2048/2063
Naspeuringen van Paul Theelen: Constantinus Imperator
Constantinus
Chronicle
of the life of Constantinus
305
Imperatores Constantius, Maximianus. Quoniam consulis, an
similis observantia
a
nobis adiciendarum feriarum, quae rebus feliciter gestis proveniunt,
ad appellationum quoque tempora porrigenda sit, verine carissime,
rescribi placuit experientiae tuae, ut in causis provocationum
iugiter et sine additamento eiuscemodi dierum tempora scias servari
debere et supra dictorum dierum in appellationum causis minime fieri
adiectionem. CONSTANTIUS ET MAXIM. AA. ET SEV. ET MAXIMIN. NOBB. CC.
VERINO. D. NON. ... APOLLONIO SUPERIORIS CONSTANTIO V ET MAXIMIANO V
CC. CONSS.
305
Emperors Constantius, Maximianus. Since
you are asking whether a similar observance of holidays added by us,
which result from successful events, should also be extended to the
times of appeals, most truly, I have been pleased to write to you in
response to your experience, so that you may know that in cases of
provocations the times of such days should be observed continuously
and without addition, and that in cases of appeals the addition of
the said days should never be made.
CONSTANTIUS AND MAXIM. AA.
AND SEV. AND MAXIMIN.
NOBB. CC.
VERINO. D. NON.
... APOLLONIO SUPERIORIS CONSTANTIUS V AND MAXIMIANUS V CC.
CONSS.
7 januari 306
Imp(eratores) Caes(ares) Fl(avius) Val(erius) Constantius,
G(alerius)
Val(erius) Maximian(us), p(ii) f(elices) in(victi) Aug(usti),
p(ontifices) m(aximi), Ger(manici) m(aximi) V, Sar(matici) m(aximi)
III, Per(sici) m(aximi) II, Br(ittannici) m(aximi) II, Car(pici)
m(aximi) V, Ar(menici) m(aximi), Med(ici) m(aximi), Ad(iabenici)
m(aximi), tr(ibunicia) p(otestate) XIV, co(n)s(ules) VI, p(atres)
p(atriae), p(roconsules)|d(omini) n(ostri) Diocletian(us) et
Maximian(us), patr(es) Aug(ustorum) et Caes(arum) d(omini) n(ostri)
Sever(us) et Maximin(us), nob(ilissimi) Caes(ares) nomina mili|tum,
qui militaver(unt)in coh(ortibus) pr(aetoris) Aug(ustorum) et
Caes(arum) dec(em) I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, piis
vindicib(us), ui pie et fortiter militia|functi sunt, ius tribvimus
conubii dumtaxat cum singulis et primis uxoribus, ut, etia(m) si
pe(re)grini iuris feminas in matrimonio suo iunxerint, proinde
liberos tollant acxi (sic) ex duobus civibus Romanis natos.
a(nte)
d(iem) VII id(us) Ian(uarias)|d(ominis) n(ostris) Constantio
Aug(usto) VI et Maximian(o) Aug(usto) VI co(n)s(ulibus)
coh(ors)
IX pr(aetoria) August(orum) et Caesar(um)|Valerius Clemens|natione
Italus.
Descript(um)
et reco(g)n(i)t(um) ex tabula aenea qu(a)e fixa est Rom(a)e in muro
pos(t) templu(m) divi Aug(usti) ad Minervam.
Valeri
Caiani; Valeri Albini; Valeri Vitalis; Valeri Valentini; Valeri
Victor(is);
31 mei 311
Edict of Toleration (Galerius)
34
"Inter cetera quae pro rei publicae semper commodis atque
utilitate disponimus, nos quidem volueramus antehac iuxta leges
veteres et publicam disciplinam Romanorum cuncta corrigere atque id
providere, ut etiam Christiani, qui parentum suorum reliquerant
sectam, ad bonas mentes redirent, 2 siquidem quadam ratione tanta
eosdem Christianos voluntas invasisset et tanta stulti tia
occupasset, ut non illa veterum instituta sequerentur, quae forsitan
primum parentas eorundem constituerant, sed pro arbitrio suo atque
ut isdem erat libitum, ita sibimet leges facerent quas observarent,
et per diversa varios populos congregarent. 3 Denique cum eiusmodi
nostra iussio extitisset, ut ad veterum se instituta conferrent,
multi periculo subiugati, multi etiam deturbati sunt. 4 Atque cum
plurimi in proposito perseverarent ac videremus nec diis eosdem
cultum ac religionem debitam exhibere nec Christianorum deum
observare, contemplatione mitissimae nostrae clementiae intuentes et
consuetudinem sempiternam, qua solemus cunctis hominibus veniam
indulgere, promptissimam in his quoque indulgentiam nostram
credidimus porrigendam. Ut denuo sint Chrsitiani et conventicula sua
componant, ita ut ne quid contra disciplinam agant. 5 <Per>
aliam autem epistolam iudicibus significaturi sumus quid debeant
observare. Unde iuxta hanc indulgentiam nostram debebunt deum suum
orare pro salute nostra et rei publicae ac sua, ut undique versum
res publica praestetur incolumis et securi vivere in sedibus suis
possint." 35 Hoc edictum proponitur NICOMEDIAE PRIDIE KALENDAS
MAIAS IPSO OCTIES ET MAXIMINO ITERUM CONSULIBUS.
34
"Among other things that we always arrange for the public good
and benefit, we indeed wished to correct everything according to the
ancient laws and public discipline of the Romans and to provide for
this, so that even Christians who had abandoned the sect of their
parents might return to good minds, 2 since for some reason such a
will had invaded the same Christians and such foolishness had taken
possession of them that they did not follow those institutions of
the ancients, which perhaps their parents had first established, but
at their own discretion and as they pleased, they made laws for
themselves to observe, and gathered various peoples together through
various places. 3 Finally, when our command of this kind had been
issued, that they should conform to the institutions of the
ancients, many were subjected to danger, many were also disturbed. 4
And since many persisted in their purpose and we saw that they
neither paid due worship and religion to the gods nor observed the
Christian gods, contemplating with contemplation our most gentle
clemency and the everlasting custom by which we are accustomed to
pardon all men to indulge, we believed that our most prompt
indulgence should be extended to these also. That they may once
again be Christians and arrange their assemblies, so that they do
not do anything contrary to discipline. 5 <By> another letter
we have indicated to the judges what they should observe. Wherefore,
according to this indulgence of ours, they should pray to their god
for our safety and that of the republic and their own, so that the
republic may be preserved on all sides and they may live in safety
and security in their seats." 35 This edict was proposed at
NICOMEDIA on the third day of the Kalends of May to the Octius and
Maximinus Consuls.
312 CONSTANTINO A. II ET LICINIO II CONSS.
28 september
312 Aditus competens iudex considerato tutelae iudicio eam
curabit
ferre
sententiam, quam agnitam legibus esse providerit. PP. IV KAL. SEPT.
CONSTANTINO ET LICINIO AUGG. II CONSS.
28 oktober 312
Constantine was directed in a dream to
cause the heavenly sign
to
be delineated on the shields of his soldiers, and so to proceed to
battle. He did as he had been commanded, and he marked on their
shields the letter Χ, with a perpendicular line drawn through it
and turned round thus at the top, being the cipher of Christ. Having
this sign (ΧР ), his troops stood to arms. The enemies
advanced, but without their emperor, and they crossed the bridge.
The armies met, and fought with the utmost exertions of valor, and
firmly maintained their ground. In the meantime a sedition arose at
Rome, and Maxentius was reviled as one who had abandoned all concern
for the safety of the commonweal; and suddenly, while he exhibited
the Circensian games on the anniversary of his reign, the people
cried with one voice, Constantine cannot be overcome! Dismayed at
this, Maxentius burst from the assembly, and having called some
senators together, ordered the Sibylline books to be searched. In
them it was found that: “On the same day the enemy of the
Romans shall perish.” Led by this response to the hopes of
victory, he went to the field. The bridge in his rear was broken
down. At sight of that the battle grew hotter. The hand of the Lord
prevailed, and the forces of Maxentius were routed. He fled towards
the broken bridge; but the multitude pressing on him, he was driven
headlong into the Tiber.
30 december
312 Imp. Constantinus a. ad Claudium Plotianum correctorem
Lucaniae
et Brittiorum. Si in negotio civili cognitis utrisque actionibus
pronuntiaveris te ad nostram scientiam relaturum, consultationis
exemplum litigatoribus intra decem dies edi aput acta iubeas, ut, si
cui forte relatio tua minus plena vel contraria videatur, is
refutatorias preces similiter tibi aput acta offerat intra dies
quinque, quam illi exemplum consultationis tuae obtuleris. Iam
dicationis tuae est omnia, quae aput te vel aput alios gesta fuerint
in eo negotio, consultationi tuae cum refutatoriis litigantis
adnectere, ita ut scias et decem dies, intra quos edi consultationem
oportet, et quinque, intra quos preces refutatoriae offerendae sunt,
continuos debere servari. Nam quinque diebus transactis nec
offerentem preces refutatorias litigatorem debebis audire, sed sine
his, quoniam intra statutum tempus oblatae non sunt, gesta omnia ad
nostram referre scientiam. Et cetera. DAT. III KAL. IAN. TREVIRIS
CONSTANTINO A. III ET LICINIO III CONSS.
Erravi
p. CL V consularem harum legum trabens ad acceptionem: nam a. 312 m.
Decembri Constantinus non fuit Treveris.
TITULUS
OPERIS PUBLICI p. 491
313 CONSTANTINO A. III ET LICINIO III CONSS.
A.
312 devicto Maxentio Constantinus Roma perrexit Mediolamum ibique
nuptias sororia Constantinae cum Licinio celebravit. Ibidem
convenerunt de Christianorum cultu libere admittendo, qua de re
deinde edictum propositum est a Licinio Nicomediae de id. Iun. Inde
Galliam Constantinus repetivit. Quaedam subscriptiones temporibus et
locis eo ducunt, ut Constantinus Mediolani fuerit d. VI id. Mart,
deine hienem a. 313/4 exegerit Treviris.
18 januari 313
Imp. Constantinus a. ad populum. Post alia: de delatoribus
iam
certa
statuimus; quibus si quis contra fecerit, poenam capitalem excipiet.
PROPOSITA XV KAL. FEB. CONSTANTINO A. III ET LICINIO III CONSS.
15 februari
313 Imp. Constantinus a. ad populum. Quoniam tabularii
civitatum
per
collusionem potentiorum sarcinam ad inferiores transferunt, iubemus,
ut, quisquis se gravatum probaverit, suam tantum pristinam
professionem agnoscat etc. PP. XV KAL. FEBR. ROMAE. CONSTANTINO A.
III. ET LICINIO III. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si tabularii aut hi, quibus exactionis libri traduntur, potentiores
voluerint relevare et, quod relevaverint, inferioribus addiderint,
is, qui gravatum se probaverit, non amplius dissolvat, quam secundum
censum se ostenderit suscepisse.
5
maart 313 Imp. Constantinus a. ad Philippum vicarium urbis. Si quis
ab actore rerum privatarum nostrarum sive a procuratore fuerit
vexatus, super eius calumniis vel depraedationibus deferre
querimoniam non dubitet. Quae res quum fuerit comprobata, sancimus,
ut idem, qui contra provincialem quicquam moliri fuerit ausus,
publice concremetur, quoniam gravior poena constituenda est in hos,
qui nostri iuris sunt et nostra debent custodire mandata. DAT. III.
NON. MART. HERACLEAE, CONSTANTINO A. III. ET LICINIO III. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quicumque ab actore dominico vel procuratore fuerit alicuius
iniuriae improbitate vexatus, de eorum calumniis vel
depraedationibus ad principem convolare debebit. Quae res si
potuerit approbari, eos, qui circa provinciales talia facere ausi
sunt, placuit incendio concremari, quia graviorem poenam principes
constitui voluerunt in eos, qui sui iuris sunt et sua debent
custodire mandata.
10 maart 313
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Aemilium virum perfectissimum
rationalem.
Si
quando adnotationes nostrae contineant possessionem sive domum quam
donaverimus integro statu donatam, hoc verbo ea vis continebitur,
quam antea scribebamus, cum adiacentibus et mancipiis et pecoribus
et fructibus et omni iure suo, ut ea, quae ad instructum
possessionis vel domus pertinent, tradenda sint. DAT. VI ID. MAR.
MEDIOLANO CONSTANTINO A. III ET LICINIO III CONSS.
15 maart 313
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Evagrium Pf. P. Nemo iudex civilium
munerum
vacationem cuiquam praestare curiali conetur, vel aliquem suo
arbitrio de curia liberet. Nam si quis fuerit eius modi infortunio
depravatus, ut debeat sublevari, de eius nomine ad nostram scientiam
referri oportet, ut certo temporis spatio civilium munerum ei
vacatio porrigatur. PP. ID. MART. CONSTANTINO A. III. ET LICINIO
III. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Nullus iudex vacationem indebitam tribuat curiali, nec eum de suo
officio studeat liberare. nam si ita tenuis cuiuscumque curialis et
exhausta facultas est, ut ei publici oneris necessitas non credatur,
ad principis iussit referri notitiam.
1 juni 313
Idem a. ad Eusebium virum perfectissimum praesidem Lyciae et
Pamfyliae.
Plebs
urbana, sicut in Orientalibus quoque provinciis observatur, minime
in censibus pro capitatione sua conveniatur, sed iuxta hanc
iussionem nostram inmunis habeatur, sicuti etiam sub domino et
parente nostro Diocletiano seniore Augusto eadem plebs urbana
inmunis fuerat. DAT. KAL. IUN. CONSTANTINO A. III ET LICINIO III
CONSS.
juli 313 When
I, Constantine Augustus, and I, Licinius Augustus, came under
favorable
auspices to Milan and took under consideration everything which
pertained to the common weal and prosperity, we resolved among other
things, or rather first of all, to make such decrees as seemed in
many respects for the benefit of every one; namely, such as should
preserve reverence and piety toward the deity. We resolved, that is,
to grant both to the Christians and to all men freedom to follow the
religion which they choose, that whatever heavenly divinity exists
may be propitious to us and to all that live under our government.
juli 313 When
we, Constantine and Licinius, emperors, had an interview at Milan,
and
conferred together with respect to the good and security of the
commonwealth, it seemed to us that, amongst those things that are
profitable to mankind in general, the reverence paid to the Divinity
merited our first and chief attention, and that it was proper that
the Christians and ll others should have liberty to follow that mode
of religion which to each of them appeared best; so that that God,
who is seated in heaven, might be benign and propitious to us, and
to every one under our government.
21 juli 313
Augg. et caess. Flaviae Aprillae. Cum profitearis te certa
quantitate
mancipium
ex sanguine comparasse, cuius pretium te exsolvisse dicis et
instrumentis esse firmatum, hoc a nobis iam olim praescriptum est,
quod, si voluerit liberum suum reciperare, tunc in eius locum
mancipium domino dare aut pretium quo valuisset numeraret.
Etiamnunc, si a suis parentibus certo pretio comparasti, ius dominii
possidere te existimamus. Nullum autem ex gentilibus liberum
adprobari licet. SUBSCR. XII KAL. AUG. CONSTANTINO AUG. III CONSS.
10 augustus
313 IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD RUFINUM P(RAEFECTUM)
P(RAETORI)O.
Ferri
non potest in titulos militaris laudis inrepere eos, qui nec aciem
viderint nec signa perspexerint nec arma tractaverint. Ideoque si
qui ex protectoribus vel ex praepositis vel ex tribunis epistulas
reportaverint, non habeant privilegium, quod merentur qui ordine
militiae sub armorum labore decurso ad hunc honorem pervenerint.
P(RO)P(OSITA) IV ID. AUG. SIRMIO CONSTANTINO A. III ET LICINIO III
CONSS.
28 september
313 [...] Ita ergo venditionum omnium est tractanda
sollemnitas, ut
fallax
illa et fraudulenta venditio penitus sepulta depereat. Cui legi
deinceps cuncti parere debebunt, ut omnia diligenti circumspectione
quaesita per universas successiones tuto decurrant neque aliquem ex
inprovidentia casum malignae captionis horrescant. D. IV KAL. SEPT.
A PRAEFECTO PRAETORIO AD CORRECTOREM PICENI AQUILEIA. ACC. XIV KAL.
OCT. ALBAE CONSTANTINO AUG. III. CONSS.
21 oktober
313? CT 16.2.2 Constantine
Christian
clergy shall be exempted from compulsory public service as not to
interfere with their divine services.
[The
Codex gives the date as 319, but Seeck, Elliot, and Pharr suggest
that it should be dated to 313, and that the following law is a
clarification of this one. This law has many parallels to the letter
of Constantine to Anullinus, proconsul of Africa, listed immediately
above, dating to Spring of 313. Coleman-Norton leaves the 319 date.]
31 oktober 313
Imp. Constantinus a. Haereticorum factione comperimus
ecclesiae
catholicae
clericos ita vexari, ut nominationibus seu susceptionibus aliquibus,
quas publicus mos exposcit, contra indulta sibi privilegia
praegraventur. Ideoque placet, si quem tua gravitas invenerit ita
vexatum, eidem alium subrogari et deinceps a supra dictae religionis
hominibus huiusmodi iniurias prohiberi. DAT. PRID. KAL. NOV.
CONSTANTINO A. III ET LICINIO III C. CONSS.
31 oktober
313? CT 16.2.1 Constantine
Certain
catholic clerics are being harassed by heretics so that compulsory
public services are too much for them to bear. They should be
relieved of their civic duties, and replacements found, and in the
future, clerics should not be forced to fulfill compulsory public
services. [The addressee is unspecified, and Pharr and
Coleman-Norton emend the year to 319. This law may go with the
immediately preceding law for North Africa, or it may be a later,
more general law. Elliot and Seeck leave the date without
emendation.]
5
maart 313 Law 3: To Philip, vicar of the city
CTh
10.4.1 Dorries p. 163-164
Threatening
treasury officials who harass subjects with public burning.
Apr
30, 313-Oct 8, 316 Inscription at Lavinium
AE
1984,151 Gruenewald 270
Restoring
the bath.
Apr
30, 313-Oct 8, 316 Inscription at Thessalonica
AE
1933,251 Gruenewald 398
Apr
30, 313-Oct 8, 316 Inscription at Golmarmara
TAM
V 645 Gruenewald 462
Apr
30, 313-Oct 8, 316 Inscription at Tunlu-Bunar
CIL
III 7170; EE V 177, 1399 Gruenewald 467
Apr
30, 313-c. 321 Inscription at Migennes
AE
1983,701 Gruenewald 17
Apr
30, 313-c. 321 Second inscription at Mascula
CIL
VIII 17681; EE VII 330, 737 Gruenewald 112
313
Letter to Caecilian, bishop of Carthage
HE
10.6; EH 7.42 Silli 2; Dorries p. 17-18
Giving
money to be distributed to the ministers and permission to request
more for them if necessary.
c.
May 313 Letter to Miltiades, bishop of Rome, and Marcus
HE
10.5.18-20; EH 7.43; HD App 13 Silli 3; Dorries p. 20-21
Asking
them to preside in Rome over the case of Caecilian.
June
1, 313 Law 4: To Eusebius, governor of Lycia and Pamphylia
CTh
13.10.2 Dorries p. 164
The
tax privilege of Diocletian is renewed.
June
13, 313 Edict of Constantine and Licinius about the freedom of the
Christian religion
HE
10.5.2-3; EH 7.41; LAC 48.2-12 Silli 4; Dorries p. 228-232
Enumeration
of religious freedoms.
July
21, 313 Law 5
Frag
Vat 34 Dorries p. 164
Ordering
a right of redemption for boys sold as babies.
Aug
10, 313 Law 6
CTh
7.21.1 Dorries p. 164
Declaring
it intolerable that people claim military status who never "saw
battle, watched the standard, or bore arms".
29
augustus 313 and 4 februari 337
Law
7: To Rufinus, the praetorian prefect
Frag
Vat 35 Dorries p. 164
Against
deceptive selling practices—Constantine affirms that being
himself innocent he is unable to suspect deceit in others.
31
oktober 313 Second letter to Anulinus
HE
10.7; EH 7.42; HD App 16 Silli 5; Dorries p. 18-19
Clergy
are exempt from all political duties.
Oct
31, 313? Law 8
CTh
16.2.1 Dorries p. 165
Instruction
to replace a particular official vexed by heretics and prevent this
kind of thing from happening in the future.
27
december 313 Law 9: To Claudius Plotianus, commissioner of Lucania
and Bruttium
CTh
11.29.1 Dorries p. 165
The
emperor is only to be consulted in difficult cases.
313
Law 10
Frag
Vat 33 Dorries p. 165
Freeborn
children may not become slaves.
313-315
Law 11
CTh
6.1.1 Dorries p. 165
The
"gates of dignity" should not stand open to those who are
excluded "from the association of the honest" through any
kind of stigma.
314 VOLVSIANO ET ANNIANO CONSS.
Pace
inter duos imperatores rupta 'bellum Cibalense fuit a. d. VIII id.
Oct.', quo finito eodem anno vel certe proximo incipiente pacem
restitutam esse iude confirmatur, quod a. 315 ambo imperatores simul
consules processerunt. Deine, ut ait auctor originis Constantianae
19, Constantinus reversus est Serdicam. Quae refragantur
constitutiones infra relatae, secundum quae Constantinus a. 314 ab
Octobri ad Decembrem Treviris fuit, videntur mendose traditiae.
1 januari 314
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Maximum praefectum Urbi. pr. Si quis
alicui
maiestatis
crimen intenderit, cum in huiuscemodi re convictus minime quisquam
privilegio dignitatis alicuius a strictiore inquisitione defendatur,
sciat se quoque tormentis esse subdendum, si aliis manifestis
indiciis accusationem suam non potuerit comprobare. Cum eo, qui
huius esse temeritatis deprehenditur, illum quoque tormentis subdi
oportet, cuius consilio atque instinctu ad accusationem accessisse
videbitur, ut ab omnibus conmissi consciis statuta vindicta possit
reportari. In servis quoque vel libertis, qui dominos aut patronos
accusare aut deferre temptaverint, professio tam atrocis audaciae
statim in admissi ipsius exordio per sententiam iudicis comprimatur
ac denegata audientia patibulo adfigatur. PROPOSITA KAL. IANUAR.
VOLUSIANO ET ANNIANO CONSS.
30 januari 314
Imp. Constantinus a. Locrio Verino suo salutem. pr. Aput
eos,
quos
superstites integris facultatibus esse pervideris vel quorum heredes
incolumia retinent patrimonia, sortes kalendarii perseverare
debebunt, ita tamen, ut annuas usuras suis quibusque temporibus
exolvant, cum simul et rei publicae utile sit retinere idoneos
debitores et ipsis commodum cumulum debiti minime nutriri.
1.
Et quia nefas est obnoxiis corporibus alienatis circumscribi
civitates, placuit, si qui debitor rei publicae civitatis quippiam
ex eo patrimonio, quod habuit, cum pecuniam rei publicae sumeret,
donaverit vel distraxerit vel qualibet in alium ratione contulerit,
qualitate rei alienatae perspecta atque omnibus debitoris
facultatibus consideratis, quas habuit, cum ei pecunia crederetur,
pro rata ab eo, qui ex debitoris facultatibus aliquid detinet, ex
sorte atque usuris postulari. Itaque quotiens minus idoneum
deprehenditur eius patrimonium, cuius nomen kalendario civitatis
alicuius invenitur obnoxium, iudex omni quibus, e diligentiae
sollicitudine debebit inquirere, ad quos ex qualibet condicione
transierint debitoris facultates, ut singuli aequa aestimatione
habita pro rata rerum quas possident conveniantur, personalem
actionem contra eum habituri debitorem, qui ipsis solventibus
liberatur. Ab eo autem, a quo constat fortunarum suarum partem
maximam recessisse, etiam reliquam portionem quae aput eum resederit
transferri ad idoneum oportebit.
2.
Quod si quispiam debitor rei publicae civitatis fisco nostro locum
fecerit, emptores quidem, qui ex fisco nostro comparaverint,
manifestum est secundum ius vetus et rescripta divorum
constitutionesque nostras nullam debere molestiam sustinere, cum
huiusmodi casibus rem publicam placuerit fortuita dispendia
sustinere; qui vero aliquid ex eiusdem bonis principali liberalitate
fuerint consecuti, iuxta legem latam obnoxii erunt rei publicae
habita solidarum facultatum consideratione, quae fuerant debitoris,
cum pecuniam rei publicae sumeret, ut pro rata corporis, quod ex
largitate nostra retinent, competentem sortis atque usurarum partem
exigantur.
3.
Quod si quis debitor non comparuerit vel certe ita omnia sua
consumpserit, ut nemo aliquam rem ex eius bonis possideat, id quoque
debitum convenit ad dispendium rei publicae pertinere. Ideoque
periculo curatoris kalendari et magistratuum et creatorum aput
idoneos vel dominos rusticorum praediorum pecunia collocanda est.
PROPOSITA III KAL. FEB. VOLUSIANO ET ANNIANO CONSS.
30
January 314 Imp. Constantine a. Locrius Verinus his greetings. pr.
Aput those,
whom
you foresee to be survivors with intact faculties or whose heirs
retain their patrimony intact, the calendar lots should continue, so
however, that they pay their annual interest at any time, since at
the same time it is useful for the state to retain suitable debtors
and for them the advantage of not having an accumulation of debt to
be nurtured.
1.
And because it is wrong to limit cities to liable alienated bodies,
it was decided that if any debtor to the state of the city has
donated or alienated anything from the patrimony that he had, when
he took money from the state, or has transferred it to another in
any way, the quality of the alienated thing is examined and all the
faculties of the debtor, which he had, when the money was entrusted
to him, should be demanded pro rata from the one who withholds
something from the faculties of the debtor, according to the lot and
interest. Therefore, whenever the patrimony of a person whose name
is found to be subject to the calendar of some city is found to be
less suitable, the judge, with due diligence, must inquire into all
those to whom the debtor's assets have passed from whatever
condition, so that each may be agreed upon, having taken a fair
assessment in proportion to the things they possess, and that the
debtor will have a personal action against him, who is released by
the payers themselves. However, from the person from whom it is
established that the greatest part of his fortunes have departed,
the remaining portion which has remained with him must also be
transferred to a suitable person.
2.
But if any debtor of the public realm of the city makes room for our
treasury, the buyers who have purchased from our treasury, it is
clear that according to ancient law and the rewritten laws of the
gods and our constitutions, they should not suffer any
inconvenience, since in such cases it is the public interest to bear
the incidental expenses; But those who have obtained something from
the same property by the principal generosity, according to the law
passed, will be liable to the state, having taken into account the
solid resources that would have been the debtor's, when he took the
money of the state, so that they may be exacted a proper share of
the lot and interest in proportion to the body that they retain from
our generosity.
3.
But if any debtor does not appear or certainly has consumed all his
property in such a way that no one possesses anything from his
property, that debt also falls to the expense of the state.
Therefore, at the risk of the curator calendar and the magistrates
and the creators, the money is to be invested with suitable persons
or owners of rural estates. PROPOSITS 3 KAL. FEB. VOLUSIANUS AND
ANNIANUS CONSS.
6 maart 314
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD URSUM VICARIUM. Si quando quis
rescriptum ad
extraordinarium
iudicem reportaverit, dilatio ei penitus neganda est. Illi autem,
qui in iudicium vocatur, danda est ad probanda precum mendacia vel
proferenda aliqua instrumenta vel testes, quoniam instructus esse
non potuit, qui praeter spem ad alienum iudicem tradebatur. DAT.
PRID. NON. MART. VOLUSIANO ET ANNIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quando ab aliquo principe praeceptio fuerit surrepta, ut ad alium
iudicem quam cui commissus est, adversarium suum pertrahat
audiendum, sicut ille, qui petitor est, indutias si petierit,
accipere non debuit, ita illi, qui ad iudicium adducitur, dilatio
debita non negetur, ut facilius aut per scripturam aut per testes
probare vale at illum a quo pulsatus est falsa supplicatione
meruisse, quod petiit.
19 maart 314
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Volusianum. Si navicularius
originalis
levamentarius
fuerit, nihilo minus aput eosdem, aput quos et parentes eius fuisse
videntur, firmiter permanebit. DAT. XIV KAL. APRIL. VOLUSIANO ET
ANNIANO CONSS.
25 maart 314
MP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. ET C. Pro officio administrationis
tutoris
vel
curatoris bona, si debitores exsistant, tamquam pigneris titulo
obligata minores sibimet vindicare minime prohibentur. DAT. VII KAL.
APRIL. TREV(IRIS) VOLUSIANO ET ANNIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quicumque tutor sive curator negligentia administrationis suae
debitor minoribus comprobatur, noverit facultates suas ita
obligatas, ut, si non satisfecerit, ratione deducta, bona sua a
minoribus loco pignoris teneantur.
1 april 314
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Probum. pr. Si quae mulieres liberae
vel a
servis
vel a quolibet alio vim perpessae contra voluntatem suam servilis
condicionis hominibus iunctae sint, competenti legum severitate
vindictam consequantur.
1.
Si qua autem mulier suae sit immemor honestatis, libertatem amittat
atque eius filii servi sint domini, cuius se contubernio coniunxit.
Quam legem et de praeterito custodiri oportet. PROPOSITA KAL. APRIL.
VOLUSIANO ET ANNIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Per vim contra voluntatem servo iuncta alieno et vindictam
consequitur. Si vero sponte fit ancilla, et eius filii servi sunt.
25 april 314
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Volusianum. Universi devotionis
studio
contendant,
si quos ingenuis natalibus procreatos sub tyranno ingenuitatem
amisisse aut propria contenti conscientia aut aliorum indiciis
recognoscunt, natalibus suis restituere, nec exspectata iudicis
interpellatione. Nam si quis contra conscientiam suam vel certissima
testimonia plurimorum in eadem avaritiae tenacitate permanserit,
severissima poena mulctabitur. Placet autem, etiam eos periculo
subiugari, qui scientes ingenuos servitutis necessitatem per
iniuriam sustinere dissimulant. PROP. VIII. KAL. MAI. ROMAE,
VOLUSIANO ET ANNIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Ingenui, qui tyranni temporibus addicti sunt servituti, ingenuitati
reddantur. Quod si quis sciens hoc ordine addictum ingenuum in
servitute tenuerit, noverit in se legibus vindicandum.
28 oktober
314 IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. PALATINIS BENE MERITIS SUIS SALUTEM.
A
palatinis tam his, qui obsequiis nostris inculpata officia
praebuerunt, quam illis, qui in scriniis nostris, id est memoriae
epistularum libellorumque, versati sunt, procul universas
cal(um)nias sive nominationes iubemus esse summotas, idque
beneficium ad filios eorum atque nepote(s) ipso ordine sanguinis
pervenire atque immunes eos a cunctis muneribus sordidis et
personalibu(s) permanere cum universis mobilibus et manci(pi)is
urbanis, neque iniurias eis ab aliquibus inferri, it(a) ut, qui haec
contempserit, indiscreta dignitate poenas debitas exigatur. DAT. IV
KAL. NOV. TREVIRIS VOLUSIANO ET ANNIANO CONSS.
3 november 314
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Catulinum. Post alia: minime fas
est,
ut
in civili negotio libellis appellatoriis oblatis aut carceris
cruciatus aut cuiuslibet iniuriae genus seu tormenta vel etiam
contumelias perferat appellator; absque his criminalibus causis, in
tiamsi possunt provocare, eum tamen statum debent obtinere, ut post
provocationem in custodia perseverent. Ea custodita moderatione, ut
eorum provocationes recipiantur, qui easdem non a praeiudicio
interposuisse noscuntur aut etiam ante causam examinatam et
determinatam, sed universo negotio peremptoria praescriptione finito
vel per cuncta membra decurso, contra iudicem interpositae esse
noscantur etc. DAT. III. NON. NOV. TREVIRIS. ACC. XV KAL. MAI.
HADRUMETO [Sousse], VOLUSIANO ET ANNIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Ista lex hoc praecipit, non debere appellantem aut carceris custodia
aut cuiuslibet iniuriae afflictione constringi, exceptis tamen
criminalibus causis, in quibus similis accusantem et accusatum
condicio poenae custodiaeque constringit: et eorum appellationes
dicit debere recipi, sed ita, ut qui appellaverit, in custodia
teneatur, quo usque ad alium iudicem crimina obiecta perveniant, ut
discussis ad integrum omnibus, aut de absolutione aut de damnatione
accipiat sententiam finitivam.
3 november 314
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Catulinum. Qui sententiam laturus
est,
temperamentum
hoc teneat, ut non prius capitalem in quempiam promat severamque
sententiam, quam in adulterii vel homicidii vel maleficii crimine
aut sua confessione aut certe omnium, qui tormentis vel
interrogationibus fuerint dediti, in unum conspirantem
concordantemque rei finem convictus sit et sic in obiecto flagitio
deprehensus, ut vix etiam ipse ea, quae commiserit, negare
sufficiat. DAT. III. NON. NOV. TREVIRIS. ACC. XV KAL. MAI. HADRUMETI
[Sousse], VOLUSIANO ET ANNIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Iudex criminosum discutiens non ante sententiam proferat capitalem,
quam aut reus ipse fateatur, aut convictus aut per innocentes testes
vel per conscios criminis sui aut homicidium aut adulterium aut
maleficium commisisse manifestius convincatur.
30 december
314 IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. IULIO ANTIOCHO PRAEFECTO VIGILUM.
Annotationes
nostras sine rescribtione admitti non placet, id[eo]que officium
gravitatis tuae observet, sicut semper est custoditum, ut rescribta
vel epistulas potius nostras quam adnotationes solas existimes
audiendas. DAT. III K. IAN. TREV(IRIS) VOLUSIANO ET ANNIANO CONSS.
EDICT OF CONSTANTINE I CONCERNING THE
ACCUSATIONS (314-323)
Two
chapters of this edict are preserved in CTh. 9, 5 and in CJ 9, 8, 3.
Three copies of the edict on stone have been discovered: one
somewhere in Asia Minor, before 1600, but now lost; one in Lycia,
also in Asia Minor, before 1902; one in Crete, reported in 1889,
which exhibits all of the surviving part of the edict. The date is
doubtful, for the superscription and the subscription preserved in
the codes do not agree by an interval of about a decade, but the
codes and the stones all agree in the subscription, which is dated
314 A.D.
1)
Copy of the sacred edict.
2)
... it has been proved that very many persons not only in respect to
their fortunes ... accusations ... sometimes ... by cases of this
kind those who are accused as well as those who are summoned for
evidence are afflicted with very serious annoyances. Wherefore,
taking counsel for the security of our provinces, we provide
remedies of this character, that an accuser indeed may not entirely
be repulsed from court, but whoever believes that he can add proofs
to his charges may have the free opporunity to approach a judge and
may reveal the defendant by clear evidence of the offenses, so that
according to the nature of the deeds suitable punishment may be
inflicted on the person who is convicted. But if he is not at all
able to establish those charges which he makes he shall know that he
must be subjected to a very severe sentence.
3)
To be sure, if anyone charges someone with the crime of treason,
since the accusation of such a kind not at all protects anyone by
the privilege of any high rank from a very strict inquisition, he
shall know that he also must be subject to torture if he is not able
to establish his accusation by other clear evidences and proofs,
since in the case of the person who is detected in this temerity
this fact properly shall be elicited also by torture, namely, by
whose advice and instigation it appears that he entered upon the
accusation, so that punishment from all persons who are accessory to
so great a deed can be exacted.
4)
Moreover, it is known to all how often an opportunity also to
approach a judge has been denied to informers not only by the
statutes of our parents, but also by our ordinances, since a hearing
must not be granted to persons of this kind, because indeed they
must be subjected to punishment in accordance with the daring of
such great wickedness.
5)
Also in the case of slaves or of freedmen who attempt to accuse or
to report their masters or their patrons we decree that the law
according to the statute of the ancient law also must be observed,
namely, that, to be sure, the declaration of such atrocious audacity
shall be repressed immediately in the inception of its commission
itself by the judge's decision, and, after a hearing has been
denied, whoever proceeds to the desperate boldness of this kind
shall offer, affixed to a gibbet, an example to all others, lest
anyone of like audacity should appear in the future.
6)
To be sure, that everywhere counsel may be taken for the security of
innocent persons, it is our pleasure that defamatory informations
shall not be accepted. And if anyone discovers these displayed
anonymously, he shall be bound to remove them immediately and to
tear them in pieces or to consume them by fire. And in these cases
it shall be proper for the judges to take note of such a kind that,
if perchance such information is brought to them, they shall direct
it to be burned by fire, since a writing of such kind properly shall
be removed completely from a judge's hearing, but an investigation
shall remain against those persons who dare to display information
of such a sort, that, when discovered, they shall be subjected to
the due punishments of their temerity.
7)
Accordingly, we have written about all these matters not only to our
prefects but also to the governors and the treasurer and the master
of our private estate, by whose other copy, when our edict has been
published, it is declared most fully what kind of law and statute it
contains.
8)
Publicly posted January I in the consulship of Volusianus and
Annianus.
314 Optatus,
De sch. Don., Appendix 5 Constantine
Constantine,
frustrated, orders the dissatisfied Donatists, who will not yield to
the rulings of Arles, to be brought to his court for the hearing for
which they have appealed.
1
januari 314 Law 12: To Maximus, prefect of the city
CTh
9.5.1 Dorries p. 165-167
1.
Accusers who do not provide sufficient proof are subject to more
server penalties.
2. The men behind the accusers who do not prove
their case should be found so that his co-conspirators also are
punished.
3. Certain categories of men must not be allowed as
accusers and if they seek to accuse they should be punished instead
of heard.
4. If a slave or freedman tries to accuse their master,
they should be bound in the stocks and not heard.
5. No anonymous
accusations can be entertained.
Early
314 Letter to Aelafius, vicar of Africa
HD
App 3 Silli 6; Dorries p. 21-24
Caecilian
and others are directed to attend the council of Arles.
Early
314 Letter to Chrestus, bishop of Syracuse
HE
10.5.21-24; EH 7.43 Silli 7; Dorries 24-28
Commanding
another synod to be held to resolve dissensions among the bishops.
19
maart 314 and 1 juni 315 Law 13: To Volusianus and to Amabilianus,
prefect of the provisions
CTh
13.5.1-2 Dorries p. 167
Ship
captains are bound to their profession.
1
april 314 Law 14: To the consular Junias Rufus Aemilius
CTh
4.13.1 Dorries p. 167
A
woman who of her free will marries a slave forfeits her own and her
children’s freedom, but if it happens against her will she
will be vindicated by the appropriate severity of the laws.
1
april 314 Law 16: To Probus
CJ
6.1.3 Dorries p. 168
Apprehended
slaves trying to run back to barbarian lands should either have
their feet cut off or be sent into the mine.
Apr
24, 314 Law 15: To Volusianus
CTh
5.8.1 Dorries p. 167-168
Whoever
loses his freedom will receive it back without a lawsuit. Severest
punishments threaten those who try to hold in bondage someone
wrongfully enslaved.
May
15, 314 Law 17: To Dionysius
CJ
3.1.8 Dorries p. 168
In
all things justice and fairness take priority to the letter of the
law.
Aug
314 Letter to the bishops after the Council of Arles
HD
App 5 Silli 8; Dorries p. 28-33
Commending
their faith and lamenting that those condemned in ecclesiastical
courts are appealing to civil courts.
Oct
29, 314 Law 18: To the well-deserving Palatines
CTh
6.35.1 Dorries p. 168
Not
only clergymen but also palace officials receive immunity "from
all vulgar and personal duties."
Nov
3, 314? Law 19: To Catalinus
CTh
9.40.1 Dorries p. 168
The
death penalty should only be used for adultery, murder, and sorcery
in cases of confession or certain evidence.
315 CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
22 januari 315
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD CONSTANTIUM. Si quis iter faciens
bovem
non
cursui destinatum, sed aratris deditum duxerit abstrahendum, per
stationarios et eos, qui cursui publico praesunt, debito vigore
correptus aut iudici, si praesto fuerit, offeratur aut magistratibus
municipalibus competenti censura tradatur eorumque obsequio
transmittatur, aut si eius fuerit dignitatis, ut nequaquam in eum
deceat tali vigore consurgere, super eius nomine ad nostram
clementiam referatur. Qui enim explicaverit mansionem, si forte
boves non habuerit, immorari debet, donec fuerint exhibiti ab his,
qui cursus publici curam gerunt, nec culturae terrae inservientes
abstrahere. ACC. XI KAL. FEB. CARALIS CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO
IV CONSS.
22
January 315 EMP. CONSTANTINE A. TO CONSTANTIUM. If anyone, while
traveling, takes an ox not intended for the course, but used for the
plow, to be taken away, he shall be reprimanded with due force by
the stationers and those who are in charge of the public course, or
he shall be presented to the judge, if he is available, or he shall
be handed over to the competent municipal magistrates for censure
and sent to their attention, or if he is of such dignity that it is
not fitting to rise up against him with such force, he shall be
referred to our clemency on his behalf. For whoever has opened a
mansion, if he does not have oxen, must delay until they have been
presented by those who are in charge of the public course, nor shall
he take away those who are in service to the cultivation of the
land. ACC. XI KAL. FEB. CARALIS CONSTANTINUS A. IV AND LICINIUS IV
CONSS.
februari 315
Imperator Constantinus. Ad fiscum pertinentes causas
rationalis
decidat,
omnibus concussionibus prohibendis. CONST. A. AD URSUM. D. NON.
FEBR. CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
February
315 Emperor Constantine. Let the rational causes pertaining to the
treasury decide, prohibiting all confiscations. CONST. A. TO URSUM.
D. NON. FEBR. CONSTANTINUS A. IV AND LICINIUS IV CONSS.
25 februari
315 Idem a. ad Volusianum praefectum Urbi. Qui a praeiudicio
appellaverit
vel ab executoribus rerum antea statutarum atque alterius auditorii
praepropere iudicia poposcerit, XXX follium poena multetur, ita ut
omnem causam ipse sine dilatione discingas, quippe cum et causam
tuam videaris esse facturus, si per coniventiam huiusmodi
appellationem admiseris. Si quas sane de omni causa interpositas
esse provocationes perspexeris, in earum disceptatione observare
debebis, quod iam pridem a nobis est evidentissime constitutum.
PROPOSITA V KAL. MART. ROMAE CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
February
25, 315 The same letter to Volusianus, prefect of the city. Whoever
appeals from a prejudice or demands premature judgments from the
executors of previously established matters and from another
audience, shall be fined 30 folli, so that you yourself may dismiss
every case without delay, since you will also seem to be about to
make your case if you admit such an appeal by agreement. If you see
that any challenges have been filed about any case, you must observe
in their discussion, which has long been clearly established by us.
PROPOSED 5 KAL. MART. ROME CONSTANTINU A. IV AND LICINIUS IV CONSS.
8 maart 315
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD VERSENNIUM FORTUNATUM CONSULAREM
AQUARUM.
Promotionis
ordo custodiendus est, ut primus in officio sit, qui prior fuerit in
consequendo beneficio principali. DAT. VIII ID. MART. THESSAL(ONICA)
CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
8
March 315 EMP. CONSTANTINE A. TO THE FORTUNATE CONSULAR OF AQUARUM.
The
order of promotion must be observed, so that the first in office is
the one who has been the first to obtain the principal benefit.
DATE. 8th March. THESSALONICA CONSTANTINUS A. IV AND LICINIUS IV
CONSS.
20 maart 315
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Mygdonium castrensem s. palatii.
Si
quis forte decesserit eorum, qui communi nomine donatum aliquid a
nostra impetraverunt clementia, nec superstites dereliquerit
successores, placet, non ad extraneam quamcumque personam, sed ad
socium vel consortem pervenire portionem illius, qui intestatus aut
sine liberis defunctus est. DAT. XII KAL. APRIL. ANTIOCHIA,
CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si aliquis ex iis mortuus fuerit, ad quos nominatim munificentia
nostra processit, et nec testamentum fecisse, nec filios reliquisse
cognoscitur, placet, ut portionem eius is, cum quo pariter defunctus
accepit, id est socius eius acquirat: merito enim socius praefertur,
ubi filii nulla persona intervenisse cognoscitur.
20
March 315 Imp. Constantine a. to Mygdonium castrensem s. palace.
If
anyone of those who have obtained something donated in common name
from our clemency has died, and has not left any surviving
successors, it is agreed that the portion of that person who has
died intestate or without children should go not to any other
person, but to the partner or consort. DAT. XII KAL. APRIL. ANTIOCH,
CONSTANTINUS A. IV AND LICINIUS IV CONSS.
Interpretation.
If anyone of those who have died, to whom our munificence has
proceeded by name, and it is not known that he has made a will, nor
left children, it is agreed that the one with whom he received it
when he died, that is, his partner, should acquire his portion: for
the partner is rightly preferred, where it is known that no person
intervened as a son.
20 maart 315
Idem a. Eumelio. Si quis in ludum fuerit vel in metallum pro
criminum
deprehensorum
qualitate damnatus, minime in eius facie scribatur, dum et in
manibus et in suris possit poena damnationis una scriptione
comprehendi, quo facies, quae ad similitudinem pulchritudinis
caelestis est figurata, minime maculetur. DAT. XII KAL. APRIL.
CAVILLUNO CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
20
March 315 Ibid. by Eumelio. If anyone has been condemned to gambling
or to metal for the quality of the crimes he has committed, let it
not be written on his face, since the punishment of condemnation can
be comprehended in one writing on both his hands and his shoulders,
so that the face, which is shaped in the likeness of heavenly
beauty, is not at all stained. DAT. XII KAL. APRIL. CAVILLUNO
CONSTANTINUS A. IV ET LICINIUS IV CONSS.
29 maart 315
Imp. Constantinus a. ad rationales. Quicumque thesaurum
invenerit
et
ad fiscum sponte detulerit, medietatem consequatur inventi, alterum
tantum fisci rationibus tradat, ita tamen, ut citra inquietudinem
quaestionis omnis fiscalis calumnia conquiescat. Haberi enim fidem
fas est his, qui sponte obtulerint quod invenerint. Si quis autem
inventas opes offerre noluerit et aliqua ratione proditus fuerit, a
supra dicta venia debebit excludi. DAT. III KAL. APRIL. CONSTANTINO
A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
29
Maart 315 Imp. Constantine a. to rationals. Whoever finds treasure
and voluntarily brings it to the treasury, let him receive half of
what he finds, and only hand over the other half to the treasury for
its accounts, so that, without disturbing the question, all fiscal
calumny may be at rest. For it is right to have faith in those who
voluntarily offer what they find. But if anyone refuses to offer the
wealth he has found and is betrayed for some reason, he must be
excluded from the above-mentioned pardon. DAT. III KAL. APRIL.
CONSTANTINUS A. IV ET LICINIUS IV CONSS.
28 april 315
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD CONSTANTIUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O.
Quoniam
iniquissime tyrannus constituit, ut, qui ex cohortali militia
honestam missionem et vacationem rerum suarum meruerint, civilibus
officiis et curiae necessitatibus inserviant, placet hac lege
cessante eos, qui cohortali militia completis XX stipendiis
discesserint, ad nulla deinceps civilia munera vel curiae devocari.
Quam rem et circa officiales praesidum observari conveniet. DAT. IV
KAL. MAI. CONSTANTINO AUG. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
28
April 315 IMP. CONSTANTINE A. TO CONSTANTIUM PPAEFFECTUM PRAETORIO.
Since
the tyrant most unjustly decreed that those who had earned an
honorable mission and the release of their property from the
cohortal militia should serve in civil offices and the needs of the
curia, it is agreed that, with the lapse of this law, those who had
left the cohortal militia after completing 20 stipends should no
longer be called to any civil or curia duties. Which thing should
also be observed regarding the officials of the praesidium DAT. IV
KAL. MAI. CONSTANTINO AUG. IV AND LICINIO IV CONSS.
10 mei 315
IDEM A. EDICTO SUO AD AFROS. Stationariis primipilarum,
quorum
manifesta
sunt loca, coram mandatum est, ut, si extra modum aliquid
extorserint, sciant se capite puniendos: praeterea ne carcerem
habeant neve quis personam pro manifesto crimine apud se habeat in
custodia neve quis amplius quam duos agasones ex provincia secum
habeat vel de Numidia sibi adiungat neve ex aliis provinciis
agasonem habeat vel qui alicuius iam stationarii minister fuit.
P(RO)P(OSITA) VI ID. MAI. KARTHAG(INE) CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO
IV CONSS.
10
May 315 Idem A. BY HIS Edict TO AFROS. The stationers of the
first-pillars, whose places are manifest, were commanded before,
that, if they extort anything beyond the limit, they should know
that they would be punished by the head: moreover, they should not
have a prison, nor should anyone have a person with them in custody
for a manifest crime, nor should anyone have more than two servants
from the province with them or from Numidia attached to them, nor
should anyone have a servant from other provinces, or who was
already the minister of some stationer. P(RO)P(OSITA) 6 ID. MAY.
CARTHAGE TO CONSTANTINE A. IV AND LICINIO IV CONSS.
13 mei 315
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Ablavium. Aereis tabulis vel
cerussatis
aut
linteis mappis scripta per omnes civitates Italiae proponatur lex,
quae parentum manus a parricidio arceat votumque vertat in melius.
Officiumque tuum haec cura perstringat, ut, si quis parens adferat
subolem, quam pro paupertate educare non possit, nec in alimentis
nec in veste impertienda tardetur, cum educatio nascentis infantiae
moras ferre non possit. Ad quam rem et fiscum nostrum et rem
privatam indiscreta iussimuas praebere obsequia. DAT. III ID. MAI.
NAISSO CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV AA. CONSS.
1 juni 315
Idem a. Amabiliano praefecto annonae. Navicularios ad
consortium
pistorum
urbicorum nominatos neque ulla hereditatis successione pistoribus
obnoxios absolvi ab hoc munere oportebit. Quod si hereditario iure
forsitan pistoribus teneantur, facultatem habeant, si forte
maluerint, obventicias pistorum hereditates eidem corpori reddere
aut quibuscumque proximis defuncti cedere, ut ipsi a pistorum
consortio liberentur. Quod si hereditatem amplectantur, necesse est
successionis ratione pistorii muneris societatem eos suscipere et ex
propriis facultatibus onera navicularia sustinere, viro clarissimo
praefecto urbi super hac re videlicet disceptante. DAT. KAL. IUN.
TREVIRIS CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quaecumque contra leges a principibus fuerint obtenta, non valeant.
1
June 315 The same to Amabilianus, the prefect of the food supply.
The navigators appointed to the consortium of the city bakers and
not liable to the bakers by any inheritance succession should be
released from this duty. But if they are perhaps bound to the bakers
by hereditary right, they have the right, if they perhaps prefer, to
return the inheritances of the bakers to the same body or to cede
them to any of their relatives upon their death, so that they
themselves may be freed from the consortium of the bakers. But if
they embrace the inheritance, it is necessary that they assume the
partnership of the baker's office by reason of succession and bear
the shipping burdens from their own resources, with the most
illustrious man prefect of the city deliberating on this matter.
DAT. KAL. IUN. TREVIRIS CONSTANTINO A. IV AND LICINIO IV CONSS.
Interpretation.
Whatever has been obtained from the princes against the laws, shall
be of no effect.
2 juni 315
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD UNIVERSOS PROVINCIALES.
Intercessores a
rectoribus
provinciarum dati ad exigenda debita ea, quae civiliter poscuntur,
servos aratores aut boves aratorios pigneris causa de possessionibus
abstrahunt, ex quo tributorum inlatio retardatur. Si quis igitur
intercessor aut creditor vel praefectus pacis vel decurio in hac re
fuerit detectus, a rectoribus provinciarum capitali sententia
subiugetur. DAT. IV NON. IUN. SIRMIO CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO
CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Multi pro fiscali debito servos cultores aut boves aratorios de
possessionibus causa pignoris auferre praesumunt, de quorum
laboribus tributa redduntur, et ideo si quis creditor vel curator
pacis vel curialis aut quicumque exactor hoc facere praesumpserit, a
provinciae iudice puniatur.
2
June 315 IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. TO ALL PROVINCIALS. Intercessors
assigned by the rectors of the provinces to collect debts that are
civilly demanded, remove slave farmers or oxen from their
possessions as a pledge, from which the payment of taxes is delayed.
If therefore any intercessor or creditor or prefect of the peace or
decurion is discovered in this matter, he shall be subjected to
capital punishment by the rectors of the provinces. DAT. IV NON.
IUN. SIRMIO CONSTANTINO A. IV AND LICINIO CONSS.
Interpretation.
Many presume to remove slave farmers or oxen from their possessions
as a pledge for a fiscal debt, from whose labors taxes are paid, and
therefore if any creditor or curator of the peace or curial or any
exactor presumes to do this, let him be punished by the provincial
judge.
18 juni 315
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Proclianum. Praeter privatas res
nostras et
ecclesias
catholicas et domum clarissimae memoriae Eusebii exconsule et
exmagistro equitum et peditum et Arsacis regis Armeniorum nemo ex
nostra iussione praecipuis emolumentis familiaris iuvetur
substantiae. Datianus enim vir clarissimus patricius, qui hanc olim
gratiam fuerat consecutus, auferri sibi id cum tanta instantia
depoposcit, cum quanta alii poscere consuerunt. Ideoque omnes
pensitare debebunt quae manu nostra delegationibus adscribuntur,
nihil amplius exigendi. Nam si qui vicarius aut rector provinciae
aliquid iam cuiquam crediderit remittendum, quod aliis remiserit de
propriis dare facultatibus compelletur. DAT. XV KAL. IUL.
CONSTANTINOPOLI [?} CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
18
June 315 Imp. Constantine a. to Proclianum. Apart from our private
properties and Catholic churches and the house of the most
illustrious memory Eusebius, ex-consul and ex-master of horse and
foot, and Arsaces, king of the Armenians, no one shall be granted
special benefits of substance by our order. For Datianus, a most
illustrious patrician, who had once obtained this favor, demands
that it be taken away from him with as much insistence as others are
accustomed to demand. Therefore, all shall consider what is assigned
to delegations by our hand, requiring nothing more. For if any vicar
or rector of a province has already entrusted anything to anyone to
be remitted, what he has remitted to others shall be compelled to
give from his own means. DAT. 15 KAL. IUL. CONSTANTINOPLE [?}
CONSTANTINE A. IV AND LICINIO IV CONSS.
25 juli 315
IDEM A. AD BASSUM. Placuit post completum vicesimum et
quintum annum
ex
eo, quo vicesimi et sexti anni dies inluxerit, ad interponendum
contestationem in urbe Roma usque ad anni tricesimi extremum diem
spatia prorogari, et intra centesimum urbis Romae militarium, si
tamen ab his iudicibus, qui Romae sunt, fuerit iudicandum: per omnem
vero Italiam usque ad finem anni vicesimi et noni: in ceteris
omnibus provinciis usque ad completum annum vicesimum et octavum.
Quo transacto tempore manifesto omnes sciant legum sibi deinceps
praesidia denegari quandoquidem contestationis necessitate. depulsa
finiendas integri restitutionum decidendasque causas certo genere
clauserimus. Eandem autem custodiri temporum convenit rationem, si
forte quis beneficio nostro aetatis veniam fuerit consecutus, ex eo
die, quo indulgentia nostra in iudicio competenti fuerit intimata
eique administratio rei propriae reserata, ut ad persequendas in
integrum restitutiones finiendasque causas iuge tempus habeat
praestitutum. Si quando sane in minoris iura successerit minor,
minime prohibetur, cum quintum et vicesimum aetatis suae annum
transierit, integri restitutionis beneficio uti tempore inlibato.
Quod si maioris fuerit minor iura nanctus, quantum ad eas pertinet
actiones, quas ex persona maioris fuerit consecutus, tantum temporis
ad exponendas integri restitutiones decidendasque causas accipere
debebit, quantum defuncto, cuius heres aut bonorum possessor
docebitur extitisse, relicum fuerat. Cum vero maior successionem
fuerit adeptus minoris, siquidem civili iure ab intestato vel ex
testamento successerit, mox cum creta fuerit vel adita hereditas, si
vero honorario iure, ex quo bonorum possessio fuerit accepta,
examinando integri restitutionis negotio solida sine ulla
deminutione tempora subputentur, quae non pro locis, regionibus
atque provinciis, in quibus morantur qui heredes aut bonorum
possessores sunt, observari iubemus, sed in quibus defuncti
domicilia conlocaverant [collocaverant]. DAT. VIII KAL. AUG. NAISSO.
PROP(OSITA) ROM(AE) NON. OCTOB. CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Iustum videtur, ut post xxv. annum, ubi xxvi. annus fuerit
ingressus, deposita apud iudicem contestatione petat, qui sibi
voluerit ea, quae in annis minoribus aut per se aut per tutores vel
curatores vitio male acta sunt, salva et integra pro aetatis
infirmitate restitui. In his dumtaxat provinciis, usque ad xxviii.
annum, si contestatus fuerit, integra ei, salvo principali negotio,
quae male amiserat, reformentur. Nam et qui serenitati nostrae pro
venia aetatis crediderit supplicandum, hoc sibi noverit esse
concessum, ut sine praeiudicio indulgentiae nostrae, quod in
sequenti lege comprehensum est, usque ad constitutum superius tempus
liberum habeat in rerum, quas male gesserat, proprietatem restitui.
Quod si forsitan minor annis in illius hereditate successerit, qui
et ipse in annis minoribus ab hac luce discessit, non prohibendus
est, quum ad xxvi. annum pervenerit, ut sibi, unde illi competebat,
reparationem agendarum rerum interposita contestatione requirat. Sin
vero minor hereditatem illius, qui plena et integra aetate defecit,
acceperit, mox in integrum fuerit restitutus, ea tempora in negotiis
prosequatur, quae defuncto maiori legibus competebant. Quum autem
maior minori seu ex testamento seu ex quocumque iure successerit,
quum primum ad eum hereditas defuncti pervenerit, quicquid pupillo
potuit pro integri restitutione competere, in illius transeat
actionem: ita ut illius provinciae forum sequatur, in qua defunctus
minor habitasse dignoscitur.
July
25, 315 Idem A. AD BASSUM. It was decided that after the
twenty-fifth year has passed, from the day on which the twenty-sixth
year dawned, the time for filing a complaint in the city of Rome
should be extended until the last day of the thirtieth year, and
within the hundredth year of the military year of the city of Rome,
if it were to be judged by those judges who are in Rome: throughout
all Italy until the end of the twenty-ninth year: in all the other
provinces until the full twenty-eighth year. After which time has
passed, let everyone know that the protection of the laws is denied
to them henceforth, since the necessity of a complaint has been met.
We have closed the cases of complete restitutions and the cases of
deciding in a certain way. However, it is appropriate to observe the
same time limit, if perhaps someone has obtained a pardon by virtue
of our age, from the day on which our indulgence was communicated to
him in a competent court and the administration of his own property
was opened to him, so that he may have a constant time set aside for
pursuing complete restitutions and concluding cases. If at any time
a minor succeeds to the rights of a minor, it is not forbidden, when
he has passed the twenty-fifth year of his age, to use the benefit
of full restitution in the time allotted. But if an adult has
acquired the rights of a minor, as far as those actions which he has
obtained in the person of the adult concern, he must take as much
time for explaining full restitutions and deciding the cases as was
left to the deceased, whose heir or possessor of the goods is shown
to have existed. But when an adult has acquired the succession of a
minor, if he has succeeded by civil law from an intestate or by
will, as soon as the inheritance has been created or accessed, but
if by honorary law, from which possession of the goods was accepted,
by examining the business of full restitution solid times are to be
calculated without any diminution, which we order to be observed not
for the places, regions and provinces in which those who are heirs
or possessors of the goods reside, but in which the deceased had
placed their domiciles. DAT. 8 KAL. AUG. NAISSO. PROP(OSITA) ROM(AE)
NON. OCTOB. CONSTANTINE A. IV AND LICINIO CONSS.
Interpretation.
It seems just that after the 25th year, when the 26th year has
entered, a petition should be filed with a judge to request that
those things which were wrongly done in younger years, either by
themselves or by their guardians or curators, be restored to them,
safe and sound, due to the infirmity of age. In these provinces
only, up to the 28th year, if a petition has been filed, the things
which they had wrongly lost should be restored to them, intact, with
the main business preserved. For whoever believes that he should
supplicate to our serenity for the pardon of his age, should know
that this is granted to him, that without prejudice to our
indulgence, which is included in the following law, he should have
free rein until the time established above to have the property of
the things which he had wrongly done restored. But if perhaps a
younger person succeeds in the inheritance of one who also departed
this world in younger years, he should not be prevented, since he
has reached the 26th year. has reached the age of one year, so that
he may, from which he was entitled, demand the restitution of the
affairs of the estate by filing a contestation. But if the minor has
received the inheritance of one who has failed at full and complete
age, and has been restored to full age, he shall immediately proceed
with the business for the periods which were applicable to the
deceased major under the laws. But when the major succeeds the
minor, whether by will or by any other right, when the deceased's
inheritance first comes to him, whatever could have been applicable
to the orphan for the restitution of full age, shall pass to his
action: so that the court of that province in which the deceased
minor is known to have resided shall follow.
27 juli 315
IDEM A. AD PROCULUM PROC(ONSULEM) AFRIC(AE). Si ex
memorialibus
vel
[ex] palatinis nostris aliquis ad agendas curas re[i] publicae vel
alterius officii fuerit destinatus, m[i]nime ab eo repraesentatio
postuletur equoru[m]. Qui autem in palatio obsequia non
praebuerun[t], sed ex alio hominum genere sunt, equos sollemnes pro
huiusmodi acta repraesentent. DAT. VI KAL. AUG. CONSTANTINO A. IV ET
LICINIO CONSS.
1 augustus 315
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Domitium Celsum vicarium Africae.
Plagiarii,
qui viventium filiorum miserandas infligunt parentibus orbitates,
metalli poena cum ceteris ante cognitis suppliciis tenebantur. Si
quis tamen eiusmodi reus fuerit oblatus, posteaquam super crimine
patuerit, servus quidem vel libertate donatus bestiis primo quoque
munere obiiciatur, liber autem sub hac forma in ludum detur
gladiatorium, ut, antequam aliquid faciat, quo se defendere possit,
gladio consumatur. Eos autem, qui pro hoc crimine iam in metallum
dati sunt, numquam revocari praecipimus. DAT. KAL. AUG. CONSTANTINO
A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Hi, qui filios alienos furto abstulerint et ubicumque transduxerint,
sive ingenui sive servi sint, morte puniantur.
3 augustus 315
Imp. Constantinus a. Rufino Octaviano correctori Lucaniae
et
Brittiorum. Quicumque extraordinarium iudicium praefectorum vel
vicariorum elicuerit vel qui iam consecutus est, eius adversarios et
personas causae necessarias minime ad officium praefectorum vel
vicarii pergere aut transire patiaris, sed de omni causa in tuo
iudicio praesentibus partibus atque personis ita his temporibus ipse
cognosce, quae ex eo die computabis, ex quo causa in tuo iudicio
coeperit inchoari, ut tunc demum, si ei, qui extraordinarium
iudicium postulaverit, tua sententia displicebit, iuxta ordinem
legum interposita eam provocatio suspendat atque ad suum iudicem
transitum faciat. DAT. III NON. AUG. TREV(IRIS) CONSTANTINO IV ET
LICINIO IV CONSS.
augustus 315
Augg. et caess. Rutiliae Primae. Ingenuos progenitos
servitutis
adfligi
dispendiis minime oportere etiam nostri temporis tranquillitate
sancitur, nec sub obtentu initae venditionis inlicite decet
ingenuitatem infringi. Quare iudicem competentem adire par est, qui
in liberali causa ea faciet compleri, quae in huiuscemodi
contentionibus ordinari consuerunt, secundum iudiciariam disciplinam
partibus audientiam praebiturus. PP. IBID. AUG. ROMAE CONSTANTINO ET
LICINIO AUGG. IV CONSS.
28 augustus
315 IDEM A. AD POPULUM. Contra ius rescribta non valeant,
quocumque
modo
fuerint inpetrata. Quod enim publica iura perscribunt, magis sequi
iudices debent. P(RO)P(OSITA) IV KAL. SEPTEMB. ROMAE CONSTANTINO A.
III ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
13 september
315 Imp. Constantinus a. et caes. ad populum. Si quid a
fisco
fuerit
occupandum vel a nobis de cetero pro unius cuiusque meritis
obsequiisque donandum vel ab eodem distrahendum, intra annum,
omnibus vel a petitione vel a comparatione se abstinentibus ii, qui
putant iniuste res proprias a fisco esse comparatas, contra eundem
agere contendant scientes gratulantesque, quod annua spatia, intra
quae suum repetant, sint indulta, ac si probaverint iustitiam
petitioni suae adesse, recipiant et nostro beneficio habeant
restituta. DAT. ID. SEPT. ROMAE CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV
CONSS.
18 september
315 Imp. Constantinus a. ad Evagrium praefectum praetorio.
Ad
omnes iudices litteras dare tuam convenit gravitatem, ut, in
quibuscumque oppidis dendrofori fuerint, centonariorum adque
fabrorum collegiis adnectantur, quoniam haec corpora frequentia
hominum multiplicari expediet. DAT. XIV KAL. OCTOB. NAISSO, ACCEPTA
VIII ID. NOVEMB. CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
1 oktober 315
Idem a. ad Crispinum. Quoniam dubitasti, utrum ex numero
dierum
an
ex nominatione kalendarum computari duum mensum spatia debeant,
forma publici iuris observanda est, quae manifeste declarat, quid
pro dierum diversitate praeceperit comprehendi. DAT. KAL. OCTOB.
CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
15 oktober 315
CT 16.8.1 Constantine
The
Jewish community may not stone a Jewish convert to Christianity.
Anyone who participates in such an act shall be burned. If anyone
from the people joins the Jewish sect, he shall receive the deserved
punishments with them.
17 oktober 315
Dominus Constantinus et caesares. Prisca legum aequitate
praeclusa
variis ambagum versutiis exquisita donatio, licet titulum emptionis
vel debiti tenorem comprehendere videatur, tamen claris
testationibus probata debet in irritum devocari, si quidem
consultissima ratione videatur esse provisum matrimonio constante
donationes inter virum et uxorem altrinsecus agitatas nullam
firmitatem habere. Nec sibi debent mulieres blandiri, si tamquam
venditores vel debitores ad eludendas legum sanctiones mariti earum
se falso videantur esse professi. Quare Vettium Rufinum clarissimum
virum praefectum urbi amicum nostrum, cuius notio est, adire non
prohiberis, qui partium allegationibus examinatis petitioni tuae
secundum iuris providebit iustitiam. D. XIV KAL. NOV. MEDIOLANO
CONSTANTINO ET LICINIO CONSS.
18 oktober 315
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Evagrium. pr. Iudaeis et maioribus
eorum
et
patriarchis volumus intimari, quod, si quis post hanc legem aliquem,
qui eorum feralem fugerit sectam et ad dei cultum respexerit, saxis
aut alio furoris genere, quod nunc fieri cognovimus, ausus fuerit
adtemptare, mox flammis dedendus est et cum omnibus suis
participibus concremandus. Si quis vero ex populo ad eorum nefariam
sectam accesserit et conciliabulis eorum se adplicaverit, cum ipsis
poenas meritas sustinebit. DAT. XV KAL. NOV. MURGILLO CONSTANTINO A.
IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
29 oktober 315
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AELIANO PROCONSULI AFRICAE. Omnes
civiles
causas
et praecipue eas, quae fama celebriores sunt, negotia etiam
criminalia publice audire debebis tertia, vel ut tardissime quarta
vel certe quinta die acta conficienda iussurus. Quae omnia legati
quoque coercitione commoniti observabunt. DAT. III K. NOV.
TREV(IRIS), CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
1 november 315
Idem a. ad Aelianum proconsulem Africae. Possessores cum
satisfecerint
publicae collationi, cautiones suas ad tabularios publicos deferant,
ut eas tabularii sive sexagenarii periculi sui memores suscipiant a
collatoribus, ipsas species quae debentur ex horreis suis ad
civitates singulas per menses singulos perlaturis, ne illatio
tributorum ex solis apochis falsis vel imaginariis cognoscatur. Et
cetera. DAT. KAL. NOV. TREVIRIS CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV
CONSS.
1 november 315
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Aelianum proconsulem Africae.
Post
alia: ducenarii et centenarii sive sexagenarii non prius debent
aliquem ex debitoribus convenire, quam a tabulario civitatis
nominatim breves accipiant debitorum. Quam quidem exactionem sine
omni fieri concussione oportet ita ut, si quis in iudicio questus,
quod indebite exactus est vel aliquam inquietudinem sustinuit, hoc
ipsum probare potuerit, severa in exactores sententia proferatur.
DAT. KAL. NOV. TREVIRIS CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
3 november 315
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Catulinum. Moratorias dilationes
frustratoriasque
non tam appellationes quam ludificationes admitti non convenit. Nam
sicut bene appellantibus negari auxilium non oportet, ita his,
contra quos merito iudicatum est, inaniter provocantibus differri
bene gesta non decet. Unde quum homicidam vel adulterum vel
maleficum vel veneficum, quae atrocissima crimina sunt, confessio
propria vel dilucida et probatissima veritatis quaestio
probationibus atque argumentis detexerit, provocationes suscipi non
oportet, quas constat non refutandi spem habere, quae gesta sunt,
sed ea potius differre tentare. Qui de variis litibus causisque
dissentiunt, nec temere, nec ab articulis praeiudiciisque, nec ab
his, quae iuste iudicata sunt, provocare debebunt. Quod si reus in
homicidii vel maleficii vel adulterii vel veneficii crimine partem
pro defensione sui ex testibus quaestioneque proposita possit
arripere, parte vero obrui accusarique videatur, tunc super
interposita appellatione ab eodem, qui sibi magis, quae pro se
faciant, testimonia prodesse debere affirmat, quam ea, quae adversus
ipsum egerint, nocere, deliberationi nostrae plenum arbitrium
relinquatur. DAT. III. NON. NOV. TREVIRIS. ACC. XV KAL. MAI.
HADRUMETI, VOLUSIANO ET ANNIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
In civilibus causis vel levioribus criminibus, quae legibus non
tenentur inserta, appellationi constituta legibus dilatio praestanda
est, et suspendenda est per appellationem sententia iudicantis. At
vero homicidis, adulteris et reliquis, quos lex ista comprehendit,
si convicti confessique fuerint et appellare voluerint, dilatio
denegetur, sed statim in manifestis criminibus convicti iudicis est
sententia proferenda, aut certe de magnis criminibus et maioribus
personis ad principis est notitiam deferendum.
8 november 315
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. PROC(ONSULI) AFRIC(AE). Si quis se a
ducenariis
vel centenariis ac praecipue fisci advocatis laesum esse cognoscit,
adire iudicia ac probare iniuriam non moretur, ut in eum qui
convictus fuerit competenti severitate vindicetur. DAT VI ID. NOV.
TREVIRIS, ACC. XV KAL. MART. CARTHAGINE CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO
IV CONSULIBUS.
12 december
315 Imp. Constantinus a. ad Catullinum proconsulem Africae.
Si
quis corpora aeneo frumento obnoxia distraxerit, ab omni
interpellatione liber sit, quamvis alia corpora possederit sive
coemerit libera ab aenei frumenti inquietudine. Comparatores enim
rerum obnoxiarum teneri oportet pro modo eius rei, quam adepti sunt,
etiamsi extra liberalitatem rem fuerint consecuti. Sed quia plerique
ex magistratibus aenei frumenti pensitationi obnoxii vel ipsi sibi,
dum administrant, alios subrogarunt vel redempti pro aliis alios
creaverunt, rescissis subrogationibus ad eiusdem aenei frumenti
pensitationem teneantur. Illos enim solos ex subrogatis perseverare
oportet, quos constiterit idoneos esse facultatibus et minus
idoneorum loco non a redemptis magistratibus subrogatos. DAT. PRID.
ID. DECEMB. SIRMI CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
30 december
315 Idem a. Amabiliano praefecto annonae Africae. Officii
cura est,
ut
omnes omnino appellationes, quaecumque fuerint interpositae,
sollemniter curet accipere nec in recipiendis libellis aliquod genus
iniuriae inferendum cuipiam existimet. PROPOSITA III KAL. IAN.
CONSTANTINO A. IV ET LICINIO IV CONSS.
315
Augustine, C. Cres., 3.70.81 and Letter 88.4 Constantine
It
had been discovered that the evidence used against Caecilian was
based on a forgery, and so Constantine summons the forger to appear
before him and the Donatists in Rome, so that once the evidence is
presented, the schism can be healed.
315 Optatus,
De sch. Don., Appendix 6 Constantine
Constantine
summons the catholic and Donatist representatives from North Africa
to a third hearing at Milan, where the new evidence can be examined
before them all, including Caecilian, whom he has summoned from
North Africa.
315 Optatus,
De sch. Don., Appendix 8 Constantine
Constantine
tells the prefect of Africa to have the churches prepare for his
visit (which never actually took place), when he would come deliver
a verdict on the schism and rule what type of worship is acceptable
and bring uniformity back to the church.
Jan
22, 315 Law 21: To Constantius
CTh
8.5.1 Dorries p. 168
Forbidding
bringing plough-oxen though an imperial post.
March
21, 315 Law 22: To Eumelius
CTh
9.40.2 Dorries p. 168-169
People
condemned to the games or the mines should be branded in the hands
or calves, not the face, which is formed in the image of the
heavenly Son.
Apr
28, 315 Law 82: To Constantius, the praetorian prefect
CTh
8.4.1 Dorries p. 187
Repealing
previous anti-military legislation and releasing soldiers from
service after 20 years.
May
10, 315 Law 23: Edict to the Africans
CTh
8.4.2 Dorries p. 169
Military
riots are punished by death.
May
13, 315 Law 24: To Ablavius
CTh
11.27.1 Dorries p. 169
Outlawing
parents from killing their children and appointing funds to care for
children.
June
17, 315 Law 20: To Proclianus
CTh
11.1.1 Dorries p. 168
Delineating
privileges for catholic churches and his sons’ father-in-law,
the King of Armenia.
Aug
1, 315 Law 25: To Domitius Celsus, vicar of Africa
CTh
9.18.1 Dorries p. 169-170
Slaves
and freedmen guilty of kidnapping are thrown to the animals and
freeborn guilty of kidnapping are condemned to the gladiatorial
games with no possibility for resistance.
Aug-Sept,
315 Letter to the Donatist bishops
HD
App 6 Silli 9; Dorries p. 33-34
Reaffirming
that Caecilian is to be tried before him in Rome and not in Africa.
Oct
1, 315 Law 26: To Crispinus
CTh
12.1.2 Dorries p. 170
"The
form of public law must be observed".
Oct
18, 315 Law 27: To Evagrius
CTh
16.8.1 Dorries p. 170
Sets
burning as the penalty for Jews who stone a Jewish convert to
Christianity as well as for those who convert to a corrupt sect..
Oct
27-Nov 19, 315 Letter to Probianus, proconsul of Africa
AUG
88.5; CC 3.70.81; CPD 32.55; HD App 14 Silli 11; Dorries p. 33, 37
Requesting
Ingentius to come to Rome and put to an end the attacks against
Caecilian.
Nov
8, 315 Law 28: To the proconsul of Africa
CTh
8.10.1 Dorries p. 170
People
who feel themselves discriminated against by tax authorities or
lower judges should prove it in court.
Late
315 Letter to Celsus, vicar of Africa
HD
App 8 Silli 10; Dorries p. 34
Instructing
him to hold off in dealing with Caecilian until the emperor himself
come to Africa to judge him.
316 SABINO ET RVFINO CONSS.
11 januari 316
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD DOMITIUM CELSUM VICARIUM.
Nemo
iudex officialem ad eam domum, in qua materfamilias agit, cum aliquo
praecepto aestimet esse mittendum, ut eandem in publicum protrahat,
cum certum sit debita eius, quae intra domum considerato sexu semet
contineat, domus eius vel cuiuscumque rei habita distractione
publicis necessitatibus posse servari. Quod si quis in publicum
matremfamilias posthac crediderit protrahendam, inter maximos reos
citra ullam indulgentiam capitali poena vel exquisitis potius exitii
suppliciis plectetur. DAT. III ID. IANUAR. TREV(IRIS) SABINO ET
RUFINO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Nullus iudicum matronam in domo sua residentem per quemcumque
apparitorem ad publicum existimet protrahendam, sed circa eam, pro
sexus reverentia, conventio honesta servetur: quum, si quid eam
debere constiterit, constrictis eius auctoribus possit exsolvi. Nam
si quis contra fecerit, summo supplicio se afficiendum esse
cognoscat.
30 januari 316
Idem a. Mecilio Hilariano correctori Lucaniae et Brittiorum.
Universos
decuriones volumus a tabellionum officiis temperare. Nemo autem ad
decurionatum vocatus excusare se poterit eo, quod fuerit tabellio,
cum et huiusmodi homines, si sint idonei, vocari ad decurionatum
oporteat. Lex enim, quae decuriones a tabellionum officiis voluit
submovere, ad decurionatum tabelliones vocari non prohibet. DAT. III
KAL. FEB. SABINO ET RUFINO CONSS.
2 februari
316? Item eodem corpore [Theodosiani]: imp. Constantinus a.
ad Maximum
praefect.
Urb. (inter cetera et ad locum:) pactiones eas valere volumus, si
cum legibus consentiant et reliqua. DAT. VI [?] NON. FEBR. ROMAE
SABINO ET RUFINO CONSS.
3 februari 316
IDEM A. AD MAXIMUM P(RAE)F(ECTUM) U(RBI). Posta alia:
Minorum
defensores, si per eos donationum condicio neglecta est, rei amissae
periculum praestent. ET CETERA. DAT. III NON. FEB. ROM(AE) SABINO ET
RUFINO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si in his, quae minoribus donari possunt, per tutoris negligentiam
sive colludium donationis solennitas vel condicio impleta non
fuerit, id, quod minori deperierit, de proprio cogitur exsolvere.
3 februari 316
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD MAXIMUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI).
Donatio,
sive directa sit sive mortis causa instituta, sive condicionibus
faciendi ac non faciendi suspensa, sive ex aliquo notato tempore
promissa, sive animo dantium accipientiumve sententiis, quantum ius
sinit, cognominata, sub hac fieri debet observatione, ut quas leges
indulgent actiones condiciones pactionesque contineat, hisque
penitus cognitis vel recipiantur, si complacitae sunt, vel
reiciantur, si sunt molestae; ita ut minorum defensores, si per eos
donationum condicio neglecta est, rei amissae periculum praestent.
In conscribendis autem donationibus nomen donatoris, ius ac rem
notari oportet, neque id occulte aut per inperitos aut privatim, sed
ut tabulae aut quodcumque aliud materiae tempus dabit vel ab ipso
vel ab eo, quem sors ministraverit, scientibus plurimis perscribatur
et corporalis traditio subsequatur ad excludendam vim adque
inruptionem advocata vicinitate omnibusque arbitris adhibitis,
quorum postea fide probabitur donatam rem, si est mobilis, ex
voluntate traditam donatoris vel, si immobilis, abscessu donantis
novo domino patefactam, actis etiam adnectendis, quae aput iudicem
vel magistratus conficienda sunt. DAT. III NON. FEB. ROM(A) SABINO
ET RUFINO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Donatio aut directa est aut mortis causa conscribitur. Directa
donatio est, ubi in praesenti res donata traditur. Mortis causa
donatio est, ubi donator, dum advivit, rem, quam donat, sibi
reservat, scribens: si prius mortuus fuero quam tu, res mea ad te
perveniat, ut postea ad illum, cui donat, non ad heredes donatoris
res donata perveniat. Quod si prius moriatur, cui res mortis causa
donata est, res in iure permaneat donatoris. Est et alia donatio,
ubi donator obligat illum, cui donat, ut aliquid faciat aut non
faciat, id est, si aliquid iubeat fieri, quod impossibile iudicetur,
aut quod honestati contrarium videatur; aut si id ordinet fieri,
quod honestum est et possit impleri: quia tunc infirmatur donatio,
quando condiciones honestatis possibilis impletae non fuerint. Nam
si inhonestae et impossibiles condiciones ponantur, remotis
condicionibus firma donatio est. Est item et alia, in qua sibi
donator certum tempus possessionis reservat. Quae tamen omnes
donationes superius comprehensae si modum excesserint lege
conscriptum, unde possint certae personae de immodica donatione
proponere, hoc est si quartam sibi facultatis suae donator non
reservaverit, non valebunt. Sed praeterea illa donatio contra legem
est, si quis rem in lite positam, quae repetitur, aut recto ordine
donet aut condicionem contra bonos mores, hoc est causam cuiuslibet
criminis, donator in donatione conscribat. Minoribus vero si quid
fuerit per donationem a quocumque oblatum sive collatum, tutores vel
curatores eorum debent studere, ne quid firmitati donationis desit.
Quod si eorum negligentia donatio ad effectum perducta non fuerit,
ad eorum dispendium pertinebit, ita ut quicquid minores de donatione
perdiderint, curatores vel tutores illis de propria facultate
restituant. In conscribendis autem donationibus hic ordo servandus
est, ut donatio nomen prius contineat donatoris vel illius, cui
donatur deinde res, quae donantur, sive in agris sive in mancipiis
sive in quibuslibet rebus atque corporibus, nominatim in donatione
conscribendae sunt, non occulte, sed publice, non privatim vel
secrete, sed aut in tabulis aut in chartis aut ubicumque legatur
facta donatio. Quam tamen donationem, si literas novit, donator ipse
subscribat: si vero ignorat, praesentibus plurimis eligat, qui pro
ipso subscribat: et hanc ipsam donationem gestorum solennitas et
corporalis traditio subsequatur, ita ut, si mobilia donantur,
praesentibus plurimis tradantur: si vero ager vel domus donatur,
quod moveri non potest, ut inde donator abscedat et novo domino
pateat res donata, si tamen sibi de his rebus usumfructum donator
non reservaverit. Gesta vero donationum aut apud iudicem aut apud
curiam alleganda sunt.
20 april 316
IDEM A. ACONIO CATULLINO PROCONS(ULI) AFRIC(AE). Si quis in
emancipatum
minorem, priusquam fari possit aut habere rei quae sibi donatur
affectum Italicum sive stipendiarium fundum crediderit conferendum,
omne ius compleat instrumentis ante praemissis et inductione
corporaliter impleta. Quod propter adtestationem fidei per eum
servum, quem idoneum esse constiterit, transigi placuit, qui eo
usque in statu suo permanebit, donec is, cuius facultatibus
cesserit, annos Laetoriae legis egressus legitimam compleverit
aetatem, quo tunc demum, si eius integritas ac fides fuerit
comprobata, si ita sederit possidentibus, libertatis praemium
consequatur. DAT. XII KAL. MAI. SERDICAE SABINO ET RUFINO CONSS.
1 mei 316
IDEM A. AD CASSIUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI). Promulgatum dudum est
donationes
nullo alio modo firmas posse detineri, nisi apud actorum
contestationem confectae fuerint. Sed quia multi aliena vel non
pleno iure ad se pertinentia donantes extra patriam et provinciam,
in qua possident, acta conficiunt, placet, ut nulli liceat extra
provinciam laremque suum donationum instrumenta apud acta allegare,
sed in quo domicilium habuerit adque possessiones constitutae sunt,
aput suum ordinarium iudicem vel, si eum abesse contigerit, aput
curatorem municipalesve eiusdem civitatis. Nam si hoc praetermissum
fuerit, nullam firmitatem habere donationes sancimus. DAT. KAL. MAI.
ROM(A) SABINO ET RUFINO CONSS.
6 mei 316
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. IULIO VERO PRAESIDI TARRACONENSIS.
Cum
semel negotium necessitate vel casu temporibus fuerit exemptum ac
postea per indulgentiam clementiae nostrae redintegratio praestetur,
intra quattuor menses iudicantis arbitrium, non ulterius,
litigatoribus praeberi oportet, etiamsi per obreptionem aliquid a
nobis iterata supplicatione meruerint. DAT. PRID. NON. MAI. VIENNAE
SABINO ET RUFINO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quando aliqua causa, necessitate intercedente vel casu, promissum
tempus excesserit, et principali beneficio eam litigator meruerit
reparare, non amplius ad definiendum negotium iudices quam quattuor
menses litigatoribus praestent. Quibus exactis, etiamsi aliud
dominorum beneficio obtinuerint, nullatenus audiantur.
14 mei 316
IDEM A. AD TITIANUM. Quoniam plerique nodosis et validissimis
fustibus
inter ipsa currendi primordia animalia publica cogunt quidquid
virium habent absumere, placet, ut omnino nullus in agitando fuste
utatur, sed aut virga aut certe flagro, cuius in cuspide infixus
brevis aculeus pigrescentes artus innocuo titillo poterit admonere,
non ut exigat tantum, quantum vires valere non possunt. Qui contra
hanc fecerit sanctionem promotus, regradationis humilitate
plectetur: munifex poenam deportationis excipiat. DAT. PRID. ID.
MAI. SABINO ET RUFINO CONSS.
6 juni 316 CI
1.13.1 Constantine
Constantine
adds a fourth legal method for freeing slaves – one may now
publicly free his slave in a church before the bishop.
28 juli 316
Imp. Constantinus a. Mechilio Hilariano correctori Lucaniae
et
Brittiorum.
pr. Si quis decurio testamentum vel codicillos aut aliquam
deficientis scripserit voluntatem, vel conscribendis publicis
privatisque instrumentis praebuerit officium, si falsi quaestio
moveatur, decurionatus honore seposito, quaestioni, si ita
poposcerit causa, subdatur. Sed non statim desinit esse decurio, qui
in huius modi facto fuerit deprehensus. Quantum enim ad municipales
pertinet necessitates, decurio permanet; quantum ad rem gestam et
veritatem reserandam, uti decurionatus honore non poterit. Nec vero
is, qui ante fuerit tabellio, ad eludendam quaestionem super his,
quae ante conscripsit, factus decurio defendi hac poterit dignitate,
quoniam scripturae veritas, si res poposcerit, per ipsum debet
probari auctorem. DAT. III. KAL. FEBR. ACC. KAL. AUG. SABINO ET
RUFINO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quis curialis voluntatem morientis aut quodlibet publicum
documentum scripserit, et de falsitate accusatur, seposita primitus
dignitate, si necesse fuerit, subdatur examini: qui si convincitur,
a curia non expelletur, sed curiae dignitate privabitur, id est ut
honoratus esse non possit. tabellio vero, qui amanuensis nunc vel
cancellarius dicitur, etiamsi ad curiae pervenerit dignitatem, si de
falsitate accusatus fuerit aut convictus, subdatur examini, ut per
ipsum, per quem confecta est, scripturae veritas approbetur.
13 augustus
316 Idem a. Petronio Probiano suo salutem. Ex illo tempore,
quo
in civilibus causis, quae inter privatos moventur, consulturum vel
relaturum te esse promiseris vel appellationis a te interpositae
sollemnia completa fuerint, nihil posthac tibi quodlibet speciale ac
requisitum vel quibuscumque modis favoris gratiam praeferens
audiendum est, sed observandum, ut iuxta priora statuta
sollemnitatis more expleto gesta ad comitatum omnia dirigantur. Et
cetera. DAT. ID. AUG. ARELATO; PROPOSITA ID. OCTOB. THEVESTE SABINO
ET RUFINO CONSS.
13 augustus
316 Idem a. Petronio Probiano suo salutem. Supplicare causa
pendente
non
licet nisi forte ei, cui opinionis exemplum negatum est vel
instructionis universae subpressa transmissio. Quo facto crimen
iudici sacrilegii imminebit, qui hoc commisso litigatori supplicandi
necessitatem imponit: cui aliter supplicanti dimidiae partis rei de
qua agitur imponenda est multa, ut pro iudicis aestimatione fisco
pretium inferat. Eo etiam, qui terminatam rescripto vel
consultatione quaestionem exquisito suffragio refricare conabitur,
quoniam maius crimen admittit, in omnem litis aestimationem protinus
condemnando et sub sacramenti observatione omni venia deneganda, si
quis contra haec supplicare temptaverit. DAT. ID. AUG. ARELATO;
PROPOSITA ID. OCTOB. THEVESTE SABINO ET RUFINO CONSS.
3 december 316
IDEM A. SEPTIMIO BASSO P(RAEFECTO) U(RBI). Ubi rigorem iuris
placare
aut lenire specialiter exoramur, id observetur, ut rescribta ante
edi[c]tum propositum impetrata suam habeant firmitatem, nec
rescribto posteriore derogetur priori. Quae vero postea sunt
elicita, nullum robur habeant, nisi consentanea sint legibus
publicis; maxime cum inter aequitatem iusque interpositam
interpretationem, nobis solis et oporteat et liceat inspicere. DAT.
III NON. DECEMB. SABINO ET RUFINO CONSS.
23 december
316 Idem a. ad. Vettium Rufinum praefectum Urbi. Ex
donatione
principum
aut quocumque modo rem ad fiscum pertinentem usque ad nostra
decennalia sine aliqua interpellatione possidentes, secundum ius
enim haec intelligitur esse possessio, securi possideant. PROPOSITA
X K. IAN. ROMAE SABINO ET RUFINO CONSS.
316
Augustine, C. Cres., 7.71.82 Constantine
Constantine,
after hearing the charges brought against Caecilian, declares him
innocent.
316
Constantine
[Constantine
passes a law against the Donatists, now lost, but mentioned in CT
16.6.2 (on Oct 17, 377). This law seems to be repealed in 321 or 322
by a law recorded by Optatus, C. Don. Date uncertain.]
Feb
3, 316 Law 29
Frag
Vat 249 Dorries p. 171
Gifts
made for religious reasons are exempt from the recording of
donations.
May
14, 316 Law 30: To Titianus
CTh
8.5.2 Dorries p. 171
Animal
abuse is threatened with demotion or deportation.
June
8, 316 Law 31: To Maximus, prefect of the city
CTh
4.8.1a Dorries p. 171
Approving
the freeing of slaves in the catholic church.
Nov
10, 316 Fragments of a letter to Eumlius, vicar of Africa
CC
3.71.82; CPD 33.56 Silli 12;
Dorries p. 37, 37-38
Reporting
the controversy concerning Caecilian.
317 GALLICANO ET BASSO CONSS.
19 januari 317
Idem a. ad Octavianum comitem Hispaniarum. Hi, qui honoris
indebiti
arripere
insignia voluerunt, cum in consilium primates municipesque coguntur,
adsistunt sedentibus his, quibus emeritis omnis honor iure meritoque
debetur. Ideoque sublimitas tua nullum omnino faciet praesidatus
praerogativa laetari, nisi qui cunctos in patria gradus egressus per
ordinem venerit, ita ut illi etiam, qui praesidatum ante tempus
reportarunt, post expletos honores civicos honestamentis praestitis
potiantur. PROPOSITA XIV KAL. FEB. GALLICANO ET BASSO CONSS.
28 januari 317
.. DAT. V KAL. FEBR. GALLICANO ET BASSO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Septem testibus civibus Romanis praesentibus tertio ex senatus
consulto Claudiano denuntiandum.
10 maart 317
Idem a. ad Bassum praefectum Urbi. Si quis per violentiam
alienum
fundum
invaserit, capite puniatur. Et sive quis ex eius parte, qui
violentiam inferre temptaverit, sive ex eius, qui iniuriam
repulsaverit, fuerit occisus, eum poena adstringat, qui vi deicere
possidentem voluerit. DAT. VI ID. MART. ROMAE GALLICANO ET BASSO
CONSS.
15 maart 317
Imp. Constantinus a. rationalibus Hispaniarum. Is, cuius
tacitae
fidei commissa fuerit hereditas, statim officio gravitatis tuae
nuntiet et gesta prodat et continuo quod actum fuerit renuntiet, et
post hanc fidem tertiam ab omnibus defuncti bonis percipiat
portionem. Quod si ab uxore defuncti istud officio devotionis tuae
fuerit revelatum, ipsa etiam, quam defunctus esse voluit heredem, si
gesta aperuerit, tali praemio mancipetur, ut ex omni patrimonio
medium consequatur et cum fisco nostro celebret divisionem, id etiam
habitura privilegium, ut prior eligat portionem; et tunc occultator
ille gestorum, fisci et mulieris pariter inimicus, exutus omni
patrimonio suo ac fisco vindicato in insulam deportetur. DAT. ID.
MAR. GALLICANO ET BASSO CONSS.
18 mei 317
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Catulinum proconsulem Africae.
Qui
in iudicio manifestam detegitur commisisse violentiam, non iam
relegatione aut deportatione insulae plectatur, sed supplicium
capitale excipiat, nec interposita provocatione sententiam, quae in
eum fuerit dicta, suspendat, quoniam multa facinora sub uno
violentiae nomine continentur, quum aliis vim inferre tentantibus,
aliis cum indignatione repugnantibus verbera caedesque crebro
deteguntur admissae. Unde placuit, si forte quis vel ex possidentis
parte vel ex eius, qui possessionem temerare tentaverit, interemptus
sit, in eum supplicium exseri, qui vim facere tentavit et alterutri
parti causam malorum praebuit. DAT. XV KAL. MAI. SERDICAE, GALLICANO
ET BASSO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Convictus in iudicio de evidenti violentiae crimine capite puniatur,
nec sententiam iudicis qui damnatus est qualibet appellatione
suspendat: et si fortasse homicidia ab utraque parte commissa
fuerint, in illum vindicetur, qui ut alium per caedem expelleret,
violenter ingressus est.
23 mei 317-319
CT 9.16.3 Constantine
Magicians
and such who use their art against the minds of men are guilty and
shall be punished; however, to use this art for good, to seek
favorable weather during harvest for example, is allowable under the
law. [The date listed is 321-324; however, Bassus, the prefect to
whom the law was issued, held office from 317-319.]
6 juni 317
Idem a. ad Bassum praefectum Urbi. Litigatoribus copia est
etiam
non
conscriptis libellis ilico appellare voce, cum res poposcerit
iudicata. DAT. VIII ID. IUN. SIRMIO GALLICANO ET BASSO CONSS.
21 juli 317
IDEM A. AD BITHYNOS. Primipilaribus post emeritam militiam
perfectissimatus
vel ducenae vel centenae vel egregiatus dari dignitas potest. DAT.
XII KAL. AUG. GALLICANO ET BASSO CONSS.
21 juli 317
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Bithynos. Caesarianos in actu
dumtaxat
constitutos
ad perfectissimatus vel ducenae vel centenae vel egregiatus
dignitates non oportet admitti. Sed si inculpate compleverint suum
officium et ab omni vacent ratione fiscali iudicio, datam huiusmodi
dignitatem prodesse eis oportet. DAT. XII KAL. AUG. GALLICANO ET
BASSO CONSS.
21 juli 317
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Bithynos. Monetarios in sua semper
durare
condicione
oportet nec dignitates eis perfectissimatus tribui vel ducenae vel
centenae vel egregiatus. DAT. XII KAL. AUG. GALLICANO ET BASSO
CONSS.
21 juli 317
Idem a. ad Bithynos. Eos qui in palatio militarunt et eos
quibus
provinciae
commissae sunt quique merito amplissimarum administrationum honorem
perfectissimatus vel egregiatus adepti sunt, nec non et illos, qui
decuriones vel principales constituti cuncta suae patriae munera
impleverunt, frui oportet dignitate indulta. Si vero decurio
suffragio comparato perfectissimatus vel ducenae vel centenae vel
egregiatus meruerit dignitatem declinare suam curiam cupiens,
codicillis amissis suae condicioni reddatur, ut omnium honorum et
munerum civilium discussione perfunctus iuxta legem municipalem
aliquam praerogativam obtineat. Eum quoque, qui originis gratia vel
incolatus vel ex possidendi condicione vocatur ad curiam,
perfectissimatus suffragio impetrati dignitas non defendit, qua
remota tradi eum curiae oportebit. DAT. XII KAL. AUG. GALLICANO ET
BASSO CONSS.
25 september
317 IDEM A. AD BASSUM. Decreta provincialium non prius ad
comitatum
perferri
oportet, quam singuli quique iudicantes ea inspexerint atque
probaverint suaque adscriptione signaverint. Si quid fiat
contrarium, competens ultio exerceatur. P(RO)P(OSITA) VIII K. OCT.
CARALI GALLICANO ET BASSO CONSUL.
12 december
317 Imperator Constantinus. Quicumque non illustris, sed
tantum
clarissima
dignitate praeditus virginem rapuerit vel fines aliquos invaserit
vel in aliqua culpa seu crimine fuerit deprehensus, statim intra
provinciam in qua facinus perpetravit publicis legibus subiugetur
nec fori praescriptione utatur. Omnem enim huiusmodi honorem reatus
excludit. CONST. A. AD OCTAVIANUM COM. HISPANIARUM. D. PRID. NON.
DEC. SERDICAE. ACC. V NON. MART. CORDUBAE GALLICANO ET BASSO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quicumque damnabile vel puniendum legibus crimen admiserit, non se
dicat in foro suo, id est in loco, ubi habitat, debere pulsari: sed
ubi crimen admissum est, ab eius loci iudicibus vindicetur, nec de
eius persona ad principem referatur.
Jan
19, 317 Law 32: To Octavian, count of Spain
CTh
12.1.4 Dorries p. 171
Career
offices should only be paused.
March
1, 317-c. 321 Inscription at Florence
CIL
XI 6671a Gruenewald 333
Restoring
the path.
March
1, 317-321 Inscription at Cherson
GAH
57 Gruenwald 404
March
1, 317-326 Inscription at Algeria
CIL
VIII 8370, 20211 Gruenewald 86
Restoring
and dedicating bridges.
After
March 1, 317 Second inscription at Rome
CIL
VI 1148-1149, 31247
Gruenewald
250
May
23, 317-319 Law 33: To Bassus, the praetorian prefect
CTh
9.16.3 Dorries p. 171-172
Magic
done to harm is punished but magic done to help is not.
July
21, 317 Law 34: To the People
CJ
4.21.15 Dorries p. 172
Documentary
evidence has as much value in litigation as witness testimony.
July
21, 317 Law 35: To the Bithynians
CTh
10.20.1 Dorries p. 172
A
minter must remain as such.
c.
317-Sept 18, 324 Inscription at Aquae Iasae
CIL
III 4121, p.2328/114; ILS 704; AIJug 469 Dorries p. 226; Gruenewald
379
Restoring
from fire damage.
318 LICINIO V ET CRISPO C. CONSS.
7 februari 318
Imperator Constantinus Sive pars sive integra dilatio
fuerit data,
eo
usque iudicis officium conquiescat, donec petiti temporis
defluxerint curricula. Feriae autem, sive repentinae sive sollemnes
sint, dilationum temporibus non excipiantur, sed his connumerentur
CONST. A. PROFUTURO PRAEF. ANNONAE. D. VII ID. FEBR. SIRMI LICINIO V
ET CRISPO CONSS.
9 februari 318
Imperator Constantinus. A procedente iudice dilationem non
convenit
postulari, etiamsi utraque parte praesente tribuatur, cum non alias
nisi causa cognita indulgeri queat et cognitio causae non
interpellatione planaria, sed considente magis iudice legitime
colligatur, et, si forte dilationis petitio fuerit improbata,
suscepta quaestio per sententiam iudicis dirimatur. CONST. A. AD
CATULLINUM PROCONS. AFRICAE. D. V ID. FEBR. SIRMI LICINIO V ET
CRISPO CONSS.
318
Constantinus et caess... Donatione secundum iuris normam perfecta
nec
ea
quae matres in filios contulerunt revocari iura permittunt. Sane si
generaliter tantummodo vel stipulatione interposita vel mancipatione
totius patrimonii donatio celebrata est, id quod donatum est stare
non potest, cum haec donatio ad id ut proprietas possit transferri
non valeat. Quare num hoc modo tibi consuli possit, rectorem
provinciae interpellare poteris... LICINIO V ET CRISPO CONSS...
10 april 318
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. FLORIANO PRAES(IDI). Veteranis, qui ex
die
V nonarum Iuliarum, cum prima per Thraciam victoria universo orbi
inluxit, et qui postea aput Nicomediam nostram missionem meruerunt,
certa per edictum indulsimus, quae scribendi tabulis vel encauto et
cerussa conscribere detur eis licentia. Edictum autem continens
indulgentiam nostram ad devotionem tuam misimus, ut et tua dicatio
et cuncti alii recognoscant, quid praestitimus memoratis.
P(RO)P(OSITA) IV ID. APRIL. LICINIO V ET CRISPO CAESARE CONSS.
23 juni 318
CT 1.27.1 Constantine
Constantine
gives Christians the right to take their cases before an
ecclesiastical court rather than a secular court. The ruling of
those bishops will carry the same authority as a secular court.
June
23, 318 Law 36
CTh
1.27.1 Dorries p. 172-173
Judges
should let matters be settled by Christian law where possible and
consider those decisions inviolable.
Nov
16, 318 Law 37: To Verinus, vicar of Africa
CTh
9.15.1 Dorries p. 173
Anyone
who murders parent, sibling, or child will be executed by being sewn
up alive in a sack with snakes and thrown into the see or a pit.
319 CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
13
januari 319 IDEM A. AD IANUARINUM. Quicumque ex eo die, quo reus
fuerit in iudicio petitus,intra anni spatium noluerit adesse
iudicio, res eius fisco vindicentur et si postea repertus nocens
fuerit, deprehensus saeviori sententiae subiugetur. Sed et si
argumentis evidentibus et probatione dilucida innocentiam suam
purgare suffecerit, nihilo minus facultates eius penes fiscum
remaneant. DAT. ID. IANUAR., ACC. V KAL. AUG. CORINTHO CONSTANTINO
A. V ET LICINIO CAES. CONSS.
1 februari 319
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Maximum. Nullus haruspex limen
alterius
accedat
nec ob alteram causam, sed huiusmodi hominum quamvis vetus amicitia
repellatur, concremando illo haruspice, qui ad domum alienam
accesserit et illo, qui eum suasionibus vel praemiis evocaverit,
post ademptionem bonorum in insulam detrudendo: superstitioni enim
suae servire cupientes poterunt publice ritum proprium exercere.
Accusatorem autem huius criminis non delatorem esse, sed dignum
magis praemio arbitramur. PROPOSITA KAL. FEB. ROMAE CONSTANTINO A. V
ET LICINIO CAES. CONSS.
4 februari 319
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD SYMMACHUM. Si quando minoribus vel
adultis
inferenda lis erit vel ab ipsis minoribus vel adultis cuidam
quaestio movenda sit, non alias cursus temporis incoetur, nisi ab
universis, quos officii sollicitudo constringit, hoc est tutoribus,
sive testamento sive decreto dati sunt, vel curatoribus, per quos
minores defenduntur, vel iisdem omnibus sollemni more lis fuerit
intimata. Quod si divisum administrationis periculum per provincias
sit, his tantum omnibus insinuari convenit et ab ipsis inferri
litem, qui in ea provincia tutelae vel curae officium sustinent, ne
de aliis provinciis defensores minorum ad iudicia perducantur. DAT.
PRID. NON. FEBR. SIRMIO, ACCEPTA VIII ID. MART. CORINTHO CONSTANTINO
A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quis contra eos, qui in annis minoribus constituti sunt, litem
forte commoverit, aut si a parte ipsorum reus aliquis arguatur, ex
eo tempora computanda sunt, ex quo tutor sive curator minoris aut
per iudicem aut per curiam intulerit seu exceperit actionem: ita
tamen, ut si in diversis provinciis istius officii homines sunt, id
est, curatores vel tutores, qui minorum causas tueantur, qui in
eadem provincia fuerint, ubi intentio nata probatur, ipsi aut
ingerant aut excipiant actiones: quia nolumus, ut ad aliam
provinciam defensores minorum pro audientiae necessitate ducantur.
Hic de iure adiectum est.
10 februari
319 Idem a. profuturo praefecto annonae. Si quis iudicum
duxerit
esse
referendum, nihil pronuntiet, sed magis super quo haesitandum
putaverit, nostram consulat scientiam aut, si tulerit sententiam,
minime postea, ne a se provocetur, relatione promissa terreat
litigantes. DAT. IV ID. FEB. SIRMIO CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C.
CONSS.
16 februari
319 IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD OCTAVIANUM. Veteranorum liberos
aptos
militiae, quorum quidam ut desides recusant militarium munerum
functionem, quidam adeo ignavi sunt, ut cum dispendio corporis
militiae velint necessitatem evadere, iubemus, si ad militiam
inutiles resectis digitis iudicentur, curialibus sine aliqua
ambiguitate muneribus atque obsequiis adgregari. DAT. XIV KAL. MART.
SIRMIO, ACC(EPTA) VII ID. APRIL. REGIO CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO
C. CONSS.
11 maart 319
Idem a. ad Priscum rationalem. Ne principali liberalitate
praeventa
dominium quis rei alienae affectet, iubemus, quotiens iure suadente
aliquorum bona ex officio tuo fuerint occupata, breves eorum
plenissimos ad virum perfectissimum comitem et amicum nostrum mitti,
ne fraudibus caesarianorum inminuantur vel petentibus aliquid
abiuretur; poena contra rationalem et officium eius proposita, si
petitorem ante possidere permiserint id quod ei donatum est
priusquam praedicti breves commeaverint. DAT. V ID. MAR. SIRMIO
CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO CAES. CONSS.
18 maart 319
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Verinum. Quicumque adulterina fecerit
numismata,
poenam pro discretione sexus et condicionis suae diversitate
sustineat, hoc est ut, si decurio vel decurionis sit filius,
exterminatus genitali solo ad quamcumque in longinquo positam
civitatem sub perpetui exilii condicione mittatur ac super
facultatibus eius ad nostram scientiam referatur; si plebeius, ut
rebus amissis perpetuae damnationi dedatur; si servilis condicionis,
ultimo supplicio subiugetur. DAT. ET PP. XV KAL. APRIL. CONSTANTINO
A. V ET LICINIO CAES. CONSS.
26
maart 319 Imp. Constantinus a. ad Verinum vicarium Africae. Si
quando famosi libelli reperiantur, nullas exinde calumnias patiantur
hi, quorum de factis vel nominibus aliquid continebunt, sed
scriptionis auctor potius requiratur et repertus cum omni vigore
cogatur his de rebus, quas proponendas credidit, comprobare; nec
tamen supplicio, etiamsi aliquid ostenderit, subtrahatur. PP. IV
KAL. APRIL. KARTHAGINE, CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Qui famosam chartam ad cuiuscumque iniuriam et maculam
conscripserit, in secreto aut in publico affixerit inveniendamque
proiecerit, illi, contra quem proposita est chartula, non nocebit,
nec famae eius aliquid derogabit. Sed si inveniri potuerit, qui
huius modi chartulam fecit, constringatur, ut probet, quae
conscripsit: qui si etiam, quae scripsit, probare potuerit,
fustigetur, qui infamare maluit quam accusare.
29 maart 319
Idem a. ad Bassum praefectum Urbi. Manente lege, qua praescriptum
est,
intra
quot dies opinionis sive relationis exemplum privatis iudex debeat
exhibere et refutatorii libelli intra quot dies rursum iudicibus
offerendi sint, tam in privatis quam etiam in fiscalibus causis ex
eo die, quo fuerit quaestio terminata vel ex quo relationem iudex
per sententiam promiserit, intra vicensimum diem quaecumque ad
instructionem pertinent causae, ad comitatum nostrum properantissime
volumus adferri. Quod nisi factum fuerit, ab universo officio
viginti transactis diebus, quos post latam sententiam placuit
supputari, intra viginti alios dies qui sequuntur tantum fisco
nostro praecipimus inferri, quanti per aestimationem rationalis
emolumentum litis, cuius suppressa fuerat instructio, fidelissime
potuerit aestimari. Cui capitale supplicium imminebit, si rigorem
legis quocumque modo mollire temptaverit. Eadem poena officio
imminente, si quando appellatione vel consultatione pendente vel
post decisas nostris responsionibus causas ei, quod ullo modo fuerit
impetratum, damnabilem voluerit coniventiam commodare. Nam decreta
nostra debet ingerere iudicanti ut ipso etiam dissimulante iudice
reluctari et tamquam manibus iniectis eos de iudicio producere ac
rationum officio traditos statuti prioris nexibus obligare, quorum
desideriis violari nostras prospexerit sanctiones. PROPOSITA IV KAL.
APRIL. ROMAE CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
13 april 319
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD LUCRIUM VERINUM. Fratres uterini
ab
inofficiosis actionibus arceantur et germanis tantummodo fratribus
adversus eos dumtaxat institutos heredes, quibus inustas constiterit
esse notas detestabilis turpitudinis, agnatione durante sine auxilio
praetoris petitionis aditus reseretur. DAT. ID. APRIL. SIRMIO
CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Fratribus uterinis, id est diversis patribus et una matre natis, non
liceat de inofficioso contra testamentum fratris agere. Sed germanis
fratribus praetermissis, id est uno patre natis, si turpibus
personis, id est infamibus fuerit hereditas derelicta, hoc est aut
pro libidine meretricibus, aut pro inhonesto affectu naturalibus aut
certe thymelicis, vel de libertis suis, agendi contra testamentum
licentia reservatur: si tamen is ipse germanus non pro crimine suo
exilio fuerit deputatus, aut per captivitatem fuerit servus
effectus, aut per emancipationem successionis vel actionis iura
perdiderit.
13 april 319
Imperator Constantinus. Fratres vel sorores uterini ab
inofficiosi
actione
contra testamentum fratris vel sororis penitus arceantur:
consanguinei autem durante vel non agnatione contra testamentum
fratris sui vel sororis de inofficioso quaestionem movere possunt,
si scripti heredes infamiae vel turpitudinis vel levis notae macula
adsparguntur vel liberti, qui perperam et non bene merentes
maximisque beneficiis suum patronum adsecuti instituti sunt, excepto
servo necessario herede instituto. CONST. A. AD LUCRIUM VERINUM. D.
ID. APRIL. SIRMIO CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
28 april 319
IDEM A. AD RUFINUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O. De cubiculis
nostris
vacatione
donatos vel diversis obsequiis palatinis aut scriniis memoriae
epistularum libellorumque vel officio largitionum comitatensium
singularumve urbium, sed et officio admissionum ad legum nostrarum
privilegia volumus pertinere, ut nec ipsi nec filii nec nepotes
eorum ad curiam vel honores vel munera municipalia devocentur.
Meritoque his iungimus largitionales urbium singularum, ne
privilegio separentur quos dignitas propemodum similis copulavit,
memorati namque palatinorum matriculis adtinentur, quique sub
castrensi militant. Quibus omnibus condonamus, ne exactorum vel
turmariorum, quos capitularios vocant, curam subeant vel obsequium
temonariorum vel prototypiae. Nam beneficiis nostris ita digni sunt,
ut etiamsi quis ad diversas administrationes post obsequia palatina
pervenerit, isdem debeat uti privilegiis, quoniam maior dignitas
nulli debet praeiudicium facere. Nemo igitur ex filiis praedictorum
vel servis castrensi peculio conquisitis professionibus censualibus
inseratur vel numero adcrescentium locove deficientium subrogetur,
si non fuerit innexus voluminibus censualibus. Personalibus etiam et
corporalibus muneribus liberentur, sive adhuc in palatio observant,
sive optata quiete donati sunt. Quibus omnibus privilegiis
coniungimus agentes in rebus, licet meritis militaribus videantur
esse subnixi. DAT. V KAL. MAI. SIRMIO CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C.
CONSS.
7 mei 319
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Proculum proconsulem Africae.
Emphyteuticarii
possessores,
qui mansuetudinis nostrae beneficio ad extraordinaria minime
devocentur, sicut ceteri provinciales obsequium suum muniendis
itineribus impendant. Nulla enim ratione debent ab hoc, quod in
commune omnibus profuturum est, esse seiuncti. PROPOSITA NON. MAI.
KARTHAGINE CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO CAES. CONSS.
11 mei 319
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Bassum. Si virgis aut loris servum dominus
adflixerit
aut custodiae causa in vincla coniecerit, dierum distinctione sive
interpretatione depulsa nullum criminis metum mortuo servo
sustineat. Nec vero inmoderate suo iure utatur, sed tunc reus
homicidii sit, si voluntate eum vel ictu fustis aut lapidis
occiderit vel certe telo usus letale vulnus inflixerit aut suspendi
laqueo praeceperit vel iussione taetra praecipitandum esse
mandaverit aut veneni virus infuderit vel dilaniaverit poenis
publicis corpus, ferarum vestigiis latera persecando vel exurendo
admotis ignibus membra aut tabescentes artus atro sanguine permixta
sanie defluentes prope in ipsis adegerit cruciatibus vitam linquere
saevitia immanium barbarorum. DAT. V ID. MAI. ROMAE CONSTANTINO A. V
ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
12 mei 319
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD RUFINUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O.
Posta
alia: Litigia sententiis vel tra[ns]actionibus terminata non sinimus
restaurari. DAT. IV ID. MAI. IPSO A. V ET L[IC(INIO) C. CONSS.]
12 mei 319
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD RUFINUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O.
Pater
noster nullam voluit liberalitatem valere, si actis inserta non
esset. Nos etiam inter sponsos quoque ac sponsas omnesque personas
eam solam donationem ex promulgatae legis tempore valere sancimus,
quam testificatio actorum secuta est. DAT. IV ID. MAI. SIRMIO
CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Ante tempus legis istius donationes etiam sine gestorum
testificatione valebant. Nunc vero post hanc legem nec nuptialis nec
quaelibet alia inter quascumque personas donatio, de quibuscumque
rebus, valere potest, si gestis non fuerit allegata.
15 mei 319
Idem a. ad populum. Haruspices et sacerdotes et eos, qui huic
ritui
adsolent
ministrare, ad privatam domum prohibemus accedere vel sub praetextu
amicitiae limen alterius ingredi, poena contra eos proposita, si
contempserint legem. Qui vero id vobis existimatis conducere, adite
aras publicas adque delubra et consuetudinis vestrae celebrate
sollemnia: nec enim prohibemus praeteritae usurpationis officia
libera luce tractari. DAT. ID. MAI. CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO
CONSS.
15 mei 319 CT
9.16.2 Constantine
Even
friendship with the owner of the house is no excuse for a soothsayer
to enter a residence.
16 mei 319
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Severum rationalem Africae. Posta
alia:
possessiones
atque mancipia exempta fisci patrimonio quibusdam donavimus. Haec
directo iure atque perpetuo absque omni quaestione volumus obtineri
poena contra rationales et magistros privatae rei atque officiales
proposita, si quid contra tentaverint etc. PP. XVI KAL. IUN. ROMAE
IN FORO TRAIANI, CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quicumque agri atque mancipia quibuscumque personis de fisci nostri
iure donantur, apud eos, quibus donata sunt, sine suspicione aliqua
volumus permanere: contra ordinatores domorum dominicarum poena
proposita, si contra praeceptionem facere cognoscuntur.
28 mei 319
Idem a. Amabiliano praefecto annonae. pr. Si quis
navicularius per
obreptionem
vel quacumque ratione inmunitatem impetraverit, ad excusationem eum
admitti nullo modo volumus. 1. Sed et si quis patrimonium
naviculario muneri obnoxium possidet, licet altioris sit dignitatis,
nihil ei honoris privilegia, in hac parte dumtaxat, opitulentur, sed
sive pro solido sive pro portione huic muneri teneatur. Nec enim
aequum est, ut patrimonio huic functioni obnoxio excusato commune
onus non omnes pro virili sustineant portione. PROPOSITA V KAL. IUN.
CONSTANTINOPOLI CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO CAES. CONSS.
30 mei 319
Idem a. ad provinciales. Iustas etiam et quae locum habent
fisci
actiones
praecipimus concremari ob hoc solum, quod suis temporibus prolatae
non sunt. Iam calumniae privatorum eo saltem arceantur exemplo, quo
iustas fisci lites silere praecipimus. DAT. III KAL. IUN.
CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
9 juni 319
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD LEONTIUM. Dudum sanximus, ut nullus
ad singula
officia
administranda ambitione perveniat, vel maxime ad tabularios, nisi
qui ex ordine vel corpore officii uniuscuiusque est. Hos enim
officia sibi iniuncta tamdiu agere iubemus, quoad idoneos esse
manifestum est aut aetate non inpediente complere id posse
monstrantur, ut administratione aput unum iugiter permanente fides
quoque eius appareat. Si quis ergo ex suffragio ambitionis ad
officia fisco obnoxia accesserit, multae nomine denas lib(ras) auri
exigatur. P(RO)P(OSITA) V ID. IUN. HIERAPOL(I) CONSTANTINO A. V ET
LICINIO CAES. CONSS.
22 juni 319
Idem a. ad Severum vicarium. Ne causas, quae in nostram
venerint
scientiam,
rursus transferri ad iudicia necesse sit, instructiones necessarias
plene actis inseri praecipimus. Nam cogimur a proferenda sententia
temperare, qui sanximus retractari rescripta nostra ad opiniones vel
etiam relationes iudicum data non oportere, quoniam verendum est, ne
lis incognito negotio dirimatur adempta copia conquerendi. Quare
perennibus inuretur iudex notis, si cuncta, quae litigatores
instructionis probationisque causa recitaverint, indita actis vel
subiecta non potuerint inveniri. DAT. X KAL. IUL. AQUILEIAE
CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
1 juli 319
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Antonium Marcellinum praesidem
provinciae
Lugdunensis
primae. Rei annonariae emolumenta tractantes, ut cognosceremus,
quanta reliqua per singulas quasque provincias et per quae nomina ex
huiusmodi pensitationibus resedissent, cognovimus hanc esse causam
maxime reliquorum, quod nonnulli captantes aliquorum momentarias
necessitates sub hac condicione fundos opimos comparent et electos,
ut nec reliqua eorum fisco inferant et immunes eos possideant.
Ideoque placuit, ut, si quem constiterit huiusmodi habuisse
contractum atque hoc genere possessionem esse mercatum, tam pro
solidis censibus fundi comparati quam pro reliquis universis eiusdem
possessionis obnoxius teneatur. DAT. KAL. IUL. AGRIPPINAE
CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
1 juli 319
Idem a. Patroclo. Nulla praeditos dignitate ad sordida
descendere
conubia
servularum etsi videtur indignum, minime tamen legibus prohibetur;
sed neque conubium cum personis potest esse servilibus et ex
huiusmodi contubernio servi nascuntur. Praecipimus itaque, ne
decuriones in gremia potentissimarum domorum libidine ducente
confugiant. Si enim decurio clam actoribus atque procuratoribus
nescientibus alienae fuerit servae coniunctus, et mulierem in
metallum trudi per sententiam iudicis iubemus et ipsum decurionem in
insulam deportari, bonis eius mobilibus et urbanis mancipiis
confiscandis, praediis vero et rusticis mancipiis civitati, cuius
curialis fuerat, mancipandis, si patria potestate fuerit liberatus
nullosque habeat liberos vel parentes vel etiam propinquos, qui
secundum legum ordinem ad eius successionem vocantur. Quod si
actores vel procuratores loci, in quo flagitium admissum est,
fuerunt conscii vel compertum facinus prodere noluerunt, metallo eos
convenit implicari. Si vero dominus hoc fieri permisit vel postea
cognitum celavit, si quidem in agro id factum est, fundus cum
mancipiis et pecoribus ceterisque rebus, quae cultui rustico
sustinentur, fisci viribus vindicetur; si vero in civitate id factum
est, dimidiam bonorum omnium partem praecipimus confiscari, poenam
augentes, quoniam intra domesticos parietes scelus admissum est,
quod noluit mox cognitum publicare. Igitur si legis latae die
repperietur quisquam patrimonium suum alienasse atque in dominum
servulae contulisse, ordini liceat diligenter inquirere, ut ita rei
publicae civitatis quod de facultatibus supra dicti fuerit
deminutum, in pecunia sarciatur. DAT. KAL. IUL. AQUILEIAE
CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
15 juli 319
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Bassum. Si non a dominis libertas
detur
mancipio
alieno, si quidem ab his iudicibus impetrabitur, quibus dandi ius
est, sine ulla trepidatione poenae facilis dissolutio est. Si vero
iubentibus nobis quicquam lege actum esse doceatur, et non dominus,
ut alienum mancipium manumitteretur, petiisse, tunc eodem, qui in
conspectu nostro libertatem monstrabitur consecutus, ei protinus, ad
cuius proprietatem pertinet, restituto, is, qui mancipium alienum
fallendo principis conscientiam manumisit, mancipia duo cogatur
domino eius dare, cuiusmodi sexus, aetatis atque artis constiterit
esse manumissum, et alia tria fisco eademque ratione similia. quae
mulcta non semper imponitur, sed potius conquiescit, si forte
manumissus inferentem sibi quaestionem status obiecta legitima
praescriptione potuerit excludere; quum sibi amissi mancipii damna
debeat imputare, qui in perniciem suam gesta taciturnitate
firmaverit. PROP. ID. IUL. CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO CAES. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si aliquis mancipium manumittere praesumpserit alienum et id sub
praesentia principis vel in ecclesia fecerit, hac poena tenebitur,
ut et manumissus a domino revocetur, et alia duo mancipia eiusdem
aetatis aut sexus aut certe artificii, quod ille, qui est
manumissus, scierit, dare cogatur. Si vero ille, qui manumissus
dicitur, repetentem dominum sub hac praescriptione superaverit, ut
iam firmitatem status sui temporibus tueatur, tunc ille, qui
manumisit, non est constringendus ad poenam, dum ille, qui repetit,
praeiudicium domini sui incurrerit aut taciturnitate nutrierit.
18 juli 319
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. CONSULIBUS, PRAETORIBUS, TRIBUNIS
PLEBIS,
SENATUI
SALUTEM DICIT. Placuit salva reverentia et pietate sacris nominibus
debita, ut potestas quidem et ius fruendi res liberorum suorum in
sacris constitutorum in maternis dumtaxat facultatibus penes patres
maneat, destituendorum autem liberorum eis licentia derogetur.
Casset itaque in maternis dumtaxat successionibus commentum
cretionis et res, quae ex matris successione fuerint ad filios
devolutae, ita sint in parentum potestate adque dominio, ut fruendi
pontificium habeant, alienandi eis licentia derogetur. Nam maternum
patrimonium, quod filiis in potestate constitutis obvenerit, cum
patre mortuo sui iuris fuerint, praecipuum habere eos et sine
cuiusquam consortio placuit. Quod si pater suum filium
patremfamilias videre desiderans eum emancipaverit, repraesentare ei
maternam debebit substantiam, ita ut filius accepto munere
libertatis reique suae dominus effectus, ne videatur ingratus,
tertiam partem custoditae sibi rei muneris causa parenti offerat,
aestimatione, si res dividi coeperint, bonorum virorum arbitrio
permittenda, quam tertiam alienare quoque pater, si hoc maluerit,
habebit liberam potestatem. Ante emancipationem autem parentes,
penes quos maternarum rerum utendi fruendique potestas est, omnem
debent tuendae rei diligentiam adhibere et quod iure filiis debetur
in examine poscere et sumptus ex fructibus inpigre facere et litem
inferentibus resistere adque ita omnia agere, tamquam solidum
perfectumque dominium et personam gerant legitimam, ita ut, si
quando rem alienare voluerint, emptor vel is cui res donatur
observet, ne quam partem earum rerum, quas alienari prohibitum est,
sciens accipiat vel ignorans. Docere enim pater debet proprii iuris
eam rem esse quam donat aut distrahit; et emptori, si velit,
sponsorem aut fideiussorem licebit accipere, quia nullam poterit
praescribtionem opponere filiis quandoque rem suam vindicantibus.
DAT. XV KAL. AUG. AQUIL(EIAE), RECITATA APUT VETTIUM RUFINUM
P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI) IN SENATU NON. SEPT. CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO
C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Legis istius reliqua pars in aliis legibus continetur: hoc tantum de
reliquis legibus plus habet, ut patres, qui filiorum res gubernare
iussi sunt, negotia eorum summo studio et integritate agere
procurent, ut nihil per negligentiam eorum filiis pereat, sed
fructus rerum maternarum sine aliqua negligentia redigi vel vendi
faciant, ut ex tempore competenti, sicut lex novella dicit,
portiones suas filii sine aliqua imminutione percipiant. Res
filiorum patribus alienare non liceat, hoc est nec vendere nec
donare. Quod si fortasse praesumpserint, emptor, vel qui donator
accesserit, grandi se sollicitudine et cura custodiant, ne filiorum
res a patre venditas aut donatas accipiant, aut scientes aut etiam
nescientes: sed compellant patrem, qui venditor vel donator fuerit,
et filiorum res in sua retinet potestate, ut probet suum esse, quod
tradidit. Etiam ut suspicionem suam possit abstergere, fideiussorem
a patre venditore percipiat, qui obligatione rerum suarum damnum
emptori non faciat: quia defuncto patre licet filiis res suas a
quibuscumque personis, sive venditae sive donatae a patre fuerint,
in suum dominium revocare.
July
18, 319 EMP. CONSTANTINE A. SAYS HOLINESS TO THE CONSULS, PRAETORS,
TRIBUNES OF THE PEOPLE, THE SENATE.
It
was decided, with due respect and piety to sacred names, that the
power and right to enjoy the property of their children who have
been ordained in the sacraments should remain with the fathers,
solely in the maternal faculties, but that the permission to
disinherit their children should be denied to them. Therefore, in
maternal successions, solely in maternal successions, the concept of
creatio is abolished, and the property that has been devolved to the
sons from the mother's succession should be in the power and
dominion of the parents, so that they have the pontifical right to
enjoy it, and the permission to alienate it should be denied to
them. For it was decided that the maternal patrimony, which has come
to the sons who have been ordained in power, should be their own
property when the father is dead, and they should be the first to
have it, without any participation. But if a father, desiring to see
his son as the head of the household, emancipates him, he must
represent to him the maternal substance, so that the son, having
accepted the gift of freedom and made the master of his property,
may not seem ungrateful, offer the father a third part of the
property entrusted to him for the sake of the gift, with an
assessment to be allowed, if the property begins to be divided, at
the discretion of good men, which the father will also have free
power to alienate, if he so prefers. Before emancipation, however,
the parents, who have the power to use and enjoy the maternal
property, must exercise all diligence in protecting the property and
demand what is rightfully due to their children in the examination
and vigorously enforce the costs of the fruits and resist those who
bring suit, and act in all matters as if they were solid and perfect
ownership and legitimate person, so that, if they ever wish to
alienate the property, the buyer or the person to whom the property
is gifted must be careful not to knowingly or unknowingly take any
part of those things that are forbidden to be alienated. For the
father must teach that the property he gives or alienates is his own
property; and the buyer, if he wishes, will be permitted to accept a
sponsor or guarantor, because he will not be able to oppose any
prescription to the children sometimes claiming their property. DAT.
15 KAL. AUG. AQUIL(EIAE), RECITATED APUT VETTIUM RUFINUM
P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI) IN THE SENATE NON. SEPT. CONSTANTINO A. V ET
LICINIO C. CONSS.
Interpretation.
The rest of this law is contained in other laws: this alone has more
than the rest of the laws, that fathers, who are ordered to govern
the property of their children, should ensure that they conduct
their affairs with the utmost diligence and integrity, so that
nothing is lost to their children through their negligence, but that
they should cause the fruits of their maternal property to be
reduced or sold without any negligence, so that from the appropriate
time, as the new law says, the children may receive their portions
without any diminution. It is not permitted for fathers to alienate
the property of their children, that is, neither to sell nor to give
it away. But if perhaps they presume to do so, the buyer or any
donor who approaches should guard themselves with great solicitude
and care, lest they accept the children's property sold or given by
the father, either knowingly or even unknowingly: but they should
compel the father, who was the seller or donor, and who retains the
children's property in his power, to prove that what he has
delivered is his. Also, in order to be able to remove his suspicion,
he should obtain a guarantor from the father-seller, who will not
cause the buyer any harm by the obligation of his property: because
after the death of the father it is permissible for the children to
recall their property from any persons whatsoever, whether it was
sold or given by the father.
25 juli 319
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD SYMMACHUM VIC(ARIUM). Optimum
duximus
non
ex eo die, quo se quisque admissum dolum didicisse memoraverit,
neque intra anni utilis tempus, sed potius ex eo die, quo adseritur
commissus dolus intra continuum tempus anni eis, quibus esse
decertandi ius invenitur, eiusmodi actionem causa cognita deferri;
ita ut, si forte is, contra quem res agitur, longius ullo genere
discesserit, nec denuntiandi necessitate petitor oneretur nec eius
qui aberit praesentia postuletur. Nec tamen adsistere, si velit,
quisquam prohibeatur examini, contra quem decernenda intentio
huiusmodi fuerit expetita: ita ut impetrata doli actione lis ad suum
iudicem translata intra biennii spatia decidatur, ratione temporis
custodita, cum legitime fuerit apud suum iudicem coepta, exemplo
litium ceterarum. Perpetuo vero silentio conquiescat, nisi ex die,
quo impetrata fuerit actio, intra continuum biennium quod sequitur,
omnis lis fuerit decisa. Omnes igitur sciant neque incipiendae post
biennium neque ante completum biennium coeptae, post biennium
finiendae doli actionis concessam licentiam. DAT. VIII KAL. AUG.
NAISSO CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Dolus malus est, quoties per aliquam scripturam vel fraudem ea, quae
definita sunt, per scripturae argumenta mutantur. Vel si quis per
chartarum suppositionem aut per surreptionem aliquam id, quod contra
se futurum sit, ut consentire videatur, inducitur, vel quum his
similia discutiente iudice probantur admissa. Et ideo ille, qui
queritur, dolo se fuisse gravatum, intra biennium suas et incipiat
et definiat actiones: ultra sibi nec ad inchoandum, nec ad
definiendum tempus noverit esse concessum. Nam si aut illum, qui
dolum admisisse dicitur, aut illum, qui pertulit, absentem esse
contigerit, a tempore, quo apud iudicem agere coeperit, biennium ad
definiendam actionem sciat sibi esse permissum.
29 juli 319
Idem a. ad Festum praesidem Sardiniae. Quicumque
cohercitionem mereri
ex
causis non gravibus videbuntur, in urbis Romae pistrina dedantur.
Quod ubi tua sinceritas coeperit observare, omnes sciant eos, qui,
sicut dictum est, ex levioribus causis huiusmodi meruerint subire
sententiam, ergastulis vel pistrinis esse dedendos adque ad urbem
Romam, id est ad praefectum annonae, sub idonea prosecutione
mittendos. DAT. IV KAL. AUG. CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO CONSS.
13 augustus
319 Idem Aureliae Sabinae sive Gaudiosae. Licet in potestate
filii
degentes
donationum effectum a patre sibi conlatarum mox consequi minime
posse videantur, tamen perseverantia voluntatis ad instar mortis
causa donationis huiuscemodi liberalitatem redigi oportere retro
principum rescriptis cognoscitur esse concessum. Unde virum
clarissimum praefectum urbi amicum nostrum, cuius notio est, adire
non prohiberis, qui omnibus rite consideratis, quae in precem tuam
conferenda tu duxisti, pro experientia sua recte iudicari curabit.
D. IDIBUS AUGUSTIS ROMAE CONSTANTINO ET LICINIO AUGG. CONSS.
13 augustus
319 Imp. Constantinus a. ad profuturum praefectum annonae.
Cunctis
pistoribus intimari oportet, quod, si quis forte possessiones suas
ideo putaverit in alios transferendas, ut postea se, rebus in abdito
collocatis, minus idoneum adseveret, tamquam in locum eius alio
subrogando, nihil ei haec astutia nec detestabilia commenta
profutura sunt, sed in obsequio pistrini sine ulla excusatione
durabit nec ad eius iura revocabuntur, si quas emptiones
transcripserit. PROPOSITA ID. AUG. CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO CAES.
CONSS.
13 augustus
319 IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD PROFUTURUM P(RAE)F(ECTUM)
ANNONAE.
Venditionis
atque emptionis fidem nulla circumscriptionis violentia facta rumpi
minime decet. Nec enim sola pretii vilioris querella contractus sine
ulla culpa celebratus litigioso strepitu turbandus est.
P(RO)P(OSITA) ID. AUG. CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quum inter ementem et vendentem res fuerit definito pretio
comparata, quamvis plus valeat, quam ad praesens venditur, hoc
tantummodo requirendum est, si nihil fraudis vel violentiae egit
ille, qui comparasse probatur. Et si voluerit revocare, qui
vendidit, nullatenus permittatur.
27 augustus
319 Imp. Constantinus a. ad Catullinum proconsulem Africae.
Patrimoniales
fundos extraordinariis oneribus vel mediae aut tertiae portionis
obsequiis fatigari non convenit, cum eosdem et auri speciem et
frumenti plurimum modum constet persolvere, ita ut qui violare
statuta temptaverit puniatur. PROPOSITA VI KAL. SEP. KARTHAGINE
CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO CONSS.
1 september
319 CT 9.16.1 Constantine
A
soothsayer who approaches another’s private residence for any
reason is in violation of the law. The “superstitions”
of soothsayers are limited to public ceremonies. [The date listed is
February 1, but Pharr notes that Maximus, the prefect to whom the
law was issued, assumed this office on September 1; thus, either
September 1 is accurate, or the date actually was February 1 of the
year 320.
7 september
319 IDEM A. IULIO SEVERO. Cum [Quum] ad patrem aliquid ex
materna
successione
interposita cretione pervenerit et ad liberos maternarum rerum
successiones defluxerint, ita eas haberi placet in parentum
potestate, ut dominium tantum possessionis usurpent, alienandi vero
licentiam facultatemque non habeant, ut, cum aetates legitimae
liberorum ad emancipationem parentes invitaverint et patresfamilias
videre liberos suos voluerint, tertiam partem materncrum bonorum eis
filii tamquam muneris causa offerant; quam suscipiendam patres
putaverint, faciendae divisionis arbitrium permitti oportebit
iustitiae bonorum virorum, per quos facta divisione tertiam partem
oblatam parentes ita accipien(t, ut alienandae quoque eius par)tis
habeant facultatem, s(i modo ullus potuerit inve)niri, cui placeat
hanc am(plecti licentiam, cum omni) modo filios conducat ad(niti, ut
pio sedulitatis affec)tu mereantur accipere eam, quam (patribus
dederint), portionem. DAT. VII ID. SEPT. MED(IOLANO), ACC. NON. OCT.
CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO CAES. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Materna bona filiorum defuncta uxore pater ita possideat, ut
usumfructum de his habeat: sed quantum aut quam diu habeat, lex
novella constituit: distrahendi tamen aut donandi ex his nullam
pater habeat potestatem. Sane si filium mortua matre emancipaverit,
de bonis maternis, id est de emancipati filii portione ipse filius
muneris causa de maternis bonis tertiam offerat portionem: quae
tamen in ipsius proprietate mansura est ita, ut eam pater bonis
viris dividentibus consequatur. Si tamen tantum patris nomen ad hoc
adduci potuerit, ut rem filiorum impia cupiditate suscipiat, aut
aliis derelinquat: studere tamen filios decet, ut id, quod
parentibus causa emancipationis obtulerint, servitio et pietate
recipiant.
6 oktober 319
Idem a. ad Bassum Pf. U. Si quis ad se fundum vel quodcumque aliud
asserit
pertinere, ac restitutionem sibi competere possessionis putat,
civiliter super possidendo agat, aut impleta solennitate iuris
crimen violentiae opponat, non ignarus, eam se sententiam subiturum,
si crimen obiectum non potuerit comprobare, quam reus debet
excipere. Quod si omissa interpellatione vim possidenti intulerit,
ante omnia violentiae causam examinari praecipimus, et in ea
requiri, quis ad quem venerit possidentem, ut ei, quem constiterit
expulsum, amissae possessionis iura reparentur, eademque protinus
restituta violentus, poenae non immerito destinatus, in totius litis
terminum differatur, ut, agitato negotio principali, si contra eum
fuerit iudicatum, in insulam deportetur, bonis omnibus abrogatis.
Quod si pro eo, quem claruerit esse violentum, sententia proferetur,
omnium rerum, de quibus litigatum est, media pars penes eum
resideat, cetera fisci viribus vindicentur. PP. PRID. NON. OCT.
ROMAE, CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quis adversarium suum ita apud iudicem crediderit accusandum, ut
se asserat violentiam pertulisse, ad probationem rei eum convenit
attineri: quod si probare non potuerit, quem dixerat violentum,
eandem poenam suscipiat, quam ille, quem impetit, convictus
potuisset excipere. De reliquo haec lex praetermittenda est, quia in
quarto libro sub titulo unde vi, quae tamen temporibus posterior
inventa est, habetur exposita.
7 oktober 319
IDEM A. AD BASSUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI). Iuxta divi Pii
consultissimi
principis
instituta valere donationes placet inter liberos et parentes in
quocumque solo et cuiuslibet rei liberalitas probabitur extitisse,
licet neque mancipatio dicatur neque traditio subsecuta, sed nuda
tantum voluntas claruerit, quae non dubium consilium teneat nec
incertum, sed iudicium animi tale proferat, ut nulla quaestio
voluntatis possit inrepere et conlata inter ceteras exceptas Cinciae
legi personas obtinere propriam firmitatem, sive mancipationis
decursa fuerit sollemnitas vel certe res tradita doceatur. Quam
legem ad lites volumus pertinere, quaecumque tempore iussionis
nostrae inveniuntur esse suspensae et quae post futurae sunt, ne
transacta negotia refricentur. DAT. NON. OCT. CONSTANTINO A. V ET
LICINIO CAES. CONSS.
12 oktober 319
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. ET C. AD BASSUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI).
In
universis litibus placet non prius puberem iustam habere personam,
nisi interposito decreto aut administrandi patrimonii gratia aut ad
litem fuerit curator datus, ut iuxta praecedentia nostrae
provisionis statuta legitime initiatae litis agitata in iudiciis
controversia finiatur. DAT. IV ID. OCTOB. AQUIL(EIAE) CONSTANT(INO)
A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si pupillis actio inferatur, quamvis adulti videantur, ad litem
venire non possunt, nisi forte aetas eorum curiae testificatione
firmetur, aut certe provisus curator patrimonium pupilli vel
negotium tueatur.
15 oktober 319
IDEM A. AD MAXIMUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI). Cum veterum
sententia
displiceat,
quae donationes in sponsam nubtiis quoque non secutis decrevit
valere, ea, quae largiendi animo inter sponsos et sponsas
celebrantur, redigi ad huiusmodi condiciones iubemus, ut, sive in
potestate patris degere sive ullo modo proprii videantur esse iuris
et tamquam futuri causa matrimonii aliquid sibi ipsi vel consensu
parentum mutuo largiantur, si quidem sponte vir sortiri noluerit
uxorem, id quod ab eo donatum fuerit nec repetatur traditum et, si
quid apud donatorem resedit, ad sponsam submotis ambagibus
transferatur. Quod si matrimonii non contrahendi causa ab sponsa,
vel in cuius agit potestate, detegatur extitisse, tunc sponso
eiusque heredibus sine aliqua deminutione redhibeantur. Quae
similiter observari oportet et si ex parte sponsae in sponsum
donatio facta sit; nullis causis ulterius requirendis, ne forte
mores aut origo dicatur, vel quidquam aliud opponatur, quod sibi
quisquam non convenire existimat, cum longe ante, quam sponsalia
contrahantur, haec cuncta prospici debuerint. Sola igitur indagetur
voluntas et mutata animi sententia ad restitutionem seu repetitionem
rerum donatarum sufficiat, cum universis causationibus pulsis nihil
amplius constare debeat, nisi ut appareat, qui sibi contrahendum
matrimonium dixerit displicere. Et quoniam fieri potest, ut moriatur
alter adhuc incolumi voluntate, priusquam nubtiae contrahantur,
congruum duximus, eo, in quem fuerat facta donatio, ante matrimonium
diem functo, quae sponsaliorum titulo vel data vel ullo genere
donata sunt, ad eum qui donaverat revocari: eo etiam qui donaverat
ante nubtias mortuo mox infirmari donationem et ad eius heredes sine
aliqua difficultate retrahi res donatas. Quod beneficium usque ad
personam patris ac matris, filiorum etiam, si qui de priore
matrimonio fuerint, stare decernimus, si quocumque modo ex his
persona aliqua defuncto successerit. Quod si ex his nulla persona
defuncti heres erit, sed ex reliquis gradibus quisquam succedat,
donationes convenit etiam non insecutis ex causa mortis nubtiis
convalescere, quoniam illis tantum personis credimus consulendum.
DAT. XVII KAL. NOVEMB. P(RO)P(OSITA) VI KAL. S(UPRA)S(CRIP)TAS ROM.
CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO CAES. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quoties inter sponsos et sponsas de futuris nuptiis specialiter
fuerit definitum, et donationem sponsaliciae largitatis vir in
sponsam suam aut ex consensu parentum aut ipse, si sui iuris est,
propria voluntate conscripserit et omni eam scripturarum solennitate
firmaverit, ita ut et gesta legitime facta doceantur, et introductio
locorum vel rerum traditio subsequatur: quicquid tali et tam solenni
donatione ad ius dominiumque sponsae transierit, si vir sponte eam,
quam depectus est factis supra scriptis solennibus chartis, accipere
noluerit uxorem, omnia, quae sunt tradita, non reposcat. Et si quid
de nominatis tam solenniter rebus et traditis apud se habere
dignoscitur, ad sponsae dominium, quam accipere noluit, sine
dilatione aliqua transferatur. Reliquum legis istius opus non fuit
explanare, quia sequentibus legibus vacuatur.
15
October 319 Idem A. TO THE MAXIMUM PREFECTUM URBI. Since the
opinion of the ancients is displeasing, which decreed that gifts to
a bride are valid even after marriages have not taken place, we
order that those which are celebrated between bridegrooms and brides
with the intention of giving gifts be reduced to such conditions,
that, whether they live in the power of their father or in any way
seem to be their own right and as a future cause of marriage they
give something to themselves or with the mutual consent of their
parents, if indeed the husband does not voluntarily wish to part
with his wife, that which was given by him is not returned and is
not handed over and, if anything remains with the donor, is
transferred to the bride, with the removal of any ambiguities. But
if it is discovered that the cause of not contracting the marriage
was from the bride, or in whose power she acts, then it is returned
to the bride and her heirs without any diminution. Which must be
similarly observed if a gift has been made on the part of the bride
to the bride; no further reasons need to be sought, lest perhaps
character or origin be mentioned, or anything else be opposed, which
someone thinks does not suit him, since all these should have been
foreseen long before the betrothal is contracted. Therefore, the
will alone is to be sought and a changed mind is sufficient for the
restitution or repetition of the things donated, since, after all
causations have been rejected, nothing more should be established,
except that it should appear that the person who said that the
marriage was to be contracted did not like it. And since it is
possible that the other person dies without his will, before the
marriage is contracted, we have deemed it appropriate that the
person to whom the donation was made, before the day of the marriage
has passed, the things that were either given or given in any way
under the title of betrothal, should be revoked to the person who
had donated them: also, if the person who had donated them died
before the marriage, the donation should be immediately invalidated
and the things donated should be withdrawn to his heirs without any
difficulty. We decree that this benefit should continue to apply to
the person of the father and mother, and also to the children, if
any, from a previous marriage, if in any way any of these persons
succeeded the deceased. But if none of these persons will be the
heir of the deceased, but someone from the remaining degrees will
succeed, it is fitting that donations should be valid even for those
who have not followed up on the cause of death, since we believe
that only those persons should be consulted. DAT. 17th KAL. NOVEMB.
PROPOSITA 6 KAL. SUPRA SCRIPTAS ROM. CONSTANTINE A. V AND LICINIO
CAES. CONSS.
Interpretation.
Whenever a future marriage has been specifically defined between the
bride and groom, and the man has written a gift of a dowry to his
bride, either with the consent of his parents or himself, if he is
independent, of his own free will, and has confirmed it with all the
solemnity of writings, so that both the deeds legally done are
taught, and the introduction of places or the delivery of things
follows: whatever has passed to the right and ownership of the bride
by such and such a solemn gift, if the husband voluntarily refuses
to accept her as his wife, whom he has requested by the solemn
documents written above, he shall not reclaim all that has been
delivered. And if he is found to have any of the things so solemnly
named and delivered with him, it shall be transferred to the
ownership of the bride, whom she refused to accept, without any
delay. The rest of this law was not necessary to explain, because it
is voided by the following laws.
20 oktober 319
Imp. Constantinus a. Octaviano correctori Lucaniae et
Brittiorum.
Qui
divino cultui ministeria religionis impendunt, id est hi, qui
clerici appellantur, ab omnibus omnino muneribus excusentur, ne
sacrilego livore quorundam a divinis obsequiis avocentur. DAT. XII
KAL. NOV. CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Lex haec speciali ordinatione praecipit, ut de clericis non
exactores, non allectos facere quicumque sacrilega ordinatione
praesumat, quos liberos ab omni munere, id est ab omni officio
omnique servitio iubet ecclesiae deservire.
23 oktober 319
IDEM A. AD FELICEM PRAESIDEM CORSICAE. Posta alia: Si
petitores
probaverint
interpellantes se saepius esse dilatos atque ita labsum temporis
incurrisse per neglegentiam atque desidiam gravitate tua audientiam
differente, indemnitas petitorum pro modo litis, quae in
altercationem fuerit adducta, de tuis facultatibus sarcietur. DAT.
IX KAL. NOVEMB. SIRM(IO) CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si repetentem iudex per negligentiam usque eo distulerit, ut causam
suam transactis legitimis temporibus perdat, omnia, quaecumque in
illius iudicio iuste sibi potuit vindicare, ei de ipsius iudicis
facultatibus, habita aestimatione, reddantur.
23 oktober 319
IDEM A. AD FELICEM PRAESIDEM CORSICAE. Cum sex menses
transcurrerint,
breves
omnium negotiorum ab officio tuo descripti commeent ad scrinia
eminentissimae praefecturae, ut his recensitis et ad scrinia nostra
perlatis pandatur, quis iudicum et in quibus discingendis causis
fidelem operam praestiterit, quo vel dignus praemium mereatur vel
neglegens coercitionem incurrat: adeundi tuum iudicium de
neglegentia vel avaritia tui officii data provincialibus facultate.
De eo sane, qui pretio depravatus aut gratia perperam iudicaverit,
ei vindicta quem laeserit non solum existimationis dispendiis, sed
etiam litis discrimine praebeatur. DAT. IX K. NOV. SIRMIO
CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO CAES. CONSUL.
1 november 319
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. ANTIOCHO P(RAE)F(ECTO) VIGILUM.
Iussione
subversa, qua certu[s] advocatorum numerus singulis tribunalibus
praefinitus est, omne[s] licentiam habeant, ut quisque ad huius
industriae laudem in quo vol[u]erit auditorio pro ingenii sui
virtute nitatur. DAT. K. NOV. SERDICAE CONST(ANTINO) A. V ET LICINIO
C. CONSS.
1 november 319
IDEM A. AD ANTIOCHUM P(RAE)F(ECTUM) VIGILUM. Destituuntur
negotia
et
temporibus sui[s] excidunt, dum advocati per multa officia et
diversa secretaria rap[i]untur; ideoque censuimus, ne hi, qui semel
protestati fuerint, quod ap[ud] te causas acturi sunt, apud alium
iudicem agendi habeant potest[a]tem. P(ROPOSITA) K. NOV. SERDICAE
CONST(ANTINO) A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
17 november
319 Imp. Constantinus a. ad Verinum vicarium Africae. Si
quis
in
parentis aut filii aut omnino affectionis eius, quae nuncupatione
parricidii continetur, fata properaverit, sive clam sive palam id
fuerit enisus, neque gladio, neque ignibus, neque ulla alia solenni
poena subiugetur, sed insutus culeo et inter eius ferales angustias
comprehensus serpentum contuberniis misceatur et, ut regionis
qualitas tulerit, vel in vicinum mare vel in amnem proiiciatur, ut
omni elementorum usu vivus carere incipiat, ut ei coelum superstiti,
terra mortuo auferatur. DAT. XVI KAL. DEC. LICINIO V ET CRISPO C.
CONSS. ACC. PRID. ID. MART. KARTHAGINE, CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO
C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quis patrem matrem, fratrem sororem, filium filiam aut alios
propinquos occiderit, remoto omnium aliorum genere tormentorum,
facto de coriis sacco, qui culeus nominatur, in quo quum missus
fuerit, cum ipso etiam serpentes claudantur: et si mare vicinum non
fuerit, in quolibet gurgite proiiciatur, ut tali poena damnatus
nullo tempore obtineat sepulturam.
20 november
319 Idem a. ad Pacatianum vicarium Brittaniarum. Unusquisque
decurio
pro
ea portione conveniatur, in qua vel ipse vel colonus vel tributarius
eius convenitur et colligit; neque omnino pro alio decurione vel
territorio conveniatur. Id enim prohibitum esse manifestum est et
observandum deinceps, quo iuxta hanc nostram provisionem nullus pro
alio patiatur iniuriam. DAT. XII KAL. DECEMB. CONSTANTINO A. ET
LICINIO C. CONSS.
27 november
319 Imp. Constantinus a. ad Ianuarinum Pf. U. Si post
strepitum
accusationis
exortae abolitio postuletur, causa novae miserationis debet inquiri,
ut, si citra depectionem id fiat, postulata humanitas praebeatur;
sin aliquid suspicionis exstiterit, quod manifestus reus depectione
celebrata legibus subtrahatur, redemptae miserationis vox minime
admittatur, sed adversus nocentem reum, inquisitione facta, poena
competens exseratur. DAT. VI KAL. DEC. SERDICA, CONSTANTINO A. V ET
LICINIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quem poenituerit accusare criminaliter et inscriptionem fecisse
de eo, quod probare non potuerit, si ei cum accusato innocente
convenerit, invicem se absolvant. Si vero iudex eum, qui accusatus
est, criminosum esse cognoverit et inter reum et accusatorem per
corruptionem de absolutione reatus convenerit, is, qui reus
probatur, remoto colludio, poenam excipiat legibus constitutam.
1 december 319
Imp. Constantinus a. Rufino Pf. P. Si decurio sine liberis
intestatus
diem vitae solverit, cui neque voluntas postrema legibus fulta,
neque alio iure gradu proximo heres exstiterit, bona eius curiae
suae commodis cedant, id est ordinis utilitati proficiant, cuius
corpori fatali necessitate exemptus est, nulli praebenda licentia
postulandi haec bona ut vacantia de nostra clementia, etiamsi revera
et testamentum et successor deesse legitimus approbetur; omni etiam
beneficio, si quod fuerit impetratum, protinus infirmando. DAT. KAL.
DEC. SIRMIO, CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO CAES. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si curialis intestatus moriens neque filios neque proximos
derelinquat, curia, cuius ordini subducitur, quicquid reliquerit,
vindicabit, ita ut nullus audeat ea quasi bona caduca a principibus
postulare. Quod si fecerit, non valebit: nam testamentum faciendi
curialibus lex ista tribuit potestatem.
1 december 319
Imp. Constantinus a. ad populum. Comprimatur unum maximum
humanae
vitae
malum, delatorum exsecranda pernicies, et inter primos conatus in
ipsis faucibus stranguletur, et amputata radicitus invidiae lingua
vellatur, ita ut iudices nec calumniam nec vocem prorsus deferentis
admittant; sed si qui delator exstiterit, capitali sententiae
subiugetur. DAT. ET PP. IN FORO TRAIANI KAL. DEC., CONSTANTINO A. V
ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Delatores dicuntur, qui aut facultates prodiderint alienas aut caput
impetierint alienum. Quicumque delator cuiuslibet rei exstiterit, in
ipso proditionis initio a iudice loci correptus continuo
stranguletur, et ei incisa radicitus lingua tollatur, ut si quis
proditor futurus est, nec calumnia nec vox illius audiatur.
13 december
319 Imp. IDEM A. CREPEREIO DONATIANO. Rescripta, quibus usi
non
fuerint
qui in fata concedunt, heredes possunt allegare, ut congrue
impetrata successoribus emolumenta adquirant. P(RO)P(OSITA) ID.
DECEMB. CONSTANT(INO) A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
26 december
319 IDEM A. AD PROCULUM. Et publicae disciplinae interest et
proconsulari
convenit dignitati, ut publicarum exactionum ceterarumque rerum
curam et notitiam ad tuam redigas potestatem, ita ut non officialium
instructione et voce fraudulenta contentus sis, sed ipsorum iudicum
curam responsionemque condiscas praefecti annonae et rationalium, si
fidelis est ea instructio. Ita enim provincialibus contra iniquas
exactiones poterit subveniri. DAT. VII K. IAN. CONSTANTINO A. V ET
LICINIO CAES. CONSUL.
26 december
319 Imp. Constantinus a. ad Proculum. Preces et impetrata
rescripta
non
placet admitti, si decisae semel causae fuerint iudiciali sententia,
quam provocatio nulla suspendit, sed eos, qui tale rescriptum
meruerint, etiam limine iudiciorum expelli. DAT. VII KAL. IAN.
CONSTANTINO A. V ET LICINIO C. CONSS.
Feb
1, 319 Law 38: To Maximus
CTh
9.16.1 Dorries p. 173
Condemning
soothesayers to be burned and those associating with them to be
banished to an island and their things confiscated.
March
29, 319 Law 39: To Verinus, vicar of Africa
CTh
9.34.1 Dorries p. 173
Anonymous
informants should be tracked down, forced to give proof, and then
punished.
Apr
24, 319 Law 43
CTh
5.27.1 Dorries p. 174
Habit
and custom have authority but not so much as to overturn reason and
law.
Apr
27, 319 Law 44: To Rufinus, the praetorian prefect
CJ
6.22.5 Dorries p. 174
Eunuchs
are allowed to testify in court.
May
11, 319 Law 45: To Bassus
CTh
9.12.1 Dorries p. 174
Masters
can physically discipline their slaves but may not kill them or
treat them barbarically.
May
15, 319 Law 47: To the people
CTh
9.16.2 Dorries p. 175-176
Forbidding
soothsaying from being practiced in individuals’ homes.
May
30, 319 Law 48: To the provincials
CTh
10.1.3 Dorries p. 176
Even
the claims of the tax officials expire after a prescribed period of
time, silencing the accusations of private citizens.
Oct
12, 319 Law 49: To Bassus, the praetorian prefect
CTh
3.17.1 Dorries p. 176
Stressing
the earlier provisions made for the benefit of dependents
Oct
21, 319 Law 50: To Octavian, commissioner of Lucania and Bruttium
CTh
16.2.2 Dorries p. 176-177
Clergymen
in Lucania and Bruttium were to have all gifts removed to prevent
envy from interfering with their ministry.
Dec
1, 319? Law 51: To the people
CTh
10.10.2 Dorries p. 177
Threatening
to cut out the tongues of accusers and execute them.
Dec
26, 319 Law 52: To Proculus
CTh
4.17.1 Dorries p. 177
Defining
the precise process for new motions.
320 CONSTANTINO A. VI ET CONSTANTINO C. CONSS.
31
januari 320 IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD POPULUM. Qui iure caelibes
habebantur, imminentibus legum terroribus liberentur adque ita
vivant, ac si numero maritorum matrimonii foedere fulcirentur,
sitque omnibus aequa condicio capessendi quod quisque mereatur. Nec
vero quisquam orbus habeatur: proposita huic nomini damna non
noceant. Quam rem et circa feminas aestimamus earumque cervicibus
inposita iuris imperia velut quaedam iuga solvimus promiscue
omnibus. Verum huius beneficii maritis et uxoribus inter se
usurpatio non patebit, quorum fallaces plerumque blanditiae vix
etiam opposito iuris rigore cohibentur, sed maneat inter istas
personas legum prisca auctorita[s]. DAT PRID. KAL. FEB. SERDICAE,
P(RO)P(OSITA) KAL. APRIL. ROM(AE) CONSTANTINO A. VI ET CONSTANTINO.
C. CONSS.
31 januari 320
CT 8.16.1 Constantine
Laws
passed in former times which punished celibacy and childlessness are
now repealed. This applies to women as well.
1 februari 320
Idem a. ad populum. Nemo carcerem plumbatarumque verbera aut
pondera
aliaque ab insolentia iudicum repperta supplicia in debitorum
solutionibus vel a perversis vel ab iratis iudicibus expavescat.
Carcer poenalium, carcer hominum noxiorum est officialium et cum
denotatione eorum iudicum, quorum de officio cohercitiores esse
debebunt, qui contra hanc legem admiserint. Securi iuxta eam
transeant solutores: vel certe, si quis tam alienus ab humano sensu
est, ut hac indulgentia ad contumaciam abutatur, contineatur aperta
et libera et in usus hominum constituta custodia militari. Si in
obdurata nequitia permanebit, ad res eius omnemque substantiam cives
eius accedant, solutionis obsequio cum substantiae proprietate
suscepto. Qua facultate praebita omnes fore credimus proniores ad
solvenda ea, quae ad nostri usus exercitus pro communi salute
poscuntur. DAT. KAL. FEB. CONSTANTINO A. VI ET CONSTANTIO CAES.
CONSS.
20 februari
320 Idem a. ad edictum. Filios decurionum, qui decem et octo
annorum
aetate
vegetantur, per provinciam Karthaginem muneribus civicis adgregari
praecipimus. Neque enim opperiendum est, ut solvantur familia et
sacris explicentur, cum voluntates patrum praeiudicare non debeant
utilitatibus civitatum. PROPOSITA X KAL. MART. CONSTANTINO A. VI ET
CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
25 februari
320 Idem a. ad Aelianum proconsulem Africae. Licet serventur
in
officio tuo et vicarii exemplaria libellorum, qui in Africa oblati
sunt, tamen eos quorum nomina continent metu absolutos securitate
perfrui sinas solumque moneas, ut ab omni non solum crimine, sed
etiam suspicione verisimili alieni esse festinent. nam qui accusandi
fiduciam gerit, oportet comprobare, nec occultare quae scierit,
quoniam praedicabilis erit ad dicationem publicam merito
perventurus. PROPOSITA V KAL. MAR. CARTHAGINE CONSTANTINO A. VI ET
CONSTANTINO C. CONSS.
1 maart 320
IDEM A. cum introisset principia et salutatus esset a
praefectis
et
tribunis et viris eminentissimis, adclamatum est: Auguste
Constantine, dii te nobis servent: vestra salus nostra salus: vere
dicimus, iurati dicimus. Adunati veterani exclamaverunt: Constantine
Aug, quo nos veteranos factos, si nullam indulgentiam habemus?
Constantinus A. dixit: Magis magisque conveteranis meis beatitudinem
augere debeo quam minuere. Victorinus veteranus dixit: muneribus et
oneribus universis locis conveniri non sinamur. Constantinus A.
dixit: Apertius indica; quae sunt maxime munera, quae vos
contumaciter gravant? Universi veterani dixerunt: ipse perspicis
scilicet. Constantinus A. dixit: iam nunc munificentia mea omnibus
veteranis id esse concessum perspicuum sit, ne quis eorum nullo
munere civili neque in operibus publicis conveniatur neque in nulla
conlatione neque a magistratibus neque vectigalibus. In quibuscumque
nundinis interfuerint, nulla proponenda dare debebunt. Publicani
quoque, ut solent agentibus super compellere, ab his veteranis
amoveantur; quiete post labores suos perenniter perfruantur. Fisco
nostro quoque eadem epistula interdiximus, ut nullum omnino ex his
inquietaret, sed liceat eis emere et vendere, ut integra beneficia
eorum sub saeculi nostri otio et pace perfruantur et eorum senectus
quiete pos[t] labores perfruatur. Filios quoque eorum defendant
decertationes, quae in patris persona fuerunt, quosque optamus
florescere sollicitius, ne si contumaces secundum eosdem veteranos
comprobari potuerint, decimentur his sententiis, cum praesidali
officio adiungentur. Probabilius iussionem meam curabunt ergo
stationarii milites cuiusque loci cohortis, et parentes eorum
desperationem, et ad sanctimoniam conspectus mei sine ulla
deliberatione remittere, ut sint salvi, cum senuas consecuntur
poenas indulgentiae. DAT. KAL. MART. IN CIVITATE VELOVOCORUM
CONSTANTINO AUG. VI ET CONSTANTINO CAES. CONSS.
1
March 320 The same A., when he had entered the palace and had been
greeted by the prefects and tribunes and most eminent men, was
called out: Augustus Constantine, may the gods preserve you to us:
your health is our health: we say it truly, we say it as sworn men.
The assembled veterans exclaimed: Constantine Aug, how have we
become veterans, if we have no indulgence? Constantine A. said: I
must increase the happiness of my fellow veterans more and more than
diminish it. Victorinus the veteran said: We are not allowed to be
gathered together in all places with duties and burdens. Constantine
A. said: Tell me more clearly; what are the duties that most
stubbornly burden you? All the veterans said: You yourself see for
yourself. Constantine A. said: Now let it be clear that my
munificence has been granted to all veterans, that none of them may
be gathered together in any civil duty or in public works or in any
contribution, either by magistrates or taxes. In whatever fairs they
may attend, they must not give any offerings. The publicans, too, as
they are wont to compel those who act on their own, should be
removed from these veterans; they should enjoy their labors in peace
forever. We have also forbidden our treasury by the same letter, so
that none of them should be disturbed at all, but that they may be
permitted to buy and sell, so that they may enjoy their entire
benefits under the leisure and peace of our age and that their old
age may be able to enjoy their labors in peace. Their sons should
also be defended by the contests which were in the person of their
father, whom we wish to flourish more anxiously, lest if they could
be proved to be rebellious according to the same veterans, they
should be decimated by these sentences when they are added to the
presidential office. It is more likely that the stationary soldiers
of each local cohort will take care of my order, and their parents
will despond and send my presence to sanctity without any
deliberation, so that they may be safe, since they are suffering the
penalties of indulgence in old age. DATED. KAL. MART. IN THE CITY OF
VELOVOCORUM CONSTANTINE AUG. VI AND CONSTANTINE CAES. CONSS.
9 maart 320
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AELIANO P(RAEFECTO) U(RBI). Religiosis
vocibus
[sena]tus
amplissimi persuasi decernimus, ut quaestor[es] ea praerogativa
utantur, qua consules et praetor[es], ita ut, si quis intra annum
sextum decimum nomin[a]tus fuerit absens, cum editio muneris
celebratur, condemnationis frumentariae nexibus minime teneatu[r,]
quoniam memoratae aetati placet hoc privilegium suffragari. DAT. VII
ID. MART. SIRMI CONSTANTINO A. VI ET CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
1 april 320
Imp. Constantinus a. ad populum. pr. Si quis nihil cum
parentibus
puellae
ante depectus invitam eam rapuerit vel volentem abduxerit,
patrocinium ex eius responsione sperans, quam propter vitium
levitatis et sexus mobilitatem atque consilii a postulationibus et
testimoniis omnibusque rebus iudiciariis antiqui penitus arcuerunt,
nihil ei secundum ius vetus prosit puellae responsio, sed ipsa
puella potius societate criminis obligetur.
1.
Et quoniam parentum saepe custodiae nutricum fabulis et pravis
suasionibus deluduntur, his primum, quarum detestabile ministerium
fuisse arguitur redemptique discursus, poena immineat, ut eis meatus
oris et faucium, qui nefaria hortamenta protulerit, liquentis plumbi
ingestione claudatur.
2.
Et si voluntatis assensio detegitur in virgine, eadem, qua raptor,
severitate plectatur, quum neque his impunitas praestanda sit, quae
rapiuntur invitae, quum et domi se usque ad coniunctionis diem
servare potuerint et, si fores raptoris frangerentur audacia,
vicinorum opem clamoribus quaerere seque omnibus tueri conatibus.
sed his poenam leviorem imponimus solamque eis parentum negari
successionem praecipimus.
3.
Raptor autem indubitate convictus si appellare voluerit, minime
audiatur.
4.
Si quis vero servus raptus facinus dissimulatione praeteritum aut
pactione transmissum detulerit in publicum, Latinitate donetur, aut,
si Latinus sit, civis fiat Romanus: parentibus, quorum maxime
vindicta intererat, si patientiam praebuerint ac dolorem
compresserint, deportatione plectendis.
5.
Participes etiam et ministros raptoris citra discretionem sexus
eadem poena praecipimus subiugari, et si quis inter haec ministeria
servilis condicionis fuerit deprehensus, citra sexus discretionem
eum concremari iubemus. DAT. KAL. APRIL. AQUILEIA, CONSTANTINO A. VI
ET CONSTANTINO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si cum parentibus puellae nihil quisquam ante definiat, ut eam suo
debeat coniugio sociare, et eam vel invitam rapuerit vel volentem,
si raptori puella consentiat, pariter puniantur. Si quis vero ex
amicis aut familia aut fortasse nutrices puellae consilium raptus
dederint aut opportunitatem praebuerint rapiendi, liquefactum
plumbum in ore et in faucibus suscipiant, ut merito illa pars
corporis concludatur, de qua hortamenta sceleris ministrata
noscuntur. Illae vero, quae rapiuntur invitae, quae non vocibus suis
de raptore clamaverint, ut vicinorum vel parentum solatio adiutae
liberari possent, parentum suorum eis successio denegetur. Raptori
convicto appellare non liceat, sed statim inter ipsa discussionis
initia a iudice puniatur. Quod si fortasse raptor cum parentibus
puellae paciscatur, et raptus ultio parentum silentio fuerit
praetermissa, si servus ista detulerit, Latinam percipiat
libertatem, si Latinus fuerit, civis fiat Romanus. Parentes vero,
qui raptori in ea parte consenserint, exsilio deputentur. Qui vero
raptori solatia praebuerint, sive viri sive feminae sint, ignibus
concrementur.
1
april 320 Imp. Constantine a. to the people. If anyone, having
previously had nothing to do with the parents of a girl, abducts her
against her will or takes her away willingly, hoping for protection
from her response, which the ancients completely excluded from
requests and testimonies and all judicial matters because of the
vice of levity and mobility of sex and counsel, according to the
ancient law the girl's response will not benefit him, but the girl
herself will rather be bound by association with the crime.
1.
And since the guardians of parents are often deceived by the fables
and perverse persuasions of nurses, let the first of these, whose
detestable ministry is argued to have been and redeemed discourse,
be threatened with punishment, so that the passages of the mouth and
throat of those who uttered the nefarious exhortations will be
closed by the ingestion of molten lead.
2.
And if the consent of the will is discovered in the virgin, he shall
be punished with the same severity as the abductor, since impunity
should not be granted to those who are abducted against their will,
since they were able to keep themselves at home until the day of
union and, if the doors of the abductor were broken down by the
audacity of the abductor, to seek the help of their neighbors by
shouting and to protect themselves by all means. But we impose a
lighter punishment on these, and we order that only the succession
of their parents be denied to them.
3.
But if the abductor, convicted beyond doubt, wishes to appeal, he
shall not be heard at all.
4.
But if any abducted slave, by dissimulation, brings a crime that has
passed or been passed on by agreement into public view, he shall be
granted Latin citizenship, or, if he is a Latin, he shall be made a
Roman citizen: the parents, whose revenge was most important, shall
be punished with deportation, if they have shown patience and
suppressed their pain.
5.
We also order the accomplices and servants of the abductor to be
subjected to the same punishment, regardless of their sex, and if
anyone is caught in the act of servile service, we order him to be
burned, regardless of his sex. DAT. KAL. APRIL. AQUILEIA,
CONSTANTINO A. VI AND CONSTANTINO C. CONSS.
Interpretation.
If anyone does not previously agree with the girl's parents that he
should marry her, and he abducts her either against her will or
willingly, if the girl consents to the abductor, they shall be
punished in the same way. But if any of the girl's friends or family
or perhaps the girl's nurses have advised the abduction or provided
the opportunity for the abduction, they shall receive molten lead in
their mouths and throats, so that that part of the body from which
the exhortations to the crime are known to have been given may be
deservedly closed. But those who are abducted against their will,
who do not cry out with their voices about the abductor, so that
they may be freed with the help of the consolation of their
neighbors or parents, shall be denied the succession of their
parents. A rapist convicted of a crime shall not be allowed to
appeal, but shall be punished by the judge immediately at the very
beginning of the trial. But if perhaps the rapist makes peace with
the girl's parents, and the abductee's parents' revenge is passed
over in silence, if the slave has brought these things, he shall
receive Latin freedom, if he is a Latin, he shall become a Roman
citizen. But the parents who have consented to the rapist in that
matter shall be sent into exile. But those who have given the rapist
comfort, whether they be men or women, shall be burned at the stake.
4 april 320
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Bassum vicarium Italiae. Posta alia:
ubi
puellae ad annos adultae aetatis accesserint et adspirare ad nuptias
coeperint, tutores necesse habeant comprobare, quod puellae sit
intemerata virginitas, cuius coniunctio postulatur. Quod ne latius
porrigatur, hic solus debet tutorem nexus adstringere, ut se ipsum
probet ab iniuria laesi pudoris immunem. Quod ubi constiterit, omni
metu liber optata coniunctione frui debebit; officio servaturo, ut,
si violatae castitatis apud ipsum facinus haereat, deportatione
plectatur, atque universae eius facultates fisci viribus
vindicentur, quamvis eam poenam debuerit sustinere, quam raptori
leges imponunt. DAT. PRID. NON. APRIL. AQUILEIA, CONSTANTINO A. VI
ET CONSTANTINO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Ubi primum puellae sub tutore viventes ad annos pervenerint
nuptiales, et quicumque petitor accesserit, non prius puella
iungatur, nisi virginitas illius, quod a tutore servata sit, fuerit
approbata: nam si ab ipso tutore convincitur eius violata
virginitas, statim exsilio deputetur, et res illius omnes fiscus
usurpet.
26 april 320
Idem a. ad Aelianum proconsulem Africae. Cum antehac lege de
appellationibus
data statutum sit, ne quis a praeiudicio vel ab executione
interponeret provocationem neve huiusmodi appellatio ab his, qui
vice nostra iudicant, admittatur, ne in perniciem plurimorum
interpositis a praeiudicio appellationibus vel moratoriis quibusdam
frustrationibus interiectis litigia protrahantur, tamen nunc poenam
addi placuit, ut intellegant universi principalis negotii
disceptatione causas suas munire debere et non ab ipsis quodammodo
primae interlocutionis exordiis vel ab executionibus provocare, cum
et illis, qui impatienter ab articulo appellandum putaverint, post
cognitionem totius causae liceat appellare et his, qui sero ab
exsecutionibus provocant, facultas appellandi minime fuerit
denegata. Si quis igitur tali usus appellatione fuerit in tuo
iudicio deprehensus, ipsum quidem XXX follium poena multes, causam
autem universam, eius dumtaxat, qui a praeiudicio vel ab executione
temere appellaverit, sine ulla dilatione discingas, cum in nostro
auditorio dari minime dilationem oporteat, interpositae
appellationis tempore sufficiente litigatoribus ad perferendam
instructionem plenissimam. PROPOSITA VI KAL. MAI. KARTHAGINE
CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
19 mei 320
Idem a. ad Dometium Dracontium magistrum privatae rei
Africae.
Cum
fiscus litem patiatur aut inferat, anni spatium ad determinandam
causam spectari oportet, quia hoc ad instruendum satis est et
diutius non oportet privatorum sive fisci emolumenta fatigari. DAT.
XIV KAL. IUN. SERDICAE CONSTANTINO A. VI ET CONSTANTE C. CONSS.
23 mei 320
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD SEVERUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI).
Omnes
pala(ti)nos, quos edicti nostri iam dudum certa privileg(ia)
superfundunt, rem, si quam, dum in palatio nost(ro) morantur, vel
parsimonia propria quaesiv(e)rint vel donis nostris fuerint
consecuti, ut ca(stren)se peculium habere praecipimus. Quid enim tam
(ex) castris est, quam quod nobis consciis ac prope (sub)
conspectibus nostris adquiritur? Sed nec alieni su(nt) a pulvere et
labore castrorum, qui signa nostra comitantur, qui praesto sunt
semper actibus, quos intentos eruditis studiis itinerum prolixitas
et expeditionum difficultas exercet. Ideoque palatini nostri, qui
privilegiis edicti uti potuerint, peculia sua praecipua retineant,
quae, dum in palatio constituti sunt, aut abore, ut dictum est,
proprio aut dignatione nostra quaesiverint. P(RO)P(OSITA) X KAL.
IUN. CONSTANTINO A. VI ET CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
26 mei 320?
CT 16.2.10 Constantine
Clerics
of the church are exempt from tax payments and menial compulsory
public services, as are their wives, children, and servants. This
applies even if they made the money by trade. This is an incentive
to join the clergy. It is assumed their money will be used to help
the poor, which is why it is not taxed. [The date given for this law
is 353. But the consuls listed do not match those living in 353, and
both Pharr and Coleman-Norton have chosen to put this law in 320.]
30 juni 320
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD FLORENTIUM RATIONALEM. In quacumque
causa
reo
exhibito, sive accusator exsistat sive eum publicae sollicitudinis
cura perduxerit, statim debet quaestio fieri, ut noxius puniatur,
innocens absolvatur.Quod si accusator aberit ad tempus aut sociorum
praesentia necessaria videatur, id quidem debet quam celerrime
procurari. Interea vero exhibito non ferreas manicas et inhaerentes
ossibus mitti oportet, sed prolixiores catenas, ut et cruciatio
desit et permaneat fida custodia. Nec vero sedis intimae tenebras
pati debebit inclusus, sed usurpata luce vegetari et, ubi nox
geminaverit custodiam, vestibulis carcerum et salubribus locis
recipi ac revertente iterum die ad primum solis ortum ilico ad
publicum lumen educi, ne poenis carceris perimatur, quod
innocentibus miserum, noxiis non satis severum esse cognoscitur.
Illud etiam observabitur, ut neque his qui stratorum funguntur
officio neque ministris eorum liceat crudelitatem suam accusatoribus
vendere et innocentes intra carcerum saepta leto dare aut subtractos
audientiae longa tabe consumere. Non enim existimationis tantum, sed
etiam periculi metus iudici imminebit, si aliquem ultra debitum
tempus inedia aut quocumque modo aliquis stratorum exhauserit et non
statim eum penes quem officium custodiae est adque eius ministros
capitali poena subiecerit. DAT. PRID. CAL. IUL. SERDICAE CONSTANTINO
A. VI ET CONSTANTINO CAES. CONSS.
8 juli 320
Idem a. ad Crispinum. Si quis per absentiam nominatus
ad
provocationis auxilium cucurrerit, ex eo die interponendae
appellationis duorum mensum tempora ei computanda sunt, ex quo
contra se celebratam nominationem didicisse se monstraverit. Nam
praesenti, qui factam nominationem cognovit et appellare voluerit,
statim debet duorum mensum spatium computari. DAT. VIII ID. IUL.
CONSTANTINO A. VI ET CONSTANTINO C. CONSS.
8
July 320 The same a. to Crispinus. If anyone nominated in absentia
runs to the aid of the challenge, the time for filing an appeal of
two months is to be calculated for him from the day on which he
shows that he learned of the nomination made against him. For a
person present, who knows of the nomination made and wishes to
appeal, the time for two months must immediately be calculated. DAT.
8 ID. IUL. CONSTANTINE A. VI AND CONSTANTINE C. CONSS.
18 juli 320
Idem a. ad Bassum praefectum praetorio. Cum constitutio
emissa
praecipiat
nullum deinceps decurionem vel ex decurione progenitum vel etiam
instructum idoneis facultatibus adque obeundis publicis muneribus
opportunum ad clericorum nomen obsequiumque confugere, sed eos de
cetero in defunctorum dumtaxat clericorum loca subrogari, qui
fortuna tenues neque muneribus civilibus teneantur obstricti,
cognovimus illos etiam inquietari, qui ante legis promulgationem
clericorum se consortio sociaverint. Ideoque praecipimus his ab omni
molestia liberatis illos, qui post legem latam obsequia publica
declinantes ad clericorum numerum confugerunt, procul ab eo corpore
segregatos curiae ordinibusque restitui et civilibus obsequiis
inservire. PROPOSITA XV KAL. AUG. CONSTANTINO A. VI ET CONSTANTIO
CAES. CONSS.
18 juli 320?
CT 16.2.3 Constantine
This
law references a previous law, stating that no decurion or anyone
else capable of fulfilling compulsory public service should be
admitted to the clergy, but only those from the poorer ranks should
take ecclesiastical office. The previous law is either non extant,
or a textual emendation is necessary (see note). This law clarifies
that the restriction of decurions becoming clergy was not
retroactive, and so decurions who had joined the clergy before the
promulgation of the first law did not have to leave their positions
in the church. [Seek and Elliott change the year of this law and of
16.2.6 (listed on June 1, 320) to 329. According to their
emendation, the previously mentioned law in 16.2.3 is actually
16.2.6, and the decurions were not restricted from the clergy until
329.]
28 juli 320
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. FURIO FELICI. Advocatorum errores
in
competenti iudicio litigatoribus non praeiudicant. DAT. V KAL. AUG.
CONSTANTINO A. VI ET CONSTANTINO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Advocatus, si in suscepti causa aliquid in praeiudicium per errorem
dixerit, praeiudicare ei, a quo adhibitus est, nullatenus debet: si
continuo de ipso errore fuerit reclamatum.
26 augustus
320 Idem a. ad populum. Cum ius vetus ingenuas fiscalium
servorum
contubernio
coniunctas ad decoctionem natalium cogat nulla vel ignorantiae venia
tributa vel aetati, placet coniunctionum quidem talium vincula
vitari, sin vero mulier ingenua vel ignara vel etiam volens cum
servo fiscali convenerit, nullum eam ingenui status damnum
sustinere, subolem vero, quae patre servo fiscali, matre nascetur
ingenua, mediam tenere fortunam, ut servorum liberi et liberarum
spurii latini sint, qui, licet servitutis necessitate solvantur,
patroni tamen privilegio tenebuntur. Quod ius et in fiscalibus
servis et in patrimoniorum fundorum originariis et ad
emphyteuticaria praedia et qui ad privatarum rerum nostrarum corpora
pertinent servari volumus. Nihil enim rebus publicis ex antiquo iure
detrahimus nec ad consortium huius legis copulamus urbium
quarumcumque servitia; volumus ut civitates integram teneant nec
[imminutam] interdicti veteris potestatem. Si vel error improvidus
vel simplex ignorantia vel aetatis infirmae lapsus in has
contubernii plagas depulerit, haec nostris sanctionibus sit excepta.
DAT. VI KAL. SEPT. SERDICAE CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Ingenua, quae se fiscali servo iunxerit, sive sciens sive ignara,
ipsa manebit libera, filii vero eius et Latini et spurii erunt, qui,
quamvis liberi sint, iuri tamen obtingunt patronorum. Idem est et si
servo emphyteuticario se sociarit ingenua vel patrimoniali aut ex
privata re principum excepto iure rei publicae, quod lex praesens
voluit conservatum.
30 september
320 Imp. Constantinus a. ad Maximum rationalem Africae.
Secandorum
marmorum
ex quibuscumque metallis volentibus tribuimus facultatem, ita ut,
qui caedere metallum atque ex eo facere quodcumque decreverint,
etiam distrahendi habeant liberam potestatem. DAT. PRID. KAL. OCTOB.
CONSTANTINO A. VI ET CONSTANTINO CAES. CONSS.
13 oktober 320
IDEM A. AD UNIVERSOS VETERANOS. Veterani iuxta nostrum
praeceptum
vacantes
terras accipiant easque perpetuo habeant immunes, et ad emenda ruri
necessaria pecuniae in nummo viginti quinque milia follium
consequantur, boum quoque par et frugum promiscuarum modios centum.
Qui autem negotii gerendi habuerit voluntatem, huic centum follium
summam immunem habere permittimus. Praeter hos ergo, qui vel
domicillis vel negotiis detinentur, omnes, qui vacatis et nullum
negotium geritis, ne inopia laboretis, ad hoc remedium debetis
concurrere. DAT. III ID. OCT. CONSTANTINOP(OLI) CONSTANTINO A. VI ET
CONSTANTINO CAES. CONSS.
4 december 320
Idem a. ad Ianuarinum agentem vicariam praefecturam.
Ut
accusatoribus patientia praebenda est, si quem persequi in iudicio
volunt, ita famosis libellis fides habenda non est nec super his ad
nostram scientiam referendum, cum eosdem libellos flammis protinus
conducat aboleri, quorum auctor nullus existit. PROPOSITA PRID. NON.
DEC. ROMAE CONSTANTINO A. VI ET CONSTANTINO CAES. CONSS.
17 december
320 Imp. Constantinus a. ad Maximum. Si quid de palatio
nostro
aut ceteris operibus publicis degustatum fulgore esse constiterit,
retento more veteris observantiae quid portendat, ab haruspicibus
requiratur et diligentissime scriptura collecta ad nostram scientiam
referatur, ceteris etiam usurpandae huius consuetudinis licentia
tribuenda, dummodo sacrificiis domesticis abstineant, quae
specialiter prohibita sunt. Eam autem denuntiationem adque
interpretationem, quae de tactu amphitheatri scripta est, de qua ad
Heraclianum tribunum et magistrum officiorum scripseras, ad nos
scias esse perlatam. DAT. XVI KAL. IAN. SERDICAE; ACCEPTA VIII ID.
MAR. CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO II CC. CONSS.
Jan
31, 320 Law 53: To the people
CJ
10.19.2 Dorries p. 177
Supervision
for executing sentences.
Jan
31, 320 Law 54: To the people
CJ
6.23.15 Dorries p. 177
Wills
should not be invalidated because of poor form.
Jan
31, 320 Law 55: To the people
CTh
8.16.1 Dorries p. 177
The
single and childless are freed from the "imminent terrors of
the laws."
Feb
1, 320 Law 56
CTh
4.4.1a Dorries p. 177-178
Proper
will form is not necessary as long as its intent is apparent.
March
1, 320/326 Law 57: To governor Florianus
CTh
7.20.2 Dorries p. 178
Outlining
the way in which the troops are to greet the emperor.
Apr
1, 320 Law 58: To the people
CTh
9.24.1 Dorries p. 178-179
Sentencing
those who abduct brides to execution, brides willingly abducted to
execution as well, and complicit parents to deportation.
Jun
30, 320 Law 59: To the accountant Florentius
CTh
9.3.1 Dorries p. 179
Making
strict provisions for the ethical treatment of people awaiting
trial.
July
18, 320 Law 60: To Bassus, the praetorian prefect
CTh
16.2.3 Dorries p. 179-180
Elaborating
on a previous edict, now lost, that decurions, their descendants,
and people with sufficient wealth for public office should not from
that point on enter the clergy.
Aug
18, 320 Law 61: To Bassus, prefect of the city
CJ
1.51.2 Dorries p. 180
Farms
cannot be bought without an appraisal.
Dec
4, 320 Law 41: To Januarinus, the acting prefect
CTh
9.34.3 Dorries p. 174
Libelous
reports are to be burned.
Dec
17, 320/321 Law 62: To Maximus
CTh
16.10.1 Dorries p. 180-181
Soothsayers
are to be sought when lightning strikes the palace or another public
building.
321 CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO II CC. CONSS.
12 januari 321
Sane etiam ex eo querimoniae litigantium oriuntur, quod a
vobis,
qui
imaginem principalis disceptationis accipitis, appellationum
adminicula respuuntur. Quod inhiberi necesse est. Quid enim acerbius
indigniusque est, quam indulta quempiam potestate ita per iactantiam
insolescere, ut despiciatur utilitas provocationis, opinionis editio
denegatur, refutandi copia respuatur? Quasi vero appellatio ad
contumeliam iudicis, non ad privilegium iurgantis inventa sit vel in
hoc non aequitas iudicantis, sed litigantis debeat considerari
utilitas. DAT. PRID. ID. IAN. SIRMIO CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO II CC.
CONSS.
12 januari 321
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD MAXIMUM. Iudicantem oportet cuncta
rimari
et
ordinem rerum plena inquisitione discutere, interrogandi ac
proponendi adiciendique patientia praebita ab eo: ut, ubi actio
partium limitata sit, contentiones non occursu iudicis, sed
satietate altercantium metas compresserint, saepius requiratur et
crebra interrogatione iudicis frequentetur, ne quid novi resideat,
quod adnecti allegationibus in iudiciaria contentione conveniat, cum
ad alterutrum hoc proficiat, sive definienda sit causa per iudicem
sive ad nostram scientiam referenda. Nec ad nos mittatur aliquid,
quod plena instructione indigeat. DAT. PRID. ID. IANUAR. SIRMIO
CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO II CC. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Iudex quum causam audire coeperit, litigatorum assertiones vel
responsiones patienter accipiat et omnia plena discussione
perquirat. Nec prius litigantibus sua sententia velit obviare, nisi
quando ipsi peractis omnibus, iam nihil amplius in contentione
habuerint, quod proponant: et tam diu actio ventiletur, quousque rei
veritas invenitur. Frequenter interrogari oportet, ne aliquid
praetermissum fortasse remaneat: quia si apud ipsum finienda causa
est, totum debet agnoscere. Sin vero ita res exigit, ut ad principis
notitiam deferatur, plena discussis omnibus data relatione debet
esse suggestio etc.
20 januari 321
[IMP. C]ONSTANTINUS A. AD SEVERUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI).
Si
quis iudicio nos[tr]o se adeptum codicillos adstruxerit et idem vel
su[pe]rna codicillorum inpressio vel scribtura adstipuletur
interior, tamen si ad hoc pecuniam constabit speratam, nihilominus
reiectus in plebem, quo plus extorquere conatus est, abdicetur. Hos
enim solos, qui intra [p]alatium versati sunt vel adminstrationibus
functi, [ad] honores excipi oportebit ceteris cunctis exemptis et
[cu]riis restitutis. Si qui tamen bonorum virorum suffra[gio] nulla
data pecunia vel provinciae legatione suscep[ta] nostris sunt
obtutibus inlustrati, hi duumviratus, curas, [fla]monium provinciae
lucrati cetera munerum publi[c]orum obire non abnuant. Qui vero
coemptis procurationum adminstrationibus post lucra de fisco captata
vacationem meruerunt, sive perfectissimi sunt sive inter egregiorum
ordinem locumque constiterint, decuriones nominentur. Quibus illi
quoque addendi sunt, qui neque ex administrationibus sunt et tamen
ut perfectissimi delitescunt. DAT. X KAL. FEB. SIRMIO, ACC. NON.
APRIL. CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO II CC. CONSS.
6 februari 321
Imperator Constantinus. Liberi de inofficioso querellam
contra
testamentum
parentum moventes probationes debent praestare, quod obsequium
debitum iugiter, prout ipsius naturae religio flagitabat, parentibus
adhibuerunt, nisi scripti heredes ostendere maluerint ingratos
liberos contra parentes extitisse.
1.
Sin autem mater contra filii testamentum inofficiosi actionem
instituat, inquiri diligenter iubemus, utrum filius nulla ex iusta
causa laesus matrem novissima laeserit voluntate nec luctuosam ei et
legitimam reliquerit portionem, ut testamento remoto matri successio
deferatur.
2.
Si tamen mater inhonestis factis atque indecentibus machinationibus
filium forte obsedit insidiisque eum vel clandestinis vel manifestis
appetiit vel inimicis eius suas amicitias copulavit atque in aliis
sic versata est, ut inimica eius potius quam mater crederetur, ut
hoc probato invita etiam adquiescat filii voluntati. CONST. A. AD
CLAUDIUM PRAES. DACIAE. D. VIII ID. FEBR. SERDICAE CRISPO II ET
CONSTANTINO II CC. CONSS.
6 februari 321
IDEM A. AD CLAUDIUM PRAESIDEM DACIAE. Licet legum auctoritas
filiorum
potius quam matrum personis voluit laborem incumbere, ut de
inofficioso agentes intra praefinita tempora doceant nullo suo vitio
factum nec offensionem se parentibus praestitisse, sed iugiter
obsecutos, ut naturae ipsius religio flagitabat, disciplinam
inlaesam inoffensamque servasse, ut his probatis removere parentum
valeant testamenta: tamen si mater contra filii testamentum
inofficiosi actionem instituat, inquiri diligenter iubemus, utrum
filius nulla ex iusta causa laesus matrem novissima laeserit
voluntate nec luctuosam ei et legitimam reliquerit portionem, ut
testamento remoto matri successio deferatur, si tamen defuncto
consanguinei agnati non sint superstites, an mater inhonestis factis
atque indecentibus votis filium forte obsedit insidiisque eum vel
clandestinis vel manifestis adpetiit vel inimicis eius suas
amicitias copulavit atque in aliis sic versata est, ut inimica eius
potius quam mater crederetur, ut hoc probato invita etiam adquiescat
filii voluntati. DAT. VIII ID. FEBRUAR. SERDIC(AE) CRISPO II ET
CONSTANTINO II CC. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quamvis leges filiis, si praetermissi testamento fuerint, maiorem
quam matribus agendi dederint potestatem, ut de inofficioso matris
testamento proponant, id est, si quarta debitae portionis suae filio
dimissa non fuerit: ita tamen, si probare potuerint, quod matris in
nullo laeserint pietatem, sed se obsequium, ut decuit, praestitisse:
sic testamentum matris, in quo praetermissi fuerint, non valebit.
Nam si mater contra testamentum filii, quod inofficiosum dixerit,
agat, debet diligenter requiri, si contra filium mater nihil egisse
probatur, aut si nullis insidiis vel publice vel secrete eum laedere
fortasse tentaverit: nec forsitan consilium adversus filium inimicis
suis, quod impium est, auxiliumque praestiterit. Quod si factum non
fuerit, potest removere praetermissa mater, quia ei quartam de rebus
suis portionem filius non dimisit, quod filius fecerat testamentum:
si tamen filio fratres consanguinei agnati, id est uno patre nati,
aut eorum filii per virilem sexum non esse probantur. Nam si mater,
ut superius dictum est, pro manifestis inimicitiis suis praetermissa
docebitur, invita acquiescat laesi filii voluntati.
27 februari
321 Imp. Constantinus a. Petronio Probiano: pr. Res uxoris,
quae
vel
successione qualibet vel emptione vel etiam largitione viri in eam
ante reatum iure pervenerant, damnato marito, illibatas esse
praecipio nec alieni criminis infortunio stringi uxorem, cum
paternis maternisve ac propriis frui eam integro legum statu
religiosum sit. Et donatio maritalis ante tempus criminis ac reatus
collata in uxorem, quia pudicitiae praemio cessit, observanda est,
tamquam si maritum eius natura, non poena subduxerit; capacitatis
privilegio videlicet et modo inspecto, ut consideretur, quid capere
potuit.
1.
Si quid etiam in emancipatos liberos ante tempus criminis ac reatus
patrem contulisse claruerit, integrum isdem et citra inquietudinem
reservetur.
2.
Quod vero nec uxor nec emancipati liberi potuerint vindicare, captum
et incorporatum ita ad me referri specialiter censeo, ut illud
quoque addatur, utrum filios habeat qui damnatus est, simulque
adiciatur, utrum iidem apud se ex causa donationis aliquid
vindicarint.
3.
Sed in his, qui fiscalibus actibus nexi sunt et pro ratiociniis
proscribuntur et condemnantur, placuit, si quid proprium uxor habuit
vel a marito datum, in quantum capere potuit, ante initum actum, ex
quo origo fraudis ac vitii in iudicium deducta est, si quid deinde
in emancipatos filios donatione collatum, antequam orto nexu
suffugium potius quam munificentia frausque temptetur intemeratum
aput accipientium iura persistere; nec quicquam fisco in qualibet
causa teneatur obnoxium, nisi quod in dominio proprio, cum obligari
ortus est, habuit vel quod agens tam suo quam uxoris vel filiorum
vel cuiuscumque praeterea nomine comparavit.
4.
Exceptis dumtaxat caesarianis, qui ab omni iuris beneficio
excluduntur, nisi probata a me purgataque ratiocinia fuerint, ut
quod innoxie habuerint transmittendi copiam habeant. DAT. III KAL.
MART. SERDICAE CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO II CC. CONSS.
3 maart 321
Imperator Constantinus. Omnes iudices urbanaeque plebes et
artium
officia
cunctarum venerabili die solis quiescant. Ruri tamen positi agrorum
culturae libere licenterque inserviant, quoniam frequenter evenit,
ut non alio aptius die frumenta sulcis aut vineae scrobibus
commendentur, ne occasione momenti pereat commoditas caelesti
provisione concessa CONST. A. HELPIDIO. PP. V NON. MART. CRISPO II
ET CONSTANTINO II CONSS.
3 maart 321
CI 3.12.2 Constantine
All
judges, inhabitants of cities, and craftsmen should rest on Sunday.
But farmers are free to work on Sunday as necessary.
3 maart 321
CT 16.10.1 Constantine
If
a public structure is struck by lightning, according to custom an
inquiry will be made of the soothsayers as to the portent of the
lightning.
15 maart 321
IDEM A. AD IULIUM VERUM VIC(AR)UM ITALIAE. Palatinis nostris,
qui
ob spectatum laborem otio donati sunt, sub obtentu pensitationum,
quae repraesentari consuerunt, tolerantia munerum sordidorum atque
indigni oneris quorundam temeritate inponitur. Quod facinus licet
graviore poena plectendum est, tamen ita volumus emendari, ut
gravitas tua ex officio rationum aeris speciem postulet et in
tabulas ei formatae legis huius apices inprimat, ut, si quid tale
sustineant, ad eas inlico quasi ad praesentia remedia perfugiant
atque ab intentato onere liberentur. P(RO)P(OSITA) ID. MART. CRISPO
II ET CONSTANTINO II CC. CONSS.
7 april 321
Imp. Constantinus a. ad edictum. Si quem susceptorem
evertisse
constiterit
rationem et ad solvendum non esse idoneum, creator eius hac
necessitate teneatur, ut, quidquid ille dilapidavit, ipse de
propriis rebus instauret compellaturque damnum omne sarcire, quod
non esset illatum, si in idoneis nominandis competens adhibitum
esset examen. DAT. VII ID. APRIL. CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO II CC.
CONSS.
9 april 321
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD VERINUM. Omnes adulescentes, qui
honestate
morum
praediti paternam frugem vel maiorum patrimonia urbana vel rustica
conversatione rectius gubernare cupiunt et imperiali auxilio
indigere coeperint, ita demum aetatis veniam impetrare audeant, cum
vicesimi anni clausae aetas adulescentiae patefacere sibi ianuam
coeperit ad firmissimae iuventutis ingressum: ita ut post impetratam
aetatis veniam iidem ipsi principale beneficium allegantes non solum
perscriptorum annorum numerum probent, sed etiam testibus advocatis
honesta aut simili aut potiore dignitate praeditis morum suorum
instituta probitatemque animi testimonio vitae honestioris edoceant.
Quod cum ea condicione effecerint, in alienatione praediorum ius
tantum legitimae aetatis optinebunt, quantum per annorum dimensiones
ac temporum leges et natura singulis quibusque deferre consuevit.
Feminas quoque, quarum aetas biennio viros non sera pubertate
praecedit, servato etiam in hoc temporis intervallo decem et octo
annos egressas ius aetatis legitimae mereri posse sanximus: sed eas,
quas morum honestas mentisque sollertia, quas certa fama commendat.
Has vero propter pudorem ac verecundiam in coetu publico demonstrari
testibus non cogimus, sed percepta aetatis venia annos tantum
probare tabellis vel testibus misso procuratore concedimus: ut etiam
ipsae in omnibus contractibus tale ius habeant, quale viros habere
praescripsimus. Ita ut senatores apud gravitatis tuae officium de
suis moribus et honestate perdoceant, perfectissimi apud vicariam
praefecturam, equites Romani et ceteri apud praefectum vigilum,
navicularii apud praefectum annonae. Cui aetati quoniam inter plenam
perfectamque adulescentiam et robustissimam iuventutem media est,
firmatae aetatis appellationem inponimus, ut prima aetas pueritiae
sit, sequens adulescentiae, firmata haec tertia, quarta legitima,
quinta senectus habeatur. In ipsis etiam contractibus hac
appellatione consignanda, ut non nudum nomen venditoris inseratur
tabulis emptionum, sed ab illo, qui firmatae aetatis sit et honestus
vir habeatur, emisse illum significetur, et venditorem esse firmatae
aetatis: ita tamen, ut, quia spes adempta perfidiae est, et in
vendendis praediis diligentiores esse persistant qui beneficium
meruerunt principale, nec praedia sine decreto alienent. DAT. V ID.
APRIL. THESSAL(ONICA). P(RO)P(OSITA) III KAL. IUN. ROM(AE) CRISPO II
ET CONSTANTIO II CC. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Adolescentes, qui honestis moribus esse probantur et ad gubernandas
facultates suas idoneam cupiunt habere personam, oportet eos primum,
antequam ad legitimam aetatem perveniant, id est, ubi vir viginti
annorum esse coeperit, auxilium principis implorare, et accepto
huius rei beneficio, eo ordine apud testificationem publicam
allegare, ut probent, se viginti annorum implesse curricula et
honesta conversatione transigere, et sic praedia sua in aliena iura
cum decreti tamen interpositione, transferre liberam habeant
potestatem. Feminae vero, sicut biennio in pubertate minores sunt,
ita et transacto biennio, ubi ad xviii. annum pervenerint, eas
tamen, quas morum et honestatis commendat opinio, non in publico
annos probare suos cogendae sunt, sed misso procuratore per
scripturam annos eos, quos superius diximus, se habere demonstrent
et similem, quam viri in contractibus habeant facultatem: ita ut
qualis vel quam digna persona sit, apud talem iudicem haec, quae
dicta sunt, debeat approbare. Ergo quum fuerint post adolescentiam
hac aetate firmati, in ipsis quoque scripturis vel venditionum
instrumentis, honestos se et firmatos aetate conscribant. Hoc tamen
illis liceat, qui beneficium, ut diximus, principis pro confirmanda
aetate meruerint, ne praedia sua sine iussu iudicis vel decreto,
quod ex praecepto iudicum vel consensu curialium datur, alienare
praesumant.
11 april 321
Idem a. Menandro. Propter neglegentiam iudicum, qui
imperialia
praecepta
differunt, ad diversas provincias diversos misimus, qui ad scientiam
nostram referant, quae vel diligentia promota viderint vel desidia
corrupta culpaverint. Monendi autem iudices sunt, qui instaurare
publica opera debent, ut de effectis eis potius quam inchoatis ad
nostram scientiam referant, nisi forte iusta ratione petendum sit
aliquos, si forte defuerint, impensarum titulos provideri. De rebus
autem praecipuis maximisque, non de quibuscumque vilissimis nostrum
debent interpellare consilium. DAT. III ID. APRIL. SIRMI CRISPO II
ET CONSTANTINO II CC. CONSS.
18 april 321
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Dometium Dracontium. Quotiens plures
fundum
patrimonialem
possident, pro portionibus fieri a singulis non vetetur illatio.
Quorundam enim probata industria ceterorum culpa poterit coherceri.
DAT. XV KAL. MAI. SIRMI, ACCEPTA XV KAL. IUN. KARTHAGINE CRISPO II
ET CONSTANTINO II CONSS.
18 april 321
CT 4.7.1 Constantine
This
law augments the law of June 8 316. Any slave freed before a bishop
is automatically granted Roman citizenship. Clergy may free their
slaves through their wills and it may be immediately enacted by a
bishop.
19 april 321
Imp. Constantinus a. Osio episcopo [HOSIO EP(ISCOP)O] Qui
religiosa
mente
in ecclesiae gremio servulis suis meritam concesserint libertatem,
eandem eodem iure donasse videantur, quo civitas Romana solennibus
decursis dari consuevit. Sed hoc dumtaxat iis, qui sub adspectu
antistitum dederint, placuit relaxari. Clericis autem amplius
concedimus, ut, quum suis famulis tribuunt libertatem, non solum in
conspectu ecclesiae ac religiosi populi plenum fructum libertatis
concessisse dicantur, verum etiam quum postremo iudicio libertates
dederint, seu quibuscumque verbis dari praeceperint ita ut ex die
publicatae voluntatis, sine aliquo iuris teste vel interprete,
competat directa libertas. DAT. XIV KAL. MAI. CRISPO II. ET
CONSTANTINO II. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Qui manumittendi in sacrosancta ecclesia habuerit voluntatem, tantum
est, ut sub praesentia sacerdotum servos suos velit absolvere,
noverit eos, suscepta libertate cives esse Romanos: nam si clerici
suis mancipiis dare voluerint libertatem, etiamsi extra conspectum
fecerint sacerdotum vel sine scriptura verbis fuerint absoluti,
manebit, sicut civibus Romanis, integra et plena libertas.
18 mei 321
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Constantino Pf. P. Matri ius
liberorum non
habenti,
interveniente licet patruo ceterisque, inter quos agnationis
incorrupta iura per ordinem porriguntur, et quicumque deinceps
agnati erunt, a quibus consanguinitatis iure mater poterat excludi,
placet omnium filii bonorum, quotiescumque ab intestato venitur,
deferri tertiam portionem etiam patruo eiusque filio et dumtaxat
nepoti, agnatione minime durante (si forte per emancipationem
cuiusquam fuerit consanguinitas diminuta), beneficio pari deferri
tertiam portionem, licet habeat mater ius liberorum. Nec immerito,
si quando supra dicto subnixa mater fuerit privilegio, agnatione
dirempta ultra nepotis gradum nostrum beneficium minime placuit
extendi, ne, multis personis vocatis, plus ablatum matri, minus
additum videretur. Sive igitur unus exstiterit pluresve patrui,
eorumque filius aut etiam filii et nepotes neptesve, non amplius
quam sola tertia universorum bonorum simul omnibus vel singulis pro
suis quibusque gradibus deferenda est. Et eodem genere, si plures
erunt, a quibus mater possit excludi, non plus quam tertia bonorum
matri adversus omnes competere debebit. Supra dictae ergo originis
existentibus personis agnatis in infinitum, matri adversus omnes
censuimus subveniendum, licet non omnibus adversus matrem, sed
certis superius comprehensis personis hoc auxilium tribuatur; ita
ut, nec petita bonorum possessione (quoniam huius legis, non
praetoris est beneficium), illico, ut sibi delatae portionis dies
exstiterit, aditione simplici, arrepto rerum quolibet corpore vel
animi destinatione patefacta, plenum dominium delatae sibi portionis
consequantur, facultate eis perpetua, dum advixerint, tribuenda in
adeunda concessa sibi parte successionis. Nec enim ad eos, qui
eorundem successores erunt, nisi ipsis prius, quos indulgentiae
nostrae ratio complectitur, quaesita fuerit hereditas, transire
quicquam iubemus, sed penes eos manere, apud quos ante istam legem
residere potuisset. DAT. XIV KAL. IUN. SIRMII, CRISPO II. ET
CONSTANTINO II. CAESS. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si mater ius liberorum non habeat, hoc est, si ingenua tres partus
vivos et libertina quattuor non ediderit et unicum filium intestatum
fortasse perdiderit, et filius moriens patruum unum vel plures aut
certe patrui vel patruorum filios vel nepotes plures cum matre
reliquerit, qui tamen emancipati non fuerint, mater in tertia
portione in filii intestati hereditate succedat, et duas partes
patruus, vel si plures patrui fuerint, aut filii vel nepotes sibimet
vindicabunt. Quod si mater liberorum ius habeat, et patruus vel
patrui cum matre superfuerint, etiamsi emancipati sunt, duas partes
de bonis filii intestati morientis mater consequatur, quae ius
liberorum habet, et tertiam patruus vel patrui: qui si defuerint,
filii patruorum, quanti fuerint, aequales sibi per capita faciant
portiones. Quod si filii patruorum defuerint, simili etiam nepotes
patruorum divisione succedant. Sed in hac successione sola
constitutio praesens sufficit, ut inter matrem, patruos eorumque
filios et nepotes bonorum possessio praesumatur; quae si fortasse
adita non fuerit hereditas, et hi, qui adire debuerant, moriuntur,
heredes eorum a successione non aditae hereditatis excludit: quia
evidenter haec lex constituit, ut non adita hereditas non transeat
ad heredes. Hic de iure addendum est.
19 mei 321
IDEM A. AD BASSUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI). Altero ex
litigatoribus
in
lite defuncto cursum temporis esse reparandum latis iam dudum
legibus continetur. DAT. XIII KAL. IUN. SIRMIO CRISPO II ET
CONSTANTINO II CC. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si unus ex litigatoribus, sive pulsatus sive petitor, intra
constitutum per scripturam tempus fortasse defecerit, tempora, quae
fuerant statuta, successoribus renoventur.
22 mei 321
Imp. Constantinus a. et c. ad Bassum Pf. P. Eorum est
scientia punienda
et
severissimis merito legibus vindicanda, qui magicis accincti artibus
aut contra hominum moliti salutem aut pudicos ad libidinem
deflexisse animos detegentur. Nullis vero criminationibus implicanda
sunt remedia humanis quaesita corporibus aut in agrestibus locis, ne
maturis vindemiis metuerentur imbres aut ruentis grandinis
lapidatione quaterentur, innocenter adhibita suffragia, quibus non
cuiusque salus aut existimatio laederetur, sed quorum proficerent
actus, ne divina munera et labores hominum sternerentur. DAT. X KAL.
IUN. AQUILEIA, CRISPO ET CONSTANTINO CAESS. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Malefici vel incantatores vel immissores tempestatum vel ii, qui per
invocationem daemonum mentes hominum turbant, omni poenarum genere
puniantur.
1 juli 321
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Iunium Rufum consularem Aemiliae.
Penes
illum vectigalia manere oportet, qui superior in licitatione
exstiterit, ita ut non minus quam triennii fine locatio concludatur,
nec ullo modo interrumpatur tempus exigendis vectigalibus
praestitutum. Quo peracto tempore, licitationum iura conductionumque
recreari oportet, ac simili modo aliis collocari; capitali sententia
subiugando, quem plus aliquid, quam statutum est, a provincialibus
exegisse constiterit. DAT. KAL. IUL. CRISPO II. ET CONSTANTINO II.
CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Vectigalia sunt, quae fisco vehiculorum subvectione praestantur, hoc
est aut in litoreis locis navibus aut per diversa vehiculis merces
deportant, cuius rei conductelam apud strenuas personas triennio
esse praecipit, et continuo hanc exactionem aliis iterum
permittendam, qui maiorem summam praestationis obtulerint. Ex qua
conductione aut exactione, si quis plus, quam praeceptum fuerit,
exigere tentaverit, ita ut mercatorem vel provincialem sub hac
exactione gravare coeperit, periculo capitis se noverit esse
damnandum.
3 juli 321
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. HELPIDIO. Sicut indignissimum videbatur
diem
solis veneratione sui celebrem altercantibus iurgiis et noxiis
partium contentionibus occupari, ita gratum ac iucundum est eo die
quae sunt maxime votiva compleri. Atque ideo emancipandi et super
his rebus acta non prohibeantur. P(RO)P(OSITA) V NON. IUL. CARALIS
CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO II CC. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quamvis sancto die dominico omnes lites ac repetitiones quiescere
iusserimus, emancipare tamen ac manumittere minime prohibemus, et de
his rebus gesta confici pari ordinatione permittimus.
3 juli 321
Idem a. ad populum. Habeat unusquisque licentiam sanctissimo
catholicae
venerabilique concilio decedens bonorum quod optavit relinquere. Non
sint cassa iudicia. Nihil est, quod magis hominibus debetur, quam ut
supremae voluntatis, post quam aliud iam velle non possunt, liber
sit stilus et licens, quod iterum non redit, arbitrium. PROPOSITA V
NON. IUL. ROMAE CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO II CAESS. CONSS.
3 juli 321
CT 16.2.4 Constantine
Every
person shall have the right to leave property to the catholic Church
in his will.
3 juli 321
CT 2.8.1 Constantine
This
is an exception to the law passed March 3, 321 regarding Sunday.
Though most legal work is still forbidden, the legal transactions
connected to freeing slaves may be conducted on Sunday.
13 juli 321
Idem a. Menandro. Universi provinciales pro his rebus, quas
ad usum
proprium
vel ad fiscum inferunt vel exercendi ruris gratia revehunt, nullum
vectigal a stationariis exigantur. Ea vero, quae extra praedictas
causas vel negotiationis gratia portantur, solitae praestationi
subiugamus. DAT. III ID. IUL. CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO CONSS.
1
augustus 321 IMPERIAL EDICTS WITH REGARD TO PROFESSORS, GRAMMARIANS,
DOCTORS, AND STUDENTS p. 19
1 augustus 321
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Volusianum. pr. Medicos, grammaticos
et
professores alios litterarum inmunes esse cum rebus, quas in
civitatibus suis possident, praecipimus et honoribus fungi; in ius
etiam vocari eos vel pati iniuriam prohibemus, ita ut, si quis eos
vexaverit, centum milia nummorum aerario inferat a magistratibus vel
quinquennalibus exactus, ne ipsi hanc poenam sustineant.
1.
Servus eis si iniuriam fecerit, flagellis debeat a suo domino
verberari coram eo, cui fecerit iniuriam, vel, si dominus consensit,
viginti milia nummorum fisco inferat, servo pro pignore, donec summa
haec exsolvitur, retinendo.
2.
Mercedes etiam eorum et salaria reddi praecipimus.
3.
Quoniam gravissimis dignitatibus vel parentes vel domini vel tutores
esse non debent, fungi eos honoribus volentes permittimus, invitos
non cogimus. PROPOSITA KAL. AUG. SIRMIO CRISPO ET CONSTANTINO CC.
CONSS.
1 augustus 321
Idem a. Menandro. Rusticanos usibus propriis vel culturae
ruris
necessaria
revehentes vectigal exigi non sinimus: capitali poena proposita
stationariis et urbanis militibus et tertiis augustanis, quorum
avaritia id temptari firmatur. Pro ceteris autem rebus, quas
quaestus gratia comparant vendituri, solitum eos oportet vectigal
agnoscere. DAT. K. AUG. CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO CONSS.
28 augustus
321 IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD VERINUM. Cum dividundae res
erunt,
dubitari
non potest ab heredibus suis consensum sine ulla controversia
commodandum. Quod vero ad huiusmodi spectat scripturas, in quibus
talis defunctorum fuisse mens invenitur, ut de testamento
intellegatur tantummodo cogitatum, etsi repugnare ius videatur,
huiusmodi quoque conscriptiones inter suos dumtaxat heredes valere
oportet, quemadmodum valent scripturae simpliciter incoatae, quas
nulla sollemnitatis adminicula defendunt, solis nixae radicibus
voluntatis. Licet enim sub testamenti vocabulo coeptae, cum
perfectae non sint neque appellari aliter ullo modo possint,
evanuisse videntur, tamen dispositiones ultimae coloratam iuris
imaginem referentes iustius in se legum proclivem favorem debent
provocare. Quam ob rem cum filiis ac nepotibus civili iure vel
auxilio praetoris ut suis heredibus defuncti successio defertur,
etiamsi coeptum neque inpletum testamentum esse memoretur, vel si ab
utilitate verborum vel sollemnitate iuris inanis scriptura esse
dicatur, considerari specialiter voluntatem placet et obsecundari
protinus, cum res dividentur, nec retineri amplius, quam quod
singulorum personis detegetur adscriptum, ut et memoria defuncti non
violetur parentis et occasiones litium dirimantur. DAT. IV KAL.
SEPTEMB. CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO II CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quando facultas patris inter filios vel nepotes dividitur,
specialiter voluntas patris vel avi paterni debet in omnibus
custodiri, cuius testamentum etiamsi non fuerit perfectum, aut si
non legitimo numero testium subscribatur, nec gestis allegetur,
tamen si agnoscitur defunctus, de quo supra dictum est, de facultate
sua aliquid ordinasse, quicquid unumquemque de filiis ac nepotibus
cuiuscumque sexus habere voluerit, hoc sibi sine consortis
repetitione defendat: nec praesumat aliquis, quod alteri consorti
auctor ille dimiserit. Sed hoc inter filios ac nepotes ex filiis
masculis observetur, quod voluntate auctoris per quamcumque
scripturam probabitur ordinatum.
August
28, 321 IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. TO VERINUM. When things are to be
divided, it cannot be doubted that the consent of their heirs must
be given without any controversy. But as regards writings of this
kind, in which it is found that the mind of the deceased was such
that a will is understood to have been merely thought out, even if
the law seems to contradict it, such writings must also be valid
only among their heirs, just as writings that are simply begun are
valid, which are defended by no support of solemnity, and are based
solely on the roots of the will. For although those begun under the
name of a will, since they are not perfect and cannot be called
otherwise in any way, seem to have disappeared, nevertheless the
final dispositions, bearing a colored image of the law, should more
justly provoke the favor of the laws inclined towards them. For this
reason, with the children and grandchildren, by civil law or by the
help of the praetor, the succession of the deceased is transferred
to his heirs, even if it is mentioned that the will was not begun
and not completed, or if it is said that the writing is void from
the utility of the words or the solemnity of the law, it is pleasing
that the will be specially considered and obeyed immediately when
the property is divided, and that no more is retained than what is
disclosed to each person, so that both the memory of the deceased
parent is not violated and the occasions for lawsuits are
eliminated. DAT. 4 KAL. SEPTEMB. CRISPUS II AND CONSTANTINE II
CONSS.
Interpretation.
When the father's property is divided among sons or grandchildren,
the will of the father or paternal grandfather must be especially
observed in all cases. Even if his will is not perfect, or if it is
not signed by the lawful number of witnesses, nor is it alleged in
deeds, nevertheless if the deceased, of whom it was said above, is
acknowledged to have ordered something about his property, whatever
he wished each of his sons and grandchildren of whatever sex to
have, he should defend this to himself without repetition by the
partner: nor should anyone presume that the author has left it to
another partner. But this should be observed among the sons and
grandchildren of the male sons, which will be proven to have been
ordered by the author's will through some writing.
16 september
321? Imp. Constantinus a. ad Maximum pf. U. pr. In
quaestione
testamenti,
quod deportati filius remeante patre fecisset, remotis Ulpiani atque
pauli notis, Papiniani placet valere sententiam, ut in patris sit
filius potestate, cui dignitas ac bona restituta sunt.
1.
Ita tamen, ut gesta per filium, cuius consilia legitima aetas
firmaverat, rata sint, eodem in potestatem patriam redeunte, ne
eorum rescissio efficiat, quod est maxime absurdum, eodem tempore
nec in patris nec in sua quemquam fuisse potestate.
2.
Minores enim aetate iure quicquam agere prohibentur. Quibus si
damnato patre tutor datus est, necesse est, ut ab officio recedat,
regresso eo, quem non solum nomine redire, sed etiam officium suum
nulla pravitate corruptum liberis praebere oportet, ut eorum bona
tueatur et augeat. Nam si patria potestate ad corrumpendi atque
effundendi patrimonii licentiam abutetur, ut furioso ac dementi,
item prodigo, libidinum omnium vitiorumque servo non est eorum
pecunia committenda: ab administratione fugiat: neque tutor esse
desinat, omniaque minoris dispendia suis ipse damnis praestet.
Sententia vero deportationis nullo patrem praeiudicio deminuat. Quem
si comperta integritas ut natura, ita officio liberis restituerit,
ei gubernacula rerum tradenda sunt, cuius, ad imitationem publici
iuris, provisa custodia est. Quae nisi bonis patribus detur,
luctuosior erit reditus quam discessus.
3.
Ideoque tantum ad restitutionem indulgentia valeat, quantum ad
correctionem sententia valuit. Utque deportationis ipsum per se
nomen rerum omnium spoliatio est, ita indulgentia reditus bonorum ac
dignitatis uno nomine amissorum omnium sit recuperatio. Et filii
emancipationem a patribus officiis petant, ut libertatem non
damnationis, sed lenitatis paternae testem habeant. DAT. XVIII. KAL.
OCT. SIRMIO, CRISPO II. ET CONSTANTINO II. CAESS. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quis pater in exsilium missus filium in maiore aetate reliquerit,
quaecumque de bonis propriis gessit filius, iuxta sententiam
papiniani rata et firma permaneant, nec contra aut testamentum aut
transactionem filii reversus pater venire permittitur. Sane quum
redierit pater, si filium vivum invenerit, filium in ius suum
paterna potestate recipiet. Ceterum quod de rebus propriis absente
patre filius gessit, reversus pater revocare non poterit. Quicquid
vero filii in annis minoribus constituti fecerint, penitus non
valebit: qui tamen si pro aetate vel absentia patris aut tutores aut
curatores acceperint, reversus pater filios, repulsis curatoribus
vel tutoribus, cum omni facultate recipiet: ea tamen condicione, ut
rem filiorum ita administret ac regat, ut non solum detrimenta non
sentiant, sed studio patris res et facultas proficiat filiorum. Quod
si pater aut prodigus aut negligens aut eversor aut libidini deditus
esse convincetur, et filiorum res impie ac dementer vastare ac
dilapidare cognoscetur, filii talis patris, tanquam eo mortuo, sub
tutore aut curatore consistant: quia sicut aequum est, ut bonus et
utilis pater rem filiorum regendam administrandamque recipiat, ita
iniquum est, ut in damnum filiorum reversus facultates a tutoribus
curatoribusve reservatas dementi subversione dilaceret.
28 september
321 IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD MAXIMUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI).
Perpetuas
prudentium
contentiones eruere cupientes Ulpiani ac Pauli in Papinianum notas,
qui, dum ingenii laudem sectantur, non tam corrigere eum, quam
depravare maluerunt, aboleri praecipimus. DAT. IV K. OCT. CRISPO ET
CONSTANTINO CONSS.
28
September 321 IMP. CONSTANTINE A. TO THE MAXIMUM P(RAEFECTUM)
U(RBI). Wishing to extinguish the perpetual contentions of the wise,
we order that the notes of Ulpianus and Paulus against Papinianus,
who, while pursuing the praise of his genius, preferred not to
correct him so much as to corrupt him, be abolished. DAT. IV K. OCT.
CRISPUS AND CONSTANTINE CONSS.
20 november
321 Idem a. ad Ianuarinum. pr. Quoniam nonnulli monetarii
adulterinam
monetam clandestinis sceleribus exercent, cuncti cognoscant
necessitatem sibi incumbere huiusmodi homines inquirendi, ut
investigati tradantur iudiciis, facti conscios per tormenta ilico
prodituri ac sic dignis suppliciis addicendi.
1.
Accusatoribus etiam eorum immunitatem permittimus, cuius modus,
quoniam dispar census est, a nobis per singulos statuetur. servos
etiam, qui hoc detulerint, civitate Romana donamus, ut eorum domini
pretium a fisco percipiant.
2.
Si quis autem militum huiusmodi personam susceptam de custodia exire
fecerit, capite puniatur.
3.
Appellandi etiam privato licentia denegetur; si vero miles aut
promotus huiusmodi crimen incurrerit, super eius nomine et gradu ad
nos referatur.
4.
Si dominum fundi vel domus conscium esse probabitur, deportari eum
in insulam oportebit, cunctis eius rebus protinus confiscandis; si
vero eo ignaro crimen commissum est, possessionem aut domum debet
amittere, in qua id scelus admissum est. Actor fundi vel servus vel
incola vel colonus, qui hoc ministerium praebuit, cum eo qui fecit
supplicio capitali plectetur, nihilo minus fundo vel domo fisci
viribus vindicanda.
5.
Quod si dominus ante ignorans, ut primum repperit, scelus prodidit
perpetratum, minime possessio vel domus ipsius proscriptionis
iniuriae subiacebit, sed auctorem ac ministrum poena capitalis
excipiet. DAT. XII KAL. DEC. ROMAE CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO II CC.
CONSS.
11 december
321 Idem a. decurionibus Agrippiniensibus. Cunctis ordinibus
generali
lege
concedimus iudaeos vocari ad curiam. Verum ut aliquid ipsis ad
solacium pristinae observationis relinquatur, binos vel ternos
privilegio perpeti patimur nullis nominationibus occupari. DAT. III
ID. DEC. CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO II CC. CONSS.
11 december
321 CT 16.8.3 Constantine
Jews
can and should serve on municipal councils; however, two or three
Jews may be given permission to be exempt from this compulsory
public service.
321 Imperator
Constantinus. Inter omnes dumtaxat heredes suos, qui ex quolibet
venientes
gradu tamen pares videantur esse, vel emancipatos, quos praetor ad
successionem vocat, sive coeptum neque impletum testamentum vel
codicillus seu epistula parentis esse memoratur sive quocumque alio
modo scripturae quibuscumque verbis vel iudiciis inveniantur
relictae, iudicio familiae erciscundae, licet intestato ad
successionem liberi vocentur, servato senatus consulti auxilio
defuncti dispositio custodiatur, etsi sollemnitate legum huiusmodi
dispositio fuerit destituta. 1. Si vero in huiusmodi voluntate
designatis liberis alia sit mixta persona, certum est eam voluntatem
quantum ad illam dumtaxat permixtam personam pro nullo haberi.
CONST. A. AD BASSUM. D. ROMAE K.... CRISPO II ET CONSTANTINO II CC.
CONSS.
321
Emperor Constantine. Among all his heirs, who, coming from any rank,
nevertheless appear to be equal, or emancipated, whom the praetor
calls to succession, whether a will begun but not fulfilled or a
codicil or letter of the parent is mentioned or in any other way
writings are found left in whatever words or judgments, by the
judgment of the family of the deceased, although children are called
to succession intestate, the disposition of the deceased is to be
preserved, with the assistance of the senate, even if the solemnity
of the laws of this kind of disposition is lacking. But if in such a
will there is another mixed person designated among the children, it
is certain that that will is to be considered null as far as that
mixed person alone is concerned. CONST. A. AD BASSUM. D. ROME K....
CRISPO II AND CONSTANTINO II CC. CONSS.
321
Eusebius, VC, 4.20 Constantine
Constantine
requires all soldiers to gather on Sundays and recite a prayer he
composed to the almighty God. [The date is somewhat speculative.
Eusebius only records that this took place shortly after Sunday was
declared a day of rest.]
321-322
Optatus, De sch. Don., Appendix 9 Constantine
Constantine
orders toleration of Donatists in North Africa. No action is to be
taken against them. [Based on CT 16.6.2 (on Oct 17, 377, below), it
may be surmised that this repeals a law against the Donatists which
is no longer extant.]
Jan
23, 321 Law 63: To Severus, prefect of the city
CTh
6.22.1 Dorries p. 181
Preventing
the purchase of offices freeing one from curial responsibility.
Feb
6, 321 Law 64: To Claudius, governor of Dacia
CTh
2.19.2 Dorries p. 181
Disinherited
sons may contest the will on the condition that they gave no reason
for such repercussion.
March
3, 321 Law 65: To Elpidius
CTh
2.8.1a Dorries p. 181
Courts
and business are to take Sunday off, but those who work the land may
work on that day.
July
3, 321 Law 66: To Elpidius
CTh
2.8.1 Dorries p. 181-182
Courts
and businesses are closed on Sundays because they lead to disputing,
but slaves can still be freed.
Apr
11, 321 Law 67: To Menander
CTh
15.1.2 Dorries p. 182
Arranging
an observation of the structural condition of the public works.
Apr
18, 321 Law 68: To Maximus, prefect of the city
CTh
4.8.1 Dorries p. 182
Clergy
have the ability to grant slaves freedom.
Apr
18, 321 Law 69: To Maximus, the praetorian prefect
CJ
7.1.4 Dorries p. 183
Naming
the regular times of liberation, later added to by the Church.
May
5, 321? Letter to the bishops of Africa and the people of the
catholic church
HD
App 9 Silli 13; Dorries p. 38-39
Granting
toleration to the Donatists and instructing the people to win them
over with patience.
July
1, July 13, and Aug 1, 321 Law 70
CTh
4.14.1-3 Dorries p. 183
Protecting
citizens from tax officials who threaten them with death or
perpetual exile.
July
3, 321 Law 71: To the people
CTh
16.2.4 Dorries p. 183
Anyone
can leave anything to the "most holy, catholic, and venerable
council" in their will.
Aug
1, 321/324 Law 72: To Volusianus
CTh
13.3.1 Dorries p. 183-184
Doctors,
grammarians, and other teachers or tax-exempt. Slaves who do
anything to them must be whipped or required to pay a fine. They are
allowed to hold office but cannot be forced to do so.
Aug
29, 321 Law 73: To Verinus
CTh
2.24.1 Dorries p. 184
Wills
not written in entirely proper form are to still be considered in
dividing up inheritance.
Dec
11, 321 Law 74: To the decurions of Cologne
CTh
16.8.3 Dorries p. 184
Jews
can be appointed to city councils.
322 PROBIANO ET IVLIANO CONSS.
15 januari?
322 IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD SEVERUM. Minores, qui intra
vig[inti
quin]que
annorum aetatem sunt, praedium vel mancipium rusti[cum sine] decreti
interpositione alienatum, etiam non petita in inte[grum
res]titutione, poterunt vindicare; ita ut, si hac lege proposita
ta[ntum] ad metas vicesimi et quinti anni supererit, ut coepta lis
[intra] eiusdem anni finem terminari non possit, inchoata lis
pos[sit proten]di. Sed et ii, quos eadem lex exacto vicensimo
et quint[o anno] intra viginti et sex annos deprehenderit, incoare
pe[titiones] suas non morentur, quoniam usque ad vicensimum et
[sextum] annum ita inchoatae litis tempora concluduntur. Qu[i vero]
post hoc tempus agere temptaverit, expellatur, ut iam [certus]
securusque possessor sit. DAT. XV K. IAN. SERD[ICAE] PROBIANO ET
IV[LIANO CONSS.]
9 februari 322
IDEM A. AD AGRICOLANUM. Cum ius evidens atque manifestum
sit,
ut
intendendi criminis publici facultatem non nisi ex certis causis
mulieres habeant, hoc est, si suam suorumque iniuriam persequantur,
observari antiquitus statuta oportet; neque enim fas est, ut passim
mulieribus accusandi permissa facultas sit. Alioquin in publicis
olim quaestionibus interdum aut admissa probatio est aut accusantis
auctoritas. Patroni etiam causarum monendi sunt, ne respectu
conpendii feminas, securitate forsitan sexus in actionem inlicitam
proruentes, temere suscipiant. P(RO)P(OSITA) V ID. FEB. PROBIANO ET
IULIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Feminis nisi in sua suorumque causa quemquam accusare non liceat,
quia susceptione alienarum causarum legibus prohibentur. Advocati
etiam commonendi sunt, ne contra leges suscipiant in alienis causis
feminas litigare cupientes.
24 maart 322
Imperator Constantinus. Cum a nobis fuerit ad appellationem
consultationemve
rescriptum, sive sit primo iudicio petita dilatio sive ea tributa
non sit sive nec petita quidem, eam dare cuiquam non licebit eadem
ratione, qua nec in iudiciis quidem cognitionum nostrarum dilatio
tribui solet. CONST. A. AD MAXIMUM. PP. ROMAE VIII K. APRIL.
PROBIANO ET IULIANO CONSS.
22 mei 322
IDEM AUG. AD MAXIMUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI). Denuntiari vel apud
provinciarum
rectores vel apud eos, quibus actorum conficiendorum ius est,
decernimus ne privata testatio mortuorum aut in diversis terris
absentium aut eorum, qui nusquam gentium sint, scripta nominibus
falsam fidem rebus non gestis adfigat. DAT. X KAL. IUN. SIRMIO
PROBIANO ET IULIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Contestari apud rectores provinciae vel defensores aut omnes, apud
quos gesta conficiuntur, litem iubemus, ne ullus nomen absentis aut
mortui vel qui non potuerit inveniri, in litis contestatione
recipiat, ne falsitatis inveniatur occasio.
22 mei 322
IDEM A. AD MAXIMUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI). Eum, qui sciens
iudicio
adesse
neglexerit, ut contumacem iudex poena multabit. DAT. X K. IUN.
SIRMIO PROBIANO ET IULIANO CONSS.
12 juni 322
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Maximum praefectum Urbi. ...uxisset,
eorum
omnium
iudicio fieret copia. Quod quidam ita interpretati sunt, ut
contractis in litem omnibus et adsertionibus iam ordinatis et
profligatis exactisque paene iudiciis, si cui earum personarum, quae
in quaestione sunt, partus accidisset, quasi accessione absentiae
necessariae spectataeque personae novari tempora iuris esse
adfirment. Sed cum aliud sit abesse, aliud necdum natum esse,
placuit eos qui nascuntur matrum condicionibus et iure uti, quarum
mox visceribus exponuntur, neque ideo, quod natus quidam est,
tempora iudicii renovari. ante litem vero nati suo omnes nomine in
quaestionem vocentur, quoniam hos solos, qui in lite nati erunt,
omnem fortunam matrum complecti oportet et aut iustis tradi dominis
aut libertate frui cum lucis auctoribus, cum eorum nulla propria
veriorve possit esse defensio quam matrum. DAT. PRID. ID. IUN.
SERMIO PROBIANO ET IULIANO CONSS.
12
June 322 Imp. Constantine a. to the Prefect of the City. ...had
lived, their
all
judgment would be sufficient. Which some have interpreted in such a
way that, after all the claims had been brought into litigation and
the claims had already been ordered and exhausted and the judgments
almost exacted, if any of those persons who are in question had been
born, they affirm that the times of the law are renewed as if by the
accession of the absence of the necessary and considered person. But
since it is one thing to be absent, another to be not yet born, it
was decided that those who are born should use the conditions and
law of their mothers, whose wombs are soon exposed, and not because
someone has been born, the times of the judgment should be renewed.
Before the lawsuit, however, all those born in their own name should
be called into question, since these alone, who will be born in
litigation, must embrace all the fortune of their mothers and either
be handed over to just masters or enjoy freedom with the authors of
light, since they can have no true or proper defense other than
their mothers. DAT. PRID. ID. IUN. SERMIO PROBIANO ET JULIANO CONSS.
6 juli 322
Idem a. Menandro. Provinciales egestate victus atque
alimoniae inopia
laborantes
liberos suos vendere vel obpignorare cognovimus. Quisquis igitur
huiusmodi repperietur, qui nulla rei familiaris substantia fultus
est quique liberos suos aegre ac difficile sustentet, per fiscum
nostrum, antequam fiat calamitati obnoxius, adiuvetur, ita ut
proconsules praesidesque et rationales per universam africam habeant
potestatem et universis, quos adverterint in egestate miserabili
constitutos, stipem necessariam largiantur atque ex horreis
substantiam protinus tribuant competentem. Abhorret enim nostris
moribus, ut quemquam fame confici vel ad indignum facinus prorumpere
concedamus. DAT. PRID. NON. IUL. ROMAE PROBIANO ET IULIANO CONSS.
20 juli 322
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Maximum Pf. U. Si quis libertate
utentes
eiusque
compotes inopinatos in discrimen ingenuitatis adducat, si eos forte
assertio defecerit, circumductio praebeatur, assertorem quaeri
titulo per literas indicante; ne causa per silentium ignoretur vel
absurde etiam proclametur: ut, qui comperissent, vellent asserere,
vel cunctantes etiam cogerentur; neu, si assertor defuerit, vincti,
multis eos scientibus liberos, a dominis ducantur.
1.
Ideoque sancimus: si quis assertoris inops atque ignotus,
circumlustratis provinciae populis, desertus tradatur ei, qui servum
dixerit, non infracta, sed dilata libertate, assertore invento vires
recolligat, et suis renovatis defensionibus resistat in iudicio,
possessoris iure privilegiisque subnixus, quamquam de domo illius
processerit. Neque enim illa possessio est in tempus accepti, sed
exspectatio assertoris in tempore non reperti; ita ut, si instaurata
lite restitutisque in sua iura partibus, pro libertate fuerit lata
sententia, iniuriae impudentiaeque causa adversarius pari numero
servorum mulctetur, quotquot erunt, qui in servitutem petiti sunt:
iis vero non condemnatur, qui in ipsa fuerint lite progeniti.
2.
Quod si quis ante assertorem repertum vel ante sententiam fuerit
mortuus, heredibus causam status probantibus mulctaticius servus
tradetur: et heredes eius, qui libertatem temerabat, si implacabilem
animum indicant, eadem maneat mancipiorum lex atque condicio; si
liberos sinent, quos clausos repererint, occidunt cum personis
delicta.
3.
Minorum defensores eadem manebit mancipiorum mulcta: ac iudicio his,
quos defenderant, reposcentibus, rei male gestae dabitur aestimatio.
4.
Quum id proprio periculo fecerit assertor, ut rem salvam fore
promittit, ita satis accipiat de mulctae redhibitione.
5.
Libertatem victis hostibus victorum dominatio abstulit; leges vero
iniuriosos poena afficiunt et fama spoliant, dictumque in iurgio in
adversarium immodestius iactatum petulantiusque fusum poenam subire
cogitur: atque non erit impunita labefactatio atque oppugnatio
libertatis, quae in convictis quoque punitur. iniustum est autem,
alienum ad servum recepisse, et alterius servi abductione
condemnatur. DAT. XIII KAL. AUG. SIRMIO, PROBIANO ET IULIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si aliquis in libertate positum ad servitium conetur addicere, iubet
pulsatum ex ordinatione iudicis per populos et per publicum duci, ut
defensorem sui status inveniat et inventum assertorem per chartam
petat a iudice, ne silentio ingenuitas opprimatur. Quod si aut ipse
sibi adesse aut assertorem non potuerit invenire, tradatur domino
repetenti ad servitium, non ad poenale supplicium: ita ut non per
hanc traditionem ex integro spem libertatis amittat, nisi quum
habuerit locum, invento assertore libertatis suae statum asserat
legibus audiendus. Quod si tali ordine reparata lite, qui pulsantur,
ingenuos se esse docuerint, tunc ille, a quo ingenuitas iniuste
fuerat appetita, tot mancipia his, quos ad servitutem vocabat, eius
aetatis et sexus dare cogatur, illis in condemnatione non
annumerandis his, qui, dum causa protrahitur, in lite nati esse
probantur. Quod si ex his, qui ad servitutem vocantur, dum per
assertorem requirendum aut alia occasione causa protrahitur, aliqui
moriantur, et heredes eorum statum ingenuitatis obtinuerint, pro
illius persona, quae in lite mortua est, heredibus suis eius
compensatio, sicut et pro vivis, a pulsante reddenda est. Si vero
ille moriatur, qui liberos conabatur addicere, et filios aut heredes
dimittat, si persequi voluerint causam, quam pater aut auctor
inchoaverat, et victi fuerint, ad supra scriptam satisfactionem
tenendi sunt, ut alia tot mancipia male pulsatis satisfaciant. Si
vero agere noluerint, nec persequi eos tentaverint, sed etiam in
custodiam ab auctore redactos absolverint, erunt a mulctae
condemnatione securi, quia non in auctoris sui vitio perstiterunt.
Quod si forte minores sint, et tutor eorum vel curator causas eorum
adversus ingenuitatem prosequi velit, et fuerit superatus, ipse de
propria facultate ad satisfactionem tenendus est. Si vero post
secundam reparationem assertor inventus periculo suo addicti causam
crediderit replicandam, ut, si vincatur, peculium aut servitia
susceptorum vel ipsos reddere debeat: similiter et ille, qui pulsat,
dato fideiussore promittat se praedictum numerum vel meritum
mancipiorum, vel quod ab his in peculio reposcit, satisfacere, quum
fuerit superatus.
26 juli 322
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD LUSITANOS. Si qua posthac edicta
sive
constitutiones
sine die et consule fuerint deprehensae, auctoritate careant. DAT.
VII KAL. AUG. SAVARIAE PROBIANO ET IULIANO CONSS.
30 oktober 322
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Maximum praefectum praetorio.
Propter
crispi atque helenae partum omnibus indulgemus praeter veneficos
homicidas adulteros. ACC. III KAL. NOV. ROMAE PROBIANO ET IULIANO
CONSS.
Feb
9, 322 Law 75: To Agricolanus
CTh
9.1.3 Dorries p. 184
Outlining
a woman’s right to prosecute in court.
July
6, 322 Law 76: To Menander
CTh
11.27.2 Dorries p. 184-185
Parents
too poor to raise children should not sell them but instead be
supported by the state.
Oct
30, 322 Law 77: To Maximus, the praetorian prefect
CTh
9.38.1 Dorries p. 185-186
In
honor of the birth of his grandson, granting amnesty to sorcerers,
murderers, and adulterers.
323 SEVERO ET RVFINO CONSS.
18 februari
323 Idem a. ad Maximum Pf. U. Libertati a maioribus tantum
impensum
est,
ut patribus, quibus ius vitae in liberos necisque potestas permissa
est, eripere libertatem non liceret.
1.
Si quisquam minor venumdatus actum maior administravit, quoniam
minoris emptio scientiam non obligat, eum ad libertatem venientem
emptionis actusque a maiore administrati praescriptio non tenebit:
2.
Nec vero ille, qui apud quempiam pro servo educatur, ac maior
effectus vendenti veluti domino acquievit actuque administrato iam
paene extremam relegit libertatem, (quoniam neque maior effectus
originem suam noverat, neque eam, quam ignoraverat, venditionem
patiens deseruisse iudicandus est) minori similis, eadem emptionis
atque actus administrati praescriptione non alligabitur, sed utrique
dabitur assertio.
3.
Paria etiam in libertinis erunt, qui quaestu quodam in eandem rursus
servitutem relabuntur. Sed eorum hac exceptione causa distinguenda
est, ut, qui impuberes intra annum quartum decimum manumissi ac
deinceps in servitio retenti ignorata libertate non utantur,
maioresque venumdati actum gerant, ab assertione non arceantur: quum
illi aetati tributae libertatis ignoratio aut oblivio concessa est.
Qui vero memoria firma venditioni post factae non nescius
innectitur, huius legis beneficio carebit.
4.
Et quoniam vicissim etiam ipsis, qui his rem commiserunt, medendum
est, si quisquam omnium, qui supra comprehensi sunt, in libertatem
proclamaverit, id, quod apud se esse eius, qui se dominum dicit,
profitebitur, quoniam de eo non dubitatur, reddi ac referri iudex
protinus pronuntiabit.
5.
Quod vero petitur, si id fuerit negotiatione controversum, per
cautionem assertoris, ut alia lege comprehensum est, conservabitur,
ac petitio differetur, ut, si fuerit approbata propria libertas,
gestarum rerum ab eodem ratio atque omne, quod debebitur,
reposcatur, ut servitute depulsus, qui pro domino quondam fuerat,
habeat, quod ut servo domini iure largitus est, et quae ex earum
rerum quaestu ac fructibus conciliata sunt, et quae de furtivis
compendiis obscure capta ac parta sunt, quum liberum esse non
oporteat, quod apud servum dominus peculii nomine collocaverat.
6.
Ea vero, quae testamento aut donatione quaesita sunt, aut quae ex
earum rerum emolumentis empta confectaque sunt, eidem ingenuo
deputentur.
7.
Quae tamen universa exacto libertatis iudicio, quo a supra dictis
rebus discernuntur, in sequestri esse oportet, ut, his ab utroque
deductis atque in medio iure locatis, ad eorum proprietatem uterque
contendat. DAT. XV KAL. MART. THESSALONICA, SEVERO ET RUFINO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Minor venditus, si post viginti et quinque aetatis suae annos iam
maior effectus servierit aut in rebus emptoris actor aut cuiuslibet
rei ordinator fuerit constitutus, quum de ingenuitate sua
proclamaverit, sine praeiudicio servitii, quod gesserit, audiatur,
nec hoc ei praeiudicium generet, quod eius, a quo emptus est, domum
aut utilitates in annis maioribus positus visus est ordinasse. Hoc
etiam de libertis lex haec praecepit custodiri, ut, qui intra
quattuordecim annos fuerint manumissi et actum in maiore aetate
positi gesserint patronorum, libertati eorum actus non praeiudicet
servitutis, sed quum voluerint, suas aut de ingenuitate aut de
libertinitate, intra tempora legibus constituta, proferant actiones.
Sic etiam, si quis minor ingenuus a quolibet fuerit educatus et,
liberum se esse nesciens, fuerit a nutritore distractus et actum vel
utilitatem illius, a quo emptus est, ut servus gesserit, priusquam
triginta annorum praeiudicio teneatur, potestatem habeat reclamandi,
et quasi minor is, priusquam tempora suppleantur, amissam recipiat
libertatem. Quicquid vero eis ille, a quo empti sunt, vel tradidit
vel donavit vel quaecumque ex rei suae administratione profecit,
totum retinendi ac revocandi habeat potestatem. Si vero huiusmodi
personis aliquid a quibuscumque aliis aut testamento aut donatione
collatum est, id solum sibi iam liberi vindicent: nam quod de re
patroni libertus vel emptoris ingenuus, dum serviret, profecit,
libertati redditus libertus patrono, ingenuus emptori restituat. Hi
vero, qui in annis maioribus constituti sunt, scientes se esse
ingenuos vel libertinos, si vendi acquieverint, in ea, ad quam
scientes sua voluntate transeunt, servitute permaneant.
EPISTULA ABLABI PRAEFECTI PRAETORIO ET
CONSTANTINI IMPERATORIS DE IURE CIVITATIS ORCISTANORUM p. 491
Interpretatio.
Si quis cum quibuslibet hostibus praedas egerit aut praedam cum
praedonibus diviserit, incendio concremetur.
13 april 323
Idem a. ad Florentinum. Si nominatus magistratus aliquis
refragetur,
non
appellatio, sed querimonia hoc dicetur, appellationis enim verbum in
maioribus rebus dici oportet. Similiter et si ad exactionem
annonariam nominatus de iniustitia queratur, non appellatio, sed
querella hoc esse videbitur. Ideoque nec tempora appellationum
servandasunt, sed mox super huiusmodi querimoniis disceptandum. DAT.
ID. APRIL. CONSTANTINOPOLI SEVERO ET RUFINO CONSS.
13 april 323
Imperator Constantinus. A nullo iudice praesumi decet, ut
auctoritate
sua ferias aliquas condat. Nec enim imperiales ferias vocari
oportet, quas administrator edixerit, ac per hoc, si nomine
eximuntur, etiam fructu carebunt CONSTANT. A. AD SEVERUM. D. ID.
APRIL. SIRMI SEVERO ET RUFINO CONSS.
28 april 323
[IM]P. CONSTANTINUS A. ET C. Ne cui liceat praepositorum vel
decurionum
vel tribunorum cohortium quocumque genere cuiquam de militibus a
castris atque signis vel his etiam locis, quibus praetendant,
discedendi commeatum dare. Si quis vero contra legem facere ausus
fuerit et militem contra interdictum commeatu dimiserit atque id
temporis nulla eruptio erit, tunc deportatione cum amissione bonorum
adficiatur; sin vero aliqua barbarorum incursio extiterit et tunc,
cum praesentes in castris atque aput signa milites esse debeant,
quisquam afuerit, capite vindicetur. DAT. IV KAL. MAI. SEVERO ET
RUFINO CONSS.
29 april 323
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A ET C. Si quis barbaris scelerata
fa(c)tione
facultatem
depraedationis in Romano(s) dederit vel si quis alio modo factam
diviserit, (vi)vus amburatur [comburatur]. DAT. IV KAL. MAI. SEVERO
ET RUFIN(O CONSS).
21 mei 323
Idem a. ad Ulpium Flavianum consularem Aemiliae et Liguriae.
Ab
extraordinariis
omnibus fundi patrimoniales adque emphyteuticarii per Italiam
nostram constituti habeantur immunes, ut canonica tantum et consueta
dependant ad similitudinem per Africam possessorum. DAT. XII KAL.
IUN., LECTA APUT ACTA SEVERO ET RUFINO CONSS.
25 mei 323
Idem a. ad Helpidium. Quoniam comperimus quosdam
ecclesiasticos et
ceteros
catholicae sectae servientes a diversarum religionum hominibus ad
lustrorum sacrificia celebranda compelli, hac sanctione sancimus, si
quis ad ritum alienae superstitionis cogendos esse crediderit eos,
qui sanctissimae legi serviunt, si condicio patiatur, publice
fustibus verberetur, si vero honoris ratio talem ab eo repellat
iniuriam, condemnationem sustineat damni gravissimi, quod rebus
publicis vidicabitur. DAT. VIII KAL. IUN. SIRMI SEVERO ET RUFINO
CONSS.
25 december
323 CT 16.2.5 Constantine
Christians
shall not be forced into participating in pagan practices; anyone
who forces a Christian into such an act shall be publicly beaten,
unless he holds an honorable rank, in which case he will be fined
and the money given to the state treasury.
[The
date listed is May 25, but according to Coleman-Norton, Pharr and
Elliot, Constantius would not have been in Sirmium (where the law
was issued) until December, so the date should be Dec. 25, 323.]
31 december
323 Imp. Constantinus a. Quoniam decessoris tui litterae
missae
ad
Proculeianum tribunum et magistrum officiorum continent quorundam
provincialium mancipia abducta pro pignore sub officio retineri, eo
quod vestes canonicas vel equos minime intulerunt, atque haec
mancipia neque dominos solutis debitis recepisse neque alios
comparasse, veritos ne haec rescinderetur distractio: iubemus duorum
mensum spatium ad solvenda debita mancipiorum dominis indulgeri, quo
transacto nisi debita fuerint persoluta, firmiter mancipia
comparabunt quicumque ad emptionem accesserint. PROPOSITA PRID. KAL.
IAN. CASTULONE SEVERO ET RUFINO CONSS.
323 Martyrdom
of Habib the Deacon Licinius
All
who will not make a pagan sacrifice were to be burned with fire.
[The persecution under Licinius is described in Eusebius, H.e.
10.8.14-19 and VC 1.51-56 and 2.1-2.5. The Martyrdom of Habib the
Deacon is a Syriac document from Egypt, now at the British Museum.
This persecution only affected the eastern portions of the empire.]
Apr
28, 323 Law 78
CTh
7.1.1 Dorries p. 186
The
punishment for treachery is being burned alive.
Apr
28, 323 Law 79
CTh
7.12.1 Dorries p. 186
Unauthorized
leaves of absence are punished with deportation or confiscation of
property or, if the absence places the borders in danger, death.
May
25, 323 Law 80: To Helpidius
CTh
16.2.5 Dorries p. 186
Clergy
and other church servants who give in to force and take part in
unchristian sacrifices are to be whipped or fined.
323-324
Letter to Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem
CCS
Tract 1, Chap 3 Silli 14
Summoning
him concerning the question of the two bishops who disturb him
daily.
324 CRISPO III ET CONSTANTINO III CC. CONSS.
Leges
huius anni et a. 321 passim perturbatas esse supra monuimus. - Post
victoriam de Licinio Constantinus se contulit Thessalonicam, ubi
occidi iussit Licinium legesque emisit diabus Mart. 8 et April 9.
Praeterea et rerum emoria ad hunc annum deficit et subscriptiones.
8 maart 324
Idem a. Helpidio. Ex quocumque Hispaniae litore portum urbis
Romae
navicularii
navis intraverit, quae onus dumtaxat fiscale subvexerit, eandem sine
interpellatione cuiusquam abire praecipimus nec ulli extraordinario
oneri deservire, ut facilius iniuncta sibi possit implere obsequia.
DAT. VIII ID. MART. THESSALONICAE CRISPO III ET CONSTANTINO III
CONSS.
24 april 324
Idem a. ad edictum Calchedoniensium et Macedoniensium.
Quotienscumque
aliquam adscriptionem fieri necesse est, rectorum consiliis et
dispositione uniuscuiusque civitatis fiat adscriptio, ne libidini et
commodo potiorum multitudo mediocrium subiecta gravibus et
iniquissimis adficiatur iniuriis.
ACCEPTA
VIII KAL. MAI. CRISPO III ET CONSTANTINO III AA. CONSS.
16 mei 324
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Constantium praefectum praetorio.
Remotis
Licini
tyranni constitutionibus et legibus omnes sciant veteris iuris et
statutorum nostrorum observari debere sanctionem. PROPOSITA XVII
KAL. IUN. CRISPO III ET CONSTANTINO III CAESS. CONSS.
Leges
huius anni et a. 321 passim perturbatus esse supra monuimus. - Post
victoriam de Licinio Constantinus se contulit Thessalonicam, ubi
occidi iussit Licinium legesque emisit diabus Mart. 8 et Apr. 9.
Praeterea et rerum memoria a hunc annum deficit et sunscriptiones.
19 juni 324
Imp. Constantinus a. Dalmatio. pr. Quoniam cognovimus
nonnullos
vacationem
a nobis personalium munerum impetrasse, alienos pro suis liberis
nostris conspectibus offerentes, iubemus eos, cum hoc probatum sit,
indulto beneficio privari, eos autem, qui cuiuscumque sexus liberos
quinque habeant, impetrata semel vacatione potiri, ita ut, si in hoc
numero filius legitimae aetatis inveniatur, obeundis statim pro suo
patre muneribus adplicetur, patribus, qui filios vel filias quinque
habuerint, promissa legibus immunitate servanda. 1. Quod si quis
propter censum tenuem vacationem meruerit atque hoc probaverit,
beneficio potiatur, si propter rerum angustias ad personalia
vocabatur obsequia. DAT. XIV KAL. FEB. SIRMIO CRISPO III ET
CONSTANTINO II CONSS.
9 juli 324
Idem a. ad Hilarianum proconsulem Africae. Si quis decurio
vel propriae
rei
causa vel rei publicae cogatur nostrum adire comitatum, is non ante
discedat quam insinuato iudici desiderio proficiscendi licentiam
consequatur. Quod si pro sua audacia parvi aliquis hanc fecerit
iussionem, deportationis exitum sortiatur. PROPOSITA VII ID. IUL.
KARTHAGINE CRISPO III ET CONSTANTINO III CONSS.
324 Eusebius,
VC 2.48-60 Constantine
Constantine
encourages all citizens of the empire, both pagan and Christian, to
live in peace and unanimity without restraining the other group.
[See note on the authenticity of anti-pagan legislation in the Life
of Constantine.]
324
Mss: Paris syr. 62 and Brit. Mus. Add. 14, 526 and 528. Constantine
Constantine
directs bishops from all over the east to assemble at Nicaea,
redirecting the council which was originally planned to meet in
Ancyra.
Apr
24, 324 and May 9, 328 Law 81: Chalcedonian and Macedonian edicat
and to Aemilianus, the praetorian prefect
CTh
11.16.3-4 Dorries p. 187
Legislation
in favor of the socially deprived.
May
16, 324 Law 83: To Constantius, the praetorian prefect
CTh
15.14.1 Dorries p. 187
The
laws of Licinius are repealed and only ancient laws and those of
Constantine are in effect.
July
324 Letter about the synod celebrated at Nicaea
BA
1.4; CCS Tract 1, Chap 3 Silli 15
Bidding
all bishops come to the upcoming council of Nicaea and that no on
prevent any of them from attending.
After
Sept 18, 324 Third inscription at Rome: The arch of St. Peter’s
Basilica
CIL
VIp.X Nr.6,pXXIX; ICUR N.S. II 1,4092; ILCV 1752 Gruenewald 263
Dedicating
the church to the One whose leadership raised the world triumphantly
to the stars.
Sept
18-Nov 11, 324 Inscription at Serino
AE
1939,151 Gruenewald 277
Refurnishing
the aqueduct.
After
Nov 8, 324 Fourth inscription at Rome: The cross of St. Peter’s
Basilica
ICUR
N.S. II 1,4093 Gruenewald 264
Building
a gleaming royal temple.
Late
324 Edict to the provincials of Palestine
VC
2.24-42 Silli 16; Dorries p. 43-50
Demonstrating
the superiority of Christianity and publishing many various laws.
Late
324 First letter to Eusebius
VC
2.46.1-3; SOC 1.9; THE 1.15.1-2; GEL 3.3.1-4; EH 8.27 Silli 17;
Dorries p. 55
Instruction
to repair damaged churches or erect new ones.
Late
324 Edict to the eastern provincials
VC
2.48-60 Silli 18; Dorries p. 51-54
Demonstrating
the righteousness of Christianity.
Late
324 Letter to Alexander and Arius
VC
2.64-72; SOC 1.7; GEL 2.4.1-13; EH 8.13; CAS 1.19 Silli 19; Dorries
p. 55-62; Opitz 17
Promoting
peace from doctrinal debate.
325 PAVLINO ET
IVLIANO CONSS.
Annus
est concilii Nicaeni (Mai. 20-Aug. 25), cui interfuit imperator.
Vicennalia
eius celebrata sunt incipiens imperatoris anno vicesimo, id est hoc
anno Iul. 25. Ea quod sit Hieronymus vix ipso die Iul. 25 Nicomediae
celebrari potuerunt, nisi propter iter quod parabat anticipata sunt.
Post actum concilium Constantini in Orientem itineris etiam
subscriptiones quaedam memoriam servarunt. - Hiemem a. 325/6
Constantinus videtur exegisse in Thracie; nam Aquae videntur
intellegi Constantinopolitanae, item Heraclea quae fuit Perinthus.
12 februari
325 IDEM A. ad universos provinciales. Tyranni et iudicum
eius gestis
infirmatis
nemo per calumniam velit quod sponte ipse fecit evertere nec quod
legitime gestum est. DAT. PRID. ID. FEB. PAULINO ET IULIANO CONSS.
25 februari
325 IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD SILVIUM PAULUM MAG ITALIAE.
Posta alia:
Ne
tua gravitas occupationibus aliis districta huiusmodi rescriptorum
cumulis oneretur, placuit has solas causas gravitati tuae iniungere,
in quibus persona potentior inferiorem aut minorem iudicem premere
potest aut tale negotium emergit, quod in praesidali iudicio
terminari fas non est, vel quod per eosdem praesides diu tractatum
apud te debeat terminari. DAT. V K. MART. NICOM(EDIAE) PAULINO ET
IULIANO CONSUL.
6 maart 325
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. Nullus iudicum id, quod a re publica ex
collatione
susceperit,
mutui interventione obposita vel invadat vel conetur invadere. DAT.
PRID. NON. MART. TREVIRIS PAULINO ET IULIANO CONSS.
30 maart 325
IDEM A. HELLADIO. Saepius claruit quosdam ex advocatis
existimationi
su[ae]
immensa atque inlicita compendia praetulisse nomine honorarior[um].
18 april 325
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD DRACILIANUM AGENTEM VICES
P(RAEFECTORUM)
P(RAETORI)O.
Quicumque fruges humidas vel arentes indigentibus mutuas dederint,
usurae nomine tertiam partem superfluam consequantur, id est ut, si
summa crediti in duobus modiis fuerit, tertium modium amplius
consequantur. Quod si conventus creditor propter commodum usurarum
debitum recuperare noluerit, non solum usuris, sed etiam debiti
quantitate privandus est. Quae lex ad solas pertinet fruges: nam pro
pecunia ultra singulas centesimas creditor vetatur accipere.
P(RO)P(OSITA) CAESAREA XV KAL. MAI. PAULINO ET IULIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quicumque fruges humidas, id est vinum et oleum, vel quodcumque
annonae genus alteri commodaverit, non plus ab eo propter usuram
quam tertiam partem accipiat, id est ut supra duos modios, qui
accepit, tertium reddat. Quod si conventus fuerit ille, qui
commodat, et pro maiore usura noluerit debitum suum, adiecto tertio
modio, a debitore recipere, etiam debitum perdat. Quam rem ad solas
fruges praecipimus pertinere. Nam quando pecunia fuerit commodata,
nisi unam tantum centesimam a creditoribus exigi non iubemus.
22 mei 325
IDEM A. SEVERO P(RAEFECTO) U(RBI). Quotiens rescripto nostro
praeiudicium
vel
moratoria praescriptio remittitur, aditus supplicandi pandatur: quod
autem totius negotii cognitionem tollit et vires principalis negotii
exhaurit, sine gravi partis alterius dispendio convelli non potest.
Nec praescriptionis igitur peremptoriae relaxatio petatur, nec
contra edictum supplicetur. DAT X KAL. IUN. NICIAE PAULINO ET
IULIANO CONSS.
17 juni 325
IDEM A. ad Maximum praefectum Urbi. pr. Comitatenses et
ripenses
milites
atque protectores suum caput, patris ac matris et uxoris, si tamen
eos superstites habeant, omnes excusent, si censibus inditi
habeantur. Quod si aliquam ex his personis non habuerint vel nullam
habuerint, tantum pro suo debent peculio excusare, quantum pro
iisdem, si non deessent, excusare potuissent, ita tamen, ut non
pactione cum alteris facta simulato dominio rem alienam excusent,
sed vere proprias facultates.
1.
Veteranos autem post emeritae missionis epistulas tam suum quam
uxoris caput excusare sancimus aut, si honestam missionem meruerint,
suum caput tantummodo excusare ceteros. Omnes veteranos de quocumque
exercitu una cum uxore sua unius capitis frui excusatione
praecipimus.
2.
Ripensis autem veteranus, qui ex priore lege post viginti quattuor
stipendia honesta missione impetrata unius excusatione capitis
fruebatur, etiam si viginti stipendiis completis honestam missionem
meruerit, ad exemplum comitatensium militum unum caput excuset.
Intra viginti etiam stipendia dimissus, quoniam inbecilli et debiles
censibus non dedicantur, eodem beneficio utatur.
3.
Alares autem et cohortales dum militant, propria capita excusent,
veteranis quoque eadem excusationis solacia habituris. Qui quocumque
tempore in quibuscumque partibus meruerint missionem, si ex
comitatensi militia senectutis vel debilitatis causa dimissi
fuerint, indiscreto stipendiorum numero duo capita excusaturis, id
est suum adque uxoris; et ripensibus indiscrete idem privilegium
habituris, si se ob belli vulnera dimissos probaverint: ita ut, si
quis eorum post quindecim stipendia intra viginti et quattuor annos
ex militia decesserit, sui tantum capitis excusatione fruatur;
uxorem enim ripensis, si militia decesserit post viginti et quattuor
annos, excusari oportet. PROPOSITA XV KAL. IUL. ANTIOCHIAE PAULINO
ET IULIANO CONSS.
17
June 325 Idem A. to the Maximum prefect of the city.
The
soldiers and protectors of the counties and ripens are to excuse all
their heads, of their father and mother and of their wife, if they
have them still alive, if they are found to be included in the
censuses. But if they do not have any of these persons or have none,
they must excuse only for their own savings, as much as they could
have excused for the same, if they were not lacking, so that they do
not excuse someone else's property by pretending to have dominion by
agreement with others, but truly their own faculties.
1.
We sanction veterans, however, after letters of merited mission, to
excuse both their own heads and those of their wives, or, if they
have earned an honorable mission, to excuse only their heads from
the rest. We order all veterans from any army to enjoy the excuse of
one head together with their wives.
2.
A retired veteran, who, according to the previous law, enjoyed the
exemption of one head after twenty-four pay periods after obtaining
an honorable discharge, even if he has earned an honorable discharge
after completing twenty pay periods, shall, following the example of
the county soldiers, exempt one head. Even those discharged within
twenty pay periods, since the weak and feeble are not dedicated to
the census, shall enjoy the same benefit.
3.
Winged and cohortal soldiers, while they are serving, shall exempt
their own heads, and veterans shall also have the same exemption
benefits. Those who have earned a discharge at any time in any part,
if they have been discharged from the county service on account of
old age or infirmity, shall exempt two heads, that is, their own and
their wife's, regardless of the number of pay periods; and retired
veterans shall have the same privilege regardless of the number of
pay periods, if they have proved that they were discharged due to
wounds of war: so that, if any of them dies from the service after
fifteen pay periods within twenty-four years, he shall enjoy the
exemption of only his own head; for retired veterans, if their wife
dies from the service after twenty-four years, must be excused.
PROPOSITIONS XV KAL. JULY ANTIOCH CONSULTATION OF PAULIN AND JULIAN.
5 juli 325?
Unde ex corpore Theodosiani: imp. Constantinus a. et Iulianus
caes.
ad
Taurum pp. (ad locum:) multabuntur iudices, qui rescripta
contempserint aut distulerint. DAT. III NON. IUL. CONSTANTINO A. VII
ET IULIANO CONSS.
11 juli 325
IDEM A. ad Maximum. Quoniam diversis praestitimus, ut
legionibus
vel
cohortibus deputentur vel militiae restituantur, quisquis huiusmodi
beneficium proferat, requiratur, utrum ex genere decurionum sit vel
ante nominatus ad curiam, ut, si quid tale probetur, curiae suae et
civitati reddatur. Quam formam circa omnes, qui iam dudum probati in
militaribus officiis agunt vel restituti militiae sacramento
muniuntur vel postea per suffragia probabuntur, observari conveniet.
PROPOSITA V ID IUL. ANTIOCHIAE PAULINO ET IULIANO CONSS.
19 juli 325
IDEM A. ad Eufrasium rationalem trium provinciarum. pr. Post
alia:
pro
multis etiam et in diversis locis constitutis liceat simul auri
pondus inferre, ita ut pro omnibus fundis securitas emissis
cautionibus detur, ne separatim ab unoquoque auro exacto multis et
adsiduis incrementis provincialium utilitas fatigetur. Hoc quoque
addimus, ut unusquisque quod debet intra anni metas, quo tempore
voluerit, inferat et per tabularium apparitorem illatio cognoscatur
absque omni mora auro suscipiendo, ne quis in aliena civitate
sumptus faciat vel, quod est gravius, legem commissi frustratus
incurrat. Nam si solvere volens a suscipiente fuerit contemptus,
testibus adhibitis contestationem debebit proponere, ut hoc probato
et ipse securitatem debitam commissi nexu liberatus cum emolumentis
accipiat et qui suscipere neglexerit, eius ponderis quod debebatur
duplum fisci rationibus per vigorem officii tui inferre cogatur.
DAT. XIV KAL. AUG. PAULINO ET IULIANO CONSS.
19 juli 325
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. ad Eufrasium rationalem trium
provinciarum.
Si
qui solidos appendere voluerit, auri cocti septem solidos
quaternorum scripulorum nostris vultibus figuratos adpendat pro
singulis unciis, XIV vero pro duabus, iuxta hanc formam omnem summam
debiti illaturus. Eadem ratione servanda, et si materiam quis
inferat, ut solidos dedisse videatur. Aurum vero quod infertur aequa
lance et libramentis paribus suscipiatur, scilicet ut duobus digitis
summitas lini retineatur, tres reliqui liberi ad susceptorem
emineant nec pondera deprimant nullo examinis libramento servato,
nec aequis ac paribus suspenso statere momentis. Et cetera.
PROPOSITA XIV KAL. AUG. PAULINO ET IULIANO CONSS.
30 juli 325
IDEM A. AD SEVERUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI). Nulli prorsus
audientia
praebeatur,
qui causae continentiam dividit et ex beneficii praerogativa id,
quod in uno eodemque iudicio poterat terminari, apud diversos
iudices voluerit ventilare: poena proposita, si quis contra hanc
supplicaverit sanctionem atque alium super possessione alium super
principali quaestione iudicem postulaverit, ut, rei quae petebatur
integra aestimatione subducta, quintam portionem rei publiae eius
civitatis inferat, in cuius finibus res de qua agitur constituta
est. P(RO)P(OSITA) III KAL. AUG. PAULINO ET IULIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Nullus penitus audiatur, qui unius causae propositionem apud duos
iudices partiri voluerit, ut apud unum de negotio principali
proponat, et ab alio sibi momenti beneficio rem postulet consignari.
Quod si quis hoc facere fortasse praesumpserit, eiusmodi poena se
noverit condemnandum, ut nec illud, quod repetit, ulla ratione
recipiat, et quintam portionem facultatum suarum, de quantum ibi
possederit, reipublicae civitatis illius cedat, in cuius finibus
res, de qua agitur, fuerit constituta.
29 augustus
325 IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD CONSTANTIUM P(RAEFECTUM)
P(RAETORI)O.
Edicto
omnes provinciales monemus, ut, si interpellantes proprios praesides
contempti fuerint, gravitatem tuam interpellent, ut, si id culpa vel
neglegentia praesidum admissum esse constiterit, ilico ad scientiam
nostram referat gravitas tua, quo possint congrue coerceri. DAT. IV
K. SEPT. ANTIOCHIAE PAULINO ET IULIANO CONSS.
17 september
325 IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. Aurelio Helladio.
IDEM
A. AD UNIVERSOS PROVINCIALES. Si quis est cuiuscumque loci ordinis
dignitatis, qui se in quemcumque iudicum comitum amicorum vel
palatinorum meorum aliquid veraciter et manifeste probare posse
confidit, quod non integre adque iuste gessisse videatur, intrepidus
et securus accedat, interpellet me: ipse audiam omnia, ipse
cognoscam et si fuerit conprobatum, ipse me vindicabo. Dicat,
securus et bene sibi conscius dicat: si probaverit, ut dixi, ipse me
vindicabo de eo, qui me usque ad hoc tempus simulata integritate
deceperit, illum autem, qui hoc prodiderit et comprobaverit, et
dignitatibus et rebus augebo. Ita mihi summa divinitas semper
propitia sit et me incolumem praestet, ut cupio, felicissima et
florente re publica. P(RO)P(OSITA) XV KAL. OCTOB. NICOMED(IAE)
PAULINO ET IULIANO CONSS.
17 september
325 IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. Aurelio Helladio. Etsi veteris
iuris
definitio
et retro principum rescripta in iudicio petitori eius rei quam petit
necessitatem probationis dederunt, tamen nos aequitate et iustitia
moti iubemus, ut, si quando talis emerserit causa, in primordio
iuxta regulam iuris petitor debeat probare, unde res ad ipsum
pertineat; sed si deficiat pars eius in probationibus, tunc demum
possessori necessitas imponatur probandi, unde possideat vel quo
iure teneat, ut sic veritas examinetur. DAT. NAISSO XV KAL. OCTOB.
PAULINO ET IULIANO CONSS.
1 oktober 325
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. Maximo praefecto praetorio. Cruenta
spectacula
in
otio civili et domestica quiete non placent. Quapropter, qui omnino
gladiatores esse prohibemus eos, qui forte delictorum causa hanc
condicionem adque sententiam mereri consueverant, metallo magis
facies inservire, ut sine sanguine suorum scelerum poenas agnoscant.
PROPOSITA BERYTO KAL. OCTOB. PAULINO ET IULIANO CONSS.
7 oktober 325
IDEM A. ad Constantium praefectum praetorio. Quoniam relictis
curiis
nonnulli ad militiae praesidia confugiunt, omnes, qui nondum
primipilo inveniuntur obnoxii, solutos militia ad eandem curiam
reverti praecipimus: his solis in militia permansuris, qui pro loco
atque ordine iam pastui adtinentur. DAT. NON. OCTOB. PAULINO ET
IULIANO CONSS.
25 december
325 IDEM A. ad Maximum vicarium Orientis. Si qui vel ex
maiore
vel
ex minore civitate originem ducit, si eandem evitare studens ad
alienam se civitatem incolatus occasione contulerit, et super hoc
vel preces dare tentaverit vel qualibet fraude niti, ut originem
propriae civitatis eludat, duarum civitatum decurionatus onera
sustineat, in una voluntatis, in una originis gratia. PP. VIII. KAL.
IAN. PAULINO ET IULIANO COSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quicumque curialis de ea, in qua natus est, civitate ad aliam
transire voluerit, condicionem curiae debitam nullatenus possit
evadere, nec si hoc ipsum mereri interposita supplicatione
tentaverit, nec ullo argumento necessitates aut servitia civitatis
suae pro eo, quod habitationem mutare voluit, possit evadere. Nam
quicumque hoc fecerit et se in aliam civitatem transtulerit, hoc
iubet, ut in utraque serviat civitate, id est in una pro condicione
nascendi et in alia pro habitandi voluntate deserviat.
1 oktober 325
CT 15.12.1 Constantine
Since
gladiatorial games are eliminated, those criminals who formerly
would have been made gladiators as punishment, are now to be sent to
the mines.
325
Constantine
Constantine
is on record as having addressed the council at Nicaea three times.
The first time he discouraged the bishops from accusing one another,
and then burned the accusations. The second, he expressed his desire
that the schism caused by the Arians be healed. Third, he dismissed
the council and encouraged the use of the Nicene Creed.
325 Gelasius,
H.e. 3, appendix 1 Constantine
Constantine
explains to the congregation at Nicomedia why he exiled their bishop
Eusebius. Eusebius had been the leading proponent of Arianism, and
had encouraged Arians from Egypt even after the Council of Nicaea.
He warns them not to defend him, or they too will be punished.
[Within a few years, Eusebius of Nicomedia had regained the
emperor’s favor. He was eventually made bishop of
Constantinople and baptized Constantine on his deathbed.]
325 Gelasius,
H.e. 3, appendix 2 Constantine
Constantine
warns a certain Theodotus that if he does not support and uphold the
ruling of the Council of Nicaea, he will be banished as other
bishops already have.
325 Eusebius,
VC 3.17-20 Constantine
Constantine
encourages all churches throughout the empire to celebrate Easter
according to the ruling of the Council of Nicaea. There is no
penalty for disobedience, however.
325 Socrates,
H.e. 1.9 Constantine
Constantine
exhorts the Alexandrians to follow the Nicene faith, which he
praises, and to disavow Arius, whom he condemns. The council is to
be regarded as the will of God.
[laws] Nicene Creed of 325
Πιστεύομεν
εἰς ἕνα Θεὸν
Πατέρα παντοκράτορα,
πάντων ὁρατῶν
τε καὶ ἀοράτων
ποιητήν·
We
believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible
and invisible.
καὶ
εἰς ἕνα Κύριον
Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν
τὸν Υἱὸν τοῦ
Θεοῦ, γεννηθέντα
ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς
[μονογενῆ, τοὐτέστιν
ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας
τοῦ Πατρός, Θεὸν
ἐκ Θεοῦ,] Φῶς
ἐκ Φωτός, Θεὸν
ἀληθινὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ
ἀληθινοῦ, γεννηθέντα,
οὐ ποιηθέντα,
ὁμοούσιον τῷ
Πατρί,
And
in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father
[the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of
God,] Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made,
being of one substance with the Father;
δι'
οὗ τὰ πάντα ἐγένετο,
[τά τε ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ
καὶ τὰ ἐν τῇ γῇ,]
By
whom all things were made [both in heaven and on earth];
τὸν
δι' ἡμᾶς τοὺς
ἀνθρώπους καὶ
διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν
σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα
καὶ σαρκωθέντα
καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα,
Who
for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and
was made man;
παθόντα,
καὶ ἀναστάντα
τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ,
ἀνελθόντα εἰς
τοὺς οὐρανούς,
He
suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven;
ἐρχόμενον
κρῖναι ζῶντας
καὶ νεκρούς.
From
thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
Καὶ
εἰς τὸ Ἅγιον
Πνεῦμα.
And
in the Holy Ghost.
[Τοὺς
δὲ λέγοντας,
Ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ
ἦν, καὶ Πρὶν γεννηθῆναι
οὐκ ἦν, καὶ ὅτι
Ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων
εγένετο, ἢ Ἐξ
ἑτέρας ὑποστάσεως
ἢ οὐσίας φάσκοντας
εἶναι, ἢ κτιστόν,
ἢ τρεπτόν, ἢ ἀλλοιωτὸν
τὸν Υἱὸν τοῦ
Θεοῦ, τούτους
ἀναθεματίζει
ἡ ἁγία καθολικὴ
καὶ ἀποστολικὴ
ἐκκλησία].
[But
those who say: 'There was a time when he was not;' and 'He was not
before he was made;' and 'He was made out of nothing', or 'He is of
another substance' or 'essence', or 'The Son of God is created', or
'changeable', or 'alterable'— they are condemned by the holy
catholic and apostolic Church.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed
Canon XII van Nicaea
XII.
Quicunque vocati per gratiam, primum quidem ardorem fidemve suam
ostenderunt, et cingulum militiae deposuerent, postea vero ut canes
ad suum vomitum reversi sunt, ita ut aliqui et pecuniam darent, et
beneficiis militiam repeterent, hi decem annis jaceant, post
triennii auditionis tempus. In his autem omnibus observare oportet
propositium et modum poenitentiae. Quicunque enim et timore, et
lacrymis, et patientia, et bonis operibus conversionem absque
simulatione demonstrant, hi definitum tempus auditionis implentes,
tum demum orationibus communicabunt, et postea licebit episcopo, de
his aliquid humanius cogitare. Quicunque vero indifferenter
tulerunt, et habitum Ecclesiam introeundi sibi arbitrati sunt ad
conversionem sufficere, hi definitum tempus omnino impleant.
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.vii.vi.xviii.html
https://www.earlychurchtexts.com/main/nicaea/canons_of_nicaea_02.shtml
Canon XII.
As
many as were called by grace, and displayed the first zeal, having
cast aside their military girdles, but afterwards returned, like
dogs, to their own vomit, (so that some spent money and by means of
gifts regained their military stations); let these, after they have
passed the space of three years as hearers, be for ten years
prostrators. But in all these cases it is necessary to examine well
into their purpose and what their repentance appears to be like. For
as many as give evidence of their conversions by deeds, and not
pretence, with fear, and tears, and perseverance, and good works,
when they have fulfilled their appointed time as hearers, may
properly communicate in prayers; and after that the bishop may
determine yet more favourably concerning them. But those who take
[the matter] with indifference, and who think the form of [not]
entering the Church is sufficient for their conversion, must fulfil
the whole time.
Notes. ANCIENT EPITOME OF CANON XII.
Those
who endured violence and were seen to have resisted, but who
afterwards yielded to wickedness, and returned to the army, shall be
excommunicated for ten years. But in every case the way in which
they do their penance must be scrutinized. And if anyone who is
doing penance shews himself zealous in its performance, the bishop
shall treat him more leniently than had he been cold and
indifferent.
LAMBERT.
The abuse of this power, namely, of granting under certain
circumstances a relaxation in the penitential exercises enjoined by
the canons-led, in later times, to the practice of commuting such
exercises for money payments, etc.
HEFELE.
In his last contests with Constantine, Licinius had made himself the
representative of heathenism; so that the final issue of the war
would not be the mere triumph of one of the two competitors, but the
triumph or fall of Christianity or heathenism. Accordingly, a
Christian who had in this war supported the cause of Licinius and of
heathenism might be considered as a lapsus, even if he did not
formally fall away. With much more reason might those Christians be
treated as lapsi who, having conscientiously given up military
service (this is meant by the soldier’s belt), afterwards
retracted their resolution, and went so far as to give money and
presents for the sake of readmission, on account of the numerous
advantages which military service then afforded. It must not be
forgotten that Licinius, as Zonaras and Eusebius relate, required
from his soldiers a formal apostasy; compelled them, for example, to
take part in the heathen sacrifices which were held in the camps,
and dismissed from his service those who would not apostatize.
BRIGHT.
This canon (which in the Prisca and the Isidorian version stands as
part of canon 11) deals, like it, with cases which had arisen under
the Eastern reign of Licinius, who having resolved to "purge
his army of all ardent Christians" (Mason, Persec. of Diocl. p.
308), ordered his Christian officers to sacrifice to the gods on
pain of being cashiered (compare Euseb. H. E. x. 8; Vit. Con. i.
54). It is to be observed here that military life as such was not
deemed unchristian. The case of Cornelius was borne in mind. "We
serve in your armies," says Tertullian, Apol. 42 (although
later, as a Montanist, he took a rigorist and fanatical view, De
Cor. 11), and compare the fact which underlies the tale of the
"Thundering Legion," - the presence of Christians in the
army of Marcus Aurelius. It was the heathenish adjuncts to their
calling which often brought Christian soldiers to a stand (see
Routh. Scr. Opusc. i. 410), as when Marinus’ succession to a
centurionship was challenged on the ground that he could not
sacrifice to the gods (Euseb. H. E. vii. 15). Sometimes, indeed,
individual Christians thought like Maximilian in the Martyrology,
who absolutely refused to enlist, and on being told by the proconsul
that there were Christian soldiers in the imperial service,
answered, "Ipsi sciunt quod ipsis expediat" (Ruinart, Act.
Sanc. p. 341). But, says Bingham (Antiq. xi. 5, 10), "the
ancient canons did not condemn the military life as a vocation
simply unlawful... I believe there is no instance of any man being
refused baptism merely because he was a soldier, unless some
unlawful circumstance, such as idolatry, or the like, made the
vocation sinful". After the victory of Constantine in the West,
the Council of Arles excommunicated those who in time of peace
"threw away their arms" (can. 2). In the case before us,
some Christian officers had at first stood firm under the trial
imposed on them by Licinius. They had been "called by grace"
to an act of self-sacrifice (the phrase is one which St. Augustine
might have used); and had shown "their eagerness at the outset"
("primum suum ardorem," Dionysius; Philo and Evarestus
more laxly, "primordia bona;" compare τὴν
ἀγάπην σου τὴν
πρώτην, Rev. ii. 4). Observe here how
beautifully the ideas of grace and free will are harmonized. These
men had responded to a Divine impulse: it might seem that they had
committed themselves to a noble course: they had cast aside the
"belts" which were their badge of office (compare the
cases of Valentinian and Valens, Soc. iii. 13, and of Benevolus
throwing down his belt at the feet of Justina, Soz. vii. 13). They
had done, in fact, just what Auxentius, one of Licinius’
notaries, had done when, according to the graphic anecdote of
Philostorgius (Fragm. 5), his master bade him place a bunch of
grapes before a statue of Bacchus in the palace-court; but their
zeal, unlike his, proved to be too impulsive - they reconsidered
their position, and illustrated the maxim that in morals second
thoughts are not best (Butler, Serm. 7), by making unworthy attempts
- in some cases by bribery - to recover what they had worthily
resigned. (Observe the Grecised Latinism βενεφικίοις
and compare the Latinisms of St. Mark, and others in Euseb. iii. 20,
vi. 40, x. 5.) This the Council describes in proverbial language,
probably borrowed from 2 Pet. ii. 22, but, it is needless to say,
without intending to censure enlistment as such. They now desired to
be received to penance: accordingly they were ordered to spend three
years as Hearers, during which time "their purpose, and the
nature (εἶδος) of their
repentance" were to be carefully "examined". Again we
see the earnest resolution of the Council to make discipline a moral
reality, and to prevent it from being turned into a formal routine;
to secure, as Rufinus’ abridgment expresses it, a repentance
"fructuosam et attentam". If the penitents were found to
have "manifested their conversion by deeds, and not in outward
show (σχήματι), by awe, and tears,
and patience, and good works" (such, for instance, Zonaras
comments, as almsgiving according to ability), "it would be
then reasonable to admit them to a participation in the prayers,"
to the position of Consistentes, "with permission also to the
bishop to come to a yet more indulgent resolution concerning them,"
by admitting them to full communion. This discretionary power of the
bishop to dispense with part of a penance-time is recognized in the
fifth canon of Ancyra and the sixteenth of Chalcedon, and mentioned
by Basil, Epist. 217, c. 74. It was the basis of "indulgences"
in their original form (Bingham, xviii. 4, 9). But it was too
possible that some at least of these lapsi might take the whole
affair lightly, "with indifference" ἀδιαφόρως
- not seriously enough, as Hervetas renders - just as if, in common
parlance, it did not signify: the fourth Ancyrene canon speaks of
lapsi who partook of the idol-feast ἀδιαφόρως
as if it involved them in no sin (see below on Eph. 5, Chalc. 4). It
was possible that they might "deem" the outward form of
"entering the church" to stand in the narthex among the
Hearers (here, as in c. 8, 19, σχῆμα
denotes an external visible fact) sufficient to entitle them to the
character of converted penitents, while their conduct out of church
was utterly lacking in seriousness and self-humiliation. In that
case there could be no question of shortening their penance time,
for they were not in a state to benefit by indulgence: it would be,
as the Roman Presbyters wrote to Cyprian, and as he himself wrote to
his own church, a "mere covering over of the wound"
(Epist. 30, 3), an "injury" rather than "a kindness"
(De Lapsis, 16); they must therefore "by all means" go
through ten years as Kneelers, before they can become Consistentes.
There
is great difficulty about the last phrase and Gelasius of Cyzicus,
the Prisca, Dionysius Exiguus, the pseudo-Isidore, Zonaras and most
others have considered the "not" an interpolation. I do
not see how dropping the "not" makes the meaning
materially clearer.
Canon 12 Readmission for those who returned to
the military
As
for those who were called by grace and at first zealously threw away
their military uniforms, but then later returned like dogs to their
own vomit (so that some regained their military positions through
bribes and gifts), let these spend three years as hearers and ten
years as prostrators. But in all such cases it is necessary to
carefully examine their intentions and their repentance. If they
give evidence of their conversions by their actions (and not mere
pretence), with fear, tears, perseverance, and good works, then they
may properly join the assembly in prayers once they have fulfilled
their appointed time as hearers. Beyond that, the bishop may make an
even more lenient (philanthropion) decision concerning them. But
those who take the matter with indifference, and who think the
prescribed form of entering the church is sufficient for their
readmission, must fulfill the whole time.
Imperial
Decrees of Constantine
from
Ecclesiastical History, Book 10, Ch. 5
As
we long since perceived that religious liberty should not be denied,
but that it should be granted to the opinion and wishes of each one
to perform divine duties according to his own determination, we had
given orders, that each one, and the Christians among the rest, have
the liberty to observe the religion of his choice, and his peculiar
mode of worship. And as there plainly appeared to be many and
different sects added in that edict, in which this privilege was
granted them, some of them perhaps, after a little while, on this
account shrunk from this kind of attention and observance. Wherefore
as I, Constantine and Augustus, and I, Licinius Augustus, came under
favorable auspices to Milan, and took under consideration all
affairs that pertained to the public benefit and welfare, these
things among the rest appeared to us to be most advantageous and
profitable to all. We have resolved among the first thing to ordain
those matters by which reverence and worship to the Deity might be
exhibited; that is, how we may grant likewise to the Christians, and
to all, the free choice to follow that mode of worship which they
may wish, that whatsoever divinity and celestial power may exist,
may be propitious to us and to all that live under our government.
Therefore, we have decreed the following ordinance, as our will,
with a salutary and most correct intention, that no freedom at all
shall be refused to Christians, to follow or to keep their
observances or worship; but that to each one power be granted to
devote his mind to that worship which he may think adapted to
himself, that the Deity may in all things exhibit to us his
accustomed favour and kindness. It was just and consistent that we
should write that this was our pleasure, that all exceptions
respecting the Christians being completely removed, which were
contained in the former epistle, that we sent to your fidelity, and
whatever measures were wholly sinister and foreign to our mildness,
that these should be altogether annulled; and now that each one of
the Christians may freely and without molestation, pursue and follow
that course of worship which he has proposed to himself: which,
indeed, we have resolved to communicate most fully to your care and
diligence, that you may know we have granted liberty and full
freedom to the Christians, to observe their own mode of worship;
which as your fidelity understands absolutely granted to them by us,
the privilege is also granted to others to pursue that worship and
religion they wish, which it is obvious is consistent with the peace
and tranquility of our times; that each may have the privilege to
select and to worship whatsoever divinity he pleases. But this has
been done by us, that we might not appear in any manner to detract
any thing from any manner of religion, or any mode of worship. And
this we further decree, with respect to the Christians, that the
places in which they were formerly accustomed to assemble,
concerning which we also formerly wrote to your fidelity, in a
different form, that if any persons have purchased these, either
from our treasury or from any other one, these shall restore them to
the Christians, without money and without demanding any price,
without any superadded value, or augmentation, without delay, or
hesitancy. And if any have happened to receive these places as
presents, that they shall restore them as soon as possible to the
Christians, so that if either those that purchased or those that
received them as presents, have any thing to request of our
munificence, they may go to the provincial governor, as the judge,
that provision may also be made for them by our clemency; all which,
it will be necessary to be delivered up to the body of Christians,
by your care, without any delay.
And
since the Christians themselves are known to have had not only those
places where they were accustomed to meet, but other places also,
belonging not to individuals among them, but to the right of the
whole body of Christians, you will also command all these, by virtue
of the law before mentioned, without any hesitancy, to be restored
to these same Christians, that is to their body, and to each
conventicle respectively; the aforesaid consideration, to wit, being
observed; namely, that they who as we have said restore them without
valuation and price, may expect their indemnity from our munificence
and liberality. In all which it will be incumbent on you, to
manifest your exertions as much as possible, to the aforesaid body
of Christians, that our orders may be most speedily accomplished,
that likewise in this, provision may be made by our clemency, for
the preservation of the common and public tranquility. For by these
means, as before said, the divine favour with regard to us, which we
have already experienced in many affairs, will continue firm and
permanent at all times. But that the purpose of this our ordinance
and liberality may be extended to the knowledge of all, it is
expected that these things written by us, should be proposed and
published to the knowledge of all, that this act of our liberality
and kindness may remain unknown to none.
Copy of another Ordinance which was issued by
the Emperors, indicating that
the
benefit was conferred solely on the catholic (universal) church.
Hail,
our most esteemed Anulinus. This is the course of our benevolence;
that we wish those things that belong justly to others, should not
only remain unmolested, but should also when necessary be restored,
most esteemed Anulinus. Whence it is our will, that when thou shalt
receive this epistle, if any of those things belonging to the
catholic church of the Christians in the several cities or other
places, are now possessed either by the decurions, or any others,
these thou shalt cause immediately to be restored to their churches.
Since we have previously determined, that whatsoever these same
churches before possessed, shall be restored to their right. When,
therefore, your fidelity has understood this decree of our orders to
be most evident and plain, make all haste to restore, as soon as
possible, all that belongs to the churches, whether gardens or
houses, or any thing else, that we may learn thou hast attended to,
and most carefully observe this our decree. Farewell, most esteemed
and beloved Anulinus.
Copy of the Emperor’s Epistle, in which he
ordains a council of bishops
to
be held at Rome, for the unity and peace of the church.
Constantine
Augustus to Miltiades bishop of Rome, and to Marcus. As many
communications of this kind have been sent to me from Anulinus, the
most illustrious proconsul of Africa, in which it is contained that
Cæcilianus, the bishop of Carthage, was accused, in many
respects, by his colleagues in Africa; and as this appears to be
grievous, that in those provinces which Divine Providence has freely
entrusted to my fidelity, and in which there is a vast population,
the multitude are found inclining to deteriorate, and in a manner
divided into two parties, and among others, that the bishops were at
variance; I have resolved that the same Cæcilianus, together
with ten bishops, who appear to accuse him, and ten others, whom he
himself may consider necessary for his cause, shall sail to Rome;
that you, being present there, as also Reticius, Maternus, and
Marinus, your colleagues, whom I have commanded to hasten to Rome
for this purpose, may be heard, as you may understand most
consistent with the most sacred law.
And,
that you may have the most perfect knowledge of these matters,
I
have subjoined to my own epistle copies of the writings sent to me
by Anulinus, and sent them to your aforesaid colleagues; in which
your gravity will read and consider in what way the aforesaid cause
may be most accurately investigated and justly decided; since it
neither escapes your diligence, that I show such regard for the holy
catholic church, that I wish you, upon the whole, to leave no room
for schism or division. May the power of the great God preserve you
many years, most esteemed.
Copy of the Epistle in which the Emperor
commanded another council
to
be held, for the purpose of removing all the dissensions of the
bishops.
Constantine
Augustus to Chrestus bishop of Syracuse. As there were some before
who perversely and wickedly began to waver in the holy religion and
celestial virtue, and to abandon the doctrine of the catholic
(universal) church, desirous, therefore, of preventing such disputes
among them, I had thus written, that this subject, which appeared to
be agitated among them, might be rectified, by delegating certain
bishops from Gaul, and summoning others of the opposite parties from
Africa, who are pertinaciously and incessantly contending with one
another, that by a careful examination of the matter in their
presence, it might thus be decided. But since, as it happens, some,
forgetful of their own salvation, and the reverence due to our most
holy religion, even now do not cease to protract their own enmity,
being unwilling to conform to the decision already promulgated, and
asserting that they were very few that advanced their sentiments and
opinions, or else that all points which ought to have been first
fully discussed not being first examined, they proceeded with too
much haste and precipitancy to give publicity to the decision. Hence
it has happened, that those very persons who ought to exhibit a
brotherly and peaceful unanimity, are disgracefully and detestably
at variance with one another, and thus give this occasion of
derision to those that are without, and whose minds are averse to
our most holy religion. Hence it has appeared necessary to me to
provide that this matter, which ought to have ceased after the
decision was issued by their own voluntary agreement, now, at
length, should be fully terminated by the intervention of many.
Since,
therefore, we have commanded many bishops to meet together from
different and remote places, in the city of Arles, towards the
calends of August, I have also thought proper to write to thee, that
taking a public vehicle from the most illustrious Latronianus,
corrector of Sicily, and taking with thee two others of the second
rank, which thou mayest select, also three servants to afford you
services on the way; I would have you meet them within the same day
at the aforesaid place. That by the weight of your authority, and
the prudence and unanimity of the rest that assemble, this dispute,
which has disgracefully continued until the present time, in
consequence of certain disgraceful contentions, may be discussed, by
hearing all that shall be alleged by those who are now at variance,
whom we have also commanded to be present, and thus the controversy
be reduced, though slowly, to that faith, and observance of
religion, and fraternal concord, which ought to prevail. May
Almighty God preserve thee in safety many years.
https://wadsworth.com/history_d/special_features/ilrn_legacy/wawc1c01c/content/wciv1/readings/eusebius.html
Jan
16-31, 325 Letter to the synod gathered at Ancyra
Codex
Brit Lib Add 14526 and 14528; Codex Parisinus syriacus 62 Silli 20;
Dorries p. 62; Schwartz p. 289; Schulthess p. 1; Opitz 20
Urging
them to now assemble for the council in Nicaea.
Jan
16-31, 325 Letter about the synod celebrated at Nicaea
KAU
2.1 Silli 21
Explaining
why the upcoming council is to be held at Nicaea.
Feb
12, 325 Law 84: To all the provincials
CTh
15.14.2 Dorries p. 187
Legitimate
acts of the tyrant and his judges remain in effect.
Apr
17, 325 Law 85: To Dracilianus, the acting praetorian prefect
CTh
2.33.1 Dorries p. 187
Interest
for borrowed crops is set at 50%, but the creditor can forego this.
325
Opening address at Nicaea
VC
3.12; GEL 2.7.1-41 Dorries p. 62-66
An
appeal for peace.
After
June 19, 325 Letter to the catholic church of Alexandria
ATH
38; SOC 1.9; GEL 2.37.1-9; CJ; TD A.3 Silli 22; Dorries 68-70; Opitz
25
Happily
reporting that the Council of Nicaea had unanimously confessed the
truth and condemned Arius.
After
June 19, 325 Letter to the churches
VC
3.17-20.2; SOC 1.9; THE 1.10; GEL 2.37.10-22; EH 8.25 Silli 23;
Dorries p. 66-68; Opitz 26
Exhortation
to follow the unanimous example of the Council of Nicaea.
After
June 19, 325 Second letter to Eusebius
VC
4.35 Silli 24
Praising
his discourse about Easter.
July
11 and Oct 7, 325 Law 86: To Maximus and to Constantius, the
praetorian prefect
CTh
12.1.10-11 Dorries p. 187
Denying
the right to leave the curia for a military career.
Sept
17, 325 Law 87: To all the provincials
CTh
9.1.4 Dorries p. 187-188
Encouraging
people to come forth and make complaints against people of his
closest circle.
Sept
17, 325 Law 88: To Aurelius Helladius
CTh
11.39.1 Dorries p. 188
In
cases of uncertain evidence, the person currently in possession must
show proof.
Oct
1, 325 Law 89: To Maximus, the praetorian prefect
CTh
15.12.1 Dorries p. 188
Gladiatorial
games are to be put to an end, with mine work replacing it as a
punishment.
Nov-Dec,
325 Letter to the catholic church of Nicomedia against Eusebius and
Theognis
ATH
41; GEL 1.11.22-31; THE 1.20.1-10; CJ; CAS 2.22.5-16 Silli 25;
Dorries p. 70-74; Opitz 27
Setting
forth his own belief in Christ’s true divinity and blaming
Eusebius for the current conflict.
Nov-Dec,
325 Letter to Theodotus
ATH
42; GEL 3 App 2 Silli 26; Dorries p. 76-77; Opitz 28
Informing
him that Eusebius and Theognis have been condemned and so their
advice should be discounted.
End
of 325-Jan 326 Letter to Publilius Optatianus Porphyrius
PUB
Silli 27; Dorries p. 127-128
Thankfully
accepting the poems dedicated to him and offering his own opinions
on poetry.
326 CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
Huius
anni annique 320 leges perturbatas tradi supra monimus. - Ex
Thracia, ibi fuit mense Februario (nam nae leges utpote in Oriente
datae non possunt transferri ad a. 320, ut omnino ad eum annum
transferendae sunt Serdicenses et Sirmienses) per Aquileiam et
Mediolanum Constantinus venit Romam, ubi eum celebrasse vicennalia
die primo anni vicesimi primi scillicet die Iul. 25, multis testibus
constat. Etiam adventus adscriptus in fastia Philocalianis editis a.
354 ad diem Iul. 28 vel 21 et profectio divi adnotata. Ibidem ad
Sept. 27 non sine probilitate relata sunt ad hanc Constantini in
urbe moram. - Hiemem a. 326/7 Constantinus ubi exegerit, parum
constat; set videtur ex urbe rediisse Mediolamum (ubi eum collocat
subscriptio Oct 23. cum laterculo praefectorum consentiens) et inde
in Illyricum se contuliase.
27 januari 326
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. ET C. AD MAXIMUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI).
Si
is, qui dignitate Romanae civitatis amissa Latinus fuerit effectus,
in eodem statu munere lucis excesserit, omne peculium eius a patrono
vel a patroni filiis sive nepotibus, qui nequaquam ius agnationis
amiserint, vindicetur. Nec ad disceptationem veluti hereditariae
controversiae filiis liceat accedere, cum eius potissimum status
ratio tractanda sit, non quem beneficio libertatis indultae sortitus
acceperit, sed is, in quo munere lucis excesserit. DAT. III KAL.
FEB. SERDIC(AE) IPSO A. VII ET C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quis civis Romanus libertus, intercedente culpa, Latinus libertus
fuerit effectus, si in eadem Latinitate, sine reparatione prioris
status, ab hac luce discesserit, facultates illius patronus vel
patroni filii vel nepotes, qui tamen per virilem lineam descendunt
et emancipati non fuerint, sibimet vindicabunt. Nec si filios, quos
civis Romanus generavit, fortasse dimiserit, aliquid de eius
hereditate praesumant: quia non quaerendum est, in qua libertate
nati fuerint, sed in qua pater eorum positus condicione defecerit.
28 januari 326
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD POPULUM. Quoniam inter alias
captiones
praecipue
commissoriae legis crescit asperitas, placet infirmari eam et in
posterum omnem eius memoriam aboleri. Si quis igitur tali contractu
laborat, hac sanctione respiret, quae cum praeteritis praesentia
quoque depellit et futura prohibet. Creditores enim re amissa
iubemus recipere quod dederunt. DAT. PRID. KAL. FEBR. SERDIC(AE)
CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Commissoriae cautiones dicuntur, in quibus debitor creditori suo
rem, ipsi oppignoratam ad tempus, vendere per necessitatem
conscripta cautione promittit: quod factum lex ista revocat et fieri
penitus prohibet: ita ut, si quis creditor rem debitoris sub tali
occasione visus fuerit comparare, non sibi de instrumentis
blandiatur, sed quum primum voluerit ille, qui oppressus debito
vendidit, pecuniam reddat et possessionem suam recipiat.
3 februari 326
Idem a. ad Evagrium. Si quis in ea culpa vel crimine fuerit
deprehensus,
quod dignum claustris carceris et custodiae squalore videtur,
auditus aput acta, cum de admisso constiterit, poenam carceris
sustineat atque ita postmodum eductus aput acta audiatur. Ita enim
quasi sub publico testimonio commemoratio admissi criminis fiet, ut
iudicibus inmodice saevientibus freni quidam ac temperies adhibita
videatur. DAT. III NON. FEB. HERACLEAE CONSTANTINO A. VII ET
CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
3 februari 326
Imp. Constantinus a. Africano v. c. Quae adulterium
commisit,
utrum
domina cauponae an ministra fuerit, requiri debebit, et ita obsequio
famulata servili, ut plerumque ipsa intemperantiae vina praebuerit;
ut, si domina tabernae fuerit, non sit a vinculis iuris excepta, si
vero potantibus ministerium praebuit, pro vilitate eius, quae in
reatum deducitur, accusatione exclusa, liberi, qui accusantur,
abscedant, quum ab his feminis pudicitiae ratio requiratur, quae
iuris nexibus detinentur, hae autem immunes a iudiciaria severitate
praestentur, quas vilitas vitae dignas legum observatione non
credidit. DAT. III. NON. FEBR. HERACLEAE, CONSTANTINO A. VII ET
CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Tabernae domina, hoc est uxor tabernarii, si inventa fuerit in
adulterio, accusari potest: si vero eius ancilla vel quae
ministerium tabernae praebuit, in adulterio fuerit deprehensa, pro
vilitate dimittetur. Sed et ipsa tabernarii uxor, si tam vilis
ministerii officium egerit et in adulterio fuerit deprehensa,
accusari non potest a marito.
It
should be ascertained whether the woman who committed adultery was
the owner of the inn, or only a servant; and if, by employing
herself in servile duties (which frequently happens), she gave
occasion for intemperance, since if she were the mistress of the
inn, she will not be exempt from liability under the law.
Where,
however, she served liquor to the men who were drinking, she would
not be liable to accusation as having committed the offense, on
account of her inferior rank, and any freemen who have been accused
shall be discharged, as the same degree of modesty is required of
these women as of those who are legally married, and bear the name
of mothers of families.
Those,
also, are not subject to judicial severity who are guilty of
fornication or adultery, and the vileness of whose lives does not
render them worthy of the attention of the law.
15 februari
326 IDEM A. AD ACINDYNUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O.
Praesidibus et
rationalibus
ceterisque, quibus propterea res publica et annonas et alimenta
pecoribus subministrat, usurpandi agminalis seu paraveredi licentia
derogetur. Quibus illud quoque licere non patimur, ne quid de
provincialibus citra ordinem poscant nisi hi tantum, quorum fides
cognita est, cum usus necessitatis exegerit. Vestrae vero gravitatis
ubi ratio exegerit, cursus publicus praesto est, quibus si a publico
itinere aliqua militari via devertendum fuerit, ubi evectio non
erit, publicis utemini agminalibus, sed modice et temperate tantum
ad usum proprium necessariis. Quae res si neglecta fuerit, vobis
aestimationis vestrae notam incurrentibus praesides periculum
sustinebunt, cum super hac re exploratores iam missi sint. Quae enim
mala provincialibus inferantur, conici ex eo etiam potest, quod
nostris itineribus, quos publica utilitas movet, magna atque anxia
dispositione vix vicenorum agminalium numerus subministrari queat.
P(RO)P(OSITA) XV KAL. MART. CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO CAES.
CONSS.
18 februari
326 IDEM A. AD ACINDYNUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O.
Praesidibus
et
rationalibus ceterisque, quibus propterea res publica et annonas et
alimenta pecoribus subministrat, usurpandi agminalis seu paraveredi
licentia derogetur. Quibus illud quoque licere non patimur, ne quid
de provincialibus citra ordinem poscant nisi hi tantum, quorum fides
cognita est, cum usus necessitatis exegerit. Vestrae vero gravitatis
ubi ratio exegerit, cursus publicus praesto est, quibus si a publico
itinere aliqua militari via devertendum fuerit, ubi evectio non
erit, publicis utemini agminalibus, sed modice et temperate tantum
ad usum proprium necessariis. Quae res si neglecta fuerit, vobis
aestimationis vestrae notam incurrentibus praesides periculum
sustinebunt, cum super hac re exploratores iam missi sint. Quae enim
mala provincialibus inferantur, conici ex eo etiam potest, quod
nostris itineribus, quos publica utilitas movet, magna atque anxia
dispositione vix vicenorum agminalium numerus subministrari queat.
P(RO)P(OSITA) XV KAL. MART. CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO CAES.
CONSS.
8 maart 326
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD BASSUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI).
Advocatos,
qui
consceleratis depectionibus suae opis egentes spoliant atque nudant,
non iure causae, sed fundorum, pecorum et manicipiorum qualitate
rationeque tractata, dum eorum praecipua poscunt coacta sibi
pactione transcribi, ab honestorum coetu iudiciorumque conspectu
segregari praecipimus. DATA VIII ID. MART. CONSTANT(INO)P(OLI)
CONSTANT(INO) A. VIII ET CONSTANTIO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Advocati, id est causas agentes, qui per iniquam cupiditatem
susceptos, quorum causas acturi sunt, prius cogunt de rebus suis
taliter scriptura intercedente pacisci, ut omnia, quae meliora sunt
in agris aut in mancipiis aut in pecoribus, ad eos sub promissa
defensione perveniant, et ideo qui tam scelerati in eos, quibus
patrocinium promittunt, fuerint deprehensi, et a conventu honestorum
virorum et iudiciorum communione praecipimus segregari.
15 maart 326
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD POPULUM. In integrum restitutione
minoribus
adversus
commenticias venditiones et adversus tutorum insidias sanctionum
praesidio cautum esse non dubium est: ac si quid forte iidem de suo
in fraudem tutelae alienasse docerentur, fraudatorio interdicto
prospectum esse minoribus declaratur. DAT. ID. MART. SIRMIO. IPSO A.
VII ET CAES. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
In annis minoribus constitutis multum legibus constat esse
prospectum. Et ideo adversus tutorum fraudes vel venditiones, quas
minoribus aliquibus commentis extorserint, aut quicquid sub tutelae
nomine iniuste egerint, noverint legis beneficio revocandum.
15 maart 326
IDEM A. AD POPULUM. Lex, quae tutores curatoresque
necessitate
adstrinxit,
ut aurum argentum gemmas vestes ceteraque mobilia pretiosa, urbana
etiam mancipia, domos balnea horrea atque omnia intra civitates
venderent omniaque ad nummos redigerent praeter praedia et mancipia
rustica, multum minorum utilitati adversa est. Praecipimus itaque,
ut haec omnia nulli tutorum curatorumve liceat vendere, nisi hac
forte necessitate et lege, qua rusticum praedium atque mancipium
vendere vel pignorare vel in dotem dare in praeteritum licebat,
scilicet per inquisitionem iudicis, probationem causae,
interpositionem decreti, ut fraudi locus non sit. Ante omnia igitur
urbana mancipia, quia totius supellectilis notitiam derunt, semper
in hereditate et in domo retineant; nam boni servi fraudem fieri
prohibebunt, mali, si res exegerit, sub quaestione positi poterunt
prodere veritatem. Atque ita omnia observabunt, ut nec inventaria
minuere nec mutare vel subtrahere aliquid tutor valeat: quod in
veste margaritis gemmis et in vasculis ceteraque supellectili
necessarium est. Et tolerabilius est, si ita contigerit, servos mori
suis dominis quam servire extraneis: quorum fuga potius tutori
adscribitur, sive neglegentia dissolutam patiatur esse disciplinam
sive duritia vel indeia at verberibus eos adficiat. Nec enim dominos
execrantur, sed magis diligunt, ita ut haec lex per hoc quoque
melior antiqua sit: tunc enim remota servorum custodia etiam vita
minorum saepius prodebatur. Nec vero domum vendere liceat, in qua
defecit pater, minor crevit, in qua maiorum imagines aut videre
fixas aut revulsas non videre satis est lugubre. Ergo et domus et
cetera omnia inmobilia in patrimonio minorum permaneant nullumque
aedificii genus, quod integrum hereditas dabit, conlapsum tutoris
fraude depereat. Sed et si parens vel cuiuscumque heres est minor
reliquerit deformatum aedificium, tutor testificatione operis ipsius
et multorum fide id reficere cogetur: ita enim annui reditus plus
minoribus conferent quam per fraudes pretia deminuta. Servi etiam,
qui aliqua sunt arte praediti, operas suas commodo minoris inferent,
et reliqui, qui in usum minoris domini esse non poterunt quibusque
ars nulla est, partim labore suo, partim alimoniarum taxatione
pascantur. Lex enim non solum contra tutores, sed etiam contra
feminas inmoderatas atque intemperantes prospexit minoribus, quae
plerumque novis maritis non solum res filiorum, sed etiam vitam
addicunt. Huic accedit, quod ipsius pecuniae, in qua robur omne
patrimoniorum veteres posuerunt, fenerandi usus vix diuturnus, vix
continuus et stabilis est: quo facto saepe intercidente pecunia ad
nihilum minorum patrimonia deducuntur. Iam ergo venditio tutoris
nulla sit sine interpositione decreti: exceptis his dumtaxat
vestibus, quae detritae usu aut corruptae servando servari non
poterint.] vel curatore sollicito, ut easdem inspiciat frequenti
re[cogni]tione incolumes. Animalia quoque supervacua minorum
veneant, non vetamus. DAT. ID. MART. SIR(MIO) CONSTANTINO (A. VII
E)T CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
25 maart 326
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Maximum praefectum Urbi. pr. Cum in
praeterito
is mos in iudiciis servaretur, ut prolatis instrumentis, si ea falsa
quis diceret, a sententia iudex civilis controversiae temperaret
eoque contingeret, ut imminens accusatio nullis clausa temporibus
petitorem possessoremve deluderet, commodum duximus, ut, etsi
alteruter litigantium falsi strepitum intulisset, petitori tamen
possessorive momentum prolatorum instrumentorum conferret
auctoritas, ut tunc civili iurgio terminato secunda falsi actio
subderetur.
1.
Volumus itaque, ut primum cesset inscriptio. Sed ubi falsi examen
inciderit, tunc ad morem pristinum quaestione civili per sententiam
terminata acerrima fiat indago argumentis testibus scripturarum
collatione aliisque vestigiis veritatis. Nec accusatori tantum
quaestio incumbat nec probationis ei tota necessitas indicatur, sed
inter utramque personam sit iudex medius nec ulla quae sentiat
interlocutione divulget, sed tamquam ad imitationem relationis, quae
solum audiendi mandat officium, praebeat notionem, postrema
sententia quid sibi liqueat proditurus.
2.
Ultimum autem finem strepitus criminalis, quem litigantem
disceptantemque fas non sit excedere, anni spatio limitamus, cuius
exordium testatae aput iudicem competentem actionis nascetur
auspicium: capitali post probationem supplicio, si id exigat
magnitudo commissi, vel deportatione ei qui falsum commiserit
imminente. PROPOSITA VIII KAL. APRIL. IN FORO TRAIANI CONSTANTINO A.
VII ET CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
30 maart 326
IDEM A. AD SEVERUM. Veteranorum filios propter privilegia
parentibus
eorum indulta vacare non patimur, sed programmate per omnes
civitates proposito diligenter quaesitos ad alterutrum compelli
iubemus, ut aut decurionatus muneribus obtemperent aut militent,
observaturo devotionis tuae officio, ut qui probantur ab annis
viginti usque ad viginti et quinque annos aetatem agant. Si autem
veteranorum filii, qui equestrem militiam toleraverunt, inter
equites probari voluerint, habeant facultatem, ita ut cum singulis
equis idoneis praedicto adgregentur obsequio. Quod si quis duos
equos habeat vel unum idoneum et servum unum, cum circitoria militet
dignitate et binas annonas accipiat, qui gradus praebetur aliis post
laborem. Singularum autem civitatum decurionibus intimetur, ut
veteranorum filios, qui praedictae aetatis sunt, si militare
noluerint vel minus inveniantur idonei, ad curialia vocare non
morentur obsequia, si tamen patrimoniis idonei esse noscuntur. Ex
his autem, qui militare voluerint, si qui minus apti sunt equestri
militiae id efficiente calamitate membrorum et legionariae congrui
esse noscuntur, deducendi ad nos protectori qui ob hoc missus est
consignentur. DAT. III KAL. AUG. AQUILEIA CONSTANTINO A. VII ET
CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
11 april 326
Idem a. Lucrio Verino. In arbitrio suo possessor habeat, ne
suario
pecuniam solvat, quod ideo permissum est, ne in aestimando porcorum
pondere licentia suariis praebeatur. Quod si iuste porcos suarius
aestimaverit, huic pecuniam possessor, cui pensitationis utriusque
copia est indulta, numerabit. Ne autem suario in suscipienda pecunia
detrimenti aliquid adferatur, singulis quibusque annis ea pretia
porcinae possessor adnumeret, quae usus publicae conversationis
adtulerit. Et quoniam non semper nec in omnibus locis una est forma
pretiorum, pro diversitate locorum et temporum in specie pretia
danda sunt, nisi ipsa porcina praestetur. Iudices autem regionum
monendi sunt, ut per singulos annos ad scientiam tuam referant, quae
in quibus locis sunt pretia porcinae, ut instructione hac a tua
gravitate perpensa tunc demum suarii per diversa proficiscantur et
pretia suscipiant, quae in his regionibus versari cognoveris. Queri
enim suarii non poterunt, quia nihil interest, carius an vilius
comparent, cum, quantum pretium daturi sunt, a possessore accipiant;
et possessores erunt moderati in specie distrahenda, cum se sciant,
quanto maiora pretia pro carne poposcerint, tanto plus suariis
soluturos. DAT. III ID. APRIL. CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO C.
CONSS.
19 april 326
Imp. Constantinus a. Maximiliano Macrobio... Quoties verbera
dominorum
talis casus servorum comitabitur, ut moriantur, culpa nudi sunt,
qui, dum pessima corrigunt, meliora suis acquirere vernulis
voluerunt. Nec requiri in huius modi facto volumus, in quo interest
domini incolume iuris proprii habere mancipium, utrum voluntate
occidendi hominis an vero simpliciter facta castigatio videatur.
Toties etenim dominum non placet morte servi reum homicidii
pronuntiari, quoties simplicibus quaestionibus domesticam exerceat
potestatem. Si quando igitur servi plagarum correctione, imminente
fatali necessitate, rebus humanis excedunt, nullam metuant domini
quaestionem. DAT. XIV KAL. MAI. SIRMIO, CONSTANTINO A. VII ET
CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si servus, dum culpam dominus vindicat, mortuus fuerit, dominus
culpa homicidii non tenetur, quia tunc homicidii reus est, si
occidere voluisse convincitur. nam emendatio non vocatur ad crimen.
26 april 326
Idem a. ad Evagrium Pf. P. Quamvis adulterii crimen inter
publica
referatur,
quorum delatio in commune omnibus sine aliqua legis interpretatione
conceditur, tamen, ne volentibus temere liceat foedare connubia,
proximis necessariisque personis solummodo placet deferri copiam
accusandi, hoc est patri vel consobrino et consanguineo maxime
fratri, quos verus dolor ad accusationem impellit. Sed et his
personis legem imponimus, ut crimen abolitione compescant. In primis
maritum genialis tori vindicem esse oportet, cui quidem ex
suspicione etiam ream coniugem facere, nec intra certa tempora
inscriptionis vinculo contineri, veteres retro principes annuerunt.
Extraneos autem procul arceri ab hac accusatione censemus. Nam etsi
omne genus accusationis necessitas inscriptionis adstringat,
nonnulli tamen proterve id faciunt et falsis contumeliis matrimonia
deformant. PP. NICOMEDIAE VII KAL. MAI., CONSTANTINO A. VII ET
CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
In adulterio extraneam mulierem nullus accuset, sed propinqui, ad
quorum notam pertinet, hoc est frater germanus, frater patruelis,
patruus et consobrinus, qui tamen ante inscriptionem, si accusata
acquieverit, possunt per satisfactionem veniam promereri. Reliqui ab
accusatione prohibentur. Maritis sane etiam ex suspicione accusare
permissum est.
Although
the crime of adultery is included among public offenses, the
accusation of which is granted to all persons without distinction,
still, in order that those who inconsiderately wish to cause discord
in households may not be allowed to do so, it is hereby decreed that
only the nearest relatives of the guilty party shall have the power
to bring the accusation; that is to say, the father, the brother,
and the paternal and maternal uncles, whom genuine grief may impel
to prosecute. We, however, also give the said persons permission to
revoke the accusation, by withdrawing it, if they should so desire.
The
husband, above all others, should be considered the avenger of the
marriage bed, for he is permitted to accuse his wife on suspicion,
and he is not forbidden to retain her, if he only suspects her; nor
will he be liable if he files a written accusation when he accuses
her as her husband, a privilege which was established by former
Emperors.
17 mei 326
Idem a. ad Evagrium praefectum praetorio. Quoniam curias
desolari
cognovimus
his, qui per originem obnoxii sunt, militiam sibi per supplicationem
poscentibus et ad legiones vel diversa officia currentibus, iubemus
omnes curias admoneri, ut, quos intra XX stipendia in officiis
deprehenderint vel originem defugisse vel spreta nominatione
militiae se inseruisse, hos ad curiam retrahant et de cetero sciant
esse servandum, ut qui derelicta curia militaverit, revocetur ad
curiam, non solum si originalis sit, sed et si substantiam muneribus
aptam possidens ad militiam confugerit vel beneficio nostro fuerit
liberatus. DAT. XVI KAL. IUN. CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO C.
CONSS.
20 mei 326
Idem a. ad Rufinum praefectum praetorio. Archiatri omnes et
ex
archiatris ab universis muneribus curialium, senatorum et comitum
perfectissimorumque muneribus et obsequiis, quae administratione
perfunctis saepe mandantur, a praestationibus quoque publicis liberi
inmunesque permaneant nec ad ullam auri et argenti et equorum
praestationem vocentur, quae forte praedictis ordinibus aut
dignitatibus adscribuntur. Huius autem indulgentiam sanctionis ad
filios quoque eorum statuimus pervenire. DAT. XII KAL. IUN.
CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
21 mei 326
IDEM A. AD MAXIMUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI). Quodam tempore
admissum est,
ut
non subscribtio, sed professio criminis uno sermone ex ore fugiens
tam accusatorem quam reum sub experiendi periculo de patria, de
liberis, de fortunis, de vita denique dimicare cogeret. Ideoque
volumus, ut remota professionis licentia ac temeritate ad
subscribtionis morem ordinemque criminatio referatur, ut iure veteri
in criminibus deferendis omnes utantur, id est ut sopita ira et per
haec spatia mentis tranquillitate recepta ad supremam actionem cum
ratione veniant atque consilio. DAT. XI KAL. IUN. SIRMIO, ACC. ROMAE
CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quis iratus crimen aliquod temere cuilibet obiecerit, convicium
non est pro accusatione habendum, sed permisso tractandi spatio, id
quod iratus dixit, per scripturam se probaturum esse fateatur. Quod
si fortasse resipiscens post iracundiam, quae dixit, iterare aut
scribere fortasse noluerit, non ut reus criminis teneatur.
29 mei 326
Imp. Constantinus a. ad populum. pr. Si qua cum servo occulte
rem
habere
detegitur, capitali sententiae subiugetur, tradendo ignibus
verberone, sitque omnibus facultas crimen publicum arguendi, sit
officio copia nuntiandi, sit etiam servo licentia deferendi, cui
probato crimine libertas dabitur, quum falsae accusationi poena
immineat.
1.
Ante legem nupta tali consortio segregetur, non solum domo, verum
etiam provinciae communione privata, amati abscessum defleat
relegati.
2.
Filii etiam, quos ex hac coniunctione habuerit, exuti omnibus
dignitatis insignibus, in nuda maneant libertate, neque per se neque
per interpositam personam quolibet titulo voluntatis accepturi
aliquid ex facultatibus mulieris.
3.
Successio autem mulieris ab intestato vel filiis, si erunt legitimi,
vel proximis cognatisque deferatur vel ei, quem ratio iuris
admittit, ita ut et quod ille, qui quondam amatus est, et quod ex eo
suscepti filii quolibet casu in sua videntur habuisse substantia,
dominio mulieris sociatum a memoratis successoribus vindicetur.
4.
His ita omnibus observandis, et si ante legem decessit mulier vel
amatus, quoniam vel unus auctor vitii censurae occurrit.
5.
Sin vero iam uterque decessit, soboli parcimus, ne defunctorum
parentum vitiis praegravetur; sint filii, sint potiores fratribus,
proximis atque cognatis, sint relictae successionis heredes.
6.
Post legem enim hoc committentes morte punimus. qui vero ex lege
disiuncti clam denuo convenerint, congressus vetitos renovantes, hi
servorum indicio vel speculantis officii vel etiam proximorum
delatione convicti poenam similem sustinebunt.
DAT.
IV KAL. IUN. SERDICAE, CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si qua ingenua mulier servo proprio se occulte miscuerit,
capitaliter puniatur. Servus etiam, qui in adulterio dominae
convictus fuerit, ignibus exuratur. In potestate habeat huius modi
crimen quicumque voluerit accusare. Servi etiam aut ancillae, si de
hoc crimine accusationem detulerint, audiantur: ea tamen ratione, ut
si probaverint, libertatem consequantur, si fefellerint, puniantur.
Hereditas mulieris, quae se tali crimine maculaverit, vel filiis, si
sunt ex marito suscepti, vel propinquis ex lege venientibus
tribuatur.
May
29, 326 Imp. Constantine a. to the people. If any one is discovered
to have a secret affair with a slave, he shall be subjected to the
capital sentence, by being delivered to the stake and beaten, and
there shall be the opportunity for all to accuse him of a public
crime, there shall be ample opportunity for reporting, and there
shall also be permission for the slave to be brought before the
court, who, if the crime is proven, shall be given freedom, since
the penalty for false accusation is imminent.
1.
Before the law, a married woman shall be separated from such a
union, not only from her house, but also from the private communion
of the province, and shall mourn the departure of her beloved,
exiled.
2.
The children also, whom she has from this union, shall be stripped
of all the insignia of dignity, and shall remain in bare liberty,
neither by herself nor through an interposed person, by any title of
will, to receive anything from the woman's faculties.
3.
But the succession of a woman from the intestate or to the children,
if they are legitimate, or to the nearest relatives and kinsmen, or
to him whom the reason of the law admits, so that both the one who
was once loved, and the children born from him, in each case, seem
to have had substance in their own right, are claimed by the
aforementioned successors in the ownership of the woman.
4.
All these things being thus observed, and if the woman or the
beloved died before the law, since at least one author of the
censure defect occurs.
5.
But if both have already died, we spare the offspring, lest they be
burdened with the defects of the deceased parents; let them be sons,
let them be preferred to brothers, nearest and kinsmen, let them be
heirs of the inheritance left.
6.
For after the law we punish those who commit this with death. But
those who, having been separated by law, secretly meet again,
renewing forbidden meetings, these, having been convicted by the
evidence of slaves or by the office of a spy or even by the
denunciation of their neighbors, will suffer a similar punishment.
DAT.
IV KAL. IUN. SERDICAE, CONSTANTINO A. VII AND CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
Interpretation.
If any free woman has secretly mixed with her own slave, she shall
be punished with capital punishment. A slave who has been convicted
of adultery with his mistress shall also be burned at the stake.
Whoever wishes to accuse such a crime shall have the power to
accuse. Even slaves or maidservants, if they bring an accusation of
this crime, shall be heard: however, in such a way that if they
prove it, they shall obtain freedom, if they are false, they shall
be punished. The inheritance of a woman who has stained herself with
such a crime shall be given either to her children, if they are
adopted by her husband, or to her relatives who come by law.
1 juni 326
Idem a. ad Ablavium praefectum praetorio. Neque vulgari
consensu
neque
quibuslibet petentibus sub specie clericorum a muneribus publicis
vacatio deferatur, nec temere et citra modum populi clericis
conectantur, sed cum defunctus fuerit clericus, ad vicem defuncti
alius allegetur, cui nulla ex municipibus prosapia fuerit neque ea
est opulentia facultatum, quae publicas functiones facillime queat
tolerare, ita ut, si inter civitatem et clericos super alicuius
nomine dubitetur, si eum aequitas ad publica trahat obsequia et
progenie municeps vel patrimonio idoneus dinoscetur, exemptus
clericis civitati tradatur. Opulentos enim saeculi subire
necessitates oportet, pauperes ecclesiarum divitiis sustentari.
PROPOSITA KAL. IUN. CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
1 juni 326 CT
16.2.6 Constantine
This
is a repetition and qualification of a law from July 18, 320. While
the clergy are granted exemption from compulsory public services,
exemption cannot be given indiscriminately to everyone who claims to
be part of the clergy, because the wealthy are not supposed to be
clergy. Also, the roles of the clergy cannot be expanded in order to
help exempt more people from public services. When a clergyman dies,
his successor should not be chosen from the wealthy, for the wealthy
should assume secular obligations. [Seeck and Elliot (listed) emend
both this law and the law 16.2.3, listed on July 18th, 320. They
move both of these laws to 329, thus reversing their order. In that
case, this law would be the original restriction on clergy
exemptions, and 16.2.3 would be a qualification released a month
later.]
23 juni 326
IDEM A. MENANDRO. Certis nuntiis compertum est, quod plures
veluti
sibi
ac necessitatibus propriis petitas angarias taxato pretio
distrahunt. Quamvis itaque raro posthac et non nisi merentibus
evectiones praebendae sint, omnes tamen, qui ubique sunt cursus
publici observatione districti, inquirant, si quis in hoc genere
criminis possit intercipi, ut emptor et venditor in insulam
relegentur, illis etiam, qui observare iussi sunt, pro
dissimulatione vel neglegentia idem supplicium luituris. Non
inprobum tamen est, si is, qui angarialem habet copiam, ad tutelam
vitae vel laborem adeundum itineris pro solacio sibi quendam
sociaverit. Namque hoc factum meretur veniam nec latere poterit
explorantes; illud poena superius dicta plectendum est. Super qua re
proconsules rectores provinciarum praefectos vehiculorum adque
omnes, qui cursui publico praesunt, admoneri conveniet. DAT. X KAL.
IUL. CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO CAESARE CONSS.
29 juni 326
Idem a. Secundo praefecto praetorio. Provinciarum iudices
commoneri
praecipimus,
ut nihil se novi operis ordinare ante debere cognoscant, quam ea
compleverint, quae a decessoribus inchoata sunt, exceptis dumtaxat
templorum aedificationibus. DAT. III KAL. IUL. CONSTANTINO A. VII ET
CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
6 juli 326
Idem a. ad Tertullum proconsulem Africae. Si quis nummum
falsa fusione
formaverit,
universas eius facultates fisco addici praecipimus, atque ipsum
severitate legitima coherceri, ut in monetis tantum nostris cudendae
pecuniae studium frequentetur. DAT. PRID. NON. IUL. MEDIOLANO
CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
8 juli 326
Idem a. Antiocho praefecto vigilum. Quae tyrannus contra ius
rescripsit
non valere praecipimus, legitimis eius rescriptis minime
impugnandis. DAT. VIII ID. IUL. ROMAE CONSTANTINO A. VII ET
CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
15 juli 326
Idem a. ad senatum. Super his, qui ex senatoribus ad
navicularium
munus
a tyranno deiecti sunt ac restitui suis natalibus deprecantur,
placuit vestrae sanctitati iudicium examenque mandare, ut vos
eligatis, qui splendori vestro patrimonii viribus et honestate
vivendi et natalium dignitate respondent. Incongruum est enim tantae
dignitatis arbitrium alteri potius quam vestris suffragiis
sententiisque conmittere. Eorum autem, quos ut dignos elegeritis,
nomina praefectus urbis nobis insinuet, ut vestrum iudicium
comprobemus. DAT. ID. IUL. CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO CAES.
CONSS.
22 juli 326
Idem a. have, Felix, carissime nobis. Omnis intra centum
pedes
vicinitas,
quantum ad horrea pertinet, arceatur ac si quid constructum fuerit,
diruatur, quoniam experimentis nuperrimis palam factum est
aedificiorum, quae horreis adhaerebant, incendiis fiscales copias
laborasse. Quod si quis aedificandi amore publica damna neglexerit,
non solum quod construxit, sed omnes res eius et quidquid in suo
iure habuit, fisco adiudicari praecipimus. DAT. XI KAL. AUG. SIRMIO
CONSTANTINO A. IV ET CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
25 juli 326
IDEM A. AD MUSONIANUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O.
Iam
dudum nostrae clementiae iussa exsistunt, ut rectoribus provinciarum
evectionum faciendarum copia denegetur, quoniam cursui publico magna
infertur pernicies, si haec licentia latius panderetur. Ideoque hoc
ipsum repetimus quod ante placuerat ac iubemus eos auctoritatis tuae
litteris commoneri, ut iussis parere festinent. DAT. VIII KAL. AUG.
CONSTANTIO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
29 juli 326
Imp. Constantinus a. Tiberiano comiti per Africam. Ii
magistratus,
qui
sufficiendis duumviris in futurum anni officium nominationes
impertiunt, periculi sui contemplatione provideant, ut, quamvis
populi quoque suffragiis nominatio in Africa ex consuetudine
celebretur, tamen ipsi nitantur pariter ac laborent, quemadmodum
possint ii, qui nominati fuerint, idonei repperiri. Nam aequitatis
ratio persuadet, nisi idonei fuerint nominati, ipsos, quorum est
periculum, adtineri. DAT. NICOMEDIAE III KAL. AUG. CONSTANTINO A.
VII ET CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
1 augustus 326
IDEM A. MAGNO AGENTI VICARIAM PRAEFECTURAM. Hoc interdicto
prohibemus,
ne quis agminales ac paraveredos aestimet postulandos: in eos enim,
qui hoc temere praesumpserint, vindicari acrius oportebit iussione
nostra cunctis provincialibus intimata. DAT. KAL. AUG. CONSTANTINO
A. VII ET CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
3 augustus 326
Idem a. ad Iulianum praefectum Urbi. Nonnulli iudicum
inferioris
gradus a sententiis suis interponi provocationis auxilium aegre
ferentes id efficiunt, ut nobis eorum relationes non necessariae et
insolentes ingerantur. Igitur volumus, cum ab eorum sententiis
fuerit provocatum, super ea quaestione, cuius appellatione
interposita iudices esse desierunt, minime eos ad nostram referre
clementiam, sed gravitatis tuae, cui nostram vicem commisimus,
sacrum auditorium expectari. Dat. III non. aug. Heracleae
Constantino a. VII et Constantio c. III conss.
3 augustus 326
IMP. CONSTANTIUS A. OLYBRIO PROC(ONSULI) AFRICAE.
Paraveredorum
exactio
patrimonia multorum evertit et pavit avaritiam nonnullorum. Ideoque
praelata iussione nostra provinciarum rectores excellentia tua
commoneat, ut, exceptis agentibus in rebus, qui ad movendum militem
mitti consuerunt, quisquis alius paraveredum exegerit, non ei cedat
inpune, sed nec illi qui dederit. DAT. III NON. AUG. ANTIOCHIAE
CONSTANTIO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
11 augustus
326 Imp. Constantinus a. ad Severum pf. U. Nec interpellatis
his,
quibus
pro laboribus suis ac meritis aliquid donaverimus, sed in iure suo,
hoc est sine molestia litis manentibus, concitatorem iudicii, qui
inquietudinem inferre tentaverit, examini tuo praesentari oportet,
ut citra molestiam possidentis ius suum manifestis probationibus
doceat: in quo partes reluctantis ipse suscipies, quoniam fructus
liberalitatis nostrae pulsatur. Hac enim lege sancimus, ut,
quicumque in tales venient querelas, secundum praedictam formam ius
suum ostendant: his, quae comperta fuerint, ad nostram scientiam
referendis, ut salva possidentium proprietate, quibus, ut dictum
est, in perpetuum quaesita est firmitas possidendi, deliberationis
nostrae sit, qualiter his, qui allegationes suas probaverint,
beneficio lenitatis nostrae extrinsecus debeat subveniri. RECITATA
III. NON. AUG. IN PALATIO, CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO C.
CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Non inquietentur ii, quibus aliqua pro suo labore donavimus, sed
omnibus, quae a nobis donata sunt, in ipsorum iure positis, is, qui
eos inquietare voluerit, ad iudicii audientiam protrahatur, ut sine
aliqua molestia possidentis ius suum pulsator valeat confirmare:
omnibus, quae hac de re inter praefatos acta fuerint, ad nostram
notitiam referendis, ut et nostris inquietatus remediis adiuvetur.
1 september
326 CT 16.5.1 Constantine
Exemption
from compulsory public services shall only be granted to clergy of
the catholic church, and not to heretics or schismatics.
18 september
326 Idem a. ad Ablavium praefectum praetorio. pr.
Navicularios
omnes
per orbem terrarum per omne aevum ab omnibus oneribus et muneribus
cuiuscumque fuerint loci vel dignitatis, securos vacuos inmunesque
esse praecipimus, sive decuriones sint sive plebei seu potioris
alterius dignitatis, ut a collationibus et omnibus oblationibus
liberati integris patrimoniis navicularium munus exerceant. 1. Naves
quoque eorum, quantaecumque fuerint, ad aliud munus ipsis invitis
teneri non convenit, ad quodcumque litus accesserint; litorum
custodibus et vectigalium praepositis exactoribus decurionibus adque
rationalibus et iudicibus scituris, quod qui hanc legem violaverit
capite punietur. DAT. XIV KAL. OCTOB. CONSTANTINO A. VII ET
CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
25 september
326 Idem a. ad Bassum. Novatianos non adeo comperimus
praedamnatos,
ut
his quae petiverunt crederemus minime largienda. Itaque ecclesiae
suae domos et loca sepulcris apta sine inquietudine eos firmiter
possidere praecipimus, ea scilicet, quae ex diuturno tempore vel ex
empto habuerunt vel qualibet quaesiverunt ratione. Sane providendum
erit, ne quid sibi usurpare conentur ex his, quae ante discidium ad
ecclesias perpetuae sanctitatis pertinuisse manifestum est. DAT. VII
KAL. OCT. SPOLETI CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
25 september
326 CT 16.5.2 Constantine
Novatians
may posses their own church buildings and cemeteries, provided they
are rightfully theirs and did not once belong to the catholic
Church. [Novatians disagreed with the Church about absolution.]
22 oktober 326
Imp. Constantinus a. Severo. Iudices absentium, qui
cuiuslibet
rei
possessione privati sunt, suscipiant in iure personam, et
auctoritatis suae formidabile ministerium obiiciant, atque ita
tueantur absentes. Hos tamen iudices, quos absentium iussimus subire
personam, intra hos terminos ministerii retinemus, ut, illibatis
atque omnibus integris causae principalis internis, id solum
diligenter inquirant, utrum eius, quolibet pacto, qui peregrinatur,
possessio ablata est, quam propinquus vel amicus vel servulus
quolibet titulo retinebat. Nec hos, qui deiecti sunt, absentium
nomine possidentes, quia minime ipsis dictio causae mandata sit, ab
experiunda re secludant, nec si servi sint, eorum reiiciant in iure
personas, quia huiuscemodi condicionis hominibus causas orare fas
non sit; sed post elapsa quoque spatia recuperandae possessionis
legibus praestituta litigium eis inferentibus largiri conveniet, ut
eos momentariae perinde possessioni restituant, ac si reversus
dominus litigasset. Cui tamen, quolibet tempore reverso, actionem
recuperandae possessionis indulsimus, quia fieri potest, ut
restitutio propter servulos infideles vel negligentes propinquos vel
amicos et colonos interea differatur. Absenti enim officere non
debet tempus emensum, quod recuperandae possessioni legibus
praestitutum est, sed reformato statu, qui per iniuriam sublatus
est, omnia, quae supererunt, ad disceptationem litigii immutilata
permaneant; iudicio reservato iustis legitimisque personis, quum
valde sufficiat, possessionem tenentibus absentium nomine contra
praesentium violentiam subveniri. DAT. X KAL. NOV. MEDIOLANO,
CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Omnes iudices specialiter admonemus, ut nullus, absentibus dominis,
res eorum praesumat invadere, sed contra improbos homines omnia per
personam iudicis vindicentur, salvo principali negotio. Quod si quis
se adversus absentem negotium habere causatur, et si, cui illi, qui
peregrinantur, rem suam commiserint gubernandam, nec actor nec
procurator eorum aut aliquis servorum ad dicendam causam domino aut
absente aut non iubente cogatur, sed si quid eis fuerit sublatum,
mox his, qui domino absente exclusi sunt, quum interpellaverint,
reformetur. Ipse vero dominus, si forte per negligentiam servorum
res recepta non fuerit, quum de peregrinis redierit, possessionem
suam momenti beneficio, etiamsi annus excesserit, nullatenus
recipere prohibetur, sed restitutis in integrum omnibus, quae eo
absente sublata sunt, integra causae actio proponatur, inter
legitimas dumtaxat et integra aetate personas: quia dignum est, ut
contra malitiam eorum, qui praesentes sunt, taliter absentibus
iubeamus esse consultum.
3 november 326
IDEM A. AD PHILIPPUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O. Officiales,
quos
ex diversis officiis ex protectoribus epistulas impetrasse
constiterit, pristinae reddi iubemus militiae. DAT. III NON. NOV.
ARELATO CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSULIBUS.
24 november
326 Idem a. ad praefectos praetorio. Dudum lege promulgata
sanxit
nostra
clementia, ut filii comitum et praesidum et rationalium
magistrorumque privatae, qui tamen ex origine curialium descendunt,
ordinibus necterentur. Nunc praecipimus, ut, qui perfuncti muneribus
idonei reperti sint iudicio clementiae nostrae accedere ad honores
praecepti ad honestas promotiones perveniant, eos vero, quos nescit
principalis auctoritas, .... iudicio praefecturae commisimus, uti
eos, qui ex genere videntur esse curialium et minus apti iudicio
principali, ordinibus propriis restituant, illos vero, quos iudicio
nostro proveximus, intactos esse perficiant; ita tamen, ut heredes
eorum curiis mancipentur. Si quis sane decurio evertens fiscalia
commoda, fugiens curiam ambitu ad senatum urbis inclytum pervenerit,
minime admittatur. DAT. VIII KAL. DEC. CONSTANTINO A. VII ET
CONSTANTIO C. CONSS.
24 december
326 Imp. Constantinus a. et Constantius caes. Pf. U. In
codicillis,
quos
testamentum non praecedit, sicut in voluntatibus testamenti septem
testium vel quinque interventum non deesse oportet: sic enim fiet,
ut testantium successiones sine aliqua captione serventur. Si quando
igitur testium numerus defecerit, instrumentum codicilli habeatur
infirmum. Quod et in ceteris voluntatibus placuit observari. DAT. XI
KAL. IAN. CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quis non fecerit testamentum, sed vice testamenti fecerit
codicillum, in quo codicillo legitima heredis institutio teneatur,
et hunc ipsum eodem numero testium, hoc est septem aut quinque
subscriptionibus faciat confirmari: si minus quam quinque, valere
non poterit, sicuti et ceterae voluntates. nam secundum superiorem
legem, si condito testamento postea factus fuerit codicillus, et in
eo alium, quam in testamento fecerat, heredem voluerit nominare, in
eo codicillo heredis institutio non valebit.
31 december
326 IDEM A. ET C. AD POPULUM. In feminis tutelam legitimam
consanguineus
patruus non recuset. DAT. PRID. KAL. IANUAR. IPSO A. VII ET C.
CONSS.
Ista
lex expositione non indiget.
31 december
326 Idem a. Defensionis facultas danda est his, quibus
aliquam
inquietudinem
fiscus infert, cum facultates eorundem athuc controversia pendente
inquietari describique fas non sit. Ubi ergo controversia extiterit
fisco alicuius patrimonium vindicante, aput eum omnibus facultatibus
constitutis cognitio ventiletur, ut, cum rei exitus debere eas
vindicari probaverit, tum demum res persequi liceat et super modo
facultatum ac rerum interrogationem haberi, quae per condicionales
servos investiganda est, ut, si quid subtractum fuerit, exigatur et
extrinsecus tantum aliud multae nomine, quantum fuerat per fraudem
ablatum. Sane in huiuscemodi quaestione si caesariani nomen
inciderit, ad usurpationem constitutionis istius non debebit
accedere, si quidem consuetudo fraudium, quibus praedicti omnia
temerare consuerunt, exceptionem eorundem meruerit. DAT. PRID. KAL.
IAN. SIRMIO CONSTANTINO A. VII ET CONSTANTIO CAES. CONSS.
Jan
31, 326? Law 90: To the people
CTh
3.2.1 Dorries p. 189
Those
who owe debts to one creditor cannot have their goods confiscated by
someone else.
Feb
3, 326 Law 91: To Africanus
CTh
9.7.1 Dorries p. 189
Because
of their lowly status, barmaids are outside of adultery laws.
Feb
3, 326 Law 92: To Evagrius, the praetorian prefect
CJ
9.4.2 Dorries p. 189
Imprisonment
can only be sentenced after public testimony.
March
15, 326 Law 93
CTh
3.30.3 Dorries p. 189-190
House
slaves are not to be sold without compelling reasons.
c.
first half of 326 Letter to the heretics
VC
3.64-65 Silli 29; Dorries p. 82-84
Removing
from heretics the right to assemble.
Apr
13, 326 Law 94: To Vettius Rufinus, prefect of the city
CTh
4.11.1a Dorries p. 190
Thankless
freedmen who act insolently towards their former master forfeit
their freedom, but their children will remain free.
Apr
25, 326 Law 95: To Evagrius, the praetorian prefect
CTh
9.7.2 Dorries p. 190
Only
a close relative can accuse a woman of adultery.
May
17, 326 Law 96: To Mecilius Hilarianus, commissioner of Lucania and
Bruttium
CTh
12.1.13 Dorries p. 190
Only
those who were soldiers over 20 years remain free.
May
22, 326 Law 97: To Maximus, prefect of the city
CTh
9.1.5 Dorries p. 190-191
Accusations
must be put down in writing to start the judicial process.
May
23, 326 Law 98: To Severus, prefect of the city
CTh
6.36.1 Dorries p. 191
Court
officials also have the privilege of the "camp stipend."
May
29, 326 Law 99: To the people
CTh
9.9.1 Dorries p. 191
Women
who become involved with or marry slaves are to be executed and the
slaves burned.
June
1, 326 Law 100: To Ablavius, the praetorian prefect
CTh
16.2.6 Dorries p. 191-192
Freedom
from public offices cannot come from appointment to the office of
the clergy, but instead a poorer person should be appointed to
positions in the church.
Jun
14, 326 Law 101: To the people
CJ
5.26.1 Dorries p. 192
No
one may have a concubine in his home while his marriage still
continues.
Jun
17, 326 Law 102: To Mastichianus, prefect of the provisions
CJ
6.62.1 Dorries p. 192
The
estate of a ship captain who dies without a will does not go to the
treasury but to the corporation of ship captains.
July
8, 326 Law 103: To Antochus, prefect of the guards
CTh
15.14.3 Dorries p. 193
Legitimate
laws of past tyrants remain in effect, but those which he made
contrary to the law are not.
326
Letter to Macarius
VC
3.30-32; SOC 1.9; THE 1.17; GEL 3.5; EH 8.28 Silli 30; Dorries p.
84-86
The
church in Jerusalem should be the most beautiful in the world.
Aug
27, 326 Law 104: To Menander
CTh
4.13.3 Dorries p. 193
Creating
a middle state between slave and free for the children of such mixed
marriages.
Sept
1, 326 Law 105: Edict about the immunity of the catholic clergy to
Dracilianus
CTh
16.5.1 Dorries p. 39-40, 193
Religious
privileges only apply to observers of catholic law, and heretics and
schismatics are subject to various public duties.
Sept
18, 326 Law 106: To Ablavius, the praetorian prefect
CTh
13.5.5
Dorries
p. 193
Ship
captains are freed from all burdens and duties.
Sept
25, 326 Law 107: To Bassus
CTh
16.5.2
Dorries
p. 193-194
Novatians
are not to be precondemned to the point that their requests are not
given audience and their houses and cemeteries are to be left
undisturbed, but they cannot lay claim to anything which belonged to
the church prior to the dispute.
Dec
10, 326-Dec 9, 327 Fifth inscription at Rome
CIL
VI 3789, 31388 Gruenewald 253
326-Dec
25, 333 Inscription at Ostia
CIL
XIV 133 Gruenewald 266
c.
326 Letter to Empress Helen
AS;
CF Chap 2 Silli 28
Urging
quietness instead of rashness in the matter of understanding God.
EDICTUM CONSTANTINI AD UMBROS p. 496
Rescript of Constantine I on Hispellum (326-337)
Although
Constantine recognized Christianity as one of the religions of the
State in 313 A.D. and perhaps embraced it himself at that time,
probably for reasons of policy he continued to serve as pontifex
maximus of the old Roman State religion. It is the opinion of
Alföldi that he took this course to propitiate the conservative
elements in the Empire and particularly the nobility, which was
still predominantly pagan. In the inscription translated here the
town of Hispellum in Umbria, Italy, where the marble tablet
containing the rescript was found in 1733, had requested the right
to build a temple to the Gens Flavia, to which Constantine's family
belonged, to celebrate games there instead of at Volsinii, as had
previously been the custom, and to rename the town in honor of the
emperor's family. All there requests were granted with the proviso,
however, that the celebrations at Volsinii must also continue to be
held.
Copy of the sacred rescript.
Emperor
Caesar Flavius Constantine Maximus Germanicus Sarmaticus Maximus
Gothicus Victor Triumphator Augustus and Flavius Constantine and
Flavius Julius Constantius and Flavius Constans.
We
encompass with our untiring attention and care everything, indeed,
that benefits human society; but this is the greatest task for our
forethought: that all the cities whose splendid appearance and
beauty distinguish them in the eyes of all provinces and of all
regions not only shall keep their former dignity, but also shall be
promoted to a still greater esteem by the grant of our Beneficence.
Since,
indeed, you aver that you have been annexed to Tuscia in such a way
that by the established practice of ancient custom priests are
created every other year in turn by you and by the aforesaid people
of Tuscia, who exhibit stage plays and a gladiatorial show at
Volsinii, a City of Tuscia; but that, because of the steepness of
the mountains and the difficulties of the paths through the forests
thither, you most earnestly request that permission shall be granted
to your priest to abandon the necessity of going to Volsinii to
celebrate the exhibition; and that we shall give a name from our
cognomen to the community, which now has the name Hispellum and
which you state is contiguous to and lying along the Flaminian Way
and in which a temple of the Flavian Family is being built, of truly
magnificent workmanship worthy of the greatness of its name; and
that there that priest, whom Umbria selects annually, shall exhibit
a festival of both stage plays and gladiatorial shows; and that this
custom shall remain as regards Tuscia: that the priest created at
Volsinii shall celebrate, as has been his wont, the observation of
the aforesaid exhibitions at that place: our assent is gladly
granted to your prayer and desire.
For
from our own name we vouchsafe to the community of Hispellum an
eternal designation, an appellation to be venerated, so that
hereafter the aforesaid city shall be called Flavia Constans; and in
its center we wish, as you desire, the temple of our Flavian Family
to be completed of magnificent workmanship, but with this regulation
added: that no temple dedicated in our name shall be defiled by the
deceptions of any contagious and unreasonable religious belief; and
so we also permit you to stage exhibitions in the aforesaid
community, although in such manner that, as has been said, the
celebration of Volsinii also shall not fall into disuse through the
ages, but that there the aforesaid celebration also must be staged
by priests chosen from Tuscia.
Thus,
indeed, it will not appear that our actions especially derogate
anything from old customs; and you, who are suppliants to us for the
aforesaid causes, will rejoice that you have gained those things for
which you have earnestly asked.
Rescript of
Constantine I on Usucapion (326-333)
Acquisition
of ownership by usucapion in the provinces was possible after ten
years if the possessor lived in the same province as the other
claimants, or twenty years if he did not, and if the usucaptor could
furnish a legal title, such as gift, informal sale, etc., and had
undisturbed possession during the period. Constantine kept the old
rule, but did not require proof of title after possession for forty
years. The rescript is on a papyrus published in 1937.
Imp. Constantinus Aug. et Constantinus et
Constantius Nobb. Caess. Agrippino
senatori:
Et diutinae possessionis hactenus placuit ut haberetur ratio, ne ab
iis si constat (rem) de qua est quaestio quadraginta annos possessam
esse, possessionis titulus requireretur. Placuit etiam, iusto titulo
ad annorum decem uel uiginti praescriptionem pertinente (?),
possessorem adiuuari, et cetera.
Our
Lords Constantine Augustus and the most noble Caesars Constantine
and Constantius to the Senator Agrippinus. It is our pleasure that
the rule of long-time possession shall be observed thus far: that in
the case of those persons who can prove possession for forty years,
a title to their possession shall not be required. It is also our
pleasure that the possessor for ten or twenty years with a legal
title of prescription shall be confirmed in his possession, etc.
326 Eusebius,
VC 3.30-32 Constantine
Constantine
orders a church to be built over the holy sepulcher and commands the
local government officials to assist.
327 CONSTANTIO ET MAXIMO CONSS.
Rerum
memoria deficit; subscriptiones nec multae nec firmae ad Illyricum
ducunt.
21 januari 327
IDEM A. AD MAXIMUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O. Qui de statutis
praesidalibus
conqueruntur, cum ea in detrimentum legum prolata arbitrantur, ad
tuae auctoritatis iudicium pervenire faciant, ut fractis atque
convulsis quae perperam inpressa sunt ne nomen quidem sententiae
possint retinere. DAT. XII K. FEB. CONSTANTIO ET MAXIMO CONSS.
27 februari
327 Idem a. Acacio comiti Macedoniae. Mancipia adscripta
censibus
intra
provinciae terminos distrahantur et qui emptione dominium nancti
fuerint, inspiciendum sibi esse cognoscant. Id quod in possessione
quoque servari rationis est: sublatis pactionibus eorundem onera ac
pensitationes publicae ad eorum sollicitudinem spectent, ad quorum
dominium possessiones eaedem migraverunt. DAT. III KAL. MART.
THESSALONICAE CONSTANTIO ET MAXIMO CONSS.
21 april 327
Idem a. ad Annium Tiberianum comitem. Universis provinciarum
rectoribus
intimato nostram clementiam statuisse veteranorum filios curialibus
muniis innectendos; ita ut et ii, qui perfectissimatus sibi honore
blandiuntur, trusi in curiam necessariis officiis publicis
inserviant. PROPOSITA XI KAL. MAI. KARTHAGINE CONSTANTIO ET MAXIMO
CONSS.
17 mei 327
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Afros. Quoniam succlamatione vestra
merito
postulastis,
ne qua his, qui praestationes fiscales differunt, reliquorum laxitas
proveniret, specialiter praecipimus observari, ut res eorum, qui
fiscalibus debitis per contumaciam satisfacere differunt,
distrahantur: comparatoribus data firmitate perpetua possidendi etc.
DAT. XV KAL. IUN. SERDICAE, CONSTANTINO ET MAXIMO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quicumque agrorum suorum tributa implere contemnent, agri eius, qui
tributa sua contemnet exsolvere, ab exactore vendantur, et qui
comparaverint, firmissimo iure hoc ordine empta possideant.
3 juni 327
IDEM A. AD CONSTANTIUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O. Nulli quidem
de
bonis
usurpandis vivorum nec dividundis contra bonos mores concessa
licentia est: sed si praecipiente matre bona eius inter se liberi
diviserunt, placuit omnifariam nobis huiusmodi divisionem durare, si
modo usque ad extremum eius vivendi spatium voluntas eadem
perseverasse doceatur. DAT. III ID. IUN. CONSTANTIO ET MAXIMO
CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Licet vivorum bona, ut dividantur, iniustum sit, tamen si mater
vivens facultates suas filiis praeceperit et permiserit dividendas,
et usque ad exitum vitae suae in eadem voluntate perstiterit,
divisio inter filios facta perduret.
19 juli 327
IDEM A. AD IULIANUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI). Petendae in integrum
restitutionis
temporibus, ut iam constitutum est, observatis si dilatio ab actore
petatur, quae intra metas lege comprehensas valeat artari, eandem
quocumque flagitante causis cognitis tribui oportebit: sin vero
eiusmodi postulentur curricula, quae intra spatium lege receptum
angustari non queunt, quippe si in confinio praedicti temporis
petuntur et eius terminos prorogabunt, dilationem petitori denegari
conveniet; in eius enim arbitrio fuerat tunc inferre litigium, cum
petitae dilationis mora spatio superstite posset includi. Quod si
defensio possidentium dilationis suffragia postulaverit, eandem
adserta causa citra obstaculum temporis deferri sancimus, quia
nequaquam in ipsius steterat potestate, quando litigio pulseratur.
Dari igitur debet, etsi impetrata dimensio sese ultra constitutionis
regulam proferat. Qua dilatione, si a possessore impetretur, etiam
petitor in requirendis probationibus uti minime prohibetur. DAT.
XIV KAL AUG.; P(RO)P(OSITA) ROMAE CONSTANTIO ET MAXIMO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Liquet
quattuor mensibus constitutum, ut petentibus pro requirenda omni
instructione indutiae concedantur. Unde si illud spatium requiratur,
quod indultum est, id est, quod quattuor menses non possit excedere,
praestari conveniet. Si vero tales petantur indutiae, quae tempus
lege constitutum excedant, petitori debet dilatio denegari, qui
scire debuit actionem suam constituto tempore finiendam. Quod si
ille spatium, qui rem possidet, fortasse petierit, dari sine
impedimento temporis, quod petentibus datum est, omnino debebit:
quia scire non potuit, quando ab adversario provocaretur ad causam,
et quando possessor spatium, ut respondere possit, acceperit, etiam
petitor suis partibus poterit necessaria providere.
31 juli 327
Idem a. Victori rationali urbis Romae. Quoniam nonnulli fisci
debitores,
cum iussi fuerint debitam summam exsolvere, interposito
provocationis auxilio vim exsecutionis eludunt nec iam opinionis
exemplum nec refutatorias preces curant petere vel offerre, placuit,
ut, si intra dies complendis sollemnitatibus praestitutos ad
facienda haec appellatoris cura defuerit, deserta ab eo provocatio
aestimetur moxque debitum exigatur. DAT. PRID. KAL. AUG. CONSTANTIO
ET MAXIMO CONSS.
27 september
327 IDEM A. AD MAXIMUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORIO). Universa,
quae
scriptura
Pauli continentur, recepta auctoritate firmanda sunt et omni
veneratione celebranda. Ideoque sententiarum libros plenissima luce
et perfectissima elocutione et iustissima iuris ratione succinctos
in iudiciis prolatos valere minime dubitatur. DAT. V K. OCT.
TREV(IRIS) CONSTANTIO ET MAXIMO CONSS.
327 Socrates,
H.e. 1.25 Constantine
Constantine
invites Arius to his court, where he may end his exile by confessing
the Nicene faith before Constantine. Arius is allowed to use public
transportation. [date uncertain]
March
6, 327 Law 108: To Julianus, prefect of the city
CTh
6.4.2 Dorries p. 194
Adult
members of the upper class are required to put on the games, but
minors are released of this responsibility.
327-328
Digest of letters to the people of Antioch
VC
3.59 Dorries p. 88-89
Encouraging
peace and godliness and pardoning past conduct.
328 IANVARINO ET IVSTO CONSS.
Ad
ea, quae de actis Constantini suppeditant subscriptiones, ex
historia indicia nulla accedunt. Roma redeuntem Constantinum a. 328
fuisse Nicomediae scribit Chron. pascale.
1 maart 328
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Cerealem praefectum annonae. Mensae
oleariae,
quae
ita caducae fuerint, ut nullus possit adserere dominium, vicenis
follibus per officium distrahantur. Sed si quis mensam oleariam
praedictis follibus emptam cariore pretio vendiderit, ferreis
vinculis constrictus ad Illyricum transmittatur poenam congruam
luiturus. Si quis autem mensam oleariam in dominio suo retinens
vivendi cursum impleverit, eandem mensam ad successores proprios cum
reliquis suis rebus hereditario poterit iure transmittere. DAT. KAL.
MAR. NICOMEDIAE, ACCEPTA VIII ID. APRIL. ROMAE IANUARINO ET IUSTO
CONSS.
9 mei 328
Idem a. ad Aemilianum praefectum praetorio. Extraordinariorum
munerum
distributio non est principalibus committenda, ideoque rectores
provinciarum monendi sunt, ut eam distributionem ipsi celebrent
manuque propria perscribant adque encauto nomina adnectant, ea forma
servata, ut primo a potioribus, dein a mediocribus adque infimis
quae sunt danda praestentur. Neque umquam sationibus vel colligendis
frugibus insistens agricola ad extraordinaria onera trahatur, cum
providentiae sit opportuno tempore his necessitatibus satisfacere.
Quae res neglecta vicariorum tuorum verecundiam tangit, ad rectorum
autem officiorum capita venietur. Manu autem sua rectores scribere
debebunt, quid opus sit et in qua necessitate per singula capita vel
quantae angariae vel quantae operae vel quae aut in quanto modo
praebendae sint, ut recognovisse se scribant, exactionis praedicto
ordine inter ditiores mediocres atque infimos observando. LECTA VII
ID. MAI. ROMAE IANUARINO ET IUSTO CONSS.
21 oktober 328
Idem a. ad Dionysium. Famosa scriptio libellorum, quae
nomine
accusatoris
caret, minime examinanda est, sed penitus abolenda. Nam qui
accusationis promotione confidat, libera potius intentione quam
captiosa atque occulta conscriptione alterius debet vitam in
iudicium devocare. PROPOSITA TYRO XII KAL. NOV. IANUARINO ET IUSTO
CONSS.
29 december
328 A. AD MAXIMUM. Praesides provinciarum oportet, si quis
potiorum
extiterit
insolentior et ipsi vindicare non possunt aut examinare aut
pronuntiare nequeunt, de eius nomine ad nos aut certe ad gravitatis
tuae scientiam referre, quo provideatur, qualiter publicae
disciplinae et laesis minoribus consulatur. et cetera. DAT. IV K.
IAN. TREV(IRIS) IANUARINO ET IUSTO CONSUL.
29 december
328 Idem a. Maximo praefecto praetorio. Providendum est, ne
veterani
protectoria
dignitate cumulati aut qui honores varios pro meritis suis consecuti
sunt, incongruis pulsentur iniuriis, cum, si quis in hoc crimine
fuerit deprehensus, rectores provinciarum conveniat ad tuum iudicium
referre atque ad tuum officium praedictos dirigere, ut factum pro
sui qualitate possit facillime coherceri. DAT. IV KAL. IAN. TREVIRIS
IANUARINO ET IUSTO CONSS.
328 Gelasius H.e. 3.15.1-5 Constantine
Constantine
pleads with the bishop Alexander of Alexandria to accept Arius back
into communion. [It is possible that this letter was written later
to Athanasius.]
Early
328 Fragments of a letter to Alexander, bishop of Alexandria
GEL
3.15.1-5; Silli 31 Dorries p. 80; Opitz 32
Reporting
the repentance of Arius and commanding that former heretics who
later confess the truth be forgiven.
c.
Jun 328 Part of a letter to the people of Alexandria about the
election of Athanasius
Codex
Angelicus Gr 22.36b Silli 32; Dorries p. 94-95
Approving
and ratifying his appointment to the episcopate.
Oct
21, 328 Law 42: To Dionysius
CTh
9.34.4 Dorries p. 174
Anonymous
accusations endangering people’s lives are forbidden.
Dec
29, 328 Law 109
CJ
1.40.2 Dorries p. 194
When
a powerful person tires the provincial governors with their
arrogance, this should be reported so as to be handled with the
appropriate discipline.
329 CONSTANTINO A. VIII ET CONSTANTIO C. IV
CONSS.
Ad
annum praecedentem quae diximus, ad hunc quoque pertinent. Serdicae
Constantinum fuisse certe parte anni maiori ostendunt subscriptiones
tam infra memoratae quam quae diem habet 339 Iun. 19.
18 april 329
IDEM A. SECUNDO P(RAEFECTO) P(RAETORI)O ORIENTIS. Ordinarii
iudicis
provinciarum
rectoris seu vicaria potestas ut speculatrix debet prave gesta
corrigere. Sed officiales vestrae celsitudinis et vicariae
potestatis placet ab exactionibus amoveri et per provincialia
officia atque rectores cunctos exigi titulos. Nam si exactio minime
impleatur, ante tribunal nostrum exhibitus capitis fortunarumque
omnium periculum sustinebit. DAT. XIV K. MAI. CONSTANTINOPOLI
CONSTANTINO A. VIII ET CONSTANTIO IV CONSS.
4 mei 329
Idem a. Helpidio. Pridem statutum fuit, ut, si ignorante
quoque domino
in
fundo eius vel domo figuratus clam nummus cuderetur, sedem flagitii
suo fiscus dominio vindicaret. Nunc discretionem fieri placet, ut,
si dominus in proximo constitutus sit, cuius incuria vel neglegentia
punienda est, praeceptum prius valeat, sin vero longissime ab ea
domo vel possessione afuerit, nullum sustineat detrimentum. Viduas
autem ac pupillos speciali dignos indulgentia credidimus, ut viduae
nec in proximo constitutae domo sua vel possessione careant, si
nulla aput ipsas tam gravis conscientiae noxa resideat, pupilli vero
etiam si conscii fuerint, nullum sustineant detrimentum, quia aetas
eorum, si tamen fuerint impuberes, quid videat ignorat. Tutores
tamen eorum si in proximo sint, quoniam ignorare eos, quid in re
pupilli geritur, non oportet, haec poena expectabit, ut ex rebus
eorum, si idonei fuerint, tantum fisco inferatur, quantum pupillo
fuerat auferendum. Quibus ita emendatis in omnibus capitulis lex
pridem lata servabitur. DAT. IV NON. MAI. CONSTANTINO A. VIII ET
CONSTANTIO IV CONSS.
28 juli 329
Idem a. ad concilium provinciae Africae. Non recte iudices
iniuriam
sibi
fieri existimant, si litigator, cuius negotium sententia vulneratum
est, a principali causa provocaverit, quod neque novum neque alienum
a iudiciis est. Ideoque post negotium principale discussum
litigatori liceat litem iuris remedio sublevare; et iudices
observare debebunt, ne appellatores vel in carcerem redigant, vel a
militibus faciant custodiri. PP. IV KAL. AUG. KARTHAGINE,
CONSTANTINO A. VIII. ET CONSTANTINO CAES. IV CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Lex ista hoc iubet, non debere iudices provinciarum assertiones
appellantium ad suam iniuriam revocare, quia hoc nec novum nec
alienum a iudiciis esse cognoscitur; et ideo hoc iubet, ut liceat
litigatori vitiatam causam appellationis remedio sublevare. Hoc
etiam specialiter praecepit, ut appellator nec in carcerem nec in
quamcumque custodiam redigatur, sed agendum negotium suum liber
observet.
17 augustus
329 Imp. Constantinus a. Italis suis. Secundum statuta
priorum
principum,
si quis infantem a sanguine quoquo modo legitime comparaverit vel
nutriendum putaverit, obtinendi eius servitii habeat potestatem: ita
ut, si quis post seriem annorum ad libertatem eum repetat vel servum
defendat, eiusdem modi alium praestet aut pretium, quod potest
valere, exsolvat. Qui enim pretium competens instrumento confecto
dederit, ita debet firmiter possidere, ut et distrahendi pro suo
debito causam liberam habeat: poenae subiiciendis iis, qui contra
hanc legem venire tentaverint. DAT. XV KAL. SEPT. SERDICA,
CONSTANTINO A. VIII. ET CONSTANTINO CAES. IV CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quis infantem a sanguine emerit et nutrierit, habendi eum et
possidendi liberam habeat potestatem. sane si nutritum dominus vel
pater recipere voluerit, aut eiusdem meriti mancipium nutritori
dabit, aut pretium nutritor, quantum valuerit, qui nutritus est,
consequatur.
29
september 329 Idem a. Si ad magistratum nominati aufugerint,
requirantur et, si pertinaci animo latere potuerint, his ipsorum
bona permittantur, qui praesenti tempore in locum eorum ad
duumviratus munera vocabuntur, ita ut, si postea repperti fuerint,
biennio integro onera duumviratus cogantur agnoscere. Omnes enim,
qui obsequia publicorum munerum declinare temptaverint, simili
condicione teneri oportet. DAT. III KAL. OCTOB. SERDICAE CONSTANTINO
A. VIII ET CONSTANTIO IV CONSS.
25 oktober 329
Idem a. ad Lucretium Paternum. Vacuatis rescriptis, per quae
munerum
civilium nonnullis est vacatio praestita, omnes civilibus
necessitatibus adgregentur, ita ut nec consensu civium vel curiae
praestita cuiquam immunitas valeat, sed omnes ad munerum societatem
conveniantur. DAT. VIII KAL. NOV. HERACLEAE CONSTANTINO A. VIII ET
CONSTANTIO IV CONSS.
25 november
329 Idem a. ad viros clarissimos praefectos praetorio. pr.
Post alia:
ad
senatum decurio non adspiret manentibus athuc his, qui eandem
dignitatem consecuti sunt. Filios sane militarium iuxta prius
praeceptum aut patris militiam adsequi volumus aut, si
detrectaverint militare et XXXV annos impleverint, curiis mancipari.
DAT. VII KAL. DEC. CONSTANTINO A. VIII ET CONSTANTIO IV CONSS.
329-332
Inscription at Ain Rchine
AE
1981,878 Gruenewald 133
Aug
13, 329 Law 110: To the people
CJ
1.19.3 Dorries p. 194
Nothing
can be requested which is contrary to the treasury or the law.
Aug
18, 329 Law 111
CJ
4.43.2 Dorries p. 194-195
Newborn
children can be sold by impoverished parents, but they retain the
right to buy the child back for the same price or by substituting a
replacement.
330 GALLICANO ET SYMMACHO CONSS.
Hoc
a. Febr. 22 Constantinus videtur constitisse Bessapaae ex Serdica
proficiscens in Thraciam, ubi die Mai. 11 Constantinopolis dedicata
est et ab ea inde die (primum 330 Iul. 16) Constantinoplis comparet
in subscriptionibus; mendas inesse probabile est etiam ob alias
causa in constitutionibus secundu codices anterioribus, in quibus
Constantinopolis invenitur. Aliquanto ante dedicationem
aedificationem coepisse, fortasse devicto Licinio a. 323?, adeoque
nomen Cons(tantinopolis) reperiri in nummis Crispi et Faustae
interfectorum a. 326 quamquam nuper intellectum est, nihilo minus
probabile est sedem eo Constantinum non transtulisse ante
dedicationem. Eo anno ibi post eam imperator resedit. Notabile est,
cum per annos praecentes passim leges novas ad praefectos urbis
Romae direxerit, inde a dedicata Constantinopli similes non reperiri
praefectosque quos enumerat laterculus praefectorum inde a. die 329
Iun. 19 ad mortem usque imperatoris in constitutionibus non
nominari.
5 februari 330
Idem a. Valentino consulari Numidiae. Lectores divinorum
apicum et
hypodiaconi
ceterique clerici, qui per iniuriam haereticorum ad curiam devocati
sunt, absolvantur et de cetero ad similitudinem orientis minime ad
curias devocentur, sed immunitate plenissima potiantur. DAT. NON.
FEB. SERDICA GALLICANO ET SYMMACHO CONSS.
5 februari 330
CT 16.2.7 Constantine
Lectors,
subdeacons, and other clergy shall not have to serve as local
senators. Given to the consular of Numidia.
22 februari
330 IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD TERTULLIANUM V(IRUM)
P(ERFECTISSIMUM)
COMITEM
DIOECESEOS ASIANAE. Si quis super invasis sui iuris locis prior
detulerit querimoniam, quae finali cohaeret cum proprietate
controversiae, prius super possessione quaestio finiatur et tunc
agrimensor ire praecipiatur ad loca, ut patefacta veritate huiusmodi
litigium terminetur. Quod si altera pars locorum adepta dominium
subterfugiendo moras attulerit, ne possit controversia definiri
locorum ordine, electus agrimensor dirigatur ad loca, ut, si fidelis
inspectio tenentis locum esse probaverit, petitor victus abscedat;
at si controversia eius claruerit, qui primo iudiciis detulerit
causam, ut invasor ille poena teneatur edicti, si tamen vi ea loca
eundem invasisse constiterit. Nam si per errorem aut incuriam domini
loca ab aliis possessa sunt, ipsis solis cedere debent. DAT. VIII K.
MART. BESSI GALLICANO ET SYMMACHO CONSS.
30 april 330
IDEM A. VALERIANO AGENTI VICARIAM P(RAE)F(ECTURAM). Quamvis
in
lucro
nec feminis (ius ignora)ntibus subveniri soleat, contra aetatem
adhuc inperfectam (locum) hoc non habere retro principum statuta
declarant. Ne igi(tur so)luta matrimonii caritate inhumanum aliquid
statuatur, (cense)mus, si futuris coniugibus tempore nubtiarum intra
aeta(tem c)onstitutis res fuerint donatae et traditae, non ideo eas
(posse) revocari, quia actis consignare donationem quondam (marit)us
noluit. DAT. III K. MAI. GALLICANO ET SYMMACHO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quamquam et feminis, quae per fragilitatem interdum excusari
possunt, in aliquibus causis, si negligentes fuerint, lex subvenire
noluerit, hic tamen specialiter voluit esse consultum, ut, si qua in
pupillaribus annis marito fuerit copulata, et sponsaliciam
largitatem per negligentiam actis non allegaverit, huius legis
beneficio, etsi gesta desint, inviolabilem in suo dominio donationem
noverit permanere.
18 mei 330
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Maximilianum consularem aquarum.
Possessores,
per
quorum fines formarum meatus transeunt, ab extraordinariis oneribus
volumus esse inmunes, ut eorum opera aquarum ductus sordibus obpleti
mundentur, nec ad aliud superindictae rei onus isdem possessoribus
adtinendis, ne circa res alias occupati repurgium formarum facere
non occurrant. Quod si neglexerint, amissione possessionum
multabuntur: nam fiscus eius praedium obtinebit, cuius neglegentia
perniciem formae congesserit. Praeterea scire eos oportet, per
quorum praedia ductus commeat, ut dextra laevaque de ipsis formis
quindecim pedibus intermissis arbores habeant; observante tuo
officio, ut, si quo tempore pullulaverint, excidantur, ne earum
radices fabricam formae conrumpant. DAT. XV KAL. IUN. GALLICANO ET
SYMMACHO CONSS.
21 juni 330
IDEM A. AD BASSUM P(RAEFECTUM) U(RBI). Si constiterit eum,
qui finalem
detulerit
quaestionem, priusquam aliquid sententia determinetur, rem sibi
alienam usurpare voluisse, non solum id quod male petebat amittat,
sed quo magis unusquisque contentus suo rem non expetat iuris
alieni, is, qui inreptor agrorum fuerit, in lite superatus tantum
agri modum, quantum diripere temptavit, amittat. LECTA APUD ACTA XII
KAL. IUL. GALLICANO ET SYMMACHO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quis pervasor finium fuerit approbatus, eo quod, priusquam
aliquid iudicio finiretur, id, quod alter tenuerat, invasisset, non
solum illud, quod male praesumpsit, amittat, sed ut non unusquisque
rem alienam occupet, quum fuerit in causa devictus pervasor iuris
alieni, tantum spatii restituat, quantum praesumpsit invadere.
26 juli 330
Imp. Constantinus a. Leontio Pf. P. Omnes solidi, in quibus
nostri
vultus
ac veneratio una est, uno pretio aestimandi sunt atque vendendi,
quamquam diversa formae mensura sit. Nec enim qui maiore habitu
faciei extenditur, maioris est pretii, aut qui angustiore
expressione concluditur, minoris valere credendus est, quum pondus
idem exsistat. Quod si quis aliter fecerit, aut capite puniri debet,
aut flammis tradi, vel alia poena mortifera. Quod ille etiam
patietur, qui mensuram circuli exterioris arroserit, ut ponderis
minuat quantitatem, vel figuratum solidum adultera imitatione in
vendendo subiecerit. DAT. VII KAL. AUG. GALLICANO ET BASSO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quicumque solidum circumciderit aut adulterum supposuerit aut falsam
monetam fecerit, capite puniatur.
29 november
330 CT 16.8.2 Constantine
Jewish
elders shall be exempt from compulsory public service. If such men
are currently decurions, they are exempt from travel.
30 november
330 Idem a. ad Ablavium praefectum praetorio. Qui devotione
tota
synagogis
iudaeorum patriarchis vel presbyteris se dederunt et in memorata
secta degentes legi ipsi praesident, inmunes ab omnibus tam
personalibus quam civilibus muneribus perseverent, ita ut illi, qui
iam forsitan decuriones sunt, nequaquam ad prosecutiones aliquas
destinentur, cum oporteat istiusmodi homines a locis in quibus sunt
nulla compelli ratione discedere. Hi autem, qui minime curiales
sunt, perpetua decurionatus immunitate potiantur. DAT. III KAL.
DECEMB. CONSTANTINOPOLI GALLICANO ET SYMMACHO CONSS.
330
Constantine to Athanasius. Having therefore knowledge of my
will, grant free
admission
to all who wish to enter into the Church. For if I learn that you
have hindered or excluded any who claim to be admitted into
communion with the Church, I will immediately send someone who shall
depose you by my command, and shall remove you from your place.
330
Optatus, De sch. Don., appendix 10 Constantine
Constantine
writes to the Numidian catholic church, granting them exemption from
compulsory public service. He orders that a new basilica be built at
public expense, to replace a basilica taken by the Donatists.
330 Eusebius,
H.e. 3.60-62 Constantine
Constantine
writes to Antioch, advising them not to elect Eusebius of Caesarea
as their bishop, since that would go against canon 15 of the Council
of Nicaea. Three letters in this connection survive.
330 Eusebius,
VC 3.52-53 Constantine
Constantine
orders pagan altars and idols to be destroyed at Mambre. Those who
used them are to be banished, and once the area has been purged a
basilica is to be built. If the local governors ignore this command
they will be punished.
Feb
5, 330 Law 112: Edict about the expansion of immunity to the
consular Valentinus of Numidia
CTh
16.2.7 Dorries p. 40, 195
Granting
exemptions for clergy.
Feb
5, 330 Letter to the bishops of Numidia
HD
App 10 Silli 33; Dorries p. 40-43
Stating
that catholic basilicas stolen by the Donatists should not be
disturbed and instead new ones constructed.
Apr
29, 330 Law 113: To Valerianus, the acting pefect
CTh
3.5.3 Dorries p. 195
Widows
inherit their husbands property even if a will does not document
this.
Jun
20, 330 Law 114: To Bassus, the praetorian prefect
CTh
2.26.2 Dorries p. 195
Whoever
takes part of someone else’s field must pay back twice as
much.
July
16, 330 Law 115
Frag
Vat 248 Dorries p. 195
Children
who do not take care of their parents will have what they have
received from them taken and returned to the parents.
330
Letter to Shapur, king of Persia
VC
4.9-13; THE 1.25.1-11; GEL 3.11.1-11; EH 8.38 Silli 34; Dorries p.
125-127
Denouncing
idolatry and persecution and expressing loving appreciation for the
blessings enjoyed by the Christians.
Nov
29, 330 Law 116: To Ablavius, the praetorian prefect
CTh
16.8.2 Dorries p. 195-196
Synagogue
leaders are exempt from all personal and civil duties and cannot be
forced out of their positions.
330-331
Letter to Macarius and the other bishops of Palestine
VC
3.52-53 Silli 35; Dorries p. 86-88
Instructing
them to destroy the idolatrous altars at Mamre.
330-331
Letter to the people of Antioch
VC
3.60 Silli 36; Dorries p. 89-92
Directing
them not to take away Eusebius of Caesarea to be their bishop.
330-331
Third letter to Eusebius at the request for the bishopric of Antioch
VC
3.61 Silli 37; Dorries p. 93-94
Praising
him for turning down the bishopric of Antioch.
330-331
Letter to Theodotus, Theodore, Narcissus, Aetius, Alpheius, and the
other bishops who are in Antioch
VC
3.62 Silli 38; Dorries p. 92-93
Denouncing
the attempt to make Eusebius bishop of Antioch.
331 BASSO ET ABLAVIO CONSS.
Constantinum
hoc quoque anno apparet mansisse Constantinopoli.
331 IMP.
CONSTANT(INUS) A. AD ABLAVIUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O. Placet
mulieri
non
licere propter suas pravas cupiditates marito repudium mittere
exquisita causa, velut ebrioso aut aleatori aut mulierculario, nec
vero maritis per quascumque occasiones uxores suas dimittere, sed in
repudio mittendo a femina haec sola crimina inquiri, si homicidam
vel medicamentarium vel sepulchrorum dissolutorem maritum suum esse
probaverit, ut ita demum laudata omnem suam dotem recipiat. Nam si
praeter haec tria crimina repudium marito miserit, oportet eam usque
ad acuculam capitis in domo mariti deponere et pro tam magna sui
confidentia in insulam deportari. In masculis etiam, si repudium
mittant, haec tria crimina inquiri conveniet, si moecham vel
medicamentariam vel conciliatricem repudiare voluerint. Nam si ab
his criminibus liberam eiecerit, omnem dotem restituere debet et
aliam non ducere. Quod si fecerit, priori coniugi facultas dabitur
domum eius invadere et omnem dotem posterioris uxoris ad semet ipsam
transferre pro iniuria sibi inlata [illata]. DAT ... BASSO ET
ABLAVIO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Certis rebus et probatis causis, inter uxorem et maritum repudiandi
locus patet; nam levi obiectione matrimonium solvere prohibentur.
Quod si forte mulier dicat maritum suum aut ebriosum aut luxuriae
deditum, non propterea repudiandus est, nisi forte eum aut homicidam
aut maleficum aut sepulcri violatorem esse docuerit, quibus
criminibus convictus sine culpa mulieris merito videtur excludi, et
mulier recepta dote discedit: nam si haec crimina mulier non
potuerit approbare, hac poena mulctatur, ut et dotem, quam dederat
vel pro ipsa data fuerat, et donationem, quam percepit, amittat
atque etiam exsilii relegatione teneatur. Quod si a viro mulier
repellatur, nec ipse, nisi certis criminibus ream docuerit, pro
levi, ut assolet, iurgio repudiare non permittitur, nisi fortasse
adulteram aut maleficam aut conciliatricem eam probare sufficiat.
Quod si docere non potuerit, dotem mulieri restituat et aliam ducere
non praesumat uxorem. Quod si forte tentaverit, habebit mulier
liberam facultatem, quae innocens eiecta est, domum mariti sui atque
omnem eius substantiam sibimet vindicare. Quod dignoscitur
ordinatum, ut etiam secundae uxoris dotem repudiata iniuste mulier
iubeatur acquirere.
1 maart 331
Idem a. ad Bassum Pf. P. Legis promulgatio, quae per sedecim
annos
bona
fide in libertate durantes contra eos, qui inquietant,
praescriptione defendit, non opitulatur his, qui ex ancillis
matribus et ingenuis patribus orti per id tempus in libertatis
affectu cum parentibus perdurarint, quandoquidem, nullo praecedente
iusto legitimae possessionis initio, usurpatio libertatis nuda
iactetur, quum neque redemptio a servitute neque vicarii traditio
servuli vel peculii assignatio valeat demonstrari; qui tituli
possint famulatus nexibus liberare eum, qui convenitur, si quo ex
iis genere usus in libertate esset per annos sedecim demoratus. Iure
enim communi maternam condicionem natum sequi necesse est, ita ut,
etsi herilem lectulum ancilla ascenderit, non liberorum domino, sed
servorum partum suscipiat. DAT. PRID. KAL. MART. BASSO ET ABLAVIO
CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Lex aliquando fuerat promulgata, ut, si quis sedecim annos sine ulla
molestia, nullo repetente vel pulsante, vixisset, et postea in
servitium non veniret. Sed hoc illis prodesse non poterit, quos de
ingenuis patribus et colonis mulieribus vel ancillis constiterit
procreatos, nisi forte patres eorum pro filiorum capite dominis,
quorum ancillas in consortio habent, aut vicaria mancipia cum
peculiis aut redemptionem status eorum solverint. Si vero patres hoc
se persolvisse non doceant, non poterunt matrum condicionem mutare,
aut mancipia dominis deperire, etiamsi de propriis dominis
nascantur, nisi per manumissionem servili condicione carere non
possunt. Si quis in libertate positus ancillam sibi copulaverit in
coniugium, si filii ex ipsis nati fuerint, origo matrem sequatur:
simili modo, si liberta servum duxerit maritum, agnatio servum
sequatur, quia ad inferiorem personam vadit origo.
18 april 331
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Ablavium Pf. P. Quicumque
puerum vel
puellam
proiectam de domo, patris vel domini voluntate scientiaque,
collegerit ac suis alimentis ad robur provexerit, eundem retineat
sub eodem statu, quem apud se collectum voluerit agitare, hoc est
sive filium sive servum eum esse maluerit: omni repetitionis
inquietudine penitus summovenda eorum, qui servos aut liberos
scientes propria voluntate domo recens natos abiecerint. DAT. XV
KAL. MAI. CONSTANTINOPOLI, BASSO ET ABLAVIO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quicumque expositum recenti partu, sciente patre vel matre vel
domino, collegerit ac suo labore educaverit, in illius, a quo
collectus est, potestate consistat, seu ingenuum seu servum, quem
nutrivit, esse voluerit, et si adoptare voluerit in filium vel
libertum aut in servitium permanere, propria utatur potestate.
1 juli 331
IDEM A. Ne ii, qui procul ab officio sublimitatis tuae sunt,
nullum
meritum
per sedulitatem vel obsequia praeferentes locum possint laborantibus
debitum inrepere, exceptores placet pro loco et ordine suo ad
commentarios accedere et eorum administrationi subrogari ceteris
propulsatis, ita ut inter exceptores, prout quisque locum tempore
adipisci meruerit, ordine et merito consequatur. DAT. KAL. IUL.
TREVIRIS BASSO ET ABLAVIO CONSS.
1 augustus 331
Idem a. ad universos provinciales. A proconsulibus et
comitibus
et
his qui vice praefectorum cognoscunt, sive ex appellatione sive ex
delegato sive ex ordine iudicaverint, provocari permittimus, ita ut
appellanti iudex praebeat opinionis exemplum et acta cum
refutatoriis partium suisque litteris ad nos dirigat. A praefectis
autem praetorio, qui soli vice sacra cognoscere vere dicendi sunt,
provocari non sinimus, ne iam nostra contingi veneratio videatur.
Quod si victus oblatam nec receptam a iudice appellationem adfirmet,
praefectos adeat, ut aput eos de integro litiget tamquam
appellatione suscepta. Superatus enim si iniuste appellasse
videbitur, lite perdita notatus abscedet, aut, si vicerit, contra
eum iudicem, qui appellationem non receperat, ad nos referri necesse
est, ut digno supplicio puniatur. DAT. KAL. AUG. PROPOSITA KAL.
SEPT. CONSTANTINOPOLI BASSO ET ABLAVIO CONSS.
1 augustus 331
Idem a. ad universos provinciales. Qui licitam provocationem
omiserit,
perpetuo silere debebit nec a nobis impudens petere per
supplicationem auxilium. Quod si fecerit, deportationis poena
plectendus est. DAT. KAL. AUG. PROPOSITA KAL. SEPT. BASSO ET ABLAVIO
CONSS.
1 augustus 331
IDEM A. AD UNIVERSOS PROVINCIALES. Posta alia: Si finalis
controversia
fuerit, tum demum arbiter non negetur, cum intra quinque pedes
locum, de quo agitur apud praesidem, esse constiterit; cum de maiore
spatio causa, quoniam non finalis, sed proprietatis est, apud ipsum
praesidem debeat terminari. Et si socius quid petat a socio, ante
praeses iudicet, an praestari aliquid oporteat et tunc demum illud
per arbitros restituatur, quod constiterit esse solvendum. DAT. K.
AUG. BASSO ET ABLAVIO CONSS.
1 augustus 331
[IDEM A. AD] UNIVERSOS PROVINCIALES. Posta alia: Minorum
defensores,
[hoc es]t tutores vel curatores, si participes rei, quae lite
posci[tur, it]a, ut iussum est, edere detractaverint eosdemque
contra ve[rum] nominaverint, quoniam pupillo nihil vel adulto perire
opor[tet, in] quolibet litis eventu tantum de proprio pecuniae fisco
infe[rant, q]uantum aestimatione habita ex tertia parte colligitur.
Quod[si pau]peres sint, capitis deminutione plectantur et desinant
cives [esse R]omani, ita ut ius integrum ipsis minoribus reservetur.
ET CE[TERA. D]AT. K. AUG. BASSO ET ABLABIO CONSS.
1 augustus 331
Imp. Constantinus a. ad provinciales. Post alia: lite
pendente illud,
quod
in controversiam devocatur, in coniunctam personam vel extraneam
donationibus vel emptionibus vel quibuslibet aliis contractibus
minime transferri oportet, tanquam nihil factum sit lite nihilominus
peragenda. Quod si tutelae causa vertitur, post examen iudicis in
supplementum pronuntiationis dentur arbitri, qui non iam arbitri,
sed exsecutores putandi sunt etc. DAT. KAL. AUG. BASSO ET ABLAVIO
CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Res, quae proposita actione repetitur, transferri a possidente ad
alterum nullis contractibus potest; neque inde aliqua fieri
scriptura permittitur, nisi prius lis, de qua agitur, fuerit iudicio
definita.
1
augustus 331 Imp. Constantinus a. ad universos provinciales. In
insulam deportandi sunt cum amissione omnium facultatum, quae fisco
addicendae sunt, ii, qui provocatione omissa litem reparare
temptaverint contra comitum ceterorumque sententias qui vice nostra
iudicaverint, firmantes se per metum appellationis omisisse
auxilium. In qua re vel nostrum vel praefectorum praetorio ex nostra
erit iussione iudicium. DAT. KAL. AUG. PROPOSITA KAL. SEPT. BASSO ET
ABLAVIO CONSS.
4
augustus 331 IDEM A. AD EVAGRIUM. Ii, qui ex officialibus
quorumcumque officiorum geniti sunt, sive eorundem parentes adhuc
sacramento tenetur sive iam dimissi erunt, in parentum locum
procedant. DAT. PRID. NON AUG. BASSO ET ABLAVIO CONSS.
4
augustus 331 Idem a. ad Evagrium pf. p. Quoniam nonnulli diversarum
civitatum curiales intemperanter minores, quibus publica tutela
debetur, ad curiae consortium devocarunt, ut septem vel octo annorum
constitutos nonnullos nominasse firmentur, decernimus, ut omnino
nullus in curiam nominationibus devocetur, nec functionum obsequia
subire cogatur, nisi qui decimum et octavum annum aetatis fuerit
ingressus. Quod et in futurum arceri volumus, et eos eximi, qui
infra eius aetatis terminos constituti iam nominati sunt, curialibus
et vinculis absolvantur. Quum enim decimum et octavum annum aetatis
intraverint, si militiae nomen inserere iuxta legem datam non
potuerint vel supersederint, municipali poterunt dari obsequio. DAT.
PRID. NON AUG. BASSO ET ABLAVIO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Minores decem et octo annorum aetate curiales nec nominari a
quibuscumque nec ad servitia applicari debere: quia hoc lex
sufficere credit, ut a decem et octo annis necessitati publicae, si
necesse fuerit, applicentur, ita ut, si qui infra hanc aetatem ante
nominati iam fuerint, absolvantur.
12 augustus
331 Idem a. ad Evagrium pf. p. Nullus decurionum ad
procurationes
vel
curas civitatum accedat, nisi omnibus omnino muneribus satisfecerit
patriae vel aetate vel meritis. Qui vero per suffragium ad hoc
pervenerit administrare desiderans, non modo ab expetito officio
repellatur, sed epistola quoque vel codicilli ab eo protinus
auferantur, et ad comitatum destinentur. DAT. PRID. ID. AUG. BASSO
ET ABLAVIO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Ista lex hoc praecipit, nullum curialem, nisi omnibus curiae
officiis per ordinem actis, aut curatoris aut defensoris officium
debere suscipere, nisi omnibus, ut dictum est, ante muneribus
satisfecerit, quae patriae ordine debentur. Nam si praefatus contra
hanc praeceptionem quolibet suffragio aut sub quocumque obtentu
honoris se munire voluerit, et obtentis careat et, ubi rerum domini
fuerint, dirigatur.
6 oktober 331
Idem a. Quaecumque mulierum post hanc legem servi contubernio
se
miscuerit, et non conventa per denuntiationes, sicut ius statuebat
antiquum, statum libertatis amittat. DAT. PRID. NON. OCT. BASSO ET
ABLABIO CONSS.
18 oktober 331
IDEM A. AD BASSUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O. Super his, qui a
praeside
vel a quolibet alio iudice sententiam dictam infirmari deposcunt,
sub eo fine sublimitatis tuae succedat examen, ut, si internis
negotii usquequaque decursis ex evidenti claruerit sententiam a iure
iustitiaque discedere, ea penitus explosa controversia de aequitate
terminum capiat. Quod si consentanea sit legibus iam prompta
sententia, eius pronuntiationis inprobus oppugnator, si patrimonio
circumfluit, biennio in insulam relegatione plectatur eiusque
bonorum media portio fiscalibus compendiis addicta cedat: quod si
agrestis vitae sit aut egentis, ad biennii tempus in metallum
detrudendus est. Quam legem in annotationibus quoque nostris de
iterando post sententiam iudicio custodire debebis. DAT. XIV K.
NOVEMB. BASSO ET ABLAVIO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quicumque causa dicta discussoque negotio a quocumque fuerit
superatus et hanc ipsam litem postea reparare tentaverit, si pro
ipso, qui antea addictus est, fuerit legibus lata sententia, prius
iudicium non valebit. Nam si et apud alium iudicem fuerit superatus,
si digna idoneaque persona est, biennio in exsilium deputetur, et
medietatem facultatum suarum fiscus acquirat. Si vero indigna et
pauperior persona est, in metallum biennio deputetur.
1 november 331
IDEM A. AD PROVINCIALES. Praesides publicas notiones
exerceant
frequentatis
per examina tribunalibus, nec civiles controversias audituri
secretariis sese abscondant, ut iurgaturus conveniendi eos nisi
pretio facultatem impetrare non possit, et cum negotiis omnibus,
quae ad se delata fuerint, exhibuerint audientiam et frequens
praeconis, ut adsolet fieri, inclamatio nullum, qui postulare
voluerit, deprehenderit, expletis omnibus actibus publicis
privatisque sese recipiant. Iustissimos autem et vigilantissimos
iudices publicis adclamationibus conlaudandi damus omnibus
potestatem, ut honoris eis auctiores proferamus processus, e
contrario iniustis et maleficis querellarum vocibus accusandis, ut
censurae nostrae vigor eos absumat; nam si verae voces sunt nec ad
libidinem per clientelas effusae, diligenter investigabimus,
praefectis praetorio et comitibus, qui per provincias constituti
sunt, provincialium nostrorum voces ad nostrum scientiam
referentibus. P(RO)P(OSITIA) K. NOV. CONSTANTINOPOLI BASSO ET
ABLAVIO CONSUL.
1 november 331
IDEM A. AD PROVINCIALES. Cessent iam nunc rapaces
officialium
manus,
cessent, inquam: nam nisi moniti cessaverint, gladiis praecidentur.
Non sit venale iudicis velum, non ingressus redempti, non infame
licitationibus secretarium, non visio ipsa praediis cum pretio.
Aeque aures iudicantis pauperrimis ac divitibus reserentur. Absit ab
inducendo eius qui officii princeps dicitur depraedatio; nullas
litigatoribus adiutores eorundem officii principum concussiones
adhibeant; centurionum aliorumque officialium parva magnaque
poscentium intolerandi inpetus oblidantur eorumque, qui iurgantibus
acta restituunt, inexpleta aviditas temperetur. Semper invigilet
industria praesidalis, ne quicquam a praedictis generibus hominum de
litigatore sumatur. Qui si de civilibus causis quidquam putaverint
esse poscendum, aderit armata censura, quae nefariorum capita
cervicesque detruncet, data copia universis qui concussi fuerint, ut
praesidum instruant notionem. Qui si dissimulaverint, super eodem
conquerendi vocem omnibus aperimus apud comites provinciarum, aut
apud praefectos praetorio, si magis fuerint in vicino, ut his
referentibus edocti super talibus latrociniis supplicia proferamus.
DAT. KAL. NOVEMB. CONSTANT(INO)P(OLI) BASSO ET ABLAVIO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Officiales omnium iudicum venales esse non audeant, neque pretium de
introitu occurrentium aut litigantium vel egressu requirant. Sed
interpellantes tam divites, quam sine ullo praemio pauperes
audiantur. Quod si rapaces esse voluerint, gladio puniantur, aut
certe de eorum rapacitate dominicis auribus referatur.
1
december 331 Idem a. hiereis et archisynagogis et patribus
synagogarum et ceteris, qui in eodem loco deserviunt. Hiereos et
archisynagogos et patres synagogarum et ceteros, qui synagogis
deserviunt, ab omni corporali munere liberos esse praecipimus.
DAT.
KAL. DEC. CONSTANTINOPOLI BASSO ET ABLAVIO CONSS.
1 december 331
CT 16.8.4 Constantine
Jewish
priests and synagogue leaders are exempt from compulsory public
service of a corporeal nature.
Jun
30, 331 Inscription at Orcistus
CIL
III 352, 7000; ILS 6091; MAMA VII 305; FIRA 195 Dorries p. 212-214;
Gruenewald 446, p. 147-150
A
letter to the city granting its request to be restored to its
ancient city status, another to Ablabius affirming the same, and a
third to the city liberating them from paying tax to Nacolea.
Apr
17, 331 Law 117: To Ablavius, the praetorian prefect
CTh
5.9.1 Dorries p. 196
Whoever
takes in and raises a child who has been put out has the rights to
him and is not required to return him to his parents or master.
Aug
4, 331 Law 118
CJ
12.47.1 Dorries p. 196
Officials’
sons are bound to follow in their father’s profession.
Nov
1, 331 Law 119
CJ
1.40.3 Dorries p. 196
Public
acclamation is introduced into the court process.
331
Law 120: To Ablavius, the praetorian prefect
CTh
3.16.1 Dorries p. 196-197
Limiting
lawful grounds for divorcing a man to murder, witchcraft, and
graverobbing and divorcing a woman to adultery, witchcraft, and
prostitution.
332 PACATIANO ET HILARIANO CONSS.
11 april 332
IDEM A. AD LEONTIUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O. Iam dudum
sanximus,
ut
veteranorum filii, qui post sedecim annos militiae munus subire non
possunt vel armis gerendis habiles non extiterint, curiis
mancipentur. DAT. III ID. APRIL. PACATIANO ET HILARIANO CONSS.
12 april 332
[IDEM] A. PACATIANO P(RAEFECTO) P(RAETORI)O Si is, qui
puellam suis
nubtiis
pactus est, (intra) biennium exsequi nubtias supersederit eiusque
spatii fine (decur)so in alterius postea coniunctionem puella
pervene(rit, ni)hil fraudis ei sit, quae nubtias maturando vota sua
diut(ius lu)di non passa est. DAT. PRID. ID. APRIL. MARCIAN(O)P(OLI)
PACATI[ANO] ET HILARIANO CONSS.
12 april 332
(IDEM A.) AD PACATIANUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O. Patri
puellae
aut
tutori aut curatori aut cui(libet) eius adfini non liceat, cum prius
militi puellam despon(deri)t, eandem alii in matrimonium tradere.
Quod si intra bi(enni)um, ut perfidiae reus in insulam relegetur.
Quod si pac(tis n)ubtiis transcurso biennio qui puellam desponderit
al(teri) eandem sociaverit, in culpam sponsi potius quam puel(lae
r)eferatur, nec quicquam noceat ei, qui post biennium pu(ella)m
marito alteri tradidit. DAT. PRID. ID. APRIL. MARCIAN(O)P(OLI)
(PACATIANO E)T HILARIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quis aut privatus aut militans, postquam sponderit, cum patre,
tutore vel curatore puellae vel propinquis de puellae coniunctione
definierit, debet post definitionem intra biennium nuptias
celebrare. Quod si tarditate aut negligentia sponsi biennii tempus
excesserit, et alio viro se puella coniunxerit, absoluta erit a
calumnia, vel ipsa, vel quicumque suorum eam tradiderit: quia culpa
est illius, qui differendo coniunctionem suam alteri nubendi locum
patefecit. Nam si intra biennium data fuerit, quid observetur,
evidentius sequente lege cognoscetur.
27 juli 332
Imp. Constantinus a. ad concilium Byzacenorum. Libertis
ingratis
in
tantum iura adversa sunt, ut, si quadam iactantia vel contumacia
cervices erexerint
aut
levis offensae contraxerint culpam, a patronis rursus sub imperia
dicionemque mittantur. DAT. VI KAL. AUG. COLONIAE AGRIPPINAE,
PACATIANO ET HILARIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quaecumque persona servilis a domino suo fuerit consecuta
libertatem, si postea superbire coeperit aut patronum, id est
manumissorem suum laeserit, amissa libertate, quam meruit, in
servitium revocetur.
27 juli 332
IDEM A. AD CONCILIUM BYZACENORUM. Servus necessarius heres
instituendus
est, quia non magis patrimonium quam infamiam consequi videtur. Unde
claret actionem inofficiosi fratribus relaxatam, cum infamiae
aspergitur vitiis qui heres extitit, omniaque fratribus tradi, quae
per turpitudinem aut aliquam levem notam capere non potest
institutus. Ita in hac quoque parte, si quando libertis heredibus
institutis fratres fuerint alieni, inofficiosi actione proposita
praevaleant in omnibus occupandis facultatibus defuncti, quas ille
perperam ad libertos voluerat pertinere. DAT. VI KAL. AUG. COLONIAE
AGRIPPINAE PACATIANO ET HILARIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si servo pro necessitate debiti a domino cum libertate hereditas
fuerit dimissa, quia huiusmodi persona videtur infamis, germanis
fratribus, qui praetermissi sunt, agendi contra testamentum datur
facultas: ut remota infami persona, salva tamen, quam meruit,
libertate, hereditatem germani fratres ad se debeant revocare. Nam
et si praetermissis fratribus liberti per testamentum heredes
fuerint instituti, simili modo germani defuncti eos a bonis
fraternae hereditatis excludent, sibique omnia, quae reliquerit,
vindicabunt.
26 oktober 332
...Si post adsertionem defensionemque ordinatam alius in
iudicium
acciri petiverit, adsertio quidem et defensio inter omnes ordinetur,
ipse vero tot mancipia, quot petebat, fisco cogatur inferre. quod si
adsertor defecerit, vel praedictam multam agnoscat vel, si per
inopiam id implere non possit, in metallum detrudetur: eadem circa
minorum defensores, cum liberalis causa agitur, forma servanda. Et
cetera. DAT. VII K. NOVEMB. CONSTANTINOPOLI PACATIANO ET HILARIANO
CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si post adsertionem defensionemque dispositam alius in iudicium qui
se dominum dicit petierit exhiberi, inter omnes quidem ordinabitur
adsertio, sed ipse ad certam poenam tenebitur. Idem est in adsertore
vel defensoribus minorum.
29 oktober 332
Imp. Constantinus a. ad provinciales. Apud quemcumque
colonus iuris
alieni
fuerit inventus, is non solum eundem origini suae restituat, verum
super eodem capitationem temporis agnoscat. 1. Ipsos etiam colonos,
qui fugam meditantur, in servilem condicionem ferro ligari
conveniet, ut officia, quae liberis congruunt, merito servilis
condemnationis compellantur implere. DAT. III. KAL. NOV. PACATIANO
ET HILARIANO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quis alienum colonum sciens in domo sua retinuerit, ipsum prius
domino restituat et tributa eius, quam diu apud eum fuerit, cogatur
exsolvere: ipse vero, qui noluit esse, quod natus est, in servitium
redigatur.
332 or 322
Eusebius, VC, 3.64-65 Constantine
Constantine
forbids heretical groups to assemble. Their buildings must be
surrendered to the catholic church. [See note on the authenticity of
anti-pagan legislation in the Life of Constantine.]
Feb
22-March 6, 332 Letter to the people of the catholic church of
Alexandria
ACA
61-62; THE 1.27; GEL 3.16.1-3 Silli 39; Dorries p. 96-99
Encouraging
them to show Christian love instead of following the example of
wicked men.
May
30, 332 Law 121: To Maximus, the praetorian prefect
CJ
6.36.7 Dorries p. 197
Since
codicils and testaments are the same thing they are given the same
weight.
Oct
17, 332 Law 122: To Tiberianus, count of Spain
CJ
6.1.6 Dorries p. 197
Setting
torture as the proper way to ascertain truth from slaves.
332-333
Digest of a letter to the censor Dalmatius
ACA
65.1 Dorries p. 99
"Requiring
him to institute a judicial enquiry" about Athanasius’
alleged murder of Arsenius.
333 DALMATIO ET ZENOFILO CONSS.
19
april 333 (IDEM A. FELIC)I. Quoniam per neglegentiam seu proditionem
tu(torum) et curatorum possessiones iuris enfyteutici vitio
in(terce)dente commissi e minorum fortunis avelluntur, pla(cet, ut)
tutor curatorve, cuius officio manente possessiones (mino)ris iuris
enfyteutici praerogativam commissi offen(sa pe)rdiderint, tantum de
facultatibus propriis censura im(mine)nte minoribus restituat,
quanto rem valere potuisse (cons)tabit. DAT. XIV K. MAI.
CONST(ANTINO)P(OLI) DALMATIO ET ZENOFILO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si forte cesserit, ut minores possessionem iuris emphyteutici, hoc
est, quod ex fisci bonis parentes eorum habere meruerant, sub
qualibet praestatione tenuerint, et hoc per negligentiam sive
proditionem tutoris aut imminutum fuerit aut certe sublatum,
quicquid perierit, a tutore vel curatore esse reddendum.
4 mei 333
Imp. Constantinus a. et c. ad Severum comitem Hispaniarum.
Scripturae
diversae
et fidem sibi invicem derogantes, ab altera parte prolatae, nihil
firmitatis habere potuerunt. DAT. IV NON. MAI. CONSTANTINOPOLI,
DALMATIO ET ZENOPHILO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quis multiplici scriptura contractum suum munire cupiens de una
re venditionem et donationem proferat vel quaecumque alia documenta:
omnia rescindantur, quia impugnantes se chartulas lex haec vetat
admitti.
4 mei 333
IDEM A. AD. SEVERUM COM(ITEM) HISPANIARUM. Data iam pridem
lege statuimus,
ut
donationes interveniente actorum testificatione conficiantur. Quod
vel maxime inter necessarias coniunctissimasque personas convenit
custodiri, si quidem clandestinis ac domesticis fraudibus facile
quidvis pro negotii opportunitate confingi potest vel id quod vere
gestum est aboleri. Cum igitur ne liberos quidem ac parentes lex
nostra ab actorum confectione secernat, id, quod necessario super
donationibus apud acta conficiendis iam pridem statuimus, universos
teneat, salvo tamen iuris privilegio, quod liberis et parentibus
suffragatur, scilicet ne traditionis vel mancipationis sollemnitas
sit necessaria. DAT. IV NON. MAI. CONST(ANTINO)P(OLI), DALMATIO ET
ZENOFILO CONSS.
5 mei 333
IDEM A. MAXIMUM P(RAEFECTUM) P(RAETORI)O. Utilitate suadente
annonarios
et
actuarios condicionales esse praecipimus, annonis etiam adiuvari et
capitationem eorum qui censiti sunt haberi immunem. Ideoque tua
sollertia competentia monebit officia, ut actuariis binas annonas,
annonariis vero singulas protinus subministrent, capitationem quoque
ipsorum tantum, qui ex his censiti sunt, faciat haberi immunem,
quoad in actu fuerint constituti, nam postea vel laus eos et
dignitas honorabit vel, si in culpa fuerint deprehensi, poena
comitabitur. EMISSA III
333 or 327
Socrates, H.e. 1.9 Constantine
Constantine
orders that Arians now be referred to as Porphyrians, that all works
of Arius or Arians be burned, and that anyone hiding a work of Arius
suffer capital punishment.
333 or 327
Gelasius, H.e. 3.19 Constantine
Constantine
sends a long, belittling letter to Arius and his followers. At the
end, he threatens to heavily fine the Arians and force them to
accept compulsory public services unless they immediately return to
the catholic faith. If Arius returns, he promises to be lenient.
May
5, 333 Law 123
CS
1 Dorries p. 197-199
The
judgments of the bishop are final.
333
Fourth letter to Eusebius about the restoration of the divine books
VC
4.36; SOC 1.9; THE 1.16.1-4; GEL 3.4.1-5; EH 8.27; CAS 2.16.1-5
Silli 40; Dorries p. 81-82
Instruction
to prepare more copies of the Scriptures in Constantinople.
333
First letter to Athanasius
ACA
59.6; SOC 1.27; SOZ 2.22.5; GEL 3.14; EH 8.48 Silli 41; Dorries p.
95-96
Threatening
to despose him if he excluded from the church those who wished to
enter its communion.
333
Edict to the bishops and people against Arius
ATH
39; SOC 1.9; GEL 2.36.1-2; EH 8.25; CAS 2.15; EOMIA 1.2.4a,b; HNI
1.1; KAU 2.1; SM 6-7 Silli 42; Dorries p. 112-113; Opitz 33
The
followers of Arius should be called Porphyrians and all their
writings burned.
333
Letter to Arius and the Arians with him
ATH
40; GEL 3.19; EPI heresy 69.9.4 Silli 43; Dorries p. 103-112; Opitz
34
Pleading
with him to end his madness and return to the church.
Sept
27, 333 Document Law 124: To the people
CTh
13.3.3 Dorries p. 199-200
Doctors
and professors are exempt from all public duties.
Nov
27, 333 Letter to Arius
SOC
1.25; EH 8.47 Silli 44; Dorries p. 77-78; Opitz 29
Summoning
him to the court.
Dec
12, 333-May 22, 337 Inscription at Muzuc
CIL
VIII 12064 Gruenewald 143
Dec
25, 333-Sept 18, 335 Inscription at Spello
CIL
XI 5265; AE 1967,112; ILS 705; ILCV 5
Dorries
p. 209-211; Gruenewald 236, p. 150-153
Granting
the city Hispellum the name "Flavia Constans" and the
right to build a temple so that their priests would not have to
travel to Tuscia.
Dec
25, 333-May 22, 337 Inscription at Goren Chiflik
SGLIB
150 Gruenewald 411
End
of 333-334 Second letter to Athanasius
ACA
68 Silli 45; Dorries p. 99-102
Declaring
the Melitians’ accusations against Athanasius to be false.
333-334
Letter to John
ACA
70.2 Silli 46; Dorries p. 102-103
Commending
him for his return to the church and granting him use of public
conveyance to come to him.
334 OPTATO ET PAVLINO CONSS.
8 maart 334
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Pacatianum praefectum praetorio.
Quoniam
suariorum
corpus ad paucos devenit, iubemus eos adstante populo Romano dicere,
quibus excusatio sit delata, quibus provenerit onus, ut his in
medium publicae rationis eductis exemplum rei naviculariae
proponatur. Itaque dinoscant facultates proprias suariorum esse
obnoxias muneri ac de duobus alterum eligant; aut retineant bona
quae suariae functioni destricta sunt ipsique suario teneantur
obsequio aut idoneos quos volunt nominent, qui necessitati idem
satisfaciant. Nullum enim vacare ab huius rei munere patimur, sed
sive honoribus evecti sive quolibet versutiae genere fugerunt,
revocari eos iubemus idque ipsum teste et audiente populo Romano
compleri ac nos super his consuli, ut animadvertamus in eos, qui hac
tergiversatione usi sint; de reliquo functionis huius vacatione
nulli penitus tribuenda, sed eo qui subripere potuerit post
beneficium infirmatum, salutis etiam periculum subituro. DAT. VIII
ID. MART. ROMAE OPTATO ET PAULINO CONSS.
30 maart 334
Idem a. ad Severum comitem Hispaniarum.
Insinuatum
est quosdam patres principalis coniugii copulatione destitutos in
perniciem filiorum ultra misericordiam sanguinis properare et
receptis deinceps aliis matrimoniis maiorem sibi in rebus filiorum
vindicare personam: qui quoniam in his usufructuarii remansisse
videntur, usurpare ea ac pervertere confidunt, ut per hoc his, qui
in orbitate remanserunt, nulla nec possidendi nec litigandi
tribuatur occasio. Ideoque placet, ne quis pater receptis deinceps
matrimoniis earum rerum, quae prioris coniugis fuerunt, sibi ius
defendendum existimet nisi tutelae vice, donec minores probata
aetate esse videantur. His autem moderatio nostra cuncta iubet
servari adque restitui. PROPOSITA III KAL. APRIL. CONSTANTINOPOLI
OPTATO ET PAULINO CONSS.
30 april 334
IMP. CONSTANT(INUS) A. GERULO RATIONALI TRIUM PROVINCIARUM.
In
Sardinia fundis patrimonialibus vel enfyteuticariis per diversos
nunc dominos distributis oportuit sic possessionum fieri divisiones,
ut integra apud possessorem unumquemque servorum agnatio permaneret.
Quis enim ferat liberos a parentibus, a fratribus sorores, a viris
coniuges segregari? Igitur qui dissociata in ius diversum mancipia
traxerunt, in unum redigere eadem cogantur: ac si cui propter
redintegrationem necessitudinum servi cesserint, vicaria per eum qui
eosdem susceperit mancipia reddantur et invigila, ne per provinciam
aliqua posthac querella super divisis mancipiorum affectibus
perseveret. DAT. III. KAL. MAI. PROCULO ET PAULINO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
In divisione patrimoniorum seu fiscalium domorum sive privatorum
observari specialiter debet, ut, quia iniustum est, filios a
parentibus vel uxores a maritis, quum ad quemcumque possessio
pervenerit, sequestrari, mancipia, quae permixta fuerint, id est
uxor cum filiis et marito suo, datis vicariis, ad unum debeant
pertinere, cui necesse fuerit commutare, quod sollicitudo
ordinantium debet specialiter custodire, ut separatio fieri omnino
non possit.
19 mei 334
IDEM A. AD VERONICIANUM VIC(ARI)UM ASIAE. Vorax et
fraudulentum
numerariorum
propositum, qui diversis rectoribus obsequuntur, ita inhibendum est,
ut et antea sanximus et nunc itidem sancimus, condicioni eos subdi
tormentorum et eculeis adque lacerationibus subiacere nec ultra
biennium hoc fungi obsequio. ET CETERA. DAT. XIV KAL. IUN. OPTATO ET
PAULINO CONSS.
19 mei 334
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Veronicianum vicarium Asiae.
Post
alia: damus provincialibus facultatem, ut, quicumque sibi a
numerariis, qui diversis rectoribus obsequuntur, conquesti fuerint
aliquas venditiones extortas, irritas inanesque efficiant, et male
vendita ad venditoris dominium revertantur, amissione etiam pretii
illicitis ac detestandis emptoribus puniendis. DAT. XIV KAL. IUN.
OPTATO ET PAULINO CONSS.
Haec
lex expositione non indiget.
18 juni 334
IDEM A. ANDRONICO. Si contra pupillos, viduas vel morbo
fatigatos
et
debiles impetratum fuerit lenitatis nostrae iudicium, memorati a
nullo nostrorum iudicum compellantur comitatui nostro sui copiam
facere. Quin immo intra provinciam, in qua litigator et testes vel
instrumenta sunt, experiantur iurgandi fortunam atque omni cautela
servetur, ne terminos provinciarum suarum cogantur excedere. Quod si
pupilli vel viduae aliique fortunae iniuria miserabiles iudicium
nostrae serenitatis oraverint, praesertim cum alicuius potentiam
perhorrescunt, cogantur eorum adversarii examini nostro sui copiam
facere. DAT. XV KAL. IUL. CONSTANT(INO)P(OLI) OPTATO ET PAULINO
CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Quicumque adversus pupillos, viduas et aegrotos nostra praecepta
meruerit, eos de locis suis commovendi vel extra provinciam suam
usquam penitus protrahendi licentiam summovemus, ut ibi causam suam
dicant, ubi instructiores esse et testimonia possint facilius
invenire. Sane si ipsi, quorum fatigationi consulimus, nos
crediderint expetendos, huic voluntati eorum veniendi aditum non
negamus; ita ut adversarii eorum sub praesentia principis adesse per
rectorem provinciae compellantur.
5 juli 334
Idem a. ad Pacatianum praefectum praetorio. Etsi potior aput
nos
privatorum
causa est quam fisci tutela, praecipimus tamen, si a nobis plures
defensacula fisci meruerint, eum praeponi ceteris, qui melior
innocentia, potior litteris, pollentior reliquis examinata fide esse
noscetur, etiamsi post alios hoc beneficium a nostra clementia
reportavit. DAT. III NON. IUL. SINGIDUNO OPTATO ET PAULINO CONSS.
24 augustus
334 Idem a. ad Iulianum praesidem. Iurisiurandi religione
testes prius,
quam
perhibeant testimonium, iam dudum arctari praecepimus, et ut
honestioribus potius fides testibus habeatur. Simili more sanximus,
ut unius testimonium nemo iudicum in quacumque causa facile patiatur
admitti. Et nunc manifeste sancimus, ut unius omnino testis
responsio non audiatur, etiamsi praeclarae curiae honore
praefulgeat. DAT. VIII. KAL. SEPT. NAISSO, OPTATO ET PAULINO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Testes priusquam de causa interrogentur, sacramento debere
constringi, ut iurent, se nihil falsi esse dicturos. Hoc etiam
dicit, ut honestioribus magis quam vilioribus testibus fides potius
admittatur. unius autem testimonium, quamlibet splendida et idonea
videatur esse persona, nullatenus audiendum.
26 augustus
334 Imp. Constantinus a. ad Felicem. Architectis quam
plurimis opus
est;
sed quia non sunt, sublimitas tua in provinciis Africanis ad hoc
studium eos impellat, qui ad annos ferme duodeviginti nati liberales
litteras degustaverint. Quibus ut hoc gratum sit, tam ipsos quam
eorum parentes ab his, quae personis iniungi solent, volumus esse
inmunes ipsisque qui discent salarium competens statui. PROPOSITA VI
KAL. SEPT. KARTHAGINE OPTATO ET PAULINO CONSS.
7 september
334 Idem a. ad Felicem. Commoda nobis visa est ea
dispositio,
quae
expresse navicularios in hunc ordinem formavit, ut non promiscue,
sed per vicissitudines rite servatas iuges cursus agnoscerent et
exiguos implerent, quo ita levamentis alternantis auxilii cunctorum
fortunae et tenuiorum potissimum confirmarentur nec necessitas
fieret aliquos semper longiora lustrare ac plerisque obnoxios
casibus fieri. Quod ne ulterius possit accidere, labor omnibus par
et iustus adiunctus sit et subsidia pari ratione deferantur nec
tenuiores in querellas infructuosae complorationis incurrant.
PROPOSITA VII ID. SEPT. KARTHAGINE OPTATO ET PAULINO CONSS.
1 december 334
Idem a. naviculariis Orientis. Pro commoditate urbis, quam
aeterno
nomine
iubente deo donavimus, haec vobis privilegia credidimus deferenda,
ut navicularii omnes a civilibus muneribus et oneribus et obsequiis
habeantur inmunes et ne honores quidem civicos, ex quibus aliquod
incommodum sentiant, subire cogantur. Ab administratione etiam
tutelae, sive legitimae sive eius, quam magistratus aut provinciae
rectores iniungunt, habeantur inmunes. Et vacatione legis Iuliae et
Papiae potiantur, ut etiam nullis intervenientibus liberis et viri
ex testamento uxorum solidum capiant et ad uxores integra voluntas
perveniat maritorum. De proprietate etiam vel hereditate vel
qualibet alia civili causa pulsati ne ex rescripto quidem nostro ad
extraordinarium iudicium evocentur, sed agentibus in suo foro
respondeant. Et ad exemplum Alexandrini stoli quaternas in frumento
centesimas consequantur ac praeterea per singula milia singulos
solidos, ut his omnibus animati et nihil paene de suis facultatibus
expendentes cura sua frequentent maritimos commeatus. ACCEPTA KAL.
DEC. OPTATO ET PAULINO CONSS.
334
Athanasius, Apol. sec. 68 Constantine
Constantine,
hearing that Arsenius is alive, has found all the charges against
Athanasius to be false, the results of wicked plots against him. He
condemns the recent disturbances in the streets of Alexandria. He
instructs Athanasius to take this letter with him and read it
publicly often. He promises to personally look into any future
allegations or disturbances against Athanasius, and punish anyone
bringing false accusations or stirring up trouble.
334
Athanasius, Apol. sec. 70 Constantine
In
a letter, Constantine rebukes the Alexandrians for causing trouble
and encourages them all to accept Athanasius, whom he has cleared of
all charges against him.
334
Athanasius, Apol. sec. 70 Constantine
Constantine
praises John Archaph, a former leader of the Meletians, for uniting
with Athanasius. He summons him to his court by means of public
transportation.
Apr
29, 334? Law 125: To Gerulus, accountant of three provinces
CTh
2.25.1 Dorries p. 200
Slaves
are not to be separated from their families as masters divide up
inheritance.
May
19, 334 Law 126: To Veronicianus, vicar of Asia
CTh
8.1.4 Dorries p. 200
Finance
officials may only hold this position 20 years and are subject to
various tortures if they are greedy or fraudulent.
May
19, 334 Law 127: To Veronicianus, vicar of Africa
CTh
8.15.2 Dorries p. 200
Finance
officials cannot make purchases, and purchases made through
extortion have no validity.
July
5, 334 Law 128: To Pacatianus, the praetorian prefect
CTh
10.15.2 Dorries p. 200
Placing
the interests of a subject over those of the treasury.
Aug
25, 334 Law 129: To governor Julianus
CTh
11.39.3 Dorries p. 200-201
Witnesses
must confirm their testimony with oaths, and multiple witnesses are
required for substantiation.
Aug?
27?, 334 Law 130: To Felix
CTh
13.4.1 Dorries p. 201
To
encourage more people to become architects, 18 year-old who chose
that profession receive a suitable salary and they and their parents
are exempt of all personal duties.
Dec
1, 334 Law 131: To the easter ship owners
CTh
13.5.7 Dorries p. 201
Granting
privileges to the ship captains so they more willingly transport
supplies for the cities.
335 CONSTANTIO ET ALBINO CONSS.
335 Φλάουιος
Φιλάγριος
σ̣τ̣ρ̣.[- ca. ? -]|Ὀξυρυγχ[ε]ίτου
χα̣ί̣ρ̣[ειν.]
|Εὐδαίμων
π̣ροσελθὼν
ἔφησ̣[εν]|ἔχειν
χρεώστας
ὁμολογο[υ]-|μένους,
ὡς γνώσει ἐκ
τοῦ̣|ἀντιτύπου
τ̣ο̣ῦ ἐπιδοθέντο[-
ca. ? -]|λ̣ι̣β̣έλλου.
φρόντισον, εἰ
ἀληθε̣ύ̣ο̣ν̣-|[τ]α̣
εὕροις, τὸ
ἀζήμιον|[αὐτ]ῷ̣
φυλάξαι. (hand 2)
ἔρρωσο.|[(hand 4) Iulio
Consta]ṇtio v(iro) c(larissimo) pat[r]icio|fratre d(omini)
n(ostri) [- ca. ? -]|- ca. ? -
21 maart 335
Idem a. ad provinciales. Omnes iudices invigilare praecipimus
et
delatores
poenis afficere. apertissimi enim iuris est, ut, quod ex cuiuscumque
patrimonio ceciderit in casum, et legibus et retro iuris ordine,
fisci advocatis agentibus, vindicetur. Sed quia nonnulli praecipites
secundum ius possessa patrimonia deferre non cessant, damus omnibus,
qui se laesos existimant, contra delatores severitatem iudicum
implorare ferro destrictam. Nemo enim potest delatorem plus
agnoscere quam ille, qui iniuriam per eius nequitiam sustinuit. DAT.
XI KAL. APRIL. CONSTANTINOPOLI, CONSTANTIO ET ALBINO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Custodientes iustitiam nomen persequimur delatorum, ita ut, quum
agniti et convicti fuerint delatores, gladio puniantur.
17 april 335
IMP. CONSTANTINUS A. AD PACATIANUM. Ordines decuriarum
scribarum
librariorum
et lictoriae consularis oblatis precibus meruerunt, ut in civilibus
causis et editionibus libellorum officiorum sollemnitate fungantur,
ita ut vetusta aetate servatum est, eo usque praerogativa veniente,
ut militares intercessiones procul usque a liberalibus causis sese
contineant. Rectores itaque quae iussimus observabunt. DAT. XV KAL.
MAI. CONST(ANTINO)P(OLI) CONSTANTIO ET ALBINO CONSS.
4 augustus 335
Idem a. ad Felicem praefectum praetorio. Quoniam afri
curiales
conquesti
sunt quosdam in suo corpore post flamonii honorem et sacerdotii vel
magistratus decursa insignia praepositos compelli fieri mansionum,
quod in singulis curiis sequentis meriti et gradus homines implere
consuerunt, iubemus nullum praedictis honoribus splendentem ad
memoratum cogi obsequium, ne nostro fieri iudicio iniuria videatur.
DAT. PRID. NON. AUG. VIMINACIO CONSTANTIO ET ALBINO CONSS.
335
Athanasius, Apol. sec. 59 Constantine
Constantine
orders Athanasius to re-admit Arius or face deposition.
335 Eusebius,
VC 4.42 Constantine
Constantine
writes to the Council of Tyre, instructing them to put an end to all
factions in the church.
335
Athanasius, Apol. sec. 81 Dionysius Dionysius, the imperial
representative
at
the Council of Tyre, writes to the fact-finding commission sent from
Tyre to Alexandria. He warns to be impartial as not to justify
criticism about the way the case was handled.
335
Athanasius, Apol. sec. 86 Constantine
Constantine
relates to the Council of Tyre how Athanasius met him unexpectedly
in Constantinople, complaining about ill-treatment at Tyre.
According to Athanasius’ reasonable request, he now summons
the Council of Tyre to relocate in Constantinople where the emperor
can hear the charges against Athanasius. [When no one from Tyre
appeared, the Emperor sent Athanasius into exile in Trier, either to
keep him safe or to get him out of the way (Apol sec. 9). Athanasius
was recalled by Constantius early in his reign.]
335
Letter to the holy synod of Tyre
VC
4.42; THE 1.29.1-6; GEL 3.17.1-7
Silli
47; Dorries p. 114-117
Encouragement
to deal with such accidental errors in a synod before it is too
late.
Aug
4, 335 Law 132: To Felix, the praetorian prefect
CTh
12.1.21 Dorries p. 201
No
one who has obtained the rank of priest or magistrate may be forced
to domestic service.
Sept
335 Letter to the bishops in Jerusalem
SOZ
2.27.13-14 Dorries p. 117-118
Asking
them to examine and evaluate the confession of faith submitted by
Arius and Euzoius.
Oct
1, 335 Law 133: To Felix, the praetorian prefect
CJ
4.62.4 Dorries p. 202
Greedy
taxfarmers are punished with permanent exile.
Oct
30, 335 Letter to the bishops gathered in Tyre
ACA
86.2-12; SOC 1.34; SOZ 2.28.2-12; GEL 3.18.1-13; EH 8.50; CAS
3.7.2-13 Silli 48; Dorries p. 119-124
Summoning
the bishops to appear before him to answer for the council’s
contentious behavior towards Athanasius.
336 NEPOTIANO ET FACVNDO CONSS.
29 april 336
Imp. Constantinus A. ...ri fecit vel si ipsorum nomine
comparavit,
totum
legitima suboles recipiat. Quod si non sint filii legitimi nec
frater consanguineus aut soror aut pater, totum fisci viribus
vindicetur. itaque liciniani etiam filio, qui per rescriptum
sanctissimum dignitatis culmen ascendit, omnis substantia auferatur
et secundum hanc legem fisco adiudicetur, ipso verberato compedibus
vinciendo, ad suae originis primordia redigendo. LECT. III K. MAI.
CARTHAGINE NEPOTIANO ET FACUNDO CONSS.
9 mei 336
Idem a. ad Severum. Navicularios Hispaniarum neque ad
extraordinaria
teneri
officia neque alicubi retentos moras sustinere oportet, sed
relatorias traditarum specierum intra decem dies a susceptoribus
percipere, cumque ad aliquas insulas portus litora stationes
accesserint, ostensis relatoriis nullam prorsus inquietudinem
sustinere. DAT. XIV KAL. IUN. NEPOTIANO ET FACUNDO CONSS.
18 mei 336 CT
16.8.5 CT 16.9.1 CS 4 Constantine
Jews
are not allowed to harass Jewish converts to Christianity, and will
be punished in accordance with the nature of the act. Also, if a Jew
circumcises a non-Jewish slave, the slave is to be taken from the
Jew and remain free.
15 juli 336
Imp. Constantinus A. ad Tiberianum Vicarium Hispaniarum
DAT.
ID. JUL. CONSTANTINO... ACC. XIII KAL. MAII. HISPALI
(IDEM
A. AD TIBERIANUM VICARIUM HISPANIARUM). Si a(b spons)o rebus
sp(on)sae donatis interveniente osculo ante nubtias hunc vel illam
mori contigerit, dimidiam partem rerum donatarum ad superstitem
pertinere praecipimus, dimidiam ad defuncti vel defunctae heredes,
cuiuslibet gradus sint et quocumque iure successerint, ut donatio
stare pro parte media et solvi pro parte media videatur: osculo vero
non interveniente, sive sponsus sive sponsa obierit, totam infirmari
donationem et donatori sponso sive heredibus eius restitui. Quod si
sponsa interveniente vel non interveniente osculo sponsaliorum
titulo, quod raro accidit, fuerit aliquid sponso largita et ante
nubtias hunc vel illam mori contigerit, omni donatione infirmata ad
donatricem sponsam sive eius successores donatarum rerum dominium
transferatur. DAT. ID. IUL. CONSTANT(INO)P(OLI). ACCEPTA XIV K. MAI.
HISPALI NEPOTIANO ET FACUNDO CONSS.
Interpretatio.
Si quando sponsalibus celebratis, interveniente osculo, sponsus
aliquid sponsae donaverit, et ante nuptias sponsus forsitan
moriatur, tunc puella, quae superest, mediam donatarum solenniter
rerum portionem poterit vindicare, et dimidiam mortui heredes
acquirunt, quocumque per gradum successionis ordine venientes. Si
vero osculum non intervenerit, sponso mortuo nihil sibi puella de
rebus donatis vel traditis poterit vindicare. Si vero a puella
sponso aliquid donatum est, et mortua fuerit, quamvis aut
intercesserit aut non intercesserit osculum, totum parentes puellae
sive propinqui, quod puella donaverat, revocabunt.
21 juli 336
Idem a. ad Gregorium. Senatores seu perfectissimos, vel quos
in
civitatibus duumviralitas vel quinquennalitas vel flamonii vel
sacerdotii provinciae ornamenta condecorant, placet maculam subire
infamiae et peregrinos a Romanis legibus fieri, si ex ancilla vel
ancillae filia vel liberta vel libertae filia, sive Romana facta seu
Latina, vel scaenica vel scaenicae filia, vel ex tabernaria vel ex
tabernari filia vel humili vel abiecta vel lenonis vel harenarii
filia vel quae mercimoniis publicis praefuit, susceptos filios in
numero legitimorum habere voluerint aut proprio iudicio aut nostri
praerogativa rescripti, ita ut, quidquid talibus liberis pater
donaverit, sive illos legitimos seu naturales dixerit, totum
retractum legitimae suboli reddatur aut fratri aut sorori aut patri
aut matri. Sed et uxori tali quodcumque datum quolibet genere fuerit
vel emptione collatum, etiam hoc retractum reddi praecipimus: ipsas
etiam, quarum venenis inficiuntur animi perditorum, si quid
quaeritur vel commendatum dicitur, quod his reddendum est, quibus
iussimus, aut fisco nostro, tormentis subici iubemus. Sive itaque
per ipsum donatum est qui pater dicitur vel per alium sive per
suppositam personam sive ab eo emptum vel ab alio sive ipsorum
nomine comparatum, statim retractum reddatur quibus iussimus, aut,
si non existunt, fisci viribus vindicetur. Quod si existentes et in
praesentia rerum constituti agere noluerint pacto vel iureiurando
exclusi, totum sine mora fiscus invadat. Quibus tacentibus et
dissimulantibus a defensione fiscali duum mensuum tempora
limitentur, intra quae si non retraxerint vel propter retrahendum
rectorem provinciae interpellaverint, quidquid talibus filiis vel
uxoribus liberalitas impura contulerit, fiscus noster invadat,
donatas vel commendatas res sub poena quadrupli severa quaestione
perquirens. Licinniani autem filius, qui fugiens comprehensus est,
compedibus vinctus ad gynaecei Carthaginis ministerium deputetur.
LECTA XII K. AUG. CARTHAGINE NEPOTIANO ET FACUNDO CONSS.
22 augustus
336 Idem a. ad Evagrium praefectum praetorio. Cum decuriones
decurionumque
filii deque his geniti ad diversas militias confugiant, iubemus eos
in quibuscumque officiis militantes exemptos militia restitui curiae
exceptis his, qui in palatii nostri iam habentur officiis. DAT. XI
KAL. SEPT. CONSTANTINOPOLI NEPOTIANO ET FACUNDO CONSS.
9 oktober 336
Idem a. Gregorio praefecto praetorio. Manu propria iudices
universi
periculo suo annonarias species et cetera, quae indictione
penduntur, definitis quantitatibus et comprehensis modis facta
adscriptione designent. Cuius observantiae illa erit commoditas, ut
post successionem quoque eorum facile requiratur, an exactores ultra
quam oportuit de fortunis provincialium aliquid exculpere voluerunt.
DAT. VII ID. OCTOB. NEPOTIANO ET FACUNDO CONSS.
20 oktober 336
Imp. Constantinus a. ad Felicem praefecto praetorio.
Post
alia: eum, qui ex iudaeo christianus factus est, inquietare iudaeos
non liceat vel aliqua pulsare iniuria: pro qualitate commissi istius
modi contumelia punienda etc. DAT. XII KAL. NOV. CONSTANTINOPOLI.
PP. VIII. ID. MAI. KARTHAGINE, NEPOTIANO ET FACUNDO COSS.
Haec
lex interpretatione non eget.
20 oktober 336
IMP. CONSTANTINUS AD FELICEM PRAEFECTUM PRAETORII.
Iam
dudum quidem constitutionis nostrae saluberrima sanctio promulgata
est, quam nostrae repetitae legis veneratione geminamus, ac volumus,
ut, si quispiam iudaeorum christianum mancipium vel cuiuslibet
alterius sectae mercatus circumcidere non perhorruerit, circumcisus
quidem istius statuti mensura libertatis compos effectus eiusdem
privilegiis potiatur: non fas iudaeo sit qui circumciderit mancipium
generis memorati in obsequium servitutis retinere. Illud etenim hac
eadem sanctione praecipimus, ut, si quispiam Iudaeorum reserans sibi
ianuam vitae perpetuae sanctis se cultibus mancipaverit et
Christianus esse delegerit, ne quid a Iudaeis inquietudinis vel
molestiae patiatur. Quod si ex Iudaeo Christianum factum aliquis
Iudaeorum iniuria putaverit esse pulsandum, volumus istiusmodi
contumeliae machinatorem pro criminis qualitate commissi poenis
ultricibus subiugari, Felix parens carissime. Quare divinitatis
affectu confidimus ipsum in omni orbe Romano qui nostri debita
veneratione servata: ac volumus, ut excellens sublimitas tua
litteris suis per dioecesim sibi creditam commeantibus iudices
moneat instantissime huiuscemodi debitam reverentiam custodiri. DATA
XII KAL. NOVEMB. PROPOSITA VII ID. MART. CARTHAGINE NEPOTIANO ET
FACUNDO CONSS.
Apr
29, 336 Law 134
CTh
4.6.2 Dorries p. 202
Denying
illegitimate sons the right to inherit and removing Licinius from
his former exalted status.
July
21, 336 Law 135: To Gregorius
CTh
4.6.3 Dorries p. 202
It
is scandalous and invalid for senators, duumvirates, and priests to
include illegitimate sons among their legitimate sons. Licinius’
son, who fled and now was caught, is to be brought in chains to a
workhouse in Carthage.
Aug
22, 336 Law 136: To Evagrius, the praetorian prefect
CTh
12.1.22 Dorries p. 202
Palace
officials are bound to their status.
Oct
9, 336 Law 137: To Gregorius, the praetorian prefect
CTh
11.1.3 Dorries p. 202
The
judges must personally sign off on customs taxes.
Oct
21, 336 Law 138: To Felix, the praetorian prefect
CS
4 Dorries p. 203
Non-Jewish
slaves who are circumcised by their Jewish masters are freed. Jews
who become Christians are protected from other Jews.
c.
336-337 Law 139: To Felix, the praetorian prefect
CTh
16.9.1, 16.8.5 Dorries p. 203-204
Non-Jewish
slaves who are circumcised by their Jewish masters are freed. Jews
who become Christians are protected from other Jews.
337 FELICIANO ET TITIANO CONSS.
4 februari 337
IDEM A. AD GREGORIUM. Qui comparat, censum rei comparatae
cognoscat:
neque
liceat alicui rem sine censu vel comparare vel vendere. Inspectio
autem publica vel fiscalis esse debebit hac lege, ut, si aliquid
sine censu venierit et id ab alio deferetur, venditor quidem
possessionem, comparator vero id quod dedit pretium fisco vindicante
perdat. Id etiam placuit neminem ad venditionem rei cuiuslibet
accedere, nisi eo tempore, quo inter venditorem et emptorem
contractus sollemniter explicatur, certa et vera proprietas a
vicinis demonstretur; usque eo legis istius cautione currente, ut,
etiamsi subsellia vel, ut vulgo aiunt, scamna vendantur, ostendendae
proprietatis probatio compleatur. Nec inter emptorem et venditorem
sollemnia in exquisitis cuniculis celebrentur, sed fraudulenta
venditio penitus sepulta depereat. DAT. PRID. NON. FEBRUAR.
CONSTANT(INO)P(OLI) FELICIANO ET TITIANO CONSS.
21 mei 337
Idem a. ad concilium provinciae Africae. Sacerdotales et
flamines
perpetuos
atque etiam duumvirales ab annonarum praeposituris inferioribusque
muneribus inmunes esse praecipimus. Quod ut perpetua observatione
firmetur, legem hanc incisam aeneis tabulis iusssimus publicari.
PROPOSITA XII KAL. IUN. KARTHAGINE FELICIANO ET TITIANO CONSS.
17 juli 337
Athanasius, Apol. sec. 87 Constantine II
Constantine
announces that Athanasius is to be restored as bishop of Alexandria.
He claims that the reason Athanasius had been exiled was for his own
safety. [Other bishops were also returned at the death of
Constantine.]
2 augustus 337
Idem a. ad Maximum praefectum praetorio. Artifices artium
brevi
subdito comprehensarum per singulas civitates morantes ab universis
muneribus vacare praecipimus, si quidem ediscendis artibus otium sit
adcommodandum; quo magis cupiant et ipsi peritiores fieri et suos
filios erudire. DAT. IV NON. AUG. FELICIANO ET TITIANO CONSS.
337
Athanasius, Apol. sec. 78 Constantius
A
church is to be built for the priest Ischyras, an opponent of
Athanasius who accused him falsely.
Feb
24, 337 Law 140: To Aurelius, duke of Mesopotamia
CJ
4.42.1 Dorries p. 204
Death
is the penalty for all future eunuchizings.
Early
337 Sixth inscription at Rome
AE
1934,158 Gruenwald 260
May
21, 337 Law 141: To the council of the province of Africa
CTh
12.5.2 Dorries p. 204
Those
who have been priest and duumvirs are exempt from lower duties.
May
22-Sept 9, 337 Inscription at Cilium-Thelepte
CIL
VIII 21934 Gruenewald 224
Aug
2, 337 Law 142 (published posthumously)
CTh
13.4.2 Dorries p. 204-205
Skilled
artists are freed from service responsibilities so that they can
spend their time furthering their talent and training their sons.
?
Law 143
Nov.
Theod. 11 Dorries p. 205
Denying
the validity of wills made by mothers who neglect their sons.
Good
Friday, ? Address to the assemblies of the saints
Appended
to VC Dorries p. 129-161
Discussing
Christianity and idolatry, especially the person and coming of
Christ including reference to pagan prophecy .
Eusebius
of Caesarea
The
Life of the Blessed Emperor Constantine
BOOK
I.
CHAPTER
I: Preface. - Of the Death of Constantine.
ALREADY
have all mankind united in celebrating with joyous festivities the
completion of the second and third decennial period of this great
emperor's reign; already have we ourselves received him as a
triumphant conqueror in the assembly of God's ministers, and greeted
him with the due mead of praise on the twentieth anniversary of his
reign: and still more recently we have woven, as it were, garlands
of words, wherewith we encircled his sacred head in his own palace
on his thirtieth anniversary.
But
now, while I desire to give utterance to some of the customary
sentiments, I stand perplexed and doubtful which way to turn, being
wholly lost in wonder at the extraordinary spectacle before me. For
to whatever quarter I direct my view, whether to the east, or to the
west, or over the whole world, or toward heaven itself, everywhere
and always I see the blessed one yet administering the self-same
empire. On earth I behold his sons, like some new reflectors of his
brightness, diffusing everywhere the luster of their father's
character, and himself still living and powerful, and governing all
the affairs of men more completely than ever before, being
multiplied in the succession of his children. They had indeed
previously the dignity of Caesars; but now, being invested with his
very self, and graced by his accomplishments, for the excellence of
their piety they are proclaimed by the titles of Sovereign,
Augustus, Worshipful, and Emperor.
CHAPTER
II: The Preface continued.
AND
I am indeed amazed, when I consider that he who was but lately
visible and present with us in his mortal body, is still, even after
death, when the natural thought disclaims everything superfluous as
unsuitable, most marvelously endowed with the same imperial
dwellings, and honors, and praises as heretofore. But farther, when
I raise my thoughts even to the arch of heaven, and there
contemplate his thrice-blessed soul in communion with God himself,
freed from every mortal and earthly vesture, and shining in a
refulgent robe of light, and when I perceive that it is no more
connected with the fleeting periods and occupations of mortal life,
but honored with an ever-blooming crown, and an immortality of
endless and blessed existence, I stand as it were without power of
speech or thought and unable to utter a single phrase, but
condemning my own weakness, and imposing silence on myself, I resign
the task of speaking his praises worthily to one who is better able,
even to him who, being the immortal God and veritable Word, alone
has power to confirm his own saying.
CHAPTER
III: How God honors Pious Princes, but destroys Tyrants.
HAVING
given assurance that those who glorify and honor him will meet with
an abundant recompense at his hands, while those who set themselves
against him as enemies and adversaries will compass the ruin of
their own souls, he has already established the truth of these his
own declarations, having shown on the one hand the fearful end of
those tyrants who denied and opposed him, and at the same time
having made it manifest that even the death of his servant, as well
as his life, is worthy of admiration and praise, and justly claims
the memorial, not merely of perishable, but of immortal monuments.
Mankind,
devising some consolation for the frail and precarious duration of
human life, have thought by the erection of monuments to glorify the
memories of their ancestors with immortal honors. Some have employed
the vivid delineations and colors of painting; some have carved
statues from lifeless blocks of wood; while others, by engraving
their inscriptions deep on tablets and monuments, have thought to
transmit the virtues of those whom they honored to perpetual
remembrance. All these indeed are perishable, and consumed by the
lapse of time, being representations of the corruptible body, and
not expressing the image of the immortal soul. And yet these seemed
sufficient to those who had no well-grounded hope of happiness after
the termination of this mortal life. But God, that God, I say, who
is the common Saviour of all, having treasured up with himself, for
those who love godliness, greater blessings than human thought has
conceived, gives the earnest and first-fruits of future rewards even
here, assuring in some sort immortal hopes to mortal eyes. The
ancient oracles of the prophets, delivered to us in the Scripture,
declare this; the lives of pious men, who shone in old time with
every virtue, bear witness to posterity of the same; and our own
days prove it to be true, wherein Constantine, who alone of all that
ever wielded the Roman power was the friend of God the Sovereign of
all, has appeared to all mankind so clear an example of a godly
life.
CHAPTER
IV: That God honored Constantine.
AND
God himself, whom Constantine worshiped, has confirmed this truth by
the clearest manifestations of his will, being present to aid him at
the commencement, during the course, and at the end of his reign,
and holding him up to the human race as an instructive example of
godliness. Accordingly, by the manifold blessings he has conferred
on him, he has distinguished him alone of all the sovereigns of whom
we have ever heard as at once a mighty luminary and most
clear-voiced herald of genuine piety.
CHAPTER
V: That he reigned above Thirty Years, and lived above Sixty.
WITH
respect to the duration of his reign, God honored him with three
complete periods of ten years, and something more, extending the
whole term of his mortal life to twice this number of years. And
being pleased to make him a representative of his own sovereign
power, he displayed him as the conqueror of the whole race of
tyrants, and the destroyer of those God-defying giants of the earth
who madly raised their impious arms against him, the supreme King of
all. They appeared, so to speak, for an instant, and then
disappeared: while the one and only true God, when he had enabled
his servant, clad in heavenly panoply, to stand singly against many
foes, and by his means had relieved mankind from the multitude of
the ungodly, constituted him a teacher of his worship to all
nations, to testify with a loud voice in the hearing of all that he
acknowledged the true God, and turned with abhorrence from the error
of them that are no gods.
CHAPTER
VI: That he was the Servant of God, and the Conqueror of Nations.
THUS,
like a faithful and good servant, did he act and testify, openly
declaring and confessing himself the obedient minister of the
supreme King. And God forthwith rewarded him, by making him ruler
and sovereign, and victorious to such a degree that he alone of all
rulers pursued a continual course of conquest, unsubdued and
invincible, and through his trophies a greater ruler than tradition
records ever to have been before. So dear was he to God, and so
blessed; so pious and so fortunate in all that he undertook, that
with the greatest facility he obtained the authority over more
nations than any who had preceded him, and yet retained his power,
undisturbed, to the very close of his life.
CHAPTER
VII: Comparison with Cyrus, King of the Persians and with Alexander
of Macedon.
ANCIENT
history describes Cyrus, king of the Persians, as by far the most
illustrious of all kings up to his time. And yet if we regard the
end of his days, we find it but little corresponded with his past
prosperity, since he met with an inglorious and dishonorable death
at the hands of a woman.
Again,
the sons of Greece celebrate Alexander the Macedonian as the
conqueror of many and diverse nations; yet we find that he was
removed by an early death, before he had reached maturity, being
carried off by the effects of revelry and drunkenness. His whole
life embraced but the space of thirty-two years, and his reign
extended to no more than a third part of that period. Unsparing as
the thunderbolt, he advanced through streams of blood and reduced
entire nations and cities, young and old, to utter slavery. But when
he had scarcely arrived at the maturity of life, and was lamenting
the loss of youthful pleasures, death fell upon him with terrible
stroke, and, that he might not longer outrage the human race, cut
him off in a foreign and hostile land, childless, without successor,
and homeless. His kingdom too was instantly dismembered, each of his
officers taking away and appropriating a portion for himself. And
yet this man is extolled for such deeds as these.
CHAPTER
VIII: That he conquered nearly the Whole World.
BUT
our emperor began his reign at the time of life at which the
Macedonian died, yet doubled the length of his life, and trebled the
length of his reign. And instructing his army in the mild and sober
precepts of godliness, he carried his arms as far as the Britons,
and the nations that dwell in the very bosom of the Western ocean.
He subdued likewise all Scythia, though situated in the remotest
North, and divided into numberless diverse and barbarous tribes. He
even pushed his conquests to the Blemmyans and Ethiopians, on the
very confines of the South nor did he think the acquisition of the
Eastern nations unworthy his care. In short, diffusing the
effulgence of his holy light to the ends of the whole world, even to
the most distant Indians, the nations dwelling on the extreme
circumference of the inhabited earth, he received the submission of
all the rulers, governors, and satraps of barbarous nations, who
cheerfully welcomed and saluted him, sending embassies and presents,
and setting the highest value on his acquaintance and friendship;
insomuch that they honored him with pictures and statues in their
respective countries, and Constantine alone of all emperors was
acknowledged and celebrated by all. Notwithstanding, even among
these distant nations, he proclaimed the name of his God in his
royal edicts with all boldness.
CHAPTER
IX: That he was the Son of a Pious Emperor, and bequeathed the Power
to Royal Sons.
NOR
did he give this testimony in words merely, while exhibiting failure
in his own practice, but pursued every path of virtue, and was rich
in the varied fruits of godliness. He ensured the affection of his
friends by magnificent proofs of liberality; and inasmuch as he
governed on principles of humanity, he caused his rule to be but
lightly felt and acceptable to all classes of his subjects; until at
last, after a long course of years, and when he was wearied by his
divine labors, the God whom he honored crowned him with an immortal
reward, and translated him from a transitory kingdom to that endless
life which he has laid up in store for the souls of his saints,
after he had raised him up three sons to succeed him in his power.
As then the imperial throne had descended to him from his father,
so, by the law of nature, was it reserved for his children and their
descendants, and perpetuated, like some paternal inheritance, to
endless generations. And indeed God himself, who distinguished this
blessed prince with divine honors while yet present with us, and who
has adorned his death with choice blessings from his own hand,
should be the writer of his actions; since he has recorded his
labors and successes on heavenly monuments.
CHAPTER
X: Of the Need for this History, and its Value for Edification.
HOWEVER,
hard as it is to speak worthily of this blessed character, and
though silence were the safer and less perilous course, nevertheless
it is incumbent on me, if I would escape the charge of negligence
and sloth, to trace as it were a verbal portraiture, by way of
memorial of the pious prince, in imitation of the delineations of
human art. For I should be ashamed of myself were I not to employ my
best efforts, feeble though they be and of little value, in praise
of one who honored God with such surpassing devotion. I think too
that my work will be on other grounds both instructive and
necessary, since it will contain a description of those royal and
noble actions which are pleasing to God, the Sovereign of all. For
would it not be disgraceful that the memory of Nero, and other
impious and godless tyrants far worse than he, should meet with
diligent writers to embellish the relation of their worthless deeds
with elegant language, and record them in voluminous histories, and
that I should be silent, to whom God himself has vouchsafed such an
emperor as all history records not, and has permitted me to come
into his presence, and enjoy his acquaintance and society?
Wherefore,
if it is the duty of any one, it certainly is mine, to make an ample
proclamation of his virtues to all in whom the example of noble
actions is capable of inspiring the love of God. For some who have
written the lives of worthless characters, and the history of
actions but little tending to the improvement of morals, from
private motives, either love or enmity, and possibly in some cases
with no better object than the display of their own learning, have
exaggerated unduly their description of actions intrinsically base,
by a refinement and elegance of diction. And thus they have become
to those who by the Divine favor had been kept apart from evil,
teachers not of good, but of what should be silenced in oblivion and
darkness. But my narrative, however unequal to the greatness of the
deeds it has to describe, will yet derive luster even from the bare
relation of noble actions. And surely the record of conduct that has
been pleasing to God will afford a far from unprofitable, indeed a
most instructive study, to persons of well-disposed minds.
CHAPTER
XI: That his Present Object is to record only the Pious Actions of
Constantine.
IT
is my intention, therefore, to pass over the greater part of the
royal deeds of this thrice-blessed prince; as, for example, his
conflicts and engagements in the field, his personal valor, his
victories and successes against the enemy, and the many triumphs he
obtained: likewise his provisions for the interests of individuals,
his legislative enactments for the social advantage of his subjects,
and a multitude of other imperial labors which are fresh in the
memory of all; the design of my present undertaking being to speak
and write of those circumstances only which have reference to his
religious character.
And
since these are themselves of almost infinite variety, I shall
select from the facts which have come to my knowledge such as are
most suitable, and worthy of lasting record, and endeavor to narrate
them as briefly as possible. Henceforward, indeed, there is a full
and opportunity for celebrating in every way the praises of this
truly blessed prince, which hitherto we have been unable to do, on
the ground that we are forbidden to judge any one blessed before his
death, because of the uncertain vicissitudes of life. Let me implore
then the help of God, and may the inspiring aid of the heavenly Word
be with me, while I commence my history from the very earliest
period of his life.
CHAPTER
XII: That like Moses, he was reared in the Palaces of Kings.
ANCIENT
history relates that a cruel race of tyrants oppressed the Hebrew
nation; and that God, who graciously regarded them in their
affliction, provided that the prophet Moses, who was then an infant,
should be brought up in the very palaces and bosoms of the
oppressors, and instructed in all the wisdom they possessed. And
when in the course of time he had arrived at manhood, and the time
was come for Divine justice to avenge the wrongs of the afflicted
people, then the prophet of God, in obedience to the will of a more
powerful Lord, forsook the royal household, and, estranging himself
in word and deed from the tyrants by whom he had been brought up,
openly acknowledging his true brethren and kinsfolk. Then God,
exalting him to be the leader of the whole nation, delivered the
Hebrews from the bondage of their enemies, and inflicted Divine
vengeance through his means on the tyrant race. This ancient story,
though rejected by most as fabulous, has reached the ears of all.
But now the same God has given to us to be eye-witnesses of miracles
more wonderful than fables, and, from their recent appearance, more
authentic than any report. For the tyrants of our day have ventured
to war against the Supreme God, and have sorely afflicted His
Church. And in the midst of these, Constantine, who was shortly to
become their destroyer, but at that time of tender age, and blooming
with the down of early s youth, dwelt, as that other servant of God
had done, in the very home of the tyrants, but young as he was did
not share the manner of life of the ungodly: for from that early
period his noble nature, under the leading of the Divine Spirit,
inclined him to piety and a life acceptable to God. A desire,
moreover, to emulate the example of his father had its influence in
stimulating the son to a virtuous course of conduct. His father was
Constantius (and we ought to revive his memory at this time), the
most illustrious emperor of our age; of whose life it is necessary
briefly to relate a few particulars, which tell to the honor of his
son.
CHAPTER
XIII: Of Constantius his Father, who refused to imitate Diocletian,
Maximian, and Maxentius, in their Persecution of the Christians.
AT
a time when four emperors shared the administration of the Roman
empire, Constantius alone, following a course of conduct different
from that pursued by his colleagues, entered into the friendship of
the Supreme God.
For
while they besieged and wasted the churches of God, leveling them to
the ground, and obliterating the very foundations of the houses of
prayer, he kept his hands pure from their abominable impiety, and
never in any respect resembled them. They polluted their provinces
by the indiscriminate slaughter of godly men and women; but he kept
his soul free from the stain of this crime. The involved in the
mazes of impious idolatry, enthralled first themselves, and then all
under their authority, in bondage to the errors of evil demons,
while he at the same time originated the profoundest peace
throughout his dominions, and secured to his subjects the privilege
of celebrating without hindrance the worship of God. In short, while
his colleagues oppressed all men by the most grievous exactions, and
rendered their lives intolerable, and even worse than death,
Constantius alone governed his people with a mild and tranquil sway,
and exhibited towards them a truly parental and fostering care.
Numberless, indeed, are the other virtues of this man, which are the
theme of praise to all; of these I will record one or two instances,
as specimens of the quality of those which I must pass by in
silence, and then I will proceed to the appointed order of my
narrative.
CHAPTER
XIV: How Constantius his Father, being reproached with Poverty by
Diocletian, filled his Treasury, and afterwards restored the Money
to those by whom it had been contributed.
IN
consequence of the many reports in circulation respecting this
prince, describing his kindness and gentleness of character, and the
extraordinary elevation of his piety, alleging too, that by reason
of his extreme indulgence to his subjects, he had not even a supply
of money laid up in his treasury; the emperor who at that time
occupied the place of supreme power sent to reprehend his neglect of
the public weal, at the same time reproaching him with poverty, and
alleging in proof of the charge the empty state of his treasury. On
this he desired the messengers of the emperor to remain with him
awhile, and, calling together the wealthiest of his subjects of all
nations under his dominion, he informed them that he was in want of
money, and that this was the time for them all to give a voluntary
proof of their affection for their prince.
As
soon as they heard this (as though they had long been desirous of an
opportunity for showing the sincerity of their good will), with
zealous alacrity they filled the treasury with gold and silver and
other wealth; each eager to surpass the rest in the amount of his
contribution: and this they did with cheerful and joyous
countenances. And now Constantius desired the messengers of the
great emperor personally to inspect his treasures, and directed them
to give a faithful report of what they had seen; adding, that on the
present occasion he had taken this money into his own hands, but
that it had long been kept for his use in the custody of the owners,
as securely as if under the charge of faithful treasurers. The
ambassadors were overwhelmed with astonishment at what they had
witnessed: and on their departure it is said that the truly generous
prince sent for the owners of the property, and, after commending
them severally for their obedience and true loyalty, restored it
all, and bade them return to their homes.
This
one circumstance, then, conveys a proof of the generosity of him
whose character we are attempting to illustrate: another will
contain the clearest testimony to his piety.
CHAPTER
XV: Of the Persecution raised by his Colleagues.
BY
command of the supreme authorities of the empire, the governors of
the several provinces had set on foot a general persecution of the
godly. Indeed, it was from the imperial courts themselves that the
very first of the pious martyrs proceeded, who passed through those
conflicts for the faith, and most readily endured both fire and
sword, and the depths of the sea; every form of death, in short, so
that in a brief time all the royal palaces were bereft of pious men.
The result was, that the authors of this wickedness were entirely
deprived of the protecting care of God, since by their persecution
of his worshipers they at the same time silenced the prayers that
were wont to be made on their own behalf.
CHAPTER
XVI: How Constantius, feigning Idolatry, expelled those who
consented to offer Sacrifice, but retained in his Palace all who
were willing to confess Christ.
ON
the other hand, Constantius conceived an expedient full of sagacity,
and did a thing which sounds paradoxical, but in fact was most
admirable.
He
made a proposal to all the officers of his court, including even
those in the highest stations of authority, offering them the
following alternative: either that they should offer sacrifice to
demons, and thus be permitted to remain with him, and enjoy their
usual honors; or, in case of refusal, that they should be shut out
from all access to his person, and entirely disqualified from
acquaintance and association with him. Accordingly, when they had
individually made their choice, some one way and some the other; and
the choice of each had been ascertained, then this admirable prince
disclosed the secret meaning of his expedient, and condemned the
cowardice and selfishness of the one party, while he highly
commended the other for their conscientious devotion to God. He
declared, too, that those who had been false to their God must be
unworthy of the confidence of their prince; for how was it possible
that they should preserve their fidelity to him, who had proved
themselves faithless to a higher power? He determined, therefore,
that such persons should be removed altogether from the imperial
court, while, on the other hand, declaring that those men who, in
bearing witness for the truth, had proved themselves to be worthy
servants of God, would manifest the same fidelity to their king, he
en-trusted them with the guardianship of his person and empire,
saying that he was bound to treat such persons with special regard
as his nearest and most valued friends, and to esteem them far more
highly than the richest treasures.
CHAPTER
XVII: Of his Christian Manner of Life.
THE
father of Constantine, then, is said to have possessed such a
character as we have briefly described. And what kind of death was
vouchsafed to him in consequence of such devotion to God, and how
far he whom he honored made his lot to differ from that of his
colleagues in the empire, may be known to any one who will give his
attention to the circumstances of the case. For after he had for a
long time given many proofs of royal virtue, in acknowledging the
Supreme God alone, and condemning the polytheism of the ungodly, and
had fortified his household by the prayers of holy men, he passed
the remainder of his life in remarkable repose and tranquility, in
the enjoyment of what is counted blessedness, - neither molesting
others nor being molested ourselves.
Accordingly,
during the whole course of his quiet and peaceful reign, he
dedicated his entire household, his children, his wife, and domestic
attendants, to the One Supreme God: so that the company assembled
within the walls of his palace differed in no respect from a church
of God; wherein were also to be found his ministers, who offered
continual supplications on behalf of their prince, and this at a
time when, with most, it was not allowable to have any dealings with
the worshipers of God, even so far as to exchange a word with them.
CHAPTER
XVIII: That after the Abdication of Diocletian and Maximian,
Constantius became Chief Augustus, and was blessed with a Numerous
Offspring.
THE
immediate consequence of this conduct was a recompense from the hand
of God, insomuch that he came into the supreme authority of the
empire. For the older emperors, for some unknown reason, resigned
their power; and this sudden change took place in the first year
after their persecution of the churches.
From
that time Constantius alone received the honors of chief Augustus,
having been previously, indeed, distinguished by the diadem of the
imperial Caesars, among whom he held the first rank; but after his
worth had been proved in this capacity, he was invested with the
highest dignity of the Roman empire, being named chief Augustus of
the four who were afterwards elected to that honor. Moreover, he
surpassed most of the emperors in regard to the number of his
family, having gathered around him a very large circle of children
both male and female. And, lastly, when he had attained to a happy
old age, and was about to pay the common debt of nature, and
exchange this life for another, God once more manifested His power
in a special manner on his behalf, by providing that his eldest son
Constantine should be present during his last moments, and ready to
receive the imperial power from his hands.
CHAPTER
XIX: Of his Son Constantine, who in his Youth accompanied Diocletian
into Palestine.
THE
latter had been with his father's imperial colleagues, and had
passed his life among them, as we have said, like God's ancient
prophet. And even in the very earliest period of his youth he was
judged by them to be worthy of the highest honor. An instance of
this we have ourselves seen, when he passed through Palestine with
the senior emperor, at whose right hand he stood, and commanded the
admiration of all who beheld him by the indications he gave even
then of royal greatness. For no one was comparable to him for grace
and beauty of person, or height of stature; and he so far surpassed
his compeers in personal strength as to be a terror to them. He was,
however, even more conspicuous for the excellence of his mental
qualities than for his superior physical endowments; being gifted in
the first place with a sound judgment, and having also reaped the
advantages of a liberal education. He was also distinguished in no
ordinary degree both by natural intelligence and divinely imparted
wisdom.
CHAPTER
XX: Flight of Constantine to his Father because of the Plots of
Diocletian.
THE
emperors then in power, observing his manly and vigorous figure and
superior mind, were moved with feelings of jealousy and fear, and
thenceforward carefully watched for an opportunity of inflicting
some brand of disgrace on his character. But the young man, being
aware of their designs, the details of which, through the providence
of God, more than once came to him, sought safety in flight; in this
respect again keeping up his resemblance to the great prophet Moses.
Indeed, in every sense God was his helper; and he had before
ordained that he should be present in readiness to succeed his
father.
CHAPTER
XXI: Death of Constantius, who leaves his Son Constantine Emperor.
IMMEDIATELY,
therefore, on his escape from the plots which had been thus
insidiously laid for him, he made his way with all haste to his
father, and arrived at length at the very time that he was lying at
the point of death. As soon as Constantius saw his son thus
unexpectedly in his presence, he leaped from his couch, embraced him
tenderly, and, declaring that the only anxiety which had troubled
him in the prospect of death, namely, that caused by the absence of
his son, was now removed, he rendered thanks to God, saying that he
now thought death better than the longest life, and at once
completed the arrangement of his private affairs. Then, taking a
final leave of the circle of sons and daughters by whom he was
surrounded, in his own palace, and on the imperial couch, he
bequeathed the empire, according to the law of nature, to his eldest
son, and breathed his last.
CHAPTER
XXII: How, after the Burial of Constantius, Constantine was
proclaimed Augustus by the Army.
NOR
did the imperial throne remain long unoccupied: for Constantine
invested himself with his father's purple, and proceeded from his
father's palace, presenting to all a renewal, as it were, in his own
person, of his father's life and reign. He then conducted the
funeral procession in company with his father's friends, some
preceding, others following the train, and performed the last
offices for the pious deceased with an extraordinary degree of
magnificence, and all united in honoring this thrice blessed prince
with acclamations and praises, and while with one mind and voice,
they glorified the rule of the son as a living again of him who was
dead, they hastened at once to hail their new sovereign by the
titles of Imperial and Worshipful Augustus, with joyful shouts. Thus
the memory of the deceased emperor received honor from the praises
bestowed upon his son, while the latter was pronounced blessed in
being the successor of such a father. All the nations also under his
dominion were filled with joy and inexpressible gladness at not
being even for a moment deprived of the benefits of a well ordered
government.
In
the instance of the Emperor Constantius, God has made manifest to
our generation what the end of those is who in their lives have
honored and loved him.
CHAPTER
XXIII: A Brief Notice of the Destruction of the Tyrants.
WITH
respect to the other princes, who made war against the churches of
God, I have not thought it fit in the present work to give any
account of their downfall, nor to stain the memory of the good by
mentioning them in connection with those of an opposite character.
The knowledge of the facts themselves will of itself suffice for the
wholesome admonition of those who have witnessed or heard of the
evils which severally befell them.
CHAPTER
XXIV: It was by the Will of God that Constantine became possessed of
the Empire.
THUS
then the God of all, the Supreme Governor of the whole universe, by
his own will appointed Constantine, the descendant of so renowned a
parent, to be prince and sovereign: so that, while others have been
raised to this distinction by the election of their fellow-men, he
is the only one to whose elevation no mortal may boast of having
contributed.
CHAPTER
XXV: Victories of Constantine over the and the Britons.
AS
soon then as he was established on the throne, he began to care for
the interests of his paternal inheritance, and visited with much
considerate kindness all those provinces which had previously been
under his father's government. Some tribes of the barbarians who
dwelt on the banks of the Rhine, and the shores of the Western
ocean, having ventured to revolt, he reduced them all to obedience,
and brought them from their savage state to one of gentleness. He
contented himself with checking the inroads of others, and drove
from his dominions, like untamed and savage beasts, those whom he
perceived to be altogether incapable of the settled order of
civilized life. Having disposed of these affairs to his
satisfaction, he directed his attention to other quarters of the
world, and first passed over to the British nations, which lie in
the very bosom of the ocean. These he reduced to submission, and
then proceeded to consider the state of the remaining portions of
the empire, that he might be ready to tender his aid wherever
circumstances might require it.
CHAPTER
XXVI: How he resolved to deliver Rome from Maxentius.
WHILE,
therefore, he regarded the entire world as one immense body, and
perceived that the head of it all, the royal city of the Roman
empire, was bowed down by the weight of a tyrannous oppression; at
first he had left the task of liberation to those who governed the
other divisions of the empire, as being his superiors in point of
age. But when none of these proved able to afford relief, and those
who had attempted it had experienced a disastrous termination of
their enterprise, he said that life was without enjoyment to him as
long as he saw the imperial city thus afflicted, and prepared
himself for the overthrowal of the tyranny.
[Book
I, 26-31]
Εἶθ'
ὥσπερ μέγα σῶμα,
τὸ πᾶν τῆς οἰκουμένης
ἐννοήσας στοιχεῖον,
κἄπειτα τὴν τοῦ
παντὸς κεφαλήν,
τῆς Ῥωμαίων
ἀρχῆς τὴν βασιλεύουσαν
πόλιν, τυραννικῇ
δουλείᾳ συνιδὼν
καθυπηγμένην,
παρεχώρει μὲν
ταπρῶτα τὴν ὑπὲρ
αὐτῆς ἄμυναν
τοῖς τῶν λοιπῶν
κρατοῦσι μερῶν,
ἅτε δὴ χρόνῳ
προάγουσιν·
ἐπεὶ δὲ τούτων
οὐδεὶς οἷός
τ' ἦν ἐπικουρεῖν,
ἀλλὰ καὶ οἱ
πεῖραν λαβεῖν
ἐθελήσαντες
αἰσχρὸν ὑπέμειναν
τέλος, οὐδὲ
βιωτὸν αὐτῷ τὴν
ζωὴν εἶναι εἰπών,
εἰ τὴν βασιλίδα
πόλιν οὕτω κάμνουσαν
παρίδοι, παρεσκευάζετο
τὰ πρὸς τὴν καθαίρεσιν
τῆς τυραννίδος.
Εὖ
δ' ἐννοήσας ὡς
κρείττονος
ἢ κατὰ στρατιωτικὴν
δέοι αὐτῷ βοηθείας,
διὰ τὰς κακοτέχνους
καὶ γοητικὰς
μαγγανείας
τὰς παρὰ τῷ τυράννῳ
σπουδαζομένας,
Θεὸν ἀνεζήτει
βοηθόν, τὰ μὲν
ἐξ ὁπλίσεων
καὶ στρατιωτικοῦ
πλήθους δεύτερα
τιθέμενος, τὴν
δ' ἐκ θεοῦ συνεργίαν
ἄμαχον εἶναι
καὶ ἀπαράθραυστον.
Ἐννοεῖ δῆτα
ὁποῖον δέοι
Θεὸν ἐπιγράψασθαι
βοηθὸν· ζητοῦντι
δ' αὐτῷ ἔννοιά
τις ὑπεισῆλθεν·
ὡς πλειόνων
πρότερον τῆς
ἀρχῆς ἐφαψαμένων,
οἱ μὲν πλείοσι
θεοῖς τὰς σφῶν
αὐτῶν ἀναρτήσαντες
ἐλπίδας, θυσίαις
τε καὶ ἀναθήμασι
τούτους θεραπεύσαντες,
ἀπατηθέντες
ταπρῶτα διὰ
μαντειῶν κεχαρισμένων,
χρησμῶν τε τὰ
αἴσια ἀπαγγελλομένων
αὐτοῖς, τέλος
οὐκ αἴσιον
εὕραντο, οὐδέ
τις θεῶν πρὸς
τὸ μὴ θεηλάτοις
ὑποβληθῆναι
καταστροφαῖς,
δεξιὸς αὐτοῖς
παρέστη· μόνον
δὲ τὸν ἑαυτοῦ
πατέρα τὴν ἐναντίαν
ἐκείνοις τραπέντα,
τῶν μὲν πλάνην
καταγνῶναι, αὐτὸν
δὲ τὸν ἐπέκεινα
τῶν ὅλων Θεόν
διὰ πάσης τιμήσαντα
ζωῆς, σωτῆρα
καὶ φύλακα τῆς
βασιλείας,
ἀγαθοῦ τε παντὸς
χορηγὸν εὑρέσθαι.
Ταῦτα παρ' ἑαυτῷ
διακρίνας, εὖ
τε λογισάμενος,
ὡς οἱ μὲν πλήθει
θεῶν ἐπιθαρρήσαντες,
καὶ πλείοσιν
ἐπιπεπτώκασιν
ὀλέθροις, ὡς
μηδὲ γένος, μηδὲ
φυὴν, μὴ ῥίζαν
αὐτοῖς, μηδ'
ὄνομα, μηδὲ μνήμην
ἐν ἀνθρώποις
ἀπολειφθῆναι,
ὁ δὲ πατρῷος
αὐτῷ Θεὸς τῆς
αὐτοῦ δυνάμεως
ἐναργῆ καὶ πάμπολλα
δείγματα εἴη
δεδωκὼς τῷ
αὐτοῦ πατρί·ἀλλὰ
καὶ τοὺς ἤδη
καταστρατεύσαντας
πρότερον τοῦ
τυράννου διασκεψάμενος,
σὺν πλήθει μὲν
θεῶν τὴν παράταξιν
πεποιημένους,
αἰσχρὸν δὲ τέλος
ὑπομείναντας·
ὁ μὲν γὰρ αὐτῶν
σὺν αἰσχύνῃ τῆς
συμβολῆς ἄπρακτος
ἀνεχώρει, ὁ δὲ
καὶ μέσοις
αὐτοῖς τοῖς
στρατεύμασι
κατασφαγεὶς,
πάρεργον ἐγένετο
θανάτου· ταῦτα
οὖν πάντα συναγαγὼν
τῇ διανοίᾳ, τὸ
μὲν περὶ τοὺς
μηδὲν ὄντας θεοὺς
ματαιάζειν, καὶ
μετὰ τοσοῦτον
ἔλεγχον ἀποπλανᾶσθαι,
μωρίας ἔργον
ὑπελάμβανε,
τὸν δὲ πατρῷον
τιμᾷν μόνον ᾤετο
δεῖν Θεόν.
Ἀνεκαλεῖτο
δῆτα ἐν εὐχαῖς
τοῦτον ἀντιβολῶν
καὶ ποτνιώμενος,
φῆναι αὐτῷ ἑαυτὸν
ὅστις εἴη, καὶ
τὴν ἑαυτοῦ δεξιὰν
τοῖς προκειμένοις
ἐπορέξαι. Εὐχομένῳ
δὲ ταῦτα καὶ
λιπαρῶς ἱκετεύοντι
τῷ βασιλεῖ,
θεοσημεία τις
ἐπιφαίνεται
παραδοξοτάτη·
ἣν τάχα μὲν ἄλλου
λέγοντος, οὐ
ῥᾴδιον ἦν ἀποδέξασθαι,
αὐτοῦ δὲ τοῦ
νικητοῦ βασιλέως,
τοῖς τὴν γραφὴν
διηγουμένοις
ἡμῖν μακροῖς
ὕστερον χρόνοις,
ὅτε ἠξιώθημεν
τῆς αὐτοῦ γνώσεώς
τε καὶ ὁμιλίας,
ἐξαγγείλαντος
ὅρκοις, τε
πιστωσαμένου
τὸν λόγον, τίς
ἂν ἀμφιβάλοι
μὴ οὐχὶ πιστεῦσαι
τῷ διηγήματι;
μάλισθ' ὅτε καὶ
ὁ μετὰ ταῦτα
χρόνος ἀληθῆ
τῷ λόγῳ παρέσχε
τὴν μαρτυρίαν.
Ἀμφὶ μεσημβρινὰς
ἡλίου ὥρας,
ἤδη τῆς ἡμέρας
ἀποκλινούσης,
αὐτοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς
ἰδεῖν ἔφη ἐν
αὐτῷ οὐρανῷ
ὑπερκείμενον
τοῦ ἡλίου
σταυροῦ τρόπαιον,
ἐκ φωτὸς συνιστάμενον,
γραφήν τε αὐτῷ
συνῆφθαι λέγουσαν·
τούτῳ νίκα. Θάμβος
δ' ἐπὶ τῷ θεάματι
κρατῆσαι αὐτόν
τε καὶ τὸ στρατιωτικὸν
ἅπαν, ὃ δὴ στελλομένῳ
ποι πορείαν
συνείπετό τε
καὶ θεωρὸν
ἐγίνετο τοῦ
θαύματος.
Καὶ
δὴ διαπορεῖν
πρὸς ἑαυτὸν
ἔλεγε, τί ποτε
εἴη τὸ φάσμα.
Ἐνθυμουμένῳ
δ' αὐτῷ καὶ ἐπὶ
πολὺ λογιζομένῳ
νὺξ ἐπῄει καταλαβοῦσα·
ἐνταῦθα δὴ ὑπνοῦντι
αὐτῷ, τὸν Χριστὸν
τοῦ Θεοῦ σὺν
τῷ φανέντι κατ'
οὐρανὸν σημείῳ
ὀφθῆναί τε καὶ
παρακελεύσασθαι,
μίμημα ποιησάμενον
τοῦ κατ' οὐρανὸν
ὀφθέντος σημείου,
τούτῳ πρὸς τὰς
τῶν πολεμίων
συμβολὰς ἀλεξήματι
χρῆσθαι.
Ἅμα
δ' ἡμέρᾳ διαναστὰς,
τοῖς φίλοις
ἐξηγόρευε τὸ
ἀπόρρητον. Κἄπειτα
χρυσοῦ καὶ
λίθων πολυτελῶν
δημιουργοὺς
συγκαλέσας,
μέσος αὐτὸς
καθιζάνει, καὶ
τοῦ σημείου
τὴν εἰκόνα φράζει,
ἀπομιμεῖσθαί
τε αὐτὴν χρυσῷ
καὶ πολυτελέσι
λίθοις διεκελεύετο·
ὃ δὴ καὶ ἡμᾶς
ὀφθαλμοῖς ποτε
συνέβη παραλαβεῖν.
Ἦν
δὲ τοιῷδε σχήματι
κατεσκευασμένον·
ὑψηλὸν δόρυ
χρυσῷ κατημφιεσμένον,
κέρας εἶχεν
ἐγκάρσιον, σταυροῦ
σχήματι πεποιημένον·
ἄνω δὲ πρὸς ἄκρῳ
τοῦ παντὸς, στέφανος
ἐκ λίθων πολυτελῶν
καὶ χρυσοῦ
συμπεπλεγμένος
κατεστήρικτο,
καθ' οὗ τῆς
σωτηρίου ἐπηγορίας
τὸ σύμβολον,
δύο στοιχεῖα
τὸ Χριστοῦ
παραδηλοῦντα
ὄνομα, διὰ τῶν
πρώτων ὑπεσήμαινον
χαρακτήρων,
χιαζομένου
τοῦ ρ κατὰ τὸ
μεσαίτατον·
ἃ δὴ καὶ κατὰ
τοῦ κράνους
φέρειν εἴωθε
κἀν τοῖς μετὰ
ταῦτα χρόνοις
ὁ βασιλεύς.
Τοῦ δὲ πλαγίου
κέρως, τοῦ κατὰ
τὸ δόρυ πεπαρμένου,
ὀθόνη τις ἐκκρεμὴς
ἀπῃώρητο, βασιλικὸν
ὕφασμα ποικιλίᾳ
συνημμένων πολυτελῶν
λίθων, φωτὸς
αὐγαῖς ἐξαστραπτόντων,
καλυπτόμενον·
σὺν πολλῷ τε
καθυφασμένον
χρυσῷ, ἀδιήγητόν
τι χρῆμα τοῖς
ὁρῶσι παρεῖχε
τοῦ κάλλους.
Τοῦτο μὲν οὖν
τὸ φᾶρος τοῦ
κέρως ἐξημμένον,
σύμμετρον μήκους
τε καὶ πλάτους
περιγραφὴν
ἀπελάμβανε, τὸ
δ' ὄρθιον δόρυ,
τῆς κάτω ἀρχῆς
ἐπὶ πολὺ μηκυνόμενον,
ἄνω μετέωρον
ὑπὸ τῷ τοῦ σταυροῦ
τροπαίῳ πρὸς
αὐτοῖς ἄκροις
τοῦ διαγραφέντος
ὑφάσματος, τὴν
τοῦ θεοφιλοῦς
βασιλέως εἰκόνα
χρυσῆν μέχρι
στέρνων, τῶν τ'
αὐτοῦ παίδων
ὁμοίως ἔφερε.
Τούτῳ μὲν οὖν
τῷ σωτηρίῳ σημείῳ,
πάσης ἀντικειμένης
καὶ πολεμίας
δυνάμεως ἀμυντηρίῳ
διαπαντὸς ἐχρῆτο
βασιλεύς, τῶν
τε στρατοπέδων
ἁπάντων ἡγεῖσθαι
τούτου ὁμοιώματα,
προσέταττεν.
CHAPTER
XXVII: That after reflecting on the Dawn fall of those who had
worshiped Idols, he made Choice of Christianity.
BEING
convinced, however, that he needed some more powerful aid than his
military forces could afford him, on account of the wicked and
magical enchantments which were so diligently practiced by the
tyrant, he sought Divine assistance, deeming the possession of arms
and a numerous soldiery of secondary importance, but believing the
co-operating power of Deity invincible and not to be shaken. He
considered, therefore, on what God he might rely for protection and
assistance. While engaged in this inquiry, the thought occurred to
him, that, of the many emperors who had preceded him, those who had
rested their hopes in a multitude of gods, and served them with
sacrifices and offerings, had in the first place been deceived by
flattering predictions, and oracles which promised them all
prosperity, and at last had met with an unhappy end, while not one
of their gods had stood by to warn them of the impending wrath of
heaven; while one alone who had pursued an entirely opposite course,
who had condemned their error, and honored the one Supreme God
during his whole life, had formal I him to be the Saviour and
Protector of his empire, and the Giver of every good thing.
Reflecting on this, and well weighing the fact that they who had
trusted in many gods had also fallen by manifold forms of death,
without leaving behind them either family or offspring, stock, name,
or memorial among men: while the God of his father had given to him,
on the other hand, manifestations of his power and very many tokens:
and considering farther that those who had already taken arms
against the tyrant, and had marched to the battle-field under the
protection of a multitude of gods, had met with a dishonorable end
(for one of them had shamefully retreated from the contest without a
blow, and the other, being slain in the midst of his own troops,
became, as it were, the mere sport of death); reviewing, I say, all
these considerations, he judged it to be folly indeed to join in the
idle worship of those who were no gods, and, after such convincing
evidence, to err from the truth; and therefore felt it incumbent on
him to honor his father's God alone.
CHAPTER
XXVIII: How, while he was praying, God sent him a Vision of a Cross
of Light in the Heavens at Mid-day, with an Inscription admonishing
him to conquer by that.
ACCORDINGLY
he called on him with earnest prayer and supplications that he would
reveal to him who he was, and stretch forth his right hand to help
him in his present difficulties. And while he was thus praying with
fervent entreaty, a most marvelous sign appeared to him from heaven,
the account of which it might have been hard to believe had it been
related by any other person. But since the victorious emperor
himself long afterwards declared it to the writer of this history,
when he was honored with his acquaintance and society, and confirmed
his statement by an oath, who could hesitate to accredit the
relation, especially since the testimony of after-time has
established its truth? He said that about noon, when the day was
already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of
a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the
inscription, CONQUER BY THIS. At this sight he himself was struck
with amazement, and his whole army also, which followed him on this
expedition, and witnessed the miracle.
CHAPTER
XXIX: How the Christ of God appeared to him in his Sleep, and
commanded him to use in his Wars a Standard made in the Form of the
Cross.
HE
said, moreover, that he doubted within himself what the import of
this apparition could be. And while he continued to ponder and
reason on its meaning, night suddenly came on; then in his sleep the
Christ of God appeared to him with the same sign which he had seen
in the heavens, and commanded him to make a likeness of that sign
which he had seen in the heavens, and to use it as a safeguard in
all engagements with his enemies.
CHAPTER
XXX: The Making of the Standard of the Cross.
AT
dawn of day he arose, and communicated the marvel to his friends:
and then, calling together the workers in gold and precious stones,
he sat in the midst of them, and described to them the figure of the
sign he had seen, bidding them represent it in gold and precious
stones. And this representation I myself have had an opportunity of
seeing.
CHAPTER
XXXI: A Description of the Standard of the Cross, which the Romans
now call the Labarum.
NOW
it was made in the following manner. A long spear, overlaid with
gold, formed the figure of the cross by means of a transverse bar
laid over it. On the top of the whole was fixed a wreath of gold and
precious stones; and within this, the symbol of the Saviour's name,
two letters indicating the name of Christ by means of its initial
characters, the letter P being intersected by X in its centre: and
these letters the emperor was in the habit of wearing on his helmet
at a later period. From the cross-bar of the spear was suspended a
cloth, a royal piece, covered with a profuse embroidery of most
brilliant precious stones; and which, being also richly interlaced
with gold, presented an indescribable degree of beauty to the
beholder. This banner was of a square form, and the upright staff,
whose lower section was of great length, bore a golden half-length
portrait of the pious emperor and his children on its upper part,
beneath the trophy of the cross, and immediately above the
embroidered banner.
The
emperor constantly made use of this sign of salvation as a safeguard
against every adverse and hostile power, and commanded that others
similar to it should be carried at the head of all his armies.
CHAPTER
XXXII: How Constantine received Instruction, and read the Sacred
Scriptures.
THESE
things were done shortly afterwards. But at the time above
specified, being struck with amazement at the extraordinary vision,
and resolving to worship no other God save Him who had appeared to
him, he sent for those who were acquainted with the mysteries of His
doctrines, and inquired who that God was, and what was intended by
the sign of the vision he had seen. They affirmed that He was God,
the only begotten Son of the one and only God: that the sign which
had appeared was the symbol of immortality, and the trophy of that
victory over death which He had gained in time past when sojourning
on earth. They taught him also the causes of His advent, and
explained to him the true account of His incarnation. Thus he was
instructed in these matters, and was impressed with wonder at the
divine manifestation which had been presented to his sight.
Comparing, therefore, the heavenly vision with the interpretation
given, he found his judgment confirmed; and, in the persuasion that
the knowledge of these things had been imparted to him by Divine
teaching, he determined thenceforth to devote himself to the reading
of the Inspired writings.
Moreover,
he made the priests of God his counselors, and deemed it incumbent
on him to honor the God who had appeared to him with all devotion.
And after this, being fortified by well-grounded hopes in Him, he
hastened to quench the threatening fire of tyranny.
CHAPTER
XXXIII: Of the Adulterous Conduct of Maxentius at Rome.
FOR
the who had tyrannically possessed himself of the imperial city, had
proceeded to great lengths in impiety and wickedness, so as to
venture without hesitation on every vile and impure action.
For
example: he would separate women from their husbands, and after a
time send them back to them again, and these insults he offered not
to men of mean or obscure condition, but to those who held the first
places in the Roman senate. Moreover, though he shamefully
dishonored almost numberless free women, he was unable to satisfy
his ungoverned and intemperate desires. But when he assayed to
corrupt Christian women also, he could no longer secure success to
his designs, since they chose rather to submit their lives to death
than yield their persons to be defiled by him.
CHAPTER
XXXIV: How the Wife of a Prefect slew herself for Chastity's Sake.
NOW
a certain woman, wife of one of the senators who held the authority
of prefect, when she understood that those who ministered to the
tyrant in such matters were standing before her house (she was a
Christian), and knew that her husband through fear had bidden them
take her and lead her away, begged a short space of time for
arraying herself in her usual dress, and entered her chamber. There,
being left alone, she sheathed a sword in her own breast, and
immediately expired, leaving indeed her dead body to the procurers,
but declaring to all mankind, both to present and future
generations, by an act which spoke louder than any words, that the
chastity for which Christians are famed is the only thing which is
invincible and indestructible. Such was the conduct displayed by
this woman.
CHAPTER
XXXV: Massacre of the Roman People by Maxentius.
ALL
men, therefore, both people and magistrates, whether of high or low
degree, trembled through fear of him whose daring wickedness was
such as I have described, and were oppressed by his grievous
tyranny. Nay, though they submitted quietly, and endured this bitter
servitude, still there was no escape from the tyrant's sanguinary
cruelty. For at one time, on some trifling pretense, he exposed the
populace to be slaughtered by his own body-guard; and countless
multitudes of the Roman people were slain in the very midst of the
city by the lances and weapons, not of Scythians or barbarians, but
of their own fellow-citizens. And besides this, it is impossible to
calculate the number of senators whose blood was shed with a view to
the seizure of their respective estates, for at different times and
on various fictitious charges, multitudes of them suffered death.
CHAPTER
XXXVI: Magic Arts of Maxentius against Constantine; and Famine at
Rome.
BUT
the crowning point of the tyrant's wickedness was his having
recourse to sorcery: sometimes for magic purposes ripping up women
with child, at other times searching into the bowels of new-born
infants. He slew lions also, and practiced certain horrid arts for
evoking demons, and averting the approaching war, hoping by these
means to get the victory. In short, it is impossible to describe the
manifold acts of oppression by which this tyrant of Rome enslaved
his subjects: so that by this time they were reduced to the most
extreme penury and want of necessary food, a scarcity such as our
contemporaries do not remember ever before to have existed at Rome.
CHAPTER
XXXVII: Defeat of Maxentius's Armies in Italy.
CONSTANTINE,
however, filled with compassion on account of all these miseries,
began to arm himself with all warlike preparation against the
tyranny. Assuming therefore the Supreme God as his patron, and
invoking His Christ to be his preserver and aid, and setting the
victorious trophy, the salutary symbol, in front of his soldiers and
body-guard, he marched with his whole forces, trying to obtain again
for the Romans the freedom they had inherited from their ancestors.
And
whereas, Maxentius, trusting more in his magic arts than in the
affection of his subjects, dared not even advance outside the city
gates, but had guarded every place and district and city subject to
his tyranny, with large bodies of soldiers, the emperor, confiding
in the help of God, advanced against the first and second and third
divisions of the tyrant's forces, defeated them all with ease at the
first assault, and made his way into the very interior of Italy.
CHAPTER
XXXVIII: Death of Maxentius on the Bridge of the Tiber.
AND
already he was approaching very near Rome itself, when, to save him
from the necessity of fighting with all the Romans for the tyrant's
sake, God himself drew the tyrant, as it were by secret cords, a
long way outside the gates. And now those miracles recorded in Holy
Writ, which God of old wrought against the ungodly (discredited by
most as fables, yet believed by the faithful), did he in every deed
confirm to all alike, believers and unbelievers, who were
eye-witnesses of the wonders. For as once in the days of Moses and
the Hebrew nation, who were worshipers of God, "Pharaoh's
chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea and his chosen
chariot-captains are drowned in the Red Sea," - so at this time
Maxentius, and the soldiers and guards with him, "went down
into the depths like stone," when, in his flight before the
divinely-aided forces of Constantine, he essayed to cross the river
which lay in his way, over which, making a strong bridge of boats,
he had framed an engine of destruction, really against himself, but
in the hope of ca-snaring thereby him who was beloved by God. For
his God stood by the one to protect him, while the other, godless,
proved to be the miserable contriver of these secret devices to his
own ruin. So that one might well say, "He hath made a pit, and
digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made. His mischief
shall return upon his own head, and his violence shall come down
upon his own pate." Thus, in the present instance, under divine
direction, the machine erected on the bridge, with the ambuscade
concealed therein, giving way unexpectedly before the appointed
time, the bridge began to sink, and the boats with the men in them
went bodily to the bottom. And first the wretch himself, then his
armed attendants and guards, even as the sacred oracles had before
described, "sank as lead in the mighty waters." So that
they who thus obtained victory from God might well, if not in the
same words, yet in fact in the same spirit as the people of his
great servant Moses, sing and speak as they did concerning the
impious tyrant of old: "Let us sing unto the Lord, for he hath
been glorified exceedingly: the horse and his rider hath he thrown
into the sea. He is become my helper and my shield unto salvation."
And again, "Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? who
is like thee, glorious in holiness, marvelous in praises, doing
wonders?"
CHAPTER
XXXIX: Constantine's Entry into Rome.
HAVING
then at this time sung these and suchlike praises to God, the Ruler
of all and the Author of victory, after the example of his great
servant Moses, Constantine entered the imperial city in triumph. And
here the whole body of the senate, and others of rank and
distinction in the city, freed as it were from the restraint of a
prison, along with the whole Roman populace, their countenances
expressive of the gladness of their hearts, received him with
acclamations and abounding joy; men, women, and children, with
countless multitudes of servants, greeting him as deliverer,
preserver, and benefactor, with incessant shouts. But he, being
possessed of inward piety toward God, was neither rendered arrogant
by these plaudits, nor uplifted by the praises he heard:but, being
sensible that he had received help from God, he immediately rendered
a thanksgiving to him as the Author of his victory.
CHAPTER
XL: Of the Statue of Constantine holding a Cross, and its
Inscription.
MOREOVER,
by loud proclamation and monumental inscriptions he made known to
all men the salutary symbol, setting up this great trophy of victory
over his enemies in the midst of the imperial city, and expressly
causing it to be engraved in indelible characters, that the salutary
symbol was the safeguard of the Roman government and of the entire
empire. Accordingly, he immediately ordered a lofty spear in the
figure of a cross to be placed beneath the hand of a statue
representing himself, in the most frequented part of Rome, and the
following inscription to be engraved on it in the Latin language: BY
VIRTUE OF THIS SALUTARY SIGN, WHICH IS THE TRUE TEST OF VALOR, I
HAVE PRESERVED AND LIBERATED YOUR CITY FROM THE YOKE OF TYRANNY. I
HAVE ALSO SET AT LIBERTY THE ROMAN SENATE AND PEOPLE, AND RESTORED
THEM TO THEIR ANCIENT DISTINCTION AND SPLENDOR.
CHAPTER
XLI: Rejoicings throughout the Provinces; and Constantine's Acts of
Grace.
THUS
the pious emperor, glorying in the confession of the victorious
cross, proclaimed the Son of God to the Romans with great boldness
of testimony. And the inhabitants of the city, one and all, senate
and people, reviving, as it were, from the pressure of a bitter and
tyrannical domination, seemed to enjoy purer rays of light, and to
be born again into a fresh and new life. All the nations, too, as
far as the limit of the western ocean, being set free from the
calamities which had heretofore beset them, and gladdened by joyous
festivals, ceased not to praise him as the victorious, the pious,
the common benefactor: all, indeed, with one voice and one mouth,
declared that Constantine had appeared by the grace of God as a
general blessing to mankind. The imperial edict also was everywhere
published, whereby those who had been wrongfully deprived of their
estates were permitted again to enjoy their own, while those who had
unjustly suffered exile were recalled to their homes. Moreover, he
freed from imprisonment, and from every kind of danger and fear,
those who, by reason of the tyrant's cruelty, had been subject to
these sufferings.
CHAPTER
XLII: The Honors conferred upon Bishops, and the Building of
Churches.
THE
emperor also personally inviting the society of God's ministers,
distinguished them with the highest possible respect and honor,
showing them favor in deed and word as persons consecrated to the
service of his God. Accordingly, they were admitted to his table,
though mean in their attire and outward appearance; yet not so in
his estimation, since he thought he saw not the man as seen by the
vulgar eye, but the God in him. He made them also his companions in
travel, believing that He whose servants they were would thus help
him. Besides this, he gave from his own private resources costly
benefactions to the churches of God, both enlarging and heightening
the sacred edifices, and embellishing the august sanctuaries of the
church with abundant offerings.
CHAPTER
XLIII: Constantine's Liberality to the Poor.
HE
likewise distributed money largely to those who were in need, and
besides these showing himself philanthropist and benefactor even to
the heathen, who had no claim on him; and even for the beggars in
the forum, miserable and shiftless, he provided, not with money
only, or necessary food, but also decent clothing. But in the case
of those who had once been prosperous, and had experienced a reverse
of circumstances, his aid was still more lavishly bestowed. On such
persons, in a truly royal spirit, he conferred magnificent
benefactions; giving grants of land to some, and honoring others
with various dignities. Orphans of the unfortunate he cared for as a
father, while he relieved the destitution of widows, and cared for
them with special solicitude. Nay, he even gave virgins, left
unprotected by their parents' death, in marriage to wealthy men with
whom he was personally acquainted. But this he did after first
bestowing on the brides such portions as it was fitting they should
bring to the communion of marriage. In short, as the sun, when he
rises upon the earth, liberally imparts his rays of light to all, so
did Constantine, proceeding at early dawn from the imperial palace,
and rising as it were with the heavenly luminary, impart the rays of
his own beneficence to all who came into his presence. It was
scarcely possible to be near him without receiving some benefit, nor
did it ever happen that any who had expected to obtain his
assistance were disappointed in their hope.
CHAPTER
XLIV: How he was present at the Synods of Bishops.
SUCH,
then, was his general character towards all. But he exercised a
peculiar care over the church of God: and whereas, in the several
provinces there were some who differed from each other in judgment,
he, like some general bishop constituted by God, convened synods of
his ministers. Nor did he disdain to be present and sit with them in
their assembly, but bore a share in their deliberations, ministering
to all that pertained to the peace of God. He took his seat, too, in
the midst of them, as an individual amongst many, dismissing his
guards and soldiers, and all whose duty it was to defend his person;
but protected by the fear of God, and surrounded by the guardianship
of his faithful friends. Those whom he saw inclined to a sound
judgment, and exhibiting a calm and conciliatory temper, received
his high approbation, for he evidently delighted in a general
harmony of sentiment; while he regarded the unyielding wills
aversion.
CHAPTER
XLV: His Forbearance with Unreasonable Men.
MOREOVER
he endured with patience some who were exasperated against himself,
directing them in mild and gentle terms to control themselves, and
not be turbulent. And some of these respected his admonitions, and
desisted; but as to those who proved incapable of sound judgment, he
left them entirely at the disposal of God, and never himself desired
harsh measures against any one. Hence it naturally happened that the
disaffected in Africa reached such a pitch of violence as even to
venture on overt acts of audacity;some evil spirit, as it seems
probable, being jealous of the present great prosperity, and
impelling these men to atrocious deeds, that he might excite the
emperor's anger against them. He gained nothing, however, by this
malicious conduct; for the emperor laughed at these proceedings, and
declared their origin to be from the evil one; inasmuch as these
were not the actions of sober persons, but of lunatics or demoniacs;
who should be pitied rather than punished; since to punish madmen is
as great folly as to sympathize with their condition is supreme
philanthropy.
CHAPTER
XLVI: Victories over the Barbarians.
THUS
the emperor in all his actions honored God, the Controller of all
things, and exercised an unwearied oversight over His churches. And
God requited him, by subduing all barbarous nations under his feet,
so that he was able everywhere to raise trophies over his enemies:
and He proclaimed him as conqueror to all mankind, and made him a
terror to his adversaries: not indeed that this was his natural
character, since he was rather the meekest, and gentlest, and most
benevolent of men.
CHAPTER
XLVII: Death of Maximin, who had attempted a Conspiracy, and of
Others whom Constantine detected by Divine Revelation.
WHILE
he was thus engaged, the second of those who had resigned the
throne, being detected in a treasonable conspiracy, suffered a most
ignominious death. He was the first whose pictures, statues, and all
similar marks of honor and distinction were everywhere destroyed, on
the ground of his crimes and impiety. After him others also of the
same family were discovered in the act of forming secret plots
against the emperor; all their intentions being miraculously
revealed by God through visions to His servant.
For
he frequently vouchsafed to him manifestations of himself, the
Divine presence appearing to him in a most marvelous manner, and
according to him manifold intimations of future events. Indeed, it
is impossible to express in words the indescribable wonders of
Divine grace which God was pleased to vouchsafe to His servant.
Surrounded by these, he passed the rest of his life in security,
rejoicing in the affection of his subjects, rejoicing too because he
saw all beneath his government leading contented lives; but above
all delighted at the flourishing condition of the churches of God.
CHAPTER
XLVIII: Celebration of Constantine's Decennalia.
WHILE
he was thus circumstanced, he completed the tenth year of his reign.
On this occasion he ordered the celebration of general festivals,
and offered prayers of thanksgiving to God, the King of all, as
sacrifices without flame or smoke. And from this employment he
derived much pleasure: not so from the tidings he received of the
ravages committed in the Eastern provinces.
CHAPTER
XLIX: How Licinius oppressed the East.
FOR
he was informed that in that quarter a certain savage beast was
besetting both the church of God and the other inhabitants of the
provinces, owing, as it were, to the efforts of the evil spirit to
produce effects quite contrary to the deeds of the pious emperor: so
that the Roman empire, divided into two parts, seemed to all men to
resemble night and day; since darkness overspread the provinces of
the East, while the brightest day illumined the inhabitants of the
other portion. And whereas the latter were receiving manifold
blessings at the hand of God, the sight of these blessings proved
intolerable to that envy which hates all good, as well as to the
tyrant who afflicted the other division of the empire; and who,
notwithstanding that his government was prospering, and he had been
honored by a marriage connection with so great an emperor as
Constantine, yet cared not to follow the steps of that pious prince,
but strove rather to imitate the evil purposes and practice of the
impious; and chose to adopt the course of those whose ignominious
end he had seen with his own eyes, rather than to maintain amicable
relations with him who was his superior.
CHAPTER
L: How Licinius attempted a Conspiracy against Constantine.
ACCORDINGLY
he engaged in an implacable war against his benefactor, altogether
regardless of the laws of friendship, the obligation of oaths, the
ties of kindred, and already existing treaties. For the most
benignant emperor had given him a proof of sincere affection in
bestowing on him the hand of his sister, thus granting him the
privilege of a place in family relationship and his own ancient
imperial descent, and investing him also with the rank and dignity
of his colleague in the empire. But the other took the very opposite
course, employing himself in machinations against his superior, and
devising various means to repay his benefactor with injuries. At
first, pretending friendship, he did all things by guile and
treachery, expecting thus to succeed in concealing his designs; but
God enabled his servant to detect the schemes thus devised in
darkness. Being discovered, however, in his first attempts, he had
recourse to fresh frauds; at one time pretending friendship, at
another claiming the protection of solemn treaties. Then suddenly
violating every engagement, and again beseeching pardon by
embassies, yet after all shamefully violating his word, he at last
declared open war, and with desperate infatuation resolved
thenceforward to carry arms against God himself, whose worshiper he
knew the emperor to be.
CHAPTER
LI: Intrigues of Licinius against the Bishops, and his Prohibition
of Synods.
AND
at first he made secret inquiry respecting the ministers of God
subject to his dominion, who had never, indeed, in any respect
offended against his government, in order to bring false accusations
against them. And when he found no ground of accusation, and had no
real ground of objection against them, he next enacted a law, to the
effect that the bishops should never on any account hold
communication with each other, nor should any one of them absent
himself on a visit to a neighboring church; nor, lastly, should the
holding of synods, or councils for the consideration of affairs of
common interest, be permitted. Now this was clearly a pretext for
displaying his malice against us. For we were compelled either to
violate the law, and thus be amenable to punishment, or else, by
compliance with its injunctions, to nullify the statutes of the
Church; inasmuch as it is impossible to bring important questions to
a satisfactory adjustment, except by means of synods. In other cases
also this God-hater, being determined to act contrary to the
God-loving prince, enacted such things. For whereas the one
assembled the priests of God in order to honor them, and to promote
peace and unity of judgment; the other, whose object it was to
destroy everything that was good, used all his endeavors to destroy
the general harmony.
CHAPTER
LII: Banishment of the Christians, and Confiscation of their
Property.
AND
whereas Constantine, the friend of God, had granted to His
worshipers freedom of access to the imperial palaces; this enemy of
God, in a spirit the very reverse of this, expelled thence all
Christians subject to his authority. He banished those who had
proved themselves his most faithful and devoted servants, and
compelled others, on whom he had himself conferred honor and
distinction as a reward for their former eminent services, to the
performance of menial offices as slaves to others; and at length,
being bent on seizing the property of all as a windfall for himself,
he even threatened with death those who professed the Saviour's
name. Moreover being himself of a nature hopelessly debased by
sensuality, and degraded by the continual practice of adultery and
other shameless vices, he assumed his own worthless character as a
specimen of human nature generally, and denied that the virtue of
chastity and continence existed among men.
CHAPTER
LIII: Edict that Women should not meet with the Men in the Churches.
ACCORDINGLY
he passed a second law, which enjoined that men should not appear in
company with women in the houses of prayer, and forbade women to
attend the sacred schools of virtue, or to receive instruction from
the bishops, directing the appointment of women to be teachers of
their own sex. These regulations being received with general
ridicule, he devised other means for effecting the ruin of the
churches. He ordered that the usual congregations of the people
should be held in the open country outside the gates, alleging that
the open air without the city was far more suitable for a multitude
than the houses of prayer within the walls.
CHAPTER
LIV: That those who refuse to sacrifice are to be dismissed from
Military Service, and those in Prison not to be fed.
FAILING,
however, to obtain obedience in this respect also, at length he
threw off the mask, and gave orders that those who held military
commissions in the several cities of the empire should be deprived
of their respective commands, in case of their refusal to offer
sacrifices to the demons. Accordingly the forces of the authorities
in every province suffered the loss of those who worshiped God; and
he too who had decreed this order suffered loss, in that he thus
deprived himself of the prayers of pious men. And why should I still
further mention how he directed that no one should obey the dictates
of common humanity by distributing food to those who were pining in
prisons, or should even pity the captives who perished with hunger;
in short, that no one should perform a virtuous action, and that
those whose natural feelings impelled them to sympathize with their
fellow-creatures should be prohibited from doing them a single
kindness? Truly this was the most utterly shameless and scandalous
of all laws, and one which surpassed the worst depravity of human
nature: a law which inflicted on those who showed mercy the same
penalties as on those who were the objects of their compassion, and
visited the exercise of mere humanity with the severest punishments.
CHAPTER
LV: The Lawless Conduct and Covetousness of Licinius.
SUCH
were the ordinances of Licinius. But why should I enumerate his
innovations respecting marriage, or those concerning the dying,
whereby he presumed to abrogate the ancient and wisely established
laws of the Romans, and to introduce certain barbarous and cruel
institutions in their stead, inventing a thousand pretenses for
oppressing his subjects? Hence it was that he devised a new method
of measuring land, by which he reckoned the smallest portion at more
than its actual dimensions, from an insatiable desire of
acquisition. Hence too he registered the names of country residents
who were now no more, and had long been numbered with the dead,
procuring to himself by this expedient a shameful gain. His meanness
was unlimited and his rapacity insatiable. So that when he had
filled all his treasuries with gold, and silver, and boundless
wealth, he bitterly bewailed his poverty, and suffered as it were
the torments of Tantalus. But why should I mention how many innocent
persons he punished with exile; how much property he confiscated;
how many men of noble birth and estimable character he imprisoned,
whose wives he handed over to be basely insulted by his profligate
slaves, and to how many married women and virgins he himself offered
violence, though already feeling the infirmities of age? I need not
enlarge on these subjects, since the enormity of his last actions
causes the former to appear trifling and of little moment.
CHAPTER
LVI: At length he undertakes to raise a Persecution.
FOR
the final efforts of his fury appeared in his open hostility to the
churches, and he directed his attacks against the bishops
themselves, whom he regarded as his worst adversaries, bearing
special enmity to those men whom the great and pious emperor treated
as his friends. Accordingly he spent on us the utmost of his fury,
and, being transported beyond the bounds of reason, he paused not to
reflect on the example of those who had persecuted the Christians
before him, nor of those whom he himself had been raised up to
punish and destroy for their impious deeds: nor did he heed the
facts of which he had been himself a witness, though he had seen
with his own eyes the chief originator of these our calamities
(whoever he was), smitten by the stroke of the Divine scourge.
CHAPTER
LVII: That Maximian, brought Low by a Fistulous Ulcer with Worms,
issued an Edict in Favor of the Christians.
FOR
whereas this man had commenced the attack on the churches, and had
been the first to pollute his soul with the blood of just and godly
men, a judgment from God overtook him, which at first affected his
body, but eventually extended itself to his soul. For suddenly an
abscess appeared in the secret parts of his person, followed by a
deeply seated fistulous ulcer; and these diseases fastened with
incurable virulence on the intestines, which swarmed with a vast
multitude of worms, and emitted a pestilential odor. Besides, his
entire person had become loaded, through gluttonous excess, with an
enormous quantity of fat, and this, being now in a putrescent state,
is said to have presented to all who approached him an intolerable
and dreadful spectacle. Having, therefore, to struggle against such
sufferings, at length, though late, he came to a realization of his
past crimes against the Church; and, confessing his sins before God,
he put a stop to the persecution of the Christians, and hastened to
issue imperial edicts and rescripts for the rebuilding of their
churches, at the same time enjoining them to perform their customary
worship, and to offer up prayers on his behalf.
CHAPTER
LVIII: That Maximian, who had persecuted the Christians, was
compelled to fly, and conceal himself in the Disguise of a Slave.
SUCH
was the punishment which he underwent who had commenced the
persecution. He, however, of whom we are now speaking, who had been
a witness of these things, and known them by his own actual
experience, all at once banished the remembrance of them from his
mind, and reflected neither on the punishment of the first, nor the
divine judgment which had been executed on the second persecutor.
The latter had indeed endeavored to outstrip his predecessor in the
career of crime, and prided himself on the invention of new tortures
for us. Fire nor sword, nor piercing with nails, nor yet wild beasts
or the depths of the sea sufficed him. In addition to all these, he
discovered a new mode of punishment, and issued an edict directing
that their eyesight should be destroyed. So that numbers, not of men
only, but of women and children, after being deprived of the sight
of their eyes, and the use of the joints of their feet, by
mutilation or cauterization, were consigned in this condition to the
painful labor of the mines. Hence it was that this tyrant also was
overtaken not long after by the righteous judgment of God, at a time
when, confiding in the aid of the demons whom he worshiped as gods,
and relying on the countless multitudes of his troops, he had
ventured to engage in battle. For, feeling himself on that occasion
destitute of all hope in God, he threw from him the imperial dress
which so ill became him, hid himself with unmanly timidity in the
crowd around him, and sought safety in flight.
He
afterwards lurked about the fields and villages in the habit of a
slave, hoping he should thus be effectually concealed. He had not,
however, eluded the mighty and all-searching eye of God: for even
while he was expecting to pass the residue of his days in security,
he fell prostrate, smitten by God's fiery dart, and his whole body
consumed by the stroke of Divine vengeance; so that all trace of the
original lineaments of his person was lost, and nothing remained to
him but dry bones and a skeleton-like appearance.
CHAPTER
LIX: That Maximian, blinded by Disease, issued an Edict in Favor of
the Christians.
AND
still the stroke of God continued heavy upon him, so that his eyes
protruded and fell from their sockets, leaving him quite blind: and
thus he suffered, by a most righteous retribution, the very same
punishment which he had been the first to devise for the martyrs of
God. At length, however, surviving even these sufferings, he too
implored pardon of the God of the Christians, and confessed his
impious fighting against God: he too recanted, as the former
persecutor had done; and by laws and ordinances explicitly
acknowledged his error in worshiping those whom he had accounted
gods, declaring that he now knew, by positive experience, that the
God of the Christians was the only true God. These were facts which
Licinius had not merely received on the testimony of others, but of
which he had himself had personal knowledge: and yet, as though his
understanding had been obscured by some dark cloud of error,
persisted in the same evil course.
BOOK
II.
CHAPTER
I: Secret Persecution by Licinius, who causes Same Bishops to be put
to Death at Amasia of Pontus.
IN
this manner, he of whom we have spoken continued to rush headlong
towards that destruction which awaits the enemies of God; and once
more, with a fatal emulation of their example whose ruin he had
himself witnessed as the consequence of their impious conduct, he
re-kindled the persecution of the Christians, like a
long-extinguished fire, and fanned the unhallowed flame to a fiercer
height than any who had gone before him.
At
first, indeed, though breathing fury and threatenings against God,
like some savage beast of prey, or some crooked and wriggling
serpent, he dared not, from fear of Constantine, openly level his
attacks against the churches of God subject to his dominion; but
dissembled the virulence of his malice, and endeavored by secret and
limited measures to compass the death of the bishops, the most
eminent of whom he found means to remove, through charges laid
against them by the governors of the several provinces. And the
manner in which they suffered had in it something strange, and
hitherto unheard of. At all events, the barbarities perpetrated at
Amasia of Pontus surpassed every known excess of cruelty.
CHAPTER
II: Demolition of Churches, and Butchery of the Bishops.
FOR
in that city some of the churches, for the second time since the
commencement of the persecutions, were leveled with the ground, and
others were closed by the governors of the several districts, in
order to prevent any who frequented them from assembling together,
or rendering due worship to God. For he by whose orders these
outrages were committed was too conscious of his own crimes to
expect that these services were performed with any view to his
benefit, and was convinced that all we did, and all our endeavors to
obtain the favor of God, were on Constantine's behalf. These servile
governors then, feeling assured that such a course would be pleasing
to the impious tyrant, subjected the most distinguished prelates of
the churches to capital punishment. Accordingly, men who had been
guilty of no crime were led away, without cause punished like
murderers: and some suffered a new kind of death, having their
bodies cut piecemeal; and, after this cruel punishment, more
horrible than any named in tragedy, being cast, as a food to fishes,
into the depths of the sea. The result of these horrors was again,
as before, the flight of pious men, and once more the fields and
deserts received the worshipers of God. The tyrant, having thus far
succeeded in his object, he farther determined to raise a general
persecution of the Christians:and he would have accomplished his
purpose, nor could anything have hindered him from carrying his
resolution into effect, had not he who defends his own anticipated
the coming evil, and by his special guidance conducted his servant
Constantine to this part of the empire, causing him to shine forth
as a brilliant light in the midst of the darkness and gloomy night.
CHAPTER
III: How Constantine was stirred in Behalf of the Christians thus in
Danger of Persecution.
HE
perceiving the evils of which he had heard to be no longer
tolerable, took wise counsel, and tempering the natural clemency of
his character with a certain measure of severity, hastened to succor
those who were thus grievously oppressed. For he judged that it
would rightly be deemed a pious and holy task to secure, by the
removal of an individual, the safety of the greater part of the
human race. He judged too, that if he listened to the dictates of
clemency only, and bestowed his pity on one utterly unworthy of it,
this would, on the one hand, confer no real benefit on a man whom
nothing would induce to abandon his evil practices, and whose fury
against his subjects would only be likely to increase;while, on the
other hand, those who suffered from his oppression would thus be
forever deprived of all hope of deliverance.
Influenced
by these reflections, the emperor resolved without farther delay to
extend a protecting hand to those who had fallen into such an
extremity of distress. He accordingly made the usual warlike
preparations, and assembled his whole forces, both of horse and
foot. But before them all was carried the standard which I have
before described, as the symbol of his full confidence in God.
CHAPTER
IV: That Constantine prepared himself for the War by Prayer:
Licinius by the Practice of Divination.
HE
took with him also the priests of God, feeling well assured that
now, if ever, he stood in need of the efficacy of prayer, and
thinking it right that they should constantly be near and about his
person, as most trusty guardians of the soul.
Now,
as soon as the tyrant understood that Constantine's victories over
his enemies were secured to him by no other means than the
co-operation of God, and that the persons above alluded to were
continually with him and about his person; and besides this, that
the symbol of the salutary passion preceded both the emperor himself
and his whole army; he regarded these precautions with ridicule (as
might be expected), at the same time mocking and reviling the
emperor with blasphemous words.
On
the other hand, he gathered round himself Egyptian diviners and
soothsayers, with sorcerers and enchanters, and the priests and
prophets of those whom he imagined to be gods. He then, after
offering the sacrifices which he thought the occasion demanded,
inquired how far he might reckon on a successful termination of the
war. They replied with one voice, that he would unquestionably be
victorious over his enemies, and triumphant in the war: and the
oracles everywhere held out to him the same prospect in copious and
elegant verses. The soothsayers certified him of favorable omens
from the flight of birds; the priests declared the same to be
indicated by the motion of the entrails of their victims. Elevated,
therefore, by these fallacious assurances, he boldly advanced at the
head of his army, and prepared for battle.
CHAPTER
V: What Licinius, while sacrificing in a Grove, said concerning
Idols, and concerning Christ.
AND
when he was now ready to engage, he desired the most approved of his
body-guard and his most valued friends to meet him in one of the
places which they consider sacred. It was a well-watered and shady
grove, and in it were several marble statues of those whom he
accounted to be gods. After lighting tapers and performing the usual
sacrifices in honor of these, he is said to have delivered the
following speech:
"Friends
and fellow-soldiers! These are our country's gods, and these we
honor with a worship derived from our remotest ancestors. But he who
leads the army now opposed to us has proved false to the religion of
his forefathers, and adopted atheistic sentiments, honoring in his
infatuation some strange and unheard-of Deity, with whose despicable
standard he now disgraces his army, and confiding in whose aid he
has taken up arms, and is now advancing, not so much against us as
against those very gods whom he has forsaken. However, the present
occasion shall prove which of us is mistaken in his judgment, and
shall decide between our gods and those whom our adversaries profess
to honor. For either it will declare the victory to be ours, and so
most justly evince that our gods are the true saviours and helpers;
or else, if this God of Constantine's, who comes we know not whence,
shall prove superior to our deities (who are many, and in point of
numbers, at least, have the advantage), let no one henceforth doubt
which god he ought to worship, but attach himself at once to the
superior power, and ascribe to him the honors of the victory.
Suppose, then, this strange God, whom we now regard with ridicule,
should really prove victorious; then indeed we must acknowledge and
give him honor, and so bid a long farewell to those for whom we
light our tapers in vain. But if our own gods triumph (as they
undoubtedly will), then, as soon as we have secured the present
victory, let us prosecute the war without delay against these
despisers of the gods."
Such
were the words he addressed to those then present, as reported not
long after to the writer of this history by some who heard them
spoken. And as soon as he had concluded his speech, he gave orders
to his forces to commence the attack.
CHAPTER
VI: An Apparition seen in the Cities subject to Licinius, as of
Constantine's Troops passing through them.
WHILE
these things were taking place a supernatural appearance is said to
have been observed in the cities subject to the tyrant's rule.
Different detachments of Constantine's army seemed to present
themselves to the view, marching at noonday through these cities, as
though they had obtained the victory. In reality, not a single
soldier was anywhere present at the time, and yet this appearance
was seen through the agency of a divine and superior power, and
foreshadowed what was shortly coming to pass. For as soon as the
armies were ready to engage, he who had broken through the ties of
friendly alliance was the first to commence the battle; on which
Constantine, calling on the name of "God the Supreme Saviour,"
and giving this as the watchword to his soldiers, overcame him in
this first conflict: and not long after in a second battle he gained
a still more important and decisive victory, the salutary trophy
preceding the ranks of his army.
CHAPTER
VII: That Victory everywhere followed the Presence of the Standard
of the Cross in Battle.
INDEED,
wherever this appeared, the enemy soon fled before his victorious
troops. And the emperor perceiving this, whenever he saw any part of
his forces hard pressed, gave orders that the salutary trophy should
be moved in that direction, like some triumphant charm against
disasters: at which the combatants were divinely inspired, as it
were, with fresh strength and courage, and immediate victory was the
result.
CHAPTER
VIII: That Fifty Men were selected to carry the Cross.
ACCORDINGLY,
he selected those of his bodyguard who were most distinguished for
personal strength, valor, and piety, and intrusted them with the
sole care and defense of the standard. There were thus no less than
fifty men whose only duty was to surround and vigilantly defend the
standard, which they carried each in turn on their shoulders. These
circumstances were related to the writer of this narrative by the
emperor himself in his leisure moments, long after the occurrence of
the events: and he added another incident well worthy of being
recorded.
CHAPTER
IX: That One of the Cross-bearers, who fled from his Post, was
slain: while Another, who faithfully stood his Ground, was
preserved.
FOR
he said that once, during the very heat of an engagement, a sudden
tumult and panic attacked his army, which threw the soldier who then
bore the standard into an agony of fear, so that he handed it over
to another, in order to secure his own escape from the battle. As
soon, however, as his comrade had received it, and he had withdrawn,
and resigned all charge of the standard, he was struck in the belly
by a dart, which took his life. Thus he paid the penalty of his
cowardice and unfaithfulness, and lay dead on the spot: but the
other, who had taken his place as the bearer of the salutary
standard, found it to be the safeguard of his life. For though he
was assailed by a continual shower of darts, the bearer remained
unhurt, the staff of the standard receiving every weapon. It was
indeed a truly marvelous circumstance, that the enemies' darts all
fell within and remained in the slender circumference of this spear,
and thus saved the standard-bearer from death; so that none of those
engaged in this service ever received a wound.
This
story is none of mine, but for this, too, I am indebted to the
emperor's own authority, who related it in my hearing along with
other matters. And now, having thus through the power of God secured
these first victories, he put his forces in motion and continued his
onward march.
CHAPTER
X: Furious Battles, and Constantine's Victories.
THE
van, however, of the enemy, unable to resist the emperor's first
assault, threw down their arms, and prostrated themselves at his
feet. All these he spared, rejoicing to save human life. But there
were others who still continued in arms, and engaged in battle.
These the emperor endeavored to conciliate by friendly overtures,
but when these were not accepted he ordered his army to commence the
attack. On this they immediately turned and betook themselves to
flight; and some were overtaken and slain according to the laws of
war, while others fell on each other in the confusion of their
flight, and perished by the swords of their comrades.
CHAPTER
XI: Flight, and Magic Arts of Licinius.
IN
these circumstances their commander, finding himself bereft of the
aid of his followers, having lost his lately numerous array, both of
regular and allied forces, having proved, too, by experience, how
vain his confidence had been in those whom he thought to be gods,
ignominiously took to flight, by which indeed he effected his
escape, and secured his personal safety, for the pious emperor had
forbidden his soldiers to follow him too closely, and thus allowed
him an opportunity for escape. And this he did in the hope that he
might hereafter, on conviction of the desperate state of his
affairs, be induced to abandon his insane and presumptuous ambition,
and return to sounder reason. So Constantine, in his excessive
humanity, thought and was willing patiently to bear past injuries,
and extend his forgiveness to one who so ill deserved it; but
Licinius, far from renouncing his evil practices, still added crime
to crime, and ventured on more daring atrocities than ever. Nay,
once more tampering with the detestable arts of magic, he again was
presumptuous: so that it might well be said of him, as it was of the
Egyptian tyrant of old, that God had hardened his heart.
CHAPTER
XII: How Constantine, after praying in his Tabernacle, obtained the
Victory.
BUT
while Licinius, giving himself up to these impieties, rushed blindly
towards the gulf of destruction, the emperor on the other hand, when
he saw that he must meet his enemies in a second battle, devoted the
intervening time to his Saviour. He pitched the tabernacle of the
cross outside and at a distance from his camp, and there passed his
time in a pure and holy manner, offering up prayers to God;
following thus the example of his ancient prophet, of whom the
sacred oracles testify, that he pitched the tabernacle without the
camp. He was attended only by a few, whose faith and pious devotion
he highly esteemed. And this custom he continued to observe whenever
he meditated an engagement with the enemy. For he was deliberate in
his measures, the better to insure safety, and desired in everything
to be directed by divine counsel. And making earnest supplications
to God, he was always honored after a little with a manifestation of
his presence. And then, as if moved by a divine impulse, he would
rush from the tabernacle, and suddenly give orders to his army to
move at once without delay, and on the instant to draw their swords.
On this they would immediately commence the attack, fight
vigorously, so as with incredible celerity to secure the victory,
and raise trophies of victory over their enemies.
CHAPTER
XIII: His Humane Treatment of Prisoners.
THUS
the emperor and his army had long been accustomed to act, whenever
there was a prospect of an engagement; for his God was ever present
to his thoughts, and he desired to do everything according to his
will, and conscientiously to avoid any wanton sacrifice of human
life. He was anxious thus for the preservation not only of his own
subjects, but even of his enemies. Accordingly he directed his
victorious troops to spare the lives of their prisoners, admonishing
them, as human beings, not to forget the claims of their common
nature. And whenever he saw the passions of his soldiery excited
beyond control, he repressed their fury by a largess of money,
rewarding every man who saved the life of an enemy with a certain
weight of gold. And the emperor's own sagacity led him to discover
this inducement to spare human life, so that great numbers even of
the barbarians were thus saved, and owed their lives to the
emperor's gold.
CHAPTER
XIV: A Farther Mention of his Prayers in the Tabernacle.
NOW
these, and a thousand such acts as these, were familiarly and
habitually done by the emperor. And on the present occasion he
retired, as his custom was before battle, to the privacy of his
tabernacle, and there employed his time in prayer to God. Meanwhile
he strictly abstained from anything like ease, or luxurious living,
and disciplined himself by fasting and bodily mortification,
imploring the favor of God by supplication and prayer, that he might
obtain his concurrence and aid, and be ready to execute whatever he
might be pleased to suggest to his thoughts. In short, he exercised
a vigilant care over all alike, and interceded with God as much for
the safety of his enemies as for that of his own subjects.
CHAPTER
XV: Treacherous Friendship, and Idolatrous Practices of Licinius.
AND
inasmuch as he who had lately fled before him now dissembled his
real sentiments, and again petitioned for a renewal of friendship
and alliance, the emperor thought fit, on certain conditions, to
grant his request, in the hope that such a measure might be
expedient, and generally advantageous to the community. Licinius,
however, while he pretended a ready submission to the terms
prescribed, and attested his sincerity by oaths, at this very time
was secretly engaged in collecting a military force, and again
meditated war and strife, inviting even the barbarians to join his
standard, and he began also to look about him for other gods, having
been deceived by those in whom he had hitherto trusted. And, without
bestowing a thought on what he had himself publicly spoken on the
subject of false deities, or choosing to acknowledge that God who
had fought on the side of Constantine, he made himself ridiculous by
seeking for a multitude of new gods.
CHAPTER
XVI: How Licinius counseled his Soldiers not to attack the Standard
of the Cross.
HAVING
now learned by experience the Divine and mysterious power which
resided in the salutary trophy, by means of which Constantine's army
had become habituated to victory, he admonished his soldiers never
to direct their attack against this standard, nor even incautiously
to allow their eyes to rest upon it; assuring them that it possessed
a terrible power, and was especially hostile to him; so that they
would do well carefully to avoid any collision with it. And now,
having given these directions, he prepared for a decisive conflict
with him whose humanity prompted him still to hesitate, and to
postpone the fate which he foresaw awaited his adversary. The enemy,
however, confident in the aid of a multitude of gods, advanced to
the attack with a powerful array of military force, preceded by
certain images of the dead, and lifeless statues, as their defense.
On the other side, the emperor, secure in the armor of godliness,
opposed to the numbers of the enemy the salutary and life-giving
sign, as at once a terror to the foe, and a protection from every
harm. And for a while he paused, and preserved at first the attitude
of forbearance, from respect to the treaty of peace to which he had
given his sanction, that he might not be the first to commence the
contest.
CHAPTER
XVII: Constantine's Victory.
BUT
as soon as he perceived that his adversaries persisted in their
resolution, and were already drawing their swords, he gave free
scope to his indignation, and by a single charge overthrew in a
moment the entire body of the enemy, thus triumphing at once over
them and their gods.
CHAPTER
XVIII: Death of Licinius, and Celebration of the Event.
HE
then proceeded to deal with this adversary of God and his followers
according to the laws of war, and consign them to fitting
punishment. Accordingly the tyrant himself, and they whose counsels
had supported him in his impiety, were together subjected to the
just punishment of death. After this, those who had so lately been
deceived by their vain confidence in false deities, acknowledged
with unfeigned sincerity the God of Constantine, and openly
professed their belief in him as the true and only God.
CHAPTER
XIX: Rejoicings and Festivities.
AND
now, the impious being thus removed, the sun once more shone
brightly after the gloomy cloud of tyrannic power. Each separate
portion of the Roman dominion became blended with the rest; the
Eastern nations united with those of the West, and the whole body of
the Roman empire was graced as it were by its head in the person of
a single and supreme ruler, whose sole authority pervaded the whole.
Now too the bright rays of the light of godliness gladdened the days
of those who had heretofore been sitting in darkness and the shadow
of death. Past sorrows were no more remembered, for all united in
celebrating the praises of the victorious prince, and avowed their
recognition of his preserver as the only true God. Thus he whose
character shone with all the virtues of piety, the emperor Victor,
for he had himself adopted this name as a most fitting appellation
to express the victory which God had granted him over all who hated
or opposed him, assumed the dominion of the East, and thus singly
governed the Roman empire, re-united, as in former times, under one
head. Thus, as he was the first to proclaim to all the sole
sovereignty of God, so he himself, as sole sovereign of the Roman
world, extended his authority over the whole human race. Every
apprehension of those evils under the pressure of which all had
suffered was now removed; men whose heads had drooped in sorrow now
regarded each other with smiling countenances, and looks expressive
of their inward joy. With processions and hymns of praise they first
of all, as they were told, ascribed the supreme sovereignty to God,
as in truth the King of kings; and then with continued acclamations
rendered honor to the victorious emperor, and the Caesars, his most
discreet and pious sons. The former afflictions were forgotten, and
all past impieties forgiven: while with the enjoyment of present
happiness was mingled the expectation of continued blessings in the
future.
CHAPTER
XX: Constantine's Enactments in Favor of the Confessors.
MOREOVER,
the emperor's edicts, permeated with his humane spirit, were
published among us also, as they had been among the inhabitants of
the other division of the empire; and his laws, which breathed a
spirit of piety toward God, gave promise of manifold blessings,
since they secured many advantages to his provincial subjects in
every nation, and at the same time prescribed measures suited to the
exigencies of the churches of God. For first of all they recalled
those who, in consequence of their refusal to join in idol worship,
had been driven to exile, or ejected from their homes by the
governors of their respective provinces. In the next place, they
relieved from their burdens those who for the same reason had been
adjudged to serve in the civil courts, and ordained restitution to
be made to any who had been deprived of property. They too, who in
the time of trial had signalized themselves by fortitude of soul in
the cause of God, and had therefore been condemned to the painful
labor of the mines, or consigned to the solitude of islands, or
compelled to toil in the public works, all received an immediate
release from these burdens; while others, whose religious constancy
had cost them the forfeiture of their military rank, were vindicated
by the emperor's generosity from this dishonor: for he granted them
the alternative either of resuming their rank, and enjoying their
former privileges, or, in the event of their preferring a more
settled life, of perpetual exemption from all service. Lastly, all
who had been compelled by way of disgrace and insult to serve in the
employments of women, he likewise freed with the rest.
CHAPTER
XXI: His Laws concerning Martyrs, and concerning Ecclesiastical
Property.
SUCH
were the benefits secured by the emperor's written mandates to the
persons of those who had thus suffered for the faith, d his laws
made ample provision for their property also.
With
regard to those holy martyrs of God who had laid down their lives in
the confession of His name, he directed that their estates should be
enjoyed by their nearest kindred; and, in default of any of these,
that the right of inheritance should be vested in the churches.
Farther, whatever property had been consigned to other parties from
the treasury, whether in the way of sale or gift, together with that
retained in the treasury itself, the generous mandate of the emperor
directed should be restored to the original owners. Such benefits
did his bounty, thus widely diffused, confer on the Church of God.
CHAPTER
XXII: How he won the Favor of the People.
BUT
his munificence bestowed still further and more numerous favors on
the heathen peoples and the other nations of his empire. So that the
inhabitants of our [Eastern] regions, who had heard of the
privileges experienced in the opposite portion of the empire, and
had blessed the fortunate recipients of them, and longed for the
enjoyment of a similar lot for themselves, now with one consent
proclaimed their own happiness, when they saw themselves in
possession of all these blessings; and confessed that the appearance
of such a monarch to the human race was indeed a marvelous event,
and such as the world's history had never yet recorded. Such were
their sentiments.
CHAPTER
XXIII: That he declared God to be the Author of his Prosperity: and
concerning his Rescripts.
AND
now that, through the powerful aid of God his Saviour, all nations
owned their subjection to the emperor's authority, he openly
proclaimed to all the name of Him to whose bounty he owed all his
blessings, and declared that He, and not himself, was the author of
his past victories. This declaration, written both in the Latin and
Greek languages, he caused to be transmitted through every province
of the empire. Now the excellence of his style of expression may be
known from a perusal of his letters themselves which were two in
number; one addressed to the churches of God; the other to the
heathen population in the several cities of the empire. The latter
of these I think it well to insert here as connected with my present
subject, in order on the one hand that a copy of this document may
be recorded as matter of history, and thus preserved to posterity,
and on the other that it may serve to confirm the truth of my
present narrative. It is taken from an authentic copy of the
imperial statute in my own possession and the signature in the
emperor's own handwriting attaches as it were the impress of truth
to the statement I have made.
CHAPTER
XXIV: Law of Constantine respecting Piety towards God, and the
Christian Religion.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS to the inhabitants of the province of
Palestine.
"To
all who entertain just and sound sentiments respecting the character
of the Supreme Being, it has long been most clearly evident, and
beyond the possibility of doubt, how vast a difference there has
ever been between those who maintain a careful observance of the
hallowed duties of the Christian religion, and those who treat this
religion with hostility or contempt. But at this present time, we
may see by stilt more manifest proofs, and still more decisive
instances, both how unreasonable it were to question this truth, and
how mighty is the power of the Supreme God: since it appears that
they who faithfully observe His holy laws, and shrink from the
transgression of His commandments, are rewarded with abundant
blessings, and are endued with well-grounded hope as well as ample
power for the accomplishment of their undertakings. On the other
hand, they who have cherished impious sentiments have experienced
results corresponding to their evil choice. For how is it to be
expected that any blessing would be obtained by one who neither
desired to acknowledge nor duly to worship that God who is the
source of all blessing? Indeed, facts themselves are a confirmation
of what I say.
CHAPTER
XXV: An Illustration from Ancient Times.
"FOR
certainly any one who will mentally retrace the course of events
from the earliest period down to the present time, and will reflect
on what has occurred in past ages, will find that all who have made
justice and probity the basis of their conduct, have not only
carried their undertakings to a successful issue, but have gathered,
as it were, a store of sweet fruit as the produce of this pleasant
root. Again, whoever observes the career of those who have been bold
in the practice of oppression or injustice; who have either directed
their senseless fury against God himself, or have conceived no
kindly feelings towards their fellow-men, but have dared to afflict
them with exile, disgrace, confiscation, massacre, or other miseries
of the like kind, and all this without any sense of compunction, or
wish to direct thoughts to a better course, will find that such men
have received a recompense proportioned to their crimes. And these
are results which might naturally and reasonably be expected to
ensue?
CHAPTER
XXVI: Of Persecuted and Persecutors.
"FOR
whoever have addressed themselves with integrity of purpose to any
course of action, keeping the fear of God continually before their
thoughts, and preserving an unwavering faith in him, without
allowing present fears or dangers to outweigh their hope of future
blessings - such persons, though for a season they may have
experienced painful trials, have borne their afflictions lightly,
being supported by the belief of greater rewards in store for them;
and their character has acquired a brighter luster in proportion to
the severity of their past suffer-rags. With regard, on the other
hand, to those who have either dishonorably slighted the principles
of justice, or refused to acknowledge the Supreme God themselves,
and yet have dared to subject others who have faithfully maintained
his worship to the most cruel insults and punishments; who have
failed equally to recognize their own wretchedness in oppressing
others on such grounds, and the happiness and blessing of those who
preserved their devotion to God even in the midst of such
sufferings: with regard, I say, to such men, many a time have their
armies been slaughtered, many a time have they been put to flight;
and their warlike preparations have ended in total ruin and defeat.
CHAPTER
XXVII: How the Persecution became the Occasion of Calamities to the
Aggressors.
"FROM
the causes I have described, grievous wars arose, and destructive
devastations. Hence followed a scarcity of the common necessaries of
life, and a crowd of consequent miseries: hence, too, the authors of
these impieties have either met a disastrous death of extreme
suffering, or have dragged out an ignominious existence, and
confessed it to be worse than death itself, thus receiving as it
were a measure of punishment proportioned to the heinousness of
their crimes. For each experienced a degree of calamity according to
the blind fury with which he had been led to combat, and as he
thought, defeat the Divine will: so that they not only felt the
pressure of the ills of this present life, but were tormented also
by a most lively apprehension of punishment in the future world.
CHAPTER
XXVIII: That God chose Constantine to be the Minister of Blessing.
"AND
now, with such a mass of impiety oppressing the human race, and the
commonwealth in danger of being utterly destroyed, as if by the
agency of some pestilential disease, and therefore needing powerful
and effectual aid; what was the relief, and what the remedy which
the Divinity devised for these evils? (And by Divinity is meant the
one who is alone and truly God, the possessor of almighty and
eternal power: and surely it cannot be deemed arrogance in one who
has received benefits from God, to acknowledge them in the loftiest
terms of praise.) I myself, then, was the instrument whose services
He chose, and esteemed suited for the accomplishment of his will.
Accordingly, beginning at the remote Britannic ocean, and the
regions where, according to the law of nature, the sun sinks beneath
the horizon, through the aid of divine power I banished and utterly
removed every form of evil which prevailed, in the hope that the
human race, enlightened through my instrumentality, might be
recalled to a due observance of the holy laws of God, and at the
same time our most blessed faith might prosper under the guidance of
his almighty hand.
CHAPTER
XXIX: Constantine's Expressions of Piety towards God; and Praise of
the Confessors.
"I
said,under the guidance of his hand; for I would desire never to be
forgetful of the gratitude due to his grace. Believing, therefore,
that this most excellent service had been confided to me as a
special gift, I proceeded as far as the regions of the East, which,
being under the pressure of severer calamities, seemed to demand
still more effectual remedies at my hands. At the same time I am
most certainly persuaded that I myself owe my life, my every breath,
in short, my very inmost and secret thoughts, entirely to the favor
of the Supreme God. Now I am well aware that they who are sincere in
the pursuit of the heavenly hope, and have fixed this hope in heaven
itself as the peculiar and predominant principle of their lives,
have no need to depend on human favor, but rather have enjoyed
higher honors in proportion as they have separated themselves from
the inferior and evil things of this earthly existence. Nevertheless
I deem it incumbent on me to remove at once and most completely from
all such persons the hard necessities laid upon them for a season,
and the unjust inflictions under which they have suffered, though
free from any guilt or just liability. For it would be strange
indeed, that the fortitude and constancy of soul displayed by such
men should be fully apparent during the reign of those whose first
object it was to persecute them on account of their devotion to God,
and yet that the glory of their character should not be more bright
and blessed, under the administration of a prince who is His
servant.
CHAPTER
XXX: A Law granting Release from Exile, from Service in the Courts,
and from the Confiscation of Property.
"LET
all therefore who have exchanged their country for a foreign land,
because they would not abandon that reverence and faith toward God
to which they had devoted themselves with their whole hearts, and
have in consequence at different times been subject to the cruel
sentence of the courts; together with any who have been enrolled in
the registers of the public courts though in time past exempt from
such office let these, I say, now render thanks to God the Liberator
of all, in that they are restored to their hereditary property, and
their wonted tranquility. Let those also who have been despoiled of
their goods, and have hitherto passed a wretched existence, mourning
under the loss of all that they possessed, once more be restored to
their former homes, their families, and estates, and receive with
joy the bountiful kindness of God.
CHAPTER
XXXI: Release likewise granted to Exiles in the Islands.
"FURTHERMORE,
it is our command that all those who have been detained in the
islands against their will should receive the benefit of this
present provision; in order that they who rill now have been
surrounded by rugged mountains and the encircling barrier of the
ocean, being now set free from that gloomy and desolate solitude,
may fulfill their fondest wish by revisiting their dearest friends.
Those, too, who have prolonged a miserable life in the midst of
abject and wretched squalor, welcoming their restoration as an
unlooked-for gain, and discarding henceforth all anxious thoughts,
may pass their lives with us in freedom from all fear. For that any
one could live in a state of fear under our government, when we
boast and believe ourselves to be the servants of God, would surely
be a thing most extraordinary even to hear of, and quite incredible;
and our mission is to rectify the errors of the others.
CHAPTER
XXXII: And to those ignominiously employed in the Mines and Public
Works.
"AGAIN,
with regard to those who have been condemned either to the grievous
labor of the mines, or to service in the public works, let them
enjoy the sweets of leisure in place of these long-continued toils,
and henceforth lead a far easier life, and more accordant with the
wishes of their hearts, exchanging the incessant hardships of their
tasks for quiet relaxation. And if any have forfeited the common
privilege of liberty, or have unhappily suffered dishonor, let them
hasten back every one to the country of his nativity, and resume
with becoming joy their former positions in society, from which they
have been as it were separated by long residence abroad.
CHAPTER
XXXIII: Concerning those Confessors engaged in Military Service.
"ONCE
more, with respect to those who had previously been preferred to any
military distinction, of which they were afterwards deprived, for
the cruel and unjust reason that they chose rather to acknowledge
their allegiance to God than to retain the rank they held; we leave
them perfect liberty of choice, either to occupy their former
stations, should they be content again to engage in military
service, or after an honorable discharge, to live in undisturbed
tranquility. For it is fair and consistent that men who have
displayed such magnanimity and fortitude in meeting the perils to
which they have been exposed, should be allowed the choice either of
enjoying peaceful leisure, or resuming their former rank.
CHAPTER
XXXIV: The Liberation of Free Persons condemned to labor in the
Women's Apartments, or to Servitude.
"LASTLY,
if any have wrongfully been deprived of the privileges of noble
lineage, and subjected to a judicial sentence which has consigned
them to the women's apartments and to the linen making, there to
undergo a cruel and miserable labor, or reduced them to servitude
for the benefit of the public treasury, without any exemption on the
ground of superior birth; let such persons, resuming the honors they
had previously enjoyed, and their proper dignities, henceforward
exult in the blessings of liberty, and lead a glad life. Let the
free man, too, by some injustice and inhumanity, or even madness,
made a slave, who has felt the sudden transition from liberty to
bondage, and ofttimes bewailed his unwonted labors, return to his
family once more a free man in virtue of this our ordinance, and
seek those employments which befit a state of freedom; and let him
dismiss from his remembrance those services which he found so
oppressive, and which so ill became his condition.
CHAPTER
XXXV: Of the Inheritance of the Property of Martyrs and Confessors,
also of those who had suffered Banishment or Confiscation of
Property.
"NOR
must we omit to notice those estates of which individuals have been
deprived on various pretenses. For if any of those who have engaged
with dauntless and resolute determination in the noble and divine
conflict of martyrdom have also been stripped of their fortunes; or
if the same has been the lot of the confessors, who have won for
themselves the hope of eternal treasures; or if the loss of property
has befallen those who were driven from their native land because
they would not yield to the persecutors, and betray their faith;
lastly, if any who have escaped the sentence of death have yet been
despoiled of their worldly goods; we ordain that the inheritances of
all such persons be transferred to their nearest kindred. And
whereas the laws expressly assign this right to those most nearly
related, it will be easy to ascertain to whom these inheritances
severally belong. And it is evidently reasonable that the succession
in these cases should belong to those who would have stood in the
place of nearest affinity, had the deceased experienced a natural
death.
CHAPTER
XXXVI: The Church is declared Heir of those who leave no Kindred;
and the Free Gifts of such Persons Confirmed.
"BUT
should there be no surviving relation to succeed in due course to
the property of those above-mentioned, I mean the martyrs, or
confessors, or those who for some such cause have been banished from
their native land; in such cases we ordain that the church locally
nearest in each instance shall succeed to the inheritance. And
surely it will be no wrong to the departed that that church should
be their heir, for whose sake they have endured every extremity of
suffering. We think it necessary to add this also, that in case any
of the above-mentioned persons have donated any part of their
property in the way of free gift, possession of such property shall
be assured, as is reasonable, to those who have thus received it.
CHAPTER
XXXVII: Lands, Gardens, or Houses, but not Actual Produce from them,
are to be given back.
"AND
that there may be no obscurity in this our ordinance, but every one
may readily apprehend its requirements, let all men hereby know that
if they are now maintaining themselves in possession of a piece of
land, or a house, or garden, or anything else which had appertained
to the before-mentioned persons, it will be good and advantageous
for them to acknowledge the fact, and make restitution with the
least possible delay. On the other hand, although it should appear
that some individuals have reaped abundant profits from this unjust
possession, we do not consider that justice demands the restitution
of such profits. They must, however, declare explicitly what amount
of benefit they have thus derived, and from what sources, and
entreat our pardon for this offense; in order that their past
covetousness may in some measure be atoned for, and that the Supreme
God may accept this compensation as a token of contrition, and be
pleased graciously to pardon the sin.
CHAPTER
XXXVIII: In what Manner Requests should be made for these.
"BUT
it is possible that those who have become masters of such property
(if it be right or possible to allow them such a title) will assure
us by way of apology for their conduct, that it was not in their
power to abstain from this appropriation at a time when a spectacle
of misery in all its forms everywhere met the view; when men were
cruelly driven from their homes, slaughtered without mercy, thrust
forth without remorse: when the confiscation of the property of
innocent persons was a common thing, and when persecutions and
property seizures were unceasing. If any defend their conduct by
such reasons as these, and still persist in their avaricious temper,
they shall be made sensible that such a course will bring punishment
on themselves, and all the more because this correction of evil is
the very characteristic of our service to the Supreme God. So that
it will henceforth be dangerous to retain what dire necessity may in
time past have compelled men to take; especially because it is in
any case incumbent on us to discourage covetous desires, both by
persuasion, and by warning examples.
CHAPTER
XXXIX: The Treasury must restore Lands, Gardens, and Houses to the
Churches.
"NOR
shall the treasury itself, should it have any of the things we have
spoken of, be permitted to keep them; but, without venturing as it
were to raise its voice against the holy churches, it shall justly
relinquish in their favor what it has for a time unjustly retained.
We ordain, therefore, that all things whatsoever which shall appear
righteously to belong to the churches, whether the property consist
of houses or fields and gardens, or whatever the nature of it may
be, shall be restored in their full value and integrity, and with
undiminished right of possession.
CHAPTER
XL: The Tombs of Martyrs and the Cemeteries to be transferred to the
Possession of the Churches.
"AGAIN,
with respect to those places which are honored in being the
depositories of the remains of martyrs, and continue to be memorials
of their glorious departure; how can we doubt that they rightly
belong to the churches, or refrain from issuing our injunction to
that effect? For surely there can be no better liberality, no labor
more pleasing or profitable, than to be thus employed under the
guidance of the Divine Spirit, in order that those things which have
been appropriated on false pretenses by unjust and wicked men, may
be restored, as justice demands, and once more secured to the holy
churches.
CHAPTER
XLI: Those who have purchased Property belonging to the Church, or
received it as a Gift, are to restore it.
"AND
since it would be wrong in a provision intended to include all
cases, to pass over those who have either procured any such property
by right of purchase from the treasury, or have retained it when
conveyed to them in the form of a gift; let all who have thus rashly
indulged their insatiable thirst of gain be assured that, although
by daring to make such purchases they have done all in their power
to alienate our clemency from themselves, they shall nevertheless
not fail of obtaining it, so far as is possible and consistent with
propriety in each case. So much then is determined.
CHAPTER
XLII: An Earnest Exhortation to worship God.
"AND
now, since it appears by the clearest and most convincing evidence,
that the miseries which ere while oppressed the entire human race
are now banished from every part of the world, through the power of
Almighty God, and at the same time the counsel and aid which he is
pleased on many occasions to administer through our agency; it
remains for all, both individually and unitedly, to observe and
seriously consider how great this power and how efficacious this
grace are, which have annihilated and utterly destroyed this
generation, as I may call them, of most wicked and evil men; have
restored joy to the good, and diffused it over all countries; and
now guarantee the fullest authority both to honor the Divine law as
it should be honored, with all reverence, and pay due observance to
those who have dedicated themselves to the service of that law.
These rising as from some dark abyss and, with an enlightened
knowledge of the present course of events, will henceforward render
to its precepts that becoming reverence and honor which are
consistent with their pious character.
Let
this ordinance be published in our Eastern provinces."
CHAPTER
XLIII: How the Enactments of Constantine were carried into Effect.
SUCH
were the injunctions contained in the first letter which the emperor
addressed to us. And the provisions of this enactment were speedily
carried into effect, everything being conducted in a manner quite
different from the atrocities which had but lately been daringly
perpetrated during the cruel ascendancy of the tyrants. Those
persons also who were legally entitled to it, received the benefit
of the emperor's liberality.
CHAPTER
XLIV: That he promoted Christians to Offices of Government, and
forbade Gentiles in Such Stations to offer Sacrifice.
AFTER
this the emperor continued to address himself to matters of high
importance, and first he sent governors to the several provinces,
mostly such as were devoted to the saving faith; and if any appeared
inclined to adhere to Gentile worship, he forbade them to offer
sacrifice. This law applied also to those who surpassed the
provincial governors in rank and dignity, and even to those who
occupied the highest station, and held the authority of the
Praetorian Praefecture. If they were Christians, they were free to
act consistently with their profession; if otherwise, the law
required them to abstain from idolatrous sacrifices.
CHAPTER
XLV: Statutes which forbade Sacrifice, and enjoined the Building of
Churches.
SOON
after this, two laws were promulgated about the same time; one of
which was intended to restrain the idolatrous abominations which in
time past had been practiced in every city and country; and it
provided that no one should erect images, or practice divination and
other false and foolish arts, or offer sacrifice in any way. The
other statute commanded the heightening of the oratories, and the
enlargement in length and breadth of the churches of God; as though
it were expected that, now the madness of polytheism was wholly
removed, pretty nearly all mankind would henceforth attach
themselves to the service of God. His own personal piety induced the
emperor to devise and write these instructions to the governors of
the several provinces: and the law farther admonished them not to
spare the expenditure of money, but to draw supplies from the
imperial treasury itself. Similar instructions were written also to
the bishops of the several churches; and the emperor was pleased to
transmit the same to myself, being the first letter which he
personally addressed to me.
CHAPTER
XLVI: Constantine's Letter to Eusebius and Other Bishops, respecting
the Building of Churches, with Instructions to repair the Old, and
erect New Ones on a Larger Scale, with the Aid of the Provincial
Governors.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to Eusebius.
"Forasmuch
as the unholy and willful rule of tyranny has persecuted the
servants of our Saviour until this present time, I believe and have
fully satisfied myself, best beloved brother, that the buildings
belonging to all the churches have either become ruinous through
actual neglect, or have received inadequate attention from the dread
of the violent spirit of the times.
"But
now, that liberty is restored, and that serpent driven from the
administration of public affairs by the providence of the Supreme
God, and our instrumentality, we trust that all can see the efficacy
of the Divine power, and that they who through fear of persecution
or through unbelief have fallen into any errors, will now
acknowledge the true God, and adopt in future that course of life
which is according to truth and rectitude. With respect, therefore,
to the churches over which you yourself preside, as well as the
bishops, presbyters, and deacons of other churches with whom you are
acquainted, do you admonish all to be zealous in their attention to
the buildings of the churches, and either to repair or enlarge those
which at present exist, or, in cases of necessity, to erect new
ones.
"We
also empower you, and the others through you, to demand what is
needful for the work, both from the provincial governors and from
the Praetorian Praefect. For they have received instructions to be
most diligent in obedience to your Holiness's orders. God preserve
you, beloved brother." A copy of this charge was transmitted
throughout all the provinces to the bishops of the several churches:
the provincial governors received directions accordingly, and the
imperial statute was speedily carried into effect.
CHAPTER
XLVII: That he wrote a Letter in Condemnation of Idolatry.
MOREOVER,
the emperor, who continually made progress in piety towards God,
dispatched an admonitory letter to the inhabitants of every
province, respecting the error of idolatry into which his
predecessors in power bad fallen, in which he eloquently exhorts his
subjects to acknowledge the Supreme God, and openly to profess their
allegiance to his Christ as their Saviour. This letter also, which
is in his own handwriting, I have judged it necessary to translate
from the Latin for the present work, in order that we may hear, as
it were, the voice the emperor himself uttering these sentiments in
the audience of all mankind.
CHAPTER
XLVIII: Constantine's Edict to the People of the Provinces
concerning the Error of Polytheism, commencing with Some General
Remarks on Virtue and Vice.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to the people of the Eastern
provinces.
"Whatever
is comprehended under the sovereign laws of nature, seems to convey
to all men an adequate idea of the forethought and intelligence of
the divine order. Nor can any, whose minds are directed in the true
path of knowledge to the attainment of that end, entertain a doubt
that the just perceptions of sound reason, as well as those of the
natural vision itself, through the sole influence of genuine virtue,
lead to the knowledge of God. Accordingly no wise man will ever be
surprised when he sees the mass of mankind influenced by opposite
sentiments. For the beauty of virtue would be useless and
unperceived, did not vice display in contrast with it the course of
perversity and folly. Hence it is that the one is crowned with
reward, while the most high God is himself the administrator of
judgment to the other.
"And
now I will endeavor to lay before you all as explicitly as possible,
the nature of my own hopes of future happiness.
CHAPTER
XLIX: Concerning Constantine's Pious Father, and the Persecutors
Diocletian and Maximian.
"THE
former emperors I have been accustomed to regard as those with whom
I could have no sympathy, on account of the savage cruelty of their
character. Indeed, my father was the only one who uniformly
practiced the duties of humanity, and with admirable piety called
for the blessing of God the Father on all his actions, but the rest,
unsound in mind, were more zealous of cruel than gentle measures;
and this disposition they indulged without restraint, and thus
persecuted the true doctrine during the whole period of their reign.
Nay, so violent did their malicious fury become, that in the midst
of a profound peace, as regards both the religious and ordinary
interests of men, they kindled, as it were, the flames of a civil
war.
CHAPTER
L: That the Persecution originated an Account of the Oracle of
Apollo, who, it was said, could not give Oracles because of "the
Righteous Men."
"ABOUT
that time it is said that Apollo spoke from a deep and gloomy
cavern, and through the medium of no human voice, and declared that
the righteous men on earth were a bar to his speaking the truth, and
accordingly that the oracles from the tripod were fallacious. Hence
it was that he suffered his tresses to droop in token of grief, and
mourned the evils which the loss of the oracular spirit would entail
on mankind. But let us mark the consequences of this.
CHAPTER
LI: That Constantine, when a Youth, heard from him who wrote the
Persecution Edict that "the Righteous Men" were the
Christians.
"I
call now on thee, most high God, to witness that, when young, I
heard him who at that time was chief among the Roman emperors,
unhappy, truly unhappy as he was, and laboring under mental
delusion, make earnest inquiry of his attendants as to who these
righteous ones on earth were, and that one of the Pagan priests then
present replied that they were doubtless the Christians. This answer
he eagerly received, like some honeyed draught, and unsheathed the
sword which was ordained for the punishment of crime, against those
whose holiness was beyond reproach. Immediately, therefore, he
issued those sanguinary edicts, traced, if I may so express myself,
with a sword's point dipped in blood; at the same time commanding
his judges to tax their ingenuity for the invention of new and more
terrible punishments.
CHAPTER
LII: The Manifold Forms of Torture and Punishment practiced against
the Christians.
"THEN,
indeed, one might see with what arrogance those venerable worshipers
of God were daily exposed, with continued and relentless cruelty, to
outrages of the most grievous kind, and how that modesty of
character which no enemy had ever treated with disrespect, became
the mere sport of their infuriated fellow-citizens. Is there any
punishment by fire, are there any tortures or forms of torment,
which were not applied to all, without distinction of age or sex?
Then, it may be truly said, the earth shed tears, the all-encircling
compass of heaven mourned because of the pollution of blood; and the
very light of day itself was darkened in grief at the spectacle.
CHAPTER
LIII: That the Barbarians kindly received the Christians.
"BUT
what is the consequence of this? Why, the barbarians themselves may
boast now of the contrast their conduct presents to these creel
deeds; for they received and kept in gentlest captivity those who
then fled from amongst us, and secured to them not merely safety
from danger, but also the free exercise of their holy religion. And
now the Roman people bear that lasting stain which the Christians,
at that time driven from the Roman world, and taking refuge with the
barbarians, have branded on them.
CHAPTER
LIV: What Vengeance overtook those who on Account of the Oracle
raised the Persecution.
"BUT
why need I longer dwell on these lamentable events, and the general
sorrow which in consequence pervaded the world? The perpetrators of
this dreadful guilt are now no more: they have experienced a
miserable end, and are consigned to unceasing punishment in the
depths of the lower world. They encountered each other in civil
strife, and have left neither name nor race behind. And surely this
calamity would never have befallen them, had not that impious
deliverance of the Pythian oracle exercised a delusive power over
them.
CHAPTER
LV: Constantine gives Glory to God, makes Grateful Acknowledgment of
the Sign of the Cross, and prays for the Churches and People.
"AND
now I beseech thee, most mighty God, to be merciful and gracious to
thine Eastern nations, to thy people in these provinces, worn as
they are by protracted miseries; and grant them healing through thy
servant. Not without cause, O holy God, do I prefer this prayer to
thee, the Lord of all. Under thy guidance have I devised and
accomplished measures fraught with blessings: preceded by thy sacred
sign I have led thy armies to victory: and still, on each occasion
of public danger, I follow the same symbol of thy perfections while
advancing to meet the foe. Therefore have I dedicated to thy service
a soul duly attempered by love and fear. For thy name I truly love,
while I regard with reverence that power of which thou hast given
abundant proofs, to the confirmation and increase of my faith. I
hasten, then, to devote all my powers to the restoration of thy most
holy dwelling-place, which those profane and impious men have
defiled by the contamination of violence.
CHAPTER
LVI: He prays that All may be Christians, but compels None.
"MY
own desire is, for the common good of the world and the advantage of
all mankind, that thy people should enjoy a life of peace and
undisturbed concord. Let those, therefore, who still delight in
error, be made welcome to the same degree of peace and tranquility
which they have who believe. For it may be that this restoration of
equal privileges to all will prevail to lead them into the straight
path. Let no one molest another, but let every one do as his soul
desires. Only let men of sound judgment be assured of this, that
those only can live a life of holiness and purity, whom thou callest
to a reliance on thy holy laws. With regard to those who will hold
themselves aloof from us, let them have, if they please, their
temples of lies: we have the glorious edifice of thy truth, which
thou hast given us as our native home. We pray, however, that they
too may receive the same blessing, and thus experience that
heartfelt joy which unity of sentiment inspires.
CHAPTER
LVII: He gives Glory to God, who has given Light by his Son to those
who were in Error.
"And
truly our worship is no new or recent thing, but one which thou hast
ordained for thine own due honor, from the time when, as we believe,
this system of the universe was first established. And, although
mankind have deeply fallen, and have been seduced by manifold
errors, yet hast thou revealed a pure light in the person of thy
Son, that the power of evil should not utterly prevail, and hast
thus given testimony to all men concerning thyself.
CHAPTER
LVIII: He glorifies him again for his Government of the Universe.
"THE
truth of this is assured to us by thy works. It is thy power which
removes our guilt, and makes us faithful. The sun and the moon have
their settled course. The stars move in no uncertain orbits round
this terrestrial globe. The revolution of the seasons recurs
according to unerring laws. The solid fabric of the earth was
established by thy word: the winds receive their impulse at
appointed times; and the course of the waters continues with
ceaseless flow, the ocean is circumscribed by an immovable barrier,
and whatever is comprehended within the compass of earth and sea, is
all contrived for wondrous and important ends.
"Were
it not so, were not all regulated by the determination of thy will,
so great a diversity, so manifold a division of power, would
unquestionably have brought ruin on the whole race and its affairs.
For those agencies which have maintained a mutual strifewould thus
have carried to a more deadly length that hostility against the
human race which they even now exercise, though unseen by mortal
eyes.
CHAPTER
LIX: He gives Glory to God, as the Constant Teacher of Good.
"ABUNDANT
thanks, most mighty God, and Lord of all, be rendered to thee, that,
by so much as our nature becomes known from the diversified pursuits
of man, by so much the more are the precepts of thy divine doctrine
confirmed to those whose thoughts are directed aright, and who are
sincerely devoted to true virtue. As for those who will not allow
themselves to be cured of their error, let them not attribute this
to any but themselves. For that remedy which is of sovereign and
healing virtue is openly placed within the reach of all. Only let
not any one inflict an injury on that religion which experience
itself testifies to be pure and undefiled. Henceforward, therefore,
let us all enjoy in common the privilege placed within our reach, I
mean the blessing of peace, endeavoring to keep our conscience pure
from all that is contrary.
CHAPTER
LX: An Admonition at the Close of the Edict, that No One should
trouble his Neighbor.
"ONCE
more, let none use that to the detriment of another which he may
himself have received on conviction of its truth; but let every,
one, if it be possible, apply what he has understood and known to
the benefit of his neighbor; if otherwise, let him relinquish the
attempt. For it is one thing voluntarily to undertake the conflict
for immortality, another to compel others to do so from the fear of
punishment.
"These
are our words; and we have enlarged on these topics more than our
ordinary clemency would have dictated, because we were unwilling to
dissemble or be false to the true faith; and the more so, since we
understand there are some who say that the rites of the heathen
temples, and the power of darkness, have been entirely removed. We
should indeed have earnestly recommended such removal to all men,
were it not that the rebellious spirit of those wicked errors still
continues obstinately fixed in the minds of some, so as to
discourage the hope of any general restoration of mankind to the
ways of truth."
CHAPTER
LXI: How Controversies originated at Alexandria through Matters
relating to Arius.
IN
this manner the emperor, like a powerful herald of God, addressed
himself by his own letter to all the provinces, at the same time
warning his subjects against superstitious error, and encouraging
them in the pursuit of true godliness. But in the midst of his
joyful anticipations of the success of this measure, he received
tidings of a most serious disturbance which had invaded the peace of
the Church. This intelligence he heard with deep concern, and at
once endeavored to devise a remedy for the evil. The origin of this
disturbance may be thus described. The people of God were in a truly
flourishing state, and abounding in the practice of good works. No
terror from without assailed them, but a bright and most profound
peace, through the favor of God, encompassed his Church on every
side. Meantime, however, the spirit of envy was watching to destroy
our blessings, which at first crept in unperceived, but soon
revelled in the midst of the assemblies of the saints. At length it
reached the bishops themselves, and arrayed them in angry hostility
against each other, on pretense of a jealous regard for the
doctrines of Divine truth. Hence it was that a mighty fire was
kindled as it were from a little spark, and which, originating in
the first instance in the Alexandrian church, overspread the whole
of Egypt and Libya, and the further Thebaid. Eventually it extended
its ravages to the other provinces and cities of the empire; so that
not only the prelates of the churches might be seen encountering
each other in the strife of words, but the people themselves were
completely divided, some adhering to one faction and others to
another. Nay, so notorious did the scandal of these proceedings
become, that the sacred matters of inspired teaching were exposed to
the most shameful ridicule in the very theaters of the unbelievers.
CHAPTER
LXII: Concerning the Same Arius, and the Melitians.
SOME
thus at Alexandria maintained an obstinate conflict on the highest
questions. Others throughout Egypt and the Upper Thebaid, were at
variance on account of an earlier controversy: so that the churches
were everywhere distracted by divisions. The body therefore being
thus diseased, the whole of Libya caught the contagion; and the rest
of the remoter provinces became affected with the same disorder. For
the disputants at Alexandria sent emissaries to the bishops of the
several provinces, who accordingly ranged themselves as partisans on
either side, and shared in the same spirit of discord.
CHAPTER
LXIII: How Constantine sent a Messenger and a Letter concerning
Peace.
AS
soon as the emperor was informed of these facts, which he heard with
much sorrow of heart, considering them in the light of a calamity
personally affecting himself, he forthwith selected from the
Christians in his train one whom he well knew to be approved for the
sobriety and genuineness of his faith, and who had before this time
distinguished himself by the boldness of his religious profession,
and sent him to negotiate peace between the dissentient parties at
Alexandria. He also made him the bearer of a most needful and
appropriate letter to the original movers of the strife: and this
letter, as exhibiting a specimen of his watchful care over God's
people, it may be well to introduce into this our narrative of his
life. Its purport was as follows.
CHAPTER
LXIV: Constantine's Letter to Alexander the Bishop, and Arius the
Presbyter.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to Alexander and Arius.
"I
call that God to witness, as well I may, who is the helper of my
endeavors, and the Preserver of all men, that I had a twofold reason
for undertaking that duty which I have now performed.
CHAPTER
LXV: His Continual Anxiety for Peace.
"MY
design then was, first, to bring the diverse judgments formed by all
nations respecting the Deity to a condition, as it were, of settled
uniformity; and, secondly, to restore to health the system of the
world, then suffering under the malignant power of a grievous
distemper. Keeping these objects in view, I sought to accomplish the
one by the secret eye of thought, while the other I tried to rectify
by the power of military authority. For I was aware that, if I
should succeed in establishing, according to my hopes, a common
harmony of sentiment among all the servants of God, the general
course of affairs would also experience a change correspondent to
the pious desires of them all.
CHAPTER
LXVI: That he also adjusted the Controversies which had arisen in
Africa.
"FINDING,
then, that the whole of Africa was pervaded by an intolerable spirit
of mad folly, through the influence of those who with heedless
frivolity had presumed to rend the religion of the people into
diverse sects; I was anxious to check this disorder, and could
discover no other remedy equal to the occasion, except in sending
some of yourselves to aid in restoring mutual harmony among the
disputants, after I had removed that common enemy of mankind who had
interposed his lawless sentence for the prohibition of your holy
synods.
CHAPTER
LXVII: That Religion began in the East.
"FOR
since the power of Divine light, and the law of sacred worship,
which, proceeding in the first instance, through the favor of God,
from the bosom, as it were, of the East, have illumined the world,
by their sacred radiance, I naturally believed that you would be the
first to promote the salvation of other nations, and resolved with
all energy of thought and diligence of inquiry to seek your aid. As
soon, therefore, as I had secured my decisive victory and
unquestionable triumph over my enemies, my first inquiry was
concerning that object which I felt to be of paramount interest and
importance.
CHAPTER
LXVIII: Being grieved by the Dissension, he counsels Peace.
"BUT,
O glorious Providence of God! how deep a wound did not my ears only,
but my very heart receive in the report that divisions existed among
yourselves more grievous still than those which continued in that
country so that you, through whose aid I had hoped to procure a
remedy for the errors of others, are in a state which needs healing
even more than theirs. And yet, having made a careful inquiry into
the origin and foundation of these differences, I find the cause to
be of a truly insignificant character, and quite unworthy of such
fierce contention. Feeling myself, therefore, compelled to address
you in this letter, and to appeal at the same time to your unanimity
and sagacity, I call on Divine Providence to assist me in the task,
while I interrupt your dissension in the character of a minister of
peace. And with reason: for if I might expect, with the help of a
higher Power, to be able without difficulty, by a judicious appeal
to the pious feelings of those who heard me, to recall them to a
better spirit, even though the occasion of the disagreement were a
greater one, how can I refrain from promising myself a far easier
and more speedy adjustment of this difference, when the cause which
hinders general harmony of sentiment is intrinsically trifling and
of little moment?
CHAPTER
LXIX: Origin of the Controversy between Alexander and Arius, and
that these Questions ought not to have been discussed.
"I
UNDERSTAND, then, that the origin of the present controversy is
this. When you, Alexander, demanded of the presbyters what opinion
they severally maintained respecting a certain passage in the Divine
law, or rather, I should say, that you asked them something
connected with an unprofitable question, then you, Arius,
inconsiderately insisted on what ought never to have been conceived
at all, or if conceived, should have been buried in profound
silence. Hence it was that a dissension arose between you,
fellowship was withdrawn, and the holy people, rent into diverse
parties, no longer preserved the unity of the one body. Now,
therefore, do ye both exhibit an equal degree of forbearance, and
receive the advice which your fellow-servant righteously gives. What
then is this advice? It was wrong in the first instance to propose
such questions as these, or to reply to them when propounded. For
those points of discussion which are enjoined by the authority of no
law, but rather suggested by the contentious spirit which is
fostered by misused leisure, even though they may be intended merely
as an intellectual exercise, ought certainly to be confined to the
region of our own thoughts, and not hastily produced in the popular
assemblies, nor unadvisedly in trusted to the general ear. For how
very few are there able either accurately to comprehend, or
adequately to explain subjects so sublime and abstruse in their
nature? Or, granting that one were fully competent for this, how
many people will he convince? Or, who, again, in dealing with
questions of such subtle nicety as these, can secure himself against
a dangerous declension from the truth? It is incumbent therefore on
us in these cases to be sparing of our words, lest, in case we
ourselves are unable, through the feebleness of our natural
faculties, to give a clear explanation of the subject before us, or,
on the other hand, in case the slowness of our hearers'
understandings disables them from arriving at an accurate
apprehension of what we say, from one or other of these causes the
people be reduced to the alternative either of blasphemy or schism.
CHAPTER
LXX: An Exhortation to Unanimity.
"LET
therefore both the unguarded question and the inconsiderate answer
receive your mutual forgiveness. For the cause of your difference
has not been any of the leading doctrines or precepts of the Divine
law, nor has any new heresy respecting the worship of God arisen
among you. You are in truth of one and the same judgment:you may
therefore well join in communion and fellowship.
CHAPTER
LXXI: There should be no Contention in Matters which are in
themselves of Little Moment.
"FOR
as long as you continue to contend about these small and very
insignificant questions, it is not fitting that so large a portion
of God's people should be under the direction of your judgment,
since you are thus divided between yourselves. I believe it indeed
to be not merely unbecoming, but positively evil, that such should
be the case. But I will refresh your minds by a little illustration,
as follows. You know that philosophers, though they all adhere to
one system, are yet frequently at issue on certain points, and
differ, perhaps, in their degree of knowledge: yet they are recalled
to harmony of sentiment by the uniting power of their common
doctrines. If this be true, is it not far more reasonable that you,
who are the ministers of the Supreme God, should be of one mind
respecting the profession of the same religion? But let us still
more thoughtfully and with closer attention examine what I have
said, and see whether it be right that, on the ground of some
trifling and foolish verbal difference between ourselves, brethren
should assume towards each other the attitude of enemies, and the
august meeting of the Synod be rent by profane disunion, because of
you who wrangle together on points so trivial and altogether
unessential? This is vulgar, and rather characteristic of childish
ignorance, than consistent I with the wisdom of priests and men of
sense. Let us withdraw ourselves with a good will from these
temptations of the devil. Our great God and common Saviour of all
has granted the same light to us all. Permit me, who am his servant,
to bring my task to a successful issue, under the direction of his
Providence, that I may be enabled, through my exhortations, and
diligence, and earnest admonition, to recall his people to communion
and fellowship. For since you have, as I said, but one faith, and
one sentiment respecting our religion, and since the Divine
commandment in all its parts enjoins on us all the duty of
maintaining a spirit of concord, let not the circumstance which has
led to a slight difference between you, since it does not affect the
validity of the whole, cause any division or schism among you. And
this I say without in any way desiring to force you to entire unity
of judgment in regard to this truly idle question, whatever its real
nature may be. For the dignity of your synod may be preserved, and
the communion of your whole body maintained unbroken, however wide a
difference may exist among you as to unimportant matters. For we are
not all of us like-minded on every subject, nor is there such a
thing as one disposition and judgment common to all alike. As far,
then, as regards the Divine Providence, let there be one faith, and
one understanding among you, one united judgment in reference to
God. But as to your subtle disputations on questions of little or no
significance, though you may be unable to harmonize in sentiment,
such differences should be consigned to the secret custody of your
own minds and thoughts. And now, let the preciousness of common
affection, let faith in the truth, let the honor due to God and to
the observance of his law continue immovably among you. Resume,
then, your mutual feelings of friendship, love, and regard: restore
to the people their wonted embracings; and do ye yourselves, having
purified your souls, as it were, once more acknowledge one another.
For it often happens that when a reconciliation is effected by the
removal of the causes of enmity, friendship becomes even sweeter
than it was before.
CHAPTER
LXXII: The Excess of his Pious Concern caused him to shed Tears; and
his Intended Journey to the East was postponed because of These
Things.
"RESTORE
me then my quiet days, and untroubled nights, that the joy of
undimmed light, the delight of a tranquil life, may henceforth be my
portion. Else must I needs mourn, with constant tears, nor shall I
be able to pass the residue of my days in peace. For while the
people of God, whose fellow-servant I am, are thus divided amongst
themselves by an unreasonable and pernicious spirit of contention,
how is it possible that I shall be able to maintain tranquility of
mind? And I will give you a proof how great my sorrow has been on
this behalf. Not long since I had visited Nicomedia, and intended
forthwith to proceed from that city to the East. It was while I was
hastening towards you, and had already accomplished the greater part
of the distance, that the news of this matter reversed my plan, that
I might not be compelled to see with my own eyes that which I felt
myself scarcely able even to hear. Open then for me henceforward by
your unity of judgment that road to the regions of the East which
your dissensions have closed against me, and permit me speedily to
see yourselves and all other peoples rejoicing together, and render
due acknowledgment to God in the language of praise and thanksgiving
for the restoration of general concord and liberty to all."
CHAPTER
LXXIII: The Controversy continues without Abatement, even after the
Receipt of This Letter.
IN
this manner the pious emperor endeavored by means of the foregoing
letter to promote the peace of the Church of God. And the excellent
man to whom it was intrusted performed his part not merely by
communicating the letter itself, but also by seconding the views of
him who sent it; for he was, as I have said, in all respects a
person of pious character. The evil, however, was greater than could
be remedied by a single letter, insomuch that the acrimony of the
contending parties continually increased, and the effects of the
mischief extended to all the Eastern provinces. These things
jealousy and some evil spirit who looked with an envious eye on the
prosperity of the Church, wrought.
BOOK
III.
CHAPTER
I: A Comparison of Constantine's Piety with the Wickedness of the
Persecutors.
IN
this manner that spirit who is the hater of good, actuated by envy
at the blessing enjoyed by the Church, continued to raise against
her the stormy troubles of intestine discord, in the midst of a
period of peace and joy. Meanwhile, however, the divinely-favored
emperor did not slight the duties befitting him, but exhibited in
his whole conduct a direct contrast to those atrocities of which the
cruel tyrants had been lately guilty, and thus triumphed over every
enemy that opposed him. For in the first place, the tyrants, being
themselves alienated from the true God, had enforced by every
compulsion the worship of false deities: Constantine convinced
mankind by actions as well as words, that these bad but an imaginary
existence, and exhorted them to acknowledge the only true God. They
had derided his Christ with words of blasphemy: he assumed that as
his safeguard a against which they directed their blasphemies, and
gloried in the symbol of the Saviour's passion. They had persecuted
and driven from house and home the servants of Christ: he recalled
them every one, and restored them to their native homes. They had
covered them with dishonor: he made their condition honorable and
enviable in the eyes of all. They had shamefully plundered and sold
the goods of godly men: Constantine not only replaced this loss, but
still further enriched them with abundant presents. They had
circulated injurious calumnies, through their written ordinances,
against the prelates of the Church: he on the contrary, conferred
dignity on these individuals by personal marks of honor, and by his
edicts and statutes raised them to higher distinction than before.
They had utterly demolished and razed to the ground the houses of
prayer: he commanded that those which still existed should be
enlarged, and that new ones should be raised on a magnificent scale
at the expense of the imperial treasury. They had ordered the
inspired records to be burnt and utterly destroyed: he decreed that
copies of them should be multiplied, and magnificently adorned at
the charge of the imperial treasury. They had strictly forbidden the
prelates, anywhere or on any occasion, to convene synods; whereas he
gathered them to his court from every province, received them into
his palace, and even to his own private apartments and thought them
worthy to share his home and table. They had honored the demons with
offerings: Constantine exposed their error, and continually
distributed the now useless materials for sacrifice, to those who
would apply them to a better use. They had ordered the pagan temples
to be sumptuously adorned: he razed to their foundations those of
them which had been the chief objects of superstitious reverence.
They had subjected God's servants to the most ignominious
punishments: he took vengeance on the persecutors, and inflicted on
them just chastisement in the name of God, while he held the memory
of his holy martyrs in constant veneration. They had driven God's
Worshipers from the imperial palaces: he placed full confidence in
them at all times, and knowing them to be the better disposed and
more faithful than any beside. They, the victims of avarice,
voluntarily subjected themselves as it were to the pangs of
Tantalus: he with royal magnificence unlocked all his treasures, and
distributed his gifts with rich and high-souled liberality. They
committed countless murders, that they might plunder or confiscate
the wealth of their victims; while throughout the reign of
Constantine the sword of justice hung idle everywhere, and both
people and municipal magistrates in every province were governed
rather by paternal authority than by any constraining.
Surely
it must seem to all who duly regard these facts, that a new and
fresh era of existence had begun to appear, and a light heretofore
unknown suddenly to dawn from the midst of darkness on the human
race: and all must confess that these things were entirely the work
of God, who raised up this pious emperor to withstand the multitude
of the ungodly.
CHAPTER
II: Father Remarks on Constantine's Piety, and his Open Testimony to
the Sign of the Cross.
AND
when we consider that their iniquities were without example, and the
atrocities which they dared to perpetrate against the Church such as
had never been heard of in any age of the world, well might God
himself bring before us something entirely new, and work thereby
effects such as had hitherto been never either recorded or observed.
And what miracle was ever more marvelous than the virtues of this
our emperor, whom the wisdom of God has vouchsafed as a gift to the
human race? For truly he maintained a continual testimony to the
Christ of God with all boldness, and before all men; and so far was
he from shrinking from an open profession of the Christian name,
that he rather desired to make it manifest to all that he regarded
this as his highest honor, now impressing on his face the salutary
sign, and now glorying in it as the trophy which led him on to
victory.
CHAPTER
III: Of his Picture surmounted by a Cross and having beneath it a
Dragon.
AND
besides this, he caused to be painted on a lofty tablet, and set up
in the front of the portico of his palace, so as to be visible to
all, a representation of the salutary sign placed above his head,
and below it that hateful and savage adversary of mankind, who by
means of the tyranny of the ungodly had wasted the Church of God,
falling headlong, under the form of a dragon, to the abyss of
destruction. For the sacred oracles in the books of God's prophets
have described him as a dragon and a crooked serpent; and for this
reason the emperor thus publicly displayed a painted resemblance of
the dragon beneath his own and his children's feet, stricken through
with a dart, and cast headlong into the depths of the sea.
In
this manner he intended to represent the secret adversary of the
human race, and to indicate that he was consigned to the gulf of
perdition by virtue of the salutary trophy placed above his head.
This allegory, then, was thus conveyed by means of the colors of a
picture: and I am filled with wonder at the intellectual greatness
of the emperor, who as if by divine inspiration thus expressed what
the prophets had foretold concerning this monster, saying that "God
would bring his great and strong and terrible sword against the
dragon, the flying serpent; and would destroy the dragon that was in
the sea.''This it was of which the emperor gave a true and faithful
representation in the picture above described.
CHAPTER
IV: A Farther Notice of the Controversies raised in Egypt by Arius.
IN
such occupations as these he employed himself with pleasure: but the
effects of that envious spirit which so troubled the peace of the
churches of God in Alexandria, together with the Theban and Egyptian
schism, continued to cause him no little disturbance of mind. For in
fact, in every city bishops were engaged in obstinate conflict with
bishops, and people rising against people; and almost like the
fabled Symplegades, coming into violent collision with each other.
Nay, some were so far transported beyond the bounds of reason as to
be guilty of reckless and outrageous conduct, and even to insult the
statues of the emperor. This state of things had little power to
excite his anger, but rather caused in him sorrow of spirit; for he
deeply deplored the folly thus exhibited by deranged men.
CHAPTER
V: Of the Disagreement respecting the Celebration of Easter.
BUT
before this time another most virulent disorder had existed, and
long afflicted the Church; I mean the difference respecting the
salutary feast of Easter.
For
while one party asserted that the Jewish custom should be adhered
to, the other affirmed that the exact recurrence of the period
should be observed without following the authority of those who were
in error, and strangers to gospel grace.
Accordingly,
the people being thus in every place divided in respect of this, and
the sacred observances of religion confounded for a long period
(insomuch that the diversity of judgment in regard to the time for
celebrating one and the same feast caused the greatest disagreement
between those who kept it, some afflicting themselves with fastings
and austerities, while others devoted their time to festive
relaxation), no one appeared who was capable of devising a remedy
for the evil, because the controversy continued equally balanced
between both parties. To God alone, the Almighty, was the healing of
these differences an easy task; and Constantine appeared to be the
only one on earth capable of being his minister for this good end.
For as soon as he was made acquainted with the facts which I have
described, and perceived that his letter to the Alexandrian
Christians had failed to produce its due effect, he at once aroused
the energies of his mind, and declared that he must prosecute to the
utmost this war also against the secret adversary who was disturbing
the peace of the Church.
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CHAPTER
VI: How he ordered a Council to be held at Nicaea.
THEN
as if to bring a divine array against this enemy, he convoked a
general council, and invited the speedy attendance of bishops from
all quarters, in letters expressive of the honorable estimation in
which he held them. Nor was this merely the issuing of a bare
command but the emperor's good will contributed much to its being
carried into effect: for he allowed some the use of the public means
of conveyance, while he afforded to others an ample supply of horses
for their transport. The place, too, selected for the synod, the
city Nicaea in Bithynia (named from "Victory"), was
appropriate to the occasion. As soon then as the imperial injunction
was generally made known, all with the utmost willingness hastened
thither, as though they would outstrip one another in a race; for
they were impelled by the anticipation of a happy result to the
conference, by the hope of enjoying present peace, and the desire of
beholding something new and strange in the person of so admirable an
emperor. Now when they were all assembled, it appeared evident that
the proceeding was the work of God, inasmuch as men who had been
most widely separated, not merely in sentiment but also personally,
and by difference of country, place, and nation, were here brought
together, and comprised within the walls of a single city, forming
as it were a vast garland of priests, composed of a variety of the
choicest flowers.
CHAPTER
VII: Of the General Council, at which Bishops from all Nations were
Present.
IN
effect, the most distinguished of God's ministers from all the
churches which abounded in Europe, Lybia, and Asia were here
assembled. And a single house of prayer, as though divinely
enlarged, sufficed to contain at once Syrians and Cilicians,
Phoenicians and Arabians, delegates from Palestine, and others from
Egypt; Thebans and Libyans, with those who came from the region of
Mesopotamia. A Persian bishop too was present at this conference,
nor was even a Scythian found wanting to the number. Pontus,
Galatia, and Pamphylia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Phrygia, furnished
their most distinguished prelates; while those who dwelt in the
remotest districts of Thrace and Macedonia, of Achaia and Epirus,
were notwithstanding in attendance. Even from Spain itself, one
whose fame was widely spread took his seat as an individual in the
great assembly. The prelate of the imperial city was prevented from
attending by extreme old age; but his presbyters were present, and
supplied his place. Constantine is the first prince of any age who
bound together such a garland as this with the bond of peace, and
presented it to his Saviour as a thank-offering for the victories he
had obtained over every foe, thus exhibiting in our own times a
similitude of the apostolic company.
CHAPTER
VIII: That the Assembly was composed, as in the days of the
Apostles, of Individuals from Various Nations.
FOR
it is said that in the Apostles' age, there were gathered "devout
men from every nation under heaven"; among whom were Parthians,
and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judea,
and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in
Egypt, and the parts of Libya about Cyrene; and sojourners from
Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians. But that
assembly was less, in that not all who composed it were ministers of
God; but in the present company, the number of bishops exceeded two
hundred and fifty, while that of the presbyters and deacons in their
train, and the crowd of acolytes and other attendants was altogether
beyond computation.
CHAPTER
IX: Of the Virtue and Age of the Two Hundred and Fifty Bishops.
OF
these ministers of God, some were distinguished by wisdom and
eloquence, others by the gravity of their lives, and by patient
fortitude of character, while others again united in themselves all
these graces. There were among them men whose years demanded
veneration: others were younger, and in the prime of mental vigor;
and some had but recently entered on the course of their ministry.
For the maintenance of all ample provision was daily furnished by
the emperor's command.
CHAPTER
X: Council in the Palace. Constantine, entering, took his Seat in
the Assembly.
NOW
when the appointed day arrived on which the council met for the
final solution of the questions in dispute, each member was present
for this in the central building of the palace, which appeared to
exceed the rest in magnitude. On each side of the interior of this
were many seats disposed in order, which were occupied by those who
had been invited to attend, according to their rank. As soon, then,
as the whole assembly had seated themselves with becoming
orderliness, a general silence prevailed, in expectation of the
emperor's arrival. And first of all, three of his immediate family
entered in succession, then others also preceded his approach, not
of the soldiers or guards who usually accompanied him, but only
friends in the faith. And now, all rising at the signal which
indicated the emperor's entrance, at last he himself proceeded
through the midst of the assembly, like some heavenly messenger of
God, clothed in raiment which glittered as it were with rays of
light, reflecting the glowing radiance of a purple robe, and adorned
with the brilliant splendor of gold and precious stones. Such was
the external appearance of his person; and with regard to his mind,
it was evident that he was distinguished by piety and godly fear.
This was indicated by his downcast eyes, the blush on his
countenance, and his gait. For the rest of his personal
excellencies, he surpassed all present in height of stature and
beauty of form, as well as in majestic dignity of mien, and
invincible strength and vigor. All these graces, united to a suavity
of manner, and a serenity becoming his imperial station, declared
the excellence of his mental qualities to be above all praise. As
soon as he had advanced to the upper end of the seats, at first he
remained standing, and when a low chair of wrought gold had been set
for him, he waited until the bishops had beckoned to him, and then
sat down, and after him the whole assembly did the same.
CHAPTER
XI: Silence of the Council, after Some Words by the Bishop Eusebius.
THE
bishop who occupied the chief place in the right division of the
assembly then rose, and, addressing the emperor, delivered a concise
speech, in a strain of thanksgiving to Almighty God on his behalf.
When he had resumed his seat, silence ensued, and all regarded the
emperor with fixed attention; on which he looked serenely round on
the assembly with a cheerful aspect, and, having collected his
thoughts, in a calm and gentle tone gave utterance to the following
words.
CHAPTER
XII: Constantine's Address to the Council concerning Peace.
"IT
was once my chief desire, dearest friends, to enjoy the spectacle of
your united presence; and now that this desire is fulfilled, I feel
myself bound to render thanks to God the universal King, because, in
addition to all his other benefits, he has granted me a blessing
higher than all the rest, in permitting me to see you not only all
assembled together, but all united in a common harmony of sentiment.
I pray therefore that no malignant adversary may henceforth
interfere to mar our happy state; I pray that, now the impious
hostility of the tyrants has been forever removed by the power of
God our Saviour, that spirit who delights in evil may devise no
other means for exposing the divine law to blasphemous calumny; for,
in my judgment, intestine strife within the Church of God, is far
more evil and dangerous than any kind of war or conflict; and these
our differences appear to me more grievous than any outward trouble.
Accordingly, when, by the will and with the co-operation of God, I
had been victorious over my enemies, I thought that nothing more
remained but to render thanks to him, and sympathize in the joy of
those whom he had restored to freedom through my instrumentality; as
soon as I heard that intelligence which I had least expected to
receive, I mean the news of your dissension, I judged it to be of no
secondary importance, but with the earnest desire that a remedy for
this evil also might be found through my means, I immediately sent
to require your presence. And now I rejoice in beholding your
assembly; but I feel that my desires will be most completely
fulfilled when I can see you all united in one judgment, and that
common spirit of peace and concord prevailing amongst you all, which
it becomes you, as consecrated to the service of God, to commend to
others. Delay not, then, dear friends: delay not, ye ministers of
God, and faithful servants of him who is our common Lord and
Saviour: begin from this moment to discard the causes of that
disunion which has existed among you, and remove the perplexities of
controversy by embracing the principles of peace. For by such
conduct you will at the same time be acting in a manner most
pleasing to the supreme God, and you will confer an exceeding favor
on me who am your fellow-servant."
CHAPTER
XIII: How he led the Dissentient Bishops to Harmony of Sentiment.
AS
soon as the emperor had spoken these words in the Latin tongue,
which another interpreted, he gave permission to those who presided
in the council to deliver their opinions. On this some began to
accuse their neighbors, who defended themselves, and recriminated in
their turn. In this manner numberless assertions were put forth by
each party, and a violent controversy arose at the very
commencement. Notwithstanding this, the emperor gave patient
audience to all alike, and received every proposition with steadfast
attention, and by occasionally assisting the argument of each party
in turn, he gradually disposed even the most vehement disputants to
a reconciliation. At the same time, by the affability of his address
to all, and his use of the Greek language, with which he was not
altogether unacquainted, he appeared in a truly attractive and
amiable light, persuading some, convincing others by his reasonings,
praising those who spoke well, and urging all to unity of sentiment,
until at last he succeeded in bringing them to one mind and judgment
respecting every disputed question.
CHAPTER
XIV: Unanimous Declaration of the Council concerning Faith, and the
Celebration of Easter.
THE
result was that they were not only united as concerning the faith,
but that the time for the celebration of the salutary feast of
Easter was agreed on by all. Those points also which were sanctioned
by the resolution of the whole body were committed to writing, and
received the signature of each several member. Then the emperor,
believing that he had thus obtained a second victory over the
adversary of the Church, proceeded to solemnize a triumphal festival
in honor of God.
CHAPTER
XV: How Constantine entertained the Bishops on the Occasion of his
Vicennalia.
ABOUT
this time he completed the twentieth year of his reign. On this
occasion public festivals were celebrated by the people of the
provinces generally, but the emperor himself invited and feasted
with those ministers of God whom he had reconciled, and thus offered
as it were through them a suitable sacrifice to God. Not one of the
bishops was wanting at the imperial banquet, the circumstances of
which were splendid beyond description. Detachments of the
body-guard and other troops surrounded the entrance of the palace
with drawn swords, and through the midst of these the men of God
proceeded without fear into the innermost of the imperial
apartments, in which some were the emperor's own companions at
table, while others reclined on couches arranged on either side. One
might have thought that a picture of Christ's kingdom was thus
shadowed forth, and a dream rather than reality.
CHAPTER
XVI: Presents to the Bishops, and Letters to the People generally.
AFTER
the celebration of this brilliant festival, the emperor courteously
received all his guests, and generously added to the favors he had
already bestowed by personally presenting gifts to each individual
according to his rank. He also gave information of the proceedings
of the synod to those who had not been present, by a letter in his
own hand-writing. And this letter also I will inscribe as it were on
some monument by inserting it in this my narrative of his life. It
was as follows:
CHAPTER
XVII: Constantine's Letter to the Churches respecting the Council at
Nicaea.
"CONSTANTINUS
AUGUSTUS, to the Churches. "Having had full proof, in the
general prosperity of the empire, how great the favor of God has
been towards us, I have judged that it ought to be the first object
of my endeavors, that unity of faith, sincerity of love, and
community of feeling in regard to the worship of Almighty God, might
be preserved among the highly favored multitude who compose the
Catholic Church. And, inasmuch as this object could not be
effectually and certainly secured, unless all, or at least the
greater number of the bishops were to meet together, and a
discussion of all particulars relating to oar most holy religion to
take place; for this reason as numerous an assembly as possible has
been convened, at which I myself was present, as one among
yourselves (and far be it from me to deny that which is my greatest
joy, that I am your fellow-servant), and every question received due
and full examination, until that judgment which God, who sees all
things, could approve, and which tended to unity and concord, was
brought to light, so that no room was left for further discussion or
controversy in relation to the faith.
CHAPTER
XVIII: He speaks of their Unanimity respecting the Feast of Easter,
and against the Practice of the Jews.
"AT
this meeting the question concerning the most holy day of Easter was
discussed, and it was resolved by the united judgment of all
present, that this feast ought to be kept by all and in every place
on one and the same day. For what can be more becoming or honorable
to us than that this feast from which we date our hopes of
immortality, should be observed unfailingly by all alike, according
to one ascertained order and arrangement? And first of all, it
appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy
feast we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously
defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are, therefore,
deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul. For we have it in our
power, if we abandon their custom, to prolong the due observance of
this ordinance to future ages, by a truer order, which we have
preserved from the very day of the passion until the present time.
Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd;
for we have received from our Saviour a different way. A course at
once legitimate and honorable lies open to our most holy religion.
Beloved brethren, let us with one consent adopt this course, and
withdraw ourselves from all participation in their baseness. For
their boast is absurd indeed, that it is not in our power without
instruction from them to observe these things. For how should they
be capable of forming a sound judgment, who, since their parricidal
guilt in slaying their Lord, have been subject to the direction, not
of reason, but of ungoverned passion, and are swayed by every
impulse of the mad spirit that is in them? Hence it is that on this
point as well as others they have no perception of the truth, so
that, being altogether ignorant of the true adjustment of this
question, they sometimes celebrate Easter twice in the same year.
Why then should we follow those who are confessedly in grievous
error? Surely we shall never consent to keep this feast a second
time in the same year. But supposing these reasons were not of
sufficient weight, still it would be incumbent on your Sagacities to
strive and pray continually that the purity of your souls may not
seem in anything to be sullied by fellowship with the customs of
these most wicked men. We must consider, too, that a discordant
judgment in a case of such importance, and respecting such religious
festival, is wrong. For our Saviour has left us one feast in
commemoration of the day of our deliverance, I mean the day of his
most holy passion; and he has willed that his Catholic Church should
be one, the members of which, however scattered in many and diverse
places, are yet cherished by one pervading spirit, that is, by the
will of God. And let your Holinesses' sagacity reflect how grievous
and scandalous it is that on the self-same days some should be
engaged in fasting, others in festive enjoyment; and again, that
after the days of Easter some should be present at banquets and
amusements, while others are fulfilling the appointed fasts. It is,
then, plainly the will of Divine Providence (as I suppose you all
clearly see), that this usage should receive fitting correction, and
be reduced to one uniform rule.
CHAPTER
XIX: Exhortation to follow the Example of the Greater Part of the
World.
"SINCE,
therefore, it was needful that this matter should be rectified, so
that we might have nothing in common with that nation of parricides
who slew their Lord: and since that arrangement is consistent with
propriety which is observed by all the churches of the western,
southern, and northern parts of the world, and by some of the
eastern also: for these reasons all are unanimous on this present
occasion in thinking it worthy of adoption. And I myself have
undertaken that this decision should meet with the approval of your
Sagacities, in the hope that your Wisdoms will gladly admit that
practice which is observed at once in the city of Rome, and in
Africa; throughout Italy, and in Egypt, in Spain, the Gauls,
Britain, Libya, and the whole of Greece; in the dioceses of Asia and
Pontus, and in Cilicia, with entire unity of judgment. And you will
consider not only that the number of churches is far greater in the
regions I have enumerated than in any other, but also that it is
most fitting that all should unite in desiring that which sound
reason appears to demand, and in avoiding all participation in the
perjured conduct of the Jews. In fine, that I may express my meaning
in as few words as possible, it has been determined by the common
judgment of all, that the most holy feast of Easter should be kept
on one and the same day. For on the one hand a discrepancy of
opinion on so sacred a question is unbecoming, and on the other it
is surely best to act on a decision which is free from strange folly
and error.
CHAPTER
XX: Exhortation to obey the Decrees of the Council.
"RECEIVE,
then, with all willingness this truly Divine injunction, and regard
it as in truth the gift of God. For whatever is determined in the
holy assemblies of the bishops is to be regarded as indicative of
the Divine will. As soon, therefore, as you have communicated these
proceedings to all our beloved brethren, you are bound from that
time forward to adopt for yourselves, and to enjoin on others the
arrangement above mentioned, and the due observance of this most
sacred day; that whenever I come into the presence of your love,
which I have long desired, I may have it in my power to celebrate
the holy feast with you on the same day, and may rejoice with you on
all accounts, when I behold the cruel power of Satan removed by
Divine aid through the agency of our endeavors, while your faith,
and peace, and concord ever? where flourish. God preserve you,
beloved brethren"
The
emperor transmitted a faithful copy of this letter to every
province, wherein they who read it might discern as in a mirror the
pure sincerity of his thoughts, and of his piety toward God.
CHAPTER
XXI: Recommendation to the Bishops, on their Departure, to Preserve
Harmony.
AND
now, when the council was on the point of being finally dissolved,
he summoned all the bishops to meet him on an appointed day, and on
their arrival addressed them in a farewell speech, in which he
recommended them to be diligent in the maintenance of peace, to
avoid contentious disputations, amongst themselves and not to be
jealous, if any one of their number should appear pre-eminent for
wisdom and eloquence, but to esteem the excellence of one a blessing
common to all. On the other hand he reminded them that the more
gifted should forbear to exalt themselves to the prejudice of their
humbler brethren, since it is God's prerogative to judge of real
superiority. Rather should they considerately condescend to the
weaker, remembering that absolute perfection in any case is a rare
quality indeed. Each then, should be willing to accord indulgence to
the other for slight offenses, to regard charitably and pass over
mere human weaknesses; holding mutual harmony in the highest honor,
that no occasion of mockery might be given by their dissensions to
those who are ever ready to blaspheme the word of God: whom indeed
we should do all in our power to save, and this cannot be unless our
conduct seems to them attractive. But you are well aware of the fact
that testimony is by no means productive of blessing to all, since
some who hear are glad to secure the supply of their mere bodily
necessities, while others court the patronage of their superiors;
some fix their affection on those who treat them with hospitable
kindness, others again, being honored with presents, love their
benefactors in return; but few are they who really desire the word
of testimony, and rare indeed is it to find a friend of truth. Hence
the necessity of endeavoring to meet the case of all, and,
physician-like, to administer to each that which may tend to the
health of the soul, to the end that the saving doctrine may be fully
honored by all. Of this kind was the former part of his exhortation;
and in conclusion he enjoined them to offer diligent supplications
to God on his behalf. Having thus taken leave of them, he gave them
all permission to return to their respective countries; and this
they did with joy, and thenceforward that unity of judgment at which
they had arrived in the emperor's presence continued to prevail, and
those who had long been divided were bound together as members of
the same body.
CHAPTER
XXII: How he dismissed Some, and wrote Letters to Others; also his
Presents.
FULL
of joy therefore at this success, the emperor presented as it were
pleasant fruits in the way of letters to those who had not been
present at the council. He commanded also that ample gifts of money
should be bestowed on all the people, both in the country and the
cities, being pleased thus to honor the festive occasion of the
twentieth anniversary of his reign.
CHAPTER
XXIII: How he wrote to the Egyptians, exhorting them to Peace.
AND
now, when all else were at peace, among the Egyptians alone an
implacable contention still raged, so as once more to disturb the
emperor's tranquility, though not to excite his anger. For indeed he
treated the contending parties with all respect, as fathers, nay
rather, as prophets of God; and again he summoned them to his
presence, and again patiently acted as mediator between them, and
honored them with gifts, and communicated also the result of his
arbitration by letter. He confirmed and sanctioned the decrees of
the council, and called on them to strive earnestly for concord, and
not to distract and rend the Church, but to keep before them the
thought of God's judgment. And these injunctions the emperor sent by
a letter written with his own hand.
CHAPTER
XXIV: How he wrote Frequent Letters of a Religious Character to the
Bishops and People.
BUT
besides these, his writings are very numerous on kindred subjects,
and he was the author of a multitude of letters, some to the
bishops, in which he laid injunctions on them tending to the
advantage of the churches of God; and sometimes the thrice blessed
one addressed the people of the churches generally, calling them his
own brethren and fellow-servants. But perhaps we may hereafter find
leisure to collect these dispatches in a separate form, in order
that the integrity of our present history may not be impaired by
their insertion.
CHAPTER
XXV: How he ordered the Erection of a Church at Jerusalem, in the
Holy Place of our Saviour's Resurrection.
AFTER
these things, the pious emperor addressed himself to another work
truly worthy of record, in the province of Palestine. What then was
this work? He judged it incumbent on him to render the blessed
locality of our Saviour's resurrection an object of attraction and
veneration to all. He issued immediate injunctions, therefore, for
the erection in that spot of a house of prayer: and this he did, not
on the mere natural impulse of his own mind, but being moved in
spirit by the Saviour himself.
CHAPTER
XXVI: That the Holy Sepulchre had been covered with Rubbish and with
Idols by the Ungodly.
FOR
it had been in time past the endeavor of impious men (or rather let
me say of the whole race of evil spirits through their means), to
consign to the darkness of oblivion that divine monument of
immortality to which the radiant angel had descended from heaven,
and rolled away the stone for those who still had stony hearts, and
who supposed that the living One still lay among the dead; and had
declared glad tidings to the women also, and removed their
stony-hearted unbelief by the conviction that he whom they sought
was alive. This sacred cave, then, certain impious and godless
persons had thought to remove entirely from the eyes of men,
supposing in their folly that thus they should be able effectually
to obscure the truth. Accordingly they brought a quantity of earth
from a distance with much labor, and covered the entire spot; then,
having raised this to a moderate height, they paved it with stone,
concealing the holy cave beneath this massive mound. Then, as though
their purpose had been effectually accomplished, they prepare on
this foundation a truly dreadful sepulchre of souls, by building a
gloomy shrine of lifeless idols to the impure spirit whom they call
Venus, and offering detestable oblations therein on profane and
accursed altars. For they supposed that their object could not
otherwise be fully attained, than by thus burying the sacred cave
beneath these foul pollutions. Unhappy men! they were unable to
comprehend how impossible it was that their attempt should remain
unknown to him who had been crowned with victory over death, any
more than the blazing sun, when he rises above the earth, and holds
his wonted course through the midst of heaven, is unseen by the
whole race of mankind. Indeed, his saving power, shining with still
greater brightness, and illumining, not the bodies, but the souls of
men, was already filling the world with the effulgence of its own
light. Nevertheless, these devices of impious and wicked men against
the truth had prevailed for a long time, nor had any one of the
governors, or military commanders, or even of the emperors
themselves ever yet appeared, with ability to abolish these daring
impieties, save only that one who enjoyed the favor of the King of
kings. And now, acting as he did under the guidance of the divine
Spirit, he could not consent to see the sacred spot of which we have
spoken, thus buried, through the devices of the adversaries, under
every kind of impurity, and abandoned to forgetfulness and neglect;
nor would he yield to the malice of those who had contracted this
guilt, but calling on the divine aid, gave orders that the place
should be thoroughly purified, thinking that the parts which had
been most polluted by the enemy ought to receive special tokens,
through his means, of the greatness of the divine favor. As soon,
then, as his commands were issued, these engines of deceit were cast
down from their proud eminence to the very ground, and the
dwelling-places of error, with the statues and the evil spirits
which they represented, were overthrown and utterly destroyed.
CHAPTER
XXVII: How Constantine commanded the Materials of the Idol Temple,
and the Soil itself, to be removed at a Distance.
NOR
did the emperor's zeal stop here; but he gave further orders that
the materials of what was thus destroyed, both stone and timber,
should be removed and thrown as far from the spot as possible; and
this command also was speedily executed. The emperor, however, was
not satisfied with having proceeded thus far: once more, fired with
holy ardor, he directed that the ground itself should be dug up to a
considerable depth, and the soil which had been polluted by the foul
impurities of demon worship transported to a far distant place.
CHAPTER
XXVIII: Discovery of the Most Holy Sepulchre.
THIS
also was accomplished without delay. But as soon as the original
surface of the ground, beneath the covering of earth, appeared,
immediately, and contrary to all expectation, the venerable and
hollowed monument of our Saviour's resurrection was discovered. Then
indeed did this most holy cave present a faithful similitude of his
return to life, in that, after lying buried in darkness, it again
emerged to light, and afforded to all who came to witness the sight,
a clear and visible proof of the wonders of which that spot had once
been the scene, a testimony to the resurrection of the Saviour
clearer than any voice could give.
CHAPTER
XXIX: How he wrote concerning the Erection of a Church, both to the
Governors of the Provinces, and to the Bishop Macarius.
IMMEDIATELY
after the transactions I have recorded, the emperor sent forth
injunctions which breathed a truly pious spirit, at the same time
granting ample supplies of money, and commanding that a house of
prayer worthy of the worship of God should be erected near the
Saviour's tomb on a scale of rich and royal greatness. This object
he had indeed for some time kept in view, and had foreseen, as if by
the aid of a superior intelligence, that which should afterwards
come to pass. He laid his commands, therefore, on the governors of
the Eastern provinces, that by an abundant and unsparing expenditure
they should secure the completion of the work on a scale of noble
and ample magnificence. He also dispatched the following letter to
the bishop who at that time presided over the church at Jerusalem,
in which he clearly asserted the saving doctrine of the faith,
writing in these terms.
CHAPTER
XXX: Constantine's Letter to Macarius respecting the Building of the
Church of our Saviour.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTIUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to Macarius.
"Such
is our Saviour's grace, that no power of language seems adequate to
describe the wondrous circumstance to which I am about to refer.
For, that the monument of his most holy Passion, so long ago buried
beneath the ground, should have remained unknown for so long a
series of years, until its reappearance to his servants now set free
through the removal of him who was the common enemy of all, is a
fact which truly surpasses all admiration. For if all who are
accounted wise throughout the world were to unite in their endeavors
to say somewhat worthy of this event, they would be unable to attain
their object in the smallest degree. Indeed, the nature of this
miracle as far transcends the capacity of human reason as heavenly
things are superior to human affairs. For this cause it is ever my
first, and indeed my only object, that, as the authority of the
truth is evincing itself daily by fresh wonders, so our souls may
all become more zealous, with all sobriety and earnest unanimity,
for the honor of the Divine law. I desire, therefore, especially,
that you should be persuaded of that which I suppose is evident to
all beside, namely, that I have no greater care than how I may best
adorn with a splendid structure that sacred spot, which, under
Divine direction, I have disencumbered as it were of the heavy
weight of foul idol worship; a spot which has been accounted holy
from the beginning in God's judgment, but which now appears holier
still, since it has brought to light a clear assurance of our
Saviour's passion.
CHAPTER
XXXI: That the Building should surpass all the Churches in the World
in the Beauty of its Walls, its Columns, and Marbles.
"IT
will be well, therefore, for your sagacity to make such arrangements
and provision of all things needful for the work, that not only the
church itself as a whole may surpass all others whatsoever in
beauty, but that the details of the building may be of such a kind
that the fairest structures in any city of the empire may be
excelled by this. And with respect to the erection and decoration of
the walls, this is to inform you that our friend Dracilianus, the
deputy of the Praetorian Praefects, and the governor of the
province, have received a charge from us. For our pious directions
to them are to the effect that artificers and laborers, and whatever
they shall understand from your sagacity to be needful for the
advancement of the work, shall forthwith be furnished by their care.
And as to the columns and marbles, whatever you shall judge, after
actual inspection of the plan, to be especially precious and
serviceable, be diligent to send information to us in writing, in
order that whatever quantity or sort of materials we shall esteem
from your letter to be needful, may be procured from every quarter,
as required, for it is fitting that the most marvelous place in the
world should be worthily decorated.
CHAPTER
XXXII: That he instructed the Governors concerning the Beautifying
of the Roof; also concerning Workmen, and Materials.
"WITH
respect to the ceiling of the church, I wish to know from you
whether in your judgment it should be panel-ceiled, or finished with
any other kind of workmanship. If the panel ceiling be adopted, it
may also be ornamented with gold. For the rest, your Holiness will
give information as early as possible to the before-mentioned
magistrates how many laborers and artificers, and what expenditure
of money is required. You will also be careful to send us a report
without delay, not only respecting the marbles and columns, but the
paneled ceiling also, should this appear to you to be the most
beautiful form. God preserve you, beloved brother!"
CHAPTER
XXXIII: How the Church of our Saviour, the New Jerusalem prophesied
of in Scripture, was built.
THIS
was the emperor's letter; and his directions were at once carried
into effect. Accordingly, on the very spot which witnessed the
Saviour's sufferings, a new Jerusalem was constructed, over against
the one so celebrated of old, which, since the foul stain of guilt
brought on it by the murder of the Lord, had experienced the last
extremity of desolation, the effect of Divine judgment on its
impious people. It was opposite this city that the emperor now began
to rear a monument to the Saviour's victory over death, with rich
and lavish magnificence. And it may be that this was that second and
new Jerusalem spoken of in the predictions of the prophets,
concerning which such abundant testimony is given in the divinely
inspired records.
First
of all, then, he adorned the sacred cave itself, as the chief part
of the whole work, and the hallowed monument at which the angel
radiant with light had once declared to all that regeneration which
was first manifested in the Saviour's person.
CHAPTER
XXXIV: Description of the Structure of the Holy Sepulchre.
THIS
monument, therefore, first of all, as the chief part of the whole,
the emperor's zealous magnificence beautified with rare columns,
anti profusely enriched with the most splendid decorations of every
kind.
CHAPTER
XXXV: Description of the Atrium and Porticos.
THE
next object of his attention was a space of ground of great extent,
and open to the pure air of heaven. This he adorned with a pavement
of finely polished stone, and enclosed it on three sides with
porticos of great length.
CHAPTER
XXXVI: Description of the Walls, Roof, Decoration, and Gilding of
the Body of the Church.
FOR
at the side opposite to the cave, which was the eastern side, the
church itself was erected; a noble work rising to a vast height, and
of great extent both in length and breadth. The interior of this
structure was floored with marble slabs of various colors; while the
external surface of the walls, which shone with polished stones
exactly fitted together, exhibited a degree of splendor in no
respect inferior to that of marble. With regard to the roof, it was
covered on the outside with lead, as a protection against the rains
of winter. But the inner part of the roof, which was finished with
sculptured panel work, extended in a series of connected
compartments, like a vast sea, over the whole church; and, being
overlaid throughout with the purest gold, caused the entire building
to glitter as it were with rays of light.
CHAPTER
XXXVII: Description of the Double Porticos on Either Side, and of
the Three Eastern Gates.
BESIDES
this were two porticos on each side, with upper and lower ranges of
pillars, corresponding in length with the church itself; and these
also had their roofs ornamented with gold. Of these porticos, those
which were exterior to the church were supported by columns of great
size, while those within these rested on piles of stone beautifully
adorned on the surface. Three gates, placed exactly east, were
intended to receive the multitudes who entered the church.
CHAPTER
XXXVIII: Description of the Hemisphere, the Twelve Columns, and
their Bowls.
OPPOSITE
these gates the crowning part of the whole was the hemisphere, which
rose to the very summit of the church. This was encircled by twelve
columns (according to the number of the apostles of our Saviour),
having their capitals embellished with silver bowls of great size,
which the emperor himself presented as a splendid offering to his
God.
CHAPTER
XXXIX: Description of the Inner Court, the Arcades and Porches.
IN
the next place he enclosed the atrium which occupied the space
leading to the entrances in front of the church. This comprehended,
first the court, then the porticos on each side, and lastly the
gates of the court. After these, in the midst of the open
market-place, the general entrance-gates, which were of exquisite
workmanship, afforded to passers-by on the outside a view of the
interior which could not fail to inspire astonishment.
CHAPTER
XL: Of the Number of his Offerings.
THIS
temple, then, the emperor erected as a conspicuous monument of the
Saviour's resurrection, and embellished it throughout on an imperial
scale of magnificence. He further enriched it with numberless
offerings of inexpressible beauty and various materials, - gold,
silver, and precious stones, the skillful and elaborate arrangement
of which, in regard to their magnitude, number, and variety, we have
not leisure at present to describe particularly.
CHAPTER
XLI: Of the Erection of Churches in Bethlehem, and an the Mount of
Olives.
IN
the same country he discovered other places, venerable as being the
localities of two sacred caves: and these also he adorned with
lavish magnificence. In the one case, he rendered due honor to that
which had been the scene of the first manifestation of our Saviour's
divine presence, when he submitted to be born in mortal flesh; while
in the case of the second cavern he hallowed the remembrance of his
ascension to heaven from the mountain top. And while he thus nobly
testified his reverence for these places, he at the same time
eternized the memory of his mother, who had been the instrument of
conferring so valuable a benefit on mankind.
CHAPTER
XLII: That the Empress Helena, Constantine's Mother, having visited
this Locality for Devotional Purposes, built these Churches.
FOR
she, having resolved to discharge the duties of pious devotion to
the God, the King of kings, and feeling it incumbent on her to
render thanksgivings with prayers on behalf both of her own son, now
so mighty an emperor, and of his sons, her own grandchildren, the
divinely favored Caesars, though now advanced in years, yet gifted
with no common degree of wisdom, had hastened with youthful alacrity
to survey this venerable land; and at the same time to visit the
eastern provinces, cities, and people, with a truly imperial
solicitude. As soon, then, as she had rendered due reverence to the
ground which the Saviour's feet had trodden, according to the
prophetic word which says "Let us worship at the place whereon
his feet have stood," she immediately bequeathed the fruit of
her piety to future generations.
CHAPTER
XLIII: A Farther Notice of the Churches at Bethlehem.
FOR
without delay she dedicated two churches to the God whom she adored,
one at the grotto which had been the scene of the Saviour's birth;
the other on the mount of his ascension. For he who was "God
with us" had submitted to be born even in a cave of the earth,
and the place of his nativity was called Bethlehem by the Hebrews.
Accordingly the pious empress honored with rare memorials the scene
of her travail who bore this heavenly child, and beautified the
sacred cave with all possible splendor. The emperor himself soon
after testified his reverence for the spot by princely offerings,
and added to his mother's magnificence by costly presents of silver
and gold, and embroidered hangings. And farther, the mother of the
emperor raised a stately structure on the Mount of Olives also, in
memory of his ascent to heaven who is the Saviour of mankind,
erecting a sacred church and temple on the very summit of the mount.
And indeed authentic history informs us that in this very cave the
Saviour imparted his secret revelations to his disciples. And here
also the emperor testified his reverence for the King of kings, by
diverse and costly offerings. Thus did Helena Augusta, the pious
mother of a pious emperor, erect over the two mystic caverns these
two noble and beautiful monuments of devotion, worthy of everlasting
remembrance, to the honor of God her Saviour, and as proofs of her
holy zeal, receiving from her son the aid of his imperial power. Nor
was it long ere this aged woman reaped the due reward of her labors.
After passing the whole period of her life, even to declining age,
in the greatest prosperity, and exhibiting both in word and deed
abundant fruits of obedience to the divine precepts, and having
enjoyed in consequence an easy and tranquil existence, with
unimpaired powers of body and mind, at length she obtained from God
an end befitting her pious course, and a recompense of her good
deeds even in this present life.
CHAPTER
XLIV: Of Helena's Generosity and Beneficent Acts.
FOR
on the occasion of a circuit which she made of the eastern
provinces, in the splendor of imperial authority, she bestowed
abundant proofs of her liberality as well on the inhabitants of the
several cities collectively, as on individuals who approached her,
at the same time that she scattered largesses among the soldiery
with a liberal hand. But especially abundant were the gifts she
bestowed on the naked and unprotected poor. To some she gave money,
to others an ample supply of clothing: she liberated some from
imprisonment, or from the bitter servitude of the mines; others she
delivered from unjust oppression, and others again, she restored
from exile.
CHAPTER
XLV: Helena's Pious Conduct in the Churches.
WHILE,
however, her character derived luster from such deeds as I have
described, she was far from neglecting personal piety toward God.
She might be seen continually frequenting his Church, while at the
same time she adorned the houses of prayer with splendid offerings,
not overlooking the churches of the smallest cities. In short, this
admirable woman was to be seen, in simple and modest attire,
mingling with the crowd of worshipers, and testifying her devotion
to God by a uniform course of pious conduct.
CHAPTER
XLVI: How she made her Will, and died at the Age of Eighty Years.
AND
when at length at the close of a long life, she was called to
inherit a happier lot, having arrived at the eightieth year of her
age, and being very near the time of her departure, she prepared and
executed her last will in favor of her only son, the emperor and
sole monarch of the world, and her grandchildren, the Caesars his
sons, to whom severally she bequeathed whatever property she
possessed in any part of the world. Having thus made her will, this
thrice blessed woman died in the presence of her illustrious son,
who was in attendance at her side, caring for her and held her
hands: so that, to those who rightly discerned the truth, the thrice
blessed one seemed not to die, but to experience a real change and
transition from an earthly to a heavenly existence, since her soul,
remoulded as it were into an incorruptible and angelic essence, was
received up into her Saviour's presence.
CHAPTER
XLVII: How Constantine buried his Mother, and how he honored her
during her Life.
HER
body, too, was honored with special tokens of respect, being
escorted on its way to the imperial city by a vast train of guards,
and there deposited in a royal tomb. Such were the last days of our
emperor's mother, a person worthy of being had in perpetual
remembrance, both for her own practical piety, and because she had
given birth to so extraordinary and admirable an offspring. And well
may his character be styled blessed, for his filial piety as well as
on other grounds. He rendered her through his influence so devout a
worshiper of God, (though she had not previously been such,) that
she seemed to have been instructed from the first by the Saviour of
mankind: and besides this, he had honored her so fully with imperial
dignities, that in every province, and in the very ranks of the
soldiery, she was spoken of under the titles of Augusta and empress,
and her likeness was impressed on golden coins. He had even granted
her authority over the imperial treasures, to use and dispense them
according to her own will and discretion in every case for this
enviable distinction also she received at the hands of her son.
Hence it is that among the qualities which shed a luster on his
memory, we may rightly include that surpassing degree of filial
affection whereby he rendered full obedience to the Divine precepts
which enjoin due honor from children to their parents. In this
manner, then, the emperor executed in Palestine the noble works I
have above described: and indeed in every province he raised new
churches on a far more imposing scale than those which had existed
before his time.
CHAPTER
XLVIII: How he built Churches in Honor of Martyrs, and abolished
Idolatry at Constantinople.
AND
being fully resolved to distinguish the city which bore his name
with especial honor, he embellished it with numerous sacred
edifices, both memorials of martyrs on the largest scale, and other
buildings of the most splendid kind, not only within the city
itself, but in its vicinity: and thus at the same time he rendered
honor to the memory of the martyrs, and consecrated his city to the
martyrs' God. Being filled, too, with Divine wisdom, he determined
to purge the city which was to be distinguished by his own name from
idolatry of every kind, that henceforth no statues might be
worshiped there in the temples of those falsely reputed to be gods,
nor any altars defiled by the pollution of blood: that there might
be no sacrifices consumed by fire, no demon festivals, nor any of
the other ceremonies usually observed by the superstitious.
CHAPTER
XLIX: Representation of the Cross in the Palace, and of Daniel at
the Public Fountains.
ON
the other hand one might see the fountains in the midst of the
market place graced with figures representing the good Shepherd,
well known to those who study the sacred oracles, and that of Daniel
also with the lions, forged in brass, and resplendent with plates of
gold. Indeed, so large a measure of Divine love possessed the
emperor's soul, that in the principal apartment of the imperial
palace itself, on a vast tablet displayed in the center of its
gold-covered paneled ceiling, he caused the symbol of our Saviour's
Passion to be fixed, composed of a variety of precious stones richly
inwrought with gold. This symbol he seemed to have intended to be as
it were the safeguard of the empire itself.
CHAPTER
L: That he erected Churches in Nicomedia, and in Other Cities.
HAVING
thus embellished the city which bore his name, he next distinguished
the capital of Bithynia by the erection of a stately and magnificent
church, being desirous of raising in this city also, in honor of his
Saviour and at his own charges, a memorial of his victory over his
own enemies and the adversaries of God. He also decorated the
principal cities of the other provinces with sacred edifices of
great beauty; as, for example, in the case of that metropolis of the
East which derived its name from Antiochus, in which, as the head of
that portion of the empire, he consecrated to the service of God a
church of unparalleled size and beauty. The entire building was
encompassed by an enclosure of great extent, within which the church
itself rose to a vast elevation, being of an octagonal form, and
surrounded on all sides by many chambers, courts, and upper and
lower apartments; the whole richly adorned with a profusion of gold,
brass, and other materials of the most costly kind.
CHAPTER
LI: That he ordered a Church to be built at Mambre.
SUCH
was the principal sacred edifices erected by the emperor's command.
But having heard that the self-same Saviour who ere while had
appeared on earth had in ages long since past afforded a
manifestation of his Divine presence to holy men of Palestine near
the oak of Mambre, he ordered that a house of prayer should be built
there also in honor of the God who had thus appeared. Accordingly
the imperial commission was transmitted to the provincial governors
by letters addressed to them individually, enjoining a speedy
completion of the appointed work. He sent moreover to the writer of
this history an eloquent admonition, a copy of which I think it well
to insert in the present work, in order to convey a just idea of his
pious diligence and zeal. To express, then, his displeasure at the
evil practices which he had heard were usual in the place just
referred to, he addressed me in the following terms.
CHAPTER
LII: Constantine's Letter to Eusebius concerning Mambre.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to Macarius, and the rest of the
bishops in Palestine.
"One
benefit, and that of no ordinary importance, has been conferred on
us by my truly pious mother-in-law, in that she has made known to us
by letter that abandoned folly of impious men which has hitherto
escaped detection by you: so that the criminal conduct thus
overlooked may now through our means obtain fitting correction and
remedy, necessary though tardy. For surely it is a grave impiety
indeed, that holy places should be defiled by the stain of
unhallowed impurities. What then is this, dearest brethren, which,
though it has eluded your sagacity, she of whom I speak was impelled
by a pious sense of duty to disclose?
CHAPTER
LIII: That the Saviour appeared in this Place to Abraham.
"SHE
assures me, then, that the place which takes its name from the oak
of Mambre, where we find that Abraham dwelt, is defiled by certain
of the slaves of superstition in every possible way. She declares
that idols which should be utterly destroyed have been erected on
the site of that tree; that an altar is near the spot; and that
impure sacrifices are continually performed. Now since it is evident
that these practices are equally inconsistent with the character of
our times, and unworthy the sanctity of the place itself, I wish
your Gravities to be informed that the illustrious Count Acacius,
our friend, has received instructions by letter from me, to the
effect that every idol which shall be found in the place
above-mentioned shall immediately be consigned to the flames; that
the altar be utterly demolished; and that if any one, after this our
mandate, shall be guilty of impiety of any kind in this place, he
shall be visited with condign punishment. The place itself we have
directed to be adorned with an unpolluted structure, I mean a
church; in order that it may become a fitting place of assembly for
holy men. Meantime, should any breach of these our commands occur,
it should be made known to our clemency without the least delay by
letters from you, that we may direct the person detected to be dealt
with, as a transgressor of the law, in the severest manner. For you
are not ignorant that the Supreme God first appeared to Abraham, and
conversed with him, in that place. There it was that the observance
of the Divine law first began; there first the Saviour himself, with
the two angels, vouchsafed to Abraham a manifestation of his
presence; there God first appeared to men; there he gave promise to
Abraham concerning his future seed, and straightway fulfilled that
promise; there he foretold that he should be the father of a
multitude of nations. For these reasons, it seems to me right that
this place should not only be kept pure through your diligence from
all defilement, but restored also to its pristine sanctity; that
nothing hereafter may be done there except the performance of
fitting service to him who is the Almighty God, and our Saviour, and
Lord of all. And this service it is incumbent on you to care for
with due attention, if your Gravities be willing (and of this I feel
confident) to gratify my wishes, which are especially interested in
the worship of God. May he preserve you, beloved brethren!"
CHAPTER
LIV: Destruction of Idol Temples and Images everywhere.
ALL
these things the emperor diligently performed to the praise of the
saving power of Christ, and thus made it his constant aim to glorify
his Saviour God. On the other hand he used every means to rebuke the
superstitious errors of the heathen. Hence the entrances of their
temples in the several cities were left exposed to the weather,
being stripped of their doors at his command; the tiling of others
was removed, and their roofs destroyed. From others again the
venerable statues of brass, of which the superstition of antiquity
had boasted for a long series of years, were exposed to view in all
the public places of the imperial city: so that here a Pythian,
there a Sminthian Apollo, excited the contempt of the beholder:
while the Delphic tripods were deposited in the hippodrome and the
Muses of Helicon in the palace itself. In short, the city which bore
his name was everywhere filled with brazen statues of the most
exquisite workmanship, which had been dedicated in every province,
and which the deluded victims of superstition had long vainly
honored as gods with numberless victims and burnt sacrifices, though
now at length they learned to renounce their error, when the emperor
held up the very objects of their worship to be the ridicule and
sport of all beholders. With regard to those images which were of
gold, he dealt with them in a different manner. For as soon as he
understood that the ignorant multitudes were inspired with a vain
and childish dread of these bugbears of error, wrought in gold and
silver, he judged it right to remove these also, like
stumbling-stones thrown in the way of men walking in the dark, and
henceforward to open a royal road, plain and unobstructed to all.
Having formed this resolution, he considered no soldiers or military
force of any sort needful for the suppression of the evil: a few of
his own friends sufficed for this service, and these he sent by a
simple expression of his will to visit each several province.
Accordingly, sustained by confidence in the emperor's pious
intentions and their own personal devotion to God, they passed
through the midst of numberless tribes and nations, abolishing this
ancient error in every city and country. They ordered the priests
themselves, amidst general laughter and scorn, to bring their gods
from their dark recesses to the light of day: they then stripped
them of their ornaments, and exhibited to the gaze of all the
unsightly reality which had been hidden beneath a painted exterior.
Lastly, whatever part of the material appeared valuable they scraped
off and melted in the fire to prove its worth, after which they
secured and set apart whatever they judged needful for their
purpose, leaving to the superstitious worshipers that which was
altogether useless, as a memorial of their shame. Meanwhile our
admirable prince was himself engaged in a work similar to what we
have described. For at the same time that these costly images of the
dead were stripped, as we have said, of their precious materials, he
also attacked those composed of brass; causing those to be dragged
from their places with ropes and as it were carried away captive,
whom the dotage of mythology had esteemed as gods.
CHAPTER
LV: Overthrow of an Idol Temple, and Abolition of Licentious
Practices, at Aphaca in Phoenicia.
THE
emperor's next care was to kindle, as it were, a brilliant torch, by
the light of which he directed his imperial gaze around, to see if
any hidden vestiges of error might still exist. And as the
keen-sighted eagle in its heavenward flight is able to descry from
its lofty height the most distant objects on the earth, so did he,
while residing in the imperial palace of his own fair city, discover
as from a watch-tower a hidden and fatal snare of souls in the
province of Phoenicia. This was a grove and temple, not situated in
the midst of any city, nor in any public place, as for splendor of
effect is generally the case, but apart from the beaten and
frequented road, at Aphaca, on part of the summit of Mount Lebanon,
and dedicated to the foul demon known by the name of Venus. It was a
school of wickedness for all the votaries of impurity, and such as
destroyed their bodies with effeminacy. Here men undeserving of the
name forgot the dignity of their sex, and propitiated the demon by
their effeminate conduct; here too unlawful commerce of women and
adulterous intercourse, with other horrible and infamous practices,
were perpetrated in this temple as in a place beyond the scope and
restraint of law. Meantime these evils remained unchecked by the
presence of any observer, since no one of fair character ventured to
visit such scenes. These proceedings, however, could not escape the
vigilance of our august emperor, who, having himself inspected them
with characteristic forethought, and judging that such a temple was
unfit for the light of heaven, gave orders that the building with
its offerings should be utterly destroyed. Accordingly, in obedience
to the imperial command, these engines of an impure superstition
were immediately abolished, and the hand of military force was made
instrumental in purging the place. And now those who had heretofore
lived without restraint learned self-control through the emperor's
threat of punishment, as likewise those superstitious Gentiles wise
in their own conceit, who now obtained experimental proof of their
own folly.
CHAPTER
LVI: Destruction of the Temple of Aesculapius at Aegae.
FOR
since a wide-spread error of these pretenders to wisdom concerned
the demon worshiped in Cilicia, whom thousands regarded with
reverence as the possessor of saving and healing power, who
sometimes appeared to those who passed the night in his temple,
sometimes restored the diseased to health, though on the contrary he
was a destroyer of souls, who drew his easily deluded worshipers
from the true Saviour to involve them in impious error, the emperor,
consistently with his practice, and desire to advance the worship of
him who is at once a jealous God and the true Saviour, gave
directions that this temple also should be razed to the ground. In
prompt obedience to this command, a band of soldiers laid this
building, the admiration of noble philosophers, prostrate in the
dust, together with its unseen inmate, neither demon nor god, but
rather a deceiver of souls, who had seduced mankind for so long a
time through various ages. And thus he who had promised to others
deliverance from misfortune and distress, could find no means for
his own security, any more than when, as is told in myth, he was
scorched by the lightning's stroke. Our emperor's pious deeds,
however, had in them nothing fabulous or feigned; but by virtue of
the manifested power of his Saviour, this temple as well as others
was so utterly overthrown, that not a vestige of the former follies
was left behind.
CHAPTER
LVII: How the Gentiles abandoned Idol Worship, and turned to the
Knowledge of God.
HENCE
it was that, of those who had been the slaves of superstition, when
they saw with their own eyes the exposure of their delusion, and
beheld the actual ruin of the temples and images in every place,
some applied themselves to the saving doctrine of Christ; while
others, though they declined to take this step, yet reprobated the
folly which they had received from their fathers, and laughed to
scorn what they had so long been accustomed to regard as gods.
Indeed, what other feelings could possess their minds, when they
witnessed the thorough uncleanness concealed beneath the fair
exterior of the objects of their worship? Beneath this were found
either the bones of dead men or dry skulls, fraudulently adorned by
the arts of magicians, or filthy rags full of abominable impurity,
or a bundle of hay or stubble. On seeing all these things heaped
together within their lifeless images, they denounced their fathers'
extreme folly and their own, especially when neither in the secret
recesses of the temples nor in the statues themselves could any
inmate be found; neither demon, nor utterer of oracles, neither god
nor prophet, as they had heretofore supposed: nay, not even a dim
and shadowy phantom could be seen. Accordingly, every gloomy cavern,
every hidden recess, afforded easy access to the emperor's
emissaries: the inaccessible and secret chambers, the innermost
shrines of the temples, were trampled by the soldiers' feet; and
thus the mental blindness which had prevailed for so many ages over
the gentile world became clearly apparent to the eyes of all.
CHAPTER
LVIII: How he destroyed the Temple of Venus at Heliopolis, and built
the First Church in that City.
SUCH
actions as I have described may well be reckoned among the emperor's
noblest achievements, as also the wise arrangements which he made
respecting each particular province. We may instance the Phoenician
city Heliopolis, in which those who dignify licentious pleasure with
a distinguishing title of honor, had permitted their wives and
daughters to commit shameless fornication. But now a new statute,
breathing the very spirit of modesty, proceeded from the emperor,
which peremptorily forbade the continuance of former practices. And
besides this he sent them also written exhortations, as though he
had been especially ordained by God for this end, that he might
instruct all men in the principles of chastity. Hence, he disdained
not to communicate by letter even with these persons, urging them to
seek diligently the knowledge of God. At the same time he followed
up his words by corresponding deeds, and erected even in this city a
church of great size and magnificence: so that an event unheard of
before in any age, now for the first time came to pass, namely, that
a city which had hitherto been wholly given up to superstition now
obtained the privilege of a church of God, with presbyters and
deacons, and its people were placed under the presiding care of a
bishop consecrated to the service of the supreme God. And further,
the emperor, being anxious that here also as many as possible might
be won to the truth, bestowed abundant provision for the necessities
of the poor, desiring even thus to invite them to seek the doctrines
of salvation, as though he were almost adopting the words of him who
said, "Whether in pretense, or in truth, let Christ be
preached."
CHAPTER
LIX: Of the Disturbance at Antioch by Eustathius.
IN
the midst, however, of the general happiness occasioned by these
events, and while the Church of God was every where and every way
flourishing throughout the empire, once more that spirit of envy,
who ever watches for the ruin of the good, prepared himself to
combat the greatness of our prosperity, in the expectation, perhaps,
that the emperor himself, provoked by our tumults and disorders,
might eventually become estranged from us. Accordingly, he kindled a
furious controversy at Antioch, and thereby involved the church in
that place in a series of tragic calamities, which had well-nigh
occasioned the total overthrow of the city. The members of the
Church were divided into two opposite parties; while the people,
including even the magistrates and soldiery, were roused to such a
pitch, that the contest would have been decided by the sword, had
not the watchful providence of God, as well as dread of the
emperor's displeasure, controlled the fury of the multitude. On this
occasion, too, the emperor, acting the part of a preserver and
physician of souls, applied with much forbearance the remedy of
persuasion to those who needed it. He gently pleaded, as it were by
an embassy, with his people, sending among them one of the best
approved and most faithful of those who were honored with the
dignity of Count; at the same time that he exhorted them to a
peaceable spirit by repeated letters, and instructed them in the
practice of true godliness, Having prevailed by these remonstrances,
he excused their conduct in his subsequent letters, alleging that he
had himself heard the merits of the case from him on whose account
the disturbance had arisen. And these letters of his, which are
replete with learning and instruction of no ordinary kind, I should
have inserted in this present work, were it not that they might
affix a mark of dishonor to the character of the persons accused. I
will therefore omit these, being unwilling to revive the memory of
past grievances, and will only annex those to my present narrative
which he wrote to testify his satisfaction at the re-establishment
of peace and concord among the rest. In these letters, he cautioned
them against any desire to claim the ruler of another district,
through whose intervention peace had been restored, as their own,
and exhorted them, consistently with the usage of the Church, to
choose him as their bishop, whom the common Saviour of all should
point out as suited for the office. His letter, then, is addressed
to the people and to the bishops, severally, in the following terms.
CHAPTER
LX: Constantine's Letter to the Antiochians, directing them not to
withdraw Eusebius from Caesarea, but to seek some one else.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to the people of Antioch.
"How
pleasing to the wise and intelligent portion of mankind is the
concord which exists among you! And I myself, brethren, am disposed
to love you with an enduring affection, inspired both by religion,
and by your own manner of life and zeal on my behalf. It is by the
exercise of right understanding and sound discretion, that we are
enabled really to enjoy our blessings. And what can become you so
well as this discretion? No wonder, then, if I affirm that your
maintenance of the truth has tended rather to promote your security
than to draw on you the hatred of others. Indeed, amongst brethren,
whom the selfsame disposition to walk in the ways of truth and
righteousness promises, through the favor of God, to register among
his pure and holy family, what can be more honorable than gladly to
acquiesce in the prosperity of all men? Especially since the
precepts of the divine law prescribe a better direction to your
proposed intention, and we ourselves desire that your judgment
should be confirmed by proper sanction. It may be that you are
surprised, and at a loss to understand the meaning of this
introduction to my present address. The cause of it I will not
hesitate to explain without reserve. I confess, then, that on
reading your records I perceived, by the highly eulogistic testimony
which they bear to Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, whom I have myself
long well known and esteemed for his learning and moderation, that
you are strongly attached to him, and desire to appropriate him as
your own. What thoughts, then, do you suppose that I entertain on
this subject, desirous as I am to seek for and act on the strict
principles of right? What anxiety do you imagine this desire of
yours has caused me? O holy faith, who givest us in our Saviour's
words and precepts a model, as it were, of what our life should be,
how hardly wouldst thou thyself resist the sins of men, were it not
that thou refusest to subserve the purposes of gain! In my own
judgment, he whose first object is the maintenance of peace, seems
to be superior to Victory herself; and where a right and honorable
course lies open to one's choice, surely no one would hesitate to
adopt it. I ask then, brethren, why do we so decide as to inflict an
injury on others by our choice? Why do we covet those objects which
will destroy the credit of our own reputation? I myself highly
esteem the individual whom ye judge worthy of your respect and
affection: notwithstanding, it cannot be right that those principles
should be entirely disregarded which should be authoritative and
binding on all alike, so that each should not be content with his
own circumstances, and all enjoy their proper privileges: nor can it
be right, in considering the claims of rival candidates, to suppose
but that not one only, but many, may appear worthy of comparison
with this person. For as long as no violence or harshness are
suffered to disturb the dignities of the church, they continue to be
on an equal footing, and worthy of the same consideration
everywhere. Nor is it reasonable that an inquiry into the
qualifications of this one should be made to the detriment of
others; since the judgment of all churches, whether reckoned of
greater or less importance in themselves, is equally capable of
receiving and maintaining the divine ordinances, so that one is in
no way inferior to another, if we will but boldly declare the truth,
in regard to that standard of practice which is common to all. If
this be so, we must say that you will be chargeable, not with
retaining this prelate, but with wrongfully removing him; your
conduct will be characterized rather by violence than justice; and
whatever may be generally thought by others, I dare clearly and
boldly affirm that this measure will furnish ground of accusation
against you, and will provoke factious disturbances of the most
mischievous kind: for even timid flocks can show the use and power
of their teeth, when the watchful care of their shepherd declines,
and they find themselves bereft of his accustomed guidance. If this
then be really so, if I am not deceived in my judgment, let this,
brethren, be your first consideration, for many and important
considerations will immediately present themselves, whether, should
you persist in your intention, that mutual kindly feeling and
affection which should subsist among you will suffer no diminution?
In the next place, remember that he, who came among you for the
purpose of offering disinterested counsel, now enjoys the reward
which is due to him in the judgment of heaven; for he has received
no ordinary recompense in the high testimony you have borne to his
equitable conduct. Lastly, in accordance with your usual sound
judgment, do ye exhibit a becoming diligence in selecting the person
of whom you stand in need, carefully avoiding all factious and
tumultuous clamor; for such clamor is always wrong, and from the
collision of discordant elements both sparks and flame will arise. I
protest, as I desire to please God and you, and to enjoy a happiness
commensurate with your kind wishes, that I love you, and the quiet
haven of your gentleness, now that you have cast from you that which
defiled, and received in its place at once sound morality and
concord, firmly planting in the vessel the sacred standard, and
guided, as one may say, by a helm of iron in your course onward to
the light of heaven. Receive then on board that merchandise which is
incorruptible, since, as it were, all bilge water has been drained
from the vessel; and be careful henceforth so to secure the
enjoyment of all your present blessing, that you may not seem at any
future time either to have determined any measure on the impulse of
inconsiderate or ill-directed zeal, or in the first instance rashly
to have entered on an inexpedient course. May God preserve you,
beloved brethren!"
CHAPTER
LXI: The Emperor's Letter to Eusebius praising him for refusing the
Bishopric of Antioch.
THE
Emperor's Letter to me on my refusing the Bishopric of Antioch.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to Eusebius.
"I
have most carefully perused your letter, and perceive that you have
strictly conformed to the rule enjoined by the discipline of the
Church. Now to abide by that which appears at the same time pleasing
to God, and accordant with apostolical tradition, is a proof of true
piety. You have reason to deem yourself happy on this behalf, that
you are counted worthy, in the judgment, I may say, of all the
world, to have the oversight of any church. For the desire which all
feel to claim you for their own, undoubtedly enhances your enviable
fortune in this respect. Notwithstanding, your Prudence whose
resolve it is to observe the ordinances of God and the apostolic
canon of the Church, has done excellently well in declining the
bishopric of the church at Antioch, and desiring to continue in that
church of which you first received the oversight by the will of God.
I have written on this subject to the people of Antioch, and also to
your colleagues in the ministry who had themselves consulted me in
regard to this question; on reading which letters, your Holiness
will easily discern, that, inasmuch as justice itself opposed their
claims, I have written to them under divine direction. It will be
necessary that your Prudence should be present at their conference,
in order that this decision may be ratified in the church at
Antioch. God preserve you, beloved brother!"
CHAPTER
LXII: Constantine's Letter to the Council, depreciating the Removal
of Eusebius from Caesarea.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to Theodotus, Theodorus, Narcissus,
Aetius, Alpheus, and the rest of the bishops who are at Antioch.
"I
have perused the letters written by your Prudences, and highly
approve of the wise resolution of your colleague in the ministry,
Eusebius. Having, moreover, been informed of the circumstances of
the case, partly by your letters, partly by those of our illustrious
counts, Acacius and Strategius, after sufficient investigation I
have written to the people of Antioch, suggesting the course which
will be at once pleasing to God and advantageous for the Church. A
copy of this I have ordered to be subjoined to this present letter,
in order that ye yourselves may know what I thought fit, as an
advocate of the cause of justice, to write to that people: since I
find in your letter this proposal, that, in consonance with the
choice of the people, sanctioned by your own desire, Eusebius the
holy bishop of Caesarea should preside over and take the charge of
the church at Antioch. Now the letters of Eusebius himself on this
subject appeared to be strictly accordant with the order prescribed
by the Church. Nevertheless it is expedient that your Prudences
should be made acquainted with my opinion also. For I am informed
that Euphronius the presbyter, who is a citizen of Caesarea in
Cappadocia, and George of Arethusa, likewise a presbyter, and
appointed to that office by Alexander at Alexandria, are men of
tried faith. It was right, therefore, to intimate to your Prudences,
that in proposing these men and any others whom you may deem worthy
the episcopal dignity, you should decide this question in a manner
conformable to the tradition of the apostles. For in that case, your
Prudences will be able, according to the rule of the Church and
apostolic tradition, to direct this election in the manner which
true ecclesiastical discipline shall prescribe. God preserve you,
beloved brethren!"
CHAPTER
LXIII: How he displayed his Zeal for the Extirpation of Heresies.
SUCH
were the exhortations to do all things to the honor of the divine
religion which the emperor addressed to the rulers of the churches.
Having by these means banished dissension, and reduced the Church of
God to a state of uniform harmony, he next proceeded to a different
duty, feeling it incumbent on him to extirpate another sort of
impious persons, as pernicious enemies of the human race. These were
pests of society, who ruined whole cities under the specious garb of
religious decorum; men whom our Saviour's warning voice somewhere
terms false prophets and ravenous wolves: "Beware of false
prophets, which will come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly
are ravening wolves. By their fruits ye shall know them."
Accordingly, by an order transmitted to the governors of the several
provinces, he effectually banished all such offenders. In addition
to this ordinance he addressed to them personally a severely
awakening admonition, exhorting them to an earnest repentance, that
they might still find a haven of safety in the true Church of God.
Hear, then, in what manner he addressed them in this letter.
CHAPTER
LXIV: Constantine's Edict against the Heretics.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to the heretics.
"Understand
now, by this present statute, ye Novatians, Valentinians,
Marcionites, Paulians, ye who are called Cataphrygians, and all ye
who devise and support heresies by means of your private assemblies,
with what a tissue of falsehood and vanity, with what destructive
and venomous errors, your doctrines are inseparably interwoven; so
that through you the healthy soul is stricken with disease, and the
living becomes the prey of everlasting death. Ye haters and enemies
of truth and life, in league with destruction! All your counsels are
opposed to the truth, but familiar with deeds of baseness; full of
absurdities and fictions: and by these ye frame falsehoods, oppress
the innocent, and withhold the light from them that believe. Ever
trespassing under the mask of godliness, ye fill all things with
defilement: ye pierce the pure and guileless conscience with deadly
wounds, while ye withdraw, one may almost say, the very light of day
from the eyes of men. But why should I particularize, when to speak
of your criminality as it deserves demands more time and leisure
than I can give? For so long and unmeasured is the catalogue of your
offenses, so hateful and altogether atrocious are they, that a
single day would not suffice to recount them all. And, indeed, it is
well to turn one's ears and eyes from such a subject, lest by a
description of each particular evil, the pure sincerity and
freshness of one's own faith be impaired. Why then do I still bear
with such abounding evil; especially since this protracted clemency
is the cause that some who were sound are become tainted with this
pestilent disease? Why not at once strike, as it were, at the root
of so great a mischief by a public manifestation of displeasure?
CHAPTER
LXV: The Heretics are deprived of their Meeting Places.
"FORASMUCH,
then, as it is no longer possible to bear with your pernicious
errors, we give warning by this present statute that none of you
henceforth presume to assemble yourselves together. We have
directed, accordingly, that you be deprived of all the houses in
which you are accustomed to hold your assemblies: and our care in
this respect extends so far as to forbid the holding of your
superstitious and senseless meetings, not in public merely, but in
any private house or place whatsoever. Let those of you, therefore,
who are desirous of embracing the true and pure religion, take the
far better course of entering the catholic Church, and uniting with
it in holy fellowship, whereby you will be enabled to arrive at the
knowledge of the truth. In any case, the delusions of your perverted
understandings must entirely cease to mingle with and mar the
felicity of our present times: I mean the impious and wretched
double-mindedness of heretics and schismatics. For it is an object
worthy of that prosperity which we enjoy through the favor of God,
to endeavor to bring back those who in time past were living in the
hope of future blessing, from all irregularity and error to the
right path, from darkness to light, from vanity to truth, from death
to salvation. And in order that this remedy may be applied with
effectual power, we have commanded, as before said, that you be
positively deprived of every gathering point for your superstitious
meetings, I mean all the houses of prayer, if such be worthy of the
name, which belong to heretics, and that these be made over without
delay to the catholic Church; that any other places be confiscated
to the public service, and no facility whatever be left for any
future gathering; in order that from this day forward none of your
unlawful assemblies may presume to appear in any public or private
place. Let this edict be made public."
CHAPTER
LXVI: How on the Discovery of Prohibited Books among the Heretics,
Many of them return to the Catholic Church.
THUS
were the lurking-places of the heretics broken up by the emperor's
command, and the savage beasts they harbored (I mean the chief
authors of their impious doctrines) driven to flight. Of those whom
they had deceived, some, intimidated by the emperor's threats,
disguising their real sentiments, crept secretly into the Church.
For since the law directed that search should be made for their
books, those of them who practiced evil and forbidden arts were
detected, and, these were ready to secure their own safety by
dissimulation of every kind. Others, however, there were, who
voluntarily and with real sincerity embraced a better hope. Meantime
the prelates of the several churches continued to make strict
inquiry, utterly rejecting those who attempted an entrance under the
specious disguise of false pretenses, while those who came with
sincerity of purpose were proved for a time, and after sufficient
trial numbered with the congregation. Such was the treatment of
those who stood charged with rank heresy: those, however, who
maintained no impious doctrine, but had been separated from the one
body through the influence of schismatic advisers, were received
without difficulty or delay. Accordingly, numbers thus revisited, as
it were, their own country after an absence in a foreign land, and
acknowledged the Church as a mother from whom they had wandered
long, and to whom they now returned with joy and gladness. Thus the
members of the entire body became united, and compacted in one
harmonious whole; and the one catholic Church, at unity with itself,
shone with full luster, while no heretical or schismatic body
anywhere continued to exist. And the credit of having achieved this
mighty work our Heaven-protected emperor alone, of all who had gone
before him, was able to attribute to himself.
BOOK
IV.
CHAPTER
I: How he honored Many by Presents and Promotions.
WHILE
thus variously engaged in promoting Saviour's doctrine, the emperor
was far from neglecting secular affairs; but in this respect also he
was unwearied in bestowing benefits of every kind and in quick
succession on the people of every province. On the one hand he
manifested a paternal anxiety for the general welfare of his
subjects; on the other he would distinguish individuals of his own
acquaintance with various marks of honor; conferring his benefits in
every instance in a truly noble spirit. No one could request a favor
from the emperor, and fail of obtaining what he sought: no one
expected a boon from him, and found that expectation vain. Some
received presents in money, others in land; some obtained the
Praetorian praefecture, others senatorial, others again consular
rank: many were appointed provincial governors: others were made
counts of the first, second, or third order: in numberless instances
the title of Most Illustrious and many other distinctions were
conferred; for the emperor devised new dignities, that he might
invest a larger number with the tokens of his favor.
CHAPTER
II: Remission of a Fourth Part of the Taxes.
THE
extent to which he studied the general happiness and prosperity may
be understood from a single instance most beneficial and universal
in its application, and still gratefully remembered. He remitted a
fourth part of the yearly tribute paid for land, and bestowed it on
the owners of the soil; so that if we compute this yearly reduction,
we shall find that the cultivators enjoyed their produce free of
tribute every fourth year. This privilege being established by law,
and secured for the time to come, has given occasion for the
emperor's beneficence to be held, not merely by the then present
generation, but by their children and descendants, in perpetual
remembrance.
CHAPTER
III: Equalization of the More Oppressive Taxes.
AND
whereas some persons found fault with the surveys of land which had
been made under former emperors, and complained that their property
was unduly burdened; acting in this case also on the principles of
justice, he sent commissioners to equalize the tribute, and to
secure immunity to those who had made this appeal.
CHAPTER
IV: His Liberality, from his private Resources, to the Losers in
Suits of a Pecuniary Nature.
IN
cases of judicial arbitration, in order that the loser by his
decision might not quit his presence less contented than the
victorious litigant, he himself bestowed, and from his own private
means in some cases lands, in other money, on the defeated party. In
this manner he took care that the loser, as having appeared in his
in his presence, should be as well satisfied as the gainer of the
cause; for he considered that non one ought in any case to retire
dejected and sorrowful from an interview with such a price. Thus it
happened that both parties returned from the scene of trial with
glad and cheerful countenances, while the emperor's noble-minded
liberality excited universal admiration.
CHAPTER
V: Conquest of the Scythians defeated through the Sign of Our
Saviour.
AND
why should I relate even briefly and incidentally, how he subjected
barbarous nations to the Roman power; how he was the first who
subjugated the Scythian and Sarmatian tribes, which had never
learned submission, and compelled them, how unwilling soever, to own
the sovereignty of Rome? For the emperors who preceded him had
actually rendered tribute to the Scythians: and Romans, by an annual
payment, had confessed themselves servants to barbarians; an
indignity which our emperor could no longer bear, nor think it
consistent with his victorious career to continue the payment his
predecessors had made. Accordingly, with full confidence in his
Saviour's aid he raised his conquering standard against these
enemies also, and soon reduced them all to obedience; coercing by
military force those who fiercely resisted his authority, while, on
the other hand, he conciliated the rest by wisely conducted
embassies, and reclaimed them to a state of order and civilization
from their lawless and savage life. Thus the Scythians at length
learned to acknowledge subjection to the power of Rome.
CHAPTER
VI: Conquest of the Sarmatians, consequent on the Rebellion of their
Slaves.
WITH
respect to the Sarmatians, God himself brought them beneath the rule
of Constantine, and subdued a nation swelling with barbaric pride in
the following manner. Being attacked by the Scythians, they had
entrusted their slaves with arms, in order to repel the enemy. These
slaves first overcame the invaders and then, turning their weapons
against their masters, drove them all from their native land. The
expelled Sarmatians found that their only hope of safety was in
Constantine's protection: and he, whose familiar habit it was to
save men's lives, received them all within the confines of the Roman
empire. Those who were capable of serving he incorporated with his
own troops: to the rest he allotted lands to cultivate for their own
support so that they themselves acknowledged that their past
misfortune had produced a happy result in that they now enjoyed
Roman liberty in place of savage barbarism. In this manner God added
to his dominions many and various barbaric tribes.
CHAPTER
VII: Ambassadors from Different Barbarous Nations receive Presents
from the Emperor.
INDEED,
ambassadors were continually arriving from all nations, bringing for
his acceptance their most precious gifts. So that I myself have
sometimes stood near the entrance of the imperial palace, and
observed a noticeable array of barbarians in attendance, differing
from each other in costume and decorations, and equally unlike in
the fashion of their hair and beard. Their aspect truculent and
terrible, their bodily stature prodigious: some of a red complexion,
others white as snow, others again of an intermediate color. For in
the number of those I have referred to might be seen specimens of
the Blemmyan tribes, of the Indians, and the Ethiopians, that
widely-divided race, remotest of mankind. All these in due
succession, like some painted pageant, presented to the emperor
those gifts which their own nation held in most esteem; some
offering crowns of goldments embroidered with gold and flowers: some
appeared with horses, others with shields and long spears, with
arrows and bows thereby offering their services and alliance for the
emperors acceptance. These presents he separately received and
carefully laid aside, acknowledging them in so munificent a manner
as at once to enrich those who bore them. He also honored the
noblest among them with Roman offices of dignity; so that many of
them thenceforward preferred to continue their residence among us,
and felt no desire to revisit their native land.
CHAPTER
VIII: That he wrote also to the King of Persia who had sent him an
Embassy, on Behalf of the Christians in his Realm.
THE
king of the Persians also having testified a desire to form an
alliance with Constantine, by sending an embassy and presents as
assurances of peace and friendship, the emperor, in negotiating this
treaty, far surpassed the monarch who had first done him honor, in
the magnificence with which he acknowledged his gifts. Having heard,
too, that there were many churches of God in Persia, and that large
numbers there were gathered into the fold of Christ, full of joy at
this intelligence, he resolved to extend his anxiety for the general
welfare to that country also, as one whose aim it was to care for
all alike in every nation.
CHAPTER
IX: Letter of Constantine Augustus to Sapor, King of the Persians,
containing a truly Pious Confession of God and Christ.
COPY
of his Letter to the King of Persia.
"By
keeping the Divine faith, I am made a partaker of the light of
truth: guided by the light of truth, I advance in the knowledge of
the Divine faith. Hence it is that, as my actions themselves evince,
I profess the most holy religion; and this worship I declare to be
that which teaches me deeper acquaintance with the most holy God;
aided by whose Divine power, beginning from the very borders of the
ocean, I have aroused each nation of the world in succession to a
well-grounded hope of security; so that those which, groaning in
servitude to the most cruel tyrants and yielding to the pressure of
their daily sufferings, had well nigh been utterly destroyed, have
been restored through my agency to a far happier state. This God I
confess that I hold in unceasing honor and remembrance; this God I
delight to contemplate with pure and guileless thoughts in the
height of his glory.
CHAPTER
X: The Writer denounces Idols, and glorifies God.
"THIS
God I invoke with bended knees, and recoil with horror from the
blood of sacrifices from their foul and detestable odors, and from
every earth-born magic fire: for the profane and impious
superstitions which are defiled by these rites have cast down and
consigned to perdition many, nay, whole nations of the Gentile
world. For he who is Lord of all cannot endure that those blessings
which, in his own loving-kindness and consideration of the wants of
men he has revealed for the rise of all, should be perverted to
serve the lusts of any. His only demand from man is purity of mind
and an undefiled spirit; and by this standard he weighs the actions
of virtue and godliness. For his pleasure is in works of moderation
and gentleness: he loves the meek, and hates the turbulent spirit:
delighting in faith, he chastises unbelief: by him all presumptuous
power is broken down, and he avenges the insolence of the proud.
While the arrogant and haughty are utterly overthrown, he requires
the humble and forgiving with deserved rewards: even so does he
highly honor and strengthen with his special help a kingdom justly
governed, and maintains a prudent king in the tranquility of peace.
CHAPTER
XI: Against the Tyrants and Persecutors; and on the Captivity of
Valerian.
"I
CANNOT, then, my brother believe that I err in acknowledging this
one God, the author and parent of all things: whom many of my
predecessors in power, led astray by the madness of error, have
ventured to deny, but who were all visited with a retribution so
terrible and so destructive, that all succeeding generations have
held up their calamities as the most effectual warning to any who
desire to follow in their stops. Of the number of these I believe
him to have been, whom the lightning-stroke of Divine vengeance
drove forth from hence, and banished to your dominions and whose
disgrace contributed to the fame of your celebrated triumph.
CHAPTER
XII: He declares that, having witnessed the Fall of the Persecutors,
he now rejoices at the Peace enjoyed by the Christians.
"AND
it is surely a happy circumstance that the punishment of such
persons as I have described should have been publicly manifested in
our own times. For I myself have witnessed the end of those who
lately harassed the worshipers of God by their impious edict. And
for this abundant thanksgivings are due to God that through his
excellent Providence all men who observe his holy laws are gladdened
by the renewed enjoyment of peace. Hence I am fully persuaded that
everything is in the best and safest posture, since God is
vouchsafing, through the influence of their pure and faithful
religious service, and their unity of judgment respecting his Divine
character, to gather all men to himself.
CHAPTER
XIII: He bespeaks his Affectionate Interest for he Christians in his
Country.
"IMAGINE,
then, with what joy I heard tidings so accordant with my desire,
that the fairest districts of Persia are filled with those men on
whose behalf alone I am at present speaking, I mean the Christians.
I pray, therefore, that both you and they may enjoy abundant
prosperity, and that your blessings and theirs may be in equal
measure; for thus you will experience the mercy and favor of that
God who is the Lord and Father of all. And now, because your power
is great, I commend these persons to your protection; because your
piety is eminent, I commit them to your care. Cherish them with your
wonted humanity and kindness; for by this proof of faith you will
secure an immeasurable benefit both to yourself and us."
CHAPTER
XIV: How the Zealous Prayers of Constantine procured Peace to the
Christians.
THUS,
the nations of the world being everywhere guided in their course as
it were by the skill of a single pilot, and acquiescing in the
administration of him who governed as the servant of God, the peace
of the Roman empire continued undisturbed, and all classes of his
subjects enjoyed a life of tranquility and repose. At the same time
the emperor, who was convinced that the prayers of godly men
contributed powerfully to the maintenance of the public welfare,
felt himself constrained zealously to seek such prayers and not only
himself implored the help and favor of God, but charged the prelates
of the churches to offer supplications on his behalf.
CHAPTER
XV: He causes himself to be represented on his Coins, and in his
Portraits, in the Attitude of Prayer.
HOW
deeply his soul was impressed by the power of divine faith may be
understood from the circumstance that he directed his likeness to be
stamped on the golden coin of the empire with the eyes uplifted as
in the posture of prayer to God: and this money became current
throughout the Roman world. His portrait also at full length was
placed over the entrance gates of the palaces in some cities, the
eyes upraised to heaven, and the hands outspread as if in prayer.
CHAPTER
XVI: He forbids by Law the Plating his Likeness in Idol Temples.
IN
this manner he represented himself, even through the medium of
painting, as habitually engaged in prayer to God. At the same time
he forbade, by an express enactment, the setting up of any
resemblance of himself in any idol temple, that not even the mere
lineaments of his person might receive contamination from the error
of forbidden superstition.
CHAPTER
XVII: Of his Prayers in the Palace, and his Reading the Holy
Scriptures.
STILL
nobler proofs of his piety might be discerned by those who marked
how he modeled as it were his very palace into a church of God, and
himself afforded a pattern of zeal to those assembled therein: how
he took the sacred scriptures into his hands, and devoted himself to
the study of those divinely inspired oracles; after which he would
offer up regular prayers with all the members of his imperial court.
CHAPTER
XVIII: He enjoins the General Observance of the Lord's Day, and the
Day of Preparation.
HE
ordained, too, that one day should be regarded as a special occasion
for prayer: I mean that which is truly the first and chief of all,
the day of our Lord and Saviour. The entire care of his household
was entrusted to deacons and other ministers consecrated to the
service of God, and distinguished by gravity of life and every other
virtue: while his trusty body guard, strong in affection and
fidelity to his person, found in their emperor an instructor in the
practice of piety, and like him held the Lord's salutary day in
honor and performed on that day the devotions which he loved. The
same observance was recommended by this blessed prince to all
classes of his subjects: his earnest desire being gradually to lead
all mankind to the worship of God. Accordingly he enjoined on all
the subjects of the Roman empire to observe the Lord's day, as a day
of rest, and also to honor the day which precedes the Sabbath; in
memory, I suppose, of what the Saviour of mankind is recorded to
have achieved on that day. And since his desire was to teach his
whole army zealously to honor the Saviour's day (which derives its
name from light, and from the sun), he freely granted to those among
them who were partakers of the divine faith, leisure for attendance
on the services of the Church of God, in order that they might be
able, without impediment, to perform their religious worship.
CHAPTER
XIX: That he directed even his Pagan Soldiers to pray on the Lord's
Day.
WITH
regard to those who were as yet ignorant of divine truth, he
provided by a second statute that they should appear on each Lord's
day on an open plain near the city, and there, at a given signal,
offer to God with one accord a prayer which they had previously
learned. He admonished them that their confidence should not rest in
their spears, or armor, or bodily strength, but that they should
acknowledge the supreme God as the giver of every good, and of
victory itself; to whom they were bound to offer their prayers with
due regularity, uplifting on whom they should call as the Author of
victory, their Preserver, Guardian, and Helper. The emperor himself
prescribed the prayer to be used by all his troops, commanding them,
to pronounce the following words in the Latin tongue:
CHAPTER
XX: The Form of Prayer given by Constantine to his Soldiers.
"WE
acknowledge thee the only God: we own thee, as our King and implore
thy succor. By thy favor have we gotten the victory through thee are
we mightier than our enemies. We render thanks for thy past
benefits, and trust thee for future blessings. Together we pray to
thee, and beseech thee long to preserve to us, safe and triumphant,
our emperor Constantine and his pious sons." by his troops, and
such the prayer they were instructed to offer up to God.
CHAPTER
XXI: He orders the Sign of the Saviour's Cross to be engraven on his
Soldiers' Shields.
AND
not only so, but he also caused the sign of the salutary trophy to
be impressed on the very shields of his soldiers; and commanded that
his embattled forces should be preceded in their march, not by
golden images, as heretofore, but only by the standard of the cross.
CHAPTER
XXII: Of his Zeal in Prayer, and the Honor he paid to the Feast of
Easter.
THE
emperor himself, as a sharer in the holy mysteries of our religion,
would seclude himself daily at a stated hour in the innermost
chambers of his palace; and there in solitary converse with his God,
would kneel in humble supplication, and entreat the blessings of
which he stood in need. But especially at the salutary feast of
Easter, his religious diligence was redoubled; he fulfilled as it
were the duties of a hierophant with every energy of his mind and
body, and outvied all others in the zealous celebration of this
feast. He changed, too, the holy night vigil into a brightness like
that of day, by causing waxen tapers of great length to be lighted
throughout the city: besides which, torches everywhere diffused
their light, so as to impart to this mystic vigil a brilliant
splendor beyond that of day. As soon as day itself returned, in
imitation of our Saviour's gracious acts, he opened a liberal hand
to his subjects of every nation, province, and people, and lavished
abundant bounties on all.
CHAPTER
XXIII: How he forbade Idolatrous Worship, but honored Martyrs and
the Church Festivals.
SUCH
were his sacred ministrations in the service of his God. At the same
time, his subjects, both civil and military, throughout the empire,
found a barrier everywhere opposed against idol worship, and every
kind of sacrifice forbidden. A statute was also passed, enjoining
the due observance of the Lord's day, and transmitted to the
governors of every province, who undertook, at the emperors command,
to respect the days commemorative of martyrs, and duly to emperors
entire satisfaction.
CHAPTER
XXIV: That he described himself to be a Bishop, in Charge of Affairs
External to the Church.
HENCE
it was not without reason that once, on the occasion of his
entertaining a company of bishops, he let fall the expression, "that
he himself too was a bishop," addressing them in my heating in
the following words: "You are bishops whose jurisdiction is
within the Church: I also am a bishop, ordained by God to overlook
whatever is external to the Church." And copal[?] care, and
exhorted them as far as in him lay to follow a godly life.
CHAPTER
XXV: Prohibition of Sacrifices, of Mystic Rites, Combats of
Gladiators, also the Licentious Worship of the Nile.
CONSISTENTLY
with this zeal he issued successive laws and ordinances, forbidding
any to offer sacrifice to idols, to consult diviners, to erect
images, or to pollute the cities with the sanguinary combats of
gladiators. And inasmuch as the Egyptians, especially those of
Alexandria, had been accustomed to honor their river through a
priesthood composed of effeminate men, a further law was passed
commanding the extermination of the whole class as vicious, that no
one might thenceforward be found tainted with the like impurity. And
whereas the superstitious inhabitants apprehended that the river
would in consequence withhold its customary flood, God himself
showed his approval of the emperor's law by ordering all things in a
manner quite contrary to their expectation. For those who had
defiled the cities by their vicious conduct were indeed seen no
more; but the river, as if the country through rose higher than ever
before, overflowed the country with its fertilizing streams: thus
effectually admonishing the deluded people to turn from impure men,
and ascribe their prosperity to him alone who is the Giver of all
good.
CHAPTER
XXVI: Amendment of the Law in Force respecting Childless Persons,
and of the Law of Wills.
SO
numerous, indeed, were the benefits of this kind conferred by the
emperor on every province, as to afford ample materials to any who
might desire to record them. Among these may be instanced those laws
which he entirely remodelled, and established on a more equitable
basis: the nature of which reform may be briefly and easily
explained. The childless were punished under the old law with the
forfeiture of their hereditary property a merciless stature, which
dealt with them as positive criminals. The emperor annulled this,
and decreed that those so circumstanced should inherit. He regulated
the question on the principles of equity and justice, arguing
willful transgressors should be chastised with the penalties their
crimes deserve. But nature herself denies children to many, who
long, perhaps, for a numerous offspring, but are disappointed of
their hope by bodily infirmity. Others continue childless, not from
any dislike of posterity, but because their ardent love of
philosophyrenders them averse to the conjugal union. Women, too,
consecrated to the service of God, have maintained a pure and
spotless virginity, and have devoted themselves, soul and body to a
life of entire chastity and holiness. What then? Should this conduct
be deemed worthy of punishment, or rather of admiration and praise;
since to desire this state is in itself honorable, and to maintain
it surpasses the power of unassisted nature? Surely those whose
bodily infirmity destroys their hope of offspring are worthy of
pity, not of punishment: and he who devotes himself to a higher
object calls not for chastisement, but especial admiration. On such
regard to the wills of dying persons, the old laws had ordained that
they should be expressed, even at the latest breath, as it were, in
certain definite words, and had prescribed the exact form and terms
to be employed. This practice had occasioned many fraudulent
attempts to hinder the intentions of the deceased from being carried
into full effect. As soon as our emperor was aware of these abuses,
he reformed this law likewise, declaring that a dying man ought to
be permitted to indicate his last wishes in as few words as
possible, and in whatever terms he pleased; and to set forth his
will in any written form; or even by word of mouth, provided it were
done in the presence of proper witnesses, who might be competent
faithfully to discharge their trust.
CHAPTER
XXVII: Among Other Enactments, he decrees that no Christian shall
slave to a Jew, and affirms the Validity of the Decisions of
Councils.
HE
also passed a law to the effect that no Christian should remain in
servitude to a Jewish master, on the ground that it could not be
right that those whom the Saviour had ransomed should be subjected
to the yoke of slavery by a people who had slain the prophets and
the Lord himself. If any were found hereafter in these
circumstances, the slave was to be set at liberty, and the master
punished by a fine.
He
likewise added the sanction of his authority to the decisions of
bishops passed at their synods, and forbade the provincial governors
to annul any of their decrees: for he rated the priests of God at a
higher value than any judge whatever. These and a thousand similar
provisions did he enact for the benefit of his subjects; but there
is not time now to give a special description of them, such as might
convey an accurate idea of his imperial wisdom in these respects:
nor need I now relate at length, how, as a devoted servant of the
Supreme God, he employed himself from morning until night in seeking
objects for his beneficence, and how equally and universally kind he
was to all.
CHAPTER
XXVIII: His Gifts to the Churches, and Bounties to Virgins and to
the Poor.
His
liberality, however, was most especially exercised on behalf of the
churches of God. In some cases he granted lands, in others he issued
supplies of food for the support of the poor, of orphan children,
and widows; besides which, he evinced much care and forethought in
fully providing the naked and destitute with clothing. He
distinguished, however, with most special honor those who had
devoted their lives to the practice of Divine philosophy. Hence his
respect, little short of veneration, for God's most holy and ever
virgin choir: for he felt assured that the God to whom such persons
devoted themselves was himself an inmate of their souls.
CHAPTER
XXIX: Of Constantine's Discourses and Declamations.
FOR
himself, he sometimes passed sleepless nights in furnishing his mind
with Divine knowledge: and much of his time was spent in composing
discourses, many of which he delivered in public; for he conceived
it to be incumbent on him to govern his subjects by appealing to
their reason, and to secure in all respects a rational obedience to
his authority. Hence he would sometimes himself evoke an assembly,
on which occasions vast multitudes attended, in the hope of hearing
an emperor sustain the part of a philosopher. And if in the course
of his speech any occasion offered of touching on sacred topics, he
immediately stood erect, and with a grave aspect and subdued tone of
voice seemed reverently to be initiating his auditors in the
mysteries of the Divine doctrine: and when they greeted him with
shouts of acclamation, he would direct them by his gestures to raise
their eyes to heaven, and reserve their admiration for the Supreme
King alone, and honor him with adoration and praise. He usually
divided the subjects of his address, first thoroughly exposing the
error of polytheism, and proving the superstition of the Gentiles to
be mere fraud, and a cloak for impiety. He then would assert the
sole sovereignty of God: passing thence to his Providence, both
general and particular. Proceeding next to the dispensation of
salvation, he would demonstrate its necessity, and adaptation to the
nature of the case; entering next in order on the doctrine of the
Divine judgment. And here especially he appealed most powerfully to
the consciences of his hearers, while he denounced the rapacious and
violent, and those who were slaves to an inordinate thirst of gain.
Nay, he caused some of his own acquaintance who were present to feel
the severe lash of his words, and to stand with downcast eyes in the
consciousness of guilt, while he testified against them in the
clearest and most impressive terms that they would have an account
to render of their deeds to God. He reminded them that God himself
had given him the empire of the world, portions of which he himself,
acting on the same Divine principle, had intrusted to their
government; but that all would in due time be alike summoned to give
account of their actions to the Supreme Sovereign of all. Such was
his constant testimony; such his admonition and instruction. And he
himself both felt and uttered these sentiments in the genuine
confidence of faith: but-his hearers were little disposed to learn,
and deaf to sound advice; receiving his words indeed with loud
applause, but induced by insatiable cupidity practically to
disregard them.
CHAPTER
XXX: That he marked out before a Covetous Man the Measure of a
Grave, and so put him to Shame.
ON
one occasion he thus personally addressed one of his courtiers: "How
far, my friend, are we to carry our inordinate desires?" Then
drawing the dimensions of a human figure with a lance which he
happened to have in his hand, he continued: "Though thou
couldst obtain the whole wealth of this world, yea, the whole world
itself, thou wilt carry with thee at last no more than this little
spot which I have marked out, if indeed even that be thine."
Such were the words and actions of this blessed prince; and though
at the time he failed to reclaim any from their evil ways, yet
notwithstanding the course of events afforded evident proof that his
admonitions were more like Divine prophecies than mere words.
CHAPTER
XXXI: That he was derided because of his Excessive Clemency.
MEANTIME,
since there was no fear of capital punishment to deter from the
commission of crime, for the emperor himself was uniformly inclined
to clemency, and none of the provincial governors visited offenses
with their proper penalties, this state of things drew with it no
small degree of blame on the general administration of the empire;
whether justly or not, let every one form his own judgment: for
myself, I only ask permission to record the fact.
CHAPTER
XXXII: Of Constantine's Oration which he wrote to the Assembly of
the Saints.
THE
emperor was in the habit of composing his orations in the Latin
tongue, from which they were translated into Greek by interpreters
appointed for this special service. One of the discourses thus
translated I intend to annex, by way of specimen, to this present
work, that one, I mean, which he inscribed "To the assembly of
the saints," and dedicated to the Church of God, that no one
may have ground for deeming my testimony on this head mere empty
praise.
CHAPTER
XXXIII: How he listened standing to Eusebius' Declamation in Honor
of our Saviour's Sepulchre.
ONE
act, however, I must by no means omit to record, which this
admirable prince performed in my own presence. On one occasion,
emboldened by the confident assurance I entertained of his piety, I
had begged permission to pronounce a discourse on the subject of our
Saviour's sepulchre in his hearing. With this request he most
readily complied, and in the midst of a large number of auditors, in
the interior of the palace itself, he stood and listened with the
rest. I entreated him, but in vain, to seat himself on the imperial
throne which stood near: he continued with fixed attention to weigh
the topics of my discourse, and gave his own testimony to the truth
of the theological doctrines it contained. After some time had
passed, the oration being of considerable length, I was myself
desirous of concluding; but this he would not permit, and exhorted
me to proceed to the very end. On my again entreating him to sit, he
in his turn was displeased and said that it was not right to listen
in a careless manner to the discussion of doctrines relating to God;
and again, that this posture was good and profitable to himself,
since it was reverent to stand while listening to sacred truths.
Having, therefore, concluded my discourse, I returned home, and
resumed my usual occupations.
CHAPTER
XXXIV: That he wrote to Eusebius respecting Easter, and respecting
Copies of the Holy Scriptures.
EVER
careful for the welfare of the churches of God, the emperor
addressed me personally in a letter on the means of providing copies
of the inspired oracles, and also on the subject of the most holy
feast of Easter. For I had myself dedicated to him an exposition of
the mystical import of that feast; and the manner in which he
honored me with a reply may be understood by any one who reads the
following letter.
CHAPTER
XXXV: Constantine's Letter to Eusebius, in praise of his Discourse
concerning Easter.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to Eusebius.
"It
is indeed an arduous task, and beyond the power of language itself,
worthily to treat of the mysteries of Christ, and to explain in a
fitting manner the controversy respecting the feast of Easter, its
origin as well as its precious and toilsome accomplishment. For it
is not in the power even of those who are able to apprehend them,
adequately to describe the things of God. I am, notwithstanding,
filled with admiration of your learning and zeal, and have not only
myself read your work with pleasure, but have given directions,
according to your own desire, that it be communicated to many
sincere followers of our holy religion. Seeing, then, with what
pleasure we receive favors of this kind from your Sagacity, be
pleased to gladden us more frequently with those compositions, to
the practice of which, indeed, you confess yourself to have been
trained from an early period, so that I am urging a willing man, as
they say, in exhorting you to your customary pursuits. And certainly
the high and confident judgment we entertain is a proof that the
person who has translated your writings into the Latin tongue is in
no respect incompetent to the task, impossible though it be that
such version should fully equal the excellence of the works
themselves. God preserve you, beloved brother." Such was his
letter on this subject: and that which related to the providing of
copies of the Scriptures for reading in the churches was to the
following purport.
CHAPTER
XXXVI: Constantine' s Letter to Eusebius on the Preparation of
Copies of the Holy Scriptures.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to Eusebius.
"It
happens, through the favoring providence of God our Saviour, that
great numbers have united themselves to the most holy church in the
city which is called by my name. It seems, therefore, highly
requisite, since that city is rapidly advancing in prosperity in all
other respects, that the number of churches should also he
increased. Do you, therefore, receive with all readiness my
determination on this behalf. I have thought it expedient to
instruct your Prudence to order fifty copies of the sacred
Scriptures, the provision and use of which you know to be most
needful for the instruction of the Church, to be written on prepared
parchment in a legible manner, and in a convenient, portable form,
by professional transcribers thoroughly practiced in their art. The
catholicus of the diocese has also received instructions by letter
from our Clemency to be careful to furnish all things necessary for
the preparation of such copies; and it will be for you to take
special care that they be completed with as little delay as
possible. You have authority also, in virtue of this letter, to use
two of the public carriages for their conveyance, by which
arrangement the copies when fairly written will most easily be
forwarded for my personal inspection; and one of the deacons of your
church may be intrusted with this service, who, on his arrival here,
shall experience my liberality. God preserve you, beloved brother!"
CHAPTER
XXXVII: How the Copies were provided.
SUCH
were the emperor's commands, which were followed by the immediate
execution of the work itself, which we sent him in magnificent and
elaborately bound volumes of a threefold and fourfold form. This
fact is attested by another letter, which the emperor wrote in
acknowledgment, in which, having heard that the city Constantia in
our country, the inhabitants of which had been more than commonly
devoted to superstition, had been impelled by a sense of religion to
abandon their past idolatry, he testified his joy, and approval of
their conduct.
CHAPTER
XXXVIII: How the Market-town of Gaza was made a City far its
Profession of Christianity, and received the Name of Constantia.
FOR
in fact the place now called Constantia, in the province of
Palestine, having embraced the saving religion, was distinguished
both by the favor of God, and by special honor from the emperor,
being now for the first time raised to the rank of a city, and
receiving the more honored name of his pious sister in exchange for
its former appellation.
CHAPTER
XXXIX: That a Place in Phoenicia also was made a City, and in Other
Cities Idolatry was abolished, and Churches built.
A
SIMILAR change was effected in several other cities; for instance,
in that town of Phoenicia which received its name from that of the
emperor, and the inhabitants of which committed their innumerable
idols to the flames, and adopted in their stead the principles of
the saving faith. Numbers, too, in the other provinces, both in the
cities and the country, became willing inquirers after the saving
knowledge of God; destroyed as worthless things the images of every
kind which they had heretofore held most sacred; voluntarily
demolished the lofty temples and shrines which contained them; and,
renouncing their former sentiments, or rather errors, commenced and
completed entirely new churches. But since it is not so much my
province to give a circumstantial detail of the actions of this
pious prince, as it is theirs who have been privileged to enjoy his
society at all times, I shall content myself with briefly recording
such facts as have come to my own personal knowledge, before I
proceed to notice the last days of his life.
CHAPTER
XL: That having conferred the Dignity of Caesars on his Three Sons
at the Three Decennial Periods of his Reign, he dedicated the Church
at Jerusalem.
BY
this time the thirtieth year of his reign was completed. In the
course of this period, his three sons had been admitted at different
times as his colleagues in the empire. The first, Constantinus, who
bore his father's name, obtained this distinction about the tenth
year of his reign. Constantius, the second son, so called from his
grandfather, was proclaimed Caesar about the twentieth, while
Constans, the third, whose name expresses the firmness and stability
of his character, was advanced to the same dignity at the thirtieth
anniversary of his father's reign. Having thus reared a threefold
offspring, a Trinity, as it were, of pious sons, and having received
them severally at each decennial period to a participation in his
imperial authority, he judged the festival of his Tricennalia to be
a fit occasion for thanksgiving to the Sovereign Lord of all, at the
same time believing that the dedication of the church which his
zealous magnificence had erected at Jerusalem might advantageously
be performed.
CHAPTER
XLI: That in the meantime he ordered a Council to be convened at
Tyre, because of Controversies raised in Egypt.
MEANWHILE
that spirit of envy which is the enemy of all good, like a dark
cloud intercepting the sun's brightest rays, endeavored to mar the
joy of this festivity, by again raising contentions to disturb the
tranquility of the Egyptian churches. Our divinely favored emperor,
however, once more convened a synod composed of many bishops, and
set them as it were in armed array, like the host of God, against
this malignant spirit, having commanded their presence from the
whole of Egypt and Libya, from Asia, and from Europe, in order,
first, to decide the questions in dispute, and afterwards to perform
the dedication of the sacred edifice above mentioned. He enjoined
them, by the way, to adjust their differences at the capital city of
Phoenicia, reminding them that they had no right, while harboring
feelings of mutual animosity, to engage in the service of God, since
his law expressly forbids those who are at variance to offer their
gift until they have first become reconciled and mutually disposed
to peace. Such were the salutary precepts which the emperor
continually kept vividly before his own mind, and in accordance with
which he admonished them to undertake their present duties in a
spirit of perfect unanimity and concord, in a letter to the
following purport.
CHAPTER
XLII: Constantine's Letter to the Council at Tyre.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to the holy Council at Tyre.
"Surely
it would best consist with and best become the prosperity of these
our times, that the Catholic Church should be undivided, and the
servants of Christ be at this present moment clear from all
reproach. Since, however, there are those who, carried away by a
baleful and furious spirit of contention (for I will not charge them
with intentionally leading a life unworthy of their profession), are
endeavoring to create that general confusion which, in my judgment,
is the most pernicious of all evils; I exhort you, forward as you
already are, to meet together and form a synod without delay: to
defend those who need protection; to administer remedies to your
brethren who are in peril; to recall the divided members to unity of
judgment; to rectify errors while opportunity is yet allowed: that
thus you may restore to so many provinces that due measure of
concord which, strange and sad anomaly! the arrogance of a few
individuals has destroyed. And I believed that all are alike
persuaded that this course is at the same time pleasing to Almighty
God (as well as the highest object of my own desires), and will
bring no small honor to yourselves, should you be successful in
restoring peace. Delay not, then, but hasten with redoubled zeal to
terminate the present dissensions in a manner becoming the occasion,
by assembling together in that spirit of true sincerity and faith
which the Saviour whom we serve especially demands from us, I may
almost say with an audible voice, on all occasions. No proof of
pious zeal on my part shall be wanting. Already have I done all to
which my attention was directed by your letters. I have sent to
those bishops whose presence you desired, that they may share your
counsels. I have dispatched Dionysius, a man of consular rank, who
will both remind those prelates of their duty who are bound to
attend the Council with you, and will himself be there to
superintend the proceedings, but especially to maintain good order.
Meantime should any one, though I deem it most improbable, venture
on this occasion to violate my command, and refuse his attendance, a
messenger shall be dispatched forthwith to banish that person in
virtue of an imperial edict, and to teach him that it does not
become him to resist an emperor's decrees when issued in defense of
truth. For the rest, it will be for your Holinesses, unbiased either
by enmity or favor, but consistently with ecclesiastical and
apostolic order, to devise a fitting remedy whether it be for
positive offenses or for unpremeditated errors; in order that you
may at once free the Church from all reproach, relieve my anxiety,
and, by restoring the blessings of peace to those who are now
divided, procure the highest honor for yourselves. God preserve you,
beloved brethren!"
CHAPTER
XLIII: Bishops from all the Provinces attended the Dedication of the
Church at Jerusalem.
NO
sooner had these injunctions been carded into effect, than another
emissary arrived with dispatches from the emperor, and an urgent
admonition to the Council to hasten their journey to Jerusalem
without delay. Accordingly they all took their departure from the
province of Phoenicia, and proceeded to their destination, availing
themselves of the public means of transport. Thus Jerusalem became
the gathering point for distinguished prelates from every province,
and the whole city was thronged by a vast assemblage of the servants
of God. The Macedonians had sent the bishop of their metropolis; the
Pannonians and Moesians the fairest of God's youthful flock among
them. A holy prelate from Persia too was there, deeply versed in the
sacred oracles; while Bithynian and Thracian bishops graced the
Council with their presence; nor were the most illustrious from
Cilicia wanting, nor the chief of the Cappadocians, distinguished
above all for learning and eloquence. In short, the whole of Syria
and Mesopotamia, Phoenicia and Arabia, Palestine, Egypt, and Libya,
with the dwellers in the Thebaid, all contributed to swell the
mighty concourse of God's ministers, followed as they were by vast
numbers from every province. They were attended by an imperial
escort, and officers of trust had also been sent from the palace
itself, with instructions to heighten the splendor of the festival
at the emperor's expense.
CHAPTER
XLIV: Of their Reception by the Notary Marianus; the Distribution of
Money to the Poor; and Offerings to the Church.
THE
director and chief of these officers was a most useful servant of
the emperor, a man eminent for faith and piety, and thoroughly
acquainted with the Divine word, who had been honorably conspicuous
by his profession of godliness during the time of the tyrants'
power, and therefore was deservedly entrusted with the arrangement
of the present proceedings. Accordingly, in faithful obedience to
the emperor's commands, he received the assembly with courteous
hospitality, and entertained them with feasts and banquets on a
scale of great splendor. He also distributed lavish supplies of
money and clothing among the naked and destitute, and the multitudes
of both sexes who suffered from want of food and the common
necessaries of life. Finally, he enriched and beautified the church
itself throughout with offerings of imperial magnificence, and thus
fully accomplished the service he had been commissioned to perform.
CHAPTER
XLV: Various Discourses by the Assembled Bishops; also by Eusebius,
the Writer of this History.
MEANTIME
the festival derived additional luster both from the prayers and
discourses of the ministers of God, some of whom extolled the pious
emperor's willing devotion to the Saviour of mankind, and dilated on
the magnificence of the edifice which he had raised to his memory.
Others afforded, as it were, an intellectual feast to the ears of
all present, by public disquisitions on the sacred doctrines of our
religion. Others interpreted passages of holy Scripture, and
unfolded their hidden meaning; while such as were unequal to these
efforts presented a bloodless sacrifice and mystical service to God
in the prayers which they offered for general peace, for the Church
of God, for the emperor himself as the instrumental cause of so many
blessings, and for his pious sons. I myself too, unworthy as I was
of such a privilege, pronounced various public orations in honor of
this solemnity, wherein I partly explained by a written description
the details of the imperial edifice, and partly endeavored to gather
from the prophetic visions apt illustrations of the symbols it
displayed. Thus joyfully was the festival of dedication celebrated
in the thirtieth year of our emperor's reign.
CHAPTER
XLVI: That Eusebius afterwards delivered his Description of the
Church of the Saviour, and a Tricennial Oration before Constantine
himself.
THE
structure of the church of our Saviour, the form of his sacred cave,
the splendor of the work itself, and the numberless offerings in
gold, and silver, and precious stones, I have described to the best
of my ability, and dedicated to the emperor in a separate treatise,
which on a fitting opportunity I shall append to this present work.
I shall add to it also that oration on his Tricennalia which shortly
afterwards, having traveled to the city which bears his name, I
delivered in the emperor's own presence. This was the second
opportunity afforded me of glorifying the Supreme God in the
imperial palace itself: and on this occasion my pious hearer evinced
the greatest joy, as he afterwards testified, when he entertained
the bishops then present, and loaded them with distinctions of every
kind.
CHAPTER
XLVII: That the Council at Nicaea was held in the Twentieth, the
Dedication of the Church at Jerusalem in the Thirtieth, Year of
Constantine's Reign.
THIS
second synod the emperor convened at Jerusalem, being the greatest
of which we have any knowledge, next to the first which he had
summoned at the famous Bithynian city. That indeed was a triumphal
assembly, held in the twentieth year of his reign, an occasion of
thanksgiving for victory over his enemies in the very city which
bears the name of victory. The present meeting added luster to the
thirtieth anniversary, during which the emperor dedicated the church
at the sepulchre of our Saviour, as a peace-offering to God, the
giver of all good.
CHAPTER
XLVIII: That Constantine was displeased with one who praised him
excessively.
AND
now that all these ceremonies were completed, and the divine
qualities of the emperor's character continued to be the theme of
universal praise, one of God's ministers presumed so far as in his
own presence to pronounce him blessed, as having been counted worthy
to hold absolute and universal empire in this life, and as being
destined to share the empire of the Son of God in the world to come.
These words, however, Constantine heard with indignation, and
forbade the speaker to hold such language, exhorting him rather to
pray earnestly on his behalf, that whether in this life or in that
which is to come, he might be found worthy to be a servant of God.
CHAPTER
XLIX: Marriage of his Son Constantius Caesar.
ON
the completion of the thirtieth year of his reign he solemnized the
marriage of his second son, having concluded that of his first-born
long before. This was an occasion of great joy and festivity, the
emperor himself attending on his son at the ceremony, and
entertaining the guests of both sexes, the men and women in distinct
and separate companies, with sumptuous hospitality. Rich presents
likewise were liberally distributed among the cities and people.
CHAPTER
L: Embassy and Presents from the Indians.
ABOUT
this time ambassadors from the Indians, who inhabit the distant
regions of the East, arrived with presents consisting of many
varieties of brilliant precious stones, and animals differing in
species from those known to us. These offerings they presented to
the emperor, thus allowing that his sovereignty extended even to the
Indian Ocean, and that the princes of their country, who rendered
homage to him both by paintings and statues, acknowledged his
imperial and paramount authority. Thus the Eastern Indians now
submitted to his sway, as the Britons of the Western Ocean had done
at the commencement of his reign.
CHAPTER
LI: That Constantine divided the Empire between his Three Sons, whom
he had instructed in Politics and Religion.
HAVING
thus established his power in the opposite extremities of the world,
he divided the whole extent of his dominions, as though he were
allotting a patrimonial inheritance to the dearest objects of his
regard, among his three sons. To the eldest he assigned his
grandfather's portion; to the second, the empire of the East; to the
third, the countries which lie between these two divisions. And
being desirous of furnishing his children with an inheritance truly
valuable and salutary to their souls, he had been careful to imbue
them with true religious principles, being himself their guide to
the knowledge of sacred things, and also appointing men of approved
piety to be their instructors. At the same time he assigned them the
most accomplished teachers of secular learning, by some of whom they
were taught the arts of war, while they were trained by others in
political, and by others again in legal science. To each moreover
was granted a truly royal retinue, consisting of infantry, spearmen,
and body guards, with every other kind of military force; commanded
respectively by captains, tribunes, and generals of whose warlike
skill and devotion to his sons the emperor had had previous
experience.
CHAPTER
LII: That after they had reached Man's Estate he was their Guide in
Piety.
AS
long as the Caesars were of tender years, they were aided by
suitable advisers in the management of public affairs; but on their
arrival at the age of manhood their father's instructions alone
sufficed. When present he proposed to them his own example, and
admonished them to follow his pious course: in their absence he
furnished them by letter with rules of conduct suited to their
imperial station, the first and greatest of which was an exhortation
to value the knowledge and worship of the Sovereign Lord of all more
than wealth, nay, more than empire itself. At length he permitted
them to direct the public administration of the empire without
control, making it his first request that they would care for the
interests of the Church of God, and boldly profess themselves
disciples of Christ. Thus trained, and excited to obedience not so
much by precept as by their own voluntary desire for virtue, his
sons more than fulfilled the admonitions of their father, devoting
their earnest attention to the service of God, and observing the
ordinances of the Church even in the palace itself, with all the
members of their households. For their father's forethought had
provided that all the attendants of his son's should be Christians.
And not only so, but the military officers of highest rank, and
those who had the control of public business, were professors of the
same faith: for the emperor placed confidence in the fidelity of men
devoted to the service of God, as in a strong and sure defense. When
our thrice blessed prince had completed these arrangements, and thus
secured order and tranquility throughout the empire, God, the
dispenser of all blessings, judged it to be the fitting time to
translate him to a better inheritance, and summoned him to pay the
debt of nature.
CHAPTER
LIII: Having reigned about Thirty-two Years, and lived above Sixty,
he still had a Sound Body.
HE
completed the time of his reign in two and thirty years, wanting a
few months and days, and his whole life extended to about twice that
period. At this age he still possessed a sound and vigorous body,
free from all blemish, and of more than youthful vivacity; a noble
mien, and strength equal to any exertion; so that he was able to
join in martial exercises, to fide, endure the fatigues of travel,
engage in battle, and erect trophies over his conquered enemies,
besides gaining those bloodless victories by which he was wont to
triumph over those who opposed him.
CHAPTER
LIV: Of those who abused his Extreme Benevolence for Avarice and
Hypocrisy.
IN
like manner his mental qualities reached the highest point of human
perfection. Indeed he was distinguished by every excellence of
character, but especially by benevolence; a virtue, however, which
subjected him to censure from many, in consequence of the baseness
of wicked men, who ascribed their own crimes to the emperor's
forbearance. In truth I can myself bear testimony to the grievous
evils which prevailed during these times; I mean the violence of
rapacious and unprincipled men, who preyed on all classes of society
alike, and the scandalous hypocrisy of those who crept into the
Church, and assumed the name and character of Christians. His own
benevolence and goodness of heart, the genuineness of his own faith,
and his truthfulness of character, induced the emperor to credit the
profession of these reputed Christians, who craftily preserved the
semblance of sincere affection for his person. The confidence he
reposed in such men sometimes forced him into conduct unworthy of
himself, of which envy took advantage to cloud in this respect the
luster of his character.
CHAPTER
LV: Constantine employed himself in Composition of Various Kinds to
the Close of his Life.
THESE
offenders, however, were soon overtaken by divine chastisement. To
return to our emperor. He had so thoroughly trained his mind in the
art of reasoning that he continued to the last to compose discourses
on various subjects, to deliver frequent orations in public, and to
instruct his hearers in the sacred doctrines of religion. He was
also habitually engaged in legislating both on political and
military questions; in short, in devising whatever might be
conducive to the general welfare of the human race. It is well
worthy of remark, that, very shortly before his departure, he
pronounced a funeral oration before his usual auditory, in which he
spoke at length on the immortality of the soul, the state of those
who had persevered in a life of godliness, and the blessings which
God has laid up in store for them that love him. On the other hand
he made it appear by copious and conclusive arguments what the end
of those will be who have pursued a contrary career, describing in
vivid language the final ruin of the ungodly. His powerful testimony
on these subjects seemed so far to touch the consciences of those
around him, that one of the self-imagined philosophers, of whom he
asked his opinion of what he had heard, bore testimony to the truth
of his words, and accorded a real, though reluctant, tribute of
praise to the arguments by which he had exposed the worship of a
plurality of gods. By converse such as this with his friends before
his death, the emperor seemed as it were to smooth and prepare the
way for his transition to a happier life.
CHAPTER
LVI: How he took Bishops with him on an Expedition against the
Persians, and look with him a Tent in the Form of a Church.
IT
is also worthy of record that about the time of which I am at
present writing, the emperor, having heard of an insurrection of
some barbarians in the East, observed that the conquest of this
enemy was still in store for him, and resolved on an expedition
against the Persians. Accordingly he proceeded at once to put his
forces in motion, at the same time communicating his intended march
to the bishops who happened to be at his court, some of whom he
judged it right to take with him as companions, and as needful
coadjutors in the service of God. They, on the other hand,
cheerfully declared their willingness to follow in his train,
disclaiming any desire to leave him, and engaging to battle with and
for him by supplication to God on his behalf. Full of joy at this
answer to his request, he unfolded to them his projected line of
march; after which he caused a tent of great splendor, representing
in shape the figure of a church, to be prepared for his own use in
the approaching war. In this he intended to unite with the bishops
in offering prayers to the God from whom all victory proceeds.
CHAPTER
LVII: How he received an Embassy from the Persians and kept the
Night Vigil with others at the Feast of Easter.
IN
the meanwhile the Persians, hearing of the emperor's warlike
preparations, and not a little terrified at the prospect of an
engagement with his forces, dispatched an embassy to pray for
conditions of peace. These overtures the emperor, himself a sincere
lover of peace, at once accepted, and readily entered on friendly
relations with that people. At this time, the great festival of
Easter was at hand; on which occasion he rendered the tribute of his
prayers to God, and passed the night in watching with the rest.
CHAPTER
LVIII: Concerning the Building of a Church in Honor of the Apostles
at Constantinople.
AFTER
this he proceeded to erect a church in memory of the apostles, in
the city which bears his name. This building he carried to a vast
height, and brilliantly decorated by encasing it from the foundation
to the roof with marble slabs of various colors. He also formed the
inner roof of finely fretted work, and overlaid it throughout with
gold. The external covering, which protected the building from the
rain, was of brass instead of tiles; and this too was splendidly and
profusely adorned with gold, and reflected the sun's rays with a
brilliancy which dazzled the distant beholder. The dome was entirely
encompassed by a finely carved tracery, wrought in brass and gold.
CHAPTER
LIX: Farther Description of the same Church.
SUCH
was the magnificence with which the emperor was pleased to beautify
this church. The building was surrounded by an open area of great
extent, the four sides of which were terminated by porticos which
enclosed the area and the church itself. Adjoining these porticos
were ranges of stately chambers, with baths and promenades, and
besides many apartments adapted to the use of those who had charge
of the place.
CHAPTER
LX: He also erected his own Sepulchral Monument in this Church.
ALL
these edifices the emperor consecrated with the desire of
perpetuating the memory of the apostles of our Saviour. He had,
however, another object in erecting this building: an object at
first unknown, but which afterwards became evident to all. He had in
fact made choice of this spot in the prospect of his own death,
anticipating with extraordinary fervor of faith that his body would
share their title with the apostles themselves, and that he should
thus even after death become the subject, with them, of the
devotions which should be performed to their honor in this place. He
accordingly caused twelve coffins to be set up in this church, like
sacred pillars in honor and memory of the apostolic number, in the
center of which his own was placed, having six of theirs on either
side of it. Thus, as I said, he had provided with prudent foresight
an honorable resting-place for his body after death, and, having
long before secretly formed this resolution, he now consecrated this
church to the apostles, believing that this tribute to their memory
would be of no small advantage to his own soul. Nor did God
disappoint him of that which he so ardently expected and desired.
For after he had completed the first services of the feast of
Easter, and had passed this sacred day of our Lord in a manner which
made it an occasion of joy and gladness to himself and to all; the
God through whose aid he performed all these acts, and whose zealous
servant he continued to be even to the end of life, was pleased at a
happy time to translate him to a better life.
CHAPTER
LXI: His Sickness at Helenopolis, and Prayers respecting his
Baptism.
AT
first he experienced some slight bodily indisposition, which was
soon followed by positive disease. In consequence of this he visited
the hot baths of his own city; and thence proceeded to that which
bore the name of his mother. Here he passed some time in the church
of the martyrs, and offered up supplications and prayers to God.
Being at length convinced that his life was drawing to a close, he
felt the time was come at which he should seek purification from
sins of his past career, firmly believing that whatever errors he
had committed as a mortal man, his soul would be purified from them
through the efficacy of the mystical words and the salutary waters
of baptism. Impressed with these thoughts, he poured forth his
supplications and confessions to God, kneeling on the pavement in
the church itself, in which he also now for the first time received
the imposition of hands with prayer. After this he proceeded as far
as the suburbs of Nicomedia, and there, having summoned the bishops
to meet him, addressed them in the following words.
CHAPTER
LXII: Constantine's Appeal to the Bishops, requesting them to confer
upon him the Rite of Baptism.
"THE
time is arrived which I have long hoped for, with an earnest desire
and prayer that I might obtain the salvation of God. The hour is
come in which I too may have the blessing of that seal which confers
immortality; the hour in which I may receive the seal of salvation.
I had thought to do this in the waters of the river Jordan, wherein
our Saviour, for our example, is recorded to have been baptized: but
God, who knows what is expedient for us, is pleased that I should
receive this blessing here. Be it so, then, without delay: for
should it be his will who is Lord of life and death, that my
existence here should be prolonged, and should I be destined
henceforth to associate with the people of God, and unite with them
in prayer as a member of his. Church, I will prescribe to myself
from this time such a course of life as befits his service."
After he had thus spoken, the prelates performed the sacred
ceremonies in the usual manner, and, having given him the necessary
instructions, made him a partaker of the mystic ordinance. Thus was
Constantine the first of all sovereigns who was regenerated and
perfected in a church dedicated to the martyrs of Christ; thus
gifted with the Divine seal of baptism, he rejoiced in spirit, was
renewed, and filled with heavenly light: his soul was gladdened by
reason of the fervency of his faith, and astonished at the
manifestation of the power of God. At the conclusion of the ceremony
he arrayed himself in shining imperial vestments, brilliant as the
light, and reclined on a couch of the purest white, refusing to
clothe himself with the purple any more.
CHAPTER
LXIII: How after his Baptism he rendered Thanks God.
HE
then lifted his voice and poured forth a strain of thanksgiving to
God; after which he added these words. "Now I know that I am
truly blessed: now I feel assured that I am accounted worthy of
immortality, and am made a partaker of Divine light." He
further expressed his compassion for the unhappy condition of those
who were strangers to such blessings as he enjoyed: and when the
tribunes and generals of his army appeared in his presence with
lamentations and tears at the prospect of their bereavement, and
with prayers that his days might yet be prolonged, he assured them
in reply that he was now in possession of true life; that none but
himself could know the value of the blessings he had received; so
that he was anxious rather to hasten than to defer his departure to
God. He then proceeded to complete the needful arrangement of his
affairs, bequeathing an annual donation to the Roman inhabitants of
his imperial city; apportioning the inheritance of the empire, like
a patrimonial estate, among his own children; in short, making every
disposition according to his own pleasure.
CHAPTER
LXIV: Constantinople's Death at Noon on the Feast of Pentecost.
ALL
these events occurred during a most important festival, I mean the
august and holy solemnity of Pentecost, which is distinguished by a
period of seven weeks, and sealed with that one day on which the
holy Scriptures attest, the ascension of our common Saviour into
heaven, and the descent of the Holy Spirit among men. In the course
of this feast the emperor received the privileges I have described;
and on the last day of all, which one might justly call the feast of
feasts, he was removed about mid-day to the presence of his God,
leaving his mortal remains to his fellow mortals, and carrying into
fellowship with God that part of his being which was capable of
understanding and loving him. Such was the close of Constantine's
mortal life. Let us now attend to the circumstances which followed
this event.
CHAPTER
LXV: Lamentations of the Soldiery and their Officers.
IMMEDIATELY
the assembled spearmen and body-guard rent their garments, and
prostrated themselves on the ground, striking their heads, and
uttering lamentations and cries of sorrow, calling on their imperial
lord and master, or rather, like true children, on their father,
while their tribunes and centurions addressed him as their
preserver, protector, and benefactor. The rest of the soldiery also
came in respectful order to mourn as a flock the removal of their
good shepherd. The people meanwhile ran wildly throughout the city,
some expressing the inward sorrow of their hearts by loud cries,
others appearing confounded with grief: each mourning the event as a
calamity which had befallen himself, and bewailing his death as
though they felt themselves bereft of a blessing common alike to
all.
CHAPTER
LXVI: Removal of the Body from Nicomedia to the Palace at
Constantinople.
AFTER
this the soldiers lifted the body from its couch, and laid it in a
golden coffin, which they enveloped in a covering of purple, and
removed to the city which was called by his own name. Here it was
placed in an elevated position in the principal chamber of the
imperial palace, and surrounded by candles burning in candlesticks
of gold, presenting a marvelous spectacle, and such as no one under
the light of the sun had ever seen on earth since the world itself
began. For in the central apartment of the imperial palace, the body
of the emperor lay in its elevated resting-place, arrayed in the
symbols of sovereignty, the diadem and purple robe, and encircled by
a numerous retinue of attendants, who watched around it incessantly
night and day.
CHAPTER
LXVII: He received the same Honors from the Counts and other
Officers as before his Death.
THE
military officers, too, of the highest rank, the counts, and the
whole order of magistrates, who had been accustomed to do obeisance
to their emperor before, continued to fulfill this duty without any
change, even after his death entering the chamber at the appointed
times, and saluting their coffined sovereign with bended knee, as
though he were still alive. After them the senators appeared, and
all who had been distinguished by any honorable office, and rendered
the same homage. These were followed by multitudes of every rank,
who came with their wives and children to witness the spectacle.
These honors continued to be rendered for a considerable time, the
soldiers having resolved thus to guard the body until his sons
should arrive, and take on themselves the conduct of their father's
funeral. No mortal had ever, like this blessed prince, continued to
reign even after death, and to receive the same homage as during his
life: he only, of all who have ever lived, obtained this reward from
God: a suitable reward, since he alone of all sovereigns had in all
his actions honored the Supreme God and his Christ, and God himself
accordingly was pleased that even his mortal remains should still
retain imperial authority among men; thus indicating to all who were
not utterly devoid of understanding the immortal and endless empire
which his soul was destined to enjoy. This was the course of events
here.
CHAPTER
LXVIII: Resolution of the Army to confer thence-forward the Title of
Augustus on his Sons.
MEANWHILE
the tribunes selected from the troops under their command those
officers whose fidelity and zeal had long been known to the emperor,
and dispatched them to the Caesars with intelligence of the late
event. This service they accordingly performed. As soon, however, as
the soldiery throughout the provinces received the tidings of the
emperor's decease, they all, as if by a supernatural impulse,
resolved with one consent, as though their great emperor had been
yet alive, to acknowledge none other than his sons as sovereigns of
the Roman world: and these they soon after determined should no
longer retain the name of Caesar, but should each be honored with
the title of Augustus, a name which indicates the highest supremacy
of imperial power. Such were the measures adopted by the army; and
these resolutions they communicated to each other by letter, so that
the unanimous desire of the legions became known at the same point
of time throughout the whole extent of the empire.
CHAPTER
LXIX: Mourning for Constantine at Rome; and the Honor paid him there
through Paintings after his Death.
ON
the arrival of the news of the emperor's death in the imperial city,
the Roman senate and people felt the announcement as the heaviest
and most afflictive of all calamities, and gave themselves up to an
excess of grief. The baths and markets were closed, the public
spectacles, and all other recreations in which men of leisure are
accustomed to indulge, were interrupted. Those who had ere while
lived in luxurious ease, now walked the streets in gloomy sadness,
while all united in blessing the name of the deceased, as the one
who was dear to God, and truly worthy of the imperial dignity. Nor
was their sorrow expressed only in words: they proceeded also to
honor him, by the dedication of paintings to his memory, with the
same respect as before his death. The design of these pictures
embodied a representation of heaven itself, and depicted the emperor
reposing in an ethereal mansion above the celestial vault. They too
declared his sons alone to be emperors and Augusti, and begged with
earnest entreaty that they might be permitted to receive the body of
their emperor, and perform his obsequies in the imperial city.
CHAPTER
LXX: His Burial by his Son Constantius at Constantinople.
THUS
did they there testify their respect for the memory of him who had
been honored by God. The second of his sons, however, who had by
this time arrived, proceeded to celebrate his father's funeral in
the city which bears his name, himself heading the procession, which
was preceded by detachments of soldiers in military array, and
followed by vast multitudes, the body itself being surrounded by
companies of spearmen and heavy armed infantry. On the arrival of
the procession at the church dedicated to the apostles of our
Saviour, the coffin was there entombed. Such honor did the youthful
emperor Constantius render to his deceased parent, both by his
presence, and by the due performance of this sacred ceremony.
CHAPTER
LXXI: Sacred Service in the Church of the Apostles an the Occasion
of Constantine's Funeral.
AS
soon as [Constantius] had withdrawn himself with the military train,
the ministers of God came forward, with the multitude and the whole
congregation of the faithful, and performed the rites of Divine
worship with prayer. At the same time the tribute of their praises
was given to the character of this blessed prince, whose body rested
on a lofty and conspicuous monument, and the whole multitude united
with the priests of God in offering prayers for his soul, not
without tears, - nay, rather with much weeping; thus performing an
office consonant with the desires of the pious deceased. In this
respect also the favor of God was manifested to his servant, in that
he not only bequeathed the succession of the empire to his own
beloved sons, but that the earthly tabernacle of his thrice blessed
soul, according to his own earnest wish, was permitted to share the
monument of the apostles; was associated with the honor of their
name, and with that of the people of God; was honored by the
performance of the sacred ordinances and mystic service; and enjoyed
a participation in the prayers of the saints. Thus, too, he
continued to possess imperial power even after death, controlling,
as though with renovated life, a universal dominion, and retaining
in his own name, as Victor, Maximus, Augustus, the sovereignty of
the Roman world.
CHAPTER
LXXII: Of the Phoenix.
WE
cannot compare him with that bird of Egypt, the only one, as they
say, of its kind, which dies, self-sacrificed, in the midst of
aromatic perfumes, and, rising from its own ashes with new life,
soars aloft in the same form which it had before. Rather did he
resemble his Saviour, who, as the sown corn which is multiplied from
a single grain, had yielded abundant increase through the blessing
of God, and had overspread the whole world with his fruit. Even so
did our thrice blessed prince become multiplied, as it were, through
the succession of his sons. His statue was erected along with theirs
in every province; and the name of Constantine was owned and honored
even after the close of his mortal life.
CHAPTER
LXXIII: How Constantine is represented on Coins in the Act of
ascending to Heaven.
A
COINAGE was also struck which bore the following device. On one side
appeared the figure of our blessed prince, with the head closely
veiled: the reverse exhibited him sitting as a charioteer, drawn by
four horses, with a hand stretched downward from above to receive
him up to heaven.
CHAPTER
LXXIV: The God whom he had honored deservedly honored him in Return.
SUCH
are the proofs by which the Supreme God has made it manifest to us,
in the person of Constantine, who alone of all sovereigns had openly
professed the Christian faith, how great a difference he perceives
between those whose privilege it is to worship him and his Christ,
and those who have chosen the contrary part, who provoked his enmity
by daring to assail his Church, and whose calamitous end, in every
instance, afforded tokens of his displeasure, as manifestly as the
death of Constantine conveyed to all men an evident assurance of his
Divine love.
CHAPTER
LXXV: He surpassed all Preceding Emperors in Devotion to God.
STANDING,
as he did, alone and pre-eminent among the Roman emperors as a
worshiper of God; alone as the bold proclaimer to all men of the
doctrine of Christ; having alone rendered honor, as none before him
had ever done, to his Church; having alone abolished utterly the
error of polytheism, and discountenanced idolatry in every form: so,
alone among them both during life and after death, was he accounted
worthy of such honors as none can say have been attained to by any
other; so that no one, whether Greek or Barbarian, nay, of the
ancient Romans themselves, has ever been presented to us as worthy
of comparison with him.
See
also
https://documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0265-0339,_Eusebius_Caesariensis,_Vita_Constantini_%5BSchaff%5D,_EN.pdf
[Greek
text I, 26-31
https://www.earlychurchtexts.com/main/eusebiusofcaes/constantine_and_the_sign_of_the_cross.shtml]
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/vita-constantine.asp
PANEGYRICUS
CONSTANTINO AUGUSTO
D I C T U
S.
I. Facerem, sacratissime
imperator, quod paulo ante mihi plerique suaserunt ut, quoniam
maiestas tua hunc mediocritati meae diem in ista ciuitate
celeberrimum ad dicendum dedisset, de eo ipso ducerem sermonis
exordium, nisi me ab hoc duplex ratio reuocaret considerantem neque
mediae aetatis hominem ostentare debere subitam dicendi facultatem
neque ad aures tanti numinis quicquam nisi diu scriptum et saepe
tractatum afferri oportere. [nam qui aput imperatorem populi Romani
dicit ex tempore, quantum sit non sentit imperium.] huc accedit quod
iam satis multi sunt qui me putant nimium multa dicturum, idque, ut
arbitror, non ex ingenio meo, quod mediocre est, sed ex laudum
uestrarum copia metiuntur. quorum ego expectationem inuitus licet
fallam breuitate dicendi. reuera enim cogitaueram plura quae
dicerem, sed malo orationem meam esse mancam quam respui. itaque
primum illud compendium faciam quod, cum omnes uos, inuictissimi
principes, quorum concors est et
socia maiestas, debita
ueneratione suspiciam, hunc tamen quantulumcumque tuo modo,
Constantine, numini dicabo sermonem. ut enim ipsos immortales deos,
quamquam uniuersos animo colamus, interdum tamen in suo quemque
templo ac seda ueneramur: ita mihi fas esse duco omnium principum
pietate meminisse, laudibus celebrare praesentem.
II. A primo igitur
incipiam originis tuae numine, quod plerique adhuc fortasse
nesciunt, sed qui te, amant plurimum sciunt. ab illo enim diuo
Claudio manat in te auita cognatio qui Romani imperii solutam et
perditam disciplinam primus reformauit immanesque. Gothorum copias
Ponti faucibus et Histri ore proruptas terra marique deleuit, utinam
diutumior recreator hominum quam maturior deorum comes. quamuis
igitur ille felicissimus dies proxima religione celebratus imperii
tui natalis habeatur, quoniam te isto habitu primus ornauit, iam
tamen ab illo generis auctore in te imperii fortuna descendit. quin
immo ipsum patrem tuum uetus illa imperatoriae domus praerogatiua
prouexit, ut iam summo gradu et supra humanarum rerum fata
consisteres, post duos familiae tuae principes tertius imperator.
inter omnes, inquam, participes maiestatis tuae hoc habes,
Constantine, praecipuum quod imperator ortu es, tantaque est
nobilitas originis tuae ut nihil tibi addident honoris imperium nec
possit fortuna numini tuo imputare quod tuum est, omisso ambitu et
suffragatione.
III. Non fortuita
hominum consensio, non repetinus aliquis fauoris uentus te principem
fecit: imperium nascendo meruisti. quod quidem mihi deorum
immortalium munus et primum uidetur et sa maximum, in lucem statim
uenire felicem et ea quae alii uix totius uitae laboribus
consequuntor iam domi parta suscipere. quamuis enim magna sit et
admiranda felicitas quae stipendiis in ordine emeritis et militiae
gradibus emensis ad fastigium istud maiestatis ascendit et solis
uirtutis nixa radicibus ad tantum potentiae robur inualuit (quod
quidem etiam tu, quantum per aetatem licuit, consecutus es et,
quamuis te super omnes acquirendae gloriae moras fauor fortunae
posuisset, crescere militando noluisti et adeundis belli periculis
ac manu cum hostibus etiam singulari certamine conserenda notiorem
te gentibus reddidisti, cum non posses esse nobilior), magnum,
inquam, etsi est ab se profectum ad maxima peruenire: longe tamen
aliud est niti per ardua et iuga montium petere e plano aliud jpsa
ortus sui sublimitate fultum uerticem tenere fortunae et quae summa
sunt non sperare, sed habere.
IV. Sacrum istud
palatium non candidatus imperii, sed designatus intrasti,
confestimque te illi paterni lares successorem uidere legitimum.
neque enim erat dubium quin ei competeret hereditas quem primum
imperatori filium fata tribuissent. te enim tantus ille et imperator
in terris et in caelo deus in primo aetatis suae flore generauit
adhuc toto corpore uigens, illa praeditus alacritate ac fortitudine
quam bella plurima praecipueque campi uidere Uindonii. inde est quod
tanta ex illo in te formae similitudo transiuit ut signante natura
uultibus tuis impressa uideaiur. idem enim est quem rursus in te
colimus aspectus, eadem in fronte grauitas, eadem in oculis et in
ore tranquillitas. sic est index modestiae rubor, sic testis
iustitiae sermo. accipe, imperator, non ancipitem nostrorum sensuum
confessionem: dolet quod Constantius excessit a nobis, sed, dum te
cernimus, illum excessisse non credimus. quamquam quid ego illum
excessisse dico, cuius inmortalia facta uiuunt et in ore omnium
hominum oculisque uersantur?
V. Quis enim non dico
reminiscitur, sed quis non adhuc quodam modo uidet quantis ille
rebus auxerit ornaritque rem publicam? qui adscitus imperio primo
aduentu suo innumerabili hostium classe feruentem exclusit oceanum
et exercitum illum qui Bononiensis oppidi litus insederat terra
pariter ac mari saepsit, cum reciprocos aestus illius elementi
iactis inter undas uallis diremisset, ut, quorum portas fluctus
alluerat, ei quo mare tangerent perdidissent. qui eodem exercitu
uirtute capto, clementia conseruato, dum aedificandis classibus
Britanniae reciperatio comparatur, terram Batauiam sub ipso quondam
alumno suo a diuersis Francorum gentibus occupatam omni hoste
purgauit nec contentus uicisse ipsas in Romanas transtulit nationes
ut non solum arma, sed etiam feritatem ponere cogerentur. nam quid
ego de receptione Britanniae loquar? ad quam ita quieto mari
nauigauit ut oceanus ille tanto uectore stupefactus caruisse suis
motibus uideretur, ita peruectus ut non comitata illum sit, sed
praestolata uictoria.
VI. Quid de misericordia
dicam qua uictis temperauit? quid de iustitia qua spoliatis amissa
restituit? quid de prouidentia qua sociis sibi iunctis se eiusmodi
in iudicio dedit ut seruitutem passos iuuaret recepta libertas,
culpae conscios ad poenitentiam reuocaret impunitas? quid loquar
rursus intimas Franciae nationes iam non ab his locis quae olim
Romani inuaserant, sed a propriis ex origine sui sedibus atque ab
ultimis barbariae litoribus auulsas, ut in desertis Galliae
regionibus collocatae et pacem Romani imperii cultu iuuarent et arma
dilectu? quid commemorem Lingonicam uictoriam etiam imperatoris
ipsius uulnere gloriosam? quid Uindonissae campos hostium strage
completos et adhuc ossibus opertos? quid immanem ex diuersis
Germanorum populis multitudinem, quam duratus gelu Rhenus illexerat
ut insulam, quam diuortio sui idem amnis amplectitur, pedestri
agmine ausa transmittere repente laxato flumine clauderetur et so
dimissis statim obsessa nauigiis ita se dedere cogeretur ut, quod
difficilius est, sorte communi elegeret et ex aequo quos captiuitati
traderet, relatura cum reliquiis suis infamiam proditionis suorum.
VII. Dies me ante
deficiet quam oratio, si omnia patris tui facta uel hac breuitate
percurram. cuius etiam suprema illa expeditio non Britannica
trophaea, ut uulgo creditum est, expetiuit, sed dis iam nocantibus
ad intimum terrarum limen accessit. neque enim ille tot tantisque
rebus gestis non dico Caledonum, Pictorum aliorumque siluas et
paludes, sed nec Hibemiam proximam nec Thylen ultimam nec ipsas si
quae sunt Fortunatorum insulas dignabatur acquirere, sed, quod
eloqui nemini uoluit, iturus ad deos genitorem illum deorum ignea
caelis astra refouentem prospexit oceanum, ut fruiturus exinde luce
perpetua iam uideret illic diem paene continuum. uere enim profecto
illi superum templa patuerunt receptusque est consessu caelitum,
Ioue ipso dexteram porrigente. quin immo statim sententiam rogatus
cui imperium decemeret, dixit, ut decebat, Gonstantium Pium:
manifeste enim sententia patris electus es, imperator. quod quidem
ita nos dicere cum ueritas iubet, tum pietati tuae, ut uideo
gratissimum est. sed cur tantummodo priuatis tuis affectibus
blandiamur, cum omnium deorum fuerit illa sententia, et quidem iam
pridem auctoritate perscripta, quamuis tunc pleno sit firmata
consilio? iam tunc enim caelestibus suffragis ad salutem rei
publicae uocabaris, cum ad tempus ipsum quo pater in Britanniam
transfretabat classi iam uela facienti repentinus tuus aduentus
illuxit, ut non aduectus cursu publico, sed diuino quodam aduolasse
curriculo uidereris.
VIII. Non enim ulla
Persarum Cydonumue tela tam certis iactibus destinata fixerunt quam
tempestiuus patri tuo terras relicturo comes affuisti omnesque
illius curas quas praesaga et tacita mente uoluebat praesentiae tuae
securitate laxasti. di boni, quanta Constantium Pium etiam in
excessu suo felicitate donastis! imperator transitum facturus in
caelum uidit quem relinquebat heredem. ilico enim atque ille terris
fuerat exemptus, uniuersus in te consensit exercitus, te omnium
mentes oculique signarunt et, quamquam tu ad seniores principes de
summa rei publicae quid fieri placeret rettulisses, praeuenerunt
studio quod illi mox iudicio probauerunt. purpuram statim tibi, cum
primus copiam tui fecit egressus, milites utilitati publicae magis
quam tuis affectibus seruientes iniecere lacrimanti. neque enim fas
erat diutius fleri principem consecratum. diceris etiam, imperator
inuicte, ardorem illum te deposcentis exercitus fugere conatus equum
calcaribus incitasse. quod quidem, ut uerum audias, adulescentiae
errore faciebas. quis enim te Cyllarus aut Arion posset eripere quem
sequebatur imperium? illa, inquam, illa maiestas, quippe Iouis
oblata nutu nec Iridi deum nuntiae, sed pinnis commissa Uictoriae,
tam facile te comitata est quam cito ad terras caelo missa
perueniunt. sic modestiam tuam atque pietatem et differendi imperii
conatus ostendit et rei publicae felicitas uicit.
IX. O fortunata et nunc
omnibus beatior terris Britannia, quae Constantinum Caesarem prima
uidisti! merito te omnibus caeli ac soli bonis natura donauit, in
qua nec rigor est nimius hiemis nec ardor aestatis, in qua segetum
tanta fecunditas ut muneribus utrisque sufficiat et Cereris et
Liberi, in qua nemora sine inmanibus bestiis, terra sine serpentibus
noxiis; contra pecorum mitium innumerabilis multitudo lacte distenta
et onusta uelleribus, certe quidem, quapropter ibi uita diligitur,
longissimae dies et nullae sine aliqua luce noctes, dum illa litorum
extrema planities non attollit umbras noctisque metam caeli et
siderum transit aspectus, ut sol ipse qui nobis uidetur occidere ibi
appareat praeterire. di boni, quid hoc est quod semper ex aliquo
supremo fine mundi noua deum numina uniuerso orbi colenda
descendunt? sic Mercurius a Nilo cuius fluminis origo nescitur, sic
Liber ab Indis prope consciis solis orientis deos se gentibus
ostendere praesentes. sacratiora sunt profecto mediterraneis loca
uicina caelo et inde propius a dis mittitur imperator ubi terra
finitur.
X. Imperatoris igitur
filius et tanti imperatoris et ipse tam feliciter adeptus imperium
quomodo rem publicam uindicare coepisti? ignobilem, credo, aliquam
barbarorum manum, quae repentino impetu et improuiso latrocinio
ortus tui auspicia temptasset, affecisti poena temeritatis. reges
ipsos Franciae, qui per absentiam patris tui pacem uiolauerant, non
dubitasti ultimis punire cruciatibus, nihil ueritus gentis illius
odia perpetua et inexpiabiles iras. cur enim ullam reputet iustae
seueritatis offensam imperator qui quod f ecit tueri potest? tuta
clementia est quae parcit inimicis et sibi magis prospicit quam
ignoscit. te uero, Constantine, quantumlibet oderint hostes, dum
perhorrescant. haec est enim uera uirtus ut non ament et quiescant.
cautior licet sit qui deuinctos habet uenia perduelles, fortior
tamen est qui calcat iratos. renouasti, imperator, ueterem illam
Romani imperii fiduciam quae de captis hostium ducibus uiudictam
morte sumebat. tunc enim captiui reges cum a portis usque ad forum
triumphantium currus honestassent, simulatque in Capitolium currum
flectere coeperat imperator, abrepti in carcerem necabantur. unus
Perses ipso Paulo qui dedentem se acceperat deprecante legem illius
seueritatis euasit. ceteri omnes in uinculis luce priuati aliis
regibus dedere documentum ut mallent amicitiam colere Romanam quam
exasperare tristitiam. adeo et hoc boni confert poena hostibus
irrogata ut non solum inimici ferocire non audeant, sed etiam amici
impensius reuereantur.
XI. Lide igitur est,
imperator, pax ista qua fruimur. neque enim iam Rheni gurgitibus,
sed nominis tui terrore munimur. quamlibet ille aut arescat aestu
aut resistat gelu, neutro hostis audebit uti uado. nihil enim tam
insuperabili uallo natnra praecludit quod non penetret audacia, cui
aliqua conandi spes relinquatur. ille est inexpugnabilis murus quem
extruit fama uirtutis. sciunt posse se Franci transire Rhenum, quos
ad necem suam libenter admittas, sed nec uictoriam possunt sperare
nec ueniam. quid ipsos maneat, ex regum suorum
cruciatibus
metiuntur ideoque tantum abest ut amsis illius transitum moliantur,
magis ut coepto ponte desperent. ubi nunc est illa ferocia? ubi
semper infida mobilitas? iam ne procul quidem Rhenum audetis
accolere et uix securi flumina interiora potatis. contra hinc per
interualla disposita magis omant limitem castella quam protegunt.
arat illam terribilem aliquando ripam inermus agricola, et toto
nostri greges bicomi amne mersantur. haec est tua, Constantine, de
Ascarici Regaisique supplicio cotidiana atque aetema uictoria
omnibus quondam secundis proeliis anteponenda. semel acie uincitur,
sine fine est documento. cladem suam, quamuis multi pereant, uulgus
ignorat: compendium est deuincendorum hostium duces sustulisse.
XII. Ut tamen omnibus
modis barbarorum immanitas frangeretur nec sola hostes regum suorum
supplicia maererent, etiam immissa Bructeris uastatione fecisti,
imperator inuicte. in quo prima consilii tui fuit ratio quod
exercitu repente traiecto inopinantes adortus es, non quo aperto
Marte diffideres ut qui palam congredi maluisses, sed ut illa natio
perfugiis siluamm et paludum bellum solita frustrari fugae tempus
amitteret. caesi igitur innumerabiles, capti plurimi; quicquid fuit
pecoris, raptum aut trucidatum est; uici omnes igne consumpti;
puberes qui in manus uenerunt, quorum nec perfidia erat apta
militiae nec ferocia seruituti, ad poenas spectaculo dati saeuientes
bestias multitudine sua fatigarunt. hoc est, imperator, fretum esse
uirtute sua atque fortuna, hoc est non pacem emere parcendo, sed
uictoriam quaerere prouocando.
XIII. Insuper etiam
Agrippinensi ponte faciundo reliquiis afflictae gentis insultas, ne
umquam metus ponat, semper horreat, semper supplices manus tendat,
cum tamen hoc tu magis ad gloriam imperii tui et ornatum limitis
facias quam ad facultatem, quotiens uelis, in hosticum trauseundi,
quippe cum totus armatis nauibus Rhenus instructus sit et ripis
omnibus usque ad oceanum dispositus miles immineat. sed pulcrum tibi
uidetur (et reuera pulcherrimum est) ut Rhenus ille non solum
superioribus locis, ubi aut latitudine uadosus aut uicinia fontis
exiguus, sed etiam ibi nouo ponte calcetur ubi totus est, ubi iam
plurimos hausit amnes quos hic noster indigena fluuius et barbarus
Nicer et Moenus inuexit, ubi iam immani meatu ferox et alluei unius
impatiens in duo cornua gestit excedere. seruit profecto,
Gonstantine maxime, ipsa rerum natura numini tuo, cum in illa
gurgitum altitudine tantarum molium fundamenta iaciuntur fidam et
stabilem firmitatem habitura. iunxerit licet quondam Hellesponti
angustias classe conexa Persarum rex potentissimus: temporarius ille
transitus fuit. simili nauium continuatione Baianum sinum strauerit
ab Augusto tertius Caesar: delicata fuit illa uectatio principis
otiosi.
hoc opus et difficile factu et usu futurum est
sempitemum. certe quidem iam tibi in exordio sui hostium mouit
obsequia, qui pacem supplices petierunt, nobilissimos obsides
obtulerunt. ex quo nemo dubitat quid perfecto ponte facturi sint qui
iam seruiunt inchoato.
XIV. Talibus te pro
utilitate ac dignitate publica rebus intentum auerterunt in se noui
motus eius hominis quem successibus tuis maxime fauere decuisset. de
quo ego quemadmodum dicam adhuc ferme dubito et de nutu numinis tui
expecto consilium. quamlibet enim merito pietatis tuae questibus
acuatur, debet tamen sibi uox priuata moderari, praesertim cum eum
qui tibi ex tantis beneficiis tuis et tanto necessitudinum fonte
ingratus extiterit adhuc contemplatu tui cogamur quamuis irati
reuereri. quid faciam igitur ut tam profunda uulnera suspensa manu
tractem? usurpabo nimirum illa communias omnium facinorum
patrocinia, quae tamen plerumque etiam a sapientibus assenmtur,
neminem hominem peccare nisi fato et ipsa scelera mortalium actus
esse fortunae, contra autem deorum munera esse uirtutes. gratulare,
Constantine, naturae ac moribus tuis quod te talem Constantius Pius
genuerit, talem siderum decreta formarint ut crudelis esse non
possis. illum autem [non] credo, cum uenturus in lucem optionem
uitae qua uteretur acciperet, sortem incurrisse fugiendam quae
multis hominibus iniustum et postremo ipsi uoluntarium ferret
exitium. ut enim alia mittam, hoc ipsum nonne fati necessitas tulit
ut ille pietati tuae hanc referret uicem, quem tu ab urbe pulsum, ab
Italia fugatum, ab Illyrico repudiatum tuis prouinciis, tuis copiis,
tuo palatio recepisti?
XV. Quid, oro, sibi
uoluit? quid optauit? uel quid amplius adipisceretur his quae a te
fuerat consecutus? cui tu summa et diuersissima bona, priuatum otium
et regias opes, dederas, cui digredienti aulicos mulos et raedas,
cui impensius etiam quam tibi occurrere obsequia nostra mandaueras,
cuius omnibus iussis sic statueras oboedire ut penes te habitus,
penes illum potestas esset imperii. quisnam ille tantus fuit non
ardor potentiae (quid enim te imperante non posset?), sed error iam
desipientis aetatis, ut tot natas annos grauissimas curas et bellum
ciuile susciperet? nullis, ut res est, fortunae muneribus explentur
quorum cupiditates ratio non terminat, atque ita eos felicitas
ingrata subterfluit ut semper pleni sperum, uacui commodorum,
praesentibus careant dum futura prospectant. at enim diuinum illum
uirum qui primus imperium et participauit et posuit consilii et
facti sui non poenitet nec amisisse se putat quod sponte
transcripsit, felix beatusque uere quem uestra tantorum principum
colunt obsequia priuatum. sed et ille multiiugo fultus imperio et
uestro laetus tegitur umbraculo, quos scit ex sua stirpe creuisse,
et glorias uestras iuste sibi uindicat. hunc ergo illum, qui ab ipso
fuerat frater adscitus, puduit imitari. huic illum in Capitolini
Iouis templo iurasse poenituit. non miror quod etiam genero
peierauit.
XVI. Haec est fides,
haec religio Palatini sacrarii deuota penetralibus, ut lente et
cunctanter, iam scilicet cum illis belli consiliis, itinere
confecto, consumptis copiis mansionum ne quis consequi posset
exercitus, repente intra parietes consideret purpuratus et bis
depositum tertio usurparet imperium, litteras ad sollicitandos
exercitus mitteret, fidem militum praemiorum ostentatione turbare
temptaret; secure scilicet usurus exercitu quem uenales manus habere
docuisset. quo quidem illius errore declaratum est, imperator,
quantus te militum tuorum amor complecteretur, qui te omnibus donis
quae ille promiserat, omnibus honorum oblationibus praetulerunt.
rara illa uirtus continentiae uix a paucis sapientiae
praeceptoribus, si tamen aliquando, seruata propter ie, Constantine,
omnibus hominibus est facta communis, nec solum his quos ratio
litterariae uitae ac quies mitigauit, sed etiam ille militarium
ardor animorum respectu tui lucra contempsit. fuerint aliqui
exercitus alacritate ac uiribus tuis similes: tibi uni contigit
habere exercitum sapientem. multi olim praui duces, certasse armis
impares, largitione certarunt: sed breuis eorum fuit et caduca
popularitas, quos facile uicit quisquis aemulatus est. hic firmus,
hic aetemus est rei publicae custos quem ipsum per se milites amant,
cui non eblandita nec uendita seruit adulatio, sed simplex et
sincera deuotio. dona tua, Constantine, manifeste sunt grata
militibus, sed hoc gratiora quod tua sunt. quaecumque porrigis, manu
tua fiunt acceptiora. quam nemo tecum potest hac ambitione
contendere! insuperabile genus est largitionis, cum ipse militi
praemium est imperator. itaque tribuis tu quidem exercitibus tuis
etiam plura quam cupiunt, sed tuum te magis nomen, tua de memoria
patris auctoritas, tua aetatis gratia, tua denique ista uenerabilis
forma commendat.
XVII. Pulcrum enim, di
boni, et caeleste miraculum imperator adulescens, in quo illa quae
iam summa est fortitudo adhuc tamen crescit, in quo hic fulgor
oculorum, haec ueneranda pariter et grata maiestas praestringit
simul et inuitat aspectus. talem Macetum illum regem, talem
Thessalum uirum mente concipio, quorum summa uirtus pulcritudini
coniuncta celebratur. non frustra enim doctissimi uiri dieunt
naturam ipsam magnis mentibus domicilia corporum digna metari et ex
uultu hominis ac decore membrorum colligi posse, quantus illos
caelestis spiritus intrarit habitator. itaque te cum ingredientem
milites uident, admirantur et diligunt, sequuntur oculis, animo
tenent, deo se obsequi putant, cuius tam pulcra forma est quam
ceirta diuinitas.
XVIII. Statim igitur ut
foedum illud facinus audierant, ultro a te proficiscendi signum
petiuerunt; cum uiatica dares, id ipsum sibi moram facere plusque
iam se quam sufficeret ex largitionibus tuis habere dixerunt. inde
arreptis armis portas petiuerunt, tot dierum iter a Rheno usque ad
Ararim sine ulla requie peregerunt indefessis corporibus. animis
flagrantibus, crescente in dies ardore uindictae quanto propius
accederent. tum quidem tua, imperator, cura, qua refouendis eorum
uiribus a Cabillonensi portu nauigia prouideras, festinantibus paene
non placuit. segnis ille et cunctabundus amnis numquam fuisse
tardior uidebatur: carinis tacite labentibus et ripis lente
recedentibus stare se, non ire clamabant. tum uero usum pedum
manibus aggressi incubuere remigiis et naturam fluminis urguendo
uicerunt et tandem eluctati Araris moras uix ipso Rhodano fuere
contenti: parum illis uidebatur concitus ruere, minus solito Arelate
properare. quid multa? confitendum est tibi, imperator: cum hoc tuo
uigore corporis, hoc mentis ardore laborasti interdum ut quem
ducebas sequereris exercitum. tanto enim omnes impetu ferebantur ut,
cum illum Arelate deserto comperissent abisse Massiliam, confestim
nauibus euolarent effasoque cursu non iam Rhodani curricula, sed
ipsa quodammodo uentorum flabra praeuerterent. tantus illos
incenderat amor numinis tui ut, quamuis scirent oppugnandam esse
munitissimam ciuitatem, sufficere sibi crederent peruenire.
XIX. Massilia enim, ut
audio, in profundum mare prominens et munitissimo accincta portu, in
quem angusto aditu mediterraneus refluit sinus, solis mille
quingentis passibus terrae cohaeret, qua firmissimus et turribus
frequens murus opponitur. quippe olim Graecos Italosque illuc
conuenas, cum artibus ingenioque pollerent, etiam ipse docuit locus
omnia quae bello usui forent largius in eam partem quae adiri posset
impendere, cum natura in ceteris sum ptum operis remisisset. itaque
illam tum graui fato Caesari portas pro duce seniore claudentem
terra marique admotis machinis, aggeribus extructis, naualibus
proeliis saepius oppugnatam quam territam uix obsessio diutuma
patefecit, cum tamen Graeculi magistratus et ipsum Gaesarem et mox
duces eius et copias non tam uiribus suis quam moenibus
reppulissent. at enim nunc primo tuo, imperator, aduentu primoque
impetu exercitus tui nihil eiusdem Massiliae altitudo murorum, nihil
creberrimae turres, nihil loci natura remorata est quominus et
portum caperes et urbem continuo, si uelles. quippe tanta fiducia
murum omnem milites inuaserant ut statim sine dubio ascensuri
fuissent, nisi in parandis quas admouerant scalis coniecturam
oculorum sublimitas fefellisset. sed sic quoque multi scalarum
breuitate decepti, quod supererat ascensui, extentis corporibus
aequabant et succedentium humeris subleuati iam interualla pinnarum
uncis manibus inuasenmt. adeo nihil periculi in uindictae executione
metuebant ut sibi non murum scandere, sed ex aequo congredi
uiderentur.
XX. Sed singularem tuam,
Constantine, pietatem et sua semper officia etiam inter arma
seruantem! signum receptui dedisti et uictoriam distulisti ut
omnibus tibi liceret ignoscere neu quid atrocius faceret milos
iratus quam clementiae tuae natura pateretur. in quo licet optimi
imperatoris sollicitudine caueris ut inducti in fraudem milites
poenitendi tempus acciperent atque ultro ueniam precarentur, nos
tamen qui mitissimos tuos sensus intuemur (nihil est enim tam
perspicuum quam in pectore tuo bonitas) illi te intellegimus
pepercisse quem, si prima copiam habuisset irruptio, eripere ferro
nemo potuisset. ita, quod ad pietatem bmm pertinet, imperator, et
illum et omnes quos receperat reseruasti. sibi imputet quisquis uti
noluit beneficio tuo nec se dignum uita iudicauit, cum per te
liceret ut uiueret : tu, quod sufficit conscientiae tuae, etiam non
merentibus pepercisti. sed, ignosce dicto, non omnia potes: di te
uindicant et inuitum.
XXI. Quod quidem nobis
semper optandum est ut prosperos habeas etiam ultra tua uotia.
successus, qui omnem spem in gremio maiestatis tuae ponimus et tuam
ubique praesentiam, quasi dari possit, expetimus. ecce enim, dum a
limite paulisper abscesseras, quibus se terroribus barbarorum
perfidia iactauerat scilicet, dum sibi illa proponunt: quando
perueniet? quando uincet? quando fessum reducet exercitum? cum
repente audito reditu tuo uelut attoniti conciderunt, ne tuum pro re
publica uotum amplius quam unius noctis cura tetigisset. postridie
enim quam accepto illo nuntio geminatum itineris laborem susceperas,
omnes fluctus resedisse, omnem quam reliqueras tranquillitatem
redisse didicisti, ipsa noc sic ordinante fortuna ut te ibi rerum
tuarum felicitas admoneret dis immortalibus ferre quae uotaueras,
ubi deflexisses ad templum toto orbe pulcherrimum, immo ad
praesentem, ut uidisti, deum. uidisti enim, credo, Constantine,
Apollinem tuum comitante Uictoria coronas tibi laureas offerentem,
quae tricenum singulae ferunt omen annorum. hic est enim humanarum
numerus aetatum, quae tibi utique debentur ultra Pyliam senectutem.
et immo quid dico 'credo'? uidisti teque in illius specie
recognouisti, cui totius mundi regna deberi uatum carmina diuina
cecinerunt. quod ego nunc demum arbitror contigisse, cum tu sis, ut
ille, iuuenis et laetus et salutifer et pulcherrimus, imperator.
merito igitur augustissima illa delubra tantis donariis.honestasti
ut iam uetera non quaerant. iam omnia te uocare ad se templa
uidentat praecipueque Apollo noster, cuius feruentibus aquis
periuria puniuntur, quae te maxime oportet odisse.
XXII. Di immortales,
quando illum dabitis diem, quo praesentissimus hic deus omni pace
composita illos quoque Apollinis lucos et sacras sedes et anhela
fontium ora circumeat? quorum scaturigines leni tepore nebulosae
arridere, Gonstantine, oculis tuis et osculis sese inserere uelle
uidentur. miraberis profecto illam quoque numinis tui sedem et
calentes aquas sine ullo soli ardentis indicio, quarum nulla
tristitia est saporis aut halitus, sed. talis haustu et odore
sinceritas qualis fontium frigidorum. dabis et illic munera,
constitues priuilegia, ipsam denique patriam meam ipsius loci
ueneratione restitues. cuius ciuitatis antiqua nobilitas et quondam
fraterno populi Romani nomine gloriata opem tuae maiestatis
expectat, ut illic quoque loca publica et templa pulchemma tua
liberalitate reparentur, sicuti uideo hanc fortunatissimam
ciuitatem, cuius natalis dies tua pietate celebratur, ita cunctis
moenibus resurgentem ut se quodammodo gaudeat olim corruisse,
auctior tuis facta beneficiis. uideo circum maximum aemulum, credo,
Romano, uideo basilicas et forum, opera regia, sedemque iustitiae in
tantam altitudinem suscitari ut se sideribus et caelo contigua et
uicina promittant. quae certe omnia sunt praesentis munera.
quaecumque enim loca frequentissime tuum numen illustrat, in his
omnia et hominibus et moenibus ex muneribus tuis augentur, nec magis
Ioui et Iunoni recubantibus nouos flores terra summisit quam circa
tua, Constantine, uestigia urbes et templa consurgunt. ideoque hoc
notis meis sufficit ut patriam meam uideas ducente pietate, quia
statim erit restituta, si uideris. sed enim ista felicitas uiderit
an adhuc meae debeatur aetati.
XXIII. Literim quoniam
ad summam uotorum meorum tua dignatione perueni, ut hanc meam
qualemcumque uocem diuersis fori et palatii officiis exercitam tuis
auribus cousecrarem, maximas numini tuo gratias ago tibique, quod
superest, commendo liberos meos praecipueque illum iam summa fisci
patrocinia tractantem, in quem me totum transtulit pietas, cuius
felix seruitus, si quando respexeris, maxime tuae conueniet aetati.
ceterum quod de omnibus liberis dixi, lata est, imperator, ambitio.
praeter illos enim quinque quos genui etiam illos quasi meos numero
quos prouexi ad tutelam fori, ad officia palatii. multi quippe ex me
riui non ignobiles fluunt, multi sectatores mei etiam prouincias
tuas administrant. quorum successibus laetor omniumque honorem pro
meo duco et. si forte hodie infra expectationem mei dixero, in illis
me confido placuisse. si tamen hoc quoque mihi tuum numen indulserit
ut ex hac oratione non eloquentiae, quod nimium est, sed
quantulaecumque prudentiae et denotae tibi mentis testimonium
referam: cedant priuatorum studiorum ignobiles curae, perpetua mihi
erit materia dicendi, qui me probauerit, imperator.
See XII panegyrici
latini: Emil Baehrens
PANEGYRIC
TO CONSTANTINE AUGUSTUS
D
I C T U S.
I.
I would do, most sacred emperor, what many have advised me a little
while ago, that since your majesty had given me this most famous day
in this city to speak, I should begin my speech on that very
subject, if a double reason were to dissuade me from this,
considering that neither a man of middle age should display a sudden
faculty of speech, nor should anything be brought to the ears of so
great a divinity except what has been written and often discussed at
length. [For he who speaks of the emperor of the Roman people from
time, does not feel the extent of his empire.] To this is added that
there are already quite a few who think that I will say too much,
and that, as I think, they measure this not by my talent, which is
mediocre, but by the abundance of your praises. Although I may
unintentionally disappoint their expectations by the brevity of my
speech. For I had truly thought of more things to say, but I would
rather my speech be incomplete than rejected. Therefore, I will
first make that summary which, when I regard all of you, most
invincible princes, whose majesty is concordant and allied, with due
veneration, I will nevertheless address this discourse, however
small in your own way, Constantine, to the deity. For as we worship
the immortal gods themselves, although we worship them all in our
minds, yet sometimes we venerate each in his own temple and shrine:
thus I consider it right for me to remember with piety all the
princes, and to celebrate with praises the present one.
II.
I will therefore begin with the first of your divinity's origins,
which perhaps many still do not know, but those who love you know
very well. For from that divine Claudius flows your ancestral
kinship who was the first to reform the loose and lost discipline of
the Roman empire and who was monstrous. He destroyed the forces of
the Goths, who burst forth from the jaws of Pontus and the mouth of
the Historians, by land and sea, would that the restorer of men had
been more long-lived than the companion of the gods who had matured.
Therefore, although that most happy day, celebrated in the nearest
religion, is considered the birthday of your empire, since it was
the first to adorn you with this habit, yet from that originator of
the race the fortune of empire has descended upon you. Nay, indeed,
that ancient prerogative of the imperial house has advanced your
father himself, so that you now stand in the highest rank and above
the destinies of human affairs, the third emperor after the two
princes of your family. Among all, I say, participants in your
majesty, you have this most important thing, Constantine, that you
are emperor by birth, and such is the nobility of your origin that
the empire of honor does not add to you, nor can fortune impute to
your divinity what is yours, leaving aside your environment and
suffrage.
III.
It was not the accidental consent of men, nor any wind of favor that
made you a prince: you deserved the empire by birth. Which indeed
seems to me to be both the first and the greatest gift of the
immortal gods, to come into the light of day happy and to undertake
those things which others scarcely attain by the labors of a whole
life, having already won at home. For although great and admirable
is the happiness which, having earned the ranks in the order and
risen to that pinnacle of majesty, and having grown strong at the
roots of virtue alone, has attained to such a strength of power
(which indeed you also have achieved, as far as your age permitted,
and, although the favor of fortune had placed you above all delays
in acquiring glory, you did not wish to grow by fighting and by
approaching the dangers of war and by engaging in single combat with
the enemy you have made yourself more known to the nations, since
you could not be more noble), great, I say, even if it is a progress
of its own, to reach the greatest heights: yet it is far one thing
to strive to seek from the plain over steep and mountain peaks, and
quite another to hold the summit of fortune supported by the very
sublimity of its origin, and not to hope for, but to have what are
the highest.
IV.
You entered that sacred palace not as a candidate for the empire,
but as one designated, and immediately saw yourself as the
legitimate successor to that paternal home. For there was no doubt
that the inheritance was due to him whom the fates had first
bestowed on the emperor. For that great emperor on earth and in
heaven, the god begot you in the prime of his life, still vigorous
in his whole body, endowed with that eagerness and fortitude which
many wars, especially the plains of Vindonium, have seen. Hence it
is that such a likeness of form has passed from him in you that we
see it imprinted on your countenances, with nature indicating it.
For it is the same whom we again worship in you, the same gravity on
the forehead, the same calmness in the eyes and mouth. Thus is
blushing an index of modesty, so is speech a witness of justice.
Accept, emperor, the unhesitating confession of our senses: it
grieves us that Constantius has departed from us, but while we
behold you, we do not believe that he has departed. Although what do
I say that he has departed, whose immortal deeds live on and are
discussed in the mouths and eyes of all men?
V.
For who does not remember, but who does not still in some way see
with how many things he has increased and adorned the republic? He
who, having assumed command, at his first arrival shut out the
raging ocean with an innumerable fleet of enemies, and fenced off
the army which had settled on the shore of the town of Bologna by
land as well as by sea, having scattered the reciprocal tides of
that element by throwing valleys between the waves, so that the
gates whose waves had washed over would be destroyed wherever they
touched the sea.
Having
seized upon virtue, having preserved clemency, while the recovery of
Britain was being prepared by building fleets, he cleared the land
of Batavia, occupied by his former pupil by various Frankish
nations, of every enemy. And not content with having conquered, he
transferred these nations to the Romans, so that they were forced to
lay down not only arms but also savagery. For what shall I say of
the recovery of Britain? To which he sailed on such a calm sea that
that ocean, astonished by so great a carrier, seemed to have lost
its motions, so carried away that victory did not accompany him, but
awaited him.
VI.
What shall I say of the mercy with which he tempered the conquered?
what of the justice with which he restored what was lost to the
despoiled? what of the providence with which he gave himself in
judgment to his allies, so that freedom recovered might help those
who had suffered servitude, and impunity might call those who were
conscious of guilt to repentance? Why should I speak again of the
inner nations of France, now no longer from these places which the
Romans had once invaded, but from their own original homes and from
the furthest shores of barbarity, so that, placed in the desert
regions of Gaul, they might both help the peace of the Roman empire
by their culture and by the levy of arms? Why should I mention the
victory of Lingonica, glorious even for wounding the emperor
himself? Why should I mention the fields of Windonissa, filled with
the slaughter of the enemy and still covered with bones? Why should
the immense multitude of the various Germanic peoples, whom the
Rhine, hardened by ice, had enticed to cross the island which the
same river embraces at its fork, by a foot-force, suddenly be
blocked by the loosened river, and so, having let go of the ships,
besieged immediately, and forced to surrender in such a way that,
what is more difficult, they would choose by common lot and by equal
right whom they would hand over to captivity, sharing with their
remains the infamy of their own betrayal.
VII.
The day will fail me before I can speak if I go through all the
deeds of your father, even in this brevity. His supreme expedition
did not seek British trophies, as is commonly believed, but, while
the gods were already harming him, he approached the innermost
threshold of the earth. For he did not deign, after so many and
great deeds, to acquire, I do not say Caledonia, the forests and
marshes of the Picts and others, but neither the nearest Hibemia nor
the last Thyla nor the islands of the Fortunates themselves, if
there are any, but, as he did not want to tell anyone, about going
to the gods, he saw that father of the gods, the fiery stars shining
in the heavens, looking out over the ocean, so that from then on he
could enjoy perpetual light and see there an almost continuous day.
For truly, the temples of the gods were opened to him and he was
received by the assembly of the heavenly beings, with Jupiter
himself extending his right hand. Nay, indeed, when asked at once to
whom he should give his command, he said, as was fitting,
Constantius Pius: for you were clearly chosen, emperor, by the will
of your father. which indeed we say so when the truth commands us,
then to your piety, as I see is most pleasing. But why are we
flattered only by your private affections, when that opinion was of
all the gods, and indeed long ago written down by authority,
although then it was confirmed by full counsel? For even then you
were called by heavenly suffrages to the salvation of the republic,
when at the very time when your father was crossing to Britain with
the fleet already setting sail, your sudden arrival shone forth, so
that you seemed to have flown not by a public course, but by a
certain divine course.
VIII.
For no Persian or Cydonumian weapons aimed at such certain throws
were fixed as you were present as a timely companion to your father
when he was about to leave the land, and you relieved all his cares
which he desired with a premonition and a silent mind by the
security of your presence. Good gods, how much happiness you
bestowed on Constantius Pius even in his passing! The emperor, about
to make his passage to heaven, saw whom he was leaving as his heir.
For as soon as he had been released from the land, the whole army
agreed on you, the minds and eyes of all were fixed on you, and
although you had reported to the senior princes what they wished to
do about the highest state, they anticipated with zeal what they
soon approved by judgment. Immediately, when you were the first to
make your presence felt, the soldiers who served the public interest
rather than your own feelings, bestowed the purple on you, who was
weeping. For it was not right for a consecrated prince to weep any
longer. You will also be said, invincible emperor, that you stirred
up that ardor of the army that was begging you with your spurs.
Which indeed, if you hear the truth, you did through the error of
youth. For who could Cyllar or Arion rescue you from whom the empire
was following? That, I say, that majesty, since offered by a nod to
Jupiter, not to Iris, the messenger of the gods, but entrusted to
Victory with wings, accompanied you as easily as things sent from
heaven reach the earth quickly. Thus your modesty and piety and the
effort to postpone the empire showed and the happiness of the
republic won.
IX.
O fortunate and now happier than all lands Britain, which first saw
Constantine Caesar! deservedly nature has endowed you with all the
good things of heaven and earth, in which there is neither excessive
rigor of winter nor excessive heat of summer, in which the crops are
so fruitful that they suffice for the gifts of both Ceres and Liber,
in which woods are free from monstrous beasts, the land is free from
noxious serpents; against the gentleness of cattle an innumerable
multitude of milk-drenched and laden with fleeces, certainly indeed,
which life is loved there, the days are very long and there are no
nights without some light, while that extreme plain of the shores
does not raise shadows and the sight of the sky and stars passes the
end of the night, so that the sun itself, which seems to us to be
setting, appears to be passing by there. Good gods, what is this
that always from some highest end of the world new deities of gods
descend to be worshipped throughout the whole world? Thus Mercury
from the Nile, the origin of which river is unknown, thus Liber from
the Indians, showing himself to the nations, gods who are almost
conscious of the rising sun. Surely the places near the sky are more
sacred than the inland ones, and from there the emperor is sent
closer to the gods where the earth ends.
X.
So, son of an emperor and yourself so happily acquiring the empire,
how did you begin to claim the republic? I believe that some ignoble
band of barbarians, who had tried the auspices of your birth with a
sudden attack and unexpected robbery, you inflicted the punishment
of your rashness. The very kings of France, who had violated the
peace by the absence of your father, you did not hesitate to punish
with the ultimate tortures, fearing nothing of the perpetual hatred
and inexpiable anger of that nation. For why should an emperor, who
can protect what he has done, consider any offense of just severity?
Safe is clemency which spares enemies and looks after itself more
than it forgives. But you, Constantine, no matter how much your
enemies hate you, as long as they are terrified. For this is true
virtue, that they do not love and remain silent. Although he is more
cautious who pardons the defeated, he is still stronger who tramples
on the angry. You have renewed, emperor, that ancient confidence of
the Roman empire which assumed death for captured enemy leaders. For
then, when the captive kings were marching from the gates to the
forum in triumph, and as soon as the emperor had begun to turn his
chariot into the Capitol, they were taken away and put to death. One
Persian, who had received him surrendering, escaped the law of that
severity by the plea of Paulus himself. The rest, all
in chains, deprived of light, gave other kings a lesson that they
would rather cultivate Roman friendship than aggravate their sorrow.
So much so that this punishment inflicted on enemies confers good,
that not only do enemies not dare to be ferocious, but even friends
are more deeply revered.
XI.
Therefore, emperor, this peace which we enjoy is a lie. For we are
no longer protected by the whirlpools of the Rhine, but by the
terror of your name. Whether it dries up with heat or resists frost,
neither enemy will dare to use the ford. For nature prevents nothing
from being penetrated by such an insurmountable wall that audacity,
to which some hope of attempting is left, cannot penetrate. That is
an impregnable wall which the fame of virtue has built. The French
know that they can cross the Rhine, whom you willingly admit to
their death, but they can neither hope for victory nor pardon. What
remains for them, they measure by the tortures of their kings, and
therefore it is so far from them that they attempt to cross that
embankment, rather than despairing of having begun the bridge. Where
is that ferocity now? Where is that ever treacherous mobility? Now
you dare not even approach the Rhine far away and you can hardly
safely water the inner rivers. On the other hand, the castles
arranged at intervals rather love the boundary than they protect it.
Sometimes the helpless farmer plows that terrible bank, and our
entire flocks are drowned in the two-lane river. This is yours,
Constantine, from the punishment of Ascaricus and Regais, a daily
and eternal victory to be preferred to all previously successful
battles. Once defeated in battle, it is an endless document. The
common people do not know their own defeat, although many perish: it
is a summary that the leaders of the defeated enemies have taken
away.
XII.
So that the barbarians' cruelty might be broken in every way and
that the enemies of their kings alone should mourn the punishments,
you have also done this, unconquered emperor, by the devastation
unleashed by Bructeri. In which the first reason of your plan was
that you suddenly crossed the army and attacked them unexpectedly,
not because you were distrustful of open war, as you would have
preferred to meet them openly, but so that that nation would lose
time in flight, being frustrated by the usual wars of refuge in
forests and marshes. Innumerable people were therefore killed, many
were taken prisoner; whatever cattle there were was carried off or
slaughtered; all the conquered were consumed by fire; the adults who
came into their hands, whose treachery was not suited to the
military nor their ferocity to serve, were given to the spectacle of
punishment and exhausted the wild beasts with their multitude. This
is, O emperor, to rely on one's own virtue and fortune, that is, not
to buy peace by sparing, but to seek victory by provoking.
XIII.
Moreover, by building the bridge of Agrippina, you insult the
remnants of the afflicted nation, lest they ever fear, always
shudder, always stretch out their supplicant hands, when yet you do
this more for the glory of your empire and the adornment of your
frontier than for the opportunity, whenever you wish, to cross over
to the enemy, since the whole Rhine is equipped with armed ships and
soldiers are stationed on all the banks as far as the ocean. But it
seems beautiful to you (and it is truly most beautiful) that that
Rhine should be crossed by a new bridge not only in its upper
reaches, where it is either shallow in width or small near its
source, but also where it is in its entirety, where it has already
absorbed many rivers, which our native and barbarian Nicer and
Moenus have invaded, where it has already been driven into two horns
by its immense course and impatient of a single flood.
Certainly,
most Constantine, the very nature of things has served your
divinity, since in that gurgling height the foundations of such
mills are laid that will have a reliable and stable firmness.
Although the most powerful king of the Persians once joined the
narrows of the Hellespont with a connected fleet: that crossing was
a temporary one. By a similar connection of ships, Caesar the Third
built the Bay of Baeanus from Augustus: that was a delicate task for
the idle prince.
This
work will be both difficult to do and very long in practice.
Certainly, at the beginning, the service of your enemies moved you,
who supplicated for peace and offered the most noble hostages. Since
then, no one doubts what those who are already serving the bridge
that has been begun will do.
XIV.
While you were intent on such matters for the benefit and dignity of
the public, the new movements of that man whom it would have been
fitting to favor your successes most turned you away. As I shall
say, I still doubt and await the advice of your divinity. For
however much he may be rightly sharpened by the complaints of your
piety, he must nevertheless moderate his voice, especially since he
who has been ungrateful to you for so many of your benefits and so
great a source of necessities is still compelled by the
contemplation of you, although we are angry and reverent. What shall
I do, then, to treat such deep wounds with a suspended hand? I will
certainly assume those common patronages of all crimes, which,
however, are often assent even by wise men, that no man sins except
by fate, and that the very crimes of mortals are acts of fortune,
while virtues are gifts of the gods. I congratulate you,
Constantine, on your nature and character, that Constantius Pius has
begotten you, and that the decrees of the stars have formed you so
that you cannot be cruel. But [I] do not believe that he, when he
was about to come into the world and was about to accept the choice
of life he would use, had incurred a fate to be avoided, which would
bring an unjust and ultimately voluntary destruction to many men.
For to send others, did not the necessity of fate bring about this
very thing that he should return to your piety this time, whom you,
having been driven from the city, put to flight from Italy, and
repudiated from Illyricum, received into your provinces, your
forces, and your palace?
XV.
What, I pray you, did he want for himself? What did he desire? Or
what more could he gain from what he had obtained from you? To whom
you had given the greatest and most diverse goods, private leisure
and royal wealth, to whom you had given court mules and chariots
when he departed, to whom you had commanded our services to be met
even more earnestly than to you, to whom you had so determined to
obey all his commands that the power of the empire would be in his
possession, as if he were in your possession. Who was he, not so
eager for power (for what could he not do when you were ruling?),
but the error of an already foolish age, that he should undertake
the most serious cares and a civil war after so many years? As it
is, no one is satisfied with the gifts of fortune, whose desires are
not limited by reason, and so ungrateful happiness slips under them
that, always full of hopes, empty of conveniences, they lack present
things while they look forward to the future. But for that divine
man who was the first to share in the empire and to establish it
according to his own plan and deed does not regret it, nor does he
think that he has lost what he has voluntarily transcribed, truly
happy and blessed, whom your many princes worship and have deprived
of their homage. But even he, supported by many yokes, is joyfully
sheltered by the empire and your little shadow, whom he knows to
have grown from his stock, and justly claims your glories for
himself. Therefore, this man, who had been adopted by him as a
brother, was ashamed to imitate him. He regretted that he had sworn
to him in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline. I do not wonder
that he also betrayed his son-in-law.
XVI.
This is the faith, this religion of the Palatine shrine, devoted to
the inner sanctum, so that slowly and hesitantly, now that those war
plans, the journey completed, the forces of the mansions consumed so
that no one could catch up with the army, he would suddenly consider
within the walls, wearing the purple, and twice deposed, a third
time, would usurp the empire, would send letters to solicit the
army, would try to disturb the faith of the soldiers by the display
of rewards; surely, he would take advantage of the army which he had
taught to have venal hands. By which error of his was made manifest,
emperor, how much love your soldiers would embrace you, who
preferred you to all the gifts he had promised, to all the offerings
of honors. That rare virtue of continence was scarcely possessed by
a few teachers of wisdom, if at all, preserved for the sake of, say,
Constantine, it became common to all men, and not only to those whom
reason for a literary life and tranquility had tempered, but also
that military ardor of the mind despised in respect to your gains.
There were some armies similar to yours in their enthusiasm and
strength: you alone happened to have a wise army. Many bad generals
of old, unequal in arms, competed with generosity: but their
popularity was short and fleeting, whom anyone who emulated easily
conquered. This firm, this eternal is the guardian of the republic
whom the soldiers love for themselves, whom flattery did not flatter
or sell, but simple and sincere devotion served. Your gifts,
Constantine, are clearly grateful to the soldiers, but all the more
grateful because they are yours. Whatever you extend, becomes more
acceptable with your hand. No one can compete with you in this
ambition! It is an insurmountable kind of generosity, the emperor
himself is the reward of the soldier. Therefore, indeed, you grant
your armies even more than they desire, but your name, your
authority from the memory of your father, your grace of age, and
finally your venerable form commend you more.
XVII.
For, good gods, the young emperor is a beautiful and heavenly
miracle, in whom that strength which is already supreme is still
growing, in whom this brilliance of the eyes, this equally venerable
and pleasing majesty simultaneously fascinates and invites the gaze.
I conceive in my mind such a king Macetus, such a Thessalian man,
whose supreme virtue is celebrated combined with beauty. For it is
not in vain that the most learned men say that nature itself can be
measured by great minds and that the dwellings worthy of bodies can
be gathered from the face of a man and the beauty of his limbs, how
much of a heavenly spirit inhabits them. Therefore, when the
soldiers see you entering, they admire and love you, they follow you
with their eyes, they hold you in their hearts, they think that they
are obeying a god, whose form is as beautiful as his divinity is
certain.
XVIII.
As soon, then, as they heard of that foul deed, they voluntarily
asked you for a sign to set out; since you were giving them a
journey, they said that they would delay it themselves, and that
they had more than enough of your bounty. Then, seizing their arms,
they went to the gates, and without any rest they completed the
journey of so many days from the Rhine to Arari, with their bodies
unwearied. Their spirits were burning, and the closer they drew
nearer they drew, the more ardor they felt for the vindicated. Then
indeed, your care, O emperor, by which you had provided ships for
their forces to resupply from the port of Cabillon, was almost not
pleasing to those in haste. That sluggish and hesitant river seemed
never to have been slower: as the banks silently slid and the banks
slowly receded, they cried out that they were standing still, not
going. Then, however, they attacked the use of their feet and hands,
and they leaned on the oars and overcame the nature of the river by
urging it, and at last, having escaped the delays of Arari, they
were scarcely content with the Rhone itself: it seemed to them that
they were rushing at a gallop, much less that they were hurrying to
Arelate. What is much? I must confess to you, emperor: with this
vigor of your body, this ardor of mind, you sometimes labored to
follow the army you were leading. For all were carried away with
such impetuosity that, when they discovered that he had left
Marseilles in the desert of Arelate, they immediately took to their
ships and with a rapid course, no longer the courses of the Rhone,
but in a way the very gusts of the winds themselves, pre-empted
them. Such was the love of your divinity that, although they knew
that a most fortified city was to be attacked, they believed that it
was sufficient for them to arrive.
XIX.
For Marseilles, as I hear, jutting out into the deep sea and
surrounded by a most fortified harbor, into which the inland gulf
flows back by a narrow approach, is joined by only fifteen hundred
paces of land, against which is opposed a very strong wall, densely
studded with towers. For in times past, when the Greeks and
Italians, who were strong in arts and ingenuity, were accustomed
there, the place itself also taught them to spend more liberally all
that was useful in war in that part which could be approached, while
nature had otherwise remitted the cost of the work. Therefore, a
long siege revealed that Caesar, who was then closing the gates of
the city on behalf of his senior leader, was often attacked by land
and sea, with engines brought in, ramparts built, and naval battles,
and was hardly more frequently attacked than terrified, although the
Greek magistrates had repelled Caesar himself and soon his generals
and forces not so much with their own strength as with their walls.
But now, O emperor, at your first arrival and the first attack of
your army, nothing, not the height of the walls of the same
Massilia, not the densest towers, not the nature of the place,
prevented you from capturing both the harbor and the city at once,
if you wished. Indeed, with such confidence the soldiers had stormed
the entire wall that they would have immediately climbed it without
a doubt, had not the height of the ladders they had brought up
deceived their guesses. But even so, many, deceived by the shortness
of the ladders, stretched out their bodies, and, having lifted the
shoulders of those who succeeded them, were already storming the
gaps in the ramparts with their hands. They feared so little danger
in the execution of the sentence that they seemed to be meeting each
other on equal terms, not scaling the wall.
XX.
But your singular piety, Constantine, and your ever-observant duties
even under arms! You gave the signal for retreat and postponed
victory so that you might be permitted to forgive all, lest Milos,
in his anger, should do anything more atrocious than the nature of
your clemency would suffer. In which, although you took care with
the solicitude of an excellent emperor that the soldiers led into
fraud should take time to repent and voluntarily beg for
forgiveness, yet we who behold your most gentle feelings (for
nothing is so clear as the goodness in your breast) understand that
you spared him whom, if the first burst had had the strength, no one
could have rescued with the sword. Thus, as pertains to your piety,
you reserved both him and all those whom you had received. Let him
impute to himself who did not wish to use your benefit nor judged
himself worthy of life, when through you it was permitted to live:
you, what is sufficient for your conscience, have spared even those
who do not deserve it. But, forgive me, you cannot do everything:
the gods avenge you even the unwilling.
XXI.
Which indeed we must always hope that you may prosper even beyond
your desires. success, which we place our hope in the bosom of your
majesty and seek your presence everywhere, as if it could be given.
For behold, while you had departed from the frontier for a short
time, with what terrors the perfidy of the barbarians had boasted,
namely, while they were asking themselves: when will he arrive? when
will he conquer? when will he bring back his weary army? when
suddenly, having heard of your return, they fell down as if
astonished, lest your vow for the republic should have touched the
care of more than one night. For the day after you had received that
news and undertaken the double labor of the journey, you learned
that all the waves had subsided, and all the tranquility you had
left had returned, the very night having so arranged fortune that
the happiness of your affairs there reminded you to offer to the
immortal gods what you had vowed, where you had turned to the most
beautiful temple in the whole world, nay, to the present god, as you
saw him. For you saw, I believe, Constantine, Apollo, accompanied by
your Victory, offering you laurel wreaths, each of which bears the
omen of thirty years. For this is the number of human ages, which
are certainly due to you beyond Pylian old age. And indeed, what do
I say 'I believe'? You have seen and recognized yourself in the form
of him to whom the divine songs of the prophets sang that the
kingdoms of the whole world were due. Which I now finally believe
has happened, since you are, like him, young and happy and salutary
and most beautiful, an emperor. Therefore, you have deservedly
honored those most august temples with such great gifts that they no
longer seek the old ones. Now all the temples see that you are
calling to them, especially our Apollo, whose boiling waters punish
perjury, which you must hate most of all.
XXII.
Immortal gods, when will you grant that day on which this most
present god, composed in all peace, will also go around those groves
and sacred seats of Apollo and the mouths of the sighing springs?
whose springs, smiling with gentle misty warmth, seem, Constantine,
to want to insert themselves into your eyes and kisses. You will
certainly marvel at that seat of your divinity and the warm waters
without any sign of burning sun, of which there is no sadness in the
taste or breath, but. such sincerity in the sip and smell as that of
cold springs. You will also give gifts there, establish privileges,
finally restore my homeland itself to the veneration of the place
itself. The ancient nobility of which city, once boasting of the
fraternal name of the Roman people, awaits the help of your majesty,
so that there too public places and temples may be repaired by your
beautiful generosity, just as I see this most fortunate city, whose
birthday is celebrated by your piety, so rising from all its walls
that it somehow rejoices that it once fell, increased by the
benefits you have bestowed. I see around my greatest rival, I
believe, Roman, I see basilicas and the forum, royal works, and the
seat of justice raised to such a height that they promise themselves
to be contiguous and close to the stars and the sky. All of which
are certainly gifts of the present. For whatever places your
divinity most frequently illuminates, in these all things, both men
and walls, are increased by your gifts, and the earth has not given
new flowers to Jupiter and Juno while they are reclining, as around
you, Constantine, cities and temples have risen. Therefore, this is
sufficient for my acquaintances, that you see my country with your
piety guiding you, because it will be restored immediately if you
see it. But for that happiness will see whether it is still due to
my age.
XXIII.
Literally, since I have reached the sum of my vows by your deign to
consecrate to your ears this voice of mine, whatever it may be,
exercised in the various offices of the forum and palace, I give the
greatest thanks to your divinity and, what remains, I commend to you
my children, especially him who is now handling the highest
patronage of the treasury, to whom piety has transferred me
entirely, whose happy service, if you ever look back, will be most
suitable to your age. However, what I have said about all my
children, is broad, emperor, ambition. For besides those five whom I
have begotten, there are also those who are like mine in number whom
I have promoted to the protection of the court, to the offices of
the palace. Indeed, many rivers flow from me, not ignoble, many of
my followers also administer your provinces. I rejoice in their
successes and I lead them all to honor for my sake. If perhaps today
I have spoken below my expectations, I trust that I have been
pleased with them. If, however, your divinity has also granted me
this, that from this speech I may report not a testimony of
eloquence, which is too much, but of the little prudence and mind
that you have shown: let the ignoble cares of private studies give
way, and I will have perpetual material for speech, whoever approves
me, emperor.
In Praise of the
Emperor Constantine
Introduction
I
COME not forward prepared with a fictitious narrative, nor with
elegance of language to captivate the ear, desiring to charm my
hearers as it were, with a siren's voice; nor shall I present the
draught of pleasure in cups of gold decorated with lorry flowers (I
mean the graces of style) to those who are pleased with such things.
Rather would I follow the precepts of the wise, and admonish all to
avoid and turn aside from the beaten road, and keep themselves from
contact with the vulgar crowd. I come, then, prepared to celebrate
our emperor's praises in a newer strain; and, though the number be
infinite of those who desire to be my companions in my present task,
I am resolved to shun the common track of men, and to pursue that
untrodden path which it is unlawful to enter on with unwashed feet.
Let those who admire a vulgar style, abounding in puerile
subtleties, and who court a pleasing and popular muse, essay, since
pleasure is the object they have in view, to charm the earn of men
by a narrative of merely human merits. Those, however who are
initiated into the universal science, and have attained to Divine as
well as human knowledge, and account the choice of the latter as the
real excellence, will prefer those virtues of the emperor which
Heaven itself approves, and his pious actions, to his merely human
accomplishments; and will leave to inferior encomiasts the task of
celebrating his lesser merits. For since our emperor is gifted as
well with that sacred wisdom which has immediate reference to God,
as with the knowledge which concerns the interests of men; let those
who are competent to such a task describe his secular acquirements,
great and transcendent as they are, and fraught with advantage to
mankind (for all that characterizes the emperor is great and noble),
yet still inferior to his diviner qualifies, to those who stand
without the sacred precincts. Let those, however, who are within the
sanctuary, and have access to its inmost and untrodden recesses,
close the doors against every profane ear, and unfold, as it were,
the secret mysteries of our emperors character to the initiated
alone. And let those who have purified their ears in the streams of
piety, and raised their thoughts on the soaring wing of the mind
itself, join the company which surrounds the Sovereign Lord of all,
and learn in silence the divine mysteries. Meanwhile let the sacred
oracles, given, not by the spirit of divination (or rather let me
say of madness and folly), but by the inspiration of Divine truth,
be our instructors in these mysteries; speaking to us of
sovereignty, generally: the heavenly array which surrounds the Lord
of all; of that exemplar of imperial power which is before us, and
that counterfeit coin: and, lastly, of the consequences which result
from both. With these oracles, then, to initiate us in the knowledge
of the sacred rites, let us essay, as follows, the commencement of
our divine mysteries.
The Oration
CHAPTER I.
TO-DAY
is the festival of our great emperor: and we his children rejoice
therein, feeling the inspiration of our sacred theme. He who
presides over our solemnity is the Great Sovereign himself; he, I
mean, who is truly great; of whom I affirm (nor will the sovereign
who hears me be offended, but will rather aprepels the gaze of every
eye from his Divine majesty. His ministers are the heavenly hosts;
his armies the supernal powers, angels, the companies of archangels,
the chorus of holy spirits, draw from and reflect his radiance as
from the fountains of everlasting light. Yea every light, and
specially those divine and incorporeal intelligences whose place is
beyond the heavenly sphere, celebrate this august Sovereign with
lofty and sacred strains of praise. The vast expanse of heaven, like
an azure veil is interposed between those without, and those who
inhabit his royal mansions: while round this expanse the sun and
moon, with the rest of the heavenly luminaries (like torch-bearers
around the entrance of the imperial palace), perform, in honor of
their sovereign, their appointed courses; holding forth, at the word
of his command, an ever-burning light to those whose lot is cast in
the darker regions without the pale of heaven. And surely when I
remember that our own victorious emperor renders praises to this
Mighty Sovereign, I do well to follow him, knowing as I do that to
him alone we owe that imperial power under which we live. The pious
Caesars, instructed by their father's wisdom, acknowledge him as the
source of every blessing: the soldiery, the entire body of the
people, both in the country and in the cities of the empire, with
the governors of the several provinces, assembling together in
accordance with the precept of their great Saviour and Teacher,
worship him. In short, the whole family of mankind, of every nation,
tribe, and tongue, both collectively and severally, however diverse
their opinions on other subjects, are unanimous in this one
confession; and, in obedience to the reason implanted in them, and
the spontaneous and uninstructed impulse of their own minds, unite
in calling on the One and only God. Nay, does not the universal
frame of earth acknowledge him her Lord, and declare, by the
vegetable and animal life which she produces her subjection to the
will of a superior Power? The rivers, flowing with abundant stream,
and the perennial fountains, springing from hidden and exhaust-less
depths, ascribe to him the cause of their marvellous source. The
mighty waters of the sea, enclosed in chambers of unfathomable ing
currents of the winds, and the airy courses of the clouds, all
reveal his presence to those to whom his Person is invisible. The
all-radiant sun, who holds his constant career through the lapse of
ages, owns him Lord alone, and obedient to his will, dares not
depart from his appointed path. The inferior splendor of the moon,
alternatively diminished and increased at stated periods, is subject
to his Divine command. The beauteous mechanism of the heavens,
glittering with the hosts of stars, moving in harmonious order, and
preserving the measure of each several orbit, proclaims him the
giver of all light: yea, all the heavenly luminaries maintaining at
his will and word a grand and perfect unity of motion, pursue the
track of their ethereal career, and complete in the lapse of
revolving ages their distant course. The alternate recurrence of day
and night, the changing seasons, the order and proportion of the
universe, all declare the manifold wisdom of [his boundless power].
To him the unseen agencies which hold their course throughout the
expanse of space, render the due tribute of praise. To him this
terrestrial globe itself, to him the heavens above, and the choirs
beyond the vault of heaven, give honor as to their mighty Sovereign:
the angelic hosts greet him with ineffable songs of Praise; and the
spirits which draw their being from incorporeal light, adore him as
their Creator. The everlasting ages which were before this heaven
and earth, with other periods beside them, infinite, and antecedent
to all visible creation acknowledge him the sole and supreme
Sovereign and Lord. Lastly, he who is in all, before, and after all,
his only begotten, pre-existent Word, the great High Priest of the
mighty God, elder than all time and every age, devoted to his
Father's glory, first and alone makes intercession with him for the
salvation of mankind. Supreme and pre-eminent Ruler of the universe,
he shares the glory of his Father's kingdom: for he is that Light,
which, transcendent above the universe, encircles the Father's
Person, interposing and dividing between the eternal and uncreated
Essence and all derived existence: that Light which, streaming from
on high, proceeds from that Deity who knows not origin or end, and
illumines the super-celestial regions, and all that heaven itself
contains, with the radiance of wisdom bright beyond the splendor of
the sun. This is he who holds a supreme dominion over this whole
world, who is over and in all things, and pervades all things
visible and invisible; the Word of God. From whom and by whom our
divinely favored emperor, receiving, as it were a transcript of the
Divine sovereignty, directs, in imitation of God himself, the
administration of this world's affairs.
CHAPTER II.
THIS
only begotten Word of God reigns, from ages which had no beginning,
to infinite and endless ages, the partner of his Father's kingdom.
And [our emperor] ever beloved by him, who derives the source of
imperial authority from above, and is strong in the power of his
sacred title, has controlled the empire of the world for a long
period of years. Again, that Preserver of the universe orders these
heavens and earth, and the celestial kingdom, consistently with his
Father's will. Even so our emperor whom he loves, by bringing those
whom he rules on earth to the only begotten Word and Saviour renders
them fit subjects of his kingdom. And as he who is the common
Saviour of mankind, by his invisible and Divine power as the good
shepherd, drives far away from his flock, like savage beasts, those
apostate spirits which once flew through the airy tracts above this
earth, and fastened on the souls of men; so this his friend, graced
by his heavenly favor with victory over all his foes, subdues and
chastens the open adversaries of the truth in accordance with the
usages of war. He who is the pre-existent Word, the Preserver of all
things, imparts to his disciples the seeds of true wisdom and
salvation, and at once enlightens and gives them understanding in
the knowledge of his Father's kingdom. Our emperor, his friend,
acting as interpreter to the Word of God, aims at recalling the
whole human race to the knowledge of God; proclaiming clearly in the
ears of all, and declaring with powerful voice the laws of truth and
godliness to all who dwell on the earth. Once more, the universal
Saviour opens the heavenly gates of his Father's kingdom to those
whose course is thitherward from this world. Our emperor, emulous of
his Divine example, having purged his earthly dominion from every
stain of impious error, invites each holy and pious worshiper within
his imperial mansions, earnestly desiring to save with all its crew
that mighty vessel of which he is the appointed pilot. And he alone
of all who have wielded the imperial power of Rome, being honored by
the Supreme Sovereign with a reign of three decennial periods, now
celebrates this festival, not, his ancestors might have done, in
honor of infernal demons, or the apparitions of seducing spirits, or
of the fraud and deceitful arts of impious men; but as an act of
thanksgiving to him by whom he has thus been honored, and in
acknowledgment of the blessings he has received at his hands. He
does not, in imitation of ancient usage, defile his imperial
mansions with blood and gore, nor propitiate the infernal deities
with fire and smoke, and sacrificial offerings; but dedicates to the
universal Sovereign a pleasant and acceptable sacrifice, even his
own imperial soul, and a mind truly fitted for the service of God.
For this sacrifice alone is grateful to him: and this sacrifice our
emperor has learned, with purified mind and thoughts, to present as
an offering without the intervention of fire and blood, while his
own piety, strengthened by the truthful doctrines with which his
soul is stored, he sets forth in magnificent language the praises of
God, and imitates his Divine philanthropy by his own imperial acts.
Wholly devoted to him, he dedicates himself as a noble offering, a
first-fruit of that world, the government of which is intrusted to
his charge. This first and greatest sacrifice our emperor first
dedicates to God; and then, as a faithful shepherd, he offers, not
"famous hecatombs of firstling lambs," but the souls of
that flock which is the object of his care, those rational beings
whom he leads to the knowledge and pious worship of God.
CHAPTER III.
AND
gladly does he accept and welcome this sacrifice, and commend the
presenter of so august and noble an offering, by protracting his
reign to a lengthened period of years, giving larger proofs of his
beneficence in proportion to the emperor's holy services to himself.
Accordingly he permits him to celebrate each successive festival
during great and general prosperity throughout the empire, advancing
one of his sons, at the recurrence of each decennial period, to a
share of his own imperial power. The eldest, who bears his father's
name, he received as his partner in the empire about the close of
the first decade of his reign: the second, next in point of age, at
the second; and the third in like manner at the third decennial
period, the occasion of this our present festival. And now that the
fourth period has commenced, and the time of his reign is still
further prolonged, he desires to extend his imperial authority by
calling still more of his kindred to partake his power; and, by the
appointment of the Caesars, fulfills the predictions of the holy
prophets, according to what they uttered ages before: "And the
saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom." And thus the
Almighty Sovereign himself accords an increase both of years and of
children to our most pious emperor, and renders his sway over the
nations of the world still fresh and flourishing, as though it were
even now springing up in its earliest vigor. He it is who appoints
him this present festival, in that he has made him victorious over
every enemy that disturbed his peace: he it is who displays him as
an example of true godliness to the human race. And thus our
emperor, like the radiant sun, illuminates the most distant subjects
of his empire through the presence of the Caesars, as with the far
piercing rays of his own brightness. To us who occupy the eastern
regions he has given a son worthy of himself; a second and a third
respectively to other departments of his empire, to be, as it were,
brilliant reflectors of the light which proceeds from himself. Once
more, having harnessed, as it were, under the self-same yoke the
four most noble Caesars as horses in the imperial chariot, he sits
on high and directs their course by the reins of holy harmony and
concord; and, himself every where present, and observant of every
event, thus traverses every region of the world. Lastly, invested as
he is with a semblance of heavenly sovereignty, he directs his gaze
above, and frames his earthly government according to the pattern of
that Divine original, feeling strength in its conformity to the
monarchy of God. And this conformity is granted by the universal
Sovereign to man alone of the creatures of this earth: for he only
is the author of sovereign power, who decrees that all should be
subject to the rule of one. And surely monarchy far transcends every
other constitution and form of government: for that democratic
equality of power, which is its opposite, may rather be described as
anarchy and disorder. Hence there is one God, and not two, or three,
or more: for to assert a plurality of gods is plainly to deny the
being of God at all. There is one Sovereign; and his Word and royal
Law is one: a Law not expressed in syllables and words, not written
or engraved on tablets, and therefore subject to the ravages of
time; but the living and self-subsisting Word, who himself is God,
and who administers his Father's kingdom on behalf of all who are
after him and subject to his power. His attendants are the heavenly
hosts; the myriads of God's angelic ministers; the super-terrestrial
armies, of unnumbered multitude; and those unseen spirits within
heaven itself, whose agency is employed in regulating the order of
this world. Ruler and chief of all these is the royal Word, acting
as Regent of the Supreme Sovereign. To him the names of Captain, and
great High Priest, Prophet of the Father, Angel of mighty counsel,
Brightness of the Father's light, Only begotten Son, with a thousand
other titles, are ascribed in the oracles of the sacred writers. And
the Father, having constituted him the living Word, and Law and
Wisdom the fullness of all blessing, has presented this best and
greatest gift to all who are the subjects of his sovereignty. And he
himself, who pervades all things, and is every where present,
unfolding his Father's bounties to all with unsparing hand, has
accorded a specimen of his sovereign power even to his rational
creatures of this earth, in that he has provided the mind of man,
who is formed after his own image, with Divine faculties, whence it
is capable of other virtues also, which flow from the same heavenly
source. For he only is wise, who is the only God: he only is
essentially good: he only is of mighty power, the Parent of justice,
the Father of reason and wisdom, the Fountain of light and life, the
Dispenser of truth and virtue: in a word, the Author of empire
itself, and of all dominion and power.
CHAPTER IV.
BUT
whence has man this knowledge, and who has ministered these truths
to mortal ears? Or whence has a tongue of flesh the power to speak
of things so utterly distinct from fleshly or material substance?
Who has gazed on the invisible King, and beheld these perfections in
him? The bodily sense may comprehend elements and their
combinations, of a nature kindred to its own: but no one yet has
boasted to have scanned with corporeal eye that unseen kingdom which
governs all things nor has mortal nature yet discerned the beauty of
perfect wisdom. Who has beheld the face of righteousness through the
medium of flesh? And whence came the idea of legitimate sovereignty
and imperial power to man? Whence the thought of absolute dominion
to a being composed of flesh and blood? Who declared those ideas
which are invisible and undefined, and that incorporeal essence
which has no external form, to the mortals of this earth? Surely
there was but one interpreter of these things; the all-pervading
Word of God. For he is the author of that rational and intelligent
being which exists in man; and, being himself one with his Father's
Divine nature, he sheds upon his offspring the out-flowings of his
Father's bounty. Hence the natural and untaught powers of thought,
which all men, Greeks or Barbarians, alike possess: hence the
perception of reason and wisdom, the seeds of integrity and
righteousness, the understanding of the arts of life, the knowledge
of virtue, the precious name of wisdom, and the noble love of
philosophic learning. Hence the knowledge of all that is great and
good: hence apprehension of God himself, and a life worthy of his
worship: hence the royal authority of man, and his invincible
lordship over the creatures of this world. And when that Word, who
is the Parent of rational beings, had impressed a character on the
mind of man according to the image and likeness of God, and had made
him a royal creature, in that he gave him alone of all earthly
creatures capacity to rule and to obey (as well as forethought and
foreknowledge even here, concerning the promised hope of his
heavenly kingdom, because of which he himself came, and, as the
Parent of his children, disdained not to hold converse with mortal
men); he continued to cherish the seeds which himself had sown, and
renewed his gracious favors from above; holding forth to all the
promise of sharing his heavenly kingdom. Accordingly he called men,
and exhorted them to be ready for their heavenward journey, and to
provide themselves with the garment which became their calling. And
by an indescribable power he filled the world in every part with his
doctrine, expressing by the similitude of an earthly kingdom that
heavenly one to which he earnestly invites all mankind, and presents
it to them as a worthy object of their hope.
CHAPTER V.
AND
in this hope our divinely-favored emperor partakes even in this
present life, gifted as he is by God with native virtues, and having
received into his soul the out-flowings of his favor. His reason he
derives from the great Source of all reason: he is wise, and good,
and just, as having fellowship with perfect Wisdom, Goodness, and
Righteousness: virtuous, as following the pattern of perfect virtue:
valiant, as partaking of heavenly strength. And truly may he deserve
the imperial title, who has formed his soul to royal virtues,
according to the standard of that celestial kingdom. But he who is a
stranger to these blessings, who denies the Sovereign of the
universe, and owns no allegiance to the heavenly Father of spirits;
who invests not himself with the virtues which become, an emperor,
but overlays his soul with moral deformity and baseness; who for
royal clemency substitutes the fury of a savage beast; for a
generous temper, the incurable venom of malicious wickedness; for
prudence, folly; for reason and wisdom, that recklessness which is
the most odious of all vices, for from it, as from a spring of
bitterness, proceed the most pernicious fruits; such as inveterate
profligacy of life, covetousness, murder, impiety and defiance of
God; surely one abandoned to; such vices as these, however he may be
deemed powerful through despotic violence, has no true title to the
name of Emperor. For how should he whose soul is impressed with a
thousand absurd images of false deities, be able to exhibit a
counterpart of the true and heavenly sovereignty? Or how can he be
absolute lord of others, who has subjected himself to the dominion
of a thousand cruel masters? a slave of low delights and un-governed
lust, a slave of wrongfully-extorted wealth, of rage and passion, as
well as of cowardice and terror; a slave of ruthless demons, and
soul-destroying spirits? Let then, our emperor, on the testimony of
truth itself, be declared alone worthy of the title; who is dear to
the Supreme Sovereign himself; who alone is free, nay, who is truly
lord: above the thirst of wealth, superior to sexual desire;
victorious even over natural pleasures; controlling, not controlled
by, anger and passion. He is indeed an emperor, and bears a title
corresponding to his deeds; a VICTOR in truth, who has gained the
victory over those passions which overmaster the rest of men: whose
character is formed after the Divine original a of the Supreme
Sovereign, and whose mind reflects, as in a mirror, the radiance of
his virtues. Hence is our emperor perfect in discretion, in
goodness, in justice, in courage, in piety, in devotion to God: he
truly and only is a philosopher, since he knows himself, and is
fully aware that supplies of every blessing are showered on him from
a source quite external to himself, even from heaven itself.
Declaring the august title of supreme authority by the splendor of
his vesture, he alone worthily wears that imperial purple which so
well becomes him. He is indeed an emperor, who calls on and implores
in prayer the favor of his heavenly Father night and day, and whose
ardent desires are fixed on his celestial kingdom. For he knows that
present things, subject as they are to decay and death, flowing on
and disappearing like a river's stream, are not worthy to be
compared with him who is sovereign of all; therefore it is that he
longs for the incorruptible and incorporeal kingdom of God. And this
kingdom he trusts he shall obtain, elevating his mind as he does in
sublimity of thought above the vault of heaven, and filled with
inexpressible longing for the glories which shine there, in
comparison with which he deems the precious things of this present
world but darkness. For he sees earthly sovereignty to be but a
petty and fleeting dominion over a mortal and temporary life, and
rates it not much higher than the goatherd's, or shepherd's, or
herdsman's power: nay, as more burdensome than theirs, and exercised
over more stubborn subjects. The acclamations of the people, and the
voice of flattery, he reckons rather troublesome than pleasing,
because of the steady constancy of his character, and genuine
discipline of his mind. Again, when he beholds the military service
of his subjects, the vast array of his armies, the multitudes of
horse and foot, entirely devoted to his command, he feels no
astonishment, no pride at the possession of such mighty power; but
turns his thoughts inward on himself, and recognizes the same common
nature there. He smiles at his vesture, embroidered with gold and
flowers, and at the imperial purple and diadem itself, when he sees
the multitude gaze in wonder, like children at a bugbear, on the
splendid spectacle. Himself superior to such feelings, he clothes
his soul with the knowledge of God, that vesture, the broidery of
which is temperance, righteousness, piety, and all other virtues; a
vesture such as truly becomes a sovereign. The wealth which others
so much desire, as gold, silver, or precious gems, he regards to be,
as they really are, in themselves mere stones and worthless matter,
of no avail to preserve or defend from evil. For what power have
these things to free from disease, or repel the approach of death?
And knowing as he does this truth by personal experience in the use
of these things, he regards the splendid attire of his subjects with
calm indifference, and smiles at the childishness of those to whom
they prove attractive. Lastly, he abstains from all excess in food
and wine, and leaves superfluous dainties to gluttons, judging that
such indulgences, I however suitable to others, are not so to him,
and deeply convinced of their pernicious tendency, and their effect
in darkening the intellectual powers of the soul. For all these
reasons, ur divinely taught and noble-minded emperor, aspiring to
higher objects than this life affords, calls upon his heavenly
Father as one who longs for his kingdom; exhibits a pious spirit in
each action of his life; and finally, as a wise and good instructor,
imparts to his subjects the knowledge of him who is the Sovereign
Lord of all.
CHAPTER VI.
AND
God himself, as an earnest of future reward, assigns to him now as
it were tricennial crowns composed of prosperous periods of time;
and now, after the revolution of three circles of ten years, he
grants permission to all mankind to celebrate this general, nay
rather, this universal festival. And while those on earth thus
rejoice, crowned as it were with the flowers of divine knowledge,
surely, we may not unduly suppose that the heavenly choirs,
attracted by a natural sympathy, unite their joy with the joy of
those on earth: nay, that the Supreme Sovereign himself, as a
gracious father, delights in the worship of duteous children, and
for this reason is pleased to honor the author and cause of their
obedience through a lengthened period of time; and, far from
limiting his reign to three decennial circles of years, he extends
it to the remotest period, even to far distant eternity. Now
eternity in its whole extent is beyond the power of decline or
death: its beginning and extent alike incapable of being scanned by
mortal thoughts. Nor will it suffer its central point to be
perceived, nor that which is termed its present duration to be
grasped by the inquiring mind. Far less, then, the future, or the
past: for the one is not, but is already gone; while the future has
not yet arrived, and therefore is not. As regards what is termed the
present time, it vanishes even as we think or speak, more swiftly
than the word itself is uttered. Nor is it possible in any sense to
apprehend this time as present; for we must either expect the
future, or contemplate the past; the present slips from us, and is
gone, even in the act of thought. Eternity, then, in its whole
extent, resists and refuses subjection to mortal reason. But it does
not refuse to acknowledge its own Sovereign and Lord, and bears him
as it were mounted on itself, rejoicing in the fair trappings which
he bestows. And he himself, not binding it, as the poet imagined,
with a golden chain, but as it were controlling its movements by the
reins of ineffable wisdom, has adjusted its months and seasons, its
times and years, and the alterations of day and night, with perfect
harmony, and has thus attached to it limits and measures of various
kinds. For eternity, being in its nature direct, and stretching
onward into infinity, and receiving its name, eternity, as having an
everlasting existence, and being similar in all its parts, or rather
having no division or distance, progresses only in a line of direct
extension. But God, who has distributed it by intermediate sections,
and has divided it, like a far extended line, in many points, has
included in it a vast number of portions; and though it is in its
nature one, and resembles unity itself, he has attached to it a
multiplicity of numbers, and has given it, though formless in
itself, an endless variety of forms For first of all he framed in it
formless matter, as a substance capable of receiving all forms. He
next, by the power of the number two, imparted quality to matter,
and gave beauty to that which before was void of all grace. Again,
by means of the number three, he framed a body compounded of matter
and form, and presenting the three dimensions of breadth, and
length, and depth. Then, from the doubling of the number two, he
devised the quaternion of the elements, earth, water, air, and fire,
and ordained them to be everlasting sources for the supply of this
universe. Again, the number four produces the number ten. For the
aggregate of one, and two, and three, and four, is ten. And three
multiplied with ten discovers the period of a month: and twelve
successive months complete the course of the sun. Hence the
revolutions of years, and changes of the seasons, which give grace,
like variety of color in painting, to that eternity which before was
formless and devoid of beauty, for the refreshment and delight of
those whose lot it is to traverse therein the course of life. For as
the ground is defined by stated distances for those who run in hope
of obtaining the prize; and as the road of those who travel on a
distant journey is marked by resting-places and measured intervals,
that the traveler's courage may not fail at the interminable
prospect; even so the Sovereign of the universe, controlling
eternity itself within the restraining power of his own wisdom,
directs and turns its course as he judges best. The same God, I say,
who thus clothes the once undefined eternity as with fair colors and
blooming flowers, gladdens the day with the solar rays; and, while
he overspreads the night with a covering of darkness, yet causes the
glittering stars, as golden spangles, to shine therein. It is he who
lights up the brilliancy of the morning stab the changing splendor
of the moon, and the glorious companies of the starry host, and has
arrayed the expanse of heaven, like some vast mantle, in colors of
varied beauty. Again, having created the lofty and profound expanse
of air, and caused the world in its length and breadth to feel its
cooling influence, he decreed that the air itself should be graced
with birds of every kind, and left open this vast ocean of space to
be traversed by every creature, visible or invisible, whose course
is through the tracts of heaven. In the midst of this atmosphere he
poised the earth, as it were its center, and encompassed it with the
ocean as with a beautiful azure vesture. Having ordained this earth
to be at once the home, the nurse, and the mother of all the
creatures it contains, and watered it both with rain and
water-springs, he caused it to abound in plants and flowers of every
species, for the enjoyment of life. And when he had formed man in
his own likeness, the noblest of earthly creatures, and dearest to
himself, a creature gifted with intellect and knowledge, the child
of reason and wisdom, he gave him dominion over all other animals
which move and live upon the earth. For man was in truth of all
earthly creatures the dearest to God: man, I say, to whom, as an
indulgent Father, he has subjected the brute creation; for whom he
has made the ocean navigable, and crowned the earth with a profusion
of plants of every kind; to whom he has granted reasoning faculties
for acquiring all science; under whose control he has placed even
the creatures of the deep, and the winged inhabitants of the air; to
whom he has permitted the contemplation of celestial objects, and
revealed the course and changes of the sun and moon, and the periods
of the planets and fixed stars. In short, to man alone of earthly
beings has he given commandment to acknowledge him as his heavenly
Father, and to celebrate his praises as the Supreme Sovereign of
eternity itself. But the unchangeable course of eternity the Creator
has limited by the four seasons of the year, terminating the winter
by the approach of spring, and regulating as with an equal balance
that season which commences the annual period. Having thus graced
the eternal course of time with the varied productions of spring, he
added the summer's heat; and then granted as it were a relief of
toil by the interval of autumn: and lastly, refreshing and cleansing
the season by the showers of winter, he brings it, rendered sleek
land glossy, like a noble steed, by these abundant rains, once more
to the gates of spring. As soon, then, as the Supreme Sovereign had
thus connected his own eternity by these cords of wisdom with the
annual circle, he committed it to the guidance of a mighty Governor,
even his only begotten Word, to whom, as the Preserver of all
creation, he yielded the reins of universal power. And he, receiving
this inheritance as from a beneficent Father, and uniting all things
both above and beneath the circumference of heaven in one harmonious
whole, directs their uniform course; providing with perfect justice
whatever is expedient for his rational creatures on the earth,
appointing its allotted limits to human life, and granting to all
alike permission to anticipate even here the commencement of a
future existence. For he has taught them that beyond this present
world there is a divine and blessed state of being, reserved for
those who have been supported here by the hope of heavenly
blessings; and that those who have lived a virtuous and godly life
will remove hence to a far better habitation; while he adjudges to
those who have been guilty and wicked here a place of punishment
according to their crimes. Again, as in the distribution of prizes
at the public games, he proclaims various crowns to the victors, and
invests each with the rewards of different virtues: but for our good
emperor, who is clothed in the very robe of piety, he declares that
a higher recompense of his toils is prepared; and, as a prelude to
this recompense, permits us now to assemble at this festival, which
is composed_ of perfect numbers, of decades thrice, and triads ten
times repeated. The first of these, the triad, is the offspring of
the unit, while the unit is the mother of number itself, and
presides over all months, and seasons, and years, and every period
of time. It may, indeed, be justly termed the origin, foundation,
and principle of all number, and derives its name from its abiding
character. For, while every other number is diminished or increased
according to the subtraction or addition of others, the unit alone
continues fixed and steadfast, abstracted from all multitude and the
numbers which are formed from it, and resembling that indivisible
essence which is distinct from all things beside, but by virtue of
participation in which the nature of all things else subsists. For
the unit is the originator of every number, since all multitude is
made up by the composition and addition of units; nor is it possible
without the unit to conceive the existence of number at all. But the
unit itself is independent of multitude, apart from and superior to
all number;
forming,
indeed, and making all, but receiving no increase from any. Kindred
to this is the triad; equally indivisible and perfect, the first of
those sums which are formed of even and uneven numbers. For the
perfect number two, receiving the addition of the unit, forms the
triad, the first perfect compound number. And the triad, by
explaining what equality is, first taught men justice, having itself
an equal beginning, and middle, and end. And it is also an image of
the mysterious, most holy, and royal Trinity, which, though itself
without beginning or origin, yet contains the germs, the reasons,
and causes of the existence of all created things. Thus the power of
the triad may justly be regarded as the first cause of all things.
Again, the number ten, which contains the end of all numbers, and
terminates them in itself, may truly be called a full and perfect
number, as comprehending every species and every measure of numbers,
proportions, concords, and harmonies. For example, the units by
addition form and are terminated by the number ten; and, having this
number as their parent, and as it were the limit of their course
they round this as the goal of their career. Then they perform a
second circuit, and again a third, and a fourth, until the tenth and
thus by ten decades they complete the hundredth number. Returning
thence to the first starting point, they again proceed to the number
ten, and having ten times completed the hundredth number, again they
recede, and perform round the same barriers their protracted course,
proceeding from themselves back to themselves again, with revolving
motion. For the unit is the tenth of ten, and ten units make up a
decade, which is itself the limit, the settled goal and boundary of
units: it is that which terminates the infinity of number; the term
and end of units. Again, the triad combined with the decade, and
performing a threefold circuit of tens, produces that most natural
number, thirty. For as the triad is in respect to units, so is the
number thirty in respect to tens. It is also the constant limit to
the course of that luminary which is second to the sun in
brightness. For the course of the moon from one conjunction with the
sun to the next, completes the period of a month; after which,
receiving as it were a second birth, it recommences a new light, and
other days, being adorned and honored with thirty units, three
decades, and ten triads. In the same manner is the universal reign
of our victorious emperor distinguished by the giver of all good,
and now enters on a new sphere of blessing, accomplishing, at
present, this tricennalian festival, but reaching forward beyond
this to far more distant intervals of time, and cherishing the hope
of future blessings in the celestial kingdom; where, not a single
sun, but infinite hosts of light surround the Almighty Sovereign,
each surpassing the splendor of the sun, glorious and resplendent
with rays derived from the everlasting source of light. There the
soul enjoys its existence, surrounded by fair and unfading
blessings; there is a life beyond the reach of sorrow; there the
enjoyment of pure and holy pleasures, and a time of unmeasured and
endless duration, extending into illimitable space; not defined by
intervals of days and months, the revolutions of years, or the
recurrence of times and seasons, but commensurate with a life which
knows no end. And this life needs not the light of the sun, nor the
lustre of the moon or the starry host, since it has the great
Luminary himself, even God the Word, the only begotten Son of the
Almighty Sovereign. Hence it is that the mystic and sacred oracles
reveal him to be the Sun of righteousness, and the Light which far
transcends all light. We believe that he illumines also the
thrice-blessed powers of heaven with the rays of righteousness, and
the brightness of wisdom, and that he receives truly pious souls,
not within the sphere of heaven alone, but into his own bosom, and
confirms indeed the assurances which he himself has given. No mortal
eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor can the mind in its vesture of
flesh understand what things are prepared for those who have been
here adorned with the graces of godliness; blessings which await
thee too, most pious emperor, to whom alone since the world began
has the Almighty Sovereign of the universe granted power to purify
the course of human life: to whom also he has revealed his own
symbol of salvation, whereby he overcame the power of death, and
triumphed over every enemy. And this victorious trophy, the scourge
of evil spirits, thou hast arrayed against the errors of idol
worship, and hast obtained the victory not only over all thy impious
and savage foes, but over equally barbarous adversaries, the evil
spirits themselves.
CHAPTER VII.
FOR
whereas we are composed of two distinct natures, I mean of body and
spirit, of which the one is visible to all, the other i invisible,
against both these natures two kinds of barbarous and savage
enemies, the one invisibly, the other openly, are constantly
arrayed. The one oppose our bodies with bodily force the other with
incorporeal assaults besiege the naked soul itself. Again, the
visible barbarians, like the wild nomad tribes, no better than
savage beasts, assail the nations of civilized men, ravage their
country, and enslave their cities, rushing on those who inhabit them
like ruthless wolves of the desert, and destroying all who fall
under their power. But those unseen foes, more cruel far than
barbarians, I mean the soul-destroying demons whose course is
through the regions of the air, had succeeded, through the snares of
vile polytheism, in enslaving the entire human race, insomuch that
they no longer recognized the true God, but wandered in the mazes of
atheistic error. For they procured, I know not whence, gods who
never anywhere existed, and set him aside who is the only and the
true God, as though he were not. Accordingly the generation of
bodies was esteemed by them a deity, and so the opposite principle
to this, their dissolution and destruction, was also deified. The
first, as the author of generative power, was honored with rites
under the name of Venus: the second, as rich, and mighty in dominion
over the human race, received the names of Pluto, and Death. For men
in those ages, knowing no other than naturally generated life,
declared the cause and origin of that life to be divine: and again,
believing in no existence after death, they proclaimed Death himself
a universal conqueror and a mighty god. Hence, unconscious of
responsibility, as destined to be annihilated by death, they lived a
life unworthy of the name, in the practice of actions deserving a
thousand deaths. No thought of God could enter their minds, no
expectation of Divine judgment, no recollection of, no reflection
on, their spiritual existence: acknowledging one dread superior,
Death, and persuaded that the dissolution of their bodies by his
power was final annihilation, they bestowed on Death the title of a
mighty, a wealthy god, and hence the name of Pluto. Thus, then,
Death became to them a god; nor only so, but whatever else they
accounted precious in comparison with death, whatever contributed to
the luxuries of life. Hence animal pleasure became to them a god;
nutrition, and its production, a god; the fruit of trees, a god;
drunken riot, a god; carnal desire and pleasure, a god. Hence the
mysteries of Ceres and Proserpine, the rape of the latter, and her
subsequent restoration, by Pluto: hence the orgies of Bacchus, and
Hercules overcome by drunkenness as by a mightier god: hence the
adulterous rites of Cupid and of Venus: hence Jupiter himself
infatuated with the love of women, and of Ganymede: hence the
licentious legends of deities abandoned to effeminacy and pleasure.
Such were the weapons of superstition whereby these cruel barbarians
and enemies of the Supreme God afflicted, and indeed entirely
subdued, the human race; erecting everywhere the monuments of
impiety, and rearing in every corner the shrines and temples of
their false religion. Nay, so far were the ruling powers of those
times enslaved by the force of error, as to appease their gods with
the blood of their own countrymen and kindred; to whet their swords
against those who stood forward to defend the truth; to maintain a
ruthless war and raise unholy hands, not against foreign or
barbarian foes, but against men l bound to them by the ties of
family and affection, against brethren, and kinsmen, and dearest
friends, who had resolved, in the practice of virtue and true piety,
to honor and worship God. Such was the spirit of madness with which
these princes sacrificed to their demon deities men consecrated to
the service of the King of kings. On the other hand their victims,
as noble martyrs in the cause of true godliness, resolved to welcome
a glorious death in preference to life itself, and utterly despised
these cruelties. Strengthened, as soldiers of God, with patient
fortitude, they mocked at death in all its forms; at fire, and
sword, and the torment of crucifixion; at exposure to savage beasts,
and drowning in the depths of the sea; at the cutting off and
searing of limbs, the digging out of eyes, the mutilation of the
whole body; lastly, at famine, the labor of the mines, and
captivity: nay, all these sufferings they counted better than any
earthly good or pleasure, for the love they bore their heavenly
King. In like manner women also evinced a spirit of constancy and
courage not inferior to that of men. Some endured the same conflicts
with them, and obtained a like reward of their virtue: others,
forcibly carried off to be the victims of violence and pollution,
welcomed death rather than dishonor; while many, very many more,
endured not even to hear the same threats wherewith they were
assailed by the provincial governors, but boldly sustained every
variety of torture, and sentence of death in every form? Thus did
these valiant soldiers of the Almighty Sovereign maintain the
conflict with steadfast fortitude of soul against the hostile forces
of polytheism: and thus did these enemies of God and adversaries of
man's salvation, more cruel far their ministers drain as it were the
cup of un-righteous slaughter in honor of the demons whom they
served, and prepare for them this dread and impious banquet, to the
ruin of the human race. In these sad circumstances, what course
should the God and King of these afflicted ones pursue? Could he be
careless of the safety of his dearest friends or abandon his
servants in this great extremity? Surely none could deem him a wary
pilot, who, without an effort to save his fellow-mariners should
suffer his vessel to sink with all her crew: surely no general could
be found so reckless as to yield his own allies, without resistance,
to the mercy of the foe: nor can a faithful shepherd regard with
unconcern the straying of a single sheep from his flock, but will
rather leave the rest in safety, and dare all things for the
wanderer's sake, even, if need be, to contend with savage beasts.
The zeal, however, of the great Sovereign of all was for no
unconscious sheep: his care was exercised for his own faithful host,
for those who sustained the battle for his sake: whose conflicts in
the cause of godliness he himself approved, and honored those who
had returned to his presence with the prize of victory which he only
can bestow, uniting them to the angelic choirs. Others he still
preserved on earth, to communicate the living seeds of piety to
future generations; to be at once eye-witnesses of his vengeance on
the ungodly, and narrators of the events. After this he outstretched
his arm in judgment on the adversaries, and utterly destroyed them
with the stroke of Divine wrath, compelling them, how reluctant
soever to confess with their own lips and recant their wickedness,
but raising from the ground and exalting gloriously those who had
long been oppressed and disclaimed by all. Such were the dealings of
the Supreme Sovereign, who ordained an invincible champion to be the
minister of his heaven-sent vengeance (for our emperor's surpassing
piety delights in the title of Servant of God), and him he has,
proved victorious over all that opposed him, having raised him up,
an individual against many foes. For they were indeed numberless,
being the friends of many evil spirits (though in reality they were
nothing, and hence are now no more); but our emperor is one,
appointed by, and the representative of, the one Almighty Sovereign.
And they, in the very spirit of impiety, destroyed the righteous
with cruel slaughter: but he, in imitation of his Saviour, and
knowing only how to save men's lives, has spared and instructed in
godliness the impious themselves. And so, as truly worthy the name
of VICTOR, he has subdued the twofold race of barbarians; soothing
the savage tribes of men by prudent embassies, compelling them to
know and acknowledge their superiors, and reclaiming them from a
lawless and brutal life to the governance of reason and humanity; at
the same time that he proved by the facts themselves that the fierce
and ruthless race of unseen spirits had long ago been vanquished by
a higher power. For he who is the preserver of the universe had
punished these invisible spirits by an invisible judgment: and our
emperor, as the delegate of the Supreme Sovereign, has followed up
the victory, bearing away the spoils of those who have long since
died and mouldered into dust, and distributing the plunder with
lavish hand among the soldiers of his victorious Lord.
CHAPTER VIII.
FOR
as soon as he understood that the ignorant multitudes were inspired
with a vain and childish dread of these bugbears of error, wrought
in gold and silver, he judged it right to remove these also, like
stumbling-stones thrown in the path of men walking m the dark, and
henceforward to open a royal road, plain and unobstructed, to all.
Having formed this resolution, he considered that no soldiers or
military force of any sort was needed for the repression of the
evil: a few of his own friends sufficed for this service, and these
he sent by a simple expression of his will to visit each several
province. Accordingly, sustained by confidence in the emperor's
piety and their own personal devotion to God, they passed through
the midst of numberless tribes and nations, abolishing this ancient
system of error in every city and country. They ordered the priests
themselves, in the midst of general laughter and scorn, to bring
their gods from their dark recesses to the light of day. They then
stripped them of their ornaments, and exhibited to the gaze of all
the unsightly reality which had been hidden beneath a painted
exterior: and lastly, whatever part of the material appeared to be
of value they scraped off and melted in the fire to prove its worth,
after which they secured and set apart whatever they judged needful
for their purposes, leaving to the superstitious worshipers what was
altogether useless, as a memorial of their shame. Meanwhile our
admirable prince was himself engaged in a work similar to that we
have described. For at the same time that these costly images of the
dead were stripped, as we have said, of their precious materials, he
also attacked those composed of brass; causing those to be dragged
from their places with ropes, and, as it were, carried away captive,
whom the dotage of mythology had esteemed as gods. The next care of
our august emperor was to kindle, as it were, a brilliant torch, by
the light of which he directed his imperial gaze around, to see if
any hidden vestiges of error might yet exist. And as the
keen-sighted eagle in its heavenward flight is able to descry from
its lofty height the most distant objects on the earth: so did he
whilst residing in the imperial palace of his own fair city,
discover, as from a watch-tower, a hidden and fatal snare of souls
in the province of Phoenicia. This was a grove and temple, not
situated in the midst of any city, or in any public place, as for
splendor of effect is generally the case, but apart from the beaten
and frequented road, on part of the summit of Mount Lebanon, and
dedicated to the foul demon known by the name of Venus. It was a
school of wickedness for all the abandoned rotaries of impurity and
such as destroyed their bodies with effeminacy. Here men undeserving
the name forgot the dignity of their sex, and propitiated the demon
by their effeminate conduct: here too unlawful commerce of women,
and adulterous intercourse, with other horrible and infamous
practices, were perpetrated in this temple as in a place beyond the
scope and restraint of law. Meantime these evils remained unchecked
by the presence of any observer, since no one of fair character
ventured to visit such scenes. These proceedings, however, could not
escape the vigilance of our august emperor, who, having himself
inspected them with characteristic forethought, and judging that
such a temple was unfit for the light of heaven, gave orders that
the building with its offerings should be utterly destroyed.
Accordingly, in obedience to the imperial edict, these engines of an
impure superstition were immediately abolished, and the hand of
military force was made instrumental in purging the place. And now
those who had heretofore lived without restraint, learned, through
the imperial threat of punishment, to practice self-control. Thus
did our emperor tear the mask from this system of delusive
wickedness, and expose it to the public gaze, at the same time
proclaiming openly his Saviour's name to all. No advocate appeared;
neither god nor demon, prophet nor diviner, could lend his aid to
the detected authors of the imposture. For the souls of men were no
longer enveloped in thick darkness: but enlightened by the rays of
true godliness, they deplored the ignorance and pitied the blindness
of their forefathers, rejoicing at the same time in their own
deliverance from such fatal error. Thus speedily, according to the
counsel of the mighty God, and through our emperor's agency, was
every enemy, whether visible or unseen, utterly removed: and
henceforward peace, the happy nurse of youth, extended her reign
throughout the world. Wars were no more, for the gods were not: no
more did warfare in country or town, no more did the effusion of
human blood, distress mankind, as heretofore, when demon-worship and
the madness of idolatry prevailed.
CHAPTER IX.
AND
now we may well compare the present with former things, and review
these happy changes in contrast with the evils that are past, and
mark the elaborate care with which in ancient times porches and
sacred precincts, groves and temples, were prepared in every city
for these false deities, and how their shrines were enriched with
abundant offerings. The sovereign rulers of those days had indeed a
high regard for the worship of the gods. The nations also and people
subject to their power honored them with images both in the country
and in every city, nay, even in their houses and secret chambers,
according to the religious practice of their fathers. The fruit,
however, of this devotion, far different from the peaceful concord
which now meets our view, appeared in war, in battles, and
seditions, which harassed them throughout their lives, and deluged
their countries with blood and civil slaughter. Again, the objects
of their worship could hold out to these sovereigns with artful
flattery the promise of prophecies, and oracles, and the knowledge
of futurity: yet could they not predict their own destruction, nor
forewarn themselves of the coming ruin: and surely this was the
greatest and most convincing proof of their imposture. Not one of
those whose words once were heard with awe and wonder, had announced
the glorious advent of the Saviour of mankind, or that new
revelation of divine knowledge which he came to give. Not Pythius
himself, nor any of those mighty gods, could apprehend the prospect
of their approaching desolation; nor could their oracles point at
him who was to be their conqueror and destroyer. What prophet or
diviner could foretell that their rites would vanish at the presence
of a new Deity in the world, and that the knowledge and worship of
the Almighty Sovereign should be freely given to all mankind? Which
of them foreknew the august and pious reign of our victorious
emperor, or his triumphant conquests everywhere over the false
demons, or the overthrow of their high places? Which of the heroes
has announced the melting down and conversion of the lifeless
statues from their useless forms to the necessary uses of men? Which
of the gods have yet had power to speak of their own images thus
melted and contemptuously reduced to fragments? Where were the
protecting powers, that they should not interpose to save their
sacred memorials, thus destroyed by man? Where, I ask, are those who
once maintained the strife of war, yet now behold their conquerors
abiding securely in the profoundest peace? And where are they who
upheld themselves in a blind and foolish confidence, and trusted in
these vanities as gods; but who, in the very height of their
superstitious error, and while maintaining an implacable war with
the champions of the truth, perished by a fate proportioned to their
crimes? Where is the giant race whose arms were turned against
heaven itself; the hissings of those serpents whose tongues were
pointed with impious words against the Almighty King? These
adversaries of the Lord of all, confident in the aid of a multitude
of gods, advanced to the attack with a powerful array of military
force, preceded by certain images of the dead, and lifeless statues,
as their defense. On the other, side our emperor, secure in the
armor of godliness, opposed to the numbers of the enemy the salutary
and life-giving Sign, as at the same time a terror to the foe, and a
protection against every harm; and returned victorious at once over
the enemy and the demons whom they served? And then, with
thanksgiving and praise, the tokens of a grateful spirit, to the
Author of his victory, he proclaimed this triumphant Sign, by
monuments as well as words, to all mankind, erecting it as a mighty
trophy against every enemy in the midst of the imperial city, and
expressly enjoining on all to acknowledge this imperishable symbol
of salvation as the safeguard of the power of Rome and of the empire
of the world. Such were the instructions which he gave to his
subjects generally; but especially to his soldiers, whom he
admonished to repose their confidence, not in their weapons, or
armor, or bodily strength, but to acknowledge the Supreme God as the
giver of every good, and of victory itself. Thus did the emperor
himself, strange and incredible as the fact may seem, become the
instructor of his army in their religious exercises, and teach them
to offer pious prayers in accordance with the divine ordinances,
uplifting their hands towards heaven, and raising their mental
vision higher still to the King of heaven, on whom they should call
as the Author of victory, their preserver, guardian, and helper. He
commanded too, that one day should be regarded as a special occasion
for religious worship; I mean that which is truly the first and
chief of all, the day of our Lord and Saviour; that day the name of
which is connected with light, and life, and immortality, and every
good. Prescribing the same pious conduct to himself, he honored his
Saviour in the chambers of his palace, performing his devotions
according to the Divine commands, and storing his mind with
instruction through the hearing of the sacred word. The entire care
of his household was intrusted to ministers devoted to the service
of God, and distinguished by gravity of life and every other virtue;
while his trusty body-guards, strong in affection and fidelity to
his person, found in their emperor an instructor in the practice of
a godly life. Again, the honor with which he regards the victorious
Sign is founded on his actual experience of its divine efficacy.
Before this the hosts of his enemies have disappeared: by this the
powers of the unseen spirits have been turned to flight: through
this the proud boastings of God's adversaries have come to nought,
and the tongues of the profane and blasphemous been put to silence.
By this Sign the Barbarian tribes were vanquished: through his the
rites of superstitious fraud received a just rebuke: by this our
emperor, discharging as it were a sacred debt, has performed the
crowning good of all, by erecting triumphant memorials of its value
in all parts of the world, raising temples and churches on a scale
of royal costliness, and commanding all to unite in constructing the
sacred houses of prayer. Accordingly these signal proofs of our
emperor's magnificence forthwith appeared in the provinces and
cities of the empire, and soon shone conspicuously in every country;
convincing memorials of the rebuke and overthrow of those impious
tyrants who but a little while before had madly dared to fight
against God, and, raging like savage dogs, had vented on unconscious
buildings that fury which they were unable to level against him; had
thrown to the ground and Upturned the very foundations of the houses
of prayer, causing them to present the appearance of a city captured
and abandoned to the enemy. Such was the exhibition of that wicked
spirit whereby they sought as it were to assail God himself, but
soon experienced the result of their own madness and folly. But a
little time elapsed, when a single blast of the storm of Heaven's
displeasure them utterly away, leaving neither kindred, nor
offspring, nor memorial of their existence among men: for all,
numerous as they were, disappeared as in a moment beneath the stroke
of Divine vengeance. Such, then, was the fate which awaited these
furious adversaries of God: but he who, armed with the salutary
Trophy, had alone opposed them (nay rather, not alone, but aided by
the presence and the power of him who is the only Sovereign), has
replaced the ruined edifices on a greater scale, and made the second
far superior to the first. For example, besides erecting various
churches to the honor of God in the city which bears his name, and
adorning the Bithynian capital with another on the greatest and most
splendid scale, he has distinguished the principal cities of the
other provinces by structures of a similar kind. Above all, he has
selected two places in the eastern division of the empire, the one
in Palestine (since from thence the life-giving stream has flowed as
from a fountain for the blessing of all nations), the other in that
metropolis of the East which derives its name from that of
Antiochus; in which, as the head of that portion of the empire, he
has consecrated to the service of God a church of unparalleled size
and beauty. The entire building is encompassed by an enclosure of
great extent, within which the church itself rises to a vast
elevation, of an octagonal form, surrounded by many chambers and
courts on every side, and decorated with ornaments of the richest
kind. Such was his work here. Again, in the province of Palestine,
in that city which was once the seat of Hebrew sovereignty, on the
very site of the Lord's sepulchre, he has raised a church of noble
dimensions, and adorned a temple sacred to the salutary Cross with
rich and lavish magnificence, honoring that everlasting monument,
and the trophies of the Saviour's victory over the power of death,
with a splendor which no language can describe. In the same country
he discovered three places venerable as the localities of three
sacred caves: and these also he adorned with costly structures,
paying a fitting tribute of reverence to the scene of the first
manifestation of the Saviour's presence; while at the second cavern
he hallowed the remembrance of his final ascension from the mountain
top; and celebrated his mighty conflict, and the victory which
crowned it, at the third. All these places our emperor thus adorned
in the hope of proclaiming the symbol of redemption to all mankind;
that Cross which has indeed repaid his pious zeal; through which his
house and throne alike have prospered, his reign has been confirmed
for a lengthened series of years, and the rewards of virtue bestowed
on his noble sons, his kindred, and their descendants.
And
surely it is a mighty evidence of the power of that God whom he
serves, that he has held the balances of justice with an equal hand,
and has apportioned to each party their due reward. With regard to
the destroyers of the houses of prayer, the penalty of their impious
conduct followed hard upon them: forthwith were they swept away, and
left neither race, nor house, nor family behind. On the other hand,
he whose pious devotion to his Lord is conspicuous in his every act,
who raises royal temples to his honor, and proclaims his name to his
subjects by sacred offerings throughout the world, he, I say, has
deservedly experienced him to be the preserver and defender of his
imperial house and race. Thus clearly have the dealings of God been
manifested, and this through the sacred efficacy of the salutary
Sign.
CHAPTER X.
MUCH
might indeed be said of this salutary Sign, by those who are skilled
in the mysteries of our Divine religion. For it is in very truth the
symbol of salvation, wondrous to speak of, more wondrous still to
conceive; the appearance of which on earth has thrown the fictions
of all false religion from the beginning into the deepest shade, has
buried superstitious error in darkness and oblivion, and has
revealed to all that spiritual light which enlightens the souls of
men, even the knowledge of the only true God. Hence the universal
change for the better, which leads men to spurn their lifeless
idols, to trample under foot the lawless rites of their demon
deities, and laugh to scorn the time-honored follies of their
fathers. Hence, too, the establishment in every place of those
schools of sacred learning, wherein men are taught the precepts of
saving truth, and dread no more those objects of creation which are
seen by the natural eye, nor direct a gaze of wonder at the sun, the
moon, or stars; but acknowledge him who is above all these, that
invisible Being who is the Creator of them all, and learn to worship
him alone. Such are the blessings resulting to mankind from this
great and wondrous Sign, by virtue of which the evils which once
existed are now no more, and virtues heretofore unknown shine
everywhere resplendent with the light of true godliness. Discourses,
and precepts, and exhortations to a virtuous and holy life, are
proclaimed in the ears of all nations. Nay, the emperor himself
proclaims them: and it is indeed a marvel that this mighty prince,
raising his voice in the hearing of all the world, like an
interpreter of the Almighty Sovereign's will, invites his subjects
in every country to the knowledge of the true God. No more, as in
former times, is the babbling of impious men heard in the imperial
palace; but priests and pious worshipers of God together celebrate
his majesty with royal hymns of praise. The name of the one Supreme
Ruler of the universe is proclaimed to all: the gospel of glad
tidings connects the human race with its Almighty King, declaring
the grace and love of the heavenly Father to his children on the
earth. His praise is everywhere sung in triumphant strains: the
voice of mortal man is blended with the harmony of the angelic
choirs in heaven; and the reasoning soul employs the body which
invests it as an instrument for sounding forth a fitting tribute of
praise and adoration to his name. The nations of the East and the
West are instructed at the same moment in his precepts: the people
of the Northern and Southern regions unite with one accord, under
the influence of the same principles and laws, in the pursuit of a
godly life, in praising the one Supreme God, in acknowledging his
only begotten Son their Saviour as the source of every blessing, and
our emperor as the one ruler on the earth, together with his pious
sons. He himself, as a skillful pilot, sits on high at the helm of
state, and directs the vessel with unerring course, conducting his
people as it were with favoring breeze to a secure and tranquil
haven. Meanwhile God himself, the great Sovereign, extends the right
hand of his power from above for his protection, giving him victory
over every foe, and establishing his empire by a lengthened period
of years: and he will bestow on him yet higher blessings, and
confirm in every deed the truth of his own promises. But on these we
may not at present dwell; but must await the change to a better
world: for it is not given to mortal eyes or ears of flesh, fully to
apprehend the things of God.
CHAPTER XI.
AND
now, victorious and mighty Constantine, in this discourse, whose
noble argument is the glory of the Almighty King, let me lay before
thee some of the mysteries of his sacred truth: not as presuming to
instruct thee, who art thyself taught of God; nor to disclose to
thee those secret wonders which he himself, not through the agency
of man, but through our common Saviour, and the frequent light of
his Divine presence has long since revealed and unfolded to thy
view: but in the hope of leading the unlearned to the light, and
displaying before those who know them not the causes and motives of
thy pious deeds. True it is that thy noble efforts for the daily
worship and honor of the Supreme God throughout the habitable world,
are the theme of universal praise. But those records of gratitude to
thy Saviour and Preserver which thou hast dedicated in our own
province of Palestine, and in that city from which as from a
fountain-head the Saviour Word has issued forth to all mankind; and
again, the hallowed edifices and consecrated temples which thou hast
raised as trophies of his victory over death; and those lofty and
noble structures, imperial monuments of an imperial spirit, which
thou hast erected in honor of the everlasting memory of the
Saviour's tomb the cause, I say, of these things is not equally
obvious to all. Those, indeed, who are enlightened in heavenly
knowledge by the power of the Divine Spirit, well understand the
cause, and justly admire and bless thee for that counsel and
resolution which Heaven itself inspired. On the other hand the
ignorant and spiritually blind regard these designs with open
mockery and scorn, and deem it a strange and unworthy thing indeed
that so mighty a prince should waste his zeal on the graves and
monuments of the dead. "Were it not better," such a one
might say, "to cherish those rites which are hallowed by
ancient usage to seek the favor of those gods and heroes whose
worship is observed in every province; instead of rejecting and
disclaiming them, because subject to the calamities incident to man?
Surely they may claim equal honors with him who himself has
suffered: or, if they are to be rejected, as not exempt from the
sorrows of humanity, the same award would justly be pronounced
respecting him." Thus, with important and contracted brow,
might he give utterance in pompous language to his self -imagined
wisdom. Filled with compassion for this ignorance, the gracious Word
of our most beneficent Father freely invites, not such a one alone,
but all who are in the path of error, to receive instruction in
Divine knowledge; and has ordained the means of such instruction
throughout the world, in every country and village, in cultivated
and desert lands alike, and in every city: and, as a gracious
Saviour and Physician of the soul, calls on the Greek and the
Barbarian, the wise and the unlearned, the rich and the poor, the
servant and his master, the subject and his lord, the ungodly, the
profane, the ignorant, the evil-doer, the blasphemer, alike to draw
near, and hasten to receive his heavenly cure. And thus in time past
had he clearly announced to all the pardon of former transgressions,
saying, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest." And again, "I am not come to
call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." And he adds
the reason, saying, "For they that are whole need not a
physician, but they that are sick." And again, "I desire
not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should repent."
Hence it is only for those who are themselves instructed in Divine
things and understand the motives of that zeal of which these works
are the result, to appreciate the more than human impulse by which
our emperor was guided, to admire his piety toward God, and to
believe his care for the memorial of our Saviour's resurrection to
be a desire imparted from above, and truly inspired by that
Sovereign, to be whose faithful servant and minister for good is his
proudest boast. In full persuasion, then, of thy approval, most
mighty emperor, I desire at this present time to proclaim to all the
reasons and motives of thy pious works. I desire to stand as the
interpreter of thy designs, to explain the counsels of a soul
devoted to the love of God. I propose to teach all men, what all
should know who care to understand the principles on which our
Saviour God employs his power, the reasons for which he who was the
pre-existent Controller of all things at length descended to us from
heaven: the reasons for which he assumed our nature, and submitted
even to the power of death. I shall declare the causes of that
immortal life which followed, and of his resurrection from the dead.
Once more, I shall adduce convincing proofs and arguments, for the
sake of those who yet need such testimony: and now let me commence
my appointed task. Those who transfer the worship due to that God
who formed and rules the world to the works of his hand; who hold
the sun and moon, or other parts of this material system, nay, the
elements themselves, earth, water, air, and fire, in equal honor
with the Creator of them all; who give the name of gods to things
which never would have had existence, or even name, except as
obedient to that Word of God who made the world: such persons in my
judgment resemble those who overlook the master hand which gives its
magnificence to a royal palace; and, while lost in wonder at its
roofs and walls, the paintings of varied beauty and coloring which
adorn them, and its gilded ceilings and sculptures, ascribe to them
the praise of that skill which belongs to the artist whose work they
are: whereas they should assign the cause of their wonder, not to
these visible objects, but to the architect himself, and confess
that the proofs of skill are indeed manifest, but that he alone is
the possessor of that skill who has made them what they are. Again,
well might we liken those to children, who should admire the
seven-stringed lyre, and disregard him who invented or has power to
use it: or those who forget the valiant warrior, and adorn his spear
and shield with the chaplet of victory: or, lastly, those who hold
the squares and streets, the public buildings, temples, and gymnasia
of a great and royal city in equal honor with its founder;
forgetting that their admiration is due, not to lifeless stones, but
to him whose wisdom planned and executed these mighty works. Not
less absurd is it for those who regard this universe with the
natural eye to ascribe its origin to the sun, or moon, or any other
heavenly body. Rather let them confess that these are themselves the
works of a higher wisdom, remember the Maker and Framer of them all,
and render to him the praise and honor above all created objects.
Nay rather, inspired by the sight of these very objects, let them
address themselves with full purpose of heart to glorify and worship
him who is now invisible to mortal eye, but perceived by the clear
and unclouded vision of the soul, the supremely sovereign Word of
God. To take the instance of the human body: no one has yet
conferred the attribute of wisdom on the eyes, or head, the hands,
or feet, or other members, far less on the outward clothing, of a
wise and learned man: no one terms the philosopher's household
furniture and utensils, wise: but every rational person admires that
invisible and secret power, the mind of the man himself. How much
more, then, is our admiration due, not to the visible mechanism of
the universe, material as it is, and formed of the selfsame
elements; but to that invisible Word who has moulded and arranged it
all, who is the only begotten Son of God, and whom the Maker of all
things, who far transcends all being, has begotten of himself, and
appointed Lord and Governor of this universe? For since it was
impossible that perishable bodies, or the rational spirits which he
had created, should approach the Supreme God, by reason of their
immeasurable distance from his perfections, for he is unbegotten,
above and beyond all creation, ineffable, inaccessible,
unapproachable, dwelling, as his holy word assures us, in the light
which none can enter; but they were created from nothing, and are
infinitely far removed from his unbegotten Essence; well has the
all-gracious and Almighty God interposed as it were an intermediate
Power between himself and them, even the Divine omnipotence of his
only begotten Word. And this Power, which is in perfect nearness and
intimacy of union, with the Father which abides in him, and shares
his secret counsels, has yet condescended, in fullness of grace, as
it were to conform itself to those who are so far removed from the
supreme majesty of God. How else, consistently with his own holiness
could he who is far above and beyond all things unite himself to
corruptible and corporeal matter? Accordingly the Divine Word, thus
connecting himself with this universe, and receiving into his hands
the reins, as it were, of the world, turns and directs it as a
skillful charioteer according to his own will and pleasure, The
proof of these assertions is evident. For supposing that those
component parts of the world which we call elements, as earth,
water, air, and fire, the nature of which is manifestly without
intelligence, are self-existent; and if they have one common
essence, which they who are skilled in natural science call the
great receptacle, mother, and nurse of all things; and if this
itself be utterly devoid of shape and figure, of soul and reason;
whence shall we say it has obtained its present form and beauty? To
what shall we ascribe the distinction of the elements, or the union
of things contrary in their very nature? Who has commanded the
liquid water to sustain the heavy element of earth? Who has turned
back the waters from their downward course, and carried them aloft
in clouds? Who has bound the force
of
fire, and caused it to lie latent in wood, and to combine with
substances most contrary to itself? Who has mingled the cold air
with heat, and thus reconciled the enmity of opposing principles?
Who has devised the continuous succession of the human race, and
given it as it were an endless term of duration? Who has moulded the
male and female form, adapted their mutual relations with perfect
harmony, and given one common principle of production to every
living creature? Who changes the character of the fluid and
corruptible seed, which in itself is void of reason, and gives it
its prolific power? Who is at this moment working these and ten
thousand effects more wonderful than these, nay, surpassing all
wonder, and with invisible influence is daily and hourly
perpetuating the production of them all? Surely the wonder-working
and truly omnipotent Word of God may well be deemed the efficient
cause of all these things: that Word who, diffusing himself through
all creation, pervading height and depth with incorporeal energy,
and embracing the length and breadth of the universe within his
mighty grasp, has compacted and reduced to order this entire system,
from whose unreasoned and formless matter he has framed for himself
an instrument of perfect harmony, the nicely balanced chords and
notes of which he touches with all-wise and unerring skill. He it is
who governs the sun, and moon, and the other luminaries of heaven by
inexplicable laws, and directs their motions for the service of the
universal whole. It is this Word of God who has stooped to the earth
on which we live, and created the manifold species of animals, and
the fair varieties of the vegetable world. It is this same Word who
has penetrated the recesses of the deep, has given their being to
the finny race, and produced the countless forms of life which there
exist. It is he who fashions the burden of the womb, and informs it
in nature's laboratory with the principle of life. By him the fluid
and heavy moisture is raised on high, and then, sweetened by a
purifying change, descends in measured quantities to the earth, and
at stated seasons in more profuse supply. Like a skillful
husbandman, he fully irrigates the land, tempers the moist and dry
in just proportion, diversifying the whole with brilliant flowers,
with aspects of varied beauty, with pleasant fragrance, with
alternating varieties of fruits, and countless gratifications for
the taste of men. But why do I dare essay a hopeless task, to
recount the mighty works of the Word of God, and describe an energy
which surpasses mortal thought? By some, indeed, he has been termed
the Nature of the universe, by others, the World-Soul, by others,
Fate. Others again have declared him to be the most High God
himself, strangely confounding things most widely different;
bringing down to this earth, uniting to a corruptible and material
body, and assigning to that supreme and unbegotten Power who is Lord
of all an intermediate place between irrational animals and rational
mortals on the one hand, and immortal beings on the other.
CHAPTER XII.
ON
the other hand, the sacred doctrine teaches that he who is the
supreme Source of good, and Cause of all things, is beyond all
comprehension, and therefore inexpressible by word, or speech, or
name; surpassing the power, not of language only, but of thought
itself. Un-circumscribed by place, or body; neither in heaven, nor
in ethereal space, nor in any other part of the universe; but
entirely independent of all things else, he pervades the depths of
unexplored and secret wisdom. The sacred oracles teach us to
acknowledge him as the only true God, apart from all corporeal
essence, distinct from all subordinate ministration. Hence it is
said that all things are from him, but not through him. And he
himself dwelling as Sovereign in secret and undiscovered regions of
unapproachable light, ordains and disposes all things by the single
power of his own will. At his will whatever is, exists; without that
will, it cannot be. And his will is in every case for good, since he
is essentially Goodness itself. But he through whom are all things,
even God the Word, proceeding in an ineffable manner from the Father
above, as from an everlasting and exhaustless fountain, flows onward
like a river with a full and abundant stream of power for the
preservation of the universal whole. And now let us select an
illustration from our own experience. The invisible and undiscovered
mind within us, the essential nature of which no one has ever known,
sits as a monarch in the seclusion of his secret chambers, and alone
resolves on our course of action. From this proceeds the only
begotten word from its father's bosom, begotten in a manner and by a
power inexplicable to us; and is the first messenger of its father's
thoughts, declares his secret counsels, and, conveying itself to the
ears of others, accomplishes his designs. And thus the advantage of
this faculty is enjoyed by all: yet no one has ever yet beheld that
invisible and hidden mind, which is the I parent of the word itself.
In the same manner, or rather in a manner which far surpasses all
likeness or comparison, the perfect Word of the Supreme God, as the
only begotten Son of the Father (not consisting in the power of
utterance, nor comprehended in syllables and parts of speech, nor
conveyed by a voice which vibrates on the air; but being himself the
living and effectual Word of the most High, and subsisting
personally as the Power and Wisdom of God), proceeds from his
Father's Deity and kingdom. Thus, being the perfect Offspring of a
perfect Father, and the common Preserver of all things, he diffuses
himself with living power throughout creation, and pours from his
own fullness abundant supplies of reason, wisdom, light, and every
other blessing, not only on objects nearest to himself, but on those
most remote, whether in earth, or sea, or any other sphere of being.
To all these he appoints with perfect equity their limits, places,
laws, and inheritance, allotting to each their suited portion
according to his sovereign will. To some he assigns the
super-terrestrial regions, to others heaven itself as their
habitation: others he places in ethereal space, others in air, and
others still on earth. He it is who transfers mankind from hence to
another sphere, impartially reviews their conduct here, and bestows
a recompense according to the life and habits of each. By him
provision is made for the life and food, not of rational creatures
only, but also of the brute creation, for the service of men; and
while to the latter he grants the enjoyment of a perishable and
fleeting term of existence, the former he invites to a share in the
possession of immortal life. Thus universal is the agency of the
Word of God: everywhere present, and pervading all things by the
power of his intelligence, he looks upward to his Father, and
governs this lower creation, inferior to and consequent upon
himself, in accordance with his will, as the common Preserver of all
things. Intermediate, as it were, and attracting the created to the
uncreated Essence, this Word of God exists as an unbroken bond
between the two, uniting things most widely different by an
inseparable tie. He is the Providence which rules the universe; the
guardian and director of the whole: he is the Power and Wisdom of
God the only begotten God, the Word begotten of God himself. For "In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. All things were made by him and without him was not any.
thing made that hath been made"; as we learn from the words of
the sacred writer? Through his vivifying power all nature grows and
flourishes, refreshed by his continual showers, and invested with a
vigor and beauty ever new. Guiding the reigns of the universe, he
holds its onward course in conformity to the Father's will and
moves, as it were, the helm of this mighty ship. This glorious
Agent, the only begotten Son of the Supreme God, begotten by the
Father as his perfect Offspring, the Father has given to this world
as the highest of all goods infusing his word, as spirit into a
lifeless body, into unconscious nature; imparting light and energy
to that which in itself was a rude, inanimate, and formless mass,
through the Divine power. Him therefore it is ours to acknowledge
and regard as everywhere present, and giving life to matter and the
elements of nature: in him we see Light, even the spiritual
offspring of inexpressible Light: one indeed in essence, as being
the Son of one Father; but possessing in himself many and varied
powers. The world is indeed divided into many parts; yet let us not
therefore suppose that there are many independent Agents nor, though
creation's works be manifold, let us thence assume the existence of
many gods. How grievous the error of those childish and infatuated
advocates of polytheistic worship, who deify the constituent parts
of the universe, and divide into many that system which is only one!
Such conduct resembles theirs who should abstract the eyes of an
individual man, and term them the man himself, and the ears, another
man, and so the head: or again, by an effort of thought should
separate the neck, the breast and shoulders, the feet and hands,: or
other members, nay, the very powers of sense, and thus pronounce an
individual to be a multitude of men. Such folly must surely be
rewarded with contempt by men of sense. Yet such is he who from the
component parts of a single world can devise for himself a multitude
of gods, or even deem that world which is the work of a Creator, and
consists of many parts, to be itself a god: not knowing that the
Divine Nature can in no sense be divisible into parts; since, if
compounded, it must be so through the agency of another power; and
that which is so compounded can never be Divine. How indeed could it
be so, if composed of unequal and dissimilar, and hence of worse and
better elements? Simple, indivisible, uncompounded, the Divine
Nature exists at an infinite elevation above the visible
constitution of this world. And hence we are assured by the clear
testimony of the sacred Herald, that the Word of God, who is before
all things, must be the sole Preserver of all intelligent beings:
while God, who is above all, and the Author of the generation of the
Word, being himself the Cause of all things, is rightly called the
Father of the Word, as of his only begotten Son, himself
acknowledging no superior Cause. God, therefore, himself is One, and
from him proceeds the one only begotten Word, the omnipresent
Preserver of all things. And as the many-stringed lyre is composed
of different chords, both sharp and flat, some slightly, others
tensely strained, and others intermediate between-the two extremes,
yet all attuned according to the rules of harmonic art; even so this
material world, compounded as it is of many elements, containing
opposite and antagonist principles, as moisture and dryness, cold
and heat, yet blended into one harmonious whole, may justly be
termed a mighty instrument framed by the hand of God: an instrument
on which the Divine Word, himself not composed of parts or opposing
principles, but indivisible and uncompounded, performs with perfect
skill, and produces a melody at once accordant with the will of his
Father the Supreme Lord of all, and glorious to himself. Again, as
there are manifold external and internal parts and members comprised
in a single body, yet one invisible soul, one undivided and
incorporeal mind pervades the whole; so is it in this creation,
which, consisting of many parts, yet is but one: and so the One
mighty, yea, Almighty Word of God, pervading all things, and
diffusing himself with undeviating energy throughout this universe,
is the Cause of all things that exist therein. Survey the compass of
this visible world. Seest thou not how the same heaven contains
within itself the countless courses and companies of the stars?
Again, the sun is one, and yet eclipses many, nay all other
luminaries, by the surpassing glory of his rays. Even so, as the
Father himself is One, his Word is also One, the perfect Son of that
perfect Father. Should any one object because they are not more, as
well might he complain that there are not many suns, or moons, or
worlds, and a thousand things beside; like the madman, who would
fain subvert the fair and perfect course of Nature herself. As in
the visible, so also in the spiritual world: in the one the same sun
diffuses his light throughout this material earth; in the other the
One Almighty Word of God illumines all things with invisible and
secret power. Again, there is in man one spirit, and one faculty of
reason, which yet is the active cause of numberless effects. The
same mind, instructed in many things, will essay to cultivate the
earth, to build and guide a ship, and construct houses: nay, the one
mind and reason of man is capable of acquiring knowledge in a
thousand forms:
the
same mind shall understand geometry and astronomy, and discourse on
the rules of grammar, and rhetoric, and the healing art. Nor will it
excel in science only, but in practice too: and yet no one has ever
supposed the existence of many minds in one human form, nor
expressed his wonder at a plurality of being in man, because he is
thus capable of varied knowledge. Suppose one were to find a
shapeless mass of clay, to mould it with his hands, and give it the
form of a living creature; the head in one figure, the hands and
feet in another, the eyes and cheeks in a third, and so to fashion
the ears, the mouth and nose, the breast and shoulders, according to
the rules of the plastic art. The result, indeed, is a variety of
figure, of parts and members in the one body; yet must we not
suppose it the work of many hands, but ascribe it entirely to the
skill of a single artist, and yield the tribute of our praise to him
who by the energy of a single mind has framed it all. The same is
true of the universe itself, which is one, though consisting of many
parts: yet surely we need not suppose many creative powers, nor
invent a plurality of gods. Our duty is to adore the all-wise and
all-perfect agency of him who is indeed the Power and the Wisdom of
God, whose undivided force and energy pervades and penetrates the
universe, creating and giving life to all things, and furnishing to
all, collectively and severally, those manifold supplies of which he
is himself the source. Even so one and the same impression of the
solar rays illumines the air at once, gives light to the eyes,
warmth to the touch, fertility to the earth, and growth to plants.
The same luminary constitutes the course of time, governs the
motions of the stars, performs the circuit of the heavens, imparts
beauty to the earth, and displays the power of God to all: and all
this he performs by the sole and unaided force of his own nature. In
like manner fire has the property of refining gold, and fusing lead,
of dissolving wax, of parching clay, and consuming wood; producing
these varied effects by one and the same burning power. So also the
Supreme Word of God, pervading all things, everywhere existent,
everywhere present in heaven and earth, governs and directs the
visible and invisible creation, the sun, the heaven, and the
universe itself, with an energy inexplicable in its nature,
irresistible in its effects. From him, as from an everlasting
fountain, the sun, the moon, and stars receive their light: and he
forever rules that heaven which he has framed as the fitting emblem
of his own greatness. The angelic and spiritual powers, the
incorporeal and intelligent beings which exist beyond the sphere of
heaven and earth, are filled by him with light and life, with wisdom
and virtue, with all that is great and good, from Iris own peculiar
treasures. Once more, with one and the same creative skill, he
ceases not to furnish the elements with substance, to regulate the
union and combinations, the forms and figures, and the innumerable
qualities of organized bodies; preserving the varied distinctions of
animal and vegetable life, of the rational and the brute creation;
and supplying all things to all with equal power: thus proving
himself the Author, not indeed of the seven-stringed lyre, but of
that system of perfect harmony which is the workmanship of the One
world-creating Word.
CHAPTER XIII.
AND
now let us proceed to explain the reasons for which this mighty Word
of God descended to dwell with men. Our ignorant and foolish race,
incapable of comprehending him who is the Lord of heaven and earth,
proceeding from his Father's Deity as from the supreme fountain,
ever present throughout the world, and evincing by the clearest
proofs his providential care for the interests of man; have ascribed
the adorable title of Deity to the sun, and moon, the heaven and the
stars of heaven. Nor did they stop here, but deified the earth
itself, its products, and the various substances by which animal
life is sustained, and devised images of Ceres, of Proserpine, of
Bacchus, and many such as these. Nay, they shrank not from giving
the name of gods to the very conceptions of their own minds, and the
speech by which those conceptions are expressed; calling the mind
itself Minerva, and language Mercury, and affixing the names of
Mnemosyne and the Muses to those faculties by means of which science
is acquired. Nor was even this enough: advancing still more rapidly
in the career of impiety and folly, they deified their own evil
passions, which it behooved them to regard with aversion, or
restrain by the principles of self-control. Their very lust and
passion and impure disease of soul, the members of the body which
tempt to obscenity, and even the very uncontrol in shameful
pleasure, they described under the titles of Cupid, Priapus, Venus,
and other kindred terms. Nor did they stop even here. Degrading
their thoughts of God to this corporeal and mortal life, they
deified their fellow-men, conferring the names of gods and heroes on
those who had experienced the common lot of all, and vainly
imagining that the Divine and imperishable Essence could frequent
the tombs and monuments of the dead. Nay, more than this: they paid
divine honors to animals of various species, and to the most noxious
reptiles: they felled trees, and excavated rocks; they provided
themselves with brass, and iron, and other metals, of which they
fashioned resemblances of the male and female human form, of beasts,
and creeping things; and these they made the objects of their
worship. Nor did this suffice. To the evil spirits themselves which
lurked within their statues, or lay concealed in secret and dark
recesses, eager to drink their libations, and inhale the odor of
their sacrifices, they ascribed the same divine honors. Once more,
they endeavored to secure the familiar aid of these spirits, and the
unseen powers which move through the tracts of air, by charms of
forbidden magic, and the compulsion of unhallowed songs and
incantations. Again, different nations have adopted different
persons as objects of their worship. The Greeks have rendered to
Bacchus, Hercules, AEsculapius, Apollo, and others who were mortal
men, the titles of gods and heroes. The Egyptians have deified Horus
and Isis, Osiris, and other mortals such as these. And thus they who
boast of the wondrous skill whereby they have discovered geometry,
astronomy, and the science of number, know not, wise as they are in
their own conceit, nor understand how to estimate the measure of the
power of God, or calculate his exceeding greatness above the nature
of irrational and mortal beings. Hence they shrank not from applying
the name of gods to the most hideous of the brute creation, to
venomous reptiles and savage beasts. The Phoenicians deified
Melcatharus, Usorus, and others; mere mortals, and with little claim
to honor: the Arabians, Dusaris and Obodas: the Getae, Zamolxis: the
Cicilians, Mopsus: and the Thebans, Amphiaraus: in short, each
nation has adopted its own peculiar deities, differing in no respect
from their fellow-mortals, being simply and truly men. Again, the
Egyptians with one consent, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, nay, every
nation beneath the sun, have united in worshiping the very parts and
elements of the world, and even the produce of the ground itself.
And, which is most surprising, though acknowledging the adulterous,
unnatural, and licentious crimes of their deities, they have not
only filled every city, and village, and district with temples,
shrines, and statues in their honor, but have followed their evil
example to the ruin of their own souls. We hear of gods and the sons
of gods described by them as heroes and good genii, titles entirely
opposed to truth, honors utterly at variance with the qualifies they
are intended to exalt. It is as if one who desired to point out the
sun and the luminaries of heaven, instead of directing his gaze
thitherward, should grope with his hands on the ground, and search
for the celestial powers in the mud and mire. Even so mankind,
deceived by their own folly and the craft of evil spirits, have
believed that the Divine and spiritual Essence which is far above
heaven and earth could be compatible with the birth, the affections,
and death, of mortal bodies here below. To such a pitch of madness
did they proceed, as to sacrifice the dearest objects of their
affection to their gods, regardless of all natural ties, and urged
by frenzied feeling to slay their only and best beloved children.
For what can be a greater proof of madness, than to offer human
sacrifice, to pollute every city, and even their own houses, with
kindred blood? Do not the Greeks themselves attest this, and is not
all history filled with records of the same impiety? The Phoenicians
devoted their best beloved and only children as an annual sacrifice
to Saturn. The Rhodians, on the sixth day of the month Metageitnion,
offered human victims to the same god. At Salamis, a man was pursued
in the temple of Minerva Agraulis and Diomede, compelled to run
thrice round the altar, afterwards pierced with a lance by the
priest, and consumed as a burnt offering on the blazing pile. In
Egypt, human sacrifice was most abundant. At Heliopolis three
victims were daily offered to Juno, for whom king Amoses, impressed
with the atrocity of the practice, commanded the substitution of an
equal number of waxen figures. In Chios, and again in Tenedos, a man
was slain and offered up to Omadian Bacchus. At Sparta they
immolated human beings to Mars. In Crete they did likewise, offering
human sacrifices to Saturn. In Laodicea of Syria a virgin was yearly
slain in honor of Minerva, for whom a hart is now the substitute.
The Libyans and Carthaginians appeased their gods with human
victims. The Dumateni of Arabia buried a boy annually beneath the
altar. History informs us that the Greeks without exception, the
Thracians also, and Scythians, were accustomed to human sacrifice
before they marched forth to battle. The Athenians record the
immolation of the virgin children of Leus, and the daughter of
Erechtheus. Who knows not that at this day a human victim is offered
in Rome itself at the festival of Jupiter Latiaris ? And these facts
are confirmed by the testimony of the most approved philosophers.
Diodorus, the epitomizer of libraries, affirms that two hundred of
the noblest youths were sacrificed to Saturn by the Libyan people,
and that three hundred more were voluntarily offered by their own
parents. Dionysius, the compiler of Roman history, expressly says
that Jupiter and Apollo demanded human sacrifices of the so-called
Aborigines, in Italy. He relates that on this demand they offered a
proportion of all their produce to the gods; but that, because of
their refusal to slay human victims, they became involved in
manifold calamities, from which they could obtain no release until
they had decimated themselves, a sacrifice of life which proved the
desolation of their country. Such and so great were the evils which
of old afflicted the whole human race. Nor was this the full extent
of their misery: they groaned beneath the pressure of other evils
equally numerous and irremediable. All nations, whether civilized or
barbarous, throughout the world, as if actuated by a demoniac
frenzy, were infected with sedition as with some fierce and terrible
disease: insomuch that the human family was irreconcilably divided
against itself; the great system of society was distracted and torn
asunder; and in every corner of the earth men stood opposed to each
other, and strove with fierce contention on questions of law and
government. Nay, more than this: with passions aroused to fury, they
engaged in mutual conflicts, so frequent that their lives were
passed as it were in uninterrupted warfare. None could undertake a
journey except as prepared to encounter an enemy in the very country
and villages the rustics girded on the sword, provided themselves
with armor rather than with the implements of rural labor, and
deemed it noble exploit to plunder and enslave any who belonged to a
neighboring state. Nay, more than this: from the fables they had
themselves devised respecting their own deities, they deduced
occasions for a vile and abandoned life, and wrought the ruin of
body and soul by licentiousness of every kind. Not content with
this, they even overstepped the bounds which nature had defined, and
together committed incredible and nameless crimes, "men with
men (in the words of the sacred writer) working un-seemliness, and
receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was
due." Nor did they stop even here; but perverted their natural
thoughts of God, and denied that the course of this world was
directed by his providential care, ascribing the existence and
constitution of all things to the blind operation of chance, or the
necessity of fate. Once more: believing that soul and body were
alike dissolved by death, they led a brutish life, unworthy of the
name: careless of the nature or existence of the soul, they dreaded
not the tribunal of Divine justice, expected no reward of virtue,
nor thought of chastisement as the penalty of an evil life. Hence it
was that whole nations, a prey to wickedness in all its forms, were
wasted by the effects of their own brutality: some living in the
practice of most vile and lawless incest with mothers, others with
sisters, and others again corrupting their own daughters. Some were
found who slew their confiding guests; others who fed on human
flesh; some strangled, and then feasted on, their aged men; others
threw them alive to dogs. The time would fail me were I to attempt
to describe the multifarious symptoms of the inveterate malady which
had asserted its dominion over the whole human race. Such, and
numberless others like these, were the prevailing evils, on account
of which the gracious Word of God, full of compassion for his human
flock, had long since, by the ministry of his prophets, and earlier
still, as well as later, by that of men distinguished by pious
devotion to God, invited those thus desperately afflicted to their
own cure; and had, by means of laws, exhortations, and doctrines of
every kind, proclaimed to man the principles and elements of true
godliness. But when for mankind, distracted and torn as I have said,
not indeed by wolves and savage beasts, but by ruthless and
soul-destroying spirits of evil, human power no longer sufficed, but
a help was needed superior to that of man; then it was that the Word
of God, obedient to his all-gracious Father's will, at length
himself appeared, and most willingly made his abode amongst us. The
causes of his advent I have already described, induced by which he
condescended to the society of man; not in his wonted form and
manner, for he is incorporeal, and present everywhere throughout the
world, proving by his agency both in heaven and earth the greatness
of his almighty power, but in a character new and hitherto unknown.
Assuming a mortal body, he deigned to associate and converse with
men; desiring, through the medium of their own likeness, to save our
mortal race.
CHAPTER XIV.
AND
now let us explain the cause for which the incorporeal Word of God
assumed this mortal body as a medium of intercourse with man. How,
indeed, else than in human form could that Divine and impalpable,
that immaterial and invisible Essence manifest itself to those who
sought for God in created and earthly objects, unable or unwilling
otherwise to discern the Author and Maker of all things? As a
fitting means, therefore, of communication with mankind, he assumed
a mortal body, as that with which they were themselves familiar; for
like, it is proverbially said, loves its like. To those, then, whose
affections were engaged by visible objects, who looked for gods in
statues and lifeless images, who imagined the Deity to consist in
material and corporeal substance, nay, who conferred on men the
title of divinity, the Word of God presented himself in this form.
Hence he procured for himself this body as a thrice-hallowed temple,
a sensible habitation of an intellectual power; a noble and most
holy form, of far higher worth than any lifeless statue. The
material and senseless image, fashioned by base mechanic hands, of
brass or iron, of gold or ivory, wood or stone, may be a fitting
abode for evil spirits: but that Divine form, wrought by the power
of heavenly wisdom, was possessed of life and spiritual being; a
form animated by every excellence, the dwelling-place of the Word of
God, a holy temple of the holy God. Thus the indwelling Word
conversed with and was known to men, as kindred with themselves; yet
yielded not to passions such as theirs, nor owned, as the natural
soul, subjection to the body. He parted not with aught of his
intrinsic greatness, nor changed his proper Deity. For as the
all-pervading radiance of the sun receives no stain from contact
with dead and impure bodies; much less can the incorporeal power of
the Word of God be injured in its essential purity, or part with any
of its greatness, from spiritual contact with a human body. Thus, I
say, did our common Saviour prove himself the benefactor and
preserver of all, displaying his wisdom through the instrumentality
of his human nature, even as a musician uses the lyre to evince his
skill. The Grecian myth tells us that Orpheus had power to charm
ferocious beasts, and tame their savage spirit, by striking the
chords of his instrument with a master hand: and this story is
celebrated by the Greeks, and generally believed, that an
unconscious instrument could subdue the untamed brute, and draw the
trees from their places, in obedience to its melodious power. But he
who is the author of perfect harmony, the all-wise Word of God,
desiring to apply every remedy to the manifold diseases of the souls
of men, employed that human nature which is the workmanship of his
own wisdom, as an instrument by the melodious strains of which he
soothed, not indeed the brute creation, but savages endued with
reason; healing each furious temper, each fierce and angry passion
of the soul, both in civilized and barbarous nations, by the
remedial power of his Divine doctrine. Like a physician of perfect
skill, he met the diseases of their souls who sought for God in
nature and in bodies, by a fitting and kindred remedy, and showed
them God in human form. And then, with no less care for the body
than the soul, he presented before the eyes of men wonders and
signs, as proofs of his Divine power, at the same time instilling
into their ears of flesh the doctrines which he himself uttered with
a corporeal tongue. In short, he performed all his works through the
medium of that body which he had assumed for the sake of those who
else were incapable of apprehending his Divine nature. In all this
he was the servant of his Father's will, himself remaining still the
same as when with the Father; unchanged in essence, unimpaired in
nature, unfettered by the trammels of mortal flesh, nor hindered by
his abode in a human body from being elsewhere present. Nay, at the
very time of his intercourse with men, he was pervading all things,
was with and in the Father, and even then was caring for all things
both in heaven and earth. Nor was he precluded, as we are, from
being present everywhere, or from the continued exercise of his
Divine power. He gave of his own to man, but received nothing in
return: he imparted of his Divine power to mortality, but derived no
accession from mortality itself. Hence his human birth to him
brought no defilement; nor could his impassible Essence suffer at
the dissolution of his mortal body. For let us suppose a lyre to
receive an accidental injury, or its chord to be broken; it does not
follow that the performer on it suffers: nor, if a wise man's body
undergo punishment, can we fairly assert that his wisdom, or the
soul within him, are maimed or burned. Far less can we affirm that
the inherent power of the Word sustained any detriment from his
bodily passion, any more than, as in the instance we have already
used, the solar rays which are shot from heaven to earth contract
defilement, though in contact with mire and pollution of every kind.
We may, indeed, assert that these things partake of the radiance of
the light, but not that the light is contaminated, or the sun
defiled, by this contact with other bodies. And indeed these things
are themselves not contrary to nature; but the Saviour, the
incorporeal Word of God, being Life and spiritual Light itself,
whatever he touches with Divine and incorporeal power must of
necessity become endued with the intelligence of light and life.
Thus, if he touch a body, it becomes enlightened and sanctified, is
at once delivered from all disease, infirmity, and suffering, and
that which before was lacking is supplied by a portion of his
fullness. And such was the tenor of his life on earth; now proving
the sympathies of his human nature with our own, and now revealing
himself as the Word of God: wondrous and mighty in his works as God;
foretelling the events of the far distant future; declaring in every
act, by signs, and wonders, and supernatural powers, that Word whose
presence was so little known; and finally, by his Divine teaching,
inviting the souls of men to prepare for those mansions which are
above the heavens.
CHAPTER XV.
WHAT
now remains, but to account for those which are the crowning facts
of all; I mean his death, so far and widely known, the manner of his
passion, and the mighty miracle of his resurrection after death: and
then to establish the truth of these events by the clearest
testimonies? For the reasons detailed above he used the
instrumentality of a mortal body, as a figure becoming his Divine
majesty, and like a mighty sovereign employed it as his interpreter
in his intercourse with men, performing all things consistently with
his own Divine power. Supposing, then, at the end of his sojourn
among men, he had by any other means suddenly withdrawn himself from
their sight, and, secretly removing that interpreter of himself, the
form which he had assumed, had hastened to flee from death, and
afterwards by his own act had consigned his mortal body to
corruption and dissolution: doubtless in such a case he would have
been deemed a mere phantom by all. Nor would he have acted in a
manner worthy of himself, had he who is Life, the Word, and the
Power of God, abandoned this interpreter of himself to corruption
and death. Nor, again, would his warfare with the spirits of evil
have received its consummation by conflict. with the power of death.
The place of his retirement must have remained unknown; nor would
his existence have been believed by those who had not seen him for
themselves. No proof would have been given that he was superior to
death nor would he have delivered mortality from the law of its
natural infirmity. His name had never been heard throughout the
world nor could he have inspired his disciples with contempt of
death, or encouraged those who. embraced his doctrine to hope for
the enjoyment of a future life with God. Nor would he have fulfilled
the assurances of his own promise, nor have accomplished the
predictions of the prophets concerning himself. Nor would he have
undergone the last conflict of all; for this was to be the struggle
with the power of death. For all these reasons, then, and inasmuch
as it was necessary that the mortal body which had rendered such
service to the Divine Word should meet with an end worthy its sacred
occupant, the manner of his death was ordained accordingly. For
since but two alternatives remained: either to consign his body
entirely to corruption, and so to bring the scene of life to a
dishonored close, or else to prove himself victorious over death,
and render mortality immortal by the act of Divine power; the former
of these alternatives would have contravened his own promise. For as
it is not the property of fire to cool, nor of light to darken, no
more is it compatible with life, to deprive of life, or with Divine
intelligence, to act in a manner contrary to reason. For how would
it be consistent,with reason, that he who had promised life to
others, should permit his own body, the form which he had chosen, to
perish beneath the power of corruption? That he who had inspired his
disciples with hopes of immortality, should yield this exponent of
his Divine counsels to be destroyed by death? The second alternative
was therefore needful I mean, that he should assert his dominion
over the power of death. But how? should this be a furtive and
secret act, or openly performed and in the sight of all? So mighty
an achievement, had it remained unknown and unrevealed, must have
failed of its effect as regards the interests of men; whereas the
same event, if openly declared and understood, would, from its
wondrous character, redound to the common benefit of all. With
reason, therefore, since it was needful to prove his body victorious
over death, and that not secretly but before the eyes of men, he
shrank not from the trial, for this indeed would have argued fear,
and a sense of inferiority to the power of death, but maintained
that conflict with the enemy which has rendered mortality immortal;
a conflict undertaken for the life, the immortality, the salvation
of all. Suppose one desired to show us that a vessel could resist
the force of fire; how could he better prove the fact than by
casting it into the furnace and thence withdrawing it entire and
unconsumed? Even thus the Word of God who is the source of life to
all, desiring to prove the triumph of that body over death which he
had assumed for man's salvation, and to make this body partake his
own life and immortality, pursued a course consistent with this
object. Leaving his body for a little while, and delivering it up to
death in proof of its mortal nature, he soon redeemed it from death,
in vindication of that Divine power whereby he has manifested the
immortality which he has promised to be utterly beyond the sphere of
death. The reason of this is clear. It was needful that l his
disciples should receive ocular proof of the certainty of that
resurrection on which he had taught them to rest their hopes as a
motive for rising superior to the fear of death. It was indeed most
needful that they who purposed to pursue a life of godliness should
receive a clear impression of this essential truth: more needful
still for those who were destined to declare his name in all the
world, and to communicate to mankind that knowledge of God which he
had before ordained for all nations. For such the strongest
conviction of a future life was necessary, that they might be able
with fearless and unshrinking zeal to maintain the conflict with
Gentile and polytheistic error: a conflict the dangers of which they
would never, have been prepared to meet, except as habituated to the
contempt of death. Accordingly, in arming his disciples against the
power of this last enemy, he delivered not his doctrines in mere
verbal precepts, nor attempted to prove the soul's immortality, by
persuasive and probable arguments; but displayed to them in his own
person a real victory over death. Such was the first and greatest
reason of our Saviour's conflict with the power of death, whereby he
proved to his disciples the nothingness of that which is the terror
of all mankind, and afforded a visible evidence of the reality of
that life which he had promised; presenting as it were a first-fruit
of our common hope, of future life and immortality in the presence
of God. The second cause of his resurrection was, that the Divine
power might be manifested which dwelt in his mortal body. Mankind
had heretofore conferred Divine honors on men who had yielded to the
power of death, and had given the titles of gods and heroes to
mortals like themselves. For this reason, therefore, the Word of God
evinced his gracious character, and proved to man his own
superiority over death, recalling his mortal body to a second life,
displaying an immortal triumph over death in the eyes of all, and
teaching them to acknowledge the Author of such a victory to be the
only true God, even in death itself. I may allege yet a third cause
of the Saviour's death. He was the victim offered to the Supreme
Sovereign of the universe for the whole human race: a victim
consecrated for the need of the human race, and for the overthrow of
the errors of demon worship. For as soon as the one holy and mighty
sacrifice, the sacred body of our Saviour, had been slain for man,
to be as a ransom for all nations, heretofore involved in the guilt
of impious superstition, thenceforward the power of impure and
unholy spirits was utterly abolished, and every earth-born and
delusive error was at once weakened and destroyed. Thus, then, this
salutary victim taken from among themselves, I mean the mortal body
of the Word, was offered on behalf of the common race of men. This
was that sacrifice delivered up to death, of which the sacred
oracles speak: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the
sin of the world." And again, as follows: "He was led as a
sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer is dumb."
They declare also the cause, saying: "He bears our sins, and is
pained for us: yet we accounted him to be in trouble, and in
suffering, and in affliction. But he was wounded on account of our
sins, and bruised because of our iniquities: the chastisement of our
peace was upon him; and by his bruises we were healed. All we as
sheep have gone astray; every one has gone astray in this way; and
the Lord gave him up for our sins.'' Such were the causes which led
to the offering of the human body of the Word of God. But forasmuch
as he was the great high priest, consecrated to the Supreme Lord and
King, and therefore more than a victim, the Word, the Power, and the
Wisdom of God; he soon recalled his body from the grasp of death,
presented it to his Father as the first-fruit of our common
salvation, and raised this trophy, a proof at once of his victory
over death and Satan, and of the abolition of human sacrifices, for
the blessing of all mankind.
CHAPTER XVI.
AND
now the time is come for us to proceed to the demonstration of these
things; if indeed such truths require demonstration, and if the aid
of testimony be needful to confirm the certainty of palpable facts.
Such testimony, however, shall be here given; and let it be received
with an attentive and gracious ear. Of old the nations of the earth,
the entire human race, were variously distributed into provincial,
national, and local governments, subject to kingdoms and
principalities of many kinds. The consequences of this variety were
war and strife, depopulation and captivity, which raged in country
and city with unceasing fury. Hence, too, the countless subjects of
history, adulteries, and rapes of women; hence the woes of Troy, and
the ancient tragedies, so known among all peoples. The origin of
these may justly be ascribed to the delusion of polytheistic error.
But when that instrument of our redemption, the thrice holy body of
Christ, which proved itself superior to all Satanic fraud, and free
from evil both in word and deed, was raised, at once for the
abolition of ancient evils, and in token of his victory over the
powers of darkness; the energy of these evil spirits was at once
destroyed. The manifold forms of government, the tyrannies and
republics, the siege of cities, and devastation of countries caused
thereby, were now no more, and one God was proclaimed to all
mankind. At the same time one universal power, the Roman empire,
arose and flourished, while the enduring and implacable hatred of
nation against nation was now removed: and as the knowledge of one
God, and one way of religion and salvation, even the doctrine of
Christ, was made known to all mankind; so at the self-same period,
the entire dominion of the Roman empire being vested in a single
sovereign, profound peace reigned throughout the world. And thus, by
the express appointment of the same God, two roots of blessing, the
Roman empire, and the doctrine of Christian piety, sprang up
together for the benefit of men. For before this time the various
countries of the world, as Syria, Asia, Macedonia, Egypt, and
Arabia, had been severally subject to different rulers. The Jewish
people, again, had established their dominion in the laud of
Palestine. And these nations, in every village, city, and district,
actuated by some insane spirit, were engaged in incessant and
murderous war and conflict. But two mighty powers, starting from the
same point, the Roman empire, which henceforth was swayed by a
single sovereign, and the Christian religion, subdued and reconciled
these contending elements. Our Saviour's mighty power destroyed at
once the many governments and the many gods of the powers of
darkness, and proclaimed to all men, both rude and civilized, to the
extremities of the earth, the sole sovereignty of God himself.
Meantime the Roman empire, the causes of multiplied governments
being thus removed, effected an easy conquest of those which yet
remained; its object being to unite all nations in one harmonious
whole; an object in great measure already secured, and destined to
be still more perfectly attained, even to the final conquest of the
ends of the habitable world, by means of the salutary doctrine, and
through the aid of that Divine power which facilitates and smooths
its way. And surely this must appear a wondrous fact to those who
will examine the question in the love of truth, and desire not to
cavil at these blessings. The falsehood of demon superstition was
convicted: the inveterate strife and mutual hatred of the nations
was removed: at the same time One God, and the knowledge of that
God, were proclaimed to all: one universal empire prevailed; and the
whole human race, subdued by the controlling power of peace and
concord, received one another as brethren, and responded to the
feelings of their common nature. Hence, as children of one God and
Father, and owning true religion as their common mother, they
saluted and welcomed each other with words of peace. Thus the whole
world appeared like one well-ordered and united family: each one
might journey unhindered as far as and whithersoever he pleased: men
might securely travel from West to East, and from East to West, as
to their own native country: in short, the ancient oracles and
predictions of the prophets were fulfilled, more numerous than we
can at present cite, and those especially which speak as follows
concerning the saving Word. "He shall have dominion from sea to
sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth." And again,
"In his days shall righteousness spring up; and abundance of
peace." "And they shall beat their swords into
ploughshares, and their spears into sickles: and nation shall not
take up sword against nation, neither shall they learn to war any
more.'' These words, predicted ages before in the Hebrew tongue,
have received in our own day a visible fulfillment, by which the
testimonies of the ancient oracles are clearly confirmed. And now,
if thou still desire more ample proof, receive it, not in words, but
from the facts themselves. Open the eyes of thine understanding
expand the gates of thought; pause awhile, and consider; inquire of
thyself as though thou weft another, and thus diligently examine the
nature of the case. What king or prince in any age of the world,
what philosopher, legislator, or prophet, in civilized or barbarous
lands, has attained so great a height of excellence, I say not after
death, but while living still, and full of mighty power, as to fill
the ears and tongues of all mankind with the praises of his name?
Surely none save our only Saviour has done this, when, after his
victory over death, he spoke the word to his followers, and
fulfilled it by the event, saying to them, "Go ye, and make
disciples of all nations in my name.'' He it was who gave the
distinct assurance, that his gospel must be preached in all the
world for a tes testimony to all nations, and immediately verified
his word: for within a little time the world itself was filled with
his doctrine. How, then, will those who caviled at the commencement
of my speech be able to reply to this? For surely the force of
ocular testimony is superior to any verbal argument. Who else than
he, with an invisible and yet potent hand, has driven from human
society like savage beasts that ever noxious and destructive tribe
of evil spirits who of old had made all nations their prey, and by
the motions of their images had practiced many a delusion among men?
Who else, beside our Saviour, by the invocation of his name, and by
unfeigned prayer addressed through him to the Supreme God, has given
power to banish from the world the remnant of those wicked spirits
to those who with genuine and sincere obedience pursue the course of
life and conduct which he has himself prescribed? Who else but our
Saviour has taught his followers to offer those bloodless and
reasonable sacrifices which are performed by prayer and the secret
worship of God? Hence is it that throughout the habitable world
altars are erected, and churches dedicated, wherein these spiritual
and rational sacrifices are offered as a sacred service by every
nation to the One Supreme God. Once more, who but he, with invisible
and secret power, has suppressed and utterly abolished those bloody
sacrifices which were offered with fire and smoke, as well as the
cruel and senseless immolation of human victims; a fact which is
attested by the heathen historians themselves? For it was not till
after the publication of the Saviour's Divine doctrine, about the
time of Hadrian's reign, that the practice of human sacrifice was
universally abandoned. Such and so manifest are the proofs of our
Saviour's power and energy after death. Who then can be found of
spirit so obdurate as to withhold his assent to the truth, and
refuse to acknowledge his life to be Divine? Such deeds as I have
described are done by the living, not the dead; and visible acts are
to us as evidence of those which we cannot see. It is as it were an
event of yesterday that an impious and godless race disturbed and
confounded the peace of human society, and possessed mighty power.
But these, as soon as life departed, lay prostrate on the earth,
worthless as dung, breathless, motionless, bereft of speech, and
have left neither fame nor memorial behind. For such is the
condition of the dead; and he who no longer lives is nothing: and
how can he who is nothing be capable of any act? But how shall his
existence be called in question, whose active power and energy are
greater than in those who are still alive? And though he be
invisible to the natural eye, yet the discerning faculty is not in
outward sense. We do not comprehend the rules of art, or the
theories of science, by bodily sensation; nor has any eye yet
discerned the mind of man. Far less, then, the power of God: and in
such cases our judgment is formed from apparent results. Even thus
are we bound to judge of our Saviour's invisible power, and decide
by its manifest effects whether we shall acknowledge the mighty
operations which he is even now carrying on to be the works of a
living agent; or whether they shall be ascribed to one who has no
existence; or, lastly, whether the inquiry be not absurd and
inconsistent in itself. For with what reason can we assert the
existence of one who is not? Since all allow that that which has no
existence is devoid of that power, and energy, and action, for these
are characteristics of the living, but the contrary is
characteristic of the dead.
CHAPTER XVII.
AND
now the time is come for us to consider the works of our Saviour in
our own age, and to contemplate the living operations of the living
God. For how shall we describe these mighty works save as living
proofs of the power of a living agent, who truly enjoys the life of
God? If any one inquire the nature of these works, let him now
attend. But recently a class of persons, impelled by furious zeal,
and backed by equal power and military force, evinced their enmity
against God, by destroying his churches, and overthrowing from their
foundations the buildings dedicated to his worship. In short, in
every way they directed their attacks against the unseen God, and
assailed him with a thousand shafts of impious words. But he who is
invisible avenged himself with an invisible hand. By the single fiat
of his will his enemies were utterly destroyed, they who a little
while before had been flourishing in great prosperity, exalted by
their fellow men as worthy of divine honor, and blessed with a
continued period of power and glory, so long as they had maintained
peace and amity with him whom they afterwards opposed. As soon,
however, as they dared openly to resist his will, and to set their
gods in array against him whom we adore; immediately, according to
the will and power of that God against whom their arms were raised,
they all received the judgment due to their audacious deeds.
Constrained to yield and flee before his power, together they
acknowledged his Divine nature, and hastened to reverse the measures
which they had before essayed. Our Saviour, therefore, without delay
erected trophies of this victory everywhere, and once more adorned
the world with holy temples and consecrated houses of prayer; in
every city and village, nay, throughout all countries, and even in
barbaric wilds, ordaining the erection of churches and sacred
buildings to the honor of the Supreme God and Lord of all. Hence it
is that these hallowed edifices are deemed worthy to bear his name,
and receive not their appellation from men, but from the Lord
himself, from which circumstances they are called churches (or
houses of the Lord). And now let him who will stand forth and tell
us who, after so complete a desolation, has restored these sacred
buildings from foundation to roof? Who, when all hope appeared
extinct, has caused them to rise on a nobler scale than heretofore?
And well may it claim our wonder, that this renovation was not
subsequent to the death of those adversaries of God, but whilst the
destroyers of these edifices were still alive; so that the
recantation of their evil deeds came in their own words and edicts.
And this they did, not in the sunshine of prosperity and ease (for
then we might suppose that benevolence or clemency might be the
cause), but at the very time that they were suffering under the
stroke of Divine vengeance. Who, again, has been able to retain in
obedience to his heavenly precepts, after so many successive storms
of persecution, nay, in the very crisis of danger, so many persons
throughout the world devoted to philosophy, and the service of God
and those holy choirs of virgins who had dedicated themselves to a
life of perpetual chastity and purity? Who taught them cheerfully to
persevere in the exercise of protracted fasting, and to embrace a
life of severe and consistent self-denial? Who has persuaded
multitudes of either sex to devote themselves to the study of sacred
things, and prefer to bodily nutriment that intellectual food which
is suited to the wants of a rational soul? Who has instructed
barbarians and peasants, yea, feeble women, slaves, and children, in
short, unnumbered multitudes of all nations, to live in the contempt
of death; persuaded of the immortality of their souls, conscious
that human actions are observed by the unerring eye of justice,
expecting God's award to the righteous and the wicked, and therefore
true to the practice of a just and virtuous life? For they could not
otherwise have persevered in the course of godliness. Surely these
are the acts which our Saviour, and he alone, even now performs. And
now let us pass from these topics, and endeavor by inquiries such as
these that follow to convince the objector's obdurate understanding.
Come forward, then, whoever thou art, and speak the words of reason:
utter, not the thoughts of a senseless heart, but those of an
intelligent and enlightened mind: speak, I say, after deep solemn
converse with thyself. Who of the sages whose names have yet been
known to fame, has ever been fore-known and proclaimed from the
remotest ages, as our Saviour was by the prophetic oracles to the
once divinely-favored Hebrew nation? But his very birth-place, the
period of his advent the manner of his life, his miracles, and words
and mighty acts, were anticipated and recorded in the sacred volumes
of these prophets. Again, who so present an avenger of crimes
against himself; so that, as the immediate consequence of their
impiety, the entire Jewish people were scattered by an unseen power,
their royal seat utterly removed, and their very temple with its
holy things levelled with the ground? Who, like our Saviour, has
uttered predictions at once concerning that impious nation and the
establishment of his church throughout the world, and has equally
verified both by the event? Respecting the temple of these wicked
men, our Saviour said: "Your house is left unto you desolate":
and, "There shall not be left one stone upon another in this
place, that shall not be thrown down." And again, of his church
he says: "I will build my church upon a rock, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it." How wondrous, too, must
that power be deemed which summoned obscure and unlettered men from
their fisher's trade, and made them the legislators and instructors
of the human race! And how clear a demonstration of his deity do we
find in the promise so well performed, that he would make them
fishers of men: in the power and energy which he bestowed, so that
they composed and published writings of such authority that they
were translated into every civilized and barbarous language,s were
read and pondered by all nations, and the doctrines contained in
them accredited as the oracles of God! How marvelous his pre
dictions of the future, and the testimony whereby his disciples were
forewarned that they should be brought before kings and rulers, and
should endure the severest punishments, not indeed as criminals, but
simply for their confession of his name! Or who shall adequately
describe the power with which he prepared them thus to suffer with a
willing mind, and enabled them, strong in the armor of godliness, to
maintain a constancy of spirit indomitable in the midst of conflict?
Or how shall we enough admire that steadfast firmness of soul which
strengthened, not merely his immediate followers,. but their
successors also, even to our present age, in the joyful endurance of
every infliction, and every form of torture, in proof of their
devotion to the Supreme God? Again, what monarch has prolonged his
government through so vast a series of ages? Who else has power to
make war after death, to triumph over every enemy, to subjugate each
barbarous and civilized nation and city, and to subdue his
adversaries with an invisible and secret hand? Lastly, and chief of
all, what slanderous lip shall dare to question that universal peace
to which we have already referred; established by his power
throughout the world For thus the mutual concord and harmony of all
nations coincided in point of time with the extension of our
Saviour's doctrine and preaching in all the world: a concurrence of
events predicted in long ages past by the prophets of God. The day
itself would fail me, gracious emperor, should I attempt to exhibit
in a single view those cogent proofs of our Saviour's Divine power
which even now are visible in their effects; for no human being, in
civilized or barbarous nations, has ever yet exhibited such power of
Divine virtue as our Saviour. But why do I speak of men, since of
the beings whom all nations have deemed divine, none has appeared on
earth with power like to his? If there has, let the fact now be
proved. Come forward, ye philosophers, and tell us what god or hero
has yet been known to fame, who has delivered the doctrines of
eternal life and a heavenly kingdom as he has done who is our
Saviour? Who, like him, has persuaded multitudes throughout the
world to pursue the principles of Divine wisdom, to fix their hope
on heaven itself, and look forward to the mansions there reserved
for them that love God? What god or hero in human form has ever held
his course from the rising to the setting sun, a course co-extensive
as it were with the solar light, and irradiated mankind with the
bright and glorious beams of his doctrine, causing each nation of
the earth to render united worship to the One true God? What god or
hero yet, as he has done, has set aside all gods and heroes among
civilized or barbarous nations has ordained that divine honors
should be withheld from all, and chimed obedience to that command:
and then, though singly conflicting with the power of all, has
utterly destroyed the opposing hosts; victorious over the gods and
heroes of every age, and causing himself alone, in every region of
the habitable world, to be acknowledged by all people as the only
Son of God? Who else has commanded the nations inhabiting the
continents and islands of this mighty globe to assemble weekly on
the Lord's day, and to observe it as a festival, not indeed for the
pampering of the body, but for the invigoration of the soul by
instruction in Divine truth? What god or hero, exposed, as our
Saviour was, to so sore a conflict, has raised the trophy of victory
over every foe? For they indeed, from first to last, unceasingly
assailed his doctrine and his people: but he who is invisible, by
the exercise of a secret power, has raised his servants and the
sacred houses of their worship to the height of glory. But why
should we still vainly aim at detailing those Divine proofs of our
Saviour's power which no language can worthily express; which need
indeed no words of ours, but themselves appeal in loudest tones to
those whose mental ears are open to the truth? Surely it is a
strange, a wondrous fact, unparalleled in the annals of human life;
that the blessings we have described should be accorded to our
mortal race, and that he who is in truth the only, the eternal Son
of God, should thus be visible on earth.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THESE
words of ours, however, [gracious] Sovereign, may well appear
superfluous in your ears, convinced as you are, by frequent and
personal experience, of our Saviour's Deity; yourself also, in
actions still more than words, a her-aid of the truth to all
mankind. Yourself, it may be, will vouchsafe at a time of leisure to
relate to us the abundant manifestations which your Saviour has
accorded you of his presence, and the oft-repeated visions of
himself which have at-tended you in the hours of sleep. I speak not
of those secret suggestions which to us are un-revealed: but of
those principles which he has instilled into your own mind, and
which are fraught with general interest and benefit to the human
race. You will yourself relate in worthy terms the visible
protection which your Divine shield and guardian has extended in the
hour of battle; the ruin of your open and secret foes; and his ready
aid in time of peril. To him you will ascribe relief in the midst of
perplexity; defence in solitude; expedients in extremity;
foreknowledge of events yet future; your fore thought for the
general weal; your power to investigate uncertain questions; your
conduct of most important enterprises; your administration of civil
affairs; your military arrangements, and correction of abuses in all
departments; your ordinances respecting public right; and, lastly,
your legislation for the common benefit of all. You will, it may be,
also detail to us those particulars of his favor which are secret to
us, but known to you alone, and treasured in your royal memory as in
secret storehouses. Such, doubtless, are the reasons, and such the
convincing proofs of your Saviour's power, which caused you to raise
that sacred edifice which presents to all, believers and unbelievers
alike, a trophy of his victory over death, a holy temple of the holy
God: to consecrate those noble and splendid monuments of immortal
life and his heavenly kingdom: to offer memorials of our Almighty
Saviour's conquest which well become the imperial dignity of him by
whom they are bestowed. With such memorials have you adorned that
edifice which witnesses of eternal life: thus, as it were in
imperial characters, ascribing victory and triumph to the heavenly
Word of God: thus proclaiming to all nations, with clear and
unmistakable voice, in deed and word, your own devout and pious
confession of his name.
See
https://people.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texts/eusebius/eusepraf.html
BÜYÜK
CONSTANTINUS
OĞUZ
TEKIN
Tarihçiler
tarafından Antikçağ’dan Ortaçağ’a
geçi dönemini ifade etmek için kullanılan
“Geç Antikçağ” belki en fazla Büyük
Constantinus’un adıyla birlikte anılmaktadır.
Onun döneminde Avrupa tarihini değitiren iki büyük
olay meydana geldi. Biri, Hıristiyanlara gösterilen hogörü
ve hatta imparatorun Hıristiyan olması, diğeri de
imparatorluğun geleneksel bakentinin Roma’dan Byzantion’a
taınmasıydı.
[...]
Res.
1: Büyük Constantinus’un babası I. Constantius
Chlorus’un (MS [293-]305-306) gümü sikke portresi.
Foto: Numismatica Ars Classica, Auction 62, 2086.
Res.
2: Büyük Constantinus’un annesi Helena’nın
altın sikke portresi. Foto: Gemini LLC, Auction VIII, 552.
Res.
3: Büyük Constantinus’un ei Fausta’nın
bronz sikke portresi. Foto: Gorny und Mosch Giessener Münzhandlung,
Auction 191, 242.
Res.
4: Büyük Constantinus’un (MS 307-337) caesar
unvanıyla Treveri’de basılmı gümü
sikkesi, 3,61 g. Ön yüzde Constantinus’un baı,
arka yüzde ordugâh kapısı betimlenmitir. Foto:
Nomos AG, Auction 3, 245.
Res.
5: Büyük Constantinus’un (MS 307-337) filius
augustorum unvanıyla Thessalonika’da basılmı
altın sikkesi. Ön yüzde imparatorun baı, arka
yüzde konsül elbiseli Constantinus ayakta betimlenmitir,
asa ve küre tutmaktadır. Foto: Ira and Larry Goldberg
Coins & Collectibles, Auction 67, 3295.
Res.
6: Büyük Constantinus’un (MS 307-337) Londinium’da
basılmı bronz sikkesi. Ön yüzde, Constantinus’un
baı, arka yüzde Concordia personifikasyonu ayakta ve her
bir elinde birer sancak tutarken betimlenmitir. Foto: Classical
Numismatic Group, Auction 87, 1157.
Res.
7: Büyük Constantinus’un (MS 307-337) Treveri’de
basılmı altın sikkesi solidus, 4,29 g Ön yüzde
imparatorun baı, arka yüzde zaferi simgeleyen Victoria
figürü, ayakta, çelenk ve palmiye dalı
tutarken betimlenmitir. Foto: Ira and Larry Goldberg Coins &
Collectibles, Auction 67, 3296.
Res.
8: Büyük Constantinus (MS 307-337), Constantinopolis’te
basılmı altın sikke (solidus), 4,38 g. Ön yüzde
imparatorun baı, arka yüzde dizlerinin üzerindeki
kalkana yazı yazan Victoria betimlenmitir. Foto: Ira and Larry
Goldberg Coins & Collectibles, Auction 62, 3212.
Res.
9: Büyük Constantinus (MS 307-337), Siscia (Sisak) darbı
altın madalyon, 6,84 g. Ön yüzde imparatorun sağa
dönük baı, arka yüzde omzunda trophe (zafer
ganimeti) taıyan imparator sağa doğru ilerlemekte,
sağ eliyle arkasındaki esiri sürüklerken sol
ayağıyla önde yerde oturan bir diğer esirin
üzerine basmaktadır. Foto: Classical Numismatic Group,
Auction 85, 1211.
Res.
10: Constantinopolis’in açılıı anısına
Constantinopolis’te basılmı gümü madalyon,
19,08 g. Ön yüzde imparatorun baı, arka yüzde
Constantinopolis Tykhesi elinde bereket boynuzu ile tahtında
oturmaktadır. Foto: Nomos AG, Auction 2, 219.
See
(60)
“Geç Antikçağ’ın En Büyük
İmparatoru: Büyük Constantinus”
CONSTANTINUS
THE GREAT
OĞUZ
TEKIN
The
term "Late Antiquity," used by historians to refer to the
transition period from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, is perhaps most
commonly associated with the name of Constantine the Great. Two
major events that changed European history occurred during his
reign. One was the tolerance shown to Christians and even the
emperor's conversion to Christianity, and the other was the transfer
of the empire's traditional capital from Rome to Byzantium.
Flavius
Valerius Constantinus, known in history as "Magnus
the Great," was born in Naissus (modern-day Nicaea) in Upper
Moesia on February 27, 273 CE, the son of Constantius I Chlorus
(Fig. 1) and Helena (Fig. 2). When Emperor Diocletian established
the tetrarchy system of government in 293 AD, Constantius sent his
son Constantine to Diocletian's eastern palace, where he was raised.
When Diocletian and Maximian abdicated in 305 AD, their Caesars,
Galerius and Constantius I, took their places. Thus, Constantine,
the subject of this article, took his place in history as the son of
an emperor. When Constantius the Elder died on July 25, 306, at
Eburacum in Britannia (present-day York), the soldiers proclaimed
his son Constantine as Augustus. However, Galerius, Augustus of the
East, rejected this title and instead granted him the title of
Caesar; He also appointed Severus as Augustus of the West. However,
when Constantine later married Fausta, the daughter of ex-Augustus
Maximianus (Fig. 3), Maximian accepted her title.
The
granting of the title (rank) of Caesar to Constantine was also
announced through coins. The rank of Caesar was also noted on coins
minted in Constantine's name between 306 and 309 AD. The obverse of
a silver coin (argenteus) minted in Treveri (present-day Trier)
bears the inscription CONSTANTINVS NOB C, with Constantine's head
facing right and wearing a laurel wreath (Fig. 4). NOB C is an
abbreviation for Nobilissimus Caesar (= noblest Caesar). The reverse
of the coin depicts the four-battleship gate (porta praetoria). The
inscription VIRTVS MILITVM around the perimeter means "virtue
of the army." PTR, located at the bottom of the reverse, is the
abbreviation of the mint where the coin was minted. The first
letter, P, is the abbreviation of the Latin pecunia, meaning money,
and TR is the abbreviation of Treveri (today Trier) (Fig. 1).
Including mint names on Roman coins was a practice that began in the
mid-3rd century AD.
In
309 AD, Constantine, along with Maximinus Daia, Caesar of the East,
was granted the title Filius Augustorum (son of emperors).
It
was emphasized that Constantine was the son of Constantius Chlorus,
Augustus of the West, and Maximinus Daia was the son of Galerius,
Augustus of the East. In reality, Galerius was not Maximinus' father
but adopted him in 305 AD. The fact that Constantine and Maximinus,
while still holding the rank of Caesar, were children of Augusti,
through coins, in a sense both preserved their existing status and
declared them legitimate heirs to the Roman throne. The obverse of a
gold coin (aureus) minted in Thessalonica (Thessaloniki) features
Constantine's head facing right, wearing a laurel wreath,
accompanied by the inscription CONSTANTINVS FIL AVGG (Fig. 5). FIL
AVGG is the abbreviation of Filius Augustorum, and the two Gs at the
end of the abbreviation refer to the two Augusti: Constantius
Chlorus and Galerius. The reverse of the coin depicts Constantine
standing to the left in consular garb, holding a scepter and a globe
symbolizing power. The surrounding inscription reads CONSVL DD NN,
where DD NN is the plural form of Dominus Noster (our lords).
However, neither Constantinus nor Maximinus Daia wanted to remain
simply Filius Augustorum any longer. About a year later, both
declared themselves augustus. The obverse of a bronze coin minted in
Londinium (now London) features the emperor's laurel-wreathed bust
facing left, holding a scepter with an eagle's head (Fig. 6). The
surrounding inscription reads CONSTANTINVS P F AVG, the emperor's
name and titles. PF stands for Pius Felix, meaning "pious,
successful, happy." AVG indicates that he now holds the title
of augustus. Indeed, from 310 AD onward, Constantine's coins bear
the abbreviation AVG (ustus) after the emperor's name. The standing
female figure on the reverse of the coin is the personification of
Concordia, the goddess of harmony. She holds a standard (signum) in
each hand. This depiction was included to emphasize the absence of
any conflict between the Roman armies and the harmony between the
soldiers. At the time, Constantine was at war with other Roman
claimants to the Roman throne, and peace between the Roman armies
was of the utmost importance. We understand that the coin was minted
in Londinium from the abbreviation PLN (= Pecunia Londinium) at the
bottom.
After
the death of Galerius, Augustus of the East, in 311 AD,
Constantineegan fighting against Maxentius, Maximian's son. In 312
AD, Constantine crossed the Alps and marched against Maxentius in
Rome. Maxentius left Rome and met Constantine's army outside the
city. In the battle near the Milvian Bridge, Constantine defeated
Maxentius' army (October 28, 312 AD); Maxentius died, and his memory
was cursed. Before the battle, Constantine had dreamed that if his
soldiers painted the monogram of Christ (khi and rho) on their
shields, they would win the war. Therefore, he ordered his soldiers
to paint this monogram on their shields. He believed this dream had
played a role in his victory. After this victory, the Roman Senate
confirmed Constantine's title as Augustus, granting him all imperial
authority and power. A gold coin minted in Trier commemorates
Constantine's victory over Maxentius (Fig. 7). The obverse features
the emperor's head, name, and titles, while the reverse features the
figure of Victoria, symbolizing victory, advancing to the left,
holding a palm branch in one hand and a wreath in the other.
The
surrounding inscription "VICTORIA CONSTANTINI AVG" alludes
to the emperor's victory over Maxentius.
This
gold coin is in the solidus denomination, which replaced the
previous aureus. After the Milvian War, the Romans introduced a new
gold coin. The aureus, worth 1/60th of a libra, was eventually
withdrawn from circulation and replaced by the solidus, worth 1/72nd
of a libra (Fig. 8). Thus, the gold coinage was lightened by 12%.
Nevertheless, the aureus continued to be minted for over 50 years.
Constantine also introduced a smaller coin worth 1.5 scripulum, the
semissis, which was half the value of the solidus. Constantine also
made some adjustments to the silver coinage. Silver coins called
siliqua and miliarense were minted. The ratio of siliqua to gold was
1/24, and the ratio of miliaranse to gold was 1/18.
1
gold solidus = 2 gold semissis = 18 silver milliaranse = 24 silver
siliqua
While
still holding the title of Caesar, Constantine reduced the weight of
the bronze coin, the follis, minted at the mints of Londinum
(London), Lugdunum (modern-day Lyon), and Treveri (modern-day
Trier); When he assumed the title of augustus, he further reduced
the weight of the follis. In 313 AD, Licinius married Constantine's
half-sister, Constantia, in Milan, cementing the closeness between
Constantine and Licinius. The two augusts, Constantine and Licinius,
issued a decree of complete toleration for Christians (the Edict of
Milan) in Milan (early 313 AD). Although the publication of the
decree is a fact, the exact location of its publication in Milan is
debatable due to the lack of conclusive evidence. However, relations
between Constantine and Licinius soon soured, and war broke out
between them. In the battles at Hadrianopolis (July 3, 324 AD) and
Chrysopolis (September 18, 324 AD), Constantine triumphed over
Licinius and became the sole ruler of the empire. We see that
Constantine led successful campaigns against the Goths, Alamannians,
and Sarmatians, and these victories were reflected on his coins
(Fig. 9). The most significant event following Licinius's removal
was undoubtedly the transfer of the empire's capital from Rome to
Byzantium. The new capital was renamed Constantinople after the
emperor. Many new structures were built in the city, and monuments
were erected. The emperor's crowned statue was brought from Rome to
Constantinople and placed atop the monumental column in the Forum of
Constantine (today's Çemberlitaş). Constantine also
established a mint in the new capital city to mint Roman coins.
Therefore, by the time of Constantine the Great (326 AD), the name
Constantinople had already begun to be used in its abbreviated form
(CON) on coins to indicate the place of minting. With the official
opening of the capital on May 11, 330 AD, coins minted in
Constantinople now bore the inscription CONSTANTINOPOLIS on the
obverse, in addition to the abbreviation CON. This inscription
appeared not only on coins minted in Constantinople but also on
coins minted at other mints throughout the empire. Therefore, it is
clear that the name Constantinople was used while Emperor
Constantine was still alive.
The
obverse of a silver coin minted in Constantinople to commemorate the
opening of the new capital (330 AD) depicts the emperor with a
jeweled diadem on his head (Fig. 10). The reverse of the coin
depicts the Tyche of Constantinople seated on her throne, crowned
with a fortification and holding a cornucopia. A ship's prow rests
at her feet. The vertical inscription on either side of the Tyche
reads D N CONSTANTINVS MAX TRIVMP AVG. The inscription can be
translated into Turkish as "Our Lord Constantine, Most
Victorious Augustus." Constantine the Great died in Nicomedia
(Izmit) on May 22, 337, before he could carry out his planned
campaign against the Sassanids; his body was brought to
Constantinople and buried in the place where the Church of the Holy
Apostles is located (Fatih Mosque); he left behind three sons
(Constantinos II, II. Co. Constantius and Constans) remained.
Fig.
1: Silver coin portrait of Constantius I Chlorus (AD [293-]305-306),
father of Constantine the Great. Photo: Numismatica Ars Classica,
Auction 62, 2086.
Fig.
2: Gold coin portrait of Helena, mother of Constantine the Great.
Photo: Gemini LLC, Auction VIII, 552.
Fig.
3: Bronze coin portrait of Fausta, wife of Constantine the Great.
Photo: Gorny und Mosch Giessener Münzhandlung, Auction 191,
242.
Fig.
4: Silver coin of Constantine the Great (AD 307-337) with the title
of Caesar, minted in Treveri, 3.61 g. The obverse depicts the head
of Constantine, and the reverse depicts the camp gate. Photo: Nomos
AG, Auction 3, 245.
Fig.
5: A gold coin of Constantine the Great (307-337 AD) minted in
Thessalonica with the title filius augustorum. The obverse depicts
the head of the emperor, and the reverse depicts Constantine
standing in consular attire, holding a scepter and orb.
Photo:
Ira and Larry Goldberg Coins & Collectibles, Auction 67, 3295.
Fig.
6: A bronze coin of Constantine the Great (307-337 AD) minted in
Londinium. The obverse depicts the head of Constantine, and the
reverse depicts the personification of Concordia standing, holding a
banner in each hand. Photo: Classical Numismatic Group, Auction 87,
1157.
Fig.
7: Gold coin of Constantine the Great (307-337 AD), minted in
Treveri, solidus, 4.29 g. The obverse depicts the emperor's head,
and the reverse depicts Victoria, a figure symbolizing victory,
standing and holding a wreath and a palm branch. Photo: Ira and
Larry Goldberg Coins & Collectibles, Auction 67, 3296.
Fig.
8: Gold coin of Constantine the Great (307-337 AD), minted in
Constantinople (solidus), 4.38 g. The obverse depicts the emperor's
head, and the reverse depicts Victoria, kneeling and writing on a
shield. Photo: Ira and Larry Goldberg Coins & Collectibles,
Auction 62, 3212.
Fig.
9: Constantine the Great (307-337 AD), Siscia (Sisak) minted gold
medal, 6.84 g. On the obverse, the emperor's head faces right. On
the reverse, the emperor, carrying a trophy (victory spoils) on his
shoulder, advances to the right, dragging a captive behind him with
his right hand while stepping on another captive seated on the
ground in front with his left foot. Photo: Classical Numismatic
Group, Auction 85, 1211.
Fig.
10: Silver medal minted in Constantinople to commemorate the opening
of Constantinople, 19.08 g. On the obverse, the emperor's head; on
the reverse, the Tyche of Constantinople, seated on her throne,
holding a horn of plenty. Photo: Nomos AG, Auction 2, 219.
Helena
on the Move
The
Makings of a Medieval Saint Relics played a key role as early
Christian veneration of the martyrs transformed and developed into
the medieval cult of the saints.
Curiously,
these material manifestations of the living presence of the saints
on earth are remarkably uncommunicative objects by themselves. As
has been argued by Patrick Geary, a relic has few properties that
can directly convey a specific message compared to a text, an image,
or an artwork.
The
cultural significance of relics almost entirely depends on the
external forces of a good story, a tradition to supply meaning.
Hagiography makes up for what relics lack: clear links with the
saint they represent, with communities of the faithful, and with the
geographical locations where relics offer contact with the sacred.
This
essay investigates the role of narratives about relic mobility in
the creation of medieval sainthood. It pays particular attention to
relics’ connections with history and specific geographical
locations, taking as its case-study Helena Augusta (c. 250–330),
mother of Constantine the Great.
Today
Helena’s saintly status within Roman Catholicism is a widely
accepted given; so much so, that assumptions about the universality
of her saintly status are often erroneously projected back onto the
late antique and medieval period.
In
reality Helena’s sainthood developed through a long and
meandering process which gained speed only many centuries after her
lifetime and lasted well into the seventeenth century. What little
we know about the historical empress became interwoven with the
legend(s) of the finding of the true cross soon after her death, but
this did not immediately result in her sainthood in Western
Christianity. Only from the ninth century onward did Helena become
venerated as a saint at an increasing number of regional cults, most
notably in the Rhineland. There are very few signs that Helena was
venerated in Rome until the late fifteenth century, but once her
cult caught on there during the course of the sixteenth century, the
omphalic quality of the eternal city seems to have eventually
ensured her status as one of the most important female saints of
early modernity.
The
aim of this essay is to reconstruct Helena’s route to becoming
a key figure in Catholicism — honoured with a chapel and a
colossal statue at Bernini’s monumental crossing at St Peter’s
in Rome in the 1630s — by analysing the medieval history of
her route to sainthood.
While
the facts about her life, her role in the true cross legend, her
cult in the Rhineland, and her legend in Britain have been studied,
it remains unclear how and why Helena eventually became ever more
universally venerated. The inventio crucis legend is often (somewhat
vaguely) invoked as explaining her sainthood, but it does not
provide clear answers.
Hagiographical
mobility and relic mobility are crucial for understanding the
development of Helena’s cult in the West: the potential of her
story and her relics to cross boundaries and to (re-)anchor at
different locations.
In
order to reconstruct Helena’s trajectory to sainthood —
from regional, to Roman, to universally revered Roman Catholic saint
— I first examine the life of the historical empress, giving
particular attention to the places which she visited and to how her
travels were first construed as pious mobility. The following
section then elucidates how the finding of the cross legend
magnified both her (perceived) historicity and her piety (and pious
mobility), without making her a saint. The third and fourth sections
analyse how the core of Helena’s medieval cult was first
created and was fundamentally characterized by narratives about
relic mobility and border crossing. As it developed through a
complex conversation between various locations, historical periods,
literary forms, and (holy) objects, and by their transmission across
Europe, her cult crossed numerous boundaries — both
geographical and temporal. Helena’s relics acquired
significance as they moved from place to place, and once she became
known as a supplier of Holy Land relics, links with Rome and
Jerusalem became increasingly important, too. By foregrounding the
interplay between holy objects and hagiography, a versatile,
transregional paradigm of sainthood emerges. Helena’s
circuitous path to sainthood showcases the dynamism of hagiography
as an expansive generic category which encompasses dialogues between
various types of texts, including secular and sacred historiography.
It
also emphasizes the importance of the interactions between these
texts and material culture (holy objects) as fundamental for the
business of medieval saint making.
The
Historical Helena
Helena’s
historicity provided a foundation for her cult as it developed in
later centuries. Historicity helped authenticate her as a saint. A
real-life Christian empress, whose ties with places such as Rome and
Jerusalem were backed up by respected historical writings, could
make for a much more convincing case. The historical facts about
Helena have, with time, become so entangled with historical legend
that (parts of) the legend have come to be — and sometimes
still are — accepted as historical truth. This has been
discussed in several modern analyses of Helena’s life
structured along the lines of ‘fact and fiction’ and
‘truth and legend’.
It
is worthwhile to briefly retrace the steps of this literature and to
establish the historical facts about her life before moving on to
discuss its legendary aspects. Only by first peeling off and then
reconstructing step by step the intricate tissue of multiple legends
that surround Helena’s person does it become possible to bring
into focus the process of hagiographic innovation which is the
subject of this essay.
We
have little solid information about the historical Helena. Her place
of birth is unknown. Although several suggestions have been made —
Drepanum (later called Helenopolis [Hersek, modern-day Turkey]),
various towns in Mesopotamia, Edessa, Trier, and Colchester —
none of these can be incontrovertibly substantiated.
The
approximate years of her birth and death (c. 248/249–c.
328/329) can be reconstructed based on her age (around 80) at the
time of her death, which occurred shortly after her journey to the
eastern provinces of the empire (c. 326–328), as well as the
sudden cessation in the issue of Helena-coinage after the spring of
329.
Contemporary
sources say nothing about her social origins, while later sources
suggest these were humble.
She
may have been working at an inn, possibly as a prostitute, when she
met Constantine’s father Constantius Chlorus (c. 250–306)
in the 270s. The couple seems to have had a stable relationship,
which probably consisted of concubinage, an arrangement which was
usual for couples of unequal social standing. Constantine was born
at Naissus (Nis, modern-day Serbia) on 27 February 272 or 273. In
289 Constantius married the more well-connected Theodora, a lady of
imperial standing, and Helena’s whereabouts cannot be inferred
until Constantine’s succession of his father in 306. She
probably then joined her son’s court, which first mainly
resided in Trier and later in Rome. Despite the suggestions of later
traditions, no substantial evidence of Helena’s presence in
Trier survives.
As
for Rome, sometime after 312 Helena owned a considerable estate
southeast of the city, the fundus Laurentus, which included an
imperial residence, the Sessorian palace, where she likely resided.
She was certainly buried in the mausoleum on the Via Labicana,
located on the same fundus. Four inscriptions recovered in this area
attest to Helena’s involvement with the water supply and
reconstruction of a bathing complex known as the Thermae Helenae.
Helena’s
status increased significantly toward the end of her life. A small
number of coins, minted in Thessalonica with Helena’s image
and the inscription NF, suggest that she had received the title
Nobilissima Femina, indicating membership in the imperial family. It
is not clear when she received this title or when these coins were
minted.
In
324, the year that Constantine became sole emperor, he granted both
his wife Fausta and his mother the title of Augusta, symbolically
sharing his power with them. Helena was thus raised to the status of
empress. Large numbers of Helena Augusta-coins were minted all over
the empire, typically with the legend securitas reipublicae.
Combined with evidence from inscriptions, it appears that Helena had
been allotted an important role in imperial propaganda as the
matriarch of a stable dynasty and state.
Appearances
of stability were soon afterward seriously threatened when
Constantine had his eldest son Crispus and his wife Fausta put to
death in 326. The reasons behind these executions remain unclear;
there is no evidence that Helena had a hand in them.
This
familial turmoil directly precedes the act for which Helena is most
famous, her journey to the eastern provinces of the empire in c.
326/328.
The
only contemporary source that mentions her trip is the Life of
Constantine by Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea (c. 260/265–340).
After discussing the discovery of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem
and Constantine’s orders to erect a church over it, Eusebius
briefly describes Helena’s visit to the east, presenting it as
primarily motivated by religious reasons. He suggests that she
founded the Nativity Basilica in Bethlehem and a church on the Mount
of Olives and describes her munificence to the inhabitants of the
eastern provinces, especially the needy. Eusebius praises Helena’s
piety profusely and describes how Constantine honoured her memory
with a stately burial in ‘the imperial city’ (meaning
Rome, as elsewhere in the Life, but this would soon lead to enduring
confusion with Constantinople).
15
Based on Eusebius’s account, Helena’s journey has often
been interpreted as a pilgrimage, motivated by personal piety.
Eusebius’s text cannot be taken at face value, however; it is
a highly partial panegyric of the first Christian emperor and his
pro-Christian policies.
It
casts Helena as the exemplary and pious Christian dowager empress in
order to further accentuate her son’s prowess and to celebrate
his Church-building in the east. Several interpretations have
emphasized the public (non-personal) nature of Helena’s
journey: an affair of state aimed at garnering support for the
emperor in the east.
Its
religious overtones apart, Eusebius’s account coincides with
all the conventional trappings of an iter principis or imperial
progress: the empress distributed gifts to the people and the
troops, sponsored public building activities, and granted pardons.
This
much can be reliably established about Helena without
overinterpreting or projecting back later traditions to the
historical person. While she was not venerated as a saint or
credited with miraculous deeds during her lifetime, it is possible
to identify historical aspects which were to become important
ingredients for her later legendary persona. Helena’s
historicity — as empress and mother of the first Christian
emperor of Rome — could lend credibility to later traditions.
Moreover, her documented presence at the important religious centres
of Rome and Jerusalem could provide a basis not only for veneration
in those cities, but also for cults further afield, wishing to
invoke their sacred grandeur. Eusebius’s account of her
journey to the eastern provinces facilitated such long-distance
associations, since he had — crucially — interpreted
Helena’s trip as a form of pious mobility.
Mobility
would go on to become a defining feature of her cult. Helena first
became a saint through a narrative about relic mobility: the
translatio of her relics from Rome to France. Later on Eusebius’s
piously travelling empress morphed into a major supplier of Holy
Land and other relics. Yet the historical empress Helena could only
transform into a travelling, relic dispensing saint after several
layers of legend had been added to her story.
The
Inventio Legend: From Legendary Founder to Auxiliary
The
next, posthumous step in Helena’s route to sainthood was
shaped by the legend of the finding or inventio of the true cross.
Its main holy protagonist is the cross; however, as its finder,
Helena eventually also acquired a degree of saintliness by
association. The medieval inventio crucis legend and the connected
veneration of the cross were extremely widespread, complex, and
diverse phenomena. I briefly analyse the legend’s development
in Western Christianity to illustrate how Helena — hitching a
lift with the inventio legend — became a widely known
quasi-saintly character. While the legend did not transform her into
a saint directly, it did fortify the foundations for her later
sainthood by magnifying both her (perceived) historicity and her
exceptional piety. My discussion also aims to facilitate
differentiation between Helena as cross-finder (an essentially
auxiliary character) and Helena as a saint in her own right, with
her own vita, relics, and geographically anchored cults (which will
be discussed in the next sections). Veneration of the cross
apparently preceded the legend about its miraculous discovery. Its
cult was first recorded by Cyril (315–386), Bishop of
Jerusalem, who around 340 wrote in his Catecheses that wood of the
cross was present and venerated in Jerusalem (presumably at the Holy
Sepulchre basilica), and that from there pieces of it had spread all
over the world. In 351 Cyril wrote a letter to Constantine’s
son, Constantius II (317–361), informing the emperor about the
appearance of a luminous cross in the sky above Jerusalem, also
mentioning the discovery of the cross in the same city in the times
of the emperor’s father. Helena is not mentioned.
For
comparison’s sake, we can recall that Eusebius’s Life of
Constantine had neither referred to either (the finding of) the
cross, or suggested any connection between it and Helena.
In
any case, several other witnesses confirm that the cult of the cross
had begun in, and was spreading from, Jerusalem during the second
half of the fourth century.
The
earliest written evidence of the inventio legend which also involves
Helena is found not in a hagiographical text (narrowly defined), but
in a funeral oration: De Obitu Theodosii Oratio (395), which was
delivered by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (c. 340–397) forty days
after the death of Emperor Theodosius I (r. 379–395). Towards
the end, Ambrose imagines that Theodosius can now greet Constantine
in heaven, thanks to the latter’s deathbed baptism and having
left a ‘heritage of faith to princes’. Ambrose then
refers to Zachariah 14. 20 and states that Helena fulfilled this
prophecy. She travelled to Jerusalem and confronted Satan on
Golgotha, accusing him of hiding the cross. By finding it she was
the second to beat Satan (the first being Mary, by giving birth to
Christ). Helena found three crosses and identified Christ’s
cross (the middle one, marked with the titulus crucis). She also
looked for and found the crucifixion nails, which she has worked
into the bridle of Constantine’ horse and the emperor’s
diadem. According to Ambrose the nail in the diadem then transformed
Roman emperors from persecutors to preachers of the Christian faith,
and the nail in the bridle reined them in as Christians, thus
fulfilling the prophecy in Zachariah 14. 20.
Ambrose
thus attributes the consolidation of Christianity as the hereditary
faith of the emperors to Helena.
His
extremely favourable account of Helena (overcoming Satan, comparable
with Mary, founding the Christian empire) was likely directed at the
women of the late Theodosius’s court.
As
co-foundress of the Christian
Empire,
Helena indeed went on to become a powerful and empowering model for
Byzantine imperial ladies.
The
initial lustre of Ambrose’s Helena wanes in subsequent
traditions, while at the same time the perceived historicity of the
legend increased, since it was mostly discussed in historiographical
texts. The next to record the inventio legend is the monk and
theologian Rufinus of Acquileia (c. 345–411) in book X of his
Church History (c. 402). In this version, visions inspire Helena to
travel to Jerusalem, where a heavenly sign helps her find three
crosses. To identify the right one, Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem,
tests them on a dying woman, who is miraculously cured after
touching Christ’s cross. Helena then builds a church on the
site of discovery and sends a part of the cross to Constantine (the
other part remains in Jerusalem), as well as the nails (for his
helmet and horse’s bridle). She hosts and serves at a banquet
for holy virgins. Rufinus may have translated/adopted the story from
Bishop Gelasius of Caesarea’s now lost Church History (c.
390), written at the request of this cousin Cyril, bishop of
Jerusalem, which would point to a Levantine origin for the inventio
legend.
However,
adding Helena to the legend may have also been an original touch by
Rufinus himself. Combined with the early interest in Helena as
cross-finder shown by Ambrose of Milan (in 395), Paulinus of Nola
(in 403), and Sulpicius Severus (in c. 403), a Western origin also
becomes conceivable.
At
any rate, the legend (with slight variations) also became known in
the East, judging from the fifth-century Greek Church Histories by
Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, and Theoderet of Cyrrhus.
On
the basis of these histories, the Roman statesman and scholar
Cassiodorus (c. 485–c. 585) compiled the influential Historia
Tripartita, ensuring that a synthesis of these three Greek accounts
of the inventio legend became widespread in the Latin west Europe.
Although
the earliest versions of the legend feature Helena as cross-finder,
she was not the only character to play that part. The slightly later
Protonike legend, first recorded in Syriac, has a fictitious empress
called Protonike find the cross.
Around
415–440, a third version of the legend appeared: the Judas
Cyriacus legend. Although the oldest surviving witness of this
legend is recorded in Syrian, it was likely first composed in Greek
in Jerusalem.
In
the Cyriacus legend Helena interrogates representatives of the
Jewish population of Jerusalem about various scriptural prophecies,
particularly a certain Judas, whom she eventually pressures into
finding the cross for her through his prayer. Three crosses are
unearthed, the true one identified by testing on a dead youth who is
revived. Helena builds a church on the site of discovery.
Judas
is baptized Cyriacus. When Helena looks for the nails, they are
again revealed by Cyriacus’s prayer. The nails are used for
the bridle of the emperor’s horse and kept as imperial
trophies.
In
this anti-Jewish version of the legend the main character is Judas,
an example of a Jew converting to Christianity, rather than Helena.
The
Judas Cyriacus legend eventually became the most widespread version
in the medieval West, thanks to initial dissemination via
influential sources like the Roman Book of the Popes or Liber
pontificalis and Gregory of Tours’s Ten Books of Histories, as
well as later via the Legenda aurea by Jacopo da Varazze (1229–1289)
(see below).
Helena’s
occasional appearance in legends about other historical persons,
such as myths about Constantine and/or Silvester (Bishop of Rome in
314–335), further magnified the (perceived) historicity of her
persona.
These
legends could add new details to her biography. For example,
according to the Silvester legend Helena was Jewish. In it,
Constantine is afflicted by leprosy. He refuses the recommended
treatment of bathing in infants’ blood, opting instead for
baptism by Silvester, which cures him and convinces him to convert.
Helena initially opposes his conversion, favouring Judaism instead,
but eventually also converts.
The
inclusion of both the Silvester and the (Cyriacus) inventio legends
in the Legenda Aurea (1260s) compiled by Jacopo da Varazze firmly
established Helena’s status as a major saintly supporting
actress. This extremely popular compendium (transmitted through
about 1000 Latin and 500 vernacular manuscripts) does not discuss
Helena as one of its 153 saints, but she is briefly mentioned in the
readings about the birth of Christ, Silvester, Epiphany, and the
exaltation of the cross.
Helena
figures most extensively in its inventio crucis legend, although she
is arguably not the most important character in Da Varrazze’s
version.
Constantine
sends her to Jerusalem to find the cross. Once there she rounds up
all Jewish men, threatening to burn them all if they do not help
her, and Judas is handed over to her. Helena starves Judas in a pit
for a week, after which he agrees to help. Judas’s prayer
reveals the cross (and later the nails), he accepts baptism, and
becomes bishop of Jerusalem. Helena sends a piece of the cross to
her son, the rest remaining where it was found. Two nails are worked
into the emperor’s bridle, a third in a statue of Constantine
in Rome, and a fourth is cast into the Adriatic to pacify the sea.
In
the Legenda Helena has little agency: she carries out Constantine’s
orders, while Judas Cyriacus performs the miraculous findings. This
is also, by and large, the Helena that made her way into various
visual representations of the inventio legend, including monumental
cycles like Piero della Francesco’s inventio-cycle at Arezzo.
In
visual representations Helena often (but not always) appears haloed,
and the Golden Legend occasionally calls her a saint.
Yet
it was not the inventio legend that initially turned Helena into a
saint, although it did play an important role in that trajectory.
Since the legend was the stuff of church histories, it did magnify
her historicity as well as her piety. It transformed Eusebius’s
piously travelling empress into a lady who purposefully went to the
Holy Land to recover the cross. Moreover, it first added the
dimension of relics to Helena’s story. The relics she was said
to have collected in the Holy Land do not (yet) travel far in the
inventio legend: they stay in Jerusalem, go to the bottom of the
sea, or are worked into objects for Helena’s son to support
the Christian empire (according to the version of the Golden
Legend). At a later stage, Helena’s potential as a mobile,
travelling character who could supply Holy Land relics would become
a central feature of her cult in Western Europe. This will be
explored in the final portion of this essay, but first we examine
how Helena did in fact become a saint.
Helena’s
Move to Sainthood
Narratives
about relic mobility and relics’ meaningful connection to
geographical place are crucial for understanding how Helena’s
cult first began. Pre-existing legend/history also mattered: the
inventio- and related legends established Helena’s image as a
devout historical figure, but perceived ‘history’ by
itself was not enough and it initially did not lead to veneration in
the West. In what follows I trace the (legendary) fate of Helena’s
own bodily remains in order to elucidate how stories about relic
mobility and the crossing of boundaries were crucial for the
creation of her sainthood. The hagiographical narrative in question
did not concern a cross relic, but rather Helena’s body, which
had been interred in Rome.
Following
her death in c. 328–329 Helena was buried in the imperial
mausoleum just outside Rome at the third mile of the Via Labicana
(situated on the fundus Laurentus formerly owned by herself). While
both this mausoleum and the porphyry sarcophagus in which she was
buried may have originally been intended for a male member of the
imperial family, it is clear that she was buried here.
This
is confirmed by sources such as the Liber Pontificalis which reports
that during the pontificate of Silvester (314–335) Constantine
built a basilica for Marcellinus and Petrus `ubi mater ipsius
sepulta est Helena Augusta, via Lavicana millario III’. He
also endowed the site with precious gifts ‘for the love of his
mother and the veneration of the saints’.
Three
seventh-century pilgrims’ guides to Rome also link this
location to Helena, referring to it as ad Helenam, ecclesia Helenae
and sancta Helena in sua rotunda; ‘church of Saint Helena
(Sancta Elena), where her body lies’; and ‘Beata
Helena’.
The
epithets sancta and beata in these seventh-century guides have been
interpreted by Seelinger as possibly already indicating saintly
holiness instead of imperial titulature, especially combined with a
Greek graffito at the site which invokes ‘Saint Helena’.
This
may possibly suggest veneration of Helena in Rome while the city was
under Byzantine overlordship. However, if Helena was venerated in
Rome during the early Middle Ages, her cult does not seem to have
been embraced with much enthusiasm. This is corroborated by
liturgical sources: Helena is not included in the Roman Canons of
the Mass. She does not appear in liturgies of the cross or in
martyrologies until the ninth century; these later inclusions stem
from her Carolingian cult.
Even
more telling is the obscure fate of Helena’s remains in and
around Rome. The status of the mausoleum-cum-catacombs complex (also
called inter duos lauros) at the Via Labicana gradually declined.
In
774 Pope Hadrian I still ordered a renovation of the cimiterium of
Marcellinus and Petrus and during the pontificate of Stephen IV
(816–817) new gold decorations for the basilica beatae Helenae
are reported.
The
translatio of the relics of Marcellinus and Petrus to Seligenstadt
in 827, famously ordered and recorded as a furtum sacrum by the
Carolingian court historian Einhard (c. 775–840), marks a
turning point in the prestige of the complex.
Not
long after this, around 840, the theft of Helena’s remains and
their transportation to the abbey of Hautvillers in France was
reported by a monk of that abbey (who may have been writing decades
after the event).
The
mausoleum seems to have nevertheless remained in use until the
middle of the twelfth century, when Helena’s porphyry
sarcophagus was moved to the Lateran basilica so that Pope
Anastasius IV (d. 1154) could be buried in it, a repurposing which
bespeaks little respect for either the empress or (possibly) the
saint.
The
site subsequently became ruinous, was used as private residence and
stone quarry, and memory of Helena’s burial there was lost
until rediscovery in 1594 by catacomb-explorer Antonio Bosio (c.
1575–1629).
What
stands out about the removal of Helena’s relics to the city of
Rome is that the event hardly caused a stir. A single thirteenth- to
fourteenth-century liturgical manuscript from an abbey in Castel
Sant’Elia (Viterbo) briefly records the event. It contains
readings for Helena’s feast (based on Altmann of Hautvillers’s
vita), and concludes with a supplementary reading which relates that
during the Pontificate of Innocent II (1130–1143) Helena’s
mausoleum was plundered for precious materials. Helena’s head
and larger bones were then brought to the city for safety first,
while the smaller bones later went along with the sarcophagus to the
Lateran’s, from where they were distributed among various
churches.
However,
where exactly the relics went within Rome is far from clear;
contemporary translatio-narratives triumphantly claiming Helena’s
remains for a Roman church do not survive. Where her relics may have
gone can only be reconstructed from (much) later sources, which
suggests that Helena’s status as a saint in medieval Rome was
humble at best, if she was venerated at all.
The
apparent disinterest in the whereabouts of Helena’s Roman
relics is telling, since relic mobility required a story proving
provenance, authenticity, and purpose in the new location, in order
to ensure continued cultural significance.
The
fact that Helena’s remains could be transported in and around
Rome without an accompanying narrative tradition elucidating where
they came from, where exactly they went, and why, suggests that her
remains had little to no cultural significance as saintly relics at
this time and place.
The
importance of narratives about the mobility and geographical
anchoring of relics becomes especially evident when the Roman
situation is compared with the vibrant Helena cult which first
developed in ninth-century France. Its earliest witness is a
translatio account, a hagiographical form which creates or
reinvigorates a cult by foregrounding the transportation of relics
from one place to another.
In
a hagiographical dossier on Helena, the Benedictine monk Altmann
relates how her relics were stolen from Rome and taken to his abbey
at Hautvillers in the diocese of Reims around 840 CE.
Whether
the theft of Helena’s remains from Rome and their
transportation to the diocese of Reims actually happened is
impossible to establish; it may not have.
This
is not out of character for Carolingian reports about relic theft,
which often disguised relic purchase or could be entirely
fabricated.
Following
more general Carolingian practice, Altmann composed a hagiographical
dossier about Helena — containing a vita, a translatio, and
miraculae (in that order) — offering, as it were, all the
ingredients for sainthood in one package.
The
vita records Helena’s exemplary holy life and deeds, the
translatio authenticates her relics and their presence at
Hautvillers, and the miracles prove that Helena, i.e. her relics,
performs as may be expected of a saint. In the vita and translatio
in particular Altmann weaves together history and meaningful
connection to place to provide a foundation for this new cult. Relic
mobility plays a crucial role in tying together this argument: it
serves to connect the remains of the historical empress who had been
interred in Rome with the relics which arrived in the diocese of
Reims in the ninth century.
Moreover,
by inventing a new layer of ‘history’ — the
suggestion that Helena had been born in Gallia Belgica —
Altmann turns the relic transferral into a meaningful return to home
ground; the crossing of the borders to her Gallic fatherland is a
transformative moment in this narrative.
For
his account of Helena’s life, Altmann used historical texts
well -known to his contemporaries, such as those by the ancient
Church historians Paulus Orosius (c. 375/385–c. 420) and
Rufinus of Acquileia (see above). For the inventio crucis he relied
on Cassiodorus’s Historia Tripartita (see above). While
Altmann knew the Judas Cyriacus legend, Judas is not mentioned,
probably because this would detract from Helena’s lustre.
Rather
than other saints’ lives or legends, Altmann’s main
hagiographical example was the Epitaphium Paulae in which Jerome of
Stridon (c. 347–420) commemorates his friend Paula, casting
her as a model of matronly saintliness, including travel to the Holy
Land.
Altmann
thus underscores the historicity of Helena, a lady whose holy deeds
were previously recorded by respected historians. However, these
traditions had not — so far — given rise to veneration
of Helena in the West. Altmann needed to offer something new, but
equally authentic and trustworthy, to legitimize the cult that had
newly sprung up at Hautvillers. He accomplished this by retelling
Helena’s story in the shape of a saint’s vita and —
crucially — by authenticating her relics and their presence at
Hautvillers by means of the translatio: the story of how the relics
moved there.
Proving
that these relics were indeed authentic was essential, all the more
because it seems that Helena’s relics arrived at the abbey at
a less than ideal moment. Altmann dates their arrival to 840, when —
he says — the archiepiscopal seat of Reims was vacant (due to
altercations related to Carolingian dynastic succession). This
dating implicitly suggests two problems concerning Helena’s
relics. First, they could not be authenticated by a bishop directly
upon arrival. Second, they were acquired by Halduin (not mentioned
by Altmann), then abbot of Hautvillers. This abbot was deposed in
853 because of his ordination by Bishop Ebbo of Reims (epis.
817–835; 840–841), eventually disgraced for choosing the
wrong side in dynastic conflicts. Altmann explicitly indicates that
he wrote Helena’s vita at the request of Hincmar (epis.
845–882), the next Archbishop of Reims. Hincmar probably also
acted as superior of Hautvillers, since the abbey was apparently
without abbot during this period. Combined with the inquiry into and
authentication of Helena’s relics at Reims (probably in 849),
this suggests that the hagiographical dossier may have formed part
of a concerted effort to straighten out the problematic start for
Helena’s relics in the diocese.
The
narrative about the transferral of the relics to Hautvillers played
an essential role in solving these initial complications.
Authentication
was therefore at the forefront of Altmann’s mind when he
composed his dossier on Helena, sometime between 850 and 890 CE.
Apart
from cleverly valorizing her historicity, he also aimed to silence
any doubts surrounding the provenance of her relics as well as to
validate their rightful place at Hautvillers. This is where Helena’s
furtive translatio comes in. Starting with a chapter titled ‘How
the body of St Helena was taken to the Gallic fatherland (patria
Gallie)’, Altmann relates the story of Theogesius, a Remois
priest who had wanted to go on pilgrimage to Rome for years, but
could not on account of his bad health, until he sought the
intercession of Helena. The moment he set out, he started feeling
better, and he arrived in Rome cured. In the church where Helena was
buried, Theogesius stayed on after vespers and stole her relics at
night (with God’s blessing, Altmann underlines), leaving for
home the next morning.
So
far so good. However, when Theogesius came to ‘the borders of
our fatherland’, things got sticky: ‘useful doubts were
born in the chests of many’, who wanted to know how such a
great saint could be transported by such a lowly priest.
Altmann
thus emphasizes that within the borders of the Gallic fatherland
people entertain a healthy distrust of obscure wandering priests
claiming to possess valuable relics.
He
then goes on to demonstrate that in Theogesius’s case their
misgivings eventually proved unfounded. Since doubts and
altercations persisted, it was decided to hold an assembly in the
cathedral of Reims, at which a map of Rome and histories were
consulted. After much discussion the assembly unanimously concluded
that Helena had indeed been buried in Rome.
This
still left open the question how such a great saint could ever
reside at the insignificant monastery of Hautvillers, giving rise to
continued unrest. The monks of Hautvillers then subjected themselves
to much praying and fasting, before seeking the truth through a
‘legal examination’, which again turned out in their
favour.
To
convince absolutely everyone, the (bishopless) cathedral of Reims,
finally sent three Hautvillers monks to Rome to inquire; they came
back with more assurances about the authenticity of Helena’s
relics and, as an additional bonus, relics of Polycarp, Sebastian,
Urban, and Quirinus.
With
this Altmann considers the provenance of Helena’s relics and
their destination exhaustively validated and authenticated and
concludes the translatio portion of the dossier.
Highlighting
the special connection between Helena and Gallia Belgica and
suggesting that within this region her relics are more meaningful
than elsewhere are the primary aims of the dossier. Therefore,
geography and the crossing of geographical borders play an important
role in the reasoning that Altmann uses to meaningfully connect
these — potentially problematic — relics to the right
saint, to their previous and new locations, and to the community
that welcomes them. His suggestion that a map of Rome was consulted
at the assembly at Reims cathedral is a case in point. Geography
really begins to matter, however, the moment that Helena’s
relics cross the borders of the Gallic fatherland and their
authenticity suddenly becomes an issue. He thus accentuates that
inside this fatherland the potential significance of her relics was
greater than outside of it. The suggestion of Helena’s special
connection with the Gallic fatherland does not come out of the blue.
In the first line of the vita Altmann had already indicated that
Helena was born in Trier; he is the first to ever suggest this.
There he also points out that her residence in Trier was converted
into a church dedicated to St Peter, belonging to the episcopal see:
‘the first of Gallia Belgica`.
Historians
have sometimes puzzled over this suggestion, because Altmann’s
patron Hincmar (Archbishop of Reims) was embroiled in a conflict
with Trier about which Belgic episcopal seat — Trier or Reims
— should take precedence over the other.
Altmann’s
remarks about Trier do make sense, however. First, Trier is a
historically plausible birthplace for Helena (more so than Reims at
least), since Trier had been the imperial capital of both her
partner and son.
Second,
this also allowed Altmann to style the transferral of Helena’s
body to the patria Galliae as a meaningful return, back to her own
fatherland.
Finally,
it offered a way of getting back at the see of Trier.
Right
at the start of the translatio Altmann explains that it had pleased
the Lord to exalt the region of Belgica Secunda (including the
diocese of Reims) with the precious relics of a body (Helena), which
had been born in Belgica Prima (of which Trier was the capital).
Note
the jibe here: Helena was born at Trier in Belgica Prima but Belgica
Secunda (the diocese of Reims) received her relics, an even better
price perhaps than episcopal precedence.
In
Altmann’s narrative Helena’s relics accrete significance
as they move: from relatively indifferent holy props in the
adventures of Theogesius, to the initially contested, but eventually
very valuable relics of a holy empress returning to her fatherland,
offering divine compensation for the political injustice of the
primacy of the see of Trier over Reims. Crossing the boundaries of
the Gallic fatherland is a transformative moment in this process. In
the authentication procedures that ensue, the authenticity of
Helena’s relics is put to the test by renewed mobility. Three
respectable Hautvillers monks retrace humble Theogesius’s
steps to Rome and back, and since this imitative trip only produces
more relics, more sanctity for their monastery, the prototype
transferral (of Helena) is considered authentic. Seen from this
perspective, Helena’s translatio not only makes a double
statement about the place of departure and of arrival — as has
been cogently argued by M.
Caroli
about translatio accounts in general — but it also makes a
statement about relic mobility: the crossing of geographical
boundaries and (renewed) mobility create sanctity.
While
Altmann’s claims about Helena’s translatio from Rome to
Hautvillers and the connections which he elaborates between her and
Gallia Belgica cannot stand the test of modern historical inquiry,
his version of events did resonate with contemporaries. Acceptance
of the narrative was undoubtedly helped by the fact that it fitted
into an established literary tradition of Rome-to-Rhineland
translations, originally started by Einhard’s Translatio SS.
Marcellini et Petri.
Altmann
does not cite this archetypal translatio, nor does he say explicitly
that Helena’s relics came from the same cemetery. He does
indicate that she was buried at inter duos lauros on the Via
Labicana, citing the Liber Pontificalis (which does name Marcellinus
and Petrus).
Whether
or not Altmann was hoping to create associations with Einhard’s
well-known translatio remains unclear. The commonality was not
missed by later medieval commentators, in any case.
Two
contemporary texts that refer to Helena’s translatio —
anonymous miraculae (after 882) and the ecclesiastical history of
Reims by the Frankish historian Flodoard of Reims (c. 893/894–966)
— are primarily interested in the miracles performed by
Helena’s relics as they were on their way to Hautvillers (both
based on Altmanns’s own miraculae).
Flodoard
even rewrites Helena’s translatio as an itinerary of
successive miracles on the way from Rome to Hautvillers, suggesting
that the idea of successful relic mobility (i.e. condoned by the
saint herself) appealed to contemporary audiences.
With
his hagiographical dossier Altmann transformed Helena from a
historical figure into a saint, by styling the translatio of her
relics as a triumphant return ‘home’. Despite Helena’s
long pre-existing role as auxiliary in the inventio crucis legend,
she thus first became a saint in her own right through a story about
the mobility and authenticity of her own relics, crucial for the new
cult at Hautvillers, rather than a narrative about cross relics. The
eventual success of Helena’s cult — i.e. its gradual
evolution from local, to Roman, to universal — would be
ensured by an increasing variety of sacred objects associated with
the empress’s legendary travels. This growing assortment of
holy things allegedly transported by Helena enhanced the appeal of
her cult and allowed it to sail on the currents of not only the cult
of corporeal relics, but also that of holy objects (construed more
broadly), as discussed by Bianca Lopez in this volume.
Following
a Carolingian start, the next phase in Helena’s route to
universal sainthood was characterized by portable holy things.
Helena
as Mover of Relics
After
starting as a local Hautvillers/Reims phenomenon centred on Helena’s
own relics, her cult eventually began to spread and to include new
aspects: Helena as an imperial local native and founder, as well as
a supplier of (Holy Land) relics. In what follows, I highlight the
interplay between relics (both Helena and Holy Land relics) and
hagiography (as well as reinventions of late antique local history)
to demonstrate how her sainthood developed into a versatile paradigm
of mobility, of herself and of holy objects.
Altmann
briefly suggests that Helena sent various relics (including a Holy
Land relic — Christ’s last supper knife — but no
cross relics) to Gallia, but seems uninterested in Helena as a
supplier of relics.
Nevertheless
this suggestion, and his suggestion of her Trier (or more broadly
Western European) origin, set the tone for later medieval cult(s),
which often tended to claim Helena as an imperial connection in
local/national narratives.
This
version of St Helena first developed in the Rhineland and was highly
concerned with elaborating connections between local history and
ecclesiastical and/or imperial Rome. Transregional mobility was
crucial for the connections which these traditions sought to
elaborate between Rome, Jerusalem, and their own locale. As a
result, it will become possible to elucidate why she attracted
veneration at these locations, and not in Rome, during the early and
high Middle Ages.
The
earliest documented signs of Helena veneration outside the Champagne
region (home to Hautvillers and Reims) date to the late tenth
century. In 952 a Helena relic was deposited, along with other
relics, in the altar of a newly dedicated crypt at the abbey church
of St Maximin in Trier.
In
the same period, St Maximin’s also began to claim that Helena
had encouraged Constantine to found this abbey.
This
claim and the inclusion of the relic point to awareness of Helena’s
supposed Trier origins, first introduced by Altmann more than a
century before. Helena’s Rhineland roots must have been widely
accepted, since the tenth-century Passio S. Gereonis also proposes
that Helena founded St Gereon’s church in Cologne, which
likewise points to a close association between herself and the
region. In both cases, claiming foundation by Helena not only
increased prestige, but could also offer political advantages,
because of the privileges enjoyed by imperial foundations.
During
the eleventh century more and clearer signs of a cult appeared, most
importantly in the shape of a hagiographical text which elaborates
additional links between Helena and Trier, and which also discusses
relics she would have sent there. The Vita S. Helene et S. Agrici
episcopi (c. 1050–1072) caters to the interests of Trier
cathedral, as well as those of the abbey of St Maximin.
The
double vita first briefly describes Helena’s life loosely
based on Altmann’s vita Helene, with as the main innovation
the twist that Trier had reverted to paganism while she was away,
first finding the cross in Jerusalem and later living in Rome. From
there, she then lobbied for the reconversion of her home city with
Pope Sylvester, resulting in the successful mission of Agricius,
former patriarch of Antioch, to Trier.
The
somewhat longer life of Agricius that follows then strives to
elaborate close connections between Rome and Trier, emphasizing that
the latter’s church is an apostolic foundation, a second Rome,
in order to promote Trier’s independence and primacy as the
first see of Gaul and Germany.
The
double vita stresses the importance of relics Helena would have sent
to her home city by giving them to Agricius to take with him on his
mission. According to the vita she prepared a reliquary with relics
she had collected in the Holy Land: the body of St Matthew the
apostle, a crucifixion nail, and a knife from the last
supper
(first mentioned by Altmann, see above), plus unnamed ‘relics
of the Lord’ (no explicit mention of cross relics). These
relics play a key role in the (forged) ‘Sylvester charter’,
quoted in this text, in which Pope Sylvester would have granted
Trier primacy in Gallia and Germania.
According
to the double vita this privilege was confirmed through the relics
sent by Helena.
Helena
thus not only initiated Agricius’s reconversion mission as a
caring imperial hailing from Trier, but she also supplied the
tangible evidence of Trier’s exceptional mandate as episcopal
see in the shape of relics. It seems that the body of Matthew and a
crucifixion nail could be worshipped in the city during the eleventh
century; the abbey of St Maximin claimed to possess the knife from
the last supper.
The
double vita (and in it Helena specifically) thus also allowed for
authentication of Holy Land relics present in Trier; as a Holy Land
pilgrim, she must have surely supplied the real thing.
Which
appeared first in Trier, these relics or the (possibly orally
transmitted) legend that Helena had supplied them, is a
chicken-or-egg conundrum. It is clear, however, that the various
roles attributed to Helena in the eleventh-century double vita —
as an imperial, Christian founder of Trier, as supplier and
authenticator of Holy Land relics — converge to further local
interests in the shape of ecclesiastical power and assets, namely
relics.
The
role for Helena in the ecclesiastical history of Trier suggested by
the The Vita S. Helene et S. Agrici episcopi provided a common
thread for subsequent medieval traditions. For example, the slightly
later city chronicle Gesta Treverorum (1101) lists additional relics
sent to Trier by Helena in confirmation of the Silvester charter:
the body of Matthew, the Holy Robe, a tooth of St Peter, sandals of
St Andrew, and the head of Pope Cornelius, also conveniently
introducing relics preserved by Trier cathedral.
The
Holy Robe, which was moved to the cathedral’s main altar in
1196, has enjoyed a particularly long career as one of Trier’s
prize relics. It was first displayed for Emperor Maximilian I (and
to eager crowds) during the imperial diet of 1512, and has attracted
popular devotion at many subsequent showings, the last of which
occurred in 2012.
Outside
of Trier, in the wider Rhineland region, legendary associations
between Helena and the Theban Legion — a Roman legion which
converted to Christianity and was collectively martyred by the end
of the third century CE — were important for her cult. From
the tenth century onward, she was typically credited with founding
churches to house the remains of sainted Theban soldiers, such as St
Gereon’s at Cologne (see above) and St Victor’s at
Xanten. Menager cogently analyses these traditions as offering
counterweight to the (Helena-based) claims and ambitions of Trier,
while displaying a comparable interest in the benefits of claiming
imperial foundation and in renovatio imperii rhetoric.
With
time, Cologne could also boast its own Helena-associated Holy Land
relics. The remains of the three Mages were said to have been found
and brought to Constantinople by herself, before they had resurfaced
in Milan in 1158. The archbishop of Cologne, who accompanied
Barbarossa on his campaign against Milan, acquired them there for
his cathedral in 1164.
The
above illustrates Helena’s appeal as a legendary imperial
founder of ecclesiastical establishments and bringer of arguably
authentic Holy Land relics in the Rhineland. It does not necessarily
point to her veneration as a saint. However, in addition to
liturgical and hagiographical witnesses, the presence of numerous
Helena relics in the area clearly indicates a vibrant cult.
The
abbey of St Maximin in Trier possessed a relic already in 952 (see
above).
During
the eleventh century Helena relics started appearing across the
Rhineland and beyond.
Relics
were recorded at Echternach (Luxemburg) in 1039, at Gorze near Metz
in 1068 and 1077, at Trier-Euren in 1075, at Bonn in 1135, at
Cologne in 1135 and 1219, at Xanten in 1220.
In
the category of slightly larger relics, the provost of St Gereon in
Cologne acquired an arm-relic of Helena in 1220, the archbishop of
Trier received a head-relic from Emperor Charles IV for which the
bishop had a reliquary bust made in 1380, and a hand-relic is
mentioned in the records of St Victor’s at Xanten in
1507.
Contact
relics (sanctified by proximity to Helena’s person) were also
recorded. A monstrance said to incorporate the corona sanctae
Helenae was first carried in a procession at St Gereon’s in
Cologne in 1266.
Various
Helena-related objects were reported at Trier cathedral at several
points during the later Middle Ages, such as another crown, an
ancient drinking bowl, a comb, and a brooch.
From
the long eleventh century onward, Helena became widely venerated as
a saint in the Rhineland, while at the same time becoming a key
character in local ecclesiastical histories, as an imperial local
native, founder of churches, and bringer of relics. This version of
Helena, both in her saintly and her imperial capacity, continued to
shape local historiography and devotion. The Medulla Gestorum
Treveren (1514) by auxiliary bishop and university rector Johan Enen
(c. 1480– 1519), for example, emphasizes the apostolic and
imperial roots of ecclesiastical Trier according to the same
paradigm first presented by the eleventh-century double vita of
Helena and Agricius. This sixteenth-century description of the
religious foundations
and
sacred objects in Trier reserves a large role for Helena in the
history of this ‘holy city’.
Her
impact on the present is also discussed, in the shape of important
relics preserved at Trier cathedral.
Enen
first stresses that this cathedral was converted from Helena’s
palace, and then discusses her head-relic as one of the prize
heiltumb of this establishment, others of which included several
relics she had supplied: the body of St Matthew, a crucifixion nail,
the head of Pope Cornelius, and above all the Holy Robe.
Late
Medieval Developments and Concluding Remarks
It
has been my object to demonstrate that Helena’s medieval
sainthood was not made by the inventio crucis legend (although it
provided an important narrative foundation), but by narratives about
relic mobility and the potential of her legendary personage for
elaborating physical connections (in the shape of relics) with the
major religious centres elsewhere, most importantly Rome and
Jerusalem. Altmann of Hautvillers first created her as a saint in
the ninth century by telling the story of the translatio of her
relics from Rome to the diocese of Reims. His innovative claim that
Helena had been born in Gallia gave meaning to this furtive relic
relocation: the empress was returning home to honour her home
region. During the long eleventh century, meaningful relic transfer
became even more important for Helena’s cult as it spread in
the Rhineland, and she received an additional role as supplier of
Holy Land relics, which in turn also confirmed connections with
ecclesiastical and imperial Rome.
The
relic-obsessed Rhineland paradigm for Helena’s sainthood,
fundamentally characterized by relic mobility and interested in
imperial allure, would go on to shape several subsequent variants of
Helena’s legend and cult. During the later Middle Ages it also
co-existed — and sometimes competed with — variant
traditions. Cults in France remained more Hautvillers-oriented: the
cathedral at Orleans received Helena relics from the abbey in the
thirteenth century, and Helena’s head was venerated at the
town of Montier-en-Der (rivalling Trier’s head-relic).
During
the thirteenth century a new cult developed in Venice; in 1212
Helena’s
body was said to have been moved there from Constantinople, a
translatio first recorded in the chronicle by Doge Andrea Dandolo
(1343–1354).
The
Rhineland paradigm was paralleled by a largely secular British
Helena tradition which took its cue from Altmann’s keenness to
‘press the local connection’.
Henry
of Huntington’s Historia Anglorum (1123–1154) first
presents Helena as a British princess, the daughter of King Cole of
Colchester, to establish Constantine’s British nationality in
his discussion on the development of the British monarchy; the
inventio crucis is not mentioned. Geoffrey of Monmouth popularized
this story in his Historia regum Britannie (c. 1136–1138),
portraying Helena as the excellent progenitrix of English monarchs,
including King Arthur.
Geoffrey
too is unconcerned with Helena’s saintly deeds.
Later
chronicle traditions did add religious overtones by referring to the
inventio crucis, and the British Helena first entered hagiography
with the Vita sancta Helene (c. 1198–1207) by Jocelin of
Furness, but on the whole Helena does not appear to have been a
popular saint in Britain.
Helena
again appeared in British hagiography three centuries later in the
Nova Legenda Anglie (1516), an early sixteenth-century revision of a
pre-existing collection of English saints.
Helena
also features in post-Reformation English Catholic hagiographical
collections, such as the Stowe 53 and Folger V.b. 334 manuscripts
discussed by Jenny Bledsoe elsewhere in this volume, which
illustrates the adaptability of her story. However, the British
Helena Legend predominantly thrived in secular contexts with
nationalist agendas, which were served by proving Constantine’s
British birth, from around 1500 CE onward, until Edward Gibbon
dispelled the myth in the late eighteenth century.
That
the British Helena mostly remained the stuff of historiographical
rather than hagiographical legend is corroborated by the striking
insular disinterest in Helena (or Helena-associated) relics.
Despite
important differences, the Rhineland cult and the British tradition
have one thing in common: they value Helena for the potential of her
legendary character to create links with Rome, imperial and/or
ecclesiastical. This commonality helps explain why in
twelfth-century Rome, it was all right to reuse Helena’s
sarcophagus for the burial of a pope and disperse her remains to
(initially) unknown locations, while this would have been
unthinkable in the Rhineland or Britain during the same period. Rome
already was Rome, the former imperial capital, with plenty of
obvious claims to being the centre of Christian empire. The papacy
could invoke the donatio Constantini; there was no need to stake any
claims based on Helena’s legendary character.
It
seems that this had not changed by the 1260s, if we refer to the
Golden Legend as a touchstone of widely accepted traditions about
Helena’s legendary deeds on the Italian peninsula. Jacopo da
Varazze briefly observes that Helena may have been born in either
Britain or Trier, but does not seem to care which is true.
He
also does not reflect on where her relics might be, and does not
connect her with Rome, except by observing that she had one
crucifixion nail incorporated into a statue of Constantine in Rome.
In
the legend on the birth of Christ it is suggested as an aside that
Helena brought nativity hay to Rome, but that is where her links
with Rome end.
Helena
thus appears in the role of supplier of Holy Land relics, but there
are no indications that Rome claimed to be a prime destination of
such relics at this point in time.
This
would change over the next few centuries. Several allegedly
Helena-supplied Holy Land relics can be venerated in Rome still
today: cross relics, the titulus crucis, earth from the Holy Land,
the scala sancta, etc. The Rhineland paradigm for Helena’s
sainthood clearly caught on in Rome. These Roman traditions claim to
be ancient, yet they are surprisingly late, as are traditions about
Helena’s own relics within Rome.
Only
from the late fifteenth century onward did Holy Land relics
supposedly brought by Helena and relics of herself start to be a
factor of note in the sacred cityscape of the eternal city and only
in the course of the seventeenth century did her cult become fully
established.
Eventually
it was this Roman Helena legend that would go on to become so
ubiquitous that the impression that Helena had always been a saint
in Rome and in Catholicism has become difficult to avoid. In
reality, her sainthood was made by medieval narratives about sacred
mobility, which clearly enjoyed renewed/continued cultural relevance
in Renaissance Rome.
Helena’s
long trajectory to universal sainthood exemplifies several larger
trends in the cult of the saints as it evolved within the contexts
of both medieval and post-Tridentine Catholicism. It is, for
example, illustrative of the general (although never altogether
hegemonic) shift from the early medieval abundance of geographically
localized cults to the handful of universal star-saints which
dominated early modernity.
Moreover,
it participates in the broader medieval preoccupation with holy
objects (including relics) which are at once similar and dissimilar
to the heavenly (Christ) and earthly (Holy Land) originals which
they represent.
The
growing number of such nuggets of portable sanctity associated with
Helena’s cult
eventually
ensured its success. The aim of this essay has been to bring into
focus the highly dynamic and multifaceted processes of medieval
hagiographic construction and to make a case for studying medieval
sainthood as a dynamic conversation between various texts and
objects in perpetual geographic transition.
As
a result, it has become clear that hagiographical narratives about
relic mobility were not just a Carolingian or a high medieval
phenomenon, but remained important well into the late medieval and
early modern period.
1
Brown, The Cult of the Saints; Angenendt, Heilige und Reliquien;
Freeman, Holy Bones, Holy Dust
2
Geary, Furta Sacra, pp. 6-7
3
Compare, for example, Geary, Furta Sacra, p. 82, and Oosten, `The
Mausoleum of Helena`, p.138
Brown,
The Cult of the Saints; Angenendt, Heilige und Reliquien; Freeman,
Holy Bones, Holy Dust
4
Lavin, Bernini and the Crossing of Saint Peter`s.
5
Compare, for example, Harbus, Helena of Britain, p. 20 ; Pohlsander,
Helena, pp. 186-95
6
The most rigorous and complete contribution (thus structured) to
date is Drijvers’s Helena Augusta, on which I base my
discussion of the historical Helena. Other examples include Couzard,
Sainte Helene; Hunt’s Holy Land Pilgrimage, pp. 28–49;
and Lauer, Kaiserin Helena. For a recent addition to the
bibliography on the historical Helena, see Hillner, Helena Augusta.
7
Drijvers, Helena Augusta, pp. 9–12; Drepanum is typically
accepted as likely option, compare for example Pohlsander, Helena,
pp. 3–5; Kajava, ‘Some Remarks’; Vatchkova,
‘(Saint) Helena of Sofia’.
8
Drijvers, Helena Augusta, pp. 12–15.
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the Thirteenth Century’, in Religious Life and Thought (11th
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1035– 42
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Remi, Sainte Helene, d’Apres l’Histoire et la Tradition
(Paris: Bloud & Cie, 1911)
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Bishops to A.D. 715, 3rd rev. edn., Translated Texts for Historians,
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Renate L. Colella et al. (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1997), pp. 55–73
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Sot,
Michel, Un Historien et son Église au Xe Siècle:
Flodoard de Reims (Paris: Fayard, 1993)
Vatchkova,
Vesselina, ‘(Saint) Helena of Sofia: The Evolution of the
Memory of Saint Constantine’s Mother’, in The Reception
of Byzantium in European Culture since 1500, ed. by Przemyslaw
Marciniac and Dion C. Smyth (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016), pp. 81–96
Vendittelli,
Laura, ‘Il Mausoleo in Eta Moderna: Gli Studi e i Lavori’,
in Il Mausoleo di Sant’Elena/Gli Scavi, ed. by Laura
Vendittelli (Milano: Electa, 2011), pp. 270–74
——,
‘Il Territorio inter Duas Lauros’, in Il Mausoleo di
Sant’Elena/Gli Scavi, ed. by Laura Vendittelli (Milano:
Electa, 2011), pp. 8–11
(PDF)
"Helena on the Move: The Makings of a Medieval Saint," in
Writing Holiness. Genre
and Reception across Medieval Hagiography edited by Jessica Barr and
Barbara Zimbalist, Cursor Mundi, 43 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), pp.
35-64.
(PDF)
Helena Augusta. The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend
of Her Finding of the True Cross
POSTPRINT
of Ritsema Van Eck, Marianne P. ‘Helena on the Move: The
Makings of a Medieval Saint’, in Writing Holiness Genre and
Reception across Medieval Hagiography, edited by Jessica Barr and
Barbara Zimbalist (Turnhout: Brepols, 2023), 35-64.
N.B.
Send me and email if you would like to receive the PDF offprint of
the published paper (which I cannot upload to sharing platforms for
copyright reasons).
ON THE DEATH OF
THE EMPRESS FAUSTA
By
DAVID WOODS
Fausta,
or Flavia Maxima Fausta to call her by her full name, was the
daughter of one western emperor, Maximianus Herculius (286-305), the
sister of another, Maxentius (306-312), and the wife of a third,
Constantine I (306-337).l She was married to Constantine in 307, and
bore him at least five children from 316 onwards, three sons
(Constantine, Constantius, and Constans), and two daughters
(Constantina and Helena).2 Following his defeat of his rival
Licinius at the battle of Chrysopolis in 324, and the unification of
the empire under his rule as the sole Augustus once more,
Constantine honoured with the title of Augusta both his wife Fausta
and his mother Helena, as is revealed by the issue of coins in their
names each with this title.3 However, tragedy struck in 326 when
Constantine appears to have executed first his eldest son Crispus,
then Fausta herself. The reason for these executions, and the extent
to which these deaths were related, has attracted a great deal of
debate. Yet more remains to be said about the manner in which Fausta
died, which may well provide an important clue as to the full
circumstances of her death, whether she was executed, died by
accident, or committed suicide even. Thus, it is my intention here,
firstly, to offer a new explanation for the manner of her death, and
secondly, to draw attention to an overlooked allusion to her death
in a late Latin source, the Historia Augusta.
I.
How did Fausta die?
Let
us begin with a brief catalogue of the more important sources for
the deaths of Crispus and Fausta, that is, those sources which do
not simply note the occurrence of these executions, but seek to
provide some detail also concerning their full circumstances:4
(i)
The anonymous author of the Latin Epitome de Caesaribus, composed
c.396, wrote as follows (Epit. 41.11-12):5
But
when Constantine had obtained control of the whole Roman Empire by
means of his wondrous success in battle, he ordered his son Crispus
to be put to death, at the suggestion of his wife Fausta, so they
say. Then he killed his wife Fausta by hurling her into boiling
baths (in balneas ardentes coniectam), when his mother Helena
rebuked him with excessive grief for her grandson.
(ii)
According to the surviving epitome of his work by the 9th-century
scholar Photius of Constantinople, the Arian ecclesiastical
historian Philostorgius, who wrote circa 425, claimed that (HE
2.4):6
...
Constantine was induced by the fraudulent artifices of his
step-mother to put his son Crispus to death; and afterwards, upon
detecting her in the act of adultery with one of his cursores,
ordered the former to be suffocated in a hot bath (τη του
λουτρου αλέα
εναποπνιγηναι).7
(iii)
Sidonius Apollinaris, bishop of Arvernum in Gaul c.471-87, wrote to
a friend in praise of his poetry, stating that (Epist. 5.8.2):8
...
no greater power of satiric suggestion was shown by consul Ablabius
when in a couple of verses he stabbed at the life and family of
Constantine and put his tooth into them with this distich posted up
secretly on the door of the palace:
Who
would now want the golden age of Saturn?
Ours
is a diamond age - of Nero's pattern.
He
wrote this, of course, because the aforesaid Augustus had almost
simultaneously got rid of his wife Fausta with a hot bath (calore
balnei) and his son Crispus with cold poison.9
(iv)
A pagan historian of the early 6th-century, Zosimus, probably
working at Constantinople, did little more than abbreviate the work
of a late 4th-century pagan historian, Eunapius, and reported that
(HN 2.29.2):10
Without
any consideration for natural law he [Constantine] killed his son,
Crispus, who, as I have related before, had been considered worthy
of the rank of Caesar, on suspicion of having had intercourse with
his stepmother, Fausta. And when Constantine's mother, Helena, was
saddened by this atrocity and was inconsolable at the young man's
death, Constantine as if to comfort her, applied a remedy worse than
the disease: he ordered a bath to be over-heated (βαλανειον
γαρ υπερ το
μέτρον έκπυρωθηναι)
and shut Fausta up in it until she was dead.11
(v)
The Passion of Artemius, a largely fictitious account of the trial
under the emperor Julian of the general (dux) Artemius, which
depends for much of its historical information on the work of
Philostorgius above, and was probably written in the 8th century by
the theologian John of Damascus, attributes to Artemius a speech
which includes the following (Art. Pass 45):12
Constantine
did kill his wife Fausta - and rightly so, since she had imitated
Phaedra of old, and accused his son Crispus of being in love with
her and assaulting her by force, just as Phaedra accused Theseus'
son Hippolytus. And so according to the laws of nature, as a father
he punished his son. But later he learnt the truth and killed her as
well, exacting the most righteous penalty against her.
(vi)
Writing in the 12th-century, although with access to early
4th-century sources, the Greek historian Zonaras claimed (Epit.
13.2.38-41):13
His
[Crispus'] stepmother Fausta was madly in love with him but did not
easily get him to go along. She then announced to his father that he
[Crispus] loved her and had often attempted to do violence to her.
Therefore, Crispus was condemned to death by his father, who
believed his wife. But when the emperor later recognized the truth
he punished his wife too because of her licentiousness and the death
of his son. Fausta was placed in an overheated bath (είσαχθεισα
γαρ εν λουτρω
... σφοδρως εκκαυθεντι)
and there found a violent end of her life.14
So
what do modern commentators make of these unsavoury allegations?
Obviously something terrible happened. Not only were Crispus and
Fausta executed, but their memory was also condemned (damnatio
memoriae). Their names were erased from public inscriptions, and
the literary record was similarly affected.15 Eusebius of Caesarea,
for example, revised later copies of his Ecclesiastical History in
order to omit earlier material in praise of Crispus, and his Life of
Constantine which he composed c.338 makes no mention whatsoever of
either Crispus or Fausta.16 Yet there has been marked reluctance in
recent times to accept the allegations of a sexual scandal, that
Crispus and Fausta had become embroiled in an intimate relationship
for which they both paid with their lives.17 Hence P. Guthrie, for
example, has argued that the execution of Crispus was a dynastic
murder by Constantine in order to remove his eldest and illegitimate
son from the succession in favour of his three legitimate sons by
Fausta.18 This has been ably refuted by H. A. Pohlsander who, among
his other arguments, pointed out that the appointment of Crispus to
the rank of Caesar in 317 had already proved his eligibility for the
rank of Augustus, and that Constantine was unlikely to regard
illegitimacy as a bar to succession, being illegitimate himself
also.19
Yet
argument and counter-argument both suffer serious flaws, the former
more so, in that it is not at all clear that Crispus and Constantine
were actually illegitimate. Many scholars now deny this.20 More
importantly, this theory does not explain why Constantine had Fausta
executed also, nor the unusual manner of her death. In brief, it
pays too little attention to what the sources themselves actually
say in this matter.
Another
theory has some merit in that it does at least accept that there was
a real connection between the deaths of Crispus and Fausta.
According to N. J. E. Austin, Crispus had his future predicted, and
Fausta reported this to Constantine as a conspiracy against his
rule.21 He executed Crispus immediately, but soon repented of his
haste when he discovered that there was little basis to her
allegation.
Consequently,
he held her responsible for Crispus' death, and executed her also.
Again, this explanation of events pays too little attention to the
testimony of the sources themselves. It ignores the allegations of
adultery, nor does it sufficiently explain the unusual manner of
Fausta's death. Furthermore, as J. W. Drijvers notes, it does not
explain why the condemnation of Crispus' memory was not reversed
when it emerged that he was innocent.22 If Fausta had been killed
because her charge against Crispus was discovered to be false, then
his memory ought to have been restored and commemorated accordingly.
But this did not happen.
The
reasons why some scholars have been so reluctant to accept the
allegation of a sexual relationship between Crispus and Fausta vary
somewhat. T. D. Barnes, for example, excluded the possibility of a
sexual relationship between them on the basis that 'Crispus normally
resided at Trier, far from his stepmother, who lived at his father's
court'.23 Hence his claim that 'Fausta or her agents (my emphasis)
must have played a large role in securing Crispus' condemnation',
playing down the possibility of any physical contact between the
two. Alternatively, others have been deterred by the similarity of
the alleged relationship between Fausta and Crispus to that between
Phaedra and Hippolytus, as if the story of their relationship was an
invention simply with this myth as its model.24 Others again have
been influenced more by the apparent origin of this allegation than
by the nature of the allegation itself. For it is possible that all
the surviving sources in this matter depend upon a single original
source only, a pagan source which was implacably opposed to
Constantine because of his rejection of Rome's traditional cults and
his espousal of Christianity. The fact that Zosimus explicitly links
the murders of Crispus and Fausta to Constantine's conversion to
Christianity serves to fuel this scepticism. According to Zosimus
(HN 2.29.3-5), when the full impact of his deeds had dawned upon
him, Constantine had approached the pagan priests and sought
purification for his sins. When these told him that no purification
was possible for these sins, an Egyptian from Spain, normally
identified as bishop Ossius of Cordova, informed him to the
contrary, that Christ would forgive all sins.25 Hence Constantine
became a Christian. The polemical nature of this story, and the
tradition which it represents, is such that Drijvers has rejected it
in entirety, claiming that 'only one option is left and that is to
conclude that Constantine's motives for killing his son and wife
will always remain unknown, in spite of the many ingenious
suppositions of historians'.26 Yet while one does not doubt that
pagan historians hostile to Constantine rejoiced to recount his
cruel execution of Crispus and Fausta, it does not necessarily
follow that one of their number must have invented the story of
their adultery also. The silence of the earliest Christian authors
on this topic is sufficient guarantee that a serious scandal really
did lie behind their deaths. Pagan tradition simply preserved that
which most Christians were all too eager to forget, and eventually
set it to serve a new polemical purpose. So why was Fausta killed in
the unusual manner alleged? All the surviving sources who care to
comment on the exact manner of her death, Greek and Latin, pagan or
Christian, seem to agree on its location, in a bath or bathroom,
even if they do not agree upon, or care to mention even, the nature
of her offence. There is strong agreement also that it was the heat
of the bath or bathroom which was the immediate cause of her death.
However, it remains unclear whether Fausta suffocated to death in
the steam, or was scalded to death by the water itself. Of our
ancient sources, only Philostorgius, or his epitomator rather,
favours death by suffocation, and the rest remain sufficiently vague
to allow of either possibility. The problem is that the terms used
to describe the exact location of Fausta at her death (balneum,
βαλανειον,
λουτρον) can all refer
either to the bath itself or to the room within which this bath was
situated. Unless the verb used in association with these terms is
itself specific, that she suffocated, drowned or was burned to
death, we must remain in the dark as to the exact manner of her
death. Yet while Philostorgius is quite clear that Fausta suffocated
to death, it is important to remember that his original account has
not itself survived, but only an epitome of the same by Photius.
There must be some doubt, therefore, whether Philostorgius himself
actually stated that Fausta suffocated, or Photius just assumed this
upon reading Philostorgius' description of the cause of death, the
heat of her bath or bathroom. It is no surprise, therefore, that
modern commentators seem unable to agree on the exact manner of her
death either. Drowning, suffocation by steam, and burning or
scalding to death, have all had their advocates.27 One scholar
considers Fausta's confinement to an overheated bath (or bathroom)
as an ordeal to find out whether she had committed adultery with
Crispus.28 It was a means of interrogation first, then execution.
Yet this treatment seems no less extraordinary whether one considers
it a form of interrogation by torture only, or a deliberate method
of execution. A number of different forms of capital punishment were
practised during the 4th century. These included beheading, burning
at the stake, and dismemberment, as well as more inventive
punishments such as suffocation over a slow fire, or the pouring of
molten lead down the victim's throat.29 However, no other case is
known where the victim was sentenced to death in a bath. Indeed,
there are no known instances of the application of the death penalty
for adultery under Constantine, other than in the case of Crispus
and Fausta, and although adulterers were often punished with death
during later reigns, beheading seems to have been the favoured
punishment.30 Hence the suggestion that Fausta committed suicide,
even if it was 'suicide under compulsion', has some merit, and the
unusual manner of her death may well have been suggested to her in
order to emphasize its 'voluntary' nature.31 One notes, for example,
that during the investigation of various sexual crimes at Rome circa
368, a certain Hesychia suffocated herself on her feather bed rather
than face interrogation.32 This is reminiscent of the claim that
Fausta suffocated to death also, although it may be that Hesychia's
choice was dictated more by the absence of other means rather than a
preference for suffocation itself. A third possibility is that
Fausta died by accident instead. In his ecclesiastical history
Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus 423-466, tells of a number of
encounters which took place at Antioch between the Syrian monk
Aphraates and the emperor Valens (364-378), or members of his staff,
including the following cautionary tale (HE 4.23):
One
of the grooms of the imperial bedchamber, who threatened the godly
man [Aphraates] somewhat more violently, met with the following
fate. He was entrusted with the charge of the bath, and immediately
after this conversation he came down to get it ready for the
emperor. On entering he lost his wits, stepped into the boiling
water before it was mixed with the cold, and so met his end. The
emperor sat waiting for him to announce that the bath was ready for
him to enter, and after a considerable time had gone by he sent
other officers to report the cause of the delay. After they had gone
in and looked all about the room they discovered the chamberlain
slain by the heat, and lying dead in the boiling water.33
While
this tale serves to illustrate that fatal accidents were possible
when preparing a hot bath, it also shows that these were far more
likely to happen to their servants than to the members of the
imperial family themselves. It seems unlikely, therefore, that
Fausta would have died in such a manner. One should remember at this
point, though, that baths often served purposes other than those of
hygiene or pleasure, being regarded as beneficial for a variety of
ailments also.34 It is said, for example, that Constantine visited
the hot baths shortly before his own illness and death.35 So was
Fausta sick when she took to her hot bath, with the result that it
was her illness rather than the heat which overcame her? Perhaps.
Yet a darker possibility suggests itself also in so far as hot baths
feature prominently among the advice which was often given to women
on how to induce abortion.
The
2nd-century physician Soranus, who studied at Alexandria in Egypt
but practised at Rome itself, has left us a valuable work whose
title sufficiently explains its contents, his Gynaecology.36 Soranus
was one of the most highly reputed of ancient medical authorities,
and enjoyed great popularity in the West during late antiquity,
particularly in North Africa. He continued to be consulted into the
16th century even. In his Gynaecology Soranus discusses various
methods of contraception and abortion at some length, but sums up
his basic theory thus (Gyn. 1.61):
For
such of these things [drugs] as are styptic, clogging, and cooling
cause the orifice of the uterus to shut before the time of coitus
and do not let the seed pass into its fundus. Such, however, as are
hot and irritating, not only do not allow the seed of the man to
remain in the cavity of the uterus, but draw forth as well another
fluid from it.37
Cold
causes the mouth of the uterus to shut, assisting thereby at
contraception, but heat causes the uterus to evacuate its contents,
assisting thereby at abortion. It is for this reason that baths,
which are understood to be hot baths, although not too hot, feature
so prominently in his advice on how to induce abortion. The patient
is advised (Gyn. 1.64):?
She
should use diuretic concoctions ... bathing daily in sweet water
which is not too hot, lingering in the baths and drinking first a
little wine and living on pungent food. If this is without effect,
one must also treat locally by having her sit in a bath of a
decoction of linseed, fenugreek, mallow, marsh-mallow, and wormwood.
The
advice continues a little later (Gyn. 1.65):
For
a woman who intends to have an abortion, it is necessary for two or
three days beforehand to take protracted baths, little food and to
use softening vaginal suppositories; ... But if a woman reacts
unfavourably to venesection and is languid, one must first relax the
parts by means of sitz-baths, full baths, softening vaginal
suppositories ... And she who intends to apply these things should
be bathed beforehand or made to relax by sitz-baths; and if after
some time she brings forth nothing, she should again be relaxed by
sitz-baths and for the second time a suppository should be applied.
It
seems possible, therefore, that Fausta took to her hot bath as part
of an attempt to induce an abortion. Yet abortion was often fatal.
Obviously so for the unborn child, but often for the mother also,
even in the best of circumstances. It is reported, for example, that
the emperor Domitian (81-96) seduced his niece Julia, and was the
cause of her death, therefore, when he forced her to have an
abortion.38 Julia should have been able to afford the best medical
advice of her day, but death still occurred. Indeed, it was the
absence of effective contraception, combined with the dangers of
abortion, that led to the widespread practice by which unwanted
children were simply abandoned, either to die or to be rescued by
strangers.39 Many of the church fathers regarded abortion as
attempted suicide even.40 In this case, however, it was unthinkable
that Fausta should continue her pregnancy and abandon her child, as
there was always the possibility that he or she would one day return
and lay claim to the throne. Dynastic considerations required that
Fausta should have an abortion, despite the risk to her person which
this inevitably entailed. Hence this interpretation of events, that
Fausta died during an attempted abortion, merits serious
consideration because it explains not only the unusual manner of
Fausta's death, in a hot bath, but the very fact of her death also.
More importantly, though, it is in perfect accord with the claims
that Fausta had had a sexual relationship with Crispus, whether
willingly or not. There seems a strong possibility that an unwanted
pregnancy would have resulted from such a relationship. For Fausta
was perfectly healthy in this regard, having given birth to at least
five children in the ten years before her death, and ancient forms
of contraception were not particular reliable. As for Crispus, we
know that he was fertile also, because his wife Helena had given
birth in 322, and may have been expecting again in 324 also.41 It is
my argument, therefore, that Fausta was pregnant by Crispus, and
died in her bath when an attempt to induce abortion went fatally
wrong.
So
how does this change our understanding of all that went before
Fausta's death? Constantine cannot be held directly responsible for
her death in so far as he did not order her execution as such.
However, the very sequence of events, the death of Crispus followed
by that of Fausta, suggests that Constantine had discovered what had
happened between Crispus and Fausta, or what was alleged to have
happened, and that he had forced her to have an abortion rather than
that she had undergone it willingly in an attempt to destroy the
evidence of her guilt. Concealment, or further deceit, was no longer
possible by the time that she died. This explanation contributes
towards the solution of another problem also. How did Constantine
learn of the alleged adultery between Crispus and Fausta? Sidonius
Apollinaris seems to claim that Ablabius had played a role in
revealing his wife's adultery to Constantine, but this only sets the
question a stage further back in time. How did Ablabius himself
learn of this adultery? One assumes, if Crispus and Fausta really
did have an affair, that they were as discreet as possible and took
every measure to conceal their relationship. However, the situation
would have become much more difficult once Fausta became pregnant,
particularly if she was unwilling to undergo a life-threatening
abortion. It seems probable, therefore, that it was her pregnancy
which brought Fausta's adultery into the open. There came a time
when her physical condition gave rise to rumours among her private
staff, these reached Ablabius, and he reported them to Constantine.
This
assumes, of course, that it was obvious to those involved that
Constantine could not have been responsible if Fausta really were
pregnant, that is, that he must have been away from Fausta long
enough for all to realize that this could not be so. However, our
sources are quite clear that something did happen between Crispus
and Fausta, whether an affair or the rape of Fausta by Crispus, such
as would not have happened, presumably, had Constantine been at
hand. So the present interpretation requires little more than our
sources themselves demand. Constantine was away from Fausta for
several months, at the end of which time rumours were circulating
that she and Crispus were having an affair, rumours which had
originated with the suspicions in some quarters that she may have
been pregnant. Constantine was informed, and questioned Fausta upon
his return. She confessed that she was indeed pregnant, but claimed,
truthfully perhaps, that Crispus had forced himself upon her. Hence
Constantine had Crispus punished, following which he forced Fausta
to proceed with an abortion, in the course of which she died.
Strictly
speaking, therefore, Fausta died by accident, and Constantine can be
absolved of guilt in this matter in so far as he had not intended
her death. Yet as far as Christian teaching was concerned, this made
little difference. From a Christian point of view, he remained
responsible not only for her death, but for the death of her unborn
child also.42 Hence Constantine had no choice but to conceal as best
he could the real circumstances of her death, assuming, that is,
that he wished to minimize the damage to his reputation as a
Christian leader. There was also his personal pride to be taken into
account. He hardly wanted to confirm to all and sundry that he had
been made a cuckold, and this by his own son. If the fact that
Fausta had died during an attempted abortion had escaped, pagan
tradition would have rejoiced to recount this extra piece of
scandal, if for no other reason than that it would seem to confirm
the rumour that Fausta had been engaged in an illicit relationship.
However, this does not seem to have happened. Constantine managed,
with commendable efficiency, to keep a lid on the worst aspects of
this affair. How did he do this? Enter Helena. What was her role in
these events? Clearly, she must have done something suspicious at
this time for the tradition to grow that she was responsible for
Fausta's death. One suspects, though, that it was Constantine who
sought her out and asked her to help deal with Fausta, rather than
that she had sought him out in order to complain about Fausta.
Doubtless there was hostility between Fausta and Helena, exactly as
our sources allege, but it is possible that this was due more to
Helena's role as Constantine's agent, and her attempts to persuade
Fausta to proceed with an abortion, than any other reason. It is my
argument, therefore, that the surviving tradition concerning
Helena's role in Fausta's death depends more on external observation
of the comings and goings at the palace rather than any genuine
inside knowledge of the cause of all this activity. It was noted,
perhaps, that Constantine had some unusual private meetings with his
mother, and that she herself was greatly distressed. It was noted
also that the two imperial ladies had become openly hostile towards
each other. Then Fausta died in unusual circumstances, and no
official explanation was forthcoming.
Two
and two were added to make five, and Helena was blamed for Fausta's
death. In reality, though, she was no more than Constantine's
confidential agent, chosen first to persuade Fausta to have an
abortion, and then to act as her assistant during the fatal
procedure itself.43 It was in this manner, therefore, that
Constantine sought to minimize public knowledge of this whole sordid
affair, by entrusting his mother with the more sensitive roles.44 It
is little wonder that she felt the need to go on pilgrimage to the
Holy Land shortly thereafter, probably in autumn 326.45
It
is appropriate at this point to comment in brief upon the death of
Crispus also, concerning which two facts alone emerge, the location
and means of the same. Writing c.391, the pagan historian Ammianus
Marcellinus (14.11.20) let slip that Crispus was put to death at
Pola on the Istrian peninsula. This is an important piece of
information. For Pola was such an out-of-the-way place that Crispus
must have had a particular reason to be there. It is generally
accepted that Fausta died at Rome itself, and often held that
Crispus normally resided at Trier in Germany.46 So how did he end up
at Pola? It must itself have been his final destination, or the
final stop on his journey to another location nearby, to one of the
offshore islands perhaps. He could not have arrived there
accidentally while on a journey from one imperial capital to
another.47 Nor was this an important military zone such as might
well have required his presence otherwise. Hence the best
explanation for his presence at such a remote location is that he
had been exiled there, or that he was on his way to exile on one of
the nearby islands.48 So what sort of crimes merited such
punishment? One notes that Constantine sentenced a senator, Ceionius
Rufius Albinus, to exile on a charge of adultery at about this time
also.49 Whether this is relevant to Crispus' own fate remains
unclear, but it is important to note that Constantine considered
exile an appropriate punishment for adultery, at least as far as the
highest social classes were concerned. Hence the location of Crispus
at his death, in a region to whose islands exiles were often sent,
lends some support to the tradition that he had been convicted of
adultery, and exiled as a result.
Let
us turn next to the means of his death. Sidonius Apollinaris alone
records that he died of poison, and in so far as no other source
contradicts him in this, and his claim concerning Fausta's death,
that she died in a hot bath, is supported by several other sources
also, there is no cause to doubt his testimony here. Crispus was
poisoned. This is important in that poison was not an official means
of execution, which points to suicide by Crispus.50 Crispus, it
would seem, killed himself, in despair perhaps, or in order to
pre-empt the execution which he feared was his destined lot, whether
immediately at the end of his journey or at some later point in
time. Important exiles were at the mercy always of those factions at
court which feared the return to influence of their enemies once
more, and sought, therefore, to achieve their more permanent end.
The elder Licinius had been exiled to Thessalonica following his
defeat in 324, but Constantine had him killed shortly thereafter,
despite an oath to preserve his life.51 In 354 Constantius II
sentenced his cousin Gallus to exile only, but senior courtiers soon
persuaded him to order his execution also, and even contrived to
prevent a second order countermanding this execution from reaching
its destination in time.52 Crispus seems to have realized that his
death was only a matter of time, and acted accordingly.
II.
An overlooked allusion to the death of Fausta
The
Historia Augusta charts the lives and reigns of the Roman emperors
from Hadrian, who began to rule in 117, to Carinus, who was killed
in 285, although its text has not survived for the period 244 to
260. It professes to be the work of six different authors writing
during the reigns of Diocletian (284-305), Constantius I (305-6),
and Constantine I (306-37), but there is general agreement now that
it was really written by one author only, writing at the end of the
4th or the beginning of the 5th century.53 Its value as a historical
source deteriorates as it progresses from Hadrian to Carinus, and
although it begins almost as trustworthy biography, its accounts of
the late 3rd-century emperors are nearly completely fictitious. This
is certainly true of its account of the emperor Carinus which is of
most interest to us here.
Carinus
was the eldest son of the emperor Carus who rose to power in late
282 following the assassination of his predecessor Probus near
Sirmium in Pannonia. Carus then elevated Carinus to the rank of
Caesar and left him in command of the Western Empire while he set
out on an expedition against the Persians together with his youngest
son Numerianus, Caesar also. The expedition was successful, and they
captured the Persian capital Ctesiphon. Shortly afterwards, however,
Carus was killed by lightning, and Numerianus succeeded him.54 He
was assassinated while leading his army home, and Diocletian, the
commander of his bodyguard, succeeded him in turn. When news of
these events reached the West, Carinus had first to put down a
military revolt in northern Italy, and readied himself then to
confront his rival Diocletian. In the spring of 285 their armies met
near the river Margus in Moesia, and Diocletian emerged victorious.
This
is a summary of what little is known about Carinus and his family,
most of which comes from various 4th-century epitomators. These same
sources all agree that Carinus lived a life of lust and
vindictiveness, and that he lost his battle against Diocletian
because his troops deserted him in disgust at this lifestyle.55 Of
most relevance to us here, however, is an anecdote concerning his
decadence which occurs in the Historia Augusta alone. Following a
description of his bejewelled finery, his luxurious banquets, and
his custom of showering his banqueting-halls and bedrooms with roses
from Milan, Carinus' bathing habits are described as follows (V. Can
17):The baths which he [Carinus] used were as cold as the air of
rooms that are under the ground, and his plunge-baths were always
cooled by means of snow. Once, when he came in the winter to a
certain place in which the spring-water was very tepid - its wonted
natural temperature during the winter - and he had bathed in it in
the pool, he shouted to the bath-attendants, it is said, 'This is
water for a woman that you have given me'; and this is reported as
his most famous saying. When his father heard of all that he did, he
exclaimed, 'He is no son of mine', and at last he determined to
appoint Constantius - afterwards made Caesar but at that time
serving as governor of Dalmatia in the place of Carinus, for the
reason that no one even then seemed to be better, and he even
planned, as Onesimus relates, to put Carinus to death.56
With
the possible exception of the reference to the position of
Constantius I as governor of Dalmatia, these allegations are
obviously and totally fictitious. But what was the purpose of this
unhistorical nonsense? It is generally accepted now that many of the
fictitious claims within the Historia Augusta allude to various
4th-century events.57 It has been argued, for example, that its
account of the emperor Elagabalus (218-22) consists in large part of
a satire on Constantine I.58 It has even been claimed that
'Elagabalus' unsuccessful attempt to murder his adopted son
Alexander Severus recalls Constantine's murder of his son
Crispus'.59 It is not unreasonable, therefore, to seek a similar
allusion in the above passage, and there is a strong case to be made
that it alludes to the deaths of Crispus and Fausta in particular.
Firstly,
the claim by Carinus that the water in the pool where he was
bathing, which happened to be too warm for his liking, was 'water
for a woman' (aqua muliebris) reminds one of the claim that Fausta
died in an overheated bath. Indeed, it is difficult to make sense of
this passage otherwise. In so far as mixed bathing was common
practice in the public baths, and there is no evidence that baths
were maintained at different temperatures for women, the description
of water which was too warm as 'water fit for a woman' seems to make
little sense in and of itself.60 Secondly, Carus' alleged
exclamation concerning Carinus, 'He is no son of mine', taken
literally at least, raises the question of illegitimacy and
adultery. At one level this reads as an accusation by Carinus
against his wife that she had committed adultery and passed off
another man's child as his son, reminiscent of the tradition that
Fausta was guilty of adultery.61 Finally, the claim that Carus
wished to put to death Carinus, his eldest son and Caesar, cannot
but remind one that Constantine put to death Crispus, his eldest son
and Caesar also, or so the story went. It is my argument, therefore,
that the author of the Historia Augusta had before him a source
which included an account of the controversy surrounding the deaths
of Crispus and Fausta, and wove different elements of this account
into his narrative concerning Carinus. He did not intend an exact
analogy, but expected rather that the very combination of these
elements would be enough for his reader to understand the subject of
his allusion. Furthermore, there is a strong similarity between the
vices and excesses which he had attributed to Elagabalus earlier and
those which he attributesto Carinus here.62 Why is this? The fact
that his life of Elagabalus was a satire on Constantine I, and that
his life of Carinus reminds us of Elagabalus once more is surely
important. The author is trying to signal to us that he has returned
to the subject of Constantine once more in his life of Carinus, and
that it is to his reign which we must turn again also if we are to
hope to understand the real significance of his words.
In
conclusion, therefore, Constantine has been unfairly blamed for the
execution of his wife and eldest son, neither of whom he had wished
to see dead. The best explanation for the unusual circumstances of
Fausta at her death, in a hot bath, is that she died by accident
during an attempted abortion. This ties in with the allegation that
she was guilty of adultery with Crispus. As for Crispus, he was
sentenced to exile, a punishment which points towards his conviction
of adultery also. He then committed suicide.
Constantine
did his best to cover up this whole sordid mess. He managed to
conceal the details of Fausta's death, that she had died during an
attempted abortion, because it had taken place in the privacy of the
imperial bathroom when Fausta was attended only by the other
imperial ladies, not least her mother-in-law Helena. He could not,
however, conceal the fact that she had died in a hot bath, which
information is surely due to the servants who had prepared the same.
Nor could he prevent people from assuming, as a result of their
close succession, that the deaths of Crispus and Fausta must have
been related, an assumption fuelled by a palace rumour that the pair
had committed adultery together. Indeed, the veil of secrecy with
which he surrounded the death of Fausta in particular only served to
confirm people's worst suspicions, that he must have ordered their
executions. He further reinforced these suspicions by condemning the
memory of both, or by allowing this condemnation to stand even after
their deaths. This reflected merely his continuing anger at their
adultery together, and at the situation in which their untimely
deaths had placed him, but it encouraged people to assume the
worst.63 Together with his apparent refusal to justify 'his'
actions, since, of course, he did not regard himself as responsible
for either death, one a suicide, the other an accident, this left a
vacuum which rumour and innuendo strove to fill. In the end,
therefore, Constantine proved the worst enemy of his own reputation.
NOTES
1.
For full references, see A. H. M. Jones, J. R. Martindale, and J.
Morris, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire I: AD 260-395
(Cambridge, 1971), 325-6. Her full name is known only from coins (n.
3).
2.
See T. D. Barnes, The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine
(Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 42-3.
3.
See P. Bruun, The Roman Imperial Coinage VII: Constantine and
Licinius AD 313-37 (London, 1966), 116, 137, 203, 263^, 325-6, 383,
447, 475, 514-15, 551, 612-13, 647, 709.
4.
In his Liber de Caesaribus composed c.361, Aurelius Victor notes
only that (De Caes. 41.11), 'When the eldest of these [Constantine's
children] had died on the orders of his father, suddenly Calocerus,
commander of the imperial camel herd, insanely seized the island of
Cyprus and pretended to rule', with no mention of Fausta. In his
Breviarium composed c.369, Eutropius claims that Constantine became
arrogant with the result that (Brev. 10.6) 'First he persecuted his
relatives and killed his son, an outstanding man, and his sister's
son, subsequently his wife and afterwards numerous friends'. Writing
c.380, Jerome notes in his Chronicle for 325, 'Crispus, the son of
Constantine, and Licinius Junior, the son of Licinius and
Constantia, Constantine's sister, are most cruelly killed', but
misdates the death of Fausta to 328, stating simply, 'Constantine
kills his wife Fausta'. The anonymous compiler of the first
recension of the Consularia Constantinopolitana, writing c.388,
dates the death of Crispus to 326, stating only, 'Crispus was
killed'. He dates the death of Licinius Junior to 325, but does not
mention Fausta at all. Finally, the ecclesiastical historian
Orosius, writing c.417, claims, following a brief mention of the
Arian heresy and the Council of Nicaea in 325, that (Adv. Pag. 7.26)
'Constantine turned the sword of vengeange and the punishment
destined for the impious against even his close relatives. For he
killed his own son, Crispus, and his sister's son, Licinius.'
5.
In general, see Barnes, 'The Epitome de Caesaribus and Its Sources',
CPh 71 (1976), 258-68.
6.
In general, see A. E. Nobbs, 'Philostorgius' View of the Past' in G.
Clarke, B. Croke, A. E. Nobbs, andR. Mortley (edd.), Reading the
Past in Late Antiquity (Rushcutters Bay, 1990), 251-64.
7.
From E. Walford, The Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen ... also the
Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius as Epitomized by Photius
(London, 1855), 435.
8.
In general, see J. Harries, Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of
Rome AD 407-485 (Oxford, 1994).
9.
From the Loeb translation by W. B. Anderson, Sidonius: Poems and
Letters II (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 197. The description of an age
'of Nero's pattern' refers to the claims by earlier sources that the
emperor Nero (54-68) had had an incestuous relationship with his
natural mother Agrippina (Tac. Ann. 14.2; Suet. Nero 28.2), alluding
thereby to the claim that Crispus had enjoyed a similar relationship
also with his stepmother Fausta.
10.
In general, see R. T. Ridley, 'Zosimus the Historian', BZ 65 (1972),
277-302.
11.
From R. T. Ridley, Zosimus' New History: a Translation with
Commentary (Canberra, 1982), 36-7.
12.
See S. N. C. Lieu and D. Montserrat (edd.), From Constantine to
Julian: Pagan and Byzantine Views. A Source History (London, 1996),
210-62, for a full discussion of this text, and the translation
which I have followed here, 242.
13.
In general, see B. Bleckmann, 'Die Chronik des Johannes Zonaras und
eine pagane Quelle zur Geschichte Konstantins', Historia 40 (1991),
343-65.
14.
From the translation by H. A. Pohlsander, 'Crispus: Brilliant Career
and Tragic End', Historia 33 (1984), 79-106, at 101.
15.
Crispus' name was erased from CIL 11.4107, III.7172, V.8030,
IX.6386a, X.517, together with that of Fausta from CIL X.678. 16.
See Barnes, 'The Editions of Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History1',
GRBS2X (1980), 191-201, at 197.
17.
It is a sad comment on our age that it seems so incomprehensible to
many that anyone should ever have been punished just for adultery.
Conspiracies or other political machinations have to be discovered
as the 'real' causes of events. See A. Ferrill, 'Augustus and His
Daughter: a Modern Myth', in C. Deroux (ed.), Studies in Latin
Literature and Roman History II (Collection Latomus 168: Brussels,
1980), 332-46, for a similar dispute concerning the 'real' reason
for the exile by Augustus of his daughter Julia to the island of
Pandateria in 2 B.C. A recent exception is G. Marasco, 'Constantino
e le uccisioni di Crispo e Fausta (326DC)', Rivista di Filologia e
di Istruzione Classica 121 (1993), 297-317, who argues that Crispus
and Fausta were executed not so much for adultery, but for incest; I
thank Prof. T. G. Elliott for drawing this last to my attention.
18.
P. Guthrie, 'The Execution of Crispus', Phoenix 20 (1966), 325-31.
19.
Pohlsander, art. cit. (n. 14), 105-6.
20.
Pan. Lat. 1A refers to Minervina, the mother of Crispus, as
Constantine's wife, which seems proof that he was legitimate. In
general, see Barnes, op. cit. (n. 2), 36,42-3; also, J. E. Grubbs,
Law and Family in Late Antiquity: the Emperor Constantine's Marriage
Legislation (Oxford, 1995), 306-7.
21.
N. J. E. Austin, 'Constantine and Crispus', Acta Classica 23 (1980),
133-8.
22.
J. W. Drijvers, 'Flavia Maxima Fausta: Some Remarks', Historia 41
(1992), 500-6, at 505.
23.
Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 220. 24.
So Pohlsander, art. cit. (n. 14), 101, claims of the relevant
passages in Zosimus and Zonaras, that 'the Phaedra-and-Hippolytus
motif is obvious and certainly raises doubts about the veracity of
this account'. Yet similar such relationships did sometimes occur,
as in the case of Antonina, the wife of the 6th-century general
Belisarius, who had an affair with their adopted son Theodosius
(Proc. Anec. 1.14—30). See also P. A. Watson, Ancient
Stepmothers: Myth, Misogyny, and Reality (Leiden, 1995), 136-9.
25.
In general, see F. Paschoud, 'Zosime 2.29 et la version paienne de
la conversion de Constantin', Historia 20 (1971), 334-53. See also
G. Fowden, 'The Last Days of Constantine: Oppositional Versions and
their Influence', JRS 84 (1994), 146-70, esp. 163-8, where he argues
that, in this instance, Zosimus combined Eunapius' text with the
fictitious Actus Silvestri.
26.
Drijvers, art. cit. (n. 22), 505.
27.
E.g., J. Burckhardt, The Age of Constantine the Great (London, 1949:
a translation by M. Hadas of the German original), 283, alleges that
Constantine had Fausta 'drowned in her bath'; J. P. V. D. Balsdon,
Roman Women: their History and Habits (London, 1962), 170, claims
that 'she was roasted - or scalded - to death in the baths'; Barnes,
op. cit. (n. 23), 221, claims that she 'suffocated in the steam'; M.
Grant, The Emperor Constantine (London, 1993), 114, keeps an open
mind, claiming that 'he [Constantine] had her immersed in a scalding
bath, or suffocated in a deliberately over-heated steam-room'.
28.
J.-L. Desnier, 'Zosime II, 29 et la mort de Fausta', BAGB (1987),
297-309, at 305.
29.
In general, see R. MacMullen, 'Judicial Savagery in the Roman
Empire', Chiron 16 (1986), 147-66.
30.
Grubbs, op. cit. (n. 20), 216-21.
31.
Barnes, op. cit. (n. 23), 221, opts strongly for suicide, as he
continues to do in JEH 44 (1993), 293, reviewing J. W. Drijvers,
Helena Augusta: the Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend
of Her Finding of the True Cross (Leiden, 1992), who accepts (60)
that Fausta was executed.
32.
Amm. 28.1.47.
33.
From the translation by B. Jackson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
III.
34.
See F. Yegiil, Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge,
Mass., 1992), 352-5.
35.
There is some dispute over the exact location of these baths.
Eusebius (KC4.61) claims that Constantine visited the hot baths of
his own city, by which he must mean Constantinople, while Zonaras
(Epit. 13.4.25—27) claims that he sailed across to visit hot
springs at Soteropolis in Asia Minor. It is possible that he visited
both.
36.
On the life, works, and nachleben of Soranus, see A. E. Hanson,
'Soranus of Ephesus: Methodicorum Princeps', in W. Haase and H.
Temporini (edd.), ANRW II.37.2 (Berlin, 1994), 968-1075.
37.
The following passages of translation are from O. Temkin, Soranus'
Gynecology (Baltimore, 1956).
38.
Suet. Domit. 22.
39.
See E. Eyben, 'Family Planning in Graeco-Roman Antiquity', AncSoc
11/12 (1980/81), 582; also, W. V. Harris, 'Child-Exposure in the
Roman Empire', JRS 84 (1994), 1-22. 40. E.g., Jerome, Ep. 22.13;
Basil, Ep. 188 Canon 2.
41.
Barnes, op. cit. (n. 2), 44, on C.Th. 9.38.1 and Porfyrius, Carm.
10.
42.
Eyben, art. cit. (n. 39), 62-74.
43.
A number of other imperial ladies were probably available also to
help Helena if she so required, including Eutropia, Fausta's own
mother, and Constantia, Constantine's sister. On the last, see now
H. A. Pohlsander, 'Constantia', AncSoc 25 (1994), 151-67.
44.
Imperial ladies, even Christians, were no less likely to be aware of
various methods of contraception or abortion than any other group.
E.g., Eusebia, wife of Constantius II (337-61), was alleged to have
tricked Helena, the wife of Julian Caesar, into drinking a potion
that caused her to miscarry (Amm. 16.10.18). Theodora, the wife of
Justinian I (527—65), was alleged to have had many abortions
during her years as an 'actress' (Proc. Anec. 9.19, 17.16).
45.
Eus, VC 3.42-6. Grant, op. cit. (n. 27), 115, refers to
'Constantine's dispatch of his mother Helena to the Holy Land, in
the hope of expiation'.
46.
On Fausta's location, see, e.g., Barnes, op. cit. (n. 23), 221;
Drijvers, art. cit. (n. 22), 506. On Crispus' journeys and
residence, see Barnes, op. cit. (n. 2), 83-4.
47.
The evidence for the imperial journeys of the period 283-337 has
been collected by Barnes, op. cit. (n. 2), but there is no evidence
that anyone else happened ever to visit Pola other than Crispus. The
same is true of the period 337-361, on which see Barnes, Athanasius
and Constantius: Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire
(Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 218—228, with one exception, the
ex-Caesar Gallus who passed near Pola on his way to exile at Flanona
on a nearby island (Amm. 14.11.20; Cons. Constant, s.a. 354; Soc. HE
2.34).
48.
Other 4th-century exiles to the Dalmatian islands include the
ex-magister officiorum Florentius in 361 (Amm. 22.3.6), and the
ex-proconsul of Africa Hymetius c.371 (Amm. 28.1.23).
49.
See Barnes, 'Two Senators Under Constantine', JRS 64 (1975), 40-9,
on Firm. Mat. Math. 2.29.10. 50. So Pohlsander, art. cit. (n. 14),
104, argues that Crispus was 'confronted by an imperial emissary and
allowed to choose the means of death'.
51.
Eutr. Brev. 10.6.1; Epit. 41.7; Zos. HN 2.28. The claim that
Licinius was trying to raise a revolt once more, Soc. HE 1.4, seems
simply a propaganda effort by Constantine, or his flatterers, to
justify this crime.
52.
Philost. HE 4.1; Art. Pass. 15.
53.
See, e.g., P. White, 'The Authorship of the Historia Augusta', JRS
57 (1967), 115-33; T. Honore, 'Scriptor Historiae Augustae', JRS 77
(1987), 156-76. The Historia Augusta is usually dated by means of
its perceived dependency upon a variety of late antique texts which
include works by Eunapius, Claudian, and Vegetius. Unfortunately,
though, the dates of composition of many of these works are
themselves subject to dispute. English-speaking scholars generally
date its composition c. 395.
54.
See H. W. Bird, 'Diocletian and the Deaths of Carus, Numerian and
Carinus', Latotnus 35 (1976), 123-32.
55.
Aur. Viet. De Caes. 39.11; Eutr. Brev. 9.20; Epit. 37.7-8.
56.
From the Loeb translation by D. Magie, The Scriptores Historiae
Augustae III (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), 443-5.
57.
See, e.g., R. Syme, Ammianus and the Historia Augusta (Oxford,
1968), passim.
58.
See R. Turcan, 'Heliogabale precurseur de Constantin?', BAGB (1988),
38-52; G. Fowden, 'Constantine's Porphyry Column: the Earliest
Literary Allusion', JRS 81 (1991), 119-31. 59. Fowden, art. cit. (n.
58), 120, on V. Heliogab. 13-14.
60.
That prostitutes often entertained their clients at the baths is
sufficient proof that male and female could tolerate the same water.
In general, see R. Bowen Ward, 'Women in Roman Baths', HThR 85
(1992), 125-47; also c. Dauphin, 'Brothels, Baths, and Babes:
Prostitution in the Byzantine Holy Land', Classics Ireland 3 (1996),
47-72.
61.
See A. Chastagnol, 'Etudes sur la Vita Can IX: Non est meus', in G.
Bonamente and F. Paschoud (edd.), Historiae Augustae Colloquium
Genevense: Atti dei Convegni sulla Historia Augusta II (Bari, 1994),
89-99, esp. 92, on adultery, and 98, on Crispus and Fausta.
62.
See Chastagnol, ' Etude sur la Vita Can VIII: Carin et Elagabal', in
J. Straub (ed.), Bonner Historia-Augusta-Colloquium 1979-81 (Bonn,
1985), 99-113. 63. Pohlsander, art. cit. (n. 14), 103, rejects the
possibility that Fausta died by accident in her bath on the basis
that Constantine did not restore her memory, or honour her with 'a
splendid funeral, orations, and monuments'. But accidents continue
to happen even to people deep in disgrace.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/3CE624703CA80405ACBFBB40EA629FCC/S0017383500029156a.pdf/on_the_death_of_the_empress_fausta.pdf
Zosimus, New
History, book 2
[…]
Experience assures us, that while these ceremonies were duly
performed, according to the direction of the oracles, the empire was
secure, and likely to retain its sovereignty over almost all the
known world; and on the other hand, when they were neglected, about
the time when Dioclesian laid down the imperial dignity, it fell to
decay, and degenerated insensibly into barbarism. That I state
nothing but truth I will prove from chronology. From the consulate
of Chilo and Libo, in which Severus celebrated the secular games, or
rites, to the ninth consulate of Dioclesian, and eighth of
Maximianus, was a hundred and one years. Then Dioclesian from an
emperor became a private individual, and Maximianus followed his
example. But when Constantine and Licinius were in their third
consulship, the 110 years were completed, and the festival ought to
have been kept according to custom; but it was neglected, and
affairs consequently declined to their present unfortunate
condition.
Three
years after Dioclesian died, and the reigning emperors, Constantius
and Maximianus Gallerius declared Severus and Maximinus (who was
nephew to Gallerius), the Caesars, giving all Italy to Severus, and
the eastern provinces to Maximinus. Affairs being all regulated and
the barbarians quiet, since the Romans had been so successful
against them, Constantine, who was the son of Constantius by a
concubine, and had previously an ambition of being emperor (but was
more inflamed with that desire, since Severus and Maximinus had
acquired the name and honour of Caesars), was now resolved to leave
the place where he had resided, and to go to his father Constantius,
who was beyond the Alps, and generally in Britain. But being
apprehensive of seizure by the way, many persons being well
acquainted of his anxiety for dominion, he maimed all the horses
that were kept for public service, whenever he came to any stable
where they were kept, except what he took for his own use. He
continued to do this throughout his journey, by which means he
prevented those that pursued him from going further, while he
himself proceeded toward the country where his father was.
It
happened that Constantius died at that time; the guards, therefore,
who thought none of his legitimate children to be fit for the
imperial dignity, considered that Constantine was a person capable
of sustaining it, and conferred the honour upon him, in hopes of
being remunerated with handsome presents. When his effigy according
to custom was exhibited at Rome, Maxentius, the son of Maximianus
Herculius, could not endure the sight of Constantine's good fortune,
who was the son of a harlot, while himself, who was the son of so
great an emperor, remained at home in indolence, and his father's
empire was enjoyed by others. He therefore associated with himself
in the enterprise Marcellianus and Marcellus, two military tribunes,
and Lucianus, who distributed the swine's flesh, with which the
people of Rome were provided by the treasury, and the court-guards
called Praetoriani. By them he was promoted to the imperial throne,
having promised liberally to reward all that assisted him in it. For
this purpose they first murdered Abellius, because he, being prefect
of the city, opposed their enterprise.
Maximianus
Gallerius, when he had learned this, sent Severus Caesar against
Maxentius with an army. But while he advanced from Milan with
several legions of Moors, Maxentius corrupted his troops with money,
and even the prefect of the court, Anullinus, and thereby conquered
him with great case. On which Severus fled to Ravenna, which is a
strong and populous city, provided with necessaries sufficient for
himself and soldiers. When Maximianus Herculius knew this, he was
doubtless greatly concerned for his son Maxentius, and therefore,
leaving Lucania where he then was, he went to Ravenna. Finding that
Severus could not by any means be forced out of this city, it being
well fortified, and stored with provisions, he deluded him with
false oaths, and persuaded him to go to Rome. But on his way
thither, coming to a place called the Three Tabernae, he was taken
by a stratagem of Maxentius and immediately executed. Maximianus
Gallerius could not patiently endure these injuries done to Severus,
and therefore resolved to go from the east to Rome, and to punish,
Maxentius as he deserved. On his arrival in Italy, he found the
soldiers about him so treacherous, that he returned into the east
without fighting a battle.
At
this period Maximianus Herculie, who lamented the tumults which
disturbed the public peace, came to Dioclesian who then lived at
Carnutum, a town of Gallia Celtica, and endeavoured to persuade him
to resume the empire, and not to suffer the government which they
had preserved so long and with so much difficulty to be exposed to
the madness and folly of those who had possessed themselves of it,
and who had already brought it near to ruin. But Dioclesian refused
to listen to him; for he wisely preferred his own quiet, and perhaps
foresaw the troubles that would ensue, being a man well versed in
matters of religion. Herculius therefore, perceiving that he could
not prevail with him, came to Ravenna, and so returned to the Alps
to meet Constantine, who lay there. And being naturally a busy
faithless man, he promised his daughter Fausta to Constantine, which
he performed, but persuaded him to pursue Maximianus Gallerius, who
was then leaving Italy, and to lay wait for Maxentius. To all which
Constantine agreed. He then left him, designing if possible to
recover the empire, as he hoped to create a quarrel between
Constantine and his son Maxentius. But while he attempted these
things, Maximianus Gallerius assumed Licinius, as his colleague in
the empire, with whose assistance he hoped to cope with Maxentius.
But while Gallerius deliberated on these affairs, he died of an
incurable wound, and Licinius then also claimed the sole dominion.
Maximianus Herculius endeavoured, as I have said, to recover the
empire by alienating the soldiers from Maxentius. For which purpose,
by gifts and insinuating addresses, having brought them over to him,
|42 he endeavoured to form a conspiracy against Constantine, in
which his soldiers were to join. But Fausta revealed it to
Constantine, and Herculius, who was now overborne by so many
disappointments, died of a distemper at Tarsus.
Maxentius,
having escaped this danger, and being of opinion that he was now
well enough established in the empire, sent persons into Africa, and
in particular to Carthage, to carry his image about that country.
But the soldiers in that country forbade it, out of regard to
Maximianus Gallerius, and the respect they had for his memory, until
they heard that Maxentius was coming to make war on them on the plea
of an insurrection. They then went to Alexandria, but meeting with a
great army with which they were not able to contend, they returned
to Carthage. Maxentius, being disturbed at this, resolved to sail
for Africa, and to punish the authors of the commotion. But the
soothsayers having sacrificed and given him ill omens, he was afraid
to go, not only because the entrails had that appearance, but also
lest Alexander, who was prefect of the court in Africa, should be
his enemy. To secure his passage thither from all doubt, he sent to
Alexander, desiring him to send his son as an hostage. But he,
suspecting that Maxentius did not desire his son for the mere
purpose of an hostage, but to deceive him, denied the request. After
this, Maxentius sending other agents to him to take him off by
treachery and stratagem, the plot was discovered; and the soldiers,
having then got a favourable opportunity to rebel, conferred the
purple robe on Alexander, though he was by birth not only a
Phrygian, but a timid cowardly man, and unlit for any difficult
undertaking, and was, moreover, of an advanced age.
At
that time a fire happened at Rome; whether it came out of the air or
earth is uncertain. It broke out in the temple of Fortune; and while
the people ran to extinguish it, a soldier, speaking blasphemy
against the goddess, was killed by the mob out of zeal, by which a
mutiny was occasioned among the soldiers. They would have destroyed
the whole city, had not Maxentius soon appeased their rage.
Maxentius after this sought every occasion to make war on
Constantine, and pretending grief for his father's death, of which
Constantine was the cause, he designed to go towards Rhaetia, which
is contiguous both to Gaul and Illyricum. For he imagined that he
should subdue Dalmatia and Illyricum, by the assistance of the
generals in those parts, and of the army of Licinius. But thinking
it better first to arrange affairs in Africa, he raised an army,
bestowing the command of it on Rufius Volusianus, prefect of the
court, and sent them into Africa. He sent Zeno also along with
Rufius, who was a person not only expert in military affairs, but
esteemed for his courtesy and affability. On the first charge,
Alexander's troops retired on a body of men in the rear, nor was the
other party left unconquered by the enemy. Alexander himself was
taken and strangled.
The
war being thus at an end, a good opportunity was afforded to
sycophants and informers of impeaching all the persons in Africa,
who had good estates, as friends to Alexander: nor were any of the
accused spared, but some of them put to death, and others deprived
of all their possessions. After this he triumphed at Rome for the
mischief done at Carthage. Such was the state of the affairs of
Maxentius, who conducted himself with cruelty and licentiousness
towards all the inhabitants of Italy, and even to Rome itself.
Meantime Constantine, who had long been jealous of him, was then
much more disposed to contention. Having therefore raised an army
amongst the Barbarians, Germans, and Celts, whom he had conquered,
and likewise drawn a force out of Britain, amounting in the whole to
ninety thousand foot and eight thousand horse, he marched from the
Alps into Italy, passing those towns that surrendered without doing
them any damage, but taking by storm those which resisted. While he
was making this progress, Maxentius had collected a much stronger
army; consisting of eighty thousand Romans and Italians, all the
Tuscans on the sea coast, forty thousand men from Carthage, besides
what the Sicilians sent him; his whole force amounting to a hundred
and seventy thousand foot and eighteen thousand horse.
Both
being thus prepared, Maxentius threw a bridge over the Tiber, which
was not of one entire piece, but divided into two parts, the centre
of the bridge being made to fasten with irons, which might be drawn
out upon occasion. He gave orders to the workmen, that as soon as
they saw the army of Constantine upon the juncture of the bridge,
they should draw out the iron fastenings, that the enemy who stood
upon it might fall into the river.
Constantine,
advancing with his army to Rome, encamped in a field before the
city, which was broad and therefore convenient for cavalry.
Maxentius in the mean time shut himself up within the walls, and
sacrificed to the gods, and, moreover, consulted the Sibylline
oracles concerning the event of the war. Finding a prediction, that
whoever designed any harm to the Romans should die a miserable
death, he applied it to himself, because he withstood those that
came against Rome, and wished to take it. His application indeed
proved just. For when Maxentius drew out his army before the city,
and was marching over the bridge that he himself had constructed, an
infinite number of owls flew down and covered the wall. When
Constantine saw this, he ordered his men to stand to their arms. And
the two armies being drawn up opposite to each other, Constantine
sent his cavalry against that of the enemy, whom they charged with
such impetuosity that they threw them into disorder. The signal
being given to the infantry, they likewise marched in good order
towards the enemy. A furious battle having commenced, the Romans
themselves, and their foreign allies, were unwilling to risk their
lives, as they wished for deliverance from the bitter tyranny with
which they were burdened; though the other troops were slain in
great numbers, being either trod to death by the horse, or killed by
the foot.
As
long as the cavalry kept their ground, Maxentius retained some
hopes, but when they gave way, he tied with the rest over the bridge
into the city. The beams not being strong enough to bear so great a
weight, they broke; and Maxentius, with the others, was carried with
the stream down the river.
When
the news of this victory was reported in the city, none dared to
shew any joy for what had happened, because many thought it was an
unfounded report. But when the head of Maxentius was brought upon a
spear, their fear and dejection were changed to joy and pleasure. On
this occasion Constantine punished very few, and they were only some
few of the nearest friends of Maxentius; but he abolished the
praetorian troops, and destroyed the fortresses in which they used
to reside. At length, having arranged all things in the city, he
went towards Gallia Celtica; and on his way sent for Licinius to
Milan, and gave him in marriage his sister Constantia, whom he had
formerly promised him, when he wished him to unite with himself
against Maxentius. That solemnity over, Constantine proceeded
towards the Celtae. It was not long before a civil war broke out
between Licinius and Maximianus, who had a severe engagement, in
which Licinius at first appeared to have the disadvantage, but he
presently rallied and put Maximianus to flight. This emperor,
travelling through the east into Egypt, in hopes of raising a force
to renew the war, died at Tarsus.
The
empire being thus devolved on Constantine and Licinius, they soon
quarrelled. Not because Licinius gave any cause for it, but that
Constantine, in his usual manner, was unfaithful to his agreement,
by endeavouring to alienate from Licinius some nations that belonged
to his dominions. By this means an open rupture ensued, and both
prepared for war. Licinius took up his head-quarters at Cibalis, a
city of Pannonia, which stands on a hill; the road to which is
rugged and narrow. The greatest part of this road is through a deep
morass, and the remainder up a mountain, on which stands the city.
Below it extends a spacious plain, which entertains the view with a
boundless prospect. On this Licinius fixed his camp, and extended
the body of his army under the hill, that his flanks might be
protected from the enemy. Constantine in the meantime drew up his
men near the mountain, placing the horse in front, thinking that to
be the best disposition lest the enemy should fall upon the foot,
who moved but slowly, and hinder their advance. Having done this, he
immediately gave the charge, and attacked the enemy. This engagement
was one of the most furious that was ever fought; for when each side
had expended their darts, they fought a long time with spears and
javelins; and after the action had continued from morning to night,
the right wing, where Constantine himself commanded, began to
prevail. The enemy being routed, Licinius's troops, seeing him
mounted and ready to fly, dared not stay to eat their portions, but
left behind them all their cattle and provisions, taking only as
much food as would suffice for one night, and marched with great
precipitation along with Licinius to Sirmium, a city of Pannonia, by
which runs a river which discharges itself into the Ister. In
passing this town he broke down the bridge over the river, and
marched on with an intention to levy troops in Thrace.
Constantine,
having taken Cibalis, and Sirmium, and all the towns that Licinius
had abandoned, sent five thousand men in pursuit of him. But as
these were ignorant of the course he had taken, they could not
overtake him. Constantine however, having rebuilt the bridge over
the Saus, which Licinius had broken down, was with his army almost
at his heels. Having entered Thrace, he arrived at the plain where
Licinius lay encamped. On the night of his arrival there he
marshalled his army, and gave orders for his soldiers to be ready
for battle by day-break. As soon as it was light, Licinius,
perceiving Constantine with his army, drew up his forces also,
having been joined by Valens, whom he styled Caesar, after the
battle of Cibalis. When the armies engaged, they first fought with
bows at a distance; but when their arrows were spent, they began to
use their javelins, and poignards. Thus the battle continued very
obstinately for a considerable time, until those whom Constantine
had sent in pursuit of Licinius descended from an eminence upon the
armies while they were engaged. These wheeled round the hill before
they arrived at them, deeming it best to join their own party from
the higher ground, and to encompass the enemy. The troops of
Licinius, being aware of them, courageously withstood against them
all, so that many thousands were slain on both sides, and the
advantage was equal, till the signal was given for both to retire.
Next day they agreed on a truce, and entered into an alliance with
each other, on condition that Constantine should possess Illyricum
and all the nations westward, and that Licinius should have Thrace
and the east; but that Valens, whom Licinius had made Caesar, should
be put to death, because be was said to be the author of all the
mischief which had happened. Having done this, and sworn on both
sides to observe the conditions, Constantine conferred the rank and
title of Caesar on Crispus, his son by a concubine called Minervina,
who was as yet but a youth, and on Constantine, who was born but a
few days before at Arelatum. At the same time Licinianus, the son of
Licinius, who was twenty months of age, was declared Caesar, Thus
ended the second war.
Constantine
hearing that the Sauromatae, who dwelt near the Palus Maeotis, had
passed the Ister in boats, and pillaged his territories, led his
army against them, and was met by the barbarians, under their king
Rausimodus. The Sauromatae attacked a town which was sufficiently
garrisoned, but its wall was built in the lower part of stone, and
in the upper part of wood. They therefore thought that they might
easily take the town by burning all the wooden part of the wall; and
with that view set it on fire, and in the mean time shot at those
who stood on the walls. The defenders threw down darts and stones
upon the barbarians, and killed many of them; and Constantine then
coming up and falling on them from a higher ground, slew a great
number, took wore alive, and put the rest to flight. Rausimodus,
having lost the greater part of his army, took shipping and crossed
the Ister, with an intention of once more plundering the Roman
dominions. Constantine, hearing of his design, followed them over
the Ister, and attacked them in a thick wood upon a hill, to which
they had fled, where he killed many of them, amongst whom was
Rausimodus. He also took many of them prisoners, giving quarter to
those that would submit; and returned to his head-quarters with an
immense number of captives. These he distributed into the different
cities, and then came to Thessalonica, where having constructed a
harbour (this city not possessing one before), he made new
preparations for war against Licinius. For this purpose, he fitted
out two hundred galleys of war; each with thirty oars, besides two
thousand transport vessels, and raised a force of a hundred and
twenty thousand foot, and ten thousand horsemen and sailors.
Licinius, hearing of the great preparations of Constantine, sent
messengers to every nation, commanding them to prepare a sufficient
number of men for the navy, besides horse and foot soldiers. The
Egyptians therefore sent out eighty galleys, the Phoenicians an
equal number, the Ionians and Dorians of Asia sixty, the Cyprians
thirty, the Carians twenty, the Bithynians thirty, and the Africans
fifty. His foot-soldiers amounted to nearly a hundred and fifty
thousand, but his horse only to fifteen thousand, which were sent to
him from Phrygia and Cappadocia. Constantine's navy lay at Piraeus,
that of Licinius in the Hellespont. When they had thus established
their naval and military forces, Licinius encamped at Adrianople in
Thrace, whilst Constantine sent for his navy from Piraeus, which was
built and manned chiefly in Greece. Advancing with his infantry from
Thessalonica, he encamped on the bank of the river Hebrus, which
runs to the left of Adrianople. At the same time, Licinius drew up
his army in order of battle, extending from a mountain which is
above the town two hundred stadia, as far as the junction of another
river with the Hebrus; thus the armies continued opposite to each
other for several days. Constantine. observing where the river was
least broad, concerted this plan. He ordered his men to bring trees
from the mountain, and to tie ropes around them, as if he intended
to throw a bridge over the river for the passage of his army. By
this stratagem he deluded the enemy, and, ascending a hill on which
were thick woods sufficient to conceal any that were in them, he
planted there five thousand archers and eight hundred horse. Having
done this, he crossed the Hebrus at the narrowest place, and so
surprised the enemy that many fled with all their speed, while
others, who were amazed at his unexpected approach, were struck with
wonder at his coming over so suddenly. In the meantime, the rest of
his army crossed the river in security, and a great slaughter
commenced. Nearly thirty thousand fell; and about sunset Constantine
took their camp, while Licinius, with all the forces he could
muster, hastened through Thrace to his ships.
As
soon as day appeared, the whole army of Licinius, or as many of them
us had fled to the neighbouring mountains and vallies, together with
those that Licinius through haste had left behind him, surrendered
themselves to Constantine. Licinius being arrived at Byzantium,
Constantine followed and besieged him in that city. His navy, as
before related, had now left Piraeus and lay at Macedon. He
therefore sent orders to his admirals to bring the ships into the
Hellespont. This being effected according to the command of
Constantine, the officers of his navy thought it not prudent to
engage with more than eighty of their best sailing vessels, which
were gallies of thirty oars each, because the place was too narrow
for the reception of a greater number. Upon which Abantus, the
admiral of Licinius, making use of two hundred ships, despised the
smallness of the enemy's fleet, which he thought he could easily
surround. But the signals on both sides being given, and the vessels
meeting stern to stern, the seamen of Constantine managed their
ships so as to engage in good order; but the ships of Abantus,
sailing against the enemy without any order, and being confined by
the narrowness of the place, became exposed to the enemy, who sunk
and otherwise destroyed them. Many were thrown overboard; till at
length night put an end to the engagement. The fleets then separated
and put in at different places, the one at Eleus in Thrace, and the
other at the Aeantian harbour. The following day, the wind blowing
hard from the north, Abantus put out from the Aeantian port and
prepared for action. But the galleys of fifty oars being come to
Eleus by order of the admirals, Abantus was alarmed at the number of
vessels, and hesitated whether to sail against the enemy. About noon
the north wind subsided; the south wind then blew with such
violence, that the ships of Licinius, which lay on the Asiatic
coast, were some driven on shore, others broken against the rocks,
and others foundered with all on board. In this affair five thousand
men perished, together with a hundred and thirty ships filled with
men, whom Licinius had sent out of Thrace to Asia accompanied by a
part of his army; Byzantium being too small to contain all that were
besieged with Licinius. The sea-fight being thus concluded, Abantus
effected his escape with only four ships into Asia. The navy of
Constantine, having arrived in the Hellespont laden with abundance
of provisions and stores for his troops, weighed anchor in order to
join in the siege of Byzantium, and to blockade the city by sea. The
foot-soldiers of Licinius, being alarmed at the sight of such a
navy, procured ships in which they sailed to Eleus.
Meantime
Constantine continued intent upon the siege, and raised a mound of
equal height, with the wall, on which he placed wooden towers that
overlooked the wall, from which his soldiers shot: those who
defended it, in order that he might with greater security bring
battering ranis and other engines of war near it. By these means he
thought himself sure to take the city. At which Licinius, being
terrified, and not knowing how to act, resolved to leave Byzantium,
and the weaker part of his army therein, and to take with him only
such men as were fit for active service, and had given proofs of
their attachment to himself, and to hasten without delay to
Chalcedon in Bithynia. He flattered himself that another army might
be raised in Asia, which would enable him again to contend with his
adversary. Arriving therefore at Chalcedon, and, having appointed
Martinianus to the command of the court guards, whom the Romans call
Magister officiorum, his associate in this dangerous enterprize, he
declared him Caesar, and sent him with an army to Lampsacus, to
hinder the passage of the enemy from Thrace into the Hellespont. He
posted his own men on the hills and passes about Chalcedon.
While
Licinius was thus occupied, Constantine, who had a great number of
transports as well as warlike vessels, and was desirous to make use
of them in crossing over and possessing himself of the opposite
shore, fearing that the Bithynian coast might be inaccessible to
ships of burden, immediately constructed some small vessels, with
which he sailed to the sacred promontory, which lies at the entrance
of the Pontus, two hundred stadia from Chalcedon. He there landed
his army, which, having done, he drew them up upon some adjacent
hills. Licinius, though he then saw that Bithynia was already in the
hands of his enemy, was rendered so desperate by danger, that he
sent for Martinianus from Lampsacus, and in order to encourage his
men to fight, told them that he himself would lead them. Having said
what he thought necessary to encourage them, he drew them up in
order of battle, and marching out of the city, met the enemy, who
were prepared for him. A sharp engagement taking place between
Chalcedon and the sacred promontory, Constantine had the
superiority; for he fell on the enemy with such resolution, that of
a hundred and thirty thousand men, scarcely thirty thousand escaped.
When the Byzantines heard of this, they immediately threw open their
gates to Constantine, as did the Chalcedonians also. Licinius after
this defeat went to Nicomedia with what horse were left him, and a
few thousands of foot.
At
this time a Persian named Hormisdas, of the royal family, came over
to Constantine for refuge, under these circumstances. His father had
been king of Persia. He was once celebrating his own birth-day after
the Persian manner, when Hormisdas entered the palace, bringing with
him a large quantity of venison. But as the guests at the table did
not rise, and pay him the respect and honour due to him, he became
enraged, and told them he would punish them with the death of
Marsyas. This saying most of them did not understand, because it
related to a foreign story; but one of them, who had lived in
Phrygia, and had heard the story of Marsyas, explained to them the
meaning of Hormisdas's menace, while they sat at table. It was
therefore so treasured up in their recollection, that when his
father died, they remembered his threat, and chose his younger
brother king, though according to law the elder should be preferred
above the other children. Not contented with that, they put
Hormisdas in chains, and confined him on a hill which lies before
their city. But after some time had elapsed, his wife effected his
escape in this manner. She procured a large fish, and put a file in
its belly, and, sewing it up again, delivered it to the most trusty
of her eunuchs, charging him to tell Hormisdas, that he must eat the
fish when no one was present, and use what he should find in its
belly for his escape. When she had formed this contrivance, she sent
several camels loaded with wine, and abundance of meat, to entertain
her husband's keepers. While they were enjoying the feast she gave
them, Honnisdas cut open the fish, and found the file; having with
that filed off the shackles from his legs, he put on the robe of the
eunuch, and passed through the midst of his keepers, who were by
that time perfectly intoxicated. Taking one of the eunuchs along
with him, he fled to the king of Armenia, who was his particular
friend. By these means he got safe to Constantine, who shewed him
all possible kindness and respect.
But
Licinius being besieged by Constantine at Nicomedia also, knew not
what to do, being sensible that he had not an army equal to engage.
Going, therefore, out of the city, he submitted himself to
Constantine, and brought him the purple robe, proclaiming him his
emperor and lord, and intreating pardon for what was past. He
presumed that he certainly should escape with life, because
Constantine had sworn to his wife that he would spare him. But
Constantine delivered Martinianus to the guards that they might put
him to death, and sent Licinius to Thessalonica, as if he were to
live there in security. However, he afterwards broke his oath, which
was usual with Constantine, and caused him to be executed.
Now
that the whole empire had fallen into the hands of Constantine, he
no longer concealed his evil disposition and vicious inclinations,
but acted as he pleased, without control. He indeed used the ancient
worship of his country; though not so much out of honour or
veneration as of necessity. Therefore he believed the soothsayers,
who were expert in their art, as men who predicted the truth
concerning all the great actions which he ever performed. But when
he came to Rome, he was filled with pride and arrogance. He resolved
to begin his impious actions at home. For he put to death his son
Crispus, stiled (as I mentioned) Caesar, on suspicion of debauching
his mother-in-law Fausta, without any regard to the ties of nature.
And when his own mother Helena expressed much sorrow for this
atrocity, lamenting the young man's death with great bitterness,
Constantine under pretence of comforting her, applied a remedy worse
than the disease. For causing a bath to be heated to an
extraordinary degree, he shut up Fausta in it, and a short time
after took her out dead. Of which his conscience accusing him, as
also of violating his oath, he went to the priests to be purified
from his crimes. But they told him, that there was no kind of
lustration that was sufficient to clear him of such enormities. A
Spaniard, named Aegyptius, very familiar with the court-ladies,
being at Rome, happened to fall into converse with Constantine, and
assured him, that the Christian doctrine would teach him how to
cleanse himself from all his offences, and that they who received it
were immediately absolved from all their sins. Constantine had no
sooner heard this than he easily believed what was told him, and
forsaking the rites of his country, received those which Aegyptius
offered him; and for the first instance of his impiety, suspected
the truth of divination. For since many fortunate occurrences had
been thereby predicted to him, and really had happened according to
such prediction, he was afraid that others might be told something
which should fall out to his misfortune; and for that reason applied
himself to the abolishing of the practice. And on a particular
festival, when the army was to go up to the Capitol, he very
indecently reproached the solemnity, and treading the holy
ceremonies, as it were, under his feet, incurred the hatred of the
senate and people.
Being
unable to endure the curses of almost the whole city, he sought for
another city as large as Rome, where he might build himself a
palace. Having, therefore, discovered a convenient site between
Troas and old Ilium, he there accordingly laid a foundation, and
built part of a wall to a considerable height, which may still be
seen by any that sail towards the Hellespont. Afterwards changing
his purpose, he left his work unfinished, and went to Byzantium,
where he admired the situation of the place, and therefore resolved,
when he had considerably enlarged it, to make it a residence worthy
of an emperor. The city stands on a rising ground, which is part of
the isthmus inclosed on each side by the Ceras and Propontis, two
arms of the sea. It had formerly a gate, at the end of the porticos,
which the emperor Sevirus built after he was reconciled to the
Byzantines, who had provoked his resentment by admiting his enemy
Niger into their city. At that time the wall reached down from the
west side of the hill at the temple of Venus to the sea side,
opposite to Chrysopolis. On the north side of the hill it reached to
the dock, and beyond that to the shore, which lies opposite the
passage into the Euxine sea. This narrow neck of land, between there
and the Pontus, is nearly three hundred stadia in length. This was
the extent of the old city. Constantine built a circular
market-place where the old gate had stood, and surrounded it with
double roofed porticos, erecting two great arches of Praeconnesian
marble against each other, through which was a passage into the
porticos of Severus, and out of the old city. Intending to increase
the magnitude of the city, he surrounded it with a wall which was
fifteen stadia beyond the former, and inclosed all the isthmus from
sea to sea. Having thus enlarged the city, he built a palace little
inferior to that of Rome, and very much embellished the hippodrome,
or horse-course, taking into it the temple of Castor and Pollux,
whose statues are still standing in the porticos of the hippodrome.
He placed on one side of it the tripod that belonged to the Delphian
Apollo, on which stood an image of the deity. As there was at
Byzantium a very large market-place, consisting of four porticos, at
the end of one of them, to which a numerous flight of steps ascends,
he erected two temples; in one of which was placed the statue of
Rhea, the mother of the gods, which Jason's companions had formerly
fixed on Mount Dindymus, which is near the city of Cyzicus. It is
said, that through his contempt of religion he impaired this statue
by taking away the lions that were on each side, and, changing the
position of the hands. For it formerly rested each hand on a lion,
but was now altered into a supplicating posture, looking towards the
city, and seeming to observe what the people were doing. In the
other temple he placed the statue of the Fortune of Rome. He
afterwards built convenient dwellings for the senators who followed
him from Rome. He engaged in no more wars; and even when the
Thaifalians, a Scythian tribe, made an incursion into his dominions,
he not only neglected to lead his army against them, but after he
had lost most of his troops, and saw the enemy plundering all before
them, even to his very intrenchments, was contented to save himself
by flight.
When
he was delivered from the distractions of war, he yielded himself to
voluptuousness, and distributed to the people of Byzantium a present
of corn, which is continued to this day. As he expended the public
treasure in unnecessary and unprofitable buildings, he likewise
built some which in a short time were taken down again, because
being erected hastily they could not stand long. He likewise made a
great change in the ancient magistracy. Till that time there had
been only two prefects of the court, whose authority was equal; not
only were the court soldiers under their control, but those also
which guarded the city, and who were stationed in its neighbourhood.
The person who had the office of prefect of the court, which was
esteemed the next post of honour to that of emperor, distributed the
gifts of corn, and punished all offences against military
discipline, as he thought convenient. Constantine altered this good
institution, and of one office or magistracy formed four. To one of
those prefects he committed all Egypt and Pentapolis in Libya, and
all the east as far as Mesopotamia, with Cilicia, Cappadocia,
Armenia, and all the coast from Pamphylia to Trapezus and the
castles near Phasis; to the same person was given all Thrace and
Moesia, as far as the mountains Haemus and Rhodope, and the town of
Doberus. He likewise added Cyprus and all the Cyclades, except
Lemnos, Imbrus, and Samothracia. To another he assigned Macedon,
Thessaly, Crete, and Greece, with the adjacent islands, both the
Epiruses, the Illyrians, the Dacians, the Triballi, and the
Pannonians as far as Valeria, besides the upper Moesia. To the third
prefect he entrusted Italy and Sicily, with the neighbouring
islands, and Sardinia and Corsica, together with all Africa westward
of the Syrtes. To the fourth he committed all beyond the Alps, Gaul,
Spain, and Britain. Having thus divided the power of these prefects,
he invented other methods likewise of diminishing their influence.
For as there used to be in all places, centurions, tribunes, and
generals, he appointed officers called Magistri militum, some over
the horse and others over the foot, to whom he gave authority to
discipline the soldiers, and punish those that had offended, by
which the power of the prefects was diminished. That this innovation
was productive of great injury to public affairs both in peace and
war I will immediately prove 4. The prefects had hitherto collected
the tribute in all places by their officers, and disposed of it in
war expences, the soldiers at the same time being subject to their
authority, whose offences they punished at discretion. Under these
circumstances, the soldiers, considering that the same person who
gave them their pay had the infliction of punishments whenever they
offended, did not dare to act contrary to their duty, for fear of
their stipend being withheld, and of being duly punished. But now
since one person is paymaster and another inspector of discipline,
they act according to their own inclination.
Constantine
likewise adopted another measure, which gave the Barbarians free
access into the Roman dominions. For the Roman empire, as I have
related, was, by the care of Dioclesian, protected on its remote
frontiers by towns and fortresses, in which soldiers were placed; it
was consequently impossible for the Barbarians to pass them, there
being always a sufficient force to oppose their inroads. But
Constantine destroyed that security by removing the greater part of
the soldiers from those barriers of the frontiers, and placing them
in towns that had no need of defenders; thus depriving those who
were exposed to the Barbarians of all defence, and oppressing the
towns that were quiet with so great a multitude of soldiers, that
many of them were totally forsaken by the inhabitants. He likewise
rendered his soldiers effeminate by accustoming them to public
spectacles and pleasures. To speak in plain terms, he was the first
cause of the affairs of the empire declining to their present
miserable state.
However,
I must not omit to relate, that having given to his three sons,
Constantine, Constantius, and Constans, the title of Caesars, he so
greatly enlarged the city of Constantinople, that many of the
succeeding emperors, who made it their residence, drew to it too
great a number of inhabitants, who flocked there from all parts, as
soldiers, merchants, and in other occupations. On this account, its
walls were rendered more capacious than those which Constantine
built, and the buildings were permitted to be placed so near to each
other, that the inhabitants are exposed to much inconvenience and
danger both in their houses and in the streets. Besides this a
considerable portion of the sea was added to the land by driving
down piles, thus forming dry ground, on which was built a sufficient
number of houses to form of themselves a considerable city.
I
have, indeed, often wondered, since the city of Byzantium is become
so great that no other is equal to it either in felicity or
magnitude, that our ancestors had not any prophecy concerning its
good fortune. Having directed my thoughts some time to this enquiry,
I consulted many historians and collections of oracles, and at
length, after much difficulty and taking great pains to interpret
them, discovered an oracle, which is attributed to Sibylla
Erythraea, or Phaello of Epirus. Nicomedes the son of Prusias
relying upon this, and interpreting it to his own advantage, by the
counsel of Attalus made war upon his father. The oracle I speak of
is this:
Thou among sheep, O
King of Thrace, shalt dwell,
But breed a savage lion, fierce and fell,
Who all the product of thy land shall spoil,
And reap thy fruitful harvest without toil.
But thou shalt not enjoy thy honour long,
Torn by wild dogs, which shall about thee throng.
Then a fierce, hungry, sleeping wolf shall thou
Awake, to whom thy conquered neck shall bow.
Next a whole herd of wolves Bithynia's land,
By Jove's decree shall ravage, and the hand
To which obedience the Byzantines yield
Shall in short time her royal sceptre wield.
Bless'd Hellespont! whose buildings by the hand
Of heaven were rais'd, and by its order stand.
Yet shall that cruel wolf my forces fear,
For all shall know me, who inhabit here.
My sire's designs no longer I'll conceal
But heaven's intent in oracles reveal.
Thrace shall e're long a monstrous birth produce,
Baneful to all by course of time and use:
A swelling ulcer by the sea shall grow,
Which when it breaks, with putrid gore shall flow.
This
oracle, in an obscure manner, points out all the particular evils
that were to befal Bythynia through the heavy impositions laid upon
it; and that the government was to devolve on those to whom the
Byzantines were then subject, in this distich:
——————————————
and the hand
To which obedience the Byzantines yield
Shall in short time her royal sceptre wield.
And
though the events foretold did not occur until many ages afterwards,
no one can suppose that the prophecy related to any other place; for
all time is short in respect of the deity, who exists through all
ages. This conjecture I have formed both from the words of the
prophecy and from the event. Should any believe that this prophecy
has a different import, they have liberty to enjoy their own
opinion.
Constantine,
having done this, not only continued to waste the revenue of the
empire in useless expences, and in presents to mean and worthless
persons, but oppressed those who paid the tributes, and enriched
those that were useless to the state. For he mistook prodigality for
magnificence. He also laid a tax of gold and silver on all merchants
and tradesmen, even to the lowest classes, nor did he even spare the
poorest prostitute. Thus, on the return of every fourth year, when
the tax was to be paid, nothing could be heard through the whole
city but lamentations and complaints. When the time arrived nothing
but whips and tortures, provided for those who on account of their
extreme poverty could not pay the money. Mothers were even forced to
part with their children, and fathers to prostitute their daughters,
for money to satisfy the collectors of this exaction. Wishing
likewise to invent some trouble for the rich, he summoned them all
and made them praetors, for which dignity he demanded a sum of
money. Upon this account when they who had the management of this
affair arrived in any city the people fled into other countries, in
the fear of gaining this honour with the loss of all they possessed.
He had the schedules of all the best estates, and imposed a tribute
on each of them, which he called a purse. With these exactions he
exhausted all the towns; for they continued in force so long even
after the time of Constantine, that the cities were completely
drained of money, and many of them forsaken by their inhabitants.
After
Constantine had oppressed and tormented the people in these various
modes, he died of a disease, and was succeeded by his three sons,
who were not born of Fausta the daughter of Maximianus Herculius,
but of another woman, whom he had put to death for adultery. They
devoted themselves more to the pleasures of youth than to the
service of the state. They began by dividing the nations between
them. Constantine the eldest, and Constans the youngest, having for
their share all beyond the Alps, together with Italy and Illyricum,
the countries bordering on the Euxine sea and all that belonged to
Carthage in Africa; Constantius obtained all Asia, the east, and
Egypt. There were likewise others who shared in the government;
Dalmatius, whom Constantine made Caesar, Constantius his brother,
and Anabllianus, who had all worn robes of purple embroidered with
gold, and were promoted to the order of Nobilissimates by
Constantine, from respect to their being of his own family.
The
empire being thus divided, Constantius who appeared to take pains
not to fall short of his father in impiety, began by shedding the
blood of his nearest relations. He first caused Constantius, his
father's brother, to be murdered by the soldiers; next to whom he
treated Dalmatius in the same manner, as also Optatus whom
Constantine had raised to the rank of a Nobilissimate. Constantine
indeed first introduced that order, and made a law, that every
Nobilissimate should have precedence over of the prefects of the
court. At that time, Ablabius prefect of the court was also put to
death; and fate was just in his punishment, because he had concerted
the murder of Sopatrus the philosopher, from envy of his familiarity
with Constantine. Being unnatural |58 towards all his relations, he
included Anaballianus with the rest, suborning the solders to cry
out, that they would have no governors but the children of
Constantine. Such were the exploits of Constantius.
In
the mean time Constantine and Constans were disputing for that part
of Africa which belonged to Carthage, and for Italy. Constans, who
wished to surprise, his brother, concealed his enmity for three
years. He took occasion, when he was in a province that was attached
to himself, to send soldiers to him, on pretence of assisting him in
the war against the Persians, but in reality to assassinate him by
surprise. This they accordingly performed. Such was the end of
Constantine.
Constans,
having thus removed his brother, exercised every species of cruelty
toward his subjects, exceeding the most intolerable tyranny. He
purchased some well favoured Barbarians, and had others with him as
hostages, to whom he gave liberty to harrass his subjects as they
pleased, in order to gratify his vicious disposition. In this manner
he reduced all the nations that were subject to him to extreme
misery. This gave uneasiness to the court guards, who perceiving
that he was much addicted to hunting placed themselves under the
conduct of Marcellinus prefect of the treasury, and Magnentius who
commanded the Joviani and Herculiani (two legions so termed), and
formed a plot against him in the following manner. Marcellinus
reported that he meant to keep the birth-day of his sons, and
invited many of the superior officers to a feast. Amongst the rest
Magnentius rose from table and left the room; he presently returned,
and as it were in a drama stood before thorn clothed in an imperial
robe. Upon this all the guests saluted him with the title of king,
and the inhabitants of Augustodunum, where it was done, concurred in
the same sentiment. This transaction being rumoured abroad, the
country people flocked into the city; while at the same time a party
of Illyrian cavalry who came to supply the Celtic legions, joined
themselves with those that were concerned in the enterprize. When
the officers of the army were met together, and heard the leaders of
the conspiracy proclaim their new emperor, they scarcely knew the
meaning of it; they all, however, joined in the acclamation, and
saluted Magnentius with the appellation of Augustus. When this
became known to Constans, he endeavoured to escape to a small town
called Helena, which lies near the Pyrenean mountains. He was taken
by Gaison, who was sent with some other select persons for that
purpose, and being destitute of all aid, was killed. Magnentius thus
gained the empire, and possessed himself all 59 the nations beyond
the Alps, and the whole of Italy. Vetranio, general of the Pannonian
army, upon hearing of the good fortune of Magnentius, was himself
inflamed with the same desire, and was declared emperor by the
legions that were with him, at Mursa, a city of Pannonia. While
affairs were thus situated, the Persians plundered the eastern
countries, particularly Mesopotamia. But Constantine, though he was
defeated by the Persians, yet resolved to subdue the factions of
Magnentius and Vetranio. While he was forming these resolutions, and
was very intent on warlike preparations, Magnentius still remaining
in Gallia Celtica, Nepotianus, nephew to Constantius, by his sister
Eutropia, collected a band of persons addicted to robbery and all
kinds of debauchery, with whom he came to Rome, and appeared in an
imperial dress. Anicetius, whom Magnentius had made prefect of the
court, armed some of the common people, and led them out of the city
to engage with Nepotianus. A sharp conflict ensued between them. The
Romans being undisciplined, and observing no order, were easily
routed; and when the prefect saw them fly, he shut the gates, for
fear the enemy should follow them into the city. The troops of
Nepotianus pursued them, and as they had no way of escape, killed
every man. In a few days after, Magnentius sent an army under the
command of Marcellinus, and Nepotianus was put to death.
Crispus
Crispus
was the oldest son of the emperor Constantine I and played a fairly
important role in the political and military events of the early
fourth century. The regular form of his full name is Flavius Iulius
Crispus, although the forms Flavius Claudius Crispus and Flavius
Valerius Crispus also occur. His mother was a woman named Minervina,
with whom Constantine had a relationship, probably illegitimate,
before he married Fausta in 307. When Minervina died or when
Constantine put her aside we do not know. Nor do we know when she
gave birth to Crispus; we may assume, of course, that it was before
307. Some modern authorities, on good grounds, think that it was in
305. Crispus' place of birth must have been somewhere in the East,
and it is not known when he was brought to Gaul and when, where, or
under what circumstances he was separated from his mother.
Constantine entrusted the education of his son to the distinguished
Christian scholar Lactantius, thereby giving a clear sign of his
commitment to Christianity. We are not told when Lactantius assumed
his duties, but a date before 317 seems likely. Nor do we know how
successful he was in instilling Christian beliefs and values in his
imperial pupil. No later than January of 322 Crispus must have
married a woman named Helena -- not to be confused with
Constantine's mother or daughter by the same name- and this woman
bore him a child in October of 322. Constantine, we learn, was
pleased.
Crispus'
official career began at an early age and is well documented. On
March 1 of 317, at Serdica (modern Sofia), his father appointed him
Caesar. The consulship was his three times, in 318, 321, and 324.
While nominally in charge of Gaul, with a prefect at his side, he
successfully undertook military operations against the Franks and
Alamanni in 320 and 323. In 324, during the second war between
Constantine and Licinius, he excelled as commander of Constantine's
fleet in the waters of the Hellespont, the Propontis, and the
Bosporus, thus making a significant contribution to the outcome of
that war. The high points of his career are amply reflected in the
imperial coinage. In addition to coins, we have his portrait, with
varying degrees of certainty, in a number of sculptures, mosaics,
cameos, etc. Contemporary authors heap praises upon him. Thus the
panegyrist Nazarius speaks of Crispus' "magnificent deeds,"
and Eusebius calls him "an emperor most dear to God and in all
regards comparable to his father."
Crispus'
end was as tragic as his career had been brilliant. His own father
ordered him to be put to death. We know the year of this sad event,
326, from the Consularia Constantinopolitana, and the place, Pola in
Istria, from Ammianus Marcellinus. The circumstances, however, are
less clear. Zosimus (6th c.) and Zonaras (12th c.) both report that
Crispus and his stepmother Fausta were involved in an illicit
relationship. There may be as much gossip as fact in their reports,
but it is certain that at some time during the same year the emperor
ordered the death of his own wife as well, and the two cases must be
considered together. That Crispus and Fausta plotted treason is
reported by Gregory of Tours, but not very believable. We must
resolutely reject the claim of Zosimus that it was Constantine's
sense of guilt over these deeds which caused him to accept
Christianity, as it alone promised him forgiveness for his sins. A
similar claim had already been made by Julian the Apostate. We must
also, I think, reject the suggestion of Guthrie that the emperor
acted in the interest of "dynastic legitimacy," that is,
that he removed his illegitimate first-born son in order to secure
the succession for his three legitimate younger sons. But Crispus
must have committed, or at least must have been suspected of having
committed, some especially shocking offense to earn him a sentence
of death from his own father. He also suffered damnatio
memoriae, his honor was never restored, and history has not
recorded the fate of his wife and his child (or children).
Roman
Emperors - DIR Crispus Caesar (luc.edu)
The
Execution of Crispus on JSTOR
Crispus:
Brilliant Career and Tragic End on JSTOR
Nazarius
(4th
century CE), was a Roman and a Latin rhetorician and panegyrist. He
was, according to Ausonius, a professor of rhetoric at Burdigala
(Bordeaux).
The
extant speech of which he is undoubtedly the author (in R.A.B.
Mynors, XII Panegyrici Latini, Oxford 1964, No. 4; English
translation in C.E.V. Nixon/Barbara Rodgers, In Praise of Later
Roman Emperors (Berkeley 1994) was delivered in 321 CE to celebrate
the fifteenth anniversary of the accession of Constantine the Great,
and the fifth of his son Constantine's admission to the rank of
Caesar. The preceding speech (No. 12), celebrating the victory of
Constantine over Maxentius, delivered in 313 CE at Augusta
Treverorum (Trier), has often been attributed to Nazarius, but the
difference in style and vocabulary, and the more distinctly
Christian coloring of Nazarius's speech, are against this.
Nazarius
was an orator who lived in the fourth century AD. Virtually nothing
is known about his life. The only information we have is that he
delivered at least two speeches in 321 in honor of Emperor
Constantine and his two sons, Crispus and Constantinus. Of the two
speeches Nazarius delivered, only one is known. He is also said to
have had a daughter who was a renowned orator.
Sources
Nazarius
is known only through three written sources. First, there is the
panegyric (eulogy) he left behind. This was delivered in Rome before
the Senate in 321. The occasion for this was the fifteenth
anniversary of Constantine's reign and the quinquennalia of his two
sons, Crispus and Constantinus. The speech celebrates Constantine's
victory over Maxentius after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312
and was likely delivered in Constantine's absence. It is striking
that Nazarius makes almost no further references to the events after
the battle. He also mentions nothing about himself, his whereabouts,
his origins, or his position. This may indicate that he deemed this
unnecessary due to the fame he enjoyed at the time.[1] The twelfth
panegyric is sometimes also attributed to Nazarius, but according to
Wilhelm Kroll, there are insufficient elements to support this
claim.[2]
A
second written source comes from Jerome of Stridon (best known for
his translation of the Bible into Latin).[3] Nazarius appears twice
in his chronicles. In the year 324, Jerome writes: "Nazarius,
rethor insignis habitur." Nazarius was therefore a renowned
orator in his time. In the year 336, Hieronymus mentions the
daughter of Nazarius: ‘Nazarii rethoris filia in eloquentia
patri coaequatur.’ Apparently, Nazarius' daughter had as much
rhetorical talent as her father. Finally, Nazarius is mentioned in
Ausonius's "Commemoratio Professorum Burdigalensium."
Deci(m)us Magnus Ausonius (c. 310 – c. 393) was a celebrated
Latin poet from Bordeaux, where he taught grammar and eloquence.
Ausonius writes that Agricus held a chair previously held by
Nazarius and Patera. This passage has led to much speculation about
whether Nazarius actually came from Bordeaux. However, this remains
highly uncertain. If Nazarius were indeed from Bordeaux, Ausonius
would undoubtedly have devoted more texts to him. Moreover, it is
also unclear whether the chair Agricus took in Nazarius's place was
actually located in Bordeaux. According to some researchers, it was
located in Rome.
Contents
of the panegyric
As
mentioned earlier, the panegyric was addressed to the Senate on the
occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of Constantine's reign and the
quinquennalia of Crispus and Constantine, the two sons of
Constantine. Constantine himself was probably not present during the
speech. The speech is primarily a slimy ode to the emperor.
According to Nazarius, Constantine surpasses all previous
emperors.[10] The military skills of the emperor and his sons are
praised, and he describes Constantine's campaign against Maxentius.
It was Maxentius's cruelties that forced him into battle.
Constantine was urged to fight by his deceased father, Constantius.
Constantine is praised as a peacemaker, and strangely enough,
Nazarius does not dwell on the tense situation that arose after the
victory in 312 between Constantine and Licinius, who was still
co-emperor in the eastern Roman Empire in 321.
Style
Nazarius
writes in baroque prose in Gaulish Latin, overloaded with every
conceivable stylistic device. Nixon and Rodgers compare his style to
that of a student eagerly displaying all his rhetorical skills.
Nazarius's style betrays a passion. for obscurity, which was typical
of this period. This obscurity is particularly evident in the
description of Constantine. Nazarius is a master of his classics,
and the speech is full of allusions to Cicero, Sallust, and Virgil.
Historical
Significance
Nazarius's
speech contains very little historical information about
Constantine. Especially from the period after Constantine's victory
over Maxentius, almost nothing is mentioned. This may be due to the
fact that Licinius was still co-emperor in 321. The atmosphere
between Constantine and Licinius (who was not a Christian) was
particularly tense at that time.
It
is important to note that Nazarius, along with Eusebius, Lactantius,
and the unknown author of the twelfth panegyric, are the only
contemporaries to have written an account of the Battle of the
Milvian Bridge (just outside Rome). This battle, where Constantine
defeated Maxentius, is still often considered a milestone in the
history of Christianity. Constantine is said to have a dream or
vision during the battle, which led him to victory and subsequent
conversion to Christianity. However, the accounts of Nazarius,
Lactantius, Eusebius, and the unknown author of Panegyric 12 differ
significantly. Moreover, both Eusebius and Nazarius testify in his
"Church History" that divine intervention occurred just
before the start of the Italian campaign against Maxentius, and not
immediately before the famous battle at the Melvian Bridge.
According to Lactantius, Constantine had already converted before
the start of his Italian campaign. According to the primary sources,
there is absolutely no evidence of Constantine converting to
Christianity during the battle.
From
a religious perspective, Nazarius's speech is particularly
interesting. Unlike Eusebius and Lactantius, Nazarius was clearly
not a Christian. Together with the unknown author of Panegyric 12,
Nazarius has handed down to us a pagan version of the battle at the
Melvian Bridge. It is particularly difficult to grasp Nazarius's
religious convictions. His speech contains many pagan elements. He
refers to Mars, among other things, and praises Constantine's
immortality (something a Christian author would never do). Yet,
there are undoubtedly Christian elements as well. Nazarius's choice
of words clearly demonstrates his familiarity with monotheism.
Heavenly troops that had aided Constantine in his victory were
commanded by his deceased father, Divus Constantius. Nazarius
doesn't mention a dream or vision, as Eusebius or Lactantius do, but
he does speak of armies sent by heaven to fight for Constantine.
This heavenly intervention was a reward for Constantine's piety.
It
seems highly likely that Nazarius did not dare to take a position
between paganism and Christianity. This can be explained by the
uncertain political and religious situation in the Roman Empire at
the time of his speech. Some researchers, such as T. Barnes, believe
that Nazarius was indeed a Christian. Wilhelm Kroll correctly points
out the Christian meaning of the name Nazarius.
The
Great Cameo of Constantine
The
large agate cameo in the Royal Dutch collection known as the Great
Cameo takes the form of a fully classicising scene of imperial
triumph and harmony that surely owes a stylistic debt to Augustan
and Julio-Claudian gem cutting. The imperial family - Constantine,
Fausta, Crispus and a second female figure who might be identified
as Constantine's grandmother Claudia - rides in a triumphal chariot
pulled by two bearded centaurs, one of whom holds a trophy over his
shoulder while trampling underfoot two bare-headed and clean-shaven
enemies, one of them appearing to be wearing a Roman military tunic.
In the foreground a cantharus or wine vessel lies on its side
on the ground. In the background a winged Victory spectacularly
shoots across the sky in the direction of the imperial party; she
holds out in both hands a victor's garland with which to crown the
emperor. Constantine, caught in profile, appears on the gem wearing
a laurel wreath and civilian rather than military garb, he holds in
his right hand a spear or thunderbolt aimed at the enemies ahead of
the chariot. Fausta is shown with veiled head, holding a corn ear or
poppy head in het hand, perhaps as a symbol of dynastic fertility
and continuity. Crispus, though clearly still a boy, is dressed in a
military cuirass and helmet, and holds his left hand ready on his
sword scabbard. Again, this might be taken as an individual image of
dynastic readiness even into the next generation. The final figures
to need identification are the two men being tramples by one of the
centaurs drawing the chariot. This is obviously a standard way to
portray the fate of enemies of Rome and the power of the emperor;
however, on most occasions the enemies being killed and humiliate in
this way are quite obviously barbarians, even at this period most
commonly bearded northern barbarians. But given the appearance of
the two overcome foes it can only be assumed that they are intended
in this context to represent Maxentius's army defeated by
Constantine at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in AD 312 and shown
being decimated by Constantine's forces on the contemporary frieze
on the Arch of Constantine.
See
https://books.google.nl/books?id=ihGoAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA9-IA3&lpg=PA9-IA3&dq=ada+cameo&source=bl&ots=9kr4Qq5i83&sig=E6rijGaHriiiewPieUKjvB0qxD4&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwij9ayh0qLVAhXLPRoKHRZcBTgQ6AEIPTAE#v=snippet&q=plate%2014&f=false
By
contrast or comparison from the article of Ruurd B. Halbertsma:
Nulli tam laeti triumphi - Constantine's
victory on a reworked cameo in Leiden
The
scene shows a chariot, drawn by two prancing centaurs. On the
chariot four persons are depicted: a man with a laurel wreath,
holding a stylized thunderbold, and embracing, with his left arm, a
woman. The woman wears a wreath or diadem. Her head is covered with
a veil. In her left hand she is holding a corn-ear and a poppy head.
She is pointing with her index finger towards a young boy. Behind
the man a second woman is depicted, wearing a laurel wreath. With
her right hand she is also pointing at the boy in front of the
couple. The boy is dressed in military gear and reaches with his
right hand behind his back to produce an arrow from a quiver. With
his left hand he touches the scabbard of his sword. A helmet with
plume covers his head.
The
two prancing centaurs form a lively composition. They are supporting
an upturned shield on which a tropaeum
is visible, consisting of a scaled cuirass and a scabbard hanging
from a belt. The right centaur is upholding the pole on which the
tropaeum is draped. Under his hooves two figures are visible. The
person on the left wears a Roman tunic and is crouching, holding the
leg of his partner and looking in fear at the centaur above him. The
other man is wearing a military outfit and tries to support himself
on his shield. His downward gaze shows he is succumbing, only
moments away from death. Under the hooves of the left centaur a
fallen calyx crater is visible, lying between the eight-spoked
wheels of the chariot. Above the centaurs a winged Victoria in a
long garment is flying towards the group in the chariot. In her
outstretched hands she holds a crown, from which a very long double
ribbon is spiralling. The ribbon makes a few twists then disappears
behind the tropaeum
and reemerges above the head of the right centaur, where it ends in
straight lines.
The
reliquarium of Constantine
The
following information and questions are connected with the
reliquarium (or reliquary) of Constantine the Great and a second
item, a vase, with the remains of his mother Helena.
In
a French article of 1873 (by H. d'Arbois de Jubainville) a report is
described about a Greek orthodox bishop who visits the monastery of
Clairvaux (Champagne) in 1744. See
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken1/gview?identifier=6WxfAAAAcAAJ.
The name of the bishop is given as Nicodeme (Nicolas at his birth):
Le
mercredi cinquième jour du mois d’août 1744, un
évêque grec d'Arcadie (marquis dans l’île
de Crête ou de Candie, moine de saint Basile, qui a reçu
le nom de Nicodème en religion, et celui de Nicolas au
baptême, banny par les Turcs hérétiques pour la
foy et la cause de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ) considéra
nos différentes reliques et reliquaires.
Then
follows a description of the reliquary, in sufficient detail to
recognise it if it should exist nowadays. A detail is that (some?)
text (names) is in the Illyric
alphabet [Glascolitic]. The name of the monastery on the West of
Crete is (Moni) Arkadi or Arkadiu and is in these days also
mentioned as devoted to Constantine:
« ΑΡΚΑΔΙ(ΟΝ)
ΚΕΚΛΗΜΑΙ / ΝΑΟΝ
ΗΔ ΕΧΩ / ΚΟΝΣΤΑΝΤΙΝΟΥ
ΑΝΑΚΤΟΣ / ΙΣΑΠΟΣΤΟΥΛΟΥ »
« L'église
porte le nom d'Arkadi et elle est consacrée à Saint
Constantin »
In
literature, some facts of before 1866 - when there is a bitter fight
with the Turks – on the monastery are given. There should be
1000 very old manuscripts (and other old items?) (writes Franz
Wilhelm Sieber). Probably these items are lost or transferred to
safe places in Western Europe, for example to Venice. When exactly
is unknown, but before August 1744.
We
also do not know when the remains of Constantine and Helena were
transferred from Constantinopel to Candia/Crete. It is possible that
this happened during the Fourth Crusade in circa 1204, but every
other period is possible too. It seems to me that the remains has
been in the monastery for centuries. Date: avant
1206. Apporté à cette date, par dom Hugues de
Saint-Ghislain,
ancien trésorier du palais de Constantinople; c'était
un don de l'empereur Henri Ier de Flandres. [See also Ghislain]
In
any case, when Constantine dies in 337 his remains were transferred
to Constantinopel, to the predecessor of the Church
of the Holy Apostles. The remains of his mother Helena were
undoubtedly reburied with those of her son. In the Vatican Museum we
can see two porphyry coffins, one belonged to a daughter of
Constantine, and one to Helena. But the war-like images on this
coffin belonged to a warrior, not to a mother. Combined with this
knowledge we can suppose that Constantine's body was in the porphyry
coffin, probably with the body of his beloved mother. When centuries
later the situation in the town became bad, the remains of
Constantine were put in a reliquary box and those of Helena in a
vase. So they could be shipped to a safer place, and Crete was a
good destination, known to the Christians of the Eastern Roman
Empire.
Why
the banned bishop just visits the monastery of Clairvaux, can be
explained because the surrounding churches of the monastery had been
filled with many religious items from Constantinopel. These were
probably given to the churches in Champagne by Jean de Brienne, king
of Jerusalem and emperor of Constantinopel.
I
want to find further indications that the human remains of
Constantine the Great and his mother were indeed present in Moni
Arkadi, and then search backwards from 1744.
The
first question is: can we find that bishop (or abbot) mentioned
somewhere in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia?
Second:
can we trace back the "contents" of Moni Arkadi? Is more
known than Sieber mentions?
Third:
can be determined when and which art objects were transferred from
Constantinopel to Crete, and in particular to Moni Arkadi?
Fourth:
we know that the (new) monastery building was rebuilt in 1587 by
Klimis Hortatsis. Are further details known about the interior of
the church and the other buildings? About the church we find: C'est
une basilique à deux nefs, dont la nef septentrionale est
consacrée à la Transfiguration du Christ et la nef
méridionale à Saint Constantin et Sainte Hélène.
This suggests that the reliquaries were
present in 1587.
Fifth:
Dès le XVIe siècle, le monastère fut un
lieu de science et d'art, possédant une école et une
bibliothèque riche de nombreux livres anciens. Maybe
the reliquaries are mentioned somewhere, together with the old
books.
Sixth,
shifting to Constantinopel: can we find indications in the Turkish
archives of movements of religious items from that capital to Crete
or elsewhere in Western Europe? Fact is that many objects –
now in museums – have their origin in Constantinopel.
Enclosed
as Appendices: texts relating to the questions
Appendix
1a
March
10, 1873 Review of Learned Societies of France and Abroad p.
372 -
ARCHAEOLOGY
SECTION. MEETING OF MARCH 10, 1873.
Mr.
d'Arbois de Jubainville, a non-resident member, submitted copies of
four documents relating to the treasury of Clairvaux Abbey, namely
the inventory of the sacristy of Clairvaux in 1405, another from
1504, the 1743 appraisal of the jewels in the abbey's treasury, and
the 1744 description of two Byzantine reliquaries from the same
treasury, written, at the dictation of a Greek bishop, by Claude
Guyton, a monk of Clairvaux. This
communication was forwarded to Mr. de Montaiglon.
p.
-381- Mr. de Montaiglon verbally proposed the printing, in
the Revue des Sociétés savantes, of four documents
relating to the Clairvaux treasure, copies of which had been sent by
Mr. d'Arbois de Jubainville. These
interesting documents should be preceded by the explanatory note
provided by our colleague.
p.
-490- CLAIRVAUX TREASURE. Communication from Mr. d'Arbois de
Jubainville. A recent and unexpected event has brought to light in
the Aube archives numerous and important documents whose existence
was previously unknown. One of the most
intriguing parts of these documents concerns the treasure of
Clairvaux Abbey. It had probably
already disappeared by the time Mr. Guignard, archivist of the Aube
department, was writing his memoir on the relics of Saint Bernard
and Saint Malachy. We have gathered here four documents:
1.
The inventory of the sacristy of Clairvaux in 1405 (document A).
Our copy was made from the original, which came from the
Harmand collection, now in the archives of the Aube department.
2.
The inventory of the sacristy of Clairvaux in 1504 (document B).
Our copy was made from an 18th-century copy, also from the
18th century, which was in the possession of Mr. Guignard, who cites
it in several passages of his memoir.
3.
The appraisal of the jewels in the Clairvaux treasury in 1743
(document C).
4.
The description of two Byzantine reliquaries from the same treasury,
written in 1744 from the dictation of a Greek bishop by Claude
Guyton, a monk of Clairvaux (document D). The last two documents
were in their original form in the Harmand collection.
Our copies of these two documents, like that of the first,
are therefore made from the originals. We have added
cross-references to these four documents, either in footnotes or
parentheses. This kind of concordance
was established using an inventory drawn up by Claude Guyton in
1741. This inventory, preserved in its original form in the Harmand
collection, often takes the form of a dissertation and is, in our
opinion, too long to be published. As
for the description of the Byzantine reliquaries, we have
inserted—after the copy of each inscription given by a
Cistercian monk under the dictation of the Greek bishop—a
transcription in cursive Greek characters.
p.
-490- CLAIRVAUX TREASURE.
Communication
from Mr. d'Arbois de Jubainville.
A
recent and unexpected event has brought to light in the Aube
archives numerous and important documents whose existence was
previously unknown. One of the most intriguing parts of these
documents concerns the treasure of Clairvaux Abbey. It had probably
already disappeared by the time Mr. Guignard, archivist of the Aube
department, was writing his memoir on the relics of Saint Bernard
and Saint Malachy. We have gathered here four documents:
1.
The inventory of the sacristy of Clairvaux in 1405 (document A). Our
copy was made from the original, which came from the Harmand
collection, now in the archives of the Aube department.
2.
The inventory of the sacristy of Clairvaux in 1504 (document B). Our
copy was made from an 18th-century copy, also from the 18th century,
which was in the possession of Mr. Guignard, who cites it in several
passages of his memoir.
3.
The appraisal of the jewels in the Clairvaux treasury in 1743
(document C).
4.
The description of two Byzantine reliquaries from the same treasury,
written in 1744 from the dictation of a Greek bishop by Claude
Guyton, a monk of Clairvaux (document D).
The
last two documents were in their original form in the Harmand
collection. Our copies of these two documents, like that of the
first, are therefore made from the originals.
H.
D'ARBOIS DE JUBAINVILLE.
Non-resident
member of the Committee.
1845
and 1846. A new edition of this memoir appeared in 1855 in M.
Migne's Patrologia Latina, vol. CLXXXV, col. 1661-1798.
[-492-][A
2] Vas sancte Helene, opere greco compositum (piece B, no. 4).
[-498-][B
4] Quarto loco est vas argentum, quod proude fecit sancta Helena, de
predicto thesauro sumptum et a domino Henrico imperatore per eumdem
Hugonem Claramvallem missum, opere Greco mirabiliter et multum
artificiose compositum, in cujus parte anteriori, sub esmaldis de
auro mirabiliter fabrefactis, honorifice condita est portio Dominice
crucis, in cruce ex auro mirabiliter fabrefacta, in qua sunt quatuor
lapides praxini et duo alii lapides in sex angulis sex esmaldis miro
opere decorati. In eadem parte anteriori continentur reliquie
plures, scilicet de ferro lancee Domini, de spinis corone Domini, et
alie reliquie sub similibus esmaldis in cellulis collocate; in parte
vero posteriori ejusdem vasis continentur reliquie sancti Georgii et
aliorum plurimorum sanctorum, in cellulis argenteis; et omnes
reliquie, que in hoc continental vase, litteris greekis exprimuntur.
Sunt autem omnes reliquie, que in hoc continental vase, quadraginta
quator. Continentur etiam in hoc vase reliquie sancti Minas,
archiepiscopi et martyris 1.
1
This shrine, known in the 18th century as the Oratory of
Constantine, was kept in the fourth cabinet. (See Exhibit C, No.
14.)
p.
-503- PIECE C. 1743.
In
the year one thousand seven hundred and forty-three, on Monday the
twenty-sixth of August, Mr. Jean-Baptiste Denis Lempereur, jeweler,
and Mr. Marin, jeweler-goldsmith, both residing in Paris, being in
the Abbey of Clairvaux out of devotion to Saint Bernard, its first
abbot, to celebrate his feast day which falls on the twentieth of
the said month, they were asked to go to the reliquary treasury of
the said church of Clairvaux to give their opinion [-504-] on the
names, qualities, and prices of the precious stones that adorn it,
and the following is recorded by copy. [...]
[-505-]
14. In the reliquary of Constantine, the first Christian emperor,
there is nothing rich in precious stones or pearls, though they are
all fine. The whole may be worth one hundred and fifty pounds. The
filigram enclosing the cross is gold (A 2, B 4, D 2). 150 pounds
[-506-]
Signed: F. CLAUDE GUYTON, monk of Clairvaux.
ITEM
D. 1744.
On
Wednesday, the fifth day of August 1744, a Greek bishop of Arcadia
(a marquis on the island of Crete or Candia, a monk of Saint Basil,
who received the name Nicodemus in religion, and that of Nicholas at
baptism, banished by the heretical Turks for the faith and cause of
Our Lord Jesus Christ) examined our various relics and reliquaries.
Here is how he explained the fourth table².
1.
All the figures are of Greek origin. In the upper right square of
the table is a cross, with two figures standing on either side; an
angel on each side above the crossbeam. Above Christ's head is
written in Greek: scabrosis (sic for stavrosis, i.e., ςταΰρωσις),
meaning crucifixion. Above this is IHS XPS; beside the angel on the
right is Michael, beside the angel on the left is Gabriel. In the
opposite square is a cross, a Christ figure, two weeping figures, a
third holding Jesus Christ by the middle of his body to take him
down from the cross, his right arm detached; on the other side, a
figure is bent low, with his head near the feet of Our Lord, holding
a handkerchief; a ladder resting by its upper end on the cross, with
a man on it detaching Jesus Christ's left arm from the cross. Above,
on the right, is an angel: O Archimichael; On the other side, an
angel: O Gabriel; above the head of the crucifix: hiapocaphilossis
(sic for hi apocathilosis³, that is, ἡ ἀποκαθήλωσις),
id est incrucifixio (sic for excrucifixio or refixio): vir timoratus
[-507-] Joseph de ligno deponit intemeratum corpus tuum 1; above
this inscription, IHS. XPS.
At
the bottom of the table and squared to the right is a woman of her
height, wearing a closed crown on her head, behind it the crown of
glory, on one side of her head sancta (that is, ἄγια),
on the other side Helena (that is, Έλένη).
In the opposite square is a man of his height, dressed in long
robes, wearing a closed crown on his head, behind which is the crown
of glory, on his left arm like a maniple, on either side of his
head: O agios Constantinus megas (ὁ ἄγιος
Κωνσταντινος
μέγας), id est o (sic) sanctus
Constantinus magnus. The rest is distinguishable and legible without
being Greek.
2.
The same Greek bishop who saw the reliquary of Constantine the Great
². One notices there, on one face at the top and between the
two door panels, the bust-length figure of Constantine the Great,
who has a closed crown on his head; in his right hand he holds a
long cross; On one side of the head are effigies (i.e., εικων),
on the other Constant (Κωνσταντ).
On the first part of the right-hand panel, Jesus Christ is detached
and taken down from the cross, and one reads in Greek:
hiapocaphilosis (ἡ ἀποκαθήλωσις),
id est vir timoratus Joseph, etc., ut supra.
On
the second, below, is the Transfiguration of Our Lord; one reads:
metamorphosis tou Xpou (μεταμόρφωσις
του Χριστου).
On the third, below, is the Dormition and Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin; we read hichimissis tis panogies (ἡ κοίμησις
της παναγίας),
id est assumptio de Sanctissima 3. On the first part of the other
leaf is the ascension of Our Lord; we read: hianalipsis (ἡ
ἀνάληψις), id est ascencio.
On the second, above, is the apparition to the doubting apostle; one
reads: ipsilaphissis (ἡ ψηλάφησις),
id est apparatio sancto Thome 4. On the third, above, is the
resurrection of Our Lord; one reads: hianastasis (ἡ
ἀνάστασις), id est
resurrectio. Inside the said reliquary, at the top of the right-hand
door, is St. Michael (ὁ Μιχαήλ).
Above, one reads: O Evangelismos (ὁ εὐαγγελισμός),
id est annuntiatio. Below are illyric characters. Below, genicis
(γένεσις), id is nativitas
Xpisti. At the top and to the right of the bottom of the reliquary,
we read: O phios prodromos (ὁ ἅγιος
πρόδρομος) 5, id est
divus Johannes Baptista (or rather sanctus praecursor); and
opposite, in the said bottom of the reliquary, we read: mitir theou
(μήτηρ θεοữ), id est
mater Dei. The two flaps, which are below in the interior of said
reliquary, are full of [-508-] enamel figures with characters that
are said to be illyric. At the top of the other upper door, one
reads: hypapanti (ἡ απάντησις),
seu occursus Simeonis ad Xpistum 1. Below this are Illyric
characters, according to the said Greek bishop. Below that, one
reads yvapticis (ἡ Βάπτισις),
id est baptismus Xpisti. In the middle of the two inner doors, above
the crucifix, one reads stabrousis (σταΰρωσις),
id est crucifixio. The rest, which is below the inner doors, is not
easy to read, because the pieces, for the most part, are placed
indirectly in view.
For
certified copy: H D'ARBOIS DE JUBAINVILLE,
Non-resident
Member of the Committee.
2
Side D. Item A, No. 8; Item B, No. 8; pi
Item
C no. 9. This reliquary came from the monk Artand, who received it
from Louis, Count of Blois, according to the 1741 inventory.
3
Ph for th as below.
1
This phrase, borrowed from the breviary, is a commentary by the monk
of Clairvaux, and not a legend inscribed on the monument.
2
Item A, no. 2; item B, no. 4; item C, no. 1.
3
The literal meaning is dormitio.
4
The literal meaning is tactus. It is the verb ψηλαφαω
that is used by Saint Luke, XXIV; cf. John, XX, 27.
5
Ph here represents the aspiration sound of the Greek γάμμα.
1
Saint Luke, II, V. 25 ff.
Appendix
1b INTERPRETATION OF THE KNOWN RELIQUARY OF CONSTANTINE
(Treasury,
no. 60). Note by Dom Guyton.
September
11, 2017 Result: The Clairvaux Treasure from the 12th to the 18th
Century:
1.
The same Greek bishop (cf. Appendix XII) who saw the reliquary of
Constantine the Great.
On
one side (front, exterior doors), at the top and between the two
door panels, is the bust-length figure of Constantine the Great,
wearing a closed crown; in his right hand he holds a long cross; on
one side of his head are the inscriptions "Effigies"
(i.e., ΕΙΚΩΝ), and on the other,
"Constantine" (ΚΩΝΣΤΑΝΤ).
On the first part of the right-hand panel, Jesus Christ is taken
down from the cross, and the Greek text reads: Hiapocaphilosis (Ἡ
ἈΠΟΚΑΘΉΛΩΙC),
id est vir timoratus Joseph, etc., ut supra; on the second part,
below, is the Dormition and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, and
the text reads: Hichimissis tis panogies (Ἡ ΚΟΊΜΗΣΙΣ
ΤΗΣ ΠΑΝΑΓΊΑC), id
est assumptio de Sanctissima. On the first part of the other panel
is the Ascension of Our Lord; the text reads: Hianalipsis (Ἡ
ἈΝΆΛΗΨΙC), id est ascencio; On the
second, it is the apparition to the doubting apostle, we read:
Ipsilaphissis (Ἡ ΨΗΛΆΦΗCIC), id
est apparitio sancto Thome (or rather tactus). On the third, above,
is the resurrection of Our Lord, we read: Hianastassis (Ἡ
ἈΝΆΣΤΑCIC), id est resurrectio. Inside
the said reliquary, at the top of the right-hand door, O Michael
(ΜΙΧΑΉΛ). Below, we read: O
Evangelismos (Ὁ ΕΥ̓ΑΓΓΕΛΙΣΜΌΣ),
id est annuntiatio. Below that are illyric characters. Below,
Genicis (ΓΈΝΕCIC), id is nativitas Xpisti. At
the top and to the right of the bottom of the reliquary, we read: O
phios prodromos (Ὁ ΘΕΙΟΣ
ΠΡΌΔΡΟΜΟΣ), id est
divus Johannes Baptista (or rather divus praecursor); and opposite,
in the said bottom of the reliquary, we read: Mitir Theou (ΜΉΤΗΡ
ΘΕΟΥ), id est Mater Dei. The two
battans, which are below in the interior of said reliquary, are full
of enamel figures with characters that are said to be illyric. At
the top of the other upper door panel, one reads: Hypapanti (Ἡ
ΑΠΆΝΤΗCIC), seu occursus Simeonis ad
Xpistum. Below this are Illyric characters, according to the said
Greek bishop. Below that, one reads Yvapticis (Ἡ ΒΆΠΤΙCIC),
id est baptismus Xpisti. In the middle of the two inner doors, above
the crucifix, one reads Stabrousis (ΣΤΑΥΥΡΩΙCIC),
id est crucifixio. The rest, which is below the inner doors, is not
easy to read, because the pieces, for the most part, are placed
indirectly in view, (Aube Archives, copy. This piece was previously
printed by M. d'Arbois de Jubainville in the Revue des Sociétés
savantes des départements, 5th Series, vol. V, p. 507.)
2.
Sheet for the other exterior and rear face of the reliquary of
Emperor Constantine. In the middle of the two doors at the top, a
figure of a prince; around it is written: O Constantios (O
KΩNCTANTIOC). On the first door on the right, there is a
Descent from the Cross, known in Greek as: Apocloelosis
(AΠOKAΘHΛΩCIC, the act of unnailing); below, a
Transfiguration expressed by the letters IC XC H METAMOPNCIC; below,
the Deposition of Our Lord into the Sepulchre expressed by the
letters IC XC H KOIMECIC, Jesus Christ lying down, the Virgin Mary
surrounded by thirteen apostles, angels, and an apostle holding a
censer. At the top of the other door is the Ascension, expressed by
the words H ANELEPIC; below it is depicted St. Thomas touching the
side of the North with the inscription H ΨΗΛΑΦHCIC,
id est tactio; then below that, the Resurrection, expressed by the
words H ANACTACIC, id est resurrectio. (We left it at this point on
May 20, 1742.)
The
images of the Coronation, which have been described, follow (Trésor,
no. 60, p. 41). Above the first figure, to the right outside the
door of the first gate of the said reliquary, is written Nicephoros
(NIKEΦOPOC); below this figure is another with the inscription,
above, Agios Theodotos (AGIOC ΘΕΟΔOTOC).
On the other door leaf, to the left outside, above the large figure
near the opening, is written Menas (MHNAC); below it, another figure
with the inscription Polieuctes (ΠΟΛΙΕΥKTHC).
Inside the door leaf, to the right, is written above a figure Agios
Eustakios (AΓIOC EΥCTAXIOC); and on the figure below,
Agios Alexandros (AΓIOC ALEΕΞΑΝΔPOC).
Inside the door leaf on the left: a figure with the inscription
Hiagapea (H AΓΑΠIA). Four small figures follow on the
small inner door, to the right and above. The first at the top is
titled Agios Babulas (AΓIOC BABΥΛAC); below
Agios Heliodoros (AΓIOC HΛIOΔΩPOC); below
repeat of the previous one; below E agia Barbara (H AΓIA
BAPBAPA). Opposite these four figures, on the small interior door to
the left and above, are four figures. Above the first Agios
Dionusios (AΓIOC ΔIONYCIOC); above the second Agios
Anthimos (AΓIOC ANΘIMOC); above the third Agios
Abdenomakos; above the fourth Agios Gregorotheolo[go]s (AΓIOC
ΓPHΓOPIOC ΘΕΟΛOΓOC).
On the small door, inside the second right-hand leaf below, is,
above the first figure, Agios Leontios (AΓIOC ΛEONTIOC);
above the second, Agios Akimaunos; above the third, Agios Pantalemon
(ΠANTAΛEHMΩN); and above the fourth, Agios Kuros
(AΓIOC KYPOC).
On
the small door, inside the second left-hand leaf, and below, are
four figures: on the first is written Agios Athanasios (AΓIOC
ATHANACIOC); on the second, Agios Autonomos (AΓIOC AΥTONOMOC);
on the third, Agios Longinos (AΓIOC ΛOΓΓINOC);
and on the fourth, Agia Aglae (H AΓIA AΓΛAIA).
Next and opposite, on the same leaf inside, on the first Agios
Demetrios (AΓIOC ΔHMHTPIOC); below Agios Mercurios
(AΓIOC MEPKYPIOC).
Small
bottom cap. Above the first figure Agios Iô (AΓIOC
ΙΩANNHC) sanctus Johannes; above the second Agios
Eugenios (AΓIOC EΥΓENIOC); above the third Agios
Eustrathios (AΓIOC EΥCTΡΑΘIOC); above
the fourth Agios Orestes (AΓIOC OPECTHC).
The
first coin on the back panel, which is the largest, bears the
inscription: Tou agiou Gregoriou Nusses... (TOΥ AΓIOΥ
ΓPHΓOPIOΥ NΥCCHC)... (Treasury, no. 60,
p. 43.)
Note
in Dom Guyton's handwriting. Regarding the reliquary known as that
of Saint Helena, also called that of Constantine, or the portable
altar of Constantine the Great, we should recall that Nicephorus
(Book VII, Chapter 6) and Sozomen (Book I, Chapter 8), in their
Ecclesiastical History, attest that the great Emperor Constantine
never undertook a military expedition without having a portable
altar on which to celebrate the divine sacrifice for himself and his
people: in quo Deum landare, orareque, ac mysteriis participare
possent.
The
monks of the abbey of Saint Sauveur, outside the city of Liège,
have two portable altars. One of porphyry, only a foot or so long
and half a foot wide, decorated with a gilded bronze border on which
we read these words: Anno Dominice
Incarnationis M.L.XI, indict. XIV, IV idus augusti, dedicatum est
hoc altare in honore Domini nostri J.-C. et sancte Crucis et B. M.
semper virginis et S. Johannis Bapt. and Omn. Apostolor., et
martyrum Laurentii, Pancratii, Georgii et XI mil. Virgin. and Omn.
SS. cooperante Lamberto II hujus loci abbate. Memoria dni Hillini,
prepositi, et majorum ejus. Around this altar the twelve
apostles are represented in ivory.
The
other altar is made of a green stone only two inches long and three
inches wide. The rest is covered with a bronze plate, on which is
engraved this inscription: Anno ab
Incarnatione Domini M.C.XXX.VII, indict. V, consecratum est hoc
altare in honore S. et I. Trinitatis et sce Crucis et sancte Marie
Virginis et sci Laurentii, mart., et Omn. SS. a domino Rodulpho,
episcopo Leodiensium, XV kal. marcii.
Hic
datur ipse Jesus animarum potus et esus
Hec
tibi sit cara, cui caro fit, crucis ara.
This
altar is adorned with several precious stones. At the four corners
are depicted the four Evangelists; and above it is an ivory
crucifix, attached to the cross with four nails.
In
the city of Paderborn, in the cathedral church, there is an ancient
portable altar, on which Mass was said for sick canons. It is a
silver chest filled with holy relics, in the center of which is a
precious stone. It is taken to the canons when they are ill, and
they themselves bring it back to the church when they are cured.
[On
portable altars (altaria gestatoria, viatica, itineraria,
portatilia), see the special treatise by Gattico, De altari
portatili. — Catalani, Commentar. in Pontific. Roman., Part
II, Title V, de altar. portatil. consecratione. Philip, Count of
Flanders, gave two portable altars to Clairvaux (Appendix XIX).]
Among the objects from the treasury of Saint-Urbain of Troyes
deposited in the collegiate church of Saint-Etienne in 1277 was a
portable altar (Archiv. Aube, Saint-Urbain, cart. 1).
Appendix
1c
2.
Reliquary of Saint Helena/Oratory of Constantine
Relics:
Forty-four relics, including fragments of the spearhead ("half
a nail, from which the spearhead was nailed"), thorns from the
Crown of Thorns, and wood from the True Cross. The relics of saints
are identified by inscriptions and bust or full-length portraits of
the corresponding saints.
Reliquary:
"Vase of Saint Helena," "Shield or Oratory of
Constantine."
Date:
before 1206. Brought there at that time by Dom Hugues de
Saint-Ghislain, former treasurer of the palace from Constantinople;
it was a gift from Emperor Henry I of Flander
Dimensions:
H.=1 foot (0.32 m); W.=9 inches (0.24 m); Thickness = 2 inches, 9
lines (0.07 m)
Attestations:
mentioned in the inventories of 1405, 1504, 1640, 1741, 1771 and in
documents from 1517, 1743, and 1744.
See
https://archive.org/stream/letresordeclairv00lalo/letresordeclairv00lalo_djvu.txt
https://www.persee.fr/doc/bec_0373-6237_1902_num_63_1_448120#
https://www.persee.fr/doc/ccmed_0007-9731_2003_num_46_184_2865
https://www.persee.fr/doc/bulmo_0007-473x_1973_num_131_2_5229
CHRONOLOGICAL
TABLE OF TEXTS AND DOCUMENTS PUBLISHED IN VOLUMES 123 TO 147 OF THE
LIBRARY OF THE SCHOOL OF CHARTES
Appendix
2
May
1, 2017 Story of Μονή Αρκαδίου/Moní
Arkadhíou
«
ΑΡΚΑΔΙ(ΟΝ) ΚΕΚΛΗΜΑΙ
/ ΝΑΟΝ ΗΔ ΕΧΩ /
ΚΟΝΣΤΑΝΤΙΝΟΥ
ΑΝΑΚΤΟΣ / ΙΣΑΠΟΣΤΟΥΛΟΥ
»
“The
church is named after Arkadi and is dedicated to Saint Constantine.”
The
Arkadi Monastery (Greek: Μονή Αρκαδίου/Moní
Arkadhíou) is an Orthodox monastery located on a fertile
plateau 23 km southeast of Rethymnon, on the island of Crete
(Greece).
The
current church dates from the 16th century and shows the influence
of the Renaissance, as the island was under Venetian rule at that
time. This influence is visible in the architecture, which blends
Romanesque and Baroque elements. This two-aisled church was
destroyed by the Turks in 1866 and has since been rebuilt. From the
16th century onwards, the monastery was a center of learning and
art, boasting a school and a library rich in ancient books.
Surrounded by thick, high walls and situated on a
difficult-to-access plateau, the monastery was a veritable fortress.
Arkadi
was an active center and one of the strongholds of resistance
against the Ottoman occupation, which contributed to its renown.
During the Cretan Revolt of 1866, 943 Greeks found refuge there:
resistance fighters, and a majority of women and children. After
three days of fighting, and on the orders of the monastery's abbot,
Gabriel, the Cretans detonated the gunpowder barrels, preferring to
sacrifice themselves rather than surrender. All but about a hundred
died in the assault. Some 1,500 Turks and Egyptians also perished in
the battle. The monastery is now a national shrine in honor of the
Cretan resistance. November 8th is now a day of commemorative
celebrations in Arkadi and Rethymno. The explosion did not end the
Cretan uprising, but it did draw Europe's attention to this people
fighting for their independence.
The
Arkadi Monastery is located in the Rethymno prefecture, about 25 km
southeast of Rethymno. The monastery occupies a roughly rectangular
plateau, approximately 6.5 km on each side, situated on the
northwest slope of Mount Psiloritis, at an altitude of about 500
meters. The Arkadi region is fertile, with numerous vineyards, olive
groves, and forests of pine, oak, and cypress trees. The plateau on
which Arkadi sits is surrounded by hills that overlook it. The
western edge of the plateau ends abruptly, giving way to a gorge.
These gorges begin at a place called Tabakaria (tanneries) and end
in the Stavromenos region on the coast, east of Rethymnon. The
Arkadi Gorge boasts a rich diversity of endemic wild plants and
flowers.
The
area where the monastery is located has been inhabited since
antiquity. The presence of Mount Psiloritis, a sacred mountain
chosen, according to legend, as the site where Zeus was raised,
encouraged human settlement. Thus, five km to the northeast, the
city of Eleftherna reached its peak during the time of Homer and the
Classical and Roman periods, but its influence was felt throughout
the Early Christian and Byzantine eras.
The
nearest village to the monastery is Amnatos, about three km to the
north. The villages surrounding Arkadi are rich in Byzantine
remains, attesting to the region's prosperity. Thus, the Moni
Arseniou monastery, a few kilometers north of Arkadi, is also among
the great monasteries of Crete.
The
monastery is shaped like an almost rectangular parallelogram,
covering a total area of 5,200 square meters. The
enclosure resembles a fortress, extending 78.50 meters to the north,
73.50 meters to the south, 71.80 meters to the east, and 67 meters
to the west.
The
exact date of the monastery's founding is not known with certainty.
According to tradition, the monastery's foundations were laid either
by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius or by the emperor Arcadius as
early as the 5th century. According to this second version, the
monastery takes its name from the emperor. The presence of numerous
monasteries in Crete bearing the name of the monk who founded the
building is very common. This hypothesis, therefore, now prevails:
that a monk named Arkadios founded the building.
According
to Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, the monastery is built on the site
of an ancient city, Arcadia, whose legend was believed that after
its destruction, all the springs and fountains in the surrounding
area would not flow again until after the founding of a new city.
However, as early as 1837, Robert Pashley demonstrated the
impossibility of the monastery having been built on the ruins of any
city. This is the version that prevails today.
The
oldest evidence of the monastery's existence dates back to the 14th
century. In 1951, Professor K.D. Kalokyris published a 14th-century
inscription that supports the hypothesis that a monastery dedicated
to Saint Constantine existed at that time. This inscription reads:
"The
church is called Arkadi and is dedicated to Saint Constantine."
It
must have been located on the pediment of a church older than the
one we see today, or perhaps above the monastery's entrance gate.
It
is a two-aisled basilica, the northern aisle dedicated to the
Transfiguration of Christ and the southern aisle to Saint
Constantine and Saint Helena. It stands in the center and slightly
south of the monastery. According to the inscription engraved on the
bell tower's facade, the church was founded in 1587 by Klimis
Hortatsis. The building's architecture is marked by a strong
Renaissance influence, which is explained by the fact that the
church's foundation dates back to the time when Crete was a colony
of the Republic of Venice.
In
the lower part of the church's facade, built of regular square
blocks of masonry, the main element consists of four pairs of
columns with Corinthian capitals. Although their capitals show
classical influence, the columns themselves, set on high bases, are
Gothic in origin. Between each pair of columns is a semicircular
arch. The two arches at the ends of the façade each contain a
door and a circular opening, adorned with palmettes around the
perimeter. The central arch of the façade contains only a
decorative portico.
In
the upper part of the façade, above the columns, a series of
moldings and elliptical openings, also decorated with palmettes, can
be seen. At the center of this upper section stands the bell tower,
and at each end are Gothic-inspired obelisks. Comparisons of the
monastery's façade with the works of the Italian architects
Sebastiano Serlio and Andrea Palladio suggest that the church's
architect was likely inspired by them.
In
1645, the church was first damaged by looters who destroyed the
altar. When the monastery was captured by the Turks in 1866, it was
burned, and the altar and icons were completely destroyed. Only a
cross, two wooden angels, and a fragment of the Resurrection of
Christ were saved from the flames. The church's apses were also
destroyed.
The
current iconostasis, made of cypress wood, was erected in 1902. From
1924 to 1927, at the initiative of Metropolitan Timotheos Veneris,
consolidation and restoration work was undertaken on the apses and
the bell tower. The interior flagstones were then replaced in 1933.
Towards
the end of the 16th century, a period of intense cultural and
artistic creation on the island, the monastery underwent
restorations and transformations. The owners were Klimis and
Vissarion Hortatsis, likely from the Hortatsis family of Rethymnon,
whose name is associated with the Cretan Renaissance, including
Georgios Hortatsis, author of Erophile. The abbot of the monastery
at that time was Klimis Hortatsis. In 1573, he transformed the
monastery into a cenobitic monastery. Thus, the building's facade
would date from 1586. The two-aisled church, as it can be seen
today, dates from this period. An inscription at the base of the
bell tower dates it back to 1587, when Klimis Hortatsis was the
abbot of the monastery. This inscription reads:
"ΑΦ
ΚΛΜΧΤΖ ΠΖ"
or:
"15 Klimis Hortatsis 87".
The
construction of this church is said to have lasted twenty-five
years, and it can therefore be assumed that the foundation stone was
laid in 1562. Abbot Klimis Hortatsis, who initiated this work,
probably died shortly after its completion and does not appear to
have lived until the inauguration of the new church. Research has
uncovered a letter from the Patriarch of Alexandria, Meletios Pigas,
stating that the inauguration ceremony was to be entrusted to
Klimis' successor, Abbot Mitrofanis Tsyrigos. While the letter is
undated, it can be placed between 1590, the year Meletios Pigas was
ordained patriarch, and 1596, when Abbot Nicephorus succeeded
Tsyrigos.
During
the tenure of the first three abbots, and until the beginning of the
17th century, Arkadi Monastery experienced significant growth, both
economically and culturally. The monastery became a major center for
copying manuscripts, most of which were produced by the Archbishop
of Niccolò.
These
manuscripts were lost during the building's destruction by the
Ottomans in 1866, but some are now in libraries abroad. The
monastery was expanded with the construction of stables in 1610 and
the refectory in 1670.
In
1645, the Ottoman conquest of the island began. By the spring of
1648, they had taken control of most of the island, with the
exception of Candia (Heraklion), Gramvousa, Spinalonga, and Souda,
which remained under Venetian rule.
After
the capture of Rethymno in 1648, the Ottomans gradually occupied the
hinterland and looted the monastery. The monks and Abbot Simeon
Halkiopoulos then sought refuge at the Vrontisi Monastery. They were
allowed to return after swearing allegiance to Hussein Pasha. The
latter also granted them the right to ring the bell. Arkadi
Monastery then became the Çanli Manastir (Monastery where the
bell is rung in Turkish). A firman authorized destroyed monasteries
to be rebuilt according to their original plans, without additions
or changes. Arkadi took advantage of this firman but seems to have
overstepped its bounds by adding new buildings.
During
the Ottoman period, the monastery continued to prosper, as evidenced
by the writings of Joseph Pitton de Tournefort. According to the
traveler, the monastery was the most beautiful and wealthiest in
Crete. He counted 100 monks living in the monastery and another 200
living in the surrounding countryside. The monastery's territory
extended north to the Cretan Sea, west to Rethymno, and south to the
summit of Mount Ida. These lands allowed the monastery to live off
the land. Thus, Tournefort speaks of "400 measures of oil"
produced each year, a figure that could be double if the monastery
didn't let its fruit go to waste due to a lack of manpower.
Tournefort also praises the monastery's cellar, which contains at
least 200 barrels, the best of which bear the name of the abbot who
blesses them each year with a prayer specifically prepared for this
purpose. The wine made at Arkadi is apparently renowned. This wine,
called Malvasia, named after a village near Heraklion, and for which
Crete was famous during the Venetian era, also came from the
monastery's vineyards. Franz Wilhelm Sieber, during his visit to the
monastery, also mentions the abbot's cellar and the production of
wine from excellent grapes grown at high altitude, but specifies
that Malvasia production was no longer in use. Instead, the
monastery was then producing corn.
At
the beginning of the 19th century, the monastery seems to have
experienced a decline. Sieber, who stopped there nearly a century
after Tournefort and Pococke, did not offer such a glowing
description as his predecessors. According to the German, the
monastery housed only eight priests and twelve monks. Fieldwork
continued to be carried out regularly, but the monastery was said to
be in debt. He mentions the abbot who, to settle his debts, often
had to travel to Rethymnon.
Sieber
describes the building's library, boasting over 1,000 volumes,
including religious texts as well as works by Pindar, Petrarch,
Virgil, Dante, Homer, Strabo, Thucydides, and Diodorus. But the
traveler emphasizes the sorry state of these books, judging that he
had "never seen such damaged books," and he is unable to
distinguish the works of Aristophanes from those of Euripides.
In
1822, a group of Turkish soldiers led by a man named Getimalis
seized and looted Arkadi. The inhabitants of Amari managed to devise
a plan to retake the monastery and exterminated Getimalis and his
men.
Another
version recounts that a man named Anthony Melidonos, a Sphakiote
living in Asia Minor, returned to the island at the head of Greek
volunteers from Asia Minor to support the Cretan effort during the
Greek War of Independence. With a force of 700 men, he set out to
cross the island from west to east. Learning of the monastery's
looting, he went there. He arrived at night and, climbing onto the
rooftops, poured flammable materials into the building and set it
ablaze. He then attacked Getimalis, who was drinking, grabbed him,
and threw him to the ground outside the room. He was about to kill
him when Getimalis swore he was ready to convert to Christianity.
The baptism took place immediately, and the new convert was
released.
Although
this event must have dealt a blow to the monastery's development,
Turkish and Greek documents mention the monastery's ability to
provide food for the local inhabitants and to shelter fugitives
pursued by the Turkish authorities. The monastery offered classes to
the local Christian population. From 1833 to 1840, it was able to
contribute 700 Turkish piastres to the region's schools.
Although
Crete rose up against the Ottoman occupiers during the Greek War of
Independence, the London Protocol of 1830 did not allow the island
to become part of the new Greek state.
On
March 30, 1856, the Treaty of Paris compelled the Sultan to
implement the Hatti-Houmayoun, that is, civil and religious equality
between Christians and Muslims. The Ottoman authorities in Crete,
however, were reluctant. Faced with the large number of Muslim
conversions (mostly former Christians who had converted to Islam and
were therefore considered relapsed), the Empire attempted to curtail
freedom of conscience. The imposition of new taxes and a curfew
further fueled discontent. In April 1858, 5,000 Cretans gathered in
Butsounaria. Finally, an imperial decree of July 7, 1858, guaranteed
them privileges in religious, judicial, and fiscal matters. The 1866
revolt seized upon the opening created by the Hatti-Houmayoun.
A
second cause of the 1866 uprising was Ismail Pasha's intervention in
an internal dispute concerning the organization of Cretan
monasteries. Since 1862, various laymen had been advocating that the
monasteries' assets be placed under the control of the council of
elders, with the aim of establishing schools, but they met with
opposition from the bishops. Ismail Pasha intervened in this
internal Christian dispute by appointing those responsible for
debating the issue, annulling the election of "undesirable"
members, and arresting and imprisoning the members of the committee
tasked with traveling to Constantinople to discuss the matter with
the Patriarch. This intervention provoked violent reactions among
the Christian population of Crete.
In
the spring of 1866, meetings were held in various villages. On May
14, an assembly was held at the Aghia Kyriaki Monastery in
Boutsounaria, near Chania, and drafted a petition which it sent to
the Sultan as well as to the consuls of the major powers present in
Chania. During the first gatherings of revolutionary committees in
the spring of 1866, representatives were elected by province. The
representative for the Rethymno region was the abbot of Arkadi,
Gabriel Marinakis.
Upon
hearing of these appointments, Ismail Pasha sent a message to the
abbot through the Bishop of Rethymno, Kallinikos Nikoletakis. The
letter demanded that the abbot dissolve the Arkadi revolutionary
assembly or face the destruction of the monastery by Ottoman troops.
In July 1866, Ismail sent his army to capture the insurgents, but
the committee members fled before the Ottomans arrived. The Turks
left after destroying the icons and sacred objects found in the
monastery.
In
September, Ismail Pasha sent the abbot a new threat of destroying
the monastery if the congregation did not surrender. The decision
was made to establish a defense system for the monastery. On
September 24, Panos Koronaios arrived in Crete and landed in Bali.
He went to Arkadi, where he was appointed commander-in-chief of the
revolt for the Rethymnon region. A career soldier, Koronaios
believed the monastery was not meant to be a stronghold. However,
the abbot and the monks held the opposite view. Koronaios eventually
yielded to the abbot's opinion. Nevertheless, Koronaios advised
destroying the stable so that the building could not be used by the
Turks, a request that was also ignored. After appointing a certain
Ioannis Dimakopoulos as commander of the monastery's garrison,
Koronaios departed. Upon his departure, many local inhabitants,
particularly women and children, sought refuge at the monastery,
some bringing their valuables with them in the hope of protecting
them from the Turks. Thus, by November 7, 1866, the monastery
sheltered 964 people: 325 men, 259 of whom were armed, and the
remainder women and children.
Appendix
3
Nicholas
Mesarites, Ekphrasis
on the Church of the Holy Apostles
THE
MAUSOLEUM OF CONSTANTINE AND THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS
XXXIX.
But let us, if you please, go off to this church which lies toward
the east, so that we may look at the things in it, in order to
admire and describe them - this church whose founder our discourse
has already declared to be Constantius.
2.
This whole church is domical and circular, and because of the rather
extensive area of the plan, I suppose, it is divided up on all sides
by numerous stoaed angles, for it was built for the reception of his
father's body and of his own and of the bodies of those who should
rule after them.
3.
To the east, then, and in first place the body of Constantine, who
first ruled the Christian Empire, is laid to rest within this
purple-hued sarcophagus as though on some purple-blooming royal
couch - he who was, after the twelve disciples, the thirteenth
herald of the orthodox faith, and likewise the founder of this
imperial city.
4.
The sarcophagus has a four-sided shape, somewhat oblong but not with
equal sides. The tradition is that Helen, his mother and his
fellow-worker for the orthodox faith, is buried with her son.
5.
The tomb toward the south is that of the famous Constantius, the
founder of the Church. This too is of porphyry color but not in all
respects similar to the tomb of his father, just as he who lies
within it was not in all ways similar to his father, but was
inferior to his father, and followed behind him, in piety and in
mental endowment.
6.
The tomb
toward the north and opposite this, and similar to those which have
been mentioned, holds the body of Theodosius
the Great like an inexhaustible treasure of noble deeds.
7.
The one toward the east, closest to this one, is that of Pulcheria.
She is the honored and celebrated founder of the monastery
of the Hodegon; see how she, a virgin herself, holds in her
hands the likeness of the all holy Virgin.
8.
This tomb holds the dust of him who was an emperor among wise men
and a wise man among emperors [=Leo
VI, "the Wise", 886-912]. This is the tomb of the
Empress Theophano
[d. 893], the worthy and venerable, whose memory is everlasting,
whose husband was the Wise Emperor, the truly wise Empress, who
lived a praiseworthy life; "for the first wisdom is a
praiseworthy life" as the holy writings say.
9.
This is the tomb of Constantine, the first emperor born in the
purple, whose name is great in righteous judgment...
10.
This is the tomb of Basil
[I, 867-86] the Macedonian, who by most divine providence was raised
from a lowly walk of life to the eminence of the imperial position -
he who, they say, removed a quantity of the decoration from the
church of the heralds of God and transferred it to the sacred house
which he himself built in the name of the chief marshal of the
powers on high, the church whose title is the Nea.
11.
This is the tomb of Nikephoros
[I, 963-9] Phokas a most brave and warlike and
prudent man, who lost his life by treachery. The tomb in the inner
part of the Church contains Constantine [VIII, 1025-8], born to the
purple, the brother of the great emperor who is known as [Basil
II, 976-1025] the Bulgar-slayer.
12.
This is the Constantine who built this Church in the form in which
it is now to be seen, as various people have told.
THE
MAUSOLEUM OF JUSTINIAN AND THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS
XL.
Let us go on a little, if it seems good to you, o spectator, to
another building, which is called a heroon,
and is named by some a place of mourning because there are buried in
it the emperors, who are, one might say, heroes.
2.
You see another building with five stoas like that pool at the Sheep
Gate of Solomon; for here too there lies a great multitude of
those who have lost their vigor because of the weakness to which
every man is subject through sin.
3.
But these men too will spring up at the coming of the angel, when he
sounds the trumpet to all the world at the second coming of the
Lord, and they will stand before the impartial judge of all, the
Savior Christ.
4.
This tomb at the east is that of Justinian
[I,
527-65], whose name is great and celebrated for just judgment and
observance of the law, who is the founder of the great shrine of the
Wisdom of the Word of God. His name will be celebrated from
generation to generation as the doer of the most mighty deeds, as
the supreme ruler, who cast down great princes who had subjected the
whole world to the power of their might.
5.
The tomb close to this and toward the north is that of Justin
[II, 565-78], the grandson of Justinian, a man celebrated for his
justice and greatly renowned for his piety, who also built what was
lacking in the great shrine of the Wisdom of the Word of God, and
completed it and resettled the dome, which had fallen, and skilfully
raised it.
6.
The tomb toward the south is that of his consort Sophia, a devout
and seemly woman, really wise and truly fearing the Lord; for the
beginning and end of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, as the holy
writing says."
7.
This is the tomb of Heraclius
[610-41] whose fame is wide and resounding in Persia and the lands
about it. He performed many labors, surpassing, as one might say,
those labors of Heracles; and before performing these he put off his
imperial robe and as he set out on his campaign, put on black-hued
boots, and then returned when he had turned them red, dyeing them in
the blood of the barbarians.
8.
This green sarcophagus is that of Theophilus
[829-42], who belched forth the venom of impiety against the holy
images and poured it over those who venerated them.
9.
Whether, indeed, as the story is, he was saved by the remarkable
assistance and zeal of the orthodox Theodora, his wife, through the
restoration and veneration once more, at her behest, of the holy and
divine images, I myself cannot say certainly; but let him speak who
was tattooed by him - and is known to this day as the Graptos
- on account of his veneration of the august images - he who is
himself inscribed in the Book of Life.
10.
This tomb of Sardian stone belongs to Theodora
[wife of Justininian I] the prudent empress, whose work this
celebrated and admired church of the heralds of God is. And
concerning the others, why should we care, since their memories are
buried with them in their tombs?
See:
Constantinople,
recueil d'études, d'archéologie et d'histoire.
Description
of the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople
mpedani@unive.it
[Maria Pia Pedani]
antonio.fabris@gmail.com
[Toni Fabris]
r.m.speelman@uu.nl
[Raniero Speelman]
info@arkadimonastery.gr
The "Cross of
Constantine", which, like and at the same time
as
the previous one, ended up in the treasury of St. Peter's Church in
Rome, is placed in a triptych, which measures 10 by 7.5 cm when the
doors are closed. For this description, the data are also taken from
those of Dr. Hoogewerff and from Flament's above-mentioned article,
in which a (deviating) drawing of it from the H. S. van Gulpen is
shown on plate III.
The
cross is placed against a flat background; this almost equal-armed
cross probably consists of particles of the Holy Cross; it is
surrounded by a "border in cassette enamel; with a pattern of
red, white and blue". In each corner of the arms there is a
large pearl; outside the end of the arms a disk of enamel: "white
letters on blue, within a red border". The inscriptions read:
OPA
TI / KAI NO / N ΘAY /
MA
- KAI Z / ENHN/ XAPI / N— XPYC / ON ME/ NEZω -
XPIC
/ TON EN / ΔECKO / πEI.
Above
the upper inscription are two pearls and a light purple agate. On
the lower left, on the flat background, the figure 1) of the emperor
is placed in relief and next to it, like poles, (Ο Κ)
ωNCT / ANT.
On
the door on the right, in relief, the golden figures of Mary, MP
ΘY; next to it
that of Ο ΠANTEΛEHωN;
below that of Ο TIMωN.
On the wing on the left, according to the notes of Dr. Hoogewerff,
there are the raised figures of Ο ΔEMHTRHOC
and below O MATΘAIOC;
next to it above IC
and XC, and below O
BAPNABAC. The left door cannot be opened completely, because the
awkwardly placed cloud of the modern pedestal is in the way. When
the doors are closed, the upper and lower edges of pearls with a
purple agate in the middle, a purple agate on the left and right
remain visible; the outside of the doors is decorated with stones,
namely: a green one on the top left, a purple-red one in the middle
and a purple one below; on the right: two purple ones, and a green
one below; in the heart a pale purple stone. Some of the pearls have
been renewed.
The
busy back of the cabinet, provided with scale and leaf
ornamentation, is of chased gold and contains an equal-armed cross
in the middle and six medallions within a pearl border; four of them
are next to the arms and two in the upper corners; the latter bear
the monograms IC and
XC. The other four
are covered by a rosette, according to fig. 531, the bottom one by a
seal.
According
to van Gulpen's drawing, (the back of) the jewel contained the
following inscriptions, which were also noted down by Dr.
Hoogewerff:
O
KAI / TETEY / KEN EK
ΠPOΘ
/ YMOY / KAPI / AC IωAN / NHC Λ / YTPω
/ CIN
AITω
/ N CΦA / ΛMAT / ωN.
We
now know the maker from the inscription, because the inscription
means that a certain Joannes, in order to obtain forgiveness of his
sins, cheerfully made (this cross). This inscription cannot be seen
in the fig. with Lipinsky's article and the author only mentions the
previous one. He ends his article with: "We are inclined to
assume the fifth or sixth century as the date. And presumably the
shrine belonged to Justinian and not to Constantine, whose taste was
less refined".
See
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken/view?identifier=MMKB06:000008521:00117
X. The cross of
Constantine in the treasury of St. Peter in Rome.
In
the church treasury of the Chapter of St. Peter in Rome there is a
very precious relic of the Holy Cross, although of small dimensions
in the form of a pectoral cross, but of a barbaric splendor and
excessive wealth. This cross is said to be the pectoral cross of
Emperor Constantine.
It
found its first describer in Dr. BOCK, who published a work of large
dimensions in 1864: Die kleinodiën des hl. röm. Reichs
Deutscher Nation". Bock assumed that this cross was used at the
liturgical coronation of the German emperors in the Middle Ages.
This remains an assumption, which however became a reason for Bock
to describe the cross of Constantine in detail on fol. 115-117.
Figure 28 of Table XX in the work in question gives a coloured
drawing of the relic. On fol. 116 an uncoloured image of the back is
included.
In
1893 the pectoral cross of Constantine was described by DE WAAL in
his article "Die antiken Reliquiare der Peterskirche". A
photographic image of the piece is given in Table XVIII. 167) The
visit of the Russian Grand Duke Sergius had given rise to the
creation of that study. In 1894 DE WAAL published a dissertation on
the same subject, in which the cross of Constantine was treated in
the same way. 168)
Better
informed about the possibility that this jewel had been used at the
imperial coronations in Rome, Dr. BOCK described in 1896 the cross
of Constantine again in "Die Byzantinischen Zellenschmelze der
Sammlung Svenigorodskoi". 169)
A
final describer found this cross in ANGELO LEPINSKY, who in July
1933 in the Illustratione Vaticana, an article wrote: "Old
goldsmithing in the church treasury of St. Peter". The Dutch
edition 170) gave the text of this article with some improvements,
for the iconographic description of less importance. 171)
Three
very good photo reproductions illustrate the article by Lepinsky.
When
in 1913 the great Staurotheca was photographed for the Dutch
Historical Institute in Rome with special permission of the Pope,
three photographs were also taken of the smaller cross, which we
reproduce here as fig. 16, 17 and 18.
In
May 1936 we were able to admire this pectoral cross from close by.
The reliquary, also called "encolpium Constantini magni",
consists of two parts: the actual pectoral cross, and the cabinet in
which the cross is kept suspended as a relic. This cabinet can be
opened as a triptych with two hinged doors. It is made entirely of
gold, according to Bock and Lepinsky. De Waal wrongly thought it was
made of gilded silver.
When
closed, the small shrine measures 12 cm high and 8 cm wide. The edge
at the top and bottom is set with a row of pearls and pearls, placed
on the wing doors, form a third row. Each row consists of ten pearls
with a large gemstone at the corners and in the middle. The pearls
are of unequal size and irregular shape. On the doors at the height
of the hinges, another gemstone is placed in the four corners. The
front shows thirteen gemstones and thirty pearls in its entirety.
The pearls are attached by means of a gold thread. Two of them, in
the bottom row, are split. The four surfaces of the doors are bare,
but bear the traces of a lost decoration. Probably gold plates with
relief decorations were attached to it, as we will see on the
inside.
On
top of the edge is a wide gold ring with a large opening, so that
the box could be worn around the neck with a chain or cord passed
through it. This need not be surprising, since it is known with what
stiff splendor of robes and jewelry the Basileus used to be hung.
Lepinsky says that a large ruby was set on the gold
pendant in 1929, as can be seen in his photo. 172) The photo with
the article by De Waal from 1893 also showed a stone, of a different
shape, most resembling a gemstone placed in a gold setting. 173)
This ornament is no longer there. According to the photo from 1913,
the gemstone had already disappeared by then. 174) The drawing by
Dr. Bock in 1864 showed nothing at that location. We must therefore
assume that between the years 1864 (actually 1862, since Bock had
the drawings made in that year for his work published in 1864) and
1893 a stone was placed on the support ring that had disappeared in
1913 and was replaced in 1933 by another stone, which according to
Lepinsky was placed there in 1929, but had disappeared again in
1936!
In
1864 the pearls were still intact according to the drawing by Dr.
Bock, and there is no mention of damaged pearls in his description
either. The photo by De Waal 175) shows that in the lowest row of
pearls the seventh (counted from left to right, calling left what is
left to the observer) is split (1893). The same can be seen in the
photo of 1913, 176) while in the photo of 1933, by Lepinsky, 177)
the third pearl is also split. Lepinsky 178) generally notes that
the pearls are in poor condition, and believes that there used to be
more rows of pearls. We could also see the poor condition of the
pearls. In the bottom row, the middle pearls on the left and the
second pearl on the right are split.
In
the previous century, the box was placed on a silver cloud decorated
with two floating angels, a similar inappropriate decoration, as
people thought they had to apply to the large Byzantine double
cross. 179) Dr. Bock (1864) says nothing about a pedestal. In 1893,
however, it was there, since the photo by De Waal 180) shows the
pins with which it can be fixed to the silver cloud.
On
the back of the cabinet the gold is worked out in relief in such a
way that one is justified in assuming that the undecorated sections
of the fronts could certainly not have been without their decoration
originally. The back is scaled in its entirety. 181) In the middle a
cross, richly worked out. The other decorations are: four medallions
with a flower pattern at the ends of the cross arms. The medallion
at the bottom is not visible in fig. 17 because of a seal hanging on
a cord. 182) When taking the photo for Lepinsky's article the seal
was lifted, so that a similar medallion is visible there. At the
bottom there are two more garlands, while in the upper corners two
more medallions have been applied. The latter bear the letters IC
and XC respectively,
the well-known hierogram letters for IHCOC XPICTOC, Jesus Christ s.
183)
This
magnificent piece only shows itself in its full richness when the
two wing doors are opened and the actual pectoral cross becomes
visible.
The
side doors are covered on the inside with gold plates, each
decorated with four very artfully crafted saint figures in standing
position in relief. On the left door we see at the top right the
image of Christ in long robe with the closed book in his left hand.
To the left of the nimbus, in which there is a cross, are the
letters IC. On the right, of course, there was XP, the abbreviation
for Jesus Christ, which we constantly encounter in Byzantine art and
also saw on the back of this "encolpium".
However,
the letters XP have disappeared due to the application of a precious
stone in that place on the outside. According to Dr. Bock, this was
already the case in 1864. The photo by De Waal (fig. 18) shows that
by then, in 1893, that stone had disappeared. In 1913, see fig. 17,
that stone was put back in its place or replaced by another, as we
also found.
Next
to the Savior we see a saintly figure, pointing with his left hand
in the direction of Christ. The inscription on either side of the
nimbus is: O ΔΗΜΗ//ΤΡΗΟC. O
the abbreviation of ο αγιος
is written together. This is also always the case with the other
figures. Also the last two letters are written together: C Dr. Bock
incorrectly read ΔΗΜΗΤΡIΟC.
Under
the figure of Christ is a statue with folded hands and the
inscription O ΒΑΡΝΑ//ΒΑC. Next to
it an apostle figure with a book in his left hand and the
inscription O ΜΑΤ//ΘΑIΟC. Dr. Bock
could, due to a bending of the edge here, only decipher O ... ΘΑIΟC.
However, the name is now clearly legible in its entirety.
On
the right door we see at the top left as a pendant to Christ, the
figure of the Mother of God. Of the usual inscription M-P ΘY
only ΘY can be seen. The first part has disappeared due to the
setting of a stone on the outside, exactly as we saw on the left
door with the letters XP. Next to the Mother of God stands with a
raised hand O ΠΑNTE//ΛEHMΩN. Below the figure
of Mary we see a saint with the inscription: O TIMOΘEC and to
the right of that an eighth saint representing O TIMΩN. Dr.
Bock mistakenly gives TIMON.
The
images are all eight with a regular round nimbus, a double drawn
circle, only the nimbus of Christ is provided with a cross. The
figures of Christ and the Mother of God are depicted standing on a
square pedestal. The other six do not have that.
In
the cabinet the actual pectoral cross hangs, loose, on the gold
ring. The cord with seal on the back prevents it from being taken
out. A large square gemstone is set on the ring. The back against
which the cross hangs is divided into four planes by the cross. In
the lower left corner we see a gold plate applied in this plane, on
which in relief in the same style as the eight other figures on the
wing doors, but somewhat smaller, a crowned saint figure, with the
inscription O KΩNCTANT.
Dr. Bock read KONCTANT
here.
These
four corner planes initially presented us with a problem as a result
of inaccurate descriptions by the various authors. The image of
Constantine raises the suspicion that the three other corners also
had their plates with images. The photo of De Waal (fig. 19) clearly
showed the figure decoration of the back in the boxes above and next
to Constantine, while the fourth box showed a blank plate. The photo
of 1913 (fig. 18), on the other hand, showed three blank plates in
addition to the corner of Constantine. The solution turned out to be
very simple. These corner-filling plates can be rotated, so that the
photo of De Waal was taken with two of the four corner panels in the
open position.
The
Holy Cross wood is closed in a golden cross and covered with rock
crystal. The horizontal bar is in one piece. The upper part of the
vertical bar is very rotten. This golden cross is - according to Dr.
Bock much later - enclosed by a second cross, on which a chain
decoration in white enamel is applied, which extends drop-shaped at
the corners of the four bars, also in white enamel. At the ends of
the beams are medallions with text in Greek letters. Between the
beams of the cross and on either side of the support ring are 6
large pearls attached by means of gold wire. The whole is surrounded
by a gold rim. In 1893, see fig. 19, one of the large pearls was
missing, namely the one between the left arm and the upper arm of
the cross. This has now (1936) been replaced.
The
medallions are in blue transparent enamel, while the letters are in
white, opaque with red punctuation. The text is in Greek capitals,
on each medallion four lines, except on the right one, which only
has three lines.
OPATI
KAINO
N
ΘAY
MA
KAIΞ
XPYC
€NHN
ONM€
XAPI
N€Ξω
XPIC
TON€N
Δ€CKO
Π€I
ον
μεν έξω
Χριστον
εν δε σκόπει.
The
meaning is:
"Behold,
what a new wonderful work,
what
a rare grace,
outside
you see gold,
but
inside Christ."
Since
the pectoral cross could actually be worn, Dr. Bock assumes that
these medallions will also bear an inscription on the back. Because
of the sealing, he had not been able to check this in 1862. Later he
learned that the inscription on the back was in one of the works of
Cardinal Mai. Since he does not mention it, we must assume that he
did not find it with Mai himself. De Waal does not say a word about
the back, nor does Lepinsky.
Only
the inner gold cross is known by Dr. Bock a great age. The tradition
that this encolpium was worn by Constantine the Great could only
concern this cross. The jewel as a whole is of a more recent date.
De Waal dates it from the IXth to the XIth century. Dr. Bock in this
well the most competent, places the production at the end of the
eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century.
In
his work on enamelling among the Byzantines he dates it even further
to the beginning of the twelfth century. 184)
According
to Dr. Bock, the second line has a metrical irregularity, while the
first is a regular Alexandrian. That is why he calls the verses of
"little correct form" and considers the cross much
younger than the fourth century. His special knowledge of the
Byzantine enamelling enables him to assume the beginning of the
twelfth century, which dating we will adhere to.
We
have already referred to the fact that Dr. Bock was mistaken when he
thought that the encolpium of Constantine had possibly served in the
coronation of the German emperors in the Middle Ages in Rome. In
Maastricht, Dr. Bock learned from the pastor of Our Lady [O.L.
Vrouw] that this precious piece came from Maastricht. 185) When he
describes this encolpium again in 1896, he explicitly states this.
The Waal knows nothing of the origin. Lepinsky, however, does, as we
have already mentioned above. The documents from the previous
century prove the correctness of the claim of the pastor of O. L.
Vrouw against [to] Dr. Bock.
In
the document, 186) in which Gregory XVI donated the double cross to
St. Peter on January 18, 1838, there is explicit mention of two
crosses "binas cruces". He describes the small as
"alteram
prout in traditis Nobis Literarum monumentis dicitur, a Constantino
Magno in proeliis obeundis gestari solitam".
In
the official act of receipt 187) signed by Gregory XVI on 30 July
1838 it is called:
"item
minorem particulam ligni Sanctissimae Crucis minori pariter cruci
isertam..."
"...
Minorem vero Crucem existimatam semper fuisse eam, quam Imperator
Constantinus Magnus in proeliis super pectus gestabat."
In
the official document of transfer, which was drawn up in Maastricht
on 27 May 1837 188) and signed by Lysens, Van der Vrecken, and the
two witnesses Ackx and Deppen, chaplains of St. Matthias and St.
Servaas, the smaller cross is mentioned not spoken.
Also
in the piece 189) of "hac Maii" 1837 the smaller cross is
not spoken about.
And
it is precisely these two pieces that Van der Vrecken presented to
the Pope as proof that he had received the crosses from Lysens to
give to the Pope.
From
this we can strictly conclude that Lysens nowhere testifies to
having given this small cross to Van der Vrecken.
Van
der Vrecken writes on 14 July 1838 190) that he handed over the
cross to Gregory XVI on 9 July 1837. Here again, only the large
double cross is mentioned. The plural form is somewhat misleading,
because it distinguishes 1° the considerable part of the cross
wood of O. L. Jesus Christ and 2° the golden cross in which it
is set. 191) Also in the piece of "hac Maii" 1837 this is
described in this way. 192) Finally, we have the piece of April 1,
1837, in which Van der Vrecken declares to have received the large
cross of Lysens "in depositum". Here too nothing is said
about the small cross. So there is no mention of the
so-called cross of Constantine in any of the documents
exchanged between Lysens and Van der Vrecken.
Van
der Vrecken did hand this cross to the Pope. Where did this cross
come from?
The
communication in the papal act of receipt (appendix 9)
"Ex
tradito porro Nobis Instrumento authentico a praedicto Paulo van der
Vrecken S. Sedis Notario confecto constat praedictas cruces S. huic
Sedi dono in perpetuum dari a R. D. R. Lysens.." is
therefore an untruth concerning the small cross. There is no
evidence that Van der Vrecken received this cross from Lysens. One
would even be inclined to say that he did not receive from Lysens.
Why would Lysens, who did not hesitate to give up the large double
cross and had this act recorded by witnesses, conceal the fact that
he had also given away the smaller cross? There are three answers to
this:
-
Either Lysens knew nothing about the small cross and is
completely innocent of the disappearance of this piece from
Maastricht;
-
or: Lysens had nothing to do with this cross of Constantijn,
because it had not belonged to O. L. Vrouwekapittel.
After
all, Lysens gave away the large double cross because he believed
that as a former canon [oud-kanunnik] he was entitled to dispose of
this property of the former chapter of O. L. Vrouw. One could
conclude from this that this cross was the property of another
church in Maastricht;
-
or: the smaller cross was considered to be of much less
importance in comparison with the large cross. And this seems to us
the most probable. In the relic lists it is always in second place.
When we compare the literature we see that much more is written
about the large cross than about the small one, although most
authors do mention the smaller one. Dr. Hoogewerff is even surprised
that the smaller cross attracts so little attention, while in his
opinion it is more valuable in every respect. As far as the material
and art historical value is concerned certainly, while the tradition
that it belonged to Constantine the Great increases its value, but
as a relic of the Holy Cross wood it is far behind the double cross
of Romanos with the small particles.
XI. The cross of
Constantine in Maastricht.
When
in 1861 the deed of 1 April 1837 of Van der Vrecken, 193) and the
deed of receipt of Gregory XVI 194) were found at the rectory of St.
Matthias and handed over to chaplain Russel of Our Lady, one reads
from these documents that Lysens had given the large Byzantine cross
and the so-called cross of Constantine to Van der Vrecken and that
he had handed them over to the Pope on behalf of the former canon
[thus: oud-kanunnik]. As a result, they requested the Pope in 1861
to be allowed to receive these two relics, which had belonged to Our
Lady. 195) In fact, this request was premature as far as the small
cross was concerned, since it is clear from the documents that Van
der Vrecken had given up a so-called cross of Constantine, but not
that this cross had belonged to Our Lady's Church.
Moreover,
it was obvious that the church council of Our Lady did not doubt
that the small cross was also theirs.
According
to the story of Van Gulpen 196), the so-called cross of Constantine
had disappeared at the same time as the large double cross. No
wonder that Van Heylerhoff 197) and Al. Schaepkens 198) wrote about
the disappeared crosses in 1847 and 1853 respectively, identifying
the donated cross of Constantine, as the church council of Our Lady
199) and Russel 200) later did, with the cross that used to be
present in Our Lady's church treasure.
Yet
there is some reason for doubt. Flament does not assume that the
cross in Rome is the same one that used to be in Our Lady's church.
We must therefore go into this matter in more detail.
We
have a total of four Relic Lists of the old chapter [kapittel], but
none of these are complete, as we do have an official and complete
Relic List of St. Servaas in the "Catalogus
Reliquiarum Sacrarii S. Servatii... Renovatus sub finem Anni 1677".
201)
The
Relic Lists of Our Lady's Church all have a more uncertain
character.
We
have:
I.
"Ritus servandus in ostensione SS. Reliquiarum in Camera
earundem insignis
Ecclesiae
Beatae Mariae Virginis Trajectensis".
This
piece was published by Bock and Willemsen. 202) The relics are
listed according to the four cabinets in which they are displayed.
Often it is not stated whether the Relic is in a holder. Cabinet no.
4 contains the Holy Cross wood donated by Philippus secundus:
"In
4to Armario
"Notabilis
pars Lignee sanctae Crucis Salvatoris nostri nobis transmissae a
Philippo 2do Constantinopolitani et Grecorum Imperatore".
There
is no mention of a pectoral cross of Constantine. We only know this
"ritus servandus" from a 17th century copy. 203) Since we
also see several pieces not mentioned here, which we do find in the
other relic lists, this inventory of the cabinets must be considered
incomplete.
II. Bock and
Willemsen also publish another list of relics, 204) namely
"Specificatio
SS. Reliquiarum Collegialis ecclesiae B. M. V. quae abhinc viginti
annis propter temporis calamitatem in obscuris latuerunt, et nunc,
religionis aurora ritulante, ecclesiae Parochiali S. Nicolai
traditae sunt. May 1, 1817".
Here
twenty-nine no's are listed in total. However, the Relic Treasure
had already been disintegrated. Two days in advance (April 28) the
canons asked for information about the two Byzantine crosses that
had disappeared. 205)
To
these well-known lists we have added two that have not yet been
published, namely
"Specificatio
SS. Reliquiarum Collegialis ecclesiae B. M. V. quae abhinc viginti
annis propter temporis calamitatem in obscuris latuerunt, et nunc,
religionis aurora ritulante, ecclesiae Parochiali S. Nicolai
traditae sunt. 1 May 1817".
Here
a total of twenty-nine no's are listed. However, the Relic Treasure
was already dismantled at that time. Two days beforehand (28 April)
the canons asked for information about the two Byzantine crosses
that had disappeared. 205)
To
these well-known lists we have added two that have not yet been
published, namely
III. "Emuneratio
praecipuarium Reliquiarum hujus Ecclesiae", which can be found
in the "Stipale Privilegiorum" of 1767. 206) Here only 21
no's are listed, according to the inscription only the most
important ones. We find as no. 2:
"2.
S. Crucis minor pars ab Imperatore Constantino gestari solita,
gemmis pretiosis adornata et capsula argentea deaurata inclusa".
IV. Finally, we have a list of
ornaments and relics of the O. L. Vrouwekerk,
which
was drawn up in 1580, when these were hidden for safety in the house
of the provost Arnold de Meroda. 207) Among the relics is mentioned
"Pars crucis Sanctae parva
tabulis argenteis deauratis inserta". This of course
refers to the same cross that is mentioned in III of Constantine. In
both III and IV it is in second place, directly behind the large
Byzantine double cross.
As
fig. 8 (p. ...) we have given a fragment of the 16th century copper
engraving, a relic plate of Our Lady.
In
the lower right corner we see an image of the cross with the
caption:
"Een
┼ D Den Keyser Consta op syn Borst placht t Drage' als he
sTrijde tegenden heydenen."
To
these direct data from the archives of the old collegiate church we
can add Gretserus (1616), Miraeus (1622), d'Outreman (1648) and
Rayssius (1628), who, where they discuss the large double cross,
also speak of the pectoral cross of Emperor Constantine. 208)
Their
data can be traced back to what Gretserus tells. Gretserus has also
paid considerable attention to the small cross. We will quote
Gretserus extensively when we discuss how this cross came to
Maastricht.
The
pectoral cross of Constantine was used during the ceremonies of Holy
Week. After the Holy Service, the officiant, carrying this cross,
and the deacon and subdeacon, each carrying a crystal reliquary
containing a Holy Thorn, 209) went to the baptismal chapel, where
the three relics were immersed in the newly consecrated water.
The
former canon Van Gulpen also drew this cross after its disappearance
during the French Revolution in the often mentioned "Liber
continens statuta". A photo reproduction of this drawing is
given as fig. 20. Unfortunately, the drawing by Van Gulpen is not
accompanied by a description. When we now compare the drawing by Van
Gulpen with the cross in Rome, several differences immediately catch
the eye. First of all, the cabinet by Van Gulpen is crowned by a
segment-shaped tympanum, while in Rome the shrine is simply flat on
top with a ring on it. On the side doors an oval is also drawn where
the statues of saints can be seen in Rome. The captions, however,
are literally the same, without a single deviation. Even the
circumscriptions O and Cº have been copied. The precious stones
and the double row of pearls are not indicated, nor are the pearls
on the cross itself. The drop-shaped extensions of white enamel are,
with the difference that in Van Gulpen's case they are also drawn in
the corners between the arms, where the cross in Rome has pearls.
The medallions show a different text, while the relief of
Constantine is completely missing.
The
text reads:
'OKAI
T€T€Y
K€N€K
ΠPOΘ
IωAN
YMOY
NHCA
KAPΔI
YTPω
AC
CIN
AITω
NCΦA
ΛMAT
ωN
In
plain Greek letters:
ο
και τετευκεν
εκ προθυμον
καρδιας
Ιωαννης
λητρωσιν αιτων
σφαλματων.
The
translation of this is:
"Which
(this) has made, with a ready heart, Joannes, requesting
forgiveness
of his sins".
The
drawing by Van Gulpen was taken over by Martinus van Heylerhoff in
his manuscript, and Arnaud Schaepkens 210) also writing about this
cross in 1846 had nothing else in mind than this drawing. His
description is taken entirely from this drawing. He says that the
triptych is crowned by a "tympanum", and that there is no
decoration with drop-shaped pearls to be seen on the cross itself.
The side doors each have four oval stones set in gold, where the
names of saints standing next to each other.
Before
asking the question whether the differences in the drawing in the
"liber continens statuta" are of much importance, one
could ask: Was there another cross of Constantine in Maastricht?
After all, it is certain that the cross was brought from Maastricht
by Van der Vrecken. The answer to this question is affirmative.
Before the French Revolution, a so-called cross of Constantine also
appeared in the treasure of St. Servaas. In the already mentioned
"Catalogus Reliquiarum" of St. Servatius from 1677 211) we
find as no: "118. Asservatur
praeterea in hoc Sacrario caput integrum S. Servatii, huius
ecclesiae ac totius civitatis Patroni (qui de cognatione fuit
Christi Domini secundum carnem) ultimi Tungrensis ac primi
Traiectensis episcopi, in statua argentea deaurata, geminis ornata
et parvula cruce aurea, quae internal habet de Ligno crucis
Dominicae et diversorum Sanctorum sacris Reliquiis, external vero
habet quatuor magnus uniones cum multis lapillis pretiosis; hanc
Imperator Constantinus gestavit dum contra infideles progrederetur”.
212)
The
bust of St. Servatius seems to have been decorated with a small
cross, which probably hung around the neck of the bust.
In
1672, the "Sacer Thesaurus
Servatianus expositus per Litanias.." etc. by Andreas
Bowens was printed in Liège. This cross is also mentioned
here on page 50. 213)
"Per
Crucem et Passionem tuam. De Cruce Christi partes insignes. Item
crucicula, quam Constantinus Imperator ex collo suspensam ferre
solebat, quando cum paganis praeliabatur. Item crux ex puro et puto
auro cum Cricifixo eburneo..." 214)
These
are the only data we have about a so-called cross of Constantine in
the St. Servatius church. There is therefore reason to investigate
whether the cross of Rome is indeed that of Our Lady, since
otherwise St. Servaas could claim ownership.
However,
are the deviations from Van Gulpen's drawing of much importance? Van
Gulpen drew from memory in 1817 when the precious pieces had already
disappeared and he had not seen them for twenty years. As for the
large staurotheca, we see him placing the medallions on the wrong
side. It can come as no surprise that his drawing of the encolpium
Constantini Magni is also inaccurate. It is understandable that he
places oval figures where there are relief statues, since he would
not have dared to draw those figures. That Arn. Schaepkens mistook
these for stones, each bearing a saint's name, is very strange.
Worse still, there is nothing to be seen of the relief statue of
Constantine in Van Gulpen's drawing. The failure to indicate the two
rows of pearls can be explained. Even someone who has only just seen
the relic will not be able to answer when asked whether these two
rows of pearls are on or above and below the doors. The fact that
these pearls are on the outside of the cabinet suggests that they
are not visible when the doors are open. Finally, Van Gulpen places
a segment-shaped head on the cabinet. Fortunately, we still have the
image on the copper plate, which allows us to correct Van Gulpen
almost completely. We see here - see fig. 8 - that the cabinet is
flat with a support ring, through which even a ribbon has been
drawn. 215) Despite the small dimensions, the eight statues of
saints are clearly visible. Pearls have been applied along the four
sides, although this is not entirely correct either, but it does
compensate for the lack of pearls in Van Gulpen's work. The cross is
very faithfully reproduced in its actual form as it can be seen in
the box on the engraving. The fact that the representation of
Constantine and the medallions are missing here is due to the
smallness of the image.
If
we add to this that the literary sources explicitly speak of a cross
hanging in a gilded silver box, then the identification of the cross
in Rome as that of O. L. Vrouwekerk does not require any new
evidence.
How,
however, to reconcile the different texts?
The
cross of St. Servaas is not considered. According to the
description, it had no medallions and was not in a box or capsule.
Before 1672, nothing was ever heard of it. A pectoral cross of
Constantine - genuine or not - would certainly have occupied a more
prominent place in the treasure of St. Servaas than was the case,
now that it served as an ornament on the bust of St. Servaas. It
would certainly have attracted the attention of writers as it did in
Our Lady's Church, and it would have been the center of a special
devotion.
It
would certainly have attracted the attention of writers and have as
was the case in O. L. Vrouwekerk, and it would have been the centre
of a special devotion. However, it is so little regarded that in the
great official "Catalogus Reliquiarum" it was not even
indicated as a separate number, but placed on an equal footing with
the precious stones that adorn the bust of St. Servaas.
We
are undoubtedly dealing here with an ordinary cross, such as are so
many in the treasuries of churches, originating from prelates, or
votive offerings, sometimes also found in graves. 216) In the
"Catalogus Reliquiarum" of 1677 of St. Servaas we find,
besides the cross with the ivory Christ on no. 17, several other
crosses; 217)
15. In monili argenteo rotundo. ... est crux argentea. ...
16. Sunt deinde tres tafellae nigrae. ... continentes tres cruces de
Ligno S. Crucis.
84. Duae cruces in auratae habent de cruce Domini.
Nos. 78 and 80 also mention crosses. 218)
In
addition to the ones discussed here, the Church of Our Lady had
several others. The list of 1580 mentions two gold and one silver
cross. 219)
The
pectoral cross of Constantine in the treasury of St. Servaas fell
from the sky so suddenly that we can hardly believe it. We must seek
the explanation in the often-mentioned jealousy of the chapters,
which led to a certain parallelism. Even in the construction history
of both churches these elements of not wanting to be inferior to
each other can be detected.
The
canons of St. Servatius displayed their relics from the dwarf
gallery of the chancel, those of Our Lady had a separate gate broken
in order to be able to do it in the same way and place. We have
already mentioned the fierce battle for the display of the relics.
220) Joint city processions were almost impossible as a result of
the disagreement about priority. As a result of this jealousy, this
parallelism can also be observed in the relic treasures. We have
already seen that the large Byzantine double cross was copied by St.
Servatius. In addition to the two Byzantine objects discussed here,
the church of Our Lady possessed a third, a capsula with Madonna,
which tradition has it was painted by St. Luke. No. 15 of the
Catalogue of 1677 from St. Servatius states that the crux argenta,
which was found in the grave of St. Servatius, was made by St. Luke
himself. This is completely consistent with the fact that St.
Servaas also had to have a pectoral cross from Constantine. The
Byzantine objects that Our Lady acquired from the second crusade,
while we hear of no acquisitions in St. Servaas, have aroused the
jealousy of this chapter in a special way.
There
are two possible explanations for the different text 221) of the
medallions in Rome and on the Van Gulpen drawing: either Van Gulpen
filled in a text that he got from an incorrect literary source on
the drawing, or the cross has a back where the medallions give a
different text. The latter is undoubtedly the case. In Maastricht,
the side would have hung in front, on which the text reads:
ο
και τετευκεν
εκ 222)
while
in Rome the other side is now visible, where one reads:
ορα
τι καινον θαυμα
223)
Dr.
Bock wrote already in 1864 that the cross probably also has a back,
where the medallions show a different text. He later learned that
this text had been published by Cardinal Mai in one of his works.
224) The fact that Dr. Bock does not publish that text from Mai is
probably because he could not discover it there.
We
have not succeeded in doing so either. In the chapter bibliography
225) we mentioned the only book by Mai in which that text could
reasonably be found, namely a part of his "Scriptorum Veterum
Collectio", in which inscriptions of the most diverse nature
are collected. 226) In this part we found the text of the large
double cross taken from Apianus and Gretserus. 227) Mai wrote this
part in 1831 and it was not until 1837 that the two crosses arrived
in Rome.
Dr.
Bock's statement about the text on the back is based on a mere
conjecture. When he has the opportunity to confirm this rumour, in
1872 228) and in 1896 229) he no longer speaks at all about the back
of the cross. De Waal and Lepinsky also described the pectoral cross
as if it had no back. A cord holds the cross at the back and is
sealed there. This seal can be seen in our fig. 17, as well as in
fig. 18 the cord itself on the inside diagonally above the lower
medallion.
The
seal is of Cardinal Merry del Val.
In
1913 Dr. Hoogewerff, then secretary of the Dutch Historical
Institute in Rome, made notes on the occasion that the two
Maastricht crosses could be photographed. We have explained above
under what circumstances this happened. 230) In the personal notes
of Dr. Hoogewerff, of which Dr. Kalf kindly granted us access, both
inscriptions are given. We would have the solution of the case here,
if it had not become apparent to us that Dr. Hoogewerff had only
seen one inscription. On that occasion, a total of seven photographs
were taken, all seven of which we had a look at. 231) No photograph
was taken of the back. This would certainly have been the case, if
the possibility had existed. Just as for Dr. Bock in 1862, the seal
was not broken in 1913. When Dr. Hoogewerff now gives a text of the
back, he did not have this from his own observations. The fact that
he accompanies the text of the inscription with a metrical
translation in Latin strengthens the suspicion that this was not
recorded from the jewel itself, but was drawn from a literary
source. This source must have been directly or indirectly the ms.
[manuscript?] Van Gulpen in Maastricht. Now, do the verses
themselves not answer the question whether they can stand on one and
the same cross?
Since
we are no longer dealing with classical verse here, it will be
difficult to draw a conclusion from the rhythm. As for the form of
the letters, we dare not draw a certain conclusion either, since we
have to compare the original with the drawing. In both cases, the
round sigma C and the W are not capitalized, but the other letters
cannot be compared.
The
content of the verses offers more certainty:
"See
what a wonderful thing, what a rare grace, of gold from outside, but
within you see Christ. Which has been made, with humble mind, John,
praying for forgiveness of his sins".
As
for the meaning, the verses fit together well, ..... is relatively
easier to explain than demonstratively. Although the latter is not
impossible, one would expect it to be, while also as a stop word
instead of or also indicates something that continues. The Greek
inscriptions on crosses that we know usually first give a praise of
the Holy Cross Wood and in the second part the information about who
had it made. This is the case with the patriarchal double cross of
Maastricht, which in four verses has the profound thought about the
Holy Cross Wood, instrument of Christ's death bringing life for us,
and in the last four verses names John as the one who decorated it
with gold and precious stones.
The
same dual character has the inscription of the Byzantine double
cross of Monte Cassino, which reads according to D. Mauro Inguanez'
translation:
"The
wood, which conquered the death, which was caused by the wood"
and then:
"Romanos
has worthily decorated with gold, because this gold is an ornament
of Christ himself". 232)
The
cross of Limburg on the Lahn also in the same way. 233) First:
"God
stretched out his hands on the wood, pouring out the powers of life
through it". Then follows the statement that Constantinos and
Romanos, the emperors, decorated it beautifully.
These
parallels, although they are ordinary crosses and not pectoral
crosses - we are not aware of a second Byzantine pectoral cross from
that time - give us the conviction that we can consider this writing
as a whole.
Added
to the data of the describers, we assume that the cross in Rome is
one and the same as that of the Church of Our Lady in Maastricht.
XII.
The oldest history of the pectoral cross.
Tradition
has it that our cross was the pectoral cross of Emperor Constantine
the Great. Dr. Kalf in the eleventh annual report of the National
Commission for Monument Care 234) doubts this and claims that it is
certainly not older than the sixth century. In the Provisional List
of Dutch Monuments of History and Art, 235) it is therefore noted as
being from the 6th-7th century. Angelo Lepinsky 236) assumes the
fifth or sixth century, 237) and believes that it did not belong to
Constantine, whose taste was less refined, but to Justinian
(527-565). There is, however, a great difference in style between
the encolpium Constantini magni and, for example, the cross of
Justin (518-527), the predecessor of Justinian. This cross, which
also belongs to the church treasure of St. Peter in Rome, is of a
more elegant form and shows, especially in its medallions and floral
figures, a more even workmanship, from which the skill of the
classics is still evident. 238)
De
Waal 239) however, following Dr. Bock 240) reckons it to the 11th to
12th century and we consider the dating of Dr. Bock in his
Byzantinischen Zellenschmelzen, 241) where he places this piece in
the beginning of the 12th century on the basis of his knowledge of
enamel. The possibility that the cross was worn by Constantine is
not ruled out by this, as we shall see. The cross names a certain
Joannes as its maker, without further indication of who this Joannes
is. Mart. van Heylerhoff 242) and Flament 243) see this Joannes as
the maker of the jewel, the goldsmith. We know of no examples of the
aurifaber in Byzantine art putting his name on his work in such a
conspicuous manner. This seems unlikely, especially on a small
pectoral cross like ours. On the other hand, there are several
crosses on which emperors, Romanos 244) or Konstantinos 245) or a
high-ranking person like Basilius de .....c, that is the chairman of
the senate 246) are mentioned as those who decorated the Holy Cross
wood.
Why
not assume here as the most obvious thing, that Joannes was one of
the emperors of that name. This was probably considered impossible
because no emperor of that name appears among the first successors
of Constantine. Since the encolpium as a whole is dated much later,
this John will be: either John I Timisces (969-976), the successor
of Nicephorus Phocas, or John II Comnenos, the successor of Alexios
Comnenos. We consider this John, who reigned from 1118-1143, to be
the one who had this encolpium made. In Byzantium, relics were a
matter of state, which primarily concerned the emperor. There are
many imperial decrees concerning relics to prove this. We saw
Emperor Romanos I open the imperial treasuries and give away a large
piece of the Holy Cross wood to the monks of the monastery of
Xeropotamu. 247) Alexios even arbitrarily disposed of the relics
that were kept in the churches of Constantinople. 248) The dating of
our cross by Dr. Bock in the first half of the twelfth century -
which dating was done completely independently of the inscription
with the name Joannes, since Dr. Bock did not know it - points with
a fair degree of certainty to Johannes II as the maker of the cross.
In
the description of the pectoral cross we have already mentioned 249)
on which Dr. Bock bases his dating, mainly the enamel cloisonné.
This agrees with the general view that the use of enamel only occurs
sporadically in the 6th century, but only becomes general in the 9th
century. 250)
Dr.
Bock's dating is partial. She does not rule out that parts of this
jewel are of older date and this seems very likely to us. The first
impression is that this cross was only hung in the golden shrine
afterwards. Initially with the intention to take it out of the gold
case when it had to be worn, later - as is evident from the carrying
ring on the case itself - it was worn in its entirety. This
corresponds to the rigidity of the ceremonial and the stiff pomp at
the Byzantine court, which increased as the power of the basileus
decreased and his territory shrank.
If
we see Emperor John II decorating the cross at the beginning of the
twelfth century, as is evident from the enamel inscriptions, then
the question remains as to what this decoration consisted of. We
assume that he had special reasons to hang this cross in such a box
that was extremely valuable even for Byzantium. And then the
tradition that we are dealing here with.
Incidentally,
we do not have to regard it as something special that in those days
the real pectoral cross of Constantine was still preserved. Niketas
testifies that in the days of Andronikos Comnenos the crown of
Constantine was still preserved. It hung above the altar in the Aya
Sophia. It so happens that the Greek sources mention the pectoral
cross of Constantine precisely in connection with Emperor John II.
In a treaty of John II, concluded in the year 1138 with the emir of
Schaizar, the emir returns a cross decorated with precious stones,
which had been taken from Romanos Diogenes when he had been defeated
in the battle of Mantzikert (1071) and had fallen into captivity.
251)
The
hypothesis becomes very tempting here: Byzantium of course still
possessed a pectoral cross of Emperor Constantine. The emperors used
to wear this pectoral cross when they went up against the pagans.
Romanos Diogenes falls into captivity in the defeat of Mantzikert in
1071, where he is forced to enter into an extremely humiliating
peace, which is to last fifty years. In 1138 another emperor stands
against the Muslims and he receives the imperial pectoral cross back
in negotiations. Will he not have the jewel, which had been in the
hands of the Turks for so long, embellished and decorated?!
This
supposed course of events overcomes the difficulty of the different
dating of the cited art historians. Even Lepinsky's objection that
Constantine's taste was not so refined disappears.
But
despite all probability, this hypothesis will only gain a firm basis
if the description of the cross from 1138 would correspond with the
Maastricht pectoral cross of Constantine. And precisely this
correspondence will remain unprovable because we also assume that
John II immediately had the necessary embellishments applied, which
will certainly make the cross unrecognizable.
What
reports do we now have concerning that peace treaty of the year
1138?
Nicetas
relates as follows: 252)
20.
Having thus taken from the besieged splendid gifts, both those of
wood, more precious than all (kinds of wood), as well as horses with
strong necks and of good breed, and silken woven cloths interwoven
with gold, and a table worth seeing, but before all this having
taken in his hands a cross, a brilliant object and regaling the
sight, with a luminous stone inserted, on which the knust naturally
revealed an inscription relating to the triumphant beauty of the
divine image and the artless delicacy of the eyes, he raised the
siege, taking the road to Antioch.
This
description of the cross then surrendered supports our hypothesis to
a very small extent. The luminous stone may perhaps still be
understood as the rock crystal cross that covers the cross wood, but
it is more likely that an extra-large and brilliant gemstone is
meant here. The fact that there was already an inscription on it
does not correspond with our starting point, that the inscription of
our cross dates from the time of John II himself. The above
description can hardly be understood otherwise than that a
figurative representation appears on it.
In
a second writer, John Kinnamos, we read about the same event: 253)
7.
Because (the emperor) noticed that the attacks were always in vain,
he entered into a peace treaty, after having received the embassy;
great treasures were now brought to him, a cross was also
brought, an extraordinary treasure and a worthy gift for emperors.
10.
There was a luminous stone of considerable size; because it had
been cut according to the shape of the cross, it had lost a little
of its natural surface during the cutting. The envoy told the
emperor that Constantine had had it made and that it had somehow
fallen into the hands of the Saracens. After receiving these
(treasures), ... etc.
Although
Kinnamos mentions Constantine, and it could all fit together quite
nicely, we can hardly draw the positive conclusion that the cross of
Mantzikert and of 1138 is the same one that Emperor John had
decorated to obtain forgiveness for his sins, and that came to
Maastricht during the plundering of Constantinople. On the other
hand, there is no reason to reject the tradition that this would be
the pectoral cross of Constantine as completely impossible.
The
priest from Maastricht, who brought this jewel to Maastricht as
pious booty, together with the large double cross of Emperor
Romanos, did indeed make a good grab and showed expertise. No
wonder! After all, he had been in Byzantium for quite some time, as
Reinerus Monachus tells us! The question of how the cross came to
Maastricht must be examined in more detail.
The
treasury of the Basilica of Our Lady still possesses a precious
silver cabinet with Madonna, executed in enamel, also of Byzantine
origin. 254) Tradition has it that this gem came to Maastricht at
the same time as the two art treasures discussed here. Reinerus
Monachus' reliable statement teaches us that this happened in the
days of the fourth crusade. 255)
Among
the numerous clerics who responded to the invitation of Baldwin of
Constantinople and were enriched by him, is the unnamed Maastricht
priest who came to Maastricht in 1206 with the large cross and
donated it "cum aliis
pretiosis reliquiis" to the Church of Our Lady. Reinerus
also tells us that this cleric had already been in Constantinople
for seven years and had been looking for a favourable opportunity
for a long time. He was not among the swarm of priests who arrived
later, and this explains why he managed to get hold of the most
precious pieces.
Earlier
256) we have already become acquainted with a cleric who, in the
same way, only intent on pious booty, managed to get hold of quite a
few relics during the plundering of Constantinople, namely Martinus
Lintzius, the abbot of Pairis, about whose adventures Guntherus
Monachus informs us extensively. 257) Guntherus also relates that
Philip of Swabia received a large number of relics as a gift from
Martinus Lintzius. Gretserus deduced from this that Philip,
distributing his treasures, gave Maastricht the three precious
Byzantine pieces. Guntherus here calls the gift to Philip a
"laudabilem partem",
but since he immediately afterwards describes a "tabula"
of inestimable value, we are more inclined to assume that Philip
received only this "tabula", for which he in turn
confirmed the abbey of Pairis in possession of the other relics. If
on that occasion a large piece such as the Byzantine double cross
had been forgiven, this would certainly have been mentioned by
Guntherus. Gretserus, who had only seen the image of the so-called
cross of Constantine on the Relic Plate, 258) sees this cross in the
"tabula", which Philips received as a gift and which
Guntherus describes in detail. 259)
Now
that we, in contrast to Gretserus, have an accurate description and
image at our disposal, the major differences are immediately
apparent. The "tabula" of the abbot of Pairis, to name
just one thing, is not a cross and does not contain a cross either.
So,
as far as the small cross is concerned, there is not the slightest
connection between the valuables of the Pairis Abbey and the
Byzantine objects from the church treasure of Our Lady. A priest
from Maastricht brought these rare pieces to his home town and
placed the church of Our Lady in the ranks of Western European
churches, where priceless treasures would have been safely preserved
for centuries, saved from the advancing Turks.
The
advancing French Republicans caused the precious pieces to travel
through Europe again six centuries later and find a new place of
preservation in Rome.
July
9, 1962 Spring of Christian art
MAASTRICHT,
July 9 - In the context of the Maastricht Heiligdomsvaart, Cardinal
Alfrink opened an exhibition of early Christian and early medieval
art in the Bonnefantenmuseum on Saturday evening. Numerically, the
exhibition is not very extensive, according to Cardinal Alfrink, but
this does not detract from its value, because the works exhibited
here give a good picture of the natural relationship between faith
and culture.
The
chairman of the working committee, Father Clodoald van Meijel O.F.M.
welcomed the cardinal and all other ecclesiastical and secular
authorities and spoke words of thanks to the many domestic and
foreign museums that donated works for this exhibition. According to
him, the willingness of the Vatican Museums to lend twelve precious
works of art to Maastricht deserves special mention. Among these
works of art is one of the two treasures that ended up in Rome from
Maastricht, namely the Byzantine double cross and the pectoral cross
of Constantine the Great. Almost 125 years ago, one of the last
canons of the chapter of the Church of Our Lady, the then pastor of
the St. Mathijs parish M. R. Lijsens, transferred both treasures to
Pope Gregory XVI through the mediation of the diplomat Paul van der
Vrecken. This transfer was accompanied by a little too much
goodwill. Amid great hilarity among those present, Father Clodoald
noted that the current residents of Maastricht cannot share the
position of Canon Lijsens. Father Clodoald had to complete the
necessary formalities in Rome before he could receive the cross of
Constantine. An extensive committee of prelates was involved and a
notarial deed of 27 folios. The sealed treasure - insured for half a
million guilders - had to be opened by order of Rome in the presence
of the bishop of Roermond. He authorized the dean of Maastricht,
Mgr. P. J. M. Jenneskens, to do so. A notarial deed of the receipt
of the cross has been drawn up, which has now been sent to Rome.
The
exhibition features valuable works of art from the pagan prehistory,
from the early Christian period, the Frankish, Merovingian and
Carolingian eras, as well as from the early Middle Ages. Prof. J. J.
M. Timmers, director of the Bonnefantenmuseum, therefore gave this
exhibition, which will remain open until 30 September, the title
"Spring of Christian Art". The designer has paid special
attention to the period between the year 384, when St. Servatius,
the first bishop of Maastricht, died and the year 1200, when the
most precious reliquary of Maastricht, the emergency chest, was
made.
Eindhoven,
August 20, 2018
Dear
Madam, Sir,
In
1913, a certain Dr. Hoogewerff, the secretary of the Dutch
Historical Institute in Rome, made notes on the occasion that the
two Maastricht crosses could be photographed.
These
two Byzantine crosses were donated to the Vatican from Maastricht in
1837. One of them (a small cross that was kept in a golden box) most
likely belonged to Constantine the Great and was therefore much
older. They were photographed in 1913 when Hoogewerff was present.
Better photos are not known, although I have written to the various
Vatican museums and libraries about this, but at the moment it is
not clear where the box with the cross is located and whether there
are modern photos of it.
Is
there a report or something like that at your institute of this
meeting in the Vatican?
Dear
Mr. Theelen,
We
have forwarded your request to Dr. Arno Witte, Head of Art History.
Perhaps he can help you further after his return from vacation (27
August).
Kind
regards,
Agnieszka
Irena Konkol
Secretary
Office
Royal
Netherlands Institute Rome
Royal
Netherlands Institute in Rome
Reale
Istituto Neerlandese di Roma
Via
Omero 10-12, 00197 Rome
Tel.
(0039)063269621 www.knir.it
Dear
Mr. Theelen,
I
received your email forwarded from our secretariat, of course with
the question whether I could answer it. As for the archive material
of our institute, most of it (but especially the institutional
matters) ended up in the National Archives because the then NIR was
part of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and/or
Foreign Affairs. What is in it about Hoogewerff mainly concerns his
directorship. As far as I know, hardly anything of Hoogewerff was
left behind in Rome, but I can check that the day after tomorrow
when I am back in the office. In any case, the chance that we have
that material seems quite small, I fear.
You
will hear from me whether we have anything in Rome!
Kind
regards,
Arnold
Witte
Royal
Netherlands Institute in Rome
Dr.
Arnold Witte
Head
of Art History
E
a.witte@knir.it
M
(+39) 334-3304153
W
http://knir.academia.edu/ArnoldWitte
August
23, 2018 Dear Paul Theelen,
now
back at my desk in the Roman I checked here how things are with the
archive documents of Hoogewerff and where they ended up. As I
already wrote, the administrative archive is mainly in the National
Archives but as I suspected, a part also ended up at the RKD
(Rijksbureau Kunsthistorische Documentatie) in The Hague, a personal
archive. I quote from an internal document about the KNIR archive:
"During
the processing of the NIR archive in 2000-2001, several other
collections or work archives were also arranged. The estate of the
former director G.J. Hoogewerff was transferred to the Netherlands
Institute for Art History in The Hague". This archive is also
listed on the RKD website: see
https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/collections/record?filters%5Bidentificatie.verantw_afdeling%5D%5B0%5D=Archivalia+%26+Excerpten&filters%5Binhoudelijke_beschr.trefw.period%5D%5B0%5D=20ste+eeuw%2C+eerste+helft&filters%5Binhoudelijke_beschr.trefw.pers%5D%5B0%5D=Hoogewerff%2C+Godefridus+Johannes&query=&start=0
I
hope that more material can be found there, including Hoogewerff's
notes. In any case, there is an inventory that gives some idea of
what is in it. As for research into those crosses, I
think they are indeed in the library, where many diplomatic gifts to
the popes ended up - and they were usually not inventoried, and so
they are untraceable. I would contact them, hoping they have some
idea. As for further research into them, that seems very interesting
to me, but unfortunately I don't have any spare quarters, and I know
from experience that this takes days of work, in the form of talking
to all kinds of people who might know something. And I can do that,
but then you will receive an invoice from our director...
Kind
regards
Arnold
Witte
Eindhoven,
August 22, 2018
Dear
Mr. Witte,
Many
thanks for your answer regarding my question about your institute. I
don't expect you to be able to find anything substantial, but
perhaps you have contacts here and there, which I can never have. So
this is what it is about: in 1837, Canon van der Vrecken of the
Church of Our Lady in Maastricht completely legally donated two
Byzantine crosses to the Pope (personally, I think). They were then
donated to the Vatican Institute and are also recorded as such,
because they have been published regularly, the most important study
being the dissertation by Charles Thewissen from 1939. It contains a
wealth of information about the works of art in the treasury of that
church and of the competing St. Servaas Church. It is now mainly
about a small cross (about 8x6 cm I estimate) that was kept in a
golden box. This small cross - of which a few black and white photos
exist - is said to have been the pectoral cross of Constantine the
Great, in the sense that the wooden splinter of the Holy Cross that
his mother had dug up in Jerusalem around 328 was contained in a
holder in the shape of a cross, which was later given an extra
covering, the cross that we can still see in the photos. There are
no photos from 1939 because they were apparently not allowed to be
taken, and photos from 1913 had to be used. Images of the back of
the cross are not known at all, because the seal (of a bell jar?)
was not allowed to be broken. Dr. Hoogewerff from your institute
seems to have been there in 1913.
I
contacted the Vatican Museum, but they do not know the two crosses
and is referred to two other institutions, which have not (yet)
responded substantively. Apparently these crosses (together or
separately) have been swallowed up in the abundance of works of art
in the Vatican. The day before yesterday, Monday, I received a
response from Inventario Generale, which does not know it and refers
to Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and the treasury of St. Peter's,
see below.
In
the past, several attempts have been made to get the crosses back,
but the Vatican has refused to give them up again.
Could
you – in a few lost quarters of an hour – do some
research into the crosses, in particular that of Constantine the
Great?
Picture
of the "Encolpium Constantini Magni" available?
Eindhoven,
19 August 2018
Dear
madam, sir,
Since
1837 (otherwise said since 1795, the French invasion in the
Netherlands) the Vatican possesses the Encolpium Constantini Magni.
It came from the Treasury of the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk in
Maastricht. In a small golden box a small cross is contained, of
which it is said that it belonged to Constantine the Great.
I
am gathering (on paper or as a computer file of course) all items
that belonged to Constantine, and it came as a surprise that this
cross existed at our days, and that it was part of a church treasury
in my country.
It
has been described by different persons, as Beck and Willemsen and
in 1939 appeared a thesis on both Byzantian crosses in your
possession. The title of the thesis is TWO BYZANTINE HOLY CROSS
RELICS. The author M.A.F.Ch. Thewissen had studied the crosses but
did not make photographs himself, and he used older pictures of
Lepinsky and De Waal. The author claims that there does not exist a
picture of the back of the cross, but the front can be seen in his
book as picture 18, in black-and-white and very grainy, because it
was made in 1913. Do you have high-resolution photographs of the
Encolpium Constantini Magni? If so, I would like to receive a
digital file. When used in an article I of course shall mention the
source of the picture.
Dear
Mr. Theleen, thank you for your kind message. Unfortunately, the
artifact you are interested in is not part of the Vatican Museums'
collections.
However,
since other Vatican institutions possess collections of art and
archaeology, it might be possible that the Encolpion is among the
Vatican Library collections (bav@vatlib.it
or in the Treasury of the St. Peter's Basilica
(amministrazione@capitolosp.va).
I wish you all the best for your research and remain Yours very
truly Alessandra Uncini Registrar of Collections, Vatican Museums
ig.musei@scv.va
Academic
Dissertation for the Degree of
DOCTOR
OF LETTERS AND PHILOSOPHY
at
the University of Amsterdam by the authority of the Rector
Magnificus
Prof.
Dr. J. D. VAN DER WAALS Jr. Professor in the Faculty of Mathematics
and Physics
To
be defended in public in the Aula of the University on FRIDAY 27
MARCH 1931, in the afternoon at 3½ o'clock precisely by
JOHANN ANTHON KOCH born in Surabaya (N.-I.)
Table
of contents Studies on the time of Constantine the Great
CONSTANTINE,
HIS FAMILY LAND AND ANCESTORS
FROM
MILITARY DICTATORSHIP TO EASTERN DESPOTY
PAGAN
EMPEROR AND CHRISTIANITY
THE
RISE OF CONSTANTINE
TO
THE SOLE RULE
CRISPUS
AND FAUSTA
THE
LAST YEARS OF CONSTANTINE'S REIGN
THE
ECONOMIC STATE OF THE EMPIRE
CHRISTIAN
EMPEROR AND PAGANISM
CONSTANTINE
AS PRINCE OF THE CHURCH
References
CONSTANTINE,
HIS FAMILY AND ANCESTORY.
Constantine
appears in history as the first medieval man, and not as a Western
European, Germanic or Roman medieval man, but as a Byzantine; and as
such he is the example of all later, Eastern Roman emperors.
With
the sign of Christ on his banner, and the imperial wreath around his
crown, he is the first bearer of a new mixed civilization that was
growing in Eastern Europe at that time from pagan-Roman and
Christian-Hellenistic elements. His strange, contradictory nature,
impetuously brave, but still cunning, cruel and hypocritically
pious, also points to this.
This
first Byzantine was therefore only Roman in name, but largely of
Greek-Illyrian blood. Constantine was born in 274 in Naissus, the
capital of the Illyrian region of Dardania, and all his paternal
ancestors were natives of the Balkans. This is important because
Illyricum (= the Balkan peninsula) had gradually become the leading
province of the empire, and since Decius almost all princes came
from this region.
The
Illyrian emperors have also repeatedly saved Rome from its two most
threatening dangers: invasions of barbarians from outside and
internal division. The latter was caused by:
I.
The denationalization of the provinces;
II.
The increasing foreign influence also in the army.
The
provinces, dissatisfied with the centralizing tax policy of the
emperors, had long been inclined to abandon Rome. Hence the constant
appearance of local usurpers (for example the 30 tyrants). This was
because the vast world empire did not form an ethnographic unity and
not even a duality, although it could be roughly divided into a
Latin Western and a Hellenized Eastern half. For its inhabitants
were indeed Romanized or Hellenized in language, but not in race and
nationality, so that they first felt themselves citizens of their
own city and region, and only then of the Roman state, which sucked
them dry. Moreover, in many border regions, depopulated by repeated
wars, the foreign element was strengthened, because Germans or
Sarmatians were transplanted there for agriculture as serf farmers
(coloni), who nevertheless often retained their barbaric character.
The
army had also long since ceased to be recruited from Italians, but
mainly from Latin provincials (Gauls, Spaniards and Illyrians), so
that the national command language was preserved by this core. But
in addition, Germans, Sarmatians, Syrians and other Semites soon
entered the ranks of officers and inferiors, so that many of them
even rose to become soldier-emperors, such as Sept. Severus,
Caracalla, Elegabalus, Alexander, Severus, Philippus Arabs (Semites)
and Maximinus Thrax (a half Goth).
Nevertheless,
until about 325 the Latin provincials formed the majority, and among
these especially the Illyrians, so that from 250-300 they were
decisive in the choice of emperor.
Why
precisely from Illyria? It had already been Latinized earlier, by
agricultural colonies of veterans (under Augustus by Tiberius).
Gradually, in this agricultural province, in addition to the smaller
peasantry, large landed estates had also formed, but this had not
displaced small-scale property, as in Italy, so that here, also due
to the absence of a large city as an exploitative center, prosperity
was maintained.
1).
The grafting of Latin culture on these untalented barbarian tribes
such as the Illyrians, Moesians, Dardanians and Thracians, only had
consequences for the language
2).
But militarily the resulting mixed people of Romans and Balkan
inhabitants proved to be all the more apt, because the dangerous
proximity of Marcomanni, Quadi, Goths and Dacians forced them to be
constantly resistant, even to expulsion to the East, in order to
protect themselves against their repeated attacks 2).
Their
country also provided quite a few soldiers and officers, since
especially sons of Illyrian large landowners served as tribunes in
the Roman army through a certain class tradition.
No
wonder that from this ancient "Junker" country many
powerful soldier-emperors emerged from the middle of the 3rd century
AD, sometimes from the large landowners, sometimes from the small
farmers (Aurelian) or even from the freedmen (Diocletian). And all
these rulers vigorously continued the fight against European and
Asian enemies. For example, Claudius II (more about him later) drove
the Goths back across the Danube; his second successor Aurelian was
able to reconquer the rebellious empire of Queen Zenobia (Palmyra)
(273).
At
the time of Constantine's birth (274) his father Constantius Chlorus
was about 25 years old. He owed his Roman family name to his mother
Claudia, daughter of Crispus, the eldest brother of Emperor Claudius
Constans the Destroyer of Goths. His Greek nickname Chloros (the
Pale) however points to Eastern origin, and indeed his father
Eutropius was a rich Dardanian nobleman from the soldierly tribe of
the Moesians, who were then probably Hellenized. He himself
(Constantius Chlorus) was, however, fully regarded as a Roman, and
had probably served in the Roman army five years earlier, under the
rule of his great-uncle Claudius (268-270).
In
270 this prince died, shortly after his victory over the Gothic
barbarians, of the same plague epidemic which they had brought with
them. There is no reason to assume that, as Zonaras alone (XII, 26)
claims, he designated Aurelian on his deathbed as the most worthy
successor, since the latter was not a special favourite of his, but
of his predecessor Valerian (see Hist. Aug. Flav. Vop. c. XII
Aurelian).
Moreover,
the deceased had an excellent brother, Quintillus, who was
immediately elevated to ruler by the Senate. But he was hated by the
soldiers because of his strict enforcement of military discipline,
so that he died after only 17 or 20 days either by his own hand or
by his mutinous troops at Aquileia 3).
In
the meantime his rival Aurelian, very popular with the army, had
already been elected emperor (270-275) and the senate was forced to
recognize him.
Nevertheless,
even during this new ruler Constantius Chlorus remained under arms,
probably as a simple tribune. As such he followed Aurelian on his
campaign to the East (V. Panegyr. Constantio Caesari, V.).
In
doing so, Aurelian first crossed the Bosporus to reconquer the
revived Bithynia (including Thyana), and landed at the town of
Drepanum 4) on the Gulf of Nicomedia. Possibly his army had spent
the night there, and the young noble officer then made the
acquaintance of Helena, the daughter of an innkeeper there 5). He
probably first lived in concubinage with her 6), and took her
everywhere with him, also on Aurelian's expedition against Zenobia,
the queen of Palmyra, and against rebellious Egypt, where a usurper
Firmus was defeated and punished (273).
On
the emperor's return journey via Asia Minor and the Balkans to Rome
(273-274), Constantius was, probably at his own request, seconded to
the Danube legions, in the garrison town of Naïssus, where his
father's lands also lay. Here Helena bore him a son, Constantine
(274). But although at first his mistress, she soon (after this
birth?) became his lawful wife 5), after which the father also
acknowledged her child as his. That she, a woman of lower rank, and
from the despised caste of innkeepers, got this done by that noble
tribune, proves her extraordinary charm and willpower. Incidentally,
this marriage gave no offence in this adventurous time of the
soldier emperors, when the lowest born could obtain the crown, and
racial and class mixing was going on everywhere.
In
the confusion after Aurelian's violent death, Constantius, although
an excellent soldier, proved to be too modest, and probably not rich
enough, to push himself to the fore and obtain the imperial purple.
Therefore he was considered harmless, and also managed to maintain
himself in the favour of the following princes, such as Tacitus,
Probus and Carus.
Nevertheless,
during Emperor Carus, when Constantius was praeses (military
governor) of Dalmatia, there was a chance of his elevation to
emperor. For before Carus' campaign against the Persians, he
considered, out of shame at the misconduct of his son Carinus at
Rome, to appoint Constantius as the most worthy successor to the
throne. (Flav. Vopisque, Carus, XVII. Hist. Aug.) But because of his
sudden death (see further) this plan remained unexecuted. In his
place Diocles took up the purple the following year, and Constantius
was flexible enough to defect to the new emperor after his victory
over Carinus.
FROM
MILITARY DICTATORSHIP TO EASTERN DESPOTY.
Diocletian
was an Illyrian, as were his predecessors. But while they were only
military men who protected the empire against barbarians and
usurpers, he was also a skilled statesman. Only he succeeded in
legitimizing the provisional, unstable military dictatorship into an
absolute monarchy, and thus in internally strengthening the unity of
the state.
Diocles,
as he was initially called, was born in a Dalmatian town, possibly
called Dioclea, as the son of a poor clerk, who was probably a
free-born citizen, and not a freedman 8). He entered military
service, went through all the ranks, became proconsul of Moesia, and
even rose to consul. In 283 he accompanied, as "comes
domesticorum" (court marshal), Emperor Carus on his expedition
against the Persians. This man, in defiance of an old oracle,
crossed the Euphrates, captured many cities of the enemy, among
others the chief city of Ctesiphon, but then died suddenly,
according to his soldiers struck by lightning as punishment for his
disobedience to the gods.
But
possibly his own courtiers murdered him and then set fire to his
tent. (Hist. Aug. Carus, VIII). As his successor they chose his son
Numerianus, who, although more gifted as a poet and orator, and weak
of constitution, had nevertheless followed the army, and he was
forced by the superstitious soldiers to return. But the time was not
favorable for highly gifted minds, and so his rank became his ruin.
His father-in-law, Arrius Aper, the prefect of the guard, kept him
hidden for days, within the portable tent, supposedly to spare his
sick eyes from the fierce sun. But at last the smell of putrefaction
betrayed his death, the soldiers who carried him tore open the
curtains, and found his body. His father-in-law, who had hoped to
deprive him of the right to the throne, was suspected as the
perpetrator, and bound.
In
the first assembly of the soldiers Diocles was elected emperor, and
he now latinized his name to Diocletian. He immediately avenged the
death of Numerian by stabbing Arrius Aper with his own hand in the
presence of all, while crying: This is the murderer! (284). In this
way he himself fulfilled the prophecy of a Gallic druid, namely,
that he would become emperor, if he would kill a boar (ape). After
having hunted boars in many forests in vain, he had now found his
right game, and killed it. (Hist. Aug. Numerian. XIX.) This
manslaughter on the basis of a prophecy characterizes the
fundamental trait of Diocletian's character: his fatalistic
superstition. Because of this he attached himself strongly to
divination, omnia, and oracles, which later even led him to his two
greatest political mistakes: his persecution of Christians and his
abdication. But at the beginning of his reign this fanaticism of
fate gave him a strong self-confidence, by which he was able to
overcome the hesitations of his shrewd, cautious, too controlled
character.
His
only legitimate and dangerous rival, Carinus, attacked him in Moesia
and delivered him the battle at the Margus of Morawa. But when he
was on the point of victory, he was already hated for his excesses,
and was murdered by one of his tribunes, whose wife he had
dishonored. Then his troops went over to Diocletian, and soon all
the governors and officials of the empire—among them
Constantius Chlorus, then proconsul of Pannonia and later
Caesar—acknowledged the new emperor. He treated his former
enemies very graciously; he took no possessions or dignities from
anyone, so that he gained the respect of all and was able to rule
for twenty years almost undisturbed by internal revolt.
But
suddenly a dangerous revolt in Gaul surprised him, that of the
Bagaudae 9) (286). This was a racial and class conflict between
Celtic peasants and their oppressors, the Latinized nobles and Roman
colonists, who exploited them as serfs and slaves from their cities
and castles. Totally impoverished by the many civil wars and
barbarian invasions, they finally refused to pay the rent, marched
in bands of beggars to the cities, where they, together with the
lower people, rose up against the government. These proletarian
freebooters soon established themselves in the strong Augustodunum,
where they elected Aelianus (Helianus) and Amandus as "emperors"
and plundered and destroyed fields and villages in the vicinity. It
was, besides a "Jacquerie" also the last attempt of the
Gauls, after Vercingetorix, Posthumus and Tetricus, to restore their
national independence.
But
Diocles found advice. He appointed his old comrade Maximianus, a
rough, boorish, illiterate Illyrian, but a good soldier, as
co-Augustus and imperator of the West, and sent him to the
rebellious province (1 April 286). He soon succeeded, supported by
Gallic nobles and Roman colonists, in suppressing the movement. The
situation now became even worse than before due to the cruelties and
extortion and which the victor imposed on the unhappy country (286).
However,
hardly had Gaul been reconquered when Britain fell away from the
empire. There, the newly appointed Roman fleet commander Carausius,
a skilled sailor from the Menapian 10) (North Brabant) coast, who
had recently excelled in the battle against the Bagauds, had set
himself up as usurper. From the booty of captured Germanic (=Saxon)
pirate ships, he had collected capital that he did not return to the
Roman treasury, but used to bribe the occupying army of his island
to his service (287). He also found the native population there
ready to support him.
Britain,
where, despite the many fortresses and highways, Roman colonists,
had never been permanently Latinized (like Gaul) both because of the
great distance and climate and because of the national-religious
opposition of the Druids. Moreover, Carausius, as a German, found
allies in the Franks and Allemanni on the Rhine. While they invaded
Gaul in the East, he ravaged the North Coast with his privateer
fleets. Then the importance of Britain's insular position became
apparent for the first time. Defended by a large fleet, it was
virtually impregnable.
Maximianus
could therefore not reconquer it, made peace and even, to his
disgrace, also recognized Carausius on behalf of his colleague the
barbarian, as independent emperor of Britain (290), whereby he even
retained Boulogne (Gessioracum or Bononia) as a base on the
mainland.
The
supreme emperor had not agreed to this without necessity. For at the
same time as in Britain, revolts broke out in Africa of the
so-called five peoples (Quinquegentanae. Aur. Vict. 39, 21) and in
Egypt of the usurper Achilleus. while in the East the Persians
crossed the Euphrates.
The
difficult defence of these border regions and the uncertainty of the
succession (because he had no son) now led Diocletian to a new
division of the empire. In 291 he travelled from the East to Milan,
summoned his co-emperor Maximianus Herculius, and expanded the
already existing two-emperorship to a fourfold system or tetrachord
(1 March 292). Under both augusti seated in Nicomedia (himself) and
Milan (Maximianus Herculius) there came two caesares, one to guard
the Rhine frontier, Julius Constantius Chlorus, with station in
Trier, another, Maximanus Galerius, a former shepherd boy from Dacia
for this Danube region. After the death or at least the abdication
of the augusti they would be succeeded by the initial caesares. In
order to establish an artificial bond of piety between the two, the
Caesars had to repudiate their former wives and remarry the
daughters of the Augusti. Thus Galerius married Diocletian's only
daughter Valeria, who adopted his eldest son Candidianus from a
former wife as her own child. Constantius Chlorus was coupled with
Theodora, not really a daughter but an adopted stepdaughter of
Maximianus Herculius. In order to marry this distinguished woman, he
had to divorce the low-born Helena, Constantine's mother, and,
flexible as he was, he obeyed the supreme emperor in this, for the
sake of his career.
With
this choice Diocletian found a very benevolent, but also capable
official, who certainly surpassed the other three princes in
descent, culture and even in seniority of rank. For when Constantius
was appointed Caesar, he had already served almost twenty years in
the Roman empire and army. When, seven years later, he had become
Caesar of the North-West as a reward for his transfer to the service
of the new emperor, he was immediately given the honourable task,
too difficult even for Maximian, of regaining the resurrected
Britain. First he took from Carausius his naval base on the mainland
of Boulogne (Gessioracum). Then he reconquered all the lands around
the Rhine estuary, including the Batavian Island, from the Franks
(294), in order to harass the Britons' Island from there, also on
the North Sea side. In the meantime, however, Carausius was
treacherously murdered by his confidant and chief officer Allectus,
who seized power, but was not so popular with the army and people
there. Constantius now hesitated no longer; he had his admiral
Asclepiodotus sail safely from the Rhine estuary to southern
England, and land there. Soon Allectus was defeated and killed,
after which the island once again submitted to Rome (296).
Now
it remained for Constantius to deal with the Germanic plunderers
from across the Rhine. Maximian had already chastised the Franks,
Burgundians, Alemanni and Heruli around 287, but again in 298 the
Alemanni invaded Gaul. Caesar defeated them at Langres, where most
of them were killed, to the great joy of the Gallic population, who
hated the destructive barbarians. Then the victor dragged his
Germanic prisoners with women and children to northern Gaul, to use
the depopulated fields, empty since the destruction of the Bagauden
War as a coloni to rebuild. This was a politically dangerous
mistake, because the repeated invasions kept the barbarians from
outside on an understanding with those from within, so that Gaul
threatened to become Germanic, which happened after a century. This
measure was humane in any case, because according to the military
law of that time, Constantius could also have killed the prisoners.
Constantius also showed the same humanity in his later attitude
towards the Christians. This tolerance was more in keeping with his
character than with his religious veneration of the sun god Mithras,
whom he served like the late Aurelian.
But
hardly had the Roman eagles been replanted in Britain, when the
supreme emperor personally gathered his troops in Asia Minor for a
campaign against Egypt, which had already risen ten years earlier
(296). On this expedition he was accompanied by Constantius' eldest
son Constantine, then 22 years old, and from his earliest youth
(possibly since 285) as a page in the service of the supreme
emperor, who held him as a hostage for his father's loyalty. (Euseb.
Vit. Const. I 19 sqq.)
This
long stay in courtly circle became a valuable political training for
Constantine, as he initially enjoyed the full confidence of his
elder prince, who initiated him into many "matters of state and
war". Moreover, on the many journeys of Diocletian he learned
from his own observation the conditions in the great empire, so that
he grew into a capable statesman, who could later continue the work
of his mentor.
But
at the same time an expedition like this enriched his military
routine and hardiness, and formed in him the future general. From an
early age he excelled in shrewdness and courage. His stately figure
also had something imposing, at least Eusebius, who at that time saw
him marching through Palestine at the right hand of the emperor,
testifies to it.
Thus
the army of Diocletian, after a long journey over land, now finally
stood on the edge of the apostate province.
The
cause of this Egyptian uprising was the same as that of the
rebellion that Aurelian had previously suppressed here (273), namely
fierce dissatisfaction with the Roman tyranny of foreigners, and
their unbearably heavy tax burden. Egypt, exploited for centuries as
a private crown domain of the Roman emperors, for whom it had to
supply grain free of charge to the world city, was consequently
terribly impoverished, famines among the fellahs, the servile rural
population, who often had to suffer for the sake of the abundance of
Rome, eventually led to the formation of desperate bands of robbers,
such as the so-called Bucoli, who nestled at the mouth of the Nile,
and privateers often prevented the export of grain. Although earlier
emperors had defeated them, their robber state had secretly
continued to exist, and now undoubtedly supported — although
the sources do not mention this — the Alexandrian Achilleus in
his national uprising.
But
also in Alexandria itself and the other large cities he could count
on the support of the entire masses. Both parts of the population:
the Hellenized upper classes and the still Coptic-speaking lower
people, although often hostile to each other, nevertheless stood as
Orientals, in national-Egyptian hatred, against the greedy Western
invaders and their brutal imperialism.
Already
then — as centuries later under Byzantium, and in modern times
under the English protectorate — the slogan sounded: Egypt for
the Egyptians!
But
of course the emperor wanted nothing to do with it.
He
marched in with his armies along the desert of Idumaea, to where the
first pyramid spires cast their immensely long triangular shadows
over the red-hot sand. Then the surprising contrast of the
everywhere green fertile Nile Valley with its blond fields of corn
and maize, where one had to wade through many rivers and marshes,
banked by waving palms. But finally, after three days' journey, the
gleaming white battlements and flat, sun-drenched roofs of the
rebellious city, which, situated on a headland in the sea, believed
itself impregnable.
Huge
food supplies had been stored here: high-vaulted aqueducts connected
it to the mainland and enabled it to withstand a long siege. The
emperor was forced to surround it not only on land, but also from
the sea by hastily equipped warships. As a result, when the supplies
were exhausted, no more grain could be brought to the hungry,
overcrowded city. And the emperor also cut off the water supply by
destroying the aqueducts, so that the townspeople, surrounded by the
waters of the ocean, were dying of thirst. Finally, after 8 months,
the city surrendered.
The
victor, embittered by impatience, ordered his soldiers to murder
until the blood reached the knees of his horse. Immediately the men
rushed in through the open gate, killing everyone they met.
But
hardly had the emperor himself entered the city, when a horse
slipped over the corpses, and waded with its knees in the blood.
Immediately, according to the word once given, the murder was
stopped. Only Achilles, brought prisoner before the emperor, had his
purple torn off, and he and his entire brave garrison lost their
heads on the scaffold. The soldiers were allowed to plunder to their
heart's content in the houses of the rich; but the citizens, who
escaped a general slaughter, later erected an iron statue in
gratitude for the benevolent emperor's horse.
Then
Diocletian marched south, conquered Koptos and Bousiris, and
destroyed them completely. Now the entire country was incorporated
as an ordinary province into the Roman empire (so no longer as a
private crown domain) and divided into 3 districts.
In
the meantime, the emperor, on his march to Egypt, had left Max.
Galerius with only a few divisions in Syria, to secure the Euphrates
border against the Persians. With this people, and their king
Narses, a war had already broken out since 286, because the Romans
had restored their vassal Tiridates, the expelled Prince of Armenia,
which the Persians had overrun, to the throne. But Tiridates' reign
was short-lived, for ten years later his enemies reconquered his
country. Now Galerius, supported by the expelled king and his army,
decided to attack the much larger Persian army in the sandy desert
of Carrhae, where Crassus had already been defeated. Galerius also
paid for his presumption with a defeat, but, like his Armenian ally,
escaped from the battle alive.
When
now the supreme emperor returned from Egypt, and his general wanted
to join him again with this message of Job, the emperor refused to
speak to him at first, and made the proud man, purple-clad, walk
several miles behind his carriage. (Eutrop. IX. 24). It is probable
that Constantine, who accompanied the emperor everywhere as an
adjutant officer, witnessed this scene, and this explains the later
hatred of Galerius against him.
However,
his disfavour was not lasting, for he had the opportunity to correct
his mistake. New troops of veterans and recruits had soon been
raised in Illyria 11), and had crossed over to Asia Minor, and with
these Galerius was able to greatly strengthen his weak army,
consisting mainly of Orientals, and to undertake a second campaign
against the Persians right through Armenia (297). He defeated them
in a night raid. Their king Narses fled, wounded. All the women of
his harem, his sisters and children, as well as a very rich booty,
fell into the hands of the Romans. The king's relatives, however
rough in nature, Galerius treated with knightly gentleness, but kept
them as hostages. Soon peace was established, whereby the Araxes or
Aboras (now Aras) became a border river in the northeast, while 5
provinces east of the Tigris were ceded to the Romans. Furthermore,
west of the Araxes, the Roman vassal state of Armenia, with
Tiridates as king, was restored.
Presumably,
shortly after this peace, the relatives of King Narses were sent
back to their country in freedom, and did not, as Eusebius fables
(Eus. Hieron. Chronicon), grace the triumph of Diocletian in Rome.
For an excellent understanding developed between the Persians and
the Romans, which would last for another forty years, almost until
the death of Constantine.
After
having thus brought the empire to rest and all his enemies to
submission, the emperor returned and established his residence at
Nicomedia (Greek Nikomedeia), situated opposite Byzantium on the
Propontis.
Rome
was unusable for that purpose. For all future influence of the
praetorians there and of the senate, which Diocletian never
consulted again, had to be eliminated. For Diocletian wished to
elevate his military dictatorship to a permanent autocracy. And he
could accomplish this better than in Rome, in the East, which had
been ruled despotically since ancient times. Here, in his new
residence, he built a magnificent palace (villa publica), and
introduced a complicated court ceremonial, borrowed from the example
of the Persian kings, whose customs he had become intimately
acquainted with thanks to Galerius' campaign. Convinced of the
heavenly origin of his family, he called himself "Jovius",
and, less out of pride than out of knowledge of people, had himself
worshipped as a deity towards his mainly Eastern subjects, who were
accustomed to this from their princes. For the Romans of that time
this was something unheard of. For, although sacrifices had been
made to the genii (guardian spirits) of the living emperors since
Augustus, it was only after their death that they were generally
worshipped as gods. They therefore saw in Diocletian's act the
hubris of a parvenu, compared to Caligula and Domitian. Yet they had
to admit that he did not behave despotically 12), but fatherly. It
was therefore a very wise policy that he, the former soldier emperor
committed, to increase the splendor of his court, and to instill in
his subjects a respect for his person. Henceforth, even under his
successors, the emperor was safe from hostile attacks. A large staff
of soldiers and eunuchs guarded his palace, where he sat enthroned
in a choice robe of pure gold thread, with sandals, heavy with
precious stones, like a sacred idol, inaccessible to the profane
people. (Aur. Vict. Epit. 39.)
Because
of the enormous costs of court, official travels, and military
expenditure, the tax burden had to be considerably increased.
However, since the people had been greatly impoverished by the many
civil wars and military extortions, and tax evasion was becoming
increasingly common, a stricter, more effective control of the
collection of taxes was necessary. For this purpose, the empire had
to be reorganized into a large, autocratic civil service state
(approximately like the Russian Tsarist Empire). To this end, the
tetrachord [=tetrarchy] or the division into four under 2 Augusti
and 2 Caesars served first.
Each
of these four emperors was assisted by a praefectus praetoris or
prime minister, who, like them, was not bound to a specific region,
but travelled around for inspection purposes.
However,
from then on he was only charged with civil administrative affairs,
so that already under Diocletian (and not only under Constantine 13)
we get a separation between civil and military administration, at
least in this one office, and not in the lower ranks.
It
is possible that the murder of his predecessor Numerian by such a
prefect (then still a general) caused the new emperor to curtail
this office. A further division, which maintained itself throughout
the fourth century, including under Constantine (except for minor
changes), was the division into 12 dioceses (later 13), namely:
I.
Oriens (the East), i.e. Libya, Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia, from
which Egypt and Libya were later split off as a separate diocese;
II.
Pontus. III. Asia. IV. Thrace.
V.
Moesia (with Macedonia and Greece), which under Constantine was more
correctly called Macedonia.
VI.
Pannonia or Illyricum. VII. Britain.
VIII.
Gaul (i.e. present-day northern France, Belgium and the Rhine
regions).
IX.
Vienna. i.e. southern France.
X.
Italy. XI. Spain. XII. Africa 14).
At
the head of each diocese or group of provinces stood a deputy
prefect or vicarius praefectorum praetorio (or simply: vicarius) as
civil and military governor, who in turn had the military-civil
governors or proconsules of the larger provinces and the praesides
of the smaller provinces under him.
The
cities lost much of their former self-government, and came under
stricter central control. Although they still retained their local
senate, elected from the hereditary class of decurions or notables
(cf. the regents in our later republics), they were henceforth
governed by the military-civil city governors or praefecti urbium.
The
old republican offices of the city of Rome, already of little
importance, were now partly abolished; partly reduced to honorary
positions, granted by the emperor, such as the consulship and
membership of the senate (not to be confused with the hereditary
status of senators or perfectissimi).
Thus
all officials, from high to low, were appointed indirectly or
directly by the supreme emperor who, as an earthly Jupiter, was only
responsible to his heavenly colleague for the well-being of his
subjects.
PAGAN
EMPEROR AND CHRISTIANITY.
Typical
of Diocletian, but entirely in keeping with his system, is his
predilection for the old Roman state religion, and his complete
disregard for the religion of the army: the worship of Mithras,
which bordered on monotheism. Only one of his co-regents, the Caesar
Constantius Chlorus, was committed to this latter doctrine; the
other two blindly followed their supreme emperor in his religious
preference. Thus the Augustus Maximianus particularly revered
Hercules, and therefore called himself Herculius, just as
Diocletianus was called Jovius after his Jupiter service.
But
especially Galerius, like Maximianus raised from Illyrian farmer to
soldier emperor, almost surpassed his father-in-law Diocles in zeal
for the old paganism and strengthened him in this by his
ever-increasing influence.
Both
watched with concern the spread of new non-national religions. The
Manicheans, a dangerous sect for that time, who openly honored Evil
as the creative world principle, and thereby threatened to bring
about a revolution in social concepts as well, were burned at the
stake by imperial edict (296). The Christians were still spared,
possibly through the intercession of Valera and her mother Prisca,
who tolerated many of them in her entourage at the court in
Nicomedia, where they, like Galerius, lived together with the
emperor. But for how long?
At
the court, pagan priests, demon exorcists, astrologers and
especially diviners gained increasing power.
From
the entrails of doves, the superstitious emperor attempted to fathom
the hidden future secrets of time, as fast as a bird and
uncapturable by any human brain.
His
son-in-law Galerius, not an intellectual, of rustic origin, but an
excellent soldier and also a strong, impressive figure, followed the
emperor in his worship of the gods, and became more and more a
person of authority at court. The old, decrepit ruler gradually
listened to him, much more than to his own wife Prisca and his
daughter Valeria, who had to hide her Christian sympathies more and
more.
Now
it was this conservative counselor who, as a representative of the
military, mostly servants of Mithras, drove the emperor to persecute
Christians.
Yet
Lactantius clearly exaggerates when he presents Galerius as a bully
of an iron-eater, who with his thundering bass voice tyrannized the
old emperor so much that he would have forced him both to persecute
Christians and to abdicate.
For
elsewhere he (Lactantius) asserts that Galerius was guided by his
fiercely pagan mother Romula, born in Dacia, and by his faithful
friend and brother-in-arms Licinius, the later enemy of Constantine.
Moreover, our informant himself mentions other advisers who drove
the supreme emperor to this decision.
For,
not only among the military (such as Galerius), not only among the
common people, but also among the intellectuals, such as most
officials, jurists and rhetoricians, Christianity was hated. And
many of them belonged to the closest confidants of the emperor.
For
example, great influence was exerted by a certain Hierocles 17)
ex-vicarius of the East, and then at the time president of Bithynia,
who continually tried to incite Diocletian against the Christians.
Presumably he was also the author of a now lost Greek work "To
the Christians", against which Lactantius later polemized in
his Divinae Institutiones (V, 2). In this work the pagan writer
attacked the Bible as a book full of contradictions and called
Jesus' disciples crude, uncultured and therefore unreliable. He
placed the miracles of Jesus far below the magic arts of the pagan
savior Apollonius of Thyana, and refused to regard him as a God,
even on the basis of those few miracles, as the Christians did.
Yet
his tone was not aggressive, but as is evident from the subtitle
φιλαληδεις
the truth-loving who carried his books 18), he wanted to convince
his opponents with objective truth.
But
where does this general hostility towards Christianity come from,
both among the government and the people?
The
mostly pagan people hated them first of all because of their open
contempt for all other religions. But also because it was mainly
Semites (Jews, Syrians, Africans) who were initially the bearers and
propagators. Time and again in the first and second centuries a loud
demand for persecution sounded "Christiani ad leones",
just as wildly unreasonable as modern pogroms in Eastern Europe and
anti-Semitic witch hunts in the West. Domitian had also persecuted
Christians as a Jewish sect. But during the Syrian and African
emperors at the beginning of the third century this changed.
Gradually, native Romans and Greeks formed the majority of
Christians, so that they were still unpopular, but not as strongly
hated as before. This was due to their tireless internal mission,
their exploitation of every martyrdom as a proselytizer and above
all: their excellent organization, against which paganism,
fragmented into countless sects, could not compete.
It
was precisely their organization that made them dangerous to the
state in the eyes of the secular authorities. The refusal of the
Christians to sacrifice on the imperial altars had therefore been
more a pretext than the actual cause of earlier persecutions. No,
the reason why the emperors feared them was their tightly knit
church association, branched out over the entire empire, through
which they had power over thousands and formed, as it were, a state
within the state.
This
was as intolerable to them as, for example, the privileged power of
the Huguenots was later for Richelieu.
Only
a slight weakening of the central absolutist authority, only a
greater spread of Christianity would be necessary to turn the
bishops into local princes. Further history, the emergence of the
secular power of the pope and prelates, has proven this. Galerius'
only, repeated advice to his father-in-law must therefore be:
Suppress Christianity with all your might, before it is too late.
The
emperor also became increasingly ill-disposed towards the new
religion, but while Galerius, as a swashbuckler, wanted to strike at
it immediately, he himself, as an experienced statesman, was more
cautious. After all, there were still many Christians at court or in
the army. They had to be removed first, in order to be able to trust
both powers completely.
A
pretext for dechristianizing the palace was soon found. The failure
of a sacrificial divination was attributed to Christian courtiers,
who had crossed themselves and thus angered the gods. That this was
only a pretext of Diocletian and not the real cause (as O. Seeck,
for example, assumes), follows from the fact that he had admitted
Christian courtiers on all possible occasions for 15 years, and that
he could therefore have complained about their crossing themselves
much earlier. Now he seized only a welcome opportunity to destroy
the Christian influence in his palace. Namely, he made sacrifices
obligatory for all courtiers, including his own Christian-minded
wife Prisca. Most of them then converted to paganism - at least
outwardly - but a few, who remained Christians, remained tolerated
in the palace despite the emperor's threats.
Then
- on the pretext that the pagan old Roman rite was necessary for the
battle - all Christians were expelled from the army. This was
necessary to ensure the loyalty of the troops in case of trouble.
But
Galerius, the fanatic pagan, was not satisfied with this. He urged
absolute, strict persecution across all classes of the empire. The
cautious old man resisted him for a long time and pointed out "how
pernicious it would be to disturb the whole world and shed the blood
of many" 19).
Nevertheless,
he agreed to convene a secret council of jurists and military men to
deliberate on the matter. Here Galerius found the greatest support.
Still, the emperor wanted to consult the oracle of Apollo in his
pagan superstition, just to be on the safe side. Only when he
replied "as an enemy of the divine religion" 19), did the
persecution begin, which the emperor initially did not intend to be
bloody, but which soon degenerated into the greatest horrors due to
a fatal coincidence.
The
first act of persecution was: the evacuation of a church, where all
the holy scriptures that were found there were burned. Then the
building was demolished to the ground. This happened on the dies
Terminalis, the day sanctified to the god of boundaries. The
superstitious emperor wanted to put a limit or end to Christianity
with this (23 February 303).
The
next day the actual edict of humiliation was openly posted. Hereby
religious gatherings were forbidden to Christians, orders were given
to demolish or close their churches, to have their holy scriptures
handed over and burned, and they were denied access to honorary
offices and state positions. Furthermore, no Christian slave could
be legally freed, and sacrifice was made obligatory for litigants in
court, so that no Christian could ever act as an accuser, while
torture was also permitted against privileged Christians (from the
higher classes).
When
a Christian had torn off this placard in mockery, he was arrested
and died as the first martyr. Of course, now that blood had been
shed, bitterness increased on both sides.
Afterwards,
a fire broke out twice in the wing of the palace where the emperor
lived. Galerius blamed this — and probably rightly — on
vengeful Christians. Some court officials (Petrus Dorotheus and
Gorgonius), suspected of this, were tortured and killed. Yes, the
emperor, deeply angry because they had wanted to burn him alive in
his own house, now committed the injustice, the guilt of a few , to
blame all the Christians in Nicomedia. They were dragged before the
court as arsonists, tortured and put to death. The number of martyrs
who fell for their faith was enormous. Of course, the sacred legend
later took possession of it, so that in the saints' stories the
names of Adrian and Genesius are handed down to us. Adrian was a
judge in Nicomedia and was converted to their religion by the
steadfast behavior of the Christians, who refused to renounce their
faith with the obligatory sacrifice before the tribunal, and was
then executed himself. Genesius was the court actor of the emperor,
who had the task of portraying the death of Adrian tragicomically on
stage, to the disgrace of the Christians. But through his role he
had so empathized with the true character of the martyr that he was
moved and suddenly "struck by divine grace". Thus, in the
last act of the play of opportunity, he heroically confessed his new
faith before emperor and court, and found his martyrdom in death by
fire. These legends, however strikingly testifying to the hellish
atmosphere of blood and flames that then blazed through the East,
will probably not have happened. For otherwise the Christian
apologist Lactantius, who appears to be so well informed about the
conditions in Nicomedia at that time and is prone to anecdotes and
melodramatic exaggeration, would have given the names of such famous
martyrs.
After
this severe punishment in the court city, the emperor heard news of
a revolt in Syria, where a usurper Eugenius threw himself up. This
was probably the work of discharged, bread-robbed Christian
soldiers. At least Diocletian believed it to be so, and after
suppressing the revolt he decided to intensify the persecution
throughout the empire. He ordered his co-Augustus, his two Caesars
and his proconsuls to arrest all Christians — from the bishops
down to the lowest parishioner — and to force them to convert
to paganism by every conceivable torture.
But
the practical execution of this decree ("rescript") varied
everywhere.
The
Western Augustus, Maxiamianus, a personal enemy of Galerius, whose
advice had not been sought in the matter of the persecution, (more
out of a sense of being offended than of pity) troubled the
Christians as little as possible, and contented himself with closing
their churches and demanding their holy scriptures. His Caesar, the
tolerant Constantius Chlorus, did the same.
But
in the East and in Africa, where fanatically pagan proconsuls ruled,
countless new means were invented to torture the unfortunate.
Red-hot grills, open desecration of virgins, cutting off the breasts
of women, no horror was too low for them against this hated sect.
The
prisons became overcrowded, so that of the newly introduced
Christians the men had to be sent as forced laborers in the mines,
and the women sold as white slaves to brothel keepers. And in the
meantime they were tortured repeatedly in court. For example, Bishop
Donatus of Carthage, who spent the entire persecution in prison and
was meanwhile put to the rack eight times.
But
that persecution was at the same time a purification in the ranks of
the faithful. The unconvinced and indifferent fell away (lapsi) to
paganism in large numbers, or handed over their holy scriptures out
of fear (traditores). The rest formed a fervent, God-consecrated
crowd, who, comforting death, gladly died with the name of Christ on
their lips. Like a terrible plague epidemic, pagan intolerance
raged, gathering its last strength, against the new religion.
Galerius, the conservative, had thus got his way. His influence on
the decrepit, superstition-bewildered supreme emperor also grew ever
greater.
He
had been deeply shocked by the events of the last few years. Even
courtiers, whom he had previously trusted most, he had murdered, out
of fear for the Christians; their entire sect with all its adherents
had been imprisoned and tortured. And still it was of no avail; the
cunning Christian god continued to support his followers in their
stubborn resistance to the emperor and the gods of the state.
As
an industrious investigator of the future, both from bird signs and
constellations, and tormented by evil premonitions, he therefore
believed that all this did not bode well, neither for the further
reign of himself, the earthly Jupiter, nor for his colleague up
there in the Olympian heaven. Moreover, he longed to throw off the
enormous blood-guilt that he had loaded on his conscience, with the
burden of authority and the responsibility for further persecution.
This
last was precisely the wish of his son-in-law Galerius, who, himself
ambitiously longing for the throne, did everything to support the
old man in his plan to abdicate after the celebration of his
Vicennalia. On this twentieth jubilee of reign, in 303 at Rome,
where Maximianus Herculius had also appeared, he too was forced by
the supreme emperor (but on the advice of Galerius) to take the
solemn oath to abdicate at the same time. He himself, Galerius,
would become supreme emperor; Constantius Chlorus his co-Augustus.
As future caesares he managed to get two creatures of his own,
Severus for the West and Maximinus Daja for the East, appointed.
This with clear disregard for the young, ambitious Constantine, who
was then first lieutenant 20) in the emperor's bodyguard, and had
certainly counted on becoming Caesar one day. But Galerius had made
him fall into disgrace with the emperor, because he had dared to
disapprove of the needless murders against the Christians.
He
probably also feared him as a future rival. At least he deliberately
sent him with too few troops on a dangerous expedition against the
Dacians, in the hope of having him killed. But Constantine prevailed
and remained alive.
In
the meantime Diocletian, after returning from his journey to Rome,
had fallen ill from fatigue, and had publicly abdicated the throne
in Nicomedia; Maximianus Herculius also against his will in Milan.
Thus Galerius was the new lord of the earth. He summoned his officer
Constantine to the court and demanded his oath of allegiance. He
came and fulfilled it. But at the palace the suspicious Galerius
held him virtually hostage, possibly in order to have a pledge of
loyalty from his father, his newly appointed co-Augustus
Constantius. When he nevertheless summoned his son to the West, and
the supreme emperor still did not want to let him go, Constantine
decided to escape.
At
the earliest dawn, when court and ruler were still asleep, he
travelled, after having bribed the coachman-postmaster, disguised in
his uniform, in the carriage of the imperial postal service. In
order to escape all persecution, at each new station, where the
horses were unharnessed and exchanged for fresh ones, he had the
newly used ones killed. 21) Thus he reached the Bosphorus and from
there sailed to the other side, after a long and adventurous journey
through Thrace, Illyria, Germania and Gaul, to the seashore at
Boulogne. Then he crossed over to England, where his father was
staying, with whom he was safe from the attacks of Galerius.
THE
RISE OF CONSTANTINE.
With
Constantine, after Julius Caesar, the greatest general-statesman in
Roman history enters the scene. In vain did Eusebius try to make him
into an eye-twisting bigot; in vain did the Greek-Catholic church
try to adorn his emperor's head with a totally superfluous wreath of
saints. He was no saint and not even a pious one, he was simply a
great, amoral statesman, who by all his qualities, both his
so-called "virtues" and his "flaws" was
predestined to rule in his time.
He
had already his appearance. We can only guess, since his head is
idealized on coins and the only so-called statue of Constantine,
originating from his triumphal arch in Rome (where it stood on top)
was not actually sculpted after him, but after Trajan (it stood on
his triumphal arch), and only later, as best as it could, was
updated after Constantine!!! So let us, out of necessity, rely on
descriptions.
Well-built
and broad-shouldered, with the sturdy Illyrian type inherited from
his father, he carried on his muscular neck a head that, with its
flaming yet motionless eyes and regular features, was at once
endearing and awe-inspiring.
Tireless
on long marches, impetuous and always at the forefront of the
attack, even to the point of recklessness, he was also a calculating
strategist. Beloved by his men, he nevertheless accustomed them to
such strict discipline that they never dared to plunder or even rob
prisoners without his permission. Accustomed from an early age to
bloodshed, he despised pity as a weakness and was needlessly cruel.
Married
early, he remained free from debauchery.
As
a statesman he understood the art of dissimulation excellently,
which makes both his frequent breach of faith and his later outward
Christian disposition understandable. But he knew how to cover this
tendency to hypocrisy with a gracious smile of his face, which he
wore clean-shaven to resemble Mithras-Helios-Apollo, his favorite
god.
But
above all he was feared by his demonic power of sympathy-radiation
and will-imposition over millions, whereby everything bowed down to
his ruthless ambition, just as Napoleon later did.
No
wonder then that almost immediately upon his arrival in Britain he
managed to take his father's army for himself. He arrived just in
time. The old Constantius Chlorus, still, despite his appointment as
Augustus, in England because of war, felt his end approaching and
had therefore called his son to him. His children from the second
marriage were still minors and in Constantine he saw the only one
who could continue his work when he died. But still the old man was
still strong enough to hold a victorious campaign against the Picts
and Scots in the North together with his son. After this last effort
he died at Eboracum (York) (306). This greatly disappointed his
half-barbarian legions. They had hoped, after Constantius became
Augustus, to march to the rich South, where booty and fortune could
be gained, and now he was dead! But it was still possible, if his
excluded son became their leader. What did they care about the ban
of the dismissed Diocles! No wonder then that, at the instigation of
the Alemannic officer Erocus, they threw the imperial purple over
Constantine's shoulders when he left the mortuary. Weeping as he
spurred his horse, the latter would have tried to escape this. 22)
It moved him that these rough, rough-bearded veterans now
transferred their loyalty to his recently deceased father to him,
the barely known son, but he probably thought it was unrespectful
towards his father to accept the purple so soon. Or were they tears
of joy over the rapid satisfaction of his ambition, which he still
concealed under false modesty? Whatever the case, he soon overcame
his hesitation and sent messengers to Galerius to obtain his
recognition. In the same year he crossed the sea and drove the
Franks, who had invaded Gaul by breaking the peace, back across the
Rhine, after which he plundered and devastated their country,
especially that of the Bructeri, as punishment. All the cattle were
plundered, the villages set on fire, so that only a few refugees
(with women and children?) could escape into the rough refuge of the
forests. Two Germanic kings, Ascaricus and Regaisus, with most of
their able-bodied men were captured and, in celebration of his first
triumph, the emperor had these blond barbarians thrown to the bears
in his arena at Trier. So great was the number of these half-naked
wretches, huddled together with fear, that they exhausted the wild
beasts with their mass of flesh 23).
Despite
this cruelty, even contrary to the then military custom of sparing
captured princes, the fearful Gallic eulogist praises the gladly
flattered emperor, that with this bloody deed he had done exemplary
fear spread among the enemies of the empire. Who were the real
"barbarians" here, Romans or Germans? 24).
In
the meantime, Galerius, who himself had too few troops to fight
Constantine there in the very North, had of necessity acquiesced in
his usurpation, but did not recognize him as Augustus, but as
Caesar. He was therefore under Severus, who would now become emperor
of the West from Caesar. But since he was still harmlessly in the
East, Constantine accepted that appointment.
A
logical consequence of this later legitimate usurpation was that the
also excluded son of the ex-emperor Maximilianus also obtained the
purple in Rome. But this one, Maxentius, never received the
legitimate recognition of Galerius for it, so that, unlike
Constantine, he remained from the beginning to the end: the
"tyrannus" or usurper.
What
kind of man was Maxentius? His appearance was — but by his
enemies — ridiculed as contemptibly small, and with weak,
crooked legs 25). About his character all informants are almost in
agreement. Unbalanced son of a thoroughly barbaric Illyrian father,
and a probably highly cultured Syrian mother, Eutropia, he had
inherited from the first his pride, cruelty, superstition and gross
pleasure-seeking, from the second his cunningly intriguing ambition.
Out of antipathy to his father [he] lived lazily and dissolutely on
his estate, 6 miles outside Rome. But Constantine's elevation
aroused his envy, and spurred him on to follow his example. Perhaps
he thought the emperorship an easy means to even more extravagant
excesses than he was accustomed to. Cowardice, however, prevented
him from setting himself up as ruler openly at this stage. For the
time being he preferred to continue to intrigue behind the scenes,
for safety's sake. For he was not a will-less creature of the
praetorians, as O. Seeck wrongly claims (cf. Zosimus, II, 9).
His
passivity at his elevation was only apparent. He simply waited to
see what would happen. By distributing grain free of charge he
already won followers among the people; by financial bribes among
the praetorians.
Now
both parties, bodyguard and citizenry, were already extremely
dissatisfied in advance that Rome was no longer an imperial city;
the bodyguard because its former role of palace revolution and
creating new emperors had been played out; while the trading people
did not earn much since the disappearance of the court and the
senate remained excluded from political influence. 26)
One
rightly attributes the general decline of Rome to the transfer of
the government to the provinces 26). When, as a sign of
Constantine's recognition by Galerius, his new Caesar statue was
exhibited in Rome, the people and soldiers rioted. They wanted their
own emperor in Rome. Under the leadership of the tribunes Marcellus
and Marcellinus and the aedile Lucianus, all henchmen of the still
invisible Maxentius, the hated quaestor Abellius, 26) who tried to
thwart their plans, was murdered as a supporter of Galerius. Then a
troop of praetorians went to the estate of Maxentius and offered
him, exactly what he had wanted, the imperial purple. Honored in
Rome, he soon received the support of all Italy, where people
everywhere were upset about the far-reaching privileges of the
provinces and wanted a return to the earliest imperial period.
But
Galerius could not acquiesce in this new usurpation. He sent his
fellow Augustus Severus (legitimate successor of Constantius
Chlorus) to Italy, to subdue the rebellious capital again. Now
Maxentius was in need. In mortal fear of a murderous defeat, he
called upon the help of his father, who was still grieving over his
abdication on an estate in Lucania. The old Maximianus agreed to
help his son, but only on condition that he himself would become
Augustus again. Thereupon he took the old purple cloak, although
somewhat moth-eaten, out of his wardrobe again, and thus dressed
went to his anxious son in Rome, who approved of everything.
But
his intervention had an unexpected result. Severus' troops consisted
largely of the so-called Moorish (Mauretanian) regiments, who had
once fought under Maximianus in his African war. When they now heard
that it was not only against Maxentius, but also against his father,
their old emperor and general, to whom they had once sworn loyalty,
they refused to fight him and (moreover, lured by promises of
reward) deserted to him just before the walls of the capital, which
they were to besiege. Severus had to flee hastily to Ravenna. Here
Maxentius, who dreaded a long siege, managed to lure him out from
behind the walls, under the pretext of personal negotiations. But
once in his camp, he captured him, and although the old Maximian had
promised him his life, after the latter's departure for Gaul the
unfortunate Severus was deceived by the untrustworthy Maxentius
treacherously murdered.
To
avenge his death, the angry Galerius himself led a new army against
the usurper. But here too, Maxentius's henchmen penetrated, who
scattered gold lavishly among the soldiers, so that these troops,
too, having been bribed, largely defected to him. Looting in
revenge, Galerius withdrew with the rest.
Meanwhile,
the relationship between father and son had become increasingly
worse. Now that the danger was over, Maxentius no longer needed his
father, who had actually saved him. Ungrateful and piety enough, he
tried to rid himself of his troublesome co-ruler and paternal
supervision.
But
the father also did the same to his son. In the army, again thinned
down to mere praetorians — the Moorish regiments had to
suppress a revolt in Africa — he declared Maxentius unfit for
supreme command. According to another informant, he even attempted
to tear the purple from his shoulders. This made his own striving
for absolute power crystal clear.
Of
course, the soldiers, obliged to him by Maxentius' gifts, responded
to the old man with a howl of mocking protest. Then he saved himself
by claiming that he had simply wanted to gauge the feelings of the
army towards his son out of fatherly love 27). Yet he thought it
safer to flee to Gaul. Here, disappointed in his ambition, he wanted
to try with Constantine what he had failed with his son. His
youngest daughter Fausta was to serve as bait for this. 28) (The
eldest, actually his stepdaughter, had been married off much
earlier, to Constantius Chlorus).
With
this marriage and the title of Augustus, Maximianus attempted to win
Constantine over to his plan to make him supreme emperor. But after
the wedding day, when the booty was finally in, his son-in-law did
not lift a hand for him. About this time Galerius, desperate after
his failed expedition against Maxentius, called a congress at
Carnuntum, to which besides Diocletian, Maximianus Herculius was
also invited. When these two old comrades-in-arms met again, they
felt only too clearly how much the years had separated them. What a
contrast between the resigned hermit of Salona, who
had chosen a quiet solitude above world domination, and the
restless, still ambitious ex-emperor of the West! In vain did
Galerius and Maximianus attempt to persuade their former overlord to
ascend the throne again and put an end to the confusion by his
authority. "If you saw my vegetables in Salona, which
I have grown with my own hands, you would immediately judge that I
should never attempt this," was his answer 29). Yes, he and the
interested Galerius even managed to persuade the ex-emperor of the
West to put down the usurped purple again.
After
all, their time was over. Instead of Severus, who had been murdered
(by Maxentius), Galerius managed to get an old comrade appointed to
the new August of the West: Licinius, who had distinguished himself
with him on a campaign in Dacia.
Diocles
returned to his vegetable gardens in Dalmatia, but his ex-colleague
went to Gaul. Still bitter about his loss of power, he soon felt
regret about his promise and decided to carry out a coup d'état
here.
He
took advantage of the absence of his son-in-law, who was fighting
the Franks and Alemanni again in the North, by seizing the crown
treasury and war chest and settling in the strong Arelatum (Arles).
But Constantine returned quickly to thwart his plan. He fled to
Massilia. His recruited mercenaries, however, delivered him to the
besieger. After the latter, at the entreaties of his wife, had
spared Maximianus' life and released him, the gray-haired schemer
attempted to murder his son-in-law in his bedroom. But his daughter
Fausta managed to get the secret of the plot out of him and betrayed
it to her husband, whose life she preferred to save rather than
spare her father's any longer. A crippled and useless eunuch was
placed in the marital bed instead of Constantine, and his son-in-law
and daughter, hidden behind a curtain, witnessed how the old
Maximianus, having crept into the room at night, stabbed his
supposed enemy with his own hands. (Lact. de mort, c. XXX).
Caught
red-handed, the old man was sentenced to a death of his own
choosing. He had himself strangled. (According to others, he was
hanged by Constantine.)
This
left only two rivals in the West: Constantine and Maxentius. For
Licinius, though the lawfully appointed Augustus of the West, found
it safer for the time being (for want of troops?) to remain in the
East, at the court of Galerius, and behaved as if he would succeed
him one day.
This
was soon to happen. Galerius was dying of an incurable disease,
probably in the last stage of syphilis 30). His Christian-minded
wife Valeria naturally attributed this disease to God's avenging
hand and persuaded him to finally stop the persecution of
Christians.
Galerius,
although he remained a pagan, still wanted to reconcile himself with
the apparently angry Christian god and agreed, especially because
the aim of the persecution, mass conversion of the "unbelievers"
to paganism, had failed. So he issued the edict of tolerance of 311,
which breathes impotent resentment rather than reconciliation and is
especially remarkable because of its superstitious request to the
Christians to pray to their so powerful God for his healing. But in
vain, he died in the same year and was succeeded by Licinius as
supreme emperor, who, like Constantine, had also signed the edict.
Only Maxentius, the unrecognized usurper of Italy, and Maximinus
Daja, the former Caesar of the East, who had been passed over for
the sake of Licinius, did not participate. Maxentius, who had
initially spared the Christians in order to annoy Galerius, suddenly
became a persecutor of Christians after his edict of tolerance,
thereby simply playing into Constantine's hands.
Maximinus
Daja, who had been deprived of the succession of the East by
Licinius, declared war on him. But the other, although stronger, did
not yet feel ready for battle and managed to persuade Daja to a
provisional reconciliation through personal negotiations on a ship
in the Hellespont. Licinius was confirmed in his possession of the
Balkan peninsula; Maximinus Daja, now also called Augustus, retained
the rest of the East with its capital Nicomedia, thus by far the
most important part. This Maximinus Daja is presented to us (by
Lactantius and Aurelius Victor) as a half-barbaric young man of
rustic origin, who by his rough determination and convinced paganism
had managed to work his way high into the favour of Galerius. He had
at least not been inferior to him in inhuman Christian tortures, and
even after the latter's edict of toleration (311) he continued them
secretly and unlawfully. According to Lactantius this was due to his
innate wickedness, but the pagan Aurelius Victor excuses his crimes
as mostly committed in drunkenness. Then he would have fits of the
cruelest bloodthirstiness and the lowest lusts; he would put
innocent people of both sexes to the torture rack in order to extort
money from them, and had beautiful women and boys from the
neighbourhood robbed to extravagant excesses. But being conscious of
his addiction to drink, he had sincerely requested his servants
never to carry out his orders until he was sober again. For then he
usually felt remorse, if he had committed misdeeds. He apparently
suffered periodically from that Caesarian madness of alternately
brutal enjoyment and destruction, a disease that has brought down so
many half-civilized rulers from the throne that was too high for
them.
After
the death of his predecessor Galerius, his first act was to seize
the imperial palace in Nicomedia. For he had cast his lustful eyes
on Valeria, the empress dowager. Was it only for her personal charm,
as Lactantius wants? I think there was another, political reason for
it. After all, it was to her favorable influence that the Christians
owed the edict of tolerance of the dying Galerius. Now, after his
death, the authority of that sect, which Maximinus Daja hated more
than anything else, threatened to increase rapidly, as both
princesses increasingly surrounded themselves with Christian
followers. It was therefore in self-defense that he had to try —
with gentleness or otherwise with violence — to persuade her
to marry him, the fanatical pagan, in order to openly show her
transition. To this end he even offered her to repudiate his own
wife. But she refused with great dignity, "because the ashes of
her dead husband were still lukewarm". (Lact. de mort., c. 39).
Then the tyrant took other measures. It could not or not only have
been revenge for love, as Lactantius wants, but he wanted to strike
in her above all the protector of Christians. Had she truly been a
good pagan, then he would have committed unnecessary cruelty with
her persecution, against the daughter of his old benefactor and
fellow believer Diocletian and therefore against Daja's own
interest. Now his act of revenge coincided with and was probably
similar to his renewed persecution against the Christians 31). He
expropriated Valeria's palace and other possessions and had her
eunuchs and slaves tortured before her eyes. Two of her married
friends — probably Christians, who had supported her in her
resistance — he had (according to Lactantius) accused of
adultery by a bribed Jew and delivered them to the hands of the
executioner. Valeria herself was banished with her mother Prisca to
an oasis in the Syrian desert. From there they wrote desperate
letters to her husband and father Diocletian, to free them both
through his mediation. The old man sent numerous letters of entreaty
to Maximinus Daja, but received no answer. He then sent one of his
relatives as a messenger, but without effect.
One
can understand how all this: the ill-treatment of his own wife and
daughter, the usurpations of Constantine and Maxentius, the
executioner's death of his former brother-in-arms Maximiamus
Herculius, embittered the lonely ex-emperor and disturbed his dream
of a happy, quiet old age in seclusion.
In
the meantime, Maxentius had considerably weakened his position in
Rome, both by his persecution of Christians, which had suddenly
begun in 311 (about which earlier), and by his growing unpopularity
with the Senate and the people.
When
this government college expressed dissatisfaction with his
autocratic conduct, he began judicial murders against senators,
which enabled him to immediately confiscate their property. He even
dared to shamelessly indulge his tyrannical lusts by abducting and
abusing daughters and wives from the highest circles. (Zonaras even
mentions a Lucretia story about this).
His
quaestors were also guilty of extortion in the levying of taxes.
Finally,
the lower classes also saw themselves mistreated by his soldiers.
This happened, for example, during the burning of the temple of
Fortuna. A large crowd rushed to extinguish the fire, but a soldier
shouted curses against the goddess and was lynched by the angry
people. (Zos. II, 13). In revenge, the praetorians now committed a
bloody massacre among the crowd, which was only stopped after great
difficulty by Maxentius.
Only
one province made an attempt to free itself from his oppressive
tyranny, namely Africa. Here the governor Alexander, a Pannonian
(Aur. Vit.) or a Phrygian (Zosimus), was clothed with the purple by
the troops despite his age and his military incapacity. Maxentius
then immediately sent a chastening army under the command of Rufius
Volusianus to Carthage. He soon suppressed the uprising, captured
the usurper and had him strangled. The victors then behaved here as
if in a conquered country. After denunciators had betrayed all the
rich who had been in contact with Alexander, the soldiers plundered
their houses and murdered them, after which their money was
confiscated in favor of Maximinus. Entire districts of the city were
destroyed. Surrounding cities also shared this fate, such as Cirta,
which later had to be rebuilt under Constantine and was then
baptized "Constantina" (tgw. Constantine). Maxentius
triumphed over the booty he had won in Rome, in which he tried to
imitate the old enmity against the former Punic Carthage.
Thus
we see in his entire territory: Italy and Africa his rule
degenerated into a military terror, in which the civilian
population, no longer certain of possessions or life, eagerly looked
forward to deliverance.
But
besides with his own subjects, Maxentius also got on bad terms with
the surrounding princes. Licinius had never recognized him and his
brother-in-law Constantine, who had wanted to conclude an alliance
with him after 310, was indignantly rejected by him as "the
murderer of his father". (Although he himself had not treated
his own father much better in the past). Of course Constantine then
sought and found rapprochement with Licinius, an experienced
military man like him, whose support could come in handy in the
event of war. As a seal of the alliance that was soon concluded, the
engagement soon took place between his half-sister Constantia and
Licinius, forty years older. He then also felt reassured on his
side, especially since his two opponents Maxentius, who threatened
to wrest Illyria from him, and Maximinus Daja, his old enemy, had
already allied themselves with each other in the East.
Thus
the war between Constantine and Maxentius and Licinius and Maximinus
Daja on the other hand was inevitable. Yet the former broke out much
earlier, because of the increasingly hateful relationship between
the tyrant of Italy and his brother-in-law. In preparation, both
recruited new mercenaries. Constantine in Gaul, Germania inferior
and Britain; Maxentius in Italy and Africa. Although the latter had
many more troops at his disposal, he was absolutely no soldier, let
alone a strategist, like Constantine. He even thought of a plan of
attack, 32) through Rhaetia and Helvetia to the middle of Gaul and
for that purpose gathered his troops in the Po Valley. But he
neglected to occupy the real gateways to Italy, the Alpine passes in
the West, in time, so that they were later open to Constantine.
In
the meantime, Constantine, whose arrival was already eagerly awaited
by oppressed Italy, which yearned for deliverance, had managed to
make himself sympathetic to Christians and tolerant pagans by
presenting himself as a defender of Galerius' edict of tolerance
against the persecutor of Christians Maxentius us. Although not yet
a Christian himself, he thereby became the protector of
Christianity. As proof of this, he had the sign (XP), the so-called
labarum, the Greek initials of Christos, attached to the shields of
the banners.
Despite
Eusebius' anecdote that the emperor had seen a flaming cross in the
sky in a vision with the inscription: Toi nika (Overcome by this),
one sees in this act absolutely no conversion of such a bloody pagan
to a religion of defenselessness and charity.
What
then were his motives?
In
the first place, his superstition and truly pagan symbol worship. He
simply identified with Christ his hitherto exclusively worshipped
Sun God.
(Mithras-Helios-Apollo).
After all, his holy sign, the svastika (actually an image of the
"sun wheel"), was almost identical to the labarum, so that
this field sign could not be an objection for the so numerous
Mithras servants. Another, equally superstitious motive was: to
appease the wrath of the Christian god, to whom the confusion and
disasters that had recently plagued the empire were attributed.
Moreover
(and this was probably the decisive factor for Constantine) it was a
brilliant political move to win over the still small but firmly
united sect of Christians as grateful subjects. He felt intuitively
that Christians, with their docile morality of submission to any
authority that respected them in their religion, would be easier to
control than the more self-willed, freedom-loving pagans. But it is
quite possible that he himself sent the fairy tale of the vision of
the cross into the world in order to entwine his head with a
prophetic halo in the imagination of credulous bishops and pious
people. How delightfully they laughed at the idea that at last, just
as in the Old Testament, a warrior of God had arisen, who would
eliminate the tyrants persecuting Christians and would spread the
kingdom of heaven already on earth! In any case, Constantine gladly
accepted this role and thereby proved his so repulsive hypocrisy, a
family trait that we find again and again in his dynasty, but most
strongly in his later son Constantius. But it was no time for
religious musing for him. He had to take immediate measures for the
battle. Leaving behind a few regiments at the Rhine border, which
was so secured (against Germans) (Pan. IX, 2), he decided, despite
the advice of his officers, to surprise the much more powerful
enemy. To this end he quickly moved his troops to the foot of the
French-Italian Alps, which he crossed (like Hannibal before him and
Napoleon after him) via the ever unguarded pass of Mont-Cenis. (see
above). On the slope he captured, after a short siege, the town of
Susa (Segusia) on his way down, which was mercifully spared from
plundering. (Pan. X, 21). But once he had descended into the plain
of Turin (Taurini), the enemy Italian-African army awaited him here,
which, with the Praetorians as its core, consisted of 18,000 cavalry
in the vanguard and 170,000 infantry in the rear, thus approximately
double the force. (Zos. II). Against their true Roman eagles rose
the labarum-bearing troops of Constantine, consisting mostly of
British and Germanic barbarians, impetuously eager to fight against
the hated Rome. With the sign of the cross on their shields they
seemed the legions of the new age, charging upon the last defenders
of paganism. But they also represented the struggle of the
upward-striving provinces against the last attempt of Italy, by
means of Maximinus' usurpation, to restore its former superiority.
First
Constantine's horsemen (or was it his foot-soldiers?), with
iron-shod clubs in their fists, charged those of the enemy, who,
with man and horse armored in steel (clibanari), seemed almost
invulnerable. But struck by the surprising blows of those murderous
weapons, many tumbled from their saddles and were trampled under the
hooves of the horses. After a terrible slaughter the assailants were
victorious. (Paneg. X, 24).
Immediately
Milan, the Cisalpine capital, opened its gates to the conqueror, who
made his entry amid the jubilation of government and people. Girls
and women dared to show themselves on the streets again, without
fear of being abducted and dishonored by Maxentius' satellites.
(Pan. IX, 7). But the support of the liberated citizens could not
detain the general for too long. He soon advanced and first occupied
the principal fortresses in the Po Valley, both to use them as bases
for the conquest of Central and Southern Italy and not to be cut off
from a possible retreat. (Compare Napoleon's conquest of the
fortress quadrangle: Mantua-Peschiera-Verona-Legnago on his Italian
campaign of 1797, although it was against Austria at that time).
Thus successively Modena (Mutina), Aquileia and after a long siege
also Verona in his hands. The garrison, which had defended itself
bravely, was spared after surrendering. Maxentius' other troops also
fought excellently. But they lacked all strategic leadership.
For
the tyrant himself, out of cowardice, remained in Rome, instead of
advancing at the head of his army. But there the mood of the
half-starved population became increasingly unfavorable to him, so
that they almost broke into revolt. In order to calm them, he had
the entrails of sacrificial animals consulted and the Sibylline
books read, in order to investigate the future. 33) When it was
predicted to him in an ambiguous way that he who worked on the
downfall of the empire would die a miserable death, he interpreted
this, in superstitious hope, in his favor to Constantine 33).
Thus
he finally took courage, when his enemy had already advanced close
to Rome; and although he had just fled, tormented by fearful dreams
and fear of attacks, with his wife and child from his palace to a
secret dwelling, he now "emerged from his shameful
hiding-place." (Pan. IX, 16) At last, after so many years of
inaction and inaction, he placed himself, in the utmost danger, at
the head of his faithful praetorians. But instead of remaining
within Rome and making sorties from the high-lying hill-town against
the besiegers, he suddenly ventured all his troops outside.
But
how did this "slave in purple" draw up his battle line?
Along the northern bank of the Tiber, so that he was wedged between
the enemy in front of him and the river at his back. Only a narrow
bridge, the Pont Mulvia, remained to him in case of retreat. Thus
the first massive attack of Constantine, with his wild barbarians
and provincials, clad in beast skins, was bound to prove disastrous.
Whatever was not pierced, cut down or killed, and could not flee
over the narrow bridge, drowned in the swiftly flowing water. The
usurper himself, to avoid a shameful death in captivity, threw
himself, steel-armoured, horse and all, into the Tiber. Because of
his weight he sank to the bottom in the same place: "the water
refused to defile itself with his corpse", so that it could be
fished up quickly.
His
head was hoisted over the walls on a spear, and shown to the Romans,
to convince them of his death. Only then did the liberated citizens
dare to give themselves over to exuberant joy, and brought
Constantine, amidst festive jubilation, in triumph into the city.
Here, in the palace, the emperor exterminated the family of the
"tyrant", that is, his unfortunate widow and little son
Romulus, as well as all his followers. Among these were also the
praetorians, who had caused his elevation, and so this guard was
abolished forever.
The
senate, suppressed by Maxentius, was nevertheless restored, and the
families of the senators, many of whom had previously joined the
usurper out of fear, were wisely allowed to live by the emperor.
False accusers or delators who attempted to slander even the most
distant relations of Maxentius, were, however, threatened with the
death penalty according to the edict of 18 January 313 (Cod. Th. 10,
10, 1). This therefore meant:
general
amnesty. In this way Constantine acquired popularity with the people
and senators.
In
the first flush of liberation joy, the city government began to
erect a triumphal arch for Constantine. But when this festive
excitement was over, it turned out that people had idealized
Constantine as a savior.
In
the meantime, the emperor had issued a general census for the
capital to cover the war expenses (1 December 312). When many nobles
had been overtaxed, he instead increased the tax burden on the lower
citizens. Only those among them who could prove that the extra tax
was too heavy for them did not have to pay more than they had taken
on according to the first census (Cod. Th. 13, 10, 1.).
Moreover,
the newly appointed senate was given only an honourable appearance
of authority. The seat of government was not moved to Rome either.
On the contrary, as soon as he could, even before the triumphal arch
that had been started was completed 34), the emperor travelled to
Milan, and temporarily occupied the old palace of Maximianus there,
without however choosing a permanent residence, (end of January
313).
Moreover,
he had arranged a meeting with Licinius there. This, though
Constantine's ally, had not helped him in the struggle with
Maxentius, probably because he hoped that both opponents, his
rivals, would weaken, if not destroy, each other. In this he had
been deceived by Constantine's unexpected victories. He now saw that
he had to keep his powerful colleague in the West on friendly terms,
especially for his threatened war in the East with Maximinus Daja.
No wonder then that Constantine could easily persuade the rough,
uneducated Licinius, completely stranger to religious matters, to
join Galerius to extend the tolerance edict of 311 in a favourable
way for the Christians.
This
edict had the drawback that it only meant toleration of the
Christians, but not constitutional equality. (So for example no
access to state positions that Diocletian had taken away from them).
Furthermore, a burning question had remained untouched, namely the
return or not of the secularised church property. This was of course
the wish of the clergy; but many pieces of land where former church
buildings stood or had stood had been either sold or given away to
favourites by proconsuls or prefects.
The
issue was now resolved as follows:
1)
No one was to be hindered in his religion;
2)
Followers of all religions had access to state positions and the
same civil rights;
3)
The Christians received former church property back;
4)
The affected new pagan owners of it could receive compensation for
it from the state through the mediation of the governors.
These
decrees the emperors combined into the erroneously called "edict"
of Milan, because it is not an edict, but only a rescript, i.e. a
circular letter to governors and prefects, but which (like an edict)
had to be posted publicly. This latter explains the mistake of
Eusebius, who on the grounds of its publicity considers it to be an
edict, although the form itself in which he transmits it shows that
it is a rescript. (Euseb. Hist. Eccles. X, 5; also in slightly
different wording in Lactantius. De Mort. XXXXVIII; see further note
35).
A
second purpose of their meeting was the solemn marriage between the
60-year-old Licinius and the barely 16-year-old stepsister of
Constantine, Constantia, a marriage without love, purely for reasons
of state. At this wedding feast both emperors also invited the old,
still living Diocles. Undoubtedly, death threatened him there. But
he saw through the trap of the two so philanthropic Christian
friends, and excused himself because of his advanced age (68 years).
Then Constantine and Licinius showed their true nature, and sent the
wretched old man threatening letters that he had formerly kept
company with Maxentius, and now still with Maximinus. If only
Diocletian could have trusted the latter, the tormentor of his wife
and daughter! But he found himself betrayed and abandoned, not only
by his immediate circle, but also by all those who owed their
elevation to him, such as Licinius.
Tired
of life, and fearing otherwise to fall into the hands of his
enemies, he took poison, (Epitome de Caesaribus, 39) or let himself
be starved to death (Lact., de Mort LII) 36). After the meeting in
Milan, Constantine probably accompanied the newlyweds for a while to
the East; at least on 16 February we find him at Sirmium in Lower
Pannonia. Here, while his sister and brother-in-law were travelling
on, he announced an imperial decree (Cod. Theod. 7, 21, 1) and thus
indicated that he considered these Western Illyrian provinces
(Noricum, Upper and Lower Pannonia and Dalmatia) to be part of his
empire. He could do this because no definite border had been
established in Milan between the territory of the Eastern and
Western emperors, any more than it had once been between Diocletian
and Max. Herculius. But Licinius could just as well consider Western
Illyria as his territory, and so this irregular situation soon
became the cause of a dispute between the two. But now Licinius was
engaged in a struggle with Maximinus Daja, and could not pay
attention to Western Illyria (= the diocese "Pannonia").
From
Sirmium Constantine marched back via Northern Italy to Gaul, where
he reached Trier at the beginning of August 313. The inhabitants of
that region were astonished at the tremendous speed with which he
had conquered Italy in less than a year, so that he now entered
their midst again, to protect them against the Germans. These, the
Franks, had invaded Lower Germany, and the emperor had soon defeated
them and driven them back. (end of October 313) (Paneg. IX, 21).
Meanwhile,
in the far East, already a few months after Maxentius' fall, his
former ally Maximius Daja was threatened with the same fate. To
prevent this, he took an offensive course, crossed the Bosphorus,
took Byzantium, but suffered defeat at Adrianople by Licinius (30
April 313), after a failed attempt to bribe his army, and treachery
by his own troops. Having crossed over to Asia Minor, he withdrew
behind the Tauric mountains, hoping to recruit new soldiers in
Egypt. But on the way he died at Tarsus, either by suicide or by an
accidental death, which spared him from the sentence that threatened
him. On his deathbed, in terrible pain, he is said to have implored
Christ for forgiveness (Lact. de Mort. and Euseb. Vita Const.).
Thus
it seemed to the Christians of that time, like Lactantius, that
their God had held a strict judgment and over all the persecutors of
his church. Galerius, the real instigator, had been taken away by a
horrible disease; Diocles, Maxentius, and possibly also Maximinus
Daja by suicide. And even the avenging, all too cruel God visited
the sins of the persecutors (according to Lactantius) in their
innocent wives and children. For Licinius, inaugurated as Daja's
successor in Nicomedia, immediately showed an inhumanity equal to
this, by mercilessly murdering his two minor children, as well as
Candidianus, a now 20-year-old foreson of his late benefactor
Galerius. 37) Moreover, he also signed the death warrant of the
banished princesses Valeria and Prisca, 38) who, hardly breathing a
sigh of relief after the death of their persecutor Maximinus Daja,
were painfully surprised by the rumour of this. They decided to flee
from Syria, in simple clothes, disguised as women of the people, and
thus wandered through the provinces. But being recognized at
Thessalonica, they were beheaded before the compassionate eyes of
the powerless crowd. (313)
TOWARDS
SOLE POWER.
Constantine,
who himself strove for sole power, watched with concern the rapid
growth of power of his co-emperor. He had remained neutral in the
war with Maximinus Daja, as Licinius had at the time in his war with
Maxentius, and had hoped (as did he at the time) that both his
rivals would weaken each other, after which he himself could find
his advantage through armed mediation. But now Licinius emerged from
the battle strengthened as his equal, as emperor over the entire
East.
Moreover,
he probably could not approve of all Licinius' atrocities, although
no less cruel himself. The completely innocent and harmless Prisca
and Valeria had been murdered for no reason at all. As a result,
Licinius made the new regime unpopular with the population. The
Christians, barely awake from the frenzy of joy at the fall of their
enemy Daja, soon feared for their own safety in the face of this new
bloody terror. The uncertain border between the territories of the
two emperors also caused the estrangement. 39) For L. believed, just
as Constantine, that he could lay claim to Western Illyria, and
accused his colleague of having wrested these provinces from him
(Zos. lib. II, 18).
A
cause for the fight, which both ambitious generals equally desired,
soon presented itself.
Licinius
attempted to take advantage of Constantine's stay in distant Trier
(autumn 313 to autumn 314) by intriguing against him in Italy. He
sent his confidant Senicio to the West, to incite his brother
Bassianus, married to Anastasia, a sister of Constantine, against
him. Constantine had appointed her as caesar and governor of Italy,
but with far too little power for his liking. He eagerly accepted
the secret proposal of his brother Senicio, and began to arm himself
treacherously against Constantine.
But
the latter discovered the cunning intrigue, had Bassianus killed,
and demanded the extradition of the fugitive Senicio. Licinius
refused and even had the statues of his fellow Augustus torn down in
the uncertain border area of Pannonia, in the city of
Emona, not far from Venice, as a sign that he considered this
country as his own. (Anon. Vales. cap. V).
The
Western emperor now decided to act harshly and decisively. From the
North (he was staying at Trier) he advanced into the Danube area
(Lower Pannonia) and there, with only 20,000 infantry and cavalry,
defeated the almost twice as strong army of his enemy at Cibalae
(Vinkovcze). Then he occupied the neighbouring fortress of Sirmium
(Mitrovitza), where the wife, the newborn son and the treasury of
the fugitive Licinius fell into his hands. He then pursued him into
the plain of Thrace, where, after having refused negotiations,
Licinius had meanwhile appointed Valens his frontier commander until
August 40), without informing Constantine. When he therefore sent
delegates once more to the victor, the latter first demanded that
Valens be deprived of his rank, and Senicio be extradited. In order
to save himself, Licinius agreed to this, had his general Valens
killed, 41) and extradited Senicio as "the instigator of all
evil," 42) after which the same thing happened to him. —
Moreover, Licinius had to cede all his European territory, except
Thrace, to his brother-in-law, (peace of October 314). That
Constantine did not destroy him immediately in the first war, which
he certainly would have been capable of, probably owed his victory
to the intercession of his wife Constantia.
After
that the emperors apparently became reconciled; for the following
year they even had themselves appointed consuls. Then, after mutual
consultation, on 17 March 317, they elevated their sons to caesars.
42a). Thus in the West Crispus, legitimate bastard of Constantine,
born to him from the concubine Minervina, and his half-brother
Constantinus, son of Fausta, and only newborn, — were elevated
to that rank; and in the East Licinius the younger (Licinianus),
barely 20 months old.
Officially
both emperors remained equal in prestige, but the power of the
Western empire far outweighed that of the East. Licinius, bitter
behind the mask of reconciliation, was seeking revenge, and
Constantine's lust for power was far from satisfied. It was clear
that the Roman Empire could not tolerate both of them as rulers at
the same time.
The
Eastern emperor played into the hands of the Western emperor, which
was fatal for him. Although it had been to his advantage, the
steadily growing Christians, especially numerous in his now
remaining Eastern provinces, he persecuted his rival out of spite.
His
first and worst grievance was with the priests, who from the pulpit
glorified Constantine far above him as the true warrior of God. They
also prayed for him in their churches, but he felt that this
official prayer was not heartfelt, and overestimated in his
suspicious imagination their secret aversion. Furthermore, he too,
like earlier emperors, became afraid of their semi-political
organization, which he regarded as an element of unrest in his
empire. Yet, with a somewhat more correct view of their doctrine of
reverence for the government, he could have assured himself of their
support and loyalty. Instead, he tactlessly incited their hatred.
First
of all, he forbade the bishops to visit each other and to hold
church councils. These councils had long since degenerated into
dangerous furnaces of mutual strife, indeed of discontented stirring
against the authority of pagan emperors.
His
further measures are reminiscent of Diocletian. For example, in
order to be able to rely better on the army, he made sacrifices for
it compulsory 43). Those who did not comply with this, that is,
first of all the Christians, were expelled. He also expelled all
Christians from his own court 44), banished them to wild,
inhospitable regions, or reduced them to the status of slaves, to
serve others, while he took their goods to himself. But this last,
greedy act brought him double advantage.
For
by this he at the same time limited the number of courtiers and
eunuchs, according to him "the mice and cockroaches of his
palace" 45).
But
he also behaved extremely greedy and cruelly towards other rich
subjects. He condemned many without guilt, only to arbitrarily
confiscate their goods 46). Even those who had been dead for a long
time, he included on the list of the sentenced for that purpose, and
then deprived their heirs of their lawful possessions. He indulged
his base passions with the wives of his banished and totally ruined
victims, or handed them over to his slaves for that purpose. Yet
this old voluptuary plagued the Christians with the hypocritical
command that men and women, supposedly for the sake of morality,
should hold religious services separately. Women were only allowed
to confess and learn catechism with their own sex. Bishops who
resisted this were killed, or sent as forced laborers in the mines,
and their churches demolished or closed 47). Yes, he even had the
death by crucifixion, which Constantine had abolished to spare
Christian feeling, used again as a preference against his victims.
Thus he appeared to be a revived Galerius, and revealed himself more
and more as an intolerant superstitious pagan, 48) who surrounded
himself with Egyptian soothsayers and seers of birds, and even
consulted entrails sacrifices again.
For
this reason he also fell in esteem among the enlightened pagans,
freed from superstition, such as men of letters, sophists, jurists,
yes, among all intellectuals, and he hated them in return. This
military savage, out of total ignorance of literature and science,
called it a "public plague", 45) especially the business
of judges and lawyers. He considered them nothing but useless
talkers, which he was somewhat right about in this time of empty
rhetoric and wordiness. Moreover, he considered all orderly legal
conditions in his empire superfluous, since everything had to bow to
his arbitrariness, with which he robbed his subjects of women or
fortunes at will.
His
greed had a good result; he was a frugal financier, and did not
waste the resources of the treasury unnecessarily. Also, due to the
many confiscations at the expense of rich city dwellers, high taxes
were not necessary, so that the poorer people did well under him. He
especially privileged his former classmates, the country squires and
farmers, both out of a sense of solidarity and because he understood
that the prosperity of his provinces depended on good agriculture
and cattle breeding. But he could not trust the Christian majority
of this Eastern population. His army, although it now consisted
entirely of pagans, was no longer as resilient as it had been
before, since the best part, the Illyrian legions, had been captured
by Constantine at the time, together with the dioceses of Pannonia
(=Illyricum) and Moesia (314). This also became apparent in the
coming war with Constantine.
Constantine
had long been looking for an opportunity to do so, and finally found
it in a pretended invasion of Thrace by the Goths, which, if we may
believe Jornandes XXI, 49) had been bought and paid for by
Constantine as a clever comedy. He now entered Thrace, Licinius'
territory, and supposedly defeated the Goths, but secretly had the
captured "prisoners" recruited for his army. When Licinius
rightly complained about the violation of his territory, war broke
out (summer 324). This second, treacherous war against his
co-emperor, had even more than all his previous campaigns, the
appearance of a religious war, indeed a crusade. Always on the
offensive, he marched against his colleague with his newly
reinforced army of 100,000 men, under the banners of the sign of
Christ. The latter, unprepared, quickly concentrated his much more
numerous troops in Thrace, and encouraged them by their ancestral
nobility and images of gods and favorable oracles, and attempted to
prevent his enemy from crossing the Ebrus (Maritza). This seemed to
succeed, for for a time both armies lay idle along the banks
opposite each other. Then Constantine devised a stratagem. He
diverted Licinius' attention by collecting felled tree trunks at a
very narrow part of the river, in order to make him think that he
wanted to build a bridge there. Of course his opponent on the other
side did the same. But suddenly, at a completely different place,
where the river was fordable, he sprang through the water on
horseback with a dozen horsemen, rushed by surprise upon the enemy,
who happened to be exposed there, and inflicted a great slaughter
among his foot soldiers. Meanwhile his rest of the cavalry and
infantry had followed his impetuous example, and also rushed across
the stream to the other bank. Thus the battle developed in the plain
of Adrianople, where Constantine, with terror as his ally, won (July
3) 50) and soon 34,000 dead, mostly of the enemy, covered the field.
Then he rushed after Licinius, who fled to Byzantium, and himself
laid siege to the city.
For
this purpose he also had his fleet of 200 warships sail from the
Piraeus to the North. Commander was his eldest son, the crown prince
Crispus.
Let
us briefly examine his past. His year of birth is uncertain, but
probably 306 (according to Seeck: 307) 49). Constantine had fathered
him with a concubine Minervina, since in such a wandering soldier's
life illicit intercourse with women from the army, sutlers or
slaves, was the rule. This bastard was now later married, and from
an early age drilled in his father's trade, military service. In
317, on 1 March, he was appointed Caesar, together with his
half-brother Constantinus (then newly born) and Licinianus, the son
of Licinius and Constantia, who was barely 20 months old. Possibly
from this year or even earlier (at the earliest 314) he received as
his tutor the Christian orator Lactantius, who had then just
travelled to the West, probably to the cultural centre of Trier in
Gaul, since the emperor also stayed there in 314 (January-October)
and 316 (January-February). But this intellectual development was
only incidental compared to the military training he had to go
through. Already in 320, at the age of fourteen, he defeated the
Franks and Alemanni on a campaign. We read a high-sounding eulogy of
his military talents in a festive speech of 321, 1 March in honour
of the quinquennalia (beginning of the fifth year) of the so-called
"reigns" of the two Western Caesars. 50a). On that
occasion, after his exploits on the Rhine, the prince had been
summoned to his father's palace at Sirmium (Pannonia), and already
then, on his march there, he showed the same indefatigable speed and
hardiness as his father. In this year Constantine also appointed
him, like his brother Constantinus Jr., as consul, and married
Crispus to a certain Helena, by whom she had a child the following
year (322, 30 October). 50b). However, the consulship of the two
princes was not recognised in Licinius' part of the empire, nor were
the Western consulships of the following years. This proves the
increasing enmity of the two supreme rulers, and at the same time
the impossibility that Crispus' wife Helena could have been a
daughter of Licinius 51).
After
having shown his military prowess on land against the barbarians,
Crispus soon had to prove his talent at sea, as admiral, in the
second war against Licinius.
By
chance the south-west wind was favourable to him, so that he could
sail against the current, which runs in the Hellespont from NE to
SW, into the narrow funnel of that strait. At its mouth, before the
entrance to the Propontis, the much more numerous naval force of the
enemy awaited him, about 350 galleys, mostly manned by Greeks from
Asia Minor, Phoenicians and Egyptians, under the command of Amandus
or Abantos, probably neither a Greek nor a Roman. All these hastily
pressed Orientals fought not for their own cause, and, being
naturally unwarlike, were no match for Crispus' fleet, manned with
Illyrians, Greeks, and Spaniards. The latter had, however, another
advantage. This was shown by his sudden attack, when he plunged with
his small, swift ships into the midst of the heavy, clumsily built
galleys of the enemy, (compare the English-Dutch fleet against the
Spanish in 1588). Their awkward mobility prevented them from
manoeuvring quickly enough in that narrow space, but they pressed
close together and crushed each other under the pressure, so that
Crispus was able to board quite a few, destroy their crews, and sink
others. When night ended the fight, Abantus, who had at first
despised the much smaller fleet of his opponent, was scarcely able
to bring the sorry remnant of his naval force into the Asia Minor
port of Ajax, while Crispus lowered the sails for Eleous (in
Thrace).
On
the second day a strong north wind arose, which enabled Abantus to
sail from his harbour to the SE, to meet the enemy, who was thus
stopped. However, he hesitated to sail quickly, and thus let the
right moment for the attack pass unutilized. As soon as both fleets
had approached each other, the wind turned completely to southwest,
drove Abantus back, and gave Crispus the opportunity for a new
attack, in which he sank many of the other's ships into the ground.
Moreover, a strong storm that arose as an ally threw most of A's
remaining ships to pieces against the rocks of Asia Minor.
Only
4 of the 350 ships he managed to save with him in a hasty flight to
Chalcedon.
In
the meantime, Licinius' position in the besieged Byzantium became
more and more dangerous. Constantine had built ramparts here and
there around the walls of the city, of the same height, on which he
erected wooden towers, which with their slings and artillery
harassed the soldiers within. In some places he had neglected the
construction of these ramparts, and there battered the stone walls
of the city with battering rams. Longer defence was impossible,
especially now that it was to be surrounded from the sea. Therefore
Licinius resolved to flee with the war-chest to Chalcedon in Asia
Minor, where he hoped to raise fresh troops. For he had brought only
a small part of his force to safety in crossing the Propontis. His
second in command, Martinian, he declared Caesar, and sent him to
Lampsacus on the right bank of the Hellespont in the SW, while he
himself attempted to guard the bank of the Bosphorus. But he could
not prevent Constantine from landing 2 miles south of Chalcedon with
a great superior force, and was so decisively and murderously
defeated that of his 70,000 troops only 30,000 remained. 52)
Now
it became apparent how imprudent he had acted in dividing his army
in two, for he himself had already been defeated when Martinianus
came to his aid from Lampsacus, who had also suffered defeat against
C. After this, the hopelessly besieged and starving Byzantium
surrendered, and Chalcedon also opened its gates to the emperor.
Closely
followed by Constantine, Licinius fled with his wife and child and
his much-depleted army to the court city of Nicomedia. Here, after a
short siege, he had his wife Constantia request negotiations. She
received from her half-brother Constantine the assurance under oath
that her husband's life would be spared and her son would retain the
office of Caesar, whereupon the old conqueror came forward and laid
the imperial purple at the feet of the conqueror (autumn 324).
Martinianus was taken prisoner to Cappadocia; Licinius with wife and
child was sent to Thessalonica, to live there in safety as a private
individual. But the following year he was unexpectedly deceived from
his home, and before his wife could intercede for him, he was
strangled in violation of the oath. (Zos. II, 28). The motivation
for this act was the allegation that Constantine's old soldiers
demanded the death of their former, still dangerous enemy, and that
he, cunning as he was, had conspired with his own discharged
soldiers, and even with Goths from across the Danube, to become
emperor again. The truth was that Constantine would rather prevent
such a usurpation of the purple, as his father-in-law the ex-emperor
Maximiamus had once attempted, a second time. For this purpose no
breach of oath could harm him.
This
was now after Maxentius and Bassianus, already the third
brother-in-law, who killed this good Christian protector. When would
his own, even closer blood relatives come to the executioner's turn?
CRISPUS
AND FAUSTA.
At
the same time, a rift also appeared to have developed between the
emperor and his eldest son Crispus. The latter had not been
reappointed to the government of Gaul at that time, but, although he
remained Caesar, was held virtually captive at his father's court.
This
was all the more painful, since Crispus had already been elected to
the honorary office of consul before the war with Licinius, at the
beginning of 324.
What
was the cause of his disfavour?
First
of all, his father became jealous of the great popular favour that
was accorded to his eighteen-year-old son, young and charming,
rather than to himself, the fifty-year-old emperor, after their
mutual victory over Licinius. The prince, who had been among them
since he was a child, was also extremely popular with the soldiers.
Perhaps he prided himself too much on this, which aroused
Constantine's distrust. Moreover, in all absolutist states there is
a natural opposition between the prince and the heir to the throne,
who often would like to rule differently from his father, according
to the ideas of a younger generation, and is therefore feared by him
as a dangerous rival.
Finally,
Crispus may have disapproved, to the greater suspicion of his
father, of the perjured murder of Licinius, and also of the fact
that his son Licinianus, in violation of the treaty of 324, remained
deposed as Caesar, and was replaced by Constantius, the second son
of Constantine (8 November 324) 53a).
But
the real author of his disgrace was his stepmother Fausta.
Was
indeed, as Zosimus and Zonaras 53b) assert, revenge for a
disappointed passion her motive, and did she play the part of a
Phaedra towards Crispus, although he was married?
Or
was it ambition to secure the right to the throne for her own three
children at the expense of her stepson, who stood in their way?
Both
qualities, both unbridled debauchery and ambition, were hereditary
in the family of the Hercules from which she descended. Her father
Maximianus even abused the bodies of hostages who had been thrown
into prison for debt, and from her brother Maxentius, during
tyranny, no Roman lady of standing was safe. In addition, both had a
burning, but brutally clumsy ambition. The old Maximianus Herculius
had only laid down the purple at the command of Diocletianus, but
then proclaimed himself imperator twice more, each time without
success.
That
same furnace of ambition and forbidden passions now smouldered in
his daughter Fausta. Possibly, in her incitement against Crispus,
both passions were at play. Not that she did not feel love for her
lawful husband, Constantine, for she had once, fourteen years ago,
saved his life, at the sacrifice of her own father.
But
he was so much older than she, and now his handsome, brave son
Crispus, as he returned from the war, an eighteen-year-old victor,
seemed exactly the rejuvenated image of his father. And she was
barely thirty, and often felt neglected by her husband for matters
of state. No wonder then that with her fiery temperament she soon
flared up in fierce passion for her young stepson.
But
at first she anxiously tried to conceal this forbidden urge, if
possible to smother it. There was no better way to do this than to
suggest to herself a hatred of Crispus by ambitious motherly care
for her own sons.
At
first she succeeded in bringing him under vague suspicion to the
emperor as a danger to state, without yet accusing him of a specific
act. Soon, ecclesiastical disputes also came to aggravate the
discord between father and son. Before the Synod of Nicaea began,
the emperor, through the efforts of his court preacher Hosius, had
immediately become a favorite of Fausta, and had already been won
over to the orthodox party. And the empress naturally competed with
her husband in fierce Catholic sentiment. A Christian sense of sin
because of her own concealed but not yet quenched passion drove her
to ever stricter devotion. But no faithful churchgoing, no
self-mortification during the great Lent before Easter — then
often customary among Christians — could kill the devil in
her.
Meanwhile,
Crispus, as a young officer, probably had little interest in
theological debates, and despised all that ostentatiously pious fuss
of emperor and court. 53c)
When,
after the end of the synod (beginning of August 325), Constantine,
on the advice of Hosius, banished Arius and three others, and
persecuted the remaining Arians, Crispus probably disapproved of
this intolerant policy.
This
must also have caused dissatisfaction at the emperor's court in
Nicomedia, as well as among the officers and officials, and many
only waited for a favourable opportunity to openly display their
secret Arian 53c) or even pagan disposition.
The
pagans from this opposition party belonged largely to the former
military and civil servants of Licinius who had mostly gone over to
Constantine's service; the Arian-minded christians were not so much
followers of Arius, as of the clerical tyranny of the homo-ousians.
Who
now gathered around all these dissatisfied elements?
Not
around one of Constantine's stepbrothers, for they were too
insignificant for that. Nor around Licinius' widow Constantia, for
although she was Arian-minded 54c) and could blame Constantine for
the perjured murder of her husband, she was still too meek to think
of revenge. She also knew that her brother, despite everything,
loved and honored her personally, and had even invited her to come
to his court, which she had possibly accepted for the future of her
son. Moreover, she had never been happily married to Licinius, forty
years her senior, to whom she had been married for reasons of state,
and this probably made her resign herself to his violent death. She
also patiently endured the unlawful deprivation of her son
Licinianus, for whom she had still negotiated the Caesarate in
October 324, finding solace in her faith and unaware of what was
soon to come for her boy.
To
whom should the dissatisfied turn for support?
Probably
to Crispus, who may have been neutral in religious matters, but who
could ill tolerate his enforced unemployment and the shameful
surveillance at his father's court. Arians and pagans may have
written him compromising letters for help and advocacy. Or perhaps a
conspiracy of both parties imprudently wanted to proclaim him and
the young Licinianus as emperor.
But
undoubtedly Crispus' attitude towards his father was loyal, since
the latter himself, much later, openly acknowledged his son's
innocence. But in this time of tense church disputes it was easy for
Fausta to accuse her stepson to the already so suspicious emperor as
if he were heretical-minded and with the help of those malcontents
was striving for the throne. She also pointed out to him the future
threat of Licinianus, who might one day avenge his father's death.
The
emperor blindly believed her, who had once saved his life, without
listening to the admonitions of his mother Helena, who pleaded for
her grandson what she could.
His
first act was to issue an edict on the 17th of September 325 against
this alleged conspiracy of his son. (Cod. Th. IX, 1,4). Without
mentioning the name of Crispus here, he encourages each of his
judges, nobles and courtiers to tell the emperor openly what they
might know about him, "who had hitherto deceived him with
feigned honesty." And of course there was no lack of delators,
who hoped to gain the emperor's favor by slandering his son to him
even worse than ever.
But
his father still hesitated to respond to these vague, most
unprovable accusations. For the time being he limited himself to
dismissing, as a precaution, the greater part of the troops who had
fought under him and Crispus against Licinius, and with whom the
prince was very popular. 55) But in order to oblige them at the same
time, he showered them with rich gifts at their departure (spring
326).
It
was precisely the twentieth year of the emperor's reign, and after
celebrating his jubilee at Nicomedia at the beginning of it (25 July
325), he was to repeat his Vicennalia at Rome, the old capital, at
the end of this year (i.e. in 326).
For
this purpose the emperor and his entire court set out on a journey
overland from Byzantium to Italy in the spring of 326 (beginning of
March). In this procession of dignitaries and lackeys both Crispus
and Licinianus were led away captive under ever stricter guard.
But
on the way Fausta, who followed her husband everywhere, suddenly
felt pity for her innocently tormented stepson, and this reawakened
her old passion. First she persuaded Constantine to allow his son
more freedom of movement, since she no longer feared him, and so he
was no longer so strictly guarded. Then she managed to lure her
stepson into her tent, and in a secret, passionate conversation
begged him to flee with her, and once in full freedom, to share the
rule of the empire with her.
He
refused this shameful offer in terror, and thus aroused her wrath.
While they were still quarrelling, Constantine suddenly came upon
their meeting, and asked with fierce suspicion the cause. In
revenge, Fausta, like another Phaedra, now accused her stepson to
the emperor of an attempt at adultery and abduction, and of plotting
against his authority.
In
vain did Crispus plead his innocence; in vain did the
eleven-year-old Licinianus testify in his favor. The emperor
believed the woman he loved more than any other, had them both,
bound, hidden in his tent, and resolved to kill them, without a
judicial hearing.
When
the darkness of that day ended, the emperor, in the depths of the
night, one of his most trusted officers, to lead Crispus and
Licinianus out of the camp, and secretly, in the nearby mountains of
Istria, to poison them. And so it happened: near Pola both
unfortunate princes died, in the prime of their years.
The
next morning the whole court journeyed on again, over the eastern
edge of the Alps that surrounds Italy, to Aquileia, and it was only
slowly that the courtiers learned something of Crispus' death. 56)
The
emperor, however, betrayed himself by issuing some strict laws
against fornication and everything connected with it in Aquileia,
where he had been staying for a long time, still filled with anger
at the supposed deceit of his son.
They
served at once as a supplement to the already existing Lex Julia de
stupro, but were not, like this, inspired by justice, but by a
cruel, implacable spite.
First,
on 1 April 326, he published a law against the abduction of girls
and women, which has only been preserved in fragments. 57)
If
this happened against her will, only the abductor was punished by
pouring molten lead down his throat. However, if she had approved,
the abductor was punished just as severely, but the girl was
deprived of her inheritance rights.
Accomplices
shared in the punishment of the abductor, but if the parents had
consented to the abduction, they were banished. (Cod. Th. IX, 24,
1).
Three
days later, the continuation of this law was proclaimed, in which
underage girls were protected from sexual abuse by their guardians.
(Cod. Th. IX, 8, 1).
Presumably
at the same time, he proclaimed another law to protect chaste women
from false accusations. No man was allowed to accuse a woman who was
not his wife of adultery, only her male relatives (full brothers,
half-brothers or first cousins) and her own husband had the right to
do so. This is clearly inspired by the case of Crispus, whose
counter-accusation against Fausta was not believed by the emperor,
since she had no male relatives who could accuse her and her own
husband also considered her innocent. (Cod. Th. IX, 7,2).
Shortly
afterwards followed two other edicts, one of 29 May 326, against
free-born women who throw themselves away to their slaves, and were
threatened with the death penalty, 58) and another edict that
forbade married men to have concubines in their homes, ("penes
se habere"), which, however, did not abolish concubinage (14
June 326) 59).
After
a long stay in Northern Italy, the emperor traveled to Rome in the
summer of this year, where he made his entry on July 18, cheered by
the people and senators, and soon moved into the high palace of
Nero.
But
although he now believed himself safe from Crispus, who had never
done him any wrong, he was not safe from his own conscience, which
tortured him more and more fiercely. And it did not stop there.
Although Constantine had ordered his henchmen to maintain the
strictest silence, and had let the rumour spread that Crispus and
Licinianus had died of a sudden illness, the secret leaked out to
the court. But this gossip around him did not bother the emperor. He
stubbornly concealed from those around him the remorse that wounded
him, and always showed them the same, stern, stern face.
Only
his mother Helena, from whom he had always concealed his sentence on
Crispus, and who now knew everything, was able to open his soul.
Love and pity for her grandson, whose innocence she had previously
pleaded, gave her the courage to speak openly.
But
in that love mixed her old resentment against the proud prince's
daughter Fausta, who for years had humiliated her, the emperor's
mother, because of her low birth, and barely tolerated her at the
palace. Her self-awareness rebelled against this: she wanted to
regain her influence over her son, extorted from her by Fausta, and
for two such ambitious women as she both were at the same time no
place at this court.
Thus
she pointed out to Constantine Fausta's own ambition, and
passionate, even hysterical nature, and assured him that she had
slandered Crispus. Perhaps she herself had striven to dethrone the
emperor with the help of her stepson, and to rule herself. Thus now,
besides remorse, fear for her own honor and safety haunted the
suspicious mind of the monarch. But he still hesitated to consider
his wife an impostor without further proof.
Until
one day Fausta was caught in the arms of a contemptible messenger of
the emperor. 60) This convincing example of her lecherous nature
brought the deceived woman to a decision. He sentenced her, the
mother of his three remaining sons, and once the savior of his own
life, to death. He ordered his eunuchs to immerse her in a boiling
bath, where she died of suffocation. 61)
This
was done in the deepest secrecy, in the quietest rooms of the palace
at Rome, probably in the summer of the same year in which he had
seen Crispus had murdered. 62)
But
this new atrocity, the death of Fausta, whom he had sacrificed as a
disguised pagan to atone for the shadow of Crispus, did not still
the remorse that continued to torture him as the murderer of his own
son. There was nothing left for him but to stifle the torment of his
evil conscience in a frenzy of new, restless deeds. So he had to
leave Rome, leave the old palace of Nero, where the walls whispered
to him of his own equally cruel deeds, leave and return to the East.
THE
LAST YEARS OF CONSTANTINE'S REIGN.
Constantine,
after all his travelling and wandering, needed a new and permanent
capital. The Asian splendour of his court could not take root in
Rome. The western half of the empire was also not nearly as valuable
as the eastern one: so he had to reside there, just like Diocletian.
But
not in Nicomedia, the seat of the former persecutor of Christians,
where everything, just like in Rome, was still too reminiscent of
paganism.
So
he decided to first found a city between Alexandria Troas and the
old Ilion, on the Aegean Sea 63). According to an old oracle, the
Romans, who had come from here after the fall of Troy, would return
here one day. The Christian court party was against this pagan
tradition, but Constantine himself went there and started building
walls, which could still be seen from the sea in the fifth century
63). At night, however, he beheld, as he often did, the God of the
Christians, who commanded him to abandon this building and choose
another place 64).
He
obeyed, and now chose Byzantium, which had proved to him a strong,
strategic position in the last war with Licinius.
It
lay on a headland between the Propontis (Sea of Marmara)
and the Keras (or Golden Horn), a narrow inlet in the form of a
river mouth, so that it was easy to defend from the land side. It
was also impregnable from the sea side, since the two natural access
channels to the Propontis, namely the Hellespont and the Bosporus,
could be closed to warships. From this unassailable stronghold he
could henceforth better guard the Balkans against Gothic and
Sarmatian barbarians in the North, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt
against the Persians on the eastern border.
Moreover,
it was favourably situated for the food supply, since all the grain
from the Black Sea was shipped along it, while Egypt was not far
away. Also by their mild climate the banks of the Bosphorus,
luxuriantly planted with vines and olive groves, attracted the
emperor to a permanent residence.
Finally,
there was another superstitious reason: the terrain included seven
hills, just like that of Rome.
History
has recognized the choice of this new capital as ingenious. For more
than a thousand years Constantinople would successfully defy the
attacks of the Goths, Arabs and Bulgarians, even a century of close
encirclement by the Turks; and after that the latter, once master of
this stronghold, would no longer be driven out of Europe.
In
the spring of 328 Constantine began to execute this plan. 66)
West
of the old Byzantium, on the second hill, he laid out a spacious,
round market place as the center of the new city, the later Forum
Constantini. Around this a colonnade rose, which was interrupted at
the ends of the square by two stately marble 65) arches opposite
each other. The eastern arch was built on the site of an earlier
city gate, which had of course been demolished for this purpose.
Soon, however, the marble quarries of the neighbouring countries and
the art of the available sculptors and architects could not provide
him with enough material to adorn his city. Therefore he proceeded
to plunder the temples and public squares of almost all the cities
67).
From
far and wide bronze and marble statues of gods were dragged in, not
as the Christian Eusebius believed 68), out of hatred for the old
paganism, but out of admiration for the high art that it had once
produced. In the middle of the forum, which received his name, he
placed, on a steep column of purple stone, a huge statue of Apollo,
with a halo around its head, which he had had stolen from Phrygia
69). The face of this he had changed, with vandalic bad taste, into
his own broad, thick-necked head, so that later it was taken for a
statue of Constantine 70).
At
the foot of this statue he placed the Palladium or wooden statue of
Pallas, which he had secretly stolen from Rome, in order to make the
new city impregnable, as he thought.
On
the north and south sides of this square, sideways from the
colonnades, that is, against the slopes of this hill, he built two
so-called temples, to which one could ascend from the surrounding
city by a staircase. In one of these he placed a statue of Rhea
Kubele, the mother of the gods, stolen from the mountain Dindumos
near Kuzikos, where the Argonauts were said to have once erected it.
71) This stolen statue he deliberately spoiled, to the great
annoyance of the pagans, 71) by removing the two lions on either
side, which she held, and also by changing the position of her hands
so that they were folded together in prayer. Thus he Christianized
the whole figure into a woman praying for the salvation of the city
she surveyed, and possibly into an image of the "god-bearing"
Mary (Maria Theotokos). In the other so-called temple he placed the
image of the goddess of fortune of Rome, called Tuche or Fortuna.
This was not so much a sly concession to his new, pagan fellow
citizens as a sign of his own indestructible superstition. He also
built, at the foot of the first hill, a large complex of palaces,
almost as large as those in Rome. It lay east of the Forum
Constantine, and was connected to it by a wide imperial avenue (Via
Regia) with two large colonnades, decorated everywhere with statues
and marble works.
Just
in front of the palace, as the starting point of the Via Regia,
stretched a wide square, the Augustaeum, so called after his mother,
the Augusta Helena, whose statue here adorned a purple pedestal in
the middle. 69) Next to the large, copper gate of the imperial
residence (Chalke) a senate building was built, which equaled the
Curia in Rome.
A
secret spiral staircase led from the palace to the imperial tribune
of the adjacent racecourse. This circus or Hippodrome, possibly
built for him, he completed in all its splendor. For this purpose a
so-called temple of Castor and Pollux was erected to the side of one
of the colonnades as decoration. Elsewhere in this racecourse he
placed, on a golden tripod, a statue of Apollo, both taken from the
Delphic temple 71). Right at the entrance, there had already been a
public bathhouse, dedicated to Zeuxippos (nickname of Zeus), but now
Constantine had it completed and embellished with columns and bronze
statues and mosaic work of multi-coloured marble.
Once
the main buildings were there, he had magnificent villas built,
spread throughout the building site, and invited many senatorial
families from Rome and decurions from the province to move there
72). Also countless lesser citizens from the nearby cities of Asia
Minor and Greece moved in large numbers, attracted by the many
privileges that the new imperial city would receive. The whole was
enclosed by a long, high wall on the west, which was fifteen stadia
or three kilometres longer than the former city wall of old
Byzantium 73).
Finally,
in 330, the construction of New Rome (Nova Roma), as the emperor
called it, or Constantine's City (Konstantinou polis), as his
flatterers renamed it, was completed. On 9 May of this year the
inauguration or birth festival was celebrated 74).
The
day began with trotting races in the hippodrome. While the emperor
and people were assembled there, a gilded wooden column, on which
was carved the image of Constantine, holding the Tuche of the city,
was carried in solemn procession amidst detachments of soldiers in
gala uniforms, all carrying long white wax candles, burning dully in
the bright day. Before the imperial tribune they stopped, and here
the founder solemnly pronounced the secret name of the city,
personified in the image of the Goddess of Fortune, and called her
Authousa, the Flourishing 74).
It
was therefore an "unbloody" consecration festival, 74)
i.e. without sacrificial animals, and even somewhat Christian in
disguise, but nevertheless still pagan in essence and nature.
And
Constantine commanded that this birth festival "according to
his own divine example" should be repeated every year, until
the distant future. And when then the image of Constantine and Tuche
was carried in procession into the circus, to the seat of the prince
who then reigned, then he had to stand up and kiss the image of the
founder and the city with reverence.
Thus
from then on, except for a few more journeys in the vicinity, he
continued to live here with his entire court. The city of
Constantinople was taken from the presidium of Europe (the banks of
the Bosporus), and was given its own praefectus praetorio and other
high officials, just like Rome. 74)
It
also received the same privileges, for example free distributions of
bread, since May 18, 332. 75) The grain of the various provinces,
first given to Rome (annona), was henceforth divided equally between
both cities, so that Rome henceforth received the grain of Africa
and Sicily, Constantinople of Egypt, Pontus and other Eastern
countries.
In
addition to this privilege was the financial support that
impecunious converts could receive from churches and government.
All
this attracted even more residents than before to the city.
Especially the poor and beggars crowded within its gates, attracted
by the "generosity and compassion of its citizens," as
Sozomenus (II, 3) claims. But he adds: "so much did it attract
everyone to Christianity that most of the Jews, and almost all the
pagans who came to live there, were finally won over to this faith."
In other words: they were put under some pressure by charity, even
by coercion, because pagan temples were not tolerated here. Thus
Constantinople received the outward stamp of a Christian city,
"never defiled by idols or altars or pagan sacrifices,"
except for the temple of Tuche.
Yet
there remained a tremendous difference between rich and poor.
Between the luxurious senatorial castles, the hovels of the urban
proletariat were crammed together. For the latter there was soon no
more room on the terrain within the city wall, so that one pole
houses had to be built in the sea. Also, Constantine's state palaces
turned out to have been so hastily thrown together that some of them
sank into ruins within a century 76).
Of
course, the foundation of this world city and the emperor's
never-ending building passion required millions of money. In
addition, there was the maintenance of his court and all its
expensive splendor, and the unheard-of waste with which he
squandered the state's resources on unworthy favorites. As Nicomedia
had been in the past — under Diocletian — so now
Constantinople became the great leech of the juices and strengths of
the provinces: their tribute of money and natural rights. Thus the
foundation of this city, although a sign of the short-term revival
of the Roman state, also became one of the causes of its approaching
downfall.
But
danger also threatened from outside, although for the time being it
was still small.
In
the latter part of his life, the emperor conducted an extremely
imprudent policy towards the northern barbarians 77).
Diocletian
had wisely stationed the legions as guards in the border regions,
but Constantine moved them to the cities.
The
motives for this are clear. The city populations, especially those
of Rome, Milan, Alexandria and Antioch, were always inclined to
revolt because of the high taxes, and had to be kept strictly under
control. Furthermore, the former soldier emperor and world conqueror
wanted to maintain his personal favour with the troops by granting
them rest and luxury after long years of war and deprivation.
Moreover, thousands of barbarians had already been taken into the
army, and these could not be won over better for the
Roman-Hellenistic culture and morals than by stationing them in the
main centres of the empire.
Yet
this remained a mistake, because in doing so he delivered the cities
to the wantonness and debauchery of the soldiers, who were softened
by visits to the theatre and other recreation, while he deprived the
border of guards. Thus he opened the gate for the barbarians in the
North to invade the Roman Empire, which did not happen often under
him, but later repeatedly 77).
He
also did not fight them himself at the end of his reign, as he had
done at the beginning. However, after a victory 79) of his generals
over the Goths (327), he had a stone bridge built over the Danube in
328, in case a new punitive expedition against the Goths became
necessary. But when one of their tribes, the Taifali 78), with 500
horsemen invaded Thrace at the end of 331, and plundered right up to
the outer moat of his capital, the emperor did not go to meet them,
but even crossed over to Asia Minor, 80) which looked very much like
a flight. The further war — he entrusted to his
fifteen-year-old, eldest son Constantinus, who drove out the enemies
and defeated them in the territory of the Sarmatians (January 332).
This defeat of the Germans greatly weakened their prestige among the
Sarmatian (Slavic) tribes, among whom they, less numerous, lived as
a dominant warrior caste. Two years later (334) the oppressed rose
up and drove one of the Gothic tribes, the Limigantes (later called
Argaragantes) into Roman territory 81). A prelude to the approaching
migration of the people.
In
order to strengthen his dynasty, the emperor, immediately after his
conquest of the entire empire, had called his brothers and other
relatives to the court and invested them with the highest offices.
Thus, of his half-brothers, he appointed the youngest, Dalmatius,
the father of Dalmatius and Hanniballianus, as censor, and the
eldest, Julius Constantius (father of Gallus and Julianus) as
praefectus praetorio of the East 82) (end of 324). The latter
remained so until the end of 329, and was then replaced by a new
favourite, Flavius Ablabius, who had not been
praefectus praetorio of Italy for a year before that time. This
Ablabius was, according to his gentile name Flavius, a presumably
distant relative of the emperor, which is also proven by the address
"parens carissime", with which the emperor addresses him
in one of the laws 83). This influential favourite, fiercely
Christian, stiffened the emperor in his clerical, anti-pagan policy,
and was partly guilty of the judicial murder of Sopator, a pagan
sophist, who had been temporarily admitted to the palace 84) (330).
Yet, because of his tremendous influence on Constantine, he had many
envious people at court, where he often stayed, so that he did not
survive Constantine's death for long. In the meantime, however, the
emperor had also appointed his third surviving son, Constans, as
caesar at the end of 333 85), after Constantinus II had already
become caesar in 317, and Constantius in 324.
Dalmatius
Jr. was soon to be appointed caesar.
In
the year 333, a violent plague 85) raged in Syria and Cilicia and
probably also on the island of Kupros (Cyprus), so that there were
not enough people left to bring in the harvest. Nevertheless, for
the food of the imperial city, as much grain as other years, and the
little grain was stolen away here. As a result, a great famine 85)
and high prices arose: the price of a bushel of grain rose to 400
pieces of silver. 86) Then riots broke out everywhere in the
villages of Syria. The inhabitants even attacked many grain
warehouses and plundered them. The soldiers soon restored order, but
there was no improvement in the lot of the peasants. Only the
Christians in the cities were well off: for example, the emperor
gave the church of Antioch 36,000 bushels of grain to distribute
among its poor and clergy 86). Naturally, this increased the
discontent among the pagans, to whom most of the countrymen
belonged, — especially since Constantine had shortly before
destroyed many of their temples or robbed them of their images
(331).
Moreover,
in the same year a great earthquake ravaged neighboring Cyprus,
where the city of Salamis collapsed into rubble and was almost
completely destroyed 86). All these disasters were attributed to the
wrath of the gods over the attacks of their enemy Constantine.
A
certain Kalokairos, overseer of the imperial camel herd on Cupros,
and probably a native of this island, now took advantage of this
displeasure to stir up a revolt here and proclaim himself emperor.
But Dalmatius Jr. soon landed on the island in the name of the
emperor with a small army, captured the presumptuous usurper, and
had him burned alive in the market place at Tarsus as a criminal
(334) 87).
As
a reward for this, Dalmatius Jr., who had previously been consul
(333), was appointed Caesar the following year, 88) (335) and
temporarily seconded to Mesopotamia as a general, because of a
threatened war with Persia 89).
At
the same time his brother Hanniballianus received the rank of rex or
nobilissimus of Cappadocia 89) and Pontus, 88) and was sent to the
capital Caesarea of the first province (335).
This
was also accompanied by a division of the remaining empire territory
among the three sons of Constantine. Constantine II, the eldest,
received Britain, Gaul and Spain, Constans the youngest, Italy and
Africa and probably also Illyricum (the Balkans except Thrace),
while Constantius received the entire East, except the possession of
Dalmatius. It is not certain whether Dalmatius received Thrace or
Mesopotamia, but in any case he was Caesar and made equal to the
sons of Constantine. On the other hand, Hanniballianus became a
future vassal of Constantius. Constantine remained supreme emperor
and kept a close eye on his sons and nephews by means of the
praefecti praetorio which he gave them as advisers, but it proves
that he felt his end approaching. Two years later, when the Persian
king had just renounced his friendship and he was preparing a war
against this empire, he died at Ancyro, a suburb of Nicomedia, after
having been baptized an Arian Christian shortly before 90). His body
was carried to Constantinople, and from all sides his sons, nephews
and brothers rushed to it. Then, encouraged by Constantius, the
middle son, a riot arose among the soldiers, in which, among others,
the hated praefectus praetorio of the East, Ablabius, 91) and all of
Constantine's brothers and nephews were murdered, except the two
sons of Constantius, Gallus and Julianus. The first was spared
because he was seriously ill, the second, the later pagan emperor,
because of his youth 90).
Later
this bloodbath was motivated by the claim that it happened at the
behest of the deceased. Constantine himself, in a will that he gave
to Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia before his death, is said to have
expressed the fear that his brothers had poisoned him, and therefore
called upon his sons to avenge his death 92).
However
this may be, this explains the anger of the soldiers against the
supposed murderers of their beloved emperor. Yet this claim was
possibly only a fabrication by Constantius, to incite them.
This
was how the Christians behaved immediately after the death of the
great Constantine. The pagan senate, however, honored this moment
more worthily by granting the renouncer of their faith an apotheosis
93).
THE
ECONOMIC STATE OF THE EMPIRE. Constantine, a lavish and wasteful
man, was in constant need of money. That is why his economic policy
was limited to one point: the strict, carefully controlled
collection of taxes. The interests of himself and his officials came
before the prosperity of his subjects. In addition to taxes and
tributes, the imperial treasury had other irregular incomes through
the high fines imposed for violations of many laws. The word
"fiscus" therefore recurs in almost all his edicts.
But
what was the situation like for Constantine, and how did it change?
Let
us exclude a few irregular taxes (such as wealth and release taxes)
to which the citizens of the city of Rome had also traditionally
been subject, while only the others, that is, Italians and
provincials, were subject to taxation.
This
consisted, before Diocletian's reign, of the following tributes:
I.
An annual corn delivery, imposed on all landowners for the annual
bread supply of the capital (annona urbis), which, according to the
purpose for which it served, was also called annona.
II.
An extra tax in times of scarcity and want, only introduced by
special order of the emperor, and therefore called indictio.
III.
Irregular tributes and requisitions in every province where soldiers
were stationed, and which concerned all kinds of naturals, e.g.
bread, meat, wine, oil, besides beasts of burden and material for
the army.
The
first tax, the annona, was already made by Diocletian from a land
tax, also into a poll tax (capitum), i.e., the new tribute was not
only dependent on the land ownership, but also on the number of
inhabitants, people and cattle. However, since the small landed
estates and the farms of the tenants were relatively more densely
populated than the large estates, the small farmers were hit hardest
by this regulation.
The
second tax, the indictio, soon became a regular tribute, which was
levied every 5 years under Diocletian.
All
these tributes, annonae and indictions, weighed unbearably heavily
on the provincials, and because of the constant repetition they
hardly gave them any chance to take a breather.
Moreover,
the tax collectors (susceptores) and officials took much stricter
action against tax refusers (exactores) against poorer citizens than
against rich and important ones. The former were flogged and
tortured even when they owned nothing; the latter, who could have
themselves defended by slaves in case of default, were often not
dared to do so. As a result, they had the most arrears in debt to
the treasury, and not the poorer ones. But Constantine, who largely
adopted this oppressive fiscal system of Diocletian, made it even
more onerous. 95) From 313 onwards he held the indictions for a
period of 15 years instead of every five, but this tax was now of
course three times as high, which again helped the emperor to
enormous sums of cash. And not yet satisfied with this, he
introduced an old, obsolete tax of Septimius Severus 94) on all
traders in his empire (314).
This
so-called "collatio lustralis" or five-yearly contribution
was a tribute in gold and silver, hence called chrusarguron by the
Greeks. 96) It had to be paid at all accessions and lustra (or
five-yearly jubilees) of both the August and the later Caesars. Thus
he repeated himself in 315, 317 320, 322, 324, 325, 327, 329, 330
etc., so on average every two years.
He
levied this tax, as the name already expresses, mainly to be able to
pay for the expensive celebrations at all those jubilees, and also
the five annual gifts to the army, without worrying about the
financial capacity of his subjects. But he thereby destroyed trade
and industry, the food root of the prosperity of his cities, just as
his predecessor had already ruined the farming business, the
prosperity of the countryside, by annonae and indictions.
For
all tradesmen, from the richest wholesalers to the poorest
craftsmen, peddlers and carters, were subject to this collatio
lustralis. Yes, even the unfortunate sluts who had to offer their
bodies for sale were not spared, but had to give up some of their
humiliating profit to the emperor 97).
Whenever
a year approached in which the tribute had to be paid, sighs and
lamentations were heard everywhere in the cities. Those who could
not pay because of their great poverty were flogged and tormented
with the most cruel tortures. Mothers were forced to sell their
sons, fathers to prostitute their daughters, in order to find gold
and silver for the ruthless tax collectors 97). Even the rich were
now forced much more severely than before. Their slaves and
household goods were confiscated, and if they had not paid off their
debt within two months, their property was sold for the benefit of
the treasury 98).
And
to all these direct taxes there were also the indirect ones, which
mainly affected the notables, that is, both the perfectissimi or
members of the senatorial nobility and the decurions or members of
the aldermen of the provincial cities, and the regent nobility that
arose from them. These had been plagued from time immemorial with
munera or expensive offices, for example with the office of praetor
or quaestor, an honour that cost them enormous sums.
Since
the perfectissimi were too few in number, and many of them belonged
to the imperial officials or favourites and therefore enjoyed
exemption from munera, this duty fell mainly on the decurions.
In
order not to ruin themselves or their families, those doomed to this
sought to escape the decurionate by all kinds of means. For example,
they married their slaves, to be expelled from their position, they
joined the Christian clergy, moved to less highly regarded cities or
to the countryside. But the cunning legislation of Constantine
thwarted all these attempts. Moving to another city gave a decurion
double duty as munera, both in the place where he came from and in
his new place of residence.
Marrying
slaves was made strictly punishable, the children born from this
were considered illegitimate and even for that reason were
persecuted and abused in the cruelest way. Becoming a priest was
only permitted to non-decurions, that is, to the poor. All these
means of escape therefore did not release anyone from the
decuroniate.
Even
this was made, by the emperor's order, a hereditary position, and
therefore the decurions were permanently taxable. 99)
This
clarifies for us the nickname latro or highwayman that Constantine
received in his middle period. But the foundation of Constantinople
increased the tax burden still more, and was accompanied at the same
time by such a tremendous waste that he was then called "pupillus"
(immature), or "ripe for guardianship" 100).
And
since Constantine's successors did not lighten his heavy tax burden
(except, very briefly, the pagan Julian), this cruel system of
extortion completely exhausted the strength of the people. The state
was henceforth cursed with its fiscal tyranny, and this became one
of the causes of its later downfall.
Let
us now follow the emperor's policy towards the various social
professions.
Two
of these, the corn shippers and the bakers, had already been charged
with appropriate munera from ancient times, for the benefit of the
treasury. The former had to transport the corn tributes or annonae
in their ships free of charge to Rome, and later to the new capital
101). The bakers had to bake this imperial grain in their ovens free
of charge for the bread supply of the court, army and capitals.
For
a long time these professions had been united into guilds and
because of their free services to the state, exempted from all other
munera, a privilege that was repeatedly perpetuated (among others 18
September 326) 102).
But
now Constantine made it virtually impossible for both the corn
skippers and the bakers to desert their professions by declaring
them, like the decurion position, hereditary 103).
Thus
in 314, 19 March, he orders that corn skippers who were originally
bakers (pistores or levamentarii) 104) should nevertheless also
become members of their parents' profession.
A
law from the following year 105) also explicitly declares that one
can only belong to the bakers' guild by right of inheritance. If one
wants to be released from this guild, one must refuse the entire
inheritance of one's parents with this right of inheritance, and
give it to a blood relative or to the guild. Of course, most will
have thought twice before buying their way out of this guild in this
way.
The
corn shippers also had to remain this from father to son, and if one
of them possibly became a clergyman and had thus cunningly obtained
freedom from munera, he was nevertheless not released from the guild
of the naricularii (corn shippers) 106). However, there was one way
left for them to get out of this, namely by selling their ships and
other possessions to others. The emperor granted them this, but on
condition that the new owners were then forced to submit to the
obligations of the shippers' guild 107) (28 October 326).
As
long as there were still two princes ruling over the Roman Empire,
Licinius competed with Constantine in the East to maintain the very
useful profession of corn shipper. Thus he had forced members of the
senatorial class to equip ships for the transport of grain, and thus
lowered them to the rank of corn shippers. But this coercion did not
seem tactical enough to Constantine, and when he had conquered the
Eastern Empire and destroyed the laws of the tyrant, he left it to
the Senate to determine which persons were most worthy of returning
to their birthplace (15 July 325) 108).
A
general aim therefore dominated Constantine in his regulation of
social ranks: to let everyone remain in the position of his parents.
Senators
were not allowed to descend in rank. Decurions were made unable to
rise to an imperial office, for example the presidency, unless they
had first gone through all the municipal ranks in their hometown in
succession 109).
And
not only the senators, the decurions, the corn shippers and bakers
were made hereditary professions, but also, for example, mint
masters 110). This one was eternally forbidden to become
perfectissimus or judex 110).
Thus
under Constantine we get the beginning rigidity of the whole society
in hereditary castes, which so typifies the Middle Ages.
All
these laws and institutions were exclusively for the better fiscal
overview.
Constantine,
who was more military than legal, has a lot to say about the further
economic life promulgated fewer laws than, for example, Diocletian,
the regulator of maximum prices and the correct observance of
purchase contracts.
He
was therefore little interested in the ordinary trades. Only one
type of these he strongly encouraged, with exceptional privileges,
namely all intellectual and artistic enterprises.
As
early as 321 or 324 111) he declared, possibly through the efforts
of the clerics who often practiced these subjects as well, all
physicians, grammarians, rhetoricians and teachers of letters free
from munera.
This
was not new, because he thereby restored an old law of Antonius
Pius, 112) which Diocletian 112) had also maintained, but had
nevertheless been forgotten again in the time of persecutions and
dynastic wars. Nevertheless, by this decision he formed a favourable
contrast with Licinius, the hater of the intellect, and could
therefore even pass for a protector of civilisation. In 333, besides
this privilege, he also granted the physicians and men of letters
exemption from military service 113).
Also
in connection with the many basilicas that he had built everywhere,
he also strongly encouraged the building trade. Now there was a
great shortage of architects. Therefore he ordered Felix, the
proconsul of Africa, to encourage all those who at the age of
twenty-two refuse to devote themselves to the "artes liberales"
by granting them munera exemption and extra allowances, also for
their parents, to this profession (334) 114).
In
337 he extended this munera exemption to all architects, physicians,
veterinarians, painters, sculptors, marble workers, woodworkers,
goldsmiths, silversmiths, coppersmiths and ironsmiths, plumbers,
glassblowers, ivory workers, potters and countless other
professions. 115)
He
grants them this privilege "so that they may rest, learn their
art as they wish and become more proficient in it and teach it to
their sons". So here too the effort to make these professions
hereditary.
But
since they were not eligible for public state services, or munera,
because of their poverty, this privilege meant very little,
especially since they remained subject to direct taxation: the
collatio lustralis.
We
therefore notice nothing of Christian influences that would lead to
milder treatment in Constantine's economic policy.
Nor
is this the case with his attitude towards the lowest classes of the
population, the slaves and freedmen. There was no question of a
softening of slavery, as is often claimed, at most of sporadic whims
of princely leniency towards that unfortunate caste.
Thus,
in one of his laws, presumably under spiritual influence, he praised
the freeing of slaves, especially on Sundays, as a pleasing work.
(See chapter CHRISTIAN EMPEROR AND PAGANISM). But in another edict
he declares that a freedman who insults his patron out of
ingratitude, together with all his descendants, will be reduced to
the slave status 116).
Elsewhere
he forbids, under specious slogans, that in the case of inheritances
a family of slaves or coloni be divided among different heirs 117).
"For who can separate children from parents, sisters from
brothers, parents from husbands!"
Yet
this was more out of considerations of utility, because he wanted to
tie the coloni to the fields where they worked.
That
is why he took much stricter action than Diocletian before him
against fugitive slaves and coloni. Those who were caught fleeing to
the barbarian country had their leg amputated, or they were killed
or otherwise punished 118). However, whoever received a fugitive
slave or colonus in his house or on his land without the knowledge
of his master, had to return him to his master with another serf or
with 20 solidi 119). However, if he received him for the second or
third time, he had to restitute 2 or 3 others or the prescribed
values in addition to the slave.
This
binding of the serfs to their fields, a commandment so typical for
the later Middle Ages, was again done for fiscal reasons. Because in
this way the slave ownership remained virtually stable on each
estate, and the official lists of these did not have to be changed
every time.
That
is why he also determined that coloni could only be sold within the
province where they lived (27 February 328) 119).
He
also took action against the abuse of many slave owners who, in
order to avoid the capitatio (or poll tax), outsourced their slaves
to foreigners as so-called free wage laborers. The slaves in
question could, if they lied about being free, be forced to confess
on the rack, and of course they fell into the treasury 120). In
general, the number of slaves in Constantine was not reduced,
because many poor people, because they were unable to pay their
taxes otherwise, had to sell their children as serfs. This is
confirmed not only by Zosimus 121) but also by a law of the emperor
himself, 122) which in this case allows the unfortunate parents to
buy back their children, if they had more money again. That
possibility will have occurred rarely.
The
emperor issued strict laws against the mixing of classes. This was,
as we have seen, general precisely in the time of the soldier
emperors, so that Constantine himself was born of an innkeeper's
daughter. First he now forbade decurions and perfectissimi to marry
slaves or slave girls "because slaves are born from this"
123). Then he extended this prohibition to the above-mentioned
dignitaries also having intercourse with all persons of low rank,
such as freedmen, actresses, landladies, innkeeper's daughters,
procurers' daughters, merchants' wives, etc. 124).
If
they declared the resulting natural children to be legitimate, they
were branded and lost their Roman citizenship. Inheritances to these
natural children were invalid and had to be returned to legitimate
descendants. But he persecuted the innocent bastards most cruelly.
These became part of the treasury and were sentenced to forced
labor.
Thus
we see that Constantine sacrificed the prosperity of his empire and
the free development of society entirely to his fiscal interests.
CHRISTIAN
EMPEROR AND PAGANISM.
As
we saw in Chapter IV [THE RISE OF CONSTANTINE], superstition and
politics had led Constantine to identify Christ with the hitherto
revered Sun-god (Mithras), and thus to unite both, Christians and
Mithras-worshippers, under his labarum (312).
Now
both religions had much in common. The worship of Mithras, too,
(performed in subterranean caves or Mithrae) had only one god, and
upheld a much stricter morality than the rest of paganism. But when
the emperor had once admitted Christian bishops into his circle (as
early as 312), who informed him of the essence of their doctrine,
their influence gradually displaced that of the Mithras priests.
From
312 onwards he became increasingly Christian, but at the same time
he continued to spare Mithraism, the religion of the army; yes,
possibly he professed both religions at the same time for a time.
This is evident, besides from the choice of the labarum, from a
second, masterly attempt at mediation between Christians and Sun
servants, namely the introduction of Sunday 125) (5 March 321).
Instead of many pagan holidays, 52 official days of rest were now
instituted. This day, although immediately intended as a Christian
Sabbath, he does not yet call it, like later emperors, "day of
the lord" (dies dominicus), but dies Solis, the day of the Sun.
In this way he could give both Christ and Mithras, the god of peace
and the god of the army, each his own, and he lived in friendship
with all gods and subjects. As an example of the unctuous, almost
benevolent tone of Constantine's religious edicts I quote this
edict:
"All
judges and townspeople and all services and businesses must rest on
the venerable day of the Sun. Those who are placed in the fields
may, however, tend the agriculture, since it often happens that on
no other day can the grain be entrusted to the furrow, the vine to
the ditch more conveniently, so that the favorable opportunity
granted by heavenly providence is not lost" 125).
But
as a correction to this law it was soon added (3 July 321) that it
was pleasing to the emperor to fulfill votive vows on that day, or
to free slaves.
So
the day of rest was immediately intended for Christian and
Mitharistic worship 126).
However,
from the beginning he had a completely different attitude towards
the other polytheistic pagan religions, such as the worship of
Jupiter and the other Olympian gods, than he did towards the
monotheistic worship of Mithras. With the term "pagans" we
now mean, speaking of Constantine, for the sake of brevity: the
great mass of polytheists.
He
gradually regarded these in the same way as his new co-religionists
did.
Now
the first Christians from ancient Judaism had imbibed the same
intolerance towards dissenters that actually characterizes all
Eastern forms of monotheism (including Mazdaism and Islam). Where
did this come from? The Christians, like the Jews before them, did
not see in the pagan polytheists pitiable sufferers of superstition,
but criminal devil-worshippers. For they themselves, like the
pagans, believed in the existence of demons. The New Testament is
steeped in this superstition: Christ banishes the devils by his
word.
The
Christians now saw in all the pagan gods demons 127) or fallen
angels, thus ministering spirits of Lucifer or Satan.
These
had namely, in human form which they could assume at will, lived for
a time on earth, so that their graves were still shown, like those
of Zeus on Crete 127). After their death, however, these beings had
devilishly seduced the survivors to worship them as gods, while in
truth their souls only continued to exist as evil spirits.
According
to the Christians, their demonic character was first apparent from
their immoral character, and it was certainly easy to enumerate all
the infamies of the Olympian gods.
Moreover,
they could creep into the souls and bodies of people. In the latter
case they only caused material ailments, but if they overpowered the
souls, idolatries and heresies. l28) But from the name of Christ and
the sign of the cross, the devils would flee. Christian priests
therefore also served as exorcists and medicine men, and were said
to be able to cure diseases just like Christ himself.
Of
course, according to them, the persecutions of Christians had also
happened under the inspiration of demons. 129) Only through the
labarum, the Christ monogram, on his banners had their protector
Constantine overcome those enemies of God. No wonder then that this
emperor, the more he came under the influence of the clerics,
learned to detest those polytheists as servants of the devil.
Yet
his initial attitude towards these pagans was one of uncertainty and
political caution. Although he was personally more devoted to the
Christians, as "pontifex maximus" or pagan high priest
(one of the old powers of the emperors) he was not allowed to the
majority of army and people.
Thus
he submitted himself for the time being, when he could not do
otherwise, to all kinds of pagan customs. After his first triumphant
entry into Rome (29 October 312), for example, as pontifex maximus
he offered the obligatory thank offering of the "suove-taurilia",
and as such he is depicted on the triumphal arch, erected for him
soon afterwards (313, 314 or at the latest 315).
But
even then he clearly showed his aversion to these senseless
ceremonies and tried, if possible, to withdraw from them. For
example, he did not celebrate the "ludi saecularii" or the
solemn centenary in honour of the foundation of the city of Rome,
(313, 21 April), which was repeated every 110 years or Etruscan
century 130) and was last shown to the people with grand pomp in 203
by Septimius Severus 131).
As
an excuse for his avoidance of these pagan ceremonies he was offered
an important meeting with Licinius which he had to attend in Milan
at the end of January 313. But by this hasty departure from Rome,
after a stay of barely three months, he not only spared himself the
reproach of idolatry, but also the enormous costs connected with
this public festival. Even after his stay in Milan he did not return
to Rome, but travelled on, first to Illyria, then to Gaul, under the
pretext of a new war against the Franks.
But
an old oracle threatened Rome with ruin if these games of the
century were skipped. In this neglect of old traditions
superstitious pagans of that time and later saw treason against the
fatherland, so that around 430 Zosimus reproached Constantine for
the then disasters of the empire.
But
in the beginning Constantine expressed his hatred of the old,
official religion of Rome only negatively, never openly. In
accordance with the Rescript of Milan, which placed both religions
on an equal footing, he pursued an apparently impartial,
conciliatory policy, and for the time being he took care not to turn
the polytheistic majority in this western empire against him by
overly hostile laws.
Nevertheless,
he preferred the Christian doctrine, and he immediately attempted to
prevent pagan propaganda. In two successive laws of 319-132) he
forbade haruspices or diviners, and soon other pagan priests as
well, to visit private houses, on pain of burning. They could, he
says, "serve their superstition according to their own rite
within public temples."
"Go
to your sanctuaries," he calls to them, "we do not prevent
you, in the open light, from maintaining a long-expired custom."
In
this he shows a certain tolerance, but also a fear barely concealed
by mockery. Yet Constantine continued to attach superstitious trust
to those same haruspices or diviners, who precisely because they
served "devilish" spirits, learned the future from them.
This became apparent, for example, when the Colosseum or
amphitheatre of the Flavians, from whom he and his family claimed to
be descended, was struck by lightning in Rome. Constantine, who was
staying in Illyria (Sardica) at the time, saw this as a dangerous
omen, and immediately had the haruspices consulted. He also
determined in an edict of 17 December 320 or 321 133), that
henceforth these diviners had to be consulted carefully if the
palace or other public buildings in Rome were touched by the flames
of heaven, but that they (the diviners) had to refrain from offering
sacrifices in private houses. This latter was a repetition of an
earlier law.
Constantine
was by no means alone in this superstition of pagan divination and
oracles. He shared it with most of his, even Christian,
contemporaries, for example with Lactantius. According to this
apologist, the Sibylline books would have predicted not only the
coming of Christ, 134) but even of Nero, 135) the forerunner of the
"antichrist". Moreover, these Sibyls 136) like Apollo of
Colophon 137) would have already proclaimed monotheism in one of his
oracles, by virtue of their prophetic gift. However, the Christians
found it difficult to explain how it was that the demons knew the
future, yes, God's most secret decrees. They saved themselves from
this by claiming that the devils themselves, as fallen angels, had a
certain divine element in them, and therefore knew — but only
partially — what would happen 138).
Related
to his laws against pagan priests, but much stricter in tone, is his
edict against sorcery (321 or 324, 23 May) 139). All practitioners
of the black art, who either seduce chaste souls to lust by it, or
conspire against the welfare of mankind, or raise rain clouds, hail
or thunderstorms to destroy the harvest in the fields, are
threatened with severe punishment. This law also explains
Constantine's later behavior against the magician and weather-maker
Sopater 140). Here too he shows himself to be the first type of a
medieval man, because this law, once ingrained as a custom, gave
rise to the later, so horrible witch trials.
Since
pagan priests often also acted as miracle workers, this law also
affected them.
Nevertheless,
he remained quite tolerant towards the polytheists at first, until
around 323, because of his increasingly worse discord with the pagan
Licinius, he changed his policy. This became apparent at the end of
this year, when in the part of his colleague's empire, in honor of
his 15th anniversary, Catholics and even their priests, as of old,
were forced to sacrifice to the emperor. Constantine now strictly
forbade this, on pain of public flogging, and thus immediately threw
himself into the role of protector of Christians also in the part of
his rival's empire. At this time he clearly changed his attitude
towards the polytheists: he became openly hostile to them 141).
After
Constantine's victory over Licinius, as well as after Maxentius'
fall, all his laws and decrees were declared invalid. First of all,
the emperor naturally annulled his persecutory measures against the
Christians 142) (324, 16 December). This was done by an edict to all
the inhabitants of the Eastern provinces, including Palestine; which
had suffered the most severely. The main provisions of this were:
(see Euseb. Vit. Const. II, 24-42):
a)
The banished Christians were recalled.
b)
Those who had been deprived of their property for religious reasons
were given it back.
c)
Clergy who were deliberately forced to munera were exempted from
this.
d)
Those who had been sentenced to forced labor in the mines or to
slavery, or to shameful women's labor (spinning and weaving) were
released from this.
e)
Those who had been expelled from the army because of their faith
were allowed to return to the same rank they had previously held,
or, if desired, to be honorably discharged.
f)
The property of those who had been killed because of their faith
went to their blood relatives, or, if they were no longer alive, to
the Church.
g)
However, if the tax authorities had given or sold these confiscated
goods to private individuals, they had to be returned to the former,
lawful owners. The later owners received no compensation for this,
but were allowed to keep everything they had enjoyed through
usufruct from these possessions, if they, in a humble petition to
the emperor, begged his forgiveness for their "greed".
This provision also and above all concerned the secularized property
of the Church.
We
can therefore clearly see a great difference between this edict and
the earlier rescript of Milan, which also returned the stolen goods
to the Christians and their Church, but against compensation from
the state to the later owners. In addition, Constantine sent an
edict to all metropolitans (supreme church princes) and governors of
the provinces concerned to rebuild the destroyed churches, so that
the new ones were at least as high or higher than the old ones. The
costs had to be met partly from the imperial treasury, partly by
"voluntary" contributions from the inhabitants, which of
course greatly increased the tax burden. (Euseb. Vit. Const. II,
46).
So
there is a growth of Christian disposition and hatred of the pagans
in the emperor. And no wonder. He now no longer had to take into
account a pagan colleague, and had also moved his residence to the
East, where there were many more Christians than in the West. That
is why he now took much more fierce action against the polytheists
than before.
About
the same time as his privileges to the Christians, he forbade his
still pagan officials to sacrifice to the gods. The text of this law
has not been preserved, and the report about it in Eusebius (Eus.
Vit. Const. II, 44, 47) is often doubted (among others by
Burckhardt), but it must have existed, since in 341 the later
emperor Constantius explicitly appealed to such an edict from his
father. (I quote:)
"Away
with superstition, let the madness of sacrifices be abolished. For
whoever still dares to sacrifice against the law of our divine
prince and father and the command of our benevolence, will be hit by
a fitting and immediate sentence." (Cod. Th. XVI, 10, 2).
Constantine
did not dismiss pagan officials from his service, but he prevented
them from religious exercises. At the same time he forced them in a
gentle, non-violent way to become Christians. Many obeyed, in order
to remain in the emperor's favor and not to waste the opportunities
for their career. And although there remained in his service
die-hard pagans, — for all the offices that became vacant, the
emperor usually appointed Christians, in order to increase the
number of his followers.
At
the same time (October 1, 325) Constantine, certainly at the request
of his new co-religionists, prohibited the bloody gladiatorial
games, which the lower, pagan people, especially in Rome, were still
fond of. This law, however, was often evaded, so that it would last
almost a century before the last sword fight would be stopped by the
self-sacrifice of the monk Telemachus (403).
Thus
we see that Constantine, at the beginning of his openly Christian
policy, that is, from the fall of Licinius to the building of
Constantinople, still acts moderately towards the pagans (323-328).
Even
around 328, as towards the Arians, a certain rapprochement with the
pagans can be detected in him.
According
to the pagan Zosimus 143) (II, 29) remorse for his murder of
Crispus, and soon of Fausta, would be the cause of this, and this is
quite possible.
After
such great misdeeds he felt as if persecuted by furies, and sought a
means to remove that torment. Should he confess everything to the
Christian bishop Hosius? He did not dare to do this, because most
Christians did not yet know anything about his murder of Crispus and
he was afraid of losing his popularity with them if this became
known. Therefore, in his growing superstitious fear of the demons of
vengeance, he first sought refuge with the priests of Mithras, the
sun god, who had the reputation of being able to exorcise and banish
spirits. But they declared themselves powerless to cleanse him of
the guilt of so many murders and perjury.
He
now decided to consult a famous neo-Platonic sophist and magician,
Sopater and pupil of Iamblichus, and summoned him to his new palace
in Constantinople (330).
Soon,
through the power of his dialectic, he gained such favor with the
emperor that he was allowed to sit at the table on his right 144).
This
annoyed the Christian party at court, especially since the pagan
sophists at that time tried to win back the people and the emperor
for Hellenic paganism by means of public debates. They did not
succeed, however, since mixed meetings of pagan and Christian
speakers were soon forbidden. 145) — but the danger of a
sudden pagan disposition of Constantine greatly frightened the
Christian priests.
Moreover,
the imperial favor that Sopater enjoyed aroused the envy of the
courtiers, especially of the Christian praefectus praetorio
Ablabius, who feared to lose his growing influence over Constantine.
According to Eunapius, he managed to make his master believe that
Sopater, the cunning magician, had tied the winds, so that the grain
ships from Egypt could not reach the imperial city. And Constantine
believed that slander, 146) and saw in Sopater one who was working
for the destruction of his empire. And since he had not been able to
free him from his remorse for the murder of Crispus, he decided to
kill the man. In doing so, he immediately gave in to the Christian
priests, who saw in all practice of magic arts a damnable
intercourse with the devil, and he openly showed that he was no
longer pagan-minded 147).
At
the same time as Sopater (or possibly just before the consecration
of Constantinople) another pagan fell as a martyr, namely Kanonaris
148).
This
philosopher repeatedly addressed the people from his orator's chair
on the forum Constantini. He found support especially among the old
Byzantines, in particular among the so-called Gazans, descendants of
colonists from Gaza, whom Septimius Severus had transplanted here a
century ago, after the massacre of Byzantium. These latter, fiercely
pagan, had at that time supported Licinius in his struggle against
Constantine, and had defended Byzantium with tenacious force. Now
they were indeed subjugated to the new emperor and had even had to
hand over their weapons as metal for his statue, but they remained
secretly hostile to him. This now became apparent in the appearance
of Kanonaris.
When,
however, Constantine showed himself on the forum and the
well-disposed among the people cheered him, the pagan orator from
his loftiness called out to him: "Do not be wiser than your
ancestors, you who have destroyed your ancestors." The emperor
then admonished the man to stop his pagan propaganda, to which he
replied loudly: that he wanted to die for his ancestors.
Then
Constantine had him beheaded, to the horror of the still pagan
Gazans.
The
pagans also have their martyrs. After having been bloodily
persecuted at first, the Christians now took revenge, against the
teaching of the gospel, on those who did not believe as they did.
From
then on the emperor took increasingly fierce action against the
polytheists. After the earlier ban on sacrifices (324), he now
(around 330) made divination and asking oracles punishable.
Nevertheless,
many continued to persevere in the old faith. In order to accelerate
the Christianization of his empire, he finally resorted to violence.
Thus,
at the instigation of his former mother-in-law Eutropia, the mother
of Fausta, a Syrian by birth, he decided to destroy an idol altar
near the sacred oak of Mamre in Palestine, 149) At this tree God was
said to have revealed himself to Abraham, 150) and therefore
Constantine now built a basilica there.
Since
then the emperor continued to persecute the pagans. First, shortly
before the dedication of his city, partly out of a desire for
plunder, partly out of a need for money, he had a real campaign held
against all the images of the gods. 151) For this purpose his
trusted courtiers went from city to city, from temple to temple, and
then ordered the mortally frightened priest to fetch his god from
the most holy place.
With
the strangling snare they were dragged closer, these "gods of
the expired fables", to be sent to Constantinople, if they
consisted of bronze or marble, to adorn a palace or circus or senate
building or one of the grandest public squares. 152) If, however,
the outside was covered with gold, then this was knocked off, and
only the ivory or bone supporting skeleton of the once so highly
revered deity. The gold, however, was carefully collected, and
melted down in the imperial melting pot into hard coin, for the
benefit of his treasury. The only remainder of the statue remained,
some worthless junk.
Thus
Constantine achieved a double goal: enrichment and strengthening of
his own power, and discouragement of the pagans. For many of them
began to doubt the value of their religion after this violent
iconoclasm and — according to Eusebius — surrendered to
Christianity.
Because
of this, the emperor finally dared to order in an edict in 331 the
demolition of the most honored or notorious pagan temples 153). He
did this, both because of a lack of building material for new
churches to be founded, and because of fanatical religious zeal.
Now
he, and all Christians, hated above all the worship of Aphrodite,
who was badly reputed — also among the pagans — for the
unbridled fornication committed in her idolatrous houses. Thus,
first of all, the temple of Aphaka 154) of the Syrian Astaroth on
the summit of Lebanon, where emasculated priests committed unnatural
filthiness in honor of the goddess, was thrown to the ground by
soldiers on the emperor's orders. Another such "house of
worship" in Phoenicia, at Heliopolis, where the priestesses
prostituted themselves to all pious visitors, was also destroyed. In
Egypt he strictly forbade the worship of the Nile goddess by
emasculated priests and ordered these eunuchs to show themselves
nowhere.
Since
a wise legislator must guard against certain moral standards, these
actions of the emperor are entirely justifiable, even in the name of
humanity and civilization.
Hatefully
intolerant, however, was the destruction of the temple of Asclepius
at Aigai 155), a kind of ancient Lourdes, where thousands of pious
pagans came to be cured of their ailments. This was done mainly at
the instigation of the Christian priests of the time, who
immediately served as exorcists and medicine men, and wanted to
stifle the competition of their pagan colleagues. At the emperor's
beckoning, the house of the "soul-seducer" was razed to
the ground.
By
these powerful measures against the religion of the Hellenes, he
would have cured many of them, according to Eusebius, of their
delusion and brought them to Christianity. With some that may be
true, but with others the emperor, precisely through his fanaticism,
provoked a reaction, as was shown, for example, by the uprising of
Calocerus in 333 on Cyprus, which was partly favoured, if not
caused, by pagan discontent.
And
against all this destruction of the old he set the construction of
the new faith. He showed this first of all by founding numerous
churches, often on the ruins of destroyed temples, and with stone
and marble columns originating from them. Thus he had one built in
Heliopolis in place of the recently demolished sanctuary of
Aphrodite. Even a bishop was given his seat here, assisted by
priests and deacons. And in order that "many people would come
closer to God's teaching, the emperor also provided rich gifts here
to support the poor, in order to urge on rapid Christianization,"
says the pious Eusebius 156). He therefore established in each such
church a well-stocked fund for converts in order to bribe the
surrounding residents to Christianity with money. It is
understandable that the pagan priests could do nothing against such
means.
But
not only proselytizing zeal, but also veneration of saints and
martyrs guided him in his church building. Shortly before, he had
built a precious church over the grave of the martyr Lucianus, who
died at Drepanum during the persecutions, and enriched the city with
many other beautiful buildings (327). Out of love for his mother,
whom Lucianus particularly revered, and who was probably born in
Drepanum herself, he called it Helenastad or Helenopolis from then
on.
It
was also she who, in her steadily increasing piety, assisted by the
Constantinopolitan presbyter Eustathius 157), advised him to build a
basilica on the grave of Jesus. The emperor therefore gave orders to
Macarius, the bishop of Jerusalem, and to Dracilianus, the vicarius
orientis 158).
They
searched in vain for the grave site, demolished a temple of Venus
that had been erected there later, and so it was finally thought
having dug up the cave of Jesus' resurrection, deep underground.
Soon
a high basilica was built there, decorated on the outside with a
pomp of gold, and with interior walls of multi-coloured marble.
Shortly
after the Synod of Tyre this church was consecrated by Macarius, in
the presence of most of the bishops of the East (17 September 335)
159).
On
hearing this, Constantine's mother, as old as she was, set out on a
journey to undertake a pilgrimage to the holy sepulchre in the last
years of her life.
On
the way she donated large sums of money to the Christian communities
of the cities she passed through, to everyone who personally
approached her, and further to garrisons who were stationed there
160). She also made money and clothing available to the poor and
freed countless prisoners who — possibly because of tax debts
— had to languish in the mines. Thus Constantine attempted, by
some alms from his mother, to reconcile his Eastern subjects
somewhat with his fiscal extortion system. The money that had flowed
to him through the diligence of millions of workers he now
squandered on a handful of lazy beggars and parasites. This journey
was also intended as financial propaganda for Christianity.
When
Helena arrived in Jerusalem she organised a special order of nuns
for the service of the Holy Sepulchre Church, that of the
"Hestiades", apparently after the example of the Roman
Vestalinen 161).
About
the same time her son sent honourable letters to Antonius the
Egyptian hermit 162) so that monasticism was also encouraged by
Constantine and his family.
They
also led their subjects in the veneration of relics. She had
excavations carried out on Golgotha, and according to the legend
163), three crosses actually came to light there. Also found was a
loose plank with the trilingual inscription "I.N.R.I."
engraved on Pilate's command. But it was not known to which of the
crosses this belonged, and therefore also not known which had been
the true cross of Christ.
However,
through the healing power that emanated from it, whereby a sick
woman became healthy, Bishop Macarius discovered the true cross.
This non-historical story proves what a miraculous power the
Christians of that time, in their superstition, attributed to all
relics.
Furthermore,
Helena enriched the city of Jerusalem with many buildings and also
had churches built on the Mount of Olives and in a cave in
Bethlehem, where Jesus was said to have been born.
Then
she died, at the age of eighty, and her remains were transported to
Constantinople and buried with military honors (336).
Shortly
afterwards Constantine built churches in his own city above the
graves of several martyrs, and also in Antioch and Nicomedia. In the
last years before his death we can therefore see in him a steadily
stricter church-mindedness, and at the same time a growing hostility
to paganism. This also appeared from his habit of giving speeches
and sermons both to his court circle and also in public to the
people of Constantinople. Sometimes he spoke immediately to give
hints to his palace companions who had fallen into disgrace; but his
main aim was the propaganda of monotheism against the pagans.
Eusebius has preserved such a speech for us, namely: "Speech to
the assembly of the saints". There is no reason to doubt its
general authenticity, but there is reason to doubt the purity of the
text, which may have been changed and supplemented here and there by
the Greek translator(s), it is nowhere original, but it contains
many reminiscences from the work of Lactantius, both from his
"Divinae Institutiones" 164) and from his "De
mortibus persecutorum." But with a certain eloquence, Christian
dogmas are defended and pagan superstitions refuted.
Thus
Constantine, despite his bloody, anything but Christian life, also
acted as an apologist, albeit as an all too slavish follower of the
church father Lactantius.
The
lasting result of the emperor's championship for Christianity
against the pagans can be summarised as: the secularisation of the
Church.
The
primitive church of the apostles strictly adhered to Jesus' words:
my kingdom is not of this world. Now, however, the Christian
communities had grown from small, pitiful, half-secret burial funds
165) into a huge, widely branched public organisation. Their landed
property, previously consisting of only a few burial grounds, had
expanded in proportion to the increasing wealth of their believers.
They had become a very worldly, social power, and Constantine had
placed them in the service of the state. Their relationship to it
had also changed completely. If she had previously opposed the
deification of princes, she now cooperated in an equally great cult
of the emperor, by venerating him as sole ruler by the grace of God.
Moreover,
her rite, which was so simple at first, had changed completely, had
adapted itself to the ostentation of paganism, with its celestial
ceremonies. Through the veneration of saints the ancient polytheism
of the newly Christianized Greeks and Romans had been revived in
her.
In
many respects, through the efforts of Constantine, the new Catholic
Church had become a hybrid of pompous paganism and the sober
primitive Christianity of the Jewish fishermen and apostles.
CONSTANTINE
AS PRINCE OF THE CHURCH.
Since
his conversion to Christianity (312), the emperor, as pontifex
maximus or pagan high priest, also assumed the highest authority in
ecclesiastical affairs of his new co-religionists. That is precisely
why he called the bishops his "brothers" and himself
"general bishop" of the empire 166).
From
the beginning, he therefore attempted to make the Church, his
personal domain, unassailable to the outside world, and to maintain
the inner unity of its confessors, either by gentleness or by
coercion.
Now,
during the persecutions, disputes had broken out among the
Christians in Africa and Mauretania. There they wanted to exclude
from the Church all a certain Donatus (not Lactantius' friend) and
his followers who, under the compulsion of the last persecution, had
renounced their faith or had delivered Christian books to the pagan
authorities for burning. In contrast, there were other Catholic
clergy (especially those outside Africa) who wanted to forgive the
sins of the repentant "traditores" (translators), since
there were far too many of them, and it was not so much the quality
as the number of faithful souls that had to be taken into account.
Moreover,
the Donatists also differed from the other Catholics in doctrine.
They doubted the value of the sacraments and made them dependent on
the worthiness of the participants. In strictness of requirements,
they therefore mostly agreed with the later Protestants.
There
was great tension between the two parties. When a certain
Caecilianus was consecrated bishop of Carthage by a clergyman
(Felix) whom the Donatists regarded as a traditor (the Catholics
denied this), discontent broke out. A Numidian council, mostly
Donatists, declared his choice illegal.
But
now Constantine intervened. Towards May 313, although he was just
travelling through Gaul to Trier, he called a council in Rome.
Caecilius soon appeared here with 10 African bishops, who were soon
joined by the bishops of Autum, Arles (Arelate) and Cologne. Under
the leadership of the Roman bishop Miltiades, they met in the
Lateran palace of Empress Fausta, who, like her husband, was
Christian-minded, and gave them hospitality in his place.
But
they achieved nothing, and a subsequent council in Arles, where the
emperor was also not present (1 August 314), did not lead to
reconciliation between the Donatists and Caecilians. On the
contrary, precisely because of the statement that Felix was not a
traditor, and Caecilius' choice of bishop was therefore legally
recognised, the disputes in Africa flared up again. Finally, after
this futile council at Arles, Constantine settled the ecclesiastical
conflict at Milan in August 315 (when he was back in Italy after a
long stay in Gaul and Illyria). On the advice of the African
proconsul Anulinus and the emperor's own court preacher, the very
orthodox Hosius, Caecilian's appointment was maintained, but the
Donatists were thrown out of the Church as troublemakers and
heretics. (Augustine, Epist. 43, 7, 20).
He
considered them schismatics, who broke the united front of the
Christians against their pagan enemies. And since he only considered
a united, Catholic or universal Church as a useful support of his
authority, he equated heretics with traitors. In this Constantine,
with his striving for caesaropapism, behaves just as Charles V later
did towards the Protestants 167). Once he had condemned the
Donatists, the orthodox were given one privilege after another (All
according to me: 21-31 October 315).
First
of all, Caecilian and his followers were paid a large sum of money,
possibly as compensation for what they had endured from the
Donatists, who had, among other things, set fire to many of their
churches, and the right to unlimited support from the state. This
was the first historical example of remuneration of the clergy by
the emperor or the state, not of regular salaries, but provisionally
in the form of donations, and Constantine continued with this in the
rest of his reign (Eus. Hist. eccl. X, 6). Secondly, all Catholic
priests were declared free from munera 168) or compulsory state
offices, i.e., they no longer had to hold expensive and
time-consuming offices in their home towns, "so that they would
not be kept from their worship by the sacrilegious envy of some."
(Cod. Theod. XVI, 2, 1 and 2). In an additional letter, exclusively
in his letter to Anulinus, the emperor adds that he should
especially watch out for the execution of this edict in Africa,
since before that time the heretics had deliberately plagued the
Catholic priests with inconvenient appointments (Cod. Th. XVI, 2,
1), which was now no longer allowed (See also Eus. Hist. eccl. X,
7). A few years later (July 5, 321) he even granted the Church the
right of inheritance, so that it could enrich itself immensely 4)
through testamentary dispositions of private individuals (Cod. Th.
XVI. 2, 4).
Yet
ch then there arose in many cities such a great influx of decurions
(rich dignitaries) to the clergy, simply because of the high
ecclesiastical salaries and the freedom from munera, that the
emperor took action against it. In an edict of July 18, 320, he
forbids decurions or their sons to become priests, if they are rich
and educated enough to hold public offices. (Cod. Th. XVI, 2, 3).
Yes,
Constantine increasingly interfered with the appointment of clerics,
for the sake of the treasury. Finally, on June 1, 326, he only
allows the priesthood to those who have no family among their fellow
citizens, and are therefore without political influence, and
moreover possess too little for a city office. "For it befits
the rich to undergo the necessary burdens of the worldly state, but
the poor to be supported by the wealth of the Church." (Cod.
Th. XVI, 2, 6).
Thus
the emperor knew how to prevent overly wealthy lords from joining
the clergy, as this was doubly damaging to his treasury. For
firstly, they profited from the state salaries to the clergy, and by
being exempt from munera, they escaped the obligation of the
decurions to be liable for the taxes of their city.
In
worldly affairs, Constantine therefore decided on his own judgment,
although in dogmatic matters he also followed the advice of the
clergy, especially of his court bishop Hosius.
Yet
their influence also increased greatly in public life, because in
318, 321 or 323 he granted the bishops the authority to administer
justice, if one of the parties to a lawsuit requested this. 169) He
did this for two reasons. First of all, he wanted to use his fellow
believers and followers as officials, and he also wanted to exercise
control over the previously all-powerful judges, whose fierce pagan
bias had become apparent during the last persecution of Christians.
However,
due to the opposition of educated professional lawyers to
ecclesiastical competitors, this law was not properly implemented at
first. Thus Constantine had to repeat his own decision in 333 in a
rescript to Ablabius, then praefectus praetorio of the East 170).
This
law is especially important, because it gave rise to the later
ecclesiastical courts of the Middle Ages, with all their damnable
aftermath of coercion of conscience and inquisition.
At
the same time as he opposed the heretics, Constantine also took a
stand against the Jews.
Here
too, Constantine followed a new course. Or rather, he restored the
old, almost forgotten anti-Semitism of the Flavian emperors, whose
family name "Flavius" he adopted, possibly with that
ulterior motive. For after the Flavians Vespasian and Titus, the
destroyers of the Jewish state, and Domitian who also persecuted
them as a people in exile, the Jews had known peace and prosperity —
except for a suppressed uprising during Hadrian, many emperors had
even protected and favored them above the Christians, because only
the Jews were exempted from the sacrifice to the imperial Genius.
Now,
however, when a Christian prince came to the throne, all this
ceased. Only the Christians were favored, and for the Jews a
thousand-year period of confinement within their Ghettos began.
In
315, October 18, Constantine then issued an edict in Milan 171),
where he had just settled the Donatist struggle, also against the
professors of the Talmud, who had apparently tormented fellow
tribesmen who had recently become Catholic. "We want to impress
upon the Jews and their rulers and rabbis that if after this edict
one of them dares to harass another who has fled their pernicious
sect and has gone over to the service of God, with stones or any
other kind of fury, (which fact we just heard happened), he will
immediately be given over to the flames and burned with all his
accomplices." (Cod. Theod. XVI, 8, 1=Just. 1, 9, 3).
From
these words the emperor's ecclesiastically tinted hatred of Jews is
clearly evident. He also proved this by choosing an official, also
Christian day of rest, which had to fall on a different day than the
Jewish Sabbath, and also at the Council of Nicaea, when determining
the Passover, the date of which was deliberately not set on the
Jewish Passover, but on the day of Jesus' resurrection. Apparently
the emperor wanted to strictly separate the future of Christianity
from the Judaism from which it had originated. Moreover,
Constantine's policy towards this religion is subject to all sorts
of princely whims and vagaries.
For
example, in 321 he orders the decurions of Cologne to make all the
wealthy Jews there — except for three — available for
the city offices or munera, which hit them hard financially. (Cod.
Th. XVI, 8, 3). But in 330 he exempts the Jewish rabbis and
synagogue leaders from this, so that they received the same
exemption from munera as the Catholic clergy.
This
is therefore remarkable, because they were privileged by this were
placed above the heretics, that is, the Arians, whose priests and
communities were excluded from all ecclesiastical privileges. (1
September 326, see Cod. Th. XVI, 5, 1).
However,
Constantine naturally did not proceed to legal equality of Jews and
Catholics. By an edict of 21 October 335 he even forbade Jews to
keep or circumcise Christian slaves, and ordered them to set them
free immediately. (Cod. XVI, 9, 1).
This
Jewish law was also extended 3 years later by his son and successor
Constantius to heretics, pagans or other non-Catholics, all of whom
were denied the right to own Catholic slaves. (Cod. Justin. 1, 10,
2), this edict became the cause:
1)
Of the decrease in the number of slaves, since many were only
enticed by the promise of freedom to be baptized orthodox.
2e)
Of the economic weakening, indeed the downfall of all non-Catholics,
who since that time could hardly keep any slaves.
3e)
Of the emergence of an overwhelming Catholic majority among the free
population, in which the dissenters sank into insignificance.
After
this digression, let us now follow Constantine's internal
ecclesiastical policy again, and indeed since his seizure of the
sole power (324).
Already
in the time of Licinius serious dogmatic disputes plagued the whole
East, and his successor hastened to settle them.
The
dispute was about the doctrine of the Trinity. This system of God,
Christ and the Logos (Holy Spirit or the Word), although not
originally present in Christianity, was, once arbitrarily
"hineininterpretiert" in the Gospel of John (1 and 5),
brought into use as a pious deception by the African bishop
Theophilus. (Late 2nd century). Soon the believers throughout the
empire had accepted it, under the motto "credimus quia
absurdum".
With
that, Christianity, still strictly monotheistic by Origen and
Tertullian, had in fact degenerated into a tritheism.
The
Sabellians were openly tritheistic, but the others cloaked this
under a compromise with monotheism, the famous "three times one
is one". However, among these, however, a difference of opinion
arose about the relationship between God the Father and God the Son.
In
the rest of the empire, this was not a concern. But in Egypt, the
traditional land of priestly rule, and especially in Alexandria, a
city where the Hellenistic frivolity of the rulers (Greeks and
Romans) had never been able to kill the gloomy, fanatical
seriousness of the natives. And as there had been ecclesiastical
unrest here of old (as under Decius and Diocletian), so now it also
came to an explosion.
The
bishop of this city, Alexander, came into conflict with his
presbyter Areios.
The
latter distinguished Christ's heavenly nature, however divine, from
that of God, since he had also led a separate life on earth as a
man. ("Heterousion"). His superior, however, did not see
Christ as similar, but absolutely equal to that of God, while at the
same time, inseparable from his divine nature, his humanity had
lived on earth. So God had remained God in Jesus and yet become man.
("Homo-ousion"). Both parties were inflamed to the utmost
in their blind, dogmatic superstition, and Alexander summoned his
presbyter Areios or Arius to submit to his verdict. He refused, was
expelled from the Church, but continued his sermons in the same
city. There he soon gained many followers, especially among the
heretical sect of the Melitians 172), who, already arising during
the last persecution, now largely joined him. Thus first Alexandria,
soon all the cities and villages of Egypt, later even Libya and
Thebais, were split into two parties. (Euseb. III, 4). This frenzy
soon spread to the neighboring provinces through propaganda letters
and messengers from both champions. The quarrel became so heated
that Arian (?) fanatics even insulted the images of the emperor, and
that even in the theater of the pagans the Christian doctrine of God
was scorned and mocked. The prestige of the Church and of the
imperial authority was thus in danger. Constantine, who heard and
understood all this, wanted to end the dispute immediately. He first
sent a "god-fearing man", his favourite Hosius, as a
peacemaker to Alexandria, with a letter to both Alexander and Arius.
The
emperor expressed his opinion that "such trivial questions
should not have been raised", but also admonished Arius to bend
to the will of his superior.
This
shows that Constantine himself was indifferent to the dogma, but
that the preservation of the hierarchy and the unity of the Church
was his main concern. However, neither of them was inclined to
reconcile, since there had already been mutual bloodshed between
their adherents.
Then
the emperor decided, just as he had done in the West before during
the Donatist disputes (311-315), to convene a synod. First he
determined as the place of meeting Ankyra, but he soon moved it to
Nicaea in Bithynia, his summer residence, in order to be able to be
present there himself.
At
this council the dispute over the determination of the Easter
festival could also be settled.
This
so-called "Easter controversy" is already very old, and
dates back to about 190 AD. The Jewish Christians, especially in
Syria, Palestine and Asia Minor, continued to adhere to the ancient
Passover, the festival that Moses had commanded to be celebrated on
the 14th of Nisan, the first month of the year (Exod. 12, 6; Levit.
23, 5). However, the Israelites then and still today (just like the
Mohammedans) reckoned with lunar years, so that this festival,
always falling on a full moon, was nevertheless dated on a different
day of the year according to the Roman and Greek-Macedonian
calendar. When the later Jews in Roman times also had to take into
account the Western year of 365 days, and therefore the Jewish
Christians too, there was complete confusion. And so there were some
Christians, such as Anatolius 173), who finally looked for a fixed
rule for determining the Passover, immediately important for them to
determine the commemoration day of Jesus' Resurrection. And since
the Alexandrian Jews had determined the Passover on the first full
moon after the equinox, and Christ would have risen on the day
following the first Sabbath day after Passover, Anatolius determined
the Christian Easter festival on: the first Sunday after the first
full moon following the equinox, (although the term "Sunday"
did not yet exist as such).
In
Constantine's time this custom already prevailed in the entire West,
as well as in Greece, Asia, Pontus and Egypt.
But
the inhabitants of Palestine, Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia, and
Cappadocia, mostly Jewish Christians or baptized Jews, celebrated
the feast of Jesus' resurrection on the same day as their ancient,
beloved Passover. This now caused much strife in the border
districts of both areas, because some were still fasting and
mortifying themselves, while others were already celebrating the
Easter feast. Constantine now saw the great importance of unity of
rite for the entire Christian Church, and therefore also raised the
Easter problem at Nicaea.
Meanwhile,
the day of assembly at Nicaea, the metropolis of Bithynia, to which
all the bishops of the world had been invited, drew near. For their
journey they were allowed to use the horses and carriages of the
imperial post, and where these proved insufficient, other vehicles
were provided by the state. (Eus. Vit. Const.)
But
the two champions Arius and Alexander had already set out earlier to
win followers, Arius to Syria, Alexander, who was smarter, to Nicaea
itself.
There,
even before the council began, he managed to win Hosius, the
all-powerful court preacher, for himself and his doctrine.
(Philostorgius, Vit. Const.)
Arius
was much less fortunate. Possibly at his request, shortly before the
meeting in Nicaea, an unofficial pre-synod was held in Antiocheia,
of mostly Eastern bishops. But there his doctrine of hetero-usion
was rejected, and he himself and two others (including the historian
Eusebius of Caesarea) were given a term until the next council
(Nicaea) to retract their theses. Finally, on 20 May 325, over 300
bishops gathered in the great throne room of the imperial summer
palace at Nicaea, mainly from the East of the empire, but also from
the surrounding barbarian countries, such as the Persians and
Scythians (=Goths). However, there were few participants from the
West: for example, Pope Sylvester, the bishop of Rome, had
apologized because of his age, and was only represented here by
envoys (including Hosius). This also contained a protest against the
fact that Constantine had deliberately bypassed the capital of the
empire when choosing a synod city.
So,
when everyone was sitting together in silence in the throne room, in
their colorful, changing clothing of Westerners in pallium,
Easterners in long robes, and barbarians in bearskin caps and wide,
foreign breeches, — a procession of stately striding courtiers
announced the arrival of the emperor. At last the chief chamberlain
beckoned that he should approach. 174) At his entrance all rose from
their seats, and thus he came into the midst of the assembly "like
an angel of God, radiant in the flaming glow of the purple and
adorned with the bright glitter of gold and precious jewels".
The tremendous majesty of his tall, sturdy heroic figure overwhelmed
all present:
they
thought they could read nothing but mild grace on the face of that
emperor, to whom they and their church owed so much. Finally he
lowered himself onto a small, clear-golden seat in the middle of the
hall, and delivered the opening speech in a calm, sonorous voice. He
spoke in Latin, another interpreted his words in Greek.
The
short sentence of it was: Be of one mind in your doctrine, cease
your quarrels and accept my mediation!
Then
he gave the chairman there was a meeting, Hosius, the word. Then a
chorus of accusations and counter-accusations soon arose between
homo-ousians and their opponents. They had already accused and
slandered each other by secret letters and pamphlets to the emperor,
175) but the emperor pretended not to know anything about it. Now he
only threw in a few calm, sarcastic words in Greek now and then, and
thus calmed the stormy quarrel. He immediately convinced himself
that the majority of the meeting, as Hosius had predicted, consisted
of supporters of the homo-ousion. All the Western and most of the
Eastern bishops belonged to it, only a few inclined to Arius.
At
a subsequent meeting things became even more heated. In vain the
minority party attempted reconciliation. A letter that one of them,
Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, read as his confession of faith, in
which he strove for mediation between homo-ousion and hetero-usion,
was not listened to to the end, but his opponents tore it from his
hands, in the presence of the emperor.
But
the decision did not come from the side of the clergy, but from the
secular overlord. However, he had long been incited against the
Arians by his court preacher Hosius, the bishop of Cordoba. Now
Constantine, as a true soldier impatient about the endless
theological wrangling, ordered Arius and his followers to yield.
All, 180) except Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia and four others, bowed
to this princely command 176) and thus by the will of the emperor
the homo-ousian or Catholic (universal) doctrine, now precisely
formulated in the "Symbolum Nicaenum" was imposed as the
only true one on all Christians in the empire. Arius himself, who
had not appeared at the synod, was struck with all his followers by
the ecclesiastical ban (anathema), and henceforth expelled from
Alexandria. But the emperor punished him still further by banishment
and soon Eusebius and the four other "recalcitrants",
shamefully branded as "Porphyrians" 177), also shared his
fate. Moreover, all their books were publicly burned. This petty,
hair-splitting dogma dispute thus betrays the inner discord of the
Church, as well as the narrow-minded persecution of its so-called
orthodox majority towards every minority, as also became apparent in
the later Middle Ages. It was officially said that the Church did
not persecute heretics, and this was initially true, but it
repeatedly incited the orthodox secular authorities to do so, both
then and later.
The
Easter controversy was also settled according to the wishes of the
overwhelming majority and of the emperor himself. In a speech full
of fierce hatred of Jews, he adjured the assembly to break all
customs that connected them with the people "who had murdered
Christ". 178) Thus, from then on, the Easter festival was dated
according to the prescription of Anatolius. (see above)
The
main goal, the unity of the Church, seemed now to have been
achieved. Except for a few older heretical sects, for example the
Novatians, 179) who, despite an invitation to the synod in which
they had also participated, did not want to return to the Church,
the overwhelming majority of Christians had remained orthodox.
Constantine,
showered with gifts and exhortations to unity, sent the bishops
home.
The
emperor remained homo-ousian-minded for another two years. In 326,
for example, on 1 September, he promulgated, probably in Rome, a
strict law whereby heretical and schismatic (=Arian) clergy lost all
privileges, including freedom from munera, and were preferably to be
tormented with this 181). The restitution of previously confiscated
church property, which had not yet been completed everywhere, did
not apply to them either. Their houses of worship were to be given
forthwith to the orthodox Church, their other places of meeting were
to be forfeited to the treasury, while further meetings of heterodox
were forbidden 182). Their books were also to be sought out and
burned, as had already been decreed the previous year concerning
Arius' writings. Only towards the Novatians, whose bishop Acesius
had obtained church peace at the synod at Nicaea, was this heretical
law soon softened to the extent that they retained their churches
and coimeteria 183) (25 September 326). Yet they were by no means
put on an equal footing with the Catholics.
But
soon there was a change in the emperor's dogmatic preference.
Possibly out of remorse for the murder of Crispus, and aversion to
the hypocritical orthodox impostor Fausta, to whom he had just given
her well-deserved punishment, he turned away from his court bishop
Hosius and the homo-ousians and became more disposed towards the
Arians, even the pagans.
Moreover,
there was another cause. In 327 (or not long after) his sister
Constantia, who could not survive the cruel murder of her son, lay
dying in Thessalonica (?) 184). Shortly before she fell ill, she
came under the influence of a secret Arian presbyter, who convinced
her that Arius and his followers had been treated unjustly. On her
deathbed, when Constantine came running to her, she now adjured her
brother to recall the innocent banished.
This
happened. In November of the same year he summoned Arius to court
and promised him rehabilitation, provided he would subscribe to the
Symbolum Nicaenum by a declaration. This Arius did, but in such
ambiguous terms that they could be interpreted as both homo-ousian
and Arian. (November 327) 185)
Thus
he was restored to his honour and soon the other exiles, including
Eusebius of Nicomedia, returned at the emperor's command after
having written letters of repentance. But when Arius left for
Alexandria again (summer 328) and wanted to become presbyter there
again, Athanasius, who had been bishop there since the death of
Alexander (28 June 328), refused him access to the Church 186).
This
Athanasius, formerly deacon of the previous bishop, was a
domineering, fanatical, truly medieval prelate, and already filled
with the later papal ideal of elevating the Church above the State
in power. He sent the emperor a haughty letter, that he could no
longer receive an apostate, who had once been struck by the
anathema, into the Church. Then Constantine ordered him, also on the
advice of Eusebius, his new favorite, to admit Arius immediately and
to rehabilitate him, on pain of deposition and banishment. 186)
Athanasius,
however, did not care, and the emperor, averse to further disputes,
gave in for the time being. Arius, however, both in Alexandria
personally, and elsewhere through his followers, zealously made
propaganda against his enemy. In Antioch he had the success, that
the homo-ousian bishop of this city, Eustathius, was overthrown by
an Arian majority in his community (329) 187) and banished. A synod
convened in that city appointed a certain Eulalius in his place, and
after that the Arians maintained themselves in this important seat
until the end of the 4th century.
In
the meantime Eusebius and his followers intrigued fiercely with the
emperor against the Alexandrian bishop. First they accused him of
demanding linen garments from the Egyptians as a tax. 188) When this
charge was refuted by Alexandrian presbyters, who happened to be at
Nicomedia at the time, the Arians accused their enemy of political
conspiracy against the imperial authority. Thereupon Constantine
(331) personally summoned Athanasius to Psamathia, 189) a suburb of
Nicomedia, convinced himself of his innocence, and sent him back
with honor to his bishopric.
Then
his enemies thought they had finally found the right weapon against
him.
They
accused him to the emperor of the murder of Arsenius, the bishop of
the Melitian sect, who was after all close friends of the Arians. He
was said to have misused the severed hand of his victim to commit
black magic with it. 190)
Since
both pagans and Christians at that time, including Constantine, were
convinced of the existence of sorcery, and the Christians in
particular abhorred it as a criminal collaboration with Satan and
his demons, this was a serious accusation.
For
these and other accusations Athanasius was now summoned before a new
synod, which the emperor convened at Tyre 191) (335). His enemies
even showed, so they claimed, the corpus delicti, the severed hand
of Arsenius to the assembled clergy and the imperial president
Dionysius. But according to the orthodox he completely destroyed
this accusation by suddenly bringing the living Arsenius, whom the
Arians had kept hidden all this time, into the hall. On the other
hand, according to an Arian historian, 192) Athanasius is said to
have hired a slut in order to shame his enemies, who in turn should
have slandered Eusebius of Nicomedia as her seducer. This plan did
not succeed, however, because the woman in question refused to
accuse such a respectable man of such infamies. 192) The result was
that Athanasius was declared deposed from his seat as a troublemaker
by almost unanimous votes. Then all the members of the synod went to
Jerusalem, where the church of the Holy Cross, built by order of the
emperor, was about to be consecrated. 193) Here Eusebius and the
other bishops solemnly received Arius, as a repentant, back into the
ecclesiastical community, so that he emerged victorious from the
battle.
But
Athanasius did not acquiesce in his sentence, but hastened to
Constantinople, to appeal to the emperor. Just as he arrived,
Constantine rode out of his palace on horseback. The proud outcast
raised his hands imploringly to him for a moment's hearing, but the
emperor did not recognize him and, when he was told who he was, at
first refused to hear him. But Athanasius persisted, obtained an
audience, and the emperor promised him that he would immediately
summon all the members of the synod of Tyre to Constantinople, to
deliver their judgment again in his presence.
to
speak.
The
accused bishops, however, feared a new Nicaea, and now dared for the
first time to defy the emperor's orders. Instead of coming
themselves, they sent six party leaders, including Eusebius of
Nicomedia, to the capital. These again succeeded in inciting the
emperor against their enemy.
Now
they accused Athanasius of having threatened to prevent the annual
grain shipments from Alexandria to Constantinople. 194) This was the
decisive factor. Finally the emperor banished the orthodox bishop to
Trier, but on condition that no one else would occupy the chair in
Alexandria for the time being, so that the exile's honor would not
remain out of the question 195).
But
now Arius tried to seize the vacant chair. He had almost persuaded
the emperor to do so, when he suddenly collapsed in the middle of a
square in Constantinople and died. 195) The orthodox, of course,
spoke of a judgment of God, but Arius' friends whispered of
poisoning by his enemies. The emperor, however, fell more and more
under Arian influence, especially that of Eusebius of Nicomedia.
Towards the spring of 337 he suddenly felt ill and used the baths in
his capital to recover. 196) When this did not help, he crossed the
Bosphorus to Helenopolis, where he visited the martyrdom church of
Lucian, which his mother Helena had once had built there. Here he
knelt down and begged forgiveness for his past sins, and for the
first time received the solemn laying on of hands from the attending
priest.
Now
feeling his end approaching, he went to his palace at Achuroon
(Acyro), a suburb of Nicomedia, and there summoned the neighboring
bishops of that region. 196) After a short speech he finally
requested Eusebius of Nicomedia to give him "the bath of
regeneration." According to the custom of those days, he had
postponed baptism until his baptismal day, in order thereby to
retain freedom in his actions, 197) to which many acts of robbery
and blood testified.
He
had murdered many enemies, yes friends and relatives, yes even his
own son and wife, and all their reproachful shades now appeared to
him in tormenting visions.
Now,
in superstitious fear, he hoped to wash away all these former sins
that burned him to the core, with a little holy water. When this
ceremony was accomplished, he had himself wrapped in a purple robe
of state, and laid down on the imperial bed of state. After this he
spoke a prayer of thanksgiving, and then died soon, on the afternoon
of the feast of Pentecost.
Since
he died in the Arian dogma, his death caused the greatest discord
between the two parties of the Church, which he had tried in vain to
reconcile.
1)
Only since a large city was founded in the Balkans, Constantinople
(330), the prosperity of this part of the empire was also lost.
2)
Only the West of Illyricum (Noricum, Pannonia and Dalmatia) was
Latinized; the rest was not. The expansion power of the Latinized
Illyrians was still evident in their late descendants, the
Walachians, who pushed across the Danube around 1000 and settled in
present-day Romania. (The Romanians are therefore not descended from
Romanized Dacians).
Of
the other Illyrians, only the tribes between Skodra (= Skutari) and
Apollonia have retained both their original language and their place
of residence (Albanians) throughout the centuries. Their relatives
in Moesia, however, had already been Hellenized in the late imperial
period.
3)
The origins of Emperor Claudius and his two brothers Quintilius and
Crispus lie in obscurity. Most contemporaries at least considered
Claudius to be a natural son of Emperor Gordian III from his youth,
"when he was sexually initiated by a mature woman." (Epit.
de Caesaribus, 34). But to hide his shameful or less honorable
birth, Claudius himself took the name Flavius and
claimed to be descended from the house of Vespasian. Later members
of his family, such as Constantius and Constantine, followed him in
this, so that their eulogists called them by this flattering name. —
Seeck, however, doubts, without further proof, Constantine's
relationship with Claudius.
4)
Drepanum was the birthplace of Constantine's mother Helena, and was
later called, in her honor, Helenopolis. (Hieronym. Euseb.
Chronicon).
7)
That she was later Constantius' lawful wife follows, among other
things, from the demand that Diocletian made of her, to divorce her.
(See also Eutropius Aurel Victor de Caes, Epit. de Caes, etc.)
8)
See Euseb. Hieron. Chronicon. Flattery of Constantine and the
following Christian emperors led later historians (Aur. Victor,
etc.) to degrade their pagan predecessor Diocletian to a freedman or
the son of a freedman of a certain senator Anulinus. But if that
were so, then the gentile name that Diod. placed before his own,
"Valerius" would have to have been borrowed from a Roman
patron of this family. And now no Anulinus of that time originated
from the gens Valeria, but from the gens Annia, as for instance the
praefecti urbis of 306 and 312. Diocles was therefore not a
freedman, and could therefore arbitrarily place the name Valerius
before his own, even if he did not descend from this gens, which
also remains possible. By the way, his Christian enemy Eusebius
calls him "son of a clerk". Eutropius gives both readings
without any particular preference (Eutr. IX, 19).
10)
According to other sources he was a Batavian, Aur. Victor 39, 20:
"Menapiae civis" (Eumenius, Eutropius). The similarity in
sound and accent of "Menapiae" and "Bataviae"
makes it likely that one of these texts must be corrupt.
12)
The later veneration of Constantine and his successors by their
courtiers was only slightly inferior to that of Diocletian.
13)
See evidence Lact. De Mort. 7, Euseb. de Mart. Pol. 13. Zosimus II,
32, however, attributes this innovation to Constantine, and
Burckhardt and Seeck follow him in this.
15)
The doctrine of the Manichees, like that of the earlier Gnostics,
was a so-called syncretic faith, i.e. amalgamated from Christianity
and numerous other religions, including Persian Mazdaism or the
doctrine of Zoroaster. The Manichees honored as the founder of their
religion a certain Manes, who suffered martyrdom in Persia around
272 on princely orders. Not long after, his doctrine spread
throughout the Roman Empire and was fiercely opposed by pagans and
also by Christians, for example by Augustine, who had belonged to
that "heretical" sect for a while.
26)
Moreover, there was general embitterment because Galerius had
recently deprived Rome, formerly tax-free, of this privilege and had
the taxes collected with great severity by the hated quaestor
Abellius. 28) It is true that Constantine had been legally married
earlier, from the end of his boyhood ("ab ipso fine pueritia")
(Paneg. VI, c.4). But this unknown woman bore him no children, and
apparently died or was divorced. He had fathered his son Crispus
with a concubine Minervina (See p. 21 of this book and further in
Seeck, Untergang II Anhang p. 508).
30)
Lactantius speaks of ulcers; Aur. Victor says (Epitome c. 40)
"consumptis genitalibus defecit", which justifies my
assumption.
31)
For example, the martyrdom of Barbara is known, which is attributed
to Daja's governor Martinianus (later transferred to the service of
Licinius).
34)
This was only completed later (313-315). The bas-relief images on
the four friezes on either side above the side gates glorify his
last campaign, against Maxentius. Two inscriptions on either side
above the main gate still bear witness to his triumph "over the
tyrant and all his followers". The expression "instinctu
divinitatis", a mediation between pagan and Christian
monotheism, proves Constantine's carefully veiled Christian
disposition.
An
earlier opinion, that under the word "divinitatis"
another, completely pagan text, also of 11 letters, would shine
through, namely "IOVISOPTMAX" (Jovis Optimi Maximi) was
refuted by de Rossi, after examination of plaster casts in 1863 made
at the behest of Napoleon III. The legend of the baptism of
Constantine by Pope Sylvester, which first occurs in Zonaras, I pass
over with understandable silence.
35)
The difference between the texts in Eusebius and Lact. comes down to
this:
I.
Those in Eusebius were addressed by both emperors (and perhaps
originally also, officially by Max. Daja, according to Seeck) to all
governors and prefects, at least none are named further); those in
Lact. only by Licinius to the governor of the newly conquered
Bithynia (after the 2nd war with Daja).
II.
Lact. differs from Eusebius in the absence of the introduction
(which guarantees tolerance and state protection for all religions),
and further in some details that could make Licinius (and thus
indirectly Constantine) pass for a Christian. For example, Eusebius
gives: hopoos ho ti pote esti theistetos kai ouraniou pragmatos
hemin.... eumenes einai sunethei (lit: that what there is of
divinity and heavenly substance might be favorable to us).
Lactantius:
quo quidem divinitas in sede coelesti nobis. — propitia possit
existere. (Mercifully might act).
The
latter reading is clearly Christian-anthropomorphic; the former, a
vague middle form between Christian and neo-Platonic pagan. Probably
Eusebius, otherwise an arch-falsifier, in this case gives the
literal, translated from Latin text: Lact. a twisted for his purpose
to present Licinius, and therefore certainly Constantine, as
declared Christians. (See further Josef Wittig, Rom. Quart. schr.
Suppl. XIX, who however does not dare to come to this conclusion).
36)
Lactantius' writing also probably published in the spring of 314,
under the fresh impression of the persecutions and victories of
Constantine and Licinius, mentions the death of Diocletian before
that of Maximinus Daja and before the murder of his Prisca and
Valeria, so in 313. But how can the year 316, in Eusebius'
Chronicon, and in the Chronicon Paschale be reconciled with this?
Probably Constantine D. deliberately kept his suicide a secret, in
order to heap the full odium on Licinius, who had the two
ex-empresses Prisca and Valeria killed in the same year. Only after
the successful war against Licinius did Constantine no longer have
any objection to making it known, and even granted the deceased
pagan emperor the honour of an apotheosis by the senate (316).
37)
Candidianus, Galerius' forefather by a concubine, was engaged to
Daja's 7-year-old daughter, and was therefore not allowed to live to
avenge her death.
38)
The two ex-empresses, although Christian-minded before the
persecution, must have turned away from that doctrine later, and
that explains the little compassion Lactantius showed for their
miserable fate.
39)
Only with the final division of the State into the Eastern and
Western Roman Empire (395) were the borders between the two parts
precisely determined.
40)
The writers call him Caesar, but according to coins he was Augustus.
41)
According to Anon. Vales. Valens was simply deprived of his rank;
Zosimus (II. 20) expresses himself ambiguously and suggests that he
was also put to death; Aur. Vict Epit. attributes his death to
Licinius.
42)
Although no document tells us anything about the extradition of
Senicio, I think that Zosimus, who has Valens called "the
instigator of all evil", means Senicio.
48)
According to Socr. I, 4 he also forbade the bishops to associate
with pagans in order to prevent Christian propaganda.
49)
Since he was acknowledged by Constantine as his son, he was probably
born at a time when Constantine was rich and powerful enough to be
able to afford such luxury, i.e. after 305, when he met his father
in Britain and soon became heir to the throne. The earliest year of
birth can therefore be considered to be 306. Earlier is difficult,
because then Minervina would have to have accompanied him with or
without child, or else followed him long afterwards, alone and
unprotected, neither of which is likely. Even later than 306 is not
possible, since Crispus had his first child with his lawful wife
Helena in 322, and would not have been married before his fifteenth
year, (z. Cod. Th.)
Seeck
does claim that emperor's sons were usually married off "ab
ipso fine pueritiae" and understands this as from their 14th
year, but that is incorrect, since the pueritia was considered to
last until the 17th year.
52)
Zosimus, from whom all this is borrowed, gives the following
figures: 130,000, of which 30,000 remained, but he forgets that
Licinius sent about half of his army with Martinianus had sent to
Lampsacus.
53a)
At the same time — 8 November 324 — his younger
stepbrother Constantius, then not yet seven years old, was appointed
Caesar. But it is highly unlikely that he was already charged with
the government of Gaul, as Gibbon assumes on the basis of Julian.
Orat. I. 53c). It is remarkable that it is mainly Arians and pagans
(Philostorgius and Zosimus) who glorify the memory of Crispus, and
not the Catholics.
56)
That his death must be attributed to suspicion of fornication is
evident:
I)
From the agreement of 4 witnesses of different faiths, namely
Zosimus (pagan, ca. 475) lib. II, 29; Philistorgius (Arian, ca. 400)
lib. II, 4; the Artemii Passio 43. (orthodox) and Zonaras
(orthodox), while it can also be read, with some good will, from the
anonymous Epitome de Caesaribus: ("Fausta conpuge, ut putant,
suggerente") and the Chronicon Paschale.
II)
From 5 fragments of edicts against fornication that Constantine all
issued at the same time, (see next page in the text).
III)
Eutropius, Eusebius-Hieronymus (Chronicon) Aurelius, Victor and
Sidonius Appollinaris only mention that Constantine first killed
Crispus and then Fausta, but these testimonies do not exclude
suspicion of adultery. Nor does the silence of Anonymus Valesius,
pars I on this. As for Licinianus, two witnesses Eutropius and
Eusebius-Hieronymus (Chronicon) state that he was killed at the same
time as Crispus, so that I doubt Seeck's assertion that he lived on
until 336. All the more so because the passages of evidence on which
he relies (Cod. Th. IV, 6, 1 and 2) have been misinterpreted. First
of all, it is not Licinianus that is mentioned here, but "filius
Liciniani", the son of a certain Licinianus, and moreover, the
frequent occurrence of the names Licinius and Licinianus throughout
the empire forbids identifying two so-called persons.
57)
The text usually bears the heading "de raptu virginum ac
viduarum", but one of the variants has "de raptu virginum
ac feminarum", which seems more appropriate.
An
even earlier edict of Constantine, dated 3 February 326 in Heraclea,
also associated with the case of Crispus by Seeck, cannot have
anything to do with it, because of the place and time of dating, and
because of the content. After all, it states that innkeepers are
punishable for adultery, but slaves in an inn are not, and it lacks
the strict, moralizing tone of the other edicts. (Cod. Th. IX, 7,
1). Seeck's assumption that all these edicts would be fragments of a
single edict seems to me unprovable. I also reject his claim that
Crispus was indeed guilty of adultery, which is contradicted by all
sources.
59)
Cod. Justin. V, 26. With this last edict he wanted to show how he
regretted having fathered Crispus with a concubine. 60)
Philostorgius II, 4 calls him "cursor" or prodromos, which
probably does not mean charioteer here, but runner. He is indeed the
only informant of this story, but the details correspond entirely
with the character of Fausta.
62)
Hieron. mentions the year 328 in the Chronicon, but his chronology
is often confused; Zosimus states that it happened in Rome, so in
the summer of 326, the last time that Constantine stayed there after
Crispus' death. The Chronica Gallica A. DXI (M. G. H. Chronic.
Minora I) also states that Fausta was killed in the same year as
Crispus and Licinius Jr. Despite the many errors in the chronology,
this document remains valuable, as it contains other sources that
are now lost.
65)
The marble was obtained from the islet of Proeconnesus in the
Propontis. (Zosim. ibid.)
74)
Chronicon Paschale, from which the further details of the initiation
feast are also taken.
78)
Id. II, 31. These Taifali also appeared later, after the battle of
Adrianople (378) when they crossed the Danube with other Germanic
and Sarmatian tribes and plundered Thrace together with the Goths.
80)
Here he had promised Athanasius of Alexandria a meeting in
Psamathia, near Nicomedia (Ath. apol. c. Ar. 61, 62). Characteristic
of Constantine in these years is that he put ecclesiastical matters
above military ones.
81)
Gibbon has misinterpreted this place in the Chron. Hieron. He
presents it as if the subjugated people were called Limigantes. The
text is: "Sarmatae Limigantes, dominos suos, ui nunc
Argaragantes vocantur, facta manu in Romanus solum expulerunt."
82)
After the victory over Licinius, all of his decrees were annulled,
and many new officials were appointed in the East. (Cod. XV, 14, 1).
92)
Philostorgius II, 16. But he may only tell this story to cleanse his
fellow Arian believer, Emperor Constantius, of guilt.
108)
Cod. Th. XV, 14, 4. Seeck wrongly calls this a countermeasure
against a decree of Maxentius, and sets this law without proof in
312 or earlier.
118)
This was thus the average price of a slave. See Cod. Just. VI, 1, 3
and 4.
122)
Cod. Just. August 17, 329. It is reminiscent of modern Chinese
conditions during the last famine there, when women and children
were also offered for sale.
124)
Cod. Just. V, 27 and Cod. Th. IV, 6, 2 and 3. The name Licinianus in
this last law need not be identified with the murdered ex-emperor
Licinius as Seeck believes. The law therefore need not be directed
against the young Licinianus. (See previous chapter).
126)
Cod. Theod. II, 8, 1. Shortly afterwards he also turns against
another pagan abuse, the growing number of holidays, which were
often arbitrarily instituted by higher officials within their area.
He expressly forbids them this, and declares the determination of
holidays an exclusively imperial privilege.
127)
See Lact. Div. Inst. I, 11—14. The theory that Lactantius here
adheres to, as do most of his Christian contemporaries, originates
from a certain Euhemerus of Messene or Cyrene, a philosopher who
lived at the court of Cassander of Macedonia around 300 BC. He
proclaimed that polytheism originated in the veneration of famous
men after their death. It escaped the Christian apologists that this
Euhemerism provided strong arguments against their own religion as
well.
130)
This also proves that the Livian foundation year 754 BC is not
correct. In truth, it was not known then, just as it is not known
now, when Rome was founded.
143)
Also told by Sozomenus, but doubted. (Sozom. I, 5.) However, the
final conversion to Christianity that Zosimus links to this is
incorrect, since the laws prove that Constantine had already been
under Christian influence.
145)
This is the probable explanation of the miracle story in which
Bishop Alexander of Constantinople is said to have struck a pagan
debater dumb "in the name of Christ". (Sozom. I, 18).
146)
This ridiculous superstition was common among all fourth-century
people, pagans and Christians, so Constantine may well have
considered it to be true. Shortly after Julian's death, for example,
Emperor Valetinian (a Christian) had his former teacher Maximus, the
Neoplatonic theurgist [??], killed as a sorcerer.
155)
Eus. Vit. Const. III, 57. Burckhardt's opinion that the god
Asclepius had also occupied himself with political questions and,
for example, would have supported the revolt of Calocerus is
incorrect, since 1st the temple was destroyed in 331, and Calocerus
did not break out until 333 and 2nd. the Asclepius temple did not
give oracles.
162)
Hieron. Chron. As early as 320 the emperor had, in order to please
the Christians, repealed the old Roman law against unmarried and
childless persons (Cod. Th. VIII, 16, 1.)
166)
Constantine was still unbaptized, but as a follower of the Christian
religious exercises or catechumen he was generally regarded by the
Christians as a fellow believer.
167)
Nevertheless, Constantine's favoritism towards the orthodox did not
bring the Donatists back to the Church, but rather alienated them
from it for good. Their sect continued to exist, despite the
oppression, and shortly after the Council of Nicaea (325), in 330,
it had again gained so many followers that Constantine, supposedly
to protect the Catholics, took new measures against them. (Cod. Th.
XVI. 2, 7 and Optat. Milevitanus I). Under his successors the
Donatists were oppressed even more than before. Nevertheless, they
continued to exist as an independent sect for three centuries, so
that during the migration of the peoples they greeted the Vandals as
liberators.
168)
There are three documents concerning the freedom from munera granted
to the orthodox clergy:
a)
Cod. Th. XVI, 2, 1, dated PRID. KAL. NOV. CONSTANTINO A. III ET
LICINIO III C. CONSS., i.e. 313 October 31. But in one of the mss.
stands CONSTANTINO A. IIII, which points to the year 315.
b)
Cod. Th. XVI, 2,2, dated XII KAL. NOV. CONSTANTINO A. V. ET LICINIO
CAESARE CONSS., i.e. 319, 21 October. However, since the previous
document (Cod. Th. XVI, 2, 1) clearly refers to an earlier law with
the same content, document b) must have been issued before document
a), so probably 21 October 315 or 313.
c)
EUSEBIUS, Hist. eccl. X, 7 which agrees in content and partly
verbatim with document b).
My
theory now is that all these 3 documents are from the same year, and
not from October 313, (because then Constantine was in Trier and was
much too busy with Germans), but from October 315. After all, at
that time the emperor was in Milan, where he had settled the
Donatist conflict in favor of Caecilian. Moreover, in document a)
the Donatists are already spoken of as "haeretici", i.e.
heretics. If this law was from October 31, 313, as Seeck assumes,
then it would be very unreasonable and premature of Constantine to
speak out against the Donatists at that time, while no council had
yet condemned them positively, (also that in Rome not of May 313).
So all that remains is: the year 315 for all three documents, namely
document b) and c) 21 October 315 and document a) 31 October 315.
The
letter of state remuneration to Caecilianus (Eus. hist. eccl. X, 6)
must also be from around the same time, intended as a reward for the
torment that this cleric had to endure from the heretics, and in
which the Donatists are spoken of as an insignificant group, so
apparently after their defeat.
171)
The text says "Murgillo", possibly a typo for "Mediolano"
since Constantine was staying there at the time.
172)
So named after Melitius, bishop of Alexandria, deposed during the
persecution of Diocletian and replaced by Peter because he had
sacrificed to the pagan gods (Socrates, I, 6).
173)
Anatolius, Alexandrian by birth, and bishop of Laodice in 279 AD,
was a learned and versatile man (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. VII, 32, 6
sqq.). (Euseb.-Hieronymus, Chronicon) 177) Porphyry, Neoplatonic
philosopher of 232-304, who wrote against the Christians, among
other things. Not to be confused with the poet Publilius Optatianus
Porphyry, a pagan contemporary of Constantine. 179) Novatus taught
during the reign of Emperor Decius that those who had sinned after
baptism should be excluded from the holy sacraments.
180)
Among those who slavishly denied their own opinions was the
historian Eusebius of Caesarea.
184)
Sozomenus II, 27. Constantia probably died in 327, since the emperor
stayed in Thessalonica, her place of residence, only in that year
between 326-329 (February 327, see Cod. Th. XI, 3, 2).
185)
Socrates I, 25. Arius could not have been recalled by the emperor in
326, as Seeck claims, since he must have traveled to Alexandria at
most a year later, where Anathanasius was then bishop, which could
not have been until after 28 June 328. Moreover, Arius was
rehabilitated shortly after Constantia's death, so probably in 327.
192)
Philostorg. II (ap. Fhot.) both the Arian and the Orthodox reading
of what happened at the synod are uncertain. Only the result, the
deposition of Athanasius, mentioned by both, is reliable.
197)
Sins committed after baptism were considered unforgivable.
Zie
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken/view?identifier=MMKB05:000037724:00001&query=constantijn+koch&coll=boeken&maxperpage=50
Constantine the
Great
1.
Augustine on Constantine
In
the fourth and fifth books of De civitate dei, Augustine deals with
the question on what grounds one may call Roman emperors happy,
felices. In the penultimate capita of the fifth book, which was
published with the fourth at the end of 415, he gives the following
extensive argument, which culminates in the image he had formed of
Constantine the Great, and which at the same time expresses a
profound problem in world history. Augustine writes (De civitate dei
V 24, 25):
"We
do not call certain Christian emperors felices because they reigned
long or died quietly, leaving the government to their sons2, or
subdued the enemies of the commonwealth, or subdued and subdued
internal enemies who rose up against them.
These
and other favors and consolations in this difficult life have also
been experienced by some servants of idols, who do not belong to the
kingdom of God like the former; and this has happened through the
mercy of the same God, to make sure that those who believe in Him
would not desire those things from Him as the highest good. But we
call them felices if they rule justly.
Augustine
continues: "if under the words of those who honor them very
highly, and the obeisances of those who greet them humbly, they do
not exalt themselves (exceedingly), but consider that they are
(only) men; if they use their power in the service of the majesty of
God to exalt His worship as highly as possible; if they fear, love,
and honor God; if they love that kingdom most where they have no
rivals to fear; if they are slow to punish, and easy to forgive; if
they use their power of punishment (only) where it is necessary for
the government and protection of the commonwealth, not to gratify
their anger against enemies, and if they use that forgiveness not
for impunity for evil, but in the hope of amendment; if they meet
the severe decrees, which they are often forced to make, with
compassion and charity; if they abstain from luxury as it is more
easily attainable to them; if they prefer to subdue (their own) evil
desires than other peoples, and if they do all this not from their
burning desire for vain glory, but from love of eternal felicitas;
if they do not fail to offer to God for their sins the sacrifice of
humility, submission, and prayer. Such Christian emperors we call
felices, for the time being in hope, later in reality, when what we
expect shall have come. (25) "For the good God, in order that
men who believe that they must worship Him for eternal life, should
not think that no one can obtain these earthly favors and kingdoms
except by praying to idols - since these spirits have great power in
such things - (the good God) has filled the emperor Constantine, who
did not pray to idols but honored Him, the true God, with so many
earthly gifts as no one would dare ask. He has allowed him to found
a civitas next to the Roman empire as a daughter of Rome, but
without any temple or image of the demons. He has reigned for a long
time, as the only Augustus he has held and defended the entire Roman
world; in organizing and waging wars he has won the greatest
victories, in suppressing tyrants (usurpers) he has been successful
in all respects; in old age he died from illness and old age,
leaving his sons as emperors. But again, in order that no emperor
should be a Christian in order to obtain the felicitas of
Constantine, since every one for the sake of eternal life must be a
Christian, (God) took away Jovian much more quickly than Julian
(Apostata); and suffered Gratian to be killed by the tyrannical
sword, though much more gently than the great Pompey, who worshipped
the so-called Roman gods. For Pompey could not be avenged by Cato,
to whom he had, so to speak, bequeathed the civil war as a legacy.
Yet Gratian, although pious souls do not ask for such consolations,
was avenged by Theodosius, whom he had taken into his government as
a partner, although he had a little brother, because he preferred a
faithful ally to too great a (domestic) power".
The
last chapter of the fifth book is then devoted to Theodosius as a
Christian emperor.
The
moral image that Augustine draws of the Felix Imperator here is
prepared in the preceding book (IV 23), where he asked the question
why the Romans, if Felicitas is a goddess, did not worship her
independently, since she was nevertheless able to give everything
and to make (man) happy in the shortest way.
"Why
did Romulus himself, who wanted a happy state to found, did not
erect a temple for her, and, for whatever, did not implore the other
gods, since he lacked nothing if she only assisted him?" Powers
of other gods were worshipped and when Felicitas finally came along,
the republic did not go so well at all, perhaps, Augustine mocks,
because Felicitas had come so late (2). Jupiter's kingdom also
depends on Felicitas and "potior est felicitas regno",
happiness is worth more than kingship. One easily finds a person who
dreads becoming king; "nullus autem invenitur qui se nolit esse
felicem", but there is no one who does not want to be Felix
(3). Besides Felicitas, the other gods are in principle superfluous,
from her alone one asks happiness, and no more from the others. What
more could one wish for? But - and now the reasoning is reversed -
"if Felicitas is not a goddess but - what she really is - is a
gift from God, then one must seek that God who can give happiness
and let go of the harmful troop of false gods who follow the stupid
masses, make the gifts of God into gods for themselves and thereby
offend Him Himself, whose gifts they are, through the resistance of
their proud self-will. For one cannot escape infelicitas -
misfortune - if one worships Felicitas as a goddess and abandons
God, who is the giver of felicitas, any more than one can escape
hunger if one licks a painted loaf of bread and does not ask it of
the one who has one" (4).
Augustine
was concerned with making known, in contrast to polytheism, the
unknown God from whom felicitas comes, with whom man finds
felicitas. He believed he could conclude that the Romans themselves
believed that felicitas was given by a god whom they did not know
(25).
The
distinction is that between material happiness and windfalls on the
one hand, entirely within the framework of this visible world, and
which Augustine then lets coincide with what the Romans expect from
their gods, and moral action on the other hand, through which
emperors also show that they participate in the other world, now
still in hope, one day in reality. It now lies undisturbed in this
world. The difference between the two worlds would can be seen as
the quality of existence. Augustine is meanwhile critical enough not
only to acknowledge that one can experience earthly happiness
outside the kingdom of God, but also that one should not serve God
in order to obtain the incomparable happiness that Constantine had -
"as much good as no one would dare ask". It must be for
eternal life, i.e. to do the kingdom of God. Earthly gifts are not
the yardstick of God's favor. Augustine ends this entire period
about the Christian emperors thus: All other honors or riches of
this life God gives as He gives the whole world the light, the air,
the earth, the water, the fruits, and the soul and body of man
himself, his senses, spirit and life, to the good and to the evil;
to this also belongs the greatness of the kingdom, which He awards
with a view to the government that falls in time (in quibus est
etiam quaelibet imperii magnitudo, quam pro temporum gubernatione
dispensat). We think here of Mt. 5:45, where it says that God makes
his sun rise on the evil and on the good. This word makes it clear
that it is extremely difficult to derive a judgment about someone's
true felicitas from visible things. Here, as I referred to at the
beginning, an important problem for our judgment about the
leadership in world history comes to light. Augustine says that a
person's felicitas depends on his participation in the vita aeterna,
which is another way of saying the civitas dei. However, he also
says that it does not help much to strive for it in a certain way,
for example by imitating someone else; that is looking at it too
narrowly. "Do from des" does not apply here. Felicitas is
not grasped, it is essentially a gift. God intended it for
Constantine.
2.
Julianus Apostata on Constantine
Half
a century earlier, Julianus Apostata had written the satire
Symposion of Caesares (361, in Constantinople), in which a number of
emperors were allowed to unburden their consciences before the
assembled gods to find a patron among them and then to see who of
them would receive the prize of honor. Last up is Constantine, who
is presented as a good warrior but otherwise as highly addicted to
pleasure. While he recounts his heroic deeds to the gods, he keeps
his gaze furtively fixed on Tryphe, the demon of luxury. Silenus
asks him if he does not have any Adonis flowers with him, which
bloom briefly and quickly wither, whereupon Constantine blushes in
the realization that this might indeed be the case with his work. He
admits that he wanted to raise money to satisfy the desires of
himself and his friends. "Then you should have become a
banker", Silenus mocked, "but you have lived like a pastry
chef and a hairdresser, your hair and your delicious smell prove
it". Constantine also no longer wore a beard like his
predecessors and Julian, for whom the beard was the symbol of his
philosophical pretensions, which makes one think of Horace:
"sapientem pascere barbam". Of course, Constantine could
not find support from any of the gods and so he sought his solace in
Tryphe and Asotia, the debauchery, and there he also found Jesus,
who called to him all who were seducers, murderers, sacrileges and
rascals, with the promise to wash them clean immediately with this
water - the baptismal water. "And if anyone is guilty of the
same thing again, I will cleanse him again if he strikes his breast
and forehead". Constantine went to him with his sons in good
spirits, but the gods nevertheless punished them for their impiety
and the bloodshed of their kinsmen, until Zeus granted them mercy
for the sake of Claudius Goticus (268-270) - from whom Constantine
derived his descent - and of his father Constantius Chlorus.
The
historical authority of Julian is entirely doubtful. To write a
satire is everyone's right, but to give in it the representation of
Constantine's flight to Christianity in 326 instead of 312 is
unforgivable for a member of the dynasty himself, who could have
known all about it. Nor is it easy to swallow what Julian wrote in
his panegyrics on Constantius in 355 before he left for Gaul, and
when he was there. In the extermination of the members of the
dynasty - two uncles, seven nephews and some of the highest
officials - Constantius, to whom Julian in his letter to the
Athenians of 6 years later attributed all this, had spared him and
his half-brother Gallus, from whom the title of Caesar was taken
away. That Constantius did not trust Julian in the least, however,
was evident from the limited military assignment that he was given
to Gaul. That Julian was terribly afraid of Emperor Constantius is
particularly evident from the same letter. He had always spared the
great ruler in every respect and therefore, when he was proclaimed
emperor by the soldiers themselves in Paris, he hesitated to accept
this election. He asked Zeus for a sign, then modestly agreed: ώς
ίσασιν οί θεοί,
στένων της καρδίας,
and continued to call himself Caesar in his correspondence. Thus
reality developed, but in the oration mentioned of 355, i.e. 18
years after the massacres of 337, he had still exuberantly praised
the education of Constantius - although he was Christian - and his
character: "it seemed as if Constantine himself was still
present, in the government of his son" and of the son himself
he said: άρχων πράως
και φιλανθρώπως
while his δικαιότης
was praised. Julianus found it praiseworthy that Constantius himself
also praised his father. The fact that one is dealing here with only
a panegyric cannot take away the fact that Julianus spoke against
his conscience, and on top of that said that Constantius tried to
imitate the divine nature on earth. He expressly added to this that
he would not tell a lie instead of the truth, but the reader wonders
how he could have gotten all this out of his pen. Julian then
permits himself in another connection to call the church historian
Eusebius a worthless author and to disparage Christianity with the
worn-out terms άθεότης and
άποστασία, "a
malicious invention of the Galileans", while he himself adheres
to the Hellenic tradition, the traditional order. Julian's criticism
of Christianity in Κατά Γαλιλαίων
is not impressive; it remains the judgment of an outsider and is
partly not original either. The mocking description in Caesares of
Jesus' constant readiness to forgive sins and cleanse the most
impure people is reminiscent of the corresponding mockery in
Celsus's Λόγος άληθής,
two centuries earlier. In the sarcastic Misopogoon, addressed to the
Antiochenes, who had little time for him, Julianus proved himself
unfit for the emperorship only with his reconstructed Hellenism,
although he had managed to bring his own military deeds into the
light. He had enough humour to ascribe to himself ούδέν
καλόν θέαμα,
not a pretty sight in public (364D). Boissier's verdict on Julianus
raisonnements was: subtils, obscurs, dialectiques, enseignement
secret pour les privilégiés and on similar grounds
Toynbee explains the failure of Julianus' artificial intellectual
undertakings. The biographer Julianus is certainly not convincing.
Julian
was the first of the pagan historians or cultural critics to express
the view that with Constantine's conversion to Christianity the
great turning point in the history of the Roman Empire had begun,
which was taken over by Ammianus Marcellinus, while the writers who
came after them, Eutropius, Aurelius Victor, the Anonymus Valesianus
and the author of the Epitome, seem to underestimate the Christian
conversion as a historical phenomenon. Zosimus called the murders
and the subsequent conversion of Constantine the beginning of
impiety (άρχήν της άσεβείας).
He took over this motif for the downfall of the Roman empire, and
the image of Constantine as created by Julian, in his Historia nova
a century later, called him someone who had surrendered his life to
Tryphe, and connected Constantine's conversion with his remorse over
the death of Crispus, his eldest son from his first marriage, and of
his second wife Fausta; the death of Licinius Jr. is not mentioned.
The chronological confusion in the sloppy story, the importance of
which F. Paschoud recently attempted to demonstrate, is almost
inextricable. It comes down to this: Constantine could find no help
for atonement for his crimes from pagan priests, but an Egyptian
from Spain, who had managed to get through to the ladies of the
court, told him that the doctrine of the Christians could wipe away
all crime and that the evildoer who accepted it was immediately
freed from all sin (άμαρτία) (II
29, 3-5). Constantine then took the decisive step, took no further
part in the sacrifice for Jupiter on the Capitoline, and thereby
immediately incurred the hatred of the Senate and the people of
Rome. The confusion lies in the fact that Zosimus places
Constantine's conversion in 326, while the military ceremony in Rome
should be placed in 312, after Constantine's victory over Maxentius.
Everyone could have known that Constantine had accepted Christianity
long before 326, and also that he had been welcomed with jubilation
as a liberator in Rome in 312. Yet this story, as appears from the
Church History of Sozomenus, who wrote half a century before Zosimus
(439-450), was more or less the usual version of Constantine's
conversion in pagan circles. According to Photius, Bibl. cod. 98,
Zosimus had read Eunapius of Sardis, who wrote even earlier, around
400, and who may have borrowed Roman data from the Annals of
Nicomachus Flavianus. If so, these were bad or he made bad use of
them. Sozomenus tells the story differently again. Constantine is
said to have heard from the philosopher Sopatros, who was his friend
at the time, that there was no reconciliation possible for crimes
such as his. A chance meeting with bishops then brought the emperor
to Christianity. But Sozomenus himself did not believe this. It
seems to me, he says, that this has been invented by those who wish
to slander the Christian religion, and he continues: "even if
we assume that the emperor spoke to Sopatros or inquired of him by
letter about his desire (for reconciliation), it is certainly still
very improbable that the philosopher would not have known that
Hercules, son of Alcmene, was purified at Athens by the mysteries of
Demeter, after the slaughter of his children and after the murder of
Iphitos, whom he killed in spite of all justice while he was his
host and friend. Since, then, the Greeks had to offer purifications
for sins of this kind, this is sufficient to expose the lie of those
who have invented that Sopatros would have said the opposite; for I,
for my part, would not dare to assert that the man who was then the
most famous among the Greeks for his knowledge, did not know these
things." To make the confusion even greater, Zosimus also links
to his story the statement that Constantine showed his impiety by
suspecting and prohibiting the μαντική,
the haruspicium, because it could be used in a hostile way against
him (II 29, 4). We know, however, that the provisions against the
haruspicinia date back to 319 and 320. According to Zosimus,
Constantine took part in the parade in awe of his soldiers at Rome,
but, warned by the "Egyptian" that a φάσμα,
an apparition, disapproved of the ascent of the Capitol, he was able
to withdraw in time from further participation in the sacrifice.
Paschoud calls the whole story "une construction mensongère
élaborée avec des renseignements exacts". We can
do little with it, but we do learn from it how the pagan world in
the fourth centuries later thought of Emperor Constantine: not the
"abstentissimus imperator" of the panegyricus Nazarius
forty years earlier (Panegyr. X (4), XXXIV), but: an unstable and
immoral man, a murderer, for whom no reconciliation was conceivable
and who therefore converted to Christianity. For the sake of
comparison I add the picture that Aurelius Victor gives of
Constantine. "From his youth his powerful mind burned with
desire to rule" (Caes. 40, 2). He was incredibly fond of
praise. He adorned his princely garments with precious stones and
his head always with the diadem. But in many things he acted
excellently: with very strict laws he restrained slander, he
promoted the bonae artes, especially the study of letters, he wrote
laws himself and thought about them, responded to legations and
complaints from the provinces. A mocker rather than a flatterer. The
common people called him Trachala (thick-necked): during the first
10 years of his life excellent, the next 12 years a robber (latro =
usurper?), the last 10 years childish and so called because of his
excessive waste (Epitome 41, 11-16). Aurelius Victor has not a word
to say about religion. It is remarkable that so soon after the
event, the chronology of Constantine's transition was so little
established. Zosimus mentions as an intermediary in the transition
an Egyptian (or someone called Aegyptios), from Spain. Cardinal
Baronius in his Annales ecclesiastici in the year 324 has assumed
for certain that this must have been Ossius or Hosius, bishop of
Cordova. The great importance of this adviser of Constantine in
ecclesiastical affairs - who has been compared with the "imperial
minister in charge of ecclesiastical affairs" and with the
cardinal secretary of state - is well known and his American
biographer De Clercq also assumes this in the conversion of
Constantine, before or in 312, to be precise, but he cannot do
anything with the designation. Constantine himself, Eusebius and
Lactantius do not mention him in this connection.
3.
Constantine's conversion to Christianity
We
have essentially the two stories of Constantine's conversion, one as
he himself is said to have told it to Eusebius, who included it in
his Vita Constantini, I 27-29, the other in Lactantius' De morte
persecutorum. Under oath, but long after the fact, Constantine told
Eusebius how, before he went to fight Maxentius for Rome, he had
deliberated which god he would choose as an ally. His polytheistic
predecessors had usually been disappointed, but his father, who had
chosen the opposite path, had found a true protector in the one true
God. (28) He therefore humbly prayed to this God to reveal to him
who He was and to help him, and then, in the afternoon, he saw in
the sky a luminous cross (σταυρου
τρόπαιον έκ φωτός
συνιστάμενον
above the sun, with the words: τουτω
νίκα. The army with which he was marching also
observed the phenomenon. (29) He did not understand it, but the
following night Christ, the Son of God, appeared to him in a dream
with the same sign that he had seen in the sky, who commanded him to
copy it and to use it as άλεξημα,
protection, when confronting the enemy. (30) The next morning he
orders his goldsmiths and jewelers to prepare this. Eusebius
connects this (31) with the description of the λάβαρον
which consisted of a cross-shaped lance with the Christ monogram in
a wreath at the top, a banner on the crossbar and the images of the
emperor and his sons; all made very expensively. Especially from
this last we see that Eusebius is also confused with history,
because Constantine did not yet have sons in 312; he apparently saw
a much later copy of the labarum, after 325. The whole story seems
distorted and we do not know from which time it is. In his book De
morte persecutorum (On the death of the persecutors), which was
certainly written before 321, possibly 318/9, Lactantius describes
the event more briefly and without mentioning an informant. His text
reads: "The anniversary of Maxentius' reign was at hand, namely
October 27 [312], on which the five years were completed. In his
sleep Constantine was admonished to apply the heavenly sign of God
to the shields and thus to fight. He does as he is commanded and
with the letter X, crossed out with [sign] of which the upper end
was bent over, he indicates Christ on the shields. Protected by this
sign the army takes up arms". Ranke gave a different
interpretation, namely that Constantine allowed his soldiers to put
the monogram on their shields - if it was the monogram at all.
Both
stories differ from each other and show similarities.
The
main thing is that the story in Eusebius begins with the cross and
that Constantine did not understand the meaning of this, while
Lactantius speaks directly of the monogram of Christ. The main
similarity is the dream. In his addition Eusebius also comes to
speak about the monogram. We feel that we are on shaky ground here.
Especially because Eusebius in his Historia ecclesiastica, which
appeared in several editions, the last in 325, does not mention the
vision, while there is room for it, and it would even have been
necessary, especially where he compares the nature of Constantine's
victory over Maxentius with the passage of the people of Israel
through the Red Sea with God's help (IX 8, 4-8). The panegyrici of
312 and 321 do not mention it either. The highly critical Belgian
Byzantinologist Henri Grégoire - who rejected the entire Vita
Constantini as the work of Eusebius - sought the origin of the
legend in the VIle Panegyrie. This was pronounced in Trier in 310
after the downfall of Maximianus, Constantine's father-in-law, who
had been guilty of foolish policy and treason. Gibbon could not
contradict this last point, but did note that it would have been
more humane of Constantine not to have let it get that far. "But
the actions of Constantine were guided by reason and not by
resentment". Constantine visited a temple of Apollo at Autun
(Autessiodorum) and saw the god himself there, who, accompanied by
Victoria, offered him laurel wreaths, each a sign of thirty years,
so-called "vota publica", as they appear on coins and
medals. Lactantius is said to have given this a Christian meaning
and Constantine himself accepted the way in which the X - ten years
- was applied to the shields as a symbol that the Christians were
welcome without in the least deterring the Pagans. This resembles
the interpretation of Ranke mentioned above. Grégoire was
very sure of himself; according to him, religion had nothing to do
with the struggle between Constantine and Maxentius. "Tout est
dit sur la victoire couronnante de Saxa Rubra ou du Pont Milvius.
Tout est dit, sauf peut-être la vérité".
This "verity" indeed includes the fact that the panegyrics
do not mention the vision. The IXth, from 313, after the event,
pronounced at Trier, says: "Habes profecto aliquod cum illa
mente divina, Constantine, secreturn, quae delegata nostri diis
minoribus cura uni se tibi dignatur ostendere", you,
Constantine, certainly have some secret communication with the
divine spirit, who leaves the care of us to the lower deities and
deigns to reveal himself to you alone, a statement that from a
distance might remind one of Augustine's argument about the
felicitas. But there is nothing Christian in this panegyric. That of
Nazarius from 321, would lead one to expect something different,
because this orator himself came into contact with Christianity. He
is at length about the military deeds of Constantine, likes to play
with the past, lets the Dioscuri (XV 4), Fortuna (XXVII), Fama and
Victoria (XXXII 4) play their part, on the other hand knows a
caelestis favor (II 6), a divinitas (XIII 5), caelestis exercitus
(XXIX 1 2), who support the emperor as a general, but whom the human
eye does not see. The religious value of the following passage VII
3-4 is difficult to determine precisely: "From on high God
looks down on us as judge and, although the human mind has its
depths in which it hides its thoughts, the divinitas nevertheless
penetrates there to search them out completely and it is impossible
that the divine power, which gives us the spirit by which we live
and so many good gifts with which we nourish ourselves, should
withdraw itself from the cares of the world and make no distinction
between the behavior of the people whose lives it provides for".
And so on. Perhaps there is something Christian in these words:
"dubitare quisquam potest te per omnia subnixum deo vadere?"
(X 18,4), can anyone doubt that you advance in all circumstances
trusting in God? Who that God is, is not specified. When he
describes in detail the battle against Maxentius, Nazarius - in 321,
that is - appears to know nothing of the vision of Christ; he speaks
only of the military skill of Constantine and the fighting power of
his army. "Fulget nobilis galea et corusca luce gemmarum
divinum verticem monstrat. Auro clipeus, auro arma collucent"
(XXIX 5): Your noble helmet shines and with the flickering light of
precious stones it adorns your divine head. Your shield gleams with
gold, your weapons flash with gold. Not a word about the cross or
the monogram of Christ. With the panegyrici we do not get any
further than this neutral transitional thought and language. With
the Christian authors the vision occurs late or not at all.
That
Constantine believed to have won the victory over Maxentius under
the protection or through the power of the cross on 27 October 312
and to have brought Rome under his power and liberated it, is
confirmed in the meantime by the report of Eusebius about the statue
of the emperor, which with "the victory sign of the saving
suffering", that is, the cross, in the right hand, was placed
on the most crowded place in Rome. Constantine had this inscription
put on it: "By this saving sign, the proof of true courage, I
have liberated your city, torn from the yoke of the tyrant, and with
this freedom I have also restored the Senate and the people of Rome
to their old glory and splendor". In the Vita Constantini (I
40) it is worded somewhat differently: In the middle of the imperial
city he had this sign of victory (τρόπαιον)
over his enemies erected and expressly engraved in it with indelible
letters: this salutary sign as protection (φυλακτήριον)
of the Roman empire and the entire empire. He immediately had a long
lance in the form of a cross (σταυρου
σχήματι) placed in the hand of his
own statue in the most crowded place in Rome and ordered this
inscription to be engraved in it in his own words in Latin: these
are literally the same words. Eusebius wanted to tell us that
Constantine had the salutary sign of the cross placed in many
places, of which the statue in Rome is the most important example.
In the Laus Constantini (IX 40) this general frame of thought
returns, specified in this later developed sense, that he taught the
people with it that not military power but God is the giver of all
good and in particular of victory. The inscription is missing here.
We find this in the Latin translation of Eusebius' church history by
Rufinus as follows: "quia in hoc singulari signo, quod est
verae virtutis insigne (badge), urbem Romam senatumque et populum
Romanum iugo tyrannicae dominationis ereptam pristinae libertati
nobilitatique restitui". The difference with the Greek text is
that Rufinus speaks of the sign of true bravery and Eusebius of the
true sign of bravery; Rufinus will probably have the correct text.
The statue with the cross as an attribute signified Constantine's
recognition of the God who had given him victory, the first statue
of an emperor holding a standard himself, according to Alfoldi.
Eusebius tells us that Constantine, thanks to his innate piety
(έμφυτος εύσεβεια)
was not at all so keen on the applause of the people and was not at
all haughty because of it, but rather was grateful to the giver of
the victory (h.e. IX 9, 10; V.C. I 39,3, Heikel I, p. 26, 11-15),
hence the statue in this form.
On
the occasion of the Decennalia, which Constantine celebrated in Rome
in 315, the triumphal arch, still in its original state, was
consecrated to him by the Senate, the second important monument. The
inscription reads: "IMP. CAES. FL. CONSTANTINO MAXIMO P. F.
AUGUSTO SPQR QUOD INSTINCTU DIVINITATIS MENTlS MAGNITUDINE CUM
EXERCITU SUO TAM DE TYRANNO QUAM DE OMNI EIUS FACTIONE UNO TEMPORE
JUSTlS REMPUBLICAM ULTUS EST ARMIS ARCUM TRIUMPHIS INSIGNEM DlCAVIT"
(C.LL. VI, 1139). The tyrant refers to Maxentius, who must have had
a significant following (factio). Constantine's arms restored a
better legal situation (iustis armis). And that happened "instinctu
divinitatis mentis magnitudine", at the inspiration of the
deity and thanks to his greatness of mind. We cannot say what
influence Constantine himself exercised on the wording of the
inscription. The words "instinctu divinitatis" may be his.
A. Alföldi compares in the Vita Constantini III 12, 3, the
emperor's opening speech to the Synod of Nicaea, 325. In it the
emperor recalls his victories over the enemies thanks to the beck
(will) and assistance of the Almighty (νευματι
και συνεργεία
του κρείττονος,
Heikel, p. 82, 27). This is then, ten years later, still a
corresponding, one might almost say lasting terminology, which
leaves open the possibility of thinking of divinitas or ό
κρείττων (or τό
θειον), although nameless, as the God
of the Christians. More specificity cannot be extracted from it.
According to L'Orange, the "dei militares", under whose
protection Constantine's army had marched against Maxentius, were
Sol Invictus and Victoria: this pair of gods is depicted three times
on the frieze and pedestal reliefs of the arch. In the eastern
passage, the bust of Sol Invictus is located directly opposite
Constantine. L'Orange then wants to interpret the abstract
"divinitas" of the large inscription on the basis of these
concrete representations. The inscription can only mean that
divinitas which the reliefs of the arch really present to us. The
"Sol Invictus Aeternus Augustus" - as he also appears on
coins - reveals himself in the emperor. In the form and with the
gesture of the Sun God, the raised right hand, he stands before the
viewer. L'Orange believes that these images of the cosmic powers Sol
(and Luna) fit "reibungslos" into the new, beginning
Christian world of thought, the end of which is the metamorphosis of
the entire ancient world, under the rising of a new sun, namely the
Sol Iustitiae above the Sol Invictus.
4.
The consolidation of Constantine's transition
With
all this in mind, we must not imagine that after the conquest of
Rome by Constantine under the sign of Christ, cross or monogram,
everything in the entire imperial and religious life and thought was
immediately set on hairs and strings. There is a single,
increasingly firmly working starting point, but otherwise we observe
a kind of tolerant or liberal, sometimes almost neutral policy. This
fixed starting point is the acceptance by Constantine of Christ as
his patron god in the field. We shall have to accept this historical
form, even if it costs us some effort. Around that also the whole
style of the panegyrici with their big words, their glorying in
bloody victories, no more persecutions of Christians, but cruel
punishments - the disgusting messing about with the head of
Maxentius, which reminds us of the same with the head of Gaspard de
Coligny - magnificent animal games and then again clemency towards
the vanquished, all that seems as pagan as possible. The statues and
the triumphal arch are Roman and not evangelical. The only change is
that complete religious tolerance now prevails in the empire.
Between
the two inscriptions of 312 and 315 falls the decision for tolerance
of 313. We know it from two texts, by Eusebius and by Lactantius in
the form of executive decrees, which go back to discussions between
Constantine and Licinius, Augustus of the East, which were held in
Milan in February 313, where Licinius married Constantine's
stepsister, Constantia. The starting point is complete freedom of
religion for Christians and all others, without any disturbance or
molestia, and indeed so that the "summa divinitas, whose
religio - veneration - we serve in spiritual freedom, may grant us
her favor and goodwill in everything". This "summa
divinitas" had been described as broadly and vaguely as
possible a few lines earlier as "quidquid est divinitatis in se
de caelesti", whatever divinity is enthroned in heaven. Now in
April 311 Galerius, as Augustus of the second tetrarchy, had already
issued a toleration edict a few days before his death, also in the
name of Constantine, which allowed everyone to be Christians again
and to restore the church buildings "provided that they would
do nothing against good order". The Christians were ordered "to
pray to their God for our salvation and that of the state and of
themselves, so that the state may prosper in every respect and they
may live safely in their own places". With this palinodia
[=withdrawal] an end had already been put to the last great
persecutions, which Galerius had instigated Emperor Diocletian, but
which had failed in their effect. "Their own God" (τον
έαυτων θεόν)
is actually more clearly defined in this text than in that of 313,
which speaks of the summa divinitas or whatever lives in heaven. It
seems to indicate an attempt to create as gradual a transition as
possible from Roman to Christian concepts in the new text of 313. No
explicit contrast, where it can still be avoided.
This
can also be read from the money that was put into circulation. The
small change often reflects the political situation. At the
beginning of our period, the coins of Constantius Chlorus and
Constantine often show Mars as a Gallic deity and later, apparently
as a personal choice of Constantine, Sol Invictus.
Around
319, however, the gods slowly begin to disappear from the special
productions. Licinius mints a coin for the last time with an emperor
making a sacrifice. A cautious line is maintained, only in certain
editions do Christian elements penetrate, which only become dominant
towards the end of Constantine's life. According to von Schoenebeck,
while A. Alföldi already starts the Christian symbolism, in
particular the Christ monogram, earlier. He explains the star on the
emperor's helmet that appears on a silver coin from Trier, 312/313,
as a simplified Christ monogram. From 315 dates a silver penny from
Ticinum (Pavia), which clearly shows the monogram XP on the
emperor's helmet and above the left shoulder the scepter, i.e. a
cross with the globe on it. From 320 onwards the vexillum appears
and from 326 dates a special edition that shows the labarum, as
Eusebius describes it, with the legend urn: "spes publica".
The conclusion is that the money was only gradually Christianized,
if one may express it that way. It should not be imagined that the
coin dies could be changed from one day to the next. The emperor
did, however, concern himself with many large and small coins in
various cities; the official images of the "sacra vestis"
were very important. Here, a two-sidedness, promoted by the loss of
content and meaning of the old religious symbols, can be repeatedly
observed; they were, so to speak, harmless. From Sirmium, the
capital of Illyricum, a Constantine solidus is known, in which
Constantine is depicted with the labarum and protected by the Sun
God. Syncretism in Constantine's thinking certainly does not mean
this. It is one of those unimportant but understandable phenomena,
which did not disturb his cautious policy.
A
similar picture is provided by Constantine's legislation. Admiring
contemporaries declare that the exceptionally gifted emperor
personally collaborated on the formulation. Until the end of his
life Constantine did not issue an absolute ban on the adherence to
and practice of pagan religions, although Eusebius does speak of the
demolition of temples. The first law is from his son Constantius,
341 (Cod. Theod. XVI 10, 2), with the bold words: "cesset
superstitio, sacrificiorum aboleatur insania". He was convinced
that he was acting in accordance with the "lex divi principis
parentis nostri". Now we do not know of such a formal law of
Constantine himself, so that the words must have been those of the
compilers of the Codex Theodosianus. But it may be assumed with
certainty that for them and for Constantius this law of 341 was the
inevitable realization of Constantine's unspoken wishes. All the
more interesting in this later light is the cautious development in
the very frequent legislative work of Constantine. A few examples
from the larger whole must suffice. In 313 Constantine began to
grant privileges, such as exemption from "munera civilia",
to clerics of the Catholic Church, who were placed on an equal
footing with state priests and officials. He did not grant this
freedom to clerics of the Donatist schism, only to "Catholics"
and, moreover, in the long run he took measures against the
profiting from these commercial, and not for personal advantage,
privileges (Cod. Theod. XVI 2, 1, of 313, October 31; cf. Eusebius,
h.e. X 7, 1.2; X 6, 1-5; Cod. Theod. XVI 2, 2, of 319, October 21;
XVI 2, 3, of 320, July 18; XVI 2, 4, of 321, July 3; XVI 2, 6, of
326, June 1; XVI 2, 7, of 330, February 5 4 • In 315 the
sentence to participate in the gladiatorial games was still a
punishment (Cod. Theod. IX 18, 1) and games in general continued to
exist under certain restrictions (XV 12,1, of 325, October 1),
gladiatorial games were later completely forbidden, although even
then without sufficient effect: for Valentinian I and Valens again
forbade condemning Christians to the games (IX 40, 8, of 365,
January 15). In 316 the first law appeared, which made the
manumissio of slaves possible before the clergy and church
community, followed by further extension in accordance with the
increasing public authority of the clergy (IV 8, la, of 316, June 8,
cf. 1, of 321, April 18 and Cod. Just. VII 1, 4). Of even more
far-reaching importance is the regulation of the "episcopalis
audientia", the decision of which was "pro sanctis
habeatur", i.e. episcopal jurisdiction without appeal, to which
each party could force the other in civil cases even against their
will (Cod. Theod. I 27, of 318, June 23; Const. Sirm. of 333, May
5). This jurisdiction, according to Dörries, paved a way out of
the snares of 1001 legal provisions and promoted the finding of the
truth with the authority of religion, the "superna potentia",
which the "secreta pectoris" knows how to discover. With
this correct point of view, Dörries somewhat weakens his own
starting point, that this jurisdiction was not so much intended to
combat corruption: it was. The two arguments are difficult to
separate. The "episcopalis audientia" already existed
before Constantine. That the constitution in question may be
regarded as an important testimony to the personal religious
attitude of the emperor, one can agree with Dörries. The first
Sunday laws, which prescribed rest at courts, because there was
fighting there, and for the craftsmen - because they seemed to make
so much noise - are from 321 (Cod. Theod. II 8, Ia and) and speak of
the "venerabilis dies solis", the day to which "veneratio"
is due, i.e. the Christian Sunday. It is also called the day of
salvation, day of light and day of the sun (V.C. IV 18, 3, Heikel p.
124, 19) and as late as 409 it occurs:
Dominica
die, quam vulgo solis appellant (Cod. Theod. I 8, 25). Farmers
remained free to harvest if necessary, in view of the weather
conditions. Conversion from Judaism was welcomed (Cod. Theod. XVI 8,
1, of 315, October 18; Const. Sirm. IV, of 336, October 21); the
terminology is that the convert opens himself "ianuam vitae
perpetuae". Favourable provisions were made for full-time
patriarchae vel presbyteri of synagogues so that they could properly
perform their office; the Jewish religion was recognised as a "lex"
and permitted, but renegotiation from Christianity to Judaism was
not.
The
strongest prohibition was the haruspicinia, which was a "praeterita
usurpatio" (Cod. Theod. IX 16, 1.2.3. of 321 or 324 and 319;
XVI of 10, 1 of 320 or 321, December 17). An exception was only made
for the investigation following lightning strikes in the palace or
other public buildings; this was considered an old consuetudo, a
"mos veteris observantiae". A good illustration of the
paganism that still dominated in the army can be found in the
acclamation of "praefecti, tribuni et viri eminentissimi"
to the emperor: "Auguste Constantine, dii te nobis servent:
vestra salus nostra salus: vere dicimus, iurati dicimus".
Unfortunately, this text cannot be dated; the years 326 and 320, but
also 316 or earlier are mentioned; certainly after 312. Constantine
will not have made too much objection to this polytheistic
acclamation; in the Codex Justinianus it is nevertheless
Christianized and reads there: "deus te nobis servet".
More important is that the emperor uses these words in a provision
with which he facilitates the rapprochement with himself: may the
"summa divinitas" always be gracious to me and preserve me
unharmed, as I desire, while the state is in a happy and flourishing
condition (Cod. Theod. IX 1, 4, of 325, September 14). This text is
from 325, the year of the Council of Nicaea, which dealt with
pointed theological questions, in which the emperor himself chose a
certain position. The term: "summa divinitas" as a general
designation of God with the omission of a name, therefore, as has
already been noted, does not occur only in the earliest or in the
pre-Christian period of Constantine. In a constitution already
mentioned, which forbade making things difficult for a Jew who
converted to Christianity, these words appear: we trust that
everyone through love for the deity, "divinitatis affectu",
will be safe in the entire Roman empire, while the honour due to us
remains assured (Const. Sirm. IV, of 336, October 21). This text,
which renews an older one, is from the last year of Constantine's
life. He gave protection to both a free Christian and a pagan slave,
without discrimination. Dörries considers it characteristic of
Constantine's way of thinking that a prospective Christian thus
enjoys God's protection within the framework of the state order, of
which the recognition or veneration of the emperor is the main
pillar. The remark is important, but we doubt whether a different
way of thinking and practice would have been possible for the Roman
statesman who had become or was becoming a Christian. This need not
be understood as a personal, excessive desire for power,
self-overestimation or ΰβρις. It is rather
an expression of Constantine's sense of calling. However conscious
he was of this, he at the same time sets limits to imperial
absolutism: decisions once established are not arbitrarily replaced
by others (Cod. Theod. IV (17), 1 Mommsen IV 16, 1, of 319, December
26). Policy, method and a good feeling for living tradition show
themselves again and again. "Consuetudo" and "usus
longaevus" are attributed "non vilis auctoritas"
(Cod. Theod. V 27, 1, of 319, April 24). Again, we cannot say which
words here are explicitly Constantine's own. The general train of
thought in the legislation remains thoroughly Roman. There is, if we
cannot now keep our own standards of feeling out of the judgment, a
certain degree of Christian humanization and moralization in the
legislation to be recognized, but there are also hard elements in
it, as we have already noticed in the panegyrics, and which we
should not criticize with modern sentiment. The total picture is
that of a profound change of thinking, which, however, does not
disturb the forms where preservation is still possible. With this
limitation, one can agree with Carl Andresen's judgment that after
the victory over Maxentius all political measures were imperatively
prescribed by the situation. Because the unity of the empire was the
emperor's great aspiration, he also acted accordingly with the new
religion. He had gained an understanding of another world.
5.
Controlled policy
That
is a characteristic of Constantine's government. The great and
unassailable place occupied by the church in it is clearly shown by
the application of the complete tolerance which had been granted to
Christendom - the great theme of Eusebius' jubilation in the tenth
book of his Church History -; secondly, by Constantine's attitude
towards Donatism in Africa; and thirdly, by his conduct in the
Melitian and the strife caused by Arius, both in Egypt. As for
complete tolerance, this term seems too weak in the case of an
emperor who personally chose for the church. But it is appropriate
because he was the Augustus of the pagan Roman empire. Thus he
decided that the church should recover all its possessions, and that
the servants of the church should have exemption from munera civilia
in order to be able to perform their ecclesiastical service without
hindrance. Christianity takes its place in the political whole,
insofar as worship is public and even promoted, but without the
church playing a role as a political instrument; it remains under
its own order. Instrument, and indeed in God's hand, Constantine
feels himself, between state and church. When Donatism appears in
the province of Africa, calls for the emperor's intervention against
the Catholic authority in the church and the emperor responds, he
regulates, organizes and orders the procedure, but this takes place
entirely according to ecclesiastical order. When the Donatists do
not like the course of events and they appeal to the emperor
himself, the latter answers to the council of Arles (314): "They
demand my judgment while I myself await the judgment of Christ",
by which Constantine meant the pronouncement of the council. How
deep ecclesiastical disputes tend to be, because they simply have
religious roots, Constantine has underestimated in the matter of
Donatism, but also in the matter of the third point, especially the
Arian struggle. In all cases he cared about the unity of those who
provided the worship recognized as lawful. Public worship was a
central issue in Constantine's Roman Christianity. He did not
dominate the church. From the beginning we repeatedly find the term
ό συνθεράπων
ύμων, your fellow servant, as he positions himself
next to, not above, the bishops. It sounds modest, and it is, and
should in no way give the impression that the emperor, who was still
a catechumen and unbaptized, fulfills a function in the church
comparable to that of the bishops; fellow servant means less than
this. With the words θεράπων
γνήσιος one should not think
of the church but of God: Your true servant. When one quotes
Constantine's famous statement to the bishops: άλλ'
ΰμεις μέν είσω
της εκκλησίας,
έγω δέ των έκτος
ύπο θεου καθεσταμένος
έπισκοπος άν
είην you are bishop over those within, I am
appointed by God as bishop over those outside the Church, then the
word "bishop", overseer, is clearly used the second time
in a figure of speech, nothing more. In no case is it meant that the
real bishops were entitled to the government of the church, and the
non-real bishop, the emperor, only to the management of the goods of
the church, as was previously thought. A serious underestimation of
the theological problems - which can hardly be attributed to Ossius
as Constantine's ecclesiastical advisor - is already apparent from
the first imperial letter to Alexander, bishop of Alexandria and
Arius from words such as: not at all worthy of such great hostility,
small and insignificant cause, useless analysis, etc. Constantine
found in his annoyance at this that insufficient thought had been
given; questions such as those now being raised should have been
postponed and not answered, certainly not in public. The council of
Nicaea was then convened by the emperor to discuss these
controversial issues. It cannot be said that he dominated this, but
it can be said that the church listened to him - until he himself
later came under the influence of the Arians. His aim was to do
εύταξία, ένωσις
and όμόνια, πίστις
είρήνη. If necessary, the emperor
threatened police intervention against άταξία.
His impulsive character often led him to use harsh insults in his
letters, as one encounters everywhere in the polemics of that time.
But the demand to obey his όροι is then again
essentially specified: άκολούθως
τω έκκλησιαστικω
και άποστολικω
κάνονι, in accordance with the
ecclesiastical and apostolic rule. In summary, Seeck has rightly
said that Constantine could have seized power over the church, but
did not do so and did not want to. In the church he encountered that
other world, which no people, not even the emperor, have at their
disposal.
6.
Attempt at interpretation
So
far some generally known facts from many. Now the theory - if it can
be found.
In
his famous commentary on the adage: Dulce bellum inexpertis Erasmus
makes the simple and lucid remark: "mundus habebat su as leges
antequam exoriretur euangelium", the world had its own laws
before the Gospel appeared. Herein were rooted the difficulties of
the encounter between world and Gospel, between the Roman Empire and
Christianity. With these words it is also explained as simply as
clearly how one should weigh the task to which Constantine felt
called. One can also extend them to the idea that world and Gospel
both have and keep their own laws. In his Apologeticum Tertullian
said around 195 that Pontius Pilate was a Christian in his heart and
reported everything about Christ to the emperor. To this
unhistorical statement, which already occurs in Justin Martyr, he
links the remark: even the emperors would have believed in Christ,
if they were not necessary to the world or if they could have been
emperor and Christian at the same time. This is the main problem
that will occupy us now. "Nothing is so foreign to us as
politics". With the Christianization of the Roman Empire, begun
by Constantine the Great, the validity of this statement of
Tertullian seems to end. Unless one argues that Constantine's
conversion to Christianity and Christianization also became the
downfall of the Roman Empire, as Julian the Apostate and Zosimus
taught. Gibbon argued at the end of chapter 14 of The Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire that the wars, accompanying the autocracy
of Constantine, did much to weaken the empire by the great cost in
blood and money and the constant increase in military burdens. He
spoke of a revolution, of which the foundation of Constantinople and
the establishment of the Christian religion were the immediate and
memorable consequences, the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire.
What really happened and what was going on in Constantine himself?
People
have often tried to penetrate into the religious life of Constantine
and to form a picture of the probable phases in his religious
conviction, wrote Jakob Burckhardt at the beginning of the last
chapter of Die Zeit Konstantins des Grossen (1852). "This is a
completely superfluous Mühe", he continues: "in a man
of genius, to whom ambition and lust for power grant not an hour of
rest, there can be no question of Christianity or paganism, of
conscious religious or irreligious disposition: such a person is
essentially completely irreligious, even if he imagines himself to
be in the midst of a church community. He knows the sacred only as a
vague memory or superstitious temptation". After having once
again rejected Eusebius as a reliable source for the knowledge of
Constantine, Burckhardt then speaks in a great paradox of: "the
moronic egoists, who demand the great merit, understand Christianity
as a world power and then treat it as such". Otto Seeck -
antipode of Burckhardt, as Stähelin says - (1921) has in his
Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt a very critical chapter
on Christianity as a doctrine, a particularly bad caricature, but
nevertheless draws a highly plausible picture of Constantine as a
Christian and explains his historical position with this principle:
"Whoever has the sow for the master, is always anxious and must
be, because otherwise his profession is to be revealed". H.-I.
Marrou recently stated that the historian would like to be able to
make clear the connection between Constantine's very important
political decisions, his personal convictions and his inner
development. Unfortunately, he says, it is easier to formulate
hypotheses in this regard than to state precise and established
facts. It is from Constantine's sense of calling that one must, I
think, start, acknowledge it, let it be in its place and apply it in
order to understand him in his career. Whatever forms it took in
practice, in any case there lay the gateway of the other world into
his life and thought. He himself repeatedly gave expression to it. A
letter to Bishop Alexander and Arius begins as follows: In the first
place, it was my endeavor to unite the conception of God of all
peoples into one form, in the second place to restore and harmonize
the entire oikoumene, which lay prostrate as if in a serious
illness. These things I endeavored to achieve, one with the inner
eye of insight, the other to bring about by the power of the army,
in the knowledge that, if I could bring about unanimity for all
God's servants according to my wishes (εύχαις),
the state would also be as the fruit thereof would reap a change in
keeping with all pious insights. He saw himself as an instrument
(ήμετέρα ύπηρεσία)
and regarded this service (διακονία)
as a gift entrusted to him (δωρον). He
was not and did not see himself as God on earth, but as his servant.
It is perhaps not out of place to think of the lines: "But God
shall govern me as a good instrument". Or of the wise saying of
Augustine, that the just man who seems to command, in reality serves
(De civ. dei XIX 14). This is an evaluation completely contrary to
the coarseness of Voltaire: "Si l'on pense, que Constantin fit
tout servir à ce qu'il crut son intérêt, on ne
se trompera pas". In truth, ecclesiastical politics was an
indispensable or separable element in, and inspiration for, his
politics, and this complex whole was a divine assignment for him.
Among German-writing church historians, this difficult-to-analyze
structure has given rise to speak of "reichskatholische
Kirche", "reichskatholische Theologie". The objection
to this is that these terms can give the impression that the empire
or the state constitutes the norm of the church and determines
theology. That was precisely not the case under Constantine. A
rendering of the German terminology that does not cause
misunderstanding in Dutch is not easy to find; one must resort to a
description: the church and theology recognized (or accepted) by the
emperor and the empire, perhaps one can briefly say: the public or
official church and theology, which is not pretty, however, and is
too reminiscent of the position of the Reformed Church during the
Republic of the United Netherlands. Only Justinian treated the
Christian faith as the "empire ideology" more than
Constantine and even more than Theodosius, not fundamentally
different, but with rare consistency and this must always be clear
in the words that we use for the different periods. That consequence
certainly changed what Constantine did. In fact, it was not a
linear, evolving consequence, but new, uncontrolled elements of
power had entered into it.
Constantine,
who always showed that he wanted to respect tradition and maintain
continuity, governed with a controlled policy. But he governed
firmly. It has been said that he never lost a battle. What Emperor
Valens said to the bishops at the Synod of Milan in 355: όπερ
έγω βουλομαι
τουτο κανών,
έλεγε νομιζεσθω,
you must regard my will as ecclesiastical law, was never said by
Constantine, that was not his theory. As an emperor, however, he was
irresistible. To quote Seeck again, whose critical judgment no one
will underestimate: autocracy was more forced upon Constantine than
he pursued it, "the Sultanism, which the man he accuses has,
lays his nature all the way far". Eusebius sketches certain
features of Constantine's character in the words: το
στερρον του
τρόπου τη συμφύτω
φιλανθρωπία
κερασάμενος
"he mixed an inflexible sternness with an innate humanity, and
with an understanding of the psychological problem of religious
change. Since the κοινωνία
was so precious to him, the emperor did not want anyone to make it
difficult for his neighbor. "Everyone keeps what his soul
desires, and let him live accordingly." But Constantine also
prays that these may have the θυμηδίαν,
the inner joy may be received. And then literally in the long letter
to the provinces against polytheism: "No one may harm another
by what he has accepted with conviction. What one has learned and
understood, he may serve the other if possible; if it is impossible,
he shall refrain from it. For it is one thing to fight for
immortality voluntarily, another to force it by punishment. That is
my opinion, I have explained it more fully than I intended, because
I did not want to hide my belief in the truth, especially since
some, as I hear, say that the customs of the temples and the power
of darkness are now over. I would like to wish that for all people.
If only the great resistance of the evil error had not, to the
detriment of the common good, become immeasurably fixed in the
hearts of some".
All
these and many more varied expressions - and actions - of
Constantine are only nuances in his policy. This shows no real
hesitations, rather a firm conviction, but also the admirable
insight into, or at least feeling of Constantine for, what he could
do as emperor and where the limits of the possible were set by the
hard reality.
We
have already heard from Gibbon that Constantine's actions were
governed more by reason than by resentment. The serious reproaches
that were made to the statesman and the Christian Constantine at all
times, concern in the first place his warfare, or, more precisely,
the use he made of the cross, of the monogram of Christ, which was
shown on the armor and carried as labarum (λάβαρον)
by a very distinguished standard guard before the troops. Here lies
for many the fall of Christianity, it is the sting of the unnatural
combination of Gospel and world in the dominant form of the Roman
Empire. Historically it happened that way, the texts do not allow us
to argue about it. On the contrary: in the Vita Eusebius describes
that the emperor surrounded himself with clerics and that he had a
separate tent outside the camp - comparable to the tabernacle of
Israel on the desert journey - where he often withdrew to pray and
deliberate. There he sometimes had a divine appearance and with this
inspiration he would rush out of the tent and order his soldiers to
immediately break camp and draw their swords. They attacked
immediately and struck the enemy in such a way that the victory was
soon won and they could erect the trophies - τρόπαια.
This played a role, if we may trust Eusebius, still in 324, during
the battle against Licinius, that is, 12 years after the story of
the vision of the cross. We must try all the more to understand this
as a factor in Constantine's thinking, however much there might be
to say about the problem of military service in the first centuries
of Christianity.
The
data are complicated. Tertullian says that Christians, as loyal
citizens of the Roman state, not only pray for "fortes
exercitus", but even that Christians are to be found everywhere
in social life: "vobiscum militamus"; on the other hand,
however, he also declares: "how can anyone serve in war, or
even be a soldier in peacetime, without a sword, because the Lord
has taken it from them? Even if soldiers have come to John [the
Baptist] and accepted his precepts, even if the centurion has come
to the faith, every soldier has later ungirded the Lord by disarming
Peter". This also has to do with idololatry, which was
inseparable from the military essence.
Conversely,
canon III of the Council of Arles, convened by Constantine in 314
for quite different reasons (namely Donatism), stated that those who
threw away their weapons in peacetime were excommunicated. At the
court of Diocletian there were many Christians among the officials
and staff - the large church was opposite the palace - but there
were few soldiers. Lactantius goes particularly far when he declares
that all deaths - and that was actually the main point - not only in
games, but also in war and even as a result of a judicial sentence,
are forbidden by God: there is no exception to this.
In
contrast to this exaggeration there is an important policy provision
of Emperor Constantine, namely that ex-soldiers who had been
wrongfully dismissed because they had allowed their Christian
confession to prevail over their function, were now free either to
return to military service and their former rank, or to request an
honourable discharge. For, it was added, it is fair and fitting that
he who has shown such great courage and steadfastness in the danger
that befell him, may now enjoy rest or an honourable position of his
own choosing. It is therefore not at all questionable whether there
were Christian soldiers in service. But it is also certain that
Constantine did not demand the Christian confession from any of
them. Coercion did not occur here either. Constantine remained true
to the good Roman conviction, formulated by Tertullian: sed nec
religionis est cogere religionem. There is mention of soldiers who
go to church with the emperor and those who do not go to church; for
the latter there is a formula prayer that they had to pray on Sunday
in the open field outside the city, nothing more. H. Grégoire
believes that the text of this comes from Licinius, and from his
struggle with Maximinus, and was attributed to Constantine by
Eusebius in his Vita in another context - one of Grégoire's
arguments for the unreliability of Eusebius. Although there seems to
be much to be said for Grégoire's textual criticism, the
report about Constantine's tolerant ecclesiastical policy towards
his soldiers remains unaffected by it. It would go too far to go
into the historical reliability of the Vita Constantini in more
detail here. It may be recalled that this has been strongly
confirmed by the identification of the papyrus London 878 by A. H.
M. Jones (of the Dept. of Mss., British Museum) in 1954.
Equally
or even more serious reproaches which historians are wont to bring
against Constantine's government policy concern four executions. The
death of Maximian in 310 at Marseilles, probably suicide, has
already been mentioned. The high treason of Maximian, who after his
abdication continually sought the recapture of the purple, is
certain. He is called ambitious and untrustworthy (άπιστος).
It is not right to approach a political verdict of Constantine at
the beginning of the fourth century with the standard of modern
humanism, as Gibbon did, while one often forgets the numerous
judicial murders of which Licinius was guilty. The execution of
Licinius himself must certainly be attributed to his attempts, after
being defeated by Constantine and after Constantine's promise to his
sister, wife of Licinius, to spare him, to come into military
contact with enemies of the empire again. Zosimus considers it a
breach of promise by Constantine, according to his custom (ήν
γαρ τουτο αύτω
σύνηθες), but this is a
meaningless traditional judgment. Much more heavily on Constantine's
conscience seems to be the death of Crispus and Fausta, which
Julianus Apostate brings so strongly to the fore. Crispus was the
eldest son (307) of Constantine and his first - legal or not - wife
Minervina, gifted and beloved by the army, who became governor of
Gaul at the age of 17 and made a rapid, brilliant military career.
He was then suspected and accused of having taken part in a
conspiracy. Before or during the vicennalia, which Constantine
celebrated in Rome, he was unexpectedly brought before a closed
court and put to death at Pola in Istria. Someone has suggested that
during the vicennalia he may have reminded his father in a very
tactless manner of the agreed 20-year period of the first tetrarchy.
The fact that the son of Licinius was also killed at that time may
suggest that a political game was indeed being played, in which
Fausta wanted to clear the way to the thrones for her own sons. In
tradition, however, the reason is considered to be that Crispus, 20
years old and already a father himself, had an affair with Fausta,
then about 28 years old. Helena, Constantine's mother - who had
converted to Christianity with him - deeply upset about the death of
her beloved grandson, is said to have convinced Constantine that not
Crispus, but Fausta was the culprit, like the wife of Potiphar
(Genesis 39, 11-20), whereupon Constantine knew no other solution
than to have Fausta killed in an overheated bath. "Es steht
fest, zegt Seeck, dass Untreue der Grund war" and Helena has
retained her reputation as "magna femina", for example in
Ambrosius. Burckhardt's verdict is that anyone who acts in this way
is not a Christian: "The Christian Church has nothing to lose
from these fearful, but politically large-scale people, just as the
Paganism has nothing to gain from them". Neither Eusebius nor
any other writer who should have known about it mentions a word
about it; the matter was deliberately concealed and was apparently
obscure to the contemporaries themselves. The damnatio memoriae of
Crispus - and of Fausta -, which can be found on various monuments,
was never undone by the father, from which it can be concluded that
he was not able to convince himself of his son's innocence even
later. No historian has ever considered for long what these
executions must have cost Constantine personally. In the absence of
historical texts, everyone seems to think that he got away with all
this easily, and then judges accordingly. In the literature on
Constantine the Great, the work of Jakob Burckhardt will never lose
its classical place, even though the historical judgment of both the
emperor and his eulogist Eusebius Pamphili, bishop of Caesarea
Palestinae, has now been greatly changed by many, it has a quality
that makes it difficult to dismiss as outdated, even with changed
insight and more knowledge of the subject. Anyone who concerns
himself with Constantine will, if necessary without speaking about
it, feel the need to test himself against Burckhardt and to justify
himself to him, certainly on certain points. Also in comparison with
Eusebius' Vita Constantini, rightly characterized as έγκωμιαστικη
τετράβιβλος,
eulogy in four books by Photius, Bibl. cod. 127. Renewed study of
the Vita gave me cause to revise the judgment I pronounced on it
during the Academy Days IV in 1951 in Middelburg (pp. 31-49) and
therefore to make a different use of it now for the history of
Constantine than I did at the time. My image of Constantine himself
has hardly changed in the meantime. The Vita is a biography that
proclaims the praise of its hero, but on the basis of facts and with
the help of documents, and without sinking into rhetoric. Eduard
Schwartz recalls with good reason that Burckhardt, who did not
understand its language and had no insight into the literary form of
the Vita, passed the harshest judgment on it. "He who, however,
is not out to judge but to understand, will not appreciate the
historical value of this period that emerged from living history,"
he says. To interpret Constantine's attitude towards Christianity is
more difficult but more useful than to moralize about the "court
bishop". Eusebius believed in the blessing of the union of the
emperor and the church. Even if that were a wicked error, one may
not condemn him because he believed what all his colleagues believed
and according to which they also acted". The West only gave
Constantine cause for praise on festive occasions, but the Greek
world has given him a biographer who, despite the praise to which he
was forced by the prescribed style, did not forget that he was a
historian, according to Hans Lietzmann. He continues: this man was
Eusebius of Caesarea, who in a certain sense may be regarded as the
spiritual representative of the time of Constantine. In his life's
work - the Church History and the Life of Constantine - the turning
point of the times is faithfully reflected, his words resound with
the joy of victory that people enjoyed and the hope with which they
looked to the future. This is the situation that must be taken as a
starting point if one wants to judge Eusebius correctly. "Then
one easily avoids the temptation to follow the example of a
brilliant but not impartial judge "den ersten durch und durch
unredlichen Geschichtschreiber des Altertums". No greater
injustice can be done to the honest man". Felix Stähelin
has given us extensive information about the creation and history of
Die Zeit Konstantins des Grossen in the second volume of the Jakob
Burckhardt Gesamtausgabe (Berlin and Leipzig 1929) in the
introduction to the reprint of the second edition. In connection
with this, my friend H. Schulte Nordholt once again pointed out to
me the conversation between the Byzantinologist Heinrich Gelzer and
Burckhardt mentioned there. To Friedrich von Preen, who insisted on
a reprint of the book published in 1852, Burckhardt wrote (31 May
1874) that he greatly appreciated that he still showed so much
interest in "meinen alten vergessenen Constantin". In this
connection, Stähelin also quotes GeIzer. His article on
Burckhardt begins with the beautiful words: "Während fünf
Semestern I am an experienced student with a clear understanding of
the truth, with Jakob Burckhardt being able to listen to the history
of the whole body of knowledge and a new version of the originality,
and the human beings ranges in my view, who are present in my life
schwächlichen Epigonenzeitalter immer seltener zijn".
Gelzer and Burckhardt talked a lot about Constantine. The former
stated that he had come to serious Byzantine study through
Burckhardt's book. Burckhardt laughed and replied: "Mein guter
Konstantin! Who was I, yet green, if I was the writer. Was woolen
Sie? Das Buch is a long time ago!" Yet Gelzer noticed that
Burckhardt still liked to talk about it. It is his only work, of
which the great man single-handedly and with great care prepared the
second edition (1874). They did not agree on the content, and Geiser
saw in it the continuation of Burckhardt's aversion to Christianity;
the first two years he had studied theology but then turned to
history. Gottfried Kinkel then played a major role in the thinking
of the young Burckhardt. In this way he arrived at a, according to
Geiser, harsh and unjustified judgment of Eusebius and other
churchmen (p. 340), after which Geiser concludes by - more strongly
than Stähelin does - recalling the influence of Gibbon,
Voltaire and the encyclopedists on Burckhardt. "So konstruierte
er einen Konstantin à la Pompal, Tanucci or Kaunitz, von dem
der historische Konstantin natürlich toto coelo versreden ist"
(p. 355).
7.
The "Constantinian period"
Before
coming to a conclusion, a few words about a concept that is not so
much used by church historians as by politicizing theologians today.
It is said that we are experiencing "the end of the
Constantinian era" in our time. A decade ago, W. Kahle
(Marburg) criticized this use of words in an article. The criticism
begins with the simple observation that, strictly speaking, the
Constantinian period lasted from 306 until his death in 337 and that
therefore, when it is said that we are now experiencing its end,
Constantine is thought of as the one symbolic figure for relations
between state and church that lasted more than 16 centuries. The
impression is thus created that these relations have remained the
same throughout all that time, generally speaking. It is evident
that this is not the case. Already from Constantine to Theodosius,
and to Justinian, such significant developments occur that even then
one can no longer speak of agreement. Throughout the centuries, in
the East and in our West, and especially since the national churches
came into being through the Reformation, all possible forms in the
relations between states and churches, including the state church,
have been seen and can still be seen. The separation of church and
state in the French Revolution has become a new starting point in
this area. Kahle rightly says that the slogan: "das Ende des
konstantinischen Zeitalters" is not a church-historical
observation, but that there is a program in it. That program amounts
to this, that everything must be done to destroy the existing
relations between church and state, between church and people,
between church and social structure. Only then would a new freedom,
a clearer understanding of, and better possibilities for the service
of the church to the world arise. In 1974, W. Schneemelcher, church
historian in Bonn, was equally critical of the slogan. In our
country, too, this theme has been of special interest, and has been
since 1946 due to H. Berkhof's book, The Church and the Emperor,
which has also attracted much attention in a Swiss edition. This
historical study, stimulated by the war experiences, devotes its
first four chapters to the period before and after Constantine,
after which the book crosses this boundary and concerns itself
primarily with the difference in the historical position of the
church in the East and the West, Byzantinism and theocracy. The
reduction of the problem that lies in these terms has rightly
aroused criticism from the German church historian K. Aland
(Münster). However, the book is separate from the activist
modern formulation of the problem and could still have a remedial
influence on it now because it is fundamental in a historical sense.
The difference between the two methods of approach, the politicized
and the historical, is well indicated by a modern writer, who
declared that just as "the Constantinian period" did not
begin until 313, neither does it end in 1960 (or whenever). But then
it would be better not to call it that. Moreover, it remains
difficult to understand what convinced Christians see as the
importance of a dechristianized public life.
8.
Conclusion
After
having indicated this confusing phenomenon, it may perhaps be
permissible in conclusion to test the general question of the
relationship between church and state, between Christianity and the
world, to which Constantine gave a first answer for his time,
against the judgment of Augustine, born three quarters of a century
after him, a Western theologian, who spoke wisely about it in De
civitate dei. His "mirror of princes" was already recalled
at the beginning, and the expression "the quality of existence"
was used (p. 7). The historical portrait of Constantine has not
received much drawing from it, Augustine was apparently not aware of
the facts in detail. For him, Constantine and Theodosius were but
examples in his grand distinction between civitas dei and civitas
terrena. These are two different worlds, each with its own reality,
in which man lives, but between which he must choose. Both worlds
are mixed: "perplexae sunt istae duae civitates in hoc saeculo
invicemque permixtae, donec ultimo iudicio dirimantur", these
two states are confused and mixed with each other in this world
until they are separated in the last judgment (De civ. dei I 35).
This therefore applies for the entire duration of history: "ab
initio usque in finem permixtae", and all that time both
civitates enjoy the temporal goods equally but "in different
faith, different hope and different love" (XVIII 54). Although
mixed, they are thus qualitatively clearly distinguished. In the
general phenomena of life, meanwhile, hardly anything of this can be
observed externally: "temporalia bona et mala utrisque Deus
voluit esse communia". He rules over the evil and the good, as
we have already heard. "Quamdiu permixtae sunt ambae civitates
utimur et nos pace Babylonis" (XIX 26), as long as both states
are still mixed, we too enjoy the peace of Babylon. This applies to
ordinary believers, but what about the imperator, who is responsible
for the world and for that peace of Babylon, for the felicitas
terrena? Augustine does not diminish his task and its weight, his
responsibility. Is the "Tertullianische Zeitalter" with
the experimental doctrine that the Roman emperor could not be a
Christian, over for him? History has spoken, and differently than
Tertullian could ever have thought. But Augustine does not become
the theoretician of the Christian empire. The true God alone gives
the power to rule to the pious and the ungodly "as it pleases
Him in whom nothing wrongly pleases" (V 21). It matters little
to a mortal man under whose empire he lives, as long as those who
rule over him do not force him to commit impieties and injustices (V
17). The law of gloria, honor and imperium is virtus, and he
therefore applauds the fact that the ancient Romans possessed
temples to Virtus and Honor (V 12, 3). Judging and accepting in such
relative terms, the civitas dei, who makes a pilgrimage on earth,
obeys the laws of the state without hesitation (XIX 17), and,
insofar as this is in keeping with pietas and religio, takes up the
cause of the state and adapts itself (XIX 18). It can even use the
strong arm of the state when the "suadibilis doctrina",
the convincing consultation, remains without prospect; then
"terribilis disciplina" may be unavoidable (XVIII 57).
These and similar points were not foreign to Constantine. We have
also heard how Augustine praised Theodosius for his positive, very
just and merciful legislation in favour of the toiling church
(laboranti ecclesiae, V 26). Augustine's own experiences with the
stubborn Donatists had strengthened him in this line of thought.
Nevertheless,
Constantine the Great and Augustine are far apart in many respects.
The concepts of civitas terrena and civitas dei did not yet exist
for Constantine and he also did not possess the view of the duality
as expressed by Augustine in these terms. For Eusebius, Constantine
had messianic significance and he was chosen by God to realise what
was potentially given with the theophany - which in Eusebius takes
the place of the incarnation. This does not allow for dualism. For
Constantine himself, it was still different. A certain reserve with
regard to church and theology was a clear characteristic of his
imperial policy, which incidentally makes an absolutist impression.
Not everything he wanted, believed and thought he could realize,
reality simply did not lend itself to that, and he recognized that.
He did say of himself: "I am that man who has dedicated his
thinking with pure faith to God, man of God", ό του
θεου άνθρωπος"
for I am Your man", έγω γαρ ό
σος άνθρωπος,
Yours in short. As θεραπευτης
του κρείττονος,
servant of the Highest, his task was to establish peace in the
world, there he was alone ruler for a pax comparable to the pax
Romana but with a great new element in it. He wanted that in the
οίκουμένη that pax
would be based partly on the worship of the one true God. He tried
to achieve it in ecclesiastical matters, which were hardly ever in
the air, by προσφώνησις
and νουθεσία,
persuasion, which can be compared with the "suadibilis
doctrina" in Augustine. The strong arm was also available if
necessary to promote unity in the church within the home as an
example and interest of the first order for the world. "One
should not abandon erring ones to error". Fear of divine wrath
in case of negligence made him intervene. It is simply not possible
to always indicate the boundary in a modern way between cool
government responsibility and - let us say - missionary
consciousness in a great man like Constantine. "All too often
that which essentially belongs to the higher level turns out to be a
task of the emperor, and then unmistakably in a pre-Christian form",
according to Dörries. One can adopt Seeck's judgment that
Constantine did not sin in one way or another more than was
inevitable for an emperor. To put it in Augustinian terminology:
both civitates are perplexae and permixtae, and that has its
consequences, in a personal sense, for those who are called to rule.
Constantine
was not the Christian emperor, whose image the early Middle Ages had
formed, even before Charlemagne from Augustine's De civitate dei,
the rex iustus, who creates the "aetas aurea", the
imperator felix, whom we already got to know at the beginning. It is
known from the Vita Caroli Einhard that Charlemagne liked to have
Augustine, and in particular De civitate dei, read to him. Ernst
Bernheim devoted an important book to the development of the
medieval conception of the "imperator felix" in 1918,
which was heavily contested, among others by W. Kamlah, who seems to
destroy the entire historical theory of Charlemagne's ideology based
on Augustine.
Kamlah's
work is entitled Christentum und Geschichtlichkeit and raises the
question of whether and how Christianity, which is a religion, can
take on historical form. If we assume that he translates the concept
of "civitas dei" not as "Gottesstaat" but as
"Bürgerschaft Gottes", it is clear from the outset
that we will no longer get out of the dialectical train of thought.
And, I believe, unavoidably; but the extensive discussion on the
entire subject cannot be discussed here in more detail.
Kamlah
also deals with the Constantine period. To begin with, he calls
Eusebius the first Byzantine court theologian - which is not
correct, one can at most call this ecclesiastical archivist a
forerunner of the Byzantine court theologians - and says that
Augustine does not follow in his footsteps, insofar as he is
reserved about the possibility of identifying imperium romanum and
church by Constantine and Theodosius. This is, however, too much
said, it was not so with Constantine, in distinction from
Theodosius. But leaving this aside, Kamlah means by this what has
already been noted, namely that it matters less by whom one is
governed, provided that no matters are required that conflict with
religion. Not only was the church, according to Kamlah, already
prepared for Constantine, the Roman state had also already come a
long way towards the church. A "profane" state without any
political cult was unthinkable in the fourth century. "Roma
aeterna" was a confession of faith. The experiment of
Heliogabalus with the Syrian Baal and that of Aurelian with the Deus
Sol Invictus had failed. The Christian experiment of Constantine,
however, succeeded in the shortest possible time, in which
Christianity was abused as a state religion - says Kamlah - in a
role that did not originate from Christian, but from pagan-Roman
tradition.
This
view, which also occurs in others, is much too general and does not
do Constantine justice. Of course Constantine did not stand outside
the framework of thought of his time, and the emperor was also
strongly framed in his function. But we have repeatedly seen how he
spared the church's own authority. He knew in the church, or rather
in what the church, which was a new and unheard-of well-organized
element in Roman society, advocated, that is, in the Christian
religion, that he was dealing with a greatness that went far beyond
and above all his own imperial thinking and power. Constantine did
not manipulate the church. Kamlah maintains that the court
theologian Eusebius, following in the footsteps of Origen, built up
a theology of the Christian Roman polis and that he saw the Old
Testament promise of peace for all peoples already fulfilled in the
pax romana, and therefore all the more in the pax constantiniana. It
is important to note here, what is often overlooked
it
is seen that there is a great difference whether one hears
Constantine speaking about himself or Eusebius speaking about
Constantine. This is actually what Kamlah starts from and he devotes
a separate paragraph to it under the title "Augustins Absage an
die eusebianische Reichstheologie". He explains that for
Augustine, in contrast to Origen and the early apologists, it is
unthinkable that the civitas of the Romans would transform itself
into the civitas dei. "But it would be conceivable, if
necessary, a polis that abolishes its bond with the gods and
replaces it with the bond with Christ. In this spirit, Constantine
and his successors have caused the altars of the gods to fall and
granted privileges of them to the churches. In this way a Christian
empire had come into being insofar as public worship had become the
service of Christ. But even a Christian state in this sense is not
known or acknowledged by Augustine, at least not in De civitate
dei". So much for Kamlah. After the capita on the felices
imperatores, with which I began above, and in which Constantine and
Theodosius were the great examples, Augustine does not arrive at a
doctrine of Christian emperorship and he only acknowledges the
possibility that God's grace from time to time gives the world a
Christian emperor. God sometimes entrusts earthly rule to a pious,
then again to an unpious prince according to His good pleasure.
These were alternately Marius, Caesar, Augustus, also Nero, the
Vespasiani, suavissimi imperatores, the terrible Domitian, the
Christian Constantine and the apostate Julian. From these changes
Christians must learn that a Christian government belongs to the
temporal goods that one can do without if one realizes that one is
only in a foreign land on earth. Augustine is, however, not always
entirely consistent in this terminology. Although he does not and
cannot acknowledge a "Konstantinian Turn" according to the
relativizing principles developed here, he nevertheless uses,
especially in the apologetic chapters of De civitate dei, the
expression "christiana tempora". He makes it clear, for
example, that it was thanks to christiana tempora, to the Christian
character of the times that were then experienced, that the
destruction of Rome in 410 by Alaric had not gone much further. This
term also occurs in Ambrose. We now live in Christian times, said
the Milanese bishop, and therefore the ara Victoriae must leave the
curia and the Roman cult can no longer claim state subsidies.
Although there seems to be a strong consolidation in this, Ambrose
nevertheless, dialectically, also had an eye, thanks to certain
experiences, for the other side. In his funeral oration De obitu
Valentiniani he let slip: "it is better that emperors persecute
bishops than that they love them". It remains that paradoxical.
Thus Augustine cannot have meant a solid "christianum imperium"
with "christiana tempora". Civitas terrena and civitas dei
cannot merge or merge into each other, the Middle Ages did not
interpret Augustine rightly in this respect. Augustine did not agree
with the Historia adversus paganos of his pupil and friend Orosius.
But that does not yet interpret Constantine the Great. Constantine
accepted Christianity instead of the religio romana and gave it its
place. That had great consequences. That he saw the perspective of a
Christianized Roman empire cannot be denied on the basis of his own
words, but he did not have a theory about it. In vain will one
search in his history for a word such as Alcuin addressed to
Charlemagne in certain circumstances: ecce in te sola salus
ecclesiarum Christi recumbit, on you indeed rests the entire welfare
of Christ's churches. He was in a duality of thought because he was
emperor and Christian. The fact of his late baptism, namely on his
deathbed, proves this. He did not postpone baptism for convenience,
but precisely because he believed in it and took this sacrament
completely seriously. He lived in an enormous problematic, and this
makes the image of the first Christian emperor in his majestic
figure and with his incomparable powers and merits so approachable.
Two
other answers to the great question: what to think of the Christian
faith of Constantine, what to think of Christianity that obtained
its great public place in the Roman Empire under his reign, may find
a place here.
It
is necessary for the historian to try to adapt his thinking to that
of the first half of the fourth century. But therein lies the great
difficulty, which makes him feel constantly uncertain. A good start
was made in our time by the American church historian K. Scott
Latourette in his original History of the Expansion of Christianity.
He breaks open the problem by thi
ch
to ask whether Christianity would have achieved victory without
Constantine. Although no one can give an answer to this, he states
that any reasonable ruler would have had to see that the
persecutions had failed and that whoever had the hope and ambition
to bring the empire - or a significant part of it - under his
authority, had in any case to try to come to an agreement with the
church, which, despite all pressure, had become a new and highly
important, clear and strong organization in society. It is therefore
obvious to assume that, if Constantine had not come to power or had
acted less positively towards it, another would soon have arisen who
would have made Christianity the public religion. In response to the
further, more specific question of how the Christian religion
achieved spiritual victory, Latourette proposes ten points of view
for consideration, which I will briefly summarize here. The victory
of Christianity came about:
Thanks
to the support of Constantine...
As
a result of the increasing disintegration of society...
Thanks
to the excellently developed organization of the church...
By
the "inclusiveness" of Christianity that embraced all
classes and races... Thanks to the intransigence as well as the
flexibility of Christianity...
Because
Christianity provided what the Greco-Roman world expected and
desired from religion and philosophy, and did this better than its
competitors...
Thanks
to its ancient Jewish origins and its revered Scriptures...
By
the belief in miracles...
Thanks
to its high moral quality.
And
finally, by the creative force behind all this, which brought about
a revolution in the lives of all who opened themselves to it: Jesus.
Here
Latourette has approached the limit at which the historian is
inclined to stop. Yet "the uniqueness of Jesus", which
Latourette thus mentions by name, cannot be sidelined, if one does
not want to remain at a level where only apparently rationally
verifiable motives apply, which have their inspiration from nowhere
and therefore remain essentially unexplained. The historian of
religion or church must dare to cross that boundary here. This
becomes apparent if one places, for example, the argument of Arnold
Toynbee next to that of Latourette.
Religiously,
philosophically and politically, says Toynbee, the times had changed
since Heliogabalus and Aurelian. The religious vacuum in the hearts
of the subjects had to be filled by a living, not a constructed,
religion. This was there, not imposed from above, but revealed in
the social underclass, and Constantine had understood this: the
service of the almighty God was set against the tame and impotent
Sol invictus, who was truly strong and could not be trifled with
(intractable). No God who, although formally the emperor's patron,
was in reality only his puppet, unable to win the hearts of the
emperor's subjects. There remained only one alternative: the
imperial authority itself had to place itself under the aegis of a
living religion, which had its own independent existence and was not
critically examined by the subjects because it had been put together
by the authorities for its raison d'état. These conditions
were fulfilled in the Roman empire by Christianity, whose spiritual
independence from all politics had been proven by a long history of
martyria, at the beginning of which stood the cross of the Founder.
The step that Constantine took was revolutionary, especially in this
respect, that he bought the new religious sanction of the empire at
the price of his subjection to the spiritual authority of the church
- the form in which Christianity was visible and tangible - which
was not under government supervision, on the contrary, had hitherto
shown itself to be unmanageable. In this way the emperor-convert
made himself dependent on the grace of the church. That became a
permanent decision. The inability of a subsequent emperor to
dethrone the thus officially established higher religion has been
demonstrated by the failure of Julian.
Toynbee
works with the terms: religions and higher religions, and he
contrasts "the old order and the new gospel", of which he
says that in this case new and old are irreconcilable. He also uses
the gospel words: I have not come to bring peace but a sword (Mt.
10:34) and: woe to you when men speak well of you! For that is what
their fathers did of the false prophets (Luke 6:26). The problem of
the relationship of the higher religions to the old order, he says,
is simple, as long as the old order prohibits and persecutes them;
it becomes complicated and difficult when the old order proves
willing to negotiate. Then the dangers of weakening and the
consequences of mass conversions threaten - and that is what
happened. All the means to share a concordat with institutions that
embody and maintain something of "the old order" is as
much as to blunt the edge of the sword that the higher religion -
the church - needs precisely to fulfill its own spiritual mission.
And so it can be diverted from its mission, even channeled back into
the service of the old establishment.
These
observations, the last of which take on a more general character,
are consistent with what church historians have been saying for so
long about the history of the fourth century. If we now compare
Toynbee's views with those of Latourette, they agree above all in
that both observe a religious vacuum in which there was room for,
perhaps we may say: that called for fulfillment. The difference is
that Toynbee speaks of a new living religion that had come to light
in the social underclass, without saying from what source or
inspiration, while Latourette explicitly names the "uniqueness
of Jesus" as the source, as the actual explanation, behind the
many phenomena that can be observed in the great change. In my
opinion, the church historian may well supplement the cultural
historian in this way. Even further, the Berlin church historian
Karl Holl at the time went into the question of why Christianity had
won over the religions in the old world, in which he also in fact
put the actual religious problem more sharply. Unlike Latourette and
Toynbee and so many others, he assumed that the old religions were
not at all so empty, meaningless and dead, but alive and still
possessed power, as Joh. Geffcken depicted them. Not through
flexibility, syncretistic adaptation and absorption did Christianity
rise above all others, but through its most essential depth, which
Celsus and Julian could only mock, but which struck those who opened
themselves up to it in the heart and renewed them: the forgiveness
of sins. Harnack, who himself, as a historian, had always followed a
somewhat different path to explanation, has called Holl's brilliant
examination of this great religious-historical problem from late
antiquity the best that had been said about it for a long time.
Although this was half a century ago, it is still just as valid.
Let
us return to Constantine himself. In the Roman Empire, Christianity
acquired the place of recognized religion under his leadership. This
did not happen without the inner conviction of the emperor himself;
and this conviction was not an opinion that he had formed for
himself or to which a realistic policy had led him, but an effect
that had taken possession of him, to which he first submitted and
which he then vigorously advocated in all situations. From the
documents in Eusebius one can follow this development. It is more
adequately expressed than with the quoted words of Seeck that, once
begun, the following phases were prescribed to him in a compelling
manner. Although it may have looked rather remarkable in the
beginning, and on the many battlefields, according to our strongly
evolved feelings and concepts, we must realize that the
Christianization of the Roman Empire in the hands of the emperor
could hardly have begun otherwise than with cultic and legal forms,
and had to work from outside, one might even say, inward. Without
institutions, Christianity does not come to fruition either. That
was the case in the culture of Roman society in any case. Tolerance
on both sides did not guarantee that everything would proceed
without shocks, but it did guarantee that the goal would be
approached. Of Constantine, the central figure, it can at least be
said that he had a sense of the other world - which Augustine would
call the civitas dei - and, according to a happy saying, from
crédule to croyant appears to have become. Eusebius knew
something of the emperor's inner, unspoken feelings.
On
the occasion of his emperor's tricennalis, Eusebius delivered the
festive speech, the Triakontaeterikos, which we quote as Laus
Constantini. It begins thus: "This is the feast day of the
great king... Great I call the truly great king. Him I mean - the
emperor present here will not take it amiss but will agree with the
(that is: our speaking about God) - who stands above the universe,
the highest of all, the most exalted, the most great, whose throne
is the vault of heaven and the earth is the footstool of his feet"
(Ps. 110, 1). Who does not think here of the first words of the
funeral oration of Massillon in the Sainte Chapelle at the bier of
Louis XIV in 1715: "God himself is great, my brothers, and in
these last moments above all, or presides over the death of the
kings of the earth: the more their glory and their power have shone
forth and then perish, the more do they pay homage to His greatness.
God proves to be all that He is, and man nothing more of all that he
is?
It
meant to be". But this was the beginning of a funeral oration,
the words of Eusebius were spoken in the presence of a living
jubilant prince, who himself agreed with them. And the orator -
wrongly belittled by church historians as a court theologian - said
something more. He praised Constantine's personal qualities:
elevated above material things, controlling his desires and lusts,
not controlled by passion and anger, in every respect a true ???,
one who is master of himself. But then it follows that precisely
such a person is able to see the brevity of ruling over people in
this mortal and temporary life, which is not worth much more than
what a goatherd or cowherd has to do. That brings us back to
Augustine, who reminds us that man is only called to rule over
unreasonable creatures: non hominem homini sed hominem pecori, and
that therefore there have been just shepherds rather than kings. The
acclamations, thus Eusebius, he found the people and the voices of
the flatterers rather troublesome than a pleasure, thanks to his
strict reasonableness and the true civility of his mind. Constantine
was apparently able to judge his own position from a distance and
objectively, even at an enormous celebration. On another occasion he
himself spoke of a άπλους
βίος, a life in simplicity and honesty,
without a double bottom and which does not hide its anger behind
beautiful hypocrisy. It remains undesirable to use the slogan: end
of the Constantinian period. It creates the greatest historical
confusion. It is better to return to the simple classical formula of
Eusebius: "pax ecclesiae", because to have achieved this
was first and foremost Constantine's revolutionary, creative act in
history. And nothing more. Constantine is not the creator of
Byzantinism. With the panegyric of Nazarius (321) we therefore say,
not in a negative but in an appreciative sense: "una demum
Constantini oblivio est humani generis occasus", Constantine
will not be forgotten until the whole of humanity perishes.
LATIN
PANEGYRICS USED FOR IMPERIAL PROPAGANDA AS EXEMPLIFIED BY
CONSTANTINE THE GREAT
Irena
Ljubomirović
University
of Niš, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of History, Niš,
Serbia irena.ljubomirovic@filfak.ni.ac.rs
Abstract
This
paper is a brief review of the development of Latin prose panegyrics
in the fourth century AD. It focuses on the value of panegyrics,
which were one of the most important instruments of emperor's
propaganda. I analyzed two panegyrics from 310 and 311, of
Constantine the Great, delivered in Trier. With the two examples I
showed whether and to what extent the official imperial policy
influenced the writing of panegyrics.
INTRODUCTION
In
the era of the late Empire, a festive oratory was developed as a
special kind of the classical Greek oratory, whose aim was to
present the achievements and the emperor himself in the best
possible light in front of his subjects to whom a speech was read
out. Eleven panegyrics were saved in Latin, modeled on Pliny's
speech to emperor Trajan, which were used to praise Roman emperors
in the period from 289 to 389 AD (Nixon and Rodgers, 1994). The
emperor used encomiasts as a means of his political propaganda, so
the panegyrists wrote them with the intention to be read publicly,
usually during the commemorations of imperial jubilees (Nixon and
Rodgers, 1994, p. 334, sq. IV) or after the emperor's victory over
the enemy (Nixon and Rodgers, 1994, p. 289, sq. IX). Late Roman
panegyrics were created seriously and were slowly becoming outdated.
They were directed to the contemporaries, specifically to that group
of residents who were able to hear them (Mac Cormack, 1976, p. 55).
If historians should try to use panegyrics as a source of historical
events, they would find themselves facing serious problems. Namely,
panegyrists would often omit names of the enemies, avoid stating
names of the cities, or follow chronology, since the aim of a
panegyric was rather to praise the emperor than to describe events
and present certain evidence. That is the difference between the
late Roman and Pliny's panegyrics, which were meaningful,
considerably more neutral, and impartial when presenting facts. In
the late Roman panegyrics, events were often not shown in detail; a
panegyrist would sometimes not specify them, which left room for the
description of the emperor's achievements. The events were presented
in a manner in which the monarch wanted them to be seen
(Liebeschuetz, 1979, pp. 237-238).
A
panegyric was one of the instruments of propaganda which was
considered to be an accurate reflection of the state policy and the
emperor to whom it was dedicated. Constantine was dedicated five
sermons that are an integral part of the proceedings "Latin
panegyrics" (Panegyrici Latini) created during the fourth
century (Nixon and Rodgers, 1994, p. 178, sq. VII; p. 212, sq. V; p.
289, sq. XII). This paper will discuss two panegyrics addressed to
Constantine and given in Trier. The first sermon carrying the number
VI was held in the summer of 310 AD and contains a special message
expressed through the report on Constantine's vision in the Temple
of Apollo (Rodgers, 1980, pp. 371-384; Warmington, 1974, pp.
371-384).
The
other panegyric was created in 313 AD, and it is interesting because
a panegyrist was met with a new situation that had to be included –
the emperor had radically changed his religious orientation. The
problem lay in how to present the emperor's Christian conversion and
not disappoint the audience, which also consisted of pagans (Odahl,
1990, pp. 45-63).
THE
AGE OF TETRARCHS
In
the years preceding the creation of the panegyrics (310 and 313 AD),
the Tetrarchic system was in crisis. The territories of the Roman
Empire were divided among the four rulers: Galerius controlling
Illyria, Maximinus Daia controlling Asia Minor and Egypt, Maxentius
holding Italy and Africa, while Constantine controlled provinces in
Gaul and Germania (Mirković, 2014, pp. 152-153). Although the
meeting in Carnuntum held on November 11, 308 AD was supposed to
resolve the issues about the division of power, none of the actors
were satisfied with the decisions of the meeting.
It
was agreed that the East would still remain in control of Augustus
Galerius and Caesar Maximinus Daia. In the West, Constantine was to
gain the title of Caesar instead of the position of Augustus.
Licinianus Licinius was proclaimed Augustus instead of Flavius
Severus. Both Maximinus Daia and Constantine were dissatisfied with
the titles of Caesars (SAN XII, 2008, pp. 91-93; Barnes, 1981, pp.
34-35; Leadbetter, 2009, pp. 200-205). Although Maximinus,
Constantine's father-in-law, who swore an oath to be faithful to his
son-in-law, he soon turned against Constantine (Pan. Lat. VI 15,6).
The
Rhine limes was threatened by the Franks, so Constantine had to go
to war against the barbarians. Lactantius stated that Maximinus
managed to convince his son-in-law to march with a smaller number of
troops, while, with the help of the remaining army, he would try to
take power (Lact. De mort. pers. 29,4.). This data is confirmed by
the panegyrist from 310 AD, who stated that Constantine surrendered
part of his army to Maximinus (Pan. Lat. VI 14,6). However,
Constantine did not do that because he trusted his father-in-law but
because there was a threat from Maxentius. It was necessary to
defend the southern areas of Gaul from possible attacks from Italy,
which forced Maximinus to have the army under his command (Barnes,
1981, p. 34). Yet, Maximinus used this situation to proclaim himself
the emperor for the third time in Arles (Pan. Lat. VI, 14-20). The
panegyrist stated that the troops remained loyal to Constantine, but
since the part of the army remained under the command of Maximinus,
he probably managed to gain upon those who wavered presenting them
with rich gifts (Pan. Lat. VI 16,2 to 17,4). As soon as Constantine
learned of his father-in-law's proclamation, he rushed to Arelate.
The army was partly moving on land, in order to come down the river
Arar (now the Saône) by ships to its confluence into the
Rhodanus (now the Rhône) in Lugdunum.
Lactantius
and a panegyrist from 310 AD wrote about the great speed with which
Constantine and the army were moving towards Arelate. The army was
so eager to deal with Maximinus that they themselves were rowing
down the slow river of Arar (Lact. De mort. pers. 29,6; Pan. Lat. VI
18).
Maximinus
transferred from Arelate to Massilia (present Marseille), since
there he could defend himself easier because the city was better
fortified. Constantine's attempt to take over Massilia ended without
success. The panegyrist even here tried to justify Constantine,
pointing out that the emperor could have taken over Massilia, but
that he wanted to prevent his soldiers, eager to get revenge, to
ransack the city (Pan. Lat. VI 19, 1-20,1).
The
panegyrist's partiality, lack of objectivity, and attempt to present
the emperor's weakness and failure as his gentleness and good
intention to spare his enemies were obvious. The emperor's failure
had to be covered in every way and the panegyrist did it by offering
misleading information. The truth was that Constantine could not
take the town with an onslaught, and he wanted to avoid the long
siege of the city at all costs, so he entered into negotiations with
his father-in-law. The negotiations were unsuccessful, but in the
meantime, the army in the town turned against Maximinus and handed
him over to Constantine, who spared his life (Lact. De mort. pers.
29,6; Pan. Lat. VI 20, 2-3). However, it must have been clear to
Constantine that as long as Maximinus was alive, he would pose a
threat to his power in the western provinces. This was likely the
reason why he decided to put him to death. The sources tried to
justify Constantine's decision and Lactantius stated that Maximinus
conspired against Constantine and persuaded his daughter Fausta to
kill her husband. Having caught Maximinus in the conspiracy,
Constantine allowed him to choose how to die, and the former chose
to be hanged (Lact. De mort. pers. 30).
After
his death, Maximinus was sentenced to damnatio memoriae as well, and
erasure of the memory of him was conducted both in the western and
eastern provinces. Since the founder of Maximinus's family was
Hercules, whom Constantine also accepted after becoming related to
Maximinus, after his father-in-law's execution the ties with the
lineage of Hercules were severed. That was why a new origin was to
be found for Constantine. It was the emperor's visit to the Temple
of Apollo in today's Grand in the Vosges that the panegyrist used to
associate Constantine to the new patron – god Apollo, but also
to the 'new' emperor's ancestor – Claudius II Gothic. In an
anonymous panegyric given in the summer of 310 in the city of Trier,
Constantine's vision of Apollo was described. In modern historical
science there was a controversy over two issues: whether Constantine
really had a vision and, if so, what he saw or what he thought he
saw (Ferj ančić, 2014, pp. 415-423 with earlier
literature). Therefore, at this point we will not deal with these
issues, but focus on the question: in what way was Constantine's
vision presented in the panegyric supposed to serve the purpose of
propaganda of the emperor's politics? The vision of Apollo had to
come from Constantine himself, because it was the only way for it to
be learned, and that is why it is assumed that it was the emperor
himself who ordered the panegyric in which the vision should be
described and introduced to the audience in Gaul. The anonymous
panegyrist said at the beginning that after Maximinus' defeat and
death, Constantine was on his way to Trier when he learned that the
Franks, in the absence of the emperor, became restless. After
learning that the barbarians calmed down, Constantine decided to
turn off the road and visit the temple of Apollo in Grand in order
to make a sacrifice as a sign of gratitude for the victory over
Maximinus and the becalming of the Franks. The orator further
alleged that in the temple Constantine saw Apollo in the company of
the Goddess of Victory and then got laurel wreaths, which carried a
prediction about the long rule and lifetime longer than the one the
fabulous Nestor enjoyed (Pan. Lat. VI 21, 4-7).
Presenting
emperors as being closely associated with some of the deities was
nothing out of the ordinary in the fourth century, because they were
prominent figures believed (or also popularly believed) to be able
to have direct contact with the deity (Bremmer, 2006, pp. 57-79).
Such performance of the emperor was supposed to strengthen his
position even more and provoke admiration among his subjects.
Bearing in mind that it was not common for the orator to contrive
such details, it is therefore assumed that Constantine himself
requested to be presented in a close encounter with Apollo, a deity
often identified with the Unconquered Sun (Sol Invictus), to which
the emperor would turn after 310 AD, and, as evidenced by the
emission of money with a presentation of this deity and the legend
of the Unconquered Sun, a companion (Soli Invicto comiti)
(Sutherland, 1967, pp. 102-116).
THE
LATIN PANEGYRIC FROM 310 AD
In
modern historical science there are researchers who state that the
panegyric from 310 AD was actually created with the aim to win the
favor of Gallic aristocracy (Bremmer, 2006, p. 16). However, if we
bear in mind that Apollo revealed to Constantine that he was the
emperor predestined to rule the whole world and who was solely meant
to rule (teque in illius specie
recognovisti, cui totius mundi regna deberi vatum carmina divina
cecinerunt) (Pan. Lat. VI 21, 5-6), it is clear that the
panegyric was also to be used to spread the reigning ideology. The
first time the orator spoke of Constantine as the new God created
for the people, he linked him to gods Bacchus and Mercury (Di
boni, quid goc est quod semper ex aliquo supremo fine mundi noua
deum numina universo orbi colenda descendunt? Sic Mercurius a Nilo,
cuius fluminis origo nescitur, sic Liber ab Indis prope cosciis
solis orientis deos se gentibus ostnedere praesentes) (Pan.
Lat. VI 9.4). When introducing Apollo, who appeared to Constantine,
into the panegyric, he did not equate them and used the possessive
pronoun 'tuus' (your) Apollo, not 'tu, Apollo'
(Vidisti
enim, credo, Constantine, Apollinem tuum....) (Pan. Lat. VI 21.4).
This
is precisely the reason why Barbara Saylor Rodgers made the
assumption that in the temple of Apollo Constantine did not see
himself in the image of the divinity itself, but in the image of the
first Roman emperor Octavian Augustus (Rodgers, 1980, p. 270).
Constantine was represented as young, cheerful, and handsome, and
health-bringing, and he was foretold to rule the entire world, which
could also apply to Octavian Augustus.
Constantine
was foretold by the gods in his vision that he would rule the whole
world, while in the case of Octavian the foretelling was delivered
by poets, first and foremost the poet Virgil, who, in his poem
"Aeneid", announced Augustus' reign as the beginning of
the Golden Age. It is less important whether Constantine saw himself
in the image of Apollo or Octavian Augustus. It is the moment in
which the panegyric was created that is important (after Maximinus'
execution) as well as the emperor's turn towards Apollo, often
identified with the Uncoquered Sun, which would become the new
protector of the emperor.
The
orator had two tasks before him – first, to justify Maximinus'
execution and then to associate Constantine with some prominent
emperor because he broke up the relation to the Herculian family. It
was hard to prove the facts of Constantine's non-involvement with
Maximinus' death, hence the orator only presented the story of
Maximinus' conspiracy and spoke of his death in a direct way (Pan.
Lat. VII 20, 3-4). In 307 AD, Constantine was Maximinuss son-in-law,
associating himself with the Herculians, which was supposed to
strengthen and secure his position in the empire and to ensure his
authority in the provinces that he inherited from his father (Jones,
1964, p. 38; Barnes, 1981, p. 11). At first, father- and son-in-law
acted in unity as imperatores semper Herculii (Pan. Lat. VII 2,5),
but after Constantine discovered Maximinus' alleged plot and after
which Maximinus killed himself, Constantine rejected protectors of
the Tetrarchy, Hercules and Mars, so it became necessary for him to
establish a 'relationship' with a former real emperor. Constantine
decided that this should be Claudius II Gothic (268-270), a ruler
who gained great fame and reputation by his victory over the Goths
near Naissus. Emperor Claudius II Gothic was close enough to
Constantine, speaking in terms of time, and the kinship between them
could have had a real basis, but at the same time the emperor was
far enough from Constantine's contemporaries in order for them to
know the details of this kinship (Krsmanović-Radošević,
2004, p. 73). The anonymous panegyrist was the first to introduce
this piece of information into the history and point out to the
right of Constantine to rule due to his origin (Pan. Lat. VI 2-3,
2). The panegyrist said that when the emperor entered the court in
Trier, destined to rule, there "ancestral lares" had
already been waiting for him (Sacrum
istud palatium non cadidatus imperii sed designatus intrasti,
confestimque te illi paterni lares successorem uidere legitimum)
(Pan. Lat. VI 4,1).
By
introducing Claudius II Gothic, as a descendent ruler, Constantine
established the principle of dynastic succession of power, thus
rejecting the tetrarchic rule of adoption of the heir to the throne.
It is clear that, since Constantine wanted to secure the throne for
his sons, he had to get rid of his co-rulers and independently rule
the empire. Another step towards this goal was the introduction of a
new patron god, and the decision was made for it to be Apollo, most
often identified with the Unconquered Sun (Alföldi, 1948, 5-6).
In the second half of the third century, it was believed that the
Sun was the supreme deity above all others. Since the Unconquered
Sun was the protector both of Claudius Gothic and Constantius,
Constantine's father, it is no surprise that this deity was chosen.
It is possible that the Emperor had a deep commitment to the
Unconquered Sun with whom he was born and raised, so the deity was
the most acceptable from the whole pantheon of the Roman gods
(Ljubomirović, Stamenković- Šaranac, 2014, p. 542).
Standing close to the cult of this deity which had strong
monotheistic elements, Constantine sought to openly express his
aspiration for an independent ruling.
The
panegyric from 310 AD was created in Gaul where the Emperor lived,
with short interruptions, from 307 AD and the wedding to Fausta up
to 316 AD (Barnes, 1982, pp. 67-73). The panegyrist was the court
orator, spending time at the court of the emperor, and had contact
with court officials. His most important role was to compose a
speech that would promote imperial policy. One of the most common
themes of panegyrics written in the first half of the fourth century
was the imperial success in the war, that it was the emperor of
practice and his military power (Mac Cormack, 1976, p. 64).
Historical background of panegyrics in the age of Tetrarchy was
militant and pagan and therefore panegyrics stressed precisely this
side of the emperor's personality. Personal religion of the emperor
at the beginning of Constantine's reign had not yet been the subject
of panegyrics. Not until many years later would Eusebius make the
religious orientation of the emperor officially relevant, since the
emperor's religion affected the whole empire: it was no longer only
his personal matter, but a means of his victory over all opponents.
Eusebius pointed to a strong connection between the emperor and God,
and that his attitudes had to be a part of the official cult of the
emperor is also confirmed by the iconography of the official
imperial art (Radošević, 1994, p. 10).
Nevertheless,
Constantine's biographer wrote many years later, when Constantine
had already sufficiently declared himself as a Christian. At the
same time, Eusebius himself was a Christian. From Eusebius'
panegyrics it is clear that he was aware of the importance of the
emperor's religious policies, but he included it into his work only
after it had become a part of the official imperial cult. Therefore,
panegyrists from the beginning of Constantine's reign, when paganism
was still the official religion of the empire, believed that
Constantine's conversion to Christianity was still only his personal
matter and was therefore not suitable to enter into the official
panegyric. The fact is that the main issue in the panegyrics was
still Constantine's defense of the Rhine border and his victory over
the Germans. Panegyrists believed that the defense of the Rhine was
vital and Constantine was given all the credit for maintaining
stability along the Rhine border (Nixon and Rodgers, 1994, pp.
30-35).
THE
PANEGYRIC FROM 313 AD - AN EXPRESSION OF NEW RELIGION ORIENTATION OF
EMPEROR CONSTANTINE
Another
panegyric, carrying the number XII, was apparently ordered in
August, in the summer of 313 in Trier (Nixon and Rodgers, 1994, p.
289, sq. XII). After the victory Constantine took over Maxentius in
the battle of the Milvian Bridge on October 28, 312 AD, the emperor
entered Rome, where he was welcomed as a liberator. Constantine
behaved as such, repealing all the exiled usurper's opponents to
return to Rome, while he showed great mercy to the supporters of his
opponent (Pan. IX 5.6; 12.1).
The
victory over Maxentius brought Constantine control over Italy and
Africa, thus these provinces were returned to the legitimate
imperial ruler. Constantine's position was additionally secured
thanks to the honors received from the Senate, which declared him
the first Augustus (Lact. De mort. pers. 44.11). The ruler spent
about two months in Rome, after which he headed towards Mediolanum,
where, in the beginning of February, he met with Licinius. The
meeting of the two co-rulers resulted in a politics of religious
tolerance – the issuing of the Edict of Milan (Lact. De mort.
pers. 48; Euseb. Hist. Eccl. X 5.1-14).
The
document provided religious tolerance and freedom of creed for all
religions as well as for the thus far prohibited Christianity. All
gods, including the Christian God, were supposed to protect the
emperor and his subjects in order to establish peace and prosperity
in the empire. By the policy of religious tolerance, the two rulers,
Constantine and Licinius, secured support of the ever increasing
number of Christian communities, which greatly strengthened their
power (Barnes, 1981, pp. 64-68). After the meeting in Mediolanum,
Constantine had to face the danger that threatened the empire from
the Germanic tribes on the Rhine. Namely, the Franks and the
Alemanni, who lived in the area between the Rhine and the Elbe,
attacked the Roman territory in Lower Germania. Constantine went
straight from Mediolanum to the Rhine limes where he attacked the
Alemanni and the Franks, and not only did he drive them away from
the Lower Germania but he also razed the area in which they lived
(Pan. Lat. IX 21, 5-23; Barnes, 1982, p. 71).
After
the victory over the barbarians, the emperor went to Trier, where he
was met with ceremonies celebrating all his successes, while the
subjects enjoyed the emperor's arrival (adventus) (Pan. Lat. IX
18.3-20; Mac Cormack, 1981, pp. 17-89). He was honored a triumphal
procession, and circuses and gladiatorial shows were held for
several days as well as games during which the beasts fought against
barbarians captured during the previous battles along the Rhine
(Pan. Lat. IX 23). On such an occasion only a panegyric was missing,
to be publicly read and unite everyone in expressing strong praise
of the emperor, which would draw the ceremony to its climax
(Liebeschuetz, 1979, p. 237). Given that the panegyric was to be
created as soon as possible, the task was entrusted to the
experienced and famous panegyrist who celebrated Constantine in one
or more previous speeches (Nixon and Rodgers, 1994, p. 288). He was
probably trained in one of the famous rhetorical schools in Oton or
Trier, using the style of Cicero, quoting Virgil's poetry and
bringing occasional comparisons with generally known rulers and
officials from the classical period, glorifying their virtutes
(bravery, power) and res gestae (heroic deeds) (Mac Cormack, 1976,
p. 61). It is possible that the members of the imperial court
advised the orator, kept him informed about the emperor's acts, and
guided him towards topics that needed to be emphasized. The common
motifs in all the panegyrics were propagation and praise of all the
emperor's deeds and successes achieved in the previous period (Mac
Cormack, 1981, pp. 1-14).
Since
the orator had previously written praises to Constantine, he gained
some experience and practice in presenting events from the emperor's
past.
Yet,
this time the panegyrist was met with a big problem – the
emperor had radically changed his religious orientation and
converted into a Christian (Mullen, 1968, pp. 81-96).
Although
the first reports of Christian writers Eusebius and Lactantius on
Constantine's conversion were written a few years later, the
panegyrist must have heard at the court about the emperor's new
protector – Christ (Odahl, 1990, p. 47). The news that
Constantine used the cross as a Christian symbol on the weapons of
his soldiers in the battle against Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge
strongly echoed in the East, so it must have reached the West as
well (Odahl, 1981, pp. 15-28). At the same time, the panegyrist also
took into consideration the fact that in the Edict of Milan, which
Constantine and Licinius issued in February 313, the protector of
Christians was called by the general term summa Divinitas (Lact. De
Mort. Pers. 44).
Spending
time at the court, the panegyrist had to be well informed about all
the important events from the emperor's life. Although the emperor's
Christian orientation during those years was not part of the
official imperial cult yet, the orator might not have be allowed to
completely ignore the fact of the Christian God as the emperor's
patron without previously receiving the approval of the emperor
himself. Sources do not mention a direct meeting between the
panegyrist and the emperor, but the monarch could have suggested to
the orator through court officials how he was to handle specific
topics.
Description
and praise of the emperor's courage during military actions could
have comprised the major part of the panegyric, but even in this
case the orator faced a difficult and delicate task – how to
describe the divine inspiration and power that helped Constantine
plan and wage the victorious wars. The panegyrist could show the new
emperor's religious orientation, which would please the Christians
at the court, but it would betray his longtime personal beliefs and
would betray the expectations of the pagans. And while in the
panegyrics written in the period of Tetrarchic policy the emperor's
deeds always had a religious background, inclusion of religion in
imperial politics after Constantine's conversion became impossible
(Mac Cormack, 1976, p. 62). Analysis of the panegyric from 313 AD
might shed some light on whether the panegyrist managed to respond
to the difficult task that was set before him.
The
speech was divided into five parts: in the introductory section
(exordium), the orator stated his observations of the emperor (Pan.
Lat. IX 1); several chapters were dedicated to his previous military
campaigns in Italy (Pan. Lat. IX 2-5.3); then followed the central
part of the speech in which Constantine's victory in Italy and his
brief stay in Rome were described (Pan. Lat. IX 5.4-21.4); several
chapters were dedicated to his return to Gaul and conflict with
barbarians on the Rhine (Pan. Lat. IX 21.5-23); finally, in the
epilogue (peroratio), the importance of Constantine's victory and
the importance of the prayer dedicated to "the highest deity"
were highlighted (Pan. Lat. IX 24-26). Aware of the difficult task
set before him, already in the introductory part of the speech the
orator distanced himself, expressing his fear that he might not be
able to properly praise the emperor's great deeds, but that he was
still taking on this task because even that was better than not to
speak about them at all (Pan. Lat. IX 1.1-3).
In
the second part, the orator associated Constantine's name to the
adjective constantia, which reflected the emperor's persistence and
perseverance during the Italian expedition (Ac primum illud adripiam
quod credo adhuc neminem ausum fuisse, ut ante de constantia
expeditionis tuae dicam quam de laude uictoriae) (Pan. Lat. IX 2.1).
Constantine marched against the enemy whose army was larger and
decided to attack first because he followed the "divine
command" (divina praecepta), while Maxentius remained faithful
to the "dangerous superstition" (superstitiosa maleficia)
(Pan. Lat. IX 4.4). Constantine entered the fight expecting a
"divine promise of victory" (promissam divinitus
victoriam) (Pan. Lat. IX 3.3). Supported by his own courage and
great promise by God, the emperor dared to start a war bigger than
the one waged by Alexander the Great (Pan. Lat. IX 4.4).
Constantine's conquest of fortified cities in northern Italy was
shown in detail, as well as the march on Rome and the Battle of the
Milvian Bridge, after which the victor triumphantly entered Rome;
the panegyric then showed the celebrations held in honor of
Constantine. Describing Constantine's military exploits in detail,
the orator skillfully avoided sensitive religious topics.
Constantine's ability and skills in commanding the army, attacking a
dangerous enemy while outnumbered, and treating the defeated
soldiers humanely were all praised in a school-like manner (Pan.
Lat. IX 6. 1-2; 15.3-6; 20.3-4).
When
describing the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, the panegyrist
indicated that Maxentius could have stayed in Rome within Aurelius'
walls providing resistance, as he had done a few years before
against Severus and Galerius (Pan. Lat. IX 16.2; Lact. De mort.
pers. 26- 27). But "the great God" (Deus summus) and
"divine thought" (mens divina) gave Constantine "divine
advice" (divinum consilium) and "divine stimulus"
(divinus instinctus), and at the same time took them away from
Maxentius (Sandys, 1974, p. 127). The orator ended the central part
of speech with a brief description of Constantine's triumphal entry
into Rome, his speech in front of the Senate and the pardoning of
the surviving enemy soldiers (Pan. Lat. IX 19.1-21.4).
The
panegyrist showed a scene in which the emperor was giving gifts to
Roman citizens in front of the pillars that the Senate raised in 303
AD in honor of vicennalia of Diocletian and Maximinus and decennalia
of Constantius and Galerius (Pan. Lat. IX 7,6). The choice of the
location was supposed to represent Constantine as the real successor
of the Tetrarchy.
In
the fourth part of the panegyric, preceding the conclusion, the
orator briefly, without any details, described the return of
Constantine to Gaul and his fight against rebellious barbarians on
the Rhine (Pan. Lat. IX 21.5-23). The speech was to be ended with a
sublime tone, which the speaker did. He compared the victory of
Constantine over Maxentius' Romans and warlike Franks with
Alexander's victories over the timid Greeks and weak Easterners and
pointed out that the emperor was the most responsible for the spread
of the famous achievements of his father, Constantius, in the
western part of the empire (Pan. Lat. IX 24.1-3; Pan. Lat. IX
24.4-25.3).
Constantine's
power and his piety were the main reasons to erect a number of
statues, shields, and crowns that the people of Rome and the Senate
dedicated to the emperor (Pan. Lat. IX 25.4). However, in the
conclusion of the final chapter the orator had a duty to make a plea
to a "supreme deity", thus facing a difficult dilemma. He
decided it was the least painful not to name the deity and to
address it as "the greatest creator of the Universe"
(summe rerum sator), so he addressed him as follows: "…
Your reliable power and divine thought that inspired the entire
world and mingled with all the elements" (tutem
quadem vis mensque divina...quae toto infusa mundo), or he
referred to him as "a force above all the heavens, which looks
down from above from a higher natural refuge" (aliqua supra
caelum potestas...quae...ex altiore naturae arce despicias) (Pan.
Lat. IX 26.1). Therefore, the panegyrist addressed the deity to whom
both himself and the audience were speaking and made him a plea that
concerned Constantine. Constantine was the best of all the rulers
and the greatest blessing that the deity has ever bestowed upon the
human race. The deity, which possessed the greatest kindness and
power in itself (summa bonitas et potestas), enabled Constantine to
perform all these good deeds (Pan. Lat. IX 26.2-5).
The
panegyric from 313 AD did not mention the name of the traditional
pagan gods or give any information about Constantine dedicating war
trophies to pagan temples (Jones, 1949, pp. 82-83; Barnes, 1981, pp.
44-46). In the previous panegyrics dedicated to Constantine (from
307, 310, and 311) Jupiter, Hercules, Apollo, and Sol were
mentioned, while their omission in the panegyric from 313 could mean
that the emperor had already completely separated himself from pagan
gods. However, the speaker did not mention the name of Christ
anywhere, or indicate that the emperor's conversion occurred and
that Constantine had used Christian symbols on the weapons and
victory statues, which Christian writers would later write about.
The panegyrist decided to adopt a neutral stance and rely neither on
traditional paganism nor Christianity. He himself was a pagan, as
were many in the audience, so his terminology had to be as vague as
possible in order not to offend the Christian emperor (Barnes, 1981,
pp. 44-46). With a neutral position, he still managed to present
Constantine's imperial position as divinely founded by associating
the emperor with the supreme God, whom he referred to using vague
terminology – the "supreme creator of the universe",
"the divine thought that inspires the world", "leader
and supreme power in the sky above" and "source of
ultimate goodness and strength" (MacMullen, 1968, pp. 110-112;
Liebeschuetz, 1979, pp. 252-291). The Triumphal arch built to honor
Constantine was also raised with "God's inspiration"
(Instinctu Divinitatis), which, even though it had a monotheistic
connotation, once more expressed a neutral attitude in terms of the
emperor's divine patron.
Constantine
favorably viewed the manner in which the orator presented the deity.
Even though Constantine could have already sided with the Christian
God, he was still ruling all of his subjects, among whom there were
a large number of pagans, so he had a duty to publicly protect all
religious cults (Ullmann, 1976, p. 2). In the Edict of Milan,
Constantine and Licinius referred to the deity with a vague and
general term summa Divinitas. In the letters from the period from
312 to 315, which Constantine sent to provincial regents or
Christian bishops, he used phrases such as "the highest God"
or "the highest deity" (Deus summus or summa Divinitas)
(Odahl, 1990, p. 52). Constantine's inclination towards Christianity
was confirmed by a number of laws that he passed after the
publication of the Edict of Milan in 313 AD. Among other things, the
emperor issued legislation that Christian clergy was dispensed from
all duties of public service and all individual and property taxes
and duties (CTh 16.2.2; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 10.7.1-2). All
confiscated property was to be returned to the Church. Still, the
monarch retained the title Pontifex Maximus and allowed the pagans
to worship in the temples of Roman gods, but he had most of these
imageries removed from the money. He allowed only the God of the
Sun, Sol, to remain on the coins a few years longer as a kind of
syncretic bridge between his Christian and pagan subjects (Alföldi,
1948, pp. 54-59). The Church, for its part, has long used the
comparison of Christ with the Sun as "the Sun of Truth",
"the resurrected Sun", or "the Sun of deliverance",
by which it has tacitly acknowledged the influence of the cult of
the Sun. Constantine's sympathy towards the God of the Sun can be
interpreted as the emperor's profound commitment to the deity with
which he was born and raised, but he also showed respect and
consideration to the Sun because of his pagan subjects. The ruler
needed the support of the pagans, because after the victory over
Maxentius it was necessary to secure the favor of the Senate, which
at that moment was the only body that could recognize Constantine as
the first Augustus. Bearing in mind that the Senate and the Roman
aristocracy did not renounce paganism, it was not in the emperor's
interest to immediately sever ties with all the pagan cults
(Ljubomirović, 2013, pp. 862-863).
In
the years that followed, the emperor would move further away from
the Unconquered Sun and openly express his allegiance to the
Christian God. However, from everything stated above, it is clear
that immediately after his conversion Constantine allowed the
remnants of paganism to be mixed with elements of the new faith. We
saw that in public letters and edicts he used neutral and ambiguous
terminology to refer to God, thus not offending either pagan or
Christian subjects. Since Constantine himself used such terminology,
it is likely that he allowed and encouraged orators to do so as
well, especially when the speeches were to be read at public
ceremonies attended by both religious groups (Odahl, 1990, p. 53).
The experienced orator was up to the task. Although he used the
words and images of the pagan poetry and philosophy, they were
sufficiently general and ambiguous to allow a Christian
interpretation (Pan. Lat. IX 26.1). The speech was written in the
spirit of the emperor's official announcements, while the emperor
apparently liked the idea that the deity was addressed as summa
Divinitas or Deus summus, for which the speaker said was ruling the
whole world from the heavenly fortress. In the "Letter to
Catholic Bishops in Arles" from 314 AD, Constantine addressed
the deity precisely in this way, so it is believed that he was
satisfied with the orator's religious notices and public performance
of the panegyric from 313.
CONCLUSION
From
all of the above, it can be concluded that the imperial speeches of
the fourth century were a kind of political manifesto of the time in
which they were written. The idea of different forms of imperial
ideology were expressed through panegyrics, precisely in the
panegyrics dedicated to Constantine, where the ruler was to be
presented as the God's chosen, foretold to rule on Earth as his
representative. Given the fact that, at the time these panegyrics
were created, Constantine was still not an independent ruler and
there were occasional clashes with the co-rulers, the panegyrics
that belonged primarily to the propaganda genre were supposed to
justify these actions and present them in a special manner. In the
panegyric from 310 AD, the anonymous orator accomplished his goal:
Constantine was not associated with Maximinus' death, so he spoke
only of his conspiracy, while his death occurred under unclear
circumstances (Pan. Lat. VII 20.3-4). The emperor's vision in the
temple of Apollo brought him closer to the cult of the Unconquered
Sun most often equated with Apollo. In this way, Constantine was not
separated from the pagan cults, which showed support for the pagans,
but which was also an acceptable solution for the Christians because
of the monotheistic properties of the cult of the Sun. With the
death of Maximinus, Constantine severed his ties with the Hercules,
and for the first time he derived his lineage from Claudius II
Gothic in the panegyric from 310 AD and chose the Unconquered Sun to
be his protector, a deity with the most monotheistic qualities.
Thus, the emperor revealed the dynastic principle of heritage to the
throne and for the first time publicly expressed his aspiration
towards monotheistic rule.
The
panegyric from 313 AD given in Trier was to celebrate Constantine's
victory over Maxentius, whom the orator presented as a usurper.
Constantine was to be praised and his successes were to be
celebrated, because not only did he free Rome from Maxentius'
oppression, but he also defended the Roman border on the Rhine.
Hence, there were enough reasons for the creation of a panegyric.
Using ambiguous terminology to refer to the deity, the orator was
able to satisfy both the pagans and the Christians, but also the
emperor himself, whose personal religious beliefs at the time could
not be the subject of a publicly read panegyric. Constantine also
agreed with this, because otherwise the orator could not deliver
such a speech. The orators wrote for the emperor currently in power
and read their panegyrics before him. Therefore, they were writing
them with propagandist aims, celebrating and praising the emperor,
highlighting his positive qualities and good deeds, and withholding
anything that was negative.
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PUBLISHED
SOURCES
Codex
Theodosianus libri XVI, ed. Mommsen-Meyer, Berolini 1905.
Eusebius
Cesariensis, Historia Ecclesiastica, Ecclesiastical History,
translated by E. Schwartz, Leipzig 1908.
Lucii
Caecilii de Mortibus persecutorom liber vulgo Lactantio tributus,
ed. J.L. Creed
“The
Augusti and Caesars Say”:
Imperial
Communication in a Collegiate Monarchy
1.
Introduction: the typology of the texts and the sources Roman
emperors wrote or had written in their names a great many letters.
An examination of imperial epistolography, however, faces a number
of problems. First, emperors issued a range of pronouncements whose
format and function cannot always be neatly demarcated. In
particular, in the period I wish to discuss, the era of Diocletian
and Constantine (284–337), the distinction between letters and
edicts tends to become blurred and remains so throughout the late
empire. It is not necessarily helpful, therefore, to consider only
texts narrowly defined as epistolary. However, in a purely formal
sense, letters are distinguished by containing a greeting to the
recipient and a closing farewell, the latter usually in the
emperor’s own hand. Further, letters, when addressed to
office-holders, often contain within them instructions regarding the
dissemination of their contents, where appropriate. Edicts are
general pronouncements directed at all under the authority of an
office-holder (whether emperor or governor) and have an opening
formula of the type, “the emperor says” (imperator
dicit). Finally, private rescripts, that is replies to petitions
from ordinary subjects (in contrast to replies to letters from
office-holders), although addressed to the petitioner, lack formal
greeting or farewell, and the emperor simply signs under it “I
have replied” (rescripsi). Approaches to the emperor on
similar subjects might in different circumstances generate replies
in different formats, since most citizens would be lucky to get a
rescript (in Latin, even if they had petitioned in Greek), whereas
cities or those of high rank would get a letter (in Greek, if they
had written in Greek). Further, even on a single matter, the emperor
might issue or there might be subsequently disseminated a range of
interrelated documents of overlapping content in different formats.
The
second key feature is the question of how texts are preserved. Much
of the earlier Near Eastern material examined in this volume
survives as original documents or even in original archives. From
the Roman imperial period, letters and copy-books of lower
administrators sometimes survive, as with the well-known Panopolis
papyri from the reign of Diocletian, which represent archival
copy-books of outgoing (September 298) and incoming
(January–February 300) correspondence of the strategos of the
Panopolite nome.
But
we have no equivalent sources for the Roman emperors. Only one
original imperial letter, with the emperor’s hand-written
valediction (of Theodosius II), survives from antiquity.
Thus,
although there exists a mass of imperial letters and pronouncements
of the tetrarchic and Constantinian periods, this is at several
removes from the originals, since the emperors’ words have
been repeatedly recycled and re-edited through legal collections and
the manuscript tradition. Even so, such collections are undoubtedly
still of the greatest importance, the two most significant being the
Codex Theodosianus (437) and Codex Iustinianus (534). Both these
provide versions, edited to greater or lesser degrees, of numerous
letters to officials (Dossier no. 2), while the latter contains in
addition a great many private rescripts, also variously redacted,
that are addressed to petitioners (Dossier no. 4). Other important
material survives because collected for use as part of Christian
debate and polemic (Dossier no. 3), often by contemporaries, as for
instance by Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea (d. 339) in his
Ecclesiastical History and Life of Constantine.
As
a result, in these types of Christian works a great deal of such
material, where it was originally in Latin, survives generally only
in Greek translation. However, the closest to imperial originals
that we have are probably contemporary copies of imperial letters
and other texts surviving on inscriptions (Dossier no. 1), more
rarely on papyrus. These can often be seen as part of a process of
promulgation, although that does not necessarily mean that such
texts are unmediated, and the epigraphic format and content are
likely to reflect agendas other than, or in addition to, that of the
emperor. Nonetheless, although not numerous, these inscriptions are
of the highest importance for examining one of the most complex
aspects of the epistolography of the tetrarchic period: namely
imperial collegiality, where documents, in practice emanating from
one ruler, are formally issued in the joint names of several.
When
we consider the nature of the exercise of government by the emperors
of the tetrarchic period we must recognize the key features of the
Roman emperor’s position that were already well established,
but continued to be relevant from Principate to Dominate. Of the
first importance is the fact that the emperor’s power was
absolute. Almost anything the emperor said or wrote in any context
or manner had come to be regarded as having the force of law. Other
forms of primary legislation fell into desuetude during the course
of the Principate: first formal laws (leges) passed by the popular
assemblies, which cannot be traced beyond the reign of Nerva (AD
96–98); then the Praetor’s Edict, which ossified into a
fixed form under Hadrian (traditionally AD 131); finally decrees of
the Senate (senatus consulta), which ceased to be legally
significant from the time of the Severans.
The
emperor’s overriding power made them all redundant. As
enunciated by the classical jurists, this meant that authoritative
imperial constitutions came in a wide variety of formats.
There
were edicts, which were general declarations aimed not at specific
persons but at provinces or even the whole empire. There were
speeches to the Senate, which had in essence replaced leges and
senatus consulta. Then there were mandata issued to governors as
standing instructions. There were letters of many types, most often
addressed to office-holders or cities, but also to individuals of
high rank, usually in response to other letters or embassies
received from them. There were decrees and judgements issued for
various types of hearings or public occasions. Finally, there were
subscripts or private rescripts, issued in response to petitions
from individuals, often people of no particular rank or status.
2.
The responsive ruler and his rescripts
This
brief summary highlights a second key feature. The most formal of
the above types, those closest to deliberate acts of primary
legislation, such as edicts and orations to the senate, seem to have
been relatively rare. Instead, the manner of government can to a
very great extent be characterized as one of “petition and
response.” Emperors most often issued pronouncements because
they were asked to do so. Thus there were officials charged with
processing the incoming material and creating the outgoing replies,
namely the Masters of Letters, of Greek Letters, and of Petitions
(magistri epistularum, epistularum Graecarum, libellorum). There is
no official known to have been specifically in charge of edicts,
unless perhaps it was the Master of Memory (magister memoriae).
This
responsive style of government had both virtues and vices. An
ideology of beneficence meant that petitioners expected favours to
be granted and victory in legal cases to be assured. Certainly our
typical epigraphic evidence from cities under the Principate is one
of favour bestowed and continually renewed. However, emperors do
indeed turn people down, though the disappointed are unlikely to
advertise the fact.
Yet
too often the emperor granted an exceptional favour. Of course, any
legal system needs a certain degree of flexibility, allowing for
occasional derogation or dispensation from the law.
But
this was where the emperor’s enormous constitutional power
became a problem, threatening to undermine legal stability by
creating permanent, if unintended, modifications. Once the emperor’s
words were out there, they turned into a loose cannon. It is
important to remember that the citizens of a state should not be
regarded as simply passive consumers of law, people upon whom law is
imposed. For many people, a legal text was an opportunity, and a
text with the emperor’s authority behind it was best of all.
Private
rescripts were not sent to individual petitioners, but were usually
posted in batches outside the emperor’s residence. The
recipient or someone on their behalf would take an authenticated
copy and then make what use of it they could. The most famous
example is that of the villagers of Scaptopara in Thrace, who set up
a monument to their legal struggle against improper exactions, a
prominent feature of which was the rescript addressed to them by
Gordian III dating to December 238.
This
bland document said little, and that little was somewhat unhelpful:
Imp(erator) Caesar M(arcus)
Antonius Gordianus Pius Felix Aug(ustus) uikanis per Pyrrum
mil(item) conpossessore[m]. Id genus qu[a]erellae praecibus
intentum an ue[rum sit deb]et iustitia praesidis potius super his
quae adlegabuntur instructa discingere quam rescripto principali
certam formam reportare debeas.
The
emperor Marcus Antonius Gordianus, dutiful, fortunate, Augustus to
the villagers through Pyrrhus, soldier and fellow-owner: With this
kind of complaint submitted in a petition, the governor’s
sense of justice, being informed about what will be alleged, should
decide whether it is true, rather than that you should take home a
specific decision embodied in an imperial rescript.
However,
the simple fact that their Praetorian fellow villager had
successfully impetrated the rescript from the emperor on their
behalf was enough for them (or even him) to wish to emphasize it.
Thus they not only erected a monument, but utilized the physical
layout of the inscription upon it, so that the details of the
rescript and its authenticated text were in larger Latin script at
the top and bottom, framing the intervening Greek.
3.
Recycling rescripts
However,
it was not only the intended recipient who could copy a rescript.
Anyone interested might do so. For this reason, it is this type of
imperial pronouncement which caused the most worry to jurists and
emperors. Although favours were being continually granted, and the
pressure to do so was very great, the view taken was that a rescript
was intended to apply only in the case for which it was issued. It
was not supposed to provide a precedent.
This,
however, was difficult to control. Diocletian even ruled that
rescripts containing exceptional derogations needed to be
accompanied by a second imperial document, an adnotatio, certifying
the grant (Cod. Iust. 8, 47, 5). Yet the case for which he made this
ruling, in which he allowed a woman as solace for losing her own
children to adopt her step-son, which was supposed to be legally
impossible (as the rescript itself stated), did in fact set a
precedent.
The
text was included in subsequent legal collections, and, although it
still required an imperial grant, this became accepted procedure.
A
single documented exception thus allowed the creation of a
precedent, albeit somewhat bounded. Emperors, in wishing to exercise
beneficence, were caught between the need to ensure the stability
and predictability of legal rules on the one hand and their
unlimited constitutional power with its potential for law-distorting
flexibility on the other. There were continual attempts, therefore,
to make sure both that rescripts and adnotationes were not corruptly
issued and that they applied only for the individual case in
question. Yet rescripts were imaginatively recycled, and not
necessarily for the purposes for which they had been granted. A
famous example is Constantine’s rescript on prescription of
long time (praescriptio longi temporis), issued to a decurion called
Agrippinus in the late 320s or early 330s, although it is only known
in a Greek translation quoted in later court proceedings:
Our
masters Constantine Augustus and Constantine and Constantius most
noble Caesars to the decurion Agrippinus: It is our pleasure that
consideration be taken also of the length of the possession to the
extent that, if it is established by inquiry from them that the
property(?) with which the investigation is concerned has been held
for forty years, not even the grounds of the possession be
investigated. It is our pleasure moreover that, since legal grounds
of possession are necessary(?) only for prescription after ten or
twenty years, the present holder be awarded the protection of the
court (…)
This
enunciates the rule that possession of property would be
unchallengeably secure after forty years.
Although
we do not know the details of the case or whether Agrippinus was the
property holder in question, it seems to have been intended to
protect possession. But in 339 it was used in a court hearing to
force two long-time possessors to keep some land and its associated
tax burdens. Thus it acted to the possessors’ detriment.
What
is perhaps surprising is that no-one in the court challenges the
authenticity of the rescript. It is accepted without demur.
In
the third century, at least, rescripts remained highly desirable and
indeed collectable.
They
tended to be short and to the point, and so served to clarify and
reinforce what the legal rules were supposed to be or what
exceptions were possible.
One
never knew when an imperial rescript might come in handy.
All
the more so as Caracalla’s universal grant of citizenship in
212 had made almost all free persons in the empire into Roman
citizens, subject in theory to Roman law, about which most will have
been largely ignorant. However, they were perhaps willing to be
informed, especially if it might be to their advantage.
Thus
the desire for rescripts reached its apogee under Diocletian in the
290s with the compilation of the Gregorian and Hermogenian Codes.
Neither work survives today and only recently have even fragments of
a manuscript of the Gregorian Code been identified.
Assumptions
about them are thus based mainly on their reuse in later legal
works. As far as we can tell, both codes consisted primarily of
imperial rescripts arranged under thematic titles. Hermogenian was
Diocletian’s Master of Petitions and, later, praetorian
prefect, and his code seems to have consisted almost entirely of
private rescripts which he had him-self composed for Diocletian in
the years 293 and 294. It was published in a single book in 295 or
not long thereafter.
Despite
Hermogenian’s closeness to the imperial court, it is far from
clear that his code was in any formal sense official. After all, it
is named after himself as a jurist, even though containing nothing
but rescripts of the emperors. It is even less clear with the
Gregorian Code, published also in the mid-to-late 290s. The scope of
the Gregorian Code was much greater than that of the Hermogenian, as
it contained material from Hadrian down to the 290s and was arranged
over at least thirteen books, perhaps fifteen. Its shadowy author
may have been operating outside the court and so perhaps had to rely
to a considerable extent, at least for his contemporary material,
upon rescripts and occasionally letters and edicts that had been
publicly posted and copied. However, it has been proposed that he
too served as Master of Petitions and even enjoyed access to older
archives in Rome.
What
is remarkable is that texts originally issued by emperors to
individuals at their own request and for their use alone ended up
having the equivalent of a mass (re)promulgation, and without this
apparently being formal imperial policy.
4.
Imperial collegiality under the First Tetrarchy
The
timing of the Hermogenian Code, however, is fortuitous, if not
suspicious. Consisting as it did solely of rescripts of the emperors
in the newly formed imperial college of the First Tetrarchy
(inaugurated on 1st March 293), it furnished a legal collection that
was, as I have noted on previous occasions, “wall-to-wall”
tetrarchs.
This
brings us to another key feature of the tetrarchic period and the
manner in which imperial texts were communicated: namely imperial
collegiality. There was already a long tradition of emperors sharing
some or all of their powers and titles. Augustus had shared the
tribunician power, and full co-emperors went back as far as Marcus
Aurelius and Lucius Verus (161–169). When Diocletian
established himself as sole emperor in 285, he appointed a close
companion, Maximian, as first Caesar, then Augustus. Later, in the
face of military overstretch, two Caesars were appointed in 293,
forming what we call the First Tetrarchy. The immediate purpose was
to allow the imperial presence in four places at once, and the 290s
saw simultaneous military crises being managed concurrently and
successfully. The imperial succession was also assured. Since
neither Augustus had an adult son, it was their sons-in-law who were
the new Caesars, thereby designated as successors in advance, ready
to be promoted from Caesar to Augustus when circumstances dictated.
The
effects of such collegiality on imperial communication are in one
sense absolutely clear. Formal pronouncements were made in the names
of all members of the imperial college.
This
was already standard practice and continued to be so throughout
later Roman and indeed Byzantine history.
One
of the best physical manifestations of this under the First
Tetrarchy is the heading to the Egyptian copy of the Prices Edict of
301, which, despite being incomplete, lists all four members of the
imperial college with their full titles.
(1)
[Imp(erator) Caesar C. Aurel(ius) Val(erius) Diocletianus p(ius)
f(elix) inu(ictus) Aug(ustus) po]nt(ifex) max(imus)
Germ(anicus)
max. VI Sarm(aticus) max. IIII Persic(us) max. II Britt(annicus)
max. Carpic(us) max. Armen(icus) max. Med-
ic(us)
max. Adiabenic(us) max. trib(unicia) p(otestate) XVIII co(n)ss(ul)
VII imp. XVIII p(ater) p(atriae) proco(n)ss(ul). et
Imp.
Caesa[r] M. Aurel. Val. Maximianus p.f. inu. Aug. pont. max. Germ.
max. V Sarm. [max. IIII Persic. max. II]
(2)
[Britt. max. Carpic. max. Armen. max. Medic. max. Adiabenic. max.
tri]b. p. XVII coss. VI imp. XVII p.p. procoss. et
Fla(uius)
Val. Constantius Germ. max. II Sarm. max. II Persic. max. II Britt.
max. Armenic. max. Medic. max. Adiabenic.
max.
trib. p. VIIII coss. III nobil(issimus) Caes(ar) et
G(alerius) Val. Maximianus Germ. max. II Sarm. [max. II Persic. max.
II]
(3)
[Britt. max. Carpic. max. Armenic. max. Medic. max. Adia]b. max.
trib. p. VIIII coss. III nobil. Caes. DICVNT Fortunam rei publicae
(…)
The
complete lines would have been very long (300 letters) and there is
a large lacuna before the edictal DICVNT, with another somewhat less
large lacuna after it. In particular, victory titles are shared
between the princes. A victory won by any member of the college
added to the titulature of each of his colleagues.
This
feature appears to have reached its highpoint at precisely this
moment, since such complete collegiality of titulature does not seem
to have lasted beyond 305.
Not
all documents were necessarily prefaced by such extensive titles,
but collegiality was always maintained. References in the papyri and
even martyr acts refer routinely to the orders of the Augusti and
Caesars.
Governors
and other officials seem to have been fairly scrupulous in observing
these formalities. Thus, since in theory official acts and
pronouncements were not those of one ruler, but of four acting in
harmonious concert, the manner in which they were issued,
circulated, and displayed consistently reflects this collegiality.
Indeed, even the physical display of sets of milestones or groups of
statues, for instance as incorporated into monumental tetrapyla,
could be used to emphasize the nature of fourfold rulership.
The
constitutional details behind this façade are more difficult
to reconstruct. It is not clear that each member of the college had
the same authority to issue pronouncements on behalf of the entire
college.
Of
course, like any governor, they should have been able to issue
edicts, write letters, and reply to petitions. Indeed, there was
little point in having four rulers, if each could not provide a
focus wherever he happened to be in residence. But whether each
document issued was imperially authoritative and always bore the
names of the four tetrarchs is uncertain. An Augustus probably could
and did issue all types of pronouncement. There is some rather
limited evidence for Caesars issuing rescripts and writing letters.
Tim
Barnes has argued, although he is not the first to do so, that
Caesars could not issue collegiate edicts, and he has suggested that
the famous Damascus incest edict of May 295, which on logistical
grounds ought to have been issued by Galerius as Caesar, was in fact
issued by Diocletian from Demessus near the Danube frontier.
A
further point is that Caesars did not at this time have praetorian
prefects, the most important officials after the members of the
imperial college, but what practical effect this had on a Caesar’s
administration is unknown.
Yet
the prefects mirrored the emperors and themselves acted as a
college, something which continued down even to the sixth century.
What
is clear is that Diocletian, as the senior member of the college,
had an overriding authority and issued measures designed to apply
empire-wide. Further he did on occasion deal with governors or
petitioners from areas under the immediate supervision of Maximian,
suggesting that people in these territories did not always approach
Maximian automatically.
Thus
most famously Diocletian issued a letter from Alexandria in reply to
a query from the proconsul of Africa about the Manichees, in 297 or
302.
But
to say that the senior emperor had an overriding authority does not
clarify what authority his colleagues had, at least in their
immediate areas. It is notable that both the Gregorian and
Hermogenian Codes contained some limited material which must have
emanated from courts other than that of Diocletian.
Before
the abdication in 305, Diocletian’s prestige enabled him to
exercise considerable control over his new tetrarchic creation. Even
here, however, it is not obvious that the measures he promulgated as
senior ruler were consistently enforced. The effects of the first
persecution edict against the Christians, issued at Nicomedia in
February 303, can be seen rippling out to Palestine and then Africa.
Yet
it seems to have been applied only minimally in the territory of the
Caesar Constantius in Gaul.
The
fourth edict (304) does not appear to have been enforced in the west
at all,
as
may also have been the case with the earlier Prices Edict (301).
5.
Collegiality after Diocletian
Since
this was the case even under Diocletian, the position after his
abdication was much more fluid. I have myself recently argued, on
the basis of a new interpretation of complex epigraphic evidence,
that Galerius issued a series of important measures to rein in
fiscal and other abuses in the summer of 305 shortly after his
accession as Augustus, even though he was not the senior member of
the college.
It
seems clear that Galerius himself hoped to manage the college and
the empire as had Diocletian and was anticipating that situation.
Yet after the death of Constantius, the theoretical senior, in July
306, Galerius quickly lost control of events. Thus different rulers
in different parts of the empire took rather different views of who
were their colleagues and what were their relative ranks.
This
is most elegantly expressed in an inscription from Heraclea Sintica
in Macedonia first published in 2002:
Imp.
Caes. Galerius Valerius Maximianus Pius Felix Augustos (sic) pont.
max. Germ. m. VI Sarm. m. V Pers. m. II Brt. m. Carp. m. V Arm. m.
Med. m. Adiab. m. trib. p. XVII imp. III p.p. proc. et Galerius
Valerius Maximinus Sarmaticus nobilissimus Caesar. salutem dicunt
IIIIuiris et decc(urionibus) Heracleotarum.
In
this letter, datable to the first months of 308, Galerius as
Augustus and Maximinus as Caesar address the town council, granting
the community proper city status. The formal heading, which lists
Galerius’s full titles, with something more attenuated for
Maximinus, shows that at this point, as a result of usurpation
(Maxentius and Maximian), defection (Constantine) and death
(Severus), Galerius no longer recognized any rulers from the western
portion of the empire as legitimate members of the imperial college.
Such
collegiate tensions continued until Constantine’s victory over
Licinius in 324, and can be further illustrated by the fate of
Licinius’s letter on military privilege in the copy known from
Brigetio, issued in June 311.
This
bronze copy was originally prefaced only with the phrase Exempl(um)
Sacra(rum) Litterarum, as in the Durostorum copy, which latter
carries just the abbreviation E S L and otherwise lacks all other
diplomatic elements.
The
Brigetio letter carries a greeting to Dalmatius, the commander or
other official to whom the original of this copy had been addressed:
Haue Dalmati, carissime nobis.
The
letter concludes with the imperial signature, marked in the
epigraphic text thus: Et manu
diuina:
Vale
Dalmati, carissime nobis.
This
is followed by the date: Diuo Maximiano VIII et [[et d(omino)
n(ostro) Maximino Aug. II.]] coss.
IIII
Idus Iunias Serdica [10th June, 311, at Sofia].
In
theory, Licinius, the issuer of the letter, whose “divine
hand” wrote the farewell, would have been third in the
collegiate line-up after Maximinus and Constantine. Following the
death of Galerius in late April or early May 311, Maximinus, who had
been in the imperial college the longest (since 1st May 305), should
have become the new senior emperor.
Licinius
himself, who had been appointed by Galerius straight to the rank of
Augustus in November 308, when Maximinus was still only Caesar, had
been at that time second in the college. Subsequently, the elevation
of all members of the college to the full rank of Augustus in 310
(Lactant. De mort. pers. 32) meant that Licinius, being the newest
arrival, was after a short delay demoted to last place.
However,
the Brigetio tablet carries no titulature to reveal the collegiate
line-up or to demonstrate Licinius’s view of himself and his
colleagues at that precise point in June 311. The letter was widely
circulated to officials both military and civil only in Licinius’s
Balkan territories, with orders for public display, the two copies
which survive coming from Danube fortresses. After the defeat and
death of Maximinus in 313, his name was erased from the consular
date (indicated by the double brackets above). A heading showing the
new imperial college of Constantine and Licinius was
added
thus:
Imp.
Caes. Fla. Val. Constantinus p. f. in. Aug. p. m. tri. p. VII imp.
VI cos. p.p. pcoss. et Imp. Caes. Val. [[Lici. Licinius ]] p. f. in.
Aug. p. m. tri. p. IIII imp. III cos. p.p. pcoss.
After
Licinius’s fall, his name too was erased. Despite the
annulment of his acts by Constantine, this text remained valid and
on display.
After
all, it was still prefaced with the name of Constantine, even if he
had not in fact issued it. Collegiality and conflict had some
strange consequences.
6.
Collegiality viewed from below
How
did this affect practical administration and what did those in
receipt of collegiate missives make of them? First, if documents
were issued in the names of all co-rulers, was it obvious who had
actually issued them? Emperors had traditionally used the first
person singular of themselves, as had their Republican predecessors
as holders of imperium, which contrasts with the practice of
Hellenistic kings. Although there is some sign of the majestic
plural in the earlier third century, it seems to have been the
almost continuous existence of imperial colleges thereafter which
made the plural normal, so that there was no reversion to the
singular even in sole reigns, and the majestic plural became
standard.
However,
occasionally an emperor with colleagues will slip into the singular
to emphasize his personal involvement, perhaps to indicate that it
is his court to which matters must be referred.
The
most remarkable case of this personal emphasis is in the letter of
toleration for Christians and others issued by Licinius and posted
up at Nicomedia in June 313.
This
opens not only with the standard talk of the emperors claiming to
exercise their providentia for the advantage and safety of their
subjects, but with the emperors naming themselves quite explicitly:
Cum
feliciter tam ego Constantinus Augustus quam etiam ego Licinius
Augustus apud Mediolanum conuenissemus atque uniuersa quae ad
commoda et securitatem publicam pertinerent, in tractatu haberemus
(…)
When
with good fortune both I, Constantine Augustus, and I, Licinius
Augustus, met at Milan, and gave consideration to all affairs that
pertained to the public benefit and security (…)
This
statement is of course very pointed, for Licinius’ letter was
issued precisely for the territories he had seized from the defeated
but not yet dead Maximinus.
At
the time of the Milan meeting (February 313), Maximinus was at best
barely a legitimate colleague, nor was he of course present.
Further, his previous claim to senior status in the college had been
voided, as the Senate, in probably its last constitutionally
significant act, had voted the first place to Constantine shortly
after the defeat of Maxentius in October 312.
Indeed,
if any letters or edicts were issued at Milan, it is hard to imagine
Maximinus’ name being included in their headings at all. The
Nicomedia letter thus emphasises both the facts of the past meeting
and the present constitutional order.
Of
course, someone who petitioned or wrote to the emperor will have
known with which ruler he was dealing, even though any documents
presented should have been addressed to the entire college, at least
as the petitioner understood it to be constituted.
Similarly,
any reply will have come in the names of all in the college as
currently recognized by the individual prince who had been
approached. However, the recipient need not, other than in a purely
formal sense, attribute it to the college as a whole. Ammon of
Panopolis talks optimistically of the power of a letter of
Diocletian to trump all other claims in a dispute over a priesthood.
No
colleagues are mentioned. Everyone in Panopolis will have remembered
Diocletian’s visit in 298, since an imperial visit was
extremely rare, and that of Diocletian may have been the last.
No-one
could have been in any doubt that it was Diocletian who had been
petitioned by the conflicting interested parties and who had issued
the letter in reply during his stay.
7.
Proactive pronouncements
I
have talked about “petition and response,” a pattern
still clear in the tetrarchic evidence. Yet the period seems to show
a more proactive side to government, with fairly aggressive
promulgation of imperial initiatives. There are several features of
this which can be briefly delineated.
First,
long Latin texts are circulated around Greek-speaking areas,
probably a sign of Latin-speaking courts permanently resident in the
Greek east for the first time, and of the fact that Roman law was
now the law of everyone.
In
fact previously emperors had tended to correspond with eastern
cities in Greek and such aggressive Latin promulgation is a
relatively short-lived phenomenon.
Even
during this period, however, governors might publish an imperial
Latin text with an explanatory edict of their own in Greek, or even
commission a translation.
In
the longer term, of course, Greek percolated into the higher
echelons of the administration and eventually superseded Latin,
although that is quite another story.
Secondly,
a highly rhetorical and moralizing style becomes prominent in edicts
and letters. The style of imperial texts had always varied with both
format and the personal idiosyncrasies of the officials writing
them, so that even private rescripts, the most spare in nature,
could be tinged with a particular official’s rhetoric.
But,
especially outside private rescripts, floridity now becomes the
order of the day, as witness the Prices Edict preamble, the
Damascus/Demessus incest edict (Collatio 6, 4), and indeed the
rescript on the Manichees (Collatio 15, 3). Thirdly, the distinction
of format between edicts and letters becomes blurred.
An
imperial enactment could generate dozens of interrelated documents
in both edictal and epistolary formats, often with overlapping or
even identical content. Unfortunately, we seldom have an imperial
text in more than one form to test this, even if we know that it
must have existed in others. One example is the dossier on the civic
status of Orcistus.
Of
the four items carved on their monument by the Orcistans, three
interrelated
items
(petition, imperial adnotatio, imperial letter) date to 324/6. We
can see how Constantine’s letter to Ablabius as vicar of
Asiana essentially marries the adnotatio to the Orcistans with
details mirrored from the Orcistans’ own petition.
Another
more complex example is my proposed Caesariani dossier, issued by
Galerius in the summer of 305.
There
were three distinct texts. First there was a letter (the 1 st
Caesariani decree) directing officials how to act both now and in
the future.
Copies
of this, presumably largely identical, were sent to the praetorian
prefects (that is of each Augustus, at least in theory), the
financial officials (apparently just of the issuing Augustus, in
this case Galerius) and the provincial governors.
Then
there were also issued at the same time two edicts, one restoring
confiscated goods (the 2nd Caesariani decree) and one repressing
accusations (the edictum de accusationibus).
This
last edict is quite clear about the documents produced and their
interrelationship as described in its concluding passage:
Super
his itaque omnibus tam ad praefectos nostros quam etiam ad praesides
et rationalem et magistrum priuatae scripta direximus, quorum
exempla alio edicto nostro subdita cuiusmodi legem statutumque
contineat plenissime declaratur.
And
therefore on all these matters we have sent letters (sc. the 1st
Caesariani decree) both to our prefects as also to the governors,
rationalis, and magister privatae, copies of which subjoined to our
other edict (sc. the 2nd Caesariani decree) give the fullest
exposition of what sort of law and statute it contains.
The
inscribed copies of these various texts all come from territory
under the control of Galerius (Achaea, Asia, Crete, Epirus, Lycia,
Paphlagonia). However, these cannot be narrowly interpreted as
defining the only places where promulgation actually took place, as
opposed to where governors or cities were motivated, perhaps out of
self interest, to erect permanent copies. The Prices Edict, of
course, is famous for being the imperial text known from the most
epigraphic copies, more than forty.
However,
here also the spread of find-spots shows that only a small number of
provinces inscribed the text (Achaea, Crete/Cyrene and Phrygia/Caria
account for all but four fragments), and even then they did not
always finish it (as was the case at Stratonicea, which expires in
the middle of chapter 23).
Thus
we may be seeing the limits of aggressive promulgation. After all,
the uneven persecution of the Christians shows how much depended not
on the senior emperor’s will, but on the variable enthusiasms
of his colleagues, of the local authorities, and even of would-be
martyrs.
Yet
we also know that census decrees issued from the top to provincial
governors could be enforced down to village level, as witness the
work of the Syrian boundary commissioners (censitores), most of
whose inscriptions are set up acknowledging the orders of the
Augusti and the Caesars.
8.
Epilogue
Thus
the tetrarchic period shows four important features of
communication: first, the pattern of petition and response, which is
crucial in the generation of imperial letters and other documents;
second, the overlapping form and function of documents, which cannot
always be neatly demarcated, as is especially true of intertwined
dossiers; third, the limitations of proactive legislation and
promulgation; and finally, the complexity and ambiguity caused by
texts issued jointly by multiple co-rulers. This is perhaps the most
notable feature in this period of ever-shifting patterns of
cooperation and conflict between emperors.
I
should like to end, therefore, with a strange, even whimsical, tale
of collegiality reflected in the heading to yet another epigraphic
letter.
E(xemplum)
S(acri) R(escripti)
Imp.
Caes. Fl. Constantinus
max.
Germ. Sarm. Got. uictor
triump.
Aug. et Fl. Constantinus
et
Fl. Iul. Constantius et Fl.
Constans.
This
is from the rescript issued to the city of Hispellum, allowing the
Umbrians the right to celebrate their own festival without trekking
to the regional capital, Volsinii, every year and also permitting
the establishment of a temple to the Flavian gens. The rescript is
most often dated to 333–335, and attributed to Constantine,
with his three sons as colleagues.However, this is not the only
possible dating of the rescript and its heading. An alternative,
although not entirely new, interpretation has recently been
advocated with typical forcefulness by Tim Barnes.
According
to Eusebius, there was a hiatus after Constantine’s death on
22nd May 337, when the government carried on as if he were still
alive, while the Caesars, with no Augustus left in the imperial
college to promote them, yet not trusting each other’s
ambitions, waited and plotted. A massacre carried out in
Constantinople before the end of June removed Constantine’s
half-brothers and most of their male relatives, including the Caesar
Dalmatius. The three sons of Constantine finally met in Pannonia,
where they were jointly proclaimed Augusti on 9th September.
Thus
the rescript can be viewed as issued by Constans, who names the city
Flavia Constans after himself, while the text studiously avoids
giving the three sons any title, so that they are neither Caesar nor
Augustus. The only Augustus is Constantine, apparently writing a
letter some weeks or even months after he was dead. I am not certain
that this interpretation is correct. However, should it be so, then
this is surely one of the more bizarre epistolographic consequences
of imperial collegiality.
9.
Dossier of documents
This
dossier is designed to illustrate with full texts and English
translations something of the nature of imperial communication in
the third and fourth centuries. I provide examples of each of the
four principal formats of pronouncement: a private letter, an
official letter, an edict, and a private rescript. Further, each
illustrates different aspects of the source material. Document 1 is
from a contemporary inscription (not tetrarchic, but dating only a
quarter of a century before Diocletian), in a partial Latin and a
complete Greek version. Document 3, relating to the persecution of
the Christians, is preserved in two contemporary Christian writers,
one giving the original Latin, the other a Greek translation.
Documents 2 and 4 are taken from the law codes, each having been
first edited into an earlier code (the Theodosian and Gregorian
respectively), before ending up re-edited into the Justinian Code
more than two hundred years after their original issue. Documents 1
and 4, although technically different in format, are in fact very
similar in subject matter and content, both reflecting individuals’
attempts to avoid the heavy burdens or duties demanded of citizens.
The edict, by contrast, reflects not only the rhetorical style
typical of late antiquity, and the tendency to apologia surrounding
confessional matters, but also the ambiguities in format that were
eliding the distinctions of edict and letter.
1
An epigraphic letter: the rescript of Valerian to Apellas (May 258)
[Feissel 2004a = AE 2004, 1402; this replaces older editions such as
Petzl 1987:no. 604.]
I
Latin text
[-
- -] CAOON [- - -] KA [- - -]
[Pr]op{p}<t>er
quod magistratus harum ciuitatum
in
quibus te suggeris possidere agere curam
[deben]t
u<t> quod optime placuisse perspicitur perpetua
obseruatione
teneatur. Vale Apel<l>a carissime nobis.
Data
V Kal. Iun. Antiochi(ae).
II
Greek text
...
Translation
(composite):
Good
fortune!
The
emperor Caesar Publius Licinius Valerianus dutiful fortunate
Augustus and the emperor Caesar Publius Licinius Gallienus dutiful
fortunate Augustus and Licinius Cornelius Valerianus most noble
Caesar to their Julius Apellas, greeting!
It
is not in doubt that established rules are also in this matter to be
observed, in that there is to be no compulsion upon the houses of
senators to be troubled by the need to provide billets. Therefore
the magistrates of those cities, in which you say you have property,
are to see to it that what is known to be a very fine decision is
kept with continual observance. Farewell, Apellas, most dear to us!
Given
at Antioch, on the fifth day before the Kalends of June (28th May
258).
This
text from Smyrna is typical in both form and substance, but reflects
also the needs of the recipient. Apellas is a senator seeking to
affirm his immunity from compulsory billeting. A famous rescript of
Severus and Caracalla on this matter dating to 204 is known from
numerous epigraphic copies in Greek and Latin.
Here
likewise, the original letter was most likely in Latin, with Apellas
inscribing it also in Greek to make sure the message was clear in
the predominant literate language of his home territory.
However,
it appears that the penultimate line of the Greek with its brief
lacuna does not have enough space to convey the full sense of the
Latin original.
Someone
of lesser rank than Apellas, like the Scaptopareni villagers
mentioned earlier (or Neo in example 4 below), would petition and,
if fortunate, get a private rescript in reply, posted in the city
where the emperor happened to be in residence. But Apellas, as a
senator, can write directly to the emperors and receive a rescript
that is epistolary. Whether he personally visited the imperial court
at Antioch, or was able to use official channels (e.g. via the
proconsul of Asia) is unknown. The reply is fully collegiate, being
in the names of all members of the imperial college (Valerian,
Gallienus, and Valerian junior), even though in fact it represents
the decision of Valerian alone. It is brief and to the point.
2
An official letter from the codes: Constantine to Eusebius, governor
of Lycia and Pamphylia (June 313 [311 or 312]) [Cod. Theod. 13, 10,
2 = Cod. Iust. 11, 49, 1]
Idem
(Imp. Constantinus, in Cod. Iust.)
A.
ad Eusebium u(irum) p(erfectissimum), praesidem Lyciae et Pamfyliae.
Plebs
urbana,
sicut in Orientalibus quoque prouinciis obseruatur, minime in
censibus pro capitatione sua conueniatur, sed iuxta hanc iussionem
nostram inmunis habeatur (Cod. Iust. ends here), sicuti etiam sub
domino et parente nostro Diocletiano seniore A(ugusto) eadem plebs
urbana inmunis fuerat. Dat. Kal. Iun. Constantino A. III et Licinio
III Conss.
The
same Augustus to Eusebius, vir perfectissimus, governor of Lycia and
Pamphylia. The urban plebs, as is also the rule in the provinces of
Oriens, is not to be liable for its poll-tax in the census, but is
to be considered exempt in accordance with this our command, just as
the same urban plebs was also exempt under our lord and parent
Diocletian, the retired Augustus. Given on the Kalends of June, in
the consulship of Constantine Augustus for the third time and
Licinius for the third time (1 June 313).
No
text in the Theodosian Code records Constantine with a fellow
Augustus as a colleague, and few mention his sons as Caesars, even
though Constantine always had at least one colleague throughout his
reign. Even as consul Licinius loses his title of Augustus, as in
the subscript here. The Constantinian texts effectively conceal not
just collegiality, but on occasion also the fact that a ruler other
than Constantine was responsible for a measure. Several code
constitutions were in reality issued by Licinius.
This
measure, too, might appear to be Licinian, as an early act of
beneficence after his occupation of Asia Minor following the defeat
of Maximinus. However, the reference to Oriens and the fact that
Diocletian is mentioned as still alive (he died c. December 312),
makes Maximinus a far more probable issuer, either in June 311
(beneficence on occupying Asia Minor after the death of Galerius, to
coincide with that year’s census) or June 312 (a reward for
petitions presented against the Christians).
The
Justinian Code version is almost identical to the Theodosian
version, but with the unnecessary clause about Diocletian removed.
3
An edict from Christian literary sources: Galerius’ “palinode”
(April 311) [Lactant. De mort. pers. 34, 1–35, 1 (Latin
original); Euseb. Hist. eccl. 8, 17, 3–10 (Greek translation);
cf. Rufinus, Historia ecclesiastica 8, 17, 3–10 (Latin
retrotranslation from Eusebius’ Greek). The Latin heading
(omitted by Lactantius) is here recreated on the basis of Eusebius’s
Greek, with my own restoration of the missing Maximinus.]
Imp(erator)
Caes(ar) Galerius Valerius Maximianus <pius felix> inuictus
Augustus, pont(ifex) max(imus), Germanicus max. <VII>,
Aegyptiacus max., Thebaicus max., Sarmaticus max. V, Persicus max.
<III, Britannicus max.> II, Carpicus max. VI, Armenicus max.,
Medicus max., Adiabenicus max., trib(unicia) pot(estate) XX,
imp(erator) XVIIII, consul VIII, p(ater) p(atriae), proc(onsul) <et
Imp. Caes. Galerius Valerius Maximinus pius felix inuictus Augustus,
pont. max., trib. pot. VII, imp. VI, consul, p. p., proc.> et
Imp. Caes. Flavius Valerius Constantinus pius felix inuictus
Augustus, pont. max., trib. pot. <VI>, imp. V, consul, p. p.,
proc. et Imp. Caes. Valerius Licinianus Licinius pius felix inuictus
Augustus, pont. max., trib. pot. IV, imp. III, consul, p. p., proc.
{provincialibus suis salutem} dicunt: Inter cetera quae pro rei
publicae semper commodis atque utilitate disponimus, nos quidem
uolueramus antehac iuxta leges ueteres et publicam disciplinam
Romanorum cuncta corrigere atque id prouidere, ut etiam Christiani,
qui parentum suorum reliquerant sectam, ad bonas mentes redirent,
siquidem quadam ratione tanta eosdem Christianos uoluntas inuasisset
et tanta stultitia occupasset, ut non illa ueterum instituta
sequerentur, quae forsitan primum parentes eorundem constituerant,
sed pro arbitrio suo atque ut isdem erat libitum, ita sibimet leges
facerent quas obseruarent, et per diuersa uarios populos
congregarent. denique cum eiusmodi nostra iussio extitisset, ut ad
ueterum se instituta conferrent, multi periculo subiugati, multi
etiam deturbati sunt <et uariis mortibus affecti> (added from
Eusebius). atque cum plurimi in proposito perseuerarent ac uideremus
nec diis eosdem cultum ac religionem debitam exhibere nec
Christianorum deum obseruare, contemplatione mitissimae nostrae
clementiae intuentes et consuetudinem sempiternam, qua solemus
cunctis hominibus ueniam indulgere, promptissimam in his quoque
indulgentiam nostram credidimus porrigendam, ut denuo sint
Christiani et conuenticula sua componant, ita ut ne quid contra
disciplinam agant. per aliam autem epistolam iudicibus significaturi
sumus quid debeant obseruare. unde iuxta hanc indulgentiam nostram
debebunt deum suum orare pro salute nostra et rei publicae ac sua,
ut undique uersum res publica praestetur incolumis et securi uiuere
in sedibus suis possint.
Hoc
edictum proponitur Nicomediae pridie kalendas Maias ipso (sc.
Maximiano) octies et Maximino iterum consulibus.
The
emperor Caesar Galerius Valerius Maximianus, dutiful, fortunate,
unconquered Augustus, Chief Priest, mightiest German victor 7 times,
mightiest Egyptian victor, mightiest Thebaic victor, mightiest
Sarmatian victor 5 times, mightiest Persian victor thrice, mightiest
British victor twice, mightiest Carpian victor 6 times, mightiest
Armenian victor, mightiest Median victor, mightiest Adiabenican
victor, holding the tribunician power for the 20th time, imperator
for the 19th
time,
consul for the 8th time, Father of his Country, proconsul; and the
emperor Caesar Galerius Valerius Maximinus, dutiful, fortunate,
unconquered, Augustus, Chief Priest, holding the tribunician power
for the 7th time, imperator for the 6th time, consul, Father of his
Country, proconsul; and the emperor Caesar Flavius Valerius
Constantinus, dutiful, fortunate, unconquered, Augustus, Chief
Priest, holding the tribunician power for the 6th time, imperator
for the 5th time, consul, Father of his Country, proconsul; and the
emperor Caesar Valerius Licinianus Licinius, dutiful, fortunate,
unconquered, Augustus, Chief Priest, holding the tribunician power
for the 4th time, imperator for the 3rd time, consul, Father of his
Country, proconsul DECLARE:
Among
all the other arrangements which we are always making for the
advantage and benefit of the state, we had earlier sought to set
everything right in accordance with the ancient laws and public
discipline of the Romans and to ensure that the Christians too, who
had abandoned the way of life of their ancestors, should return to a
sound frame of mind; for in some way such self-will had come upon
these same Christians, such folly had taken hold of them, that they
no longer followed those usages of the ancients which their own
ancestors perhaps had first instituted, but, simply following their
own judgement and pleasure, they were making up for themselves the
laws which they were to observe and were gathering various groups of
people together in different places. When finally our order was
published that they should betake themselves to the practices of the
ancients, many were subjected to danger, many too were struck down.
Very many, however, persisted in their determination and we saw that
these same people were neither offering worship and due religious
observance to the gods nor practising the worship of the god of the
Christians. Bearing in mind therefore our own most gentle clemency
and our perpetual habit of showing indulgent pardon to all men, we
have taken the view that in the case of these people too we should
extend our speediest indulgence, so that once more they may be
Christians and put together their meeting-places, provided they do
nothing to disturb good order. We are moreover about to indicate in
another letter to governors what conditions they ought to observe.
Consequently, in accordance with this indulgence of ours, it will be
their duty to pray to their god for our safety and for that of the
state and themselves, so that from every side the state may be kept
unharmed and they may be able to live free of care in their own
homes.
(Lactantius’
comment) This edict was published at Nicomedia on the day before the
Kalends of May, during his (sc. Galerius’s) eighth consulship
and the second consulship of Maximinus (30 April 311])
This
text shows several features typical of edicts of this period,
especially the moralizing rhetoric and the need for imperial
self-justification, the latter a particular feature of texts
relating to the persecution and other Christian matters. It is,
however, rather shorter than other examples, such as the Prices
Edict preamble or the longer letters sent by Constantine. The
imperial titulature, however, is given in full form, although as
preserved by Eusebius it suffers from both deliberate omission and
error in transmission. The most serious loss is the absence of
Maximinus, who will have been damned by the time Eusebius wrote. It
is notable that only four manuscripts include Licinius, as he too
was damned and later editions of the Ecclesiatical History reflect
his diminished status.
Unlike
the Prices Edict heading quoted earlier, victory titles are only
attributed to the senior emperor (Galerius). The Lactantian text
should have derived from the original edict posted up at Nicomedia.
However, Maximinus did not promulgate the edict in Oriens.
Therefore,
unlike Licinius’s letter ending the persecution in the East,
which was initially promulgated at Nicomedia with another version
later displayed at Caesarea, Eusebius’s text of the edict must
have been obtained by some other route.
Although
the text appears to be an edict, the heading in Eusebius, unless it
represents mistranslation of the Latin, suggests an epistolary form
greeting the provincials, typical also of Constantinian missives,
and indeed the text itself refers to “another letter.”
This shows the confusing convergence of format at this period
between edicts and letters.
A
rescript from the Gregorian(?) and Justinian Codes: The tetrarchs to
Neo (undated, but probably 293 or 294) [Cod. Iust. 7, 62, 7 with
overlap in bold from the Fragmenta Londiniensia Anteiustiniana (Cod.
Greg. 10, 11, 7?)]
Idem
(sc. Impp. Diocletianus et Maximianus) AA. et CC. Neoni. <Hi>
qui ad ciuilia munera {uel decurionatum uel honores} deuocantur,
licet uacationem a principibus acceperint, si appellationis auxilio
non utantur, consensu suo nominationem confirmant. Cum igitur ad
munus uocatus appellaueris, apud praesidem prouinciae iuste te
appellasse ostende. [The subscript with the dating clause is
lost]
The
same Augusti and Caesars to Neo. Those who are summoned to civic
obligations or to the decurionate or to magistracies confirm their
nomination by acquiescence, if they do not invoke the assistance of
an appeal, even though they have been granted exemption by the
emperors. Since, therefore, you have been called to an obligation
and you have appealed, show before the provincial governor that your
appeal is well-grounded.
This
is a typical private rescript on a typical topic. It both states the
law and indicates how this relates to the petitioner’s
circumstances. The petitioner’s next step is suggested, but
the rescript does not decide the issue one way or the other. The
rescript survives principally through the version in the second
edition (534) of the Justinian Code, and so is at least three
removes from the original. The imperial titles of the First
Tetrarchy are attenuated in the code format. A subscript date would
have been present, but has been lost in transmission, nor is there
any trace of it in the surviving London fragments. If the London
fragments indeed derive from a copy of the Gregorian Code, this
shows that the text was, in an earlier incarnation, present in that
Code rather than the Hermogenian Code, which, comprising solely
rescripts of 293 and 294, would otherwise have been the default
option as the source for this rescript.
Comparing
the overlapping text between the Justinian Code and the London
fragments, the gap between the various fragments does not seem long
enough to include the phrase “uel
decurionatum uel honores,” which most probably,
therefore, is a Justinianic interpolation into the first edition of
529. It would have been designed to make the rescript more general
and apply to a wider range of positions and duties than the civilia
munera, which must have been the focus of the original petition and
rescript.
See
(PDF)
"The Augusti and Caesars say": Imperial communication in a
collegiate monarchy
The
Value of the Stability of the Law.
A
Perspective on the Role of the Emperor in Political Crises
1
Emperors and Usurpers in Conflict in Late Antiquity
The
great Church father Augustine, speaking from the pulpit of the
Tricilarum Basilica around 413, offered a comment on the Apostle
Paul’s passage Non regnet peccatum in vestro mortali corpore.
The bishop of Hippo urged the people not to be overcome by the lust
of the flesh, describing this situation as a civil war of the fifth
century. Christians faced the conflict between flesh and spirit just
as citizens of the empire faced the choice between a usurper, or
tyrannus, and an emperor:
Languor
iste tyrannus est. Si vis te tyranni esse victorem, Christum invoca
imperatorem.
This
disease is like a tyrant. If you want to defeat this tyrant, you
shall invoke Christ the real emperor.
Augustine’s
speech, in its imagery, had a direct connection with the daily life
of Christian believers. The bishop’s audience had experienced
such a clash between a usurper and the emperor; for in that very
same year, Heraclanius, comes Africae, had been declared hostis
publicus.
Usurpation
was very frequent in the Late Empire, as depicted by the historical
sources. Beside the list of triginta tyranni in the Historia
Augusta, Orosius mentions a catalogus tyrannorum in his
Historiae adversus paganos when describing the usurpers Constans,
Maximus, and Jovinus in the year 409. Furthermore, in Polemius
Silvius’ annotated Julian calendar in honor of Eucherius
(Bishop of Lyon) of December 448, we find a copy of an enumeratio
principum cum tyrannis, a list of Roman emperors and usurpers from
Julius Caesar to Theodosius II and Valentinian III.
Usurpation
in Late Antiquity took diverse forms, ranging from emperors being
declared enemies of the state to rebellious generals. Nonetheless,
usurpation constituted a political problem, not only a military one,
because the claimant wanted to be recognized as a legitimate ruler
and acted as such.
The
opposition between an emperor and his rival for the title of
Augustus had been a political matter since its genesis. Once such
usurpers were suppressed, the legitimate emperors continued a
propaganda war against their defeated opponents.
Late imperial coinage celebrated the successes over the usurpers
through depictions of the goddess Victoria promoting the triumph of
the emperor. Monuments were another medium of representation
for a legitimate ruler.The Senate built an arch at the foot of the
Palatine to commemorate Constantine’s victory against
Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge; Theodosius I decided to erect an
obelisk on the central spina of the hippodrome at Constantinople in
order to celebrate his victory against the usurper Magnus Maximus.
Finally, public ceremonies indicated the return of peace after the
usurper’s defeat. A triumph of Honorius in Rome in
416, for instance, symbolically ended the political crises caused by
attempted usurpations in Gaul.
In
view of these various “imperial” manifestations, sharing
an intent to reaffirm the emperor’s legitimacy, a question
arises: what did the law say? The war of a legitimate emperor
against a usurper continued on an administrative and legal level. A
usurper used the same legal forms as a legitimate ruler, because he
usurparet imperium. For example, Eugenius appointed consuls
and sent his officials to Africa, and he provided grain supplies as
well. Usurpers typically also enacted a number of statutes
and/or grants of beneficia and privilegia.
Consequently,
usurpation created a fracture in the legal order because emperors,
after defeating their rivals, removed the effects that the
usurpations had produced. The condemnation of a usurpation to
oblivion was carried out with legal instruments. For the period that
runs from Constantine to Theodosius II, imperial constitutions are
the most vital witnesses of the actions taken by the emperors. On
the one side, in public law, emperors professed to be restoring the
status quo ante; in particular, they tended to order that enactments
issued under the usurper should be nullified (rescissio actorum).
On the other side, they tended to confirm all private legal acts
which had been enacted during the time of “tyranny”,
because the danger of collapse in social and economic relationships
had to be avoided.
Even
if different points of view emerge from public and from private law,
imperial statutes show a consistent image of what constituted a
legitimate ruler. As words of the emperor himself, constitutions are
part of the ideological system centred on the figure of the emperor
and made up of many different elements, for example rhetorical texts
as Panegyrics or images on coins. All these objects and texts played
a role in the representation and promotion of imperial power to the
population of the Roman empire. By examining several constitutions
from the Theodosian Code, I argue in this paper that the imperial
statutes promote the emperor who has vanquished a usurper as the
person who re-established order and protected the stability of the
law.
2
Annulling a Usurper’s Legislation: Between Commands and
Political Communication
Removal
of a rival generally forced emperors and their administration to
review the enactments that the usurper had issued. The question is
not simple, as in some cases a usurper may have exercised power for
a long period and over an extensive area.
Constantine,
to use an important example, had to solve such a situation after
defeating Licinius, who had been Augustus for more that fifteen
years. Constantine branded him a tyrannus—a term which defines
a political enemy but also a usurper—in order to recast his
own conquest of the East as a restoration ofliberty and the rule of
law. Constantine addressed an epistula to the praetorian prefect
Constantius, ordering that all inhabitants should obey only his
constitutions and the vetus ius because the constitutions and the
leges of Licinius had been declared void, probably by an edictum
previously issued:
Imp.
Constantinus a. ad Constantium praefectum praetorio. Remotis Licini
tyranni constitutionibus et legibus omnes sciant veteris iuris et
statutorum nostrorum observari debere sanctionem. Proposita XVII
kal. iun. Crispo III et Constantino III caess. conss.
Emperor
Constantine Augustus to Constantius, Praetorian Prefect. All men
shall know that the constitutions and laws of the tyrant Licinius
are abolished and that the sanctions of ancient law and of Our
statutes must be observed. Posted on the seventeenth day before the
kalends of June in the year of the third consulship of Crispus and
Constantine Caesars — May (December) 16, 324
The
words used in the constitution are extremely clear. They communicate
the point of view of the winner, who wants to show strength and
authority.
The
existing body of law from then on included ancient law followed by
the enactments of Constantine, while the constitutions of the
usurper completely lost their power. The vacuum that was potentially
created by the deletion of Licinius’ laws was filled by the
constitutions of Constantine, who connected his own legislation to
the ancient law (ius vetus), thus creating a continuation of the
legal order. The constitution, however, was less effective in
practice, since the historical record has preserved many traces of
Licinius the legislator. Moreover, coeval Christian sources confirm
that Constantine abrogated only the enactments against the church.
The proclaimed complete annulment of Licinius’ legislation
seems rather part of the political message of the Constantinian
regime, absorbed in manipulating the past and
celebrating a new vision of government.
The
link between the emperor and ancient law (vetus ius), stressed in
CTh. 15.14.1, was already expressed in an earlier constitution that
Constantine issued in an analogous situation in 313, namely the
overthrow of Maxentius. The arrival of Constantine in Rome was
followed by a widespread promotion of his person, which had to
counteract the city’s preference for his rival. Constantine
characterized his opponent as a tyrant, providing, at the same time,
a revealing self-portrait in the role of liberator urbis.
In this context of vilifying Maxentius, Constantine dealt with his
enactments:
Idem
a. Antiocho praefecto vigilum. Quae tyrannus contra ius rescripsit
non valere praecipimus, legitimis eius rescriptis minime
impugnandis.
Dat.
VIII id. iul. Romae Constantino a. VII et Constantio caes. conss.
The
same Augustus to Antiochus, Prefect of the City Guard. We direct
that if the tyrant issued any rescripts contrary to law, they shall
have no validity, but his lawful rescripts shall not be impugned.
Given on the eighth day before the ides of July at Rome in the year
of the seventh consulship of Constantine Augustus and the consulship
of Constantius Caesar. — July 8, 326; January 6, 313.
In
CTh. 15.14.1, Constantine referred to the “tyrant”
Licinius’s enactments, leges and constitutiones. In the
statute about Maxentius, the same oblivion was imposed on the
imperial rescripts, i.e. the answers to petitions, that the usurper
had pronounced “against the law” (contra ius).
However,
the acts of Maxentius were not abolished in their entirety, for
Constantine ordered that the lawful rescripts were not to be
challenged. It is important to focus on this decision, because the
lawful rescripts received their validity not only because they
complied with the ius vetus, but also because Constantine forbade
opposition against them. The constitution thus points to an implied
evaluation of what valid law is. Even if the usurper as illegitimate
legislator has no competence to make law, and his acts must
therefore be abolished, some of his rescripts may be granted
existence because the legitimate emperor gives them a new life in
the world of the law. The criterion that allows these rescripts to
retain their validity is their adherence to the ius vetus. In other
words, the non-existence of the usurper’s acts can be overcome
by the connection between the ius vetus and the legitimate emperor;
the former exists independently, the latter is the guarantor of the
body of law in its entirety.
The
sources show that the discourse linking the emperor and the ius
found expression in various ways, even though in terms of semantics
and ideology the range was quite narrow. The virtue of justice in
the legitimate ruler is more intensely denoted as opposed to the
iniquity of the usurper. For instance, in October 388, Theodosius I
condemned every law and verdict that Magnus Maximus had
conceived during his usurpation:
[Impp.
Valentinianus et Theodosius et Arcadius] aaa. Trifolio praefecto
praetorio. Omne iudicium, quod vafra mente conceptum iniuriam, non
iura reddendo Maximus infandissimus tyrannorum credidit
promulgandum, damnabimus. Nullus igitur sibi lege eius, nullus
iudicio blandiatur.
Dat.
VI Id. Octob. Mediolano Theodosio a. II et Cynegio conss.
Emperors
Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius Augustuses to Trifolius,
Praetorian Prefect.We condemn every decision which Maximus, the most
nefarious of tyrants, conceived in his crafty mind and supposed that
he should promulgate, thus rendering injustice instead of justice.
Therefore, no man shall boast about any law or decision of the
tyrant. Given on the sixth day before the ides of October at Milan
in the year of the second consulship of Theodosius Augustus and the
consulship of Cynegius — October 10, 388.
Maximus
was described as the most nefarious and the most monstrous of the
usurpers. He devised laws and judgments with a wily mind,
and he supposed that he should promulgate them. In reality,
according to Theodosius, he was not a legitimate lawgiver, he was a
source of injustice: he did wrong, rather than making law (non iura
reddendo). The strong language of the constitution made the abstract
idea of justice appear in the figure of Theodosius. The emperor was
the personification of this principle, and his authority took away
all the effects of the usurper’s legal actions, in order that
no-one could take advantage of any law or decision of Maximus.
We
can thus say that the usurper is the living sign of iniuria, i.e.
the absence of the law, while the emperor is the source of the
justice. The same characterization is adopted by the rhetor Pacatus.
His panegyric dedicated to Theodosius has the usurper’s
suppression as its major theme and shows a shared back-ground with
the text of the constitution. While the usurper Magnus Maximus
carries with him perfidia, nefas, and iniuria, the legitimate
emperor is the one who gives fides, fas and ius:
Tecum
fidem, secum perfidiam; tecum fas, secum nefas; tecum ius, secum
iniuriam; tecum clementiam pudicitiam religionem, secum impietatem
libidinem crudelitatem et omnium scelerum potremorumque vitiorum.
On
your side there was loyalty, on his, treachery; you had right on
your side; he, wrong; you had justice, he injustice; you had
clemency, modesty, religious scruple, he impiety, lust, cruelty and
a whole company of the worst crimes and vices.
Despite
the technical legal contents of the laws, the style of the
constitutions emulates the panegyrics and their persuasive purpose;
the broad circulation of the edicts allowed the emperors to build a
common and loyal consent to imperial authority among the population
of the empire. The need for approval became more pressing
when emperors had to support their legitimacy at the end of a
political crisis, and the emphatic formulation of the enactments
conveyed the idea of reinstating justice:
Omnia
penitus amputentur, quae tyrannicum tempus poterat habere
tristissima; universos ergo praecipimus esse securos.
All
the most unhappy circumstances which the time of the tyrant could
afford shall be abolished entirely. Therefore We command that
everyone shall be secure.
3
Safeguarding the Daily Life of the Empire’s Inhabitants
Erasing the usurper’s actions in terms of public law, such as
by abolishing constitutions or rescripts and removing officials who
had collaborated with the tyrant, was bound to have severe
repercussions. At the same time, however, emperors chose to confirm
the validity of transactions by private citizens during the period
of usurpation. During the reign of a usurper, people evidently
concluded contracts, manumitted slaves, and litigated in the courts.
In order to avoid the chaos resulting from cancelling all legal
actions, emperors tried to mitigate the consequences of the damnatio
memoriae by preserving the stability of the law.
In
November 352, Constantius II issued an edict to the population of
the Roman provinces and to the people of Rome, after defeating
Magnentius with his troops in the Battle of Mursa Major and forcing
him to retreat back to Gaul. Even though the usurper was still alive
at this time, the emperor wanted to reassure the inhabitants of the
empire:
Imp.
Constantius A. et Constans C. ad universos provinciales et populum.
Quae tyrannus vel eius iudices contra ius statuerunt, infirmari
iubemus reddita possessione expulsis, ut qui vult ab initio agat.
Emancipationes autem et manumissiones et pacta sub eo facta et
transactiones valere oportet. Dat. III non. Nov. Mediolano
Constantio A. V et Constante conss.
Emperor
Constantius Augustus and Constans Caesar to all the Provincials and
the People. We order that all the regulations established by the
tyrant and his judges contrary to law shall be invalidated.
Possession shall be restored to those persons who were evicted, so
that any person who wishes may litigate as from the beginning. But
emancipations, manumissions, pacts, and compromises made under the
tyrant, must remain valid.
Given
on the third day before the nones of November at Milan in the year
of the fifth consulship of Constantius Augustus and the consulship
of Constans — November 3, 352.
At
the opening of the constitution, the emperor ordered the
invalidation of the regulations that Magnentius and his judges had
established contrary to the law (contra ius). The emperor also
decreed that possessions should be restored to the people who had
been evicted. Next, however, he ordered that emancipations,
manumissions, pacts and compromises that were made under the
tyrannus were to remain valid.
Valentinian
decided to preserve the effects of the same legal acts, after
commanding that any declaration of law and any decisions taken by
judges appointed by the usurper Magnus Maximus should be cancelled:
[Imppp.
Valentinianus, Theodosius et Arcadius] aaa. Constantiano praefecto
praetorio Galliarum … Exceptis his tantum negotiis adque in
sui integra firmitate mansuris, quae conventionibus pactisque finita
sunt, si dolo metuve caruerunt: his quoque pariter exceptis, quae
donatio transtulit, emancipatio liberavit, contulit manumissio
praemia meritae servitutis, quia in his omnibus voluisse sat iuris
est. Dat. XVIIII kal. feb. Mediolano Timasio et Promoto vv. cc.
conss.
Emperors
Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius Augustuses to Constantianus,
Praetorian Prefect of Gaul … Only those suits shall be
excepted and remain in their complete effectiveness which were
terminated by agreements and pacts, provided that fraud and fear
were absent. Those legal acts are likewise excepted whereby a gift
was transferred, freedom was conferred by emancipation, or the
reward of manumission was bestowed upon meritorious slaves, because
in all such matters the intention is a sufficient law. Given on the
nineteenth day before the kalends of February at Milan in the year
of the consulship of the Most Noble Timasius and Promotus. —
January 14, 389.
Pacts
and agreements, such as gifts, emancipations, and manumissions, were
to be excepted from the sanction of invalidation, unless all these
private agreements were the consequence of fraud and fear.
Valentinian considered that these acts were effective because they
were based on the will of the person ho had concluded them. Sat
iuris esse means that, even in a period where there had been no law
because of the illegality of the usurper’s reign, the citizens
of the empire had preserved the respect for the rules, which were
now protected by the emperor. The emperor, in this way, recognized
that the people had continued to be free in regulating on their own
their economic and domestic affairs.
The
opposite decision was taken when a usurper participated directly in
the legal acts. Honorius, after suppressing the usurpation of
Heraclianus and commanding his damnatio memoriae, ordered
that grants of freedom were revoked and had to be redone because the
usurper had influenced directly the will of the masters:
Impp.
Honorius et Theodosius aa. Hadriano praefecto praetorio …
Libertates quoque, quoniam certum est scelere eius sollemnitatem
consulatus esse pollutam, in melius revocamus, sciatque dominorum
voluntas iterandum esse, quod illo auctore advertit stare non posse;
semel tamen mutatae condicionis beneficium implendum esse
praecipimus et ita repeti manumissionum consuetudines nunc iubemus,
ut nullus sub hac occasione incipiat nolle quod voluit. Dat. III
non. aug. Ravennae post cons. Honorii VIIII et Theodosii v. aa.
Emperors
Honorius and Theodosius Augustuses to Hadrianus, pretorian prefect,
we also revoke for the better all grants of freedom, since it is
certain that the legal formalities of the consulship were polluted
by his criminality, and masters shall know that they must repeat
their action, expressing their will, which they observe cannot be
valid under his sponsorship. We direct, however, that the benefit of
the changed condition of slaves must be fulfilled when the change is
once made, and We now order that the customary rites of manumission
shall be so repeated that no man under such pretext shall begin to
unwill that which he once willed. Given on the third day before the
nones of August at Ravenna in the year after the ninth consulship of
Honorius Augustus and the fifth consulship of Theodosius Augustus. —
August 3, 413.
The
manumissions that Heraclianus promoted personally or that were
celebrated solemnly in front of him as consul were not the free and
independent desire of the masters of the freed slaves, but were
polluted by the criminality of the usurper. Heraclanius’
presence during the ceremony undoubtedly affected the masters’
behaviour. The usurper might also have leveraged the masters’
fear to induce them to manumit their slaves, perhaps in order to
conscribe them for his own troops. Honorius renewed the decision of
his predecessor Valentinian (CTh. 15.14.8), and accepted that the
intention of releasing someone from slavery was legally sufficient
if it was independent from the negative and illegal authority of a
tyrannus. When, on the contrary, manumissions were affected by the
pernicious influence of the usurper, he ordered that the masters had
to repeat the acts.
The
respect of people’s liberty in performing legal acts comes to
light in another constitution of Honorius, dated about eighteen
years before CTh. 15.14.13 to 21 April 395:
Impp.
Arcadius et Honorius aa. Andromacho praefecto Urbi.Valeat omnis
emancipatio tyrannicis facta temporibus; valeat a dominis concessa
libertas; valeat celebrata et actis quibuslibet inserta donatio;
valeat deficientium omne iudicium; valeat universa venditio; valeant
sententiae iudicum privatorum—convelli enim iudicium non
oportet—quos partium elegit adsensus et compromissi poena
constituit; valeant conceptae sollemniter pactiones; valeant
scripturae, quibus aut fides rerum aut ratio probatur aut debitum;
valeant apud quemlibet habitae spontaneae professiones; valeat
deposita super instituenda lite testatio; valeat impetratio iuris
communium liberorum; valeat procuratio scaevis mandata temporibus;
datus tutor vel curator optineat firmitatem; valeat in sponsam
perfecta largitio; doli ac vis et metus inchoata actio in tempus
legitimum perseveret; bonorum admissa possessio et adfectus adeundae
hereditatis obtineat et interdicti beneficium non amittat; valeat in
integrum restitutionis petitum auxilium; valeat vindicatio ….
identidem desiderata tribuatur; locatio et conductio inviolabilem
obtineant firmitatem; interdicti beneficia tempora infausta non
mutilent; postulata inofficiosi actio et inmodicarum donationum
rescissio petita servetur; beneficia transacta non titubent;
sacramento terminata permaneant; pignoris adque fiduciae obligatio
perseveret. Stent denique omnia, quae in placitum sunt deducta
privatum, nisi aut circumscriptio subveniet aut vis aut terror
ostenditur. Funestorum tantum consulum nomina iubemus aboleri, ita
ut his reverentia in lectione recitantium tribuatur, qui tunc in
Oriente annuos magistratus victuris perpetuo sunt fascibus
auspicati; tempus vero ipsum, ac si non fuerit, aestimetur, si
quidem tunc temporis omissa aliqua praescriptio taciturnitatis etiam
de illis, quae confirmavimus, non possit obponi.
Dat.
XI kal. mai. Mediolano Olybrio et Probino conss.
Emperors
Arcadius and Honorius Augustuses to Andromachus, Prefect of the
City. Every emancipation made in the times of the tyrant shall
remain valid; all grants of freedom by masters shall remain valid;
all gifts made and registered in any records shall remain valid;
every will of deceased persons shall remain valid; every sale shall
remain valid; the decisions of private judges, chosen by the assent
of the parties and appointed under penalty of a mutual promise to
abide by the award, shall remain valid, since judgments once
rendered must not be disturbed; pacts that were formally made shall
remain valid; written documents by which the trustworthiness of
transactions or the reason there for or debts are proved shall
remain valid; declarations voluntarily made before any person shall
remain valid; attestations filed for the institution of suits shall
remain valid; impetrations of special privileges that accrue to
parents on account of their common children shall remain valid;
procurator ships entrusted during the untoward times shall remain
valid; the appointments of tutors and curators shall retain their
validity; a completed gift to a betrothed woman shall remain valid;
an action for fraud or one on account of violence and intimidation,
when once instituted, shall remain effective during the statutory
time limits; a grant of the possession of the goods of an
inheritance and the expressed will to enter on an inheritance shall
prevail, and shall not lose the benefit of the interdict; the aid
sought for restoration to the original condition shall remain valid;
vindications shall remain valid, and any such action often requested
shall be granted; letting and hiring shall retain inviolable
effectiveness; the inauspicious times shall not mutilate the
benefits of an interdict; requested actions against inofficiosity
and the petitioned rescission of immoderate gifts shall be
preserved; completed benefits shall not waver; transactions
terminated by an oath shall remain valid; the obligation of a pledge
or a trust shall persist. Finally, every transaction shall stand
firm which was embodied in a private pact, unless either
circumvention entered therein or duress or intimidation is shown. We
order that the names of the calamitous consuls only shall be
abolished, but reverence shall be paid in the public recital of
readers to those persons who at that time in the Orient administered
the annual magistracies under Our ever victorious fasces. The very
time of the tyranny shall be considered as though it had not been,
since any prescription of silence omitted at that time cannot be
brought, even in regard to those matters which We have confirmed.
Given on the eleventh day before the kalends of May at Milan in the
year of the consulship of Olybrius and Probinus. — April 21,
395.
Addressed
to Andromachus, praefectus urbis, this imperial enactment concerns
the usurper Eugenius. Honorius preserved the effects of the legal
acts performed by citizens during the usurpation. The emperor tried
to cover all private law, and the constitution implied a very good
knowledge of the praetorian edict, as the references of many of its
institutions show. For contracts, both formal and informal, he
listed e.g. sale, hire, agency, pledge and fiducia; for the law of
succession, he cited the acquisitions of inheritance, the bonorum
possessio, as well as the remedies of the heir; for the law of
procedure, he remembered the litis contestatio and the in integrum
restitutio; he did not forget the law of family, quoting
emancipation, guardianship and gifts for marriage. The long list of
legal acts ends with a general provision. The emperor recognized the
validity of all acts that had not been indicated in the list and
that were embodied in a private agreement (omnia, quae in placitum
sunt deducta privatum), provided that they had not been concluded
dolo or vi.
The
constitution then resolved the problem of the formality of the acts
that was the result of deleting in the documents the names of the
consuls appointed by the tyrannus. The nomen consulis was a
necessary requirement for an act to be legally valid, and its
importance is clearly evoked by John Chrysostom.
Yet, in the present case, the emperor decreed that the omission of
the consuls’ names did not invalidate the contracts and all
the other private regulations. Using a fictio, he denied that the
praescriptio was able to invalidate these agreements, which the
authority of the legislator confirmed.
From
a political and ideological point of view, the constitution clearly
states that there was a time of the usurper (tyrannicis
temporibus / scaevis temporibus / tempora infausta), but that
now the time of justice is back. Honorius wanted to erase the time
of usurpation, tempus vero ipsum, ac si non fuerit, aestimetur:
the
time of usurpation must be considered as having never existed, as if
no usurpation had ever occurred. However, asserting that the time of
the usurpation had never existed threatened the certainty and the
stability of relations between the individuals. For this, the
emperor gave effect to all private acts, and he based this solution
on his power, which was legitimately exercised. The emperor presents
himself as the only one able to guarantee the existence and
effectiveness of all the actions taken by the citizens during the
time of usurpation. The repetition of the verb valeat stresses that
the emperor assures the serenity and the prosperity of the empire
and safeguards peace among the citizens.
The
idea that power is now legitimately exercised after the usurper’s
fall also emerges in the decision to ensure reverentiam in lectione
recitantium only for legitimate consuls. In the courts of the
empire, only the emperor’s time would resound, while oblivion
fell on the usurper’s period. The same emperor emphasized this
thought in CTh. 9.38.12, in which he released an act of grace for
those awaiting trial and for the convicted. By celebrating the
defeat of the usurper Priscus Attalus in 410, he affirmed that the
state had been freed from tyrannidis iniuria, i.e. a period of no
law (in-ius).
Honorius’
validation of private acts answers to the need to secure the trust
of his subjects in imperial power and to strengthen the period of
peace after the conflict with the usurper. By doing this, he
protects the principle of legal certainty, because the law is
certain when the subjects can predict the consequences of their
conduct and see the effects of their legal action maintained over
time. This principle of law, adopted in the Roman legal system, is a
constant in the political programme of all the emperors. For
example, Marcianus, in a lex of 4 April 454, stated that he wanted
to remove obscuritas and bring certainty to the laws:
Si
quid vero in iisdem legibus latum fortassis obscurius fuerit,
oportet id imperatoria interpretatione patefieri, ut omnis
sanctionis removeatur ambiguum et in suam partem iuris dubia
derivare litigatorum contentio alterna non possit.
If
any regulation issued in the aforesaid laws should perhaps be rather
obscure, it must be clarified by the interpretation of the Emperor.
Thus the ambiguity of every sanction shall be removed, and the
alternate contention of litigants cannot divert doubtful points of
law to their own advantage.
4
The Emperor is also νόμος ἔμψυχος
during Political Crises
This
brief survey of texts has demonstrated how constitutions function as
vehicles for the public advertisement of emperors’ legitimacy
after political crises caused by usurpation. Constantine and
Theodosius emphasized that they restored the law, while the usurper
was turned into the personification of the absence of any kind of
order and justice. In addition, Valentinian and Honorius claimed
that they were guardians of the stability of the rules by
recognizing the validity of the legal acts of private citizens while
they were subject to the power of the tyrannus.
This
account traced the connection between emperors and law, which
characterized all legal experience in Late Antiquity. The power of
issuing enactments was not simply a prerogative of the emperor, but
became one of the essential features of his persona. In Late Antique
imperial ideology the emperor was not only the source of the law but
the law itself. Libanius defines the emperor as master of
the law, an expression which evokes the phrase τοῦ
κόσμου κύριος,
used by Antoninus Pius in answering the petition of Eudemone.
Themistius, in his encomium, displays Theodosius as living law and
superior to all the written rules.
The
ideological system that the emperors manipulated to obtain the
subjects’ consensus survived also during usurpations, a period
where rival claims of succession in the imperial power shook the
routine of the empire’s life. After the removal of the
defeated enemy, the language of power, through imperial
constitutions, aimed to convince all inhabitants of the empire that
the triumph of the emperor restored the rule of law, which had been
lost under the “tyranny” of the opponent. Legislation,
connected to the communicative framework of the imperial regime,
promoted in a very effective way the image of an emperor as legum
dominus Romanorum, iustitiae aequitatis rector.
See
(PDF)
The Value of the Stability of the Law. A Perspective on the Role of
the Emperor in Political Crises, in O. HEKSTER-K. VERBOVEN, The
Impact of Justice on the Roman Empire, Brill 2019, pp. 68-85
Constantine's
Bridge
5
juli 328 Constantine's Bridge (Bulgarian: Константинов
мост, Konstantinov most;
Romanian:
Podul lui Constantin cel Mare) was a Roman bridge over the Danube.
It was completed or rebuilt in 328 and remained in use for no more
than four decades. It was officially opened on 5 July, 328 in the
presence of the emperor Constantine the Great. With an overall
length of 2437 m, 1137 m of which spanned the Danube's riverbed,
Constantine's Bridge is considered the longest ancient river bridge
and one of the longest of all time.
It
was a construction with masonry piers and wooden arch bridge and
with wooden superstructure. It was constructed between Sucidava
(present-day Corabia, Olt County, Romania) and Oescus (modern Gigen,
Pleven Province, Bulgaria), by Constantine the Great. The bridge was
apparently used until the mid-4th century, the main reason for this
assumption being that Valens had to cross the Danube using a bridge
of boats at Constantiana Daphne during his campaign against the
Goths in 367. The length of the bridge was 2437 m with a wooden deck
with a width of 5.70 m at 10 meters above the water. The bridge had
two abutment piers at each end, serving as gates for the bridge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine%27s_Bridge_(Danube)
Константиновият
мост е пътен
мост над река
Дунав, съществувал
в Късната античност
и свързващ
Улпия Ескус
(край днешното
село Гиген в
България) със
Сукидава (край
днешния град
Корабия в Румъния).
Мостът
е с дървена
връхна конструкция
и зидани каменни
стълбове. Разкрити
са останки от
крайните му
опори, които
са използвани
и като порти,
и няколко от
междинните
опори, намиращи
се под водите
на река Дунав.
Общата дължина
на моста е 2434 m,
предполага
се, че ширината
му е била 5,70 m при
височина над
водата около
10 m.
Константиновият
мост е построен
или обновен
през 328 г., когато
е официално
открит от император
Константин
Велики. Предполага
се, че мостът
вече не функционира
през 367 г., когато
император
Валент прехвърля
войските си
през Дунав по
понтонен мост
по-надолу по
течението на
реката.
The
bridge was constructed between Sucidava (present-day Corabia,
Romania) and Oescus (modern Gigen, Bulgaria), during the reign of
Constantine the Great, being inaugurated on 5 July 328.
The
construction was certainly inspired, in technique and dimensions, by
the famous Trajan's bridge, built by Apollodorus of Damascus. It is
not at all excluded that the architect of this bridge was also a
renowned builder, perhaps the mysterious Theophilus Patricius,
proconsul, quaestor and then praefectus Urbi in the new capital of
the Empire.
The
inauguration of the bridge was commemorated by the minting of a gold
medallion in the mint of Rome in 328, with the obvious purpose of
immortalizing the great technical achievement. Today only two bronze
copies of a lost original are known.
The
obverse of the medallion with a diameter of 37.6 mm shows the
cuirassed, draped bust of Emperor Constantine to the right; the
emperor wears a diadem decorated with rosettes, and around the
effigy is the legend CONSTANTI - NVS MAX AVG. On the reverse is a
stone bridge with three arches and a watch tower at one end.
The
bridge proved to be essential in the transfer of troops, equipment
and supplies north of the Danube for the implementation of the
imperial strategy north of the river. The resumption of control over
the Lower Danube (ripa Gothica), included the raising of the bridge,
the strengthening of the Sucidava fortress, the restoration of the
strategic road towards Romula and the implantation of a new
bridgehead on the left bank of the river, from where it could
control the Romanian Plain - Constantiniana Daphne (still unlocated
in the field).
The
bridge was apparently used until the mid-4th century, the main
reason for this assumption being that Valens had to cross the Danube
using a bridge of boats at Constantiana Daphne during his campaign
against the Goths in 367.
In
any case, the decommissioning of the bridge has most likely occurred
before the floods of 376, when the Goths crossed the Danube. The
dramatic events in which many barbarians drown, swallowed by the
waters of the Fuvius, are chronicled by Ammianus Marcellinus,
without the bridge being mentioned in any way (XXXI, 4.5).
Ancient
and medieval sources
The
first mention of the bridge is from the fourth century, in Liber de
Caesaribus, by Sextus Aurelius Victor. Later, it was mentioned by
chronographers during the 7th - 9th centuries (Chronicon Pascale and
Theophanes Confessor in Chronographia) and in the 11th century in
the chronicle compiled by the Byzantine monk Georgios Kedrenos,
Synopsis historion.
The
construction is called "the brass bridge" by the locals on
both sides of the river, as the popular belief was that its legs
were cast from metal.
According
to local legends, the Lord of Dew (”Domnul de Rouă”)
walked on the bridge during the night, heading to the court of
Emperor Ler (Ler Împărat), located in the former Roman
castra from Romula.
Research
The
bridge was subsequently mentioned in the end of the 17th century, in
the Index Geographicus Celsissimi Principatus Wallachiae, the map of
Wallachia made by Romanian historian Constantin Cantacuzino. Shortly
after that, the italian Anton Maria Del Chiaro, mentions the
construction in the Istoria delle moderne rivoluzioni della Valachia
(1718, Venice).
The
construction is mentioned several times in the 18th-19th centuries
by various historians or philologists, who overwhelmingly attribute
it to emperor Trajan, perpetuating the erroneous information
attributed to Anton Maria del Chiaro.
While
Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli attempted to locate the bridge in the 17th
century and Alexandru Popovici and Cezar Bolliac continued this
search in the 19th century, the first real scientific discoveries
were performed by Grigore Tocilescu and Pamfil Polonic in 1902. In
1934 Dumitru Tudor published the first complete work regarding the
bridge, and other systematic work on the north bank of the Danube
was performed in 1968 by Octavian Toropu and in 2002 by Lucian Amon
and Petre Gherghe. Later, in the area was carried out a bathymetry
in 2017 and a magnetometric survey in October 2022.
The Memorial of
the Apostle and the Constantinian Basilica
by
Jose Ruysschaert
The
history of the tomb of the Apostle Peter at the Vatican has been
enriched during the last thirty-five years since Pius XII, who at
the very beginning of his pontificate, decided to extend
archaeological investigations throughout the entire lower sections
of the Vatican crypts and also under the papal altar. These
investigations had been begun by chance at the site chosen for the
burial of his predecessor, Pius XI.
Little
by little, as the encrusted legends and learned theories were
stripped away, the Memoria of Peter began to reappear in a more
exact light, thus making possible a comparison of the monuments with
ancient texts. This is the history we would like to relate, starting
with the present Basilica and going back through the course of the
centuries to the Basilica of Constantine, to the ancient 2nd-century
necropolis and the small burial monument marking the site of Peter's
tomb, and finally to the archaeological setting of the 1st century
which offers a starting point.
The
paradoxical character of this history stems from the fact that the
small burial monument which, since the middle of the 2nd century,
has never ceased to be the evidence on which this history is based,
has stayed in place, despite successive raisings of the level of the
ground, both in the first Basilica, built during the pontificate of
Sylvester and the reign of Constantine, probably between 320 and
333, and in the present Basilica as well, built under eighteen popes
from Julius II to Paul V, from 1506 to 1615. But, as is often the
case, the contradiction is only an apparent one, as we shall see.
The presence of the tomb has never ceased throughout the centuries
to be the center of this history and its only justification.
This
presence is that of a small burial monument built in the 2nd-centuty
necropolis. It is made up of two superimposed niches forming part of
a wall seven m long. The niches were made in the middle of the wall
at the time of its construction, about the year 150. Originally a
marble plaque supported by two small columns separated the two
niches. In front of this small monument there was an enclosure
measuring seven m by four. Some family monuments of the necropolis
bordered part of it. That was how Peter's tomb appeared in the
middle of the second century. It is easy enough to locate this
modest set of constructions in the present Basilica. In fact, at the
side of the small chapel called the Niche of the Palliums, under the
papal altar, the small monument with niches and small columns has
been discovered substantially intact, while some remains of the
enclosure were discovered during excavations directly underneath the
open area called the Confession which, protected by a balustrade,
gives access to the Niche of the Palliums.
The
tomb's first architectural setting, moreover, is now right before
the eyes of visitors who descend from the Basilica into the crypts
and pass through the archaeological area below those just mentioned.
Thus taken suddenly from the present era into the 2nd century, the
visitor walks along narrow paths hemmed in by the high family burial
chambers of an ancient Roman necropolis. Having recovered from the
surprise, the visitor realizes that he is walking on what was the
slope of a hill. After a short climb to the north, he finds himself
on the narrow main path which rises gradually towards the west in
the direction of the papal altar, following the principal axis of
the Basilica. As he moves on, the visitor gradually realizes that
the family monuments he is passing have been demolished, more and
more extensively, so that where the path ends, immediately under the
papal altar, the last of the monuments consists only of a pavement
and part of a wall.
Such
a visit enables the visitor to form a good idea of the problems
facing the architects of Constantine's time who were given the task
of constructing the first Vatican Basilica. On the side of a hill
where an important necropolis was located and which at that time was
still being used, they managed to create an artificial plateau, by
building imposing walls of substructure and by filling in the area
with earth. The plateau was extended considerably beyond the site of
the future Basilica. The level of the plateau was planned in such a
way as to keep the small monument with niches intact and isolated at
the focal point of the new structure, located directly in front of
the apse. A simple burial monument in a necropolis, now closed by
imperial authority, thus became the reason for the construction of a
Basilica and the transformation of an entire area of what was then
open country. Placed in the contemporary context of the
martyria-basilicas, the way in which the Vatican Basilica was
constructed is explained solely by the fact that the monument with
niches was considered by the Christian community of Rome to be
Peter's tomb. And without a doubt the most important result of the
Vatican excavations is that it has been possible to recognize even
in terms of the construction of the first Vatican Basilica the
archaeological and historical proof for a community belief which was
beyond dispute: if it is a palaeo-Christian Basilica built ad
corpus, that is, to serve as a martyr's tomb, then it is clearly the
one built at the Vatican according to Constantine's wishes.
Significant
in the construction of the Basilica, the small monument is no less
unusual in the 2nd century necropolis. In the first place, it is an
individual building constructed in the middle of a large number of
family monuments. Furthermore, it also interrupts the straight line
which the others follow. In fact, the closest monuments are built
around the enclosure with the small building in the center, as if it
were an obstacle. Moreover, among these buildings two contemporary
staircases were put in to provide access to the revered enclosure.
Finally, the soil of the enclosure seems to be partly a built-up
mound resting against the family monuments. The height of the mound
is dictated by the height of the small monument built at a
particularly steep point on the slope.
In
the midst of these family monuments, therefore, the enclosure and
the small building seem to answer to the desire that an already
existing tomb should be preserved and integrated within the new
necropolis then being developed. During the second half of the 3rd
century, other plans attest to an identical wish. Two marble
decorations and small walls were added to the small building,
flanking it on each side. At the same time, the earth of the
enclosure where, in the meantime, numerous ground burials had taken
place, was covered over with a mosaic pavement. In addition, the
paths to the two stairways were closed by gates.
An
archaeological continuity is thus attested to, from the middle of
the 2nd century when the small building was constructed up to the
beginning of the 4th century which marks the start of the Basilica's
construction: the Petrine identity of the small building at the
beginning of the 4th century can thus be traced back historically to
the middle of the 2nd century. The Vatican excavations have once
again placed before our eyes the tomb as it was marked by the small
building with niches before the construction of the Basilica.
These
excavations have also allowed us to have a more precise idea of what
visitors to the first Basilica saw, for they clarify and confirm the
descriptions given by ancient texts and by a reliquary of the 5th
century found at Samagher and now preserved in Venice. Isolated from
the razed monuments and walls of the necropolis, the small Petrine
building was located in front of the apse, in the center of the
transept.
After
the sides had been altered to correct irregularities in shape
inherited from the 3rd century modifications, it was covered with
marble decorations similar to those covering the apse. Its façade
was divided into two parts. A golden cross bearing the names of
Constantine and his mother Helena was placed in the upper part, and
the lower section was closed with a double door. This door opened
into a small area where, at least by the end of the 4th century, an
opening in the floor was made, enabling visitors to lower objects on
to the earth inside the small cavity below. This design, which still
exists in the present Niche of the Palliums and is typical of the
veneration practiced at the tombs of martyrs, is an extremely
significant element of the tradition intimately linking the small
monument to the site, immediately below, of Peter's tomb.
Gregory
of Tours gives us a picture of a pilgrim lowering into the small
shaft a cloth which would touch the Apostle's tomb and thus become a
relic of it. The mediaeval liturgy placed a censer there for the
whole year from 29 June to 29 June. The temporary placing of the
Palliums in the niche, a custom still observed, is a further
indication of the respect in which this spot was held.
Around
the monument of Peter, four spiraling columns of sculpted marble
connected with the balustrades, likewise of marble, formed the
supports for a baldacchino crowned by architraves and arches. Two
other spiraling columns at the angle of the apse were connected to
the other four by two architraves. But the six columns of the
baldacchino were not alone in stressing the importance of the
monument of Peter in the Basilica. The plan of the Basilica itself
also marks its importance. The architectural works just described
are not only in front of the apse but also at the center of the
transept.
This
architectural fact is in itself unusual. Churches with transepts "in
the form of a cross" may be familiar to us, but the historian
notes that, among all the marytria-basilicas of the Near East and of
Rome in Constantine's time, the Vatican is the only Basilica which
has this design, a design later to be spread by the Carolingian
renaissance. In the Vatican Basilica the transept was, in fact, the
martyrium, the structure centered above the martyr's tomb and
reserved for liturgical functions, as opposed to the five aisles
reserved for the assembly of the faithful. The martyrium was a huge
rectangle, 87 m by 18, separated from the aisles at the time by a
large central triumphal arch decorated with a mosaic showing
Constantine offering the building to the Saviour, and by four
arch-shaped openings on the sides. Taken together, the naves were 91
m long and 64 m wide. Besides the six columns of the baldacchino,
100 simpler columns taken from a variety of ancient monuments (as
was much other material for the Basilica), in groups of 22,
separated the aisles, or were placed at the lateral arch-shaped
openings to the transept and at both ends o the transept. The
entrance of the Basilica, a portico 12 m wide, was preceded by a
quadriportico 62 m by 46, reached by 35 steps.
We
have roughly sketched out what was by the will of Constantine the
new architectural setting for the tomb of Peter. The Basilica,
demolished by the Renaissance on the pretext that it was in danger
of collapse, and precisely on the spot where it rested on the
highest substructures, had certainly been damaged, but just as
certainly it had been improved. Canons of the Vatican, architects
and artists have fortunately left numerous testimonies which
opportunely complete the information furnished by the recent
excavations. We hesitate to stop here: certain stages of these
changes, the first ones and the last, are essential to our subject
matter.
The
solution which Constantine's architects decided upon was the best -
if not the simplest - which could have been chosen for a
cemetery-basilica ad corpus, which was both a grandiose burial
monument built around a tomb and a cemetery set aside to receive the
bodies of the dead who wished to be placed near a saint's tomb, as
was done in the catacombs. This burial characteristic is certainly a
primary one for the Vatican Basilica. The solution of Constantine's
architects nevertheless presented a serious inconvenience, since
even then the influx of pilgrims made evident the need for regular
liturgical functions. The monument and its baldacchino took up too
much space in the middle of the transept. To his credit, Gregory the
Great solved this problem with an architectural device which
respected the monument as ingeniously as had that of Constantine's
architects.
The
problem was to establish a permanent altar at the center of the
transept, easily accessible and perfectly visible, without touching
the monument. The area immediately surrounding the Petrine monument,
apse included, was raised about one and a half m, while the top of
the monument was transformed into an altar, without doubt the first
permanent altar of the Petrine tomb. Four small columns placed on
the altar allowed for the construction of a baldacchino.
Nevertheless, the monument of Peter remained accessible, as before.
Not only was it still completely visible from the central nave,
separated from it only by the six columns of the ancient baldacchino
now place in a single row and crowned by an architrave, but also two
stairways permitted direct descent from the new presbyterium. In
addition, under the presbyterium an original architectural
contrivance had been built. Extending along the interior of the apse
wall, an almost circular corridor, reached from the transept by two
doors, led to a chapel, likewise underground, built directly behind
the small monument and for that reason called ad corpus in some
mediaeval texts. About two m high (thus it was a little lower than
the height of Constantine's construction), the new design, properly
called the "Confession", gave a completely new appearance
to the Memoria Petri. The ancient Basilica underwent only secondary
changes. Under Gregory III, a second row of six spiraling columns of
sculpted marble in the same style as the others was placed parallel
to them. Under Calixtus II a new altar was constructed above that of
Gregory the Great.
We
noted above that the design of the Basilica with transept created at
the Vatican by Constantine's architects spread throughout religious
architecture from the Carolingian renaissance onwards. The
architectural contrivance of Gregory, consisting of an altar-tomb
and a presbyterium-crypt, imposed on the Vatican by liturgical needs
and the requirements of a burial monument which was not intended to
be touched, became almost instantaneously the model for builders of
churches where the body of a saint was venerated, even if they did
not have the problem of a pre-existing tomb in the edifice under
construction. We may add that, from its time of construction
onwards, the "uncovered Confession" which was to be built
under Clement VIII and Paul V would become a prototype for similar
constructions, imposed, and most often wrongly, on some altars in
Roman Basilicas, including in the 19th century the altar of the
Basilica of St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls. But it seems to be beyond
our purpose to stress the different manifestations of the attraction
which Peter's place of pilgrimage has had on religious architecture.
What
we have hitherto described of the history of Peter's tomb at the
Vatican shows that this history was dominated architecturally by a
desire to keep the tomb intact. It is very tempting to state that
this concern was equally dominant in the most delicate phase of this
history - the construction of the present Basilica. The first
measure taken at that time was dramatically of a preservative
nature. In 1507, temporary walls joined to the apse wall permitted
the setting up of a small construction which protected the papal
altar until 1592. It was only under the pontificate of Clement VIII
that the first part of the present architectural contrivance was
constructed. The floor of the new Basilica, raised 3.20 m above the
previous floor level, required a corresponding raising of he 13th
century papal altar. A new altar, the present one, was superimposed
over the altar of Callixtus II. At the same time, the "uncovered
Confession" with stairways maintaining direct access to the
Niche of the Palliums was also constructed. Paul V added little to
its present appearance. But Clement VIII did not limit himself to
external modifications of the Petrine Memoria.
Preserving
the underground contrivance of Gregory the Great, he adapted it. On
the outside of the almost circular corridor of Gregory, parallel to
it and bordering the outside of the wall of Constantine's apse, a
new circular corridor was built. Access was still assured from the
crypts previously added according to the plans of Michelangelo
between the floors of the two Basilicas. This new corridor, an
essential element of what is called the new crypts, preserved access
to the chapel ad corpus of Gregory which, since his time, had been
enlarged a little and given the name "Clementine Chapel".
It is in this small chapel, at the end of which still stands the
small 7th century altar ad caput, as it is called, and in the two
adjacent areas that the small burial building of the middle o the
2nd century presents for our reflection and devotion the first
architectural testimonies preserved for us by a history which, until
the recent excavations, had been concealed, as well a preserved, by
the Niche of the Palliums.
Following
the changes made by Clement VIII, a final architectural note needs
to be made so that we can place in the new and prestigious setting
of the present Basilica the ancient Memoria, which is somewhat lost
in the immense space of the new edifice even while remaining its
center.
Urban
VIII's authority and Bernini's art carried out this final stage,
through the construction of the bronze baldacchino of the altar
which bids the onlooker to unite inseparable in his vision
Michelangelo's dome with Peter's tomb. Eight spiraling columns which
surrounded that same tomb in the ancient Basilica are included in
the four pillars which support the dome and these columns,
surrounding the baldacchino of bronze which was inspired by them,
remain a witness to the continuity which we are striving to bring
out.
It
has been described above how the history of the Vatican Memoria of
Peter is dominated by the constant desire to keep it intact. No less
abiding is the wish to keep it visible and to ensure direct access
to it. These aims seemed particularly evident in the Constantinian
Basilica, both at the time of Construction and during the changes of
Gregory, but these desires were already asserted, as we have seen,
in the middle of the 2nd century when the small burial monument with
niches and columns was built. Let us now add that these same
imperatives were, at the price of a whole series of projects and
plans, the final determining elements for the construction of the
present Basilica.
An
architectural tradition thus permits us to go back as far as the
middle of the 2nd century; it is centered on a burial monument
considered without interruption to be the one built above Peter's
tomb. Yet our aim would remain unachieved if we did not present, in
the light of the excavations made under and near the Basilica, the
essential points of the record which could be described as the
archaeological setting of the site of Peter's tomb in the first two
centuries.
To
begin with, it should be observed that, in giving a strict
explanation, it would be better to talk here about the location of
the tomb rather than about the tomb itself. In fact, the excavations
did not discover the remains of Peter's body as it was buried after
his martyrdom. Moreover, no archaeological element retrieved from
the small cavity next to and below the Niche of the Palliums can be
considered as belonging to a burial monument, however modest, of the
1st century. Yet it would be wrong to conclude that the recent
archaeological investigations have added nothing to the history of
the first decades of the tomb.
First
of all, the investigations established that the 2nd century
necropolis had been built beside a secondary road running directly
along the northern border of the Circus of Caligula and Nero. It is
equally clear that the family monuments which were part of it were
built in an area already in use as a burial place. In the immediate
surroundings of the Petrine monument there have been found piles of
bones taken from previous tombs. These remains had been gathered
together by the 2nd century masons, who did not take great pains to
respect the material arrangements of the tombs in question. They
seemed to be acting according to the customs prescribed by law. But
this fact, hitherto hardly noticed, throws some light on what may
have happened to the Petrine tomb at the moment of the construction
of the small monument with niches. Under that monument only the
remains of the body of the Apostle-martyr would have been collected.
Did they remain there until the time of the construction of
Constantine's Basilica? Had they already been moved in the middle of
the 3rd century, when the monument underwent important changes? Our
present purpose does not include answers to these questions.
On
the other hand, it is important to stress that although this Vatican
area was imperial property in the 1st century, it was then lined
with roads beside which other burial grounds have been discovered.
In particular, a small part of the most important one was unearthed
in Vatican City at the time of the construction of a garage. It
remained in use during the first four centuries and was located
beside the ancient Triumphal Way. It included, in particular, two
tombs which according to their inscriptions date from the reign of
Nero. Further excavations have led to the discovery of some burial
monuments of the Flavian age on the south side of the Circus.
But
in Rome it is without doubt along the Ostian Way that the true
archaeological and architectural parallel to the history we have
been tracing is found: the tomb of the Apostle Paul and his two
Basilicas. Concerning the second Basilica, built at the end of the
4th century and destroyed by fire at the beginning of the 19th, the
reconstruction which respected the essence of its design gives us a
precise enough picture. Concerning the first, built by Constantine,
the excavations carried out at the time of the reconstruction tell
us that it was of modest proportions. There, too, Gregory the Great
raised the presbyterium and designed a crypt, limited this time to a
chapel ad corpus located behind the altar and reached through a
door. And, as at the Vatican, the tomb is situated in the middle of
a pagan necropolis, but this time it is inside a family monument. We
are obliged to end these pages dedicated to Peter's tomb by a visit
to Paul's, since the true Roman pilgrimage ad limina has never
consisted of anything other than a visit to the two tombs of the
Apostles, "at the Vatican" and "along the Ostian
Way". This was expressed at the end of the 2nd century by the
priest Gaius, and at the beginning of the 5th century by the Spanish
poet Prudentius - Gaius to justify a point of Roman ecclesiastical
discipline and Prudentius to present the two Apostles as the
guarantors of the faith of Rome. Thus the history of the two tombs
has been, through nineteen centuries, a matter of parallel
faithfulness to those who, by their common presence, their common
preaching and their common martyrdom, "laid the foundations"
of the Roman Church in the faith of Christ.
On
the vault of the Constantinian apse, did not the mosaic erected by
Pope Liberius exalt the divinity of Christ, as the bordering
inscription indicates, and are not Peter and Paul standing together
on either side of Christ in order to be the first ones in Rome to
proclaim his divinity?
Now
let us go down, step by step, to see what is under the altar. And as
we go down, it is easy to see that we are also going back through
the centuries.
Under
the present altar, which belongs to the time of Clement VIII
(1592-1605), is the altar of Callistus II (1119-1124); lower still,
that of Gregory the Great (590-604). Next we find the monument built
in honor of St. Peter by the Emperor Constantine after his victory
near the Milvian Bridge (October 28, 312) and the establishment of
peace with the Church by the Edict of Milan (313 AD). The date of
this monument cannot be fixed with absolute certainty, but there are
good reasons to think that it preceded the construction of the
basilica (begun about 322) and perhaps it is no later than 315; that
is, the year in which great holiday were held in Rome to exalt
Constantine and his victory; the year in which Rome dedicated the
famous Arch of Triumph which still rises majestically from its soil.
Constantine's
monument to Peter contained within its rich marble construction an
earlier chapel (or, more literally, shrine) which has been brought
to light by excavations. This chapel indicates, evidently, the place
sacred to the Apostle, the place that Constantine considered so
important and worthy of honor that he did not hesitate to build on
it first his precious monument and later - at the cost of
incalculable expense and enormous labor - the great basilica.
The
characteristic chapel rises from the level of the ancient necropolis
already described. It stands in a little open area, a sort of small
square in the middle of various tombs. (See Plate III.) This little
area which, in relation to the modern basilica, is directly under
the Confession, was called "Field P" by the excavators. It
is rectangular in form (about seven meters from north to south,
about four from east to west), and it lies in a place where the
terrain rises quite rapidly from the south to the north, i.e. toward
the Apostolic Palaces, and more gradually from the east to the west,
i.e., toward the Vatican Gardens.
Field
P is bounded on the west by a wall called "Red" because of
the red color of the plaster (now largely fallen off) which was used
to cover it; on the south by a tomb which the excavators call S; on
the east, but only in the southern half of the east section, by
another tomb called O (this tomb was owned by the Matuccii and is
sometimes called by their name). The northern boundary of the
eastern side and all the northern boundary of the eastern side and
all the northern boundary cannot be traced today, but there are good
reasons for believing that there were once structures there which
have been mostly destroyed.
Behind
the Red Wall ran a small street (the so-called clivus) which slopes
up from the south to north and includes some sets of stairs (Fig.
24). On the other side of this clivus are the remains of two other
tombs, called R and R1 by the excavators. The clivus gave access to
the Tomb R1 and to a tomb called Q which lies behind the Red Wall
with the Red Wall itself used for its eastern wall.
Under
the clivus runs a little gutter used for drainage and covered with a
line of tiles, five of which, fortunately, bear a mark by which they
can be dated. The mark mentions Aurelius Caesar (the future Emperor
Marcus Aurelius) and his wife Faustina as proprietors of the furnace
in which the tiles were made.1 The tiles can therefore be dated
between about 146 and 161 AD. It was about 146 when Faustina, wife
of the future Emperor Marcus Aurelius, received the title of
Augusta, and in 161 Aurelius Caesar, having succeeded Antonius Pius,
abandoned the name of Aurelius Caesar and took that of Marcus
Aurelius.
The
essential purpose of the Red Wall seems to have been to fix the
boundaries of the various burial places in the area. From this fact,
it can be considered contemporary with the gutter I have mentioned,
and therefore it can be dated between about 146 and 161 AD. In round
numbers, and wishing to take the latest possible date, we can say
that it was built by about 160 AD.
The
most ancient of the tombs surrounding Field P is certainly Tomb O,
which, as can be seen form the marble tablet over the entrance,
belonged to the Matuccii family. This tomb, in which the rite of
cremation was practiced, can be dated about 130, and is certainly
later than 123, since a brick was found in one of its walls with a
seal dating from that year.
The
Tomb S, which bounds all the southern flank of Field P, contains
traces of cremation urns and of repositories for inhumation. Later
than Tomb O, Tomb S is still earlier than the Red Wall, since the
wall leans on it, thus barring access to Field P from the south.
Therefore Tomb S can be assigned a date somewhere between 130 and
150.
THE
REMAINS OF PETER
One
of the surprises of the excavations carried out between 1940 and
1949 under the Confession of the Vatican Basilica was the discovery
- beneath the papal altar - of the site of Peter's original tomb
empty and in disarray.
The
Apostle's remains were strangely missing.
After
his martyrdom in Nero's Circus (autumn of 64), Peter was buried a
short distance away, beyond the road (Via Cornelia?) which bordered
the Circus, in a place where tombs already existed. That place
corresponds to the area which archaeologists today call Area P. In
the course of the centuries, various monuments were placed over the
modest grave of the Apostle: the so-called "Trophy of Gaius"
(about the middle of the 2nd century), the monument of Constantine
(after 313), the altar of Gregory the Great (590-604), the altar of
Calixtus II (1119-1124), and the altar of Clement VIII (1592-1605),
which is the present altar. All these monuments were built (or so it
seemed at first) over an empty tomb.
At
the western edge of Area P there were found remains of human bones,
remains to which some people attributed a certain importance. It was
subsequently shown that in fact these remains had nothing to do with
Peter, differing as they did with regard to both age and sex.
But
the excavations inside Constantine's monument had also revealed a
characteristic loculus which had been deliberately hollowed out of
an already existing wall (the wall which archaeologists today call
"Wall G"), included within the Constantinian construction.
Wall G is built against the back wall of the Trophy of Gaius, that
is the wall which - on account of the vivid red colour of its
plaster - came to be called the "Red Wall". Wall G,
therefore, is later than the Red Wall, but earlier than the monument
of Constantine in which it was enclosed. On the whole, Wall G can be
dated to about the mid-3rd century. Inside this wall, as I have
said, a secret hiding-place (the loculus) was discovered. It
measured 0.77 m long by 0.29 m wide and 0.315 m high, and was lined
with slabs of Greek marble.
Wall
G and its hiding-place are at the center of extraordinary events,
due in part to the somewhat abnormal situation in which the
1940-1949 excavations took place. The first opening made in the
northern side of the Constantinian monument brought to light the
north section of Wall G, covered with Christian graffiti, and, below
it, the opening of the famous loculus. No detailed study of these
graffiti was made either then or during the entire period of the
excavations. They were deciphered and commented upon at a later time
by myself, and in fact they proved to be a wonderful page of
Christian spirituality in which the names of Christ, Mary and Peter
are particularly prominent and their victory is acclaimed. As for
the loculus, the excavators had immediately noticed that it was
about half filled with plaster rubble which had fallen from above,
that is from the inside of Wall G itself, and from the side, that is
from a section of the adjacent Red Wall. For various reasons a
systematic emptying of the loculus was not carried out immediately.
However, it happened that a certain moment someone noticed that
there were bone fragments mixed in with the plaster rubble inside
the hiding-place, and arranged for these bones to be gathered up,
put in a wooden box and placed in a nearby spot in the Vatican
Grottoes, where they remained forgotten for a long time.
In
the meantime, the scholars working on the excavations returned to
the loculus of Wall G and naturally found it empty, except for "some
remains of organic material and bone fragments mixed with earth"
(these are their own words) which had remained at the bottom. It was
easily perceived that the hiding-place had been made during the
building of the Constantinian monument, and from this perception
there sprang the theory that it had been intended for the bones of
Peter. This theory was admitted, in fact, by various scholars:
Father Antonio Ferrua (1952), Jerome Carcopino (1953), Father
Engelbert Kirschbaum (1957) and Pasquale Testini (1957). But for the
moment the theory remained only a theory. The essential element of
proof was missing: the box which had been placed in the nearby spot
in the Vatican Grottoes and forgotten.
Since
the excavators were unaware of the existence of the box, and on the
other hand wished to give some explanation for the riddle of Wall G,
the idea was put forward and gained increasing credence that the
hiding-place had been opened during the Middle Ages on the eastern
side, and that through this opening the remains of the Apostle had
been taken away.
The
wooden box containing the material removed from the hiding-place was
found by me only in 1953. Besides bones, it also contained earth,
flakes of red plaster, small pieces of rich fabric and two marble
fragments. A note, written by a Sampietrino who took part in the
first excavations and read by me clearly and in its entirety, stated
that the material had been taken from the loculus of Wall G. The
flakes of red plaster belonged to the adjacent section of the Red
Wall (as can be easily understood). The fragments of marble were
shown by a chemical analysis to originate from the front slab of the
lining of the loculus. Both the plaster and the marble fragments
clearly confirmed the statement in the note.
The
idea accredited by the excavators and then generally accepted that
the loculus had been broken into during the Middle Ages meant that
at that time I myself did not attribute to these remains the
importance due to them. But the elementary duty of serious
scientific inquiry led me to transfer them to a dry place and to the
making of provisions for their systematic examination by a qualified
specialist. The specialist chosen was Prof. Venerando Correnti, who
then held the chair of anthropology at the University of Palermo and
today holds the same chair at the University of Rome.
Prof.
Correnti was therefore asked in 1956 to begin his work. But before
anything else he had to make a long and careful study of the
skeletal remains, found in the earth on the western edge of Area P,
to which (as I have stated above) a certain importance had hitherto
been attributed. The anthropological examination showed in fact that
the bones belonged to four different individuals, none of whom could
be taken into consideration in connection with the problem of
Peter's remains.
Only
in October 1962 was Prof. Correnti able to devote himself to the
examination of the bones found in the loculus of Wall G. This work
lasted until the end of June 1963. Briefly, the result was the
following: bones of a single individual, of male sex, sturdy build
and advanced age (between 60 and 70 years old), encrusted with
earth.
This
result corresponded with the historical and archaeological data. In
the only loculus of Peter's monument-tomb there was in fact to be
expected the presence of bones with these characteristics. And this
precisely is what had happened. Furthermore, it had to be kept in
mind that among the remains from the loculus were small fragments of
rich fabric. These indicated that these bones really were the mortal
remains of Peter.
There
remained a single doubt in my mind: that of the alleged opening of
the loculus from the east during the Middle Ages. But it quickly
vanished when a minute examination of the interior of the loculus,
carried out at my request by the best specialists in Roman
wall-construction, proved that the loculus had never been broken
into from the time of Constantine until the moment when the
excavators of the 1940-49 period had made the first breach of the
Constantinian wall.
Experimental
analyses of the remains of fabric and of earth were also carried
out. All of these tests yielded positive results. The gold was
genuine; the cloth was dyed with purple made from murex; the earth
matched that of the area.
At
this point it seemed reasonable to draw the following conclusions:
at the time of Constantine, after the peace of the Church (313),
when it was decided to arrange definitively the site of Peter's
tomb, the bones lying in the earth under the Trophy of Gaius were
collected, wrapped in a precious cloth of purple interwoven with
gold and placed in a loculus specially made inside a wall (Wall G)
already existing beside the Trophy. In front of this wall, enriched
by the precious material inserted, another wall was built which was
to be partially broken down only by the excavations begun in 1940.
It can be added that the reason for the transfer of Peter's relics
from the earth tomb to the loculus in Wall G was probably the
well-founded fear that the dampness of the earth, which is
notoriously very considerable in the Vatican area, would rapidly
damage the venerable remains which had once been entrusted to it.
At
this point, it would seem appropriate to sum up, for the sake of
clarity, the chief elements which have permitted the present writer
to proceed to the identification of the bones in the loculus of Wall
G as those of the Apostle:
1.
The Constantinian monument was considered, in Constantine's day, to
be the tomb of the martyr.
2.
Inside the monument-sepulchre there exists a loculus, and one only:
the loculus of Wall G.
3.
This loculus was carved out of Wall G and lined with marble at the
time of Constantine.
4.
The loculus was never broken into from the age of Constantine until
the time of the excavations (about 1941).
5.
From this loculus come the bones which were removed at the beginning
of the excavations, kept without interruption in a nearby spot in
the Vatican Grottoes and recovered from this spot in 1953.
6.
These bones, therefore, are the ones which were verified at the time
of Constantine as the bones of Peter and place in the loculus of
Wall G, inside the monument-sepulchre.
7.
The cloth of purple interwoven with gold-thread in which the bones
were wrapped at that time confirms the highest dignity then
attributed to the remains. The royal purple harmonizes perfectly in
fact with the royal porphyry which decorates the outside of the
monument.
8.
The anthropological examination of the bones - belonging to a single
individual - showed that they conform perfectly to what, by
tradition, we can imagine was Peter's physical appearance at the
time of his martyrdom. Apart from the obvious fact that they belong
to a male, the bones indicate a sturdy build and an age somewhere
between 60 and 70.
9.
The earth encrusted on the bones indicates that the bones themselves
originally lay in an earth-grave, and we know that Peter's first
burial was in the earth.
10.
The characteristics of the earth, shown by the scientific
examination, match those of the place where the original tomb was
dug (marly sand), while in other parts of the Vatican area the earth
is different (blue clay or yellow sand).
11.
The place of the earth-burial under the Trophy was found empty. This
is in harmony with the presence of the bones, transferred about two
metres higher up, in the loculus in the monument of Constantine.
From
this concise exposition it can be seen that the above elements
constitute the links of a chain, joined to one another, and that
chain leads to a conclusion: the bones of Peter have been
identified.
Constantine's
Basilica
Constantine
the Great brought about the triumph of Christianity in making it the
religion of the State. The subversive, oppressed, underground creed
had been raised out of obscurity to a height of authority of which
no third-century pope could have dreamed. What the Faith owes to
this extraordinary layman cannot be assessed in terms of ordinary
human gratitude. Constantine was a soldier and dictator, a ruthless
and ambitious ruler, whose worldly interests played a prominent, but
not a predominant part in his determination to advance the banner of
Jesus Christ. He was helped and exhorted in the role of supreme
protagonist of Christianity by Pope Sylvester. The reigns of popes
are not usually long. The longest in history has been that of Pius
IX, which was thirty-two years. Before his death in 1878, no pope
had covered more than twenty-five years, the presumed limit of St
Peter's spiritual sovereignty in Rome; and until Pius reached his
quarter of a century of tradition always maintained that it would
never be exceeded. Pope Sylvester did not reach twenty-five years,
yet he reigned twenty-two, which was a record not to be broken
before the death in 795 of Adrian I who surpassed it by one year.
Very little is known about Sylvester's character or life beyond the
legend that he baptized Constantine and cured him of leprosy in the
process. He clearly laboured diligently to promote the Faith and
encouraged the emperor's pious reinstatement of martyrs' remains and
erection of magnificent churches over their tombs. That he was a
saintly, disinterested bishop we guess from his achievements. We may
surmise that he was also a man of immense tact and diplomacy to have
worked in partnership and apparent harmony from 314 until 335 with
an autocrat of Constantine's passion, violence and unpredictability.
The
munificent emperor founded, in addition to St Peter's and St John
Lateran, the original basilicas of S. Croce in Gerusalemme (in which
to deposit the sacred relic of the cross brought to Rome by St
Helena his mother), S. Agnese, St Paul and S. Lorenzo, (five of them
over the remains of the titular saints and only St John's and S.
Croce within the city walls,) the churches of the Nativity at
Bethlehem and the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, besides lesser
churches outside Rome and in other parts of the ancient world of
which no vestiges now remain. No pagan emperor Constantine had
raised so many temples to the old gods within so short a space of
years; and it is exceedingly doubtful if before his reign a single
Christian assembly room had ever been built specifically for a
Christian congregation. That the Church ha downed property in the
third century we already know from the fact that the Emperor
Gallienus, a tolerant predecessor, restored it after the Decian
persecutions. And by property land, and not churches, is meant.
There was no church architecture before Constantine's day, even if
some private houses were used more or less exclusively for worship,
and had been given decoration of a religious character.
Architecturally, such places would be indistinguishable from
dwellings, for which purpose they had been erected. From the
earliest times the houses of rich Christians may have contained
small oratories set aside for prayer, and nothing else. With
Constantine all was changed. There was no longer any need for the
worshippers of Christ to assemble behind closed doors. Christianity
was adopted as the state religion and came into the open. Artists
appeared whose talents were in sudden demand. The emperor's churches
glowed with rich decoration and treasure. An appreciative
contemporary describes the 'paints of every colour' of church
exteriors, 'reflecting their gold, which the water blends with green
reflections in the ornamental pools,' made for ablutions in the
courtyard. He rhapsodizes over the interiors and their 'ceilings
with gilded beams that make the whole chamber seem like a sunrise.
And in the windows glowing stained glass, so that they look like
fields studded with gorgeous flowers'.
We
shall only be dealing with one of Constantine's basilicas, and that
the greatest in the Christian world. In precisely which year St
Peter's was begun is not known. Certainly not at the beginning of
the emperor's reign. Whereas the endowments for the earlier Lateran
basilica came from Italian sources, those for St Peter's were
financed by the eastern provinces which only fell to the emperor in
324. The year 322 has been suggested for the foundation date by
Toynbee and Perkins. They believe that Constantine may have
anticipated the colonial riches which were shortly to come to him.
By his death in 337 at least the structure of St Peter's was
completed.
The
Site
The
first questions which present themselves to us are these. Why was
the particular site on the Vatican Hill chosen by the emperor for
his church? And did a previous building associated with St Peter
exist upon it? These questions, which have been examined and
thrashed out by many eminent past and present-day scholars with the
most scrupulous attention, I shall endeavour to summarize. For a
start, let us consider the history of the site in ancient times.
The
Mons Vaticanus, or Vatican Hill, derives its name from the worship
of Cybele, whose fertility rites associated with her youthful lover
Attis were performed here, ex vaticinatione archigalli - that is to
say in accordance with the prophecies of the goddess' high priest.
On this hill of prophecy the annual spring festival was held. A pine
tree, the phallic symbol of Attis, was reared outside the temple in
preparation for the Day of Blood. The events that took place on this
occasion were to commemorate the self-castration of the youth at the
instance of Cybele, whose motives were to prevent him marrying
another. In Asia Minor, whence the Cybele cult was brought to Rome,
Attis was called Papas, or Zeus Papas. By certain ancient writers
his myth has been confused with that of Apollo and, like the great
god of perennial youth and beauty, he was supposed to have been
slaughtered by a wild boar. But Attis was rather a god of vegetation
and propagation, and the spring festival coincided with his death
and resurrection. The hill to which the worshippers resorted at the
festivals being outside the city walls was indeed until medieval
times at the mercy of enemy assaults. This was a cogent reason why
the earliest popes preferred not to reside in the Vatican but in the
comparative safety of the Lateran Palace. The elder Pliny clearly
thought the hill a barren and unattractive spot. He referred to it
as infamis Vaticanis locis, an area infested with mosquitoes, which
in the summer of 69 decimated the troops of Vitellius posted there.
Few people lived on it apart from some fabricators of cooking
utensils and wine jars. Worse still, the hill produced a horrible
wine. 'If you drink Vatican wine', wrote the satirist poet Martial,
'you are drinking poison: if you like vinegar you will like Vatican
wine: Vatican wine is perfidious.' From time to time members of the
imperial family attempted to improve the soil. Agrippina senior,
Nero's grandmother, drained it, digging channels to take the water
down the sticky clay slopes, altering the contours and constructing
terraced gardens, and even a covered way to the Tiber. When Nero
inherited or appropriated the gardens after murdering his mother,
Agrippina junior, in AD 59 they were flourishing. He built a bridge
over the river near where the Santo Spirito hospital now stands. So
whenever he wished to dally in his grandmother's pleasances or to
disport himself in the circus which his predecessor Caligula had
made on the lower ground, he could go there at a moment's notice.
The
whereabouts of Caligula's Circus was until only a few years ago a
puzzle. Most historians were of the opinion that the south wall of
Constantine's basilica had been built on the foundations of the
northern boundary of the circus. The misapprehension was caused by a
belief that the famous Egyptian obelisk, which had been brought from
Heliopolis by Caligula, was set up on the central point of the low
wall, called the spina, dividing lengthwise the new circus around
which the emperor raced his chariots; and that, until its
re-erection by Pope Sixtus V in the present piazza in 1586 it had
never been moved from its original setting. This was on a spot
fairly close to the south side of the medieval St Peter's, and
midway between the east and west ends. Yet the excavations which
Pope Pius XII put in train in 1940 have proved conclusively that
Constantine did not build his basilica over the northern boundary of
Caligula's Circus.
So
contemporary historians now suggest that the great needle must have
been shifted after Caligula's and before Sixtus's time. But when,
and by whom? Did Constantine in discontinuing the use of the circus
need the site for some buildings ancillary to his basilica, and
finding the obelisk in his way move it closer to his new south wall?
This question will be considered when we come to the story of Pope
Sixtus V's removal of the obelisk in a later chapter.
At
all events Nero made his predecessor's racecourse his favourite
playground. Here on every possible occasion of popular holiday he
would take the reins and drive frenziedly round and round, his
egregious vanity tickled by the obligatory plaudits of his
embarrassed subjects. Here too after the Fire of Rome, in order to
distract the minds of the miserable citizens from their plight and
the whispered allegations of his reckless responsibility for the
disaster, he organized in AD 67 spectacles of ineffable carnage and
brutality at the expense of the Christians. We may therefore assume,
until archaeological or literary evidence to the contrary is
forthcoming, that St Peter met his death by crucifixion in the field
of blood, Caligula's Circus. Why then did Constantine not select the
circus terrain for the foundations of his huge basilica? As the
presumed site of the Apostle martyrdom and as a relatively level
space at the foot of the Mons Vaticanus, it offered sentimental as
well as physical advantages apparent to the least percipient
builder.
On
the contrary, Constantine did a very extraordinary thing. He chose
to erect the great basilica in honor of the Apostle Peter on the
steep slope of the Vatican Hill and right on top of an existing
cemetery. We shall come to the difficulties he encountered from
geographical causes in due course. First of all, there were distinct
legal and moral ones involved in the total destruction of a burial
ground in full use. The profanation of a Roman cemetery (violatio
sepulchri) was in Roman law a criminal offence. Not even the highest
officials of the land dared do such a thing without risking
prosecution and the direst penalties. And here was the emperor
himself razing tombs and sepulchers in order to build over the
rubble to which they were reduced. That he could flout public
opinion and the law in this flagrant manner is an indication of the
height of power the emperor had now attained. The Vatican cemetery
was not a very old one. It had developed within a comparatively
short period. The large majority of its tombs date from AD 125-200.
Pope Pius XII's excavators have established that it was not a
particularly high-class cemetery. Few persons belonging to the old
Roman families were buried in it. Some of the deceased had been
freeborn, many not. Most were of Greek-speaking origin. Nearly all
came from the lower clerical and administrative grades of the civil
service. As the place became a more and more popular burial ground -
remember it was outside the city walls - speculators began buying up
plots which they resold for the building of family tombs. The
process continued on somewhat haphazard lines and showed little
advanced planning. Several of the excavated tombs are, in spite of
their middle-class ownership, objects of much beauty as well as
interest. Those which escaped total pulverization by Constantine lie
below the western half of the old basilica where the land slopes
steeply away to the south. The emperor left their roofs intact,
merely filling the interiors with rubble to make a firm foundation.
The rubble has lately been dug away. The tombs below the eastern
half of Constantine's church, which unlike the western half was not
built over a crypt, were absolutely razed and cannot for reasons of
safety to the present fabric be investigated.
The
most notable of the surviving tombs are those facing south across a
very narrow street. The fronts, which were of course originally
above ground, are more finished than the side and back walls, which
were thrust into the northern slope. They present a long line of
carefully coursed and jointed brick, washed with thin coats of
crimson. They have doorways of travertine and windows and relief
panels of terra cotta. The surrounds and lintels of the windows are
sharply cut. The perspective reliefs of receding arcades and the
figures of quails and other birds are delicately moulded. The street
façade is as functional and satisfying as that of a late
Georgian London street - which it somewhat resembles only in
miniature - where exceedingly plain surfaces are broken by an
economy of classical detail in door and window features. The
interiors on the other hand are exuberant and aglow with colour and
decoration. The barrel-vaulted roods are either paneled with stucco
squares and hexagons, framing little rosettes, or painted with
arabesques and figures. The walls which provided for the urns or
sarcophagi are pierced with shell-headed niches stuccoed in
allegorical reliefs, with recesses in lunettes and simple
pigeon-hole boxes. In between are crude divisions framing birds and
animals finely painted in tempera. The marble sarcophagi are
sculptured. Some bear scenes in relief; others are strigilated (that
is to say channeled in the familiar Roman S scrolls), flanking a
single maenad, a naked Dionysus, or perhaps a bust of the deceased
in relief. The second century saw a gradual supercession of
cremation by burial, since the Christians favoured the latter way of
disposal of their dead, regarding the former as essentially pagan.
In the third-century tombs of the Vatican cemetery more definite
proof of Christian burial is supplied by some of the inscriptions.
Familiar phrases like Dormit in pace are taking the place of the old
pagan ejaculations such as 'I am ash, ash is earth, earth is divine;
therefore I am not dead', or that moving epitaph to a dead boy: 'I
pray that his ashes may become violets and roses, and that the
earth, whose child he now is, rest light upon him, as he in life
weighed heavy on no man.' Paganism was obsessed by speculations on
the hereafter.
There
are even earlier hints of Christian burial in the mosaic decorations
on vault and wall of at least one of the Vatican tombs, namely that
of the Julii family. These fragments are the oldest Christian
mosaics so far discovered. They date from the late second century.
On the east wall Jonah is depicted falling feet foremost from board
ship into the whale's jaws. A matrix, deprived of the tiny cubes,
shows what looks like St Peter casting his net into the sea. On the
west wall the Good Shepherd carries a sheep on his shoulders. Again,
on the ceiling vault appears the earliest discovered representation
of Christ. Surrounded by spreading vines, in three tones of vivid
green, the beardless figure wearing a tunic, his cloak flying in the
wind, stands driving a chariot of which one wheel and two white
horses in scarlet harness are intact. From his head nimbus rays
shoot upwards and sideways. In his left hand he carries a globe. The
mosaic is known as the Christ-Helios and illustrates the syncretism
of Christianity with the pagan sun-worship instituted at the winter
solstice by Emperor Marcus Aurelius at the end of the second
century.
Lastly,
in the tomb of the Valerii the excavators revealed what they believe
to be the head of St Peter drawn in faded red lead, with an
inscription, 'Peter, pray Christ Jesus for the holy Christian men
buried near your body.' Several experts have claimed that the
drawing and inscription date from before the basilica was built.
Toynbee and Perkins on the other hand conclude that they were
roughly daubed by one of Constantine's workmen at the start of the
emperor's building operations. There is no reason to regret the
later date. On the contrary, it affords striking corroboration of
the motives which were behind the whole gigantic enterprise. The
sketch and inscription are important evidence of the emperor's own
belief. They go a long way to answer the question raised earlier why
Constantine chose the awkward site of an existing cemetery on the
slopes of a hill for the foundation of his great basilica. He was
convinced that the remains of St Peter lay buried there. And he was
determined, no matter what the cost, to raise the most central,
sacred part of his basilica right above the Apostle's resting place.
Clearly
then Constantine made a distinction between the site of St Peter's
martyrdom and that of his burial. If, as all the records suggest,
Peter met his death among hundreds, and perhaps thousands of other
victims in the circus, it would have been difficult for his
disciples, after the carnage was over, to identify the precise spot.
Moreover, did it greatly matter? They will have had a delicate
enough task secretly gathering together, probably by night, the
cherished remains, of which a reverent interment was their chief
concern.
Even
the manner of the Apostle's death is conjectural.
The
first written reference to it comes in the Acts of Peter, supposedly
compiled by the Gnostic Pseudo-Linus in the second or third century.
He stated that the Apostle was crucified 'ad locum qui vocatur
Naumachiae iuxta obeliscum Neronis in monten' in the place called
Naumachia [i.e. the artificial lake where sea battles amongst other
diversions were staged] close to Nero's obelisk and on the hill. The
artificial lake could only hae been made on level ground, with the
rising stone seats of the circus acting as a bank to the waters.
Eusebius writing a little later than the author of the Acts asserted
that the crucifixion took place head downwards, and that the body
was buried in the Vatican 'field'. Did he mean by 'field' the pagan
cemetery nearby? And was this understood to be the case by all
Christians in the centuries intervening between the martyrdom and
the building of the first basilica? Eusebius evidently thought so,
for he went on, '…his memory among the Romans is still alive
than the memory of all those who had lived before him'.
It
is true that men born Greeks and even slaves have their tombs in the
Vatican cemetery, but before their death they had presumably become
Roman citizens, who observed Roman customs and rites. St Paul, who
suffered an ignominious death similar to St Peter's, was buried in a
pagan cemetery. But unlike Peter he had from birth been a citizen in
spite of his Jewish descent. There can be little doubt that during
or just after the Neronian pogrom the less attention drawn to
Peter's burial the better. The Acts of Peter maintains that the body
was placed in the tomb of a senator, named Marcellus, presumably a
Christian convert and follower, a kind of Joseph of Aramathea. But
it does not state where the tomb was.
Constantine
had absolutely no doubts in his mind where the Apostle lay buried.
In order to get the centre of the apse of his basilica over what he
believed to be the grave he was obliged to cut deeply into the rock
of the Vatican Hill which rose in a northerly direction. To extend
the level platform to the south, an equally formidable operation had
to be undertaken. This was the raising of massive foundations by
means of artificial terraces over the descending hillside to a
height of Thirty-five feet above the bottom of the southern slope.
Into the space tons of earth and rock scooped from the northern
slope and debris from the desecrated cemetery were shoveled, then
packed with concrete and faced with brick and tufa stone.
What
exactly the emperor found over the Apostle's grave before he began
to build will be discussed shortly, and can in the light of the
recent excavations be assessed fairly accurately. What, if anything,
he found within it is still open to conjecture. Let us deal first
with the last query. This involves taking into account the claims of
another resting place, or grave of the Apostle Peter. Pope Damasus
(366-84) left an inscription in verse (long ago destroyed) to the
effect that Peter and Paul 'once dwelt' on the site now covered by
the Church of St Sevastian, likewise built by Constantine, three
miles outside Rome along the Appian Way. Gregory the Great (590-604)
recorded that the two saints' remains were taken there immediately
after their deaths and before their final resting places were
prepared for them. It is not impossible that during the lull that
followed the Neronian persecution Peter's body, after being hidden
at St Sebastian's, was transported to the Vatican cemetery, and
Paul's to the Ostian Way.
Be
this as it may, early documents and a plethora of tradition claim
that for a second time the bodies returned to the catacomb of St
Sebastian in the year 258 when the persecutions under Valerian were
impending, and that they remained there until Constantine's
basilicas were ready to receive them. I see no reason to dispute the
likelihood of these precautions having been taken. After all, a
similar situation arose more than thirteen hundred years later. When
Sir Francis Drake threatened to sack the tomb of St James at
Santiago de Compostella, the archbishop and three clerics hastily
removed the body to a safe place. They died and when the danger
lifted no one knew where the body had been hidden. Not until 1879
was it rediscovered. The St Sebastian tradition is given credence by
the discovery under the church of over two hundred graffiti
scratched on plaster by pious pilgrims invoking the intercession of
Peter and Paul. The date of the graffiti is late third century. Why,
if the bodies were not in the locality, should these prayers have
been addressed to the saints?
The
Shrine
Whether
the remains of St Peter were in the tomb on the Vatican Hill when
Constantine began to build, or whether the emperor brought them back
again from St Stebastian's we may never know. We can only be sure
that a monument or shrine to Peter of some kind already existed in
the Roman cemetery. Apart from the recent archaeological
discoveries, there is written evidence. First of all, the Liber
Pontificalis tells us that St Anacletus (AD 79-91), the second pope
after Peter, who had ordained him, erected a memorial 'in the
vicinity of the Neronian Circus beside the Vatican', to mark the
spot where the Apostle's remains were buried after his crucifixion;
and that Linus, Peter's immediate successor, had been 'buried there
beside Peter's body'. Unfortunately, the Liber Pontificalis is not
an invariably trustworthy guide and, as we are about to see, the
recent excavations throw doubts upon this early claim. A more
revealing quotation is the well-known extract from a letter by a
certain Roman priest, named Gaius, written some time between the
years 199 and 217. This is what he, an eyewitness, tells his
correspondent. 'If you go to the Vatican or to the Ostian Way [where
St Paul's outside the Walls is] there you will find the trophies
[tropaia, for he writes in Greek] of those who founded this church.'
Now the meaning of the Greek word tropaion is neither place of
martyrdom, nor indeed place of burial, but monument, to be exact
triumphal monument, in this context signifying the victory of the
winged soul over darkness. In early Christian years before the cult
of relics and the morbid lamentation over death had become common,
the glory rather than the suffering of martyrs was recorded. Shrines
were erected over their graves where commemorative celebrations were
held from time to time by jubilant - not mourning - friends and
admirers. In the same spirit, early Christian art represented Christ
by a variety of cheerful symbols, like the fish, loaf of bread and
vine, but never depicted him hanging in agony on the cross.
The
extract from the letter of the priest Gaius need not be questioned.
It affords very important written evidence. The evidence of the
Liber Pontificalis compiled several centuries later, although
probably taken from earlier testimony, is, as I have suggested, less
reliable. It is not, however, necessarily a fabrication. Pius XII's
excavators incline, on the archaeological data revealed to them, to
believe that the name Anacletus, the second pope after Peter, was a
mistake made by the scribe of the Liber Pontificalis for Anicetus, a
pope in office from AD 155-66. Tiles discovered by them in a drain
close to the site are stamped with the name of the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius whose reign coincided with that of Pope Anicetus. In their
view, the remains of the shrine, or tropaion, which Gaius knew and
saw are of the same date as the tiles, that is to say about AD 160,
only four years after the death of Polycarp, who had been the pupil
of St John!
The
long and exciting story of the investigations of the Apostle's grave
and monument beneath the basilica has been most skillfully and
impartially recorded in Professor Jocelyn Toynbee and Mr John Ward
Perkins's exciting book, The Shrine of St Peter and the Vatican
Excavations, 1956. It would be redundant to go over their ground in
detail. I will just summarize very briefly indeed what the
excavators' discoveries amounted to. They found immediately below
the central chord of the apse of Constantine's basilica sufficient
remains of an aedicular shrine for a conjectural sketch to be made
of what the structure looked like in A. D. 160. Somewhat similar
aedicular shrines to this one have been found intact in other Roman
cemeteries in Italy. The St Peter's shrine, a fairly straightforward
and simple affair, was built against and into a wall of the same
date, called by the excavators the Red Wall because it is lined with
a red plaster - which runs from south to north. The so-called Red
Wall was built in order to form a division in the cemetery between
certain tombs on the west and an uncovered space, or court, on the
east. The shrine within the court and facing east consisted of two
superimposed niches, originally visible above ground. The upper
niche was round headed and was contained within a little tabernacle
under a pediment. The little tabernacle rested on a projecting ledge
like a table - only slightly higher from the ground than an ordinary
table would be - supported in its turn by two advanced columns.
Under the ledge and in front of the lower niche were found the
remains of a carefully fitted, moveable slab. The odd thing about
the slab is that it was not set flush with the shrine and the Red
Wall, but asymmetrically at an angle of ten degree to the north. The
irregular setting of the slab at first gave rise to much conjecture
until it was found that two very deep graves on either side to much
conjecture until it was found that two very deep graves on either
side of the shrine were orientated at precisely the same angle.
These graves have been dated from the first century, one of them,
again owing to a sealed tile, from Vespasian's reign of AD 69-79.
The inference to be drawn from the irregularly set slab and the
first-century graves parallel to it is that a previous shrine
existed on the site of the A. D. 160 one, but flush with the slab.
Other graves dating from the next century were found grouped around
the foundations of the shrine, not at the same angle buy, as it
were, radiating from them. A statement in the Liber Pontificalis
that Linus, the first pope after Peter, who died in 79, and the next
eleven popes were buried round the remains of St Peter may then be
borne out by these first - and second-century graves. The fact that
the graves are inhumation, not cremation, resting places and were
all humble ones, compared with the richly decorated tombs in other
parts of the cemetery, contributes to the likelihood that Christian
bodies reposed in them.
(In
1626 when the deep foundations for Bernini's baldacchino were being
dug the workmen came upon a number of Christian corpses clad in
linen, their heads turned towards a central point beneath the high
altar. There is no means now of telling the date of the burials.)
And
what did the excavators find directly beneath the second-century
shrine? Below the lower niche, under the floor level, and hacked out
of the foundations of the Red Wall, a third niche or arch, the
purpose of which can only have been to avoid disturbing a grave
below it. On the south side of the lowest niche, and below the
foundations of the Red Wall were traces of a short projecting wall
parallel with the first-century graves and the moveable slab already
referred to. Clearly this deep wall had been built to form on the
slope of the hillside a revetment to a grave above it. On
examination, the grave proved to be shorter than it originally had
been. One third, which lay on the west side of the Red Wall, had at
the time of the wall's building been filled in. In the recess which
the remainder of the grave formed, on the east side of the wall, was
found a pile of human bones without a head. Heaped together the
bones were obviously not in the position of their original burial,
and the area showed distinct signs of subsequent looting and
desecration. Scientific tests have certified that the bones are the
remains of a person of the male sex, of advanced age and powerful
physique. Tradition has always maintained that Peter's head was
removed for safety in 846, when the threat of Saracen invasion
reached Rome, to the Lateran church, where it still remains. Of the
many sacks of Rome by barbarian tribes and Christian potentates, the
only one which did not spare the tomb of Peter was the Saracens'.
Whereas the Nordic invaders of Rome had all been Christians of a
sort, the infidel Saracens alone were in no awe of the Faith's most
sacred shrine in the west. Contemporary writers mention that they
destroyed the altar over the grave, committing unmentionable
wickednesses around it. The excavators are satisfied that they went
further than this in smashing and looting what they found within the
tomb itself. Toynbee and Perkins sum up their synopsis of the long
official report made by Pope Pius's excavators with these words:
'Although it is not certain that the aedicula marks the site of an
earlier grave, the hypothesis that it did so explains much that is
otherwise obscure; and although there is nothing to prove that this
grave was that of St Peter, nothing in the archaeological evidence
is inconsistent with such an identification.' To which we may merely
add that the second-century builders of the aedicula, or shrine,
must have had sounder reasons for putting it where they did than any
which we of the twentieth century are likely to discover.
The
excavations carried out by a group of highly-trained and skilled
archaeologists in most difficult circumstances, chief of which was
the abiding threat of danger to the great fabric of the present-day
St Peter's above ground, have not then established once and for all,
as so ardently hoped, that the Apostle's body rests beneath the
heart of the basilica. On the other hand, they have enabled the
experts to draw a picture of what Constantine the Great saw when he
decided to raise a vast basilica in Peter's honour on the slopes of
the Vatican Hill. After crossing the Tiber by Nero's bridge, the
emperor would leave on his right hand the great drum of Hadrian's
Mausoleum, (now the Castle S. Angelo) which dominated the river
where it loops sharply to the south. He would then ride, or be
driven, along a narrow straight road to where the southern arm of
the present colonnade now claws at the entrance of St Peter's
Piazza. Ahead of him no sharp cliff of papal palace buildings so
familiar to us today, but a steepish slope of poorly cultivated vine
terraces. At this spot his road would incline to the west. On his
left, on the low ground stretched the oval expanse of Caligula's
Circus, punctuated in the centre perhaps by the sharp needle brought
from Heliopolis and now gracing the piazza. On his right, reaching
to the very edge of the road, the rows of the cemetery tombs,
looking like little garden pavilions, spruce and compact and huddled
closely together. Dismounting, the emperor would walk through an
entrance gate up a narrow path paved with rough concrete, the Red
Wall of brick coated with washed plaster to his right, and some
grandiose family mausoleums to his left. Skirting the Red Wall, he
would emerge into the small courtyard by an entrance in either its
northern or eastern enclosure. He then found himself in an
altogether humbler quarter of the cemetery. Rising above the unpaved
earthen floor a few headstones, or twin slabs of stone leaning
together in the form of a tent marked the inhumation graves of St
Peter's spiritual heirs. Only against the west wall of the court
stood the more prominent aedicula, or shrine, which we have already
described as open to the skies. This was the object which the
emperor sought to make the central feature of the most ambitious
church yet projected by a member of the new Christian faith. As he
stopped to gaze upon it and then turned to survey the extremely
awkward and steep contours of th surrounding land, which sloped to
south and east, he must have pondered the immense task confronting
him as well as the odium to be incurred in the total destruction of
the cemetery crowded with sepulchers and graves of rich an poor
alike.
The
Liber Pontificalis states quite categorically that the emperor's
first action was to put the Saint's remains, which he either found
below the shrine or brought back from St Sebastian's, in a new
coffin of cypress wood; this in turn he enclosed within a
sarcophagus of bronze. Over the sarcophagus fecit crucem ex auro
purissimo - he laid a cross made of purest gold, on which an
inscription recorded that it was his and his mother, Helena's gift.
This statement has given rise to what in the light of the excavation
discoveries must be a fable, namely that the gold cross was seen in
1594.
The
Church
Constantine's
next move was the leveling of a great space at least 250 m long and
150 m broad to accommodate his projected basilica and atrium. That
the emperor regarded the whole enterprise as an act of piety is
suggested by the tradition that he carried on his imperial shoulders
the first twelve basketfuls of earth for the foundations. Then came
the orientation of the church. At St Peter's the setting is the
reverse of the later, general custom of having the sanctuary at the
east end of the axis. Here the entrance is at the east end and the
sanctuary, upon which the body of the church is focused, at the
west.
This
arrangement, not unusual in Constantinian churches, was to enable
the rays of the rising sun to fall on the celebrant as he stood
before the high altar facing the congregation at Mass. In fact at
the vernal equinox the great doors of the porch and those of the
church were thrown open at dawn to allow the first beams to
illuminate the Apostle's shrine, while the choir and congregation
burst into a paean of thanksgiving. The setting is compatible with
Constantine's youthful predilection for sun worship and the Roman
Christians' tendency to identify Christ with the god of the rising
sun.
Just
as many pagan traditions of ritual were adapted to the requirements
of the new Faith, so too was pagan architecture largely copied in
the building of churches by the early Christians. The plan of
Constantine's several churches deliberately followed the
conventional plan of the Roman hall of justice, called the Basilica.
This law court was habitually rectangular, divided by rows of
columns into nave and aisles. At one end, steps led to a platform
within a semi-circular apse, in the middle of which sat the chief
judge on an armed chair, or throne, made of marble. On either side
of him assistant judges perched on curved benches of marble, or
stone. A rail or low screen would separate the judges from the
populace in the hall below. Before either end of the arc of the
apse, and in the body of the hall, stood a box, called the 'ambo',
from which counsel and witnesses could address the court. In the
middle of the chord of the apse there was often an altar dedicated
to Minerva, goddess of wisdom, to whom sacrifice might be made
before the legal proceedings began.
Out
of these various conventional features the Christian basilica
derived. The chief judge's throne was turned into the bishop's
throne. The assistant judges' benches became those of the
presbyters. The two 'ambos' the pulpits from which the Gospel and
Epistle were read. The altar of Minerva gave way to that of the
Christian Lord. In execution the chief difference between old St
Peter's and a basilica like that of Maxentius lay in the roofing.
Whereas Maxentius's basilica had elaborate coffered vaults carried
on stout piers in the classical manner admired and followed by the
Renaissance, the Christian basilica was roofed in a simple wooden
construction which was to be widely imitated by early church
builders in Italy. The effect was less remarkable as architecture
burttr more aspirant spiritually. The open timber roofs of most
Gothic churches were filled in by later ages contemptuous of this
primitive form of carpentry. S. Sabina on the Aventine Hill, dating
from about 425 and owing much to St Peter's model, has a flat
boarded ceiling inserted beneath the timbers. This church, or nave
and two aisles separated by arcades in place of architrave, is in
other respects the perfect example of an early medieval Roman
basilica, its ample width savouring of serenity and peace.
When
St Peter's Basilica was built, the second-century shrine was not
buried beneath an altar. On the contrary, it was purposely allowed
to stand above the pavement level, but encased in a lavish,
contemporary framework befitting so precious a relic. Everything
else formerly around it in the old pagan cemetery had been
flattened. It alone was made the focal point to which all eyes in
the church were to be turned. We may refer once again to the Liber
Pontificalis to learn precisely what Constantine did. 'Et exornavit
supra,' we read, 'ex columnis purphyreticis et alias columnas
vitineas quas de Graecia perduxit.' The little, old-fashioned and
rude shrine he enclosed with corner columns, or to be accurate, with
pilasters of porphyry. The 'other vine-clad columns', specially
brought from Greece, formed part of a new screen across the apse and
the canopy over the shrine. This is the earliest reference to six of
the strange barley sugar columns of translucent white marble,
wreathed with vine tendrils, which still remain in the present St
Peter's. Each column, capital, shaft and base is a single block,
carved probably around the year 200. Their provenance is not known,
and the legend that they came from Solomon's Temple is worth no more
than the name of solomónica, which they have given to those
ubiquitous twisted columns copied on altars and reredoses in in
numerable Spanish renaissance churches. Presumably their pagan
significance was Dionysiac, which conveniently became translated by
the Christians into the vintage of the Lord. For two centuries and a
half the Constantinian setting of the shrine survived. A
fifth-century ivory casket, unearthed in 1906 at Samagher, bears in
relief a faithful outline of what the canopy looked like. Curved
ribs from the corners of four of the columns meet in a boss from
which is suspended a lamp shaped like a crown, another gift to St
Peter's from the emperor. Between each rear column of ht canopy and
a pair of separate columns placed at the corners of the apse
curtains are hanging. Two priests officiate at the shrine while four
more with hands upraised in blessing face the congregation from the
sides. Shortly before the Constantinian arrangement was altered a
certain deacon, called Agiulf, gave a description of the shrine and
the strange antics that took place at it. For anyone wishing to pay
particular reverence to the Apostle's tomb, the doors, probably at
the rear of the shrine, were unlocked and a small window was opened.
The pious person thrust his head inside and was sure to be granted
whatever he asked for, provided of course that it was meritorious.
Then, having weighed a piece of cloth he might have brought with
him, he dropped it on the end of a string into the tomb below. After
fervently praying, fasting and waiting, he drew up the cloth. If he
was a person of worth, the cloth on being weighed again would prove
to be appreciably heavier than before on account of the special
virtue with which it had become impregnated while in contact with
the holy remains. Agiulf spoke of the 'snow-white columns of
wondrous elegance, four in number' of the canopy, as did his
contemporary Gregory of Tours in almost the same phraseology - mirae
elegantiae, candore niveo.
About
594, however, Gregory the Great thought fit to raise the presbytery
some four and a half feet above the level of the rest of the church.
The platform contrived was approached by steps leading to a central
throne and benches fitted into the apse. In consequence of this
alteration, the shrine was left below the presbytery pavement and
must henceforth be looked at through a grill from the lower level. A
new canopy with different supports was provided for an altar which
was now built over the sunken shrine. The six twisted columns were
advanced to form a screen to the sanctuary. By these means, a
primitive sort of confession was formed. It was entered from the
sides at the base of the platform and gave access to the shrine by a
passage running round the apse. Thus was established a precedent to
be widely followed in Italy and France in early medieval church
building. The first purpose of St. Gregory's alterations was to
protect from barbarian incursions - alas, he did not forestall that
of the Saracens! - the shrine now enriched with the treasure of
successive donors. This had been accumulating for over two
centuries. Emperors and popes competed with one another in making
splendid gifts to the Apostle in earnest of their devotion. Pope
Pelagius II, St Gregory's predecessor, had, according to the Liber
Pontificalis, 'enclosed the body of Blessed Peter, the Apostle, in
plates of gilded silver', which will mean that he had started to
redecorate the shrine. Gregory's second purpose was to form out of
the two upper of the three niches of the shrine - all now submerged
below the raised presbytery level - one high and narrow niche to
contain the historic pallia. The pallium is a circular band of white
material, marked with six purple crosses, having pendants on the
front and back, to be worn on the shoulders over the chasuble. It is
solely the Pope's right to grant the pallium to archbishops in
symbolism of the plenitude of the pontifical office. The coveted
garment is made from the wool of lambs blessed on St Agnes's Day in
the church of S. Agnese fuori le Mura, and before being dispatched
to each recipient rests for a night in front of St Peter's tomb. In
the course of forming the single Niche of the Pallia, the axis of
the shrine was shifted some ten to twelve centimeters to the south.
The
Memorial of the Apostle and the Constantinian Basilica
by
Jose Ruysschaert
The
history of the tomb of the Apostle Peter at the Vatican has been
enriched during the last thirty-five years since Pius XII, who at
the very beginning of his pontificate, decided to extend
archaeological investigations throughout the entire lower sections
of the Vatican crypts and also under the papal altar. These
investigations had been begun by chance at the site chosen for the
burial of his predecessor, Pius XI.
Little
by little, as the encrusted legends and learned theories were
stripped away, the Memoria of Peter began to reappear in a more
exact light, thus making possible a comparison of the monuments with
ancient texts. This is the history we would like to relate, starting
with the present Basilica and going back through the course of the
centuries to the Basilica of Constantine, to the ancient 2nd-century
necropolis and the small burial monument marking the site of Peter's
tomb, and finally to the archaeological setting of the 1st century
which offers a starting point.
The
paradoxical character of this history stems from the fact that the
small burial monument which, since the middle of the 2nd century,
has never ceased to be the evidence on which this history is based,
has stayed in place, despite successive raisings of the level of the
ground, both in the first Basilica, built during the pontificate of
Sylvester and the reign of Constantine, probably between 320 and
333, and in the present Basilica as well, built under eighteen popes
from Julius II to Paul V, from 1506 to 1615. But, as is often the
case, the contradiction is only an apparent one, as we shall see.
The presence of the tomb has never ceased throughout the centuries
to be the center of this history and its only justification.
This
presence is that of a small burial monument built in the 2nd-centuty
necropolis. It is made up of two superimposed niches forming part of
a wall seven m long. The niches were made in the middle of the wall
at the time of its construction, about the year 150. Originally a
marble plaque supported by two small columns separated the two
niches. In front of this small monument there was an enclosure
measuring seven m by four. Some family monuments of the necropolis
bordered part of it. That was how Peter's tomb appeared in the
middle of the second century. It is easy enough to locate this
modest set of constructions in the present Basilica. In fact, at the
side of the small chapel called the Niche of the Palliums, under the
papal altar, the small monument with niches and small columns has
been discovered substantially intact, while some remains of the
enclosure were discovered during excavations directly underneath the
open area called the Confession which, protected by a balustrade,
gives access to the Niche of the Palliums.
The
tomb's first architectural setting, moreover, is now right before
the eyes of visitors who descend from the Basilica into the crypts
and pass through the archaeological area below those just mentioned.
Thus taken suddenly from the present era into the 2nd century, the
visitor walks along narrow paths hemmed in by the high family burial
chambers of an ancient Roman necropolis. Having recovered from the
surprise, the visitor realizes that he is walking on what was the
slope of a hill. After a short climb to the north, he finds himself
on the narrow main path which rises gradually towards the west in
the direction of the papal altar, following the principal axis of
the Basilica. As he moves on, the visitor gradually realizes that
the family monuments he is passing have been demolished, more and
more extensively, so that where the path ends, immediately under the
papal altar, the last of the monuments consists only of a pavement
and part of a wall.
Such
a visit enables the visitor to form a good idea of the problems
facing the architects of Constantine's time who were given the task
of constructing the first Vatican Basilica. On the side of a hill
where an important necropolis was located and which at that time was
still being used, they managed to create an artificial plateau, by
building imposing walls of substructure and by filling in the area
with earth. The plateau was extended considerably beyond the site of
the future Basilica. The level of the plateau was planned in such a
way as to keep the small monument with niches intact and isolated at
the focal point of the new structure, located directly in front of
the apse. A simple burial monument in a necropolis, now closed by
imperial authority, thus became the reason for the construction of a
Basilica and the transformation of an entire area of what was then
open country. Placed in the contemporary context of the
martyria-basilicas, the way in which the Vatican Basilica was
constructed is explained solely by the fact that the monument with
niches was considered by the Christian community of Rome to be
Peter's tomb. And without a doubt the most important result of the
Vatican excavations is that it has been possible to recognize even
in terms of the construction of the first Vatican Basilica the
archaeological and historical proof for a community belief which was
beyond dispute: if it is a palaeo-Christian Basilica built ad
corpus, that is, to serve as a martyr's tomb, then it is clearly the
one built at the Vatican according to Constantine's wishes.
THE
REMAINS OF PETER
One
of the surprises of the excavations carried out between 1940 and
1949 under the Confession of the Vatican Basilica was the discovery
- beneath the papal altar - of the site of Peter's original tomb
empty and in disarray.
The
Apostle's remains were strangely missing.
After
his martyrdom in Nero's Circus (autumn of 64), Peter was buried a
short distance away, beyond the road (Via Cornelia?) which bordered
the Circus, in a place where tombs already existed. That place
corresponds to the area which archaeologists today call Area P. In
the course of the centuries, various monuments were placed over the
modest grave of the Apostle: the so-called "Trophy of Gaius"
(about the middle of the 2nd century), the monument of Constantine
(after 313), the altar of Gregory the Great (590-604), the altar of
Calixtus II (1119-1124), and the altar of Clement VIII (1592-1605),
which is the present altar. All these monuments were built (or so it
seemed at first) over an empty tomb.
At
the western edge of Area P there were found remains of human bones,
remains to which some people attributed a certain importance. It was
subsequently shown that in fact these remains had nothing to do with
Peter, differing as they did with regard to both age and sex.
But
the excavations inside Constantine's monument had also revealed a
characteristic loculus which had been deliberately hollowed out of
an already existing wall (the wall which archaeologists today call
"Wall G"), included within the Constantinian construction.
Wall G is built against the back wall of the Trophy of Gaius, that
is the wall which - on account of the vivid red colour of its
plaster - came to be called the "Red Wall". Wall G,
therefore, is later than the Red Wall, but earlier than the monument
of Constantine in which it was enclosed. On the whole, Wall G can be
dated to about the mid-3rd century. Inside this wall, as I have
said, a secret hiding-place (the loculus) was discovered. It
measured 0.77 m long by 0.29 m wide and 0.315 m high, and was lined
with slabs of Greek marble.
Wall
G and its hiding-place are at the center of extraordinary events,
due in part to the somewhat abnormal situation in which the
1940-1949 excavations took place. The first opening made in the
northern side of the Constantinian monument brought to light the
north section of Wall G, covered with Christian graffiti, and, below
it, the opening of the famous loculus. No detailed study of these
graffiti was made either then or during the entire period of the
excavations. They were deciphered and commented upon at a later time
by myself, and in fact they proved to be a wonderful page of
Christian spirituality in which the names of Christ, Mary and Peter
are particularly prominent and their victory is acclaimed. As for
the loculus, the excavators had immediately noticed that it was
about half filled with plaster rubble which had fallen from above,
that is from the inside of Wall G itself, and from the side, that is
from a section of the adjacent Red Wall. For various reasons a
systematic emptying of the loculus was not carried out immediately.
However, it happened that a certain moment someone noticed that
there were bone fragments mixed in with the plaster rubble inside
the hiding-place, and arranged for these bones to be gathered up,
put in a wooden box and placed in a nearby spot in the Vatican
Grottoes, where they remained forgotten for a long time.
In
the meantime, the scholars working on the excavations returned to
the loculus of Wall G and naturally found it empty, except for "some
remains of organic material and bone fragments mixed with earth"
(these are their own words) which had remained at the bottom. It was
easily perceived that the hiding-place had been made during the
building of the Constantinian monument, and from this perception
there sprang the theory that it had been intended for the bones of
Peter. This theory was admitted, in fact, by various scholars:
Father Antonio Ferrua (1952), Jerome Carcopino (1953), Father
Engelbert Kirschbaum (1957) and Pasquale Testini (1957). But for the
moment the theory remained only a theory. The essential element of
proof was missing: the box which had been placed in the nearby spot
in the Vatican Grottoes and forgotten.
Since
the excavators were unaware of the existence of the box, and on the
other hand wished to give some explanation for the riddle of Wall G,
the idea was put forward and gained increasing credence that the
hiding-place had been opened during the Middle Ages on the eastern
side, and that through this opening the remains of the Apostle had
been taken away.
Significant
in the construction of the Basilica, the small monument is no less
unusual in the 2nd century necropolis. In the first place, it is an
individual building constructed in the middle of a large number of
family monuments. Furthermore, it also interrupts the straight line
which the others follow. In fact, the closest monuments are built
around the enclosure with the small building in the center, as if it
were an obstacle. Moreover, among these buildings two contemporary
staircases were put in to provide access to the revered enclosure.
Finally, the soil of the enclosure seems to be partly a built-up
mound resting against the family monuments. The height of the mound
is dictated by the height of the small monument built at a
particularly steep point on the slope.
In
the midst of these family monuments, therefore, the enclosure and
the small building seem to answer to the desire that an already
existing tomb should be preserved and integrated within the new
necropolis then being developed. During the second half of the 3rd
century, other plans attest to an identical wish. Two marble
decorations and small walls were added to the small building,
flanking it on each side. At the same time, the earth of the
enclosure where, in the meantime, numerous ground burials had taken
place, was covered over with a mosaic pavement. In addition, the
paths to the two stairways were closed by gates.
An
archaeological continuity is thus attested to, from the middle of
the 2nd century when the small building was constructed up to the
beginning of the 4th century which marks the start of the Basilica's
construction: the Petrine identity of the small building at the
beginning of the 4th century can thus be traced back historically to
the middle of the 2nd century. The Vatican excavations have once
again placed before our eyes the tomb as it was marked by the small
building with niches before the construction of the Basilica.
These
excavations have also allowed us to have a more precise idea of what
visitors to the first Basilica saw, for they clarify and confirm the
descriptions given by ancient texts and by a reliquary of the 5th
century found at Samagher and now preserved in Venice. Isolated from
the razed monuments and walls of the necropolis, the small Petrine
building was located in front of the apse, in the center of the
transept.
After
the sides had been altered to correct irregularities in shape
inherited from the 3rd century modifications, it was covered with
marble decorations similar to those covering the apse. Its façade
was divided into two parts. A golden cross bearing the names of
Constantine and his mother Helena was placed in the upper part, and
the lower section was closed with a double door. This door opened
into a small area where, at least by the end of the 4th century, an
opening in the floor was made, enabling visitors to lower objects on
to the earth inside the small cavity below. This design, which still
exists in the present Niche of the Palliums and is typical of the
veneration practiced at the tombs of martyrs, is an extremely
significant element of the tradition intimately linking the small
monument to the site, immediately below, of Peter's tomb.
Gregory
of Tours gives us a picture of a pilgrim lowering into the small
shaft a cloth which would touch the Apostle's tomb and thus become a
relic of it. The mediaeval liturgy placed a censer there for the
whole year from 29 June to 29 June. The temporary placing of the
Palliums in the niche, a custom still observed, is a further
indication of the respect in which this spot was held.
Around
the monument of Peter, four spiraling columns of sculpted marble
connected with the balustrades, likewise of marble, formed the
supports for a baldacchino crowned by architraves and arches. Two
other spiraling columns at the angle of the apse were connected to
the other four by two architraves. But the six columns of the
baldacchino were not alone in stressing the importance of the
monument of Peter in the Basilica. The plan of the Basilica itself
also marks its importance. The architectural works just described
are not only in front of the apse but also at the center of the
transept.
This
architectural fact is in itself unusual. Churches with transepts "in
the form of a cross" may be familiar to us, but the historian
notes that, among all the marytria-basilicas of the Near East and of
Rome in Constantine's time, the Vatican is the only Basilica which
has this design, a design later to be spread by the Carolingian
renaissance. In the Vatican Basilica the transept was, in fact, the
martyrium, the structure centered above the martyr's tomb and
reserved for liturgical functions, as opposed to the five aisles
reserved for the assembly of the faithful. The martyrium was a huge
rectangle, 87 m by 18, separated from the aisles at the time by a
large central triumphal arch decorated with a mosaic showing
Constantine offering the building to the Saviour, and by four
arch-shaped openings on the sides. Taken together, the naves were 91
m long and 64 m wide. Besides the six columns of the baldacchino,
100 simpler columns taken from a variety of ancient monuments (as
was much other material for the Basilica), in groups of 22,
separated the aisles, or were placed at the lateral arch-shaped
openings to the transept and at both ends o the transept. The
entrance of the Basilica, a portico 12 m wide, was preceded by a
quadriportico 62 m by 46, reached by 35 steps.
The
wooden box containing the material removed from the hiding-place was
found by me only in 1953. Besides bones, it also contained earth,
flakes of red plaster, small pieces of rich fabric and two marble
fragments. A note, written by a Sampietrino who took part in the
first excavations and read by me clearly and in its entirety, stated
that the material had been taken from the loculus of Wall G. The
flakes of red plaster belonged to the adjacent section of the Red
Wall (as can be easily understood). The fragments of marble were
shown by a chemical analysis to originate from the front slab of the
lining of the loculus. Both the plaster and the marble fragments
clearly confirmed the statement in the note.
The
idea accredited by the excavators and then generally accepted that
the loculus had been broken into during the Middle Ages meant that
at that time I myself did not attribute to these remains the
importance due to them. But the elementary duty of serious
scientific inquiry led me to transfer them to a dry place and to the
making of provisions for their systematic examination by a qualified
specialist. The specialist chosen was Prof. Venerando Correnti, who
then held the chair of anthropology at the University of Palermo and
today holds the same chair at the University of Rome.
Prof.
Correnti was therefore asked in 1956 to begin his work. But before
anything else he had to make a long and careful study of the
skeletal remains, found in the earth on the western edge of Area P,
to which (as I have stated above) a certain importance had hitherto
been attributed. The anthropological examination showed in fact that
the bones belonged to four different individuals, none of whom could
be taken into consideration in connection with the problem of
Peter's remains.
Only
in October 1962 was Prof. Correnti able to devote himself to the
examination of the bones found in the loculus of Wall G. This work
lasted until the end of June 1963. Briefly, the result was the
following: bones of a single individual, of male sex, sturdy build
and advanced age (between 60 and 70 years old), encrusted with
earth.
This
result corresponded with the historical and archaeological data. In
the only loculus of Peter's monument-tomb there was in fact to be
expected the presence of bones with these characteristics. And this
precisely is what had happened. Furthermore, it had to be kept in
mind that among the remains from the loculus were small fragments of
rich fabric. These indicated that these bones really were the mortal
remains of Peter.
There
remained a single doubt in my mind: that of the alleged opening of
the loculus from the east during the Middle Ages. But it quickly
vanished when a minute examination of the interior of the loculus,
carried out at my request by the best specialists in Roman
wall-construction, proved that the loculus had never been broken
into from the time of Constantine until the moment when the
excavators of the 1940-49 period had made the first breach of the
Constantinian wall.
Experimental
analyses of the remains of fabric and of earth were also carried
out. All of these tests yielded positive results. The gold was
genuine; the cloth was dyed with purple made from murex; the earth
matched that of the area.
At
this point it seemed reasonable to draw the following conclusions:
at the time of Constantine, after the peace of the Church (313),
when it was decided to arrange definitively the site of Peter's
tomb, the bones lying in the earth under the Trophy of Gaius were
collected, wrapped in a precious cloth of purple interwoven with
gold and placed in a loculus specially made inside a wall (Wall G)
already existing beside the Trophy. In front of this wall, enriched
by the precious material inserted, another wall was built which was
to be partially broken down only by the excavations begun in 1940.
It can be added that the reason for the transfer of Peter's relics
from the earth tomb to the loculus in Wall G was probably the
well-founded fear that the dampness of the earth, which is
notoriously very considerable in the Vatican area, would rapidly
damage the venerable remains which had once been entrusted to it.
We
have roughly sketched out what was by the will of Constantine the
new architectural setting for the tomb of Peter. The Basilica,
demolished by the Renaissance on the pretext that it was in danger
of collapse, and precisely on the spot where it rested on the
highest substructures, had certainly been damaged, but just as
certainly it had been improved. Canons of the Vatican, architects
and artists have fortunately left numerous testimonies which
opportunely complete the information furnished by the recent
excavations. We hesitate to stop here: certain stages of these
changes, the first ones and the last, are essential to our subject
matter.
The
solution which Constantine's architects decided upon was the best -
if not the simplest - which could have been chosen for a
cemetery-basilica ad corpus, which was both a grandiose burial
monument built around a tomb and a cemetery set aside to receive the
bodies of the dead who wished to be placed near a saint's tomb, as
was done in the catacombs. This burial characteristic is certainly a
primary one for the Vatican Basilica. The solution of Constantine's
architects nevertheless presented a serious inconvenience, since
even then the influx of pilgrims made evident the need for regular
liturgical functions. The monument and its baldacchino took up too
much space in the middle of the transept. To his credit, Gregory the
Great solved this problem with an architectural device which
respected the monument as ingeniously as had that of Constantine's
architects.
The
problem was to establish a permanent altar at the center of the
transept, easily accessible and perfectly visible, without touching
the monument. The area immediately surrounding the Petrine monument,
apse included, was raised about one and a half m, while the top of
the monument was transformed into an altar, without doubt the first
permanent altar of the Petrine tomb. Four small columns placed on
the altar allowed for the construction of a baldacchino.
Nevertheless, the monument of Peter remained accessible, as before.
Not only was it still completely visible from the central nave,
separated from it only by the six columns of the ancient baldacchino
now place in a single row and crowned by an architrave, but also two
stairways permitted direct descent from the new presbyterium. In
addition, under the presbyterium an original architectural
contrivance had been built. Extending along the interior of the apse
wall, an almost circular corridor, reached from the transept by two
doors, led to a chapel, likewise underground, built directly behind
the small monument and for that reason called ad corpus in some
mediaeval texts. About two m high (thus it was a little lower than
the height of Constantine's construction), the new design, properly
called the "Confession", gave a completely new appearance
to the Memoria Petri. The ancient Basilica underwent only secondary
changes. Under Gregory III, a second row of six spiraling columns of
sculpted marble in the same style as the others was placed parallel
to them. Under Calixtus II a new altar was constructed above that of
Gregory the Great.
We
noted above that the design of the Basilica with transept created at
the Vatican by Constantine's architects spread throughout religious
architecture from the Carolingian renaissance onwards. The
architectural contrivance of Gregory, consisting of an altar-tomb
and a presbyterium-crypt, imposed on the Vatican by liturgical needs
and the requirements of a burial monument which was not intended to
be touched, became almost instantaneously the model for builders of
churches where the body of a saint was venerated, even if they did
not have the problem of a pre-existing tomb in the edifice under
construction. We may add that, from its time of construction
onwards, the "uncovered Confession" which was to be built
under Clement VIII and Paul V would become a prototype for similar
constructions, imposed, and most often wrongly, on some altars in
Roman Basilicas, including in the 19th century the altar of the
Basilica of St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls. But it seems to be beyond
our purpose to stress the different manifestations of the attraction
which Peter's place of pilgrimage has had on religious architecture.
What
we have hitherto described of the history of Peter's tomb at the
Vatican shows that this history was dominated architecturally by a
desire to keep the tomb intact. It is very tempting to state that
this concern was equally dominant in the most delicate phase of this
history - the construction of the present Basilica. The first
measure taken at that time was dramatically of a preservative
nature. In 1507, temporary walls joined to the apse wall permitted
the setting up of a small construction which protected the papal
altar until 1592. It was only under the pontificate of Clement VIII
that the first part of the present architectural contrivance was
constructed. The floor of the new Basilica, raised 3.20 m above the
previous floor level, required a corresponding raising of he 13th
century papal altar. A new altar, the present one, was superimposed
over the altar of Callixtus II. At the same time, the "uncovered
Confession" with stairways maintaining direct access to the
Niche of the Palliums was also constructed. Paul V added little to
its present appearance. But Clement VIII did not limit himself to
external modifications of the Petrine Memoria.
At
this point, it would seem appropriate to sum up, for the sake of
clarity, the chief elements which have permitted the present writer
to proceed to the identification of the bones in the loculus of Wall
G as those of the Apostle:
1.
The Constantinian monument was considered, in Constantine's day, to
be the tomb of the martyr.
2.
Inside the monument-sepulchre there exists a loculus, and one only:
the loculus of Wall G.
3.
This loculus was carved out of Wall G and lined with marble at the
time of Constantine
4.
The loculus was never broken into from the age of Constantine until
the time of the excavations (about 1941).
5.
From this loculus come the bones which were removed at the beginning
of the excavations, kept without interruption in a nearby spot in
the Vatican Grottoes and recovered from this spot in 1953.
6.
These bones, therefore, are the ones which were verified at the time
of Constantine as the bones of Peter and place in the loculus of
Wall G, inside the monument-sepulchre.
7.
The cloth of purple interwoven with gold-thread in which the bones
were wrapped at that time confirms the highest dignity then
attributed to the remains. The royal purple harmonizes perfectly in
fact with the royal porphyry which decorates the outside of the
monument.
8.
The anthropological examination of the bones - belonging to a single
individual - showed that they conform perfectly to what, by
tradition, we can imagine was Peter's physical appearance at the
time of his martyrdom. Apart from the obvious fact that they belong
to a male, the bones indicate a sturdy build and an age somewhere
between 60 and 70.
9.
The earth encrusted on the bones indicates that the bones themselves
originally lay in an earth-grave, and we know that Peter's first
burial was in the earth.
10.
The characteristics of the earth, shown by the scientific
examination, match those of the place where the original tomb was
dug (marly sand), while in other parts of the Vatican area the earth
is different (blue clay or yellow sand).
11.
The place of the earth-burial under the Trophy was found empty. This
is in harmony with the presence of the bones, transferred about two
metres higher up, in the loculus in the monument of Constantine.
From
this concise exposition it can be seen that the above elements
constitute the links of a chain, joined to one another, and that
chain leads to a conclusion: the bones of Peter have been
identified.
Guide
to Saint Peter's Basilica (stpetersbasilica.info)
Preserving
the underground contrivance of Gregory the Great, he adapted it. On
the outside of the almost circular corridor of Gregory, parallel to
it and bordering the outside of the wall of Constantine's apse, a
new circular corridor was built. Access was still assured from the
crypts previously added according to the plans of Michelangelo
between the floors of the two Basilicas. This new corridor, an
essential element of what is called the new crypts, preserved access
to the chapel ad corpus of Gregory which, since his time, had been
enlarged a little and given the name "Clementine Chapel".
It is in this small chapel, at the end of which still stands the
small 7th century altar ad caput, as it is called, and in the two
adjacent areas that the small burial building of the middle o the
2nd century presents for our reflection and devotion the first
architectural testimonies preserved for us by a history which, until
the recent excavations, had been concealed, as well a preserved, by
the Niche of the Palliums.
Following
the changes made by Clement VIII, a final architectural note needs
to be made so that we can place in the new and prestigious setting
of the present Basilica the ancient Memoria, which is somewhat lost
in the immense space of the new edifice even while remaining its
center.
Urban
VIII's authority and Bernini's art carried out this final stage,
through the construction of the bronze baldacchino of the altar
which bids the onlooker to unite inseparable in his vision
Michelangelo's dome with Peter's tomb. Eight spiraling columns which
surrounded that same tomb in the ancient Basilica are included in
the four pillars which support the dome and these columns,
surrounding the baldacchino of bronze which was inspired by them,
remain a witness to the continuity which we are striving to bring
out.
It
has been described above how the history of the Vatican Memoria of
Peter is dominated by the constant desire to keep it intact. No less
abiding is the wish to keep it visible and to ensure direct access
to it. These aims seemed particularly evident in the Constantinian
Basilica, both at the time of Construction and during the changes of
Gregory, but these desires were already asserted, as we have seen,
in the middle of the 2nd century when the small burial monument with
niches and columns was built. Let us now add that these same
imperatives were, at the price of a whole series of projects and
plans, the final determining elements for the construction of the
present Basilica.
An
architectural tradition thus permits us to go back as far as the
middle of the 2nd century; it is centered on a burial monument
considered without interruption to be the one built above Peter's
tomb. Yet our aim would remain unachieved if we did not present, in
the light of the excavations made under and near the Basilica, the
essential points of the record which could be described as the
archaeological setting of the site of Peter's tomb in the first two
centuries.
To
begin with, it should be observed that, in giving a strict
explanation, it would be better to talk here about the location of
the tomb rather than about the tomb itself. In fact, the excavations
did not discover the remains of Peter's body as it was buried after
his martyrdom. Moreover, no archaeological element retrieved from
the small cavity next to and below the Niche of the Palliums can be
considered as belonging to a burial monument, however modest, of the
1st century. Yet it would be wrong to conclude that the recent
archaeological investigations have added nothing to the history of
the first decades of the tomb.
First
of all, the investigations established that the 2nd century
necropolis had been built beside a secondary road running directly
along the northern border of the Circus of Caligula and Nero. It is
equally clear that the family monuments which were part of it were
built in an area already in use as a burial place. In the immediate
surroundings of the Petrine monument there have been found piles of
bones taken from previous tombs. These remains had been gathered
together by the 2nd century masons, who did not take great pains to
respect the material arrangements of the tombs in question. They
seemed to be acting according to the customs prescribed by law. But
this fact, hitherto hardly noticed, throws some light on what may
have happened to the Petrine tomb at the moment of the construction
of the small monument with niches. Under that monument only the
remains of the body of the Apostle-martyr would have been collected.
Did they remain there until the time of the construction of
Constantine's Basilica? Had they already been moved in the middle of
the 3rd century, when the monument underwent important changes? Our
present purpose does not include answers to these questions.
On
the other hand, it is important to stress that although this Vatican
area was imperial property in the 1st century, it was then lined
with roads beside which other burial grounds have been discovered.
In particular, a small part of the most important one was unearthed
in Vatican City at the time of the construction of a garage. It
remained in use during the first four centuries and was located
beside the ancient Triumphal Way. It included, in particular, two
tombs which according to their inscriptions date from the reign of
Nero. Further excavations have led to the discovery of some burial
monuments of the Flavian age on the south side of the Circus.
But
in Rome it is without doubt along the Ostian Way that the true
archaeological and architectural parallel to the history we have
been tracing is found: the tomb of the Apostle Paul and his two
Basilicas. Concerning the second Basilica, built at the end of the
4th century and destroyed by fire at the beginning of the 19th, the
reconstruction which respected the essence of its design gives us a
precise enough picture. Concerning the first, built by Constantine,
the excavations carried out at the time of the reconstruction tell
us that it was of modest proportions. There, too, Gregory the Great
raised the presbyterium and designed a crypt, limited this time to a
chapel ad corpus located behind the altar and reached through a
door. And, as at the Vatican, the tomb is situated in the middle of
a pagan necropolis, but this time it is inside a family monument. We
are obliged to end these pages dedicated to Peter's tomb by a visit
to Paul's, since the true Roman pilgrimage ad limina has never
consisted of anything other than a visit to the two tombs of the
Apostles, "at the Vatican" and "along the Ostian
Way". This was expressed at the end of the 2nd century by the
priest Gaius, and at the beginning of the 5th century by the Spanish
poet Prudentius - Gaius to justify a point of Roman ecclesiastical
discipline and Prudentius to present the two Apostles as the
guarantors of the faith of Rome. Thus the history of the two tombs
has been, through nineteen centuries, a matter of parallel
faithfulness to those who, by their common presence, their common
preaching and their common martyrdom, "laid the foundations"
of the Roman Church in the faith of Christ.
On
the vault of the Constantinian apse, did not the mosaic erected by
Pope Liberius exalt the divinity of Christ, as the bordering
inscription indicates, and are not Peter and Paul standing together
on either side of Christ in order to be the first ones in Rome to
proclaim his divinity?
Guide
to Saint Peter's Basilica (stpetersbasilica.info)
Now
let us go down, step by step, to see what is under the altar. And as
we go down, it is easy to see that we are also going back through
the centuries.
Under
the present altar, which belongs to the time of Clement VIII
(1592-1605), is the altar of Callistus II (1119-1124); lower still,
that of Gregory the Great (590-604). Next we find the monument built
in honor of St. Peter by the Emperor Constantine after his victory
near the Milvian Bridge (October 28, 312) and the establishment of
peace with the Church by the Edict of Milan (313 AD.). The date of
this monument cannot be fixed with absolute certainty, but there are
good reasons to think that it preceded the construction of the
basilica (begun about 322) and perhaps it is no later than 315; that
is, the year in which great holiday were held in Rome to exalt
Constantine and his victory; the year in which Rome dedicated the
famous Arch of Triumph which still rises majestically from its soil.
Constantine's
monument to Peter contained within its rich marble construction an
earlier chapel (or, more literally, shrine) which has been brought
to light by excavations. This chapel indicates, evidently, the place
sacred to the Apostle, the place that Constantine considered so
important and worthy of honor that he did not hesitate to build on
it first his precious monument and later - at the cost of
incalculable expense and enormous labor - the great basilica.
The
characteristic chapel rises from the level of the ancient necropolis
already described. It stands in a little open area, a sort of small
square in the middle of various tombs. (See Plate III.) This little
area which, in relation to the modern basilica, is directly under
the Confession, was called "Field P" by the excavators. It
is rectangular in form (about seven meters from north to south,
about four from east to west), and it lies in a place where the
terrain rises quite rapidly from the south to the north, i.e. toward
the Apostolic Palaces, and more gradually from the east to the west,
i.e., toward the Vatican Gardens.
Field
P is bounded on the west by a wall called "Red" because of
the red color of the plaster (now largely fallen off) which was used
to cover it; on the south by a tomb which the excavators call S; on
the east, but only in the southern half of the east section, by
another tomb called O (this tomb was owned by the Matuccii and is
sometimes called by their name). The northern boundary of the
eastern side and all the northern boundary of the eastern side and
all the northern boundary cannot be traced today, but there are good
reasons for believing that there were once structures there which
have been mostly destroyed.
Behind
the Red Wall ran a small street (the so-called clivus) which slopes
up from the south to north and includes some sets of stairs (Fig.
24). On the other side of this clivus are the remains of two other
tombs, called R and R1 by the excavators. The clivus gave access to
the Tomb R1 and to a tomb called Q which lies behind the Red Wall
with the Red Wall itself used for its eastern wall.
Under
the clivus runs a little gutter used for drainage and covered with a
line of tiles, five of which, fortunately, bear a mark by which they
can be dated. The mark mentions Aurelius Caesar (the future Emperor
Marcus Aurelius) and his wife Faustina as proprietors of the furnace
in which the tiles were made.1 The tiles can therefore be dated
between about 146 and 161 A.D. It was about 146 when Faustina, wife
of the future Emperor Marcus Aurelius, received the title of
Augusta, and in 161 Aurelius Caesar, having succeeded Antonius Pius,
abandoned the name of Aurelius Caesar and took that of Marcus
Aurelius.
The
essential purpose of the Red Wall seems to have been to fix the
boundaries of the various burial places in the area. From this fact,
it can be considered contemporary with the gutter I have mentioned,
and therefore it can be dated between about 146 and 161 A.D. In
round numbers, and wishing to take the latest possible date, we can
say that it was built by about 160 AD.
The
most ancient of the tombs surrounding Field P is certainly Tomb O,
which, as can be seen form the marble tablet over the entrance,
belonged to the Matuccii family. This tomb, in which the rite of
cremation was practiced, can be dated about 130, and is certainly
later than 123, since a brick was found in one of its walls with a
seal dating from that year.
The
Tomb S, which bounds all the southern flank of Field P, contains
traces of cremation urns and of repositories for inhumation. Later
than Tomb O, Tomb S is still earlier than the Red Wall, since the
wall leans on it, thus barring access to Field P from the south.
Therefore Tomb S can be assigned a date somewhere between 130 and
150.
The
Tomb of St. Peter by Margherita Guarducci (stpetersbasilica.info)
Bishops and Saints
at the time of Constantine
11.
Bishop Šeri‘a of Arbela
(291-316)
And
following Aha d-Abuhi in the leadership of the people of the Lord
was the diligent worker and true priest Šeri‘a. This
man was from Arbela, son of Christian parents, who loved Christ. And
since his youth, he relied on the church and lived off holy service.
Also in his time the church had a great victory, the church of God,
o pious Pinhes. And after 300 years more or less that it was
persecuted and weak and its fundamentals were shaken. They had quiet
and victory over all of its enemies through Constantine
172.
the victorious basileus
173.
But before his time, around a few, Diocletian, the sacreligious
Caesar, had tried to exterminate the name of Christendom
174.
from the Earth, and for this he fervently strove night and day. And
he gave an order, that the churches be destroyed and all Christians
slain without mercy. Which fear and which panic won power over the
entire world, as this order went out without mercy. And the weren’t
content with this, that they kill the Christians alone, but rather
they killed them in droves or burned them, whereby they also did not
have leadership prepared by a judge. And because of it, it was seen
that the father was the butcher of his son, and the brother of his
brother, and the enclosure of the natural love was ripped out of the
midpoint. And as those roman Caesars were stricken with such sin,
and as this lust to kill was enflamed in them, they were not once
capable of governing the people, as they should rule. And as this
was noticed by the grand king of the Persians, Hormizd
175.
he took a large army and plundered many Roman cities
176.
And as God saw all of this turpitude, "he rose up, and all of
his enemies were dispersed, and his haters fled before him. The were
dispersed like smoke and melted away like wax".
177.
And he gave over to them torture without mercy. But He gave power
over his servants to Constantine. And He showed him the sign of the
cross over the clouds of lights, on which was written: "In this
sign
178.
you will be victorious". And he took this sign and gave it to
all of his troops. And with it they beat them, the soldiers of the
gruesome demons, into scattering like flies. And the cross, which
was formerly the sign of shame, became the sign of victory for
everyone, for the rich and for the poor, for the nobles and the
condemned, the learned and the simple people. In the East, Papa, the
bishop of Medinata, which we had mentioned, because he lived in the
grand king’s city
179.
and other bishops required this due to his external business, had
the desire, that he obtain the authority over all bishops, as if one
bishop-general was needed, which they had to have. And the priests
of Medinata along with the people resisted him. And they desired,
that they clarify his deposition
180.
And also Šem‘on, his archdeacon
181,
was enraged over these notions and gave notice to Miles of Šašan
and to ‘Aqeb Allaha of Karka de-Bet Selok. And Mar Papa became
very afraid, because Šem‘on’s parents were very
close to the grand king and respected by all people. And he wrote to
the bishops of the West and especially to the bishop of Edessa,
which had the name Sa‘da. And all the bishops answered him,
and they promised him, that they would help him through Basileus
Constantine. Because they recognized, that case would be measured,
if now the bishop of Medinata would become the patriarch
182.
of all bishops in the East. And they wrote him a letter about this
in their name and the name of the basileus and the patriarchs of the
West. And they wrote him, that as in the West, which was under the
rule of the Romans, there were many patriarchs, the one from Antioch
and from Rome and Alexandria and Constantinople, in the East, which
stands under the rule of the Persians, it is necessary, that present
there should be nevertheless at least one patriarch.Now God, which
ordered due to the sins of Adam, that a savior should come into the
world, which is his own son, he, which through plagues of Egypt it
was brought about, that there would be freedom for the Benai Israel,
he, which from thorns brought fruit and from the thorn bush let
roses spring forth, he, which at all times is capable of evoking
goodness from the evil, allowed through his godly order and through
his venerable providence, that the notions of Papa achieve success.
And he became adamant in this matter without his knowledge as
universal head of all bishops and all Christians in the land of the
East
183.
All bishops now consented to that which was ordered from the West,
and they feared the bishops, which were there, that they not cause
it, that they wedge themselves between two powerful enemies, from
the West the Christian Basileus of the Romans, and from the East the
grand king of the Persians. Šem‘on, the archdeacon of
Papa, however, did not want at all to accept this new government,
but rather wanted, that through his parents they would be removed in
the name of the grand king. Papa managed to reconcile with Šem‘on’s
father, and promised him, that upon his death, he will appoint him
to be Patriarch after him.
At
this time, in the border city
184.
a god-fearing man, Jacob
185.
became known for the miracles he worked like the apostles and
powerful deeds of the prophets. This man spent often the entire
night in prayer like his Lord, and his vigils and fasting were known
everywhere. And because truly he was a godly man, we will especially
handle the news about him later
186.
And also our Šeri‘a, because he glowed in zeal in the
love of God, he went often to him, that with it he visit him and
became blessed through him. And both spoke to one another. And after
great ado and countless adversities he died on a Friday in the
summer of the year 627 of Jaunaj 187. And he was buried in the
church with great celebration.
166
Line 15 has Radgan, and line 18 has ç ܓ
ܪܕ Dargan.
They are undoubtedly the same person, yet it is unknown which is
correct.
167
Is this some colloquial idiom?
168
Psalm 51:17;
170
Susa, the winter residence of the Persian king.
171
The first bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon was ordained in 291
172 Constantine
I, the Great
175
Hormizd II (302-309)
176
A war between Hormizd II and Rome does not appear in any other
source, including the Cambridge History of Iran.
177
Psalm 68:1 178 The Christian monogram Chi-Ro.
180
removal from office
182
this text implies he would be in addition to the patriarchs of Rome,
Alexandria, Antioch, and New Rome (Constantinople).
183
His patriarchate included not only the Persian Empire, but also the
Christians in southern India, the Christianized Turks of central
Asia, and the emerging Christian populations in Mongolian China.
184
Nisibis
185
Jacob Episcopus, bishop of Nisibis (308-338)
186
If this was truly handled later, it might signify a missing part of
the Chronicle, as it does not appear here.
187
Meant here is the Seleucidan era. 627 S.E.=316
188
Mary, the mother of Jesus.
12.
Bishop Johannan (Daniel Bar Marjam) of Arbela (316-345)
And
following him, Seri‘a, was the vigilant and careful Johannan.
This man, because he so much loved Mariam
188.
the bearer of the invigorator or the world and our rejuvenator, was
named Bar Mariam. He also taught many heathen people and the Ihudaj.
And therefore they hated him with deadly hate. And upon their
prosecution they forced him from Arbela. And they sent foot-soldiers
after him, which should kill him. But he hid himself and saved
himself from their snares and wandered a long time around in the
hamlets and mountains. But his love for God was enflamed more and
more. And he strengthened it by staying busy with work. And he
succeeded in brining many lambs into the sheep pen of Christ. In
this time, as a Christian basileus ruled the world, and the matters
of the church were eminent, Hades furthered its honor and let loose
its stinking mouth and put out words, which stood in contradiction
to the orthodox faith. And it found an unfaithful worker, which
spread their teaching; the keen and astute Arius
189.
the Wicked. He, who already did not recognize His grandeur and
counted on the superfluousness, that was happening, that if even the
son of God the creator, returned for our salvation, he would deny
the godliness of Christ and proclaim falsely, that Christ is not the
savior, but a creation, and that his nature was not the son of God,
but rather just pretend. And there was great uproar because of him
in the entire known world. And the bishops gathered in order to
impeach his lies in the city of Nicea.
190.
in all 318, and through the willingness of Basileus Constantine,
whose memory is blessed. And these fathers execrated Arius and
everyone who accepted his opinion. And they affirmed that the son,
Christ, was of one nature with the father, and equal with him in
being 191.
And
at this time Šapur II, the grand king of the Persians, moved
into the mountains, in order to annihilate the enemies, which were
from the mountains near the sea, erupted, and decimated many
hamlets. And his plan was, that he lay waste to many Roman cities.
That, what also happened, we will see afterwards.
And
everyone could reckon that namely the time was near, that the church
would be destroyed and the sanctuaries desecrated. But God, before
whom everything arises, knows well, saw and silenced and delivered
to us the scorching heat of his scorn. As namely it was seen by
Šapur the second king, who ruled seventy years, more or less,
from the year 620 of Jaunaj to the year 690 192, after the death of
Constantine, the victorious basileus, who filled the world with fear
of him, and after him the Roman Constantius
193.
his son, was made basileus of the lands of the East, who thought,
that the time came for him, in which he can dare to take the
leadership of the lands of the Christians without hindrance.
And
he moved out and laid siege to Nisibis, the border city. He did not
namely know, that it, the city, was not destroyed and stood "like
a rose out of the thorns"
194.
only through the strong arm of the Lord, the King of Kings.
Meanwhile God, which through Judith, a weak woman, threw down and
destroyed the pride and the legions of Elparna
195.
and through the prayers of Esther, a humble woman, and hung Haman,
the evildoer, up on the gallows
196.
He, who through Šem‘on slew thousands of Philistines,
he distanced Šapur, the grand king, from the city through the
prayers of the bishop, the pious and called Jacob
197.
the famous. And as he, the people’s father, saw it, that the
children now became distraught after every page a laugher became for
the impure demons "like Moses, the Lord’s chosen one, he
stood in the breech"
198.
before them, he stepped up to the city wall and begun to bid the
Lord, that either he kill him or save his people from the hand of
the heathens and from death. And the Lord heard this. And see, an
army of yellow insects
199.
appeared from heaven. And it came and descended upon Šapur’s
army. And one of the swarms pushed into the nostrils of the horses
and made them wild and robbed the men of visibility. And there was
no time to do anything except to flee. They feared namely this
unnatural blindness, and that the Roman army would suddenly fall on
them and would annihilate them, while they were in this illness. And
a few of them went and let Constantius know about that, which was.
And they said praise and believed in God because of his grace, which
he had poured over his servant Jacob. And he turned back to the
grand king, in that he threatened him and he decided that the
religion of the Romans would be weeded out of his lands. But
Johannan, the bishop of our land, was then not among his sheep, but
rather since the year 640 of Jaunaj
200.
he had moved to Medinata, he with other bishops, that with it they
elect a man, a Christian and a sage, for the office of patriarch
189
Arius (260-336) was a priest in Alexandria, who taught that Jesus
was not of the same body with God, but only his elegant creation, as
he was begat by God and had therefore a beginning. His faith,
Arianism, was so wide- spread that it reached from southern Ethiopia
to the north with the Goths and Vandals.
190
The First Council of Nicea (19 June–25 August 325) was the
first imperial synod. It was concerned with the Arian heresy, and
actually only about 250 bishops took part.
191
ουσια
192
620-690 S.E.=309-379
193
Basileus Constantius (337-361)
194
Song of Solomon 2:2
195
Judith 13-16
196
Esther 7
197
Jacob of Nisibis
198
Psalm 106:23
200
640 S.E.=329
201.
Empty was namely the seat of Seleucia’s patriarch by the
lamentable death of Mar Papa, which was taken too soon before. They
say that he spent two years there in Medinata. And then he went to
Bet Huzaje because of the affairs of the church. And he was there,
as the merciless orders went out to the Mahupats of the land, in
which it was ordered, that all Christians should be killed without
sympathy and that their churches should be destroyed, and on the
sixth of the month of Nisan, as the grand king was in Bet Huzaje,
and in the thirtyfirst year
202.
of this evil, which never had known in his life, what mercifulness
is, the sword began to rule without sympathy. And everyone, who
dared to say, that he was Christian, was slain. But Johannan, the
bishop of Arbela, left thereupon Bet Huzaje and came to his herd,
that he pastured the lambs and the cattle, which were given into his
hands, and that he watch them. But his heart was filled with joy, as
he saw, that the sword, which was ready, that it should slay the
Christians of the land, was still hidden in its sheath. Pagrasp
203.
namely, the Mauhapta of the land, was in agreement with the city
elite, that he not kill the Christians outside of the month of Ilul
204.
at the time of the vintage and the harvest. And it is said, that the
grand king felt remorse over the fact that he gave this hard order
of persecution and planned to lift it then.
But
the Ihudaj and the Manicheans, which are enemies of the name of
Christ, pressed the Megušes and brought them in, that they
not allow the king of kings to do it. And they explained to him,
that all the Christians were spies of the Romans. And nothing
happens in the kingdom, that they do not write to their brothers who
are there.And they all were rich and found themselves in a
comfortable life, while the king of kings is entwined in an
excruciating life of war and battle. They, however, lead no war, and
always live in peace. So the Megušes changed the mind of the
grand king through their lying. And the king gave an order, that the
head tax be doubled for all the Christians and strengthened his
order that they be again killed without mercy.
205.
We became thereupon the laughter of the heathens and the faithless.
The Ihudaj mocked us and said: "Where is your god? Rising now
should be your Christ, he, who was crucified in shame on Galgatha,
and should destroy your persecutors. Has he not said to you: "See,
I am with you until the end of the world?" But the Manicheans
curse us more than the Ihudaj and they regard us as the scum of the
people. "And the shepherd was slain and the herd was
scattered".
206.
It was namely the time of darkness, and the light was hunted. It was
the time, when the meek and perishable creatures were forced, that
they are prayed for with violence instead of the creator. So the
sun, which was made as a servant for the god of the people,
sacrifices and gifts were brought to it. And the fire, which was
made for the need of the children of Adam: one temple
207.
was made for the children of light, which they built. One
fire-temple, namely they built for the demons, that with it, they
bring the churches of the heavenly father into the land of the
forgotten. Oh the godlessness! O the disobedience and the insurgency
of the people! And as when a man, who wants to destroy a tree, to
ruin his seeds and throw them away, and then rip out its roots and
throw them away, so the Megušes and the heathens wanted to
make and end of the bishops
208.
and the metropolitans
209.
And immediately Mar Šem‘on Bar Sabba‘e, who sat
in the seat of the East, together with a large number of priests
210.
and deacons
211.
were seized and brought to the grand king in Karka de-Ledan
212.
And after much torture, as the powerful man of the Lord and his
great patriarch were not sheltered from his menace for not being
willing to pray to the sun, a creature, Šapur turned over the
torture to his associates, who were in a number of 102. However,
they cut his head off, all those athletes of Christ. He strengthened
them, all of them, and stood by them with courage in this battle for
a short time. This happened on a high Good Friday. And from then
until the Sunday of the White Garments
213.
the sword did not stop throughout the East. And to the ends of
heaven groups of Christians were tied up like a group of sheep being
led to slaughter, with exception of them, who were killed right
there in their homes. But in our land of Hedejjab, through the
thoughtfulness of the mauhapta, the sympathetic Pagrasp, only a few,
it was said, were killed, those whose names are unknown.But in the
following year, as Pargasp
214.
the mauhapta, died, after him they made Peroz Tamšabor his
successor, the blood of the Christians began to flow in our land and
flood the Earth, which was filled with injustice and evil due to the
evil students of Satan, the cursed, who live off it.
There
he cleansed them through a flood of pure and innocent blood of all
dross and of all vice, that with it they would be the bride in
truth, which adorns and beautifies herself for the heavenly
bridegroom
215.
who through his cross and his dishonor wed them on the hilltop of
Galgatha through torture and through agony, which is unspeakable,
whereby it is said to all of his students and their successors after
them and to all members of his church: "Blessed are you, when
they taunt you and they persecute you and say against you every evil
word against me in lies. Then be happy and rejoice, because your
wage is great in heaven. Even so have they persecuted the prophets
who were before you."
216.
It is hence
202
309+30=339
204
September/October (340 )
205
Cambridge History of Iran: Shapur II needed money for his army to
attack the Romans, so the taxes on Christians were doubled to
provide extra revenues. The Christians naturally objected and the
persecutions resumed.
206
Matthew 26:31
209
president, prefect, princeps
212
=Susa
213
=White Sunday (Easter Sunday), when the baptized wore white to show
their purity.
214
possible misspelling
215
Ref. Ephesians 5:25-27
216
Matthew 5:11-12.
difficult
for me, oh my beloved Pinhes, that I enumerate for you one after the
other all of those, the names of the Christians, which were killed
in the entire land of the East. Uncountable and even incalculable
are the simple sheep, which through the butcher’s knife were
brought as living sacrifices for God and became worthy for the
kingdom of heaven. If I only now count those, who saturated the dirt
of our city and our country –because it is your request-, so
that through this you know, which godly men truly have gone before
you, and that you are able to follow their footsteps without
difficulty.They truly were lieutenants for us and the leaders on the
way to perfection, on which all of them are followed with joy. In
the 35th year of Šapur
217.
the grand king, Johannan, the bishop
218.
with Jacob, his priest
219.
were seized by order of Piroz Tamšabor. And the mauhaptas
imprisoned them, without sympathy, first in Hesna da-Bedigar
220.
And they remained in Hesna one year.And the heathens let loose many
tortures which are not to be counted. And they suffered it, these
brave warriors of Christ with patience, which cannot be described,
whereby they were cheerful and overjoyed, that they were held as
worthy, to suffer such for the sake of the love of Christ. And on
this day
221.
men and women and daughters of the alliance
222.
of all classes were killed, flock among flock. And among them
Narsai, the priest
223.
and Hananja and Rehima, deacons of the church. And after all
interrogations and adulatory convincing attempts, as Satan could not
diminish their steadfastness, thereupon they were brought out of the
house out of the city were crucified as the life-giver, their Lord.
Their corpses, however, were taken away during the night by the
Christians. And see, their bones are a fountain, which lets the
godly grace flow for all, which took asylum in those of the errant
children of Adam
224.
And from that day until the end of the year the sword was drunk with
blood without satiation. And the collected Megušes
225.
were like butchers for our land, although they did not become fat.
And like wild dogs they daily licked the coagulum of our blood,
which like a bog colored red the markets and alleys of our city. And
they rampaged out more and more and became rabid.
https://www.sasanika.org/wp-content/uploads/ChronicleofArbela.pdf
Saint
Alexandra of Rome (Αλεξάνδρα)
— Christian
martyr and saint, known from "Martyrdom of Saint George"
as either Emperor Diocletian's wife or the wife of Dacian, a Roman
Prefect. She is also sometimes mistaken with Priscilla or Prisca.
According
to Frederick George Holweck Saint Alexandra was the reputed wife of
the Emperor Diocletian and was secretly converted to Christianity.
Jacobus de Voragine listing her name as "Alexandria"
describes her as the wife of Dacian the Roman Prefect who persecuted
Saint Caprasius of Agen and Saint Maginus. While Saint George was
being tortured, Alexandra went to the arena, bowed before him and
professed her faith openly. When she questioned whether she was
worthy of paradise and of martyrdom without being baptized, Saint
George told her "Do not fear, for your blood will baptize you".
She was denounced a Christian and imprisoned on her husband’s
orders in Nicomedia, then sentenced to death.
Her
husband was so outraged by her conversion that he is said to have
uttered "What! Even thou hast fallen under their spell!".
Alexandra quietly accepted her sentence and prayed as the guards
walked her to the place of execution. She asked if she could rest
for a moment. The guards allowed this. She rested by the place of
Saint George’s execution at Nicomedia’s City Wall.
Her
three servants Apollo, Isaac and Codratus went to prison with her,
the first two died of hunger while the last was beheaded with her on
April 21, 303. Her feast day is usually celebrated on April 23, when
she is commemorated at the same time along with the soldier martyrs
Anatolios and Protoleon and the 630 others who were martyred for
professing faith while witnessing George's martyrdom. The Coptic
Church venerates her on April 8.
She
is sometimes confused with Saint Prisca. Holweck believes that her
story was fabricated, de Voragine presents it as legendary but not
outright fiction. Prisca was either a Christian or lenient towards
Christianity, but never rebelled towards her husband. When
Diocletian retired to Spalatum in 305, Prisca stayed with her
daughter, Galeria Valeria and son-in-law, Galerius in Thessalonica.
When Galerius died in 311, Licinius was entrusted with the care of
Prisca and her daughter Valeria. The two women, however, fled from
Licinius to Maximinus Daia. After a short time, Valeria refused the
marriage proposal of Maximinus, who arrested and confined her in
Syria and confiscated her properties. At the death of Maximinus,
Licinius had Prisca and her daughter killed in 315.
Attendees of the
Council of Nicaea
Academius/Acatemius
of Papha/Papae/Pampa
Acedius
Achilleus
of Larissa (Athanasius of Thessaly)
Acogiua
of Tripolis
Acrites
of Diospontum
Actius/Aetius/Aëtius
of Lydda
Acylas,
Chorepiscopus
Adamantius,
Zeno
Adamantius/Adamantus
of Canon/Coeis
Admus
of Bosporus
Adon
of Lycia
Aeneas
of Accho
Aeneas
of Ptolomais
Aëtius
of Dintia
Agapius
of Seleucia
Agathumius
of Amordiané
Agogius
of Tripolis
Aithalas
of Edessa
Alexander
of Alexandria
Alexander
of Constantinopel
Alexander
of Thessalonica
Alitodorus
of Corcyra/Cercyra
Alphius
of Apamea/Apamia
Alphocranon
Harpocration/Alpocration of Alphocranum/Arpocrator of Alphocranon
Ammonius
of Aphrodisias
Amphion
of Epiphanea/Epiphania
Ananias
of Ptolmais
Anatolius
of Emesa/Emetsa
Anatolius,
Chorepiscopus
Antiochus
of Hierocaesarea/Hidron-Caesarea
Antiochus
of Resaina/Resiina/Risiané
Antiochus/Antilogus
of Memphis
Antiochus/Antochus
of Aurelianopolis/Aulilianopolis
Antiochus/Antochus
of Capitolias/Gapetulinus
Antipatros
of Capitolias
Antoninus/Antonius
of Antioch
Aphrodisias
of Magidon/Magyda
Apoc...
prao...
Aquila,
Chorepiscopus
Araunius
of Limena
Arbetion
of Barathu/Pharbaethus/Pharboethus
Arccathius
of Gadmeausa
Archelaus
of Doliche/Perioche
Arices
of Armenia
Arirteus
of Armenia=Aristaces/Aristacius of Armenia=Arices of Armenia?
Arnus
of Thadmor
Artemidorus
of Sardes/Sardis
Arustaces
Asclepias/Asclepius
/Asclepas of Gaza
Athanasius
of Alexandria
Athenaeus
of Coracesium/Gorpissus
Athenodorus
of Dorylaeum/Dorylleum
Atthas/Athas
of Ascedia/Scethia
Attheas
of Scete
Autychius
of Smyrna
Badonius
of Alaso
Balanus
of Carboula
Ballaus
of Thersea
Bassianus
of Raphanea
Bassones
of Tabulé
Bassonius
of Gabala
Bassus
of Zeugma/Zeuma/Seucmatés
Becon,
presbyters
Brontius
of Ancyra
Budiaeus
of Trobon
Budius
of Stobi/Stobae
Cadmus
of Bosphorus
Caius
of Thmuis
Callicles
of Perga
Cecilian
of Carthage
Cerontius
of Larissa
Claudianus
of Thessaly/Larissa
Conatus,
Chorepiscopus
Contianus/Cyntianus
of Seleucia
Corconius
of Cinae
Cyntus,
Chorepiscopus
Cyrillus
of Cium/Cyum
Cyrillus
of Paphos/Paphus
Cyrillus
of Thaumanada/Oumandra
Cyrnon/Cyrion
of Philadelphia
Daces
of Berenice
Dacus
Dacus
of Macedonia
Dathes
Dicasius
of Tyana/Tarbia/Tauias
Dion
...
Dionysius
of Mesopotamia
Dios
of Paratonion
Dios
of Tkou
Domnus
of Aspendum
Domnus
of Pannonia
Domnus
of Sirmium
Domnus
of Trapezus/Trapezunta
Doron,
Chorepiscopus
Dorotheus
of Pelusium
Ebdomasius
of Philadelphia
Edesius
of Claudiopolis
Eliconos
of Abalas
Ellaticus
of Tripolis
Elpidius
of Comana
Erechtius
of Tmausont
Erichtius
of Damaba
Erothrius/Erithrius
of Colonia/Collania
Ethilhas/Ethalas
of Edessa
Etoemasius
of Philadelphia
Eucromius,
Chorepiscopus
Eudemus
of Patara
Eudion
of Ilium
Eudrames/Eudaimon/Eudromius/Eudumon,
Chorepiscopus
Euetheius
of Sadola
Euethius
of Adriana
Eugenes/Eugenius
of Apollonias
Eugenius
of Eucarpa/Eucarpia
Euhethius
of Adrianopolis
Euhethius/Euethius
of Satala
Eulalius
of Iconium
Eulalius,
Chorepiscopus
Eulalius/Eularius
of Sebaste/Sebastia
Euphrantion/Euphration
of Balanea/Daneon
Euphrosynus
of Rhodes/Rhodus
Eupsychius
of Amastris
Eupsychius
of Tyana
Eurasius/Euresius
of Termessus
Eurerius
of Comana
Eusebius
of Antiochia
Eusebius
of Caesarea
Eusebius
of Miletus
Eusebius
of Nicomedia
Eusebius
of the Parochia of Isauropolis
Eustathius
of Antioch/Antiochia
Eustathius
of Arestan/Arethusa?
Eustathius/Eutychius
of Seleucia
Eutropius
of Andrinopel
Eutychianus
of Amasea/Eutychius of Amastris/Amastria/Amasia
Eutychius
of Sicion
Eutychius
of Smyrna
Eutychius/Eutychianus
of Tyana/Teana
Faustus
of Panemitichus
Festus
of Marcianopolis
Flaccus
of Sanis/Sanada/Synanta
Flaccus/Flacus
of Hierapolis
Florentius
of Ancyra Ferrea
Gainus
of Sebaste=Galanus of Sebaste
Gaius
of Panyos
Gaius
of Thmuis
Gegasius
of Harba-Kedem
Gelasius
of Salamis/Samaminé
Gennadius
of Esbonta/Jebunda
Georgius
of Aprusas/Prusias
Germanus
of Neapolis
Germanus
of Samaria
Gerontius
of Larissa
Gorgonius
of Apollonias
Gorgonius
of Ciaena/Cinae
Gorgonius,
Chorepiscopus
Gregorius
of Berytus/Betus
Hedesius
of Claudiopolis
Helidius
of Comana
Heliodorus
of Zabulon/Zabula
Hellanicus
of Tripolis
Helpidius
of Comana
Heraclius
of Zela/Zola/Sela
Heraclius/Heracleus
of Baris/Beresia
Hesychius
of Alexandria Minor
Hesychius
of Neapolis
Hesychius
of Prusa
Hesychius,
Chorepiscopus
Hosius
of Córdoba/Corduba
Hypatius
of Gangra
Ionocentus,
presbyter
Jacob
of Nisibus/Nisibis
Jacobus
of Sirinus
Januarius
of Jericho/Hiericho
Joannes
of Persia/Persinus
Lelitius
of Sebastopolis
Leontius
of Caesarea
Letodorus
of Cibyra
Lisianus
of Lycae
Longinus
of Ascalon
Longinus/Longianus
of Neocaesarea
Macarius
of Jerusalem/Elion
Macedonius
of Mopsuestia
Macrinus
of Jamnia
Macrinus
of Julium
Magnus
of Damascus
Manicius
of Epiphania/Manicus of Epimia
Manicius
of Hamath
Maraias
of Macedonopolis
Marcellus
of Ancyra
Marcus
of Calabria
Marcus
of Standum/Standon/Tanton
Mareas
of Birtha
Marianus
of Jamnia
Marianus
of Troas
Marinus
of Palmyron
Marinus/Marianus
of Sebastena/Sebastenus
Maris
of Chalcedon
Marsyas
of Euboea
Mathras
of Hypaepa
Maximus
of Eleutheropolis
Meliphron
of Coos/Cous
Melitius
of Lycopolis (?)
Menophantes
of Ephesus
Mereas
of Macedonopolis
Mithres/Methres
of Hypyrpa/Iemptsa
Moses
of Castabala/Mouses of Cataballa
Narcissus
of Irenopolis
Narcissus
of Neronias/Erotanus
Nestor
of Syedra
Nicasius
of Die=Nicasius of Divio?/Duia
Nicetas
of Phleias/Nicetes of Flavianus
Nicetas
the Goth {?}
Nicholas
of Myra/Nicolaus
Nicomachus/Nicomacus
of Bostra
Nunechius
of Laodicea
Orion
of Ilium/Eli...
Ouranius
of Limena
Palladius,
Chorepiscopus
Pancharius
of Ancyra
Paphnutius
of Thebes
Papirius
of Samoata
Patricius
of Alateus
Patricius
of Ampelada/Amblada
Patricius
of Maximianopolis/Mazimianopolis
Patrophilus
of Beishan
Patrophilus
of Scythopolis
Paulinus
of Adana
Paulinus
of Tyrus
Paulus
of Anaea/Anora
Paulus
of Apamea/Apamia
Paulus
of Laranda
Paulus
of Maximianopolis
Paulus
of Neocaesarea
Paulus
of Spania
Pederos
of Heraclia
Pegasius
of Armocadama
Perperius
of Samusata
Petronius
of Junopolis
Petrus
of Aila/Aïla/Ialon
Petrus
of Cytalu
Petrus
of Gindara
Petrus
of Hnes
Petrus
of Nicopolis
Phaedrus
of Herclea
Phaladus/Phalatus,
Chorepiscopus
Philadelphus
of Juliopolis/Julipolis/Heliopolis?
Philadelphus/Philadelphius
of Pompeiopolis
Philip
of Panephysus=Philippus of Panyphis/Panephyson
Philocles/Philocalus
of Paneas/Panias
Philoxenus
of Hierapolis
Philoxenus
of Mabug
Pierius
of Samosata
Pigasius
of Abogatana
Pisticius/Pistus
of Azani/Azana/Ozana
Pistus
of Athenae
Pistus
of Marcianopolis
Plusianus
of Siout
Pollio
of Baris
Polycarpus
of Metropolis
Postus
of Panaemon
Potamon
of Heraclea/Heracleos (Throis)
Procopius
of Synnada/Sanata
Protogenes
of Sardica
Rodon,
Chorepiscopus
Rufus
of Caesarea
Sabianus
of Heraphantes
Sabinus
of Azotus
Sabinus
of Gadara/Cadara
Salamanes/Salamias
of Germanicia/Cermanicus
Sarapion/Sarapion
of Antipurgos
Sares/Seras/Sarapas
of Thyatira/Thyadira
Secundus
of Ptolemais=Secountus of Ptolmais
Secundus
of Tauché/Teuchilibya
Segentus
of Teuchira
Seleucus/Seleucius,
Chorepiscopus
Serapion
of Antipurgos
Severus
of Dionysias
Severus
of Sodoma
Silvanus
of Azotus
Silvanus
of Isauropolis/Metropolis
Siricius
of Cyrrhus
Soilus
of Gabalon
Solomon
of Germanicia
Sopater
of Barathena/Beritaneus
Spyridion
of Trimythous
Stephen
of Barata/Stephanus of Carata
Stephin/Stephanus,
Chorepiscopus
Strateges
of Ephestia/Strategius of Hyphestia
Stratophilus/Stratolius
of Pitiunt/Pityunta/Pityus/Piteous
Stretegius/Strategius
of Lemnos/Lemnus
Synodorus
of Antaratos
Syricus/Siricus
of Cyprus
Takés
of Berenicé
Tarcodemantus
of Aegea
Tarsicius/Taracius
of Apamea/Apamia
Telemachus
of Adrianopolis
Thadoneus
of Lazos
Theodorus
of Caesarea
Theodorus
of Ou-Andala/Ousin
Theodorus
of Sidon
Theodorus
of Tarsus
Theodorus
of Vasada
Theodotus
of Laodicea/Laodicia
Theodulus
of Trajanopolis
Theogenus/Theognus/Theognis
of Nicaea
Theonas
of Corycus/Cyzicum
Theonas
of Cysicus
Theonus/Theonas
of Marmarica
Theophanes,
Chorepiscopus
Theophanes,
Chorepiscopus
Theophilus
(Gothic)
Tiberius
of Lystra/Alistra
Tiberius
of Tauthasis/Tauthité/Thmuis
Timotheus
of Comana
Timotheus
of Cybistra
Titus
of Paraetonium/Patronium
Tyrannus
of Antinoë/Antinous/Antinou
Ulpius
of Apamea
Uranicus
of Limen
Victor/Vito,
pope's legate
Vincentius/Vicentius,
pope's legate
Volusianus
of Lycon
Zeno
of Tyre
Zenobius
of Seleucia
Zephyrus
(Zopyrus) of Barca
Zeuxes
of Verabon
Zeuxius
of Syarma
Zoilus
of Gabala
Zopirus/Zopirus
of Barcé/Bac
One
If by Land, Two If by Sea.
Traveling
to Nicaea for the Council of 325
Mark
Wilson
Introduction
"One
if by land, and two, if by sea." So goes the line in Henry W.
Longfellow’s "Paul Revere’s Ride." This famous
poem recalls an incident in America’s foundation story about a
Boston patriot who established a secret signal to alert his
compatriots to how the British forces would advance to Concord. A
candle lit in one lantern meant that enemy troops were using the
longer land route; candles in two lanterns meant they were taking
the shorter route by water. "If one were to think of a perfect
symbol of the American Revolutionary War, perhaps short of the
Declaration of Independence itself, it would probably be Paul
Revere’s lanterns."
While
this article will say nothing about lanterns, it will discuss the
land and sea routes that early church leaders took to Nicaea, where
they drafted the foundational document of Christianity, which is
still professed by Christians around the world.
Visitors
to İznik (ancient Nicaea) today see little more than a sleepy
rural town situated among expanses of olive groves on the east end
of a scenic lake. It is hard to imagine that in the Roman period
Nicaea vied with Nicomedia (modern İzmit) to be the capital and
leading city of the province of Bithynia. Today neighboring İzmit
is a bustling industrial city situated on the main highway between
Istanbul and Ankara. Yet Nicaea was to be the center not only of
Bithynia but of the whole Roman Empire for a moment in time in 325
CE. There Constantine convened the first ecumenical council.
This article will first address some issues of historical
background regarding these cities. Next to be presented is the
geographical and hodological situation both of Nicomedia and Nicaea.
Nicaea’s
four gates and their relationship to Bithynia’s road network
will be discussed in depth. It will conclude by offering a
fresh hypothesis regarding how the emperor, some bishops, and their
attendants might have traveled to Nicaea to reach this historic
council.
Background
of the First Ecumenical Council
For
the residents of Nicaea, the year 325 began with political stability
restored to the province of Bithynia and to the Roman Empire. From
Nicomedia on June 14, 313, Licinius had issued the edict of
toleration that allowed Christians to worship without fear of
persecution.
However,
a civil war broke out for control of the empire between Licinius and
his brother-in-law Constantine. Aſter defeating Licinius at
the naval battle of the Hellespont in July 324 and the land battle
of Chrysopolis in September 324, Constantine, aſter accepting
his rival’s surrender in Nicomedia shortly thereaſter,
became the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. The year 325 also found
imperial and ecclesiastical officials preparing to travel to
Nicomedia for Constantine’s vicennalia. However, the emperor
decided to hold a council beforehand to unify the church now torn
theologically by the Arian controversy. The logistics of moving
hundreds of bishops and their attendants from around the empire was
a daunting one. Then, at the last minute, Constantine changed the
council’s location from Ancyra to Nicaea.
Barnes
cites three reasons for the change: (1) bishops from the West could
reach Nicaea more easily; (2) the climate was more temperate; and
(3) the emperor could attend more easily.
In
reality, there were few participants from the West. As Gwynn notes,
"The overwhelming majority of those bishops were from the
Greek-speaking East."
Two
presbyters represented the bishop of Rome, and single bishops came
from Gaul, Dacia, Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Persia. Therefore, its
ecumenical nature was in word only.
Hosius
of Cordoba, who probably presided over the council, was already in
the East aſter presiding over the Council of Antioch in
324/325.
Nicomedia
and Nicaea: The "First Cities" of Bithynia
From
the Hellenistic period onwards, Nicomedia and Nicaea were the two
main cities of Bithynia.
Aſter
the Romans established the province in 74 BCE, Nicomedia became its
first capital. In 29 BCE Augustus authorized an imperial cult
temple dedicated to Rome and to himself to be built in Nicomedia,
while in Nicaea a sanctuary for Divus Julius and Dea Roma was built
for the Roman residents in that city. Sometime aſter the death
of Augustus in 14 CE the provincial assembly (koinon) and the
governor moved from Nicaea to Nicomedia.
The
two cities continually vied for prominence, especially in the titles
so important to Greek cities. Orations 38 and 39 of Dio Chrysostom,
the orator and philosopher
from
nearby Prusa (Bursa), addressed their ongoing strife in the late 90s
CE. He proposed concord (homonoia) between the two cities rather
than vying for status as "first" (prote) or
"metropolis" of the province.
However,
as Bekker-Nielsen laments, "needless to say, both Nicomedians
and Nicaeans ignored his advice, and the conflict played on
throughout the second century."
Two
notable Roman historians came from these cities: Arrian (d. ca. 160
CE) from Nicomedia, and Cassius Dio (d. ca. 235) from Nicaea. In 284
Diocletian was proclaimed emperor on a hill outside of Nicomedia,
and he rebuilt the city as his new Rome, making Nicomedia the chief
capital of his tetrarchy.
A
reason for this, according to Doonan, is that it "was
particularly well placed to dominate the Roman transport system, set
directly on the easternmost extension of the Propontis at the head
of the road systems along the north Anatolian riſt valley."
Nicomedia,
"the chief city of Bithynia," was honored again when
Constantine built a large and splendid church there from his own
funds to give thanks for victory over his enemies (Eusebius, Vit.
Const. 3.50.1).
Given
the centuries-long rivalry between these major cities, it is
difficult to sustain the observation that "Nicomedia’s
location was vastly superior to that of Nicaea."
Further,
it was Nicaea, not Nicomedia, whose location turned out to be
superior for the site of the council in 325. Nicaea: The City with
Four Gates The geographer Strabo describes Nicaea as a Hellenistic
foundation and metropolis of Bithynia. He describes its plan: "The
city is sixteen stadia (ca. 2,960 m) in circuit and is quadrangular
in shape; it is situated in a plain, and has four gates; and its
streets are cut at right angles, so that the four gates can be seen
from one stone which is set up in the middle of the gymnasium"
(Geogr. 12.4.7).
Through
these four original gates, rebuilt or restored multiple times
because of earthquakes and the Gothic sacking in 258, visitors to
the city arrived, including emperors, senators, and the bishops in
325.
The
east and west gates were connected by the cardo maximus (Kılıçaslan
Caddesi), running ca. 1,308 m through the city; the north and south
gates were connected by the decumanus maximus (Atatürk
Caddesi), running ca. 1,473 m. These gates start to appear on
Nicaea’s coinage in the third century CE. Lichtenberger
writes, "Remarkable of the coin depictions are the regular
layout of the walls . . . and the emphasis on the single-arched city
gates. . . . Their depiction is consistent with the archaeological
evidence."
From
these gates, as Weissova and Pavúk express, "the roads
themselves radiate from Iznik toward all the four cardinal points,
presumably likewise since the Hellenistic period. ."
The
north gate (modern Istanbul Gate) "is believed to be the most
important and therefore the most impressive of Nicaea’s four
gates."
It
was reerected by Vespasian and restored by Hadrian. This was once
called the Byzantium/Constantinople Gate. However, this name must be
anachronistic because its orientation was initially to Nicomedia.
Yet, perhaps because of civic competition, the Nicaeans refrained
from putting their rival’s name to a gate, despite its
orientation. This gate and the east gate are structurally triple
gates. An inscription in the middle east gate (Le?e Kapısı)
states that the proconsul Marcus Plancius Varus built it for the
emperor Vespasian with the help of the leading citizen C. Cassius
Chrestos. Aſter an earthquake heavily damaged Nicaea in 120
CE, Hadrian provided funds to rebuild the city. An inscription to
Hadrian in the architrave suggests that the eastern gate was
rededicated to the emperor upon his visit in 123 CE. Aſter
Nicaea chose the losing side with Pescennius Niger in 193 CE,
Nicomedia, which supported Septimius Severus, successfully
petitioned to have the title "first of the province"
erased from this gate. For the west gate facing the lake and its
harbor, only part of the north tower and the base of the south one
have survived.
The
south gate (modern Yenişehir) was reerected by Claudius II
around 268–70 CE.
Nicaea’s
geography, oriented around these gates, contributed to its
development "for it was located at intersection point of the
roads which provided access to important cities." Where these
gates led from this transportation node will be discussed next.
Travel
Eastwards
The
east gate was a very important junction point "through which
the whole traffic of the empire passed, moving from the North to the
East and vice versa."
Traffic
out of Nicaea’s east gate veered south of a ridge upon which
sat a monumental sarcophagus today called Berberkaya. It continued
eastwards through a plain before veering south again above modern
Çiçekli. A milestone dating from Diocletian was found
near Karadin/Karatekin. The track then turned southeastwards toward
the mutatio at Schinae (south of modern Gaziler). At Mygdum/Midum,
northwest of modern Osmaneli, the road entered the valley of the
Sangarius River
From
Mygdum the road continued east toward Juliopolis (modern Çayırhan)
and Ancyra (modern Ankara). This route, which continued to Antioch
and Jerusalem, is today called the "Pilgrim’s Way."
Milestones
began to appear as early as Trajan, and, as Doonan notes, "the
‘Pilgrim Road’ from Nicomedia to the central Anatolian
plateau seems to have received a lot of investment in the early
third century, possibly in connection with Caracalla’s
Parthian campaign of 216–17 CE."
The
regions of bishops arriving from the east might include Hosius from
Antioch (1), Palestine (19), Phoenicia (10), Coele-Syria (22),
Arabia (6), Mesopotamia (4), Persia (1), Cilicia (10), Cappadocia
(10), Armenia Minor (4), Armenia Maior (5), and Galatia (5),
totaling 97 bishops coming from this direction.
Travel
Southwards and Southwestwards
The
south gate provided access to two routes south and west of Nicaea.
A
road running south is not depicted in the Barrington Atlas; however,
French shows one and labels it C9. It intersected with two routes
that ran east and southeast from Prusa toward the next
transportation node at Dorylaeum (modern Eskişehir).
A
second route turned westwards aſter the gate to circle the
south side of Lake Ascania. Aſter 5 miles (8 km the track
passed below a rocky promontory today called Karacakaya. Remains of
fortification walls dating to the Byzantine period are found
around its peak. Because its favorable position overlooking both
Nicaea’s harbor and the lake, Weissova and Altın propose
"the place might have served as a watchtower as well as a
lighthouse."
Aſter
leaving the lakeshore and crossing the peninsula to Cius, the road
turned southwards to Prusa, the third city of Bithynia. As Jones
writes, Prusa’s situation gave it a good but not preeminent
place in the road system of the region. . . . Prusa’s
advantage lay in its position on the lines of communication between
these two cities [Nicaea and Nicomedia] and those of the
northwestern Aegean, since the great natural obstacle of Olympus
deflects these routes around its shoulder.
Traffic
coming from the great cities of Asia such as Pergamum, Smyrna, and
Ephesus also passed through Prusa. Bishops coming from the important
sees in western and southwestern Anatolia would have arrived via
these roads through Nicaea’s south gate.
The
regions of the bishops arriving from the south would probably
include Asia (7), Lydia (9), Phrygia (8), Pisidia (12), Pamphylia
(7), Isauria (18), Caria (5), and Bithynia (8), totaling 74 bishops
coming from this direction.
Travel
from the North
Ine
Jacobs has suggested that delegates "coming from overseas would
have disembarked in Nicomedia, and, like Constantine himself, still
needed to travel two more days south to reach their final
destination."
This
observation will receive extensive discussion since, as just
discussed, there is little debate regarding how some 167 delegates
arrived from the east and south-southwest. The road network between
Nicomedia and Nicaea is first described in the third-century
CE Itinerarium Antonini, which lists a route mentioning Nicomedia,
Libum, and Nicaea (It. Ant. 140–42). The distance given is 44
Roman miles (RM).
The
Itinerarium Burdigalense, written by the Bordeaux pilgrim (ca.
333–34) and dating shortly aſter the council (It. Burd.
573), provides mileage from Nicomedia: "Change at
Eribolum—miles
x. Halt at Libum—miles xi. Change at Liada—miles xii.
City of Nicia—miles ix."
It
gives a total distance of 42 RM. The Tabula Peutingeriana depicts
Nicaea as a major traffic junction. The distance between it and the
road station at Eribolo is given as 33 RM. Although a road trace
continuing to Nicomedia is absent, a distance of 12 RM is shown for
a total of 45 RM.
The
totals depicted are 44 RM on Antonine, 42 RM by the Bordeaux
pilgrim, and 45 RM on Peutinger for a variant of 3 RM. This converts
to 62–67 km for the distance between the two cities on the
itineraries.
The
Peutinger map incorrectly situates Cius inland below Lake Ascania.
It
shows another road from Nicaea running along the upper shore of the
lake to Pronetios (Prainetos).
Two
bridges dated to the Roman period are on this line: Kuru ("Dry")
Köprü and Koca ("Large") Köprü.
The
latter once spanned the Pharmutios River (modern Karasu).
This
seems to be the bridge described by Procopius that had been built in
earlier times but swept away by floodwaters (Aedif. 5.3.4–6).
This required Justinian to build a new and improved bridge that
would withstand future torrents.
Fingarova
suggests that this bridge "formed part of an important road
that connected Nicomedia to Nicaea."
However,
French fails to include these bridges in his discussion of this
route.
Foss,
citing Procopius, states, "Justinian, some time before 548,
abolished the public post between Chalcedon and Dacibyza, west of
Nicomedia, ordering messengers instead to proceed directly across
the Gulf to Helenopolis and thence straight to Nicaea, a saving of a
considerable distance" (Hist. Arc. 30.8–11).
Therefore,
these bridges are better related to this updated route along the
northern shore of the lake to Helenopolis (modern Hersek), founded
by Constantine in 327 to honor his mother, rather than to the
original route running to Nicomedia.
A
hiking trail called the Tolerance Way purports to be "the trail
that we think extended from Izmit (Nicomedia) — the capital
and the only metropolis of the period—to Iznik (Nicaea)."
However,
its route aſter Astacus tracks significantly east from
the route depicted in the itineraries and in the Barrington Atlas.
It begins in modern İzmit near the imperial temple discovered
in the Çukurbağ neighborhood and ends at the Hagia
Sophia Church in İznik. Aſter crossing the restored
bridge at Başiskele, the route continued on the east side of
the Astacus Gulf before bending southwest to pass through Astacus,
opposite Nicomedia (Memnon, FGrH 434 F12).
Here
the Tolerance Way turns south toward Bahçecik, while the
route of the Roman road continued along the southern shore to
Eribolon.
Weissova
adopts an obscure route between the Tolerance and the Barrington
routes, one Von Diest described in 1898 and Şahin tentatively
approves.
She
curiously disregards the results of Least Cost Path Analysis (LCPA)
as well as the route described in the early itineraries.
While
noting that French’s projected route, originally thought by
her to be "most probable," also agrees with LCPA, she
nevertheless adopts a route in all her maps that goes through,
rather than skirts, the western extension of the Samanlı
Mountains.
Volume
2 of her dissertation is copiously illustrated with various versions
of this base map. Significantly, no archaeological realia are
depicted along her projected route except for the two bridges,
discussed earlier, and a milestone marked just north of Nicaea.
As
noted, the Peutinger map measures Eribolon’s distance as 12 RM
from Nicomedia. Cassius Dio situates Eribolon as a port on the south
shore of the Astacus Gulf (Epit. Xiph. 78.39.3).
However,
neither Barrington nor Pleiades places it on the coast; both place
it at modern Yeniköy.
The
line of the road from Astacus would suggest a location for Eribolon
southeast of the modern port at Golçuk (ancient Dioklides).
This
is confirmed by an Ottoman caravanserai, Kazıklı
Kervansarayı, which indicates the existence of a commercial
track used for centuries. The partially restored caravanserai
features a course of Roman ashlars along its foundation, undoubtedly
spoliated from nearby Eribolon.
From
here the route follows Beyoğlu Caddesi (Street) southwest to
follow the lush valley of a small stream before climbing slowly to
Libum (modern Sanaiye). The itineraries identify Libum as a mansio
(inn) since it is a day’s travel from Nicomedia 32 km. Half of
that distance is at sea level; however, from Eribolon the track
rises over 580 m. to Libum. No remains of the ancient rest stop are
found in the village today.
From
Libum the road makes a steep climb of over 300 m to a ridge, with
the highest point on the route at 885 m. It descends to a stretch of
level road at 738 m that extends toward the mutatio (way station) at
Liada. North of modern Sarıağil a raised roadbed can be
seen in the oak forest with curbstones visible in places.
Nearby
are the remains of a funerary monument that once stood along the
road.
The
route follows the village road through Sarıağil, where no
remains of ancient Liada are visible. In French’s day
curbstones, spine, and surface of the ancient road could be seen.
From
here and then passing Orhaniye, the road descends about 610 m toward
the plain of the Pharmutios River. Turning southeastwards, the track
then passed the funerary obelisk of Gaius Cassius Philiscus, which
rises over 12 m and thus is visible for miles.
Whether
this monument, standing at 130 m above sea level, was on the road is
debated. However, as Bekker-Nielsen observes, if it was, the obelisk
"was flanked by life-sized or larger bronze sculptures,
whose hands and feet were fixed to metal cramps in the
recesses."
Its
situation along the road would allow travelers to appreciate its
bronze statues and read the inscription on the monument. Roads
typically entered a city through a necropolis.
Peschlow
writes about Nicaea, "The largest necropolis was situated to
the northwest, around the modern village of Elbeyli."
This
would align with the projected route from the obelisk to the north
gate of Nicaea. With a distance of 26 km, the leg from Libum is
somewhat shorter; however, the terrain is more difficult with
switchbacks as it climbs and descends toward the shore of Lake
Ascania. The distance calculated on Google Earth agrees with the
calculation of 58 km found on ORBIS; however, it is 9 km shorter
than found on the itineraries.
Jacobs
suggests this distance, traversed by the emperor from Nicomedia, was
"easily covered in two days of travel."
As
just outlined, this road was not so "easily" traveled. The
regions of the bishops arriving along this northern route would
include Pontus Polemoniacus (3), Paphlagonia (3), and Bithynia (2),
totaling 8 bishops traveling through Nicomedia to Nicaea’s
north gate.
Travel
Westwards Across the Lake
Nicaea
was situated at the eastern end of Lake Ascania which stretched 32
km to its western shore.
The
port on the lake was accessed through the city’s west gate.
The north mole was situated approximately 370 m north of the gate
while the south mole was 300 m to its south.
At
the tip of the latter, a lighthouse perhaps stood on the circular
base. Between these breakwaters, Gündüz and Dumankaya
write that "there were no large-scale ships in the lake, so
lowpriced wooden docks which could be shaped easily take precedence
over concrete docks where heavy cargos could be loaded and
unloaded." They propose that these docks were located on an
axis straight west of the lake gate.
These
archaeological finds confirm that Nicaea was an
important port city in antiquity.
While
Nicaea’s maritime situation was somewhat inferior to that of
Nicomedia (Dio Chrysostom, Or. 38.22), its lacustrine location
nevertheless had advantages. Pliny the Younger writes about Boane
Lake (modern Sapanca) east of Nicomedia. "Across this lake,
marble, agricultural produce, timber and building materials are
carried by boat, with little effort and cost, as far as the
main road; but from there to the coast by cart, requiring great
effort and even greater expense" (Ep. 10.41.2).
Bekker-Nielson
extrapolates, "If Pliny’s description of the advantages
which the lake offers Nicomedia is anything to go by, then lake
Ascanius must have offered even greater advantages for Nicaea. No
wonder that the city prospered through the Hellenistic and into the
first centuries of the Roman era."
Thus
it is surprising that he also writes, "It is a fair assumption
that the lower town of Nicomedia resembled Ostia or Puteoli, as
described for us by Juvenal or Petronius, more than it resembled
Nicaea."
Since
the chora of Nicaea was more productive than that of Nicomedia, its
lake port must have been a bustling one as well.
Boat
traffic left the lake via a second port situated in a sheltered bay
on its southwestern corner (modern Golyaka).
A
straight road, typical of Roman construction, ran west for almost 9
km from the shore.
The
road then crossed a low pass (στενός;
Cassius Dio, Hist. 76[75].15.3) following the course of a stream
(modern Karsak Deresi) that ran from the lake into the sea at the
port of Cius or Prius ad Mare/Prousias (modern Gemlik).
Cius
was situated on the eastern end of the Kianos Sinus (Gulf) on the
southeastern shore of the Propontis (Sea of Marmara; Strabo, Geogr.
12.4.3). The narrow isthmus separating the lake from the gulf was
approximately 18 km across. Roller calls Cius "an important
landing point for the interior."
Looking
through Nicaean eyes, Wilson writes that "while the
landing-places of the north were most convenient for purposes of
travel, the easiest way to the sea for heavy goods lay to the west,
to Cius."
In
addition to the extensive olive production that still characterizes
the area, "legumes for the capital were delivered from Nicaea
and its surroundings; the port of shipment could have been Cius."
The
lake played a role in the defeat of Pescennius Niger’s forces
in December 193. Septimius Severus mobilized his troops in Nicomedia
and sailed from there to Cius to cross the pass and engage Niger’s
army at the Battle of Nicaea (Herodian, Hist. 3.2.9). The battle was
fought even from boats on the lake (Cassius Dio, Hist. 75.6). Aſter
the Severan forces rallied, Niger and his remaining troops retreated
by sailing to Nicaea, which supported him. Aſter Niger was
later beheaded, coinage both from Nicaea and Cius "produced
reverses of Mars the pacifier and Peace herself, and Septimius
is shown clasping hands with Jupiter."
Over
a century later Zozimus (Hist. Nova 2.23–24, 26) describes the
massive naval fleets assembled in the Sea of Marmara for the
final battles between Constantine and Licinius in 324. Thus, a
variety of ships were available in 325 for travel from Nicomedia to
Nicaea by sea.
ORBIS
calculates that a fast sea journey covering the 143 km between
Nicomedia and Cius could be made in just over half a day.
A
half-day walk from Cius brought travelers to the lake where an easy
transfer by boat across the lake could be arranged. This itinerary
contrasts considerably with the two-day low mountainous route
between the two cities previously discussed. Given the challenge of
taking an imperial contingent overland through such terrain, it is
possible, even likely, that Constantine and his retinue traveled by
ship to Cius so as to make the easy land and lake crossing to
Nicaea. The regions of bishops arriving by sea via Cius might
include those from Rome (2), Egypt (13), Thebes (2), Upper Libya
(4), Lower Libya (1), Lycia (1), 83 Islands (4), Cyprus (2), Europe
(1), Dacia (1), Calabria (2), Moesia (3), Africa (4), Macedonia (2),
Dardania (1), Achaia (3), Thessaly (2), Dalmatia (1), Pannonia (1),
Gauls (1), Goths (1), and Bosporus (1), totaling 53 participants.
The
Attendees and Their Mode of Transport
The
estimated number of attendees is, of course, related to the number
of bishops who traveled to the council. The traditional number of
318 is usually reduced to some 250 bishops in attendance (cf.
Eusebius, Vit. Const. 3.8). Projecting around 220 bishops, Gwynn
estimates that the number of attendees was approximately two
thousand persons.
This
total is derived from Constantine’s letter to Chrestus of
Syracuse regarding the Council of Arles in 314.
You
should secure from the most illustrious Latronianus, corrector of
Sicily, a public vehicle, and you should choose two others of the
second rank and take them with you. You should bring along three
servants who may serve you on the way, and arrive to the
above-mentioned place before the appointed day.
Thus
five others were authorized to accompany Chrestus to Arles.
Such a large entourage would have surely taxed cursus publicus, the
imperial transportation system. Begun by Augustus as a way to
communicate with his governors and legionary commanders—a
system initially called vehiculio—by the fourth century it had
morphed into an elaborate travel network used and abused by imperial
and provincial officials.
Regarding
the viability of the sea route proposed above, was the cursus
publicus available for bishops who wished to travel by sea? Whiting
thinks not.
The
disadvantages of sea travel were the dangers, unpredictability, and
dependence on the seasons and weather. There was also the cost of
chartering passage to consider. For travelers with permission to use
the services of the cursus publicus, the permit issued by the state
was only valid for travel by land.
However,
the geography of the empire suggests otherwise. Island provinces
such as Britannia, Crete, and Cyprus required nautical
transportation as did the provinces in North Africa. The ports of
Brundisium and Dyrrachium, termini of the Via Appia and Via Egnatia
respectively, similarly required a nautical leg to connect these
major land routes.
Arguing
that shipping connections formed part of the system since the time
of Augustus, Anne Kolb observes, "Hinweise auf den Seeverkehr
im Rahmen des cursus publicus geben noch weitere spätantike
Zeugnisse."
For
the Council at Arles bishops were summoned from "a great many
different places" to arrive by August 1 (Constantine, Ep. 22).
Those coming from Syracuse and Carthage had to travel by sea, so it
can be assumed passage was provided for their entourage using a
nautical cursus publicus.
Thus,
the bishops and their attendants had the option to travel to Nicaea
either by land or sea using the cursus publicus.
Nicaea
and Constantine’s Vicennalia
The
council concluded on July 19, and six days later the celebration of
Constantine’s vicennalia started in order to mark the
twentieth year of his rule. His reign had begun on July 25, 306, the
day his father Constantius I died in Eboracum (modern York). To
celebrate the occasion, the emperor hosted a banquet in the
innermost imperial apartments of the palace, at which every bishop
was present (Eusebius, Vit. Const. 3.15). Ramskold, citing Jerome
(Chron. A326), believes that "the vicennial celebrations
commenced at Nicomedia."
Gwynn
similarly observes that "the famous banquet may have taken
place not in Nicaea but in the imperial palace in nearby Nicomedia,
to which the bishops would have travelled en masse."
While
Nicomedia was somewhat "nearby" in terms of distance, the
transfer of the bishops and their entourages would have been a
logistical challenge.
Even
if only the bishops traveled there, several hundred persons would be
traveling either by land or water. Eusebius uses the same word
basileon for the imperial palace where the council met as well as
the place where the banquet was held, without mentioning any change
of venue to Nicomedia (Vit. Const. 10.1; 15.2).
Drake
notes that Constantine had previously planned a meeting with the
bishops in Nicaea for his vicennalia, "so the shiſt might
not have been as abrupt as it now seems."
Two
other factors to be considered is that the council of bishops
probably lasted longer than Constantine had anticipated, and then
the heat and humidity would have made travel more challenging in
late July.
Nicaea
was therefore convenient for the emperor and his bodyguard, and
remaining there thus ensured "that not one of the bishops was
missing from the imperial banquet" (Eusebius, Vit. Const.
15.1).
The
palace was thus transformed from holding an ecclesiastical synod to
hosting an imperial panegyris.
Eusebius
describes how Constantine gave a farewell address to the bishops
"when the Council (synodos) was finally about to
dissolve" (Vit. Const. 3.21.2).
This
address follows the vicennalia banquet in his narrative. Therefore,
it seems the emperor expeditiously began the celebration where
everyone was gathered rather than requiring an inconvenient transfer
to Nicomedia. Following Constantine’s address, the bishops
were dismissed to pass again through one of Nicaea’s four
gates to return to their homes by land or by sea. Constantine
himself departed with his retinue most probably across Lake Ascania,
transiting the isthmus to Cius, and finally sailing back to
Nicomedia to resume his residency there.
Conclusion
Local
traffic in İznik today detours around the north, east, and
south gates; only the dilapidated west gate to the lake remains part
of a thoroughfare. Regional traffic bypasses the city altogether.
The new toll road from İzmir to İstanbul does pass through
Gemlik (Cius) and around the western end of İznik Lake
(Ascania).
Ironically
this road crosses the Sea of Marmara on the new Ozmangazi Bridge
from Hersek/Altınova (Helenopolis) to Gebze (Libyssa) at its
narrowest point, once the crossing for the later Pilgrim’s
Road. The main road to Ankara now runs east from İzmit to Bolu
(Claudiopolis) before turning southeast to Turkey’s capital
city. The main north-south route between İzmit and Eskişehir
follows the Sakarya River valley 32 km east of İznik.
Therefore, pilgrims to Nicaea today must take secondary roads to
visit the city, which was once the crossroads of Christianity
geographically but still is its center theologically, as the
celebration of the 1,700th anniversary of the council in 2025
attests.
See
(PDF)
One If by Land, Two If by Sea Traveling to Nicaea for the Council of
325
Fontes
Nicaenae Synodi aims to offer a complete collection of documents
relating to the Council of Nicaea. These documents have three
characteristics in common: 1) they were written in the period from
the beginning of the Melitian crisis (304) to the death of
Constantine (337); 2) they have a close relationship to the topics
discussed at Nicaea, such as the Melitian crisis, the Arian
controversy, disciplinary and liturgical issues; and 3) they have
been handed down by indirect tradition. These features already
reveal the novelty of the work, which, unlike Hans Georg Opitz's
foundational work, Urkunden zur Geschichte des arianischen Streites
(Berlin 1934-1935), is not a collection of documents on the Arian
crisis, but on the Nicene Council. The traditional view tended to
identify Nicaea with the condemnation of Arianism, with the
condemnation of Arianism and with the introduction of the
controversial homoousios. This tendency is understandable because
most of the documents concern the Arian controversy, and the
consequences of this dispute were most relevant in the long run.
However, the gradual maturation of studies makes it possible to take
a step further by moving from a retrospective and selective look at
Nicaea to a comprehensive historical survey of the documents: this
is the purpose of Fontes Nicaenae Synodi. Consequently, the volume
starts with the Melitian crisis (304), which broke out because of
Diocletian's persecution. From the point of view of the Alexandrian
episcopate, the persistence of this schism created a need to
reabsorb centrifugal thrusts, which may help to explain the
exacerbated ecclesial climate in which Alexander and Arius clashed.
On the other hand, the volume ends with the death of Constantine
(337), which marks the end of the first reception of Nicaea.
Fontes
Nicaenae Synodi also suggests a method of study for the documents
that concern the Arian crisis. This method draws the consequences of
the long and deep path of historical revision that began with the
work of Eduard Schwartz and Opitz, and of the current
historiographical debate that is increasingly international and
emancipated from ideological and apologetic assumptions at least as
far as most scholars are concerned. The method consists of freeing
the documents from the unnatural context in which they were
transmitted polemic, apologetic, narrative to study them iuxta
propria principia, placing them back at the precise moment in which
they were composed and into their authors' motivations, which may
also have been polemical and apologetic, but which, in any case,
were their own, not of those who transmitted them. Let us not forget
what was said at the beginning: the earliest documents of the Arian
crisis – what Samuel Fernández, the editor of this
valuable volume, calls “the third level” of primary
sources – were transmitted in the indirect tradition by the
protagonists of the controversy themselves, in primis Eusebius and
Athanasius, and later historians, who represent the other two levels
of sources. But the process of re-interpretation to which the
documents are subjected because of their inclusion in later sources
is not the only problem to be addressed. Often, their chronology is
uncertain; in many cases, it can be established with good
probability only through mutual comparison, as Fernández
explains in the introduction.
Fontes
Nicaenae Synodi is intended to be a working tool for scholars and
students of Late Antiquity in the fields of history, theology,
philosophy, and philology. For this reason, the editor, while
relying on modern editions of the collected documents and resorting
only exceptionally to manuscripts, has provided the reader with
clear indications to the reference editions. Above all, in the case
where a document is transmitted by different sources, the
differences in the various textual traditions are pointed out. For
example, the letter of Eusebius of Caesarea to his church, written
immediately after the Council, is handed down by Athanasius,
Socrates, and Theodoret, so the differences between the three
textual transmissions of the letter are noted. This is a further
value of the volume that deserves to be noted.
In
conclusion, I think that there is no better way to commemorate the
1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea (325–2025) than to
put the Council itself back in the center by presenting its
documentation, finally collected in one volume.
Emanuela
Prinzivalli
Sapienza
University of Rome
See
(PDF)
Fontes Nicaenae Synodi: The Contemporary Sources for the Study of
the Council of Nicaea (304–337)
Natalia
Smelova
The
Canons of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in the Manuscript
IOM, RAS Syr. 34
Abstract:
The article deals with the manuscript IOM, RAS Syr. 34, one leaf of
parchment originating from the collection of Nikolai Likhachev. It
contains a Syriac translation of selected documents of the First
Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (AD 325): the introduction to the
canons, a bilingual Greek-Syriac list of 42 bishops, and the first
five canons of the council. Most of the texts are incomplete and
damaged. The present article focuses mainly on the study and
commented publication of the five Nicaean canons from IOM, RAS Syr.
34. On the basis of comparative textual research the author aims to
show the place of the St. Petersburg manuscript in the history of
Syriac translations of the canons.
Key
words: Christian Church, Late Roman Empire, Ecumenical Councils,
canon law, Syriac translations from Greek, Syriac manuscripts
Introduction
1.
IOM, RAS Syr. 34: the study of provenance and paleographic
description
The
subject of this paper is a remarkable one-leaf parchment manuscript
IOM, RAS Syr. 34, which contains fragmented documents of the First
Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (AD 325) (hereafter, Nicaea I): a final
portion of the introduction to the canons (f. 1r), the bilingual
Greek-Syriac list of 42 bishops (f. 1r), and the first five canons
(incomplete and badly damaged) (f. 1v).
The
manuscript came into the Institute as part of the collection of the
historian Nikolai Likhachev (1862–1936). This remarkable
private collection was formed in the course of the late 19th and
early 20th cс. It included various types of script and writing
material, both Eastern and Western, due to the collector’s
special interest in the history of writing, paleography and
codicology. In 1918, the nationalised collection became the basis
for the newly-founded Cabinet of Paleography that first was part of
the Archeological Institute, and then (since 1923) of the
Archeological Museum of the Petrograd University. In 1925 it was
renamed the Museum of Paleography and came under the administration
of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
Later
on, in 1930, following Likhachev’s arrest, this was
reorganised as the Museum of the Book, Document and Writing, which
was soon afterwards renamed Institute and subsequently, in 1936,
ceased its existence as an independent organisation. From 1930 until
1935 the collection was gradually distributed among different
institutions in Leningrad, such as the State Hermitage Museum, the
Leningrad Branches of the Institute of History and the Institute of
Oriental Studies (now IOM) of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR,
depending on the language and nature of the material.
The
scope, scale and significance of the collection could be fully
appreciated at the exhibition held in the Hermitage in 2012, which
brought together artefacts and manuscripts that once belonged to
Likhachev and are now kept in different depositories in St.
Petersburg.
Among
the numerous Oriental materials from the Likhachev Collection, six
items were identified as Syriac, in some cases by their script
rather than by language.
The
provenance of the manuscripts can be established, albeit only
approximately, from the hand-written notes taken by Yurii Perepelkin
of Likhachev’s own statements, now in St. Petersburg Branch of
the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Regarding
the manuscript later classified as Syr. 34, we know that it was
acquired from an antiquarian bookseller in St. Petersburg around
1900 along with two others, the liturgy of John Chrysostom in the
form of a paper scroll, and 53 loose leaves of parchment carrying
the Homiliae Cathedrales by Severus of Antioch.
However,
there is another piece of testimony provided by Heinrich Goussen who
writes that most probably this is the same leaf of parchment which
was offered to the University of Strasbourg by an antiquarian from
Frankfurt around 1896/1897. Goussen saw and copied the manuscript
himself and he tends to date it to the 7th–8th cс. Thus
it well may be that Likhachev purchased the manuscript from an
antiquarian bookeller in Frankfurt rather than St. Petersburg.
Apart
from this information, we are fortunate to have further notes
testifying to the time when our manuscript reached St. Petersburg
and was first examined there. The manuscript is still kept in its
original folder along with two handwritten notes in French dated
14th November 1859. These were made by two librarians of the
Imperial Public Library (hereafter — IPL) in St. Petersburg,
Eduard de Muralt and Bernhard (Boris) Dorn, who examined and
provided an expert opinion on the two manuscripts, the Homiliae
Cathedrales (now Syr. 35) and the Nicaean documents (now Syr. 34).
Muralt describes the latter as containing the first five canons of
the Council of Nicaea of AD 325 issued and subscribed by 318
bishops, of whom 41 (sic! — N.S.) signature survived in Greek
writing of approximately the 9th–10th cc. and in Syriac
esṭrangelo writing. He then lists the names of the bishops in
French.
In
Dorn’s note the manuscript is described as being written in
the “Nestorian” script and is dated, on the basis of
paleography, to the 9th c. In October 1859 Constantine Tischendorf
returned to St. Petersburg from his expedition to the Middle East
and brought a collection of 109 Greek and Oriental manuscripts,
predominately Christian, which was solemnly presented to the Tsar
Alexander II, who had sponsored the expedition, and subsequently
deposited in the IPL. Among Tischendorf’s finds was the other
portion of the Homiliae Cathedrales manuscript (23 leaves; now NLR,
Syr. new series 10). We can only conjecture that the two manuscripts
(IOM, RAS Syr. 34 and Syr. 35) might also have been brought to St.
Petersburg by Tischendorf in 1859. However, it is unclear why,
having been seen and described by Bernhard Dorn, the librarian at
the IPL Manuscripts Department as well as the director of the
Asiatic Museum, they were acquired neither by he IPL nor by the
Museum. Probably, in 1859, they entered a private collection in
Russia, from which they were sold to an antiquarian, either in St.
Petersburg, or in Frankfurt, where they were eventually purchased by
Likhachev at the turn of the 20th c.
The
first scholarly description of the manuscript, the study and
publication of the bilingual Greek and Syriac list of bishops was
undertaken by Vladimir Beneshevich in the 1910s.
The
researcher highlighted the bilinguality of the list as a feature
which made the St. Petersburg manuscript unique, since no other
examples were known to him at that time. He thoroughly analysed the
Greek script used in the names of the bishops (majuscule form) as
well as in the names of the provinces and marginal notes
(transitional form with elements of minuscule), and came to the
conclusion that the writing can be dated to the 8th(?)–9th cc.
Quoting Prof. Pavel Kokovtsoff’s opinion, he described the
Syriac script as “a Jacobite cursive” of approximately
9th– 10th cc. In addition to this, Beneshevich stated that
both parts of the list were written simultaneously, although the
Greek and parallel Syriac column (the names of the bishops and
provinces) could have been written by one scribe and the three
columns of Syriac text by another hand.
Another
significant conclusion drawn by Beneshevich was that the Syriac text
of the canons in the St. Petersburg manuscript is virtually the same
recension as that in the manuscript Paris syr. 62 in the
Bibliothèque Nationale de France. He supposed that this
translation of the Greek canons was made around the time of the
Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon, i.e. AD 451 (see the
discussion on this text in chapter 2 below).
A
short description of the IOM, RAS Syr. 34 was included in the
“Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in Leningrad” by Nina
Pigulevskaya.
Agreeing
with Kokovtsoff’s opinion, she defined the script of the
manuscript as a clear cursive in its transitional form from
esṭrangelo to serṭo (the WestSyrian writing). She added
also that the ductus is similar to that seen in the manuscript
containing a work by Sahdona copied in AD 837 (AG 1148) by a monk
called Sergius who donated it to the Monastery of Moses on Sinai
(NLR Syr. new series 13; Strasbourg MS 4116).
This
statement is somewhat unclear because the main text of the latter
manuscript is written in esṭrangelo. Apparently, Pigulevskaya
was referring to the cursive writing used in the colophon, which
does make sense, although the two scripts are obviously not
identical, as the Sahdona manuscript contains more elements of
cursive than IOM, RAS Syr. 34.
The
dimensions of the IOM, RAS Syr. 34 are 195×293 mm. The upper
right corner of f. 1r is damaged, so that the final part of the
introduction on the recto as well as the title and the initial part
of the canons on the verso have been lost. The text on the hair
(recto) side of the parchment is generally better preserved than the
text on the flesh side, where it was rubbed or washed off. The text
is written with iron gall ink, while the names of provinces in both
Greek and Syriac (f. 1r) as well as the titles and numbers of the
canons (f. 1v) are in red ink.
The
recto contains two columns of text; the right-hand column and the
text in the lower margin are further divided to include parallel
lists of bishops in two languages. The left edge of the right-hand
column is more or less observed, in contrast to the right edge which
is virtually ignored. Thus it becomes obvious that the Greek names
were written prior to the Syriac ones, which were fitted into the
space available. The left column contains 42 lines of plain Syriac
text of the so-called introduction to the canons. In the left
margin, there are a few Greek words corresponding to those given in
Syriac transcription in the introduction. Writing area: variable,
272×164 mm maximum; right column: variable, 272×88 mm
maximum; left column: 224× 64 mm; upper margin — 20 mm;
lower margin: filled with names of bishops and, in the bottom right
corner, four lines of smaller Syriac text in a vertical direction
published by Beneshevich; right margin: between 7 and 16 mm; left
margin: up to 25 mm, gap between columns about 10 mm.
The
verso contains two columns of Syriac text (42 lines in the right
column, 41 in the left column) with Greek glosses in the right
margin and in the gap between the columns. The traces of ruling
include four pinholes marking the edges of the columns. Writing
area: 224×150 mm; right column: 224×64 mm; left column:
224×67 mm; upper margin — up to 23 mm; lower margin —
up to 48 mm; right margin — up to 30 mm; left margin —
17 mm; gap between columns 20 mm. Measurememts were taken from the
pinholes.
The
writing of the main Syriac text is a transitional form of esṭrangelo
with
some elements of serṭo ( ܐ
ܕ ܗ ܡ ܘܪ). The
Syriac list of bishops is written in a rather cursive script with
occasional elements of esṭrangelo (letters ܒ
ܡ ܦ ܩ). It is, however,
unlikely that the two were written by different scribes, as
Beneshevich suggested. Such ductus features as the slope of the
letters and final strokes, especially, the final ܢ,
testify to the fact that both parts were written by the same hand.
It is difficult to say whether the Greek text was executed by the
same scribe. However, taking into account the high level of
translation activity and the widespread use of Greek marginal notes
in West-Syrian manuscripts, it would seem reasonable to assume that
both texts were written by the same Syriac scribe well versed in the
Greek language and calligraphy.
Although
a similar transitional form of the script can be found in a number
of 9th c. West-Syrian manuscripts (e.g. BL Add. 12159 of AD 867/868
and BL Add. 14623 of AD 823), it is also characteristic of some
SyroMelkite manuscripts, presumed to be of the same period (e.g.
Syr. Sp. 68, Syr. Sp. 70, 9th c., according to Sebastian Brock).
Therefore
in our case the writing per se cannot be decisive in determining
whether the manuscript belongs to one tradition or the other.
However, the Greek words in the margins form part of the
specifically West-Syrian system for the presentation of translated
texts (cf. Greek scholia in IOM, RAS Syr. 35, BL Add. 17148 (AD
650–660), BL Add. 17134 (AD 675), BL Add. 12134 (AD 697) and
many other West-Syrian manuscripts from the 7th c. onwards).
This
latter feature as well as the recension of the text, which is only
preserved in WestSyrian manuscripts, may testify to the West-Syrian
origin of the St. Petersburg leaf.
2.
Documents of Nicaea I in Syriac translation: an overview
Paraphrasing
Michel Aubineau, the question of the exact number of bishops who
participated in the Council of Nicaea is likely to remain for ever
insoluble.
Even
the 4th c. writers, who attended the council, do not agree on this
matter. The Vita Constantini, ascribed, although not without some
doubt, to Eusebius, gives the smallest number, to wit “more
than two hundred and fifty bishops”.
Theodoret,
quoting the words of Eustathius of Antioch, who chaired the council
before his deposition and exile, mentions about 270 bishops.
Other
sources give a number around or above 300.
These
are the letter from Emperor Constantine to the Church of Alexandria
(AD 325) quoted by Socrates Scholasticus, Gelasius of Cyzicus and
others; Apologia contra Arianos (AD 350–351) and Historia
Arianorum ad monachos (AD 358) by Athanasius; Altercatio Luciferiani
et Orthodoxi by Jerome, etc.
However,
at some point in the 4th c., the precise number of 318 bishops
emerged and gained currency, being associated with the number of
Abraham’s servants in Gen. 14:14.
Among
the earliest sources which give the number 318, scholars mention De
Fide ad Gratianum by Ambrose, Epistola ad Afros by Athanasius, De
synodis and Liber contra Constantium imperatorem by Hilary of
Poitiers.
I
should add that the tradition does not always specify whether 318
refers to the total number of bishops gathered in Nicaea or to those
who signed the canons and other resolutions of the council (some
bishops were deposed in the course of the sessions and sent into
exile before the end of the council; others refused to put their
signatures to the Creed).
In
either case, the number 318 became widely reflected in the title of
the Nicaean canons in Syriac translations (e.g. BL Add. 14528, BL
Add. 14526, BL Add. 14529, and also the 72 pseudo-Nicaean canons
associated with Maruta of Maiperqaṭ) as well as in some later
Greek versions of the list of bishops.
The
written records of Nicaea I have not survived unlike the acts of the
Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (AD 431) and all subsequent
Ecumenical Councils. The main resolutions concerning Church
structure and internal discipline, including issues of private life
and ordination of priests and bishops, were formulated in the form
of 20 canons. Karl Joseph Hefele in his Conciliengeschichte made a
thorough study of the question of the number of the Nicaean canons.
On the one hand, he cites Theodoret, Gelasius of Cyzicus, Rufinus
and other Church historians who spoke of 20 canons, and mentions
numerous western (Latin) and eastern (Greek and Slavonic) medieval
canonic manuscripts (Syntagmas, Nomocanons and other collections of
canon law) containing 20 Nicaean canons. On the other hand, he shows
some Arabic versions which preserved up to 84 canons ascribed to the
Council of Nicaea. First published in the course of the 16th c. by
the Jesuits François Torrès and Alphonse Pisani, then
re-published in mid– 17th c. by the Maronite Abraham
Ecchelensis, the Latin translation of these was included in all
major collections of the proceedings of the Ecumenical Councils
Hefele
sums up the conclusions of various scholars that these additional
canons were products of later Eastern traditions. Some of them could
not have been composed before the Council of Ephesus (431), others
not before Chalcedon (461).
In
1898, the publication by Oscar Braun made known the corpus of works
ascribed to Maruta, Bishop of Maiperqaṭ, on the basis of the
East-Syrian manuscript from the former Borgia Museum in Vatican, now
Borg. sir. 82. Among a dozen works dealing with the Council of
Nicaea, he published a transcription of 73 Syriac “Nicaean”
canons.
The
scholarly publication of these texts was undertaken by Arthur
Vööbus.
As
follows from the title, the canons of the council of 318 [bishops]
were translated by Maruta at the request of Mar Isḥaq,
Bishop-Catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.
In
AD 410 Maruta assisted Mar Isḥaq in convening the Synod of
Seleucia-Ctesiphon. That synod was an important milestone in the
formation of the Church structure within the Sasanian Empire. In
order to stress its legitimate status and continuity from the
Ecumenical Church, the Synod accepted the main resolutions of Nicaea
I, including the Creed and the canons.
On
the occasion of the synod, Maruta apparently translated from Greek
the main documents of the Council of Nicaea, including 20 canons,
the Creed, the Sacra, letters of Constantine and Helena and the
names of the bishops (220 in number, without the Western bishops)
and also composed his own overview of the Canon of Nicaea and
various related explanatory pieces, i.e. on monasticism,
persecutions, heresies, on terms, ranks and orders, etc. All these
texts were included in the edition prepared by Vööbus on
the basis of the manuscript from the Monastery of Our Lady of the
Seeds in Alqoš (Alqoš 169; later in the Chaldean
monastery in Bagdad, No. 509) with variants from Vat. sir. 501,
Borg. sir. 82, Mingana Syr. 586, and Mingana Syr. 47 (see details of
some of these manuscripts in Table 1 below).
Braun
considered Maruta to be the author of the 73 canons originally
composed in Syriac.
Vööbus
neither supports nor rejects this attribution due to the lack of
evidence, as well as the critical edition and stylistic analysis of
the text.
Moreover,
he adds that the East-Syrian recension, which associates the canons
with Maruta, is not the original one and must have been adopted from
the West-Syrian tradition. He also mentions Arabic and Ethiopic
versions of these canons.
In
a number of Syriac manuscripts the authentic Nicaean canons are
accompanied by the list of bishops who approved and signed them (the
list can be included either before or after the canons). Being
originally a collection of signatures in Greek, the list underwent
certain transformations within the Greek tradition and was
subsequently translated into Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic and
Armenian.
Among
the variety of versions Dmitrii Lebedev distinguished two forms of
the list. In “systematic” lists, which include all
extant Latin, Syriac, Coptic and Armenian versions, the names are
arranged according to provinces. The “non-systematic”
lists published by Gelzer, Hilgenfeld and Cuntz from selected Greek
and Arabic manuscripts lack the names of the provinces and arrange
the bishops’ names in a different, somewhat peculiar, way.
All
Syriac lists, which can be found in both West-Syrian and East-Syrian
manuscripts, are in the “systematic” form and derive
from the Greek recension of Theodoros Anagnostes (the list of 212
names, originally included in Socrates Scholasticus’s Historia
Ecclesiastica).
Besides
anonymous collections of ecclesiastical law, the lists are included
in the Chronicle of the 12 th -c. Syrian Orthodox patriarch Michael
the Great and the Nomocanon of ‘Abdišo‘ bar
Brika, the Metropolitan of Nisibis (Church of the East) (13th–14th
cc.). According to Vladimir Beneshevich, the version of the list in
the manuscript IOM, RAS Syr. 34 corresponds to the West-Syrian
recension used by Michael the Great in his Chronicle (VII:2).
This
perfectly supports our assumption regarding the West-Syrian origin
of the St. Petersburg manuscript. Beneshevich also states that the
original Greek version of the Syriac list must have been composed
after 371 under a certain influence from theCoptic tradition. It
also became the source for the Latin translations.
Another
curious observation by Beneshevich about the Greek text of the list
in IOM, RAS Syr. 34 is that it represents a transcription of the
Syriac forms of the names of provinces and bishops rather than being
the authentic Greek forms.
However,
Hubert Kaufhold demonstrates that this is not particularly correct
and the scribe must have had the original list of bishops before his
eyes. The fact that the Greek names of the provinces are in the
nominative rather than the genitive is not decisive here, as some
Greek and Syriac forms in this recension (which can be fully
evaluated on the grounds of Mardin Orth. 309) are clearly different
(e.g. ΕΔΕΣΗΣ — ܐܘܪܗܝ).
Beneshevich
wrote his work in the first decades of the 20th c. when no other
manuscripts containing bilingual lists of bishops were known. Thus
the St. Petersburg leaf was considered unique. However, due to new
acquisitions made by the Vatican Library and Arthur Vööbus’s
exploration of Middle Eastern manuscript collections, some other
bilingual Greek-Syriac lists have become known, among them the
8th-c. codex Mardin Orth. 309 and Vat. sir. 495, a 20th c.
manuscript “copied from an ancient codex”.
The
Mardin manuscript attracted a lot of attention, particularly, from
Hubert Kaufhold who published the lists of bishops of the early
Greek councils and synods on its basis.
Alongside
the above-mentioned 20 canons and the list of bishops, the Nicaean
documents in both West-Syrian and East-Syrian manuscripts, mostly of
legislative contents, include the Nicaean Creed, the letter of
Constantine of AD 325 calling on the bishops who assembled in Ancyra
to move to the new venue in Nicaea, the Sacra, i.e. the decree of
Constantine against the Arians; the letter of the bishops to the
Church of Alexandria, and an introduction to the canons.
This
last work has not yet been fully identified. According to Vladimir
Beneshevich, it may be a combination of two different texts: the
afterword to the Nicaean Creed included in Gelasius’s Historia
Ecclesiastica (II:27), also known in Latin, Coptic and Armenian
translations, and the council’s resolution on the celebration
of Easter.
This
text in Syriac translation was thought to be present in full in the
manuscript Paris syr. 62 only. However, it can be also identified in
the two Mardin manuscripts discovered by Arthur Vööbus,
Mardin Orth. 309 and Mardin Orth. 310, as well as the Birmingham
manuscript Mingana Syr. 8 that was copied in 1911 from the
fragmented Mardin Orth. 310.
3.
The place of IOM, RAS Syr. 34 in the textual history of the Syriac
canons of Nicaea I
We
are indebted to Friedrich Schulthess for the initial identification
of different Syriac translations and recensions of the canons of
Nicaea I. Through a critical study of eight Syriac manuscripts, he
uncovered the fact that the canons were translated twice. One
translation (A) is attested by the London codex BL Add. 14528 of the
6th c. The first of its two independent parts that were bound
together is an archaic form of Synodicon of the councils from Nicaea
to Chalcedon with the exception of the Council of Ephesus (ff.
1–151). This form of canonical collection is known as the
“Corpus canonum” and is thought to have been compiled in
Antioch shortly before the Council of Constantinople (381). It
included the canons of the Greek councils and synods of the 4th c.
(Nicaea, Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Gangra, Antioch, Laodiceia and
Constantinople itself) with later added canons of the Ecumenical
Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon.
It
represents the core and the initial part of subsequent Synodica,
i.e. the corpora of ecclesiastical legislation, both West-Syrian
(e.g. Paris syr. 62, Damascus 8/11) and East Syrian (e.g. Alqoš
169 and its copies).
The
colophon of Add. 14528 informs us that the entire collection of 193
canons of various synods was translated from Greek into Syriac in
Mabbug in the year 500/501 (AD 812).
Schulthess
described this translation as precise, and Vööbus
suggested that it was the later of the two. He states that
translation A (hereafter, I use Schulthess’s letters
indicating the published manuscripts as a designation of
translations contained in them) was intended to correct and improve
the existing rendering which permitted certain leeway in the
interpretation of Greek canon law.
The
manuscript BL Add. 14528 is also interesting as it contains a very
well preserved Syriac list of the bishops at Nicaea I which became
the basis for a number of modern publications (see Table 1 for
details).
The
beginning of the 6th c. was the time when Philoxenus, a strong
advocate of Miaphysitism, was active in Mabbug, where he was a
bishop from 485 until his deposition in 519. In all probability, the
translation of the canons made in Mabbug in 501 (as is claimed in
the colophon of Add. 14528) was the result of a large-scale
translation activity, which consisted primarily in the translation
of the Old and New Testament, commissioned by Philoxenus and
performed by his horepiskopus Polycarpus. Hubert Kaufhold adds an
interesting detail: another Miaphysite leader, Severus, Patriarch of
Antioch (512–518), mentions in his letters a collection of
canons of the imperial councils which was available to him, although
no Greek original for this existed at his time.
This
may have been the translation produced in Mabbug just a decade
before his patriarchate.
In
this case, why were the canons of the hostile Council of Chalcedon
translated and included in all known West-Syrian manuscripts of
purely legislative or mixed contents (e.g. BL Add. 14526, BL Add.
14529, BL Add. 12155, Paris syr. 62, Damascus Part. 8/11 etc.)? The
answer is probably that they cover and discuss disciplinary rather
than doctrinal issues, so their inclusion in the West-Syrian
collections would not give rise to any further controversy. By
contrast, the canon(s) of Ephesus seems to be a rarer text. Most
West-Syrian manuscripts studied by Schulthess and Vööbus
include only one canon of Ephesus (namely, canon 7, dealing with the
Nicaean Creed) of eight known in the Greek tradition (with the
exception of Paris syr. 62 which includes two canons, 8 and 7). They
are not included in the East-Syrian Synodicon Borg. sir. 82,
although that codex is highly fragmented. The canons of Ephesus are
quite different in content as, unlike those of other councils, they
have a pronouncedly polemical character.
The
earliest evidence of another translation (B), which Schulthess
characterises as “free”, is the manuscript BL Add. 14526
from the 7th c. It was probably written around or soon after 641.
Like
the previous manuscript, the first part of this composite codex
contains the Corpus canonum, including one canon of the Council of
Ephesus. Despite the evidence for this translation being more recent
than the previous one, Vööbus points out its archaic
character and suggests that this might be the first attempt at
interpreting the canons.
The
further development of both translations of the Nicaean canons is
most curious. Translation A emerges in East-Syrian manuscripts which
contain the works of Maruta of Maiperqaṭ (Borg. sir. 82, Vat.
Syr. 501, Mingana Syr. 586, Mingana Syr. 47). This creates a certain
difficulty, as the colophons in the manuscripts contradict each
other. Was the Nicaean corpus translated by Maruta on the occasion
of the Synod of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in 410 (as East-Syrian
manuscripts claim) or were the canons of Nicaea translated together
with those constituting the Antiochian Corpus canonum around 501 in
Mabbug? This question can only be answered on the basis of
comparative stylistic analysis of translation A with the texts
ascribed to Maruta on the one hand and with the West-Syrian
translations from the 6th c. on the other.
Interestingly,
other examples of translation A can be found in manuscripts with
mixed contents of undoubtedly West-Syrian origin: the polemic
florilegium BL Add. 14529 (7th–8th cc.) which includes
patristic texts against heretics such as Nestorius and Julian of
Halicarnassus; and a highly fragmented 8th–9th cc. codex in
the Houghton Library of Harvard University that came from the
collection of James Rendel Harris, which also contains apocryphal
gospels and apocalypses.
The
comparison of the different patterns of translation A show minor
variants (with the exception of the general title of the canons) and
testify to roughly the same recension of the text.
Translation
B, on the contrary, underwent some major alterations in the course
of its textual history, probably due to the free character of the
original translation, which was considered unsatisfactory at some
point. The first recension (C-D) of this translation is attested by
West-Syrian manuscripts with various contents, e.g. BL Add. 12155
(C) (8th c.), a very extensive polemic florilegium, and Vat. sir.
127 (D), a collection of canons similar in structure to the earlier
manuscript BL Add. 14526.
In
the course of the exploration of Syriac manuscripts in the Middle
East, Arthur Vööbus discovered in the library of the
Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate in Damascus an important codex that was
a compendium of the ecclesiastical law, the Synodicon, belonging to
the West-Syrian tradition.
According
to Vööbus, the version of the Nicaean canons preserved in
this manuscript conforms in general to the C-D recension, although
it adds a number of variants not attested by any previously known
manuscripts.
Vööbus
identified another example of the same recension in the manuscript
Mardin Orth. 320.
Another
recension (E), the result of further revision of the C-D text, was
identified by Schulthess in the 9th-c. manuscript Paris syr. 62, a
WestSyrian collection of apocryphal, patristic and canonical texts.
An interesting feature is that this compendium of undoubtedly
West-Syrian origin contains the previously mentioned 73
pseudo-Nicaean canons associated with Maruta of Maiperqaṭ.
Apart from the 20 authentic canons of Nicaea I, the manuscript
includes the introduction to the canons which also can be found in
all other manuscripts attesting to this recension.
Arthur
Vööbus and, later, Hubert Kaufhold identified the same
revision of the text in two 8th-c. Synodica from the Za‘faran
Monastery, namely, Mardin Orth. 309 and Mardin Orth. 310. With
regard to the latter, Vööbus mentions a number of variants
which “throw more light” on the history of this
recension.
The
copy of Mardin Orth. 310 is a manuscript of 1911 in the Mingana
collection at the University of Birmingham, Mingana Syr. 8. Unlike
Schulthess, Kaufhold identifies this version as the second
translation (or, rather an adaptation of the first translation) of
the canons made by Jacob of Edessa at the end of the 7th c.
Within
the context of comparative textual study of the translations of the
Nicaean canons and, in particular, the recension E just mentioned,
the main perspective is the preparation of the critical edition of
the 20 Nicaean canons and an introduction to the canons through
study and collation of the manuscripts Mardin Orth. 309, Mardin
Orth. 310, IOM, RAS Syr. 34, Paris syr. 62 and Mingana Syr. 8. There
is still a possibility that at some point the manuscript, presumably
from the 9th c., to which our leaf originally belonged to, will be
found.
See
(55)
The Canons of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in the
Manuscript IOM, RAS Syr. 34, in Written Monuments of the Orient
(English version), 1(3), 2016. P. 35-63.
Tempus
destruendi et tempus aedificandi (Eccl 3:3). The
historiography of the Council of Nicaea was dominated for a long
time by the retrospective “master narrative” established
by Athanasius and developed by the ancient Christian historians and
heresiologists. In contrast, during recent centuries it has been
shaped by the deconstruction of this narrative in light of critical
studies. Williams points to Newman as the initiator of modern
scholarship on Nicaea (1833); however, the critical spirit was not
absent from earlier editors and historians, such as Henri de Valois
(+1676) and Bernard de Montfaucon (+1741). In any case, as far as
the sources are concerned, the works of Schwartz and Opitz
undoubtedly marked a milestone (1934). The Urkunden, freed from the
polemical or apologetic context in which they were transmitted,
allowed a new understanding of the sources and prompted a necessary
process of deconstruction of the master narrative, tempus
destruendi. This process has been neither linear nor homogeneous
because abandoning the persistent hermeneutical biases imposed by
the master narrative is a difficult task.
Moreover,
wrong ways of integrating confessional premises into historical
studies have hindered this process. However, the works of authors
such as Bardy, Simonetti, and Hanson have made enormous steps in
rewriting the history of the Council of Nicaea.
Recent
studies have shown the extent to which “Arianism” is a
polemical construction. This is an achievement that scholarship
cannot waive. Yet, at times, the idea of “construction”
has been misunderstood, as if it indicates a narrative that is
nothing more than the fruit of polemical imagination and, therefore,
an object of pure deconstruction, tempus destruendi. Of course, for
example, Alexander transmitted a construction of Arianism; however,
the task of scholars should not just be to “deconstruct”
ancient “constructions,” but also to identify and
“reconstruct” the historical elements that explain the
shape of such a construction. What did Alexander see in the clerics
whom he criticized that moved him to construct such an “Arianism”?
Ancient accounts were not usually created ex nihilo. Therefore, a
programmatic distrust of ancient sources can be just as uncritical
as a naive trust in them. It is not that academic studies should be
less critical; they must be more critical! Scholars should
critically assess their own distrust of sources and their models of
understanding. Indeed, it is impossible to grasp the complexity of
reality with out such models. For this reason, human knowledge,
including scientific works, is a kind of construction. Consequently,
scholars must critically reevaluate both ancient models of
interpretation and their own.
INTRODUCTION
Something
similar could be said about the factors that shape history.
According to the “master narrative,” the ultimate
driving force behind the controversy was the fight of heresy against
orthodoxy. According to this view, the Arians alleged many reasons
for attacking Athanasius, but the real reason behind all their
claims and actions was their hatred of orthodoxy. Their sole purpose
was to introduce impiety into the Church (ἀσέβειαν
εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν
εἰσαγάγωσι).1
In contrast, some modern studies have regarded doctrinal causes with
suspicion and have disclosed to what extent Christian controversies
were shaped not only by theology, but also by politics, power, local
identities, and other factors. Again, this is an accomplishment that
academic works cannot neglect. However, scientific studies should
also critically assess the assumption that theological reasons are
always a pretext that hides other unconfessed motivations. In short,
critical scholars must be self-critical as well. Tempus
destruendi et tempus aedificandi.
An
open and honest dialog between the scholar’s preconceptions
and the evidence is crucial. Without this dialog, scholars risk
projecting into the ancient world our modern categories, to the
point of distrusting systematically the dynamics that are unfamiliar
to our current way of thinking. It is not critical to replace
ancient beliefs with modern beliefs. A self-critical assessment of
our own assumptions allows us to hear the sources and to get in
contact with the richness of what is unfamiliar to us.
This
dialog is complex because it is not possible to approach historical
evidence without a preexisting theoretical model and certain
presuppositions.
A
model is necessary to grasp reality. However, it implies some risks.
A theoretical framework must always be provisional. A fitting model
is one that can grasp reality and is helpful for making sense of
seemingly unrelated historical data. In the same vein, a suitable
working hypothesis is one that solves more problems than it causes.
Instead,
a theoretical framework could become an obstacle for grasping
reality, when it is not open to welcome the anomalies of ancient
sources. Models are a working tool and, therefore, they should be
tentative and provisional.
Theories
must fit reality, and not vice-versa. Scholars who are open to
bearing the mismatch between the model and the historical evidence
can learn from the sources. Otherwise, scholars risk projecting
their presuppositions onto ancient sources. Let me recall a classic
example. All the textual evidence – Greek and Latin –
supports that Arius, in his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia,
declared that the Son is “fully God” (πλήρης
θεός).
However,
as the theoretical framework established that Arius denied the Son’s
divinity, instead of rethink ing the framework, the editors amended
the text. Of course, it is not easy to deal with these anomalies
that witness the unexpected; however, this uncomfortable mismatch
puts the scholar on the edge of knowledge.
This
example shows, in addition, that conceptual models impact not only
doctrinal interpretation of sources, but also the scientific edition
of their texts. The philological and hermeneutical stages are not
strictly successive; they also influence one another. Even those who
work directly with manuscripts are somehow guided by theoretical
presuppositions. Again, critical scholars must be self-critics as
well.
The
1,700th anniversary of Nicaea offers a precious opportunity, that
is, a καιρός, to take a step
forward and revisit this event. Two main reasons foster this task.
First, standard works on Nicaea focus on the so-called Arian
controversy rather than the synod itself and pay more attention to
its reception than to the event. Second, studies on the synod have
not always applied the method that scholars of the 20th century have
developed. In addition, thanks to the efforts of the Athanasius
Werke, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller, Sources
chrétiennes, and other series, almost all the sources appear
in a scientific edition. Accordingly, the present book has two main
purposes: 1) to focus on the Council of Nicaea itself, rather than
its reception, and 2) to apply a ratio interpretandi that observes
the hierarchy of the sources and, therefore, gives effective
priority to contemporary sources over retrospective accounts.
1)
The book focuses on Nicaea, and not exclusively on the “Arian”
crisis; there fore, it intends to address the various topics that
the synod tackled. Accordingly, on the one hand, the book should not
begin with the outbreak of the theological crisis – the most
significant topic of the synod, but not the only one. On the other
hand, it is necessary to trace in the second and third centuries
some disciplinary issues addressed by the canons and the letters of
Nicaea. Therefore, the book includes a first chapter that deals with
the institutional and theological antecedents, including the
development of synodal activity before Nicaea, the relationship
between the episcopate and the school in Alexandria, the Melitian
crisis, the date of Easter, and the Trinitarian discussions that
preceded and shaped the debate addressed by the Council of Nicaea.
The following chapters present in a chronological way the steps of
the events related to the synod, from the outbreak of the “Arian”
controversy to the end of the first phase of the reception of the
Nicene synod. As is explained in chapter 5, the death of Constantine
is regarded as the end of the first step of the reception of the
council.
2)
The first comprehensive historical account of Nicaea is found in the
historical, apologetic and polemical writings of Athanasius of
Alexandria, a participant in the events. He reported the history
according to his own perspective as a staunch adversary of Arius and
a firm supporter of Nicaea. Although his long career was
controversial, his literary activity, travels, political skills and
other factors secured his reputation. Less than ten years after his
death, Gregory of Nazianzus compared him with Christ (or. 21.29,3).
Thus,
from the beginning, Athanasius’ historical writings were
backed by his personal reputation as a saint. Hence, almost all
Christian authors have adopted his narrative. Indeed, Church
historians and heresiologists of the 4th and 5th centuries, such as
Epiphanius, Gelasius, Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret,
transmitted Athanasius’ black-and-white picture of the
controversy. In the West, Rufinus, Sulpicius, and Cassiodorus
adopted the same narrative. Only Hilary of Poitiers provided a quite
independent perspective, but it had much less influence than that of
Athanasius. Therefore, the Athanasian account became the “master
narrative.”5 Only Philostorgius challenged the already
official narrative, yet the imperial reaction against his
perspective resulted in his work being lost; only some fragments
were preserved. Thus, Athanasius became the indisputable hallmark of
Nicene orthodoxy and Arius the arch-heretic: “No other heretic
has been through so thoroughgoing a process of demonization.”6
This process has had lasting hermeneutical consequences because it
produces strong prejudices in ancient and modern readers of the
original sources.
Accordingly,
ancient Christian writers developed, expanded, supplemented and, at
times, disputed this narrative, but always within the framework
established by Athanasius. This situation gives rise to a
hermeneutic challenge. Roughly speaking, scholars who want to
reconstruct the controversy are in a trap. On the one hand, they
need Athanasius as a source; on the other, they need to be free from
Athanasius’ interpretation. Is it possible to escape this
trap? Fortunately, there is a way-out: modern scholarship has
recognized that ancient sources transmit material that has varying
degrees of reliability.
In
general terms, it is possible to distinguish three layers or levels
in the primary sources: the narratives of the historians, the
testimonies of the protagonists, and the documents contemporary to
the events. The last category of sources does not rely on the
Athanasian account.
1)
The narratives are the most immediate level of the historical works
that describe the controversies of the fourth century. They are
accounts written by Christian authors of the late fourth and early
fifth centuries, who did not participate in the events they narrate
and who shaped their works within the Athanasian framework. They are
mainly Gelasius, Epiphanius, Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret,
Philostorgius, and Sulpicius. These authors produced their histories
based on written sources. The problem with these narratives lies in
the difficulty of distinguishing between what the ancient historians
read in the sources and what they elaborated as authors influenced
by the Athanasian account.
2)
The second level is that of the testimonies, which are historical
accounts of the controversies written some years after the events –
with a retrospective viewpoint – by authors who participated
in these events. For the period under study (ca. 304–337),
these authors are mainly Eusebius and Athanasius.
As
they participated in the controversies, they are privileged
witnesses. However, the time elapsed between the events and their
writings, on the one hand, and their engagement in the controversy,
on the other, led them to interpret the events retrospectively and
biasedly. Thus, alongside the evidence, their accounts offer a
retrospective and one-sided interpretation of the conflicts.
Therefore, to assess the historical worth of these testimonies, it
is necessary to consider the perspective of each of these authors.
3)
The most valuable texts are the documents contemporary to the
events, which are transmitted by ancient Christian writers. They are
letters, creeds, canons, theological statements, and imperial
reports. They have been transmitted as quotations, i.e., they are
preserved in other works (traditio indirecta). The main authors
transmitting documents are Eusebius, Athanasius, Hilary, Epiphanius,
and the ancient Church historians. These documents are not free of
bias because their authors were engaged in controversies. However,
because they are contemporary to the events, they do not convey a
retrospective view of the facts, nor are they influenced by
Athanasius’ account.
These
controversial documents have been transmitted by works that are not
neutral, and therefore it is necessary to free them from the
polemical or apologetic framework in which they are embedded. This
is the task undertaken by Fontes Nicaenae Synodi (FNS), the “partner
book” that contains the text and translation of the
contemporary documents.
The
methodology guiding this research consists of 1) distinguishing the
different layers of sources, narratives, testimonies, and documents,
2) giving effective hermeneutical priority to the documents over
retrospective testimonies and narratives, 3) freeing the documents
from the polemical framework in which they are embedded, and 4)
relocating them in their original context.
In
this way, they can be interpreted iuxta propria principia. Of
course, the setting of each document, and especially its chronology,
is a debatable matter (Ch. 2.1). These methodological steps belong
to traditional historicalphilological analysis of ancient sources.
The novelty of this research – if any – is the
systematicity with which these steps are applied. This approach
implies that, for each period, the first reconstruction must be
shaped by the analysis of the contemporary documents; then, this
provisional reconstruction is complemented and confronted with
ancient Christian historians and modern studies. The exception is
chapter 2.3, where the period is reconstructed, as an example,
taking into account the retrospective testimonies and narratives
(master narrative), and then this reconstruction is confronted with
the analysis of the contemporary documents in order to contrast the
two narratives.
The
“master narrative” describes Nicaea as a struggle
between individuals moved by hatred, faith, jealousy and loyalty.
The envy of the devil plays a crucial role in the events, and the
participants are moved by theological reasons, namely, hatred of
orthodoxy or heresy. Modern scholars, however, have shown that,
alongside theology (and philosophy), politics also played a
significant role in the crisis. The “Arian” crisis,
though, was not only an intellectual and political struggle between
individuals but also – and largely – a group conflict.
The controversy, then, has been analyzed through the lenses of
theology, philosophy, and politics, but the approach of the social
sciences has been somehow neglected. Indeed, only particular aspects
of the crisis have been studied using this perspective.7 However, it
is not possible to explain a group phenomenon only in terms of
theology, philosophy, politics, and individual behavior. Hence, to
address the group dimension of the controversies, this research
applies – when it is needed – an appropriate
social-scientific theory to study the Arian crisis, namely, the
social identity theory.
The
fragmentary state of the ancient sources and their – at times
– frustrating scarcity imply that any reconstruction of the
Nicene Council cannot but be hypothetical. As the evidence allows
different levels of certainty, the tenor of the phrases intends to
point out the degree of certainty for each assertion.
Unless
otherwise indicated translations are my own. Some elements of
chapters 2 and 4 have appeared in previous articles, as stated in
the footnotes.
However,
these materials have been thoroughly reconsidered and reworked.
See
Nicaea_325_Reassessing_the_Contemporary.pdf
THE
OLDEST BISHOPS OF TONGEREN-MAASTRICHT.
1 januari 1934 The 7th volume of
the Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques,
commencé sous la direction de Mgr. A. Baudillart, recently
appeared, in which E. de Moreau 1) extensively discusses Belgium.
This precious Dictionnaire, a work of the highest order, is beyond
the reach of most people, and therefore I would like to provide some
excerpts from Moreau's account of the Christianization of Belgium,
specifically of the region under Diocletian, Germania Inferior,
later also called Civitas Tungrorum—because the oldest bishops
of Tongeren-Maastricht are mentioned in it—and thus provide
some information about it from this recent work by a highly
competent author. Those interested can find the sources and
literature consulted by Moreau in the Dictionnaire itself.
[original in French]
When did the new religion appear
in the Meuse Valley? A famous text by Saint Irenaeus speaks of
Christian communities founded in Germany. The Bishop of Lyon is
certainly, in this case, a primary witness. But even if we can
deduce from this text, with Harnack, that organized churches, that
is to say, churches with a bishop, must have existed at the time
this Church Father was writing, around 185, in Cologne, Mainz,
Strasbourg (and a fortiori, in Trier, Belgium [Germany!]), nothing
similar can be said for Tongeren.
Harnack, however, considers this
city to have had a bishopric before Constantine. "In any case,"
he writes, "it has a bishop, shortly after Constantine, in the
person of Servatius... and the fact that the Bishop of Cologne,
Maternus, also appears as the first Bishop of Tongeren, can
certainly be interpreted as meaning that the bishopric was founded
under Maternus."
The question of the origin of the
Bishopric of Tongeren will have to be addressed specifically in
connection with this entry. A legend, which appears to have been
formed in a biography dating back probably to the first half of the
10th century, portrays Maternus as a subdeacon contemporary with
Eucherius, Bishop, and Valerius, Deacon, who were supposedly sent by
Saint Peter to Gaul and Germania. Maternus is said to have succeeded
these figures in the episcopal see of Trier, which he is said to
have occupied for forty years. From the second half of the 10th
century onward, the episcopal list of Tongeren mentions Maternus as
the first bishop of that city.
Saint Maternus, whom legend has
made a contemporary of Saint Peter, actually lived much later.
Historical documents mention him in 313 and 314 as Bishop of
Cologne. It seems impossible, given the current state of research,
to determine whether the Diocese of Tongeren was created before
Saint Servatius.
Saint Servatius certainly ruled
the vast diocese corresponding to the Civitas Tungrorum, which
initially comprised eastern Belgium, except for the tip of
Luxembourg, and perhaps Toxandria, then parts of northern Brabant,
Dutch Limburg, the Rhineland, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
Little reliable historical information has been preserved concerning
this first, and certainly authentic, bishop of ancient Belgium. Let
us simply recall what little we have here. Saint Athanasius
mentions, no later than 346, Servatius, undoubtedly Servatius of
Tongeren, among the bishops who supported his cause at the Council
of Sardica. The authenticity of the list on which Servatius appears
can be accepted even if the Council of Cologne of 346 must be
rejected. We also know from Athanasius, the great Bishop of
Alexandria, that Servatius, along with another bishop, was sent as
an ambassador by the usurper Magnentius to Emperor Constantius (350
or 351). Eight or nine years later, at the Council of Rimini (359),
Servatius of Tongeren, along with Phebadius of Agen, was one of the
most staunch defenders of Nicene orthodoxy, as represented by Saint
Athanasius. Sulpicius Severus tells us the circumstances and extent
to which they yielded to the threats of Prefect Taurus. Gregory of
Tours, however, mentions Servatius twice. In his *Historia
Francorum*, he recounts, based on oral tradition, that a bishop of
Tongeren, Aravatius, to be identified with Servatius, foresaw the
future invasion of the Huns, but failed to obtain from Saint Peter,
during a pilgrimage to Rome, a promise that this calamity would be
averted for his people. Finally, abandoning his episcopal city, he
went to die in Maastricht. It is certain that he was buried there,
as Gregory of Tours informs us in *Gloria confessorum*.
With the end of the 4th century,
or the beginning of the 5th, a very dark period began for Belgium,
lasting more than a century. It ended after the conquest of Gaul by
Clovis. The evangelization of Belgium then had to be resumed, and,
according to the common view among historians, as if nothing had
been done in the 3rd and 4th centuries.
What was the size of the Christian
population in the eastern part of Belgium in the early years of the
5th century? No literary text allows us to answer this question.
Furthermore, archaeological discoveries have yielded very little
information for the period in question.
We are completely lacking in
information about the religious history of Belgium in the 5th
century. Only the episcopal list of Tongeren mentions seven names
between Saint Servatius and Falco (before 533). But Hériger,
who is the first to provide them, has no further details to add
about them. One might even wonder if they are all the names of
bishops of Tongeren.
For the diocese of Tongeren, we
begin again (after the invasions) to have reliable information about
it, starting with Bishop Falco, to whom Saint Remigius addressed a
letter. This document predates 533, the year of Saint Remigius's
death. Falco's successor, Domitian, is mentioned in connection with
the councils of Clermont (535) and Orléans (549). The
transfer of the residence from Tongeren to Maastricht is attributed
to Monulf, who ascended the episcopal see after Domitian. However,
this assertion rests on a misinterpreted text by Gregory of Tours.
2) There is every reason to believe that, Tongeren having been
destroyed by the Vandal invasion of 406, the successors of Saint
Servatius no longer resided there.
(Paganism persisted for a long
time.) The literary sources, which delay the complete conversion of
Belgium until around the end of the 7th or the beginning of the 8th
century, are in agreement with the archaeological discoveries. It
was only at the end of the 7th or the beginning of the 8th century
that cross pattée, chains ending in small crosses, rings with
Christian monograms, and belt buckles depicting, in a very crude
manner, Daniel in the lions' den, began to appear, rather timidly,
in funerary objects. But it must be added that in the majority of
the oldest Merovingian necropolises, one finds no more pagan than
Christian symbols.
In the 3rd and 4th centuries, the
Roman gods, particularly Mercury, Mars, Apollo, Jupiter, and
Hercules, had absorbed the ancient Gallic gods: Teutates, Esus,
Belenus, Taran, and Ogmios. Some male deities of the Belgae resisted
better, for example, Entarabus (Treveri). It was primarily the
Celtic female deities whose names were preserved in the Roman
period. It is undeniable that Venus, Diana, Minerva, Juno, and
others were still highly venerated. However, alongside them, one
often encounters in inscriptions and figurative monuments Sirona,
companion of Bellenus; Epona, goddess of horses; Rosmerta,
associated with Mercury; and local goddesses such as Arduina,
Vihansa (Tongres), and others. The Belgians showed a special
devotion to the Matres, groups of goddesses of varying numbers who
were believed to follow and protect their followers everywhere.
Among the imported Eastern cults,
the most attested in ancient Belgium is that of the Phrygian gods,
Cybele and Attis.
It seems that the paganism of the
6th and 7th centuries was an amalgamation of Germanic and
Gallo-Roman idolatry. Roman gods and goddesses such as Jupiter,
Mars, Mercury, Juno, Diana, and Venus appear to have remained more
popular than Germanic gods.
The complete eradication of
paganism in Belgium was partly the work of St. Amand, St. Lambert,
and St. Hubertus, bishops of Maastricht; St. Amand for only three
years, from 646 to 649.
J. BLONDEN.
1) E. de Moreau S.J., professor at
the S.I. theological college in Louvain. 2) The complete texts are
included in "De straatnamen van Maastricht" (The Street
Names of Maastricht), by J. L. Blonden (Maastricht 1933), no. 208.
3) The seven names between
Servatius and Falco are: Agricolaus, Ursicinus, Designatus, Renatus,
Supplicius, Quirillus, and Eucharius.
4) Heringer, the most ancient
historiographer of Belgium, died at the monastery of Lobbes, but he
had been a monk in 990.
5) Eucharius is usually mentioned
as Falco's immediate successor, before Domitian.
See
also
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/tijdschriften/view?identifier=dts%3A2435002%3Ampeg21%3A0006&query=oudste+bisschoppen+tongeren+maastricht&coll=dts&page=2&maxperpage=50&sortfield=date
Maternus
(c. 285–September 14, 315 AD), also known as Maternus II
was
the first known bishop of Cologne, reportedly also the third bishop
of Trier, and founder of the diocese of Tongeren. He is venerated as
a saint in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. The Basilica
of Saint Maternus in Walcourt, Belgium was allegedly founded by him.
Life
The Basilica of Saint Maternus in
Walcourt, Belgium was founded by Maternus, according to legend.
According to Eusebius, Bishop
Maternus was active during the period of the Donatist controversy.
In May 313, Maternus and other bishops were summoned to Rome by
Emperor Constantine to consult regarding the status of Bishop
Caecilianus of Carthage. He also took part in the Synod of Arles in
314. While a legend grew in Trier concerning Maternus, a popular
cult developed in Cologne.
The Bollandists and others date
his Episcopate to the fourth century. He was the first Apostle of
Alsace, and successfully promoted the spread of Christianity in that
Province and in Western Germany.
Until the discovery of the
Frankfurt silver inscription, dated to between 230 and 270,
Maternus' participation in the Synod of Rome in 313 was the earliest
reliable evidence for Christianity north of the Alps.
Legend
According to legend, he was a
follower of Saint Eucharius, the first bishop of Trier. Eucharius
was sent to Gaul by Saint Peter as bishop, together with the deacon
Valerius and the subdeacon Maternus, to preach the Gospel. They came
to the Rhine and to Ellelum in Alsace, where Maternus died. His two
companions hastened back to St. Peter and begged him to restore the
dead man to life. St. Peter gave his pastoral staff to Eucharius,
and, upon being touched with it, Maternus, who had been in his grave
for forty days, returned to life. The Gentiles were then converted
in large numbers. After founding many churches the three companions
went to Trier where the work of evangelization progressed so rapidly
that Eucharius chose that city for his episcopal residence.
Maternus assisted Valerius for
fifteen years and then succeeded him as bishop of Trier for the next
forty years. While assisting Valerius, he had already founded the
dioceses of Cologne and Tongeren. He also founded a church on the
site of a Roman temple which later became Cologne Cathedral. The
staff of Saint Peter, with which he had been raised to life, was
preserved in Cologne till the end of the tenth century when the
upper half was presented to Trier, and was afterwards taken to
Prague by Emperor Charles IV.
The legend is from the ninth
century and appears to have been intended to attest to the ancient
establishment of the see of Trier, and therefore seniority over
other dioceses in Germany.
Frankfurt
silver inscription
The Frankfurt silver inscription
is an early Christian silver amulet from the third century,
originating from the Roman settlement of Nida. The amulet was
discovered in 2018 during excavations at a Roman-period burial
ground in Frankfurt-Praunheim and is now part of the collections of
the Archaeological Museum Frankfurt am Main. In 2024, the rolled-up
silver foil was digitally "unrolled" and deciphered with
the help of computed tomography. The inscription is considered one
of the earliest material testimonies of Christianity north of the
Alps and provides valuable insights into early Christian devotional
practices in the border regions of the Latin West.
[...] Transcription and
translation are difficult because the inscription is only accessible
digitally via CT. This makes it difficult to identify the type and
direction of the incisions, which are important for deciphering
individual letters. In addition, the text has large gaps, especially
at the beginning of lines, which are further complicated by the
uneven size of the letters in Latin cursive.<[4]: 29
Santiago Guijarro suggests the following reading of the
text:[4]: 38 [4]: 29–37 [5][b]
Transcript Translation
1 In nomine sancti Tit̅i. In
the name of Saint Titus
2 Agios, agios, agios. Saint,
Saint, Saint
3 In nomine I͞H X͞P Dei
f(ilii), In the name of Jesus Christ Son of God.
4 mundi dominus, The Lord of the
world
5 viribus omnibus with all his
might
6 incurs ionibus oponit. faces
attacks.
7 Deus valetudinibus God, to the
diseases
8 salvis accessum healed grants
access
9 praestat. Haec salus tueat This
salvation (this amulet?) may protect
10 hominem, qui se the man who
himself
11 dedit voluntati surrendered to
the will
12 Domini I͞H X͞P ti Dei
f(ilii). of the Lord Jesus Christ Son of God.
13 Quoniam I͞H X͞Po For
before Jesus Christ
14 omnes genua flec- everyone
knees shall
15 tent, caelestes, bend, those of
heavens,
16 terrestres et those of the
earth and
17 inferi, et omnis lin- those
underneath and all tongue
18 gua confiteatur. confess.
See
Frankfurt
silver inscription - Wikipedia
DE OUDSTE
BISSCHOPPEN VAN TONGEREN-MAASTRICHT.
Pas
geleden verscheen het 7e deel van Dictionnaire d'histoire et de
géographie ecclésiastiques, commencé sous
la direction de Mgr. A. Baudillart, waarin E. de Moreau 1) Belgique
uitvoerig behandelt. Die kostbare Dictionnaire, een werk van
den eersten rang, valt buiten het bereik van de meesten en daarom
wil ik hier uit Moreau's verhaal van de christianiseering van
België, bepaaldelijk van de streek onder Diocletianus Germania
Inferior, later ook Civitas Tungrorum genoemd —
omdat de oudste bisschoppen van Tongeren-Maastricht hierbij vermeld
worden — eenige uittreksels geven, dus eenige mededeelingen
daaromtrent doen uit dat recent geschrift van een zeer bevoegde. De
door Moreau geraadpleegde bronnen en literatuur kunnen de
belanghebbenden in den Dictionnaire zelf vinden.
Quand
la nouvelle religion apparaît-elle dans la vallée de la
Meuse? Un texte célèbre de saint Irénée
parle de chrétientés fondées en Germanie.
L'évêque de Lyon est certainement, dans le cas présent,
un témoin de premier ordre. Mais même si 1'on peut
déduire de ce texte, avec Harnack, que des Eglises
organisées, c'est-a-dire pourvues d'un évêque,
devaient exister au moment où écrit ce Père de
1'Eglise, vers 185, a Cologne, a Mayence, a Strasbourg (et a
fortiori, a Trèves, en Belgique), rien de semblable ne peut
être affirmé pour Tongres.
Harnack
considère cependant cette ville comme dotée d'un
évêché avant Constantin.
"En
tous cas, écrit-il, elle possède un évêque,
peu après Constantin, dans la personne de Servais... et le
fait que l'évêque de Cologne, Ma terne, apparaît
aussi comme premier évêque de Tongres, peut
certainement être interprété de cette manière
que 1'évêché a été fondé
sous Materne."
La
question de 1'origine de 1'évêché de Tongres
devra être traitée ex professo a propos de ce mot. Une
légende, qui apparaît formée dans une biographie
remontant sans doute a la première moitié du 10e
siècle, a fait de Materne un sous-diacre contemporain
d'Euchère, évêque, et de Valère, diacre,
envoyés, parait-il, par saint Pierre en Gaule et en Germanie.
Materne aurait succédé a ces personnages sur le siège
épiscopal de Trèves qu'il aurait occupé durant
quarante années. Dès la seconde moitié du 10e
siècle, la liste épiscopale de Tongres mentionne
Materne comme premier évêque de cette ville.
Saint
Materne, dont la légende a fait un contemporain de saint
Pierre, vécut en réalité beaucoup plus tard.
Les documents historiques nous le signalent, en 313 et 314, comme
évêque de Cologne. II nous parait impossible, dans
1'état actuel des recherches, de déterminer si le
diocèse de Tongres fut créé antérieurement
a saint Servais.
Saint
Servais dirigea certainement le vaste diocèse correspondant a
la Civitas Tungrorum et qui comprenait d'abord la Belgique
oriëntale, sauf l'extrémité du Luxembourg, et
peut-être la Toxandrie, ensuite des parties du Brabant
septentrional, du Limbourg hollandais, de la Prusse rhénane
et du grand duché de Luxembourg. Peu de renseignements
historiques surs nous ont été conservés au
sujet de ce premier évêque certainement authentique de
1'ancienne Belgique. Contentons nous de les rappeler ici.
Saint
Athanase cite, au plus tard en 346, Sarbatios, sans aucun doute,
Servais de Tongres, parmi les évêques qui adhérèrent
a sa cause a 1'occasion du concile de Sardique. L'authenticité
de la liste ou figure Servais peut être admise même s'il
faut rejeter le concile de Cologne de 346. Nous connaissons aussi
par Athanase, le grand évêque d'Alexandrie, que
Servais, en compagnie d'un autre évêque, fut envoyé
en ambassade par 1'usurpateur Magnence à 1'empereur
Constance (350 ou 351). Huit ou neuf ans plus tard, au concile de
Rimini (359), Servais de Tongres fut, avec Phebadius d'Agen. L'un
des plus tenaces défenseurs de 1'orthodoxie nicéenne
représentée par saint Athanase. Sulpice-Sévère
nous raconte dans quelles circonstances et jusqu’à quel
point ils cédèrent aux menaces du préfet
Taurus. Enfin, Grégoire de Tours 2) parle a deux reprises de
Servais. Dans l'Historia Francorum il raconte, d'après
la tradition orale, qu'un évêque de Tongres, Aravatius,
à identifier avec
Servais, prévit la future invasion des Huns (sic), n'obtint
pas de saint Pierre, dans un pèlerinage a Rome, que ce
malheur fut évité a son peuple et, enfin, abandonnant
sa ville épiscopale, alla mourir a Maestricht. II est certain
qu'il y fut enterré, comme Grégoire de Tours nous
1'apprend dans Gloria confessorum.
Avec
la fin du 4e siècle, ou au début du 5e, commence pour
la Belgique une période fort sombre et qui dure plus d'un
siècle. Elle se termine après la conquête de la
Gaule par Clovis. L'évangélisation de la Belgique dut
alors être reprise et, selon la manière commune de voir
des historiens, comme si rien n'avait été fait aux 3e
et 4e siècles.
Quelle
était l'importance de la population chrétienne dans la
partie oriëntale de la Belgique, vers les premières
années du 5e siècle? Aucun texte littéraire ne
nous permet de répondre a cette question. D'autre part, les
découvertes archéologiques ne nous ont livré
que peu de choses pour la période envisagée.
Nous
sommes totalement dépourvus de renseignements sur 1'histoire
religieuse de la Belgique au 5e siècle. Seule la liste
épiscopale de Tongres signale sept noms 3) entre saint
Servais et Falco (avant 533). Mais Hériger, 4) qui est le
premier a nous les donner, n'a aucun détail a ajouter à
leur sujet. On peut même se demander s'ils sont tous des noms
d'évêques de Tongres.
Pur
le diocèse de Tongres, nous recommençons (après
les invasions) à avoir des renseignements surs a son sujet, à
partir de l'évêque Falco, à qui saint Remi a
adressé une lettre. Ce document est antérieur a 533,
année de la mort de saint Remi. Le successeur de Falco,
Domitien, 5) est mentionné a propos des conciles de Clermont
(535) et d'Orléans (549). A Monulphe, qui monta sur le siège
épiscopal après Domitien, on attribue le transfert de
la résidence de Tongres a Maestricht. Mais cette affirmation
repose sur un texte mal interprété de Grégoire
de Tours. 2) II y a tout lieu de croire que Tongres ayant été
détruite par 1'invasion vandale de 406, les successeurs de
saint Servais n'y résidèrent plus.
(Le
paganisme a persisté longtemps.) Les sources littéraires
qui retardent jusque vers la fin du 7e ou le début du 8e
siècle la conversion complète de la Belgique sont bien
d 'accord avec les découvertes archéologiques. Ce
n'est guère qu'a la fin du 7e ou au commencement du 8e
qu'apparaissent, assez timidement, dans les mobiliers funéraires,
les croix pattées, les chaînettes terminées par
de petites croix, les bagues a monogramme chrétien, les
boucles de ceinturon représentant, d'une manière très
grossière, Daniël dans la fosse aux lions. Mais il faut
ajouter que, dans la majorité des plus anciennes nécropoles
mérovingiennes, on ne rencontre pas plus de signes paiens que
de signes chrétiens.
Aux
3e et 4e siècles les dieux romains, particulièrement
Mercure, Mars, Apollon, Jupiter et Hercule, avaient absorbé
les anciens dieux gaulois: Teutatès, Esus, Belenus, Taran et
Ogmios. Certaines divinités masculines des Belges résistèrent
mieux, par exemple Entarabus (Trévires). Ce furent surtout
les divinités féminines celtiques dont les noms se
conservèrent à 1'époque romaine. II est
incontestable que Vénus, Diane, Minerve, Junon, etc. sont
toujours très honorées. Cependant, a coté
d'elles, on rencontre souvent, dans les inscriptions et les
monuments figurés, Sirona, compagne de Bellenus; Epona,
déesse des chevaux; Rosmerta, associée a Mercure, et
des déesses locales comme Arduina, Vihansa (Tongres), etc.
Les Belges témoignaient une dévotion spéciale
aux Matres, groupes de déesses de chiffre varié et qui
étaient supposées suivre partout et protéger
leurs fidèles.
Parmi
les cultes orientaux importés, le plus attesté pour
1'ancienne Belgique est celui des dieux phrygiens, Cybèle et
Attis.
II
semble bien que le paganisme du 6e et du 7e siècle ait été
un amalgame de 1'idolâtrie germanique et de la gallo-romaine.
Les dieux et les déesses romaines comme Jupiter, Mars,
Mercure, Junon, Diane, Vénus paraissent être restés
plus populaires que les dieux germaniques.
De
algeheele uitroeiing van het heidendom in België is mede het
werk geweest van St. Amandus, St. Lambertus en St. Hubertus,
bisschoppen van Maastricht; St. Amandus slechts gedurende drie
jaren, van 646 tot 649.
J.
BLONDEN.
1)
E. de Moreau S.J., professeur au collége théologique
S.I., à Louvain.
2)
De volledige teksten zijn opgenomen in De straatnamen van
Maastricht, door J. L. Blonden (Maastr. 1933), no. 208.
3)
De zeven namen tusschen Servatius en Falco zijn: Agricolaus,
Ursicinus, Designatus, Renatus, Supplicius, Quirillus en Euchenus.
4)
Heringer, le plus ancien historiographe de la Belgique, mourut au
monastère de Lobbes, dont il avait été élu
abbe en 990.
5)
Gewoonlijk wordt Eucharius als de onmiddelijke opvolger van Falco
genoemd, vóór Domitianus.
Zie
ook
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/tijdschriften/view?identifier=dts%3A2435002%3Ampeg21%3A0006&query=oudste+bisschoppen+tongeren+maastricht&coll=dts&page=2&maxperpage=50&sortfield=date
Fifty
Bibles of Constantine
It
is speculated that this commission may have provided motivation for
the development of the canon lists and that Codex Sinaiticus and
Codex Vaticanus are possible surviving examples of these Bibles.
There is no evidence among the records of the First Council of
Nicaea of any determination on the canon; however, Jerome, in his
Prologue to Judith, makes the claim that the Book of Judith was
"found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the
number of the Sacred Scriptures". [circa 330]
See
for example: Great uncial codices
Constantine
I (reigned 306–337) adopted Christianity as his system of
belief after the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312. His victorious
legions fought under the "labarum", a standard with the
first two Greek letters of Christ's name (XP).
In
313 the Edict of Milan legalised Christianity alongside other
religions allowed in the Roman Empire. In 325 the First Council of
Nicaea signalled consolidation of Christianity under an orthodoxy
endorsed by Constantine, and though this did not make other
Christian groups outside the adopted definition illegal, the
dissenting Arian bishops were initially exiled. But Constantine
reinstated Arius just before the heresiarch died in 336 and exiled
the Orthodox Athanasius of Alexandria from 335 to 337. In 380
Emperor Theodosius I made Christianity the Roman Empire's official
religion (see State church of the Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire and
the Goths) and did enforce the edict. In 392 Theodosius passed
legislation prohibiting all pagan cultic worship.
During
the 4th century, however, there was no real unity between church and
state: in the course of the Arian controversy, Arian or semi-Arian
emperors exiled leading Trinitarian bishops, such as Athanasius
(335, 339, 356, 362, 365) Hilary of Poitiers (356), and Gregory of
Nyssa (374); just as leading Arian and Anomoean theologians such as
Aëtius (fl. 350) also suffered exile.
Towards
the end of the century, Bishop Ambrose of Milan made the powerful
Emperor Theodosius I (reigned 379–395) do penance for several
months after the massacre of Thessalonica (390) before admitting him
again to the Eucharist. On the other hand, only a few years later,
Chrysostom, who as bishop of Constantinople criticized the excesses
of the royal court, was eventually banished (403) and died (407)
while traveling to his place of exile.
See:
Constantinian shift
The
Fifty Bibles of Constantine
were
Bibles in the original Greek language commissioned in 331 by
Constantine I and prepared by Eusebius of Caesarea. They were made
for the use of the Bishop of Constantinople in the growing number of
churches in that very new city. Eusebius quoted the letter of
commission in his Life of Constantine, and it is the only surviving
source from which we know of the existence of the Bibles.
It
is speculated that this commission may have provided motivation for
the development of the canon lists and that Codex Sinaiticus and
Codex Vaticanus are possible surviving examples of these Bibles.
There is no evidence among the records of the First Council of
Nicaea of any determination on the canon; however, Jerome, in his
Prologue to Judith, makes the claim that the Book of Judith was
"found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the
number of the Sacred Scriptures".
According
to Eusebius, Constantine I wrote him in his letter:
I
have thought it expedient to instruct your Prudence to order fifty
copies of the sacred Scriptures, the provision and use of which you
know to be most needful for the instruction of the Church, to be
written on prepared parchment in a legible manner, and in a
convenient, portable form, by professional transcribers thoroughly
practised in their art.
About
accomplishing the Emperor's demand:
Such
were the emperor's commands, which were followed by the immediate
execution of the work itself, which we sent him in magnificent and
elaborately bound volumes of a threefold and fourfold form.
This
is the usual way in which Eusebius' text is translated, but there
are more possibilities, because the phrase "ἐν
πολυτελῶς
ἠσκημένοις
τεύχεσιν τρισσὰ
καὶ τετρασσὰ
διαπεμψάντων
ἡμῶν" has many meanings:
Three
or four codices were prepared at a time – Kirsopp Lake and
Bernard de Montfaucon;
Codices
were sent in three or four boxes – F. A. Heinichen;
Codices
were prepared in with three or four folios – Scrivener;
Text
of the codices was written in three or four columns per page –
Tischendorf, Gebhardt, and Gregory, Kirsopp Lake;
Codices
were sent by threes or fours.
Some
codices contained three gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) but others
included four gospels (including John) - Eduard Schwartz.
Athanasius
of Alexandria referred to another request of producing Bible
manuscripts: "I sent to him volumes containing the holy
Scriptures, which he had ordered me to prepare for him".
Athanasius could have received this request between 337-339.
Constantin
von Tischendorf, discoverer of Codex Sinaiticus, believed that
Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were among these fifty Bibles prepared by
Eusebius in Caesarea. According to him, they were written with three
(as Vaticanus) or four columns per page (as Sinaiticus).
Tishendorf's view was supported by Pierre Batiffol.
Frederick
Henry Ambrose Scrivener rejected Tischendorf's speculation because
of differences between the two manuscripts. In Sinaiticus, the text
of the Gospels is divided according to the Ammonian Sections with
references to the Eusebian Canons, but Vaticanus used the older
system of division. Vaticanus was prepared in a format of 5 folios
in one quire, but Sinaiticus had 8 folios. According to Scrivener,
Eusebian Bibles contained three or four folios per quire (Scrivener
used a Latin version of Valesius). Scrivener stated that the
Eusebian is unclear and should not be used for a doubtful theory.
Westcott
and Hort argued the order of biblical books on the Eusebian list of
the canonical books, quoted by Eusebius in "Ecclesiastical
History" (III, 25), is different from every surviving
manuscript. Probably none of the 50 copies survive today.
Caspar
René Gregory believed that Vaticanus and Sinaiticus were
written in Caesarea, and they could belong to the Eusebian fifty.
According
to Victor Gardthausen Sinaiticus is younger than Vaticanus by at
least 50 years.
Kirsopp
Lake states "copies of three and four columns" is
grammatically sound, but there appears not to be good evidence for
this technical use of the words. "Sending them by threes of
fours" is the most attractive, but there is no evidence that
τρισσα can denote "three at a
time". Regarding "in three or four columns per page,"
there is only one known manuscript written in that way –
Sinaiticus. Sinaiticus has a curious spelling of the word κραβαττος
as κραβακτος;
Sinaiticus spells Ισραηλειτης
as Ισδραηλειτης,
Vaticanus as Ιστραηλειτης;
these forms have been regarded as Latin, and they can find in papyri
from Egypt. There is no other known Greek district in which these
forms were used. The argument for a Caesarean origin of these two
manuscripts is much weaker than Egyptian.
According
to Heinrich Schumacher, Eusebius instead prepared fifty
lectionaries, not Bibles.
Skeat
argued that Sinaiticus was a first attempt to produce a full Bible
in fulfillment of Constantine's order but was abandoned before
completion in favor of a more compact form (then languishing in
Caesarea until salvaged in the sixth century), while Vaticanus was
one of the fifty Bibles actually delivered to Constantinople.
Kurt
Aland, Bruce M. Metzger, Bart D. Ehrman doubt that Sinaiticus and
Vaticanus were copied by Eusebius on the Constantine order.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifty_Bibles_of_Constantine
The
Rubrics of the First Book of Lactantius Firmianus's
On
the Divine Institutes Against the Pagans Begin
This
very rare work by Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius is one of
the first books printed in Italy and the first dated Italian
imprint. It was produced by the German typographers Conrad Sweynheym
and Arnold Pannartz, who established a printing press in 1465 at the
Benedictine abbey of Subiaco, near Rome. According to the colophon,
the book was completed "In the year of Our Lord 1465, in the
second year of the papacy of Paul II, the thirteenth indiction and
the last day but two of the month of October. In the venerable
monastery of Subiaco". Sweynheym and Pannartz moved to Rome in
1467 and by 1475 had printed 50 books, including works by church
fathers and classical Roman authors. This volume contains the seven
books of Lactantius’s most important work, Divinarum
institutionum libri VII (The divine institutions), and two minor
works by the same author. Born in North Africa late in the third
century AD, Lactantius was a teacher of rhetoric who, after his
conversion, wrote works patterned after classical models that
explained Christianity in ways intended to appeal to educated Romans
still practicing the traditional religions of their empire. Written
between 303 and 311, Divinarum institutionum argues the futility of
pagan belief and the logic and truth of Christianity. The beginning
of the volume contains a table of nine explanatory commentaries
introducing the texts that follow. Throughout most of the book, the
first letters of paragraphs are in red or blue, and the beginnings
of chapters are handwritten in red. Initial capital letters
illuminated with gold leaf open each of the nine books within the
work. The volume was bound in gold-tooled red morocco leather in the
middle of the 19th century.
https://www.wdl.org/en/item/4172/
Vervolging
en de kunst van het tussen de regels schrijven:
De vita beata, Lactantius en de Grote
Christenvervolging
Pastristici
en historici hebben tot nu toe geen aandacht gehad voor Boek 7 (De
vita beata) van de Divinae Institutiones van Lactantius. Dat boek,
geschreven tussen 306 en 310, lijkt een pastiche van
eindtijd-profetieën. Maar indien men het als een soort ex
eventu profetie situeert in de ruimere context van de kritiek van
Porphyrius van Tyr op het Boek Daniël, blijken de aanvallen op
de twee regerende "beesten" te verwijzen naar de Keizers
Diocletianus en Galerius, die zonet de "Grote
Christenvervolging" hadden ingezet. In lijn hiermee kan men
bovendien suggereren dat de "goddelijke koning" die de
wereld zal redden en zijn alleenheerschappij zal vestigen voor een
nieuw millennium niemand anders is dan Constantijn, die sinds 306
het noordwestelijke deel van het Rijk regeerde.
http://newadvent.org/fathers/0701.htm
https://www.wdl.org/en/item/4172/view/1/9/
Persecution
and the Art of Writing between the Lines: De vita beata, Lactantius,
and the Great Persecution
Elizabeth
Depalma Digeser
https://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_2014_num_92_1_8546?q=diocletianus+edictum
THE
RELICS OF THE HOLY SUFFERING.
March
22, 1899 God's goodness has wanted to preserve for us, as a memorial
of the bitter suffering of the Savior, numerous relics: cross-wood,
crown of thorns, column of scourging, etc.
To
a certain extent, that wood of shame and those instruments of
torture have shared in the glorification that was bestowed upon the
scourged and crucified Jesus: for centuries they have been venerated
by millions as the most precious treasures and handed down with the
most sacred care. Some further details about these remarkable relics
will be heard with interest, especially in these days.
It
took three centuries before the most important relic, the
cross-wood, came into the possession of the faithful. All that had
served to execute the three death sentences had been buried near
Mount Calvary; and in order to make it impossible for Christians
even to visit these holy places, a temple had been built over them
in honour of Venus. The desire for possession of the sacred ground
and the relics hidden therein remained, however, alive; and as soon
as the period of persecution was ended, the Emperor Constantine, who
had learned the power of the cross in his victory over Maxentius,
had the temple demolished and the relics exhumed.
Pious
tradition relates to us the circumstances of this finding of the
cross. Helena, the mother of Constantine, is said to have received
from God himself, in a dream vision, the command to seek the relics.
The task was certainly difficult, but the pious empress spared
nothing, spared neither effort nor expense, and even came to
Jerusalem to conduct the investigations in person. She saw her
efforts rewarded. The cave of the Holy Sepulchre was found, and a
little to the east of it the three crosses, nails and inscription.
The latter lay loose, so that there was no sure sign to distinguish
the cross of the murderers from that of the Savior. However, they
firmly trusted that God would help them in this also; and on the
advice of Macarius, the bishop of Jerusalem, the crosses were
brought to a terminally ill woman in the city. In the presence of
the empress and a large crowd of people, she was allowed to touch
the crosses. She reached out her hands to two in vain, but when she
touched the third, a miracle of God suddenly restored her to health.
Where
would the precious relic be preserved from now on, was now the
question. Jerusalem could certainly lay claim to that honor, but the
emperor, and the whole West, were also eager for that treasure, and
so we see that it was immediately divided. A part of it was sent to
Constantine; the largest, however, remained provisionally in
Jerusalem, where it was preserved, set in silver, in the Basilica,
which was erected by Macarius above the Holy Sepulchre.
When
the cross was begun to be divided still further, cannot be
determined precisely. Probably, however, one could not have resisted
for long the desire of so many to possess a portion, however small,
of the holy wood. The ecclesiastical writers of the end of the 4th
century at least already tell us how in their time those particles,
set in gold casings or capsules, were worn by men and women as
precious things around neck and breast; how fortunate the Christian
communities considered themselves when they had such a relief in
their midst, and how they then often bore witness to their pious
reverence by building a separate chapel or church. Up to our time,
this division into ever smaller particles has continued, so that now
most churches possess such a relic. Quite large pieces are in the
possession of the church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem in Rome, the
Notre Dame of Paris and the Notre-Dame of Bruges.
In
the great number of these relics unbelievers have found a reason to
suspect their authenticity. Already Erasmus mocked the
inexhaustibility of the relics, which made one suppose a cross as
large as a warship. Completely wrongly, however. Most particles are
no larger than 1 to 2 cubic millimeters, and now an accurate
calculation has shown that the many thousands of pieces together
would only form a piece of wood of 9 or 10 million cubic mm. The
cross now had a length of about 3 or 4 m (it must have stood at
least 3/4 m in the ground); the crossbeam will have been about 2 m,
and if one now calculates the width at 12 and the thickness at 8 cm,
then the cross would certainly have had a content of 50 to 60
million cubic m. Even if three quarters had escaped attention in
calculating the particles, the large number would not have presented
the slightest difficulty.
Near
the cross were also found the nails that had pierced Jesus' hands
and feet. These nails were said to have been sent to the emperor,
who had one put in the bridle of his horse, and one in his helmet,
to fight in war always under God's protection. A third nail is said
to have been thrown into the Adriatic Sea by Helena (or perhaps only
immersed in it), to calm a violent storm. So tells us a reliable
tradition, but what happened to it after that, we cannot find out.
Probably, however, they did not stay long in Constantinople, but
were soon taken to the West. There the so-called nail of the Iron
Crown of Italy has acquired its greatest fame. This crown, with
which the emperors were crowned in the Middle Ages, which Napoleon
also put on his head in 1805, when he had himself crowned as King of
Italy, is still kept at Monza near Milan. The actual golden crown,
which consists of six pieces, is held together by a strip of iron,
and according to the age-old, very credible tradition, the iron of
one of the nails is said to have been forged for that purpose.
Another nail is preserved in the Basilica of the Holy Cross of
Jerusalem in Rome. This one is 12 cm long and 8.5 mm thick at the
wide end. (With the point it would have a length of about 16 cm) It
is square and the head, which is riveted around it, has a somewhat
hat-shaped shape. The nail preserved in Trier has much in common
with that of Rome.
Many
other cities boast of having nails, and because of the large number
one would almost conclude that there is a certain pious deception.
Yet this is absolutely not necessary. How can this be explained? We
know that small parts of nails, even a little filing, were already
considered a treasure. Such particles or filings were then sometimes
placed in imitation nails, as in a reliquary: and such an imitation
nail, which then contained at least a part of a real nail, was also
considered a treasure and venerated. The same church of the Holy
Cross in Rome possesses another remarkable relic, namely an
important part of the inscription on the cross. It is a small plank
full of worm-marks, of oak or poplar wood. It is 235 mm long and 130
wide. The parts of the Latin and Greek inscription are clearly
visible, while from above, where the plank is broken off, some hooks
and lines can be seen, which resemble the lower parts of Hebrew
letters. The middle one the Greek word Nazarenous, the lower one the
Latin Nazarenus Re. (The x of rex = king has been omitted.) The
letters are little hollowed out in the plank; they are red on a
white background, and as they have a size of 28 to 30 mm, they must
have been clearly legible to the witnesses of the crucifixion. It is
peculiar that the letters, according to the Eastern writing method,
are placed from right to left, so that, as in mirror writing, they
appear reversed. Calculated from this fragment, the entire
inscription must have had the size of 65 by 20 cm.
March
11, 1913 Sacred memories.
— Now
that in this early Easter month it is already approaching the feast
days, a list seems appropriate, where the faithful Catholics keep
their sacred memories of Jesus and his death on the cross.
Christ's
skirt was offered as a gift by Charlemagne to the monastery of
Argenteuil, near Paris.
The
"seamless garment" was donated by Saint Helena to the
church in Trier.
and
other gases, and thus, depending on the intensity of the contact
with the shroud, could, as it were, evoke a negative image of the
body.
Dr.
Vignon was able to prove this hypothesis plausible by means of an
experiment. Not with a corpse (this experiment is still awaiting
execution) but by placing the hand moistened with ammonia on a cloth
treated with aloe. The result was the same as with the Shroud of
Turin.
Thirty
years ago, Dr. Vignon pointed out that a chemical impression that at
first sight seems insignificant can produce a good photographic
image, especially with objects with a strong relief. Vignon has now
again called upon the art of photography to establish all kinds of
peculiarities on the Shroud: clots of blood, streams of blood-water,
traces of the flogging, the crown of thorns and human secretions.
No
modern method of research has been neglected by Dr. Vignon.
We
hope to be able to report further details about the result of Dr.
Vignon's research soon.
August
17, 1933 Theft of relics
PARIS,
August 17 (Reuter). The 1400 year old embalmed foot of Saint Victor,
dating from the 5th century AD, was stolen from the church of Saint
Nicholas du Chardonnet, as well as a copy of the crown of thorns,
which contained 8 small relics, each of which was said to contain a
piece of the real crown of thorns of Christ.
The
crown of thorns was made of gilded copper, in which the foot of
Saint Victor. The thieves probably mistook this copper for gold.
January
31, 1936 THE HOLY SHROUD OF CHRIST
Remarkable
results of a scientific investigation.
The
Passion of the Savior.
In
the cathedral of Turin the Holy Shroud is kept, in which the most
holy body of Christ was wrapped after the descent from the cross.
For years, scientists have investigated the authenticity of this
precious relic. The result of these investigations has now been
summarized in a book by the Czech physician Dr. R. V. Hynek, which
has also been published in German these days, and which bears the
title: "The Martyrdom of Christ in the Light of Modern Science.
The Discovery of the True Image." After long and scientific
investigations, using all the resources of modern technology, such
as chemistry, photography, physiology, ultra-violet and infrared
rays, it has been concluded that the relic preserved in Turin is
really the Holy Shroud, in which the body of Christ was wrapped for
about 36 to 42 hours. The main proof lies in the fact that the
images in the shroud are absolutely negative, that is to say, as
from a photographic plate, on whose sensitive layer the projected
image is captured. It could be clearly established that these prints
could not have been applied later. Dr. Hynek has investigated this
problem extensively and has specifically investigated how it was
possible that an impression of the corpse could have been created.
He comes to the following conclusions: According to the Bible story,
the shroud was sprinkled with aloe and myrrh, which were changed by
chemical action into an insoluble dye of aloetin, which soaked the
linen. Sweat, blood, uric acid, everything containing urine salts,
which are formed during the decomposition of the corpse, are changed
by chemical action into ammonium carbonate and ammonia, which then
chemically binds the substance of the aloe. The dye was therefore
preserved on the linen, not on the body, which formed a kind of
sensitive chemical layer on the shroud.
From
an in-depth examination of the imprints in the shroud, the author
attempts to reconstruct a complete picture of the suffering of
Christ. The blood traces of the crown of thorns indicate an arterial
hemorrhage, without these tissues being torn too much. On the body
were clearly visible the traces of numerous wounds of about 3 cm in
length, which were visible two by two, 80 in total, which
corresponds to the 40 lashes that were customary among the Romans.
From the impressions of the wounds that occurred at the crossing,
the conclusion can be drawn that the nails were not driven through
the middle of the hand, but through the carpal; while the arms were
already stretched out, the feet were nailed completely in the middle
of the instep. From the investigation it has further been
established, the cause of death by which Christ died: Death occurred
by suffocation, as a result of tetanic cramps, under very great pain
and with full consciousness; it has been anatomically proven that
with prolonged extension of the arms, especially when they are
nailed to a cross, an obstruction of breathing is caused by the
unusual effort of the diaphragm, which finally leads to suffocation,
suffocation, zyanosis, which causes a blue color. It is very
remarkable how these medical investigations completely agree with
the Bible story.
January
28, 1937 The true image of Christ discovered
Under
this title, the firm J. Romen & Zonen in Roermond has published
the Dutch translation of a book in which the Czech physician W.
Hynek, by way of positive experimental science, tries to provide
proof that the Holy Shroud of Turin, an antique linen cloth 4.36 m
long and 1.10 m wide, shows us the true, original image of the dead
body of Christ. This relic would really be the burial linen in which
the blessed body of the Redeemer was wrapped after the descent from
the cross, to be laid in the grave.
The
author of the corner relies in his argument on the photographs taken
by Guiseppe Enrie of the shroud and its parts, when it was exhibited
in the year 1931.
Dr.
Hynek studied the impressions that are visible on the sharp
photographs of the Shroud of Turin, mainly from the standpoint of
anatomical and medical science, in which the photographic recordings
formed an inviolable basis. In fact, he followed in the footsteps of
Paul Vignon, who in 1902 already defended the authenticity of the
Holy Shroud of Turin in his work "Le saint Linceuil de Turin".
Vignon also built his argumentation with evidence of a positive
scientific nature. The argumentation of Hynek's new book is not much
more than a repetition and supplement of the argument that was
already provided 35 years ago by Vignon and his associates. Hynek,
like his predecessor, takes the position that the imprints of the
body of Christ on the shroud of Turin, both of the front and of the
back of Christ's figure, were not caused by blood and sweat, which
adhered to the linen as dyes, but that the aloe, one of the
components of the perfume that was sprinkled in the shroud at the
funeral, was converted by the alkaline efflux of the body into an
insoluble dye: aloetin. By chemical action an imprint of the Body of
Christ was thus created, a double imprint of the front and back. The
body was first placed on the shroud and then the remaining part of
the very long cloth was folded over the head. The remarkable thing
is that the impressions in the grave linen are pure negatives; this
must be attributed to the chemical process that took place in the
shroud covered with perfume. Exceptions are, however, the
bloodstains of the nail wounds in the hands and feet and the large
bloodstain of the heart wound, caused by the spear. These stains are
simply positive impressions. In Hynek's work, which was written from
the first to the last page with ardor and enthusiasm and with a warm
love for the Holy Wounds of the Redeemer, it is not only proven
beyond doubt that the Shroud of Turin is genuine, that is, that the
dead body of Christ was wrapped in this linen cloth, but from the
photographs made by Enrie of the Shroud, Hynek also reads off what
the facial features of the Lord were, how the Redeemer was scourged,
in what way he was crowned with thorns, how he was nailed to the
cross and how the heart wound was inflicted by the spear. Hynek even
claims that now the problem of the exact and immediate cause of
death of the crucified Jesus has been solved and that the mystery of
the water that flowed with the blood from the heart wound of the
Redeemer has lost all its mystery. The phenomena that occur in the
stigmatized person of Konnersreuth are incidentally compared with
the impressions of the Shroud of Turin for confirmation. And with
all this exact scientific argument a sensitive lyricism is mixed,
which involuntarily carries the reader along to the conviction that
speaks from every page of the book: that the authenticity of the
Holy Shroud of Turin has now finally been sufficiently, indeed
evidently, proven. In the chapter "Possible Objections"
the author even goes so far as to attribute a lack of humility and
meekness to those who do not give in to his argumentation.
In
the face of this work by Hynek, an admonition to caution is perhaps
appropriate, now that it has been published in Dutch and is going to
stir up emotion among deeply religious readers in our country, as it
has already done beyond our language borders. The question of the
authenticity or otherwise of the famous relic, which is preserved in
Turin and is the property of the royal house of Italy, is treated
very one-sidedly in this book. Evidence obtained by way of positive
experimental science should at least be supplemented with historical
data and with statements from Christian antiquity. The data from the
gospels should also be given their due. Now Hynek has not entirely
overlooked these sides of the question of the authenticity of the
shroud of Turin, but he has not shed sufficient light on them at
all.
What
can be read in the Gospel of John about the burial linen of the body
of Lazarus (11, 44) and of the body of Jesus (19, 40; 20, 6-7) will
always remain a very serious argument against the authenticity of
the shroud of Turin. Christian antiquity then teaches us that in the
first centuries no original image of the Redeemer was known at all.
Hynek finds this centuries-long silence about the Shroud of the Lord
astonishing. Perhaps it is even dangerous for his position. The
history of the relic itself is not all that rosy either: the author
could tell us much more about it than he actually does. Let his
argumentation, based on accurate photographic images and on data
from modern positive science, be as strong, at least apparently - we
admit - it still remains daring to defend the authenticity of this
relic in such a triumphant and almost challenging way. The matter is
too delicate for that. And after the publication of this article we
are still as far as we were in 1902, when with the same
argumentation and with the same fervor the authenticity of the Holy
Shroud of Turin was defended by Paul Vignon, while Ulysse Chevalier
then appeared in the arena with his work "Etude critique sur
1'origine du S. Suaire", to combat authenticity. Both writers
then found a broad following for their opinion. On the side of the
opponents of authenticity, among others, the Bollandists positioned
themselves.
The
state of the problem has not actually changed at present. That is
why we consider caution to be appropriate here. One should not be
carried away by the noble intentions and enthusiasm of Dr. Hynek.
The German edition of Hynek's book was edited by P. Gächter
S.J. as follows in the "Zeitschrift für katholische
Theologie":
"This
study has been circulated with quite a lot of fuss, entirely in
accordance with the high enthusiasm that dominates it. It is a pity,
however, that this storm of enthusiasm here and there leads the
author away from the paths of extractive scientific proof... The
explanations that are given of the photographic data are not
convincing. The sober criticism still stands, as before, on the
position that Ulysse Chevalier indicated: we are still dealing here,
according to the statement of a document from the year 1389, with an
artificially painted cloth.
And
we still attach significance to the decision of the Congregation of
Indulgences of 18 Nov. 1670, according to which, in the case of
public veneration of the Holy Shroud, the permitted indulgence
could
not be earned by those who unconditionally venerated the relic as
the true grave cloth of Christ".
This
assessment by P. Gächter S.J. is very sharp and severely
negative. We have mentioned it here to show that Hynek's book
entitled "The true image of Christ discovered" should be
read soberly and calmly. If one takes up the book in this mood, it
will still remain interesting and captivating. It certainly gives us
a clearer insight into the problem of Jesus' suffering and into the
passion story of the Gospels.
W.
VAN DE RIET.
January
11, 1939 THE CROWN OF THORNS RELIQUIY OF PARIS.
For
the first time in 700 years, the Reliquie will leave the city.
This
year it is seven hundred years ago that the magnificent reliquary of
the crown of thorns was received in Paris. In 1239 this reliquary,
which had been given as a gift by the King of Jerusalem John of
Brienne to the French King, St. Louis, was brought to the Sainte
Chapelle. Later this relic was transferred to Notre Dame in Paris,
where it now rests in a single crystal shrine.
In
solemn procession the precious relic will be brought back to Sens
and Villeneuve by Cardinal Verdier himself with great pomp, where
Louis first received the relic. These ceremonies will take place in
Jui next and especially in Sens great festivities will be organized.
After the ceremonies the relic will be brought back to Paris.
This
is the first time in seven centuries that the relic has left the
French capital.
April
6, 1939 AMSTERDAM.
Precious
relic of Crown of Thorns and Holy Cross.
Transferred
from Constantinople to Amsterdam.
Centuries-old
possession of the Testa family. A well-known Catholic Amsterdammer,
Mr. K. V. Testa, recently came into possession of a very precious
relic, consisting of a thorn from the Crown of Thorns and a fragment
of the Holy Cross, set in a precious gilded silver reliquary, which
has been part of his family's possession for many centuries, but
which was kept in Constantinople until recently.
Mr.
Testa wanted to make the relic, which was brought to Amsterdam by
the "Hertog Hendrik" after a training voyage that this
ship undertook in the Mediterranean in 1935, available to one of the
Amsterdam churches, which will receive it on loan.
To
this end, Mr. Testa has recently placed the relic in the hands of
His Eminence Mgr. J. P. Huibers, Bishop of Haarlem, who will
establish the authenticity of the precious relic, after which the
relic will be given on loan to one of Amsterdam's churches. It has
not yet been determined which church will be considered for this and
Mr. Testa, whom we asked about this, did not want to comment on this
either.
For
centuries, the double relic of the Holy Thorn and the Holy Cross has
been part of the family property of the Testa family, which
originates from Genoa and in the past occupied an important place at
the court of the Turkish Porte.
The
relic came into the possession of the Testa family as early as 1660.
This was during a great fire that ravaged Constantinople in that
year and in which very many buildings and also all the churches
except one were destroyed by the fire. During this fire, one of the
members of the Testa family, Frans Testa, saved the relic at the
risk of his life from the St. Franciscus Church in Constantinople,
where it was kept. In addition to the reliquary, Frans Testa also
managed to save a ciborium with Holy Hosts from the flames. The
ciborium was returned to the clergy after the fire, but the
reliquary remained in the possession of the rescuer, who did not
want to return it. This led to a conflict with the clergy of the
church to which the relic originally belonged and with the head of
the Brotherhood of St. Anne, which was connected to the St. Francis
Church. Finally, the judgment of Rome was invoked in this conflict.
The case was dealt with by the Congregation of the Propaganda Fide,
which after an extensive investigation concluded that the relic
would remain the property of Frans Testa, who had saved the
reliquary from the flames at the risk of his life. This officially
recognized the ownership of the precious relics of the Testa family.
The first owner of the relic died in 1709. After his death, it
passed to his son Caspar, who in turn left it to his son, who was
also called Frans. In 1784 the authenticity of the relics, which had
already been officially confirmed earlier, was again established by
the Papal legate in Constantinople, Mgr. François Antoine
Frachia. After the death of Francis Testa the relics were inherited
by his son Charles, who in 1803 had the authenticity of the relic
once again established by an official ecclesiastical authority,
namely the Archbishop of Constantinople, Mgr. Jean Baptist de
Fonton. In later years the reliquary came into the possession of one
of his descendants, who settled in Montpellier, in the South of
France. The reliquary remained there after his death, in 1876, where
it was kept by the widow of this Antoin, who only later gave it to
the eldest nephew of her deceased husband, Charles Testa, in
Constantinople, the father of the present owner of the relic. Karel
Testa kept the relic until his death in 1911, after which it was
loaned to the Minorite monastery in Constantinople, which had been
its rightful owner before 1660. The relic was kept there until 1935.
In the last year, however, Mr. K. Testa in Amsterdam, who had
inherited the relic from his father, decided to have the precious
relic brought to Amsterdam. To this end, he contacted the Dutch
naval chaplain, Father I. A. P. Albada Jelgersma, who would be
taking part in a training voyage of Hr. Ms. "Hertog Hendrik"
in the Mediterranean that year. He asked him to collect the relic in
Constantinople and bring it to Amsterdam on board the "Hertog
Hendrik". In advance, contact had been made with the Minorite
monastery in Constantinople, where at that time a Dutch priest,
Father V. Bruine O.F.M., was staying, who prepared the transfer of
the relic. Although the Minorite monastery would have liked to keep
the relic, it nevertheless fully recognized the rights that the
Amsterdam owner claimed to it. The transfer of the relic took place
with some ceremony at the beginning of February 1935. A Holy Mass
was celebrated in the Minorite church on Sunday morning, which was
attended by the Catholic members of the crew of the "Hertog
Hendrik". After this ceremony, the reliquary was transferred to
Father Jelgersma. In the meantime, the authenticity of the relics
had once again been officially recognized by the delegate of His
Holiness the Pope in Constantinople, Mgr. Rotta. The documents
relating to this were provided with the signature and seal of the
papal delegate, enclosed in the lid of the reliquary, which was then
also sealed. The reliquary itself was also packed with all
precautions and provided with the seal of the apostolic vicariate at
Constantinople.
It
was stipulated that this seal could only be broken in the presence
of the bishop of the diocese where the owner of the relic resides or
by the dean of his place of residence, when he was officially
authorized to do so by the bishop. Thus the return journey to the
homeland was begun. During this journey, however, the naval chaplain
was struck by illness, so that he was forced to seek medical
treatment in Catania (in Sicily). He was therefore unable to
continue the journey to England. The commander of the "Hertog
Hendrik", captain at sea C. E. L. Helfrich, was however
prepared to take care of the relic and to deliver it personally to
the owner. In this way the reliquary came into the possession of Mr.
K. V. Testa in Amsterdam, who kept it sealed in his home for several
years. Recently, however, Mr. Testa decided to lend the relics to
one of the Amsterdam churches, where they could be openly venerated.
In connection with this, Mr. Testa turned to His Eminence Mgr. J. P.
Huibers, who recently received the sealed package containing the
reliquary.
Soon
the lid of the shrine, which is made of beautifully worked gilded
silver, will be opened by a goldsmith, after which the bishop will
check the official documents enclosed in this lid, which relate to
the authenticity of the relics. At the same time, the glass
enclosing the relics, which appeared to be cracked when the package
was opened, will be replaced by a new one under supervision. Only
then will a decision be made about which church in Amsterdam the
relics will be given on loan to. Mr. Testa has contacted one of the
pastors in the capital. If we are well informed, the precious relic
will soon be given on loan to one of the parish churches on the edge
of the city. The decision about this has yet to be made. It had been
hoped that the relic would be given the destination that the owner
had intended on Good Friday. The repairs that still need to be made
to the pedestal will, however, take so much time — everything
is being done under the personal supervision of Mgr. Huibers —
that it will probably be after Easter.
August
10, 2017 Double relic of the Holy Cross and the Crown of Thorns of
Christ
In
the right side wall of the Agnes Church, right next to the baptismal
chapel, there is a niche in which a reliquary with a double relic is
placed. The reliquary contains a Holy Thorn from the Crown of Thorns
of Christ and a splinter of the Holy Cross.
In
1660, this shrine with relics was saved by Frans Testa from the
burning St. Francis Church in Constantinople. Since then, the relic
has been in the possession of the Testa family. In the 19th century,
the shrine ended up in Montpellier (Southern France), but in 1911 it
was transferred back to Istanbul. In 1935 the reliquary was
transferred to Amsterdam, the then place of residence of the Testa
family. Since then this shrine with double relic has been in our
church. Today, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, we
carried it around in procession and everyone could personally
venerate the relic.
June
17, 1939 THE CROWN OF THORNS OF PARIS.
Great
ceremonies in France on July 2nd
With
great solemnity the day will be commemorated in France on July 2nd,
on which seven hundred years ago the precious relic of the Holy
Crown of Thorns was received by the French King, St. Louis, in
Villeneuve.
On
the occasion of this commemoration we will give some details about
the remarkable history of this Holy Relic. In the centre of Paris is
the magnificent building of the "Sainte Chapelle" with its
famous stained glass windows, and the guide who will show you around
will tell you that this chapel was built to house the precious relic
of the Holy Crown of Thorns. For quite some time, however, the relic
was no longer in this chapel, but in the treasury of the nearby
"Notre Dame" of Paris.
The
Crown of Thorns of Paris, which lacks several thorns that were
donated to other churches in the Middle Ages, has a diameter of 21
centimetres. The crown was wider than the head of Christ, because
people wanted to press the thorns into the flesh.
The
thorns come from a thorn tree, called the "Zizyphus spina
Christi" that comes from Syria and is common in the Jordan
Valley. The tree can grow to a height of 5 to 6 metres and has
strong and sharp thorns that can cause terrible wounds. The question
naturally arises: how did the crowning with thorns take place?
Probably not according to a predetermined plan. Probably the
soldiers, as usual, made a fire from the branches of the thorn tree,
and then wove a crown from a few remaining branches. This crown was
probably taken by a soldier and handed over to one of Jesus'
disciples.
A
few centuries of silence about the crown with thorns now follow, and
it is not until the year 409 that the crown is mentioned by Paulinus
of Nola. It was originally kept in Jerusalem, and probably
transferred to the basilica of Mount Zion in Byzantium in the year
1063. Emperor Alexis Commenius I speaks about it in a letter to
Robert, Duke of Flanders, in the year 1100.
From
the fourteenth century a testimony has come down to us of the
Belgian Jean de Mandeville, who declared that he had seen with his
own eyes the Crown of Thorns of Paris (consisting of the branches,
of which most of the thorns had been broken off) and the thorns of
this crown, which were in Constantinople, and according to him were
intended to be distributed to "grand seigneurs" (great
lords). In the year 1238 Baldwin II, Emperor of Constantinople, had
come to France to ask for support for the strengthening of his
power. In doing so he gave the Thorns to St. Louis, King of France.
However,
he did not have this crown of thorns with him, and when some
Dominicans set out to fetch the Crown of Thorns in Constantinople,
they discovered that the crown had been pawned to the Venetians by
high officials of the Emperor, who was in dire financial straits.
They
returned to France and obtained permission from the king to repay
the pledge to the Venetians, after which they could take the Crown
of Thorns, which was already in the treasuries of San Marco in
Venice.
And
when the French king heard that the precious relic was on its way to
his country, the king and his court went to meet the bearers. He met
them in Villeneuve in the diocese of Troyes and received the relic
there. On 11 August 1239, the king arrived with the relic in Sens
and eight days later reached Paris. In order to preserve the
precious relic, St. Louis had the "Sainte Chapelle" built,
where the Crown of Thorns was preserved until the French Revolution.
In 1791, the relic was transferred to Saint Denis, in 1799 it was
confiscated and finally transferred to the National Library.
On
26 October 1804, the relic was handed over again to the Archbishop
of Paris, who had it brought to Notre Dame in August 1806, where it
is preserved to this day.
The
arrival of the Crown of Thorns in Paris, seven centuries ago, will
be commemorated on 2 July in Villeneuve. The commemoration
ceremonies will be attended by Cardinal Verdier, Archbishop of
Paris, Cardinal Oerlier, Archbishop of Lyon and Cardinal Villeneuve,
Archbishop of Quebec. Also present will be the Papal Nuncio, Mgr.
Valerio de Valeri, and more than twenty Archbishops and Bishops will
be present.
The
official commemoration is placed under the high patronage of the
French President, Albert Lebrun.
March
22, 1940 The Passion Relics
The
closer we come to the great days before Easter, the more we look up
to the objects that remind us of the suffering Christ.
The
most precious Relics, which also enjoys the greatest veneration in
the Church, is the Holy Cross. It was found in Jerusalem between 320
and 345. According to the Holy Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem, it was
already divided into numerous particles in 347. Whether all the
blessed cross particles are genuine, is however doubtful. In no case
is the large number of Particles a proof against their authenticity.
It has been calculated that the cubic content of all the cross
particles together amounts to approximately 9 to 10 million cubic
millimeters, while a cross of 3 to 4 meters high has a volume of 57
million cubic mm.
According
to tradition, the inscription on the cross and the nails were also
found at the same time as the Holy Cross. The inscription is now
preserved and venerated in the basilica of Santa Croce in Rome. Its
great age is proven by the fact that it was originally placed above
the triumphal arch of the basilica, which was decorated with mosaics
by Emperor Valentinian (423-445). The inscription itself was only
added at a later time.
No
fewer than 30 nails are venerated as relics.
Queen
Theolinda is said to have had one placed in the famous "iron
crown" that is preserved in Monza.
The
crown of thorns is said to have been brought to Constantinople at
the end of the 6th century. King Louis the Saint of France came into
possession of the crown of thorns and brought it to Paris. Some
thorns were broken off and distributed as relics. Whether these
thorns, which are venerated in various places, are genuine, is
however a great question, since it has been concluded that they are
made of different types of wood and it is not known what type was
used by the dead soldiers.
A
much discussed relic is the grave cloth or linen cloth in which the
Holy Body was wrapped when it was laid in the grave. There are more
than 40 relics of this name, of which of course only one can be
genuine. The grave cloth, which is preserved in Turin and belongs to
the crown treasures of the Italian Royal House, made and still makes
the greatest claim to authenticity.
A
relic that is more famous than the grave cloth is the cloth of St.
Veronica, which is certainly not genuine, but is only an old highly
venerated image of the Holy Face of Christ. The column of scourging
is already mentioned in the reports of the oldest pilgrims to
Jerusalem. Part of it is preserved in the Chapel that belongs to the
Church of the Sepulchre, another part in Rome.
In
Rome there is also the so-called "Holy Stairs", which has
28 steps and is said to have been brought to Jerusalem in the 9th
century or according to others already by St. Helena and on which
the Savior is said to have descended to the place of punishment
after the scourging. However, there is no historical proof of this,
although the fact that the stairs are made of Tyrian marble leaves
open the possibility that they were once in a palace in Jerusalem.
The Holy Stairs are climbed on one's knees, as is well known.
The
question of the authenticity or falsity of all these relics has
nothing to do with the principles of faith. Yet there are memorable
memories connected to these objects, and they are sanctified by the
veneration that has been shown there by the faithful for centuries.
August
21, 2024 DEAR PAUL
THE
DOUBLE RELIC IS STILL IN THE AGNES CHURCH
THANKS
FOR THIS INTERESTING INFORMATION
IT
IS A DOUBLE RELIC: A PART OF THE HOLY CROSS AND A NEEDLE OF THE
CROWN OF THORNS
THESE
WERE SAVED BY A FAMILY MEMBER OF MINE FROM A BURNING CHURCH IN
CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1660
AND
SINCE THEY HAVE BEEN IN THE TESTA FAMILY'S POSSESSION, I AM AT THE
MOMENT THE CURRENT "CUSTODION"
HERE
A NUMBER OF IMAGES
GREETINGS
ANDRE TESTA
JHR
DRS ANDRE L.F.M. TESTA
HOUSE
"IF"
WALDECK
PYRMONTLAAN 22 A
NL-3743
DE BAARN
MOB:
+31653234998
EMAIL:
ANDRE.TESTA@ME.COM
4
February 2025 Amsterdam, Baarn, Wapse 4 February 2025
The
Testa Relics
Dear
family members and friends,
In
1660, our ancestor François Draco Testa risked his own life
to save a reliquary containing a thorn from the Crown of Thorns of
Jesus Christ, as well as a wooden fragment of the Holy Cross from
his parish church in Constantinople, which was on fire.
The
Pope decided - in gratitude for this heroic act - that these relics
would come into the possession of the Testa family. Over the
centuries, Testa family members have ensured that these church
treasures could be venerated by believers and shown to interested
parties.
In
1935, the then owner Karl Victor Testa - with the help of the
Minister of Defence L.N. Deckers and the naval vessel Hr. Ms. Duke
Hendrik - transfer these relics from Constantinople to Amsterdam.
And then he loaned them to his parish church, St. Agnes Church.
In
1968, his widow Elisabeth Testa-Baroness van Wijnbergen transferred
ownership of the reliquary to Jonkheer André Testa. Due to
his advanced age, he will now transfer the relics in turn to his
niece Noepy Beckers-Testa.
This
ceremony will take place on Sunday 30 March 2025 in the Jubilee Year
of the Catholic Church and also the year of the celebration of the
750th anniversary of the city of Amsterdam.
On
this occasion, we would like to invite you to a solemn and sung Holy
Mass in the Basilica of St. Nicholas at Prins Hendrikkade 73 in
Amsterdam.
Immediately
after that, Noepy will in turn loan these church treasures to the
Diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam and store them in the St. Nicholas
Church, one of the oldest churches in Amsterdam.
The
reliquary will then be permanently on display in the Basilica for
churchgoers.
Approximately
200,000 (international) visitors visit the church each year, where
relics of St. Nicholas can also be seen.
The
Holy Mass begins at 10 o'clock sharp with a procession in which the
reliquary containing the relics is carried into the church under the
guidance of the Bishop of Haarlem-Amsterdam, Mgr. Jan Hendriks,
Pastor of St. Nicholas Basilica Eric Fennis, Pastor of St. Agnes
Church Martin Kromann Knudsen, acolytes, altar boys, members of the
Holy Military Constantinian Order of St. George, the Order of the
Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem and the Sovereign Military Hospitaller
Order of Malta.
For
a look inside the church: www.nicolaas-parochie.nl/digitale-tour/
The
choir Capella Nicolai and the organist of the Basilica will enhance
the Eucharistic celebration: https://muziekindenicolaas.nl/koren/
Afterwards
we cordially invite you to a short reception in the former "waiting
room 1st class" of the Central Station. The distance from the
Basilica is 82 meters. Home - Restaurant 1st class and for Location
& Contact - Restaurant 1st class
(no
public transport card required for admission)
We
would like to offer you the beautiful memorial book about these
impressive church treasures, illustrated with images of many
historical documents, prints and maps:
"The
Testa Relics - From Constantinople to Amsterdam". Compiled by
our esteemed family historian Mehmet Tütüncü. See the
cover below.
This
book will then be available in bookstores.
It
is recommended - if coming from outside Amsterdam - to travel to
Central Station by train or metro.
Also
on behalf of Bishop of Haarlem-Amsterdam, Mgr. Jan Hendriks and
Pastor and Dean of Amsterdam, Eric Fennis, we as Testa descendants
would greatly appreciate it if you would honor us with your visit.
Please
let us know if you plan to be present and if "accompanied"
by whom. RSVP: ptesta0808@gmail.com
Due
to the great interest (approx. 300 guests) we request that you bring
this invitation as an admission ticket and show it to the inspectors
at the entrance.
The
celebration will be broadcast live on NPO 2 and therefore Pastor
Fennis requests that you take your place no later than 09:45 and
preferably earlier.
With
kind regards from us,
André
Testa, Patrick Testa, Noepy Beckers-Testa
0653234998
andre.testa@me.com
ptesta0808@gmail.com
noepy.testa@gmail.com
Twenty
canons in Greek
α′. Εἴτις ἐν νόσῷ ὑπὸ ἰατρῶν ἐχειρουργήθη, ἢ ὑπὸ βαρβάρων ἐξετμήθη, οὗτος μενέτω ἐν τῶ, κλήρῳ· εἰ δέ τις ὑγιαίνων ἑαυτὸν ἐξέτεμε, τοῦτον καὶ ἐν τῷ κλήρῷ ἐξεταζόμενον πεπαῦσθαι προσήκει· καὶ ἐκ τοῦ δεῦρο μηδένα τῶν τοιούτων χρῆναι προάγεσθαι. Ὤσπερ δὲ τοῦτο πρόδηλον, ὅτι περὶ τῶν ἐπιτηδευόντων τὸ πρᾶγμα καὶ τολμώντων ἑαυτοὺς ἐκτέμνειν, εἴρηται, οὕτως εἴτινες ὑπὸ βαρβάρων ἢ δεσποτῶν εὐνουχίσθησαν, εὑρίσκοιντο ἄλλως ἄξιοι, τοὺς τοιούτους εἰς κλῆρον προσίεται ὁ κανών.
β′. Ἐπειδὴ, πολλὰ ἤτοι ὑπὸ ἀνάγκης ἢ ἄλλως ἐπειγομένων τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐγένετο παρὰ τὸν κανόνα τὸν ἐκκλησιαστικὸν, ὥστε ἀνθρώπους ἀπὸ ἐθνικοῦ βίου ἄρτι προσελθόντας τῇ πίστει, καὶ ἐν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ κατηχηθέντας εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τὸ πνευματικὸν λουτρὸν ἄγειν, καὶ ἅμα τῷ βαπτισθῆναι προσάγειν εἰς ἐπισκοπὴν, ἢ εἰς πρεσβυτερεῖον, καλῶς ἔδοξεν ἔχειν τοῦ λοιποῦ μηδὲν τοιοῦτο γίνεσθαι. Καὶ γὰρ καὶ χρόνου δεῖ τῷ κατηχουμένῷ, καὶ μετὰ τὸ βάπτισμα δοκιμασίας πλείονος· σαφὲς γὰρ τὸ ἀποστολικὸν γράμμα τὸ λέγον,
«Μὴ νεόφυτον, ἵνα μὴ τυφωθεὶς εἰς κρῖμα ἐμπέσῃ καὶ παγίδα τοῦ διαβόλου·» Εἰ δὲ προϊόντος τοῦ χρόνου ψυχικόν τι ἁμάρτημα εὑρεθείη περὶ τὸ πρόσωπον, καὶ ἐλέγχοιτο ὑπὸ δύο ἢ τριῶν μαρτύρων, πεπαύσθω ὁ τοιοῦτος τοῦ κλήρου. Ὁ δὲ παρὰ ταῦτα ποιῶν, ὡς ὑπεναντία τῇ μεγάλῃ συνόδῳ θρασυνόμενος, αὐτὸς κινδυνεύσει περὶ τὸν κλῆρον.
γ′.Ἀπηγόρευσεν καθόλου ἡ μεγάλη σύνοδος, μήτε ἐπισκόπῳ μήτε πρεσβυτέρῳ μήτε διακόνῳ μήτε ὅλως τινὶ τῶν ἐν κλήρῳ ἐξεῖναι συνείσακτον ἔχειν, πλὴν εἰ μὴ ἄρα μητέρα, ἢ ἀδελφὴν, ἢ θείαν, ἢ ἃ μόνα πρόσωπα πᾶσαν ὑποψίαν διαπέφευγε.
δ′. Ἐπίσκοπον προσήκει μάλιστα μὲν ὑπὸ πάντων τῶν ἐν τῇ ἐπαρχίᾳͅ καθίστασθαι· εἰ δὲ δυσχερὲς εἴη τὸ τοιοῦτο, ἢ διὰ κατεπείγουσαν ἀνάγκην ἢ διὰ μῆκος ὁδοῦ, ἐξαπαντος τρεῖς ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ συναγομένους, συμψήφων γινομένων καὶ τῶν ἀπόντων καὶ συντιθεμένων διὰ γραμμάτων, τότε τὴν χειροτονίαν ποιεῖσθαι· τὸ δὲ κύρος τῶν γινομένων δίδοσθαι καθ᾽ ἑκάστην ἐπαρχίαν τῷ μητροπολίτῃ.
ε′. Περὶ τῶν ἀκοινωνήτων γενομένων, εἴτε τῶν ἐν κλήρῳ εἴτε τῶν ἐν λαϊκῷ τάγματι, ὑπὸ τῶν καθ᾽ ἑκάστην ἐπαρχίαν ἐπισκόπων, κρατείτω ἡ γνώμη κατὰ τὸν κανόνα τὸν διαγορεύοντα, τοὺς ὑφ᾽ ἑτέρων ἀποβληθέντας ὑφ᾽ ἑτέρων μὴ προσίεσθαι· ἐξεταζέσθω δὲ, μὴ μικροψυχίᾳ ἢ φιλονεικίᾳ ἤ τινι τοιαύτῃ ἀηδίᾳ τοῦ ἐπισκόπου ἀποσυνάγωγοι γεγένηνται. Ἵνα οὖν τοῦτο τὴν πρέπουσαν ἐξέτασιν λαμβάνῃ, καλῶς ἔχειν ἔδοξεν ἑκάστου ἐνιαυτοῦ καθ᾽ ἑκάστην ἐπαρχίαν δὶς τοῦ ἔτους συνόδους γίνεσθαι, ἵνα κοινῇ πάντων τῶν ἐπισκόπων τῆς ἐπαρχίας ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ συναγομένων, τὰ τοιαῦτα ζητήματα ἐξετάζοιτο· καὶ οὕτως οἱ ὁμολογουμένως προσκεκρουκότες τῷ ἐπισκόπῳ κατὰ λόγον ἀκοινώνητοι παρὰ πᾶσιν εῖναι δόξωσι, μέχρις ἂν τῷ κοινῷ τῶν ἐπισκόπων δόξῃ τὴν φιλανθρωποτέραν ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν ἐκθέσθαι ψῆφον. Αἱ δὲ σύνοδοι γινέσθων, μία μὲν πρὸ τῆς τεσσαρακοστῆς, ἵνα πάσης μικροψυχίας ἀναιρουμένης, τὸ δῶρον καθαρὸν προσφέρηται τῷ Θεῷ, δευτέρα δὲ περὶ τὸν τοῦ μετοπώρου καιρόν.
ς′. Τὰ ἀρχαῖα ἔθη κρατείτω τὰ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ, καὶ Λιβύῃͅ καὶ Πενταπόλει, ὥστε τὸν ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ ἐπίσκοπον πάντων τούτων ἔχειν τὴν ἐξουσίαν, ἐπειδὴ καὶ τῷ ἐν τῇ Ῥώμῃ ἐπισκόπῳ τοῦτο σύνηθές ἐστιν· ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ κατὰ τὴν Ἀντιόχειαν καὶ ἐν ταῖς ἄλλαις ἐπαρχίαις, τὰ πρεσβεῖα σώζεσθαι ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις. Καθόλου δὲ πρόδηλον ἐκεῖνο, ὅτι εἴ τις χωρὶς γνώμης τοῦ μητροπολίτου γένοιτο ἐπίσκοπος, τὸν τοιοῦτον ἡ μεγάλη σύνοδος ὥρισε μὴ δεῖν εἶναι ἐπίσκοπον. Ἐὰν μέν τοι τῇ κοινῇ πάντων ψήφῳ εὐλόγῳ οὔσῃ, καὶ κατὰ κανόνα ἐκκλησιαστικὸν, δύο ἢ τρεῖς δι᾽ οἰκείαν φιλονεικίαν ἀντιλέγωσι, κρατείτω ἡ τῶν πλειόνων ψῆφος.
ζ′. Ἐπειδὴ συνήθεια κεκράτηκε καὶ παράδοσις ἀρχαία, ὥστε τὸν ἐν Αἰλίᾳ ἐπίσκοπον τιμᾶσθαι, ἐχέτω τὴν ἀκολουθίαν τῆς τιμῆς, τῇ μητροπόλει σωζομένου τοῦ οἰκείου ἀξιώματος.
η′. Περὶ τῶν ὀνομαζόντων μὲν ἑαυτοὺς Kαθαρούς ποτε, προσερχομένων δὲ τῇ καθολικῇ καὶ ἀποστολικῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ, ἔδοξε τῇ ἁγιᾳ καὶ μεγάλῃ συνόδῳ, ὤστε χειροθετουμένους αὐτοὺς μένειν οὕτως ἐν τῷ κλήρῳ. Πρὸ πάντων δὲ τοῦτο ὁμολογῆσαι αὐτοὺς ἐγγράφως προσήκει, ὅτι συνθήσονται καὶ ἀκολουθήσουσι τοῖς τῆς καθολικῆς καὶ ἀποστολικῆς ἐκκλησίας δόγμασι· τοῦτ᾽ ἐστὶ, καὶ διγάμοις κοινωνεῖν, καὶ τοῖς ἐν τῷ διωγμῷ παραπεπτωκόσιν, ἐφ᾽ ὧν καὶ χρόνος τέτακται, καὶ καιρὸς ὥρισται, ὥστε αὐτοὺς ἀκολουθεῖν, ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς δόγμασι τῆς καθολικῆς ἐκκλησίας. Ἔνθα μὲν οὖν παντες, εἴτε ἐν κώμαις, εἴτε ἐν πόλεσιν αὐτοὶ μόνοι εὑρίσκοιντο χειροτονηθέντες, οἱ εὑρισκόμενοι ἐν τῷ κλήρῳ ἔσονται ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ σχήματι εἰ δὲ τοῦ τῆς καθολικῆς ἐκκλησίας ἐπισκόπου ἢ πρεσβυτέρου ὄντος προσέρχονταί τινες, πρόδηλον ὡς ὁ μὲν ἐπίσκοπος τῆς ἐκκλησίας ἕξει τὸ ἀξίωμα τοῦ ἐπισκόπου, ὁ δὲ ὀνομαζόμενος παρὰ τοῖς λεγομένοις Καθαροῖς ἐπίσκοπος τὴν τοῦ πρεσβυτέρου τιμὴν ἕξει, πλὴν εἰ μὴ ἄρα δοκοίη τῷ ἐπισκόπῳ τῆς τιμῆς τοῦ ὀνόματος αὐτὸν μετέχειν. Εἰ δὲ τοῦτο αὐτῷ μὴ ἀρέσκει, ἐπινοήσει τόπον ἢ χωρεπισκόπου ἢ πρεσβυτέρου ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἐν τῷ κλήρῷ ὅλως δοκεῖν εἶναι, ἵνα μὴ ἐν τῇ πόλει δύο ἐπίσκοποι ὦσιν.
θ′. Εἴ τινες ἀνεξετάστως προσήχθησαν πρεσβύτεροι, ἢ ἀνακρινόμενοι ὡμολόγησαν τὰ ἡμαρτημένα αὐτοῖς, καὶ ὁμολογησάντων αὐτὼν, παρὰ κανόνα κινούμενοι οἱ ἄνθρωποι τοῖς τοιούτοις χεῖρα ἐπιτεθείκασι, τούτους ὁ κανὼν οὐ προσίεται· Τὸ γὰρ ἀνεπίληπτον ἐκδικεῖ ἡ καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία.
ι′. Ὅσοι προεχειρίσθησαν τῶν παραπεπτωκότων κατὰ ἄγνοιαν, ἢ καὶ προειδότων τῶν προχειρισαμένων, τοῦτο οὐ προκρίνει τῳ κανόνι τῷ ἐκκλησιαστικῷ· γνωσθέντες γὰρ καθαιροῦνται.
ια′. Περὶ τῶν παραβάντων χωρὶς ἀνάγκης, ἢ χωρὶς ἀφαιρέσεως ὑπερχόντων, ἢ χωρὶς κινδύνου, ἤ τινος τοιούτου, ὃ γέγονεν ἐπὶ τῆς τυραννίδος Λικινίου, ἔδοξε τῃ συνόδῳ, εἰ καὶ ἀνάξιοι ἦσαν φιλανθρωπίας, ὅμως χρηστεύσασθαι εἰς αὐτούς. Ὅσοι οὖν γνησίως μεταμέλονται, τρία ἔτη ἐν ἀκροωμένοις ποιήσουσιν οἱ πιστοὶ, καὶ ἑπτὰ ἔτη ὑποπεσοῦνται, δύο δὲ ἔτη χωρὶς προσφορᾶς κοινωνήσουσι τῷ λαῷ τῶν προσευχῶν.
ιβ′. Οἱ δὲ προσκληθέντες μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς χάριτος καὶ τὴν πρώτην ὁρμὴν ἐνδειξάμενοι, καὶ ἀποθέμενοι τὰς ζώνας, μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα «ἐπὶ τὸν οἰκεῖον ἔμετον ἀναδραμόντες ὡς κύνες,» ὥς τινας καὶ ἀργύρια πρόεσθαι, καὶ βενεφικίοις κατορθῶσαι τὸ ἀναστρατεύσασθαι, οὗτοι δέκα ἔτη ὑποπιπτέτωσαν μετὰ τὸν τῆς τριετοῦς ἀκροάσεως χρόνον. Ἐφ᾽ ἅπασι δὲ τούτοις, προσήκει ἐξετάζειν τὴν προαίρεσιν καὶ τὸ εἶδος τῆς μετανοίας· ὅσοι μὲν γὰρ καὶ φόβῳ καὶ δάκρυσι καὶ ὑπομονῃ καὶ ἀγαθοεργίαις τὴν ἐπιστροφὴν ἔργῳ καὶ οὐ σχήματι ἐπιδείκνυνται, οὗτοι πληρώσαντες τὸν χρόνον τὸν ὡρισμένον τῆς ἀκροάσεως, εἰκότως τῶν εὐχῶν κοινωνήσουσι μετὰ τοῦ ἐξεῖναι τῷ ἐπισκόπῳ καὶ φιλανθρωπότερόν τι περὶ αὐτῶν βουλεύσασθαι. Ὅσοι δὲ ἀδιαφόρως ἤνεγκαν, καὶ τὸ σχῆμα τοῦ εἰσιέναι εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἀρκεῖν ἑαυτοῖς ἡγήσαντο πρὸς τὴν ἐπιστρέφειαν, ἐξ ἁπαντος πληρούτωσαν τὸν χρόνον.
ιγ′. Περὶ δὲ τῶν ἐξοδευόντων ὁ παλαιὸς καὶ κανονικὸς νόμος φυλαχθήσεται καὶ νῦν, ὥστε εἴτις ἐξοδεύοι, τοῦ τελευταίου καὶ ἀναγκαιοτάτου ἐφοδίου μὴ ἀποστερεῖσθαι· εἰ δὲ ἀπογνωσθεὶς, καὶ κοινωνίας πάλιν τυχὼν, πάλιν ἐν τοῖς ζῶσιν ἐξετασθῃ, μετὰ τῶν κοινωνούντων τῆς εὐχῆς μόνης ἔστω. Καθόλου δὲ καὶ περὶ πάντος οὐτινοσοῦν ἐξοδεύοντος, αἰτοῦντος δὲ μετασχεῖν εὐχαριστίας, ὁ ἐπίσκοπος μετὰ δοκιμασίας ἐπιδότω.
ιδ′. Περὶ τῶν κατηχουμένων καὶ παραπεσόντων ἔδοξε τῃ ἁγίᾳ καὶ μεγάλῃ συνόδῳ, ὥστε τριῶν ἐτῶν αὐτοὺς ἀκροωμένους μόνον, μετὰ ταῦτα εὔχεσθαι μετὰ τῶν κατηχουμένων.
ιε′. Διὰ τὸν πολὺν τάραχον καὶ τὰς στάσεις τὰς γινομένας, ἔδοξε παντάπασι περιαιρεθῆναι τὴν συνήθειαν τὴν παρὰ τὸν κανόνα εὑρεθεῖσαν ἔν τισι μέρεσιν, ὥστε ἀπὸ πόλεως εἰς πόλιν μὴ μεταβαίνειν μήτε ἐπισκοπον, μήτε πρεσβύτερον, μήτε διάκονον. Εἰ δέ τις μετὰ τὸν τῆς ἁγίας καὶ μεγάλης συνόδου ὅρον τοιούτῳ τινὶ ἐπιχειρήσειεν, ἢ ἐπιδοίη ἑαυτὸν πράγματι τοιούτῳ, ἀκυρωθήσεται ἐξάπαντος τὸ κατασκεύασμα, καὶ ἀποκατασταθήσεται τῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ, ἧς ὁ ἐπίσκοπος ἢ ὁ πρεσβύτερος ἐχειροτονήθη.
ις′. Ὅσοι ῥιψοκινδύνως μήτε τὸν φόβον τοῦ Θεοῦ πρὸ ὀφθαλμῶν ἔχοντες, μήτε τὸν ἐκκλησιαστικὸν κανόνα εἰδότες, ἀναχωρήσουσι τῆς ἐκκλησίας, πρεσβύτεροι ἢ διάκονοι, ἢ ὅλως ἐν τῷ κανόνι ἐξεταζόμενοι, οὗτοι οὐδαμῶς δεκτοὶ ὀφείλουσιν εἶναι ἐν ἑτέρᾳ ἐκκλησίᾳ, ἀλλὰ πᾶσαν αὐτοῖς ἀνάγκην ἐπάγεσθαι χρὴ, ἀναστρέφειν εἰς τὰς ἑαυτῶν παροικίας· ἢ ἐπιμένοντας, ἀκοινωνήτους εἶναι προσήκει. Εἰ δὲ καὶ τολμήσειέ τις ὑφαρπάσαι τὸν τῷ ἑτέρῳ διαφέροντα, καὶ χειροτονῆσαι ἐν τῃ αὑτοῦ ἐκκλησίᾳ, μὴ συγκατατιθεμένου τοῦ ἰδὶου ἐπισκόπου οὗ ἀνεχώρησεν ὁ ἐν τῷ κανόνι ἐξεταζόμενος, ἄκυρος ἔστω ἡ χειροτονία.
ιζ′. Ἐπειδὴ πολλοὶ ἐν τῷ κανόνι ἐξεταζόμενοι τὴν πλεονεξίαν καὶ τὴν αἰσχροκερδείαν διώκοντες, ἐπελάθοντο τοῦ θείου γράμματος λέγοντος,
«τὸ ἀργύριον αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἔδωκεν ἐπὶ τόκῳ,» καὶ δανείζοντες ἑκατοστὰς ἀπαιτοῦσιν, ἐδικαίωσεν ἡ ἁγία καὶ μεγάλη σύνοδος, ὡς, εἴτις εὑρεθείη μετὰ τὸν ὅρον τοῦτον τόκους λαμβάνειν, ἐκ μεταχειρίσεως ἢ ἄλλως μετερχόμενος τὸ πρᾶγμα, ἢ ἡμιολίας ἀπαιτῶν, ἢ ὅλως ἕτερόν τι ἐπινοῶν αἰσχροῦ κέρδους ἕνεκα, καθαιρεθήσεται τοῦ κλήρου, καὶ ἀλλότριος τοῦ κανόνος ἔσται.
ιη′. Ἦλθεν εἰς τὴν ἁγίαν και μεγάλην σύνοδον, ὅτι ἔν τισι τόποις καὶ πόλεσι, τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις τὴν εὐχαριστίαν οἱ διάκονοι διδόασιν, ὥσπερ οὔτε ὁ κανὼν οὔτε ἡ συνήθεια παρέδωκεν, τοὺς ἐξουσίαν μὴ ἔχοντας προσφέρειν τοῖς προσφέρουσι διδόναι τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ· κἀκεῖνο δὲ ἐγνωρίσθη, ὅτι ἤδη τινὲς τῶν διακόνων καὶ πρὸ τῶν ἐπισκόπων τῆς εὐχαριστίας ἅπτονται. Ταῦτα οὖν πάντα περιῃρήσθω· καὶ ἐμμενέτωσαν οἱ διάκονοι τοῖς ἰδίοις μέτροις, εἰδότες ὅτι τοῦ μὲν ἐπισκόπου ὑπηρέται εἰσὶν, τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτέρων ἐλάττους τυγχάνουσι· λαμβανέτωσαν δὲ κατὰ τὴν τάξιν τὴν εὐχαριστίαν μετὰ τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους, ἢ τοῦ ἐπισκόπου διδόντος αὐτοῖς, ἢ τοῦ πρεσβυτέρου· ἀλλὰ μὴδὲ καθῆσθαι ἐν μέσῳ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων ἐξέστω τοῖς διακόνοις· παρα κανόνα γὰρ καὶ παρὰ τάξιν ἐστὶ τὸ γινόμενον. Εἰ δέ τις μὴ θέλοι πειθαρχεῖν καὶ μετὰ τούτους τοὺς ὅρους, πεπαύσθω τῆς διακονίας.
ιθ′. Περὶ τῶν Παυλιανισάντων, εἶτα προσφυγόντων τῃ καθολικῃ ἀκκλησίᾳ, ὅρος ἐκτέθειται ἀναβαπτίζεσθαι αὐτοὺς ἐξάπαντος. Εἰ δέ τινες ἐν τῷ παρεληλυθότι χρόνῳ ἐν τῷ κλήρῳ ἐξητάσθησαν, εἰ μὲν ἄμεμπτοι καὶ ἀνεπίληπτοι φανεῖεν, ἀναβαπτισθέντες χειροτονείσθωσαν ὑπὸ τοῦ τῆς καθολικῆς ἐκκλησίας ἐπισκόπου· εἰ δὲ ἡ ἀνάκρισις ἀνεπιτηδείους αὐτοὺς εὑρίσκοι, καθαιρεῖσθαι αὐτοὺς προσήκει. Ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ περὶ τῶν διακονισσῶν, καὶ ὅλως περὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ κλήρῳ κανόνι ἐξεταζομένων, ὁ αὐτὸς τύπος παραφυλαχθήσεται· ἐμνήσθημεν δὲ διακονισσῶν τῶν ἐν τῷ σχήματι ἐξετασθεισῶν, ἐπεὶ μηδὲ χειροθεσίαν τινὰ ἔχουσιν, ὥστε ἐξάπαντος ἐν τοῖς λαϊκοῖς αὐτὰς ἐξετάζεσθαι.
κ′. Ἐπειδή τινές εἰσιν ἐν τῃ κυριακῃ γόνυ κλίνοντες, καὶ ἐν ταῖς τῆς πεντηκοστῆς ἡμέραις· ὑπὲρ τοῦ πάντα ἐν πάσῃ παροικίᾳ ὁμοίως παραφυλάττεσθαι, ἑστῶτας ἔδοξε τῃ ἁγίᾳ συνόδῳ τὰς εὐχὰς ἀποδιδόναι τῷ Θεῷ.
Twenty
Canons in Latin
I. Si quis in morbo a medicis excisus, vel a barbaris exsectus est, is maneat in clero. Si quis autem sanus seipsum abscidit, hunc, etiam in clero constitutum, abstinere convenit, et deinceps nullum talem promoveri oportet. Sicut autem hoc manifestum est, quod de iis qui de industria hoc agunt, audentque seipsos abscindere, dictum est: ita si qui vel a barbaris, vel a dominis eunuchi facti sunt, et ii alioqui digni inveniantur, tales in clerum admittit canon.
II. Quoniam multa vel necessitate, aut aliter cogentibus hominibus, facta sunt praeter canonem ecclesiasticum, ita ut homines e gentili vita nuper accedentes ad fidem, et exiguo tempore eruditi, statim ad spirituale lavacrum ducantur, et simul atque baptizati fuerint, ad episcopatum vel presbyterium promoveantur; recte habere visum est, ut nihil deinceps tale fiat. Nam et tempore opus est catechumeno, et post baptismum probatione majore: apertum enim est apostolicum scriptum, dicens: Non neophytum, ne forte inflatus in judicium incidat, et laqueum diaboli. Si vero procedente tempore aliquod animi peccatum inveniatur in ea persona, et duobus vel tribus testibus convincatur, abstineat talis a clero: qui autem praeter haec facit, ut qui magnae synodi adversarius esse audeat, ipse de clericatu periclitabitur.
III. Vetuit omnino magna synodus, ne liceat episcopo, nec presbytero, nec diacono, nec ulli penitus eorum qui sunt in clero, extraneam [subintroductam] habere mulierem; nisi forte aut matrem, aut sororem, aut amitam, vel eas tantum personas quae omnem suspicionem effugiunt.
IV. Episcopum oportet maxime quidem ab omnibus qui sunt in provincia episcopis constitui: si vero hoc difficile fuerit, aut propter urgentem necessitatem, aut propter itineris longitudinem, tres omnino in idipsum convenientes, dummodo consenserint qui absunt, et per litteras approbaverint, ordinationem faciant. Confirmatio autem eorum quae in quaque provincia geruntur, tribuatur metropolitano.
V. De iis qui communione privantur, seu ex clero, seu ex laico ordine, ab episcopis uniuscujusque provinciae servetur haec sententia secundum canonem qui pronuntiat, ut hi qui ab aliis abjiciuntur, ab aliis non recipiantur. Inquiratur autem ne simultate, aut contentione, aut aliqua alia molestia episcopi sint excommunicati. Ut hoc ergo decentius examinetur, recte habere visum est ut singulis annis per unamquamque provinciam bis in anno synodi fiant, ut omnes in unum convenientes episcopi provinciae, ejusmodi quaestiones examinent, et sic qui manifeste offenderint episcopum, juste excommunicati ab omnibus esse videantur, donec episcoporum coetui visum fuerit pro iis humaniorem ferre sententiam. Synodi autem fiant, una quidem ante Quadragesimam, ut omni simultate sublata, munus purum Deo offeratur: secunda autem circa tempus autumni.
VI. Antiqui mores obtineant, qui sunt in Aegypto, Libya et Pentapoli, ut Alexandrinus episcopus horum omnium habeat potestatem, quoniam illa est Romano etiam episcopo consuetudo. Similiter autem et in Antiochia, et in aliis provinciis privilegia serventur Ecclesiis. Illud autem omnino manifestum est, quod si quis praeter sententiam metropolitani factus sit episcopus, hunc magna synodus statuit non oportere esse episcopum. Si vero communi omnium suffragio rationi consentaneo, et secundum ecclesiasticum canonem, duo aut tres contentiose, seu propria pertinacia inducti contradixerint, obtineat plurimorum sententia.
VII. Quoniam consuetudo obtinuit, et antiqua traditio, ut Aeliae episcopus honoretur, habeat ordinem honoris, metropoli propria dignitate servata.
VIII. De his qui se catharos, id est puros, nominant, si aliquando ad catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam redierint, visum est sanctae et magnae synodo, ut accepta manuum impositione, sic in clero maneant. Prae omnibus autem eos scripto profiteri oportet, quod consentient, et sequentur dogmata Ecclesiae catholicae et apostolicae, id est, et cum digamis communicare, et his qui in persecutione lapsi sunt, quibus etiam tempus constitutum est, et opportunitas definita, ut in omnibus sequantur dogmata catholicae Ecclesiae. Ubicunque autem, sive in vicis, sive in civitatibus ipsi soli inventi fuerint ordinati, qui inveniuntur in clero in eodem ordine permaneant. Si autem catholicae Ecclesiae episcopo aut presbytero existente quidam accedunt, manifestum est, quod episcopus Ecclesiae dignitatem episcopi habeat. Qui autem apud eos, qui dicuntur cathari, nominatur episcopus, habeat honorem presbyteri, nisi forte placuerit episcopo nominis honorem illi concedere. Si hoc autem ei minime placuerit, inveniat ei locum chorepiscopi, aut presbyteri, ut in clero omnino esse videatur, ne in civitate duo sint episcopi.
IX. Si qui sine examinatione presbyteri promoti sint, vel cum discuterentur, peccata sua confessi sint, eisque confessis, homines contra canonem moti, manus imposuerint, tales canon non admittit: quod enim reprehensibile est, catholica Ecclesia non defendit.
X. Quicunque ex lapsis ordinati sunt per ignorantiam, aut dissimulationem eorum qui eos ordinarunt, hoc non praejudicat canoni Ecclesiastico; cogniti enim deponuntur.
XI. De his qui praevaricati sunt sine necessitate, aut facultatum ablatione, aut sine periculo, aut aliquo ejusmodi, quod factum est sub tyrannide Licinii, visum est synodo, licet misericordia indigni sint, benignitate tamen in eos uti. Quicunque ergo vere poenitent, tribus annis fideles inter audientes habeantur, et septem annis jaceant: duobus autem annis sine oblatione, populo communicent in orationibus.
XII. Quicunque vocati per gratiam, primum quidem ardorem fidemve suam ostenderunt, et cingulum militiae deposuerunt, postea vero ut canes ad suum vomitum reversi sunt, ita ut aliqui et pecuniam darent, et beneficiis militiam repeterent, hi decem annis jaceant, post triennii auditionis tempus. In his autem omnibus observare oportet propositum et modum poenitentiae. Quicunque enim et timore, et lacrymis, et patientia, et bonis operibus conversionem absque simulatione demonstrant, hi definitum tempus auditionis implentes, tum demum orationibus communicabunt, et postea licebit episcopo, de his aliquid humanius cogitare. Quicunque vero indifferenter tulerunt, et habitum Ecclesiam introeundi sibi arbitrati sunt ad conversionem sufficere, hi definitum tempus omnino impleant.
XIII. De his qui vita excedunt, vetus et canonica lex nunc quoque servabitur, ut si quis vita excedat, ultimo et necessario viatico minime privetur. Si vero desperatus, et communionem assecutus supervixerit, sit inter eos qui communionem orationis tantummodo consequuntur. Generaliter autem omni cuilibet in exitu posito, et eucharistiae participationem petenti, episcopus cum examinatione oblationem impertiat.
XIV. De catechumenis lapsis placuit sanctae et magnae synodo, ut ii tribus annis audientes tantum sint, postea orent cum catechumenis.
XV. Propter tumultus et seditiones quae fiunt, placuit omnino consuetudinem tolli, quae praeter canonem in quibusdam partibus invenitur, ut a civitate in civitatem nec episcopus, nec presbyter, nec diaconus transferatur. Si quis autem post definitionem sanctae et magnae synodi, tale quid aggressus fuerit, vel se rei ejusmodi dederit, quod factum erit omnino infirmabitur, et Ecclesiae restituetur cui fuerat episcopus, aut presbyter, vel diaconus ordinatus.
XVI. Quicunque temere et inconsiderate nec Dei timorem prae oculis habentes, nec ecclesiasticum canonem agnoscentes, ab Ecclesia discesserint presbyteri vel diaconi, vel quicunque omnino in canone recensentur, hi nequaquam debent in aliam ecclesiam recipi, sed omnino cogendi sunt in suas ipsorum paroecias redire: vel si perseverent, eos a communione privari oportet. Si quis etiam ausus fuerit eum qui ad alium pertinet, surripere, et in sua ecclesia ordinare, non consentiente proprio episcopo, a quo recessit qui in canone censetur, ordinatio hujusmodi irrita erit.
XVII. Quoniam plerique qui in canone recensentur avaritiam et turpem quaestum sectantes, obliviscuntur divinae Scripturae dicentis: Pecuniam suam non dedit ad usuram (Psalm
14
15).5), et foenerantes centesimas exigunt, aequum censuit sancta et magna synodus, ut si quis inventus fuerit post hanc definitionem usuras sumere ex mutuo, vel aliter eam rem consectari aut sescupla exigere, vel omnino aliquid aliud excogitare turpis lucri gratia, e clero deponatur, et alienus a canone existat.
XVIII. Pervenit ad sanctum magnumque concilium, quod in quibusdam locis et civitatibus, diaconi presbyteris eucharistiam praebeant; quod neque canon, neque consuetudo tradidit, ut qui potestatem offerendi non habent, his qui offerunt corpus Christi porrigant. Illud etiam innotuit quod jam quidam ex diaconis etiam ante episcopos eucharistiam attingant. Omnia igitur ista auferantur, et diaconi intra propriam mensuram maneant, scientes quod ministri sunt episcoporum, et presbyteris inferiores existant: accipiant autem suo ordine eucharistiam post presbyteros, vel episcopo dante vel presbytero; sed nec sedere in medio presbyterorum diaconis liceat, id enim fit praeter canonem et ordinem. Si quis autem obedire noluerit post has definitiones, desinat esse diaconus.
XIX. De Paulianistis, si ad Ecclesiam catholicam confugerint, definitum est eos omnino rebaptizari. Si qui vero praeterito tempore in clero fuerint, si quidem inculpati et irreprehensibiles, rebaptizati ordinentur ab episcopo catholicae Ecclesiae. Si vero examinati, minus apti deprehensi fuerint, deponi eos convenit: similiter autem et de diaconissis, et omnino de his qui sub canone versantur, eadem forma servabitur. Diaconissarum autem meminimus, quae in habitu quidem esse censentur, quia vero nullam manus impositionem habent, ut omnino inter laicos ipsae deputentur.
XX. Quoniam sunt quidam, qui die dominico genua flectunt, et in diebus Pentecostes, ut omnia similiter in omni paroecia serventur, visum est sanctae synodo, stantes Deo orationes persolvere.
Canons
of the Council of Nicaea - Page 1 of 2 (earlychurchtexts.com)
Canons
of the Council of Nicaea - Page 2 of 2 (earlychurchtexts.com)
Domination
by Alice Roberts review – a brilliant but cynical history of
Christianity
The
humanist historian brings objects to life beautifully, but falters
when it comes to people and their beliefs
Domination
tells the story of how a tiny local cult became one of the greatest
cultural and political forces in history. Alice Roberts puts the
case that the Roman empire lived on in a different form in the
church.
It
is not an original idea – after all the foundation prayer of
Christianity says “thy Kingdom come” – but Roberts
tells the story from the point of view of individual parishes and
even buildings. It’s a revelation, like watching those
stop-motion films of how a plant grows and blooms. There’s a
section about how a Roman villa might transform into a parish, the
long barn providing the footprint, the web of relationships
providing the social connection, the very tiles and columns
providing the building materials. I can’t think of anyone who
writes better about the way objects can speak to us. There’s a
passage here describing her joy on grasping what it means that an
ordinary-looking clay lamp found in Carlisle is purple on the
inside; there’s a beautiful afterword about the history of
bells.
The
book revolves around the moment that Christianity became a religion
of empire – the Council of Nicaea in AD325. Roberts patiently
picks away at the mythologising around this key event to figure out
how a multitude of competing interests was finally brought together
under the umbrella of a particular Christology. She illuminates the
way Christianity manages to be both centralised and local. This is
still true: a recent Bible Society report shows that if you close a
church a third of its congregation will not even try to find
another. Truth may be universal, loyalty is parochial.
The
trouble with rolling your eyes is that you end up looking in the
wrong direction
The
book (according to its YouTube trailer, at least) promises to “lift
the veil on secrets that have been hidden in plain sight” and
find out who started Christianity and why. It is a humanist take, so
you know the who and why is not likely to be Jesus, and the
forgiveness of sins. And some of the secrets have been hidden in
very plain sight indeed. The fact that Christians served in the
Roman army won’t be news to fans of that patron of archers,
gay icon, and subject of portraits by Botticelli, El Greco, Mishima,
Derek Jarman and Louise Bourgeois: Saint Sebastian. There is a
bracingly contrarian takedown of Saint Paul, reframing him as a
Trumpian grifter and stupidity advocate. It’s fun but no more
lifts the veil on his influence than pointing out that Marie Stopes
was a raging eugenicist would lift the veil on the appeal of
contraception.
If
you’re looking for the open, inquisitive humanism of Erasmus
or Ursula K Le Guin, then you’ll have to read them. Prof
Roberts’s approach is more brisk. Anyone who thinks the church
was about anything “other than money and power”, she
says, is suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Illuminators of
manuscripts, builders of cathedrals, makers of the objects in which
she herself finds such wonder were all either duplicitous or duped.
In a splendidly anachronistic closing flourish she shelves the
empire metaphor and instead compares the church to a corporation
with directors and CEOs, franchises and a product to sell. This –
with its implication of top-down control and single unswerving
purpose – is queasily close to a conspiracy theory, albeit one
that the best bits of this book refute.
There
is a lot of disappointed eye-rolling about the things that people
believed – or pretended to believe. The trouble with rolling
your eyes is that you end up looking in the wrong direction. One
example among many: Roberts is dismissive of saints such as Columba
and Aidan who chose to live on isolated islands, pointing out that
these islands were not that isolated in days when sea was safer than
roads. But surely they were choosing to embrace simplicity not just
for its own sake but as a kind of protest, a holding to account.
Yes, you can more or less see Bamburgh castle from Lindisfarne –
but isn’t that the point? That the king in his castle is
forced to consider the saint in his cell every time he looks out
from the battlements. To protest somewhere truly isolated would be
like shouting “fuck the patriarchy” in a penguin colony.
Of course from some angles Christianity does looks like a business,
but then from many angles a dolphin looks like a fish. It swims,
eats and lives like a fish but there’s an important
difference. It suckles its young.
Back
in 2016, Alice Roberts had a go at a vastly more sacred cow than
Christianity. In a piece in Scientific American, she attacked David
Attenborough himself for promoting the “aquatic ape
hypothesis”, dismissing it as a theory of everything, and like
all theories of everything, “both too extravagant and too
simple”. I know this because I kept the article on my desk for
years. Cynicism is also a theory of everything. If the humanism that
frames the narrative here is ever to offer more than eye-rolling, it
needs to embrace the fact that, to quote the Alice Roberts of 2016,
the reality is “both more complex and more interesting”.
Domination
by Alice Roberts review – a brilliant but cynical history of
Christianity | History books | The Guardian
HET ALGEMEEN CONCILIE IN
DE VIERDE EEUW
ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT
TER VERKRIJGING VAN DË GRAAD VAN DOCTOR IN DE H. GODGELEERDHEID
AAN DE ROOMSCH-KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT VAN NIJMEGEN, OP GEZAG VAN
DEN WND. RECTOR MAGNIFICUS PROF. MR. B. H. D. HERMESDORF,
HOOGLEERAAR IN DE FACULTEIT DER RECHTSGELEERDHEID VOLGENS BESLUIT
VAN DE SENAAT IN HET OPENBAAR TE VERDEDIGEN IN DE AULA DER
UNIVERSITEIT OP VRIJDAG 13 JULI 1945 'S NAMIDDAGS TE 4 UUR
DOOR P. fr. MONALD
GOEMANS O.F.M.
GEBOREN TE HILLEGOM
1945 DEKKER & VAN DE
VEGT N.V. – NIJMEGEN-UTRECHT
Het
algemeen concilie in de vierde eeuw » Goemans, Monald »
1945 - Pag. 9 | Delpher
THE GENERAL
COUNCIL IN THE FOURTH CENTURY
ACADEMIC
THESIS FOR THE OBTAINING OF THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF HOLY THEOLOGY AT
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF NIJMEGEN, BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE
ACTUAL RECTOR MAGNIFICUS PROF. B.H.D. HERMESDORF, PROFESSOR IN THE
FACULTY OF LAW, ACCORDING TO A DECISION OF THE SENATE TO BE PUBLICLY
DEFENDED IN THE AUDITORY OF THE UNIVERSITY ON FRIDAY 13 JULY 1945 AT
4 O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON BY MONALD GOEMANS O.F.M.
BORN IN HILLEGOM
PROBLEM AND OBJECTIVE
Introduction
That
no council can exist as "ecumenical" without a
"cooperation" of the visible Supreme Head of the Church,
the Bishop of Rome, is a truth that no Catholic can and will doubt.
However, when Catholic scholars, dogmatists, canonists and
historians want to determine in more detail what that cooperation of
the Pope must consist of or has existed in the course of history,
one encounters, besides great agreement and irrefutable certainty,
not only different formulations of one and the same thing, but also
divergent and even opposing opinions. Both, both the different
formulations and the divergent, even opposing opinions, form an
obstacle to a clear insight, a clouding becomes inevitable,
moreover, because the authors repeatedly use vague expressions, do
not seem to distinguish sufficiently between the various issues,
even to confuse them or on the other hand want to make distinctions
that give the impression of belonging more to dialectics than to
logic. The following definition, given by J. Forget, of the concept
of "ecumenical council": "An ecumenical or universal
council is a solitary assembly of the universal eves, called upon
and under authority and the presidency of the Roman Pontiff to
liberate and legislate in common on matters of interest to the
Christian faith"1), may sound ever so clear, concrete and
distinct, but in reality this definition cannot boast of these so
necessary characteristics. For if this definition is to claim to be
correct, it must be applicable to the councils which are accepted as
"ecumenical". From a historical point of view, however,
numerous difficulties must arise, and the definition appears not
only to be expressed in general terms, but even to be open to
question, perhaps even incomplete. If we confine ourselves for the
time being to the "cooperation" of the Pope, as described
in the definition, then the historian is faced with the thorny
question: was there any question of a convocation at the first eight
General Councils held in the East by the Pope? Or also for this
problem: how can the demand for papal presidency be reconciled with
the facts of the second General Council in 381 in Constantinopel,
where successively Meletius of Antioch presided, after his death
Gregory of Nazianzus and after his abdication Nectarius of
Constantinopel? Or with the facts of the fifth General Council in
553 also in Constantinopel, which was held against the wishes and
without any cooperation of Pope Vigilius? Indeed, without the Pope
no General Council and that is undoubtedly firmly anchored in the
above definition. But that the influence which the Pope has actually
exercised on the Ecumenical Councils in the course of history has
not always fully corresponded to the above requirements, is admitted
by the same author, J. Forget, when he continues: "It is true
that, in order to be ecumenical without restriction, it means that I
have always been through my convocation, my celebration and the
plurality of powers; but in all cases, according to my appreciation
and traditional terminology, a council is not ecumenical, as it is
not universal, that it is the legal representation, the authorized
body of the whole Church; or, if you don't want to wait until the
end of the day, you don't have to worry about it; And because of the
intervention of the superior suffira souvent to supplement the
manquer d'ailleurs with the oecumenicitism, the guarantee of
autorité absolute et universelle descisions. "De la
vient que certains councils sont considérés comme
ecuméniques pour partie seulement de leurs décrets, le
concours ou l'approbation du saint-siège ayant manqué
pour le reste" 2).
Here,
then, a distinction is apparently made between General Councils
"sans restriction aucune", to which the above-mentioned
definition applies, and General Councils, to which not all of these
characteristics are present and which are therefore general in a
broader sense. For this category of General Councils, the terms "la
représentation juridique, I’organe autorisé de
toute I’Église, I’intervention du chef suprème,
paree qu'elle garantira I’autorité absolue et
universalle des décisions" apparently serve as a
definition. The convocation and the meeting itself may, if
necessary, lack something, as long as the deficiency is then
supplemented by that "cooperation" (concours) of the Pope,
which consists in the approval, by which the decisions first receive
an absolute and universal authority. This view seems to be in accord
with the historical facts, at least when we read the judgment of the
impartial historian, the Anglican Herbert Scott, who wrote in 1928:
"It appears that what in the opinion of the Easterns of these
centuries [before the Eastern Schism] made a Council to be reckoned
ecumenical was ratification and confirmation by the Pope" 3).
It is, however, difficult to assume that only the ratification and
confirmation of the Pope stamps a council as an "ecumenical".
The ratification and confirmation by the Bishop of Rome, even if
they take place in forma solemni, of the decisions of a particular
council, do indeed give such decisions a universal force, valid for
the entire Church, but do not make such a council itself an
ecumenical one. The representation of the entire Church of Christ by
the Fathers present is also one of the requirements. The latter is
also indicated by the dogmaticians in various words as a
requirement; for example, Forget speaks of the "assemblée
solennelle des évêques de tout l’univers".
But then another difficulty immediately arises. What should one
think of the words: "the bishops of the whole world", when
at the first eight Councils held in the East only four or six or ten
from the whole West were present and represented? Or what should one
think of the Second General Council at Constantinopel in 381, at
which not even a single Western bishop was invited, present or
represented? Yet another condition is defined by Forget with the
words: "pour délibérer et légiférer
en commun sur les choses qui intéressent la chrétienté
entière". Now, however, it is not immediately obvious
what matters are that belong to the interest of the whole of
Christendom. In itself, every matter concerning faith or morals is
of importance to the whole of Christendom. But not every matter
concerning faith or morals calls forth a General Council, nor does
it have to do so. The solution, after all, of a question may be
urgent for a certain region, where this question is the centre of
attention, and thus certainly justify a regional synod, but when
that question remains limited within narrower boundaries, a General
Council will rightly be absent, even if it concerns faith or morals.
Circumstances will have to show whether the integrity of faith and
the purity of morals of the whole of Christendom are at stake or
only of a smaller group; as is self-evident, it will often be
difficult to draw a fixed boundary.
How
easily different questions are confused may be seen from the
following words of Forget: "pour être oecuménique
sans restriction aucune, il doit I’être a la fois par sa
convocation, sa célébration et la plénitude du
pouvoir". This fullness of power is not a constitutive element
of a General Council, but an essential consequence, a consequence in
particular of the fact that the authorities of the entire Church are
present and represented. A Council is not general partly because of
the fullness of power, but on the contrary: possesses the fullness
of power because of its generality.
The
difficult to determine boundary, which according to Forget's
definition should be drawn between matters of importance to the
entire Christendom and only to a certain part, is no longer
fortunately in the definition of a General Council given by a
dogmatist like H. Dieckmann: "est
conventus legitimus omnium episcoporum ad deliberandas et
decernendas res ecclesiasticas", or a little further
"res et quaestiones, quae
spectant ad Ecclesiam" 4). When Dieckmann now asks
himself in concrete terms what is "required" to be able to
call a council ecumenical, he immediately makes a distinction
between the quaestio iuris and the quaestio facti. With regard to
the General Councils which have already taken place, he acknowledges
the existence of a threefold difficulty, namely: the absence of all
bishops numerically or physically, the apparent absence of virtually
all bishops, necessary for the General Council to be the
representation of the universal teaching authority of the Church,
and finally the absence of complete agreement among the assembled.
In order to resolve the quaestio iuris, Dieckmann follows the
prescriptions of canon law 5), firstly with regard to the share of
the bishops (can. 223-226), secondly with regard to the share of the
Pope (can. 222 and can. 227).
As
regards the number of bishops present, it is necessary and
sufficient that the assembled bishops represent the entire teaching
authority of the Church. Here already Dieckmann is forced to note
that a distinction must be made between councils which are general
from the beginning and others which, by virtue of their convocation,
must rather be called particular councils, but which are later
elevated to the dignity of General Council 6). As far as general
consent is concerned, the majority of votes are recognized as
sufficient for a decision with infallible force.
Passing
on to the part of the Bishop of Rome, Dieckmann has much more
opportunity to rely on canon law, since this defines the papal
functions much more precisely. In the first place, the Pope, and
indeed he alone and exclusively, has the right to convene a General
Council, in accordance with canon 222, § 1: "Dari nequit
Oecumenicum Concilium quod a Romano Pontifice non fuerit
convocatum". Here, however, a difficulty arises for us again.
Undoubtedly the Pope has the right to convene a General Council, and
that exclusively, since He alone is the visible Supreme Head of the
entire Church. But it is another matter whether the Pope must always
make use of that right, and whether the convocation by the Pope
belongs to the necessities, the requirements of a General Council.
And this is nevertheless the question which the author wants to
solve. Apparently two questions are confused here, although it must
be admitted that both are closely related. History also shows that
the first eight General Councils were not convened by the Pope, but
by the Emperor. Dieckmann does not ignore this and tries to explain
these facts by appealing to a development in knowledge about the
Primacy and about the rights resulting from it, as well as to the
possibility that the Pope has explicitly or tacitly delegated the
"right of convocation" to the Emperor, which can happen,
for example, by the fact that the Pope recognizes a council convened
by the Emperor. Then, however, it seems more correct to speak of a
delegation, not as regards the "right of convocation", but
as regards the "convocation"; thus one has the right
distinction between the right to convene, the jus convocandi, and
the actual convening, the convocare, and the above-mentioned
confusion of the two issues is avoided. The jus convocandi belongs
to the Pope by the nature of the matter, the exercise of that right
or better the mere convocare can also be done by others.
In
the second place Dieckmann mentions the leadership and the
chairmanship as elements that belong to the Pope, in accordance with
canon 222, § 2: "Eiusdem
Romani Pontificis est Oecumenico Concilio per se vel per alios
praeesse, res in eo tractandas ordinemque servandum constituere ac
designare, Concilium ipsum transferre, suspendere, dissolvere".
All this belongs to the task of the Pope "with the same supreme
right". Like the previous, this right also flows from the
nature of the matter itself. But here again one may ask whether a
distinction should not be made between the right and its exercise.
The
third right which belongs to the Pope is the right of confirmation,
in accordance with the paragraph of canon 222 just quoted:
"Eiusdem Romani Pontificis est... eiusque decreta confirmare".
Here Dieckmann notes that "this is the most important right of
all." After all, there were councils which were not convened by
the Bishop of Rome; others at which he did not preside; but there
was never a General Council which would not derive and has not
derived its universal authority from the confirmation by the Bishop
of Rome 7). Why then in the foregoing speak of the convocation and
the leadership as requirements, if these may be lacking if need be?
"Requirements" nevertheless evoke the concept of
necessity, of essential element, when one treats the requirements as
an explanation of a definition. An essential element is something
that must be present, if the thing itself is to be present.
That
confirmation is an essential element and therefore indispensable,
can be beyond doubt; confirmation is equivalent to the vote of the
Pope and without the papal vote one can never speak of a decision
taken by the entire Church teaching authority, which is possible if
another bishop were to refuse to give his vote. And only when papal
confirmation is present and one can therefore speak of a decision of
the entire Church teaching authority, will the Council decision have
a definitive or infallible force, in accordance with canon 227:
"Concilii decreta vim
definitivam obligandi non habent, nisi a Romano Pontifice fuerint
confirmata et eius iussu promulgata".
That
confirmation is indeed the essential element, if not the only
essential element among the various possible influences of the Pope,
could also be illustrated by Dieckmann’s own words concerning
the Council of Constantinopel 381. The author states that only
Eastern bishops were present at this Council; "this synod was
only later recognized as ecumenical" 8). A little further on
the author explains himself further by writing that some synods were
only later elevated to the dignity of ecumenical synod, "such
as Constantinopel I by the immediately following approval of Pope
Damasus and the Western bishops" 9). We find the same thing
again when Dieckmann writes that Constantinopel I was not ecumenical
as regards the convocation, but "later as generally recognized
because of the recognition by Pope Damasus and the bishops of the
West" 10). However necessary the confirmation of the Pope may
be, it seems from the words just quoted that this alone is not
sufficient; the ecumenical dignity, indeed, is derived not only from
the approval of the Pope, but also from that of the Western bishops;
now, these, added to the signature of the Eastern bishops present at
that Council, together form the recognition of the entire Church's
teaching authority. And this recognition then elevates the Council
to an ecumenical one.
To
elevate the Council to an ecumenical one. Would it not be more
correct to say that this recognition of the entire Church's teaching
authority gives infallible force to the decisions and thus makes
this Council a Council at which decisions were made which later
acquired infallible force? In this context, reference may also be
made to the less fortunately chosen terminology of decretum vere
conciliare universale ll) in the sense of "infallible"
Council decision. It would be preferable to speak of decretum vere
conciliare infallibile or of decretum vere conciliare universale et
itaque infallibile. The awareness that doctrinal decisions on faith
and morals issued by a General Council possess the privilege of
infallibility and the naturally associated universally binding force
for the entire Church, seems to be so firmly anchored in the
Catholic mentality and these conciliar decisions seem to have grown
together into such a natural whole with their infallibility that the
distinction between the otherwise very closely connected concepts of
"ecumenicity" and "infallibility" of a General
Council practically fades away. As a result, one comes to use both
terms either side by side as two terms of virtually one and the same
concept or simply interchangeably. While the "infallibility"
of the decisions of a General Council is a consequence of the fact
that these decisions were made by a Council that is the
representation of the entire Church teaching authority, and is
therefore a consequence of "ecumenicity". The treatise has
so far been a critical rendering of Dieckmann's exposition, in the
following it may be permitted to make some remarks on the method
used by the author; this method, which is also the one usually used,
can be formulated briefly as a dogmatic exposition based on the data
of the Codex luris Canonici. While a collaboration between scholars
of different disciplines is to be welcomed, the way in which in this
case the dogmatician relies on the data of canon law seems to us
incorrect and also fatal. Incorrect, because the provisions of the
Codex do not want to indicate anything more than the requirements of
and the conditions for a General Council from Pentecost 1918, a
regulation of the future and not an assessment of the past. The
Codex is not a book of dogmatics, nor does it want to be, and it is
an incorrect view of the dogmatist when he draws his dogmatic
doctrine, which must also be true in the past, from and lets it rest
on the Codex. There are, however, various canons in the Codex that
can be indicated, which contain the official formulation of one or
another doctrine, have a dogmatic content; here canon law has been
taken over from dogmatics. In that case, however, they are dogmatic
provisions not because they are in the Codex, but because this is
evident from elsewhere. It therefore remains the only correct method
for the dogmatician to appeal, not to the Codex, but to the same
source of dogmatics from which the compilers of the Codex also drew
when adopting a dogmatic provision among the canons. The method is
fatal, because it is due to this that the dogmatician in his
exposition loses sight of the real question of the "requirements"
or "essential elements" of a General Council and starts
talking about the "rights" of Pope and Concilium Fathers,
in accordance with the terminology of the Code. At the same time,
one overlooks the fact that the Code does not mention a distinction
between that which is of divine right and that which is only of
ecclesiastical right, or between that which necessarily follows from
the nature and essence of the matter and therefore must be present
at all times and that which for some external reason has been
determined in the past or is determined for the future and therefore
does not always have to be true in all General Councils in order to
be able to speak of an Ecumenical Council.
With
regard to the doctrine of the General Councils, various questions
can therefore be raised, all of which culminate in the further
determination concerning the required "cooperation" of the
Pope. And although it is certain on the one hand that the vote or
confirmation of the Pope is required in order to be able to speak of
a true universal conciliar decision, and on the other hand that
doctrinal decisions of an Ecumenical Council on faith and morals
possess the privilege of infallibility, the question has not yet
been resolved unanimously among dogmatists as to who or what in
concrete terms is the bearer of that awesome authority. Are these
the pastors, gathered and assembled from all quarters, precisely
through their union with the Pope and only insofar as they are
united with him, so that ultimately the Pope is the only adequate
bearer of infallibility, or do the bishops enjoy the special
guidance of the Holy Spirit, who protects them from error and even
from the possibility of error, together with the Pope, so that
besides the Pope, the universal ecclesiastical teaching authority,
in which the Pope is necessarily included, is also the bearer of
infallibility. Since the history of the Councils, which are in fact
considered ecumenical, offers valuable data showing what is required
in order to be able to speak de jure of a General Council 12) and
since the history of the tradition surrounding the concept of
"General Council" may with equal right claim consultation
as a source of valuable data, the aim that is set out below is to
conduct a purely historical investigation into the facts and into
the views of the fourth century which can shed light on the
questions surrounding the concept of "Ecumenical Council".
This formulation already implies that this historical research will
mainly, although not exclusively, concern itself with the two
Councils that are recognized as the only General Councils of this
period: the Council of Nicea in 325 and the Council of
Constantinopel in 381. The facts and opinions concerning other
councils or synods are examined, because they too can contribute to
a correct explanation. The research therefore opens with an overview
of the synods before the year 325, among which not a single General
Council was held; a separate chapter is devoted to such important
synods as Sardica 343 and Rimini-Seleucia 359.
When
it comes to questions concerning the concept of "Ecumenical
Council", as is self-evident after all that has been said, the
focus will be on the questions of ecumenicity, infallibility and the
bearer of infallibility. Here the historical research is again
concentrated on the question of whether in the 4th century the Pope
was considered the subject of infallibility, as Forget 13) and many
others assume or whether on the contrary the thesis of F. X. Funk
14) is historically founded! according to which the General Council
itself, in other words the assembled bishops together with the Pope,
possessed this authority according to the view of that time.
CHAPTER I SYNODS BEFORE THE YEAR 325
Terminology and Nature
A
detailed theory of the General Council will not yet be expected from
the Church Fathers and ecclesiastical writers of the 4th century,
the first century in which General Councils occur. It is therefore
necessary to unearth their views on the concept of "General
Council" from more or less loose sayings, from indirect
indications, from the line of conduct with regard to the General
Council and of particular synods, from the various events. Valuable
data can also be hidden under the perhaps colorless-seeming
terminology that the sources use when they deal with General
Councils on the one hand and with particular synods on the other. It
is therefore important to investigate the way in which various
synods before the year 325, all particular, are described. There is
an essential difference between a General Council and a particular
council. This is already apparent from the difference in authority.
The authority of the first is infallible, that of the second is not.
The investigation of the terminology is therefore connected with a
sketch of the nature of the particular synods that took place before
the first General Council of Nicea in 325.
When
one reads through the texts of the already numerous synods before
the year 325, the sobriety immediately stands out as a
characteristic feature. Not so much as regards the number of texts.
For, even if the historian lacks a detailed account of most synods
from the early times of the Church and has the authentic Acts of
only one of those synods, he can still, with a careful
investigation, compile a collection of a respectable number of
texts, taken from immediate sources. The sobriety that is striking
is especially that in the terminology. The expressions are of a
monotonous sameness, without any embellishment or variation.
When
Eusebius of Caesarea writes about the Easter Controversy at the end
of the 2nd century: "On this matter there were synods and
meetings of bishops, and all unanimously established by means of
letters an ecclesiastical regulation for all the faithful... Even
now there is a letter in circulation from those who at that time met
in Palestine, under the chairmanship of Theophilus, bishop of the
community in Caesarea, and Narcissus, bishop of that in Jerusalem"
1), then he has gathered together almost the entire repertoire of
terminology concerning the synods before the year 325, both the
repertoire of the writers before Nicea and those after Nicea. An
older witness is Polycrates of Ephesus, who in a letter to Pope
Victor also reports on the Easter controversy: "I could also
mention the bishops present who requested me to convene it, and whom
I did convene; whose names - if I must write them - are of a great
number" 2).
This
sobriety in terminology applies not only to the less important or
almost unknown synods from the earliest times (2nd century), but
also to the most well-known, the most important and the often very
busy synods from the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th century. St.
Cyprian writes in connection with the heretic baptismal controversy
over a nefarious one in Cathago, held around the year 220 3), the
following": "Our opinion that those who come from heresy
to the Church must be baptized is nothing new and unexpected with
us, given the fact that many years and a long time ago under
Agrippinus, of last memory, very many bishops have met and
established this" 4). Concerning the Synod of Carthage in April
or May 251, as well as a synod in Rome in the same year, the
following words flow from the pen of the same Father of the Church,
Cyprian: "According to what had been previously agreed upon,
especially when there would be an opportunity to meet together
(facultas in unum conveniendi)
due to the end of the persecution, we bishops ... have assembled in
large numbers ... And if perhaps the number of bishops in Africa is
not considered large enough, we have also written to Rome about this
matter, to our fellow bishop Cornelius, who himself, after a council
of very many fellow bishops [cum
plurimus coepiscopis habito concilio], agreed with us in the
same conviction" 5). The synodal letter of Carthage 253, which
was written by Cyprian and signed by sixty-six bishops, is entitled:
"Cyprian and the other fellow bishops, who were present at the
council in the number of sixty-six, to Brother Fidus, greetings); in
the letter one can read: "Now concerning the matter of
children, that according to your words they should not be baptized
within two or three days of their birth and that the ancient law of
circumcision should be observed, so that according to your opinion
no newborn should be baptized and sanctified within eight days:
quite different is the view of our council"?) Regarding the
heretic baptismal council in Carthage during the spring of the year
256, at which seventy-one bishops from proconsular Africa and
Numidia were present»), the synodal letter to Pope Otephanus
writes: "In order to settle certain matters and to examine them
thoroughly by common agreement, we have deemed it necessary, dear
brother, to convene and hold a council, at which very many priests
came together and much was discussed and carried out" 9). From
these letters it appears that both Cyprian and the assembled bishops
call their meeting a "council" without further ado. Even
more simply in a letter to Pope Lucius: "Cyprian with his
fellow bishops to Brother Lucius, hail" 10).
The
oldest authentic document of synodal Acts known to us, entitled:
Sententiae episcopomm numero
lxxxvii de haeretias baptizandis, which gives an official
report of the synod of Carthage on 1 September 256 11), at which no
fewer than eighty-five bishops were present 12), states very
matter-of-factly that on 1 September several bishops from the
provinces of Africa, Numidia and Mauretania had assembled in
Carthage with priests and deacons, while a very large part of the
people was also present, and after the letter of Jubaianus to
Cyprian had been read, as well as that of Cyprianus to Jubaianus on
the baptism of heretics and what the same Jubaianus had subsequently
written back to Cyprian, Cyprian spoke ..." 13). Bishop
Crescens Cirta appears to be the most elegiac, when he introduces
his vote as follows: "After to such a company [tanto
coetu] of holy confreres in the Priesthood the letters have
been read from our beloved Cyprianus to Jubaianus and to Stephanus
14), which contain so much in them of holy testimonies of
predecessors from divine scriptures, that we all rightly, gathered
together [adunati] by Cod's
grace, must agree, I give as my vote... 15).
Cyprianus
and his fellow fighters speak together in simple words about these
important and, as far as the number of people present, large synods
are concerned, Cyprian writes just as simply in his numerous private
letters about the other synods in Carthage, which for the area of
Africa from the middle of the 11th century seem to
belong to an annual or even semi-annual institution and at which the
bishops of three provinces: Africa proconsularis, Numidia and
Mauretania, met 16). The contemporary, Bishop Dionysius of
Alexandria, writes in a letter to Pope Sixtus about the various
heretic baptismal councils: "And consider the weight of the
matter. For indeed, as I hear, it has been decided in the largest
synods of bishops on this subject, that those who join heresies must
first become catechumens, then wash and purify themselves again from
the stain of the old and impure leaven" 17).
Later,
post-Nicene writers also display a similar simplicity towards these
synods. One of the many examples from the Church History of Eusebius
opened this series of texts 18). In the case of St. Augustine, too,
one must again make a choice from much material, since Augustine
repeatedly speaks of the Carthaginian synods in connection with
Donatism. Dealing with the heretic baptismal controversy, the bishop
of Hippo says: "Indeed, he [Cyprian] says that not one, but two
or more councils were held on this question, African ones
nonetheless. And he mentions that at one of them there were
seventy-one bishops..." 19). Augustine reproaches the Donatists
for sowing discord against the intention of Cyprian, to whom they
appeal: "What can you say, that you even dare to appeal to
Saint Cyprian, as if he, a defender in great measure of Catholic
unity and peace, were the author of your schism? Take care
[Augustine addresses the Donatist Cresconius] in the first place to
be in the Church which, as is certain, Cyprian kept and preached;
and only then have the mischief to name Cyprian as the inventor of
your conception: first of all imitate the affectionate love and
humility of Cyprian, and first come then bring up with the Council
of Cyprian 20). Elsewhere Augustine writes: "Let those [the
Donatists], by whom unity is assailed by an appeal to this council,
listen carefully to how much unity must be loved according to this
council 21). Referring to this same Council of Carthage, 1 September
256, at which eighty-five bishops were present, Augustine writes
extensively about the gesta
concilii, the "acts of the council" 22).
Among
the legion of texts about this Carthaginian meeting in his seven
books De Baptismo contra Donatistas, the synod is called a "holy
council" only once: "I for one believe that the Catholic
bishop Cyprian, the Catholic martyr, who, in order to find favor in
the eyes of God, — humbled himself in everything according as
he was more respected, uttered nothing at all, especially in the
holy council of his fellow bishops [in sancto praesertim concilio
collegarum], but what he had in his heart" 23). Vincent of
Lerin asks: "What authority does this African council or decree
possess 24)? In De viris illustribus, Jerome gives the following
testimony about Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria: "He agreed with
the decision of Cyprian and the African synod about the rebaptism of
heretics." 25)
At
a synod convened by Pope Cornelius in Rome in the year 251 for the
purpose of settling the Novatian question, Eusebius says: "A
very large synod was assembled at Rome for this matter, bishops to
the number of sixty, and many more priests as well as deacons"
26). Despite the large number of people present and the special
importance, since this concerns a Roman synod convened by a Pope,
Eusebius does not use any special epitheta ornantia, any more than
in the following quotation: "There are still in circulation
among us letters from Cornelius, the bishop of Rome, to Fabius, the
bishop of the Antiochene Church, which make known the proceedings
concerning the Roman synod and the views of all in Italy, Africa and
the regions therein" 27). About the same synod Jerome also
writes in simple words in De viris illustribus: "Cornelius ...
wrote a letter to Fabius, bishop of the Church of Antioch, about the
synod at Rome, in Italy and Africa, and another about Novatian and
those who have apostatized; a third about the proceedings of the
Roman synod" 28).
When
Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria, in his struggle against the
Sabellian heresy, was suspected of preaching the opposite heresy,
that the Son was only a creature and not co-existent with the
Father, and an accusation was even brought against his namesake Pope
Dionysius, this Pope convened a synod in Rome in the year 259 or 260
29). About this the later Athanasius writes: "the synod in Rome
expressed its dissatisfaction" 30).
The
synodal letter of the synod at Antioch in the year 268 31), at which
no fewer than seventy to eighty bishops were present 32), Eusebius
introduces with the following words: "With unanimous decision
therefore the pastors assembled thereupon wrote [ol èm xauxó
auyKEKpoxr|pévoi noipévec;] a letter to the bishop of
Rome, Dionysius, and Maximus, the bishop of Alexandria, and sent it
around to all the provinces" 33). The address of the synodal
letter itself is not more abundant: "To Dionysius and Maximus
... and to the whole Catholic Church under heaven, Helenus and
Hymenaeus ... and all the other bishops and priests and deacons, who
live with us in neighboring cities and under the £ovt]"
34). In the letter itself it says once: "But while we were
together auveXrjXuSóxcov]" 35). Theodoret of Cyrus also
says that "they met at a synod" 36), Athanasius, Basil and
bishop Alexander of Alexandria observe the same simplicity 37).
We
still have the canons of the council at Elvira (around 300) 38).
Without any addition of "holy synod" or anything of the
sort, fifty-eight canons of the total number of eighty-one introduce
the decision with "it is decided" [placuit] or "it
pleases us" [placet]; the other canons lack even this 39). The
sources speak no differently about the synod of Alexandria in 306;
about the meeting of seventy Donatist bishops at Carthage in 312;
about the synod in the Lateran Palace in Rome from 2 to 4 October
313, convened at the invitation, if not by order, of Constantine I
to put an end to the schism in Africa, under the presidency of Pope
Miltiades, while in addition three Gallic and fifteen Italian
bishops acted as judges, all of whom acquitted Caecilian of Carthage
and condemned Donatus of Casae-Nigrae. With this last-mentioned
council, however, the troubles in Africa had not yet ended. The
Donatists continued to trouble the emperor with their complaints
against Caecilian, and Constantine, irritated, simply referred them
to the decision of the Roman synod. In reply, the Donatists
indicated that only a few bishops had pronounced their judgment;
they also claimed that they had not been sufficiently heard in Rome
40); at his wits' end 4l), Constantine decided that the question
should be finally settled at a great meeting of bishops, which he
convened on 1 August 314 at Arles 42). One of his letters of
invitation 43) has been preserved, addressed to Chrestus, the bishop
of Syracuse. After a complaint about the failure of the synod at
Rome, because in conflict with the fraternal harmony the discord in
Africa continued to exist, Constantine writes: "Therefore it
fell upon me to try, whether that which should have come to an end
after the decision already issued by voluntary agreement, could now
find a conclusion by a gathering of many. Since we have ordered
[êKsXeóaapev] very many bishops from various and
innumerable places to assemble [ouveXoeiv] in the city of Arles
before the 1st of August, we also thought it necessary to write to
you, asking you to go to the aforementioned place before the same
day, so that ... you, both by your steadfastness and by the
unanimous and unanimous view of the other congressmen [&ia xrjc;
Xonxfjq xcbv ouvióvxcov ópoijióxou Kal
ópóippovoq auvéaecoq], that which has hitherto
been frivolously continued in a shameful, mutual strife, may at last
be brought back to the due respect in faith as well as to brotherly
harmony, after all the delegates sent by those who are now divided
into two parties, whom we have also ordered to appear, have been
heard" 44).
Constantine
rightly speaks in his letter of "very many bishops from
innumerable places". There are traditions according to which no
fewer than six hundred bishops were gathered in Arles 45). Ellies du
Pin 46) however believes that the number should be limited to
thirty-three bishops, because the synodal letter to Pope Sylvester
47) does not mention more in the title and also the persons-list,
which is found in various manuscripts, has this number 48).
Notwithstanding this relatively limited number of bishops, all the
provinces of the empire, under Constantine, were represented at this
Council. For besides the thirty-three bishops of the synodal letter,
the list of persons mentions a respectable number of priests and
deacons, some as attendants of their bishop, others as
representatives and proxies of their absent bishops, so that one can
count forty-six, perhaps forty-seven seats. Pope Sylvester is also
represented at this Council, according to the signatures of two
priests, Claudian and Vitus, as well as by two deacons, Eugenius and
Cyriacus 49). From the fact that the name of Bishop Marinus of Arles
appears first in the synodal letter, one may well infer that he held
the presidency. With Marinus of Arles there are also: Acratius of
Trier, Theodorus of Aquileia, Proterius of Capua, Vocius of Lyon,
Caecilianus of Carthage, Reticius of Autun, Ambitausus of Reims,
Merocles of Milan, Adelphius of London, Maternus of Cologne,
Liberius of Merida in Spain.
Indeed,
the Church provinces of the West: Gaul, Italy, Dalmatia, Africa,
Spain and Britain, were present in Arles. The Pope was also
represented and if one may fully accept the signature even in an
impressive way; a stronger representation than that same Pope
Silvester had at Nicea, where only two priests fulfilled the
legateship, stronger also than at the Council of Sardica in 343,
where Pope Julius was also represented by only two priests.
Notwithstanding the controversy, the extreme limits of which as far
as the number of bishops is concerned are far apart, the number of
those present can be called respectable. The Synod of Arles is
undoubtedly one of the first really great councils in Church
history, if one considers not only the number of those present but
also the provinces represented. However, this council cannot be
called ecumenical for the simple reason that the Eastern
patriarchates did not participate in it, they had not been invited;
they would even have been virtually unaware of the existence of a
Donatist question, according to the testimony of Saint Augustine).
However, it has been claimed that Saint Augustine considered this
synod to be an ecumenical one, in which case an appeal has been made
to his writing De Baptismo contra Donatistas, where he calls Arles a
"concilium plenarium" 51) and to his Epistola xliii, where
this synod is characterized as a "plenarium Ecclesiae universae
concilium" 52). Let it be permitted here to leave aside the
question of whether Augustine has the Synod of Arles in mind in
these texts 53) and also of the question of what is meant in these
texts by the expressions concilium plenarium and plenarium Ecclesiae
universae concilium 54); these questions belong to an investigation
of the view of St. Augustine on the Ecumenical Council.
At
present it is more interesting whether the contemporaries themselves
regarded Arles as an ecumenical synod. And this is not apparent
anywhere. The type of convocation letters sent around by Constantine
can be seen above in his letter to Chrestus of Syracuse 55). Even
though Constantine says that he invited bishops from various and
almost unmentionably many provinces, this expression is also
justified when sending convocation letters only to the numerous
bishops of the West between London and Syracuse, between Cologne and
Carthage. Moreover, it is not apparent anywhere in this letter that
Constantine wants an "ecumenical", a "world"
synod, a synod in which also the various, extensive areas of the
East would be represented; in fact they were not present. This is a
major difference with the letter of convocation of Constantine,
which concerns Nicea, in which the emperor states as one of the
reasons why he chose Nicea as a meeting place: "so that the
bishops from Italy and the rest of Europe can more easily go there
56); besides the East, the entire West, the entire Church was
invited to participate. The letter of convocation of Arles, on the
contrary, does not speak of the East and from the actual
circumstances, among other things the sole representation of Western
bishops, it clearly follows that Arles was intended as a Western
council; but then also a council at which the entire West had to be
present.
Neither
do the two synodal letters 57) to Pope Sylvester give any indication
that Arles was considered ecumenical by contemporaries. The opening
of the shorter synodal letter does not differ from that of the
synodal letters of earlier councils; it reads very simply: "To
the much beloved Pope Silvester, Marinus, Acratius, ... Epictetus,
eternal salvation in the Lord" 58). And then the letter
continues: "Bound together by the common bond of love and by
the unity of the mother, the Catholic Church, we have been led
[adducti] by the command of the most pious emperor to the city of
Arles, and from there we greet you, glorious Pope, with the respect
due ... And if you, most beloved brother, had considered it of such
great importance to be present at this most glorious spectacle, then
we certainly believe that a stricter judgment would have been
pronounced against them [the Donatists]; while our assembly [coetus
noster] would have rejoiced with still greater joy, if You had
spoken rightly with us...: and since we have come together from
different provinces [cum diversae
sint provinciae ex quibus advenimus], there are accordingly
also different matters, which according to our judgment must be
considered. In the presence of the Holy Spirit and His Angels, it
has pleased us [placuit ergo,
praesente Spiritu Sancto et angelis eius] to bring forward
for judgment, from the matters which greatly interested each one
separately, those which deal with the present peace. It has also
pleased everything to You, who have the greatest dioceses governs,
to write and especially to make known to all by you. As for our
opinion, we have added it to the writing of our lowliness [scripto
nostrae mediocritatis]" 59). The fact that the
"jubilant" bishops use the solemn terms of "such a
glorious spectacle", "in the presence of the Holy Spirit
and His Angels", does indicate the awareness of the special
character of this council, as the first council at which the entire
West is present.
The
second synodal letter to Pope Silvester, which literally and
exclusively contains the canons and addresses the Pope only in the
preamble and the first canon, begins as follows: "To the most
holy brother, Mr. Silvester, Marinus or the assembly of bishops, who
were together in the place of Arles. What we have decided in common
decision [Quid decrevimus communi
consilio], we make known to you, beloved, so that all may
know what they have to do in the future" 60). In the twenty-two
canons of Arles, added to this letter, "placuit" is always
used without more, for example in the third canon: "De
his qui arma proiiciunt in pace, placuit abstineri eos a communione"
61). At the end of the first-quoted synodal letter, the contents of
the canons are briefly stated and there too, placuit is used without
more. The synodal letter of Nicea I will sound more resonant with
its "the holy synod", "the great and holy synod"
62) and six canons of the twenty, also with their "the great
and holy synod" 63). Also the letter by Constantine after the
Council of Arles to the bishops, in which the emperor complains
about the heretics, who had appealed to the emperor's judgment,
while the judgment of the priests had to be considered as from God
himself: sacerdotum iudicium ita
debet haberi, ac si ipse Dominus residens iudicet, this
letter also contains nothing special 64). How completely different
is Constantine's ardent conviction expressed in his letter after the
Council of Nicea written to various Churches 65)!
From
the foregoing the conclusion may be drawn that the Council of Arles
was indeed an important council and was also regarded as such by
contemporaries, but that there is no question of a "world
synod", a General Council with its characteristic features, not
even in the thinking of contemporaries. When the Church could
breathe freely after the death of Maximinus in the summer of the
year 313, at the same time as the Council of Arles, several
"assemblies of bishops" also took place in the East 66).
One of the first and best known is the Council of Ancyra, the
capital of Galatia, held between Easter and Pentecost in the year
314 67), at which eighteen bishops from almost all the Asian
provinces were present. The canons of this council have been
preserved both in Greek text and in various old Latin translations
68). While two codices bear the heading: "Canons of the Synod
of Ancyra" 69), the best Greek manuscripts bear the following
heading: "Canons of the Blessed Fathers, who met at Ancyra:
which, however, are of an older date than the canons promulgated at
Nicea, but are second in rank because of the authority of the
ecumenical synod" 70). These canons also always have very
simply: "it has pleased" or: "it pleases" [sokel
or bet] 71). In the sixth canon we read: "As for those who ...
have now joined on the occasion of the synod ... it has pleased ...
If there are, however, those who have been admitted to penance
before this synod ..." 72).
It
is therefore very striking that in these twenty-five canons there is
only one mention of "the holy synod [q ayia aóvoöoc;]
and the most remarkable and strange, not to say inexplicable thing,
is that this represents the first and only case before Nicea. In the
seventeenth canon it is stated: "Those who have lived as if
without reason [i.e. have committed the sin of bestiality] and have
become unclean [leper] and have made others unclean [leper], must,
according to the decree of the holy synod, pray under the
xei-Pa^oPévoucl" 73). In vain will one look for an
explanation of this fact in commentators such as Balsamom, Zonaras
and Aristenus, or also Beveridge 74); it does not even seem to have
occurred to them, because none of them draws attention to this
remarkable fact. Nor does Hefele-Leclercq, who, especially in the
French edition of Leclercq, always draws attention to all kinds of
small details, always relying on an extensive literature 75). One
also searches in vain with X. Le Bachelet, while he draws attention
specifically to this canon because of the term "XeiPa^°Pévous"
76). The same applies to the extensive Baronius 77). The canon
collection of Isidorus Mercator does not speak of "the holy
synod", but simply gives placuit, "it has been pleased"
or "it has been decided" 78), as does the Prisca versio
79). That of Dionysius Exiguus, on the other hand, has "the
holy synod, "q ayia aóvo&oc; sancta synodus 80), as
well as the reading in Ceillier, who, however, in his commentary
pays no attention to this peculiarity 8l). Constantinus Harmenopulus
has rendered the text freely: "'O aXoyeuoapEvoc;, Kal Xeitpot;
&>v, r) XeTtpcóoaq, év Totq euxéoßco"
82), Tillemont does not point this out either 83), nor does Van
Espen in his extensive commentary on this canon 84). It is of course
possible that the Synod of Ancyra used the term "the holy
synod" for the first time in history; it seems more likely to
us, however, that this synod, like all its predecessors and entirely
in accordance with its own terminology in the sixth canon 85), also
spoke simply of "the synod" or even of "it has
pleased" in its seventeenth canon. The presently occurring "fj
ayia auvobog" would then have to be regarded as a later
addition either of the word "ayia" or of the entire
expression "f| ayia auvoboq"; This addition is quite
understandable if one takes into account the fact that the canons of
this synod have not been preserved separately, but only in council
collections which were compiled after the General Council of Nicea
and in which this latter Council always occupied the first place
86); the compiler or copyist of these collections could very well,
consciously or unconsciously, have inserted this terminology into
the seventeenth canon of Ancyra, under the influence of the
preceding canons of Nicea, in which reference is made several times
to "the holy synod", as well as under the influence of the
fact that after Nicea the terminology "the holy synod"
became more and more common also for smaller, particular synods.
Going further, one can posit the possibility that there were old
Greek manuscripts of these council collections in which the
collector left the original "f] ouvo&oq" or, other
Greek manuscripts in which the collector used "f] ayia
aóvoboc;", which explains why the two oldest Latin
translations, the versio Isidoriana and the versio Prisca, have
simply "it has been decided", the other manuscripts of the
Latin translations "the holy synod". The synod at
Neo-Caesarea, the capital of the Pontus Polemoniacus, held a little
later than that of Ancyra, provides no material for this
investigation in its fifteen canons; even the otherwise so common
"it has pleased", "ëbo£,e" does not
occur.
Meanwhile,
with the rise of Arianism, the eve of Nicaea is approaching. Already
around 323 87) Arius was condemned by a great synod in Alexandria,
at which about a hundred bishops from Egypt and Libya were present,
convened by the Alexandrian bishop Alexander. After this synod
Alexander sent a letter to numerous bishops 88), in which the head
of the Alexandrian Church wrote: "Since the followers of Arius
asserted this... we met with the bishops of Egypt and Libya, almost
a hundred in number, and pronounced condemnation against them"
89). And in a letter to his namesake, Alexander of Constantinopel,
one can read: "We have therefore unanimously [uapijitjtpei]
expelled them from the Church, which reveres the divinity of Christ"
90). In the same letter the request is made not to admit "these
people, condemned by the brotherhood" 91) into communion.
Still further Alexander speaks simply of "our fellow
servants" 92) and indicates that letters were sent in all
directions to all Egypt and Thebais, to Libya and the Pentapolis, to
Syria, Lycia and Pamphylia, to Asia, Cappadocia and neighbouring
regions. Later writers speak of this synod in a similar manner. Thus
the historian Socrates: "Hearing and seeing these events,
Alexander was enraged; and after he had called a synod [ouvebpiov]
of many bishops, he condemned Arius and those who adhered to his
doctrine" 93). The historian Sozomenus uses such terms as: "he
[Alexander] sat down as judge with the clerics" 94); "after
another synod had been held" 95). St.
Epiphanius states in his catalogue of heretics: "This [Arius]
reached his zenith in the time of the holy bishop Alexander, the
successor of Peter, who sent this Arius amid much commotion and
condemned by means of a great synod" 96). In very general terms
this synod is indicated by St. Athanasius as follows: "The
Arians, who were expelled for impiety by Alexander, of blessed
memory, the former bishop of Alexandria" 97). Elsewhere this
Church Father says: "These [Arians] were declared heretics
thirty-six years ago" 98). Sozomenus also speaks of a synod in
Bithynia, held by the followers of Arius. "And when they had
assembled a synod in Bithynia, they wrote everywhere to the bishops
to hold fellowship with the followers of Arius as orthodox believers
and to bring about that Alexander also should enter into fellowship
with them" 99). A similar synod must also have been held at
Caesarea in Palestine 100). Probably in the year 324 another synod
was held in Alexandria, at which Ossius of Cordova 101), who had
already reached the age of sixty-seven, must have been present. At
this synod the priest Colluthus, who claimed for himself the power
to administer Holy Orders, was deposed. 102) In his Apologia contra
Arianos Athanasius includes a letter from priests and deacons from
Mareotis, in which it is written: "But behold, because he
[Colluthus] assumed such a title, he was deposed from his [priestly]
office at the synod assembled in Alexandria, in the presence of our
Father Ossius" 103). Much later Patriarch Photius testifies:
"[Philostorgius says] that before the synod of Nicea Alexander,
the bishop of Alexandria, came to Nicomedia and found Ossius of
Cordova with the bishops present with him and with synodal votes he
worked on the Son "to confess to the Father and also to expel
Arius" 104). The entire terminology with regard to the
particular synods before Nicea, taken together, shows such colorless
expressions as convenire in unum, coire, cogere et celebrare
concilium, advenire, adunati, concilium, synodus, coetus noster,
visum est, placuit, statuere, ouyKpoxEtv, peTaKXrjöfjvai,
aupxcapEivai, ouvépXEoGai, aóvoboq, aovébpiov,
ouvéXEuaiq, aoyKpóxrjau; iiuaKoncov, aóvEaiq.
Special epitheta ornantia are completely absent, with one exception:
the seventeenth canon of the council at Ancyra in the year 314 with
its "the holy synod" 105).
If
one now asks for the reasons why these meetings of bishops were held
in the various church provinces, Tertullian gives the first answer:
"Moreover, in the Greek countries in certain places councils
are held from all the churches, whereby both the more important
matters are dealt with in common and the representation of
everything that is called Christian is celebrated in a venerable
manner. And how right it is to gather together under the good omen
of faith from all sides around Christ! See, how good and pleasant it
is when brothers are united together [Ps. CXXXII, 1]; you can
perhaps only sing this text when you are eating a good meal with
more people. These meetings, however, first devote themselves to the
stations and other fasts and thus know how to mourn with the
mourners and then to rejoice with those who rejoice" l06).
The
seriousness and importance of the issues caused the bishops to meet
to consult together. The Church was faced with such a matter when,
under the pressure of persecution, many had renounced their faith
and wished to be received back into the ecclesiastical community in
more peaceful times. This was a burning problem, especially in
Africa in the middle of the 11th century, not in one or another
diocese, but in all three provinces: Africa proconsularis, Numidia
and Mauretania. The Primas Africae, St. Cyprian, did not feel
responsible, if he were to decide alone and on the question of the
lapsi; he considered himself obliged to call together his fellow
bishops for this purpose in order to make a joint decision. On the
occasion of the synod held at Carthage in the spring of the year
251, he wrote to Bishop Antonian: "It was necessary to write to
you about this now, so that you would know, that I have acted
nothing frivolously, but, entirely in accordance with the position
previously expressed in my letters, have referred everything to the
common decision of our council and that I had not had any
intercourse with any of the lapsi beforehand, when there was still
an opportunity to receive not only forgiveness, but even the crown.
Afterwards, however, as the agreement with my fellow bishops and the
interest of uniting our brothers and healing the wound required, I
yielded to the circumstances of the time and I thought I had to
provide for the salvation of many. And now I do not deviate from
what was once decided in our council by common agreement" 107).
A judgment of several bishops will be more mature and correct and
therefore carry more weight. Before the Council of Carthage, held on
the fifteenth of May 252, Cyprian reported to a number of bishops
who had asked him for advice about three who had fallen through
weakness: "Since you have written to me to discuss this matter
thoroughly with several fellow bishops and because such an important
matter requires a more extensive deliberation, one that is of
greater importance because many seek their cooperation... I will
discuss this more deeply with each of them" 108).
In
this way the bishops were able to form their own Church-province
through the surf. Accordingly, Pope Cornelius received a letter from
Africa, in which he read: "For since it has been determined by
all of us, as is just and just, that the cause of each should be
heard there, where the fault has been committed, and to each
shepherd a portion of the flock has been entrusted, which each has
to govern and guide, while he must render an account to God of his
actions, those over whom we are appointed should not seek refuge
hither and thither, nor seek to break the concord of the bishops by
their crafty and lying recklessness, but should plead their cause
there, wherever they may find accusers and witnesses of their
crime." 109) It was therefore not from fear of lack of
jurisdiction that two Spanish Churches 110) turned to Africa to
express their opinion on the matter of the apostate Spanish bishops,
Basilides and Martialis; but they did this, according to Cyprian, in
order to receive comfort and reinforcement, which would be
especially welcome to them, because Basilides and Martial had
already taken refuge in Rome with Pope Stephen, whom they had
succeeded in winning over. And in the same way the council at
Carthage, autumn 254, did not think of examining this question
again, completely independently. The synodal letter, written by
Cyprian and co-signed by thirty-six other bishops, contains the
following words: "You [the two Spanish Churches] have expressed
the wish that you would receive an answer on this matter and that
your justified and at the same time necessary concern would be
relieved either by the comfort or by the help of our judgment. But
your request already contains the answer not so much in our advice,
as in the divine precepts" 111).
There
have been several councils in Africa that have dealt with the
heretic baptismal controversy. This question belonged to the "more
important matters" mentioned by Tertullian, on which a common
deliberation was to be held. That this was the prevailing view is
evident not only from the fact of these heretical baptismal
councils, but also from the words of a synodal letter signed by
seventy-one bishops to Pope Stephen of the synod held at Carthage in
the spring of 256: "In order to regulate certain matters and to
examine them thoroughly by common consultation, we have deemed it
necessary, dear brother, to convene and hold a council, at which a
great many priests came together" ll2). The baptism of heretics
is emphasized in the remainder of the letter and is the only point
of discussion; the members of the council express their opinion that
they must communicate their decision on this matter to the Pope.
Dionysius of Alexandria also judges the heretical baptismal
controversy to be a matter of great importance and supports this
opinion by appealing to the fact that great heretical baptismal
councils have been held. He writes to Pope Xistus: "And note
the weight of the matter. Indeed, because decisions have been made
on this subject at the greatest synods of bishops" 113).
In
addition to the numerous councils, especially in Africa, on lapsi
and heretical baptism, there have been others that had as their
subject the Easter controversy, heretical or at least very dangerous
opinions such as those of Origen, Privatus, Beryllus of Bostra, the
hypnopsychites, the Millenarians, Paul of Samosate, Meletius of
Lycopolis, the Donatists and Arius and his followers; even bishop
Dionysius of Alexandria was accused of heresy in the Logos doctrine
in Rome and asked by a synod for a written explanation. Schismatics
such as Felicissimus, Novatianus, Nepos were condemned at councils.
In Africa, at a synod in the early 11th century, the question was
discussed whether clerics were allowed to take on the task of tutor
or curator testamenti, which was answered in the negative and this
prohibition was tightened up again at the council of Carthage in
249. The agenda of the synod in Alexandria in 324 included the
celebration of Easter, the Meletian schism and the condemnation of
Colluthus.
During
this period, then, synods were held at Rome, in Africa, at
Alexandria, in Arabia, in Palestine, Achaia, Cilicia and Phrygia,
Galatia and Cappadocia, in Spain and Gaul, synods at which bishops,
either from the same province or from different neighbouring
provinces, came together to deliberate on ecclesiastical interests,
which were of various kinds, very important ones like heretical
baptism and less important ones like tutorship, interests in the
doctrinal and disciplinary fields, and to judge various persons,
priests like Origen and Colluthus and also bishops like Privatus of
Lambesia, Paul of Samosate and the orthodox Dionysius of Alexandria
114).
Striking
is the often repeated expression of the ultimate agreement of the
assembled bishops. How often does Cyprian point out that the
decisions were made "unanimously"! In the footsteps one
encounters in the sources: omnes
uno consensu, de consensu communi, quid decrevimus communi consilio,
de communi conlatione, universi iudicavimus, pdï Yv<hpß>
én KOivfjq yvcbpqc;, bloc èpoijjoyoo Kal ópcxppovoc;
auvéaecoq, aóptpcovov qjrjcpov è£,eveyKÓVTEq.
Once
the bishops had jointly determined their position and made their
decisions [decreta or placita], then these pronouncements possessed
authority [decreti nostri auctoritas] and the force of law, which
was also the case for pronouncements made by predecessors [ab
antecessoribus nostris statutam sententiam] 115). The bishops were
also subject to the decisions which they themselves had made
jointly. Does not Cyprian say that he and his fellow bishops were
deeply indignant when they heard that Bishop Geminius Victor, on his
deathbed, had appointed the priest Geminius Faustinus as executor of
his will, "while it had already been decided earlier at a
council of bishops that no one should appoint any of the clerics or
servants in God's House as tutor or curator for his estate"
116)? Therefore, for this bishop, who acted "against the norm
recently established by priests in a council," no Holy Mass may
be offered or publicly prayed in the Church, "so that the
decision of the priests may be observed by us." 117)? And the
sixty-six bishops at the council of Carthage in 253 reproached
Therapius, Bishop of Bulla, for having reconciled one of his
priests, named Victor, with the Church without demanding sufficient
penance; this meant a violation of the rule established by the
council of 251: "And this grieves us deeply, that the authority
of our decision has been set aside" 118). Regarding the action
taken with regard to the already mentioned Spanish bishops,
Basilides and Martialis 119), the synodal letter of 254 writes that
such people cannot stand at the head of Christ’s Church nor
may they offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass "especially since
our fellow bishop Cornelius has already previously decided with us
and with literally all the bishops throughout the world that such
people may indeed be admitted to penance, but must be kept away from
ordination as clerics and from the priestly office" 120).
Dionysius of Alexandria does not want to detract from the decisions
on heretical baptism that were taken at so many councils, for
example in Iconia and Synnada 121). Apparently, the Egyptian bishop
Meletius, who was deposed at a synod in Alexandria at the beginning
of the 4th century for various crimes, also considered the
pronouncement to be of such force that he did not seek it from
another authority, but simply renounced obedience, so that
Athanasius could later testify: "Meletius, however, did not
have recourse to another synod, nor did he endeavor to defend
himself for posterity; he caused a schism" 122). The Council of
Arles, which expressed its regret that the Pope had not been present
123), made its decision known "so that all would know what they
must observe and observe in the future" 124). Nevertheless,
people were convinced that the pronouncements of particular synods
were not decisions that could no longer be changed: infallibility,
an absolute, always and everywhere valid force, cannot be attributed
to them. Is this already indirectly evident from the fact that on
exactly the same subject, on which a decision had already been made,
a council was held several times without protest and in different
parts of the world and even in the same ecclesiastical province
125), this can be demonstrated very clearly and directly from the
words spoken by Cyprian on September 1, 256, in the presence of more
than eighty bishops at the opening of the third council held by him
on the baptism of heretics. "You have heard, most beloved
colleagues, what our fellow bishop Jubaianus has written to me to
consult our lowliness about the illicit and unholy baptism of
heretics and what I have written back to him, namely my judgment
that we have already pronounced once and again and often: that the
heretics who wish to be received into the Church must be baptized
and sanctified with the baptism of the Church ... '. It now remains
for each of us to express our opinion on this matter separately, not
pronouncing judgment or condemnation on anyone or denying the right
of community to anyone if he is of a different opinion" 126).
Although the question had already been decided several times and the
decision taken several times had the force of law, the matter was
once again dealt with in its entirety and every bishop present was
still free to maintain whatever he thought fit concerning the
validity of heretical baptism, so that any possible proponent of the
validity, in deviation from the previous decisions, would not incur
excommunication 127). A position that cannot be reconciled with an
infallible pronouncement. About the synod at Carthage in the spring
of the year 251, at which the attitude towards the lapsi was
determined, Cyprian wrote in a later circular: "And if the
number of bishops in Africa is perhaps not considered large enough,
we have also written to Rome about this matter, to our fellow bishop
Cornelius" 128); at the council at Rome in the autumn of the
year 251, the Pope agreed with the decision of the African synod. A
decision of a particular synod, even if it had the force of law, was
still subject to further scrutiny.
CHAPTER II THE FIRST GENERAL COUNCIL AT NICEA IN
325
It
is difficult to determine who or to whom the initiative for the
first General Council belonged. If a synodal letter in Syriac is
indeed a translation of an authentic document, a synod must have
been held in Antioch in the winter of 324 to 325 1). Fifty-six
bishops 2) from Palestine, Arabia, Phoenicia, Coelesyria, Cilicia
and Cappadocia were assembled under the chairmanship of Eusebius of
Isauria. They had to choose a new bishop for Antioch, since
Philogonius had died on 24 December 324; their choice fell on
Eustathius, bishop of neighbouring Beroea and kindred spirit of
Alexander of Alexandria. The opportunity was also used to condemn
the heresy of Arius and to make a confession of the true faith.
Three of those present, Theodotus of Laodicea, Narcissus of
Neronias, and Eusebius of Caesarea in Palestine, refused to sign the
formula; the synod excluded them from the community, although not
definitively, since they were given time and opportunity to come to
their senses. A synodal letter was sent in all directions,
especially to the "bishops of Italy, who belonged to the See of
the great Rome". These Western bishops sent back a letter
approving the decree of faith of Antioch 3). The phrase from the
synodal letter, in which the provisional character of the
excommunication of the three bishops is expressed, reads as follows:
"And you must also know this, that because of the great
brotherly love of the synod we have given these persons time to
repent and to acknowledge the truth until the great synod of priests
at Ancyra" 4). Based on this information, some have thought
that the proposal for a General Council originated with the Fathers
of the Antiochene synods 5). However, from the text just quoted one
can read no more than that already at the end of the year 324 the
plan was known to hold a General Council at Ancyra 6) because of the
Arian doctrines and that the invitations had most probably already
been sent and received by the Eastern bishops; however, this synodal
letter says nothing about the initiative. According to Sulpicius
Severus, Ossius of Cordova is the author of the Nicene Council 7).
Philostorgius seems to regard Alexander of Alexandria as the main
driving force, in collaboration with Ossius and other bishops 8).
Usually,
however, the initiative is attributed to Emperor Constantine; the
emperor as initiator is also the representation given by the
eyewitness and oldest church historian, Eusebius. He writes:
"Thereupon he [the emperor], as if taking the field against him
[Arius] with a phalanx of God, assembled an ecumenical synod by
urging the bishops of all regions with honorable letters to hasten"
9). However, one must not lose sight of the fact that Eusebius in
this writing, De Vita Constantini, is not primarily a historian but
a panegyrist; for the eulogist there is a real danger of
exaggeration, which is why it is very possible that Eusebius was the
great and the of course, for the world more conspicuous part of
Constantine has made into an exclusive role.
A
combination of the different reports perhaps brings us closest to
the actual course of events. The situation indeed threatened to
become serious. The heresy of Arius was in itself devastating for
Christianity: it denied after all one of the fundamental principles
of Christianity, the true Godhead of Christ. Moreover, Arianism
meant a rationalization of faith, the battle waged by pure reason
against the spirit of faith 10), the battle of a mentality,
entangled in the remains of pagan views against the pure Christian
mentality. Several bishops, priests and believers had already been
affected by this pernicious tendency and heretical doctrine and
despite a condemnation at the Council of Alexandria, a particular
synod, the evil continued to proliferate. In addition to this danger
to the true religion, there was a danger to the State. Recently,
since the death of Licinius in 324, the unity of the Empire had been
restored and order and peace could enter under the sole rule of
Constantine, who was well-disposed towards the Christians. Now,
however, the danger of a conflict of faith, of sharp religious
disputes threatened; unity in the Church would be over. With that,
the newly acquired unity, peace and order in the State would also
come to an end. Under these circumstances, both the ecclesiastical
authorities and the head of State had to feel drawn to take
energetic measures to exorcise the evil spirits. The appropriate,
already existing means was: a council of bishops. Was it not
obvious, after the failure of the particular synod in Alexandria,
and now that unity in the entire Church and the entire State was at
stake, to convene a meeting of the bishops from the entire Church
and the entire State, a world meeting or "ecumenical"
synod? For the first time in the history of the Church, external
circumstances made such a meeting possible. Moreover, a world
meeting would not only be the only effective measure, but also a
solemn manifestation of the unity so much desired by the emperor and
the bishops. The idea of such a world meeting must
therefore have hung in the air, as it were, in the given
circumstances, and must have occurred spontaneously to several
people. 11). In a personal contact between the emperor and Ossius of
Cordova, between Ossius and Alexander of Alexandria, between these
persons and other bishops, who were all disappointed in the more
private attempts, it is therefore quite natural that the
desirability and the possibility of a world meeting were discussed
on both sides. The initiative is then not to be attributed to one
person, but to the spontaneous, common idea of all of them who were
involved in the fight against the Arian heresy and focused on the
unity of Church and State; in the first place one thinks of Ossius,
Alexander and Constantine. The transformation of the idea into
action, of the initiative into reality, must be attributed to the
only person who was practically able to bring together the bishops
of the entire world: the emperor; hence the panegyrist Eusebius was
tempted to mention only Constantine, so that one gets the impression
that everything originated from the emperor alone. However, the
emperor brought the Council together after and as a result of the
exchange of ideas with leading figures in the Church; probably
Ossius, who had a personal interview with the emperor in the year
324 and was sent to Alexandria with an imperial letter on the Arian
question, was Constantine's principal adviser, so that Sulpicius
Severus was allowed to mention Ossius in particular as the arranger
of the General Council; the text of Sulpicius Severus must not be
interpreted in the sense that Ossius was the sole arranger.
Philostorgius rightly mentions a third leading figure, namely
Alexander of Alexandria; insofar as Philostorgius makes it clear
that Alexander collaborated with other persons, he represents the
actual situation more accurately than the other sources.
That
Ancyra was indeed originally determined as the meeting place, is
evident from the convocation letter of Emperor Constantine. This
letter has been preserved in the oldest Syriac version of the Nicene
canons, by Marouta, bishop of Maipherkat, produced at the
instigation of the Patriarch Isaac of Seleucia-Ctesiphon (4th
century). After this letter is announced with the words: "Letter
of Emperor Constantine to the sixty bishops", the text follows:
"It is, I think, known to all, that nothing is so dear to my
heart as piety towards God. Although at first I thought it good to
convene a synod of bishops in the city of Ancyra in Galatia, it has
now appeared to me for many reasons more expedient to convene the
synod in the city of Nicea in Bithynia 12), and so that the bishops
from Italy and the rest of Europe can more easily go there, and
because the weather there is milder and healthier, and so that I
myself can be present and take part in the proceedings. And
therefore, dear brethren, I communicate to you as my will, that all
shall meet as soon as possible in the aforesaid city, namely Nicea.
Every one of you, taking into account the great interest, may
hasten, as has been said, to come without delay, to take part in the
discussions in person. May God protect you, dearly beloved brethren"
13).
This
letter of convocation shows that it was Emperor Constantine who
called the first General Council of Nicea, and he alone. Constantine
apparently acted on his own authority and regarded the convocation
as a matter which was rightfully his as basileus and on which he
decided independently. The empress does not let the idea even hint
in her letter that the approval or action on the orders of a second
and in particular of the Bishop of Rome would in fact be present or
required. The other initiators such as Ossius and Alexander of
Alexandria are not even mentioned; they may have suggested the idea
of the desirability of a general synod, but the
convocation of such a synod belongs to the emperor and is not done
on the orders of others 14).
Various
other statements by Emperor Constantine about the Council of Nicea
reflect the same train of thought. In his speech to the synod
Constantine says: when I heard of the ecclesiastical discord, I
thought I should attend to this matter; I also wished to use my
resources and therefore "I called them all together without
delay" 15). In a letter to the Alexandrian Church Constantine
also writes that he called the synod at Nicea "by the
inspiration of God" 16); even here the emperor does not speak
of the cooperation or consent of the Bishop of Rome, any more than
in his circular letter to the Churches 17) and in his later letter
to the Church of Nicomedia 18).
The
Council itself also knows nothing else than that it was brought
together by the grace of God and the care of the basileus, beloved
of God, Constantine 19). Constantine's contemporary Eusebius of
Caesarea bears witness to the same view when he simply mentions that
the emperor called an Ecumenical Synod 20). In the same way, the
later historian Socrates says that the emperor "called together
an ecumenical synod, inviting the bishops of all regions by letters
to meet at Nicea of Bithynia" 21). The same can
be found in Sozomenus 22), Theodoret 23) and in the continuation of
the Eusebian Church History by Rufinus 24). According to the latter
historian, the emperor convenes the assembly "at the wish of
the priests" ex sacerdotum sententia. Who these priests, or
rather bishops, are, Rufinus does not mention. But here one feels
compelled to think especially of Ossius and Alexander of Alexandria,
whose desire for the definitive means of a General Council has
already been demonstrated. If the historical circumstances preceding
Nicea already give the legitimate presumption that Rufinus means
Alexander and Ossius with the expression ex sententia sacerdotum,
written not before the year 403, this presumption becomes certain
when one reads the testimonies of Epiphanius and Sulpicius Severus.
In the years 374-377 Epiphanius already wrote: "But soon
Constantine, of blessed memory, assembled a synod in the city of
Nicea at the zealous urging of Alexander, the holy bishop of
Alexandria" 25). At the same time as Rufinus, Sulpicius Severus
wrote in his Chronicles that Ossius was the author of the Nicene
Council, which means that it must be meant that Ossius belonged to
the auctores intellectuales 26). That Pope Silvester would also have
been included among those "sacerdotes" is not apparent
anywhere and is very unlikely, since Constantine convened the
Council during his stay in the East and the Pope would not have
followed him there. Moreover, if Pope Silvester were indeed among
the number of bishops at whose request Constantine convened the
Council, the silence of all sources about this special advisor
becomes puzzling and inexplicable. However, even if one wants to see
the Pope included in Rufinus' words, the text is still not
conclusive for the recognition of a papal right of approval. Rufinus
only speaks of "wish", not of approval; and then about
different bishops, not about the Pope alone, which would have to be
the case if one wants to read the recognition of the papal right of
approval into the text. From all these testimonies it appears that
the emperor and this one alone convened the General Council of
Nicea, and that the time-notes granted the emperor the right of
convening. If one had been convinced that the Pope had to grant the
emperor full authority to do so and the granting of this authority
consisted in approval and if the emperor had also acted accordingly
with the approval of the Bishop of Rome, then this cooperation of
the Pope could not always have been completely passed over by the
various sources in a way that suggests the very opposite 27).
Because
the various reports do not agree, it is difficult or impossible to
determine the exact number of participants. The eyewitness Eusebius
of Caesarea counts more than two hundred and fifty bishops, while
according to him the number of priests, deacons and acolytes who
accompanied their bishops was almost innumerable 28). Saint
Eustathius of Antioch, who was also present at the Council, speaks
of about two hundred and seventy-eight bishops 29). Another
participant, Saint Athanasius, repeatedly gives the number as three
hundred bishops or about three hundred 30). In De synodis seu de
fide Orientalium of Saint Hilary of Poitiers, written in the year
359 shortly before the synods of Rimini and Seleucia, the well-known
number of three hundred and eighteen is found for the first time;
this number then signifies for Hilary a sacred and symbolic number
as being the number of servants of the conqueror Abraham (Gen., XIV,
14) 31). From that time on this symbolic number is held on to.
Hilary himself repeats this figure in his Liber contra Constantium
Imperatorem, written in the year 360 32). His example is now also
followed by Athanasius in his Epistola ad Af ros episcopos of the
year 369 33). Three hundred and eighteen is also the number given by
Pope Liberius 34), Pope Damasus 35), Epiphanius 36), Hieronymus 37),
Rufinus 38), and as a symbolic number especially by Ambrose 39). The
later historians Socrates 40) and Theodoret 41) adopt this number;
only Sozomenus still speaks of about three hundred and twenty
bishops 42).
People
came together at Nicea from all sides. Eusebius describes this in
the following way; "From all the Churches now, which filled all
of Europe, Libya and Asia, the flower of God's servants came
together. A single house of prayer, as if enlarged by divine power,
offered room within its walls for Syrians as well as Cilicians,
Phoenicians and Arabs, for Palestinians and also for those from
Egypt, from Thebais and Libya and for those who came from
Mesopotamia. A bishop from Persia was present at the synod, and
Scythia was not lacking in this company; Pontus and Galatia,
Pamphylia, Cappadocia and Asia and Phrygia had their elite among
those present; and also Thracians and Macedonians, Achaeans and
Epirotes, and among them those who lived the furthest away had come;
even from Spain the much-vaunted one came together with many others
to sit with the words: "the head of the imperial city [Rome]
however was absent because of old age, but his priests were present
to take his place" 43).
The
Eastern part of the Empire formed by far the majority at this
Council; almost all the bishops were Eastern bishops: Egypt,
Palestine, Coelesyria, Asia Minor counted many bishops among those
present. The Greek regions of Europe, notably Thrace, Thessaly,
Macedonia, Dardania and Achaia had some representatives: of Moesia
and Dacia only two bishops' names are known.
But
nevertheless the large ecclesiastical areas of the West were also
represented. North Africa was present in the person of the bishop of
Carthage, Caecilian; Calabria was also represented by one bishop,
Marcus graced; Milan by its bishop Eustorgius 44); Gaul by the
bishop of Die, Nicasius 5); Ossius of Cordova represented Spain; the
bishop of Rome was personally represented by two Roman priests, Vito
and Vincentius. Only of Britain no representative is known. From the
shores of the Black Sea came the bishop of Pityus in the Caucasus,
that of the Bosporus, and two from Great Armenia; Persia had one
bishop at the Council of Nicaea 46). In spite of the Eastern
majority, one may therefore say that the whole Church and all parts
of the Church at this Council in the history of the Church, which
indeed embraced the whole Catholic world.
The
Fathers present showed understandable differences in nature and
disposition. Some were skilled in theological difficulties and
mutual arguments; for Eustathius of Antioch, Eusebius of Nicomedia,
Alexander of Alexandria or Marcellus of Ancyra, who at this Council
was one of the principal opponents of the Arians 47), the Arian
doctrine held no secrets. There were learned men like Eusebius of
Caesarea, who knew ancient Church history to the finest detail. By
the many graces of God the bishop of Cyprus, Spiridion, had come to
great sanctuary; this bishop was famous for his miracles and James
of Nisbee was also known as a wonder-worker. Others had heroically
testified to their faith in times of persecution and could proudly
show their wounds; for example, Paul of Neocaesarea, Paphnutius the
Egyptian, Amphion of Epiphania and Potamon of Heraclea in Egypt.
Among the participants may also be mentioned Macarius of Jerusalem;
the three Apostolic sees of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem were
all present, while the see of Rome was represented. Liontius of
Caesarea in Cappadocia possessed the gift of prophecy. Nicholas of
Myra was known as the great benefactor. Eusebius rightly wrote: "Of
these servants of God, some were distinguished by their wise words,
others by their strict life, patience, and self-control; others
again were endowed with the virtue of modesty. There were those who
were honored for their great age, others distinguished by their
youthful strength of body and soul, or had only recently come to
this degree of ministry [the episcopal office] 48). And Theodoret
later testified: "Many there were at that time who were
distinguished by Apostolic gifts: many who bore in their bodies the
stigmata of the Lord Jesus 49). Among those who accompanied their
bishop to the Council as priests or deacons, the most famous must be
mentioned: St. Athanasius, who as a young deacon of Bishop Alexander
of Alexandria was the most vehement opponent of the Arian party 50).
That Rome occupied and should occupy a very special place according
to the Orientals, is evident from what Eusebius of Caesarea relates
in his De Vita Constantini. In the seventh chapter of the third
book, Eusebius is enumerating which regions are represented by their
bishops and he closes the series with the words: "the head of
the imperial city [Rome], however, was absent because of old age,
but its priests were present to take his place" 51).
After
the series of bishops who were present, this special and isolated
mention of the absence of Rome’s bishop is nevertheless an
indication that, according to the Easterners, Rome occupied a
special place. This is all the more compelling when one takes into
account that of the other Western regions, only the representative
of Spain is mentioned by name by Eusebius, the in the East famous
and revered bishop of Cordova, Ossius. Neither the brevity that
Eusebius observes, nor the great prestige that Ossius enjoyed, are
able to displace the thought of and the mention of Rome. Finally,
although Eusebius in this seventh chapter speaks exclusively of the
bishops, only to add at the end of the eighth chapter that the
number of priests, deacons, acolytes and others can hardly be
indicated, the representation of Rome by two priests is nevertheless
recorded in the seventh chapter. From the quoted text, however, it
cannot be proven that, according to Eusebius, Rome occupied that
special place for dogmatic reasons; that special mention can,
perhaps must be explained by the fact that Rome was the "capital
of the empire", to which Eusebius himself points out 52).
The
first meeting took place on the 20th of May in the year 325. This is
the date that Socrates found in the notes of the council documents
53). The bishops met in the great hall of the imperial palace. The
meeting was attended by the emperor, who was accompanied only by a
few Christian courtiers; Constantine resembled "an angel of God
from heaven" 54). The bishop, seated at the right hand of the
emperor, rose and thanked him for the care he had taken for the sake
of the Church. Then the emperor made a speech to the Fathers,
beginning with the words: "It was my most fervent wish,
beloved, to be able to rejoice in your assembly, and this has now
fallen to my lot. I express my gratitude to the King of the
universe, that after all other benefits He has given me this
surpassing pleasure to see; I mean this, that I have been able to
see you all come together in one place in the spirit of concord and
harmony" 55). The emperor considered a strife within the Church
of God worse and more dangerous than any war or quarrel, and this
strife grieved him more than any other thing. Therefore, as soon as
he had learned of the discord, he had made every effort to summon
all to this synod without delay. "And I now rejoice to see your
assembly". Then Constantine urged them to remove all causes of
discord and to secure peace. With that this speech ended, which is
rightly called "the speech on peace". This speech,
delivered by Constantine in Latin, was immediately translated into
Greek. After this the emperor gave the floor "to the presidents
of the synod" 56). According to Eusebius, the emperor had to
guide the heated discussions several times in the right direction
and use all possible means to restore peace. This representation
will not be entirely true, and must be attributed in part to the
ardent desire and premeditated intention of Eusebius to praise the
emperor as highly as possible 57). According to Rufinus, laymen,
some of whom were not even Christians, joined the company to dispute
with the bishops; their attempts to bluff the bishops with
dialectical reasoning would have been frustrated by the simplicity
of faith which the church princes displayed 58). This dispute
between the pagan philosophers and the Fathers of Nicea certainly
belongs to the realm of fables 59). The question of who held the
presidency presents no small difficulties. It has just been heard
that a bishop seated at the right hand of the emperor opened the
first meeting with an address to the monarch. According to the
heading of the eleventh chapter in the third book of the Vita
Constantini, this bishop was called Eusebius, and it must therefore
have been Eusebius of Caesarea himself. But, since the headings of
the chapters were not added by Eusebius, but only later, little or
no value can be attached to this testimony. Constantine, after
having made a speech himself, gave the leadership of the discussions
into the hands of the "xipoeSpoL" or "chairmen."
It seems that there were several leading persons to be. Who were
these persons? According to Theodoret, Eustathius of Antioch acted
as the leading person 60); Theodoret probably derived this from a
letter written a few years earlier by John of Antioch (429-441) to
Proclus of Constantinopel (434-446), in which the exaltation of the
Antiochene see is emphasized 61). The testimony is therefore not
very reliable, both because of the great distance from Nicea and
because of the tendency 62). Were perhaps the Roman priests Vito and
Vincentius, as legates of the Pope, the presidents of the Council?
This is not very likely, since there are no positive data for this
opinion, and a study of the conduct of Rome up to the Council of
Chalcedon (451) shows that the Roman legates did not go to the
councils to preside, but only to assist and, if necessary, to show
by their presence the adhesion of the Holy See. 63) Moreover, Pope
Julius writes in the year 341 about these Roman legates that they
were present at Nicea and there confirmed the orthodox faith; if
these priests had indeed also been the presidents, Pope Julius would
probably have mentioned this in this letter within twenty years
after Nicea. 64) The bishops at Nicea would also have found it
difficult to accept that simple priests presided over their meeting;
If they had done so and the peculiar fact had taken place that
priests had the leadership over bishops, the actual and actual
persons authorized to judge, then this would probably have been
recorded as something striking in the sources or at least clearly
stated in some source. The candidate suggested to us by the
eyewitness Athanasius can reap more certainty. In the year 357
Athanasius writes about Ossius: "What synod is there that he
has not presided over?" 65). Could Athanasius, who apparently
does not expect any objection, have written this if Ossius had not
presided over the most important Council? And to confirm this
testimony of Athanasius, there are the lists with the signatures; on
all these lists the name of Ossius is at the top, followed only by
the names of the Roman priests. It is therefore very likely, if not
almost certain, that Ossius held the chairmanship. Equally unlikely,
however, is that Ossius would owe this presidency to a delegation
from the Holy See; it was Rome's custom not to reserve the
presidency for itself in any way; on the contrary, until the Council
of Chalcedon Rome left the question of the presidency to
circumstances 66). The choice of Ossius as president can hardly be
attributed to the fact that he occupied the see of Cordova; this see
was not important enough for that. Undoubtedly Ossius owed the
presidency to his personal prestige, to the confidence that he had
long enjoyed with Constantine and thus also to the emperor's favour,
to the fact that he was well informed about the theological
questions at issue and finally to the fact that as a Western bishop
he could be considered more suitable to judge the disputes between
the Easterners in an impartial manner 67).
The
Arian question was in the centre of attention. Although Rufinus
mentions that Arius was summoned to the meetings several times to
give an account of himself 68), it is not very likely that he was
admitted to a discussion with the bishops. Even if Arius himself was
not present, he had supporters and defenders among those present;
Philostorgius gives a list of twenty-two names, among which are
Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theognis of Nicea, Maris of Chalcedon,
Theodotus of Laodicea, Paulinus of Tyre, Eusebius of Caesarea,
Athanasius of Anazarbus, Gregory of Berytus, Aetius of Lydda,
Menophantes of Ephesus, Patrophilus of Scythopolis and Narcissus of
Neronias; also the Egyptian bishops Theonas of Marmarica and
Secundus of Ptolemais, who had already been condemned in their own
country, belonged to this group 69). Moreover, the Council had the
writings of Arius at its disposal to be able to pronounce judgment;
thus, at the Council, several passages from his Thalia were read,
and this was enough to arouse indignation: upon hearing these
blasphemies, the bishops stopped their ears 70). It was agreed that
the real Godhead of the Son was a point of faith. Some now thought
that one should continue to adhere to the creed that had been handed
down from the beginning and that one should not introduce anything
new; they belonged especially to that category of persons who in
their simplicity of faith had a great fear of elaborating the
content of the faith on reasonable grounds. Others, however, were of
the opinion that one should not follow the earlier views without
investigation 71). This difference of opinion led to lengthy
discussions. It was indeed a difficult task to briefly record the
traditional faith in precise terms. At first one tried to use only
words from Holy Scripture. This was also in accordance with the
wishes of the Arians themselves, because they hoped that the
expressions would then be vague and general enough to allow an
interpretation in accordance with their doctrine. For example, the
Fathers wanted to accept the expression; the Logos is from God (èk
toC GeoG), meaning by this that the Son is not from nothing, as the
Arians taught. Eusebius of Nicomedia and his followers readily
accepted this expression, saying: for we also are of God, for all
things are of God, as the Apostle Paul says (I Cor., VIII, 6). When
the Fathers noticed this tactic, they felt compelled to define this
"of God" more precisely. They now wrote: the Son is of the
essence of God (èk Trjq oöoiac; toü 0eoö).
Thus, words of Scripture alone were not sufficient; precise
definitions were necessary to safeguard the pure doctrine against
the Arians 72). Thus one arrived, one had to arrive, at the term
"co-independent" or "ópooóoioc;"
73). Even among the Eusebians disagreement arose, and some of them
sought refuge in silence when they understood the weakness of their
position 74). These latter also foresaw a condemnation, which was
certainly capable of infuriating their fervour; for a condemnation
could mean for the adherents the loss of their office and dignity.
In
order to avoid the so precise and therefore so feared ópooóai.oc;,
Eusebius of Caesarea intervened. He presented to the Council the
baptismal confession that was in use in his church; it would be able
to satisfy both parties. This procedure is known from a letter that
Eusebius himself wrote to his faithful after the Council in order to
justify his attitude at the Council; as Eusebius writes, this
confession was read in the presence of the emperor and was
recognized as good and right 75). The emperor, according to
Eusebius, praised this confession and urged everyone to accept and
sign it; only the term ópooÓGLOt; had to be added.
Indeed, the Fathers of Nicea included the word ópooÓotoc;
in their confession of faith, thereby establishing a profound
difference between the Nicene symbolum and that of the Church of
Caesarea; but there are still more important differences between the
two formulas 76). The confession of Eusebius might perhaps have been
accepted by the Arians, but the Nicene creed was so clear and
precise that the Arians were cut off from evasions. The principal
term, the ópooóatog, more or less suspected in the
East because of the abuse of Paul of Samosate, was inserted probably
especially under the influence of Ossius of Cordova and the Western
Fathers in general 77), since this term had already acquired civil
rights in the West and especially in Rome 78). Later Basil or John
Chrysostom 79) would make the statement that the redaction of the
creed was entrusted to a deacon named Hermogenes, who became bishop
of Caesarea in Cappadocia 80).
After
lengthy deliberations, after much struggle and a careful
investigation, the Nicene Creed was established on 19 June 81).
Provided with the anathematism of the Arian doctrines, this creed
has been preserved in a letter from Eusebius of Caesarea to his
faithful 82). All the bishops present at the Council were requested
in order to sign 83) and all immediately complied with this request,
convinced that this formula contained the ancient and apostolic
faith of the Church 84). However, when the creed was handed to
Eusebius of Caesarea for signature, he asked for a moment's
reflection; then he too signed 85). Eusebius himself wrote to his
Church after the Council that he had not wanted to sign before
having made a careful investigation into the meaning intended by the
Fathers by expressions such as £K xfjc; oöaiaq and
ópooóaioc;; after questions and answers he was
reassured about this; out of love for peace and in order not to keep
himself aloof from the pure faith, he no longer wanted to reject the
term ópoouatoc; 86). Only two Arian bishops stubbornly
refused to sign: the Egyptians Secundus of Ptolemais and Theonas of
Marmarica 87). Philostorgius relates that the other Arian bishops,
named Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theognis of Nicea and Maris of
Chalcedon, used a ruse by signing a text in which the word ópooóatoq
had been replaced by the term ópotoóotoq 88). This is
not very likely. Theonas and Secundus were excluded from the Church;
the same fate befell Arius and all who would adhere to his doctrine;
the writings of Arius also fell under the anathema 89). Secundus,
Theonas, Arius and the priests who remained loyal to him were
immediately banished by the emperor to Illyria.
After
the Arian question had been settled, the Fathers turned their
attention to the Meletian schism in Egypt. The schismatic Meletians
supported Arianism and had brought Bishop Alexander of Alexandria
before the Empress as an accusation 90); Constantine had left the
judgment to the great synod. The Fathers took a very moderate
attitude towards the Meletians. Meletius himself retained his title
of bishop and was allowed to remain in Lycopolis, but to administer
no more ordinations; the bishops he had ordained, twenty-eight in
number 91), priests and deacons were admitted under mild conditions
92).
There
was still a difference between the Church of Antioch and that of
Alexandria in the calculation of the date of Easter. This gave rise
to unpleasantness. This question also had to be resolved by the
Council. The Nicene Fathers decided that henceforth Easter would be
celebrated on the same date throughout the Church. The Antiochene
Church, which until then had borrowed its calculation from the
Jewish one, now adopted the usage of the Alexandrian and Roman
Churches 93). The agreement does not seem to have been reached
without difficulties; under the leadership of Eusebius of Nicomedia
the Syrians asserted their tradition 94); in the end, however, they
yielded to the opinion of the others.
Finally
the Council issued twenty canons 95). The contents of this need not
be given here; it may only be noted that the Nicene canons in many
places are a repetition and supplement of the canons of Arles, so
that here too, as in the confession of faith, the influence of the
Western bishops on the Council becomes visible 96). The terminology
of these prescriptions is significant. In the second canon the
Fathers say: "it seemed good to us that in future such a thing
should not occur again"; the canon closes with the words: "he
who acts contrary to these provisions and presumes to oppose this
great synod, runs the risk of losing his clergy" 97). In the
third canon it imposes a ban on bishops, priests and deacons in the
sixth canon. 98) The Fathers again call their meeting in the sixth
canon the "great synod" 99) (in the eighth, fourteenth,
fifteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and twentieth canons even "the
holy and great synod 100). In the eleventh canon, however, it simply
says "the synod 101). The fact that this Council uses "the
great synod" three times and even "the holy and great
synod" six times for the first time within the short space of
only twenty canons does indicate that the Nicene Fathers themselves
were convinced of the very special character of their meeting; the
conviction that a synod of this character had never taken place and
that they enjoyed the privilege of composing such a synod for the
first time in history, made the Fathers use a new, more exalted
terminology, which was adapted to the sublimity and special value of
this Council; the ordinary "placuit" or "synod"
was no longer sufficient and had to make way for the "great and
holy synod".
The
collections of the canons of various synods, which collections were
soon compiled and widely distributed (4th century) 102), also offer
a favorable testimony to Nicea. For from these collections appears
the conviction which the East possessed concerning the special
position of Nicea. Not only does the Synod of Nicea receive special
epitheta ornantia in those collections as "the great, holy, and
ecumenical" 103) but its canons even take first place, so that
the decisions of earlier councils such as Ancyra in Galatia (314)
and Neocaesarea in Cappadocia (between 314 and 325) come after those
of Nicea. Thus the already cited collection of Marouta of Maipherkat
104) explicitly states: "Those canons [meaning those of Ancyra]
are chronologically earlier than the canons of Nicea. But because of
the authority of the great and holy Synod of Nicea, being canons of
Nicea in the first place written down" l05). After the canons
of Ancyra come in this collection the canons of Neocaesarea, where
it is noted: "These canons are indeed of a later date than the
canons of Ancyra, but nevertheless existed before the canons of
Nicea" l06). This collection and other Greek, Arabic, Chaldean,
Ethiopian and perhaps also Armenian ones observe a hierarchical
order as far as Nicea is concerned, but with respect to the other
councils they are again chronological, they go from Ancyra,
Neocaesarea, Gangra, Antioch, Laodicea to Constantinopel (381).
This
makes it easy to explain that later, like for example Pope Zosimus
(417-418), canons were attributed to Nicea that were not from Nicea;
in the manuscripts, above the canons that followed those of Nicea,
there were no more names of the various councils to which they
belonged; the copyists had not copied the names. This may have
happened by chance, but it was most probably done deliberately, in
several cases at least, in order to let these particular decisions
with their limited authority share in the universal authority of the
canons of Nicea. The flag of Nicea had to cover the lesser cargo and
ensure its sales area. Nicea suffered the same fate as the Apostles,
to whom, because of their authority, considerably more has been
attributed than corresponds to realityl 107).
It
is not possible to say with certainty at what date the end of the
Council should be placed. Arguments can be made for 19 June 108), 25
July 109) or 25 August l10); 19 June, however, is the most likely
date l11). Constantine, convinced that the much-desired unity and
peace had been achieved, wanted to celebrate the outcome of the
deliberations with great festivities. The occasion was all the more
favorable, because Constantine was just commemorating his
twenty-year jubilee as emperor. The monarch invited the Fathers to a
grand banquet, about which Eusebius of Caesarea writes with great
enthusiasm 112). Before leaving Nicea, the bishops came to the
emperor, who gave an encouraging and edifying speech, presenting the
bishops with gifts and then gave them permission to return home
113).
Before
their departure, the Fathers had sent a synodal letter to the
bishops of Egypt, Libya, and the Pentapolis, in which the decisions
taken on the three points under discussion: Arianism, the Meletian
schism, and the date of Easter 114). This letter, with the creed and
the canons, the only authentic ones that have survived from Nicea,
is addressed: "To the by God’s grace holy and great
Church of Alexandria and to the beloved brethren in Egypt, Libya,
and the Pentapolis, the bishops assembled at Nicea and composing the
great and holy synod, greetings in the Lord." 115). In the
letter itself, the Fathers call their Council three times "the
holy" or "the great and holy synod" 116); twice the
expression "synod" occurs without further ado 117). The
Fathers also expressly mention the fact that the condemnation of
Arianism was unanimous 118) and the fact that unanimity had been
reached on the Easter question 119). The synod probably sent other
letters of similar or nearly similar content, but these have not
been preserved. It has rightly been asked whether there were never
any official Acts of this Council or stenographic reports of the
sessions. In view of the custom on other occasions, both before and
after Nicea, it is very likely that stenographic reports were made.
But it is certain that no trace of these reports can be found
anywhere 120). That a council such as that at Nicea possessed more
than ordinary power or influence was also the conviction of Emperor
Constantine, as is evident from one of his letters, written after
the Council to the various absent Churches about "the one faith
and pure love as well as harmonious worship of Almighty God"
121).
The
Emperor writes: "But since it was not possible to make a fixed
and lasting arrangement, unless all, or at least a large part of the
bishops came together for that purpose", we have summoned as
many as possible 122). And the result of this meeting is that
"nothing remains for disagreement or conflict of faith"
123).
May
Constantine also indicate the origin of the authority at the end of
this letter with the words: "This being so, receive with joy
the grace of God and the truly divine commandment; for everything
that happens in the holy synods of bishops is traceable to the
divine will 124), yet one finds herein no indication and explanation
of the special authority that this General Council possessed, since
according to the text the decisions of every synod of bishops
contain a divine command and are traceable to the divine will. In
the same vein, Constantine had already written to the bishops after
the Council of Arles: "The judgment of the priests must be
considered as if the Lord Himself were present and judging. For they
may not think or judge anything other than what has been taught them
by their teacher Christ" 125).
We
see this more clearly than in the previous letter to the Church of
Alexandria, in which, according to him, the deepest foundation of
the absolute authority of the Nicene Fathers lies. The emperor
exults:
"We
have received a perfect favor from divine Providence, that we are
especially delivered from every error and profess one and the same
faith" 126). Constantine then emphasizes once more that the
more than three hundred bishops have established one faith and that
only Arius remained caught in the snares of the devil. What these
bishops taught is the truth, "for what pleased the three
hundred bishops is nothing other than the opinion of God, especially
since the Holy Spirit is in the minds of such men and makes known
the divine will. So that no one may doubt" 127).
The
Fathers derived their authority from the assistance of the Holy
Spirit. The historian Socrates also draws attention to this opinion
of Constantine in the following words: "The opinion of all who
came together, he [Constantine] calls simply the opinion of God, and
he firmly believes that the unanimity of so many and such bishops is
due to the Holy Spirit" 128). Socrates adopts this view when he
argues against the Macedonian Sabinus, who accused the Nicene
Fathers of ignorance and stupidity: "but he [Sabinus] did not
consider that, even if the Fathers were undeveloped, they were
enlightened by God and the grace of the Holy Spirit and could in no
way miss the truth" 129). The assistance of the Holy Spirit is
therefore the most important thing; by it the Fathers are protected
from error, even if they may be undeveloped.
A
summary of the results of this chapter may first draw attention to
the persons who initiated this Council. Although the initiative is
attributable to the spontaneous, common thought of many who saw a
great danger in the teaching of Arius, and of those who longed for
unity, peace and order in Church and State, one may nevertheless say
that prominent persons such as Alexander of Alexandria and Ossius of
Cordova from the ecclesiastical side and an emperor Constantine from
the political side must have had a suggestive share in it. The
initiative was transformed into reality, in other words the Council
was convened by him who was practically the only one capable of
doing so: Emperor Constantine. That it was the emperor who convened
the council on his own authority is evident from Constantine's own
letter of convocation, from his speech to the Council Fathers, from
his letters to the Alexandrian Church and to the Church of
Nicomedia, and from his circular letter to the Churches. The Council
itself also testifies to this in its letter to the Church of
Alexandria, as do Eusebius of Caesarea and the later historians
Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomenus, and Theodoret, who all attributed the
emperor the right of convocation.
The
great majority of those present at the Council came from the East;
but the various parts of the West were also represented; only from
Britain no participant is known. The whole Church and all parts of
the Church therefore made their voices heard at this Council, so
that this Council is in truth the first synod of the "oiKoupévr]"
or the first "ouvo&og oiKoopEVLKp". From the way in
which Eusebius of Caesarea describes the various regions and their
representatives, it is clear that the Bishop of Rome, according to
Eusebius’ view and according to that of the Orientals in
general, occupied a special place among the ecclesiastical
dignitaries; the reason, however, for this special esteem in
relation to the Pope is not indicated. The question of the
presidency at the Council cannot be resolved with complete
certainty. But at least Ossius of Cordova was the president, who
enjoyed that privilege because he was more or less the designated
person for it for incidental or coincidental reasons; the idea that
he owed the presidency to a delegation from the Holy See can safely
be dismissed as unfounded. It may also be safely denied that the
Roman priests Vito and Vincentius presided over the Council as
delegates of the Pope. This can of course be combined with the fact
that these priests and other prominent persons assisted Ossius with
advice in his difficult task, which involved such great
responsibility.
Three
important questions were settled by this Council by unanimous
decision: the Arian question, the Meletian question and the question
of the date of Easter. In the conviction that the Nicene Creed
contained "the ancient and apostolic faith of the Church",
all signed this formula, even the former defenders of Arius; only
two Egyptian bishops, Secundus of Ptolemais and Theonas of
Marmarica, stubbornly refused to sign. The refusal of two of those
present shows that the expression of "unanimity" that was
also used and customary at that time should not be taken in an
absolute sense. Nor is it necessary that the opinions were unanimous
from the first moment, since it appears from the De synodis of
Athanasius that agreement regarding the Easter question was only
reached after the Syrians, led by Eusebius of Nicomedia, had put up
resistance; moreover, the drafting of the creed was preceded by days
of discussions. The good end result is born from the choc des idéés
and therefore Fathers from the entire Church were gathered to be
able to choose the right position after mutual consultation, that
is, after an exchange of thoughts and opinions. Despite the
relatively small number of Western bishops at this Council, one may
see a strong Western influence in the fact of the insertion of the
term ópoouaioc; in the creed; the East itself was averse to
this term, which had already been discredited a century earlier by
Paul of Samosate, the West, on the other hand, especially Rome, had
a special preference for this expression; Ossius of Cordova in
particular will have exerted his influence and dominance over the
Easterners here. Western influence also becomes visible when one
compares the twenty canons of Nicea with those of Arles.
If
one extends the comparison still further by confronting the Nicene
canons with the canons of all earlier synods under the supervision
of the terminology used, one finds the fact that the Nicene Fathers
employ a new, more elevated terminology, adapted to the sublimity
and special value of their Council. The Nicene Fathers themselves
were therefore convinced of the very special character of their
meeting. They also bear witness to this in their synodal letter to
the bishops of Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis. The more than ordinary
power or influence of Nicea was also recognized by Constantine the
Great, as appears from several of his letters. Constantine derives
the authority of the Council Fathers in general and that of the
Nicene Fathers in particular from the assistance of the Holy Spirit,
whereby the council opinion is the opinion of God. In the first half
of the 5th century, the historian Socrates even declares that the
assistance of the Holy Spirit is the only cause of authority and not
the learning or otherwise of the Council Fathers. Already in the 4th
century, the various collections of canons give very favorable
testimony to Nicea; not only do these collections use a special
terminology for Nicea, but they also place this Council on the
highest level of the hierarchical gradation; of all the councils,
Nicea is the most important.
The
General Council of Nicea is a council that was not convened by the
Pope and was not chaired by his legates, the priests Vito and
Vincentius. Did the Pope perhaps make use of the sovereign right to
ratify the decisions? Before answering this question, it is
necessary to determine the meaning of the term "ratify". A
double ratification can be distinguished. The one is already
included in the fact that the Pope, either personally or by means of
legates, takes part in the council and its deliberations, gives his
vote and signs the acts with the others. The second is present when
the Pope, by a separate act, ratifies the decisions taken at the end
of the council. If there is to be a ratification in the second
sense, the papal ratification must be found after the council and
not as part of the council itself. For this approval or confirmation
in the second sense, it is also not sufficient to demonstrate that
the Pope accepts the council decisions; simply accepting or, which
is the same, not rejecting cannot be equated with what is understood
and must be understood by the term ratify. Ratifying means giving a
decision validity and legal force, so that with the demand for papal
ratification in the second sense, the council decisions have no
validity and legal force without that ratification and the decisions
only acquire validity and legal force through and with that papal
confirmation. If one applies these general remarks to the first
General Council of Nicea, then there is no doubt that the decrees of
Nicea possess papal ratification in the first sense. Vito and
Vincentius participated in the deliberations as legates of Pope
Sylvester and gave their assent to the decrees concerning the Arian,
the Meletian and the Easter question, in particular also to the
Nicene Creed; all decrees were taken with "unanimity", and
therefore also received the vote of the papal legates. To doubt
this, because the sources do not specifically record the assent of
the papal legates when mentioning "unanimity", would be
hypercritical. Moreover, such doubt would be completely destroyed by
the fact that the papal legates signed the acts of this Council, in
other words the aforementioned decrees and the twenty canons, and
thus approved and ratified them. That Pope Sylvester, however, would
have ratified the Council of Nicea by a special act after the end of
the Council, cannot be demonstrated by any testimony and must, in
view of the absence of this ratification compared to the other
General Councils in Antiquity, be denied by analogy. Christian
Antiquity considered papal ratification in the first sense
sufficient, but not necessary in the second sense 130).
If
the Emperor had summoned the Council, he also gave permission to
return home. After the Council, Constantine wrote a letter to the
various absent Churches and one to the Church of Alexandria, in
which he made the decrees of Nicea known to his people and gave them
civil force.
CHAPTER III THE EUSEBIAN REACTION AGAINST NICEA
Emperor
Constantine was mistaken when he thought that the decision of Nicea
would definitively put an end to discord, unrest and differences of
opinion. After Nicea, religious unrest in the East really broke out.
Several bishops had given their signature at the council out of fear
of and under pressure from the emperor. Among them were especially
Eusebius of Nicomedia and his followers, who formed a strong middle
party between the real Arians and the orthodox 1). Eusebius and the
real Arians formed an alliance in their fight against Nicea and the
orthodox, their common enemy. In Egypt they found allies in the
Meletians, who, despite the mildness of Nicea towards them,
continued to sow unrest. The most complicated contradictions
revealed themselves, the most unsavory means of struggle were used
and it is not without reason that Socrates compares the religious
disputes after Nicea with night battles 2).
Barely
three months after the conclusion of the Synod of Nicea, Eusebius of
Nicomedia, Maris of Chalcedon, and Theognis of Nicea informed the
emperor that they were withdrawing their signature from the Creed of
Nicea. Constantine acted as the protector of orthodoxy and of the
Creed for which he had taken so much trouble: he sent the three
opponents into exile in Gaul. The emperor even succeeded in having
new bishops elected for the sees of Nicomedia and Nicea, Amphion and
Chrestus respectively. A few years later, on June 7, 328, the
opponents of Nicea saw their greatest enemy ascend the see of
Alexandria: St. Athanasius, who had already been designated as his
successor by his predecessor Alexander. The hatred of the Eusebians
and Arians against Athanasius dated back to the Council of Nicea.
whereupon Athanasius, then still a deacon, had taken a very
determined attitude towards Arian impiety 3).
However
favourable the situation seemed on the surface for orthodoxy, thanks
to the emperor's strong support, the struggle soon broke out.
Eusebius of Nicomedia had a powerful advocate at the imperial court
in the emperor's sister, Constantia; perhaps also in the emperor's
mother, Helena, whom Eusebius regarded only as the disciple of the
martyr Lucian of Antioch 4), whom she greatly revered. It is
probably due to their efforts that Constantine allowed Eusebius and
Theognis to return to their dioceses in 328, after they had given
him reassuring assurances 5). They even resumed the leadership of
their Church, despite the rights of their legitimate successors.
From that time on, Eusebius waged a subtle diplomatic war against
the faithful adherents of the Nicene Ópoouatoc; especially
against the leaders of orthodoxy, whom he tried to render harmless.
While Eusebius and his followers pretended to submit to the
decisions of Nicea, they secretly and in various ways tried to
destroy the opoooaiog and to make their Arian and subordinate views
prevail. The emperor was won over above all by the deceptive promise
of complete unity in doctrinal matters: Arius and his followers were
supposedly orthodox at bottom and prepared to sign an eighteen-carat
orthodox formula of faith, if they were allowed to return from exile
6).
After
Eusebius of Nicomedia had tried in vain to discredit the election
and ordination of St. Athanasius, he turned against another champion
of Nicea, Eustathius of Antioch. He was accused of Sabellianism. At
the end of 330 or the beginning of 331 Eusebius convened a great
synod at Antioch against Eustathius. At this council, among others,
Eusebius of Caesarea, Patrophilus of Scythopolis, Aetius of Lydda
and Theodotus of Laodicea were present as partisans of Eusebius of
Nicomedia. According to Socrates, Cyrus of Beroea was the main
opponent of Eustathius at this synod and formally accused him of
Sabellianism. Eustathius was also wrongly accused of less honourable
matters 7). The "unlawful assembly" 8) deposed the bishop
of Antioch, which caused a violent popular uprising in the city,
where Eustathius was much loved. Emperor Constantine, informed by
bias, sent Eustathius into exile, where he must have died a few
years later. The assembled bishops elected Paulinus of Tyre as their
successor, and from this time dates the endless struggle for the
episcopal see of Antioch, a struggle which continued throughout the
century and which led to a serious crisis between East and West
after the Council of Constantinopel in 381 9). Several other
orthodox bishops suffered the same fate as Eustathius of Antioch at
this time.
Once
again, Athanasius was chosen as his victim. The Eusebians made
common cause with the Meletians in Egypt, and together they
presented false accusations against the Alexandrian bishop to the
emperor. Their first attempts failed, because Athanasius managed to
convince the emperor of his innocence 10). After this failure the
Meletians tried to win the friendship of Athanasius, but soon they
were again incited against the Alexandrian by the Eusebians. Barely
ten years after the Council of Nicea the unrest in Church and State
was greater than ever. Cunning as they were, the Eusebians had
already proposed to the emperor several times to hold a great
council and thereby restore peace and unity in Church and State. The
most favourable opportunity now presented itself. In 335 the emperor
was going to celebrate his thirty-year jubilee of reign and this
year was also the tenth anniversary of the Council of Nice.
Constantine wanted to embellish and immortalize the celebration of
his Tricennalia by consecrating the new Church of the Holy Sepulchre
in Jerusalem. A large number of bishops had to be present. "How
much more impressive would all this be if unity among the bishops
had been restored beforehand," said the Eusebians.
And
"the emperor, beloved of God, again called for a synod of very
many bishops and drew them up like an army of God in battle array
against the blasphemous devil: from all Egypt and Libya, Asia as
well as Europe, he urged them to hasten, first to put an end to the
discord, then to perform the aforesaid sanctuary; he therefore
ordered that they should resolve the dispute en passant in the
metropolis of Phoenicia [Tyre]" 11). The emperor also addressed
a letter to the holy synod in the city of Tyre, held in the year
335, from which letter it appears that the ex-consul Flavius
Dionysius was appointed to keep a watchful eye on the
assembly on behalf of the emperor; if there should be a bishop who
refused to come against the orders of the empress, she would drive
him into exile; finally Constantine urged to put aside all
dissension 12). Socrates 13), Theodoret 14), Rufinus 15),
Epiphanius 16) and also Athanasius 17) also report that this synod
was convoked at Tyre by the emperor.
A
large number of bishops were present. "And there appeared at
the synod at Tyre bishops from various places, about the number of
Nestig," writes Socrates.) To these there were added eight
Egyptian suffragan bishops of forty, nearly one hundred i»)
20). The Eusebians were of course very strongly present; in Tyre one
saw leaders such as Eusebius of Nicomedia, Eusebius of Caesarea,
Theognis of Nicea, Maris of Chalcedon, Macedonia of Mopsueste,
Flaccillus of Antioch, Theodore of Heraclea and Patrophilus of
Scythopolis; also two bishops from Pannonia, who would play a great
role in the following years, made their entrance into the company of
the Eusebians: Valens of Mursa and Ursacius of Singidunum 21). The
few moderate or orthodox bishops, such as Maximus of Jerusalem,
Alexander of Thessalonica and Marcellus of Ancyra could not exert
any influence on the course of events 22); the orthodox bishops from
Egypt, who accompanied Athanasius, were denied entrance 23). Now
Athanasius refused to appear, but in the end he had to yield to the
emperor, who threatened to use force otherwise 24). Macarius, an
Alexandrian priest, against whom the Eusebians had also brought a
false accusation, was even taken in chains to Tyre 25).
In
Tyre Athanasius found himself among his enemies; the
Egyptian-Meletian bishops acted as accusers, the Eusebians fulfilled
the role of judges, Athanasius was the accused. The presidency
rested mainly in the hands of Eusebius of Caesarea 26). The
accusations rained down. Athanasius is said to have broken a
chalice, destroyed an altar, thrown Ischyras into prison and
slandered him to the prefect of Egypt; bishop Callinicus of Pelusia
is said to have been unlawfully deposed by Athanasius because of
this affair 27); other Meletian bishops such as Euplus, Pachomius,
Isaac, Achillas and Hermaeon complained about corporal punishments
and all opposed the legality of Athanasius' choice of bishop2B). The
Alexandrian bishop was even said to have murdered the Meletian
bishop Arsenius, and a severed hand was shown as a gruesome piece of
evidence; Athanasius was able to refute this accusation convincingly
by having Arsenius come in and showing him both hands; a great
commotion arose and people even wanted to attack Athanasius. 29). It
is also reported that a woman was brought in, who was said to have
been violated by Athanasius, but this accusation also fell into
insignificance, because the woman showed that she did not even
recognize Athanasius by sight 30); Sozomenus also relates that this
case was not recorded in the acta concilii for no other reason, in
his opinion, than because this case was too shameful and ridiculous
to be registered in synodal acts 31); the authenticity of this story
can be seriously doubted and perhaps Rufinus is the disseminator of
it 32), which in the last instance could then be traced back to the
Church History of Gelasius of Caesarea.
Successively
the various accusations against Athanasius proved to be without
foundation. The Eusebians tried to divert attention from this by
pushing the case forward against the Alexandrian priest Macarius,
who was said to have been the helping hand in Athanasius' cruelties
against Ischyras. The synod should appoint a commission, which
should conduct an investigation in Mareotis itself, the homeland of
Ischyras. The Eusebians intended this, according to Athanasius, to
create an opportunity to take revenge on Athanasius in Egypt during
his absence 33). Athanasius considered an investigation in Mareotis
superfluous, but in the end the Eusebians and Meletians succeeded in
having a very partial committee sent, consisting of Theognis of
Nicea, Maris of Chalcedon, Ursacius, Valens, Macedonius and
Theodorus 34). Protected by a military escort and provided with a
letter of recommendation for the governor of Egypt, the company set
out. Aided by the Egyptian prefect, Philagrius, refused to hear the
eyewitnesses; on the contrary, it listened eagerly to the assertions
of Jews, pagans, and catechumens, who could not act as eyewitnesses,
because it concerned a fact that was supposed to have taken place in
the sacrarium, where even the catechumens had no access 35).
This
partial and illegal action aroused a fiery protest from the clergy
in Egypt and Mareotis; they sent letters to the commissioners 36),
to the synod at Tyre 37), to Philagrius and another imperial
official 38). Athanasius, according to these letters, is innocent
and Ischyras, who falsely presents himself as a priest, has borne
false witness. The Egyptian bishops, who had gone to Tyre with
Athanasius, also opposed the conduct of the Eusebians in a letter
addressed to the entire council 39). They declared that they had
been forced to remain silent by the Eusebians; that those who wished
to judge according to justice and equity were harassed by threats or
accusations, so that the Eusebians could freely act as enemies. They
reproached the embassy and adjured the bishops not to make common
cause with the Eusebians, but to fear God more than threats. They
sent an almost identical letter to Count Flavius Dionysius
40). Later they sent him another letter, in which it was written
that they felt compelled by the intrigues of their enemies to leave
the judgment of their case to the emperor 41). This imperial
official also received a letter from Bishop Alexander of
Thessalonica, warning him against the Eusebians 42). At all this
Dionysius contented himself with urging the Eusebians to moderation
and caution 43).
As
the Eusebians continued to carry out their plans, Athanasius
withdrew from their grasp 44), secretly left the city of Tyre and
sailed for Constantinopel to have refuge with the emperor 45). After
the committee had returned from Egypt and had delivered its biased
report, the Eusebians, although not present, deposed Athanasius and
forbade him to return to Alexandria 46). The committee's report was
carefully concealed from Athanasius, and the Eusebians were furious
when Pope Julius later sent this report to Athanasius 47). Thus the
Alexandrian was condemned on false charges, none of which,
remarkably, had any bearing on his doctrine. In Tyre the Meletian
bishop John Archaph and his party followers were received into
ecclesiastical communion and restored to their office; Ischyras was
even appointed bishop. The decisions were brought to the attention
of the emperor and a synodal letter to all bishops imposed the
obligation to break off all relations with Athanasius 48). Sozomenus
adds: "That this condemnation was not right, was also thought
by many of the priests present" 49). Hardly had these decisions
been taken when an imperial messenger came to warn those assembled
in Tyre to proceed to Jerusalem as soon as possible to attend and to
grace the consecration of the church there 50). The Eusebians took
advantage of the opportunity to call another council in the same
year 335, this time in Jerusalem. Eusebius of Caesarea writes in
praise of this: "The whole place here was then filled with a
very great choir of God, because the illustrious bishops from all
the provinces came together in Jerusalem; for the Macedonians had
the bishop of their metropolis sent 51), the Pannonians and the
Moesians the flower and ornaments of the young bishops consecrated
to God 52); also from the Persian bishops there was a holy ornament
present, a man exceptionally skilled in the Holy Scripture, and also
the Bithynians and the Thracians increased the splendor of the
synodal college 53). Nor were the most famous of the Cilicians
lacking. of the Cappadocians, among all, those who were most
developed in knowledge and eloquence shone forth. And all Syria and
Mesopotamia, Phoenicia as well as Arabia with Palestine itself, the
Egyptians with Libya and the inhabitants of Thebais, all together
made up the great choir of God; them followed an innumerable
multitude from all provinces; and they were all assisted by imperial
servants, and from the imperial palace itself excellent men had been
sent to enliven the festivities with funds provided by the emperor"
54). The bishops were received magnificently on behalf of the
emperor by the tribune and notary Marianus 55). While the preceding
quotation from Eusebius, especially through the expression "the
great choir of God", strongly recalls the description given by
the same author of Nicea, in the following quotation this council in
Jerusalem is even expressly placed by Eusebius on a par with the
Nicene. "This second synod, he writes, which to our knowledge
is the greatest, was convened by the empress Jerusalem, after the
first, which was held by him in the famous city of Bithynia"
56).
Other
sources, however, draw the true picture of this great meeting; not
on the same level as Nicea, but the antithesis of Nicea Before
giving the synodal letter of this synod, St. Athanasius introduces
his chapter thus: "Meanwhile, they were [the Eusebians] but
never tired of continually holding synods against the General [of
Nicea]. For although the Eusebians were deposed after the Synod of
Nicea, yet after a time they insolently invaded the Churches and
even began to harass the bishops who opposed them, and to appoint in
their place adherents of their own heresy against the Churches; in
order that they might [thus] hold synods at will, since they [now]
had men who were on their side and whom they had purposely ordained
for this very purpose. They now assembled in Jerusalem" 57). To
the question put by the emperor concerning the confession of faith
submitted some time before by Arius and his followers, the Eusebians
replied that that confession was sufficient and orthodox, and they
solemnly declared that the Arians should be received into communion
58). These decisions they communicated by synodal letter to the
emperor, to all the bishops and to the entire clergy, especially to
that of Egypt, so that this example of tolerance would be followed
everywhere. The opening of this synodal letter reads as follows:
"The holy synod, which by the grace of God is assembled in
Jerusalem, to the Church of God in Alexandria, and to that in all
Egypt, and Thebais and Libya and Pentapolis, and to the bishops and
priests and deacons throughout the world, salvation in the Lord"
59). The Eusebians write that they have received Arius and his
followers at the instigation of the emperor, because Constantine
accepted the orthodoxy of their creed; this creed "we have all
recognized as good and ecclesiastical" 60). They expect great
joy from all over this reunion. "And having heard the acts of
the council, especially how those persons have united themselves
with us and have been received by such a holy synod, it is indeed
most fitting for you to enter into communion and peace with your own
members, especially since the profession of faith made by them is
uncontested and inviolate the Apostolic tradition and doctrine
professed by all" 61). Athanasius could rightly pronounce the
following judgment on this synod and that of Tyre: "And they
did not hesitate to write such things nor to assert that those
possessed orthodox opinions which had been condemned by the entire
ecumenical synod; nor did they fear to underhandedly render
powerless that great synod to the best of their ability, proceeding
very lightly in all their sayings and doings" 62). If the
Council of Nicea had condemned Arius, the synod of Jerusalem
rehabilitated him; both synods are therefore diametrically opposed
to each other.
In
the meantime, Athanasius lodged his complaint with the emperor in
Constantinopel. Constantine sent a letter "to the bishops
assembled in Tyre" 63). "I really do not know what was
decided so tumultuously and stormily by your synod" 64), writes
the emperor. The truth seems to have been lost in all this
commotion. "Therefore I desire that you all come to me quickly,
so that you may give us a precise account of your conduct" 65).
They are summoned to Constantinopel at the request of Athanasius
himself, so that he can complain in their presence about the
injustice done to him; all this discord greatly displeases the
emperor. After this letter the Eusebians did not feel reassured;
they succeeded in preventing the bishops who had protested against
the conduct towards Athanasius 66) from going to Constantinopel, so
that in the end only Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theognis, Maris,
Patrophilus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Theodore, Ursacius and Valens
left for the imperial city. There they found Athanasius in the
company of some other orthodox believers, namely the Egyptian
bishops Adamantius, Anubion, Agathammon, Arbethion and Peter. 67) In
the presence of the emperor the Eusebius dared to the
bians no longer touched upon the question of the chalice and of
Ischyras; they invented a new accusation; Athanasius was said to
have threatened to stop the grain supply from Alexandria to
Constantinopel. When the emperor heard this he flew into a rage,
would not even listen to Athanasius's defence and banished him to
Gaul 68). Sozomenus adds that the emperor may have done this in the
belief that the bishops would henceforth live in peace 69). Later
Constantine II wrote that his father had done this in order to free
Athanasius from the hands of his mortal enemies and not to punish or
condemn him; his father would therefore have wanted to restore
Athanasius to his see, but death had prevented him from carrying out
this plan 70). Athanasius himself seems to have believed these words
71). Much more likely, however, is that Constantine wanted to carry
out the judgment of the synod at Tyre by banishing Athanasius and to
gain his imperial approval for it. On the 5th of February 336,
Athanasius left Constantinopel for his place of exile, the city of
Trier 72).
A
next victim was Marcellus of Ancyra. At a Eusebian synod at
Constantinopel in 336, he was accused mainly of heresy in his
writing against the Arian sophist Asterius. Marcellus was deposed
and banished; a certain Basilius took Marcellus' seat at Ancyra 73).
After Constantine the Great had died on Pentecost in the year 337,
Athanasius was able to return to Alexandria 74), where he arrived on
23 November of the same year 75). While Constantine II and Constans
remained loyal to the Nicene faith, Constantius, who governed the
East, soon became entangled in the Eusebian net. Paul us, the bishop
of Constantinopel, was deposed at a Eusebian synod in his episcopal
city in the year 338; thrown in chains on Constantius' orders, he
too went into exile at Singar in Mesopotamia, while Eusebius of
Nicomedia succeeded him in Constantinopel 76).
At
the same time the intrigues against Athanasius began to revive;
rallying around their own bishop Pistus 77) the Alexandrian Arians
and with them the Eusebians accused Athanasius of new crimes, which
were brought before the three emperors; Constantius alone considered
the charges well-founded. The Eusebians carried their brutality so
far that they sent an embassy to Pope Julius I, consisting of the
priest Macarius and two deacons, Martyrius and Hesychius, to
introduce their accusations against Athanasius in Rome and even to
induce the Pope to recognize Pistus as a legitimate bishop. The
embassy had to submit to the Pope the reports of the committee sent
to Mareotis in 335.
Pope
Julius sent Athanasius a copy of these reports, whereupon Athanasius
sent some representatives in his defense to Rome and the emperors
Constantine II and Constans. Moreover, he had already prepared a
synod at Alexandria of all the Catholic bishops from Egypt, Libya,
Thebais and Pentapolis. Nearly one hundred bishops met 78) in the
year 338. A synodal letter of this synod has the following opening:
"The holy synod, assembled in Alexandria from Egypt, Thebais,
Libya and Pentapolis, to all the bishops of the Catholic Church, the
beloved and much loved brothers in the Lord, greetings" 79). In
this letter all the accusations against Athanasius are refuted; no
reprisals were taken by Athanasius upon his return to Alexandria
against priests or laymen; the facts, brought forward by the
Eusebians, took place before Athanasius’ return and the
responsibility for them rests with the prefect of Egypt, who is not
very orthodox; 80) the reason for the hatred against Athanasius is
his actions against Arius and Arianism; Athanasius was desired by
all as a bishop and lawfully consecrated 881). How dare Eusebius of
Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicea depose one another?
They
themselves have been deposed. For the Pope knows that in their place
Amphion of Nicomedia and Chrestus of Nicea have been consecrated,
because Eusebius and Theognis "have been rejected by the
ecumenical synod. This true synod they want to destroy, they try to
call their own unjust conspiracy [the synod of Tyre] a synod and
while they want to make the decrees of Nicea invalid, they want to
ratify their own decrees; and that they call a synod, while they
have so sublime a synod with obedient ones. Thus they do not care
about a synod, but they pretend to care about it" 82). This is
a very different sound from that of Eusebius of Caesarea; this put
Jerusalem, which is actually a continuation of Tyre, on a par with
Nicea, the Egyptian bishops on the other hand do not want to see
Tyre and thus implicitly its continuation in Jerusalem as a "synod"
but as a "conspiracy" and underline as strongly as
possible the contrast between Nicea and Tyre-Jerusalem. Then the
synod letter bears witness to the great joy at Athanasius’
return 83). What confidence, the letter continues, did such a synod
as that held in Tyre have, what confidence can one place in its
decisions? "For what kind of synod of bishops was it then? Was
it a meeting that devoted itself to the truth? Were most of them
with us with How is it possible that such people want to hold a
synod against us? How dare they call such a thing a synod when a
count was in charge and a supervisor was present, and a comentarius
led us in instead of deacons of the Church. He spoke, those present
were silent, rather surrendered to the words of the count. And that
those bishops of whom it was clear that they had to be removed were
indeed removed, prevented his advice. He ordered, we were led away
by soldiers; or rather, the Eusebians gave orders, he, helped them
in their decisions. In short, beloved, what kind of synod is this,
the end of which could have been banishment and murder If that had
been according to the emperor's wish?). This passage does throw a
sharp light on the events at Tyre; it was not a real synod, not a
meeting of bishops, at which impartial and truthful justice was
pronounced on the accusations against Athanasius, but really a
conspiracy of the Eusebians with the help of imperial officials and
soldiers; the imperial officials and especially the count even
somewhat predominated, while at a synod, which aims at the
leadership of a spiritual community, the bishops should be the only
legal persons. The meeting at Tyre was indeed far removed from the
character of a real synod. Then the episode at Constantinopel, end
335 to beginning 336, is discussed; by banishing Athanasius the
emperor managed to prevent the bishop from being killed; Constantine
wanted to do well, but could not do otherwise; this was evident from
the letter which he had written to Athanasius before the meeting at
Tyre, in which he had incriminated those hostile plots, condemned
the Meletians, and called them villainous and accursed 85). "But
in order that it might be seen that they were destroying both the
truth and this imperial letter, those admirable Eusebians gave to
their meeting [at Tyre] the name of "synod," and to the
synodal acts the appearance of having come from the emperor.
Therefore a count was present, and soldiers were the bodyguard of
the bishops, and there was an imperial letter which forced them to
assemble, which they themselves had requested. But if they left the
judgment to themselves as bishops alone [and not to the emperor],
why were there any need of a count and soldiers? Or why did they let
themselves be assembled by an imperial letter? If they needed the
emperor and wanted to borrow authority from him, why did they make
his judgment invalid?" 86). An equally sharp indictment against
Tyre and a painful dilemma for the Eusebians. The synodal letter
deals with the various subjects: on the breaking of the chalice 87),
on Ischyras 88), on the embassy of the Eusebians to Mareotis 89), on
the conduct of that committee in Egypt 90), on the letter of Bishop
Alexander of Thessalonica to Dionysius 9l), and on the attitude of
the Egyptian clergy and their letters 92). The synod declares that
Athanasius had proceeded to the satisfaction of all in the
distribution of the grain; the Arians, on the other hand, had tried
to get their hands on the grain that was intended for the church
93). The letter ends with a request to all bishops to have
compassion for the fate of their fellow bishop Athanasius and to
express their indignation about the conduct of the Eusebians 94). In
addition, Athanasius expressly testifies that this synodal letter
was also sent to Pope Julius 95). When the priest Macarius, the
leader of the Eusebian embassy to Pope Julius, learned that a
legation from Egypt was on its way to Rome, he left the city during
the night despite his illness 96). The deacons Martyrius and
Hesychius, however, were confronted with Athanasius's legation and
refuted in everything; they seized a last straw and requested the
Pope to convene a synod and to write to Athanasius, the bishop of
Alexandria, as well as to the Eusebians, so that a just judgment
could be passed in the presence of all. For then they would prove
all the accusations against Athanasius, they promised" 97).
Pope Julius acceded to this request and announced by letter that a
synod was to be held at a place of choice by both parties 98).
Athanasius
was all the more prepared to respond to this papal appeal, because
serious events had taken place in his episcopal city. A certain
Gregory of Cappadocia had been appointed by imperial decree as
Athanasius's successor 99) and his installation had resulted in acts
of violence and bloodshed. This Cappadocian had been chosen and
consecrated by the Eusebians at a synod at Antioch in the month of
January or February of the year 339, because they understood that
Pistus had little chance of being recognized by the Pope. That
Eusebian synod is known from the above-mentioned letter of Pope
Julius; in it we read: "What kind of ecclesiastical canon or
what kind of apostolic tradition prescribes that while the Church is
living in peace and so many bishops are in agreement with the
Alexandrian bishop Athanasius Gregory should be sent, a stranger to
the city of Alexandria, who was not even baptized there and also
unknown to most, neither asked for by priests, nor by bishops, nor
by the people? But he had been appointed in Antioch and was sent to
Alexandria, not in the company of priests or deacons of the city nor
in the company of bishops from Egypt, but with an escort of
soldiers. For these accusations were told by those who came here;
even if Athanasius had been found guilty after the synod" 100),
it would still have been against ecclesiastical law to simply
appoint someone else. No wonder that Pope Julius did not grant this
synod any authority and rightly put the Eusebians to the question,
which also contained a serious reproach: "Consider carefully,
then, who acted against the canons: we, who after so much proof
received this man [Athanasius], or they who, thirty-six days’
journey away in Antioch, appointed a foreigner as bishop and sent
him to Alexandria with military force?" 101). Athanasius
himself also relates that Gregory was appointed in violation of
canon law and apostolic tradition and that he was someone "from
the palace" 102), sent by the emperor 103). Emperor Constantius
and the Eusebian bishops thus always worked together.
After
Easter of the year 339 Athanasius arrived in Rome, and Pope Julius
immediately sent two priests, Elpidius and Philoxenus, to Antioch,
who were to announce a limit within which the Eusebians were
expected at Rome to meet at a synod l04). "But the Eusebians,
upon hearing that it would be an ecclesiastical investigation, at
which no count would appear, nor would soldiers stand at the door,
and that the acts of the synod would not be ratified by an imperial
edict (for by these means they had always exerted their influence
against the bishops, and without it they dared say nothing at all),
were so filled with fear that they kept the priests even after the
appointed time and invented a feeble excuse: they could not come now
because of the war with the Persians" 105). Very sarcastically,
but not without reason, Athanasius remarks: what have bishops to do
with war, and why were they prevented by the Persians (in the East)
from going to Rome (in the West), a city far away and over sea?
Elpidius and Philoxenus were sent back to Rome with a letter
containing a sharp protest against a possible revision of the
synodal decision of Tyre concerning Athanasius' deposition 106) and
an accusation against the Pope for his association with Athanasius
and Marcellus of Ancyra l07). The Eusebians refused to come to Rome.
After
Pope Julius had kept this fiercely arrogant letter of the Eusebians
secret for a long time, in the hope that eventually some Eusebians
would respond to his appeal 108), he decided to hold a synod in the
city of Rome at the end of 340. More than fifty bishops were
assembled 109): the Pope, Athanasius, Marcellus of Ancyra, and many
bishops from Thrace, Coelesyria, Phoenicia, and Palestine: in
addition, many priests from various countries, among whom also a
deputation from Alexandria and all Egypte ll0). Apparently there
were also Italian bishops and priests present 111). After Athanasius
had defended himself before them, they received him into communion
as well as Marcellus of Ancyra and declared both their depositions
for unjust 112). The assembly requested the Pope to make the
decisions known in writing to the Eusebians 113). A very detailed
letter from Pope Julius went to the East: "Julius to Danius,
Flaccillus, Narcissus, Eusebius, Maris, Macedonius, Theodore and
their companions, who wrote to us from Antioch, to the beloved
brethren, greetings in the Lord" 114). The Pope states that he
had finally had to make their arrogant letter known and that
everyone was astonished and could hardly believe that the Eusebians
had written such a letter 115). Why should there not be an inquiry
into whether Athanasius had been rightly deposed by the synod at
Tyre? "The bishops also assembled at the great Council at
Nicea, not without God's will, had permitted the proceedings of an
earlier synod to be examined at another synod. If you do not wish
this already ancient custom, mentioned and described at the great
council, to be in force among you, such a demand is inappropriate;
for that which has once become customary law in the Church and has
been ratified by synods, cannot reasonably be made invalid by any
one" 116). Pope Julius clearly sets before his eyes the
authority of Nicea; the Eusebians must submit to that which, besides
by customary law, was expressly sanctioned at this Council; they
have no right to disapprove of the Pope’s action and must
recognize the decision of the Roman synod as legitimate and valid.
After all that series of meetings in the thirties, this Roman synod
in 340 is finally the first, after Alexandria in 338, that can
properly be called a "synod"; and the first thing that
this synod makes heard through the mouth of Pope Julius is an appeal
to the General Council. Here the sublimity of Nicea is recalled by a
synod which itself might almost be considered a general synod: under
the presidency of the Pope, there were bishops present from various
parts of the East and the West were not absent; however, for a real
general synod the number of bishops was rather small and apparently
the West only the Italian area was represented 117); this synod was
therefore never considered ecumenical. Since the Eusebian legation,
the Pope continues, had itself requested a synod, the Eusebians
should have come to this council with all the more reason to be
happy instead of showing their indignation. The Eusebians had
written that every synod had authority and power and that it was an
insult to the judge if his judgment was examined by another. Very
well. But then consider who the synods hold in honor and who deprive
the judgments of others of their power 118). "After the Arians
were expelled for impiety by Alexander of blessed memory, the former
bishop of Alexandria, they were not only publicly forbidden by every
city, but also excommunicated by all who came together at the great
Council of Nicea" 119). These now were received into communion
by the Eusebians. Whom do the synods dishonor? "Are they not
those who hold the judgment of the three hundred to be nothing?"
And Marcellus, who resisted the Arians at the Council of Nicea, and
Athanasius, whose guilt could not be proven either at Tyre or at
Mareotis, they condemned. 120) The Pope then gives some concrete
cases from which their association with the condemned Arians is
evident; for example, their communion with the priest Pistus, who
had been expelled "by the Council of Nicea" and was later
consecrated bishop by a certain Secundus, who had also been
condemned by "the great Council." Are they not rather
guilty who despise "the great Council"? 121) "If,
then, as you write, it is evident from the cases of Novatian and
Paul of Samosate that the decisions of the synods must be and remain
in force, then all the more reason should not be given to
invalidating the judgment of the three hundred, then the Catholic
Council should not be despised by any" 122). Who then will
light the torch of discord? We, or on the contrary "those who
ambitiously and contrary to the canon dissolve the judgment of the
three hundred and despise the Council in everything?" 123).
Here the Pope touches on the critical point; the opponents of
Athanasius are an oligarchy who claim to have the precedence over a
council, which represents the whole Catholic Church. You should
therefore have come to Rome to bring this question to a good end.
Your excuses, that the appointed time is too short or the situation
in the East does not permit it, are not valid 124). To the complaint
of the Eusebians, that the letter of convocation of the Pope was
addressed only to them and not to all the Eastern bishops, the Pope
replies that the letter of convocation was a reply and therefore
only sent to those who asked for a reply; the Eusebians. The Pope
had not written to them, they believed, only in his own name, but
they should know that his opinion was also that of "all in
Italy" and of the bishops in those regions. "But I did not
want to urge them all to write, because that would cause difficulty
for many. But rest assured, at the appointed time the bishops met
and they were of the same opinion, which I again make known to you
by my letter; so that, beloved, you must know that this is the
opinion of all, even though I write alone" 125).
The
Pope then shows that Athanasius and Marcellus were received into
communion "not lightly or unjustly and without a form of trial"
126). Here Julius I also mentions the goodwill of "the great
Council", that is, of Nicea 127) as well as the fact that "our
priests, who were present at the Council of Nicea at that time"
have now testified to Marcellus’ orthodoxy 128). Incidentally,
Athanasius and Marcellus were not the only ones who had filed
complaints; many bishops and priests from Thrace, Coelesyria,
Phoenicia and Palestine and also from Alexandria and all Egypt had
done the same at this synod; especially there had come from
Alexandria and Egypt, who testified that many bishops and priests
had intended to attend the synod, but had been prevented from doing
so: it was in Egypt a real persecution, and at Ancyra in Galatia it
went no better l29). Who then stirs up discord? Let not the limbs of
Christ be torn asunder. Even if Athanasius and Marcellus had been
guilty, and with them all the other bishops and priests who were
condemned or persecuted by the Eusebians, the Eusebians would still
not have acted rightly. "For granted that, as you say, some
fault could indeed be imputed to them, then the judgment should have
been made according to the canon of the Church, and not in that way;
all should have written to Us, so that in this way the right thing
might be determined by all. Or do you not know that it is customary
to write to Us first, and that in this way the judgment is
pronounced here? If, therefore, any suspicion of that kind had
fallen on the bishop of that city [Alexandria], they should have
written to this Church [Rome]" l30). However, the way the
Eusebians acted is not according to the regulations of St. Paul, nor
according to tradition, but something quite different and an
attitude of their own invention. Finally, the Pope adjures the
Eusebians to desist from their course of action and to disturb the
Church no more. This important letter sheds a clear light on two
things: first, that the Pope and his circle attached no value to the
synod at Tyre and its continuation in Jerusalem, no matter how the
Eusebians, and especially Eusebius of Caesarea, had expressed
themselves about it; secondly, that the Pope and his circle
recognized in a special way the authority of Nicea, to which they
always appealed. Tyre-Jerusalem and Nicea are opposites. Emperor
Constantine the Great had already begun to build a church at
Antioch, which was called the great church or apostolic church, also
called the golden church. Constantius finished the building and the
consecration had to take place in a solemn manner. As was customary,
such a ceremony attracted a large number of bishops and provided a
fine opportunity to hold a synod. The consecration of the church at
Antioch attracted ninety-seven bishops, who held a synod there
between 22 May and 1 September of the year 341 131). Athanasius
calls this synod expressly "ëv xotc; ’EyKaivtoiq",
"the synod of initiation", so that from the beginning it
was always called "Antioch in Encaeniis" 132). Emperor
Constantius himself was present at this synod 133). According to the
testimony of Socrates, it was Eusebius of Nicomedia who had ensured
that this synod took place 134) and Sozomenus also attributes the
meeting to the influence of the Eusebians 135). Nevertheless, the
Eusebians formed the minority, a third belonged to the moderates and
the rest were entirely orthodox and Nicene. All the bishops were
from the East; although the majority were from the Antiochene
patriarchate, there also appeared Acacius of Caesarea in Palestine,
Patrophilus of Scythopolis, Theodore of Heraclea, Eudoxius of
Germanicia, Gregory of Alexandria, Dianius of Caesarea in
Cappadocia, George of Laodicea in Syria, and Eusebius of Nicomedia,
who was now bishop of Constantinopel 136). Flaccillus of Antioch was
probably president 137). Socrates and Sozomenus further mention that
Maximus of Jerusalem refused to come, because he regretted having
been deceived at the synod at Tyre six years before, and had been
induced by the wiles of the Eusebians to sign the deposition of
Athanasius 138). Socrates also mentions that Pope Julius was not
present and had not sent anyone to take his place: "while the
canon of the Church forbids the Churches to establish canons without
the will of the Bishop of Rome" 139). Sozomenus says that no
one from the Italian area or from the other Western provinces was
present either 140). "Since the assembled bishops were partly
Eusebians, partly moderates, and partly fully orthodox, it is
understandable that this synod was largely orthodox in its actions
and decisions, and partly heretical or at least under the influence
of heretical currents.
Twenty-five
canons have been promulgated in Antioch 141). The promulgation bull
begins with the following words: "The holy and most peaceful
synod assembled by Goddess Antioch from the eparchy of Coelesyria,
Phoenicia, Palestine, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Cilicia, Isauria, to the
unanimous and holy priests in all provinces, salvation in the Lord"
142). The assembled point out that they are making known the canons
"under the inspiration of the Holy and peaceful Spirit"
143) and "after much and careful investigation" 144). They
trust that all will agree with them, ratify the decisions and
confirm them "with the consent of the Holy Spirit" 145).
The first canon deals with the feast of Easter and determines that
all who dare to deprive "the decree of the holy and great synod
assembled at Nicea" of its force must be excommunicated. Should
anyone in the future dare to celebrate Easter at the same time as
the Jews, this holy synod (at Antioch) will consider him a
secessionist 146). While this canon can be attributed entirely to
the influence of the orthodox party and perhaps also to that of the
moderates, the fourth canon strongly suggests the influence of the
Eusebians. For this canon determines that if a bishop, priest or
deacon has been deposed by a synod and yet dares to exercise some
ecclesiastical function, such a person cannot, according to the
custom already in force, hope to be reinstated by another synod;
such a person may not even expect to be given the opportunity to
defend himself; the same applies to all those who continue in
fellowship with such people. 147) This canon, according to the
Eusebian view, is applicable to Athanasius and even to all who
adhered to him; for, although deposed by the Synod of Tyre,
Athanasius had nevertheless later exercised his episcopal office
again in Alexandria, had defended himself before the Pope at the
Synod in Rome, and had been recognized as innocent by this Synod and
received into communion.
The
twelfth canon was also deliberately edited or renewed by the
Eusebian party. It stipulates that when a priest or deacon, deposed
by his bishop, or a bishop deposed by a synod, has complained about
it to the emperor, he must bring his case before a larger synod,
submit his complaints there and submit himself to the decision of
this assembly; if, however, he does not take these legal means into
account and continues to insist on the emperor, then he no longer
deserves forgiveness, he no longer has the right to defend himself
and he can cherish no hope of being reinstated. Another threat to
Athanasius. For after his condemnation at Tyre he had sought refuge
in Constantinopel and appealed to the emperor. Afterwards a large
council had been held at Jerusalem, at which Athanasius had not been
present and at which the decision of the synod at Tyre was
implicitly ratified. And Athanasius was later restored to his seat
in Alexandria through the mediation of Emperor Constantine II. But,
thus Athanasius could defend himself with this canon, this provision
is nevertheless from a few years after the events and so I can
hardly be affected by it. Confident in the success achieved with
this canon, the Eusebians went a step further. After the editing of
the canons they asked for confirmation of the decree of deposition
against Athanasius. Socrates testifies: "The Eusebians made it
their main task to falsely accuse Athanasius, and in the first place
of the fact that he had acted contrary to the canon which they
themselves had then established, that he had in particular exercised
the episcopal office again without the judgment of a common
conference of bishops" 149). Sozomenus also says: "Many of
them expressed their discontent and vehemently accused Athanasius of
having despised the priestly law which they themselves had issued,
and of having resumed the government of the Alexandrian Church
before it had been permitted him by a synod" 150). The
Eusebians therefore wanted to give these canons retroactive effect
and thus checkmate the decision of Pope Julius and the Roman synod.
Whether the decree of deposition against Athanasius was confirmed by
this synod and, if so, whether all those assembled agreed to it, is
difficult to determine with certainty. In any case, Socrates and
Sozomenus made a mistake when they called Gregory the Cappadocian to
this synod bishop of Alexandria and thus implicitly had Athanasius
deposed by this synod; that appointment had already taken place at
an earlier synod in Antioch in the year 339 151). Even if the
orthodox bishops had confirmed a decree of deposition in 341, there
is still no reason for surprise; after all the intrigues of the
Eusebians, the chance of a clear and good insight and certainly also
of a calm and mature judgment was almost impossible. In addition,
the extreme Nicene Athanasius gave rise to suspicions of
Sabellianism, while his great friend and fellow-combatant Marcellus
of Ancyra at least came very close to Sabellianism and used
expressions that were difficult to reconcile with the doctrine of
the Son of God as a Person. In this confused state of affairs, the
orthodox bishops should not be bothered too much with a possible
ratification of a decree of deposition l52).
The
other canons of this synod do not give rise to the suspicion of
different parties and it suffices to mention here that the ninth
canon contains: "therefore it has pleased" 153), the tenth
canon: "it has pleased the holy synod" 154), the
thirteenth canon: "by this fact the holy synod declares him
condemned" 155), and the fourteenth: "it has pleased the
holy synod" 156); the sixteenth canon agrees with "complete,
a complete synod" and itself gives the explanation of this
term: "A complete synod is that at which the metropolitan is
present" (157). The seventeenth and eighteenth canons also
mention the complete synod (158).
The
main characteristic of this synod, however, is that it inaugurated a
new period in the Eusebian reaction to Nicea. At Antioch, it was no
longer personal matters that were the centre of attention; the
question of faith itself was given first place for the first time
since Nicea. Three confessions of faith were submitted at this synod
in succession. Here too, the various parties among those present
made themselves felt, but the Eusebian influence was strongly
restrained by the orthodox bishops.
The
first confession of faith was brought to our attention in a circular
letter, which opens with the words: "We are not followers of
Arius, for how could we bishops be followers of a priest? Nor did we
accept any other faith than that which was handed down from the
beginning. In fact, because we had to examine and test his [Arius’]
faith, we accepted him rather than followed him." 159) It is
clear from this introduction that the Eusebian group, which had
received Arius into communion, inspired this text and tried to
justify itself here. They apologize, as it were, for having received
Arius into communion; they do not want their name to be connected
with that of Arius on that account, and they attach importance to
declaring that their beliefs agree with the old traditional faith.
160) And to prove this last assertion they follow up with a
confession of faith. The contents of this confession are described
by Sozomenus in the following words: in this formula no mention is
made of the subsistence of the Father or of the Son, nor of the term
ópoouoioc;. The same author gives his judgment by saying that
the meaning of this confession was so ambiguous or neutral that
neither the Arians nor the followers of Nicea could bring an
accusation on the basis of the expressions used; terms that were
foreign to the language of Holy Scripture were not in it; the
expressions that both parties rejected had been passed over in
silence on purpose and those that both parties accepted had been
included 161). This confession may therefore not be called
heretical; it can be explained entirely in an orthodox sense. But
why not simply accept the formula of faith of Nicea? Because that
was impossible for the Eusebian group without condemning their own
opinions. By the given confession, however, the Eusebians hoped to
be recognized as orthodox, while, precisely because this confession
remained outside the points of contention, they believed that they
could hold on to their own views. Moreover, they cherished the hope
that a new confession would supplant the criticized Nicene with its
specific ópoooooooioc;. Thus a, literally speaking, neutral
confession of faith came into being in circumstances that were
extremely serious for the life of faith, because heretical views
were gaining more and more influence and Nicea was increasingly and
directly attacked. Nicea found itself in serious danger and here in
Antioch had the Eusebians managed to set a questionable precedent;
in the future this precedent would be followed with pleasure and
repeatedly and new formulas of faith would be issued at the expense
of orthodoxy. The tendency of the Eusebian endeavour is indicated by
Socrates in the words; "They did not change the creed in any
[open] disapproval of what had been established at Nicea, but in
reality they did so in order to undermine and modify the belief in
the oopouoioc; because by their actions they gave cause to
continually hold synods and to issue a different definition of
faith, so that in this way they gradually turned towards the Arian
view 162); Athanasius also judges that the endeavour of the
Eusebians was aimed at making heresy gain ground 163). The first
formula apparently did not satisfy the assembled. The sources say
that they regretted it and that they invented new and different
things 164). A second, extensive confession of faith was issued.
This is indeed the official formula of the synod and will for many
years be explicitly regarded as the only true confession of Antioch
in Encaeniis. This formula is rightly attributed to Lucian of
Antioch who died as a martyr in 312 165). The confession is directed
against the Sabellian views, of which Marcellus of Ancyra had been
openly accused and Athanasius had been seriously suspected by
several, including orthodox ones 166). This formula also has nothing
positively heretical. St. Hilary even does his utmost to demonstrate
its orthodoxy, notwithstanding that, -- even in his opinion, less
correct expressions could be cited and the word ópooóoioq
is missing 167). This concealment of the ópoouaioc; is indeed
the greatest error which adheres to the confession. A third formula
is explicitly directed against the Sabellians, while Marcellus of
Ancyra is also explicitly mentioned as a supporter of this heresy.
According to Athanasius, Bishop Theophronius of Tyana composed this
confession, presented it to the assembly, and all accepted the
confess ion as orthodox declared and signed 168). With this the work
of this synod was ended 169).
In
the meantime the emperor of the West, Constans, had asked his
brother Constantius for information about the attitude of the
Eastern episcopate. In order to comply with this request, probably
at the beginning of 342, four bishops, namely Narcissus of Neronias
in Cilicia, Maris of Chalcedon, Theodorus of Heraclea and Marcus of
Arethusa in Syria, went from Antioch to the court at Trier. They
brought with them a new confession of faith, which is usually called
the fourth formula of Antioch, but has nothing to do with the synod
170). This formula is also anti-Sabellian and is closer to the
confession of Nicea than the first Antiochene formula; the term
ógooóaioc; is however also missing here. This was
probably drawn up by the Eusebians, because it offers even more
opportunity than the others for subtle and abundant hair-splitting
171) and the Eusebians hoped that the West would regard this formula
as the faith of the whole East.
Due
to the presence of various influences at this synod it is
understandable that posterity had a non-uniform appreciation of it
with respect to Antioch in Encaeniis 172). The canons have acquired
a high esteem in the Church, so that they have also been preserved
in numerous manuscripts. Two of these canons, the fourth 173) and
the fifteenth, were quoted by the Fourth General Council, at
Chalcedon in 451, under the name: canons of the holy Fathers 174).
Pope John II sent these two canons in 534 to Caesarius of Arles to
make use of them in the matter with Bishop Contumeliosus 175). The
ninth canon was placed by Pope Zacharias, in a letter to Pepin the
Short and the clergy of the Frankish kingdom, among the canons of
the holy Fathers, established by the Spirit of God and confirmed by
the reverence of the whole world. 176) At a synod, held in Rome in
853, all those present, at the suggestion of Pope Leo IV, gave the
following testimony: "We could do no better than judge and
repeat what the holy Fathers at the Synod of Antioch in the third
chapter [that is, the third canon] promulgated and established
inviolably." 177) St. Hilary wrote that "the synod of
saints" composed various formulas of faith 178). Sozomenus, on
the other hand, viewed the synod from the other side. He had this
synod meet at the instigation of the Eusebians: "ostensibly as
if to consecrate the newly built church; as the outcome showed,
however, to change the decrees of Nicea." 179) And when the
unjust deposition of John Chrysostom was confirmed by appealing to
the fourth canon, St. John called this canon "not a canon of
their church, but of the Arians; for those who had assembled at
Antioch to tear down the faith of the "opoooooooioq"
issued this canon out of hatred against Athanasius" 180).
Likewise Sozomenus testifies that John Chrysostom called this a "law
of heterodoxes" and that the Arians had established this law
181). Pope Innocent I (402-417) wrote on this matter in a letter to
the clergy and people of Constantinopel that one must obey only the
canons of Nicea; canons that deviate from it and are composed by
heretics are rejected by the Catholic bishops; these canons are to
be condemned at the same time as the heretical and schismatic
doctrines, as the synod of Sardica already did 182). Most probably
the synod of Gangra, the metropolis of Paphlagonia, must be placed
around the year 340 183). From the reports of the historians
Socrates and Sozomenus and from the data in the synodal letter it
appears that this synod was directed against the leader of the
semi-Arian fraction Eustathius of Sebaste in Lesser Armenia or even
more against various unauthorized practices of Eustathius' disciples
184). The thirteen bishops at this synod 185) issued twenty canons,
which condemn the various practices and opinions of the Eustathians.
These twenty canons, which all begin with "if anyone" and
end with "let him be accursed" 186), contain nothing
special for this investigation l87). In the synodal letter, which
gives a summary of the contents of the twenty canons, the synod
already calls itself in the address the "holy synod of Gangra"
188); immediately after that "the most holy 189) and at the
end, before giving the canons themselves, twice "the holy
synod" 190). For the sake of clarity, the synod concluded its
canons with an epilogue, intended to prevent misinterpretations of
these decrees 191). However, the epilogue does not offer any details
regarding this investigation; each time it speaks of "we
without further ado: we write, we feel admiration, we accept, we
admire, we value, we do not despise, we praise, we reject, we honor,
we have lyre, we approve, we have praise, we wish 192).
The
Eusebians must have considered it presumptuous to go directly
against the General Council of Nicea and its creed. They chose a
more cautious tactic, which, they hoped, would be equally effective:
to neutralize the advocates of Nicea, first of all to foremost and
most vigorous defenders of orthodoxy, such as Athanasius of
Alexandria, Eustathius of Antioch, Marcellus of Ancyra, and Paul of
Constantinopel. In carrying out their plans, the Eusebians sought to
overthrow these persons into discredit, but not by immediately
bringing an accusation concerning their doctrine, for this would
have meant an accusation against the Nicene faith and would have
exposed too clearly the aim of the Eusebian endeavour. Immoral acts,
invalidity of the election or consecration of a bishop, political
crimes and the like were the accusations which they embraced, even
though they were aware of the total falsity or far-reaching
exaggeration of these accusations. Only Marcellus of Anya could be
accused with any justification of Sabellianism or the use of
Sabellian expressions. The Eusebian tactic was only too successful;
bowed down by the gravest suspicions, Athanasius, Eustathius, Paulus
and many others with them had to take the road to exile. It was not
until 341, when the Eusebians saw the successes already achieved
being undone by Rome and the West and the exiled Niceans having been
accepted into communion by a synodal decision, that they tried it
with the question of faith itself: a new creed had to supplant the
Nicene creed with all its hatred. However, they apparently did not
dare to make an open protest against the Nicene faith, a protest
such as the followers of Nicea directed against everything that was
not Nicene. After all, by openly opposing Nicea, they would openly
and definitively exclude themselves from the Church and they wanted
to avoid that; they wanted to be regarded as Catholics. They
understood that for that they had to submit themselves, at least in
appearance, to Nicea, since this was a General Council, a council at
which the entire Church had defined the Catholic faith. Without this
submission they would fall into the position of heretics or
excluded. Their reaction against the General Council could therefore
not be anything other than a side-line reaction.
In
sharp terms, the Catholic synod at Alexandria in 338 condemned the
actions of the Eusebians, who were led by Eusebius of Nicomedia and
Theognis of Nicea, against Athanasius. Eusebius and Theognis were
not able to depose another bishop, in this case Athanasius. After
all, they no longer possessed any power, because they themselves had
been deposed and rejected on the basis of what was determined at
Nicea at the "ecumenical synod", a council "in the
true sense of the word, elevated above synods such as those at Tyre
and Jerusalem, which are not real synods, but only conspiracies. A
real synod is a meeting of bishops who defend and make known the
truth and indeed as independent judges of themselves, independent of
all extra-ecclesiastical influences; worldly dignitaries, even the
emperor, may not take a leading position at the meetings, church
officials such as deacons must assist the bishops, with soldiers or
imperial officials. Two years later, Pope Julius outlined the
authority of the ecumenical synod. After investigation, the Bishop
of Rome admitted Athanasius, who had sought justice from him, into
communion and to all who seek justice from the Pope, justice will be
done. The Pope is not obliged to endorse without investigation the
judgment of particular synods, however great they may be. A
definitive judgment is given only by that synod at which the entire
episcopate of the Catholic Church is represented. And therefore the
Pope can rightly appeal to "the great Council of Nicea" to
justify his actions; for "not without God’s will"
this council permitted the proceedings of an earlier synod to be
examined at another 193). And a decision of Nicea is the decision of
the entire Catholic episcopate and therefore definitive, always and
everywhere binding. The Eusebians must also submit to a decision of
Nicea on pain of loss of catholicity. This is the judgment of the
Roman synod of 340, that is to say, of the Pope and of more than
fifty bishops from East and West. The Pope supplements this positive
argument with an argumentum ad hominem. The Eusebians may not
reproach the Pope and the Roman synod with making synodal decisions
powerless and worthless. For it is precisely the Eusebians who
dishonor the synod by not recognizing the judgment "of the
three hundred," "of the great Council of Nicea." If
one must recognize one synod, it is the Synod of Nicea, and whoever
despises the Synod of Nicea cannot have respect for any synod; for
Nicea is "the Catholic Council" and as such stands above
all councils that have ever been held, above Tyre and Jerusalem,
above the councils of the eleventh century against Novatian and Paul
of Samosate. Nicea is "the holy and great" synod, as the
first canon of Antioch 341 says. This last synod, that of Antioch,
is also convinced that it has drawn up its canons "under the
inspiration of the peaceful and holy Spirit", which does not
alter the fact that the drawing up of these regulations was preceded
by a "careful and repeated investigation". Synods
increasingly call themselves "the holy synod". The
orthodox synod at Alexandria in 338 does so in the address of its
synodal letter 194), Antioch in Encaeniis up to four times in its
canons 195), while in the promulgation bull it speaks of "the
holy and most peaceful synod" 196). The synod at Gangra even
calls itself once "the most holy synod" in its synodal
letter 197). It is indeed distressing that an untrue synod like
Jerusalem 335 dares to also claim the title of "holy synod"
in the address of its synodal letter and once in the corpus thereof
198). Constantine the Great does the same with regard to the synod
at Tyre, when he writes the address on the letter addressed to it;
in the letter itself, however, Constantine uses the term synod
without further ado 199); the clergy of Mareotis also write in the
address of their protest letter to the same synod "the holy
synod of blessed bishops" 200), so that one may conclude that
this designation is already understood as a stencil; however, the
same clergy does not use this title when they speak about Tyre in a
letter to the imperial officials Philagrius and Curiosus 20l).
Moreover, the terminology used in the sources remains simple. All
the various synods after Nicea are called "synods" without
further ado, while Theodoret and Philostorgius have a special
predilection for the word "ouvé&piov", which
term Socrates uses once for Constantinopel 338 202). The lyric,
which a partisan like Eusebius of Caesarea uses with regard to the
synod at Jerusalem 335, can be left out of consideration. Among the
many texts only Nicea receives the name of "ecumenical"
synod, the catholic or general 203). Nicea is also the great synod
204) or the holy and great synod 205).
For
concepts such as calling together 206), coming together 207),
holding a synod 208) and gathering 209) one finds the usual
terminology. As far as calling together is concerned, it has been
pointed out several times that this was often done by the emperor.
CHAPTER IV THE COUNCIL OF SARDICA IN 343-344
Once
again banished from the East, Athanasius stayed in Rome. There,
after three years, in April or May 342, he received a letter from
Emperor Constans, who summoned him to Milan. Some bishops, including
Pope Julius, Ossius of Cordova and Maximus of Trier 1), had asked
Constans to mediate with Constantius to have a synod held in Sardica
2), at which the points of contention concerning Athanasius were to
be definitively resolved 3). Constans received a similar request
from followers of Paul, the legal and orthodox, but also expelled
bishop of Constantinopel, as well as from followers of Athanasius;
they demanded that "an end be put to these personal matters as
well as to the questions of faith at a general synod 4). Emperor
Constans conveyed this request to his brother, and both decided to
hold a synod. "There was thus again a convocation of a general
council at Sardica, a city of Illyria, according to the decision of
the two emperors, one of whom had requested it by letter, the other,
namely that of the East, had willingly consented" 5). With this
testimony of Socrates is that of Sozomenus agrees: "It pleased
both emperors that the bishops of each of the realms would meet in
Sardis on the appointed day" 6). A General Council (Socrates)
as a council of the two parts of the realm, East and West
(Sozomenus). The synodal letter also bears witness to the fact that
the emperors convened this synod "with the assistance of God’s
grace" and that they permitted this "holy synod" to
be held 7). St. Athanasius also repeatedly testifies to this course
of events 8). The initiative for this council came from various
bishops, among whom was the Pope; the emperors called it together
with the intention that it should be a "General" Council,
a council of East and West, on which they also assigned both the
Eastern and Western bishops. When Socrates and Sozomenus place the
Council of Sardica during the consulate of Rufinus and Eusebius in
the eleventh year after the death of Constantine the Great, that is,
after 22 May 347, they are mistaken 10). The starting point falls in
the second half of the year 343 and the end point probably in the
spring of 344. The twofold purpose of this meeting is stated in the
synodal letter of the council itself as follows: "so that all
differences of opinion may disappear, all errors of faith may be
banished, and only the true cult of Christ may be maintained by all
and "especially because of what they [the Easterners]
repeatedly related about our beloved brothers and colleagues,
Athanasius, bishop of Alexan, and Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra in
Galatia".
Elsewhere
this council mentions as the three questions dealt with: the
restoration of the true faith, which had been violated by several,
the question of the deposition of several bishops, and the acts of
violence against bishops, priests and other classes of clergy 14).
From
the East and West 15) at the very favourably situated place Sardica
many bishops came together. The Eusebians feared the judgment;
however, with the support of the two imperial officials they brought
with them, Musonianus and Hesychius, they trusted, as usual, that
they would win the case 16). "But as soon as they perceived
that it was a purely ecclesiastical justice without count and
soldiers, as soon as they saw the accusers of each Church and city
and the evidence against them" they became confused 17). The
number of participants of each party is difficult to determine
precisely. The Eusebians, or more generally the Easterners, say in
their synodal letter that they came to Sardica with eighty bishops
18). But only seventy-three, or rather seventy-two, signed this
letter 19); but it is evident from the same letter that besides
these seventy-three, Maris of Chalcedon, Macedonius of Mopsueste and
Ursacius of Singidunum were also present 20). So then there would
have been seventy-six, which number is given by Socrates 21) and
Sozomenus 22). Socrates explicitly states that he is relying here on
Sabinus, bishop of Heraclea in Thrace, a semi-Arian, who probably
wrote a treatise on councils in the time of Emperor Valens, which
was later lost 23). The principal participants of the Eusebian party
were, besides the three already with named, Valens of Mursa and
Theodore of Heraclea, five of whom had belonged to the committee
sent to Mareotis by the synod of Tyre 24); furthermore the new
bishop of Antioch, Stephanus, Menophantus of Ephesus, Acacius of
Caesarea in Palestine, Marcus of Arethusa, Eudoxius of Germanicia
and Basil of Ancyra. They were joined by Dianius of Caesarea in
Cappadocia and Ischyras of Mareotis.
It
is more difficult to determine the number of orthodox or Western
bishops. According to Socrates and Sozomenus the number of
Westerners was about three hundred 25). Socrates adds that
Athanasius gives this number. Athanasius, however, says that more
than three hundred bishops "agreed" to the decisions of
Sardica 26). In the same Apologia contra Arianos Athanasius takes up
the synodal letter of Sardica and follows it with the names of two
hundred and eighty-four bishops, among whom was Pope Julius "by
means of the priests Archidamus and Philoxenus" 27); but before
giving this list of names Athanasius says: "This letter was
also sent by the synod of Sardica to those who had not been able to
come; and they also declared that they agreed with the decisions."
The names of the signatories at the synod and of the other bishops
are given below 28), and after the list Athanasius adds: "These
then are those who signed the letter of the synod; then there are
very many others, who also wrote in my favor before this synod from
Asia and Phrygia and Isauria, and their names are in their own
letters, among the three and sixty, all together three hundred and
forty-four" 29). These numbers do not therefore indicate the
number of participants at the synod; on the other hand, among these
names are not those of Euphratas of Cologne 30), Marcellus of Ancyra
and a certain Olympius 31), who were certainly present at the synod.
Elsewhere Athanasius says that from the East and West about one
hundred and seventy bishops were present 32). According to the
context, this number also includes the Eusebians 33); if, however,
they were not included and their number were counted at eighty, the
total would be two hundred and fifty, the number given by Theodoret
34).
In
any case, the number of bishops was respectable; it can be safely
estimated at a hundred and seventy or eighty, of whom eighty were
Eusebians and therefore almost a hundred orthodox. On the basis of
the various documents with signatures 35) and other historical data,
the Ballerini brothers were able to compile a list of ninety-seven
orthodox bishops who were present at the council 36). Of these, six
were from Spain, two from Gaul, four from Africa, eight from Italy,
three from Illyria, nine from Dacia, thirty-three from Macedonia
with Crete, four from Thrace, one from Asia, one from Pontus, three
from Syria, one from Egypt and twenty-one from unknown regions,
among whom there must have been several from Egypt 37). Of the West,
only Britain was not represented.
Pope
Julius had himself replaced by two priests, Archidamus and
Philoxenus and the deacon Leo 38). The synodal letter to the Pope
says: "You, therefore, most beloved brother, were indeed
physically absent, but present with the will and in the spirit of
concord and your apology for your absence was praiseworthy but also
necessary, so that the schismatic wolves could not commit theft and
plunder by cunning and ambush, or the heretical dogs inflamed with
fury would not bark senselessly or the devilish serpent would not
vomit his blasphemous poison" 39). Whether the sentence
immediately following this is genuine, one can reasonably doubt. It
follows in particular: "We consider this to be good and
entirely proper, that the priests [bishops] should report to the
Head, that is, to the Chair of the Apostle Peter, concerning every
province of the Lord." 40)
Ossius
of Cordova, who had left Gaul for Sardis at the same time as
Athanasius 41), took over the presidency and as such he proposed the
canons 42) and was the first to sign the council documents 43).
Athanasius expressly says: "the holy synod, of which the great
Ossius was president" 44), after having previously written that
"the Western [i.e. orthodox] bishops were alone with their
father Ossius 45). In a similar manner Theodoret writes: "This
Ossius was bishop of Cordova and had shone at the great synod at
Nicea and had taken the first place among those assembled at Sardis"
46). Sozomenus calls the orthodox party "the Ossians" 47)
and writes further: "Ossius and Protogenes [of Sardica], who
were then in charge of the Western assembly at Sardica" 48).
The Eusebians also regard Ossius and Protogenes of Sardica as the
leaders of the orthodox 49). In the same spirit Socrates speaks of
Protogenes and Ossius 50).
Besides
Ossius of Cordova there were also from Spain Amanus of Castulo 51),
Castus of Saragossa, Domitian of Asturia, Blorentius of Emerita and
Praetextatus of Barcelona. Gaul was represented by Verissimus of
Lyons and Maximus of Trier; Italy by Protasius of Milan, Severinus
of Ravenna, Januanus of Beneventum, Fortunatianus of Aquileia,
Lucius of Verona, Sterconius of Apulia, Ursacius of Brescia, and
Vincentius of Oapua. Among the great number of bishops from
Macedonia and Achaia were Athenodorus of Platea, Dionysius of Elis,
Hermogenes of Sicyon, and Plutarchus of Patras. Asia had sent as its
orthodox bishop Diodorus of Tenedos. The three accused Athanasius of
Alexandria, Marcellus of Ancyra, and Asclepas of Gaza in Palestine
were also present. According to Socrates, Paul of Constantinopel was
also present as an accused 52), but this is contradicted by the
synodal letter of the Eusebians: "through Asclepas they [the
orthodox] held communion with Paul and they received letters from
him and they sent them to him" 53).
Before
going to Sardica, where the orthodox were already, the Eusebians
held a meeting in the nearby city of Philippopolis; from here they
wrote to the Fathers at Sardica, that they should expel Athanasius
from the council and break communion with him, because he had been
deposed from his episcopal office. When they arrived at Sardica they
refused to set foot in the church where the meetings were to be
held, as long as Athanasius, Marcellus and Asclepas were present 54)
The Eusebians could not reinstate them in the episcopal office,
because that would mean an infringement of a ancient tradition and
this power the Church did not grant to itself and had not received
from God; faithful to the divine laws, to tradition and to the
ecclesiastical regulations they had never yet received anyone who
had once been condemned. "And therefore, we have never shaken
anything that is indissolubly established: but rather maintained
that which was determined by the Fathers 55). They then called
meetings on their own occasion and had managed to force their
adherents under threats to promise not to attend the orthodox
meeting or prevented the well-intentioned from going there. At
Sardica they stayed together in a house, the Palatium, and did not
allow anyone to isolate himself. And two of them, Macarius (also
called Arius) from Palestine and Asterius from Petra in Arabia, were
able to avoid this forced isolation to escape; they went to the
Orthodox and reported the conduct of the Eusebians 56). These two
bishops had to pay for this after the council with their exile in
Libya, where they were sent by Emperor Constantius" 57).
Indeed, the Eusebians could well have been afraid, since an
impartial investigation was being held in Sardica, independent of
imperial officials, and where there were several bishops and priests
who could testify to their misdeeds; chains and fetters were even
produced as evidence 58).
Of
course, the Eusebians themselves gave a representation of the course
of events that was more to their advantage. According to them,
Athanasius, after the death of several accusers, witnesses and
judges, would have driven the Pope, Ossius, Maximus of Trier and
other bishops to bring about the Council of Sardica. Out of respect
for tradition and the council decisions, the Eusebians had ordered
Ossius and Protogenes to remove Athanasius, Marcellus and other
condemned bishops. After that, the Eusebians would, together with
the orthodox to investigate what sentences these bishops had
undergone in the past. Apparently the Eusebians denied Sardica the
right to revise the sentence of Tyre and Antioch. But since the
orthodox persisted in their communion with these sinners, the
Eusebians burst into tears; they could have no part in the holy
mysteries with profane men, and it was impossible for them to hold
court with men who had been condemned by their predecessors. The
Eusebians had repeatedly requested not to trample on divine laws,
not to neglect ecclesiastical tradition, not to cause a new schism,
or not to despise the Eastern bishops and the most holy synods. But
these Westerners ignored all this, threatened us, and promised to
avenge Athanasius and the other criminals. As if they could have
said and done anything else, those who received all criminals and
reprobates into their communion. They carried their presumption so
far as to set themselves up as judges over the judges, and to try to
overturn the judgment of those who were already in communion with
God. While both parties were thus disputing, the five remaining
members of the committee that had once been sent to Mareotis had
proposed, so the Eusebians always did, to send some bishops from
both parties to the places where Athanasius had committed his
infamies. Should this embassy come to the conclusion that they, the
five members of the committee, had made a false statement, then they
would consent to their own condemnation; but if they had given their
report truthfully, then the orthodox delegates of this new committee
would have to be excluded from the community, as well as all the
supporters and defenders of Athanasius and Marcellus. Ossius,
Protogenes and their followers would have recoiled from this
proposal. After a long series of accusations against the Fathers,
the Eusebians wrote that the orthodox had wanted to intimidate them
with the imperial letters in order to force them to join Ossius and
Protogenes. Thereupon the Eusebians decided to return to their
homeland and, before leaving Sardica, to inform Christendom in
writing of what had happened. 59)
The
orthodox would have liked to see the Eusebians appear at their
council; they had also repeatedly invited them and warned them not
to withdraw, as this would be the principal evidence against them.
For from this one might rightly conclude that they could not prove
their accusations against Athanasius and the other bishops and that
they had therefore been false accusers; as such the council would
have to brand them in that case 60). Athanasius, Marcellus, Asclepas
and many others, on the other hand, were present and prepared to
refute every accusation and to prove the crimes of the Eusebians.
The Eusebians chose flight 61), by which they acknowledged their
shameful conduct. Ossius himself testifies to his accommodating
attitude towards the Eusebians in a letter to the Emperor
Constantius. "When the enemies of Athanasius came to the church
where I usually stayed, I myself invited them to speak, if they had
anything against him. I solemnly assured them that they might rest
easy, and promised that they could expect nothing but an impartial
tribunal in all respects. And this I did not once, but twice, adding
that if they would not do it before the whole synod, they would at
least do it before me individually. I also promised that if he were
found guilty, he would undoubtedly be expelled by us; but that if
Athanasius were found innocent and proved their fraud, and they
nevertheless rejected him, I would try to persuade him to go with me
to Spain. Athanasius also accepted these conditions without a word
of protest; but they had no hesitation in no good head in it and
refused to go into this also" 62). Athanasius also mentions
that the Eusebians preferred the shame of flight to the shame of
being openly denounced as impostors; and that if they were convicted
at Sardica the emperor would not have them expelled from their
churches 63). Before leaving the council city the Eusebians sent
Eustathius, a priest of Sardica, to the orthodox with the message
that they had received a letter from the emperor, in which his
victory over the Persians was mentioned; they were therefore obliged
to go and congratulate the emperor. Seeing through this subterfuge,
the synod immediately replied: "come here to defend yourselves
against the charges brought against you and to cleanse yourselves of
the frauds you have committed, or else; know that the synod condemns
you as guilty, the Athanasians .on the other hand will declare free
and pure from all guilt" 64). During the night the Eusebians
left.
With
this the orthodox could have considered the matter settled and
declared Athanasius and the other accused innocent without further
ado. However, in order that the Eusebians would not use their flight
as a new pretext for further intrigues, the assembled decided to
re-examine the whole affair and to examine all the documents in
order to bring the truth to light. It then turned out that
Athanasius had been falsely accused of murdering Arsenius; Macarius,
the priest of Athanasius, falsely accused of breaking a chalice. The
council received the full information from several Egyptian bishops
who were present at Sardica, as well as from the letter which eighty
Egyptian bishops had at that time sent to Pope Julius 65).
The
council then considered the accusations against Marcellus of Ancyra.
The book written by Marcellus was read. The Western bishops were not
sufficiently versed in all the subtleties which a dialectician of
Greek speech could develop. With too much indulgence they declared
that the impugned passages were written more in hypothetical form to
express a doubt than as defended propositions; they therefore judged
Marcellus' doctrine to be fundamentally orthodox. 66) A third
accused was Asclepas of Gaza in Palestine, who had been deposed by
the Eusebians at Antioch. Asclepas produced the acts of the synod at
Antioch and proved his innocence by the words of his own judges. 67)
It also appeared that the Eusebians had not only received into their
community some persons who had been condemned for their Arianism,
but had even promoted them to a higher ecclesiastical rank; certain
acts of violence by the Eusebians could be established 68). The
council judged Athanasius, Marcellus, Asclepas and their followers,
among whom in particular the Alexandrian priests Aphtonius,
Athanasius, the son of Capito, Paulus and Plution 69) innocent and
sent a letter to each diocese with the admonition to acknowledge
their innocence and to receive them as bishop. However, those who
had invaded the Churches like wolves, namely Gregory in Alexandria,
Basil in Ancyra and Quintian in Gaza, were not to be named bishops
and were not to have any communication with them. The "holy
synod declared with unanimous consent" Theodore of Heraclea in
Thrace, Narcissus of Neronias, Acacius of Caesarea in Palestine.
Stephen of Antioch, Ursacius of Singidunum, Valens of Mursa,
Menophantus of Ephesus, and George of Laodicea in Syria were
deprived of their episcopal dignity because of their Arianism and
crimes committed; they were also to be excluded from the
ecclesiastical community become 70). Athanasius also mentions that
"the great synod at Sardica" also deposed Patrophilus of
Scythopolis; in this, however, Athanasius seems to be mistaken 7l).
Theodoret also seems to be guilty of an anachronism when he relates
that Maris, Valens and Ursacius asked forgiveness from the council
after they had acknowledged their partiality in the investigation at
Mareotis 72); two of them, namely Valens and Ursacius, only took a
similar step later. The council Fathers also informed the emperors
of their decisions 73).
The
task of the council also included banishing every error concerning
the faith and restoring the true faith in all its glory. According
to Athanasius, some bishops in their rashness proposed at the
council to issue a formula of faith, as if there were something
lacking in the Symbol of Nicea; "but the holy synod at Sardica
was indignant at this and determined that nothing more should be
written about the faith and that the formula of faith composed by
the Fathers at Nicea was sufficient, since it left nothing to be
desired, but was full of piety. And the synod determined that no
other formula of faith should be issued, so that the one at Nicea
would not be considered imperfect and no pretext would be given to
those who wanted to write and define the faith all the time"
74). The council of Sardica thus clearly saw through the efforts of
the last years to undermine the Symbol of Nicea by means of new
formulas of faith. The Fathers at Sardica considered Nicea
inviolable and perfect.
Nevertheless,
soon after the council a confession of faith was in circulation
which was wrongly attributed to Sardica. Athanasius and the bishops
gathered around him declared this formula to be spurious and false
in Alexandria in 362 75). Eusebius of Vercelli, who was also present
at this council in Alexandria, signed the acts in Latin and in his
signature also condemned the pseudo-Sardica formula; only the Nicene
was to be considered the true confession and it was not necessary to
add anything to it. The text of this signature has been preserved by
Athanasius 76).
At
the end of the synodal letter of Sardica to the entire Church,
Theodoret gives a copy of this confession of faith 77). This
confession of faith is probably intended as an explanation of the
Nicene symbolum; it therefore has an orthodox meaning and contains,
besides the positive part, a refutation of the Arian conception of
the Father and the Son. In the Historia Tripartita one finds a Latin
translation by Epiphanius Scholasticus 78). Sozomenus mentions this
formula as an "enlargement of that of Nicea," but with the
same meaning and not differing word for word. He then relates how
Ossius and Protogenes testify in a letter to Pope Julius that they
had ratified this formula; for fear that some would detract from the
Nicene decrees, they had composed this somewhat more detailed
confession in order to prevent the Arians from abusing the brevity
of the Nicene formula 79). This report of Sozomenus has been
confirmed by a discovery by Scipio Maffei in the eighteenth century.
In the library of his birthplace Verona he found an old Latin
translation of almost all the acts of Sardica. The brothers
Ballerini and also Mansi published these documents and among them
one indeed finds a short letter from Ossius and Protogenes to Pope
Julius, which agrees with the table of contents given by Sozomenus.
Ossius and Protogenes sent the confession of faith to the Pope "so
that no criticism would be made of their conduct" 80). The
council of Chalcedon in 451 probably had this formula of faith in
mind in its allocation to Emperor Marcian 81). The Latin translation
of the text has been preserved in the Verona manuscript 82); in
general, however, the Greek text in Theodoret at the end of the
synodal letter is better 83).
The
apparently contradictory data of Athanasius and of the letter of
Ossius and Protogenes to Pope Julius can be reconciled with the
Ballerini thus: the confession proposed by Ossius and Protogenes did
not receive the official approval of the council; nevertheless, the
confession and the letter about it to Pope Tulius were later
included in the collection of acts of this synod; soon both
documents were wrongly regarded as official synodal documents; the
Council of Chalcedon must also have made this mistake. Is it not
surprising then that Athanasius speaks of the rashness of some
bishops? The wise, high-minded and generally respected Ossius and
his co-president Protogenes can hardly have been considered rash by
Athanasius. Perhaps there were some bishops who more or less rashly
insisted on the promulgation of a formula of faith and this trend
was the reason for Ossius and Protogenes to make an attempt in that
direction. In that case the qualification of rashness does not apply
to Ossius and Protogenes and on the contrary one sees an example of
their policy and tact not to suppress this trend without further ado
on the one hand and not to urge their proposed formula as chairmen
against the majority on the other hand; their tact knew how to guide
the trends into the right channel and thus to settle the issue
without discord. According to the introduction to the Easter letters
of St. Athanasius, the Council of Sardica also dealt with the Easter
question, which had not yet been completely resolved by the Council
of Nicea. For a period of fifty years, the same day for celebrating
Easter was established at Sardica for the Roman and Alexandrian
Churches 84); only a modus vivendi, therefore, not a solution on
principle. In his Eastern Letter of the year 346, St. Athanasius,
with reference to this council, establishes the Easter festival for
the Egyptian Church not on the 27th Phamenoth, but 8 days later on
the 4th Pharmuthi 85). After the threefold task had been fulfilled
by the synod, the Fathers were still occupied with church discipline
and issued a series of canons. Of these canons, there is a double,
official version, a Latin one for the West and a Greek one for the
East. In the history of the Church, this is the first fact of an
official bilingual document. From this date on, the division between
East and West took place more and more, also in the area of
language.
By
the bilingualism of Sardica the distance between East and West was
not only officially announced or established, but even more so, as
it were, sanctioned. It was clear that from now on one had to take
into account a dual Christianity, of which the two parts had
different interests, different concerns and also different languages
86). A symbolization of the distance between the two parts of the
Church can be seen in the fact that the Orthodox met in the church
at Sardica, while the Eusebians held their meetings in the Palatium
and later left Sardica for Philippopolis; in the sources both
parties are indicated respectively as Westerners and Easterners,
although there were several Eastern bishops among the Orthodox.
Socrates already describes the situation very aptly in the following
words: "The West was now torn away from the East and there was
a dividing line [öpoc;] between their mutual intercourse,
namely the mountain [opoe;] Tisoukis 87), which lies between Illyria
and Thrace; in the immediate vicinity of this mountain there was a
common mutual intercourse, although there was a difference of faith;
between the more extensive areas, however, there was no mutual
intercourse 88). Such a confused state of affairs then prevailed in
the Churches" 89).
The
Greek text of the canons has been handed down by John of
Constantinopel (fifth century) and by various manuscripts, the
original Latin text in the three most famous Western canon
collections, the Prisca, that of Dionysius Exiguus and that of
Isidore of Seville 90). The following words introduce the canons:
"The Holy Synod of Sardica, assembled from the various
eparchies, has established the following" 91). Ossius of
Cordova first makes a proposal and asks whether it pleases everyone,
to which he replies "all the bishops" answer: "it
pleases all" 92). This first canon is apparently directed
against the Eusebians, to whom Pope Julius had already reproached
that their bishops changed diocese so often out of desire for rich
bishoprics; this practice had already been forbidden by the
fifteenth canon of Nicea. The second canon, also directed against
the Eusebians, is, like the first, a proposal by Ossius and
formulated in the same way. The same applies to the third, fourth
and fifth canons, which together form a unity and establish the
principle of the appeal to Rome 93): the fourth canon, however, is a
supplementary proposal by Bishop Gaudentius of Naissus in Dacia to
the proposal of Ossius in the third canon. From the sixth to the
thirteenth 94) each canon also contains a proposal by Ossius, which
is approved by all. According to the Greek version, Ossius expresses
his concern in the fourteenth canon about a priest or a deacon who
would be the subject of a rather impetuous bishop and would be
excluded from the community by him; all the Fathers of Sardica
together then indicate how such a case should be solved. According
to the Latin version, where it is the seventeenth canon, Ossius
himself indicates the line of conduct to be followed. In deviation
from the still existing Greek text, in the Latin version a proposal
by Bishop Januarius of Beneventum in Campania follows as the
eighteenth canon; all accept this proposal 95). In the fifteenth
canon (Greek) one sees the same as in canons 6-13. The sixteenth
canon offers a case brought up by Aëtius of Thessalonica in
connection with the eleventh canon, for which special case Ossius
then gives the application of the eleventh canon in the name of all.
In the seventeenth canon Ossius takes over a proposal from Olympius
of Aenus in Thrace and this is also accepted by all. In the Latin
version, where this is the twenty-first and last canon, the
signatures follow. The eighteenth and nineteenth canons contain a
proposal from Bishop Gaudentius, which is taken over and more
sharply defined by Ossius and accepted by all; since they relate
exclusively to the Church of Thessalonica, it is not surprising that
these canons are absent from the Latin version. Again, the twentieth
and twenty-first canons 96) form a unity, in which also a proposal
from Gaudentius is approved by all. In the Latin version, a decree
from Ossius now follows as the twelfth canon; the absence of this in
the Greek text is explained by the fact that this proposal does not
have the express approval of the synod and especially because this
canon is of course of a very temporary nature, because here the
procedure is prescribed for making the decisions of Sardica known;
after publication the regulation automatically lapses. This council
left behind several synodal letters. The most important is that to
the bishops of the entire Church 97). Since Athanasius preserved
this letter in Greek and Hilarius includes a Latin text in his
collection of documents from Sardica, the conclusion seems justified
that Sardica itself, as well as its canons, also made a double
redaction of this general synodal letter; the number of Western
bishops present in Sardica was approximately equal to the number of
Eastern bishops. The address reads in Greek redaction: "The
holy synod, by the grace of God assembled in Sardica, to the bishops
and the Catholic Church everywhere in the world, beloved brethren,
salvation in the Lord" 98). A second synodal letter is
addressed to the Church that had suffered most from the Eusebian
intrigues, the Church of Alexandria; the address of which is in the
same terms as that of the previous letter 99). The bishops of Egypt
and Libya received a similar letter); the Christians of Mareotis
also honored the Fathers with a letter). At the request of the other
bishops, who had been recognized as innocent by this council, the
Fathers also sent letters to their Churches with the order to
restore the previously expelled bishops to their dignity 102). Pope
Julius was also allowed to receive a letter, of which only a Latin
text exists; perhaps it was written by the council only in Latin
103). An official address is missing in the extant text. In all
these official documents the course of the council is outlined and
the decisions are communicated; in the letter to the Pope special
attention is requested for the heretics Ursacius and Valens, who
belong to the West. The Pope is requested to accept the judgment
pronounced by the council with regard to these two "young men".
Ursacius and Valens do not hesitate to spread their heresy in Italy;
Valens himself had left his episcopal see to seize that of Aquileia,
on which occasion riots had taken place; Bishop Viator, who had been
unable to flee, had been so trampled underfoot that he died three
days later. Finally, the Fathers addressed the Pope in writing to
inform the bishops of Sicily, Sardinia, and Italy of everything. In
this letter the Pope was addressed as "beatissime pater"
and "eximia gravitas tua." According to this
correspondence, the council also sent a petition to Emperor
Constantius; in it the Fathers implored him to put an end to the
intrigues and acts of violence of certain bishops and to forbid
civil magistrates to interfere in ecclesiastical affairs.
Athanasius
personally sent a letter to the priests and deacons of Mareotis,
which after a preambulum contains an almost complete copy of the
synodal letter to the Church of Alexandria and finally signed by
Athanasius as well as by a large number of bishops present in
Sardica 105); Athanasius also wrote a letter to the priests and
deacons of the Church of Alexandrië l06).
Pope
Julius' joy over the results of Sardica was great. The Pope
expressed this in a letter to the Church of Alexandria, which
Athanasius included in his collection of documents 107). In this
letter the Alexandrian Church is congratulated on the recovery of
Athanasius, on its steadfastness in the faith, on the fact that
Athanasius, despite his long absence, has not forgotten his
episcopal church. After a eulogy of Athanasius 108), the Pope says
that Athanasius is now returning more gloriously than he left. They
must therefore receive their bishop with joy as a true Athanasius
(immortal) 109); in the spirit of it the Pope sees all the
demonstration of joy in honour of Athanasius’ return. The joy
also falls largely on the Pope, since he has come to know such an
illustrious man. This letter is concluded with a prayer. Emperor
Constantius had also already shown his good disposition towards
Athanasius, but not before he had received a more or less
threatening letter from his brother, Emperor Constans, with whom
Athanasius and Paul of Constantinopel had sought refuge l10). In a
threefold letter to Athanasius the emperor invited the bishop to
come to an audience with him; to his brother, the emperor Constans,
he had already sent a letter requesting Athanasius to grant him
leave to return to Alexandria. 111) From Sardica a circular letter
had also been sent by the Eusebians to all the bishops and other
ecclesiastical ministers and faithful of the whole Church, but was
addressed in particular to Gregory of Alexandria, the schismatic
bishop Donatus of Carthage, Maximus of Salonae, the present Spalato
on the Adriatic, and to some other bishops. This letter was handed
down in Latin translation by Hilarius ll2). The address reads as
follows: "To Bishop Gregory of Alexandria, to the Bishop of
Nicomedia, the Bishop of Carthage, the Bishop of Campania, the
Bishop of Neapolis in Campania, to the clergy of Rimini, to the
Bishop of Campania, the Bishop of Salonae in Dalmatia, Amphion,
Donatus, Desiderius, Fortunatus, Euthicius, Maximus, Sinferons, and
to all our fellow bishops throughout the world, to the priests and
deacons, and to all who are in the holy catholic Church here in the
world, the bishops who assembled in the city of Sardica to hold a
council from the different provinces of the East, namely, from the
province of Thebais, and the province of Palestine, Arabia,
Phoenicia, Syria, Mesopotamia, Cilicia, [Galatia], Isauria,
Cappadocia, Galatia, Pontus, Bithynia, Pamphylia, Paphlagonia,
Caria, Phrygia, Pisidia and the islands of the Cyclades, of Lydia,
Asia, Europe, the Hellespont, Thrace, Emimontus, eternal salvation
in the Lord." 113) The Eusebians begin with the following
words: "We continually ask in our prayer, dearly beloved
brethren, first of all that the holy catholic Church of the Lord,
free from all discord and schism, may everywhere preserve the unity
of spirit and the bond of charity in the orthodox faith. It is also
fitting that all who call upon the Lord, and especially we, the
bishops, who are at the head of the holy Churches, preserve, embrace
and maintain an undefiled life. Secondly, we pray that the
ecclesiastical ordinance and the sacred tradition of the Fathers and
their decrees may remain in force and unshaken for ever, and that
new sects or pernicious traditions, especially in the appointment or
deposition of bishops, may never trouble us, but on the contrary the
evangelical and sacred precepts and what was prescribed by the holy
and most blessed Apostles and by our forefathers and has been
observed and is observed by ourselves to this day, may remain in
force 114). Then they discuss the question of Marcellus of Ancyra,
"that accursed heretical plague", condemned at the Council
of Constantinopel in 336, but received into communion with Sardica,
even by Protogenes of Sardica, who had signed the decree of
condemnation of Constantinopel. The Pope is also accused of having
received Marcellus and acquitted him of heresy. The Eusebians forbid
anyone to have intercourse with him or his followers 115). Then
follows a long series of accusations against Athanasius 116), after
which Paul of Constantinopel, Marcellus of Ancyra, Asclepas of Gaza,
Lucius of Adrianople and again Athanasius are accused of the worst
crimes, as well as of intrigues with the Western bishops, so that
they even "planned to introduce a new law by having the Eastern
bishops judged by the Western bishops" 117). Next the Eusebians
give their partial and dishonest representation of the proceedings
at Sardica 118). With the fine words: "A great multitude of all
sorts of evildoers and rabble, coming from Constantinopel and
Alexandria, gathered at Sardica," a defamation of the Fathers
of Sardica is introduced. 119) After the Eusebians have declared
that they must therefore withdraw from Sardica and that the schism
is entirely due to the Western bishops, they forbid communication
with Ossius, Protogenes, Athanasius, Marcellus, Asclepas, Paulus,
and also Pope Julius; After this they even venture to urge to
preserve unity and peace in the Church and to elect only holy
bishops, that is, men pure in faith and with a holy life 120). After
having again accused the Western bishops and appealed to the
inviolability of synodal decisions, they announce that the entire
council has condemned, according to ancient law, Pope Julius,
Ossius, Protogenes, Gaudentius (of Nice) and Maximus of Trier,
because of their communion with Athanasius, Marcellus, Paul of
Constantinopel and their followers; in what that communion consists
is further elaborated for each separately 121). The letter ends with
a confession of faith, which is equal to the fourth formula of
Antioch, except for a small addition; this confession is followed by
some anathematisms 122). A long series of signatures, in all
seventy-three, concludes this document 123). The Eusebians also
addressed this letter especially to Donatus of Carthage, probably in
order to win over the Donatists, as they had previously won over the
Meletian party in Egypt. From various reports in St. Augustine it
appears that the Eusebians succeeded in their intention to pass off
their illegal meeting in the Church of Carthage as the true Council
of Sardica, so that Augustine, unaware of the true facts, could
write to the Donatists that the Council of Sardica was a council of
Arians 124).
A
survey of the terminology shows that Theodoret, in the few words
which he himself devotes to this council, gives it no higher title
than "synod". The same is the case with Sozomenus. When
Socrates speaks about the convocation, he says twice that it
concerns "ecumenical synod", otherwise it is at most
"synod". In addition to the many texts in which Athanasius
Sardica simply calls "synod", there are two texts in him
in which mention is made of the "great synod at Sardica 125)
and thirteen texts in which the expression the "holy"
synod occurs 126), of which once in direct connection with Nicea,
which is there locally called "the synod at Nicea" 127).
In the address of its synodal letters and in its promulgation bull
of the canons, one sees the council itself repeatedly calling itself
"the Holy Synod, "by the grace of God" gathered at
Sardica; also in the letters themselves the council always speaks of
"the holy" synod, or "the synod of all the holy
bishops" 128), or "the holy and great synod" 129).
The council explicitly says in its synodal letter to the entire
Church that it "unanimously" deposed the intruder Gregory
as bishop of Alexandria 130); thus Athanasius writes that "the
entire holy synod" deposed the various bishops 131); in the
same spirit Pope Julius writes that Athanasius has been declared
innocent by the judgment of the entire synod 132). No mention is
ever made of differing opinions among the Fathers, except with
regard to whether or not to issue a formula of faith, and this
question too has apparently been resolved to everyone’s
satisfaction.
Here
too one naturally finds the usual terminology of calling together
l33), coming together l34), holding a synod l35), gathering l36) and
determining, establishing, defining l37). In the canons one finds
the terms beplezier l38), be of opinion l39), determine l40), befit
141). The verbs occur in the first person plural l42) or in the
second person plural l43). The Fathers are addressed in the canons
as; "if it pleases you, beloved brothers" l44), "Your
sagacity must judge" 145), "Let your holiness establish"
146); in the twentieth canon it reads very solemnly: "That
which is wholesome and fitting and in accordance with the honor of
us priests, and according to the pleasure of God and man, will
preserve the firm force; to this proposal all respond; "this
opinion suits and pleases us" 147). The tenth canon points out
that all scrupulousness and care must be used 148) and all respond
that the decision is definitive and valid for all time 149). The
bishops declare in the eleventh canon that they take this decision
because it is already very appropriate 150) In the fifteenth canon
the bishops respond that this too is definite 151). They were
therefore convinced of the definitive force of their decisions. The
indissolubility is also the view which the Eusebians tried to gain
acceptance with regard to the decisions taken at their various
synods against Athanasius and other accused; for by appealing to
this they denied Sardica the right to judge these persons again.
When one has to determine the value of this council, one will
immediately feel compelled to say that the Council of Sardica has
all the airs of a General Council. The decision to hold a general
synod was made by various bishops in the East and West, among whom
the Pope each. The emperors of both empires convened the council
with the intention that it would be a synod of the East and West of
the entire Church. And bishops from all directions came to Sardica
even if one only takes into account the orthodox group one still
sees the various parts of the Church represented with the exception
of Britain 152). Papal participation in the deliberations was
guaranteed by the presence of two priests and one deacon, a larger
number of presence then at the Council of Nicea. The issues that
Sardica had to resolve were fully worthy of a General Council; after
all, it was not just about personal issues, but about "the
restoration of the true faith" itself, a new attempt at unity
and peace in Church and State, which had been hoped for in vain as a
result of Nicea. Moreover, as at Nicea, the Easter question was on
the agenda. Church discipline also had full interest, as is evident
from the series of canons. The required papal ratification was also
present, since the decisions were taken unanimously and thus also
the papal representatives approved those decisions; their names
therefore appear on the signature lists 153). However, nothing is
known about papal ratification, consisting of a special act by Pope
Julius after the end of the council, with respect to Sardica, just
as little as with Nicea. From the letter which the council sent to
Pope Julius, it appears that the Fathers did not consider such a
ratification necessary; it was not their intention by means of this
letter to request the Pope to ratify the decisions taken, but to
officially inform the Pope of these decisions, which were valid and
legally valid in themselves, and at the same time to request him to
inform the neighbouring Churches with which persons they were to
maintain communion according to the synodal decision and with which
persons they were not 154). That the Pope was in complete agreement
with Sardica may be concluded indirectly from the letter of Julius
to the Church of Alexandria, in which he expresses his joy at the
rehabilitation of Athanasius. The council also sent a circular to
all the Churches to make the decisions known, and according to the
testimonies of Athanasius, subscriptions flowed in from all sides;
one gets the impression that the outcome of Sardica was a relief to
all orthodox believers in the entire Church; they had all desired
such a solution. The emperors were also informed by letter; the
Western emperor Constans immediately expressed his joy; the more
Eusebian-minded Eastern emperor Constantius, also under pressure
from his imperial brother, felt compelled to accept the decision of
Sardica concerning Athanasius. All the usual requisites for a
General Council are apparently present in Sardica. That the Fathers
of Sardica themselves were convinced to put together a more than
ordinary council, more than just a council of the Western Church, is
already evident from the address of their letter to the Alexandrian
Church: "The holy synod by the grace of God gathered together
in Sardinia, from Rome, Spain, Gaul, Italy, Campania, Calabria,
Apulia, Africa, Sardinia, Pannonia, Moesia, Dacia, Noricum, Siscia,
Dardania, the other Dacia, Macedonia, Thessaly, Aachâia,
Epirus, Thrace and Rhodope, Palestine, Arabia, Crete and Egypt, to
the priests and deacons and to the whole holy Church of God in
Alexandria, to the beloved brethren salvation in the Lord"
155).
Many
people’s attention has naturally been drawn to the question of
whether this council belongs to the ecumenical one, especially since
this council in its third, fourth and fifth canons establishes a
right of appeal to Rome and thus deals with and contains papal
jurisdiction and the views on it in the fourth century 156).
Since
this council is indicated in the sources as a General Council by
design, it is significant that no source calls it an "ecumenical"
council; it may be called a "great" council, a "holy"
one, or both together, every reporter and even the council itself
are careful not to speak of "ecumenical". Sulpicius
Severus relates that the emperor "convenes bishops from all
over the world at Sardica" 157). And Socrates reports that the
followers of Paul of Constantinopel and Athanasius wanted to see an
end to the question by a "general synod" and that
therefore a "general" synod is called 158). But in both
cases apparently nothing more is said than that the design was that
of a "general". Emperor Justinian mentions in his
Confessio rectae fidei that various doctrines were proclaimed which
were contrary to the symbolum of Nicea; these persons were
condemned, either during their life or after their death, by Pope
Damasus and by "the synod of Sardica". This is how it is
in the Greek text according to the edition of Migne. In the council
edition of Hardouin, however, it says "the ecumenical synod of
Sardica", which can also be read in the Latin translation, both
by Migne and Hardouin, where the words occur: "ab universali
Sardicensi synodo". Perhaps all this came about under the
influence of the environment, because in this writing there is talk
several times of General Councils and especially because just before
that the Council of Nicea is mentioned and immediately afterwards
that of Chalcedon, both of which, however, in the Greek and Latin
text, both in Migne and Hardouin, are simply called "the holy
synod" 159). It is certainly not the intention of Emperor
Justinian to regard Sardica as a General Council and to put it on
the same level as Nicea, Constantinopel 381, Ephesus and Chalcedon,
because elsewhere in this same writing he mentions these four
councils in succession, apparently in order to enumerate the
"general" ones that had taken place up to that time and
were regarded as such 160), which is further confirmed by two other
passages from two other writings of Justinian on the same subject
161). Moreover, if there are no other testimonies from which it
would appear that Sardica was regarded as general, then an emperor
is not the competent person to decide on the generality.
The
defenders of the generality of Sardica have also appealed to the
second canon of the Trullan synod in 680-681, in which the Fathers
ratified the canons of Sardica. It is true that the ratification of
the Sardicean canons comes immediately after that of the canons of
Constantinopel 381, of Ephesus and of Chalcedon, but in the same
canon are also ratified those of Nicea, Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Gangra,
Antioch in Syria, Laodicea in Phrygia; after that of Sardica follows
the ratification of the canons of Carthage, Constantinopel, of
Bishop Dionysius, Bishop Peter and a whole series of bishops 162).
This Trullan canon cannot therefore be cited as a witness for the
view of the generality of Sardica; then Ancyra, Neocaesarea and all
the other synods mentioned would also have been conceived as
general, which no one will accept or assert; moreover, the canons of
individual bishops then a very strange phenomenon in the series.
People
have also appealed to a statement by Pope Nicholas I (858-867). He
writes to Photius: "That you now say that you have or accept
neither the council of Sardica nor the decretals of the holy Popes,
we find it difficult to believe: especially since the council of
Sardica, which was held in your territories, is also accepted by the
entire Church; how could it then happen that the holy Church of
Constantinopel would have rejected this council and would not have
adhered to it properly?" 163) In this letter the Pope contests
the view of Photius, who, by appealing to examples such as St.
Ambrose, Nectarius and Tarasius, wanted to prove that he had rightly
become a bishop from a layman. This is not in accordance with the
law, but on the contrary contrary to ecclesiastical and papal
regulations, according to the Pope. Also in conflict with the
ordinances of Sardica. You say that the Constantinopolitan Church
does not know or accept them. How is that possible? The entire
Church knows the legal validity of the provisions of Sardica and
therefore accepts them as decisions with legal force. The Pope
therefore appeals to nothing more or less than the general
recognition of the legal validity of the canons or decisions of
Sardica. But it does not follow from this that the Pope or his
contemporaries accepted this council as "general". Also
the councils such as Ancyra, Neocaesarea and so many others were and
are generally accepted, in other words generally recognized as real
councils with legally valid decisions, while there is no mention at
all of the concept of "general" councils. At the time of
St. Augustine, one certainly did not think of a recognition of
ecumenicity. For then Augustine could not have been so ignorant of
the true character of Sardica and could not simply have called this
council a "synod of Arians".
Nowhere
is there an ecclesiastical testimony to be found in favor of
ecumenicity; on the contrary, when a list is given of general
councils, Sardica is always missing. Despite its airs of generality,
this council was never accepted by the Church as ecumenical 164). At
first glance this may seem surprising, but on closer inspection it
is understandable. The council was intended as a meeting of the
joint episcopate from East and West, of followers of Nicea, of
moderates and of opponents of the Nicene ópooóaioc; in
order to bring both parts of the Church together again and to
restore unity between all. The various parties therefore received a
summons and arrived in Sardica; but immediately, from the very
beginning, a large group, almost half the total number, separated
under the leadership of Eusebius. In very general terms one may say
that in Sardica from the very beginning the East, that is to say
those who had at least a shudder for the ópooóoioc;
and to whom persons like Athanasius and Marcellus were suspect,
stood opposed to the West or those who had a predilection for the
ópoouoioq and were convinced of the orthodoxy and innocence
of Athanasius and Marcellus. As a result, Sardica was no longer a
general council, but immediately a Western council, despite the fact
that several Eastern bishops also fall under the title of
"Westerners". According to the view of that time and in
accordance with the actual situation, one had to consider the
council of Sardica not as a general council, but only as a Western
one, in which the only tendency was indeed the specifically Western
tendency. From the beginning, Sardica also meant a failure, because
due to the separation of one group, the goal: to restore unity
between both areas, was and remained unattainable. No wonder,
therefore, that contemporaries never saw an ecumenical synod in
Sardica and that the very first sources already speak of the council
of the Westerners and the separate meetings of the Easterners.
Already at that time, that is, in the first half of the 4th century,
people were convinced that the characteristics of a General Council
included: the representation of the entire Church, of East and West,
and that without this representation no council could be called
"general". According to the testimony of Athanasius 165),
the Council of Sardica was convinced that the creed of Nicea was
sufficient and even perfect and therefore left nothing to be
desired. New formulas of faith were therefore unnecessary and
harmful to the perfect creed of Nicea.
CONCLUSION
At
the end of this study it is possible and desirable to offer a
summary of the separate conclusions, which are written down on the
basis of the historical data at the end of each chapter. In
connection with the Introduction to this work, some dogmatic
reflections are added to the historical conclusions.
Before
the year 400 there was no council that was so much in the center of
attention among proponents and opponents as the Council of the three
hundred and eighteen Fathers, assembled in Nicea in 325. The
dogmatic controversies in the 4th century concentrated almost
exclusively on the Nicene Council with its confession of faith.
Initially, the heretical direction of the Eusebians did not dare to
open an action against the Nicene confession. Their first effort was
aimed at rendering the great proponents and defenders of Nicea
harmless by discrediting them; the Eusebians deliberately refrained
from accusations of a dogmatic nature. The year 341 brought a change
in the tactics of the Eusebians. From this time onwards the question
of faith itself came more to the fore. New creeds with all sorts of
nuances followed each other in quick succession; it was intended
that by their introduction they would deprive the Nicene Creed with
the hated ópooóoioc; of its prestige; the Nicene Creed
had to fade into the background or better yet disappear. This
reaction against the Nicene Creed also meant a sideways reaction,
however, because an open and direct rejection of the Nicene Creed
would immediately have branded the Eusebians as heretics and would
have excluded them from the Church by the fact itself. Their
tactics, however, even though they were sideways, were fully
understood by the followers of Nicea and therefore fiercely opposed.
During the 4th century, one sees everything that was orthodox
rallying in explicit terms to Nicea, everything that was against the
ópoouoioc; making attempts in all sorts of ways to undermine
Nicea. Nicea was considered the most exalted council, standing on
the highest step of the hierarchical gradation, as the council that
put all others in the shade, as the council "in the true sense
of the word".
The
reason for this special esteem is already expressed in the term that
was used for this council: Nicea and Nicea alone is an aóvo&oq
oiKoupeviKr], a catholic or general synod, a world synod. Nicea is
the only council that receives the full meaning of this terminology
in the 4th century. Repeatedly between 325 and 400 the desire for a
world synod arose, several serious attempts to bring about a world
synod were made, the plans were carried out several times, but each
time they failed and only Nicea was considered ecumenical. Even the
Council of Sardica in 343-344, which apparently possessed all the
requirements of a General Council, did not receive the term
"ecumenical", nor did Rimini-Seleucia in 359. In order to
qualify for the title of General Council, another requirement was
that the council indeed be a world synod. The Council Fathers really
had to represent the whole Church, East and West and all parts of
the Church. But even the Christians of the fourth century did not
make the impossible demand that numerically all the bishops of the
whole Church were present; nor did they rack their brains with the
question of how large the number had to be exactly or in percentage
terms in order to be able to consider a council as general; it was
sufficient if the composition of the bishops present was of such a
nature that one could say: the assembled bishops represent the whole
Church teaching authority, because they represent the whole Church
and all parts of the Church. Because Nicea fulfilled these
requirements, it was eligible for the dignity of General Council and
received the name of world synod. The absence of this requirement at
the Council of Arles in 314, in which the East had no part, is the
reason why this council was not considered general, however
important it was. The Council of Sardica 343-344 was divided from
the beginning into two large parties, of which one party, the
Eusebians, separated itself and met separately; as a result, this
council was actually no more than a Western council and the goal:
restoration of unity, became unattainable from the start.
Constantinopel 381 was a purely Eastern council and was intended and
convened as such. Because the Eastern episcopate actually kept
aloof, the Roman council of 382 was an explicitly Western council.
And although the number of Westerners at the Council of Nicea,
certainly in proportion to the number of Easterners, was very small,
the Westerners present were the representatives of the entire
Western Church and of all parts of the Western Church: North Africa,
Calabria, Northern Italy, Rome, Gaul and Spain, as well as the more
Eastern parts of the Western Church such as Moesia and Dacia.
Despite their small number, the Western bishops evidently had a
strong influence, given the insertion of the term ópoouaioc;
in the symbolum and the content of various canons; they therefore
really gave evidence of their presence. Only from Britain no
representative is known; this province was moreover often absent
from the great councils of the fourth century, as example also on
that of Sardica; the absence of one province, which moreover lay
more on the periphery of the inhabited world and did not yet possess
such great influence, was apparently no obstacle to the view that
the entire Church teaching authority was represented at the Council
of Nicea.
The
character of universality through representation of the entire
Catholic episcopate seemed, in our opinion rightly, to be considered
saved, when the entire East and the entire West each met separately
and after determining the position each sent an embassy, which
both embassies, having come together in one place, had to act as the
spokesmen of both episcopates in order to come to a definitive
agreement after joint consultation. An intention, however, which
failed for various reasons at Rimini-Seleucia.
There
must be a sufficient or legitimate reason for holding a synod.
Already from ancient times the seriousness and importance of the
issues made bishops meet to consult together. A judgment of several
bishops, after all, will be more mature and correct and therefore
carry more weight. The more far-reaching the questions were, the
more desirable it was to hold a more influential or larger synod.
And the further, geographically speaking, an issue extended, the
larger area naturally the synod had to cover, as far as the
assembled bishops were concerned. In 381 and 382, did
one not hear Ambrose and the Eastern episcopate assert that
exclusively Western affairs should be resolved by a Western council
and exclusively Eastern affairs by an Eastern council? The question,
however, which was on the programme for the Council of Nicea,
certainly justified a world meeting. The heresy of Arius was
dangerous and naturally vital enough to stir up the entire Church,
as the facts have shown. Moreover, it undermined the very
foundations of the Christian faith. True faith and peace and order
in Church and State were at stake. At the same time, this meeting of
bishops could serve as the glorious manifestation of the unity of
the Holy Church, which, despite the persecutions, had formed itself
into a world institution and now, since the reign of Constantine the
Great, promised to enter into a flourishing future. The Fathers of
the fourth century continually emphasized the unanimity with which
decisions were made. However, unanimity should not be taken in an
absolute sense. For example, two Egyptian bishops continued to
refuse to sign the formula of Nicea; after the other Fathers had
signed the formula, they excluded both Egyptians from the
ecclesiastical community. From the fact that Pope Liberius wrote to
the Easterners after the Roman synod of the year 353 that there was
no reason to depart from Athanasius, since the majority of the
bishops present at the council had declared Athanasius innocent, we
may perhaps conclude that according to the view of the 4th century
the majority was sufficient to make a legally valid decision. The
4th century did not consider it necessary that unanimity was present
from the very beginning. At the Council of Nicea, agreement on the
Easter question was only reached after exchange of ideas and even
opposition, and the formulation of the creed was also preceded by
lengthy deliberations, much conflict and careful investigation.
However,
if the final agreement is to have any value, it is necessary that it
be reached freely and without coercion. This is also one of the
reasons why Rimini-Seleucia 359 was never considered ecumenical; the
final signatures were involuntary and forced, so that they did not
reflect the inner view of the signatories. The agreement must
therefore be the reflection of the inner mood, of the inner
conception, as can be read from the synodal letter of the Roman
synod of 368 to the Eastern bishops and to those of Illyria. The
inner conception of the Fathers of Rimini-Seleucia was to be found
in their initial refusal to sign; when they had finally freed
themselves from pressure and coercion, they, one after the other,
revoked their signature.
As
for the question of the Pope's cooperation, this cannot be
determined in a single word. In fact, the Pope's cooperation at the
Council of Nicea consisted in his presence through two
representatives, in the participation in the deliberations by these
representatives, and in the ratification of the creed and the canons
by their signature. In reality, therefore, the bishops present
formed the entire ecclesiastical teaching authority, because Rome
also participated with the other parts of the Church. By this
presence of the papal legates the influence on and participation in
the deliberations of the Roman Church was guaranteed, just as by the
signing of the creed and canons the ratification of the Roman Church
was confirmed.
Whether
the 4th century considered this cooperation, and in particular this
ratification, as requirements, is not so clear. From the history of
facts one can establish with certainty that the 4th century did not
consider papal ratification by a separate act after the end of the
council to be necessary in order to accept the legal validity of the
decisions and to consider the council as general. If one then
examines the many texts in which the Fathers and ecclesiastical
writers speak about Nicea, it is immediately noticeable that no
attention is paid to papal cooperation, nor to papal ratification,
which is included in the votum of the papal legates and in their
signing of the acts; even St. Athanasius, the ardent defender of
Nicea, who possessed an almost fully developed theory about the
General Council, did not mention this cooperation in his numerous
writings. However, it is not justified to conclude from this that
this cooperation was not required according to the then prevailing
view. There are also too many testimonies from this century, from
which a recognition of the Primacy of Rome is evidentl), for such a
conclusion to remain unpunished. Only a positive statement by one or
other or by more Fathers about the non-necessity of this cooperation
would legitimize the conclusion. Such a statement is not now
available.
Moreover,
the evidence to the contrary, especially for the necessity of papal
cooperation or, more correctly, ratification, is not entirely
lacking in the fourth century. The lack of papal approval was the
first complaint that the Roman synod of 368 clearly brought forward
against Rimini in its synodal letters; no one should be misled by
the large number of bishops assembled in Rimini, because the Pope
had not given his approval, according to the synodal letter to the
Illyrians. In other words: all the bishops in the world without the
Pope are not able to form a General Council and cannot make
generally binding and always valid decisions. The Roman synod in 368
was therefore apparently of the opinion that papal approval or
ratification was necessary. If one projects this opinion a decade
ago and applies it to the synod of Milan 355, to which all the
bishops of the world were invited, in which many Western and also
some Eastern bishops participated as well as a papal embassy, one
can put forward as another reason why this synod was never
recognized as general, the fact that both papal embassies refused to
sign and Pope Liberius even openly disapproved of the synod in the
same year. On this basis one might conclude that the 4th century
considered the necessity of papal cooperation, in particular papal
ratification, as a requirement.
From
the otherwise general silence, however, one can, we think, conclude
that the 4th century was not deeply imbued with the necessity of
such cooperation or at least gave its first and even exclusive
attention to the representation by the entire Church. The specific
term, introduced by the 4th century, for a Council like Nicea,
namely the ouvoboc; oiKoupEViKg, therefore has a pronounced
geographical character. Certainly, in the 4th century the Primacy of
the Bishop of Rome was recognized. This did not, however, prevent
the views on the Primacy and the practical implementation of those
views from undergoing a whole development in the course of the
centuries before they could catch, which is present today. Consider,
for example, the view concerning the infallibility of the Pope. Not
all rights and duties, not all consequences, which flow from the
Primacy, could have been clearly and distinctly in the minds of the
Fathers of the fourth century, if they were in their minds at all
and did not previously remain in the subconscious. Thus, it seems to
us, the question of the extent to which papal cooperation in a
General Council was necessary, did not yet belong to the questions
which the Fathers of the fourth century explicitly posed to
themselves. And to that extent the doctrine concerning the General
Council still had to undergo a development, just as the doctrine
concerning the Primacy, taken in general, would still show a history
of development. Precisely because the doctrine concerning papal
cooperation in a General Council is a part of the doctrine
concerning the Primacy, taken in general, the development of the one
will keep pace with the development of the other and they will be
able to influence each other mutually. To establish this development
in its components, through the centuries, is of course beyond the
scope of this work and will be the task of various historians.
In
any case, it is clear from this that one must be extremely careful
about simply projecting modern dogmatic views back into the ancient
past, in this case to want to see the modern views on the Pope's
cooperation with the General Council come true in the 4th century.
And one will certainly be embarking on dangerous paths, historically
considered, if one wants to see the views that are currently valid
regarding that papal cooperation, which are the fruit of a
development that has lasted for centuries, explicitly present in the
Fathers, that is to say the theologians, of Antiquity. That the 4th
century was not yet fully aware of all the rights that flowed from
the Primacy, and that those rights were more implicitly than
explicitly included in the general idea of Primacy,
which was and was explicitly present, is clearly illustrated by the
questions of the convocation and the chairmanship. The convocation,
including that of the General Council, was done by the emperor and
by him alone, who regarded this as a matter which rightfully
belonged to him as basileus and on which he could decide
independently, without the cooperation, approval or order of a
second, namely the Bishop of Rome, being required. The
contemporaries, including the Council Fathers and the Popes, also
granted the emperor the right to convene councils, in particular a
General Council. It was also the emperor who dissolved the council
and allowed the Fathers to return home. The Fathers of Rimini had
waited in vain for this imperial permission for a long time, and
this was also one of the means by which Emperor Constantius achieved
his goal: the signing.
The
right to convene a General Council, however, is a right that
naturally belongs only to the Pope as Head of the Church and that
may be considered an inalienable right. Seen in this light, it is
strange that in the fourth century the right of convocation was
simply attributed to the emperor. Here a difficulty presents itself
that cannot be solved by simply distinguishing between the right and
whether or not it was used. For the case of the fourth century is
not only such that the Pope did not use this right of convocation
and left the convocation to the emperor, but it goes even further:
the emperor was attributed the right of convocation and no thought
or talk was given about the exclusive right of the Pope. In order to
explain this fact, we think that an appeal can and must be made here
too to the development in knowledge about the Primacy and the rights
resulting from it2). It is also not surprising that in the fourth
century no thought or talk was given about the Pope's right of
convocation. In practice, only the empress was able to bring about a
General Council, as far as the material side of it was concerned.
The emperor came to the rescue, called the bishops together and made
it possible for them to travel there and back and to stay there. The
emperor could do it, the emperor did it. In such circumstances the
opinion could easily take hold: the convocation is something that
the emperor must do, the convocation must come from the emperor, for
the convocation we must go to the emperor. If the Fathers of the
fourth century thought that the basileus had the right to convene,
this, we think, means no more than that they thought that the
convocation had to be done by the emperor. The question of law in
the strict sense as well as the question whether the Pope as Head of
the Church does not have the exclusive right to convene, are
questions that were not yet asked at that time and did not yet occur
to the Fathers of the fourth century. An answer to these questions
should not really be sought in the fourth century. If the
convocation was not done by the Pope, the presidency at the council
was not in the hands of the Pope or the papal legates; in this
century the Roman legates did not yet go to the councils to preside
there. Here, therefore, an analogous picture presents itself as with
the convocation. The question was not yet raised as to who in the
strict sense of the word had the right to the presidency, and the
Pope or the papal legates did not yet lay claim to the leadership;
the leadership was simply left to the person who, because of his
personal qualities or because of external circumstances, was the
most suitable person for it.
That
the Fathers precisely the representation of the entire Church and
paid little, or better still, no attention to the papal cooperation
in the Council, can be explained, apart from by appealing to the
development of knowledge concerning the Primacy, also by the course
of action which the heretics followed and against which the Fathers
had to act. In order to undermine Nicea, the heretics convened one
synod after another and in various ways they ensured that several of
these synods were impressive in number. In contrast to this, the
Fathers showed that these countersynods could not at all outweigh
the Council of Nicea, since Nicea was a council at which the entire
Church was represented, while the countersynods of the heretics,
despite their outward impressiveness, were only particular synods.
The whole is always more than a part or a few parts. The position
which was taken by the heretics and against which the Fathers had to
fight is also in another way a ground for explaining the fact that
the Fathers paid no attention to the papal cooperation at the
Council of Nicea. One of the principal arguments, after all, which
the heretics tirelessly brought forward against the ópooucnoc;
was the remark that this term did not appear in Holy Scripture. The
heretics therefore referred the fight to the terrain of tradition.
And against this the Fathers saw themselves obliged always to bring
forward as an important argument in favor of the ópoouoioc;
that this term was in agreement with the tradition which went back
through the Fathers and the Apostles to Christ Himself and could be
found in the prophetic, evangelical and apostolic books or in Holy
Scripture. Therefore the fides Nicaena was identical with the fides
catholica or ecclesiastica and this confession found the approval of
the entire Church. This entire assent was then for the Fathers a new
proof of the truth or infallibility of the Nicene faith. Thus in
their argument tradition and especially Holy Scripture came first.
The Nicene Creed or, more generally speaking, the dogmatic
determinations of a General Council possessed, according to the
Fathers of the fourth century, perpetual or infallible force. In
their opposition to the heretical currents the Fathers came rather
to exaggerate than to diminish the authority of the Nicene formula,
since they repeatedly argued that this confession was not only
sufficient, but also perfect and conclusive, so that besides the
heresy of Arius, which it was about in the year 325, it also refuted
all heresies. As to the cause of the authority: mention is made of
the assistance of the Holy Ghost, for example by the Fathers of
Rimini in their synodal letter to the emperor, sent before their
apostasy; or the presence of Christ Himself at the Council is the
guarantee of infallibility, as St. Ambrose teaches. Therefore, the
opinion of the entire Catholic episcopate, assembled at the Council,
is the opinion of God. In the first half of the 5th century, the
historian Socrates will already say explicitly that the authority is
not dependent on the greater or lesser learning of the Fathers. This
view of the assistance of the Holy Spirit did not, however, exclude
that one was convinced of the necessity of a careful and repeated
investigation, of diligence and effort, in short of man's
cooperation. Finally, if one has to answer the question whether the
Pope was considered the subject of infallibility in the fourth
century or the General Council itself, then the answer must be that
the General Council itself was considered as such. The dogmatic
decisions taken by the bishops assembled from the entire Church had,
from the moment they were established at the council, a generally
and always binding force. That the General Council itself was,
according to the view of the fourth century, the subject of
infallibility is evident from the fact that the approval or
ratification of the Pope by a separate act after the end of the
council was not considered necessary. The decisions had their
definitive force through the fact itself that the council had
established them with general consent. Also from the synodal letter
of Sardica to Pope Julius it appears that the Fathers did not
consider it necessary to ratify the Pope by means of a separate act;
by this letter they simply officially informed the Pope of their
decisions, which were valid and legally valid in themselves.
Secondly, it also applies here that in the 4th century people did
not yet explicitly ask themselves whether the Pope possessed the
gift of infallibility; and certainly not whether the General Council
or actually the Pope and with and through him the Council possessed
that gift. People were explicitly of the opinion that the subject of
infallibility was in the Church: the General Council as such. The
reflections on the relationship and the interaction between the Pope
and the General Council are of a later date. If one wants to
summarize everything in one formula, then one can say: for the
Fathers of the 4th century, the Council of Nicea was a meeting of
bishops, who, summoned for a good, legitimate reason, represented
the entire Church or the entire Church teaching authority and who,
after deliberation, unanimously and in full freedom, reached their
decisions and above all drew up their infallible confession of
faith, through the assistance of the Holy Spirit or that of Christ.
The doctrine contained in this confession was not the own invention
of the Nicene Fathers, but a summary of that which was contained in
the written source of Revelation, the Holy Scripture, and in the
oral tradition, which was ultimately the doctrine of Christ Himself.
The Nicene faith was therefore identical with the fides catholica,
the faith that had the general assent of the Church.
Content
A
Preface ix-x Bibliography xi-xviii A. Abbreviations, XI. B.
Principal Sources, XI-XV. C. Principal Literature, XV-XVIII.
Introduction, Problem and Objective xix-xxvii
Introduction,
XIX. Definition by J. Forget of the concept of ecumenical council,
XIX. Difficulties, inspired by this definition, concerning the
cooperation of the Pope, XIX-XX. View of the Anglican H. Scott,
XX-XXI. The representation of the whole Church and a difficulty in
this regard, XXI. Matters, which belong to the interest of the whole
of Christendom and a difficulty in this regard, XXI. The fullness of
power and the General Council, XXI. Definition by H. Dieckmann, S.J.
and some questions arising from it, especially concerning the
convocation, the presidency and the ratification, XXI-XXIV. On the
relation between the concepts of infallibility and universality of a
General Council, XXIV-XXV. On the method used by Dieckmann and its
consequences, XXV-XXVI. Purpose of this study: a purely historical
investigation of the facts and the views in the 4th century, which
can shed light on the questions concerning the concept of
"Ecumenical Council", XXVI-XXVII.
Chapter I. Synods before the year 325,
Terminology and Nature 1-25
Reason
for investigation into terminology and nature, 1. Sobriety in
terminology, 1. In Eusebius of Caesarea and Polycrates of Ephesus
with regard to the synods on the Easter Controversy in the 11th
century, 1-2. In Cyprian on the Synods of Carthage in the IIIth
Century, 2-3. In the Synodal Acts of Carthage 256, 3-4. Cyprian and
Dionysius of Alexandria on the Councils of Baptism of Heresies, 4-5.
In post-Nicene writers, 5-7. Synod at Antioch in 268, 7-8. Council
of Elvira around 300, 8. Synods in the early 4th century, 8. Council
at Arles in 314: participants, 8-10. Not ecumenical, 10-14. Canons
of Ancyra (314) and the curiosity of the seventeenth canon, 14-16.
Synod at Neo-Caesarea, 16. Synod at Alexandria circa 323, 16-18.
Various synods, 18-19. Terminology, 19. Reasons for these meetings,
19-23. Agreement, 23. Authority of the particular synods, 23-25.
Chapter II. The First General Council at Nicaea
in 325 26-52
Initiators,
26-29. Convocation by the emperor, 29-32. Number of participants,
32-33. Where from, 33-34. Nature and disposition of the
participants, 35. Representation of the Pope, 35-36. The first
meeting, 36-37. Presidency, 37-39. The Arian question, the
ónoooioc;, 39-41. The Nicene Creed and its signature, 41-42.
Condemnation, 42. The question of the Meletian schism in Egypt,
42-43. The question of the date of Easter, 43. The twenty canons and
their terminology, 43-44. The collections of canons and their
terminology, 44-45. Closing ceremonies of the Council, 45-46. The
synodal letter and its terminology, 46. Were there any official
Acts? 46. Emperor Constantine in his letters on the
Council, 46-48. Summary, 48-50. Papal ratification, 50-51. Imperial
ratification, 52.
Chapter III. The Eusebian reaction against
Nicaea.
53-86
Introduction, 53. Eusebius of Nicomedia, Maris of Chalcedon and
Theognis of Nicaea against Nicaea; Athanasius bishop of Alexandria,
53. Eusebius’ influence at the imperial court, 54. Eusebius
against Eustathius of Antioch, 54-55. Eusebius against Athanasius,
55. Synod of Tyre in 335: participants, charges against Athanasius,
Eusebian committee to Mareotis, protest of Egyptians, deposition of
Athanasius, 55-60. Synod of Jerusalem in 335: eulogy of Eusebius of
Caesarea, true nature of this synod, admission of the Arians, 60-63.
Events at Constantinople, banishment of Athanasius, 63-64. Synod at
Constantinople in 336: deposition and banishment of Marcellus of
Ancyra, 64. Athanasius returns to Alexandria, 64-65. New intrigues
against Athanasius, 65. Catholic synod at Alexandria in 338, synodal
letter, 65-68. Appearance of Pope Julius I, 68. Eusebian synod at
Antioch in 339 elevates Gregory of Cappadocia to the Alexandrian
see, 68-69. The Eusebians refuse to appear in Rome, 69-70. Synod at
Rome at the end of 340: Athanasius and Marcellus acquitted, 70-71.
Letter of Pope Julius to the Eusebians, 71-74. Importance of this
letter for the Council of Nicaea, 74. Synod of Antioch in Encaeniis
in 341: participants, 74-75. Its canons, 76-78. Its first confession
of faith, 79-80. Its second and proper confession of faith, 80. The
third confession of faith, 80-81. A fourth confession of faith, 81.
Appreciation of posterity, 81-82. Synod at Gangra, 82-83. Summary,
83-85. Terminology, 85-86.
Chapter IV. The Council of Sardica in 343-344
87-115
Initiators
of a General Council, convocation by the emperors, 87-88. Beginning
and end point of the council, 88. Purpose of the council, 88-89.
Participants from East and West, 89. Number of Eusebians and
Orthodox, 89-91. The ecclesiastical provinces present, 91.
Presidency, 92. Principal persons, 92-93. Conduct of the Eusebians,
93-94. Eusebian representation of the course of events, 94-95.
Conduct of the Orthodox towards the Eusebians, 95-96. Acquittal of
Athanasius, 96. Acquittal of Marcellus of Ancyra, 97. Acquittal of
Asclepas of Gaza, 97. Synodal letter, 97-98. Question of faith and
confession of faith, 98-100. Easter question, 100. Canons in Greek
and Latin version, 100-103. Various synodal letters, 103-104.
Letters of Athanasius, 105. Joy of Pope Julius, 105. Attitude of the
emperors Constans and Constantius, 105. Circular letter of the
Eusebians, 105-108. Survey of the terminology, 108-110. Value of
this council: question whether it was an ecumenical synod, 110-115.
Position of Sardica towards the Nicene Creed, 115.
Chapter V. —The period of the creeds
116-133
Introduction,
116. The pocKpocmxoc; of the synod at Antioch in 344, 116-117.
Eusebian embassy at the council of Milan in 345, 117. Return of
Athanasius to Alexandria, 117. Council at Milan in 347, 118. The
question of Photinus of Sirmium, the Eusebian synod at Sirmium at
the end of 347, 118-119. The first formula of Sirmium, issued by the
synod of 351-352, 119. The increasing strength of the Eusebians,
120. The synod at Rome in 353, under Pope Liberius, 120. The Council
of Arles, end of 353-beginning of 354: the orthodox sign the
condemnation of Athanasius, 120-121. The reaction of Pope Liberius,
121-122. The Council of Milan in 355: the orthodox again sign the
condemnation of Athanasius, 122-123. Some steadfast ones, 123-124.
The Eusebians encounter opposition in Gaul; exile of Hilary and
Bishop Rhodanius of Toulouse, 124. Persecution in Egypt, terror in
Rome, banishment of Pope Liberius and of Ossius of Cordova, 124-125.
Schisms within the heresy, 125-126. The second formula of Sirmium,
issued by the synod of 357, 126-127. Signature by Ossius of Cordova,
127. Enthusiastic reception of the formula at Antioch, 127-128.
Opposition in the West, 128. Attitude of the East towards this
formula, synod at Ancyra in Galatia in 358 and its formula, 128-129.
Commentary of Basil and George on the synodal letter of Ancyra,
129-130. Constantius joins the Homoiousians, 130. The synod at
Sirmium in 358 issues the third Sirmian formula, which is signed by
Pope Liberius, 130-131. Liberius returns to Rome, 131. Summary and
terminology, 131-133.
Chapter VI. The failed attempts at unification
of Rimini-Seleucia 359 134-158
Plan
of a General Council by Basil of Ancyra, 134-135. A separate council
for the East and for the West through the efforts of the Anhomeans,
135. The Anhomeans and the fourth formula of Sirmium or the dated
Credo, 135-137. The procedure of the synods, 137. The council at
Rimini: those present, 137-438. Steadfast attitude of the Orthodox
towards the fourth formula and the heretics, 138-139. Orthodox
delegation to the emperor, 139-140. Delegation of the heretics to
the emperor, 140. Action of the emperor, 140. Defection of the
Orthodox legation at Nike by signing the formula of Nike, 140-141.
Defection of the Orthodox at Rimini, 141-142. A small group of
faithful bishops finally surrenders; deception of Valens, 142-143.
The council at Seleucia; attendees, 143-145. First session: question
of faith, 145-146. Second session: question of faith, 146-147. Third
session: question of faith, 147-148. Fourth session: question of
faith, 148-149. Fifth session: questions of personality,
condemnation of Acacias, 149-150. Delegation to the emperor, 150.
Theological dispute at Constantinople, 150-152. Various embassies
assembled at Constantinople, signing of the formula, 152-153.
Summary: on the nature of generality, 153-154. Testimonies in favor
of Nicea, 154-156. The argument from tradition, 156. TerMinology,
156-157. Necessity of unanimity, 157-158.
Chapter VII. Weakening of Arianism and rise of
Pneumatomachism 159-181
Acacia
synod at Constantinople in 360: question of faith, questions of
persons, 159-160. Action against the homoiousians and the orthodox,
161. Judgment of Gregory of Nazianzus and of Basil the Great on the
synods of Seleucia and Constantinople, 161-162. Orthodox synod at
Paris in 360, 162- 163. Synod at Antioch in 361, at which Meletius
is elected bishop of Antioch, 163. Orthodox synod at Alexandria in
362, 163-165. The synodal letter or Tomus ad Antiochenos, 165-166.
Schism of the Luciferians, 166. Pneumatomachism, 166-167. Synodal
letter of the orthodox synod at Alexandria in 363, 167-168. Synod at
Antioch in 363 and its synodal letter, 168-169. The homoiousians,
169. In the West the orthodox emperor Valentinian I, in Ostend the
Arian emperor Valens, 169. Macedonian synod at Lampsacus in 364,
169. Synod at Nicomedia in 366, 169-170. The Macedonians call for
help from the West: embassy to Pope Liberius, 170-171. Letter of
Pope Liberius on behalf of the Western Church to the Eastern Church,
171. Synod in Sicily, 171. The embassy presents the Western letters
at a council of the Macedonians at Tyana in 367, 171-172. Macedonian
synod at Antioch in Caria, 172. Pope Damasus, 172. Synod at Rome on
1 October 368: the synodal letter Confidimus, 172-173. De
explanatione fidei, 173-174. Synod at Rome in 375: the fragmentum Ea
gratia, 174. Synod at Sirmium in 375 and the fragments Non nobis and
Illud sane, 174-175. Synod at Iconium around the year 376, 175-176.
Synod at Rome in 378, 176. Macedonian Synod at Antioch in Caria in
378, 176. Meletius resumes contact with the West at the Synod at
Antioch in 379, 176. Reply Quod vestra caritas by Pope Damasus,
176-177. Summary, 177-179. Importance of the number of participants
in a council and of their consent, 179. Terminology, 180-181.
Unanimity, 181.
Chapter VIII. The doctrine on the General
Council in the 4th century 182-217
Introduction,
182. St. Athanasius: terminology, 182-183. Athanasius’ theory
on the Ecumenical Council: quotation from his Epistola ad Afros
episcopos, 183-184. Various conditions laid down by Athanasius: good
reason, 185. Representation of the whole Church, 185. Mutual
agreement, which must be free and without compulsion, 185. Doctrine
not one's own invention, 185. Agreement with the doctrine of the
Fathers, of the Apostles, of Christ Himself, 185-187. Agreement with
the doctrine of Holy Scripture, 187. Doctrine must be the fides
ecclesiastica or the doctrine of the catholica ecclesia, 187. Nicea
is sufficient, 187-188. Athanasius' conduct not in conflict with
this view, 188. Nicene doctrine is sufficient, not open to
discussion or further investigation; Nicea is exalted above all
synods, 188-189. Nicea possesses infallible authority, 189.
Therefore possesses the consent of the whole world, 190. Terminology
of Eusebius of Caesarea and Emperor Constantine on Nicea, 190-193.
Eusebius' theory on the General Council, 193-194. Emperor
Constantine on the authority of Nicea, 194. The ecumenicity of
Nicaea, 194-195. The general consent and a careful investigation,
195. Nicene doctrine is tradition-doctrine, in particular the
doctrine of Holy Scripture, and therefore represents the faith of
the Church or the Catholic faith; a healthy development is possible
and present, 195-199. The Nicene Creed is sufficient and adequate,
199-201. The Nicene Creed is infallible, 201-203. Nicaea is exalted
above all synods, 204. The cause of infallibility is the assistance
of the Holy Spirit or divine influence, 204-205. Very expressive
expressions about Nicaea in the Fathers, 205-206. The Nicene faith
has been agreed upon by the whole world, 206-207. Three hundred and
eighteen as the number of the participants in Nicaea and the
symbolism of this number: in Hilary, 207. In Pope Liberius, 207-208.
In Athanasius, 208. In Gregory of Nazianzus, 208. In St. Ambrose,
who brings the symbolism to full development and therein clearly
teaches the infallibility of the Nicene Creed, 208-211. The
Alexandrian Church and Nicaea, 211. Cappadocia and Nicaea, 211-212.
The Antiochenes and Syrians about Nicaea, 212. Gaul and Nicaea, 213.
Spain and Nicaea, 213. The Illyrians and Nicaea, 213-214. West
Africa and Nicaea, 214. Sardinia and Nicaea, 214-215. Upper Italy
and Nicaea, 215. The Church of Rome and Nicaea, 215-216. Summary, in
which the cooperation of the Pope is discussed, 216-217.
Chapter IX. The Council of Constantinople in
381. 218-241
Introduction,
218. Convocation of the council by Emperor Theodosius, 218-219.
Participants: the West or the Pope was not present, 219-220.
Orthodox and Macedonian participants, 220-221. The three presidents,
221. The part of Emperor Theodosius, 221-222. Attitude of the
Macedonians, 222. Election of Gregory of Nazianzus as bishop for the
see of Constantinople, 222-223. Death of Meletius of Antioch, 223.
Election of Flavian as Bishop of Antioch, 223. Departure of Gregory
of Nazianzus, 223-224. Election of Nectarius as Bishop of
Constantinople; he also succeeds Gregory as president, 224-227. On
the Tomos of Constantinople, 227. The Creed, 227-229. The four
canons of Constantinople: the first canon, 229-230. The second
canon, 230-231. The third canon, 231-232. The fourth canon, 232. End
of the council; the Theodosian law of July 30, 232-233. Synodal
letter to Emperor Theodosius, 233. On the meaning of the imperial
ratification, 233-234. On the fact that only a letter was written to
the emperor, 234-235. The imperial approval, 235. On the so-called
approval of the West and of Pope Damasus, 235-236. Terminology,
236-238. Unanimity, 238-239. Valid, legally binding decisions, 239.
Summary, 239-240. How this council can be called a General Council,
although it was not an Ecumenical Council in itself, 240-241. Nicaea
325 and Constantinople 381. 241.
Chapter X. The Council of Constantinople 381 and
its immediate environment 242-279
Introduction,
242. Pope Damasus' position towards the schemer Maximus Cynicus, and
towards Constantinople 381, 242-243. Maximus' actions, 243. Council
of Aquileia in 381: various data, 243-244. Participants and
chairman, 244-245. The official session of 3 September, at which the
condemned division took place between Palladius of Ratlaria and
Secundianus of Singidunum, 245-247. The first synodal letter, 247.
The second synodal letter, 247. The third synodal letter, 247-248.
The fourth synodal letter, which treats of Eastern questions,
248-249. Correspondence between Ambrose and Emperor Theodosius on
Eastern affairs: nature of the Ambrose letters, 249-250. Letter from
the emperor, 250. Letter Fidei of Ambrose, 250-251. Letter Sanctus
of Ambrose, 251-253. Some remarks on these letters, 253-254. The
Dissertations Maximini contra Ambrosium: contents, 254-256. What
this writing reveals about the relationship between Pope Damasus and
the Council of Aquileia, 256-258. The humiliating judgment of
Palladius on Pope Damasus, 258. Palladius on the General Council,
258-259. Conclusion of the Dissertatio, 259. The Council of
Constantinople 382: Gregory of Nazianzus's negative attitude, 259.
The synodal letter to the bishops assembled in Rome, 260-264. Two
canons of this council, 264-265. The Council of Rome 382 and its
ecumenicity, 265-267. A religious conversation in Constantinople in
383, 267-269. This history of the synods gives no proof of an
official approval by the Pope or by the West of the council of
Constantinople in 381, 269-270. Nor do the works and correspondence
of Pope Damasus, 270-271. Nor do the writings of the Fathers who
took part in the synods of Aquileia or Rome, such as the writings of
Ambrose, 271-272. Of Philastrius of Brescia, 272. Of Epiphanius of
Salamis, Paulinus of Antioch and Jerome, 272-273. The opinion of the
Fathers of Constantinople 381 themselves about their council:
Gregory of Nazianzus, 273-275. Nectarius of Constantinople, Timothy
of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem and Gelasius of Caesarea, 275-276.
Gregory of Nyssa, 276-277. Peter of Sebaste and Amphilochius of
Iconium, 277-278. Diodorus of Tarsus and Eunomius of Cyzicus, 278.
Conclusion: the Council of Constantinople 381 had little importance
at the end of the fourth century, both in the East and in the West,
278-279.
Conclusion 280-288 Introduction, 280. Nicaea in
the fourth century the center
of
attention among orthodox and heretics, 280. Nicaea the most sublime
council, 280. The reason for this was the fact that Nicaea was a
world synod, 280-281. For a General Council the representation of
the entire Church's teaching authority is required, 281. How this
requirement was fulfilled at Nicaea, 281-282. A special procedure
which can preserve the character of universality, 282. On the
legitimate reasons for holding councils in general and a General
Council in particular, 282. Unanimity must not be understood in an
absolute sense, 282-283. Nor does it have to be present from the
first moment, 283. Must be free and without compulsion, 283. On the
cooperation of the Pope: in the first place, in particular on
ratification, in which reference is made to the development in views
concerning Primacy, 283-285. On the convocation, 285-286. On the
Presidency, 286. The scant attention paid in the fourth century to
papal cooperation can also be explained by the conduct of the
heretics, 286-287. According to the Fathers of the fourth century,
the dogmatic decisions of a General Council possess infallible
force, 287. The cause of this infallible authority is the assistance
of the Holy Spirit or of Christ, 287-288. The subject of
infallibility is the General Council as such according to the fourth
century, 288. Short summary formula, 288.
Appendix
I. The convocation of the General Councils in Antiquity 289-291
Appendix
II. The number three hundred and eighteen. 292-295
Appendix
III. On the Creed of Constantinople 296-298
Appendix
IV. List of synods from the fourth century 299-302
Index
303-316
Contents
317-323
To
this is added a map of the situation of the Church in the fourth
century: Western half-Eastern half.
Epitome De Caesaribus
In
these days, the Caesars Constantius, the father of Constantine, and
Armentarius were proclaimed Augusti, with Severus in Italy and, in
Oriens, Maximinus, the son of Galerius' sister, created Caesars; and
at the same time Constantine was made a Caesar.
2.
Maxentius was made imperator in a villa six miles outside the city,
on the road to Lavicanum, next Licinius became an Augustus, and, in
the same fashion, Alexander at Carthagina; and likewise Valens was
created imperator. Their demise was as follows:
3.
Severus Caesar was killed by Herculius Maximian in Rome at Tres
Tabernae and his ashes were interred in the sepulchre of Gallienus,
which is nine miles from the city on the Appian Way.
4.
Galerius Maximianus, when his genitals were consumed, died.
5.
Maximian Herculius, besieged by Constantine at Massilia, then
captured, was executed in a fashion most base, with his neck snapped
by a noose.
6.
Alexander was slaughtered by Constantine's army.
7.
Maxentius, while engaged against Constantine, hastening to enter
from the side a bridge of boats constructed a little above the
Milvian Bridge, was plunged into the depth when his horse slipped;
his body, swallowed up by the weight of his armor, was barely
recovered.
8.
Maximinus died a simple death at Tarsus.
9.
Valens was punished with death by Licinius.
10.
As for characters, moreover, they were of this sort: Aurelius
Maximian, with the cognomen Herculius, was fierce by nature, burning
with lust, stolid in his counsels, of rustic and Pannonian stock.
For even now, not far from Sirmium, there is a spot prominent
because of a palace constructed there, where his parents once worked
wage-earning jobs.
11.
He died at the age of sixty, imperator for twenty years.
12.
From Eutropia, a Syrian woman, he sired Maxentius and Fausta, the
wife of Constantine, to whose father Constantius had given his
stepdaughter, Theodora.
13.
But Maxentius, they say, was substituted by the womanly wile of one
laboring to control a husband's affection by means of an auspice of
a most felicitous fecundity which commenced with a boy.
14.
Maxentius was dear to no one at all, not even to his father or
father-in-law, Galerius.
15.
Galerius, moreover, although possessed of an uncultivated and rustic
justice, was praiseworthy enough, physically attractive, a skilled
and fortunate warrior, sprung from country parents, a keeper of
cattle, whence for him the cognomen Armentarius ["Herdsman"].
16.
He was born and also buried in Dacia Ripensis, a place which he had
called Romulianum from the name of his mother, Romula.
17.
He insolently dared to affirm that, in the fashion of Olympias, the
mother of Alexander the Great, his mother had conceived him after
she had been embraced by a serpent.
18.
Galerius Maximinus, scion of Armentarius' sister, called by the name
Daca, to be sure, before imperium, was a Caesar for four years, then
an Augustus in Oriens for three -- in birth, indeed, and in station
a shepherd, yet a supporter of every very learned man and of
literature, quiet by nature, too fond of wine.
19.
Drunk with which, with his mind corrupted, he used to command
certain harsh measures; but when he repented what had been done, in
a continent and sober time, what he had enjoined, he ordered
deferred.
20.
Alexander was a Phrygian in origin, inferior in the face of hardship
through the fault of old age. [166]
With
all these men out of the way, the rights of imperium fell to
Constantine and Licinius.
2.
Constantine, son of imperator Constantius and Helena, ruled thirty
years. While a young man being held as a hostage by Galerius in the
city of Rome on the pretence of his religion, he took flight and,
for the purpose of frustrating his pursuers, wherever his journey
had brought him, he destroyed the public transports, and reached his
father in Britain; and by chance, in those very days in the same
place, ultimate destiny was pressing on his parent, Constantius.
3.
With him dead, as all who were present -- but especially Crocus,
King of the Alamanni, who had accompanied Constantius for the sake
of support -- were urging him on, he took imperium.
4.
To Licinius, who was summoned to Mediolanum, he wed his own sister
Constantia; and his own son, Crispus by name, born by Minervina, a
concubine, and likewise Constantinus, born in those same days at the
city Arlate, and Licinianus, son of Licinius, about twenty months
old, he made Caesars.
5.
But, indeed, as imperia preserve concord with difficulty, a rift
arose between Licinius and Constantine; and first, near Cibalae,
beside a lake named Hiulca, when Constantine burst into Licinus'
camps by night, Licinius sought escape and, by a swift flight,
reached Byzantium.
6.
There Martinianus, Master of Offices, he made a Caesar.
7.
Then Constantine, stronger in battle in Bithynia, pledged through
the wife to confer regal garb upon Licinius, his safety having been
guaranteed. Then, after he had been sent to Thessalonica, a little
later he ordered him and Martinianus slaughtered.
8.
Licinius died after about fourteen years of dominatio, and near the
sixtieth year of his life: through a love of avarice he was the
worst of all men and not a stranger to sexual debauchery, harsh
indeed, immoderately impatient, hostile toward literature, which, as
a result of his boundless ignorance, he used to call a poison and a
public pestilence, especially forensic endeavor.
9.
Obviously he was sufficiently salutary to farmers and country folk,
because he had sprung from and had been raised from that group, and
a most strict guardian of the military according to the institutes
of our forefathers.
10.
He was a vehement suppressor of all eunuchs and courtiers, calling
them worms and vermin of the palace.
11.
But Constantine, when mastery of the entire Roman empire had been
obtained through the wondrous good fortune of his wars, with his
wife, Fausta, inciting him, so men think, ordered his son Crispus
put to death.
12.
Then, when his mother, Helena, as a result of excessive grief for
her grandson, chastised him, he killed his own wife, Fausta, who was
thrown into hot baths.
13.
He was, to be sure, too desirous of praise, as is able to be
ascertained. On account of the legends inscribed on many structures,
he was accustomed to call Trajan "Wall Plant". He built a
bridge over the Danube.
14.
The royal garb he adorned with gems, and his head, at all times,
with a diadem. Nevertheless, he was most agreeable in many matters:
by means of laws most severe he checked malicious prosecutions; he
nurtured the fine arts, especially studies of literature; he himself
read, wrote, reflected, and listened to legations and the complaints
of the provinces.
15.
And when, with his children and his brother's son, Delmatius,
confirmed as Caesars, he had lived sixty-three years, half of which
thus, so that thirteen he alone ruled, he was consumed by disease.
16.
He was a mocker rather than a flatterer. From this he was called
after Trachala in the folktale, for ten years a most excellent man,
for the following twelve a brigand, for the last ten, on account of
his unrestrained prodigality, a ward irresponsible for his own
actions.
17.
His body was buried in Byzantium, called Constantinople.
18.
With him dead, Delmatius was put to death by the violence of the
troops.
19.
Thus dominatio of the Roman world was returned to three men,
Constantinus, Constantius, and Constans, the sons of Constantine.
20.
These individually held these areas as their realms: Constantinus
the Younger, everything beyond the Alps; Constantius, from the
Strait of the Propontis, Asia, and Oriens; Constans, Illyricum and
Italy and Africa; Delmatius, Thrace and Macedonia and Achaea;
Hannibalianus, brother of Delmatius Caesar, Armenia and neighboring,
allied nations.
21.
However, on account of the legal right to Italy and Africa,
Constantinus and Constans immediately disagreed. When Constantinus,
reckless and horribly intoxicated, in a display of highway robbery,
rushed into territories not his own, he was slain and thrown into a
river, the name for which is Alsa, not far from Aquileia.
22.
But while Constans, because of a desire of hunting, was roaming
through forests and woodland pastures, some soldiers, with
Chrestius, Marcellinus, and also Magnentius the instigators,
conspired toward his murder. As soon as the day of carrying out the
business was resolved, Marcellinus, feigning the birth of a son,
invited many men to dinner. And so, late in the night, while a
drinking party was being celebrated, he withdrew as if to relieve
himself as is normal, and assumed the revered attire.
23.
When this action was discovered, Constans attempted to flee to
Helena, a city close to the Pyrenees, and by Gaiso, who had been
dispatched with picked men, he was killed in the thirteenth year of
his reign as an Augustus (for he had been a Caesar for a three-year
period), at the age of twenty-seven.
24.
Disabled in the feet and hands through a malady of the joints, he
was fortunate in temperateness of climate, in an abundance of
harvests, and in no terror from barbarians, things which would have
been still greater indeed, if he had promoted governorsof provinces
not for a price, but on the basis of judgment.
25.
When his death became known, Vetranio, Master of Soldiers, seized
imperium in Pannonia at Mursia; not many days after, Constantius
desposed him from power, granting to him not only a long life, but
also a retirement full of pleasures. He was, moreover, a most
simpleminded man, verging on stupidity.
Constantius
proclaimed Caesar Gallus, the son of his father's brother, marrying
to him his sister, Constantia.
2.
Magnentius, too, made Decentius, his brother, Caesar beyond the
Alps.
3.
In these days, at Rome, Nepotianus, son of Eutropia, Constantine's
sister, with those who had been destroyed driving him on, took the
name Augustus; him Magnentius crushed in twenty-eight days.
4.
At this time, Constantius did battle with Magnentius at Mursa and
was victorious. In this battle, hardly anywhere was Roman might more
fully consumed and the fortune of the whole empire dashed.
5.
Then, when Magnentius had removed himself toward Italy, near Ticinum
he scattered many who were recklessly and, as is customary in
victory, too boldly pursuing him.
6.
Not much later, cornered near Lugdunum, he breathed his last in the
forty-second month of imperium and in about the fiftieth year of his
life, his side pierced with a sword secretly supplied, assisting the
blow by pushing against a wall - as he was of immense size -,
spewing blood from the wound, his nostrils, and mouth.
7.
He sprang from barbarian parents, who inhabited Gallia; he was
inclined toward the study of reading, sharp of tongue, of a haughty
spirit, and cowardly beyond measure; a master, nevertheless, for
concealing terror under a pretext of boldness.
8.
When his death was heard of, Decentius ended his life with a noose
made of a cloth swathe.
9.
At this time, Gallus Caesar was killed by Constantius. He ruled four
years.
10.
Silvanus was made imperator and, on the twenty-eighth day of
imperium, was destroyed. He was by nature most charming.
11.
Although the scion of a barbarian father, he was nevertheless, as a
result of Roman training, sufficiently cultivated and patient.
12.
Constantius took to himself with the rank of Caesar Claudius Julian,
Gallus' brother, almost twenty-three years old.
13.
In the Argentoratensian Fields in Gallia, he, with a few troops,
destroyed an innumerable army of enemies.
14.
The heaps were standing like mountains, the blood was flowing in the
fashion of rivers; a king, noble Nodomarius, was captured; the
entire aristocracy was routed; the frontier of Roman property was
restored; and afterward, doing battle with the Alamanni, he captured
their most powerful king, Badomarius.
15.
He was proclaimed Augustus by the Gallic troops.
16.
Through legations, Constantius urged him to return to his original
status and title. Julian, in a rather mild, secret correspondence,
replied that he would serve far more dutifully under the title of a
lofty imperium.
17.
As a result of these things, Constantius burned more and more with
outrage and, as he was unable to endure the like, with a sharp fever
which excessive indignation increased by sleepless nights, perished
in the foothills of Mount Taurus near Mopsocrene in the forty-fourth
year of age and in the thirty-ninth of imperium, but in his
twenty-fourth as an Augustus: eight alone, sixteen with his brothers
and Magnentius, fifteen as a Caesar.
18.
He was lucky in civil wars, lamentable in foreign; an amazing artist
with arrows, very abstinent from food, drink, and sleep, able to
endure labor, a lover of eloquence, which, since, through slowness
of mind, he was unable to attain, he used to envy in others.
19.
He was addicted to the love of eunuchs, courtiers, and wives, by
whom - satisfied by no deviant or unlawful pleasure - he used to be
polluted.
20.
But from wives, many whom he obtained, he especially delighted in
Eusebia, who was indeed elegant, but, through Adamantiae and
Gorgoniae and other dangerous abettors, harmful of her husband's
reputation, contrary to what is customary for more upright females
whose precepts often aid their husbands.
21.
For, as I pass over others, it is incredible to relate how much
Pompeia Plotina increased the glory of Trajan: when his procuratores
were disrupting the provinces with false accusations to the extent
that one of them was said to have greeted a certain wealthy fellow
thus, "How did you get so much?"; another, "Where did
you get so much?"; a third, "Give me what you've got,"
she admonished her husband and, reproaching him because he was so
unconcerned with his reputation, returned so much that afterward he
spurned unjust exactions and called the fisc the spleen, because, as
it increased, the remaining muscles and limbs dwindled.
https://www.roman-emperors.org/epitome.htm
Origo Constantini
Imperatoris
Constantius,
grandson of the brother of that best of emperors Claudius, was first
one of the emperor's bodyguard, then a tribune, and later, governor
of Dalmatia. With Galerius, he was appointed Caesar by Diocletian;
for he put away his former wife Helena and married Theodora,
daughter of Maximianus, by whom he afterwards had six children,
brothers of Constantine. But by his former wife Helena, he already
had a son Constantine, who was later the mightiest of emperors.
This
Constantine, then, born of Helena, a mother of very common origin,
and brought up in the town of Naissus, which he afterwards
splendidly adorned, had but slight training in letters. He was held
as a hostage by Diocletian and Galerius, and did valiant service
under those emperors in Asia. After the abdication of Diocletian and
Herculius, Constantius asked Galerius to return his son; but
Galerius first exposed him to many dangers. For when Constantine,
then a young man, was serving in the cavalry against the Sarmatians,
he seized by the hair and carried off a fierce savage, and threw him
at the feet of the emperor Galerius. Then sent by Galerius through a
swamp, he entered it on his horse and made a way for the rest to the
Sarmatians, of whom he slew many and won the victory for Galerius.
Then at last, Galerius sent him back to his father. But in order to
avoid meeting Severus as he passed through Italy, Constantine
crossed the Alps with the greatest haste, ordering the post-horses
to be killed as he went on; and he came up with his father
Constantius at Bononia, which the Gauls formerly called Gesoriacum.
But his father Constantius, after winning a victory over the Picts,
died at York, and Constantine was unanimously hailed as Caesar by
all the troops.
In
the meantime, two other Caesars had been appointed, Severus and
Maximinus; to Maximinus was given the rule of the Orient; Galerius
retained Illyricum for himself, as well as the Thracian provinces
and Bithynia; Severus received Italy and whatever Herculius had
formerly governed. But after Constantius died in Britain, and his
son Constantine succeeded him, Maxentius, the son of Herculius, was
suddenly hailed as emperor by the praetorian soldiers in the city of
Rome. By order of Galerius, Severus took the field against
Maxentius, but he was suddenly deserted by all his followers and
fled to Ravenna. Thereupon Galerius, with a great army, came against
Rome, threatening the destruction of the city, and encamped at
Interamna near the Tiber. Then he sent Licinius and Probus to the
city as envoys, asking that the son-in law, that is Maxentius,
should attain his desires from the father-in law, that is Galerius,
at the price of requests rather than of arms.
Galerius'
proposal was scorned, and having learned that through Maxentius'
promises many of his own men had been led to desert his cause, he
was distressed and turned back; and in order to furnish his men with
whatever booty he could, he gave orders that the Flaminian Road
should be plundered. Maximianus took refuge with Constantine. Then
Galerius made Licinius a Caesar in Illyricum, and after that,
leaving him in Pannonia, returned himself to Serdica, where he was
attacked by a violent disease and wasted away so completely, that he
died with the inner parts of his body exposed and in a state of
corruption — a punishment for a most unjust persecution, which
recoiled as a well-merited penalty upon the author of the iniquitous
order. He ruled for nineteen years.
Severus
Caesar was low both in character and in origin, given to drink, and
hence a friend to Galerius. Accordingly, Galerius made Caesars of
him and Maximinus, without Constantine having knowledge of any such
step. To this Severus were assigned some cities of Pannonia, Italy,
and Africa. Through this chance, Maxentius became emperor; for
Severus was deserted by his men and fled to Ravenna. Summoned to
support his son Maxentius, Herculius came to Ravenna, deceived
Severus by a false oath, gave him into custody, and took him to Rome
in the condition of a captive; there he had him kept under guard in
a villa belonging to the state, situated thirty miles from Rome on
the Appian Road. When Galerius later went to Italy, Severus was
executed; then his body was taken to a place eight miles from the
city, and laid in the tomb of Gallienus. Now Galerius was such a
tippler that when he was drunk he gave orders such as ought but to
be obeyed; and so, at the advice of his prefect, he directed that no
one should execute any commands which he issued after luncheon.
Meanwhile
Constantine, after defeating the tyrant's generals at Verona, went
on to Rome. When he had reached the city, Maxentius came out and
chose a plain above the Tiber as the place to do battle. There the
usurper was defeated, and when all his men were put to flight, he
was prevented from escaping by the crowd of fugitives, thrown from
his horse into the river, and drowned. On the following day his body
was recovered from the Tiber, and the head was cut off and taken to
Rome. When his mother was questioned about his parentage, she
admitted that he was the son of a Syrian. He ruled for six years.
Now
Licinius was a native of New Dacia, and was of somewhat common
origin. He was made emperor by Galerius, in order that he might take
the field against Maxentius. But when Maxentius was overthrown and
Constantine had recovered Italy, he made Licinius his colleague on
condition that he should marry Constantine's sister Constantia at
Mediolanum. After the celebration of the wedding Constantine went to
Gaul, and Licinius returned to Illyricum. Some time after that
Constantine sent Constantius to Licinius, to persuade him to confer
the rank of Caesar on Bassianus, who was married to a second sister
of Constantine (named Anastasia), to the end that, after the manner
of Maximianus, Bassianus might hold Italy and thus stand as a buffer
between Constantine and Licinius. But Licinius thwarted such an
arrangement, and influenced by Bassianus' brother Senicio, who was
loyal to Licinius, Bassianus took up arms against Constantine. But
he was arrested in the act of accomplishing his purpose, and by
order of Constantine was condemned and executed. When the punishment
of Senicio was demanded as the instigator of the plot and Licinius
refused, the harmony between the two emperors came to an end; an
additional reason for the break was, that Licinius had overthrown
the busts and statues of Constantine at Emona. Then the two emperors
declared open war. Their armies were led to the plain of Cibalae.
Licinius had 35000 infantry and cavalry; Constantine commanded
20000. After an indecisive contest, in which 20000 of Licinius' foot
soldiers and a part of his mail-clad horsemen were slain, he himself
with a great part of his other cavalry made his escape under cover
of night to Sirmium. From there, taking with him his wife, his son,
and his treasures, he went to Dacia and appointed Valens, who was
commander on the frontier, to the rank of Caesar. Then, having
through Valens mustered a large force at Hadrianopolis, a city of
Thrace, he sent envoys to Constantine, who had established himself
at Philippi, to treat for peace. When the envoys were sent back
without accomplishing anything, the war was renewed and the two
rivals joined battle on the plain of Mardia. After a long and
indecisive struggle, the troops of Licinius gave way and night aided
them to escape. Thereupon Licinius and Valens, believing that
Constantine (as turned out to be the case), in order to follow up
his advantage, would advance farther in the direction of Byzantium,
turned aside and made their way towards Beroea. As Constantine was
eagerly pushing on, he learned that Licinius had remained behind
him; and just then, when his men were worn out from fighting and
marching, Mestrianus was sent to him as an envoy, to propose peace
in the name of Licinius, who promised to do as he was bidden. Valens
was ordered to return again to his former private station; when that
was done, peace was concluded by both emperors, with the stipulation
that Licinius should hold the Orient, Asia, Thrace, Moesia, and
Lesser Scythia. Then Constantine, having returned to Serdica,
arranged with Licinius, who was elsewhere, that Crispus and
Constantinus, sons of Constantine, and Licinius, son of Licinius,
should be made Caesars, and that thus the rule should be carried on
in harmony by both emperors. Thus Constantine and Licinius became
colleagues in the consulship. In the regions of the Orient, while
Licinius and Constantine were consuls, Licinius was stirred by
sudden madness and ordered that all the Christians should be driven
from the Palace.
Soon
war flamed out again between Licinius himself and Constantine. Also,
when Constantine was at Thessalonica, the Goths broke through the
neglected frontiers, devastated Thrace and Moesia, and began to
drive off booty. Then because of fear of Constantine and his check
of their attack they returned their prisoners to him and peace was
granted them. But Licinius complained of this action as a breach of
faith, on the ground that his function had been usurped by another.
Finally, by using sometimes humble entreaties and sometimes arrogant
threats, he aroused the deserved wrath of Constantine. During the
interval before the civil war began, but while it was in
preparation, Licinius gave himself up to a frenzy of wickedness,
cruelty, avarice and lust; he put many men to death for the sake of
their riches, and violated their wives. Now peace was broken by
consent of both sides; Constantine sent Crispus Caesar with a large
fleet to take possession of Asia, and on the side of Licinius,
Amandus opposed him, likewise with naval forces. Licinius himself
had covered the slopes of high mountain near Hadrianopolis with a
huge army. Hither Constantine turned his march with his entire
force. While the war went on slowly by land and sea, although
Constantine's army had great difficulty in scaling the heights, at
last his good fortune and the discipline of his army prevailed, and
he defeated the confused and disorganised army of Licinius; but
Constantine was slightly wounded in the thigh. Then Licinius fled to
Byzantium; and while his scattered forces were on the way to the
city, Licinius closed it, and feeling secure against an attack by
sea, planned to meet a siege from the land-side. But Constantine got
together a fleet from Thrace. Then Licinius, with his usual lack of
consideration, chose Martinianus as his Caesar. But Crispus, with
Constantine's fleet, sailed to Callipolis, where in a sea-fight he
so utterly defeated Amandus that the latter barely made his escape
with the help of the forces which he had left on shore. But
Licinius' fleet was in part destroyed and in part captured.
Licinius, abandoning hope on the sea, by way of which he saw that he
would be blockaded, fled with his treasures to Chalcedon.
Constantine entered Byzantium, where he met Crispus and learned of
his naval victory. Then Licinius began a battle at Chrysopolis,
being especially aided by the Gothic auxiliaries which their prince
Alica had brought; whereupon the army of Constantine was victorious,
slaying 25000 soldiers of the opposing side and putting the rest to
flight. Later, when they saw Constantine's legions coming in
Liburnian galleys, the survivors threw down their arms and gave
themselves up. But on the following day Constantia, sister of
Constantine and wife of Licinius, came to her brother's camp and
begged that her husband's life be spared, which was granted. Thus
Licinius became a private citizen, and was entertained at a banquet
by Constantine. Martinianus' life was also spared. Licinius was sent
to Thessalonica; but Constantine, influenced by the example of his
father-in law Herculius Maximianus, for fear that Licinius might
again, with disastrous consequences to the State, resume the purple
which he had laid down, and also because the soldiers mutinously
demanded his death, had him assassinated at Thessalonica, and
Martinianus in Cappadocia. Licinius reigned nineteen years and was
survived by his wife and a son. And yet, after all the other
participants in the abominable persecution had already perished, the
penalty he deserved would surely demand this man also, a persecutor
so far as he could act as such.
In
commemoration of his splendid victory Constantine called Byzantium
Constantinople after his own name; and as if it were his native
city, he adorned it with great magnificence and wished to make it
equal to Rome. Then he sought out new citizens for it from every
quarter, and lavished such wealth on the city, that thereon he all
but exhausted the imperial fortunes. There he also established a
senate of the second rank, the members of which had the title of
clari. Then he began war against the Goths, rendering aid also to
the Sarmatians, who had appealed to him for help. The result was
that almost a hundred thousand of the Goths were destroyed by hunger
and cold through Constantinus Caesar. Then he also received
hostages, among whom was Ariaricus, the king's son. When peace with
the Goths had thus been secured, Constantine turned against the
Sarmatians, who were showing themselves to be of doubtful loyalty.
But the slaves of the Sarmatians rebelled against all their masters
and drove them from the country. These Constantine willingly
received, and distributed more than three hundred thousand people of
different ages and both sexes through Thrace, Scythia, Macedonia,
and Italy.
Constantine
was also the first Christian emperor, with the exception of
Philippus who seemed to me to have become a Christian merely in
order that the one-thousandth year of Rome might be dedicated to
Christ rather than to pagan idols. But from Constantine down to the
present day all the emperors that have been chosen were Christians,
with the exception of Julian, whose disastrous life forsook him in
the midst of the impious plans which it was said that he was
devising. Moreover, Constantine made the change in a just and humane
fashion; for he issued an edict that the temples should be closed
without any shedding of pagan blood. Afterwards he destroyed the
bravest and most populous of the Gothic tribes in the very heart of
the barbarian territory; that is, in the lands of the Sarmatians.
Constantine
also put down a certain Calocaerus, who tried to achieve a
revolution in Cyprus. He made Delmatius, son of his brother of the
same name, a Caesar; Delmatius' brother Hannibalianus he created
King of Kings and ruler of the Pontic tribes, after giving him his
daughter Constantiana in marriage. Then it was arranged that the
younger Constantine should rule the Gallic provinces, Constantius
Caesar the Orient, Constans Illyricum and Italy, while Dalmatius was
to guard the Gothic coastline. While Constantine was planning to
make war on the Persians, he died in an imperial villa in the
suburbs of Constantinople, not far from Nicomedia, leaving the State
in good order to his sons. He was buried in Constantinople, after a
reign of thirty-one years.
https://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/Constantine/Origo.html
Constantine: triumph
over a usurper
Victory
in war was, as already mentioned, an integral part of generating
political legitimacy, and, as during the Late Republic, civil war
had to be justified if individual emperors were to obtain that
legitimacy. Discussing the contested triumph of Constantine, Beard
comments on later Roman triumphal celebrations:
Yet
we should hesitate before we conclude that the ancient triumph
lasted as long as anyone was prepared to describe ceremonies in
triumphal terms. This was, after all, contested territory. And at a
certain point the gap between the triumphal rhetoric and the ritual
action must have become so wide as to be implausible.It does indeed
seem difficult to use the evidence of panegyrists and poets to
determine whether a triumph has actually taken place, and in general
one should be careful with inferences on this point drawn from their
effusions. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the
triumph was, as mentioned above, already contested territory during
the period of the Late Republic.
But
first an obvious point: we should not exclude any triumphs held
outside Rome. Triumphs in imperial residences were nothing new by
the time of Constantine and certainly were not problematic,
moreover, but as we shall see, a similar practice can be traced to
Republican times. During Constantine’s time at Trier he
successfully defeated several German tribes. Barnes has tabulated
these victories as follows:
the
first German victories of Constantine appeared in 307,
the
second in 308,
and
the third preceded his decennalia in 315, most probably in 313.
The
panegyric of 310 recounts the punishing of enemy chiefs within a
triumphal context, referring to triumphs of the Republican period
(Pan. Lat. 6(7).10.2-11.6, esp. 10.5-7). The result of the victory
was peace (11.1), which corresponds to the ‘sense of an
ending’ implicit in the ritual of the triumph (cf. Livy
26.21.2-4). After this victory over Frankish tribes, a procession
was held in Trier culminating with the enemy chiefs being fed to the
beasts in the arena (Eutr. 10.3.2: "magnificum spectaculum").
The spectacle and punishment of the enemy is also described in the
panegyric of 307 (Pan. Lat. 7(6).4.2, 4; cf. Eutr. 10.3.2). The
panegyric of 313 (Pan. Lat. 12(9).21.5-22.5; 23.3-4; cf. Euseb. Vit.
Const. 1.46; RIC 7 124, 163f, 166f) also mentions the celebration of
a Frankish triumph (triumphus), probably in 313 (23.3):
Nam
quid hoc triumpho pulchrius, quo caedibus hostium utitur etiam ad
nostrum omnium voluptatem, et pompam munerum de reliquiis barbaricae
cladis exaggerat?
What
is lovelier than this triumphal celebration in which he employs the
slaughter of enemies for the pleasure of us all, and enlarges the
procession of the games out of the survivors of the massacre of the
barbarians?
Cameron
and Hall suggest that this was only a generalizing statement, not a
reference to a specific campaign. This cannot be entirely excluded,
but a local triumph remains a more reasonable conclusion, in light
of the detailed description of the fate of the enemy chiefs. In 307
and 308 Rome was under the control of the usurper Maxentius and even
if Constantine desired to celebrate a triumph in Rome, he would not
have had access to the city. In 313 Constantine chose to celebrate a
triumph in Trier for other reasons, away from Rome and the Capitol,
perhaps because this was close to the victories and because
crossing the Alps with a large armed force would have weakened the
frontiers.
In
the Republic the Alban Mount triumph had already revealed the
conundrum of the physical locality of the triumph: it concluded
outside the city of Rome, approximately 30 km to the South-East of
the city. As it did not end on the Capitol, it could not be
considered a triumph; moreover it was the only form of triumph that
was not granted to the victorious commander by the Senate. However,
Alban Mount triumphs are mentioned and recorded on the Fasti
Triumphales, erected during the reign of Augustus. This adaptability
in the concept of the triumph can also be seen in the celebrations
of Constantine in Trier: triumphs held outside Rome, out of
necessity or practicality. And this adaptability reappears in the
312 celebrations in Rome.
Constantine
and Rome AD 312
Having
been passed over as a member of the tetrarchy, Maxentius usurped
power in Rome, whereupon Galerius summoned Severus to recover the
city from the usurper. This was unsuccessful, as was Galerius’
later attempt to take Rome. Finally in 312 Constantine invaded Italy
and after the capitulation of Verona, moved against Rome. The
Tetrarchy was finally collapsing into civil war. On the 28th of
October Maxentius was defeated at the Milvian Bridge, in what was to
become the foundation myth of the regime, and on the 29th of October
Constantine entered Rome.
As
a usurper Maxentius was a hostis publicus and could be killed
without consequence. Furthermore, Lactantius and Zosimus both claim
that Maxentius declared war on Constantine due to the death of his
father, allegedly killed by Constantine. This, however, may be a
later rewriting by the regime, as the panegyric from 321
(4(10).9-11) observes that Constantine attacked first.
The
case is similar to that of Antonius in the civil war against
Octavian: if Antonius, as mentioned, was to take up arms against
Octavian and the res publica, he would declare war on the res
publica and thus declare himself a hostis. This was mainly a
question of justification: civil war appeared inevitable, but
Constantine did not want to be seen to cause it. He was, it would
seem, closely following the tactics of Augustus.
https://www.academia.edu/7442635/Constantine_s_Civil_War_Triumph_of_AD_312_and_the_Adaptability_of_Triumphal_Tradition_Analecta_Romana_Instituti_Danici_37_2012_29_53_the_complete_article_?swp=rr-rw-wc-4359131
EDICT OF CONSTANTINE
I CONCERNING THE ACCUSATIONS (314-323)
Two
chapters of this edict are preserved in CTh. 9, 5 and in CJ 9, 8, 3.
Three copies of the edict on stone have been discovered: one
somewhere in Asia Minor, before 1600, but now lost; one in Lycia,
also in Asia Minor, before 1902; one in Crete, reported in 1889,
which exhibits all of the surviving part of the edict. The date is
doubtful, for the superscription and the subscription preserved in
the codes do not agree by an interval of about a decade, but the
codes and the stones all agree in the subscription, which is dated
314
1)
Copy of the sacred edict.
2)
... it has been proved that very many persons not only in respect to
their fortunes ... accusations ... sometimes ... by cases of this
kind those who are accused as well as those who are summoned for
evidence are afflicted with very serious annoyances. Wherefore,
taking counsel for the security of our provinces, we provide
remedies of this character, that an accuser indeed may not entirely
be repulsed from court, but whoever believes that he can add proofs
to his charges may have the free opporunity to approach a judge and
may reveal the defendant by clear evidence of the offenses, so that
according to the nature of the deeds suitable punishment may be
inflicted on the person who is convicted. But if he is not at all
able to establish those charges which he makes he shall know that he
must be subjected to a very severe sentence.
3)
To be sure, if anyone charges someone with the crime of treason,
since the accusation of such a kind not at all protects anyone by
the privilege of any high rank from a very strict inquisition, he
shall know that he also must be subject to torture if he is not able
to establish his accusation by other clear evidences and proofs,
since in the case of the person who is detected in this temerity
this fact properly shall be elicited also by torture, namely, by
whose advice and instigation it appears that he entered upon the
accusation, so that punishment from all persons who are accessory to
so great a deed can be exacted.
4)
Moreover, it is known to all how often an opportunity also to
approach a judge has been denied to informers not only by the
statutes of our parents, but also by our ordinances, since a hearing
must not be granted to persons of this kind, because indeed they
must be subjected to punishment in accordance with the daring of
such great wickedness.
5)
Also in the case of slaves or of freedmen who attempt to accuse or
to report their masters or their patrons we decree that the law
according to the statute of the ancient law also must be observed,
namely, that, to be sure, the declaration of such atrocious audacity
shall be repressed immediately in the inception of its commission
itself by the judge's decision, and, after a hearing has been
denied, whoever proceeds to the desperate boldness of this kind
shall offer, affixed to a gibbet, an example to all others, lest
anyone of like audacity should appear in the future.
6)
To be sure, that everywhere counsel may be taken for the security of
innocent persons, it is our pleasure that defamatory informations
shall not be accepted. And if anyone discovers these displayed
anonymously, he shall be bound to remove them immediately and to
tear them in pieces or to consume them by fire. And in these cases
it shall be proper for the judges to take note of such a kind that,
if perchance such information is brought to them, they shall direct
it to be burned by fire, since a writing of such kind properly shall
be removed completely from a judge's hearing, but an investigation
shall remain against those persons who dare to display information
of such a sort, that, when discovered, they shall be subjected to
the due punishments of their temerity.
7)
Accordingly, we have written about all these matters not only to our
prefects but also to the governors and the treasurer and the master
of our private estate, by whose other copy, when our edict has been
published, it is declared most fully what kind of law and statute it
contains.
8)
Publicly posted January I in the consulship of Volusianus and
Annianus.
Helios and the
Emperor in the Late Antique Peloponnese
GEORGIOS DELIGIANNAKIS
This
paper discusses a badly damaged over-life-sized marble head with
radiate headgear found in the Roman theater of Gytheum. It probably
belonged to a public statue or shield monument of the god Helios and
is thought to be late antique. It is here argued that this monument
was in fact intended to pay honor to the ruling emperor, who was
associated with the god Helios. It is also suggested that the
association of the new Flavian dynasty with the solar god represents
a particular way by which the people of Greece, among other
provincials, chose to express their loyalty to the emperor along
traditional religious lines.
Description and Identification
The
head is carved of local beige marble, with a height of 0.52 meters
and a width of 0.37 meters. It has a strong frontal rendering and
cursorily curved features. It may be reworked from a previous piece
(Figs. 1–5). It now appears severely damaged due to later
re-use; the back side is hollowed out. It seems that the head was
later placed upside-down and the newly carved concavity used as a
fountain urn. It features large almond-shaped eyes, wide-open.
Boldly emphasized eyelids frame the eyeballs. The damaged nose is
wedge-shaped and crudely modelled. The mouth simply appears as a
horizontal sharpcut across thickly modeled lips. The ears are
rendered by curved incisions invery low relief. The hair projecting
in front of the forehead is a compact mass, defined against the flesh
by a continuous chisel-line above the forehead. The hair is rendered
in a cursory way as being thick and long and brushed back-wards on
all sides of the head; superficially incised chisel lines on the
left and right temple can be discerned; below the left ear the head
is broken off. Seven rectangular mortises (0.02 m×0.03 m) are
still visible, chiseled above the hairline for the support of metal
inserts. Their number, size, and near rectangular shape suggest that
these deep mortises were most probably intended for the insertion of
metal rays. Near the center of the cranium, a thin metal spike is
still preserved. If this is a feature of the head and not a later
addition, it may be a dowel for the attachment of a separate piece
of stone to complete the top of the head. The head gives the
impression that it was left unfinished. Yet the sockets for metal
rays and the metal spike on the top of the head leave little doubt
that this piece, together with the rest of the monument of which it
presumably was a part, had been placed on display in antiquity.
Despite
its bad condition, the characteristic headgear identifies this as
animage of the god Helios. Its style and technique places it
chronologically after the collapse of the provincial sculpture
workshops in Late Antiquity, which canbe roughly placed after the
270s. Thereafter only a few workshops, located mostly in provincial
capitals or big cities, were able to produce high-quality portrait
sculpture for the needs of local elites and for representatives of
the imperial government. The rendering of the frontal, bulging eyes,
awkwardly placed on the face, appears similar to the style of a
life-sized portrait head made of local marble and found in the
theater of Sparta. In the case of the Spartan head, which probably
portrayed a local dignitary or a provincial governor, the pupils of
the eyes are drilled. Its excavators suggested a date close to the
last phase of the theater, about 375–400 (Fig. 6). Moreover,
two late antique statues of similar technique and style, one an
imperial portrait (probably Constantine I), from an urban mansion in
Messene can be approximately dated on archaeological grounds to no
later than 360/70. Based on its late antique style and crude
technique, the Gytheum head could be dated to any period from the
late third century onwards. Yet it is its possible connection to
imperial imagery, as we will see below, which provides a more
specific chronological and histori-cal context, in the second or
third quarter of the fourth century.
In
a period when the local production of sculpture had sharply
decreased and the cutting of new pieces of life-size sculpture
depicting mythological themes was rare, the discovery of this head
from Gytheum is striking.
Gytheum
in southernmost Laconia was the most important city of the region
and the major port for exporting the famous local green
porphyrystone in Roman times. The Expositio totius mundi et gentium
(composed around 359–360) singles out "Laconica" as
one of the three districts of the province of Achaia. By "Laconica"
one should understand the cities of the League of the Free
Laconians, rather than Sparta. Thinking in commercial terms, the
author of Expositio adds, "it is considered to be rich in one
product alone, the stone of Crocinum which they call
‘Lacedaemonian’." The Tabula Peutingeriana
(Tetrarchic to fifth century) names Gytheum, along with Asopos and
Boeae as part of the late Roman cursus publicus. Moreover, the late
Roman imperial fleet probably used Gytheum as an occasional
port of call on the east–west sea route, while auxiliaries in
the Roman army from Sparta and Laconia are attested in the second
and third centuries.
It
is important to ask why the people of Gytheum decided to erect this
imposing statue of a pagan god in the public domain, despite its
poor work-manship and deviation from the trends that we postulate
about late antique public statuary in Greece and the Greek East,
when we find almost no public statuary monuments with polytheistic
themes. The choice of a pagan god whose cult was of little
popularity in Greece but with strong links to Hellenistic and
imperial perceptions of rulership, along with the fact that the
majority of public statuary in Late Antiquity normally consisted of
images of the emperor, suggest a connection between this
mythological figure and the ruling emperor.
Drawing
on extensive previous scholarship in this field, Bergmann and
Bardill have recently offered a systematic study of the use and
meaning of the radiate portrait by Hellenistic and Roman rulers as
well as the relation of solar imagery to imperial iconography.
Bardill points out that Constantinehad tried to re-employ
iconographic traits of Alexander, Augustus and Nero, among them an
association with the god Apollo-Helios and the use of the radiate
crown. The statue of Constantine as Apollo-Helios on the porphyry
column in Constantinople had an obvious precursor in the statue of
Augustus on a column in the precinct of Apollo on the Palatine Hill,
and also the "Colossus of Nero" in Rome. Although many
later emperors had worn radiate crowns on coins, only with
Constantine did this attribute convey a profound solar aspect in the
guise of Sol Invictus, with the exception of Aurelian(reigned
270–275). In fact, a fascination with solar imagery and the
imagery of light as an attribute of imperial rule under divine
guidance would endure until the end of his life, whether expressed
in a traditional religious context ora Christian one. By 310
Constantine offcially declared Sol as his new religious patron. The
Latin panegyrist of 310 has him witness a vision from Sol while on a
military campaign, near an important sanctuary of Apollo Grannus in
Gaul. All of Constantine’s imperial mints for the years from
310 to 317 massively produced copper alloy coins that displayed Sol
on the reverse. He also adopted the legend SOLI INVICTO on his gold
solidi as well as the epithet INVICTUS as part of his personal
titulature. After his victory over Maxentius, Constantine issued a
gold medallion (Ticinum, 313) showing Constantine’s bust
overlapping that of Sol wearing a radiate crown; on the shield of
the emperor, Sol in his horse-drawn chariot rises from the ocean
(Fig. 7). Constantine and Sol were overtly juxtaposed on the Arch of
Constantine dedicated in 315 in Rome and also the colossal statue of
Sol nearby. Even after Constantine began to advertise his conversion
to Christianity, the images of Sol and Constantine continued to be
featured together on the gold solidi of various mints between 316
and 324 or 325, describing Sol as the protector of Constantine. In
this period, Sol probably provided a unifying bridge between
Licinius’s paganism and Constantine’s Christian God.
Furthermore, Licinius’s troops in 324 marched against
Constantine under Sol’s protection, while Constantine too
seems to have celebrated his victory over his opponent with gold
solidi bearing the legend SOLI COMITI AUG. Even though after 325 or
326 Constantine abandoned Sol Invictus on his coins and his support
for Christianity became more manifest, the erection of the colossal
radiate statue in Constantinople as late as 328 or 330 shows that
Constantine continued to promote his solar associations in a way
that easily appealed to a pagan and a Christian audience. In various
sources of this period the solar imagery isnow used to symbolize the
eternity of Constantine’s unified rule, the beginning of a
Golden Age, but also the coming of a new Christian era.
The
most remarkable monument that associated Constantine with Helios,
which is also the most pertinent to our discussion, is the colossal
bronze statue of Constantine on a porphyry column in the middle of
his forum in Constantinople (Fig. 8). Its model was apparently the
Colossus of Sol in Rome, which was erected by Nero and later moved
to the Colosseum. Constantine’s New Colossus was erected in
328 or 330 but is now lost. Only the column survives, truncated, but
later textual sources refer to the statue above. It wore a radiate
crown and carried a spear in one hand and a globe in the other.
Whether it was naked or draped is not certain, as comparative
evidence suggests either possibility. Most modern scholars agree
that the image of Constantine incorporated the identity of
Apollo-Helios. Writing in the sixth century, Hesychius mentions "the
notable porphyry column on which we see Constantine set up, shining
forth to his citizens in the manner of the sun". He gives an
interpretation of the image that emphasizes the element of solar and
divine radiance of the emperor, while avoiding any explicit pagan
association, and in that it seems to reflect to a great extent
the way Christians viewed it. Later texts make explicit that the
figure was a statue of Apollo (Patria) or Helios (Anna Comnena,
Zonaras) re-used by Constantine, something that may be taken as yet
another indirect proof of the intentional religious ambiguity of the
message that the monument had originally intended to transmit.
Another sixth-century source, Malalas, reports that the statue bore
seven rays on his head, as in our example from Gytheum.
Constantine’s crown probably had angled, rather than vertical,
rays, of a type that appeared often in the iconography of
Hellenistic kings as well as the representation of Nero-Helios, thus
making later observers identify it with the Sun god. An illusion to
the sun could also be contained in the inscription that was probably
placed on the base of thecolumn, whose text (or part of it) is given
by a mid-tenth century source.
Constantine’s
adoption of the diadem, of Sol-Apollo as the dynasty’s
protector, and the Apolline portrait (modeled on Alexander and
Augustus) denoteda striking break with previous Tetrarchic
traditions. The new message offered different readings to his
subjects. With the majority of the empire’s population still
pagan, it is reasonable to suppose that most would have tried to
situate the emperor against traditional religious forms of
mediation, foremost the imperial cult and the assimilation of the
person of the emperor with ancestral cults. The promotion of Sol
Invictus as the heavenly protector of the emperor provided a
universal point of reference. It was this parallel association with
Apollo-Helios and a Hellenistic royal style in his official
self-representation that probably shaped how a Greek-speaking
population sought to naturalize the official imperial message.
The
following examples illustrate this dynamic. Sometime between 324 and
337, the city of Termessos in Pisidia erected a monumental
equestrian bronze statue in which the emperor Constantine was
honored in the guise of the local god Helios Pantepoptes,
"All-Seeing Sun" (Fig. 9). The latter appears on the
city’s past bronze coins with a radiate crown and riding on a
horse; it seems that the equestrian statue along with the inscribed
block were re-used to create an image of Constantine from a previous
dedication to the local solar god. There seems to be only a single
way to interpret this evidence: the people of Termessos tried to
respond to the strong solar associations of the new Flavian dynasty
by assimilating him with a local solar deity.
On
the inscription of a statue dedication to Constantine in Lepcis
Magna in Libya Tripolitania, we read that the provincial governor
set up a marble statue that "was radiant by his divine spirit
to our lord Constantine, most powerful victor, eternal Augustus"
(dated between 324 and 326). The language is more allusive here, but
as Tantillo suggested, a badly damaged imperial head of
Julio-Claudian date, which was re-carved and given seven holes for
the insertion of metal rays, possibly came from the same monument.
Another example is a reused portrait head of a clean-shaven man from
Augusta Treverorum (Trier), who is wearing a diadem and radiate
crown and has also been identified with Constantine. A fourth
example is a reused bust of Caracalla with a dedication to
Constantine, found in a Mithraeum in Rusicade in Numidia.
Constantine’s name replaced that of Caracalla. In the
inscription, the emperor is addressed with the standard epithet of
Sol: "to the divine spirit (numini) of the most sacred
(sanctissimi) and invincible (invictissimi) Constantine."
Furthermore, a group of late antique images, which have long been
only tentatively identified as reproducing radiant portrait images
of Constantine in minor form (for private veneration?), further
underline how fertile the ground was for the cultivation of this
particular assimilation of the emperor with Sol. Each of them, it
has been suggested, may be a reminiscent of the image of a radiate
Constantine holding the Tyche of the city of Constantinople, which
on the day of the city’s anniversary would be paraded on a
golden chariot into the hippodrome and parked before the imperial
box, or that of the forum.
Returning
to the Gytheum head, it was found in the Roman theater, but we
cannot rule out that the monument stood in the nearby Kaisareion of
the city. The Kaisareion is only epigraphically attested but is
believed to have been part of the so-called "Roman Agora",
located close to the theater. According to the well-known lex sacra
of Gytheum (15 CE), the sacred procession of the local Kaisareion
passed by different sanctuaries of the city and finally reached the
Kaisareion and the Agora, where sacrifices took place; then the
sacred images of the emperor and his family (probably panel
paintings) were carried to the theater, where they could watch the
festivities. The head, whether originally erected in the theater, or
the Kaisareion, could be linked to the local festival of the
imperial cult, which is epigraphically attested until the late third
century. The connection with the festival of the imperial cult in
the reign of Constantine in Gytheum is also likely, since a priest
of the imperial cult is attested at Sparta in 325 or 329. Could the
veneration of the person of the emperor also be embedded in a
traditional local cult of the god Helios in Gytheum or its
periphery? An honorific inscription dated to the imperial period
refers to a local priesthood of Helios and Selene. One may assume
that the cults of Septimius Severus and Julia Domna, who had been
closely associated with that divine couple, and later that of
Constantine, were integrated into this local cult. Be that as it
may, a temple of the god Helios in Gytheum is not known. Regarding
cults of Helios in Laconia, we know of a sanctuary of Helios in
Taleton on the peak of Taygetos; an oracle sanctuary of Ino-Pasiphae
(Selene) at Thalamae, where Helios was also worshipped; and a place
sacred to Helios on the Tainaron promontory mentioned in the Homeric
hymn to Apollo. It is impossible to know whether the foundation of
the statue of Helios was connected to these Laconian ancestral
cults, or was anchored in a previous cult of Helios and Selene at
Gytheum.
I
would propose instead that the Gytheum head should be understood
along the same lines as the above examples, that is, as an attempt
on the part of the local community to read the solar associations of
Constantine’s official image through a local religious idiom.
The transcendent power of the association between Constantine and
Apollo-Helios in Achaia is explicitly attested by the issue of a
bronze coin of Constantine from the mint of Thessalonica, which
together with Achaia was part of the diocese of Macedonia, featuring
a unique iconographic type on its reverse: Sol Invictus together
with an enigmatic solar pattern made of overlaid X-formations (Fig.
10). It is dated to 319, that is, only two years after the
annexation of Illyricum by Constantine.
The
veneration of an emperor styled as Apollo-Helios in the Greek East
had a striking precedent in the case of Nero. Drawing on the model
of Alexander and Augustus, Nero associated himself with solar and
Apolline aspects, wishing to express his aspiration for a new Golden
Age of peace and prosperity. He too appeared wearing a radiate crown
on coins, while his Colossus in Rome was presumably the model for
Constantine’s similar statue in New Rome. In response to court
propaganda that linked the emperor with Apollo and Helios, Greek
cities venerated Nero as New Apollo (at Athens) and New Helios (at
Akraiphia in Boeotia and at Sagalassos in Pisidia). It is therefore
likely that the strong similarities between the ideological package
of Nero and that of Constantine (including a close association with
Sol-Helios-Apollo; the imitation of Augustus’s persona; the
Golden Age; the Colossi) stimulated similar initiatives on the part
of the Greek provincials of Greece and Pisidia, while striving to
pay honor to a benevolent emperor associated with Apollo-Helios.
I
have so far argued that the Gytheum head can be associated with
public honors to the emperor Constantine, based on the strong solar
imagery of his official representation and the receptiveness of this
particular aspect of his image into local contexts, as the numerous
examples presented above show. It should be noted that Licinius and
Julian too were associated with Sol Invictus, yet the almost total
absence of public dedications to these emperors in Achaia, the
shorter period of their reigns, and the lack of similar evidence
proving the connection of Helios and these emperors on a provincial
level in Achaia or elsewhere make Constantine our most plausible
candidate.
If
we accept the proposed identification, the earliest chronological
context of the Gytheum head should be the year 317, when Constantine
took control of the province of Achaia. Since Constantine felt no
qualms about representing the Sun god as his divine companion on
coins down to 325 and 326 (at least on the gold), and his Colossus
was erected in Constantinople as late as 328 or 330, it is possible
to place the Gytheum head any time between 317 and Constantine’s
death in 337. Besides, pagans preferred to associate Constantine and
his successors with the sun long after their conversion to
Christianity.
Greece and Constantine
By
exploring additional aspects of the regional history of Greece in
the early fourth century, the present section seeks to set the
Helios head of Gytheum in a wider historical context. I begin by
highlighting a serious landmark in the late Roman history of the
province of Achaia: the regaining of its proconsular status after a
short interlude during the Tetrarchy. This occurred either after a
joint decision of Constantine and Licinius in 314 or — more
probably — by Constantine alone, after he took control of
Illyricum from Licinius in 317. A remarkable number of statue
dedications to Constantine and his sons are attested in Greece. They
come from even insignificant cities, to the extent that these stones
are often the only late antique public inscription, or the last
attested, from the site.
Julian
in his Speech of Praise for Constantius mentions that the Athenians
had granted the title of strategos of the Athenians to Constantine
and also dedicated to him a statue with an elaborate inscription.
Greatly pleased with this action, which gave him "more than the
highest honors", Constantine bestowed on the city an annual
gift of many tens of thousands of bushels of wheat. A series of
statue dedications to Constantine and his sons (in Latin) were
recently discovered near the Roman Agora. Two prominent Athenians
were closely connected with Constantine; one is Nicagoras, son of
Minucianus, a cultured man and priest of Eleusis, who travelled at
the emperor’s expense to the Valley of the Kings in Egypt in
326. He left two graffiti in the tomb of Ramses VI in the Valley of
the Kings near Thebes commemorating his visit and naming his
benefactor, "the most pious emperor Constantine". There
was also the Athenian Praxagoras, who wrote a flattering
history of Constantine in two books, of which only small fragments
survive.
A
third possible example is Onasimus, a historian and rhetorician, who
was a citizen of Sparta or Athens (or both) and wrote an Encomium
of Constantine.
The
aim of Nicagoras’s mission at Thebes is puzzling. For several
scholars, by sponsoring it Constantine intended to favor the pagan
aristocracy of Athens and present himself as a friend of the arts.
Moreover, Fowden has suggested that Constantine entrusted Nicagoras
to visit Egypt and secure the removal of two obelisks, which were
later erected on the spina of the Circus Maximus in Rome and of the
hippodrome in Constantinople, and a porphyry column for his Colossus
in Constantinople. As he notes, this project should be understood as
a conciliatory move by Constantine, who had already started to favor
Christianity, towards the pagan establishment of his Empire.
Constantine’s favors to Athens, a predominately pagan city and
center of learning, are customarily interpreted in the same way.
There
is much scholarly discussion about the motives and the circumstances
of the removal of statues and other religious objects from Greek
cities by Constantine. The emperor had dispatched officials to
travel through the provinces and confiscate treasures from Greek
sanctuaries either to melt them down into bullion or to transport
them to Constantinople. Despite what Eusebius wanted his readers to
believe (that Constantine wanted his subjects to ridicule pagan
art), the emperor really intended to adorn and glorify the new city
with the art and iconic cultural symbols of the Greek East. The
removal and transfer of temple treasures from the provinces
apparently intensified around 330. The famous Panhellenic victory
monument of the battle of Plataea (479 BCE), the Serpent Column of
Delphi, together with a statue of Apollo and sacred tripods, were
removed and placed on the spina of the hippodrome of Constantinople.
It accompanied other victory monuments, images of public figures and
other spolia that intended to denote the supremacy and grandeur of
the city, graced by the authority of the Greek and Roman past. A
group (or groups) of Muses from the Museion on Mount Helicon in
Thespiae was also sent to Constantinople. It is striking that
Nicagoras, a priest of the Eleusinian mysteries, would be assigned a
mission that many pagans may have regarded as a sacrilege, as many
expressed their indignation at the stripping of temples of their
treasures and holy objects by Constantine’s agents. However,
both Delphi and Thespiae, whose artworks were removed, honored
Constantine and his sons with several statue monuments. On the flip
side, Constantine showed his favor towards the Pythian priesthood,
even though Delphi may have also been responsible for instigating
the renewal ofthe persecution against the Christians by Diocletian.
Indeed, this implies a reciprocal process between Constantine and
the prominently pagan local establishment. Local elites had
consented to Constantine’s policy of confiscating temple
treasures, and in the case of Nicagoras may have been involvedin it,
perhaps in exchange for favors or other local privileges. On the
other hand, this may be the reason why so few artworks from mainland
Greece are reported in Constantinople in the early fourth century,
in comparison to those from other cities of the East.
Between
326 and 329, the city of Sparta dedicated a statue of the provincial
governor Publilius Optatianus (signo Porfyrius) and placed it next
to the image of Lycurgus, along the east parodos of the city’s
theater. As proconsul of Achaia, Optatianus had the privilege of
appealing directly to the emperor and enjoyed the pleasures of the
intellectual life of Athens, the historical monuments of Greece, and
perhaps traditional cult. Optatianus was a Roman aristocrat and a
poet and had exchanged letters with Constantine on literary matters
in 312. He was later banished (apparently in 322/323), but perhaps
thanks to a series of poems he sent to the emperor, he was recalled
from exile (325/326) and advanced to prefect of the city of Rome (in
329 and 333). His post in Greece probably dated after his exile and
before his prefecture. The local magistrate Marcus Aurelius
Stephanus, who paid for the statue of Optatianus, is also the last
recorded priest of the imperial cult in Achaia. Could Optatianus
also be responsible for the statue of Helios in neighboring Gytheum?
This is impossible to know. In the Spartan text, he is described as
a benefactor in all things and savior of Lacedaemon. In his praises
to Constantine, Optatianus makes regular references to Apollo and
the Heliconian Muses primarily in terms of literary allusions, that
is, as gods of his poetic inspiration. At the same time, his
collection includes clear references to Christianity. Regarding the
protecting deity, he often refers to him as "the Highest God",
but in a few cases the god Helios is mentioned in this function or
in an allusion to Constantine’s rulership. Along with these
poetic allusions, in one of Optatianus’s picture-poems
dedicated to Constantine the enigmatic solar symbol we saw on the
coin of Thessalonica appears once again. Although this evidence
cannot be connected to the Gytheum head, it may reveal the attitude
of a powerful imperial official who, as part of his conventus, must
have visited Sparta and, probably on one of these occasions, was
honored with a statue set up by the priest of the imperial cult next
to that of the city’s mythical law-giver.
Krallis
has recently suggested that sections 2.22–28 of Zosimus New
History, which refer to Constantine’s war against Licinius, is
modelled on the battles of Salamis and Hydapses and might come from
the work of the Athenian historian Praxagoras. The assimilation of
Constantine’s victories to famous battles of the Greco–Persian
Wars and the campaigns of Alexander by an Athenian historian
possibly reveals how the Athenian intellectual elite tried to flatter
the emperor by giving a Panhellenic, or Athenocentric,
myth–historical version of Constantine’s successful
campaigns, casting his opponent as an oriental despot of some sort
fighting against Hellas. This new reading also supports the view
that the Serpent Column of Delphi in the hippodrome should primarily
be seen as a trophy monument, which urged the viewer to compare the
great moments of Hellas with Constantine’s victories and,
together with the Egyptian obelisks, reinforced the solar allusions
of Constantine’s image in the hippodrome. When Prohaeresius
was called forward to praise Constans publicly in Athens with
respect to the renewal of the grant of corn supply to the city, he
cited Celeus, Triptolemus, and Demeter. So, a mythical king of
Athens, Alexander, Apollo-Helios, and Zeus Eleutherius (who was
traditionally associated with the imperial cult in Athens and the
Panhellenic commemoration of the Persian Wars at Plataea) may all
have been powerful comparisons to make for praising Constantine.
Interestingly enough, when Himerius (315–386), a teacher of
rhetoric in Athens, praised Constantius II on behalf of the city, he
also used solar imagery and named the Sun as Constantius’s II
ancestor (προπάτωρ), thus
revealing that Sol still offered an appropriate comparandum for the
son of Constantine when an Athenian wished to praise him in 351. It
is therefore possible to imagine thatthe head of Gytheum may have
also been reconfigured several times in honor of different emperors
in the course of the fourth century.
Conclusion
The
Gytheum head belonged to a late antique sculptured monument
representing Helios. The poor condition and technique of the work do
not allow us to decide whether the sculptor had also intended to
combine divine and imperial portrait iconography. Be that as it may,
the image of Helios and his symbolism in the 320s provided a
syncretistic blueprint for the glorification of Constantine that
possibly aimed to reassure the pagan population of the recently
conquered eastern territories in the face of Constantine’s
Christianity. Deprived of traditional worship, entailing sacrifice
and idol veneration, but also accommodating an attempted
de-paganized version of imperial cult, the solar imagery offered a
polysemy that
would cater to both pagans and Christians. I have argued that the
Gytheum head could be read as a manifestation of loyalty and popular
devotion towards Constantine, being expressed in a way that was not
only in accord with the official image promoted at that time by the
court, but also drew on traditional norms of honoring the emperor in
the Greek East. Key elements of Constantine’s negotiated
conceptualization by the cities of Hellas would include the close
association with the Sun god — the Supreme Deity and protector
of the emperor — and the link between his recent military
victories and classical Greek and Roman conceptions of the glorious
past. If the Athenians liked to emphasize culture and letters, the
Laconians prized more the god who was still most connected to the
late Roman army. In all these time-tested strategies of praise, the
people of Hellas were walking a well-trodden path, whose value an
emperor like Constantine still knew how to appreciate.
Open
University of Cyprus g.deligiannakis@ouc.ac.cy
Zosimus
Book
Two
THE
longest period of the life of man is only equal to the intermediate
space between these games. For an age, or the space of one hundred
years, which we call aiw_n, is by the Romans called seculum. This is
an excellent remedy for the plague, consumption and other diseases;
of its origin receive this account. Valesus Valesius, from whom
descended the Valerian family, was a great man among the Sabines,
before whose house was a grove of very lofty trees, which were burnt
with lightning. He was thus induced to enquire the meaning of such a
portent. His children, moreover, falling sick, he consulted both the
physicians and the soothsayers. He was told by them, that by the
manner of the fire falling the gods were angry; which caused
Valesius wisely to attempt by sacrifices to appease them. He and his
wife being terrified, and expecting every moment the death of their
children, he prostrated himself before Vesta, and promised to offer
up two entire souls instead of their children, which were his own
and that of their mother. But turning to the grove that had been
burnt, he seemed to hear a voice that commanded hint to carry the
children to Tarentum, and there to warm some |36 Tiber water over
the fire of Pluto and Proserpine, and to give it to. the children to
drink. On hearing this he despaired the more of the recovery of the
children. For Tarentum was at a great distance, and besides there
was no Tiber water to be had there: and it caused him to entertain
more desponding thoughts of it, that the voice had told him the
water must be warmed on the altar of the infernal deities, at which
the soothsayers themselves were also startled. However, having heard
it the second time, he obeyed the command of the gods. Putting his
children on board a small river-vessel, he carried the fire along
with him. The children were ready to faint through heat, while he
sailed to that part of the river where the stream is most gentle;
and taking up his lodging at a shepherd's cottage, he heard a voice
say that he must stay at Tarentum, for that was the name of the
place, which had the same name with Tarentum near the Iapygian
promontory; On which Valesius, having paid due adoration to the gods
for his good fortune, ordered the pilot to put to shore, and,
landing, told the whole story to the shepherds. Presently taking
some water out of the Tiber, and heating it on an altar erected by
himself, he gave it to his children to drink; as soon as they had
drunk it they fell asleep and were perfectly cured. But in that
sleep they fancied that they saw a vision, which told them to offer
black victims to Pluto and Proserpine, and to spend three nights in
singing and dancing; which dream they communicated to their father,
and that it was a huge man of a godlike presence, who ordered them
to do it in the Campus Martius, where the horse-races are held.
Valesius, therefore, intending to build an altar in that place, set
the masons to dig, who found an altar ready made, on which was
inscribed. "To Pluto and Proserpine". By which being more
plainly instructed how to act, he sacrificed the black victims on
the altar, and kept the vigils in that place.
This
same altar, and the manner of sacrificing on it, thus originated.
The Romans and the Albans being at war, and both prepared for
battle, a monstrous figure appeared, clothed in a black skin, find
crying out, that Pluto and Proserpine commanded sacrifices to be.
made to them before they fought, it disappeared. On which, the
Romans, who were terrified at the sight, made an altar underground,
and when they had sacrificed on it, buried it at the depth of twenty
feet., in order that it might not be found by any but themselves.
Valesius having found it, according to command, sacrificed upon it,
and kept the vigils; for which he was called Manius Valerius
Tarentinus. For the Romans call the infernal gods Manes, and Valere
signifies to be in good health; |37 and the surname of Tarentinus he
derived from Tarentum where he sacrificed. Some time afterwards,
when a plague happened in the city, which was the year after the
expulsion of the kings, Publius Valerius Publicola sacrificed a
black bull and a black heifer to Pluto and Proserpine, by which he
freed the city from, the disease. He wrote on the altar this
inscription; "Publius Valerius Publicola dedicated fire to
Pluto and Proserpine in the Campus Martius, and exhibited spectacles
in honour of them, for the preservation of the Roman people."
But
afterwards, when they were oppressed with diseases and wars, which
was in the year 352 after the building of the city, the senate
endeavoured to deliver themselves from those calamities by means of
the oracles of the Sibyls, and therefore commanded those whose
office it was to consult those oracles. Having so done they told the
senate, that by sacrificing to Pluto and Proserpine an end would be
put to all their miseries. They therefore chose a convenient place,
which they consecrated to Pluto and Proserpine as they were
commanded, when Marcus Potitus was in his fourth consulate. And when
the ceremony was completed, being delivered from their grievances,
they again laid aside the altar in some extremity of the Campus
Martius. These rites were afterwards neglected for many years, until
some misfortunes befell them, and then Octavianus Augustus renewed
the games which had before been celebrated, when Lucius. Censorinus
and Marcus Manlius Puelius were consuls. They were again used under
the consulate of Lucius Censorinus and Caius Sabinus, when Ateius
Capito had explained the laws concerning them, and the fifteen men
who had the care of the books of the Sibyls had found out the time
when the sacrifice ought to be performed and the games held. After
Augustus was dead, these games were celebrated by Claudius, without
any regard to the due time. After him Domitian, who paid no regard
to what Claudius had done, computed the years from the time when
Augustus kept that festival, and seemed to observe their original
institution. And after them Severus in the hundred and tenth year
restored the same game, with his two sons Antoninus and Geta, when
Chilo and Libo were consuls. This is said to be the manner in which
these games were observed. The beadles went round at the time, and
invited all the people to a spectacle, such as they had never
witnessed and never would again. The Quindecimviri, in the summer
season, a little before the games began, sat in the Capitol, and in
the Palatine, temple, upon a tribunal, from which they distributed
to the people a kind of purifying |38 preparations, called
lustralia, which consisted of torches, brimstone and pitch, of which
none but freemen are allowed to participate. And when the people
assembled in the above mentioned places and in the temple of Diana,
which is on mount Aventine, each person brought wheat, barley, and
beans, and kept vigils to the fatal sisters. The time of the
festival being arrived, which was celebrated three successive days
and nights in the Campus Martins, the victims were consecrated near
the bank of the Tiber at Tarentum. There they sacrificed to several
deities; to Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, Latona, and to the Parcae,
Lucinae, Ceres, Pluto, and Proserpine, which was performed in this
order. The first night that the spectacles were exhibited, the
emperor with the Quindecimviri sacrificed three lambs on as many
altars purposely placed on the side of the river, where having
sprinkled the altars with blood he offered up the victims whole.
Then, having prepared a scene without a theatre, they placed a great
number of lights, and made a large fire, by which they sang a new
hymn, to render the games more solemn. They who performed these
ceremonies were rewarded for their labour with the first fruits of
their wheat, barley, and beans. For these were as I stated
distributed among the people. The following day they went up to the
Capitol, where the usual sacrifices were offered, and going from
thence to the appointed place, celebrated games in honour of Apollo
and Diana. On the next day, the principal ladies entered the Capitol
at the hour appointed by the oracle, where they conducted themselves
with due reverence: and at the third hour, in the temple of Apollo
near the palace, twenty-seven children of each sex, whose parents
were all living, sang hymns, and spoke in Greek and Latin; by which
the Roman empire was preserved. Besides these, however, there were
other rites observed by the divine command, which as long as they
were kept up preserved the Roman empire. And in confirmation of what
I have stated, I will add the oracle of the Sibyl, which has been
mentioned by others before my time;
But
when a hundred years and ten are past
Which
is the longest time man's age doth last,
Romans
! be sure (it is fatal to mistake
In
any point) due offerings to make
To
heaven, and see you bring the sacrifice
Into
that field which on the Tiber lies:
And
do it, in that season, when the night
Deprives
men least of the diurnal light.
After
sun set; Then to the Parcae pay
Your
homage; and upon their altars lay |39
Young
sheep and goats: next the Lucinae please
With
decent rites, who childing women ease,
Those
finished offer a black hog and sow
To
Tellus, for the product of the plow,
But
to Jove's altar bring the bulls milk-while
For
victims, in the day-time, not by night:
(For
heavenly deities accept of none
But
what are offer'd in the day alone.)
And
next to Juno sacrifice a cow
Spotless
all o'er, and pure as fulling snow,
Then
let Apollo, whom they call the sun,
And
Phoebus, have his equal honours done.
Whilst
in the temple Latin girls and boys
In
sacred hymns make a triumphant noise.
But
let them be apart, the girls to stand
And
sing on this, the boys on t'other hand;
Besides
this caution I must farther give
That
all the parents of them be alive.
As
for the married women, let them pray
To
Juno on their knees, that each one may
Have
their desire, both men and women too,
But
chiefly women. Then, let all of you
Bring
from your houses what is fit to bring,
(As
the first-fruits of every useful thing)
To
the immortal gods an offering.
And
let all that upon your altars lie,
Whence
you may men and women both supply.
But
to attend the gods be sure there be
Both
night and day a numerous company
Of
votaries both serious and free.
These
laws observ'd not Latium alone
But
Italy's extent your sway shall own.
Experience
assures us, that while these ceremonies were duly performed,
according to the direction of the oracles, the empire was secure,
and likely to retain its sovereignty over almost all the known
world; and on the other hand, when they were neglected, about the
time when Dioclesian laid down the imperial dignity, it fell to
decay, and degenerated insensibly into barbarism. That I state
nothing but truth I will prove from chronology. From the consulate
of Chilo and Libo, in which Severus celebrated the secular games, or
rites, to the ninth consulate of Dioclesian, and eighth of
Maximianus, was a hundred and one years. Then Dioclesian from an
emperor became a private individual, and Maximianus followed his
example. But when Constantine and Licinius were in their third
consulship, the 110 years were completed, and the festival ought to
have been kept |40 according to custom; but it was neglected, and
affairs consequently declined to their present unfortunate
condition.
Three
years after Dioclesian died, and the reigning emperors, Constantius
and Maximianus Gallerius declared Severus and Maximinus (who was
nephew to Gallerius), the Caesars, giving all Italy to Severus, and
the eastern provinces to Maximinus. Affairs being all regulated and
the barbarians quiet, since the Romans had been so successful
against them, Constantine, who was the son of Constantius by a
concubine, and had previously an ambition of being emperor (but was
more inflamed with that desire, since Severus and Maximinus had
acquired the name and honour of Caesars), was now resolved to leave
the place where he had resided, and to go to his father Constantius,
who was beyond the Alps, and generally in Britain. But being
apprehensive of seizure by the way, many persons being well
acquainted of his anxiety for dominion, he maimed all the horses
that were kept for public service, whenever he came to any stable
where they were kept, except what he took for his own use. He
continued to do this throughout his journey, by which means he
prevented those that pursued him from going further, while he
himself proceeded toward the country where his father was.
It
happened that Constantius died at that time; the guards, therefore,
who thought none of his legitimate children to be fit for the
imperial dignity, considered that Constantine was a person capable
of sustaining it, and conferred the honour upon him, in hopes of
being remunerated with handsome presents. When his effigy according
to custom was exhibited at Rome, Maxentius, the son of Maximianus
Herculius, could not endure the sight of Constantine's good fortune,
who was the son of a harlot, while himself, who was the son of so
great an emperor, remained at home in indolence, and his father's
empire was enjoyed by others. He therefore associated with himself
in the enterprise Marcellianus and Marcellus, two military tribunes,
and Lucianus, who distributed the swine's flesh, with which the
people of Rome were provided by the treasury, and the court-guards
called Praetoriani. By them he was promoted to the imperial throne,
having promised liberally to reward all that assisted him in it. For
this purpose they first murdered Abellius, because he, being prefect
of the city, opposed their enterprise.
Maximianus
Gallerius, when he had learned this, sent Severus Caesar against
Maxentius with an army. But while he advanced from Milan with
several legions of Moors, Maxentius corrupted his troops with money,
and even the prefect of the court, Anullinus, |41 and thereby
conquered him with great case. On which Severus fled to Ravenna,
which is a strong and populous city, provided with necessaries
sufficient for himself and soldiers. When Maximianus Herculius knew
this, he was doubtless greatly concerned for his son Maxentius, and
therefore, leaving Lucania where he then was, he went to Ravenna.
Finding that Severus could not by any means be forced out of this
city, it being well fortified, and stored with provisions, he
deluded him with false oaths, and persuaded him to go to Rome. But
on his way thither, coming to a place called the Three Tabernae, he
was taken by a stratagem of Maxentius and immediately executed.
Maximianus Gallerius could not patiently endure these injuries done
to Severus, and therefore resolved to go from the east to Rome, and
to punish, Maxentius as he deserved. On his arrival in Italy, he
found the soldiers about him so treacherous, that he returned into
the east without fighting a battle.
At
this period Maximianus Herculius, who lamented the tumults which
disturbed the public peace, came to Dioclesian who then lived at
Carnutum, a town of Gallia Celtica, and endeavoured to persuade him
to resume the empire, and not to suffer the government which they
had preserved so long and with so much difficulty to be exposed to
the madness and folly of those who had possessed themselves of it,
and who had already brought it near to ruin. But Dioclesian refused
to listen to him; for he wisely preferred his own quiet, and perhaps
foresaw the troubles that would ensue, being a man well versed in
matters of religion. Herculius therefore, perceiving that he could
not prevail with him, came to Ravenna, and so returned to the Alps
to meet Constantine, who lay there. And being naturally a busy
faithless man, he promised his daughter Fausta to Constantine, which
he performed, but persuaded him to pursue Maximianus Gallerius, who
was then leaving Italy, and to lay wait for Maxentius. To all which
Constantine agreed. He then left him, designing if possible to
recover the empire, as he hoped to create a quarrel between
Constantine and his son Maxentius. But while he attempted these
things, Maximianus Gallerius assumed Licinius, as his colleague in
the empire, with whose assistance he hoped to cope with Maxentius.
But while Gallerius deliberated on these affairs, he died of an
incurable wound, and Licinius then also claimed the sole dominion.
Maximianus Herculius endeavoured, as I have said, to recover the
empire by alienating the soldiers from Maxentius. For which purpose,
by gifts and insinuating addresses, having brought them over to him,
|42 he endeavoured to form a conspiracy against Constantine, in
which his soldiers were to join. But Fausta revealed it to
Constantine, and Herculius, who was now overborne by so many
disappointments, died of a distemper at Tarsus.
Maxentius,
having escaped this danger, and being of opinion that he was now
well enough established in the empire, sent persons into Africa, and
in particular to Carthage, to carry his image about that country.
But the soldiers in that country forbade it, out of regard to
Maximianus Gallerius, and the respect they had for his memory, until
they heard that Maxentius was coming to make war on them on the plea
of an insurrection. They then went to Alexandria, but meeting with a
great army with which they were not able to contend, they returned
to Carthage. Maxentius, being disturbed at this, resolved to sail
for Africa, and to punish the authors of the commotion. But the
soothsayers having sacrificed and given him ill omens, he was afraid
to go, not only because the entrails had that appearance, but also
lest Alexander, who was prefect of the court in Africa, should be
his enemy. To secure his passage thither from all doubt, he sent to
Alexander, desiring him to send his son as an hostage. But he,
suspecting that Maxentius did not desire his son for the mere
purpose of an hostage, but to deceive him, denied the request. After
this, Maxentius sending other agents to him to take him off by
treachery and stratagem, the plot was discovered; and the soldiers,
having then got a favourable opportunity to rebel, conferred the
purple robe on Alexander, though he was by birth not only a
Phrygian, but a timid cowardly man, and unlit for any difficult
undertaking, and was, moreover, of an advanced age.
At
that time a fire happened at Rome; whether it came out of the air or
earth is uncertain. It broke out in the temple of Fortune; and while
the people ran to extinguish it, a soldier, speaking blasphemy
against the goddess, was killed by the mob out of zeal, by which a
mutiny was occasioned among the soldiers. They would have destroyed
the whole city, had not Maxentius soon appeased their rage.
Maxentius after this sought every occasion to make war on
Constantine, and pretending grief for his father's death, of which
Constantine was the cause, he designed to go towards Rhaetia, which
is contiguous both to Gaul and Illyricum. For he imagined that he
should subdue Dalmatia and Illyricum, by the assistance of the
generals in those parts, and of the army of Licinius. But thinking
it better first to arrange affairs in Africa, he raised an army,
bestowing the command of it on Rufius Volusianus, prefect of the
court, and sent |43 them into Africa. He sent Zeno also along with
Rufius, who was a person not only expert in military affairs, but
esteemed for his courtesy and affability. On the first charge,
Alexander's troops retired on a body of men in the rear, nor was the
other party left unconquered by the enemy. Alexander himself was
taken and strangled.
The
war being thus at an end, a good opportunity was afforded to
sycophants and informers of impeaching all the persons in Africa,
who had good estates, as friends to Alexander: nor were any of the
accused spared, but some of them put to death, and others deprived
of all their possessions. After this he triumphed at Rome for the
mischief done at Carthage. Such was the state of the affairs of
Maxentius, who conducted himself with cruelty and licentiousness
towards all the inhabitants of Italy, and even to Rome itself.
Meantime Constantine, who had long been jealous of him, was then
much more disposed to contention. Having therefore raised an army
amongst the Barbarians, Germans, and Celts, whom he had conquered,
and likewise drawn a force out of Britain, amounting in the whole to
ninety thousand foot and eight thousand horse, he marched from the
Alps into Italy, passing those towns that surrendered without doing
them any damage, but taking by storm those which resisted. While he
wns making this progress, Maxentius had collected a much stronger
army; consisting of eighty thousand Romans and Italians, all the
Tuscans on the sea coast, forty thousand men from Carthage, besides
what the Sicilians sent him; his whole force amounting to a hundred
and seventy thousand foot and eighteen thousand horse.
Both
being thus prepared, Maxentius threw a bridge over the Tiber, which
was not of one entire piece, but divided into two parts, the centre
of the bridge being made to fasten with irons, which might be drawn
out upon occasion. He gave orders to the workmen, that as soon as
they saw the army of Constantine upon the juncture of the bridge,
they should draw out the iron fastenings, that the enemy who stood
upon it might fall into the river.
Constantine,
advancing with his army to Rome, encamped in a field before the
city, which was broad and therefore convenient for cavalry.
Maxentius in the mean time shut himself up within the walls, and
sacrificed to the gods, and, moreover, consulted the Sibylline
oracles concerning the event of the war. Finding a prediction, that
whoever designed any harm to the Romans should die a miserable
death, he applied it to himself, because he withstood those that
came against Rome, and wished to take it. His application indeed
proved just. For when Maxentius drew out |44 his army before the
city, and was marching over the bridge that he himself had
constructed, an infinite number of owls flew down and covered the
wall. When Constantine saw this, he ordered his men to stand to
their arms. And the two armies being drawn up opposite to each
other, Constantine sent his cavalry against that of the enemy, whom
they charged with such impetuosity that they threw them into
disorder. The signal being given to the infantry, they likewise
marched in good order towards the enemy. A furious battle having
commenced, the Romans themselves, and their foreign allies, were
unwilling to risk their lives, as they wished for deliverance from
the bitter tyranny with which they were burdened; though the other
troops were slain in great numbers, being either trod to death by
the horse, or killed by the foot.
As
long as the cavalry kept their ground, Maxentius retained some
hopes, but when they gave way, he tied with the rest over the bridge
into the city. The beams not being strong enough to bear so great a
weight, they broke; and Maxentius, with the others, was carried with
the stream down the river.
When
the news of this victory was reported in the city, none dared to
shew any joy for what had happened, because many thought it was an
unfounded report. But when the head of Maxentius was brought upon a
spear, their fear and dejection were changed to joy and pleasure. On
this occasion Constantine punished very few, and they were only some
few of the nearest friends of Maxentius; but he abolished the
praetorian troops, and destroyed the fortresses in which they used
to reside. At length, having arranged all things in the city, he
went towards Gallia Celtica; and on his way sent for Licinius to
Milan, and gave him in marriage his sister Constantia, whom he had
formerly promised him, when he wished him to unite with himself
against Maxentius. That solemnity over, Constantine proceeded
towards the Celtae. It was not long before a civil war broke out
between Licinius and Maximianus, who had a severe engagement, in
which Licinius at first appeared to have the disadvantage, but he
presently rallied and put Maximianus to flight. This emperor,
travelling through the east into Egypt, in hopes of raising a force
to renew the war, died at Tarsus.
The
empire being thus devolved on Constantine and Licinius, they soon
quarrelled. Not because Licinius gave any cause for it, but that
Constantine, in his usual manner, was unfaithful to his agreement,
by endeavouring to alienate from Licinius some nations that belonged
to his dominions. By this means an open rupture ensued, and both
prepared for war. Licinius |45 took up his head-quarters at Cibalis,
a city of Pannonia, which stands on a hill; the road to which is
rugged and narrow. The greatest part of this road is through a deep
morass, and the remainder up a mountain, on which stands the city.
Below it extends a spacious plain, which entertains the view with a
boundless prospect. On this Licinius fixed his camp, and extended
the body of his army under the hill, that his flanks might be
protected from the enemy. Constantine in the meantime drew up his
men near the mountain, placing the horse in front, thinking that to
be the best disposition lest the enemy should fall upon the foot,
who moved but slowly, and hinder their advance. Having done this, he
immediately gave the charge, and attacked the enemy. This engagement
was one of the most furious that was ever fought; for when each side
had expended their darts, they fought a long time with spears and
javelins; and after the action had continued from morning to night,
the right wing, where Constantine himself commanded, began to
prevail. The enemy being routed, Licinius's troops, seeing him
mounted and ready to fly, dared not stay to eat their portions, but
left behind them all their cattle and provisions, taking only as
much food as would suffice for one night, and marched with great
precipitation along with Licinius to Sirmium, a city of Pannonia, by
which runs a river which discharges itself into the Ister. In
passing this town he broke down the bridge over the river, and
marched on with an intention to levy troops in Thrace.
Constantine,
having taken Cibalis, and Sirmium, and all the towns that Licinius
had abandoned, sent five thousand men in pursuit of him. But as
these were ignorant of the course he had taken, they could not
overtake him. Constantine however, having rebuilt the bridge over
the Saus, which Licinius had broken down, was with his army almost
at his heels. Having entered Thrace, he arrived at the plain where
Licinius lay encamped. On the night of his arrival there he
marshalled his army, and gave orders for his soldiers to be ready
for battle by day-break. As soon as it was light, Licinius,
perceiving Constantine with his army, drew up his forces also,
having been joined by Valens, whom he styled Caesar, after the
battle of Cibalis. When the armies engaged, they first fought with
bows at a distance; but when their arrows were spent, they began to
use their javelins, and poignards. Thus the battle continued very
obstinately for a considerable time, until those whom Constantine
had sent in pursuit of Licinius descended from an eminence upon the
armies while they were engaged. These wheeled round the hill |46
before they arrived at them, deeming it best to join their own party
from the higher ground, and to encompass the enemy. The troops of
Licinius, being aware of them, courageously withstood against them
all, so that many thousands were slain on both sides, and the
advantage was equal, till the signal was given for both to retire.
Next day they agreed on a truce, and entered into an alliance with
each other, on condition that Constantine should possess Illyricum
and all the nations westward, and that Licinius should have Thrace
and the east; but that Valens, whom Licinius had made Caesar, should
be put to death, because be was said to be the author of all the
mischief which had happened. Having done this, and sworn on both
sides to observe the conditions, Constantine conferred the rank and
title of Caesar on Crispus, his son by a concubine called Minervina,
who was as yet but a youth, and on Constantine, who was born but a
few days before at Arelatum. At the same time Licinianus, the son of
Licinius, who was twenty months of age, was declared Caesar, Thus
ended the second war.
Constantine
hearing that the Sauromatae, who dwelt near the Palus Maeotis, had
passed the Ister in boats, and pillaged his territories, led his
army against them, and was met by the barbarians, under their king
Rausimodus. The Sauromatae attacked a town which was sufficiently
garrisoned, but its wall was built in the lower part of stone, and
in the upper part of wood. They therefore thought that they might
easily take the town by burning all the wooden part of the wall; and
with that view set it on fire, and in the mean time shot at those
who stood on the walls. The defenders threw down darts and stones
upon the barbarians, and killed many of them; and Constantine then
coming up and falling on them from a higher ground, slew a great
number, took wore alive, and put the rest to flight. Rausimodus,
having lost the greater part of his army, took shipping and crossed
the Ister, with an intention of once more plundering the Roman
dominions. Constantine, hearing of his design, followed them over
the Ister, and attacked them in a thick wood upon a hill, to which
they had fled, where he killed many of them, amongst whom was
Rausimodus. He also took many of them prisoners, giving quarter to
those that would submit; and returned to his head-quarters with an
immense number of captives. These he distributed into the different
cities, and then came to Thessalonica, where having constructed a
harbour (this city not possessing one before), he made new
preparations for war against Licinius. For this purpose, he fitted
out two hundred galleys of war; each with thirty oars, |47 besides
two thousand transport vessels, and raised a force of a hundred and
twenty thousand foot, and ten thousand horsemen and sailors.
Licinius, hearing of the great preparations of Constantine, sent
messengers to every nation, commanding them to prepare a sufficient
number of men for the navy, besides horse and foot soldiers. The
Egyptians therefore sent out eighty galleys, the Phoenicians an
equal number, the Ionians and Dorians of Asia sixty, the Cyprians
thirty, the Carians twenty, the Bithynians thirty, and the Africans
fifty. His foot-soldiers amounted to nearly a hundred and fifty
thousand, but his horse only to fifteen thousand, which were sent to
him from Phrygia and Cappadocia. Constantine's navy lay at Piraeus,
that of Licinius in the Hellespont. When they had thus established
their naval and military forces, Licinius encamped at Adrianople in
Thrace, whilst Constantine sent for his navy from Piraeus, which was
built and manned chiefly in. Greece. Advancing with his infantry
from Thessalonica, he encamped on the bank of the river Hebrus,
which runs to the left of Adrianople. At the same time, Licinius
drew up his army in order of battle, extending from a mountain which
is above the town two hundred stadia, as far as the junction of
another river with the Hebrus; thus the armies continued opposite to
each other for several days. Constantine. observing where the river
was least broad, concerted this plan. He ordered his men to bring
trees from the mountain, and to tie ropes around them, as if he
intended to throw a bridge over the river for the passage of his
army. By this stratagem he deluded the enemy, and, ascending a hill
on which were thick woods sufficient to conceal any that were in
them, he planted there five thousand archers and eight hundred
horse. Having done this, he crossed the Hebrus at the narrowest
place, and so surprised the enemy that many fled with all their
speed, while others, who were amazed at his unexpected approach,
were struck with wonder at his coming over so suddenly. In the
meantime, the rest of his army crossed the river in security, and a
great slaughter commenced. Nearly thirty thousand fell; and about
sunset Constantine took their camp, while Licinius, with all the
forces he could muster, hastened through Thrace to his ships.
As
soon as day appeared, the whole army of Licinius, or as many of them
us had fled to the neighbouring mountains and vallies, together with
those that Licinius through haste had left behind him, surrendered
themselves to Constantine. Licinius being arrived at Byzantium,
Constantine followed and besieged him in that city. His navy, as
before related, had now left Piraeus and |48 lay at Macedon. He
therefore sent orders to his admirals to bring the ships into the
Hellespont. This being effected according to the command of
Constantine, the officers of his navy thought it not prudent to
engage with more than eighty of their best sailing vessels, which
were gallies of thirty oars each, because the place was too narrow
for the reception of a greater number. Upon which Abantus, the
admiral of Licinius, making use of two hundred ships, despised the
smallness of the enemy's fleet, which he thought he could easily
surround. But the signals on both sides being given, and the vessels
meeting stern to stern, the seamen of Constantine managed their
ships so as to engage in good order; but the ships of Abantus,
sailing against the enemy without any order, and being confined by
the narrowness of the place, became exposed to the enemy, who sunk
and otherwise destroyed them. Many were thrown overboard; till at
length night put an end to the engagement. The fleets then separated
and put in at different places, the one at Eleus in Thrace, and the
other at the Aeantian harbour. The following day, the wind blowing
hard from the north, Abantus put out from the Aeantian port and
prepared for action. But the galleys of fifty oars being come to
Eleus by order of the admirals, Abantus was alarmed at the number of
vessels, and hesitated whether to sail against the enemy. About noon
the north wind subsided; the south wind then blew with such
violence, that the ships of Licinius, which lay on the Asiatic
coast, were some driven on shore, others broken against the rocks,
and others foundered with all on board. In this affair five thousand
men perished, together with a hundred and thirty ships filled with
men, whom Licinius had sent out of Thrace to Asia accompanied by a
part of his army; Byzantium being too small to contain all that were
besieged with Licinius. The sea-fight being thus concluded, Abantus
effected his escape with only four ships into Asia. The navy of
Constantine, having arrived in the Hellespont laden with abundance
of provisions and stores for his troops, weighed anchor in order to
join in the siege of Byzantium, and to blockade the city by sea. The
foot-soldiers of Licinius, being alarmed at the sight of such a
navy, procured ships in which they sailed to Eleus.
Meantime
Constantine continued intent upon the siege, and raised a mound of
equal height, with the wall, on which he placed wooden towers that
overlooked the wall, from which his soldiers shot: those who
defended it, in order that he might with greater security bring
battering ranis and other engines of war near it. By these means he
thought himself sure to take the city. At |49 which Licinius, being
terrified, and not knowing how to act, resolved to leave Byzantium,
and the weaker part of his army therein, and to take with him only
such men as were fit for active service, and had given proofs of
their attachment to himself, and to hasten without delay to
Chalcedon in Bithynia. He flattered himself that another army might
be raised in Asia, which would enable him again to contend with his
adversary. Arriving therefore at Chalcedon, and, having appointed
Martinianus to the command of the court guards, whom the Romans call
Magister officiorum, his associate in this dangerous enterprize, he
declared him Caesar, and sent him with an army to Lampsacus, to
hinder the passage of the enemy from Thrace into the Hellespont. He
posted his own men on the hills and passes about Chalcedon.
While
Licinius was thus occupied, Constantine, who had a great number of
transports as well as warlike vessels, and was desirous to make use
of them in crossing over and possessing himself of the opposite
shore, fearing that the Bithynian coast might be inaccessible to
ships of burden, immediately constructed some small vessels, with
which he sailed to the sacred promontory, which lies at the entrance
of the Pontus, two hundred stadia from Chalcedon. He there landed
his army, which, having done, he drew them up upon some adjacent
hills. Licinius, though he then saw that Bithynia was already in the
hands of his enemy, was rendered so desperate by danger, that he
sent for Martinianus from Lampsacus, and in order to encourage his
men to fight, told them that he himself would lead them. Having said
what he thought necessary to encourage them, he drew them up in
order of battle, and marching out of the city, met the enemy, who
were prepared for him. A sharp engagement taking place between
Chalcedon and the sacred promontory, Constantine had the
superiority; for he fell on the enemy with such resolution, that of
a hundred and thirty thousand men, scarcely thirty thousand escaped.
When the Byzantines heard of this, they immediately threw open their
gates to Constantine, as did the Chalcedonians also. Licinius after
this defeat went to Nicomedia with what horse were left him, and a
few thousands of foot.
At
this time a Persian named Hormisdas, of the royal family, came over
to Constantine for refuge, under these circumstances. His father had
been king of Persia. He was once celebrating his own birth-day after
the Persian manner, when Hormisdas entered the palace, bringing with
him a large quantity of venison. But as the guests at the table did
not rise, and pay him the respect and honour due to him, he became
enraged, and told them he would |50 punish them with the death of
Marsyas. This saying most of them did not understand, because it
related to a foreign story; but one of them, who had lived in
Phrygia, and had heard the story of Marsyas, explained to them the
meaning of Hormisdas's menace, while they sat at table. It was
therefore so treasured up in their recollection, that when his
father died, they remembered his threat, and chose his younger
brother king, though according to law the elder should be preferred
above the other children. Not contented with that, they put
Hormisdas in chains, and confined him on a hill which lies before
their city. But after some time had elapsed, his wife effected his
escape in this manner. She procured a large fish, and put a file in
its belly, and, sewing it up again, delivered it to the most trusty
of her eunuchs, charging him to tell Hormisdas, that he must eat the
fish when no one was present, and use what he should find in its
belly for his escape. When she had formed this contrivance, she sent
several camels loaded with wine, and abundance of meat, to entertain
her husband's keepers. While they were enjoying the feast she gave
them, Honnisdas cut open the fish, and found the file; having with
that filed off the shackles from his legs, he put on the robe of the
eunuch, and passed through the midst of his keepers, who were by
that time perfectly intoxicated. Taking one of the eunuchs along
with him, he fled to the king of Armenia, who was his particular
friend. By these means he got safe to Constantine, who shewed him
all possible kindness and respect.
But
Licinius being besieged by Constantine at Nicomedia also, knew not
what to do, being sensible that he had not an army equal to engage.
Going, therefore, out of the city, he submitted himself to
Constantine, and brought him the purple robe, proclaiming him his
emperor and lord, and intreating pardon for what was past. He
presumed that he certainly should escape with life, because
Constantine had sworn to his wife that he would spare him. But
Constantine delivered Martinianus to the guards that they might put
him to death, and sent Licinius to Thessalonica, as if he were to
live there in security. However, he afterwards broke his oath, 1
which was usual with Constantine, and caused him to be executed. |51
Now
that the whole empire had fallen into the hands of Constantine, he
no longer concealed his evil disposition and vicious inclinations,
but acted as he pleased, without controul. He indeed used the
ancient worship of his country 2; though not so much out of honour
or veneration as of necessity. Therefore he believed the
soothsayers, who were expert in their art, as men who predicted the
truth concerning all the great actions which he ever performed. But
when he came to Rome, he was filled with pride and arrogance. He
resolved to begin his impious actions at home. For he put to death
his son Crispus, stiled (as I mentioned) Caesar, on suspicion of
debauching his mother-in-law Fausta, without any regard to the ties
of nature. And when his own mother Helena expressed much sorrow for
this atrocity, lamenting the young man's death with great
bitterness, Constantine under pretence of comforting her, applied a
remedy worse than the disease. For causing a bath to be heated to an
extraordinary degree, he shut up Fausta in it, and a short time
after took her out dead. Of which his conscience accusing him, as
also of violating his oath, he went to the priests to be purified
from his crimes. But they told him, that there was no kind of
lustration that was sufficient to clear him of such enormities. A
Spaniard, named Aegyptius, very familiar with the court-ladies,
being at Rome, happened to fall into converse with Constantine, and
assured him, that the Christian doctrine would teach him how to
cleanse himself from all his offences, and that they who received it
were immediately absolved from all their sins. Constantine had no
sooner heard this than he easily believed what was told him, and
forsaking the rites of his country, received those which Aegyptius
offered him; and for the first instance of his impiety, suspected
the truth of divination. For since many fortunate occurrences had
been thereby predicted to him, and really had happened according to
such prediction, he was afraid that others might be told something
which should fall out to his misfortune; and for that |52 reason
applied himself to the abolishing of the practice. And on a
particular festival, when the army was to go up to the Capitol, he
very indecently reproached the solemnity, and treading the holy
ceremonies, as it were, under his feet, incurred the hatred of the
senate and people 3.
Being
unable to endure the curses of almost the whole city, he sought for
another city as large as Rome, where he might build himself a
palace. Having, therefore, discovered a convenient scite between
Troas and old Ilium, he there accordingly laid a foundation, and
built part of a wall to a considerable height, which may still be
seen by any that sail towards the Hellespont. Afterwards changing
his purpose, he left his work unfinished, and went to Byzantium,
where he admired the situation of the place, and therefore resolved,
when he had considerably enlarged it, to make it a residence worthy
of an emperor. The city stands on a rising ground, which is part of
the isthmus inclosed on each side by the Ceras and Propontis, two
arms of the sea. It had formerly a gate, at the end of the porticos,
which the emperor Sevtrus built after he was reconciled to the
Byzantines, who had provoked his resentment by admiting his enemy
Niger into their city. At that time the wall reached down from the
west side of the hill at the temple of Venus to the sea side,
opposite to Chrysopolis. On the north side of the hill it reached to
the dock, and beyond that to the shore, which lies opposite the
passage into the Euxine sea. This narrow neck of land, between there
and the Pontus, is nearly three hundred stadia in length. This was
the extent of the old city. Constantine built a circular
market-place where the old gate had stood, and surrounded it with
double roofed porticos, erecting two great arches of Praeconnesian
marble against each other, through which was a passage into the
porticos of Severus, and out of the old city. Intending to increase
the magnitude of the city, he surrounded it. with a wall which was
fifteen stadia beyond the former, and inclosed all the isthmus from
sea to sea. Having thus enlarged the city, he built a palace little
inferior to that of Rome, and very much embellished the hippodrome,
or horse-course, taking into it the temple of Castor and Pollux,
whose statues are still standing in the porticos of the hippodrome.
He placed on one side of it the tripod that belonged to the Delphian
Apollo, on which stood an image of the deity. |53 As there was at
Byzantium a very large market-place, consisting of four porticos, at
the end of one of them, to which a numerous flight of steps ascends,
he erected two temples; in one of which was placed the statue of
Rhea, the mother of the gods, which Jason's companions had formerly
fixed on Mount Dindymus, which is near the city of Cyzicus. It is
said, that through his contempt of religion he impaired this statue
by taking away the lions that were on each side, and, changing the
position of the hands. For it formerly rested each hand on a lion,
but was now altered into a supplicating posture, looking towards the
city, and seeming to observe what the people were doing. In the
other temple he placed the statue of the Fortune of Rome. He
afterwards built convenient dwellings for the senators who followed
him from Rome. He engaged in no more wars; and even when the
Thaifalians, a Scythian tribe, made an incursion into his dominions,
he not only neglected to lead his army against them, but after he
had lost most of his troops, and saw the enemy plundering all before
them, even to his very intrenchments, was contented to save himself
by flight.
When
he was delivered from the distractions of war, he yielded himself to
voluptuousness, and distributed to the people of Byzantium a present
of corn, which is continued to this day. As he expended the public
treasure in unnecessary and unprofitable buildings, he likewise
built some which in a short time were taken down again, because
being erected hastily they could not stand long. He likewise made a
great change in the ancient magistracy. Till that time there had
been only two prefects of the court, whose authority was equal; not
only were the court soldiers under their controul, but those also
which guarded the city, and who were stationed in its neighbourhood.
The person who had the office of prefect of the court, which was
esteemed the next post of honour to that of emperor, distributed the
gifts of corn, and punished all offences against military
discipline, as he thought convenient. Constantine altered this good
institution, and of one office or magistracy formed four. To one of
those prefects he committed all Egypt and Pentapolis in Libya, and
all the east as far as Mesopotamia, with Cilicia, Cappadocia,
Armenia, and all the coast from Pamphylia to Trapezus and the
castles near Phasis; to the same person was given all Thrace and
Moesia, as far as the mountains Haemus and Rhodope, and the town of
Doberus. He likewise added Cyprus and all the Cyclades, except
Lemnos, Imbrus, and Samothracia. To another he assigned Macedon,
Thessaly, Crete, and Greece, with the adjacent islands, |54 both the
Epiruses, the Illyrians, the Dacians, the Triballi, and the
Pannonians as far as Valeria, besides the upper Moesia. To the third
prefect he entrusted Italy and Sicily, with the neighbouring
islands, and Sardinia and Corsica, together with all Africa westward
of the Syrtes. To the fourth he committed all beyond the Alps, Gaul,
Spain, and Britain. Having thus divided the power of these prefects,
he invented other methods likewise of diminishing their influence.
For as there used to be in all places, centurions, tribunes, and
generals, he appointed officers called Magistri militum, some over
the horse and others over the foot, to whom he gave authority to
discipline the soldiers, and punish those that had offended, by
which the power of the prefects was diminished. That this innovation
was productive of great injury to public affairs both in peace and
war I will immediately prove 4. The prefects had hitherto collected
the tribute in all places by their officers, and disposed of it in
war expences, the soldiers at the same time being subject to their
authority, whose offences they punished at discretion. Under these
circumstances, the soldiers, considering that the same person who
gave them their pay had the infliction of punishments whenever they
offended, did not dare to act contrary to their duty, for fear of
their stipend being withheld, and of being duly punished. But now
since one person is paymaster and another inspector of discipline,
they act according to their own inclination.
Constantine
likewise adopted another measure, which gave the Barbarians free
access into the Roman dominions. For the Roman empire, as I have
related, was, by the care of Dioclesian, protected on its remote
frontiers by towns and fortresses, in which soldiers were placed;
it. was consequently impossible for the Barbarians to pass them,
there being always a sufficient force to oppose their inroads. But
Constantine destroyed that security by removing the greater part of
the soldiers from those barriers of |55 the frontiers, and placing
them in towns that had no need of defenders; thus depriving those
who were exposed to the Barbarians of all defence, and oppressing
the towns that were quiet with so great a multitude of soldiers,
that many of them were totally forsaken by the inhabitants. He
likewise rendered his soldiers effeminate by accustoming them to
public spectacles and pleasures. To speak in plain terms, he was the
first cause of the affairs of the empire declining to their present
miserable state.
However,
I must not omit to relate, that having given to his three sons,
Constantine, Constantius, and Constans, the title of Caesars, he so
greatly enlarged the city of Constantinople, that many of the
succeeding emperors, who made it their residence, drew to it too
great a number of inhabitants, who flocked there from all parts, as
soldiers, merchants, and in other occupations. On this account, its
walls were rendered more capacious than those which Constantine
built, and the buildings were permitted to be placed so near to each
other, that the inhabitants are exposed to much inconvenience and
danger both in their houses and in the streets. Besides this a
considerable portion of the sea was added to the land by driving
down piles, thus forming dry ground, on which was built a sufficient
number of houses to form of themselves a considerable city.
I
have, indeed, often wondered, since the city of Byzantium is become
so great that no other is equal to it either in felicity or
magnitude, that our ancestors had not any prophecy concerning its
good fortune. Having directed my thoughts some time to this enquiry,
I consulted many historians and collections of oracles, and at
length, after much difficulty and taking great pains to interpret
them, discovered an oracle, which is attributed to Sibylla
Erythraea, or Phaello of Epirus. Nicomedes the son of Prusias
relying upon this, and interpreting it to his own advantage, by the
counsel of Attalus made war upon his father. The oracle I speak of
is this:
Thou
among sheep, O King of Thrace, shalt dwell,
But
breed a savage lion, fierce and fell,
Who
all the product of thy land shall spoil,
And
reap thy fruitful harvest without toil.
But
thou shalt not enjoy thy honour long,
Torn
by wild dogs, which shall about thee throng.
Then
a fierce, hungry, sleeping wolf shall thou
Awake,
to whom thy conquered neck shall bow.
Next
a whole herd of wolves Bithynia's land,
By
Jove's decree shall ravage, and the hand
To
which obedience the Byzantines yield
Shall
in short time her royal sceptre wield. |56
Bless'd
Hellespont! whose buildings by the hand
Of
heaven were rais'd, and by its order stand.
Yet
shall that cruel wolf my forces fear,
For
all shall know me, who inhabit here.
My
sire's designs no longer I'll conceal
But
heaven's intent in oracles reveal.
Thrace
shall e're long a monstrous birth produce,
Baneful
to all by course of time and use:
A
swelling ulcer by the sea shall grow,
Which
when it breaks, with putrid gore shall flow.
This
oracle, in an obscure manner, points out all the particular evils
that were to befall Bythynia through the heavy impositions laid upon
it; and that the government was to devolve on those to whom the
Byzantines were then subject, in this distich:
————————
and the hand
To
which obedience the Byzantines yield
Shall
in short time her royal sceptre wield.
And
though the events foretold did not occur until many ages afterwards,
no one can suppose that the prophecy related to any other place; for
all time is short in respect of the deity, who exists through all
ages. This conjecture I have formed both from the words of the
prophecy and from the event. Should any believe that this prophecy
has a different import, they have liberty to enjoy their own
opinion.
Constantine,
having done this, not only continued to waste the revenue of the
empire in useless expences, and in presents to mean and worthless
persons, but oppressed those who paid the tributes, and enriched
those that were useless to the state. For he mistook prodigality for
magnificence 5. He also laid a tax of gold and silver on all
merchants and tradesmen, even to the lowest classes, nor did he even
spare the poorest prostitute 6. Thus, on the return of every fourth
year, when the tax was to be paid, nothing could be heard through
the whole city but lamentations and complaints. When the time
arrived |57 nothing but whips and tortures, provided for those who
on account of their extreme poverty could not pay the money. Mothers
were even forced to part with their children, and fathers to
prostitute their daughters, for money to satisfy the collectors of
this exaction. Wishing likewise to invent some trouble for the rich,
he summoned them all and made them praetors, for which dignity he
demanded a sum of money. Upon this account when they who had the
management of this affair arrived in any city the people fled into
other countries, in the fear of gaining this honour with the loss of
all they possessed. He had the schedules of all the best estates,
and imposed a tribute on each of them, which he called a purse. With
these exactions he exhausted all the towns; for they continued in
force so long even after the time of Constantine, that the cities
were completely drained of money, and many of them forsaken by their
inhabitants.
After
Constantine had oppressed and tormented the people in these various
modes, he died of a disease, and was succeeded by his three sons,
who were not born of Fausta the daughter of Maximianus Herculius,
but of another woman, whom he had put to death for adultery. They
devoted themselves more to the pleasures of youth than to the
service of the state. They began by dividing the nations between
them. Constantine the eldest, and Constans the youngest, having for
their share all beyond the Alps, together with Italy and Illyricum,
the countries bordering on the Euxine sea and all that belonged to
Carthage in Africa; Constantius obtained all Asia, the east, and
Egypt. There were likewise others who shared in the government;
Dalmatius, whom Constantine made Caesar, Constantius his brother,
and Anabllianus, who had all worn robes of purple embroidered with
gold, and were promoted to the order of Nobilissimates by
Constantine, from respect to their being of his own family.
The
empire being thus divided, Constantius who appeared to take pains
not to fall short of his father in impiety, began by shedding the
blood of his nearest relations. He first caused Constantius, his
father's brother, to be murdered by the soldiers; next to whom he
treated Dalmatius in the same manner, as also Optatus whom
Constantine had raised to the rank of a Nobilissimate. Constantine
indeed first introduced that order, and made a law, that every
Nobilissimate should have precedence over of the prefects of the
court. At that time, Ablabius prefect of the court was also put to
death; and fate was just in his punishment, because he had concerted
the murder of Sopatrus the philosopher, from envy of his familiarity
with Constantine. Being unnatural |58 towards all his relations, he
included Anaballianus with the rest, suborning the solders to cry
out, that they would have no governors but the children of
Constantine. Such were the exploits of Constantius.
In
the mean time Constantine and Constans were disputing for that part
of Africa which belonged to Carthage, and for Italy. Constans, who
wished to surprise, his brother, concealed his enmity for three
years. He took occasion, when he was in a province that was attached
to himself, to send soldiers to him, on pretence of assisting him in
the war against the Persians, but in reality to assassinate him by
surprise. This they accordingly performed. Such was the end of
Constantine.
Constans,
having thus removed his brother, exercised every species of cruelty
toward his subjects, exceeding the most intolerable tyranny. He
purchased some well favoured Barbarians, and had others with him as
hostages, to whom he gave liberty to harrass his subjects as they
pleased, in order to gratify his vicious disposition. In this manner
he reduced all the nations that were subject to him to extreme
misery. This gave uneasiness to the court guards, who perceiving
that he was much addicted to hunting placed themselves under the
conduct of Marcellinus prefect of the treasury, and Magnentius who
commanded the Joviani and Herculiani (two legions so termed), and
formed a plot against him in the following manner. Marcellinus
reported that he meant to keep the birth-day of his sons, and
invited many of the superior officers to a feast. Amongst the rest
Magnentius rose from table and left the room; he presently returned,
and as it were in a drama stood before thorn clothed in an imperial
robe. Upon this all the guests saluted him with the title of king,
and the inhabitants of Augustodunum, where it was done, concurred in
the same sentiment. This transaction being rumoured abroad, the
country people flocked into the city; while at the same time a party
of Illyrian cavalry who came to supply the Celtic legions, joined
themselves with those that were concerned in the enterprize. When
the officers of the army were met together, and heard the leaders of
the conspiracy proclaim their new emperor, they scarcely knew the
meaning of it; they all, however, joined in the acclamation, and
saluted Magnentius with the appellation of Augustus. When this
became known to Constans, he endeavoured to escape to a small town
called Helena, which lies near the Pyrenean mountains. He was taken
by Gaison, who was sent with some other select persons for that
purpose, and being destitute of all aid, was killed. Magnentius thus
gained the empire, and possessed himself all |59 the nations beyond
the Alps, and the whole of Italy. Vetranio, general of the Pannonian
army, upon hearing of the good fortune of Magnentius, was himself
inflamed with the same desire, and was declared emperor by the
legions that were with him, at Mursa, a city of Pannonia. While
affairs were thus situated, the Persians plundered the eastern
countries, particularly Mesopotamia. But Constantine, though he was
defeated by the Persians, yet resolved to subdue the factions of
Magnentius and Vetranio. While he was forming these resolutions, and
was very intent on warlike preparations, Magnentius still remaining
in Gallia Celtica, Nepotianus, nephew to Constantius, by his sister
Eutropia, collected a band of persons addicted to robbery and all
kinds of debauchery, with whom he came to Rome, and appeared in an
imperial dress. Anicetius, whom Magnentius had made prefect of the
court, armed some of the common people, and led them out of the city
to engage with Nepotianus. A sharp conflict ensued between them. The
Romans being undisciplined, and observing no order, were easily
routed; and when the prefect saw them fly, he shut the gates, for
fear the enemy should follow them into the city. The troops of
Nepotianus pursued them, and as they had no way of escape, killed
every man. In a few days after, Magnentius sent an army under the
command of Marcellinus, and Nepotianus was put to death.
Meantime
Constantius advanced from the east against Magnentius, but deemed it
best first to win over Vetranio to his interest, as it was difficult
to oppose two rebels at once. On the other hand, Magnentius used
great endeavours to make Vetranio his friend, and thus to put an end
to the war against Constantius. Both therefore sent agents to
Vetranio, who chose to adopt the friendship of Constantius rather
than that of Magnentius. The ambassadors of Magnentius returned
without effecting their purpose. Constantius desired that both
armies might join, to undertake the war against Magnentius. To which
proposal Vetranio readily assented; and they seated themselves on a
throne provided for the occasion. Constantius, speaking first
according to his dignity, endeavoured to remind the soldiers of his
father's munificence, and of the oaths they had taken to he true to
his children. He then told them, that they ought not to suffer
Magnentius to go unpunished, who had murdered the son of
Constantine, with whom they had fought many battles, and had been
generously remunerated. When the soldiers heard this, having been
previously corrupted by valuable presents, they cried out, that they
would have no mock emperors, and immediately began to strip the
purple from Vetranio, and pulled him from the throne |60 with the
determination to reduce him to a private station. Constantius would
not suffer them to injure him, and therefore sent him into Bithynia,
where he allowed him a competency for life. He had not remained
there long without employment before he died.
Constantius,
having so well succeeded in his design against Vetranio, marched
against Magnentius, having first conferred the title of Caesar on
Gallus, the son of his uncle, and brother to Julian who was
afterwards emperor, and given him in marriage his sister Constantia;
either in order that he might oppose the Persians, or as seems more
probable, that he might have an opportunity of taking him off. He
and his brothers were the only remaining persons of the family whom
Constantius had not put to death, as I have related. When he had
clothed Gallus with the Caesarean robe, and appointed Lucilianus
general in the Persian war, he marched towards Magnentius with his
own troops and those of Vetranio in one body. Magnentius, on the
other hand, resolved to meet him with a larger force. He declared
his kinsman Caesar, and appointed him to govern the nations beyond
the Alps. The armies meeting in Pannonia, and coming near to each
other at a town called Mursa, Magnentius placed an ambuscade in the
defiles near to Adrana, and sent a messenger to the officers of the
army of Constantine to retard their march, saying, that they might
proceed to Siscia, where he intended to give them battle, the fields
in that neighbourhood being spacious and open. When Constantius
heard this, he was much pleased that he was to fight in a place
where there was room for the cavalry to manoeuvre, being superior to
the enemy in that kind of force. He accordingly led his army to
Siscia. As they were marching unarmed and without order, not
suspecting any thing, the troops that lay in ambush attacked them,
and blocked up their passage with stones, which they threw upon them
in such quantities that great part of them were killed.
Magnentius,
perceiving that many of his enemies were thus slain, was so elated,
that being now unwilling to defer the war, he mustered his forces,
and immediately marched towards Pannonia. Arriving in the plain
before Cius, through the midst of which runs the river Draus, which,
passing by Noricum and Pannonia, discharges itself into the Ister,
he led his troops into Pannonia, intending to engage near Sirmium.
His mother is said to have enjoined him not to go that way, or over
into Illyricum, but he disregarded her injunctions, though on many
former occasions he had found her a true prophetess. Meantime he
deliberated whether to construct a bridge over the Saus, or to pass
over on |61 boats joined together for that purpose. At the same
time, Constantius sent one of the principal persons in his service,
named Philip, a man of extraordinary prudence, under pretence of
treating for peace and an alliance, but in reality to observe the
state and disposition of the army of Magnentius, and to discover
their intended movements. Approaching the camp, he met Marcellinus,
the principal confidant of Magnentius, and by him was conducted to
Magnentius. The army being drawn up, Philip was desired to explain
the cause of his coming. Upon which he directed himself to the
soldiers, telling them, that it did not. become them, who were Roman
subjects, to make war on Romans, especially as the emperor was the
son of Constantine, with whom they had erected many trophies over
the Barbarians. That Magnentius, moreover, ought to remember
Constantine, and the kindness he had shewn to him and to his
parents. That it was Constantine who had protected him when in
imminent danger, and exalted him to the highest dignities. Having
made these observations, he requested Magnentius to depart from
Italy, and to be content with the government of the nations beyond
the Alps.
This
speech of Philip nearly occasioned a mutiny of the whole army.
Magnentius, therefore, being alarmed, with much difficulty prevailed
on the soldiers to attend to him. He said, that he likewise was
desirous of concluding a peace, but would then dismiss the assembly,
until he had deliberated how to act. Upon which, the assembly being
dissolved, Marcellianus entertained Philip as one whom he was
desirous of obliging by the laws of hospitality. Meanwhile,
Magnentius debated with himself, whether to dismiss Philip without
the purpose of his embassy being effected, or, in violation of the
law of nations, detain him. He determined, after much hesitation, to
invite all the officers of his army to sup with him, and at table
inform them of his opinion. The following day he again convened the
army; he reminded them of the injuries they received from Constans
when furious and intoxicated. That the soldiers could not sustain
the enormities with which he oppressed the state contrary to all law
and justice, but had inclined to what was most for the public
advantage; and that after they had freed the cities from so savage a
monster, they had compelled him to become their emperor.
He
had scarcely concluded this address, when they all rose, and
displayed their willingness to continue the war by arming themselves
immediately, in order to cross the Saus. The centinels who were on
the watch in Siscia, a town that lies on the Saus, perceived their
approach, and gave notice of it, to the garrison, who shot some of
them as they were landing on the bank of |62 the river, and stopped
others who were coming over; so that many of them were slain, hut
more pushed into the river, either by each other or by the enemy. By
which means a great slaughter was made amongst them, and while one
party fell from the bridge in their haste to escape, the other
pursued with the greatest speed: so that Magnentius, who was reduced
to his last device, had only one method of avoiding the present
danger. He struck a spear into the ground, and beckoned with his
right hand to the enemy as if he wished to treat for peace. When he
saw that they attended to this, he said he would not pass the Saus
without the emperor's permission. As soon as he had said this,
Philip told him, that if he would treat for peace, he must leave
Italy and Noricum, and go into Illyricum. Constantius, having heard
what was said, commanded his soldiers to continue their pursuit no
longer, and permitted Magnentius to bring his troops into the plains
between Noricum, Pannonia, Moesia, and Dacia; having a wish to leave
those rugged places, and to contend where his horse would have room
to manoeuvre, for in that species of force he had the advantage of
the enemy. His design succeeded; and he appointed Cibalis which he
thought a convenient place for his purpose; it being the place where
Constantine conquered Licinius. In that town, which is situated as I
have described in my narrative of those times, he kept part of his
army. And having erected a bulwark between the hill on which the
town stands, and the plain through which the river Saus flows, he
inclosed all that part of it which is not encompassed by the river,
with a deep ditch and a strong rampart. He then made a bridge of
boats over that part of the river which surrounds the place, which
bridge he could disjoin when he pleased, and put together again with
the same ease. Here he placed tents for his army, and in the midst
of them a royal tent of exceeding magnificence. The emperor then
invited his officers to a banquet, at which all except Latinus and
Thalassius were present. These were absent, though they were the
greatest favourites of the emperor, because they were officiating
for Philip, who was detained by Magnentius, notwithstanding his
being an ambassador.
While
they were consulting about this affair, Titianus, a man of the
senatorian order at Rome, came with an insolent message from
Magnentius. He employed ninny absurd expressions against Constantine
and his children, charging the destruction of the cities on the
emperor's negligence, and commanded Constantius to make way for
Magnentius by abdicating the empire, and to be contented with his
life being granted him. But |63 the emperor only desired the gods
and fate to be the avengers of Constans, saying that he would fight
with their assistance. He suffered Titianus to return to Magnentius,
though Philip still remained in his custody. Magnentius now drew out
his army, and taking Siscia on the first assault, razed it to the
ground. Having overrun all the country near the Saus, and acquired
great plunder, he marched towards Sirmium, which he hoped likewise
to take without bloodshed. But failing in his attempt, being
repulsed by the inhabitants and the troops that defended the town,
he marched with his whole army to Mursa. Finding that those in the
town had shut the gates against him and mounted the walls, he was at
a loss how to act on the occasion, having no engines nor any other
method of getting near the wall. He was assailed with stones and
darts by those that stood on the battlements. When Constantius heard
that the place was besieged, he marched with all his forces to its
relief, having passed by Cibalis and all the country through which
the river Draus passes.
Meanwhile
Magnentius approached nearer to Mursa, and set fire to the gates,
thinking if he could destroy the iron that covered the wood, which
would soon yield to the flames, he might make a passage wide enough
for the entrance of his army into the city. But this did not succeed
to his wishes, the people on the wall extinguishing the flames with
water which they poured down in large quantities. When he therefore
heard that Constantius was near Mursa, he invented another stratagem
to this effect. There was before the city a stadium or place of
exercise, formerly used by those that fought for prizes, which was
covered over with wood. In this he concealed four companies of
Celtae, with orders when Constantius should come up, and they were
ready to engage before the city, to attack the enemy by surprise,
and to surround them and kill every man. This being discovered by
those that were on the walls, Constantius immediately sent thither
Scolidoas and Manadus, two of his officers. They first selected the
choicest of their men, both heavy armed and archers, and taking them
along with themselves, fastened up all the doors of the stadium.
Having then possessed themselves of the upper steps loading into
the; Stadium, and inclosed the soldiers that were within on all
sides, they threw darts at them. And observing some of them with
their shields placed over their heads attempting to force open the
doors, they fell upon them and did not cease throwing darts or
cutting at them with their swords until they had killed them all.
This project of Magnentius being thus frustrated, the armies met and
engaged in the plain before Mursa; |64 where such a battle was
fought as had not occurred before in the course of this war, and
great numbers fell on both sides.
Constantius,
considering that as this was a civil war victory itself would be
scarcely an advantage to him, now the Romans being so much weakened,
as to be totally unable to resist the barbarians who attacked them
on every side, began to think that it would be better to end the war
by offering proposals for peace. While he was thus deliberating, the
armies were still engaged; and that of Magnentius became more
furious, nor would they cease fighting though night came on, but
even their officers continued performing what belonged to common
soldiers, and encouraging their men to oppose the enemy with vigour.
On the other side likewise, the officers of Constantius called to
mind the ancient bravery and renown of the Romans. Thus the battle
continued until it was completely dark; nor did even darkness cause
them to relax; but they wounded each other with spears, swords or
whatever was in their reach; so that neither night nor any other
obstacle which usually causes some respite in war, could put an end
to the slaughter, as if they thought it the greatest felicity that
could happen to them to perish beside each other. Amongst the
officers, that shewed great bravery in this battle and fell in it
were Arcadius, commander of the legion called Abulci, and Menelaus,
who commanded the Armenian horse archers. What is said of Menelaus
is worthy of being related. He could take three darts at once, and
with one shot hit three men, by which manner of shooting he killed a
great, number of the enemy, and was himself almost the cause of
their flight. He was killed by Romulus, who was the first in command
in the army of Magnentius, and Romulus hmiself fell at the same
time. He was wounded by a dart which Menelaus had thrown at him, yet
continued fighting after he had received the wound, until he had
killed the person who had given it to him.
Constantius
now gaining the victory, by the army of Magnentius taking to flight,
a terrible slaughter ensued. Magnentius, therefore being deprived of
all hope, and apprehensive lest the remnant of his army should
deliver him to Constantius, deemed it best to retire from Pannonia,
and to enter Italy, in order to raise an army there for another
attempt. But when he heard that the people of Rome were in favour of
Constantius, either from hatred to himself, or because they had
heard of the event of the battle, he resolved to cross the Alps, and
.seek for himself a refuge among the nations on that side. Hearing
however that Constantius had likewise engaged the Barbarians near
the Rhine against him, and that |65 he could not enter Gaul, as some
officers had obstructed his passage thither in order to make their
court to Constantius, nor through Spain into Mauritania, on account
of the Roman allies there who studied to please Constantius. In
these circumstances he preferred a voluntary death to a
dishonourable life, and chose rather to die by his own hand than by
that of his enemy.
Thus
died Magnentius, having been emperor three years and six months. He
was of Barbarian extraction, but lived among the Leti, a people of
Gaul. He understood Latin, was bold when favoured by fortune, but
cowardly in adversity, ingenious in concealing his natural evil
disposition, and deemed by those who did not know him to be a man of
candour and goodness. I have thought it just to make these
observations concerning Magnentius, that the world may be acquainted
With his true character, since it has been the opinion of some that
he performed much good, who never in his life did any thing with a
good intention.
Decentius,
whom Magnentius had called to his assistance, being now on the road
to Italy, soon heard of the misfortune, of Magnentius; meeting with
some legions and troops from which he saw no hope of escaping, slew
himself. After these occurrences, the whole empire being now in the
hands of Constantius, he began to be more arrogant than before, and
could not conduct himself with any moderation in his prosperity. The
state-informers, with which such men are usually surrounded, and
which are designed for the ruin of those that are in prosperity,
were augmented. These sycophants, when they attempted to effect the
downfal of a noble in hopes of sharing his wealth or honours,
contrived some false accusation against him. This was the practice
in the time of Constantius. Spies of this description, who made the
eunuchs of the court their accomplices, flocked about Constantius,
and persuaded him that his cousin german Gallus, who was a Caesar,
was not satisfied with that honour, but wished to be emperor. They
so far convinced him of the truth of this charge, that they made him
resolve upon the destruction of Gallus. The contrivers of this
design were Dynamius and Picentius, men of obscure condition, who
endeavoured to raise themselves by such evil practises. Lampadius
also, the Prefect of the court, was in the conspiracy, being a
person who wished to engross more of the emperor's favour than any
other. Constantius listened to those false insinuations, and Gallus
was sent for, knowing nothing of what was intended against him. As
soon as he arrived, Constantius first degraded him from the dignity
of Caesar, and, having reduced him to private station, delivered him
to the public |66 executioners to be put to death. This was not the
first time that Constantius imbrued his hands in the blood of his
relations, but only one other in addition to many former.
[Footnotes
moved to end]
1.
* If what others say of Constantine, be true, Zosimus has no reason
to impute to him the crime of perjury; for he did not seem so much
to break an oath or promise, as to punish the violation of it in
Licinius, who, after Constantine had gained so many victories, when
he was reduced to a very low condition, omitted no opportunity of
recovering the empire, of which he had been deprived by the just
sentence of victory, but contrived all methods of making ill returns
for the kindness of Euergetes; Euseb, Life of Constantine, l. i. c.
43. and Theodor, l. i. c. 7. To which this may likewise be added,
that Licinius hated the christians as much as Constantine esteemed
them, who consequently could not endure to see those exposed to
injury whom he favoured. Nor should any one object, that these
authors are not to be credited, because they were partial; since
Zosimus himself cannot be excused in that particular, being an
inveterate enemy to Christianity, and a violent bigot to the
heathenish superstition.
2.
* Among the Imperial laws or edicts, is one which Eusebius mentions,
l. x. c. 5. "That every one may apply himself to that mode of
worship he thinks suitable to his own reason." And therefore,
though he did not abolish the old heathen institutions of his
country at that: time, yet he favoured the Christians most, and gave
them liberty, of which almost all the former emperors used to
deprive them.
3.
* It is almost needless to say, that all that is here related of
Constantine is the slander of Julian the Apostate, and is totally
without any foundation in truth. Crispus was justly executed for an
atrocious crime, and Fausta perished by an accidental suffocation by
the fault of the bath keepers.
4.
* Zosimus throws the odium of the insensible decay by which the
Roman empire fell to ruin upon Constantine; but he ought to have
more cautiously weighed his arguments, and have reflected how ready
those persons, who have gained the highest office under their
sovereign, are to use all their endeavours to acquire the attachment
of the soldiers, and from the hope of becoming emperors themselves,
to throw every thing into confusion. Indeed when both the care of
military discipline, and the distribution of the public money are
committed to the same individual, it is probable that he will take
some opportunity of acquiring the empire to himself, having every
thing in his power which can influence the soldiers with the hope of
reward and dread of punishment. Constantine therefore wisely adopted
that political maxim, Divide and Rule.
5.
* We must admit that Constantine was extravagant in his expences,
whence Julian took occasion to ridicule him in his book called
Caesares, where he introduces Mercury asking Constantine, "What
do you think a commendable action?" Constantine replies, "For
a man who possesses much to give much away."
6.
+ See Evagrius Hist. Eccl. l. iii. c. 39, where he commends
Anastasius, in whose reign this tax was taken off. But he inveighs
against Zosimus for saying that Constantine was the author of it in
these words, "Who would wonder that this should be done in the
very infancy of christianity, since his holiness the Pope suffers
the same things now it has attained riper years."
SEXTI AVRELII
VICTORIS
LIBER DE CAESARIBVS
AVRELII VICTORIS
HISTORIAE ABBREVIATAE
ab Augusto Octaviano,
id est a fine Titi Livii, usque ad
consulatum decimum
Constantii Augusti et Iuliani
Caesaris tertium.
34 1 Sed Claudii imperium milites,
quos fere contra ingenium perditae res subigunt recta consulere, ubi
afflicta omnia perspexere, avide approbant extolluntque, viri
laborum patientis aequique ac prorsus dediti reipublicae, 2 quippe
ut longo intervallo Deciorum morem renovaverit. 3 Nam cum pellere
Gothos cuperet, quos diuturnitas nimis validos ac prope incolas
effecerat, proditum ex libris Sibyllinis est primum ordinis
amplissimi victoriae vovendum. 4 Cumque is, qui esse videbatur,
semet obtulisset, sibi potius id muneris competere ostendit, qui
revera senatus atque omnium princeps erat. 5 Ita nullo exercitus
detrimento fusi barbari summotique, postquam imperator vita
reipublicae dono dedit. 6 Adeo bonis salus civium ac longa sui
memoria cariora sunt; quae non gloriae modo, verum etiam ratione
quadam posterorum felicitati proficiunt. 7 Hoc siquidem Constantius
et Constantinus atque imperatores nostri * * * orisque acceptior
militibus praemiorum spe seu lasciviae. 8 Quo aegra asperiorque
victoria fuit, dum, uti mos subditis est, studio impune peccandi
remissa imperia promptius quam utilia defendant.
40 1 Igitur Constantio atque
Armentario his succedentibus Severus Maximinusque Illyricorum
indigenae Caesares, prior Italiam posteriorque, in quae Iovius
obtinuerat, destinantur. 2 Quod tolerare nequiens Constantinus,
cuius iam tum a puero ingens potensque animus ardore imperitandi
agitabatur, fugae commento, cum ad frustrandos insequentes publica
iumenta, quaqua iter egerat, interficeret, in Britanniam pervenit;
nam is a Galerio religionis specie ad vicem obsidis tenebatur. 3 Et
forte iisdem diebus ibidem Constantium patrem vel parentem vitae
ultima urgebant. 4 Quo mortuo cunctis qui aderant, annitentibus
imperium capit. 5 Interim Romae vulgus turmaeque praetoriae
Maxentium retractante diu patre Herculio imperatorem confirmant. 6
Quod ubi Armentarius accepit, Severum Caesarem, qui casu ad urbem
erat, arma in hostem ferre propere iubet. 7 Is circum muros cum
ageret, desertus a suis, quos praemiorum illecebris Maxentius
traduxerat, fugiens obsessusque Ravennae obiit. 8 Hoc acrior
Galerius ascito in consilium Iovio Licinium vetere cognitum amicitia
Augustum creat; eoque ad munimentum Illyrici ac Thraciae relicto
Romam contendit. 9 Ibi cum obsidione distineretur, militibus eadem,
qua superiores, via attentatis, metu ne desereretur, Italia
decessit; pauloque post vulnere pestilenti consumptus est, cum agrum
satis reipublicae commodantem caesis immanibus silvis atque emisso
in Danubium lacu Pelsone apud Pannonios fecisset. 10 Cuius gratia
provinciam uxoris nomine Valeriam appellavit. 11 Huic quinquennii
imperium, Constantio annuum fuit, cum sane uterque potentiam
Caesarum annos tredecim gessissent. 12 Adeo miri naturae beneficiia,
ut ea si a doctis pectoribus proficiscerentur neque insulsitate
offenderent, haud dubie praecipua haberentur. 13 Quare compertum est
eruditionem elegantiam comitatem praesertim principibus necessarias
esse, cum sine his naturae bona quasi incompta aut etiam horrida
despectui sint, contraque ea Persarum regi Cyro aeternam gloriam
paraverint. 14 At memoria mea Constantinum, quamquam ceteris
promptum virtutibus, adusque astra votis omnium subvexere. 15 Qui
profecto si munificentiae atque ambitioni modum hisque artibus
statuisset, quis praecipue adulta ingenia gloriae studio progressa
longius in contrarium labuntur, haud multum abesset deo. 16 Is ubi
vastari urbem atque Italiam comperit pulsosque seu redemptos
exercitus et imperatores duos, composita pace per Gallias Maxentium
petit. 17 Ea tempestate apud Poenos Alexander pro praefecto gerens
dominatui stolide incubuerat, cum ipse debili aetate, agrestibus ac
Pannonicis parentibus vecordior, milites tumultuarie quaesiti,
armorum vix medium haberetur. 18 Denique eum a tyranno missi
paucissimis cohortibus Rufius Volusianus praefectus praetorio ac
militares duces levi certamine confecere. 19 Quo victo Maxentius
Carthaginem, terrarum decus, simul Africae pulchriora vastari diripi
incendique iusserat, ferus inhumanusque ac libidine multa tetrior.
20 Adhuc pavidus et imbellis atque in desidiam foede pronus, usque
eo, ut flagrante per Italiam belle fusisque apud Veronam suis nihilo
segnius solita curaret neque patris exitio moveretur. 21 Namque
Herculius natura impotentior, simul filii segnitiem metuens
inconsulte imperium repetiverat. 22 Cumque specie officii dolis
compositis Constantinum generum tentaret acerbe, iure tandem
interierat. 23 Sed Maxentius atrocior in dies tandem urbe in Saxa
rubra milia ferme novem aegerrime progressus, cum caesa acie fugiens
semet Romam reciperet, insidiis, quas hosti apud pontem Milvium
locaverat, in transgressu Tiberis interceptus est tyrannidis anno
sexto. 24 Huius nece incredibile quantum laetitia gaudioque senatus
ac plebes exsultaverint; quos in tantum afflictaverat, uti
praetorianis caedem vulgi quondam annuerit primusque instituto
pessimo munerum specie patres aratoresque pecuniam conferre
prodigenti sibi cogeret. 25 Quorum odio praetoriae legiones ac
subsidia factionibus aptiora quam urbi Romae sublata penitus, simul
arma atque usus indumenti militaris. 26 Adhuc cuncta opera, quae
magnifice construxerat, urbis fanum atque basilicam Flavii meritis
patres sacravere. 27 A quo etiam post Circus maximus excultus
mirifice atque ad lavandum institutum opus ceteris haud multo
dispar. 28 Statuae locis quam celeberrimis, quarum plures ex auro
aut argenteae sunt; tum per Africam sacerdotium decretum Flaviae
genti, Cirtaeque oppido, quod obsidione Alexandri conciderat,
reposito exornatoque nomen Constantina inditum. 29 Adeo acceptius
praestantiusque tyrannorum depulsoribus nihil est, quorum gratia eo
demum auctior erit, si modesti atque abstinentes sint. 30 Quippe
humanae mentes frustratae boni spe asperius offenduntur, cum mutato
rectore flagitioso aerumnarum vis manet.
41 1 Dum haec in Italia geruntur,
Maximinus ad Orientem post biennii augustum imperium fusus
fugatusque a Licinio apud Tarsum perit. 2 Ita potestas orbis Romani
duobus quaesita, qui quamvis per Flavii sororem nuptam Licinio
conexi inter se erant, ob diverses mores tamen anxie triennium
congruere quivere. 3 Namque illi praeter †admodum magna
cetera, huic parsimonia et ea quidem agrestis tantummodo inerat. 4
Denique Constantinus cunctos hostes honore ac fortunis manentibus
texit recepitque, eo pius, ut etiam vetus teterrimumque supplicium
patibulorum et cruribus suffringendis primus removerit. 5 Hinc pro
conditore seu deo habitus. Licinio ne insontium quidem ac nobilium
philosophorum servili more cruciatus adhibiti modum fecere. 6 Quo
sane variis proeliis pulso, cum eum prorsus opprimere arduum
videretur, simul affinitatis gratia refectum consortium ascitique
imperio Caesarum communes liberi Crispus Constantinusque Flavio
geniti, Licinianus Licinio. 7 Quod equidem vix diuturnum neque his,
qui assumebantur, felix fore defectu solis foedato iisdem mensibus
die patefactum. 8 Itaque sexennio post rupta pace apud Thracas
Licinius pulsus Chalcedona concessit. 9 Ibi ad auxilium sui
Martiniano in imperium cooptato una oppressus est. 10 Eo modo
respublica unius arbitrio geri coepit, liberis Caesarum nomina
diversa retentantibus: namque ea tempestate imperatori nostro
Constantio insigne Caesaris datum. 11 Quorum cum natu grandior,
incertum qua causa, patris iudicio occidisset, repente Calocerus
magister pecoris camelorum Cyprum insulam specie regni demens
capessiverat. 12 Quo excruciato, ut fas erat, servili aut latronum
more, condenda urbe formandisque religionibus ingentem animum
avocavit, simul novando militiae ordine. 13 Et interea Gothorum
Sarmatarumque stratae gentes, filiusque cunctorum minor, Constans
nomine, Caesar fit. 14 Cuius gratia reipublicae permixtionem fore
ostentorum mira prodidere; quippe ea nocte, quae commissi imperii
diem sequebatur, igni continuo caeli facies coliflagravit. 15 Abhinc
consumpto fere bieimio fratris filium, cui ex patre Dalmatio nomen
fait, Caesarem iussit obsistentibus valide militaribus. 16 Ita anno
imperii tricesimo secundoque, cum totum orbem tredecim tenuisset,
sexaginta natus atque amplius duo, in Persas tendens, a quis bellum
erumpere occeperat, rure proximo Nicomediae — Achyronam vocant
— excessit, cum id tetrum sidus regnis, quod crinitum vocant,
portendisset. 17 Funus relatum in urbem sui nominis. Quod sane
populus Romanus aegerrime tulit, quippe cuius armis legibus clementi
imperio quasi novatam urbem Romam arbitraretur. 18 Pons per Danubium
ductns; castra castellaque pluribus locis commode posita. 19 Remotae
olei frumentique adventiciae praebitiones, quibus Tripolis ac Nicaea
acerbius angebantur. 20 Quorum superiores Severi imperio gratantes
civi obtulerant, verteratque gratiam muneribus in perniciem
posterorum dissimulatio. Alteros Marcus Boionius afflixerat mulcta,
quod Hipparchum praestanti ingenio indigenam fuisse ignoravissent.
Fiscales molestiae severius pressae, cunctaque divino ritui paria
viderentur, ni parum dignis ad publica aditum concessisset. 21 Quae
quamquam saepius accidere, tamen in summo ingenio atque optimis
reipublicae moribus, quamvis parva vitia, elucent magis eoque
notantur facile; quin etiam acrius saepe officiunt, cum ob auctoris
decus in virtutes potissimum accipiuntur atque ad imitandum
invitamento sunt. 22 Igitur confestim Dalmatius, incertum quo
suasore, interficitur; statimque triennio post minimum maximumque
fatali bello Constantinus cadit. 23 Qua Constans victoria tumidior,
simul per aetatem cautus parum atque animi vehemens, adhuc
ministrorum pravitate exsecrabilis atque praeceps in avaritiam
despectumque militarium anno post triumphum decimo Magnentii scelere
circumventus est externarum sane gentium compressis motibus. 24
Quarum obsides pretio quaesitos pueros venustiores quod cultius
habuerat, libidine huiuscemodi arsisse pro certo habetur. 25 Quae
tamen vitia utinam mansissent! Namque Magnentii, utpote gentis
barbarae, diro atrocique ingenio, simul his, quae post accidere,
adeo exstincta omnia sunt, ut illud imperium haud iniuria
desideraretur; 26 tum quia Vetranio litterarum prorsus expers et
ingenio stolidior idcircoque agresti vecordia pessimus, cum per
Illyrios peditum magisterio milites curaret, dominationem ortus
Moesiae superioris locis squalidioribus improbe occupaverat.
42 1 Eum Constantius cis mensem
decimum facundiae vi deiectum imperio in privatum otium removit. 2
Quae gloria post natum imperium soli processit eloquio clementiaque.
3 Nam cum magna parte utrimque exercitus convenissent, habita ad
speciem iudicii contione, quod fere vix aut multo sanguine
obtinendum erat, eloquentia patravit. 4 Quae res satis edocuit non
modo domi, verum militiae quoque dicendi copiam praestare; qua demum
vel ardua proclivius eo conficiuntur, si modestia atque integritate
superet. 5 Quod maxime cognitum e nostro principe; quem tamen, quo
minus statim in hostes alios ad Italiam contenderet, hiems aspera
clausaeque Alpes tardavere. 6 Interim Romae corrupto vulgo, simul
Magnentii odio Nepotianus, materna stirpe Flavio propinquus, caeso
urbi praefecto armataque gladiatorum manu imperator fit. 7 Cuius
stolidum ingenium adeo plebi Romanae patribusque exitio fuit, uti
passim domus fora viae templaque cruore atque cadaveribus
opplerentur bustorum modo. 8 Neque per eum tantum, verum etiam
advolantibus Magnentianis, qui tricesimo die triduo minus hostem
perculerant. 9 Sed iam antea cum externi motus suspectarentur,
Magnentius fratri Decentio Gallias, Constantius Gallo, cuius nomen
suo mutaverat, Orientem Caesaribus commiserant. 10 Ipsi inter se
acrioribus proeliis per triennium congressi; ad extremum Constantius
fugientem in Galliam persecutus vario ambos supplicio semet adegit
interficere. 11 Et interea Iudaeorum seditio, qui Patricium nefarie
in regni speciem sustulerant, oppressa. 12 Neque multo post ob
saevitiam atque animum trucem Gallus Augusti iussu interiit. 13 Ita
longo intervallo annum fere post septuagesimum relata ad unum cura
reipublicae. 14 Quae recens quieta a civili trepidatione Silvano in
imperium coacto tentari rursus occeperat. 15 Is namque Silvanus in
Gallia ortus barbaris parentibus ordine militiae, simul a Magnentio
ad Constantium transgressu pedestre ad magisterium adolescentior
meruerat. 16 E quo cum altius per metum seu dementiam conscendisset,
legionum, a quis praesidium speraverat, tumuitu octavum circa ac
vicesimum diem trucidatus est. 17 Qua causa ne quid apud Gallos
natura praecipites novaretur, praesertim Germanis pleraque earum
partium populantibus Iulianum Caesarem cognatione acceptum sibi
Transalpinis praefecit, isque nationes feras brevi subegit captis
famosis regibus. 18 Quae quamquam vi eius, fortuna principis tamen
et consilio accidere. 19 Quod adeo praestat, ut Tiberius Galeriusque
subiecti aliis egregia pleraque, suo autem ductu atque auspicio
minus paria experti sint. 20 At Iulius Constantius, annos tres atque
viginti augustum imperium regens, cum externis motibus, modo
civilibus exercetur, aegre ab armis abest. 21 Quis tyrannide
tantorum depulsa sustentatoque interim Persarum impetu genti
Sarmatarum magno decore considens apud eos regem dedit. 22 Quod
Gnaeum Pompeium in Tigrane restituendo vixque paucos maiorum fecisse
comperimus. 23 Placidus clemensque pro negotio, litterarum ad
elegantiam prudens atque orandi genere leni iocundoque; laboris
patiens ac destinandi sagittas mire promptus; cibi omnis libidinis
atque omnium cupidinum victor; cultu genitoris satis pius suique
nimis custos; gnarus vita bonorum principum reipublicae quietem
regi. 24 Haec tanta tamque inclita tenue studium probandis
provinciarum ac militiae rectoribus, simul ministrorum parte maxima
absurdi mores, adhuc neglectus boni cuiusque foedavere. 25 Atque uti
verum absolvam brevi: ut imperatore ipso praeclarius, ita
apparitorum plerisque magis atrox nihil.
SIXTH
AURELII VICTORIS
BOOK
OF THE CAESARIVS AURELII VICTORIS
ABBREVATED
HISTORY
from
Augustus Octavianus, that is, from the end of Titus Livius, to the
tenth consulship of Constantius Augustus and the third of Julian
Caesar.
34
1 But the soldiers of Claudius, whom the ruinous affairs almost
against their nature subject to right counsel, when they have seen
all the afflictions, eagerly approve and extol, men of patient
labors and just and entirely devoted to the republic,
2
since he renewed after a long interval the custom of the Decii.
3
For when he desired to drive out the Goths, whom long life had made
exceedingly strong and almost inhabited, it is revealed from the
Sibylline books that the first of the most extensive orders of
victory was to be vowed.
4
And when he who seemed to be had offered himself, he showed that the
office was rather suited to himself, who was in reality the leader
of the senate and of all.
5
Thus the barbarians were routed and driven out without any loss to
the army, after the emperor had given his life as a gift to the
republic.
6
So much the safety of the citizens and a long memory of himself are
dearer to the good; which not only contribute to glory, but also to
the happiness of posterity in a certain way.
7
This indeed is why Constantius and Constantine and our emperors * *
* are more acceptable to the soldiers than to their lust or to their
hope of rewards.
8
Which made the victory more painful and harsh, since, as is the
custom of subjects, they are more eager to sin with impunity and
defend their abandoned empires than to defend their useful ones.
40
1 Therefore, when Constantius and Armentarius succeeded them,
Severus and Maximinus, the native Caesars of Illyricum, the former
to Italy and the latter to the lands which Jove had conquered.
2
Unable to tolerate this, Constantine, whose great and powerful mind
had already been stirred up by the ardor of command from his
boyhood, devised a plan of flight, and, in order to frustrate the
pursuers, killed the public cattle wherever they had gone, and
reached Britain; For he was held by Galerius as a hostage under the
pretext of religion.
3
And it so happened that in the same days they were pressing
Constantius' father or relative to the last days of his life.
4
When he died, he seized power with the approval of all who were
present.
5
Meanwhile, the populace and the praetorian troops in Rome confirmed
Maxentius as emperor, after his father Herculius had long since
retracted.
6
When Armentarius heard this, he promptly ordered Severus Caesar, who
happened to be near the city, to take up arms against the enemy.
7
While he was marching around the walls, he was deserted by his men,
whom Maxentius had lured away with the lure of rewards, and,
fleeing, he was besieged and died at Ravenna.
8
Galerius, more furious at this, took counsel with Jovian, and
created Licinius, an old friend of his, Augustus; and leaving behind
him the fortifications of Illyricum and Thrace, he hastened to Rome.
9
There, while he was being separated from the siege, he departed for
Italy, fearing that he might be deserted by his soldiers, who had
attacked the same road as his superiors; and a little later he was
consumed by a pestilential wound, when he had made a land
sufficiently suitable for the republic by cutting down immense
forests and by draining the lake Pelso into the Danube among the
Pannonians.
10
In gratitude for which he called the province Valeria after his
wife.
11
This man had a five-year reign, while Constantius had an annual one,
although both had indeed held the power of the Caesars for thirteen
years.
12
Such were the benefits of a wonderful nature that if they proceeded
from learned hearts and did not offend with insipidity, they would
undoubtedly be considered the most important.
13
Wherefore it has been found that learning, elegance, and courtesy
are especially necessary for princes, since without these the goods
of nature are looked down upon as if they were unfit or even horrid,
and in contrast to them they prepared eternal glory for Cyrus, king
of the Persians.
14
But my memory has carried Constantine, although ready for other
virtues, even to the stars, by the wishes of all.
15
And if he had set a limit to his generosity and ambition by these
arts, especially since adult minds, having advanced in the pursuit
of glory, would have fallen further into the opposite, he would not
have been far from God.
16
When he found the city and Italy devastated, and the armies and two
generals driven out or ransomed, he sought peace through Gaul for
Maxentius.
17
At that time, Alexander, acting as prefect among the Carthaginians,
had foolishly set his sights on domination, while he himself, being
weak in age, more unkind than his rustic and Pannonian parents, had
soldiers hastily recruited, and was scarcely able to hold a standard
of arms.
18
Finally, Rufius Volusianus, the praetorian prefect sent by the
tyrant with a very small number of cohorts, finished him off in a
light fight with the military leaders.
19
After Maxentius had defeated him, he had ordered Carthage, the glory
of the world, and at the same time the most beautiful city in
Africa, to be laid waste and burned, a savage and inhuman man, and
much more wicked in his lust.
20
Still fearful and weak-willed and foully inclined to idleness, he
was so much the worse for weariness, that while his army was burning
through Italy and scattered at Verona, he was no less careless in
his usual pursuits, nor was he moved by the death of his father.
21
For Herculius, who was naturally more impotent, and at the same time
feared the indolence of his son, had unwisely resumed the empire.
22
And when, under the guise of office, he bitterly tempted his
son-in-law Constantine with cunning devices, he finally died justly.
23
But Maxentius, more cruel in nature, having advanced with great
difficulty from the city to the red rock about nine thousand days,
when, having been defeated in battle, he was fleeing and returning
to Rome, he was intercepted by the ambushes which he had laid for
the enemy at the Milvian Bridge, while crossing the Tiber in the
sixth year of his tyranny.
24
At his death he was filled with incredible joy and gladness.
[?]
born
and the plebs rejoiced; whom he had so afflicted that he once agreed
to the massacre of the common people by the praetorians, and was the
first to force the fathers and the ploughmen to contribute money to
the prodigal by the most wicked design of gifts.
25
In their hatred the praetorian legions and the aids more suitable to
the factions than to the city of Rome were completely taken away,
together with the arms and the use of military clothing.
26
Furthermore, all the works which he had magnificently constructed,
the temple and basilica of the city, the fathers dedicated to the
merits of Flavius.
27
By whom also afterwards the Circus Maximus was wonderfully decorated
and the work established for washing was not much different from the
others.
28
Statues in the most famous places, many of which are of gold or
silver; then the priesthood was decreed throughout Africa to the
Flavian race, and the town of Cirta, which had fallen during the
siege of Alexander, was restored and adorned and given the name of
Constantine.
29
Nothing is more acceptable to the expellers of tyrants, whose favor
will ultimately be all the greater if they are modest and abstinent.
30
For human minds, frustrated by the hope of good, are more bitterly
offended, when, after a change of the wicked ruler, the force of
misfortunes remains.
41
1 While these things were taking place in Italy, Maximinus, after a
two-year reign as Augustus, was driven to the East and perished at
Tarsus by Licinius.
2
Thus the power of the Roman world was sought by two men, who,
although they were connected to each other through Flavius' sister,
who was married to Licinius, nevertheless, due to their different
manners, were anxiously unable to agree for three years.
3
For in addition to his other great qualities, he possessed the
thriftiness and that of a peasant only.
4
Finally, Constantine sheltered and received all his enemies while
their honor and fortunes remained, so pious that he was the first to
abolish even the ancient and most terrible punishment of the gallows
and the breaking of the legs.
5
Hence he was regarded as a founder or a god. They did not even
torture innocent and noble philosophers in the servile manner.
6
Whom, indeed, having been driven out in various battles, since it
seemed difficult to completely overwhelm him, at the same time, out
of kinship, a partnership was renewed and the common empire of the
Caesars was taken by the sons of Crispus and Constantine, born to
Flavius, and Licinianus to Licinius.
7
Which, indeed, would hardly last long, nor was it revealed to those
who assumed it, that it would be happy, by the failure of the sun,
which was fouled in the same months.
8
Therefore, six years later, when peace was broken with the
Thracians, Licinius, driven out, made way for Chalcedon.
9
There, having co-opted Martinianus into the empire to his aid, he
was oppressed together.
10
In this way the republic began to be governed by one will, the sons
of the Caesars retaining different names: for at that time our
emperor Constantius was given the insignia of Caesar.
11
When the eldest son, for some unknown reason, had killed them by his
father's judgment, Calocerus, the master of the camel herd, had
suddenly seized the island of Cyprus, mad with the appearance of a
kingdom.
12
Having tortured him, as was fitting, in the manner of a servile or a
robber, he devoted his great spirit to the founding of a city and
the formation of religions, at the same time renewing the order of
the army.
13
And in the meantime the nations of the Goths and Sarmatians were
destroyed, and the youngest son of all, named Constans, became
Caesar.
14
By whose grace the republic was to be united in a strange way; for
on the night which followed the day of his assumption of power, the
face of the sky was immediately blazing with fire.
15
After this, having almost two-thirds of his brother's son, whom he
named Dalmatia after his father, was killed, he ordered Caesar, with
the soldiers standing firm.
16
Thus in the thirty-second year of his reign, when he had held the
whole world for thirteen years, and was sixty-two years old, heading
for the Persians, from whom he had begun to break out into war, he
departed for the country near Nicomedia (they call it Achyrona),
when that dreadful star which they call the Hairy Star had foretold
the kingdoms.
17
The funeral was carried to the city of his own name. Which indeed
the Roman people bore most painfully, since by whose arms and laws
the city of Rome was thought to have been renewed by the clement
government.
18
A bridge across the Danube; camps and castles conveniently placed in
several places.
19
The extra supplies of oil and wheat, by which Tripoli and Nicaea
were more bitterly afflicted, were removed.
20
The citizens who had been grateful to the government of Severus had
offered them, and the dissimulation of their posterity had turned
the gratitude with gifts into the ruin of their posterity. Others
Marcus Boionius had afflicted with fines, because they had not known
that Hipparchus was a native of the city, with his excellent genius.
Fiscal annoyances were more severely pressed, and all would have
seemed equal to the divine rite, had he not granted access to the
public to those who were not worthy.
21
Which, although they occur more frequently, nevertheless in the
highest genius and best morals of the republic, even though they are
small faults, shine more brightly and are therefore easily noted;
nay, they often even more sharply offend, since, due to the glory of
the author, they are especially accepted as virtues and are an
invitation to be imitated.
22
Therefore Dalmatius was immediately killed, at whose instigation it
is uncertain; and immediately three years later Constantine fell in
a fatal war, at least at the greatest.
23
Constans, more proud of this victory, at the same time a little
cautious in his age and vehement in his spirit, still execrable by
the wickedness of his ministers and prone to avarice and contempt
for the military, was surrounded by the crime of Magnentius, in the
tenth year after his triumph, and the movements of foreign nations
were suppressed.
24
Of these hostages, having been bought for a price, the more handsome
boys than the
25
But if only these vices had remained! For Magnentius, as a barbarian
nation, was so completely destroyed by his terrible and cruel
nature, and by what happened afterwards, that that empire was not
unjustly desired; 26 and because he was completely unlettered and
more foolish than Vetranius, and therefore the worst of the rustic
follies, while he was leading soldiers as a foot soldier through the
Illyrians, he had wickedly seized the dominion of the upper Moesia,
which was born of the Illyrians.
42
1 Constantius, having thrown him out of power in the tenth month,
removed him from power into private leisure.
2
Which glory, after the birth of the empire, came only from his
eloquence and clemency.
3
For when a large part of the armies on both sides had assembled, he
held a semblance of a trial, which was to be obtained with almost no
difficulty or much blood, and he performed his eloquence.
4
Which event sufficiently taught him that he should not only at home
but also in the army be able to speak; which at last even steep
slopes are made more difficult, if he prevails with modesty and
integrity.
5
This was most well known from our prince; whom, however, the harsh
winter and the closed Alps delayed, lest he should immediately rush
to Italy against other enemies.
6
Meanwhile, in Rome, the common people being corrupted, and at the
same time the hatred of Magnentius, Nepotianus, a relative of
Flavius on his mother's side, having slain the prefect
of the city and armed with the hand of gladiators, became emperor.
7
His foolish wit was such a ruin to the Roman people and patricians,
that everywhere houses, fora, streets and temples were filled with
blood and corpses, in the manner of busts.
8
And not only by him, but also by the arrival of the Magnentians, who
on the thirtieth day had beaten the enemy in less than three days.
9
But already before, when external movements were suspected,
Magnentius had entrusted Gaul to his brother Decentius, and
Constantius to Gallus, whose name he had changed to his own, had
entrusted the East to the Caesars.
10
They fought each other in fierce battles for three years; At length
Constantius, pursuing the fugitive into Gaul, forced both men to put
him to death by various tortures.
11
And in the meantime the Jewish rebellion, which had wickedly raised
Patricius to the semblance of kingship, was suppressed.
12
Not long afterwards, the Gaul died by order of Augustus, for his
cruelty and cruel spirit.
13
Thus, after a long interval of about a year, after his seventieth
year, the care of the republic was brought back to one man.
14
Which, having recently calmed down from civil unrest, had begun to
be tested again by the imposition of Silvanus on the throne.
15
For Silvanus, born in Gaul of barbarian parents, had at the same
time earned the rank of general by passing from Magnentius to
Constantius on foot as a youth.
16
From which, when he had ascended higher through fear or madness, he
was massacred about the twentieth day by a tumult of the legions
from whom he had hoped for protection.
17
For this reason, lest anything should be changed among the Gauls by
nature, especially the Germans, who were ravaging most of their
parts, he appointed Julian Caesar, whom he had adopted as his
relative, as governor of Transalpine, and he quickly subdued the
savage nations, capturing famous kings.
18
Which, although it was due to his strength, nevertheless happened by
the prince's fortune and counsel.
19
Which is so remarkable that Tiberius and Galerius, his subjects,
experienced many excellent things in others, but less so under his
own leadership and auspices.
20
But Julius Constantius, who had ruled the august empire for
twenty-three years, was exercised only by civil affairs, despite
external disturbances, and was reluctant to be absent from arms.
21
Who, having driven out the tyranny of so many and meanwhile
sustained the onslaught of the Persians, gave the nation of the
Sarmatians a king with great dignity, sitting among them.
22
Which we find that Gnaeus Pompey, in restoring Tigranes, did
scarcely a few of his predecessors do.
23
Placid and merciful in business, prudent in elegance of letters, and
gentle and pleasant in manner of oratory; patient in labor and
wonderfully quick in aiming arrows; conqueror of all lusts and
desires; sufficiently pious in the worship of his father and
exceedingly devout in his own; knowing the life of good princes to
rule the peace of the republic.
24
These great and illustrious efforts to prove the governors of the
provinces and the army, together with the absurd manners of the
majority of the ministers, have so far disgraced the good of each,
neglected.
25
And as is true, I will briefly conclude: as for the emperor himself,
nothing is more illustrious, so for most of his attendants nothing
is more atrocious.
Delphi in the
newspapers
1 August 1854
SOME TREASURES OF THE GLASS PALACE OF SYDENHAM.
The
glass palace at Sydenham, of whose external appearance we have
before spoken, contains also within itself many productions of art
which are well worth seeing. Entering through the door of the great
transsept, the eye is at once attracted by the famous works of
sculpture which adorn this part of the palace. At the entrance is a
copy of the Greek monument known as the Lantern of Demosthenes or
Monument of Lysicrates. It is the only one of its kind which has
escaped general destruction. Close by are the well-known groups of
the horses of Monte Cavallo, which are to be seen in Rome in the
Quirinal, and are attributed to Phidias and Praxiteles, without
having any other proof than that their names are engraved on the
marble. There is also the famous Toro Farnese, found in the baths of
Caracalla in Rome and now in the museum of Naples. Pliny attributes
this group to Apollonius of Rhodes.
Directly
opposite, in the other half of the transsept, to make room for the
groups of the Quirinal, other statues have been placed, such as: of
Castor and Pollux, on horseback, by San Giorgio of Milan, the
original pieces of which are made of bronze. In the middle is the
equestrian statue of Coleoni, by Andre Verrocchio, the original of
which, also in bronze, is in Venice and is considered one of the
most beautiful products of the Renaissance style.
But,
after having cast this general glance at the transsept, one must
return to the most interesting part of the palace, namely, to the
halls of the fine arts, which are furnished in the style of the
various periods to which they belong. The Egyptian halls deserve a
first mention. Here one cannot say: Ab Jove principium, for Jupiter
resembles the youngest of the family among these Gods and Kings, to
whom the ancient Egyptian temples are dedicated. One finds oneself
here opposite the oldest sculpture in the world, and what must above
all cause astonishment is, that Egyptian art, the oldest and the
father of all others, has reached in one leap a height which has
remained the same in later years; the two first monuments of the
world, the pyramids, are still the largest.
Egyptian
art, which is the oldest known, has also left behind the most
remains. The Egyptians built for immortality, and in this they have
succeeded, in every way. By following the rules, which art bound in
their strict bonds, they united the highest comprehension with an
eminently beautiful execution. They have not only produced
everything that has been produced after them, but even surpassed it.
In all other nations art passes through the same phases; from its
birth it rises rapidly to a high degree of perfection, but then
slowly descends again. But in Egypt this is by no means the case.
The further back one goes in the course of time, the more perfect is
the art; its birth and its zenith are unknown. In the most perfect
temples that have been discovered, there are found in the walls
stones laid with hieroglyphs on the inside, which are finer and more
beautiful in execution than modern art can achieve. Egyptian
sculpture was regulated by the religious laws of this exceptional
people, and has remained unshaken in its general forms for several
centuries.
The
Egyptian part of the building is reached by an avenue formed by
eight large sleeping lions, which are taken from those in the
British Museum. The facade, which looks out over the nave, is a
portico of the Ptolemaic period; on the frieze is placed a
hieroglyphic inscription in honour of Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert. It reads as follows: "In the seventeenth year of the
reign of Her Majesty, the mistress of the waves, the daughter of the
Kings - Victoria, most illustrious Queen, the directors, architects,
painters, sculptors have laid out this palace and these gardens, to
serve as an instruction to the men and women of all countries, of
all nations." Most of the temples and colonnades in this part
of the palace, are not reproductions of existing monuments; they are
a collection of the various orders of architecture, borrowed from
various sources, and of which a whole has been formed at will,
although good taste has not been lost sight of. Copies of Egyptian
monuments were of course out of the question, the temple of the
palace of Karnac alone was larger than the entire glass palace! All
the monuments of this museum are therefore only models on a very
reduced scale.
In
this way has been composed the first column facade, a model of that
order of the Ptolemies, about three hundred years before Christ,
when the Greek influence had already brought a certain looseness of
style into the massive and, so to speak, priestly order of the times
of the Sesostris and Pharaohs. The colour is taken from that of the
ruins. On entering the first room, one sees on the walls paintings
of battles and processions, taken from a temple of Ramses, situated
near Thebes. It is to this same temple, the Memnonium, that the
second of the facades present here belongs; it consists of eight
columns, in front of each of which is a colossal statue of King
Rhamses. These statues originally had a height of thirty feet.
It
is this facade that has been used as a transition to the well-known
gallery of columns at Karnac. It is especially in this gigantic
monument that the system adopted by the English artists gives ample
play to criticism. The Egyptian architecture and sculpture are so
astonishingly colossal in size, that models of natural dimensions
can only give a false idea of the whole. A
reproduction on a small scale, which in itself would not resemble
the reality, can give a truer idea of the real
monument than a picture in which one can move. The colonnade of
Karnac in the glass palace, with however much care it may be
executed, can therefore give no idea of the original.
This
famous temple, the product of Ramses II, the most powerful of the
Egyptian kings, who lived about the year 1170 before Jesus Christ,
was connected to the almost equally famous temple of Luxor by means
of an avenue of sphinxes of more than 2000 ells in length. A hall of
it has been preserved, which is more than 1200 feet long and 360
feet wide. Another avenue led to a portal 360 feet long, 148 feet
high, with a great gate 64 feet high, which led into a hall 58,000
square feet in size. In this hall stood, with folded arms, statues
with shoulders 25 feet broad, whose face was 7, the nose 21, the
beard 51, the headdress 14 feet long. These statues were 72 feet
high; they could be seen at a distance of 12 miles. In this hall of
columns, restored in the glass palace, were 134 columns, of which in
the middle 12 were 66 feet high and 12 feet in diameter, the others
42 feet high and 9 in diameter.
The
ambition of the Egyptian kings seems therefore to have consisted
exclusively in building immortal tombs; for this purpose they piled
one temple and one mountain on top of the other. The two great
pyramids are tombs. The smallest covers at its foot an area of 11
acres of ground and its four corners converge at a height of 460
feet to one point. The other is 40 feet higher and 40 feet wider at
the lower part. At its foot sits the great sphinx, a lion with a
human head; it has a length of 80 feet. This pyramid is the largest
monument and the sphinx at the same time the largest statue that has
ever been made.
Continuing
the road along this side, one first comes to the facade of the old
temple of Aboo-Simbel, hewn in the rock about the year 1565 before
Christ. This facade was 117 feet long and 100 feet high. The seated
statues represent Ramses the Great, his mother, his wife and his
daughter; they are found in their original size of 65 feet in
another part of the palace. The model of this monument is taken at
the 1/10 part of the original.
Turning
to the left, one finds the portico of the temple of Philae, situated
on an island in the middle of the sacred river of Egypt, the Nile;
then passing through the hall of Amenophis, one comes to the tomb of
Beni-Hassan, the oldest of the monuments, of which a model was
provided in the Glass Palace; it dates from the year 1660 before
Christ. The paintings inside represent the domestic life of the
Egyptians. In the Egyptian museum one also finds copies of the Bull
[Stone!] of Rosetta, which was found by a French engineer on the
occasion of the expedition to Egypt. On this basalt stone, which
dates from the year 196 before the birth of Jesus Christ, there was
an inscription in hieroglyphs or sacred letters, in common Egyptian
and in Greek. It is thanks to this Egyptian translation that the key
to the language of the hieroglyphs has been found.
Of
all these curiosities of the most remote antiquity it can rightly be
said that the ancient master builders were really great men. They
could not borrow anything from anyone. Their own genius alone was
their source of information and this made them produce things as
great as they have ever been seen. They discovered many rules, which
constitute the sublime of art and were far superior to useless
ornamentation. They felt all the weight of their calling. The last
Egyptian temples, copied from their models, have given the world an
idea of the greatness of their architectural order.
In
chronological order, after Egypt comes Greece. Entering the nave of
the building, one finds oneself before a facade in Doric style,
followed by a temple of Jupiter at Nemea, 400 years before Christ.
The frieze is decorated with inscriptions and with the names of the
principal cities of Greece. In front of the facade are placed groups
of wrestlers, of Silenus and Bacchus, of Bacchus and the Fauns. The
central door leads to the great hall; this is square, surrounded by
porticos and represents the agora of the Greeks, or the forum of the
Romans, that is to say a place intended for public meetings. It is
of Doric order and the names placed on the frieze are those of
poets, philosophers and artists of Greece. The paintings, which will
decorate the walls (and which are still being worked on) are
illustrations from Greek theology; they are executed under the
supervision and according to the sketches of G. Scharf and
represent: 1°. Olympus; 2°. the capture of Troy; 3°. the
realm of the underworld; 4°. the period of Pericles and Phidias.
In
this room one finds collected the masterpieces of ancient sculpture,
with which everyone is familiar. In the middle, as the finest stone
of this diadem, stands the most beautiful woman in the world, the
Venus de Milo, found by Mr. Marcellus in the year 1820 and which now
decorates the Louvre in Paris. This is the Venus Victrix. Next to
her stands the Venus of Capua, almost identical to the first, and of
which the original is in the Museum of Naples. Furthermore, the
wrestler from the Louvre in Paris; the Juno Farnese from Naples, the
Naïad from the Louvre, the Faunus from the Vatican; the Faunus
from the Capitol, the Minerva Farnese from Naples, the Medicea from
Rome, the sleeping Ariadne, which is found in one of the halls of
the Vatican, and the Laocoon found in the ruins of the palace of
Titus in the year 1506, and which is considered a masterpiece of
ancient art.
Continuing
along this road, one comes to a covered gallery, where a place has
been given to another order of architecture. The square pilasters
which support this gallery were found at Eleusis. The ceiling, which
is executed with equal talent and taste, is the work of Owen Jones,
who is of the opinion that the Greeks painted their monuments and
monumental sculpture; and in the copies of the friezes and reliefs
of the Parthenon, he has had some parts painted, to serve as a
standard of comparison with the rest.
The
principal ornament of the bas-reliefs is an imitation of one of the
facades of the Parthenon, the most beautiful of all the temples in
the world. It is taken to about one-fourth the ordinary size, and
this is the largest representation of it ever made. It is here that
the value of the remark previously made, concerning the reproduction
on a reduced scale of the Egyptian monuments, may be estimated. In
the case of the Greek monuments, copies of ordinary size can give a
true idea of the original, because the beauty of Greek
art lies less in size than in the harmony of proportions. The
Parthenon was at its highest point only 64 feet high; it was 228
feet long and 100 feet wide; the columns were 34 feet high and 6
feet in diameter. This famous temple, as is known, was dedicated to
Minerva, the patron goddess of Athens. In the cella, in the middle
of the temple, was the statue of this goddess, in gold and ivory, a
masterpiece by Phidias. It was under the supervision of this artist
that the work on the temple was done, of which Ictinus and
Callicrates were the master builders. The Parthenon dates from the
most beautiful period of art, that of Pericles, 444 years before
Jesus Christ.
The
first drawings that are in possession of the Parthenon are from the
year 1674 and were made by a French artist, Jacobus Carrey, while
the Marquis de Nointel was at Athens. These drawings are still in
the collection at Paris and remain the most accurate ones that have
been in our possession since then, since the Parthenon has suffered
new and numerous destructions, both by the ravages of time and by
the hand of man. When Carrey made his sketches, the temple of
Minerva was a Christian church, and the statues had been removed
from one of the pediments to replace them with a peddler. A few
years later, in 1687, the Venetians shelled Athens, and the
Parthenon, which had been turned into a powder magazine, was badly
damaged by an explosion that destroyed the central part of the
building, and shattered several statues. It is known that the Turks
used the columns of the Parthenon to make plaster, that travellers
carried off pieces for their collections, and that Lord Elgin
finally brought back the most beautiful remains of the work of
Phidias in England. These incomparably beautiful remains, which now
adorn the British Museum in London, have been restored to the glass
palace. The frieze, representing the feasts of Minerva, extends the
whole length of the gallery; part of it, as we have said, is
painted; another is white on a blue ground; another is entirely
white, so that comparisons may be made. There are also the famous
statues brought by Lord Elgin, which have preserved his name. It is
believed that the Parthenon contained 44 statues; of these, 13
fragments are now left in London and 2 in Athens; this is all that
remains of those beautiful works. The Glass Palace also possesses
here a copy of Theseus, which is considered the most perfect of the
known fragments; furthermore copies of Ceres and Proserpina, of a
head of the horse of the chariot of the night, and of the Fates. On
the opposite side of the Parthenon is placed the well-known group of
Niobe, found in the year 1580 at the gate of St. John in Rome, and
now in Florence. In the halls of the Glass Palace, devoted to Greek
works of art, there are more than 200 statues, the description of
which would naturally take us too far, so we have confined ourselves
to the most important.
The
Roman halls differ little from the Greek; there is no Roman art,
properly speaking. The conquerors of the world made the conquered
peoples work for them. Among the Romans the first artists were the
Etrurians, and then the Greeks.
It
is known that the Etrurians, now the Tuscans, were a people who were
particularly fond of art; but it was not only in this that they
excelled; they were also a very industrious people and already
carried on a very extensive trade when Rome was still in its birth.
The Romans produced great, especially useful works, such as the
construction of roads and water pipes. They also built great
temples, but the Etrurians made the statues and images of gods,
either in earth or in bronze. One of the oldest Etrurian fragments
is the she-wolf of the Capitol.
After
the defeat of Pyrrhus (275 years before Christ), and the conquest of
Sicily, the Romans brought their victorious arms to Greece, and
Paulus Emilius, the conqueror of Perseus, King of Macedonia,
returned to Rome in triumph with the booty taken in Greece. He
loaded no less than 250 wagons with it, 167 years before the birth
of Christ. Twenty years later, in 146, Mummius completed the
conquest of Greece; he gave everything up to plunder and took with
him a great number of masterpieces, many of which, however, broke or
were badly damaged during transport. What the Romans destroyed
during their invasions and during the time of their rule over the
Greek provinces, is incalculable.
But
at the same time a multitude of Greek artists came to settle in
Rome, and a new era of art dawned for them as well as for the
Romans, — an era of wealth and elegance of production, but
also of decline. The simple and ideal beauty of pure Greek art gave
place to something more sensual, which worked less on the feeling
than on the passions. Under the first Roman Emperors, people were
content with an imitation of the Greek masterpieces; and this
explains why they often made different specimens of the same heaths.
For the beautification of his palace, Nero had five hundred statues
brought from Delphi. On the site where this palace stood, Titus had
his baths built, and it is there that some famous pieces were later
found, such as the Laocoon. The Forum is due to Trajan, and also
bears his name; likewise the column, a picture of which will also
enrich the glass palace, is from him. The period of Hadrian was the
most flourishing; under his reign it seems to have reached a high
perfection. It was during the reign of the Antonines that the
engraved stones and cameos, which served for many portraits, were
made.
In
the fourth century, when the seat of the Empire was transferred to
Constantinople, the arts, the artists, and the collection of fine
arts followed the same path, and were followed by the masterpieces
already brought from Greece. But the arrival of the barbarian
tribes, who sought only gold, silver and bronze, was a deadly blow
to the beautiful collection. Thus the works of Phidias, Polycletus,
Lysippus disappeared long before the fall of the Greek empire.
Entering
the Roman halls through the nave, one finds oneself opposite a
facade, borrowed from the ground floor of the Colisseum in Rome. It
is the first time in the history of ancient architecture that one
hears mention of the arch style. The Greeks never made use of it. It
was therefore thought that the first use of it was made under the
Roman rule; but the latest discoveries made in Assyria have proven
that the arch dated back to a much earlier age and that it was used
extensively at Nineveh, that it was brought from there to Asia
Minor, from where the Etrurians introduced it to Italy. In the Roman
halls of the glass palace a model and relief of the Coliseum will be
placed, which is however not yet completely finished. The great hall
is entirely covered and decorated with stones, which imitate the
porphyry, malachite and rare marbles, of which the Romans made ample
use in their palaces.
The
Venus of the Capitol, which is found here, is preferred by many
masters to the Venus of Medici, because it is wrought in a purer and
more exalted style; furthermore, there is the Venus Genitrix, the
Venus of the sea and the Venus of Arles, all from the Louvre. Around
the Venus Callipygos of Naples, the Bacchus of the Louvre. Around
the hall are arranged in chronological order, the busts of the Roman
Kings and Emperors. Here is also placed a relief of the forum at
Rome, one of the most interesting for study; the mountain of the
Capitol, the ruins of the temple of Concord, the arch of Septimius
Severus, the column of Phocas, the temples of Antonius and Faustina,
the temple of peace, the arch of Constantine, the Coliseum, the arch
of Titus.
On
the other side of the main hall are several rooms, of which Roman
baths have been made. These baths are furnished entirely according
to the original. They have been decorated with beautiful statues;
there is the hall of Apollo and the hall of Diana. The Apollo is the
one that one sees on the Belvedere in the Vatican, and which has
given rise to so many conjectures. The Diana is the one of the
Louvre and the Goddess of the hunt.
12 March 1856
MISCELLANEOUS. From Constantinople it is reported
that
some French soldiers, whose barracks are situated not far from the
Atmeidan (the old racecourse from the time of the Emperors), have
recently dug up the serpent column buried under the mud there. This
column is one of the most remarkable of the few ancient monuments
preserved in the capital of the Turkish empire. It consists of three
bronze serpents, twisted together, about 25 feet high, and ends at
the top in three superbly worked massive serpent heads. These latter
were all knocked off by the iconoclastic Turks at the capture of the
city, and indeed, as the historians report, the first by Mohammed
the conqueror himself. That head is still preserved in the small
museum of the former Irene church. Eusebius and Sozomenus relate
that this work of art was brought from Delphi to Constantinople by
Constantine the Great, and that this column is the same which was
placed by the united Greeks, after the battle of Plataea, as the
pedestal of a golden tripod made from the booty, in the temple of
Apollo at Delphi. The classical writers Herodotus, Thucydides and
Pausanias speak several times of this serpent or dragon column.
Pausanias, King of Sparta, sought to appropriate to himself the fame
of the victory at Plataea by having a two-line verse, in which he
was celebrated as the hero of Plataea, engraved on this column. The
Amphictyones, however, incensed at the unjustness of this boast,
gave orders to blot out the words, and decreed that in their stead
the names of all the Greek peoples who had taken part in the war
against the Persians should be chiselled on the column. The rubbish
which had accumulated on this spot for fifteen centuries has up to
the present day covered the lower part of this monument, which has
suffered greatly through time. It has now been discovered, however,
that on one side of the lower twelve serpentine coils a multitude of
Greek national names can be read, partly in very ancient script,
among which are the names of the inhabitants of Ambracia, Lepreae,
Tenos, and Corinth. It is remarkable that up to now no trace has
been found of the names of the Athenians and Spartans; they have
probably become illegible through the rust with which they are
covered. A few young German philologists are busily engaged in the
complete decipherment of this remarkable inscription, which dates
from the most brilliant period of Greece's heroic age.
(When
one compares what Petrus Gylius in his work: the Topographia
Constantinopoleos cap. XII, says about that column or pillar, one
will be cautious, with waiting for further reports about this
discovery.)
5 February
1882 From Athens it is reported that the archaeological
society
has
decided to have the temple of Apollo at Delphi excavated, provided
that the Government compensates the owners of the plots above it.
29 March 1887
Greece and France have concluded an agreement
concerning
the excavations at Delphi. All the excavated objects remain in
Greece, but the French Government reserves the exclusive right to
publish the inscriptions and photographs for a certain period.
9 May 1887
Between the Greek and German governments
a
treaty was concluded at the time for the excavations in Olympia that
serves as an example of the treaty that the Greek and French
governments are currently concluding for the excavations in Delphi.
According to this last treaty, the French government would have the
right to do excavations in Delphi for five years, but everything
that is brought to light would become the property of Greece. The
only thing against this is that the French government would have the
right to multiply finds by casts and to depict them in scientific
writings. The Greek House of Representatives will now have to decide
whether or not this treaty will be concluded.
1 August 1887
At the latest session of the archaeological society in
Berlin,
Mr.
Ponikoff gave an extensive report of his research to determine the
topography of ancient Delphi, so world-famous at the time because of
the oracle of Apollo. He found a large number of inscriptions during
his excavations and has now made them public. He was also able to
praise the fidelity of the description given by Pausanias. This
research and the excavations took place in May last and later
extensive reports on the remains of the world-famous temple and its
surroundings will appear in the light,
7 March 1888
It has long been known that in ancient times among the Romans
and
also in many parts of Greece no one was allowed to sell without
being supported by a surety who guaranteed to the buyer that the
seller was indeed trading his property and not goods on which his
ownership rights could be contested. Such a surety was called by the
Romans auctor secundus, by the Greeks bebaioter or proapodotas. An
inscription of the demos sypaleitos has now been discovered, from
which it appears that in ancient Attica too the buyer had recourse
to such a surety, if the surrender of the thing sold was contested
by others who could claim a right to it. Here too, at least until
the fifth century, the rule seems to have applied that sale and
surrender of the thing sold to the buyer was impossible unless in
the presence of a third person, who guaranteed that the seller was
disposing of his property and not of foreign goods. But in Attica
after that time the seller himself was the person responsible to the
buyer. In other Greek states, on the other hand, it remained
necessary for a long time to call in the intervention of the surety,
of the confirmer of the right of ownership, since no other proof of
ownership could be produced. As late as the second century, for
example, the old institution of a bebaioter was still used in
Delphi.
11 November
1889 Eduard Engel writes from Greece about "Delphi"
to the "N. R. Ct.":
A
walk within the perimeter of the old sanctuaries leaves one
completely unsatisfied. The excavations that have been carried out
up to now have certainly aroused desire, but they have brought to
light almost nothing that can flatter the artistic sense of even a
non-archaeologist. The museum — a room like a stable —
possesses, apart from a few insignificant inscriptions, nothing that
is worth seeing. And yet it is my firm conviction, to which I want
to give the strongest possible expression here, that there is
perhaps nowhere in Greece a soil where an excavation undertaken on a
large scale will yield such surprising results as at Delphi. And
with much smaller resources than were used at Olympia at the time.
Here one need not clear away the thousand-year-old stone dust of two
riverbeds at a depth of dozens of m; here one has not much more to
do than to expropriate the village of Kastri, as it stands there,
and then to take up the axe and the spade under every house, in
every garden and on every vineyard, in order to come across
discoveries of the highest value for science as well as for art,
perhaps day after day. The Greek Government and the Archaeological
Society at Athens connected with it are aware of the necessity of
such an excavation on a large scale, and also of that of the
expropriation of Kastri, completely convinced. But with the best
will they cannot find the means for it. Americans, swimming in
money, have offered to undertake the excavations and to buy the
whole of the new Delphi in advance; in this case everything found
would come into the possession of Americans and the archaeological
treasures would be transferred to America. On that point the small
Greek kingdom from top to bottom understands no joke. Anyone who
provides the necessary guarantees for a sensible enterprise is
allowed to do excavations. In the past Germany received the permit
for Olympia, and Germany has contented itself with the certainly not
small honor of having dug up a treasure for science and art from the
mountain-high rubble of thousands of years. But Greece knowingly
gives away nothing of the treasures of its great past, just as all
export of that kind is strictly forbidden. For the rest the offer of
the Americans is nothing less than generous; for if even a single
well-preserved statue from the best period were to be unearthed
under the houses of Kastri, that discovery alone would be able to
offset the expenses.
The
Greek Government, in conjunction with the German Archaeological
Institute in Athens, has had an investigation made into the costs of
the excavations at Delphi, and it estimates the costs of
expropriating the Kartriotes at only 3/4 million drachmas
(f300,000). Once the houses, mostly miserable cottages, have been
pulled down, the work can begin wherever one wants. One would think
that somewhere in the world there was a millionaire who, if only out
of vanity, would throw a few million drachmas on the table to help
bring about such a work, for which one would reap eternal gratitude.
And if there is no such millionaire, then the German government,
Greece's "sister-in-law", as it is now called in the
vernacular of the Hellenes, will eventually develop for Delphi the
same selfless activity as it showed for Olympia. It does not really
matter for art and science who excavates ancient Delphi, but for
German hearts it would be more desirable that Germany were not
outdone by France, which is pursuing the same plan. The Greeks, even
the simple folk here in the village, are convinced that help will
come from Germany. It is a pleasure to see with what confidence
people in this eastern corner of Europe have turned their eyes to
Germany. Smoke rises from the Kastalian source. I have to smile: I
involuntarily think of the tripod of the oracle, from which swirling
clouds of smoke and so much wisdom arose. And now I have to laugh
out loud. There are two tripods before me, not by the bubbling water
from the rock cleft, nor is there a Pythian virgin sitting above the
tripod, but there are sturdy black kettles on top, and in them boils
the washing of the Delphic men, women and children, and suspended
high the women of Kastri splash so bravely in the water that the
foam splashes away. On a boulder in the cleft, around which grazing
lambs and goats hop, sits a black-eyed rascal of 12 years, the
village shepherd, crouched down and blowing on his stick pipe. He
suddenly stopped blowing, astonished, when he saw a stranger
approaching with a cup in his hand to draw a drink of Kastalian
water from the spring that springs from the rock cleft.
20 February
1891 — A heated debate was held in the French Chamber
about
a credit application of fr. 480,000 for the excavations at Delphi.
This enterprise is the work of Frenchmen residing in Athens, and
important discoveries are expected, which would benefit the French
museums. Mr. Le Chevalier raised his voice against the proposal,
calling it untimely, now that Versailles and other palaces in France
are almost falling into ruins; the money could be better used to
maintain these and other State domains. Mr. Dupuy, who defended the
proposal, said he could not believe that French legislation would
grant the countrymen of Mac Kinley the fame of having excavated the
Temple of Apollo. Finally, the proposal was adopted by 341 votes to
61.
10 November
1893 A discovery at Delphi!
—
During the excavations at the site where the famous temple of Delphi
once stood, a discovery has been made which is of the utmost
importance for the knowledge of ancient Greek literature and music.
For instance, a stone slab was found, in which a hymn of praise to
Apollo is engraved, and above each syllable, the notes in which the
song was sung are mentioned. It is believed that we now have the key
to ancient Greek music, which was sought in vain for so long. The
music is by the composer Aristoxenes, a pupil of Aristotle, and
dates from the 2nd century BC. According to the convention between
Greece and France, the latter country has the right to publish the
hymn. A second hymn was found, but this one was not provided with
notes.
3 April 1894 A
most remarkable musical performance took place on Thursday
in
Athens. In the French school of antiquity a two thousand year old
"hymn to Apollo" was performed, the text of which with the
notes had recently been found at Delphi.
The
two tablets on which the hymn is engraved were found during the
excavation of a building, which was situated, close to the place
which was dedicated to the old oracle. One of the tablets was
unfortunately defective, but the other was still almost intact. This
discovery was of special importance, because the fragments of old
music which had been found up to now, are not complete enough to
give a correct idea of the characteristic of a whole
composition.
Reinach
in Paris had set this old music to new notes. The hymn was performed
by a quartet of male voices: it made an exceptionally pleasant,
though strange effect, and in many respects reminded one of the most
beautiful German chorales, the performance was attended by the king
and queen, two princes and princesses, many persons of the court,
members of the cabinet and the diplomatic corps. The hymn was so
well received that it was repeated at the request of the queen.
25 May 1894
The French archaeologists at Delphi
have
now also discovered during their excavations the treasury of the
ancient inhabitants of the island of Siphnos, which was famous in
ancient times for its gold and silver mines. The building is well
preserved and remarkably beautiful. It would be of great service to
the French, as a reporter from The Standard notes, if they, like the
Germans in their excavations in Greece, would obtain the help of a
few architects.
30 May 1894
Among the latest discoveries at Delphi
are
a horse's head in marble, which probably belonged to the frieze of
the Temple of Apollo, six metopes from the treasury of the
Athenians, representing fighting Amazons; Theseus wrestling with the
Minotaur and other bas-reliefs, which must have belonged to the
treasury of Siphnos. The score of a hymn has also been excavated,
although it is rather incomplete.
5 June 1894
Among the latest discoveries at Delphi is a very large statue
of
Apollo, from an early period of Greek art, and the lower part of an
altar erected by Gelon of Syracuse, with an inscription in which the
victory of the Tyrant over the Carthaginians at Himera (480 BC) is
glorified.
19 June 1894
At Delphi a column has been excavated, which bears en relief
the
images of three women, in the spirit of the column in the temple of
Ephesus. The drapery of the three well-preserved statues gives an
excellent impression that they are in rapid motion. This discovery
is considered to be of great value.
3 October 1894
The Apollo hymn,
On
the second Apollo hymn, excavated by Homolle at Delphi, not only the
notes of the song but also the accompaniment with instruments must
have been noted. Since the Greeks used a different and older
notation for their instruments than for singing, it is not likely
that Homolle would have been mistaken. This discovery may therefore
provide an answer to the question of how harmony was among the
Greeks. The passages in Aristotle and Plutarch, which until now were
the only sources for the knowledge of harmony among the Greeks, are
so obscure that scholars do not agree with each other at all. One
claims that the Greeks only knew primes and octaves, the other
believes that the Greeks did keep singing homophonous, but that the
instruments were allowed to accompany the singing in fifths, fourths
or thirds. The hymn that has now been discovered will probably
settle that dispute.
As
for the text, it is almost identical to that of the first hymn;
Apollo's birth on Delos and his battle with the Pytho are sung in
it. What is new is that the hymn is concluded with a prayer for
Athens and Rome. The poem probably dates from after Christ's birth,
and Homolle assumes that it was composed in the second century after
Christ. The hymn is engraved in two columns on a single marble slab,
which has been preserved fairly well.
19 January
1895 In an extensive hemisphere, walled in by high and wild
rocks,
offshoots
of Parnassus, on the right bank of the Kephalo-Vrysi, which rises
from the source of Oastalis and, forming many waterfalls, makes its
way through a forest of olives and laurels until it falls into the
dried-up bed of the Xero-Potamo, there are three or four white
houses: that is the village of Castri, which by a miraculous twist
of fate has risen on the site of Delphi, the opulent holy city, the
great gods servile centre of the civilization of the ancients.
For
a long time the learned have wondered whether a city so famously
renowned could in reality have disappeared so completely, without
leaving anything behind it but a few fragments of marble scattered
over the ground, and a few mutilated sculptures set aside under the
shade of the olive trees in the gardens; whether the Phocidian
plunderers, the centurions of Sulla and Nero, the Gauls under
Brennus, the warriors of Constantine could thus have doomed to
nothing that immense city, consisting of nothing but temples and
sanctuaries, peopled by thousands of statues. At the beginning of
the year 1891, when the Minister of Education in France put that
very old question to Mr. Homolle, the present director of the "Ecole
francaise d'Athènes," the latter did not hesitate to
answer that he was convinced that the soil of the village of Castri
contained the most precious monuments, and he supported his opinion
by mentioning the efforts made by Ottfried Müller, Wescher,
Foucart, Haussoulier and Pomtow, and by the observations which he
himself had been allowed to make in the region of the Delphic
valley.
It
is to the last parliament's unfading honor to have accepted his
assurance and to have granted a considerable sum for this
disinterested undertaking, for none of the excavated works will
leave the soil of Greece.
A
whole year was spent in expropriating the cottages of the farmers,
which had been built on the very spot where the principal buildings
were formerly located, around the sanctuary of Apollo.
This
was accompanied by many difficulties: although 280,000 francs,
intended to indemnify the farmers, had immediately been deposited in
the Bank of Athens, they would not allow the work to begin until
they had the money in their hands. "Here is my field, here is
my hand," said an old woman to the director; lay drachmas on
that hand, and I will give that land to you." Those poor people
did not want to believe that a signature could have any monetary
value and in their simplicity imagined that, after having turned the
terrain upside down, they would start to dispute the extent of the
possessions that they had bought off. Several times Mr. Homolle
wanted to persevere, but the farmers demolished the sheds in a riot
and it was a close call that a bloody encounter had taken place:
they had to exercise patience.
In
the month of October of the year 1892, the first ditches were opened
and the narrow-gauge railway was laid, with which the excavated soil
was carried away. The result of the investigations was not very
satisfactory at first. At the site of the temple of Apollo, where it
was mainly thought that valuable sculptures would be found, nothing
or almost nothing was found, as if — in the expression of Mr.
Homolle — the removal of the statues had been carried out
according to a specific plan and regulation had taken place. In the
year 1893, at the highest point of the sacred road, which
intersected the entire city, admirable remains were uncovered, one
after the other, the first indemnities of two years of fruitless
labor: pedestals of ex-votos, marble horses, female figures, male
torsos, and also terra-cottas, bronzes, and inscriptions, among
which were fragments of the accounts of the sanctuary, dating from
the 4th century before the Christian era.
Then
followed the discovery of the Hymn to Apollo, which enabled Mr.
Salomon Reinach to revive a tone poem that had been lost for 2000
years. And finally, the results of the campaign of the past year
have gloriously rewarded the sacrifices which our budget had made,
as well as the diligence of Mr. Homolle and his collaborators,
Messrs. Convert, Bourguet, Perdrizet, Millet, Conve, Jonguet-Blot
and Tournaire.
The
workmen have excavated a crossroads, at which four buildings were
situated: one of which formerly housed the treasure of the offerings
made to the Delphic god by the people of Athens; another the
treasure of the Syphnians, a third the treasure of the Beotians.
True, they have not been able to lay hands on the talents, the
golden drinking vessels, the precious gems which had been in it, and
which had once seized the covetousness of the invaders, but
masterpieces have been found which have an entirely different value
for the knowledge of antiquity. They are, in the treasury of the
Athenians, a series of column decorations of a wonderful art,
representing the story of Theseus; then not far from there an
archaic Apollo, the work of an archaic master, corresponding in all
respects with another figure discovered last year; in the treasury
of the Syphnians, the construction of which has been entirely
restored, bas-reliefs, representing sacred events, besides warriors
fighting, horses that have the same noble and impressive bearing,
the same fiery and supple movements, as those famous horses of
Phidias, which decorated the Parthenon (now belonging to the
so-called Elgin Marbles preserved in the British Museum): yet they
were carved a century before those of the Athenian master and differ
from it only by the frizzy hair of tail and mane, a remnant of the
old tradition. Side by side, moreover, there are works of art, which
then bear the stamp of that ideal grace, which for us is the highest
revelation of art, and others whose artless stiffness, yet not
devoid of greatness, seems to date from more distant centuries.
Yet
there is no doubt that they were all made at the same time, but the
old masters, attached to the old traditions, worked at the same time
as the younger ones, whose conception was broader and newer; this
contains an important lesson for criticism, which is too anxious to
assign to each school its own narrowly limited date.
Among
the very latest discoveries, a torso, outstanding in grace and
strength, probably the remains of a statue erected for an athlete
who had been victorious in the Pythian games, deserves attention,
and above all an Antinous in marble, from which nothing but the arms
is missing, and which is particularly noble and sober in execution.
The casts and photograms of most of these beautiful objects have
recently been exhibited at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Later they will
be transferred to the Louvre, where they will form a separate
collection, which will be enlarged according to the progress of the
discoveries.
The
excavations are still being continued, and Mr. Homolle is about to
return to Greece to resume their direction. Convinced that he has
not been going wild since the excavation of the principal
sanctuaries, whose names he has been able to establish on the basis
of the indications given us by Pausanias, he is fully convinced that
he will soon be able to hand over to antiquity and art a new and
abundant harvest of monuments. Will he find again one of those
wonderful statues whose azure tint excited the admiration of the
Roman emperors? That would be a more precious discovery than even
that of the fabulous offerings, destined by their richness to fall
prey to the desire of the peoples and which were piled up in that
city of treasures: the golden bricks dedicated by Croesus, the
drinking cups of King Gyges, the throne of Midas, the silver dish
which fell to Homer in a contest of poets, the golden statue of the
beautiful Phryné. Little can be said of it in advance, but
the French Ecole d'Athènes, some of whose members are now
even making the rarest discoveries on the island of Delos, has the
right to be proud of the work it has done at Delphi: it has once
again given France the very true and very noble fame of enriching
the entire world.
(ANDRÉ
SAGLIO.)
2 June 1895 —
As has been repeatedly reported, the French are
busy
excavating the site where the famous temple at Delphi in Greece once
stood. Recently, important antiquities have again been brought to
light, among other things from the theater that belonged to the
temple and where the competitions were held. Beautiful sculptures
have been unearthed, with representations from the Iliad and the
Odyssey. A large number of inscriptions were found on the walls of
the theater.
24 October
1895 — The excavations at Delphi, carried out at the
expense
of
the French government, have yielded particularly favorable results
this year, especially by the uncovering of the two treasuries of the
Athenians and the Siphnians. Thirty largely damaged, but still
partly well-preserved marble reliefs have come to light, made to
glorify the battle of Marathon. Designed in Archaic style, Zeus,
Hera, Athena, Dionysus, Apollo and Heracles appear here as
conquerors of the giants, six representations of the labors of
Heracles, Amazon fights, etc. All these works of art belong to the
period between 480 and 470 BC, when the Archaic character began to
disappear. Of the original 28 m long frieze more than 20 m have been
saved, containing the deification of Heracles, the race of Pelops,
the battle for the body of Sarpedon and the Gigantomachy. Artists of
the old and the new direction seem to have worked on this work,
partly polychromed.
4 January 1896
The French excavations at Delphi have produced a second find
of
ancient Greek music in the form of a hymn to Apollo, written on
stone tablets. The fragments were dug up in the building, described
by Pausanias as the treasury of the Athenians: they form a more or
less complete whole with ten of the fourteen pieces, which were
discovered in 1893. The remaining four formed a separate hymn, which
has already been translated and published. Henri Weil and Theodor
Reinach will be charged with the decipherment of the new hymn, which
is certainly not older than 146 BC, the year of the conquest of
Corinth by the Roman general Mummius.
30 May 1896 A
new inscription has been discovered at Delphi,
which
provides special information concerning the training system for the
participants in the Olympic Games of antiquity.
12 June 1896
The excavations at Delphi. At the beginning of May,
during
the excavations at Delphi, near the ruins of the theatre, a
remarkable find was made, a bronze statue, of which the head and the
upper body were missing. They continued digging and then found the
pedestal, as well as an excellently preserved chest piece with a
head, of which the eyes were still intact, and finally an arm, whose
fingers closed around metal reins. They had discovered the statue of
a victor of the Olympic Games; here and there they found pieces of
the horse and of the triumphal chariot. The statue is 1 m80 high and
represents a young man. It is a masterpiece of Greek casting, which
was undoubtedly made between the years 470 and 460 BC.
There
are no exact indications about the artist who created it, but it is
suspected that he was a teacher of Phidias, called Ageladas.
2 July 1896
Olympic Games. Reuter reports from Athens that an inscription
has
been dug up at Delphi, in which it is described in detail how the
competitors for the Olympic Games in antiquity trained. Could the
inscription have been buried on the occasion of the last Olympiad,
last month?
23 August 1896
The archaeological finds in Greece.
(Delphi.)
III.
While
the excavations at Olympia have been stopped for some time, or at
least are no longer being continued continuously, the scholars of
the "French school" at Athens are still constantly busy at
Delphi, where they are also constantly making more or less important
finds, among others now very recently that bearded charioteer of
bronze, which is one of the most important metal works of art of
antiquity, whose excavation has been reported everywhere. The fact
is that they have only been digging at Delphi for a few years.
Before the work of excavation began, there was a Pelasgian wall,
fragments of the sacred precincts of Delphi, the fountain of
Castalia, fragments of statues and sculptures built into the walls,
as had been done elsewhere, in the wretched huts of the
neighbourhood: this was all that remained of one of the most famous
and glorious metropolises of the ancient world. Founded on a terrace
of the southern slope of Parnassus, in this land of Krisoa and
Phoki, on the blue Gulf of Corinth, protected on two sides by mighty
rock walls, Delphi had been for centuries and centuries the most
glorious sanctuary of antiquity. Not only the Greeks, but also the
Barbarians had sent ambassadors to inquire of the oracle of the
blind god of light. And gradually unknown treasures, splendid works
of art, were gathered together in its treasuries. Pausanias is also
of great value in relation to Delphi: the temple of Apollo alone, he
said, contains four thousand statues of gold, bronze, iron wood;
then the countless shields, tripods, images of animals, ex-votos of
all kinds, gifts from kings, commonwealths, corporations and private
individuals. But the time came when these treasures were carried
away. Nero brought 500 bronze statues from Delphi to Rome, the
sanctuary gradually lost its significance, the oracle was opposed by
the church fathers and finally it was here too Theodesius, who, in
390, slammed the door shut for good. The holy city then became a
ruin caused by nature and by wilfulness and soon, throughout the
Middle Ages, the shepherds of the village Kastri, meanwhile built on
its remains, tended their sheep and goats, where once the highest
wisdom had spoken.
The
success that the Germans had had with their excavation of Olympia
was an encouragement for the French to attempt similar work at
Delphi: in 1881 the French Chamber donated a sum of frs. 500,000 and
in October 1892 the work began, which at first met with great
resistance from the pastoral population of Kastri. And, although not
nearly as extensive as at Olympia, the excavations at Delphi have
yielded a greater harvest of important objects: in writings,
statues, bas-reliefs, foundations of more than seven buildings,
bronzes, vases, etc.
The
first important discovery was the treasury of the Athenians on the
Sacred Highway: a small building of Penthelic marble of the Aryan
order of architecture, whose walls were literally covered with
inscriptions. Smashed down by an earthquake, it had suffered
relatively little. Pausanias also helped explain the find here: the
sanctuary of the Athenians, erected in memory of Marathon, of the
spoils of the Persians. If its walls already form a true historical
library, on which one has also found important "Hymn to
Apollo", which explains so much of the music of the ancients,
perhaps even greater importance are the metopes of this small
sanctuary. There are thirty of them in number, all damaged, and they
represent the "labors of Hercules and Theseus". As
sculpture they have even greater value than the famous metopes of
the Parthenon, brought to England by Lord Elgin in an unlawful
manner.
But
not only do one find works from the heyday of Hellenic sculpture;
also important works of archaic art have been found, statues of
Apollo, in that stiff, hard style, which remind one of the oldest
statues of wood. Of the famous treasury of Apollo, of which so many
ancient writers have told wonders, nothing more than insignificant
fragments appeared to be left. It had been systematically destroyed.
They were happier with the treasury of the inhabitants of the island
of Siphnos, known as the most beautiful and the richest of Delphi.
The excavations have brought it back in its entirety: a work of the
6th century before Christ, and of admirable architectural execution.
Around the four walls of the little temple runs a frieze —
horsemen, chariots, quadrigas, battles — which is a completely
unique complex of sculpture, despite the fact that it is a century
older than the aforementioned Elgin marbles of the Parthenon. An
important franton has also been found from this sanctuary, important
although it is, apparently by another hand, a much less beautiful
art than the frieze. In one and another the traces of the colours
are still very clear; the background is always blue, the horses red,
the armour green, the chariots red, blue and green. Two exedras, the
stoa of the Athenians, a Greco-Roman tomb, houses, an aqueduct,
ruins that have not yet been explained, that is what has been found
at Delphi. But before these, some sculptures deserve to be
mentioned: a very large Sphinx, among others, a gift from the
inhabitants of Naxos. One of the most beautiful sculptures that were
found there, are three dancing coriatids, surrounded by leaves and
flowers. And now, a good year ago, an Antinous was excavated, which
is a worthy counterpart of the Olympian Hermes. A work of Roman
origin apparently, but of purely Greek beauty.
Some
important bronzes were also found, among others that male statue,
which has only been brought back to light a few weeks ago.
Such
are the excavations of Delphi, which are still continuing and appear
to be of the greatest importance for the history of Greek art.
Besides the fact that they have yielded valuable indications with
respect to the music of Greece, it is hoped that further remains
will be found which will reveal the art of painting. To what extent
this expectation will be confirmed is difficult to say at present,
but what has already been found is of the utmost importance and
encourages us to continue.
17 February
1897 Important discovery at Delphi.
Mr.
Svaronos, director of the coin cabinet in Athens, has expressed the
assumption that the bronze statue found by French discoverers is not
Hiero, Tyrant of Syracuse, but one of the kings of Cyrene. He bases
his opinion, according to the correspondent of the Standard, on the
comparative study of Pausanias on the coins of Cyrene, the ancient
province of Africa. According to him, the statue is by the hand of
the sculptor Amphion, of Gnossus on Crete. Pausanias already stated
that this statue was erected at Delphi by Archesilaus, the king of
Cyrene. The poet Pindar, who sang about his reign, also composed the
verses that are engraved on the pedestal.
Mr.
Homulle, director of the French archaeological school, disputes the
statement of Mr. Svoronos, whose guesses have aroused great
interest. The statue, which is of the greatest artistic value, is
equated with the magnificent statue of Mercury by Praxiteles, which
was found at Olympia.
5 December
1898 COMMUNICATIONS OF VARIOUS NATURE.
REPORT
by Dr. A. E. J. Holwerda, concerning the scientific journey to Italy
and Greece. To His Excellency the Minister of Internal Affairs.
[...]
The way in which the Greek collections are made available for study
is, in a word, exemplary and it is therefore very regrettable that,
for example, in Delphi, which was excavated by the École
Française, the Greek Museum Board, headed by the well-known
General ephoros P. Kabbadias, cannot yet act with full authority.
Understandably, the French stipulated the right of first publication
of what was found there, but for a very long time, a decade, and
with a ban on all foreigners not only from drawing and
photographing, but even from making notes. Every visitor is
therefore closely followed by a soldier.
[...]
From
Olympia we went to Patras. From there by steamboat to the beautiful
island of Ithaca, from Ithaca to Itea Delphi's harbour. It is
probably located almost on the site of the old Cirrha. The road to
Delphi first leads through a slowly rising plain, covered with olive
groves. You see the Delphic mountain country before you, with the
white peak of Parnassos protruding above it. On the left you come
along the road that leads to the old Amphissa. Soon, however, you
climb along slender mountain roads; one then passes through the
village of Chryso, which probably lies on or near the site of the
old Krisa. Then one reaches the village of Kastri, the old Delphi. A
village of that name was located on the site of the old sanctuary.
This was demolished by the French school and rebuilt a little
further on. The temple area lies on a fairly steep slope,
artificially levelled, against the almost vertically rising
Phaedriades. It has now been completely excavated. Opposite the
great sanctuary lies the temple of Athena Pronoia, of which
Aeschylus speaks in the beginning of his Eumenides; when that will
be uncovered, the French excavations will be at an end. The
sun-house of the Kastalian spring was completely destroyed early on;
the water now springs up elsewhere; yet the place where it stood, a
few steps beyond the great sanctuary, is still very well
recognisable. Our company left us very soon; we stayed a few days
longer. On the site of the excavations one obtains a very clear idea
of the entire ground plan of this so extensive
sanctuary and as in Olympia the buildings mentioned by Pausanias and
others could be found almost. It is a pity that not so much of the
upright parts of the buildings has remained. The sculpture that was
found and only partly published, is of the highest importance for
the history of art. Almost intact a charioteer has come to light, of
extraordinary artistic value, certainly the most excellently
preserved bronze statue from antiquity. In its artistic style the
work is from around 470 before Christ. Pieces of horses and a
chariot and of one or two more human figures have been found with it
and a limestone slab with an inscription belonging to a pedestal,
which must have been that of this votive offering; the one who
dedicated it was, according to the inscription, Polyzalos, brother
of the Syracusan tyrant Gelo. This discovery means for the
excavations of Delphi what that of the Hermes of Praxiteles meant
for those of Olympia. The epigraphic discoveries are also extremely
important. It is very much to be desired that all the inscriptions
found will soon be published. From Delphi we went to Athens, where
we stayed a few more days. From Athens we sailed to Constantinople.
There we wanted to study the two Museums, especially the new one
with its famous Sidonian and Klassomenan sarcophagi. The magnificent
Aja Sophia was also carefully examined. Of course we also tried to
form a good idea of the city and its location. We went
home via Vienna. On 4 May 1898 we returned to Leiden. I have more
than achieved with this journey what I had imagined of it. I hope
and expect that my teaching will prove to have gained much from it
and that in general the study of classical antiquity at our
university will benefit from it. The new material I brought back for
study is not unimportant. I brought together a collection of
photographs of about 700. These carefully arranged and provided with
an accompanying description now form an excellent aid for study.
28 March 1899
— After the Egyptian cemeteries have given rise
to
a new Aristotle, the Delphic stones now also speak. Among a number
of inscriptions that the French have found in Delphi in recent years
and of which hardly a tenth, 382 texts, has been made known, there
is also a small fragment in Stoichedon script, with 13 partly very
mutilated lines. The French scholar Homolle has deciphered the
content of this with great acumen; it is a eulogy to Aristotle and
his cousin Kalisthenes in gratitude for having arranged the lists of
the victors at the Pythian games. This work, which was important not
only for the Delphic, but for the entire ancient Greek calendar, is
lost to us except for a few clues. Now we have not only recovered
the original certificate for that writing, but we may even hope that
during further excavations the rest of the lists may also be found.
In that inscription the treasurer is ordered to have the list of the
victors hewn in stone and placed in the sanctuary of Apollo.
1 September
1901 Excavations.
In
Greece.
The
great excavations at Delphi by the French are almost finished. The
last great work was the excavation of the Stadion, the great Pythian
racecourse, which is about 178 m long and 25 to 28 m wide. Since the
entire sacred area of Delphi consists only of large
rock surfaces, it was far from easy to build a racecourse there, at
the foot of Parnass. A just idea of the great
difficulties with which this undertaking was to be contended is
given us by the old documents, which mention in particular the
expenses of each subdivision of the work: of raising the ground,
levelling the ground, removing all weeds, and sprinkling it with
white sand; furthermore, of providing spectators' seats, the lower
rows of which were hewn out of the rock, and of the construction of
a wooden grandstand, which was also intended for musical
performances and plays. Of particular interest to the sportsman are
the practical arrangements for the starting line. In order to
regulate the starting line properly, two steps were hewn out of the
rock for the feet of the runner; he stood on one of these with each
foot until the signal was given. Such starting places were provided
for eighteen competitors. That these had to take their duty
seriously and enter the racecourse soberly, has been nicely proven
in an inscription dating from around the fifth century before
Christ. It reads:
"Wine
shall not be brought into the sanctuary of Eudromos; if it happens,
the one who mixed the wine shall offer an atonement to the deity and
atone for his guilt with five drachmas; he who informs the
authorities of the crime shall receive half of that."
This
inscription is engraved on a stone block in one of the annexes of
the Stadium. According to some, it proves that immediately next to
the racecourse, where a large triumphal tower stood for a festive
entrance of the runners, there was a sanctuary dedicated to the
hitherto unknown deity of the runners: Eudromos.
1 January 1906
DELPHI.
In
a corner of the valley, which resembled a rocky gorge along the
southern slopes of Parnassus, lay Homer's Pytho, the later Delphi.
Three entrances connected this sacred place with the outside world.
One led eastward to Boeotia, the second northwestward to Amphissa,
and the third southwestward to Crisa and Cirrha. Delphi was not so
isolated as one often imagines. It was precisely at the time when it
had reached its highest fame, namely shortly before the Persian
wars, that the full stream of Greek life bubbled along Parnassus.
The
landscape around Delphi has been painted many times: it is
incomparable in its impressive beauty. Whether one came from the
East or the West, a bend in the road always hid the overwhelming
view until one was very near it. In the foreground, deep below, one
saw the gorge in which the little river Pleistus rushed to the sea
at Cirrha, — further north, at the increasingly longer,
increasingly steeply rising foot of the mountain, the simple
dwellings of the Delphians, — in the middle of the city the
world-famous sanctuary, with its dependencies (treasuries,
monuments, etc.) forming a kind of fortress, — and, finally,
embracing the whole as in a proud frame, the Castalia gorge, pressed
in between terribly steeply rising rock walls, which sends its
foaming waves to the Pleistus. The modern tourist, who has arrived
here and witnessed the many changes to which the weather is subject
here, can form an idea (albeit only a faint one) of the sensations
that the pilgrims of antiquity experienced here.
A
little less than twenty years ago, on the spot where Delphi once
stood, one found the village of Castri. The French scholars, who at
that time wanted to do excavations on a large scale, were forced to
buy all the huts that made up the tiny village. And that was not
enough: new houses had to be built for the inhabitants first, a good
distance further on. Only after this complete removal could the
French diggers begin their work, — a work that has only
recently been completed, and which has been crowned by the
completion of a simple museum.
I
flatter myself with the hope that many a reader who has never set
foot on Delphi's sacred soil will be pleased to know that to follow
in thought through the scene of the French discoveries, the full
weight of which we shall not gauge until the inscriptions and many
other details have been made known to the world.
I
now ask you to follow me on my way from the East, as do the pilgrims
coming from Boeotia. At the crossroads where, according to
tradition, Edipus killed his father, things are still not right,
according to the people, who believe in the ghosts of a robber
captain killed there. At a pretty village, called Arachowa, we
descend into the valley of the Pleistus. Rock tombs and sarcophagi
(or rather remains of them) betray to us that we are passing the
last resting place of many an ancient Delphian. Another minute or
so, and we will have the terraces of what once was Delphi in sight.
First
we must pass through the Marmaria, which is a wild field of
fragments, where once a kind of suburb seems to have stood, and
where an ancient boundary stone announces to us in the Delphic
dialect that we are in the quarter of Athene Ergane, i.e. the
goddess, in her quality of protector of weaving and similar
handicrafts. It is indeed remarkable that the above-mentioned
village of Arachowa still flourishes through an industry of a
similar nature, namely the manufacture of coarse carpets,
horse-cloths, etc., crude fabrics with garish colours and gaudy
motley, but nevertheless not entirely unworthy of Athene Ergane.
If
we now return to the Marmaria, our attention is soon attracted by
not unimportant remains of a subsidiary temple, dedicated to Athene,
namely, according to Pausanias, Athene Pronaa (i.e. the
Pre-temple-Athens). The relation of this to the actual temple
standing nearby is uncertain; but it is certain that this last (a
round building) must have been a work of the first rank. One can
form a fairly good idea of this from the blocks of
stone that lie on the spot, and from the upright parts that can be
seen in the above-mentioned Museum. From the attentive consideration
of all this it appears that this temple could compete in grandeur
and symmetry with the best buildings of the fifth century BC.
However, from the connection of Doric outer and Corinthian inner
columns I gather that the whole is of a somewhat later date. The
round wall (if I may call the main part so) is of light-coloured
marble and rests on a solid floor of a black stone, which projects
tastefully outwards.
The
Marmaria leads us to a somewhat lower "gymnasion", of
which enough has been preserved to give us an idea of the
furnishings. We find there unmistakable remains of courtyards with
annexed rooms, of a swimming place and showers, once fed by the
crystal clear Castalia, and, to crown all this, a long portico.
Young people, gathered from far and wide, will have trained
themselves here many times, to participate with profit in the
Pythian games.
A
newly constructed road leads us to the Castalia, where there is an
opportunity to take a drink from the world-famous water. A glance
into the deep rock pool betrays in niches etc. the traces of ancient
tributes to the fountain nymph, to which we do not pay much
attention, however, because we burn with desire to approach Pytho's
ancient sanctuary.
It
does not take long before we are there. A spacious, gracefully paved
forecourt immediately attracts our attention. There the processions
must have been arranged before entering the sanctuary, with the
"laurel bearer" at the head, who represented Phoebus
Apollo.
We
cross the spot where the main gate must once have stood; and we
enter "the Holy Way", still clearly recognizable by
numerous broad paving stones.
1)
According to Otto Schroeder, in the Preuszische Jahrbücher of
Sept. 1905
On
both sides of this broad highway the pedestals of disappeared
statues crowd together. "Crowding" is the true word here:
they often block each other's view, now standing in long rows, then
again forming a separate group in a semicircle. Finally the statues
stop; and now a number of remains of buildings begin, which are
known under the name of "treasuries", but are actually
very mysterious. By far the most striking of these largely
disappeared buildings is that which is (perhaps wrongly) called "the
Cnidian House". Of this, two caryatides, a large part of the
front facade and the entire foundations have been preserved. This
building is of such importance that a detailed description is
justified here, for which in the Museum many a piece of half-raised
sculpture and a plaster model of probably the entire decoration of
the front facade enable us to do quite well.
One
must read the relevant statements carefully in order to be able to
get the right understanding. After all, the separate fragments had
often become widely separated in the course of the centuries, and
were then discovered in very heterogeneous company. The most
interesting part is formed by the friezes, a marble sculpture that
is well worth a closer look. Let us begin with the part that was
first visible from the large access road, and which now rests in the
Museum. It is the eastern frieze, representing the battle of Greek
heroes for the body of Euphorbus: gods and goddesses sitting on
chairs, are spectators. The names of those present (including the
gods) were once noted in colour print next to each; but, although
they seem to have been quite clearly visible during the excavation a
few years ago, one must assume that they have become unrecognisable
through neglect. Today we read names in many places, later added in
pencil; but these apparently do not deserve unqualified confidence
everywhere. The northern frieze once formed a magnificent ornament
of the front facade. It represents an enormous battle, which once
took place between giants and gods. On a blue background a
magnificent, half-raised, in many places red or yellow coloured
statue shows the Giants, in the form of warriors, armed with helmet
and armour. The gods fighting against them are, in order, AEolus,
Dionysus (in a panther skin and on a team of lions), Heracles,
Hermes, Athena, and (walking next to each other) the twins Apollo
and Artemis. All these figures are represented with a liveliness of
movement, which leaves nothing to be desired.
The
southern frieze crowned the backside centuries ago. It represents an
episode from a subject that was also much later favoured in the
visual arts, the tradition of the persecution of Castor and Pollux
by Idas and Lynceus, all four on horseback. The western frieze
finally is badly damaged. On the right and left one sees a goddess,
drawn by a winged team. One of these goddesses will probably
represent Athena, behind whose chariot Hermes appears. Between the
two vehicles a figure with a thick stick appears, perhaps Heracles.
Now
still over the gable field. This adorns with the representation of a
myth, the exact origin of which is unknown, but which seems to be
connected with the great Dorian emigration and with disagreements
between Apollo and Heracles. The latter is represented here with a
tripod hanging over his shoulder, which Apollo tries to wrest from
him with both hands. Between the two stands Athena, who, although
her head has been lost, was apparently depicted as a giantess. Her
left hand is also missing; but the attitude she assumes towards
Apollo leaves no doubt as to the intention that she acts as a
peacemaker. Less clear is the artist's intention with a fourth
figure, who seems to represent Artemis. This character stands behind
Apollo, whom she seems to want to stop.
All
the above details apply to the main of the three preserved
buildings, which are known as "treasuries". The first (the
so-called Cnidian House) seems to have been built not long before
the year 500 BC, the second (called the Sicyonian House) is probably
of an earlier date. Presumably some pieces of relief sculpture found
here come from an even older building with the same purpose; at
least those pieces betray a not yet very developed technique by
their exaggerated detail. One of them represents Castor, Pollux and
Idas, while they are going to fetch cattle that were stolen in
common.
The
largest and youngest of the three preserved treasuries is known as
the Athenian House. The word "youngest" is however to be
understood very relative here; for the building is in any case older
than the battle of Marathon. The anatomical precision, as it were,
with which the French excavators have gone to work here, has
revealed that the foundations come from an even older building. The
Athenian House has its remarkable location above the Cnidian and
Sicyonian, which I have discussed above. It is located at the
impressive point where the Sacred Road suddenly bends northwards, to
wind in a zigzag up the mountain; and the striking scene is made
even more striking by the fact that the building is situated on a
terrace that rises above the level of the road.
Of
the many buildings and sculptures that this "treasure chamber"
once yielded, the French gentlemen have managed to collect so much
that a reconstruction is worth considering. The walls have already
been rebuilt up to half their height, with newly inserted plaster
pieces.
In
front of it rise two Doric columns, which, in a similar manner to
the two caryatids in the Cnidian House, support the roof of the
front part, where a portal is added here, resting on two pillars.
Quite a lot of the sculptural decorations have been preserved and
can be found in the Museum. These include a riding Amazon, from the
ridge, and a large part of the front decorations, representing the
heroic feats of Heracles and Theseus (e.g. the Nemean lion, the
Minotaur, etc.). The artistic value of this relief work is
nevertheless not particularly great. Close to the building, on the
south side, we find a pedestal, which bears the inscription:
"Athenians to Apollo, as Median booty from the battle at
Marathon". It seems, however, that this is not the original
inscription, but a renewal from the time shortly after Alexander the
Great. The booty souvenirs, which used to lie on the pedestal, or
were attached to it, have disappeared without a trace. Moreover,
neither booty nor pedestal has anything to do with the so-called
treasury. Among the ruins of the latter building a few stones have
also come to light, which are very important for the history of
ancient music, namely two smooth, flat stones, on which are little
songs with accompanying music. Now these hymn notes, the
decipherment of which is hardly open to doubt, cannot lay claim to a
melodiousness which would make them popular at modern concerts; but
for music as a science, and for the knowledge of ancient Greek
worship, these finds are certainly of the highest importance. In
other places, in Delphi, a few other songs, but without the notes,
have been dug up. One of them is by Philodamus, the Scarphian, and
is dedicated to Bacchus. It has suffered much through time; but with
patience and a little ingenuity one can get something like this out
of it:
"In
honor of Bacchus,
Whom
Semele bore,
And
Zeus had for a son!
When
he was born,
Then
the gods danced,
And
here they rejoiced."
We
continue, past the so-called Sibyl rock, behind which a fallen
Sphinx has been found, namely the votive offering of the Naxians,
which once rested on a high column. Having passed over a circular
dancing place (orchestra), we reach another foundation of the
Athenians, namely the ruins of a simple memorial building of theirs,
which seems to be of very ancient date. The very ancient inscription
reads: "Athenians have dedicated this building and the weapons
and the ..., which they had captured from the enemies, [to Apollo]."
Which enemies are meant is unknown. It seems that it cannot be the
Persians, but older ones. On the preserved narrow, widely spaced
columns a wooden roof seems to have rested. On one side this small
building does not stand alone, but leans against a wall, which
surrounds the temple terraces, and on which decrees for the freeing
of slaves were once announced.
At
a corner of this wall a steep path leads to the temple height. On
the right one found the substructure of the serpent column, which
was the bearer of the golden tripod, the magnificent victory symbol
of Plataea. Some visitors will remember this column from
Constantinople, where it served as a turning post in the racecourse.
On the column, as it now adorns the Turkish capital, one can still
read the names of the principal Greek cities that defeated the
Persians at Plataea. From ?tus and Thucydides we know that on the
long-vanished gem on the top of the column there was originally a
brazen inscription by Pausanias, "the Greek general". A
very short distance further up, and we stand, next to the altar of
the citizens of Chios, right in front of the once world-famous
temple. Anyone who, following in the footsteps of that other
Pausanias, might imagine that he would see the old Alcmaeonides
sanctuary revived, — would not be a little disappointed. There
is absolutely no question of an impressive whole. The foundations of
the walls and a fairly large number of widely scattered small column
fragments, — that is all. A kind of consolation can be drawn,
however, from the fact that these insignificant remains do not even
originate from the real, old temple, but from the Roman imperial
period.
The
oldest temple building at Delphi dates from the sixth century BC. It
was the work of Attic exiles, who had committed themselves to
providing a sandstone facade; but, in order to win Apollo's special
favor, they gave one of marble. That temple formed a grand whole,
especially when the following century had added so many votive
offerings to it. When that temple had fallen to pieces, a new one
was built in the fourth century: that was the temple in which
Pausanias found the facade statues he described (Apollo with mother
and sister, the Muses, etc.). That temple too was later replaced by
another; and what was subjected to the French excavations initially
promised very little.
At
a time, that was not so bad. More and more important finds came to
light. People were particularly rightly taken with a series of
(although fragmentary) finely polychrome marble figures, which
together seem to have belonged to the façade of the oldest
temple: a deer and a bull, both seized by a lion, horses before
two-horse chariots, each with a charioteer, finally some standing
women, replicas of some votive figures on the Athenian acropolis.
The
leader of the French excavations, Mr. Homolle, has, after long and
careful research, come to the conclusion that the aforementioned
sculpture most probably once filled the largest part of the eastern
façade in the Alcmaeonides temple, and that the missing
central piece will have consisted of a representation of the same
tripod robbery, which also (as I have already discussed) adorns the
so-called Cnidian House. Other important excavations betray the same
technique, but are made of tuff. They represent: Athena in lively
motion, a fallen Giant, fragments of vehicles, and a part of a beast
of prey (belonging to a corner of a gable field). From these data,
it seems, a battle of the Giants must be deduced, in which Athena
and perhaps Dionysus on the other side take part, while Zeus sits in
the middle. That, however, is partly very uncertain; but it is
almost certain that the tuff and marble fragments referred to here
belonged to the statues of the oldest of the three temples.
As
for the widely renowned earth-navel or world-navel, which in
antiquity was often, and sometimes still in our days, regarded as a
symbolic, domed tomb of the dragon Python, — that so-called
Navel will in any case have been a kind of fetish, like for example
the "Eros-stone" in Thespiae. In the eastern part of the
Delphic temple a strange, more or less acorn-shaped object (wrapped
with wool) has recently been excavated, which may not be the sacred
object itself, but may be a later imitation.
The
north side of the temple seems to have suffered greatly from
earthquakes or other natural disasters; so that much that is now to
be found outside the sanctuary originally stood inside. As an
example of this I draw attention to a couple of historically
important pedestals, which once supported tripods. The inscriptions
come from two famous Syracusan brothers. The first has been
completely preserved, and reads as follows:
»Gelo,
son of Deinomenes, from Syracuse dedicated this to Apollo. The
tripod and the goddess of victory were made by Bion, son of
Diodorus, from Miletus». Of the second pedestal one can still
read: "Hiero, son of Deinomenes, has dedicated ..." All
the rest has become illegible over time.
Most
probably this refers to an epigram attributed to Simonides, which
mentions four such votive offerings (also from the two other
brothers). In fact, remains of a third have been found near the two
pedestals mentioned. The epigram in question, freely translated,
reads as follows:
"Gelo,
Hiero, his brother,
Polyzelus,
Thrasybulus,
Sons
of Deinomenes,
Each
dedicated his own tripod
To
the temple of Apollo,
In
memory of the victory,
Which
they with their brave hosts
Over
Carthage's power achieved,
Which
our people wanted to oppress.
Hellas
breathed freely again." 1)
Not
far from these Syracusan memorials, a narrow column has been found,
which in the museum (most likely rightly) has acquired the hall of
the Hellenistic centuries as a residence. This small hall is
telescope-shaped and divided into five sections separated by
Acanthus foliage. On the top of these Acanthus rings rise three
pretty statues, representing dancers. A tripod seems to have been
attached to it as the crown of the monument.
Of
the many things that have come to light here, I will discuss very
little in this short overview. In the first place I mention an
excellent marble statue of the beautiful Antinous, of which,
incidentally, the only thing to say here is that it has been
excellently preserved. I cannot be so brief about the second statue
that I still wish to discuss, if only because of the much writing
that has been provoked by it. I have in mind here the remains of the
nine marble statues of the so-called Thessalian votive offering.
Among these was a statue in the Museum, representing a beautifully
executed athletic man, and bearing an inscription, a duplicate of
which has been found in or near Pharsalus, where it is to be read on
a statue that was evidently the model of the Delphic one: only it is
not of marble, but of metal. Strange is an apparently insignificant
difference in the weather silken inscriptions, of which the
Pharsalian gives "five Nemean, three Pythian, five Isthmian
victories", while the Delphic differs from them in so far that
"five Pythian" can be read on it. Another point of
difference is that the former mentions the name of the artist (the
famous Lysippus), and the Delphic is silent about it. Apparently the
Delphic inscription is an improvement on the other, as regards the
above-mentioned number "three". On the Delphic statue one
reads, moreover, that it was sent by "Daochus, Thessalian
Tetrarch, delegate of the Amphictyones", probably shortly
before the reign of Alexander the Great.
In
the best of times, many statues of bronze or copper stood on either
side of the "Holy Way", which later aroused the greed of
Roman and other temple robbers, and therefore (or for other reasons)
disappeared. Only one exception to this rule has been traced so far,
namely the magnificent statue known as "The Charioteer",
which probably owes its preservation only to the fact that it was
buried under a thick layer of rubble. What a pity that the
accompanying quadriga has disappeared, with the exception of a few
broken pieces and the stone pedestal of the horses! The inscription
has been so badly damaged that the guess that the votive offering is
considered a second monument of the Himera victory is quite daring.
Let
us now consider this masterpiece of bronze work a little more
closely! High above the racing chariot, the impressive figure of the
proud, muscular charioteer looks out at us. He wears a kind of
tabard, which protects him from the hurling of the rushing horses,
and prevents a possible obstructive play of the wind by girdling the
upper body. This girdling particularly beautifully highlights the
athletic shoulders, connected by a no less muscular neck to a head
from which not only physical strength, but also high development of
the mind gazes at the admiring spectator. A silver headband wreathes
the temples. Both feet are slightly forward, especially the right
one, — from which some scholars infer that there may have been
another figure on the currus. A goddess of Victory perhaps? or the
great Syracusan Gelo? Such suppositions are very daring; but what is
in any case indisputable is the high artistic value of this
extremely beautiful work. I think I cannot conclude this very brief
survey of the French activities in and around Delphi (more
methodical than those on the island of Delos) better than by
expressing my homage to Mr. Homolle and his faithful phalanx. What a
pity that our similar work in the vicinity of Olympia has turned out
so much less successful! Not only have at least four masterpieces of
sculpture been disinterred from the earth's surface; but now at
least a general picture has emerged of that world-famous terrain.
Truly, those ten years have been well spent. May the French
enterprise find its most beautiful laurel in the unfeigned homage of
the entire learned world!
1)
The name of Carthage is not mentioned in the original. The victory
referred to here is the victory won by Syracusans and other Greeks
over the Punics in the year 480 (near the river Himera in the north
of Sicily). (Trans.)
5 November
1906 The excavation of ancient Delphi.
The
most famous place of worship in ancient Greece, to which people went
from all parts of the Greek world to ask advice from the priestess
inspired by Apollo, was Delphi. The Pythians in Delphi were also
distinguished by their wit in their divination. When Croesus crosses
the Halys, a great empire will be destroyed. Whether this was his
own empire or that of the king of Persia, Cyrus, Croesus himself
could decide. In any case, the oracle had predicted it.
Nevertheless, that ancient place was venerated for centuries, and
the priests of the Phytian Apollo were known far beyond the borders
of Greece.
The
temple buildings in Delphi were particularly beautiful. No fewer
than six temples stood together. Many of these buildings have been
preserved to us, and the French have brought the entire temple
surface to light again.
The
wealth of the Pythian priests, who were well paid for their oracles,
was proverbial. Of the temples, only the foundations of one, the
oldest, remain. Of the second, which dates from the sixth century
before Christ, one can form a better idea. A magnificent building
was the fourth temple, which had the shape of a circus. The roof of
that temple is supported by twenty columns in the richest Doric
style. The temple was richly decorated, but nothing of the rich
sculpture has remained intact. The fifth temple must also have made
a magnificent impression. It was built of blue marble. From the
surviving pieces one can best make out the plan of the temple. The
archaeologists suspect that it was the Athena temple mentioned by
Paussanias. The construction shows a harmonious mixture of Doric and
Ionic styles.
8 December
1912 The goddess of Victory.
A
few weeks ago, on the day of the declaration of war by Greece, a
perfect statue was found at Delphi on the site "Marmaria"
(so called because of the large amount of marble found there).
People thought they recognized the goddess of victory Nike in it and
blessed the find at that very moment. How great was the
disillusionment when the French archaeologist Dr. Courby, who is
continuing the excavations that were started at the time by the
French Archaeological Institute at Delphi, called the statue a
facade figure, with which houses and temples used to be decorated.
The characteristic wings are missing from the statue. Yet some
magazines maintain that even if the statue does not represent Nike
herself, it is her daughter, the goddess of fame.
1 July 1920
DELPHI, MONUMENTS OF THE THESSALIAN PRINCES
[p. 291]
It
is impossible to prescribe the limits of development for a genius
like Lysippus, of whose 1,500 famous bronze statues only a fraction
is preserved to-day, not in the originals, but in more or less
successful marble copies, That, in spite of all divergences, there
are common features connecting the Agias and the Apoxyomenos, has
rightly been emphasized by good judges in recent times. 1) The
artistic career of Lysippus begins for our inquiries with the year
372 BC, when he executed the statue of a man who had won the
chariot-race at Olympia "both with full-grown horses and with
colts.” The base of the statue was found in the German
excavations, and shows characters of writing agreeing well with this
date. 2) The monument of Daochus, as shown above, was erected soon
after 340 BC; but the original Agias statue at Pharsalus is older,
and may well have been produced some years before, in the beginning
or middle of the forties.
There
is no reason to date it still earlier, for we must start with the
assumption that Lysippus was not taken up by the Thessalian nobles,
but that they only placed orders with him when his fame was assured
and his style well known.
Pliny
gives a far later date, 328 BC, as the culminating point of his art,
probably the time when he executed his most famous portrait, that of
Alexander. Just after 320 BC, Lysippus is active, and executes a
great bronze group at Delphi, the lion-hunt of Alexander and
Craterus, which was ordered by Craterus, son-in-law of the
Macedonian Viceroy Antipater and one of Alexander's old companions
in arms, in memory of the fact that during the Asiatic expedition in
a hunt he fell a lion which threatened the life of the great king.
In gratitude for the escape of both, the group was dedicated to
Apollo at Delphi; but as Craterus died in 321 BC, it was his
newly-born son who erected the group in his father's name, exactly
as was the case with Hieron's group, erected at Olympia by his son,
Deinomenes.
Pliny
names this among the most famous works of Lysippus; Plutarch says it
had two authors, Lysippus and Leochares. 3) The base of the group
has been discovered at Delphi in a chamber to right of the
staircase, which north of the temple leads up to the theater (fig.
150), and the metrical inscription reports that the group was vowed
by Craterus, friend of the great Alexander, but only his son
performed the vow and dedicated it in memory of the fight with the
lion which his father courageously carried through when he followed
King Alexander on his Asiatic expedition; he laid the lion low on
the borders of the Nomad Syrians.
In
consideration of the son's tender age, it was assumed that the group
was erected long after 320, about 300 BC, but against that are the
other dates of the two artists engaged, and there is nothing to
prevent us from thinking of the group as erected in the name of the
infant son. 1) Anyhow, it is a long life for an artist, of whose
outlines we thus catch glimpses, and the Apoxyomenos probably
belongs only to its latest period, the twenties of the fourth
century.
In
any case Lysippus, at the time when he executed the Agias, was
strongly influenced by the art of Scopas, and only in advanced years
seems to have experienced the artistic transformation of which the
Apoxyomenos bears witness. This is the importance of the Delphic
find, that it reveals to us how late this master "found his
nature” as Aristotle would say. 1) In this respect he reminds
us of a modern sculptor like Meunier, who only at the age of
fifty-five became the Meunier the world knows and admires. Homolle
conjectures that other figures from the Daochus monument are copies
of Lysippus' originals, and the latest found Agelaus figure (fig.
133) might point to that so long as most of the figures are
headless, all appreciation of them is out of the question, for at
this stage of his development Lysippus, like Scopas, showed more
individuality in characterizing heads than bodies. Twenty years
later, on the threshold of old age, he is a different man. A torso,
contemporary with and stylistically akin to the Apoxyomenos, we
should recognize without difficulty as his work. 2)
1
Amelung, in Helbig's Führer, 3rd ed., n. 23; Studniczka, Das
Bildnis Menanders, Leipzig, 1918, 20. 2 Pausanias, vi. 1.4.; Loewy,
Inscriptions griech. Bildhauer, 76. 3 Pliny, Nat. Hist., xxxiv. 64;
Plutarch, Alexander, 40. 1 Perdrizet, Bull. the con. hell., xxii,
1898, 566. 1
Lysippus
was also the author of the bronze group of the Sun-god on his car
founded by the Rhodians, the base inscription of which Pomtow
thought he had found in Delphi; Dittenberger, Sylloge, 441; Pliny,
Nat. Hist., xxxiv. 63.
This
is, however, incorrect; the lettering is characteristic of the end
of the third century, so a century later than Lysippus; Bourguet,
Bull. the correct hell., xxxiv, 191 1, 458, and Revue arch., 1918,
i. 220. 2 In my description of the Thessalians I have omitted to use
the judgment Theopompus passed on them {Athenaeus, xii. 527a): "They
play away their time with dancing women and flute-players, others
spend whole days in dice-playing, drinking, or other excesses, and
they take more care about filling their board with all manner of
meats than in leading an honorable life. But the Pharsalians are the
laziest and the most pitiful of them all." Further, he
describes how one can win the friendship of the Thessalians by
drinking matches with them and by joining in their debaucheries (op.
cit., vi. 260b). But Theopompus passes similar judgments on the
Etruscans, the people of Methymna and other Greek towns, and on
Philip of Macedon (Athenaeus, xii. 507, d, e; x. 442/ -44, a; iv.
i66/-i67e) ; so he seems to have been a specialist in chronicles
scandaleuses.
https://archive.org/details/delphipoulsen00poul
1 April 1921
From the School of the Spade. XXII.
[...]
At that time, women's bodies were painted white, as men's were
painted brown-red. Perhaps Artemis stood next to Apollo, as Hermes
in Heracles.
So
it was represented in life-size, brightly colored as an
impressionistic painting — the bare parts of the male body
bright brick red, those of the female chalk white, the clothes with
colorful borders - how Heracles as one would have guessed from a
comparison with several Greek vases may suggest that he is defending
his prey, a sacred hind, with a raised club, against the god of
Delphi, who is striding towards him resolutely, perhaps with the
gruesome bow in his left hand. Spectators are Hermes, often the
leader of a daring man, and Artemis, who in courage was not inferior
to her brother.
It
seems that this entire group was a votive offering, which was placed
either before or in the temple by a worshipper of the god.
That
the original location was outside, one would be inclined to conclude
from the fact that in the pointed cap of Mercury there are small
holes, which could have supported a "meniscos". A
meniscos, one should know, is a metal plate, which the Greeks often
placed above the heads of their statues to prevent — forgive
the unsubtle detail — birds from defiling them. But the
evidence is not conclusive; a temple has openings along the roof; so
sometimes birds come in and you understand me....
Where
the group stood, is just as impossible to determine as what the
donor thought about it. The myth is known to us only from vases and
reliefs. [...]
12 September
1921 [...] Prof. Vollgraff also made a statement
"On
the Delphic hymn to Dionysus",
The
hymn in honor of Dionysus must be considered one of the most
important finds which the French excavations at Delphi brought to
light. The hymn was inscribed on a large slab of limestone, and
consisted of twelve lyrical stanzas, eight of which have been
partially preserved. It was composed by Philodamus of Skarpheia, in
the spring of the year 335 BC. In the first part the poet relates in
his own way the usual legend of the birth of Dionysus and his
travels and wanderings on earth. In the second part he mentions
various feasts and sacrifices, which are part of the worship of
Dionysus at Delphi or are connected with it. Two things strike us
especially: the poet consciously places himself on the standpoint of
the mystical teachings of the Orphics, and he announces an important
extension of the cult of Bacchus. Thus, even at the Pythian
festivals, formerly dedicated exclusively to Apollo, Dionysus will
henceforth be honored with sacrifices and choral dances, and an
image of him, resplendent as the sun, will be set up, standing on a
chariot drawn by golden lions. This corresponds to the
representation of Dionysus as a sun god, which is found in Macedonia
and Thrace, and in the Orphic religion. The most remarkable passage
in the hymn is that in which King Alexander the Great himself, under
the name of son of Dionysus, is designated as the one who gives that
increased splendor to the cult of Bacchus.
We
know Alexander as an independent ruler and a socially ordering
prince, and as a deeply religious nature. The Delphic hymn teaches
us that he was a worshipper of Dionysus, the national god of his
people, and a confessor of the Orphic doctrine, which also belonged
above all in Macedonia and Thrace. The Orphics taught concerning God
that he is one. They did not have the rigid monotheism of the
Semites, who said that there is one God, and that all other gods are
idols. Their henotheism was such that they recognized and respected
the gods who enjoyed worship from men, but regarded them all as
expressions of the same divine spirit. And should not the policy in
religious matters, which Alexander and his successors followed in
the East, be regarded as inspired by their own religious views? That
policy can be indicated by the one word "syncretism"; that
is to say, they have made it their business to equate every foreign
deity with a Greek god or goddess, and to merge them with it in
worship. Hellenistic syncretism is thus the result of the much older
Orphic theokrasy.
22 December
1923 [...] In 340 before Christ, the chief architect
of
the temple area of Delphi received an unheard-of
amount, four drachmas a day. This almost unbelievably high payment
for a state official coincided with a period of important
construction. Then the priests seem to have understood how important
such a post was. Even greedy Delos gives its architect three
drachmas a day instead of two in such cases! Yet Delphi lagged far
behind. Delphi calculated with Aeginetic currency, which was one and
a half times higher than the Attic, so that the four drachmas from
there would have been worth six on Delos. After 300 BC, a rapid and
continuous decline in wages can be observed on Delos. A typical
example, which touches on the material itself from which we draw all
these data, is that of the stonemason who made the temple
inscriptions. For a very long time this certainly not very stupid
workman stipulated and received one drachma per hundred letters.
That price was still paid in 302 to a certain Hermodikos, but later
on he was increasingly cut back. In the same year 302 the same
Hermodikos had to deliver 130 letters, five years later even 300!
Around 250 we reach the lowest wage level. Then the temple lords pay
for an inscription - of 354 lines with 42,000 letters the sum of 120
drachmas, that is to say one drachma for every 350 letters. But now
the bow was apparently too tense. The inscriptions were so
shamefully rushed that the principals began to feel ashamed of it.
They apparently thought of their good name with posterity and
therefore, probably with a bleeding heart, took the brave decision
to return to the previous payment. [...]
1 January 1924
DELPHI
BY
DR. J. W. VAN ROOIJEN.
If
one wants to reach Delphi from Athens by land, this is not the
easiest way. By train one can only travel to Brailo, a station on
the railway to Saloniki. From there a bus, a grand name for a lorry,
in which some benches have been installed, goes to Amphissa.
However, if you are lucky, like us, that the bus does not even wait
for the express train from Athens, then good advice is expensive.
The nearest village (I have forgotten the name) is a few hours away.
However, the helpful station master knew what to do. We were able to
hire a couple of mules and so, packed and ready, we set off. In the
village in question, it was said, a car could be obtained.
When
we arrived there, it turned out that the car had to come from
Amphissa. It did not appear until the evening. We have seldom
experienced more anxious moments than during that car journey. Just
imagine being driven at breakneck speed up a mountain as high as
Parnassus in a car driven by the most reckless driver in the world,
who takes the corners so sharply that at any moment you think you
are going to plunge car and all into the abyss that is always
staring at you on the right side of the road, while you sometimes
whizz past wagons going uphill at the speed of an express train,
then you will understand that we were glad to have finally arrived
in Amphissa.
We
have no pleasant memories of this last place; the Xenodokeion
(hotel), which was the best in the town, did not even meet the most
moderate requirements of cleanliness; we were therefore very glad
when we were able to leave this inhospitable place as early as
possible.
From
Amphissa to Delphi, however, there is still quite a climb; wagons
are not to be had, so that, forced by necessity, we had to resort
again to our driver of the previous evening, who brought us up
without accident.
Delphi,
in ancient times also called Pytho, lies between high rocks on a
terrain that slopes gently upwards. There, where the rock plateau
joins the mountain, rise the so-called Phaedriades, the brilliant
rocks, so called because the sunlight radiates brilliantly from the
naked limestone. The two rocks form an obtuse angle and are
separated from each other only by a narrow abyss. From the eastern
rock rises the spring Kastalia, whose water flows along the rocks to
Pieistos, a quarter of an hour away.
The
Delphic oracle was very old. According to a Delphic legend, the
vapours that rose from a gorge and brought the Pythia into a kind of
ecstasy were discovered by a goatherd. He had namely noticed that
his goats, when they came to the chasm in question, made strange
leaps and uttered unusual sounds; when he himself now approached the
chasm, he fell into a kind of ecstasy and began to prophesy.
Before
Apollo founded his oracle here, Gaia, the Earth, was the first
possessor of the oracle; her daughter Themis followed her; the
pronouncements of the oracle were called themistes (laws). Themis
voluntarily gave the place to Phoebe, who gave the oracle to her
grandson Phoibos Apollo. He went from Delos, the island on which he
was born, under the guidance of the Athenians, who boasted of having
been the first to pave the sacred road to Delphi, where the people
and King Delphos received him with joy.
According
to another legend, Apollo did not acquire the oracle in such a
peaceful manner. Shortly after his birth, Apollo is said to have set
out to seek an oracle. The valley of Delphi pleased him and he
decided to establish an oracle here. However, the snake Python, who
lived here at the spring Delphusa, prevented him from entering. The
young god fought the snake and killed it with his arrows.
There,
for the first time, the paean, the joyful song of victory, resounded
from the mouth of the god and the choir of the young Delphic women;
as a reminder of this victory, the Pythian games were established
forever. As penance for the death of the Python, Apollo had to flee
and perform 8 years of slave service. He went to King Admetus in
Thessaly and was purified in the valley of Tempe, in order to return
to Delphi as Phoibos, the bright, shining one.
This
penance and purification was symbolically represented at the
festivals, which returned every 8 years; a boy, who was supposed to
represent Apollo, set fire to a hut, the hut of Python, in front of
the temple: then he fled quickly; accompanied by a procession he
passed through Locris, Doris, over the Oeta, to Tempe, and here,
like Apollo before him, he was purified. According to the legend,
Apollo appointed Cretans as priests, whom he had brought here over
the sea. When the leader of these men looked at the bare rocky plain
and asked the god what they would live on here, the god replied:
"Every one must hold the sacrificial knife ready in his right
hand and continually slaughter sacrificial animals, which the people
will bring me in immeasurable numbers." And so it happened.
From
all sides the people came to ask the god for advice and had their
sacrificial animals slaughtered; at the same time valuable gifts
were offered to the god, so that the temple came to possess a great
wealth of precious metals and works of art. Homer (Iliad, 9th book)
already speaks of "the great wealth that the stone threshold of
Pytho encloses within". Not only Greeks consulted the oracle,
but also foreign peoples. Do we not read in "tus" that the
king of Lydia, Croesus, had the oracle consulted when he wanted to
march against Cyrus, the king in Persia?
A
league of so-called Amphictyones, consisting of peoples from Central
and Northern Greece, had united to protect the sanctuary and to
celebrate the festivals at common expense. The Dorians in
particular, when they lived near Parnassus and Oeta, had established
close connections with the oracle and also after they had settled in
the Peloponnesus, they had maintained these relations.
In
the centuries between Lycurgus and the Persian wars, Delphi became
both the religious and political centre of Greece. Nothing of
importance was taken up by individuals and states without first
seeking the advice of the Delphic god.
At
the beginning of the Persian wars the oracle was uncertain and gave
doubtful answers. After the battle of Salamis (480 BC) was the first
to take up the national cause of Greece. The fact that the temple
had been spared by the Persians (probably because of their worship
of the god of light) raised the prestige of the oracle again.
Trophies from the Persians, were established in Delphi and the
Amphictyones issued decrees in honor of those who had remained loyal
to the fatherland.
Gradually,
however, a reaction set in. In the so-called holy wars the power of
the oracle diminished; at one time the Phoenicians even seized the
incalculable treasures of the temples and paid for the war they
waged from them. It is true that the oracle still enjoyed some
prestige in the time of Emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD), but only in
private matters. When Emperor Julian the Apostate had the oracle
questioned before his journey to Persia in 362, he received the
answer: "Tell the king that the artfully made dwelling is
covered with dust, Phoibos has no more shelter and no prophetic
laurel, or a babbling spring; the beautiful water has ceased to
flow". Finally, in 390, the oracle was closed forever by
Emperor Theodosius.
The
actual sacred space, formerly enclosed by walls, was about 130 m
wide and 180 m long. The main entrance was located in the SE and
here the sacred road led, with two bends, to the temple of Apollo.
Along this entire road stood statues and votive offerings in great
numbers. Emperor Nero had about 500 statues removed and yet the
number of those that remained was estimated at 3000. The number of
statues at the entrance was exceptionally large. On the right side
was the statue of a bull, consecrated in 500 BC by the Kerkyraeans,
opposite which rose the monument that the Athenians had built in
memory of the battle of Marathon.
To
the west of this rose the wooden horse of the Argives, consecrated
in 414 BC. This was followed by a triumphal monument of the
Arcadians, which they had erected there to commemorate their
liberation from Sparta. On the left followed the Seven against
Thebes, with the chariot of Amphiaraus, a memorial of the Argives to
their victory at Oenoe.
If
one walked further along the sacred road, one came across more than
a dozen treasuries, which had been built by various cities and
states of Greece. Among these, that of the Siphnians, of which we
shall speak more fully below, was well preserved; it resembles an
Ionic templum in antis, with caryatides instead of columns. The
Doric treasury of the Athenians is also well preserved, it has been
possible to rebuild it in its entirety.
This
was followed by a large building, in which one may see the
bouleuterion, while behind it the terrain has been left in its
original rocky state. This is probably the rock on which the Sibyl
Herophyle first gave her oracles. A high Ionic column, erected by
the Naxians, on which stood the well-known Sphinx, towered above the
entire area. A little further on one reached the round festival
place, the Halos, (threshing floor), where the already mentioned
symbolic representation of the killing of the Python took place.
Immediately
behind the column of the Naxians rises the wall of the temple
terraces; it was covered with inscriptions, which contained decrees
of the Amphictyones, lists of victors and certificates of the
release of slaves. Between this wall and the Halos was the Stoa of
the Athenians, with columns, built in the Ionic style; this stoa was
probably built in gratitude for the victory in 480 BC won at
Salamis; later (428 BC) Phormion added trophies of captured ships.
Next to the S.W. corner stood a Nike of Paionios, probably the
example of the one found at Olympia. Also on the east side of the
temple terrace stood several monuments, among these the Tripod of
the Plataeans is especially worth mentioning; this rested on a base,
which has been found. The middle support formed the famous serpent
column, at the top was a golden basin, which was stolen in the Holy
War. Later the tripod was taken to Constantinople and can still be
seen there in the so-called AT-Meîdan.
Of
the Doric temple of Apollo, which was of course the most important
sanctuary, only the foundations remain; yet we know from the Greek
writer Pausanias, how this temple looked in ancient times. The
sanctuary was rebuilt or rebuilt several times. The oldest temple
was, according to legend, formed from laurel trees; the branches of
these descended from the sacred laurel in Tempe. This was followed
by a temple built by bees, from wax. Apollo put a copper temple in
its place; this however melted in a fire and sank into the cleft of
the earth.
After
this a fourth temple, of stone, was built by the master builders
Trophonios and Agamedes. After they had finished their work, they
asked the god for a reward. He promised them this by the seventh
day. When this had come, they died the following night.
This
temple however burned down in 548 BC: for a new building money was
collected among all the Greeks; even the Egyptian king contributed
to this. The family of the Alcmaeonidae, expelled from Athens,
undertook the construction for the sum of 300 talents. They built
it, however, more expensively than the contract required them to do,
but naturally won the favor of the priests of Delphi; the architect
was Spintharus of Corinth.
In
front of the temple was the great altar of burnt offering and close
to it the statue of a wolf, the animal dedicated to Apollo. On its
head the Delphians had the decree engraved, by which the Spartans
who had helped them were granted the right of promanteia (to be
allowed to consult the oracle for others). Pericles, however, had
the same decree engraved on the back, in favor of the Athenians.
Entering the pronaos (forehall), one first saw the golden-lettered
sayings: Gnoothi Seauton (Learn to Know Yourself) and:
Mèden Agaan (Nothing too much), both sayings of the Seven
Sages; by these sayings stood the image of Homer. The cella of the
temple was 100 feet long and decorated on the outside with Doric
columns, on the inside with Ionic ones. Here was the statue of
Apollo and in front of it the Hestia (hearth) on which the eternal
fire was maintained by a widow; this hearth was considered the
common one for all and also the center of the entire Greek world.
Zeus had once, in order to find out the center of the earth, let two
eagles fly towards each other from the East to the West and they had
come together at this place.
Near
the hestia stood the iron chair of Pindarus, on which the pious
singer had praised Apollo with his hymns. For he was accustomed to
offer hymns to the god instead of sacrifices. Moreover, in the cella
there was a statue of Poseidon, the statues of two Moira (Goddesses
of Fates) with those of Zeus Moiragetes and Apollo Moiragates (the
leader of fate).
Behind
the cella was a room, which was intended as a waiting room for those
who wished to consult the oracle. This was followed by the holy of
holies, the adyton, where the cleft of the earth was located, from
which the well-known vapours arose; there a colossal tripod had been
erected, made of wood and covered with gold; above this a seat had
been placed.
After
the omens had first been observed, the Pythia, after having first
drunk water from the spring Kastalia, and taken a laurel leaf in her
mouth, went to the adyton and sat down on the tripod; through the
vapours that rose from the earth, she fell into a kind of ecstasy
and uttered incoherent sounds. These words were then written down in
the form of hexameters by so-called prophets; these verses, however,
were not easy for the interrogator to understand. Therefore they
went to the professional interpreters, to find out from them what
the meaning of the oracle was.
The
large terrace, which extended along the entire south wall of the
temple, contained the much-sung laurel and myrtle forest; in the
middle of this we also have to look for the old sanctuary of Gaia,
who, as we saw, was the first to possess the oracle. To the
south-east probably rose the mast with three golden stars, which the
Aeginetes, after the battle of Salamis, had dedicated here;
furthermore here was the pedestal on which Perseus of Macedonia
wanted to place his statue. Aemilius, who had defeated him, had his
own placed there. The great altar of the temple was a foundation of
the inhabitants of Chios, erected about 520 BC. A little to the
north rose an elegant acanthus column, on which dancing girls were
depicted. Golden tripods, which Gelo of Syracuse and his brothers,
after the victory at Himera, (480 BC) had dedicated, were located
here. The well-known bronze charioteer also originally stood here.
To
the north of these Sicilian votive offerings the Thessalian Daochos
had nine statues of himself and his ancestors erected.
Opposite
the N. West corner of the temple is a room, where Craterus had his
famous lion hunt, in which he had saved the life of Alexander the
Great, immortalized by Leochares and Lysippus. The theater is
located behind this. The space intended for the spectators has
remained in a fairly good state, the stage has been destroyed. In
the very northern part of the peribolos was the Lesche of the
Knidians, a kind of conversation building. On the wall on the right
side, according to Pausanias, there was a representation of the
destruction of Troy, painted by Polygnotus, on the left wall a
picture of the Underworld.
Not
far from the main entrance is the source Kastalia. The water of this
spring springs from the rock face, which has been hewn out into a
large, square basin. Below it is a large niche, in which one can now
a small chapel of Saint John. In the basin of the Kastalia all who
wished to enter the temple had to cleanse themselves by taking a
bath. Even today the water of the spring, although it has lost its
reputation of holiness, is still held in high esteem. Every
afternoon one can still see the mules, hung on both sides with
barrels and driven by boys and girls, going to the spring to fetch
the delicious, cool water that is so precious in these arid regions.
It
is a picturesque sight when one sees these groups gathering at the
spring, especially towards evening, when the sun is already sinking
behind the mountains and from the high Parnassus one sees a splendid
panorama before one, which one will not forget for the rest of one's
life. How beautiful is this piece of land, which the Greeks had
chosen as a dwelling place for their god of light Apollo, who knew
how to sweep away the darkness of the future with his light and to
whom people came from far and wide to hear the pronouncements of his
oracle.
We
would now like to take a walk through the Museum, which is located
near the excavations. The building, which was built through the
generosity of Syngros, consists of a main building and two wings.
In
front of the entrance is a marble sarcophagus, on which the
Calydonian hunt is depicted. When we enter the large hall, we see
first of all the bronze statue of the Charioteer, fairly well
preserved, which was found near the temple. With it were a part of a
Horse and an arm. All this belonged to the votive offering that
Polyzalos had set up in gratitude for a victory in a race with his
chariot. It is supposed that this Polyzalos was the brother of Gelo
and Hiero of Syracuse.
The
charioteer stands before us at his full length; the folds of his
garment are not unlike the cannelures of a column; probably a part
of these folds, which appear somewhat monotonous, were covered by
the body of the chariot. The workmanship of the bronze is very fine;
the face with the full chin, the eyes full of expression, the
workmanship of the hair, all these things lend the work a high
value.
The
next room is known as that of "The Treasury of the Athenians",
on the walls are attached the metopes that were on the outside of
the said treasury. They represent the deeds of Hercules and Theseus.
Five metopes represent the robbery of the cattle of Geryones; a
sixth shows us a Centaur, who has fallen against an opponent
(Hercules); he places his foot on his neck. A seventh image shows
the fight with the Nemean lion, while an eighth metope represents
the capture of the bull.
The
rest all seem to represent deeds of Theseus, and in particular his
fight against the Amazons. In one image we see the young Theseus,
provided with a helmet, fighting an Amazon; on the other side the
defeat of the Minotaur and the bull of Marathon is represented. In
the middle of the hall one sees Amazons on horseback, the acroteria
of the top of the sanctuary.
On
the right wing is the Greco-Roman hall, or the Monument of Pydna.
The monument records the defeat of King Perseus of Macedonia (168
BC); on all four sides there are inscriptions and it is decorated
with a frieze, in relief. Opposite the Macedonians, who can be
recognized by their beautifully decorated shields, one sees
barbarians, who are almost completely naked; they represent the
allies of the Roman people; the Romans themselves are not seen, but
their cavalry. In front of this monument are placed the Three
Dancing Girls (Karyatides); the support on which they are placed is
decorated with acanthus leaves; they form a beautiful base for a
tripod, or another votive offering. The clothing of these girls and
the garlands of palm leaves have identified them as Dancers of
Karyae, from which the name Karyatides is derived, who, as is known,
also occur at the Erechtheion in Athens.
We
now return to the entrance and reach the hall of the Temple of
Apollo; on the right we find a large relief, representing a youth,
with outstretched arms; a boy stands next to him. The first figure
is usually taken as an image of Apollo; it is perhaps an
Apoxyomenos, with a servant.
Fragments
of marble statues from the temple of the Alcmaeonides represent
lions tearing bulls; one can also see two female figures, who hold
her dress with their left hand; on the left wall are depicted scenes
from the battle between Athena and the giant Enceladus.
In
this room five reliefs were also placed; on the first one one sees
the ship Argo; round shields, on the outside, represent the warriors
on board; to the side are two people, who play on a lyre, one of
these is probably Orpheus. At each end stands a horseman, apparently
Castor and Pollux. On a second relief Pollux, Idas and Castor drive
the stolen cattle from Arcadia before them; the division of these
was the cause of the quarrel between them. Each figure holds two
spears in his left hand, a third spear in his right. The third
relief shows us the abduction of Europa on the bull; the story of
the Calydonian boar is the subject of the fourth relief; in the
image we see the remains of a dog under the wild animal. The last
relief is much damaged; it is supposed that it represents the ram on
which Phrixus and Helle were seated, when they fled the ambushes of
their stepmother Ino.
East
of the temple was found a large Omphalos, the stone of which we have
already spoken; on it were placed images of woolen bands; probably
this was not the original omphalos, as it was covered with real
woollen bands.
Between
this and the next room stand the statues of two youths from the
archaic period. On the pedestal of the best preserved statue an
inscription tells us that the sculptor was an Argive. They look a
lot like the well-known Apollo statues, with the round, somewhat
smiling face. They probably date from the 7th century BC. It is
believed that these statues represent Cleobis and Biton, about whom
"between us" tells us in his history. He relates (1,31)
that Solon, the Athenian philosopher, once visited Croesus, the king
of the Lydians. One day the king, who was known for his wealth, had
Solon led through all his treasuries. Then he asked him who he
considered the happiest man in the world. Solon awarded the first
prize to a certain Tellus, an Athenian, the second to the young men
Cleobis and Biton, from Argos. One day their mother had to be
brought to the temple of the goddess Hera, but the oxen were not
present in time. Then the young men themselves pulled their mother
to the temple, a distance of 45 stadia (a stadium is ± 182
m). The partygoers praised the mother happy to have such good sons.
Then the mother prayed to the goddess to give them that which is
happiest for man. After that prayer they lay down to sleep in the
temple and did not get up again. By this the goddess had shown that
death is happiest for man. The Argives had statues made of them
afterwards and consecrated them in Delphi.
We
have now approached the last room of the museum, that of the
Treasury of the Cnidians, according to Pomtov, the Siphnians. The
sculptures of the facade pieces of the completely destroyed building
have been found so completely that it could be reconstructed in its
entirety. As we have already seen, the building had the form of a
templum in antis; instead of the usual columns the roof of the
vestibule is supported by the statues of two girls. They remind us
of the priestesses of the Acropolis and are perhaps the forerunners
of the Caryatides of the Erechtheion. A frieze runs along the entire
building. On the north side it represents the Gigantomachy; first we
see a man, in a somewhat bent position, holding an object in his
hand that looks like a bag. This is Aeolus, the god of the winds,
who sets his storms in motion against the giants. Then follow two
goddesses, who are engaged in battle with giants. The giants are
depicted in ordinary human form. In the background we discover
Hercules, with the lion's skin wrapped around his neck and arms; he
fights with his lance against a giant. Dionysus, with a long robe
and a panther's skin, rides into the fray with his chariot, drawn by
lions. A little further on are Apollo and Diana with their bows.
Ephialtes lies dead at their feet; another giant is about to take
flight, while three others are approaching in close column. Then
Hermes appears, he fights with a sword and can be recognized by his
conical headdress; the other figures can no longer be identified.
On
the other side one sees the remains of the Eastern frieze; this
represents the fight between Menelaus and a Trojan hero (perhaps
Hector), for the body of Euphorbos, while Meriones assists the
former and Aeneas the latter. The names of these persons can be
determined from the inscriptions. The left half is occupied by an
assembly of the gods. The second half shows a battle scene.
Also
to be mentioned is the image that decorated the Western façade,
the mysterious fight for the tripod between Apollo and Hermes;
Athena, who is in the middle, seems to separate the combatants; it
is said that the Dorians once tried to put their hero Heracles in
the place of the Ionian Apollo; in this way the image could be
explained. In the same hall is also the already mentioned Column of
the Naxiers, on which the Sphinx was placed.
We
have now completed our tour; a visit to Delphi will leave an
unforgettable impression on everyone.
10 July 1925
From a Travel Diary.
XXIV.
Delphi.
From a Travel
Diary. XXIV. Delphi.
A
mighty, severe god was the prophet Apollo, in dark oracles
communicating his wisdom to those of the people who understood him.
Realizing this with awe, the Greeks only came closer to him to hear
his voice there, where Greek nature unfolds in its greatest majesty,
in harmony with the being of the great seer. One of those places is
Delos, amidst the deserted beauty of cliffs and sea. Another, even
grander and more impressive, is Delphi, in a gorge of one of the
mightiest mountain massifs of Greece, Parnassus. In that environment
I now want to try to understand something of the great veneration of
the Greeks for Apollo, of his influence on their religious and
political life.
But
my journey does not go directly to Delphi: Thebes lies on my way,
the cradle of many legends, immortalized by Greek tragedy.
It
is a beautiful journey, in the early morning, to Thebes. First
through the fresh green Attic land, between the Pentelicon and the
Parnes. Then bending along the Parnes to the well-cultivated plain
of Thebes, with a beautiful view, to the east, where the sea appears
between the mountains, while above it the still snow-capped peaks of
Euboia protrude. In Thebes I do not expect to see any important
antiquities; there is a museum in a Fraukian tower with many
interesting inscriptions, including the decree in which Nero granted
the Greek countries freedom at the Isthmian games in 67 AD. But
furthermore, in and around the present city, which occupies the
place of the Acropolis of the former, only scarce ruins, one finds
barely noticeable traces of ancient walls. Thebes is more
interesting because of the lovely nature of its surroundings,
intersected by the brooks Ismenos and Dirke, while in the west the
horizon is closed by the grey Muses mountain, the Helikon. To many
places in the vicinity, which the modern visitor still tries to
determine accurately, the memory of the tremendous dramas of the
saga, which must once have taken place here, is bound. The history
of Kadmos' unhappy royal family comes to life for him, the tragedies
"The Seven Against Thebes" by Aichylos, "King
Oedipus" and "Antigone" by Sophocles, "The
Bacchantes" by Euripides appear to him in a new form. Modern
Thebes is a small, rather poor town on top of a hill: A straight
road, the Epammondasstraat, cuts through it in its entire length.
Between the heavy trees on either side of the houses, under the
still fresh green spring foliage, people practice many crafts in the
open air. On one of these trees I read on a notice board that the
space at its foot is rented for the practice of a craft. The free
space is occupied by the chairs for the small cafés.
In
the evening, walking through one of the suburbs, I am struck by a
fresh and colorful scene, such as one only finds in small villages.
There on the bank of the Dirke is a large fountain, fed by water
that, brought over a high viaduct, first runs over a huge wooden
water wheel. At more than thirty stone wells stand the women of the
village, in their brightly colored clothes, their bare feet in the
water, washing their linen. Clear laughter and song sound from their
midst. A beautiful village idyll...
The
next day I continue my train journey, between the cotton fields of
the drained Lake Kopais, past Livadia and Chaeronea, where on the
left against a row of cypresses I discover the eight-meter-high gray
stone lion with pedestal, which was erected here by the Thebans
after the battle of Chaeronea in 338. In a N.W. direction the train
now follows the high spurs of the mighty Parnassus on our left to
Bralo, where I get off. We have now circumnavigated the Parnassus in
the N.E., now I drive it further from the N.W. side by car, along
the beautiful road through the mountains, which was constructed here
by the French during the war. The weather is gloomy. The mountains
rise in pitch-black behind the small red-brown plain that we first
speed through. Then it immediately goes up into a ravine between two
mountains. We soon have the clouds under us, and above us, around
the peaks, up to the winding road, the snow lies on the slopes.
Before a snow shower, accompanied by an icy cold wind, we dive
deeper into our coats. Finally, we go down the slopes for a long
time with the engine turned off, into the valley that is enclosed
between Parnassus in the E. and the high mountains of Doris in the
W.
In
a pouring rain we reach we, after driving 44 km, Amphissa, situated
on a green, wooded slope, under a large old castle. In the streets
we meet a troop of camels, a relic from the time of the Turks, which
maintains the connection with Itea. From here it is still 22 km to
Delphi, and because of the pouring rain I am forced to take the car
even further. We descend quickly into a fertile plain, occupied by
dense olive groves, the old fields of Kirrha and Krisa, — now
Chryso — which the Delphic Amphictyony, as its richest
possession, has had to defend so often in fierce "holy"
wars against its neighbors. Then we go up to the East and the valley
of the Pleistos. As we climb, we get a wider view.
In
the village of Kastri I get out. Five minutes further on the road
bends around a rock, provided with tombs from all times. There lies
Delphi before me. On a theatre-shaped sloping terrain, enclosed by
vertical rock walls, and on the low side by the ravine of the
Pleistos, lies the Temenos of Apollo, rising in terraces.
Within
this space lies the museum and behind it, diagonally above the
excavations, the house of the French school. It is already getting
dark, so I first go and look for shelter, to explore the
surroundings further the next day. On the balcony of my room I wait
for the twilight to fall over this magnificent nature. The gloomy
rain clouds have been torn apart. Here and there a piece of the sky
comes through. When it has become dark for a moment, in the far
East, above the long silent valley of the Pleistos, the moon rises
above the mountains, silvering a few clouds that descended deep into
the great mountain gorge. A soft light now shines in the depths; the
valley is lovely. But the mountain walls on both sides, shrouded in
shadow, are now terribly threatening, gloomy black. Oppressively
high they embrace the light below. I begin to understand that here
the Greeks thought they could hear the voice of their god...
The
next morning, armed with "Les ruines de Delphes" by E.
Bourquet, I begin the visit to the excavations, too extensive for me
to attempt to give more than a single impression of them here.
Already
in ancient times this place, thanks to the sulphurous vapour rising
from the crevices in the rocks, was dedicated to the worship of the
gods of the underworld; it was then called Pytho, and had, near a
cave, inhabited by a snake Python, symbol of the underworld, an
oracle, whose service was exercised by Pythia. In later times,
sailors introduced the cult of Apollo Delphimos, worshipped in the
form of a dolphin. Since this god, under the name of Apollon
Pythios, "took possession" of this oracle, the name Pytho
was changed to Delphi.
Doubt
But
there is still room for doubt, and Prag himself provides arguments
for it: "They say he looks like me! I don't see it that way
myself, but the head, fully made up, stood here in the room for a
while and my assistant who was working at a table opposite, got the
fright of her life every time she looked up! We had to take him
away."
But
Prag derives much confidence from a small ivory statue of the
deceased that was in his grave. It belongs to the cabaret, which in
Greece long before official art depicted people as they were. The
resemblance to the reconstruction is striking.
Neave
naturally does not claim a complete likeness. Although he himself is
sometimes impressed by what the method used can achieve. "I've
done Egyptians, police cases, but before and after that of course
also control experiments, with corpses of which I only saw the
photos afterwards. I once had an assistant here reconstruct the face
of an Australian aborigine man, who were quite different. He didn't
know that and therefore didn't trust what came out of his hands. He
did it four times before he came to me: I can't do it any other way.
He was very angry that I hadn't said anything all that time. But I
couldn't help it: I wanted to prove something to myself."
Despite
all the scientific guarantees, he realizes that he is working on the
border between science and art. "You have so much freedom with
lips, the nose, the position of the eyes. There are rules of thumb
for it, but afterwards you still look at it with the feeling of the
artist, changing minute details. Until you get the feeling: that's
how it must have been, that's how it looks like a person who really
existed."
2 October 1987
'I spy with my little eye' is not just a child's game
Medgessy has actually read letters
By
R.A. Tybout
The
front page of NRC Handelsblad recently reported that Canadian art
historian Rolph Medgessy has discovered microscopic signatures by
Goya on numerous paintings and drawings that were previously
attributed to his most illustrious predecessors. Leonardo da Vinci,
Michelangelo, Titiaan, Rubens, Rembrandt and Velazquez: they would
all have to cede the claim to some of their best-known works to
their younger colleague, who would thereby be branded as a forger.
If
even a part of Medgessy's observations were correct, it would mean a
true revolution in art history. Now revolutions, even when they take
place entirely on paper, should be strongly distrusted. The reaction
from professional circles was therefore predominantly negative: the
signatures "in unusual places, such as nostrils, earlobes,
corners of the eyes and eyebrows" are not visible to others
and, what is sufficient, a pre-Goyan past can be demonstrated for
some works.
The
psychological aspect is interesting about this true history: the
scholar who 'after twenty years of research' is the only one who
believes he can read twelve signatures by Goya on the Venus with the
Mirror attributed to Velazquez. Prof. E. van de Wetering already
addressed this: "it is a kind of delusion that you as an art
historian often encounter in practice. You see something in fly
droppings, paint flakes and surface dirt and you recognize scribbles
in it".
It
can be added that you will read what you expect to find. Tampering
with almost invisible signatures, spectacular forgeries: that is
really something for the author of a work entitled 'The Secret Life
of Goya' - a rich subject, with which several more books could be
filled if desired.
Talking stones
That
the imagination noted by Van de Wetering can take on considerably
stronger forms is proven by a tragicomic affair that recently took
place in another scientific field: that of Greek epigraphy. The
epigraphician is concerned with deciphering and interpreting texts,
usually carved on marble or stone blocks. These 'talking stones' are
excavated after an underground stay of usually more than two
thousand years. They can also be reused as building material, for
example for a threshold in a modern Greek or Turkish home. Moisture,
cracks, wear and tear or the shuffling of countless soles often
damaged the once clearly legible letters. The epigraphician is then
tasked with determining what was or could have been written on the
stone. Sometimes he is helped by literary sources, which can contain
historical data with the help of which the text of an inscription
can be approximately reconstructed. The ideal situation is of course
one in which effortlessly legible inscriptions confirm the data
already known from the literary tradition. Anyone who, with his new
text, finally gets a stagnated discussion out of the doldrums has
climbed epigraphic Olympus.
Sanctuary of
Apollo
Incidentally,
our story takes place in Delphi, in the famous sanctuary of Apollo.
Pausanias visited this in the second century AD and noted in his
Guide to Greece: "at the entrance to the sanctuary one sees a
bronze bull, made by Theopropos of Aegina, consecrated by the
inhabitants of Corcyra (...). Then follow consecrations of the
inhabitants of Tegea consisting of what they took from the Spartans
(...). On the opposite side are votive offerings of the Spartans
from the booty taken from the Athenians".
The
precise location of the three monuments is unclear: what is on the
left and what on the right side of the Sacred Way? The modern
visitor sees a considerable number of foundations on loose blocks in
the intended area. But which of these correspond to the monuments
mentioned by Pausanias?
In
1981 Claude Vatin, a scholar of hitherto undisputed scientific
conduct, published numerous interesting inscriptions, which seemed
to solve the problems outlined once and for all. He read all these
texts on blocks that had been excavated towards the end of the
previous century. No one had ever noticed that they were written on.
Just as Schliemann was guided by Homer in the excavation of Troy, so
our scholar must have had his Pausanias in his pocket. He began, as
Pausanias, at the entrance to the Apollo sanctuary. Immediately to
the right there stands a limestone block. Could this not very well
be the pedestal of the bull of the Korkyraioi mentioned by
Pausanias?
After
long observation, Vatin began to distinguish letters on the heavily
weathered stone surface. And what did he read? "Korkyraioi”!.
Not just in one single version, but five times, with which Vatin
clearly lags behind the giant scores of Medgessy.
Triumph
The
confirmation of his suspicions must have been a triumph for him.
Encouraged by this, he read on the same block: "Theopropos the
Aeginetian made this monument". The original signature, and in
the Aeginetic alphabet! But that was not all. Pausanias also
mentions that the Korkyraioi dedicated the bull to Apollo as a
'tenth' of an abundant tuna catch. What Vatin read more can now be
read by anyone honorary reader guess: "As a tenth because of
the lucky tuna catch, to Apollo".
According
to Pausanias, next to the bull stood a monument for the victory of
the Tegeates over the Spartans. From Xenophon's Greek History we
know that it concerns the attack on a Spartan naval station in
370-369 BC. Armed with this information, Vatin went to the ruins of
the colonnade next to the supposed bull pedestal. On a block of the
stylobate that was also heavily weathered, he found two inscriptions
carved on top of each other: "The Tegeates from Arcadia
dedicate the sails captured from the Spartans to Apollo as a tenth"
and a ditto text in which 'weapons' takes the place of 'sails'.
As
if this were not enough, Vatin read fragments of seven (!) almost
identical texts on other parts of the building. There was now no
doubt about Pausanias' Spartan trophies from the battle against the
Athenians, which were situated 'on the other side': they were of
course placed opposite the colonnade.
Vatin
also went to work further on in the sanctuary. According to
Pausanias, the statue of an ox stood on the square in front of the
Temple of Apollo, dedicated to the deity by the inhabitants of
Plataiai in memory of their victory over the Persian troops in 479
BC, achieved together with the other Greeks. In this famous battle,
the Greeks finally freed themselves from the Persian threat. Who
wouldn't like to find a contemporary document that records their
victory?
Now,
in the place indicated by Pausanias, there is a block with a clearly
legible signature on one side of the sculptor Theopropos, mentioned
earlier. It has been thought that this block contains the pedestal
of the bull of the Korkyraioi, which must have been dragged from its
original location to the square in front of the Apollo temple after
the demolition of the monument in times of decay.
But
what did Vatin manage to extract from the uneven top of the block?
Nothing less than the following dedication: "The Plataeans
dedicate this to Apollo, booty taken as revenge from the Persians".
For the concept of revenge, Vatin refers to Aeschylus and thus makes
his inscription into a paragraph in Greek intellectual history.
Not
a single letter of any of these texts is visible on the photographs
published by Vatin. That is why he helps his reader with sketches he
made himself on which his lectures can be seen.
These
images have not been able to convince other Delphi experts. Scholars
from the French School in Athens have subjected the blocks studied
by Vatin to a new investigation, with all the technical aids
available to the epigraphician. Their unanimous conclusion: "il
n'y a rien, ce sont des illusions". In order to prevent further
proliferation of the phantom texts, they shared their findings with
a number of other prominent scholars.
For
C. Habicht, this warning apparently came too late. Perhaps that was
just as well. In 1985, he published a very readable book: Pausanias'
guide to ancient Greece. His main thesis is that Pausanias is a much
more reliable informant than we always thought. No wonder he
gratefully made use of what Vatin offered him, because: "How
does Pausanias come out of this? With flying colors"! And with
that, the circle is complete.
Projections
As
is well known, our powers of perception function extremely
selectively. It shows us what we want to see, even our own
projections. The good faith of Medgessy and Vatin need not be
doubted for a moment: they really read their letters. Unlike most
visions, however, their illusion has not crystallized into fleeting
images, but into concrete and constantly reread texts. That shows
once again how much the human brain is capable of. 'I see, I see
what you do not see!' No, that is not child's play.
The
author is co-editor of the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum and
works at the Department of Ancient History at Leiden University.
Photos
Above: drawing by C. Vatin of inscriptions on the pedestal of the
bull of the Korkyraioi. Below: Vatin's drawing of inscriptions on
the colonnade of Tegea.
7 January 1988
A discovery in Delphi: Etruscan inscriptions in a Greek
sanctuary?
Claude
Vatin and the benefit of the doubt
By
J.A.K.E. de Waele
Anyone
who has ever entered the hospitable home of Claude Vatin in one of
the picturesque villages near Aix-en-Provence knows that in one of
his study rooms there is an impressive series of shelves along all
the walls. On these shelves the French scholar has stored the
harvest of almost 25 years of epigraphic research in Delphi. In
recent years he has 'abgeklatscht' thousands of stones scattered
here and there in the sanctuary, a process in which blotting paper
is placed on a stone and then moistened. The blotting paper dries in
all the irregularities, scratches and cracks of the stone. In
negative, on the underside of the blotting sheet to see all traces.
In this way, ancient inscriptions engraved in the stone can also be
deciphered in the study. In an article on the Opinion page of NRC
Handelsblad, R.A. Tybout recently sided with unnamed scholars of the
French school, who declared that Vatin's lectures were based on
fantasy. Here an attempt is made to make clear how spectacular
Vatin's discoveries are and how accurate his working methods are.
One must have examined the stones themselves for a long time and
studied the Abklatsche if one wants to criticize Vatin's results.
After
the French school in Athens had previously uncovered monuments in
Delphi, the large-scale excavations were decided upon in 1892 by the
French parliament in an atmosphere of animosity with the German
Empire. After the reparations that France was forced to make after
the Franco-German war of 1870-1871, the German Empire had large
amounts of gold in its coffers. This was used to finance the
excavations at Olympia 1875-1881, a form of development work avant
la lettre. The decision of the French National Assembly to beat the
Germans to Delphi must also be seen as an attempt to make up for the
damaged glory of the fatherland, at least in science.
The
German archaeologists watched with dismay as this important
excavation at Delphi, where they had already done the necessary
preparatory work, passed them by. The sanctuary was uncovered by
French scientists in record time. This was not always done very
accurately, but at a time when wages were still low, an immense area
was explored. This sacred area is now one of the tourist attractions
of the Greek world. One is impressed by the imposing scenery of the
steep pink-grey rocks, between which the ruins are nestled. Apollo
once spoke here through his famous Oracle, to which the entire Greek
world listened. The discussions between the digging French and the
Germans on the sidelines frequently flared up. In a time of
positivist criticism, in which every ancient text was arbitrarily
changed if it did not seem to match archaeological observations,
polemics were conducted that sometimes seemed to be a direct
continuation of the armed Franco-German conflict. Pomtow, a German
archaeologist and historian who has been occupied with Delphi all
his life, has summarized his life's work in an encyclopedia article
of 120 densely printed pages of text. He turned against the "French
method, particularly beloved in Delphi, of 'ignoring' stones and
facts that do not suit them".
Justification
The
French response was inevitable; in a youthful work, the French
Nestor of epigraphy at Delphi seeks a justification for the attitude
of 'ignoring' the various arguments of the German researcher.
However, many controversial questions are still unresolved and it
may be called a favourable development that now some young German
archaeologists are making sensational discoveries thanks to
sensitive photography. As a result, one of the greatest
controversies seems to be resolved soon, which means that the
ancient writers — and the French archaeologists — are
once again proven right.
Knowledge
of this background is essential to understand the situation in which
Vatin finds himself. With a sharp eye he has examined stones and
Abklatsche and has overturned many established ideas. One of the
sacred houses that is threatened concerns the statues of two archaic
young men who have been identified with Cleobis and Biton since the
discovery site. According to the story, these had pulled their
mother, priestess of the goddess Hera, to the sanctuary in her
chariot at "tos" — six km in the burning sun! When
they had succumbed to exhaustion, their fellow citizens set up their
statues in Delphi.
In
1893, a group of statues of two young men was excavated in Delphi.
The inscription on the base was read as if it were Cleobis and
Biton. However, Vatin believes that he can see the two Dioscuri,
Castor and Pollux, in the group. This is not believed by many
colleagues. Nevertheless, the inscription on the base of the statues
has never been read in such a way that all scholars came to a
unanimous interpretation.
Pausanias
The
reading of the stones with which Vatin makes the reconstruction that
is so criticized by Tybout is no different. It must be stated in
advance that Vatin's reading is based on a text by Pausanias, which
Pomtow changed with the approval of all scholars because the text
did not seem to correspond with the situation in the field. This
ancient writer Pausanias, who in the second century AD compiled a
'Baedeker' of ancient Greece, was vilified at the end of the
previous century as a scholar who, sitting at his desk, frantically
copied earlier authors without actually doing so.
He
ever saw the places he describes. Fortunately, this picture has
changed radically in modern times. The ancient historian Christian
Habicht, who teaches at the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, has contributed greatly to this rehabilitation of
Pausanias, because he has shown how much Pausanias became the
personal enemy of a German classicist and his school. But that is
another story.
The
polemic flared up again when Vatin discovered a bilingual
inscription in Etruscan and Greek from Delphi. The editors of the
journal where he offered his article refused to publish it. Vatin
then announced his data at an Etruscan conference in Italy. The
majority of the colleagues present there received this message as a
sensational discovery. The document will certainly receive special
attention from ancient historians and Etruscanologists in the coming
years. The historical importance of the inscription in particular
must be investigated.
The
correctness of Vatin's observation is not doubted in these circles.
She testifies to a method by which the French scholar comes into the
limelight in a completely different light than he was previously
portrayed in this magazine. Perhaps the French colleagues working in
Delphi feel a slight irritation that stones that have been known for
so long still appear to contain important epigraphic data. Do they
experience it as a disgrace to the national research that has been
taking place in Delphi for more than a century? The fact that French
epigraphers also have a razor-sharp pen and a great deal of power
quickly makes an underdog hopeless and despondent.
But
great discoverers in archaeology have already been greeted with
derision by their colleagues: the merits of Schliemann are now
almost universally recognized. He was also lucky that the weight of
the gold he found tipped the scales in his favor. That he has given
Greece back a piece of history is now clear to everyone. And when
Marinatos offered an article to a magazine in which he identified
Thera with Atlantis, the editors disclaimed all responsibility in a
note. Fortunately, the Greek archaeologist would once again be able
to test his theory in practice through the spectacular finds.
Weathered
A
rectangular stone from Delphi has long been known on which the
following can be read: "(a tenth of the booty?) have dedicated
to Apollo the Tyrrhenians, i.e. the Etruscans". What exactly
the Etruscans dedicated is unknown because the upper part of the
stone is damaged. The same name was also previously written under
the last word 'Tyrrhenians', but it has weathered so much over the
years that it has been reapplied. To his great surprise, Vatin also
read a few more letters from the older, heavily weathered
inscription, of which 'Kymaion helontes' (= conquered from the
inhabitants of Kyme) was the most important. He concluded that this
stone had been dedicated after a victory by the Etruscans over Kyme,
a Greek city north of Naples, where one of the earliest Greek
colonies was located.
Whether
this dedication was set up by the Etruscans in a Greek sanctuary
will have to be investigated further. Two conflicts between Kyme and
the Etruscans are known from historical sources. Both times the
Greeks were victorious. The first time the Etruscans were defeated
in about 524 by the tyrant Aristodemos. A few decades later the
Syrakusan tyrant Hieron drilled the Etruscan fleet into the ground
in the roadstead of Kyme. Helmets that the Syrakusan set up in
Olympia still remain from the last victory. It is not clear what
reason the Etruscans saw to place a dedication or booty at Delphi.
Perhaps the naval battle was not so clearly decided in the Greeks'
favour after all.
Bilingual
This
discovery prompted Vatin to take another good look at the sides of
the stone. What he found there exceeded all expectations. He found a
bilingual dedication in Greek and Etruscan. The Greek text reads in
translation: "This tripod was consecrated by the Velthanes (?)
as a gift from the spoils taken from the Chalkidians at Kyme".
Too good to be true. The older inscription on the stone can be found
attached to the side!
Encouraged
by this discovery, Vatin continued his search for traces of
Etruscans in Delphi. Now, traditionally, a treasury - a temple-like
building in which the precious consecrations were placed - had been
attributed to an Etruscan city. It concerns a foundation behind the
rebuilt treasury of the Athenians in Delphi. It is built of an
unusually dark (tuff?) stone that was assumed to have been brought
from Etruria by sea and assembled in Delphi. In itself, this is not
unusual; in other sanctuaries, entire buildings were also brought to
Greece from Sicily, for example.
However,
Vatin was initially very sceptical about the attribution. However,
when he carefully examined all the blocks, he found an inscription
written in Greek, local Delphic alphabet: "To Apollo of Delphi
the Velthanes have brought a consecration". Furthermore, on
another side of the treasury the inscription could be read: "The
Tyrrhenians achieved on the inhabitants of Kyme".
Velthanes
This
inscription was written in a later period than the one mentioned
earlier. Apparently, the inscription was also renewed here in the
second instance. This time, however, it no longer refers to
'Velthanes' but to 'Tyrrhenians'. According to the first
inscription, a treasury of the Velthanes was built here in the fifth
century BC. The inscription was renewed again afterwards, this time
in the name of the Tyrrhenians, probably because the older text
mentioning the Velthanes was less deeply engraved and had become
difficult to read. From the ancient sources it appears that there
were treasuries of the Etruscan cities of Agylla and Spina in
Delphi.
Who
these Velthanes were has not yet been investigated. Two
possibilities present themselves. Either it concerns a consecration
of the league of cities that met annually in the sanctuary of
Volsinii (= Velthanes?) near present-day Bolsena, or a connection
must be sought with the Etruscan name of Bologna, 'Felsina'.
Geographically, this last city is closer to Spina, but then it
remains a mystery how and when these Etruscans waged war with the
inhabitants of the Greek Kyme.
This
gives ancient historians and Etruscanologists a new bone to chew on.
How incredible do Vatin's observations sound! But also unbelievable?
Those who know him will be inclined to take him seriously for his
careful working methods and scientific seriousness as a scholar and
epigrapher. Despite the criticism of his colleagues, Vatin still
deserves the benefit of the doubt. The author is an extraordinary
professor of classical archaeology at the Catholic University of
Nijmegen.
Photos
The treasury of the Athenians at Delphi.
On
the left Vatin's drawing of the front of the stone and on the right
his drawing of the left side with the bilingual, Etruscan and Greek,
inscription.
The
statue group of Cleobis and Biton (?) at Delphi.
16 February
1988 Etruscanologist Pallottino also doubts the working
methods of the French scholar
Vatin's
observation deserves scepticism
By
R.A. Tybout
Claude
Vatin believes he has discovered Etruscan inscriptions in a
sanctuary at Delphi. Nonsense? According to the Dutch archaeologist
De Waele (last month on the Opinion page) he should be given the
benefit of the doubt. That does not alter the fact that the French
scholar sees inscriptions that have remained invisible to others.
Some time ago it was reported that Rolph Medgessy had read numerous
microscopic signatures by Goya on important paintings by several old
masters. The straw fire of this news was quickly extinguished by the
fact that none of his colleagues appeared to be able to see what
Medgessy saw. On the Opinion page of NRC Handelsblad I then pointed
out a similar affair in the field of Greek epigraphy: Claude Vatin
published a series of interesting texts, which he claims to read on
the weathered surface of various blocks in the Apollo sanctuary at
Delphi. In this case too, colleagues reacted extremely sceptically.
Not so J.A. de Waele, who on this page broke a lance for Vatin. It
would have been relevant if he had published a photo of a stone or
Abklatsch from which it would appear that there are indeed letters
present. 'Abklatschen' is a procedure in which blotting paper is
placed on a stone and moistened. The negative of the dried sheet
then shows the irregularities and cracks (and possible letters) in
the stone.
Abklatsche
are an 'instrument de travail'. Every epigraphician in the field
documents his findings with this prepared blotting paper, among
other things. Later, in the peace of his study, he can arrive at a
text constitution, whether or not justified.
Furthermore,
De Waele attempts to explain why Vatin's lectures encounter
resistance. Not facts, but feelings of unease from his fellow
'Delphiens' are said to be responsible for this. It is an old song:
the brilliant loner who, because he would pose a threat to the
established scientific order, would be ignored or marginalized by
it. An attempt is made to reverse the burden of proof and to arouse
the sympathy of the general public for the 'underdog'. All this is
only interesting as a psychological mechanism, but has no value for
disciplines other than psychology.
Verifiable
But
back to the bare facts! Anyone who thinks he can report something of
importance publishes his findings in a professional journal. Vatin
did the same. Anyone who also wants to gain approval from colleagues
should ensure that at least his factual material is verifiable.
Vatin did not do so. Note: this does not apply to all his work, but
it does apply to a large part of the articles on Delphic
inscriptions included in various magazines since 1981, including the
texts I mentioned in NRC Handelsblad. On the photographs of stones
or Abklatsche that Vatin provides in some cases, not a single letter
is visible. This circumstance is, to put it euphemistically, unique.
It
does happen that letters on photographs in comparable publications
are illegible, or that the weathered stone surface allows for more
readings of certain letters:
for
example, on the pedestals of the statues of 'Kleobis and Biton'
mentioned by De Waele. However, there has never been any doubt that
these pedestals bear inscriptions. The precise reading of these
visible letters is open to dispute. A different kind of problem
arises with the texts that I quoted in translation: no one except
Vatin has been able to observe a single letter. The latter applies
to a large number of other Delphic inscriptions that Vatin thinks he
reads. These texts show the same profile, with somewhat suspicious
contours: they are extremely interesting, groundbreaking in many
vexed questions and almost always in perfect agreement with what we
know from the literary sources. They are often said to be on stones
that also contain an inscription that is visible to everyone.
Another characteristic is that Vatin usually does not leave it at
one new inscription, but that he gives a series of often engraved
identical versions (up to seven!) of a text. All this in a script
that, according to Vatin himself, is barely perceptible. For
example, on the pedestal of the famous 'Danseuses de Delphes' (in
the museum at Delphi), he reads, in addition to the already known
fragmentary inscription of the oath, eight new texts (some
identical), which provide answers to all the questions that this
group of statues has raised among generations of scholars: the
occasion and date of the dedication ('victory of Athens over
Sparta'; '375-374 BC'), the identity of the dedicators ('The
Athenians and their allies'), of the artist (none other than
'Praxiteles'!) and of a later restorer ('Philodemos', 'second
century BC'). Can it be more beautiful? "Too good to be true",
writes De Waele in response to another cookie from Vatin's dough.
One should be warned not to take this Greek-Etruscan pastry without
a few grains of salt.
Now
it could be that all appearances are wrongly against Vatin.
Therefore, De Waele is right when he says that verification of
Vatin's proposals should ultimately be done on site in Delphi and
after thorough study by Abklatsche of the stones in question. Well,
that was done, with the result mentioned. And by epigraphists of
various persuasions. At the time, I spared the readers of NRC
Handelsblad their names. There are indeed 'Delphiens' among them
from the French school in Athens. Their secretary J.-Y. Empereur
informed the editors of the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (a
publication in book form that organizes and makes accessible the
annual harvest of Greek inscriptions) of their findings in writing.
But perhaps none of them could discover a letter because they were
collectively cross-eyed with jealousy. My quote "il n'y a rien,
ce sont des illusions" however comes from a similar written
warning from a scholar who is out of reach of any possible bad
vapours of the Delphic Pythia: O. Masson, a French 'epigraphist
without party' of undisputed reputation. De Waele is silent about a
few extremely relevant professional publications in this matter. Who
is actually "ignoring" whom? Are supposed enemies ignoring
Vatin or is De Waele ignoring the fictitious company of
conspirators? These publications show that Vatin is by no means
being ignored silently and that he is not at all hostile a priori.
For
example, there is the Crete expert P. Faure (also not a 'Delphien'),
who, like Vatin, examined the texts on the pedestals of 'Kleobis and
Biton' (L'Antiquité Classique 54, 1985, pp. 56-65). The nice
thing is that Vatin is right about his reading of these visible
texts as a dedication to the Dioscuri. So there is no trace of
partiality; it is very possible that 'Cleobis and Biton' should be
relegated to the realm of fable. But about a number of
never-observed texts that Vatin also reads here and there on the
images, he writes: "I am obliged, but it may be that my eyes
are not good enough, to say that I see nothing of it." And
neither on the original, nor on plaster casts, nor on Abklatsche,
nor on colour and black and white photos.
Pallottino
These
negative findings are not limited to the French borders. Vatin's
bilingual Greek-Etruscan text also stirred up Italian pens. For
example, the Etruscanologist M. Cristofan concluded after studying
stone and Abklatsche: "I have not seen a single sign that could
be interpreted with certainty as belonging to an alphabet"
(Xenia 8, 1984, p. 13). What does De Waele tell the reader when he
speaks about the reception of Vatin's findings among Etruscans? "The
correctness of Vatin's observation is not doubted in these circles."
No
doubt? There is another person from 'these circles' who shed light
on the matter: none other than the doyen of Etruscans, Massimo
Pallottino, wrote a nuanced, but again sceptical, consideration of
Vatin's bilingual text under the title De cippus van Delphi en het
'casualt Vatin' (Studi Etruschi 53, 1987, pp. 7-14). Pallottino
operates as cautiously as possible and makes every effort to give
Vatin the 'benefit of the doubt' — ultimately without positive
results. He looks at the matter from three points of view. First,
the technical-epigraphical side: are there indeed letters on the
stone in question? Here Pallottino can do little more than establish
that no one except Vatin has been able to perceive even a single
letter of the disputed texts. He himself has studied some of Vatin's
Abklatsche. For the sake of completeness he mentions that "with
much good will" two irregularities could be interpreted as
letter signs, but he adds: "There is nothing else to see than
this, which could just as well be pure illusion and then explain how
it is possible that illusory readings (of letters) are born from
unintentional scratches on the stone, wear or irregularities in the
surface."
Aplu
Second,
Pallottino provides a linguistic analysis of the Etruscan part of
Vatin's text. He notes that it is internally consistent and
corresponds word for word with Vatin's Greek counterpart text. Of
course, that says nothing about the authenticity of either version:
either a late archaic Etruscan or Vatin has translated the Greek
into neat Etruscan — except for one detail, "fairly
decisive," according to Pallottino. In the archaic period, from
which the inscription is said to originate based on its content, one
would not expect the syncopated form Aplu instead of Apulu as the
name of the god Apollo. Then follows a cautious phrase: "One
would truly say that the author of a hypothetical, learned, and
ingenious Etruscan version of a Greek text inspired by the Delphic
vowel inscription would have made a rather serious mistake here
through inattention."
Pallottino's
third consideration concerns "the personal and psychological
profile" of some of the statements that Vatin added to the
publication of his inscriptions. He notes that they are sincere, but
that they do show an unmistakably apologetic slant: Vatin writes
that one must have experience and patience to be able to read his
texts, that he does not act out of a desire for fame, nor because
there is anything suggestive about finding an Etruscan text, which
to his own surprise gradually became apparent to him.
Pallottino's
final conclusion: "illusory or not, we have no other material
evidence of Vatin's readings than his own explanation. We can, if we
wish, give credence to that explanation. But unfortunately science
does not base itself on professions of faith."
Whatever
one may think of this remarkable history (I still consider it
plausible that Vatin 'projected' entirely in good faith into the
numerous fissures and cracks of the rough stone letters that are not
there): a strong doubt about the reliability of Vatin's observations
is certainly justified.
The
author is co-editor of the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum and
works at the Department of Ancient History at Leiden University.
Photos
The Etruscan scholar Massimo Pallottino is sceptical about Vatin's
discovery. Also: the Delphic twins: Dioscuri or 'Kleobis and Biton'?
4 July 1989
Pausianas' travel guide to Greece restored to its former
glory after a hundred years
Jos
de Waele
Dr.
J. de Waele is professor of classical archaeology at the Catholic
University of Nijmegen.
The
Greek writer Pausanias, who wrote his 'Description of Greece' around
150 AD, is not exactly among the top ten of ancient literature.
Little is known about his life. He lived during the Roman imperial
period and came from the vicinity of Smyrna in Asia Minor. He deals
with the Greek mainland in a dry manner, which he describes as
smaller than the present-day Balkan state. As a child of his time,
Pausanias looks back as far as we do to the heyday of Gothic
cathedrals in classical Greece. His interest lies in the cities and
monuments of classical Hellas, which still attract many tourists as
ruins.
However,
one should not expect Pausanias to provide the detailed descriptions
of a Baedeker, Guide bleu or Cantecleer guide. His text is not
intended as a manual on the spot, but as reading material in the
study of the educated intellectual of the imperial period. That is
why Pausanias alternates the descriptions of the places with long
excursions into mythological and historical background information.
The
value of Pausanias was recognized early on by archaeologists in the
field. After the liberation from the Turks in 1832, many travelers
traveled through Greece with Pausanias in their hands. Many
archaeological sites have been found and excavated in this way. In
the major tourist attractions of Olympia or Delphi, many buildings
would not be identifiable without Pausanias' text. That he did his
work thoroughly is evident in Olympia, where he lists more than 200
gifts with inscriptions. Of the 115 bases found, 34 inscriptions are
also given by Pausanias. In the agora of Athens, during the American
excavations in the 1930s, several crucial monuments were also
identified, which allows the entire walk of Pausanias to be
reconstructed in broad outline.
Nevertheless,
the ancient Baedeker has not always been so highly valued in the
scientific literature. In the previous century, the Berlin school,
led by the famous Greek Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff,
severely damaged the reputation of the ancient author. Pausanias was
said to have been a 'miserable compiler' and an 'Erzkonfusionar',
who copied most of his text from others at home without having
travelled much himself.
Although
archaeologists immediately came forward with good arguments for
Pausanias, the attacks of the Berlin professor and his pupils were
merciless. The latter cut down their victims like true epigones, so
that many suspicions remained despite all the good services that the
'old Baedeker' had rendered to the archaeologists. Recently,
however, it became clear to what Pausanias owed this. On 18 April
1873, a German travel party left Olympia and headed for Arcadia.
Among these grand tourists were hereditary princes and country
squires from the Prussian nobility. Due to his knowledge of ancient
Greek, Von Wilamowitz was in charge. As reading material, he had a
Pausanias text in his pocket. Due to an incorrect interpretation —
he did not realise that he was following Pausanias in the opposite
direction — he took the wrong path and after a few hours he
had to admit that he was hopelessly lost. The young scholar then
became the butt of the ridicule of his fellow travellers. Shortly
afterwards the first publications appeared in which Von Wilamowitz
tried to show that Pausanias was completely unreliable: "The
whole rat-king of contradictions and errors... can only be explained
by the fact that Pausanias thoughtlessly copies an earlier
description, sometimes weaving his own memories into it and more
often supplementing it with quotations from other authors; over all
this he hangs a rococo mantle of sophistic absent-mindedness and
infantile erodotus imitation." Only recently has Christian
Habicht, a former historian at the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, found the reason for this trauma: in Von Wilamowitz's
wounded pride. Only now can the full rehabilitation of an author be
initiated, of whom the famous British historian of religion Sir
James Frazer once wrote: "Pausanias could never have foreseen
how 1700 years later severe professors would condemn him. Had he
seen this coming, he might never have written his entire description
of Greece and we would have to regret the loss of one of the most
curious and valuable documents that Antiquity has left us."
30 April 1993
The mysterious farmers of the Iron Age
In search of
the Celts in the Netherlands
by
Pieter Steinz
The
Netherlands has never had much time for the Celts, even though they
were here once. Even the exhibition that the Allard Pierson Museum
dedicates to them ends with a question mark: The Celts in the
Netherlands? They have not left many traces and the little that
there is seems very Roman to the layman. But appearances can be
deceptive. "No Roman would dream of building a temple in the
countryside."
Generations
of grammar school students and readers of the adventures of Asterix
can dream of them: the famous opening sentences of Caesar's Notes on
the Gallic War. 'Gaul is divided into three parts', the Roman
conqueror teaches, and then names the native inhabitants as Belgae
(in the North), Aquitani (in the South) and 'people who in their own
language are called Celtae but in ours Galli.' The Belgae are the
furthest removed from the civilizing influence of the provincia (the
Romanized Provence), and are constantly at war with the wild Germans
from across the Rhine. That is why, Caesar concludes, they are the
bravest of all the Gallic peoples.
Caesar
knew what he was talking about. When he published his Notes in 51
BC, formerly all of Gaul had been occupied, but in the area between
the Rhine and the Marne it had cost him a lot of effort and
manpower. For five years he had fought a bloody war there with
various Belgian tribes, and especially with the Eburones under their
chief Ambiorix. After losing an entire legion in 54, he opted for
drastic measures. The enemy was systematically massacred, his lands
ransacked, his places of residence wiped off the map. The Eburones
disappeared from history. They suffered the fate of the other Celtic
tribes on the mainland to an extreme extent: once defeated by the
legions, they were absorbed into the Imperium Romanum and
transformed into decent 'Gallo-Romans'.
Two
thousand years after Julius Caesar, the Celts are making their
comeback in historiography. Interest in civilisations from the Iron
Age (700-50 BC) is growing and exhibitions of Celtic gold and silver
attract full museums. In addition, the importance of the Celts for
European culture is increasingly valued; at the time of the great
Celt exhibition, two years ago in Venice, they were even proclaimed
by some scholars as the real pioneers of a united Europe. That the
hundreds of different Celtic tribes in Europe had no central
government and at most a Celtic dialect in common was conveniently
forgotten in the euphoria.
More
has been fantasized about the ancient Celts. This is not surprising,
because unlike their conquerors, the Romans, they have left no
written sources. What we know about them comes from the books of
classical historians and ethnographers. They regarded the 'Keltoi'
(also called 'Galli' or 'Galatae') as unspoiled savages, who from
the sixth century BC had swarmed out from the Alps all over Europe
and had plundered Rome and Delphi, among other places. The tall
barbarians wore trousers, bracae, wore thick golden neck rings,
torques, washed their hair in a lime bath, and were known for their
fearlessness. The story of the meeting between Alexander the Great
and a Celtic embassy on the Danube is famous. Alexander asked what
the Celts feared most, and expected the answer to be 'You, sir.' But
the envoys declared that they were only afraid of one thing, namely
that the sky would fall on their heads. Their answer would surprise
the Greeks and Romans for centuries to come, and is still one of the
running gags of the Asterix comics today.
Fighting and
partying
Just
like in the rest of Europe, there seems to be more attention in the
Netherlands recently for pre-Roman culture, for the forgotten tribes
that lived between the Rhine and the Scheldt [Schelde] before (but
also after) the beginning of our era. At the end of 1992, the A.G.
Foundation van Hamel for Celtic Studies, organised a campaign to
raise awareness of the pre-Roman culture. A symposium was held at
which the Celts in the Netherlands were discussed. This coming
autumn, the exhibition 'Fighting and partying among the Celts' will
take place in Utrecht. And at the moment, a modest exhibition of
Celtic art and utensils can be seen in the Allard Pierson Museum in
Amsterdam — as part of the manifestation 'Celtica Nederland'
with which Dutch Celtic studies wants to introduce itself to a broad
audience. The Netherlands has never had much time for its Celtic
past. Ambiorix may have been widely regarded as the Arminius of the
Low Countries, but he was first and foremost a Belgian hero, with a
statue in Tongeren. And the Eburones may have lived deep in the
Dutch river area, but their ancestral homeland was in Belgian
Limburg. In Dutch history books, the Gauls or Belgae were not
mentioned as distant ancestors, but the Batavians: a —
according to Roman historians — Germanic tribe that descended
the Rhine after Caesar's conquests and settled in the Betuwe. The
fact that the Celts appeal so little to the imagination in the
Netherlands is undoubtedly because they have left few traces. From
abroad you sometimes hear that a Celtic gold treasure has been
excavated or a hill fort (oppidum) has been exposed. The British
Museum is famous for its display cases full of torques and weapons
from the Iron Age, and in the East of Southern France every
medium-sized provincial town has a Gallo-Roman museum. But in the
Netherlands no well-known Celtic remains come to mind at first.
"That's not so strange," says Celticologist Lauran
Toorians, a month before the opening of the exhibition in the Allard
Pierson Museum that he helped put together. "The south of the
Netherlands was on the edge of the Celtic cultural area, and was
also influenced by the Germans from the northeast. There was no
'pure' or rich Celtic culture here, and large oppida such as at
Kessel-Lo or on the Kemmelberg in Flanders have not been found. Many
special examples of Celtic culture in the Netherlands also date from
the Roman period, and then they are soon seen as more Roman than
Gallic."
I
went to Toorians to find out what remains of the Celts in the
Netherlands. The list is manageable: a few artefacts in the large
archaeological museums, a small hill fort at the Sint Pietersberg
(on the Belgian side), and the remains of two Gallo-Roman
sanctuaries under the church of Elst and on the Maas near Empel.
When I say that the latter surprises me — I have heard of
those temples, but weren't they built by the Batavians, and not by
the Celts? — Toorians explains that the Batavians are now
often counted among the Celtic tribes: the Romans called them
Germans because they came from across the Rhine, but it seems
unlikely that they actually spoke Germanic.
Grave field
Before
I go looking for the remains of Celtic Netherlands, I call Dr Nico
Roymans. He is an Iron Age specialist affiliated with the Institute
for Pre- and Protohistory of the University of Amsterdam, and was
one of the excavators of the indigenous Roman 'temple of Empel' in
1990. Roymans is even more cautious than Toorians. He would rather
not talk about Celts at all ("As an archaeologist I don't work
with those kinds of language-based macro-concepts"), but he
invites me to take a look at the only Iron Age excavation that is
currently being worked on: the burial ground of Mierlo-Hout, near
Helmond. We agree to meet in two weeks' time.
In
the meantie I immerse myself in the Celts. I read the standard work
by the Belgian S.J. De Laet, Prehistorische culturen in het zuid der
Lage Landen (Wetteren 1979), and visit two archaeological museums
with an Iron Age collection. The National Museum of Antiquities
turns out not to be worth the trip to Leiden: the Netherlands
department is being reorganised and even the world-famous 'disc of
Helden', a gilded-silver hunting scene from the Late Iron Age, is
not on display to the public. I have better luck in Museum Kam in
Nijmegen (once the Celtic Novio-magus, 'Nieuw-markt'). there is
renovation work going on, but fortunately almost all the Celtic
masterpieces are on display on the ground floor: an iron sword with
bronze scabbard dredged from the Waal (1st century BC); the melted
remains of the 'Wagon Grave of Nijmegen', the final resting place of
a local nobleman from the fourth century BC; and a beautiful bronze
mirror inlaid with red enamel - the only one of its kind found on
the European mainland.
Not
far from Nijmegen, in the Over-Betuwe, lies Elst. The town between
the Lower Rhine and the Waal, a small Batavian settlement in early
Roman times, was badly damaged in the Battle of Arnhem, but gained
an archaeological monument during the restoration of the Gothic
Werenfridus Church. The remains of two Gallo-Roman stone temples
were found under the burnt-out nave. The first was built around 50
AD and destroyed twenty years later during the Batavian uprising
against the Romans. The second, six times as large (31 by 23), was
built at the end of the first century — fourteen m high and
with a spacious colonnade all around. With an old-fashioned pointer,
the church sexton explains the mini-exhibition that is set up in a
side aisle. The objects on display look unremarkable and above all
Roman: a few pieces of stone, an orange roof tile, and the skull
remains of a suovetaurilia, a Roman purification offering consisting
of a pig (sus), a sheep (ovis) and a bull (taurus).
More
interesting are the temple remains in the large crawl space under
the church, a maze of walls, pillars and stone stacks in which, with
some help, the various building layers and styles can be discovered.
Of Temple II, the foundations of the actual sanctuary (the cella)
can be seen and a piece of the colonnade wall. Of Temple I, not much
remains than a floor of lime mortar with a large hole in it. But no
matter how closely you look, to the layman's eye everything looks
Roman. Elst offers precious little Celtic.
Misty
"Appearances
can be deceiving," says Nico Roymans, when I tell him about my
disappointing visit to the Betuwe a week later at a misty Helmond-'t
Hout station. "Just like the temple of Empel, the one in Elst
is typically indigenous. Of course, the building techniques were
Roman and the materials were imported. But no Roman would dream of
building a temple in the countryside. That, plus the fact that Roman
temples never have a four-sided colonnade, is an indication: Elst
and Empel were indigenous sanctuaries, built by the Batavian elite
on sites where gods were already worshipped in the Iron Age."
We
walk through a spacious new housing estate to the site of the Iron
Age urn field that was recently uncovered. An emergency operation,
Roymans emphasizes: "We are digging ahead of the bulldozers, in
a few months there will be luxury villas on these sandy soils."
In an iron construction shed, which serves as headquarters and
coffee house for four frozen architects, geologists, Roymans
explains the excavation using topographic maps. On either side of
the shed is a burial ground of 100 by 500 m where, in the periods
650-450 BC and 25-400 AD, two hundred and fifty people were buried
after being cremated. An estimated three to five families lived
around the burial ground, in wooden thatched roof farms of the
so-called 'house type': unlike abroad, people and cattle slept under
one roof in the Netherlands.
It
all sounds rather unspectacular, and it isn't. The excavation is one
of the 'for enthusiasts' category. In the Iron Age, this may have
been an idyllic landscape with a few hundred hills, now it is a
messy piece of land that is being laboriously prepared for
construction. Circles and rectangles are visible in wide, bulldozed
trenches — discolorations that indicate where the graves and
the associated ditches once lay. No major finds have been made.
Roymans: “The people who lived here had a poor burial ritual,
but that does not mean that their culture was poorly developed;
after all, we also only bury our dead in a suit. From richer
excavations on the sandy soils of Brabant we have at least been able
to conclude that there were contacts between the local elites and
the Celtic world of Central Europe."
Back
in the coffee shop, Roymans wants to say a bit more about what he
calls the Celt question. "The discussion about Celts and
Germans in the South of the Netherlands is complicated by the fact
that scientists from different disciplines talk past each other.
Linguists say: someone is a Celt if he speaks Celtic. Unfortunately,
little Celtic has been handed down in these regions - a handful of
names that could just as well have been borrowed - so try to draw a
sensible conclusion. Archaeologists base themselves on the material
culture and prefer not to stick an ethnic label on the farmers from
the Iron Age. We do not speak of Celts, but at most of 'Celticized
tribes'. Our research focuses on cultural influence.
"The
entire discussion goes back to Caesar. He wanted to go down in
history as the conqueror of all of Gaul. Because he could not go on
forever, he declared the Rhine the ethnic border between the wild
Celts and the even wilder Germanic hordes. But if you had asked an
inhabitant of an Iron Age settlement on the Rhine whether he was a
Celt or a German, he would have stared at you incredulously. 'I am
Jansen van Pietersen,' he would say, or, if he were very
open-minded, perhaps: 'I am an Eburone.'
Punitive
expedition
That
afternoon I travel on to Maastricht, in a last attempt to get in
touch with the spirit of the Celts, or at least that of the
Eburones. After a short visit to the Bonnefanten Museum — the
archaeology department is being reorganized and the famous Gallic
'cock of Buchten' is not on display — I cycle on a rented
Batavus past the Sint Pietersberg and the Eerste Nederlandse Cement
Industrie. Just across the Belgian border, a wooded plateau rises on
the right side of the road. On top of it, at Kanne-Caster, there is
supposed to be a fort from the Gallic War, uncovered in the 1970s.
Some scholars believe it was a small oppidum of the Eburones;
according to others, it was the legendary Aduatuca, the place where
Ambiorix slaughtered six thousand Romans in 54 BC, and from where
Caesar later organised his punitive expedition against the Eburones.
After
a steep climb along a zigzag path, I expect all sorts of things:
cobblestone walls, post holes, defensive ditches — whether or
not covered with grass and bushes. But there is nothing
archaeological to be seen, not even an information sign. Looking out
over the rolling ridge, with a canal low in the distance and a
meadow with white cows behind me, it dawns on me that the
excavations here were of course of the same nature as those at
Helmond. The research has been done, the trenches have been filled
in again, and there is nothing left to remind us of the Eburones.
When I cycle back over the Sint Pietersberg, I realise how
thoroughly Caesar went about his work. However brave the Belgae
were, there is depressingly little left of them in the Netherlands.
The
exhibition 'Celts in the Netherlands?' in the Allard Pierson Museum
can be seen until 11 June. Amsterdam, Oude Turfmarkt 129. Tue. to
Fri. 10am-5pm, Sat. and Sun. 1pm-5pm. Information about the
manifestation 'Celtica Nederland' at the Stichting A.G. van Hamel,
Postbus 1427, 3500 BK Utrecht.
THE
NETHERLANDS AROUND THE BEGINNING OF OUR CENTURY
Card:
NRC Handelsblad/Willum Morsch, 30.04.93
The
bronze 'cock of Buchten' (h. 15 cm), a votive offering decorated
with enamel to the indigenous goddess Arcanua, who had a sanctuary
in Buchten, Limburg. Second century AD
Reconstruction
drawing of the large, second Gallo-Roman temple of Elst, built in
the last quarter of the first century AD R.O.B. - J. Ipey - C.J. de
Vries
From:
'Asterix — The Champion' (René Goscinny and Albert
Uderzo, 1963)
WHY THE PYTHIA
DOES NOT NOW GIVE ORACLES IN VERSE
I. Basilocles
– Philinus.
THE
SPEAKERS BASILOCLES, a citizen of Delphi.
PHILINUS,
a friend, perhaps also of Delphi.
Bas.
"You have made it late in the evening, Philinus, by escorting
your guest about amongst the dedicated things: I lost all patience
in waiting for you both."
Phil.
"Yes, Basilocles, we strolled along slowly — sowing words
as we went, and forthwith 'reaping words with strife', that sprung
up and emerged along our path, like the crop of the Dragon's Teeth,
spiteful and contentious words."
Bas.
"Will it then be necessary to ask one of those who were there
at the time, or are you willing yourself to oblige us and repeat
your conversation? and tell us who were the speakers?"
Phil.
"That task, it seems, is mine, for you won't find the others
easily; I saw most of them going up again to the Corcium and the
Lycoreia, in company with the visitor."
Bas.
"How fond our visitor is of seeing the sites, and how
extravagantly fond of hearing stories!"
Phil.
"Rather, fond of history, and willing to learn; and not so much
to be admired for these two qualities, as for gentleness combined
with elegance of manner, and then an incredulity and a fondness for
disputation — the result of intelligence — with nothing
in it ill-tempered or stubborn: so that after being a little while
in his company you exclaim, 'The child of a good father!' [Plato
Republic 368a] You are surely acquainted with Diogenianus, that best
of men?
Bas.
"I have not seen him; but I have met many who greatly approve
of his conversation and character, and say just the same things of
him as you do of the youth. But what was the occasion of this
discussion of yours?"
II. Philinus narrates their conversation.
THE
SPEAKERS PHILINUS
DIOGENIANUS,
a young visitor from Pergamum, son of Diogenianus.
THEON,
a literary friend.
SERAPION,
Athenian poet.
BOETHUS,
a geometrician, nearly a converted Epicurean.
TWO
GUIDES to the Temple of Delphi.
Phil.
"The guides were going through their regular spiel, paying no
heed to our entreaties that they cut short their long stories and
their reading of every single inscription, whatever its interest.
The appearance and artistic merit of the statues did not so much
attract the notice of the visitor, who had no doubt seen many fine
things of the sort elsewhere. But he admired the color of the
bronze, which was not like dirt nor like verdigris, but shone with a
dark blue dye, so as to contribute considerably to the effect of the
statues of the admirals (for there he had begun his tour), standing
as they did, sea-like in color, and truly men of the ocean deep. Was
there, he asked, some special mode of alloying and preparing the
bronze used by the ancient artificers, like the tempering of swords,
on the loss of which skill, bronze was exempted from the uses of
war? For we know," he continued, "that Corinthian bronze
acquired its beauty of color not through any art, but through
accident, when a fire consumed a house containing a little gold and
silver and a great quantity of bronze; all which being mixed and
melted together; and the whole thing took its name from bronze, the
preponderating metal."
Theon
broke in: "We have heard a different story, with a bit of
mischief in it. A Corinthian bronze-worker found a chest containing
a hoard of gold. Fearing detection, he chipped it off little by
little, quietly mixing the bits with bronze; the result was a
marvellous blend, which he sold at a high price, as people were
delighted with its color and beauty. However, the one story is as
mythical as the other; what we may suppose is that some method was
known of mixing and preparing, much as now they alloy gold with
silver, producing a peculiar and rare, and to my mind a sickly and
pallid effect, a perversion with no beauty in it."
III. Diog. "What then has been the cause,
do you think, of the color of these bronzes?"
Theon
"Here is a case in which, of the first and primal elements of
Nature — namely, Fire, Earth, Air Water — none comes
near to, or has to do with, bronze, except only air: clearly then,
air is the agent; from its constant presence and contact the bronze
gets its exceptional quality, or perhaps
τουτί
μὲν ᾔδη πρὶν Θέογνιν
γεγονέναι
Thus
much you knew before Theognis was, as the comic poet has it. But
what you want to learn, Diogenianus, is perhaps the nature of the
air, and the property in virtue of which repeated contact has thus
colored the bronze?" Diogenianus said that it was; "And I
too," continued Theon; "my young friend, let us continue
our quest together; and first, if you will agree, ask why olive oil
produces a more copious rust on the metal than other liquids. It
does not, of course, actually make the deposit, because it is pure
and uncontaminated when applied."
Diog.
"Certainly not; the real cause appears to me to be something
different; the oil is fine, pure, and transparent, so the rust when
it meets it is specially evident, whereas with other liquids rust
becomes invisible."
Theon
"Excellent, my young friend, that is prettily put. But consider
also, if you please, the cause given by Aristotle."
Diog.
"I do please. Aristotle says that rust, when it comes into
contact with other liquids, passes invisibly through and is
dispersed, because the particles are irregular and fine; whereas in
dense oil it is held together and permanently condensed. If, then,
we can come to some such hypothesis ourselves, we shall not be
entirely at a loss for a spell to charm away this difficulty."
IV. We encouraged him and agreed, and Theon went
on to say that the air
of
Delphi is thick and close of texture, with a tenseness caused by
reflection from the hills and their resistance, but is also fine and
biting, as seems to be proved by the facts of digestion of food. The
tenuity allows it to enter bronze, and to scrape up from it much
solid rust, which rust again is held up and compressed, because the
density of the air does not allow it a passage through; but the
deposit breaks out, because it is so copious, and takes on a bright
rich hue at the surface. This we applauded, but the visitor remarked
that either hypothesis was sufficient for the argument.
Diog.
"The fineness will be found to be in contradiction to the
density you speak of, but there is no necessity to assume it. The
bronze, as it ages, exhales or throws off rust by its own inherent
action; the density holds together and solidifies the rust, and
makes it apparent because of its quantity."
Theon
broke in, "What is to prevent the same thing being both fine
and dense, as silks or fine linen stuffs, of which Homer says
καιροσέων
δ᾽ ὀθονῶν ἀπολείβεται
ὑγρόν ἔλαιον,
And
from the close-spun weft the trickling oil will fall, [Od. 7.107: *]
where
he indicates the minute and delicate workmanship of the fabric by
the fact that the oil would not remain, but trickled or glided off,
the fineness at once and the density refusing it passage. And again,
the scraping up of the rust is not the only purpose served by the
tenuity of the air; it also makes the color itself pleasanter to the
eye and brighter, mingling lustre with the azure of the blue."
V. Here there was an interval of silence; the
guides were getting back
to
their routine speeches. A certain oracle given in verse was
mentioned — I think it was one about the reign of Aegon the
Argive — when Diogenianus observed that he had often been
surprised at the badness and common quality of the verse in which
oracles are delivered. yet the God is Choirmaster of the Muses, and
eloquent language is no less his function than beauty of ode for
tune, and he should have a voice far above that of Homer and Hesiod
in verse. And yet we have the greater part of the oracles a tissue
of bad taste, both in diction and in metre. Then Serapion the poet
of Athens, said
Serap.
"Then do we really believe that these verses are the God's, yet
venture to say that they fall behind Homer and Hesiod in beauty?
Shall we not rather take them as the best and most beautiful in
poetry, and revise our judgement of them, as prejudiced by
familiarity with a bad standard?"
At
this point Boethus the geometer — you know him, already well
on his way into the Epicurean camp — broke in.
Boeth.
"Have you ever heard the story of Pauson the painter?"
Serap.
"No, I have not."
Boeth.
"Well, it's certainly worth hearing. It seems that he had
contracted to paint a horse rolling, and not galloping. The buyer
was indignant; so Pauson laughed and turned the canvas upside down,
with the result that the lower parts became the upper, and there was
the horse rolling, not galloping. So it is, Bion tells us, with
certain syllogisms when converted. Thus some will tell us not that
the oracles are quite beautiful because they are the God's, but that
they are not the God's because they are bad! That point may be left
unsettled. But that the verses used in the oracles are bad poetry,"
he continued, "is made clear also in your judgement, my dear
Serapion, isn't it so? For you write poems which are severe and
philosophical in subject, but in force, grace, and diction are more
like the work of Homer and Hesiod than like the utterances of the
Pythia!"
VI. Serap. "Yes, we are sick, Boethus, sick
in ear, and sick in eye.
Luxury
and softness have accustomed us to think things beautiful as they
are more sweet, and call them so. Soon we shall actually be finding
fault with the Pythia because she does not speak with a more
thrilling voice than Glauce the singing-girl, or use costly
ointments, or put on purple robes to go down into the sanctuary, or
burn on her censer cassia, mastic, and frankincense, rather than her
own barley and bay leaves. Do you not see," he went on, "what
grace the songs of Sappho have, how they charm and soothe the
hearers, while the Sibyl 'with raving mouth,' as Heraclitus says,
'utters words with no laugher, no adornment, no perfumes,' yet makes
her voice carry to ten thousand years, because of the God. And
Pindar tells us that Cadmus heard from the God 'right music', not
sweet music, or delicate music, or twittering music. What is
passionless and pure gives no admission to pleasure; she was cast
out in this very place, together with pain; and the most of her has
dribbled away, it seems, into the ears of men."
VII. When Serapion had done, Theon smiled.
Theon
"Serapion has paid his usual tribute to his own proclivities,
making capital out of the turn which the conversation had taken
about pain and pleasure! But for us, Boethus, even if these verses
are inferior to Homer, let us never suppose that the God has
composed them; he only gives the initial impulse according to the
capacity of each prophetess. Why, suppose the answers had to be
written, not spoken. I do not think we should suppose that the
letters were made by God, and find fault with the calligraphy as
below royal standard. The strain is not the God's, but the woman's,
and so with the voice and the phrasing and the metre; he only
provides the fantasies, and puts light into her soul to illuminate
the future; for that is what inspiration is. To put it plainly,
there is no escaping you prophets of Epicurus — yes, you too,
Boethus, are drifting that way — you blame those old
prophetesses because they used bad poetry, and you also blame those
of today because they use no poetry, and speak the first words which
come, that they may not be assailed for delivering headless, hollow,
crop-tailed lines."
Diog.
"Do not jest, in Heaven's name, no! but help us to solve the
problem, which interests us all. There is no one who is not in
search of a rational account of the fact that the oracle has ceased
to use metre and poetry."
Theon
"But right now, my young friend, we seemed to be doing a shabby
turn by the guides, keeping them from their proper duties. Suffer
them first to do their office; afterwards we shall discuss in peace
whatever you wish."
VIII. Our round had now brought us in front of
the statue of Hiero the tyrant.
Most
of the stories the foreign visitor knew well, but he good-naturedly
lent his ear to them. But at last, when he heard that a certain
bronze pillar given by Hiero, which had been standing upright, fell
of its own accord on the very day when Hiero died at Syracuse, he
showed surprise. I set myself to remember similar instances, such as
the notable one of Hiero the Spartan, how before his death at
Leuctra the eyes fell out of his statue, and the gold stars
disappeared which Lysander had dedicated after the naval battle of
Aegospotami. And then the stone statue of Lysander himself broke out
into such a growth of weeds and grass that the face was hidden. At
the time of the Athenian disaster in Syracuse, the golden berries
kept dropping off from the palm trees, and crows chipped the shield
on the figure of Pallas. Again, the crown of the Cnidians, which
Philomelus, tyrant of Phocis, had given to Pharsalia the dancing
girl, caused her death, as she was playing near the temple of Apollo
in Metapontum, after she had removed from Greece into Italy: for
young men made a rush for the crown and in their struggle with one
another for the gold, they tore her limb from limb. Now Aristotle
used to say that Homer is the only poet who made "words which
stir, because of their energy." But I would say that there have
been votive offerings sent here which have movement in a high
degree, and help the God's foreknowledge to signify things; that
none of them is void or without feeling, but all are full of
Divinity.
Boeth.
"Very good! So it is not enough to shut the God into a mortal
body once every month. We will also knead him into every morsel of
stone and brass, to show that we do not choose to hold Fortune, or
Spontaneity, a sufficient author of such occurrences."
Phil.
"Then in your opinion," I said, "each of the
occurrences looks like Fortune or Spontaneity; and it seems probable
to you that the atoms glided forth, and were dispersed, and swerved,
not sooner and not later, but at the precise moment when each of the
dedicators was to fare worse or better. Epicurus helps you now by
what he said or wrote three hundred years ago; but the God, unless
he take and shut himself up in all things, and be mingled with all,
cannot, you think, initiate movement, or cause change of condition
in anything which is."
IX. Such was my answer to Boethus, and to the
same effect about the Sibyl
and
her utterances. For when we stood near the rock by the Council
Chamber, on which the first Sibyl is said to have been seated on her
arrival from Helicon, where she had been brought up by the Muses
(though others says that she came from the Maleans, and was the
daughter of Lamia the daughter of Poseidon), Serapion remembered the
verses in which she hymned herself; how she will never cease from
prophesying, even after death, but will herself go round in the
moon, being turned into what we call the "bright face",
while her breath is mingled with the air and borne about in rumours
and voices for ever and ever; and her body within the earth is
transformed, so that from it spring grass and weeds, the pasture of
sacred cattle, which have in their inward parts all the colours,
shapes and qualities by which men obtain forecasts of future things.
Here Boethus made his derision still more evident.
The
foreign visitor observed that, although these things have a mythical
appearance, yet the prophecies are attested by many uprootings and
removals of Greek cities, inroads of barbarian hordes, and the
overthrow of dynasties.
Diog.
"These still recent troubles at Cumae and Dicæarchia, 1
were they not long ago foretold in the songs of the Sibyl; so that
Time was only discharging his debts in the fires which have burst
out of mountains, the boiling seas, the masses of burning rocks
tossed aloft by the winds, the ruin of cities many and great, so
that if you visit them in broad daylight you cannot get a clear idea
of the site, the ground being covered with confused ruins? It is
hard to believe that such things have happened at all, let alone
that they were predicted long ago — unless with divine
assistance."
X. Boeth. "My good Sir; what does happen in
Nature which is not Time
paying
his debts? Of all the strange, unexpected things, by land or sea,
among cities and men, is there any which some one might not
foretell, and then, after it has happened, find himself right? Yet
this is hardly foretelling at all; it is telling, rather it is
tossing or scattering words into the infinite, with no principle in
them. They wander about, and sometimes Fortune meets them and falls
in with them; but it is all chance. It is one thing, I think, when
what has been foretold happens, and quite another when what will
happen is foretold. Any statement made about things then
non-existent contains intrinsic error; it has no right to await the
confirmation which comes from accident; nor is it any true proof of
having foretold with knowledge that the thing happened after it was
foretold; for Infinity will bring all things. No, the 'good
guesser', whom the proverb 2 has announced to be the best prophet,
is like a man who hunts on the tail of the future, by the help of
the plausible. These Sibyls and Bacises threw into the sea, that is,
into time, without having any real clue, nouns and verbs about
troubles and occurrences of every description. Some of these
prophecies came about, but they were lies; and what is now
pronounced is a lie like them, even if, later on, it should happen
to turn out true."
XI. When Boethus had finished, Serapion spoke.
Serap.
"The case is quite fairly put by Boethus against prophecies so
indefinitely worded as those he mentions, with no basis of
circumstance: 'If victory has been foretold to a general, he has
conquered; If the destruction of a city, it is overthrown.' But
where not only the thing which is to happen is stated, but also the
how, the when, after what event, with whose help, then it is not a
guess at things which will perhaps be, but a clear prediction of
things which will certainly be. Here are the lines with reference to
the lameness of Agesilaus: 3
Sure
though thy feet, proud Sparta, have a care,
A lame king's reign
may see thee trip — Beware!
Troubles unlooked for long
shall vex thy shore,
And rolling Time his tide of carnage pour.
"And
then again those about the island 4 which the sea threw up off Thera
and Therasia, and upon the war between Philip and the Romans:
When
Trojan race the victory shall win
From Punic foe, lo! wonders
shall begin;
Unearthly fires from out the sea shall
flash,
Whirlwinds toss stones aloft, and thunder crash,
An
isle unnamed,unknown, shall stand upright,
The weak shall beat
the stronger in the fight.
"What
happened within a short time — that the Romans mastered the
Carthaginians, and brought the war with Philip to a finish, that
Philip met the Aetolians and Romans in battle and was defeated, and
lastly, that an island rose out of the depths of the sea, with much
fire and boiling waves — could not all be set down to chance
and spontaneous occurrence. Why, the order emphasizes the
foreknowledge, and so does the time predicted to the Romans, some
five hundred years before the event, as that in which they were to
be at war with all the races at once, which meant the war with the
slaves after their revolt. In all this nothing is unascertainable,
the story is not left in dim light to be groped out with reference
to Fortune 'in Infinity', it gives many securities, and is open to
trial, it points the road which the destined event is to tread. For
I do not think that any one will say that the agreement with the
details as foretold was accidental. Otherwise, what prevents some
one else from saying that Epicurus did not write his Leading
Principles for our use, Boethus, but that the letters fell together
by chance and just spontaneously, and so the book was finished off?"
XII. While we were talking thus, we were moving
forward.
In
the store-house of the Corinthians we were looking at the golden
palm tree, the only remnant of their offerings, when the frogs and
water-snakes embossed round the roots caused much surprise to
Diogenianus, and for the matter of that, to us. For the palm tree is
not, like many others, a marshy or water-loving plant, nor have
frogs anything specially to do with the Corinthians. Thus they must
be a symbolical or canting device of that city, just as the men of
Selinus are said to have dedicated a golden plant of parsley
(σέλινον), and those of Tenedos
the axe, because of the crabs found round the place which they call
Asterium, the only ones, it appears, with the brand of an axe on the
shell. Yet the God himself is supposed to have a partiality for
crows and swans and wolves and hawks, for anything rather than
beasts like crabs. Serapion observed that the artist intended a
veiled hint at the sun drawing his aliment and origin from
exhalations out of moist plants, whether he had it from Homer,
ἠέλιος
δ’ ἀπόρουσε
λιπὼν περικαλλέα
λίμνην
Leaving the beauteous lake, the
great sun scaled the brazen sky
or
whether he had seen the sun painted by the Egyptians as a new-born
child seated on a lotus. I laughed:
Phil.
"Where have you got to again, my good Sir, thrusting the Stoa
in here, and quietly slipping into our discussion their
'Conflagrations' and 'Exhalations'? Thessalian women fetch the sun
and the moon down to us, but you are assuming that they are first
born and then watered out of earth and its waters. Plato dubbed man
a 'heavenly plant', 5 rearing himself up from a root on high, namely
his head; but you laugh down Empedocles when he tells us how the
sun, having been brought into being by reflection of heavenly light
around the earth,
ἀνταυγεῖν
πρὸς Ὄλυμπον
ἀταρβήτοισι
προσώποις
Beams
back upon Olympus undismayed!
Yet,
on your own showing, the sun is a creature or plant of the marshes,
naturalized by you in the country of frogs or water-snakes. However,
all this may be reserved for the Stoics and their tragedies; here we
have the incidental works of the artists, and let us examine them
incidentally. In many respects they are clever people, but they have
not in all cases avoided coldness and elaboration. Just as the man
who designed Apollo with the cock in his hand meant to suggest the
early morning hour when dawn is coming, so here the frogs may be
taken for a symbol of the spring season when the sun begins to have
power over the air and to break up winter; always supposing that,
with you, we are to reckon Apollo and the sun one God, not two."
Serap.
"What? do you not agree? do you hold the sun to be different
from Apollo?"
Phil.
"As different as the moon from the sun; only she does not hide
the sun often or from all the world, whereas the sun has made, we
may almost say, all the world ignorant of Apollo, diverting thought
by sensation, to the apparition from the real."
XIII. Next Serapion asked the guide the real
reason why they call
the
chamber not after Cypselus, the Dedicator, but after the
Corinthians. When they were silent, being, as I privately believe,
at a loss for reason, I laughed, and said "What can these men
possibly know or remember, utterly dazed as they must be by our high
celestial talk? Why, it was only just now that we heard them saying
that, after the tyranny was overthrown, the Corinthians wished to
inscribe the golden statue at Pisa, and also this treasure-house,
with the name of the city. So the Delphians granted it as a right,
and agreed; but the Corinthians passed a vote to exclude the
Eleians, who had shown jealousy of them, from the Isthmian meetings,
and from that time to this there has been no competitor from Elis.
The murder of the Molionidæ by Hercules near Cleonæ has
nothing to do with the exclusion of the Eleians, though some think
that it has. On the contrary, it would have been for them to exclude
the Corinthians if that had been the cause of the conflict."
Such were my remarks.
XIV. When we passed the chamber of the
Acanthians and Brasidas,
the
guide showed us a place where iron obelisks to Rhodopis the
courtesan once used to stand. Diogenianus showed annoyance.
Diog.
"So it was felt to be the duty of the same state both to find a
place for Rhodopis to deposit the tithes of her earnings and to put
Aesop, her fellow slave, to death!"
Serap.
"Bless you, friend; why so vexed at that? Carry your eyes
upwards, and behold among the generals and kings the golden
Mnesarete, which Crates called a standing trophy of the lewdness of
the Greeks."
Diog.
"Was it then about Phryne that Crates said that?"
Serap.
"Yes it was; her name was Mnesarete, but she took on that of
Phryne [toad] as a nickname because of her yellow skin. Many names,
it would seem, are concealed by nicknames. There was Polyxena,
mother of Alexander, afterwards said to have been called Myrtale and
Olympias and Stratonice. Then Eumetis of Rhodes is to this day
called by most people Cleobuline, after her father; and Herophile of
Erythræ, when she showed a prophetic gift, was addressed as
Sibylla. You will hear the grammarians telling us that Leda was
named Mnesinoe, and Orestes Achæus. But how do you propose,"
he continued, looking hard at Theon, "to get rid of the charge
as to Phryne?"
XV. Theon smiled quietly: "In this way: a
counter-charge against you
for
raking up the pettiest of the Greek misdoings. For as Socrates, 6
when entertained in the house of Callias, makes war upon the
ointment only, but looks on all the dancing and tumbling and kisses
and buffoonery, and holds his tongue, so you, it seems to me, want
to exclude from the temple a poor woman who made an unworthy use of
her charms; but when you see the God encompassed by first-fruits and
tithes of murder, war, and rapine, and his temple loaded with Greek
spoils and booty, you show no disgust; you have no pity for the
Greeks when you read on the beautiful offerings such deeply
disgraceful inscriptions as 'Brasidas and the Acanthians from the
Athenians', 'Athenians from Corinthians', 'Phocians from
Thessalians', 'Orneatans from Sicyonians', and 'Amphictyones from
Phocians'. So Praxiteles, it seems, was one person who offended
Crates by finding room for his mistress to stand here, whereas
Crates ought to have commended him for placing beside those golden
kings a golden courtesan, a strong rebuke to wealth as having
nothing wonderful or worshipful about it. It would be good if kings
and rulers were to set up in the God's house offerings to Justice,
to Temperance and Magnanimity, not to golden and delicate Abundance,
in which even the very foulest lives have their share."
XVI. "You forget to mention," said one
of our guides, "how Crœsus had
sculpted
a golden figure of his baker-woman and dedicated it here."
Theon
"Yes; but that was not to flout the temple with his luxury of
wealth, but for a good and righteous cause. The story 7 is that
Alyattes, father of Crœsus, married a second wife and brought
up a second family. This woman fomented a plot against Crœsus,
giving poison to the baker and telling her to knead a loaf with it
and serve it to Crœsus. The baker told Crœsus in secret
and set the loaf before the second wife's children. And so, when
Crœsus became king, he requited the baker-woman's service in
away which made the God a witness, and moreover did a good turn to
him. Hence, it is quite proper to honour and love any such offering
from cities as that from the Opuntians. When the Phocian tyrants had
melted up many of the gold and silver offerings and struck coined
money, which they distributed among the cities, the Opuntians
collected all the silver they could find, and sent a large jar to be
consecrated here to the God. I commend the Myrinæans also, and
the Apollonians, who sent hither sheaves of gold, and even more
highly the Eretrians and Magnesians, who endowed the God with
firstfruits of men, as being the giver of crops and also ancestral,
the god of their fathers; racial, the creator of men; and the friend
of man. Whereas I blame the Megarians, because they were almost
alone in setting up the God holding a lance; this was after the
battle in which they defeated and expelled the Athenians who were
holding their city, after the Persian wars. Later on, however, they
offered to him a golden plectrum, referring it, as it appears, to
Scythinus, who says of the lyre:
ἣν
ἁρμόζεται
Ζηνὸς
εὐειδὴς Ἀπόλλων,
πᾶσαν ἀρχῆν καὶ
τέλος
συλλαβλων:
ἔχει δὲ παμπὸν
πλῆκτρον ἡλίου
φάος
which the son of Zeus
Wears, the
comely God Apollo, gathering first and last in one,
And he holds
a golden harp-quill flashing as the very sun.
XVII. Serapion wanted to put in some further
remark on this, when the stranger said:
Dion.
"It is delightful to listen to such speeches as we have heard,
but I feel myself obliged to claim fulfillment of the original
promise, that we should hear the cause which has made the Pythia
cease to prophesy in epic or other verse. So, if it be your
pleasure, let us leave to another time the remainder of the sights,
sit down where we are, and hear about that. For it is this more than
anything else which militates against the credibility of the oracle;
for it must be one of two things: either the Pythia does not get
near the spot where the Divinity is, or the current is altogether
exhausted, and the power has failed."
Accordingly
we went round and seated ourselves on the southern plinth of the
temple, in view of the temple of Earth and the spring of water,
which made Boethus at once observe that the very place where the
problem was raised lent itself to the stranger's case. For here was
a temple of the Muses where the exhalation rises from the fountain;
from which fountain they drew the water used for the lustrations, as
Simonides has it:
ἔνθα
χερίβεσσιν
ἀπύνεται τὸ
Μουσᾶν
καλλικόμοων
ὑπένρθεν ἁγνὸν
ὕδωρ.
Whence is drawn for holy
washings
Water of the Muses bright.
And
again, in a rather more affected strain, the same poet addresses
Clio:
ἁγνᾶν
ἐπίσκοπον
χερνίβων,
Chaste guardian
of our lustrations
and
goes on to say
πολύλιστον
ἀρυόντεσσιν
ἀχρυσόπεπλον
...
εὐῶδες ἀμβροσίων
ἐκ μυχῶν
ἐρανὸν
ὕδωρ λαβεῖν.
Goddess
sought in many a vow
By no golden robe encumbered, hear thy
servants drawing now
Water, fragrant and delightful, from
ambrosial depths below.
So
Eudoxus was wrong in believing those who have made out that this was
called 'Water of Styx'. But they installed the Muses as guardians of
prophecy and wardens of the place, by the fountain and the temple of
Earth where the oracle used to be, some say, because the responses
were given in metre and in lyric strains. And some say further that
here the heroic metre was first heard:
συμφέρετε
πρερά τ᾽, οἰωνοις,
κηρόη τε, μέλισσαι.
Bring
in your feathers, ye birds; ye bees, bring wax at his bidding.
Later
Earth became inferior to the God and lost her august position. 8
XVIII. Serapion responded, "More
reasonable, that, Boethus, and more
in
tune with the Muses. For we ought not to fight against the God, nor
to remove, along with his prophecy, his Providence and Godhead also,
but rather to seek fresh solutions for apparent contradictions, and
never to surrender the reverent belief of our fathers."
Phil.
"Excellent Serapion! you are right. We are not abandoning
Philosophy, as cleared out of the way and done for, because once
upon a time philosophers put out their dogmas and theories in verse,
as Orpheus, Hesiod, Parmenides, Empedocles, Thales, whereas later on
they gave it up, and have now all given it up — except you! In
your hands Poetry is returning home to Philosophy, and clear and
noble is the strain in which she rallies our young people. Astronomy
again: she was not lowered in the hands of Aristarchus, Timocharis,
Aristyllus, Hipparchus, all writing in prose, whereas Eudoxus,
Hesiod, and Thales used metre, if we assume that Thales really wrote
the Astronomy attributed to him. And Pindar himself confesses that
he is quite at a loss about the neglect of verse in his own day, and
is astonished 9 .... It is neither out of the way nor absurd for us
to seek out the causes of such changes; but to dismiss any of the
arts and sciences altogether, because there is some alteration or
variation in their details or delivery, is totally unfair."
XIX. Theon "And yet those instances have
involved really great variations
and
novelties, whereas of the oracles given here we know many in prose
even in old days, and those on no trifling matters. When the
Lacedæmonians consulted the God after their war with the
Athenians, as Thucydides tells us, 10 he promised them victory and
mastery, and that "he himself will help them, invited or
uninvited". And again, that if they did not restore Pleistonax,
they should plough with a silver share. 11 When the Athenians
consulted the God about their expedition in Sicily, he directed them
to bring the priestess of Erythræ to Athens; now the woman's
name was 'Quiet'. When Deinomenes of Sicily inquired about his sons,
the answer was that all three should reign as tyrants. 'And the
worse for them,' rejoined Deinomenes. 'That too,' added the God, and
added it to the response. You know that Gelo had the dropsy and
Hiero the stone, while they reigned; Thrasybulus, the third son, was
involved in revolutions and wars and soon lost his throne. Then
Procles, tyrant of Epidaurus, after putting many others to death in
cruel and unlawful ways, at last killed Timarchus, who had come to
him from Athens with money, after receiving him with hospitality and
kindness; he thrust his body into a basket and threw it into the
sea. This he did by the hands of Cleander of Aegina, and no one else
knew about it. Afterwards, when he was in sore trouble, he sent his
brother Cleotimus to consult the oracle secretly about his own
flight and retirement to another land. The God answered that he
granted exile to Procles, and retirement either to the place where
he had ordered his Aeginetan friend to lodge the basket, or to where
the stag sheds his horn. The tyrant understood the God to bid him
fling himself into the sea, or to buy himself underground (for the
stag buries his horn deep out of sight when it falls off). He waited
a short time, but when his affairs became desperate he sought exile.
But the friends of Timarchus caught him and slew him, casting the
corpse into the sea.
"Now
comes the strongest instance: the statutes by which Lycurgus
regulated the Lacedæmonian constitution were given to him in
prose. So Alyrius, Herodotus, Philochorus, and Ister, the men who
most zealously set about collecting metrical prophecies, have
written down oracular responses which were not in metre; and
Theopompus, who was exceptionally interested in the oracle,
administered a vigorous rebuke to those who held that the Pythia did
not prophesy in metre in those days; yet, when he wanted to prove
the point, he found an exceedingly small number of such answers,
which shows that the others, even at that early time, were put forth
in prose.
XX. "Some oracles, however, still give
their answers in metre; and one
of
them has become famous. There is in Phocis a temple of Hercules
Woman-Hater, where the practice is for the consecrated priest not to
associate with a woman during his year of office. So they appoint
comparatively old men to the priesthood. However, not very long ago,
the office was accepted by a young man of good character, but
ambitious, and in love with a young woman. At first he restrained
himself and avoided her; but one day, when he was resting after wine
and dancing, she burst in and he yielded. Then, in his fear and
confusion, he fled to the oracle, and proceeded to ask the God about
his offence, and whether it admitted of excuse or expiation. He
received his reply:
ἅπαντα
ἀναγκαῖα συγχωρεῖ
θεὀς.
All needful business doth the
God allow.
All
the same, if it be granted that nothing is prophesied in our own
day, otherwise than in metre, the difficulty will be so much greater
about the ancients, who sometimes employed metre for the responses,
sometimes not. There is nothing strange, my young friend, in either
one or the other, so long as we hold sound, pure views about the
God, and do not suppose that it is himself who formerly used to
compose the verses, or who now speaks through the Pythia, giving
answers as it were through a mask.
XXI. "However, it is worth our while to
pursue this inquiry at greater length
another
time. For the present, let us remember our results, which are
briefly these: Body uses ;many instruments, soul uses body and
parts, soul has been brought into being as the instrument of God.
The excellence of an instrument is to imitate most closely the power
which uses it, with all its own natural power, and to reproduce the
effect of his essential thought, but to exhibit it, not pure and
passionless and free from error, as it was in the creative artist,
but with a large admixture of foreign element. For in itself it is
invisible to us, but appearing 'other' and through another medium it
is saturated with the nature of that medium. I pass over wax and
gold and silver and copper, and all other varieties of moulded
substance, which take on one common form of impressed likeness, but
add to the copy each its distinct specialty. I pass over the myriad
distortions of images and reflections from a single form in mirrors,
plane, hollow, or convex. For nothing seems better to reproduce the
type, no instrument more obediently to use its own nature, than the
moon. Yet taking from the sun his bright and fiery rays, she does
not transmit them so to us: mingled with herself they change colour
and also take on a different power; the heat wholly disappeared, and
the light fails from weakness before it reaches us. I think you know
the saying found in Heraclitus, that 'the sovereign whose seat is at
Delphi, speaks not, nor conceals, but signifies'. Take and add then
to what is here so well said, the conception that the God of this
place employs the Pythia for the hearing as the sun employs the moon
for the seeing. He shows and reveals his own thoughts, but shows
them mingled in their passage through a mortal body, and a soul
which cannot remain at rest or present itself to the exciting power
unexcited and inwardly composed, but which boils and surges and is
involved in the stirrings and troublesome passions from within. As
whirlpools do not keep a steady hold on bodies borne round and
round, and also downwards, since an outer force carries them round,
but they sink down of their own nature, so that there is a compound
spiral movement, of a confused and distorted kind, even so what we
call inspiration seems to be a mixture of two impulses, and the soul
is stirred by two forces, one of which it is a passive recipient,
one form its own nature. We see that inanimate and stationary bodies
cannot be used or forced contrary to their own nature, that a
cylinder cannot be moved as if it were a sphere or a cube, that a
lyre cannot be played like a flute or a trumpet like a harp, but
that the artistic use of a thing is no other than the natural use.
Is it possible, then, that the animate and self-moving, which has
both impulse and reason, can be treated in any other way than is
agreeable to the habit, force or natural condition which is already
existent within it? Can an unmusical mind be excited like a musical,
or an unlettered mind be moved by literature, a mind untrained in
reasoning, whether speculative or disciplinary, by logic? It is not
to be spoken of.
XXII. "Again, Homer is my witness: he
assumes 12 that nothing, so to speak,
is
brought about without a God; he does not, however, describe the God
as using all things for all ends, but according to the art or
faculty which each possesses. For do you not see, dear Diogenianus,
that Athena, when she wants to persuade the Achæans, calls in
Odysseus; 13 when to wreck th truce, she looks for Pandarus; 14 when
to rout the Trojans, she approaches Diomedes? 15 Why? because
Diomedes is a sturdy man and a fighter, Pandarus an archer and a
food, Odysseus a clever speaker and a sensible man. For Homer was
not of the same mind as Pindar, 16 if it was Pindar who wrote
Sail
on a crate, if God so choose 'twill swim.
He
knew that different faculties and natural gifts are appointed for
different ends; each is moved in its own way, even if the moving
force be one for all. As then the force cannot move that which walks
so as to make it fly, nor that which lisps to speak clearly, nor the
thin voice to be melodious — why, Battus himself was sent as
colonist of Libya to get his voice, because he lisped and had a thin
voice, but withal was a kingly, statesmanlike, prudent man —
even so, it is impossible for one who has no letters and knows no
verse to talk like a poet. And so she who now serves the God has
been born as respectably as any man here, and has lived as good and
orderly a life; but having been reared in the house of small farmer
folk, she brings nothing with her from art or from practice or
faculty whatsoever, as she goes down into the sanctuary. As Xenophon
thinks that the bride should step into her husband's home having
seen as little as may be, and heard as little, so she, ignorant and
untried in almost all things, and a true virgin in soul, is
associated with the God. Yet we, who think that the God, when he
'signifies', uses the cries of herons and wrens and ravens, and
never ask that they, as the messengers and heralds of the God,
should put things into clear rational phrases, do nevertheless ask
that the Pythia should use a voice and style as though from the
Thymele, not unembellished and plain, but with metre and elevation,
and trills, and verbal metaphors, and a flute accompaniment!
XXIII. "What shall we say then about her
older predecessors? Not one thing,
I
think, but several. In the first place, as has been already said,
they, too, for the most part, used to give the responses in prose.
In the second place, those times produced temperaments and natural
conditions which offered an easy and convenient channel for the
stream of poetry, to which were at once superadded, in one and
another, an eagerness, an impulse, a preparation of soul, all
resulting in a readiness which needed but a slight initial movement
from without to give the imagination a turn. So it was that not only
were astronomers and philosophers drawn, as Philinus says, in their
several directions, but also, when men were mellow with wine and
sentiment, some undercurrent of pity or joy would come, and they
would glide into a song-like voice; drinking parties were filled
with amorous strains and songs, books with poems in writing. When
Euripides wrote 17:
ποιητῆν
ἄρα
Ἔρως διδάσκει,
κἂν ἄμουσος
ᾖ τὸ πρίν
Love can teach, he
makes
A poet of a stranger to the Muse.
he
did not mean that Love implants a faculty for poetry or music; the
faculty is there already, but Love stirs and warms what was latent
and idle. Or are we to say, Sir Stranger, that no one now loves,
that Love has gone by the heels, because there is no who, to quote
Pindar, 18
ῥίμφα
παιδείους
τοξεύει
μελιγάρυας
ὕμνους
Scatters with easy
grace
The vocal shafts of love and joy?
That
is absurd. Loves there are and many of them, and they master men;
but when they associate with souls which have no natural turn for
music, they drop the flute and the lyre, yet are vocal still and
fiery through and through, as much as of old. It is an unhallowed
thing to say, and an unfair, that the Academy was loveless, or the
choir of Socrates and Plato; yet, while we have their love dialogues
to read, they have left no poems. Why not declare at once that
Sappho was the only woman who ever loved, if you are to say that
Sibylla alone had the gift of prophecy, or Aristonica, and the
others who delivered themselves in verse? As Chæremon used to
say,
ὁ
μὲν γὰρ οἶνος
τοῖς τρόποις
κεράννυται
Wine
mingles with the moods of them that drink,
and
the prophetic inspiration, like that of love, uses the faculty which
is subjected to it, and stirs its recipients according to the nature
of each.
XXIV. "Not but that, if we look also into
the subject of the God and his
foreknowledge,
we shall see that the change has taken place for the better. For the
use of language is like exchange in coined money. Here also it is
familiarity which gives currency, the purchasing power varies with
the times. There was a day when metres, tunes, odes were the coins
of language in us; all History and Philosophy, in a word, every
feeling and action which called for a more solemn utterance, were
drawn to poetry and music. It is not only that now but few
understand, and they with effort, whereas then all the world were
listeners, and all felt pleasure in what was sung,
μηλοβόται
τ᾽ ἀρόται τ᾽
ὀρνιχολόχοι
τε
who fats his flock
Who ploughs the soil, who
snares the winged game,
as
Pindar 19 has it. More than that, there was an aptitude for poetry,
most men used the lyre and the ode to rebuke, to encourage, to frame
myths and proverbs; also hymns to the Gods, prayers, thanksgivings,
were composed in metre and song, as genius or practice enabled them
to do. And so it was with prophecy; the God did not grudge it
ornament and grace, or drive from hence into disgrace the honoured
Muse of the tripod; he rather led her on, awakening and welcoming
poetic natures; he gave them visions from himself, he lent his aid
to draw out pomp and eloquence as being fitting and admirable
things. Then there was a change in human life, affecting men both in
fortune and in genius. Expediency banished what was superfluous,
top-knots of gold were dropped, rich robes discarded; probably too
clustering curls were shorn off, and the buskin discontinued. It was
not a bad training, to set the beauty of frugality against that of
profusion, to account what was plain and simple, a better ornament
than the pompous and elaborate. So it was with language: it changed
with the times, and shared the general break-up. History got down
from its coach, and dropped metre. Truth was best sifted out from
Myth in prose; Philosophy welcomed clearness, and found it better to
instruct than to astonish, so she pursued her inquiry in plain
language. The God made the Pythia leave off calling her own fellow
townsmen 'fire-burners', the Spartans 'serpent-eaters', men
'mountaineers', rivers 'mountain-drainers'. He cleared the oracle of
epic verses, unusual words, circumlocutions, and vagueness, and so
prepared the way to converse with his consultants just as law
converse with states, as kings address subjects, as disciples hear
their masters speak, so framing language as to be intelligible and
convincing.
XXV. "For it should be clearly understood
that the God is, in the words of Sophocles,
σοφοῖς
μὲν αἰνικτῆρα
θεσφάτων ἀεί,
σκαιοῖς
δὲ φαῦλον κἀν
βραχεῖ διδάσκαλον
Unto
the wise a riddling prophet aye,
to silly souls a teacher plain
and brief.
The
same turn of things which brought clearness brought also a new
standard of belief; it shared the general change. Whereas of old
that which was not familiar or common, but, in plain words,
contorted and over-phrased, was ascribed by the many to an implied
Divinity, and received with awe and reverence; in later times men
were content to learn things clearly and easily with no pomp or
artifice; they began to find fault with the poetical setting of the
oracles, not only as a hindrance to the perception of truth, because
it mingled indistinctions and shadow with the meaning, but also
because by this time they were getting to mistrust metaphors,
riddles, and ambiguities, as so many holes or hiding-places provided
for him who should trip in his prophecy, that he might step into
them and secure his retreat. You might have heard it told by many,
how certain persons with a turn for poetry still sit about the place
of oracles, waiting to catch the utterances, and then weaving
verses, metres, rhythms, according to occasion, as a sort of
vehicle. As to your Onomacrituses, and Herodotuses, and Cinæthons,
and the censures which they brought upon the oracles, by importing
tragedy and pomp where they were out of place, I let the charge pass
and won't join in the attack on them. Most, however, of the
discredit which attached so copiously to poetry came from the gang
of soothsayers and scamps who strolled around the ceremonies of the
Great Mother and of Serapis, with their mummeries and tricks,
turning verses out of their own heads, or taking them at random from
handbooks, for servant boys and silly girls, and such as are best
attracted by metre and a poetic cast of words; from all which causes
poetry seemed to put herself at the service of cheats and jugglers
and lying prophets, and was lost to truth and to the tripod.
XXVI. "Thus I should not be surprised to
find that the old people
sometimes
required a certain ambiguity, circumlocution, indistinctness. For it
was not then a case of 'A' approaching the oracle with a question,
if you please, about the purchase of a slave, or 'B' about business;
powerful states, haughty kings and tyrants would consult the God on
public affairs, men whom it did not answer the officials of his
temple to vex and provoke by letting them hear what they did not
wish to hear. For the God does not obey Euripides, 20 who sets up as
a lawgiver with
Φοῖβον
ἀνθρώποις μόνον
χρῆν
θεσπιῳδεῖν
Phoebus,
none but he,
May give men prophecies.
He
uses mortal men as ministers and prophets, whom it is his duty to
make his care, and to protect, lest they perish at the hands of the
bad while serving him. He does not then choose to conceal the truth;
what he used to do was to give a twist to its manifestation, which,
like a beam of light, is refracted more than once in its passage,
and is parted into many rays as it becomes poetry, and so to remove
whatever in it was harsh and hard. Tyrants might thus be left in
ignorance, and enemies not forewarned. For them he threw a veil in
the innuendoes and ambiguities which hid the meaning from others,
but he did not elude the intelligence of the actual consultants who
gave their whole mind to the answers. Hence, now that things have
changed, it is sheer folly to criticize and find fault with the God
because he thinks right to give his aid no longer n the same manner
but in another.
XXVII. "Another thing is this: Language
receives no greater advantage
from
a poetical form than this, that a meaning which is wrapped and bound
in metre is more easily remembered and grasped. Now in those days
much memory was required. Many things used to be explained orally;
local indications, the times when things were to be done, rites of
Gods across the seas, secret burying-places of heroes, hard to be
discovered by those setting off for lands far from Greece. You know
about Chius and Cretinus, and Nesichus, and Phalanthus, and many
other leaders of expeditions, how many clues they needed to find the
proper place appointed to each for settlement, while some of them
missed the way, as did Battus. 21 He thought that he would be turned
out, not understanding what the place was to which he had been sent;
then he came a second time loudly complaining. Then the God
answered:
αἰ
τὺ ἐμεῦ Λιβύαν
μαλοτρόφον
οἶσθας ἄρειον,
μὴ
ἐλθὼν ἐλθόντος,
ἄγαν ἄγαμαι
σοφίην σευ
Thou
that hast never been there, if thou know'st Libya the
sheepland
Better than I that have been, then wonderful wise is
they wisdom.
And
thus he sent him out again.
Then
Lysander 22 entirely failed to make out the hill Orchalides,
otherwise called Alopecus, and the river Hoplites,
γῆς
τε δράκονθ᾽
ὑϊὸν δόλιον
κατόπισθεν
ἰόντα
Also the dragon, earthborn, in
craftiness coming behind thee.
and
was defeated in battle and slain in those very spots by Neochorus, a
man of Haliartus, who bore on his shield the device of a serpent.
There are many such answers given to the old people, all hard to
grasp and remember, which I need not give you at length, since you
know them.
XXVIII. "Our present settled condition, out
of which the questions now put
to
the God arise, I welcome and accept. There is great peace and
tranquility, war has been made to cease, there are no wanderings in
exile, no revolutions, no tyrannies, no other plagues or ills in
Greece asking for potent and extraordinary remedies. But when there
is nothing complicated or mysterious, or dangerous, only questions
on petty popular matters, like school themes, 'whether I should
marry', 'whether I should sail', 'whether I should lend', and the
most serious responses given to states concern harvests and
cattle-breeding and public health; in such circumstances, to clothe
the answers in metre, or to devise circumlocutions, to introduce
strange words on questions calling for a plain, concise answer, is
what an ambitions sophist might do, bedizening the oracle for his
glory. But the Pythia is a lady in herself, and when she descends
thither and is in the presence of the God, she cares for truth
rather than for glory, or for the praise or blame of men.
XXIX. "So perhaps ought we too to feel. As
it is, in a sort of agony of fear,
lest
the place should lose its reputation of three thousand years, and a
few persons should think lightly of it and cease to visit the
oracle, for all the world as if it were a sophist's school, we
apologize, and make up reasons and theories about things which we
neither know now ought to know. We smooth the critic down, and try
to persuade him, whereas we ought to bid him be gone —
αὐτῷ
γἀρ οἱ πρῶτον
ἀνιηρότερον
ἒσται
He shall first suffer in a loss
not light 23 —
if
that is the view which he takes of the God; for if we welcome and
admire what the Wise Men of old days have written up: 'Know Thyself'
and 'Nothing too much', not least because of the brevity which
includes in a small compass a close hammer-beaten sense, we cannot
blame the oracles because they mostly use concise, plain, direct
phrases. It is with sayings like those of the Wise Men as with
streams compressed into a narrow channel; there is no distinctness
or transparency to the eye of the mind, but if you look into what
has been written or said about them ;by those who have wished to
learn the full meaning of each, you will not easily find longer
treaties elsewhere. The language of the Pythia illustrates what
mathematicians mean by calling a straight line the shortest between
the same points; it makes no bending, or curve, or doubling or
ambiguity; it lies straight towards truth; it takes risks, its good
faith is open to examination, and it has never yet been found wrong;
it has filled the shrine with offerings from Barbarians and Greeks,
and has beautified it with noble buildings and Amphictyonic
fittings. Why, you see for yourselves many buildings added which
were not here formerly, many restored which were ruinous or
destroyed. As new trees spring up by the side of those in vigorous
bearing, so the Pylæa flourishes together with Delphi and is
fed upon the same meat; the plenty of the one causes the other to
take on shapeliness and figure and a beauty of temples, and halls of
meeting and fountains of water, such as it never had in the thousand
years before. Now those who dwell about Galaxius in Boeotia felt the
manifest presence of the God in the abundance and more than
abundance of milk:
προβάτων
γᾶρ ἐκ πάντων
κελάρυξεν,
ὡς
ἀπὸ κρηνᾶν φέρτατον
ὕδωρ,
θηλᾶν γάλα·
τοὶ δ᾽ ἐπίμπλεν
ἐσσύμενοι
πίθους·
ἀσκὸς
δ’ οὐδέ τις
ἀμφορεὺς ἐλίνυεν
δόμοις,
πέλλαι
γὰρ ξύλιναι πίθοι
τε πλῆσθεν
ἅπαντες·
From all the
kine and every flock,
Plenteous as water from the rock,
Came
welling, gurgling on its way
The milk that day.
Hot foot they
hied them to the task,
To fill the pail, to fill the cask;
No
pot or pan had holiday;
Wine-skin or flagon, none might
stay
Within, that day.
But
to us he gives tokens bright and stronger and more evident than
these, in having, after the days of drought, of desertion and
poverty, brought us plenty, splendour, and reputation. True, I am
well pleased with myself for anything which my own zeal or service
may have contributed to this result in support of Polycrates and
Petraeus, well pleased too with him who has been our leader in this
policy, to whose thought and planning most of the improvements are
due; but it is wholly impossible that so great, so vast a change
could have been effected in this short time by merely human care,
with no God present here or lending his Divinity to the place of the
oracle.
XXX. "But as in those days there were some
who found fault with the responses
for
obliquity and want of clearness, so now there are those who
criticize them as too simple, which is childishness indeed and rank
stupidity! For as children show more glee and satisfaction at the
sight of rainbows or haloes or comets than in that of the sun or of
the moon, so do these people regret the riddles, allegories, and
metaphors which are so many modes of refraction of prophetic art in
a mortal and fanciful medium. And if they do not fully inquire into
the cause of the change, they go away having passed judgement
against the God, rather than against ourselves or themselves, for
having a power of thought which is too feeble to attain to his
counsels."
NOTES
*
Note that the English translation of this passage at Perseus is
misnumbered; the translation of line 107 in fact occurs on the
previous page and not on the page that says it begins with l. 107.
1.
Alluding to the eruption of Vesuvius in 79. "Dicæarchia"
= Puteoli.
2.
Euripides; as quoted by Plutarch himself in "De defectu
oraculorum", μάντις δ᾽
ἄριστος ὅστις
εἰκάζει καλῶς
3.
Quoted also in Life of Agesilaus, c.3 (597c).
4.
Palæa Kaumene, a volcanic island ejected in 196 BC
5.
Tim. 90.
6.
Xen. Sympos. c.2.3.
7.
Herod. 1.51.
8.
This passage from the Loeb edition. The text is defective at this
point; Prickard reads "The God was in need, and dignity was
waived"; King "... [On its] becoming necessary to the god
... to cast away his gravity."
9.
The text is defective at this point, and we unfortunately do not
know the cause of Pindar's astonishment.
10.
Thucydides I, 118.
11.
Ibid. V, 16 (from which words have been supplied in the defective
text of Plutarch, which additionally reads "Pausanias" for
"Pleistonax"). "Silver share" turned out to mean
that their crops would be inadequate and they would have to buy
grain.
12.
Od. 2.372.
13.
Il. 2.169.
14.
Il. 4.86.
15.
Il. 5.1.
16.
The MSS. have "Pandarus". Plutarch probably did not
suppose Pindar was the author of the line. It is quoted by
Aristophanes, Peace 699, in connexion with the stinginess of
Sophocles or Simonides, and the scholiast quotes from Pindar a
censure of that vice in poets; so some confusion is possible.
17.
In the Stheneboea.
18.
Isthm. 2.3.
19.
Isthm. 1.69.
20.
Phoen. 958.
21.
Herod. 4.155; Pindar Pyth. 4.
22.
See Lysander 450B-C
23.
Od. 2.190.
Note
on the text: This text follows the translation of Prickard (1918)
with occasional departures where I felt his English was too quirky
or ugly or where it departs substantially from other translations I
felt to be more acceptable. (You may judge from what is left exactly
how quirky and ugly his translation is at times.) The text covers
pages 394d to 409e; page numbers are accessible via local links in
the html (for instance, "plutarchVerses.html#395f" will
take you [approximately] to the appropriate passage). Chapter
numbers I-XXX are similarly linked (e.g.,
"plutarchVerses.html#XXV"). The Greek, where supplied, is
mostly from the Loeb edition.
STUDIES OF THE DELPHIAN TREASURIES (1)
BCH_45.1
237934 Inscr_162 Catalogue of the theorodokoi of Delphi (230-210)
CID_4.11
303196 Inscr_37 Letter of Adeimantos to Demetrios (302)
CID_4.25
303210 Syll_418 The Amphictyons honour Sokrates and
Alexeinides (272-270)
CID_4.27
303212 Syll_419 The Amphictyons honour Eudoxos of Argos (270)
CID_4.28
303213 Syll_482 Delphi honours the hieromnemones (269/8)
CID_4.33
303218 Syll_483 Delphi honours the hieromnemones (c. 264/3)
CID_4.33
303218 Syll_484 A decree of the Aetolians concerning the
hieromnemones (264)
CID_4.35
303220 Syll_488 The Amphictyons honour Aristarchos of
Kamarina (c. 263/2)
CID_4.36
303221 Inscr_94.B The Amphictyons honour the hieromnemones during a
war (266)
CID_4.43
303228 Syll_498 The Amphictyons honour Achaiïon and
Antagoras (260/59)
CID_4.49
303234 Syll_431 The Amphictyons honour Menalkes of Athens
(255/4 or252/1)
CID_4.52
303237 Syll_436 The Amphictyons honour Hereas of Lamia (254/3
or250/49)
CID_4.54
303239 Syll_422 The Amphictyons honour Mentor of Naupaktos
(252/1 or 249)
CID_4.66
303251 Syll_499 The Amphictyons honour Antagoras (c. 233/2)
CID_4.85
303270 Syll_523 A decree of the Amphictyons concerning the
portico of Attalos (c. 220)
CID_4.101
303286 Syll_603 The Amphictyons honour Pixodaros of Mylasa
(193)
CID_4.106
303291 Syll_613 The Amphictyons honour Nikostratos of Larisa
(184/3)
CID_4.108
303294 Syll_636 Decree of the Amphictyons concerning sacred
lands (178)
CID_4.110
303296 Syll_668 Decree of Kytenion concerning votes in the
Amphictyonic Council (c. 161/0)
CID_4.127
303323 Austin_125G A decree of the Amphictyons concerning the
Athenian tetradrachm (c. 140-130)
FD_3.1.38
238618 Syll_516 Delphi confirms the rights of the descendants
of Dromeus (c. 222)
FD_3.1.47
238627 Syll_625 An equestrian statue of Philopoimen at Delphi
(183)
FD_3.1.48
238628 Syll_659 Delphi honours Nikon of Megalopolis (c.
165/4)
FD_3.1.49
238629 Syll_660 Delphi honours Thrason and Sokrates of
Aigeira (c. 161/0)
FD_3.1.54
238635 Syll_517 Delphi honours Alkidamas of Ephesos (315-280)
FD_3.1.68
238650 Syll_407 The Tyritai make a dedication at Delphi
(276/5)
FD_3.1.86
238670 Syll_477 Delphi honours Damagetos of Amphilochian
Argos (315-280)
FD_3.1.87
238672 Syll_405 The Amphictyons honour Neon of Argos (277)
FD_3.1.88
238673 Syll_406 The Amphictyons honour four men from Argos
(276/5)
FD_3.1.96
238681 Syll_309 Delphi honours Telemachos of Thespiai
(318-306)
FD_3.1.121
238710 Syll_478 Delphi honours Dynatos and Argeios of Ephesos
(315-280)
FD_3.1.146
238739 Syll_383 Delphi honours various Aetolians (c. 283 and
281)
FD_3.1.181
238775 Syll_378 Delphi honours Timon of Megara (c. 300)
FD_3.1.195
238791 Syll_440 Delphi honours Timomachos of Aigina (265/4)
FD_3.1.218
238823 Syll_653 Honours granted to Kassandros of Alexandria
Troas (c. 165)
FD_3.1.299
238936 OGIS_66 Delphi honours Sostratos of Knidos (c.
290-280)
FD_3.1.351
238992 Inscr_115 Decree of the Amphictyons concerning a festival at
Thebes (230-225)
FD_3.1.358
239005 Inscr_78 Delphi agrees to maintain a house for Theban
envoys (c. 219/8)
FD_3.1.359
239006 Syll_503 Delphi honours Hypatodoros of Thebes (c. 228)
FD_3.1.408
239063 Syll_308 Delphi honours Epiteles of Athens (323-312)
FD_3.1.429
239088 Syll_377 Delphi honours Neanthes and Polykles of Kyzikos (c.
300)
FD_3.1.432
239091 Austin_227G Delphi honours Philetairos and his family
(282-262)
FD_3.1.451
239112 Inscr_95 Delphi honours Satyros of Agrinion (200/199)
FD_3.1.453
239114 Syll_439 Delphi honours Pairisades, king of Bosporos (c.
170)
FD_3.1.513
239201 Syll_376 A statue of Philostratos of Kyzikos at Delphi
(c. 300)
FD_3.1.526
239215 Sherk_52G A statue of M. Minucius Rufus at Delphi (110-106)
FD_3.1.575
239275 Syll_511 Names of Aetolian women on a monument at
Delphi (270-230)
FD_3.2.18
239300 Syll_541 Delphi honours the citizens of Tetrapolis in
Attica (240)
FD_3.2.19
239301 Syll_541 Delphi honours the citizens of Tetrapolis in
Attica (240)
FD_3.2.20
239302 Syll_637 Delphi honours the citizens of Tetrapolis
(178)
FD_3.2.72
239361 Syll_395 Delphi honours Glaukon of Athens (c. 271/0)
FD_3.2.75
239364 Syll_448 Delphi honours Kleandros of Kolophon (c.
240-210)
FD_3.2.78
239367 Syll_450 Delphi honours Kleochares of Athens (c.
230-220)
FD_3.2.86
239375 Syll_539 The Amphictyons honour Eudamos of Athens
(204)
FD_3.2.89
239379 Syll_615 Delphi honours Apollodoros of Athens (c. 180)
FD_3.2.92
239383 Syll_654 Delphi honours (?) Hegesandros (c. 149-144)
FD_3.2.134.b
239429 Syll_564 The Amphictyons recognise Teos as inviolable (203/2)
FD_3.2.134.c
239429 Syll_565 Delphi recognises Teos as inviolable (203/2)
FD_3.2.134.d
239429 Syll_566 Delphi honours Pythagoras and Kleitos of Teos
(203/2)
FD_3.2.158
239455 Syll_451 Delphi honours Eratoxenos of Athens (c. 226)
FD_3.2.159
239456 Syll_403 The Delphians honour Kybernis of Athens (240-230)
FD_3.2.166
239464 Syll_541 Delphi honours the citizens of Tetrapolis in Attica
(240-210)
FD_3.2.205
239504 Syll_416 The Amphictyons honour Kephalion and Boïdiŏn
(273)
FD_3.2.207
239506 Syll_432 Delphi honours Nikodromos of Chalkis (c.
265/4)
FD_3.2.210
239509 Syll_414 Delphi honours Timokrates of Athens (274/3)
FD_3.3.40
239879 Syll_629 The Aetolians recognise the Nikephoria games,
instituted by Eumenes (182)
FD_3.3.121
239741 Syll_670 A statue of Attalos II at Delphi (shortly
before 160)
FD_3.3.128
239749 Syll_648 Delphi honours Satyros of Samos (c. 194)
FD_3.3.145
239769 Syll_532.B Chaleion honours Aristodama of Smyrna (c. 218/7)
FD_3.3.149
239774 Syll_514 A dedication by Lykos of Aetolia at Delphi (c.
225)
FD_3.3.157
239782 Syll_396 Delphi honours Hierokles of Syracuse (c.
271/0)
FD_3.3.167
239792 Syll_461 The Amphictyons honour Lykon, the Peripatetic
philosopher (249-239)
FD_3.3.184
239810 Syll_494 The Amphictyons honour Agathokles and Damon
(260/59)
FD_3.3.186
239814 Syll_418 The Amphictyons honour Sokrates and Alexeinides
(272-270)
FD_3.3.187
239815 Syll_418 The Amphictyons honour Sokrates and
Alexeinides (272-270)
FD_3.3.191
239819 Syll_423 The Delphians honour Kyllon of Elis (252/1
or249/8)
FD_3.3.194
239822 Syll_446 Delphi honours Abaiokritos of Thebes (c.
258/7)
FD_3.3.203
239831 Syll_417 The Amphictyons honour Satyros, Teisandros and
Phainion (272)
FD_3.3.214
239842 Syll_443 Chios honours the Aetolians (c. 247/6)
FD_3.3.215
239845 Syll_402 A Chian decree about the Soteria games, found
at Delphi (249/8)
FD_3.3.217
239851 Syll_447 Delphi honours Amphiklos of Chios (c. 242/1)
FD_3.3.218
239852 Syll_506 The Amphictyons honour Timokrates of Chios (c.
237/6)
FD_3.3.218
239852 Syll_507 The Aetolians grant privileges to the Dionysiac
Artists (c. 237/6)
FD_3.3.219
239853 Syll_508 The Delphians honour Timokrates of Chios (c.
237/6)
FD_3.3.220
239855 Syll_545 The Amphictyons honour Leochides of Chios
(206/5)
FD_3.3.221
239856 Syll_553 Delphi honours Polyarchides of Chios (207/6)
FD_3.3.224
239860 Syll_579 Delphi honours Hermokles of Chios (end of 3rd
century)
FD_3.3.230
239868 Syll_628 A statue of king Eumenes, dedicated by the
Aetolians at Delphi (182)
FD_3.3.238
239876 Syll_671 Delphi holds a festival in honour of Eumenes II
(160/59)
FD_3.3.239
239877 Syll_671 Delphi holds a festival in honour of Eumenes
II (160/59)
FD_3.3.241
239880 OGIS_305.A Delphi recognises games at Sardis, for king
Eumenes (c. 166)
FD_3.3.242
239881 OGIS_305.B Delphi recognises games at Sardis, for king
Eumenes (c. 166)
FD_3.3.261
239904 Syll_630 The Amphictyons honour Eumenes II (182)
FD_3.3.378
240033 Syll_441 A dedication by the Rhodians at Delphi (304)
FD_3.3.383
240040 Syll_614 Delphi honours arbitrators sent by Rhodes (c.
180/79)
FD_3.4.7
240110 Syll_325 Delphi honours Nikodemos of Messenia (c.
308)
FD_3.4.21
240127 Syll_555 Delphi honours the Messenians (c. 209/8)
FD_3.4.22
240128 Syll_555 Delphi honours the Messenians (c. 209/8)
FD_3.4.23
240129 Syll_556 Delphi honours the Messenians (c. 209/8)
FD_3.4.24
240130 Syll_556 Delphi honours the Messenians (c. 209/8)
FD_3.4.37
240145 Sherk_55G Piracy Law (101/0) | Delphi
FD_3.4.75
240193 Syll_643 Letter to the Amphictyons concerning Perseus
(171/0)
FD_3.4.76
240195 Syll_632 A statue of king Prousias, dedicated by the
Aetolians at Delphi (c. 182)
FD_3.4.125
240251 Syll_509 List of victors at the Delphian Soteria (c.
225)
FD_3.4.130
240261 Syll_513 A dedication by Aristaineta of Aetolia at
Delphi (c. 225)
FD_3.4.131
240262 Syll_513 A dedication by Aristaineta of Aetolia at
Delphi (c. 225)
FD_3.4.133
240265 Inscr_67 Lilaia honours the garrison sent by Attalos
(c. 208)
FD_3.4.153
240293 OGIS_228 Delphi recognises the inviolability of Smyrna
(c. 242)
FD_3.4.155
240296 Syll_470 The Delphians grant privileges to the people
of Smyrna (240-230)
FD_3.4.163
240306 OGIS_234 The Amphictyons recognise the inviolability of
Alabanda (201)
FD_3.4.175
240320 Syll_553a Delphi honours Philleas of Naupaktos (202/1)
FD_3.4.207
240368 Syll_397 A dedication by Kleomenes at Delphi. (350-300)
FD_3.4.218
240380 Syll_361 The Phocians honour Xanthippos (301)
FD_3.4.219
240385 Syll_361 The Phocians honour Xanthippos (301)
FD_3.4.220
240386 Syll_361 The Phocians honour Xanthippos (301)
FD_3.4.221
240389 Syll_361 The Phocians honour Xanthippos (301)
FD_3.4.235
240405 Syll_453 A dedication at Delphi by Nereis, daughter of
Pyrrhos II (c. 233)
FD_3.4.242
240412 Syll_602 Xenon dedicates a statue of his wife Pasichŏn
at Delphi (200-190)
FD_3.4.353
240552 Syll_612 Two letters of Sp. Postumius to Delphi, with a
decree of the senate (189)
FD_3.4.356
240558 Syll_489 List of contestants at the Delphian Soteria (c.
264/3)
FD_3.4.357
240560 Inscr_94.A Decree of the Amphictyons concerning the
Ptolemaieia (262/1)
FD_3.4.362
240568 Syll_538 The Amphictyons honour Philistos of Kos and
Philippos of Kalymna (204/3)
FD_3.4.367
240579 Syll_643 Letter to the Amphictyons concerning Perseus
(171/0)
FD_3.4.372
240588 Syll_550 Delphi recognises the inviolability of the temple
at Chalkedon (c. 213-203)
FD_3.4.387
240605 Syll_383 Delphi honours various Aetolians (c. 283 and 281)
FD_3.4.409
240637 Syll_379 Delphi honours Prepelaos of Macedonia (c. 300)
FD_3.4.414
240644 Syll_438 Delphi honours Kotys, king of the Thracians (266/5)
FD_3.4.418
240650 Syll_430 Delphi honours King Areus (255/4 or252/1)
FD_3.4.430
240672 Syll_653 Honours granted to Kassandros of Alexandria Troas
(165)
IG_9.1².181
43017 Syll_515 A dedication by Charixenos of Aetolia at Delphi (mid
3rd century)
IG_9.1².182
43018 Syll_512 A dedication by an Aetolian woman at Delphi
(270-230)
RPh_1943.62
AGL_22 Law against maltreatment of parents at Delphi
(c. 300)
SEG_27.123
242021 Syll_610.C A list of properties given to Delphi by Acilius
(190)
SGDI_2.1708
241218 Inscr_24.A Manumission of female slaves at Delphi: Meda (c.
160/59)
SGDI_2.1715
241225 Inscr_24.B Manumission of female slaves at Delphi: Zopyra (c.
161/0)
SGDI_2.1722
241232 Inscr_24.C Manumission of slaves at Delphi: Antigona (158/7)
SGDI_2.1747
241258 Inscr_24.D Manumission of slaves at Delphi: Phalakra (166/5)
SGDI_2.1798
241310 Inscr_24.E Manumission of slaves at Delphi: Damarchis (168/7)
SGDI_2.1803
241315 Inscr_24.F Manumission of slaves at Delphi: Hedyla (172)
SGDI_2.1826
241338 Inscr_24.G Manumission of slaves at Delphi: Euphrosyna (c.
161/0)
SGDI_2.1842
241354 Inscr_24.H Manumission of slaves at Delphi: Sosikrateia
(170-156)
SGDI_2.1854
241366 Austin_147.b Manumission records at Delphi: Maiphatas (167)
SGDI_2.1867
241379 Inscr_24.I Manumission of slaves at Delphi: Sosicha
(176)
SGDI_2.1899
241412 Inscr_22 Manumission of Damon by a doctor (155/4)
SGDI_2.2001
241514 Inscr_24.J Manumission of slaves at Delphi: Artemidora
(197)
SGDI_2.2070
241583 Mackil_61G Manumission record of Nikon of Megara
(189/8)
SGDI_2.2084
241597 Inscr_24.K Manumission of slaves at Delphi: Dorema
(184)
SGDI_2.2101
241614 Syll_631 Alkesippos dedicates money for a sacrifice
and public feast at Delphi (182)
SGDI_2.2123
241630 Inscr_24.L Manumission of slaves at Delphi: Eukleia
(194)
SGDI_2.2143
241651 Austin_147.a Manumission records at Delphi: Sosos (144)
SGDI_2.2596
241834 Syll_445 Delphi honours Kallikles of Athens (251/0
or247/6)
SGDI_2.2607
241842 Syll_481 Delphi honours foreign residents (c. 257/6)
SGDI_2.2677
241869 OGIS_241 Delphi honours Dikaiarchos of Laodikeia
(168/7)
Sylloge_404
241967 Syll_404 The Delphians honour the city of Alexandria
(276)
Sylloge_411
241970 Syll_411 A dedication by Eretria at Delphi, in honour
of Neoptolemos (274-267)
Sylloge_415
241973 Syll_415 Delphi honours Eugeiton of Tanagra (274/3)
Sylloge_424
241976 Syll_424 List of contestants at the Delphian Soteria
(256/5 or254/3)
Sylloge_425
241978 Syll_425 Public dedications at Delphi (c. 270)
Sylloge_437
241981 Syll_437 Delphi honours Philistion (240-230)
Sylloge_444
241982 Syll_444 The Amphictyons honour Kallikles of Athens (c.
247-240)
Sylloge_452
241987 Syll_452 Delphi honours Nikandros of Kolophon (254/3
or250/49)
Sylloge_458
241988 Syll_458 A dedication by Aristomachos of Sikyon, at
Delphi (250)
Sylloge_460
Syll_460 Delphi grants privileges to the Dionysiac Artists (c.
300-280)
Sylloge_481A
241991 Syll_481 Delphi honours foreign residents (c. 257/6)
Sylloge_534
241999 Syll_534 Delphi honours Pantaleon and Aristarchos (c.
205/4)
Sylloge_534B
242000 Syll_534 Delphi honours Pantaleon and Aristarchos (c. 205/4)
Sylloge_548
242004 Syll_548 Delphi honours the people of Sardis (c. 213/2)
Sylloge_549
242006 Syll_549 Delphi honours Matrophanes of Sardis (c.
213/2)
Sylloge_585
242007 Syll_585 List of proxenoi of Delphi (197-175)
Sylloge_598.B
242009 Syll_598 The Amphictyons honour Sosikles of Magnesia (194)
Sylloge_604
242013 Syll_604 Delphi honours the city of Chersonnesos (192)
Sylloge_607
242015 Syll_607 A statue of Acilius at Delphi (191/0)
Sylloge_608
242016 Syll_608 Delphi honours Dionysios of Elea (c. 178/7)
Sylloge_609
242018 Syll_609 A letter of Acilius to the city of Delphi
(190)
Sylloge_610
242020 Syll_610 A list of properties given to Delphi by
Acilius (190)
Sylloge_611
242022 Syll_611 Letter of C. Livius Salinator to Delphi
(189/8)
Sylloge_616
242024 Syll_616 Delphi honours Flamininus (c. 189/8)
Sylloge_621
242025 Syll_621 A statue of Pantaleon of Aetolia at Delphi
(186-172)
Sylloge_622
242026 Syll_622 Aetolian decree concerning Epikles of Axos (c.
185-175)
Sylloge_672
242032 Syll_672 Decree of Delphi, concerning a foundation
provided by Attalos II (160/59)
http://www.attalus.org/docs/inscriptions2.html#region3a
August
14, 1854 SOME ART TREASURES FROM THE GLASS PALACE OF SYDENHAM.
The
glass palace at Sydenham, whose external appearance we have
previously discussed, also contains many works of art within its
interior that are well worth seeing. Entering through the door of
the great transept, the eye is immediately drawn to the famous works
of sculpture that adorn this part of the palace. At the entrance,
one encounters a copy of the Greek monument known as the Lantern of
Demosthenes or Monument of Lysicrates. It is the only one of its
kind to have escaped general destruction. Nearby are the well-known
groups of horses from Monte Cavallo, which can be seen in Rome on
the Quirinal Hill and are attributed to Phidias and Praxiteles,
without any other evidence than the fact that their names are
inscribed on the marble. There is also the famous Farnese Tower,
found in the baths of Caracalla in Rome and now displayed in the
Naples Museum. Pliny attributes this group to Apollonius of Rhodes.
Directly
opposite, in the other half of the transsept, to make room for the
Quirinal groups, other statues have been placed, such as: Castor and
Pollux, on horseback, by San Giorgio of Milan, whose originals are
made of bronze. In the center is the equestrian statue of Coleoni,
by André Verrocchio, the original of which, also in bronze,
is in Venice and is considered one of the most beautiful works of
the Renaissance style. But after this general glance at the
transsept, one must return to the most interesting part of the
palace, namely the halls of the fine arts, which are decorated in
the style of the various periods to which they belong. The Egyptian
halls deserve first mention. Here one cannot say: Ab Jove
principium, for Jupiter resembles the youngest of the family among
these gods and kings to whom the ancient Egyptian temples are
dedicated. Here one finds oneself before the oldest sculpture in the
world, and what must be especially astonishing is that Egyptian art,
the oldest and father of all others, reached a height in one leap
that has remained unchanged in later years; the two first monuments
of the world, the pyramids, are still the largest.
Egyptian
art, the oldest known, has also left behind the most remains. The
Egyptians built for immortality, and in this they certainly
succeeded. By following the precepts that bound art within them,
they combined the highest comprehension with an exceptionally
beautiful execution. They not only created everything that came
after them, but even surpassed it. In all other nations, art passes
through the same phases; from its birth, it rapidly ascends to a
high level of perfection, only to then slowly descend again. But in
Egypt this is by no means the case. The further back one goes in
time, the more perfect the art; its birth and culmination are
unknown. In the most perfect temples discovered, one finds stones
set into the walls with hieroglyphs on the inside, which are finer
and more beautiful in execution than modern art can achieve.
Egyptian sculpture was regulated by the religious laws of this
exceptional people and has remained unwavering in its general forms
for several centuries. The Egyptian section of the building is
reached via an avenue formed by eight large sleeping lions, modeled
after those in the British Museum. The facade, which faces the nave,
is a portico from the Ptolemaic period; on the frieze is a
hieroglyphic inscription honoring Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
It reads: "In the seventeenth year of the reign of Her Majesty,
Mistress of the Waves, Daughter of Kings—Victoria, Most
Illustrious Queen—the directors, architects, painters, and
sculptors have created this palace and these gardens for the
instruction of the men and women of all lands, of all nations."
Most of the temples and colonnades in this part of the palace are
not replicas of existing monuments; they are a collection of
different architectural orders, borrowed from various sources, and
assembled arbitrarily, though good taste has not been lost sight of.
Copies of Egyptian monuments were, of course, out of the question;
the temple of the palace of Karnac alone was larger than the entire
glass palace! All the monuments in this museum are therefore merely
models on a very reduced scale.
This
is how the first column-shaped structure was constructed.
A
model of the Ptolemaic architectural order, approximately three
hundred years before Christ, when Greek influence had already
introduced a certain looseness of style into the massive and, so to
speak, priestly architectural order from the times of Sesostris and
the Pharaohs. The color is based on that of the ruins. Upon entering
the first hall, one sees paintings of battles and processions on the
walls, taken from a temple of Ramses, located near Thebes. The
second of the facades here belongs to this same temple, the
Memnonium; it consists of eight columns, each with a colossal statue
of King Rhamses. These statues originally measured thirty feet in
height.
It
is this facade that served as a transition to the famous colonnade
of Karnac. It is especially in the case of this gigantic monument
that the system adopted by English artists is given ample
opportunity for criticism. Egyptian architecture and sculpture are
so astonishingly colossal in scale that life-size models can only
give a false impression of the whole. Reproducing them on a small
scale, which in itself would not resemble the real thing, can give a
more faithful idea of the actual monument than a static image. The
colonnade of Karnac in the glass palace, however carefully executed,
can therefore offer no idea of the original.
This
famous temple, the creation of Rhamses II, the most powerful of the
Egyptian kings, who lived around 1170 BC, was connected to the
almost equally famous temple of Luxor by an avenue of sphinxes over
2,000 cubits long. A hall has survived, measuring over 1,200 feet
long and 360 feet wide. Another avenue led to a portal 360 feet long
and 148 feet high, with a large gate 64 feet wide, leading to a hall
measuring 58,000 square feet. In this hall, with folded arms, stood
statues with shoulders 25 feet wide, whose faces measured 7 feet,
their noses 21 feet, their beards 51 feet, and their headdresses 14
feet long. These statues were 72 feet high; they could be seen from
a distance of 12 miles. In this hall of columns, restored in the
glass palace, were 134 columns, 12 of which were 66 feet high and 12
feet in diameter in the center, while the others were 42 feet high
and 9 feet in diameter.
The
ambition of the Egyptian kings, therefore, seems to have consisted
solely in building immortal tombs; For this purpose, they piled one
temple and one mountain on top of the other. The two large pyramids
are tombs. The smaller one covers an area at its base equal to 11
acres of land, and its four corners converge at a height of 460
feet. The other is 40 feet higher and 40 feet wider at its base. At
its foot sits the great sphinx, a lion with a human head; it is 80
feet long. This pyramid is the largest monument, and the sphinx is
also the largest statue ever made.
Continuing
the road along this side, one first comes to the facade of the
ancient temple of Abu Simbel, carved into the rock around 1565 BC.
This facade was 117 feet long and 100 feet high. The seated statues
represent Rhamses the Great, his mother, his wife, and his daughter;
they can be found in their original size of 65 feet in another part
of the palace. The model of this memorial was taken at one-tenth the
size of the original.
Turning
left, one finds the portico of the temple of Philae, situated on an
island in the middle of Egypt's sacred river, the Nile. Then,
passing through the Hall of Amenophis, one arrives at the tomb of
Beni-Hassan, the oldest of the memorials, a model of which was
provided in the Glass Palace; it dates from 1660 BC. The paintings
inside depict the domestic life of the Egyptians. The Egyptian
Museum also houses copies of the Rosetta Bull (Stone!), which was
discovered by a French engineer during the expedition to Egypt. On
this basalt stone, dating from the year 196 before the birth of
Jesus Christ, was an inscription in hieroglyphs, or sacred letters,
in common Egyptian and Greek. It is thanks to this Egyptian
translation that the key to the language of hieroglyphs has been
discovered.
Of
all these curiosities of the most remote antiquity, it can rightly
be said that the ancient architects were truly great men. They could
not borrow anything from anyone. Their own genius alone was their
source of inspiration, and this led them to produce works as grand
as any they have ever seen. They discovered many rules that...
They
were considered essential elements of art and were far superior to
useless ornamentation. They fully grasped the importance of their
calling. The last Egyptian temples, copied from their models, have
given the world an idea of the greatness of their architecture.
Chronologically,
after Egypt comes Greece. Entering the nave of the building, one
finds oneself before a Doric-style facade, followed by a temple of
Jupiter at Nemea, 400 BC. The frieze is decorated with inscriptions
and the names of the principal cities of Greece. Groups of
wrestlers, Silenus and Bacchus, Bacchus and the Fauns are placed in
front of the facade. The central door leads to the great hall; this
is square, surrounded by porticos, and represents the agora of the
Greeks, or the forum of the Romans—that is, a place intended
for public meetings. It is of Doric architecture, and the names
placed on the frieze are those of poets, philosophers, and artists
of Greece. The paintings that will adorn the walls (and which are
still in progress) are illustrations from Greek theology; they are
being executed under the supervision and according to the sketches
of G. Scharf and depict: 1st. Olympus; 2nd. the capture of Troy;
3rd. the realm of the underworld; 4th. the era of Pericles and
Phidias.
In
this room, one finds the masterpieces of ancient sculpture, familiar
to everyone. In the center, like the finest stone of this diadem,
stands the most beautiful woman in the world, the Venus de Milo,
discovered by Mr. Marcellus in 1820 and which now adorns the Louvre
in Paris. This is the Venus Victrix. Next to her stands the Venus of
Capua, almost identical to the former, the original of which can be
found in the Museum of Naples. Furthermore, there is the wrestler
from the Louvre in Paris. the Juno Farnese from Naples, the Naiad
from the Louvre, the Faunus from the Vatican; the Faunus from the
Capitol, the Minerva Farnese from Naples, the Medicea from Rome, the
Sleeping Ariadne, which is found in one of the Vatican halls, and
the Laocoon discovered in the ruins of Titus's palace in 1506 and
considered a masterpiece of ancient art.
Continuing
along this path, one arrives at a covered gallery, where a different
architectural style is given a place. The square pilasters
supporting this gallery were found at Eleusis. The ceiling, executed
with equal talent and taste, is the work of Owen Jones, who believes
that the Greeks painted their monuments and monumental sculpture;
and in the copies of the friezes and reliefs of the Parthenon, he
had some sections painted to serve as a benchmark for comparison.
The
principal adornment of the bas-reliefs is a replica of one of the
facades of the Parthenon, the most beautiful of all temples in the
world. It is painted at approximately one-quarter of the usual size,
and this is the largest representation of it ever made. It is here
that one can appreciate the value of the earlier observation
regarding the reproduction of Egyptian monuments on a reduced scale.
For Greek monuments, copies of normal size can give a faithful idea
of the original, because the beauty of Greek art lies less in size
than in the harmony of proportions. At its highest point, the
Parthenon was only 64 feet high; it was 228 feet long and 100 feet
wide; the columns were 34 feet high and 6 feet in diameter. This
famous temple, as is well known, was dedicated to Minerva, the
patron goddess of Athena. In the cella, in the center of the temple,
stood the statue of this goddess, in gold and ivory, a masterpiece
by Phidias. It was under the supervision of this artist that the
work on the temple, built by Ictinus and Callicrates, took place.
The Parthenon dates from the most beautiful age of art, that of
Pericles, 444 years before Jesus Christ.
The
first drawings of the Parthenon that exist date from 1674 and were
made by a French artist, Jacobus Carrey, while the Marquis de
Nointel was in Athens. These drawings are still in the Paris
collection and remain the most accurate ones in existence today, as
since then the Parthenon has suffered new and numerous destructions,
both by the ravages of time and by human hands. When Carrey made his
sketches, the Temple of Minerva served as a Christian church, and
the statues had been removed from one of the pediments to replace
them with a peddler. A few years later, in 1687, the Venetians
shelled Athens, and the Parthenon, which had been converted into a
powder magazine, was severely damaged by an explosion that destroyed
the central section of the building and shattered several statues.
It is known that the Turks used the columns of the Parthenon to make
plaster, that travelers took pieces for their collections, and that
Lord Elgin finally brought back the finest remains of Phidias's work
in England. These incomparably beautiful remains, which now adorn
the British Museum in London, have been returned to the Glass
Palace. The frieze, depicting the Feasts of Minerva, extends the
entire length of the gallery; as we have mentioned, a section is
painted; another is white on a blue ground; yet another is
completely white, so that comparisons can be made. There you will
also find the famous statues brought back by Lord Elgin, which have
preserved his name. It is believed that the Parthenon contained 44
statues; of these, 13 fragments are now left in London and 2 in
Athens. This is all that remains of these beautiful works. The Glass
Palace also possesses a copy of Theseus, considered the most perfect
of the known fragments; furthermore, copies of Ceres and Proserpina,
a head of the horse of the chariot of the night, and of the Fates.
On the opposite side of the Parthenon is the famous group of Niobe,
found in 1580 at the gate of St. John in Rome and now in Florence.
In the halls of the Glass Palace dedicated to Greek works of art,
there are more than 200 statues, the description of which would
naturally take us too far afield, so we have limited ourselves to
the most important.
The
Roman halls differ little from the Greek ones; there is no such
thing as Roman art. The conquerors of the world made the conquered
peoples work for them. Among the Romans, the first artists were the
Etrurians and then the Greeks.
It
is known that the Etrurians, now the Tuscans, were a people
particularly fond of art; but it was not only in this that they
excelled; they were also a very industrious people and already
engaged in extensive trade when Rome was still in its infancy. The
Romans produced large, primarily useful works, such as the
construction of roads and aqueducts. They also built great temples,
but the Etrurians sculpted statues and images of gods, whether in
earth or bronze. One of the oldest Etrurian fragments is the
she-wolf from the Capitol.
After
the defeat of Pyrrhus (275 BC) and the conquest of Sicily, the
Romans brought their victorious weapons to Greece, and Paulus
Emilius, the victor over Perseus, King of Macedonia, returned to
Rome in triumph with the spoils captured in Greece. He loaded no
fewer than 250 wagons with it (167 years before the birth of
Christ). Twenty years later, in 146, Mummius completed the conquest
of Greece; he abandoned everything to plunder and took with him a
great number of masterpieces, many of which, however, broke or were
severely damaged during transport. The destruction of the Romans
during their invasions and during their rule over the Greek
provinces is incalculable.
But
at the same time, a multitude of Greek artists settled in Rome, and
a new era of art dawned for them as well as for the Romans—an
era of wealth and elegance of production, but also of decline. The
simple and ideal beauty of pure Greek art gave way to something more
sensuous, which appealed less to the senses than to the passions.
Under the first Roman Emperors, people were content with imitating
Greek masterpieces; and this explains why they often produced
several copies of the same kind. To embellish his palace, Nero
commissioned five hundred statues from Delphi. Titus had his baths
built on the site where this palace stood, and it was there that
some famous pieces were later discovered, such as the Laocoon. The
Forum is owed to Trajan and bears his name; likewise, the column, a
depiction of which will also enrich the Glass Palace, is his. The
era of Hadrian was the most flourishing; during his reign, art seems
to have reached a high level of perfection. It was during the reign
of the Antonines that the engraved stones and cameos, which served
for many portraits, were produced.
In
the fourth century, when the seat of the Empire was transferred to
Constantinople, the arts, artists, and the collection of fine arts
followed the same path, followed by the masterpieces already brought
from Greece. But the arrival of Barbarian tribes, who sought only
gold, silver, and bronze, was a mortal blow to the finest
collections. Thus disappeared the works of Phidias, Polycletus, and
Lysippus, long before the fall of the Greek Empire.
Entering
the Roman halls through the nave, one finds oneself facing a facade
borrowed from the ground floor of the Coliseum in Rome. This is the
first time in the history of ancient architecture that one hears
mention of the arch style. The Greeks never used it. It was
therefore believed that its first use occurred under Roman rule;
however, recent discoveries made in Assyria have proven that the
arch dated back to a much earlier age and was widely used in
Nineveh, and that it was brought from there to Asia Minor, from
where the Etrurians introduced it to Italy. A model and relief of
the Coliseum, although not yet fully completed, will be placed in
the Roman halls of the glass palace. The large hall is entirely clad
and decorated with stones imitating the porphyry, malachite, and
rare marbles that the Romans used extensively in their palaces.
The
Venus of the Capitol, which can be found here, is preferred by many
masters to the Venus de Medici, as it is wrought in a purer and more
exalted style; also found here are the Venus Genitrix, the Venus of
the Sea, and the Venus of Arles, all from the Louvre. Around it, the
Venus Callipygos of Naples, the Bacchus of the Louvre. Arranged in
chronological order around the hall are the busts of Roman kings and
emperors. A relief of the Forum in Rome, one of the most interesting
for study, has also been placed here. The Capitoline Hill, the ruins
of the Temple of Concord, the Arch of Septimius Severus, the Column
of Phocas, the Temples of Antonius and Faustina, the Temple of
Peace, the Arch of Constantine, the Coliseum, and the Arch of Titus.
On
the other side of the main hall are several rooms, which have been
converted into Roman baths. These baths are furnished entirely in
accordance with the original. They are decorated with beautiful
statues; there is the Hall of Apollo and the Hall of Diana. Apollo
is the one seen on the Belvedere in the Vatican, which has given
rise to so many conjectures. Diana is the one from the Louvre and
the goddess of the hunt.
August
23, 1896 Archaeological Discoveries in Greece.
(Delphi.)
III.
While
excavations at Olympia have been halted for some time, or at least
are no longer being continued continuously, scholars of the "French
school" in Athens are still constantly at work at Delphi, where
they are also continually making more or less important discoveries,
including, very recently, that bearded bronze charioteer, one of the
most important metal works of art of antiquity, whose excavation has
been widely reported. The fact is that excavations at Delphi have
only been underway for a few years.
Before
excavation began, there was a Pelasgian wall, fragments of walls
from the sacred precincts of Delphi, the spring of Castalia,
fragments of statues and sculptures embedded, as had been done
elsewhere, in the walls of the miserable huts in the surrounding
area: this is all that remained of one of the most famous and
magnificent metropolises of the ancient world. Founded on a terrace
on the southern slope of Parnassus, in this land of Krisoa and
Phoki, on the blue Gulf of Corinth, protected on two sides by mighty
rock walls, Delphi had for centuries been the most magnificent
sanctuary of antiquity. Not only the Greeks, but also the Barbarians
had sent envoys to inquire of the oracle of the blind god of light.
And gradually, unprecedented treasures, magnificent works of art,
were gathered in its treasuries. Pausanias also holds great value
compared to Delphi: the Temple of Apollo alone, he said, contains
four thousand statues of gold, bronze, and ironwood; then countless
shields, tripods, animal images, votive offerings of all kinds,
gifts from kings, commonwealths, corporations, and private
individuals. But the time came when these treasures were carried
away. Nero brought 500 bronze statues from Delphi to Rome, the
sanctuary gradually lost its significance, the oracle was opposed by
the Church Fathers, and finally, in 390, it was Theodesius who
finally closed the door for good. The holy city subsequently fell
into ruin, caused by nature and malice, and soon, throughout the
Middle Ages, the shepherds of the village of Kastri, now built on
its remains, tended their sheep and goats, where the highest wisdom
had once spoken.
The
success the Germans had enjoyed with their excavation of Olympia
encouraged the French to attempt similar work at Delphi: in 1881,
the French Chamber donated 500,000 francs, and in October 1892, work
began, initially encountering strong resistance from the pastoral
population of Kastri. And, although not nearly as extensive as at
Olympia, the excavations at Delphi have yielded a greater harvest of
important artifacts: inscriptions, statues, bas-reliefs, foundations
of more than seven buildings, bronzes, vases, etc.
The
first major discovery was the Athenian treasury located on the
Sacred Way: a small building of Penthelic marble of Darian style,
whose walls were literally covered with inscriptions. Destroyed by
an earthquake, it had suffered relatively little damage. Pausanas
also helped explain the discovery here: the sanctuary of the
Athenians, erected in memory of Marathon, the spoils of the
Persians. If its walls already constitute a veritable historical
library, where an important "Hymn to Apollo" has also been
found, which explains so much about the music of the ancients,
perhaps even more important are the metopes of this small sanctuary.
Thirty of them, all damaged, depict the "Labors of Hercules and
Theseus." As sculptures, they are even more valuable than the
famous metopes of the Parthenon, unlawfully brought to England by
Lord Elgin.
But
not only are works from the heyday of Hellenic sculpture found;
important works of archaic art have also been discovered, statues of
Apollo, in that rigid, hard style reminiscent of the oldest wooden
sculptures.
Of
the famous treasury of Apollo, of which so many ancient writers
recount wonders, nothing more than insignificant fragments remained.
It had been systematically destroyed. They were more fortunate with
the treasury of the inhabitants of the island of Siphnos, reputed to
be the most beautiful and richest at Delphi. The excavations have
restored it in its entirety: a work of the 6th century BC, and of
admirable architectural execution. A frieze—horsemen,
chariots, quadrigas, battle scenes—runs around the four walls
of the small temple. It is a truly unique sculptural ensemble,
despite being a century older than the aforementioned Elgin marbles
of the Parthenon. A significant franton has also been recovered from
this sanctuary, important though it is, apparently by another
artist, of much less beautiful quality than the frieze. Traces of
the colors are still very clear in some of these; the background
always blue, the horses red, the armor green, the chariots red,
blue, and green.
Two
exedras, the stoa of the Athenians, a Greco-Roman tomb, houses, an
aqueduct, ruins that have not yet been explained—these are
some of the remains found at Delphi. But even before these, a few
sculptures deserve mention: a very large Sphinx, among others, a
gift from the inhabitants of Naxos. Among the most beautiful
sculptures found there are three dancing coriatids, surrounded by
leaves and flowers. And now, a good year ago, an Antinous was
unearthed, a worthy counterpart to the Olympian Hermes. A work of
Roman origin, apparently, but of purely Greek beauty.
Several
important bronzes were also found, including that male statue, which
was only recently returned to light a few weeks ago. Such is the
case with the excavations at Delphi, which are still ongoing and
have proven to be of the utmost importance for the history of Greek
art. Besides having yielded valuable clues regarding Greek music, it
is hoped that remnants will also be discovered that will reveal the
art of painting. To what extent this expectation will be confirmed
is difficult to say at this time, but what has already been
discovered is of the utmost importance and encourages further
exploration.
1 juli 1920
DELPHI, MONUMENTS OF THE THESSALIAN PRINCES
[p.
291] It is impossible to prescribe the limits of development for a
genius like Lysippus, of whose 1,500 famous bronze statues only a
fraction is preserved to-day, not in the originals, but in more or
less successful marble copies, That, in spite of all divergences,
there are common features connecting the Agias and the Apoxyomenos,
has rightly been emphasized by good judges in recent times. 1)
The
artistic career of Lysippus begins for our inquiries with the year
372 BC, when he executed the statue of a man who had won the
chariot-race at Olympia "both with full-grown horses and with
colts.” The base of the statue was found in the German
excavations, and shows characters of writing agreeing well with this
date. 2) The monument of Daochus, as shown above, was erected soon
after 340 BC; but the original Agias statue at Pharsalus is older,
and may well have been produced some years before, in the beginning
or middle of the forties.
There
is no reason to date it still earlier, for we must start with the
assumption that Lysippus was not taken up by the Thessalian nobles,
but that they only placed orders with him when his fame was assured
and his style well known.
Pliny
gives a far later date, 328 BC, as the culminating-point of his art,
probably the time when he executed his most famous portrait, that of
Alexander. Even after 320 BC, Lysippus is active, and executes a
great bronze group at Delphi, the lion-hunt of Alexander and
Craterus, which was ordered by Craterus, son-in-law of the
Macedonian Viceroy Antipater and one of Alexander's old companions
in arms, in memory of the fact that during the Asiatic expedition in
a hunt he felled a lion which threatened the life of the great king.
In gratitude for the escape of both, the group was dedicated to
Apollo at Delphi; but as Craterus died in 321 BC, it was his
newly-born son who erected the group in his father's name, exactly
as was the case with Hieron's group, erected at Olympia by his son,
Deinomene
Pliny
names this among the most famous works of Lysippus; Plutarch says it
had two authors, Lysippus and Leochares. 3)
The
base of the group has been discovered at Delphi in a chamber to
right of the staircase, which north of the temple leads up to the
theatre (fig. 150), and the metrical inscription reports that the
group was vowed by Craterus, friend of the great Alexander, but only
his son performed the vow and dedicated it in memory of the fight
with the lion which his father courageously carried through when he
followed King Alexander on his Asiatic expedition; he laid the lion
low on the borders of the Nomad Syrians.
In
consideration of the son's tender age, it was assumed that the group
was erected long after 320, about 300 BC, but against that are the
other dates of the two artists engaged, and there is nothing to
prevent us from thinking of the group as erected in the name of the
infant son. 1) Anyhow, it is a long life for an artist, of whose
outlines we thus catch glimpses, and the Apoxyomenos probably
belongs only to its latest period, the twenties of the fourth
century.
In
any case Lysippus, at the time when he executed the Agias, was
strongly influenced by the art of Scopas, and only in advanced years
seems to have experienced the artistic transformation of which the
Apoxyomenos bears witness. This is the importance of the Delphic
find, that it reveals to us how late this master "found his
nature” as Aristotle would say. 1) In this respect he reminds
us of a modern sculptor like Meunier, who only at the age of
fifty-five became the Meunier the world knows and admires. Homolle
conjectures that other figures from the Daochus monument are copies
of Lysippus' originals, and the latest found Agelaus figure (fig.
133) might point to that. But so long as most of the figures are
headless, all appreciation of them is out of the question, for at
this stage of his development Lysippus, like Scopas, showed more
individuality in characterizing heads than bodies. Twenty years
later, on the threshold of old age, he is a different man. A torso,
contemporary with and stylistically akin to the Apoxyomenos, we
should without difficulty recognize as his work. 2)
1
Amelung, in Helbig's Führer, 3rd ed., n. 23; Studniczka, Das
Bildnis Menanders, Leipzig, 1918, 20.
2
Pausanias, vi. 1,4.; Loewy, Inschriften griech. Bildhauer, 76.
3
Pliny, Nat. Hist., xxxiv. 64; Plutarch, Alexander, 40.
1
Perdrizet, Bull. de con. hell., xxii, 1898, 566.
1
Lysippus was also the author of the bronze group of the Sun-god on
his car founded by the Rhodians, the base inscription of which
Pomtow thought he had found in Delphi; Dittenberger, Sylloge, 441;
Pliny, Nat. Hist., xxxiv. 63. This is, however, incorrect; the
lettering is characteristic of the end of the third century, so a
century later than Lysippus; Bourguet, Bull. de corr. hell., xxxiv,
191 1, 458, and Revue arch., 1918, i. 220.
2
In my description of the Thessalians I have omitted to use the
judgment Theopompus passes on them {Athenaeus, xii. 527a): "They
play away their time with dancing women and flute-players, others
spend whole days in dice-playing, drinking, or other excesses, and
they take more care about filling their board with all manner of
meats than in leading an honourable life. But the Pharsalians are
the laziest and the most pitiful of them all." Further, he
describes how one can win the friendship of the Thessalians by
drinking matches with them and by joining in their debaucheries (op.
cit., vi. 260b). But Theopompus passes similar judgments on the
Etruscans, the people of Methymna and other Greek towns, and on
Philip of Macedon (Athenaeus, xii. 507, d, e; x. 442/ -44, a; iv.
i66/-i67e); so he seems to have been a specialist in chroniques
scandaleuses.
https://archive.org/details/delphipoulsen00poul
January
1, 1924 DELPHI
BY
DR. J. W. VAN ROOIJEN.
If
one wants to reach Delphi by land from Athens, this isn't the
easiest route. By train, one can only travel as far as Brailo, a
station on the railway to Salonika. From there, a bus—a grand
name for a truck with some benches—runs to Amphissa. However,
if, like us, you're lucky enough that the bus doesn't even wait for
the express train from Athens, good advice is expensive. The nearest
village (I've forgotten the name) is a few hours away. The helpful
stationmaster, however, had some advice. We were able to rent a
couple of mules, and so, packed and ready, we set off. A car was
reportedly available in the village in question.
However,
upon arrival, it turned out that the car had to come from Amphissa.
It didn't arrive until evening. We've rarely experienced more
frightening moments than during that car ride. Imagine being driven
at breakneck speed up a mountain as high as Parnassus, in a car
driven by the most reckless driver in the world, who takes corners
so sharply that at any moment you think you're going to plunge, car
and all, into the abyss that constantly gapes at you on the right,
while you sometimes whizz past cars going uphill at the speed of an
express train. Then you'll understand how happy we were to finally
have arrived in Amphissa.
We
don't have any pleasant memories of this last place; the Xenodokeion
(hotel), which was the best in the town, didn't even meet the most
modest standards of cleanliness; we were therefore very glad to be
able to leave this inhospitable place as early as possible.
From
Amphissa, however, to Delphi is quite a climb; Cars are unavailable
here, so we, forced by necessity, had to resort again to our driver
from the previous evening, who brought us up without incident.
Delphi,
also called Pytho in ancient times, lies between high rocks on a
gently sloping terrain. Where the rocky plateau meets the mountain,
rise the so-called Phaedriades, the shining rocks, so named because
the sunlight reflects brilliantly from the bare limestone. The two
rocks form an obtuse angle and are separated only by a narrow abyss.
From the eastern rock rises the spring Kastalia, whose water flows
along the rocks to Pieistos, a quarter of an hour away.
The
Delphic oracle was ancient. According to a Delphic legend, the
vapors that rose from a gorge and sent the Pythia into a kind of
ecstasy were said to have been discovered by a goat herder. He
had... He noticed that his goats, when they approached the chasm in
question, made strange leaps and uttered unusual sounds; when he
himself approached the chasm, he fell into a kind of ecstasy and
began to prophesy.
Before
Apollo established his oracle here, Gaia, the Earth, was the first
possessor of the oracle; her daughter Themis succeeded her; the
oracle's pronouncements were called themistes (laws). Themis
voluntarily ceded the place to Phoebe, who then gave the oracle to
her grandson Phoibos Apollo. He traveled from Delos, the island
where he was born, accompanied by the Athenians, who boasted of
being the first to pave the sacred road to Delphi, to Delphi, where
the people and King Delphos received him with joy.
According
to another legend, Apollo did not acquire the oracle so peacefully.
Shortly after his birth, Apollo is said to have set out to seek an
oracle. He took a liking to the Valley of Delphi and decided to
establish an oracle there. However, the serpent Python, who lived
here near the Delphic spring, prevented him from entering. The young
god engaged the serpent in battle and killed it with his arrows.
There,
for the first time, the paean, the joyful song of victory, resounded
from the mouth of the god and the choir of Delphic young women; in
remembrance of this victory, the Pythian Games were established
forever. As penance for the death of the Python, Apollo was then
forced to flee and perform eight years of slave labor. He went to
King Admetus in Thessaly and was purified in the Valley of Tempe, to
return to Delphi as Phoibos, the bright and radiant one.
This
penance and purification were symbolically represented at the
festivals, which occurred every eight years; a boy, supposed to
represent Apollo, set fire to a hut, the hut of Python, in front of
the temple: then he hastily fled. Accompanied by a procession, he
passed through Locris, Doris, over the Oeta, to Tempe, and here,
like Apollo before him, he was purified. According to legend, Apollo
appointed Cretans, whom he had brought here by sea, as priests. When
the leader of these men looked at the bare rocky plain and asked the
god what they were supposed to be made of here.
The
god replied, "Everyone must hold the sacrificial knife ready in
their right hand and continually slaughter sacrificial animals,
which the people will bring to me in countless numbers." And so
it was done.
People
came from all sides to consult the god and have their sacrificial
animals slaughtered; precious gifts were also presented to the god,
so that the temple acquired a great wealth of precious metals and
works of art. Homer (Iliad, book 9) already speaks of "the
great riches that the stone threshold of Pytho encloses within."
Not only Greeks consulted the oracle, but also foreign peoples.
Don't we read in "tus" that the king of Lydia, Croesus,
consulted the oracle when he wanted to march against Cyrus, the king
of Persia?
A
league of so-called Amphictyons, consisting of peoples from Central
and Northern Greece, had united to protect the sanctuary and
celebrate the festivals at their shared expense. The Dorians, in
particular, had established close ties with the oracle when they
lived near Parnassus and Oeta, and they maintained these ties even
after settling in the Peloponnese.
In
the centuries between Lycurgus and the Persian Wars, Delphi became
both the religious and political center of Greece. Nothing of
importance was undertaken by individuals or states without first
seeking the advice of the Delphic god.
At
the beginning of the Persian Wars, the oracle was uncertain and gave
equivocal answers. After the Battle of Salamis (480 BC) was the
first to take up Greece's national cause again. The fact that the
temple had been spared by the Persians (probably because of their
worship of the god of light) raised the oracle's prestige. Trophies
from the spoils taken from the Persians were erected at Delphi, and
the Amphictyones issued decrees in honor of those who had remained
loyal to their homeland.
However,
a reaction gradually set in. In the so-called holy wars, the
oracle's power diminished; at one point, the Phoenicians even seized
the temples' immense treasures and used them to finance the war they
waged. Admittedly, the oracle still enjoyed some prestige during the
time of Emperor Hadrian (117–138 AD), but only in private
matters. When Emperor Julian the Apostate, before his expedition to
Persia in 362 AD, C. had the oracle questioned, and he received the
answer: "Tell the king that the cunningly made dwelling is
covered with dust, Phoibos has no more shelter, no prophetic laurel,
nor a bubbling spring; "The beautiful water has ceased to
flow." Finally, in 390 AD, the oracle was closed forever by
Emperor Theodosius.
The
actual sacred space, formerly enclosed by walls, was approximately
130 meters wide and 180 m long. The main entrance was located in the
southeast, and from here the sacred road, with two bends, led to the
Temple of Apollo. Along this entire road stood statues and votive
offerings in great numbers. Emperor Nero had approximately 500
statues removed, yet the number of those remaining was estimated at
3,000. The number of statues at the entrance was exceptionally
large. On the right side stood the statue of a bull, dedicated by
the Kerkyraeans in 500 BC; opposite this stood the monument built by
the Athenians in memory of the Battle of Marathon.
To
the west of this stood the wooden horse of the Argives, dedicated in
414 BC. C. dedicated. This was followed by a triumphal monument of
the Arcadians, which they had erected there to commemorate their
liberation of Sparta. On the left were the Seven Against Thebes,
with the chariot of Amphiaraus, a memorial of the Argives to their
victory at Oenoe.
If
one continued along the sacred road, one would pass more than a
dozen treasuries, built by various cities and states of Greece.
Among these, the Siphnian treasury, which we will discuss in more
detail below, was well preserved; it resembles an Ionic templum in
antis, with caryatides instead of columns. The Doric treasury of the
Athenians is also well preserved; it has been rebuilt in its
entirety.
Following
this was a large building, where one can see the bouleuterion, while
behind it the terrain has been left in its original rocky state.
This is probably the rock on which the Sibyl Herophyle first gave
her oracles. A tall Ionic column, built by the Naxians The temple,
on which the famous Sphinx stood, towered over the entire site. A
little further on, one reached the circular festival site, the Halos
(threshing floor), where the aforementioned symbolic depiction of
the slaying of the Python took place.
Immediately
behind the Naxians' column rises the wall of the temple terraces; it
was covered with inscriptions containing decrees of the
Amphictyones, lists of victors, and charters and the release of
slaves. Between this wall and the Halos stood the Athenian Stoa,
with columns, built in the Ionic style. This stoa was probably built
in gratitude for the victory achieved at Salamis in 480 BC; later
(428 BC), Phormion added trophies from captured ships. Next to the
southwest corner stood a Nike of Paionios, probably a copy of the
one found at Olympia.
Several
monuments also stood on the east side of the temple terrace, among
which the Plataean Tripod is particularly noteworthy. It rested on a
base that has been recovered. The central support formed the famous
serpent column, and at the top was a golden basin, stolen during the
Sacred War. Later, the tripod was taken to Constantinople and can
still be seen there in the so-called AT-Meidan. Of the Doric temple
of Apollo, which was naturally the principal sanctuary, only the
foundations remain; yet, thanks to the Greek writer Pausanias, we
know what this temple looked like in ancient times. The sanctuary
had been rebuilt, or rebuilt, several times. The oldest temple,
according to legend, was formed of laurel trees; the branches of
these stemmed from the sacred laurel in Tempe. Next came a temple
built by bees from wax. Apollo replaced it with a copper temple;
however, this melted in a fire and sank into the earth's fissure.
After
this, a fourth temple, made of stone, was erected by the master
builders Trophonios and Agamedes. After they had completed their
work, they asked the god for a reward, which he promised them by the
seventh day. When that day arrived, they died the following night.
This temple, however, burned down in 548 BC: money was collected
from all the Greeks for a new one; even the Egyptian king
contributed. The Alcmaeonides, expelled from Athens, undertook the
construction for the sum of 300 talents. They built it more
expensively than the contract required, but naturally won the favor
of the priests of Delphi; the architect was Spintharus of Corinth.
In
front of the temple was the great altar of burnt offering, and
nearby was the statue of a wolf, the animal dedicated to Apollo. On
its head, the Delphians had the decree engraved, granting the
Spartans who had assisted them the right of promanteia (to consult
the oracle on behalf of others). Pericles, however, had the same
decree engraved on the back, in favor of the Athenians. Entering the
pronaos (forehall), one first saw the golden inscriptions: Gnoothi
Seauton (Know Thyself) and Mèden Agaan (Nothing Too Much),
both sayings of the Seven Sages; beside these inscriptions stood the
image of Homer. The temple cella was 100 feet long and decorated
with Doric columns on the outside and Ionic columns on the inside.
Here stood the statue of Apollo, and before it the Hestia (hearth)
where the eternal fire was maintained by a widow; this hearth was
considered the common center of all, and also the center of the
entire Greek world. Zeus, in order to discover the center of the
earth, had once sent two eagles flying towards each other from east
to west, and they had met at this spot.
Near
the hestia stood the iron chair of Pindar, on which the pious singer
had praised Apollo with his hymns. For he was accustomed to offering
hymns to the god instead of sacrifices. Moreover, the cella
contained a statue of Poseidon, the statues of two Moiragios (the
Fates), along with those of Zeus Moiragetes and Apollo Moiragates
(the leader of fate).
Behind
the cella was a room intended as a waiting room for those who wished
to consult the oracle. This was followed by the Holy of Holies, the
adyton, where the cleft of the earth was located, from which the
familiar vapors arose. A colossal tripod, made of wood and plated
with gold, was erected there, and above it was a seat.
After
observing the omens, the Pythia, having first drunk water from the
Kastalia spring and taken a laurel leaf in her mouth, proceeded to
the adyton and sat on the tripod. The vapors rising from the earth
caused her to enter a kind of ecstasy and emit incoherent sounds.
These words were then written down in hexameter form by so-called
prophets; however, these verses, too, were not easy for the
interrogator to understand. Therefore, they went to the professional
interpreters to find out from them what the meaning of the oracle
was.
The
large terrace, which extended along the entire south wall of the
temple, contained the much-sung laurel and myrtle forest; in the
center of this we also find the the ancient sanctuary of Gaia, who,
as we saw, was the first to possess the oracle. To the southeast
probably rose the mast with three golden stars, which the Aeginites
had dedicated here after the Battle of Salamis; further along stood
the pedestal where Perseus of Macedonia intended to place his
statue. Aemilius, however, who had defeated him, had his own placed
there. The temple's great altar was a foundation of the inhabitants
of Chios, erected around 520 BC. A little to the north stood an
elegant acanthus column depicting dancing maidens. Golden tripods,
which Gelo of Syracuse and his brothers had dedicated after the
victory at Himera (480 BC), were also located here. The well-known
bronze charioteer also originally stood here.
North
of these Sicilian votive offerings, the Thessalian Daochos had nine
statues of himself and his ancestors erected. Opposite the
northwestern corner of the temple is a room where Craterus had his
famous lion hunt, during which he saved Alexander the Great's life,
immortalized by Leochares and Lysippus. The theater is located
behind this. The space intended for the spectators remains in
relatively good condition, although the stage has been destroyed. In
the very northern part of the peribolus was the Lesche of the
Cnidians, a kind of lounge. On the right-hand wall, according to
Pausanias, there was a depiction of the destruction of Troy, painted
by Polygnotus, and on the left-hand wall, an image of the
Underworld.
Not
far from the main entrance is the Kastalia spring. Its water springs
from the rock face, which has been carved into a large, square
basin. Below it is a large niche, in which a small chapel of Saint
John has now been built. In the Kastalia basin, all who wished to
enter the temple had to purify themselves by bathing. Even today,
the water from the spring, though it has lost its reputation for
holiness, is still held in high esteem. Every afternoon, one can
still see the mules, hung on both sides with barrels and driven by
boys and girls, making their way to the spring to fetch the
wonderful, cool water so precious in these arid regions.
It
is a picturesque sight to see these groups gather at the spring,
especially in the evening, when the sun is already setting behind
the mountains and from the heights of Parnassus one sees a
magnificent panorama before one, one that one will not forget for
the rest of one's life. This spot of land, chosen by the Greeks as
the dwelling place of their light god Apollo, who knew how to banish
the darkness of the future with his light and to whom people came
from far and wide to hear the pronouncements of his oracle, is truly
beautiful. We would now like to take a short stroll through the
Museum, which is located near the excavations. The building,
constructed through the generosity of Syngros, consists of a main
building and two wings.
In
front of the entrance stands a marble sarcophagus depicting the
Calydonian hunt. Entering the main hall, we first see the relatively
well-preserved bronze statue of the Charioteer, which was found near
the temple. Along with it were a portion of a horse and an arm. All
of this belonged to the votive offering that Polyzalos had erected
in gratitude for a victory won in a chariot race. It is believed
that this Polyzalos was the brother of Gelo and Hiero of Syracuse.
The
charioteer stands before us at full length; the folds of his garment
are not unlike the fluting of a column; probably some of these
folds, which appear somewhat monotonous, were covered by the
chariot's body. The bronze workmanship is very fine; the face with
its full chin, the expressive eyes, and the hair—all these
elements lend the work a high value.
The
next room is known as "The Treasury of the Athenians." The
metopes that once stood on the outside of this treasury are attached
to the walls. They depict the deeds of Hercules and Theseus. Five
metopes depict the theft of Geryones' cattle; a sixth shows a
centaur fallen against an opponent (Hercules), who places his foot
on his neck. A seventh depiction shows the battle with the Nemean
lion, while an eighth metope depicts the capture of the bull.
The
rest all seem to depict deeds of Theseus, primarily his battle
against the Amazons. In one depiction, we see the young Theseus,
wearing a helmet, fighting an Amazon; On the other side, the defeat
of the Minotaur and the bull of Marathon is depicted. In the center
of the hall, one sees Amazons on horseback, the acroteria of the top
of the sanctuary.
On
the right wing is the Greco-Roman hall, or the Monument of Pydna.
The monument commemorates the defeat of King Perseus of Macedonia
(168 BC); inscriptions appear on all four sides and are decorated
with a frieze in relief. Opposite the Macedonians, recognizable by
their beautifully decorated shields, are barbarians, almost
completely naked; they represent the allies of the Roman people. The
Romans themselves are not visible, but their cavalry is. In front of
this monument are the Three Dancing Maidens (Karyatides); the
support on which they are placed is decorated with acanthus leaves;
they form a beautiful base for a tripod or other votive offering.
The clothing of these maidens and the garlands of palm leaves have
identified them as the Dancers of Karyae, from which the name
Caryatides derives, which are also known to be found at the
Erechtheion in Athens.
We
now return to the entrance and reach the hall of the Temple of
Apollo. On the right, we find a large relief depicting a youth with
outstretched arms; a boy stands beside him. The first figure is
usually interpreted as a depiction of Apollo; however, it is
probably Apoxyomenos, with an attendant.
Fragments
of marble statues from the temple of the Alcmaeonides depict lions
tearing bulls; two female figures are also seen, each holding her
dress in her left hand; on the left wall are depicted scenes from
the battle between Athena and the giant Enceladus.
Five
reliefs were also placed in this hall. On the first, we see the ship
Argo; round shields, on the outside, represent the warriors on
board; to the side stand two figures playing a lyre, one of whom is
probably Orpheus. At each end stands a horseman, apparently Castor
and Pollux. In a second relief, Pollux, Idas, and Castor drive the
stolen Arcadian ox before them; the division of this ox was the
cause of the disagreement between them. Each figure holds two spears
in their left hand and a third in their right. The third relief
depicts the abduction of Europa on the bull; the story of the
Calydonian boar is the subject of the fourth relief; in the image,
the remains of a dog can be seen beneath the wild animal. The last
relief is severely damaged; it is suspected that it represents the
ram on which Phrixus and Helle were seated when they fled the
ambushes of their stepmother Ino.
East
of the temple, a large Omphalos, the stone we mentioned earlier, was
found; on it were depicted woolen ribbons; however, this was
probably not the original omphalos, as it was covered with real
woolen ribbons. Between this and the next room stand the statues of
two youths from the Archaic period. On the pedestal of the
best-preserved statue, an inscription tells us that the sculptor was
an Argive. They closely resemble the well-known Apollo statues, with
their round, slightly smiling faces. They probably date from the 7th
century BC. It is believed that these statues represent Cleobis and
Biton, whom "Tus tells us about" in his history. He
relates (1:31) that Solon, the Athenian philosopher, once visited
Croesus, the king of the Lydians. One day, the king, who was known
for his wealth, had Solon led through all his treasuries. Then he
asked him who he considered the happiest man in the world. Solon
awarded the first prize to a certain Tellus, an Athenian, and the
second to the young men Cleobis and Biton, from Argos. One day,
their mother had to be brought to the temple of the goddess Hera,
but the oxen were not present in time. The young men then themselves
drew their mother to the temple, a distance of 45 stadia (a stadium
is approximately 182 meters). The celebrants praised the mother.
They were fortunate to have such fine sons. The mother then prayed
to the goddess to grant them that which is happiest for mankind.
After this prayer, they lay down to sleep in the temple and never
rose again. By this, the goddess had shown that death is happiest
for mankind. The Argives subsequently had statues made of them and
dedicated them at Delphi.
We
have now approached the last room of the museum, that of the
Treasury of the Cnidians, or, according to some, Pomtov, the
Siphnians. The sculptures on the facades of the completely destroyed
building have been recovered so completely that it has been possible
to reconstruct it in its entirety. As we have already seen, the
building was in the form of a templum in antis; instead of the usual
columns, the roof of the vestibule is supported by the statues of
two girls. They remind us of the priestesses of the Acropolis and
are perhaps the precursors of the Caryatides of the Erechtheion.
Along the entire building frieze opens. On the north side, it
depicts the Gigantomachy; first, we see a man, slightly stooped,
holding an object in his hand that resembles a bag. This is Aeolus,
the god of the winds, who sets his storms in motion against the
giants. Next, two goddesses are engaged in battle with giants. The
giants are depicted in normal human form. In the background, we see
Hercules, with a lion's skin wrapped around his neck and arms; he is
battling a giant with his lance. Dionysus, wearing a long robe and a
panther skin, rides into the fray with his chariot, drawn by lions.
A little further on, Apollo and Diana stand with their bows.
Ephialtes lies dead at their feet; another giant is about to flee,
while three others approach in close column. Then Hermes appears,
fighting with a sword and recognizable by his conical headdress; the
other figures are no longer identifiable.
On
the other side, one sees the remains of the eastern frieze; this
depicts the battle between Menelaus and a Trojan hero (perhaps
Hector) for the body of Euphorbos, while Meriones assists the former
and Aeneas the latter. The names of these figures can be determined
from the inscriptions. The left half is occupied by an assembly of
the gods. The second half shows a battle scene.
It
is also worth mentioning the depiction that adorned the western
façade, the enigmatic battle over the tripod between Apollo
and Hermes; Athena, positioned in the center, seems to separate the
combatants; it is said that the Dorians once attempted to place
their hero, Heracles, in place of the Ionian Apollo; this could
explain the depiction. In the same room is also the aforementioned
Column of the Naxians, upon which the Sphinx was placed.
We
have now completed our tour; a visit to Delphi will leave an
unforgettable impression on anyone.
Descriptions of different kinds of objects
stored in Delos
akinake;
iron akinake; gilded akinake; [=short Persian sword]
akroterion;
alabaster;
alabaster box;
alabastos;
alabastotheke;
wood alabastotheke;
altar;
wood altar; stone altar; gilded glass altar;
amber;
goldbound amber; amber with gold ring; goldbound amber ring; amber
with gold circle;
amphora;
necklace of amphoras;
amprion/ampra;
anchor;
anchor sign; iron anchor;
anvil;
iron anvil;
aparche;
aparche to Apollo; aparche of the Koans/Coans;
apyron;
gold apyron; apeiron ring;
argyris;
aristeion;
aristeion of the goddess;
armlet;
twisted armlet;
arrow;
arrow box;
ax;
barleycorns;
basin;
pierced hand basin; foot basin;
basket;
bridal basket; gold basket; gilded straight-sided basket; bronze
basket; gilded bronze basket; straight basket; reed basket; wood
basket; willow basket; Delphic basket
batiake,
batiakion [=”Persian” phiale, drinking vessel];
beaker;
gold beaker; olive oil beaker;
bed;
bed-cover;
belt;
blazon;
shield blazon;
bombulion;
boss;
figured boss;
bow;
box;
alabaster box; arrow box; incense box;
boxwood;
boxwood couch; boxwood Victories; boxwood feet; boxwood beam;
boxwood eleven cypress laminates;
bracelet;
silver bracelet; bracelet on wood; gilded bracelet;
brazier;
sacrificial brazier; silver brazier; stone-carrying brazier;
processional censer with bronze brazier; lionfooted brazier;
bridle;
Medic bridle;
brooch;
bucket;
leaky bucket;
calf;
kolobaphic calf;
calyx;
iron calyx;
casserole;
broken casserole;
censer;
censer in shrine; bronze censer; stone censer; processional censer;
cheese
grater;
chest;
choker;
choreia;
chous;
olive oil chous; bronze chous;
chrysides;
clamp;
iron clamp;
collar;
coller;
comb;
iron comb;
conch;
silver conch;
cooler;
cornel;
cornel wood;
couch;
Chian couch; Milesian couch;
crab;
stone-fasted crab;
crest;
crown;
ivy crown; myrtle crown; laurel crown; oak crown; olive crown;
cup;
Stesileian/Stesileion cup; silver cup; reversible cup; Rhodian cup;
glass cup;
diadem;
myrtle diadem; gilded diadem;
diereisma;
dinos;
discus;
dish;
incense dish;
disk;
distaff;
silver distaff; gold distaff;
dolphin;
figure on a dolphin; dolphin on a small column;
earring;
gold earring; tin earring; silver earring; Thasian earring; gilded
wood earring;
echinos;
eriskos;
fan
with onyx handle;
fawn;
figure;
ivory figure; bronze figure; figured phiale; silver figure; figured
quiver;
fillet;
woolen fillet; gold fillet; silvered fillet;
flower
flyswatter;
girdle;
goats;
gorgoneion;
gourd;
cupping gourd;
grate;
fire-bearing grate; broken grate with the wood in it; bronze grate;
grater;
cheese grater;
greaves;
griffin;
grill;
hammer;
handcuff;
hawk;
hawk in his right hand; hawk without a leg;
hedypotidion;
hedypotis; hedypotis kylix; hedypotidion from ostrich egg;
helmet;
wood-underneath helmet; iron helmet; bronze helmet; Illyrian helmet;
helmet wing; silvered iron helmet; bronzed helmet; silvered helmet;
helmet rack; gilded bronze helmet;
hemiteion;
hippikon;
hook;
iron meat hook; small meat hook;
horn;
gilded horn; ornamented true horn;
horse;
statue of the god on horses; horse-cent[aur;
hydria;
bronze hydria and stamnos;
hydria handle; hydria weight; bronze hydria; silver hydria; gold
hydria; new silver hydria; hydria of Athena Nike; hydria of
Brauronian Artemis; hydria of the Anakes; hydria of Demeter and
Kore; hydria base;
hylikter/heilikter;
gold heilikter;
hypria;
wood hypria;
image;
incense
box;
ingot;
gold ingot; ingot from the tripod; silver ingot; ingot of the worse
gold; ingot with the A; ingot with the B; ingot with stone;
jar;
jug;
bronze jug;
kabasas;
kampe;
gilded kampe;
kanoun;
karchesion;
silver karchesion;
kesterion
key;
draw key;
kissyphion;
knife;
knobby;
knobby phiale;
knucklebone;
kolobaphine;
kolobaphine statue; kolobaphic calf; calf on stone base; ivory calf;
korai;
kothon;
bronze kothon; kothon in wood; kothon of Pytheas; bronze kothon;
kottabos;
kottabos stand; kottabos flower;
krater
or crater; Etruscan krater; Spartan krater; Argive krater; Laconian
krater; trieretic krater;
krateutai;
kremaphoros;
kyathos;
kyathos from the deer; bronze kyathos; silver myrrh kyathos;
kylichnion;
kylix;
Rhodian kylix; Mikytheion/Mikytheian kylix; Tean Teian-worked kylix;
kymbion
[=bowl];
kyrbe;
ladder;
ladder (skalis);
ladle;
large ladle; broken ladle; bronze ladle;
lamp;
bronze lamp;
lampstand;
bronze lampstand; iron lampstand; silver lampstand;
lanceolate;
lanceolate necklace; lanceolate phiale; lanceolate ring;
lavender;
gold sea lavender;
lebes;
lebes gamikos;
lebetion;
lekane;
lekanis;
lekanopsykter;
lotharion;
bronze lotharion;
lyre;
mastos
meniskos;
bronze meniskos;
nail;
large hollow nail; bronze nail; silvered acanthus nail; gold nail;
necklace;
obol;
ochthoibos;
oinochoe;
onyx;
onyx disk; onyx handle; onyx stone; onyx cup; onyx seal; bronze
large onyx; onyx in a box;
opisthion;
gold opisthion;
owl;
gold owl;
ox;
ox head; gold ox head; phiale with ox-head;
palladion;
bronze palladion;
panagride;
paraboliskos;
paraboliskoi for the tetracycle;
perona;
pezikon;
phiale
or patera; Gorgieian phiale; rayed phiale;
pillow;
plaques;
plastra;
plinth;
pot;
Chian pot;
protome;
puppy;
Mollosan puppy; puppy on stone base;
pyglaion;
quiver;
ram
horn;
rhymos;
ῥυμός;
rhyton;
ribbon;
ring;
sandal;
sardion;
scabbard
(for the equestrian sword); ivory scabbard; scabbard for doctor’s
knife;
scraper;
seal;
emerald seal; onyx seal; goldbound seal; public seal;
seleucid;
sheaf;
wheat sheaf;
shield;
processional shield;
sieves;
siglos
[weight of circa 5,5 g];
signet;
silpheion;
skaphion;
Mikytheian skaphion; smooth skaphion; Philonideion/Philonideian
skaphion; Stesileian skaphion;
skewer;
skyphos;
small
female statue;
snake;
silver snake;
spear;
spear shaft;
spearhead;
Phocean spearhead; gold ring with spearhead (seal); necklace of
spearheads weighing; bronzed spearhead;
sphageia;
sphinx;
with sphinx feet; sphinx-footed incense box;
sprinkler;
staff
in sandalwood case;
stamnos;
stamnos of the Boeotian (type); olive oil stamnos; stamnos with one
handle;
stamps;
stand;
stater;
Aeginetan and Cretan stater; Corinthian stater; Kyzikene/Kyzikenian
and Phocean stater; Ptolemaic stater; counterfeit stater;
stathmion;
bronze stathmion;
statue;
stone;
lead stone;
strainer;
strap;
striner;
swallow;
sword;
table;
tablet;
talent;
talent weight;
tetradrachm;
τετράδραχμον;
phillipic/stephanephoric/lysimachean of Lysimachus/Maussolean
Mausolean/Naxian/Ptolemaic/Antiochene
Antiochean/Ephesian/kistophoric
kissophoric/prusian/alexandrian/persic/
thermastes;
with chain;
topeion;
torch;
wood torch; gold torch; silvered torch; torchbearer; torchrace;
torchracer;
tray;
processional tray; bronze tray; round tray; tray with bronze circle;
trident;
iron trident;
tripod;
wood tripod; Delphic tripod; silvered tripod; stone tripod; silver
tripod; iron tripod; gilded tripod;
trough;
large trough;
vulture;
vulture head;
wax;
weight with the wax; sealing wax;
weaving;
wheel;
bronze wheel; iron from wheel; bronze with wheel; four-spoked wheel;
wing;
helmet wing; Victory with one wing; bronze wing;
zomerysis;
See
also the “Persian”
Objects in Classical and Early Hellinistic Inventory Lists by
Elizabeth Kosmetatou
Treasure
Map: A Guide to the Delian Inventories
by
Richard Hamilton ISBN 0472036289/978-0472036288
and
a review
by Elizabeth Kosmetatou
The archaeology of
the cuneiform inscriptions
Preface
The
first six chapters which follow, embody the Rhind Lectures in
Archaeology which I delivered at Edinburgh in October 1906. The
seventh chapter appeared as an article in the Contemporary Review
for August 1905, and is here reprinted by the courtesy of the Editor
to whom I render my thanks. The book is the first attempt to deal
with what I would call the archaeology of cuneiform decipherment,
and like all pioneering work consequently claims the indulgence of
the reader. For the sake of clearness I have been forced to repeat
myself in a few instances, more especially in the sixth chapter, but
what has thereby been lost in literary finish will, I hope, be
compensated by an increase of clearness in the argument.
If
what I have written serves no other purpose, I shall be content if
it draws attention to the miserably defective state of our
archaeological knowledge of Babylonia and Assyria, and to the
necessity of scientific excavations being carried on there similar
to those inaugurated by Mr. Rhind in Egypt. We have abundance of
epigraphic material; it is the more purely archaeological material
that is still wanting.
The
need of it is every year becoming more urgent with the ever-growing
revelation of the important and far-reaching part played by
Babylonian culture in the ancient East.
Excavation
is just commencing in Asia Minor, and there are many indications
that it has startling discoveries and surprises in store for us.
Even while my manuscript was in the printer's hands, Professor
Winckler has been examining the cuneiform tablets found by him last
spring at Boghaz Keui, on the site of the old Hittite capital in
Cappadocia, and reading in them the records of the Hittite kings,
Khattu-sil, Sapaluliuma, Mur-sila and Muttallu. Most of the tablets,
though written in cuneiform characters, are in the native language
of the country, but among them is a version in the Babylonian
language of the treaty between the "great king of the Hittites"
and Riya-masesa Mai or Ramses II, the Egyptian copy of which has
long been known to us. The two Arzawan letters in the Tel el-Amarna
collection no longer stand alone; the Boghaz Keui tablets show that
an active correspondence was carried on between Egypt and
Cappadocia. We must revise our old ideas about an absence of
intercourse between different parts of the ancient Oriental world:
there was quite as much intercommunication as there is today.
Elam
and Babylonia, Assyria and Asia Minor, Palestine and Egypt, all were
linked together by the ties of a common culture; there were no
exclusive religions to raise barriers between nation and nation, and
the pottery of the Hittites was not only carried to the south of
Canaan, but the civilization of Babylonia made its way through
Hittite lands to the shores and islands of Greece. On the south, the
Egean became a highway from Asia Minor to Europe, while northward
the Troad formed a bridge which carried the culture of Cappadocia to
the Balkans and the Danube.
A.
H. Sayce.
November
1906.
CHAPTER I THE DECIPHERMENT OF THE CUNEIFORM
INSCRIPTIONS
[by
Rev. A. H. SAYCE PROFESSOR OF ASSYRIOLOGY, OXFORD]
The
decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions was the archaeological
romance of the nineteenth century.
There
was no Rosetta stone to offer a clue to their meaning; the very
names of the Assyrian kings and of the gods they worshipped had been
lost and forgotten; and the characters themselves were but
conventional groups of wedges, not pictures of objects and ideas
like the hieroglyphs of Egypt. The decipherment started with the
guess of a classical scholar who knew no Oriental languages and had
never travelled in the East. And yet it is upon this guess that the
vast superstructure of cuneiform decipherment has been slowly
reared, with its ever-increasing mass of literature in numerous
languages, the very existence of some of which had been previously
unknown, and with its revelation of a civilized world that had faded
out of sight before Greek history began.
The
ancient East has risen, as it were, from the dead, with its politics
and its wars, its law and its trade, its art, its industries and its
science. And this revelation of a new world, this resurrection of a
dead past, has started from a successful guess. But the guess had
been made in accordance with scientific method and had scientific
reasons behind it, and it has proved to be the fruitful seed of an
overspreading tree.
Seventy
years ago a single small case was sufficient to hold all the
Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities possessed by the British Museum.
They had been collected by Rich, to whom we owe the first accurate
plans of the sites of Babylon and Nineveh. But the cuneiform
characters found on the seals and clay cylinders of Babylonia were
not the only characters of the kind that were known.
Similar
characters had been noticed by travellers on the walls of the ruined
palaces of Persepolis in Persia. As far back as 1621 the Italian
traveller Pietro della Valle had copied two or three of these, which
he reproduced in the account of his travels - some thirty years
later. One of the first acts of the newly-founded Royal Society of
Great Britain was to ask in their Philosophical Transactions (p.
420) whether some draughtsman could not be found to copy the
bas-reliefs and inscriptions which had thus been observed at
Persepolis, though the only result of the inquiry was that a few
years afterwards (in June 1693) two lines of cuneiform were
published in the Transactions from the papers of a Mr. Samuel
Flower, who had been the agent of the East India Company in Persia.
The editor of the Transactions correctly concluded that the
inscriptions were to be read from left to right. The cuneiform
characters which were printed in the Transactions were, however, not
the first specimens of cuneiform script that had been published in
England. Thomas Herbert, in the fourth edition of his Travels, which
appeared in 1677, had already given three lines of characters taken
indifferently from the three classes of inscriptions engraved on the
Persian monuments; these were afterwards annexed by an Italian named
Careri, who published them as his own. But the earliest inscription
to be reproduced in full was a short one inscribed by Darius I over
the windows of his palace, which had been copied by Sir John Chardin
during one of his two visits to Persepolis (in 1665 and 1673).
Chardin
was the son of a Huguenot jeweller in Paris, and after returning
from his travels settled in London, where he became a great
favourite of Charles II., and was made a Fellow of the Royal
Society. The inscription he had copied, however, was not printed in
the earlier edition of his Travels, and had to wait until 1735
before it saw the light.1
The
existence of the cuneiform script thus became known in Europe, and
that was all. It was not until Carsten Niebuhr, the father of the
better-known historian, had been sent by the Danish Government on an
exploring mission to the East that fairly complete and accurate
copies of the inscriptions of Persepolis were at last put into the
hands of European scholars.
Niebuhr,
who sacrificed his sight to the work, returned to Denmark in 1767,
and seven years later the first of the three volumes in which the
scientific results of his travels were embodied was published at
Copenhagen.
With
the publication of the second volume, which contained his
description of the Persepolitan monuments, the attempt to decipher
the cuneiform characters began. He himself had noticed that in the
first of the three classes or systems of cuneiform writing of which
every inscription consisted, only forty-two characters were
employed, and he therefore concluded that the system was alphabetic.
Another Dane, Bishop Munter, discovered that the words in it were
divided from one another by an oblique wedge,1 and further showed
that the monuments must belong to the age of Cyrus and his
successors.2 One word, which occurs without any variation towards
the beginning of each inscription, he correctly inferred to signify
"king"; but beyond this he was unable to advance.
Meanwhile,
Anquetil-Duperron, with self-sacrificing enthusiasm, had
rediscovered the Zend of the later Zoroastrian faith, and de Sacy,
with the help of it, had deciphered the Pehlevi inscriptions of the
Sassanid kings. It was only the older Persian of the Achaemenian
cuneiform inscriptions that still awaited interpretation; and a
bridge had been built between it and modern Persian by means of the
Zendic texts. In 1802 the guess was made which opened the way to the
decipherment of the mysterious wedge-shaped signs. The inspired
genius was Grotefend, an accomplished Latinist and a school-master
at Frankfort-on-the-Main. He knew no Oriental languages, but his
mother-wit and common-sense more than made up for the deficiency. It
was clear to him that the three systems of cuneiform represented
three different languages, the Persian kings being like a Turkish
pasha of to-day, who. when he wishes an edict to be understood,
writes it in Turkish and Arabic. It was also clear to him that the
first system must be the script of the Persian kings themselves, of
which the other two were translations. The preparatory work for
reading this had already been done by Munter; what Grotefend now had
to do was to identify and read the names to which the word for
"king" was attached.
On
comparing the inscriptions together he found that while the word for
"king" remained unchanged, the word which accompanied it
at the beginning of an inscription varied on different monuments.
There were, in fact, two wholly different words, one of which was
peculiar to one set of monuments, the other to another set. But he
also found that the first of these words followed the other on the
second set of monuments, though with a different termination from
that which belonged to it when it took the place of the first word.
Hence he conjectured that the two words represented the names of two
Persian kings, one of whom was the son of the other, the termination
of the second name when it followed the first being that of the
genitive. It was now necessary to discover who the kings were whose
names had thus been found.
Fortunately
the Achsemenian dynasty was not a long one, and the number of royal
names in it was not large. And of these names, Cyrus was too short
and Artaxerxes too long for either of the two names which Grotefend
had detected. There only remained Darius and Xerxes, and as Xerxes
was the son of Darius, the name which characterized the first set of
monuments must be Darius.
Grotefend's
next task was to ascertain the old Persian pronunciation of the name
of Darius. This had been given by Strabo, while the Persian
pronunciation of Xerxes was indicated in the Old Testament. With
this assistance Grotefend was able to assign alphabetic values to
the cuneiform characters which composed the two names, and a corner
of the veil which had so long covered the cuneiform records was
lifted at last. A comparison of the names which he had thus read
gave the needful verification of the correctness of his method. In
the names of Darius and Xerxes the same letters occur, but in
different places; a and r in Darius occupy the second and third
places, in Xerxes the fourth and fifth, while sk> which is the
last letter in Darius, would be the second and sixth in Xerxes. And
such was actually the case.
Grotefend
was therefore justified in concluding that his guesses were correct,
and that the right values had been assigned to the cuneiform
characters. A beginning had been made in cuneiform decipherment, and
in this instance the beginning was half the whole.
Grotefend's
Memoir was presented to the Gottingen Academy on September 4, 1802.
By a curious accident it was at the same meeting that Heyne
described the first attempts that had been made towards deciphering
the Egyptian hieroglyphs. But the learned world looked askance at
the discoveries of the young Latinist. The science of archaeology
was still unborn, and Oriental philologists were unable even to
understand the inductive method of the decipherer. The Academy of
Gottingen refused to print his communications, and it was not until
1815 that they appeared in the first volume of the History of his
friend Heeren, who, being untrammelled by the prejudices of Oriental
learning, had been one of the earliest to accept his conclusions.1
For a whole generation the work of decipherment was allowed to
sleep.
It
is unfortunately true that after his initial success Grotefend's
ignorance of Oriental languages really did stand in his way. He
assumed that the language of the inscriptions and that of the
Zend-Avesta were one and the same, and accordingly went to the
newly-found Zend dictionary for the readings of the cuneiform names
and words. Vishtaspa, the name of the father of Darius, was thus
read Goshtasp, the word for "king" became khsheh instead
of khshayathiya, and that which Grotefend had correctly divined to
signify "great," eghre instead of vazraka. It is not
wonderful, therefore, that he was never able to follow up the
beginning he had made.
The
revival of interest in Grotefend's work was due to the fact that
Champollion, after the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs,
found the name of Xerxes on an alabaster vase at Paris on which,
according to Grotefend's system, the same name was written in
Persian cuneiform. This led the Abbe Saint-Martin, who was a
recognized Orientalist, to adopt and follow up Grotefend's discovery
in a Memoir which he read before the French Academy in 1822, and
Saint-Martin's work attracted the attention of Rask and Burnouf.
To
do this was reserved for the Zendic scholars of a later generation.
Rask the Dane in 1826 determined the true form of the genitive
plural, and thereby identified the character for which gave him the
names of the supreme god Auramazda and of Achaemenes the forefather
of Cyrus.1 But the great step forward was made by the eminent French
scholar, Emile Burnouf, in 1836.2 The first of the inscriptions
published by Niebuhr he discovered to contain a list of the
satrapies of Darius. With this clue in his hand the reading of the
names and the subsequent identification of the letters which
composed them could be a question only of patience and time. For
this Burnouf was well equipped by his philological knowledge and
training, and the result was an alphabet of thirty letters, the
greater part of which had been correctly deciphered.
Burnouf's
Memoir on the subject was published in June 1836. In the preceding
month his friend and pupil, Professor Lassen of Bonn, had also
published a work on "The Old Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions of
Persepolis."3 He and Burnouf had been in frequent
correspondence, and his claim to have independently detected the
names of the satrapies, and thereby to have fixed the values of the
Persian characters, was in consequence fiercely attacked. To the
attacks made upon him, however, Lassen never vouchsafed a reply.
Whatever
his obligations to Burnouf may have been,his own contributions to
the decipherment of the inscriptions were numerous and important. He
succeeded in fixing the true values of nearly all the letters in the
Persian alphabet, in translating the texts, and in proving that the
language of them was not Zend, but stood to both Zend and Sanskrit
in the relation of a sister.
Meanwhile
another scholar, armed with fresh and important material, had
entered the field. A young English officer in the East India
Company's service, Major Rawlinson by name, was attached to the
British Mission in Persia. A happy inspiration led him to attempt
the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions. It was in 1835, when
he was twenty-five years old, that he first began his work. All that
he knew was that Grotefend had discovered in the texts of Persepolis
the names of Darius, of Xerxes and of Hystaspes, but cut off as he
was in his official position at Kirmanshah on the western frontier
of Persia from European libraries, he was unable to procure either
the Memoir of the German scholar or the articles to which it had
given rise. Like Burnouf, he set himself to decipher the two
inscriptions of Hamadan, which he had himself copied with great
care. He soon recognized in them the names that had been read by
Grotefend, and thus obtained a working alphabet.
But
his position in Persia soon gave him an advantage which was denied
to his fellow-workers in Europe. It was not long before he found an
opportunity of copying the great inscription on the sacred rock of
Behistun, which had never been copied before. It was by far the
longest cuneiform inscription yet discovered, and was filled with
proper names, including those of the Persian satrapies. The copying
of it, however, cost much time and labour, and was accomplished at
actual risk of life, as Major Rawlinson, better known by his later
title of Sir Henry Rawlinson, had to be lowered in a basket from the
top of the cliff in order to ascertain the exact forms of certain
characters.
In
the following year (1836) Rawlinson moved to Teheran, and there
received from Edwin Norris, the Secretary of the Royal Asiatic
Society, the Memoirs of Grotefend and Saint-Martin. In 1837 he
finished his copy of the Behistun inscription, and sent a
translation of its opening paragraphs to the Royal Asiatic Society.
Before, however, his Paper could be published, the works of Lassen
and Burnouf reached him, necessitating a revision of his Paper and
the postponement of its publication. Then came other causes of
delay. He was called away to Afghanistan to perform the onerous and
responsible duties of British Agent at Kandahar, and it was not
until 1843 that he was once more free to resume his cuneiform
studies. A year later he was visited by the Danish Professor,
Westergaard, who placed at his disposal the copies he had just made
of the inscription on the tomb of Darius at Naksh-i-Rustam and of
some shorter inscriptions from Persepolis, and Rawlinson's Memoir
was accordingly finished at last and sent to England.
Here
Norris subjected it to a careful revision, and at his suggestion
Rawlinson once more visited Behistun, where he took squeezes and
re-examined doubtful characters. In 1847 the first part of the
Memoir was published, though the second part, containing the
analysis and commentary on the text, did not appear till 1849.1 The
work, however, was well worthy of the time and care that had been
bestowed upon it.
The
task of deciphering the Persian cuneiform texts was virtually
accomplished, and the guesses of Grotefend had developed into the
discovery of a new alphabet and a new language. The capstone was put
to the work by the discovery of Hincks, an Irish clergyman, that the
alphabet was not a true one in the modern sense of the word, a
vowel-sound being attached in pronunciation to each of the
consonants represented in it.
The
mystery of the Persian cuneiform texts was thus solved after nearly
fifty years of endeavour. A harder task still remained. The Persian
texts were accompanied by two other cuneiform transcripts, which, as
Grotefend had perceived, must have represented the other two
principal languages that were spoken in the Persian Empire. That the
third transcript was Babylonian seemed evident from the resemblance
of the characters contained in it to those on the bricks and
seal-cylinders of Babylonia. Grotefend had already written upon the
subject, and had even divined the name of Nebuchadrezzar on certain
Babylonian bricks.
But
this third species of writing, which we must henceforth term
Babylonian or Assyrian, presented extraordinary difficulties.
Instead of an alphabet of forty-two letters, the decipherer was
confronted by an enormous number of different characters, while no
indication was given of the separation of one word from another.
Moreover the forms of the characters as found on the Persepolitan
monuments differed considerably from those found on the Babylonian
monuments, which again differed greatly from each other. On the
seal-cylinders, more especially, they assumed the most complicated
shapes, between which and the Persepolitan forms it was often
impossible to trace any likeness whatever.
Suddenly
a discovery was made which furnished an abundance of new material
and incited the decipherer to fresh efforts. In 1842 Botta was sent
to Mossul as French Consul, and at Mohl's instigation began to
excavate on the site of Nineveh. His first essays there not proving
very successful, he transferred his workmen further north, to the
mound of Khorsabad, and there laid bare the ruins of a large and
splendid palace which subsequently turned out to be that of Sargon.
In the autumn of 1845 the excavations of Botta were succeeded by
those of Layard, first at Nimrud (the ancient Calah), and then at
Kuyunjik or Nineveh, the result being to fill the British Museum
with bas-reliefs covered with cuneiform writing and with other
relics of Assyrian civilization.
The
inscriptions brought to light by Botta were copied and published by
him in 1846-50.1 The sumptuous work which was dedicated to them was
followed by a smaller and cheaper edition, and the author gave
further help to the student by classifying the characters, which
amounted to as many as 642.2 His work proved conclusively the
identity of the script used at Nineveh with that of the third
tran-scripts on the Persian monuments, as well as the substantial
agreement of the groups of characters occurring in each.
The
Irish scholar Dr. Hincks — one of the most remarkable and
acute decipherers that have ever lived — was already at work
on the newly-found texts. In 1847 he published a long article on
"The Three Kinds of Persepolitan Writing,"1 and, two years
later, another "On the Khorsabad Inscriptions."2 In 1850
he read a Paper before the British Association,3 summing up his
conclusions and announcing the important discovery that the Assyrian
characters were syllabic and not alphabetic, as had hitherto been
supposed. With this discovery the scientific decipherment of the
Assyrian inscriptions actually begins.
The
proper names contained in the Persian texts furnished the clue to
the reading of the Babylonian transcripts. The values thus obtained
for the Babylonian characters made it possible to read many of the
words, the meaning of which was fixed by a comparison with the
Persian original. It then became clear that Assyrian was a Semitic
language, standing in much the same relation to Hebrew that the Old
Persian stood to Zend.
Its
Semitic origin was proved to demonstration by the French scholar de
Saulcy in 1849. Another French scholar, de Longperier, had already
discovered the name of Sargon in the Khorsabad inscriptions4 —
the first royal Assyrian name that had yet been read.
De
Saulcy himself subjected the Babylonian transcript of the trilingual
inscription of Elwend to a minute analysis, and so carefully was the
work performed, and so secure were the foundations upon which it
rested, that the translation needs but little revision even today.1
The old belief in the alphabetic nature of the characters, however,
still possessed the mind of the decipherer, although in one passage
he goes so far as to say, "I am tempted to believe" that
the signs are syllabic. But he did not go beyond the temptation to
believe, and the discovery was reserved for Hincks.
Rawlinson
was now at Bagdad. De Saulcy sent him his Memoirs, and the British
scholar had the immense advantage of having in his hands the
Babylonian version of the great Behistun inscription, of knowing the
country in which the monuments were found, and of possessing copies
of inscriptions which had not yet made their way to Europe.
Nevertheless,
it is amazing with what rapidity and perspicacity he forced his way
through the thick jungle of cuneiform script. In his Memoir on the
Persian texts, published in 1847, he already maps out with
marvellous fulness and exactitude the different varieties of
cuneiform writing. It is his second Memoir, however, which excites
in the Assyriologist of to-day the profoundest feelings of surprise
and admiration.
This
consists of notes on the inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia, and
was communicated to the Royal Asiatic Society at the beginning of
the year 1850.2 One of the inscriptions he has translated in full —
the annals of Shalmaneser II., on an obelisk of black marble
discovered at Nimrud and now in the British Museum. The text is a
long one, and for the first time the European reader had placed
before him a contemporaneous account of the campaigns of an Assyrian
monarch in the ninth century before our era.
The
translation is substantially correct; it is only in the proper names
that Rawlinson has gone much astray.
The
values of many of the characters were still uncertain or unknown,
and he was under the domination of the belief that they represented
alphabetic letters.
He
was, moreover, mistaken as to the age of the monument itself, which
he assigned to too early an epoch. It was Dr. Hincks who again
settled the question, by reading upon it the names of Hazael of
Damascus and Jehu of Israel.1 This was one of the first-fruits of
his discovery of the syllabic character of the Assyrian signs.
Another was the discovery of the name of Sennacherib,2 as well as
those of Hezekiah and Jerusalem.8
Shortly
before this Hincks had made another discovery of importance. He had
deciphered the names of Nebuchadrezzar and his father on the bricks
of Babylon, 4 and had further shown that a cylinder of
Nebuchadrezzar brought from Babylon by Sir Robert Ker-Porter, and
written in the cuneiform characters met with on the Persian
monuments, contained the same text as another cylinder obtained by
Sir Harford Jones, and inscribed with characters of the most complex
kind. A comparison of the two texts gave him the values of the
latter characters, which we now know to represent the archaic
Babylonian forms of the cuneiform signs.
But
the decipherment of the Assyro-Babylonian script was not yet
complete. In 1851 Rawlinson's long-promised Memoir on the Babylonian
version of the inscription of Behistun was given to the world,1 and
consisted of the cuneiform text, with translation, grammar and
commentary, besides a list of 242 characters. It announced,
moreover, two facts about these characters, one of which had already
been recognized, while the second was received by the Orientalists
with shouts of incredulity. The first fact was that the characters,
besides having phonetic values, could also be used ideographically
to denote objects and ideas.
The
second fact was that they were polyphonous, each character
possessing more than one phonetic value.
For
once the sceptics seemed to have common-sense upon their side. How,
it was asked, could a system of writing be read the symbols of which
might be pronounced sometimes in one way, sometimes in another?
Anything could be made out of anything upon such principles, and a
method of interpretation which ended in such a result was pronounced
to be self-condemned. Hincks, however, once more entered the field
and demonstrated that Rawlinson was right.2
Hincks
was an Egyptologist, and consequently the polyphony of the cuneiform
characters was not to him a new and startling phenomenon. It merely
showed that they must once have been pictorial — as, indeed,
their ideographic use also indicated — and in a
picture-writing each picture could necessarily be represented by
more than one word, and therefore by more than one phonetic value,
when the pronunciation of the word came to be employed phonetically.
The picture of a foot, for instance, would denote not only a "foot,"
but also such ideas as "go," "run," "walk,"
each of which would become one of its phonetic values with the
development of the picture into a conventional syllabic sign.
Excavation
was still proceeding on the site of Nineveh. Mr. Hormuzd Rassam,
himself a native of Mossul and the active assistant of Layard, was
sent in 1852 by the British Museum to complete the work from which
Layard had now been called away by diplomatic duties.1 In 1853 he
made a discovery which proved to be of momentous importance for
Assyrian decipherment, and without which, in fact, it could never
have advanced very far. He discovered the library of Nineveh with
its multitudes of closely-written clay tablets, many of them
containing long lists of characters, dictionaries and grammars,
which have served at once to verify and to extend the knowledge of
the script and language that the early decipherers had obtained.
Meanwhile a careful survey of the whole country was made at the
expense of the East India Company,1 and the French Government sent
out an exploring and excavating expedition to Babylonia under a
young and brilliant scholar, Jules Oppert. The results of the
mission, which lasted from 1851 to 1854, were embodied in two
learned volumes, the first of which appeared in 1863.2 In these
Oppert showed, what Hincks and Rawlinson had already pointed out,
that the peculiarities of the Assyrian syllabary were due not only
to its pictorial origin but also to the fact that it had been
invented by a non-Semitic people. This primitive population of
Babylonia, called Akkadian by Hincks, Sumerian by Oppert, had spoken
an agglutinative language similar to that of the Turks or Finns, and
had been the founders of Babylonian civilization. For these views
Oppert found support in the tablets of the library of Nineveh, a
large part of which consists of translations from the older language
into Semitic Assyrian, as well as of comparative grammars,
vocabularies and reading-books in the two languages.
Once
more the Semitic scholars protested. There was no end to the
extravagant fantasies of the Assyriologists! The learned world was
comfortably convinced that none but a Semitic or Aryan people could
have been the originators of civilization, and to assert that the
Semites had borrowed their culture from a race which seemed to have
affinities with Mongols or Tatars was an outrage upon established
prejudices. The Semitic philologist was more certain than ever that
Assyrian decipherment was the folly of a few "untrained"
amateurs, and could safely be disregarded.
But
the little band of Assyriologists pursued their labours undisturbed.
In 1855-6 Hincks published a most remarkable series of articles in
the Journal of Sacred Literature, in which the various forms of the
Assyrian verb were analyzed and given once for all.
The
work has never had to be repeated, and the foundations of Assyrian
grammar were solidly laid.
A
few years later (in 1860) a complete grammar of the language was
published by Oppert. The initial stage of Assyrian decipherment was
thus at an end.
We
must now turn back to the second transcript of the Persian
inscriptions, which, thanks to its greater simplicity, had been
deciphered before the Assyro-Babylonian. The way was opened in 1844
by the Danish scholar Westergaard.1 With the help of the proper
names he fixed the values of many of the characters and made a
tentative endeavour to read the texts. But the language he brought
to light was of so strange a nature as to throw doubt on the
correctness of his method. Turkish, Arabic, Indian and even Keltic
elements seemed alike to be mingled in it. It was not, therefore,
till his readings had been subjected to revision by Hincks in 1846 2
and de Saulcy in 1850 3 that any confidence was reposed in it, and
the results made available for the decipherment of the Babylonian
transcripts, the characters of which frequently had the same forms.
It must be remembered, however, that Westergaard worked from
defective materials. Rawlinson had not yet published his copy of the
Behistun inscription, which he eventually placed in the hands of
Edwin Norris, who, in 1853, edited the text along with a syllabary,
grammar and vocabulary, as well as translations and commentary.1
This edition was a splendid piece of work, and with it the
decipherment of the second transcript of the Persian inscriptions
may be said to have been accomplished. Oppert's Peuple et Langage
des MMes, which appeared in 1879, did but revise, supplement and
systematize the work of Norris.
The
new language which had thus been brought to light was agglutinative.
Westergaard had seen in it the language of the Medes, and, like
Rawlinson, had connected it with a hypothetical "Scythian"
family of speech. The term "Scythian" was retained by
Norris, who, however, attempted to show that it was really related
to the Finnish dialects. But the excavations made at Susa by Loftus
in 1851 put another face on the matter. In 1874, and again more
fully in 1883,2 I pointed out that the inscriptions found at Susa
and other ancient Elamite sites were in an older form of the same
language as that of the second Achaemenian transcripts, and
furthermore that certain inscriptions discovered by Layard in the
plain of Mai-Amir eastward of Susa were in practically the same
script and dialect. At the same time I fixed the values of the
characters in the Mai-Amir texts and gave provisional translations
of them, with a vocabulary and commentary. Oppert and myself had
already been working at the reading of the older Susian
inscriptions, a task in which we were followed by Weissbach with a
greater measure of success.
But
the same cause which had retarded the decipherment of the second
transcript of the Persian inscriptions — a want of materials —
militated against any great advance being made in the decipherment
of the older Susian, and it is only since 1897, when the excavations
of M. de Morgan at Susa were begun, that the student has been at
last provided with the necessary means. Thanks to the brilliant
penetration of the French Assyriologist, Dr. Scheil, the outlines of
the language of the ancient kingdom of Elam can now be sketched with
a fair amount of completeness and accuracy.1 The name of Neo-Susian
has by common consent been conferred upon the language of the second
Achaemenian transcripts; perhaps Neo-Elamite would be better. At all
events it represents the language of the second capital of the
Persian Empire as it was spoken in the age of Darius and his
successors, and is a lineal descendant of the old agglutinative
language of Elam.
The
three systems of cuneiform script, which a hundred years ago seemed
so impenetrable in their mystery, have thus, one by one, been forced
to yield their secrets. But as each in turn has been deciphered,
fresh forms of cuneiform writing and new languages expressed in
cuneiform characters have come to light. The first to emerge was
that agglutinative language of primitive Chaldaea which so
scandalized the philological world and excited such strong distrust
of the Assyriologists. The question of the name by which it should
be called has been set at rest by the discovery of tablets in which
its native designation is made known to us. Some years ago Bezold
published a bilingual text in which it is termed "the language
of Sumer,"1 and more recently Messerschmidt has edited a
bilingual inscription of the Babylonian king Samsu-ditana in which
the Semitic "translation" is described as "Akkadien."2
Oppert
is thus shown to have been right in the name which he proposed to
give to the language of the inventors of the cuneiform script.
The
first analysis of Sumerian grammar was made by myself in 1870, when
the general outlines of the language were fixed and the verbal forms
read and explained.3 Three years later Lenormant threw the materials
I had collected into a connected and systematic form, one result of
which was a controversy started by the Orientalist, Joseph Hale?,
who maintained that Sumerian was not a language at all, but a
cryptograph or secret writing. The answers made by the
Assyriologists to this curious theory obliged its author constantly
to shift his ground, but at the same time it also obliged them to
examine their materials more carefully and to revise conclusions
which had been arrived at on insufficient evidence. An important
discovery was now made by Haupt, who had already given the first
scientific translation of a Sumerian text; he demonstrated the
existence of two dialects, one of which is marked by all tuc
phenomena of phonetic decay.2 This was naturally supposed to
indicate a difference of age in the two dialects, the one being the
older and the other the later form of the language. Subsequent
research, however, has gone to show that the two dialects were
really used contemporaneously, the decayed state of that which was
called "the woman's language" by the Babylonians being due
to the fact that it was spoken in Akkad or Northern Babylonia, where
the Semitic element became predominant at a much earlier period than
in Sumer or Southern Babylonia.
Up
to this time the study of Sumerian had been almost entirely confined
to the bilingual texts, of which a very large number existed in the
library of Nineveh, and in which a Semitic translation was attached
to the Sumerian original. Now, however, the French excavations at
Tello in Southern Babylonia began to furnish European scholars with
monuments of the pre-Semitic period, and to these the decipherers,
among whom Amiaud and Thureau Dangin hold the first place,
accordingly turned their attention. Texts composed in days when
Sumerian princes still governed the country, and written by scribes
who were unacquainted with a Semitic language, were successfully
attacked with the assistance of the bilingual tablets of Nineveh.
But it was soon found that between these genuine examples of
Sumerian composition and the Sumerian which was written and
explained by Semitic scribes there was a good deal of difference.
The Semites had derived their culture from their Sumerian
predecessors, and a considerable part of the religious and legal
literature that had been handed on to them was in the older
language. This older language long continued to be that of both
religion and law, the two conservative forces in society, Sumerian
becoming to the Semitic Babylonians what Latin was to mediaeval
Europe. The inevitable result followed: Semitic idioms and modes of
thought were clothed in a Sumerian dress, and the ignorance of the
scribe produced not infrequently the equivalent of the dog-Latin of
a modern school-boy. The gradual changes that took place in the
cuneiform system of writing, and the adaptation of it to the
requirements of Semitic speech, contributed to the creation of an
artificial and quite unclassical Sumerian, and the lexical tablets
became filled with uses and combinations of characters which were
professedly Sumerian but really Semitic in origin. All this renders
the decipherment of a Sumerian text even now a difficult affair, and
many years must elapse before we can say that the stage of
decipherment is definitely passed and that the scholar may content
himself with a purely philological treatment of the language.
But
Sumerian was not the only new language outside the circle recognized
by the Persian monarchs which the decipherment of the cuneiform
characters has revealed to us. Even before the discovery of
Sumerian, cuneiform inscriptions had been copied on the rocks and
quarried stones of Armenia, which, when the characters composing
them came to be read, proved to belong to a language as novel and as
apparently unrelated to any other as Sumerian itself. As far back as
1826 a young scholar of the name of Schulz had been sent by the
French Government to Van in Armenia, where, according to Armenian
writers, Semiramis, the fabled queen of Assyria, had once left her
monuments. Here Schulz actually found that the cliff on which the
ancient fortress of the city stood was covered with lines of
cuneiform characters, and similar inscriptions soon came to light in
other parts of the country. Before Schulz, however, could return to
Europe he was murdered (in 1829) by a Kurdish chief, whose guest he
had been. But his papers were recovered, and the copies of the
inscriptions he had made were published in 1840 in the Journal
Asiatique. The first to attempt to read them was Dr. Hincks, whom no
problem in decipherment ever seemed to baffle.1 The characters, he
showed, were practically identical with those found in the Assyrian
texts, the values of many of which had now been ascertained; but
Hincks, with his usual acuteness, went on to use the Armenian or
Vannic inscriptions for settling the values of other Assyrian
characters which had not as yet been determined. In 1848 he was
already able to read the names of the Vannic kings and fix their
succession, to make out the sense of several passages in the texts,
and to indicate the nominative and accusative suffixes of the noun.
Here
Vannic decipherment rested for many years. There was no difficulty
in reading the inscriptions phonetically, for they were written in a
very simplified form of the Assyrian syllabary; but the language
which was thus revealed stood isolated and alone, without linguistic
kindred either ancient or modern.
The
various attempts made to decipher it were all failures.
So
things remained until 1882-3, when I published my Memoir on "The
Decipherment of the Vannic Inscriptions" in the Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society. Here for the first time translations were
given of the inscriptions, together with a commentary, grammar and
vocabulary. At the same time I settled the chronological place of
the Vannic kings, which had hitherto been uncertain, as well as the
geography of the country over which they ruled, and analyzed the
ancient religion of the people as made known to us by the
decipherment of the texts. In revising and supplementing Schulz's
copies of the inscriptions I had obtained the help of squeezes taken
by Layard and Rassam. The task of decipherment was, after all, not
so hard a matter as the absence of a bilingual text might make it
appear. The want of a bilingual was compensated by the numerous
ideographs and "determinatives" scattered through the
inscriptions, which indicated their general meaning, pointed out to
the decipherer the names of countries, cities, individuals and the
like, and gave him the signification of the phonetically-written
words which in parallel passages often replaced them. Moreover, the
French Assyriologist, Stanislas Guyard, and myself had independently
made the discovery that a clause which frequently comes at the end
of a Vannic inscription corresponds with the imprecatory formula of
the Assyrians, while the decipherment of the inscriptions led to the
further discovery that not only had the characters employed in them
been borrowed from the Assyrians in the time of the Assyrian
conqueror, Assur-natsir-pal, but that many of the phrases used in
Assur-natsir-pal's texts had been borrowed at the same time.
Other
scholars soon appeared to pursue and extend my work, more especially
Drs. Belck and Lehmann, whose expedition to Armenia in 1898 has
placed at our disposal a large store of fresh material. Amongst this
fresh material are two long bilingual inscriptions, in Vannic and
Assyrian, one of which had been discovered by de Morgan in 1890.
These have verified my system of decipherment, have increased our
knowledge of the Vannic vocabulary, have corrected a few errors,
and, I am bound to add, have in one or two cases justified
renderings of mine to which exception had been taken. A historical
Vannic text can now be read with almost as much certainty as an
Assyrian one.
With
the discovery of the language spoken in Armenia before the arrival
of the modern Armenians the list of lost languages and dialects
brought to light by the decipherment of the cuneiform script is by
no means exhausted. Among the tablets found in 1887 at Tel el-Amarna
in Upper Egypt was a long letter from the king of Mitanni or
Northern Mesopotamia in the native language of his country, which
has been partially deciphered by Messerschmidt, Jensen and myself.1
The language turns out to be distantly related to the Vannic, but is
of a much more complicated description. Two of the other letters in
the same collection were in yet another previously unknown language,
which the contents of one of them showed to be that of a kingdom in
Asia Minor called Arzawa. Since then tablets have been found at
Boghaz Keui in Cappadocia, on the site of the ancient capital of the
Hittites, which are in the same dialect and form of cuneiform
writing, and prove that in them we have discovered at last actual
relics of the Hittite tongue. Thanks to the light thrown upon them
by a tablet from the same locality, which I obtained last year, it
is now possible to raise the veil which has hitherto concealed the
Hittite language, and in a Paper which will shortly be printed I
have succeeded in partially translating the texts and sketching the
outlines of their grammar. But any detailed account of these
discoveries must be reserved for a future chapter; at present I can
do no more than refer briefly to these latest problems in cuneiform
decipherment.
That
other problems still await us cannot be doubted. The number of
different languages which the decipherment of the cuneiform script
has thus far revealed to us is an assurance that, as excavation and
research proceed, fresh languages will come to light which have
employed the cuneiform syllabary as a means of expression.Indeed, we
already know that it was used by the Kossaeans, wild mountaineers
who skirted the eastern frontiers of Babylonia, and a list of whose
words has been preserved in a cuneiform tablet,1 and also that there
was a time, before the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet, when
"the language of Canaan" — better known as Hebrew —
was written in cuneiform characters. Canaanite glosses are found in
the Tel el-Amarna tablets, and two Sidonian seals exist in which the
cuneiform syllabary is employed to represent the sounds of
Canaanitish speech.2
And
the key to all this varied literature, this medley of languages, the
very names of which had perished, was a simple guess! But it was a
scientific guess, made in accordance with scientific method, and
based upon sound scientific reasoning. It is true that it needed the
slow and patient work of generations of scholars before the guess
could ripen into maturity; the discovery of the value of a single
letter in the Old Persian alphabet was sometimes the labour of a
lifetime; but, like the seed of the mustard tree, the guess
contained within itself all the promise of its future growth. On the
day when Grotefend identified the names of Darius and Xerxes, the
decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, and therewith of the
history, the theology and the civilization of the ancient Oriental
world, was potentially accomplished.
1
In this year an elaborate edition of his work was brought out under
the title of Voyages du Chevalier Chardin en Perse, et autres Lieux
de l'Orient, Enrichis de Figures en Tailledouce, qui reprentent les
Antiquités et les Choses remarquables du Pais (Amsterdam),
two pages (167-8) in vol. ii. being devoted to the inscriptions, the
cuneiform being printed on plate lxix.
1
Ideen über die Politik, den Verkehr und den Handel der
vornehmsten Volker der alten Welt, vol. i. pp. 563 sqq.; translated
into English in 1833.
1
The discovery has sometimes been claimed for Tychsen {De cuneatis
hiscriptionibus Persepolitanis Lucubratio, 1798, p. 24), but Tychsen
supposed that the wedge was used to divide sentences, not words.
2
Undersogelser om de Persepolilanske Inscriptioner (1800), translated
into German in 1802.
1
"Om Zendsprogets," in the Skandinaviske Literaturselskabs
Skrifter, xxi., translated into German in 1826.
2
Menwire sur deux Inscriptions cuneiformes trouvées prfc
(THamadan (Paris, 1836).
3
Die Altpersischen Keil-Inschriften von Persepolis (Bonn, 1836).
1
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, x.
1
Monument de Ninive, with plates drawn by Flandin.
2
See his Memoir, "Sur lecriture assyrienne," in the Journal
asiatique, 1847-8, ix.-xu
1
Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, xxi. pp. 240 sqq See also
pp. 114 sqq.
2
Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, xxii. pp. 3 sqq.
3
Edinburgh Meeting, p. 140.
4
Revue archeologique, 1847, pp. 501 sqq.
1
Recherches sur P/criture cundiforme assyrienne (1849).
2
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xii. pp. 401 sqq. The
translation of the Black Obelisk inscription is given on pp.431-48.
1
Atheneam, December 27, 1851.
2
In the Paper read by Hincks before the Royal Irish Academy in June
1849, and published the following year.
3
For Hincks's translation of the annals of Sennacherib, see Layard's
Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 139 sqq.
*
Literary Gazette July 5, 1846.
1
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xiv.
2
A List of Assyro-Babylonian Characters (1852); also the Transactions
of the Royal Irish Academy, xxii. (1855), and more especially The
Polyphony of the Assyro-Babylonian Cuneiform Writing (1863).
1
See his Asshur and the Land of Nimrod (1898).
1
F. Jones, Vestiges of Assyria (1855); Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society, xv. pp. 297 sqq.; and more especially Memoirs, edited by R.
H. Thomas, 1857.
3
Expedition scientifique en Mesopotamie.
1
In the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vi. PP- 337
sqq.
2
Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, xxi. pp. 114 sqq. and 233
sqq.
3
Journal asiatique, xiv. pp. 93 sqq.; xv. pp. 398 sqq.
1
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xv.
2
Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, iii. pp. 465
sqq.; Actes du Vlieme Congres International des Orientalistes en
1883, ii. pp. 637 sqq. (1885).
1
Memoires de la Delegation en Perse; the volumes by Dr. Scheil on the
inscriptions that have thus far appeared are ii., iii., iv., v. and
vi.
1
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 1889, p. 434.
2
Ak-ka-du; Orientalische Literatur-Zeitung, 1905, p. 268.
3
Journal of Philology, iii. pp. 1 sqq. I endeavoured to settle the
nature of Sumerian phonology in a Memoir on "Accadian
Phonology," published by the Philological Society, 1877-8.
1
Die Sumerischen Familiengesetze (1879).
2
Gottingen Nachrichten, 17 (1880); Die Akkadische Sprache (1883).
1
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1848, ix. pp. 387 sqq.
1
See my article, "On the Language of Mitanni," in the
Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archeology, 1900, pp. 171
sqq.; and Leopold Messerschmidt in the Mitteilungen der
Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1899, part iv. pp. 175 sqq.
1
Fr. Delitzsch, Die Sprache der Kossder (1884).
2
They are now in the possession of M. de Clercq. For a translation of
the inscriptions upon them, see my Patriarchal Palestine, p. 250.
CHAPTER II THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL MATERIALS; THE
EXCAVATIONS AT SUSA AND THE ORIGIN OF BRONZE
The
modern science of archaeology has been derisively called "the
study of pots." As a matter of fact, the study of ancient
pottery occupies a prominent place in it, and we cannot turn over
the pages of a standard archaeological work without constantly
coming across photographs and illustrations of the ceramic art or
reading descriptions of vases and bowls, of coloured ware and
fragmentary sherds.
Questions
of date and origin are made to turn on the presence or absence of
some particular form of pottery on a given site, and fierce
controversies have arisen over a single fragment of a vessel of
clay. A knowledge of ancient pottery is a primary requisite in the
scientific excavator and archaeologist of to-day.
The
reason of this is obvious. Archaeology is an inductive science; its
conclusions, therefore, are drawn from the comparison and
co-ordination of objects which can be seen and handled, as well as
tested by all competent observers. It is built upon what our German
friends would call objective facts, and the method it employs is
that carefully-disciplined and experimentally-guarded application of
the ordinary logic of life which can alone give us scientific
results.
The
method is one which the purely literary mind seems often curiously
incapable of comprehending; the literary student is accustomed to
deal so exclusively with matters of merely individual taste and
theory that he is as little able to understand what is meant by
scientific evidence and probability as the scholar who is not a
mathematician is able to follow the reasoning of Lord Kelvin. This
is a fact which has to be borne in mind more especially in
archaeological science, for the questions with which archaeology is
concerned so frequently invade the domain of literature or appear so
closely connected with questions that are more or less literary,
that the purely literary scholar is apt to think himself just as
well qualified to discuss them as "the man in the street"
is apt to think himself qualified to discuss the etymology of a
word. To all such the archaeologist would say, "Go and study
your pots."
For
pottery is practically indestructible. Like the fossils on which the
geologist has built up the past history of life upon the earth, it
is an enduring evidence, when rightly interpreted, of the past
history of man.
Like
the fossils, moreover, it exhibits a multitudinous variety of types
and forms. But in all these types and forms there is an underlying
unity. The primitive
needs
of man are everywhere the same, and the powers of mind called in to
supply them are the same also.
The
dish and bowl, the vase and its handles, meet us again and again
wherever we go; and the same materials for making them meet us also.
The hands of man, guided by the brain of man, found clay wherewith
to manufacture the vessels that he needed, and to harden it
afterwards in the sun or fire.
Where
or how the first pottery was made we do not know, we probably shall
never know. When palaeolithic man first makes his appearance in
Europe he seems not yet to have been acquainted with it; but it is
difficult to prove a negative in archaeology as in other sciences,
and the absence of palaeolithic pottery may be due only to the
imperfection of the record. At any rate, as we descend the ladder of
chronology the existence of man is marked more and more by the
fragments of pottery he has left behind him; at Rome a whole
mountain of it grew up in the space of a few centuries, and the huge
mounds that encircled Cairo a hundred years ago were mainly formed
of mediaeval sherds. When excavating on an Egyptian site I have
sometimes been tempted to think that the people who once lived there
must have spent their whole time in breaking their household ware.
Now
not only are the primitive needs of man much the same throughout the
world and at all periods of time, the nature of man is much the same
also; and a distinguishing feature in his nature is love of variety.
The
same variety which we see in the forms of life and in the outward
appearance and mental aptitudes of man himself is reflected in the
products of his skill.
Yet
along with this love of variety goes a strong conservative or
imitative instinct — an instinct which finds, too, its
counterpart in nature, "so careful of the type."
On
the one hand, fashions change; on the other, a fashion once
introduced spreads rapidly and maintains itself to the exclusion of
all others for a determinate period of time throughout a determinate
area. And to nothing does this apply with more truth than to
pottery. Observation has shown that not only are different tribes or
countries distinguished by a difference in their pottery, but that
in each tribe or country similar differences distinguish successive
periods of time. When to this is added the practical
indestructibility of the potsherd, it will easily be seen what a
criterion is afforded by it for fixing the age and character of
ancient remains, and their relation to other monuments of the past.
It is not surprising that a study of pottery has become the
sheet-anchor of archaeological chronology, and that the first object
of the scientific excavator is to determine the relative succession
of the ceramic remains he discovers and their connection with
similar remains found elsewhere.
Scientific
excavation means, before all things else, careful observation and
record of every piece of pottery, however apparently worthless,
which the excavator disinters.
But
now, unfortunately, I have to make an admission. We have, as yet, no
ceramic record in either Babylonia or Assyria. Until very recently
there has been no attempt in either country at scientific
excavation. The pioneers, Layard and Botta and Loftus, lived and
worked before it was known or thought of, and we cannot, therefore,
be too thankful to Layard for having nevertheless given us so full
and accurate an account of what he found, and the conditions under
which he found it. The excavations controlled by the British Museum
have, I am sorry to say, been for the most part destructive rather
than scientific; such objects as were wanted by the Museum were
alone sought after; little or no record has been kept of their
discovery, and they have been mixed with objects bought from
natives, of whose origin nothing was known. At one spot, Carchemish,
the old Hittite capital, which, though not strictly in Assyria,
formed part of the Assyrian Empire, and was the seat of an Assyrian
governor, the so-called excavations conducted by the Museum in 1880
were simply a scandal, which Dr. Hayes Ward, who visited the spot
shortly afterwards, has characterized as "wicked." The
archaeological evidence there, which would have thrown so much light
on the Hittite problem, has been irretrievably lost.
Matters
are better now, and if I may judge from the work done by Mr. H. R.
Hall at Der el-Bahari in Egypt for the Egypt Exploration Fund, his
colleague, Mr. L. W. King, who has recently been excavating for the
British Museum in Assyria, will have done something to retrieve the
archaeological good name of our British excavators in the East. M.
de Sarzec's excavations at Tello in Southern Babylonia were also
conducted with some consideration for archaeological method, at all
events on the architectural side, and in the capable hands of M.
Heuzey the works of art found there have been made to yield valuable
results.
Moreover,
the history of Tello may be said to be comprised in a single epoch
of archaic Babylonia, and all objects discovered on the site may
consequently be regarded as belonging to one age and phase of
Babylonian civilization. Of the American excavations at Niffer it is
difficult to speak at present. The work there has been careful and
patient, and has extended over a long series of years. The
architectural facts have been accurately recorded, at all events in
the case of the great temple of Bel, and about the sequence of the
inscribed monuments there is little room for doubt. But accusations
of carelessness have lately been brought by the excavators one
against the other, and when we find the sharpest critic among them
unable
to substantiate his own account of the discovery of a library and
implicitly endorsing the assignment of a Parthian palace to the
"Mykenaean" age, it is impossible to put much faith in
their descriptions of archaeological details. Some years ago the
Germans explored a cemetery at El-Hibba with considerable care and
thoroughness, and thus revealed to us pretty much all we know at
present about Babylonian funereal customs; yet here again too little
attention was paid to the pottery, and the actual date of the
cemetery is still uncertain. It may belong to the Babylonian period,
but it may also not be older than the Persian or even Parthian age.
The
Germans are once more working in the lands of the Euphrates and
Tigris, but in Babylonia their labours have been mainly confined to
the Babylon of Nebuchadrezzar, where comparatively little has been
discovered. Since 1904, however, the chief strength of the
expedition has been directed upon Qal'at Shiiqat, where Assur, the
primitive capital of Assyria, formerly stood, and here we may expect
that archaeological results of first-class importance will at last
be obtained. But the work there has not yet advanced far enough for
more to be done than the mapping out of the old city, the
ascertainment of certain architectural facts, and the recovery of
inscriptions of great historical value.
It
will be seen, therefore, that the reproach brought against
excavations in Egypt by Mr. Rhind in 1862 still holds good of
excavations in Babylonia and Assyria. The first stage in their
history is only just passing away. The idea that excavation is a
trade which any one can take up without previous training, and that
all the excavator need think about is the discovery of objects for a
museum, is only beginning to disappear. In 1862 Rhind could write of
Egyptian tombs: "I am not aware that there can be found the
contents of a single sepulchre duly authenticated with satisfactory
precision as to what objects were present, and as to the relative
positions all these occupied when deposited by contemporary hands.
Indeed,
for many of the Egyptian sepulchral antiquities scattered over
Europe there exists no record to determine even the part of the
country where they were exhumed.... There have thus been swept away
unrecorded into the past illustrative facts of very great interest,
which cannot now, according to any reasonable probability, be
replaced, at all events in the degree which there are grounds to
believe were then possible."1 Happily, Mr. Rhind's words are no
longer true of Egypt, where he himself set the first example of
showing how scientific exploration ought to be carried on, and the
result is that the ancient civilization and culture of Egypt are now
known to us even better than those of classical Greece or Rome.
But
what was true in 1862 of Egypt is still very largely true of Assyria
and Babylonia. We are beginning to know something about the history
of Assyro-Babylonian architecture; we know a little about the early
work of the Babylonians in metal and stone; but the history of
Assyro-Babylonian pottery is still, speaking broadly, a blank. For
most of his knowledge of the ancient Euphratean civilizations the
archaeologist has to turn to the inscriptions and written literature
of which such vast quantities have survived, and hence, besides
being an archaeologist in the strict sense, he must be also a
decipherer and a philologist. He is still precluded from appealing
to the evidence which can be handled and felt.
From
the point of view of the archaeologist written evidence is usually
unsatisfactory because it admits of more than one interpretation. A
translation which seems certain to one scholar may be questioned by
another; an inference drawn from the words of a text by one student
may be denied by another.
The
statements in the texts themselves may be contradictory, or their
imperfection may lead to wrong conclusions. Above all, the evidence
may come to the archaeologist from a philologist whose bent of mind
is literary rather than scientific, and who will therefore be unable
either to appreciate or to understand scientific testimony. Nothing
is more common than to come across literary critics who cannot be
made to understand the nature of inductive proof.
On
the other hand, the decipherer of a lost language must necessarily
be an archaeologist as well. The clues he follows will be largely
archaeological, and he has to appeal to archaeology at every step.
The method he must pursue is the method of archaeology and of other
inductive sciences, and the materials he uses are in part the
materials of archaeology also.
The
philologist who knows nothing of history and geography, who is
unable to follow a scientific argument and appreciate scientific
reasoning, can never decipher; he may take the materials given him
by the decipherer and work them into philological shape,but that is
all. We must listen to him on questions of grammar and vocabulary;
on questions of archaeology his opinions are worth no more than
those of the ordinary man.
I
have insisted on this point because it is a very important one in a
study like Assyriology. The public naturally thinks that in all
Assyriological matters the opinion of one Assyriologist is as good
as that of another. We might just as well suppose that in all
matters which come under the head of astronomy the opinions of every
class of astronomer are equally authoritative. But in astronomy
there are questions which are purely mathematical, and there are
other questions which are more or less chemical, and the astronomer
who has devoted his attention to the spectrum analysis is contented
to leave to his mathematical colleague abstruse calculations in
advanced mathematics. The Assyriologist who is a grammarian pure and
simple is just as little an authority on the archaeological side of
his study as any one else who is ignorant of archaeology, and the
materials he provides must be dealt with by the archaeologist like
the literary materials provided for him by the classical
philologist; the materials in both cases stand on the same footing.
At
the same time, there is a difference between them. In the first
place, the literary materials with which the Assyriologist deals are
in a very large number of instances autographs. They are the actual
documents of the writers whose names they bear or to whose age they
belong. And there is all the difference in the world between the
letters of a Plato or a Cicero which have come down to us through
numerous copyists and the letters of Khammu-rabi of Babylon, the
originals of which are now in our hands. The inscriptions in which
Nebuchadrezzar describes his building operations or the
contemporaneous annals of the Assyrian kings are, from the
historical point of view, of far more value than the books written
about them at a later date, however admirable the latter may be as
works of literature; in other words, they are first-hand sources,
and, as such, objective facts of much the same character as ancient
pottery or stone implements.
Then,
in the second place, the documents have to be deciphered before they
can be treated philologically; and, as I have already said, the task
of decipherment is in itself an archaeological pursuit. If carried
out on correct lines it is itself an instance of the application of
the inductive method, and it is, moreover, constantly compelled to
call archaeology or history to its aid. Assyriology is thus
primarily an archaeological study, using the methods of
archaeological science and demanding the help of the archaeologist,
even though there are Assyriologists who are not archaeologists
themselves.
But
for the present our archaeological facts have to be taken mainly
from the results of the decipherment of the inscriptions. They are
for the most part epigraphical; the excavator has not yet
supplemented them, as in Egypt or prehistoric Greece, on what I
would term the ceramic side. This, at least, is the case in
Babylonia and Assyria. It is no longer the case, however, throughout
the ancient Assyro-Babylonian world. There is one exception to the
charge brought by modern archaeology against the excavators in the
lands of the Tigris and Euphrates. M. de Morgan has been working for
the last ten years on the site of Susa, the capital of Elam, and he
has brought to his labours the knowledge and experience of an
excavator who has been trained in modern methods and is fully awake
to the requirements of modern science. At last, at Susa, we have an
archaeological record of the history of culture, based not only on
written monuments, but also on the more tangible evidence of
scientifically-observed strata of human remains. It is true that
Elam is not Babylonia; but one of the surprises of M. de Morgan's
discoveries is that in the early days of Babylonian history Elam was
a Babylonian province, and Susa the seat of a Babylonian governor.
The
same culture extended from Sippara on the Euphrates to Susa in Elam,
and this culture was Babylonian. Hence, in default of materials from
Babylonia itself, we may see in the history of cultural development
at Susa a counterpart of that in Baby-
lonia,
at any rate during the period when Elam and Babylonia were alike
under Semitic rule.1
At
Susa the line of division between the prehistoric or neolithic age
and the historical epoch is very clearly marked. The prehistoric
stratum lies twenty-five metres below the surface of the mounds, and
is divided by M. de Morgan and his fellow-workers into two periods.
The first is distinguished by a fine thin pottery, with yellow
paste, which is already made upon a wheel. It does not exceed from
two to seven millimetres in thickness; it is polished, and decorated
with black bands and various patterns in a brown colour produced by
oxide of iron. The designs are not only geometric, but also
represent animal and vegetable forms. Among them are rows of
ostriches identical with those found on the painted prehistoric
pottery of Egypt. Indeed, the explorers were especially struck by
the resemblance of the pottery as a whole to that of Egypt in the
prehistoric age, though it is difficult to see what connection there
can have been between the two countries at so remote a date, and the
curious similarity between the rows of birds depicted on the vases
must remain for the present an archaeological puzzle. There is also
a certain amount of resemblance between the geometric pottery and
that disinterred by M. Chantre at the early Assyrian colony at Kara
Eyuk in Cappadocia, which will be discussed more fully in a later
chapter.1
Among
the geometrical patterns of the Susian ware spherical forms are
common; the herring-bone pattern is also met with, as well as a
pattern like the Greek sigma. The under-part of the vases is often
decorated, so also is the inside. A form of vase frequently found is
the water-jar with a rounded foot; the goblet is another common
shape. Sometimes the vases are supplied with four handles for
suspension.
This
fine yellow pottery occurs not only at Susa, but also throughout
Elam, but practically none of it has hitherto been discovered in
Babylonia. 1 One cause of this is doubtless that in the alluvial
plain of Babylonia a purely neolithic stratum, if it existed at all,
would lie below the water-level. Maritime shells are met with as far
north as the site of Babylon, showing that the Persian Gulf once
extended thus far, and the water of the Euphrates still infiltrates
through the soil.
The
period of the fine thin pottery in Elam comes suddenly to an end,
and the people of the second prehistoric period seem to have been
intruders who were less civilized than their predecessors and
un-acquainted with the art of making the older ware.
Their
pottery is coarse and porous, and the geometric designs upon it are
traced with the pen, not freely painted as in the case of the
earlier ceramic. The animal and vegetable designs of the older ware
have disappeared, and the zones, triangles and other geometric
figures which take their place are traced in black or maroon-red
upon a yellow clay. The resemblance between this pottery and that of
Kara Eyuk is even greater than in the case of the pottery of the
first period. Thick cylindrical vases are common, as well as bowls
with a flat bottom and broad sides. Some of the vases resemble the
bulbous vases of the Egyptian Twelfth dynasty; there are others with
flat bottoms and angular sides which are also like Egyptian
water-jars of the same Twelfth-dynasty period. Along with these more
characteristic forms of pottery many small, unpainted cups have been
found, as well as a few finer wheel-made vases of ovoid shape and
yellow or reddish colour. It should be added that coarse, red,
hand-made pottery abounds in both the prehistoric periods, as indeed
it does also in the later historic epoch.
As
the second prehistoric epoch drew to a close at Susa, many
indications of an advance in culture began to show themselves. Vases
and flat-bottomed cups of soft stone were introduced, among them
being a few of alabaster; the bricks began to be burnt in a kiln,
and even seals with a species of writing upon them made their
appearance. Nevertheless, the neolithic age does not pass into the
age of metal through any transitional stages.
The
earliest stratum which marks the historic age yields for the first
time clay tablets with inscriptions, the characters of which are
already developing out of pictures into the cursive cuneiform. The
inscribed cylinder-seals of Babylonia naturally appear along with
them; alabaster vases, cups and bowls become common, and some of
them are cut into the forms of animals. Comparatively little pottery
has been found in this stratum; but this is probably an accident.
The
next stratum brings us to the period of Babylonian supremacy, when
the viceroys of the Babylonian king ruled at Susa, and Semitic
influence was already predominant in the Babylonian plain. It is the
age of Sargon of Akkad, and its commencement may approximately be
placed about BC 4000.
The
pottery still consists of a yellow paste, though there are also many
specimens of a coarse black clay decorated with incrustations in
white. The yellow ware is occasionally ornamented with mouldings of
trees and other natural objects. A typical vase of the period is one
of globular shape and small rim, and with a moulded or incised
rope-pattern running round the centre and lower part of the rim.
Another type is one which looks like an inverted vase, with a series
of rope-patterns encircling it, while another seems to have been
copied from the pile of cylindrical vases into which, as into a
drain, the body of the dead Babylonian was inserted. These types of
vase appear to have lasted, with little variation, down to the end
of the Persian period, though, unfortunately, the disturbance of the
ground and the consequent mixture of objects under the temple of
In-Susinak, where the excavations were carried on, makes certainty
on the point unattainable. Immense quantities of bronze votive
offerings, of all kinds and sorts, were, however, found here, along
with fragments of glass, and, as inscriptions show that they must
all have been buried on the spot before the tenth century BC, we
have a time-limit for dating the forms of the bronze weapons and
tools.
The
archaeological evidence obtained at Susa has been supplemented by
excavations made some ninety miles to the west of it, at a place
called Mussian, on the eastern bank of the river Tib. Here there are
graves, as well as the remains of a temple and houses with vaults,
columns and walls of burnt brick. Where the strata have allowed a
section to be cut down to the virgin soil the results are found to
agree with those revealed by the excavations at Susa. The earliest
layer belongs to the neolithic age, flint and obsidian, as at Susa,
being the materials employed for tools and weapons. The pottery is
thick and hand-made, the paste being either yellow or red in colour,
and the surface is often polished, while many of the vases are
furnished with holes for suspension.
This
layer seems older than anything discovered at Susa. It is followed
by a second layer, in which the pottery is wheel-made, and is
decorated with animal and vegetable figures in black or red, like
the first prehistoric ware of the Susa mounds. Among the animal
figures are those of men, and one fragment of yellow ware is
ornamented with the so-called swastika.
In
the upper part of the layer a few fragments of copper have been met
with, indicating that the neolithic age was beginning to pass into
that of copper.
Above
this layer is a third, characterized by a fine ware, usually yellow
but sometimes greenish in colour, and decorated with designs in
lustrous black. In the fine specimens the decoration has been laid
on before firing, in other cases after firing. The pottery as a
whole has a general resemblance to that of prehistoric Egypt. The
culture represented by this layer was still neolithic, but objects
of copper were making their appearance, and the flint instruments of
the past were beginning to be superseded by metal, a knowledge of
which appears to have come from abroad. With the introduction of
copper the Elamite or historical epoch may be said to have begun. It
was now that the temple was first built of crude bricks, reeds
taking the place of wood, and so pointing to the influence of
Babylonia, where reeds were plentiful and wood was scarce.
Another
proof of Babylonian influence must be seen not only in ware of
Babylonian origin, but also in the figures of a nude goddess with
the hands placed upon the breasts, which originally represented the
divinity called Istar by the Semitic Babylonians.
Indeed,
from the fact that the goddess was represented in human form we may
infer that the figures, though first met with in the Sumerian age,
were of Semitic derivation, and show that Sumerian culture was
already being affected by the influence of Semitic religious ideas.1
The pottery found along with the figures is of a very varied
description, including coarse red and fine yellow ware. Among the
fine yellow ware are goblets with a tall cup supported on a foot.
A
typical form of the yellow ware is the vase with angular sides;
this, together with vases of more bulbous shape and terra-cotta
stands, is remarkably like some of the Egyptian Twelfth-dynasty
pottery in form. The stands, more especially, remind us of
Twelfth-dynasty Egypt. There is also a black ware decorated with
incised lines which are filled in with white. This black ware is
also found in Egypt, where Professor Petrie is now inclined to
associate it with the Hyksos. At all events it is absent there
during the interval that elapsed between the prehistoric period and
the epoch of the Twelfth dynasty, and it characterizes the Hyksos
sites of the Delta, while its foreign and non-Egyptian character has
been recognized from the first. A few fragments of the same class of
pottery have been brought to light at Tello in Babylonia, where they
would appear to belong to the age of Gudea (BC 2700). One of these
formed part of a cylindrical vase or pyxis, identical in shape with
the black incised pyxides found at Susa at a depth of from five to
ten metres below the surface.
On
another fragment are spirited drawings of a water-bird, a fish
seized by a gull, a four-footed animal, and a boat with reeds
growing behind it, each in a separate panel.1 Similar ware has been
discovered in Southern Palestine, on the eastern coast of Cyprus, in
Spain and in the Greek islands. At Syros, for instance, where it
goes back to the neolithic age, it is associated with alabaster
vases, just as it is at Mussian.
Here
the bowls and vases of alabaster are strikingly Egyptian in form.
The
clay figures of the Babylonian goddess testify to the same extension
of culture in the copper age of Western Asia as do the black incised
vases with their white fillings. M. Chantre has found them at Kara
Eyuk in Cappadocia, on the borders of the Hittite region, though in
these the arms are no longer folded across the breast. Further west
I have lately shown2 that the so-called figure of Niobe on Mount
Sipylus in Lydia is a Hittite modification of them, and Dr.
Schliemann discovered one of them, of lead, in the ruins of the
Second (prehistoric) city at Troy.1 At Troy, however, the type was
more usually modified in the Hittite direction, as it was also in
the islands of the Egean, where marble figures of the goddess are
plentiful.2 In Egypt clay figures closely resembling those of
Babylonia and Elam, but with the arms outstretched, have been met
with from time to time at Karnak, and supposed to be dolls of the
Roman period; but since the discovery by M. Legrain of remains which
prove that the history of Karnak reaches back to the prehistoric or
early dynastic period, there is no longer any reason for not
connecting them with their analogues elsewhere. And the discoveries
recently made by Professor Pumpelly in the tumuli near Askabad, west
of Khiva and Herat, go far towards supporting the identification.
Here the explorers have brought to light two periods of neo-lithic
culture, in the earlier of which no animals were as yet
domesticated, and the pottery was of the rudest description. During
the second period the domesticated animals were introduced,
including the horse and camel. Then came an age of copper,
accompanied by figurines representing the Babylonian goddess,
sometimes with the arms outstretched, sometimes with them lying
against the sides, as in Cappadocia. The figurines are evidence that
the art of working copper was derived from Babylonia, a conclusion
which is confirmed by M. Henri de Morgan's excavations in the tumuli
of Talish in Gilan, on the south-western shore of the Caspian. 1
As
far back as our knowledge of Babylonian history extends the
inhabitants of the country were acquainted with copper, and its use
lasted century after century into quite recent times. Of a stone
age, as I have already said, there is no clear trace. It is true
that Captain Cros has sunk shafts at Tello, and reached the virgin
soil at a depth of seventeen metres, finding there mace-heads of
alabaster and hard stone similar to those of primitive Egypt, as
well as other stone objects; but no flint flakes were met with, and
the pottery was similar to that of the higher strata.2 On the other
hand, objects of copper, great and small, including helmets and a
colossal spear dedicated by a king of Kis, have been disinterred,
though nothing of bronze has been discovered among the earlier
remains. It was the same at Muqayyar, the ancient Ur, as well as on
the site of Eridu, where Taylor found only copper bowls and the like
in the graves, even in those of so late a date as to contain objects
of iron and an Egyptian scarab.1 At Nififer, moreover, the ancient
Nippur, American excavation has the same tale to tell. According to
Dr. Peters,2 though iron knives, hatchets, spear-heads and
arrow-heads have been exhumed, the date of which is said to be
between 2000 and 1000 BC, there is no trace of bronze, the
multitudinous objects, which further west would have been of bronze,
being here of copper.
As
at Ur, the copper age lasts down to the very end of the Babylonian
kingdom. Hilprecht, on the authority of Haynes, does indeed say3
that in the very lowest strata of the temple mound, far below the
pavements of Sargon and Naram-Sin (BC 3750), "fragments of
copper, bronze and terra-cotta vessels" were disinterred. But
no attempt seems to have been made to analyze the so-called
"bronze," which may have been a natural alloy of copper
with a small percentage of lead or antimony, and the age ascribed to
the fragments is rendered doubtful by the accompanying statement,
that "fragments of red and black lacquered pottery" were
discovered in the same place which were indistinguishable from the
red and black pottery of classical Greece. As yet, therefore,
excavation in Babylonian lands has failed to tell us when the art of
mixing tin with the copper was discovered and copper was superseded
by bronze.
This,
however, had taken place before the commencement of the Assyrian
age. The bronze scimitar of Hadad-nirari I (BC 1330) x finds an
exact copy in a scimitar discovered by Mr. Macalister at Gezer in
Palestine,2 and the tools and weapons exhumed at Nineveh are of
bronze and not copper. Analysis shows that the bronze usually
consisted of about one part of tin to ten of copper, though for
special objects like bells the amount of tin was considerably
increased.3 When was it that the tin was first imported and
intentionally mixed with the copper in order to harden the metal?
In
default of archaeological evidence, the only possibility there is of
discovering an answer to this question lies in an examination of the
primitive pictures out of which the cuneiform characters eventually
developed. Here we are at once struck by a
curious
fact. The "determinative" attached to ideographs
signifying "knife," "weapon" and the like is not
an ideograph which expresses the name of a metal; nor is it an
ideograph denoting "stone," but one which means "wood."
That is to say, the material of which cutting instruments were made
at the time when the picture-writing of Babylonia came into
existence was neither metal nor stone, but wood.
That
it should not have been stone is explained by the geology of the
Babylonian plain, which consists of alluvial soil devoid of stones.
That it should not have been of metal can only mean that the
inventors of the pictorial script were not yet acquainted with the
use of copper, bronze or iron. In default of metal and stone they
had to content themselves with hard wood.
On
the other hand, copper, as well as gold and silver, had become known
to them when the primitive pictographs were still in process of
formation, and long before they had passed into cursive cuneiform.
Copper
was represented by the picture of an ingot or square plate of the
metal with a handle attached to it, showing that it was already in a
fused and worked state when it was imported into Babylonia.
Gold
seems to have originally been denoted by the picture of a collar or
necklace, which signified "shining," and was afterwards
employed before the names of the precious metals. I have, however,
never found this collar actually used to signify "gold";
in the earliest texts yet discovered the phonetic syllable gi is
attached to it when "gold" is denoted, the Sumerian word
for "gold" being azag-gi. "Silver" was "the
white precious metal," the symbol for "white" being
attached to the picture of the collar, and so forming a compound
ideograph. This implies that silver became known to the inventors of
the hieroglyphs at a later period than gold, though still before
what I will call the cuneiform age. Even iron was known to them at
the same early epoch, and was expressed by ideographs which
literally mean "stone of heaven,"l an indication that
meteoric iron must be referred to.
But
now comes a fact which is difficult to explain, so contrary is it to
the archaeological evidence. As we have seen, no traces of bronze
have been found in the Assyro-Babylonian region before the beginning
of the Assyrian age — let us say about BC 2000.
Nevertheless,
by the side of the simple ideograph which denotes the Sumerian
tirudu, "copper" — er& in Semitic Babylonian —
we find a compound ideograph signifying "bronze," called
zabar in Sumerian, from which the Semites borrowed their 'siparrn.
It is true that it is a compound ideograph, but it occurs in the
cuneiform texts, not only in the era of Gudea (BC 2700), but even
before the age of Sargon of Akkad (BC 3800). And an analysis of its
earliest form seems to indicate that it really must have meant
bronze from the first, and that consequently there was no
transference of signification in later days. Literally it means
"white copper," the word for "copper" being
phonetically written ka-mas, with which the Semitic Babylonian
kemassu is closely connected. Lead cannot be intended, as that was
denoted by a different word and different ideographs, and I do not
see what else "white copper" can be in contradistinction
to red copper except bronze. Polished copper could be termed
"bright," but hardly "white."1
The
possibility remains that tin might have been the metal originally
denoted by the compound ideograph. If so, both the ideograph and the
words expressed by it had lost all reference to tin before the
beginning of the Assyrian period, and neither the Assyrian word for
"tin" nor the Sumerian word, if any existed, is now known.
Tin, moreover, was archaeologically late in making its appearance.
The earliest examples of pure tin of which I know are of the time of
the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. On the other hand, bronze first
appears in Egypt in the age of the Twelfth dynasty, 2 though it does
not become common until the Hyksos predecessors of the Eighteenth
dynasty had made themselves masters of the valley of the Nile. From
about BC 1600 onwards, enormous quantities of it were employed in
the eastern basin of the Mediterranean and the adjoining lands,
necessitating an equally large supply of tin. What the source of
this tin may have been it is not my present purpose to inquire. But
the persistence of the copper age in Babylonia, as well as in the
tumuli of Askabad, east of the Caspian, indicates that the
manufacture of bronze must have migrated from the north-west to the
Babylonian plain. We find it first in Assyria, not in Babylonia, and
it may well be that the Assyrians derived it from Armenia and the
population of Cappadocia, where, as I shall show in a subsequent
chapter, they had established colonies at an early period. At all
events, the earliest examples of bronze yet met with were discovered
by Dr. Schliemann in the Second prehistoric city at Troy.
It
was to this region that classical tradition referred the origin of
working in iron. An analysis of the gold of the first six Egyptian
dynasties submitted to Dr. Gladstone by Professor Petrie proved that
it was mixed with silver, and hence must have been derived from Asia
Minor.1 Egyptian legend made "the followers of Horus," who
founded dynastic Egypt, metallurgists and smiths whose metal weapons
enabled them to subdue the older neolithic population. The story as
it has come down to us declares the smiths to have been workers in
iron; iron, however, must be the substitute of the later version of
the story for some other metal, since, though Vyse claims to have
discovered an iron clamp in the great pyramid of Giza,1 and Petrie
has found a mass of iron in a Sixth-dynasty deposit in the temple of
Osiris at Abydos,2 ironsmiths can hardly have existed in the
pre-dynastic age. It is probable, therefore, that copper was the
metal which the dynastic Egyptians introduced into their new home,
and which was already in use in Babylonia. But the intercourse with
Asia Minor, which the gold of the First dynasty indicates must even
then have been going on, makes it possible that it was from this
quarter of the world that the earliest knowledge of the manufacture
of bronze was brought to the valley of the Nile. Even in the time of
the Twelfth dynasty, however, the tools found by Professor Petrie in
the workmen's huts at Kahun are of copper rather than of bronze.3
The colossal statue of King Pepi of the Sixth dynasty, discovered at
Hierakonpolis, is of hammered copper, and we have to wait for the
advent of the Eighteenth dynasty before bronze becomes the
predominant metal.
That
such was the case points to the Hyksos period as that in which
bronze succeeded in superseding the older copper. It may be that the
Hyksos brought the extended use of it with them from Syria.
In
Southern Palestine, Mr. Macalister's excavations at Gezer have shown
that bronze rather than copper was largely employed throughout the
so-called Amorite period, which went back to an earlier age than
that of the Twelfth dynasty, and it is just here that in the time of
the Eighteenth dynasty bronze itself began to make way for iron. Mr.
J. L. Myres has recently traced the polychrome pottery of Southern
Canaan to the Hittite lands of Cappadocia, 1 where the red ochre was
found by which it was characterized, and a knowledge of bronze may
have travelled along the same road.
But
these are speculations which may or may not be verified by future
research. For the present we must be content with the fact that, in
spite of the philological evidence to the contrary, copper, and not
bronze, was the metal which preceded the use of iron in Babylonia,
whereas in the northern kingdom of Assyria bronze was already known
at a comparatively early date. So far as the existing evidence can
carry us, it seems to indicate that Babylonia was the primitive home
of the copper industry, while bronze, on the other hand, made its
way eastward from Asia Minor and the north of Syria. Where bronze
was first invented is still unknown to us; all that seems certain is
that it must have been in a land where copper and tin are found
together.
NOTE
According
to the mineralogists, in the western part of the northern hemisphere
tin is found only in Britain, Spain and the neighbourhood of
Askabad, the scanty surface-tin of Saxony, France and Tuscany being
too poor and insignificant to have attracted attention in antiquity
(see de Morgan, Mission Scientifique au Caucase, ii. pp. 16-28). The
American excavations at Askabad under Professor Pumpelly appear to
have made it clear that bronze was not invented in that part of the
world, or indeed used in early days, and we are thus thrown back on
Britain and Spain. It is quite certain, however, that bronze made
its way to the west of Europe from the east, and the Hon. John
Abercromby has proved {Journal of the Anthropological Institute,
xxxii. pp. 375-94, and Proceedings of Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland, 1903-4, pp. 323-410) that the bronze culture came to this
country from the valley of the central Rhine where it cuts the river
at Mayence. On the other hand, the bronze-age civilization of the
Danube valley, the Balkan peninsula and Italy forms a whole with
that of the south-eastern basin of the Mediterranean, which again is
closely connected with the bronze-age culture of the Egean, Asia
Minor and Egypt, while the civilization of the Danube valley leads
on to that of Central Europe and, to a less extent, of Scandinavia
and Northern Germany. Montelius {Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, 1900, pp. 89 sgq.) has pointed out that the early bronze
culture of Northern Italy was carried to Scandinavia along the route
of the amber trade as far back as the close of the neolithic age in
Sweden, and the numerous objects of Irish gold found in Scandinavia
— though, it is true, of somewhat later date — show that
commercial relations must have existed between the British Islands
and the Scandinavian peninsula. Tin might have followed the gold
route until it met the amber route, by which it would have been
carried southward to Central Europe and the Adriatic.
In
Western Europe the sword, like the socketed celt, is first met with
in the third and last period into which the bronze age has been
divided. The earliest examples of the sword, in fact, are those
discovered at Mykenae, which belong to the age of the Eighteenth
Egyptian dynasty. Schliemann found only the dirk at Troy, and, so
far as our present evidence goes, the dirk alone was used by the
Hittites and Proto-Armenians down to the seventh century BC The
scimitar, however, was known in Assyria and at Gezer at least as
early as the fourteenth century BC (see p. 57 above), and in Cyprus
the sword makes its appearance along with the knife and fibula in
the later bronze age after the close of the age of copper.
Similarly
in Krete it was only in tombs of the Late Mykensean (or Late Minoan)
period that the cemetery of Knossos yielded swords of bronze {Annual
of the British School at Athens, x. p. 4). The dirk of the copper
age was stanged as at Troy and in the Danube valley, the Cyprian and
Hungarian forms being practically identical. From the Danube valley
the stanged spear-head passed to Western Europe during the second
period of the bronze age. The fibula is not found at Troy, where the
early bronze age will have corresponded with the copper age of
Cyprus.
All
this goes to show (1) that the scimitar — the harpe of the
Perseus myth — was a Semitic invention, while the long sword
was of European origin; (2) that at Troy, and possibly also in
Southern Palestine, to which Hittite polychrome pottery was carried
at an early date, bronze was known at a time when only copper was
used in Cyprus and Egypt; and (3) that the characteristic weapon of
this primitive bronze age was the dirk, which continued to
characterize Asia Minor long after the sword and scimitar had been
invented elsewhere. Taken in connection with the fact that the
pottery and decorative designs of Asia Minor can be linked with
those of the Balkan peninsula and the valley of the Danube, we may
provisionally conclude that Northern Asia Minor was the home of the
invention of bronze. Against this is the fact that no tin has
hitherto been found there, and we should accordingly have to explain
the origin of bronze by the theory that after the discovery of
various processes for hardening copper, further experiments were
made with imported tin. Unfortunately, neither the south of Cornwall
nor Asia Minor, with the exception of the Troad, has as yet been
scientifically explored from an archaeological point of view. But it
deserves mention that the curious needles with a double head of
twisted wire, which are met with among the remains of the bronze age
in Britain, are characteristic of the copper age in Cyprus and of
the early bronze age at Troy.
1
Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants, pp. 62, 66.
1
For the archaeological results of M. de Morgan's work, see his
Memoires de la Delegation en Perse, vols. i. and vii. The eighth
volume, which will also be devoted to archaeology, is in
preparation.
1
Chantre, Mission en Cappadoce plates x.-xii.
1
The yellow and red wheel-made ware, some of it inscribed with
characters of the age of Gudea, which has been disinterred at Tello,
is quite different. This class of pottery, by the way, seems to have
been preceded by a grey coarse ware, made with the hand. One
fragment of fine polished yellow ware with traces of black
ornamentation has recently been reported from Tello by Captain Cros
(Revue d'Assyriologie, 1905, p. 59), but the isolated character of
the discovery makes it probable that it was an importation from
Elam.
1
Copper figurines of the goddess, with hands pressed under the
breasts, found in one of the earliest substructures of Tello {circa
BC 4000), are published by M. Heuzey in the Revue d'Assyriologie,
1899, p. 44.
2
Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1905, p. 28.
1
Heuzey, in the Revue d'Assyriologie, 1905, pp. 59 sqq. and plate
iii. Von Lichtenberg (Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen
Gesellschaft, 1906) has lately pointed out that the black incised
pottery with white fillings is identical in Cyprus, Troy, the
Laibach bog and the Mondsee, and that the ornamentation which
characterizes it is found in the valley of the Danube and the
pile-dwellings of Switzerland. His attempt to derive it from Cyprus,
however, cannot be sustained in view of its occurrence in Elam.
1
Ih'os, p. 337. Schliemann called it the Third city. Dorpfeld's
subsequent excavations, however, have shown that it really was the
Second city, whose history fell into three periods,2 Some of these
represent the goddess with the arms folded, and not pressed against
the breasts. See, for example, the photograph of one found at Naxos
in the Comfites rendus du Congres International d'Archaeologie,
1905, p. 221. For Trojan examples, see Ilios, pp. 331-6.
1
See Memoires de la Delegation en Perse, viii. pp. 336-7. A report of
some of the results of the Pumpelly expedition is given by Dr.
Hubert Schmidt in the Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie 1906, Pt. iii. p.
385.
2
Flint implements, however, were discovered by Taylor in his
excavations at Abu Shahrein, the site of Eridu {Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society, xv. p. 410 and plate ii.).
1
See Taylor's "Notes on the Ruins of Muqeyer," in the
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xv. pp. 271-3 and 415.
2
Nippur, vol. ii. pp. 381-6.
3
The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, i. 2,
pp. 26-7.
1
Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archeology, 1876, pp. 347-8.
2
Figured in the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration
Fund, October 1904, p. 335.
3
Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 571-3.
1
ANA-BAR. Bar is given as the Sumerian pronunciation of the word for
"stone" {Syllabary 5, iv. 11, in Delitzsch's Assyrische
Lesestiicke, 3rd edition). In Old Egyptian "iron" was
similarly ba-n-pet, "stone of heaven," while "silver"
was "white gold," "gold" being symbolized by a
collar. We may compare the Indo-European "white" metal as
a name of "silver." The Sumerian azaggi, "gold,"
was a form of azagga^ "precious," more especially
"precious metal"; the more specific word for "gold"
was guskin, with which the Armenian oski must be connected. "Silver"
was bdbara, the "bright metal," nagga being "lead,"
the Armenian anag. The identity of the Armenian and Sumerian words
for "gold" and "lead," coupled with the Armenian
origin of the vine, and the fact that the mountain on which the ark
of the Babylonian Noah rested was Jebel Judi, south of Lake Van,
raises an interesting question as to the origin of Sumerian
civilization.
1
It must be remembered, however, that, according to Aristotle, the
copper of the Mossynceci in Northern Asia Minor was brilliant and
white, owing to its mixture with a species of earth, the exact
nature of which was kept a secret. The Babylonian ideograph for
"bronze," therefore, may have been a similar kind of
hardened copper, which was transferred to denote "bronze"
when the alloy of copper and tin became known.
2
See Garstang, El-Ardbah, p. 10. Dr. Gladstone, however, after giving
the results of his analysis of the Sixth-dynasty copper discovered
by Professor Petrie at Dendera, suggests that the small amount of
tin observable in it (about one per cent.) may have been added to it
artificially (Dendereh, p. 61). Bronze was "the normal metal"
of the Amorite period at Gezer (Mac-alister, Quarterly Statement of
the Palestine Exploration Fund, April 1904, p. 1 19), and the three
cities which represent this period go back beyond the age of the
Twelfth Egyptian dynasty, to at least BC 2900 (see Quarterly
Statement, January 1905, pp. 28-9).
At
Troy also Schliemann found numerous bronze weapons in the Second
(prehistoric) city (Ilios, pp. 475-9). In Krete bronze daggers of
the Early Minoan period (coeval with the Middle Empire of Egypt)
have been found at Patema and Agia Triada (Annual of the British
School at Athens, x. p. 198), and the pottery of the Middle Minoan
period (BC 2000-1500) was associated at Palaikastro with a bronze
button, two miniature bronze sickles, and a pair of bronze tweezers
{ibid, p. 202). As for the Caucasus, bronze was not known there till
a late date. Wilke {Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1904, pp.
39-104) has shown that the bronze culture of the Caucasus was
derived from the valley of the Danube, and made its way eastward
along the northern coast of Pontus; see also Rossler, Zeitschrift
fur Ethnologie, 1905, p. 118.
1
Dendereh (Egypt Exploration Fund), p. 62, for the gold of the Sixth
dynasty; The Royal Tombs of the Earliest Dynasties, pp. 39-4? for
that of the First dynasty.
1
Vyse, Pyramids of Gizeh, i. p. 276. The clamp was actually found by
his assistant Hill, after blasting away the two outer stones behind
which it had been placed.
2
Abydos, part ii. p. 33. An iron pin of the age of the Eighteenth
dynasty was found by Garstang at Abydos (El-Arabah, p. 30).
3
Illahun, Kahun and Curob, p. 12. Dr. Gladstone's analyses give only
about 2 parts of tin to 96*35 of copper. The bronze of the
Eighteenth dynasty found at Gurob yielded a less proportion of tin
(about 7 parts to 90 of copper) than the bronze of the Second
Assyrian Empire. A ring of pure tin, however, was also discovered at
Gurob.
1
Journal of the Anthropological Institute xxxiii. pp. 367 sqq.
CHAPTER III THE SUMERIANS
Among
the first results of the decipherment of the Assyrian cuneiform
inscriptions was one which was so unexpected and revolutionary, that
it was received with incredulity and employed to pour discredit on
the fact of the decipherment itself. European scholars had long been
nursing the comfortable belief that the white race primarily, and
the natives of Europe secondarily, were ipso facto superior to the
rest of mankind, and that to them belonged of right the origin and
development of civilization. The discovery of the common parentage
of the Indo-European languages had come to strengthen the belief;
the notion grew up that in Sanskrit we had found, if not the
primeval language, at all events a language that was very near to
it, and idyllic pictures were painted of the primitive Aryan
community living in its Asiatic home and already possessed of the
elements of its later culture. Outside and beyond it were the
barbarians, races yellow and brown and black, with oblique eyes and
narrow foreheads, whose intelligence was not much above that of the
brute beasts. Such culture as some of them may have had was derived
from the white race, and perhaps spoilt in the borrowing. The idea
of the rise of a civilization outside the limits of the white race
was regarded as a paradox.
It
was just this paradox to which the first decipherers of Assyrian
cuneiform found themselves forced. And another paradox was added to
it.
Not
only had the civilization of the Euphrates and Tigris originated
amongst a race that spoke an agglutinative language, and therefore
was neither Aryan nor Semitic, the civilization of the Semitic
Babylonians and Assyrians was borrowed from this older civilization
along with the cuneiform system of writing. It seemed impossible
that so revolutionary a doctrine could be true, and Semitic
philologists naturally denounced it. For centuries Hebrew had been
supposed to have been the language of Paradise, and the old belief
which made the Semitic Adam the first civilized man still
unconsciously affected the Semitic scholars of the nineteenth
century. It was hard to part with the prejudices of early education,
especially when they were called upon to do so by a small group of
men whose method of decipherment was an enigma to the ordinary
grammarian, and who were introducing new and dangerous principles
into the study of the extinct Semitic tongues.
The
method of decipherment was nevertheless a sound one, and the result,
which seemed so incredible and impossible when first announced, is
now one of the assured facts of science. The first civilized
occupants of the alluvial plain of Babylonia were neither Semites
nor Aryans, but the speakers of an agglutinative language, and to
them were due all the elements of the Babylonian culture of later
days. It was they who first drained the marshes, and regulated the
course of the rivers by canals, thereby transforming what had been a
pestiferous swamp into the most fertile of lands; it was they who
founded the great cities of the country, and invented the pictorial
characters, the cursive forms of which became what we term
cuneiform. The theology and law of later Babylonia went back to
them, and long after Semitic Babylonian had become the language of
the country, legal judgments were still written in the old language
and the theological literature was still studied in it.
The
Church and the Law were as loth to give up the dead language of
Sumer as they were in modern Europe to give up the use of Latin.
This
dead agglutinative language has been called sometimes Akkadian,
sometimes Sumerian, but Sumerian is the name which has been finally
selected.
In
fact, this was the name applied to it by the Semitic Babylonians
themselves, who included in the term the two dialects — or
rather the two forms of the language at different periods of its
development — which have been preserved to us in the cuneiform
tablets. Strictly speaking, the dialect which had been most affected
by contact with the Semites, and had in consequence suffered most
from phonetic decay, was known as the language of Akkad, but this
was because Akkad represented Northern Babylonia, which had become
Semitic at an earlier date than the south and had been the seat of
the first great Semitic Empire.1 Both names, Akkadian and Sumerian,
are correct as applied to the primitive language of Chaldaea, but of
the two Sumerian is preferable, not only because it was used by the
Babylonian scribes themselves, but also because it denoted the
oldest and purest form of the language before it had passed under
foreign influence.
This,
then, was the great archaeological fact which resulted from the
decipherment of the Assyro-Babylonian texts. The earliest civilized
inhabitants of Babylonia did not speak a Semitic language, and
therefore presumably they were not Semites. It is perfectly true
that language and race are not synonymous terms, and that we are
seldom justified in arguing from the one to the other. But the
Sumerian language is one of the exceptions which proves the rule.
Those who spoke it were the first civilizers of Western Asia, the
inventors and perfecters of a system of writing which was destined
to be one of the chief humanizing agents of the ancient world, the
authors of the irrigation engineering of the Babylonian plain, and
the builders of its many cities. The language they spoke,
accordingly, could not have been forced upon them by conquerors who
have otherwise left no trace behind them, and they certainly would
not have exchanged it of their own accord for their native tongue.
The Semitic languages have always been conspicuous for the tenacity
with which they have held their own, and the conservatism with which
they have resisted change. We may still hear in the Egyptian Arabic
of to-day the very words which were written by Semitic Babylonian
scribes upon their tablets some four or five thousand years ago. A
Semitic
people would have been the last to borrow the language of its
less-civilized neighbours without any assignable reason. The fact,
consequently, that the pioneers of Babylonian culture spoke an
agglutinative language fully justifies us in concluding that they
belonged to a race that was not Semitic.
Sumerian,
however, was not the only language in the neighbourhood of the
Babylonian plain which was agglutinative. Further to the east, in
the highlands of Elam, other agglutinative languages were spoken,
monuments of one or more of which have been preserved to us. Whether
or not the agglutinative languages of Elam were related to the
Sumerian of Babylonia, I cannot tell; so far as our materials go at
present they do not warrant us in saying more than that, like
Sumerian, they were of the agglutinative type. It is only rarely
that the scientific philologist is able to separate some of the
multitudinous languages of the globe into genealogically related
groups; for the most part they stand isolated and apart from one
another, and, however much we may wish to group them together, it is
seldom that we find such proofs of a common descent as will satisfy
the requirements of science. Families of speech — or at all
events such as can be scientifically proved to be so — are the
exception and not the rule.
Eastward
of Sumer the type of language was thus agglutinative, as it was in
Sumer itself. And in the days when civilization first grew up there,
there is no sign or trace of the languages we call inflectional.
The
speakers of Aryan dialects, whom we find in classical times in Media
or Persia or North-Western India, belong to a later epoch; the old
belief in the Asiatic cradle of the Aryan tongues has long since
been given up by the anthropologist and comparative philologist, 1
and it is recognized that if we are to look for it anywhere it must
be in Eastern Europe. The Semitic languages are equally absent; the
tide of Semitic speech which eventually overflowed Babylonia, surged
northward and eastward into Assyria and Elam, but never succeeded in
passing Susiana, and was finally driven again from the ground it had
once gained there. The home of the Semite lay to the west and not to
the east of the Babylonian plain.
Babylonian
culture owed its origin to a race whose type of language was that of
the Finn, of the Magyar or the Japanese.
The
physical characteristics of this race cannot as yet be fully
determined. The oldest sculptures yielded by Babylonian excavation
belong to a time when the Semite was already in the land. It might
be supposed that the early monuments of Tello, which were erected by
Sumerian princes and go back to Sumerian times, would give us the
necessary materials; but not only are they too rude and infantile to
be of scientific use, they also indicate the existence of two
ethnological types, one heavily bearded, the other beardless, with
oblique eyes and negrito-like face. It is not until we come to the
age of Semitic domination that sculpture is sufficiently realistic
for exact anthropological purposes. At the same time, there was to
the last a marked contrast of both form and feature in the artistic
representation of the Babylonian and his more purely Semitic
Assyrian neighbour. The squat, thick figure, the full, well-shaven
cheeks, the large, almond-shaped eyes and round head of King
Merodach-nadin-akhi in the twelfth century BC still reproduce the
characteristic form and features of the statues found in the palace
of Gudea, the Sumerian high-priest of Lagas, who lived more than a
thousand years before. The aquiline or hooked nose, the thick lips
and muscular limbs which distinguished the Assyrian are generally
wanting in Babylonia. And, on the other hand, there is a likeness
between the Babylonian as he is portrayed on the monuments and the
Elamite adversaries of Assur-bani-pal, some of whom, it is
noticeable, are depicted with beards, though the excavations of
Dieulafoy and de Morgan at Susa have shown (according to Quatrefages
and Hamy) that a beardless and short-nosed negrito type with round
heads was aboriginal in Elam. The same type is reproduced in one of
the heads found at Tello, and M. de Morgan has pointed out that
similar brachycephalic and beardless negritos are represented on the
monuments of Naram-Sin as serving in the army of Akkad. 1 We may
conclude, therefore, that they still formed a part of the population
of Northern Babylonia even in the age when it had passed completely
under Semitic rule. Indeed, Dr. Pinches has shown that the pure
Semitic type is not depicted in Babylonian art, outside the kingdom
of Akkad, "before the time of the First dynasty of Babylon,
which began to reign about BC 2300."
It
has often been maintained that the Sumerians themselves were an
immigrant people, who had descended from the mountains of Elam.
There is nothing unreasonable in the supposition; it was always
difficult to prevent the mountaineers of Elam from making raids in
Babylonia, and one of their tribes succeeded in settling in the
country and establishing at Babylon one of the longest-lived of its
dynasties. But the supposition mainly rests upon two facts. The
pictorial hieroglyphs out of which the cuneiform characters have
developed had no special sign for "river," while the same
character represented both "mountain" and "country."
It would seem, therefore, that the land in which the cuneiform
system of writing was first invented was just the converse of the
Babylonian plain, being at once mountainous and riverless. That the
same character means both "mountain" and "country"
is no doubt a strong argument in favour of the Elamite origin of
Babylonian civilization. That the use of the primitive hieroglyphs
should have survived in Elam while it was lost in Babylonia, as M.
de Morgan's discoveries have shown to be the case, is also another
fact which may perhaps be claimed on the same side; at any rate it
indicates that they were known to the Elamites before the cursive
cuneiform had developed out of them. But the want of a special
character for "river" is not so decisive as it appears at
first sight to be. The word "river" is represented by two
ideographic signs which literally signify "the watery deep,"
and so point to the fact that those who originally invented them
lived not in the highlands of the East, but on the shores of that
Persian Gulf which the Babylonians of the historic period still
called "the deep." As it was also known as "the salt
river," it is not difficult to understand how, to those whose
experience of navigable water had been confined to the Persian Gulf,
the Tigris and Euphrates would have seemed but repetitions of the
Gulf on a smaller scale.1
The
rise of Sumerian culture on the shores of the Persian Gulf is in
accordance with Babylonian tradition. Babylonian myths told how
Oannes or Ea, the god of culture, had risen each morning out of his
palace in "the deep," bringing with him the elements of
civilization which he communicated to mankind.
Letters,
science and art had all been his gifts. He had instructed the wild
tribes of the coast to build houses and erect temples; he had
compiled for them the first law-book, and had instructed them in the
mysteries of agriculture. Babylonian civilization was sea-born. The
system of cosmology which finally won its way to acceptance with the
priesthood and philosophers of Babylonia was one which had been
first conceived at Eridu, the site of which is now more than a
hundred miles distant from the sea, but in the early days of
Babylonian history, before the silting up of the shore, had been its
sea-port. Here the first man Adam 1 was supposed to have lived, and
to have spent his time fishing in the waters of the Gulf. The whole
earth was believed to have grown out of a primeval deep like the
mudflats which the inhabitants of Eridu saw slowly emerging from the
retreating sea. Philosophy and cosmology, with the theology with
which they were associated, looked back upon Eridu and the
Babylonian coast as their primeval home.2
In
fact the physical conditions of the Babylonian plain rendered it
impossible for the first culture of the country to have sprung up in
it. Before it was reclaimed by engineering skill and labour the
larger part of it had been a pestiferous marsh. The science needed
for making it habitable, at least by civilized man, must have arisen
outside its boundaries. Only when he was already armed with a
civilization which enabled him to dig canals, to mould bricks, and
pile his houses and temples on artificial foundations could the
Sumerian have settled in the Babylonian plain and there developed it
still further. The cities of the plain grew up each round its
sanctuary, which became a centre of civilization and progress, of
agriculture and trade. But the builders of the sanctuaries must have
brought their culture with them from elsewhere.
Of
these sanctuaries the most venerable was that of Bel the Elder at
Nippur. It has been systematically excavated by the Americans down
to its foundations, and the successive strata of its history laid
bare.
Inscribed
objects have been found in all the strata, carrying the history of
the cuneiform system of writing back to the days when the temple was
originally built.
But
it is still the cuneiform system of writing as far back as we can
go, that is to say the characters are the cursive forms of earlier
hieroglyphic pictures, the features of which are in most cases
scarcely traceable.
Here
and there, it is true, the primitive pictorial form has been
preserved, but this is the exception and not the rule. As a rule the
earliest writing found at Nippur, and coeval with the foundation of
its temple, is already the degenerated and cursive hand which we
call cuneiform.
The
fact is very noteworthy. The cuneiform characters have assumed the
shapes which give them their name owing to their having been
inscribed on clay by a stylus of wood or metal, which obliged the
writer to substitute a series of wedge-like indentations for curves
and straight lines. As time went on, the number of the wedges was
reduced, the forms of the characters were simplified, and the
resemblance to the pictures they were once intended to represent
became more and more indistinct. The cuneiform script is, in short,
a running hand, like the hieratic of Egypt.
But
whereas in Egypt the hieratic running hand does not come into common
use until long after the beginning of the monumental period, while
the pictorial hieroglyphs continued to be employed to the last, in
Babylonia the cuneiform running hand has superseded the primeval
pictures as far back as our records carry us. When the temple of
Nippur was built — and it was probably one of the first, if
not the first, to be built in the Babylonian plain — the clay
tablet was already in use for writing purposes, and the cursive
cuneiform had taken the place of the older hieroglyphs.
The
Babylonian plain was called by its Sumerian inhabitants the Edin, or
"Plain," a name which was borrowed by the Semites and has
been made familiar to us by the book of Genesis. Originally it had
meant all the uncultivated flats on either side of the Euphrates,
but it soon acquired the sense of the country as opposed to the
city, and so of the cultivated plain itself. Most of the important
Babylonian cities were built in it between the Euphrates on the west
and the Tigris on the east. A few only lay beyond it on the western
bank of the Euphrates. One of these was Eridu, another was Ur, a
third was Borsippa.
Of
Eridu I have already spoken. Some six or eight thousand years ago it
was the sea-port of primitive Babylonia. 1 Ur, which stood close to
it, seems to have been a colony of Nippur, and therefore of
comparatively late origin.2 Borsippa was a small and unimportant
town, which eventually became a suburb of Babylon, and Babylon, on
the eastern bank of the Euphrates, was itself a colony of Eridu.3
Hence
of the cities which stood outside the Edin of Babylonia, and may
therefore belong to an age when Babylonian civilization was still in
its infancy, Eridu alone is of account. And the priority even of
Eridu was contested. Traditionally Sippara, which is expressly
stated to have been in "the Edin," claimed to be the
oldest of Babylonian cities; one quarter of it bore the name of
"Sippara that is from everlasting," and like Eridu, it
believed itself to have been the abode of the first man.1 Thus far,
however, the monuments have given us nothing to substantiate the
claim; the culture-god of Babylonia was Ea of Eridu, not the Sun-god
of Sippara, and for the present, therefore, we must look to the
shore of the Persian Gulf, rather than to the "land of Eden"
for the cradle of Babylonian civilization.
At
any rate, both Sippara and Eridu were of Sumerian foundation, as
indeed were nearly all the great cities of Babylonia. Eridu was a
later form of the older Eri-dugga, "the good city," a name
which seems to have been the starting-point of more than one legend.
The growth of the coast to the south of it gives us some idea as to
the age to which its foundation must reach back.
It
was, as I have said, the primitive sea-port of Babylonia, and its
legend of the first man Adamu made him a fisherman in the Persian
Gulf. Its site is now rather more than a hundred miles distant from
the present line of coast. The progress of alluvial deposit brought
down by the Euphrates and Tigris can be estimated by the fact that
forty-seven miles of it have been formed since Spasinus Charax, the
modern Mohammerah, was built in the age of Alexander the Great, and
was for a time the port of Chaldsea.
During
the last 2000 years, accordingly, the rate of deposit would seem to
have been about 115 feet a year. This, however, does not agree with
the observations of Loftus, who made the rate not more than a mile
in every seventy years,1 while on the other hand Sir Henry Rawlinson
adduced reasons for believing it to have been more rapid in the past
than it is to-day, and that consequently the rate must once have
been as much as a mile in thirty years.2 It is desirable that some
competent geologist should study the question on the spot. Taking,
however, as a basis of calculation, the one known fact of the rate
of growth since the foundation of Spasinus Charax, and bearing in
mind that before the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates the rate
of advance must have been comparatively slow, we should have to go
back to about BC 5000 as the latest date at which Eridu could still
have been the sea-port of the country.
Was
it here that the system of writing which was so closely entwined
with the origin of Babylonian civilization was first invented?
Babylonian tradition in later days certainly believed that such was
the case, and the fact that Ea of Eridu was the culture-god of
Babylonia is strongly in its favour. But there are difficulties in
the way. Eridu was the home of the "white witchcraft" of
early Chaldaea; it was here that the charms and incantations were
composed which gave the priesthood of Eridu its influence, and made
the god they worshipped the impersonation of wisdom. The belief that
he was the originator of Babylonian culture may have had its source
in the system of magic which was associated with his name.
Eridu
was built on the Semitic side of the Euphrates, and the Semitic
tribes who received their letters and their civilization from the
Sumerians of Eridu would naturally have looked upon the city of
their teachers as the primeval home of Sumerian culture. The
traditions that made Eridu the starting-point of Sumerian
civilization could thus be explained away, and we should be left
free to settle the question of its origin upon purely archaeological
evidence.
Unfortunately
the site of Eridu has not yet been systematically excavated. Once
again the archaeological materials for settling an archaeological
question are not at hand, and we are thrown back upon an examination
of the picture-writing from which the cuneiform characters are
derived. Here the evidence on the whole may be said to be in favour
of tradition.
It
is true that there is no special ideograph for "river,"
but there is one for "the deep," and "the spirit of
the deep" must have been a chief object of worship at the time
when the primitive hieroglyphs were first formed.
The
"ship," too, played a prominent part in the life of their
inventors, and the picture of it represented it as moved not by oars
but by a sail.1 The flowering reed was equally prominent, and was
even used to symbolize what stood firm and established.2 Houses,
fortresses, temples, and cities were built of brick, and vases were
moulded out of clay.3 The tablet, rectangular or square, was already
employed for the purpose of writing, but as it was provided with a3
handle or a couple of rings at the top,1 think it was more probably
of wood than of clay. The sheep, goat and ox were domesticated,1 and
so also probably was the ass,2 and corn was cultivated in the
fields.
The
symbol of the "earth" appears to have been the picture of
an island of circular or elliptical form. Among trees the cedar was
well known.
All
this points to the sea-coast of Babylonia as the district in which
its civilization first arose. But on the other hand, there is the
fact that "country" and "mountain" are alike
represented by the picture of a mountainous land. There is also the
fact that the land in which the inventors of the hieroglyphs lived
was one in which copper, gold and silver were procurable —
perhaps also meteoric iron; and the further fact that hard wood was
sufficiently plentiful for tools or weapons to have been made of it
before the employment of metal. That they should have been made of
wood, however, and not of stone, is a strong argument in favour of
the Babylonian coast.
It
is on wood, moreover, that the first hieroglyphs must have been
painted or cut. Many of them represented round objects or were
formed of curved lines, which were transformed into a series of
wedge-like indentations when imprinted by a stylus upon clay.
We
know, therefore, that clay was not the original writing material;
its use as such, in fact, is coeval with the rise of that cursive
script which, in the case of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, is called
hieratic, but in Assyro-Babylonian is known as cuneiform. It was the
attempt to reproduce the old pictures upon clay that created the
cuneiform characters. As metal is not likely to have been employed
by the primitive scribes of Chaldaea, and there is no trace of stone
having been used — even the stone cylinder of later days being
called a dup-sar or "written tablet" — we are left
to choose between wood and papyrus. In favour of papyrus is the fact
that the circular forms of so many of the pictures suggest that they
were originally painted rather than engraved; on the other hand, it
is doubtful whether the papyrus grows in the Babylonian rivers, or
at any rate did so in the prehistoric age. And the pictograph of a
"written document" is not a strip or roll of papyrus, as
in Egypt, but a tablet with a handle or loop. It is true that the
primeval picture which denoted "copper" has much the same
form, but as even cutting instruments had the determinative of
"wood" attached to them in the early picture writing, it
is clear that the original tablet could not have been of metal,
whatever might have been the case with its later successors.
The
picture, moreover, of the "tablet" is distinguished from
that of a "plate of bronze" by the addition of a string
which is tied to the handle.
On
the whole, therefore, the only archaeological evidence available at
present is on the side of the tradition which made Babylonian
culture move north-ward from the coast. The only fact against it of
which I know is that, as I have already stated, the word for land
was symbolized by the picture of a triple mountain. But this fact is
not insuperable.
Before
the silting up of the shore, the old coast-line of Babylonia would
have stretched away north-eastward of Eridu towards the mountains of
Elam. Whether the mountains that fringed what would then have been
the eastern coast of the Persian Gulf are visible from the site of
Eridu, I do not know; if the clear light of Upper Egypt exists there
they would be so.
Nor
do I know whether on the western side there are mountain ranges
visible in Arabia; these are points which can be cleared up only
when the country has been thoroughly explored.
Eridu
lay five miles southward of Ur, 1 that "Ur of the Chaldees"
from which Hebrew history affirmed the ancestor of the nation had
come. Ur was never a maritime port like Eridu; it stood on the
Arabian plateau and looked towards the west. Its face was turned to
the Semitic rather than to the Sumerian world. From the first,
therefore, it must have been in touch with Semitic tribes. And a
curious reminiscence of the fact survived in the western Semitic
languages.
Ur
or Uru signifies "the city"; it was a Sumerian word,
another form of which was eri. The word was borrowed by the Semites,
and in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, accordingly, the idea of
"city" is expressed byl ir. The Assyrians of the north,
whose vocabulary was otherwise so full of Sumerian loan-words,
preferred the native dlu, "a tent," to which the meaning
of "city" was assigned when Sumerian culture had been
passed on to the Semitic race and the tent had been exchanged for
the city. The history of the word is a history of early culture as
well.
But
I am far from saying that it was through Ur that the civilization of
Sumer came to be handed on to its Semitic neighbours. On the
contrary, such facts as there are point in a different direction.
Western Semites, whom linguistically we may call Arabs or Aramaeans,
or Canaanites or Hebrews, doubtless mingled with the Sumerian
population of Ur, and adopted more or less of its manners and
civilization, but it was further north, in the Babylonian Eden
itself, that the Semite first came under the influence of the higher
culture, and soon outstripped his masters in the arts of life.
The
entrance of the Semitic element into Babylonia is at present one of
the most obscure of problems.
All
we can be sure of are certain main facts. First of all, as we have
seen, the early culture of Babylonia, including so integral a part
of it as the script, was of Sumerian origin. So, too, were the great
cities and sanctuaries of the country, as well as the system of
irrigation engineering which first made it habitable.
Sumerian
long continued to be the language of theology and law; indeed a
large part of the Babylonian pantheon of later days was frankly
non-Semitic.
As
was inevitable under such conditions, the Assyrian language
contained an immense number of words — many of them compound —
which were borrowed from the older language, and its idioms and
grammar equally showed signs of Sumerian influence. I have sometimes
been tempted, from a scientific point of view, to speak of Semitic
Babylonian as a mixed language.
On
the other hand, if the elements of Babylonian civilization were
Sumerian, the superstructure was Semitic. When the Semites entered
into the heritage of Sumerian culture, the cuneiform script must
have still been in a very inchoate and immature state. Its pictorial
ancestry must still have been clear, and no scruples were felt about
altering or adding to the characters. The phonetic application of
the characters, which was still in its initial stage in the Sumerian
period, was developed and carried to perfection by the Semitic
scribes, and a very considerable proportion of their values and
ideographic meanings is of Semitic derivation. The theological
system was transformed, and a new literature and a new art came into
existence. As Sumerian words had been borrowed by the Semites, so,
too, Semitic words were borrowed by the Sumerians, and it is
possible that examples of them may occur in some of the oldest
Sumerian texts known to us.1 The Babylonians of history, in short,
were a mixed people; and their culture and language were mixed like
our own.
This,
then, is one main fact. A second is that the Semitic element first
comes to the front in the northern part of Babylonia. It is in
Akkad, and not in Sumer, that the first Semitic Empire — that
of Sargon the Elder, BC 3800 — had its seat, and old as that
empire is, it presupposes a long preceding period of Semitic
settlement and advance in power and civilization. The cuneiform
system of writing is already complete and has ceased to be Sumerian,
archive-chambers of Semitic literature are founded, and Semitic
authority is firmly established from Susa in the east to the
Mediterranean in the west. Art is no longer Sumerian, and in the
hands of the Semitic subjects of Saigon and his son Naram-Sin has
reached a perfection which in certain directions was never
afterwards surpassed. The engraved seal-cylinders of the period are
the finest that we possess. Naturally the Semitic language has
superseded the Sumerian in official documents, and the physical type
as represented on the monuments is also distinctly Semitic.
At
the beginning of the fourth millennium before our era, the
civilization and culture of Northern Babylonia have thus ceased to
be Sumerian, and the sceptre has fallen into the hands of a Semitic
race.
But
there is a third fact. The displacement of the Sumerian by the
Semite was the case only in Northern Babylonia. In the south, in the
land of Sumer, the older population continued to be dominant.
Sumerian dynasties continued to rule there from time to time, and
the old agglutinative language continued to be spoken. When a
West-Semitic dynasty governed the country about BC 2200, state
proclamations and similar official documents had still to be drawn
up in the two languages, Semitic Babylonian and Sumerian.
Sumerian
did not become extinct till a later day.
Indeed,
after the fall of the empire of Sargon of Akkad there seems to have
been a Sumerian reaction. While Susa was lost to the Semites and
became the capital of a non-Semitic people who spoke an
agglutinative language, the power of the Sumerian princes in
Southern Babylonia appears to have revived. At all events even the
dynasty which followed that of the West-Semites bore Sumerian names.
1 It was only under the foreign domination of the Kassites,
apparently, who governed Babylonia for nearly 600 years, that the
Sumerian element finally became merged in the Semitic and the
Babylonian of later history was born.
The
last fact is that while what we call Assyrian is Semitic Babylonian
with a few dialectal variations, it stands apart from the other
Semitic languages. A scientific comparison of its grammar with those
of the sister-tongues leads us to believe that it represents one of
the two primeval dialects of the Semitic family of speech, the other
dialect being that which subsequently split up into the varying
dialects of Canaanite or Hebrew, Arabic, South-Arabic and Aramaean —
or, adopting the genealogical form of linguistic relationship,
Assyro-Babylonian would have been one daughter of the primitive
parent-speech, while the other daughter comprised the remaining
Semitic languages. 2 There are two conclusions to be drawn from
this; one is that the Babylonian Semites must have separated from
their kinsfolk and come under Sumerian influence at a very early
period, the other that they moved northward, along the banks of the
Tigris into Assyria.
With
these two inferences we have to be content. Upon the first home of
the Semitic race or its affinities with other branches of the white
race, Babylonia can naturally throw no light. The earliest glimpses
we catch of the Semites of Babylonia are those of a people who have
already come under the influences of Sumerian civilization, who are
mingling with their teachers and helping with them to build up the
stately edifice of historical Babylonia. There were ruder Semitic
tribes, it is true, who continued to live their own nomad life on
the western bank of the Euphrates or in the marshes that bordered
the Persian Gulf. But like the Bedawin of to-day on the outskirts of
Egypt they were little, if at all, affected by the civilization at
their sides. They remained the same wild savages of the desert as
their descendants who encamp in the swamps of modern Babylonia; they
neither traded nor tilled the ground, and the language they spoke
was not the same as that of their Babylonian kindred. They served,
however, as the herdsmen and shepherds of their Babylonian
neighbours, and the vast flocks whose wool was so important an
article of Babylonian trade, were entrusted to their care. But
Bedawin they were born, and Bedawin they continued to be.
Even
the Aramaean tribes of the coast-land kept apart from the
Babylonians, whether Sumerian or Semitic, until the day when one of
their tribes, the Kalda or Chaldeans, made themselves masters of
Babylon under their prince Merodach-baladan, and from henceforward
became an integral factor in the Babylonian population. They must
have settled on the borders of Babylonia at a comparatively late
date, when Semitic Babylonian had definitely marked itself off from
its sister-tongues and the Babylonian Semite had acquired
distinctive characteristics of his own. The West-Semitic elements in
the population of Babylonia could have entered the country only long
after the mixture of Sumerian and Semite had produced the Babylonian
of history.
The
Babylonian of history came to forget that he had ever had another
fatherland than the Babylonian plain, the Eden of the Old Testament,
the land whose southern border was formed by "the salt river"
or Persian Gulf of early Sumerian geography, with its four branches
which were themselves "heads." Here the first man Adamu x
had been created in Eridu, "the good city," and here
therefore the Babylonian Semite placed the home of the first
ancestor of his race. But it was a borrowed belief, borrowed along
with the other elements of Babylonian culture, and no argument can
be drawn from it as to the actual cradle of the Semitic race. Like
the story of the deluge, it was part of the Sumerian heritage into
which the Semite had entered.
The
Semitic tradition which made the first man a tiller of the ground
may also have been borrowed from the earlier inhabitants of
Babylonia. At all events it is significant that the garden in which
he was placed was in the land of Eden, and that the picture of a
garden or plantation is one of the primitive hieroglyphs of Sumer.
The beginnings of Babylonian civilization were bound up with the
cultivation of the Babylonian soil; the reclamation of the great
alluvial plain was at once the effect and the cause of Sumerian
culture. Sumerian culture, in fact, was at the outset essentially
that of an agricultural people.
Trade
would have come later, when Eridu had become a seaport, and ships
ventured on the waters of the Persian Gulf. It grew up under the
shelter of the great sanctuaries. Supported at first by the labour
of their serfs, the priests in time came to exchange their surplus
revenues — the wool of their sheep, the wheat and sesame of
their fields, or the wine yielded by their palms — for other
commodities, and the temples themselves formed safe and capacious
store-houses in which such goods could be kept. In the historical
period Babylonia is already a great trading community, and as the
centuries passed trade absorbed more and more the energies of its
population, agriculture fell into the background, and the Babylonia
conquered by Cyrus could be described with truth as "a nation
of shopkeepers." Even the crown prince was a merchant who dealt
in wool.1
The
increasing preponderance of trade goes along with the increasing
preponderance of the Semitic element in the country, and it is
tempting to suppose that there was a connection between the two.
At
present, however, there is no positive evidence that such was the
case. Nor is there any positive evidence that the Semites who
settled in Babylonia were not already agriculturists. The
circumstances in which a people lives are mainly responsible for its
being agricultural or pastoral, and the fact that the Bedawin
neighbours of the Babylonians on the western side of the Euphrates
remained a pastoral race does not exclude the possibility that there
were other branches of the Semitic family who had already passed out
of the pastoral into the agricultural stage before coming into
contact with the Sumerians. On the other hand, it is at least
noticeable that in Semitic Babylonian the usual word for "city"
continued to be one which properly meant a "tent" —
the home of the pastoral nomad — and that no Semitic
traditions have come down to us of the beginnings of agricultural
life outside the limits of the Babylonian "Plain." The
title of "Shepherd," moreover, was at times given to the
Babylonian kings in days subsequent to the Semitic Empire of Sargon
of Akkad. So far as our materials allow us to judge, city-life was
the gift of the Sumerian to the primitive Semitic nomad.1
To
the Semite, however, I believe I have shown in my Lectures on
Babylonian religion, 2 we must ascribe an important theological
conception. In historical Babylonia the gods were conceived of in
the form of man. Man was created in the image of God because the
gods themselves were men. But the conception cannot be traced back
further than the age when the Sumerians and Semites came into
contact with one another. In pre-Semitic Sumer there are no
anthropomorphic gods. We hear, instead, of the zi or "spirit,"
a word properly signifying "life" which manifested itself
in the power of motion. All things that moved were possessed of
life, and there was accordingly a "life" or "spirit"
of the water as well as of man or beast. In place of the divine
"lord of heaven" whom the Semites adored there was "a
spirit of heaven"; in place of Ea, the later Babylonian god of
the deep, there was "a spirit of the abyss." Sumerian
theology, in fact, was still on the level of animism, and the
inventors of the script represented the idea of "god" by
the picture of a star. Vestiges of the old animism can still be
detected even in the later cult: by the side of the human gods an
Assyrian prayer invokes the mountains, the rivers and the winds, and
from time to time we come across a worship of deified towns. It was
the town itself that was divine, not the deity to whom its chief
temple was dedicated. So, again, the god or goddess continued to be
symbolized by some sacred animal or object whose figure appears upon
seals and boundary-stones, and in some cases we learn that the
Sumerian prototypes of the later Babylonian divinities bore such
names as "the gazelle," "the antelope" or "the
bull."
With
the advent of the Semite all is changed.
The
gods have become men and women with intensified powers and the gift
of immortality, but in all other respects they live and act like the
men and women of this nether world. Like them, too, they are born
and married, and the court of the early prince finds its counterpart
in the divine court of the supreme Bel, or "Lord." The
Semitic god of Babylon was "lord of gods" and men, of
heaven and earth; Assur of Assyria was "king of the gods"
and lord of "the heavenly hosts."
It
was natural that, corresponding with this lord of the heavenly
hosts, there should be a lord of the hosts of earth, and that as the
divine king was clothed in the attributes of man, the human king
should take upon him the divine nature. Like the Pharaohs of Egypt
or the emperors of Rome, the early kings of Semitic Babylonia were
deified. And the deification took place during their life-time, —
in fact, so far as we can judge, upon their accession to the throne.
In the eyes of their subjects they were incarnate deities, and in
their inscriptions they give themselves the title of god. One of
them is even called "the god" of Akkad, his capital.1
Here,
then, in the conception of the divine, we have a clear dividing line
between the Semite and his non-Semitic predecessor. So far back as
the cuneiform monuments allow us to carry his history, the Semite is
anthropomorphic. As a consequence, the gods he worships conform to
the social conditions under which he lives. In the desert the sacred
stone becomes "the temple of the god"; in the organized
monarchy of Babylonia each deity takes his appointed place in an
imperial court. Under the one supreme ruler there are princes and
sub-princes, vice-regents and generals, while angel-messengers carry
the commands of Bel to his subjects on earth, like the messengers
who carried the letters of the Babylonian king along the high-roads
of the empire. On the other hand, the earthly king receives his
power and attributes from the god whose adopted son and
representative he claims to be. Nowhere has "the divine right
of kings" been more fully insisted on than in ancient
Babylonia. The laws of the monarch had to be obeyed, foreign nations
had to become his vassals, because he was a god on earth as the
supreme Bel was god in heaven.
But
the reflection of the divine upon the human brought with it not only
the exaltation of sovereignty, but also the rise of a priesthood.
There were priests of a sort in Sumer of whom many different classes
are enumerated. But when we examine the signification of the names
attached to them we find that they were not priests in the true
sense of the word. They were rather magicians, sorcerers, wizards,
masters of charms.
They
do not develop into priests until after the Semite has entered upon
the scene. The god and the priest make their appearance together.
I
do not think, however, that we are justified in concluding that the
elaborate hierarchy of Babylonia was of purely Semitic origin. On
the contrary, like the theological system with which it was
associated, it was a composite product. Behind the gods and
god-desses of Semitic Babylonia lay the primitive "spirits"
and fetishes of Sumer; its mythology and cosmological theories
rested on Sumerian foundations; and in the same way the priestly
hierarchy was the result of a racial amalgamation in which the
Semitic element had adopted and adapted the ideas and institutions
of the older people. We do not find the theology and priesthood of
Babylonia among other Semitic populations, except where they had
been borrowed from the Babylonians (as in Assyria); in the form in
which we know them they were peculiarly and distinctively
Babylonian. Like the language of Semitic Babylonia, which is
permeated with Sumerian elements, or the script, which is a Semitic
adaptation of the Sumerian system of writing, they presuppose a
mixture of race.
The
priesthood eventually proved irreconcilable with "the divine
right" of the monarch, though both alike had the same origin.
The priests prevailed over the king, and as in England the doctrine
of divine right was unable to survive the accession of a German line
of princes, so in Babylonia the accession of a foreign, non-Semitic
dynasty (that of the Kassites) dealt a death-blow to the belief in a
deified king.
The
king became merely the representative and deputy of the divine
"Lord" of heaven, deriving his right to rule from his
adoption by the god as a son; Bel-Merodach came to be regarded as
the true ruler of Babylonia, lord of the earth as well as of the
heavens, and a theocratic state affords but little room for a
secular king. The priests of Bel decided whom their god should
recognize or not, and little by little the controlling power of the
state passed into their hands It was in a sense a triumph for the
non-Semitic element in the population. While the deification of the
sovereign may be said to have been purely Semitic in its origin, the
necessary corollary of an anthropomorphic conception of the deity,
the supernatural powers supposed to be inherent in the priesthood
went back to Sumerian times. It was because he had once been a
master of spells that the priest of the anthropomorphic god could
influence the spiritual world.
The
final triumph of the theocratic principle in Babylonia, where the
Semite had been so long dominant, showed that the old racial element
was still strong, and ready to reassert itself when the favourable
moment arrived. Such, indeed, is generally the history of a mixed
people: the conquering or immigrant race may seem to have suppressed
or absorbed the earlier population of the country, but as
generations pass the foreign element becomes weaker, and the nation
in greater or less degree reverts to the older type.
NOTE
So
far as the primitive culture of Sumer may be recovered from such of
the primitive pictographs as can be at present identified, it may be
described as follows.
The
inventors of them lived on the sea-coast within sight of mountains,
but in a marshy district where reeds abounded. Trees also grew
there, and the cedar was known. Stone was scarce, but was already
cut into blocks and seals. Tablets were used for writing purposes,
and copper, gold and silver were worked by the smith. Daggers with
metal blades and wooden handles were worn, and copper was hammered
into plates, while necklaces or collars were made of gold. Brick was
the ordinary building material, and with it cities, forts, temples
and houses were constructed. The city was provided with towers and
stood on an artificial platform; the house also had a tower-like
appearance. It was provided with a door which turned on a hinge, and
could be opened with a sort of key; the city gate was on a larger
scale, and seems to have been double.
By
the side of the house was an enclosed garden planted with trees and
other plants; wheat and probably other cereals were sown in the
fields, and the shaduf was already employed for the purpose of
irrigation.
Plants
were also grown in pots or vases. That floods took place is evident
from the existence of a pictograph denoting "inundation,"
and representing a fish left stranded above the foliage of a tree.
Canals or aqueducts had already been dug. The sheep, goat, ox and
probably ass had been domesticated, the ox being used for draught,
and woollen clothing as well as rugs were made from the wool or hair
of the two first.
A
feathered head-dress was worn on the head. Beds, stools and chairs
were used, with carved legs resembling those of an ox. There were
fire-places and fire-altars, and apparently chimneys also. Pottery
was very plentiful, and the forms of the vases, bowls and dishes
were manifold; there were special jars for honey, butter, oil and
wine, which was probably made from dates, and one form of vase had a
spout protruding from its side. Some of the vases had pointed feet,
and stood on stands with crossed legs; others were flat-bottomed,
and were set on square or rectangular frames of wood. The oil-jars —
and probably others also — were sealed with clay, precisely as
in early Egypt. Vases and dishes of stone were made in imitation of
those of clay, and baskets were woven of reeds or formed of leather.
Knives, drills, wedges and an instrument which looks like a saw were
all known, while bows, arrows and daggers (but not swords nor,
probably, spears) were employed in war. Time was reckoned in lunar
months. Sacred cakes were offered to the gods, whose images were
symbolized sometimes by a bearded human head with a feather crown,
sometimes by a two-legged table of offerings on which stand two
vases (of incense ?). Demons were feared who had wings like a bird,
and the foundation stones — or rather bricks — of a
house were consecrated by certain objects that were deposited under
them. A "year" was denoted by the branch of a tree, as in
Egypt, and a "name" by a bird placed over the sacred table
of offerings. The country was full of snakes and other creeping
things, and wild beasts lurked in the jungle. The pictographs were
read from left to right, and various expedients were devised for
making them express ideas. Thus mud, "to beget," was
denoted by the picture of a bird dropping an egg. At other times the
pictograph was used to express an idea, the pronunciation of which
was the same as that of the object which it represented. The bent
knee, for example, was used to express dug or tuk, "to have,"
since it represented a "knee," which was called dug in
Sumerian.
1
The two dialects were called eme-K.XJ (i.e. enie-lakhkha, W.A.I,
iii. 4,31, 32), "the language of the enchanter," and
eme-SAL, "the woman's language," which are rendered in
Semitic Babylonian, lisan Sumeri and (lisa?i)Akkadi, "the
language of Sumer" and "the language of Akkad." In a
tablet (81, 7-27, 130, 6, 7) they are said to be "like"
one another. Other dialects were termed "the language of the
sacrificer" and "the language of the anointer," as
being used by these two classes of priests.
They
differed, perhaps, from the standard dialects in intonation or the
use of technical words. We hear also of "a carter's language"
in which anbarri — which, it is noticeable, is a Sumerian word
— meant "yoke and reins," i.e. "harness"
{Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, ix. p. 164).
1
Fick, however, is an exception (Beitrage zur Ku?ide der
indogermanischen Sprachen, xxix. pp. 229-247.
1
Memoires de la Delegation en Perse, i. pp. 152-3. Photographs of the
two types — Sumerian and Semitic — represented on the
early monuments of Babylonia are given by Dr. Pinches in an
interesting Paper in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society;
January 1900, pp. 87-93.
1
It is noticeable that the script of the other people whose
civilization grew up on the banks of a river, the Egyptians namely,
contains no special ideograph for "river." The word is
expressed by the phonetically-written atur, with the determinative
of "water" or "irrigation basin." As in the
primitive hieroglyphs of Babylonia, "the sea" was a
"circle."
1
For proof of this reading see Expository Times, xvii. p. 416 and
note infra, p. 91.
2
See my Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, pp. 373-84.
1
Taylor found quantities of sea-shells in its ruins {Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society, xv. p. 412). At the time of its foundation an
arm of the sea probably ran up to it from the south-east, though the
myth of Adamu describes him as fishing each day in the waters of the
actual Gulf, rather than in an arm of it.
2
The Moon-god of Ur was a "son" of El-lil, the god of
Nippur.
3
For proof of this see my Religion ojthe Ancient Babylonians p. 105.
1
A tablet obtained by Dr. Hayes Ward divides Sippara into four
quarters, "Sippara of Eden," "Sippara that is from
everlasting," "Sippara of the Sun-god," and
"Sippara," which may be the "Sippara of Anunit"
or "Sippara of Aruru," the creatress of man, of other
inscriptions. Amelon or Amelu, "man," who corresponds with
the Enos of Scripture, is said in the fragments of Berossus to have
belonged to Pantibibla, or "Book-town," and since
Euedoranchus of Pantibibla, the counterpart of the Biblical Enoch,
is the monumental Enme-dhur-anki of Sippara, it is clear that
Pantibibla is a play on the supposed signification of Sippara (from
sipru, "a writing" or "book"). The claim to
immemorial antiquity made on behalf of Sippara may be due to the
fact that Akkad, the seat of the first Semitic empire, was either in
the immediate neighbourhood of Sippara or another name of one of the
four quarters of Sippara itself.
1
Chaldaea and Susiana, p. 282.
2
Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, xxvii. p. 1 86. Rawlinson
calculated the rate of advance from that made by the Babylonian
Delta between 1793 an d 1833. In the age of Strabo and Arrian the
Tigris and Euphrates were not yet united, while in the time of
Nearchus (BC 335) the mouth of the Euphrates was 345 miles from
Babylon. De Morgan calculates that between the age of Nearchus and
that of Sennacherib, when the Euphrates had not yet joined the more
rapid Tigris, the rate of increase must have been much slower than
it is to-day and have not exceeded eighty metres a year. In the age
of Sennacherib Eridu was already seventy miles distant from the
coast (de Morgan, Metnoires de la Delegation en Perse, i. pp. 5-23).
The
distance from the Shatt el-Arab (the united stream of the Tigris and
Euphrates) to the end of the alluvium in the Persian Gulf is 277
kilometres, or 172 miles. Some idea of the appearance of the coast
in the Abrahamic age may be gained from the map of the world drawn
by a Babylonian tourist in the time of Khammu-rabi which I have
published in the Expository Times, November 1906.
1
There is a striking resemblance between the primitive Babylonian
picture of a boat and the sailing boat depicted on the prehistoric
pottery of Egypt, for which last see Capart, Les Debuts de l'Art en
Egypte, p. 1 16.
2
Perhaps, however, this was really due to the accidental similarity
of sound between gz, "a reed," and gin, "to be firm."
3
The various forms of vases represented in the early pictography are
given by de Morgan in a very instructive article, "Sur les
procedes techniques en usage chez les scribes babyloniens," in
the Recueil des Travaux relatifs a la Philologie et a l'Archeologie
egyptiennes et assyrietines, xxvii. 3, 4 (1905).
Among
special vases were those for oil, wine and honey. The butter or oil
jar was closed with a clay sealing exactly like those of early
Egypt. Vases with spouts were also used.
1
The American excavations at Askabad have shown that the
domestication of animals, including the camel, took place during the
neolithic age, the goat being one of the last to be tamed.
2
This, however, is not absolutely certain, since the ideograph which
denotes an "ass" originally signified merely "a yoked
beast."
1
Peters, Nippur, ii. p. 299.
1
Thus in the great historical inscription of Entemena, King of Lagas
(BC 4000), M. Thureau Dangin is probably right in seeing in
datn-kha-ra (col. i. 26) a Semitic word. In fact where a word is
written syllabically, that is to say phonetically, in a Sumerian
text there is an a priori probability that it is a loan-word.
1
This may of course have been only a literary archaism. But if the
kings were really of Semitic origin, it is difficult to understand
why they should have been ashamed of being called by their native
Semitic names.
2
See Hommel, Grundriss der Geographie und Geschichte des Alten
Orients, i. pp. 79-82.
1
Hitherto read A-da-pa. But the character PA had the value of mu when
it signified "man," according to a tablet quoted by
Fossey, Contribution au Dictionnaire Sumirien-assyrienne, No. 2656,
and in writing early Babylonian names or words the characters with
the requisite phonetic values were selected which harmonized
ideographically with the sense of the words. Thus out of the various
characters which had the phonetic value of mu that was chosen which
denoted "man" when the name of the first man was needed to
be written. The Semitic Adamu, which M. Thureau Dangin has found
used as a proper name in tablets from Tello of the age of Sargon of
Akkad, was borrowed from the Sumerian adatn, which signified
"animal," and then, more specifically "man."
Thus in the bilingual story of the creation we have (1. 9) uru
nu-dim adam nu-mun-ya, "a city was not built, a man was not
made to stand upright," and a list of slaves published by Dr.
Scheil {Recueil de Travaux, etc., xx. p. 65) is dated in "the
year when Rim-Anum the king (conquered) the land of bi and its
inhabitants" (adam-bi). See above, p. 76.
1
Records of the Fast, New Series, iii. pp. 124-7.
1
Erech was one of the earliest of the Semitic settlements in the
Babylonian plain, and Erech was known later as 'supuru, "the
sheepfold," as is shown by its ideographic equivalent.
2
The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, pp. 276-80.
1
See my Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, pp. 276-89, 348-61
CHAPTER IV THE RELATION OF BABYLONIAN TO
EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION
In
dealing with the question of origins, science is constantly
confronted with the problem of unity or polygeneity. Has language
one origin or many; are the various races of mankind traceable to
one ancestor or to several? Do the older civilizations presuppose
the same primeval starting-point, or were there independent centres
of culture which grew up unknown to one another in different parts
of the world?
Under
the influences of theology the belief long prevailed that they were
all sprung from the same source; of late the tendency has been in an
opposite direction. While the biologist has inclined to a belief in
the unity of species, the anthropologist has seen reason to maintain
the diversity of origin in culture.
The
two earliest civilizations with which we are acquainted were those
of Babylonia and Egypt. To a certain extent the conditions under
which they both arose were similar. They grew up alike on the banks
of great rivers and in a warm, though not tropical, climate. They
rested, moreover, on organized systems of agriculture, which again
had been made possible by irrigation engineering. In Babylonia the
first settlers had found a plain which was little more than a swamp,
over which the swollen streams of the Euphrates and Tigris wandered
at will during the annual period of inundation, and which needed
engineering works on a large scale before it could be made
habitable. The rivers had to be confined within their channels by
means of embankments, and canals had to be cut in order to draw off
the surplus supply of water and regulate its distribution to the
land. While the swamp was thus being made possible for habitation,
the population must have lived on the edge of the desert plateau
which bordered it, and have there developed a civilization which not
only produced the engineers and their science, but also the
concentrated authority which enabled the science to be utilized.
In
Egypt it was the banks and delta of the Nile which took the place of
the Babylonian plain. Recent discoveries have shown that in the
prehistoric age, when the natives still lived in the desert and led
a pastoral life, all this was a morass, the haunt of beasts of prey
and venomous reptiles. But here again the swamp was rendered
habitable by engineering works similar to those of primeval
Babylonia. The swamp was transformed into fertile fields, the annual
flood of the river was regulated, and an elaborate network of canals
and embankments spread over the country.
The
pastoral nomads of the neolithic age became agriculturists, or were
employed in constructing and repairing the works of irrigation, or
in erecting monumental buildings for their rulers. There is evidence
of the same centralized government, the same directing brain and
organizing force that there is in primitive Babylonia.
Is
it possible that two systems of engineering science, so similar in
their objects, their methods and their results, should have been
invented independently in two different countries? There are
scholars who answer in the negative. But the possibility cannot be
denied, since an even more elaborate system of irrigation was
invented in China without any suggestion, as far as we know, from
outside. The geographical conditions of Babylonia and Egypt,
moreover, resemble one another, and the question of draining the
swamps and regulating the overflow of the rivers once raised, the
answer to it seems fairly obvious. By itself, therefore, the fact
that the cultures of ancient Babylonia and Egypt alike rested on a
similar system of irrigation engineering would be no proof of their
common origin.
In
some respects the problem which the Babylonian engineers were called
upon to solve was more difficult than that which faced the
Egyptians. The Nile is fed by the rains and melting snows of
Abyssinia and Central Africa, and its annual inundation takes place
in the later summer months. The Euphrates and Tigris flow from the
north, from the highlands of Armenia, and are at their fullest in
the spring. Their overflow accordingly comes just before the summer
heats, when agriculture is difficult or impossible, whereas in Egypt
the period of inundation ushers in the most favourable time of the
year for the growth of the crops. What the Babylonian engineers had
to do was not only to drain off the overflow, but also to store it
for use at least six months later. With them it was a question of
storage as well as of regulation.
Those
then, who believe that the engineering sciences of the Babylonians
and Egyptians were no independent inventions are bound to see in
Babylonia their original home. It would have been here that the
great problems were solved, the practical application of which to
the needs of Egypt would have been a comparatively simple matter. On
the chronological side there would be no difficulties in such a
view. Old as was the civilization of Egypt, the excavations in
Babylonia have made it clear that the civilization of Babylonia was
at least equally old. At Nippur the American excavators claim to
have found inscribed remains which reach back for nearly ten
thousand years, and though the data upon which this calculation is
based may be disputable, it is certain that the earliest monuments
met with are of immense age.
And
it must be remembered that they belong to a time when the early
pictorial writing had already passed into a cursive script, and the
plain of Babylonia had been a land of cultivated fields for
unnumbered generations.
But
by itself, I repeat, the practical identity of engineering science
in primeval Babylonia and Egypt is no proof that it had been learnt
by the one from the other. If we are to fall back on the old belief
which brought the civilized population of Egypt from the plain of
Shinar, it must be for reasons which are supported by archaeological
facts. If such archaeological facts exist, the parallel systems of
irrigation engineering will be additional evidence; alone, they
prove nothing.
At
the outset we are met by a fact which personally I find it hard to
explain away. The hieroglyphic script of Egypt has little in common
with the primitive pictorial characters of Babylonia. Objects and
ideas like "the sun," "man," "number one,"
will be represented by the same pictures or symbols all the world
over, and consequently the fact that in both Babylonian and Egyptian
writing the sun is denoted by a circle and the moon by a crescent is
of no significance whatsoever. But when we turn to less obvious
symbols there is comparatively little similarity between the two
forms of script. The ideograph of "god," for example, is a
star in Babylonia, a stone axe and its shaft in Egypt; "life"
is represented by a flowering reed in the one case, by a knotted
girdle in the other. It is true that Professor Hommel and others
have pointed to a few coincidences like those between the Egyptian
symbol for "foreign land" and the Babylonian ideograph of
"country," or between the Egyptian and Babylonian signs
for "city," "place," but such coincidences are
rare.1 As a rule, as soon as we leave the more obvious conventions
of pictorial writing little or no connection can be traced between
the pictorial characters of Egypt and those of Babylonia. As a whole
the two graphic systems stand apart.
Nevertheless
I am bound to add that it is only as a whole that they do so. With
all the general unlikeness there is a curious similarity in a few —
a very few — instances which it is difficult to interpret as
merely the result of accident. The round circle with lines inside it
which denotes "a city" in Egyptian might be explained from
the circular villages which still characterize Central Africa; but
then how is it that the ideograph for "place" in the
pictorial script of Babylonia had precisely the same form? That the
word for "country" should be denoted in the Babylonian
script by the picture of three mountain peaks may be due to the fact
that to the Babylonian "country" and "mountain"
were the same; but such an explanation fails us in the case of the
Egyptian hieroglyph of "foreign land," where the three
peaks appear again, since the hieroglyph for "mountain" in
Egyptian has but two. The picture of a seat, and a seat, too, of
peculiar shape, represents "place" in Egyptian; in
Babylonian the same picture represents "city," thus
inverting the ideographic signification of the picture which in
Egyptian and Babylonian has respectively the meanings of "city"
and "place."
Between
the primitive Babylonian picture of a "ship" and the boats
depicted in the prehistoric pottery of Egypt, again, the resemblance
is very exact, and Professor Hommel has pointed out to me a curious
likeness between the original form of the Babylonian ideograph for
"a personal name" and the ka-sign with the Horus-hawk
above it within which the names of the earliest Pharaohs are
inscribed. 1 Indeed the learned and ingenious Munich Professor has
made out a list of even more striking coincidences, where the
characters agree not only in sense but also in the phonetic values
attached to them.1
Here,
however, we trench on another question, the philological position of
the Egyptian language.
Egyptian
scholars to-day are practically unanimous in believing it to belong,
more or less remotely, to the Semitic family of speech. The Berlin
school of Egyptologists, who under the guidance of Professor Erman
have made Egyptian grammar a special subject of investigation, are
largely responsible for the dominance of this belief. I ought to be
the last person in the world to protest against it, seeing that I
maintained it years ago when the patronage of the Berlin
Egyptologists had not yet made it fashionable.
At
the same time I confess that I cannot follow the Berlin philologists
to the extent to which they would have us go. For them the old
Egyptian language is not related to the Semitic family of speech
"more or less remotely," but very closely indeed. Indeed
in their hands it becomes itself a Semitic language, and as a
logical consequence the Egyptian script is metamorphosed into one of
purely Semitic invention.
But
while admitting that Egyptian grammar is Semitic in the sense in
which English grammar is Teutonic, the comparative philologist is
bound to add that it contains much which cannot be reduced to a
Semitic pattern. The structure, moreover, is not on the whole
Semitic, neither is a large part of its vocabulary. And among the
words in the lexicon which have Semitic affinities there are a good
many which are better explained as the result of borrowing than as
belonging to the original stratum of the language. In some cases
they are demonstrably words which have been introduced into the
Egyptian language at a late date; in other cases it seems possible
to regard them as loan-words from Semitic Babylonian which entered
the language at a "pre-dynastic" epoch. Thus, qemku, "the
wheaten loaf" which was used for offerings, is the Hebrew
qemakh, the Babylonian qimu> and may have been brought into Eygpt
along with the wheat which was first cultivated in Babylonia and
still grows wild on the banks of the Euphrates. To what an early
period the importation of the cereal must be referred is shown by
its occurrence in the prehistoric graves of Upper Egypt.1
When
all allowances are made, however, the fact remains that the Egyptian
language as we know it was related to the Semitic family of speech.
It stood to the latter as an elder sister, or rather as the sister
of the parent-language which the existing Semitic dialects
presuppose. It was not like the so-called Hamitic dialects of
Eastern Africa, which are African languages Semitized, but it was
itself of the same stock as Hebrew or Semitic Babylonian. It
represents, however, a form of language at an earlier stage of
development than arc any of those which we call Semitic, and it has,
moreover, been largely influenced and modified by foreign languages,
which we may term African. So extensive has this influence been that
the Semitic element has been even more disguised in it than the
Teutonic element is disguised in modern English. In leaving the soil
of Asia the language of Egypt took upon it an African dress.
Now
though language can prove but little as regards race, it can prove a
great deal as regards history. A mixed language means a mixed
history, and indicates an intimate contact between the populations
who spoke the languages which are represented in it. Egyptian
grammar would not have been Semitic if those who imposed it upon the
natives of the Nile had not been of Semitic descent, or at all
events had not come from a region where the language was Semitic.
Nor would this grammar have been modified by foreign admixture if a
part of those who learned to use it had not previously been
accustomed to some other form of speech. And since we know of no
Semitic languages in Africa which were not brought from Asia, we are
justified in concluding that the Semitic element in the Egyptian
language was of Asiatic origin.
But
we can go yet a step further. Where two languages are brought into
close contact, the general rule is that that of the stronger race
prevails. The conqueror is less likely to learn the language of the
conquered than the conquered are to learn the language of their
masters. On the other hand, the negro slave in America became
English-speaking, whereas the English emigrant wherever he goes
preserves the language of his fathers. It is only where a conquering
caste brings no women with it that it is likely to lose its
language.
When,
therefore, we find that Old Egyptian is an Africanized Semitic
language, we have every right to infer that it is because invaders
brought it with them from Asia who were Semites either by race or by
language. In other words, Egypt must have been occupied in
prehistoric days by a people who came from the Semitic area in Asia.
The
days were prehistoric, but of the invasion itself history preserved
a tradition. On the walls of the temple of Edfu it is recounted how
the followers of Horus, the totem guide and patron deity of the
first kings of Upper Egypt, made their way across the eastern desert
to the banks of the Nile, and there, with the help of their weapons
of metal, subjugated the older inhabitants of the valley. Battle
after battle was fought as the invaders slowly pushed their way down
the Nile to the Delta, establishing a forge and a sanctuary of Horus
on every spot where a victory had been gained.1 The story has come
down to us under a disguise of euhemeristic mythology, but the
tradition it embodies has been strikingly confirmed by modern
discovery. The "dynastic" Egyptians, the Egyptians, that
is to say, who founded the Egyptian monarchy and to whom we owe the
great monuments of Egypt, were immigrants from the east.
The
culture of these "dynastic" Egyptians was built up on two
solid foundations, the engineering skill which made Egypt a land of
agriculture, and a system of writing which made the organization of
the government possible. The culture was at once agricultural and
literary, and this alone marked it off from the culture of neolithic
(or "prehistoric") Egypt, which belonged to the desert
rather than to the banks and delta of the river, and which knew
nothing of writing. Now we have seen that there was one other
country in the world in which a similar form of culture had come
into existence. In Babylonia too we have a civilization which has as
its basis the training of rivers for the purpose of irrigation and
the use of a pictorial script. The civilization of Babylonia was, it
is true, Sumerian at its outset, but in time it became Semitic, and
expressed itself in a Semitic tongue. It is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that the Semitic-speaking people who brought the science
of irrigation and the art of writing to the banks of the Nile came,
like the wheat they cultivated, from the Babylonian plain.
There
are two archaeological facts connected with the early culture of
"dynastic" Egypt which seem to me to prove at any rate
some kind of intercourse with Babylonia. No building-stone exists in
the Babylonian plain; it was therefore the natural home of the art
of building in brick, and since every pebble was of value it was
also the natural birthplace of the gem-cutter. Nowhere else could
the use of clay as a writing material have suggested itself, or that
of the inscribed stone cylinder which left its impression behind it
when rolled over the clay. Wherever we have the clay tablet and the
seal-cylinder we have evidence of Babylonian influence.
Now
recent discoveries have shown that the culture of the early dynastic
period of Egypt is distinguished from that of later times by the
employment of clay and the stone seal-cylinder. Neither the one nor
the other could have originated in the country itself, for Upper
Egypt (where all authenticated discoveries of early seal-cylinders
have been made) is a land of stone, and the river-silt, which is
mixed with sand, is altogether unsuited for the purpose of writing.
When the Egyptians of the Eighteenth dynasty corresponded in
Babylonian cuneiform with their subjects and allies in Asia, the
clay upon which they wrote was brought from a distance. Moreover,
the stone seal-cylinder of the early dynasties is an exact
reproduction of the early seal-cylinder of Babylonia. Substitute
cuneiform characters for the hieroglyphs and there is practically no
difference between them in many cases. It is difficult to believe
that such an identity of form is the result of accident, more
especially when we find that, as Egyptian civilization advanced, the
seal-cylinder became less and less like its Babylonian original, and
finally disappeared from use altogether.
That
is to say, as the culture of the people was further removed from its
first starting-point, and therefore more national, an object which
never had any natural basis in the physical conditions of the
country grew more and more of an anomaly, and was eventually
superseded, first by the "button-seal" and then by the
scarab. I see no other explanation of this than that it was
originally introduced from Babylonia, and maintained itself so long
in an alien atmosphere only because it was bound up with a culture
which had come from the same region of the world. The seal-cylinder
of the early Egyptian dynasties seems to me, apart from everything
else, to prove the existence of some kind of "prehistoric"
intercourse between the civilizations of the Euphrates and the Nile.
And in this intercourse the influences came from Babylonia to Egypt,
not from Egypt to Babylonia.
The
use of brick in early Egypt points in the same direction. While
Babylonia was a land of clay, Upper Egypt was a land of stone, and
it was as unnatural to invent the art of brick-making in the latter
country as it was natural to do so in the former.
To
this day the Nubians build their cottages of stone; so too do the
Bedawin squatters on the east bank of the Nile; it is only where the
population is Egyptian and the influence of the old Egyptian
civilization is still dominant that brick is employed.
Under
the Old Empire the Egyptian Pharaohs built even the temples of the
gods of brick; it was but gradually that the brick was superseded by
stone.
It
was the same also in Assyria; here too, in a land of stone, brick
was at first the sole building material, and even the great brick
platforms which the marshy soil of Babylonia had necessitated
continued to be laid. But Assyrian culture was confessedly
Babylonian in origin, and the brick edifice was therefore a
characteristic of it. It was only by degrees that Assyrian
architecture emancipated itself from its early traditions, and at
first timidly, then more boldly, superseded the brick by stone. The
example of Assyria throws light on that of Egypt, and as the
Assyrian employment of brick was due to the Babylonian origin of its
civilization, it is permissible to infer that the Egyptian
employment of brick was also due to the same cause. Once more we may
repeat that there was early intercourse between Egypt and Babylonia
— the land of the brick-maker — and that in this
intercourse the prevailing influences came from the east.
Such,
then, is the conclusion to which the most recent research leads us.
The "dynastic" Egyptians, the Egyptians of history, spoke
a language which is related to those of the Semitic family; their
first kingdoms, so far as we know, were in Upper Egypt, and
tradition brought them across the eastern desert to the banks of the
Nile. The culture which they possessed was characterized by
Babylonian features, and was therefore due either wholly or in part
to intercourse with Babylonia. The fact that the use of the
seal-cylinder — which, by the way, bore the Semitic name of
khetem — should have lingered in the valley of the Nile to the
very beginnings of the Middle Empire, is an indication that the
period of its introduction could not have been very remote. The
earliest historical monuments which have been revealed to us by
modern excavation may not, after all, be many centuries later than
the time when the culture of Babylonia found its way to the Nile.
Indeed,
there is a fact which indicates that this is the case, and that the
literary culture of Babylonia had been imported into the valley of
the Nile at a time when Egypt was divided into independent kingdoms.
At an early epoch an ingenious system of official chronology had
been invented in Babylonia. The years were named there after the
chief events that had occurred in each of them, among these the
accession or death of a king being naturally prominent. At the death
of a king a list was drawn up of his regnal years, with their
characteristic events, and such lists were from time to time
combined into longer chronicles. The Babylonians were preeminently a
commercial people, and for purposes of trade it was necessary that
contracts and other legal documents should be dated accurately, and
that in case of a dispute the date should be easily ascertained.
Now
an exactly similar system of dating had been adopted in Egypt before
the age of the First historical dynasty. A pre-Menic monument dated
in this way has been discovered at Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt, and
the same method of reckoning time is found on ivory tablets that
have been disinterred at Abydos.
The
method lasted down to the age of the Fifth dynasty, since the Museum
of Palermo contains the fragment of a stone from Heliopolis, on
which the chronology of the Egyptian kings is given from Menes
onward, each year being named after the event or events from which
it had received its official title. The successive reigns are
divided from one another as in the Babylonian lists, and the height
of the Nile in each year is further added — a note which
naturally is of Egyptian origin. It is, therefore, interesting to
observe that it is added as a note, independent of the event which
gave its name to the year. Nothing could prove more clearly the
foreign origin of the whole system of chronology, since, had it been
of native invention, the height of the Nile, on which the prosperity
of the country depended, would have been the first event to be
recorded. After the fall of the Old Empire this ancient Babylonian
method of dating seems to have passed out of use like the Babylonian
seal-cylinder; at all events we find no further traces of it. It
was, in short, an exotic which never took kindly to Egyptian soil.
Did
the "dynastic" Egyptians bring this method of dating with
them, or did they borrow it after their settlement in Egypt? The
second supposition is very difficult to entertain, for intimate
trade relations between Babylonia and Upper (or Lower) l Egypt in
the pre-Menic age appear to be out of the question, and are
unsupported by any known facts. And literary correspondence, such as
was carried on in the time of the Eighteenth dynasty, seems equally
out of the question. How, then, did the Egyptians come to learn the
peculiar Babylonian system of chronology unless the founders of the
culture of which it formed a portion had originally brought it with
them from the east?
The
same question is raised by the existence in early Egypt of an
artistic motif which had its origin in Babylonia. This is what is
usually known as the heraldic position of the figures of men and
animals.
An
example of it is found on the famous "palette" of
Nar-Buzau discovered by Mr. Ouibell at Hierakonpolis, 1 where the
hybrid monsters whose necks form the centre of the slate are
heraldically arranged.
In
this case the design is known to be Babylonian, since M. Heuzey has
pointed out a Babylonian seal-cylinder on which the two monsters
recur. Nar-Buzau is made the immediate predecessor of Menes by
Professor Petrie on grounds to which every archaeologist must
assent; but an even better example of the heraldic design is met
with
on a great isolated rock of sandstone near El-Kab which was quarried
in the time of the Old Empire. Here the ownership and opening of the
quarry are denoted by an elaborate sculpture of the Pharaoh, who is
duplicated, his two forms being figured as seated back to back, with
a column between them, while the winged solar disk of Edfu, with the
royal uraei on either side of the orb, spreads its wings above them.
Each of the royal forms holds a sceptre, but that on the left has no
head-dress, whereas that on the right wears a skull-cap, above which
is the solar orb with the uraeus serpent issuing from it.2 In front
of the latter is an altar consisting of a bowl on a stand, loaves of
bread and a cup and jar of wine (with the customary handles for
suspension) being engraved above the bowl along with a series of
perpendicular lines which in this instance cannot (as has been
suggested) represent the fringes of a mat. In front of the figure on
the left is another altar, of different shape, the place of the bowl
being taken by a flat top, above which are six upright lines and a
fiat cake. Precisely the same altar with the same objects above it
are engraved on a broken seal-cylinder of ivory found by Dr. Reisner
at Naga' ed-Der, which I understand from the discoverer to be of the
age of the First dynasty. When, therefore, was it that the heraldic
design in art was introduced into Egypt from its Babylonian
birthplace? In any case it would seem to have been before the
foundation of the united monarchy.
In
Babylonia itself, as we have seen, tradition looked seaward, towards
the Persian Gulf, for the elements of its civilization. At any rate
the seaport of Eridu was the gateway through which the culture of
Babylonia was believed to have passed. Here on the shores of the sea
the culture-god of Sumer had his home; here trade sprang up, and the
sailors and merchants of Eridu came into contact with men of other
lands and other habits. Is it possible to discover a connection
between Eridu and primeval Egypt?
I
believe that it is, though in making the attempt we are of course
treading upon precarious ground. There are certain curious
coincidences, one of which, since it goes to the heart of Sumerian
and Egyptian religion, is necessarily of considerable weight. But
they are all, it must be remembered, more in the nature of
indications and possibilities than of ascertained facts.
Eridu
meant in Sumerian "the good city." Memphis (Men-nofer),
"the good place," the name of the first capital of united
Egypt, had the same signification. In the case of Eridu the name had
something to do with the fact that the city was the seat of Ea, the
god of beneficent spells and incantations, who had given the arts
and sciences to man, and was ever ready to heal those that were
sick. The son and vice-gerent of Ea, who carried his commands to
earth and spent his time in curing diseases and raising "the
dead to life," was Asari, "the prince," who was
usually entitled Mulu-dugga, "the good" or "beneficent
one." The character and attributes of Asari are thus the same
as those of the Egyptian Osiris, who was also known as Ati, "the
prince," and was commonly addressed as Un-nofer, "the good
being."
Unlike
most of the Egyptian deities, Osiris had the same human form as
Asari of Eridu, and the resemblance between the names of Asari and
Osiris — Asar in Egyptian — is rendered more striking by
the remarkable fact that they are both represented by two ideographs
or hieroglyphs of precisely the same shape and signification.1 It
does not appear possible to ascribe such a threefold identity to
mere coincidence. And the theory of coincidence becomes still more
improbable when we remember that while the story of Osiris centres
in his death and resurrection, one of the chief offices of the
Sumerian Asari was to "raise the dead to life." Nowhere
else in Babylonian literature, whether Sumerian or Semitic, do we
find any reference to a resurrection; the Semitic Babylonians,
indeed, did not look forward to a future life at all, or if they
did, it was to a shadowy existence in a subterranean land of
darkness "where all things are forgotten." It is only in
connection with Asari that we hear of a possibility that the dead
may live again.
Other
resemblances between the theologies of Eridu and primitive Egypt
have been pointed out.
Professor
Hommel believes that in the Egyptian deity Nun, the heavenly ocean,
we must see a Sumerian god Nun, who also represented the celestial
abyss. However this may be, an old formula, torn from its context,
which has been introduced into the Pyramid texts of the Pharaoh Pepi
I., takes us back not only to the cosmology of Eridu but to the
literary form in which it had been expressed. Pepi, it is said, "was
born of his father Turn. At that time the heaven was not, the earth
was not, men did not exist, the gods were not born, there was no
death." The words are almost a repetition of those with which
the Babylonian epic of the creation begins: "At that time the
heaven above was not known by name, the earth beneath was not named
... at that time the gods had not appeared, any one of them";
and they are also a distant echo of the commencement of the
cosmological legend of Sumerian Eridu: "At that time no holy
house, no house of the gods in a holy place had been built, no reed
had grown, no tree had been planted." x
The
testimony of philological archaeology, if I may use such a term, is
supplemented by that of archaeological discovery. Sumerian Babylonia
and early dynastic Egypt are alike characterized by vases of hard
stone, many of which have the same forms.
Examples
of some of them will be found in de Morgan's Recherches sur les
Origines de l'Egypte, ii. p. 257, where J?quier observes that
analogues to the Egyptian vases have been disinterred by de Sarzec
at Tello in Southern Babylonia, "the shape and execution of
which are exactly like" those discovered in Egypt, "the
only difference being that the one are ornamented with
hieroglyphics, and the others with a cuneiform inscription; apart
from this they are identical in make." The most remarkable
instance of identity, however, is the design on the palette of the
pre-Menic Pharaoh Nar-Buzau to which attention was first called by
Professor Heuzey.1 On this we have a representation of two lions set
face to face in the Babylonian fashion, and with long serpentine
necks which are interlaced so as to enclose a circle. Precisely the
same representation is met with on an early Babylonian seal-cylinder
from Tello.
Years
ago I noticed the general likeness presented by the seated statues
of Tello to those of the Third Egyptian dynasty,2 and suggested that
both belonged to the same school of sculpture. A little earlier
Professor Flinders Petrie had demonstrated that the standard of
measurement marked upon the plan of the city which one of the Tello
figures holds in his lap is the same as the standard of measurement
of the Egyptian pyramid-builders, the cubit, namely, of 20*63, which
is quite different from the later Assyro-Babylonian cubit of 2?*6.1
Still more convincing, perhaps, is the Babylonian division of the
year into twelve months of thirty days each, which was already known
in Egypt in the age of the early dynasties. The Babylonian week of
five and ten days reappears in the Egyptian week of ten days, while
the division of the day into twelve "double hours," six
belonging to the day and six to the night, has its counterpart in
the Egyptian day of twenty-four hours, twelve of which were reckoned
to the day and the other twelve to the night. Since a list of the
thirty-six decans or zodiacal stars has recently been found on a
coffin of the time of the Twelfth Dynasty2 it is possible that this
distinctively Babylonian invention may also go back to the age of
the first Egyptian dynasties. At all events one of the chief stars
in the Pyramid texts is "the Bull of heaven," a
translation of the Sumerian Gudi-bir, or "Bull of Light,"
the name given to the planet Jupiter in its relation to the
ecliptic. In primitive Babylonian astronomy the zodiacal sign of the
Bull ushered in the year.
It
may be that some of these evidences of Babylonian influence are
referable to contact between Babylonia and Egypt in the age that
immediately preceded the foundation of the united Egyptian monarchy
rather than to that still earlier age when the "dynastic"
settlers first settled in the valley of the Nile. But at present we
do not know how such a contact could have taken place. Upper Egypt
and not the Delta was the seat of the first Pharaohs with their
Horus-hawk totem, and at the remote period when the future
civilization of the country was being developed under their
fostering care it is difficult to believe that Babylonian soldiers
or traders had made their way to the shores of the Mediterranean,
much less to the deserts of the Sayyid. For the present, at all
events, where we have clear proof of the dependence of early
Egyptian culture upon that of the Babylonians we have no alternative
but to ascribe it to the Semitic emigrants or invaders to whom the
historical civilization of Egypt was primarily due.1 This
civilization, like that of Babylonia, implied a knowledge of metal.
It was a civilization of the copper age, and thus stood in sharp
contrast to the neolithic culture, such as it was, of "prehistoric"
Egypt. Egyptian tradition, it is true, believed that the metal
weapons with which the followers of Horus had overcome the
stone-defended natives of the country were of iron, but this was
because the compilers of the story in its existing form projected
the knowledge and usages of their own time back into the past. There
is incontrovertible proof that in Egypt, as in Europe, the ages of
copper and bronze preceded that of iron. But the tradition was
doubtless right in laying stress upon the fact that the invaders
were forgers and blacksmiths. It would have been by reason of the
superiority of their arms that they succeeded in subduing the valley
of the Nile and reducing its inhabitants to serfdom. They were, too,
"the followers of Horus," under the leadership of a single
prince who was himself a Horus, that is to say, an incarnate god.
Here, again, we find our- selves in the presence of a conception and
doctrine of Semitic Babylonia. There, too, as we have seen, the
kings were incarnate gods, not only the sons of a divinity, but
themselves divine. In Egypt, apart from the Osirian circle, the gods
were not men, but animals, and so deeply rooted was this
beast-worship in the hearts of the indigenous population that even
the "dynastic" civilization, with all its unifying and
absorbing power, never succeeded in doing more than in uniting the
head of the beast with the body of the man. Even the human Pharaoh
was forced to picture himself as a hawk. In Semitic Babylonia on the
other hand, as we have seen, the deification of the king flowed
naturally from the anthropomorphic conception of the deity; where
man was made in the image of God, it was easy to see in him a god on
earth. Like the use of copper, therefore, the deification of the
king which characterized dynastic Egypt points back to Babylonia.
It
must not be supposed, however, that because certain elements and
leading characteristics in the civilization of historical Egypt
indicate that the Semitic-speaking race to whom it was mainly due
came originally from Babylonia, there are no elements in it which
can be derived from elsewhere. On the contrary, there is much that
is native to Egypt itself.
Even
the script shows but comparatively few traces of a Babylonian
origin. If the "dynastic" Egyptians came from Babylonia,
they must have very considerably modified and developed the seeds of
culture which they brought with them. And in Egypt they found a
neolithic culture which had already made considerable progress. The
indigenous population possessed the same artistic sense as the
palaeolithic European of the Solutrian and Magdalenian epochs, with
whom perhaps it was contemporaneous, and under the direction of its
dynastic conquerors this sense was trained and educated until the
Egyptians of history became one of the most artistic peoples of the
old world.
But
it is noticeable that throughout the historical period whenever the
civilizations of Egypt and Babylonia came into contact, it was Egypt
that was influenced rather than Asia. The tradition of the earliest
ages was thus carried on; the stream of influence flowed from the
east, and Herodotus was justified in assigning Egypt to Asia rather
than to Africa. It was, in fact, Asia with an African colouring.
In
the days of the Eighteenth dynasty, when Egypt for the first and
last time possessed an Asiatic empire, the eastern influence is very
marked. The script itself became Babylonian, the correspondence of
the Government with its own officials in Canaan was conducted in the
Babylonian language and the Babylonian syllabary, and there are
indications that even the official memoranda of the campaigns of
Thothmes III. were drawn up in cuneiform characters.
The
clay tablets of Babylonia were imitated in Upper Egypt, where
hieroglyphic and hieratic characters were somewhat awkwardly
impressed upon them, and the language was filled with Semitic
loan-words. The fashionable author of the age of the Nineteenth
dynasty interlarded his style not only with Semitic words, but even
with Semitic phrases. It is true that the Semitic words and phrases
are Canaanite; but Canaan had long been a province of Babylonia, and
it was because it was permeated with Babylonian culture and used the
Babylonian script, that the foreign words and phrases were
introduced into the literary language of Egypt.
On
the other hand, so far as, we can judge, there was no reflex action
of Egypt upon Babylonia. The seal-cylinder was never superseded
there by the scarab; indeed the only scarabs yet found in the
Mesopotamian region are memorials of the Egyptian conquests of the
Eighteenth dynasty. Neither the hieroglyphs nor the hieratic of
Egypt made their way eastward into Asia, a fact which is somewhat
remarkable when we remember over how wide an area the more
complicated cuneiform spread. It was Europe that was affected by
Egypt rather than Asia.
Before
Egypt laid claim to Palestine, Babylonian culture had already taken
too firm a hold of Western Asia to be dislodged, and in Babylonia
itself Egyptian influences are hard to find. In the age of
Khammu-rabi, we meet with a few proper names which may contain the
name of the Sun-god Ra, as well as with the name of Anupum or Anubis
on a stone cylinder, and the hieroglyphic character nefer, "good,"
is affixed to a legal document.1 But this merely proves that in a
period when the Babylonian Empire reached to the confines of Egypt,
there were Egyptians settled in Babylon for the purpose of trade. A
more curious example of possible Egyptian influence is one to which
I have drawn attention in my lectures on the Religions of Ancient
Egypt and Babylonia? Thoth, the Egyptian god of literature, was
accompanied by four apes, who sang hymns to the rising and setting
sun. Travellers have described the dancing and screaming of troops
of apes at daybreak when the sun first lights up the earth, and the
origin of these companions of Thoth has been cleared up by an
inscription in a tomb at Assuan. Here we learn that in the age of
the Old Empire, expeditions were sent by the Pharaohs into the Sudan
— the home of the apes of Thoth — in order to bring back
from "the land of the gods" Danga dwarfs who could "dance
the dances of the gods."
In
the eyes of the Egyptians, it would seem, there was little
difference between the ape and the Danga dwarf; the one was a
dwarf-like ape, the other an ape-like man. But they alone could
perform correctly the dances that were held in honour of certain
gods, and which are already depicted on the prehistoric vases of
Egypt.1 Closely allied to the Danga dwarfs and the apes of Thoth are
the Khnumu or Pataeki of Memphis, the followers of Ptah, who were
also dwarfs with bowed legs. Now dwarfs of precisely the same form
are found on early Babylonian seal-cylinders where they are
associated sometimes with the goddess Istar, sometimes with an ape
and the god Sin.2 The Babylonian name of the dwarf was the Sumerian
Nu-gidda, an indication that his association with the deity went
back to Sumerian times. We may conclude that, like the Danga dwarf
of Egypt, he, too, performed dances in honour of the gods.
The
extraordinary resemblance of form between the Egyptian and
Babylonian sacred dwarfs, as represented in art, raises the question
whether the Babylonian dwarf was not an importation from Egypt,
since the ape with which he was confounded was a native of the
Sudan. This was the view to which I was long inclined, but there are
certain considerations which make it difficult to be accepted.
The
Khnumu of Memphis were not the only dwarfs who were represented by
the Egyptian artists. Still better known was Bes, who became a
special favourite in the Roman period, when he was made a sort of
patron of childbirth. But Bes, it was remembered, had come to Egypt
from the southern lands of Somali and Arabia, like the goddess
Hathor or the god Horus. Hathor is, I believe, the Babylonian Istar,
who has passed to Egypt through her South Arabian name of Athtar;
however this may be, Ptah of Memphis, whose followers were the
Khnumu dwarfs, bears a Semitic name, and must therefore be of
Semitic derivation. He belongs, that is to say, to the Egyptians of
the dynastic stock, and is accordingly one of the few Egyptian
divinities who is depicted in human form. On the other hand, the
Sumerian dwarf Nu-gidda is the companion of Istar.
On
the Egyptian side, therefore, the dwarfs of Ptah are associated with
a god who has come from Asia, while the dwarf Bes was confessedly of
foreign extraction. On the Babylonian side the dwarf Nu-gidda was
the associate of Istar, the counterpart of Hathor, and of Sin, the
Moon-god, who was adopted by the people of Southern Arabia, and
whose name was carried as far as Mount Sinai on the borders of
Egypt. All this suggests that the sacred dwarf came to the valley of
the Nile from Babylonia and Arabia like the name of Ptah, the
creator of the world. In this case it would have come with the
dynastic Egyptians before the age of history begins.
But,
on the other hand, there is the ape, and the ape is figured along
with the dwarf on the Babylonian seals. It is true that the ape is
equally foreign to Egypt and Babylonia, but the Sudan is nearer
Egypt than Southern Arabia is to Babylonia. The actual date and path
of migration, therefore, of the sacred dwarf must be left undecided.
Whether he was brought to Egypt at the dawn of history, or whether
he travelled to Babylonia in the historical age remains doubtful.
All we can be sure of is that the sacred dwarfs of Babylonia and
Egypt were originally one and the same, and that they testify to an
intercourse between the two countries of which all literary record
has been lost.1
The
same verdict must be given in the case of another point, not only of
resemblance, but of identity, between ancient Egypt and Babylonia.
This is the shaduf or contrivance for drawing water from a falling
river for the sake of irrigation. The shaduf, which is still used in
Upper Egypt, can be traced back pictorially to the time of the
Eighteenth dynasty, but the basin system of irrigation with which it
was connected was already of immemorial antiquity. It is a simple
yet most effective invention, and on that account perhaps the less
likely to have been independently invented, for it is always the
obvious which remains longest unnoticed. In the modern shaduf a long
pole is laid across a beam which is supported at either end upon
other poles or on pillars of brick or mud; it is kept in place by
thongs and is heavily weighted at one end, while at the other end a
bucket or skin is attached to it by means of a rope. The shaduf of
the Eighteenth dynasty was supported sometimes, as to-day, on a
cross-beam, sometimes on a column of mud, and the bucket was of
triangular form with two handles to which the rope was tied.
Representations of it from Theban tombs will be found in Maspero's
Dawn of Civilization, p. 764, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson's Ancient
Egyptians, plates 38 and 356.
Precisely
the same machine is represented on a bas-relief found by Layard in
the palace of Kuyunjik at Nineveh,1 the only difference being that
the shaduf-worker stands upon a platform of brick instead of on the
bank itself, and that the pillar upon which the pole is supported
seems to be built of bricks rather than of mud. The machine,
however, is identical in both its Egyptian and its Assyrian form.
That the bas-relief should have been found in Assyria and not in
Babylonia is a mere accident. Like almost everything else in
Assyrian culture, the invention was of Babylonian origin, and, in
fact, formed part of the system of irrigation which made the plain
of Babylonia habitable. Herodotus, who calls the machine a
??cavelov, describes it as being used as in Egypt, and for the same
reason, since the river did not rise to the actual level of the
cultivated ground, which, like that of Egypt, was divided into a
number of basins.2
The
palace of Kuyunjik belongs to the last age of Assyrian history. But
the shaduf in Babylonia went back to the Sumerian period, as we know
from the references to it in the lexical tablets. It was called
duldtum in Semitic Babylonian, the pole or poles being kakritum, and
the bucket zirqu or zirqatum (Sumerian sd),1 and an old Sumerian
collection of agricultural precepts describes how the irrigator
"fixes up the shaduf, hangs up the bucket and draws water."2
The
"irrigator" was naturally an important personage in early
Babylonia, and legend averred that the famous Sargon of Akkad, the
founder of the first Semitic Empire, had been rescued as a child
from a watery grave, and brought up by one. In both Babylonia and
Egypt the shaduf was closely associated with a system of irrigation
which went back to the dawn of their several histories.
What
explanation must we give of its identity in the two countries? There
are three possibilities. In the first place, it may have been
invented independently on the banks of both the Euphrates and the
Nile.
Similar
conditions tend to produce similar results.
But
against this is the fact that the shaduf was not the only kind of
irrigating machine that was suggested by the nature of the two
rivers and the lands through which they flowed. In modern Egypt,
besides the shaduf there are the saqia, or water-wheel, and an
irrigating contrivance which is in use in the Delta.
The
water-wheel, we know, was a Babylonian invention which was imported
into Egypt in comparatively recent times; the irrigating contrivance
of the Delta, which consists of a bucket suspended on a rope swung
by two men who stand facing each other, is a primitive instrument
which might have been invented anywhere.
Its
survival is due to the fact that in the flat marshes of the Delta,
the shaduf, though saving labour, is not necessary, and it therefore
continued to be employed there after the shaduf was known. But this
implies that the shaduf was not the oldest instrument for raising
the water of the Nile.
Then
there is the second possibility that the shaduf was borrowed by
Egypt from Babylonia or by Babylonia from Egypt in historical times.
In Babylonia, however, we can trace its history back to the Sumerian
epoch, and in both countries it was intimately connected with a
system of irrigation the origin of which must be sought in the
prehistoric age, and which was probably carried from the valley of
the Euphrates to that of the Nile. There remains the third
possibility that it came to Egypt along with the system of
irrigation itself.
It
is always easier to ask questions than to answer them, in
archaeology as in other things. There are many details connected
with the early relationship between the civilizations of Babylonia
and Egypt which must be left to future research to discover.
But
of that relationship there can now be little question in the minds
of those who are accustomed to deal with inductive evidence. There
was intercourse in the prehistoric age between the two countries,
and the civilizing influences, like the wheat and the language, came
from the lands which bordered on the Euphrates.
Civilized
man made his way from the east, and dwelt in primeval days "in
the land of Shinar." x
1
In Egyptian, however, the bird stands over a door, while in
Babylonian it is over the two-legged stool on which two vases of
offerings are set when it is used to denote the image of a god.
The
Sumerian pictograph for "(divine) lord" or "lady"
(nin) is the representation of a similar vase on a mat, and thus has
the same form as the Egyptian hotep. The Egyptian nefer, "good,"
finds its exact counterpart in the Babylonian pictograph of
"ornament" (me-Te). The Babylonian "house," too,
is given the same tower-like shape as the Egyptian {aha).
1
If, however, the Sumerian pictograph for "city" represents
a tower on a mound, as seems to be the case, the identity in form of
the Egyptian hieroglyph cannot be an accident, since both the tower
and the artificial platform were essentially Babylonian.
In
the cursive cuneiform two separate pictographs have coalesced, one
representing a seat, the other what appears to be a tower on a
mound.
1
In a short Paper entitled Lexicalische Belege zu meinen Vortrag über
die sprachliche Striking des Altegyptischen (1895), in which he has
attempted to draw up a list of phonetic equivalences between
Egyptian and Sumerian. In this, however, I am unable to follow him,
as his comparisons of Egyptian and Sumerian words are not
convincing.
1
See de Morgan, Recherches sur les Origines de l'Egypte, pp. 94, 95.
According to Schweinfurth, barley, which is also found in the
prehistoric graves of Egypt, must originally have come from
Babylonia like the wheat. Qemku is found in the Pyramid texts
(Maspero, Rccueil de Travaux relatifs de la Philologie et de
l'Archeologie egyptiennes et assyriennes, v. p.10). Boti, whence the
Coptic boti and the battawa or "durra cake" of modern
Egyptian Arabic, was "durra," not "wheat."
1
See Maspero, Etudes de Mythologie, ii. pp. 313 sqq.
1
I have put "Lower" between parentheses since it is very
questionable whether this particular system of registering time was
known in the Delta until it was introduced from Upper Egypt. On the
Palermo stone a list of the early kings of Lower Egypt is given, but
without any dates, which make their appearance along with the kings
of the First dynasty, who belonged to Upper Egypt. It is interesting
to observe that the ideograph for "year" is denoted in
exactly the same way in both the Babylonian and the Egyptian
hieroglyphs by the branch of a (palm) tree. Such a curious symbol
for the idea can hardly have been invented independently Professor
Hommel further draws attention to the fact that while the literal
translation of a common ideographic mode of representing "year"
in Babylonian is "name of heaven," that of the two
syllables of the Egyptian word renpet) "year," would also
be "name of heaven."
1
Hierakonpolis, part i. plate xxix. The name of the king is usually
(but erroneously) written Nar-Mer.
2
As the royal figures wear no crowns, they can hardly depict the king
in his double office of king of Upper and Lower Egypt, and the
duplication of the Pharaoh must consequently have a purely artistic
origin. That this artistic origin is closely connected with the
origin of the seal-cylinders is shown by the fact that the figures
correspond with one of the most common designs on the latter, in
which the ka of the person to whom the cylinder belonged is seated
on a chair similar to that of the El-Kab king, an altar with
offerings of bread being set before him.
1
The eye and the ideograph of city or place. Since the eye here has
the phonetic value of eriox art, the ideograph of "city,"
which is eri in Sumerian, must have the Egyptian value of as.
1
See my Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia p. 238.
1
Comptes rendus de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 4
Ser., 1899, xxvii. pp. 60-67 see Hierakonpolis, part ii. plate
xxviii. In the Revue d'Assyriologie, v. pp. 29-32, Heuzey has lately
drawn attention to the resemblance between the early Egyptian and
Babylonian bowls of calcite or Egyptian alabaster.
2
Lectures on the Religion of the Aficient Babylonians, 1887, p. 33.
1
Nature, August 9, 1883, p. 341.
2
Daressy, "Le Cercueil d'Emsaht," in the Annates du Service
iles Antiquites de l'Egypte, 1899, i. pp. 79-90.
1
I have called Upper Egypt the seat of the first Pharaohs, not only
because the earliest dynastic monuments we possess come from thence,
but also because it was of Upper Egypt and its ruling caste that the
hawk-god Horus was the guardian deity.
From
Upper Egypt he was carried to Lower Egypt and its nomes, presumably
through conquest, as is monumentally attested by the "palette"
of Nar-Buzau discovered at Hierakonpolis (Capart, Debuts de PAit en
Egypte, p. 236). So, too, the anthropomorphic Osiris — the
duplicate of Anhur — made his way from the south to the north.
That Southern Arabia should have been the connecting-link between
Babylonia and Egypt was the result of its being the source of the
incense which was imported for religious use into both countries
alike at the very beginning of their histories. That this foreign
product should have been considered an indispensable adjunct of the
religions of the two civilizations is one of the best proofs we have
of their connection with one another. Dr. Schweinfurth has shown
that the sacred trees of Egypt — the sycamore and the persea —
which needed artificial cultivation for their preservation there,
came from Southern Arabia, where he found them growing wild under
the names of Kkanes, Burra and Lebakh (Verhandlungen der
Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, July 1889, No. 7).
1
In the possession of Lord Amherst of Hackney. On an early Babylonian
seal-cylinder, bought by Dr. Scheil at Mossul and figured in the
Recueil de Travaux relatifs de la Philologie et d'Archeologie
egyptiennes et assyriennes, xix. I, 2, No. 7 of the plate, we have:
"Ili-su-bani son of Aminanum, servant of the gods Bel and
Anupum." Aminanum may be a Semitized form of the Egyptian
Ameni. 2 pp. 133, 139 485.
1
De Morgan, Recherches sur les Origines de Egypte, p. 65.
2
Scheil, Recueil de Travaux relatifs de la Philologie et
d'Archeologie egyptiennes et assyrie/mes, xix. pp. 50, 54; Sayce,
Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, p. 485. The dwarf is
represented as dancing before the god Sin on an early Babylonian
seal-cylinder published by Scheil in the Recueil, xix. 1, 2, No. 16
of the plate.
1
It is worth notice that the dwarf-god Bes, who is called "God
of Punt" in inscriptions of the Ptolemaic age, appears on Arab
coins of the Roman period (Schweinfurth, Verhandlungen der
Gesellschaft für Erdkunde 1889, No. 7).
1
Layard, Monuments of Nineveh Second Series, pi. 15.
2
Herodotus, i. 193.
1
The rope appears to have been makutum; see IV. A. I. v. 26, 61. i K.
56, ii. 14.
1
For other evidences of contact between primitive Babylonia and early
Egypt, see Heuzey in the Revue d'Assyriologie, 1899, v. 2, pp. 53-6.
He there enumerates (1) the resemblance between the stone mace-heads
of the two countries in "prehistoric times," as well as
between the flat dishes of veined and ribboned onyx marble, hollowed
and rounded by the hand; (2) between the lion-heads of stone, the
onyx stone of one of which is stated in an inscription to have come
from Magan; (3) the extraordinary likeness in the delineation of
animal forms, which extends to conventional details "like the
two concentric curves artificially arranged so as to allow the two
corners of the profile to be visible at the same time"; (4) the
use of a razor and the custom of completely shaving the face, and
even the skull; and (5) the ceremonial form of libation by means of
a vase of peculiar shape, with a long curved spout and without a
handle.
This
libation vase was practically the same in both countries, in spite
of its peculiar and somewhat complicated form. Of later introduction
into Egypt was the inscribed cone of terra-cotta, which was of early
Babylonian origin, but is not met with in Egypt before the age of
the Twelfth dynasty. At any rate, the first specimens of it hitherto
found there were discovered by myself at Ed-Der, opposite Esna, in
1905 {Annates du Service des Antiquites de l'Egypt, 1905, pp.
164-5).
CHAPTER V BABYLONIA AND PALESTINE
A
very few years ago Palestine was still archaeologically an unknown
land. Its history subsequent to the Israelitish conquest could be
gathered from the Old Testament, and Egyptian papyri of the age of
the Nineteenth dynasty had told us something about its condition
immediately prior to that event.
Thanks
to the Palestine Exploration Fund,the country had been carefully
surveyed, and the monuments still existing on its surface had been
noted and registered. But the earlier history of the people, their
races and origin, their social and religious life, and their
relation to the rest of the world, were still a blank. Of the Canaan
invaded by the children of Israel we knew nothing from an
archaeological point of view, and very little even of the Palestine
that was governed by Israelitish judges and Jewish kings.
The
veil has at last been lifted which so long lay over the face of
Palestine. Cuneiform texts have come to clear up its civil history,
while the spade of the excavator has supplemented their evidence on
the more purely archaeological side. The history of Palestine can
now be followed back not only into the neolithic, but even into the
palaeolithic age, and the source and character of Canaanite
civilization have been in large measure revealed to us.
First
and foremost among the materials which have made this possible are
the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna in Upper Egypt, which were
discovered in 1887. Tel el-Amarna, about midway between Minia and
Assiut, is the site of a city which sprang, like a meteor, into a
brief but glorious existence under the so-called "heretic king"
Amon-hotep IV, about BC 1400. Amon-hotep, under the guidance of his
mother, had endeavoured to suppress the old state religion of Egypt,
and to substitute for it a pantheistic monotheism. In spite of
persecution, however, the adherents of the old faith proved too
strong for the king; he was forced to leave Thebes, the capital of
his fathers, and to build a new capital further north, where he
changed his name to that of Khu-n-Aten, and called artists from the
islands of the Mediterranean to adorn his palace. When moving from
Thebes he naturally transferred to the new seat of government both
the Foreign Office and its records in so far as they covered the
reign of his father Amon-hotep III. and his own. For reasons unknown
to us they do not extend further back.
They
were all in the cuneiform script, and for the most part in the
Babylonian language. The fact came upon the historian with a shock
of surprise, and had far-reaching consequences, historical as well
as archaeological. In the first place, they proved what had already
been suspected, that under the Eighteenth dynasty Egypt possessed an
Asiatic empire which stretched to the banks of the Euphrates. Then,
secondly, they showed that Western Asia was at the time intersected
by high-roads along which merchants and couriers were constantly
passing, and an active literary correspondence was carried on.
Thirdly — and this was the greatest surprise of all —
they made it clear that this correspondence was in the script and
language of Babylonia, and that it was shared in by writers of
various nationalities and languages, of all classes of society and
of both sexes. The Hittite and Cappadocian kings wrote to the
Pharaoh in cuneiform characters, just as did the kings of Babylonia
and Assyria. Arab shekhs and Hittite condottieri joined in the
correspondence, and politically-minded ladies did the same. Even the
Egyptian Government was compelled to suppress all feelings of
national vanity, and to conduct the whole of its correspondence with
its own governors and vassals in Palestine or Syria in the foreign
language and syllabary. There is no trace anywhere of the use of
either the Egyptian language or the Egyptian mode of writing.
From
these facts other facts follow. The age of the Eighteenth Egyptian
dynasty must have been quite as literary as the age of our own
eighteenth century, and international correspondence must have been
quite as easy, if not easier. Education, moreover, must have been
very widely spread; all the civilized world was writingand reading;
and the system of writing was a most complicated one, demanding
years of study and memory. In spite of this it was known not only to
a professional class of scribes and the officials of the Government,
but also to the shekhs of petty Canaanitish towns and even to
Bedawin chiefs. And along with the system of writing went a
knowledge of the foreign language of Babylonia — the French of
Western Asia — including some slight acquaintance with the
extinct language of the Sumerians. All this presupposes libraries
and archive-chambers where books and dispatches could be stored, as
well as schools where the Babylonian script and language could be
taught and learned.
Such
libraries and schools had existed in Babylonia from a very early
age. Every great city had its library, every great temple its
muniment-room. Here the clay books were numbered and arranged on
shelves, catalogues being provided which gave their titles. The
system under which the longer literary or semi-scientific works were
arranged and catalogued was at once ingenious and complete. By the
side of the library was naturally the school. Here every effort was
made to facilitate the progress of the scholars, more especially in
the study of the Sumerian language and texts. The characters of the
syllabary were classified and named; comparative grammars,
dictionaries and reading-books of Sumerian and Semitic Babylonian
were compiled, lists of Semitic synonyms were drawn up, explanatory
commentaries were written on older works, and interlinear
translations provided for the Sumerian texts. But with all this the
cuneiform system of writing must have been hard even for the native
Babylonian to learn, and in the case of the foreigner its
difficulties were multiplied. It may be doubted whether the average
boy of to-day, who finds the spelling of his own English almost too
much for him, would have had the memory and patience, to learn the
cuneiform characters. Even in Sumerian times the difficulty of the
task was realized, for there is a Sumerian proverb that "he who
would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn."
x It says much for the educational zeal of the Oriental world in the
century before the Exodus that it was just this difficult and
complicated script which it chose as its medium for correspondence.
The
fact, however, points unmistakably to its cause. The reason why the
Babylonian language and syllabary were thus in use throughout
Western Asia, and why even the Egyptian Government was obliged to
employ them in its communications with its Asiatic subjects, can
only have been because Babylonian culture was too deeply rooted
there to be superseded by any other. Before Egypt appeared upon the
scene under the conquerors of the Eighteenth dynasty, Western Asia,
as far as the Mediterranean, must have been for centuries under the
direct influence and domination of Babylonia. I say domination as
well as influence", for in the ancient East military conquest
was needed to enforce an alien language and literature, theology and
system of law upon another people. And even military conquest was
not always sufficient, as witness the Assyrian and Persian conquests
of Egypt, or the Roman conquest of Syria.
We
now have monumental testimony that such domination there actually
was. As far back as BC 3800, Sargon of Akkad had founded a Semitic
empire which had its centre in Babylon, and which stretched across
Asia to the shores of the Mediterranean. We learn from his annals
that three campaigns were needed to subdue "the land of the
Amorites," as Syria and Palestine were called, and that at
last, after three years of warfare, all the coast-lands of "the
sea of the setting sun" acknowledged his sway. He set up an
image of himself on the Syrian coast in commemoration of his
victories, and moulded his conquests "into one" great
empire. His son and successor, Naram-Sin, extended his conquests
into the Sinaitic peninsula, and a seal-cylinder, on which he is
adored as a god, has been found in Cyprus. But Sargon was a patron
of literature as well as a conqueror; his court was filled with
learned men, and one of the standard works of Babylonian literature
is said to have been compiled during his reign. The extension of
Babylonian rule, therefore, to Western Asia meant the extension of
Babylonian civilization, an integral part of which was its script.
Here,
then, is an explanation of the archaeological fact that the graves
of the copper and early bronze age in Cyprus, which mark the
beginning of civilization in the country, contain numerous
seal-cylinders made in imitation of those of Babylonia. 1 Examples
of the seal-cylinders from which they were copied have also been
discovered there. Among them is the cylinder on which Naram-Sin is
adored as a god, another is an extremely fine specimen of the style
that was current in the age of Sargon of Akkad.2 Along with the
seal-cylinder it is probable that the clay tablet was also
introduced to the people of the West. Though the clay tablets found
by Dr. Evans and others in Krete may not go back to so remote a
date, the linear Kretan characters belong to the same system of
writing as the Cypriote syllabary, and an inscription in the letters
of this syllabary on a seal-cylinder from the early copper-age
cemetery of Paraskevi near Nikosia has recently been published by
myself.1 We may infer that the prototypes of the tablets of Knossos
or Phaestos once existed in Cyprus and Syria, though in the damp
climate of the Mediterranean the unbaked clay of which they were
made has long since returned to its original dust.
A
few centuries after the age of Sargon of Akkad we find Gudea, a
Sumerian prince in Southern Babylonia, bringing limestone from "the
land of the Amorites," blocks of alabaster from the Lebanon,
and beams of cedar from Mount Amanus, for his buildings in the city
of Lagas. Gold-dust and acacia wood were at the same time imported
from the "salt" desert which lay between Palestine and
Egypt, and stones from the mountains of the Taurus, to the
north-east of the Gulf of Antioch, were floated down the Euphrates
on rafts.2 At a later date we hear of the kings of the Babylonian
dynasty which had its capital at Ur, conducting military expeditions
to the district of the Lebanon.
About
BC 2100 Northern Babylonia was occupied by a dynasty of kings, whose
names show that they belonged to the Western division of the Semitic
family. The language of Canaan — better known to us as Hebrew
— and that of Southern and North- eastern Arabia, were at the
time substantially one and the same, and as the same deities were
worshipped and the same ancestors were claimed throughout this
portion of the Semitic world, Assyriologists are not agreed as to
whether the dynasty in question should be regarded as coming from
Canaan or from Southern Arabia. The Babylonians them-selves called
the names Amorite, so it is possible that they would have pronounced
the kings to have been Amorite also. The point, however, is of
little moment; the fact remains that Northern Babylonia passed under
the rule of sovereigns who belonged to the Western and not to the
Babylonian branch of the Semitic race, and who made Babylon their
capital.
The
contract tablets and other legal documents of this period show that
Babylonia was at the time full of Amorite, that is Canaanite,
settlers, most of whom had come there for the sake of trade. At
Sippara there was a district called "the field of the
Amorites," over which, therefore, they must have had full legal
rights. Indeed, it would seem that in the eyes of the law the
Amorite settlers were on a complete footing of equality with the
natives of the country.
This
fact, so little in harmony with our ordinary idea of the
exclusiveness of the ancient East, is largely explained by the
further fact that Canaan and Syria were now acknowledged portions of
the Babylonian Empire. When Babylonia was conquered by the Elamites,
and the West Semitic king of Babylon allowed to retain his crown as
an Elamitc vassal, his claim to rule over "the land of the
Amorites" passed naturally to his suzerain. Accordingly we find
Chedor-laomer of Elam in the Book of Genesis marching to Canaan to
put down a local rebellion there, while Eri-Aku, or Arioch, of
Larsa, at the same date describes an Elamite prince as "governor
of the land of the Amorites." When Khammu-rabi, or Amraphel,
the king of Babylon, at last succeeded in shaking off the Elamite
yoke and making himself monarch of a free and united Babylonia, "the
land of the Amorites" followed the fortunes of Babylonia as a
matter of course. On a monument discovered at Diarbekir, in Northern
Mesopotamia, the only title taken by the Babylonian sovereign is
that of "king of the land of the Amorites." And the same
title is borne by one at least of his successors in the dynasty.
For
more than two thousand years, therefore, Western Asia was more or
less closely attached to Babylonia. At times it was as much a part
of the dominions of the Babylonian king as the cities of Babylonia
itself, and it is consequently not surprising that it should have
become thoroughly interpenetrated with Babylonian culture. There was
an excellent postal service connecting Canaan with Babylonia which
went back to the days of Naram-Sin, and some of the clay bulla which
served as stamps for the official correspondence at that period are
now in the Museum of the Louvre.1 On the other hand, a clay docket
has been found in the Lebanon, dated in the reign of the son of
Khammu-rabi, which contains one of the notices sent by the
Babylonian Government to its officials at the beginning of each
year, in order that they might know what was its official title and
date.1
When
this close connection between Babylonia and its Syrian provinces was
broken off we do not as yet know. Perhaps it did not take place
until the conquest of Babylonia by a horde of half-civilized
mountaineers from Elam about BC 1800. At any rate, from this time
forward, though the influence of Babylonian culture continued,
Babylonian rule in the West was at an end. From the Tel el-Amarna
correspondence we learn that the Babylonian Government was still
inclined to intrigue in Palestine; the memories of its ancient
empire were not altogether obliterated, and just as the English
sovereigns called themselves kings of France long after they had
ceased to possess an inch of French ground, so the Babylonian kings
doubtless persuaded themselves that they were still by right the
rulers of Canaan.
The
wild mountaineers from the Kossaean high-lands who had conquered
Babylon soon passed under the spell of Babylonian culture, and
became them-selves Babylonian in habits, if not in name. They
founded a dynasty which lasted for five hundred and seventy-six
years and nine months. It is a curious coincidence that Egypt also
was governed about the same time by foreign conquerors, whose
primitive wildness had been tamed by the influences of Egyptian
civilization, which they had adopted as the Kossaean mountaineers
adopted that of Babylonia, and whose rule also lasted for more than
five hundred years. The Hyksos who conquered Egypt have been
convincingly shown by recent discoveries to have been Semites,
speaking a language of the West Semitic type.1 They came from
Canaan, and their conquest of Egypt made of it a dependency of
Canaan. Hence they fixed their head-quarters in the northern part of
their Egyptian territories, where they could easily keep up
communication with Asia.
The
excavations undertaken by the Palestine Exploration Fund at Lachish,
Gezer and other sites in Southern Canaan have made it clear that
throughout the Hyksos period Egypt and that part of Palestine were
closely connected with one another. How much further eastward the
government or influence of the Hyksos may have extended we do not
know; the figure of a lion inscribed with the name of a Hyksos
Pharaoh has been discovered in Babylonia, but this may have been
brought from elsewhere. At any rate, so far as Palestine is
concerned, we may say that the Hyksos period in Egypt coincides with
the disappearance of Babylonian rule in Canaan. From that time
onward Canaan looks towards Egypt, and not towards Babylonia.
But
even before the beginning of the Hyksos period Canaan — or at
all events Southern Canaan — is Egyptian rather than
Babylonian. That has been abundantly proved by Mr. Macalister's
excavations at Gezer. Objects of the age of the Twelfth dynasty have
been disinterred there, and of such a character as to make it
evident that the country was already subject to Egyptian influence
long before the appearance of the Hyksos. An Egyptian of that age
was buried within the precincts of the consecrated "high
place," and a stela commemorating him erected on the spot.
Both
at Gezer and at Lachish it has been possible to trace the
archaeological chronology of the sites by the successive cities
which arose upon them. Gezer was the older settlement of the two;
its history goes back to the neolithic age, when it was inhabited by
a race of short stature who lived in caves and burned their dead,
and whose pottery was of the roughest description. Some of it was
ornamented with streaks of red or black on a yellow or red wash,
like coarse pottery of the age of the Third Egyptian dynasty which I
have found in so-called "prehistoric" graves at El-Kab.
Two settlements of the neolithic population can be made out, one
resting upon the other; in the second there was a distinct advance
in civilization, and the place became a town surrounded by a wall.
The neolithic race was succeeded by a taller race with Semitic
characteristics, to whom the name of Amorite has been given; they
buried the dead in a contracted position, and were acquainted with
the use of copper and later of bronze. The city was now defended by
a solid wall of stone, intersected with brick towers; as Mr.
Macalister observes, in a country where stone is the natural
building material the employment of brick must be due to foreign
influence. He thinks the influence was Egyptian; this is very
possible; but considering that building with brick was a salient
feature in Babylonian civilization, the influence may have come
rather from the side of Babylonia.
The
first "Amorite" city at Gezer was coeval with the earliest
city at Lachish — the modern Tel el-Hesy, where the Amorite
settlers had no neolithic predecessors. At Gezer their sanctuary has
been discovered. It was a "high place" formed of nine
great monoliths running from north to south, and surrounded by a
platform of large stones. The second monolith, polished with the
kisses of the worshippers, was possibly the central object of
veneration, the bcetylos or beth-el, as it was termed.1 This
beth-el, or "house of God," takes us back to Semitic
Babylonia. The veneration of isolated stones was common to all
branches of the Semitic race; it may have come down to them from the
days when their ancestors wandered over the desert plains of Arabia,
where the solitary rocks assumed fantastic shapes that appealed to
their imagination and excited feelings of awe, while their shadows
offered a welcome retreat in the heat of noon-day. In the historical
age, however, it was not the rock itself that was adored, but the
divinity whose home it had become by consecration with oil. The
brick-built temple was called by the Babylonians a bit-ili, beth-el,
or "house of God," and the name was easily transferred to
the consecrated stones, the worship of which was coeval with the
beginnings of Semitic history. But though the worship of stones was
primitive, the belief that the stone was not a fetish, but the
shrine of divinity, belonged to an age of reflection and points to a
Babylonian source.
The
first Amorite city at Gezer was succeeded by a second, in which the
high place underwent enlargement and was provided with a temenos.
Under its pavement have been found memorials of the grim rites
performed in honour of its Baal — the bones of children and
even adults who had been sacrificed and sometimes burnt and then
deposited in jars. Similar sacrifices, it would seem, were offered
when a new building was erected, since children's bones have been
disinterred from under the foundations of houses, both at Gezer and
at Taanach and Megiddo. The bones were placed in jars along with
lamps and bowls, which, it has been suggested, were intended to
receive the blood of the victim. The old sacred cave of the
neolithic race was now brought into connection with the high place
of the "Amorite" settlers, and the skeleton of a child has
been found in it resting on a flat stone.
This
fourth city at Gezer — the second since the Semites first
settled there — has yielded objects which enable us to assign
to it an approximate date. These objects are Egyptian, and belong to
the age of the Twelfth dynasty. Many of them are scarabs, but there
is also the tombstone of the Egyptian who was buried under the
shadow of the Amorite sanctuary.
Fragments
of diorite and alabaster vases also occur, telling of trade with
Egypt, and in the upper and later part of the stratum painted
pottery makes its appearance similar to that met with in the
corresponding stratum at Lachish. I shall have more to say about
this painted pottery in the next chapter here it is sufficient to
state that it is related to the early painted pottery of the Egean,
but is itself of Hittite origin, and can be traced back to the
Hittite centre in Cappadocia.
The
fourth city had a long existence. It lasted from the period of the
Twelfth Egyptian dynasty to the middle of the Eighteenth. Then it
was ruined by an enemy and its old wall partially destroyed —
doubtless by Thothmes III. when he conquered Palestine (about BC
1480). Upon its ruins rose another Amorite town. A new city wall was
built of larger circumference and greater strength; it measured
fourteen feet in thickness, and the stones of which it was composed
were large and well shaped. The houses erected on the debris of the
brick towers belonging to the old wall were rilled with scarabs,
beads, fragments of pottery and other objects contemporary with the
reign of Amon-hotep III. (BC 1400). At Lachish the ruins of the
third city were full of similar objects, and among them was a
cuneiform tablet in which reference is made to the governor of
Lachish mentioned in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. At Taanach
the Austrian excavators discovered an archive-chamber, the contents
of which were of the same age. Taanach was merely a third-rate or
fourth-rate town, but its shekh possessed a fortified residence, in
a subterranean chamber of which his official records and private
correspondence were kept in a coffer of terra-cotta.
They
were all in the Babylonian language and script. Among them is a list
of the number of men each landowner (?) was required to furnish for
the local militia, and there are also the letters which passed
between the shekh and his friends about their private affairs. How
little of an official character is to be found in these letters may
be gathered from the following translation of one of them: "To
Istar-yisur (writes) Guli-Hadad. — Live happily! May the gods
grant health to yourself, your house and your sons! You have written
to me about the money ... and behold I will give fifty pieces of
silver, since this has not (yet) been done. — Again: Why have
you sent your salutation here afresh? All you have heard there I
have (already) learned through Bel-ram. — Again: If the finger
of the goddess Asherat appears, let them announce (the omen) and
observe (it), and you shall describe to me both the sign and the
fact.
As
to your daughter, we know the one, Salmisa, who is in the city of
Rabbah, and if she grows up, you must give her to the prince; she is
in truth fit for a lord."1
These
Taanach letters are a final proof, if any were needed, of the
completely Babylonian nature of Canaanitish civilization in the
century before the Exodus. When we find the petty shekhs of obscure
Canaanite towns corresponding with one another on the trivial
matters of every-day life in the foreign language and syllabary of
Babylonia, it is evident that Babylonian influence was still as
strong in Palestine as it had been in the days when "the land
of the Amorites" was a Babylonian province.
It
is also evident that there must have been plenty of schools in which
the foreign language and syllabary could be taught and studied, and
that the clay literature of Babylonia had been carried to the West.
Indeed
the Tel el-Amarna collection contains proof of this latter fact.
Along with the letters are fragments of Babylonian literary works,
one of which has been interpunctuated in order to facilitate its
reading by the Egyptian scholar.
On
the other hand, apart from the cuneiform tablets the more strictly
archaeological evidence of Babylonian influence upon Canaan is
extraordinarily scanty. Naturally we should discover no traces of
"the goodly Babylonish garments" which, as we learn from
the Book of Joshua, were imported into the country, the climate of
Palestine not being favourable to their preservation; but it is
certainly strange that so few seal-cylinders or similar objects have
been disinterred, either at Gezer and Lachish in the south, or at
Taanach and Megiddo in the north. What makes it the stranger is that
Mr. Macalister has opened a long series of graves, beginning with
the neolithic race and coming down to Graeco-Roman times, and that
while the influence of Egypt is sufficiently visible in them, that
of Babylonia is almost entirely absent. It is true that a few
seal-cylinders have been met with in the excavations on the city
sites, but with the exception of one found at Taanach1 I do not know
of any that can be said to be of purely Babylonian manufacture; most
of them are of Syrian make, and represent a Syrian modification of
the Babylonian type. And yet there are seal-cylinders from the
Lebanon, now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, which are purely
Babylonian in origin, and belong to the period of Khammu-rabi 2
There are also two seal-cylinders of later pattern in M. de Clercq's
collection, on which are representations of the Egyptian gods Set
and Horus — similar to those found on scarabs from the Delta
of the time of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties — as
well as of the Canaanite god Reshef, accompanied by cuneiform
inscriptions which on palaeographic grounds must be assigned to the
age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets. As the inscriptions record the
names of Hadad-sum and his son Anniy, "citizens of Sidon, the
crown of the gods," we know that they have come from the
Phoenician coast.3
Like
the cuneiform tablets, they bear witness to the long-continued
influence of Babylonian culture in Canaan on its literary side.
When
we turn to theology and law, the same influence is recognizable. The
deities of Canaan were to a large extent Babylonian, with Babylonian
names. The Babylonian gods Ana, Nebo, Rimmon (Ramman), Hadad and
Dagon meet us in the names of places and persons, and Ashtoreth, who
shared with Baal the devotion of the inhabitants of Palestine, is
the Babylonian Istar with the suffix of the feminine attached to her
name. Even Asherah, in whom Semitic scholars were long inclined to
see a genuinely Canaanitish goddess, turns out to have been of
Babylonian origin, and to be the feminine counter-part of Asir, or
Asur, the national god of Assyria.
The
recently-discovered legal code of Khammu-rabi has shown that such
glimpses as we have in the Book of Genesis of the laws and legal
customs of Canaan in the patriarchal age all presuppose Babylonian
law. From time to time usages are referred to and laws implied which
have no parallel in the Mosaic code, and are therefore presumably
pre-Israelite.
But
though they have no parallel in the Mosaic code, we have now learnt
that they were all provided for in the code of Khammu-rabi. Thus
Abram's adoption of his slave and house-steward Eliezer is in strict
accordance with the provisions of the old Babylonian law. Adoption,
indeed, which was practically unknown among the Israelites, was a
leading feature in Babylonian life, and the childless man was
empowered to adopt an heir, even from among his slaves, to whom he
left his name and his property.
So,
again, Sarai's conduct in regard to Hagar, or Rachel's conduct in
regard to Bilhah, is explained by the Babylonian enactment which
allowed the wife to present her husband with a concubine; while we
can now understand why Hagar was not sold after her quarrel with
Sarai, for the Babylonian law laid down that "if a man has
married a wife, and she has given a concubine to her husband by whom
he has had a child, should the concubine afterwards have a dispute
with her mistress because she has borne children, her mistress
cannot sell her; she can only lay a task upon her and make her live
with the other slaves."
In
the account of Isaac's marriage with Rebekah it is again a provision
of the old Babylonian code with which we meet. There we hear of the
bride receiving a dowry from the father of the bridegroom, and of
other presents being made to her mother in conformity with
Babylonian usage. So, too, the infliction of death by burning with
which Judah threatened his daughter-in-law Tamar, on the supposition
that she was a widow, has its explanation in the legislation of
Khammu-rabi, where the same punishment is enacted against a nun who
has been unfaithful to her vows of virginity or widowhood. The story
of the purchase of the cave of Machpelah, moreover, has long been
recognized by Assyriologists as presupposing an acquaintance with
the legal forms of a Babylonian sale of land in the Khammu-rabi age.
With
all this heritage of Babylonian culture, therefore, it is curious
that the excavators in Palestine have come across so few material
evidences of intercourse with Babylonia. Mr. Macalister is inclined
to believe that it must belong to a period anterior to the Twelfth
Egyptian dynasty. But this raises a chronological question of some
difficulty. We have seen that the earlier and inner city wall of
Gezer served as the defence of three successive settlements, and
that it was partially destroyed along with the city it protected
about BC 1480. Now the outer and more massive wall which superseded
it also served to protect three cities, the latest of which was
deserted during the Maccabean period, about BC 100. Hence, Mr.
Macalister argues, "if we may assume the rate of growth to have
been fairly uniform, we are led back to BC 2900 as the (latest)
date" for the foundation of the first wall. During this long
period of time twenty-eight feet of debris accumulated; below this
are as much as twelve feet of neolithic accumulation.1
The
conquests of Sargon of Akkad would accordingly have fallen within
the neolithic epoch. But in this case it is strange that the use of
copper, with which Babylonia had long been acquainted, was not
communicated to its Western province, and that it should have needed
a new race and the lapse of nearly a thousand years for its
introduction. Moreover, specific evidences of Babylonian
civilization are quite as much wanting in the remains of the first
Amorite city as they are in those of the second.
And
unless we adopt a date for the Twelfth Egyptian dynasty, which on
other grounds seems out of the question, it is hard to see how the
Khammu-rabi dynasty can be placed before it. What little evidence we
possess at present goes to indicate that the Khammu-rabi dynasty was
contemporaneous with the earlier Hyksos kings or their immediate
predecessors. And yet not only do we know that the Khammu-rabi
dynasty ruled in Palestine, but the adoption of the cuneiform
script, which was at least as old as the age of that dynasty, as
well as the testimony of theology and law, proves that its rule must
have exercised a profound and permanent influence upon the people of
Canaan. How is it, then, that while the excavations have brought to
light so many evidences of Egyptian domination, there is so little
in the way of material objects to show that Palestine was once and
for several centuries a Babylonian province?l
Perhaps
the excavations which are still proceeding at Megiddo may throw some
light upon the problem.
Meanwhile,
we may remember that thus far the greater part of the objects that
have been found belong to the less wealthy and educated part of the
population. The annals of Thothmes III. prove that, so far as the
upper classes were concerned, the picture of Canaanitish luxury
presented in the Old Testament had a foundation of fact. Among the
spoils taken from the princes of Canaan we hear of tables, chairs
and staves of cedar and ebony inlaid or gilded with gold, of a
golden plough and sceptre, of richly-embroidered stuffs similar to
those depicted on the walls of the Egyptian monuments, of chariots
chased with silver, of iron tent-poles studded with precious stones,
and of "bowls with goats heads on them, and one with a lion's
head, the workmanship of the land of the Zahi," that is to say,
of the Canaanitish coast.
These
latter were doubtless imitations of the gold and silver cups with
double handles and animals' heads imported from Krete, which were
also received as tribute from the Canaanitish princes by the
Egyptian king. Other gifts comprised chariots plated with gold, iron
armour with gold inlay, a helmet of gold inlaid with lapis-lazuli,
the tusks of elephants, rings of gold and silver that were used as
money, copper and lead, as well as jars of wine, oil and balsam. Of
all these articles, the copper and lead excepted, it is needless to
say next to nothing has been discovered by the excavators. The most
valuable work of art yet met with is a bronze sword of precisely the
same shape as one found in Assyria, which bears upon it the name of
Hadad-nirari I (BC 1330). 1
On
the palaeographical side the forms of the cuneiform characters used
in Canaan go back to the script of the age of Khammu-rabi and his
predecessors. From a purely Assyriological point of view, no regard
being had to other considerations, I should date their introduction
into Palestine about BC 2300. The chronology that would best
harmonize the historical facts would thus be one which made the
dominance of Egypt in Palestine under the Twelfth dynasty precede
the Babylonian rule of the Khammu-rabi period. Against it is the
negative evidence of archaeological discovery, so few traces of this
rule having been discovered in the course of the excavations. But
neither in archseology nor in anything else is negative evidence of
much value.
At
any rate, thanks to the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions,
the main facts are clear. Canaan was once a province of the
Babylonian Empire, and during the long period of time that this was
the case it became permeated with the literary culture of Babylonia.
The civilization which was partially destroyed by the Israelitish
invasion had its roots in the valley of the Euphrates.
Gezer,
it is true, was one of the cities in which no visible break with the
past was made by the irruption of the desert tribes. It escaped
capture by the invaders, and it was only in the reign of Solomon,
when the Israelites had already entered into the heritage of the old
Canaanitish culture, that it was handed over by the king of Egypt to
his Jewish son-in-law.
But
at Lachish the marks of the destruction of the town by Joshua are
still visible. Above the ruins of the Amorite cities is a bed of
ashes left by the charcoal-burners who squatted on the site before
it was again rebuilt. Above the stratum of ashes all must be
Israelitish, and the objects found in the remains of the cities that
stand upon it testify accordingly to a complete change. No more
cuneiform tablets are met with, and but few Egyptian scarabs; the
pottery is different, and the "high place" has
disappeared. The bowl and lamp, indeed, are still buried under the
walls of the newly-built house, but the bones of sacrificed children
which they once contained are replaced by sand. As the Israelitish
power increased the old Babylonian influence necessarily lessened.
When the cuneiform syllabary finally made way for the so-called
Phoenician alphabet is still uncertain, but it was at all events
before the days of Solomon. Already in the Amorite period the
characters of the Kretan linear script discovered by Dr. Evans are
found scratched on fragments of pottery, indicating that besides the
cuneiform another form of writing was known; it may be that the
Israelitish conquest, by destroying the centres of Canaanitish
civilization and the schools of the scribes, gave a first blow to
the tradition of Babylonian learning, and that the work of
destruction was subsequently completed by the Philistine wars.
1
Recueil de Travaux, etc., xvi. p. 190.
1
In the later bronze or "Mykenaean" age the seal-cylinders
are of a different type, and are engraved on a black artificial
paste resembling haematite (Myres and Ohnefalsch-Richter, Catalogue
of the Cyprus Museum, p. 32).
2
Sayce, Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1877, v.
part ii.; Bezold, Zeitschrift fur Keilinschrift, 1885, pp. 191-3.
1
Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archceology, November 1905,
plate No. 11.
2
A cadastral survey, which was drawn up at this period under
Uru-malik, or Urimelech, "the governor of the land of the
Amorites," would, if perfect, have given us an interesting
description of Syria and Palestine in the third millennium before
our era; see Thureau Dangin in the Revue Semitique, Avril 1897.
1
See Heuzey, in the Revue de l'Assyriologie, 1897, pp. 1-12.
1
This was "the year when Samsu-iluna the king gave Merodach a
shining mace of gold and silver, the glory of the temple; it made
E-Saggil (the temple of Bel-Merodach at Babylon) shine like the
stars of heaven." The title of the year was derived from the
chief event, or events, that characterized it. See Dr. Pinches, in
the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, April and
July 1900, pp. 269-73.
1
See my analysis of some of the Hyksos names in the Proceedings of
the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1901, pp. 95-8. Since the
publication of the Paper other names of the same type, like Rabu and
Sakti, have come to light. The characteristic names of the Hyksos
princes recur among the "Amorite" names found in the
contract tablets of the Khammu-rabi period, but not later. The
abbreviated forms of the names met with on the Egyptian scarabs are
also found in the tablets. Indeed, the contracted form of Ya'qub-el,
that is to say, Yakubu, with k instead of q, must have been
transcribed from a cuneiform original.
1
Macalister, Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund,
January 1903, p. 28. It is the seventh stone, however, which alone
has been brought from a distance — the neighbourhood of
Jerusalem — all the others being of local origin {Quarterly
Statement, July 1904, pp. 194-5).
1
See Sellin, Tell Taannek (1904) and Eine Nachlese auf dem Tell
Taannek in ?alas Una (1905).
1
Tell Ta'annek, pp. 27-8. The cylinder is earlier than BC 2000.
2
See my Patriarchal Palestine, pp. 60, 61.
3
Collection De Clercg, Catalogue methodique et raisonné, i. p.
217.
1
Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, January 1905,
pp. 28, 29.
1
The chronological difficulty, however, would be partially solved if
the date recently proposed by Professor Petrie {Researches in Sinai,
ch. xii.) for the Twelfth dynasty — BC 3459-3250 — be
adopted. The Twelfth dynasty would in this case have reigned a
thousand years before the dynasty of Khammu-rabi, whose domination
in Palestine would have been an interlude in the history of the
Hyksos period, while the conquest of Canaan by Sargon and Naram-Sin
would have coincided with the supersession of the neolithic
population by the "Amorites," who brought with them the
copper and the culture of Babylonia.
1
Unless we except the gold and silver ornaments found on the body of
a woman in a deserted house at Taanach, which, as Dr. Sellin says,
are by themselves sufficient to remove all grounds for doubting such
accounts as those in Joshua vii. 21, and Judges viii. 26 {Eine
Nachlese auf dem Tell Tafannek [Taannek?])
CHAPTER VI ASIA MINOR
If
it has been a surprise to learn that Palestine was once within the
circle of Babylonian culture, it has been equally a surprise to
learn that Asia Minor was so too. It is true that Herodotus traced
the Herakleid dynasty of Lydian kings to the gods of Nineveh and
Babylon, that Strabo knew of a "mound of Semiramis" in
Cappadocia, and that in the Book of Genesis Lud is called the son of
Shem. But historians had long agreed that all such beliefs were
creations of a later day, and rested on no substratum of fact. The
northern limits of Babylonian or Assyrian influence, it was held,
were fixed by the Taurus and the mountains of Kurdistan.
The
discoveryof cuneiform inscriptions on the stones and rocks of
Armenia made the first breach in this conclusion. Their existence
was known even before Botta and Layard had opened up Nineveh. In
1826 Schulz had been sent by the French Government at the instance
of M. Mohl to copy the mysterious characters which had already
excited the attention of Oriental writers. Schulz was unexpectedly
successful in his quest. The number of inscriptions he discovered
was far larger than had been imagined, and his copies of them, as we
now know, were remarkably accurate.
But
the explorer himself never lived to return to Europe. He was
murdered by a Kurdish chief, Nurallah Bey, in 1829, while engaged in
the work of exploration; his papers, however, were eventually
recovered, and the inscriptions he had copied were published in 1840
in the Journal of the Societe Asiatique. One of them was a
trilingual inscription of Xerxes, the Persian transcript of which
was just beginning to be deciphered; the rest were still a closed
book.
Then
came the discovery of Nineveh and the first essays at the
interpretation of the Assyro-Babylonian texts. Layard himself made
an expedition to Armenia, and besides recopying Schulz's texts and
correcting certain inaccuracies in them, added considerably to the
collection. Dr. Hincks, with his usual genius for decipherment,
perceived that the syllabary in which they were written was the same
as that used at Nineveh, and utilized them for determining the
values of some of the Assyrian characters. He succeeded in reading
most of the proper names, in assigning the inscriptions to a group
of kings whose order he was able to fix, and in pointing out that
many of them contain an account of military campaigns and of the
amount of booty which had been carried off. But it was also clear
that the inscriptions were not in a Semitic language, and as the
nominative and accusative of the noun seemed to terminate in -s and
-n, while the patronymic was expressed by the suffix -khinis, the
decipherer assumed that the language was Indo-European. The most
important texts had been found in or near Van, which had apparently
been the capital of the kings by whose orders they had been
engraved, and the name of Vannic, accordingly, was given to both
texts and language.
It
was soon recognized that Dr. Hincks had been in error in suggesting
that the Vannic language was Indo-European. It was, it is true,
inflectional, but with this any resemblance to the languages of the
Indo-European family ceased. Nor was there any other language or
group of languages to which it appeared to be related, and all
attempts failed to advance the decipherment much beyond the point at
which it had been left by Hincks. Thanks to the "determinatives,"
which indicate proper names and the like, and the ideographs, which
are fairly plentiful, the general sense of many of the inscriptions
could be made out; but beyond that it seemed impossible to go.
Lenormant, indeed, following Hincks, showed that the suffix -bi
denoted the first person singular of the verb, and indicated
Georgian as possibly a related language; but in the hands of other
would-be decipherers, like Robert and Mordtmann, there was
retrogression instead of advance.
So
matters remained until 1882, when Stanislas Guyard pointed out the
parallelism between a formula which occurs at the end of many Vannic
inscriptions and the imprecatory formula of the Assyrian texts.
I
had already been struck by the same fact, and was at the time
preparing a Memoir on the decipherment and translation of the
inscriptions, which shortly afterwards appeared in the Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society. In this I had made use of Layard's
copies, which had never been published; other copies also, including
photographs, squeezes and casts, had been placed at my disposal, and
in 1882 I was able to lay before cuneiform scholars a grammar and
vocabulary of the Vannic language, together with translations and
analyses of all the known texts.1 These have been subsequently
corrected and extended by other Assyriologists — Guyard, D. H.
Muller, Nikolsky, Scheil, Belck and Lehmann, as well as by myself.
An ordinary Vannic text can now be translated with nearly as much
completeness and certainty as an Assyrian text, and the number of
them known to us has been greatly enlarged by the archaeological
explorations of Belck and Lehmann.
In
the decipherment of the Vannic inscriptions the ideographs and
determinatives which are scattered through them took the place for
me of a bilingual text.
The
determinatives told me what was the nature of the words which
followed or preceded them, and so explained the general sense of the
passages in which they occurred, while from time to time a
phonetically-written word would be replaced in a parallel passage by
an ideograph the signification of which was known.
I
soon found, moreover, that the cuneiform syllabary must have been
brought from Nineveh to Van in the age of Assur-natsir-pal II. (BC
884-859), and that the actual phrases met with in the inscriptions
of that monarch are sometimes reproduced in a Vannic dress.
The
Vannic language, however, still remains isolated, though the
majority of those who have studied it incline to Lenormant's view
that its nearest living representative is Georgian. Not being a
Georgian scholar myself, this is a point upon which I can express no
opinion.
Instead
of "Vannic," it has been proposed to call the language
"Khaldian." The chief god of the people whospoke the
language was Khaldis,and in the inscriptions we find the people
themselves described as "the children of Khaldis."
Derivatives from the name are found employed in a geographical sense
northward of the region to which the inscriptions belong. Thus the
Khaldi "in the neighbourhood of Colchis" are said to have
been also called Khaldaei; "Khaldees" are frequently
referred to by Armenian writers as living between Trapezont and
Batum, and a Turkish inscription at Sumela shows that as late as the
beginning of the fifteenth century Lazistan was still known as
Khaldia. That the name was ever applied, however, to the kingdom
which had its chief seat at Van is not proved, and it is therefore
best to adhere to the term "Vannic," which commits those
who use it to no theory.2
The
decipherment of the Vannic texts has not only led to the discovery
of a new language, it has also thrown a flood of light on the early
history, geography and religion of the Armenian plateau. The
military campaigns of the Assyrian kings had brought it into contact
with Assyrian civilization, and in the ninth century before our era
a dynasty arose which adopted the literary culture and art of
Assyria, and founded a powerful kingdom which extended its sway from
Urumia on the east to Malatia on the west, and from the slopes of
Ararat and the shores of Lake Erivan to the northern frontiers of
Assyria.
The
main fact which has thus been disclosed is that the Armenians of
history — the Aryan tribes, that is to say, who spoke an
Indo-European language — did not enter the country and
establish themselves in the place of its older rulers before the end
of the seventh century before our era. The fall of the Vannic
monarchy seems to have coincided with the fall of the Assyrian
Empire, with which it had once contended on almost equal terms, and
in each case the invasion of the so-called Scythian hordes from the
plains of Eastern Europe had much to do with the result. The
founders of Armenian civilization and of the cities of the Armenian
plateau had no connection with the Indo-European family. Their type
of language corresponded with that which distinguishes most of the
actual languages of the Caucasus, though no genetic relationship is
traceable between them. The break with the past, however, occasioned
by the irruption of the Indo-European invaders, was so great that
not only did the older language become extinct and forgotten, but
even the tradition of the older civilization was also lost. Like the
recovery of the Sumerian language and the culture it represented,
the recovery of the Vannic language and culture is the revelation of
a new world.
At
the head of the pantheon was a trinity consisting of Khaldis, the
supreme god of the race; Teisbas, the god of the air; and the
Sun-god Ardinis. Temples were erected in their honour, and shields
and spears dedicated to their service. The vine, which grows wild in
Armenia, was the sacred tree of the people, and there are
inscriptions which commemorate its planting and consecration, and
describe the endowments that were set apart for its maintenance.
Wine was naturally offered to the gods along with the domestic
animals and prisoners of war. Dr. Belck has discovered burial-places
which go back to the neolithic age, but the majority of the
monuments scattered over the Vannic area belong to the bronze age,
and testify to a native adaptation of Assyrian art and culture. Iron
also makes its appearance, but scantily. The pottery of the age of
the inscriptions is related on the one side to the Assyrian pottery
of the same period, and on the other to the pottery of Asia Minor.
The polished red ware more especially points to the west.
The
existence of a language of the Caucasian type in Armenia, and its
association with a powerful king-dom and an advanced culture, is not
the only revelation of the kind that we owe to cuneiform
decipherment. We have learned that at a much earlier epoch Northern
Mesopotamia was occupied by a people who spoke a language of similar
type but of far more complicated form; and that here, too, the
language in question was accompanied by a high civilization, a
powerful monarchy, and the use of the cuneiform syllabary. The
monarchy was that of Mitanni, and its culture and script had been
borrowed from Babylonia in the age of Khammu-rabi, instead of from
Assyria in the age of Assur-natsir-pal. But it is interesting to
observe that in borrowing the script the people of Mitanni had
adapted and simplified it in precisely the same way as did the
people of Van in after days. Superfluous characters were discarded,
a single phonetic value only assigned to each character, and large
use made of those which expressed vowels. In fact, in both Mitannian
and Vannic the system of writing begins to approach the alphabetic.
Whether
this similarity in adaptation was due to a similarity of phonetic
structure in the two languages or to conscious imitation on the part
of the Vannic scribes it is difficult to say; it is a point,
however, which cannot be passed over.
The
name of Mitanni meets us on the Egyptian monuments of the Eighteenth
and Nineteenth dynasties. The kingdom played a considerable part at
that period of time in the politics of Western Asia, and the
daughters of its kings were married to the Egyptian Pharaohs. The
boundaries of the Egyptian Empire were coterminous with those of
Mitanni, and we gather from the Tel el-Amarna correspondence that
the Mitannian forces had more than once made their way into
Palestine, perhaps as far south as Jerusalem, and that Mitannian
intrigue was active in that portion of the Pharaoh's dominions.
Among the Canaanitish governors are some who bear Mitannian names,
and testify to the continuance of a Mitannian element in that common
meeting-place of nationalities.
Several
letters from the Mitannian king have been found among the Tel
el-Amarna tablets. Most of them are written in the Babylonian
language, but one — and fortunately an exceptionally long one
— though in cuneiform characters, is in the native language of
the country. A comparison of it with its companion letters, assisted
by the determinatives and ideographs which are employed in it from
time to time, has enabled Jensen, Leopold Messerschmidt and myself
to decipher a very considerable part of the letter, and so to
compile a grammar and vocabulary of the Mitannian language. That it
is distantly related to Vannic seems to admit of little doubt, but
it comes before us in a much more developed form; indeed, its system
of suffixes is so elaborate and ponderous as to remind us of the
polysynthetic languages of America.
A
legal document found in Babylonia and dated in the epoch of
Khammu-rabi contains a number of proper names which are of Mitannian
or allied origin, and show that persons of that race were already
settled in Babylonia.1 As the Mitannian form of cuneiform script
must have been borrowed about the same time, we may infer that the
advanced guard of the northern race had already made its way as far
south as Mesopotamia, and there established its power in the midst
of a Semitic population. From that time forward a constant struggle
went on between the two races, the Semitic race striving to push
back the northern intruders and planting its own colonies in the
very heart of the northern area, while the northerners pressed ever
more and more to the southward, and at one time even seemed likely
to possess themselves of the heritage of the Babylonian Empire in
Western Asia. Like Armenia, Northern Mesopotamia was occupied by a
people of Caucasian and Asianic affinities, whose armies had crossed
the Euphrates and won territory in Syria and Palestine.
On
the west, however, the Mitannians found themselves confronted by
another northern population, the Hittites, whose first home was in
Cappadocia. The Hittites also had passed under the spell of
Babylonian culture, and the cuneiform script had been carried to
them at an early date. Thanks to recent discoveries, we can now
trace in some measure the earlier fortunes of a race who made a
profound impression, not only on the future history of Asia Minor
and its relations with Greece, but also on the history of Palestine.
As
far back as about BC 2000, Babylonian or Assyrian troops had already
made their way along the northern banks of the Tigris and Euphrates
to the borders of Cappadocia and the neighbourhood of the Halys. I
say Babylonian or Assyrian, for Assyria was at the time a province
of Babylonia, though as the colonies which settled in the track of
the invaders were distinctively Assyrian in their municipal customs
and the names of their inhabitants, the troops were probably drafted
from Assyria.1 The mineral wealth of Cappadocia was doubtless the
attraction which led them to such distant and semi-barbarous lands;
Dr. Gladstone's analysis of the gold of the Sixth Egyptian dynasty,
with its admixture of silver, has shown that it was imported from
the north of Asia Minor,1 and the silver itself was probably already
worked. Further south, in the Taurus, were mines of copper.
However
this may be, the remains of one of these early Assyro-Babylonian
colonies has been partially excavated a few miles (twenty-three
kilometres) to the north-east of Kaisariyeh.2 The site is now known
as Kara Eyuk, "the Black Mound," and numerous cuneiform
tablets have come from it. It has obtained its present name from the
marks of fire which are every-where visible upon it, and bear
eloquent testimony to its final fate. Established as an outpost of
the Assyrian Empire in the distant west, a time came when, deserted
by the Government at home, its strong walls were battered down by
the besieging foe and the Assyrian settlers massacred among the
ruins of their burning town. According to M. Chantre, its excavator
(who, however, believes that it was destroyed by a volcanic
eruption), the whole mound is a mass of charred and burnt remains.
The
construction of the walls, as well as the pottery found within them,
marks it off with great distinctness from the ruins of the Hittite
or native Cappadocian cities in its neighbourhood. While in their
case the city wall is made of unmortared blocks of stone, the walls
of Kara Eyuk are built of brick, and where stones are used they are
of small size and cemented with mortar. The pottery differs
considerably from that of the Hittite capital at Boghaz Keui. Some
of it is of black ware, especially characterized by the vases with
long spouts, which are also found in Phrygia and the Troad. Some of
it, again, is of the dark-red lustrous ware which has been met with
at Toprak Kaleh, near Van, and Boz Eyuk in Phrygia, while the yellow
ware with geometrical patterns in black and maroon-red which has
been discovered in Phrygia occurs in large quantities. This latter
ware is of the class known as "Mykenaean."
The
cuneiform tablets which have come from the site are known as
"Cappadocian," and were first noticed by Dr. Pinches. The
forms of the characters resemble those of the early Babylonian
script, which was still used in Assyria in the age of Khammu-rabi.
Many
of the proper names, moreover, seem to be distinctive of that
period. On the other hand, a large proportion of them contain the
name of Asur — often in its primitive form of Asir — or
are otherwise characteristic of Assyria. The tablets are further
dated by the archons who gave their names to the years, a system of
chronology which was peculiar to Assyria and unknown in Babylonia,
while the month was divided into "weeks" of five days
each. The language of the tablets also, which is full of dialectic
mispronunciations and strange words, points to Assyria rather than
to the southern kingdom, and we may therefore conclude that the
colonists were Assyrians, even though the colony may have been
founded when Assyria was still a Babylonian province.
There
are indications in the Assyrian inscriptions themselves that the
road to Cappadocia was known to the Assyrian princes at an early
epoch. The earliest Assyrian kings whose annals have come down to us
are Hadad-nirari I and his son Shalmaneser I (BC 1300). Hadad-nirari
tells us that his great-grandfather, Assur-yuballidh, whose letters
form part of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, had subdued "the
wide-spread" province of Subari, which lay near the sources of
the Euphrates, and in which Kara Eyuk was perhaps included, while he
himself restored the cities of the same province which had fallen
into ruin. Later, Shalmaneser I conducted campaign after campaign
towards the same region. In his second year he overthrew the king of
Malatia, and the combined forces of the other "Hittite"
states, who had come to his assistance: "all were conquered,"
from the borders of Cappadocia to the Hittite stronghold of
Carchemish.
A
military colony was settled at the head waters of the Tigris which
secured the high-road to Asia Minor.
Two
centuries later we learn from Tiglath-pileser I that Moschians and
Hittites had overrun part of this Assyrian territory, and occupied
some of the Assyrian settlements. Once more, therefore, the Assyrian
troops marched to the north-west; the provinces which lay in the
valley of the Murad-chai were recovered, and the old province of
Subari cleared of intruders. Soon afterwards Tiglath-pileser forced
his way into Southern Cappadocia and the valley of the Sarus, making
Comana tributary, razing to the ground the fortresses that had
resisted him, and erecting on their site chambers of brick, with
bronze tablets on which his conquests were recorded. Eastern Cilicia
was known at the time to the Assyrians as Muzri, or "the
Marchland," a clear proof that it had long formed a borderland
and debatable territory between the Assyrian Empire and the nations
of Asia Minor.
It
is thus evident that even before the rise of the Assyrian monarchy,
the road that led to the mining districts of Cappadocia, along the
valleys of the Upper Tigris, Euphrates and Tokhma Su, was not only
known to the Assyro-Babylonians, but had actually constituted
Assyrian territory, which was colonized by Assyrian garrisons and
paid tribute to Nineveh whenever Assyria was strong enough to
enforce its authority. At the eastern extremity of the road stood
the city of unknown name, now represented by "the Burnt Mound"
of Kara Eyuk, whose existence as an Assyro-Babylonian city probably
dates back to the age of Khammu-rabi.
It
was the outpost of Babylonian culture in Asia Minor. Babylonian art,
and, above all, the Babylonian system of writing, were brought by it
into the heart of the Hittite region, and the archaeological objects
found there consequently become important for chronological dating.
Not far off, on the other side of the Halys, rose the Hittite
capital, now known as Boghaz Keui, the centre from which, as
Professor Ramsay has shown, 1 the early roads of Asia Minor radiated
in all directions.
Boghaz
Keui is being excavated at the present moment. Hundreds of clay
tablets have already been found there, inscribed with cuneiform
characters, the majority of which are in the native Hittite
language, though many are in Semitic Babylonian, including a copy of
the famous treaty between Ramses I 1, and the Hittite king. So far
as the tablets have been examined, they show that the Hittite empire
extended from the west of Asia Minor to the Egyptian frontier, and
that the cuneiform characters were used in ordinary life.
By
one of those coincidences which sometimes happen in archaeological
research, the discovery fits with another fact which had long been
in the possession of the Assyriologist, though the full meaning of
it was unknown to him. Among the Tel el-Amarna letters are two in a
language unlike any with which we are acquainted. One of them is
from a Hittite leader of condottieri,2 who has left us two other
letters which are in the Assyrian language, and who came from a town
in the neighbourhood of Cilicia. The second letter was written to
the king of Arzawa by one of the foreign secretaries of the Egyptian
Government. But the situation of Arzawa was wholly uncertain; as the
king bore the Hittite name of Tarkhundaraba, I suggested that it lay
in the Hittite territory, and that consequently in the language of
the letter we had a fragment of the Hittite language. For many
years, however, this remained a mere conjecture, without any
definite proofs.
When
the fragmentary tablets from Boghaz Keui came to be copied, it was
at once perceived that they were in a language which resembled that
of the Arzawa letters, but it was not until the new tablet from
Constantinople had been cleaned and copied by Dr. Pinches and myself
that the actual facts became clear. The Arzawa and Boghaz Keui texts
agree in the forms given to the characters, in grammar and in
vocabulary. Arzawa, therefore, must have been the Hittite kingdom
which had its centre at Boghaz Keui, and already in the age of the
Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty it was employing a form of the cuneiform
script which implied a long preceding period of use and adaptation.
A new realm has thus to be added to the domain of the cuneiform
system of writing; in Syria the Hittite king of Kadesh wrote to the
Pharaoh in Babylonian, but in his old home in the north, though the
Babylonian syllabary had been adopted, the language it served to
express was that of the Hittites themselves.
A
certain amount of this Hittite language of Arzawa can be deciphered,
thanks to those same determinatives and ideographs which have
assisted so materially towards the decipherment of the Vannic texts,
and more especially to the recurrence in the two Tel el-Amarna
letters of phrases that are common to the whole correspondence. The
new tablet, however, is more than usually helpful, since it contains
Assyrian words and grammatical forms which in parallel passages of
the same text are replaced by native equivalents. In this way a
sketch of Arzawan grammar can now be made, as well as a list of
Arzawan words. The language which is thus disclosed is of an Asianic
type, with features that remind us of Lycian on the one side, and of
Mitannian and Vannic on the other. But in what may be termed the
fundamentals of grammar it agrees with Mitannian and Vannic.
At
the same time, certain of these same fundamentals have a curious but
superficial resemblance to what we have hitherto been accustomed to
regard as characteristics of Indo-European grammar. The nominative
and accusative of the noun, for example, are distinguished by the
suffixes -s and -n, the plural nominative and accusative often
terminate in -s, and the possessive pronouns of Arzawan are mis,
"mine"; ti-s, "thine"; and sais), "his";
while si is "(to) her."
The
third person of the present tense ends in -t; es-tu, is "may it
be"; es-mi, "may I be." Yet with all these remarkable
coincidences, I can assure the comparative philologist that Arzawan
is certainly not an Indo-European language, and I must leave him to
explain them as best he may.
We
have, however, learnt a good deal more about the Hittite populations
of Asia Minor from the Tel el-Amaraa tablets than the nature of the
language which they spoke. In the closing days of the Eighteenth
Egyptian dynasty we find them on the southern side of the Taurus,
sending forth bands of adventurers, who hired their services to the
king of Egypt and to the rival governors and princes of Palestine,
and from time to time carved out principalities of their own with
the sword. We are even able to follow the fortunes of some of the
leaders of the condottieri, who had no scruple in transferring their
allegiance from one vassal prince to another when tempted by the
prospect of better pay, or in murdering their employer when the
opportunity arose, and plundering or occupying his city. They had,
it is true, a wholesome awe of Egyptian power and of the Egyptian
army, and some of the letters they wrote to the Egyptian court are
amusing examples of the excuses they offered for their misdeeds. But
they never hesitated about seizing the Pharaoh's property when they
thought they could do so with impunity, while they were all the time
professing to be his devoted slaves. A considerable number of the
vassal princes of Canaan kept these mercenaries in their pay, and in
many cases the Egyptian Foreign Office thought it wisest to confirm
one of their leaders in the government of a district, however
doubtful might have been the means by which it had come into his
hands. So long as the tribute was paid, and the imperial authority
acknowledged, no further questions were asked. The mercenaries were
useful at times to the imperial forces, and the mutual jealousies
and quarrels of the local governors were perhaps not altogether
displeasing to the home Government.1
In
this way bands of Hittite mercenaries came to be settled in various
parts of Palestine, even in the extreme south. The sons of Arzawaya,
"the Arzawan," established themselves in the neighbourhood
of Jerusalem, whose king, by the way, seems to bear a Mitannian
name. The statement in the Book of Genesis that Heth was the son of
Canaan receives a new signification from the Tel el-Amarna tablets.
But
Hittite influence in Southern Palestine goes back to an earlier
epoch than the age of the tablets.
The
painted pottery found in the "Amorite" strata of Lachish
and Gezer shows remarkable affinities to the pottery discovered by
Chantre at Boghaz Keui, and Mr. J. L. Myres has succeeded in tracing
it in a fairly continuous line to the region north of the Halys.2
Here was found the red ochre — or sandarake, as it was called
— which was used in the decoration of the pottery, and after
the introduction of two other colours still remained the principal
feature in the system of ornamentation. This Hittite or Cappadocian
pottery was carried westward along the road which led from Boghaz
Keui towards the Troad, and south-eastwards across the Taurus into
Syria. It was probably the ultimate origin of the painted Minoan or
"Kamares" pottery of Krete.
The
introduction of Hittite pottery into Canaan where it tended to
supersede the native ware, was doubtless the result of trade. But in
ancient Asia the trader and the soldier were very apt to march side
by side. The soldier opened the way for the trader and kept it for
him, quite as much as the trader opened it for the soldier. Hence it
is not surprising that the Assyrian monuments should furnish
incidental evidence of the Hittite occupation of Palestine at an
early date. In the inscriptions of Babylonia, as we have seen,
Palestine and Syria are "the land of the Amorites"; the
name went back to an immemorial antiquity, and indicates that at the
time it was first given the Amorites were the ruling population in
the West But in the Assyrian inscriptions the place of the Amorites
is taken by the Hittites. For the Assyrians, Syria is "the land
of the Hittites," and in the later historical texts even the
Israelites and Philistines are classed as "Hittite."1
Canaan,
however, was already well known to the Assyrians in the age of the
Tel el-Amarna correspondence, when the ambassadors of the Assyrian
king carried letters and presents through it to the Pharaoh. It
must, therefore, have been at a still earlier period that they first
became acquainted with it, and at this period Hittite influence must
have been so predominant as to cause them to discard the name of
Amorite, consecrated though it was by the long-continued usage of
Babylonian literature, and to employ instead of it the name of
Hittite.
But
it was in the direction of the Greek seas that Hittite influence was
most powerful. Through Asia Minor Babylonian culture penetrated to
the West.
A
native imitation of the Babylonian seal-cylinder was found by Dr.
Schliemann in the ruins of Hissarlik,1 and the so-called "heraldic"
position of the lions at Mykenae can be traced back through Asia
Minor to the designs of the Babylonian gem-cutters. The winged
horse, Pegasus, is found on Hittite seals, and, like the
double-headed eagle of Eyuk and other composite figures, is derived
from Babylonian proto-types.2 They represented the first attempts of
the creative power, as conceived of by Babylonian cosmology, and an
old Babylonian legend of the creation accordingly describes the
monsters suckled by Tiamat as "warriors with the bodies of
birds, men with the faces of ravens."3 The fantastic monsters
of "Minoan" art, which have been brought to light by the
excavations in Krete, claim an intimate connection with the similar
composite beings which are a characteristic of Hittite art.4
The
early Hittite art of Asia Minor, as I pointed out many years ago, is
dependent on that of Babylonia, and has little in common with the
art of Assyria.1
It
is not until we come to the later Hittite monuments of Cilicia and
Syria that the influence of Assyrian art makes itself visible. Hence
was derived the partiality of the Hittite artist for the composite
animals that adorn the seal-cylinders of Babylonia, and which
consequently became known wherever the seal-cylinder and the
literary culture it accompanied had made their way. As I have
already stated, though Subari was an Assyrian province and Kara Eyuk
an Assyrian colony, the form of the cuneiform script that was used
in Cappadocia was of Babylonian origin.
The
writing material of "Minoan" Krete, we now know, consisted
of clay tablets. The fact is a proof that the influence of
Babylonian culture had extended thus far. But it was an indirect
influence only.
Though
the clay tablet was employed, the characters impressed upon it were
the native Kretan. This in itself, however, demonstrates how strong
the influence must have been, for the Kretan characters, whether
hieroglyphic or linear, were less easy to inscribe on clay than the
cuneiform. Krete, moreover, is a land of rock and stone rather than
of clay. We may infer, therefore, from the use of the Babylonian
material that the first impulse to write was inspired by the
civilization of Babylonia.
How
it was brought to Krete we do not know. It may have passed over from
the shores of Canaan; it may have come from Cyprus or Asia Minor. A
seal-cylinder, which I have lately published, and which was found in
the early copper-age cemetery of Agia Paraskevi in Cyprus, shows
that the so-called Cypriote syllabary was already in use in the
island at a remote date, 1 and this syllabary is closely connected
with the linear characters of Krete. Inscriptions in the same form
of script have been found on the site of Troy, and the
pre-Israelitish pottery of Southern Palestine is marked with signs
which seem to be derived from it. So, too, is certain Egyptian
pottery of the age of the Eighteenth dynasty, and even of the age of
the Twelfth.2
It
is possible that Krete was the birthplace of the picture writing
which developed into the linear script of Knossos and the Cypriote
syllabary; it is possible that it was rather Cyprus. I do not think,
as I once did, that it comes from Asia Minor, for Asia Minor had its
own pictographic system, which we see represented in the Hittite
inscriptions, and an increased knowledge of this system tends to
dissociate it from the pictographs and syllabaries of Krete and
Cyprus.
Wherever
it arose, however, it was associated with the Babylonian writing
material and the Babylonian seal-cylinder. So far as our present
knowledge goes, Cyprus is more likely than any other part of the
world to have been the meeting-point of Babylonian culture and the
nascent civilization of the West.
The
numerous seal-cylinders which characterize the early copper age of
the island are native imitations of Babylonian seal-cylinders of the
epoch of Sargon of Akkad, when the boundaries of the Babylonian
Empire were pushed to the coasts of the Mediterranean, if not into
Cyprus itself, and the great eastern plain of Cyprus was better
fitted to provide clay for the tablet than any other Mediterranean
district with which I am acquainted.
That
no written tablets have been found by the excavators in Cyprus is
not surprising. In an island climate where heavy rains occur the
unbaked tablet soon becomes hardly distinguishable from the earth in
which it is embedded. It was almost by accident that even the
practised eye of Dr. A. J. Evans was first led to notice the clay
tablets of Knossos.
The
Greek term 8eA.ro?, which was borrowed from the language of Canaan,
is evidence that the tablet was once known to the Greeks. For the
letters of the Phoenician and Greek alphabet rolls of papyrus or
leather were needed; the fact that the writing material was a tablet
and not a roll refers us back to Babylonia. With the introduction of
the Phoenician letters the word SeAros necessarily changed its
meaning, and became synonymous with a wooden board.
But
it is possible that a reminiscence of its original signification is
preserved in a famous passage of the Iliad (vi. 169), where the
later "board" has been substituted for the earlier
"tablet." Here we are told how Bellerophon carried with
him to Lycia "baleful signs" — which may have been
the pictographs of Krete or the Hittites, or even cuneiform
characters — written upon "a folded board." The
expression would have most naturally originated in the folded clay
tablet of early Babylonia, the inner tablet being enclosed in an
envelope on which the address or a description of the contents of
the document is written.
On
the literary side, however, this is the utmost contribution that we
can claim for Babylonia to have made to historical Greece. In the
sphere of religion it is possible that the anthropomorphism of
Greece was influenced by the anthropomorphism of Babylonia through
Asia Minor, where the rock sculptures of Boghaz Keui show how the
primitive Hittite fetishes had become human deities like those of
Chaldaea; in the sphere of philosophy Thales and Anaximander clothed
in a Greek dress the cosmological theories of the Babylonians; and
in the domain of art the heraldry and composite monsters of
Babylonia made their way to Europe, while the Ionic artists of
Ephesus carved ivories into forms so Oriental in character that
similar figures found in the palace of Sargon have been pronounced
to be the work of Phoenicians. But the literary culture of
historical Greece did not begin until the tide of Babylonian
influence had already rolled back from Western Asia, when the
Phoenician alphabet had taken the place of the cuneiform syllabary
in Syria, and the Hittite populations of Asia Minor had returned to
their clumsy hieroglyphs.
It
is, however, remarkable how very nearly the cuneiform script became
what the Phoenician alphabet has been called, "the mother of
the alphabets of the world." At one time it covered nearly the
whole area of the civilized globe. A seal-cylinder with a cuneiform
inscription in an unknown language has been discovered on the hills
near Herat; x in the west its use extended as far as Cappadocia,
perhaps further.
Northward
it made its home in Armenia; southward it obliged even the Egyptian
Foreign Office to employ it for correspondence, while military
scribes wrote in it their memoranda of the Pharaoh's campaigns. In
both Mitanni and Van the syllabary was on the high-road to becoming
an alphabet; in Persia it actually became one.
But
this final evolution came too late. A simpler script had already
entered the field, and won its way in lands where clay was scarce
and other writing materials more easily procurable. Indeed, it is
probable that the presence or absence of clay suitable for writing
purposes had quite as much to do with the spread of the cuneiform
script as the political events which transformed the map of Western
Asia.
Canaan
still continued to write in cuneiform characters after the empire of
Babylonia had been exchanged for that of Egypt, while the use of the
script never penetrated far into the limestone regions of the
Mediterranean. It was probably the geological formation of Europe
more than anything else which saved us to-day from having to learn
the latest modification of the cursive writing of the Babylonian
plain.
But
it had been a potent instrument of civilization in its day, perhaps
more potent even than the Phoenician alphabet, for its sway lasted
for thousands of years. It was at once the symbol and the inspiring
spirit of a culture whose roots go back to the very beginnings of
human civilization, and to which we still owe part of our own
heritage of civilized life. Babylonia was the mother-land of
astronomy and irrigation; from thence a knowledge of copper seems to
have spread through Western Asia; it was there that the laws and
regulations of trade were first formulated, and the earliest legal
code, so far as we know, was compiled. Babylonian theology and
cosmology left their impress upon beliefs and views of the world
which have passed through Judaea to Europe, and the astrology and
magic which played so active a part in the mental history of the
Middle Ages were Babylonian creations. It is not a little remarkable
that an Etruscan model of the liver in bronze (discovered at
Piacenza), divided and inscribed for the purposes of haruspicy,
finds its counterpart and probably also its prototype in the clay
copy of a liver, similarly divided and inscribed, which was found in
Babylonia.1 We are children of our fathers, and amongst our
spiritual fathers must be reckoned the Babylonians.
1
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, xiv. 3, 4, pp.
377-732.
1
Eustathius on Dion. Perieget. 767. See Lehmann in the Zeitschrift
für Assyriologie, 1894, pp. 90 and 358-60.
8
The Vannic kings always call themselves kings, not of the Khaldians,
but of Biainas or Bianas, the Byana of Ptolemy, the Van of to-day.
1
See more especially Belck's comparison of the Vannic pottery with
that of the Assyrian colony of Kara Eyuk, near Kaisariyeh, in the
Verhandlungen der Berliner anthropologischen Gesellschaft, December
1901, p. 493. Besides the highly-polished lustrous red ware, he
found at Kara Eyuk fragments of the same wheel-made wine-jars, "of
gigantic size," which characterized Toprak Kaleh, near Van.
Similar jars, as well as lustrous red pottery, were discovered by
Schliemann in the "prehistoric" strata at Troy. The
animals' heads in terra-cotta found at Kara Eyuk are stated by Dr.
Belck to be similar to those of the Digalla Tepe, near Urumiya. For
further details see infra.
1
See Pinches in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1897, pp.
589-613; and myself in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical
Archaeology, 1897, p. 286.
1
Thus we find from the Cappadocian cuneiform tablets discovered at
Kara Eyuk, north-east of Kaisariyeh, that time was reckoned by the
annual succession of officers called livuni as in Assyria.
1
Denderek, p. 62.
2
Chantre, Mission en Cappadoce, pp. 71-91.
1
See Belck, Verhandlungen der Berliner anthropologischen
Gesellschaft, December 1901, p. 493; and the admirable plates, iii.,
vii.-xiv., in Chantre, Mission en Cappadoce. As has been already
mentioned {supra, p. 166), Dr. Belck noticed at Kara Eyuk coarse
sherds of great thickness coming from wine-jars similar to those of
Toprak Kaleh. The black vases with long spouts have been found at
Yortan and Boz Eyuk in Phrygia; long-spouted vases of yellow ware
with geometrical patterns in maroon-red on the site of Gordium.
Chantre
discovered numerous spindle-whorls in the ruins similar to those
discovered at Troy. He also found terra-cotta figurines, among which
the ram is the most plentiful, as well as covers and handles of
vases in the shape of animals heads, and some curious hut-urns not
unlike those of Latium.
Few
bronze objects were met with, but among them were five flanged
axe-heads of the incurved Egyptian Hyksos type, totally unlike the
straight bronze axe-heads from Troy and Angora (of Egyptian I-XII
dynasty form), with which M. Chantre compares them. The obsidian
implements and stone celts were of the ordinary Asianic pattern. M.
Chantre notes that whereas at Troy the terra-cotta figurines
represented the heads of oxen or cows, at Kara Eyuk they were the
heads of sheep, horses, and perhaps dogs.
1
Historical Geography of Asia Minor, ch. i., ii.; Cities and
Bishoprics of Phrygia, i. p. xiv.
2
Labawa, or Labbaya, for whom see the next chapter. A revised
transcript of his letter in Arzawan (Hittite) is given by Knudtzon,
Die zwei Arzawa-Briefe, pp. 38-40. The introductory paragraph should
read: Ata-mu kit Labbaya nicmis-la Uan-wa-nnas iskhani-tta-ra
atari-ya ueni. "To my lord says Labbaya .... thy servant of Uan
(a district west of Aleppo); seven times I prostrate myself."
In other letters Labbaya is called prince of Rukhizzi, the
Rokhe's-na of the treaty between Ramses II. and the Hittites.
1
The facts were first stated in my article in the Contemporary
Review, August 1905, pp. 264-77, which is reprinted as chapter vii.
of the present book.
2
Journal of the Anthropological Institute; 1903, xxxiii. pp. 367-400.
1
By Shalmaneser II. {Black Obelisk, 61) and Sargon. Sennacherib
describes his famous campaign against Phoenicia and Judah as made
"to the land of the Hittites."
1
Ih'os, p. 693. What seem to be similar characters on a seal-cylinder
found in the copper-age cemetry of Agia Paraskevi in Cyprus have
recently been published by me in the Proceedings of the Society of
Biblical Archaeology, June 1906, plate ii. No. xi. See above, p.
141.
2
One of these seals, with the name of Tua-is, "the Charioteer,"
in Hittite hieroglyphs, is in the possession of M. de Clercq.
Another is figured by Layard, Culte de Mithra, xliv. 3.
3
See Sayce, Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, pp. 377-9.
4
See Hogarth, "The Zakro Sealings," in the Journal of
Hellenic Studies, xxii. pp. 76-93, and plates vi.-x.
1
Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1881, vii. 2,
p. 27.
1
See above, p. 141.
2
Professor Petrie finds similar marks on Egyptian pottery of the
prehistoric and early dynastic age; see his table of" signs in
The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty (Egypt Exploration Fund), i. p.
32.
1
Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, xi. pp. 316 sqq. The
cylinder was bought by Major Pottinger, but afterwards lost. The
inscription seems to read: AN Nin(?)-zi-in Su-luM(?)- me-am-el
Khi-ti-sa ARAD-na — "To the god Nin(?)-zin, Sulukh- ammel
(?) son of Khiti, his servant."
1
The Etruscan monument is described by Deecke, Das Temp htm von
Piacetiza (Etruskische Forschungen, iv. 1880) and Etruskische
Forschungen imd Studien, part ii. (1882). For the Babylonian
prototype, see Boissier, Note sur un Monument babylonien se
rapportant & Fextispicine (1899).
CHAPTER VII CANAAN IN THE CENTURY BEFORE THE
EXODUS
It
is now nearly twenty years ago since the archaeological world was
startled, not to say revolutionized, by the discovery of the
cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna in Upper Egypt. Nor was it the
archaeological world only which the discovery affected. The
historian and the theologian have equally had to modify and forsake
their old ideas and assumptions, and the criticism of the Old
Testament writings has entered upon a new and altogether unexpected
stage. The archaeologist, the historian and the Biblical critic
alike can never again return to the point of view which was dominant
before 1887, or regard the ancient world of the East with the
unbelieving eyes of a Grote or a Cornewall Lewis. A single
archaeological discovery has upset mountains of learned discussion,
of ingenious theory and sceptical demonstration.
At
the risk of repeating a well-worn tale, I will describe briefly the
nature of the discovery. In the ruins of a city and palace which,
like the palace of Aladdin, rose out of the desert sands into
gorgeous magnificence for a short thirty years and then perished
utterly, some 300 clay tablets were found, inscribed, not with the
hieroglyphics of Egypt, but with the cuneiform characters of
Babylonia. They were, in fact, the contents of the Foreign Office of
Amon-hotep IV., the "Heretic King" of Egyptian history,
who endeavoured to reform the old religion of Egypt and to
substitute for it a pantheistic monotheism. This was about 1400
years before the birth of Christ, and a full century before the
Israelitish Exodus. The attempt failed in spite of the fanatical
efforts of its royal patron to force it upon his people, and of his
introduction of religious persecution for the first time into the
world. The Eighteenth dynasty, to which he belonged, and which had
conquered Western Asia, went down in civil and religious war; the
Asiatic Empire of Egypt was lost, and a new dynasty sat on the
throne of Thebes.
The
archives in the Foreign Office included not only the foreign
correspondence of Amon-hotep's own reign, but the foreign
correspondence also of his father, which he had carried with him
from Thebes when he founded his new capital at Tel el-Amarna.
And
the scope and character of it are astounding. There are letters from
the kings of Babylonia and Assyria, of Mesopotamia and the Hittites,
of Cilicia and Cappadocia, besides letters and communications of all
sorts from the Egyptian governors and vassal princes in Canaan and
Syria. Most of the correspondence is in the language of Babylonia;
it is only in a few rare instances that the cuneiform characters
embody the actual language of the people from whom the letters were
sent. It is difficult to imagine anything more subversive of the
ideas about the ancient history of the East, which were current
twenty years ago, than the conclusions to be drawn from this
correspondence. It proved that, so far as literary culture is
concerned, the civilized Oriental world in the Mosaic age was quite
as civilized as our own. There were schools and libraries all over
it, in which a foreign language and a complicated foreign system of
writing formed an essential part of education. It proved that this
education was widely spread: there are letters from Bedawin shekhs
as well as from a lady who was much interested in politics. It
showed that this correspondence was active and regular, that those
who took part in it wrote to each other on the trivial topics of the
day, and that the high-roads and postal service were alike well
organized. We learned that the nations of the Orient were no
isolated units cut off from one another except when one of them made
war with the other, but that, on the contrary, their mutual
relations were as close and intimate as those of modern Europe. The
Babylonian king in his distant capital on the Euphrates sent to
condole with the Egyptian Pharaoh on his father's death like a
modern potentate, and was every whit as anxious to protect and
encourage the trade of his country as Mr. Chamberlain. Indeed, the
privileges of the merchant and the sacredness of his person had long
been a matter of international law.
In
one respect the advocates of international harmony and arbitration
were better off in the Mosaic age than they are in the Europe of
to-day. There was no difficulty about diversities of language and
the danger of being misunderstood. The language of diplomacy, of
education and trade was everywhere the same, and was understood,
read and written by all educated persons. Even the Egyptian lord of
Western Asia had to swallow his pride and write in the language and
script of Babylonia when he corresponded with his own subjects in
Canaan. Indeed, like English officials in Egypt, who are supposed to
write to one another on official business in French, his own
Egyptian envoys and commissioners sent their official communications
in the foreign tongue. The Oriental world in the century before the
Exodus thus anticipated the Roman Empire.
Canaan
was the centre and focus of the correspondence. It was the
battle-ground and meeting-place of the great powers of the Eastern
world. It had long been a province of Babylonia, and, like the rest
of the Babylonian Empire, subject to Babylonian law and permeated by
Babylonian literary culture. It was during these centuries of
Babylonian government that it had come to adopt as its own the
script and language of its rulers; the deities of Babylonia were
worshipped on the high places of Palestine, and Babylonian legends
and traditions were taught in its schools.
Out
of Canaan had marched the Hyksos who conquered Egypt. The names of
their kings found on the monuments that have survived to us are
distinctively Canaanite of the patriarchal period; among them is
Jacob-el, or Jacob, whom the Alexandrine Jews seem to have
identified with their own ancestor. While the Hyksos Pharaohs
reigned, Egypt was but a dependency of Canaan; the source of Hyksos
power lay in Canaan, and their Egyptian capital was accordingly
placed close to the Canaanitish frontier.
When,
after five generations of warfare, the native princes of Thebes
succeeded at last in expelling the Hyksos conquerors from the valley
of the Nile and in founding the Eighteenth dynasty, they perceived
that their best hope of preventing a second Asiatic conquest lay in
possessing themselves of the land which was, as it were, the key to
their own. The Hyksos conquest, in fact, had shown that Canaan was
at once a link between Asia and Africa, and the open gate which let
the invader into the fertile fields of Egypt. The war, therefore,
that had ended by driving the Asiatic out of Egypt was now carried
into his own home. Campaign after campaign finally crushed
Canaanitish resistance, and the Egyptian standards were planted on
the banks of the Euphrates. Palestine and Syria were transformed
into Egyptian provinces; in the language of the tenth chapter of
Genesis, they became the brothers of Mizraim.
The
Tel el-Amarna letters tell us how the new provinces were organized.
The most important cities were placed under Egyptian governors, many
of whom, however, were natives. But they were carefully watched by
Egyptian commissioners, to whom the control of the military forces
was entrusted, as well as by special high-commissioners sent from
time to time by the imperial Government. Local jealousies and
rivalries, moreover, among the governors prevented union among them
against the central power, and up to a certain point were not
discouraged by the Egyptian Foreign Office. The Tel el-Amarna
letters offer us a curious picture of the extent to which their
mutual animosities were carried in the days when the Egyptian Empire
was growing feeble. All the governors protest their devotion to the
court, and all like are accused by their rivals of intriguing and
even fighting against it.
Besides
the states which were thus directly under Egyptian rule, there were
also protected states. Here the representative of the old line of
kings was allowed to retain a titular authority, though in reality
his power was not greater than that of the governors in other
states. But, whether governor or protected prince his duty to the
imperial Government was clearly marked out for him. He had to levy
the taxes and send a fixed amount of tribute to the Egyptian
Treasury, to provide a certain number of militia, and to send
official reports to the king. He had further to see that the troops
of the army of occupation were duly provided with pay and
maintenance.
The
army of occupation in the reign of Amonhotep IV. does not seem to
have been large. The imperial forces were needed at home to enforce
the new faith upon the Egyptian people, and to put down the
discontent that was growing there. We hear, however, of "the
household troops," who belonged to the standing army of Egypt
and formed the nucleus of the permanent garrison. How many of them
were native Egyptians it is impossible to say; as we hear of
Kushites or Ethiopians among them, it is probable that the Sudanese
were at least as largely employed on foreign service as the
Egyptians themselves. The Egyptian has never been fond of military
service, whereas, we all now know, the Sudanese is essentially a
fighting animal.
Both
sides of the Jordan were included in the Egyptian administration.
One of the Tel el-Amarna letters, for example, is from a governor of
"the field of Bashan." It is characteristic of the whole
series, and shows what the relations were between the army of
occupation and the native levies. I cannot do better than quote it
in full: "To the king, my lord, thus says Artamanya, the
governor of the Field of Bashan, thy servant: at the feet of the
king, my lord, seven times seven do I fall. Behold, thou hast
written to me to join the household troops, and how could I be a dog
(of the king) and not go ? Behold, I and my soldiers and my chariots
will join the house-hold troops in whatever place the king my lord
orders."
The
name of Artamanya is not Semitic; neither is it Egyptian. The fact
brings us to one of the most interesting and unexpected results of
the decipherment of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. And this is
that the ruling caste in the Palestine of the Mosaic age was largely
of Hittite origin, or had come from those countries of the north
whose population was related in blood and language to the Hittites
of Asia Minor.
In
Northern Mesopotamia was a kingdom which ranked with those of Egypt
and Babylonia as regarded power and influence. Its native name was
Mitanni; the Hebrews, like the Egyptians, called it the kingdom of
Aram Naharaim. It stretched from Assyria to the Orontes, and
contended with the Hittites of Carchemish for the possession of the
fords of the Euphrates.
Its
rulers had descended upon it from the highlands of Armenia and the
Caucasus, and had reduced the native Aramaean population to
servitude. There are frequent references in the Tel el-Amarna
tablets to Mitannian intrigues in Canaan. Mitannian armies had from
time to time marched against the Canaanitish cities, and although
there was now a nominal alliance between Mitanni and Egypt, and the
royal families of the two countries were united by marriage, the
Mitannian court never lost an opportunity of sending secret support
to the disaffected princes of Canaan or of encouraging them in their
revolts from the Egyptian Government In many parts of the country
the ruling family continued to be Mitannian, and accordingly we find
more than one governor who bears a Mitannian name. Thus one of them,
as we see, was governor of Bashan, and there was another who had his
seat near the Sea of Galilee.
Mitannian
influence, however, was chiefly confined to the northern part of
Palestine. It was otherwise with the Hittites, whose marauding bands
penetrated as far south as the frontiers of Egypt. The important
part they played in the early history of Canaan and the substantial
element they must have contributed to the future population of the
country has but lately been disclosed to us by the advance that has
been made in the interpretation of the Tel el-Amarna texts.
We
have at last obtained an explanation of the fact that whereas in the
older Babylonian period Canaan was known as "the land of the
Amorites," it was called by the Assyrians "the land of the
Hittites." The Assyrian kings even speak of Judah and Moab as
"Hittite," and the town of Ashdod is described by Sargon
as a "Hittite" state. What this must mean has indeed long
been recognized by the Assyriologists.
When
the Assyrians first became acquainted with Palestine the Hittites
must have been there the dominant power. But how and when this came
about we have but just begun to learn, and it is the story of the
Hittite occupation of Canaan, as a better knowledge of the Tel
el-Amarna tablets is making possible, that I now propose to
describe.
The
Hittite race was of Cappadocian origin. Professor Ramsay has pointed
out that the hieroglyphic characters which they used in their
inscriptions must have been invented on the treeless plateau of
Central Asia Minor, and that their capital, whose ruins now strew
the ground at Boghaz Keui, north of the Halys, was the centre
towards which all the early high-roads of Asia Minor converge. But
they extended on both sides of the Taurus Mountains, and at an early
date had planted themselves in Northern Syria. I have lately
succeeded in deciphering their inscriptions, which have so long
baffled our attempts to read them, and one result of my decipherment
is the discovery of an unexpected fact. I find that the name of
Hittite was confined to that portion of the race which lived
eastward and southward of the Taurus. In Asia Minor itself, their
first cradle and home, they called themselves Kas or Kasians; it was
the kingdom of Kas over which the Hittite lords of Boghaz Keui
claimed to rule, and it is still as kings of Kas that they are
entitled on the monuments of Carchemish, though here they also
acknowledge the name of Hittite.
The
name of Kas is met with in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, where it has
hitherto been misunderstood.
The
kings of the Hittites, of Mitanni and of Kas are associated together
as supporting the enemies of the Egyptian Pharaoh or attacking his
cities in Syria.
Hitherto
we have supposed that Kas signified Babylonia, though the
supposition had but little in its favour, and a different name is
given to Babylonia in passages where there is no doubt as to what
country is meant. Now, however, all becomes clear: in the age of the
tablets there were still four Hittite kingdoms in the north: Kas in
Asia Minor, the Hittites proper, east and south of the Taurus,
Mitanni in Mesopotamia, and Naharaim on the Orontes. Shortly
afterwards they were all swallowed up in the empire of the "great
king" of the Hittites, whose southern capital was at Kadesh.
Some Kasians had found their way to Jerusalem, where the king
Ebed-Kheba — whose name is compounded with that of a Mitannian
deity — writes to the Egyptian Government to excuse his
conduct in regard to them. They had been accused of plundering the
Pharaoh's territory and murdering his servants; he assures the court
that nothing of the sort is true. They are still in his house, where
it would seem they formed his body-guard. But, on the other hand,
there were other Hittites in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem who were
really enemies to the king and threatened Jerusalem itself. These he
calls Khabiri, or "Confederates," a name in which, despite
history and probability, certain writers have insisted upon seeing
the Hebrews of the Old Testament. But Dr. Knudtzon's fresh collation
of the Tel el-Amarna texts has at last dispelled the mystery. The
Khabiri turn out to have been bands of Hittite condottieri, who sold
their military services to the highest bidder and carved out
principalities for themselves in the south of Canaan. The Egyptian
Government found them useful in escorting and protecting the trading
caravans to Asia Minor and the Taurus region, and as long as their
leaders professed themselves the devoted servants of the Pharaoh it
was quite willing to overlook such little accidents as their capture
and sack of a Canaanitish town or the murder of a Canaanitish
prince.
One
of these Hittite leaders, Aita-gama by name, had possessed himself
of the city of Kadesh on the Orontes, which in the following century
was to become the capital of a Hittite empire. In a letter to the
Egyptian court he has the audacity to assert that he was merely
claiming his patrimony, the whole district having belonged to his
father. If there is any truth in this it can only mean that his
father had already led a troop of Hittite raiders into this portion
of the Egyptian territory.
Along
with Aita-gama two other Hittite chieftains had marched, Teuwatti,
whose name appears in the native texts under the form of Tuates, and
Arzawaya.
Arzawaya
means "a man of Arzawa," the country whose language has
been revealed to us in one of the Tel el-Amarna letters, and which
proves to be the same as the Hittite dialect found in the cuneiform
tablets of Boghaz Keui. We are told that he came from a city which
was in the neighbourhood of the Karmalas, in Southern Cappadocia.
Arzawaya helped Teuwatti to conquer Damascus and then led his
followers further south. Here he acted as a free-lance, hiring
himself and his mercenaries to the rival Canaanitish princes and
professing himself to be all the while a faithful servant of the
Egyptian king. It is amusing to read one of his letters to the
Egyptian court: "To my lord the king thus writes Arzawaya, of
Rukhiza. At the feet of my lord I prostrate myself. My lord the king
wrote that I should join the household troops of the king my lord
and his numerous officers." Here follow four words of Hittite
which are accompanied by the translation: "I am a servant of
the king my lord." Then the letter proceeds: "I will join
the household troops of the king my lord and his officers; and I
will send everything after them and march wherever there is
rebellion against the king my lord. And we will deliver his enemies
into the hand of the king our lord." Doubtless Arzawaya
expected to be well paid for his help.
There
is another letter from Arzawaya to the Pharaoh in which he calls
himself "the dust of his feet and the ground on which he
treads." But in this letter he has to explain away the share he
took in entering the town of Gezer along with Labbawa,1 another
Hittite leader, and there infringing the royal prerogative by
summoning a levy of the militia. In the eyes of the home Government
this was a much more serious matter than merely plundering or
killing a few of its Canaanitish subjects, as it was equivalent to
usurping the functions of the imperial power.
Labbawa
also had to write and ask for forgiveness, and assure the Pharaoh
that he is his "devoted slave," who does "not
withhold his tribute" or disobey the "requests" of
the Egyptian commissioners. In fact, he concludes his letter with
declaring that "if the king should write to me: Run a sword of
bronze into your heart and die, I would not fail to execute the
king's command." All the same, however, he had established
himself securely on Mount Shechem, from whence, like Joshua in after
days, he was able to make raids on the surrounding Canaanitish
towns.1
Labbawa,
or Labawa, is written Labbaya in the letter which is in the Arzawan
language.
In
the north we hear of him at Shunem and Gath-Rimmon, where he first
appeared upon the scene in the train of the Egyptian army at a time
when Amonhotep III. was suppressing an insurrection in that part of
Palestine. It is probable that he had just arrived with his band of
condottieri, attracted by the pay and the chance of plunder that the
Egyptian Pharaoh offered the free-lance. By a curious fatality it
was also in this same locality that he afterwards met his death at
the hands of the people of Gina — the Cana of Galilee,
probably, of St. John's Gospel.
Labbawa
cast envious eyes on the important city of Megiddo, and its governor
— who, by the way, is mentioned in one of the cuneiform
tablets found three years ago by the Austrian excavators on the site
of Taanach — sent piteous appeals for assistance against him
to the Egyptian Government. The beleaguered governor declared that
so closely invested was he by the Hittite free-lances that he could
not venture outside the gates of his town. The peasantry were afraid
even to bring vegetables into it, and unless help were forthcoming
from Egypt, Megiddo was doomed.
After
all, however, Labbawa was not only unable to possess himself of the
Canaanitish stronghold, but was taken prisoner and confined in the
very place he had hoped to capture. But fortune befriended him. He
managed to bribe the governor of Acre, and the latter, on the
pretext that he was going to send Labbawa by sea to Egypt, took him
out of prison and set him free.
Labbawa
now turned his attention to the south of Palestine — the
future territory of Judah. Here he entered into alliance with the
king of Jerusalem, or, to speak more precisely, was taken into his
pay, and the two together waged war on the neighbouring states. One
of the Egyptian governors complains that they had robbed him of
Keilah, and he had to wait for Labbawa's death before he could
recover his city.
One
of the two letters in the Tel el-Amarna collection which are in the
Arzawan or Hittite language was written by Labbawa, as we have
lately learned from Dr. Knudtzon's revised copy of it. In this he
calls himself a native of the Hittite district of Uan, near Aleppo,
and refers to "the Hittite king," though our knowledge of
the language is too imperfect to allow us to understand the meaning
of the reference.
The
letter is addressed simply "to my lord," and we do not
know, therefore, whether it was intended for Hittite or Egyptian
eyes. After his settlement in Palestine, however, Labbawa adopted
the official language of the country; his letters to the Pharaoh are
in Babylonian, and his son bore the characteristically Semitic name
of Mut-Baal. The fact is an interesting example of the rapid way in
which the Hittite settlers in Palestine were Semitized. They brought
no women with them, and their wives accordingly were natives of
Canaan.
Labbawa
left two sons behind him, who, in spite of their Semitic education,
followed in their father's footsteps and continued to lead his
company of Hittite mercenaries. Mut-Baal, moreover, made himself
useful to the Government by escorting the trading caravans to
Cappadocia, a fact which proves that he still maintained relations
with the country of his origin.
The
alliance between Ebed-Kheba of Jerusalem and his father, however,
had come to an end; Ebed-Kheba now had the Hittites of Kas in his
pay, and no longer needed the services of the sons of Labbawa. They
therefore transferred themselves to his rivals, together with the
sons of Arzawaya, who, like Labbawa, was now dead, and Ebed-Kheba
soon found himself in difficulties. The result was letter after
letter from him to the Egyptian court, begging for help against his
enemies, and declaring that if no help came the king's territory
would be lost. These appeals seem to have met with no response; the
Egyptian Government was by no means assured of Ebed-Kheba's loyalty,
and knew that if the territory of Jerusalem were to pass into the
hands of the Hittite chieftain it would make but little difference
to the imperial power.
The
tribute would still be paid, the Egyptian commissioner would still
be respected, and the new rulers of the district would profess
themselves the faithful subjects of the Pharaoh. There would merely
be a change of governors, and nothing more. The Hittite mercenaries
were formidable only in the petty struggles which took place between
the rival Canaanitish governors; when it came to dealing with the
regular army of Egypt they were numerically too few to be of
account.
Ebed-Kheba
calls the followers of Labbawa and Arzawaya "Khabiri." I
have long ago pointed out that the word is found elsewhere in the
Assyrian texts in the sense of "Confederates," and that
its identification with the Hebrews of the Old Testament, though
phonetically possible, is historically impossible. Now that we know
the nationality of Labbawa and Arzawaya the question is finally
settled, and we can explain a hitherto puzzling passage in one of
Ebed-Kheba's letters, in which he says that "when ships were on
the sea the arm of the mighty king seized Naharaim and Kas, but now
the Khabiri have seized the cities of the king." Naharaim lay
southward of the gulf of Antioch, while Kas extended to the Cilician
coast, and they were thus, both of them, within reach of a maritime
Power; they were, moreover, both of them Hittite regions, Naharaim
being the district afterwards called Khattina, "the Hittite
land," by the Assyrians, while Kas was the Hittite kingdom of
Cappadocia.
Ebed-Kheba,
therefore, is drawing a comparison between the power of "the
mighty king" in the days when an Egyptian fleet controlled the
sea and the present time when Hittite marauders are seizing without
let or hindrance the king's cities on the very borders of Egypt.
Even Lachish and Ashkelon had joined the enemy.
Perhaps
the most important of the King of Jerusalem's letters is one which
has hitherto been misunderstood, partly owing to its being broken in
half and the relation of the two halves to one another not being
recognized, partly to the imperfections of the published copy. Now
that a complete and accurate text of it lies before us, its meaning
has ceased to be a riddle, and I will therefore give here the first
translation that has been made of the completed text:
"To
the king my lord thus says Ebed-Kheba thy
servant:
at the feet of my lord the king seven times
seven
I prostrate myself. Behold, Malchiel has not
separated
himself from the sons of Labbawa and the
sons
of Arzawaya so as to claim the king's land for
them.
A governor who commits such an act, why
has
not the king questioned him (about it)? Behold,
Malchiel
and Tagi have committed such an act by
seizing
the city of Rabbah. And now as to Jerusalem,
if
this land belongs to the king, why is it that Gaza has
been
appointed for the (residence of the) king ('s
commissioner)?
Behold the land of Gath-Carmel is
in
the power of Tagi, and the men of Gath are (his)
bodyguard.
He is (now) in Beth-Sannah. But (never-
theless)
we will act. Malchiel wrote to Tagi that
they
should give Labbawa and Mount Shechem to
the
district of the Khabiri, and he took some boys as
slaves.
They granted all their demands to the people
of
Keilah. But we will rescue Jerusalem. The garri-
son
which you sent by Khaya the son of Meri-Ra
has
been taken by Hadad-mikhir and stationed in his
house
at Gaza. [I have sent messengers] to Egypt,
[and
may] the king [listen to me], ... There is no
garrison
of the king [here]. Verily by the life of the
king
Pa-ur has gone down to Egypt; he has left me
and
is in Gaza. But let the king entrust to him a
garrison
for the defence of the land. All the land of
the
king has revolted. Send Yenkhamu and let him
take
charge of the king's land.
"(Postscript):
To the secretary of the king says
Ebed-Kheba
your servant: [bring] what I say
clearly
before the king. Kindest regards to you!
I
am your servant."
The
references in this letter are explained in other letters from the
same correspondent. Malchiel was the native governor of the Hebron
district, and had married the daughter of Tagi, whose name does not
sound Semitic. The Hittite mercenaries of Labbawa from Shechem and
of Arzawaya, who does not seem to have established himself in any
special district of the country, were now in the pay of Malchiel,
while Ebed-Kheba, as we have seen, had secured the services of
another body of Hittites from Kas. He had been accused at the
Egyptian court of seeking by their means to make himself
independent, and more than one of his letters is occupied with
defending himself and bringing a counter-charge against Malchiel.
Malchiel, however, secured the support of the royal commissioner,
Yenkhamu, who agreed to his employment of the Hittite condottieri.
With their assistance Keilah had been recovered from the hands of
Ebed-Kheba, who, at an earlier date, had got Labbawa to seize it for
him, but after Labbawa's death the tables were turned, and his sons
had offered their services to the rival party, doubtless for the
sake of better pay. It was now that Malchiel summoned the militia of
Gezer, Gath-Carmel and Keilah, and made himself master of Rabbah, a
small place north-west of Keilah and Hebron, which Ebed-Kheba
asserted belonged to his territory. The tide was beginning to turn
against the King of Jerusalem: his enemies were in greater favour at
court than he was himself, and they had the support of the Hittite
bands. It was in vain that he appealed to the Egyptian Government
for aid and declared that not only had his rivals given Mount
Shechem to the Hittite free-lances, but that by their action against
himself they were delivering the whole of Southern Palestine into
Hittite hands. "The king," he writes, "no longer has
any territory, the Khabiri have wasted all the lands of the king. If
the royal troops come this year, the country will remain my lord the
king's, but if no troops come, the territory of the king my lord is
lost".
At
this point the story breaks off abruptly. The Tel el-Amarna
correspondence comes to an end and the fate of Jerusalem and the
surrounding districts is unknown to us. Soon afterwards religious
troubles at home forced the Egyptian Government to withdraw its
troops from Canaan altogether, and for awhile the Egyptian empire in
Asia ceased to exist. It was restored, however, by Seti I and his
son, Ramses II., at the beginning of the Nineteenth dynasty, and
among the cities whose conquest is celebrated by Ramses on the walls
of the Ramesseum at Thebes is Shalem or Jerusalem. But this second
Egyptian empire in Asia did not last long, and when the Israelitish
Exodus took place it was already passing away. When some years later
the Israelitish invaders planted themselves in Labbawa's old
stronghold on Mount Shechem, the Egyptian occupation of Canaan
belonged to the history of the past.
Like
the Saxons in England, however, the Hittite chieftains must have
founded principalities for them-selves in the south of Canaan, as we
know from the evidence of the Tel el-Amarna tablets and the Egyptian
monuments that they did in the north. Ezekiel, in fact, tells us
that the mother of Jerusalem was a Hittite, and the Jebusites, from
whom Jerusalem took its name in the age of the Israelitish conquest,
were probably the descendants of the followers of the Hittite
Arzawaya. They had, moreover, found a Hittite population already
settled in the country, descendants of older bands who had made
their way from the highlands of Asia Minor to the frontiers of Egypt
in days when as yet Abraham was unborn.
At
the very commencement of the Egyptian twelfth dynasty we hear of the
Pharaohs destroying "the palaces of the Hittites" in
Southern Palestine,1 and archaeology has recently shown that the
painted pottery discovered in the earlier strata of Lachish and
Gezer by English excavators had its original home in Northern
Cappadocia and is an enduring evidence of Hittite culture and trade.
The
Hittites had been preceded in their occupation of Canaan by the
Amorites, as we have learnt from the Babylonian inscriptions. But in
the Tel el-Amarna age the specifically Amoritish territory was in
the north, eastward of Tyre and Gebal. Here Ebed-Asherah and his son
Aziru had their seat and from hence they led their forces northwards
towards Aleppo to resist "the king of the Hittites" on
behalf of the Egyptian Government, or attacked the Phoenician cities
on their own account. In the north, in fact, they played much the
same part as the Hittite mercenaries did in the south, with the
additional advantage of being able to secure secret assistance when
it was needed from Mitanni. Between Amorites and Hittites the
Canaanites must have had a somewhat unhappy time, like the Britons
after the departure of the Roman legions, who found themselves the
alternate prey of Saxons and Scots. But we can now understand and
appreciate the ethnological notice in the Book of Numbers (xiii.
29), which tells us that "the Hittites and the Jebusites and
the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites dwell by the
sea and by the coast of Jordan."
The
Amorite princes, however, were more formidable to the Egyptian
Government than the Hittite chieftains, or else must have played
their cards a little too openly, for we find Aziru receiving a
scolding such as the Egyptian court seldom had the courage or energy
to give. The letter from the Egyptian Foreign Office, which is a
long one, is worth translating in full:
"To
the governor of the land of the Amorites [thus] says the king your
lord. The governor of Gebal, thy brother, whom his brother has
driven from the gate (of the city) has said: 'Take me and bring me
back into my city, [and] I will then give you money, [for] I have
nothing [of value] with me now.' So he spoke to you. "Behold,
you write to the king your lord saying: I am your servant like all
the loyal governors who are each in his city. Yet you have acted
wrongly in taking a governor whom his brother had driven from the
gate of his city, and being in Sidon you handed him over to the
governors (there) at your own discretion, as if you did not know
that they were rebellious.
"If
you are really a servant of the king why have you not seen that he
should go up to the presence of the king your lord instead of
thinking, 'This governor wrote to me saying, "Take me to
thyself and restore me to my city"'?
"But
if you have acted loyally and nothing that I write is correct, the
king has devised a lie in saying that nothing which you declare is
true.
"But
it happens that one has heard that you have made a treaty with the
(Hittite) prince of Kadesh to deliver food and drink to one another,
and it is true.
Why
have you acted thus? Why have you made a treaty with a governor with
whom another governor is at enmity? For if you act with loyalty to
him and observe your and his engagements you cannot look after (our)
interests as you have undertaken to do long ago. Whatever be your
conduct in the matter you are not on the side of the king your lord.
"Now
as for these men to whom you want to turn, they are seeking to get
you into the fire and to burn (you) and all you most love. Whereas
if you submit yourself to the king your lord, what is there which
the king cannot do for you? If in anything you love to act wickedly
and if you lay up wickedness, even thoughts of rebellion, in your
heart, then you will die by the axe of the king along with all your
family.
Submit
therefore to the king your lord, and you shall live, for you know
that the king has no wish to be angry with all the land of Canaan.
"And
since you write: 'Let the king excuse me this year and I will go
next year to the court of the king my lord, my son not being with
me,' the king your lord accordingly will excuse you this year as you
have asked. Go yourself instead of sending your son, and you shall
see the king in the sight of whom all the world lives, and do not
say: let me be excused this year also from going to the court of the
king your lord; and do not send your son to the king your lord; he
must not go in your place.
"And
now the king your lord has heard that you wrote to the king saying,
'Let the king my lord permit Khanni the messenger of the king to
come to me for the second time, and I will deliver the enemies of
the king into his hand.' Now he will go to you as you have asked; do
you therefore deliver them (to him) and do not let a single one of
them escape. Now the king your lord sends you the names of the
king's enemies in this letter by the hand of Khanni the king's
messenger; so deliver them to the king your lord and let not a
single one of them escape, but put fetters of bronze upon their
feet. Behold, the men you are to send to the king your lord are
Sarru with all his sons, Tuia, Liya with all his sons, Yisyari with
all his sons, (and) the son-in-law of Manya with his sons and wives.
The treasurer of Khanni is the official who will read the dispatch.
Dasirti, Paluwa and Nimmakhi have gone [to collect taxes?] into the
country of the Amorites.
"And
know that the king, the Sun-god in heaven, is well; his soldiers and
chariots are many; from the upper country to the lower country, from
the rising of the sun [to] the setting of the sun all is peace."
We
hear again of one of the rebels mentioned in this letter in the
tablet discovered at Lachish in Palestine by Mr. Bliss. Yisyari is
there described as inciting the governor of Lachish to revolt and
promising assistance if he would call out the militia of his city
against the king. That an Amorite of the north should thus have been
able to interfere in the politics of a city in the south of
Palestine is an interesting illustration of what I may call the
solidarity of Syria and Canaan in the pre-Mosaic period. They had
not yet been broken up into a series of isolated States; like the
Hittites, the Amorites still claimed to be a power in the future
territory of Judah as well as in the neighbourhood of Sidon or
Hamath.
It
is possible that a well-known but somewhat mysterious personage of
the Old Testament was one of the Hittite leaders who succeeded in
carving out a principality for himself: I mean Balaam the son of
Beor. He is said to have come from the Hittite town of Pethor near
Carchemish, and besides being a seer and a prophet he was also a
soldier who fell in the ranks of the Midianites in a war against
Israel.
But
Balaam the son of Beor was not only a native of Pethor; we hear of
him again in the Book of Genesis, and here he appears as the first
king of Edom, his name heading the list of Edomite kings extracted
from the state annals of Edom and probably brought to Jerusalem when
David conquered the country. In the light of what we have learnt
from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna it is perhaps not going too far to
suppose that in Balaam we have one of those Hittite chieftains who,
after playing the part of prophet, made himself leader of a band of
Hittite free-lances and established a kingdom for himself in Edom,
finally falling in battle by the side of his Midianite allies.
However
this may be, the important place occupied by the Hittites in
creating the Canaan which the Israelites invaded is now clear. While
the larger bands of Hittite raiders settled in the north, where they
prepared the way for the Hittite king himself with his regular army,
and where Hittite power became so firmly established that even the
great Ramses could not dislodge it, smaller companies of condottieri
made their way to the extreme south of Palestine, hiring their
services to the rival governors and princes and seizing a town or
district for themselves when the opportunity offered. So long as the
tribute was paid, and its subjects were not too troublesome, the
Egyptian Government looked on with equanimity while the states of
Canaan were practically ruled by the leaders of foreign mercenaries
who transferred their services from one paymaster to another with
the most perfect impartiality.
What
is most curious is that the Imperial Government recognized the legal
position not only of the Hittite or Amorite mercenaries, but even of
organized bands of Bedawin and outlaws. As for the Bedawin, it had
companies of them in its own pay, like the Egyptian Government in
more recent times, and the governor of Gebal complains that the
Egyptian commissioner Pa-Hor had sent some of the latter to murder
his garrison of Serdani or Sardinians, who were themselves
mercenaries in the Egyptian army.
That
bodies of outlaws should have been subsidized by the native princes
with the permission, or at least the connivance, of the Egyptian
court may seem surprising. But after all it is only what we find
happening in later times when the king of Gath similarly enrolled
David and his band of outlaws into his bodyguard without any
remonstrance on the part of the other Philistine "lords."
Still it is startling to find one of the Pharaoh's governors coolly
announcing that he and his soldiers and chariots, together with his
brothers, his "cut-throats" and his Bedawin, are ready to
join the royal troops, at the very time when another governor is
piteously begging the great king to "save" him "out
of the hands of the cut-throats and Bedawin." Here is a strange
picture of Canaanitish life in the days when as yet the Israelite
was not in the land.
Th
fact is, the Canaanites were an unwarlike people. Inland, they were
agriculturists; on the sea coast they were traders. And, like other
trading communities, they were disinclined to fight, preferring to
entrust the protection of themselves and their property to a paid
soldiery, while at the same time their wealth made them a tempting
prize to the assailant. It is true that they maintained a native
militia, as we have learned from one of the cuneiform tablets
discovered at Taanach, but it was upon a small scale, and apparently
so long as the person on the roll could produce the one or two men
for whom he was responsible he was not himself obliged to serve. It
was again a case of paying others to fight instead of themselves.
The
fighting population of Canaan, in short, were the foreigners, and
these it was who gradually made themselves its practical masters.
The leaders of the mercenaries became the rulers of the Canaan ite
states, which thus passed into the hands of a dominant military
caste. When the Israelites entered the country it was with this
military upper class that they had principally to deal; where the
Canaanite had not its protection he trusted for his defence to his
iron chariots and the strong and lofty walls of his towns. It is
instructive to read the long list of unconquered cities and
districts given by the Hebrew historian in the first chapter of the
Book of Judges; among them are the Jebusites of Jerusalem, while we
are told that "the Amorites forced the children of Dan into the
mountain, for they would not suffer them to come down to the
valley."
Canaan,
it will probably be thought, was a somewhat insecure country in
which to live in the days of the Egyptian Empire. There seem to have
been constant turmoil and confusion, governor attacking governor and
bribing bands of foreign mercenaries to help him. But the turmoil
and confusion were mainly on the surface. When a town is taken from
one governor by another we do not hear of its population or their
possessions suffering materially; they soon appear upon the scene
again as prosperous as before.
It
is merely the governor and his immediate surroundings who suffer;
the capture of the town was probably an affair amicably arranged
between the condottieri who were attacking it and the condottieri
who were its defenders. The Egyptian commissioners go up and down
the country, hearing complaints and settling disputes, and no one
ventures even to protest against their decisions, while a few
Egyptian troops are stationed in places where the Government was not
quite sure of the fidelity of its subjects. Caravans of merchants
passed through Canaan going from Egypt to the north, and the traders
of Babylonia and Asia Minor travelled along its high roads under the
escort of Hittite and other chieftains who were subsidized for the
purpose by the Egyptian court.
Even
in the days when the Egyptian Government was breaking up, the
constant fighting among the foreign mercenaries and their employers
seems to have affected the mass of the population little, if at all.
What
happened when the strong hand and controlling power of the Egyptian
Pharaoh were removed we do not yet know. We must look for
information to the systematic excavations that are at last being
made on the sites of the old Canaanitish towns. Already cuneiform
tablets have been found on them, and though these belong to the
Egyptian period we may hope that before long others may be
discovered of later date. We have still to bridge over the age which
elapsed between the final withdrawal of Egyptian domination and the
conquest of the country by Philistines and Israelites. When that age
begins the script and official language of Canaan are still
Babylonian; when it closes the cuneiform characters have been
superseded by the letters of the Phoenician alphabet, and the
language of the inscriptions engraved in them is the language no
longer of Babylonia or of Hittite lands, but of Canaan itself.
1
A copy of the text (Louvre, C i) is given by Professor Breasted in
the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature, xxi. 3
(1905). The determinative attached to the name is not that of
"country" but of "going," showing that the
scribe supposed the name to be connected with some otherwise unknown
word that signified "to go," just as in Gen. xxiii.
"The
sons of Heth" are supposed by the Hebrew writer to derive their
name from the Hebrew khath t "terror."
26
februari 1909 [...] Toch is het Karnaval veel, veel ouder
dan de Romeinsche
Keizertijd.
Want reeds in het oude Babylon werd het huwelijk van den god Mardoek
op dep tienden dag van de eerste maand op geheel dezelfde wijze
gevierd; een prachtig versierd processie-schip werd op wielen door
de heilige straat getrokken. En dat daarbij eveneens de dolste
feestvreugde tot uiting kwam, kan mep weer afleiden uit de
tekstverklaringen van den Berlijnschen professor Hugo Winckler, die
een studie maakte van de opschriften uit den tijd van den
priesterkoning Goedea van Sirgoella, die nog vóór
Babels bloeitijd regeerde. Zoo weet men uit dien tijd, dat ter
gelegenheid van het Nieuwjaarsfeest, dat gedurende zeven dagen
plaats had bij de tempelwijding, en de daarmee gepaard gaande
feesten, ter eere van den god der stad, er geen graan werd gemalen,
dat de slaven met hun meesters gelijk waren, zelfs aan hun zijde
mochten gaan, en dat tusschen machtigen en onaanzienlijken dan geen
verschil bestond. Deze opschriften dagteekenen van drie duizend jaar
v. Chr.
Merkwaardigerwijze
toont professor Hommel dan dezelfde zeden aan bij een Joodsch
huwelijksgebruik, uit den tijd van Christus, wijl hij aldus
verklaart de gelijkenis uit het Evangelie van Lukas 12:36 en 37,
waar gezegd wordt: "En zijt gij den menschen gelijk, die op
hunnen heer wachten, - wanneer hij wederkomen zal van de bruiloft,
opdat, als hij komt en klopt, zij hem terstond, mogen opendoen.
"Voorwaar ik zeg u, dat hij zich zal omgorden, en zal ze doen
aanzitten, en bijkomende, zal hij hen bedienen". [...]
http://www.archive.org/stream/archaeologyofcun00sayc/archaeologyofcun00sayc_djvu.txt
Inventories of the
temples at Delos
[For
the scholarly articles, see
http://www.persee.fr/collection/bch]
June 30, 1770 [...]
Delos, most notable for the Oracle of Apollo
and highly
renowned: the remains of the Pillar of Apollo can still be seen
here, as well as several large fragments and pieces of his renovated
Temple, as well as the once so important City of Delos.
July
19, 1873 Reports arrive from Greece that are very important for both
antiquarians
and industrialists. The King has recently had
excavations carried out on one of his estates near Athens, and
several inscribed stones have now been discovered there, indicating
that the well-known town of Dekelia once stood on that site. A
French society has made highly important discoveries on the island
of Delos; Among other things, the ruins of a temple have been
uncovered, probably that of the famous building dedicated to
Apollo.
Furthermore, it is reported that the renowned Trojan
excavator, Dr. Schliemann, recently returned to Athens with a
treasure of important and very valuable objects (gold and silver),
which he found at a depth of 18 meters at the site where he believes
he has discovered Priam's palace.
September 3, 1873: Two
archaeological discoveries.
On the island of Delos, Mr. Burnouf,
director of the French school in Athens, and one of his students
discovered an ancient temple, probably of Apollo, as well as the
ruins of a city.
Mr. Schliemann, who has been engaged in
excavations for several years on the site where Troy once stood, has
returned to Athens. He made several important discoveries, not only
vases and the like, but also precious gold and silver ornaments, at
a depth of 18 to 19 meters in the ruins of what he believes to be
King Priam's
palace.
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1877_num_1_1_4540
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1878_num_2_1_4428
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1879_num_3_1_4361
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h
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http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1879_num_3_1_4417
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1879_num_3_1_4426
July
6, 1880. Divers searching for sponges near the island of Delos
found
a life-size copper horse at a depth of 45 meters. As evidence of
their discovery, they first unearthed a hoof and later one of the
animal's legs. There must also have been a rider on the
horse.
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1880_num_4_1_4291
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1880_num_4_1_4299
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1880_num_4_1_4315
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h
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1880_num_4_1_4333
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http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1881_num_5_1_4278
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1881_num_5_1_4288
August
14, 1882 Excavations are currently underway on Delos under the
direction of Mr. Kavadias, which are yielding surprising results,
especially since only a very small area has been excavated thus far.
A well-preserved statue of Venus was discovered, the head of which
is identical to that of Venus de Medicis. On the other hand, the
body is reminiscent of the Venus of Praxiteles. A female head of
great beauty was also found. Its torso has not been recovered. It is
certain that this statue was damaged by barbarians or Christians.
The head still bears traces of color. Other beautiful sculptures
(including a small Venus statue, of which only the right hand is
missing) of ancient Hellenic origin and of great originality were
discovered. The Greek government intends to continue the work with
greater vigor.
September 1, 1882 During the excavations at
the sacred lake at Dilos (or Delos),
according to reports
received by the Greek Ministry, interesting works have again been
unearthed; Firstly, a magnificent mosaic of an unknown hand; then a
colossal statue of the goddess Rome, of Melanos the Athenian; and
finally, a larger-than-life statue of a kneeling warrior (not Greek,
but Barbarian) of Agasius the Ephesian. In the theater, which is
also being excavated, large marble tripods were found, seats used in
the orchestra; and two straps, which served to support the floor of
some small building on the stage. From what has been found so far,
it appears that the orchestra used the same seats as those found in
the Athenian Odeon of Herod the Athenian.
October 6, 1882.
Under the direction of the commissioner Kavadias, excavations are
taking place on the island of Delos, which surprisingly yields
promising results, especially considering that only a very small
area has been excavated thus far. A well-preserved statue of Venus
was discovered, the head of which is entirely similar to that of the
Venus de Medicis. However, the body, in its entire composition, is
reminiscent of the Venus of Praxiteles. Furthermore, a magnificent
female head of truly classical beauty was found, though its torso
has not been found. It is certain that this statue was damaged by
barbarians or Christians. The head still bears traces of its color.
Other beautiful sculptures (including a small statue of Venus, from
which only the right hand is missing) of ancient Hellenic origin and
of great originality were discovered. The Greek government intends
to continue the work with greater vigor.
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1882_num_6_1_4188
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1882_num_6_1_4211
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1882_num_6_1_4221
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1882_num_6_1_4228
June
1, 1883 The sea, which over the centuries has swallowed up so much —
including art treasures — has now returned a most remarkable
art treasure from ancient times. From the Greek Parnassus, it
appears that fishermen from Aegina, sailing to Delos to dive for
sponges, found a bronze horse of larger than life-size, overgrown
with mussels on all sides, at the bottom of the sea, at a depth of
about 5 cubits. With great effort, they managed to break off a leg
of the horse. When the leg was put up for sale in Argina, the matter
came to the attention of antiquarians, and since the leg was of
excellent workmanship, and it is therefore likely that the entire
statue was so exquisitely crafted, efforts are now being made to
have the entire horse brought to light. It is believed that the
horse was originally located in Delos. It is the first large bronze
horse to survive from Greek antiquity. Bronze horse statues are
generally not numerous, and a Greek origin has not yet been proven.
August
22, 1883 — Interesting excavations have been conducted on the
Greek island of Delos.
A
private house, probably dating from the Alexandrian period, has been
discovered near the Apollo Theater. So far, a courtyard and twelve
rooms have been unearthed. The courtyard's floor is beautifully
inlaid.
The
gate and part of the road leading to it have also been excavated,
and there is hope that, with continued investigation, an entire
district of the ancient city may be discovered.
September
26, 1883 — An interesting discovery is reported from Athens.
On
the island of Delos, where excavations are being conducted under the
direction of the French School of Athens, the remains of a private
house from the time of Alexander have been discovered near the
Apollo Theater. A courtyard surrounded by columns and twelve rooms
have already been uncovered. The floor is inlaid with beautiful
mosaics featuring flowers, fish, and other ornaments, and has a
reservoir full of water in the center. The excavations are
continuing diligently.
October
31, 1883 — As is known, a French company is conducting
archaeological excavations in Delos, Greece, but these have been
halted for some time due to a lack of labor. The reason for this
must lie in the fact that the Nomasch (governor) is doing everything
he can to prevent the company from excavating, as he cannot bring
himself to allow others to remove the treasures of his ancestors;—a
spirit that is manifesting itself throughout Greece today.
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1883_num_7_1_4136
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doc/bch_0007-4217_1883_num_7_1_4176
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4_num_8_1_4132
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http
://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1887_num_11_1_3991
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1887_num_11_1_3995_t1_0302_0000_1
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1887_num_11_1_3995_t1_0303_0000_3
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1888_num_12_1_3953
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1888_num_12_1_3963
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1888_num_12_1_3969
July
11, 1889 The popular games of the Greeks.
II.
We
borrow another scene from the Odyssey, where Homer, in his depiction
of the Phaeacians, presents us with a charming image of Ionic folk
life. We see with pleasure the Princess Nausicaa on the seashore, as
she dances there with her maidens, after having cleansed the linen
and veils for her future bridal attire, to relax, play ball, and
sing joyful songs. As gloriously as Artemis passed over the heights
of Taygetus, so charming did the exalted maiden appear to the
maidens. There she threw the ball at one of the maidens, but missed.
Then a loud cheer arose, which awakened Odysseus, who had been
washed ashore on Scheria and lay slumbering in the nearby forest. At
this strange apparition, the maidens were seized with fright and
fled, but Nausicaa remained standing and took pity on the
unfortunate stranger, who, from a respectful distance, begged her
help and wished that the gods would grant her all her heart desired:
"a husband and a house, and peace and concord". "What
you rightly desire," she spoke kindly to him, "you shall
not lack. I will show you the city we live in, where my father
Alcinus rules". After bathing and dressing properly, he was
already a completely different man. He was further refreshed with
food and drink before they set off together into the city. Towards
sunset they reached the lovely grove of poplars dedicated to Pallas
Athena. There the stranger had to wait until the others had returned
home and presented him to the King. In the meantime, he prayed that
he might receive love and mercy from the Phaeacians.
Admitted
to the royal palace, where the country's nobles were assembled, he
begged Queen Arete to be allowed to return to his homeland. The King
invited him to the banquet, after which popular games would be held,
so that the stranger could proclaim to his people how far the
Phaeacians excelled as boxers, wrestlers, and in jumping and racing.
At the appointed hour, they proceeded to the market square, where
the popular festival was to take place. Many distinguished young men
had arrived, eager for the contest. Among them were the three
distinguished sons of Alcinus. They would test their agility against
each other. From the starting point, the raceway stretched out
before them. Everyone rushed towards it simultaneously. But it
wasn't long before the brave hero Clytoneus was far ahead of them
all, and the others, despite their exertions, lagged far behind.
Then followed the difficult wrestling match, in which Euryalus
excelled, triumphing over the bravest. Next, Amphialos far surpassed
the others in the leaping. Elatreus triumphed in the throwing of the
discus, and finally, in the fist fight, Laodamas was victorious. He
then invited his friends to investigate whether the stranger was
also experienced in the sport. Considering his stature and age, he
had high hopes for it, but the misfortune of the shipwreck might
have broken his spirit. Nevertheless, they ventured to address him
through Laodamas. "Well, O stranger, if you know how to
compete, try it and cast your cares aside". But he couldn't be
persuaded. Then Euryalus began to sneer and scold. "No, indeed,
you don't seem to me a man skilled in the sport, but someone who
constantly sails a ship, perhaps a captain of skippers who also act
as merchants". This didn't make a favorable impression. Looking
at him darkly, Odysseus began: "Stranger, your words are not
pleasant; you are an overconfident youth. By your unseemly language
you have greatly offended me. I am no stranger to the contest, as
you babble. However deeply distress has bowed me, I accept the
contest, for you have forced me to it".
Thus
speaking, he stood up and seized the discus, which was even larger,
thicker, and heavier than the other discus the Phaeacians were
practicing with each other. After swinging the disc around, he threw
it with great force. With a loud whoosh, it flew far over the mark.
"Imitate me, you young men. Anyone who dares, come and test
their strength, whether with your fist, in wrestling, or in the
race. I refuse no one except my host: who would gladly wrestle with
their guest? I know how to strike with the bow and the javelin too.
Only in the race do I fear that anyone will prevail against me,
since that storm at sea has robbed my limbs of strength". But
everyone around him was hushed and silent. Only Alkinos replied, "We
are not particularly good at boxing or wrestling, but we are at
racing and sailing. We also always love meals, singing, and dancing.
Come then, masters of the dance, play for us, and let the singer
Demodocus accompany you on the harp". Soon, space was cleared
and the dancing area decorated. The singer took his place in the
center, and around him gathered young men, in the prime of their
years and skilled in the dance; how gracefully and swiftly they
moved in regular steps! Odysseus was amazed. Then the blind singer
rustled the strings and, to everyone's delight, began the joyful
song of the love of Ares and the charming Aphrodite, and of how
Hephaestus had held them captive in the cleverly wrought net. Then
Laodamas was invited to dance separately with Halios. Immediately
they took the elegant ball in their hands. Lo and behold, one threw
it toward the shadowy clouds, leaning backward, and the other,
springing from the ground, caught it deftly before he could stand
again. After they had tried to throw the ball straight up, they
danced there with swift steps, frequently changing places. Other
youths standing nearby clapped their hands, and a loud cheer arose.
Odysseus was deeply moved. "See," he addressed the King,
"you boasted of having the most excellent dancers, and you
maintained your fame".
Following
the example of Alcinus, the guest was now showered with rich gifts.
Euryalus, too, had to try to appease him, both by word and deed. He
gladly complied with the King's request and handed the stranger the
metal sword, with its silver hilt and polished ivory sheath, with
the winged words: "Joy to you, father and guest! If an
offensive word was spoken, may the storms quickly dispel it. The
gods also grant you to see your homeland and your wife again, since,
far from your own, you have experienced so much suffering".
"Joy to you too," replied Odysseus, "and health and
blessing from the gods! May you never in the future need this sword,
which you have now given me with conciliatory words".
That
evening, returning to the royal palace, they heard that blind singer
again at dinner. Now he sang of the Trojan Horse and the fall of
Troy, and of him who so courageously participated in that terrible
struggle, until, strengthened by the exalted Athena, he finally
triumphed. Hearing these words, Odysseus was deeply moved. He then
gave his name and recounted his subsequent adventures. After bidding
a hearty farewell, he boarded a spacious ship, which brought him
back safe and sound to his homeland.
While
the Ionian Greeks had previously come from East and West, from their
ancient settlements, to the Isthmus to offer communal sacrifice to
the land- and sea-moving Poseidon, since their settlements on the
islands of the Aegean Sea and on the nearby coasts, little Delos,
surrounded as if by a circle by the Cyclopes, became the center of
their worship of Apollo and gradually the common sacrificial hearth
of all the Ionians. Homer knew the slender palm tree that rose
there, beside the altar of the god of light.
According
to legend, Poseidon had caused this island to rise from the sea with
a blow of his trident. Here Leto, pursued everywhere by the jealous
Hera, finally found a resting place to give birth to her offspring.
When she entered the island, Pindar sang in his festive song, four
pillars rose from the depths of the sea to support and secure the
sacred rock, which had hitherto drifted, for her and her children,
Apollo and Artemis. The great lights of heaven could only have come
from Zeus, the god of heaven.
If
light broke through from the darkness, from the twilight, then the
mother of Apollo and Artemis must be this twilight, this darkness
itself. The name Apollo means the warding off, and Phoebus the
giving of light. From the silver bow with which he is armed, he
sends his arrows, the sun's rays. With them he dispels the darkness
of the night. Even the turbulent sea must obey him. When the sun
pierces the dark clouds, its rays falling upon the sea and
illuminating the gray waves, the spirits of darkness are banished;
the sailor breathes freely again and thanks the god of light, who
has saved him with his arrows. Once the dark winter is over and the
glorious spring has arrived, all Ionians together celebrate the
festival of the reborn light, the birth of Apollo, the god of the
ever-new, ever-bright, ever-youthful light. Amidst an
ever-shimmering sea, brightly illuminated by the sun's rays and
sheltered from storms by the islands of Mykonos and Eheneia, the
rock of Delos was dedicated to Phoebus Apollo.
When
Theseus landed there after his victory in Crete, where, with the
help of the princess Ariadne, he had slain the Minotaur in the
Labyrinth, he, at the head of the fortunately rescued youths and
maidens of Athens, performed the first sacrifice to thank the god
for their deliverance. He then performed with them the first round
dance around the altar, "the artful play of winding arms,
tripping light feet," the meandering chorus, the Geranos, which
was meant to represent the many twists and turns of the labyrinth in
which they had nearly perished. A branch of the sacred palm tree,
under which Apollo was born, Theseus awarded as a trophy to the one
who had most excelled in this game. This was roughly how the Delian
Games were founded. From then on, the Ionians went there annually to
celebrate in honor of Apollo and Artemis. Following the example of
the chief hero of their tribe, they celebrated this festival with
sacrifices and competitions. When spring had arrived, when the
swallows returned, when the birdsong in the mountains and forests
sang its joyful song, "in the dense, green plane trees the
nightingales hid, singing love," then they prepared to be
illuminated by the glorious light that radiated from Delos, which
shone like a brilliant star even to the gods on Olympus from the
dark earth. Then the festive embassy set sail from Athens, in the
sacred Delian ship in which Theseus, the founder of their state, the
father of wrestling, had first sailed to Delos. Towards the end of
the ninth century BC, in the first days of May, all the Ionians from
far and wide, from the coasts of Asia Minor and Greece, from Caria
and Lydia, from Euboea and Attica, from the Sporades and Cyclopes,
flocked in their galleys and boats to the holy land of Delos, to
offer sacrifice at their common hearth on the 6th and 7th of that
month and to hold competitions in song and dance, in music and
gymnastics. At one of these festivals, around the middle of the
eighth century, the blind singer of Chios sang the beautiful hymn to
Apollo: "O Phoebus, though many temples, shady forests, high
mountain peaks, and rivers flowing into the sea are dedicated to
you, yet your heart rejoices most in Delos. There the Ionians gather
in long robes, with their children and their noble women.
Remembering you, they delight in song and dance and contest. Whoever
comes there might believe that the Ionians were free from old age
and death. He will rejoice at the sight of the men and beautifully
girded women and the fleet ships with their rich cargo. At the same
time, the virgins of Delos, the handmaidens of the far-reaching god,
praise Apollo and Leto and Artemis in song and sing the hymns of men
and women of old and bring the generations of men into "delight"...
With a word to the virgins who performed the dance around the altar,
he concludes his hymn.
"Joy
to you! Remember me also in the days to come, and when one of the
inhabitants of the earth comes here, having suffered much, and asks
you: who brings you the sweetest songs and who brings you the most
joy? then answer immediately, with a kind word: the blind man, who
inhabits rocky Chios".
The
dances around the sacrificial altar consisted of simple, solemn,
continuous movements and rhythmic turns, with some mimicry of the
choruses or choirs that performed at the festivals. In his Greek
idyll, Vosmaer, in the round dance, at the head of the maidens, has
Nanno appear thus:
"Head
held high, fingertips on the pleated robe.
While
the toes of the feet made the supple, swaying body
float,
and the narrowness of the wild flower gave a wrinkle,
Thus
the beautiful maiden soared slenderly before them all".
Not
only physical strength and agility, but also excellence of mind were
given the opportunity on Delos to win the palm branch of victory. We
have already heard the hymn to Apollo. Under the influence of the
great master, who delights the gods on Olympus with his song at the
phorminx, as the singers sing at the banquet of the kings of the
earth, the mind became increasingly enlightened and refined. Was he
not the master of all the fine arts and the leader of the Muses?
How
solemnly the song sounded! With the earnestness of the highest art,
Which
melts the strictly sublime into the all-enchanting beauty,
The
Ionian beauty, full of refinement and eternal youth,
That
indeed uplifts and moves, but does not disturb or shock,
Thus
sounded the poet's words, carried and supported,
Not
dominated, by the finely colored string sound.
(Vosmaer.)
For
the oldest contest, the footrace, a spacious field was set aside and
arranged in such a way that other physical exercises could also be
held. For this purpose, two parallel heights were enclosed on one
side in an arc. On the other side, at the place where the footrace
began, a straight line was drawn through those heights, or a wall
erected. This encampment acquired the name stadium. The Delian games
would have been not unlike the contests described by Homer. Over
time, however, everything became better organized and regulated. The
established rules, in which the distinctive Hellenic element took
shape, first emerged in the Dorian states, especially in Sparta.
A
few years before the outbreak of the Persian Wars, the population of
Delos was reinforced by Attic colonists. Upon the enemy's approach,
they fled to Tenos, but the Persian generals invited them to return
to the sacred island without fear. When their fleet was anchored
there, Datis burned 300 centenars of incense in honor of Apollo,
whom he took for the sun god Mithra, whose powerful protection would
ensure his victory on his further voyages. The unfortunate outcome
of this is well known. At the Battle of Marathon, where they were
defeated by Miltiades, Theseus was seen rising from the ground to
break the enemy battle lines.
For a time, the celebration of the
Delian festival seems to have fallen into disrepair, until the
Athenians attempted to restore it at the beginning of the
Peloponnesian War in 426 BC. After the island's purification, a
smaller annual festival was celebrated, and a larger one, which
lasted for five years, was celebrated, and both festivals were
attended by delegations from Athens, and certainly also from the
other Ionian states. The magnificent Temple of Apollo at the harbor,
with its rich treasures, came under the supervision and management
of the Amphictyones (associations for the mutual celebration of a
religious festival, etc.), presided over by the Athenians, of
course, and to which one of their citizens was delegated annually.
Recently, since 1873, the French School of Athens has conducted
excavations on Delos, which will undoubtedly reveal more about this
remarkable island. The ruins of the oldest temple have been
discovered. Eight female statues, dating from the eighth to the
fifth century BC, have been discovered and partially restored. A
large number of manuscripts and a wealth of bas-reliefs and bronze
objects from all periods of Greek art have been unearthed and
transferred to the museum in Athens.
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1889_num_13_1_3891
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[mentioning possessions and
Crateros]
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October
15, 1894 Excavations undertaken by the French Archaeological School
in Athens
on the island of Delos have uncovered several walls of
private residences and two marble statues of Apollo. These walls are
completely covered with ancient frescoes, which date back to a very
old age, yet still retain their original freshness. They depict
scenes from everyday life and mythology and constitute very
important documents for the art history of ancient Greece.
October
15, 1894 Excavations on the island of Delos, where, according to
myth, Latona
gave birth to Apollo and Diana, will be halted due
to the bad weather. During the latest excavations, two marble
statues of Apollo and several walls of private houses have been
uncovered, which are richly decorated with frescoes depicting scenes
from domestic life and mythology. The frescoes are exceptionally
well preserved and of great importance for the history of ancient
Greek art.
January 3, 1895 From Delos, Greece, it is reported
that students of the technical school in Athens have conducted
excavations there, which have unearthed magnificent ancient
sculptures. Among other things, a statue of a woman is said to have
been unearthed, praised as a priceless masterpiece of
antiquity.
January 19, 1895 In a vast hemisphere, walled by
high and rugged rocks, in the foothills of Parnassus, on the right
bank of the Kephalo-Vrysi, which rises from the source of Oastalis
and, forming numerous waterfalls, winds its way through a forest of
olives and laurels until it falls into the dried-up bed of the
Xero-Potamo, stand three or four white houses: this is the village
of Castri, which, by a miraculous twist of fate, arose on the site
of Delphi, the opulent holy city, the great religious center of
ancient civilization.
For
a long time, scholars have wondered whether such a renowned city
could have truly vanished so completely, leaving nothing behind but
a few fragments of marble scattered across the ground and a few
mutilated sculptures set aside under the shade of the olive trees in
the gardens; whether the Phocidian plunderers, the centurions of
Sulla and Nero, the Gauls under Brennus, and the warriors of
Constantinople could thus have reduced to nothing that immense city,
consisting entirely of temples and sanctuaries, populated by
thousands of statues. At the beginning of 1891, when the French
Minister of Education posed that age-old question to Mr. Homolle,
the current director of the Ecole française d'Athènes,
he did not hesitate to reply that he was convinced that the soil of
the village of Castri contained the most precious monuments, and he
supported his opinion by mentioning the efforts made by Ottfried
Müller, Wescher, Foucart, Haussoulier, and Pomtow, and by the
observations he himself had been able to make in the Delphic Valley
region.
It is to the last parliament's unfading honor that it
accepted his assurance and authorized a considerable sum for this
selfless undertaking, for none of the excavated works will leave
Greece.
An entire year was spent expropriating the farmers'
houses, which had been built on the very site where the main
buildings formerly stood. around the sanctuary of Apollo.
This
was accompanied by many difficulties: although 280,000 francs,
intended to compensate the farmers, had immediately been deposited
in the Bank of Athens, they would not allow work to begin until they
had the money in hand. "Here is my field, here is my hand,"
said an old woman to the director; "lay drachmas on that hand,
and I will give you this land". These poor people refused to
believe that a signature could have any monetary value and, in their
simplicity, imagined that, after turning the land upside down, they
would dispute the extent of the properties they had bought off.
Several times, Mr. Homolle tried to press on, but the farmers
demolished the sheds in a stampede, and a bloody clash nearly broke
out: patience was necessary.
In October 1892, the first ditches
were dug and the narrow-gauge railway, which transported the
excavated soil, was laid. The initial results of the investigations
were not very satisfactory. At the site of the Temple of Apollo,
where it was thought they would find precious sculptures, nothing or
almost nothing was found, as if—in Mr. Homolle's words—the
removal of the statues had taken place according to a specific plan
and prescription. In 1893, at the highest point of the sacred road,
which bisected the entire city, admirable remains were suddenly
uncovered, the first reparations of two years of fruitless labor:
pedestals of votive offerings, marble horses, female figures, male
torsos, and also terracottas, bronzes, and inscriptions, including
fragments of the sanctuary's accounts, dating from the 4th century
BCE.
Then came the discovery of the Hymn to Apollo, which enabled
Mr. Salomon Reinach to revive a musical poem that had been lost for
2,000 years. And finally, the results of the campaign of the Last
year, the sacrifices made by our budget were gloriously rewarded, as
well as the diligence of Mr. Homolle and his collaborators, Messrs.
Convert, Bourguet, Perdrizet, Millet, Conve, Jonguet-Blot, and
Tournaire.
The workers excavated a crossroads, where four
buildings were situated: one of which formerly housed the treasure
of the sacrifices offered to the Delphic god by the people of
Athens; another the treasure of the Syphnians; a third the treasure
of the Beotians. While they were unable to recover the talents, the
gold drinking vessels, or the precious stones that had once been
inside, and which had once aroused the greed of the invaders,
masterpieces have been recovered that have a completely different
value for the knowledge of antiquity. These include, in the Athenian
treasury, a series of column decorations of astonishing art,
depicting the story of Theseus; and not far from there, a Archaic
Apollo, the work of an Archaic master, corresponding in every
respect to another figure discovered last year; in the Syphnian
treasury, the building of which has been completely restored,
bas-reliefs depict sacred events.
And,
besides fighting warriors, horses that have the same noble and
impressive bearing, the same fiery and agile movements, as those
famous horses of Phidias, which adorned the Parthenon (now among the
so-called Elgin Marbles, preserved in the British Museum): yet they
were carved a century before those of the Athenian master and differ
only in the frizzy hair of their tails and manes, a remnant of
ancient tradition. Side by side, moreover, are works of art, some
bearing the stamp of that ideal grace which, for us, is the highest
revelation of art, and others whose unaffected stiffness, though not
devoid of greatness, seems to date from more distant centuries.
Yet,
there is no doubt that they were all created at the same time, but
the old masters, attached to the ancient traditions, worked
simultaneously with the younger ones, whose conception was broader
and more recent. This holds an important lesson for criticism, which
is all too eager to assign each school its own narrowly defined time
period.
Among
the very latest discoveries, noteworthy is a torso, outstanding for
its grace and strength, probably the remains of a statue erected for
an athlete victorious in the Pythian Games, and above all, an
Antinous in marble, lacking only the arms and of particularly noble
and sober execution. The casts and photograms of most of these
beautiful objects were recently exhibited at the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts. Later, they will be transferred to the Louvre, where
they will form a separate collection, which will be expanded as the
discoveries progress.
The
excavations are continuing, and Mr. Homolle is about to return to
Greece to resume their direction. Convinced that he has not been
indiscriminate since the excavation of the principal sanctuaries,
whose names he has been able to ascertain from the clues provided by
Pausanias, he is fully convinced that he will soon be able to offer
a new and abundant harvest of monuments to antiquity and art. Will
he rediscover one of those wondrous statues whose azure hue aroused
the admiration of the Roman emperors? That would be a more precious
discovery than even that of the fabulous offerings, destined by
their wealth to fall prey to the greed of the people and piled up in
that city of treasures: the golden masonry stones dedicated by
Croesus, the drinking cups of King Gyges, the throne of Midas, the
silver dish that fell to Homer in a poet's contest, the golden
statue of the beautiful Phryne. Little can be said in advance, but
the French Ecole d'Athènes, some of whose members are even
making the rarest discoveries on the island of Delos, has every
right to be proud of the work it has accomplished at Delphi: it has
once again given France the very true and very noble glory of
enriching the entire world.
(ANDRÉ
SAGLIO.)
March
19, 1895 Mixed reports.
During
the excavations at Delphi, a second hymn to Apollo with musical
notes was discovered, 28 lines long, which are perfectly legible.
Professor Weil in Paris has restored the mutilated fragments after
thorough examination.
It
is carved in two columns on a marble slab measuring 0.8 meters by
0.61 meters. It celebrates the birth of Apollo and the city of
Delos, the god's arrival at Delphi, and his victory over the dragon,
and concludes with a prayer for Greece and the Romans.
Besides
this hymn, fragments containing notes from a famous Greek war hymn,
or Päan, have been discovered. However, parts of these are
illegible. Reinach and Weil are attempting to reconstruct these
fragments as likely as possible. Both pieces will soon be performed
in Paris with orchestra and choir.
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October
27, 1904 — The excavations undertaken by the French School of
Athens on the island of Delos have again resulted in some very
remarkable discoveries. Two statues of Silenus dating from the third
century BC have been found wreathed with ivy leaves, each carries an
amphora on their left shoulder, the mouth of which they hold shut
with their right hand. But a group of Pan and Aphrodite, dating from
the second century BC, is particularly praised. Eros, seated on
Aphrodite's left shoulder, attempts to push Pan back, having seized
him by one of his
horns.
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1904_num_28_1_3320
June
17, 1905 Excavations. During the archaeological research being
conducted on the Greek island of Aegina by the "Basserman-Jordan
Foundation" of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, another
important discovery has been made.
Below the volcanic cone of
Oros, the island's highest mountain, on whose summit a prehistoric
city is said to have stood, a sanctuary has now been excavated,
reminiscent of the famous ancient cave sanctuary of Mount Cynthos on
the island of Delos. However, only its beautiful walls remain.
The
sanctuary on Delos was previously considered unique. A second one
now exists, on Aegina.
Remains of a village — 150 dwellings
— dating from the Bronze Age have been excavated near Bleslau.
Near the village, 400 graves were found.
August 1, 1905: Coin
discovery on Delos.
During excavations on the island of Delos,
the French have recently discovered four hundred silver
tetradrachmas from the time of Alexander the Great, but they are
exceptionally well preserved; the modeling of the heads is described
as excellent. A number of drachmas were found in a house excavated
at the same time.
All the coins will be transferred to the Museum
in Athens.
December 14, 1905 Excavations at Delos.
The
director of the French school in Athens has reported on the results
of the latest excavations conducted by Mr. Loubat at Delos.
The
portico of Philipp has been uncovered, as well as a new section of
the theater. Two documents found among the ruins are of the utmost
importance. One contains the dedication of a monument erected by
Antigone Doson, King of Macedonia. The other is the text of a law
regulating the sale of wood and charcoal at
Delos.
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February
2, 1907 — During the latest excavations at Delos, a large rock
terrace
with five colossal marble lions from the 17th century BC
was discovered, as well as a large Mycenaean tomb with rich
contents.
("Chronicle".)
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January
10, 1908, The Gazette des Beaux-Arts contains an article about
excavations under the heading "A Greek Pompeii" on Delos,
which were primarily executed by the French "Ecole d'Athènes"
and largely at the expense of a French antiquity enthusiast, the
Duke de Loubat.
The author, A. Jarde, repeatedly notes the
similarity between the architectural order and decorative motifs
found on Delos and in Pompeii, without being able to determine which
served as a model for the other. Images of important works of art
found on Delos are included with the piece, including an Aphrodite
with Pan and Eros and a Mosaic
fragment.
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August
21, 1909, Review of Ancient and Modern Art.
It must have been a
very peculiar sensation. For the antiquarian Gabriel Leroux, during
excavations on Delos over a period of two years, a very important
Greek statue gradually emerged in fragments, not in one place, but
at various points between the harbor and the theater; the pieces
were probably deliberately scattered, Leroux writes in the Bevue de
l'Art ancien et moderne. It is a statue of Apollo, depicting the god
as the conqueror of the Galatians, his left foot resting on a small
stack of shields belonging to these barbarians. This representation
of Apollo, with an arm raised above the head, is quite common, but
it is particularly beautifully executed in this statue. Apollo is
not an athlete here; he has rather something weak, almost feminine,
but the flesh is beautifully rendered. The image shows that the
statue is not entirely complete; some limbs are missing, and the
face is also damaged.
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July
11, 1910: The very important results of the French excavations on
Delos are reported. For example, it has been discovered that in the
second century BC, parallel moles had been cast into the sea from
the island, forming true docks. But even more remarkable are the
discoveries of the remains of a sanctuary dedicated to foreign gods.
It must have been situated on a number of high terraces, to which a
large open staircase led, with houses of several stories alongside,
where foreigners would have lived.
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September
4, 1911 The Victim of the Gioconda.
French
newspapers recall the merits of Homolle, the director of the Louvre
who was dismissed after the theft of the Gioconda. They note his
significant contributions to art history, particularly regarding the
excavations at Delos and Delphi, for which he received Greek and
French honors.
September
6, 1911 — The Gioconda.
The
first victim of the disciplinary measures resulting from the theft
of the Gioconda was the director of the Louvre Museum, Theophile
Homolle. It is understandable that the lack of vigilance is
primarily attributed to the man who should actually be in charge.
Yet, it is regrettable that such a respectable art scholar as
Homolle should have ended his career in such a humiliating manner.
Homolle made great contributions to art history, particularly as the
leader of the excavations at Delos and Delphi (Greece). He spent
thirty years there, and rightly, people in various circles are
questioning the propriety of entrusting this museum security service
to someone so outside the national social fabric. Therefore, it
seems the intention is to no longer make the director, who must be
an art scholar and be able to continue his studies, responsible for
security, but rather to appoint a police officer assigned to him.
For Homolle, whose merits were recognized with high honors by both
France and Greece—whose appointment as director was
undoubtedly intended as a distinction and as a care for old age—it
remains a sad event to lose his honorary position at the age of 63,
although one can agree that such a responsible post should neither
be granted nor accepted as a sinecure.
December
11, 1911 The French excavations on Delos have recently been crowned
with
brilliant
results. A deposit of no fewer than two hundred vases, dating from
the seventh and sixth centuries BC, and of very diverse origins, was
discovered beneath the Temple of Hera. Also of interest is the
discovery of a number of blue earthenware dishes, decorated with
blue, of a previously unknown type. A whole series of terracotta
statues, apparently depicting Hera, also came to light.
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February
28, 1912: The excavations at Delos in 1911.
These
excavations were the richest of all, especially with regard to
inscriptions. Holleaux notes in particular the discovery of
previously unknown blue dishes decorated with figures of exceptional
fineness; an admirable series of terracotta busts (probably the
goddess Hera); trapdoors and canals of the waters of Ipnos; Finally,
a council resolution translated into Greek, probably from 160 or 165
BC, a valuable document for the history of the Athenian occupation.
Valbis has discovered a temple of Dionysius or Apollo and a road
with monuments leading to it.
November
27, 1912 Excavations.
The
French excavations on the island of Delos are now almost complete.
The most interesting result after the previous report is the
discovery of a building with pews along the walls, which is believed
to be a synagogue. If this hypothesis is accepted, then, alongside
the Egyptian and Syrian sanctuaries, the meeting place of the Jews
on Delos has been discovered, thus completing the image of the
sacred island where, in the last centuries before Christ, all the
religions of the ancient world coexisted. ("Hbld".=Handelsblad)
A
victory predicted.
Homolle,
the director of the Louvre, who resigned due to the disappearance of
the Mona Lisa, has now returned, as before his directorship, to
Greece, where he previously conducted important excavations and is
now director of the French School in Athens. He reports that an
archaic statue of Nike has been found at Delphi on the site of the
temple of Athena Prenaea, which the Greeks, because the war with
Turkey had just broken out, considered a favorable omen. And weren't
they right?
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http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1912_num_36_1_3153
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1912_num_36_1_3154
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0007-4217_1913_num_37_1_3137
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1913_num_37_1_3142
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1914_num_38_1_3124
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1915_num_39_1_3112
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1916_num_40_1_1473
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http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1916_num_40_1_1481
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1920_num_44_1_3072
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07-4217_1920_num_44_1_3076
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1921_num_45_1_3048
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http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1921_num_45_1_3050
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0007-4217_1921_num_45_1_3056
November
24, 1923 From the Spade school.
CXXXVIII.
(Private
correspondence.)
Rome,
Nov.
Delos
from the practical side. I.
The
sanctity of the place. Its myths. Pindar's celebratory song. Divine
origin. The purification of the soil. Very ancient festivals.
Changes in Delos's fortunes. A rich harvest of inscriptions.
Financial affairs before and after. Xenophon's little capital. The
exploitation of pilgrims and tourists. Restaurants and hotels kept
by the priests.
The
Greeks considered the small, barren island, situated in the middle
of the other, larger Cyclades, highly sacred. Even their first poet,
Homer, has Odysseus compare the slender beauty of Nausicaa to the
palm branch he once admired at the temple of the Delian Apollo.
That
place of worship, already known so early, later became the center of
a league of nations, which had the same significance for the Greek
maritime states as Delphi had for the continental powers. Tradition
spun a golden web of fantastic myths around the god's birthplace.
One of Homer's followers composed a "legenda aurea" for
the island. Pindar, in his language, glittering and glowing like
Parisian marble, hewed an unforgettable celebratory hymn in honor of
the barren strip of land exalted above all other places on earth by
Leto's labor pains. The beauty of this song can only be judged by
its original, the content of which is roughly as follows: "Hail
to you, place captivated by the power of the gods, lovely origin of
the children of Leto, the shining-haired one, you, daughter of the
sea, unwavering wonder on the broad bosom of the earth; mortals call
you Delos, but the blessed of Olympus call you the radiant star on
the dark earth... For Delos used to drift on the rocking waves,
tossed by the pressure of the winds, but when Leto entered it, swept
along by the pains of the approaching birth, then from the trunk of
the seabed sprang upright four diamond-footed columns and supported
the rocky ground with their capitals; there she beheld her lovely
offspring". In plain human language, ancient mythology
textbooks tell us that Hera, in her jealousy, forbade the Earth to
grant Leto a place to bear her children—Zeus was their
father!—and that then the will of the supreme god created a
new piece of land for his beloved by fastening the formerly floating
Delos to the seabed.
How
this legend arose, and why she chose Delos in particular, we do not
know. There have been those who claim that Delos could be called
floating because it appears in a different place each time a voyage
through the Cyclades takes place, but you will agree with me that
such down-to-earth people—the ancients called them
Euhemerists—should keep their hands off myths about the gods.
In
short, Delos was once and for all hallowed. The barren, relatively
flat patch of land was considered a territory reserved only for the
gods, therefore no suffering was allowed, no war was allowed to
exist on that spot, it was solely intended for the ceinhabitants of
all the cities belonging to the "Delian" alliance. Then
followed competitions in music and physical exercises, where the
victors were crowned with branches of the palm tree, whose praises
Homer had already sung, dances and songs by young Delian women, who
imitated the accents of all Greek peoples and proclaimed the praises
of the three gods: Leto, Apollo, and Artemis. Primitive customs such
as a "crane dance," performed in a gallery decorated with
bulls' heads, and self-mortification with rods prove that these
festivals are very ancient.
When
the Athenians took over management of the "Delia" in 426
BC and a plague broke out in their city shortly thereafter, they
feared that the jewel, whose desecration through birth and death was
carefully avoided, still suffered from a stain of the past. To erase
these, they dug up the small amount of humus that had accumulated on
the limestone and in its crevices, and removed the bodies of former
inhabitants for whom the city had apparently not yet been so sacred.
Furthermore, they were no longer satisfied with one large festival
every four years, but enlivened the quiet solitude, also at other
times with smaller ones. Thus, the priests of the temple were given
the opportunity to engage in permanent occupation. This consisted,
as we shall see, not only of preparing for the reception of the
numerous revelers and visitors to the associated annual fair, but
also of other "administrative" activities.
We
know quite a bit about this latter, because more than six hundred
fragments of inscriptions have been found on the island, containing
the sanctuary's accounts for several centuries. Those stone-engraved
accounts, when leafing through them in the Bulletin de
correspondance hellénique and the Corpus Inscriptionum
Graecarum, look quite forbidding, but fortunately, some
scholars—first the Frenchman Homolle, last the German
Schock—have been kind enough to make them more accessible.
I
will now recount what they found in them, but first I want to
summarize the further fortunes of the holy island, because they
explain how we managed to find so much. Delos was under the direct
rule of the Athenians from 426 to 316, then remained independent
until 166. In the latter year, the Romans, who already had a
considerable say in Greek affairs, transferred the administration
back to Athens. After the destruction of Corinth in 146 BC, the will
of the now all-powerful city of the Tiber turned it into a major
trading center and the center of the slave trade. Of this type of
human, greatly devalued by the incessant wars of that time,
sometimes ten thousand copies were sold a day. In 87 BC, the growing
prosperity of Delos came to a sudden end. A general of King
Mithradates of Pontus plundered the temple and ravaged the city with
fire and sword. Delos never recovered from this blow: by the time of
Emperor Hadrian, it was desolate. The art treasures were, of course,
successively transported to Rome and Constantinople, but there was
no interest in inscriptions at the time. That is why the French, who
had been conducting archaeological research on the island since
1873, found the hundreds of stone fragments covered in letters and
numbers that I mentioned to you. We also know much about the temple,
the priests, and everything related to it during the period of
independence (the Athenians recorded their earnings in their own
city) that we would not have expected after the profound piety of
the Homeric hymn in honor of Apollo of Delos and the ardent
adoration of Pindar. These documents, after all, only provide the
financial side of the religious coinage. That, then, is what I will
show you.
Homol
calculates the "god's fortune" in the year 279 BC at 5.5
million drachmas. Of this, approximately 5,300,000 represent the
value of the temple, the buildings for worship, and the votive
offerings. In a narrower commercial sense, one could call this large
sum unproductive; in fact, it was the basis of the entire subsequent
business, as I hope to demonstrate shortly. Yet, only approximately
200,000 drachmas can be called "mobile". What did the
administrators do with it? How did they allocate that sum?
I
beg you not to be surprised by the matter-of-factness of my
language; we are dealing with... bankers. After all, temples always
functioned as banks in ancient Greece. This is evident not only on
the Holy Island, but I can also prove it to you from your grammar
school reading. Just think again of Xenophon's Anabasis. In it, the
author recounts that before the expedition of the pretender Cyrus to
the interior began, he entrusted his savings to Mr. Megabuzos,
official of the famous Temple of Artemis at Ephesus on the occasion
of the celebration of the gods in peace.
It
was agreed upon that if Xenophon did not return, Megabuzos would use
the money for a votive offering in his name. As we know, the leader
of the Ten Thousand did escape with his life and could thus tell us
how Megabuzos took advantage of the opportunity they both attended
the festivals at Olympia to return the depositor's money—plus
the accrued interest, ça va sans dire, although Xenophon
doesn't mention it. That single sentence in the simply written
booklet characterizes the economic significance of the temples and
the great international festivals. In a few harsh but true words:
the temples were centers of monetary trade, the festivals served as
periods of settlement. These transactions were particularly favored
by the religious peace, which was so absolutely respected that
cashiers like Megabuzos did not hesitate to undertake long journeys
with very significant sums of money in their pockets. The financial
developments of such a "temple bank" now reveal the Delian
inscriptions down to the smallest detail. I have already mentioned
that the largest portion of the capital consisted of the temple, its
outbuildings, and the votive offerings placed or deposited
everywhere. This seemingly inert investment actually bore very
lively fruit. The larger and richer a temple area, the longer
pilgrims needed to view it in its entirety. As more works of art can
be admired in a "temonos," the number of "tourists"
increases, seeking more enjoyment of art than edification. Now,
everyone knows that nothing makes you as hungry as visiting a
museum. Visitors to the quadrennial "panegyreis"—besides
pious souls and tourists, also wealthy merchants and bankers, far
from averse to life's pleasures—needed... restaurants.
It
was therefore the duty of the priestly authorities to ensure the
taming of what Homer already called the "disrespectful
stomach". A duty that could easily lead to the creation of a
source of income. Travelers are usually generous, especially
commercial travelers. No wonder, then, that we find these in the
accounts of three temple-run hestiatoria (that's what eating houses
in Athens are still called!). Globetrotters seem to have been
attached to decorum even then. We find it recorded that before each
festival, the eating houses were meticulously were inspected, the
walls were rewhitewashed, and the doors and windows were repaired.
This
periodic renovation proves that in ordinary times, such a large
dining space was not needed. A similar phenomenon can be observed
with regard to lodging. In the year 364, we find mention of 150 beds
in the temple depots. Anyone who has ever stayed in a festive city
knows that this means restless nights in bathrooms, salon floors
full of sleeping arrangements, and so on.
Nevertheless,
the administration naturally took the best possible care of the
"pilgrims". The better earthly needs were met, the richer
the gifts collected after the festivals from the "offering
blocks" dug in the ground next to the temple doors, the richer
the donations in the form of cash or land. After each successful
panegyric, the treasury felt fuller. And the priests were not the
men to let this wealth go to waste. let it devour!
December
8, 1923 From the School of the Spade.
CXXXIX.
(Private
correspondence.)
Rome,
December.
Delos
from the Practical Side. II.
Safest
Investment. Land and Houses. How the Temple Came to Exploit the
latter. Rapidly Changing Tenants. Industrialists and Schoolmasters.
Tenements. Banking. Relations between the Secular and Spiritual
Lords of Delos. The Fertilization of the Money of "Foundations".
The Need for Sacrificial Animals. The Temple Menagerie and its
Doves. The Manifold Uses of the latter. The Lack of Swans. How Busy
the Priests Were.
According
to experts, there is no more solid capital investment than that in
real estate. Even more secure investments are distinguished
according to the order of reliability, yet again, land from houses.
The
administrators of the Delian House of God seem to have already
accepted this gospel as their own; At least they began to apply it
logically. Initially, outside the Temple, we only hear of "sacred
domains," which the god likely received as gifts. The first
"foundation" we know of, in any case, is that of the
famous Athenian general Nieias. In 417 or 416 BC, he transferred a
piece of land worth ten thousand drachmas (the drachma was then
equivalent to the pre-World War I franc) to the administrators of
the sanctuary. This "Domain" appears repeatedly in the
accounts; it yielded between three and six percent interest
annually. So, a safe, but not a very profitable investment,
especially not in that time, one percent per month was considered
normal.
The
leasing of this and other landed property took place every ten
years. Each time, an inventory was made of buildings, stables,
herds, and, remarkably, also... doors. Was the climate of Delos so
exceptionally mild? Or did no one dare steal there? The temple
administration was always very strict with its farmers: it imposed
heavy fines for the slightest delay in payment.
This
was the first extremely cautious practice of rent cultivation, but
soon the administration seems to have become less solid and began to
focus on acquiring cultivated land. The reason for this was
religious. In 376, some inhabitants of Delos seem to have violated
the Amphictyones, an originally sacred, later politicized
association, of which we know little. The Amphictyones' helpers
punished the criminals with the confiscation of their houses, which
were donated to the temple. Later, other "sacred"
dwellings came into his possession because debtors defaulted on
their loans. Sometimes, homeowners also experienced a burst of
generosity and transferred their property to the god. It is to be
hoped that these were not all in the condition of the one donated by
Stesileos in 378, which left the administrators with no choice but
to sell to the public for demolition. An unexplained phenomenon,
apparently unflattering to both parties, is that the houses changed
tenants so frequently. The contract was concluded for five years
and, after that period, was almost always transferred to a different
name. During the independence of Delos (315–166 BC), the
tenants were almost exclusively Delian; foreigners had to provide a
local surety. During the preceding period, when Delos was under the
control of Athens, we almost always find Athenians; After 166, when
the Athenians ruled solely by the grace of the Romans, more and more
Italians arrived. This is related to the Roman trade policy, which
made Delos a free port to prevent a renewed flourishing of Corinth
and to compete with Rhodes.
We
can trace the history of twenty-six "holy houses": eight
served exclusively as residences, while in the others some kind of
trade was practiced. For example, we hear of a potter, a locksmith,
a wool dyer, and a fish smoker. Moreover, the temple possessed two
palaestras, in which, of course, gymnastics was not exclusively
taught, just as in our grammar schools. One of these schools was run
by the same "master" for twelve years. To encourage the
zeal of the youth, the temple administration set aside from fifty to
one hundred drachmas annually for "prizes".
The
increasingly vibrant trade increased the value of the houses and the
land on which they stood. Therefore, as early as the end of the
fourth century, the temple administration began adding upper floors
to the workshops and shops, renting them out separately, and
undertook the construction of tenements.
Increasingly,
the temple took on the character of a veritable bank, making its
floating capital productive in all sorts of ways. Delos became a
center of monetary exchange. The secular community, which had
apparently existed alongside the clergy for a long time, gratefully
seized the opportunity of such a substantial savings pot in its
immediate vicinity. A popular decree of 279 BC stipulated that
24,000 (later even 35,000) drachmas must always be available in the
temples for the needs of the civil community.
The
latter seem to have frequently taken advantage of this opportunity
to borrow. But the clergy did not surrender defenselessly. When the
state withdrew an advance, it demanded a guarantee. Sometimes, Delos
had to pledge its taxes, which in that case were deposited directly
into the temple treasury. flowed; usually, the bank was satisfied
with the moderate interest of ten percent.
Most
private "foundations" intended to establish a capital, the
interest from which was to be used to offer sacrifices to the god at
specific times. The priests would not have been good financiers if
they had not tried to generate more income from the sums deposited
in this way. The only concession they made to the testamentary
dispositions was to administer each "foundation"
separately. Incidentally, this would usually have been the case with
the three thousand drachmas that Echenike, daughter of Stesileos,
bequeathed in her last will in 250 for an offering to Apollo and
Aphrodite. We see this sum lent first to the city of Delos—the
security was the "public revenues"—then to private
individuals. Because these funds or their interest could not always
be collected precisely on the date of the offering, the "hieropeioi"
were sometimes required
It
was necessary to draw on the general temple treasury to fulfill its
obligations.
The
temple naturally benefited most when state administrators attempted
to gain its favor. They were always very generous, both in terms of
"foundations" and in instituting festivals. Yet, we need
not assume that these advances changed the political balance of
power. Delos was and remained a neutral state. Perhaps that is
precisely why the potentates, always at odds with each other and
therefore usually struggling for money, were so attached to the
bank, which could profit from all dynamics on the political
chessboard and whose deposits were nevertheless respected by all.
But
we find no traces of these "higher" financial transactions
in the temple's books. They do, however, demonstrate that the
priests, as befits good capitalists, were interested in all kinds of
industrial enterprises. Thus, they levied tolls and harbor fees,
operated a ferry service to Mykonos—one of the larger islands
in the area—drew income, albeit very fluctuating, from
searching for purple snails, and collected a fixed fee from
fishermen in the "sacred pool".
We,
who are completely unaccustomed to bloody sacrifices, usually forget
that a whole mass of animals must always have been available around
each temple to satisfy the suddenly arising desire of the pious
public to allow the celestials to enjoy the fat vapors, the only
thing that rose to them from the altar. Whatever wasn't burned, as
you know from Homer, ended up in human stomachs. In "more
civilized" times, butchers probably intervened in this matter.
I believe I once read that the people of Ephesus were actually only
angry with Paul because he wanted to abolish sacrifices and thus
harmed both the cattle breeders and the butchers.
But
to return to Delos. The barren island itself, of course, could not
produce the animals needed for the sacrifices. So the priests were
also entrusted with that care. Their records demonstrate that they
handled the matter decisively. Apparently, a rich menagerie was
associated with the shrine, which consisted mainly of gifts. The
inhabitants of this zoo—which may have been one of the
attractions—were partly sacrificed and partly sold. The
latter, of course, only occurred when there was abundance or certain
circumstances prevented their use as sacrifice. For example, we find
that the body of a pig drowned in the sacred pool was sold for a
mere penny.
Birds,
in particular, lived near the temple. The peacocks, gathered among
them, were probably one of the attractions before they were
slaughtered. There were also geese from Egypt, partridges, and
especially pigeons. Not only were the eggs of the latter highly
prized, but also... the guano they produced. A little sidetrack. The
dove is the sacred bird of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Now,
Aphrodite enjoyed absolutely no special veneration on Delos. Yet, it
was teeming with doves. Can we therefore assume that all the temples
had "tilts"? They are indeed very charming creatures,
especially beloved by tourists. Who doesn't remember the first
fluttering flocks of doves in St. Mark's Square in Venice and the
tame individuals perched on the hands of strangers, who were oh so
eager to be photographed? In antiquity, beautiful statues stood in
the open air at and in front of the temples. Doesn't it suddenly
become clear to you why they wore a round metal plate—meniskos
in Greek—on top of their heads? Wouldn't those meniskoi have
served a double purpose: primarily to prevent the defilement of
beauty, but also to serve as a receptacle for the highly prized
waste? Incidentally, the priests would have ensured the cleaning of
the temple peaks and gables before and after each festival.
Now
I can leave aside the zoo that so unexpectedly appeared before us,
but not before mentioning that the accounts allocate a monthly sum
for food and expressing my surprise that among all those hairy and
feathered guests, not a single swan appears, even though the swan is
the sacred bird of Apollo.
Yes,
the administrators of Delos' temenos certainly had plenty of work in
the good old days, even outside the official festival season. They
were involved in land leasing, slum landlordism, purplefishing,
operated a ferry and a zoo, lent money to everyone, kings, the
municipal government, and private individuals, traded in guano, etc.
December
22, 1923 From the School of the Spade.
CXL.
(Private
correspondence.)
Rome,
December.
Delos
from the Prosaic Side. III.
Workers.
The enviable fate of Greek slaves. The uniform wages of the fifth
century. Numerous holidays and long labor contracts. Poorly paid
temple officials. Appreciation of architectural talent. Stingy Delos
and generous Delphi. Varying payments for inscription carvers.
Foodstuffs and freight. Monopoly prices. Ivory and papyrus. The
political price of resin.
In
the accounts of large enterprises, labor wages always occupy a
prominent place. We may therefore hope to learn something from the
accounts of the Delian temple about what so many consider the core
of the social question. This will strike us as more ordinary than
you might at first think, because you believe that slavery gave
ancient society a very unique structure, making comparison with
modern conditions impossible.
I
am putting it very formally, because in the realm of labor, we must
always be completely serious, preferably tragic; Otherwise...
Let's
take a sober look at the phenomenon of the "classical Greek
slave". Whoever bought a prisoner of war invested capital.
Aside from all humanity—which was certainly not foreign to the
Greeks—self-interest dictated maximizing the interest on that
investment, preferably so that amortization became possible before
too many years passed and the slave thus became unproductive. Now, a
person can undoubtedly work best (at that time, this didn't mean
watching a machine create, but producing it themselves) when they
are sufficiently fed. Therefore, the master had to give their slave
enough to eat. But even if they could work hard, that doesn't
necessarily mean they did. After all, they knew very well that their
master wouldn't kill them, because that would mean losing their
capital, nor would they mistreat them severely, because that would
definitely reduce their productivity. Because the slave had to earn
more than the free laborer—remember the redemption of the
purchase price—and didn't fear starvation, the latter actually
came just as cheaply. Aristotle was therefore entirely right when he
called the "free" craftsmen a horde, performing slave
services for everyone, not just one.
But
let me quickly leave the dangerous terrain of theoretical
considerations behind me. In the fifth century—as we learn
from inscriptions from mainland Greece—construction workers
earned one drachma per day: a standard wage that applied to both the
free overseer and the slaves under him.
After
the fierce wars between the Greeks had caused the value of currency
to decline, craftsmen naturally had to earn more to at least
somewhat approach the standard of living before those wars.
Therefore, we find that masons and carpenters at Eleusis in 329 BC
earned two and a half drachmas per day. I don't know why Delos could
produce more cheaply than Attica, but it's a fact that the maximum
wage for skilled labor there was two drachmas, and casual workers
had to settle for much less: we even see their wages drop by 16
percent in those years, despite the triple price of grain.
Despite
this high cost, it seems to have been possible to live on about one
and a half drachmas a day, but only if one could count on that
amount every day. Unfortunately, however, there were frequent feasts
on the holy island. Since the free workers also wanted to eat on
those days, they insisted on monthly or annual contracts, which at
least guaranteed them against starvation.
Incidentally,
the temple administration wasn't generous with its own permanent
staff either! It had divided them into two classes. The lowest,
which included, for example, the flute players and the sextons,
received an income of 120 drachmas per year, which is two obols, or
about fifteen cents in Dutch currency per day. The sextons also
received free clothing. Those on the second, higher scale received
180 drachmas per year, less than twenty-five cents per day. And this
while the state slaves in Eleusis were allocated not only the same
wages for food, but an additional 44 drachmas for clothes and shoes.
The overseer of these slaves even received 280 drachmas per year,
but he had to pay for his own clothes. So, the profession of slave
in the Athenian commonwealth wasn't so bad after all. The higher
official class on Delos earned 37 percent less, the lower even 47
percent less than they did. Did tips perhaps make up for the
shortfall? One man on Delos, however, was better off in terms of a
fixed salary: the "architectoon," the chief architect of
the temple. He received no less than 720 drachmas annually and was
therefore as financially strong as his colleague at Eleusis. The
appreciation of the intellect seems to have risen considerably since
the time of Pericles. We know from Athenian inscriptions that the
architect of the Erechtheum, who was indeed one of the greatest
artists the world has ever known, had to settle for one drachma a
day, exactly the same as his most foolish slave!
In
340 BC, the chief architect of the temple area at Delphi received an
unheard-of amount: four drachmas a day. This almost unbelievably
high payment for a state official coincided with a period of
significant construction. The priests seem to have understood the
importance of such a position. Even stingy Delos, in such cases,
gives its architects three drachmas a day instead of two! Yet,
Delphi lagged far behind. Delphi, after all, used Aeginite currency,
which was one and a half times higher than Attic, so the four
drachmas from there would have been worth six on Delos.
After
300 BC, a rapid and continuous decline in wages can be observed on
Delos. A typical example, relevant to the very material from which
we draw all this information, is that of the stonemason who created
the temple inscriptions. For a long time, this certainly not
entirely foolish workman stipulated, and received, one drachma per
hundred letters. This price was still paid in 302 to a certain
Hermodikos, but later, he began to be increasingly cut back. In the
same year of 302, the same Hermodikos had to deliver 130 letters,
five years later even 300! Around 250, we reach the lowest wage
level. Then, the temple lords pay for an inscription—354 lines
with 42,000 letters—the sum of 120 drachmas, that is, one
drachma per 350 letters. But by now, the bow was apparently already
too much. The inscriptions were so shamefully rushed that the
commissioners became ashamed of them. They were apparently mindful
of their good name with posterity and therefore, perhaps with a
heavy heart, made the bold decision to return to the previous
payment system.
Less
fortunate than the stonemason was the roofer—the man who kept
the roofs of the various temple buildings in order—his wages
decreased by 73 percent in half a century, and we hear of no
improvement whatsoever.
During
the same period, food prices in Greece did fall, but ship freight
increased, and intermediaries took on a higher percentage. The
workers on Delos must have been in dire straits!
Yes,
those high freight rates would often have infuriated the islanders.
The price of wine on the mainland, for example, was less than half
of what the Delians were paying for it. And then there were the
bricks! In 280 BC, they cost three drachmas per two hundred pieces
at the factory ("they now write, I believe, "ex works"),
while Delos added 7.5 drachmas freight! Other manufactured products,
on the other hand, also became much more "reasonable" at
their destination. For example, the fine linen robe given to the
goddess Hera each year cost 40 drachmas in 306, but only 25 in 250.
Sometimes,
political events had a significant impact on prices. When Alexander
the Great's conquests "opened" the East and Egypt to Greek
trade, ivory, often used for statues, suddenly became four times
cheaper. This already low price dropped by a third between 269 and
250. We do not know the cause of this remarkable phenomenon; it is
assumed that the Seleucids—the rulers of Syria and its
hinterland—then succeeded in ending the monopoly established
by the Egyptian Ptolemies. These Ptolemies were generally very
supportive of the system of "sole trade". Among other
things, they reserved the production of papyrus at one point. This
meant that a sheet of paper, which in 296 BC cost one obol on Delos,
seventeen years later had to be paid for with one and a half to two
drachmas: an increase of nine hundred to twelve hundred percent. It
is no wonder that the rulers of Pergamon in Asia Minor began to
focus on producing a different writing material, parchment, not yet
unknown even to us.
The
"price fluctuation" of resin is quite remarkable. From 310
to 296 BC, the average per meter (½ H.L.) was 18 to 19
drachmas, whereas from 292 to 286 it was 27; the curve reached a
peak of 40 in 279. Then, between 250 and 169, there was another
significant decline to an average of 14.5; resin was particularly
cheap in the last years before 169.
These
sharp fluctuations can be quite plausibly explained by political
circumstances. Delos received this product exclusively from
Macedonia. Macedonia, in antiquity, exhibited much the same
peculiarities as in the past half century. There was never really
any peace—the history of the kings before Philip and after
Alexander the Great resembles a horror film played too fast. The
country's production apparently suffered almost nothing. However, in
280, it suffered a formidable blow with the invasion of Gallic
tribes. This crisis caused the price of resin to suddenly skyrocket.
However, it soon fell back to normal. Only after 179 did the priests
receive the apparently indispensable raw material for their
business—it served, among other things, to make black dye and
probably also for lighting—below its normal market value. This
favoritism remarkably coincided with an exceptionally generous act
by King Philip V. In the aforementioned year, he presented Apollo
with no less than four gold wreaths worth a total of two thousand
drachmas. Was he so exceptionally fond of Apollo or of the capital
that was under his high protection? I venture to believe the latter,
because the Macedonian king had been resting for ten years for a
final battle against Rome and, of course, knew as well as other
quarrelsome people that fighting requires money first, second, and
third place. Whether the temple lords were swayed by the "most
favored nation" clause in the export tariff on Macedonian resin
and invested their good money in a very unpromising venture, I don't
know. Perhaps they truly compromised and—as early as 166
BC—therefore returned Delos to Athens, which didn't hesitate
for a moment to expel the Delians from their island and take over
the temple's administration itself.
This
marks the end of the on-site recording of income and expenditure on
stone, and thus of our economic reflections on the fate of this
"sacred" money.
February
4, 1925 Excavations on Delos.
As
in previous years, the management of the National Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden organized a series of archaeological lectures
this winter. Last night, Brussels Professor Mayence, curator at the
Musée du Cinquantenaire, opened the series of lectures. He
spoke about the excavations on Delos, and in particular the temple
buildings. Professor Mayence, who himself participated in these
excavations for four years, began by providing an overview of the
location and history of this small Greek island, which is only about
5 kilometers long and a few kilometers wide. He demonstrated that
the great prosperity that Delos experienced is a result of the
religion that played an important role here from very early on.
After all, Homer already sang the praises of this island as the
mythological birthplace of Apollo and his sister Artemis. However,
we lack virtually all literary information about ancient Delos.
Pausanias, who left behind so many important references for other
Greek centers, did not visit Delos. And the works of other Greek
writers who did relate to the island have been lost. Therefore,
systematic excavations were necessary. These studies were undertaken
around 1880, under the direction of the Ecole française
d'Athènes, and have continued with tireless zeal and
extraordinary success to this day. Professor Mayence demonstrated
how it is now possible, based on these investigations, to
distinguish four periods in the development of Delos, ranging from
approximately the 8th to the 1st century BC, during which the island
alternated between prosperity, stagnation, and renewed prosperity,
ultimately succumbing to violent destruction under Roman rule.
After
providing an overview of the numerous temple buildings, the most
important of which was dedicated to Apollo, the professor showed
several striking examples of sculpture discovered during the work.
He also pointed out the particular importance of the inscriptions
found in the Temple of Apollo, which provide a detailed account of
the temple's possessions and administration.
Excellent
slides enhanced this lecture, which was well-attended. Prof.
Professor Mayence will give a second lecture on Friday, the 6th of
this month (8:00 PM) in the lecture hall of the aforementioned
Museum, on: "Les fouilles de Délos; la ville antiquit"
(The Searches of Delos; the Ancient City).
February
8, 1925 Excavations on Delos.
Professor
Mayence gave his second lecture on Friday in the lecture hall of the
National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, on the excavations on the
island of Delos. While his first lecture had focused primarily on
the temple buildings, he now discussed the city as it gradually
developed around the quarter dedicated to the cult. After
emphasizing that the excavations of the city section have only
revealed houses from the third, second, and first centuries BC, and
nothing is known of the houses that may have stood there during the
Greek period of prosperity, the speaker pointed out the irregularity
of the street layout and the arrangement of the houses. This was
particularly evident in the plan of the section between the temple
buildings and the theater were located there. Using several
examples, the professor also showed what the main street, where
numerous shops were located, must have looked like, how a
well-maintained sewer system was constructed beneath the heavy
paving stones, and how a water supply already existed.
Finally,
Professor Mayence dwelt a little longer on some of the larger houses
that were excavated, such as Cleopatra's, so named after a
discovered inscription, and Dionysus's, so named because this god is
depicted in a magnificent mosaic that was unearthed. He briefly
pointed out how the excavations at Priene and those at Delos have
given us a completely different view of the Greek house as depicted
by Vitruvius. Delos is particularly important for the transitional
period between Greek and Roman house types. This transition from
Greek to Roman is also evident in the sculptures and the wall
decorations of the houses. Indeed, the decorative art of Pompeii,
commonly referred to as the first style, can be found on Delos.
In
summary, the speaker examined the results of the immense excavation
work and concluded that, although the booty of artworks remains
relatively small, Delos has nevertheless significantly enriched our
knowledge of civilization and the way of life in the Hellenistic and
Greco-Roman periods.
May
30, 1928 DELOS. The French excavation work.
On
Delos, the small island in the center of the Cyclades, the French
have been conducting excavations since 1876. The Ecole française
d'Athènes has now completed its research on the small island,
which, viewed from the summit of Mount Cynthus, which is only one
hundred and twelve meters high, yet dominates the surface of a land
five kilometers long and several hundred kilometers wide, gives the
impression of a barren and infertile terrain.
Legend
has it that Delos was initially adrift, but was bound by Zeus with
diamond chains so that Latona, who wanted to escape the jealousy of
Hera, Zeus's wife, would have the opportunity to give birth to
Apollo and Artemis. Consequently, the island became sacred ground
for the Greeks. People traveled there from far and wide to offer
sacrifices to Apollo and Artemis. Apollo's temple served for a time
as the treasury of the Attic maritime confederation, until the
treasure was transferred to Athens in 454 BCE.
In
later times, Delos again held a special position. After Rome
destroyed Corinth in 146 BC, it made Delos a free port to destroy
Rhodes' trade. Italian merchants came there to collect all kinds of
goods brought there from various countries, especially slaves. It is
said that sometimes as many as twenty thousand slaves were sold in a
single day. The prosperity thus created on Delos led to the
construction of a population, abundant and wealthy for the small
island, that built houses. Half a century later, wealthy Delos was
plundered by Mithradates, the king of Pontus, Rome's enemy, and
again in 88 BC by the pirate Athenodorus. Delos fell into complete
disrepair and was abandoned, and the dust of the centuries
accumulated in the narrow, sloping streets and in the houses. During
the French excavations, the peristyle—the inner courtyard
surrounded by a colonnade—was discovered for the first time,
which was also found in Pompeii, for example. Among the beautiful
residences from the prosperous period must have been this, the
remains of which are depicted on the photo page: the home of a
certain Cleopatra and her husband Dioscorides. The forecourt is
surrounded by columns of Parian marble. Further in the background,
one can see the damaged statues representing their owners.
On
one side of Mount Cynthus, one descends to the sacred lake, on whose
western shore some primitive sculptures on pedestals—see the
photo page—representing lions can be seen.
August
17, 1928 THE LOST ANCIENT WORLD DELOS
The
story of prosperity and decline.
When
Odysseus wanted to express his admiration for the princess who so
kindly approached him, the naked shipwrecked sailor, he compared her
to the slender palm tree of Delos, rising beside the altar of
Apollo. Such is the age-old fame of Delos, the only island willing
to offer hospitality to Leto when she was about to give birth to her
son Apollo, and rewarded for this with the construction of temples
and the fumes of endless sacrifices. Delos was the center of
religious life, and also of the political unification of Ionian
Greece. Later, under the Romans, it became for a time the center of
world trade. But like the Ionians "with trailing hems" and
their beautifully girdled women, the Romans also passed by, and
Delos once again became a barren, barely inhabited islet, now low
and insignificant. The harbor has silted up, the quays have
disappeared. Where they must have been, rushes grow: large, thorny
forests. Further on, it seems like a field of stones and marble
blocks, from which here and there a column or base rises.
The
French Archaeological Institute in Athens excavated here at the end
of the last century and uncovered much that the earth hid.
Unfortunately, these were not countless works of art in marble and
bronze, nor famous votive offerings or temple statues. Many
generations of people had already worked to destroy what earlier
generations had created with love and a deep sense of art. But the
foundations of buildings were exposed, and the bases of many
statues, and from the inscriptions found, a part of Delian history
suddenly became clear again.
As we step ashore, a delightful
scent of flowers greets us: the only thing Apollo can still offer in
his birthplace. Within his sacred temple precincts, directly
opposite the main harbor, where Leto and Artemis also had their
places of worship, nothing but the lowest rows of stones remain
standing. A few centuries ago, the gigantic statue of Apollo,
dedicated by the Naxians, lay stretched out on the ground here;
anyone whose fate led them to Delos could pick up their ruler and
later tell stories of miracles back home. But when the French began,
only a hand, a piece of thigh, and the upper part of the chest and
back, bearing the outline of Apollo's archaic long locks, remained.
The temples can be found, but the famous altar, built from the horns
of sacrificed cattle, has been permanently obliterated. It is a
tangle of foundations, foundations of temples, treasuries, and
colonnades. Wall lizards and larger, yellow-headed reptiles crawl
over the stones, their scaled bodies rustling dryly, and the ground
is strewn with a soft purple gypsophyllum. Rebuilding antiquity
above these stone blocks and floral splendor is impossible; there's
too little left. There, for example, lies the round base of the
bronze palm tree that the Athenian Nicias once consecrated. But what
did the palm look like? It has gone the way of all bronze: melted
down, perhaps repurposed into kitchen utensils.
But there are
places more suggestive than Apollo's ruined temenos, where there's
more material left for the imagination, which longs to see, if only
for a moment, the afterglow of the ancient world. Delos, always a
trading port, has, like no other place of such limited size,
experienced an era of material prosperity. That was when Corinth was
destroyed by the Romans, and Delos became a free port, connecting
trade between East and West. Then, thousands of Italian merchants
came to live there, and the Easterners—Jews and Zyrians—moved
there in droves. The large market squares are still clearly visible,
where once the most important business was discussed and conducted
in the shadow of the colonnades that surrounded them.
So there
lies the great Roman market before us, purple with flowers: a
gigantic square, outlined by poros blocks—for the columns have
long since disappeared. On one side, something remains of the shops
and warehouses that formed the back of the colonnades.
Here and
there, a colorful patch of mosaic still shines, perhaps once the
pride of the owner.
The foreign merchants also had their large
meeting buildings on Delos: clubhouse and temple closely combined,
for each meeting was under the protection of some deity. Their place
has been rediscovered; Of one of them, that of the merchants from
Beyrout, two intact columns, topped by a piece of architrave, could
still be raised: the reflection of the water, which once lay beneath
the now-collapsed mosaic floor of the colonnade, ripples gently
across the white marble. What a history—and what
desolation!
There stands another reminder of even earlier times,
when there was no Roman world power, when there was not even that
wonder, the classical art of Greece. It is the row of lions, which
the Naxians, following the Egyptian example, erected along the
former temple path. They are ugly in shape, with their overly
elongated bodies; they are broken, weathered, and worn; some have
acquired the smooth heads of seals, as time has worn away everything
that gave them form. Yet that incomplete, broken row is still
impressive: how many centuries have passed over them, and yet they
still stand there with open mouths, as if watching over Apollo's
sacred lake, which lay across the road.
Alas, no one bothered the
old guardians, for the lake has been desecrated: filled with malaria
mosquitoes. Within the enclosure, a rusty chicken cart stands amidst
freshly dumped earth and stones. And the slender palm tree has also
disappeared. "Everything flows; nothing remains," said the
old philosopher.
To the left of the museum, which the French
built for the found artifacts and inscriptions, we now turn into
Stadionstraat: the stadium was on the other side of the island. Soon
the paved road turns into a narrow footpath that winds across the
fields; we open a wooden gate and climb a little further over a
stone dividing wall. On top of the low ridge of the island stood the
gymnasium, with a magnificent view of the sea on two sides. Along
the walls, the low benches where the boys sat to rest, and where the
others sat to watch, still stand. The stadium, a little further on,
is clearly visible, but little remains of the seating. Only the
houses that stood behind it, even further towards the sea, stand:
the walls there, several meters high, still stand, and we can walk
through the narrow streets and look at the street altars where the
father of the house offered sacrifices when returning home, so that
his arrival would be blessed. They were often vividly painted with
sacrificial scenes, but alas: the colors, which defied centuries,
can no longer withstand full daylight after the long darkness: soon,
nothing will remain of all the wall paintings except the images
created during the excavations.
Near
the stadium district, by the sea, stands a building that also
provides evidence of Delos's international significance around 100
BC. It is a synagogue. On the excavated floor, a few votive altars
of a peculiar shape, dedicated in Greek to the Most High, still
stand. This monument to Jewish faith is moving amidst all that
polytheism. Polytheism indeed, although this island was
pre-eminently Apollo's property, for the sun god shared the worship
here with many other gods; he seems not to have been jealous.
Anyone
who takes the path to the summit of Delphi's (Delos's) only
mountain, Cynthia, which rises just over a hundred meters above the
sea, will see the facade of a small temple from afar. It is a facade
without a roof or side walls, but amidst so many scattered broken
stones, it is nevertheless impressive. In the temple hall, a
fragment of the statue of a heavily robed woman still stands. This
woman, who in no way resembles an Egyptian, represented Isis; this
upward path is the district of the foreign gods, who arrived with
merchants from afar. Serapis, whose worship became so popular during
the Roman Empire, was also worshipped there, and the mysterious
Habira had a large sanctuary there. There is a small theater here,
where mysteries were likely performed for a private circle of
initiates; there are also banquet halls with mosaic floors, where
cults gathered around the table. All foreign gods were initially
tolerated by the government, and then the followers themselves took
care of the maintenance of their sanctuary. Often, the capitals of
the columns still bear the name of the donor. But after some time,
the government took charge of the foreign cult. Beneath the statue
of Iris, it is stated that the Athenians—rulers of Delos in
that wholesale period—erected it in her honor. Thus, we see
the state adopting new deities without much hesitation. The stones
speak for themselves.
A
small temple of the truly Greek goddess Hera also stood here, since
ancient times. To that small temple, we owe a treasure trove of
vases from all periods. For damaged or very old temple vessels were
never thrown on the rubbish heap: they remained dedicated to the
deity, and as such, inalienable. To dispose of them, they were
buried in the ground in or near the temple. Thus, beneath the floor
of the Heraeon, the ancient temple inventory was discovered, which
later generations no longer valued, having been replaced by more
valuable items. Reminders of the religious veneration of Delos's
countless inhabitants lie all the way up to the top of Cynthia:
alas, nothing stands there anymore. It is a mosaic floor, or a piece
of foundation, from which one must deduce what once was here.
The
summit of the mountain offers a magnificent view. Surrounding it lie
the Cyclades, which form the circle around sacred Delos. Nearby is
Rhenia, now almost uninhabited, where the Delians once went to die,
for since the 5th century BC, no one was allowed to die, nor to be
born, on this sacred ground. Over there lies Mykonos with its
un-Dutch windmills, and Tinos. Further away, very hazy, for even
here the view is rarely clear, lie Paros and Naxos. All are almost
bare rocks, rising from the bright blue sea.
At
the foot of the mountain lay the quarters of the wealthiest
merchants, the best-preserved part of the city. The walls and column
shafts still stand meters high: we can still walk in and out of the
rooms and admire the mosaic floors. The streets along which they lay
are incredibly narrow, but what did that really matter to the
ancient houses, which were open inward to allow sun, wind, and
street noise to enter.
To
keep away from the nuisance. Riding was out of the question on those
steep slopes.
And
below lay Delos's principal port. In ancient times, hundreds of
elegant ships arrived there for the annual ceremonies, carrying
festive envoys, stately sacrificial bulls, and precious votive
offerings. There also entered the wreathed triumvirate, whose return
Socrates had to await before he could drink the poisoned cup.
Merchandise, handicrafts from all regions came there—how we
wished we had the contents of just one such ship! Much misery must
have been endured there in that silted-up bay, where now a single
barque lies resting in the fierce midday sun. For the Romans, in
need of slaves, turned a blind eye to the pirates of the coasts of
Asia Minor coming here to market their plunder. There were days when
thousands of slaves were brought here and immediately sold off to an
unknown future, far from home and family. Then, during the
Mithridatic War, came the battle that ended it all: one of
Mithridates' generals ravaged the island and killed 20,000
inhabitants. That was in 88 BC. Twenty years later, the pirates did
the same thing again. After that, trade sought other avenues and
abandoned the rocky island of Apollo. When the foreigners had
departed and the harbors became empty, the native population
gradually disappeared. And now, after all the unspeakable beauty and
all the boundless misery of the ancient world, Delos lies barren and
lonely again, as before the dawn of history, amidst the deep blue
waters.
A.
Roes.
January
31, 1931 THE CIVILIZATION OF DELOS. The latest bulletin of the
"Association for the Promotion of Knowledge of Ancient
Civilization," as we have already mentioned, contains a
contribution by Emilie Haspels about the excavations on the
remarkable, smallest of the Cyclades islands, Delos; remarkable
because it contains the remains of the largest and most important
number of ancient houses known in Greece. She visited these houses,
accompanied by the excavation leaders, Messrs. Roussel, director of
the Ecole Française d'Athènes, and J. Chamonard
(Exploration archéologique de Delos).
These
houses are remarkable for life in a city populated by merchants from
the Levant, Greece, and Italy during the Hellenistic and Roman
periods. The houses of this trading city date mainly from the 2nd
and 1st centuries BC. In 166 BC, Rome made Delos a free port, and
the island's great economic prosperity began. And the inscriptions
teach that the flourishing of trade was accompanied by an increase
in population, as evidenced by the rise in rents. This heyday lasted
less than a century. The city was repeatedly plundered, and a poor
population then lived amid the ruins of the merchants' palaces.
The
author then recounts the renewed excavation in July and August of
last year, after many years of inactivity. She describes the
quadrangular block (insula) of houses excavated last summer, near
the previously excavated "House with the Dolphins". This
insula consists of four houses, one large, the other medium-sized.
The large house, "the house with the masks," has a
courtyard leading to four rooms with mosaic floors. Numerous
fragments of delicate mosaic have also been unearthed from the upper
floor, as well as pieces of wall paintings, lotus borders, and
floral festoons. The large hall has a regular mosaic pattern of
bands folded back and forth; On both sides, a row of tragic masks is
decorated in bright colors: black, white, and red. On each side,
five masks are spaced evenly, with ivy tendrils between them; one
mask with a beard and one without, alternating.
The
other rooms also feature mosaics depicting birds, dolphins, and
stylized leaves. One room depicts Dionysus riding a panther, holding
a thyrsus with a bandelette in his right hand and a tambourine in
his left. The description of this composition reveals that this
Dionysus has the highest decorative and aesthetic value of all the
mosaics excavated on Delos thus far.
These
rooms, with their beautiful mosaic floors, were naturally furnished
with equal care and artistry. But not a trace of this furniture
remains, not even a fragment. It was removed and used in the poorer
period, when the remaining population lived on Delos. Only a few
smaller objects were found: fragments of marble statues, a sundial,
many shards of glass, pottery, and some children's toys. And then a
mass of pottery lamps. Each room must have had these on all sides,
in niches, on the walls, and on the tables.
Besides
other statues, the most important find is a standing male portrait,
found in pieces here and there, as if the later inhabitants of Delos
had already been dragging this statue around.
Not
so.
The
least interesting aspect of Miss Haspel's description is her
attempted reconstruction of the town of Delos, where, due to the
many temples and sanctuaries, there is hardly any room for the
houses crowded together. Streets are sparse, as they slip between
the houses, like irregular channels, "which the houses were
kind enough to leave open to
traffic".
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5052
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5053
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5054
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2
456_1973_sup_1_1_5055
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5056
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5057
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5058
http://www.per
see.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5059
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5060
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5061
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1
_1_5062
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5063
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5064
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5065
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch
_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5066
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5067
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5068
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5069
http:/
/www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5070
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5071
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5072
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_197
3_sup_1_1_5073
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5074
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5075
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5076
http://www.persee.fr
/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5077
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5078
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5079
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bch_0304-2456_1973_sup_1_1_5080
IG
XI.2 154 (296 BC) and IG XI.2 154 AB (296 BC)
(non-stoichedon)
http://epigraphy.packhum.org/text/62616
https://web.archive.org/web/20160419062608/http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/translations/154translation.htm
This
is the first (apparently) complete Independence inventory; it begins
toward the bottom of side A and is preceded by a list of expenses,
unlike other inventories which are either on a side separate from
accounts or on a separate stone. The absence of a list of receipts
or of a year-end balance suggests that there was at least one other
stele of accounts. The absence of the Artemision treasure is
surprising, and it may have been on another stele; the Temple of the
Delians has been renamed the Temple of Apollo. The inventory is
dominated by the silver cups stored in the Hieropoion until
completion of the Apollo Temple; these are described in considerable
detail and weighed, in contrast to the groupings (unweighed!) of
established treasures of the Temple of the Athenians (pointedly
renamed the Temple of the Seven Statues) and of the Apollo Temple.
There are more than twice as many named dedicants as in 104; most
have no ethnic, some undoubtedly because they are Delians. The
proportion of female dedicants is somewhat lower than in 104 (21% vs
29%).
face
A {²initio vss. 2-3 deleti}²
[—
— — — — — — — —
—]ΟΙΟΥΚΑ̣[—
— — — — —]ΗΣ̣[—
—]
[․․․․]ΔΔΔ𐅃·
πίσσης [μετρηταὶ
παρὰ] Διακρίτου
[— — — —c. {²dim. vs.}²— —
—]
[․․․]
μισθωτοῖς·
Η· Κόμα[ιθο]ς
ἐξέλαβεν ἐξαλεῖ[ψαι
— — —c.20— — — τῶν]
[ἱε]ρ̣ῶν?
καὶ τῶν ἑστιατο[ρίω]ν
τὰς θύρας καὶ
τὰς θυρίδ[ας
— —c.15— —]
5
δραχμῶν· ΔΔ·
εἰς τὴν [πα]λαίστραν
τὴν κάτω δοκὸν
ἐπ[ιθέντι —c.12—]
ως
δραχμῶν· 𐅄𐅃·
ταύτην [ἐξ]έλαβεν
ὑποθεῖναι
Ἀγλώστρατος
δραχμ[ῶν ․․․․․․․]
τῆς
δ’ ὑφαιρεθείσης
δοκο[ῦ τὸ] χρήσιμον
ὑπὸ τὸ πρόδομον
τῆς κάτω [παλαίστρας]
ὑπέθηκεν·
μισθωτοῖ[ς
πρί]σασι τὴν δοκὸν·
𐅂ΙΙ· κήλων εἰς
παλαίστρα[ν
․․․․․]·
τὸ
τειχίον τοῦ
ἱε[ροῦ] Σω[σία]ς
ἐξέλαβεν ἀνοικοδομῆσαι
δραχμ[ῶν ․․․․․․]
10
𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἐπὶ τὸ
Ἡραῖον [κ]έρα[μον]
ἐπιθέντι καὶ
διακεσαμένωι
τὸλ λοιπὸ[ν ․․․․․]
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
μηνὸς Λ[η]ναιῶ[νος
ἱερο]μηνίαι
ἀρὴν τῶι Ἀπόλλωνι·
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· εἰς
ἱε[ρισμὸν?]
𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ὑπηρέτει [Μ]ενε[κλεῖ?
μη]νῶν τεττάρων
μισθὸς̣· ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τοῦ [λοι]-
ποῦ
χρόνου Μί[κ]ωνι
[Η𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂]· γραμματεῖ
Ἱεράρχωι· 𐅄ΔΔΔ·
κήρυκι Φιλωνύ[μωι]
𐅄Δ·
ἰνωποφύλακι
Δη[μάκωι 𐅄]ΔΔΔΔ·
νεωκόρωι εἰς
τὸν θεὸν· Δ̣𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἐλαίου εἰς
ἱε[ρο]-
15
πόιον χόες·
𐅃ΙΙΙΙ· τιμὴ [․․․․·
εἰς ἱ]ερισμὸν
οἴνου μετρητὴς·
Δ𐅂· ξύλων τά(λαντα)·
Δ̣Δ̣Δ̣𐅃ΙΙ[Ι]·
vac.
μισθωτοῖς
ἀνακομίσασιν·
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· τοῦ
ναοῦ τοῦ ἐν τῶι
Θεσμοφορίωι
τὸ τειχίον̣
ἀνοικοδομήσαντι
Τιμοκρίτωι·
Δ𐅂𐅂· σκαφεῖον
παρ’ Εὐκλέους·
𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· μηνὸς
Ἱε-
ροῦ
εἰς τὸγ χορὸν
δᾶιδες· 𐅃𐅂·
ξύλα, ῥυμὸς·
𐅂Ι· ὀβελίσκοι
〚—
— —〛 παρ’
Ἡρακλείδ[ου]
καὶ
Ὁδοιτέλους·
Δ𐅂· ἡμίτειαν
ἐπισκευάσαντι
Ἡρακλεί[δηι
․․]· Κρίτωνι τοῦ
[Διὸς?]
20
τὸμ βωμὸν ὁμαλίσαντι·
𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· τοῖς
κοσμηταῖς
ἀνά[λ]ωμα· Δ𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
σκαφεῖ[ον]
Ἡρακλείδηι
κατασκευάσαντι·
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· ταῖς
ἱερέαις εἰς
τὴγ̣ κόσμησ[ιν]
τ[ῆς Ἥ]-
ρας·
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· ὀθόνιον
παρ’ Ἑρμαίου
τῆι Ἥραι· ΔΔΔΔ·
εἰς τὸ[γ] χορὸν
τοῖς Ἀ[ρ]τε[μι]-
σίοις
δᾶιδες 𐅃𐅂Ι̣Ι
ξύλα καὶvac.
ῥυμὸς· 𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
τῆι ὀγδόηι δᾶιδες·
𐅃̣𐅂𐅂· ξύλα καὶ
ῥυμὸ[ς]· 𐅂․․·
τὸ
Λευκόθιον
ἀνοικοδομήσαντι
Φιλοκράτει·
ΙΙΙΙ· χάρτης̣
Ι[․․․․]ΟΛΛΙ
Καΐκ[ωι? θύ]-
25
ρας ἐπισκευάσαντι
τὰς ἐπὶ τοῦ
Προπύλου·
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· Ἀρτίμαι
[— c.10 — σαν]-
τι
τὰ θύρια καὶ
ἐνοικοδομήσαντι·
ΙΙΙΙ· ταῖς ἱερέαις·
𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· πτ[ῶμα]
ἐν τῶι τοῦ Πουλ[υ]-
δάμαντος
Τιμοκρίτου
παιδὶ ἀνοικοδομήσαντι·
𐅃𐅂· [χοῦν? ἀνακαθ]άρασι
[πε]-
ρὶ
τὸμ βωμὸν τῆς
Ἀρτέμιδος·
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
Ἀριστοκρίτωι
τοὺς βωμοὺς
τοὺς ἐν τ[ῶι]
Θεσμοφορίωι
καὶ τὸν τοῖχον
καὶ τὰς κρηπῖδας
ἐξαλείψαντι·
𐅂𐅂· τὸ τειχί[ον
τῆς]
30
παλαίστρας
Ἀριστοκρίτωι
καταλείψαντι·
Δ𐅃· τὸ τέγος
τοῦ οἴκου τοῦ
ἐπ’ Ὀ[ρτυ]-
γίαι
καὶ τὸ τῆς κρήνης
Εὐβίωι καταλείψαντι·
Δ𐅃· Φιλοκράτηι
πτῶμα ἐν τ[ῶι]
τοῦ
Πουλυδάμαντος
ἀνοικοδομήσαντι·
𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· χαλκία
ἐπισκευάσαντι
Δ[ια]-
δήλωι·
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
Ἀριστοκρίτωι
τὸ φρέαρ τὸ ἐμ
παλαίστραι
περικονιάσαντι·
𐅂·
Ἡρακλείδηι
τὸγ κρατῆρα καὶ
τὸ οὖς τοῦ κώθωνος
ἐπισκευάσαντι·
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· [β]ιβλία·
𐅂·
35
Λεωφῶντι τὰ
πτώματα τὰ ἐν τῶι
τοῦ Ἀρχηγέτου
ἀνοικοδομήσαντι·
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂· τὸμ
πανιώνιον
στεγνώσαντι
καὶ κλύσαντι
Ἡρακλείδηι·
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· κηρὸς
παρὰ Λύδου·
𐅂·
{²vac.}²
πίσσα· 𐅂ΙΙ·
Ἡρακλείδηι
οἰνοχοῶν ἐπισκευὴ·
𐅂ΙΙ· τοῖς τὸ
Διοσκούριον
[κα]-
θηραμένοις·
Δ𐅂𐅂· τοῦ οἰκήματος
τοῦ ἐν τῶι
πεντηκοστολογίωι
τὸ τέγος Παρ-
μένοντι
κατασκευάσαντι·
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· τὸν ἐν
τῶι Λητώιωι
φοίνικα περικαθάραντι
40
Τιμησιέργωι·
𐅂𐅂· μισθωτοῖς
τὸ τειχίον τὸ
παρὰ τὸμ βωμὸν
πεσὸν ἀνελοῦσ[ιν]
𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τὸγ καπρῶνα
ἐπισκευάσαντι·
𐅂· τότε Βάλαγρος
ἦλθεν, δᾶιδες
εἰς τὸγ χ[ο]-
ρὸν·
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι𐅁· ξύλα
καὶ ῥυμὸς·
𐅂ΙΙ· τοῖς
Ἀντιγονείοις
δᾶιδες εἰς
τὸγ χορὸν· 𐅃𐅂[․․]·
ῥυμὸς
καὶ ξύλα· 𐅂·
τοῖς τὴν σκηνὴν
κατενέγκασι
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν·
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ξύλον
εἰς τὸμ φα[λ]-
λὸν
παρὰ Ἀντιγόνου·
ΔΔΔ· τοῖς
παραγαγοῦσι
τὸ ξύλον· 𐅂𐅂·
ποιήσαντι Καΐκωι·
𐅃𐅂𐅂·
45
Σωστράτωι γράψαντι·
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· εἰς
τἄλλα· 𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ𐅁·
τὸ χαλκίον τὸ
ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ
τοῦ Διὸ[ς]
τοῦ
Κυνθίου ἐπισκευάσαντι·
𐅂· πέτευρον
τῶι λόγωι· 𐅂ΙΙΙ·
δέλτος τῶι
λόγωι· 𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ̣𐅁·
Σωστράτωι
λευκώσαντι·
𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἀετὸν εἰς
τὴν θυρίδα τοῦ
ἐπ’ [Ὀ]ρτυγίαι
οἴκου ποιή-
σαντι·
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· πίσσης
κεράμια τέσσαρα
παρ’ Ἡροδώρου
Χίου ἀνὰ· Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
vac.
{²c.
3 vss. vacant}²
49
ἐπὶ Φίλλιδος
ἄρχοντος τάδε
παρελάβομεν
παρὰ τῶν ἱεροποιῶν
Διακρίτου,
Δεξι-
50
[κράτους], Φίλλιδος·
ἐν τῶι {²versus
consulto erasus}²
[νεῶι
τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος·
στεφάνο]υς
χρυσοῦς ἑπ[τὰ
κ]αὶ δέκα· στρεπτὸν
χρυσοῦν
[Δάτιδος?
ἀνάθημα· στέφαν?]ον
χρυσοῦν Ἀρισταίχμου
ἀνάθημα· φιάλας
τρεῖς
[ἃς
Στησίλεως
ἀνέθηκ]ε̣· ῥόδον
ἀργυροῦν Δεξικράτους
ἀνάθημα· στέφανον
[χρυσοῦν
ἐπὶ τῆς κόμης?
ὃ]ν Τιμοκράτης
ἀνέθηκεν· ποτήριον
ἀργυροῦν· κρα-
55
[τῆρα — — — — —
δακτ]υλ[ί]ους
ὑπαργύρους
διακοσίους
εἴκοσιν, ὑποχρύσους
[σιδηροῦς
ἐννέα? κηρύ]κ̣ε̣ι̣ο̣ν̣
ἀργυροῦν· χαλκοῦν·
κλῆιδας τρεῖς
τοῦ νεὼ οὗ τὰ
ἑπτὰ
ἀγάλματα·
ἐγ κιβωτίωι
χρυσίον σταθμῶι
παντοδαπὸν
παρελάβομεν
ὁλκὴν δρα-
χμὰς
ἑβδομήκοντα
τέτταρας τρεῖς
ὀβολούς· ἀπὸ
τούτου ἀφείλομεν
εἰς στεφά-
νην
τῆι Λητοῖ κατὰ
ψήφισμα δήμου
ὁλκὴν δραχμὰς·
ΔΔ· ἀργυρίου
τοῦ παντοδαποῦ
60
σὺν τῶι χαλκιδικῶι
καὶ τοῖς μηνίσκοις
ὁλκὴν δραχμὰς
πεντήκοντα
ὀκτώ. vac.
In
the archonship of Phillis we took over the following from the
hieropoioi
Diakritos,
Dexi[krates], (50) Phillis
[In
the Temple of Apollo.] seventeen gold [crow]ns; gold collar
[...]; gold [crow]n, dedication of Aristaichmos; three phialai
[which Stesileos dedicate]d; silver rose, dedication of Dexikrates;
crown [...wh]ich Timokrates dedicated; silver cup; kra[ter[...r]ings
(55) silvered two hundred twenty; gilded [...st]aff silver. Bronze:
three keys of the Temple of the Seven Statues. In a chest we
received by weight various gold, weight seventy four drachmas, three
obols; from this we subtracted (gold) for the crown for Leto voted
by the demos, weight 20 drachmas. Weight of various silver (60) with
the Chalcidian (coin) and the little moons, fifty-eight drachmas.
ἐν
τῶι νεῶι οὗ τὰ
ἑπτὰ ἀγάλματα·
φιάλας ἀργυρᾶς
τριάκοντα·
ποτήρια τέτταρα
ἀργυρᾶ·
στεφάνους
χρυσοῦς ἠρτημένους
πρὸς τῶι τοίχωι
εἴκοσι ἕνα καὶ
συντε-
θλασμένους
ἐγ κιβωτίωι
δύο· ἐν τῶι
προδόμωι· φιάλην
ἀργυρᾶν Καλλικλέους
ἀνά-
θημα·
φιάλας ἀργυρᾶς
τρεῖς Ταυρομενιτῶν
ἀνάθημα· φιάλην
ἀργυρᾶν Εὐθυδίκου
65
ἀνάθημα· στεφάνους
δύο χρυσοῦς
ὑπὲρ τῶν θυρῶν.
καὶ τάδε ἄλλα
ἐν τῶι νεω-
[κ]ορίωι·
ὀβελίσκους·
𐅄ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ· καὶ
εἷς κατεαγώς·
δέλτους τρεῖς·
ἀρυστῆρας τρεῖς·
λεκάνη
[․․․]α̣κή·
ἐπιχύτας τέτταρας·
τούτων δύο
διαπεπτωκότας·
ἡμιτείας δύο·
ἀρυστῆ
[ρας
τρ]εῖς· κρατῆρας
ἕξ· τούτων εἷς
διαπεπτωκώς·
ὑπόστατα τρία·
δῖνον· βομβυλιόν·
[․․․․
γα?]στρεῖς τρεῖς·
ψυκτῆρας τέτταρας·
πέλεκυν· χοῦν
χαλκοῦν· τυροκνῆστ[ιν]·
κλῆι-
70
[δας δύο? τ]οῦ
τε Διοσκουρίου
καὶ τοῦ τῆς
Ὀρτυγίας·
κυάθους τρεῖς·
κύλικας χαλκᾶς
[—c.8-9—
ὀ]κτώ, τὰ δύο
πεπτωκότα· ἠθμὸν
χαλκοῦν· χυτρογαύλους
τρεῖς σα-
[κνοὺς
καὶ ἄλλ]α χυτρογαύλια
σαπρὰ τρία·
οἰνοχόαι παλαιαὶ
δέκα πέντε·
ἄλλαι τρεῖς
[οἰνοχόαι
ὑγι]εῖς. vac.
In
the Temple of the Seven Statues. Thirty silver phialai; four
silver cups; twenty-one gold crowns fastened to the wall and two
crushed (crowns) in a chest. In the Prodomos: silver phiale,
dedication of Kallikles; three silver phialai, dedication of the
Tauromenitans; silver phiale, dedication of Euthydikos (65); two
gold crowns over the doors.
And
the following others in the Neokorion. 78 skewers and one
broken one; three tablets; three ladles; lekanis [...]; four
beakers, two of these fallen apart; two hemiteiai; three ladles; six
kraters, one of these fallen apart; three stands; dinos; bombulion;
three [...] STREIS; four coolers; ax; bronze chous; cheese grater;
[...] keys, of the (70) Dioskourion and of (the shrine) of Ortygia;
three kyathoi; bronze kylixes; 8 [...]. two fallen; bronze strainer;
three leaky buckets and another three rotten; fifteen old oinochoai,
another three sound. [space]
face B {²initio
vss. 3-4 deleti}²
1
[— — — — — — — — —
— — λ]υχνεῖα
τέτταρα Ι[— — —
— — —]
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — —] τ̣ήρια τρία·
τούτων ἓν̣ [διαπε]-
[πτωκός?
— — — — — — — — —
—] τούτων αἱ
τέτταρες διαπε̣[πτώ]-
[κασιν]·
π̣ροσ[κεφάλαια
και?]νὰ δύο·
κλίνας ἐν τῶι
ἱεροποίωι
τρεῖς· ἄ[λ]-
5
[λας? δ]έκα ἕξ,
[τὰς μὲν] δέκα
[ἐ]ξερρωγύας,
τὰς δὲ κατεαγύας·
τράπεζα[ν].
[ποτ]ήρια
ἀργυρᾶ τάδε
παρελάβομεν
σταθμῶι ἐν τῶι
ἱεροποίωι·
κ[ύλι]-
[κας]
χελιδονείας
ἐννέα σὺν ἧι Ἀδὼ
ἀνέθηκεν, ὁλκὴ
πεντακόσι[αι]
[πεν]τήκοντα·
φιάλας δύο ἃς
Ἔμπεδος τοῖς
Διοσκούροις
ἀνέθηκεν, ὁλκ[ὴ]
[ἑκατ]ὸν
ἑβδομήκοντα
μία, ὀβολός·
φιάλας δύο,
Πολεμίδος
ἀνάθημα,
[...l]amps
four [...|[...]ers, three, one of these [...|[...] three small
kraters, one of these brok[en[...]cof these the four have fall[en|
apart]; two [ne]w pillows; three couches in the Hieropoion;
ot[hers, s]ixteen, (5) ten broken apart, the others collapsed;
table. The following silver cups we took over by weight in the
Hieropoion: nine swallow kylixes with the one Ado dedicated,
weight five hundred fifty; two phialai which Empedos dedicated to
the Dioskouroi, weight one hundred seventy one (and) an obol; two
phialai, dedication of Polemis, [weight] one hundred
10
[ὁλκὴ ἑ]κατὸν
τετταράκοντα
ὀκτώ· φιάλη
Κλέωνος καὶ
Ξενοκράτους
[ἀνάθη]μα,
ὁλκὴ ἐνενήκοντα
ἕξ· [κ]υμ[β]ία
τέτταρα, ἐπιγεγραμμένα
ἆθλα
[ἐγ
Δήλο]υ, ὁλκὴ
ἑκατὸν τετταράκοντα·
[κυ]μ̣β̣ίον̣
ὑπὲρ Κριτόλης,
ὁλκὴ εἴκοσι
[τέτταρ]ες·
κύλιξ Ἀλεξάνδρου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ἑκατὸν τριάκοντα
ἑπτά·
βατιάκη
Ἐπαρχίδου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ἑβδ[ομή]κοντα
ὀκτώ· κύλιξ
Τηρέως ἀ[νά]-
15
[θ]ημα, ὁλκὴ ἑβδομήκοντα
ἕ̣ξ̣· κυμβ̣ίον
Ἐλπίν̣ου ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ τριάκοντα
ἑπτά·
κύλιξ θηρίκλειος
Δημοσ[ῶντος
ὑ]πὲρ [Ἐπαρχ]ίδου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ἑκατὸν
τέττα[ρες
— —c.10— —]ΚΥΔΟ[—
—c.9— —] ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ τριάκοντα
ἕξ· βατιάκη
Νικίδος
[ἀνάθημα, ὁλκ]ὴ
ἑ[κατόν]· κυμβίον
Ἐπιν̣οίδα ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ τετ-
ταράκοντα
[— — —c.24— — —]ου
Μυκονίου ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ ἑκα-
(10)
forty eight; phiale dedication of Kleon and Xenokrates, weight
ninety-six; four kymbia inscribed "prizes [from Del]os",
weight one hundred forty; kymbion, on behalf of Kritole, weight
twenty four; kylix, dedication of Alexander, weight a hundred thirty
seven; batiake, dedication of Eparchides, weight seventy eight;
kylix, dedication of Tereus,
(15)
weight seventy six; kymbion, dedication of Elpines, weight thirty
seven; Therakleian kylix, dedication of Demoson on behalf of
[Epar]chides, weight one hundred four [...] dedication, weight
thirty six; batiake [dedication] of Nikis we[ight one hund]red;
kymbion, dedication of Epinoidas, weight forty [...] dedication of
[...] dikos from Mykonos, weight one hundred
20
τὸν ἑξήκοντα
τέτταρε[ς· —
—c.12— —]ς Δημοσῶντος
ἀνάθημα ὑπὲρ
Δη-
μέου,
ὁλκὴ ἑκατὸν
πέντ[ε? — —c.10— —]
Φ̣ε̣[ιδ]ιάνακτος
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
πεντή-
κοντα
τέτταρες· φιάλαι
[δύο ․․․․․․]ος
ἀνάθημα Διοσκούροις,
ἡ μὲν διαπε-
πτωκῦα,
ἡ δὲ σακνή, ὁλκὴ
[․․․․․]κοντα
ὀκτώ· κύλιξ
μεγάλη, τῶμ Πολυάρχου
ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ τριακό[σιαι]
τριάκοντα ὀκτώ·
βοὸς προτομὴ
Ἀμύντα ἀνά-
25
θημα, ὁλκὴ τριακόσιαι
ὀ[γδοή]κοντα·
φιάλη Ἀμύντα
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ἑκα-
τὸν
πεντήκοντα τρεῖς·
κλεψύδρα <ἧ>ς
ὁλκὴ τετταράκοντα
πέντε· κυμβί<ον>
Μενύλλου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
τριάκοντα μία·
κυμβίον Εὐμήδους
ἀνάθη-
μα,
ὁλκὴ τριάκοντα
τέττα[ρ]ες· κυμβία
δύο Μενύλλου
ἀναθήματα, ὁλκὴ
πεντή-
κοντα
ἕξ· κυμβία [ὀρθ]ηλὰ
δύο Φιλίσκου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
πεντήκοντα δύο·
κυμβί-
(20)
sixty four; [... Therakl]eian dedication of Demoson on behalf of
Demeas, weight one hundred fi[ve [...] dedication of Pheidianax,
weight fifty four; phialai [...] dedication of [...] to the
Dioskouroi, the one fallen apart, the other saknê, weight
[...]ty eight; large kylix, dedication of Polyarchos’
(children), weight three hundred thirty eight; (phiale with) ox
head, dedication of Amyntas, (25) weight three hundred eighty;
phiale, dedication of Amyntas, weight one hundred fifty three;
weight of waterclock forty five; kymbio(n), dedication of Menyllos,
weight thirty one; kymbion, dedication of Eumedes, weight thirty
four; two kymbia, dedications of Menyllos, weight fifty six; two
straight-sided kymbia, dedication of Philiskos, weight fifty two;
kymbion,
30
ον Δημητρίας
Μυκονίας ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ δέκα ἑπτά·
ποτήριον ὦτα
ἔχον Νικί-
δος
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ἐνενήκοντα·
φιάλη ἔκτυπος
Ἀντικράτους
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ἑκατόν·
φιάλη Ἐρε[σί]ων
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ἑκατὸν τετταράκοντα
τέτταρες· οἰνοχοΐ-
διον
Δημοτίμου ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ τετταράκοντα
δύο· φιάλαι
δύο Κεβαλίνου
ἀνά-
θημα,
ὁλκὴ διακόσιαι·
βατιάκη Δαδάμα
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ἑξήκοντα ἕξ·
φιάλαι
35
δύο ἃς Ἀδὼ
Μακέστα ἀνέθηκεν,
ὁλκὴ διακόσιαι·
κυμβίον Φιλάγρου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλ-
κὴ
ἑκατὸν ἕξ· φιάλη
ἣν Ἀδὼ ἀνέθηκεν,
ὁλκὴ ἐνενήκοντα
ὀκτώ· φιάλη
Νικά-
νορος
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ἑκατὸν ἑβδομήκοντα
ἕξ· φιάλη Κρατεροῦ
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ἑκατὸν
δέκα ἕξ· φιάλη
Λεωδίκης Ναξίας
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ὀγδοήκοντα
τέτ-
ταρες·
κυμβίον Ἀθηναγόρου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
τετταράκοντα
τέτταρες· βοὸς
(30)
dedication of Demetria of Mykonos, weight seventeen; cup with
handles, dedication of Nikis, weight ninety; figured phiale,
dedication of Antikrates, weight one hundred; phiale, dedication of
the Eresions, weight one hundred forty four; small oinochoe,
dedication of Demotimos, weight forty two; two phialai, dedication
of Kebalinos, weight two hundred; batiake, dedication of Dadamas,
weight sixty six; two phialai (35) which Ado daughter of Maketias
dedicated, weight two hundred; kymbion, dedication of Philagros,
weight one hundred six; phiale which Ado dedicated, weight ninety
eight; phiale, dedication of Nikanor, weight one hundred seventy
six; phiale, dedication of Krateros, weight one hundred sixteen;
phiale, dedication of Leodike of Naxos, weight eighty four; kymbion,
dedication of Athenagoras, weight forty four; (phiale with)
40
προτομὴ Σίμου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
τριάκοντα ἕξ·
ῥόδον Ἐπαρχίδου
ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ
εἴκοσι δύο·
φιάλη Ξένωνος
καὶ Γερύλλου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ἑκατὸν
εἴκοσι
ἓξ ὀ̣βο̣λ̣οὶ
δύο· φιάλη
Ἀνδρομένους
ὑπὲρ Γλαυκυρίου
ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ
ἐνενήκοντα ἕξ·
φιάλη Μίδα ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ ἑκατὸν
τετταράκ[ον]-
τα
ὀκτὼ τέτταρες·
[κυ]μβίον Ἀριστόλης
Μυκονίας ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ τρι-
45
άκοντα ἕξ· [βατιάκη]
Ἱππ[ο]κράτους
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
τετταράκοντα
τ[ρεῖς]·
φιάλιον
[— —c.12— —] ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ τριάκοντα
ὀκτώ· κυλίκιον
Χαρέωνος
ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ [․․․․κο]ντα·
τὴν δημοσίαν
σφραγῖδα· βατιάκη
Ἱπποκλέους
ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ [․․․․․․]
δύο· κύλιξ
θηρίκλειος
Π[υ]θείου ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ ἐνε-
νήκοντα
ἕξ· [φιάλη] Πυθείου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ἑκατόν· φιάλη
ἑτέρα Πυθείου
(40)
ox head, dedication of Simos, weight thirty six; rose, dedication of
Eparchides, weight twenty two; phiale, dedication of Xenon and
Geryllos, weight one hundred twenty six and two obols; phiale,
dedication of Andromenes for Glaukurios, weight ninety six; phiale,
dedication of Midas, weight one hundred forty eight and four
(obols); kymbion, dedication of Aristole of Mykonos, weight thirty
(45) six; [batia]ke dedication
of Hippokrates, weight forty t[hree]; small phiale, dedication of
Tereus, weight thirty eight; small kylix, dedication of Chareon,
weight sixty; the public seal; batiake, dedication of Hippokles,
weight [...] two; Therikleian kylix, dedication of Pytheas, weight
ninety six; phiale dedication of Pytheas, weight one hundred;
another phiale, dedication of Pytheas, [weigh]t
50
ἀνάθ[ημα, ὁλκ]ὴ
ἑκατόν· κύλιξ
ἡδυλεία Πυθείου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ἑκατόν·
δ̣[ι]κέφαλα
[․]α[․․․․․ Μυρ]τ̣ά̣λ[η]ς?
ἀνάθημα, ὁ[λκὴ]
πεντήκοντ[α]
τ[έ]τ̣[ταρες·
κύλικα κο]-
ρινθίαν
Δεξάνδρου
ἀν[άθημα, ὁλκὴ
— — — — — — — — —
— — —]
ρος
ἀνέθηκε, [ὁλκὴ
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — —]
καὶ
τάδε σα[κνά·
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —]
55
ΛΔΑ· κώθων[α
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — . — — —]
ξυλώματι
α̣[— — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
ἐν τῶι]
Ἀρτεμισίωι
στεφα[νο — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — —]
(50)
one hundred; Hedylean kylix, dedication of Pytheas, weight one
hundred; two-headed [... dedication of Myrta]le, w[eight] fifty
tw[o[...Co|]rinthian [kylix, ded]ication of Dexandros, weight
[...|]ros dedicated [...]| and the following unweighed: [...]ada;
(55) kothon [...in]| wood; in the Hieropo[ion [...in the]|
Artemision, crown[...] dedication of Xenophantos [space]
IG
XI,2 161 (279/278 BC) and IG XI.2 161B (279 BC)
http://epigraphy.packhum.org/text/62623
https://web.archive.org/web/20160419062609/http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/translations/161%20translation.htm
This is the first ‘complete’
Independence inventory, showing the pattern followed thereafter. It
is also the first confined to one side; since the inventory is dated
to Galaxion, the third month of the year, it seems likely that this
side (though labelled side B) was carved before the accounts on the
other side (which presumably cover the full year). Hereafter
inventories hardly ever run over onto another stele as seems to have
been the case with 154, though the accounts often de and though
inclusion of the Chalkotheke treasure required use of the edge (side
C) otherwise unparalleled. Finally, it is the first inventory to
contain the treaure of the new Apollo Temple, now finally completed
after almost two centuries. Interestingly, all the dedications
appear to be in the Prodomos whereas none is in Prodomos of the
Artemision and only the named dedications are in the Prodomos of the
Temple of the Seven Statues.
Aside from the long-standing
rhymoi of the Artemision, objects are listed individually and
described in unparalleled detail, including discrepancies noted
between inscribed and "actual" weight. The treasure of the
new Apollo Temple has an impressive array of dedications, including
many by or in honor of the famous Delian choral society, the
Deliades, often in connection with an official sacred visitation
(theoria) by a foreign group and often sponsored by dynasts such as
Ptolemy, Antigonos and Demetrios. Some of the "new"
dedications, however, may go back to the 4th C., and one wonders
where they were kept until now. [For changes in the Artemision
treasure since the Amphictyonic period see p.??.]
face A
θ[ε]ο[ί].
1
[λόγ]ος ἱεροποιῶν
τῶν ἱεροποιησάντων
ἐπὶ ἄρχοντος
Ὑψοκλέους,
Ἀριστοθέου
τοῦ Τιμοθάλους,
Ξενοκλέους
τοῦ Φιλαρχίδου.
παρελάβο[μεν]
[π]αρὰ
ἱεροποιῶν τῶν
ἱεροποιησάντων
ἐπὶ ἄρχοντος
Χάρμου, Ἡγία
τοῦ Φωκαιέως,
Ἀνασχέτου τοῦ
Θεοξένου, παρόντων
βουλευτῶγ
καὶ γραμμ[α]-
τέων
τοῦ τῆς πόλεως
Τιμησιδήμου
τοῦ Ἀντικράτους,
τοῦ τῶν ἱεροποιῶν
Λυσιμαχίδου
τοῦ Λύσου,
ἀργυρίου
νομίσματος
δραχμὰς ·Μ𐅆Χ
ΧΧ𐅅ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅀·
καὶ χρυσοῦς
·ΔΙ· καὶ τεττίγια
πτολεμαϊκὰ
χρυσᾶ δύο· καὶ
φωκαΐδα· καὶ
παντοδαποῦ
ἀργυρίου εἰς
ἀλεξανδρείου
λόγ[ον]
5
δραχμὰς ·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
καὶ παρὰ Ἀριστοκλέους
τοῦ Φίλωνος
·Η· καὶ παρὰ
Φιλαίθου καὶ
Εὐκλείδου
τῶν ἱεροποιησάντων
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Γλαυκιάδου
·𐅅Η.
οἵδε
τῶν ἱερῶν τεμενῶν
ἐπὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς ἐνηρόσια
τεθήκασιν·
τῆς γῆς τῆς ἐπὶ
Πορθμῶι Ἀπολλόδωρος
Ξενομήδους
δρα-
χμὰς
·ΧΗΗΗΔΔ· τῆς
γῆς τῆς ἐμ Πύργοις
Δόρκων δραχμὰς
·ΧΗΗΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅁/·
τῆς γῆς τῆς ἐν
Λίμναις Ἀριστέας
Ἀμφοτεροῦ δραχμὰς
·ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃[𐅂]
𐅂𐅁/·
τῆς γῆς τῆς ἐν
Ῥάμνοις Ἀντίγονος
Ἀνέκτου δραχμὰς
·ΗΗΗΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τῆς γῆς τῆς ἐν
Διονυσίωι
Παρμενίων Χοιρύλου
δραχμὰς ·𐅅ΗΔ̣Δ̣𐅂̣·
τῆς
γῆς τῆς ἐν Νικοῦ
χώρωι Διονύσιος
Αὐτοκλέους
δραχμὰς ·ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅂·
τῆς γῆς τῆς ἐμ
Πανόρμωι Ἰηκλῆς
δραχμὰς ·𐅅ΗΗ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τῆς γῆς τῆς
10
Σκιτωνείας
Δίδυμος Καλλιδίκου
δραχμὰς ·𐅅ΔΔΔ·
τῆς γῆς τῆς
Χαρητείας
Ἐμπεδοκλῆς
Χαριλέοντος
δραχμὰς ·Χ𐅅ΗΗΗ·
τῆς γῆς τῆς
Χαρω-
νείας
Μελήσιππος
Ῥηναιεὺς δραχμὰς
·𐅅̣ΗΗΗ· τοῦ
Ἱπποδρόμου
καὶ τῆς Ἀφέσεως
Ἀριστείδης
Ἀριστέου δραχμὰς
·𐅅Η𐅃· Λειμῶνος
Φερεκλείδης
Εὐκλείδου
δραχμὰς ·ΗΗΗΔΔΔ·
τοῦ Κεραμείου
Ἱερόμβροτος
Ἐτεοκλείδου
δραχμὰς ·Η̣ΔΔΔΔ·
τῆς γῆς τῆς ἐν
Σολόηι καὶ
Κορακιαῖς
Τελέσων Αὐ-
τοκλέους
δραχμὰς ·ΗΗΗΗΔ·
τῆς γῆς τῆς ἐν
Ἄκραι Δήλωι
Ζώπυρος Αὐτομέδοντος
δραχμὰς ·𐅅𐅂·
τῆς γῆς τῆς ἐμ
Φοίνιξι Θεωρύλος
·𐅅ΗΗΔ·
τῆς
γῆς τῆς Ἐπισθενείας
Χοιρύλος Τελέσωνος
δραχμὰς ·𐅅𐅄ΔΔΔΔ·
τῶν ἐμ Φυταλιᾶι
Καλλισθένης
Διακρίτου
δραχμὰς ·𐅄Δ·
τοῦ Λυκωνείου
15
Ἀριστείδης
Ἀριστέου δραχμὰς
·Η𐅄/////· τῶν Σωσιμαχείωγ
Γέρυλλος
Πιστοξένου
δραχμὰς ·ΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ.
vac.
καὶ
τάδε τῶν ἱερῶν
οἰκιῶν ἐνοίκια
εἰσήκει· τῶν
οἰκημάτων ἐν
οἷς Ἔφεσος
καπηλεύει παρὰ
Ἐφέσου δραχμαὶ
·𐅄𐅂· τῆς Χαρητείας
οἰκίας τῆς
ἀν-
δρωνίτιδος
παρὰ Ἴσου δραχμαὶ
·𐅄Δ𐅃· τῆς
γυναικωνίτιδος
παρὰ Ἀναψυκτίδου
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃·
τῆς ἀνδρωνίτιδος
παρὰ Σωτέ-
λ̣[ου]ς
τῶν ἀνδρώνων τῶμ
πρὸς τῆι θαλάττηι
·𐅄· τοῦ ἀνδρῶνος
τοῦ ἐχομένου
τούτων παρὰ τῶν
Διοφάντου παίδων
·Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂· τῆς
οἰκίας ἣ ἦν
τῶν
παίδων τῶν Ἀριστοβούλου
παρ’ Αὐτοσθένους
·ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁·
τῶν οἰκιῶν τῶμ
πρὸς τῶι σιδηρείωι
αἳ ἦσαν Κλεοκρίτου
παρὰ Πρωτομάχου
20
ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂· τῆς
οἰκίας ἣ ἦν
Ὀρθοκλέους
παρὰ Γερύλλου
τοῦ Πύθωνος
·ΔΔΔΔΙ· τῆς
Σωσιλείας
οἰκίας πρὸς
ἧι ἡ κρηπὶς παρὰ
Κτησικλέους
ΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
τῶν
οἰκημάτων τῶμ
πρὸς τῆι θαλάττηι
καὶ τῶν ἐπὶ τούτοις
ὑπὲρ Διονυσοδώρου
παρὰ Μνησίλεω
·𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂· τῶν
ἐχομένων τούτων
οἰκη-
μάτων
παρὰ Ἀγαθάρχου
·𐅄Δ· τῆς οἰκίας
ἣ ἦν Ἐπισθένους,
ἣν ἐμεμίσθωτο
Ἀπήμαντος Λεωφῶντος
δραχμῶν ·𐅄𐅂·
παρὰ Πρωτόλε[ω]
τοῦ
ἐγγυητοῦ κατὰ
τὸ ἥμυσυ ·ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ·
τῆς οἰκίας ἣ
ἦν Ἀρκέοντος
παρὰ Ἀρκέοντος
·ΔΔ𐅃· τῆς οἰκίας
ἣ ἦν Πυθαγόρου
παρὰ Φίλτου
·ΔΔ𐅃· τῆ[ς]
οἰκίας
ἐν ἧι Ἀντίγονος
οἰκεῖ παρὰ
Ἀρχεπόλιος
·𐅄Δ· τῆς οἰκίας
ἣ ἦν Ἐπισθένους
ὑπὲρ Τολμίδου
οἱ ἔγγυοι
Τεισικλῆς
Λύσου, Ἀντίγονος
Κυδι[θάλου]
𐅄Δ.
25
καὶ τάδε ἄλλα
εἰσῆλθεν· εἰς
τὴν ἀπόδοσιν
τοῦ ἀργυρίου
οὗ ἡ πόλις ὀφείλει
τῶι θεῶι, παρὰ
βουλευτῶν
τῶν ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ὑψοκλέους,
ἐκ
τῆς πεντηκοστῆς
σὺν τοῖς ἐπωνίοις
·ΜΧΧΧΧ𐅅ΗΗΗΗΔ·
τῶν ἐνοικίων
τῆς δεκάτης
ὑπὲρ Τεισικλέο<υ>ς
·𐅅Η· τοῦ ὑποτροπίου
ὑπὲρ Φίλλιος
𐅅ΔΔΔ·
τῆς δεκάτης
τοῦ σίτου ὑπὲρ
Γνωσιδίκου
·ΗΔΔ· ἐπώνια
τούτων δραχμὰς
·𐅄Δ𐅂ΙΙΙ· καὶ
τὸ χορηγικὸν
ἀργύριον ·ΧΧ𐅄𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ.
οἵδε
τόκους τεθήκασιν
ἐπὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς· Γέρυλλος
Πιστοξένου
δραχμὰς ·Η· Ἄθηνις
Εὐρυμάνθους
ὑπὲρ τῶγ χωρίων
τῶν ἐμ Πασ-
σίρωι
τοῦ αὑτοῦ μέρους
δραχμὰς ·𐅄Δ·
Μνήσαλκος
Τελεσαρχίδου
ὑπὲρ τῶγ χωρίων
τῶν ἐμ Πασσίρωι,
ἃ ἦν πρότερον
Σωσιπόλιδο[ς],
30
δραχμὰς ·𐅄Δ·
Ἀνδρομένης Ξένωνος
·ΔΔΙΙΙΙΙ·
Ἀλεξικράτεια
ὑπὲρ Ἀριγνώτου
·ΔΔΙΙΙΙΙ· Φωκαιεὺς
Πιστοξένου ·Δ·
Κλεινόδικος
καὶ Δεξικράτης
Στησίλεω
·ΔΔ· Ἀνδρομένης
Δημόνου καὶ
Ἐρασῖνος Τλησιμένους
·ΔΔ· Ἀπολλόδωρος
Ἀπολλωνίου
Κυζικηνὸς ·Δ·
Γοργὼ καὶ ὁ
κύριος Εὐκλεί-
δης
ὑπὲρ Χάρητος
·Δ· Φαναγόρας
Φαναγόρου ὑπὲρ
τοῦ οἰκήματος
ὃ ἦν πρότερον
Νεωκόρου δραχμὰς
·Δ𐅁· Τελέσων
Χοιρύλου ·𐅃𐅂𐅀·
Φίλτης
καὶ
Ἀντιχάρης Τληπολέμου
·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· Παρμενίων
Χοιρύλου ·𐅃𐅂𐅀·
Ἱερόμβροτος
Μνησικλέους
·𐅄· Πύρραιθος
Νησιώτου ·ΔΔΔ·
Ὀλυμπιάδης
Θή-
ριδος
·Δ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· Ναυτέλης
καὶ Ἀριστόβουλος
Ἀμφιτίμου ·𐅃𐅂·
Ἑρμόδοτος
Ἀριστέου ·ΗΔΔ·
Σωσισθένης
Φιλοσόφου
·ΔΔΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
Ἀντίπατρος
·𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ·
35
Σώστρατος
Στράτωνος
·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· Πόλυβος
Διοδότου
·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅀· Τελέσων
Αὐτο<κλέους>
ὑπὲρ Ξένωνος
Ἑρμιονέως ·𐅂𐅂ΙΙ.
vac.
καὶ
τάδε ἄλλα εἰσήκει·
τῶν ἰχθύων τῶν
ἐν τῆι λίμνηι
παρὰ Καλοδίκου
·𐅄Δ· ἐκ τῶν
ἐγκυκλίων τὸ
περιγενόμενον
·ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂. vac.
ἐκ
θησαυρῶν· τοῦ
ἐν τῶι ἱερῶι
·Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
αἰγιναία ·𐅂·
ῥόδιον ·ΙΙ·
ἐπιδαύριον ·ΙΙΙ·
τοῦ ἐν Ἀσκληπιείωι
·ΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙ𐅀· ἐκ
τοῦ ἐν Ἀφροδισίωι
·ΙΙΙΙ𐅀/·
καὶ
χρυσοῦς. χηνὸς
ἀποθανόντος
·𐅃ΙΙΙ· χηναλώπεκος
καὶ χηνὸς ὠιῶν
·𐅂ΙΙ· πέρδικος
·Ι· ἀπὸ τοῦ Προπύλου
ξύλων πραθέντων
·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
παρὰ
βουλευτῶν
τῶν ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Χάρμου τοῦ
χορηγικοῦ
ἀργυρίου δραχμὰς
·ΧΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλας παρὰ
βουλευτῶγ
καὶ ἱεροποιῶν
40
τῶν ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Χάρμου δραχμὰς
·ΗΗ· ἃς ἐξέτεισεν
Ὑψοκλῆς Ἀρχεστράτου
ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐγγύης
ἧς ἠγγύητο
Ἀμφίστρατον
Ὑψοκλέους·
ἄλ-
λας
παρὰ βουλευτῶν
τῶν ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ὑψοκλέο<υ>ς
·Η𐅄ΔΔ𐅃· ἃς
ἐξέτεισε Ἀρίγνωτος
Ἀντιπάτρου ὑπὲρ
τῆς ἐγγύης ἧς
ἠγγύητο Δίαιτον
Ἀπολλοδώρου
τῆς
τοῦ θεάτρου
περιοικοδομίας
τὸ καθ’ αὑτὸν
μέρος· καὶ παρ’
Ἀντικράτους
τοῦ Τιμησιδήμου
ἀντὶ τοῦ παλαιοῦ
ἀργυρίου δραχμὰς
·Η· τοῦ
φοίνικος
τοῦ περιγενομένου
ἀπὸ τοῦ παραδείγματος,
παρὰ Φανέου
·𐅃𐅂· τῶμ περιστερῶν
τῆς κόπρου
·𐅃𐅂· τῆς πορφύρας
·Δ𐅂𐅂· συκαμίνο[υ
․].
τάδε
ἔργα ἐξεδώκαμεγ
κ̣ατὰ ψηφίσματα
τοῦ δήμου μετὰ
τοῦ ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν
οὓς εἵλετο
ὁ δῆμος καὶ
{καὶ} κατὰ συγ-
45
γραφάς. τοῦ νεὼ
τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
τοῦ περιστύλου
τοῦ κατάπροσθεν
τῆς ὀροφῆς
ποιῆσαι φάτνας
δέκα πέντε
ἠργολάβησεν
Φανέας
Καΐκου
καὶ Πεισίβουλος
Πάριος, τὴν φάτνην
ἑκάστην δραχμῶν
·ΗΗΗ· ὥστε παρέχειν
αὐτοὺς ἑαυτοῖς
πάντα ὅσων ἂν
δεῖ εἰς τὰ ἔργα
πλὴν
ξύλων· τούτοις
ἐδώκαμεν κελευόντων
ἐπιμελητῶγ καὶ
ἀρχιτέκτονος
τὴμ πρώτην δόσιν
δραχμὰς ·ΧΧΗΗ𐅄·
ποιήσασι δὲ
τὰ
ἡμίση
τῶν ἔργων κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
ἐδώκαμεν δευτέραν
δόσιν δραχμὰς
·Χ𐅅ΗΗΗ· συντελέσασι
δὲ τὸ ἔργον καὶ
ἀποδοῦσι
〚—
—〛
δόκιμον
κατὰ τὴν συγγραφὴν
τὸ ἐπιδέκατον
ἀπεδώκαμεν
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν
κελευόντων
δραχμὰς ·ΗΗΗΗ𐅄̣·
τὸν θρᾶνον τοῦ
50
νεὼ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
ἐπικόψαντι Νίκωνι
μισθὸς δραχμαὶ
·𐅃· Δεινοκράτει
τὴν ταινίαν ἐπὶ
τὸν θρᾶνον τοῦ
νεὼ ἐπιθέντι
δραχμαὶ ·ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂.
τοῦ
νεὼ τοῦ πωρίνου
τὴν ὑπωροφίαν
ἐργάσασθαι
καὶ ἐπιθεῖναι
παρέχοντας αὐτοὺς
αὑτοῖς εἰς
τὰ ἔργα πάντα
ὅσων ἂν δεῖ πλὴγ
ξύλων
καὶ
κεράμου ἠργολάβησαν
Δεινοκράτης
Λεωφάντου,
Ξενοφάνης Σύριος,
Θεόφαντος
Καρύστιος
δραχμῶν ·ΧΗΗΗ·
〚—
—〛 τούτοις
ἐδώκαμεν
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν
κελευόντων
τὴμ πρώτην δόσιν
δραχμὰς ·𐅅Η𐅄·
ποιήσασι δὲ
τὰ ἡμίση τῶν ἔργων,
ὡς ἡ συγγραφὴ
λέγει,
τὴν
δευτέραν δόσιν
ἐδώκαμεν δραχμὰς
·𐅅ΔΔ· συντελέσασι
δὲ τὸ ἔργον καὶ
ἀποδοῦσι δόκιμογ
κατὰ συγγραφὴν
τὸ ἐπιδέκατον
55
ἀπεδώκαμεν
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶγ
κελευόντων
δραχμὰς ·ΗΔΔΔ·
〚—
—〛 τοῦ
Πωρίνου τὰς
παραετίδας
ἆραι καὶ τὰς
δοκοθήκας
ἐπι-
τρῆσαι
καὶ πάλιν καθαρμόσαι
ἀρχιτέκτονος
ἐγδόντος ἠργολάβησαν
Νίκων καὶ Ἀριστοκλῆς
δραχμῶν ·ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τὸ περιοικοδόμημα
τὸ πλίν-
θινον
τὸ ἐν τῶι Πωρίνωι
καθελοῦσι
καὶ τοὺς πώρους
καὶ τὸγ χοῦν
ἐξενέγκασι
καὶ τὸ ἔδαφος
ὁμαλίσασι
Θεοφάντωι καὶ
Ξενοφάνει δρα-
χμαὶ
·ΔΔΔΔ. τῆς ὑποδομῆς
τῆς ἐν τῆι νήσωι
τῆι ἱερᾶι τῆς
Ἀρτέμιδος
ἀνοικοδομῆσαι
καὶ συγχῶσαι
ὀργυὰς πεντήκοντα
ἠργολάβ[η]-
σαν
Νίκων Σύριος,
Ἀλεξικλῆς
Σερίφιος, Δημόφιλος
δραχμῶν ·𐅅·
τού{του}τοις
{τούτοις} ἐδώκαμεν
τὴν πρώτην δόσιν
δραχμὰς ·ΗΗ𐅄·
ἀρχιτέ{κ}-
60
κτονος {ἀρχιτέκτονος}
καὶ ἐπιμελητοῦ
κελεύοντος·
ποιήσασι δὲ
τὰ ἡμίση τῶν ἔργων
κατὰ τὴν συγγραφὴν
δευτέραν δόσιν
ἐδώκαμεν δραχμὰ[ς]
ΗΗ·
συντελέσασι
δὲ τὸ ἔργον καὶ
ἀποδοῦσι δόκιμον
τὸ ἐπιδέκατον
ἀπεδώκαμεν
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητοῦ
κελεύοντος
δραχμ[ὰς]
𐅄·
τὸ λοιπὸν τῆς
ὑποδομῆς
ἀνοικοδομῆσαι
καὶ συγχῶσαι
ἠργολάβησαν
Μολπίων Ῥηναιεύς,
Ἀλεξικλῆς,
Δημόφιλος ὀργυὰς
〚—
—〛
<πεντήκοντα>
δρ[α]-
χμῶν
·𐅅· τούτοις
ἐδώκαμεν ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητοῦ
κελευόντων
τὴμ πρώτην δόσιν
δραχμὰς ·ΗΗ𐅄·
ποιήσασι δὲ
τὰ ἡμί[ση]
τῶν
ἔργων δευτέραν
δόσιν ἐδώκαμεν
δραχμὰς ·ΗΗ·
συντελέσασι
δὲ τὸ ἔργον κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
τὸ ἐπιδέκατον
ἀπεδώκαμεν
·<𐅄>.
65
[τ]ορνίσκον εἰς
τὸ θέατρον
ἐργασαμένωι
Ἀντιγόνωι Καΐκου
παρέχοντι αὑτῶι
πάντα εἰς τὸ
ἔργον πλὴγ ξύλων
μισθὸς δραχμαὶ
․ΔΔ.
τοῦ Προπύλου
τὰς θύρας τὰς
συντριβείσας
κατασκευάσασι
καὶ ἐπιστήσασι
τὰ θύρετρα
Ἀμεινονίκωι
Θηβαίωι καὶ
Θεοδήμωι δρα-
[χ]μαὶ
·ΗΔΔΔ· καὶ τὰς
πυλίδας τὰς
καινὰς τοῦ
Προπύλου ποιήσασι
καὶ ἐπιθεῖσι
〚—
—〛 Θεοδήμωι
καὶ Ἀμεινονίκωι
μισθὸς δραχμαὶ
·ΔΔ· ἥλων πα-
[ρὰ]
Δεξίου εἰς
τὰς πυλίδας
μναῖ πέντε· ἡ
μνᾶ 𐅂Ι𐅁· τὸγ
κίονα τοῦ Προπύλου
τὸμ πεσόντα, πρὸς
ὧι τὰ θύρετρα
ἕστηκεν, ὥστε
στῆσαι μισθ[ω]-
[τοῖ]ς
τὴμ μηχανὴν ἐξενέγκασι
καὶ στήσασι
μισθὸς ·𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
Θεοδήμωι τέκτονι
τὴμ μηχανὴν ἐπισκευάζοντι
ἡμέρας δύο
μισθὸς ·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἥλων 〚—
—〛
70
μνᾶ 〚—
—〛 παρὰ
Πρωτόλεω ·𐅂ΙΙ·
εἰς τὸν ἄξονα
τῆς μηχανῆς ξύλον
ἀρέϊνον ·𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ξύλον εἰς τὰς
ἁψῖδας τοῖς
σφονδύλοις
τοῦ κίονος
·𐅂𐅂𐅂· Νίκω-
νι
καὶ τῶι υἱῶι
ἐργασαμένοις
ἐπὶ τοῦ κίονος
ἡμέρας δύο
μισθὸς δραχμαὶ
·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· μισθωτοῖς
συνάρασι τὸγ
κίονα ·𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
Καίρωι ὑπηρετοῦντι
πρὸς
τῆι
μηχανῆι ·ΙΙΙΙΙ·
μισθωτοῖς τὴμ
μηχανὴγ καθελοῦσι
καὶ ἀπενέγκασι
·𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ. τοῦ
νεὼ τοῦ Ἀσκληπιοῦ
τῆς ὀροφῆς τὰ
κρίνα λευκώ////σαντι
κα[ὶ]
τὰς
κάλχας χρυσώσαντι
Ἀντιδότωι ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν
ἐγδόντων ἐδώκαμεν
δραχμὰς ·ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂.
ἐπὶ τὸν νεὼ τὸμ
πώρινον κε-
ράμου
ζεύγη ·Η𐅄ΔΔ𐅃·
ἐξύρου, τιμὴ
τοῦ ζεύγους
·ΙΙΙΙΙ· ἡ πᾶσα
τιμὴ δραχμαὶ
·ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃· τέλος
ἐν Σύρωι τοῦ
κεράμου ·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ναῦλλον τοῦ
ζεύγους ·Ι[𐅀/]
75
Νικοκλεῖ vac. τὸ
πᾶν δραχμαὶ
·ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
ἀνακομίσασι
τὸγ κέραμον εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν μισθὸς
·𐅂ΙΙΙ. εἰς τὸ
παράδειγμα τοῦ
Προπύλου πίνακα
ἠγοράσαμεν
παρὰ
Χρησίμου
·Δ𐅂𐅂· ἐπισκευάσαντι
τὸμ πίνακα Θεοδήμωι
·𐅂𐅂· λευκώσαντι
τὸμ πίνακα ἀμφοτέρωθεν
·𐅂𐅂𐅂. καὶ τάδε
τῶμ πρὸ ἡμῶν ἔργων
ἐγδεδομένων
ἐδώκαμεν ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶγ
κελευόντων·
Κροίσωι ἐργώνηι
τῶν λίθων τῶν
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ
Κυνθ[ί]-
ου
ἀπαγαγόντι καὶ
ἀπομετρήσαντι
τοὺς προσοφειλομένους
λίθους εἰς
τοὺς χιλίους
καὶ τέτταρας
πόδας τὴν δευτέραν
δόσιν ἐδώκα-
μεν
δραχμὰς
·Χ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅀/.
τοῦ νεὼ τοῦ
Ἀσκληπιοῦ τὴν
ὀροφὴν συντελέσαντι
Δεινοκράτει
τὸ ἐπιδέκατον
ἀπεδώκαμεν
80
δραχμὰς ·𐅄𐅃.
ὑπὲρ Θεοφίλου
τοῦ ἐργολαβήσαντος
τὰς παραετίδας
ἐργάσασθαι
τῶι νεῶι τῆς
Ἀρτέμιδος τοῖς
ἐγγυηταῖς αὐτοῦ
Σωσιμέ<νει>
καὶ
Τιμησιδήμωι
συντελέσασι
τὸ ἔργον κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
τὸ ἐπιδέκατον
ἀπεδώκαμεν
δραχμὰς ·ΗΔΔΔ𐅃.
τοῦ θεάτρου
τὴν ὀρχή-
στραν
καὶ τοὺς θάκους
ἀνακαθάρασι
καὶ τὸγ χοῦν
ἐξενέγκασι
μισθωτοῖς
ἀρχιτέκτονος
ἐγδόντος μισθὸς
·𐅃𐅂𐅂. καὶ τάδε
ἄλλα ἐδώκαμεν·
ἀρχιτέκτονι
μισθὸς ·𐅅ΗΗΔΔ·
τῆι ἀνθρώπωι
εἰς τὰ ἐπιτήδεια
·ΗΔΔ· τῶι ὑπηρέτηι
Δώρωι ·Η𐅄𐅃𐅂·
Λεπτίνηι καὶ
Βακχίωι τοῖς
λιθουργοῖς
εἰς
τὰ ἐπιτήδεια
·ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ· καὶ
εἰς ἱματισμὸν
·ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
γραμματεῖ μισθὸς
·𐅄ΔΔΔ· κήρυκι
·𐅄Δ· νεωκόρωι
εἰς Ἀσκληπιεῖον
85
Η𐅄ΔΔΔ· νεωκόρωι
εἰς τὸν θεὸν
·𐅄Δ· κρηνοφύλακι
·𐅄ΔΔΔΔ· τῆι
αὐλητρίδι τῆι
αὐλούσηι τῶι
χορῶι τῶγ γυναικῶν
μισθὸς ·ΗΔΔ·
χορῶι τῶι γε-
νομένωι
τοῖς κωμωιδοῖς
καὶ τῶι τραγωιδῶι
Δράκοντι τοῖς
ἐπιδειξαμένοις
τῶι θεῶι δᾶιδες
παρὰ Ἐργοτέλους
·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ῥυμοὶ
καὶ
ξύλα
·ΙΙΙΙ· εἰς τὸν
σίδηρον τῶν
λιθουργῶν
στόμωμα παρὰ
Πολύβου ·𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
Δεξίωι στομώσαντι
τύχους δύο
καὶ γλαρίδα
καὶ σφῆνας καὶ
παρασφήνια
ποιήσαντι μισθὸς
·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἱερισταῖς εἰς
σπονδὰς ·Δ·
εἰς τὸγ χορὸν
τὸγ γενόμενον
το[ῖ]ς Ἀπολλωνίοις
δᾶιδες παρὰ
Ἐργοτέλ<ους>
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ῥυμὸς ·ΙΙ· τοῖς
κατὰ μῆνα λόγοις
ἐκτιθεμένοις
εἰς τὴν ἀγορὰν
λεύκωμα ·ΙΙΙ·
στάμνον εἰς
Ἀρτεμίσιον
·ΙΙΙ· εἰς τὸ
ἄγαλμα τῶι Διονύ-
90
σωι κεραία παρὰ
Ἐλπίνου ·ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἐργασαμένωι
τὸ ἄγαλμα Ἀριστοθάλει
·𐅃· γράψαντι
Δεινομένει
·𐅃· εἰς κόσμησιν
τοῦ ἀγάλμα-
τος
·𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· τὴν
ἅμαξαν ἧι ἄγεται
τὸ ἄγαλμα τοῦ
Διονύσου Θεοφάντωι
ἐπισκευάσαντι
·𐅂· ἧλοι ·ΙΙΙ·
τοῦ οἴκου οὗ
Στρατονίκη κλῆιδα
ποιή-
σαντι
Δεξίωι ·𐅂𐅂·
τοῦ Ἀρτεμισίου
εἰς κόσμησιν
νίτρον ·ΙΙΙΙ·
σφόγγοι ·𐅂𐅂·
ἔλαιον χοῦς
ἡμίχουν ·𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
λίνογ καὶ κηρὸς
·ΙΙΙΙ· μύρον
ῥόδινο[ν]
παρὰ
Κωμωιδίας ·𐅃·
εἰς τοὺς χοροὺς
τοὺς γενομένους
τοῖς Λητ<ώ>ιοις
καὶ τοῖς Ἀρτεμισίοις
καὶ τὸν τῆι ὀγδόηι
δᾶιδες παρὰ
Λυσίο[υ]
καὶ
Ἐργοτέλους
·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ῥυμοὶ
παρὰ Μνησικλέους
·ΙΙΙΙ𐅁· Δεξίωι
κλῆιδα ποιήσαντι
ἀνάπαιστον ·𐅂ΙΙΙ·
λαβὴ τῆι κληιδὶ
·ΙΙ· Θεοδήμωι
95
τὸν τρύφακτον
τὸν ἐν τῆι νήσωι
τῆς Ἑκάτης
ἐπισκευάσαντι
·𐅂𐅂· ἧλοι ·ΙΙΙΙ·
νίτρον ·Ι𐅁· τὴν
θυμέλην τοῦ
βωμοῦ τοῦ ἐν
τῆι Νήσωι
κονιάσαντι
Φιλοκράτει
·𐅂· σανίδες
φιλύριναι ἐννέα
παρὰ Δεινοκράτους
ἀρχιτέκτονος
κελεύοντος,
τιμὴ ·𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ·
μισθωτοῖς
τὰς
σανίδας ἀπενέγκασιν
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
·ΙΙΙ· τὸν τρύφακτον
τὸν ἐν τῶι Διοσκουρίωι
καὶ τοῦ ἑστιατορίου
τὰς θύρας ἐπισκευάσαν-
τι
Θεοδήμωι ·𐅃·
ἧλοι ·ΙΙΙΙ·
Διοσκούροις
ἐπίκρασις ·Δ·
Δεξίωι παρασφήνια
ποιήσαντι ·𐅂𐅂·
τροχιλείας
εἰς παλαίστραν
·𐅂· σχοινίον
παρὰ
Διακοσίου
·𐅃· σκαφεῖον
εἰς παλαίστραν
παρὰ Ἀλεξιδήμου
·𐅃ΙΙΙ· χαλκίον
ἐπισκευάσαντι
Δεξίωι ·𐅂ΙΙΙ·
κηρύκειον
ἠγοράσαμεν
·𐅂𐅂·
100
εἰς τὸγ χορὸν
τὸγ γενόμενον
Τιμοστράτωι
τῶι αὐλητῆι,
ὅτε ἐπεδείξατο
τῶι θεῶι, δᾶιδες
παρὰ Ἀρχικλέους
·𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· ῥυμὸς
·ΙΙ· πίττης με-
τρηταὶ
τρεῖς τὸγ Κερατῶνα
ἀλεῖψαι, τιμὴ
τοῦ μετρητοῦ
δραχμαὶ ·ΔΔΔΔ·
τὸ πᾶν ·ΗΔΔ·
ἀλείψαντι τὸγ
Κερατῶνα Ἕρμωνι
·ΔΙΙΙ· τοῦ κρατῆ-
ρος
τοῦ ἀργυροῦ
τοῦ ὠτὸς ἀποπεσόντος
κολλήσαντι
Ἀριστάρχωι ·𐅂𐅂·
ἄνθρακες ·ΙΙΙ·
εἰς τὴγ κόσμησιν
τῆς Ἥρας σφόγγοι
·𐅂· μύρον ·𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ταῖς
ἱερείαις εἰς
τἄλλα ·𐅃𐅂Ι·
τοὺς βωμοὺς
τοὺς ἐν τῶι
Θεσμοφορίωι
ἐξαλείψαντι
καὶ γῆν ἐνέγκαντι
καὶ λευκώσαντι
καὶ ἀνακα-
θάραντι
τὸ Θεσμοφόριον
καὶ τὸγ χοῦν
ἐξενέγκαντι
Διονυσίωι
μισθὸς ·Δ𐅃𐅂·
γῆ λευκὴ ·𐅂·
κρανείας τάλαντον
παρὰ Μνησικλέους
·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
105
Θεοδήμωι τορνίσκον
ποιήσαντι ·𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
τὸν λίθον τὸν
ὑπὸ τὸ μέλαθρον
ὑποκείμενον
τοῦ Πωρίνου
ἐκ τοῦ Ἀσκληπιείου
παραγαγοῦσι
καὶ ἀ-
νακομίσασιν
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
καὶ συνάρασι
μισθωτοῖς
·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· τὰς
πλίνθους ἐκ
τοῦ Πωρίνου
ἐξενέγκασι
μισθωτοῖς εἰς
τὸγ ξυλῶνα ·𐅃𐅂·
μό-
λυβδος
·ΙΙΙΙ𐅁· ποτήρια
ἐπισκευάσαντι
Ἀριστάρχωι ·𐅂Ι𐅁·
ξύλον διαπρίσαντι
Θεοδήμωι ·ΙΙΙΙΙ·
Δεξίωι ὀξύνοντι
τὰ σιδήρια τοῖς
λιθουργοῖς
εἰ[ς]
τὸν
ἐνιαυτὸν ·ΔΔΔΔ·
ἐλαίου εἰς
ἱεροπόιον
μετρητής, τιμὴ
·ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ξύλων
εἰς Πύθιον
τάλαντα ·𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃·
τὸ τάλαντον
·𐅂ΙΙ· ἡ πᾶσα
τιμὴ ·Η𐅃𐅂𐅂
𐅂ΙΙ·
ἀνακομίσασι
τὰ ξύλα ·𐅂·
ἀνθράκων κάλαθοι
δύο καὶ ἡμικαλάθιον,
τιμὴ ·ΔΔ· τῆς
οἰκίας τῆς
Σωσιλείας
πρὸς ἧι ἡ κρηπὶς
τοῖχον οἰκοδομήσαντι
110
Θεοδήμωι ·𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τῆς οἰκίας
ἐν ἧι Ἱέρακος
οἰκεῖ τὰ τέγη
ἐπισκευάσαντι
καὶ δοκὸν ὑποθέντι
τῶι θαλάμωι
Θεοδήμωι ·Δ𐅂𐅂·
τράπεζα εἰς
ἱερο-
πόιον
·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· τοῦ
κώθωνος τοῦ
χαλκοῦ τοῦ
πυθμένος ἀποπεσόντος
κολλήσαντι
Ἀριστάρχωι ·𐅂·
ἄνθρακες ·𐅂·
κηρὸς ·𐅂· κληὶς
εἰς Κύνθο[ν ․]·
ξοΐδος
Δεξίωι ·𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
χαρτία δύο
·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· χορῶι
τῶι γενομένωι
τοῖς Ῥοδίων
θεωροῖς δᾶιδες
παρ’ Ἐργοτέλους
·𐅂𐅂𐅂· ῥυμὸς
Ι𐅁· σανὶς πτελεΐνη
εἰς
τὴν
ταινίαγ καὶ τὰ
καταζεύγματα
τῆς ὀροφῆς τοῦ
νεὼ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
παρὰ Ἱερομβρότου
·Δ𐅃· ταῖς συγγραφαῖς
καὶ τῶι λόγωι
λευκώματα
λευκώ-
σαντι
·𐅂𐅂𐅂. —— καὶ
τάδε ἄλλα
ἀναλώσαμεγ
κατὰ ψηφίσματα
τοῦ δήμου· τοῦ
ἑστιατορίου
τοῦ ἐν τῆι Νήσωι
τὸ τέγος στεγνώσαντι
Ἕρμων[ι]
115
Δ𐅂𐅂· τῆς σκηνῆς
τὸ τέγος καταλείψαντι
Ἕρμωνι ·Δ𐅂𐅂·
τῶν οἰκημάτων
τῶν ἐν τῆι ἀποβάσει
τὰ τέγη στεγνώσαντι
Διονυσίωι
·Δ𐅃𐅂· εἰς
{εἰς}
τὰ Θεσμοφόρια
προσαναλώσαμεν
πρὸς ὧι παρὰ
ταμίου ἐλάβομεν
δραχμὰς ·𐅄ΔΔ𐅃·
εἰς τὴν θυσίαν
τῆι Εἰλειθύηι
·ΔΔ𐅃· πρὸς τὸ
ἐκ φιά-
λης
εἰσελθὸγ κατὰ
μῆνα ὥστε τὸ
ἱερὸγ καθαίρεσθαι
προσαναλώσαμεν
δραχμὰς ·Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι𐅁·
Δώρωι ὑπηρέτηι
ἱμάτιον ·ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στήλη
παρὰ
Φιλωνίδου
·ΔΔ𐅃· παραγαγοῦσι
τὴν στήλην ἐκ
τοῦ Ἀσκληπιείου
καὶ εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
ἀνακομίσασιν
·𐅂ΙΙΙ· γράψαντι
τὴν στήλην Δεινομέν<ει>
τῆς
δραχμῆς γράμματα
τριακόσια, τὰ
πάντα γράμματα
τρισμύρια, μισθὸς
δραχμαὶ ·Η·
μόλυβδος ·𐅃·
ξύλα ·𐅂· τοῖς
στήσασι τὴν
στήλην ·𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
120
τῆς οἰκίας
ἐν ἧι Ἀντίγονος
ὁ Τιμοκράτους
οἰκεῖ πτῶμα
οἰκοδομήσαντι
·Δ· σανὶς πτελεΐνη
εἰς τὴν ταινίαν
τὴν ὑποκειμένην
τῆι
ὀροφῆι
τοῦ νεὼ τοῦ
Ἀπόλλωνος παρὰ
Δεινοκράτους
·Δ𐅃· ἅλες
·𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· ξύλον
εἰς τύλους
·ΙΙΙΙ· πίττης
ἡμιαμφόριον
παρ’ Ἀμφιθάλους
·ΔΔ.
{²vac.}²
122
κεφάλαιον οὗ
τε παρελάβομεν
ἀργυρίου καὶ
τοῦ ἐπὶ τῆς
ἡμετέρας ἀρχῆς
εἰσελθόντος
δραχμαὶ ·𐅇ΧΧΧΧΗ𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂·
ἀργυρίου παντοδα-
ποῦ
εἰς ἀλεξανδρείου
λόγον δραχμὰς
·Δ𐅂· καὶ χρυσοῦς
·ΔΙΙ· καὶ τεττίγια
χρυσᾶ δύο καὶ
φωκαΐδα. κεφάλαιον
ἀναλώματος
δραχμ[αὶ]
ΜΧΧ𐅅ΗΗΔΔ.
τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν
παρεδώκαμεν
ἱεροποιοῖς
τοῖς ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Μενεκράτους
Δημόνωι τῶι Νίκωνος,
Πίστηι τῶι Ξένωνος,
πα-
125
ρόντων βουλευτῶν
καὶ γραμματέων,
τοῦ τῆς πόλεως
Ἀντιπάτρου τοῦ
Δημητρίου καὶ
τοῦ τῶν ἱεροποιῶν
Κλεινοδί[κου
τ]οῦ Κλεινο-
δίκου,
ἀργυρίου
νομίσματος
δραχμὰς ·ΜΜΜΜΧΗΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅁𐅀/·
σὺν ταῖς ·ΜΜΧΧΧΧ𐅅ΗΔΔΔ·
αἷς ὁ δῆμος
ἐψηφίσατο [ἐν
παραδ]όσει παρα-
λαμβάνειν
ἀεὶ τοὺς ἱεροποιοὺς
τοὺς ἐν τέλει
ὄντας vac. καὶ τεττίγια
·ΙΙ· καὶ φωκαΐδα·
καὶ ἀργυρίου
παντοδ[αποῦ
·Δ𐅂· καὶ χρυσ]οῦς
ΔΙ[Ι].
face
B.1
[ἄρχοντ]ος
Ὑψοκλέους
μηνὸς Γαλαξιῶνος
τάδε παρελάβομεν
παρὰ ἱεροποιῶν
τῶν ἱεροποιησάντων
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Χάρμου, Ἀνασχέτου
τοῦ
Θεοξένου,
Ἡγία τοῦ Φωκαιέως,
παρόντωμ βουλευτῶγ
καὶ γραμματέων,
τοῦ τῆς πόλεως
Τιμησιδήμου
τοῦ Ἀντικράτους
καὶ τοῦ τῶν
ἱεροποιῶν
Λυσιμαχίδου
τοῦ Λύσου. [——]
ἐν τῶι Ἀρτεμισίωι·
φιαλῶν ὁ πρῶτος
ῥυμός, ὁλκὴν
τρία ἡμιτάλαντα,
ἀριθμὸς φιαλῶν
·ΗΙΙΙΙ· ὁ δεύτερος
ῥυμός, τρία
ἡμιτάλαν-
τα,
ἀριθμὸς φιαλῶν
·ΗΙΙΙ· ὁ τρίτος
ῥυμός, ὁλκὴν
τρία ἡμιτάλαντα,
ἀριθμὸς φιαλῶν
·ΗΙΙΙΙ· ὁ τέταρτος
ῥυμός, ὁλκὴν
τρία ἡμιτάλαντα,
ἀριθμὸς φιαλῶν
5
ΗΙΙ· ὁ πέμπτος
ῥυμός, ὁλκὴν
τρία ἡμιτάλαντα,
ἀριθμὸς φιαλῶν
·ΗΙΙΙΙ· ὁ ἕκτος
ῥυμός, ὁλκὴν
τρία ἡμιτάλαντα,
ἀριθμὸς φιαλῶν
·ΗΔΔΙ· ὁ ἕβδομος
ῥυ-
μός,
ποτηρίων παντοδαπῶν,
ὁλκὴν τάλαντον,
ἀριθμὸς ποτηρίων
·ΗΔ· ὁ ὄγδοος
ῥυμός, vac. c.12 ὁλκὴ
τάλαντομ μναῖ
δέκα, ἀριθμὸς
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ·
ὁ ἔνατος ῥυμός,
ποτηρίων παντοδαπῶν,
σταθμὸν τάλαντον,
ἀριθμὸς ·𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙ·
ὁ δέκατος ῥυμός,
πυθμένωγ καὶ
ὠτῶγ καὶ τῶν
ἀπὸ
τῆς γεράνου,
ὁλκὴν μναῖ εἴκοσι
δύο· ὁ ἑνδέκατος
ῥυμός, φιαλῶγ
καὶ ἄλλων ἀργυρωμάτων
ἃ καθηιρέθη
προσηλωμένα,
ὁλκὴν
τάλαντον
μναῖ δύο, ἀριθμὸς
πάντων ·𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ·
σὺν τοῖς ἀλαβάστροις
τοῖς ·𐅃· καὶ
τῆι οἰνοχόηι
τῆι παλαιᾶι·
ὁ δωδέκατος
ῥυμός, αἱ προτομαὶ
καὶ
(1)
In the archonship of Hypsokles in the month Galaxion we took over
the following from the hieropoioi who served in the archonship of
Charmos, Anaschetos the son of Theoxenos, Hegias the son of
Phokaios, with the members of the Council present and the secretary
of the city, Timesidemos the son of Antikrates, and of the
hieropoioi, Lysimachides the son of Lysos.
In
the Artemision: the first rhymos of phialai, weight three
half-talents, number of phialai 104; the second rhymos, weight three
half-talents, number of phialai 103; the third rhymos, weight three
half-talents, number of phialai 104; the fourth rhymos, weight three
half-talents, number of phialai (5) 102; the fifth rhymos, weight
three half-talents, number of phialai 104; the sixth rhymos, weight
three half-talents, number of phialai 121; the seventh rhymos of
various cups, weight a talent number of cups 110; the eighth rhymos,
weight one talent, ten mnai, number 89; the ninth rhymos of various
cups, weight a talent, number 67; the tenth rhymos of bases and
handles and the material from the Crane, weight twenty two mnai; the
eleventh rhymos of phialai and other silver objects which were taken
down after having been nailed to the wall, weight one talent two
mnai, number of all 88 with the 5 alabaster boxes and the old
oinochoe; the twelfth rhymos, the protomai and
10
αἱ οἰνοχόαι
καὶ τὰ λεοντόποδα,
ὁλκὴ πάντων μναῖ
τριάκοντα·
τρεισκαιδέκατος
ῥυμός, οἰνοχόαι
δέκα δύο, ὁλκὴ
πασῶν μναῖ ·ΔΔΙΙΙΙ.
vac.
καὶ
τάδε ἄστατα
ἐν τῶι Ἀρτεμισίωι·
θυμιατήριον
ὑπόχαλκον λεπίδα
ἀργυρᾶν ἔχον
συντετριμμένον·
ζώιδια ἀργυρᾶ
δύο, Κλεινοῦς
ἀνάθημα·
ἀετὸς ἀργυροῦς
τῶν ἀρχαίων
διαπεπτωκώς·
φιάλαι ἓξ ἐμ
πλινθείοις,
Ἰκαρίου ἀνάθημα·
φιάλη, Βάκχωνος
ἐπιδόντος Δηλιάσιν
χορεῖα·
φιάλη χρυσόκλυστος,
ἀνάθημα Δηλιάδωγ
χορεῖα· φιάλη,
Δηλιάδων ἀνάθημα
χορεῖα ἐπὶ
ἀρχεθεώρου
Ῥοδίων Θρασυμάχου·
φιάλη, [Φι]λώ-
[τ]α
[Σι]κυωνίου
ἀνάθημα· φιάλη,
Φυλάκου ἀνάθημα·
φιάλη, Λεοντίνων
ἀνάθημα· φιάλη,
Κώιων ἀνάθημα
ἐπὶ ἀρχεθεώρου
Σίμου· φιάλαι
δύο ἐμ πλ[ιν]θεί-
15
ο[ις, Ἀπολ]λοδώρου
ἀνάθημα· φιάλαι
δύο, Στρατονίκης
βασιλίσσης
ἀνάθημα· φιάλαι
δύο, Κώιων ἀνάθημα
ἐπὶ ἀρχεθεώρου
Πολυκλείτου·
φιάλη, Ῥοδί-
ων
[ἀνάθ]ημα ἐπὶ
ἀρχεθεώρου
Ἀγησάνδρου·
φιάλη, Θεοτίμης
ἀνάθημα· φιάλη
ἔκτυπον ἔχουσα
Ἡλίου πρόσωπον,
ἀνάθημα Δηλιάδων
χορεῖα ἐπ’
ἀρχεθεώ-
ρου
Πολυχάρμου·
κρατὴρ ἀργυροῦς,
ὃν ἀνέθηκε
Παρμίσκος, ὁλκὴν
·𐅆ΧΧΧΧ𐅅𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
ἀργύριον παντοδαπὸν
καὶ ἀνδριαντίσκος
καὶ ἠλακά-
ται
καὶ ἀμφιδαῖ
καὶ δελφὶς
καὶ προχοΐδιον
καὶ ἄλλα παντοδαπά,
ὁλκὴ πάντων
δραχμαὶ ·ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλο παντοδαπὸν
ἀργύριον, ὁλκὴ
ΧΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ψίλ̣ια ἀργυρᾶ
δύο καὶ ἀμφιδῆ
ἀποκεκλασμένη,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
πεντόροβος
χαλκοῦς ἐπίχρυσος·
ὀρχομένιοι
ὀβολοὶ ·ΗΗΗΗ[Δ]·
(10)
the oinochoai and the lions’ feet, total weight thirty mnai;
thirteenth rhymos, twelve oinochoai, total weight 24 mnai. [space]
And the following unweighed objects in the Artemision: bronze
censer with silver detail, crushed; two silver figures, dedication
of Kleino; silver eagle fallen off the old (?treasure); six phialai
in plinths, dedication of Ikarios; phiale, gift of Bakchon, choreia
for the Deliades; gilded phiale, dedication of the Deliades,
choreia; phiale dedication of the Deliades, choreia with
Thrasymachos chief theoros of the Rhodians; phiale, dedication of
Philotas of Sikyon; phiale, dedication of Phylakos; phiale,
dedication of the Leontini; phiale, dedication of the Koans, with
Simos chief theoros; two phialai in plinths, (15) dedication of
Apollodoros; two phialai, dedication of queen Stratonike; two
phialai, dedication of the Koans, with Polykleitos chief theoros;
phiale, dedication of the Rhodians with Agesandros chief theoros;
phiale, dedication of Theotime; figured phiale with head of Helios,
dedication of the Deliades with Polycharmos chief theoros; silver
krater, which Parmiskos dedicated, weight 9572; various silver,
statuette and spindles and bracelets and dolphin and small pitcher
and various other objects, total weight 444 drachmas; various other
silver, weight 1289; two silver armlets and bracelet fragment,
weight 74; gilded bronze peony; 400+ Orchomenian obols;
20
ἀργυρίου ἀττικοῦ
καὶ ἀλεξανδρείου
δοκίμου καὶ
χαλκοῦ ἐπιχωρίου
〚—
—〛 δραχμὰς
·𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ·
αἰγιναῖοι καὶ
κρητικοὶ στατῆρες
ἕνδεκα καὶ κο-
ρίνθιοι
στατῆρες δύο
καὶ μαυσσώλεια
τετράδραχμα
ἐννέα· νάξια
τετράδραχμα
δύο καὶ φωκαΐδα
καὶ ὀβολὸν
φωκαϊκόν· νομίσματος
πα[ν]-
τοδαποῦ
ὁλκὴν ·ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂.
vac. c.15 καὶ τάδε χρυσᾶ
ἐν τῶι Ἀρτεμισίωι·
ὅρμος ὁ πρὸς
τῶι θρόνωι ἠρτημένος,
οὗ οἱ γρῦπες
οἱ πέντε καὶ
ὁ
λέων
ὁ τὸν ταῦρογ
κατέχων, ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ ·ΗΗΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ὅρμος λογχωτός,
ὃν ἀνέθηκε Σιμίχη
Μυκονία, ἄστατος·
ἀριθμὸς λογχίων
·𐅄ΔΔΔΙΙ· {ὅρμος
λογ}
ὅρμος
λογχωτός, ὃν
ἀνέθηκε Δημοστράτη,
ἄστατος· ἀριθμὸς
λογχίων ·𐅄ΔΔΙΙΙΙ·
τραγίσκοι χρυσοῖ
<ΙΙ> ἄστατοι·
δακτύλιος
περίχρυσος,
ὃν ἀνέθηκε
25
Στράτων Αἰτωλός,
ἄστατος· ἀσπιδίσκη
χρυσῆ, Αἰσχυλίος
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ ·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
φιάλη ῥαβδωτὴ
χρυσῆ τετρυπημένη,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅄ΔΔ̣[𐅃𐅂]·
ψίλιον
στρεπτόν, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
ἐπιχύτης χρυσοῦς,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·ΗΔ𐅂𐅂· ἐνώτια
χρυσᾶ δύο, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅃ΙΙΙΙΙ·
θηρίκλειο[ς]
κύλιξ,
ἀνάθημα Πτολεμαίου,
ὁλκὴ ·ΗΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
φιάλιον Δημοσῶντος
Μυκονίου ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· φιάλαι
χρυσαῖ λεῖαι
ἑπτά,
ὁλκὴ τῆς πρώτης
δραχμαὶ ·ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
τῆς δευτέρας
ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
·ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂· τῆς
τρίτης ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ ·ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
τῆς τετάρτης
ὁλκ[ὴ] <δραχμαὶ>
ΗΔΔΔΔ·
τῆς πέμπτης ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ ·ΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τῆς ἕκτης ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ ·ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τῆς ἑβδόμης
ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
·ΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
φιάλαι
(20)
Attic silver and genuine Alexandrian and local bronze (coin),
drachmas 76 3 ob; eleven Aeginetan and Cretan staters and two
Corinthian staters and nine Maussolean tetradrachms, two Naxian
tetradrachms and a Phocean and a Phocean obol; various coin, weight
27 [space] And the
following gold (objects) in the Artemision: necklace fastened
to the throne with the five griffins and the lion holding bull,
weight drachmas 213; lanceolate necklace which Simiche of Mykonos
dedicated, unweighed, number of spearheads 82; {lanc necklace}
lanceolate necklace, which Demostrate dedicated, unweighed, number
of spearheads 74; small gold goats unweighed; gilded ring which (25)
Straton of Aetolia dedicated unweighed; gold disk, dedication of
Aischylis, weight drachmas 4; gold rayed phiale pierced, weight 70+;
twisted armlet, weight drachmas 9 5 ob; gold beaker, weight drachmas
112; two gold earrings, weight drachmas 5 5 ob; Therikleian kylix,
dedication of Ptolemy, weight 236; phialion, dedication of Demoson
of Mykonos, weight drachmas 28; seven smooth gold phialai, weight of
the first drachmas 146; weight of the second drachmas 142; weight of
the third drachmas 142; weight of the fourth 140; weight of the
fifth drachmas 139; weight of the sixth drachmas 144; weight of the
seventh drachmas 148; six
30
καρυωταὶ ἕξ,
ὁλκὴν ἡ πρώτη
δραχμὰς ·ΗΗ𐅂𐅂·
ἡ δευτέρα ὁλκὴν
·ΗΗ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἡ τρίτη
ὁλκὴν ·Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃·
ἡ τετάρτη ὁλκὴν
·Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἡ πέμ-
πτη
ὁλκὴν ·ΗΗ𐅂· ἡ
ἕκτη ὁλκὴν
·Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
φιάλη χρυσῆ
καρυωτή, Ναξίων
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
·ΗΗ𐅂· φιάλιον
χρυσοῦν λεῖον
τετρυπημένον,
ὁλ-
κὴ
·ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἀνεπίγραφον·
φιάλιον χρυσοῦν
ῥαβδωτὸν τετρυπημένον,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅄Δ𐅃·
λευκοῦ χρυσίου
φιάλιον ῥαβδωτόν,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·𐅄·
οἰνοχόαι
δύο χρυσαῖ,
ὁλκὴ τῆς πρώτης
δραχμαὶ ·𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
τῆς δευτέρας
ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
·𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃·
πέταλα χρυσᾶ
πεντήκοντα καὶ
{ο}
ὀκτὼ
καὶ ἀσπιδίσκης
κλασμάτιον καὶ
στλεγγίς, ὁλκὴν
πάντων δραχμαὶ
·ΗΗΗΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
κανοῦγ χρυσοῦν
λεῖον ὦτα καὶ
πυθμένα ἀργυρᾶ
ἔχον, ἐπ[ι]-
35
γέγραπται ὁλκὴ
τοῦ χρυσίου
δραχμαὶ ·ΧΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τοῦ ἀργυρίου
ὁλκὴν ·𐅅ΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
κλιμάκιον ξύλινομ
περίχρυσον
ὄφεσιν ἀργυροῖς
δ[ιεζ]ω-
μένον,
ἄστατον· θυμιατήριον
φιαλωτὸν μέγα
περίχρυσον, ὧι
ἐπιγέγραπται
ὁλκὴ τοῦ χρυσίου
δραχμαὶ ·𐅅ΗΗΗΔΔΙΙ·
τοῦτο οὐκ ἐστάθη·
ἄλλο θυμιατή-
ριον
ἔλαττον φιαλωτὸν
ἐπίχρυσον
ἀνεπίγραφον·
τοῦτο οὐκ ἐστάθη·
κανοῦν ὀρθηλὸν
ἐπίχρυσον, ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχον σταθμὸν
δραχμᾶς
ΧΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅁·
χρυσίον [λ]ευκόν,
καὶ ἐν τούτωι
στατῆρες κυζικηνοὶ
δύο καὶ φωκαΐς,
ὁλκὴ τούτων
πάντων δραχμαὶ
·ΗΗΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ὅρμος ἀμφορέ-
ων,
ὁλκὴν σὺν [τ]οῖς
λίνοις δραχμαὶ
·Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἀριθμὸς
ἀμφορέων ·𐅄𐅃ΙΙΙ·
στλεγγὶς καὶ
στεφάνωγ κλάσματα
χρυσᾶ, ὁλκὴν
·ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
πεντόροβο[ς]
(30)
knobbed phialai, the first weight drachmas 202; the second weight
204; the third weight 195; the fourth weight 193; the fifth weight
201; the sixth weight 196; knobbed gold phiale, dedication of the
Naxians, weight 201; smooth gold phialion pierced weight 28,
uninscribed; rayed gold phialion pierced weight 65; rayed phialion
of white gold, weight drachmas 50; two gold oinochoai, weight of the
first drachmas 697.2; weight of the second drachmas 685; fifty eight
gold leaves and part of a disk and a ribbon, total weight drachmas
319; smooth gold basket with silver handles and base, the (35)
weight of the gold is inscribed drachmas 1193, weight of the silver
836; gilded wooden ladder girt with silver snakes, unweighed; large
gilded censer with phiale, on which the weight of the gold is
inscribed 820 dr 2 ob, this was not weighed; another smaller gilded
censer with phiale, uninscribed, this was not weighed; gilded
straight-sided basket with inscription weight drachmas 1232 dr 2 1/2
ob; white gold including two Kyzikene and Phocean stater, total
weight drachmas 328; necklace of amphoras, weight with the strings
drachmas 18, number of amphoras 58; ribbon and pieces of gold
crowns, weight 24 dr 3 ob; gold peony,
40
χρυσοῦς, ὁλκὴν
·𐅂· στεφάνωγ
κλάσματα χρυσᾶ
καὶ ἀσπιδίσκαι
καὶ στλεγγίδωγ
κλάσματα καὶ
ἄλλα παντοδαπὰ
χρυσία, ὁλκὴ
πάντων δρα-
χμαι
·ΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
μῆλα χρυσᾶ, ἔνια
πλήρη γῆς, ἀριθμὸν
·ΔΔΔΙΙΙΙ· καὶ
ἀνθεμίου ὑπαργύρου
κλάσμα, ὁλκὴ
τούτων ·ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙ.
περόναι χρυσαῖ
καὶ
τούτωγ
κλάσματα, ἀριθμὸν
·ΔΔΙΙΙ· ἄστατοι·
ὅρμος ὁ Ἐριφύλης
χρυσοῦς, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·Η𐅄𐅃𐅂·
ἀσπιδίσκη καὶ
φυκία δύο καὶ
περιδειρίδια
χρυσᾶ, ὁλκὴν
πάντων
σὺν τοῖς λίνοις
δραχμαὶ ·Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
δακτύλιοι
χρυσοῖ ἕξ, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
σφραγίδια διάλιθα
δύο ἄστατα·
δαρεικοὶ χρυσοῖ
ὀκτώ· χρυσ̣<ίου>
ὁλκὴ
·𐅃ΙΙΙ· ῥοαὶ
χρυσαῖ πέντε
ἄστατοι καὶ
μῆλον καὶ πέταλα
χρυσᾶ ἄστατα·
ἄμπελος χρυσῆ
ἄστατος· σφραγὶς
μαράγδου δεδεμένη
σειρᾶι χρυ-
45
σῆι, Ἀπολλοδώρου
ἀνάθημα, ἄστατος·
ὅρμος ἀμφορέων
ἐφ’ οὗ ὁ Τριπτόλεμος
καὶ ἄνθεμα καὶ
ἀσπιδίσκη καὶ
ἐνώτια καὶ στλεγγὶς
χρυσᾶ, ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ
·ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης ὁ παρ’
Ἀμεινώνδα ἀπελθών,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·𐅄ΔΔ· δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦ[ς] Ἀρτεμίσιον
ἔχων
ἐπίσημον,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·𐅃ΙΙΙ· δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς λεῖος,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς, ὁλκὴν
·𐅂𐅂· ἐπίσημον
ἔχων Ἔρωτα·
δακτύλιος
σιδη-
ροῦς
χρυσίωι ἐνδεδεμένος
ἄστατος· σφραγὶς
χρυσίωι [ἐνδ]εδεμένη
ἄστατος σημεῖον
ἔχουσα τραγέλαφον·
κυλινδρίσκος
χρυσένδετος
ἄστα-
τος·
σφραγὶς χρυσένδετος
ἄστατο<ς>·
λυγγούριον
κίρκον ἔχο[ν
χ]ρυσοῦν ἄστατον·
σφραγίδιον
χρυσένδετον
ἄστατον· σφραγίδιον
κίρκον ἔχον
χρυσοῦν
(40)
weight 1; pieces of gold crowns and disks and pieces of ribbons and
various other gold objects, total weight drachmas 344; gold apples,
some filled with ointment, number 34, and piece of a gilded silver
flower, weight of these 40 dr 3 ob; gold pins and pieces of these,
number 23, unweighed; the gold necklace of Eriphyle, weight drachmas
156; gold disk and two rouge jars and necklaces, total weight with
their strings drachmas 14 dr 3 ob; six gold rings, weight drachmas
8; two stone sealrings, unweighed; eight gold darics, weight of
go(ld) 5 dr 3 ob; five gold pomegranates unweighed and an apple and
gold leaves unweighed; gold grapevine unweighed; emerald seal bound
with gold cord, (45) dedication of Apollodoros, unweighed; necklace
of amphoras with Triptolemos on it and flowers and disk and earrings
and gold ribbon, weight drachmas 43; gold laurel crown coming from
Ameinondas, weight drachmas 70; gold ring with image of Artemis,
weight drachmas 5 dr 3 ob; smooth gold ring, weight 4 dr 3 ob; gold
ring, weight 2, with image of Eros; iron ring bound in gold,
unweighed; seal bound in gold unweighed with image of goat-stag;
small cylinder bound in gold, unweighed; seal bound in gold
unweigh(ed); amber with gold circle unweighed; small seal bound in
gold unweighed; small seal with gold circle
50
ἄστατον· σφραγίδιον
ἀργυρίωι ἐνδεδεμένον·
σφραγίδιον
ὑάλινον χρυσένδετον·
ἀνθέμια καὶ
ὀφίδιογ καὶ
κίρκος καὶ
ἄλλα παντοδαπά,
ὁλκὴν ·ΔΙ·
δακτύλιος
χρυ<σ>οῦς ἐν
ταινιδίωι ἐνδεδεμένος
ξυλίνωι, Καλλικρίτης
ἀνάθημα· στεφανίσκοι
χρυσοῖ δύο,
ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς
μυρρίνης, ἀνάθημα
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
μυρρίνης, Βερενίκης
ὑπὲρ Πτολεμαίου
ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·𐅄ΔΔ𐅂· στέφανος
δάφνης χρυσοῦς,
ὃν ἀνέθηκε
Πευκέστης, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄Δ𐅃·
στέφανος μυρρίνης
χρυσοῦς,
Δηλιάδων
ἀνάθημα, χορεῖα
Νικοκρέοντος
ἐπιδόντος, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος δάφνης
χρυσοῦς, Καλλικράτους
ἀνάθημ[α],
55
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·ΔΔ· στέφανος
δάφνης χρυσοῦς,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·ΔΔ𐅂𐅂· Ἰωμίλκου
ἀνάθημα· στέφανος
δάφνης χρυσοῦς,
ἀνάθημα Δηλιάδων,
χο-
ρεῖα
Φιλοκλέους
ἐπιδόντος, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·ΔΔΔΔ𐅂·
στέφανος κιττοῦ
χρυσοῦς, ἀνάθημα
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·ΗΔΔΔΔ· στέ-
φανος
χρυσοῦς δάφνης,
Δημητρίου βασιλέως
〚—
—〛 ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς, Δηλιάδων
ἀνάθημα, χορεῖα
Μήτρωνος
ἐπιδόντος, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης, Δηλιάδων
ἀνάθημα, χορεῖα
Κλείτου ἐπιδόντος,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ·
στέφανος μυρρίνης
χρυσοῦς, Λυσάνδρου
Λακεδαιμονίου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
σὺν τῶι ῥόδωι·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης {π},
(50)
unweighed; small seal bound in silver; small glass seal bound in
gold; flowers and small snake and hawk and various other objects,
weight 10 dr 1 ob; gold ring bound in wood on string, dedication of
Kallikrite; two small gold crowns, weight drachmas 8; gold myrtle
crown, dedication of king Ptolemy, weight drachmas 193; gold myrtle
crown, dedication of Berenike on behalf of Ptolemy, weight drachmas
71; gold laurel crown which Peukestes dedicated, weight drachmas 65;
gold myrtle crown, dedication of the Deliades, with Nikokreon giving
the choreia, weight drachmas 44; gold laurel crown dedication of
Kallikrates, (55) weight drachmas 20; gold laurel crown, weight
drachmas 22, dedication of Iomilkos; gold laurel crown, dedication
of the Deliades, with Philokles giving the choreia, weight drachmas
41; gold ivy crown, dedication of king Ptolemy, weight drachmas 140;
gold laurel crown, dedication of king Demetrios, weight drachmas 67;
gold crown, dedication of the Deliades, with Metron giving the
choreia, weight drachmas 72; gold laurel crown, dedication of the
Deliades, with Kleitos giving the choreia, weight drachmas 90; gold
myrtle crown, dedication of Lysander of Sparta, weight drachmas 58,
with the rose; gold laurel crown,
60
Κρατεροῦ ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς, Φιλοκλέους
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄ΔΔΔΔ·
ἀνδριαντίσκος
χρυσοῦς
σχέλος
οὐδὲ χεῖρα
ἔχων, ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
·𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ· χρυσίου
ἀσήμου ὁλκὴν
·𐅂𐅂𐅂· δακτύλιοι
καὶ ἐνώτια ἀργυρᾶ
ἀνειρμένα· ἡ
καλουμένη γέρανος
καὶ ὁ ὅρ-
μος
ὁ ὑποτείνων ὑπὸ
τὴγ γέρανον,
ἄστατα· ὁ κόσμος
ὁ τοῦ ἀγάλματος
τοῦ τὴν ἐρειᾶν
ἐσθῆτα ἔχοντος,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
περόνη ἀργυρᾶ
ἐπί-
χρυσος,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·Δ𐅃· δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς, Πολυαράτου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅂𐅂𐅂·
φιάλη ἀργυρᾶ
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
Χοροιθίδος
ἀνάθημα, ἄστατον·
φιάλη,
Θυεσταδῶγ
καὶ Ὠκυνειδῶν
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·Η· ἀντὶ
τῆς θηρικλείου
τῆς ἀποβληθείσης
ἧς ἀνέθηκε
Πύθειος, φιάλη
ὁλκὴν
65
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂.
{²vac.}²
ἐν
τῶι προδόμωι
τοῦ νεὼ τοῦ
Ἀπόλλωνος·
ἄστατα· φιάλη
ἀργυρᾶ ἐμ πλινθείωι.
τῆς πόλεως τῆς
Κώιων ἀνάθημα
ἐπὶ ἀρχεθεώρου
Ἀρά-
του·
φιάλη ἔκτυπον
ἔχουσα ἅρμα
καὶ Νίκην καὶ
ζώιδια δύο,
Ἡρακλείδου
ἀνάθημα· φιάλη
λεία ὀμφαλὸν
ἐπίχρυσον ἔχουσα,
Ῥοδίων ἀνάθημα
ἐπὶ
ἀρχεθεώρου
Πολυαράτου·
φιάλη ἐπίχρυσος
ῥαβδωτή, Τιμάνθους
Ῥοδίου ἀνάθημα·
φιάλη λεία
ὀμφαλὸν ἐπίχρυσον
ἔχουσα, Ῥοδίων
[ἀν]άθημα
ἐπὶ ἀρχεθεώρου
Φρασίλα· φιάλη
ἔκτυπος διάχρυσος,
Διοκλέους
Κώιου ἀνάθημα·
φιάλιον Πυρρίου
ἀνάθημα· φιάλη
λεία ὀμφαλὸ[ν]
(60)
dedication of Krateros, weight drachmas 58; gold crown, dedication
of Philokles, weight drachmas 90; gold statuette with neither leg
nor hand, weight drachmas 6 dr 3 ob; unstamped gold weight 3; rings
and linked silver earrings; the so-called Crane and the necklace
stretched under the Crane, unweighed; the ornament of the statue
with the wool cloths, weight drachmas 87; gilded silver pin, weight
drachmas 15; gold ring, dedication of Polyaratos, weight drachmas 3;
silver phiale in plinth, dedication of Choroithis, unweighed; phiale
dedication of the Thyestadai and Okyneidai, weight drachmas 100; the
phiale replacing the discarded Therikleian which Pytheios dedicated,
weight (65) drachmas 96. [space]
In
the prodomos of the Temple of Apollo, unweighed: silver phiale
in plinth, dedication of the city of the Koans with Aratos chief
theoros; phiale with image of chariot, Nike and two figures,
dedication of Herakleides; smooth phiale with gilded boss,
dedication of the Rhodians with Polyaratos chief theoros; gilded
rayed phiale, dedication of Timanthes of Rhodes; smooth phiale with
gilded boss, dedication of the Rhodians with Phrasilas chief
theoros; gilded figured phiale, dedication of Diokles of Cos;
phialion dedication of Pyrrias; smooth phiale with
70
[ἐπίχ]ρυσον ἔχουσα,
ἀρχεθεώρου
Ἱππαγόρα καὶ
θεωρῶν ἀνάθημα·
φιάλη, Ῥοδίων
θεωρῶν ἀνάθημα
ἐπὶ ἀρχεθεώρου
Ἀκεστία· φιάλη
λογχωτὴ
[τῆς
Κα]λυμνίων πόλεως
ἀνάθημα ἐπὶ
Πολυμήδους
ἄρχοντος· φιάλη
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
Ἀρχία Καλυμνίου
ἀνάθημα· φιάλαι
τρεῖς, Στησίλεω
ἀνάθημα·
[φιάλη]
λεία, Νικίππου
ἀνάθημα· φιάλη
καρυωτὴ ἔκτυπος,
Ἀρταπάτου ἀνάθημα·
φιάλη λεία,
Δηλιάδων ἀνάθημα,
χορεῖα Ῥοδίων
θεωρῶν ἐπιδόντων
[ἐπὶ
ἀρχ]εθεώρου
Ἀγησιδάμου·
φιάλαι καρυωταὶ
δύο ἔκτυπα ζῶια
ἔχουσαι, τῶγ
Χαρμίδου θυγατέρων
ἀνάθημα· φιάλη
λεία ὀμφαλὸν
ἐπίχρυσον ἔχουσα,
[Ῥοδίω]ν
θεωρῶν ἀνάθημα
ἐπὶ ἀρχεθεώρου
Φίλωνος· φιάλη
καρυωτὴ ἔκτυπον
ἔχουσα ζώιδιον,
τῆς πόλεως τῆς
Κώιων ἀνάθημα,
τῶι Ἀπόλλωνι
ἀ-
75
[παρχ]ήν· φιάλη
λεία, Ἀμμωνίου
ἀνάθημα· φιάλη
λογχωτὴ κεχρυσωμένη,
Ἀριστοφίλου
Ῥοδίου ἀνάθημα·
φιάλη ἐν ἐλάφου
προτομῆι, Ἐτεάρχου
ἀνάθημ[α]·
[φιάλη]
ἐπάργυρος ἔκτυπα
ζῶια ἔχουσα
προσηλωμένα,
Ἀρχεστράτου
ἀνάθημα· κύρβη
ἀργυρᾶ ἐν σανιδίωι
προσηλωμένη,
Κοσκάλου
ἀνάθημα· ῥόδο[ν]
[ἀργυ]ροῦν,
Δεξικράτους
ἀνάθημα· τύπος
ἀργυροῦς,
Ὀνητορίδου
ἀνάθημα· περικεφαλαία
σιδηρᾶ περιηργυρωμένη,
Λεωνίδου
ἀνάθημα· κρατῆρε[ς]
[ἀργ]υροῖ
μεγάλοι δύο
ῥαβδωτοί, βασιλίσσης
Στρατονίκης
ἀνάθημα, ἄστατοι·
τριήρης ἀργυρᾶ,
βασιλέως Σελεύκου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·Χ𐅅ΔΔ
[Δ]Δ{Δ}𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
θυμιατήριον
ἐν [ναΐ]σκωι
ἀργυροῦν, Στιλπύριος
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
κύλικες τηιουργεῖς
ἀργυρένδετοι
δύο, Κτήσωνος
ἀνά-
(70)
gilded boss, dedication of Hippagoras chief theoros and the theoroi;
phiale dedication of the Rhodian theoroi with Akestias chief
theoros; lanceolate phiale, dedication of the city of the Kalymnians
with Polymedes archon; phiale in plinth dedication of Archias of
Kalymnos; three phialai, dedication of Stesileos; smooth [phiale]
dedication of Nikippos; knobbed figured phiale, dedication of
Artapatos; smooth phiale dedication of the Deliades, with the
Rhodian theoroi giving the choreia with Agesidamos chief theoros;
two knobbed phialai with relief figures, dedication of the daughters
of Charmides; smooth phiale with gilded boss, dedication of the
[Rhodia]n theoroi with Philon chief theoros; knobbed phiale with
relief figure, dedication of the city of the Koans, aparche to
Apollo; (75) smooth phiale, dedication of Ammonios; gilded
lanceolate phiale, dedication of Aristophilos of Rhodes; phiale with
deer head, dedication of Etearchos; silvered [phiale] with relief
figures riveted on, dedication of Archestratos; silver kyrbe riveted
to board, dedication of Koskalos; silver rose, dedication of
Dexikrates; silver image, dedication of Onetorides; silvered iron
helmet, dedication of Leonidas; two large rayed silver kraters,
dedication of queen Stratonike, unweighed; silver trireme,
dedication of king Seleukos, weight drachmas 1534+; silver censer in
little shrine, dedication of Stilpurios, weight drachmas 8; two
silvered Tean kylixes, dedication of Kteson,
80
[θ]ημα, ἄστατοι·
πτολεμαϊκὰ
τετράδραχμα
δύο καὶ ἀρβυλικοὺς
ὀβολοὺς δύο·
ἀργυρίου
παντοδαποῦ
ἐπισήμου, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄·
δακτύλιοι
σιδηρ[οῖ]
[ὑ]πάργυροι
·ΗΗ𐅃ΙΙ· δακτύλιοι
ὑπόχρυσοι σιδηροῖ
·𐅃ΙΙΙΙ· δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς ἀπείρων
Ὀνασικράτους
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
·𐅂ΙΙΙ· δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς
[σ]υντεθλασμένος,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς ἀνθράκιον
ἔχων, Σαπφοῦς
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
·𐅂𐅂𐅂· χρυσίου
ἀσήμου παντοδαποῦ
ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ
·Η𐅃· σὺν τῶι
κλάσματι τῶι
τοῦ θυμιατηρίου·
χρυσοῦς, Νικολάου
ἀνάθημα· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς, ὃν
ἀνέθηκε Πευκέστης,
ὁλκὴν σὺν τῶ[ι]
λίνωι
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
κιττοῦ, βασιλέως
Πτολεμαίου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·ΗΔΔΔΔΙΙΙ·
σὺν τῶι λίνωι·
στέφαν[ος]
85
{στέφανος} δάφνης
χρυσοῦς, βασιλέως
Δημητρίου ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος δάφνης
χρυσοῦς, Ἀντιπάτρου
ἀνάθημα. ὁλ[κὴν]
[δρ]αχμαὶ
·ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς,
βασιλέως Σιδωνίων
Φιλοκλέους
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος δάφνης
χρυσοῦς,
Πολυκλείτου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙ·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς,
Φάρακος Λακεδαιμονίου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄· σὺν
τῶι ξύλωι [καὶ]
τῶι
λίνωι· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς κιττοῦ,
τοῦ δήμου τοῦ
Δηλίων ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος μυρρίνης
χρυσοῦς, Πνυταγόρου
ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂· στέφανος
δάφνης χρυσοῦς,
Ξενοφάντου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος δάφνης
χρυσοῦς, Καλλικρ[ά]-
(80)
unweighed; two Ptolemaic tetradrachms and two arbylic obols; various
stamped silver, weight drachmas 50; silvered iron rings 207; gilded
iron rings 9; gold apeiron ring, dedication of Onasikrates, weight 1
dr 3 ob; crushed gold ring, weight 3 dr 5 ob; gold ring with garnet,
dedication of Sappho, weight 3; various unstamped gold, weight
drachmas 105; gold (coin) with the piece of the censer, dedication
of Nikolaos; gold crown which Peukestes dedicated, weight with the
string drachmas 69; gold ivy crown, dedication of king Ptolemy,
weight drachmas 140 3 ob with the string; gold laurel crown (85)
{crown}, dedication of king Demetrios, weight drachmas 88; gold
laurel crown, dedication of Antipater, weight drachmas 47; gold
crown, dedication of Philokles king of the Sidonians, weight
drachmas 97; gold laurel crown, dedication of Polykleitos, weight
drachmas 90 3 ob; gold crown dedication of Pharax of Sparta, weight
drachmas 50 with the wood and string; gold ivy crown, dedication of
the Delian demos, weight drachmas 98; gold myrtle crown dedication
of Pnytagoras, weight drachmas 32; gold laurel crown, dedication of
Xenophantos, weight drachmas 64; gold laurel crown, dedication of
Kallikrates,
90
[τ]ους ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
μυρρίνης, Νικοκρέοντος
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
στέφανοι χρυσοῖ
δύο ἐπὶ <τοῦ>
αὐτοῦ
ξύλου ἀνεπίγραφοι,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς,
Ἰωμίλκου ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· στέφανος
ἀμπέλου χρυ-
σοῦς,
Λυσάνδρου
Λακεδαιμονίου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος δάφνης
χρυσοῦς, Λυσάνδρου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·ΔΔ𐅃𐅂[𐅂]·
στέφανος
χρυσοῦς, [Κ]άρπου
καὶ Ἀδράστου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλ[κ]ὴν
δραχμαὶ ·ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
μυρρίνης, Ἀνδροκλέους
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ
·ΔΔΔ𐅂· σὺν τῶι
λίνωι· στέφανος
μυρρίνης, Τιμασιπόλιος
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
ἐπὶ τοῦ ὑπερθύρου
95
προσηλωμένος,
ἄστατος, Τιμοκράτους
ἀνάθημα· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς δάφνης,
ὧι τὸ ἄγαλμα
ἐστεφάνωται,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
στρεπτὸν
χρυσοῦν
vac. πρὸς τῶι τοίχωι,
Δάτιδος ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
·ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂· στέφανοι
δάφνης χρυσοῖ
δύο πρὸς τῶι
τοίχωι, ὁλκὴν
τοῦ πρώτου δραχ-
μαὶ
·𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
τοῦ ἑτέρου
στεφάνου ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
χρυσίου παντοδαποῦ
ὁλκὴν δραχμαὶ
·𐅃𐅂𐅂· [σ]ὺν τῆι
σφραγῖδι τῆι
ἀργυρᾶι· 〚—
—〛
κηρύκειον
ἀργυροῦν, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ
〚—
—〛·
κηρύκειον
ἀργυροῦν· φοίνικα,
ὁλκὴν δραχμαί·
vac. στλεγγὶς
χρυσῆ, Γλαύκου
ἀνάθημα, ἄστατος·
μάχαιρα
ἱππική, Θυμώιδου
ἀνάθημα· κολεὸν
μαχαίρας ἱππικῆς,
Τιμέου ἀνάθημα·
θυμιατήριον
χαλκοῦν· κανοῦμ
μέγα χαλκοῦν·
(90)
weight drachmas 49; gold myrtle crown, dedication of Nikokreon,
weight drachmas 67; two gold crowns on the same wood, uninscribed,
weight drachmas 48; gold crown, dedication of Iomilkos, weight
drachmas 24; gold grapevine crown, dedication of Lysander of Sparta,
weight drachmas 69; gold laurel crown, dedication of Lysander,
weight drachmas 26+; gold crown, dedication of Karpos and Adrastos,
weight drachmas 33; gold myrtle crown, dedication of Androkles,
weight drachmas 21+ with the string; myrtle crown, dedication of
Timasipolis, weight drachmas 18; gold crown nailed to the lintel,
(95) unweighed, dedication of Timokrates; gold laurel crown with
which the statue is crowned, weight drachmas 146; gold collar
[space] on the wall, dedication of Datis, weight drachmas 36; two
gold laurel crowns on the wall, weight of the first drachmas 63 3
ob, weight of the second crown drachmas 48; various gold weight
drachmas 7 with the silver seal; silver staff, weight drachmas
[erased]; silver staff; palm, weight drachmas [space]; gold ribbon,
dedication of Glaukos, unweighed; equestrian sword, dedication of
Thymoides; scabbard for the equestrian sword, dedication of Timeos;
bronze censer; large bronze basket;
100
τόξα κρητικὰ
δύο καὶ φαρέτραι
ζωιωταί· ὀβελίσκους
·𐅃ΙΙΙ· χαλκοῦ
ἐπισήμου παντοδαποῦ
ἐν ὑδρίαι καὶ
στάμνωι χαλκ[οῖ]ς,
ὁλκὴν σὺν τοῖς
ἀγγεί-
ο[ις]
μναῖ ·ΙΙ· φυκίον
χρυσοῦν πρὸς
τῶι στυλί[σ]κωι,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
ἱμάντι ·𐅂· δακτύλιος
Φωκαΐδος λόγχην
ἔχων σημεῖον·
σφραγῖδα ἐπίχρυσον·
[κ]υλίκιον
ἀργυροῦν, ὁλκὴν
·ΙΙΙ· ἐσχαρὶς
ἀργυρᾶ, Βουλομάγας
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
σὺν τῶι ἐμπύρωι
δραχμαὶ ·𐅅Η. vac.
[ἐν]
τῶι νεῶι οὗ τὰ
ἑπτά· ἐν τῶι
προδόμωι· φιάλη
λεία ἐμ πλινθείωι,
Καλλικλέους
ἀνάθημα· φιάλαι
τρεῖς ἐμ πλινθείωι
ἔκτυποι, Ταυρομενι-
[τῶν
ἀν]άθημα· φιάλη
λεία ἐμ πλινθείωι,
Εὐθυδίκου
ἀνάθημα· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς προσηλωμένος,
Αὐτοκλέους
ἀνάθημα, ἔχων
φύλλα ·ΔΔΙΙ,
105
[κόκκου]ς ·𐅃ΙΙΙ·
στέφανος δάφνης
χρυσοῦς, Νικίου
ἀνάθημα, ἀριθμὸς
φύλλων ·ΔΔΔΔΙΙ·
κόκκοι ·ΔΙΙΙΙ.
ἐν τῶι νεῶι·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
συντεθλα-
[σμένος]
ἐγ κιβωτίωι,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλος στέφανος
χρυσοῦς συντεθλασμένος
ἐν τῶι αὐτῶι
κιβωτίωι, ὁλκὴν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄ΔΔ𐅂·
φιάλ[αι]
[ΔΔΔ,
ὁ]λκὴν πᾶσαι
·ΧΧ𐅅Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
κυμβία τέτταρα,
ὁλκὴν ·Η𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τῶγ κρεμαμένων
στεφάνω[ν] ὁ πρῶτος,
ὁλκὴν δραχμὰς
·Η𐅁𐅀· ὁ δεύτερος,
ὁλ-
[κὴν]
·𐅄̣ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὁ τρίτος, ὁλκὴν
·𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
ὁ τέταρτος, ὁλκὴν
·𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ὁ πέμπτος ἐπιγραφὴν
εἶχεν ·ΗΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
σταθεὶς δὲ
εἵλκυσεν
[Η]ΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
ὁ ἕκτος ἐπιγραφὴν
μὲν εἶχεν ·𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
σταθεὶς δ’
εἵλκυσεν ·𐅄Δ𐅃·
ὁ ἕβδομος, ὁλκὴν
·𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὁ ὄγδοος, ὁλκὴν
·𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂· ὁ ἔνατος,
ὁλκὴν
(100)
two Cretan bows and figured quivers; 8 skewers; various stamped
bronze in bronze hydria and stamnos, weight with the containers 2
mnai; gold rouge jar on the peg weight with the cord 1; ring with
Phocean spearhead as stamp; gilded seal; small silver kylix, weight
3 ob; silver brazier, dedication of Boulomagas, weight with the rack
600 [space]
In
the Temple of the Seven. In the prodomos. smooth phiale
in plinth, dedication of Kallikles; three figured phialai in plinth,
dedication of the Tauromenitans; smooth phiale in plinth, dedication
of Euthydikos; nailed gold crown, dedication of Autokles, with 22
leaves, 8 (105) [berr]ies; gold laurel crown, dedication of Nikias,
number of leaves 42, berries 14. In the temple. crushed gold
crown in chest, weight 97; another crushed gold crown in the same
chest, weight drachmas 71; [...] phialai, total weight 2519; four
kymbia, weight 158; of the hanging crowns the first, weight drachmas
100 3/4 ob; the second, weight 83 dr 3 ob; the third, weight 68 dr 5
ob; the fourth, weight 67 dr 4 ob; the fifth had the inscription 113
dr 3 ob but when weighed it displaced 22+; the sixth had the
inscription 63, but when weighed it displaced 65; the seventh,
weight 69 dr 3 ob; the eighth, weight 72; the ninth, weight
110
[𐅄]Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· ὁ
δέκατος ἐπιγραφὴν
μὲν εἶχεν ·𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
σταθεὶς δ’
εἵ<λ>κυσεν
δραχμὰς ·𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
ὁ ἑνδέκατος
ἐπιγραφὴν μὲν
εἶχεν ·𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
σταθε<ὶς>
δ’
εἵλκυσεν
·𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· ὁ
δωδέκατος,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅄ΔΔΔΙΙ𐅁·
ὁ τρίτος καὶ
δέκατος εἶχε
μὲν ἐπιγραφὴν
·𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
σταθεὶς δ’
εἵλκυσεν
·𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὁ τέταρτος
{τος}
καὶ δέκατος,
ὁλκὴν ·ΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
ὁ πέμπτος καὶ
δέκατος εἶχε
μὲν ἐπιγραφὴν
·𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
εἵλκυσεν δὲ
σταθεὶς
·𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὁ ἑκκαιδέκατος,
ὁλ-
[κ]ὴν
·ΗΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ὁ
ἑπτακαιδέκατος,
ὁλκὴν ·Η𐅂ΙΙ·
ὁ ὀκτωκαιδέκατος,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ὁ ἔνατος καὶ
δέκατος εἶχε
μὲν ἐπιγραφὴν
·𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
σταθεὶς
[δ’]
εἷλκεν ·𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὁ εἰκοστὸς
ἐπεγέγραπτο
μὲν ὁλκὴν ·Η·
σταθεὶς δ’
εἵλκυσεν
·Η𐅂ΙΙΙ· ὁ εἷς
καὶ εἰκοστός,
ὁλκὴν ·Η𐅂ΙΙΙ.
[——] ἐν τῶι Εἰλειθυιαίωι·
βατιά-
115
κη ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἣν ἀνέθηκε Κλεαρχίς·
φιάλη ἔκτυπα
ἔχουσα Περσῶν
πρόσωπα, Κτησυλίος
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
·𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂· ἀμφιδαῖ
καὶ τύποι καὶ
[ὄ]φεις
καὶ δακτύλιοι
καὶ κριθαὶ
ἀργυρᾶ, ὁλκὴν
·𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂· πυρήνια
χρυσᾶ καὶ ἐνδεσμίδες
καὶ τύποι καὶ
κάρδια καὶ ἄλλα
χρυσία, ὁλκὴν
πάντων ·Δ𐅃ΙΙ·
ἄλλα
ζωιδάρια τέτταρα,
ἓν αὐτῶν ξύλινον
ἐπίχρυσον, καὶ
δακτύλιοι δύο,
ὁ εἷς λιθάριον
ἔχων, καὶ ἐνώτι<α>,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
μῆλα ἐννέα ἐπάργυρα
ἐπί<χρυ>-
σα,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅃𐅂𐅂Ι·
ἐρωτίωγ καὶ
βουβαλίων
ζεῦγος πρὸς
ξύλωι, Θεσσαλίας
ἀνάθημα. καὶ
τάδε ἀνετέθη
ἐπὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς τὸ Εἰλειθυιαῖον·
δακτυλίδιον
χρυσοῦν, ἀνδριάντιον,
τύπιον χρυσᾶ,
ὁλκὴ πάντων ·𐅂𐅂·
τύπιον ἀργυροῦν,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅂𐅂·
δακτυλίδιον
διάλιθον ἐν
ταινιδίωι, Κερκίδος
ἀ-
(110)
18+; the tenth had the inscription 92 dr 3 ob but when weighed it
displaced drachmas 96; the eleventh had the inscription 66.4 but
when weighed it displaced 68; the twelfth, weight 80 dr 2 1/2 ob;
the thirteenth had the inscription 82 dr 5 ob but when weighed it
displaced 83 dr 3 ob; the fourteenth, weight 128 dr 5 ob; the
fifteenth had the inscription 82 dr 3 ob but when weighed it
displaced 84 dr 3 ob; the sixteenth, weight 124; the seventeenth,
weight 101 dr 2 ob; the eighteenth, weight 98; the nineteenth had
the inscription 82 dr 2 ob but when weighed it displaced 82 dr 3 ob;
the twentieth was inscribed weight 100 but when weighed it displaced
101 dr 3 ob; the twenty first, weight 101 dr 3 ob.
In
the Eileithyiaion: batiake (115) in plinth, which Klearchis
dedicated; phiale with Persian faces in relief, dedication of
Ktesylis, weight 72; silver bracelets and relief plaques and snakes
and rings and barleycorns, weight 91; gold beads and endesmides and
relief plaques and kardia and other gold objects, total weight 15 dr
2 ob; four other statuettes, one of them gilded wood, and two rings,
one with stone, and earrings, weight 8; nine (gil)ded silver apples,
weight 7 dr 1 ob; pair of cupids and bracelets on wood, dedication
of Thessalia. And the following were dedicated in our year of office
in the Eileithyiaion: small gold ring, gold statuette, gold
relief plaque, total weight 2; silver image, weight 2; small ring
with stone on string, dedication of Kerkis.
120
νάθημα. [——] ἐν τῆι
Χαλκοθήκηι
τάδε χαλκᾶ·
ὑδρίας ·Δ𐅃·
ἄλλη πυθμένα
οὐκ ἔχουσα·
ὑδρίαι δύο,
ἑκατέρα ἓν οὖς
ἔχουσα· ὑδρία
ἓν οὖς ἔχου-
σα·
ὑδρία ἓν οὖς
ἔχουσα, πυθμένα
οὐκ ἔχουσα·
ἄλλη πυθμένα
οὐκ ἔχουσα,
οὖς ἔχουσα
ἕν· ὑδρία ὦτα
οὐκ ἔχουσα
δύο· στάμνος
μέγας ἓν οὖ[ς]
ἔχων·
στάμνος βοιωτιακὸς
ἓν οὖς ἔχων·
στάμνος ἐλαιηρός·
κρατῆρες τυρρηνικοὶ
τρεῖς ὑπόστατα
ἔχοντες· κρατήριον
τυρρηνικὸν
οὖς
οὐκ ἔχον· κρατήριον
λακωνικὸν τὸμ
πυθμένα ἔχον
ἀπο<πε>πτωκότα·
κρατῆρες λακωνικοὶ
τρεῖς· κανᾶ
ὀρθηλὰ δύο·
κανοῦμ μέγα
πυθμέ-
να
οὐκ ἔχον· κανᾶ
τρία· κάδοι
λεῖοι δύο, ὁ
εἷς πυθμένα
οὐκ ἔχων· κάδοι
στρεπτοὶ δύο·
ἐσχάραι πυρκαιοὶ
τρεῖς· λεβήτια
ἐννέα ἀχρεῖα·
χαλκία [με]-
125
γάλα τρία ἀχρεῖα·
χαλκία δύο
μικρὰ ἀχρεῖα·
χαλκία ἑπτὰ
μικρὰ ἀχρεῖα·
κρατὴρ στρογγύλος
ὑπόστατον ἔχων·
ἐχίνη στρατιωτική·
ἐξάλειπτρο[ν]·
κανᾶ
μικρὰ πέντε·
πινακίσκοι
τέτταρες·
περιρραντήριον
ὑπόστατον ἔχογ
καὶ ἐπιγραφήν·
χερνιβεῖα δύο
τετρυπημένα, τὸ
ἓν οὖς οὐκ ἔχο[ν]·
χερνιβεῖα
ὀκτὼ τετρυπημένα·
ποδανιπτῆρες
δύο οὐχ ὑγιεῖς,
οὖς ἔχοντες
ἓν ἑκάτερος·
ψυκτῆρες τρεῖς
ὦτα οὐκ ἔχοντες·
λυχνεῖα
σιδηρᾶ
δύο ἐπὶ τοῖς
μέσοις φιάλ[ας]
οὐκ ἔχοντα·
ὀβελίσκοι
μικροὶ· ·ΔΔΔ𐅃·
κλάσματα δύο·
ἐσχάρα σιδηρᾶ·
γαστροπτὶς
διαπεπτωκυῖα·
σκαφείω[ν]
κλάσματα
·𐅃· δίσκοι
χαλκοῖ δύο·
[ἐσχα]ρίου μικροῦ
ἥμυσυ κατεαγὸς
ὑπόστατον ἔχον·
ψυκτήριον ὦτα
καὶ πυθμένα οὐκ
ἔχον· χεὶρ σιδηρᾶ·
οἰνοχόη.
(120)
In the Chalkotheke the following bronze. 15 hydrias; another
without base; two hydriai, each with one handle; hydria with one
handle; hydria with one handle, without base; another without base,
with one handle; hydria without two handles; large stamnos with one
handle; Boeotian stamnos with one handle; olive oil stamnos; three
Etruscan kraters with stands; small Etruscan krater without handle;
small Spartan krater with the base fallen off; three Spartan
kraters; two straight-sided baskets; large basket without base;
three baskets; two smooth jars, one without base; two twisted jars;
three sacrificial braziers; nine useless lebetia; three (125)
useless large bronze (lebetia); two small useless bronze (lebetia);
seven useless small bronze (lebetia); round krater with stand;
military echine; unguent box; five small baskets; four small
tablets; sprinkler with stand and inscription; two pierced hand
basins, one without handle; eight pierced hand basins; two unsound
foot basins, with one handle each; three coolers without handles;
two iron lampstands without phialai in their centers; 35 small
skewers; two pieces (of skewers?); iron brazier; broken casserole; 5
pieces of dishes; two bronze disks; broken half of small brazier
with stand; cooler without handle or base; iron hand; oinochoe.
(side
C)
{²initio
vss. 5 omnino oblitterati}²
6
καὶ τάδε ἐν τῆι
Χαλκοθήκηι
παρελάβομεν·
οἰνοχό[ην] χ̣α̣λ̣κῆ[ν]
10
οὖς οὐκ ἔχουσαν·
οἰνοχό[ας ·Δ𐅃]·
πυθμ[έ]- νας οὐκ
ἐχού[σας]· οἰνοχό[ας
δύο] οὖς [οὐκ
ἐχο]ύσ[ας]·
15
[ἄλλα]ς δύο
[οὔτε οὖς] [οὔτ]ε
πυθμένα [ἐ]- [χού]σας,
σα[κ]νά[ς]· [ἄλλας]
δ[ύο σακνὰς]
[πυθμένας
οὐκ ἐχού]-
20
[σας — — —]
{²c.
vss. 12 e quibus ne una quidem littera conspicua est}²
32
[τ]ὸν [τράχηλον
ἀπο]- κεκλα[σμένην·
ἄλ]- [λην σ]υντεθλα[σμέ]-
35
[ν]ην πυθμένα οὐκ
[ἔχουσαν· ἄλλας]
[δύο] τοὺς πυθμέ-
νας ἐκκεκομμέ-
[νας]· ἄλλας
ὀκτὼ
40
ὦτα οὐκ ἐχούσας
οὐδὲ πυθμένας
ἐχούσας· δύο
[ο]ὔ[τ]ε [π]όδας
[οὔτε] πυθμένας
οὐκ ἐ-
45
χούσα[ς], σακνάς·
[χόας ἐλαιη]-
ροὺς [τ]ρεῖ[ς]·
τού- των εἷς οὖς
οὐκ ἔχ[ει·
σπονδο]χόα[ι
·ΙΙ]·
50
π̣ρ̣ο̣χ̣ο̣ΐ̣δ̣ι̣α̣
ΙΙΙΙ· ἓν τούτων
[— — — —] τὸν πυθμένα
οὐ̣[κ] ἔχον·
53a
ἄ̣λ̣λ̣α̣ς̣
ο̣ἰ̣ν̣ο̣χ̣ό̣α̣ς̣
δύο σακνά[ς]·
54
οἰνοχόης τράχη-
55
λον· προχοΐδιον
λε- οντόπουν·
κύαθοι μεγάλοι
·ΙΙΙΙ· μικρ[οὶ]
δύο διαπεπτωκό-
τες· ἄνθεμα
{²vac.
vss. 3}²
{nihil
unquam ibi exaratum fuisse videtur propter vitium lapidis}²
60
[κ]οτταβείων
δύο· θυμιατήριον
πόδα οὐκ ἔχον·
Νίκη ἐπὶ ἰκτίνου·
ἀρυσ- τῆρας
μεγάλου[ς]
65
𐅃ΙΙ· μικροὺς
·ΔΔ𐅃Ι· λυχνίαν
χαλκῆν συντετριμμένην·
στυλὶς μεγάλη
λυ- χνίας χαλκῆς·
ἐ-
70
ξ̣αύσ[τρ]ιον·
ξυσ[τῆ]- ρα σιδηροῦν·
ἠθμ[ὸν] ἀπὸ κρατῆρος
[συν]- τετριμμένον·
[ἄλ]- λον ἐγ ξύλωι
[ἐν]-
75
δεδεμένον·
[σαυ?]- νιοθῆκαι
[σι]δ[ηραῖ] δύο·
λυχνείου [κλάσ]-
ματα δύο· λα[μπτῆ]-
ρα ὦτα οὐκ ἔ[χοντα]·
80
σκαφίδιον
χαλκοῦ[ν] τετρυπημένο[ν]·
[φι]άλαι ·ΙΙΙΙ·
τούτω[ν] μία ἀπὸ
λυχνείο[υ]
τετρυ[πη]μένη·
85
χέρνιβ[ον]· ψυκτή-
ριον σακνὸν
πυθ[μέ]- να οὐκ
ἔχον· ποτ[η]- [ρ]ίδια
δύο· λεβήτιον
μικρόν· κάδων
90
κλάσματα· χυτρί-
διον καὶ ψυκτήρι-
ον μικρὰ [ὦτα]
οὐκ [ἔ]χοντα·
πυθμένας 𐅃ΙΙ·
ἐπιστάτου
95
κλάσματα· ζ[ώι]-
δια καὶ ὦτα καὶ
πό- δες καὶ κλάσμα-
[τ]α παντοδαπά·
ἄ[ν]- θ̣ε̣μα λυχνείου
δύ[ο]·
100
τριποδίσκος
πό- δα οὐκ ἔχω̣ν·
κ̣ε̣[ρα]- [μ]ύλλιον·
ὁλκεῖον· [λ]επίδας
χαλκᾶς [ἀπὸ
τριπόδωγ καὶ
105
{καὶ} ἀσπίδων
λόγ- χας ·𐅃ΙΙΙ·
ἀσπίδας ἐ- πιχάλκους
·ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ[ΙΙ]· πέλτην
ἐπίχαλ[κον].
[5
lines obliterated] (5) And the following we received in the
Chalkotheke. bronze oinochoe (10) without handle; [...]
oinochoai without bases; [...] oinochoai [witho]ut handle; (15) two
oth[ers...n]or base, broken; t[wo...12 lines obliterated]
th[e...br]oken [off...] crushed, (35) base not [...] the bases
knocked off; eight others (40) without handles or bases; two with
neither feet [...] bases, (45) broken; [...oliv]eoil three; one of
these without handle [...chal]ice[...]; (50) 4 small pitchers, one
of these [...] without the base; two other oinochoas, broken; neck
of an oinochoe; (55) small lionfooted pitcher; 4 large kyathoi; two
small (ones), broken; flowers [3 line space] (60) of two kottabos
stands; censer without foot; Nike on bird (iktinos); 7 large ladles;
(65) 26 small; crushed bronze lampstand; large pole from bronze
lampstand; (70) small meat hook; iron scraper; broken strainer from
a krater; another bound in wood (75); two iron [...]niothekai; two
pieces of lampstand; grate without handles; (80) small broken bronze
dish; 4 phialai, one these from lampstand, broken; (85) hand basin;
broken cooler without base; two small cups; small lebes; pieces of
jars; (90) small pot and cooler without handles; 7 bases; pieces of
stand; (95) figures and handles and feet and various pieces; two
flowers of lampstand; (100) small tripod without foot; small jar;
basin; bronze pieces from tripods and (105) {and} 8 spearheads of
shields; 27 bronzed shields; bronzed helmet.
τάδε
τεμένη
110
ἀνεμισθώσα-
μεν· Πάνορμον,
[καὶ] ἐμισθώσατο
Σωτάδας Κρής·
ἔγγυος Ἀντίγον-
115
ος Ἀν[δρομένους?]·
Νικοῦ χῶρον,
Ἡγη- σαγόρας
·ΗΗ𐅄Δ Δ𐅂· ἔγγυοι
Ξενο- κλείδης,
Ξενο-
120
κλείδης· Χαρώ-
νειαν, Μελήσιπ-
πος Ῥηναιεὺς
κ- αὶ οἱ ἔγγυοι
Ἱερόμ- βροτος,
Σωσισθέ-
125
νης· αὐτοὶ παρέ-
λαβον τά τε φυτ-
ὰ καὶ τἄλλα τὰ
γε- γραμμένα ἐν
τῆι στήληι ἧι
ἔστησα-
130
ν Ἡγίας καὶ Ἀνά-
σχετος.
vac.
face
D left.1
καὶ
τόδε ἄλλο ἀ[ρ]-
γύριον εἰσήκει·
παρὰ Ἀριστοβού-
λου τοῦ Λυσιξέ-
5
νου τοῦ ἱερέως
τοῦ Ἀσκληπιοῦ
τῶν ἱερείων
τῶν θυθέντων
τῶι Ἀσκληπιῶι
10
τῶν δερμάτων
τιμὴ δραχμαὶ ·․
ΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ· vac. παρὰ
Ἀμεινίου το[ῦ]
Εὐθυπόλιδος
Δ𐅃·
15
παρὰ [․․․]δου
τοῦ Κρ[ι]το [— —
— —] ΔΔΔ𐅃· παρὰ
Χάρη- τος τοῦ
Εὐκ̣λεί̣δου?
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂 καὶ [— —
—]
20
ΓΕΙΣ ·Δ[— — —]
ΛΟΝ[․․]Τ[— — —]
ΛΤΕ[— — — ἀρ]- γυρο[—
— — — —] ΝΕ[— — —
— —]
25
ΑΥΡ[— — — —] ΤΑΣΑ̣Μ̣[—
— —] [․]ΟΛ[— — —
— —] Σ̣[— — — — —]
ΛΙ[— — — — —]
30
․Τ̣Λ̣[— — — — —]
․ΑΡ̣Α[— — — —]
Γ̣Ο̣Δ̣[— — — —]
ΛΥΜΩ[— — — —] ΞΑ[—
— — — —]
35
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ[— — —
—] Ν[— — — — —] Ν̣Η̣[—
— — — —] ΑΝΑ[— —
— —] 𐅄ΔΔΙ[— — —
—]
40
[․․]ΤΟΚ[— — — —]
𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ[— — — —]
ΕΠΙ[— — — —] ΙΛΛΛΣ[—
— — —] Καλλισθέ[ν
— — —]
45
ΔΟΥΑ[— — — —]
ΠΛΕΙΣ[— — — —]
[․]ΒΛ[․]Σ[— — —]
ΟΤ[— — — — —]
{²vss.
8 consulto erasi}²
57
οἵδε ἐνοίκια
οὐ [τε]- θήκασιν
[ἐπὶ] τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆ[ς],
60
ἀλλὰ ὀφεί[λουσι]
τῶι θεῶι αὐτοὶ
καὶ οἱ ἐγγυηταί·
Ἀριστοκράτης
Ἀμύνου δραχμὰς
65
ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἔ[γγυ]- οι Ἡγησαγόρας
Μ[η]- τροδώρου,
Μητ[ρό]- δωρος
Ἀμύνου· Ἀπήμαντος
Λε̣[ω]-
70
[φ]ῶντος ·ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ·
[ἔγ]- γυος <Σ>φ̣όγγος?
Ἀ[πη]- μάντου·
Ἱέρακο[ς] Θεοκύδους
·ΔΔΔ 𐅂̣𐅂𐅂𐅁·
ἔγγυοι Διον̣[υ]-
75
σόδωρος Μα̣[ρ]α[θω]-
νίου, Τιμοκράτης
Ἐπιγένους.
vac. {²vac. = vss. 2}²
78
οἵδε τόκους
οὐ τε- θήκασιν
[ἐπὶ τῆς ἡ]-
80
μετέρας ἀρχῆς·
[Π]ολύξενος
Φω[και]- έως
δρα[χμ]ὰ[ς] ·Η·
Δ[ίαι]- τος Ἀπολλ[οδώρου]
·Δ𐅂[𐅂]·
[Θ]εόγν[ωτος
․․․․]
85
𐅄̣Δ̣Δ𐅃ΙΙΙ·
Ξένων Ἑρμιονεὺς
·ΔΔΙ̣Ι̣Ι̣·
[Φ]ερεκλείδης
ὑπὲρ [α]ὑτοῦ καὶ
Προξένου
𐅄̣ΔΔ𐅃𐅂̣𐅂̣𐅂̣[ΙΙΙ?
καὶ ὑ]-
90
πὲρ Χάρητος
·ΔΔ𐅃̣· ὑπὲρ
Νεωκόρου ·Δ𐅃.
ξύλα κέδρινα
πα- ρελάβομεν
Δ̣Δ̣Δ̣𐅃̣· τούτων
κατεχρή-
95
σθη εἰς τὴν
[ὀρο?]- φὴν τοῦ νεὼ
τοῦ Ἀ- πόλλωνος
𐅃̣Ι̣Ι̣[․․․․]
[․․․․]ΙΙΙ· ε̣ἰ̣ς̣
[τὴν ὀροφὴν? τοῦ]
Πωρίνου
[․․․․․․․]
100
ξύλα Δ̣Δ̣Δ̣[․․․․
εἰς] τὰς θυρίδας
[τοῦ Προ]- πύ[λου
— — — —]. περιεγ[ένετο
ξύ]- λα δύο· [ταῦτα
πα]-
105
ρεδ[ώκαμεν ἱερο]-
ποιοῖ[ς Δ]ημόνωι
Νίκω[νος, Πίστηι]
Ξένω[νος ․․․․․]
ΝΗ̣ΣΕ[— — — —]
110
Χ̣ΛΝ̣[— — — — —]
καὶ τάδε ἄλλα
ξύλα κατεχρήσθη·
[εἰς] τὴν ὀ[ροφὴ]ν
τοῦ [Πω]- ρ̣ίνου
ξύλα [ἀπὸ]
115
τῶμ παλαιῶν ξύ-
λων τῶν [πα]- ρὰ
Νικομήδου
ἀ[γορασ]- θέντων·
εἰς τὸ[ν ἔμ]- βολον
τῶι μελάθρωι
120
δοκὸν ἑκκαιδεκά-
πηχυν καὶ ἄλλην
[δο]- κὸν δεκάπηχυν
<κ>α̣[ὶ] τόμους
τετραπή- χεις
ποδιαίους
·ΙΙΙΙ·
125
ἄλλην δοκὸν
ἑνδε- κάπηχυν
εἰς τὸ λο- [γ]εῖον
τῆς σκηνῆς·
τ̣όμον τετράπη-
χυν εἰς τὰς
θύρας
130
τοῦ Προπύλου·
τόμον τετράπηχυν·
σανί- δας πτελεΐνας
·ΙΙ.
IG XI,2 199 (273 BC)
and IG XI.2 199B (274)
http://epigraphy.packhum.org/text/62661
https://web.archive.org/web/20160419062610/http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/translations/199%20translation.htm
[λόγος
ἱεροποιῶν τῶν]
ἱεροποιησάντων
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀντιγόνο̣υ
ὄν̣τ̣ο̣ς
τ̣ρ̣ει[σκαιδεκαμή]ν̣ου
το[ῦ] ἐνιαυτοῦ,
Ἀντικράτους
τοῦ #⁷#⁷[— — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — τάδε
παρελάβομεν
παρ’ ἱεροποιῶν]
[τῶν
ἱεροποιησάντων
ἐπ’ ἄ]ρχοντος
Φίλλιδος Στησίλεω
καὶ Φίλτου
παρούσης βουλῆς
καὶ γραμματέων
τοῦ τῆς πόλεως
Μνησάλκου καὶ
τοῦ τῶν ἱεροπο[ιῶν
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — —]
[—
—c.13— — καὶ χρυ]σοῦς
ΔΙΙ καὶ τεττίγι[α]
δύο καὶ φωκαΐδα
καὶ ἀργυρίου
παντοδαποῦ εἰς
ἀλεξανδρείου
λόγον Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂.
καὶ [οἵ]δε τῶν
γεωργούν[των
τὰ ἱερὰ τεμένη
ἐνηρόσια τεθήκασιν·
Ἀπολλόδωρος
Ξενομήδους?]
[τοῦ
ἐπὶ Πορθμῶι
ΧΗΗ]ΗΔΔ· Κλεινίας
τοῦ ἐμ Πύργοις
ΧΗΗΔΔ𐅂· Ἀντίγονος
τοῦ {ς} ἐν Ῥάμνοις
ΗΗΗΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
Τελέσανδρος
τῆς ἐν Διονυσίωι
𐅅ΗΔ̣Δ̣𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
Σωτάδ[ας Κρὴς
τῆς ἐμ Πανόρμωι
𐅅ΗΗ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· —
—c.24— —]
5
[— —c.15— —· Τιμησίδημ]ος
καὶ Ἀριστόδικος
τῆς γῆς ἐγ Χαρωνείαι
𐅅ΗΗΗ· τῆς ἐν
Λίμναις Ἀριστέας
ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅁·
Ἡγησαγόρας
τῆς ἐν Νικοῦ
χώ̣ρω[ι ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅂·
Ἀριστείδης]
Ἀριστείδου
τοῦ Ἱπποδρόμου
καὶ τῆς
[Ἀφέσεως
𐅅Η𐅃]· οἱ Φερεκλείδου
παῖδες Λειμῶνος
ΗΗΗΔΔΔ· Τε<λέσ>ων
τῆς ἐν Σολόηι
καὶ Κορακιαῖς
ΗΗΗΗΔ· Ζώπυρος
τῆς ἐν Ἄκραι
Δήλωι 𐅅𐅂· Θεωρύλος
τῆς [ἐμ Φοίνιξι
𐅅ΗΗΔ· Χοιρύλος]
τῆς Ἐπισθενείας
𐅅𐅄ΔΔ[ΔΔ· ․]ΟΛΟ․․․․
— c.17 — Ἱερόμβροτος
τοῦ Κεραμείου
ΗΔΔΔΔ· Καλλισθένης
τῶν ἐμ Φυταλιᾶι
𐅄[Δ]. vac. [καὶ οἵδε
τῶν τὰς ἱερὰς
οἰκίας μεμ]ισ[θωμένων
ἐνοίκια τεθήκασιν]·
[—
c.15 —α]ρχίδης 〚—
—〛 ΗΔΙΙΙΙ·
τῆς ἐχομένης
Μνησίλεως 𐅄Δ·
τῶν πρὸς τῆι
θαλάττηι οἰκημάτων
καὶ τῶν ἐπὶ τούτοις
Ἀριστέας 𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τῆς Χαρητείας
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — —
․․․․․․․․․․․ασ․․𐅃𐅂ΙΙ·
τῆς γυναικωνίτιδος
Ἐχεκρατίδης
[𐅄]ΔΔΔ· τῆς
ἀνδρωνίτιδος
Μνῆσις ΔΔΔ· τῶμ
πρὸς τ[ῶι σιδηρείωι
․․․․․․․ΔΔ]ΔΔ·
τῆς Πυθᾶ Διονύσιος
․․․Τ — — — — — —
— — — — — —
10
․․․․․․․․ΙΑ̣
παρὰ Λύδου
𐅄Δ̣Δ̣𐅂̣· τῆς
οἰκίας ἣ ἦν
τῶν Ἀριστοβούλου
παίδων Χάρμος
ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁·
τῆς Ὀρθοκλέους
Βουληκράτης
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ𐅀. vac. οἵ[δε
τόκους τεθήκασιν
ἐπὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς]·
[Εὐ]ρυμάνθης
ΔΔΔΔΙΙ𐅁̣·
Μένυλλος ΗΙ·
Πίστης ΔΔ· Γοργὼ
Δ𐅁· Φωκαεὺς
Δ· Ἱερόμβροτος
𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂· Ἀρίγνωτος
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· Ἀνδρομένης
ΔΔΙ̣Ι̣· Φ̣ί̣λ̣της
𐅂̣𐅂̣𐅂̣𐅂̣·
Πολύξενος Η·
Π[ό]λ̣υ̣β̣ος
·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅁̣· Μνήσαλ[κος
․․․․․․α]νδρο
— — — — — — —
[Θῆ]ρις
ὑπὲρ Ὀλυμπιάδου
Δ𐅂𐅂̣ΙΙΙ· ἡ
τριττὺς ἡ Μαψιχιδῶν
ὑπὲρ τῶγ χωρίων
τῶν Θεογ̣[νώ]του
ΔΔΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ. καὶ
οἵδε δανεισάμενοι
ἐπὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς· Τελέσ[ων
Δ]Δ[ΔΔ — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
—]
[ἐπὶ]
δραχμ[αῖς] ΗΗ
ὀκταμήνου
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· Τελέσων
καὶ Κόνων δρα.
ΗΗΗΗ διμήνου
𐅃𐅂<ΙΙ>ΙΙ {⁴𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙ}⁴·
Ἀριστ— —c.30— —των
․․․․․ντων ἐκ
τῆς οἰκ․․․․․𐅄Δ—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — —
[τῆς]
ἐγδείας ἧς
ἠγγυήσ[α]το
Ἐροτίων 𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
ὑπὲρ Πολυζήλου
τοῦ ἐγγυησαμένου
Ἐπαρχίδης κατὰ
τὸ ἥμυσυ τοῦ
[ἐνηροσίου
τ]ο[ῦ ὀφ]ε[ιλομένο]υ?
ἐπὶ Πορθμῶι
κατέβαλ[ε]ν —
— — — — — — —
15
δρα[χμ]ὰς 𐅄Δ𐅃·
τῶν διαφραγματίων
τῶν ἐκ τῆς παλαίστρας
ΔΔ· vac. τῆς πορφύρας
[παρ’ Ἐξηκ]έσ[τ]ου
ΔΔΔ — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — ἐν
τῶι θεά[τρωι —
— — — — — — — —]
Η̣Ν․․․․ΕΙ
τῶν ἐνοικίων
𐅅ΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅃· τοῦ
ὑποτροπίου
𐅅ΗΔΔΔ· ἐπώνια
τούτων ΗΔΔΙ·
τοῦ χορηγικοῦ
[․]· ἐκ τῶν — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— τῶν ․․․υο —
— — — — — — — — —
—
τῶ[ν
ξ]ύλων τῶν ἀπὸ
τῆς συκαμίνου
𐅃· τῶν λίθων
τῶν περιγενομένων
ἐκ τῆς παλαίστρας
․․․․․․․․ου
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
Λ̣Ο̣Ι παρὰ Δημόν[ου
․․․․]ΕΝΥΠ․․Υ
— — — — — — —
Δημητρίου
𐅃𐅂· ἐξ εὐθυνῶν
𐅅̣Η̣ΗΗ𐅄Δ· vac. παρὰ
βουλῆς καὶ
ταμίου Διδύμου
ἐκ τῆς — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— ντος 𐅄ΔΔ𐅂
․․․․․․․․․․της
— — — — — — — — —
—
σίτου
δεκάτης ΔΔ·
ἐκ φιάλης 𐅃.
vac. κεφάλαιον
ἀργυρίου οὗ
τε παρελάβομεν
καὶ τοῦ ἐπὶ τῆς
ἡμετέρας ἀρχῆς
[εἰσελθόντος
— —c.10— —]δες δὲ
καὶ ΚΩ̣ΙΛ̣—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — —
20
[ἐ]κ τούτου τάδε
ἀνήλωται· ἄ[ρν?]ες
τῶι Ἀπόλλωνι
καὶ τῆι Ἀρτέμιδι
ἐπιθῦσαι 𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ΓΥΙΩ— — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — μισθωτὴς
․․․․․․․․․𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ
Π̣— — — — — — — —
—
ἐπισκευάσαντι
𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι· λεπίδες
𐅄̣Δ[Δ]Δ̣Ι καὶ
ἧλοι εἰς τὴν
θύραν 𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁·
Δημητρίωι χαλκίον
ἐπι[σκευάσαντι
— — — c.30— —]ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
Πρ — —c.18— — Ο̣Ε̣ΤΤ
— — — — — — — — —
—Π․․․․
καὶ
τῶι ἐργασαμένωι
𐅂ΙΙΙ· ψίαθοι
τρεῖς ΤΕ̣Ι․․ΠΙΙΙΙΙ·
χαρτία τρία 𐅃·
οἶνος εἰς
ἱερισμὸν ·𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
μισθωτοῖς
․․Λ̣ΟΥΛ̣Σ̣
— — — — — — — — —
— — —ΠΙΙΙΤΛ[․․․․
ἀρχι]τέκ̣τονος
[ἐγδόν]τος 𐅃𐅂
— — — — — — — — —
—
μάτων
μναῖ δύο 𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
Φιλώται ὕσπληγας
ἐπισκευάσαντι
𐅂· ὁπλά̣ρ̣ι̣ον
τῆι ὕσπληγι
𐅃ΙΙΙ· Σ̣ΤΟ․ΟΥ̣ΣΤΟ̣ΥΛΛ
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
—π— — — — — — —π—
— — — —
εἰς
κόσμησιν 𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
Νίκωνι τῶι ἐγλαβόντι
ἀνακομίσαι
τοὺς λίθους
τοὺς εἰς τὸν
τρύφακτον ․․․εκτο—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — —𐅂𐅂𐅂—
—
25
παρ’ Ἀγαθάρχου
ὠνηθέντα 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
Θεοφάντωι τῆς
Χαρητείας οἰκίας
θύραν ἐπισκευάσαντι
𐅂𐅂· Π — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — οικο —
— — — — — ουδο
— — — — — —
ναντι
δύο 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
εἰς τὴν κόσμησιν
τῶν ἐν τῶι Ἀρτεμισίωι
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· μισθωτοῖς
ἀπενέγκασιν
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
ἐκ τῆς — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — —λ․․․․․μι—
— — — — — — — — —
τὰς
κλίνας καὶ τὰς
τραπέζας τὰς
ἐν τῆι Νήσωι
ἐπισκευάσαντι
𐅃· Δεξίωι ἥλων
εἰς τὰς κλίνας
καὶ τραπέζας
ΙΙΙ [— — — — — —
— — — — — ἀρχιτέκτονος]
ἐγ[δόν]τος μισθωτοῖς?
— — — — — —
ἀπενέγκασι
𐅂ΙΙΙ· Δεινομένει
τὴν θύραν τὴμ
πρὸς ταῖς Χάρισιν
ἐπισκευάσαντι
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· Δεξίωι
τῶι — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — —ιον․․․․․․ους
ἐξέδομεν — —
— — — — — —
ΙΙ̣Ι̣Ι̣·
σκαφεῖον εἰς
τὴμ παλαίστραν
παρ’ Ἀριστοβούλου
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἧλοι
εἰς τὸν κανόνα
καὶ εἰς τὴν
κλίμακα 𐅂ΙΙΙ·
Ἀσκλαπι — — —
— — — — — —c.30-35— —
εἰς τὴμ παλαίστραν
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· μισθωτοῖς
[ἀνακο]-
30
μίσασι τοὺς
λίθους τοῦ
τρυφάκτου οὗ
Βά̣κ̣χιος
ἠργάσατο πρὸς
τὸ Πύθιον 𐅃𐅂—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — εἰς τὴμ παλαίστραν
καὶ
τὴν ἡμίτειαν
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· Πύρωνι
καύσαντι καὶ
οὖς τῶι κρατῆρι
προσθέντι 𐅂Ι·
Ὀλύμπωι ἐγλαβόντι
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
—ΙΙΣ κηρὸς
․․ΥΣ․․․․․Ε̣Π̣Ι̣
μισθωτοῖς
τοῖς ἀπενέγκασι
τὴγ κράνεαν τὴμ
παρὰ Κράτωνος
καὶ τὴμ πίσσαν
ΙΙΙ· Ἐχεμάντι
ἐπισκευάσαντι
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — ἑξῆς
τῆς ΑΝΕ․․ΛΣ
ἀπενέγκα ․․․․․․․․․․
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
Θράσωνι καὶ
Κτήσωνι τοῖς
ἀπενέγκασιν
ἀπὸ τοῦ χῶματος
τὰς δοκοὺς
τὰς παρὰ Μικύθου
εἰς τ— — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — —ΕΤ—
— — α․․․․․ ἐκ
τῆς ․․․․․
τὴμ
παλαίστραν
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· Ἀντίκωι
τὰς θύρας
ἐπισκευάσαντι
τοῦ Λητώιου
ΙΙΙΙ· [— — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — μισθ]ωτοῖς
․․․․․․․․․․․
35
τι εἰς τοὺς
κανόνας 𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
Φιλώται ἐπισκευάσαντι
τὰς θύρας τὰς
ἐν τῶι Θεσμοφορίωι
[— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — πίσσης]
μ[ε]-
τρηταὶ
δύο ἡμιαμφόριον·
ὁ μετρητὴς ΔΔ·
Πόρωι καὶ Κτήσωνι
χρίσασι τὸν
[Κ]ε̣[ρα]τ[ῶνα?
ἄλλοι πίσσης
μετρηταὶ — — ὁ
μετρητης (pretium) —
—]ΛΠ̣ΛΝΕΑΙζ
{²⁷ἀλεῖψαι ?
ἀλείψαντι}²⁷
— — — — το̣ῦ̣
Θεσμοφορίου
τὰς θύρας πάσας
καὶ τὴν στοὰν
𐅃· Ἡρακλείδει
τῶι τὰς θύρας
τῆς <σ>κηνῆς
χρίσ[αν]τ[ι — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
—] μισθωτ[οῖς]
τοῖς
τὴμ πίσσαν τὴμ
παρὰ Μένωνος
ἀπενέγκασι
ΙΙΙ· ταῖς ἱερείαις
εἰς κόσμησιν
τῶν ἀγαλμάτ[ων
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — ἐ]π[ὶ]
τὸ
θέατρον λίθους
τῶν ἐκ Τήνου
δύο καὶ ἐκ τοῦ
σταδίου τῶμ
παρὰ Ἱεροῦ ε̣ἰ̣ς
το — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — οἰνοχ[ο
— — — — —]
40
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· μισθωτοῖς
ἀπενέγκασιν
τὰ παρὰ Διδύμου
ξύλα εἰς τὴμ
παλαίστραν
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· καὶ τὰ
σκυρω[τὰ? — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — —]𐅂𐅂
ἀπενέγκασιν
εἰς τὴμ παλαίστραν
ὥστε κιόκρανον
γενέσθαι ΙΙΙΙ·
τοῖς ἀπο[— — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — με]λεΐνην
{²⁷πτ]λεΐνην?}²⁷
ὥστε ΜΑ․ΛΤΩ․․․․
․․σ̣αι
ἐπὶ τὸ πῦρ ἐν τῶι
Πυθίωι παρὰ
Φανοδίκου καὶ
παρὰ Διοφάνους
·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· Εὐφράνορι
τὸμ ․ο[— — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — δέκ]α̣
τριῶν πρὸς ἕω
Δ̣𐅂𐅂[𐅂· πα]-
[ρὰ
Πο]σειδίππου
τῆι τραπέζηι τῆι
ἀργυραῖ 𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἧλοι χαλκοῖ
παρὰ Δεξίου
τρεῖς εἰς τοὺς
πόδας τῆς τρα[πέζης
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — —]ΛΙ․ΙΔΗΓ̣Λ
— — — — — — —
[Ἡρ]ακλείδει
ἀποκομίσαντι
ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας
τῆς Μενίππης
δόκιον καὶ
ἐπιβλῆτας ·ΙΙΙΙΙ·
Δεξίωι τ[ὰ]ς —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — ἀπενέγκαντι
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
ἐκ τῆς οἰ[κί]-
45
[ας] τῆς Μενίππης
δοκοὺς καὶ
σφῆνας ·ΙΙΙΙΙ·
Στρομβίχωι τὰ
διαφραγμάτια
ἀπενέγκαντι
ἐκ τῆς [παλαίστρας
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — —] Φιλώται
ἐπισκευάσαντι
τὰς θύρας τοῦ
ναΐσκου
τῆς Ἀφροδίτης
·𐅂𐅂· Θράσωνι
καὶ Κτήσωνι
καὶ τοῖς μετ’
αὐτῶν μισθωτοῖς
ἀπενέγκασιν
το — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — καὶ τὰ
ξύλα [τ]ά τε
[ὀκτω?]καιδεκαπήχη
καὶ τὰ παρὰ Ἀγαθάρχου
ἀρχιτέκτονος
συνεγδόντος
μισθὸς ·Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
καὶ τὰ ὕστερο[ν
ὠνηθέντα? — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— —] ἀπενέγκασιν
ἐ[κ τ]ῆ̣ς̣ ἀγορᾶς
ξ̣ύλ[α παρὰ]
[Δη]μητρίου
ἀγορασθέντα
·𐅂ΙΙΙ· Στρομβίχωι
καὶ Ἀπολλωνίωι
καταψήσασι
τοὺς τοίχους
το[ῦ τε] μεγά[ρου?
καὶ — — — — — —
— — — ΟΓΛ — — —
— — — — Τ — —
[τὸ
ἱ]ε̣?ρὸν τὸ τοῖς
νυκτοφυλαξίο<ι>ς
καὶ ἐνοικοδομήσαντι
𐅂· ταῖς ἱερείαις
ξύλων τάλαντο̣ν̣
·𐅂ΙΙ· τομε[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
τὴμ πα]λαίστραν
— — — — — —Ω
50
[․․ χ]αλκίον
ὥστε χρῆσθαι
τοῖς Ποσιδείοις
·𐅃𐅂· ὅτε ἐτελεύτησε
Στέφανος, χοῖρος
·𐅂𐅂𐅂 — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — ουσι
·𐅃𐅂· [εἰ]ς λατ[ομ?․․․․
καὶ]
[εἰς]
τὸ θέατρον ἀπὸ
τοῦ νεωκορίου
τοὺς λίθους
οὓς ἠργάσατο
Βάκχιος εἰς
τὰ παρασκήνια
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — —όμωι
ἐργασαμένωι
․ΕΠ․․․․
[․․
σ]υστήσαντι τὸ
παρασκήνιον
[ἡμερῶν] δέκα
μισθὸς ·Δ𐅃·
Στρομβίχω[ι]
ἐξενέγκαντι
λίθους ἐκ τοῦ
․․․ο— — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— —ν ἐξέπλευσαν
𐅂· τοῦ κ․․․․․
[ἀπο]κομίσασιν
εἰς τὴν παλαίστρα[ν
τ]ὰ παρὰ Φίλτου
ὠνηθέντα ξύλα
·𐅂Ι· Διονυσίωι
τὸν ․ν․τ — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — —ς
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἀρχιτέκτονος
κελεύοντος·
[λευκώ]-
[σαν]τι
τὴν σανίδα τῶι
λόγωι ·𐅂ΙΙ·
ἄλ̣λ̣[ο ἴ]κριον?
παρὰ Θήριδος
εἰς τὴν παλαίστραν
καὶ μισθωτοῖς
ε̣ἰ̣ς τ[— — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — εἰρ]γ̣ασμένους
μετὰ Βακχίου
— — — — — —
55
․․ Ξεννέαι τὸν
θησαυρὸν ἀνοίξ[αντι
μ]ετὰ Βακχίου
𐅂· τόμιον παρὰ
Βακχίου ·ΙΙΙΙ·
Πρώτωι [— — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
το]ῦ ἠθμοῦ καὶ
τὴν εἴσρυσιν
ἀνακαθάρα ․․․
ἀρχιτέκτονος
ἐγδόντος ·Δ·
μισθωτοῖς τῶν
πώρων ·𐅂ΙΙ· τὴν
ἡμίτειαν Δημητρίωι
ἐπισκευάσαντι
․․𐅂— —. vac.
[κ]αὶ
τάδε ἄλλα ὠνήθη
ψηφισαμένου
[τοῦ δήμου·
ξ]ύλα παρὰ Μένωνος
μακεδονικὰ
μετὰ βουλῆς
[․]· παρὰ Μένωνος
[ἄ]λ[λα ξύ]λ[α —
c.25 — — —]ου, Φίλτου,
Ἀ̣[νδ]ρομένους
εἰς τ[ὰς]
σκηνὰς
καὶ τὴν παλαίστραν
ἑκκαιδ[εκαπήχη]
μὲν ἕνδεκα ἀνὰ
δραχμὰς ἕκαστον
τὸ ξύλον ·𐅄ΔΔ·
τεσσαρεσκαιδεκαπ̣[ήχη
— — — — — — — — —
—] τριάκοντα
πήχ̣εω̣ν [κατεχρήσ]-
θη
εἰς τὰς σκηνάς·
σφηνίσκοι δέκα
ἓξ [εἰς τοὺς]
καν̣όνας·
ἑκκαιδεκαπήχη
τρία· τεσσαρεσκαιδεκαπήχη
ἓξ [— — — — — — —
— — καὶ παρὰ —
—]οκλέους
τεσσαρεσκαιδεκαπήχη
τέτταρα̣ ․․
60
ἄλλα ξύλα ἐπριάμεθα
εἰς τὴν παλαίστραν
μ[ετ]ὰ τοῦ ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν·
τεσσαρεσκαιδεκαπήχη
πέντε ·𐅄̣Δ𐅂·
ΑΡ [— —12-13— — κατεχρησάμ]εθα
εἰς τὴμ παλαίστραν
μετὰ τοῦ ἀρχιτέκτονος
δύο
τεσσαρεσκαιδεκαπήχη,
τὸ μὲν ·ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙ·
[τ]ὸ δὲ ·𐅄· καὶ
ὃ Μένυλλος
ἐπρίατο παρελάβομεν
τοῦ ἴσου ·ΗΔΔΔΙΙΙ·
καὶ παρὰ [Μέν]ω[νος?
— —c.16— — μετὰ τοῦ
ἀρχιτ]έκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητοῦ
Μενύλλου ἀνὰ
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
παρὰ
Διδύμου δεκαπήχεις
δοκοὺς τέ[σσ]αρας
ἀνὰ ·Δ𐅃𐅂· ὀκταπήχεις
δέκα ὀκτώ, ἀνὰ
·Δ𐅂𐅂· ὀβελίσκους
δρυΐνους δέκα,
ἀνὰ 𐅃𐅂· παρὰ Φ—
— — — — — — — — —
— —ΤΩΓ․․αντι
ξύ[λα]
ταῖς
σκηναῖς καὶ
τοῖς παρασκηνίοι[ς
εἰς ․․]λι․․α
καὶ θύ̣[ρ]ας τὴν
σανίδα ἀνὰ δραχμὰς
·ΔΔΔΔ· ξύλον
μελέϊνον παρὰ
Μετωνύμου — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — αρον
ἀγ̣αγ̣όντος
Κα[ί]-
[β]ωνος
τάλαντα ὀκτώ,
τὸ τάλαν[τον
δ]ραχμῶν ·𐅃𐅂·
εἰς [π]ερόνας
ταῖς σκηναῖς
καὶ εἰς τὴμ
παλαίστραν τύπους
καὶ ε — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
ΤΑ․․․․Τ․․․ΠΥΛΙΟΥΟ̣․․
65
․․ΙΙνα εἰς τὴμ
παλαίστραν παρὰ
[Δημη]τρίου τὸ
μὲν ·ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂, τὸ
δὲ ·ΔΔΔΔ𐅃· vac.
καὶ̣ ἡλιαίαι
μισθ̣ὸ̣ς καὶ
δικαστηρίωι
τῶν ἐπιτιμημάτων
𐅄̣ — — —. vac.
[καὶ]
τάδε ἄλλα ἀνηλώθη
κατὰ ψή[φισ]μα
τοῦ [δ]ήμου·
Ἀντίκωι τῶι
ἐγλαβόντι
κατασκευάσαι
τὰ ἀγάλματα τό
τε τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος
— — — — — — — —ους
— — — — — ΟΣΔΟΚ․․․Ν
κηρύκειον
ἀργυροῦν Εἰρηνίωνι
πο[ιή]σαντι ὁλκὴν
·ΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἀπέδομεν τάς
τ[ε] ΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
καὶ τὸμ μισθὸν
δραχμὰς ·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
χελώνην ․ε —
— — — — — — — — —
— — Διονυσίωι
τῶι ἐγλ[α]-
[β]όντι
κατασκευάσαι
τῆς Χαρητείας
οἰκίας τοῦ
ἀνδρῶνος τοῦ
ἐπὶ θαλάσσηι
τὰς ΣΕΛΞΑΣ τὰς
πεπτωκυίας
·Δ· <ψ>ιάθους
𐅃̣· ΘΙΑΝΕ— —
c.22 — —ς δέκα ἓξ
ἀνὰ ․․Δ̣ ἑ[κασ]τ—
—c.16— — — Θεοδή-
[μ]ωι
τῶι ἐγλαβόντι
διακέσασ[θαι
τὴ]ν ὀροφὴν τῆς
οἰκίας τῆς
Σωσιλείας
καὶ [τῶι?] πλ[ινθ]οβολήσαντι?
καὶ θύ[ρα]ν τὴν
ἀπὸ τῆς παλαίστρας
․․․․․․․․․․․․․ερα
τὰ ἀπενεγχθέν[τα
— —c.20— — ἀναλώ]-
70
[σ]αμεν εἰς τὰς
ἐχθυσίας καὶ
εἰς σ[πονδὰς?
κ]αὶ εἰς πρεσβείας·
ΧΧΧΧ𐅅Η𐅃̣𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
λογισταῖς
μισθοὺς ·𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔ[𐅂𐅂]𐅂̣·
ἐφόδιον Φάνωι
𐅄Δ· Ἡρύαι 𐅄Δ·
Ἀ[ρκ]ιλέωι 𐅄Δ·
Σωσισθένηι 𐅄Δ·
ψηφισαμένου
τ[οῦ] δήμου
καθάρασθαι
τὸ ἱερόν, ἐπριάμεθα
ταῦ-
ρον
παρὰ Προξένου
·𐅄· κριὸν παρὰ
Ἑ[ρμά]κου [Δ]𐅃̣𐅂·
κάπρον παρὰ
Ἡρακλείδου
Δ𐅃𐅂· ξύλων τάλαντα
ἑπτά ·[ΔΙ]ΙΙ·
Καλλ<ί>αι? καὶ
Στρομβίχωι καὶ
Ἀπολλωνίωι
τοῖς [τοῦ ἔργ]ου
συλλαβομέ[νοις
— —c.18— —]ος δε
․ον
ἐπριάμεθα
·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
Κτήσωνι καὶ
[Γ]αδάται τοῖς
ἐξαγαγοῦσι
τὸν τελευτήσαντα
ἐδόθη 𐅃𐅂· εἰς
ταῦτα ἔδωκεν
ἡμῖν Πρῶναξ ·𐅃.
—— καὶ τάδε
[ἔ]ργ[α ἐ]ξέδομεν
<μετὰ> τοῦ
[ἀρ]χιτέκτονος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν
κατὰ τὸν
νόμον·
[εἰς] τὰ μεταστύλια
τοῦ Π[ωρίνου?]
τρυφάκτους·
Νικοκλῆι Νίκωνος
τρύφακτον 𐅅[𐅄ΔΔ]·
Ἀντίκωι Καΐκου
τρύφακτον ·𐅅𐅄ΔΔ·
Ἀγλωσθένηι
[Ναξί]ωι τρύφακτον
𐅅𐅄ΔΔ· Ὀνησιφῶντι
τρύ[φακτο]ν 𐅅[𐅄ΔΔ·
․․]λλ․․․ίαι
τρύφακτο[ν]
𐅅𐅄ΔΔ·
τούτων ἀπέδομεν
ἑκάστ{τ}ωι {ἑκάστωι},
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητοῦ
Φίλλιδος·
Νικοκλεῖ
ὑπερελόντες
τὸ ἐπιτιμηθὲν
δραχμὰς ·Δ𐅂𐅂·
τὸ γινόμενον
𐅅[𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· Ἀντί]κωι
ὑπερελόντες
τὸ ἐπιτιμηθὲν
Δ, τὸ [γι]-
75
νόμενον ·𐅅𐅄Δ·
Ἀγλωσθέ[νη]ι
ὑπερελόντες
τὸ ἐπιτιμηθὲν
𐅃𐅂𐅂, τὸ γινόμενον
𐅅𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂· Ὀνησιφῶντι
ὑπερελόντες
τὸ ἐπιτιμηθὲν
𐅃𐅂, τὸ γινόμενον
·𐅅𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
[․․λλ․․․ίαι
ὑπ]ερελόντες
τὸ ἐπιτιμηθὲν
δραχμὰς
ΔΔΔΔ,
τὸ λοιπὸν ·𐅅ΔΔΔ·
Ἀ[ντ]ίκωι καὶ
Νικοκ[λεῖ] τοῖς
συντελέσασιν
ἑκατέρωι θύρετρον
κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν
συγγραφὴν μισθὸς
ἀμφοτέροις
𐅅𐅄ΔΔ· Νικοκλῆι
τῶι ἐ[γλαβ]όντι
καταγλύψαι
τὰ κυμάτια τοῦ
τρυφά-
κτου
τοῦ ἠργάσατο
Βάκχιος κ̣α̣ὶ
ἐγκα[ύσαντι]
δραχμαὶ 𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂·
κατὰ τὴν συγγραφὴν
συντελέσαντι
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
γινόμενον·
Ἀριστοκλῆι
τῶι ἐγλαβόντι
ἀγαγεῖ[ν ἐκ
Κεσ]τρείου
εἰς τὸ Πύθιον
λίθους ὀκτώ,
τὸμ
πόδα ·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂,
ἀπομετρησάμενοι
μετὰ τοῦ ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ τοῦ ἐπιμελητοῦ
πόδας πεντήκοντα
ἕξ, ἀπέδομεν τὸ
συλλογισθὲν
·ΗΗΔΔ𐅂𐅂[𐅂𐅂]
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτ[έκτον]ος
καὶ ἐπιμελητοῦ·
ναῦλλον Στ[ρά?]-
[τ]ωνι
τῶν λίθων [ἀπο]μετρήσαντι
πόδας ὁλκάδων
κατὰ τὴν συγγραφὴν
τριάκοντα πέντε
τοῦ ποδὸς τὸ
γινόμενον ·𐅂․․
—— Εὐφράνορι
τῶι ἐγλαβόντι
ποιῆσαι το․․․ο․․․․․․․․ΟΙΟΥ․
δραχμῶν Η̣Η̣
συντελέσα[ν]-
80
τι τὸ ἔργον κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
γινόμενον κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητοῦ·
Νευγένει τῶι
ἐγλαβόντι ἐγκαῦσαι
τὰ κυμάτια τὰ
[ἐπὶ τοῦ] θ[αλ]άμου
οὗ ὁ φοῖνιξ τὸμ
πόδα Ι𐅁, ἀ[πο]-
μετρήσαντι
πόδας τετταράκοντα
τὸ γινόμενον
·Δ· Ἀριστοκλῆι
τῶι ἐγλαβόντι
στρῶσαι τὴν στοὰν
τὴν ἐν τῶι Ἀρτεμισίωι
δραχμῶν ·ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂,
ὑπερελόντες
τὸ ἐπιδέκατον
ὃ ἐπετίμησεν
ἀρχιτέ-
κτων
τὸ λοιπὸν ἀπέδομ[εν
·ΔΔΔ]𐅂̣𐅂̣·
[Φ]ιλώται τῶι
ἐγλαβόντι τὴμ
τράπεζαν τὴν
ξυλίνην δραχμῶν
·𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂, συντελέσαντι
τὸ ἔργον κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
γινόμενον κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν
Μενύλλου,
Ἀριστοβούλου,
Ἀριστοθέου·
Δαιδάλωι τῶι
ἐγλαβόντι
περιαργυρῶσαι
τὴν τράπεζαν
μισθὸς τὴμ [μνᾶν
․․]ΔΔ, ἀποστησάμενοι
κατὰ τὴν συγγρα-
[φὴν]
καθ’ ἕκαστον̣
․․․․․․․․ μετὰ
τοῦ ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν
καὶ συλλογισθέντος
τοῦ ἀργυρίου
οὗ ἔχει ἡ τράπεζα
δραχμῶν ·Χ̣ΧΧ𐅅𐅄Δ𐅃·
ὑπερελόντες
τ[ῆ]ς̣ [μνᾶ]ς̣ ὃ
ἐπετίμησεν ὁ
ἀρχιτέκτων δρα[χμὰς]
85
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂, τὸ λοιπὸν
ἀπέδομεν ․․․․𐅂𐅂·
Μνησιβούλωι
Μυκονίωι τῶι
ἐγλαβόντι τὸ
Διοσκούριον
ἐδαφίσαι καὶ
τὰς πέτρας ἐγλιθεῦσαι
δραχμῶν ·ΗΔ·
ὑπερελόντες
τὸ ἐπιδ[έκ]ατον
ὃ ἐπετίμησεν
ὁ ἀρχιτέκ[των]
[καὶ
οἱ] ἐπιτιμηταί,
τὸ λο[ιπὸν ἀπ]έδομεν
·𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
Δεξίωι ἐγλαβόντι
στομῶσαι τὰ
σιδήρια καὶ
κολαπτῆρας
καὶ τορογλυφεῖς
καινοὺς ποιήσαντι
τὴμ [μν]ᾶν [𐅂𐅂𐅂]ΙΙΙΙΙ[𐅁],
ἀποστησάμενοι
μετὰ [τοῦ]
ἀρχιτέκτονος
μνᾶς [δέκα] τρεῖς
ἡμιμναῖον, τὸ
συλλογισθὲν
·𐅄𐅂𐅂Ι̣ΙΙΙ𐅁·
καὶ τῶν ὀξυνομένων
σιδήρων ἐγλαβόντι
τὸ στόμα ὀξύνειν
τύχου καὶ ξοΐδος
·𐅁̣· τὸ σ[υλλ]ογισθὲν
εἰς τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν
·𐅄̣𐅂𐅂𐅂· Λ —
—
[κ]ρίτωι
τὴν θεμελίωσι[ν
ἐγλ]αβόντι τοῦ
Πουλυδάμαντος
δραχμῶν ·𐅄·
συντελέσαντι
τὸ ἔργον ἀπέδομεν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος·
Ῥόδωνι τῶι ἐγλαβόντ[ι
τὴν περι]βολίαν
τοῦ Πουλυδάμαντ[ος
κα]-
τὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
δραχμ[ὰς] ΔΔΔΔ𐅃.Ἀριστογείτωι
Κορινθίωι ἐγλαβόντι
τὴν πρισμὴν τῶν
ξ[ύλ]ων τῶν εἰς
τὰς σκηνὰς τὸ̣μ
πῆχυ[ν ․․․․․․]δα
χαλκῶν [ὀκτ]ὼ
ἀπε[λογισά]μεθα
μετὰ τοῦ ἀρχιτέκτονος
90
[κ]αὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν
Ἀρησιμβρότου
καὶ Ἀνδρομένους
πή[χεις] χιλίους
ἑκατὸν δέκα·
Ἡρακλείδηι
ἐργολαβήσαντι
γόμφους καὶ
δεσμοὺς εἰς
τὸ Κύνθιον π̣[οιῆσαι
τὴμ μνᾶν 𐅂ΙΙΙΙ],
ἀποστησάμενοι
μετὰ τοῦ ἀρχιτέκτ[ο]-
νος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν
Τελέσωνος,
Νίκωνος, Ἀντιπάτρου
τάλαντα ΙΙΙΙ·
τὸ γινόμενον
ἀπέδομεν δραχμὰς
ΗΗΗΗ· Κτήσωνι
τῶι τοὺς ἥλους
ἐγλαβό[ντι εἰς
τὰς σκ]ηνὰς καὶ
τὰ παρασκήνια
ποιῆσαι τὴ[μ]
μνᾶν
𐅂𐅂, ἀπεσστησάμεθα
κατὰ τὴν συγγραφὴν
μνᾶς τριάκοντα
ἑπτὰ μετὰ τοῦ
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν·
καὶ Δεξίωι
ἐγλαβόντι κατὰ
τὴ[ν αὐτὴ]ν συγγραφὴν
ποιῆσαι ἥλους
εἰς τὰ παρασκή-
νια
τὴμ μνᾶν δραχμῶν
·𐅂𐅂· ἀπεστησάμεθα
μετὰ τοῦ ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν
μνᾶς ὀκτώ· Θεοδήμωι
τῶι ἐγλαβόντι
ἐργάσασθαι
τὴν [σκηνὴ]ν τὴν
μέσην καὶ τὰ
παρασκήνια τὰ
κάτω δραχμῶ[ν]
ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
συντελέσαντι
τὸ ἔργον κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
γινόμενον κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
Ἐπικράτηι τῶι
ἐγλα[β]όντι τὰς
σκηνὰς τὰς παλαιὰς
ξῦσαι καὶ ἐπισκευάσαι
95
καὶ τὰς ἐπάνω
σκηνὰς καινὰς
ποιῆσαι δύο
καὶ τὰ παρασκήνια
τὰ ἄνω καινὰ
ποιῆσαι δύο
καὶ τοῖς παλαιοῖς
πίναξι τῶν παρασκηνίων
κύκλωι περιφ̣[ρά]ξ̣αι
καὶ τὰ ἔξωστρα
καὶ τὴν κλίμακα
καὶ τοὺς βω-
μοὺς
ἐπισκευάσαι
·𐅅ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν
συγγραφὴν καθ’
ἣν καὶ Θεόδημος
ἐξέλαβεν, συντελέσαντι
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
γινόμενον κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν·
Γονεῖ καὶ Ἀσκληπι-
[ά]δηι
τοῖς ἐγλαβοῦσι
γράψαι τὰς σκηνὰς
καὶ τὰ παρασκήνια
τὰ τε ἐπάνω καὶ
τὰ ὑποκάτω δραχμῶν
ΧΧ𐅅· τούτοις
ἔδομεν τὴμ πρώτην
δόσιν δραχμὰς
Χ· καὶ ἐπεὶ τὰ
ἡ[μί]ση ἔγραψαν,
τὴν δευτέραν
δόσιν δ[ρα]-
χμὰς
Χ· τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν
τῆς ἐργολαβίας
δραχμὰς ·𐅅·
ἐπεὶ τὸ ἔργον
συνετέλεσαν
κατὰ τὴν συγγραφὴν
ἀπέδομεν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν
Δημόνου, Στησίλεω,
Ἀριστοθέου,
Ἱερομβρότου,
Ἡγησαγόρου,
Κοιράνου· τῶι
ἐγλαβόν[τι] ποιῆσαι
τὸ παρασκήνιον
τὸ ἐν τῶι θεάτρωι
δραχμῶν ·ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ·
ἔδομεν τὴν πρώτην
καὶ δευτέραν
δόσιν κατὰ τὴν
συγγραφὴν ·ΗΗΗ𐅄·
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
ἐγκα-
100
ταλιπόντος δὲ
τὸ ἔργο[ν ἡμιτελὲς
καὶ συντ]ελέσαντος
τοῦ ἐγγυητοῦ,
κατὰ τὴν συγγραφὴν
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
ἐπιδέκατον
ἀρχιτέκτονος
κελεύοντος·
Θρασύλ<λ>ωι
τῶι ἐγλαβόντι
ἐργάσασθαι
τὸ ἐπιστύ[λιον
τοῦ Βακ?]χίου
κατ[ὰ]
τὴν
αὐτὴν συγγραφὴν
καθ’ ἣ[ν καὶ
Θεόδημ]ος ἐξέλαβεν,
ἀπέδομεν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν
δραχμὰς ·𐅄·
Ἀρχέλαι τῶι
ἐγλαβόντι ἀπαγαγεῖν
τὴν γῆν ἐκ Πανόρμου
τ<ῆς> Μυ[κόνου
δραχμ]ῶν ·Η𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂
καὶ
καταχ̣ρ̣ί̣σαντι
τὸ τ̣ε̣ῖ̣χος
τῆς σκηνῆς κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφήν,
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
γινόμενον ἀρχιτέκτονος
κελεύοντος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν.
Διονυσίωι τῶι
ἐγλαβόντι
οἰκοδομῆσαι
δραχμῶν — — — —
— — — —
καὶ
τοῦ Πλι[ν]θίνου
[κα]ὶ το[ῦ] ἐσ[χα]ρῶνος
[καὶ τ]οῦ Θεορρήτου
τὰ ἐκπεπτωκότα
διακεσαμένωι,
καὶ τοῦ Θεσμοφορίου
δύο πτώματα
οἰκοδομήσαντι
καὶ τοὺς βωμοὺς
καὶ τὸμ βόρειον
τοῖχον καὶ τὴν
στοὰν κ[αὶ τὸν
ναὸν τ]ῆς Κόρ[ης]
ἐξαλείψαντι
καὶ τὴν γωνίαν
τοῦ ναοῦ [δι]ακεσαμένωι
κατὰ τὴν συγγραφὴν
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
γινόμενον ἀρχιτέκτονος
κελεύοντος.
Θεοφάντωι τῶι
ἐγλαβόντι τῆς
παλαίστρας
ὀροφῶσα[ι] τ[ὸν
λουτρῶν]α κα[ὶ]
τὸ π[αι]-
105
δαγωγεῖον καὶ
τὸ ἀλειπτήριον
καὶ τὴν ἐξέδραν
καὶ τὴν στοὰν
τὴν κατάβορρον
καὶ τὰς ἀστέγους
στοὰς δύο δραχμῶν
·ΧΗΗΗ𐅄· ἔδομεν
τὴν πρώτην καὶ
τὴν δευτέραν
δόσιν κατὰ τὴν
συγγ[ραφὴν
κ]ελεύοντ[ος]
[ἀ]ρχιτέκτονος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν
δραχμὰς ·ΧΗΗΔ𐅃𐅂·
οὐ συντελοῦντος
δὲ Θεοφάντου
τὰ ἔργα, ἐπιμισθωσάμενοι
μετὰ τοῦ ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν
συνετελέσαμεν
τὴν ὀρόφωσιν
τῆς ἐ[ξέ]-
δρας
ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐπιδεκάτου·
Νικοκλῆι τῶι
τὰ λίθινα ἔργα
τῆς παλαίστρας
ἐγλαβόντι δραχμῶν
·ΗΗΗΗ· κατὰ τὴν
αὐτὴν συγγραφήν,
καθ’ ἣν καὶ
Θεόφαντος
ἐργολάβησεν,
συντελέσαντι
τὰ ἔργα ἀπέδομεν
κελεύοντος
τοῦ [ἀρ]-
χιτέκτονος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν·
Κ[αλ]λικράτηι
τῶι ἐγλαβόντι
κονιάσαι τοὺς
κίονας καὶ
χρῖσαι τὸ περιστύλιον
γῆι δραχμῶν
·𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔΔ· συντελέσαντι
τὰ ἔργα κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
γινόμενον [κε]-
λεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν·
Ἀναψυκτίδηι
τῶι ἐγλαβόντι
τὸν κέραμον ἐπὶ
τὴμ παλαίστραν
ζεύγη 𐅅, τὸ ζεῦγος
𐅂Ι𐅁𐅀, ἀπαγαγόντι
τὸγ κέραμον καὶ
παραριθμήσαντι
ὑγιᾶ κατὰ τὴν
συγγραφὴν π[αρόν]-
110
τος ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
συλλογισθὲν
·𐅅ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙΙ·
Διονυσίωι
ἐγλαβόντι ἐδαφίσαι
τὸ σφ[αι]ριστήριον
καὶ τὰς στοὰς
καὶ τὰς ἐξέδρας
καὶ [τ]ὸν χοῦν
ἐξενέγκαντι
δραχμῶν ΗΔΔΔΔ·
συν[τελέ]-
σαντι
κατὰ τὴν συγγραφὴν
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
γινόμενον κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος·
Φιλώται καὶ
Δεξίωι ἐγλαβοῦσι
κατασκευάσαι
ἐπὶ τὴν θύραν
τῆς παλαίστρας
μοχλὸν [κ]αὶ
βαλανάγραν
δραχμῶν 𐅄ΔΔΔΙΙΙ·
συντε[λέσασι]
κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
γινόμενον κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν·
Ἀντίκωι τῶι
ἐγλαβόντι διελεῖν
τὸν τοῖχον τὸμ
μέσον τοῦ ἀλειπτηρίου
[κα]ὶ τοῦ παιδαγωγείου
τοῦ ἀρχαίου
δραχμῶν [․․․ καὶ]
μέλαθρα
ὑποθέντι ὑπὸ
τὰς δοκοὺς
δύο καὶ ἐνοικοδομήσα[ντι]
τὴν θύραν τοῦ
π[αιδαγωγ]είου
ἀπέδ[ομεν] τὸ
γιν[όμ]εν[ον
κελεύο]ντ[ος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν.
Κ]υδ̣ά[νθ]ει?
[ἐγ]λαβόντι τοῦ
Κυνθίου τ[ῆ]ς
περιοικοδομία[ς
πόδας]
[ἑ]κατόν,
τὸμ πὸδα δραχμῶν
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ𐅁·
—— ἔδομεν τὴν
πρώτην [δόσιν
Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙ·
καὶ τὴν δευτέραν
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — —ο]ῦντι
δραχμὰς Η𐅄𐅃𐅂Ι
καὶ τὸ ἐπιδέκ[ατον]
115
[σ]υντελέσαντι
τὸ ἔργον ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂̣𐅂̣𐅂̣[𐅂Ι]
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — καὶ
δευτέραν δόσιν
κατ[ὰ τὴν συγ]-
[γρα]φὴν
δραχμὰς 𐅅ΗΗΔ𐅂𐅂Ι
κελ[εύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — —]ν․․․․․𐅅ΗΙΙ
https://web.archive.org/web/20160419062610/http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/translations/199%20translation.htm
face
B.1
[ἐπὶ
Ἀητιγόνου ἄρχοντος
μηνὸς Ληναιῶνος].
vac.
1
τάδε [παρελ]άβομεν
[παρὰ ἱε]ροποιῶν
Στησίλεω τοῦ
Σκύμνο[υ], Φίλ[τ]ου
τοῦ — — —
[ἄστατα·
φιάλας ἀργυρᾶς
ἐν τῶι προδόμωι
τοῦ νεὼ τοῦ
Ἀπόλ]λωνος·
ἣν ἀνέθεσαν
Κῶ[ιοι] ἐπ’ ἀρχεθεώρου
Ἀράτου· ἄλλην
ἅρμα ἔχουσαν
Ἡρακλείδου·
<ἄλλην> ὀμφαλὸν
[ἐπίχρυ]-
[σον
ἔχουσαν, ἀνάθημα
Ῥοδίων ἐπ’
ἀρχεθεώρ]ου
Πολυαράτου·
ἄλλην Ῥοδίων,
ὀμφαλὸν ἔχουσαν
ἐπίχρυσον, ἐπ’
ἀρχεθεώρου
Φρασίλα· ἄλλη
Ῥοδίων τὸν αὐτὸν
[ἔχουσα
ῥυθμόν, ἐπ’
ἀρχεθεώρου
․․․․․․․․․·
ἄ]λλη Ῥοδίων,
ἐπ’ ἀρχεθεώρου
Ἀκεστία· ἄλλη
Ῥοδίων ἐπιδόντων
χορεῖα ἐπ’
ἀρχεθεώρου
Ἀγησιδάμου·
ἄλλη Ῥοδίων
5
[ἐπ’ ἀρχεθεώρου
․․․․․․․․· ἄλλη
Ῥοδίων ἐπ’]
ἀρχεθεώρου
Μένωνος· λογχωτὴ
φιάλη, ἀνάθημα
Ἀριστοφύλου
Ῥοδίου, ἐπίχρυσος·
ῥαβδωτή, ἀνάθημα
Τιμάν[θ]ους·
[φιάλη
ἔκτυπος διάχρυσος,
ἀνάθημ]α Διοκλέους
Κώιου· φιάλιον
λεῖον, ἀνάθημα
Πυρρίου· καὶ
ἃς ἀνέθηκε
Στησίλεως
τρεῖς· Καλυμνίων
λογχωτή· ἄλλη
ἐπ’ ἀρχε-
[θεώρου
— c.17 — ἀ]νάθημα,
λεία· καὶ καρυωτὴ
ἔκτυπος, ἀνάθημα
Ἀρταπάτου· καὶ
ἄλλαι ἐκτυπωταὶ
δύο τῶν Χαρμίδου
θυγατέρων·
ἄλλη καρυωτή,
ἀπαρχὴ Κώιων
[ἀνάθημα
ἐπ’ ἀρχεθ]εώρου
Ἀλεξιβίου·
Ἀμμωνίου ἀνάθημα,
λεία· καὶ
ἀστερωτή, Δαμασίου
ἀνάθημα· ἐμ προτομῆι
Ἐτεάρχου ἀνάθη<μα>
φιάλη· vac. βατιάκιον,
ἀνάθημα Σελεύκου·
[φιάλιον
λογχωτόν], ἀνάθημα
Σωθάλους·
καρυωτὴ φιάλη
καὶ φιάλια ἐπὶ
ταινίας, ἀνάθημα
Ἀγία· κρατῆρας
ἀργυροῦς δύο,
οὓς ἀνέθηκεν
βασίλισσα
Στρατονίκη·
τριήρης ἣν ἀνέθηκε
[...]
[space] (1) The following we received from the hieropoioi Stesileos
son of Skymnos, Phltos the son of [... Temple of Apol]lo. (phiale)
which the Koans dedicated with Aratos chief theoros; another with
chariot, of Herakleides; (another) with a boss [...chief theor]os
Polyaratos; another from the Rhodians, with a gilded boss, with
Phrasilas chief theoros; another of the Rhodians, with the same
[...a]nother of the Rhodians, with Akestias chief theoros; another
with the Rhodians giving the choreia with Agesidamos chief theoros;
another of the Rhodians [...] (5) Menon chief theoros; gilded
lanceolate phiale, dedication of Aristophylos of Rhodes; rayed
(phiale), dedication of Timanthes [... dedicati]on of Diokles of
Kos; smooth phialion, dedication of Pyrrhios; and three which
Stesileos dedicated; lanceolate (phiale) of the Kalymnians; another
with chief theoros [... d]edication, smooth; and figured, knobbed
(phiale), dedication of Artapatos; and two other figured (phialai)
from the daughters of Charmides; another, knobbed, aparche of the
Koans [... chief th]eoros Alexibios; dedication of Ammonios, smooth;
and starred, dedication of Damasios; phiale in protome, dedicat(ion)
of Etearchos; batiakion, dedication of Seleukos; [...] dedication of
Sothales; knobbed phiale and phialia on ribbons, dediction of Agias;
two silver kraters which queen Stratonike dedicated; trireme which
[...] dedicated;
10
[Σέλευκος]·
κύρβη, ἀνάθημα
Κοσκάλου·
ῥόδον, ἀνάθημα
Δεξικράτους·
τύπος προσηλωμένος
ἀργυροῦς·
κηρύκειον
ἀργυροῦν· φοῖνιξ·
μάχαιραν ἱππικήν,
ἀνάθημα
[Θυμώιδου·
κο]λεὸν μαχαίρας,
Τιμέου ἀνάθημα·
περικεφαλαίαν
περιηργυρωμένην,
ἀνάθημα Λεωνίδου·
θυμιατήριον
χαλκοῦν· κανοῦν
χαλκοῦν. στλεγγίδα
χρυσῆν Γλ[αύ]-
[κου
ἀνάθημα]· δακτύλιον
λογχωτὸν Φωκαΐδος·
σφραγίδιον ἐν
δακτυλίωι
ἐπιχρύσωι· ταινίαν
ἐπάργυρον·
κύλικας ἀργυρενδέτους
δύο, ἀνάθημα
Κτήσωνος·
δακτυλίους
[σιδηροῦς]
ὑπαργύρους
ΗΗ𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙ· ὑποχρύσους
δακτυλίους
𐅃ΙΙΙΙ· φιάλην
ἐμ πλινθείωι
καρυωτὴν ἔκτυπον,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντων
τῶν θεωρῶν τῶν
παρὰ βασιλέως
Πτολεμαίου
ἐπ’ ἀρχεθεώρου
․․․νακ-
[τος?·
φι]άλη λεία τὸν
αὐτὸν ἔχουσα
ῥυθμόν, ἐπιδόντων
θεωρῶν τῶν ἐγ
Μεγάλης πόλεως
ὧν ἀρχεθέωρος
Ἀφθόνητος·
ἄλλην χορεῖα
ἔκτυπον ἐπιδόντων
θεωρῶν Κασίων
ὧν ἀρχεθέωρος
Ἄλεξις· φιάλας
15
․․ΝΑΣΚΙΣ․․․ΑΣ,
ἀνάθημα Ἀντιπάτρου
Ἠπειρώτου. καὶ
τάδε σταθμῶι·
κηρύκειον λεῖον,
ἕλκον 𐅄· ἄλλο
μικρόν, ὁλκὴν
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· χρυσίου
κλάσματα σὺν
σφραγῖδι ἀργυρᾶι,
ὁλκὴν 𐅃𐅂𐅂·
φυκίον χρυσοῦν
περὶ τ[ῶι]
[σ]τυλίσκωι
ἕλκον 𐅂· στλεγγίδα
συνπεφλασμένην,
ὁλκὴν ∶𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἐσχαρίδα ἀργυρᾶν,
ἣν ἀνέθηκε
Βουλομάγα,
ὁλκὴν σὺν τῶι
ἐπιπύρωι δρα(χμὰς)
𐅅𐅄ΔΔΔ· κυλ<ί>κιον,
ὁλκὴ 𐅂· χρυσίου
λεπίδα ἀπὸ τοῦ
[ἀ]νδριάντος·
vac. καὶ ἐκ τοῦ
Ἀσκληπιείου
ὁλκὴ 𐅂· θυμιατήριον,
ἀνάθημα Στιλπύριος,
ὁλκὴ 𐅃̣𐅂𐅂̣𐅂·
δακτύλιον
χρυσοῦν, ἀνάθημα
Μνασικράτους,
ὁλκὴ 𐅂̣ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλον δακτύλιον
συντεθλασμένον
χρυσοῦν
ἕλκοντα 𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ[ΙΙ]·
ἄλλον δακτύλιον
ἔχοντα ἀνθράκιον
Σαφφοῦς, ὁλκὴν
𐅂𐅂· τετράδραχμον
ἐμ πλινθείωι·
χρυσοῦν ἐν
ταινιδίωι, Νικολάου
ἀνάθημα· τετράδραχμα
πτολεμαϊκὰ
δύο καὶ ὀβολοὺς
ἀγρολικοὺς
δύο καὶ ἀργυρίου
παντοδαποῦ ὁλκὴ
𐅄· χρυσίου
παντοδαποῦ ὁλκὴ
Η𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· νομίσματος
χαλκοῦ παντοδαποῦ
ἐν ἀγγείοις
χαλκοῖς τρισί,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τοῖς
ἀγγείοις μνᾶς
ΙΙ· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς
(10)
kyrbe, dedication of Koskalos; rose, dedication of Dexikrates;
nailed silver image; silver staff; palm; equestrian sword,
dedication [... sc]abbard for sword, dedication of Timeos; silvered
helmet, dedication of Leonidas; bronze censer; bronze basket; gold
fillet Gl[aukos...]; lanceolae ring of Phokais; seal in gilded ring;
silvered ribbon; two silvered kylixes, dedication of Kteson; 267
silvered [...]rings; 9 gilded rings; knobbed, figured phiale in
plinth, choreia given by the theoroi from king Ptolemy with chief
theoros [... phi]ale smooth with the same pattern, given by the
theoroi of Megalopolis whose chief theoros (was) Aphthonetos;
another figured, choreia given by the Kasians whose chief theoros
(was) Alexis; phialas [...] (15) dedication of Antipater from
Epirus. And the following weighed: smooth staff weighing 50; another
small, weight 3.3; pieces of gold with silver seal, weight 7; gold
rouge jar on a peg weighing 1; crushed fillet, weight 2.3; silver
brazier which Boulomagas dedicated, weight with the grate dra. 580;
small kylix, weight 1; piece of gold from the statue [space]
and from the Asclepieion, weight 1; censer, dedication of
Stilpurios, weight 8; gold ring, dedication of Mnasikrates, weight
1.3; another gold ring, crushed, weighing 3.3+; another ring with
garnet, Sappho’s, weight 2; tetradrachm in plinth; gold on
ribbon, dedication of Nikolaos; two Ptolemaic tetradrachms and two
agrolic (Argolic?) obols and various silver, weight 50; various
gold, weight 107.3; various bronze coin in three bronze containers,
weight with the containers, 2 mnas; gold crown
20
ὃν ἀνέθηκε
Πευκέστας,
ὁλκὴν δραχμὰς
𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· καὶ
ὃμ βασιλεὺς
Πτολεμαῖος,
ὁλκὴν δραχμὰς
ΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂· καὶ
ὃμ βασιλεὺς
Δημήτριος, ὁλκὴν
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂· καὶ
ὃν Ἀντίπατρος,
ὁλκὴν ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
καὶ
ὃμ βασιλεὺς
Φιλοκλῆς,
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
καὶ ὃμ Πολύκλειτος,
ὁλκὴν 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
καὶ ὃμ Φάραξ,
ὁλκὴν ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
καὶ ὃμ Πνυταγόρας,
ὁλκὴν ΔΔΔ𐅂·
καὶ ὃν Ξενόφαντος,
ὁλκὴν 𐅄Δ𐅂ΙΙ·
ὃν Κτησικλῆς,
ὁλκὴν
[Δ]ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
καὶ ὃν Νικοκρέων
ἀνέθηκεν, ὁλκὴν
𐅄̣Δ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ὃν Ἰώμιλκος,
ὁλκὴν ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
καὶ ὃν Λύσανδρος
τῆς ἀμπέλου,
ὁλκὴν 𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
καὶ ἄλλον
Λυσάνδρου,
ὁλκὴν ΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
ὃν Ἀνδροκλῆς,
τῆς μυρσ[ί]-
νης,
ὁλκὴν ΔΔΔ𐅃̣𐅂̣𐅂̣𐅂̣·
καὶ ὃν Τιμασίπολις,
ὁλκὴν Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὃν ὁ δῆμος ὁ
Δηλίων ἀνέθηκε
στεφανωθεὶς
ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου
τοῦ Ναξίων, ὁλκὴν
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
ἀνεπιγράφους
στεφάνους δύο,
ὁλκὴν ἀμφοτέρων
𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂·
στεφάνους
πρὸς τῶι τοίχωι
δύο, ὁλκὴν τοῦ
μὲν 𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂, τοῦ
δὲ ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
καὶ ὃν Κάρπος
καὶ Ἄδραστος
ἀνέθεσαν, ὁλκὴν
ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂· στρεπτὸν
χρυσοῦν, ἀνέθηκε
Δάτις, ἕλκον
ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂· στέφανος
25
[ὧι] τὸ ἄγαλμα
τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
ἐστεφάνωται,
ὁλκὴν ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
στεφάνιον ἐπὶ
τῆς κόμης, ἀνάθημα
Τιμοκράτου,
ἄστατον· στλεγγίδιον
χρυσοῦν, ὃ ἀνέθηκαν
οἱ Βύβλιοι.
vac.
vac.
26
[ἐ]ν τῶι ναῶι οὗ
τὰ ἑπτὰ ἀγάλματα·
φιάλην ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθημα Καλλικλέους,
ἄστατον· ἄλλας
τρεῖς ἀστάτους,
ἀνάθημα Ταυρομενιτῶν·
ἄλλο φιάλιον
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθημα
[Εὐ]θυδίκου·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
προσηλωμένος,
ἀνάθημα Αὐτοκλέους·
ἄλλος στέφανος,
ἀνάθημα Νικίου·
καὶ ἐν κιβωτίωι
στεφάνους δύο,
ὁλκὴν τοῦ μὲν
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂, τοῦ
δὲ 𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙΙ·
φιάλας
[τ]ριάκοντα,
ὁλκὴν ΧΧ𐅅Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
κυμβία τέτταρα,
ὁλκὴν Η𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
φιάλην λείαν,
τὸν ὀμφαλὸν
ἐπίχρυσον, ἐμ
πλινθείωι, ἀνάθημα
θεωρῶν τῶν ἐγ
Ῥόδου ἐπ’
ἀρχεθεώρου
Σιμίωνος· στεφάνους
πρὸς
τῶι
τοίχωι, χρυσοῦς
εἴκοσι ἕνα,
ὁλκὴν [τ]οῦ πρώτου
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τοῦ δευτέρου
𐅄̣ΔΔΔΙΙΙ· τοῦ
τρίτου 𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τοῦ τετάρτου
𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂· τοῦ
πέμπτου ΗΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
τοῦ ἕκτου
𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂· τοῦ
ἑβδόμου 𐅄<Δ>𐅃𐅂𐅂Ι·
τοῦ ὀγδόου
<𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂>·
(20)
which Peukestas dedicated, weight drachmas 69; and (crown) which
king Ptolemy (dedicated), weight drachmas 137; and which king
Demetrios, weight 87; and which Antipater, weight 47; and which king
Philokles 99.3; and which Polykleitos, weight 88.3; and which
Pharax, weight 49.3; and which Pnytagoras, weight 31; and which
Xenophantes, weight 61.2; which Ktesikles, weight 38.3+; and which
Nikokreon dedicated, weight 66.4; which Iomilkos, weight 24; and
which Lysandros, of grapevine, weight 67; and another of Lysander,
weight 26; which Androkles, of myrtle, weight 38; and which
Timasipolis, weight 17.3; which the Delian demos dedicated, crowned
by the Naxian demos, weight 86; two uninscibed crowns, weight of
both 57; two crowns on the wall, weight of the one 67, of the other
47; and which Karpos and Adrastos dedicated, weight 32; gold collar,
Datis dedicated, weighing 36; crown [with which] (25) the statue of
Apollo is crowned, weight 146; small crown on the hair, dedication
of Timokrates, unweighed; small gold fillet, which the Byblioi
dedicated [space]
In
the Temple of the Seven Statues: phiale in plinth, dedication of
Kallikles, unweighed; three others unweighed, dedication of the
Tauromenites; another phialion in plinth, dedication of Euthydikos;
nailed gold crown, dedication of Autokles; another crown, dedication
of Nikias; and two crowns in a chest, weight of the one 97, of the
other 65.3; thirty phialai, weight 2519; four kymbia, weight 158;
smooth phiale, boss gilded, in plinth, dedication of the theoroi
from Rhodes with Simion chief theoros; twenty one crowns on the
wall; weight of the first 99; of the second 80.3; of the third 68;
of the fourth 67; of the fifth 118.3; of the sixth 63; of the
seventh 57.1; of the eighth;
30
[τ]οῦ ἐνάτου
𐅄<Δ>𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· τοῦ
δεκάτο[υ
𐅄]ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τοῦ ἑνδεκάτου
𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· τοῦ
δωδεκάτου
𐅄ΔΔΔΙΙ𐅁· τοῦ
τρίτου 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
τοῦ τετάρτου
ΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
τοῦ πέμπτου
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
τοῦ ἕκτου ΗΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
τοῦ ἑβδόμου
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
[τ]οῦ
ὀγδόου 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ·
τοῦ ἐνάτου
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
τοῦ εἰκοστοῦ
Η· τοῦ ἐπόντος
Η. καὶ ἐν τῶι Πωρίνωι·
καρυωτὴ φιάλη
ἔκτυπος θεωρῶν
τῶν παρὰ βασιλέως
Πτολεμαίου
ἐπ’ ἀρχεθεώρου
Θ̣ευφίλου.
ἐν
τῶι Ἀρτεμισίωι·
φιαλῶν τὸν πρῶτον
ῥυμόν, σταθμὸν
μνᾶς ἐνενήκοντα,
φιαλῶν ἀριθμὸν
ΗΙΙΙ[Ι]· τὸν δεύτερον,
σταθμὸν μνᾶς
ἐνενήκοντα,
ἀριθμὸν ΗΙΙΙ·
τὸν τρίτον, σταθμὸν
μνᾶς ἐνήκοντα,
ἀριθμὸ[ν]
[Η]ΙΙΙΙ·
τὸν τέταρτον,
σταθμὸν μνᾶς
ἐνήκοντα, ἀριθμὸν
ΗΙΙ· τὸν πέμπτον,
σταθμὸν μνᾶς
ἐνήκοντα, ἀριθμὸς
ΗΙΙΙΙ· τὸν ἕκτον,
σταθμὸν μνᾶς
ἐνήκοντα, ἀριθμὸν
ΗΔΔΙ· τὸν ἕβδομον
ῥυμόν, ποτηρίων
παν-
[το]δαπῶν,
σταθμὸν μνᾶς
ἑξήκοντα, ἀριθμὸν
ΗΔ· [κ]υά[θ]ους?
καὶ ὀξύβαφον
καὶ τὸ συμπεφυσημένον
ἀργύριον· τὸν
ὄγδοον ῥυμόν,
φιαλῶν καὶ ποτηρίων
παντοδαπῶν, σταθμὸν
μνᾶς ἑβδομήκοντα,
ἀριθμὸ[ν]
35
[𐅄]ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ·
τὸν ἔνατον ῥυμόν,
σταθμὸν μνᾶς
ἑξήκοντα σὺν
λεβητίω̣ι καὶ
κανῶι καὶ ἠ̣ρίσκοις
τέτταρσιν καὶ
τῶι κέρατι καὶ
τῶι συμπεφυσημένωι
ἀργυρίωι, ἀριθμὸς
πάντων 𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙ·
δέκατος ῥυμός,
ὠτῶν
[κ]αὶ
πυθμένων καὶ
τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς γεράνου,
ὁλκὴν μνᾶς εἴκ̣οσι
δύο· ἑνδέκατον
ῥυμόν, φιαλῶν
καὶ ἄλλων ποτηρίων
παντοδαπῶν, σταθμὸν
μνᾶς 𐅄ΔΙΙ, ἀριθμὸς
πάντων σὺν τοῖς
ἀλαβά-
στ<ρ>οις
πέντε καὶ οἰνοχόηι
καὶ ἐπιχύτηι
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ·
δωδέκατον ῥυμόν,
σταθμὸν μνᾶς
ΔΔΔ· εἰσὶ δὲ
προτομαὶ τρεῖς·
οἰνοχόαι τέτταρες·
λεοντόποδα
τρία· λεοντίου
κεφαλή· τρεισκαιδέκατον
ῥυμόν,
οἰνοχόας δέκα
δύο, ὁλκὴν μνᾶς
·ΔΔΙΙΙΙ· καὶ
ἐμ πλινθείωι
ΙΙ φιάλας ἐν
τῶι Ἀρτεμισίωι
ἀστάτους, ἃς
ἀνέθηκεν Ἰκάριος
Γοργίου Μυκόνιος·
ἕξ, χορεῖα Βάκχωνος
ἐπιδόντος· δύο
Ῥοδίων
ἐπιδόντων
χορεῖα· φιάλη
χρυσόκλυστος
ἐπ’ ἀρχεθεώρου
Πολυαράτου·
ἄλλη φιάλη Ῥοδίων
ἐπιδόντων χορεῖα
ἐπ’ ἀρχεθεώρου
Θρασυμάχου·
ἄλλη Ῥοδίων
ἐπ’ ἀρχεθεώρου
Ἀγησάνδρου·
ἄλλη ἔκτ[υ]-
(30)
of the ninth 58; of the tenth 44+; of the eleventh 66.4; of the
twelfth 80.2 1/2; of the third 82; of the fourth 128.5; of the fifth
82.5; of the sixth 122; of the seventh 99; of the eighth 96.3; of
the ninth 83.2; of the twentieth 100; of the following 100.
And
in the Porinos: knobbed phiale of the theoroi from king
Ptolemy with Theuphilos chief theoros.
In
the Artemision: the first row of phialai, weight ninety mnas,
number of phialai 103; the second, weight ninety mnas, number of
phialai 103; the third, weight ninety mnas, number of phialai 104;
the fourth, weight ninety mnas, number of phialai 102; the fifth,
weight ninety mnas, number of phialai 104; the sixth, weight ninety
mnas, number of phialai 121; the seventh row, of various cups,
weight sixty mnas, number 110, plus kyathoi and the crushed silver;
the eighth row, of phialai and various cups, weight seventy mnas,
number 39+; (35) the ninth row, weight sixty mnas with a small lebes
and basket and four eriskoi and the horn and the crushed silver,
number of all 67; tenth rumos, of handles and bases and pieces from
the Crane, weight twenty two mnas; eleventh row, of phialai and
various other cups, weight 62 mnas, number of all with the five
alabastoi and oinochoe and beaker 88; twelfth row, weight 30 mnas,
there are three heads, four oinochoai, three lionsfeet, small lion
head; thirteenth row, twelve oinochoai, weight 24 mnas. And
unweighed in the Artemision 2 phialai in plinth, which
Ikarios son of Gorgios from Mykonos dedicated; six with Bakchon
giving the choreia; two with the Rhodians giving the choreia; gilded
phiale with Polyaratos chief theoros; another phiale with the
Rhodians giving the choreia, with Thrasymachos chief theoros;
another of the Rhodians with Agesander chief theoros; another
figured
40
πος ἐπ’ ἀρχεθεώρου
Ῥο{υ}δίων {Ῥοδίων}
Φιλοδάμου·
φιάλαι δύο
χορεῖα ἐπιδούσης
βασιλίσσης
Στρατονίκης·
φιάλη Κώιων ἐπ’
ἀρχεθεώρου
Σίμου· ἄλλαι
Κώιων δύο ἐπ’
ἀρχεθεώρου
Πολυκλείτου
καὶ τῶν ἐξ Ἀλεξα[ν]-
δρείας
θεωρῶν· φιάλη
ἐπ’ ἀρχεθεώρου
Λυσίου· φιάλη,
ἀνάθημα Φιλώτα
Σικυωνίου·
καὶ ἄλλη, ἀνάθημα
Φυλάκου· καὶ
ἄλλη, Λεοντίνων
ἀνάθημα· ἄλλαι
δύο, ἀνάθημα
Ἀπολλοδώρου·
ἄλλη, ἀνάθημα
Θεοτί[μης]
[Σαλ]αμινίας·
ἄλλη ἀστερωτή,
ἀνάθημα Φιλωτίδος,
ἕλκουσα ·Η·
καὶ ἄλλη, Χοιροιθίδος
ἀνάθημα· κρατὴρ
ἀργυροῦς, ἀνάθημα
Παρμίσκου·
ζώιδια ἀργυρᾶ
δύο, Κλεινοῦς
ἀνάθημα· θυμιατήριον
χαλκοῦν ἐπάργυρον,
συντετριμμένον·
ἀετὸν ἀργυροῦν
διαπεπτωκότα·
ἀργυρίου
παντοδαποῦ καὶ
κλασμάτων ἀπὸ
φιαλῶν ἀργυρῶν
καὶ ποτηρίων,
ὁλκὴν πάντων
δραχμὰς ·ΧΧ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ·
καὶ ἄλλου
ἀργυρίου δοκίμου
καὶ δηλί[ων]
[χαλ]κ̣ῶν
δραχμαὶ ·𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
καὶ ὀρχομενίους
ὀβολοὺς ·ΗΗΗΗ·
αἰγιναίους
καὶ κρητικοὺς
στατῆρας ἕνδεκα
καὶ κορινθίους
δύο· τέτραχμα
νάξια δύο καὶ
μαυσσώλλεα
ἐ[ν]νέα καὶ φωκαΐδα
καὶ ὀβολὸν
φωκαϊκ[όν]·
45
[καὶ] ἄλλου
νομίσματος
παντοδαποῦ,
ὁλκὴν ·ΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
πέταλα χρυσᾶ
πεντήκοντα ὀκτώ,
καὶ ἀπὸ στεφάνων
κλάσματα καὶ
ἀπὸ στλεγγίδων,
καὶ περόναι καὶ
πεντόροβος,
ὁλκὴν πάντων
δραχμὰ<ς> ·𐅅ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂·
[καὶ]
χρυσίου λευκοῦ,
καὶ ἐν αὐτῶι
στατήρων ὄντων
κυζικηνῶν δύο
καὶ φωκαΐδος
·ΗΗΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂· μῆλα
χρυσᾶ ἔχοντα
εἴσω γῆν καὶ
ἀνθεμίου ὑπαργύρου
κλάσμα, ὁλκὴ
·ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙ· ἐνώιδια
χρυσᾶ θάσια,
ὁλκὴ ·𐅃ΙΙΙΙ·
δακτυλίο[υς]
χρυσοῦς
ἕξ, τούτων διάλιθος
εἷς, ὁλκὴ ·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
σφραγ<ίδ>ια
δύο ἄστατα·
δαρεικοὺς
ὀκτώ· δακτύλιον
χρυσοῦν ἐπίσημον
ἔχοντα Ἀρτεμίσιον,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅃ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλον λεῖον,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
ἄλλον δακτύλιον
ἔχοντα ἐπίσημον
Ἔρωτα, ὁλκὴ[ν
·𐅂𐅂]·
ἄλλον
χρυσένδετον
σιδηροῦν, ὁλκὴν
·𐅂𐅂𐅂· σφραγῖδα
ἐγ χρυσίωι
σημεῖον ἔχουσαν
τραγέλαφον,
ὁλκὴ ·𐅂𐅂Ι·
κυλινδρίσκος,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅂𐅂․·
σφραγῖδα χρυσένδετον,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅂ΙΙΙ·
λυγγούριον
κίρκον ἔχον
χρυσοῦν, ὁλκὴν
·𐅂Ι[ΙΙ]·
〚—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — —〛 ἄλλο
σφραγίδιον
χρυσένδετον,
ὁλκὴν 𐅂· ἄλλο
σφραγίδιον
κίρκον ἔχογ
χρυσοῦν, ὁλκὴν
·𐅂𐅂· ἄλλο
ἀργυρένδετον,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὑάλινον χρυσένδετον,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅂𐅂·
ἀνθέμια καὶ
κίρκος καὶ
[κλάσ]-
(40)
with Philodamos chief theoros of the Rhodians; two phialai with
queen Stratonike giving the choreia; phiale of the Koans with Simos
chief theoros; two others of the Koans with Polykleitos chief
theoros and the theoroi from Alexandria; phiale with Lysias chief
theoros; phiale, dedication of Philotas from Sikyon; and another
dedication of Phylakos; and another dedication of the Leontini; two
others dedication of Apollodoros; another dedication of Theoti[me]
of Salamis; another starred, dedication of Philotis, weighing 100;
and another dedication of Choirithis; silver krater, dedication of
Parmiskos; two silver animals, dedication of Kleino; silvered bronze
censer, crushed; silver eagle fallen apart; various silver and
pieces from silver phialai and cups, total weight drachmas 2900; and
other assayed silver and Delian bronze drachmai 78.3; and 400
Orchomenean obols; eleven Aeginetan and Cretan staters and two
Corinthian; two Naxian tetradrachms and nine Mausolean and Phocean
(drachma) and Phocean obol [and] (45) various other coins, weight
26; fifty eight gold petals and pieces from crowns and fillets and
pins and peony, total weight drachma(s) 881; [and] white gold
including 2 Kyzikenian staters and Phocean, 326; gold apples with
ointment inside and piece of silver flower, weight 40.3; gold
Thasian earrings, weight 5.4; six gold rings, one of these with
stones, weight 8; two unweighed seals; eight darics; gold ring with
image of Artemis, weight 5.3; another smooth, weight 4.2; another
ring with image of Eros, weigh[t...]; another iron (ring) bound in
gold, weight 3; seal in gold with image of stag-goat, weight 2.1;
small cylinder, weight 2; gold bound ring, weight 1.3; amber with
gold ring, weight 1.1+; another gold bound small seal, weight 1;
another seal with gold circle, weight 2; another silver bound,
weight 1.3; gold bound glass, weight 2; flowers and circle and
various [piec]es,
50
[μ]ατα παντοδαπά,
ὁλκὴ ·ΔΙΙΙΙ·
δακτύλιος ἐν
ταινιδίωι Καλλικρίτης
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
𐅂ΙΙΙ· ἄλλος
Ἀθηνᾶς πρόσωπο<ν>,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλον ἐπίχρυσον,
ἀνάθημα Στράτωνος,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅃· ἄλλον
δακ[τύ]-
λιον
ἀργυροῦν, ὁλκὴν
·𐅂𐅂𐅂· 〚—
— — — — — — —〛
τύπογ
χρυσοῦν ἐγ
ξυλωματίωι
ἄστατον· περιδέραια
τὰ Δημητρίου
καὶ φιάλια καὶ
περισκελίδα
ἀνέθηκε Στρατονίκη,
ἄστατα· θυμιατήριογ
χαλκο[ῦν]
ἐπίχρυσον
ὧι ἐπιγέγραπται
ὁλκὴ ·𐅅ΗΗΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλο θυμιατήριογ
χαλκοῦν ἐπίχρυσο{υ}ν
{ἐπίχρυσον} ἔλαττον,
φιάλην ἔχον
χαλκῆν, ἀνεπίγραφον·
κανοῦγ χαλκοῦν
ἐπίχρυσον ἐφ’
ὧι ἐπιγέγραπται
ὁλκὴ ·Χ[ΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂]
𐅂ΙΙ𐅁·
κανοῦν χρυσοῦν
λεῖον τὰ ὦτα
ἔχογ καὶ τὸν
πυθμένα ἀργυρᾶ,
ἐφ’ ὧι ἐπιγέγραπται·
χρυσίου ·ΧΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἀργυρίου
·𐅅ΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
οἰνοχόη χρυσῆ,
ἐφ’ ἧι ἐπιγραφὴ
·𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
ἄλλη οἰνοχόη,
ἐφ’ ἧι ἐπι-
γέγραπται
ὁλκὴ ·𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂Ι·
φιάλας χρυσᾶς
λείας ἑπτά,
ὁλκὴ πασῶν
·𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
καὶ καρυωτὰς
φιάλας χρυσᾶς
ἕξ, ὁλκὴν πασῶν
ΧΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
κύλικα θηρίκλειον,
ἣν ἀνέθηκε
Πτολεμαῖος,
ὁλκ[ὴν]
55
[Η]ΗΔΔΔ𐅃· φιάλην
χρυσῆν, ἀ<νά>θημα
Ναξίων, ὁλκὴν
·Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλην φιάλην
ῥαβδωτὴν χρυσῆν,
ὁλκὴν 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
φιάλιον χρυσοῦν
λεῖον, ὁλκὴν
·ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· φιάλην
ῥαβδωτὴν χρυσῆν,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅄․․․․·
ἐπιχύτην
χρυσοῦν, ὁλκὴν
·ΗΔ{Δ}𐅂𐅂· φιάλιον
ὃ καλεῖται
χρυσίς, ὁλκὴν
·𐅄𐅃· ὅρμον χρυσοῦν
ἀνέθηκε Δημοστράτη,
ἄστατον, ἀριθμὸν
λογχίων ·𐅄ΔΔ{Δ}ΙΙΙΙ·
ὅρμον τὸμ πρὸς
τῶι κλισμῶι
ἠρτημένον, ὁλκὴ
·Η[ΗΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂]·
ἄλλον
ὅρμον λογχωτόν,
ἀνάθημα Σιμίχης,
ἄστατον, ἀριθμὸν
λογχίων ·𐅄ΔΔΔΙΙ·
τραγίσκους
ἀστάτους δύο·
ἀσπιδίσκην,
Αἰσχυλίος
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ψίλιον
στρεπτόν, ὁλκὴν
·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· κλιμάκιον
[ξύλι]-
[ν]ον
ἐπίχρυσον, ὄφεις
ἔχον ἀργυροῦς·
ὅρμον ἀμφορέων
ἕλκοντα ·Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ὅρμον τὸν τῆς
Ἐρι[φύλ]ης, ἀριθμὸν
χρυσίων ·ΗΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ·
ἄμπελον χρυσῆν
ἄστατον· ῥοὰς
ἐπιχρύσους
πέντε καὶ μῆλον
καὶ προσ․․․․․․
․α
χρυσᾶ ἄστατα·
σφραγῖδα μαράγδου
ἄστατον· ἀνδριαντίσκον
ὑπὸ τῆι ἀμπέλωι
σκέλος οὔκ
ἔχοντα, ὁλκὴν
·𐅃𐅂· ἀσπιδίσκην
καὶ περιδέραια
καὶ φυκίον,
ὁλκὴν Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὅρμον ἀμφορέων
καὶ ἀνθέμ[ια
καὶ ․․․․]
(50)
weight 10.4; ring on ribbon, dedication of Kallikrites, weight 1.3;
another with face of Athena, weight 3; another gilded, dedication of
Straton, weight 5; another silver ring, weight 3; gold image on
wood, unweighed; the perideraia of Demetrios and phialia and anklets
Stratonike dedicated, unweighed; gilded bronze censer, on which the
weight is inscribed 827; another smaller gilded bronze censer with
bronze phiale, uninscribed; gilded bronze basket on which is
inscribed the weight 1001.2 1/2 +; smooth gold basket with silver
handles and base, on which is inscribed (weight) of gold 1193, of
silver 836; gold oinochoe, on which the inscription 697.2; another
oinochoe, on which is inscribed the weight 681.1; seven smooth gold
phialai, total weight 998; and six knobbed gold phialai, total
weight 1183; Therikleian kylix, which Ptolemy dedicated, wei[ght]
135+; (55) gold phiale, dedication of the Naxians, weight 196.3;
another gold rayed phiale, weight 86; small smooth gold phiale,
weight 28; rayed gold phiale, weight 50+; gold beaker, weight 112;
small phiale, which is called a chrysis, weight 55; gold necklace
Demostrate dedicated, unweighed, number of spearheads 74; the
necklace fastened to the couch, weight 100+; another lanceolate
necklace, dedication of Simiche, unweighed, number of spearheads 92;
two unweighed small goats; disk, dedication of Aischylis, weight 4;
twisted armlet, weight 9; gilded wood ladder with silver snakes;
necklace of spearheads weighing 18; the necklace of Eriphyle, number
of gold pieces 128; unweighed gold grapevine; five gilded
pomegranates and apple and [...] gold unweighed; unweighed seal of
emerald; statuette under the grapevine without leg, weight 6; disk
and perideraia and rouge jar, weight 14.3; necklace of amphorae and
flowe[rs...]
60
․․․, ὁλκὴν
·ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
φιάλιον ἐμ πλινθείωι
ἄστατον, Δημοσ{ι}ῶντος
{Δημοσῶντος}
ἀνάθημα· στεφάνους
χρυσοῦς ἐν τῶι
Ἀρτεμισίωι δύο,
ὁλκὴ ·𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
καὶ ὃν ἀνέθηκε
βασιλεὺς
Πτολεμαῖος
τῆς μυρσίνης,
ὁλκὴν ·Η𐅄Δ[ΔΔ]Δ𐅂[𐅂𐅂]·
[καὶ]
ὃμ Βερενίκη
ἀνέθηκεν, ὁλκὴν
·𐅄ΔΔ· ὃμ Πευκέστης
ἀνέθηκεν, ὁλκὴ
·𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος
Νικοκρέοντος,
ὁλκὴ ·ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
καὶ ἄλλον Δηλιάδων,
χορεία ἐπιδόντος
Κλείτου, ὁλκὴν
·𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
καὶ [ἄλ]λον
χορεῖα
Μήτρωνος ἐπιδόντος,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅄ΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ·
Καλλικράτους
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
·Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλος Ἰωμίλκου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
·ΔΔ𐅂[𐅂· Φ]ιλοκλέους
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
·ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙ. καὶ
ἄλλος Φιλοκλέους
ὁ̣ [τῆς] μυρρίν[ης],
ὁλκὴν
·𐅄ΔΔΔ{Δ}𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανον ἄλλον
ἀνέθηκε βασιλεὺς
Πτολεμαῖος
κιττοῦ, ὁλκὴ
·ΗΔΔΔΔ· καὶ
ὃν ἀνέθηκε βασιλεὺς
Δημήτριος, ὁλκὴν
·𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂· στέφανογ
καὶ ῥόδον, ἀνάθημα
Λυσάνδρου,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
․․․τωι
τοῦ ῥόδου
·𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂· καὶ
ἄλλον, Κρατεροῦ
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴν
·𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂· καὶ
τὸν ἀπελθόντα
στέφανον παρ’
Ἐπαμεινώνδα,
ὁλκὴ ·𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂.
καὶ τάδε ἐν τῶι
Ε<ἰ>λειθυαίωι·
φιάλην, ἀνάθημα
Κλεαρχίδος,
ἄστ[ατον· φιά]-
65
λην ἀργυρᾶν,
ἄστατον, ἀνάθημα
Κτησυλίδος,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅄ΔΔ𐅃·
ἀ<μ>φ̣ιδᾶς ἀργυρᾶς
․․․ καὶ ἄλλα
παντοδαπά, ὁλκὴν
·𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
πυρήνια χρυσᾶ
καὶ ἐνδεσμίδες
καὶ τύποι καὶ
ἀνδριαντίσκοι
τέτταρες, τούτων
[ξύλι]νος [εἷς],
καὶ
δακτύλιοι δύο,
ὁ εἷς ἔχων λίθον,
καὶ ἐνώιδιον
καὶ ἄλλα χρυσία
παντοδαπὰ καὶ
ἄλλον δακτύλιον
καὶ τύπιον καὶ
ἐρώτιον, ὁλκὴν
πάντων ·ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
μῆλα ξύλινα
ἐπάργυρα καὶ
ἐπίχρυσα ἄστατα
ἐννέα· δακτυλίδιον
[ἐν ταινι]-
δίωι
[λίθ]ον ἔχον,
ἀνάθημα Καλλιφάντης·
δακτύλιον χρυσοῦν
ἐν ταινιδίωι,
ἀνάθημα Κερκίδος·
ὅρμον χρυσοῦν,
ἀνάθημα Φρυνοῦς,
ὁλκὴν ·𐅃𐅂𐅂·
ἁλύσια διάλιθα
δύο, ἃ ἀνέθηκεν
Ἀριστόνικος
τῆι Ἀφροδίτηι,
ὁλκὴ τοῦ ἑνὸς
․, τοῦ δὲ ․.
καὶ
τάδε ἄλλα
παρέδομεν
ἀ[να]τεθέντα ἐπὶ
τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς· [φι]άλην
λείαν, ἀνάθημα
Ὠκυν<ε>ιδῶν
καὶ Θυεσταδῶν,
ἐφ’ ἧι ἐπιγραφή·
ἄρχων Κλεόστρατος·
καὶ ἄλλην Ὠκυνειδῶν
καὶ Θυεσταδῶν,
ἐφ’ ἧς ἐπιγέ-
[γραπτ]αι·
ἄρχων Σωσίμαχος·
καὶ ἄλλην λείαν
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος βασιλέως
Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Φίλλιδος· καὶ
ἐπ’ Ἀντιγόνου
ἄρχοντος, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος βασιλέως
Πτολεμαίου·
vac. φιάλην ἐμ
(60)
weight 44; unweighed small phiale in plinth, dedication of
Demos{i}on; two gold crowns in the Artemision, weight 8; and
(the one) which king Ptolemy dedicated, of myrtle, weight 171+;
which Berenike dedicated, weight 70; which Peukestes dedicated,
weight 64; with Nikokreon giving the choreia, weight 43; and another
of the Deliades with Kleitos giving the choreia, weight 89; and
another with Metron giving the choreia, weight 71.3; dedication of
Kallikrates, weight 19.3; another dedication of Iomilkos, weight
21+; [Ph]ilokles’ dedication, weight 40.3; and another of
Philokles, the myrtle one, weight 89; another crown king Ptolemy
dedicated, ivy, weight 140; and which king Demetrios dedicated,
weight 67; crown and rose, dedication of Lysander, weight with the
[...] of the rose, 57; and another, dedication of Krateros, weight
57; and the crown coming from Epameinondas, weight 68.
And
the following in the Eileithyiaion: phiale dedication of
Klearchis, unweighed; silver [phia]le (65) unweighed dedication of
Ktesylis, weight 75; silver bracelets [...] and various other
objects, weight 93; gold beads and endesmides and various other gold
objects and another ring and image and cupid, total weight 27; nine
gilded and silvered apples unweighed; small ring with stone on
ribbon, dedication of Kalliphantes; gold ring on ribbon, dedication
of Kerkis; gold necklace, dedication of Phryno, weight 7; two chains
with stones which Aristonikos dedicated to Aphrodite, weight of the
one [...], of the other [...].
And
the following other objects we gave over in our year of office:
smooth phiale, dedication of the Okyneidai and Thyestadai, on which
is the inscription Kleostratos archon; and another of the Okyneidai
and Thyestadai, on which is inscribed archon Sosimachos; and another
smooth (one) of the Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the choreia
[space]; phiale in plinth,
70
[πλι]νθε[ί]ωι Κώιων
θεωροὶ ἐπ’
ἀρχεθεώρου
Τεισίου· βασίλισσα
Ἀρσινόη τρίποδα
[ἀργ]υροῦν· 〚—
— — — — — — — — —
—〛 φιάλην
ἐμ πλινθείωι
πρό[σω]πον ἔχουσαν,
χορεῖα Δηλιάδων
ἐπιδούσης
Ἱεροκλείας.
[ἐν τῶι]
[Πω]ρίνωι
φιάλας ἐμ πλινθείωι
τρεῖς, ἀνάθημα
Στρατονίκης
Μακέτας· καὶ
ἄλλην ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθημα θεωρῶν
τῶν ἐγ Ῥόδου
ἐπ’ ἀρχεθεώρου
Δαμονίκου·
ἄλλην ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθημα
[Πασι]κράτους
Ῥοδίου· δακτυλίους
ἀργυροῦς 𐅃ΙΙΙ
καὶ σιδηροῦς
ὑπαργύρους·
vac. δεσμοὺς τῶν
εἰς τὸ Κύνθιον
vac. καὶ γόμφους·
vac. τὰ χαλκᾶ τοῦ
ἑνὸς θυρέτρου
τοῦ ἐπὶ τὸ Πύθιον.
παρέδομεν
δὲ καὶ τὴν τράπεζαν
τὴν ἀ[ργυρ]ᾶν καὶ
κηρύκειον [ἃ]
ἐφ’ ἡμῶν κατεσκευάσθη,
ὁλκὴν τῆς τραπέζης
ἀργυρίου δρα(χμὰς)
·ΧΧΧ𐅅𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂, τοῦ
κηρυκείου
·ΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ. vac. καὶ
τάδε ἐν τῆι
[Χαλ]κοθήκηι·
ὑδρίας Δ𐅃· ἄλλη
πυθμένα οὐκ
ἔχουσα· ἄλλαι
δύο, ἑκατέρα
ἓν οὖς ἔχουσα·
ἄλλη ἓν οὖς
ἔχουσα· ἄλλη
ἓν οὖς ἔχουσα,
πυθμένα δὲ οὔ·
ἄλλη πυθμένα
οὐκ̣ ἔχουσα,
οὖς δὲ ἕν· ἄλλη
vac. ὦτα οὐκ ἔχουσα·
στάμ<ν>ος μέγα[ς
ο]ὖς ἓν ἔχων·
75
[ἄλλο]ς στάμνος
τῶν βοιωτιακῶν
οὖς ἓν ἔχων·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐλαιηρός· κρατῆρες
τυρρηνικοὶ ΙΙ
ὑπόστατα ἔχοντες·
ἄλλο κρατήριον
τυρρηνικὸν οὖς
οὐκ ἔχον· κρατήριον
λακωνικόν, πυθμένα
ἔχον ἀποπεπτωκότα·
ἄλλοι κρατῆρες
[λακ]ωνικοὶ
ΙΙΙ· κανᾶ ὀρθηλὰ
ΙΙ· κανοῦμ μέγα
πυθμένα οὐκ
ἔχον· ἄλλα κανᾶ
ΙΙΙ· κάδοι
στρεπτοὶ ΙΙ·
κάδοι λεῖοι
ΙΙ, ὁ εἷς πυθμένα
οὐκ ἔχων· ἐσχάραι
πυρκαϊοὶ ΙΙΙ·
λεβήτια ἀχρεῖα
𐅃ΙΙΙΙ· χαλκία
μεγάλα ΙΙΙ
ἀχρεῖα·
[χαλκ]ία
ΙΙ ἐλάττω ἀχρεῖα·
ἄλλα χαλκία
μικρὰ 𐅃ΙΙ ἀχρεῖα·
κρατὴρ στρογγύλος
ὑπόστατον ἔχων·
ἐχίνη στρατιωτική·
ἐξάλειπτρον·
κανᾶ μικρὰ 𐅃·
πινακίσκοι
ΙΙΙΙ· περιρραντήριον
ὑπόστατον ἔχον
καὶ ἐπιγραφήν·
χερνιβεῖα ΙΙ·
τούτων τὸ [ἓν]
τετρυπημένον,
τὸ δὲ ἓν οὖς
ἔχον· ἄλλα
χερνιβεῖα 𐅃ΙΙΙ
τετρυπημένα·
ποδανιπτῆρες
ΙΙ· ὅ θ’ ἕτερος
ὑγιής, οὖς ἓν
ἑκάτερος ἔχων·
ψυκτῆρες ΙΙΙ
ὦτα οὐκ ἔχοντες·
λυχνεῖα σιδηρᾶ
ΙΙ ἐπὶ τοῖς μέσοις
φιάλας οὐκ
ἔχοντα· ὀβελίσκοι
μικρ[οὶ]
ΔΔΔ𐅃·
κλάσματα ΙΙ·
ἐσχάρα σιδηρᾶ·
γαστροποτὶς
διαπεπτωκυῖα·
σκαφείων τρίμματα
𐅃· δίσκοι χαλκοῖ
ΙΙ· ἐσχαρίου
μικροῦ ἥμυσυ
κατ<ε>αγός,
ὑπόστατον ἔχον·
ψυκτήριον ὦτα
οὖκ ἔχον οὐδὲ
πυθμένα· [χεὶρ]
σιδηρᾶ· οἰνοχόη
[σακ]ν[ὴ]?
(70)
Koan theoroi with Teisias chief theoros; queen Arsinoe, silver
tripod; phiale in plinth with face, Hierokleas giving the choreia of
the Deliades.
[In
the Po]rinos: three phialai in plinths, dedication of Macedonian
Stratonike; and another in plinth, dedication of the Rhodian theoroi
with Damonikos chief theoros; another in plinth, dedication of
Pasikrates of Rhodes; 8 silver rings and silvered iron; bonds of the
(doors?) for the Kynthion; and pegs; the bronze of the one door to
the Pythion.
We
gave over also the silver table and staff made in our year of
office, weight of the silver of the table dra 3566, of the staff
22.3.
And
the following in the [Chal]kotheke: 15 hydrias; another without
base; two others, one with one handle; another with one handle;
another with one handle but no base; another with no base but one
handle; another [space] without handle; large stam(n)os with one
handle; [anoth]er (75) stamnos of the Boeotian (type) with one
handle; another olive oil stamnos; 2 Etruscan kraters with stands;
another small Etruscan krater with no handle; small Spartan krater
with the base fallen off; 3 other Spartan kraters; 2 straight
baskets; large basket without base; 3 other baskets; 2 twisted jars;
2 smooth jars, one without base; 3 sacrificial braziers; 9 broken
lebetia; 3 large broken bronzes; 2 smaller broken bronzes; 7 other
small broken bronzes; round krater with stand; military echine;
unguent box; 5 small baskets; 4 small tablets; sprinkler with stand
and inscription; 2 hand basins, one of these punctured, the other
with one handle; 8 other punctured hand basins; 2 foot basins, one
sound, the other with one handle; 3 coolers without handles; 2 iron
lampstands without phialai in the middle; 35 small skewers; 2 broken
pieces; iron brazier; broken casserole; 5 pieces of dishes; 2 bronze
disks; broken half of a small brazier with stand; cooler without
handles or base; iron [...]; broken oinochoe
80
οὖς οὐκ ἔχουσα·
ἄλλαι οἰνοχόαι
Δ πυθμένα οὐκ
ἔχουσαι· οἰνοχόαι
ΙΙ μεγάλαι,
σακναί· ἄλλαι
δύο οὔτε ὦτα
οὔτε πυθμένα
ἔχουσαι, σακναί·
ἄλλαι ΙΙ σακναί,
πυθμένας οὐκ
ἔχουσαι· ἡμίχα
ΙΙ, τὸ ἓν οὖς οὐκ
ἔχον οὐδὲ πυθμένας·
προχ[οΐ]-
διον
λεοντόπουν·
χοῦς ἐλαηρὸς
ἐν ἐλύτ<ρ>ωι
τὸμ πυθμένα ἔχων
καὶ ἄλλος οὔτε
πυθμένα οὔτε
οὖς ἔχων· οἰνοχόη
οὔτε οὖς οὔτε
πυθμένα ἔχουσα·
ἄλλη τὸν τράχηλον
ἀποκεκλασμένη·
ἄλλη συντεθλασμένη,
πυθμένα οὐκ
ἔχουσα·
ἄλλαι
𐅃ΙΙΙ, τοὺς πυθμένας
ἐκκεκομμέναι·
ἄλλαι 𐅃ΙΙΙ ὦτα
οὐκ ἔχουσαι·
τούτων δύο
ἔχουσιμ πυθμένας·
ἄλλαι ΔΙΙΙ
πυθμένα οὐκ
ἔχουσαι, σακναί·
ἐπιχύται ἐλαιηροί,
εἷς οὖς οὐκ
ἔχων· σπονδοχό<α>ι
ΙΙ· προχοΐδια
ΙΙΙΙ· τού[των
ἓν τὸν]
πυθμένα
οὐκ ἔχει· ἄλλαι
οἰνοχόαι ΙΙ,
σακναί· οἰνοχόης
τράχηλος·
προχοΐδιον
λεοντόπουν·
κύαθοι μεγάλοι
ΙΙΙΙ· ἄλλοι
μικροὶ ΙΙ, διαπεπτωκότες·
ἄνθεμα κοτταβείων
ΙΙ· θυμιατήριον
πόδας οὐκ ἔχον·
Νίκη ἐπ’ ἰκτίνου·
[ἀρυστῆρες]
μεγάλοι
𐅃ΙΙ· μικροὶ
ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ· λυχνία
χαλκῆ συντετριμμένη·
λυχνίας χαλκῆς
[στυλὶς] μεγάλη·
ἐ[ξ]αύστριον·
ξυστὴρ σιδηροῦς·
ἠθμὸς ἀπὸ κρατῆρος
συντετριμμένος·
ἄλλος ἐγ ξύλωι
δεδεμένος·
<σ>αυνιοθῆκαι?
σιδηραῖ ΙΙ·
λυχνεί[ου
κλάσματα δύο]·
85
λαμπτὴρ ὦτα οὐκ
ἔχων· σκαφίδιον
χαλκοῦν τετρυπημένον·
φιάλαι ΙΙΙ·
τούτωμ μία τετρυπημένη
ἀπὸ λυχνείου·
χέρνιβον· ψυκτήριον
σακνὸμ πυθμένα
οὐκ ἔχον· ποτηρίδια
ΙΙ· λεβήτιον
μικρόν· κάδων
κλάσματα ΙΙ·
χυτρίδιογ καὶ
[ψυκτήριον]
μικρά,
ὦτα οὐκ ἔχοντα·
πυθμένες 𐅃ΙΙ·
κλάσματα ἐπιστάτου
καὶ ζώιδια καὶ
ὦτα καὶ πόδες·
κλάσματα ἄνθεμα
λυχνείου ΙΙ·
τριποδίσκος
πόδα οὐκ ἔχων·
[κεραμ]ύλλ[ι]ον·
ὁλκεῖον· λεπίδες
χαλκαῖ ἀπὸ
τριπόδων καὶ
ἀσπίδων· λόγχα[ι
𐅃ΙΙΙ· ἀσπίδες
ἐπίχαλ]-
κοι
Δ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ· πέλτη
ἐπίχαλκος·
ἐμβόλους χαλκοῦς
𐅃ΙΙ· λύχνον
τετράρινον·
στήλην χαλκῆν
Νικοκρέοντος
προξενίαν· κάδον
πυθμένα οὐκ
ἔχοντα· θυμιατήρια
χαλκᾶ ΙΙΙ· κανοῦν,
ἀνάθημα Θρασυλέο[ντος?
— — c.25 — —]·
κρατῆρα
Μάνδρου ἀνάθημα
καὶ Φοίνικος,
καὶ Ἀμυνίχου
ἄλλον· καὶ
ἄλλον ἀνεπίγραφον·
κρατήρων ὑπόστατα
δύο· χέρνιβα
δύο· φιάλην·
λυχνεῖα ΙΙΙ·
χαλκία 𐅃· καὶ
ἄλλο χαλκίον
μέγα καὶ λέβητα·
τὸγ κώθωνα
το․․․․․․․ντο․․․․․․․․
[κ]αὶ
ὑπόστατον·
ἐσχάρας πυρκαϊοὺς
ΙΙΙ· κύαθος·
λιβανωτίδα·
φιάλιον· ψυκτήριον·
χοᾶ ἐλαηρόν·
κηρύκειον·
ἡμίτειαν· σιδηροῦς
μοχλοὺς ΙΙΙ.
ἐπικόπανον·
γόμφους ΙΙΙ·
ΠΟΓΕΙΟΝ· σφῆνας
σιδηροῦς ΙΙΙ·
σφῦραν σιδηρᾶν·
πέλεκυς ․ΛΕΙ․․․
κ̣λίνας ΔΙ·
(80)
without handle; 10 other oinochoai without base; 2 large oinochoai,
broken; two others with neither handles nor base, broken; 2 others
broken, without bases; 2 hemicha, one without handle or bases; small
lionfooted pitcher; olive oil chous with base, in case; and another
without handle or base; oinochoe without handle or base; another
with neck broken; another smashed, without base; 8 others, bases
broken off; 8 others without handles, two of these have bases; 13
others without bases, broken; olive oil beakers, one without handle;
2 chalices; 4 small pitchers, of th[ese one] without base; 2 other
oinochoai, broken; neck of oinochoe; small lionfooted pitcher; 4
large kyathoi; 2 other small, fallen apart; 2 kottabos flowers;
censer without feet; Nike on iktinos; 7 large [...]; 28 small;
crushed bronze lampstand; large [...] of bronze lampstand; small
meat hook; iron scraper; crushed strainer from krater; another bound
in wood; 2 iron auniothekai; lamp[...]; (85) grate without handles;
small crushed bronze dish; 3 phialai from lampstand, one of these
punctured; hand basin; broken cooler without base; 2 small cups;
small lebes; 2 pieces of jars; small pot and [...] small, without
handles; 7 bases; pieces of stand and animals and handles and feet;
2 flowers, pieces of lampstand; small tripod without foot; small
jar; basin; bronze pieces from tripods and spears;
spearhea[ds...bronz]ed 19; bronzed helmet; 7 bronze rams; four-skin
lamp; bronze stele proxenia of Nikokreon; jar without base; 3 bronze
censers; basket, dedication of Thrasyleo[n...]; krater, dedication
of Mandros and Phoinix; and another of Amynichos; and another
uninscribed; two krater stands; two hand basins; phiale; 3
lampstands; 5 bronzes; and another large bronze and lebes; the
kothon [...] and stand; 3 sacrificial braziers; kyathos; incense
dish; small phiale; cooler; olive oil chous; staff; hemiteian; 3
iron bolts; chopping block; 3 rivets; [pogeion] gogeion [gorgeion?];
3 iron wedges; iron hammer; ax [...] couches 11; pair of scales; and
another smaller;
90
[τ]ρυτάνην καὶ
ἐλάττω ἄλλην·
παραδείγματα
τοῦ Κυν[θί]ου,
τῆς θυμέλης,
τῶν θυρῶν τοῦ
ναοῦ· κλίνας
σὺν ταῖς ἐμ
πρυτανείωι καὶ
ταῖς ἐνερρωγυίαις
𐅄Δ· vvvvvv ἡμίκλινον.
ἐν τῆι νήσωι τῆι
τῆς Ἑκάτης·
χαλκίον· κρατὴρ
χαλκοῦς· κανοῦν
μικρὸν τ̣ῶ̣[ν]
ἐκ
τῆς Χαλκοθήκ[ης]
καὶ ὀβελίσκους
ΔΙΙ· ο<ἰ>νοχόην·
λυχνεῖα σιδηρᾶ
ΙΙ. ἐν τῶι ἱεροποίωι·
βατιάκην· λιβανωτίδα·
φιάλας Χερσονησιτῶν
ἀνάθημα ΙΙΙ·
Ὠκυνειδῶν καὶ
Θυεσταδῶν ΙΙ·
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως
Πτολεμαίου
ΙΙΙΙ· ποτήριον,
ἀνάθημα Καλλίου.
vac.
models
of the Kynthion -- altar, doors, shrine; couches including those in
the Prytaneion and those broken 60 [space]; half-couch.
In
the Island of Hekate: bronze; krater from the Chalkotheke and 12
skewers; oinochoe; 2 iron lampstands.
In
the Hieropoion: incense dish batiake; 4 phialai of the
Chersonites from Ptolemy; cup, dedication of Kallias.
κ̣αὶ
οἵδε τῶμ μεμι[σθω]μένων
τὰς οἰκίας
μισθώματα οὐκ
ἀποδόντες
ὀφείλουσι
τῶι θεῶι αὐτοὶ
καὶ οἱ ἐγγυηταί·
τῆς Χαρητείας
τῶν ἀνδρώνων
Μνῆσις ΔΔ𐅃·
τοῦ ἀνδρῶνος
τοῦ παρὰ θαλάσ[σηι]
[Μνη?]σίλεως
Πυρρί(δου)
ΔΔ𐅃̣[𐅂𐅂𐅂?· Ἀ]ρκέων
Σωτά(δου) ΔΔΔ·
τῆς οἰκίας
οὗ ὤικει Ἀντίγονος,
Μνησίλεως Δ̣·
τῆς Σωσιλείας
Τελεσαρχίδης
𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
〚τῶμ
πρὸς τῶι σιδηρείωι
․․․․․․․․․․․
Δ𐅃·〛
τῆς
Ἐπειθένους
{Ἐπισθένους}
Πόρος καὶ ἔγ<γ>υος
Προκλείδης
𐅄[— —]
95
[—c.8—ο]υ καὶ ἃ
εὗρε ΧΗ· τούτου
εἰσεπράχθη
𐅅ΗΗ𐅄Δ· ἀπὸ τούτου
εἰς Ποσίδεα
𐅅Η· εἰς Θεσμοφόρια
προσανάλωμα
𐅄Δ𐅂ΙΙΙ· εἰς
ἱεροπόιον
ἄνθρακες, ἔλαιον
𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ. vac.
[οἵδε
τῶν τέλη] πριαμένων
οὐκ ἀποδόντες
ὀφείλουσιν·
τοῦ πορθμείου
τοῦ εἰς Ῥήνειαν,
Νικόδρομος
Τεύ(κρου) καὶ
ἔγγυοι Ἀριστόλοχος,
Φίλλις Δι(αίτου)
Η𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂· τῶν
ἡμιωβελίων
Εὐμήδης καὶ
ἔ̣γ̣[γυος? —
— — — — — —]
[—
— c.12 — — το]ῦ εἰς
Μύκονον πορθμείου,
Ἀριστέας Ἑρμο(δότου)
καὶ ἔγγυος
Ἡγίας Δ𐅃· τοῦ
λιμένος Θεόδ〚—〛ωρος
{Θεόδωρος} καὶ
ἔγγυος Σώσιλος
Π[άχ]η(τος) ΔΔΔΔ.
vac.
[σύμπαγ
κεφάλαιον οὗ
π]αρέδομεν ἱεροποιοῖς
τοῖς ἐπὶ Καλοδίκου
ἄρχοντος Ναύτηι,
Καλλίαι, Ἀπατουρίωι,
Εὐβούλ[ωι],
παρόντων βουλευτῶγ
καὶ γραμματέων
τοῦ τῆς πόλεως
Ξένωνος, τοῦ
[τῶν ἱεροποιῶν
— — — — — ἀργυρίου
νομίσ]-
[ματος
δραχμὰς ․․․․․․․․]Η̣𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃
καὶ χρυσοῦς
ΔΙΙΙΙ· καὶ τεττίγια
δύο καὶ φωκαΐδα
καὶ ἀργυρίου
παντοδαποῦ
ἀλεξανδρείου
Δ· ἐκ τῶν θησαυρῶν
ἐξαιρεθὲν
Η𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
ἐκ τῶν τόκων καὶ
ἐνοικίω[ν — —
— — — — — — — —]
100
— — — — — — — — —
— ἐπιμελητῶν,
τὸ δὲ ἐπίπεμπτον
vac. τὸ δὲ κηρύκειον
ὃ ἐποι[η]σάμεθα
ἔδομεν πρε[σβευτῆι
τῶι αἱ]ρεθέντι
Ἐμπεδοκλῆι
Σωσι. vac.
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— ἀρχ]ιτέκτων.
vac.
1
․ΙΔΙΙ— — — — —
․․ εἰς τ— — —
— — Μ̣ΗΝΙΑ— — —
— [χ]αλκᾶ? [— γόμφους?]
5
κ̣αὶ δεσμ̣[οὺς
— —] ․ δραχ[μῶν —
— —] 𐅂𐅂· ἀπο[στησά]-
μενοι με[τὰ τοῦ]
ἀρχιτέκ[τονος]
10
μ̣ν̣ᾶς δέ[κα,
ἀπέ]- [δ]ομεν τὸ
γι[νό]- μενον δραχμ[ὰς]
ΔΔΔ· Ἀντίκωι
[ἐ]γλαβόντι ποῆ-
15
[σ]αι τὰς θύρας
[τ]ὰς ἐπὶ τὸ Πύθι-
ον δραχμῶν
ΧΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂
[ἔ]δομεν τὴν πρώ-
20
την καὶ δευτέ-
ραν δόσιγ κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
κελεύοντος
ἀρ- [χ]ιτέκτονος
κα[ὶ]
25
τοῦ ἐπιμελητο[ῦ]
[ΧΗ]𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
Ἀναψυκτίδηι
τῶι ἐγλαβόντι
τὴν ἀνακομι-
30
δὴν τῶν λίθων
εἰς τὸ Κύνθιον
ἀνα- κομίσαντι
δια- τοίχων πόδας
ἑβδομήκοντα
35
ἀπέδομεγ κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
τοῦ ποδὸς ·ΙΙΙΙΙ·
κ- ελεύοντος
ἀρχι- τέκτονος
καὶ ἐπι-
40
μελητῶν. vac.
[ὑ]πηρέταις· Φανέ-
αι ἀρχιτέκτονι
τρεῖς καὶ δέκα
μῆ- νας τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ
45
𐅅ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ· vac.
γραμματῆι 𐅄ΔΔ
Δ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· κήρυκι
𐅄 Δ𐅃· ἰνωποφύλακι
[𐅄]ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
vac.
50
[ν]εωκόρωι ἐν
[τ]ῶι Ἀσκληπιείωι
[Η]𐅄̣ΔΔΔΔ𐅃vac.
καὶ ἐν τῆι Νήσωι
[Η]ΔΔΔ· καὶ εἰς
55
[τ]ὸν θεὸν 𐅄Δ𐅃·
[α]ὐλητρίδι τῆι
αὐ- [λ]ούσηι τῶι
χορῶι [Η]ΔΔΔ·
Βακχίωι [Η]Η𐅄Δ·
καὶ εἰς [ἱ]-
60
[μ]άτιον? ΔΔ[𐅂𐅂?]
ΩΙΚΑΙΚ․․ΤΛ̣․
․Ε․ΚΗΝ [ὑπηρέ]-
τει Δώρωι?
[Η𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂]·
․․․․․ τῆς τετρ[α]-
65
[μ]ήνου 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂․․.
[σ]τήλη δραχ[μῶν]
[Δ]Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· βατὴρ
[τῆι] [σ]τή̣λ[ηι
— — —] — — — — — —
— — —
70
[μό]λ[υβ]δ[ος? —
—]· [τ]ῶι γράψαντι
τ̣ῆ̣ς̣ [στή]λης
γράμμα- τα μιᾶς
δραχμῆς ΗΗΗ· ὁ
πᾶς μισθὸς
75
γραμμάτων ΜΜΜ𐅆ΧΧΧ
δραχμαὶ ΗΔΔ𐅃[𐅂ΙΙΙΙ]·
μισθωτοῖς τὴν
στ[ή]- [λ]ην ἀπενέγκασι
𐅂·
80
τοῖς στή[σασι
․]· [δαῖδ]ες καὶ
ῥυμο[ὶ] [το]ῖς
χοροῖς 𐅂𐅂. [οἵ]δε
τόκους οὐκ
ἀπ[ο]- [δ]όντες
ὀφείλουσι
τ[ῶι]
85
θεῶι· Δίαιτος
— — — — — — — — —
— — —α 𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂 vac.
Ἀπολλόδωρος
Δ· vss. 4 consulto
erasi
93
Κλεινόδικος
Δ· Δε[ξικρ]- άτης
Δ· [Φερεκλεί]-
95
δ̣ου κληρονόμοι
Η̣𐅄ΔΔ· καὶ ὑπὲρ
Προξένου ΔΔ𐅂·
καὶ ὑπὲρ Χάρητος
ΔΔ· καὶ Τελέσων
vss. 3 consulto erasi
102
〚—
— — — —〛 Εὐρυμάν-
[θ]ης ΔΔ· Τελέσων
καὶ ο̣ἱ̣ ἐ̣γ̣γ̣υ̣η̣τ̣α̣ὶ̣
ΔΔ𐅂·
105
2 vss. vac. 4 vss. deleti
108
[Νίκω]ν Νικοδ[ρόμ]-
[ου] καὶ ἔγγυοι
[Νίκ]-
110
ωνος Φιλ— — —
Δ𐅃𐅂. vac.
[— — — — — Πίσ]- [τ]ης?
καὶ Γέρυλλ[ος]
[ἐγγυησ?]άμενοι
Λ —
115
— —το— —ου. —
—ην— —ν κα[ὶ] —
— — — — — — —
vacat
face
D right
init.
deletum
1
εισ— — — — — —
․․․ου Ἀρισ—
— — — — — — — — —
— ․κ— — — — — —
5
․ντ— — — — — — —
— — — — — — — [μ]ετὰ?
τὸ ε— — — ενος
καὶ — — — —
4
vss. deleti
13
σεν καὶ — — — —
13 vss. deleti
27
[— — — α]κοσίω[ν]
․το — — — — — —
[ἑ]ξήκοντα τοῦ
μ[η]-
30
[νὸς?] ἐμ παντὶ και-
[ρῶι — — — — —] —
— — — — — — — ΣΩΣ․․․
παρα․․ ․․․ΣΙΑΝ̣ΤΟΣ
τὸ
35
ἥμυσυ — — — —
․τ — — — — — —
κομισάμενοι
ἐκ̣ [τ]οῦ ἐρ̣γ̣αστηρίου?
χαλκοῦ μνᾶς
Δ𐅃
40
ἐφ’ ὧι ἐν․․․․․․
ἔφη· καὶ τὸ ἔργον
ἀνεμισθώσαμεν
ἐν τῆι ἀγορᾶι
ὑ- πὸ κήρυκος
με-
45
τὰ τοῦ ἀρχιτέκτο-
νος 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
καὶ τού<του>
ἐξέλαβε Δ[ει]-
ν̣οκράτης Λε̣[ω]-
[φά]ν̣του τὸ ἥμ[υ]-
50
[σ]υ? ․․․α κατὰ
τὴ[ν] — — — — — — —
— ․․, ἐν[ηνο]χ̣ό̣των
δὲ ἡ- [μῶν] τὸν λόγον
πρὸς τὴ[ν]
[βουλ]ὴν
παρεγένετο
55
[αὐτὸς] πρὸ̣ τῆς
ἀγωγ[ῆς] [τοῦ
ἐγγύ]ου μη․․․
․․․․․․Η̣ΙΑΛΤΗΜ․
․․․․․․․𐅄Δ․Α․․
— — — —Τ— —
vac.
IG XI,2 203 (269 BC)
and IG XI.2 203B
http://epigraphy.packhum.org/text/62665
https://web.archive.org/web/20090408151731/http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/translations/203translation.htm
Side
B begins with building expenses continued from side A and then the
year’s total income and outlay before the inventory begins.
θεοί.
λόγος
ἱεροποιῶν τῶν
ἱεροποιησάντων
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Χαρίλα Ἀπημάντου
τοῦ Ἀρκέοντος,
Χαρίλα τοῦ
Ἀντιγόνου. τάδε
παρελάβομεν
παρ’ ἱεροποιοῦ
τοῦ ἱεροποιήσαντος
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Μειλιχίδου
Πλεισταινέτου
τοῦ
Τελέσωνος καὶ
τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ
Πελάγωνος
Λάμπωνος, παρούσης
βουλῆς καὶ
γραμματέων τοῦ
τῆς πόλεως
Φιλαίθου τοῦ
Νησιώτου, τοῦ
τῶν ἱεροποιῶν
Σωστράτου τοῦ
Στράτωνος· ἐκ
τοῦ θησαυρο[ῦ]
[τοῦ]
ἐν τῶι <ἱ>ερῶι
τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
ἀργυρίου
δ̣ρ̣α̣χμὰς
∶Η̣𐅃̣𐅂̣𐅂̣𐅂̣𐅁̣∶
χαλκοῦ [∶]𐅄𐅂𐅂∶
ῥοδίας δραχμὰς
[∶]𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ∶ κώιαν
∶𐅂[∶] κ̣αὶ ψίλλιον·
ἐκ τ̣ο̣ῦ̣ θησαυροῦ
τοῦ ἐν Ἀσκληπιείωι
δραχμὰς ∶ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ∶
ἐκ θησαυροῦ
τοῦ ἐν Ἀφροδισίωι
∶ΙΙ∶ ἐν Ἀρτ[ε]-
5
μισίωι ἀργυρίου
νομίσματος
∶ΧΧΧ𐅅̣𐅃̣∶ κ̣αὶ̣
ἄ̣λ̣λ̣ο̣ ἀργύριον
παρελάβομεν
παρὰ Πλεισταινέτου
καὶ Λάμπωνος
δραχμὰς̣
[∶]𐅆ΧΧΧΧ𐅅ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ̣∶
καὶ ἄλλο ἀργύριον
εἰσήκει ἐπὶ
τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς·
παρὰ Πίστου
τοῦ Ξένωνος τὸ
δάνειον ὃ ἔφη
ὀφείλειν τῶι
θεῶι δραχμὰς
∶𐅅̣Η̣Η̣Η̣𐅄̣Δ̣Δ̣∶
παρ’ ἐπιμελητῶν
τοῦ θεάτρου
Τιμησιδήμου
τοῦ Ἀντικράτους,
Ἀνδρομένου
τοῦ Ξένωνος,
Εὐδήμου
τοῦ Ἄμνου ὃ
ἔφασαν εἰσ[ελθ]εῖν?
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — Φ̣ά̣ν̣ου
∶Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂̣∶
Ἀντίοχος Νέωνος
[∶]Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂Ι∶ Κυδ[ι]-
θάλης
Ἀντιγόνου — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — ∶Η∶
παρὰ βουλῆς
ὃ ἔφασαγ κατα-
βαλεῖν
Τιμόθεμιν Τ̣ —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — Ἀντιπάτρου.
καὶ τόδε εἰσήκει·
10
δορκαδίου
ὃ ἐπρίατο Ἀ̣ν[τίο]χ[ος?
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — —] τῶι
ἀργυρίωι ὧι
ἐδανείσα-
μεν
τοῖς ἐ[πι]μεληταῖς
τῆς στοᾶς δραχμὰς
[∶]ΧΧ̣Η̣Δ — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — Καλοδίκου
δραχμαὶ ∶Δ𐅃𐅂․․․
παρὰ
․λ․․κου τοῦ
Εὐέλθοντος
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — παρὰ
ταμίου ∶ΗΗΗΔΔΔΙΙΙ𐅁∶
παρ̣ὰ̣ Φ̣ι̣λ̣ί̣-
[ο]υ
ὃ κατα․Λ․Τ Λ—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— τῶι] ἀργυρίωι
ὧι ἐδανείσαμ̣[εν]
δ[ρ]αχμὰ[ς
․]Κ․․ΙΔΙΜ̣Η̣
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— δραχμὰς ∶ΧΧΗΗΗΗΔ𐅂ΙΙ∶
Ἀμ․․․
15
δραχμὰς — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— του, Ξενοκλείδου
τοῦ Ἀριστοβούλου
․․
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — ομένους
τῶν ἡμιωβελίων
∶ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
παρὰ
Πυρ[ρί]ου [— —
—.
] vac.
[τ]άδε
εἰσήκει μισθώματα
παρὰ τῶν γεωργούντων
τὰ τεμένη τὰ τοῦ
θεοῦ ∶ παρὰ
Κλεινίου τοῦ
Ὀρθίου Πύργων
∶ΧΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅁Χ∶
παρὰ Ἱερομβρότου
τοῦ Ἐτεοκλείδου
[τ]οῦ
Κεραμείου
∶Η[𐅄]Δ𐅃𐅂∶ [π]αρὰ
Ἀπολλοδ[ώ]ρου
τοῦ Ξενομήδους
Πορθμοῦ ∶Χ̣ΗΗΗΗ𐅄𐅂𐅂∶
παρ’ Ἐνπεδοκλέους
τοῦ Χαριλέον[τος]
Χαρητείας ∶Χ𐅅ΗΗΗ∶
παρὰ Διδύμου
τοῦ Καλλιδίκου
Σκιτωνεί-
20
ας ∶𐅅𐅄Δ∶ παρὰ
Τελέσωνος τοῦ
Αὐτοκλέους
Σολόης καὶ
Κορακιῶν
[∶]Η̣ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ[𐅂𐅂]∶
παρὰ Τιμησιδήμου
καὶ Ἀριστοδίκου
τῶν Ἀντικράτους
Χαρωνείας ∶ΧΗ[∶]
παρὰ Ὁδοιτέλου[ς]
Λειμῶνος
∶ΗΗΗΙ̣Ι̣∶ π[αρὰ]
Ξένωνος τοῦ
Τελέσωνος
Ἐπισθενείας
∶𐅅̣Η̣Δ̣𐅂𐅂∶
παρὰ Χαρίλα τοῦ
Τιμησιδήμου
Ἄκρας Δήλου
[∶]𐅅Δ𐅂𐅂Ι̣Ι̣∶
παρὰ τῶν Ἀντιγόνου
τοῦ Ἀνέκτου
κληρονό-
μων
Ῥάμνων [∶]ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ̣𐅂Ι̣Ι̣𐅀/∶
παρὰ Ἀρησιμβρότου
τοῦ Πολυξένου
Πανόρμου 𐅅̣ΗΗΗΔΔΔ[∶]
παρὰ Χοιρύλου
τοῦ Τελέσωνος
Λιμνῶν 𐅅𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
παρὰ Διακρίτου
τοῦ Καλλισθένους
Φυταλιᾶς
𐅄Δ[Δ𐅂𐅂]∶ παρὰ
Κ[α]λ[λισθέ]νου[ς
τοῦ Διακρίτου]
Φοινίκων 𐅅̣Η̣Η̣[ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂∶]
παρὰ Ἱ̣π̣π̣άκ̣ου
τοῦ Δ̣η̣λίκου
τοῦ Λυκωνείου
∶Η̣․Ι̣Ι̣Ι̣∶
πα[ρὰ ․․․․․]ο[υ?]
το̣[ῦ] Θαρσυδίκου
Νικοῦ χώρου
ΗΗΗ∶ vac. παρὰ Τε-
λεσάνδρου
τοῦ Παρμενίωνος
Διονυσίου
∶𐅅̣Η̣․․∶ παρὰ
Πολύβου τοῦ
Διοδότου τοῦ
Σω[σι]μαχείου
∶Η𐅄∶ παρὰ Ἀντικράτους
τοῦ Τιμησιδήμου
τοῦ Ἱπποδρόμου
καὶ τῆς
25
Ἀφέσεως
[∶𐅅]Η̣[ΗΔ]ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅀Χ.
ἐξ ἐνοικίων·
παρὰ Ἀνδρόλα
τῆς Σωσιλείας
∶ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
παρὰ Μάχωνος
τῆς Χαρητείας
τοῦ ἀνδρῶνος
[∶Δ]ΔΔ𐅂∶ παρὰ
Ἐτεοκλείδου
οὗ Ἔφεσος
Η̣ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂∶
[παρὰ — —]κου
τῆς οἰκίας
τῆς Ἐπ̣ι̣σ̣θ̣ε̣ν̣ε̣ί̣α̣ς̣?
𐅄̣Δ̣Δ̣Δ̣Δ̣[∶
παρὰ Διονυσί]ου
τῆς Πυθᾶ ∶ΔΔ∶
παρὰ Φιλοχάρους
τῆς γυναικωνίτιδος
∶𐅄ΔΔΔ∶ π[αρ]ὰ
[Δημέ]ου τῶν
οἰκημάτων τῶν
πρὸς τοῖς σιδηρείοις
∶Δ̣ΔΔΔ∶ τῆς
Ὀρθοκλέους
πα-
ρὰ
Βοήθου 𐅄[∶]
παρ’ Ἀπολλοδώρου
τῆς Ἐπισθενείας
𐅄̣[Δ∶ παρ’ Ἀριστοβούλου]
τῆς Ἀριστοβούλου
𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅁∶
παρὰ Σ[ωτ]ᾶ τοῦ
ἀνδρῶνος τοῦ
κάτω τῆς Χαρητείας
ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ τῶν
οἰκημάτων τῶν
ὑπὸ τῆι Χαρητεία[ι]
παρὰ
Ἀρισστοδήμου
𐅄̣[∶] τοῦ ξυ[λ]ῶνος
παρὰ Δεξικράτους
ΔΔ𐅃∶ τοῦ ἑτέρου
ξυλῶνος παρὰ
Ἀριστοδήμου
ΔΔ𐅃· τῶν οἰκημάτων
τῶν πρὸς τεῖ
θαλάττει καὶ
τῶν ἐπὶ τούτοις
παρὰ Φίλτου
𐅄ΔΔ·
[τ]ῆς
Ἐπισθε̣νείας
τ[ῆς] ἑτέρας παρ’
Ἀπολλωνίου
∶𐅄Δ∶ vac. ἐξ ἐγκυκλίων·
τοῦ λιμένος
παρὰ Σκύμνου
ΔΔΔ𐅃∶ παρὰ
Τηλεμνήστου
τοῦ πορθμείου
τοῦ εἰς Ἀπολλώνιον
𐅄𐅃∶ παρὰ Κλεοκρίτου
30
τοῦ ὁλκοῦ τοῦ
ἐν Νήσω[ι ․․∶]
παρὰ Ἀνδρομένου
τοῦ πορθμείου
τοῦ εἰς Ῥήνειαν
∶ΗΗ∶ παρὰ Θήριος
στροφέων ․․
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅁̣∶ παρὰ
Προκλέους
ἡμιωβελίων
𐅄𐅂𐅂∶ παρὰ Προκλέους
[αἱ]ρεσίων 𐅄ΔΔ∶
παρὰ Κράτ[ω]-
νος
τοῦ πεντηκοστολογίου
𐅅̣ΗΔ· παρὰ ․․․․κλέους
τῆς πορφύρας
∶𐅄ΙΙ. τάδε εἰσήκει
ἐκ τῆς φιάλης·
Ληναιῶνος
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ Ἱεροῦ
∶𐅂𐅂Ι∶ Γαλαξιῶνος
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι∶ Ἀρτεμισιῶνος
∶𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ Ταργηλιῶνος
∶𐅂𐅂Ι∶ Πανήμου
∶𐅂𐅂Ι∶ Ἑκατ[ομ]-
βαιῶνος
∶𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀∶
Μεταγειτνιῶνος
∶𐅂ΙΙΙΙ̣∶ Βουφονιῶνος
∶𐅂𐅂∶ Ἀπατουριῶνος
∶𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ Ἀρησιῶνος
∶𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅀∶ Ποσιδεῶνος
∶𐅂𐅂Ι∶ τάδε
ἀνάλω[τ]αι·
Ληναιῶνος·
χοῖρος παρὰ
Νίκωνος τὸ ἱερὸγ
καθάρασθαι
𐅂𐅂∶ λαμπὰς ∶𐅁∶
Ἀριστοκλεῖ
τοὺς [θη]-
σαυροὺς
δύο ἀνοίξαντι
𐅂∶ [εἰ]ς τὰ φῶ̣τα
Παρμένοντι τὴν
ἡμίτεαν ἐπισκευάσαντι
καὶ κωνήσαντι
𐅂∶ μισθωτοῖς
τοὺς ὄχους
ἀνακαθάρασι
τοὺς ἐν τῶι ἱερῶι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ Θεοδήμωι
ἐσχάραν ξυλώσαντι
𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ ἱερισταῖς
εἰς σπον-
δὰς
∶Δ∶ Ἱεροῦ·
χοῖρος παρὰ
Πυρραίθου τὸ
ἱερὸγ καθάρασθαι
∶𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁∶
λαμπὰς Ι̣𐅁̣∶
λεύκωμα κατα[λευ]κώσαντι
∶Ι̣𐅁̣∶ Ἐ̣χε̣μάντι
κλειδίον ἐπὶ
τῆι Χαλκοθήκηι
∶Ι̣𐅁̣∶ στιβάδας
ἐγβαλοῦσι
∶𐅂∶ Ἐπικράτει
λευκώματος
∶𐅂∶ παρ’ Ἐχεμάντιος
μολύβδου μ[ναῖ]
35
ἑπτὰ ὥ̣στε̣
Ε̣ΞΕΧΕ․․․․Ω․․․․․․․․․․․․Χ․ΛΤΟΥ
τιμὴ [∶]𐅃̣𐅁∶ τὸγ
κώθωνα ἐπισκευάσαντι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ τῆς
Χαρητείας τοῦ
ἀνδρῶνος τὴν
θύραν ἐπισκευάσαντι
Δεινομένει
∶𐅃𐅂∶ τῆς ἀργυρίδος
καὶ τοῦ κρατηρίσκου
ὦτα ἐπιθέντι
[Πο]-
σειδωνίωι
∶ΙΙΙ∶ εἰς ἆθλα
∶𐅄∶ Θεοδήμωι
τὴν θύραν ἐπισκευάσαντι
τοῦ Νεωκορίου
∶𐅂∶ Γαλαξιῶνος·
χοῖρος παρὰ
Λάμπωνος τὸ
ἱερὸγ καθάρασθαι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ λαμπὰς
∶𐅁∶ ξύλον εἰς
τὸ ἄγαλμα
τοῦ
Διονύσου ∶ΔΔΔ𐅃∶
Ἀριστοθάλει
τὸ ἄγαλμα τῶι
Διονύσωι ἐργασαμένωι
∶𐅃𐅂𐅂∶ Νουμάκωι
γράψαντι ∶𐅃𐅂𐅂∶
Ῥόδωνι ὁδοποήσαντι
∶𐅂ΙΙ∶ Φιλοκράτει
τὸν ποταμὸν vac.
τοῦ
Λευκοθίου
ἀνακαθάραντι
καὶ τὸ Λευκόθιον
∶𐅂∶ εἰς κόσμησιν
τῶι ἀγάλματι
τοῦ Διονύσου
∶Δ𐅂𐅂∶ τὴν σκηνὴν
τὴν ἐν τῶι θεάτρωι
ἀνακαθάρασι
∶𐅂Ι∶ κόπρον
ἐγβαλόντι ἐκ
τοῦ ἱεροῦ ∶ΙΙ∶
σφό[γ]-
γοι
εἰς τὴν κόσμησιν
∶𐅂∶ ἐλαίου
λευκοῦ χοεῖς
δύο ∶𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι∶
νίτρον ∶ΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀∶
μύρου ῥοδίνου
παρὰ Κομβάρ̣ιος
τρία ἡμικοτύλια
∶𐅃𐅂∶ ἦρον ὠνουμένων
ἔδωκεν Φιλανδρίδης
Ἐχεσθένους
Πάριος ∶𐅃̣·
40
[τ]ῶι θεῶι ἀνηλώσαμεν·
vac. τὸν ἦρον ἐνδήσαντι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ τέλος
ἐν Πάρωι τοῦ ἤρου
∶𐅂𐅂∶ κατακο{κο}μίσασι
{κατακομίσασι}
∶𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ συνεξελομένοις
ἐν Δήλωι καὶ
ἀνακομίσασιν
μισθωτοῖς ∶𐅂𐅂∶
σχοινίον παρὰ
Πύρ-
[ρ]ου
εἰς τὴν παλαίστραν
∶𐅃∶ Ἀρτεμισιῶνος·
χοῖρος παρὰ
Σαγγαρίου τὸ
ἱερὸγ καθάρασθαι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ λαμπὰς
∶𐅁∶ Νικοτέλει
Σεριφίωι τοῦ
Βρέμητος τὸ
καταπεσὸν
ἀνοικοδομήσαντι
καὶ ἀποστρώσαν-
τι
∶Δ𐅃∶ Βριτομαρτίοις
τῶι χορῶι τῶι
γυναικῶν ῥυμὸς
∶Ι∶ λαμπάδες
∶𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁∶ χοῖρος
τὴν Νῆσον τὴν
ἱερὰγ καθάρασθαι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ Ἐχεμάντι
σκαφεῖον
κατασκευάσαντι
εἰς τὴν παλαίστραν
∶𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
․․․․ες
∶𐅁∶ παρὰ Τέλλωνος
στρωτῆρες δύο
ὥστε κλίμα<κε>ς
εἰς τὸ θέατρον
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ Θεοδήμωι
κλιμακτῆρας
παρασ[χ]όντι καὶ
κατασκευάσαντι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
μισθωτοῖς τὴν
ὁδὸν τὴν ἐν Νήσωι
ἀνακαθά-
[ρα]σι
𐅂𐅂∶ Ἐχεμάντι
κάδον τὸν ἐν τῆι
παλαίστραι
ἐπισκευάσαντι
∶𐅂𐅂∶ Θαργηλιῶνος·
χοῖρος παρὰ
Σωνίκου τὸ
ἱερὸγ καθάρασθαι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ λαμπὰς
∶𐅁∶ μισθωτοῖς
ἀνενέγκασι
τὰς κεραμίδας
καὶ τοὺς
45
καλυπτῆρας
εἰς τὰ Δώδεκα
∶𐅂𐅂∶ ἐπίκρασις
Διοσκούροις
∶𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ Πανήμου·
χοῖρος παρὰ
Σωνίκου τὸ
ἱερὸν καθάρασθαι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ λαμπὰς
∶𐅁∶ Θεοδήμωι
ἐργασαμένωι
ἀντίθη<μ>α? ἐπὶ
τὰς πύλας
τὰς
κατὰ Κουροτρόφον
∶𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ Κλε[<ιν>ο]πόλιδι
Θηραίωι τοὺς
τοίχους
παροικοδομήσαντι
ἐπὶ τῆς γεφύρας
τῆς ἐπὶ τοῦ
Ἡρακλείου
∶Δ∶ Ἑκατομβαιῶνος·
χοῖρος παρὰ
Νίκωνος τὸ ἱερὸγ
καθάρασθαι
𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
λαμπὰς
∶𐅁∶ Θεοτιμίδει
τὸγ Κερατῶνα
καὶ τὸ ξύλωμα
καὶ τὰς θύρας
καὶ τῶν ἄλλων
ὅσα ἤλειψε
μισθὸς ∶ΔΔ𐅃∶
πίσσης παρὰ
Ἀντιγένους
Κλαζομενίου
μετρηταὶ ἐννέα
ἡμιαμφόριον, ὁ
μ[ε]-
τρητὴς
∶ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ∶ ὥστε
χρῖσαι τὸγ Κερατῶνα
καὶ τἄλλα, ἡ
πᾶσα τιμὴ ∶ΗΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂[𐅂𐅂]∶
Μεταγειτνιῶνος·
χοῖρος παρὰ
Λάμπωνος τὸ
ἱερὸγ καθάρασθαι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
λαμπὰς ∶𐅁∶
ἱερείαις εἰς
κόσ-
μησιν
τοῦ ἱεροῦ τῆς
Ἥρας ∶𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂̣𐅁∶
ἱ{ι}ερείαις
{ἱερείαις} ἐπὶ
Δήμητρα εἰς
ἱερὰ ∶𐅃∶ εἰς
ἔλαιον ∶ΙΙΙ∶
Φιλοκράτει
τοὺς βωμοὺς
τοὺς ἐν τῶι
Θεσμοφορίωι
ἐξαλείψαντι
καὶ τἄλλα ὅσα
ἔδει ποήσαντι
μισθὸς
50
𐅃𐅂∶ ὀβελίσκοι
δρύϊνοι δύο
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
τῆς Δήμητρος,
τιμὴ ∶Δ𐅂𐅂∶
Θεοτιμίδει
τὰ χαλκία ἐπισκευάσαντι
∶𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ χοῖρος
καθάρασθαι
τὸ ἱερὸν τῆς
Δήμητρος ∶𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
Ἐπικράτει τὰς
θύρας
ἐπισκευάσαντι
τῆς στοᾶς τῆς
ἐπὶ τῶι ἱερῶι
τῆς Δήμητρος
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ∶ εἰς
τὴν θυσίαν τῆι
Δήμητρι προσαναλώσαμεν
∶ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅀∶
ξύλα καὶ κληματίδες
καὶ ῥυμοὶ τὰ
ἱερεῖα ἑψ̣ῆσαι
∶𐅂Ι̣Ι̣Ι∶ λ̣ί-
[κ]νωι?
∶𐅂∶ Βουφονιῶνος·
χοῖρος παρὰ
Τιμησιδήμου
τὸ ἱερὸγ καθάρασθαι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι∶ λαμπὰς
∶𐅁∶ παρὰ Ἀκριδίωνος
μόλυβδος ὥστε
εἰς τὸ Κύνθιον
τάλαντον μναῖ
τρεῖς, τιμὴ
𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ𐅀·
Δεινομένει
τὸ[γ]
[γ]αυλὸν
ξυλώσαντι τὸν
ἐκ τῆς παλαίστρας
∶𐅂ΙΙ∶ Φιλοκράτει
τὸν ποταμὸν
ἀνακαθάραντι
τὸν ἐν τῶι Λευκοθίωι
καὶ τὸ Λευκόθιον
∶𐅂∶ Ἀπατουριῶνος·
χοῖρος παρὰ
Ἀριστοδίκου
τὸ ἱερὸν
[κ]αθάρασθαι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ λαμπὰς
∶𐅁∶ Διονυσίωι
τέγη καταχρίσαντι
ἐν τῶι ἱερῶι
τῶι Ἀρχηγέτου
∶𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ∶ Σωσθένει
τὰς θύρας
ἐπισκευάσαντι
τοῦ πεντηκοστολογίου
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ Ἐπιτέλει
τῆς Χαρη-
55
τείας οἰκίας
τοῖχον ἐνακεσαμένωι
∶Δ𐅂𐅂∶ Ἕρμωνι
τέγη ἐπισκευάσαντι
τοῦ πεντηκοστολογίου
∶Δ∶ Ἀρησιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸγ
καθάρασθαι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ λαμπὰς
∶𐅁∶ στήλη ὥστε
λόγον ἀναγράψαι
[Δ]Δ𐅃∶
βατὴρ τῆι στήληι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ τοῖς
ἀπενέγκασι
∶𐅂𐅂∶ Κλεινοπόλι
ἀνακεσαμένωι
τοῖχον ἐν τῆι
οἰκίαι ἣ ἦν
Ὀρθοκλέους
δραχμαὶ ∶Δ𐅃∶
χαρτία πέντε
ἀνὰ ∶𐅂𐅂Ι∶ ἡ πᾶσα
τιμὴ ∶ΔΙΙΙΙΙ∶
Ποσιδεῶ-
νος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθάρασθαι
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
λαμπὰς ∶𐅁∶ εἰς
Ποσίδεια ∶𐅅Η∶
Δεινομένει
Λεωφάντου
διαπρίσαντι
καὶ κολλήσνατι
καὶ λευκώσαντι
λευκώματα
∶𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ — — ∶
καὶ τόδε
ἄλλο
ἀργύριον ἀνήλωται·
τῶν Βακχίου
σιδηρίων Παρμένοντι
ὄξυντρα ∶𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
ξύλων εἰς Πύθιον
καὶ ἐφ’ ἱεροπόιον
τάλαντα πεντήκοντα
δύο, τὸ τάλαντον
∶𐅂Ι∶ ἡ πᾶσα τιμὴ
𐅄ΔΙΙΙΙ∶
ἐλαίου εἰς
ἱεροπόιον
μετρητής, τιμὴ
∶Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂̣Ι̣· vac.
ἀνθράκων ἐπὶ
βωμοὺς κάλαθοι
τρεῖς ἡμικαλάθιον
ὀγδοήμορον,
ὁ κάλαθος
∶𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
ἡ πᾶσα τιμὴ
∶ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅁∶
Ἐχεμάντι
60
χαλκίον ἐπισκευάσαντι
∶𐅂𐅂∶ Φανέαι
ἀρχιτέκτονι
μισθὸς ∶𐅅ΗΗΔΔ∶
Βακχίωι ∶ΗΗ̣ΔΔΔΔ∶
εἰς ἱμάτιον
∶ΔΔ∶ Πόρωι ὑπηρέτει
∶Η𐅄ΔΔΔ∶ νεωκόρωι
τῶι ἐν Ἀσκληπιείωι
Ἀντιγόνωι ∶Η𐅄ΔΔΔ∶
ἰνωποφύ-
λακι
Κλεοστράτωι
∶𐅄ΔΔΔΔ∶ αὐλητρίδι
τοῦ χοροῦ Πε[․․․]
Η̣𐅄̣ΔΔΔ∶ γραμματεῖ
Σωστράτωι ∶𐅄ΔΔΔ∶
κήρυκι Ἀριστολόχωι
∶𐅄Δ∶ τῶι εἰς
Νῆσον νεωκόρωι
Ἱέρωνι ∶ΗΔΔ∶
τῶι εἰς τὸν
Ἀρχηγέτην
νεωκόρωι
Φιλοκράτει
∶𐅄Δ∶ δικαστηρίωι
μισθὸς τοῖς
ἐπιτιμήμασιν
∶Δ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ∶
ἡλιαίαι μισθὸς
τῆς γραφῆς ἧς
ἐγράψατο Σωσιμένης
Εὔβουλον
δραχμαὶ ∶𐅄̣[ΔΔΔ]𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ∶
ἐπιτιμηταῖς
ἐφόδιον Μν[η]-
σικλείδει
∶ΔΔΔΔ∶ Θεωρύλωι
∶ΔΔΔΔ∶ Κράτωνι
∶ΔΔΔΔ∶ λογισταῖς
ἐφόδιον Ἀντικράτει
Τιμησιδήμου
∶𐅄Δ∶ Φάνωι Διοδότου
∶𐅄Δ∶ Ξενοκλείδει
Ἀριστοβούλου
∶𐅄Δ∶ Ξενοκλείδει
Ἀφθονήτου
∶𐅄[Δ]·
εἰς
ἆθλα καὶ τοὺς
λαμπαδιστὰς
ἐλάβομεν παρὰ
ταμίου δραχμὰς
∶Η∶ καὶ ἡμεῖς
ἔδομεν ἐκ τῆς
βύρσης τοῦ βοὸς
τοῦ εἰς τὰ
Ἀπολλώνια, τιμὴ
∶ΔΔΙΙ· καὶ ἀπὸ
τούτου ἐλαίου
παρὰ Π․․
65
μου μετρηταὶ
τρεῖς, ὁ μετρητὴς
∶Δ𐅃𐅂∶ Ἕρμωνι
σκάψαντι ἐν τῶι
σταδίωι ∶𐅂ΙΙ∶
σφόγγοι παρὰ
Θουδᾶ ∶𐅂̣∶
ταινία παρὰ
Κωμωιδίας
∶𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι∶ λανπαδάρχοις
παίδων ∶𐅃∶ ἀνδρῶν
∶Δ∶ Αὐτοκλεῖ
δ[ολί]-
[χ]ου
∶𐅃∶ Θεοδότωι
Διδύμου ἀγενείων
στάδιον ∶𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
Θεοδωρίδει
ἀνδρῶν στάδιον
∶𐅃∶ Ἀρχεστράτωι
Σίμου παῖδας
στάδιον ∶𐅂<𐅂>ΙΙΙ∶
Ἀριστοτέλει
δολίχου ∶𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
Ἀριστοδίκωι
παῖδας στάδ[ιον]
[𐅂𐅂]ΙΙΙ∶
Θεοδωρίδης
ἵππιον ∶𐅃∶ Δημοσῶντι
Φίλωνος παῖδας
πυγμὴν ∶𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
Στράτιος πυγμὴν
∶𐅃∶ Μάνδρης
πυγμὴν ∶𐅃∶ Θεόδοτος
πυγμὴν ∶𐅃∶ Δημέας
παῖδας πυγμὴν
∶𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
[Φ]ίλαρχος
παῖδας πυγμὴν
∶𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ Τιμοκράτης
Βύβλιος ἀγενείων
πυγμὴν ∶𐅃∶
Ἀντίπατρος
ἀγενείων πυγμὴν
∶𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ Δίαιτος
ἀγενείων πυγμὴν
∶𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ Σίλλις
Σιδώνιος ἀγενείων
πυγ-
μὴν
∶𐅃∶ Ἀρτέμων
ἄνδρας πυγμὴν
∶𐅃∶ Τίμαι[ος]
Ἀλεξανδρεὺς
ἄνδρας πυγμὴν
∶𐅃∶ Τίμαιος
Ἀλεξανδρεὺς
ἄνδρας πάλην
∶𐅃∶ Ἕρμακος
Τήνιος ἀγενείων
πάλην ∶<𐅃>∶
Θεοδωρίδη[ς]
70
[ὁ]πλίτην ∶𐅃∶
Θεοδωρίδης
πένταθλον ∶𐅃∶
— — ∶ [κ]αὶ τάδε
ἀνήλωται κατὰ
ψήφισμα· τοῖς
ἐπιμεληταῖς
το[ῦ] θεάτρου
Τιμησιδήμωι,
Εὐδήμωι, Ἀνδρομένει,
ἐφόδιον εἰς
Πάρον ∶𐅄Δ·
ἐλέφαντος
ὀδόντες δύο
παρὰ Ἡρακλείδου
†Βασιλεύκου
{²⁷Βασιλ<είδου
Σελ>εύκου?}²⁷
Τυρίου, τάλαντον
μναῖ τριάκοντα
δύο ἡμιμναῖον
ὀγδοήμορον,
τὸ τάλαντον
δραχμῶν ∶𐅅∶ ἡ
πᾶσα τιμὴ ∶𐅅ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ∶
μόλυβδ[ος]
ὥστε
εἰς τὸ Κύνθιον
παρὰ Κυδιθάλους
τάλαντον δραχμῶν
∶𐅃𐅂𐅂∶ Μάχωνι
χερνίβου ∶𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
Μάχωνι κηρυκείων
∶ τριῶν ∶ΔΔΔΔ𐅃∶
φοινικὶς εἰς
Ἀρτεμίσιον παρὰ
Δημέου ∶ΔΔΔΔ∶
Φάνωι ἀπ[έ]-
[δ]ομεν
ψηφισαμένου
τοῦ δήμου
∶𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
παρὰ Ἀγάθωνος
πορφύρας εἰς
ἱμάτιον τῆι Λητοῖ
μναῖ δύο, τιμὴ
δραχμαὶ ∶ΗΗ∶
ἐρίου Τημνίου
∶𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂̣∶ καὶ
τόδε ἀργύριον
ἐδανείσαμεν
κατὰ ψήφισμα
[τ]οῦ
δήμου καὶ κατὰ
τὸν νόμον <καὶ>
κατὰ συγγραφὰς
τῆι πόλει καὶ
προδανεισταῖς
Πίστηι Ξένωνος,
Πολύβωι Διοδότου
∶𐅅ΗΗ∶ κατὰ
συγγραφὴν τὴγ
κειμένην παρὰ
Ἀντιγόνωι τῶι
Χαρίλα·
75
Γαλαξιῶνος
Δημέαι καὶ Θεωρύλωι
καὶ ἀναδόχοις
Δημέου Καλλισθένει
Θεωρύλου,
Ξενοκλείδει
Ἀφθονήτου
∶ΧΧΗΗΗΗ∶ κατὰ
συγγραφὴν τὴγ
κειμένην παρὰ
Ἀντιγόνωι τῶι
Χα-
[ρ]ίλα·
τούτου ἀποδέδωκε
Θεωρύλος τοῦ
καθ’ αὑτὸν μέρους
∶Χ∶ Ἑκατομβαιῶνος
τῆι πόλει καὶ
προδανεισταῖς
Στησιλέωι Σκύμνου,
Ἀντιγόνωι Ἀνδρομένους,
Ἱερομβρότωι
Εὐδήμο[υ]
[κ]αὶ
ἀναδόχοις Σκύμνωι
Φανοδίκου,
Δημόνωι Νίκωνος,
Εὐδήμωι Ἄμνου
∶ΧΧΧ∶ κατὰ συγγραφὴν
τὴν παρ’ Ἀνπυκίδει
Κριτοβούλου
κειμένην· τῆι
πόλει καὶ
προδανεισταῖς
Μνησάλκωι Τ[ε]-
[λ]εσαρχίδου,
Πολύβωι Διοδότου,
Δημέαι Αὐτοκλέους
∶ΧΧ∶ κατὰ συγγραφὴν
τὴγ κειμένην
παρὰ Πίστηι τῶι
Ξένωνος· ἄρχει
τοῦ τόκου μεὶς
Ληναιὼν ὁ ἐπὶ
Καλλίμου ∶
— — ∶ καὶ τάδε
ἔργ[α]
ἐξέδομεν
κατὰ ψήφισμα
τοῦ δήμου καὶ
κατὰ συγγραφὰς
μετὰ το[ῦ] ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
Διονυσίωι
ἐγλαβόντι τὴν
ὀρχήστραν τοῦ
θεάτρου καταχρῖσαι
τὴν πρώτην δόσιν
80
ἔδομεν κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
δραχμὰς ∶ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι𐅁∶
συντελεσαμένωι
δὲ τὰ ἡμίση τῶν
ἔργων ἔδομεν
τὴν δευτέραν
δόσιν δραχμὰς
∶Δ𐅂𐅂𐅁𐅀∶ συντελεσαμένωι
δὲ τὸ ἔργον κατὰ
τὴν
συγγραφὴν
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
λοιπὸν ∶Δ𐅂𐅂𐅁𐅀∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος·
Σωσιμένει Ἀντιγόνου
τῶν λίθων τῶν
εἰς τὸν θησαυρὸν
ἔδομεν τὴν πρώτην
δόσιν κατὰ τὴν
συγγραφὴν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
ἐκ ποδῶν τριάκοντα
ἑνὸς τὰ δύο μέρη
δραχμὰς ∶ΗΔΔΔ𐅂̣𐅂𐅂ΙΙ∶
Ἀντίκωι τῆς
διόδου τῆς
ἐν τῶι θεάτρωι
τὴν πρώτην δόσιν
ἔδομεν κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
δραχμὰς
∶𐅅𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν
Τιμησιδήμου
τοῦ Ἀντικράτους,
Ἀνδρομένους
τοῦ Ξένωνος,
Εὐδήμου τοῦ
Ἄμνου· συντελεσαμέ-
νωι
δὲ τὰ ἡμίση τῶν
ἔργων ἔδομεν
τὴν δευτέραν
δόσιν δραχμὰς
∶ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ𐅁∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
συντελεσαμένωι
δὲ τὸ ἔργον
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
85
ἐπιδέκατον
δραχμὰς ∶ΗΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
Ἀντίκωι Καΐκου
ἐγλαβόντι ἀνακαθᾶραι
τὸν τόπον τῆι
διόδωι τῆι ἐν
τῶι θεάτρωι
πάντα
κύκλωι
ἔδομεν τὴν πρώτην
δόσιν κατὰ τὴν
συγγραφὴν δραχμὰς
∶𐅄ΔΔΔΔ<𐅃>∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
συντελεσαμένωι
δὲ τὰ ἡμίση τῶν
ἔργων
ἔδομεν
τὴν δευτέραν
δόσιν δραχμὰς
∶𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂∶ κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
συντελεσαμένωι
δὲ τὸ ἔργον
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
ἐπιδέκατον
δραχμὰς
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
Ἀριστοκλεῖ
καὶ Καλλιγένει
τῆς λιθείας
τῆς εἰς τὸ
παρασκήνιον
ἐκ ποδῶν [πε]ντακοσίων
ἔδομεν τὴν πρώτην
δόσιν
κατὰ τὴν συγγραφὴν
δραχμὰς ∶ΧΗ𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν
Πολύβου τοῦ
Διοδότου, Ἡγία
τοῦ Φωκαέως·
ἀπαγαγοῦσι
δὲ τοὺς ἡ-
90
μίσεις τῶν λίθων
πόδας διακοσίους
πεντήκοντα
ὑπερελόντες
τὸ ἐπιδέκατον
παντὸς τοῦ ἀργυρίου
ἔδομεν τὴν δευτέραν
δόσιν δραχμὰς
∶𐅅ΗΗΗΗ
ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
[κ]ελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
ἀπαγαγοῦσι
δὲ τοὺς ὑπολοίπους
τῶν λίθων ἀπέδομεν
Καλλιγένει
καὶ Ἀριστοκλεῖ
τὸ ἐπι-
δέκατον
δραχμὰς ΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν
Πολύβου, Ἡγίου·
Ἁρπάλι τοῦ στωιδίου
τοῦ ἐπὶ Κουροτρόφον
ἔδομεν τὴν
πρώτην
δόσιν κατὰ τὴν
συγγραφὴν δραχμὰς
∶Η𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
συντελεσαμένωι
δὲ τὰ ἡμίση τῶν
ἔργων ὑπερελόντες
τὸ ἐπιδέκατον
τοῦ παντὸς ἀρ-
γυρίου
ἔδομεν τὴν δευτέραν
δόσιν δραχμὰς
∶ΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅁∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
συντελεσαμένωι
δὲ τὸ ἔργον
ἀπέδομεν
95
τὸ ἐπιδέκατον
δραχμὰς ∶ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
Φιλανδρίδει
Παρίωι τῆς λιθείας
τῆς εἰς τὰς
κρηπῖδας τὰς
ἐν τῶι θεάτρωι
ἐγλαβόντι
πόδας χιλίους
ἔδομεν τὴν πρῶτην
δόσιν κατὰ τὴν
συγγραφὴν δραχμὰς
∶ΧΧΧ𐅅∶ κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν
Ἀνδρομ[έ]-
νους
τοῦ Ξένωνος,
Τιμησιδήμου
τοῦ Ἀντικράτους,
Εὐδήμου τοῦ
Ἄμνου 〚—〛
vac.
face
B.1
1
[— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — ἔδομεν τὴν
πρώτ]ην δόσιν κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
∶ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος·
συντελεσαμέν[ωι]
[δὲ
τὰ ἡμίση τῶν ἔργων
ἔδομεν τὴν δευτέραν
δόσιν δραχμὰς
∶ΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκ]τονος·
συντελεσαμένωι
δὲ τὸ ἔργον
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
ἐπιδέκατον
∶𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁∶
κελεύοντος
[ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — κεραμίδας?
— — — — — —]α, τὸ
ζεῦγος ∶𐅂∶
καὶ καταστήσαντι
ζεύγη διακόσια
ἔδομεν κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφὴν
[δραχμὰς
ΗΗ — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — —] τῶι στωιδίωι
τῶι ἐπὶ Κουροτρόφον
ἔδομεν τὴν πρῶτην
δόσιν κατὰ τὴν
συγγραφὴν δ[ρα]-
5
[χμὰς ∶𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
συντελεσαμένωι
δὲ] τὰ ἡμίση τῶν
ἔργων ὑπερελόντες
τὸ ἐπιδέκατον
τοῦ παντὸς ἀργυρίου
ἔδομεν τὴ[ν]
[δευτέραν
δόσιν δραχμὰς
∶𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν]·
συντελεσαμένωι
δὲ τὸ ἔργον
ἀπέδομεν τὸ
ἐπιδέκατον
∶Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέ-
[κτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — —
—]κ̣ρ̣ίτ̣ου·
Ἐχεμάντι ἐργολαβήσαντι
δεσμοὺς καὶ
γόμφους ὥστε
εἰς τὸ Κύνθιον
χαλκοῦ τά-
[λαντον
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — —] δραχμὰς
∶𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃∶ κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
Ἁγνίαι τὴν παλαί-
[στραν
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
ἔδομεν τὴν πρώτην]
δόσιν δραχμὰς
∶ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂[∶
κ]ελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος·
συντελεσαμένωι
δὲ τὰ ἡμίση
10
[τῶν ἔργων ἔδομεν
τὴν δευτέραν
δόσιν δραχμὰς
∶ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονο]ς̣·
τὸ δὲ ἐπιδέκατον
ἐπέβα[λλ]εν ὁ
ἀρχιτέκτων·
λίθων τῶν εἰς
τὸ θέατρον
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — ἀπαγαγόντι
πόδας θεατρικ]οὺς?
τετταράκοντα
δύο ἔδομεν
ναῦλον τοῦ ποδὸς
∶[𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ]∶ τὸ
πᾶν ∶𐅄ΔΔ𐅃̣𐅂̣𐅂
〚—
—〛 κελεύον-
[τος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — — — — — — — —
— — — ἀπαγαγόντι
πόδας — — κοντ]α̣
δύο ἔδομεν
ναῦλον τοῦ ποδὸς
∶𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ τὸ πᾶν
∶ΔΔΔΔΙΙ∶ Διοσκουρίδει
ἀπαγαγόντι πό-
[δας
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — ἀπαγαγ]ό̣ν̣τ̣[ι]
πόδας θεατρικοὺς
πεντήκοντα ὀκτώ·
ἔδομεν ναῦλον
τοῦ ποδὸς ∶𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ∶
τὸ πᾶν
[Η𐅃𐅂ΙΙ∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν
— — — — — — — —
—]τ․․κ̣ω̣ι̣
ἀνακομίσαντι
εἰς τὸ θέατρον
λίθους ∶𐅄ΔΔΙΙΙ∶
τὸν λίθον ἕκαστον
∶ΙΙΙ𐅁∶ τὸ
15
[πᾶν ∶ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁∶
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — —]ΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀∶
ἔδομεν τὸ πᾶν
∶𐅄․∶ κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν
Δημέ-
[ου
καὶ τοῦ δεῖνος
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — τετ]ρακοσίους
ὑπερελόντες
ὃ ἐπετί[μη]σεν
ὁ ἀρχιτέκτων
δραχμὰς ∶𐅄∶
τὸ λοιπὸν ἀπέ-
[δομεν
— — — — — — — —
δραχμὰς — — —
— κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν]
Νίκωνος καὶ
Τελέσωνος
․․․․․․Ν․ΕΛ̣Α̣
δύο οἷς πλείους
ἠργάσατο κελευούσης
[τῆς
βουλῆς — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
—]ν̣ δραχμὰς
∶ΔΔΔΔ𐅃[𐅂]𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
Ἀντίκωι τὰς̣?
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — κελεύ]οντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητοῦ
Φίλλιος τοῦ
Διαίτου ∶Η𐅄𐅂̣𐅂̣∶
τοῖς τὴγ κονίαν
ἀναμετρησα-
20
[μένοις — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — τῶ]ν̣
ἐγγ[ύω]ν ∶𐅂𐅂∶
μόλυβδος τὴν
στή̣λ̣η̣ν̣
[σ]τ̣ῆ̣[σαι]? 𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
ξύλα ∶ΙΙΙΙΙ∶
μολυβδοχοήσαντι
∶𐅂. vac.
[κεφάλαιον
οὗ παρελάβομεν
ἀργυρίου· —
— — — — — κεφά]λαιον
τοῦ εἰσεληλυθότος
ἐπὶ τῆς ἡμε[τ]έρας
ἀ̣ρ̣χ̣ῆ̣ς̣
∶ΜΜΜΜ̣Χ̣Χ̣Χ̣Χ̣.
vac. 〚—
— — — — — —〛
[κεφάλαιον
ἀναλώματος —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — —]ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι̣ΙΙ𐅁∶
κ̣αὶ χρυσοῦς
∶Δ∶ δίδραχμον
σελεύκειον·
κ̣ώ̣ι̣ας δραχμὰς
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
κώιαν 𐅂· χαλκιδικὴν
∶𐅂∶ vac.
[τὸ
δὲ λοιπὸν παρέδομεν
ἱεροποιοῖς
τοῖς μεθ’ ἡμᾶς·
ἀργυρίου δραχμὰς
∶ΜΜ𐅆ΧΧΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
καὶ] χρυσοῦς
∶ΙΙΙ∶ τρ̣ι̣ώβ̣ολον
αἰγιναῖον·
διώβολον
πά̣[ρι]ον(?). vac.
Side
B begins with building expenses continued from side A and then the
year’s total income and outlay before the inventory begins.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090408151731/http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/translations/203translation.htm
[τάδε
παρελάβομεν
παρ’ ἱεροποιοῦ
τοῦ ἱεροποιήσαντος
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Μειλιχί]δου
Πλεισταινέτου
τοῦ Τελέσωνος
καὶ τοῦ κληρονόμου
τοῦ Πελάγοντος
Λάμπωνος·
25
[ἐν τῶι ἱεροποίωι?
φιάλην Θυεσταδῶν
καὶ Ὠκυνειδῶν,
ὁλκὴ ∶Η∶ φιάλην]
Δηλιάδων, Πτολεμαίου
ἐπιδόντος, ὁλκὴ
∶Η∶ φιάλην Δηλιάδων,
Πτολεμαίου
ἐπιδόντος, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
φιάλην Δηλιά-
[δων,
ἐπιδόντος
Πτολεμαίου,
ὁλκὴ ∶Η∶ φιάλην
Χερσονησιτῶν,
ὁλκὴ ∶Η∶ ἄλλην
Χερσονησιτῶν],
ὁλκὴ ∶Η∶ ἄλλην
Χερσονησιτῶν,
ὁλκὴ ∶Η∶ φιάλην
Δηλιάδων, Πτολεμαίου
ἐπιδόντο[ς], ὁλκὴ
∶ΗΙΙΙ∶ φιάλην
Ὠκυνειδῶν κα[ὶ]
[Θυεσταδῶν,
ὁλκὴ ∶ — — — —
— — — — — — φιάλην
Ὠκυνει]δῶν καὶ
Θυεσταδῶν, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ∶
φιάλην Ὠκ[υν]ειδῶν
καὶ Θυεσταδῶν,
ὁλκὴ Η∶ φιάλην
Δηλιάδων, Πτολεμαίου
ἐπιδόντος,
[ὁλκὴ
∶ — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — φιάλην
Δηλιάδ]ων, Πτολεμαίου
ἐπιδόντος, ὁλκὴ
∶ΗΙΙΙ∶ φιάλην
Ὠκυνειδῶν καὶ
Θυεσταδῶν, ὁλκὴ
∶Η∶ κύλιξ Δημοσῶντος,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄ΔΔ∶
ἄλλη κύλιξ
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — ἀντὶ
τῆς χελιδονείου,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι∶
ῥοδιακὴ̣ ἀντὶ
τῆς χελιδονείου,
ὁλκὴ ∶ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
ἡδυποτίδιον
Θεμι-
...archonship
of Meilichi]dos, Pleistainetos son of Teleson and Lampon, the heir
of Pelagon. [... phia]le (25) of the Deliades, Ptolemy donor, weight
100; phiale of the Deliades, Ptolemy donor, weight 99; phiale
Delia[des...] weight 100; another of the Chersonites, weight 100;
phiale of the Deliades, Ptolemy donor, weight 100.3; phiale of the
Okyneidai and [...Okynei]dai and Thyestadai, weight 98.2; phiale of
the Okyneidai and Thyestadai, weight 100; phiale of the Deliades,
Ptolemy donor [... Deliad]es, Ptolemy donor, weight 100.3; phiale of
the Okyneidai and Thyestadai, weight 100; kylix of Demoson, weight
70; another kylix [...] instead of the swallow, weight 53.1; Rhodian
instead of the swallow, weight 44.3; small hedypotis of Themi[...]
30
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — —ς, ὁλκὴ
∶ΔΔΔ𐅃∶ κύαθος,
ὁλκὴ ∶ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
κυμβίον Ἐπιν̣οίδα,
ὁλκὴ ∶ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂∶
χελιδόνειος,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
ἄλλη χελιδόνειος,
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — κονδύλιον
ἀργυροῦν· κυλίκιον
Θυμοχάρους,
ὁλκὴ ∶ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
κώθων Πυθέου,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃∶
— — ἐν Ἀσκλη[πι]-
[είωι
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — —]
ὁλκὴ ∶․Δ̣․․․
ἐν τῶι προδόμωι
τοῦ νεὼ τοῦ
Ἀπόλλωνος·
φιάλας τρεῖς
Στησίλεω· φιάλας
δύο [Ἀ]ντιπάτρου·
φιάλην Ἀγία
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
φιάλην τῆς πόλε]ως
τ[ῆς] Καλυμνίων·
φιάλην Ἀρχία·
φιάλην ἐπ’ ἀρχιθεώρου
ἐγ Ῥόδου Μέ[νω]νος·
φιάλην Κώιων
ἐπ’ ἀρχι-
[θεώρου
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — —] φιάλην
Κ[ώιων ἐπ’] ἀρχιθεώρου
Ἀναξιβίου, ἐπὶ
ταινιδίου·
φιάλια δύο
Φίλωνος· φιάλην
Διοκλείους·
φ[ι]άλην ἐπίχρυσον
Ἀριστοφύλ[ου]
35
[Ῥοδίου· — —
— — — — — — — —
φιάλην ἐν προτομῆι?]
Ἐτεάρχου·
φιάλην Ἱεροκλέους·
φιάλην Φιλοκλείδου·
φιάλην τῆς Καλυμνίων
πόλεως· φιάλην
Ῥοδίων ἐπ’ ἀ[ρ]-
[χιθεώρου
— — — — — — — — —
— — — φιάλας
ἐκτύπους] δύο
Χαρμίδου· φιάλιον
Δεξικράτους·
φιάλιον Ἀρταπάτου·
φιάλην Ἀμμωνίου·
φιάλην Πυρρίου·
φιάλην Τη-
[—
— — — — — — — —
φιάλην καρυωτὴν]
Φι̣λ̣ώ̣τα? πρ̣ο̣σ—
—c.11— — φιάλην
ἐπίχρυσον Τιμάνθους·
φιάλιον ἀργυροῦν
ἐπὶ Διοφάνους·
φιάλην ἐπ’ ἀρχιθεώρου
Πολυαρά-
[του·
φιάλην Κώιων]
ἐπ’ ἀρχιθεώρου
Ἀράτου· φιάλην
Ἡρα̣κλείτου·
φι[άλην Δηλι]άδων,
ἐ̣πιδόντων Κασίων·
φιάλην Δηλιάδων,
ἐπιδόντων θεωρῶν
τῶν ἐγ Μεγάλης
πόλεως· φιάλην
Ῥοδίων
[ἐπ’
ἀρχιθεώρου
— — — — — —· φιάλην]
Κ̣ώ̣ι̣ω̣ν ἐπ’
ἀρχιθεώρου
<Ζ>ωπυρίωνος·
φιάλην Σι̣μ̣ί̣ου·
ταινία περιηργυρωμένη
Ἀρχεστράτου·
κολεὰ δύο
ἐλεφάντινα, τὸ
μὲν Θυμώιδα, τὸ
δὲ Τιμέ-
(30)
weight 35; kyathos, weight 33; kymbion of Epinoidas, weight 47;
swallow, weight 56.3; another swallow [...] silver kondylion; small
kylix of Thymochares, weight 27.3; kothon of Pytheas, weight 95.
In
the Ascle[pieion...] weight 10+.
In
the prodomos of the Temple of Apollo: three phialai of
Stesileos; two phialai of Antipater; phiale of Agias [...ci]ty of
the Kalymnians; phiale of Archias; phiale withe Menon of Rhodes
chief theoros; phiale of the Koans with
chief[theoros... phiale of the Koans with Anaxibios chief theoros,
on a ribbon; two small phialai of Philon; phiale of Diokleios;
gilded phiale of Aristophylos [...] (35) of Etearchos; phiale of
Hierokles; piale of Philokleides; phiale of the city of the
Kalymnians; phiale of the Rhodians with [...two of Charmides; small
phiale of Dexikrates; small phiale of Artapatos; phiale of Ammonios;
phiale of Pyrrhios; phiale of Te[...of Philotas to [...]; gilded
phiale of Timanthes; small silver phiale in the year of Diophanes;
phiale with Polyarato[s...] with Aratos chief theoros; phiale of
Herakleitos; phi[ale of the Deli]ades, with the Kasians donors;
phiale of the Deliades, with the theoroi of Megalopolis donors;
phiale of the Rhodians [...] of the Koans with Zopyrion chief
archon; phiale of Simios; silvered ribbon of Archestratos; two ivory
scabbards, the one of Thymoidas, the other of Time[os]
40
[ου] ΛΗΛ̣ΟΥ·
ἐπὶ τοῦ ὀδο̣ῦ̣
θυμιατήριον
χαλκοῦν· δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς ἔχων
λιθάριον Δεξιλάου·
χρυσοῦς Νικολάου·
τέτραχμον
ἀντιόχειον·
δραχμὴν ῥοδίαν
ἐπὶ ταινιδίου·
vac.
․․․․․․․․
στέφανος
ἐπὶ προκομίου
Τιμοκράτους
ἔ[παθ]λο[ν]? τοῦ
Ἀ[γ]λ[ωφ]ῶ[ντ]ος?·
κρατῆρας ἀργυροῦς
δύο Στρατονίκης·
τριήρης ἀργυρᾶ
Σελεύκου·
τράπεζαν ἀργυρᾶν·
τρίποδα ἀργυροῦν
Ἀρσινόης
[βασιλίσσης]·
φι̣ά̣λ̣η̣ν
ἐπ̣ι̣δ̣όντων
θεωρῶν τῶν παρ’
Ἀλ̣ε̣ξανδρέων·
κρατῆρα ἀργυροῦν·
θυμιατήρια
χρυσᾶ δύο·
οἰνοχόην χρυσῆν,
ὁλκὴ ∶[𐅅]Η[𐅄]ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
ἄλλην οἰνοχόην
χρυσῆν, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅅̣Η𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂Ι·
φιάλας χρυ-
[σ]ᾶς
[λείας ἑπτά,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂]∶
καρυωτὰς ἕξ,
ὁλ̣κ̣ὴ [∶ΧΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂]∶
κανοῦν χαλκοῦν·
χρυσίου παντοδαποῦ
ὁλκὴ ∶Η[𐅃]ΙΙΙ∶
ἄλλο χρυσίον
παντοδαπὸν σὺν
σφραγῖδι ἀργυρᾶι,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙ∶
ἄλλο χρυσίον,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂·
[φι]άλιο[ν]
ἀργυροῦν, ὁλκὴ
ΙΙΙ· στλεγγὶς
χρυσῆ, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ δρακόντ[ιο]ν
[ἀργυροῦν], ὁλκὴ
𐅂𐅂∶ ἄλλο χρυσίον,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅃𐅂∶
θυμιατήριον
ἀργυροῦν, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ θυμιατήριον
ἀργυροῦν Βουλομάγα
σὺν τῶι ἐπιπύρωι,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅅𐅄Δ∶
45
[π]ε̣[ρ]ίπ̣υρον
χαλκοῦν·
περικεφαλαί[α]ν
ὑπάργυρον Λεωνίδου·
δακτυλίους
ὑπαργύρους
∶Η<Η>𐅄ΙΙ∶ ἀργυροῦς
∶Δ𐅃Ι∶ σιδηροῦς
∶𐅃∶ δακτυλίους
ὑποχρύσους
∶Δ∶ κύλικας
δύο ἀργυρενδέτους
τηιουργεῖς
Κτήσωνος·
δακτύλιον χρυσοῦν
λόγχην ἔχοντα
ἐπίσημον· τέτραχμον
ἀντιόχειον·
κυλίκιον ἀργυροῦν,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂∶ δακτύλιον
χρυσοῦν συνπεφλασμένον,
ὁλκὴν ∶𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
δακτύλιος
ἐπίχρυσο[ς]
ἀνθράκιον
ἔχων· δακτύλιον
χρυσοῦν Μνασικράτους·
πτολεμαϊκὰ
τέτραχμα δύο·
ὀβολοὺς ἀρβυλικοὺς
δύο· ἀργυρίου
νομίσματος
παντοδαποῦ ὁλκὴ
𐅄𐅃𐅂∶ σὺν τῶι
φιαλίωι· χαλκοῦ
νομίσ-
ματος
ἐν ἀγγείοις
χαλκοῖς δύο,
ὁλκὴ μναῖ ∶𐅃∶
ταινίδιον χρυσοῦν
Βυβλίων· ταινίδιον
χρυσοῦν Γλαύκου·
στέφανος ὃν
ἀνέθηκε Λύσανδρος
ἀνπέλου, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
στέφανος ὃν
Πτολε-
μαῖος
ἀνέθηκε, ὁλκὴ
∶Η𐅄∶ στέφανος
δάφνης ὃν Δημήτριος
ἀνέθηκεν, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂∶
σὺν τῶι λίνωι·
στέφανος δάφνης
ὃν ἀνέθηκεν
Ἀντίπατρος, ὁλκὴ
∶ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
στέφανος
(40)
of Delos; bronze censer on the road (?); gold ring with stone of
Dexilaos; gold of Nikolaos; Antiochene tetradrachm; Rhodian drachma
on ribbon [space] [...]crown for the head prize of Timokrates son of
Aglophon; two silver kraters of Stratonike; silver trireme of
Seleukos; silver table; silver tripod of Arsinoe [...]; phiale with
the theoroi from the Alexandrians donors; silver krater; two gold
censers; gold oinochoe, weight 147.3+; another gold oinochoe, weight
681.1; gold phialas [...]; six knobbed, weight [...] bronze basket;
of various gold, weight 100.3+; other various gold with silver seal,
weight 7.2; silver censer, weight 7.3; silver censer of Boulomagas
with the grate, weight 560; (45) bronze grate; silvered helmet of
Leonidas; 152 silvered rings; 16 silver; 5 iron; 10 gilded rings;
two silverbound Teian-worked kylixes of Kteson; gold ring with
spearhead seal; Antiochean tetradrachm; small silver kylix, weight
1; crushed gold ring, weight 4; gilded ring with garnet; gold ring
of Mnasikrates; two Ptolemaic tetradrachms; two arbylic obols; of
various silver coin, weight 56, with the small phiale; of various
bronze coin in two bronze containers, weight 5 mnai; gold ribbon of
the Byblioi; gold ribbon of Glaukos; grapevine crown which Lysander
dedicated, weight 68; crown which Ptolemy dedicated, weight 150;
laurel crown which Demetrios dedicated, weight 87 with the string;
laurel crown which Antipater dedicated, weight 46.3; laurel crown
50
δάφνης ὃν ἀνέθηκε
Φιλοκλῆς, σὺν
τῶι λίνωι ὁλκὴ
∶𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
στέφανος δάφνης
ὃν ἀνέθηκε
Πολύκλειτος,
σὺν τῶι λίνωι
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
στέφανος ὃν
ἀνέθηκε Φάραξ
σὺν τῶι λίνωι
ὁλκὴ
∶𐅄ΙΙΙ∶ στέφανος
ὃν ἀνέθηκεν
Κτησικλῆς, σὺν
τῶι λίνωι ὁλκὴ
∶ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
στέφανος ὃν
ἀνέθηκεν Νικοκρέων
μυρσίνης, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅄Δ𐅃∶ στέφανοι
δύο οὓς ἀνέθηκεν
Ἀνδροκλῆς,
ὁλκὴ
σὺν <τ>ῶι λίνωι
∶𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
σ[τ]έφανος ὃν
ἀνέθηκεν Ξενόφαντος
δάφνης, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
στέφανος ὃν
ἀνέθηκεν Ἰώμικλος
{²⁷Ἰώμιλκος}²⁷,
σὺν τῶι λίνωι
ὁλκὴ ∶ΔΔ𐅃∶
στέφανος δάφνης
ὃν ἀνέθηκεν
Λύσανδρος,
σὺν τῶι λίνωι
ὁλκὴ ∶ΔΔ𐅃𐅂∶
στέφανος ὃν
ἀνέθηκεν Πνυταγόρας
μυρσίνης, σὺν
τῶι κηρῶι ὁλκὴ
∶ΔΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
στέφανος ὃν
ἀνέθηκεν ὁ δῆμος
ὁ Δηλίων δάφνης,
σὺν τῶι λίνωι
ὁλκὴ
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
στέφανος δάφνης
ὃν ἀνέθηκεν
Πευκέστας οὐ
παρελάβομεν
σταθμῶι, ἀλλὰ
ἄστατον· στέφανος
ὃν ἀνέθηκεν
Ἀνδροκλῆς
μυρσίνης, σὺν
τῶι λίνωι ὁλκὴ
∶ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
στέφανος ὃν
ἀνέθη-
55
[κ]εν Καλλικράτης
μυρσίνης, ὁλκὴ
∶Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
ὁ πρὸς τῶι τοίχωι,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂∶
ἄλλος στέφανος
χρυσοῦς πρὸς
τῶι τοίχωι, ὁλκὴ
σὺν τῶι λίνωι
∶ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂∶
στρεπτὸν περίχρυσον,
ὁλκὴ ∶ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ∶
στέφανος 〚—
—〛
[ὧι]
τὸ ἄγαλμα ἐστεφάνωται,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
λίνωι ∶ΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
ἐλέφαντος
ὀ<δ>όντας δύο.
οὗ τὰ ἑπτὰ ἐν
τῶι προδόμωι·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
Νικίου· φιάλαι
ἐν πλινθείοις
ἀργυρᾶι πέντε·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
Αὐτο-
κλέους
∶ ἐν τῶι ναῶι·
φιαλῶν ἀργυρῶν
ὁ πρῶτος ῥυμός,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅅ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
φιάλαι ὀκτώ·
ὁ δεύτερος
ῥυμός, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅅Η𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
φιάλαι ὀκτώ·
ὁ τρίτος ῥυμός,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅅Η𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
φιάλαι ἑπτά·
ὁ τέταρτος ῥυμός,
ὁλκὴ·
𐅅𐅄𐅃ΙΙΙ∶
φιάλαι ἑπτά·
κυμβία τέτταρα,
ὁλκὴ ∶Η𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
στέφανοι χρυσοῖ
δάφνης δύο, ὁλκὴ
σὺν τοῖς κλάσμασιν
∶[Η]𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂∶ στέφανοι
χρυσοῖ πρὸς
τῶι τοίχωι εἴκοσι
εἷς· ὁ πρῶτος
μυρσίνης, ὁλκὴ
∶Η[․․]ΙΙΙ∶ ὁ δεύ-
τερος
δάφνης, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
τρίτος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄ΔΔ𐅂∶
τέταρτος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ σὺν <τῶι>
σπαρτίωι ∶𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
πέμπτος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ ∶ΗΔΔΙΙΙ∶
ἕκτος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅀∶
ἕβδομος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
(50)
which Philokles dedicated with the string, weight 93; laurel crown
which Polykleitos dedicated, with the string weight 87.3; crown
which Pharax dedicated, with the string weight 50.3; crown which
Ktesikles dedicated, with the string weight 48.3; myrtle crown which
Nikokreon dedicated, weight 65; two crowns which Androkles
dedicated, weight with (t)he string 59; laurel crown which
Xenophantes dedicated, weight 63.3; crown which Iomilkos dedicated,
with the string weight 25; laurel crown which Lysander dedicated,
with the thread weight 26; myrtle crown which Pnytagoras dedicated,
with the wax weight 31.3; laurel crown which the Delian demos
dedicated, with the string weight 96.3; laurel crown which Peukestas
dedicated, which we received by weight but unweighed; myrtle crown
which Androkles dedicated, with the string weight 37.3; myrtle crown
which (55) Kallikrates dedicated, weight 19; the gold crown on the
wall, weight 62; another gold crown on the wall, weight with the
string 47; gilded collar, weight 35.2; crown [with which] the statue
is crowned, weight with the string 134; two elephant teeth.
(Temple)
of the Seven. In the prodomos: gold crown of Nikias; five
silver phialai in plinths; gold crown of Autokles. In the naos:
of silver phialai the first row, weight 642.3, phialai eight; the
second row, weight 658.3, phialai eight; the third row, weight
662.3, phialai seven; the fourth row, weight 555.3, phialai seven;
four kymbia, weight 157.3; two gold laurel crowns, weight with the
pieces 62+; twenty one gold crowns on the wall; the first myrtle,
weight 100.3+; the second laurel, weight 83; third laurel, weight
71; fourth laurel, weight with the thread 68.3; fifth laurel weight
120.3; sixth laurel, weight 6.2 1/4; seventh laurel, weight 69;
60
ὄγδοος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄ΔΔ𐅂∶
ἔνατος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι∶
δέκατος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ∶
ἑνδέκατος
δάφνης, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ∶
δωδέκατος
δάφνης, ὁλκὴ
σὺν τῶι λίνωι
∶𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
τρίτος ἐπὶ δέκα
δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
τέταρτος καὶ
δέκατος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
σπαρτίωι ΗΔΔΔ𐅂∶
πέμπτος καὶ
δέκατος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
ἑκκαιδέκατος
δάφνης, ὁλκὴ
∶ΗΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
ἕβδομος καὶ
δέκατος
δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
λίνωι ∶Η∶ ὀκτωκαιδέκατος
δαφνης, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ∶
ἔνατος καὶ
δέκατος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄[ΔΔΔ]𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ.
εἰκοστὸς δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ ∶Η𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι∶
εἷς καὶ εἰκοστὸς
δάφνης, ὁλκὴ
∶Η𐅂∶ ἐν τῶι Πω-
ρίνωι·
φιάλας ἐν πλινθείοις
ἕνδεκα. ἐν Ἀρτεμισίωι·
μῆλα χρυσᾶ ∶ΔΔΔΔ∶
ἔχοντα γῆν, καὶ
γυπὸς κεφαλὴν
καὶ ἄλλα χρυσίδια,
ὁλκὴ ∶ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙ∶
πέταλα χρυσᾶ
ἐγ κιβωτίωι
∶𐅄ΔΙΙΙ∶ ὁλκὴ
∶ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ̣∶
ἐγ κι-
βωτίωι
κλάσματα ἀπὸ
στεφάνων καὶ
περόναι καὶ
στλεγγίδων
κλάσματα καὶ
πεντόροβος
χρυσᾶ, ὁλκὴ
∶ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
χρυσίου παντοδαποῦ
λευκοῦ ὁλκὴ
∶ΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ∶ ἔνεστιν
ἐν τούτωι vac. μῆ<λα>
65
[γ]ῆν ἔχοντα·
χρυσοῖ ∶ΔΙΙ∶
φωκαΐς· τεττίγια
δύο· ἐγ κιβωτίωι
χρυσίου παντοδαποῦ
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
ἐγ κιβωτίωι
χρυσίου παντοδαποῦ
ὁλκὴ ∶ΗΗΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂∶
ἐν τούτοις ἔνι
μῆλα γῆν ἔχοντα·
δακτύλιοι
χρυσοῖ 𐅃Ι∶
τούτ[ων]
εἷς
διάλιθος ἐγ
κιβωταρίωι
μικρῶι, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ δακτύλιος
εἷς Ἀρτεμίσιον
ἔχων, ὁλκὴ ∶𐅃ΙΙΙ∶
ἄλλος δακτύλιος
λεῖος χρυσοῦς
Ι, ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
ἄλλο<ς> ἐπίσημον
ἐρώτιον ἔχων,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂𐅂∶ ἄλλος
σφραγῖδα ἔχων,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅃̣[𐅂]·
κύλινδρος,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
σφραγὶς χρυσένδετος,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂𐅂∶ ἄλλη
σφραγὶς χρυσένδετος,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
ἄλλη σφραγὶς
χρυσένδετος,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂∶ λυγγούριον
χρυσένδετον,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
ἄλλη σφραγὶς
χρυσένδετος,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂𐅂Ι[ΙΙ]·
[ἄλ]λη
σφ̣ρ̣αγὶς
ἀργυρένδετος,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂∶ δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς ἐν
ταινιδίωι, Καλλικρίτης
ἀνάθημα, ἄστατος·
ἄλλος δακτύλιος
σιδηροῦς περίχρυσος,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅃∶ ἄλλος
δακτύλιος
σιδηροῦς περίχρυ-
[σο]ς,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
ἐνώτια χρυσᾶ
σειστὰ ἐγ κιβωτίωι,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅃ΙΙΙΙΙ∶
δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς Ἀθηνᾶς
κράνος ἔχων,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂𐅂𐅂̣∶
Δημητρίου περιδέραια
χρυσᾶ σὺν τοῖς
φιαλίοις ∶ΔΔΔ𐅃Ι∶
ἄστατα· περισκελίδες
ΙΙΙ∶ φυκ<ί>α
δύο
(60)
eighth laurel, weight 71; ninth laurel, weight 68.1; tenth laurel,
weight 95.4; eleventh laurel, weight 68.2; twelfth laurel, weight
with the string 81.3; third after ten laurel, weight 93.3;
fourteenth laurel, weight with the thread, 131; fifteenth laurel,
weight 83.3; sixteenth laurel, weight 123.3; seventeenth laurel,
weight with the string 100; eighteenth laurel, weight 97.4;
nineteenth laurel, weight 53.2+; twentieth laurel, weight 103.1;
twenty first laurel, weight 101.
In
the Porinos: eleven phialai in plinths.
In
the Artemision: 40 gold apples, with ointment and head of
vulture and other gold objects, weight 40.3; 63 gold petals in
chest, weight 298.2; in chest pieces from crowns and pins and pieces
of fillets and gold peony, weight 39; of various white gold weight
340, there is in this [space] 12 gold ap[ples] (65) with earth;
Phocean (drachma); two grasshoppers; in chest various gold weight 3;
in chest various gold weight 327, among these there are apples with
earth; 6 gold rings, one of these with stones in a small box, weight
9; one ring with Artemis, weight 5.3; another 1 smooth gold ring,
weight 4.3; anothe(r) with image of cupid; another with seal, weight
5+; cylinder, weight 4; goldbound seal, weight 2; another seal
goldbound, weight 1.3; another seal goldbound, weight 1; goldbound
amber, weight 1.3; another seal goldbound, weight 2.1+; another seal
silverbound, weight 1; gold ring on ribbon, dedication of
Kallikrite, unweighed; another ring gilded iron, weight 5; another
ring gilded iron weight 3; linked gold earrings in chest, weight
5.5; gold ring with head of Athena, weight 3; 36 gold perideraia of
Demetrios with the small phialai, unweighed; 3 anklets; two rouge
jars unweighed;
70
[ἄστ]ατα· ἀργύριον
δόκιμον καὶ
χαλκοῖ δήλιοι
ἐγ κιβωτίωι ∶
𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ
τύπος χρυσοῦς
ἐν πλινθείωι
ἄστατος· ὀβολοὶ
ὀρχομένιοι
∶ΗΗΗΗΔ∶ αἰγιναῖοι
καὶ κρητικοὶ
στατῆρες ∶ΔΙ∶
κορίνθιοι
στατῆρες δύο·
μαυσώλ[ει]-
[α
τ]έτραχμα ∶𐅃ΙΙΙΙ∶
νάξια τέτραχμα
δύο καὶ φωκαῒς̣
καὶ ὀβολὸς
φωκαϊκός·
ἀργυρίου
παντοδαποῦ
νομίσματος
ὁλκὴ ∶ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂∶
δαρ<ε>ικοὶ
ὀκτὼ καὶ ἄλλο
χρυσίον παντοδαπὸν
καὶ λιθάριον
χρυσένδετον
[καὶ]
δακτύλιος̣·
κύλινδρος
χρυσοῦς, ὁλκὴ
∶ΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙ̣Ι∶
ἐγ κιβωτίωι
ἐλεφαντίνωι
χρυσᾶ ὀφίδια
καὶ ἀνθέμιον
ἀργυροῦν καὶ
φιάλιον ἀργυροῦν
καὶ χρυσίον
παντοδαπόν, ὁλκὴ
πάντων ∶Δ𐅂𐅂∶
ἀργυρίου
παντοδαποῦ
ἀσήμου ὁ πρῶτος
ῥυμός
𐅄̣𐅃̣𐅂∶
ὁ δεύτερος
∶ΗΗ𐅄𐅂𐅂∶ ὁ τρίτος
∶ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂∶
ὁ τέταρτος
∶ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂∶ ὁ
πέμπτος ∶Η𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
ὁ ἕκτος ∶𐅅ΗΗ𐅄Δ𐅂∶
ὁ ἕβδομος
∶𐅅𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
ὁ ὄγδοος ∶𐅅ΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂∶
ὁ ἔνατος ∶ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ∶
ὁ δέκ[ατος] ∶ΗΗΗ𐅂∶
καὶ δακτύ-
[λ]ιον
ἀργυροῦν φωσφόριον
ἔχοντα· ἀργυρίου
νομίσματος
παντοδαποῦ ὁλκὴ
∶Δ𐅂𐅂∶ στέφανος
χρυσοῦς κισσοῦ
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ὁλκὴ ∶ΗΔΔΔΔ∶
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
μυρσίνης βασιλέως
Σιδω-
75
[νί]ων Φιλοκλέους,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ∶
σὺν τῶι λίνωι·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης, Δηλιάδες,
χορεῖα Κλείτου
ἐπιδόντος, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂∶ στέφανος
χρυσοῦς δάφνης
Πευκέστα, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
σὺν
[τῶι]
λίνωι· ἡδυποτὶς
ἀργυρᾶ Ἀρχίππης·
ξυστάλλιον
ἐν κιβωτίωι·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης, Δηλιάδες,
χορεῖα Φιλοκλείους
ἐπιδόντος, ὁλκὴ
∶ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙ∶ σὺν
τῶι λίνωι· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς μυρσίνης
[βα]σιλέως
Πτολεμαίου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
∶Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂∶
σὺν τῶι λίνωι
καὶ κηρῶι· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς μυρσίνης
Βερενίκης ὑπὲρ
Πτολεμαίου,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂∶
σὺν τῶι λίνωι·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
μυρσίνης Καλ[λι]-
[κρ]άτους
Μακεδόνος, ὁλκὴ
∶Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ σὺν
τῶι λίνωι· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς δάφνης
Δημητρίου, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
σὺν τῶι λίνωι·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
μυρσίνης Ἰωμίλκου,
vac. ὁλκὴ ∶ΔΔ𐅂∶
σὺν τῶι λίνωι·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
μυρσίνης,
Δηλιάδες χορεῖα,
στεφανῶσαντος
Νικοκρέοντος,
ὁλκὴ ∶ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂∶
σὺν τῶι λίνωι·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχων ἐπὶ τοῦ
πλινθείου·
Κρατερὸς Ἀρτέμιδι,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
σὺν τῶι λίνωι·
(70)
assayed silver and Delian bronzes in chest, 77.3; gold image in
plinth, unweighed; 410 Orchomenian obols; 11 Aeginetan and Cretan
staters; two Corinthian staters; 9 Mausolean tetradrachms; two
Naxian tetradrachms and Phocean and Phocean obol; of various silver
coin weight 27; eight darics and other various gold and goldbound
stone [and] ring; gold cylinder, weight 22.3; in ivory chest gold
snakes and silver flower and small silver phiale and various gold,
total weight 12; of various unstamped silver the first row 56; the
second 252; the third 497; the fourth 431; the fifth 173; the sixth
761; the seventh 598; the eighth 632; the ninth 440; the te[nth]
301; and silver ring with torchbearer; of various silver coin weight
12; gold ivy crown of king Ptolemy, weight 140; gold myrtle crown of
the Sidonian king (75) Philokles, weight 88.5 with the string; gold
laurel crown, Deliades, Kleitos giving the choreia, weight 86; gold
laurel crown of Peukestes, weight 63.3 with [the] string; silver
hedypotis of Archippe; scraper in chest; gold laurel crown,
Deliades, Philokles giving the choreia, weight 40.3 with the string;
gold myrtle crown, dedication of king Ptolemy, weight 192 with the
string and wax; gold myrtle crown of Berenike for Ptolemy, weight 72
with the string; gold myrtle crown of Kallikrates of Macedon, weight
19 with the string; gold laurel crown of Demetrios, weight 64.3 with
the string; gold myrtle crown of Iomilkos [space]
weight 21 with the string; gold myrtle crown, Deliades choreia, with
Nikokreon having crowned, weight 29 with the string; gold laurel
crown with inscription on the plinth "Krateros to Artemis",
weight 57.3 with the string;
80
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης, ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχων ἐπὶ τοῦ
πλινθείου·
ἱερὸς Ἀρτέμιδος
Δηλίας Ἀπόλλωνος,
ὁλκ̣ὴ ∶𐅄ΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ∶
σὺν τῶι λίνωι·
στεφάνια χρυσᾶ
δύο, ὁλκὴ ∶𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ∶
κύλιξ θηρίκλειος
Πτολεμαίου,
ὁλκὴ ∶ΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂̣𐅂̣𐅂̣[ΙΙΙ]·
[ῥό]δον
καὶ στέφανος
χρυσᾶ Λυσάνδρου,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
ξύλωι ἐν ὧι τὸ
ῥόδον καὶ σὺν
ταινιδίοις
καὶ λίνωι
∶𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι̣Ι̣Ι∶
φιάλιον χρυσοῦν,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄𐅃∶
ἐπιχύτης χρυσοῦς,
ὁλκὴ ∶ΗΔ𐅂𐅂̣ΙΙΙΙ∶
τ[ρα]γίσκοι
χρυσοῖ δύο
ἄστατοι· ἀσπ[ι]-
[δί]σκη
χρυσῆ, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅂𐅂𐅂∶ σὺν τῶι
λίνωι· φιάλη
χρυσῆ καρυωτὴ
Ναξίων, ὁλκὴ
∶Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂∶
φιάλιον χρυσοῦν
λεῖον, ὁλκὴ
∶ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
ψίλιον χρυσοῦν
στρεπτόν, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
στλεγγίδιον
χρυσοῦν ἐπὶ
ταινιδίωι
ἄστατον
Δόνακος· ὅρμος
χρυσοῦς ἀμφορέων,
ὁλκὴ ∶Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ∶
σὺν τῶι λίνωι·
ὅρμος χρυσοῦς
λογχίων Δημοστράτης
ἄστατος, ἀριθμὸς
λογχίων ∶𐅄ΔΔΙΙ∶
ἄμπελος χρυσῆ
ἄστατος· πρόσεστιν
Ἀπόλλωνος
ἀπότυπ[ον]
ἀργυροῦν
ἐπίχρυσον· ὄφις
ἀργυροῦς·
αἰετὸς ἐπίχρυσος
καὶ ἄλλα παντοδαπὰ
ἐπίχρυσα ἄστατα·
ῥοαὶ ἐπίχρυσοι
ἑπτά· ἱππάριον
ἐπίχρυσον·
ῥόδον καὶ ἄλλα
χρυσᾶ παντοδαπά,
ἄστατα· ἀνδριαντίσκος
χρυσοῦς
85
τὴν μίαγ κνήμην
οὐκ ἔχων, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅃𐅂∶ πυρήνια
καὶ μηνίσκοι
καὶ βοὸς κεφαλὴ
καὶ ἄλλα παντοδαπὰ
χρυσία ἀνειρμένα
ἐπὶ λίνου, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
στλεγγίδιον
ἐπὶ ναΐσκωι
ὑπόχαλκον, ἄστατον·
ὅρμος χρυσοῦς
ἀμφο-
ρέων
χρυσᾶ, τὰ πάντα
∶Δ𐅃Ι̣ΙΙΙ∶ ὁλκὴ
∶ΔΔ𐅃𐅂∶ κλιμάκιον
[ξ]ύλινον ἐπίχρυσον
ὄφεις δύο ἔχον
ἀργυροῦς·
ὅρμος χρυσοῦς
λογχωτὸς Σιμίχης,
ἄστατος· ἀριθμὸς
λογχίων ∶𐅄ΔΔΔΔΙΙ∶
ὅρμος ὁ τῆς
Ἐριφύλης ἄστατος·
στέφανος
χρυσοῦς
δάφνης ἄνευ
πλινθείου,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂∶
σφρ[α]γὶς σμαράγδου,
ἄστατο<ς>·
φιάλιον χρυσοῦν
ἐν πλινθείωι
ἄστατον Δημοσῶντος·
ἀσπιδίσκη χρυσῆ
καὶ περιδέραια
καὶ ἐνώτια καὶ
φυκίον, ὁλκὴ
∶Δ𐅃𐅂ΙΙ∶ σὺν
κη-
[ρ]ῶι
καὶ λίνωι· ὅρμος
ὁ πρὸς τῶι κλισμῶι
χρυσοῦς, ὁλκὴ
σὺν [ἀ]σπιδίσκηι
χρυσῆι ∶Η𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι̣ΙΙ∶
σὺν τῶι λίνωι.
ἐν Εἰλυθυαίωι·
φιάλη ἀργυρᾶ
Κλεαρχίδος
ἐν πλινθείωι·
φιάλη ἀργυρᾶ
Κτησυλίδος,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
ἀμφιδαῖ ἀργυ-
[ρ]αῖ
καὶ τύποι καὶ
ἄλλα παντοδαπά,
ὁλκὴ ∶Η𐅃𐅂[𐅂]
𐅂ΙΙΙ∶ ὅρμος
χρυσοῦς λογχίων,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅃𐅂𐅂∶
τύποι χρυσοῖ
καὶ τύπος Κλεινοῦς
καὶ πυρήνια καὶ
ἀνδριάντια καὶ
ἀνδριάντιον
ξύλινον ἐπίχρυσον
καὶ ἐρώτιον ἓν
(80)
gold laurel crown with inscription on the plinth "sacred to
Delian Artemis, Apollo", weight 71.5 with the string; two small
gold crowns, weight 18.2; Therikleian kylix of Ptolemy, weight 233+;
rose and gold crown of Lysander, weight with the wood for the rose
and with the ribbons and string, 68.3; small gold phiale, weight 55;
gold beaker, weight 112.4; two gold goats, unweighed; gold disk,
weight 3 with the string; knobbed gold phiale of the Naxians, weight
196; small smooth gold phiale, weight 28.3; twisted gold armlet,
weight 8.3; gold strigil on ribbon unweighed, from Donax; gold
necklace of amphorae, weight 18.2 with the thread; gold lanceolate
necklace of Demostrate, unweighed, number of spearheads 72; gold
grapevine, unweighed; there is in addition a gilded silver image of
Apollo; silver snake; gilded eagle and various other gilded,
unweighed; seven gilded pomegranates; gilded pony; goose and various
other gold, unweighed; gold statuette (85) without one knee, weight
6; beads and little moons and ox head and various other gold linked
on string, weight 8.3; gilded bronze fillet in shrine, unweighed;
gold necklace of amphorae gold 19 total, weight 26; gilded wood
ladder with two silver snakes; gold lanceolate necklace of Simiche,
unweighed, number of spearheads 92; the necklace of Eriphyle,
unweighed; gold laurel crown without plinth, weight 67; emerald
seal, unweighed; small gold phiale in plinth, unweighed, from
Demoson; gold disk and perideraia and earrings and rouge jar, weight
16.2 with wax and string; gold necklace on the couch, weight with
gold disk, 153.3 with the string.
In
the Eileithyiaion: silver phiale of Klearchis in plinth; silver
phiale of Ktesylis, weight 74.3; silver bracelets and images and
various other, weight 107.3+; gold lanceolate necklace, weight 7;
gold images and image of Kleino and beads and statuettes and gilded
wood statue and one cupid and
90
[κ]αὶ δακτύλιος
καὶ ἐνώτιον ἓν
καὶ ἄλ̣λα
παντοδαπά, ὁλκὴ
πάντων ∶ΔΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
μῆλα χρυσᾶ ἄστατα
γῆν ἔχοντα ἐννέα·
ἁλύσιον διάλιθον,
ὁλκὴ ∶𐅂ΙΙΙ∶
ἄλλο ἁλύσιον
διάλιθον, ὁλκὴ
∶𐅃∶ vac.
[ἐ]νώτια
δύο ἐπὶ ταινιδίωι
ἄστατα χρυσᾶ
καὶ ἐκκλαστρίδια
δύο Λαμιδίου·
δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς ἐπὶ
ταινιδί[ωι] Κερκίδος·
δακτύλιος
διάλιθος
χρυσένδετος
ἐπὶ ταινιδίου
Καλλιφάντης·
δακτύλιο[ς]
[λ]υγγούριον
χρυσένδετος
ἄστατος· δακτύλιος
κονδύλιον
χρυσοῦς, ὁλκὴ
∶ΙΙΙΙΙ∶ καὶ
τάδε ἐπὶ τῆς
ἡμετέρας ἀρχῆς
ἀνετέθη καὶ
παρέδομεν τοῖς
ἱεροποιοῖς
Φίλλι καὶ Θαρσύνοντι·
ζώιδια δύο
ἀργυρᾶ ἐφ’ ἡ-
μικυκλίου
ἀργυροῦ, ὁ̣λκὴ
∶ΔΔΔΔ∶ ἀνέθηκεν
Ἀπολλόδωρος
Κυμαῖος· φιάλη
ἐν πλινθείωι
Σώσιος καὶ
Πραξιδήμου καὶ
Σ[ω]κλέους·
φιάλη Ὠκυνειδῶν
καὶ Θυεσταδῶν,
ὁλκὴ ∶ Η. vac.
καὶ
τάδε παρελάβομεν
ἐν τῶι Ἀνδρίων
οἴκωι· δεσμοὺς
χαλκοῦς μεγάλους
∶ΙΙΙΙ∶ τούτων
ἕνα κατεχρησάμεθα
εἰς τὸν γαυλὸν
τὸν ἐν τῆι παλαίστραι·
τοὺς δὲ λοιποὺς
παρέδομεν τοῖς
ἱεροποιοῖς
Θαρ-
95
σύνοντι Φίλλι·
ὀβελίσκους
χαλκοῦς ∶Δ𐅃ΙΙΙ∶
παρέδομεν·
ἄσφαλτον παρέδομεν·
κλῆιθρα σιδηρᾶ
δύο παρέδομεν·
κρατήρων ὦτα
δύο, πυθμένα
παρέδομεν·
παράδειγμα τοῦ
Κυνθίου παρέδομεν·
ὕσπληγα
λαμπαδίειον
παρέδομεν· δοκὸν
ἀπὸ τῆς Μενί<π>πης
οἰκίας παρέδομεν·
κλάσμα δοκοῦ
παρέδομεν·
παράδειγμα
θυρῶν τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
παρέδομεν· ξύλα
κέδρινα ∶Δ𐅃∶
παρέδομεν·
σω̣λῆνας
∶𐅄Δ∶ τούτων
κατεχρησάμεθα
δέκα, τοὺς δὲ
λοιποὺς παρέδομεν·
ἐσχάραν λιθηγὸν
παρέδομεν·
ἐλέφαντος μνᾶς
δέκα πέντε
παρέδομεν·
κόλλης πέταλα
δύο παρέδομεν·
τύχον, ἐπικόπα-
νον,
χοᾶ χαλκοῦν,
ψυκτῆρα χαλκοῦν,
ζυγὰ δύο παρέδομεν·
σανίδα πτελεΐνην
δεκάπηχυν παρέδομεν·
ἅμαξαν τῶι ἀγάλματι
τοῦ Διονύσου
παρέδομεν·
σταθμὰ τάλαντον
ἡμιτάλαντον
χαλκοῦν,
δεκάμνων
λίθινον παρέδομεν·
ἱμάτιον, παραπέτασμα,
ὅπλον στύππινον
παρέδομεν·
ἄκμονα σιδηροῦν,
ἔνβολον παριουργοῦς
χαλκοῦν, σφῦραν
σιδηρᾶν παρέδομεν.
ἐν τῶι Δηλίων
οἴκωι· ξύλα̣
δρύϊνα δωδεκα-
(90)
ring and one earring and various other, total weight 31.3; nine
unweighed gold apples with ointment; chain with stones, weight 1.3;
another chain with stones, weight 5 [space]; two gold earrings on
ribbon and two ekklastridia of Lamidion; gold ring on ribbon of
Kerkis; goldbound ring with stones on ring of Kalliphante; goldbound
amber ring, unweighed; goldbell ring, weight .5.
And
the following were dedicated in our year of office and we gave them
over to the hieropoioi Phillis and Tharsynon: two silver animals on
silver semi-circle, weight 40, Apollodoros of Kyme dedicated; phiale
in plinth of Sosis and Praxidemos and Sokles; phiale of the
Okyneidai and Thyestadai, weight 100 [space]
And
we received the following in the House of the Andrians: 4
large bronze bonds, one of these we used for the bucket in the
palestra and the rest we gave over to the hieropoioi Tharsynon and
(95) Phillis; 18 bronze skewers we gave over; asphalt we gave over;
two iron keys we gave over; two krater handles, base we gave over;
model of the Kyntheion we gave over; starting machine for torchrace
we gave over; beam from the house of Menippe we gave over; part of
the beam we gave over; model of doors of Apollo we gave over; 15
cedar boards we gave over; 60 solenas, ten of which we used, the
rest we gave over; stone-carrying brazier we gave over; fifteen mnas
of ivory we gave over; two petals of glue we gave over; stone pick;
chopping block; bronze chous; bronze cooler; two yokes we gave over;
ten cubit board of elm we gave over; wagon for the statue of
Dionysus we gave over; weights talent, half-talent bronze, ten-mnai
stone we gave over; rope, sail, hemp cable we gave over; iron anvil;
Parian bronze ram; iron hammer we gave over.
In
the House of the Delians: twelve cubit pieces of oak wood,
100
πήχη· τούτων ἓν
κατεχρησάμεθα
εἰς τὸ στοΐδιον
τὸ ἐπὶ Κουροτρόφωι·
τὸ δὲ ἕτερον
παρέδομεν. ἐν
τῶι πλινθίνωι·
ξύλον ἐλάτινον
ὀκτωκαιδεκάπηχυ
παρέδομεν. ἐν
τῆι γραφῆι·
σανίδας καρυΐνας
δύο
παρέδομεν·
σφραγῖδα δημοσίαν
παρέδομεν· θύραν
ἀπὸ τῆς Μενίππης
οἰκίας παρέδομεν·
κονίας μεδίμνους
ΔΔΔΔ π(έντε)
μ(εδίμνους)
μ(έδιδμνον) ἡ(μιμέδιμνον)
{⁸46 1/2 med.}⁸. vac. Κεραμίδων
ἠγοράσαμεν
ζεύγη ∶ διακόσια
∶ τούτων κατεχρη-
σάμεθα
εἰς τὸ στοΐδιον
τὸ ἐπὶ Κουροτρόφωι
ζεύγη ∶𐅄ΔΔ∶
ἐπὶ τὸ περιοικοδόμημα
τὸ περὶ τῶι Ἀρτεμισίωι
κατεχρησάμεθα
κεραμίδων ζεύγη
∶ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙΙ∶
τὰ δὲ λοιπὰ ζεύγη
∶𐅄ΔΔ𐅃Ι∶ παρέδομεν
τοῖς
ἱεροποιοῖς
Θαρσύνοντι Φίλλι.
(100)
one of which we used for the small stoa for Kourotrophos, the other
we gave over.
In
the Plinthinon: eighteen cubit piece of fir we gave over.
In
the Graphe: two cornel wood tablets; public seal we gave over;
door from Menippe’s house we gave over; 40+ medimnoi of
dust/cement [space] 200
yokes of pottery we bought, 70 yokes of which we used for the small
stoa for Kourotrophos, 44 yokes of pottery we used for the the
building around the Artemision; the remaining 76 yokes we gave over
to the hieropoioi Tharsynon Phillis. [space]
1
Φίλλι Ποσειδίκο<υ>
λογιστεῖ ἐφόδι-
ον 𐅄Δ. vac.
{²vac. 3 vss.}²
4
[κ]α[ὶ] οἵδε ἐνοίκια
οὐκ ἔ-
5
[θ]εσαν, ἀλλὰ
ὀφείλο[υ]- σιν·
τῆς Ἀρκέοντος
Πυρρ․․․εγγ․․․
αμ․․ας̣ [Ἀ]μειν̣ί̣ου?
Φίλλακος ε․․․των
10
․․ τοῦ μισθώμ-
ατος τῆς οἰκίας
[Δ]ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂 〚—
— — —〛 rasura
5 vss. vacat in inferiore parte
—
— — — — — — — — —
13
πήχη {χη} τρία·
τα[ῦ]- τα κατεχρησάμ[ε]-
15
θα εἰς τὸ στωΐδιον
[τ]ὸ ἐ[π]ὶ Κουροτρόφωι·
ἐλάτινα δύο
δω- δεκαπήχη.
1
καὶ οἵδε τ[όκ]ους
οὐ[κ] [ἔ]θεσαν
ἐ[π]ὶ τῆς [ἡ]- μετέρας
[ἀρ]χῆς· Πόλυβος
ὑπὲρ Με-
5
νύλλου Η̣ — —
— — Ὑψοκλέη[ς
․․]· Τε[λέ]- [σ]ων?
ὑπὲρ Ἀριγν[ώ]-
[τ]ου ΔΔΔ[Δ] — —
— c. 35 vss. deleti
44
𐅄ΔΔ[ΔΔ]𐅃․․․
45
Εὐθ?— — — — —
․ΣΤΕΝ̣․․ΕΡΜ
— — ․Δ𐅃𐅂· Ξενοκ[ρά]-
της Ἱερομβρό-
[τ]ου τὸ ἐπιβάλλ[ο]-
50
ν αὐτῶι Δ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ̣Ι̣
vac.
51
[ὀφ]είλουσιν
οἱ Ἱε- ρομβρότου
ὑοὶ Ἀντίγονος
Μνησ[ικ]λείδης
55
Μνησι[κλῆς?] ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ·
Ἀνδρομένου
δ[ὲ] [ο]ὐ καταβαλόντος
τὸ λοιπὸν τοῦ
πορ- θμείου
τοῦ εἰς Ῥή-
60
νειαν, ἐνεγράψα-
μεν τὸν ἔγγυον
Φίλιον Χαρίλα
δραχμὰς ΗΗΔΔΔ·
παρὰ Θήριος
ὑ-
65
πὲρ Ὀλυμπιά- δου
Δ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ. vac.
{²rasura 2 vss.}²
67
καὶ οἵδε τόκους
οὐκ [ἔ]- θεσαν
ἀ̣λλ’ ὀφείλου-
σι τῶι θεῶι αὐτοὶ
70
καὶ ἔγγυοι·
〚—
— — —〛~ζ
{²rasura 15 vss.}²
71
〚—
— — —〛 οἱ
Φερεκλεί- [δ]ου
κληρονόμοι
[𐅄Δ?]𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ̣·
καὶ ὑπὲρ Π̣- [ρο]ξένου
ΔΔ𐅂Ι𐅁· καὶ
75
[ὑπ]ὲρ Χάρητος
∶ΔΔ․· Ν̣αυτέλης
∶𐅃𐅂· Σ̣τ̣- ρατὸς
∶ΔΔΔΔ̣Ι∶ Δίαι-
τος Ἀπολλοδώ-
ρου ∶Δ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
〚—
— — —〛
{²rasura
3 vss.}²
80
〚—
—〛 Ξένων
Ἑρμ[ιο]ν̣[εὺ]ς̣
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· Τελέσωνος
τοῦ Χοιρύλου
κληρο- νόμοι
𐅃𐅂𐅁.
vestigia
litterarum?
IG XI,2 287 (250 BC)
http://epigraphy.
packhum.org/text/62754
https://web.archive.org/web/20090408151735/http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/translations/287translation.htm
Our
only totally intact Independence inventory. The order of objects has
changed radically from 161 and there have been major changes in the
placement and description of phialai: the hundreds of phialai in
rhymoi and most individual phialai have disappeared from the
Artemision, as have all the phialai in H/A along with the group of
30 phialai (and 4 kymbia) in the Temple of the Seven Statues; the
inventory ends with long lists of endowment phialai in the Apollo
Temple, without weights but with sum totals.
face
A.1
θεοί.
λόγος
ἱεροποιῶν τῶν
ἱεροποιησάντων
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Σωσισθένους,
Ἐπιτροφῶντος
τοῦ Κινέου,
Καίβωνος τοῦ
Λυσανίου.
παρελάβομεν
παρὰ Τηλεμνήστου
τοῦ Φιλίου
τοῦ ἱεροποιήσαντος
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀρτυσίλεω
παρούσης βουλῆς
καὶ γραμματέων
Μνησικλέους
τοῦ
Μνησικλέους,
Θεοπρώτου τοῦ
Ἐπιχάρμου· ἐχ
θησαυρῶν· τοῦ
ἐν ἱερῶι δραχμὰς
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἐκ τοῦ ἐν Νήσωι
𐅃ΙΙΙ𐅁· ἐκ τοῦ
ἐν Ἀσκληπιείωι
ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἐκ
τοῦ
5
ἐν Ἀφροδισίωι
𐅁𐅀/. καὶ τόδε
παρελάβομεν
ἀργύριον παρὰ
Τηλεμνήστου·
μηνὸς Ληναιῶνος
δραχμὰς 𐅆Χ· καὶ
ἄλλας μηνὸς
Ληναιῶνος
𐅆ΧΧΧΔ𐅂·
καὶ ἄλλας μηνὸς
Ληναιῶνος ΧΧΧ·
καὶ ἄλλας μηνὸς
Γαλαξιῶνος
ΜΧΧΧ𐅅ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂·
καὶ ἄλλας
Ἀρτεμισιῶνος
ΧΧΧ· καὶ ἄλλας
Ἑκατομβαιῶνος
Χ· καὶ ἄλλας
Ἀπατουριῶνος
𐅆ΧΧΧΧΗ. κεφαλὴ
σὺν τῶι ἐχ θησαυρῶν
ΜΜΜΜΧΧΧ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅀/.
καὶ παρὰ Ξε-
νοκράτους
τοῦ Ἱερομβρότου
τοῦ ἱεροποιήσαντος
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Φάνου δραχμὰς
𐅆· καὶ παρὰ βουλῆς
τῆς ἐπὶ Σωσισθένου
καὶ ταμίου
Πιστοῦ·
πεντηκοστῆς
τῆς ἀστίας
δραχμαὶ 𐅆ΗΗ𐅄·
ἰχθύων δεκάτης
δραχμαὶ Χ𐅅ΗΗΗ𐅄·
ἐνοικίων δεκάτη[ς]
Χ𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ· σίτου
δεκά-
10
της ΗΔ· καὶ τὸ
ἐπώνιον τούτων
δραχμαὶ ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃·
καὶ ἐξ ἐκ<κ>λησιῶν
δραχμαὶ ΧΗΗ· καὶ
παρὰ ταμίου
Πιστοῦ εἰς ἆθλα
Η· καὶ ὅρων ΔΔΔΔ·
καὶ
τραπεζῶν ΗΗ· καὶ
εἰς Θεσμοφόρια
𐅄· καὶ ἡ βύρσα
ἐπράθη δραχμῶν
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂. παρὰ
Δημοχάρους
τοῦ Κύδρωνος
δραχμαὶ ΔΔΔ, ἃς
ἔφη ἐγγύ-
αν
ἀποτίνειν ὑπὲρ
Ἁρπάλιος τοῦ
Σίμου, ὃ ἐνεγέγραπτο
ἐν τῆι στήληι
ἣν ἔστησαν Τιμοκλῆς
καὶ Ξενοκλείδης.
καὶ παρὰ τῆς
βουλῆς
τῆς
ἐπ’ Ἀρτυσίλεω
δραχμαὶ Η, ἃς
ἔφασαν ἀποδοῦναι
Φίλλιν τὸμ Φίλωνος.
καὶ παρ’ Αὐτοσθένους
τοῦ Ἐμμενίδου
πρυτανικὸν 𐅅·
καὶ
παρὰ Διοκλέους
τοῦ Ἀρισταγόρου
πρυτανικὸν ΗΗ.
καὶ παρὰ Σωσιδήμου
τοῦ ταμίου
Η𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀/.
παρ’ Ἀμφικρίτης
καὶ τοῦ κυρίου
Δημό-
15
νου, τόκος ὃν
ἔφη ἀποδιδόναι
ὑπὲρ τῶν χωρίων
ἃ ἦν Φερεκλείδου
𐅅ΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅀.
παρὰ Χοιρύλου
τοῦ Τελέσωνος
ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂, ἃς ἔφη
ἐγγεγράφθαι
ἐν τῆι
στήληι
ἣν ἔστησαν Θῆρις
καὶ Λάμπων. παρὰ
Καλλίμου ὑπὲρ
τοῦ πατρὸς
Ἀριστοδήμου
Η καὶ τόκος ὃν
ἔφη προσοφείλειν
Η𐅂ΙΙΙΙ. παρὰ
Μαντιθέου τοῦ
Ἀφθονήτου
τόκος ὃν ἔφη
ἀποδιδόναι
ὑπὲρ τῆς συνοικίας
ἣ ἦν Φερεκλείδου
𐅅ΗΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁.
παρὰ Ξένωνος
ὑπὲρ Νικάνορος
ἐγδείας Σολόης
καὶ Κορα-
<κιᾶς
— —>. καὶ τάδε
εἰσήκει· μηνὸς
Ληναιῶνος· ἐκ
φιάλης 𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι𐅀·
χηναλωπέκων
δύο ΙΙΙΙ𐅁·
περιστερῶν Ι𐅀.
Ἱεροῦ· ἐκ φιάλης
𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ· χηναλωπέκων
δύο ΙΙΙ𐅁. Γαλαξι-
ῶνος·
ἐκ φιάλης 𐅂𐅂·
αἰγίσκου
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁·
περιστερῶν ΙΙ𐅁.
Ἀρτεμισιῶνος·
ἐκ φιάλης 𐅂ΙΙΙ·
περιστερῶν
Ι𐅁𐅀/· αἰγίσκου
𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁.
Θαργηλιῶνος·
ἐκ φιάλης 𐅂Ι𐅁𐅀·
ὠιῶν ΙΙΙ·
20
περιστερῶν
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅀.
Πανήμου· ἐκ
φιάλης 𐅂ΙΙ·
περιστερῶν ΙΙΙ𐅁·
κόπρου περιστερῶν
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· ταὼ
𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅁𐅀· χηνὸς
𐅂ΙΙΙ. Ἑκατομβαιῶνος·
ἐκ φιάλης 𐅂ΙΙ𐅁·
περιστερῶν
ΙΙΙ𐅀/. Μ̣ε̣τ̣α̣-
γειτνιῶνος·
ἐκ φιάλης 𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁·
περιστερῶν ΙΙΙ.
Βουφονιῶνος·
ἐκ φιάλης 𐅂Ι𐅀·
περιστερῶν Ι𐅁.
Ἀπατουριῶνος·
ἐκ φιάλης 𐅂ΙΙ𐅀·
παρὰ Ἀρησιμβρότου
λίθων τῶν ἀπὸ
τοῦ Ἡρακλείου
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
χηναλώπεκος
ΙΙΙ· τῶν ξύλων
τῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ κοτίνου
παρ’ Ἀττινᾶ 𐅂𐅂·
καὶ παρὰ Τηλείου
𐅂ΙΙ. Ἀρησιῶνος·
ἐκ φιάλης 𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁·
περιστερῶν
𐅂ΙΙ𐅁𐅀/· κεραμίδων
κλασμάτων τῶν
κα-
θαιρεθέντων
ἀπὸ τῶν οἴκων
ΔΔΔΙΙΙ· τῶν
τορνευμάτων
ἀπὸ τῶν χοινικίδων
παρὰ Ξένωνος
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅀.
Ποσιδεῶνος·
ἐκ φιάλης 𐅂ΙΙΙ·
χηναλώπεκος
ΙΙΙΙΙ· κόπρου
π[ερι]-
στερῶν
ΙΙΙ𐅀· τοῦ βοὸς
τοῦ θυθέντος
τοῖς Ποσιδείοις
ἡ βύρσα ἐπράθη
δραχμῶν 𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
καὶ κώιδιον
δραχμῶν 𐅂𐅂𐅂·
δοκίδος
συντετριμμένης
τῆς καθαιρεθείσης
25
ἐκ τοῦ ἀνδρῶνος
𐅂ΙΙΙΙ. καὶ παρὰ
τῶν μεμισθωμένων
τὰ ἱερὰ τεμένη
εἰσήκει· Πορθμοῦ
παρὰ Πυθοκλέους
𐅅ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂·
Ῥάμνων παρ’
Αὐτοκλείους
𐅅𐅄ΔΔΔ․․․·
Λιμνῶν
παρὰ Κυνθιάδου
ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ· Νικοῦ
χώρου παρὰ
Πυθοκλέους
ΗΗΗΔΔ𐅂· Διονυσίου
παρὰ Κερκίωνος
𐅅𐅄Δ· Σκιτωνείας
παρὰ Καλλισθένους
ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔΙ̣Ι̣ΙΙ𐅀//·
καὶ παρὰ
Ἕρμωνος
τοῦ ἐγγύου
τὸ ἐπιβάλλον
αὐτῶι τῆς ἐγδείας
ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
Χαρωνείας παρὰ
Τιμησιδήμου
ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΙ· καὶ
παρὰ τῶν ἐγγύων
καθ’ ὃ ἐγίνετο
ἑκάστωι τῆς
ἐγδείας· παρὰ
Πολυξένου
τοῦ Ἀλκιμάχου
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅁𐅀/·
παρὰ Διονυσοδώρου
τοῦ Θεοτίμου
Δ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ//· παρὰ
Κλεομάχου
τοῦ Πελάγοντος
𐅃̣𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀//·
παρ’ Εὐκλείδου
τοῦ Πυρ(ρίδου)?
𐅃̣𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ[ΙΙ𐅀?]·
παρὰ
Πολυστράτου
τοῦ Τιμο(θέμιδος)?
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁· παρὰ
Θεοκύδου τοῦ
vac. 𐅂ΙΙΙ//· παρ’
Ἀριστοφίλου
τοῦ Μνη(—) 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅀/·
παρὰ Τιμοκράτους
τοῦ Λυσ(ανίου)?
ΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀/· Χαρωνείας
παρὰ Βούλωνος
ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ
30
𐅃𐅂𐅂· Πανόρμου
παρὰ Πολυξένου
𐅅ΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂· Χαρητείας
παρὰ Διογένους
𐅅ΗΗ· vac. Χαρητείας
παρὰ Ξενοκράτους
ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂· Πύργων
παρὰ Κλεινίου
ΧΔ𐅂𐅂𐅁/·
Φοινίκων
παρὰ Διακτορίδου
𐅅Η· τῶν Σωσιμαχείων
παρ’ Ἀπολλωνίου
ΗΗ𐅄· Ἄκρας Δήλου
παρ’ Ἐμπέδου
ΗΗΗΗ· Σολόης
καὶ Κορακιῶν
παρὰ Τιμοξένου
ΗΗΗΗ· Ἐπισ-
θενείας
παρὰ Περιάνδρου
𐅅Η𐅄Δ· Λειμῶνος
παρὰ Διονυσοδώρου
ΗΗΗ· Ἱπποδρόμου
παρ’ Ἱερομβρότου
ΗΗΗ𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀/·
καὶ παρὰ τῶν
ἐγγύων τὸ ἐπιβάλλον
αὐτοῖς τῆς
ἐγδείας·
παρὰ Καλλαγόρα
𐅄𐅃ΙΙΙΙΙ· παρὰ
Φίλωνος τοῦ
Δημοσῶντος
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙ//·
τοῦ Κεραμείου
παρὰ Νεοκροντίδου
Η𐅄ΔΔ𐅂· τοῦ
Λυκωνείου
παρ’ Ἀκριδίωνος
ΗΔ𐅂· τῆς
Λίμνης
παρὰ ταμίου
Πιστοῦ κατὰ
ψήφισμα ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ/·
Φυταλιᾶς παρ’
Εὐβίου ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂.
καὶ παρὰ τῶν
μεμισθωμένων
τὰς ἱερὰς οἰκίας·
παρὰ Μένητος
τῆς Χαρητείας
𐅄Δ· παρ’ Ἀν-
35
τιπάππου τῶν
ἀνδρώνων ΔΔΔΔ𐅃·
παρὰ Τληπολέμου
τῆς Χαρητείας
𐅄ΔΔΙ̣Ι̣Ι· παρ’
Ἀνδρία τοῦ ἀνδρῶνος
ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ̣Ι̣·
παρὰ Νικάνδρου
τῶν ἀνδρώνων
𐅄ΔΔΔ· παρ’
Ἀριστοβούλου
τῆς
Σωσιλείας
𐅄𐅂· παρ’ Ἀμφία
τῆς Σωσιλείας
πρὸς ἧι ἡ κρηπὶς
Η𐅂· τοῦ ξυλῶνος
παρ’ Ἀμφία Δ𐅃·
καὶ τοῦ ἑτέρου
παρὰ Φίλωνος
ΔΔ· παρ’ Ἀριστοβούλου
τοῦ Λυσιξένου
τὰ τρία
μέρη
τοῦ ἐνοικίου
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀·
παρὰ Δημέα τῶν
οἰκημάτων τῶν
πρὸς τῶι σιδηρείωι
𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· παρὰ
Πυθαγόρα τῆς
οἰκίας τῆς
πρὸς τῶι Ἰνωπῶι
ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
παρὰ Διακτορίδου
οὗ
χαλκεύει Παρμενίων
𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂· παρὰ
Διονυσοδώρου
τῆς οἰκίας ἣ
ἦν Ἀρκείοντος
ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂̣· παρὰ
Ποσειδίκου
τῆς Ἐπισθενείας
𐅄Δ· παρὰ Καλλισθένου
τῆς ἑτέρας
𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
παρὰ
Βοήθου τῆς
οἰκίας τῆς
ἐγ Κολωνῶι
ΔΔΔΔ. τῶν ἐγκυκλίων·
παρὰ Φίλωνος
τοῦ λιμένος
ΔΔΔΔ· παρὰ
Ἀριστοβούλου
τοῦ πορθμείου
τοῦ εἰς Μύκονον
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂· παρὰ Χαρίλα
τ̣[οῦ]
40
ὁλκοῦ τοῦ ἐν
Νήσωι ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
παρὰ Δεξικλέους
τοῦ πορθμείου
τοῦ εἰς Ῥήνειαν
ΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ· παρὰ
Διογένους
τῶν στροφείων
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅁· παρ’
Εἰρηναίου τῶν
ἡμιωβελίων
ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· τῶν
αἱ-
ρεσίων
παρὰ Λυσοῦ
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂· παρ’
Ἐξηκέστου τῆς
πορφύρας Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
παρὰ Διακτορίδου
καὶ Καλλισθένου
τῶν ἐγγυῶν ὑπὲρ
Λυσοῦ Η. τάδε
ἀνήλωται· μηνὸς
Ληναιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθάρασ-
θαι
𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ· ξύλα
καὶ πεύκη εἰς
θυσίαν τῶι
Ἀπόλλωνι καὶ
τῆι Ἀρτέμιδι
τῆι νουμηνίαι
Δ· ἄνθρακες
ἐπὶ βωμοὺς καὶ
εἰς ἱεροπόιον
𐅃𐅂𐅂· ξύλα
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ𐅁·
λευκώματα εἰς
διεγγυ[ήσεις]
𐅂Ι·
θησαυροὺς
ἀνοίξαντι Νικίαι
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· στάμνοι
ὥστε τῶι ἀργυρίωι
𐅂Ι· ἐλαίου
χοεῖς δύο
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· σφυρίδες
ταῖς φιάλαις
ΙΙ𐅁· λιβανωτοῦ
ταρτήμορον 𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ἐργάταις τὸ
ἱερὸν ἀνακαθάρασιν
Δ𐅃ΙΙΙ·
τὸ Διοσκούριον
ἀνακαθάρασιν
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· ἐγκαυστήρια
𐅂ΙΙ· ἅλες ΙΙ𐅁·
Βίωνι τὸν οὐδὸν
κατασκευάσαντι
τὸμ πρὸς τῶι
Νεωκορίωι
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· καὶ
Ἀντιγόνωι τὰς
θύρας ἐπισκευ-
45
άσαντι καὶ ἐπιθέντι
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· μόλυβδος
ΙΙΙ· παρὰ Καίβωνος
τοῦ Σωτίωνος
κριθῶν μέδιμνοι
τρεῖς ὥστε τοῖς
χησὶν δραχμῶν
Δ· ξύλων τάλαντα
εἴκοσι, τὸ τάλαντον
𐅂Ι· ἀνενείγ-
κασιν
ΙΙ· εἰς ἱερισμὸν
Δ· σκεύη εἰς
τὸν θεὸν 𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τὸ θέατρον
ἀνακαθάρασιν
𐅂ΙΙΙ· σχοινίον
εἰς παλαίστραν
𐅂𐅂· καὶ εἰς
τὸν θεὸν 𐅂𐅂·
κλεὶς καὶ
χελώνιον ἐπὶ
τὸν Ἰνωπὸν 𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
καὶ ἐ-
πὶ
τὸ Ἡρακλεῖον
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· ἐπὶ τὴν
σκηνὴν 𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἐπὶ Διοσκούριον
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ. vac. Ἱεροῦ·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθάρασθαι
𐅂ΙΙΙ· ξύλα καὶ
πεύκη ΙΙ· στεφανώματα
ΙΙ· ἐλαίου
χοεῖς δύο
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· λαμπά-
δες
Ἀπολλωνίοις
τῶι χορῶι 𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ῥυμοὶ ΙΙ· κληματίδες
ΙΙ· κόρακας
θηρεύσαντι 𐅂Ι·
τὸ περιραντήριον
ἐπισκευάσαντι
Ι𐅁· λαμπάδες
Ἀντιγονείοις
εἰς τὸν χορὸν
𐅂𐅂· καὶ ῥυμοὶ
καὶ κλη-
ματίδες
ΙΙΙΙ· μισθωτῶι
τὸ ἱεροπόιον
συνανακαθάραντι
ΙΙ𐅁· τῶι τὸ
ἀνδριάντιον
καθαρὸν ποιήσαντι
τὸ πρὸς ταῖς
Χάρισιν 𐅂ΙΙΙ·
Κόνωνι κιβωτὸν
ἐπισκευάσαντι
ὥστε τ̣α̣[μι]-
50
εῖον τοῖς
χορευταῖς
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· Παρμένοντι
ἀνακαθάραντι
τὴν ἐξαγωγίδα
τὴν ἐν τῶι θεάτρωι
𐅂𐅂· ξύλων τάλαντα
δέκα, τὸ τάλαντον
𐅂𐅁· χάρτης 𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ἄνθρακες 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂.
Γαλαξιῶνος·
χοῖρος
τὸ
ἱερὸν καθάρασθαι
𐅂𐅂· ξύλα καὶ
πεύκη ΙΙ· παρὰ
Σαρπηδόνος
ἄγαλμα τῶι Διονύσωι
ΔΔ𐅃𐅂· ξύλα 𐅂·
Ἀντιγόνωι καὶ
Πατροκλεῖ
ἐργασαμένοις
καὶ ἀγαγοῦσιν
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· ἧλοι
εἰς ζ̣ε[υ]-
γίον
ΙΙΙΙΙ· πρίσαντι
ξύλον ὥστε ἐπὶ
τὴν ἅμαξαν 𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
γράψαντι 𐅃𐅂𐅂·
εἰς κόσμησιν
τοῦ ἀγάλματος
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· ξύλων
τάλαντα πέντε,
τὸ τάλαντον ΙΙΙΙ·
χάρτης 𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
Εὐμένει τὸ
περιραντή-
ριον
ἀγαγόντι τὸ πρὸς
τεῖ Γραφῆι 𐅂ΙΙ·
Θεοδήμωι
ἐπισκευάσαντι
τὰ ἐν Ἀφροδισίωι
καὶ ἐν Ἀσκληπιείωι
ὧν προσέδει
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· Φανέαι
τριχάπτου ὥστε
εἰς τὸ Ἀρτεμίσιον
Δ𐅂𐅂· ἐλαίου
δύο
χοεῖς, τιμὴ
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· τοῖς
χησὶν εἰς τροφὴν
𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· εἰς
κόσμησιν, μύρου
τριημικοτύλια
δραχμῶν 𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁,
κηρὸς ΙΙΙ, σπόγγοι
ΙΙΙΙ𐅁, λίνον
𐅂· ἐλαίου χοεῖς
εἰς κόσμησιν
τρεῖς 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
Ἐμ-
55
πέδωι αἰγίδιον
λαβόντι 𐅂· ἄνθρακες
𐅂𐅂𐅂. Ἀρτεμισιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθάρασθαι
𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ· ξύλα
καὶ πεύκη ΙΙ·
ἄνθρακες 𐅃𐅂·
ξύλων τάλαντα
ἑπτά, τὸ τάλαντον
ΙΙΙΙΙ· χοῖ[ρος]
τὴν
Νῆσον καθάρασθαι
𐅂𐅂Ι𐅁· ξύλα καὶ
πεύκη ΙΙ· Πατροκλεῖ
ἀνάβασιν ποιήσαντι
ἐν Νήσω<ι> 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
καὶ κλειδὸς
καὶ χελωνίου
ἐπὶ τὸν τρύφακτον
𐅂𐅂· Ἀρτεμισίοις
λαμπάδες εἰς
τὸν
χορὸν
𐅂𐅂𐅂, καὶ ῥυμὸς
Ι, κληματίδες
Ι· καὶ Φιλοκλείοις
𐅂𐅂𐅂 καὶ ῥυμὸς
καὶ κληματίδες
ΙΙ· Ἡρακλείδει
χαλκίον ἐπισκευάσαντι
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἅλες
ΙΙΙ· ψίαθοι
εἰς ἱεροπόιον
τέτταρες 𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
αἰγίδιον λαβ[όν]-
τι
𐅂𐅂· Νουίωι
συνεγκαύσαντι
τὰ κτήνη 𐅂̣Ι̣Ι·
εἰς ἀνάλωμα
𐅂𐅂Ι· κόφινος
ΙΙΙΙ𐅀· ἐλαίου
χοῦς ἡμίχουν
𐅂𐅂. Ταργηλιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθάρασθαι
𐅂𐅂· ξύλα καὶ
πεύκη ΙΙ· ἐλαίου
χοῦς ἡμίχουν
[𐅂𐅂]·
Κεφαλίωνι
καὶ Βίωνι ἐπικοσμήσασιν
τὸ ἄγαλμα τοῦ
Διοσκούρου
𐅃𐅂𐅂· Νικίαι
ἐπισκευάσαντι
τὰ ἐν Ἡραίωι καὶ
ἐν Ὀρτ[υ]γίαι
ὧν προσέδει
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
Πεισικράτει
κριθῶν μεδίμνων
τριῶν [ὥσ]-
60
τε τοῖς χησὶν
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
εἰς ἐπίκρασιν
τοῖς Διοσκούροις
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅀· καὶ
ἀνακαθάρασι
τὸ Διοσκούριον
ΙΙΙΙ· ἄνθρακες
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· Ἁρπάλι
τὸν [β]ωμὸν τὸν ἐν
τῶι Θεσμοφορίωι
ὑποικοδομήσαντι
𐅂𐅂· Παρμέ-
νοντι
τὴν Μινοίαν
ὑποικοδομήσαντι
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· Θεοδήμωι
ἐπισκευάσαντι
τὰς θύρας τὰς
ἐν τῆι στοᾶι
τοῦ Θεσμοφορίου
𐅂𐅂𐅂· ξύλων
τάλαντα ἕξ, τὸ
τάλαντον ΙΙΙΙ.
Πανήμου· χοῖρος
τὸ ἱερὸν καθά-
ρασθαι
𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ· ξύλα
καὶ πεύκη ΙΙ·
Τίθωνι κρατῆρα
ἐπισκευάσαντι
𐅂𐅂· κηρὸς καὶ
μίλτος 𐅂· Νικίαι
καὶ τοῖς μετὰ
Νικία κατακαλλύνασι
τὴν κόπρον τῶν
περιστερῶν ἀπὸ
τῆς ἐπωροφίδος
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· καὶ
τὴν
κόπρον ἐξενείγκασιν
εἰς ἀγορὰν
ΙΙΙ· καὶ τὸγ
χοῦν τὸν πρὸς
τῶι ἱερῶι ἀνακαθάρασιν
ΙΙ· καὶ τὸν Θεορρήτου
οἶκον ΙΙ· ξύλων
τάλαντα δύο
𐅂ΙΙ· ἐλαίου
χοῦς ἡμιχό<υ>ν
𐅂𐅂· Θεοδήμωι
θύραν ἐπισκευάσαντι
․․․·
παρ’
Ἀντιγόνου κριθῶν
μέδιμνοι τρεῖς
τοῖς χησὶν
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· Τίθωνι
ἐκ τῶν καδίων
τῶν ὑπαρχόντων
κάδον ποιήσαντι
εἰς παλαίστραν
μισθὸς Δ𐅃𐅂·
καὶ Νικίαι
ξυλώσαντι ΙΙΙΙΙ·
καὶ σχοινίον
65
𐅂𐅂𐅂· ξύλων
τάλαντα εἴκοσι
δύο, τὸ τάλαντον
ΙΙΙΙΙ· καὶ ἐνέγκασιν
Ι𐅁𐅀. Ἑκατομβαιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθάρασθαι
𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ· ξύλα
καὶ πεύκη ΙΙ·
στεφανώματα
Ι𐅁· λιβανωτὸς
𐅁· ἐλαίου χοεῖς
δύο 𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ἄνθρα-
κες
𐅂𐅂𐅂· Λεωστρατίδει
κριθῶν μεδίμνων
τριῶν ὥστε τοῖς
χησὶν 𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
πίσσης μετρηταὶ
δέκα εἷς, ὁ
μετρητὴς Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂,
ὥστε ἀλεῖψαι
τὸν Κερατῶνα
καὶ τὰ ἄλλα·
καὶ Λεωφάκοι
ἀλείψαντι
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὁρκωμόσιον
ὑπὲρ τῶν περιστερῶν
𐅂𐅂· καὶ τἄλλα
ΙΙΙ· ἅλες ΙΙΙ.
Μεταγειτνιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθάρασθαι
𐅂𐅂· ξύλα καὶ
πεύκη ΙΙ· ξύλων
τάλαντα ἓξ 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
Λειωστρατί[δει]
κριθῶν μεδίμνων
τριῶν
𐅃𐅂𐅂· ἐλαίου
χοῦς ἡμίχουν
𐅂𐅂· εἰς κόσμησιν
τῆς Ἥρας καὶ
ταῖς κοσμούσαις
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· Εὐπορίωνι
τοὺς βωμοὺς
καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ἐν
τῶι Θεσμοφορίωι
ἐξαλείψαντι
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁·
χοῖρος τὸ Θεσμοφόριον
καθά-
ρασθαι
𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· ὗς ἐγκύμων
εἰς θυσίαν
τῆι Δήμητρι Δ𐅃·
καὶ ὥστε τῆι
Κόρηι ἱερεῖον
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· καὶ
Διὶ Εὐβουλεῖ
ἱερεῖον Δ𐅃𐅂·
καὶ εἰς τροφὴν
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· καὶ
μαγείρωι 𐅂·
καὶ ταῖς ἱερείαις
εἰς ἱερεῖα
𐅃· ξύλα 𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ῥυμοὶ ΙΙΙ[․․]·
70
σπονδὴ ΙΙΙΙ·
μισθωτοῖς ΙΙΙΙ·
Νικοστράτωι
κλίνας ἐντείναντι
καὶ διακεσαμένωι
Δ· ξύλων τάλαντα
πέντε, τὸ τάλαντον
ΙΙΙΙ𐅁· ἄνθρακες
𐅂𐅂𐅂. Βουφονιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθάρασθαι
𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· ξύλα
καὶ πεύκη ΙΙ·
Ἀντιγόνωι
κριθῶν μεδίμνων
τριῶν τοῖς χησὶν
𐅃𐅂· Ἀνδροκράτει
λευκ<ω>μάτων
δύο ὥστε ταῖς
συγγραφαῖς
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· Νουμάκωι
λευκώσαντι
𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· μισθωτοῖς
κεραμίδας
κατενείγκασι
𐅂𐅂̣𐅂̣𐅂̣· κλεὶς
ἐ̣[πὶ]
τὰ
δώδεκα 𐅂·
Πατροκλεῖ καὶ
Ἐπικράτει τοῦ
Ἀμφιστρόφου
διακεσαμένοις
τῆς ὀροφῆς τὰ
προσχρήιζοντα
καὶ ἀνακεραμώσασιν
Δ𐅂· ὅτε ὁ χορὸς
ἐγένετο τοῖς
Κώιων θεωροῖς
λαμπάδες 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅁·
καὶ
ῥυμὸς
καὶ κληματίδες
ΙΙΙΙ𐅁· ἄνθρακες
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· ξύλων
τάλαντα εἴκοσιν,
τὸ τάλαντον
ΙΙΙΙ𐅁· λιβανωτοῦ
ἡμίμναιον 𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ὅτε ὁ χορὸς
ἐγένετο τοῖς
Καρυστίων θεωροῖς
λαμπάδες 𐅂𐅂
καὶ ῥυμὸς καὶ
κληματίδες
ΙΙΙ· ἐλαίου
χοῦς 𐅂ΙΙ· Νικίαι
ἐπισκευάσαντι
θύραν ἐν τῶι
Ἀφροδισίωι
καὶ ὅσων προσέδει
𐅂𐅂𐅂· σχοινίον
εἰς παλαίστραν
𐅂𐅂. Ἀπατουριῶνος
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθάρασθαι
𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ· ξύλα
κ[αὶ]
75
πεύκη ΙΙ· κήρυκι
ΙΙΙΙ· ὀβελίσκοι
ὥστε εἰς τὸ
ἱερὸν πέντε, μναῖ
τέτταρες καὶ
ἡμίμναιον, ἡ μνᾶ
𐅂· ἐργάταις
τὸν ἠθμὸν ἐκκαθάρασιν
τοῦ Ἰνωποῦ
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· ἄνθρακες
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· λαμπάδες
ὅτε ὁ χορὸς
τοῖς Σιφνίων
θε[ω]-
ροῖς
ἐγένετο 𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι𐅁·
καὶ ῥυμοὶ καὶ
κληματίδες
ΙΙΙΙ· ἐλαίου
χοεῖς δύο
𐅂𐅂𐅂· στάμνοι
ὥστε τῶι ἀργυρίωι
𐅂. Ἀρησιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθάρασθαι
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· ξύλα
καὶ πεύκη ΙΙ·
ἐργάταις τὸν
Ἐσχαρῶνα ἀνακάθαρασι
Ι․·
τὸ
θύρετρον διελοῦσι
τὸ πρὸς τῶι ἱεροῖ
ΙΙΙΙ· τῶγ κεραμίδων
ἐνείγκασι τὰ
κλάσματα εἰς
ἀγορὰν 𐅂ΙΙΙ·
κήρυκι Ι· κρανείας
ἡμιτάλαντον
εἰς τὸ θύρωμα
𐅂𐅂· ἄνθρακες
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· Σωπάτρωι
καθελόντι τὰς
φιάλας ὅτ[ε]
τὸ
θύρωμα κατεσκευάζετο
καὶ ἐπισκευάσαντι
τὰς θύρας οὗ
τὰ ἑπτὰ 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τοῖς ἄρασιν
ἐκ τοῦ ἱπποδρόμου
τὴν νεωκόρον
τοῦ Καρυστίων
οἴκου 𐅃· Ὠμανέαι
καὶ τοῖς μεθ’
αὑτοῦ τὸ Νυμφαῖον
ἐκκαθάρασιν
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἧλοι ἐπὶ τὴν
θύραν τοῦ Ἀφροδισίου
ΙΙΙΙ𐅁· καὶ κλειδὸς
καὶ σιδηρίου
ἐπὶ τὰ ἑπτὰ ΙΙΙΙ𐅁·
ἐλαίου χοῦς
𐅂ΙΙΙ· Ὠφελίωνι
τοὺς κρουνοὺς
διακαθάραντι
τοὺς ἐν τῆι σκηνῆι
𐅂· τῶι τὸν κύκνον
τὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ θησαυροῦ
80
διακαθάραντι
𐅂· ἅλες ΙΙΙ·
τοῖς νυκτοφυλαξίοις
ξύλων τάλαντον
ΙΙΙΙ· ἐργάταις
τὰς θύρας ἄρασιν
εἰς τὸν οἶκον
𐅂· Νεογένει
ἐπιγράψαντι ἐπὶ
τὸ προσκήνιον
𐅃· καὶ ἀναγράψαντι
εἰς στήλην τὸ
δόγ[μα]
τὸ
Αἰτωλῶν 𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
Νουμάκωι πέτευρα
λευκώσαντι
𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· ξύλων
τά[λ]αντα πέντε
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· δικαστηρίωι
μισθὸς τῶν
ἐπιτιμημάτων
Δ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ· καὶ
ἐργάταις ἑδωλιάσασιν
𐅂· σχοινίον
εἰς παλαίστραν
𐅂𐅂. Ποσιδε[ῶνος]·
χοῖρος
τὸ ἱερὸν καθάρασθαι
𐅂𐅂· ξύλα καὶ
πεύκη ΙΙ· ἄνθρακες
𐅃𐅂· ξύλων τάλαντα
πέντε, τὸ τάλαντον
ΙΙΙΙ𐅁· ἐλαίου
χοεῖς δύο
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ· ἐργάταις
τὸ ἱερὸν καθάρασθαι
ὅτε ἀνήχθη ὁ
στόλος 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
κόφινος ΙΙΙΙ·
καὶ
εἰς
τὸν θεὸν ΙΙΙΙ·
ἐργάταις ξύλα
ἀπενέγκασι τὰ
περιγενόμενα
ἀπὸ τοῦ θυρώματος
𐅂Ι· Πατροκλεῖ
καὶ Ἐπικράτει
τὰ ἀναθήματα
τὰ καθαιρεθέντα
ὅτε κατεσκευάζετο
τὸ θύρωμα ἀποκαταστή-
σασιν
𐅃𐅂𐅂Ι𐅁· εἰς
ἱερὰ τεῖ Εἰλειθυίαι
τὰ γενόμενα ἐν
τεῖ παλαίστραι
ΔΔ𐅃· ξύλον εἰς
τὸ πρόδομον τοῦ
ναοῦ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
διέρεισμα 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
χάρτου 𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
σφόγγοι περιψῆσαι
τὰ ἀναθήματα
ΙΙΙΙ·
85
κεραμὶς εἰς
τὸ Ἀφροδίσιον
ΙΙΙΙ· ἥλους
ποήσαντι ὥστε
τοῖς ἀναθήμασιν
𐅂. τοῦ ἐκ τῶν
μηνῶν κεφαλὴ
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅁.
vac. καὶ τάδε ἄλλα
ἀνήλωται· Βρομιάδι
αὐλητρίδι
Η𐅄ΔΔΔ·
Ἀρκέτωι ἰνωποφύλακι
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ· Τυννάδει
εἰς Νῆσον νεωκόρωι
ΗΔΔ· Πύθωνι εἰς
τὸν θεὸν νεωκόρωι
𐅄Δ· Ξενοκλεῖ
εἰς Ἀσκληπιεῖον
νεωκόρωι ΗΔΔ·
Ἀπολλωνίωι
ὑπη-
ρέτηι
ΗΔΔ· καὶ ἐπωμὶς
Δ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ· καὶ
<χ>ιτῶνος Δ·
Θεοπρώτωι
γραμματεῖ 𐅄ΔΔΔ·
Μένητι κήρυκι
𐅄Δ· Ἀντιγόνωι
ἀρχιτέκτονι
𐅅ΔΔΔΔ. ἐπιτιμηταῖς·
Μνησικλεῖ Ἱερομβρό-
του
ΔΔΔΔ, Ἄμνωι
Τλησιμένου
ΔΔΔΔ, Εὐκράτει
Ἀριστοκράτου
ΔΔΔΔ. λογισταῖς·
Ἀρκιλέωι Δεινίωνος
𐅄Δ, Ἀντιπάτρωι
Καλλίου 𐅄Δ,
Ἀντιχάρει Κτησικλέους
𐅄Δ, Ξενοκρά-
τει
Ἱερομβρότου
𐅄Δ, Παντέλει
Στρατονίκου
𐅄Δ. εἰς Ποσίδεια
𐅅Η. καὶ τάδε
ἔργα ἐξέδομεν.
τὴν λιθείαν
τὴν εἰς τὴν στοὰν
ἣν ἀνέθ<ε>σαν
Νάξιοι πόδας
ὀκτακο-
90
σίους τεσσαράκοντα,
τὸμ πόδα δραχμῶν
𐅃ΙΙΙ· ἠργώνησε
Σώπατρος, καὶ
ἀπαγαγὼν τοὺς
λίθους καὶ
ἀπομετρήσας
τῶι ἀρχιτέκτονι
ἔλαβε δραχμὰς
ΧΧΧΧ𐅅ΗΔΔ
κελευόντων
ἐπιμελητῶν καὶ
ἀρχιτέκτονος·
καὶ Εὐτύχωι
ἐργολαβήσαντι
ἀναγαγεῖν τοὺς
λίθους εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν τοὺς
εἰς τὴν στοάν,
τὸμ πόδα Ι, καὶ
ἀναγαγόντι
ἔδομεν
δραχμὰς ΗΔΔΔΔ.
τῆς λιθείας
τῆς εἰς τὸ θέατρον
ἐξέδομεν πόδας
διακοσίους,
τὸμ πόδα δραχμῶν
𐅃𐅂𐅂· ἠργώνησε
Σώπατρος καὶ
ἔλαβε δραχμὰς
ΧΗΗΗΗ̣ κελευόν-
των
ἐπιμελητῶν καὶ
ἀρχιτέκτονος,
ἀπαγαγὼν τοὺς
λίθους καὶ
ἀπομετρήσας.
Παρμένοντι
ἐργολαβήσαντι
κατασκευάσαι
τὴν ἐξαγωγίδα
τοῦ Ἰνωποῦ
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ.
Στράτωνι περιραντή-
ριον
ποήσαντι Δ𐅃𐅂·
καὶ Εὐβίωι τὸν
ἰχθὺν χρυσώσαντι
ΙΙΙΙ. Καλλιγένει
ἐγολαβήσαντι
οἰκοδομῆσαι
ἐν τῆι οἰκίαι
ἣ ἦν Ἀριστοβούλου
μισθὸς 𐅃ΙΙΙΙΙ.
τῆς ἐργασίας
τοῦ ἐπιθεάτρου
ἐξέδομεν πόδας
δια-
95
κοσίους, τὸμ
πόδα δραχμῶν
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀·
ἠργώνησεν Εὐκλείδης,
καὶ ἀπομετρήσας
πόδας ἑκατὸν
ἐνενήκοντα ὀκτὼ
παλαστὰς τρεῖς
ἔλαβε δραχμὰς
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ𐅀/
κελευόντων
ἐπιμελητῶν
καὶ
ἀρχιτέκτονος.
τὸν κοιλόσταθμον
τοῦ ναοῦ τοῦ
Ἀπόλλωνος
ποιῆσαι ἠργώνησε
Κτησίας δραχμῶν
𐅅ΗΗ𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
τοῦτ’ ἔλαβε
κελευόντων
ἐπιμελητῶν καὶ
ἀρχιτέκτονος
συντελέσας
τὸ ἔργον.
τὸν
οἶκον ἐπισκευάσαι
τὸν ἐν Νήσωι καὶ
κλίμακα ποιῆσαι
καὶ τὰ ἐν τοῖ
οἴκωι ὧν προσέδει
ἠργολάβησε
Πατροκλῆς δραχμῶν
ΔΔΔΔ· τοῦτ’
ἔλαβε συντελέσας
τὰ ἔργα κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος.
τὰς
θύρας τοῦ ναοῦ
τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
ποιῆσαι ἠργώνησε
Κτησίας δραχμῶν
ΧΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂, καὶ
τοῦτ’ ἔλαβε
κελευόντων
ἐπιμελητῶν καὶ
ἀρχιτέκτονος
συντελέσας
τὸ ἔργον. πλίν-
θους
ποιῆσαι καὶ
οἰκοδομήσαι
τὸν περίβολον
τοῦ Ἀρχηγέτου
<ἠ>ργολάβησε
Βλεψίας καὶ
Βότρυς, τὰς
ἑκατὸν δραχμῶν
𐅃𐅂ΙΙ, καὶ ἀπαριθμήσαντες
πλίνθους ἐν
τῶι ἔργωι χιλίας
τετρακοσίας
πεν-
100
τήκοντα ἔλαβον
δραχμὰς 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
συντελέσαντες
τὰ ἔργα. Ἐπικράτει
τὸ θύρετρον
καθελόντι καὶ
θύρας ἐπιθέντι
τὰς πρὸς τεῖ
Γραφεῖ δραχμαὶ
𐅄̣· καὶ Βίωνι
τὸν
οὐδὸμ ποιήσαντι
𐅂𐅂. ὀβελίσκους
ποιῆσαι εἰς
τὸν τρύφακτον
τὸν ἐν Νήσωι
τριάκοντα ἠργώνησεν
Ἡρακλείδης,
τὴν μνᾶν 𐅂Ι, καὶ
εἵλκυσεν τάλαντα
δύο μνᾶν ταρτήμορον,
καὶ ἔλαβεν
δραχμὰς
ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂̣ΙΙ𐅁𐅀
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος.
χοινικίδας
ποιῆσαι εἰς
τὸ στρόφωμα τῶν
θυρῶν τοῦ ναοῦ
τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
ὀγδοήκοντα
ὀκτὼ ἠργολάβησεν
Αἴθων τὴν μνᾶν
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ, ἥλκυσαν
σταθμὸν
τάλαντον
μνᾶς τριάκοντα
ἡμίμναιον, καὶ
ἔλαβε δραχμὰς
ΗΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂Ι𐅁 κελευόντων
ἐπιμελητῶν καὶ
ἀρχιτέκτονος.
τὸ ἀνάλημμα τὸ
ἐν τῶι Νυμφαίωι
οἰκοδομῆσαι
ἠργώνησεν Ἰσόδικος
δραχμῶν
ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂,
καὶ τοῦτο ἔλαβε
κελευόντων
ἐπιμελητῶν καὶ
ἀρχιτέκτονος
συντελέσας
τὰ ἔργα. οἰκοδομῆσαι
τὸν τοῖχον τὸν
ἐν τῶι Ἡρακλείωι
ἠργώνησε Λάχης
τὴν ὀργυὰν
105
δραχμῶν 𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ,
καὶ ἀπομετρήσας
ὀργυὰς δέκα
τρεῖς ἔλαβεν
δραχμὰς ΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος.
μέλαθρον καὶ
δοκοὺς ἐμβαλεῖν
εἰς τὸν οἶκον
τὸν ἐν τῶι Ἡρακλείωι
καὶ [κ]λίνα[ς]
κατασκευάσαι
καὶ τὸ ξύλωμα
καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ὧν
προσέδει ἠργώνησε
Θέτων δραχμῶν
ΗΗΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂, καὶ
τοῦτο ἔλαβε
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
συντελέσας
τὰ ἔργα. τοῦ
περιβόλου τοῦ
ἐν τῶι
Ἀσκληπιείωι
τὸ πτῶμα οἰκοδομῆσαι
ἠργώνησε Παρμένων,
τὴν ὀργυὰν δραχμῶν
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀,
καὶ ἔλαβεν
ἀπομετρήσας
ὀργυὰς δέκα
τρεῖς 𐅄𐅂ΙΙ𐅁𐅀
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος.
τὰ ἐν το[ῖς]
οἴκοις
τοῦ Ἀρχηγέτου
ἐπισκευάσαι
καθ’ ἃ ἐξηγεῖτο
ὁ ἀρχιτέκτων
ἠργώνησε Νικίας
δραχμῶν ΔΔΔΔ,
καὶ τοῦτο ἔλαβε
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
συντελέσας
τὰ ἔργα. ἐξέλαβε
δὲ καὶ μέλα-
θρον
ἐμβαλεῖν εἰς
τὸν οἶκον τὸν
ἐν τῶι Ἀρχηγέτει
καὶ τῆς ὀροφῆς
τὰ πεπονηκότα
ἐπισκευάσαι
δραχμῶν ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τοῦτ’ ἔλαβε
συντελέσας
τὰ ἔργα κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέ[κτ]ονος·
καὶ Εὐπ[ο]-
110
ρίωνι τὰ τέγη
κατασκευάσαντι
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ. τὸμ
βωμὸν κατασκευάσαι
τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος
τὸν ἐν Δελάτρει
ἠργώνησε Βίων
δραχμῶν ΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂,
καὶ τοῦτο ἔλαβε
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
συντελέσας
τὸ
ἔργον.
ἐπισκευάσαι
τοῦ Κερατῶνος
τὰ προσχρήιζοντα
καθ’ ἃ ὁ ἀρχιτέκτων
ἐξηγεῖτο, ἠργώνησε
Πατροκλῆς δραχμῶν
Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ, καὶ
τοῦτο ἔλαβε
συντελέσας
τὰ ἔργα κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος.
τῶν
ναῶν
καὶ τῶν οἴκων
καὶ τοῦ γυμνασίου
διακέσασθαι
τὸν κέραμον τὸν
κατειαγότα
καὶ τὸν καθηλμηκότα
ἆραι ἠργώνησεν
Ἀντίγονος, τὸ
ζεῦγος 𐅁//, καὶ
ἔλαβε ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ,
καὶ ἀνακεραμῶσαι
ἐ̣ν̣
τῆι
παλαίστραι
κεραμίδας
τετταράκοντα
πέντε, ἔλαβε
δραχμὰς 𐅃. καὶ
κεραμίδων ζεύγη
ἠγοράσθη παρὰ
τοῦ Χίου ἑκατὸν
ἐνενήκοντα, τὸ
ζεῦγος ΙΙΙΙ,
καὶ παρὰ Περιάνδρου
ζεύγη ἑξήκοντα
πέντε,
τὸ
ζεῦγος ΙΙΙΙΙ·
τιμὴ τῶν κεραμίδων
Η𐅄ΔΔΔΙΙΙΙΙ.
φιάλη εἰς Νῆσον
τῆι Ἑκάτηι δραχμῶν
𐅂𐅂. καὶ πέταλα
παρ’ Ἐχεστράτου
δέκα ἐννέα, τὸ
πέταλον ΙΙΙΙ·
καὶ παρ’ Ἄνδρωνος
τέτταρα, 𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ.
Ὠφελίωνι χρυσώ-
115
σαντι καὶ ἐπικοσμήσαντι
τὸ ἄγαλμα Δ𐅂𐅂.
κλίνας ποιῆσαι
εἰς τὸν οἶκον
τὸν ἐπὶ Κυνθίωι
δέκα τέτταρας
ἠργώνησε Πατροκλῆς
ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅃. ταῖς
θύραις τοῦ ναοῦ
τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
κυλίνδρους
πέν[τε]
καὶ
ΤΡΙΡΕΣ καὶ
ὑποδοχεῖα
ἠργώνησεν Ἐχέμαντις,
τὴμ μνᾶν 𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
σταθ(μὸς) ἐγένετο
τάλαντα δύο
μναῖ εἴκοσι
μία ἡμίμναιον
ταρτήμορον·
τούτω̣[ν] ἔλαβε
ΗΗΗΗ𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀. τὴν
ἔπαρσιν τοῦ
θυρέτρου τοῦ
ἐν τῶι να- ῶι τοῦ
Ἀπόλ<λ>ωνος
ἠργώνησεν Μειδίας
𐅅Η𐅃ΙΙΙΙ, καὶ
τοῦτο ἔλαβε
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν
συντελέσας
τὰ ἔργα. Θεοδήμωι
τὸ περίφραγμα
ποιήσαντι τοῦ
ἡλιοτρο[π]ίου
μισθὸς Δ· ․․․․
ωνι τρήσαντι τὰς
βάσεις μισθὸς
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· καὶ
Ἀζαράτωι ἥλων
χαλκῶν 𐅂𐅂· καὶ
Καίβωνι ξύλου
δρυΐνου 𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
καὶ
Ἄνδρω
ι 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂. ἐλέφαντος
εἰς τὸ θ[ύρ]ωμα
ἐπριάμεθα μνᾶς
δέκα, τὴν μν[ᾶ]ν
𐅂̣𐅂̣𐅂̣[ΙΙΙ, τι]μὴ
ΔΔΔ𐅃̣.
Λεωφάκωι
τοὺς φαλλοὺς
μεταθέντι 𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ.
τὴν στήλην τὴν
περὶ τῶν γερῶν
ἐργολαβήσαντι
Ἀριστέαι γράψαι
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
Παρμένοντι
ἐργολαβήσαντι
οἰκοδομῆσαι
τὸ τειχίον [τ]ὸ
ἐπὶ τῶι Εἰλειθυαίωι
καὶ
120
τὸ Νεωκόριον
ἐξαλείψαντι
𐅃𐅂𐅂. Εὐκλείδει
ἐργολαβήσαντι
τὸν ὀρθοστάτην
καὶ τὸν καταληπτῆρα
θεῖναι καὶ
ἐργάσασθαι
ἐν τῶι ἐπιθεάτρωι
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂. ὀθόνιον
ὥστε τεῖ Ἥραι
παρ’ Ἀν-
δρίκου
ΔΔ𐅃. εἰς τὸν
ἀνδρῶνα τὸν πρὸς
τεῖ θαλάσσει
παρ’ Ἀπολλοδώρου
δοκοὶ δύο
Δ𐅃𐅂· καὶ Ἐπικράτει
ἐμβαλόντι 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
καὶ ἐργάταις
ἀποσκάψασι
καὶ δορώσασι
𐅂𐅂. Μένητι τῆς
στήλης
καὶ
βατῆρος τιμὴ
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃· καὶ
Βίωνι ἐργασαμένωι
τὴν στήλην καὶ
τὸν βατῆρα ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂.
καὶ τόδε ἀργύριον
ἐδανείσαμεν·
μηνὸς Ληναιῶνος
κατὰ ψήφισμα
τῆι πόλει καὶ
προδανεισταῖς
τοῖς βο[υ]-
λευταῖς
δραχμὰς ΧΧΧ ἃς
ἀνέθηκεν Ἐχενίκη
Στησίλεω εἰς
θυσίαν τῶι τε
Ἀπόλλωνι καὶ
τῆι Ἀφροδίτηι,
ἐπὶ ὑποθήκει
ταῖς προσόδοις
ταῖς δημοσίαις·
ἡ συγγραφὴ παρὰ
Πάχητι. καὶ εἰς
τὴν σι[τω]-
νίαν
ἐδανείσαμεν
τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου
κατὰ ψήφισμα
τῆι πόλει καὶ
προδανεισταῖς
Ξενοκράτει
Ἱερομβρότου,
Πολυξένωι
Ἀρησιμβρότου,
Σωσιδήμωι Νίκωνος
δραχμὰς Μ𐅅̣ ἐπὶ
ὑποθήκει τα[ῖς]
125
προσόδοις ταῖς
δημοσίαις. καὶ
ἄλλας ἐδανείσαμεν
τῆι πόλει καὶ
προδανεισταῖς
τοῖς βουλευταῖς
κατὰ ψήφισμα
εἰς τὸ ἀποδοθὲν
Κύνωνι δραχμὰς
Χ𐅅ΗΗ. καὶ τόδε
ἄλλο ἀργύριον
ἐδα[νεί]-
σαμεν
τοῦ ἱεροῦ·
Αὐτοκλεῖ
Τελέσωνος
μηνὸς Ἀρησιῶνος
δραχμὰς ΗΗΗΗ ἐπὶ
ὑποθήκει τεῖ
οἰκίαι τῆι ἐν
Θώκωι ἣ ἦν Ἱερομβρότου
ἧι γειτονεύει
ἡ οἰκία ἡ Σατυρίωνος
καὶ ἐπὶ τοῖς
ἄλ[λοις]
τοῖς
ὑπάρχουσιν
Αὐτοκλεῖ πᾶσιν
καὶ ἀναδ[όχοι]ς
Ἀντιγόνωι Δημείου,
Τηλεμνήστωι
Ἀντιγόνου· ἡ
συγγραφὴ παρὰ
Διονυσίωι τῶι
Ἀγοράλλου.
καὶ ἄλλας
Αὐτοκλεῖ Τελ[έ]-
σωνος
μηνὸς Ἀρησιῶνος
δραχμὰς ΗΗ ἐ[π]ὶ
ὑ[ποθ]ήκει τῆι
οἰκίαι ἣν ἐπρίατο
Νικάνωρ παρὰ
Θεοδωρίδου
ἧι γειτονεύει
ἡ οἰκία ἡ Ξενοκλείδου
καὶ ἡ 〚—
— — — —〛 Ἄμνου,
ἐπιχωρήσα[ν]-
τος
Ξένωνος τοῦ
Νικάνορος, καὶ
ἀναδόχοις
Ἀν[τ]ιγόνωι Δημέου,
Τηλεμνήστωι
Ἀντιγόνου· ἡ
συγγραφὴ παρὰ
Διονυσίωι τῶι
Ἀγοράλλου.
καὶ Διακτορίδει
Θεωρύλου μηνὸς
Ἀπατου[ρι]-
130
ῶνος δραχμὰς
ΗΗΗΗ ἐπὶ ὑποθήκει
τῶι χωρίωι ὧι
γειτονεύει
τὸ χωρίον ὃ ἦν
Φερεκλείδου
καὶ ὃ καλεῖται
Φυταλιὰ καὶ
τοῖς ἄλλοις
τοῖς ὑπάρχουσιν
Διακτορίδει
πᾶσιν καὶ ἀναδό-
χοις
Καλλισθένει
Θεωρύλου,
Ἀντιγόνωι Διδύμου·
ἡ συγγραφὴ παρ’
Ἐπιχάρμωι Θεοπρώτου.
τῶν εἰς ἆθλα·
ἔλαιον εἰς
παλαίστραν
μετρηταὶ τέτταρες
καὶ ἡμιαμφόριον·
ὁ μετρητὴς
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τιμὴ 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂·
καὶ ἆθλα λαμπαδάρχοις
παίδων· Λευκίνωι
Σωσιστράτου
𐅃, Τελεσάνδρωι
Τελεσάνδρου
𐅃· νεανίσκων·
Ἀναξιθέμιδι
Πάχητος 𐅃, Πραξιμένει
Καλλιδίκου
Δ𐅃̣·
ταινίαι
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
σκάψαντι ἐν τῶι
σταδίωι 𐅂· βάθρα
ἐνείγκασι ΙΙ·
ἔλαιον 𐅂ΙΙ·
σπογγιαὶ 𐅂. τὸ
δὲ λοιπὸν ἔδομεν
δραχμὰς ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ
μετὰ τοῦ ἄρχοντος
ἆθλα τοῖς
ἀγωνισαμένοις.
καὶ
τόδε παρέδομεν
ἀργύριον ἱεροποιοῖς
τοῖς ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀρ[χί]α Κριτοβούλοι
καὶ Μενύλλοι
ἐν ἱερῶι μηνὸς
Ληναιῶνος δραχμὰς
Μ𐅅ΔΔΔΔ𐅃· καὶ
ἄλλας Μ𐅆ΧΧΧΗΗΗ𐅄𐅃ΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀·
καὶ ἄλ[λα]ς
135
διὰ τραπέζης
ΧΧ· ἄλλας διεγράψαμεν
ΧΧ. κεφαλὴ οὗ
παρέδομεν
ΜΜΜΧΧ𐅅ΗΗΗΗΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀.
vac.
ἀνεμισθώσαμεν
δὲ καὶ τὸ χωρίον
ὃ καλεῖται
Ῥάμνοι, οὐ καθιστάντος
Ξενομήδους
τοὺς ἐγγύους
κατὰ τὴν ἱερὰν
συγγραφὴν ὅτε
ἦσαν αἱ διεγγυήσεις,
καὶ ἐμισθώσατο
Αὐτοκλῆς
Τελέσωνος
δραχμῶν 𐅅𐅄ΔΔΔ.
ἀνεμισθώσαμεν
δὲ καὶ τὸ χωρίον
ὃ καλεῖται
Σκιτώνεια, οὐ
καθιστάντος
Πολυβούλου
τοὺς ἐγγύους,
καὶ ἐμισθώσατο
Καλλισθ[έ]-
νης
Διακρίτου
δραχμῶν ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂.
ἀνεμισθώσαμεν
δὲ καὶ Χαρωνείας
τὸ ἥμυσυ, ὃ μέρος
ἐγειώργει ποτὲ
Ἀριστόδικος,
οὐ καθιστάντος
Τιμησιδήμου
τοὺς ἐγγύους,
καὶ ἐμισ-
θώσατο
Βούλων Τύννωνος
δραχμῶν ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂.
ἀνεμισθώσαμεν
δὲ καὶ τῆς Χαρητείας
τὸ μέρος ὃ ἐμεμίσθωτο
Μνησίμαχος, οὐ
καθιστάντος
τοὺς ἐγγύους
Μνησιμάχου, κα[ὶ]
140
ἐμισθώσατο
Ξενοκράτης
Ἱερομβρότου
δραχμῶν ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂·
τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν
ὅσωι ἔλαττον
ηὗρεν ἡ γῆ ἀναμισθωθεῖσα
ὀφείλει Μνησίμαχος
Αὐτοκράτους
καὶ οἱ ἔγγυοι
Ἱεροκλῆς
καὶ
Φρασίλας Ἀμμωνίου
καὶ Φᾶνος Διοδότου
δραχμὰς ΗΗΗΗΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἔγγυος πρὸς
τὸ ἥμυσυ Φᾶνος,
πρὸς δὲ τὸ ἥμυσυ
Ἱεροκλῆς καὶ
Φρασίλας·
ὀφείλουσι
δὲ καὶ τούτου
τὸ ἡμιόλι-
ον
κατὰ τὴν συγγραφὴν
δραχμὰς ΗΗ𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁.
〚—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — —〛 ἐμισθῶσα-
μεν
δὲ καὶ τὰ τεμένη
τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ
εἰς ἔτη δέκα
κατὰ τὴν ἱερὰν
συγγραφὴν καὶ
ἐμισθώσαντο
οἵδε· τὸν Ἱππόδρομον
Ἀντίγονος
Τηλεμνήστου
δραχμῶν 𐅅Η𐅄Δ𐅂·
ἔγγυοι
Τηλέμνηστος
Φιλίου, Ἀριστόβουλος
Ἀρκέοντος·
καὶ παρέλαβεν
κλείσιον
τεθυρωμένον,
θάλαμον ἄθυρον,
βούστασιν ἄθυρον,
προβατῶνα ἄθυρον,
ἰπνῶνα ἄθυ-
145
ρον, θύραν αὐλείαν.
τὸ Κεραμεῖον
Λυσῆς Σίμιος
ΗΗ𐅄· οὐ καθιστάντος
δὲ τοὺς ἐγγύους,
ἀνεμισθώσαμεν
καὶ ἐμισθώσατο
Εὔδικος Φιλιστίδου
δραχμῶν ΗΗ𐅄·
ἔγγυοι Ἀναξίθεμις,
Κραταίβιος
Ἐρητυμένου·
καὶ παρέλαβεν
θύραν αὐλείαν,
κλείσιον
τεθυρωμένον
καὶ θάλαμον
ἔχον τεθυρωμένον,
κλίμακα φοινικίνην,
ὑπερώιδιον
τεθυρωμένον,
μυλῶνα τεθυ[ρω]-
μένον,
ἀνδρώνιον τεθυρωμένον
—— ἐπὶ τοῦ κήπου
θύρα ——, ἰπνῶνα
ἄθυρον ἐγ κήπωι,
ἀνδρώνιον ἄθυρον,
συκᾶς τέτταρας,
ῥοάν. τὴν Λίμνην
Γλαῦκος Γλαύκου
δραχμῶν ΔΔ𐅂·
ἔγγυο[ς]
Ξένων
Νικάνορος. Λειμῶνα
Διονυσόδωρος
δραχμῶν ΗΗΔΔ𐅂·
ἔγ<γ>υοι Θειαῖος
καὶ Συνώνυμος
οἱ Θεαίου·
καὶ παρέλαβεν
κλείσιον
τεθυρωμένον,
βούστασιν
τεθυρωμένη[ν],
ἀχυρῶνα
ἄθυρον, προβατῶνα
ἄθυρον, ἄλλο
οἴκημα τεθυρωμένον,
θύραν αὐλείαν.
Κορακιὰς καὶ
Σολόην Φίλαρχος
Θεωρύλου
δραχμῶν ΗΗΗΗΔΔ·
ἔγ<γ>υοι Πυθαγόρας
Ἅβρωνος, Χέ̣ρ-
150
σις Ἐλπίνου·
καὶ παρέλαβεν
θύραν αὐλείαν,
κλείσιον
τεθυρωμένον,
θαλάμους δύο
ἀθύρους, βούστασιν
ἄθυρον, προβατῶνα
ἄθυρον, ὑπερώιδιον
ἄθυρον, θάλαμον
τεθυ-
ρωμένον.
Φοίνικας Ἀντίγονος
Διδύμου δραχμῶν
𐅅Η𐅄𐅂· ἔγ<γ>υοι
Σωσίδημος
Νίκωνος, Ἄναξος
Τελέσωνος·
καὶ παρέλαβεν
θύρας αὐλείας
δύο, κλείσιον
τεθυρωμένον,
θάλα-
μον
ἄθυρον, βούστασιν
ἄθυρον, προβατῶνα
διπλοῦν ἄθυρον,
ἀχυρῶνα ἄθυρον,
ὑπερῶιον τεθυρωμένον
θάλαμον ἔχον
ἄθυρον, ἰπνῶνα
ἄθυρον, ἀμπέλους
𐅅𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃Ι, συ-
κᾶς
ΔΔΔΔ, ἐρινοὺς
𐅃. Ῥάμνους
ἐμισθώσατο
Κυνθιάδης δραχμῶν
𐅅𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂, οὐ
καθιστάντος
δὲ τοὺς ἐγγύους,
ἀνεμισθώσαμεν
καὶ ἐμισθώσατο
Παρμίσκος Διοδότου
δρα-
χμῶν
𐅅𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἔγ<γ>υοι
Ἀντίρρητος
Ἀντιγόνου, Θυμίας
Ἐχεκρατίδου·
καὶ παρέλαβεν
θύραν αὐλείαν,
προβατῶνα ἄθυρον,
πυργίον τεθυρωμένον,
ἀνδρώνιον τεθυρω-
155
μένον, κλείσιον
τεθυρωμένον,
βούστασιν ἄθυρον,
θαλάμους ἀθύρους,
ἀμπέλους
Χ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ,
συκᾶς 𐅄ΔΔΔΔΙ,
ῥοήν. Νικοῦ χῶρον
Πυθοκλῆς
Φερεκλείδου
δρα-
χμῶν
ΗΗ𐅄Δ· ἔγγυοι
Τηλέμνηστος
Ἀντιγόνου, Ῥάδις
Σκύδρου· καὶ
παρέλαβεν θύραν
αὐλείαν, κλείσιον
τεθυρωμένον,
θάλαμον ἄθυρον,
μυλῶνα ἄθυρον,
ἀχυρῶνα ἀθυ-
ρον,
βούστασιν ἄθυρον,
ἀνδρώνιον ἄθυρον,
ὑπερώιδιον,
προβατῶνα ἄθυρον,
ἰπνῶνα ἄθυρον,
ἀμπέλους 𐅅ΗΗ,
συκᾶς Δ𐅃. Λίμνας
Αὐτοκλῆς Τελέσωνος
δραχμῶν
ΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἔγγυοι Ἀντιγόνος
Δημέου, Τηλέμνηστος
Ἀντιγόνου· καὶ
παρέλαβεν θύρας
αὐλείας δύο,
κλείσιον
τεθυρωμένον,
θάλαμον τεθυρωμένον,
ἄλ<λ>ον ἄθυρον,
ἀχυρῶνα
ἄθυρον, μυλῶνα
ἄθυρον, βούστασιν
τεθυρωμένην,
ὑπερώιδιον
τεθυρωμένον,
ἀνδρώνιον ἄθυρον,
ἀμπέλους Χ𐅅ΔΙΙΙΙ,
συκᾶς ΔΔΔΙΙ,
ἐρινοὺς ΙΙΙ.
Διονύσιον
Ἡρακλείδ[ης]
160
Ῥηναιεὺς δραχμῶν
𐅅ΗΗΗ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἔγγυοι
Πόλυβος Διοδότου,
Σώσιλος Νησιώτου·
καὶ παρέλαβεν
θύραν αὐλείαν,
κλείσιον
τεθυρωμένον,
θάλαμον τεθυρωμένον,
ἀχυρῶνα ἄθυρον,
μυλῶνα
τεθυρωμένον,
ἰπνῶνα ἄθυρον,
ὑπερώιδιον
τεθυρωμένον,
ἀνδρώνιον ἄθυρον,
προβατῶνα ἄθυρον,
ἀνδρώνιον ἄθυρον,
ἀμπέλους Χ𐅄𐅃Ι,
συκᾶς ΔΔΔ𐅃Ι.
Σκιτών[ει]-
αν
Ἀρχεδάμας
Κτησικλείους
δραχμῶν ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἔγγυοι Ἀχαιὸς
Ἀριστείδου,
Ἀριστόβουλος
Μενεκράτου·
καὶ παρέλαβεν
κλείσιον
τεθυρωμένον,
θαλάμους δ[ύο]
ἀθύρους,
τὸν τοῖχον τὸν
πρόσβορρον
πεπτωκότα, βούστασιν
ἄθυρον, ὑπερῶιον
τεθυρωμένον,
ἄλλα οἰκήματα
τρία ἄθυρα, θύραν
αὐλείαν, ἀμπέλους
𐅅ΗΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ〚—〛,
συκῆ[ν]·
Χαρώνειαν
Εὐκτήμων καὶ
Δεξικράτης
Ἀχαιοῦ δραχμῶν
ΧΗ· ἔγγυοι
Παντέλης Οἴκωνος,
Χάρμος Κτησιβούλου·
καὶ παρέλαβον
κλείσιον
τεθυρωμένον,
θαλάμους δύο
τὸν ἕν[α]
165
τεθυρωμένον,
βούστασιν ἄθυρον,
προβατῶνα ἄθυρον,
οἴκημα ὀροφὴν
οὐκ ἔχον, πύργον
τεθυρωμένον,
θύραν αὐλείαν,
ἄλλην οἰκίαν
ἔχουσαν θύραν
αὐλείαν, κλείσιον
τεθυρωμέν[ον],
θάλαμον
τεθυρωμένον,
ἄλλον θάλαμον,
ἀνδρώνιον τεθυρωμένον,
ἰπνῶνα{ν} ἐστυλωμένο<ν>
τὴν δοκόν, βούστασιν
ἄθυρον, ἀχυρῶνα
ἄθυρον, προβατῶνα
ἄθυρον, συκᾶς
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ,
ἀμπέλους
ΧΧΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ.
Πάνορμον Στήσαρχος
δραχμ{ν}ῶν {δραχμῶν}
𐅅Η𐅃𐅂· ἔγγυοι
Φίλλις Διαίτου,
Πολύξενος
Ἀρησιμβρότου·
καὶ παρέλαβεν
θύραν αὐλείαν,
κλείσιον τεθυρωμέ-
νον,
θάλαμον τεθυρωμένον,
ἀχυρῶνα ἄθυρον,
βούστασιν ἄθυρον,
ἰπνῶνα ἄθυρον,
πιθῶνα τεθυρωμένον,
ὑπερώιδιον,
προβατῶνα ἄθυρον,
ἀνδρώνιον τεθυρωμένον,
ἀμπέλους
ΧΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ,
συκᾶς ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ,
ἐρινόν. Χαρήτειαν
Φιλόνικος
Φερεκλείδου
δραχμῶν ΧΗΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἔγγυοι Πραξιμένης
Καλλιδίκου
Ξένων Πιστοῦ·
καὶ παρέλαβε[ν]
170
θύραν αὐλείαν,
κλείσιον
τεθυρωμένον,
θαλάμους δύο
τεθυρωμένους,
ἐν τῶι ἑνὶ δοκὸν
ἐστυλωμένην,
βούστασιν
ἐστυλωμένην
ἄθυρον, σιτοβολῶνα
ἄθυρον, ἀχυρῶνα
[ἄ]-
θυρον,
ὑπερώιδια δύο
τεθυρωμένα,
ἀνδρώνιον θάλαμον
ἔχον ἄθυρον,
ἀνδρώνιον ἄθυρον,
ἰπνῶνα ἄθυρον,
μυλῶνα ἄθυρον,
προβατῶνα ἐστυλωμένον
ἄθ̣υρ[ο]ν?, ἀμπέλους
𐅅̣[𐅄Δ?],
συκᾶς
𐅄ΔΔΙΙ. Πύργ[ου]ς
Ε[ὐ]θέας? Ι․․․․․ου
δραχμῶν Χ· ἔγγυοι
Ἀντικράτης
Ἀριστοδίκου,
Χαρίλας Ἀντιγόνου·
καὶ παρέλαβεν
θύραν αὐλείαν,
κλείσιον
τεθυρωμένον,
θαλά-
μους
δύο τεθυρωμένους,
ἀχυρῶνα ἄθυρον,
βούστασιν ἄθυρον,
ἀνδρώνια δύο
τεθυρωμένα,
ὑπερώιδιον
τεθυρωμένον,
ἰπνῶνα ἄθυρον,
προβατῶνα ἄθυρον,
ἀμπέλους ΧΧΗΗ𐅄,
συκᾶς
𐅄ΔΔΙΙΙ, ἐρινοὺς
δύο. καὶ οἵδε
τῶν μεμισ[θω]μένων
ἐπέβαλον τὰ
ἐπιδέκατα κατὰ
τὴν συγγραφήν·
Πορθμῶι Πυθοκλῆς
Φερεκλείδου
ἐπὶ 𐅅ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂
ἐπέβαλεν
175
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂[𐅂𐅂𐅁/]
καὶ μεμίσθωται
σὺν τῶι ἐπιδεκάτωι
ΧΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅁/·
ἔγγυοι Κριτόβουλος
Ἀμπυκίδου,
Φίλαρχος Φιλίου.
τῶι ἐν Ἄκραι
Δήλωι Ἔμπεδος
Ξένωνος ἐπὶ ΗΗΗΗ
ἐπέβαλεν ΔΔΔΔ,
κα[ὶ]
μεμίσθωται
σὺν τῶι ἐπιδεκάτωι
ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ· ἔγγυοι
Τελέσων Ξένωνος,
Ἐπίχαρμος
Βουληκράτου.
τοῖς Σωσιμαχείοις
Ἀπολλώνιος
ἐπὶ ΗΗ𐅄 ἐπέβαλεν
ΔΔ𐅃 καὶ μεμίσθωται
σὺν
τῶι
ἐπιδεκάτωι
ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅃· ἔγγυοι
Μένυλλος Μενύλλου,
Ἰσόδικος Σωσίλου.
Φυταλιᾶι Εὔβιος
Θεοδότου ἐπὶ
ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂]
ἐπέβαλεν 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅁//
καὶ μεμίσθωται
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅁//·
ἔγγυοι Ἄνεκτος
Εὐ-
δίκου,
Χαρικλείδης
Ἀριστοκρίτου.
Ἐπισθενείαι
Περίανδρος
Ἡγησαγόρου
ἐπὶ 𐅅Η𐅄Δ ἐπέβαλεν
𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂 καὶ μεμίσθωται
σὺν τῶι ἐπιδεκάτωι
𐅅ΗΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂· ἔγγυοι
Κράτων Μνη-
σιάδου,
Βούλων Τύννωνος.
τῶι Λυκωνείωι
Ἀκριδίων Διονυσοδώρου
ἐπὶ ΗΔ𐅂 ἐπέβαλεν
Δ𐅂𐅁/ καὶ μεμίσθωται
σὺν τῶι ἐπιδεκάτωι
ΗΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅁/· ἔγγυοι
{η̣} Ἡρακλείδης
Ἐπαρχίδο[υ],
180
Ἀριστόβουλος
Ἀριστείδου.
καὶ οἵδε τόκους
ἀπέδοσαν τοῦ
ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου·
Καλλίας Ἀντιπάτρου
ὑπὲρ Μνησιμάχου
τῆς ἐγγύης τὸ
ἐπιβάλλον αὐτῶι
δραχμὰς ΔΔΔΔ·
Ἀνδρομένης
〚—〛
Χαρικλείδης
Ἀριστοκρίτου
Δ· Ἀστίας ὑπὲρ
τοῦ πατρὸς Ἐρασίνου
𐅄ΔΔ· Μένυλλος
ὑπὲρ τῶν χωρίων
ἃ ἦν Ὑψοκλέους
Η· Λυσῆς ὑπὲρ
Δεξικράτους
Δ· Ἀριστοδίκο{ο}υ
{Ἀριστοδίκου}
κληρο-
νόμοι
𐅃𐅂𐅁 καὶ ὑπὲρ
τοῦ οἰκήματος
ὃ ἦν Ἀριγνώτου
ΔΙΙ𐅁· Ἀμφικρίτη
καὶ ὁ κύριος
Δημόνους ὑπὲρ
τῶν χωρίων ἃ ἦν
Φερεκλείδου
𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ𐅀·
καὶ Μαντίθεος
Ἀφθονήτου ὑπὲρ
τῆς
συνοικίας
𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ𐅀
ὃν ἔφερε Φερεκλείδης
ὑπέρ τε αὑτοῦ
καὶ Χάρητος
καὶ Προξένου·
Ἡρακλείδης
Γνωσιδίκου
ΔΔ· Μνησίας ὑπὲρ
τῶν χωρίων ἃ ἦν
Παρμενίωνος
Η· Γοργίας
Σωσίλου
ὑπὲρ
τῶν {χων} χωρίων
ἃ ἦν Εὐρυμάνθους
𐅄Δ· Πόλυβος
Διοδότου
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅀· καὶ ὑπὲρ
τῶν παιδίων τῶν
Τελεσάνδρου
𐅃𐅂𐅁/̣· Ἀνακρέων
ΔΔΔ· παρὰ τῶν
κληρονό[μων] ὑπὲρ
Ἀπημάντου
185
τοῦ Φίλωνος
𐅄Δ· Ξενοκράτης
Ἱερομβρότου
𐅄, ὑπὲρ Σωσισθένου
ΔΔΙΙΙΙΙ, ὑπὲρ
Χαρίλου ΔΔΙΙΙΙΙ·
Δημόλυτος
Νικομάχου
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· Κράτων
Μνησιάδου Δ·
Χοιρύλος Τελέσωνος
ΔΔΔΔ·
Τηλέμνηστος
Ἀντιγόνου ΔΔΔΔ·
Μαντίθεος
Ἀφθονήτου ὃν
ἔφερε Δημάρης
𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ, καὶ ὑπὲρ
Γοργοῦς Δ·
Φιλτῆς Τληπολέμου
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· οἱ κληρονόμοι
Φίλλιος ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅀·
Φωκαιεὺς
Ἀπολλοδώρου
ὑπὲρ τοῦ οἰκήματος
ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
Τηλέμνηστος
Ἀριστείδου
Δ𐅃· Γλαυκύδ[ης]
Ξένωνος ΔΔΔΔ·
Πιστῆς Ξένωνος
ΗΔΔ· ἄλλας ΔΔ·
Τέλεσις ὑπὲρ
Αὐτοκλέους
Δ·
Διακτορίδης
Θε(ωρύλου)
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· Μαψιχίδαι
ΔΔΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
Δίδυμος Ἀντιγόνου
𐅄· Θέμων Λυσαγό[ρου]
ΔΔ𐅃Ι· Φωκαιεὺς
Ἡγίου 𐅄Δ. vac.
καὶ
οἵδε τόκους
ὀφείλουσι
καὶ οἱ ἔγγυοι·
Πολύξενος
Φωκαέως 𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
Ἑρμοδότου
κληρονό. Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
Ναυτέλης Ἀμφιτίμου
𐅃𐅂· Διαίτου
κληρονόμοι
Δ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· Λυσάνδρου
τοῦ Δεξιπόλι-
190
ος κληρονό.
ΔΔΔΔ· Φωκαέως
τοῦ Πιστοξένου
κληρονόμοι Δ·
Κλεινόδικος
Στησίλεω Δ·
Ῥάδιος τοῦ
Διδύμου κληρονόμοι
ΔΔΔ𐅃· Φιλτῆς
Τληπόλεμου
Η𐅄· Γέρυλλος
Πιστο(ξένου)
<Δ>·
Ξένων
Ἑρμιονεὺς 𐅂𐅂̣ΙΙ·
Μειλιχίδης
Ποσείδιος
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂· Προστάτης
Τελέσιος ΔΔΔΔ·
Μοιραγένης
Καλλισθένους
ΔΔΔ· Μνησίμαχος
Αὐτοκράτους
𐅄Δ· Ἀπολλόδωρος
Κυζικηνὸς
Δ· Μνήσαλκος
Μνησάλκου 𐅄Δ·
Ἀπημάντου τοῦ
Ἡροδίκου
κληρονό. ΔΔ·
Θεύγνωτος
Μνησικλείους
ΔΙΙ𐅁· Ἀρκεφῶν
Ἀρκεφῶντος
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· Ἀναψυκτίδου
καὶ Κλε-
οβούλου
κληρονό. ΔΔ·
Ναύτης Ναύτου
ΔΔ· Ἐλπίνης
Ξενοχάριος
ΔΔΔ𐅃. vac. καὶ οἵδε
τόκους ἀπέδοσαν
τοῦ ἀργυρίου
οὗ ἀνέθηκε
Νησιάδης· Ἄμνος
Τιμοξέ-
νου
ΔΔΔ· Ἱεράρχη
ὑπὲρ Λυσίλεω
τοῦ πατρὸς τῆς
ἐγγύης τῆς
Γλαύκου ΔΔ𐅃·
Δημοκράτης
Θαρσυδίκου
ΔΔ· Χαρίλας
Ἀριστείδου
𐅄· Ἀκριδίων
Ἐλπίνου ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙ․․
195
καὶ οἵδε ὀφείλουσι
καὶ οἱ ἔγγυοι
αὐτῶν· Γλαῦκος
Σωσιβίου ΔΔ𐅃·
Μνήσαλκος
Μνησάλκου 𐅄·
Διόδοτος Φάνου
𐅄· Γοργίας
Ἰκαρίου 𐅄·
Σωκράτης Ἀνδροτέλους
𐅄.
〚—
— — — — — — —〛 vac.
καὶ οἵδε ὀφείλουσιν
αὐτοὶ καὶ οἱ
ἔγγυοι τῶι
θεῶι· Μοιραγένης
Καλλισθένους
ἔγδειαν Λιμνῶν
Η· καὶ Ἐκέφυλος
καὶ οἱ ἔγγυοι
Χαρητείας Ι.
Νεογένει
γράψαντι τὴν
στήλην ΗΔΔ·
δέλτον ποήσαντι
𐅂𐅂𐅂· τῶι εἰς
τὴν δέλτον γράψαντι
τὰ ἐκ τῆς στήλης
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· τοῖς
τὴν στήλην ἀγαγοῦσι
𐅃·
μόλυβδος
καὶ ξύλα 𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀·
τῶι περιχέαντι
𐅂. vac. κεφαλὴ εἰσόδου
σὺν ὧι παρελάβομεν
𐅇ΜΜ𐅆ΧΧΧΧΗΗΗΗ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΧ.
vac.
κεφαλὴ
ἐξόδου σὺν ὧι
παρέδομεν
𐅇ΜΜ𐅆ΧΧΧΧΗΗΗΗ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΧ.
καὶ τὸ ἐχ θησαυρῶν
εἰσελθὸν ἐπὶ
τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς παρέδομεν
τοῖς μεθ’ ἡμᾶς
ἱερο-
200
ποιοῖς δραχμὰς
𐅆ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙΙ/. vac.
face
C left
haec
ad sinistram vs. 64A exarata sunt:
1
χάρτη<ς> 𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅀.
Face
D right
{²ad
dextram vss. 12-13:}²
1
ΛΕΟ [․․․]ΙΚΟ[․․․․?]
2a
{²ad dextram vss. 33-81:}²
3
ΕΓ․Υ ΛΗΙ#⁷․
5
ΔΙΩΝΙΕΙΙΛ Η Γ
ΥΑ Α
9a
{²vac. ad dextr. vss.
82-119}² {²vestigia litt. ad dextr. vs. 120}² {²vac.
ad dextr. vss. 120-134}² {²deinde ad dextr. vss. 135-148}²
10
[․․․ Θεο]πρώτοι
καὶ Διακτορίδει
πα- ρέδομεν διὰ
τρα- πέζης δραχ[μ]ὰς
𐅆̣Η̣Η̣Η𐅄· ἄλλας
15
[ἐπὶ] Εἰδοκ[ρί]-
του Ἡγέαι καὶ
[․․․․․θ]έοι
τοῖς ἱεροποιοῖς
παρ[έ]- δομεν διὰ
τρα-
20
πέζης ΧΗΗΗ.
20a
{²vac.? ad dextr. vss.
150-179}² {²ad dextr. vss. 180-185}²
21
[․․․] Δημόνους
𐅄Δ ὑπὲρ τῶν οἰκημά-
των ἃ ἦν Ἀνδρομένου·
ἄλλας ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ
ὑπὲ[ρ]
25
τῶν οἰκημάτων
[ἃ] [ἦν Φερεκλείδ]ο[υ]?
26a
{²vss. 3 deleti}² {²ad
dextr. vss. 190-196}²
27
Πολύβουλος
Παρ- μενίωνος
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂 [— —]Ι̣Ε̣[—
— — —]
30
[— — — — — —]Τ̣Ο̣Υ̣
[πα]ρὰ ταμίου
Λε̣υ- [— — — —]Λ[—
— —]
{²vac.
ad finem}²
face
B.1
1
τάδε παρελάβομεν
παρ’ ἱεροποιοῦ
Τηλεμνήστου
τοῦ Φιλίου
καὶ παρέδομεν
ἱεροποιοῖς
τοῖς μεθ’ ἡμᾶς
Κριτοβούλοι
καὶ
Μενύλλοι
μηνὸς Γαλαξιῶνος·
ἐξ Ἀρτεμισίου
σταθμῶι καὶ
ἀριθμῶι· στέφανο{υ}ς
{στέφανος} χρυσοῦς
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ
ΗΔΔΔΔ· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς μυρσίνης
βασιλέως Σιδωνίων
Φιλοκλέους,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
λίνωι 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
στέφανος δάφνης,
Δηλιάδες,
χορεῖα Κλείτου
ἐπιδόντος, ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ 𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
στέφανος δάφνης,
Πευκέστα ἐπιδόντος,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λίνωι
𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στέφα-
5
νος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης, Δηλιάδες,
χορεῖα Φιλοκλέους
ἐπιδόντος, ὁλκὴ
σὺν τῶι λίνωι
ΔΔΔΔ· στέφανος
μυρσίνης, Πτολεμαίου
ἐπιδόν-
τος,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λίνωι
καὶ κηρῶι Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος δάφνης,
Βερενίκης ὑπὲρ
Πτολεμαίου,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λίνωι
καὶ κηρῶι 𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος
μυρσίνης,
Καλλικράτου
ἐπιδόντος, ὁλκὴ
σὺν λίνωι Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
Ἀρχίππης Μυκονίας
ἐρωτίδια ἐπὶ
ταινιδίου·
στέφανος δάφνης,
Δημητρίου
ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λίνωι
καὶ κηρῶι 𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στέφανος, Ἰωμίλκου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
σὺν λίνωι καὶ
κηρῶι ΔΔ, ἕλκει
δὲ ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος μυρσίνης,
Δηλιάδες,
χορεῖα Νικοκρείοντος
ἐπιδόντος, ὁλκὴ
σὺν λίνωι καὶ
κηρῶι Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος δάφνης
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων
ἐπὶ τοῦ πλινθείου·
Κρατε-
(1)
The following we received from the hieropoios Telemnestos son of
Philis and we gave over to the hieropoioi after us Kritoboulos and
Menyllos in the month Galaxion.
From
the Artemision by weight and number: gold crown{s} of king Ptolemy,
weight drachmai 140; gold myrtle crown of Philokles king of the
Sidonians, weight with the string 88.5; laurel crown, Deliades, with
Kleitos giving the choreia, weight drachmai 76; laurel crown with
Peukestes donor, weight with string 63.3; gold (5) laurel crown,
Deliades, with Philokles giving the choreia, weight with string 40;
myrtle crown, with Ptolemy donor, weight with string and wax 192;
laurel crown of Berenike for Ptolemy, weight with string and wax 72;
myrtle crown with Kallikrates donor, weight with string 18.3; cupids
on ribbon from Archippe of Mykonos; laurel crown dedication of
Demetrios, weight with string and wax 19.3; crown, dedication of
Iomilkos, weight with string and wax 20, but it weighs 38; myrtle
crown, Deliades, with Nikokreon giving the choreia, weight with
string and wax 19; laurel crown with inscription on the plinth, from
Krateros,
10
ροῦ, ὁλκὴ σὺν
λίνωι καὶ κηρῶι
𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· στέφανος
δάφνης ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχων ἐπὶ τοῦ
πλινθείου·
ἱερὸς Ἀπόλλωνος
καὶ Ἀρτέμιδος,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λί-
νοι
𐅄ΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
στεφάνια δύο,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λίνωι
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· θηρίκλειος
χρυσῆ, Πτολεμαίου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ΗΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂̣ΙΙΙ·
ῥόδον καὶ στέφανος,
ὁλκὴ
σὺν
τῶι λίνωι καὶ
τῶι ξύλωι 𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
φιάλιον χρυσοῦν,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄· ἐπιχύτης
χρυσοῦς ΗΔ𐅂𐅂·
τραγίσκοι δύο
ἄστατοι· ἀσπιδίσκη
χρυσῆ, ὁλκὴ
𐅂𐅂·
φιάλη
χρυσῆ, Ναξίων
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
φιάλιον χρυσοῦν
λεῖον, ὁλκὴ
ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στλεγγίδιον
χρυσοῦν ἐπὶ
ταινιδίου
ἄστατον, ἀνέ-
θηκε
Δόναξ· ὅρμος
χρυσοῦς ἀμφορέων,
ὁλκὴ Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ὅρμος χρυσοῦς
λογχίων ἄστατος,
Δημοστράτης
ἀνάθημα, ἀριθμὸν
λογχίων 𐅄ΔΔΙΙΙΙ·
15
ἄμπελος χρυσῆ
ἄστατος· πρόσεστιν
Ἀπόλλων χρυσοῦς
κνήμην οὐκ ἔχων,
ὁλκὴ 𐅃𐅂· καὶ
ἱππάριον ἐπίχρυσον·
καὶ τύπος χρυσοῦς
ἄστατος·
ῥοαὶ καὶ Ἀπόλλων
ἀργυροῦς ἀπότυπος·
πυρήνια καὶ
μηνίσκοι καὶ
βοὸς κεφαλή·
καὶ ἄλλα παντοδαπὰ
ἀνε<ι>ρμένα ἐπὶ
λίνου, ὁλκὴ
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂̣ΙΙΙ·
στλεγγίδιον
ἐπὶ ναΐσκου
χρυσοῦν· ὅρμος
χρυσοῦς ἀμφορέων,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
λίνωι ΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
ὅρμος χρυσοῦς
ὃν ἀνέθηκε Σιμίχη
ἄστατος,
ἀριθμὸς
λογχίων 𐅄ΔΔΔΔΙΙ·
ὅρμος τῆς Ἐριφύλης
ἄστατος· στέφανος
δάφνης χρυσοῦς,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λίνωι
𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂· σφραγὶς
σμαράγδου
ἄστατος·
φιάλιον
χρυσοῦν Δημοσῶντος
ἐμ πλινθείωι
ἄστατον· περιδέραια
καὶ ἀσπιδίσκη
καὶ ἐνωτίδια
καὶ φυκίον,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λίνωι
καὶ κηρῶι Δ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὅρμος
(10)
weight with string and wax 57.2; laurel crown with inscription on
the plinth, sacred to Apollo and Artemis, weight with string 71.4; 2
small crowns, weight with string 8; gold Therikleian, dedication of
Ptolemy, weight 238.3; rose and crown, weight with the string and
the wood, 68.3; small gold phiale, weight 50; gold beaker 112; two
goats unweighed; gold disk, weight 2; gold phiale, dedication of the
Naxians, weight 196; small smooth gold phiale, weight 28.3; small
gold fillet on ribbon unweighed, dedicated Donax; gold necklace of
amphorae, weight 18; gold lanceolate necklace unweighed, dedication
of Demostrate, number of spearheads 74; (15) gold grapevine
unweighed; there is in addition gold Apollo without leg, weight 6;
and gilded hipparion; and gold image, unweighed; pomegranates and
silver Apollo image; beads and little moons and ox head; and various
others linked on string, weight 8.3; small gold fillet in naiskos;
gold necklace of amphorae, weight with the string 26; gold necklace
which Simiche dedicated, unweighed, number of spearheads 92;
necklace of Eriphyle, unweighed; gold laurel necklace, weight with
string 67; emerald seal, unweighed; small gold phiale from Demoson
in plinth, unweighed; perideraia and disk and earrings and rouge
jar, weigh with string and wax 16.3; the necklace
20
ὁ πρὸς τῶι κλισμίωι,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
λίνωι ΗΗΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ξυστάλλιον
ἐγ κιβωτίωι,
ἀνάθημα <— —>·
ἡδυποτίδιον
ἀργυροῦν Ἀρχίππης
ἀνάθημα· Δημητρίου
βασιλέως
περιδέραια
χρυσᾶ καὶ περισκελίδες
δύο καὶ ψί<λ>ιον·
καὶ φυκία δύο
ἄστατα, Στρατονίκης
βασιλίσσης
ἀνάθημα· καθετήρ,
ὁλκὴ
ΗΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂· δακτύλιος
ἀμέθυστον, ὁλκὴ
ΔΔ𐅂, ἐκ τῆς κιβωτοῦ·
μῆλα ἐπίχρυσα
ΔΔΔΔ· καὶ γυπὸς
κεφαλή· πέταλα
χρυσᾶ ἐγ κιβωτίωι,
ὁλκὴ
ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἐγ κιβωτίωι
χρυσίου κλάσματα
ἀπὸ στεφάνων,
καὶ πεντόροβοι
καὶ περόναι,
ὁλκὴ ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
χρυσίου παντοδαποῦ
λευκοῦ
ὁλκὴ
ΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ· χρυσοῖ
ΔΙΙΙ· χρυσίου
παντοδαποῦ ὁλκὴ
𐅂𐅂𐅂· δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς Ἀρτεμίσιον
ἔχων, ὁλκὴ 𐅃ΙΙΙ·
χρυσίου παντοδαποῦ
ὁλκὴ ΗΗΗΔΔ
25
𐅃𐅂· δακτύλιοι
ἕξ· τούτων χαλκοῖ
δύο καὶ διάλιθος
εἷς, ὁλκὴν
𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· ἄλλος
λεῖος, ὁλκὴ
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· ἄλλος
ἐρώτιον ἔχων,
ὁλκὴ 𐅂𐅂· ἄλλος
σφραγῖδα ἔχων,
ὁλκὴ
𐅃𐅂· κύλινδρος,
ὁλκὴ 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
σφραγὶς χρυσένδετος,
ὁλκὴ 𐅂𐅂· ἄλλη
σφραγὶς χρυσένδετος,
ὁλκὴ 𐅂· ἄλλη
σφραγὶς χρυσένδετος,
ὁλκὴ 𐅂ΙΙ· λυγγούριον
χρυσένδετον,
ὁλκὴ 𐅂ΙΙΙ· ἄλλη
σφραγὶς χρυσένδετος,
ὁλκὴ 𐅂𐅂· ἄλλη
σφραγὶς ἀργυρένδετος,
ὁλκὴ 𐅂· δακτύλιος
Καλλικρ<ί>τ<η>ς
ἐν ταινιδίωι
ἄστατος·
δακτύλιος
σιδηροῦς ὑπόχρυσος,
ὁλκὴ 𐅃· ἄλλος
σιδηροῦς ὑπόχρυσος,
ὁλκὴ 𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἐνώτια
χρυσᾶ σειστά,
ὁλκὴ 𐅃ΙΙΙΙΙ·
δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς, Ἀθηνᾶν
ἐπίση-
μον
ἔχων, ὁλκὴ 𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἀργύριον δόκιμον
σὺν χαλκοῖ
𐅄ΔΔ𐅂· ὀβολοὶ
ὀρχομένιοι
ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ·
δαρεικοὶ 𐅃ΙΙΙ·
καὶ ἄλλο χρυσίον
παντοδαπόν· καὶ
λιθάριον χρυ-
(20)
on the couch, weight with the string 213.3; small scraper in chest,
dedication; silver hedypotidion, dedication of Archippe; gold
peridereia of king Demetrios and 2 sets of leggings and armlet; and
two rouge jars, unweighed, dedication of queen Stratonike; collar
necklace, weight 117; amethyst ring, weight 21 from the chest; 40
gilded apples; and vulture head; gold leaves in chest, weight 340;
gold(?) 13; of various gold weight 3; gold ring with Artemis, weight
5.3; of various gold weight 3206; (25) six rings, two of these
bronze and one with stones, weight 7.3; another smooth, weight 4.3;
another with cupid, weight 2; another with seal, weight 6; cylinder,
weight 4; goldbound seal, weight 2; another goldbound seal, weight
1; another goldbound seal, weight 1.2; goldbound amber, weight 1.3;
another goldbound seal, weight 2; another goldbound seal, weight 1;
ring of Kallikrate on ribbon unweighed; gilded iron ring, weight 5;
another gilded iron, weight 3; linked gold earrings, weight 5.5.;
gold ring with image of Athena, weight 3; assayed silver with bronze
71; 398 Orchomenian obols; 8 darics and various other gold and
goldbound stone
30
σένδετον καὶ
δακτύλιος,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τοῖς
δαρεικοῖς
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ, ἐν
λιθίνει λιβανωτίδι·
χρυσίου παντοδαποῦ
ὁλκὴ πάντων Δ𐅂𐅂·
τοῦτο ἐγ κιβωτίωι
ἐλεφαν-
τίνωι·
δακτύλιος
ἀργυροῦς φωσφόριον
ἐπίσημον ἔχων·
νομίσματος
παντοδαποῦ ὁλκὴ
Δ𐅂𐅂· χρυσοῦς
ἀλεξανδρείους
ΔΙΙ· οὗτοι ἐν
ἁλίαι· vac.
ἀργυρίου
παντοδαποῦ
ἀσήμου ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ ΧΧΧΧ𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂.
καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς
ἡμετέρας ἀρχῆς·
φιάλη ἔκτυπος
ἀργυρᾶ, Ἐχενίκης
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
ΗΔΔ.
δεξιᾶς
ἐν τῶι προδόμωι
τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος·
Ῥοδίων φιάλη
ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Πολυαράτου·
φιάλαι τρεῖς
Στησίλεω ἀνάθημα·
Ἀντιπάτρου
Ἠπειρώτου φιά-
λαι
δύο· Ἀγίου
φιάλη καὶ ὀφείδια
ἐπὶ ταινίας
χρυσᾶ δύο·
Δαμασίου φιάλη·
Ἐτειάρχου
προτομὴ καὶ
φιάλη· Ῥοδίων
φιάλη ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Ἀκεστία· Φιλοξένου
σκάφι-
35
ον· Ἀρχίου φιάλη
Καλυμνίου·
Ἀρταπάτου φιάλη
ἔκτυπος· Δεξικράτους
φιάλιον· Ῥοδίων
φιάλη ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Μένωνος· Σωθάλου
φιάλιον· Κώιων
φιάλη ἐπ’ ἀρκι-
θεώρου
Τεισίου· Σελεύκου
φιάλιον· Κόσκαλος
Κλεάνδρου
πῖλον· Κασίων
φιάλη ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Ἀλέξιος· <φιάλη>
Χαρμύλου <τοῦ>
Πολυχάρμου
Ῥοδίου· φιάλη
Ῥοδίων ἐπ’ ἀρκιθε-
ώρου
Ἱππαγόρου·
φιάλη ἐγ Ῥόδου
ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Τιμοστράτου·
Ῥοδίων φιάλη
ἐπ ἀρκιθεώρου
Ἀγησιδάμου·
Καλυμνίων φιάλη
ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Πο-
λυμήδους·
φιάλη Ῥοδίων
ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Διοκλείδα·
φιάλη Ῥοδίων
ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Κράντορος·
Χαρμίδου φιάλαι
δύο ἔκτυποι·
φιάλη Ῥοδίων
ἐπ’ ἀρκι-
θεώρου
εἰς Δελφοὺς
Λυσιστράτου·
Ἀριστοφύλου
φιάλη Ῥοδίου·
Ἀπολλοφάνου[ς]
φ[ι]άλιον· Κώιων
ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Φίλωνος φιάλη·
Ἡρακλείτου
φιά-
(30)
and ring, weight with the darics 22.3; in stone incense burner
various gold total weight 121; this in ivory chest: silver ring with
image of torchracer; of various coin weight 12; 12 gold
Alexandrians, these in salt cellar(?) [space] of various unstamped
silver weight drachmai 4688. And in our year of office: figured
silver phiale, dedication of Echenike, weight 120.
From
the right in the prodomos of Apollo: phiale of the Rhodians with
Polyaratos chief theoros; three phialai, dedication of Stesileos;
two phialai of Antipater of Epirus; phiale of Agios and two small
gold snakes on ribbon; phiale of Damasios; head and phiale of
Eteiarchos; phiale of the Rhodians with Akestias chief theoros;
small tray of Philoxenos; (35) phiale of Kalumnian Archias; figured
phiale of Artapatos; small phiale of Dexikrates; phiale of the
Rhodians with Menon chief theoros; small phiale of Sothales; phiale
of the Koans with Teisias chief theoros; small phiale of Seleukos;
Koskalos son of Kleandros pilos; phiale of the Kasians with Alexis
chief theoros; of Charmylos son of Polycharmos of Rhodes; phiale of
the Rhodians with Hippagoras chief theoros; phiale from Rhodes with
Timostratos chief theoros; phiale of the Rhodians with Agesidamos
chief theoros; phiale of the Kalymnians with Polymedes chief
theoros; phiale of the Rhodians with Diokleides chief theoros;
phiale of the Rhodians with Krantor chief theoros; two figured
phiale of Charmides; phiale of the Rhodians with Lysistratos chief
theoros to Delphi; phiale of Aristophylos of Rhodes; small phiale of
Apollophanes; phiale of the Koans with Philon chief theoros; figured
phiale of Herakleitos;
40
λη ἔκτυπος·
Φιλώτα φιάλη
καρυωτή· Τιμάνθους
φιάλη Ῥοδίου·
Νικίππου φιάλη
λεία· Πυρρίου
φιάλη· Δημητρίου,
Ἡρακλείτου,
Αἰσχρίωνος
φιάλη· Σῶσι[ς]
καὶ
Πραξίδημος καὶ
Σωκλῆς φιάλην·
Κώιων φιάλη ἐπ’
ἀρκιθεώρου
Ἀναξιβίου·
Ἀμμωνίου φιάλη·
Καλυμνίων φιάλη
ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Διοφάνους·
Φιλοκλε[ί]-
δου
φιάλη· Ἱεροκλέους
φιάλη· Σιμία
φιάλη· Κώιων
φιάλη, Ἀπόλλωνι
ἀπαρχάν· Διοκλέους
φιάλη Κώιου·
ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Ἀέρτα φιάλη·
Κώιων φιάλη ἐ-
π’
ἀρκιθεώρου
Ζωπυρίωνος·
Κώιων φιάλη ἐπ’
ἀρκιθεώρου
Ἀράτου· Ἡρακλείδου
φιάλη ἔκτυπος·
Κώιων φιάλη ἐπ’
ἀρκιθεώρου
Διδυμάρχου·
Μεγαλοπο-
λιτῶν
<φιάλη> ἐπ’
ἀρκιθεώρου
Ἀφθονήτου·
Ῥοδίων φιάλη
ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Φρασίλα· Ῥοδίων
φιάλη ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Φίλωνος· Κώιων
φιάλη ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Εὐκλε[ί]-
45
δα. καὶ τὰ ἐπὶ
τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς· Κώιων
τοῦ δήμου τοῦ
Ἰσθμιατῶν φιάλη
ἀρχιθεώρου
Τελευτία <τοῦ>
Θρασυκρίτου·
Κώιων φιάλη ἐπ’
ἀρκιθεώρου
Ἱππάρχου. αἱ
πᾶσαι φιάλαι
𐅄𐅃ΙΙΙΙ σὺν
τῶι
πίλωι· Κολεὰ
δύο ἐλεφάντινα,
τὸ μὲν Τιμέου,
τὸ δὲ Θυμώιδου·
θυμιατήριον
χαλκοῦν Δεξιλάου·
δακτύλιος
λιθάριον ἔχων
Νικολάου·
χρυσοῦς λυ-
σιμάχεος·
Τιμοκράτους
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
ἐπὶ προκομίου·
Παμφίλης τέτραχμον
ἐφέσιον καὶ
δραχμὴ ῥοδία.
ἐν τῶι ναῶι εἴσω·
Ἀρκεστράτου
ται-
νία
περιηργυρωμένη·
κρατῆρες ἀργυροῖ
δύο, Στρατονίκης
ἀνάθημα· τράπεζα
ἀργυρᾶ· τρίπους
ἀργυροῦς, Ἀρσινόης
ἀνάθημα· τριήρης
ἀργυρᾶ, Σελεύκου
ἀν[ά]-
θημα·
φιάλη ἐμ πλινθείωι,
θεωρῶν ἐπιδόντων
παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως
Πτολεμαίου·
θυμιατήρια
χρυσᾶ δύο·
κρατὴρ ἀργυροῦς,
Παρμίσκου ἀνάθημα·
χρυσίου παντοδα-
(40)
knobbed phiale of Philotas; phiale of Rhodian Timanthes; smooth
phiale of Nikippos; phiale of Pyrrias; phiale of Demetrios,
Herakleitos, Aischron; Sosis and Praxidemos and Sokles phiale;
phiale of the Koans with Anaxibios chief theoros; phiale of
Ammonios; phiale of the Kalymnians with Diophanes chief theoros;
phiale of Philokleides; phiale of Hierokles; phiale of Simias;
phiale of the Koans, aparche to Apollo; phiale of Diokles of Kos;
phiale with Aertas chief theoros; phiale of the Koans with Xopyrion
chief theoros; phiale of the Koans with Aratos chief theoros;
figured phiale of Herakleides; phiale of the Koans with Didymarchos
chief theoros; of the Megalopolitans with Aphthonetos chief theoros;
phiale of the Rhodians with Phrasilas chief theoros; phiale of the
Rhodians with Philon chief theoros; phiale of the Koans with
Eukleides chief theoros. (45) And in our year of office: phiale of
the Koan demos of the Isthmiatai with Teleutias son of Thrasykritos
chief theoros; phiale of the Koans with Hipparchos chief theoros.
Total phialai 59, with the pilos. Two ivory scabbards, the one of
Timeos the other of Thymoides; bronze censer of Dexilaos; ring with
stone of Nikolaos; gold Lysimachean; gold crown of Timokrates for
the head; Ephesian tetradrachm and Rhodian drachma of Pamphile.
In
the temple within. silvered ribbon of Archestratos; two silver
kraters, dedication of Stratonike; silver table; silver tripod,
dedication of Arsinoe; silver trireme, dedication of Seleukos;
phiale in plinth, gift of the theoroi from king Ptolemy; tnsers;
silver krater, dedication of Parmiskos; of various unstamped gold
50
ποῦ ἀσήμου
ὁλκὴ Η𐅄· χρυσίου
ἄλλου ὁλκὴ
𐅃𐅂· σφραγὶς
ἀργυρᾶ, ὁλκὴ
𐅂ΙΙΙ· ἄλλου
χρυσίου ὁλκὴ
𐅂 ἔνεστιν ἐμ
πισγίδι σχοινίνει·
φιάλιον ἀργυροῦν,
ὁλκὴ ΙΙΙ· στλεγγὶς
χ[ρυ]-
σῆ
συντεθλασμένη,
ὁλκὴ 𐅂𐅂𐅂·
δρακόντιον
ἀργυροῦν, ὁλκὴ
𐅂𐅂· ἄλλο χρυσίον,
ὁλκὴ 𐅃ΙΙΙ·
θυμιατήριον
ἀργυροῦν, ὁλκὴ
𐅃𐅂𐅂, Βουλομάγας
ἀνάθημα, τὸ θυμιατήριον
ὁλκὴ
𐅅𐅄Δ· δακτύλιοι
ὑπάργυροι ΗΗ𐅄Δ·
ἄλλοι ἀργυροῖ
Δ𐅃ΙΙΙ· ὑπόχρυσοι
Δ· κύλικες
δύο τηιουργεῖς
ἀργυρένδετοι
ἐν οἰκίσκωι,
Κτήσωνος ἀνάθημα·
δακτύλιος
λόγχην
ἔχων χρυσοῦς·
κυλύχνιον
ἀργυροῦν, ὁλκὴ
𐅂· δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς συντεθλασμένος,
ὁλκὴ 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
δακτύλιος
ἀνθράκιον ἔχων
ἐπίχρυσος·
δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς, Μνασικράτους
ἀνάθημα· τετράαχμα
πτολεμαϊκὰ
δύο· νομίσματος
παντοδαποῦ ὁλκὴ
𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ταῦτα
ἔνι ἐμ πισγίδι
ξυλίνει·
55
ἄλλο χρυσίον,
ὁλκὴ 𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ταινίδιον χρυσοῦν
ἐπὶ ταινιδίου,
Βυβλίων ἀνάθημα·
ἄλλο χρυσίον,
ὁλκὴ 𐅃𐅂· ταινίδιον,
Γλαύκου ἀνάθημα·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς,
Λυσάνδρου
ἀνάθημα, ὁλκὴ
𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς κισσοῦ
ὃμ Πτολεμαῖος
ἀνέθηκε, ὁλκὴ
ΗΔΔΔΔ· στέφανος
δάφνης χρυσοῦς,
Δημητρίου
ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λίνωι
καὶ κηρῶι 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος δάφνης
ὃν ἀνέθηκεν
Ἀντίπατρος
Βαλάγρου, ὁλκὴ
σὺν λίνωι καὶ
κηρῶι ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στέφανος
χρυσοῦς
ὃν ἀνέθηκε Φιλοκλῆς,
σὺν λίνωι ὁλκὴ
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης ὃν ἀνέθηκε
Πολύκλειτος,
σὺν λίνωι ὁλκὴ
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δά-
φνης
ὃν ἀνέθηκε Φάραξ,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λίνωι
καὶ ἱμάντι 𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης ὃν ἀνέθηκε
Κτησικλῆς, σὺν
τῶι λίνωι ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στέφανοι δύο
χρυσοῖ μυρρίνης
οὓς
(50)
weight 150; of other gold weight 6; silver seal, weight 1.3; of
other gold weight 1, (which) is in reed basket; small silver phiale,
weight .3; gold fillet crushed, weight 3; small silver snake, weight
2; other gold, weight 5.3; silver censer weight 7; dedication of
Boulomagas, the censer, weight 560; 260 silvered rings; other silver
18; gilded 10; two Teian-style silver gound kylixes in shrine,
dedication of Kteson; gold ring with spearhead; small silver
kylichnion, weight 1; gold ring crushed, weight 4; gilded ring with
garnet; gold ring, dedication of Mnasikrates; two Ptolemaic
tetradrachms; of various coin weight 64, these are in a wood basket;
(55) other gold, weight 8; gold ribbon on ribbon, dedication of the
Byblioi; other gold, weight 6; ribbon, dedication of Glaukos; gold
crown dedication of Lysander, weight 67; gold ivy crown which
Ptolemy dedicated, weight 140; gold laurel crown, dedication of
Demetrios, weight with string and wax 87; laurel crown which
Antipater son of Balagros dedicated, weight with string and wax
46.3; gold crown which Philokles dedicated, weight with string 93;
gold laurel crown which Polykleitos dedicated, weight with string
87.3; gold laurel crown which Pharax dedicated, weight with string
and cord 53; gold laurel crown which Ktesikles dedicated, with the
string 48.3; two gold myrtle crowns which
60
ἀνέθηκε Νικοκρέων,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λίνωι
καὶ κηρῶι 𐅄Δ𐅃·
στέφανος δάφνης
χρυσοῦς ὃν
ἀνέθηκε Ξενόφαντος,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λίνωι
𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στέφανος μυρρίνης
χρυσοῦς ὃν
ἀνέθη-
κε
Ἰώμιλκος, ὁλκὴ
σὺν λίνωι καὶ
κηρῶι ΔΔ𐅃· ἔχει
ἡ ὑφιέρεια·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
ὃν ἀνέθηκε
Λύσανδρος, ὁλκὴ
σὺν τῶι λίνωι
ΔΔ𐅃𐅂· στέφανος
μυρρίνης ὃν ἀνέθηκεν
Πνυ-
ταγόρας,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λίνωι
καὶ κηρῶι ΔΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
ὃν ἀνέθηκε ὁ
δῆμος ὁ Δηλίων,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
ὃν ἀνέθηκε
Πευκέστας,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λίνωι
𐅄ΔΔ·
στέφανος
χρυσοῦς ὃν
ἀνέθηκε Καλλικράτης,
ὁλκὴ σὺγ κηρῶι
καὶ λίνωι Δ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
ὃν ἀνέθηκε
Ἀντίγονος, ὁλκὴ
σὺν λίνωι ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
στέφανοι δύο
οὓς ἀνέθηκε
Ἀνδροκλῆς,
ὁλκὴ σὺν λίνωι
καὶ κηρῶι 𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλος στέφανος
ἀνεπίγραφος
χρυσοῦς, ὁλκὴ
ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂· ἄλλος
στέφανος ἀνεπίγραφος,
ὁλκὴ ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
οἱ πάντες στέφανοι
ἐν τ[ῶι]
65
ναῶι τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
ΔΔΙΙ χωρὶς τῶν
πρὸς τῶι τοίχωι.
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
πρὸς τῶι τοίχωι,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλος στέφανος
χρυσοῦς ὁ ἀπὸ
τοῦ τοίχου,
ὁλκὴ ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
στρεπτὸν
χρυσοῦν·
στέφανος ὧι
τὸ ἄγαλμα ἐστεφάνωται,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
λίνωι ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλος στέφανος
χρυσοῦς ὧι τὸ
ἄγαλμα ἐστεφάνωται,
ὃν ἀνέθηκεν
βασίλισ-
σα
Στρατονίκη
βασιλέως Δημητρίου
θυγάτηρ, χρυσοῖ
ὁλκὴ 𐅅Η𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλοι στέφανοι
χρυσοῖ τρεῖς
οἷς αἱ Χάριτες
ἐστεφάνωνται,
οὓς ἀνέθηκε
βασίλισσα Στρα-
τονίκη
βασιλέως Δημητρίου
θυγάτηρ, ὁλκὴ
χρυσοῖ ΔΔΔ𐅂·
καθετὴρ χρυσοῦς
ὃν ἀνέθηκε βασίλισσα
Στρατονίκη
βασιλέως Δημητρίου
θυγάτηρ τῆι
Λητοῖ ἐχ θυ-
ρεῶν
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ, ὁλκὴ
Η𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
καὶ δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς, ὃν
ἀνέθηκε τῆι
Λητοῖ, ἔχων σάρδιον
ἐφ’ οὗ Ἀπόλλων
ἐπίσημον, ὁλκὴ
ΔΙΙ· καὶ φιάλας
χρυσᾶς δύο
διαλίθους,
(60)
Nikokreon dedicated, weight with string and wax 65; gold laurel
crown which Xenophantes dedicated, weight with string 63.3; gold
myrtle crown which Iomilkos dedicated, weight with string and wax
25, (which) the assistant priestess has; gold crown which Lysander
dedicated, weight with the string 26; gold myrtle crown which
Pnytagoras dedicated, weight with string and wax 31.3; gold crown
which the Delian demos dedicated, weight 96; gold crown which
Peukestas dedicated, weight with string 70; gold crown which
Kallikrates dedicated, weight with wax and string 16.3; gold crown
which Antigonos dedicated, weight with string 37; two crowns which
Androkles dedicated, weight with string and wax 59; another gold
crown uninscribed, weight 37; another uninscribed crown, weight 23.
Total crowns in the (65) Temple of Apollo 22, apart from those on
the wall. Gold crown on the wall, weight 62; another gold crown from
the wall, weight 47; gold collar; crown with which the statue is
crowned, weight with the string 144; another gold crown with which
the statue is crowned, which queen Stratonike daughter of king
Demerios dedicated, gold weight 609; three other gold crowns with
which the Graces are crowned, which queen Stratonike daughter of
king Demetrios dedicated, weight gold 31; gold katheter which queen
Stratonike daughter of king Demetrios dedicated to Leto from the 48
doors weight 109.4; and gold ring which she dedicated to Leto, with
sardion with Apollo image, weight 10.2; and two gold phialai with
stones,
70
ὁλκὴ 𐅅ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
καὶ δακτύλιον
χρυσοῦν ἔχοντα
σάρδιον ἐφ’ οἷ
ἐπίσημον Νίκη,
ὃν ἔχει ὁ θεός,
σὺν τῶι κίρκωι
ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂· καὶ
ἀσπιδίσκας
ὀνυχίνας ΔΔ,
πρὸς αἷς ἁλύ[σι]-
ον
χρυσοῦν, σὺγ
κίρκοις ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔΙΙ·
καὶ φαρέτρα
ἡρακλεωτικὴ
χρυσοποίκιλτος
τόξον ἔχουσα
καὶ ταινίδιον
χρυσοῦν, ἐφ’
οἷς ἐπιγραφή·
καὶ μυοσόβαι
τρεῖ[ς]
λαβὰς
ἔχουσαι, μία
μὲν ἐλεφαντίνη,
ἄλλη χρυσοποίκιλτος,
ἄλλη ὄνυχα·
καὶ ῥιπίδα
τετράγωνον λαβὴν
ἔχουσαν ἐλεφαντίνην·
φιάλη ἀργυρᾶ,
Ἀριστοκρά-
τους
τοῦ Δάμωνος
ἀνάθημα, ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλη φιάλη
Ἀριστοκράτους
τοῦ Δάμωνος,
ὁλκὴ ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
ζώιδια ἀργυρᾶ
δύο ἐφ’ ἡμικυκλίου,
Ἀπολλοδώρου
ἀνάθη-
μα,
ὁλκὴ ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
ὀδόντες ἐλέφαντος
δύο καὶ ὃν ἡμεῖς
ἠγοράσαμεν,
ὁλκὴ μναῖ δέκα,
ἔξω παραδόσεως·
τέτραχμα πέντε·
χελιδονείους
δύο· φιάλι[α]
75
τρία· κυμβία
δύο· κυλύχνια
δύο· χρυσίου
ἀσήμου ὁλκὴ
Δ𐅂· καὶ δακτύλιοι
δύο ἀργυροῖ.
καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς
ἡμετέρας ἀρχῆς·
κύλιξ χρυσῆ,
Ἐχενίκης ἀνάθημα,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄.
οὗ
τὰ ἑπτὰ ἐν τῶι
προδόμωι· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς ὃν
ἀνέθηκε Νικίας·
ἄλλος στέφανος
χρυσοῦς, Αὐτοκλέους
ἀνάθημα· φιάλαι
ἐμ πλινθείοις
πέντε· ἄλλη
φιάλη Νικοκλέους
ἀνά-
θημα·
στέφανοι δάφνης
συντεθλασμένοι,
ὁλκὴ Η𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂.
οὗτοι ἐν τῶι
τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
πρὸς τῶι τοίχοι
εἴσω· στέφανοι
χρυσοῖ ΔΔΙ·
ὁ πρῶτος μυρρίνης
οὗ τὸ ἄλφα, ὁλκὴ
Η· ὁ δεύτερος
δά-
φνης,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙ̣·
ὁ τρίτος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄ΔΔ𐅂· ὁ
τέταρτος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
σπάρτωι 𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ὁ πέμπτος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ ΗΔΔΙΙΙ·
ὁ ἕκτος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ὁ ἕβδομος δά-
φνης,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ὁ ὄγδοος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ὁ ἔνατος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ὁ δέκατος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ·
ὁ ἑνδέκατος
δάφνης, ὁλκὴ
𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὁ δωδέκατος
δά-
(70)
weight 537; and gold ring with sardion with Nike image, which the
god has, with the circle, 33; and 20 onyx disks with gold chain,
with circles 430.2; and gold ornamented Heraklean quiver with bow
and gold ribbon, on which inscription; and three flyswatters/fans
with handles, one ivory, another gold ornamented, another onyx; and
square fan with ivory handle; silver phiale dedication of
Aristokrates son of Damon, 282; another phiale of Aristokrates son
of Damon, weight 276; two silver animals on semi-circle, dedication
of Apollodoros, weight 42; two elephant tusks and the one which we
bought, weight ten mnai, not part of the transferral; five
tetradrachmas; two swallows; three small phialai; (75) two kymbia;
two small kylixes; of unstamped gold weight 11; and two silver
rings. And in our year of office: gold kylix, dedication of
Echenike, weight 50.
(Temple)
of the Seven. In the prodomos: gold crown which Nikias
dedicated; another gold crown, dedication of Autokles; five phialai
in plinths; another phiale, dedication of Nikokles; crushed laurel
crowns, weight 167. These in the Temple of Apollo on the wall
within: 21 gold crowns. The first myrtle where the alpha, weight
100; the second laurel, weight 90.3; the third laurel, weight 71;
the fourth laurel, weight with the thread 79; the fifth laurel,
weight 120.3; the sixth laurel, weight 64.4; the seventh laurel,
weight 69; the eighth laurel, weight 69; the ninth laurel, weight
69; the tenth laurel, weight 95.3; the eleventh laurel, weight 68.3;
the twelfth laurel,
80
φνης, ὁλκὴ σὺν
τῶι λίνωι 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὁ τρίτος καὶ
δέκατος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὁ τέταρτος καὶ
δέκατος, ὁλκὴ
σὺν τοῖ σπάρτοι
ΗΔΔΔ𐅂· ὁ πέμπτος
καὶ δέκατος
δάφνης, ὁλκὴ
𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὁ ἕκτος καὶ
δέκατος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ ΗΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὁ ἕβδομος καὶ
δέκατος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
λίνωι Η· ὁ ὄγδοος
καὶ δέκατος
δάφνης, ὁλκὴ
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ὁ ἔνατος
καὶ
δέκατος δάφνης,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ὁ εἰκοστὸς
δάφνης, ὁλκὴ
Η𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι· ὁ εἷς
καὶ εἰκοστὸς
δάφνης, ὁλκὴ
Η𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· τούτους
παρελάβομεν
οὐ σταθμῶι, οὐδὲ
γὰρ αὐτοὶ ἔφασαν
στα-
θμῶι
παραλαβεῖν. ἐν
τῶι Πωρίνωι·
φιάλαι ΔΙΙΙ·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντων
Κνιδίων· φιάλη,
Δηλιάδες, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος Πατρόκλου·
φιάλια τρία,
Στρατονίκης
ἀνάθημα·
φιάλη Ῥοδίων
ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Δαμονίκου·
φιάλη παρὰ βασιλέως
Πτολεμαίου
καὶ τῆς Ἀλεξανδρέων
πόλεως ἐπ’
ἀρκιθεώρου
Φιλόκ<τ>α· φιάλη
παρὰ βασιλέ-
85
ως Πτολεμαίου
καὶ τῆς Ἀλεξανδρέων
πόλεως ἐπ’
ἀρκιθεώρου
Ποσειδίππου·
φιάλη Ῥοδίων
ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Πεισιστράτου·
φιάλη τῆς Ἀλεξανδρέων
πόλε-
ως
ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Θεοφίλου·
φιάλη Πασικράτους
Ῥοδίου ἀνάθημα·
φιάλη Ῥοδίων
ἐπ’ ἀρκιθεώρου
Εὐκλέος· φιάλη
παρὰ βασιλέως
Πτολεμαίου
καὶ τῆς Ἀλεξανδρέ-
ων
πόλεως ἐπ’
ἀρκιθεώρου
Στράτωνος. ἐν
τῶι οἴκωι ὃν
ἀνέθεσαν Ἄνδριοι·
χρυσίου ἀσήμου
σὺν τῶι ἀπὸ τοῦ
θυμιατηρίου,
ὁλκὴ ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ·
καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς
ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς συνήχθη
σὺν δακτυλίοις
δύο τῶι τε ἐχ
θησαυροῦ τοῦ
ἐν Νήσωι καὶ
τοῦ <ε>ὑρεθέντος
ἐν ἱερῶι ὁλκὴ
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ.
καὶ τάδε ἀργυρώματα·
λιβανωτίς·
ἀργυρίς· καβάσας·
κύαθος· φιάλιον
ἀντὶ τῆς θηρικλείου
τῆς ἀποβληθείσης
Δημοσῶντος·
κύλικες δύο,
ἡ μία πυθμένα
οὐκ ἔχει,
(80)
weight with the string 81.3; the thirteenth laurel, weight 83.3; the
fourteenth, weight with the thread 131; the fifteenth laurel, weight
73.3; the sixteenth laurel, weight 123.3; the seventeenth laurel,
weight with the thread 100; the eighteenth laurel, weight 97.4; the
nineteenth laurel, weight 83.3; the twentieth laurel, weight 103.1;
the twenty-first laurel, weight 104. These we received not by weight
for they said they themselves did not receive them by weight.
In
the Porinos: 13 phialai; phiale of the Deliades, with Knidians
giving the choreia; phiale Deliades, with Patroklos giving the
choreia; three small phialai, dedication of Stratonike; phiale of
the Rhodians with Damonikos chief theoros; phiale from king Ptolemy
and the city of the Alexandrians with Philok(t)as chief theoros;
phiale from king (85) Ptolemy and the city of the Alexandrians with
Poseidippos chief theoros; phiale of the Rhodians with Peisistratos
chief theoros; phiale of the city of the Alexandrians with
Theophilos chief theoros; phiale dedication of Pasikrates of Rhodes;
phiale of the Rhodians with Eukles chief theoros; phiale from king
Ptolemy and the city of the Alexandrians with Straton chief theoros.
In
the Oikos which the Andrians dedicated: unstamped gold with that
from the censer, weight 25.3 and in our year of office it was
collected with two rings, the one from the treasure on the Island
and the one found in the sanctuary, weight 19.3. And the following
silver objects: incense dish; argyris; kabasas; kyathos; small
phiale replacing the discarded Therikleian of Demoson; two kylixes,
the one without base, from
90
Πυθέου· μάνης
Πυθέου· καπηλική·
κυλύχνιον ἀντὶ
κριοῦ ὃν ἀνέθηκε
Δημήτριος·
ῥοδιακὴ κύλιξ
ὑποπυθμένιον
οὐκ ἔχουσα,
Θυμοχάρους·
κυμβίον· ἠθμ[ός]·
ἡδυποτίδιον
ἀντὶ τῶν αἰγίσκων
ὧν ἀνέθηκεν
Ἡγήμων· ἡδυποτίδιον
ὅ ἀποκατέστησαν
οἱ ἐπὶ Καλοδίκου
ἱεροποιήσαντες.
ἀριθμὸς Δ𐅃. καὶ
φιάλας παρέδω-
κεν
ἡμῖν 𐅄ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ
καὶ ἄλλ<α>ς
ἐν τῶι τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
𐅄ΔΙ. τούτων ἦσαν
Θυεσταδῶν καὶ
Ὠκυνειδῶν
ἀνάθημα· ἐπὶ
Φιλίου φιάλη·
ἐπ’ Ἀριστοκρίτου
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Ποσειδ[ί]-
κου
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Κλεοστράτου
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Γλαυκιάδου
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Χάρμου
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Ὑψοκλέους
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Μενεκράτου
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Σωσιμάχου
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Φίλλι-
δος
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Τηλεμνήστου
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Μειλιχίδου
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Χαρίλα
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Καλλίμου
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Μειλιχίδου
τοῦ Ἐχεσθένου
φιάλαι δύο·
〚—
— —〛
95
ἐπὶ Προκλέους
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Πολύβου
φιάλη· ἐπ’ Ἀρχεδάμα
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Ἐλπίνου
φιάλαι δύο·
ἐπὶ Φίλλιος
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Θεοπρώτου
φιάλη· ἐπ’ Ἀντιχάρου
φιάλη·
ἐπ’
Ἀντιγόνου φιάλη·
ἐπ’ Ἀναξιθέμιδος
φιάλη· ἐπ’ Ἀρτυσίλεω
φιάλη· φιάλη
Ὠκυνειδῶν καὶ
Θυεσταδῶν,
τρικτυαρχησάντων
Αὐτοσθέ-
νους,
Μενεκράτους·
φιάλη Ὠκυνειδῶν
καὶ Θυεσταδῶν,
τρικτυαρχησάντων
Γλαύκου, Ἀρχεδάμα·
φιάλη Θυεσταδῶν
καὶ Ὠκυνειδῶν,
τρικτυαρχή-
σαντος
Ἀριστοκλέους
κα<τὰ> τὸ αὐτοῦ
μέρος. κεφαλὴ
ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ. ὧν Πτολεμαῖος·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ταμίου Ξένωνος·
φιάλη
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος βασιλέως
Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπιστατοῦντος
Τηλεμνήστου·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαί-
(90)
Pytheas; manes of Pytheas; kapelike; small kylix in place of the ram
that Demetrios dedicated; Rhodian kylix without stand; kymbion from
Thymochares; strainer; hedypotidion for the goats that Hegemon
dedicated; hedypotidion which the hieropoioi during Kalodikos’
archonship dedicated. (Number 15?)
And
he gave over to us 78 phialai and 61 others in the Temple of
Apollo.
Of
those (the following) were dedication of Thyestadai and Okyneidai:
phiale in Philios’ archonship; phiale in Aristokritos’;
phiale in Poseidikos’; phiale in Kleostratos’; phiale in
Glaukiades’; phiale in Charmos’; phiale in Kallimos’;
two phialai in Meilichides son of Echesthenos’; (95) phiale in
Prokles’; phiale in Polybos’; phiale in Archedamas’;
two phialai in Elpinos’; phiale in Phillis’; phiale in
Theoprotos’; phiale in Antichares’; phiale in
Antigonos’; phiale in Anaxithemis’; phiale in
Artysileos’; phiale of Okyneidai and Thyestadai, with
Autosthenes Menekrates trittys-chiefs; phiale of Okyneidai and
Thyestadai, with Glaukos Archedamas trittys-chiefs; phiale of
Okyneidai and Thyestadai, with Aristokles trittys-chief in the same
spot. Sum 28.
Of
those (the following were dedicated by) Ptolemy: phiale of the
Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the choreia, Xenon steward;
phiale of the Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the choreia, with
Telemnestos overseer; phiale of the Deliades, with king Ptolemy
giving the choreia,
100
ου, ταμία Μενύλλου·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπιστατοῦντος
Μνησιμάχου·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασι-
λέως
Πτολεμαίου,
ταμίου Σκύμνου·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ταμίου Ἱερομβρότου·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως
Πτολεμαίου,
ταμίου Διοδότου·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπὶ Σωσιμάχου·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόν-
τος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπὶ Τηλεμνήστου·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπὶ Χαρίλα·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπι-
δόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπὶ Καλλίμου·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπὶ Μειλιχίδου·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
105
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπὶ Πολύβου·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπ’ Ἀρχεδάμα·
φιάλη Δηλιά-
δων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐφ’ Ἐλπίνου·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπὶ Θαρσύνοντος·
φιάλη Δηλι-
άδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπ’ Ἀμφικλέους·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπὶ Φίλλιδος·
φιάλη Δη-
λιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπὶ Τυννάδου·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπὶ Θεοπρώτου·
φιάλη
Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπ’ Ἀντιχάρου·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπ’ Ἀντιγόνου·
(100)
with Menylas steward; phiale of the Deliades, with king Ptolemy
giving the choreia, with Mnesimachos overseer; phiale of the
Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the choreia, with Skymnos
steward; phiale of the Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the
choreia, with Hierombrotos steward; phiale of the Deliades, with
king Ptolemy giving the choreia, with Diodotos steward; phiale of
the Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the choreia, in Sosimachos’
archonship; phiale of the Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the
choreia, in Telemnestos’; phiale of the Deliades, with king
Ptolemy giving the choreia, in Charilas’; phiale of the
Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the choreia, in Kallimos’;
phiale of the Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the choreia, in
Meilichides’; phiale of the Deliades, (105) with king Ptolemy
giving the choreia, in Polybos’; phiale of the Deliades, with
king Ptolemy giving the choreia, in Archidamas’; phiale of the
Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the choreia, in Elpinos’;
phiale of the Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the choreia, in
Tharsynon’s; phiale of the Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving
the choreia, in Amphikles’; phiale of the Deliades, with king
Ptolemy giving the choreia, in Phillis’s; phiale of the
Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the choreia, in Tynnades’;
phiale of the Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the choreia, in
Theoprotos’; phiale of the Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving
the choreia, in Antichares’; phiale of the Deliades, with king
Ptolemy giving the choreia, in Antigonos’;
110
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπὶ Πάχητος·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπ’ Ἀναξιθέμι-
δος·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπὶ Φάνου· φιάλη
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος βασιλέως
Πτολεμαίου,
ἐπ’ Ἀρτυσί-
λεω·
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου.
κεφαλὴ ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ.
ὧν Ἑρμίας· ἐπὶ
Μειλιχίδου
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
Ἑρμίου· ἐπ’
Ἐ-
χεμάντιδος
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
Ἑρμίου· ἐπὶ
Προκλέους
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
Ἑρμίου· ἐπὶ
Πολύβου φιάλη
Δηλιάδων, χο-
ρεῖα
ἐπιδόντος Ἑρμίου·
ἐπ’ Ἀ<ρ>χεδάμα
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
Ἑρμίου· ἐφ’
Ἐλπίνου φιάλη
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος Ἑρμίου·
ἐπὶ Θαρσύ-
115
νοντος φιάλη
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος Ἑρμίου·
ἐπ’ Ἀμφικλείους
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
Ἑρμίου· ἐπὶ
Φίλλιδος φιάλη
Δηλιάδων, χορε[ῖ]-
α·
ἐπὶ Τυννάδου
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
Ἑρμίου· ἐπὶ
Θεοπρώτου
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
Ἑρμίου· ἐπ’
Ἀντιχάρου φιάλη
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖα
ἐπι-
δόντος
Ἑρμίου· ἐπ’
Ἀντιγόνου φιάλη
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος Ἑρμίου·
ἐπὶ Πάχητος φιάλη
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος Ἑρμίου·
ἐπὶ Ἀναξιθέμιδος
φιάλη,
Δηλιάδες, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος Ἑρμίου·
ἐπὶ Φάνου φιάλη,
Δηλιάδες, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος Ἑρμίου·
ἐπ’ Ἀρτυσίλεω
φιάλη, Δηλιάδες,
χορεῖα ἐπι-
δόντος
Ἑρμίου. κεφαλὴ
Δ𐅃ΙΙ. ὧν Φιλέταιρος·
ἐφ’ Ἐλπίνου
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
Φιλεταίρου·
ἐπὶ Θαρσύνοντος
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα
(110)
phiale of the Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the choreia, in
Pachys’; phiale of the Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the
choreia, in Anaxithemis’; phiale of the Deliades, with king
Ptolemy giving the choreia, in Phanes’; phiale of the
Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the choreia, in Artysileos’;
phiale of the Deliades, with king Ptolemy giving the choreia. Sum
27.
Of
those (the following were dedicated by) Hermias: in Meilichides’
archonship phiale of the Deliades, with Hermias giving the choreia;
in Echemantis’ phiale of the Deliades, with Hermias giving the
choreia; in Prokles’, phiale of the Deliades, with Hermias
giving the choreia; in A(r)chedamas’, phiale of the Deliades,
with Hermias giving the choreia; in Elpinos’, phiale of the
Deliades, with Hermias giving the choreia; in Tharsynon’s,
(115) phiale of the Deliades, with Hermias giving the choreia; in
Amphikles’, phiale of the Deliades, with Hermias giving the
choreia; in Phillis’s, phiale of the Deliades, with Hermias
giving the choreia; in Tynnades’, phiale of the Deliades, with
Hermias giving the choreia; in Antichares’, phiale of the
Deliades, with Hermias giving the choreia; in Antigonos’,
phiale of the Deliades, with Hermias giving the choreia; in
Pachys’s, phiale of the Deliades, with Hermias giving the
choreia; in Anaxithemis’, phiale of the Deliades, with Hermias
giving the choreia; in Phanes’s, phiale of the Deliades, with
Hermias giving the choreia; in Artysileos’, phiale of the
Deliades, with Hermias giving the choreia. Sum 17.
Of
those (the following were dedicated by) Philetairos: in Elpinos’s
archonship, phiale of the Deliades, with Philetairos giving the
choreia; in Tharsynon’s, phiale of the Deliades, with
Philetairos giving the choreia;
120
ἐπιδόντος
Φιλεταίρου·
ἐπ’ Ἀμφικλέους
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
Φιλεταίρου·
ἐπὶ Φίλλιδος
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
Φιλεταίρου·
ἐπὶ
Θεοπρώτου
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
Φιλεταίρου·
ἐπ’ Ἀντιχάρου
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
Φιλεταίρου·
ἐπ’ Ἀντιγόνου
φιάλη Δηλι-
άδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
Φιλεταίρου·
ἐπὶ Πάχητος φιάλη
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος
Φιλεταίρου·
ἐπ[ὶ] Ἀναξιθέμιδος
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος
Φιλεταίρου·
ἐπὶ Φάνου φιάλη
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος
Φιλεταίρου·
ἐπ’ Ἀρτυσίλεω
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
Φιλεταί-
ρου.
κεφαλὴ ΔΙ. ἐπὶ
Φάνου φιάλη
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖα
ὑπὲρ βασιλίσσης
Στρατονίκης·
ἐπ’ Ἀρτυσίλεω
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ὑπὲρ
βασιλίσσης
125
Στρατονίκης·
ἐπὶ Φάνου φιάλη
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος βασιλέως
Ἀντιγόνου· ἐπ’
Ἀρτυσίλεω
φιάλη Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασι-
λέως
Ἀντιγόνου. κεφαλὴ
ΙΙΙΙ. φιάλη, ἀνάθημα
βασιλέως Παιρισάδου·
φιάλη, ἀνάθημα
Ἀκεστίμου
Κρητός· ἐπ’
Ἀρτυσίλεω
φιάλη, ἀνάθημα
Νι-
κολάου.
κεφαλὴ ΙΙΙ. καὶ
τῶν ἀρχαίων φιάλαι
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ. καὶ
τάδε ἐπὶ τῆς
ἡμετέρας ἀρχῆς·
φιάλην Νικόλαος
Ἀγίου Αἰτωλὸς
ἀνέθηκεν Ἀπόλ<λ>ωνι
Ἀρ-
τέμιδι
Λητοῖ, ὁλκὴ Η·
φιάλην Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖα ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
ὁλκὴ Η· φιάλην
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος Ἑρμίου,
ὁλκὴ Η·
φιάλη
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖα
ἐπιδόντος βασιλέως
Ἀντιγόνου, ὁλκὴ
Η. καὶ τάδε ποτήρια
ὧν ἀνέθηκε
Στησίλεως·
ἐπὶ Λυσιξένου
θηρίκλειος
καὶ κυμ-
(120)
in Amphikles’, phiale of the Deliades, with Philetairos giving
the choreia; in Phillis’s, phiale of the Deliades, with
Philetairos giving the choreia; in Theoprotos’, phiale of the
Deliades, with Philetairos giving the choreia; in Antichares’,
phiale of the Deliades, with Philetairos giving the choreia; in
Antigonos’, phiale of the Deliades, with Philetairos giving
the choreia; in Pachys’s, phiale of the Deliades, with
Philetairos giving the choreia; in Anaxithemis’, phiale of the
Deliades, with Philetairos giving the choreia; in Phanes’s,
phiale of the Deliades, with Philetairos giving the choreia; in
Artysileos’, phiale of the Deliades, with Philetairos giving
the choreia. Sum 11.
In
Phanes’ archonship, phiale of the Deliades, choreia for queen
Stratonike; in Artysileos’, phiale of the Deliades, choreia
for queen (125) Stratonike; in Phanes’ phiale of the Deliades,
with king Antigonos giving the choreia; in Artysileos’ phiale
of the Deliades, with king Antigonos giving the choreia. Sum 4.
Phiale,
dedication of king Pairisades; phiale dedication of Akestimos of
Crete; in Artysileos’ archonship phiale, dedication of
Nikolaos. Sum 3.
And
of the old, 49 phialai.
And
the following in the year of our office: Nikolaos son of Hagios from
Aetolia dediated a phiale to Apollo Artemis Leto, weight 100; phiale
of the Deliades, king Ptolemy giving the choreia, weight 100; phiale
of the Deliades, Hermios giving the choreia, weight 100; phiale of
the Deliades, king Antigonos giving the choreia, weight 100.
And
the following cups from what Stesileos dedicated: in Lysixenos’
archonship, Therikleian and kymbion;
130
βίον· ἐπὶ Κτησικλέο<υ>ς
μάνης καὶ φιάλη
καρυωτ<ή>· ἐπὶ
Δημώνακτος
μάνης καὶ ἄλλος
μάνης· ἐπὶ Κλεοκρίτου
τηιουργὴς καὶ
ῥοδιακή· ἐπὶ
Πυρρίδου
καρχήσιον
καὶ κυμβίον
καὶ ἡδυποτίδιον·
ἐπὶ Φίλλιδος
φιάλη καρυωτὴ
καὶ ἡδυποτίδιον·
ἐπὶ Διοδότου
φιάλαι δύο·
ἐπὶ Ξένωνος
θηρίκλεος
πυθμένα οὐ-
κ
ἔχουσα καὶ
κυμβίον· ἐπὶ
Δημοκρίτου
ῥοδιακὸν ἔμβλημα
οὐκ ἔχον· ἐπ’
Ἀνδροθάλου
χιουργής· ἐπ’
Ὀλυμπιάδου
ῥοδιακὸν ἔμβλημα
οὐκ ἔχον καὶ
κυμβίον·
ἐπὶ Κώκωνος
ῥοδιακὸν πυθμένα
οὐκ ἔχον καὶ
βατιάκη· ἐπὶ
Θεοδότου
τηιουργὴς
ἔμβλημα οὐκ
ἔχουσα καὶ
κόνδυ· ἐπ’
Ἀφθονήτου κονω-
νεία·
ἐπὶ Τιμοθέμιδος
χιουργὴς πυθμένα
οὐκ ἔχουσα
καὶ κόνδυ· ἐπὶ
Δημέου προτομὴ
καὶ ἡδυποτίδιον·
ἐπὶ Φιλίου
θηρίκλειος
ἔμβληθμα οὐκ
ἔχουσα·
135
ἐπ’ Ἀριστοκρίτου
θηρίκλειος·
ἐπὶ Ποσειδίκου
μάνης καὶ μιλησιουργής·
ἐπὶ Κλεοστρ<ά>του
ἡδυποτίς, ἄλλη
ἡδυποτίς· ἐπὶ
Γλαυκιάδου
βατιάκη καὶ
ἄλ-
λη
βατιάκη· ἐπὶ
Χάρμου βατιάκιον·
ἐφ’ Ὑψοκλέους
κυμβίον· ἐπὶ
Δημέου φιάλη
καὶ ἄλλη φιάλη·
ἐπὶ Φίλλιος
ῥοδιακὴ ἔμβλημα
οὐκ ἔχουσα
καὶ βατιάκη·
ἐπ’ Ἀ[ν]-
τιγόνου
βατιάκη· ἐπὶ
Καλοδίκου
ῥοδιακὴ ἔμβλημα
οὐκ ἔχουσα
οὐδὲ οὖς· ἐπὶ
Κυρβηλίωνος
φιάλη καὶ ἄλλη
φιάλη· ἐπὶ Μειλιχίδου
ῥοδιακὴ ἔμβλημα
οὐκ ἔ-
χουσα
καὶ φιάλιον·
ἐπὶ Χαρίλα ῥοδιακὸν
πυθμένα οὐκ
ἔχον καὶ μάνιον
οὖς οὐκ ἔχον·
ἐπὶ Καλ<λ>ίμου
ῥοδιακὴ πυθμένα
οὐκ ἔχουσα
καὶ μάνιον οὖς
οὐκ ἔ-
χον·
ἐπὶ Μειλιχίδου
φιάλη· ἐπ’ Ἐχεμάντιος
ῥοδιακή· ἐπὶ
Προκλέους
ῥοδιακή· ἐπ’
Ἀρχεδάμα βατιάκη
καὶ ἄλλη βατιάκη·
ἐφ’ Ἐλπίνου
φιάλιον, ἄλ<λ>ο
φιάλιον·
(130)
in Ktesikles’, manes and knobbed phiale; in Demonax’s,
manes and another manes; in Kleokritos’, Thean-crafted and
Rhodian; in Pyrriades, karchesion and kymbion and hedypotidion; in
Phillis’s, knobbed phiale and hedypotidion; in Diodotos’
two phialai; in Xenon’s Therikleian without base and kymbion;
in Demokritos’, Rhodian without figured boss; in Androthales’,
Chian crafted; in Olympiades’, Rhodian without figured boss
and kymbion; in Kokon’s, Rhodian without base and batiake; in
Theodotos’, Thean-crafted without figured boss and kondy; in
Aphthonetos’ Cononian (kylix); in Tiimothemis’, Chian
crafted without base and kondy; in Demeas’s head and
hedypotidion; in Philios’s Therikleian without figured boss;
(135) in Aristokritos’, Therikleian; in Poseidikos’,
manes and Milesian-crafted; in Kleostr(a)tos’, hedypotis,
another hedypotis; in Glaukiades’, batiake and another
batiake; in Charmos’s, small batiake; in Hypsokles’,
kymbion; in Demeas’s, phiale and another phiale; in Phillis’s
Rhodian without figured boss and batiake; in Antigonos’,
batiake; in Kalodikos’, Rhodian without figured boss or
handle; in Kyrbelion’s, phiale and another phiale; in
Meilichides’, Rhodian without figured boss and small phiale;
in Charilas’ Rhodian without base and manion without handle;
in Kalimos’, Rhodian without base and manion without handle;
in Meilichides’ phiale; in Echemantis’, Rhodian; in
Prokles’, Rhodian; in Archedamas’, batiake and another
batiake; in Elpinos’, small phiale and another small phiale;
140
ἐπὶ Θαρσύνοντος
βατιάκη καὶ
φιάλη· ἐπ’ Ἀμφικλείους
ῥοδιακὴ τὸ οὖς
ἀπεαγῦα· ἐπὶ
Φίλλιος τοῦ
Ποσειδίκου
ῥοδιακὴ πυθμένα
οὐκ ἔχουσα
καὶ μάνιον· ἐπὶ
Τυννάδ[ου]
ῥοδιακὴ
καὶ μάνιον· ἐπὶ
Πάχητος ῥοδιακή,
ἄλλη ῥοδιακὴ
ἔμβλημα οὐκ
ἔχουσα, ἄλλη
ῥοδιακὴ ἔμβλημα
οὐκ ἔχουσα
καὶ σκάφιον·
ἐπὶ Φάνου ῥοδιακὴ
καὶ σκάφιον·
καὶ
Μελιτοῦς ἀνάθημα
φιάλη· καὶ Ἱπποδάμα
ἀνάθημα κόνδυ
καὶ ἄλλο κόνδυ.
ἀριθμὸς 𐅄ΔΔ𐅃Ι.
ταῦτα ἐστήσαμεν
ἐν τῶι ζυγῶι
τῶι ἐλάττονι
τῶι ἐν ἀγορανο-
μίωι
πρὸς ἀργύριον
ἀτ<τ>ικὸν ὁλοσχερές,
καὶ ἥλκυσεν
σὺν τοῖς πυθμέσι
καὶ τοῖς ὠσὶν
τοῖς ἀποπεπτωκόσιν
δραχμὰς 𐅆ΗΗΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂.
ταῦτα παρέδομεν
τοῖς
μεθ’ ἡμᾶς ἱεροποιοῖς·
καὶ τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς
ἡμετέρας ἀρχῆς·
σκάφιον, ὁλκὴ
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
καὶ κύλιξ ἡδυποτίς,
ὁλκὴ ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ.
καὶ ξύλα ἦν·
κέδρινα ΔΙΙΙΙ·
πτελέϊνα 𐅃ΙΙ·
145
φάλαγγες πύξιναι
ΔΔ· καὶ οὗ αἱ
Γραφαί· κυπαρίσσινα
ξύλα ΙΙ καὶ
δρυΐνων παράτομα
ΙΙ. τὰ δρύϊνα
κατεχρήσθη εἰς
τὸ ἡλιοτρόπιον.
Κτησίαι τῶι
ἐργωνήσαντι
ποιῆσαι
τὸ κοιλόσταθμον
καὶ τὰς θύρας
ἔδομεν μετὰ
τοῦ ἀρχιτέκτονος
καὶ ἐπιμελητῶν·
ξύλα τῶν κεδρίνων
𐅃ΙΙΙ· πτελέϊνα
ΙΙΙΙ· φάλαγγας
πυξίνας ΔΙ̣
καὶ
τὰ κυπαρίσσινα
ΙΙ. ἀπὸ τῶν δοθέντων
περιεγένετο
παρατετμημένα·
κέδρινα ΙΙΙΙ,
μῆκος πήχεων
ἕκαστον δέκα
δύο· σανίδες
τῶν εἰς τὰς
θύρας
τμηθεισῶν πέντε
δεκαπήχεις·
πτελεΐνου
παράτομον μῆκος
πήχεων δέκα·
στροφεῖς οἱ
ἀποδοκιμασθέντες
δύο· πτελέϊνον
δεκάπη-
χυ·
ἄλλο πτελέϊνον
πήχεων ἕξ· ἄλλο
πτελέϊνον· vac.
ἄλλο πτελέϊνον·
vac. τῶν στροφέων
ἀπότομον μῆκος
πήχεων πέντε·
παράτομα τῶν
(140)
in Tharsynon’s, batiake and phiale; in Amphikleias’,
Rhodian with handle broken off; in Phillis son of Poseidikos’,
Rhodian without base and manion; in Pynnades’, Rhodian and
manion; in Paches’s, Rhodian, another Rhodian without figured
boss, another Rhodian without figured boss and skaphion; in Phanes’
Rhodian and skaphion; and phiale, dedication of Melito; and kondy
and another kondy, dedication of Hippodamas. Number 76. These we put
in the smaller scales in the Market Supervisor’s Office
against Attic coin altogether and they weighed with the fallen off
bases and ears drachmas 5329. These we gave over to the hieropoioi
after us.
And
the following in our year of office: skaphion, weight 48; and
hedypotis kylix, weight 42.4.
And
the wood was: cedar 14; elm 7; (145) 20 boxwood beams; and where the
Graphai: cypress wood 2 and pieces of oak 2; the oak was used for
the sundial; to make the coffered ceiling and the doors with (the
approval) of the architect and the overseers we gave to Ktesias the
carpenter: 8 pieces of cedar; 4 elm; 11 boxwood beams; and the 2
cypress pieces. From what was given planks with rebates were left: 4
cedar, each 12 cubits in length; five ten cubit planks cut for the
doors; elm plank with rebate, ten cubits in length; 2 tested/trued
door sockets; ten cubit elm board; another elm 6 cubits; another elm
[space] another elm; length
cut from the sockets, 5 cubits in length;
150
κεδρίνων ἐπὶ
τὸ πλάτος παρατετμημένα
ἑπτά· τῶν κυπαρισσίνων
ἀπότομα δύο
μὲν διπήχη, δύο
δὲ τριπήχη· τούτων
ἓν κατεχρήσθη
εἰς δέλτον·
ἀπότομα
κεδρίνων δέκα
ἑπτά· πτελεΐνων
ἀπότομα τρία·
κεδρίνων παράτομα
ἐπὶ τὸ στενὸν
παρατετμημένων
ὀκτώ· ἀπὸ τοῦ
ὑπερθύρου τῶν
σανί-
δων
παράτομα ἐπὶ
τὸ πλάτος δύο,
πήχεων ἓξ ἑκάτερον·
καὶ ἐπὶ τὸ στενὸν
ἕν· τῶμ πυξίνων
ἀπότομα κολλήματα
κυπαρίσσινα
δέκα ἕν. vac.
ἀπὸ
τῆς ἐπάρσεως
τοῦ θυρέτρου
τοῦ ἐν τῶι ναῶι
τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
περιεγένοντο
λίθοι πέντε
καὶ τῶν λίθων
δεσμοὶ δέκα
ἕξ· vac.
καὶ
ἀπὸ τοῦ κεράμου
τοῦ ἀγορασθέντος
ἐπὶ τοὺς οἴκους
περιεγένοντο
καλυπτῆρες
ἑκατὸν δέκα
τέτταρες. vac.
(150)
seven planks with rebates cutting from the cedar pieces cut
widthwise; cutting from the cypress pieces, two two cubit, two three
cubit; one of these was used for the tablet; cutting from the cedar
17; cutting from the elm three; rebate cut from the cedar of the
eight cut along the narrow; cutting from the boxwood eleven cypress
laminates [space] and from
the pottery bought for the houses one hundred fourteen rooftiles
were left. [space]
ID442 (179 BC) and ID
2 442B (179 BC)
http://epigraphy.packhum.org/text/62921
https://web.archive.org/web/20151019042845/http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/translations/442translation.htm
Virtually
complete on this side; the Artemision treasure can be supplemented
from 443/444/461, which present "une concordance parfaite"
and "replissent les lacunes sans excès comme sans
déficit" (D 168). The fixed order and unvarying weights
of this last group of Independence inventories shows that inventory
formats depend less on overseeing group (Amphictyonians vs
Hieropoioi vs Athenians) than on practical exigencies. The influx of
hundreds of endowment phialai has confused the order, which is now a
combination of topographic listings and series of epeteia. There are
changes beyond format: many new sorts of coins are now listed, there
are many broken pieces, there are many fewer individual phialai, the
Athenian crowns have disappeared, the Artemision rhymoi have
returned. For the first time we have indications of accountability.
face
A
θεοί.
1
[λόγος] ἱεροποιῶν
τῶν ἱεροποιησάντων
τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν
τὸν ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Δημάρου, Ἀμφοτεροῦ
τοῦ Ἀριστέου,
Πολυξ<έ>νου
τοῦ Παρμενίωνος,
Σιλήνου τοῦ
Σιλήνου, Φιλίππου
τοῦ Ἀκεσιμβρό-
του.
τόδε παρελάβομεν
ἀργύριον ἐν τῶι
ναῶι τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
ἐν τεῖ κιβωτῶι
τεῖ ἱερᾶι, παρούσης
βουλῆς καὶ
τοῦ ἄρχοντος
τοῦ τῆς πόλεως
Δημάρου καὶ
τοῦ γραμματέως
τοῦ τῆς πό-
λεως
Ποσειδίκου
καὶ τῶν πρυτάνεων
τῶν κατὰ μῆνα
καὶ τοῦ γραμματέως
τοῦ τῶν ἱεροποιῶν
Νεοκροντίδου,
παρ’ ἱεροποιῶν
Συνωνύμου καὶ
Κρίττιος· στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα·
τὸ ἀπελθὸν ἐκ
Τήνου 𐅆Χ· ἄλλον
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· τὸ ἀπελθὸν
ἐκ Τήνου 𐅆Χ·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
τὸ ἀπελθὸν ἐκ
Τήνου 𐅆Χ· ἄλλον
στάμνον ἐπιγρα-
5
φὴν ἔχοντα· τὸ
ἀπελθὸν ἐκ Τήνου
𐅆Χ· ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
τὸ ἀπελθὸν ἐκ
Τήνου 𐅆Χ· ἄλλον
στ[ά]μνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· τὸ ἀπελθὸν
ἐκ Τήνου 𐅆Χ·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· τὸ ἀπελθὸν
ἐκ Τήνου 𐅆𐅅ΗΗΗ𐅃𐅦𐅁𐅀·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
τὸ ἐν τῇ Μινόῃ
φανὲν 𐅆Χ· ἐν ὧι
λοιπὸν ἔνεστιν
ΧΧΧΗΗΗΗ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀/·
ἄλλον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχον-
τα·
τὸ ἀνενεχθὲν
ἐκ τῆς Μινόης
ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂, καὶ
τὸ ἀπ[ε]λθὸν πρῶτον
ἐκ Τήνου ἐν τῶι
κυνούχωι ΗΗΗΔΔΔ,
καὶ τὸ [ἐ]ν τῇ Μινόῃ
ὕστερον φανὲν
ΗΗΔΔΔΙΙΙΙ, καὶ
τὸ ἀνήνεγκεν
Πάχης 𐅄𐅃𐅂, καὶ
τὸ
〚—
—〛 παρὰ
Πολυξένου,
Πάχητος, Πολυβούλου
ΗΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ𐅁, καὶ
Λευκίου 𐅂𐅂·
τὸ πᾶν ἔνει ΧΔΔ𐅃𐅂Ι𐅁·
ἄλλον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἐξ στάμνων
δέκα ΧΧΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅦𐅁𐅀·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα·
μηνὸς Ποσιδεῶνος
τόδε ἐχώρισαν
ἀργύριον τοῦ
χορηγικοῦ ἀπὸ
τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου
Ἀπολλόδωρος
Μαντιθέου, Φιλοκλῆς
Φιλοκλέους
αἱρεθέντες
ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου
κατὰ τὸ
10
ψήφισμα, ἐν ὧι
ἐπεγέγραπτο·
λοιπὸν ἔνει
𐅃ΙΙΙ𐅀· ἄλλον
στάμνον ἐπιγρα̣φὴν
ἔχοντα· χορηγικὸν
θέντων [Φ]ωκαιέως
τ[οῦ] Ἀπολλοδώρου
καὶ Διαδήλου
τοῦ Διαδήλου
Η𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂Ι𐅀//· <ἄ>λλος
στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχ[ω]ν·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλε[ί]δου,
ἐπὶ Δημητρίου
Ποσ[ι]δεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Φωκίων Κλεοκρίτου
καὶ Παρμενίων
ὁ κληρονόμος
τοῦ πα-
τρὸς
Πολυβούλου
εἰς τὴν [ἀ]πόδοσιν
τῶι θεῶι τῶν
στεφάνων, ἐν ὧι
λοιπὸν Η· ἄλλον
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Τελεσαρχίδου
Ποσιδε-
ῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Παρμενίων καὶ
Μνῆσις τὰ παρὰ
τῶν ταμιῶν τῶν
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀπατουρίου
Ὀρθοκλέους
καὶ Πολυξένου,
ὃ ἔφασαν περιεῖναι
[ἀ]πὸ τῶν τεχνιτῶν
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ἄλλον
στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Νικίου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθε〚—〛σαν
{ἔθεσαν} εἰς
τὸ ἱ[ε]ρὸν ἱεροποιοὶ
Δημήτριος καὶ
Λ[ε]οντιάδης
κατὰ τὸ ψήφισμα
τοῦ δήμου
15
[τ]ὰ δάνεα παρὰ
τῶν γεωργῶν, ἐν
ὧι λοιπὸν
𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀/·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴ[ν] ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Δημητρίου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱ-
ερὸν
ταμίαι Φωκίων
Κλεοκρίτου
καὶ Παρμενίων
ὁ κληρονόμος
τοῦ πατρὸς
Πολυβούλου
ὅρων ΔΔΔΔ· ἄλλον
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐ-
π’
Ἀρίστωνος 〚—
— — —〛 Πο[σιδε]ῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Ἀντίγονος καὶ
Ἀλεξικὸς ὃ
κατέβαλε πρὸς
αὐτ[οὺς] ὁ ταμίας
Φωκίων καὶ ὁ
Πολυβούλου
κληρονόμος
Παρμενίων, ὃ ἔφασαν
περι-
γενέσθαι
αὐτοῖς ἀπὸ τοῦ
διαταχ[θέν]τος
εἰς τὰ ξένια
τοῖς τεχνίταις
ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂· ἄλλον
στάμνον ἐπιγραφ[ὴ]ν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Ἀπατουρίου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν
ἱεροποιοὶ
Πραξιμένης κα[ὶ]
Τε[λ]εσαρχίδης,
ἐν ὧι λοιπὸν
ΗΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅦𐅀//·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Τελεσαρχίδου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔ-
20
θεσαν ἱεροποιοὶ
Εὐβοεὺς καὶ
Παρμεν[ί]ων κατὰ
τὸ ψήφισμα τοῦ
δήμου τὰ δάνεα
ἃ ἀπέδωκαν κ[αὶ]
τοὺς τόκους
Ὄστακος καὶ
Βόηθος καὶ
Καίβων καὶ
Θεόδωρος, τὸ
πᾶν ΧΧ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
ἄ-
λλον
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ληναιῶν[ος], ἔθεσαν
ταμίαι οἱ ἐπὶ
Τελεσαρχίδου
Παρμενίων καὶ
Μνῆσις τὸ περιγενόμενον
ἀ-
πὸ
τῶν τεχνιτῶν
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ἄλλος στάμνος
<ἐ>πιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Ἕλληνος
καὶ Μαντινέως,
ἐπὶ Τ[ελ]εσαρχίδου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Παρμενίων καὶ
Μνῆσις ὅρων
ΔΔΔΔ·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Ἕλληνος
καὶ Μαντινέως,
ἐπὶ Νικίου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
[ἔ]θεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν Λεοντιάδης
καὶ Δημήτριος
ἱεροποιοὶ
κατὰ τὸ ψήφισμα
τοῦ δήμο[υ],
ὃ
οὐκ ἐδανείσαντο
οἱ ἐγκεκτημένοι
ἐν Ῥηνείαι, ἐν
ὧι λοιπὸν ΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ
25
ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Καίβων καὶ
Μνησικλείδης
εἰς ἀπόδοσιν
τῶι θεῶι οὗ
προεχρήσατο
ἡ πόλις εἰς
τ[οὺ]ς στεφάνους
τόν τε βασιλεῖ
Φιλίππωι καὶ
τὸν βασιλεῖ
Εὐμένει καὶ
τὸν εἰς Ῥόδον
ΧΗΗΗ·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Ἕλληνος
καὶ Μαντινέως,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
[Π]οσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Καίβων καὶ
Μνησικλείδης
εἰς ἀπόδοσιν
τῶι
θεῶι
εἰς τὰ ὀφειλόμενα
δάνεια παρὰ τεῖ
πόλει ἀντὶ τῶν
ἀποδόσεων ὧν
πρότερον ἐψ[η]φίσατο
ὁ δῆμος Χ· ἄλλος
στάμνος ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχων· ἀπὸ τῆς
Φίλωνος καὶ
Σιλήνου, ἐ-
πὶ
Φωκαιέως Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Καίβων καὶ
Μνησικλείδης
τῶν τ[ρα]πεζῶν
ἀπὸ τῆς στοᾶς
ΗΗ· ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ
Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
〚—〛
Καίβων
καὶ Μνησ[ικ]λείδης
ὅρων ΔΔΔΔ· ἄλλος
στάμνος ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχων· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρα-
30
κλείδου, ἐπὶ
Φωκαι[έ]ως Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ἱεροποιοὶ
Κρίττις καὶ
Συνώνυμος τὸ
[πε]σὸν παρ’
Ἀριστοφάνου
δάνειον ὃ ἐδάνεισαν
αὐτῶι ἱεροποιοὶ
Εὐβοεὺς καὶ
Παρμενίων,
ἐν
ὧι λοιπὸν
ΗΗ𐅄𐅂𐅂[Ι]ΙΙ𐅁//·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώ[ρ]ου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ἀπατουριῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ἱεροποιοὶ
οἱ ἐπὶ Τελεσαρχίδου
Εὐβοεὺς
καὶ Παρμενίων
τὸ περιὸν ἐκ τοῦ
λόγου 𐅂𐅄ΔΔΙ𐅁//·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Καίβων
καὶ
Μνησικλείδης
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
τὸ χορηγικὸν
𐅂ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ἄλλος στάμν[ο]ς
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ [τ]ῆς Ἕλληνος
καὶ Μαντινέως,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ἀρησιῶνος, ἔθεσαν
εἰς
τὸ
ἱερὸν Πραξιμένης
καὶ Τελεσαρχίδης
ἱεροποιοὶ οἱ
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀπατουρίου,
ἐν ὧι λοιπὸν
ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂̣𐅂𐅂/·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐ-
35
πὶ Φωκαιέως
Ἀρησιῶνος, ἔθεσαν
ἱεροποιοὶ
Πραξιμένης καὶ
Τελεσαρχίδης
ο[ἱ] ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀπ̣ατουρίου
τὸ λοιπὸν τοῦ
περιόντος ἐκ
τῆς στήλης
𐅅ΗΗ𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ἄλλος στά-
μνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ἀρησιῶνος, ἔθεσαν
〚—〛
ἱεροποιοὶ
οἱ ἐπὶ Ἀπατουρίου
Πραξιμένης καὶ
Τελεσαρχίδης
οὗ ἀναφέρε-
ται
ἐν τῇ στήλῃ τὸ
περιὸν 𐅂ΧΧΧΧΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ/·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγ[ρ]αφὴν ἔχων·
𐅅ΗΗ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι𐅁/.
κεφαλὴ οὗ
παρελάβομεν
ἐν τεῖ ἱερᾶι
κιβωτῶι
𐅇Μ𐅅ΗΗΗΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀/.
καὶ
τόδε ἄλλο
ἀργύριον ἐτέθη
ἐπὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς εἰς τὴν
ἱερὰν κιβωτόν,
παρόντος ἄρχοντος
τοῦ τῆς πόλεως
καὶ τῶν γραμματέων
καὶ τῶν πρυτάνεων
τῶν κατὰ μῆ-
να·
ἐν στάμνωι ὧι
ἐπιγραφή· ἀπὸ
τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Δημ[ά]ρου
Ἀρησιῶνος, ἔθεσαν
ἱεροποιοὶ
Πολύξενος,
Φίλιππος, Ἀμφοτερός,
Σίληνος τὸ
δάνειον ὃ κατέβαλε
Ἕρ-
40
μων Σόλωνος
𐅅Η𐅃Ι𐅁 καὶ τόκον
ὃν ἔφη ὀφείλειν
ΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂Ι·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ἀπατουριῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν
ἱεροποιοὶ
οἱ ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Φωκαιέως Κρίττις
Νικάρχου, Συν[ώ]νυμος
Ἱερομβρότου
τὸ περιὸν ἐκ τοῦ
λόγου ΗΗΔΔΙΙΙΙ𐅀·
ἄλλον στάμνον,
ἀπὸ τῆς Ἕλληνος
καὶ Μαντινέως,
ἐπὶ Δημά-
ρου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος [κα]ὶ
Φωκαιεὺς κατὰ
〚—〛
τὴν
διάταξιν εἰς
ἀπόδοσιν τῶν
δανείων τῶν
ὀφειλομένων
τῶι θεῶι παρὰ
τεῖ πόλει Χ,
καὶ
εἰς ἀπόδοσιν
τοῦ προχρησθέντος
εἰς τοὺς στεφάνο[υς]
τῶι βασιλεῖ
Φιλίππωι καὶ
τῶι βασιλεῖ
Μ[α]σ[α]ννάσαι καὶ
εἰς τὸ προσοφειλόμενον
εἰς τοὺς στεφάνους
τοὺς ἐπ’ ἄρ-
χοντος
Τελεσαρχίδου
𐅂ΧΗΗΗ𐅄· ἄλλον
στάμνον, [ἀ]πὸ τῆς
Φίλωνος καὶ
Σιλήνου, ἐπὶ
Δημάρου Ποσιδεῶ[νο]ς,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς τῆς
ἀγορᾶς 𐅂ΧΗΗΗ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁/·
45
ἄλλον στάμνον,
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Δ[η]μάρου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος κ[αὶ
Φ]ωκαιεὺς τῶν
ὅρων 𐅂ΔΔΔΔ·
ἄλλον στάμνον,
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σι-
λήνου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν [τα]μίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς τὸ
χορηγικὸν
𐅂Η[Η]ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ἄλλον στάμνον,
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ποσιδεῶν〚—〛ος
{Ποσιδεῶνος},
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μένυλλο[ς κ]αὶ
Φωκαιεὺς τραπεζῶν
ΗΗ· ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ποσιδεῶ-
νος,
ἔθεσαν ἱεροποιοὶ
οἱ ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Τ[ελε]σαρχίδου
Εὐβοεὺς καὶ
Παρμενίων τὸ
πραχθὲν ἐνηροσίων,
ἐνοικίω[ν], τελῶν,
τόκων 𐅆Χ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀//·
ἄλλον στά-
μνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Φί[λω]νος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱ<ε>ρὸν ἱεροποιοὶ
οἱ ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Τελεσαρχίδου
Εὐβοεὺς καὶ
Παρμενίων τὸ
50
λοιπὸν τοῦ ἐκ
τῆς στήλης οὗ
ἔπραξαν ἐνηροσίων,
ἐνοικίων, τελῶν,
τόκων Χ𐅅Η· ἄλλον
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
{ε} ἐπὶ Δημά-
ρου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ἱεροποιοὶ
Πολύξενος,
Σίληνος, Ἀμφοτερός,
Φίλιππος τὸ
δάνειον ὃ ἀπέδωκεν
Πάχης ὑπὲρ τοῦ
πατρὸς Διογένου
ὃ ἐδανείσατο
παρὰ ἱεροποιῶν
Εὐβοέως
καὶ Παρμενίωνος
𐅅, καὶ ὃν ἀπέδωκεν
τόκον, φάμενος
ὀφείλειν, ἐνιαυτοῦ
καὶ μηνῶν δύο
𐅄Δ· ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ποσιδεῶ-
νος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς τὸ
περιὸν ἀπὸ τῶν
τεχνιτῶν Δ𐅃Ι.
κεφαλὴ τοῦ
τεθέντος ἐπὶ
τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς 𐅂ΜΧΧΧΧ𐅅ΗΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι𐅀.
κεφα-
λὴ
τοῦ παραδοθέντος
ἡμῖν καὶ τεθέντος
ἐπὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς 𐅇ΜΜ𐅆𐅅𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂/·
vac. καὶ χαλκοῦ
τοῦ παραδοθέντος
ἡμῖν ὑπὸ τῶν ταμιῶν
Μενύλλου καὶ
Φωκαι-
55
έως ΧΧΧ𐅅ΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ.
μηνὸς Ἱεροῦ
ἐξείλομεν εἰς
τὰ ἔργα παρόντος
ἄρχοντος τοῦ
τῆς πόλεως καὶ
τῶν γραμματέων
καὶ τῶν πρυτάνεων
τῶν κατὰ μῆνα·
στά-
μνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Τελεσαρχίδου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ἱεροποιοὶ
Εὐβοεὺς καὶ
Παρμενίων κατὰ
τὸ ψήφισμα τοῦ
δή-
μου
τὸ δάνειον ὃ
ἀπέδωκεν 〚—
—〛 Ὄστακος
Κτησικλέους
𐅅, καὶ τόκον ὃν
ἔφη προσοφείλειν
ΔΔ𐅦, καὶ τὸ δάνειον
ὃ ἀπέδωκεν Βόηθος
Ὀρθοκλέους
𐅅, καὶ τόκον ὃν
ἔφη προσ-
οφείλειν
ΔΔ𐅦, καὶ τὸ δάνειον
ὃ ἀπέδωκεν Καίβων
Καίβωνος 𐅅,
καὶ τόκον ὃν
ἔφη προσοφείλειν
ΔΔ𐅦, καὶ τὸ δάνειον
ὃ ἀπέδωκεν
Θεόδωρος Σωσιβίου
𐅅, καὶ τόκον ὃν
ἔφη
προσοφείλειν
ΔΔ𐅦· τὸ πᾶν
ΧΧ𐅅ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ.
μηνὸς Γαλαξιῶνος
εἰκάδι προείλομεν
ἀπὸ στάμνου οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· ἀπὸ
τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ἀρη-
60
σιῶνος, ἔθεσαν
ἱεροποιοὶ οἱ
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀπατουρίου
Πραξιμένης καὶ
Τελεσαρχίδης
οὗ ἀναφέρετ<αι>
ἐν τῇ στήλῃ τὸ
περιὸν 𐅂ΧΧΧΧΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
ἀπὸ τούτ[ο]υ
ἀφείλο-
μεν
εἰς τὸν στέφανον
τῶι βασιλεῖ
Φιλίππωι ΧΗΗΗ𐅄·
λοιπὸν ἔνεστιν
𐅂ΧΧ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
ἀπὸ τούτου
μηνὸς Θαργηλιῶνος
πέμπτῃ ἱσταμένου
προείλο-
μεν
εἰς τὰ ἔργα
𐅂ΧΧ· λοιπὸν
ἔνεστιν 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ.
μηνὸς Βουφονιῶνος
τρίτῃ ἀπιόντος
τοῦτο ἐξείλομεν
τὸ περιὸν ἐν τῶι
στάμνωι εἰς τὰ
ἔργα τὰς 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ.
καὶ τόδε ἄλλο
ἀργύριον ἐξείλομεν
μηνὸς Βουφονιῶνος
εἰς τὰ ἔργα·
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Φίλωνος καὶ
Σιλήνου, ἐπὶ
Φωκαιέως Ποσιδεῶ-
νος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Καίβων καὶ
Μνησικλείδης
{Ι} εἰς ἀπόδοσιν
τῶι θεῶι οὗ
προεχρήσατο
ἡ πόλις εἰς
τοὺς στεφάνους
τόν τε βασιλεῖ
Φιλίππωι καὶ
τὸν βασιλεῖ
Εὐ-
65
μένει καὶ τὸν
εἰς Ῥόδον 𐅂ΧΗΗΗ.
μηνὸς Ποσιδεῶνος
ἐξείλομεν ἀπὸ
στάμνου οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· ἀπὸ
τῆς Ἕλληνος
καὶ Μαντινέως,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν
ταμίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς κατὰ
τὴν διάταξιν εἰς
ἀπόδοσιν τῶν
δανείων τῶν
ὀφειλομένων
τῶι θεῶι παρὰ
τεῖ πόλει 𐅂Χ,
καὶ εἰς ἀπόδοσιν
τοῦ προχρησθέντος
εἰς τὸν
στέφανον
τῶι βασιλεῖ
Φιλίππωι καὶ
τῶι βασιλεῖ
Μασαννάσαι καὶ
εἰς τὸ προσοφειλόμενον
εἰς τοὺς στεφάνους
τοὺς ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Τελεσαρχίδου
ΧΗΗΗ𐅄· ἀπὸ τούτου
ἀφείλομ<εν>
ἱεροποιοὶ οἱ
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Δημάρου εἰς
τὴν κατασκευὴν
τοῦ ναοῦ τῆς
Ἀρτέμιδος κατὰ
τὸ ψήφισμα τοῦ
δήμου ΧΧΗΗ·
λοιπὸν ἔνει
Η𐅄. μηνὸς Ποσιδεῶνος
ἐξείλο-
μεν
ἀπὸ στάμνου οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· ἀπὸ
τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ἱεροποιοὶ
οἱ ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Τελεσαρχίδου
Εὐβοεὺς καὶ
Παρμενίων
70
τὸ πραχθὲν ἐνηροσίων,
ἐνοικίων, τελῶν,
τόκων 𐅂𐅆Χ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀//·
ἀπὸ τούτου
ἀφείλομεν μηνὸς
Ποσιδεῶνος
ἱεροποιοὶ
Πολύξενος,
Ἀμφοτερός,
Φίλιππος,
Σίληνος
εἰς τὰ ἔργα
𐅂ΧΗΔΔ<ΙΙΙΙ>·
λοιπὸν ἔνεστιν
𐅆𐅅ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅁𐅀//.
μηνὸς Ποσιδεῶνος
ἐξείλομεν εἰς
τὸ δάνειον τὸ
Εὐβοεῖ 𐅅 κατὰ
τὸ ψήφισμα τοῦ
δήμου ἀπὸ στάμνου
οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· ἀπὸ
τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ἀρησιῶνος, ἔθεσαν
ἱεροποιοὶ
Πολύξενος,
Φίλιππος, Σίληνος,
Ἀμφοτερὸς τὸ
δάνειον ὃ κατέβαλεν
Ἕρμων Σόλω-
νος
𐅅Η𐅃Ι𐅁, καὶ τόκον
ὃν ἔφη ὀφείλειν
ΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂Ι·
λοιπὸν ἔνει
ΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅁.
κεφαλὴ τοῦ
ἐξαιρεθέντος
ἐπὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς ΜΧ𐅅𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ.
τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν
παρεδώκαμε<ν>
τοῖς
μεθ’ αὑτοὺς
ἱεροποιοῖς
Δημητρίωι καὶ
Μειλιχίδῃ
𐅂𐅇ΜΧΧΧ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ/.
παρεδώκαμεν
δὲ καὶ τὸν χαλκὸν
ὃν παρελάβομεν
παρὰ ταμιῶν Μενύλλου
καὶ
75
Φωκαιέως τοῖς
μεθ’ αὑτοὺς
ἱεροποιοῖς
ΧΧΧ𐅅ΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ.
καὶ τόδε ἄλλο
ἀργύριον παρελάβομεν
παρ’ ἱεροποιῶν
Σ[υ]νωμύνου
{²⁷Συνωνύμου}²⁷
καὶ Κρίττιος
ἐν τῆι δημοσίαι
κιβωτῶι
παρόντος
ἄρχοντος τοῦ
τῆς πόλεως καὶ
γραμματέων καὶ
πρυτάνεων τῶν
κατὰ μῆνα· στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴ[ν ἔχ]οντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ
Τελεσαρχίδου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Ἀλκίμαχος καὶ
Διογένης τραπεζῶν
καὶ ὅρων ΗΗΔΔΔΔ·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ὧι ἐπιγραφή·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ
Τελεσαρχίδου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Παρμενίων καὶ
Μνῆσις τραπεζῶν
τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς στοᾶς
ΗΗ· ἄλλον στάμνον
ὧι ἐπιγραφή·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλεί-
δου,
ἐπὶ Διοκλέους
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Τηλέμνηστος
καὶ Ὀρθοκλῆς
εἰς τὸ χῶμα 𐅅,
ἐν ὧι λοιπὸν
ΔΔΔΔ· ἄλλος
στάμνος ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχων· ἀπὸ τῆς
Ἕλληνος καὶ
Μαν-
80
τινέως, ἐπὶ Ἀπατουρίου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
Ὀρθοκλῆς καὶ
Πολύξενος τὸ
διαγραφὲν παρὰ
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπὶ Ἀπατουρίου,
ὃ κατέβαλον
ἐπὶ τὸ ἀρχεῖον
Πολυ-
βούλωι
οἱ ἐγγυηταὶ
οἱ Κλεοπάτρας
Ἀπατούριος,
Χοιρύλος,
Ἀριστόβουλος
ΗΗΗ· ἄλλος
στάμνος ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχων· ἀπὸ τῆς
Ἕλληνος καὶ
Μαντινέως, ἐπὶ
Τελεσαρχίδου
Ποσιδε-
ῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Παρμενίων καὶ
Μνῆσις τὸ εἰς
τὸ χῶμα, ἐν ὧι
λοιπὸν Η𐅄ΔΙ𐅀//·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Ἕλληνος
καὶ Μαντινέως,
ἐπὶ
Δημητρίου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν Φω[κί]ων
Κλεοκρίτου
ταμίας καὶ
Παρμενίων ὁ
Πολυβούλου
κληρονόμος
ὧι ἔλαττον ἔλαβεν
ὁ ἰατρὸς ΗΗ𐅄,
καὶ τοῦ ἐνοικίου
ὡσαύτως
ΔΔ𐅃· ἄλλος
στάμνος ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχων· ἀπὸ τῆς
Ἕλληνος καὶ
Μαντινέω[ς, ἐ]πὶ
Διοκλέους
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Τηλέμνηστος
καὶ Ὀρθοκλῆς
85
τραπεζῶν ΗΗ·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλε[ίδ]ου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μνησικλείδης
καὶ Καίβων εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν
μισθὸν
τοῖς αὐληταῖς
ΧΧΧ, καὶ τὸ σιτηρέσιον
καὶ τὰ χορηγήματα
καὶ τὸ νικητήριον
ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ· ἄλλος
στάμνος ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχων· ἀπὸ τῆς
Φίλωνος καὶ
Σιλήνου, ἐπὶ
Φωκαιέ-
ως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Καίβων καὶ
Μνησικλείδης
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
τὸ ἀποταγὲν εἰς
τὰς εἰκόνας,
οὗ προεχρήσατο
ἡ πόλις τῆς
δοθείσης δωρεᾶς
τοῖς Αἰτωλοῖς
κατὰ τὸ
ψήφισμα
τοῦ δήμου ΗΗΗΗ·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Φωκα[ι]έως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Καίβων καὶ
Μνησικλεί-
δης
εἰς τὴν κατασκευὴν
τοῦ χώματος
𐅅· ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Μνησι-
90
κλείδης καὶ
Καίβων εἰς τὸ
{α} ἀποταγὲν εἰς
τὸ χῶμα, οὗ προεχρήσατο
ἡ πόλις τῆς
δοθείσης δωρεᾶς
τοῖς Αἰτωλοῖς
κατὰ τὸ ψήφισμα
τοῦ δήμου
Η𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλος
στάμνος ἐπιγρα-
φὴν
ἔχων· ἀπὸ τῆς
Φίλωνος καὶ
Σιλήνου, ἐπὶ
Φωκαιέως Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
Καίβων καὶ
Μνησικλείδης
εἰς τὴν σιτωνίαν
𐅂Μ· ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔ-
χω[ν]·
ἀπὸ τῆς Ἕλληνος
καὶ Μαντινέως,
ἐ[π]ὶ Φωκαιέως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Καίβων καὶ
Μνησικλείδης
εἰς τὴν σιτωνίαν
κατὰ τὴν διάταξιν
Χ𐅅· ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχων· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Μνησικλείδης
καὶ Καίβων εἰς
τὴν σιτωνίαν
𐅂ΧΧΧ𐅄Δ· ἄλλος
στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθε[σ]αν ταμίαι
Μνησικλείδης
καὶ {καὶ} Καίβων
εἰς τὴν σιτωνίαν
𐅂ΧΧΧΧ· ἄλλος
στάμνος
95
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμία[ι]
Μνησικλείδης
καὶ Καίβων ἐκ
τῶν ἀδιατάκτων
ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂Ι𐅀/·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχων· ἀπὸ τῆς
Φίλωνος καὶ
Σιλήνου, ἐπὶ
Φωκαιέως Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Καίβων καὶ
Μνησικλείδης
εἰς τὸ ἱερόν,
τῶν ἀκατατάκτων
ΧΧΧΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅁·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχων· ἀπὸ τῆς
Ἕλληνος καὶ
Μαντινέως, ἐπὶ
Φωκαιέως Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Καίβων καὶ
Μνησικλείδης
ἐκ τῶν ἀκατατάκτων
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
ἄλλος στά-
μνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μνησικλείδης
καὶ Καίβων τὸ
περιὸν ἀπὸ τῶν
τεχνιτῶν ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ.
κεφαλὴ οὗ παρελά-
βομεν
ἐν τῇ δημοσίαι
κιβωτῶι ΜΜ𐅆ΧΧΧΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅀.
καὶ τόδε ἄλλο
ἀ[ρ]γύρι[ον] ἐτέθη
ἐπὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς εἰς τὴν
δημοσίαν κιβωτόν,
παρόντος ἄρχοντος
τοῦ τῆς πόλεως
100
καὶ γραμματέων
καὶ πρυτάνεων
τῶν κατὰ μῆνα·
στάμνος ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχων· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ληναιῶνος, ἔθεσαν
σιτῶναι Ἄμνος,
Φᾶνος, Φίλλα-
κος
καὶ ὁ πρεσβευτὴς
Ῥοδ[ί]ων σίτου
μεδί〚——〛μνων
{μεδίμνων} χιλίων
τετρακοσίων
ὀγδοήκοντα
τεσσάρων ἡμιέκτων
ἐννέα τὴν τιμὴν
τοῦ παρὰ τοῦ
βασιλέως Μασαννάσα
𐅂ΧΧΧΧΗΗΗΗ𐅄
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι𐅁·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Ἕλληνος
καὶ Μαντιν[έ]ως,
ἐπ̣ὶ Δημάρου
Ἀρτεμισιῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν Ἕρμων
Σόλωνος, Σῆμος
Κοσμιάδου,
Σόλων Μετωνύμου
ἀπὸ
τῆς
τιμῆς τοῦ σίτου
τοῦ παρὰ τοῦ
βασιλέως Μασαννάσα
κατὰ τὸ ψήφισμα
τοῦ δήμου 〚—〛
ΧΧ𐅅ΔΔΔ·
ἄλλος στάμνος
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχων·
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ἀρ-
τεμι〚——〛σιῶνος,
{Ἀρτεμισιῶνος}
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν Ἕρμων,
Σόλων, Σῆμος
ἀπὸ τῆς τιμῆς
τοῦ σίτου τοῦ
παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως
Μασαννάσα κατὰ
τὸ ψήφισμα τοῦ
δήμου ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅃·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγρα-
105
φὴν ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ
τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ἀρτεμισιῶνος,
ἔθεσαν Ἕρμων,
Σόλων, Σῆμος
τὸ λοιπὸν τῆς
τιμῆς τοῦ σίτου
μεδίμνων χιλίων
τριακοσίων
δέκα ἑνὸς
ἡμιέκτων
ἐννέα, τοῦ μεδίμνου
ἀνὰ τέσσερας,
τοῦ παρὰ τοῦ
βασιλέως Μασαννάσα
𐅂ΧΧ𐅅𐅄ΔΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀
κατὰ τὸ ψήφισμα
τοῦ δήμου·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Ἕλληνος
καὶ
Μαντινέως,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ἀρτεμισιῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς εἰς
τὴν σιτωνίαν
κατὰ τὴν διάταξιν
𐅆Χ𐅅𐅄Δ· ἄλλον
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀ-
πὸ
τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ἀρτεμισιῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς εἰς
τὴν σιτωνίαν
𐅆Χ· ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλω-
νος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ἀρτεμισιῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς εἰς
τὴν σιτωνίαν
𐅆Χ· ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
110
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Μεταγειτνιῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς εἰς
τὴν σιτωνίαν 𐅆·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Ἕλ〚—〛ληνος
{Ἕλληνος} καὶ
Μαντινέως, ἐπὶ
Δημάρου Μετα-
γειτνιῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Φωκαιεὺς καὶ
Μένυλλος εἰς
τὴν σιτωνίαν
κατὰ τὴν διάταξιν
𐅆· ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ
Δημάρου
Μεταγειτνιῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς εἰς
τὴν σιτωνίαν
𐅂ΧΧΧΧ𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅁//·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ
Δημάρου Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς τὸ
τοῖς αὐληταῖς
ΧΧΧΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Δη-
μάρου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς εἰς
τὰς εἰκόνας
𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· ἄλλος
στάμνος ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχων· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
115
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς εἰς
τὸ χῶμα Η𐅃𐅂𐅂Ι𐅀/·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ποσι-
δεῶνος,
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς εἰς
τὴν σιτωνίαν
𐅆𐅄Δ· ἄλλον
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Φίλωνος καὶ
Σιλήνου, ἐπὶ
Δημάρου Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
Μένυλ-
λος
καὶ Φωκαιεὺς
εἰς τὴν σιτωνίαν
𐅆ΧΧ· ἄλλον
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Ἕλληνος καὶ
Μαντινέως, ἐπὶ
Δημάρου Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαι-
εὺς
εἰς τὸ χῶμα κατὰ
τὴν διάταξιν 𐅅·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Ἕλληνος
καὶ Μαντινέως,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς
[εἰς]
τὴν σιτωνίαν
κατὰ τὴν διάταξιν
𐅆Χ𐅅· ἄλλον
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Ἕλληνος καὶ
Μαντινέως, ἐπὶ
Δημάρου Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
120
[Φ]ωκαιεὺς ἐκ
τῶν ἀκατατάκτων
ΧΧ𐅅· ἄλλον
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς
ἐκ
τῶν ἀκατατάκτων
ΧΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ/.
κεφαλὴ τοῦ
τεθέντος εἰς
τὴν δημοσίαν
κιβωτὸν ἐπὶ τῆς
ἡμετέρας ἀρχῆς
𐅇ΜΜ𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅀/. κεφαλὴ
τοῦ παραδοθέντος
καὶ τεθέντος
ἐπὶ
τῆς
ἡμετέρας ἀρχῆς
𐅇ΜΜΜΜ𐅆ΧΧΧΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁/.
καὶ τόδε 〚—
— —〛 ἀργύριον
ἐξείλομεν·
μηνὸς Ληναιῶνος,
παρόντος ἄρχοντος
τοῦ τῆς πόλεως
καὶ γραμματέων
καὶ πρυτάνε-
[ων]
τῶν κατὰ μῆνα·
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μνησικλείδης
καὶ Καίβων εἰς
τὴν σιτωνίαν
ΧΧΧ𐅄Δ· ἄλ-
λον
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔ〚—〛χοντα
{ἔχοντα}· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μνησικλείδης
καὶ Καίβων εἰς
τὴν σιτωνίαν
𐅂ΧΧΧΧ· ἄλλον
στά-
125
μνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Φίλωνος καὶ
Σιλήνου, ἐπὶ
Φωκαιέως Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
Καίβων καὶ
Μνησικλείδης
εἰς τὴν σιτωνίαν
𐅂Μ· ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπι-
γραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Ἕλληνος καὶ
Μαντινέως, ἐπὶ
Φωκαιέως Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμίαι
Καίβων καὶ
Μνησικλείδης
εἰς τὴν σιτωνίαν
κατὰ τὴν διάταξιν
Χ𐅅. τὸ πᾶν
Μ𐅆ΧΧΧ𐅅𐅄Δ·
τοῦτο ἔδομεν
τοῖς σιτώναις
Ἄμνωι, Φιλλάκωι,
Φάνωι. ἄλλον
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαέως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθε-
σαν
ταμίαι Μνησικλείδης
καὶ Κα[ίβ]ων εἰς
τὸ ἱερόν, τοῖς
αὐληταῖς ΧΧΧ
καὶ τὸ σιτηρέσιον
καὶ τὰ χορηγήματα
καὶ τὸ νικητήριον
ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ· τοῦτο
παρεδώκαμεν
τοῖς ταμίαις
Με〚—〛-
νύλλωι
{Μενύλλωι} καὶ
Φωκαιεῖ. μηνὸς
Θαργηλιῶνος
δευτέραι, ἐξείλομε[ν
στ]άμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Ἕλληνος κ[α]ὶ
Μαντινέως, ἐπὶ
Δημάρου Ἀρτεμισιῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμί-
130
αι Μένυλλος
καὶ Φωκαιεὺς
εἰς τὴν σιτωνίαν
κατὰ τὴν διάταξι[ν
𐅆]Χ𐅅𐅄Δ· ἄλλον
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ἀρτεμισιῶνος,
ἔθε-
σαν
ταμίαι Μένυλλος
καὶ Φωκαιεὺς
εἰς τὴν σιτωνίαν
𐅆Χ· ἄλλον στ[ά]μνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Ἀρτεμισιῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμί-
αι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς εἰς
τὴν [σ]ιτωνίαν
𐅆Χ. τὸ πᾶν 𐅂Μ𐅆ΧΧ[Χ]𐅅𐅄Δ·
τοῦτο ἐδώκαμεν
τοῖς σιτώναις
Ἄμνωι, Φιλλάκωι,
Φάνωι. μηνὸς
Βουφονιῶνος,
ἐξείλομεν
στάμνον ἐπι-
γραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Μεταγειτνιῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς εἰς
τὴν σιτωνίαν
ΧΧΧΧ𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅁//·
ἄλλον στά-
μνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Ἕλληνος
καὶ Μαντινέως,
Μεταγειτνιῶνος,
ἔθεσαν εἰς
τὸ ἱερὸν ταμί[αι
Μέν]υλλος καὶ
Φωκαιεὺς εἰς
τὴ[ν σ]ιτωνίαν
κατὰ τὴν διάταξιν
𐅆· ἄλλον
135
στάμνον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· ἀπὸ τῆς
Φίλωνος καὶ
Σιλήνου, ἐπὶ
Δημάρου Μεταγειτνιῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μένυλλος Πολύβου
καὶ Φωκαιεὺς
Φωκαιέως εἰς
τὴν σιτωνίαν
𐅂𐅆· ἄλλον
στάμνον,
ἀπὸ τῆς Φίλωνος
καὶ Σιλήνου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Καίβων καὶ
Μνησικλείδης
εἰς τὸ ἱερόν,
τῶν ἀκατατάκτων
ΧΧΧΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅁·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπι-
γραφὴν
〚—
— —〛 ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Νυμφοδώρου
καὶ Ἡρακλείδου,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέ〚․〛ως
{Φωκαιέως} Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
Μνησικλείδης
καὶ Καίβων, ἐκ
τῶν ἀδιατάκτων
ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂Ι𐅀/·
ἄλλον στάμνον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
ἀπὸ τῆς Ἕλληνος
καὶ Μα[ντ]ινέως,
ἐπὶ Φωκαιέως
Ποσιδεῶνος,
ἔθεσαν ταμίαι
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
Καίβων καὶ
Μνησικλείδης,
ἐκ τῶν ἀκατατάκτων
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ.
τὸ πᾶν 𐅂Μ𐅆
[Χ]ΧΧ𐅅𐅄Δ𐅁·
τοῦτο ἔδομεν
τοῖς [σ]ιτώναις
[Ἄ]μ[ν]ωι, Φάνωι,
Φιλλάκωι. κεφαλὴ
οὗ ἐξείλομεν
ἐπὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας
ἀρχῆς 𐅇𐅆ΧΧΧΧΗ𐅄𐅁·
τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν
παρέδομεν τοῖς
μεθ’ αὑτοὺς
ἱεροποιοῖς
140
Δημητρίωι καὶ
Μειλιχίδηι
𐅂ΜΜΜ𐅆ΧΧΧΧΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ/.
καὶ τόδε ἄλλο
ἀργύριον εἰσήκει
τῶι θεῶι· ἐνοικίων·
παρὰ Τηλεμνήστου
τοῦ Ἀριστείδου,
τῆς ἑξῆς τῆς
Ἐπισθενείου
οἰκίας, 𐅄ΔΔ·
τῆς Ἀ-
[ρι]στοβούλου,
παρὰ Σωνίκου
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ· τῆς
Ἐφέσου, παρὰ
Ἵππωνος τοῦ
Ἀντιφάνου ΗΔ·
τῆς Σωσιλείου,
παρὰ Κτησικλείους
τοῦ Κτησικλέους
Η𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂· τῆς
Ἀρκέοντος, παρὰ
Δεξιθέου τοῦ
Κλει-
[τ]άρχου
𐅄· τῆς ἑξῆς τῆς
ἐπὶ τοῦ Βρέμητος,
παρὰ Στράτωνος
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τῆς Πυθᾶ, παρὰ
Δώρου 𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τῆς ἑξῆς τῆς
Σωσιλείου,
παρὰ Διονυσίου
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
τῆς ἑξῆς τῶν
ἀνδρώνων, παρὰ
<Ἀπολλωνίου
𐅄Δ𐅂>·
〚—
—〛 τοῦ
ξυλῶνος, παρὰ
Διοφάντου
ΔΔΔΔ𐅂· τῆς ἑξῆς
ἣν εἶχε Σώφρων,
παρὰ Κραταιβίου
𐅄Δ· τῆς ἐπὶ τοῦ
Βρέμητος, παρὰ
Νουμηνίου
𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂· τῆς
συνοικίας τῆς
γενομένης Ἀρχίου,
παρὰ Ἰατρο-
κλέους
ΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ· τῶν
ἀνδρώνων, παρὰ
Δημητρίου ΗΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
τῆς ἑξῆς, παρὰ
Σωτίωνος 𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τῆς Ὀρθοκλέους,
παρὰ Ἀντιγόνου
Η𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· τῆς
πρὸς τῶι σιδηρείωι,
παρὰ Ἀριστοβούλου
𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
τῆς Ἐπι-
145
σθενείου, παρὰ
Εὐφράνορος
ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂. κεφαλὴ
[ἐνο]ικίων
Χ𐅅ΗΗΔ<Δ?>𐅂𐅦. vac.
καὶ τόδε ἄλλο
ἀργύριον εἰσήκει
τῶι θεῶι· ἐνηροσίων·
Φ[ο]ινίκων, παρὰ
Παρμικοῦ τοῦ
Ἐπικύδου
ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂·
Ἄκ[ρα]ς
Δήλου, παρὰ
Πιστοῦ τοῦ
Φερεκλείδ[ου]
Η̣𐅄· Ἐπισθενείας,
παρὰ Μενεστράτου
τοῦ Τιμοστράτου
ΗΗΗΗΔ𐅂· Σολόης
καὶ Κορακιῶν,
παρὰ Ἀριστίωνος
τοῦ Φέλυος
ΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
Ἱπποδρόμου,
παρὰ
Διαίτου τοῦ
Διαίτου 𐅅Η𐅄𐅃ΙΙΙ·
Λειμῶν[ο]ς, παρὰ
Ἀρησιμβρότου
τοῦ Νικάνδρου
ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
Φυταλιᾶς, παρὰ
Σιλήνου τοῦ
Σιλήνου ΔΔΔ·
Σωσιμαχείας,
παρὰ Γερύλλου
τοῦ Καρυστίου
Η𐅄Δ
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
Ῥάμνων, παρὰ
Εὐέλθοντος
τοῦ Νικίου
ΗΗΗ𐅄𐅂· Λιμνῶν,
παρὰ Ἀντιγόνου
τοῦ Ἀντιγόνου
τοῦ Τηλεμνή[σ]του
ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ· Διονυσίου,
παρὰ Ἀπολλωνίου
τοῦ Κτήσωνος
ΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂·
Σκιτωνείας,
παρὰ
Δημοστράτου
τοῦ Διογένου
ΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
Χαιρωνείας,
παρὰ Κασσάνδρου
τοῦ Κατων̣άνδρου
ΗΗΗΗ𐅄𐅂· Πύργων,
παρὰ Ἀφροδισίου
τοῦ Σωπάτρου
ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
Πανόρμου, παρὰ
Φέλυος
150
τοῦ Φέλυος
ΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
Λυκωνείου,
παρὰ Νέωνος τοῦ
Δημητρίου
Η𐅄ΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁//·
τοῦ Κεραμείου,
παρὰ Ἀναξάνδρου
τοῦ Νεοκροντίδου
ΗΗΗ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· Νικοῦ
χώρου, παρὰ Ἀχαιοῦ
τοῦ Ζηλομένου
𐅄
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀/·
Χαρητείας, παρὰ
Φανοδίκου τοῦ
Φανοδίκου
𐅅ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀/·
Πορθμοῦ, παρὰ
Τληπολέμου
τοῦ Κρίττιος
𐅅𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅦𐅁//·
τῆς Λίμνης, παρὰ
Τιμοξένου τοῦ
Τιμοξέ-
νου
ΔΙ. κεφαλὴ ἐνηροσίων
𐅆Χ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΙ<Ι>.
καὶ τόδε ἄλλο
ἀργύριον εἰσήκει
τῶι θεῶι· τελῶν·
παρὰ Τελεσα[ρ]χίδου
τοῦ Νικόλεω,
τῆς πορφύρας
Δ· παρὰ Μνήσιος
τοῦ Φωκαιέως,
τῶν αἱρε-
σίων
ΗΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂· παρὰ
Ὑψοκλέους
τοῦ Ἐλπίνου,
τοῦ ὁλκοῦ τοῦ
ἐ〚—〛ν
{ἐν} Ἀπολλωνίωι
𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂· τοῦ εἰς
Ῥήνειαν πορθμείου,
παρὰ Διονυσοδώρου
τοῦ Μαραθωνίου
ΗΔΔ· τοῦ πορθμείου
τοῦ εἰς Ἀπολ-
λώνιον,
παρὰ Τιμέου τοῦ
Ἀθήνιος 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τοῦ ὁλκοῦ τοῦ
ἐν Νήσωι, παρὰ
Δημονίκου τοῦ
Ἀριστείδου
𐅂𐅂· παρ’ Ὀρθοκλέους
τοῦ Ἀριστοθάλου,
στροφέων ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
καὶ τοῦ ἐννομίου
τοῦ ἐν τῇ ἰσθμῶι
𐅃· τοῦ
155
λιμένος, παρὰ
Ἀντιγόνου τοῦ
Χαριστίου Δ𐅃.
κεφαλὴ τελῶν·
ΗΗΗ𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂. vac. καὶ
τόδε ἄλλο
ἀργύριον εἰσήκει
τῶι θεῶι· ἐχ
θη-
σαυρῶν·
ἐκ τοῦ ἐν ἱερῶι·
ΔΔ𐅃· καὶ τοῦ
ἐπ’ Ἀσκληπιῶι
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· καὶ τοῦ
ἐν Νήσωι 𐅂ΙΙ·
[κα]ὶ τοῦ ἐν Σαραπιείωι
Δ𐅃· καὶ τοῦ ἐν
Ἀφροδισίωι
𐅦̣· καὶ ἐκ φιάλης
ἐκ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ
ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
καὶ παρὰ ταμιῶν
Με-
νύλλου
καὶ Φωκαιέως
εἰς Θεσμοφόρια
𐅄· ξύλων τῶν
ἀποπραθέντων
ἀπὸ τοῦ Κυνθίου
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· καὶ
θύρας 𐅂Δ𐅂·
ἄλλων ξύλων
τῶν ἀποτμηθέντων
ἀπὸ τῶν κουρῶν
τῶν δοκῶν τῶν
ἐπὶ
τὸ
Ἡρακλεῖον
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
καὶ χηνῶν τεσσάρων
τῶν ἀποθανόντων
ἐν τῇ λίμνῃ
[𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ]Ι· καὶ
παρὰ Ἀλκιμίδου
τοῦ Ἀλκιμίδου,
ὃ ἔφη εἰληφέναι
τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ
ἱεράζοντα τῶι
Ἀσκληπιῶι,
τῶν
δερμάτων 𐅄𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ·
λίθων τῶν ἀποπραθέντων
ἀπὸ τοῦ τοίχου
τοῦ ἱεροῦ καὶ
πώρων τῶν ἀποδοκίμων
𐅃Ι. κεφαλὴ
ΗΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ.
καὶ τόδε ἄλλο
ἀργύριον εἰσήκει
τῶι θεῶι· Ληναιῶ-
160
νος· παρὰ Πολυξένου
τοῦ Παρμενίωνος,
τὸ δάνειον ὃ
ἔφη δανείσασθαι
παρὰ ἱεροποιῶν
Συνωνύμου καὶ
Κρίττιος ΧΗΗΗΗ,
καὶ τὸ δάνειον
ὃ ἔφη δανείσασθαι
παρὰ ἱεροποιῶν
Εὐβοέως καὶ
Παρμενίωνος
𐅄, καὶ τόκον ὃν
ἔφη ὀφείλειν
μηνὸς Δ𐅂𐅂𐅁·
παρὰ Εὐβοέως
τοῦ Ἱππώνακτος,
τόκον τοῦ ἱεροῦ
ἀργυρίου ὃν
ἔφη ὀφείλειν
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι· παρὰ
Ὀρθοκλέους
τοῦ Ἀριστοθάλου,
ἀπὸ τοῦ δανεί-
ου
οὗ ἔφη δανείσασθαι
παρὰ ἱεροποιῶν
Συνωνύμου καὶ
Κρίττιος τοῦ
ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου
Η, καὶ τόκον ὃν
ἔφη ὀφείλειν
ΗΔΔΔ𐅃· παρὰ
Δημοχάρου τοῦ
Σωτίωνος ὑπὲρ
Ἀρίστιος τῆς
κατὰ
[Ἑ]βδομίσκον
ἐγγύης τόκον
τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου
ὃν ἔφη ἐπιβάλλειν
αὑτῶι ἀπὸ 〚—
—〛 ἄρχοντος
Δημητρίου ἕως
Οἰνέως ΔΔΔΔ.
vac.
[Λη]ν̣αιῶνος·
παρὰ Ἁγνηΐδος
τῆς Χοιρύλου
μετὰ κυρίου
τοῦ ἀνδρὸς
Ποσειδίκου,
ὑπὲρ Θυμίου,
τόκον ὃν ἔφη
ἐγγράψαι ἱεροποιοὺς
τοὺς ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἐμπέδου Μνησικλείδην
καὶ Πολύ-
165
[βου]λο[ν ἐ]κτετεισμένου
τοῦ δανείου,
ὡς ἔφη ὁ Ἁγνηΐδος
κύριος Ποσείδικος
<— —>. Ποσιδεῶνος·
παρὰ Τηλεμνήστου
τοῦ Ἀντιγόνου,
ὑπὲρ Τιμοξένου
τοῦ Τιμοξένου,
τῆς ἐγγύης τῆς
κα-
[τὰ
τὸν πατ]έρα αὐτοῦ
Τιμόξενον, τοῦ
ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου
τόκον ἐτῶν τεσσάρων
ὃν ἔφη ὀφείλειν
ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· παρὰ
Φιλονίκου τοῦ
Φερεκλείδου
τοῦ Φιλονίκου,
τόκον τοῦ ἱεροῦ
ἀργυρίου ὃν
ἔφη
[ὀφείλειν
— —]𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
παρὰ Πάχητος
τοῦ Διογένου,
ὑπὲρ τοῦ πατρὸς
Διογένου, τόκον
ὃν ἔφη ὀφείλειν
ἐτῶν τεσσάρων
ΗΗ. Ποσιδεῶνος·
παρὰ Νικίου
τοῦ Εὐέλθοντος,
ὑπὲρ αὑτοῦ καὶ
τῶν υἱῶν,
[τόκον̣
τοῦ ἱεροῦ]
ἀργυρίου ὃν
ἔφη ὀφείλειν
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· παρὰ
Πραξιμένου τοῦ
Πραξιμένου, τόκον
τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου
οὗ ἐδανείσατο
π[αρὰ] ἱεροποιῶν
Εὐβοέως καὶ
Παρμενίωνος
ὃν ἔφη ὀφείλειν
[—
— —· παρὰ — — —
ο]υ τοῦ Ἱερομβρότου,
τόκον τοῦ ἱεροῦ
ἀργυρίου τὸν
ἐπὶ Τελεσαρχίδου,
Φωκαιέως, Δημάρου
ὃν ἔφη ὀφείλειν
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀·
παρὰ Ξένωνος
τοῦ Φερεκλείδου
τοῦ Φιλονίκου,
τόκον ὃν ἔ-
170
[φη ὀφείλειν
τοῦ ἱ]εροῦ
ἀργυρίου
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁//·
παρὰ Στράτωνος
τοῦ Ξένωνος,
τὸ ἐνοίκιον
τῆς ἱερᾶς οἰκίας
ὃ ἔφη ἐγγραφῆναι
ὑπὸ ἱεροποιῶν
Συνωνύμου καὶ
Κρίττιος
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
παρὰ Πρωτο-
[δάμα,
ὑπὲρ τοῦ πα]τρὸς
Ἀντιλάκου,
τόκον τοῦ ἱεροῦ
ἀργυρίου ὃν
ἔφη ὀφείλειν
αὐτὸν Δ· παρὰ
Ξενοτίμου τοῦ
Ξενοτίμου, τόκον
τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου
ὃν ἔφη ὀφείλειν
τοὺς Φάνου τοῦ
Ξενοτίμου κληρο-
[νόμους
— — —· παρὰ Ἀχ]αιοῦ
τοῦ Ζηλομένου,
τόκον τοῦ ἱεροῦ
ἀργυρίου ὃν
ἔφη ὀφείλειν
ΔΔ· παρὰ Φωκαιέως
τοῦ Φωκαιέως,
τόκον τοῦ <ἱ>εροῦ
ἀργυρίου ὃν
ἔφη ὀφείλειν
𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· παρὰ
Καλλισθέ-
[νους
τοῦ Κλεοκρίτου],
ὑπ̣ὲ̣ρ̣ Φιλλάκου
τοῦ Θεοφραστίδου,
τόκον τῆς ἐγγύης
τῶν ἑκατὸν 𐅂 ὃν
ἔφη ἐπιβάλλειν
αὑτῶι Δ· παρὰ
Ἀνδροθάλου
τοῦ Τιμησιέργου,
ὃ ἐνέγραψαν αὐτὸν
τῆς πορθμί-
[δος
Παρμενίων καὶ
Εὐβο]εὺς 𐅄ΔΔ·
καὶ ὑπὲρ Τιμησιέργου,
τόκον τοῦ ἱεροῦ
ἀργυρίου οὗ
ἐδανείσατο
παρὰ ἱεροποιῶν
Κρίττιος καὶ
Συνωνύμου ΔΔ·
παρ’ Ἀνδροθάλου
τοῦ Τιμησιέρ-
175
[γου,
ὃ ἐνέγραψαν αὐτὸν
ἱε]ροποιοὶ
Συνώνυμος καὶ
Κρίττις τῆς
πορθμίδος τῆς
εἰς Ῥήνειαν
ΗΗ̣𐅃̣𐅂𐅂𐅂· παρὰ
Εὐδήμου τοῦ
Διακτορίδου,
τόκον τοῦ ἱεροῦ
ἀργυρίου ΔΔ𐅃·
καὶ ὑπὲρ τῆς
οἰκίας
[τῆς
— — — — — — — —]νου
Δ𐅂ΙΙΙ· παρὰ
Σωτίωνος τοῦ
Σωτίωνος, ὑπὲρ
Ἀρίστιος, τὸν
ἐπιβάλλοντα
τῆς κατὰ Ἑβδομίσκον
ἐγγύης τόκον
τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου
ὃν ἔφη ὀφείλειν
ἐ-
[π’
ἀρχόντων Δημητρίου],
Ἀρίστωνος,
Τελεσαρχίδου,
Φωκαιέως, Δημάρου,
Ξενοτίμου, Οἰνέως
ΔΔΔ𐅃. vac.
[Ποσιδεῶνος·
παρὰ Πά]χητος
τοῦ Διο[γέ]νου,
ὑπὲρ τοῦ πατρὸς
Διογένου, τ[ὸ]
δάνειον ὃ ἔφη
δανείσασθαι
τὸν πατέρα παρὰ
ἱεροποιῶν Εὐβοέως
καὶ Παρμενίωνος
𐅅, καὶ τόκον ὃν
ἔφη ὀφεί-
[λειν
ἐνιαυτοῦ καὶ
μηνῶν δύο 𐅄Δ].
Ἀρησιῶνος·
π[α]ρ[ὰ] Ἕρμωνος
τοῦ Σόλωνος,
τὸ δάνειον ὃ
ἔφη ὀφείλειν
ἐπὶ τοῖς χωρίοις
τοῖς ἐν Ῥηνείαι,
κατὰ συγγραφὴν
τὴν τεθεῖσαν
παρὰ Ἄμνωι Τιμοξένου
180
[𐅅Η𐅃Ι𐅁, καὶ τόκον]
ἐ̣τῶν τεσσάρω[ν]
Η̣ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂Ι.
τοῦτο ἔθεμεν
εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν
κατὰ τὸ ψήφισμα
τοῦ δήμου. τάδε
ἀνήλωται εἰς
τὰ 〚—
—〛 κατὰ
μῆνα· Ληναιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθᾶ-
[ραι
— —· πεύκη, κληματὶς
— —· στεφαν]ώματα
ἐπὶ βωμοὺς καὶ
Πύθιον καὶ πρόπυλα
Δ𐅂𐅂· τῶι τοὺς
στεφάνους
πλέξαντι 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
εἰς θυσίαν
Ἀπόλλωνι, Ἀρτέμιδι,
Λητοῖ, Διὶ Σωτῆρι,
Ἀθηνᾶι Σωτείραι
[—
— — — — — — — — ξύλα
ἐπὶ βωμο]ύς,
Πύθιον, ἱεροπόιον,
ΤΔΔΙΙ, τιμὴ
ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙ<Ι>·
ἄνθρακες Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
εἰς ἱερισμὸν
Δ· χαρτῶν 𐅃·
ἐλαίου με.
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂· ἅλες
𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· ὄξος
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ. Ἱεροῦ·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθᾶραι 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅦·
πεύκη,
[κληματὶς
— —· ξύλα ἐπὶ
βωμούς, Πύθιον,
ἱε]ροπόιον,
ΤΔΔ𐅃, τιμὴ ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στεφανώματα
𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄνθρ[α]κες
Δ𐅂𐅂· ἐλαίου
με. Δ𐅃𐅂· λαμπάδες,
ῥυμοὶ εἰς τοὺς
χοροὺς ΔΙΙΙ.
Γαλαξιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
[καθᾶραι
—· πεύκη, κληματὶς
— —· στεφα]νώματα
𐅃· ξύλα ἐπὶ βωμούς,
Πύθιον, ἱεροπόιον,
ΤΔΔ, τιμὴ ΔΔΔ·
ἄνθρακες Δ𐅃·
ἐλαίου χο. 𐅃Ι,
τιμὴ 𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
εἰς κόσμησιν,
κηροῦ 𐅂ΙΙΙ·
σφόγγοι 𐅂𐅂·
λῖνον 𐅂𐅂𐅂·
μύρον 𐅃·
185
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
Π̣Ω 𐅂ΙΙΙΙ. Ἀρτεμισιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθᾶραι 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
πεύκη, κληματὶς
ΙΙΙΙ· στεφανώματα
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ξύλα
ἐπὶ βωμούς,
Πύθιον, ἱερο[πό]ιον,
ΤΔ𐅃, τιμὴ ΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ
{Ι}·
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — λαμπάδες
καὶ] ῥυμοὶ εἰς
τοὺς χοροὺς
Ἀρτεμισίοις,
Βριτομαρτίοις
𐅃𐅂. Θαργηλιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθᾶραι 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
πεύκη, κληματὶς
ΙΙΙΙ· στε[φα]νώματα
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ξύ-
[λα
ἐπὶ βωμούς,
Πύθιον, ἱεροπόιον,
ΤΔ], τιμὴ Δ𐅃· εἰς
ἐπίκρασιν τοῖς
Διοσκούροις
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂. Πανήμου·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθᾶραι 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
πεύκη, κληματὶς
ΙΙΙΙ· σ[τεφ]ανώματα
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ξύλα
ἐπὶ βωμούς, Πύ-
[θιον,
ἱεροπόιον, Τ
— —, τιμὴ — —· ἐλαίου
χο. Δ], τιμὴ Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
πίσσης με. ΔΙ,
ὥστε χρῖσαι
τὸν Κερατῶνα
καὶ τὰ ἄλλα
ὅσα χρίεται,
τιμὴ 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τοῖς χρίσ[ασι]ν
Δ𐅃. Ἑκατομβαιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱε-
[ρὸν
καθᾶραι —· πεύκη,
κληματὶς — —·
στεφανώματα
— —· ξ]ύλα ἐπὶ
βωμούς, Πύθιον,
ἱεροπόιον, ΤΔ𐅃,
τιμὴ ΔΔ𐅂𐅂{𐅂}ΙΙ̣Ι·
Ἀφροδισίων τῶι
χορῶι λαμπάδες,
ῥυμοὶ 𐅃· χορεῖα
Δ· ἄνθρακες
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἐλαίου
χο. 𐅃Ι, τιμὴ 𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂.
190
[Μεταγειτνιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθᾶραι — —·
πεύκη, κ]ληματὶς̣
ΙΙΙΙ· στεφανώματα
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ξύλα
ἐπὶ βωμούς,
Πύθιον, ἱεροπόιον,
ΤΔ, τιμὴ Δ𐅃· ἄνθρακες
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂[𐅂]· ἐλαίου
χο. 𐅃Ι, τιμὴ 𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
λιβανωτὸς 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂.
[Βουφονιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθᾶραι — —·
πεύκη, κλημ]ατὶς
ΙΙΙΙ· στεφανώματα
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ξύλα
ἐπὶ βωμούς,
Πύθιον, ἱεροπόιον,
ΤΔΔ, τιμὴ ΔΔΔ·
ἄν〚——〛θρακες
{ἄνθρακες} Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἐλαίου χο.
<𐅃>ΙΙΙΙ, τιμὴ
Δ𐅂𐅂. Ἀπατουριῶ-
[νος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθᾶραι —· πεύκη,
κληματὶς — —·
στεφανώ]ματα
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· ξ[ύ]λα
ἐπὶ βωμούς,
Πύθιον, ἱεροπόιον,
ΤΔ𐅃, τιμὴ ΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄνθρακες Δ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἐλαίου με. τιμὴ
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂. Ἀρησιῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
κα-
[θᾶραι
— —· πεύκη, κληματὶς
— —· στεφανώματα
— —· ξύλα ἐπὶ
βωμ]ούς, Πύθιον,
ἱεροπόιον, ΤΔΔ,
τιμὴ ΔΔΔ· ἄνθρακες
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἱερείαι
εἰς τὰ νομιζόμενα
𐅂𐅂· καὶ τοῖς
τὸ θύρετρον
ἐνοικοδομήσασιν
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἐλαίου
[με.
— —. Ποσιδεῶνος·
χοῖρος τὸ ἱερὸν
καθᾶραι —· πεύκη,
κλημ]ατὶς ΙΙΙΙ·
στεφανώματα
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ξύλα
ἐπὶ βωμούς,
Πύθιον, ἱεροπόιον,
ΤΔΔ, τιμὴ ΔΔΔ·
ἄνθρακες Δ𐅂𐅂·
ἐλαί[ο]υ με.,
τιμὴ Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂. κεφαλὴ
vac.
195
[— — — — —. τάδε
ἀνήλωται κατὰ
νόμους καὶ
ψηφί]σματα·
Ἀπολλωνίωι
σιτηρέσιον ΗΔΔ·
εἰς ἱματισμὸν
Δ𐅃· κάρπωι
σιτηρέσιον ΗΔΔ·
εἰς ἱματισμὸν
Δ𐅃· στεφάνωι
σιτηρέσιον ΗΔΔ·
[εἰς
ἱματισμὸν Δ𐅃·
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — —]Δ̣ΔΔ·
νεωκόρωι εἰς
Σαραπιεῖον
Ἄμνωι ΗΔΔ· νεωκόροις
καθ’ ἱερὸν
Η𐅄ΔΔΔ· νεωκόρωι
εἰς Νῆσον Σωτέληι
ΗΔΔ· νεωκόρωι
ἐπ’ Ἀσ-
[κληπιὸν
τῶι δεῖνι ΗΔΔ·
— — — — — — — — —
—]Δ· ἰνωποφύλακι
Ἀθηνάδῃ μηνῶν
ἓξ ΔΔΔΔ𐅃· Ἀπολλωνίωι
ἀρχιτέκτονι
𐅅ΗΗΔΔ· Φιλουμένῃ
αὐλητρίδι ΗΔΔ·
κοφίνων καὶ
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — ο]υ
ΗΔΔ· χοῖρος
τὸ Θεσμοφόριον
καθᾶραι 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
κήρυκι 𐅄Δ·
γραμματεῖ Νεοκροντίδῃ
𐅄ΔΔΔ. ἄγαλμα
τῶι Διονύσωι
𐅄· ξύλα
[εἰς
πτέρυγας — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — —]· ἐργάταις
τοῖς τὴν ἅμαξαν
ἀγαγοῦσιν καὶ
ἀπαγαγοῦσιν
καὶ τοῖς τὸν
μόλυβδον ἐνέγκασιν
καὶ ἀπενέγκασιν
Δ· εἰς ἐπι-
200
[κόσμησιν τοῦ
ἀγάλματος —
— — — — — — —·
πέτευρα ταῖς]
δι[εγγ]υήσεσιν
καὶ ταῖς συγγραφαῖς
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· εἰς
Θεσμοφόρια
τῇ Δήμητρι ὗς
ἐγκύμων ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
ἐχθύματος
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλου
ἐ-
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— —·
εἰς τροφὴν τοῖς
ἱερείοις
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· τῇ
ἱερείαι τῆς
Δήμητρος Δ𐅃·
τῇ τῆς Κόρης
Δ𐅃· ἐπισπλαγχνίδιοι
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· ξύλα
καὶ
[πεύκη
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — —· πίσσης
με. ΙΙ — — —]λις
παρὰ Ῥοδίππου
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· Λυκίωι
χρίσαντι τοὺς
βωμοὺς τοὺς
ἐν τῶι Θεσμοφορίωι
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ. λογισταῖς
ἐφόδια· παν-
[τ
— — 𐅄Δ· — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
—. στ]ηλῶν 𐅄Δ𐅃·
βατήρων Δ𐅃𐅂ΙΙ·
τοῖς ἀπενέγκασιν
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· τοῖς
ἐργασαμένοις
Δ𐅃𐅂· τῶι γράψαντι
ΗΗ· μολύβδου
𐅃𐅂𐅂·
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — πέτευρα
ταῖς π]αραδόσεσιν
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· καὶ τῶι
γράψαντι Δ𐅂𐅂·
τῶι τοὺς θησαυροὺς
ἀνοίξαντι 𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἐργάταις τοῖς
ἄρασι τὸ σῶμα
τὸ
205
[προσπεσὸν πρὸς
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — —· τοῖς ἄρα]σι
τὸ σῶμα τὸ ἐκ
τῆς στοᾶς τῆς
παρὰ τὸ Λευκόθιον
𐅃𐅂ΙΙ· τοῖς
ἄρασι τὰ σώματα
τὰ προσπεσόντα
[πρὸς
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— τ]ὰς κλεῖδας
τῇ θεᾶι ΔΔΔΔ𐅃·
καὶ ἀνθέων 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
Σωδάμωι ὥστε
Ἀριστοῖ ὑφανάσῃ
καὶ ποικιλάσῃ
τὰ ἐνδύ-
[ματα
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — —]𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅀.
κεφαλὴ ΧΧΧΧΗ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅀.
vac. ἐλάβομεν δὲ
καὶ παρὰ ταμιῶν
Μενύλλου καὶ
Φωκαιέως εἰς
ἆ-
[θλα
Η· ταύτας κατηθλήσαμεν
μετὰ τοῦ ἄρχοντος
καὶ τοῦ γυμνασιάρχου.
τοὺς δὲ τοῦ
ἱεροῦ? τόκ]ους
ὀφείλοντας
προχρη[σ]άμενοι,
ἔδομεν τοῖς
ἐπιστάταις τὸ
ἀργύριον ἐν
τοῖ[ς] καθήκουσιν
χρόνοις
[ἵνα
συντελῶνται
αἱ θυσίαι τοῖς
θεοῖς. καὶ τόδε
ἄλλο ἀργύριον
ἐδανείσαμεν
τῆι πόλει μηνὸς
— — ῶ]νος καὶ
προδανεισταῖς
Λευκίνωι Φωκαιέως,
Κτησωνίδῃ Ἀμπιθάλου,
Γοργίαι Πολυκρίτου,
Καί-
210
[βωνι Καίβωνος,
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — τῶι δεῖνα
—]ρου, Θεοτίμωι
Ἀριστοκλέους,
Ξενοκ[ρί]τωι
Κλεινοδίκου,
Νικίαι Εὐέλθοντος,
Σωτίωνι Κτησι-
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— —, τῶι δεῖνα]
Αἰσίμου, Πασσῇ
Ἀριστοβούλο<υ>,
〚—
—〛 Χοι[ρύ]λωι
Τελεσάνδρου,
Πολύβωι Πολύβου,
Καλλισθένῃ
Θαρ-
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — ὃ ἐπιβά]λ̣λ̣ει
δάνειον τοῦ
ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου
{Ι} εἰς τὸν στέφανον
τῶι βασιλεῖ
Φιλίππωι κατὰ
συγγρα-
[φὴν
τὴν κειμένην παρὰ
Ὀρθοκλῇ Ἀριστοθ]άλ[ου.
καὶ τόδε ἄλλο
ἐδανείσαμεν
[Εὐβοεῖ Ἱππώνακτος?
τοῦ ἱε]ροῦ
ἀργυρίου,
ἐπιχωρούσης
καὶ τῆς γυναικὸς
αὐτοῦ Ἀρκούσσης
μετὰ κυρίου
αὐτοῦ Εὐ-
[βοέως?
— — — ἀργ]υρίου?
[— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — ἐπ]ὶ
τοῖς χωρίοις
πᾶσιν δι’ ἐγγύων
Σωκρίτου τοῦ
Δημοκράτου
καὶ Ἀμφι[κλέ]ους
τοῦ Εὐβοέ-
215
[ως κατὰ συγγραφὴν
τὴν κε]ιμένην
[παρὰ — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — —. καὶ
τόδε ἄλλο
ἀρ]γύριον ἐδανείσαμεν
τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου
Εὐβούλει
Θεοδ̣[ώ]ρ̣ου,
μετὰ κυρίου
τοῦ ἀν-
[δρὸς
Φιλλάκου τοῦ
Θεοφρα?]στίδου
δάν[ειον Χ? — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — Φιλ]λάκου
τοῦ Θεοφραστίδου
κατὰ συγγραφὴν
τὴν κειμ[έν]η̣ν
παρὰ Μ[ε]νεκράτῃ
Διαί-
[του.
καὶ τόδε ἄλλο
ἀργύριον ἐ]δ̣ανείσαμ[εν
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — —]Γ̣ΥΚ̣ΙΟΥ
Θεσσαλοῦ τοῦ
ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου
ἐπὶ ὑποθήκῃ
τοῖς [χ]ωρίοις
τοῖς ἐν Σχινοῦν-
[τι
— — — — — — — — καὶ
ἐπὶ τ]οῖς ἄλλοις
[τοῖς ὑπάρχουσιν
αὐτῶι καὶ τοῖς
τῶν ἐγγύων πᾶσι·
— — — — — — — — —
— Παρμενίω?]νι
Πολυβούλου
καὶ Πολυξένωι
Παρμενίωνος
𐅂ΧΗΗΗ𐅄, κατὰ
συγγραφὴν τὴν
[κειμένην
παρὰ Ὀρ]θοκλεῖ
[Ἀρισ]τοθάλου.
καὶ τάδε ἀνήλωται
εἰς τὰ Ποσίδεια
ἀπὸ τῶν ἑξακοσίων
καὶ τοῦ τέλ?]ους
τῶν ἡμιωβελίων·
βοῦς τῶι Ποσειδῶνι
παρὰ Φανέου
𐅂Η· ἱερεῖ[α]
παρὰ Προ-
220
— — — — — — — — —
— δελφάκ[ιο]ν
𐅂ΔΔΔ· εἰς —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — 𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἀλφίτων Δ𐅂𐅂·
εἰς τὸν ἀλφιτισμὸν
οἴνου Κνίδια
ΔΙΙ, 𐅂𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τοῖς μὴ πορ[ε]υομέ-
[νοις
— — — — —] εἰς
ἀπόμοιραν 𐅄𐅂ΛΛ[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — μα]γείρωι
ΔΔ· ἐργάταις
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄνθρακ[ε]ς
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· ξύλων
ΤΔ𐅃, 𐅂ΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ῥυμοὶ, κλη-
[ματίδες
— — — — — —]ΙΟΟΙΣ·
κάρυα Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
ἰσχάδ[ες — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
—]ους εἰς τὸ
περίκομ̣μ̣α
𐅂ΔΔ· εἰσίτημα
δὲ δερμάτων
Δ𐅂𐅂· κεραμίων
𐅃𐅂.
[καὶ
τάδε ἀνήλ]ωτα[ι]
εἰς Εἰλ[ει]θύαια
․ων․ΙΣΣΓ — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — Ι̣Ι· ἀρτοκόπωι
𐅂· στεφανώματα
ΙΙΙΙ· οἶνος
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· τάριχος
𐅂𐅂𐅂· ὄψον 𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
κάρυα 𐅂𐅂.
[τὸ
δὲ ἐνειρ]όσιον
τὸ γινόμενον
[Θαλ]έ̣[ο]υ Η̣.
ἔδο[μεν πράξαντες
εἰς τὰ κατὰ
μῆνα καὶ τῆς
φιάλης τοῖς
πρ]υτάνεσιν, τὸ
δὲ λοιπὸν τῶι
ἐπιστάτει παρέδομεν.
παρέδομεν δὲ
καὶ
225
[ἄρχο]ντι Ξενοτίμωι
φιάλην [γοργ]ίε̣ιο[ν]
ΛΙ[— — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —·
καὶ παρέδομεν
ἱεροποιοῖς
Μειλιχίδηι καὶ]
Δημητρίωι φιάλας
ΙΙ, εὐτύχειον
καὶ φιλαδέλφειον,
ὁλ. ἀγούσας
𐅂ΗΗ.
[παρελ]άβομεν
δὲ καὶ παρ’
ἱεροποιῶν
Συνω[νύμου καὶ
Κρίττιος ξύλα
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— —· ξύλον στρογγ]ύλον
πήχων Δ𐅃ΙΙ· καὶ
ἄλλα τετράγωνα
𐅃· καὶ παράρους
κεραμίδας ΔΙ·
καὶ
[καλυ]πτῆρας
Η𐅄Δ καὶ ἐπιβλῆτας̣
ΧΧΔΔΔ καὶ [— —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
παρὰ ἱεροπο]ιῶν
Συνωνύμου καὶ
Κρίττιος καὶ
ὧν ἐπριάμεθα
τετραγώνων ξύ-
[λων
—] παρὰ Ἕρμω[ν]ος·
ἀπὸ τούτων κατεχρήσθ[η
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — εἰς
τὴν κατασκευὴν
τῶν] στοῶν τῶν
ἐπὶ τοῦ Ἡρακλείου
Δ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ· εἰς
ταῦτα τῶν παρὰ
Ἕρμωνος
—
— — — 𐅃 εἰς
τοὺς ὑποτόνο̣υ̣ς
τοὺς συγγωνίους
τ[— — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — —. εἰς
τὴν κατασκευὴν
τ]ῶν στοῶν καὶ
εἰς τ[ὸ] παρακάλυμμα
τὸ παρὰ ταῖς
κουραῖς τῶν
230
[δοκῶν, τῶ]ν 𐅃ΙΙ
τ̣ῶν παρ[ὰ Ἕρ]μωνο[ς
․․] κ̣αὶ ἀπὸ τῶν
στρ[ογγύλων?
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — ἐ]πριάμεθα
αὐτοὶ κατεχρήσθη
εἰς τὴν κατα[σκ]ευὴν
τῶν στοῶν
[τῶν
ἐπὶ τ]ὸ Ἡρακλεῖον
καὶ ΛΙΠ․․․ΛΝΤΕΣΑΣΙΙ̣ΚΥ̣
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — ς
Δ𐅃· παλαιὰς
κερα[μί]δας ἃς
παρελάβομ[ε]ν,
ἐπεθήκαμεν
εἰς
[τὸν
κέρα]μον τῶν στοῶν
[τ]ῶν ἐπὶ τοῦ
Ἡρα[κλείου
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — εἰς]
τὴν κατασκε[υὴ]ν
τῶν πινάκων τῶν
ἐπὶ τὸ λογεῖον,
ἀφ’ ὧν
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — κατεχ[ρή]σθησ[αν
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
εἰς τὸ Ἡ]ρακλεῖον
τὰ γενόμενα
ἀπότομα 𐅃Ι
κατεχρήσθη εἰς
τοὺς π̣․․․
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — Ι․․ΙΜΗΤ[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — κ]αθ̣η<ι>ρέθη
δὲ καὶ τὰ ἰκρία
τὰ ἐν τῶι Δωδεκαθέωι
τὰ ὑπ․․․
235
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — Ρ̣ΟΣ̣Γ̣ΥΛ
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — συ εἰς
τὸ Θεσμοφόριον
ξύλα στρογγύλα
𐅃· ἱμάντες 𐅄·
κ․․
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — ἱ]μάντων
𐅄Δ𐅃Ι· καὶ εἰς
τὸ Σαραπιεῖον
ἱμάντες Γ
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— ου
εἰς τὸν οἶκον
τὸν πλησίον τοῦ
Ἰσιείου κατεχρη-
[σάμεθα
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— παρέδομεν
τοῖς μεθ’] αὑτοὺς
Δημητρίωι καὶ
Μειλιχίδῃ ξύλον
τετρ[άγω]-
[νον
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — πτ]ελέινον
Ι καὶ ἥμ[υ]συ·
καὶ κεραμίδας,
ἀφ’ ὧν ἐπριάμ[εθα]
240
[— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —.
καὶ οἵδε τόκους
ὀφείλουσιν
τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου
αὐτοὶ καὶ οἱ
ἔγγυοι· — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — —] υτάδο[υ]?
κληρονόμοι 𐅃·
Ἀπημάντου κληρονόμοι
[𐅄Δ·
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
—]ν Η· Ξ̣ενοκ̣ράτου
κληρονόμοι
ΔΙ̣· Ἀρκεφῶντος
τοῦ Ἀρ-
[κεφῶντος
κληρονόμοι
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ {²⁷𐅃?}²⁷·
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — —]ου 𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂[𐅂]ΙΙ·
Παρμενίωνος
τοῦ Διοδότου
κληρο[ν]ό-
[μοι
Δ· — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — Κόνων]ο̣ς
τοῦ Φωκαιέως
κληρονόμοι Δ·
ἄλλας Δ· ἄλ-
[λας
𐅃· ἄλλας ΔΔΔΔ·
ἄλλας ΔΔ· —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — Εὐκτή]μονος
κληρονόμοι Δ·
Φιλάρχου τοῦ
Θεωρύ-
245
[λου κληρονόμοι
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂 —· — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — Ἀμφέας
Δη]μοκράτου
Δ· Κλειτάρχου
κληρονόμοι
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅦·
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — κληρον]ό̣μον
κατὰ τὸ ἥμυσυ
Δ𐅃· Τιμέας Δ·
Ἀριστόδι-
[κος
Η· — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — ἄλ]λας
𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· Σωσιδήμου
κληρονόμοι ΔΔ·
Σω-
[σίλου
τοῦ Θεαίου
κληρονόμοι
ΗΔΔ𐅃· — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
Κλειτ]άρχου
κληρονόμοι
κατὰ τὸ ἥμυσυ
Δ𐅂ΙΙΙ·
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— Κοσμι]άδου
τοῦ Σήμου
κληρονόμοι
Δ𐅃· Ἑβδο-
250
[μίσκος 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
{²⁷Ἑβδο|[μίσκου
κληρονό. Η𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ?}²⁷·
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— εἰ δέ τινας
μὴ ἐγγεγραφήκαμεν
ὀφείλοντας
τῶι θεῶι, ἐγ]γράφομεν
ὀφείλοντας
τῶι θεῶι α[ὐτοὺς]
[καὶ
τοὺς ἐγγύους
αὐτῶν — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — —. καὶ τάδε
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — ὀφείλουσιν
αὐτ]οὶ καὶ οἱ
ἔγγυοι αὐτῶν
Ἀπατούριος
Ἀ[πα]-
[τουρίου
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — —]〚—
— — — —〛 Εὐβούλην
Θεο-
[δώρου
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν
παρέδομεν ἱεροποιοῖς
Ἄ]μνωι, Χαρίλαι,
Χαρικλείδῃ,
Ἀγοράλ-
[λωι]
— vac.
255
[κεφαλὴ πάσης
εἰσόδου — —
— — 𐅆ΧΗΗΗΗΔ𐅃𐅦𐅁//.
κεφαλὴ πάσης
ἐξόδου — —
—]𐅆ΧΗΗΗΗΔ𐅃𐅦𐅁//.
vac.
vac.
http://epigraphy.packhum.org/text/62921
face
B
θεοί.
1
τάδε παρελάβομεν
ἐν τῶι ναῶι τοῦ
Ἀπόλλωνος παρὰ
ἱεροποιῶν
Κρίττιος τοῦ
Νικάρχου, Συνωνύμου
τοῦ Ἱερομβρότου,
παρούσης βουλῆς
καὶ γραμματέως
τοῦ τῆς πόλεως
Ποσειδί-
κου
τοῦ Σωτέλου,
καὶ τοῦ τῶν
ἱεροποιῶν
Νεοκροντίδου
τοῦ Νεοκροντίδου,
καὶ παρέδομεν
τοῖς μεθ’ ἑαυτοὺς
ἱεροποιοῖς
Δημητρίωι Τιμοξένου,
Μειλιχίδει
Κριτοβούλου,
παρούσης
βουλῆς
καὶ γραμματέως
τοῦ τῆς πόλεως
Τηλεμνήστου
τοῦ Ἀντιγόνου,
καὶ τοῦ τῶν
ἱεροποιῶν
Τιμοξένου τοῦ
Τιμοξένου·
δακτύλιον
χρυσοῦν, σάρδιον
ἔχοντα ἐπίσημον
Ἀ-
πόλλωνα,
ὃν ἀνέθηκε τῇ
Λητοῖ Στρατονίκη,
ὁλ. 𐅂Δ· καθετῆρα
χρυσοῦν διάλιθον,
ὃν ἀνέθηκε τῇ
Λητοῖ Στρατονίκη,
ἐχ θυρεῶν ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ,
καὶ ἡμίση ΙΙ,
καὶ ἐμ μέσωι
εἷς ἑκατέρωθεν,
καὶ σειστὰ
5
ΗΔΔΔΔΙ, ὁλ. 𐅂Η𐅃𐅂·
δακτύλιον
χρυσοῦν, ὃν ἀνέθηκε
Στρατονίκη
Ἀπόλλωνι Ἀρτέμιδι,
ἔχοντα ἐπίσημον
Νίκην, ὁλ. σὺν τῶι
κίρκωι 𐅂ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
στεφάνια χρυσᾶ
ΙΙΙ, ἃ ἀνέθηκε
ταῖς Χάρισι
Στρα-
τονίκη,
τὸ ἓν οὐκ ἔχον
κίρκους οὐδὲ
τοὺς δεσμούς,
διαλελυμένα,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄ΔΙΙΙ·
χύμα χρυσοῦν
ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
τοῦ ἀγάλματος,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλο χρυσοῦν
χύμα ἀπὸ τῶν
τριῶν,
ὁλ. 𐅂Δ̣Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
χρυσοῖ φιλίππειοι
ΙΙΙ· ἀλεξάνδρειος
Ι· νόμισμα παντοδαπόν,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἡδυποτὶς χρυσῆ,
Ἐχενίκης ἀνάθεμα,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δρυός, Λυσάν-
δρου
ἀνάθεμα, ὁλ.
𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
κισσοῦ, ἀνάθεμα
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου,
διαλελυμένος,
καὶ κόρυμβοι
𐅃, ὁλ. 𐅂Η𐅃𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης, ἀνάθεμα
βασιλέως Δημητρίου,
ὁλ.
𐅂𐅄ΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης, ἀνάθεμα
Πολυκλείτου,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙΙ·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης, ἀνάθεμα
Φιλοκλέους,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στέφανον χρυσοῦν
κισσοῦ, ἀνάθεμα
Δη-
Gods,
We
received the following in the Temple of Apollo from the
hieropoioi Krittis son of Nikarchos, Synonymous the son of
Hierombrotos in the presence of the Council and the city scribe
Poseidikos son of Soteles and the scribe of the hieropoioi
Neokrontides son of Neokrontides, and we gave it over to the
hieropoioi after us Demetrios son of Timoxenos, Meilichides son of
Kritoboulos in the presence of the Council and the scribe of the
city Telemnestos son of Antigonos and the scribe of the hieropoioi
Timoxenos son of Timoxenos: gold
ring with sardion Apollo image which Stratonike dedicated to Leto,
wgt d.10; gold collar set with stones, which Stratonike dedicated to
Leto with 48 shields and 2 half-shields and one on either side in
the middle, with (5) 141 pendants, wgt d.106; gold ring which
Stratonike dedicated to Apollo, Artemis, with Nike image, wgt with
the circle d.36.4; 3 small gold crowns which Stratonike dedicated to
the Graces, one without circles or bonds, disassembled, wgt d.60.3;
gold ingot from the statue of Apollo, wgt d.98.3; another gold ingot
from the three (crowns), wgt d.27.3; 3 gold Philipics; 1
Alexandreian; various coin wgt d.68; gold hedypotis, dedication of
Echenike, wgt d.49.3; gold oak crown, dedication of Lysander, wgt
63.3; gold ivy crown, dedication of king Ptolemy, disassembled, and
5 clusters, wgt d.107; gold laurel crown, dedication of king
Demetrios, wgt d.71.3; gold laurel crown, dedication of Polykleitos,
wgt d.65.3; gold laurel crown, dedication of Philokles, wgt d.77.3;
gold ivy crown, dedication of the Deliades,
10
λιάδων, κόρυμβοι
ΙΙΙ κατεαγότες,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
στέφανον χρυσοῦν
μυρσίνης, Ἰωμίλκου
ἀνάθεμα, ὁλ.
𐅂ΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς δάφνης,
ἀνάθεμα βασιλέως
Ἀντιγόνου, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅄Δ𐅂·
λειμώνιον
χρυσοῦν, Σόλωνος
ἀνάθεμα Ἀσκληπιῶι,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης, ἀνάθεμα
βασιλέως Ἀντιγόνου,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΔΔ𐅃· στέφανον
χρυσοῦν δάφνης,
Ἀντιπάτρου ἀ-
νάθεμα,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στέφανον χρυσοῦν
δάφνης, ἀνεπίγραφον,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
στέφανον χρυσοῦν
δάφνης, Φάρακος
ἀνάθεμα, ὁλ.
𐅂ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στέφανον χρυσοῦν
δάφνης, Πνυταγόρα
ἀ-
νάθεμα,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂·
στέφανον χρυσοῦν
δάφνης καινόν,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄Δ𐅂· σφαῖραν
χρυσῆν ἐν ἐλύτρωι,
ἀνάθεμα Φίλας
τῆς Θεοδώρου,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στεφάνη χρυσῆ
μυρσίνης, Ξενοφάντου
ἀνάθεμα,
ὁλ.
𐅂ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
τέτραχμα ΙΙ· ἓν
ὑπόχαλκον
λυσιμάχειον,
ἓν ἀντιόχειον·
δραχμὴ ἀλεξανδρεία·
δακτύλιοι
ἀργυροῖ Δ𐅃ΙΙΙ
καὶ κυλίκιον
καὶ ὠτάριον,
δύο λίθους
ἔχοντες, εἷς
σιδηροῦς, ὁλ.
𐅂Δ
15
ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
δακτύλιοι
σιδηροῖ ὑποκεχρυσωμένοι
ΔΙ· τέτραχμον
λυσιμάχειον
ὑπόχαλκον·
φιάλας ἐκ πλινθείων
ἐξειρημένας
𐅃, ἀναθέματα
μία Δηλιάδων,
ἐπιδόντων θεωρῶν
καὶ ἀρχι-
θεώρου
Κλεάνακτος·
ἄλλη, ἀνάθεμα
Χερσονησιτῶν
τῶν ἐκ τοῦ Πόντου·
ἄλλη, ἀνάθεμα
Χερσονησιτῶν
τῶν ἐκ τοῦ Πόντου·
ἄλλη, ἀνάθεμα
Βακχίου Κολοφωνίου·
ἄλλη, ἀνάθεμα
Χερσο-
νησιτῶν
τῶν ἐκ τοῦ Πόντου,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ·
ἠλεκάται ἀργυραῖ
𐅃ΙΙ, ὁλ. 𐅂Δ𐅂𐅂·
τέτραχμον λυσιμάχειον·
φιάλαι αἱ ἀνατεθεῖσαι
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Τηλεμνήστου,
ἐφ’ ὧν ἐπιγραφή·
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἄμνου,
ταμιευόντων
Νίκωνος τοῦ
Ἀντιρήτου καὶ
Νικομάχου τοῦ
Νικομάχου, φιάλαι
Δ𐅃ΙΙΙ· ἄλλαι,
Νικάρχου καὶ
Τληπολέμου
ταμιῶν, φιάλαι
Δ𐅃· ἄλλαι ΙΙΙΙ,
ἐφ’ ὧν ἐπιγραφή·
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἄμνου,
ἱεροποιῶν
Φερεκλείδου
καὶ Ποσειδίκου·
εὐτύχειος Ι·
ἄλλη, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Φίλλιος, Θυεστάδαι
καὶ Ὠκυνεῖδαι
ἀπὸ τῶν γερῶν,
τρικτυαρχοῦντος
Κοσμιάδου
τοῦ Σήμου τὸ
ἐπιβάλλον Σή-
(10)
3 broken clusters, wgt d.76; gold myrtle crown, dedication of
Iomilkos, wgt d.21.3; gold laurel crown, dedication of king
Antigonos, wgt d.61; gold sea lavender, dedication of Solon to
Asklepios, wgt d.88; gold laurel crown, dedication of king
Antigonos, wgt d.25; gold laurel crown, dedication of Antipater, wgt
d.39.3; gold laurel crown, uninscribed, wgt d.37; gold laurel crown,
dedication of Pharax, wgt d.43; gold laurel crown, dedication of
Pnytagoras, wgt d.62; new gold laurel crown, wgt d.61; gold ball in
case, dedication of Phila, wife of Theodoros, wgt d.58; gold myrtle
diadem, dedication of Xenophantes, wgt d.48.3; 2 tetradrachms, one
gilded bronze Lysimachean, one Antiochean; Alexandrian drachma; 18
silver rings and small kylix and earring with two stones, one iron,
wgt d.34; (15) 11 gilded iron rings; gilded bronze Lysimachean
tetradrachm; 5 phialai taken from their plinths, one dedication of
the Deliades, with the theoroi and chief theoros Kleanax donors,
another dedication of the Chersonites from Pontos, another
dedication of the Chersonites from Pontos, another dedication of
Bakchios from Kolophon, another dedication of the Chersonites, wgt
d.480; 7 silver distaffs, wgt d.12; Lysimachean tetradrachm; phialai
dedicated in the archonship of Telemnestos, on which the inscription
in the archonship of Amnos, with Nikon son of Antiretos and
Nikomachos son of Nikomachos stewards, phialai 18; others, with
Nikarchos and Tlepolemos stewards, phialai 15; 4 others on which the
inscription in the archonship of Amnos with Pherekleides and
Poseidikos hieropoioi; 1 Eutychean; another in the archonship of
Phillis, Thyestadai and Okyneidai from the awards, with Kosmiades
son of Semos trittys-chief (paying) Semos’ share;
20
μωι· ἄλλη, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Καλλίου,
ἐπιδόντος βασιλέως
Ἀντιγόνου,
ἐπιστατοῦντος
Μειλιχίδου·
ἄλλη, ἀνάθεμα
Μαψιχιδῶν, ταμιεύοντος
τῶν προσόδων
Ἀφθονήτου. αἱ
πᾶσαι ἐν τῶι πρώ-
τωι
ῥυμῶι φιάλαι
ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ, ὁλ.
μν. ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ,𐅂𐅄.
δεύτερος ῥυμός,
φιάλαι 𐅄ΔΙΙΙΙ,
ὁλ. Τ,𐅂Η𐅄ΔΔ. τρίτος
ῥυμός, φιάλαι
Δ𐅃ΙΙ, ὧν μία ἡ
ἐπ’ Ἀντιγόνου
μόλυβδον ἔχουσα
ἐν τῶι πυθμένι,
ὁλ. μν. Δ𐅃Ι. τέταρ-
τος
ῥυμός, φιάλαι
𐅄ΔΙΙΙΙ, ὁλ. Τ,𐅂ΔΔΔΔ.
πέμπτος ῥυμός,
φιάλαι 𐅄ΔΙΙ,
ὁλ. Τ,𐅂ΔΔΔΔ. ἕκτος
ῥυμός, φιάλαι
𐅄ΔΙΙ, ὁλ. Τ,𐅂ΔΔ.
ἕβδομος ῥυμός,
φιάλαι 𐅄ΔΙΙ,
ὁλ. Τ,𐅂ΔΔ. ὄγδοος
ῥυμός, φιάλαι
𐅄ΔΙΙΙ, ὁλ. Τ. ἔ-
νατος
ῥυμός, φιάλαι
𐅄ΔΙΙΙ, ὁλ. Τ,𐅂ΔΔΔ.
δέκατος ῥυμός,
φιάλαι 𐅄ΔΙΙΙ,
ὁλ. Τ,𐅂ΔΔΔ. ἑνδέκατος
ῥυμός, 𐅄ΔΙΙΙ,
ὁλ. Τ,𐅂ΔΔΔ. δωδέκατος
ῥυμός, φιάλαι
𐅄ΔΙΙΙ, ὁλ. Τ,𐅂𐅄Δ.
τρεισκαιδέκατος
ῥυ-
μός,
φιάλαι 𐅄ΔΙΙΙ,
ὁλ. Τ,𐅂ΔΔ. τεσσαρεσκαιδέκατος
ῥυμός, φιάλαι
𐅄ΔΙΙ, ὁλ. Τ,𐅂ΔΔ.
πεντεκαιδ<έκατο>ς
ῥυμός, φιάλαι
𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙ, ὁλ. Τ, μν.
𐅃,𐅂𐅄. τὰ συνσταθέντα
μετὰ τῶν χυμάτων
τῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ
25
τρίποδος, ὁλ.
𐅂ΔΔΔΔ𐅂. ἐκ τοῦ
πρώτου ῥυμοῦ
τοῦ ἐκ τῆς κιβωτοῦ
φιάλη Ι ἡ περιγενομένη
ἀπὸ τοῦ ῥυμοῦ
τοῦ παραδοθέντος
τοῖς ἀνδράσιν,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄Δ· ἐκ τοῦ
δευτέρου ῥυμοῦ
τοῦ ἐκ τῆς κι-
βωτοῦ
φιάλη Ι καὶ ποτήρια
ΙΙΙ τὰ περιγενόμενα
ἀπὸ τοῦ ῥυμοῦ
τοῦ παραδοθέντος
τοῖς ἀνδράσιν,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗΔΔΔ· ἐκ
τοῦ τρίτου ῥυμοῦ
τοῦ ἐκ τῆς κιβωτοῦ
φιάλαι ΙΙΙ,
χελιδόνειοι
ΙΙ, ποτήρια
παντοδαπὰ
τεθραυμένα ΔΙ·
ὠταρίων κλάσματα
καὶ πυθμένων,
ὁλ. μν. 𐅃ΙΙΙ,𐅂ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ῥυτόν, οὗ ὁλ.
ἐν τῶι μικρῶι
ζυγῶι μν. 𐅃,𐅂𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλα ποτήρια
𐅃 τῶν ἐκ τῆς
κιβωτοῦ καὶ
ἠθμός, ὁλ. 𐅂Η𐅄
ΔΔΔ𐅂·
σκάφια ΙΙ τῶν
ἐκ τῆς κιβωτοῦ
τῶν ἐγ Νήσου,
τὸ μὲν Τιμοκράτου
ἀνάθεμα Δηλίου,
τὸ δὲ Νικάνδρου
ἀνάθεμα Ῥιθυμνίου,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄ΔΔΔΔ·
κηρύκειον καὶ
θυμιατήριον
καὶ ἠλεκάται,
ὧν
ὁλ. 𐅂ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂.
ἄστατα· ταινία
περιηργυρωμένη,
Ἀρχεστράτου
ἀνάθεμα· κρατῆρες
ἀργυροῖ ΙΙ,
βασιλίσσης
Στρατονίκης
ἀναθέματα·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
ὧι τὸ ἄγαλμα
ἐστεφάνω-
(20)
another, in the archonship of Kallias, with king Antigonos donor,
Meilichides overseer; another, dedication of the Mapsichidai, with
Aphthonetos steward of the revenues.
In
the first row total phialai 38, wgt mn.37 d.50; second row phialai
63, wgt T, d.170; third row, 17 phialai of which the one in
Antigonos’ archonship had lead in the base, wgt. mn.16; fourth
row, 64 phialai, wgt T, d.40; fifth row, 62 phialai, wgt T, d.40;
sixth row, 62 phialai, wgt T, d.20; seventh row, 62 phialai, wgt T,
d.20; eighth row, 63 phialai, wgt T; ninth row, 63 phialai, wgt T,
d.30; tenth row, 63 phialai, wgt T, d.30; eleventh row 63, wgt T,
d.30; twelfth row, 63 phialai, wgt T, 60; thirteenth row, 63
phialai, wgt T, d.20; fourteenth row, 62 phialai, wgt T, d.20;
fift(een)th row, 62 phialai, wgt T, mn 5, d.50; The part weighed
with the ingots from the (25) tripod, wgt d.41; from the first row
from the chest, 1 phiale left over from the row transferred to the
officers, wgt d.60; from the second row from the chest, 1 phiale and
3 cups left over from the row transferred to the officers, wgt
d.230; from the third row from the chest 3 phialai, 2 swallows, 11
various shattered cups, bits of earrings and bases, wgt mn.8, d.38;
rhyton, with wgt in the small scales mn.5, d.9; 5 other cups from
the chest and a strainer, wgt d.181; 2 skaphia from what came out of
the chest from the Nesos, the one dedication of Timokrates of Delos,
the other dedication of Nikander from Rethymnon, wgt d.90; staff and
censer and distaffs, wgt d.42.
Unweighed:
silvered fillet, dedication of Archestratos; 2 silver kraters,
dedications of queen Stratonike; gold crown with which the statue is
crowned,
30
ται, ἐμ μέσωι
σάρδιον ἔχων·
φιάλαι χρυσαῖ
ΙΙ, βασιλίσσης
Στρατονίκης
ἀναθέματα, λίθους
ἔχουσαι· θυμιατήριον
ἀργυροῦν, Βουλομάγας
ἀνάθεμα· σκύφοι
ΙΙ ἀπότυποι,
Δηλίων ἀναθέματα·
ζωιδάρια
ἀργυρᾶ ΙΙ ἐν
οἰκίσκωι ξυλίνωι
καὶ ἡμικύκλιον
ἀργυροῦν, Ἀπολλοδώρου
ἀνάθεμα· τριήρης
ἀργυρᾶ, Σελεύκου
ἀνάθεμα· φιάλη
ἀργυρᾶ ἐμ πλινθείωι,
Κώιων ἀνάθεμα,
ἀρχιθεώ-
ρου
Εὐέλθοντος·
ἀσπιδίσκαι
ὀνύχιναι ΔΔ,
βασιλίσσης
Στρατονίκης
ἀναθέματα, ἐν
χρυσίωι ἐνδεδεμέναι·
τούτων αἱ δύο
ἅλυσιν ἔχουσιν·
φαρέτρα ἡρακλεωτικὴ
χρυσοποίκιλτος
τόξον
ἔχουσα· ταινία
χρυσῆ, ἐφ’ ἧς
ἐπιγραφή· βασίλισσα
Στρατονίκη
βασιλέως Δημητρίου
καὶ βασιλίσσης
Φίλας Ἀπόλλωνι
Δηλίωι· μυοσόβαι
ΙΙ ὀνυχίνας
λαβὰς ἔχουσαι·
ποτήριον ὀνύχι-
νον,
ἀνάθεμα Κοίντου
Ῥωμαίου· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς καὶ
στρεπτόν, κρεμάμενα
πρὸς τῶι τοίχωι·
φιάλη ἀργυρᾶ
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
Ἀριστοκράτου
ἀνάθεμα· φιάλη
ἀργυρᾶ ἐμ πλινθείωι,
Κώι-
35
ων ἀνάθεμα,
ἀρχιθεώρου
Μακαρέως· φιάλη
ἀργυρᾶ ἐμ πλινθείωι,
Θεοδότου
ἀρχιθεώρου
Ῥοδίου· φιάλη
ἀργυρᾶ ἐμ πλινθείωι,
Ἀριστοκράτου
ἀνάθεμα· φιάλη
ἀργυρᾶ ἐμ
πλινθείωι,θεωρῶν
ἀνάθεμα
ἀρ〚——〛χιθεώρου
{ἀρχιθεώρου}
Ἀλέξιος. δεξιᾶς
εἰσιόντι εἰς
τὸν νεὼ τοῦ
Ἀπόλλωνος·
φιάλαι ἀργυραῖ
ἐμ πλινθείοις
𐅄, ὧν μία ἐν τῶι
ναῶι ἐστίν· καὶ
πῖλος ἀργυροῦς·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
ἐπὶ
προκομίου
καὶ ἡ ἀνατεθεῖσα
φιάλη ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Τηλεμνήστου
ὑπὸ τῆς πόλεως
τῆς Κώιων, ἀρχιθεώρου
Ἀλθαιμένου,
καὶ ἡ ἀνατεθεῖσα
φιάλη ἐφ’ ἱεροποιῶν
Ὀρθοκλέους
καὶ Πολυβού-
λου,
ἀνάθεμα Μενεστράτου
Ἀθηναίου· ἄλλη
φιάλη, δεξιᾶς
εἰσιόντι εἰς
τὸν νεώ, Ἱπποκρίτου
Κώιου· ἄλλη,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Τελεσαρχίδου,
ἀνάθεμα Κώιων,
ἀρχιθεώρου
Νικαγόρα τοῦ
Θεοδώρου·
τριπόδιον
δελφικόν, ἀνάθεμα
Ἀριστάρχου.
ἀριστερᾶς εἰσιόντι
εἰς τὸν νεὼ τοῦ
Ἀπόλλωνος·
φιάλαι ἀργυραῖ
ἐμ πλινθείοις
ΔΔΔ𐅃· σκάφια
ΙΙ καὶ χρυσοῦς
ἐμ πινακίωι,
Νικολάου ἀνάθεμα
Ῥοδί-
(30)
with sardion in the middle; 2 gold phialai, dedications of queen
Stratonike, with stones; silver censer, dedication of Boulomagas; 2
figured skyphoi, dedications of the Delians; 2 silver animals in
small wood house and silver half circle, dedication of Apollodoros;
silver trireme, dedication of Seleukos; silver phiale in plinth,
dedication of the Koans with Euelthon chief theoros; 20 onyx disks,
dedications of queen Stratonike, bound in gold, two with chain; gold
ornamented Heraclean quiver with bow; gold fillet with inscription:
queen Stratonike daughter of king Demetrios and queen Phila to
Delian Apollo; 2 flyswatters/fans with onyx handles; onyx cup,
dedication of Quintus of Rome; gold crown and collar, hanging on the
wall; silver phiale in plinth, dedication of Aristokrates; silver
phiale in plinth, dedication of the Koans (35) with Makareus chief
theoros; silver phiale in plinth from Theodotos Rhodian chief
theoros; silver phiale in plinth, dedication of Aristokrates; silver
phiale in plinth dedication of the theoroi with Alexis chief
theoros.
Entering
the Temple of Apollo from the right: 50 silver phialai in
plinths, one of which is in the temple; and a silver pilos; gold
crown for the head; and the phiale dedicated in the archonship of
Telemnestos by the city of the Koans with Althaimenos chief theoros;
and the phiale dedicated with Orthokles and Polyboulos hieropoioi,
dedication of Menestratos of Athens; another phiale, from the right
going into the temple, from Hippokritos of Kos; another in the
archonship of Telesarchides, dedication of the Koans with Nikagoras
son of Theodoros chief theoros; small Delphic tripod, dedication of
Aristarchos.
Entering
the Temple of Apollo from the left: 35 silver phialai in
plinths; 2 skaphia and gold on plaque, dedication of Nikolaos of
Rhodes;
40
ου· δραχμὴ καὶ
τέτραχμον ἐφέσιον,
ἃ ἔφασαν ἀνενεχθῆναι
Μνησικ〚——〛λῆς
{Μνησικλῆς} καὶ
Διογένης παρ’
ἰδιωτῶν· φιάλην
καρυωτήν, ἐφ’
ἧς ἐπιγραφή·
Νικάνωρ Ἀπόλλωνι
Δηλίωι, ἱεροποιούντων
Ἀφθο-
νήτου
καὶ Θεοξένου·
κυμβίον, οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Ἱστιαιεύς
μ’ ἀνέθηκεν
Κάλλωνος ὕπερ,
φίλ’ Ἄπολλον,
τήνδε· συναμφοτέροις
εὐτυχίην ὄπασον·
κυλίκιον μόνωτον·
Ἐπιάναξ Μυτιληναῖος
Ἀπόλλω-
νι·
φιάλη, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Πανταίνου, βασιλέως
Ἀντιγόνου ἀνάθεμα,
ἐπιστατοῦντος
Ὠκυνείδου·
φιάλη καρυωτή,
ἐφ’ ἧς ἐπιγραφή·
Νικήρατος Πολύβου
Δήλιος καὶ
παῖδες Ἀπόλλωνι
Δηλίωι· σκά-
φιον,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Πανταίνου, ἱεράζοντος
δὲ τῶι Ἀσκληπιῶι
Ξενοκράτου·
σκάφιον, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Μειλιχίδου,
ἱεράζοντος
δὲ τοῦ Ἀσκληπιοῦ
Καρυστίου·
σκάφιον, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Σωτέλου,
στη-
σίλειον,
ἐπιστατοῦντος
Σατύρου τοῦ
Πυρρίδου·
σκάφιον, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Ἀπολλοδώρου,
ἱεράζοντος
τῶι Ἀσκληπιῶι
Λυσανίου·
σκάφιον, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Ἀγκιθείδου,
στησίλειον·
μαστός, ἐπ’ ἄρ-
45
χοντος Τλησιμένου,
ἱεράζοντος
τοῦ Ἀσκληπιοῦ
Σωτέλου· φιάλιον,
Δηλιάδων χορεῖα,
Φιλίππου ἐπιδόντος
τοῦ Πτολεμαίου·
ἄλλο φιάλιον·
Ἐπίκτητος Ἀμόργιος
Ἀρτέμιδι Ἑκάτει·
σκάφιον,
ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Σωτίωνος,
ἱεροποιῶν δὲ
Λυσάνδρου
καὶ Ἐλπίνου,
ἀπὸ τῶν αἰγῶν
καὶ τῶν ἄρκων·
σκάφιον, ἐφ’
ἱερέως Πολύβου,
Θεανδριδῶν·
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Λυκάδου, κυμβίον,
Ἥρηι Θῆρις τήνδε
ἀνέθηκεν
παῖς Ἀμιάντου·
κυμβίον· Πρόξενος
καὶ παῖδες
δεκάτην τῶι
Ἀπόλλωνι· σκάφιον,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Χαρίλα, στησίλειον,
ἐπιστατοῦντος
Ἑλικάνδρου·
σκάφιον, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Φιλοξένου,
ἱεράζοντος
τῶι Ἀσκληπιῶι
Ξένωνος τοῦ
Πιστοῦ· φιάλην,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Πολυστράτου·
βασιλεὺς Ἀντίγονος
Πανί, ἐπιστατοῦντος
Τελεσάνδρου·
σκάφιον, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Σωτίωνος,
ἱερο-
ποιῶν
Ἐλπίνου καὶ
Λυσάνδρου
ἀπὸ τῶν αἰγῶν
καὶ τῶν τράγων
ὧν ἀνέθηκεν
Τιμόξενος καὶ
Παρμενίων· φιάλιον,
Μύνδιος Ἀρτεμῆς
Θεοκρίτου
Ἀπόλλωνι Δηλίωι·
μάνης, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ξε-
(40)
drachma and Ephesian tetradrachm which they say was offered by
Mnesikles and Diogenes as private individuals; knobbed phiale with
inscription Nikanor to Delian Apollo, with Aphthonetos and Theoxenos
hieropoioi; kymbion with inscription Istiaieus dedicated me for
Kallo, dear Apollo, as follows, give both good fortune; small one
handled kylix, Epianax of Mytilene to Apollo; phiale in the
archonship of Pantainos, dedication of king Antigonos, with
Okyneidos overseer; knobbed phiale, with inscription Nikaratos son
of Polybos of Delos and his children to Delian Apollo; skaphion in
the archonship of Pantainos, with Xenokrates priest to Asklepios;
skaphion in the archonship of Meilichides, with Karystios priest of
Asklepios; Stesileion skaphion in the archonship of Soteles with
Satyros son of Pyrrides overseer; skaphion in the archonship of
Apollodoros, with Lysanios priest to Asklepios; Stesileion skaphion
in the archonship of Agkitheides; mastos in the archonship (45) of
Tlesimenes, with Soteles priest of Asklepios; small phiale, choreia
of the Deliades, donor Philip son of Ptolemy; another small phiale,
Epiktetos of Amorgos to Artemis Hekate; skaphion in the archonship
of Sotion, with Lysander and Elpinos hieropoioi, from the goats and
bears; skaphion in the priesthood of Polybos, from the Theandridai,
with Lykas archon; kymbion Theris child of Amias dedicated this to
Hera; kymbion Proxenos and children a tithe to Apollo; Sesileion
skaphion in the archonship of Charilas with Helikandros overseer;
skaphion in the archonship of Philoxenos, with Xenon son of Pistos
priest to Asklepios; phiale in the archonship of Polystratos: king
Antigonos to Pan, with Telesandros overseer; skaphion in the
archonship of Sotion, with Elpinos and Lysander hieropoioi from the
goats and billies that Timoxenos and Parmenion dedicated; small
phiale: Myndian Artemes son of Theokritos to Delian Apollo; manes in
the archonship of Xeno{no}medes
50
νο{νο}μήδου
{Ξενομήδου},
ἱεροποιῶν δὲ
Ἀστία καὶ Ἱερομβρότου,
ἱερὸν Ἀπόλλωνι·
φιάλη καρυωτή·
Κτησυλὶς Ἀριστολόχου
θυγάτηρ, Πυθέου
δὲ γυνή, Εἰλειθυίει·
ψυκτήριον, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Ἀπολλοδώρου,
ἱε-
ροποιοὶ
Σῆμος καὶ Πυθοκλῆς
ἀπὸ τῆς ἐλάφου
καὶ τῶν τράγων·
σκάφιον, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Ἀμφοτεροῦ,
στησίλειον,
ἐπιστατοῦντος
Ἡρακλείδου
τοῦ Ἐχεκράτου·
φιάλη, Ἀμφικλεῖδαι
Νάξιοι ἐξικε-
λίας
Ἀπόλλωνι· τὰ
πάντα ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ, ὁλ.
μν. Δ𐅃ΙΙΙ,𐅂𐅄ΔΔ·
ἀργύριον τὸ
περιγενόμενον
ἀπὸ τῶν ἐπιθύρων,
χύμα καὶ ἄλλα
λεπτά, ὁλ. 𐅂ΔΔΔ𐅂·
ἀργυροῖ κίρκοι
ΙΙ, ὁλ. 𐅂· ποτήριον,
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Σωσίβι-
ος
Γλαύκου ἀπὸ
τῶν γερῶν· ἄλλο,
Σωκρίτου
ἱερητεύσαντος
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Φίλλιος· φιάλη,
ἐφ’ ἧς ἐπιγραφή·
Δᾶζος Δαζίσκου
Ἀζαντῖνος ἀφ’
ὧν εἰργάσατο
Ἀπόλλωνι· ὁλ.
τῶν τριῶν 𐅂ΗΗΔ𐅃
𐅂𐅂·
φιάλας ΙΙΙΙ,
ἃς ἔφασαν παραδοθῆναι
ὑπὸ ταμιῶν Τληπολέμου
καὶ Νικάρχου
Θευεργεσίων,
Φιλεταιρείων,
Σωπατρείων,
Παταικείων, ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· φιάλαι
ΙΙ Θυεσταδῶν
καὶ Ὠκυνειδῶν,
55
τρικτυαρχούντων
Ἀλκιμάχου τοῦ
Τιμοκράτου,
Ἀριστείδου
τοῦ Τελέσωνος,
Τληπολέμου
<τοῦ> Διοδότου,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ· ἄλλαι
φιάλαι ΙΙ, ἱεροποιῶν
Μνησικλέους,
Διογένου,
Εὐτυχείων,
Φιλαδελφείων,
ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΗ· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς ἐπὶ
κώνου δάφνης,
ὃν ἀνέθηκεν
Περσεὺς βασιλέως
Φιλίππου Ἀπόλλωνι
Δηλίωι· φιάλαι
Δ𐅃Ι, ἃς παρέδοσαν
ταμίαι Καλλίας
καὶ Τελε〚—〛σαρχίδης
{Τελεσαρχίδης},
ὁλ. μν. Δ𐅃Ι· ἄλ-
λαι
φιάλαι ΙΙΙΙ,
ταμιῶν Καλλίου
καὶ Τελεσαρχίδου,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· ἄλλη
φιάλη, τρικτυάρχων
Πολύβου καὶ
Μνησικλέους,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· ἄλλη
φιάλη, ἣν ἔφασαν
παραλαβεῖν
παρὰ τρικτυάρχων
Χαρίλα
καὶ
Τελεσαρχίδου,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· ἄλλαι
φιάλαι ΙΙ, ἃς
ἔφασαν παραλαβεῖν
παρὰ ἱεροποιῶν
Σωκρίτου καὶ
Πολυξένου, ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΗ· ἄλλαι φιάλαι
Δ𐅃Ι, ταμιῶν Ἄμνου
καὶ Μνησιάδου,
ὁλ. μν. Δ𐅃Ι· ἄλλαι
φιάλαι ΙΙΙΙ,
τα-
μιῶν
Ἄμνου καὶ Μνησιάδου,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· χρυσοῦς
ἀλεξάνδρειος
Ι· ἐνώτιον χρυσοῦν
Ι· φιάλαι Δ𐅃Ι,
ἃς ἔφασαν αὑτοῖς
παραδοῦναι
ταμίας Πόλυβον
καὶ Ἀντίγονον,
ὁλ. μν. Δ𐅃Ι· ἄλλαι
ΙΙΙΙ, ταμιῶν Πολύ-
(50)
with Astias and Hierombrotos hieropoioi, sacred to Apollo; knobbed
phiale, Ktesylis daughter of Aristolochos wife of Pytheas to
Eileithyia; small cooler in the archonship of Apollodoros, with
Semos and Pythokles hieropoioi from the deer and the billy goats;
Stesileion skaphion in the archonship of Amphoteros, with
Herakleides son of Echekrates overseer; phiale the Naxian
Amphikleidai exikelias? to Apollo. Sum 27, wgt mn.18, d.70. Silver
left from the doors, ingots and other small pieces, wgt d.31; 2
silver circles, wgt 1; cup with inscription Sosibios son of Glaukos
from the awards, another with Sokritos priest in the archonship of
Phillis, phiale with the inscription Azantinian Dazos son of
Daziskos to Apollo from his produce, wgt of the three, d.217; 4
phialai which they said were given over by the stewards Tlepolemos
and Nikarchos, from the Theuergesia, Philetaireia, Sopatreia,
Pataikeia, wgt d.400; 2 phialai from the Thyestadai and Okyneidai
(55) with Alkimachos son of Timokrates, Aristeides son of Teleson
Tlepolemos son of Diodotos trittys-chiefs, wgt d.200; 2 other
phialai, with Mnesikles, Diogenes hieropoioi, from the Eutycheia,
Philadelpheia, wgt d.200; gold laurel crown on pinecone, which
Perseus son of king Philip dedicated to Delian Apollo; 16 phialai
which the stewards Kallias and Telesarchides gave over, wgt mn.16;
another 4 phialai from the stewards Kallias and Telesarchides, wgt
d.400; another phiale, with Polybos and Mnesikles trittys-chiefs,
wgt d.100; another phiale, which they said they received from the
trittys-chiefs Charilas and Telesarchides, wgt d.100; 2 other
phialai which they said they received from the hieropoioi Sokritos
and Polyxenos, wgt d.200; 16 other phialai from the stewards Amnos
and Mnesiades, wgt mn.16; another 4 phialai from the stewards Amnos
and Mnesiades, wgt d.400; 1 gold Alexandreian; 1 gold earring; 16
phialai which they said the stewards Polybos and Antigonos gave over
to them, wgt mn.16; another 4 from the stewards Polybos
60
βου καὶ Ἀντιγόνου,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· ἄλλαι
φιάλαι ΙΙ, Εὐξενίδου
καὶ Ἀντιγόνου,
Εὐτυχείων,
Φιλαδελφείων,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ· ἄλλα
ἀργυρᾶ παντοδαπὰ
ἀπ’ ἀνδριάντων
καὶ δακτύλιοι
καὶ κίρκοι καὶ
ἱστιαϊκὰ ΙΙΙ,
ὁλ.
𐅂Δ· δακτύλιοι
ὑπάργυροι ΙΙΙΙΙ
καὶ κονδύλιον
ὑπόχρυσον·
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης βασιλέως
Ἀττάλου, ὁλ.
𐅂Η. ἀριστερᾶς
εἰσιόντων εἰς
τὸν ναὸν τοῦ
Ἀπόλλωνος φιάλη
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
Ποπλίου
ἀνάθεμα· καὶ
Σατύρου αὐλός·
φιάλαι Δ𐅃Ι,
ταμιῶν Εὐφράνορος
καὶ Ἀλκιμίδου,
ὁλ. μν. Δ𐅃Ι· ἄλλαι
ΙΙΙΙ, ταμιῶν
Ἀλκιμίδου καὶ
Εὐφράνορος,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· ἄλλαι
φιάλαι ΙΙ, Κοσμιάδου
καὶ Θαρσαγό-
ρου,
ἀνεπίγραφοι,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ· ἄλλαι
φιάλαι ΙΙ, ἱεροποιῶν
Δημόνου καὶ
Τηλεμνήστου,
Εὐτυχείων,
Φιλαδελφείων,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ· ἄλλαι
φιάλαι ΙΙ, τρικτυάρχων
Ξενοκράτου
καὶ Νίκωνος,
ἀπὸ τῶν γερῶν,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· σκά-
φιον
στησίλειον,
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπὶ Λευκίνου,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄Δ· σκάφιον
στησίλειον,
ἐπιστατοῦντος
Διοδότου ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Ἡρακλείτου,
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπὶ Ἐπικτήμονος,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄Δ· σκάφιον
στησίλειον,
βου-
65
λῆς τῆς ἐπὶ
Σωσιστράτου,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄Δ· σκάφιον
στησίλειον,
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπὶ Ἐμπέδου,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄Δ· σκάφιον
στησίλειον,
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπὶ Ἡρακλείτου,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄Δ· σκάφιον
στησίλειον,
ὃ ἔφασαν ἀνενεχθῆ-
ναι
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπὶ Τηλεμνήστου,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄Δ· σκάφιον
στησίλειον,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Παρμενίωνος,
ἄστατον· φιάλαι
ΙΙ, ἱεροποιῶν
Ὀρθοκλέους
καὶ Πολυβούλου,
εὐτύχειος,
φιλαδέλφειος,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ· ἄλλαι
φιά-
λαι
Δ𐅃Ι, ταμιῶν Ξενοκλείδου
καὶ Γερύλλου,
ὁλ. μν. Δ𐅃Ι· ἄλλαι
φιάλαι ΙΙΙΙ,
ταμιῶν Ξενοκλείδου
καὶ Γερύλλου,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· ἄλλη
φιάλη, βασιλέως
Ἀντιόχου, ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· φιάλη
ἀργυρᾶ ὑπὲρ τὸ
ὑπέρθυ-
ρον,
ἣν ἀνέθηκαν Ἀχαιοὶ
καὶ ὁ ἡγεμὼν
Θεόξενος·
φιάλην, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἡρακλείτου,
Θυεσταδῶν καὶ
Ὠκυνειδῶν,
τρικτυαρχούντων
Τηλεμνήστου
καὶ Ἀριστοφῶντος,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· ἄλλας
φιάλας Δ𐅃Ι, τα-
μιῶν
Πολυκρίτου
καὶ Φανοδίκου,
ὁλ. μν. Δ𐅃Ι· ἄλλαι
ΙΙΙΙ, ταμιῶν
Πολυκρίτου
καὶ Φανοδίκου,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· φιάλ〚—〛ην
{φιάλην}, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Κοσμιάδου,
Θυεσταδῶν καὶ
Ὠκυνειδῶν,
τρικτυαρχοῦντος
Πάχητος
(60)
and Antigonos, wgt d.400; another 2 phialai from Euxenides and
Antigonos, from the Eutycheia, Philadelpheia, wgt d.200; various
other silver from the statues and rings and circles and 3 Histiakia,
wgt d.10; 5 silvered ring and gilded kondylion; gold laurel crown of
king Attalos, wgt d.100.
Entering
the Temple of Apollo from the left: phiale in plinth, dedication
of Publius; and pipes of Satyros; 16 phialai from the stewards
Euphranor and Alkimides, wgt mn.16; another 4, from the stewards
Alkimides and Euphranor, wgt d.400; 2 other phialai, from Kosmiades
and Tharsagoros, uninscribed, wgt d.200; 2 other phialai, hieropoioi
Demonos and Telemnestos from the Eutycheia, Philadelphia, wgt d.200;
2 other phialai, from the trittys-chiefs Xenokrates and Nikon, from
the awards, wgt d.100; Sesileion skaphion, from the Council of
Leukinos’s year, wgt d.60; Stesileion skaphion, with Diodotos
overseer in the archonship of Herakleitos, from the Council of
Epiktemon’s year, wgt d.60; Stesileion skaphion from the
Council (65) in Sosistratos’ year, wgt d.60; Stesileion
skaphion from the Council in Empedos’ year, wgt d.60;
Stesileion skaphion from the Council in Herakleitos’ year, wgt
d.60; Stesileion skaphion which they said was offered by the Council
in Telemnestos’ year, wgt d.60; Stesileion skaphion in the
archonship of Parmenion, unweighed; 2 phialai, with Orthokles and
Polyboulos hieropoioi, Eutycheian, Philadelpheian, wgt d.200;
another 16 phialai, from the stewards Xenokleides and Geryllos, wgt
mn.16; another 4 phialai, from the stewards Xenokleides and
Geryllos, wgt d.400; another phiale from king Antiochos, wgt d.400;
silver phiale over the lintel which the Achaians and their leader
Theoxenos dedicated; phiale in the archonship of Herakleitos, from
the Thyestadai and Okyneidai, with Telemnestos and Aristophon
trittys-chiefs, wgt d.100; 16 other phialai from the stewards
Polykritos and Phanodikos, wgt mn.16; 4 others, from the stewards
Polykritos and Phanodikos, wgt d.400; phiale in the archonship of
Kosmiades, from the Thyestadai and Okyneidai, with Paches
70
τοῦ Ἀναξιθέμιδος,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· καὶ ἣν
παρέδωκαν ἱεροποιοὶ
Ὀρθοκλῆς καὶ
Ἀλκιμίδης·
φιάλην ἐμ πλινθείωι
ὑπὲρ τὸ ὑπέρθυρον,
ἀνάθεμα Κώιων·
φιάλην, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀπολλοδώρου,
Θυεσταδῶν καὶ
Ὠκυνειδῶν,
τρικτυαρχούντων
Ξενοκράτου
καὶ Πυθέου,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· φιάλην,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Διογένου,
ἱεροποιῶν δὲ
Ἀπολλοδώρου,
Ἀντιγόνου,
ἐπιδόντος Ἑρμίου
τοῦ νησιάρχου,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· 〚—〛
ἄλλην,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντ<ος>
Διογένου,
ἱεροποιῶν δὲ
Ἀπολλοδώρου,
Ἀντιγόνου·
Εὔτυχος Φιλώτου
Χῖος Ἀπόλλωνι,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· φιάλας
Δ𐅃Ι, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀπολλοδώρου,
ταμιῶν Ἀπολλοδώρου
καὶ Ἡγέου, ὁλ.
μν. Δ𐅃Ι· ἄλλας
φιάλας ΙΙΙΙ,
ταμιῶν
Ἀπολλοδώρου
καὶ Ἡγέου, ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· ἄλλας
φιάλας, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος
Ἀπολλοδώρου,
ΙΙ, ἱεροποιῶν
δὲ Τλησιμένου,
Τελέσωνος,
Εὐτυχείων,
Φιλαδελφείων,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ· ἄλλας
φιάλας ΙΙ, ἱερο-
75
ποιῶν δὲ Ὀρθοκλέους
καὶ Ἀλκιμίδου,
Εὐτυχείων,
Φιλαδελφείων,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς, ὃν
ἀνέθηκεν Τίμων
Νυμφοδώρου
Συρακόσιος,
ἄστατος· φιάλαι
χρυσαῖ ΙΙ ἐμ
πλινθείοις,
ἃς ἀνέ-
θηκεν
Θέων Στράτωνος
Χῖος, ἄστατοι·
ἄλλη, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Χαιρέου, Θυεσταδῶν,
ἐπιστατοῦντος
Ἑβδομίσκου
καὶ Ἀπατουρίου,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς ἐπὶ
κώνου, ὃν ἀνέθηκεν
Δημήτριος βα-
σιλέως
Φιλίππου Ἀπόλλωνι
Δηλίωι· δακτύλιον
ἀργυροῦν τὸν
ἐκ τοῦ θησαυροῦ,
ὁλ. ΙΙΙ· ἄλλον
δακτύλιον
ὑπάργυρον·
φιάλας Δ𐅃Ι, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Ὀλυμπιοδώρου,
ταμιῶν Ἐμπέδου,
Ἀπατουρίου,
ὁλ.
μν.
Δ𐅃Ι· ἄλλαι
ΙΙΙΙ, ταμιῶν Ἐμπέδου
καὶ Ἀπατουρίου,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· φιάλαι,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ὀλυμπιοδώρου,
ΙΙ, ἱεροποιῶν
Ξενοκλείδου,
Παρμενίωνος,
Εὐτυχείων,
Φιλαδελφείων,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ· φιάλαι,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Χαιρέου,
Δ𐅃Ι, ταμιῶν Διακρίτου,
Νίκωνος, ὁλ. μν.
Δ𐅃Ι· ἄλλαι
ΙΙΙΙ, ταμιῶν
Διακρίτου,
Νίκωνος, ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· φιάλη
λεία χρυσῆ
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχουσα·
Ἀπόλλωνος
Δηλίου, Ἀρτέμιδος
Δηλίας, ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλη
φιάλη χρυσῆ
λεία, ἐπιγραφὴ
ἡ αὐτή, ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλη φιάλη λεία
χρυσῆ, ἐπιγραφὴ
ἡ αὐτή, ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
〚—〛
ἄλλη
φιάλη χρυσῆ
λεία, ἐπιγραφὴ
ἡ αὐτή, ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΔΔΔΔ·
ἄλλη φιάλη χρυσῆ
λεία, ἐπι-
(70)
son of Anaxithemis trittys-chief, wgt d.100; and the one which the
hieropoioi Orthokles and Alkimides gave over; phiale in plinth over
the lintel, dedication of the Koans; phiale in the archonship of
Apollodoros, from the Thyestadai and Okyneidai, with Xenokrates and
Pytheas trittys-chiefs, wgt d.100; phiale in the archonship of
Diogenes, with Apollodoros, Antigonos hieropoioi, Hermias the island
chief donor, wgt d.100; another in the archo(ship) of Diogenes, with
Apollodoros, Antigonos hieropoioi: Eutychos son of Philotas from
Chios to Apollo, wgt d.100; 16 phialai in the archonship of
Apollodoros with Apollodoros and Hegeas stewards, wgt mn.16; another
4 phialai with Apollodoros and Hegias stewards, wgt d.400; 2 other
phialai in the archonship of Apollodoros with Tlesimenes, Teleson
hieropoioi, from the Eutycheia, Philadelpheia, wgt d.200; 2 other
phialai with Orthokles and Alkimides hieropoioi, from the Eutycheia,
Philadelpheia, wgt d.200; gold crown which Timon son of Nymphadoros
from Syracuse dedicated, unweighed; 2 gold phialai in plinths which
(75) Theon son of Straton from Chios dedicated, unweighed; another
in the archonship of Chaireas, from the Thyestadai, with Ebdomiskos
and Apatourios overseer(s), wgt d.100; gold crown on pinecone, which
Demetrios son of king Philip dedicated to Delian Apollo; silver ring
from the treasure, wgt .3; another silvered ring; 16 phialai in the
archonship of Olympiodoros, with Empedos, Apatourios stewards, wgt
mn.16; another 4, with Empedos and Apatourios stewards, wgt d.400; 2
phialai in the archonship of Olympiodoros, with Xenokleides,
Parmenion hieropoioi from the Eutycheia, Philadelpheia, wft d.200;
16 phialai in the archonship of Chaireas, with Diakritos, Nikon
stewards, wgt mn.16; another 4, with Diakritos, Nikon stewards, wgt
d.400; smooth gold phiale with inscription: of Delian Apollo, Delian
Artemis, wgt d.139; another smooth gold phiale, the same
inscription, wgt d.143; another smooth gold phiale, inscription the
same, wgt d.139; another smooth gold phiale, inscription the same,
wgt d.140; another smooth gold phiale, inscription
80
γραφὴ ἡ αὐτή,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
ἄλλη φιάλη χρυσῆ
λεία, ἐπιγραφὴ
ἡ αὐτή, ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΔΔΔ𐅃·
ἄλλη φιάλη χρυσῆ
λεία, ἐπιγραφὴ
ἡ αὐτή, ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
φιάλη χρυσῆ
καρυωτή, ἐπιγραφή·
Ἀπόλλωνος
Δηλίου, ὁλ.
𐅂Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλη καρυωτὴ
χρυσῆ, ἐπιγραφὴ
ἡ αὐτή, ὁλ.
𐅂Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλη καρυωτὴ
χρυσῆ, ἐπιγραφὴ
ἡ αὐτή, ὁλ. 𐅂Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλη καρυωτὴ
χρυσῆ, ἐπιγραφὴ
ἡ αὐτή, ὁλ. 𐅂Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
ἄλλη
καρυωτὴ
χρυσῆ, ἐπιγραφὴ
ἡ αὐτή, ὁλ. 𐅂Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙΙ·
ἄλλη καρυωτὴ
χρυσῆ, ἐπιγραφὴ
ἡ αὐτή, ὁλ. 𐅂Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ·
οἰνοχόη χρυσῆ
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχουσα·
Ἀπόλλωνος
Δηλίου, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃·
ἄλλη οἰνο-
χόη
χρυσῆ, ἐπιγραφὴ
ἡ αὐτή, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
φιάλη, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Πολυξένου,
Θυεσταδῶν καὶ
Ὠκυνειδῶν,
τρικτυαρχούντων
Ἀντιγόνου καὶ
Ἀντιγόνου, ὁλ.
𐅂Η· φιάλαι Δ𐅃Ι,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Πο-
λυξένου,
ταμιῶν Περιάνδρου
καὶ Εὐξενίδου,
ὁλ. μν. Δ𐅃Ι· ἄλλαι
ΙΙΙΙ, ταμιῶν
Περιάνδρου
καὶ Εὐξενίδου,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· φιάλαι
Δ𐅃Ι, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ξένωνος, ταμιῶν
Φερεκλείδου
καὶ Πολυξένου,
ὁλ. μν. Δ
85
𐅃Ι· ἄλλαι φιάλαι
ΙΙΙΙ, ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗΗΗ·
φιάλαι ΙΙ, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Ξένωνος,
ἱεροποιῶν δὲ
Φωκαιέως, Μενύλλου,
Φιλαδελφείων,
Εὐτυχείων, ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΗ· πόρπη χρυσῆ,
Λευκίου ἀνάθεμα
Ῥωμαίου, ὁλ.
𐅂 𐅂𐅂· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς,
Τίτου ἀνάθεμα
Ῥωμαίου, ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΔ· ἄλλος
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης, Αὔλου
ἀνάθεμα Ῥωμαίου,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· ἄλλος
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης, Γαίου
Λιβίου Ῥωμαίου
ἀνάθεμα, ὁλ. 𐅂Η·
φιάλαι Δ𐅃Ι,
ἐπ’
ἀρχοντος Μενεκράτου,
ταμιῶν Δημοστράτου
καὶ Πάχητος,
ὁλ. μν. Δ𐅃Ι· φιάλη,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ξένωνος, ἣν ἀνέθηκαν
Θυεστάδαι,
τρικτυαρχούντων
Χαρίλα τοῦ
Ἀριστοθάλου,
Ἀκριδίωνος
τοῦ
Ἐλπίνου,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· φιάλαι
ΔΔ, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀριστάρχου,
ταμιῶν Φιλονίκου
καὶ Διακτορίδου,
ὁλ. μν. ΔΔ· φιάλη,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Μενεκράτου,
ἣν ἀνέθηκαν
Θυεστάδαι καὶ
Ὠκυνεῖδαι,
τρικτυαρχούντων
Δη-
μαρήτου
τοῦ Ἀνδρία,
Δημονίκου τοῦ
Ἀριστείδου,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· τὰ ἀπὸ
τοῦ τρίποδος
καὶ τῆς τραπέζης
ψήγματα ἀργυρᾶ,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄𐅃𐅂· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς, ὃν
ἀνέθηκεν Τίτος
Ῥωμαῖος, ὁλ.
ὀβολοὶ ΙΙ·
ἄλλος στέ-
(80)
the same, wgt d.136; another smooth gold phiale, inscription the
same, wgt d.135; another smooth gold phiale, inscription the same,
wgt d.136; gold knobbed phiale, inscription of Delian Apollo, wgt
d.198.3; another gold knobbed, inscription the same wgt d.196.3;
another gold knobbed, inscription the same wgt d.192; another gold
knobbed, inscription the same wgt d.196; another gold knobbed,
inscription the same wgt d.190.4; another gold knobbed, inscription
the same wgt d.190; gold oinochoe with inscription of Delian Apollo,
wgt d.685; another gold oinochoe, inscription the same wgt d.679;
phiale in the archonship of Polyxenos, from the Thyestadai and
Okyneidai with Antigonos and Antigonos trittys-chiefs, wgt d.100; 16
phialai in the archonship of Polyxenos with Periander and Euxenides
stewards, wgt mn.16; another 4, with Periander and Euxenides
stewards, wgt d.400; 16 phialai in the archonship of Xenon, with
Pherekleides and Polyxenos stewards, wgt mn.16; (85) 4 other
phialai, wgt 400; 2 other phialai in the archonship of Xenon, with
Phokaieus, Menyllos hieropoioi, from the Phiadelpheia, Eutycheia,
wgt d.200; gold pin, dedication of Luke of Rome, wgt d.2; gold
crown, dedication of Titus of Rome wgt d.110; another gold laurel
crown, dedication of Aulus of Rome, wgt d.100; another gold laurel
crown, dedication of Gaius Livius of Rome, wgt d.100; 16 phialai in
the archonship of Menekrates, with Demostratos and Pachys stewards,
wgt mn.16; phiale in the archonship of Xenon, which the Thyestadai
dedicated with Charilas son of Aristothales, Akridion son of Elpinos
trittys-chiefs, wgt d.100; 20 phialai in the archonship of
Aristarchos, with Philonikos and Diaktorides stewards, wgt mn.20;
phiale in the archonship of Menekrates, which the Thyestadai and
Okyneidai dedicated with Demaratos son of Andrias, Demonikos son of
Aristeides trittys-chiefs, wgt d.100; silver fragments from the
tripod and the table, wgt d.56; gold crown which Titus of Rome
dedicated, wgt 2 obols; another gold crown
90
φανος χρυσοῦς,
ὃν ἀνέθηκεν
Λεύκιος Κορνήλιος
Σκιπίων στρατηγὸς
Ῥωμαίων, ὁλ. πρὸς
ἀργύριον 𐅂Η·
ἄλλος στέφανος
χρυσοῦς ἐλαίας,
ὃν ἀνέθηκαν
Δηλιάδες χορεῖα,
στεφανωθεῖσαι
ὑπὸ Λευκίου
Κορνηλίου
Σκιπίωνος
στρατηγοῦ Ῥωμαίων,
ὁλ. πρὸς ἀργύριον
𐅂ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂· φιάλαι
ΙΙ, ἃς παρέδωκαν
ἱεροποιοὶ
Περίανδρος
καὶ Ἀπατούριος,
Φιλαδελφείων,
Εὐτυχείων, ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΗ· φιάλη, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Ἀ-
ριστάρχου,
Θυεσταδῶν καὶ
Ὠκυνειδῶν,
τρικτυάρχων
Μνησιμάχου,
Θεοδώρου, ὁλ.
𐅂Η· ἄλλαι φιάλαι
ΙΙ, ἱεροποιῶν
Νεωθάλου,
Τελεσικράτου,
Φιλαδελφείων,
Εὐτυχείων, ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΗ· νομίσματα
ἀργυρᾶ
Δ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ· τέτραχμον
λυσιμάχειον·
στατόν· κάδον·
μαστοὶ ΔΙΙ·
χυτρίδες ΙΙΙΙ·
κύαθοι ΙΙΙΙ·
οἰνοχόο̣ι ΙΙ·
λιβανωτὶς Ι·
θυμιατήριον
Ι· κανοῦν Ι·
φιάλην, ἣν ἔφασαν
ἀνατεθῆναι ἐπὶ
τῆς αὑτῶν ἀρχῆς
Χαιρέ-
ας
καὶ Τελεστόκριτος,
Νικάρχου Ῥοδίου
ἀνάθεμα· φιάλαι
ἐμ πλινθείοις
ΙΙ, ὑπὲρ τὸ θύρετρον,
ἃς ἔφασαν ἀνατεθῆναι
ἐπὶ τῆς αὑτῶν
ἀρχῆς Χαιρέας
καὶ Τελεστόκριτος,
μίαν Πτολεμαίου
τοῦ Λυ-
95
σιμάχου ἀνάθεμα,
ἄλλη Ἀντιπάτρου
τοῦ Ἐπιγόνου·
ἄλλην, Κώιων
ἀνάθεμα, ἀρχιθεώρου
Χαιρεστράτου
τοῦ Ἑκατοδώρου·
ψήγματα ἀργυρᾶ,
ἃ παρέδωκαν
ἱεροποιοὶ
Χαιρέας καὶ
Τελεστόκριτος,
ὁλ.
𐅂ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂· κονδύλιον
σιδηροῦν ὑποκεχρυσωμένον·
χύματα ἀργυρᾶ
Δ𐅃Ι· δοκιμεῖα
𐅃ΙΙΙΙ· ἄλλα
ξύσματα παντοδαπὰ
τὰ περιγενόμενα
ἀπὸ τῶν ἀργυρωμάτων
τῶν ἐκ πρυτανείου·
κύαθος,
Φίλλιος
καὶ Πυθέου
ἀνάθεμα, ὁλ.
𐅂ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
θυμιατήριον·
σκάφια ΙΙ, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Σωσίκου,
Μαψιχιδῶν ἀναθέματα·
ἀρυσᾶς κατεαγώς,
Μητροδώρου
Κλαζομενίου
ἀνάθεμα· ψήγματα
ἀργυρᾶ ἐν τῶι
ἀ-
ρυσᾶι,
ὧν ὁλ. 𐅂Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
φιάλαι ΙΙΙΙ, ἃς
παρέδωκαν ταμίαι
Δημόστρατος
καὶ οἱ κληρονόμοι
οἱ Πάχητος, ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· καὶ παρὰ
Διοδότου σκάφιον
στησίλειον,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Εὐτέλου· ἄλλο
σκάφιον φιλωνί-
δειον,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ξενομήδου,
Φιλωνὶς Ἡγησαγόρου·
ἄλλο σκάφιον
στησίλειον,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Εὐτέλου, ἐμβόλιον
ἔχον· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς δάφνης,
ἀνάθεμα βασιλέως
Εὐμένους, ὁλ.
𐅂Η· ἄλλος
(90)
which Lucius Cornelius Scipio Roman general dedicated, wgt against
coin d.100; another gold olive crown, which the Deliades dedicated
as choreia, crowned by Lucius Cornelius Scipio Roman general, wgt
against coin d.42; 2 phialai which Periander and Apatourios
hieropoioi gave over from the Philadelpheia, Eutycheia, wgt d.200;
phiale in the archonship of Aristarchos from the Thyestadai and
Okyneidai, with Mnesimachos, Theodoros trittys-chiefs, wgt d.100; 2
other phialai, with Neothales, Telesikrates hieropoioi, from the
Philadelpheia, Eutycheia, wgt d.200; 19 silver coins; Lysimachean
tetradrachm; large bowl; jar; 12 mastoi; 4 little pots; 4 kyathoi; 2
oinochoai; 1 incense dish; 1 censer; 1 basket; phiale which Chaireas
and Telestokritos said was dedicated in their year of office,
dedication of Nikarchos of Rhodes; 2 phialai in plinths, over the
lintel which Chaireas and Telestokritos said was dedicated in their
year of office, one dedication of Ptolemy son of Lysimachos, (95)
another of Antipater son of Epigonos; another dedication of the
Koans, with Chairestratos son of Hekatodoros chief theoros; silver
fragments which the hieropoioi Chaireas and Telestokritos gave over,
wgt d.36; gilded iron kondylion; 16 silver ingots; 9 assayed pieces;
various other pieces from the silver from the Prytaneion; kyathos,
dedication of Phillis and Pytheas, wgt d.28; censer; 2 skaphia, in
the archonship of Sosikos, dedications of the Mapsichidai; broken
ladle, dedication of Metrodoros of Clazomenae; silver pieces in the
ladle, wgt d.14; 4 phialai which the stewards Demetrios and Pachys’
heirs gave over, wgt d.400; and from Diodotos Stesileian skaphion,
in the archonship of Euteles; another Philonideion skaphion in the
archonship of Xenomedes, Philonis son of Hegesander; another
Stesileian skaphion in the archonship of Euteles, with boss; gold
laurel crown, dedication of king Eumenes, wgt d.100; another
100
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης, ἀνάθεμα
Γναίου Μαελλίου
στρατηγοῦ Ῥωμαίων,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· ἄλλος
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δρυός, ἀνάθεμα
Λευκίου Κορνηλίου
Σκιπίωνος
στρατηγοῦ ὑπάτου
Ῥωμαί-
ων·
ἄλλος στέφανος
χρυσοῦς δάφνης,
βασιλέως Εὐμένους
ἀνάθεμα, ὁλ. 𐅂Η·
καὶ ὃν ἔφασαν
ἀποκατασταθῆναι
ἐπὶ τῆς αὑτῶν
ἀρχῆς Μνησικλείδης
καὶ Πολύβουλος,
ὃν παρέδωκεν
αὐτοῖς
Σωσίστρατος
Ἀμφίου, στέφανον
χρυσοῦν δάφνης
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
Πόπλιος Ποπλίου
Κορνήλιος
στρατηγὸς ὕπατος
Ῥωμαίων, ὁλ. 𐅂Η·
ἄλλος στέφανος
χρυσοῦς δάφνης,
ὃν παρέδωκεν
Πόλυ-
βος
Μενύλλου,
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
Κοίντος Φάβιος
Κοίντου υἱὸς
στρατηγὸς Ῥωμαίων,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· ἄλλος
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
δάφνης, ὃν παρέδωκαν
οἱ ἐπιμεληταὶ
Τληπόλεμος
καὶ Ξενοκλεί-
δης,
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχοντα·
Λεύκιος Αἰμύλιος
στρατηγὸς Ῥωμαίων,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· φιάλας,
ἃς ἔφασαν
παρε〚—〛ιληφέναι
{παρειληφέναι}
παρὰ ταμιῶν τῶν
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Τελεσαρχίδου,
Διογένου καὶ
Ἀλκιμάχου, ΔΔ,
ὁλ. μν.
105
ΔΔ· στέφανον
χρυσοῦν δάφνης,
ὃν παρέδωκαν
ἐπιμεληταὶ
Περίανδρος
καὶ Τλησιμένης
καὶ Ξένων, ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· βασιλε[ὺς
Ε]ὐμένης βασιλέως
Ἀττάλου Ἀπόλλωνι·
φιάλας ΔΔ, ἃς
παρέδωκαν
ταμίαι Ὀρθοκλῆς
καὶ Τηλέμνηστος,
ὁλ. μν. ΔΔ· ἄλλας
φιάλας ΙΙ, ἃς
παρέδωκαν ἱεροποιοὶ
Ἔμπεδος καὶ
Ἀπατούριος,
Εὐτυχείων,
Φιλαδελφείων·
ἄλλας φιάλας
ΙΙ, ἃς παρέδωκαν
ἱεροποιοὶ
Χαιρέας καὶ
Τελεστόκριτος,
Εὐτυχείων,
Φιλαδελφείων,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ· στέφανον
χρυσοῦν, ὃν ἀνέθηκεν
Ἀπολλόδοτος
Νικογένου
Ῥόδιος, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· φιάλη,
ἣν παρέδωκαν
ἐπιμεληταὶ
Περίαν-
δρος
καὶ Τληπόλεμος,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄𐅃· ἄλλην
φιάλην ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχουσαν· ἄρχοντος
Διοκλέους
Θυεστάδαι ἀπὸ
τῶν γερῶν, τρικτυαρχοῦντος
Σήμου τοῦ
Κοσμιάδου,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄· λέοντος
προτομὴ ἐμ πλιν-
θείωι,
Ὑσπασίνου
Μιθροάξου
Βακτριανοῦ
ἀνάθεμα. καὶ
ἀριστερᾶς
εἰσιόντων εἰς
τὸν ναὸν τοῦ
Ἀπόλλωνος·
φιάλη ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθεμα Κώιων,
ἀρχιθεώρου
Διομέδοντος
τοῦ Ζμένδ<ρ>ωνος·
φιά-
(100)
gold laurel crown, dedication of Gnaeus Maellius, Roman general, wgt
d.100; another gold oak crown, dedication of Lucius Cornelius Scipio
Roman consul; another gold laurel crown, dedication of king Eumenes,
wgt d.100; and the one Mnesikleides and Polyboulos said was removed
in their archonship, which Sosistratos son of Amphios gave to them,
a gold laurel crown with the inscription Publius Cornelius son of
Publius Roman consul, wgt d.100; another gold laurel crown which
Polybos son of Menyllos gave over, with the inscription Quintus
Fabius son of Quintus Roman general, wgt d.100; another gold laurel
crown which the overseers Tlepolemos and Xenokleides gave over, with
the inscription Lucius Aemulius Roman general, wgt d.100; 20 phialai
which they said they received from the stewards in the archonship of
Telesarchides, Diogenes and Alkimachos, wgt mn.(105) 20; gold laurel
crown which the overseers Periander and Tlesimenes and Xenon gave
over, with the inscription king Eumenes son of king Attalos to
Apollo; 20 phialai which the stewards Orthokles and Telemnestos gave
over, wgt mn.20; 2 other phialai which the hieropoioi Empedos and
Apatourios gave over from the Eutycheia, Philadelpheia; 2 other
phialai which the hieropoioi Chaireas and Telestokritos gave over
from the Eutycheia, Philadelpheia, wgt d.200; gold crown which
Apollodotos son of Nikogenes of Rhodes dedicated, wgt d.3; phiale
which the overseers Periander and Tlepolemos gave over, wgt d.55;
another phiale with the inscription with Diokles archon the
Thyestadai from the awards with Semos son of Kosmiades
trittys-chief, wgt d.50; lion head in plinth, dedication of Baktrian
Mithroaxes.
Entering
the Temple of Apollo from the left: phiale in plinth, dedication
of the Koans, with Diomedon son of Zmend(r)on chief theoros; 26
110
λας γοργιείους
ΔΔ𐅃Ι· λιβανωτίδα
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχουσαν·
ἄρχοντος Τελεσαρχίδου
Τιμοκλῆς Τελεσίππου
ἱερητεύσας
Ἀσκληπιῶι, ὁλ.
𐅂ΔΔΔΔ· ἄλλην
λιβαν〚—〛ωτίδα
{λιβανωτίδα}
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχουσαν·
Πάτρων Ἀμ-
μωνίου,
τῆς τιμῆς τῆς
ἐλάφου ἧς
ἀνέθηκεν, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅄· φιάλας ΙΙ,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Πολυξένου,
ἱεροποι[ῶ]ν
Χαρίλα καὶ
Ἀριστοφῶντος,
Εὐτυχείων,
Φιλαδελφείων,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ· σκάφιον
στησίλειον,
ὃ ἔφασαν ἐ-
κτὸς
τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ
εὑρεῖν Μνησικλείδης
καὶ Πολύβουλος,
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχον·
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Δεξικλέους
Στησίλεως
Διοδότου,
ἐπιστατοῦντος
Κινέου· φιάλας
ΔΔ, ἃς παρελάβοσαν
ἱεροποιοὶ
Δημήτριος
καὶ
Λεοντιάδης
ἐν τεῖ ἡλιαίαι
παρὰ ταμιῶν Ποσειδίκου
καὶ τοῦ ἐπιτρόπου
τῶν παιδίων τῶν
Μνησιμάχου Οἰνέως,
ἀνεπίγραφοι,
ὁλ. μν. ΔΔ· φιάλην,
ἣν ἔφασαν ἀνενεχθῆναι
ἐπὶ τῆς αὑτῶν
ἀρχῆς Λε-
οντιάδης
καὶ Δημήτριος,
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχουσαν·
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Καλλίου, ταμιεύοντος
τῶν προσόδων
Ἀπολλοδώρου
τοῦ Μαντιθέου,
Μαψιχίδαι ἀπαρχὴν
Ἀπόλλωνι, ὁλ.
𐅂Η· χρυσίον
ἀπ’ ἀνδριάντων,
ὃ ἔ-
115
φασαν ἀνενεχθῆναι
ἐπὶ τῆς αὑτῶν
ἀρχῆς ἱεροποιοὶ
Δημήτριος καὶ
Λεοντιάδης,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂·
φιάλην ὑπὲρ τὸ
ὑπέρθυρον, ἣν
ἔφ[ασα]ν ἀνατεθῆναι
ἐπὶ τῆς αὑτῶν
ἀρχῆς ἱεροποιοὶ
Δημήτριος καὶ
Λε-
οντιάδης
ὑπὸ Δαμοκράτου
Μεσσηνίου·
ἄλλας φιάλας
ΙΙ, ἃς ἔφασαν
παραλαβεῖν ἐπὶ
τῆς αὑτῶν ἀρχῆς
ἱεροποιοὶ
Δημήτριος καὶ
Λεοντιάδης
παρὰ ἱεροποιῶν
Μνησικλείδου
καὶ Πολυβούλου,
Εὐ-
τυχείων,
Φιλαδελφείων,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ· ἄλλην
φιάλην, ἣν ἔφασαν
παραδοῦναι ἐπὶ
τῆς αὑτῶν ἀρχῆς
ἱεροποιοὶ
Δημήτριος καὶ
Λεοντιάδης,
Θυεσταδῶν καὶ
Ὠκυνειδῶν,
τρικτυαρχούντων
Ἀφθο-
νήτου
καὶ Ἕρμωνος,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· ψήγματα
χρυσᾶ, ὁλ. 𐅂𐅃𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλα ψήγματα
ἀργυρᾶ ἐπίχρυσα,
ἃ ἔφασαν ἀνενεχθῆναι
ἐπὶ τῆς αὑτῶν
ἀρχῆς ἱεροποιοὶ
Δημήτριος καὶ
Λεοντιάδης,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
καὶ ἐκ τῶν ψη-
γμάτων
τῶν χρυσῶν καὶ
τῶν στεφάνων
τῶν διαλελυμένων,
ὧν παρέδωκαν
τοῖς ἀνδράσιν
τοῖς αἱρεθεῖσιν
ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου
κατὰ τὸ ψήφισμα
ὥστε συγχωνεῦσαι
ἐν τεῖ ἐκκλησίαι
ἃ παρέ-
(110)
gorgieian phialai; incense dish with inscription with Telesarchides
archon Timokles son of Telesippos priest to Asklepios, wgt d.40;
another incense dish with inscription Patron son of Ammonios, for
the price of the deer which he dedicated, wgt d.50; 2 phialai, in
the archonship of Polyxenos, with Charilas and Aristophon
hieropoioi, from the Eutycheia, Philadelpheia, wgt d.200; Stesileian
skaphion which Mnesikleides and Polyboulos said they found outside
the count, with the inscription in the archonship of Dexikles, from
Stesileos son of Diodotos, with Kineas overseer; 20 phialai which
the hieropoioi Demetrios and Leontiades received in court from the
stewards Poseidikos and the guardian of the children of Mnesimachos
son of Oineus, uninscribed, wgt mn.20; phiale which Leontiades and
Demetrios said (115) was offered in their year of office, with the
inscription in the archonship of Kallias with Apollodoros son of
Mantitheos steward of revenue, the Mapsichidai aparche to Apollo,
wgt d.100; gold from the statue which the hieropoioi Demetrios and
Leontiades said was offered in their year of office wgt d.53; phiale
over the lintel which they said was dedicated in their year of
office by Damokrates of Messene; 2 other phialai which the
hieropoioi Demetrios and Leontiades said they received in their year
of office from the hieropoioi Mnesikleides and Polyboulos from the
Eutycheia, Philadelpheia, wgt d.200; another phiale which the
hieropoioi Demetrios and Leontiades said they gave over in their
year of office from the Thyestadai and Okyneidai, with Aphthonetos
and Hermon trittys-chiefs, wgt d.100; gold pieces, wgt d.7; other
gilded silver pieces, which the hieropoioi Demetrios and Leontiades
said were offered in their year of office, wgt d.36; gold ingots
from the gold pieces and disassembled crowns which they handed over
to the men chosen by the demos by decree to remelt what they
received in the assembly:
120
λαβον χύματα
χρυσᾶ· τὸ πρῶτον
χύμα, ὁλ. χρυσοῖ
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ καὶ 𐅂·
δεύτερον χύμα,
ὁλ. χρυ. 𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ#⁸⁹⁹·
τρίτον χύμα, ὁλ.
χρυ. 𐅄𐅃 καὶ 𐅂ΙΙΙ·
τέταρτον χύμα,
ὁλ. χρυ. 𐅄ΔΙΙ#⁸⁹⁹·
πέμπτον χύμα, ὁλ.
χρυ. 𐅄ΔΙΙΙΙ#⁸⁹⁹·
ἕ-
κτον
χύμα, ὁλ. χρυ. 𐅄
καὶ 𐅂· ἕβδομον
χύμα, ὁλ. χρυ.
𐅄ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ· ὄγδοον
χύμα, ὁλ. χρυ.
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ καὶ 𐅂·
ἔνατον χύμα, ὁλ.
χρυ. ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ καὶ
𐅂· δέκατον χύμα,
ὁλ. χρυ. 𐅄ΙΙ καὶ
𐅂· ἑνδέκατον
χύμα, ὁλ. χρυ. 𐅃,
ὀβολοὶ 𐅃ΙΙΙ·
καὶ
τοῦ χείρονος
χρυσίου, πρῶτον
χύμα, ὁλ. χρυ.
ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ καὶ 𐅂·
δεύτερον χύμα,
ὁλ. χρυ. ΔΔΔΔΙ·
καὶ ὃ παρέλαβον
ἱεροποιοὶ
ἐπὶ τῆς αὑτῶν
ἀρχῆς Δημήτριος
καὶ Λεοντιάδης
ἐν τεῖ ἐκκλησίαι
παρὰ τῶν
ἀνδρῶν
Ξενοκλείδου
καὶ Γερύλλου,
πρῶτον χύμα, ὁλ.
χρυ. ΔΔΔΙΙ#⁸⁹⁹·
δεύτερον χύμα,
ὁλ. χρυ. 𐅃 καὶ
𐅂· καὶ ἐκ τῶν
ψηγμάτων τῶν
ὑπαργύρων, ὧν
παρέδοσαν ἱεροποιοὶ
Λεοντιάδης
καὶ Δημήτριος
τοῖς
ἀνδράσιν
τοῖς αἱρεθεῖσιν
ὑπὸ τοῦ δήμου
κατὰ τὸ ψήφισμα
ὥστε συγχωνεῦσαι
ὃ παρελάβοσαν
ἱεροποιοὶ
Ἀλκίμαχος καὶ
Στησίλεως ἐν
τεῖ ἐκκλησίαι
[χύ]ματα ἀργυρᾶ·
πρῶτον χύμα, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅄ΔΔ
125
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂· δεύτερον
χύμα, ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΔΔΔΔΙΙ·
τρίτον χύμα, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅄ΔΔ· τέταρτον
χύμα, ὁλ. 𐅂ΔΔΔΔ·
πέμπτον χύμα, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· καὶ
ἃς ἔφασαν ἀνενεχθῆναι
ἐπὶ τῆς αὑτῶν
ἀρχῆς Στησίλεως
καὶ Ἀλκίμαχος
φιάλας
Δ𐅃Ι,
ταμιῶν Πραξιμένου
καὶ Τελεσαρχίδου,
ὁλ. μν. Δ𐅃Ι· ποτήριον
στησίλειον,
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Τελεσαρχίδου,
ἐμβόλιον ἔχον
Πανίσκον, ὃ ἀνήνεγκεν
Ἀμφοτερὸς
Ἀριστέου·
φιάλην, Θυεσταδῶν
καὶ
Ὠκυνειδῶν,
τρικτυάρχων δὲ
τῆς φυλῆς Στησίλεω
καὶ Λυκομήδου,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· ποτήριον
στησίλειον,
ὃ παρέδωκεν
βουλὴ ἡ ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Διοκλέους,
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
{Σ} Στησίλεως
Διοδότου Ἀπόλλω-
νι
Ἀφροδίτει, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
φιάλην ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχουσαν· ἄρχοντος
Δημητρίου, Δηλιάδες,
χορεῖα Ἀπόλλωνι
Ἀρτέμιδι Λητοῖ
ἐπιδόντος
Ἀπολλωνίδου
τοῦ Διοφάντου,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η· φιάλαι
ΙΙ, ἃς
[πα]ρέδωκαν
ἱεροποιοὶ
Δημήτριος καὶ
Λεοντιάδης,
Εὐτυχείων,
Φιλαδελφείων,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ· ἄλλας
φιάλας ΙΙΙΙ,
ταμιῶν Πραξιμένου
καὶ Τελεσαρχίδου,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗΗΗ· στέφανος
χρυσοῦς δάφνης,
βασι-
(120)
first ingot, wgt of gold 90 and 1; second ingot, weight gld 65.4
1/2; third ingot, wgt gld 55 and 1.3; fourth ingot wgt gld 60.2 1/2;
fifth ingot wgt gld 60.4 1/2; sixth ingot wgt gld 50 and 1; seventh
ingot, wgt gld 75.3; eighth ingot, wgt gld 90 and 1; ninth ingot,
wgt gld 35.2 and 1; tenth ingot, wgt gld 50.2 and 1; eleventh ingot,
wgt gld 5, obols 8; and of the lesser gold first ingot, wgt gld 35.2
and 1, second ingot wgt gld 40.1; and what the hieropoioi Demetrios
and Leontiades received in their year of office in the assembly from
the men Xenokleides and Geryllos, first ingot, wgt gld 30.2 1/2;
second ingot, wgt gld 5 and 1; and from the gilded silver pieces
that the hieropoioi Leontiades and Demetrios gave over to the men
chosen by the demos by decree to remelt what the hieropoioi
Alkimachos and Stesileos had received in the assembly silver ingots:
first ingot, wgt d.92; (125) second ingot wgt d.140.2; third ingot
wgt d.70; fourth ingot wgt d.40; fifth ingot wgt d.4.3; and 16
phialai that Stesileos and Alkimachos said had been offered in their
year of office with Praximenes and Telesarchides stewards, wgt
mn.16; Stesileion cup, during the Council in the archonship of
Telesarchides, with small Pan as boss, which Amphoteros son of
Aristeus offered; phiale of Thyestadai and Okyneidai with Stesileos
and Lykomedes trittys-chiefs of the tribe, wgt d.100; Stesileian cup
which the Council gave over in the archonship of Diokles with the
inscription {S} Stesileos son of Diodotos to Apollo, Aphrodite, wgt
d.89; phiale with inscription with Demetrios archon Deliades with
Apollonides son of Diophantes giving choreia to Apollo Artemis Leto,
wgt d.100; 2 phialai which the hieropoioi Demetrios and Leontiades
gave over from the Eutycheia, Philadelpheia, wgt d.200; 4 other
phialai, with Praximenes and Telesarchides stewards, wgt d.400; gold
laurel crown dedication of king
130
λ[έ]ως Εὐμένους
ἀνάθεμα, ὁλ. 𐅂Η·
χρυσίον ἀπ’
ἀνδριάντων, ὃ
ἔφασαν ἀνενεχθῆναι
ἐπὶ τῆς αὑτῶν
ἀρχῆς Στησίλεως
καὶ Ἀλκίμαχος,
ὁλ. 𐅂Δ· Ἀπόλλωνα
ἀργυροῦν, ἀνάθεμα
Βιβίου Ῥωμαίου·
πο-
τήριον
στησίλειον,
ὃ παρέδωκεν
βουλὴ ἡ ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Νικίου,
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχον·
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Νικίου, Στησίλεως
Διοδότου Ἀπόλλωνι
Ἀφροδίτει, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλο ποτήριον
στη-
σίλειον,
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Διογένου·
ἄλλο ποτήριον
στησίλειον,
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Δημητρίου·
φιάλην, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Δημητρίου, Θυεσταδῶν
καὶ Ὠκυνειδῶν,
τρικτυαρχοῦντος
Ῥ̣άδιος
τοῦ Διδύμου,
Ἀπολλοδώρου
τοῦ Ἄμνου· φιάλη,
{ε} ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Διογένου,
Θυεσταδῶν καὶ
Ὠκυνειδῶν,
τρικτυαρχούντων
Ὀρθοκλέους
τοῦ Ἀριστοθάλου,
Τελέσωνος τοῦ
Λευκίππου·
φιά-
λας
ΙΙ, ἃς παρέδωκαν
ἱεροποιοὶ
Στησίλεως καὶ
Ἀλκίμαχος,
Εὐτυχείων,
Φιλαδελφείων·
καὶ τὸ ἀνενεχθὲν
ὑπὸ ἱεροποιῶν
Νικομάχου καὶ
Βοήθου χρυσίον
ἀπ’ ἀνδριάντων,
οὗ ὁλ. 𐅂Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
λιβανωτίδα
135
ἀργυρᾶν τὴν
ἀγορασθεῖσαν
κατὰ τὸ ψήφισμα
τοῦ δήμου, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅅ΗΗΔΔ· φιάλας
ΔΔ, ἃς παρελάβοσαν
παρὰ ταμίου
Φωκίωνος τοῦ
Κλεοκρίτου
καὶ τοῦ κληρονόμου
τοῦ Πολυβούλου
Παρμενί-
ωνος,
ὁλ. μν. ΔΔ· ἄλλας
φιάλας Δ𐅃Ι,
ταμιῶν Ἀντιγόνου
καὶ Ἀλεξικοῦ,
ὁλ. μν. Δ𐅃Ι· ἄλλαι
ΙΙΙΙ, ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗΗΗ·
χρυσίον ἀπ’
ἀνδριάντων, οὗ
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
σκάφιον στησίλειον,
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀπατουρίου·
φιάλη
Θυεσταδῶν καὶ
Ὠκυνειδῶν,
τρικτυάρχων
Κτησωνίδου
τοῦ Ἀμφιθάλου,
Τελέσωνος τοῦ
Κοσμιάδου·
καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς αὑτῶν
ἀρχῆς ὃ ἔφασαν
ἀνενεχθῆναι
Εὐβοεὺς καὶ
Παρμενίων χρυ-
σίον
ἀπ’ ἀνδριάντων,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
φιάλαι ΙΙ, ἱεροποιῶν
Νικομάχου καὶ
Βοήθου, Εὐτυχείων,
Φιλαδελφείων,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ· ὑδρίας
ἀργυρᾶς ΙΙ, ὧν
ὁλ. μν. ΔΔΔΙΙ·
πέταλα χρυσίωι
ἐπίτηκτα, ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΔΔ· ἀρυσᾶς
ἐμ
πλινθείωι
ῥωμαϊκοῖς
γράμμασιν ἐπιγεγραμμένος·
φιάλη ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχουσα· Δηλιάδες,
χορεῖα Ἀπόλλωνι
Ἀρτέμιδι Λητοῖ
ἐπιδόντος βασιλέως
Πτολεμαίου
καὶ βασιλίσσης
Κλεοπά-
(130)
Eumenes, wgt d.100; gold from the statue which Stesileos and
Alkimachos said was offered in their year of office, wgt d.10;
silver Apollo, dedication of Bibios of Rome; Stesileian cup which
the Council gave over in the archonship of Nikias, with inscription
from the Council in the archonship of Nikias, Stesileos son of
Diodotos, to Apollo Aphrodite, wgt d.87; another Stesileian cup from
the Council in the archonship of Diogenes; another Stesileian cup
from the Council in the archonship of Demetrios; phiale in the
archonship of Demetrios from the Thyestadai and Okyneidai with
Radeus son of Didymos, Apollodoros son of Amnos trittys-chief;
phiale {i} in the archonship of Diogenes, from the Thyestadai and
Okyneidai, with Orthokles son of Aristothales, Teleson son of
Leukippos trittys-chiefs; 2 phialai which the hieropoioi Stesileos
and Alkimachos gave over from the Eutycheia, Philadelpheia; and the
gold from the statue offered by the hieropoioi Nikomachos and
Boethos, wgt d.17; silver incense dish (135) bought by decree of the
demos, wgt d.720; 20 phialai which they received from the steward
Phokion son of Kleokritos and the heir of Polyboulos son of
Parmenion, wgt mn.20; 16 other phialai with Antigonos and Alexikos
stewards, wgt mn.16; 4 others, wgt d.400; gold from the statues, wgt
d.126; Stesileian skaphion from the Council in the archonship of
Apatourios; phiale from the Thyestadai and Okyneidai, with
Ktesonides son of Amphithales, Teleson son of Kosmiades
trittys-chiefs; and gold from the statues which Euboeus and
Parmenion said was offered in their year of office, wgt d.9; 2
phialai with Nikomachos and Boethos hieropoioi from the Eutycheia,
Philadelpheia, wgt d.200; 2 silver hydriai, wgt mn.32; gilded
leaves, wgt d.120; ladle in plinth inscribed with Roman letters;
phiale with inscription Deliades, with king Ptolemy and queen
Kleopatra giving the choreia to Apollo, Artemis, Leto;
140
τρας· φιάλαι
ΙΙ, ἱεροποιῶν
Πραξιμένου καὶ
Τελεσαρχίδου·
φιάλας ΔΔ, ἃς
παρελάβοσαν
Συνώνυμος καὶ
Κρίττις παρὰ
ταμιῶν Ὀρθοκλέους
καὶ Πολυξένου,
ὁλ. μν. ΔΔ· φιάλας,
ἃς παρελάβοσαν
παρὰ
ταμιῶν Μνήσιος
καὶ Παρμενίωνος,
Δ𐅃Ι, ὁλ. μν. Δ𐅃Ι·
〚—
— — — —〛 σκάφιον,
βουλῆς τῆς
{ε} ἐπ’ Ἀρίστωνος,
στησίλειον·
καὶ φιάλη Θυεσταδῶν
καὶ Ὠκυνειδῶν,
τρικτυάρχων
Τληπολέμου
καὶ
Λάμπρωνος.
καὶ τὰ παρὰ τοῦ
ἄρχοντος Τελεσαρχίδου
παραδοθέντα
ὑπὸ ἱεροποιῶν
Συνωνύμου καὶ
Κρίττιος παρελάβομεν
ἐν τῶι ναῶι τοῦ
Ἀπόλλωνος·
ἀργυρίδα μικύθειον·
λιβανωτίδα,
ἧς
ἐπιγραφή· ὁ
ἱερεὺς Πύθεος
καὶ ὁ ἄρχων Φίλλις
Ἑστίαι· φιάλας
γοργιείους
Δ𐅃· ποτήρια,
ἐπὶ Διογένου,
Ἀπολλοδώρου,
Χαιρέου, Ὀλυμπιοδώρου,
Πολυξένου,
Ξένωνος, Μενεκράτου,
Ἀριστάρχου,
Τε-
λεσαρχίδου,
Ἐμπέδου, Ἐμπέδου,
Νικίου, Δημητρίου,
Ἀρίστωνος,
Ἀπατουρίου·
σκάφια φιλωνίδεια
Δ𐅃, ἐπὶ Διογένου,
Ἀπολλοδώρου,
Ὀλυμπιοδώρου,
Πολυξένου,
Ξένωνος, Μενεκράτου,
Ἀρισ-
145
τάρχου, Τελεσαρχίδου,
Διοκλέους,
Διοκλέους,
Ἐμπέδου, Δημητρίου,
Ἀρίστωνος,
Ἀρίστωνος,
Τελεσαρχίδου·
σκάφια μικύθεια
𐅃ΙΙΙΙ, ἐπὶ Κοσμιάδου,
Ὀλυμπιοδώρου,
Πολυξένου,
Ξένωνος, Με-
νεκράτου,
Ἀριστάρχου,
Δημητρίου· ἄλλο,
ἐπιστατοῦντος
Τεισικλέους·
ἄλλο, ἐπὶ Τελεσαρχίδου·
κύλικας μικυθείους
ΙΙΙΙ, ἐπὶ Διοκλέους,
Νικίου, Δημητρίου,
Ἀρίστωνος·
καὶ ῥοπάλια
ΙΙ ἀπὸ κύλικος·
ὠταρίων
κλάσματα ΙΙ·
καὶ ὃ ἔφασαν
ἐπὶ τῆς αὑτῶν
ἀρχῆς ἀνατεθῆναι
Συνώνυμος καὶ
Κρίττις· στέφανον
χρυσοῦν ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχοντα· Μίνατος
Μινάτου Τήιος
Ῥωμαῖος ἐκ
Κύμης ἀ-
νέθηκεν·
ἄλλο στεφάνιον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχον·
Λεύκιος Ὄππιος
Ῥωμαῖος Ἀπόλλωνι
χαριστήριον·
ἄλλο στεφάνιον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχον·
Κ<ο>ίντος Πλίνιος
Ἀπόλλωνι εὐχήν·
τρίποδα ἀργυροῦν,
ὃν πα-
ρέδωκαν
ἱεροποιοὶ
Εὐβοεὺς καὶ
Παρμενίων, ἄστατον·
καὶ τὸ περιγενόμενον
χύμα καὶ δοκιμεῖα
ΙΙΙ, ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
χρυσίον ἀπ’
ἀνδριάντων, 〚—
— — — —〛 ὃ
ἔφασαν ἀνενεχθῆναι
Συνώνυμος κα[ὶ]
(140)
2 phialai, with Praximenes and Telesarchides hieropoioi; 20 phialai
which Synonymous and Krittis received from the stewards Orthokles
and Polyxenos, wgt mn.20; 16 phialai which they received from the
stewards Mneseus and Parmenion, wgt mn.16; Stesileian skaphion from
the Council in the archonship of Ariston; and phiale from the
Thyestadai and Okyneidai with Tlepolemos and Lampron trittys-chiefs.
And
the objects from the archon Telesarchides given over by the
hieropoioi Synonymos and Krittis we received in the Temple of
Apollo: Mikytheian silver (dish?); incense dish with inscription
the priest Pytheas and the archon Phillis to Hestia; 15 gorgieian
phialai; cups in the archonships of Diogenes, Apollodoros, Chaireas,
Olympiodoros, Polyxenos, Xenon, Menekrates, Aristarchos,
Telesarchides, Empedos, Empedos, Nikias, Demetrios, Ariston,
Apatourios; 15 Philonideian skaphia in the archonship of Diogenes,
Apollodoros, Olympiodoros, Polyxenos, Xenon, Menekrates,
Aristarchos, (145) Telesarchides, Diokles, Diokles, Empedos,
Demetrios, Ariston, Ariston, Telesarchides; 9 Mikytheian skaphia in
the archonship of Kosmiades, Olympiodoros, Polyxenos, Xenon,
Menekrates, Aristarchos, Demetrios; another with Teisikles overseer;
another in the archonship of Telesarchides; 4 Mikytheian kylixes, in
the archonship of Diokles, Nikias, Demetrios, Ariston; and 2 clubs
from a kylix; 2 earring pieces; and a gold crown which Synonymous
and Krittis said was dedicated in their year of office with the
inscription Minatos son of Minatos of Teos a Roman from Kyme
dedicated; another small crown with inscription Quintus Plinius to
Apollo vow; silver tripod which the hieropoioi Euboeus and Parmenion
gave over, unweighed; and the remaining ingot and 3 assayed pieces,
wgt 87.2; gold from the statues which Symonymous and
150
Κρίττις ἐπὶ τῆς
αὑτῶν ἀρχῆς, ὁλ.
𐅂ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλας φιάλας,
ἃς παρέδωκαν
ταμίαι Μνησικλείδης
Καλλίου, Καίβων
Καίβωνος, Δ𐅃Ι,
ὁλ. μν. Δ𐅃Ι· σκάφιον
στησίλειον,
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Τελε-
σαρχίδου
τοῦ Εὐδίκου·
καὶ φιάλας, ἃς
παρελάβομεν
ἐπὶ τῆς αὑτῶν
ἀρχῆς Ἀμφοτερός,
Σί〚—〛ληνος
{Σίληνος}, Πολύξενος,
Φίλιππος, παρὰ
ἱεροποιῶν Εὐβοέως
καὶ Παρμενίωνος,
Εὐτυχείων καὶ
Φιλαδ<ελφείων>,
ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΗ· καὶ ποτήριον
στησίλειον,
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Φωκαιέως· καὶ
φιάλην, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Τε{λε}λεσαρχίδου
{Τελεσαρχίδου},
Θυεσταδῶν καὶ
Ὠκυνειδῶν,
τρικτυαρχούντων
Ἄμνου τοῦ Ἱερομβρό-
του,
Νουμηνίου τοῦ
Σόλωνος· καὶ
φιάλας, παρὰ
ταμιῶν Μνησικλείδου
τοῦ Καλλίου,
Καίβωνος τοῦ
Καίβωνος, ΙΙΙΙ,
ὁλ. μν. ΙΙΙΙ· καὶ
ὃ ἔφασαν ἐπὶ τῆς
αὑτῶν ἀρχῆς
ἀνενεχθῆναι
χρυσίον ἀπ’
ἀνδριά[ν]-
των,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· καὶ
φιάλας ΙΙ, ἃς
παρελάβομεν
παρὰ ἱεροποιῶν
Συνωνύμου καὶ
Κρίττιος, Εὐτυχείων,
Φιλαδελφείων,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ· φιάλας,
ἃς παρελάβομεν
παρὰ ταμιῶν Μνήσιος
καὶ Παρμενίωνο[ς]
155
ΙΙΙΙ, ὁλ. μν. ΙΙΙΙ·
〚—
—〛 ἄλλας
φιάλας, παρὰ
ταμιῶν Μενύλλου
τοῦ Πολύβου,
Φωκαιέως τοῦ
Φωκαιέως, Δ𐅃Ι,
ὁλ. μν. Δ𐅃Ι. καὶ
τάδε παρελάβομεν
ἐν τῶι Ἀνδρίων
οἴκωι· θυμιατήριον,
Εὐμαρίδα ἀνάθεμ[α]·
λιβανωτίδος
κλάσματα ΙΙ·
στατόν· σκύφον,
Εὐκράτου ἀνάθεμα·
κρατῆρα ἀργυροῦν,
ἀπὸ τοῦ ὠτὸς
ἑκατέρου χη〚—〛νίσκον
{χηνίσκον} οὐκ
ἔχοντα, καὶ τοῦ
ἑνὸς ὠτὸς τὸν
κόσμον οὐκ
ἔχοντα,
καὶ
τοῦ ἄλλου ὠτὸς
τὸ ἓν μέρος τὸν
κόσμον οὐκ
ἔχοντα· τράπεζαν
περιηργυρωμένην·
τρίποδα περιηργυρωμένον·
δίσκου κλάσματα
ΙΙΙ· περόνας
χαλκᾶς ΙΙ·
ἀρυσᾶν, Παταίκο[υ]
ἀνάθεμα·
φιάλαι ΙΙ, Ἀσκληπιάδου
Χίου ἀναθέματα·
ἀρυσᾶς, ἀνάθεμα
Δημητρίου Σεριφίου·
φιάλην ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχουσαν· ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Καλλίου,
ἐπιστατοῦντος
Ἀμφιθάλου
τοῦ
Φιλωνύμου·
ἄλλην φιάλην,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Σωκλείδου,
Θυεσταδῶν καὶ
Ὠκυνειδῶν·
κυμβίον, ἐφ’
ἱερέως Πολύβου,
Θεανδριδῶν·
χηνίσκους ΙΙ
ἀπὸ τοῦ κρατῆρος
καὶ κλάσματα
ΙΙ ἀπὸ το[ῦ]
(150)
Krittis said was offered in their year of office, wgt d.49; 16 other
phialai which the stewards Mensikleides son of Kallias, Kaibon son
of Kaibon gave over, wgt mn.16; Stesileion skaphion from the Council
in the archonship of Telesarchides son of Eudikos; and phialai which
we received in our archonship, Amphoteros, Silenos, Polyxenos,
Phillipos from the hieropoioi Euboeus and Parmenion, from the
Eutycheia and Philad(elpheia) wgt d.200; and Stesileian cup, from
the Council in the archonship of Phokaieus; and a phiale in the
archonship of Te{le}lesarchides, from the Thyestadai and Okyneidai,
with Amnos son of Hierombrotos, Noumenios son of Solon
trittys-chiefs; and 4 phialai from the stewards Mnesikleides son of
Kallias, Kaibon son of Kaibon, wgt mn.4; and the gold from the
statues which they said was offered in their year of office, wgt
d.8; and 2 phialai which we received from the hieropoioi Synonymous
and Krittis, from the Eutycheia, Philadelpheia, wgt d.200; 4 phialai
which we received from the stewards Mneseus and Parmenion, (155) wgt
mn.4; 16 other phialai from the stewards Menyllos son of Polybos,
Phokaieus son of Phokaieus, wgt mn.16.
And
the following we received in the Oikos of the Andrians:
censer, dedication of Eumarides; 2 pieces of incense dish; large
bowl; skyphos, dedication of Eukrates; silver krater, missing a
goose from either handle, and missing the ornament of one handle and
missing part of the ornament of the other handle; silvered table;
silvered tripod; 3 pieces of a disk; 2 bronze pins; ladle,
dedication of Pataikos; 2 phialai, dedications of Asklepiades of
Chios; ladle, dedication of Demetrios of Seriphos; phiale with
inscription in the archonship of Kallias with Amphithales son of
Philonymos overseer; another phiale, in the archonship of Sokleides,
from the Thyestadai and Okyneidai; kymbion in the priesthood of
Polybos, from the Theandridai; 2 geese from the krater and 2 pieces
from the
160
ὠτὸς τοῦ κρατῆρος·
σκάφιον, ἐφ’
ἱερέως Πολύβου,
Θεανδριδῶν·
σκάφιον, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Ἀκριδίωνος,
στησίλειον·
σκάφιον, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Δωριέως,
Παταίκου ἀνάθεμα·
ἀρυσᾶς, Παταίκο[υ]
ἀνάθεμα·
σκάφιον, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Δωριέως,
Παταίκου ἀνάθεμα·
φιάλη, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀριστοβούλου,
βασιλίσσης
Στρατονίκης
ἀνάθεμα· φιάλη,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Καλλίου, βασιλέως
Ἀντιγόνο[υ]
ἀνάθεμα·
φιάλη ἐμ πλινθείωι
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχουσα·
ἁ πόλις ἁ Κώιων,
ἀρχιθεώρου
Πόμ<πι>ος καὶ
συνθεώρων·
κηρύκειον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχον·
Ἀπόλλωνος
Δηλίου, Ἀρτέμιδος·
κύαθος ἀπὸ
τῆ[ς]
ἐλάφου,
ἐπιγραφή· θεοῦ·
φιάλη, Ῥανίος
ἀνάθεμα· καὶ
ὃ ἔφασαν ἱεροποιοὶ
Πολύξενος καὶ
Σώκριτος εὑρεθῆναι
τοῦ κόσμου
τοῦ κρατῆρος,
κλάσματα ΙΙ·
σκάφιον, Μηδείου
ἀνάθεμα,
τῶν
ἐγ Νήσου, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Πολύβου·
φιάλη, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Καλλισθένου,
Μαψιχιδῶν· φιάλη,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀντιπάτρου
Κυρηναίου ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Σωτίωνος·
σκάφιον στησίλειον,
165
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπὶ Κοσμιάδου·
σκάφιον, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Λευκίνου,
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχον·
Ξενότιμος Φάνου
ἀπὸ τῶν γερῶν·
ἐβένου ὁλ. μν.
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ· κρατὴρ
χαλκοῦς ὦτα
οὐκ ἔχων· ἐλέφαν-
τος
μν. ΔΔΔΙΙ· χαλκοῦ
κλάσματα παντοδαπά,
ὁλ. ΤΔΔ𐅃Ι, μν. Δ·
λέβης συντετριμμένος·
χαλκίον τετρυπημένον·
ἄλλο χαλκίον
τετρυπημένον·
λέβης συντετριμμένος·
ἄλλος
λέβης
συντετριμμένος·
νεὼς ἔμβολον·
λαμπὰς χαλκῆ
ἐπὶ βάσεως·
κέρας κριοῦ
χαλκοῦν· σκέλος
χαλκοῦν· ἀνδριαντίδιον
χέρα οὐκ ἔχον·
λεβήτιον κατεαγός·
περόναι [χαλ]-
κ̣αῖ,
ὧν ὁλ. ΤΔΙ, μν. ΔΔΔΔ𐅃·
〚—
— — — —〛 λαβίδες
σιδηραῖ καὶ
ἄλλα κλάσματα
παντοδαπά, ὁλ.
Τ𐅃Ι· ἄκμων· ἄγκυρα
σιδηρᾶ καὶ λίθος
μολυβδοῦς,
ὁλ. Τ, μν. ΔΔ𐅃Ι·
ἐπαέτιον ξύλινον
[με]-
μολυβδωμένον·
ἄλλου σιδήρου
παντοδαποῦ, ὁλ.
ΤΙΙ, μν. ΔΔ· τρίπους
σιδηροῦς διαλελυμένος·
κλάσματα χαλκᾶ
παντοδαπά, ὁλ.
Τ, μν. ΔΔΔ𐅃· σιδήρια
παντοδαπά, ἐν
οἷς [λα]-
(160)
krater handle; skaphion in the priesthood of Polybos, from the
Theandridai; Stesileian skaphion in the archonship of Akridion;
skaphion in the archonship of Dorieus, dedication of Pataikos;
ladle, dedication of Pataikos; skaphion in the archonship of
Dorieus, dedication of Pataikos; phiale in the archonship of
Aristoboulos, dedication of queen Stratonike; phiale in the
archonship of Kallias, dedication of king Antigonos; phiale in
plinth with inscription the city of the Koans with Pom(pi)os chief
theoros and his fellow theoroi staff with inscription of Delian
Apollo, Artemis; kyathos from the deer, inscription the god’s;
phiale, dedication of Rhanios; and 2 pieces from the krater ornament
which the hieropoioi Polyxenos and Sokritos said was found;
skaphion, dedication of Medeias, from those on the Nesos, in the
archonship of Polybos; phiale in the archonship of Kallisthenes,
from the Mapsichidai; phiale dedication of Antipater of Cyrene in
the archonship of Sotion; Stesileian skaphion (165) from the Council
in the archonship of Kosmiades; skaphion in the archonship of
Leukinos with inscription Xenotimos son of Phanes from the awards
weight of ebony, mn.48; bronze krater without handles; ivory mn.32;
various pieces of bronze, wgt T 26, mn.10; crushed lebes; leaky
bronze; another leaky bronze; crushed lebes; another crushed lebes;
ship beak; bronze lamp on stand; bronze ram horn; bronze leg; small
statue without hand; broken small lebes; [ir]on pins, wgt T 11,
mn.45; iron clamps and various other pieces, wgt T 6; anvil; iron
anchor and lead stone, wgt T, mn.26; leaded wood epaietion; various
other iron,
170
βίδες, ὁλ. ΤΙΙ,
μν. Δ· περόναι
χαλκαῖ, ὁλ. Τ𐅃Ι,
μν. ΔΔΔ· λέβης
χαλκοῦς κατεαγώς·
δίσκων κλάσματα
καὶ ἄλλα παντοδαπά,
ὁλ. Τ, μν. Δ· ἐλέφαντος
σκυτάλαι Δ𐅃ΙΙ·
κασσιτέρου
σκυ[τάλαι]
ΙΙΙ,
ὁλ. μν. ΔΔΙΙΙ·
ἀνδριάντων κλάσματα
𐅄ΔΔ· ἄγκυρα
σιδηρᾶ λίθον
οὐκ ἔχουσα·
δόρυ σιδηροῦν·
ἀνδριαντίδια
χαλκᾶ 𐅃ΙΙΙ·
σιδηροῦν Ι·
ἐρείσματα σιδηρᾶ
ΙΙ· κύαθος
χαλκοῦς· βουπ[ά]-
λινα
ΙΙΙΙ· κανᾶ ΙΙ·
ἐσχάραι ΙΙΙ·
χαλκίον, ὃ ἠγόρασαν
ἱεροποιοὶ
Δημήτριος καὶ
Λεοντιάδης,
ὑγιές· τύπον
ξύλινον κεραμίδων
τῶν ἐπὶ τὸν Κερατῶνα·
κύλικα μικύθειον,
ἐφ’ ἧς ἐ[πιγρα]-
φή·
ἄρχοντος Ἐμπέδου
Μίκυθος <τ>ῇ
Δήλωι, ἐπιστατοῦντος
Ἀρησιμβρότου.
καὶ ἃ ἔφασαν
ἀνενεχθῆναι
ἐπὶ τῆς αὑτῶν
ἀρχῆς Δημήτριος
καὶ Λεοντιάδης·
ποτήριον στ[ησίλειον],
ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Ἀριστοβούλου·
ἄλλο ποτήριον
στησίλειον,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ὀρθοκλέους·
ἄλλο ποτήριον
στησίλειον,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Σωτέλου· ἄλλο
ποτήριον στησίλειον,
ἐ[π’ ἄρχοντος]
175
Σωκλείδου·
ἄλλο ποτήριον
στησίλειον,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀνέκτου· ἄλλο
ποτήριον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχον· Μαντίθεος
Μαντιθέου
ἱερητεύσας
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Μενεθάλου·
ἄλλο π[οτήριον,
ὃ ἔφα]-
σαν
ἀνενεχθῆναι
ἐπὶ τῆς αὑτῶν
ἀρχῆς Στησίλεως
καὶ Ἀλκίμαχος,
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχον·
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Πολύβου, Τιμοκράτης
Ἀντιγόνου Ἀρτέμιδι
Ἑκάτει· [ἄλλο
ποτήριον]
στησίλειον
τὸ εὑρεθὲν ἐν
τῶι νεωκορίωι,
τεθλασμένον.
καὶ τάδε παρελάβομεν
ἐν τῶι ναῶι οὗ
τὰ ἑπτά· στέφανον
χρυσοῦν, Νικίου
ἀνάθεμα· ἄλλον
στέφανον χρυσ[οῦν,
Αὐτοκλέους
ἀ]-
νάθεμα,
ἐπὶ πίνακος·
στεφάνην ἐπίχρυσον·
φιάλας ἀργυρᾶς
ἐμ πλινθείοις
𐅃ΙΙΙ· ἄλλην
φιάλην ἐμ πλινθείωι,
Ἀντιπάτρου
Ἀθηναίου ἀνάθεμα·
ἀσπὶς ἀργυρᾶ,
Τίτου Ῥωμ[αίου
ἀνάθεμα. ἐν τῶι]
Πωρίνωι
οἴκωι· φιάλας
ἐμ πλινθείοις
ΔΙΙΙΙ· κεραμύλλιον
ἀργυροῦν χῖον,
Νουμηνίου
ἀνάθεμα· κόγχον
ἀργυροῦν. καὶ
τάδε παρελάβομεν
ἐν τῶι ναῶι τῆς
Ἀρτέ[μιδος παρὰ
ἱεροποιῶν]
(170)
weight T 2, mn.20; collapsed iron tripod; various bronze pieces, wgt
T, mn.35; various iron including clamps, wgt T 2, mn.10; bronze
pins, wgt T 6, mn.30; broken bronze lebes; pieces of disks and
various others, wgt T, mn.10; 17 ivory rods; 3 tin rods, wgt mn.23;
statue pieces 70; iron anchor without stone; iron spear; 8 small
bronze statues; 1 iron; 2 iron pieces; bronze kyathos; 4 bracelets;
2 baskets; 3 braziers; sound bronze pot which the hieropoioi
Demetrios and Leontiades bought; wood mould for the ceramics in
the Keraton; Mikytheion kylix with inscription Empedos archon
Mikythos to Delos, with Aresimbrotos overseer; and what Demetrios
and Leontiades said was offered in the year of their office:
St[esileian) cup in the archonship of Aristoboulos; another
Stesileian cup in the archonship of Orthokles; another Stesileian
cup in the archonship of Soteles; another Stesileian cup i[n the
archonship] of (175) Sokleides; another [Stesileian cu]p in the
archonship of Anektos; another cup with the inscription Mantitheos
son of Mantitheos priest in the archonship of Menethales; another
[cup which] Stesileos and Alkimachos said was offered in the year of
their archonship with the inscription in the archonship of Polybos,
Timokrates son of Antigonos to Artemis, Hekate; [another cup]
Stesileion found in the Neokorion shattered.
And
we received the following in the Temple of the Seven: gold
crown, dedication of Nikias; another gold crown de[dication of
Autokles] on pinax; gilded diadem; 8 silver phialai in plinths;
another phiale in plinth, dedication of Antipater of Athens; silver
shield [dedication of Ro]man Titus.
[In
the] Porinos Oikos: 14 phialai in plinths; small silver Chian
pot, dedication of Noumenios; silver conch.
And
the following we received in the Temple of Arte[mis from the
hieropoioi]
180
Συνωνύμου καὶ
Κρίττιος, μηνὸς
Γαλαξιῶνος,
ὅτε ἦσαν οἱ
κοσμηταί, παρούσης
βουλῆς καὶ
γραμματέως τοῦ
τῆς πόλεως
Ποσειδίκου
τοῦ Σωτέλου,
καὶ [τοῦ τῶν
ἱεροποιῶν Νεο]-
κροντίδου
τοῦ Νεοκροντίδου·
θηρίκλεον χρυσῆν
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχουσαν·
Πτολεμαῖος
Λάγου Μακεδὼν
Ἀφροδίτει·
ὁλκὴ 𐅂ΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
φιάλη χρυσῆ
καρυωτή, ἐπ[ιγραφή·
Νάξιοι Ἀ]-
πόλλωνι,
θεο<ῦ>, ὁλ.
𐅂Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
φιάλη ῥαβδωτὴ
ἀνεπίγραφος,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἐπιχύτης, ἐπιγραφή·
Ἀρτέμιδος Δηλίας,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ·
φιάλη ῥαβδωτή,
ἐπιγραφή· θεο[ῦ,
ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂
{²⁷𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ?}²⁷·
φιάλιον ῥα]-
βδωτὸν
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχον·
Ἀπόλλωνο[ς]
Δηλίου, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅄𐅃· φιάλη
ἀπότυπος, ἐπιγραφή·
βασιλεὺς Ἄτταλος
Ἀπόλλωνι Δηλίωι,
χαριστήρια
Δηλιάδων χορε[ῖα
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀντικράτου],
ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ· φιάλη
ὀμφαλὸν οὐκ
ἔχουσα, ἀνεπίγραφος,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ποτήριον λεῖον
διάλιθον, ἐπιγραφή·
Ἀρτέμιδι Φίλα
βασιλέως Θεοδώρου,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΔ𐅃· τρ[αγίσκοι
ΙΙ ἀνεπίγραφοι,
ὁλ. Δ𐅃𐅂· δα]-
185
κτύλιον χρυσοῦν
λίθον ἔχοντα,
ἐπιγραφή· βασίλισσα
Στρατονίκη
βασιλέως Δημητρίου
Ἀρτέμιδι Δηλία[ι,
ὁ]λ. 𐅂ΔΔ𐅂· κανοῦν
[χ]ρυσοῦν ὦτα
ἔχον ἀργυ[ρᾶ
καὶ πυθμένα καὶ
ἀστραγαλίσ]-
κους,
ἐπιγραφή· Ἀπόλλωνος
Δηλίου, ὁλ.
𐅂ΧΧΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
κανοῦν ὀρθὸν
ἐπίχρυσον ἄστατον,
ἐπιγραφή· Ἀπόλλωνος
Δηλίου, σ[ταθ]μὸν
χρυσίου
𐅂ΧΗΗ[ΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅁.
ἐκ τῆς κιβωτοῦ·
πέταλα χρυ]-
σᾶ
ἐγ κιβωτίωι,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλα πέταλα
χρυσᾶ, ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄·
χρυσίον ἐγ
κιβωτίωι παντοδ[α]πόν,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἐν οἷς χύματα
ΙΙΙ· χρυσίο[ν
λευκόν, ὁλ. 𐅄Δ·
δακτύλιοι
χρυσοῖ καὶ]
ψήγματα
παντοδαπά, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
ψήγματα χρυσᾶ
καὶ ἀργυρᾶ καὶ
ἐπίτηκτα παντοδαπά,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ𐅄· δακτύλιοι
σιδηροῖ χρυσίωι
ἐπ[ίτηκτοι ΙΙΙ·
δακτύλιοι ἐγ
κιβωτίωι ἐνδεδε]-
μένοι,
ἐν οἷς χρυσοῦς
Ι καὶ ἑξάγωνος,
ὧν ὁλ. Δ𐅃· χρυσοῖ
ἀλεξάνδρειοι
ΔΔΙΙΙ· φιλίππειοι
𐅃· ἀντιόχε[ιος
Ι]· καρυστία
𐅂 χρυσῆ· πτολεμαϊκὰ
τέτ[αρτα ΙΙ·
φωκαΐς· χρυσοῖ
δαρεικοὶ —]·
(180)
Synonymous and Krittis in the month Galaxion when the wardrobe
attendants were in the presence of the Council and the scribe of the
city Poseidikos son of Soteles and [of the hieropoioi Neo]krontides
son of Neokrontides: gold Therikleian with inscription Ptolemy son
of Lagos of Macedon to Aphrodite, weight d.199; rayed phiale
uninscribed, wft d.64.3; beaker, inscription of Delian Artemis, wgt
d.111.3; rayed phiale, inscription of the go[d...ra]yed with the
inscription of Delian Apollo, wgt d.55; figured phiale, inscription
king Attalos to Delian Apollo thanks choreia of the Deliades [...]
wgt d.111.3; phiale without boss, uninscribed wgt d.28.3; smooth cup
with stones, inscription to Artemis Phila daughter of king
Theodoros, wgt d.115; go[ats...r]ing (185) gold with stone,
inscription queen Stratonike daughter of king Demetrios to Delian
Artemis, wgt d.21; gold basket with silver handl[es...] inscription
of Delian Apollo, wgt d.2029; gilded straight basket, unweighed,
inscription of Delian Apollo weight of gold d.1200+[...go]ld in
chest, wgt d.263.3; other gold petals, wgt d.50; various gold in
chest, wgt d.233 including 3 ingots; gol[d...] various pieces, wgt
d.92; gold pieces and silver and various gilded, wgt d.250; gilded
iron rings [...] including 1 gold and hexagon, wgt 15; gold
Alexandrians 23; 5 Phillipics; [...] Antiochean; gold Karystian 1;
Ptolemaic tetr[adrachms...]
190
Φωκαΐδος νόμισμα
Ι· ἀργυρίου
ἀττικοῦ 𐅂Δ𐅃𐅂·
ἀλεξανδρείου
𐅂ΔΔ𐅂· πτολεμαϊκὸς
στατήρ· ἐφέσι[ος
στα]τήρ· δραχμὴ
δηλία· νομίσματα
[𐅃ΙΙΙΙ· χῖαι
𐅂𐅂· δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς ἐπίσημον
ἔ]-
χων
Ἀρτεμίσιον, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅃ΙΙ· λίθος
χρυσίωι ἐνδε<δε>μέ<ν>ος,
ἐπίσημον ἔχων
τραγέλαφον,
ἄστατος· ἀετοῦ
κε[φαλὴ ἀργυρᾶ
ἐπίχρυσος, ὁλ.
𐅂ΔΔΔΔ[𐅃𐅂· χρυσίου
ψήγματα ἀπὸ
στεφάνων, ὁλ.]
ΗΔΔΔ𐅂·
στεφάνων χρυσῶν
κλάσματα καὶ
ῥοαὶ ΙΙΙΙ καὶ
ἀνδριαντίδιον
καὶ δακτύλιος,
ὧν ὁλ. 𐅂Η𐅄ΔΔΔ·
ἀνδριαντίδια
ΙΙ ἐπὶ βάσεω[ς
ξυλίνης, ἐπιγραφή·
Κλεινὼ Ἀδμήτου
Ἀπόλλωνι]
Ἀρτέμιδι
εὐχήν· ὀβολοὶ
ὀρχομένιοι
ΗΗΗ𐅄𐅃[ΙΙΙ]· βοιώτιον
ΙΙΙ· καὶ δηλίου
χαλκοῦ 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁𐅀·
φιάλιον χρυσοῦν
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχον·
Δημοσ[ῶν Μυκόνιος
ὑπὲρ Λυσι?θάλου
Ἀρτέμιδι δεκάτην],
ὁλ.
𐅂ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
στεφάνου κισσίνου
κλάσματα, [ὁ]λ.
𐅂ΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂· στέφανον
χρυσοῦν δάφνης,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλον στέφανον
χ[ρυσοῦν δάφνης,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΔΔΔ· ἄλλον
χρυσοῦν μυρσίνης
κατεαγότα],
195
ὁλ. 𐅂ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλον μυρσίνης
κατεαγότα, ὁλ.
𐅂𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλον
δάφνης, ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄ΔΔ·
ἄλλον δάφνης
κατεαγότα, ὁλ.
𐅂ΔΔ𐅃· ἕτερον
δάφ[νης, ὁλ. 𐅂ΔΔ𐅃·
ἄλλον δάφνης
κατεαγότα, ὁλ.
𐅂ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ]·
στέφανον
δάφνης περιεαγότα
καὶ κλάσματα
παντοδαπά, ὁλ.
𐅂Η· στεφάνων
κλάσματα παντοδαπά,
ὁλ. 𐅂Η𐅄𐅂· ταῦτ[α
ἐπίκειται ἐπὶ
τοῦ κάδου? τοῦ
ἐλεφαντίνου
— — — — — ὁλ. — —
— — σὺν? τῶι]
τρίποδι
τῶι ἐπιχρύσωι·
στεφάνων κλάσματα
καὶ ἄλλα χρυσία
παντοδαπὰ ἐγ
κιβωτίωι, ὁλ.
𐅂ΗΗΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂· ὅρμος
οὗ ὁ λέων [καὶ
ὁ ταῦρος καὶ
γρῦπες 𐅃 σὺν
κόσμωι, χρυσᾶ,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΗΗ𐅂· ὅρμος
χρυσοῦς]
διάλιθος,
διαλε<λ>υμένος,
ἐπιγραφή· βασίλισσα
Στρατονίκη
βασιλέως Δημητρίου
καὶ βασιλίσσης
Φίλας Ἀρτέμιδι
Δηλίαι, [ὁλ.
𐅂𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
μηνίσκοι διάλιθοι
καὶ ἄνθεμον,
ὁλ. ΔΔ․․․· πόρπη
ἀργυ]-
ρᾶ
ἐπίχρυσος, ὁλ.
𐅂Δ𐅃· ὅρμοι ΙΙ
καὶ περισκελίς,
ὁλ. 𐅂ΔΔΔ𐅃·
βουκεφάλια
χρυσᾶ καὶ ἀμφορεῖς
καὶ σφίγγες
καὶ ἄλλα χρ[υσία
παντοδαπά, ὁλ.
𐅄𐅂𐅂· ταινίαι
κατεαγεῖαι
ΙΙ χρυσαῖ προσ]-
(190)
Phocean coin 1; Attic silver d.16; Alexandrian d.21; Ptolemaic
stater; Ephesian stater; Delian drachma; coins [...w]ith Artemis wgt
d.5.2; stone bound in gold, with goat-stag image, unweighed; gilded
silver head of eagle wgt d.40+[...] 131; pieces of gold crowns and 4
pomegranates and small statue and ring, wgt d.180; 2 small statues
on bas[e...] to Artemis vow; 355+ Orchomenian obols; 3 Boeotian; and
Delian bronze 4.3 3/4; small gold phiale with inscription
Demos[on...] wgt d.27.3; pieces of ivy crown, wgt d.126; gold laurel
crown, wgt d.49.3; another gold crown [...] (195) wgt d.43; another
broken myrtle wgt d.8; another laurel, wgt d.70; another broken
laurel, wgt 25; another laur[el...] broken laurel crown and various
pieces, wgt d.100; various pieces of crowns wgt.d151; these [...] on
the gilded tripod; pieces of crowns and various other gold in chest,
wgt d.217; necklace with lion [...] with stones, disassembled,
inscription queen Stratonike daughter of king Demetrios and queen
Phila to Delian Artemis [...sil]ver gilded wgt d.15; 2 necklaces and
anklet, wgt d.35; gold ox heads and amphorae and sphinxes and other
go[ld...n]ailed,
200
ηλωμέναι, ὁλ.
𐅂ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· κόσμος
χρυσοῦς ἐπὶ
φοινικιδίου
Ἐριφύλης, ὁλ.
𐅂Η𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂. ἄστατα·
βασιλέως Δημητρίου
[περιδέραια
χρυσᾶ ἐπὶ ταινιδίου·
ἀριθμὸς τῶν ἐκ
τῆς σει]-
ρᾶς
κρεμαμένων τῶν
μειζόνων ΔΔΙΙΙ,
τῶν ἐλασσόνων
𐅄ΔΙΙ· περισκελίδες
ΙΙ καὶ ψέλιον,
ἄστατα· χρυσοῖ
[ΙΙΙ ἐπὶ ταινιδίωι
ξυλίνωι, Κοίντου
Ῥωμαίου ἀνάθεμα·
ταινίδια]
προσηλωμένα
ΙΙΙ· ὅρμος χρυσοῦς
ἐπὶ ταινιδίου,
ἄστατος· χρυσοῦς
τύπος μητρικὸς
πρὸς ξύλωι. γέραν[ος
ἀργυρᾶ, ὁλ.
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
μῆλα τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς
γεράνου, εἵλκυσεν
𐅂ΗΗ𐅄]·
δακτύλιοι
χρυσοῖ καὶ
χύματα ΙΙ καὶ
ἄλλα χρυσία
παντοδαπά, ὁλ.
𐅂ΔΔ· χαλκᾶ καὶ
ἀργυρᾶ ἐπίτηκτα,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅄[Δ· νόμισμα·
φωκαΐς· λυσιμάχειον
τέτραχμον· δίδραχμον·
αἰ]-
γιναία
𐅂· ῥόδιαι 𐅂𐅃𐅂𐅂·
σικυωνία 𐅂.
πρῶτος ῥυμός,
ἐν ὧι οἰνοχόαι
𐅃ΙΙΙΙ, χελιδόνειοι
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ, κέρατα
ΙΙ, ἀλά[βαστρα
ΙΙ, τὰ πάντα 𐅄Δ,
πεπονηκότα, ὁλ.
Τ. δεύτερος
ῥυμός, οἰνοχόαι]
205
𐅃ΙΙ, παλιμπόται
𐅃, κανοῦν Ι, καὶ
ΙΙ Πύρρου καὶ
Ἀλεξάνδρου,
καὶ ἄλλα παντοδαπὰ
𐅄, τὰ πάντα 𐅄Δ𐅃·
τού[των ὁλ. Τ,
πεπονηκότα.
τρίτος ῥυμός,
φιάλαι 𐅄ΔΔΙΙΙ,
καὶ ποτήρια
παντοδαπὰ]
𐅃ΙΙ,
καὶ σπονδοχοΐδιον
Ι, τὰ πάντα 𐅄ΔΔΔΙ,
ὁλ. Τ. τέταρτος
ῥυμός, φιάλαι
𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ, κυμβία
ΙΙΙΙ, τὰ πάντα
[𐅄ΔΔΙΙΙ, ὁλ. Τ,
πεπονηκότα.
πέμπτος ῥυμός,
φιάλαι 𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ
πεπονηκεῖαι],
ὁλ.
Τ. ἕκτος ῥυμός,
φιάλαι 𐅄ΔΔΙΙ,
πεπονηκεῖαι,
ὁλ. Τ. ἕβδομος
ῥυμός, φιάλαι
𐅄ΔΙ, καὶ λάγιον
Ι, τὰ πάντα [𐅄ΔΙΙ,
πεπονηκότα, ὁλ.
Τ. ὄγδοος ῥυμός,
φιάλαι 𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙ,
καὶ κυμβίον]
Ι,
τὰ πάντα 𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙΙ,
πεπονηκότα, ὁλ.
Τ. ἔνατος ῥυμός,
φιάλαι 𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ,
ὁλ. Τ. δέκατος
ῥυμός, φιάλ[αι
𐅄ΔΙΙ, ὁλ. Τ. ἑνδέκατος
ῥυμός, φιάλαι
— — —, ὁλ. Τ. δωδέκατος
ῥυμός, φιάλαι]
παντοδαπαὶ
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ,
χελιδόνειοι
ΙΙ, ἀναγκαιοπότης
Ι, κυμβία ΙΙΙ,
λέβης καὶ ἄλλα
παντοδαπά, [τὰ
πάντα 𐅄𐅃Ι, ὁλ.
Τ. τρεισκαιδέκατος
ῥυμός, ἐν ὧι
φιάλαι — — — —
— — — — — —]
(200)
wgt d.24; gold ornament on palm from Eriphyle, wgt d.157. Unweighed:
from king Demetrios [...c]ord hanging larger 23, smaller 62; 2
anklets and armlet, unweighed; gold [...] nailed 3; gold necklace on
ribbon, unweighed; gold image of mother on wood; Crane [...]; gold
rings and ingots and various the gold wgt d.20; gilded bronze and
silver wgt d.7; Sicyonian dr.; first row with 9 oinochoai, 47
swallows, 2 horns, ala[bastra...] 7, (205) 5 reversible cups, 1
basket and 2 from Pyrrhos and Alexander, and 50 various other, 65
total; of the[se...] 7 and 1 small libation oinochoe, 81 total, wgt
T; fourth row, 69 phialai, 4 kymbia, total [...] wgt T; sixth row,
72 phialai, used, wgt T; seventh row, 61 phialai and 1 lagion, total
[...]1, total 68, used, wgt T; ninth row, 69 phialai, wgt T; tenth
row, phial[ai...] various 49, swallows 2, anagkaiopotes 1, 3 kymbia,
lebes and various others [...] (210) pieces and 8 pieces of other
phialai, 6 twisted, 60+ various cups [...la]rge lebes used; 10
pieces of various others, wgt mn.55. These are in [... From the
right e]ntering: 12 phialai in plinths. From the left entering:
phialai in pli[nths...an]other in plinth, dedication of Phila
daughter of Theodoros; another in plinth, from Aristokyde daughter
of Xe[nokleides...a]re in the reed chest 21 phialai, distaffs, wgt
mn.14, d.33; phiale in p[linth. . ] (215) 29 tetranoma, 11 dinoma,
10 nomoi, of the hearth d.24; Alexandrian tetradra[chm...th]ese we
gave over to the hieropoioi after us Demetrios and Meilichides in
the [...].
210
του κλάσματα
καὶ ἄλλων φιαλῶν
κλάσματα 𐅃ΙΙΙ,
ἑλικτὰ 𐅃Ι, ποτήρια
παντοδαπὰ 𐅄Δ[𐅃·
ἐν τούτοις ἔνι
φιάλια ΙΙ, ὀξύβαφα
ΙΙ, ὀξίδες ΙΙ,
καδίσκοι ΙΙΙ,
κύαθος ἀργυροῦς,
ἄλλος μέ]-
γας
λέβης πεπονηκώς·
ἄλλων παντοδαπῶν
κλάσματα Δ, ὁλ.
μν. 𐅄𐅃〚[Ι?]〛·
ταῦτα ἔνεστιν
[ἐν — — — — — —·
φιάλη ἀπὸ τοῦ
Κερατῶνος, ὁλ.
μν. ΔΔ,𐅂𐅄 — — — —
— — — — — — —. δεξιᾶς
εἰσ]-
πορευομένων·
φιάλαι ἐμ πλινθείοις
ΔΙΙ. ἀριστερᾶς
εἰσπορευομένων·
φιάλαι ἐμ πλινθε[ίοις
Δ𐅃ΙΙΙ. ἐν τῆι
ὀροφῆι φιάλαι
ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙΙ· ἄλλη
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
Γλαύκωνος
ἀνάθεμα· ἄλ]-
λη
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
Φίλας τῆς Θεοδώρου
ἀνάθεμα· ἄλλη
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
Ἀριστοκύδης
τῆς Ξε[νοκλείδου
ἀνάθεμα· ἄλλη,
βασιλίσσης
Φθίας τῆς Ἀλεξάνδρου.
τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς ὀροφῆς
ἔνει]-
σιν
ἐν τεῖ παπυρίνει
κιβωτῶι φιάλαι
ΔΔΙ· ἠλεκάται,
ὧν ὁλ. μν. ΔΙΙΙΙ,𐅂ΔΔΔΙΙΙ.
φιάλη ἐμ π[λινθείωι,
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχουσα·
Φίλων Δεξίου
ὑπὲρ Δηλιάδων
χορεῖα Ἀρτέμιδι]·
215
τετράνομα ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ·
δίνομα ΔΙ· νόμοι
Δ· ἱστιαϊκοῦ
𐅂ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἀλεξάνδρειον
τέτραχμ[ον — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — —·
ταῦ]-
τα
παρέδομεν τοῖς
μεθ’ αὑτοὺς
ἱεροποιοῖς
Δημητρίωι καὶ
Μειλιχίδει
ἐν τοῖς [καθήκουσι
χρόνοις. — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — καὶ τά]δε
[ἔργα ἐξέδομεν
ψηφισαμένου
του δή]-
μου,
καὶ τὰς δόσεις
ἔδομεν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος·
Ἀπολλοδώρωι
Ἀπολ[λ — — —
ἐργολαβήσαντι
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
—]ν κατ[ὰ συγγραφὴν
τὴν κειμένην παρὰ
Ὀρθο]-
κλῇ
Ἀριστοθάλου
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅀·
καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτ[έκτονος
— —. τῶι δεῖνι
ἐργολαβήσαντι
— — — — — — τῶι
ἐκκλησι]αστηρίω̣[ι
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — οὗ]
τὰ
ἑπτὰ καὶ ἐπισκευάσαντι
κλεῖθρον τῆς
ὑπολαμπάδος
οὗ τὰ τρία 𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
Σωσαν[δρίδηι?
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — κε]λεύοντος
[ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — — — — — — — —].
220
Πύρρωι ἐργολαβήσαντι
ἐπισκευάσαι
τὸν οἶκον τὸν
ἐν τῶι Σαραπιείωι
κατὰ [συγγραφὴν
τὴν κειμένην παρὰ
Ὀρθοκλῇ Ἀριστοθάλου?
ἔδομεν πρώτη]ν
δόσιν ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂[𐅂ΙΙΙ?·
καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν
ἔδομεν]
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ.
Ἀρχέαι ἐργολαβήσαντι
ἐπισκευάσαι
[— — — — — — — — —
— — — — κατὰ συγγραφὴν
τὴν κειμένην παρὰ
Ὀρθ]οκλῇ Ἀριστοθάλ[ου
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν — —· καὶ]
τὸ
λοιπὸν ἔδομεν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
𐅃𐅂𐅂. Ἀριστοδήμωι
ἐργολαβ[ήσαντι
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
κατὰ συγγραφὴν
τὴν] κειμένην
παρὰ [Ὀρθοκλῇ
Ἀριστοθάλου?
ἔδομεν]
πρώτην
δόσιν Η𐅃· καὶ
τὴν δευτέραν
δόσιν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
𐅄̣[— —· καὶ τὸ
λοιπὸν ἔδομεν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— —. — —]έαι Δημοστράτο[υ
— ethnic? — ἐργολαβήσαν]-
τι
ἐπισκευάσαι
τοῦ Δωδεκαθέου
τὴν ὀροφὴν κατὰ
συγγραφὴν τὴν
κειμ[ένην παρὰ
Ὀρθοκλῇ Ἀριστοθάλου?
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν κελεύοντο]ς
ἀρχιτέκτονος
ΔΔ̣[— —· καὶ τὸ
λοιπὸν ἔδο]-
225
μεν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ.
Φιλόφρονι Εὐπορίωνος
Τηνί[ωι? ἐργολαβήσαντι
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
τὸ νε?]ώριον τὰ
πεπονηκότ[α κατὰ
συγγραφὴν τὴν]
[κ]ειμένην
παρὰ Ὀρθοκλῇ
Ἀριστοθάλου
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν κελεύοντ[ος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —· καὶ τὴν
δευτέραν δόσιν
κελεύον]τος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
ΗΗΗΔΔΔΔΙΙΙΙ̣·
[καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν]
[ἔ]δομεν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
ΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ. Τίμωνι
Κτησιφάνους
[ἐργολαβήσαντι
— — — — — πρὸς τὸ
θύρετρον τὸ ἐν
{²⁷πρὸς?}²⁷ τῶι]
Κυνθίωι τὸ πρὸς
δυσμὰς καὶ τὸ
[— — — — — τοῦ]
θυρέτρου
καὶ ἄλλην πρὸς
τὸ θύρετρον τὸ
πρὸς μεσημβρίαν
κα〚—〛τὰ
{κατὰ} [συγγραφὴν
τὴν παρὰ Ὀρθοκλῇ
Ἀριστοθάλου?
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν κελεύ]οντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
Η𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂· κα[ὶ
τὴν δευ]-
τέραν
δόσιν ἔδομεν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
ΗΗΗ〚—
—〛·
καὶ τὸ λοι[πὸν
ἔδομεν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— —. τῶι δεῖνι
τοῦ δεῖνος
Σ]ινωπεῖ ἐργολαβήσαντι
ἐπισκ[ευάσαι]
230
τὸν οἶκον τὸν
ἐχόμενον τοῦ
Ἰσιείου κατὰ
συγγραφὴν τὴν
κειμέν[ην παρὰ
Ὀρθοκλῇ Ἀριστοθάλ̣ου?
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτο]νος
𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙΙ· καὶ
τὴν δευτέραν
[δόσιν κε]-
λεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
𐅄ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ· καὶ
τὸ λοιπὸν ἔδομεν
κελεύ[οντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —. τῶι δεῖνι
τοῦ δεῖνος
ἐργολαβήσαντι
ἐ]ργάσασθαι
τῶι βωμῶι τοῦ
Διο[νύσου τῶν]
παρακειμένων
λίθων τοὺς εἰς
τὸν εἰδοφόρον
καὶ τοὺς στατο[ὺς
— — — — — κατὰ
συγγραφὴν τὴν
παρὰ Ὀρθοκλῇ
Ἀριστοθάλου?
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν] κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — — — — —
𐅂·
καὶ τὴν δευτέραν
δόσιν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
𐅄̣[— — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— —· καὶ] τὸ λοιπὸν
ἔδομεν [κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέ]-
κτονος
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ.
Ἀπολλωνίωι
Διονυσίου
Μυτιληνα[ίωι
ἐργολαβήσαντι
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — κατὰ
συγγραφ]ὴν τὴν
παρὰ Ὀρθοκ[λῇ
Ἀριστοθάλου
ἔδο]-
235
μεν πρώτην δόσιν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
ΔΔ· καὶ τὸ λο[ιπὸν
ἔδομεν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— —. τῶι δεῖνι
τοῦ δεῖνος
ἐργολαβήσαντι
στε?]γάσαι τὸ
νεω[κόριον? —
— — — — — — — — —]
ρίωι
καὶ ἐπισκευάσαι
τὰ κατὰ κέραμον
τοῦ ναοῦ κατὰ
συγ[γραφὴν τὴν
κειμένην παρὰ
Ὀρθοκλῇ Ἀριστοθάλου?
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
Δ𐅃· καὶ τὴ[ν
δευτέραν δόσιν
κε]-
λεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
Δ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· καὶ
τὸ λοιπὸν ἔδομεν
κελ[εύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —. τῶι δεῖνι
τοῦ δεῖνος
ἐργολαβήσαντι
— — — — — θύρε?]τρον
τ — — — — — — — —
— — —
ου
καὶ θύρας μακελλωτὰς
κατὰ συγγραφὴν
τὴν παρ[ὰ Ὀρθοκλῇ
Ἀριστοθάλου?
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —· καὶ τὴν
δε]υτέρα[ν δόσιν
κελεύοντος]
ἀρχιτέκτονος
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι𐅁/· καὶ
τὸ λοιπὸν κελεύοντος
ἀρχι[τέκτονος
— — —. τῶι δεῖνι
τοῦ δεῖνος
ἐργολαβήσαντι
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —]
τον π — — — — — —
— — — —
240
τος κατ[ὰ σ]υγγραφ[ὴ]ν
τὴν κειμένην παρὰ
Ὀ[ρθ]οκλῇ Ἀρισ[τοθάλου
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —· καὶ τὴν
δευτέραν δόσιν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — — —]·
[καὶ
τὸ λοιπὸν κελεύ]οντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι𐅁. Ἀρχέ[αι
ἐργολαβήσαντι
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — κατὰ
συγγραφὴν τὴν
παρὰ Ὀρθοκλῇ]
Ἀριστοθάλου,
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν κελε[ύοντο]ς
ἀρχιτ[έκτονος
— — —· καὶ τὴν
δευτέραν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —· καὶ τὸ
λοιπὸν ἔδομεν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —].
Διονυσίωι
Σατύρου ἐργολαβήσαντι
ποιῆσαι ἐπι[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — κατὰ
συγγραφὴν τὴν
παρὰ Ὀρθοκλῇ
Ἀριστοθάλου?
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν κελεύον]-
τος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅀·
καὶ τὴν δευτέραν
δ[όσιν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —· καὶ τὸ
λοιπὸν ἔδομεν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — — —. τῶι δεῖνι
ἐργολαβήσαντι
— — — — — —]
245
ῆσαι κεφαλὴν
ἑκατέρωι ἐνωπίωι
τῶν στοῶν [τῶν
— — — — — — — — —
— ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —· καὶ τὴν
δευτέραν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —· καὶ τὸ
λοι]-
πὸν
ἔδομεν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂. [τῶι
δεῖνι τοῦ δεῖνος
ἐργολαβήσαντι
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— κατὰ συγγραφὴν
τὴν παρὰ Ὀρθοκλῇ]
Ἀριστοθάλου
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν κελεύοντος
[ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —· καὶ τὴν
δευτέραν δόσιν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —· καὶ τὸ
λοιπὸν ἔδομεν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —].
Στησίμωι
Πεισιστράτου
ἐργολαβήσαντι
ποιῆσαι [— — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — κατὰ συγγραφὴν
τὴν παρὰ Ὀρθοκλῇ
Ἀριστοθάλου?
ἔδομεν πρώτην]
[δ]όσιν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ𐅁· [καὶ
τὴν δευτέραν
δόσιν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —· καὶ τὸ
λοιπὸν ἔδομεν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —. τῶι δεῖνι]
250
Συνωνύμου
ἐργολαβήσαντι
τεμεῖν πέτρ[ας
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — κατὰ
συγγραφὴν τὴν
παρὰ Ὀρθοκλῇ
Ἀριστοθάλου?
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν]
[κ]ελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
𐅅ΗΗ𐅂𐅂· καὶ [τὴν
δευτέραν ἔδομεν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —· καὶ τὸ
λοιπὸν ἔδομεν
κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —. τῶι δεῖνι
τοῦ δεῖνος
ἐργολαβήσαντι
— — — — — — ἐπισκευ?]-
[ά]σαι
τῆς οἰκίας
τῆς καλουμένης
Ἀρκέον[τος κατὰ
συγγραφὴν τὴν
παρὰ Ὀρθοκλῇ
Ἀριστοθάλου?
ἔδομεν πρώτην
δόσιν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— —· καὶ τὴν
δευτέραν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέ]-
κτονος
ΔΔ𐅃· [κ]αὶ τὸ
λοιπὸν ἔδομεν
κελ[εύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
— — —. τῶι δεῖνι
τοῦ δεῖνος
ἐργολαβήσαντι
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— κατὰ συγγραφὴν
τὴν παρὰ Ὀρ]-
θοκλῇ
Ἀριστοθάλου
ἔδομεν πρώτην
[δόσιν κελεύοντος
ἀρχιτέκτονος
κτλ.] —
vac.
http://epigraphy.packhum.org/text/62921
face
C left
traces
of letters?
1
παρὰ Χαρι[σ]τί[ου]
τοῦ Ἀντιγ̣ό̣[νου?]
ὑ- πὲρ τοῦ πάππου
Νικομάχου τόκον
5
ὃν ἔφη ὀφείλειν
τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου
τὸν πάππον Νικό-
μαχον τοῦ δανεί-
ου οὗ ἐδανείσατο
10
παρ’ ἱεροποιῶν
Πρα- ξιμένου καὶ
Τελε- σαρχίδου
τὸν ἐπὶ Δημάρου
Η· καὶ ὑ{π}- πὲρ
{ὑπὲρ} Εὐθυτίμης
15
τῆς Διοδότου
τό- κον ὃν ἔφη
ὀφείλειν τοῦ
ἱεροῦ ἀργυρί-
ου τὸν ἐπὶ Δημά-
ρου ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι/·
πα-
20
ρ’ Ἀριστοβούλου
το[ῦ] Ἀριστοβούλου
ὑπὲρ Ὀρθοκλέους
τοῦ Ὀρθοκλέους
τόκον τῆς ἐγγύης
τοῦ ἱε-
25
ροῦ ἀργυρίου
ὃν ἔ- φη αὑτῶι
ἐπιβάλ- λειν
𐅄ΔΔΔ· παρὰ
Τληπολέμου
τοῦ Ἄμνου τόκον
τοῦ
30
ἱεροῦ ἀργυρίου
ὃν ἔφη ὀφείλειν
Η𐅂ΙΙΙ· παρὰ
Δημοχάρου τοῦ
Σωτίωνος ὑ- πὲρ
Ἀντιχάρ<ου>
35
τοῦ Αὐτοσθένου
ὃ ἔφη ἐγγραφῆν[αι]
αὐτὸν ὑπὸ ἱερο-
ποιῶν τῶν ἐπ’
[ἄρ]- χοντος Ἀρίστ[ω]-
40
νος τοῦ τέλο̣υ[ς?]
τῶν αἱρεσίων
— —· παρὰ Διακτο[ρί]-
δου τοῦ Ἀριστο̣[θέ]-
ου τόκον τοῦ
ἱε-
45
ροῦ ἀργυρίου
ὃν ἔ- φη ὀφείλ<ε>ιν
Δ̣𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· παρὰ
Γλαυκυρί[ου]
τοῦ Θαρσαγ̣ό̣ρα
[ὑ]- πὲρ Κτησυλί[ος
τό]-
50
κον τὸν ἐπὶ Δημ[ά]-
ρου τῆς ἐγγύης
τοῦ ἱεροῦ
ἀργυρ̣[ί]- ου
ὃν ἔφη ὀφεί- λειν
Κτησυλὶν Δ̣
55
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· παρὰ
Δημο- κρίτου
τοῦ Πα[ρ]- μενίωνος
ὃ ἔφ[η] ἐγγράψαι
αὐτὸ[ν] τὸν πατέρα
ἱερο-
60
ποιοὺς Κινέαν
κ[αὶ] Καλλίαν
τὸν ἐπι- ώβολον
𐅄· παρὰ Φωκαιέως
τοῦ Λευκίνου
ὑπὲρ
65
τῆς μητρὸς Ἀρισ-
[τ]ακοῦς τόκον
[τ]ὸν ἐπ’ ἄρχοντο[ς]
[Δ]ημάρου τοῦ
[ἱε]- [ρ]οῦ ἀργυρί̣ο̣υ̣
ΜΗ
70
[Η]ΗΔ[— — — — Χ]
!ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ̣.
vac.? vac.?
face
D right
1
Ἀπολλωνίου
𐅄Δ𐅂. vac.
3 lines
2
ἐγγράφομεν δὲ̣
καὶ Εὐφράνορα
καὶ τὸν ἔγγυον
5
αὐτοῦ Ἀριστεί-
δην Ἀριστείδου
ὃ οὐκ ἀπέδωκεν
τοῦ ἐνοικίου
τῆς ἱερᾶς οἰκίας
τῆς
10
Ἐπισθενείου
〚—〛
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅁//·
καὶ Διο- νυσόδωρον
Μα- ραθωνίου
καὶ τὸν ἔγγυον
Δημέ-
15
αν Φωκρίτου ὃ
οὐ- κ ἀπέδωκεν
τοῦ τέλους
τῆς πορ- [θ]μίδος
τῆς εἰς Ῥή- νειαν
𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂· καὶ
20
Ἀντίγονον Χαρι-
στίου καὶ τοὺς
ἐγ- γύους ὧι
ἔλασ- σον ἀπέδωκεν
τοῦ τέλους
τοῦ
25
λ̣ιμένος Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
[Ὀ]ρθοκλῆν Ὀρθο-
[κ]λέους τόκον
τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἀργυρί-
ου κατὰ τὸ ἥμυσυ
30
𐅄ΔΔΔ. εἰ δέ τινας
μὴ ἐγγεγρα-
φήκαμεν ὀφεί-
λοντας τῶι θεῶι,
ἐγγράφομεν αὐ-
35
τοὺς καὶ τοὺς
ἐγ- γύους ὀφείλοντας
τῶι θεῶι.
ID 1417 (155/154 BC)
and ID 3. 1417
http://epigraphy.packhum.org/text/63852
https://web.archive.org/web/20151019042847/http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/inscriptions/id31417.htm
Athenian
Inventories
From
the formal standpoint, the Athenian inventories are frustrating: we
have no complete examples; the fragments rarely overlap; few weights
are preserved. On the other hand, they include much more than the
earlier inventories, which were largely confined to precious
objects, and so we learn a lot more about the contents of
sanctuaries. Also there are many more temples, partly the result of
new cults gaining footing but partly of the new inclusive approach
to inventories since some of the newly listed treasures are clearly
quite old (Thesmophorion, Heraion, Letoion, Gymnasium,
Samothrakion). Most of the precious items are housed in the Temples
of Apollo and Artemis (for safety?). The order is fixed; there is no
reweighing. We find hints of melting down of dedications and
replacement of lost. Topographic listing of 442 has been abandoned
for the old listing by metal (gold before silver in Artemis and
Athenian temples; silver before gold in Apollo temple).
—μ̣ο̣υ̣
ξύλα ἀπὸ τῆς
σκηνῆς
—ον
ἠχ̣ρεωμένον
ἔχοντα πλαί-
[σιον
— — — — — — — — —
— — — —]θ̣εις̣
κ̣αὶ λεπτὰς
σανίδας ἑπτά·
ἄγαλ-
[μα
— — — — — — — — —
— οὐκ] ἔχον τὸν
δεξιὸν βραχίονα,
ἀνάθεμα
5
— — — — — — — — —
— κ̣ίου. καὶ
τάδε προσπαρελάβομεν·
χαλ-
[κᾶ·
— — — — — — ἐν
π]λαισίωι, ἀνάθεμα
Ποσειδωνίου
Ἀλεξανδρέ-
[ως
— — — — — — — —]ην·
χιτῶνα λευκὸν
ἀνεπίγραφον·
μαχαίριον
—
— — — — κην.
ἐν τῶι οἴκωι
τῶι πρὸς τῶι
ἐκκλησιαστηρίωι·
εἰ-
[κόνα
χαλκῆν] βασιλίσσης
Ἀρσινόης, ἀνάθεμα
Πτολεμαίου·
ἄγαλμα λί-
...]mos;
wood from the skene... with a ehcremeonon frame... and seven thin
panels; stat[ue...not] having the right leg, dedication [...]kios.
And the following we took over in addition: bronz[e... in f]rame,
dedication of Poseidonios of Alexandr[ia...]; white chiton
uninscribed; knife [...].
In
the Oikos near the Ekklesiasterion. [Bronze im]age of Queen
Arsione, dedication of Ptolemy; stone statue in frame,
10
[θινον ἐμ πλιν]θ̣ε̣ί̣ω̣ι̣,
ἀνάθεμα Πτολεμαίου
τοῦ βασιλέως
Λυσιμάχου·
[πίνακα
ἐπὶ β]άσεως
τεθυρωμένον,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀφθονήτου
καὶ Ἀριστέου·
[ἄλλον
ἐπὶ] βάσεως
ἀθύρωτον ἔχοντα
γραφήν, ἀνάθεμα
Πτολεμαί-
[ου
τοῦ βασ]ιλέως
Λυσιμάχου·
ἄλλον ἐλάττονα
ἀθύρωτον, ἔχοντα
[γραφὴν]
βασιλέως Λυσιμάχου·
ἄλλον ἠρτημένον
ἀθύρωτον,
15
[ἔχοντα γ]ραφήν,
ἀνάθεμα Μνησικλέους·
ἄλλον ἀθύρωτον
ἔ-
[χοντα
γρα]φήν, ἀνάθεμα
Σωσισθένου·
ἄλλον ἐλάττονα
ἠρτημέ-
[νον,
ἔχον]τα γραφήν,
ἀνάθεμα Μνησικλέους·
ἄλλα πινάκια
εἰ-
[κονι]κὰ
καὶ ἀναθεματικὰ
ὀκτώ· ἀσπίδα
χαλκῆν ἐμ πλαισίωι
[ἀνά]θ̣ε̣μ<α>?
Ἀμφικλέους
Ἀθηναίου· θυρεὸν
πεζικὸν ἐμ πλαισίω〚—〛ι
{πλαισίωι}
dedication
of Ptolemy son of King Lysimachos; another smaller undoored, with
[painting] of King Lysimachos; another suspended undoored [with
p]ainting, dedication of Mnesikles; another undoored w[ith
pa]inting, dedication of Sosisthenes; another smaller one suspend[ed
wit]h painting, dedication of Mnesikles; eight other plaques with
images and dedications; bronze shield in frame, [dedi]cat(ion) of
Amphikles of Athens;
20
ἔχοντα ἔγκαυμα,
ἀνάθεμα Τιμαρ<ά>του
Ῥοδίου· ἄλλον
ἱππι-
κόν,
ἔχοντα ἔγκαυμα,
ἀνάθεμα Θεοξένου
Λεοντησίου·
ἄλλον
πεζικὸν
ἐμ πλαισίωι,
ἔχοντα ἔγκαυμα,
οὗ τὴν ἐπιγραφὴν
οὐ-
κ
ἦν συνιδεῖν·
ἄλλον πεζικόν,
ἔχοντα ἔγκαυμα,
ἀνάθεμα
Μενελάου
Ἠπειρώτου·
ἄλλον ἱππικὸν
ἐπίχρυσον, ἔχοντα
ἔγ-
25
καυμα, ἀνάθεμα
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου
τοῦ Λυσιμάχου·
ἄλλον
πεζικὸν
περίχρυσον,
ἔχοντα κεραυνὸν
ἐπίχρυσον, ἀνάθε-
μα
Πτολεμαίου
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου·
ἀσπίδα ἐμ πλαισίωι,
ἀνε-
πίγραφον,
ἔχουσαν ἔγκαυμα·
χιτῶνα λευκόν,
ἀνάθεμα Κλεο-
δάμα·
ἄλλον ἐμ πλαισίωι
μεσόλευκον,
ἀνάθεμα Πτολεμαίου
doored
pezikon in frame with encaustic, dedication of Timar(a)tos of
Rhodes; another hippikon, with encaustic, dedication of Theoxenos of
Leontini; another pezikon in frame, with encaustic where the
inscription was illegible; another pezikon, with encaustic,
dedication of Menelaus of Epirus; another gilded hippikon, with
encaustic, dedication of King Ptolemy son of Lysimachos; another
gilded pezikon, with gilded lightningbolt, dedication of Ptolemy son
of King Ptolemy; shield in frame, uninscribed, with encaustic; white
chiton, dedication of Kleodamas; another half white in frame,
dedication of Ptolemy son of Lysimachos;
30
τοῦ Λυσιμάχου·
ἄλλον ἐμ πλαισίωι
περιπορφυροῦν
ῥακώδη κατερρυη-
κότα,
ἀνάθεμα ․ιμ̣․․․τρου̣․․․․δ̣ίου·
ἄλλον ἐμ πλαισίωι
πορφυ-
ροῦν,
ἀνάθεμ[α] Ἰσιδ̣ώ̣ρ̣ου·
π[αράδ]ειγμα
ναΐσκου ξυλίνου·
ἄλλο
παράδειγμα
τῆ[ς] τετρα․․․․․ε̣υ̣․․․․
ἐν τῶι ἐκκλησιαστη-
ρίωι·
θυρεὸν ἱππ̣[ικὸν?]
Ι̣Σ̣ — — — — —
ἀν[ά]θεμα Καλλικράτου·
ἄλ-
35
[λ]ον Τησίου
Θ̣η̣β̣α̣[ίου(?)·
— — — — — ἐμ] πλαισίωι
δύο καὶ λόγχας
δύο
καὶ — — — — — —
— — — — — κ[․․․․,
ἀν]άθεμα Μάρκου
Αἰ-
μυλίου
ἐ̣πι̣λε̣[— —
— — θυμιατήριον?
πομ]π̣ι̣κὸν
περίχρυσον ἐμ
πλαισίωι
ἔχον [— — — — — —
— τούτου τὴν
ἐπιγρα]φὴν οὐκ
ἦν συνι-
δεῖν·
θυρ̣[εὸν(?) — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — —] σὺν τεῖ
another
in frame with purple border, worn, disintegrating, dedication of
[...]; another in frame purple, dedication of Isidoros; model of
wooden shrine; another model of the four[...].
In
the Ekklesiaterion. Doored hipp[ikon...] dedication of
Kallikrates; another of Tesias of Theb[es...in] frame two and two
spearpoints and [..e]dication of Marcus Amelius [...] gilded
process[ional censer] in frame with [...the inscrip]tion was not
legible; doo[red... plaques] with images 23 on the al[tar...] bronze
processional censer, this br[oken...] two bronze; five iron
tridents...
40
ΠΑΡΜ̣[— — — — — —
— — — — —· πίνακας]
εἰκονικοὺς
․․Δ̣Δ̣Ι̣Ι̣Ι̣
ἐπὶ
τοῦ βω̣[μοῦ(?) —
— — — — — — — — —·
θυμιατή]ριον
πομπικὸν
χαλκοῦν·
τοῦτο περ̣ιε̣[ρρωγός?
— — — — —] χαλκᾶ
δύο· τρίαιναι
σ<ι>δη-
ραῖ
πέντε — — — — —
— — — — — μέ̣ναι.
ἐν τῶι Δωδεκαθέωι·
ἀγάλματα
λίθινα τ[ῶν θεῶν]
— — — — — — ς̣ Δ̣Ι·
καὶ ἄλλο ξύλινον
45
ἐπίχρυσον ὧι
— — — — — — — —
Σ․․․․․ οὐ[κ]
ἔχον τοὺς ἵππους
οὐ-
δὲ
τοὺς παρα̣στάτας
οὐδὲ τοὺς
ἐπιβάτας οὐδὲ
τὰ ὑπὸ τοὺς
ζῶια.
vacat ἐν τῶι [Ποσιδεί?]ωι·
τὸ ἄγαλμα λίθινον·
τρύφακτον ἐν-
τελῆ
ἔχοντα κ[λε]ῖδ[α(?)
— — — — — — — — —
—] δέ̣κ̣α δύο·
τραπέζια ὑπό-
σπαστα
ἕξ· θύρας̣
κ̣α̣τ̣[αγείας?].
ἐν [τῶι] Θεσμοφορίωι·
vacat
In
the (House of the) Twelve Gods. Stone statues of t[he gods...]
11 and another gilded wood one [...] without the horses or
parastatai or the epibatai nor the animals under them.
In
the [Poseidei]on. The stone statue; railing with complete key
(?) [...] twenty two; six fold-away tables; doors [...].
50
ἀγάλματα τῶν
θεῶν [δύο ἐν
θρόνοις ἀκρό]λιθα
ἔχοντα στεφάνας
ξυλίνας
ἐπιχρύσους
καὶ [ἐ]ν̣[ώιδ]ι̣α
ξύλινα ἐπίχρυσα,
ἐνδεδυ-
κότα
ἐνδύματ[α] ․τ․μ․․․․․πορφυρα
καὶ ἠμφιεσμένα
λίνοις· εἰ-
κόνες
ἔκ[τ]υποι ․․․․․․․
ἀργυρᾶ· περίχειρα
στρεπτὰ ἐπίχρυ-
σα
τέτταρα, ὧν ὁλκὴ
[Δ]ΔΔΔ[Ι]Ι̣Ι̣·
σκύφιον ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Δηλιάδες
55
Δήμητρι καὶ Κόρηι,
ὁλκὴ κατὰ τὴν
ἐπιγραφὴν 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
τύπι-
ον
ἐνδέξια το̣ῦ̣
[․․․․․․․ κ]αὶ
ἐπὶ ταινιδίου,
ἀνάθεμα Πολέας.
vac.
χαλκᾶ·
[ὑδρί]δ[ι]α̣ χαλκᾶ
ἓξ ․τ․․․․․․․․․․․․
ἔχοντα ὦτα δύο
καὶ
βάσιν
— — — — — — — πεπτωκὸς
ἔχον ὦτα δύο·
μέτρον σι-
τηρόν·
λύχνον μικρὸν
μ̣ο̣ν̣[όμ]υξ[ον]·
ἀνδριαντίδιον
γυναικεῖον
ἐ-
In
the Thesmophorion. Akrolithic statues of the gods [...] with
gilded wood diadems and gilded wood earrings, dressed in purple
clothes and cloaked in linen; relief images... Silver: four gilded
bracelets; whose weight (is) 30.2+; small skyphos with the
inscription Deliades to Demeter and Kore, weight according to the
inscription 96; relief on the right of [.. an]d on a ribbon,
dedication Poleas. Bronze: six bronze hydriai... with two handles
and base... collapsed with two handles; grain measure; small
single-spout lamp;
60
πὶ βάσεως ἔχον
δᾶιδα ξ[υ]λίνην,
[ἀνάθεμα] Δημανάσσης·
ἐπίπυρον
ὠτάρια
ἔχον [σιδηρᾶ —
— — — — — — — —
—]κ․․․λ̣ε̣ί̣σ̣τριο̣ν(?)·
․α̣․․οντο̣π․υ
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — τρίαιναν·
[μαχ]αίρι-
ον
․․ιμ̣ατ — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— —δρια παντο̣δα-
πά
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — λιβανω-
65
τίδας πέντε —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
ν νιτρι̣δα
οἰνοχόη
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — υν․․․․
η̣ρον
ἐλε̣φάντινον
— — — — — — — — —
— —· πίνακας
εἰκονικοὺς
𐅃Ι·
ἄλλους ἀναθεματ[ικοὺς
πλείους· ἄλλον
μ]είζονα, ἀνάθεμα
Βοσ-
π̣όρου·
καλαθίσκους
ΙΙ ἰ̣τ̣είνους
— — — — — — — —·
ἐν τῶι ο̣ἴ̣κ̣ω̣ι̣
ἐπὶ
small
female statue on base with wood torch, [dedication[ of Demanasse;
brazier with handles [...] trident; knife; [...] various [...] five
incense boxes [...] oinochoe [...] ivory [./ . .]6 plaques with
images; other dedicat[ory...l]arger, dedication of Bosporos; 2 small
willow baskets [...].
70
τῶι ἐμ — — — — —
— — — — — —· καρδόπιον
λίθινον ἐπὶ
βάσεως
τετραγώνου·
λύχν[ους — —
— — — — — —]ους
κεκολοβωμέ-
νους
τριμύξους δύο·
ἄλλους [μον]ο[μ]ύξους
δύο· ἀγαλμάτιον
ξύλινον
ἀρχαϊκόν· σανίδας
ἐπὶ διατοναίων
ξυλίνων ΙΙΙ·
θύρας
παλαιὰς
δύο· [ἄ]λ[λ]ην
πεπιττωμένην
φαιάν· κοφίνια
ὀκτώ.
75
ἐν τῶ<ι> οἰκήμα[τι
ἀ]πέναντι εἰσιόντων·
ὡ̣ρολόγιον
λίθινον ἐπὶ
βάσεως·
κλιμάκιον
πεντάβασμον·
βωμὸν ξύλινον·
πίνακα παλαιόν,
[ἀ]νάθεμα
Ἁρπάγης· ἐν τεῖ
στοᾶι τεῖ ἐναρίστερα·
βάθρα ξύλινα
δύο·
σκαφὴν κίρκον
ἔχουσαν χαλκοῦν·
τράπεζαν ἐξ σανίδων
πόδας
ἔχουσαν· ἄλλην
πόδας οὐκ ἔχουσαν·
θύρας τὰς τοῦ
ἱεροῦ
In
the House at The [...] small square stone kneeding trough on
square base; two broken three-spout lamps; two other single-spout;
old small wood statue; 3 boards on wood diatonaia; another grey
covered with pitch; eight small baskets.
In
the Oikos Facing the Entrance: small stone clock on base; small
five-rung ladder; wood altar; old plaque, dedication of Harpage.
In
the Stoa on the Left. two wood benches; tray with bronze circle;
table from planks with feet; another without feet; all the doors of
the temple
80
πάσας ἐντελεῖς
κλεῖδας ἐχούσας.
χρυσᾶ· δάιδιον
χρυσοῦν ἐπὶ
βάσεως,
οὗ ὁλκή. Ι̣·
δάιδιον καὶ
τύπια Δ̣ΙΙ καὶ
πλείονα ὧν ὁλκὴ
δρα.
ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
κίρκον {․․․}
ἐπίχρυσον οὗ
ὁλκὴ 𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
[δ]άιδιον ἐπὶ
βάσεως,
ὁλκὴ
𐅂𐅂. καὶ τάδε
ἄστατα· φιάλιον
λεῖον ἐ<μ> πλινθείωι
ὡς δακτύ-
λων
τριῶν, ἀνάθημα
Ἑστι<α>ίας·
δάιδια μείζον[α]
περιηργυρωμένα
85
ὡς ἑπτὰ παλαστῶν
τέ[τταρα]· ἄλλα
ἐλάττονα ἐπὶ
βάσεων
ξυλίνων
ἕνδεκα· φιάλην
ζώιδια ἔχουσαν
ὀ̣κ̣τ̣ώ̣, ἧς
ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
Η·
ἄλλην λείαν,
ἧς ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙΙ· ἄλλην
λείαν, ἧς ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ
ΔΔΔΔΙΙ· ἄλλην
λείαν, ἧς ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ ΔΔΔΔ𐅃Ι·
ἄλλην λείαν,
ἧς
ὁλκὴ ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
ἄλλην λείαν,
ἧς ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
Η· ἄλλην λείαν,
complete
with keys. Gold: small gold torch on base, whose weight (is) .1;
torch and 12 reliefs and more (?), whose weight (is) 23.3 dr; gilded
circle, whose weight (is) 2.4; torch on base, weight 2. And the
following unweighed: smooth phialion in plinth about three fingers
(high), dedication of Hestiia; large(r) four silvered torches about
seven palms (high); eleven other smaller on wooden bases; phiale
with eight figures, whose weight (is) 100 drachmai; another smooth,
whose weight (is) 40.4 drachmai; another smooth whose weight (is)
40.2; another smooth whose weight (is) 45.1; another smooth whose
weight (is) 39.5; another smooth whose weight (is) 100 drachmai;
another smooth whose weight (is)
90
ἧς ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
ΔΔΔΔΙΙ· θυμιατήριον·
βωμίσκον, οὗ
ὁλκὴ 𐅂̣𐅂̣𐅂̣·
σκύ-
φιον,
οὗ ὁλκὴ 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
vac. λιβανωτίδα
ἔχουσαν πόδας
τρεῖς καὶ
πρόσωπον
Δήμητρος, ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ 𐅄𐅂·
ὑδρίαν μικράν,
ἧς ὁλ-
κὴ
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· ἄλλην
μικράν, ἧς ὁλκὴ
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· δᾶιδα
μείζω, ἧς ὁλκὴ
κα-
τὰ
τὴν ἐπιγραφὴν
Η𐅄𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
ἄλλην ἐλάττω,
ἧς ὁλκὴ κατὰ
τὴν ἐ-
95
πιγραφὴν ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃Ι,
ἄστατον· σκάφιον
λεῖον, οὗ ὁλκὴ
δραχ.
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
τύπια καὶ δάιδια
πλείονα, ὧν ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ ΔΔΙΙ·
ἄλλ<α>
δάιδια ὧν ὁλκὴ
δρα. Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
δᾶιδας δύο
ὡς παλαστῶν
πέντ[ε καὶ]
δάιδια
ἑπτά, ἃ παρέλαβεν
ἡ ἱέρεια Φιλόκλεια
παρὰ τῆς πρότερον
ἱερεί-
ας,
ὧν ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
περισκ[ελί]διον
λεῖον περικεχρυσωμένον,
40.2
drachmai; censer; little altar, whose weight 3; skyphion whose
weight 91.5; incense box with three feet and face of Demeter weight
drachmai 51; small hydria, whose weight 14.2; another small whose
weight 13.3; larger torch, whose weight according to the inscription
152.5; another smaller whose weight according to the inscription
145.1. Unweighed: smooth skaphion, whose weight drach.48.3; reliefs
and larger torches whose weight drachmai 20.2; other torches, whose
weight dra. 18.4; two torches about five palms and seven torches
which the preiestess Philokleia took from the earlier priestess,
whose weight 18.3; smooth gilded
100
ὁλκὴ 𐅃 ἀκριβεῖς.
ἐν τῶι Λητώιωι·
τὸ ἄγαλμα τῆς
θεοῦ ξύλινον,
δεδυκὸς
χιτῶνα λινοῦν
καὶ ἠμφιεσμένον
λίνωι· ὑποδημάτων
κοίλων
ζεῦγος· θρόνον
ἐφ’ οὗ κάθηται
ξύλινον· χελωνίδα
ἔχου-
σαν
ἐμπαίσματα
ἐλεφάντινα·
τράπεζαν ξυλίνην·
κιβωτά-
ριον
κατεαγός, ἐπίθεμα
οὐκ ἔχον, ἐν ὧι
χαλκωμάτια δέκα
ἄστα-
105
τα vacat ἐλεφάντινα·
θυμιατήριον
πομπικὸν ἔ[χον
ἐπίπυ]ρον χαλ-
κοῦν·
λ̣ιβ̣ανωτίδα·
ῥιπίδα λαβὴν
ἔχουσαν· κιβωτάριον
․․․․ τ̣ρ̣αφη(?)-
μ̣εν̣ον
ξύλινον ἐν ὧι
τύπιον ἀργυροῦν
ἄστατον· ἄλλο
τύπιον
ἐνδέξια
τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἄστατον·
ἄλλο τύπιον
μικ[ρὸ]ν ἐνδέξια
τοῦ ἀγάλ-
ματος·
ἄστατα ἕξ· θρόνον
τῆς ἱερείας
καὶ χελωνίδα̣
μικράν· πίνα-
anklet,
weight 5 exactly.
In
the Letoion: the wooden statue of the goddess wearing a linen
chiton and cloaked in linen; pair of hollow sandals; throne on which
the wooden (statue) sits; lyre with ivory embossing; wooden table;
small broken box without lid in which ten unweighed bronze
(statues?); ivory; processonal censer with bronze brazier; fan with
handle; small box; wooden traphemon in which a small silver relief,
unweighed; another small relief to the right of the statue; six
unweighed (reliefs?); throne of the priestess and small lyre;
110
κα χαλκοῦν,
ἀνάθεμα Παρμίσκου·
κέστρων ζεύγος
ξυστῶν· ἐπὶ τῶν
ἔνδον
θυρῶν ἐπίσπαστρα
χαλκᾶ δύο·
ἀσπιδίσκας
χαλκᾶς τέτ-
ταρας·
ἐπὶ τῶν ἔξω θυρῶν
ἐπίσπα<σ>τρον
χαλκοῦν· ἀσπιδίσκας
χαλκᾶς
δύο· ἐπίπυρον
ἐπὶ τοῦ βωμοῦ
σιδηροῦν ἔχον
παραστάδα
χαλκῆν
καὶ ὑπερτόναιον
καὶ ἀνθέμια
δύο· ἀνδριάντα
γυναικεῖ-
115
ον ἐπὶ βάσεως,
ἀνάθεμα Τελείας
τῆς Κρίτου·
τράπεζαν λιθίνην·
κλεῖν
ἀνάπαιστον τῶν
ἔνδον θυρῶν·
ἄλλην ὁλοσίδηρον
τῶν ἔ-
ξω
θυρῶν. ἐν τῶι τοῦ
Ἀνίου· ἀπολλωνίσκον
χαλκοῦν ἐπὶ
βάσεως ἀρ-
{αρ}χαϊκόν
{ἀρχαϊκόν}· θύρας
ἐντελεῖς·
κ[λε]ῖν τοῦ ἱεροῦ.
ἐν τῶι γυμνασίωι·
χαλ-
κᾶ·
δεξιᾶς εἰσιόντων
εἰς τὸ περιστῶιον·
Ἔρωτα ἐπὶ κιονίου
ὡς δί-
bronze
plaque, dedication of Parmiskos; pair of polished kestra; two bronze
door latches on the inner doors; four small bronze shields/disks;
iron brazier on the altar with bronze post and lintel and two
flowers; female statue on base, dedication of Teleia (wife) of
Kritos; stone table; draw-key of the inner doors; another pure iron
(key) of the outer doors.
In
the (Temple) of Anios: old bronze Apollo statue on base; whole
doors; key of temple.
In
the Gymnasium.
Bronze. On the right going into the peristyle: Eros on small column,
120
πουν, λεοντῆν
ἔχοντα καὶ ῥόπαλον,
ἀνάθεμα Τληπολέμου
καὶ Ἡγέου·
λ̣α̣μπάδ̣α̣
ἐν τῶι τοίχωι,
ἀνάθεμα Εὐκλ̣ε̣ί̣δ̣ο̣υ̣
Ἀθηναίου·
κορυθήκην
ἀρχαϊκὴν
ἔχουσαν χάλκωμα,
ἀνεπίγραφον·
ἐν τεῖ ἐχομένει
στοᾶι·
ἀνδριάντα τέλειον
γυμνόν. πρὸς τῶι
ἀποδυτηρίωι·
δεξι-
ᾶς·
λαμπάδα, ἀνάθεμα
Δημοκράτου
Ἀθηναίου·
Ἡρακλῆν ἐπὶ
βάσε-
125
ως ὡς δίπουν,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀφθονήτου.
ἐναρίστερα
<τ>οῦ ἀποδυτηρίου·
Ἔρωτα
ὡς δίπουν καὶ
ὑδρία̣ν ἐπὶ
βάσεως λιθίνης,
ἀνάθεμα Οἰνέ-
ως·
ἐνδέξια τοῦ
Ἔρωτος λαμπάδα
ἐν τοῖ τοίχωι,
ἀνάθεμα Πρωτο-
γένου
Ἀλεξανδρέως·
ἄλλο ἀνδριαντίδιον
ἐν τῶι τοίχωι,
ἀνάθε-
μα
Ἐρ̣ασίνου καὶ
Πάχητος· Ἡρακλῆν
ὡς ποδιαῖον
καθήμενον,
about
two feet, with lionskin and club, dedication of Tlepolemos and
Hegeas; torch in the wall, dedication of Eukleides of Athens; old
helmet rack with bronze (statue), uninscribed. In the enclosed
Stoa: full-sized naked statue. Near the (un)dressing room on the
right: torch dedication of Demokrates of Athens; Herakles on base
about two feet dedication of Aphthonetos. On the left of the
(un)dressing room: Eros about two feet and hydria on stone base
dedication of Oineus. On the right of the Eros: torch in the wall
dedication of Protogenes of Alexandria; another small statue in [the
wall] dedication of Erasinos and Paches; seated Herakles about a
foot
130
ἀνάθεμα Ἀπολ̣λ̣οδώρου
καὶ Τληπολέμου·
ἀπολλωνίσκον
ὡς ποδιαῖ-
ον
καθήμενον ἔχοντα
κιθάραν, ἀνάθεμ<α>
Μαντιθέου καὶ
Ἀριστέα·
ἄλλο
ἀνδριαντίδιον
ὡς πεντασπίθαμον,
ἀνάθεμα Αὐτο̣κλέ-
ους·
ἐν τεῖ ἐχομένει
στοᾶι· ἀνδριάντα
τέλειον γυμνὸν
ἐν τῶι ἐξε-
δρίωι
ἔχοντα ῥαβδόν,
ἀνάθεμα Δηλίων·
ἄλλο ἐν τῶι
ἐξεδρίωι ἀνδρι-
135
αντίδιον ὡς
δίπουν ἐν τῶι
τοίχωι ἀναβαλλόμενον,
ἀνεπίγραφον·
Ἡρακλῆν
ὡς δίπουν λεοντέη̣ς̣
ἀναβολὴν ἔχοντα,
ἀνεπίγραφον·
παλλάδιον
ὡς δίπουν ἐν
θυρίδι, ἀνάθεμα
Σατύρου Κηφισιέως·
καὶ
λαμπάδα̣ς
δύο κ̣α̣ὶ̣
ἄ̣λ̣λ̣α̣ ζώιδια
ὡς ποδῶν δυεῖν
ἐν θυρίδι, ἀνεπί-
γραφα·
λαμπάδας μικρὰς
δύο, ἀνάθεμα
ἡ μὲν Διοτίμου
τοῦ Βερενικίδου,
dedication
of Apollodoros and Tlepolemos; small Apollo about a foot, seated
with lyre dedication of Mantitheos and Aristeas; another small
statue about five spans, dedication of Autokles. In the enclosed
Stoa: whole naked statue in the exedrion with a staff,
dedication of the Delians; another in the exedrion, small
statue about two feet suspended on the wall, uninscribed; Herakles
about two feet with lion skin mantle; statue of Pallas (Athena)
about two feet in a niche, dedication of Satyros of Kephisios; and
two torches and other figures about two feet in a niche,
uninscribed; two small torches, the one a dedication of Diotimos son
of Berenikides,
140
ἡ δὲ [Εὐμέν]ους·
ἐν τῆι σφαιριστρᾶι
ἐπὶ τοῦ ὡρολογίου·
τριτωνίσκο<ν>
μικρὸν
καὶ πρὸς τῶ<ι>
ἀποδυτηρίω<ι>
ἀνδριάντα γυναικεῖον
ἐν ταῖς χερ-
σὶν
ἔχοντα̣ ἔ̣κ̣π̣ω̣μα,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀριστίωνος
τ̣ο̣ῦ Θεοδώρου·
ἀσπίδας
χαλκᾶς
δ̣έ̣κ̣α̣ ἐν τῶι
ἐπιστασίωι.
ἄστατα· ὑδρίας
δύο ὧν τὴμ μὲν
μί-
αν
ἐντελ̣ῆ̣, τὴν
δὲ ἄλλην ο̣ὖς
οὐ̣κ ἔχουσαν
καὶ τὸν τράχηλον
διαβε-
145
[βρωμένον]· ῥαντήριον
ἐντελέ̣ς̣·
ἀσκοὺς δύο
ἀνεπιγράφους·
κάδον
ἱ̣μ̣η̣τ̣ῆ̣ρ̣α̣·
τούτου τὰ ὦτα
ἡ ὑδρία ἔχει.
λίθινα· ἑρμαῖ
ΔΔΔΔΙ·
ἐν τῶι λουτρῶνι·
λ̣η̣ν̣οὺς
μετεώρους
τρεῖς· αἱ ἐπὶ
τοῦ ἐδάφους
δ̣έ̣κα·
ἡμικύκλιον·
κασκ̣ο̣φη(?)․․․․
ἐν τοῖς ἐξεδρίοις
καὶ συγγωνίο̣ι̣ς̣·
ὡρολ̣όγ̣ιον
ἐ̣π̣ὶ̣ κιονίου·
ἀσπίδας ἐπιχρύσους
γραφὰς ἐχούσας
ἑξήκοντα·
the
other of Eumenes. In the ball court at the clock: small
triton and next to the (un)dressing room female statue with a cup in
her hands, dedication of Aristion son of Theodoros; ten bronze
shields in the Epistation (Superintendent's Office?).
Unweighed: two hydriai, one complete, the other with no handle and
broken neck; complete sprinkler; two uninscribed askoi; himetera
jar, whose handles the hydria holds. Stone: 41 herms. In the
Washroom: three suspended troughs; the ten on the base;
semi-circular (statue base)... In the Exedrai and Corners:
small clock on small column; sixty disks with gilded letters;
150
ἄλλας [․․․․
περι]χρύσους
𐅃· ἄλλας γραφὰς
ἐχούσας ἀχρυσώτους
ΔΙΙΙ·
πίνακα̣ς̣
ἀ̣ν̣α̣θ̣ε̣ματικοὺς
πλείους· ἄλλας
περιχρύσους
ἀσπίδας δέκα·
ἀμ-
φορεῖς
δύο, [Εὐαγ]ίωνος
Ἀθηναίου·
λαμπάδας χαλκᾶς𐅃,
μίαν Θαρσ̣έ̣ου
Ἀθηνα̣ί̣ο̣υ̣,
ἄλλη [Ν]ικία
Ἀθηναίου, ἄλλη
Χαρίου Ἀθηναίου,
ἄλλη Διο-
κλέους
Ἀθηναίου,
π̣έ̣μ̣π̣τ̣η̣
λαμπάς, ἀνάθεμα
Μητροδώρου
Σαμίου. vac.
155
ἐν τῶι Σαμοθρακίωι·
Ἡρακλῆ χαλκοῦν·
ἄλλο ἀνδριαντίδιον,
τὸ ἀρισ-
τερὸν
σκέλος κατεαγὸς
καὶ τὴν ἀριστεράν·
κανοῦν πόδα ἕνα
ἔχον καὶ
ὦς
ἕν· στέφανον
ἀργυροῦν ὃν
<ἔ>χει ὁ Ἡρακλῆς,
ἀνάθεμα Μάρκου,
ὁλκὴ 𐅂𐅂· πῖλοι
ἀρ-
γυροῖ
δύο, ἀνάθεμα
Μάρκου Ῥωμαίου,
ὧν ὁλκὴ 𐅂̣𐅂̣·
ναΐδιον ξύλ<ι>νον
<ἐν>
ὧι
τὰ τῶν θεῶν ἀγάλματα
ξύλινα ἐφ’ ἵππων.
ἐν τῶι προστόωι·
ἀν-
5
others gilded; 13 others with ungilded letters; more dedicatory
plaques; ten other gilded disks; two amphorai, of Euagion of Athens;
5 bronze torches, one of Tharseos of Athens, another of Nikias of
Athens, another of Charios of Athens, another of Diokles of Athens,
the fifth, dedication of Metrodoros of Samos.
In
the Samothrakion: bronze Herakles; another small statue, the
left leg broken and the right (arm); basket with one foot and one
handle; silver crown which the Herakles wears, dedication of Marcus,
weight 2; two silver piloi, dedication of Marcus of Rome, whose
weight (is) 2; small wood shrine (in) which (are) the wood statues
of the gods on horses. In the Prostoa:
160
δριαντίδιον
λίθινον ἐπὶ
βάσεως λιθίνης,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀντιδότου
Τυρίου·
τράπεζα
λιθίνη ἐφ’ ἧς
πῖλοι λίθινοι
δύο. ἐν τεῖ αὐλεῖ·
ἀνδριαντί-
διον
χαλκοῦν· Ἡρακλῆ
ἐπὶ βάσεως
λιθίνης. ἐν τῶι
προστοίωι·
κλῖναι
ξύλιναι
𐅃 κα<ὶ> ἄλλα<ι>
κατεαγεῖαι
τέτταρες· ἄγκυρα
ξυλίνη δίβολος·
σκυ-
τάλιον
ἐβένινον, ἅλυσιν
ἔχον σιδηρᾶν.
καὶ τάδε· τρίαιναν
ἐντελῆ· πελέ-
165
κιον καὶ ἀπ’
ἀγκύρας σιδήριον
κίρκον ἔχον
καὶ ἄγκυραν
ξυλίνην
τοῦ
μολύβδου
ἀποκεκομμένην·
λύχνον χαλκοῦν
τὸ ἄνωθεν οὐκ
ἔχον-
τα·
ἄγκυραν σιδηρᾶν
ἐντελῆ.
vac.
small
stone statue on stone base, dedication of Antidotos of Tyre; stone
table on which (are) two stone piloi. In the Court: small
bronze statue, Herakles on stone base. In the Prostoa: 5 wood
chairs and four other broken ones; two-pronged wood anchor; small
ebony club with iron chain. And the following: complete trident;
small ax and iron from anchor with ring and wood anchor cut off from
the lead; bronze torch lacking the upper part; complete iron anchor.
ἐν
τῶι Ἀφροδισίωι·
τὸ ἄγαλμα τῆς
θεοῦ λίθινον,
vac.
ἔχον
φιάλην ἐν τεῖ
δεξιᾶι ξυλί[νην]
ἐπίχρυσον·
ἐνώιδια χρυσᾶ
ἃ ἔ-
χει
ἡ θεός, ὧν ὁλκὴ
𐅂𐅂, ἀνάθεμα
Δημητρίας· τράπεζα
λιθίνη· θυ-
μιατήριον
χαλκοῦν· ἀφροδίσιον
λίθινον ἐπὶ
βάσεως λιθίνης,
ἀνάθε-
5
μα Ἐχενίκης·
ἄλλο ἐπὶ βάσεως
λιθίνης, ἀνάθεμα
Κτησωνίδου·
ἄλλο ἐπὶ
κιονίου,
ἀνάθεμα Προμαθίωνος·
ἄλλο ἐπὶ βάσεως,
ἀνάθεμα Πραξιμέ-
νου·
ἄλλο μικρόν,
ἀνάθεμα Στησικράτης·
ἄλλα ἐλάττονα
τρία, ὧν τὰ δύο
κολοβά·
πίνακας ἀναθεματικοὺς
δύο· θύραι τοῦ
ναοῦ ἔχουσαι
ἀσπι-
δίσκας
δύο χαλκᾶς
καὶ ἥλους
χαλκοῦς ὧν
ἐλλείπουσιν
πέντε·
In
the Aphrodision: the stone statue of the goddess with gilded
wood phiale in right hand; gold earrings which the statue wears,
weight of which (is) 2, dedication of Demetria; stone table; bronze
censer; small stone Aphrodite on stone base, dedication of Echenike;
another on stone base, dedication of Ktesonides; another on a small
column, dedication of Promathion; another on base, dedication of
Praximenes; another small, dedication of Stesikrates; another three
smaller, two of them undersized; two dedicatory plaques; doors of
the temple with two bronze disks and bronze nails, five
10
κάτοπτρον χαλκοῦν·
ἐπίσπαστρον
χαλκοῦν ἀσπιδίσκιον
ἔχον· κιν-
κλίδας
ξυλίνας δύο
καὶ χελώνιον.
ἐν τῶι προδόμωι·
βάθρα λίθινα
δύο·
Ἔρωτα χαλκοῦν
ἐπὶ βάσεως·
ἐξάλειπτρον,
τὸ πλινθεῖον
μόνον
ἦν, ὑάλινον ἐν
πλινθείωι, ἀνάθεμα
Ἐχενίκης· πίνακας
εἰκονικοὺς
τρεῖς· ἄλλους
ἀναθεματικοὺς
𐅃· λευκώματα
τρία· ἄλλα
15
ἐλάττονα δύο·
πίνακα ξύλινον,
ἀνάθεμα Στησίλεω·
αἱ ἐκτὸς θύ-
ραι
τοῦ ναοῦ ῥόπτρον
ἐπίσπαστρον
ἔχουσα<ι>·
χαλκᾶς ἀσπιδί〚—〛-
{ἀσπιδί}σκας
{ἀσπιδίσκας}
δύο· κλεῖν
ἀνάπαιστον
ὁλοσίδηρον·
πίνακας ὀροφικοὺς
ἐννέα.
τὰ ἐκτὸς τοῦ
ναοῦ· ἀνδριάντα
ἐπὶ βάσεως,
ἀνάθεμα Στη-
σίλεω·
ἄλλογ γυναικεῖον,
ἀνάθεμα Στη<σί>λεω·
ο̣ἶ̣κο̣ι ἐν
τῶι ἱερῶι τεθυρωμένοι
κερα-
of
which are missing; bronze mirror; bronze curtain? with small disk;
two wooden lattice gates and lock. In the Prodomos: two stone
pedestals; bronze Eros on base; ointment box, the plintheion was
alone, glass in the plintheion, dedication of Echenike; three
plaques with images; another 5 dedicatory; three white boards;
another two smaller; wood plaque, dedication of Stesileos; the outer
doors of the temple with draw-bolt; bronze for shield; two small
shields; solid iron draw-key; nine roof plaques. The part outside
the Temple: statue on base, dedication of Stesileos; another of
female, dedication of Stesileos; ceramic shrines
20
μωτοὶ κλεῖς
οὐκ ἔχοντες,
οὐδὲ αἱ ἀπὸ τοῦ
ἱεροῦ θύραι
κλε<ῖ>ν οὐκ
ἔχο̣[υσαι]·
χιτῶνα
ἐρεοῦν λευκόν,
ἀνάθεμα ἱερείας
Εὐδώρας. ἐν τῶι
Ἡραίωι·
ἀγάλματα
δύο ἠμφιεσμένα
λίνοις· τράπεζαι
λίθιναι δύο·
θυμ[ια]-
τήριον
χαλκοῦν· ἀγάλματα
λίθινα δύο·
θύρωμα ἔχον
ἥλους χαλ-
κοῦς,
ὧν εἷς ἐλλείπει·
ἐπίσπαστρον
ἕν· ἀσπιδίσκας
τρεῖς.
25
ἐν τῶι προδόμωι·
κιγκλίδας
ξυλίνας δύο·
πινάκια ἀναθεματι[κὰ]
δέκα.
vac. ἐν τῶι τῆς Ἀγαθῆς
Τύχης· ἄγαλμα
λίθινον Ἀγα[θῆς]
Τύχης,
ἔχον Ἀμαλθείας
κέρας περικεχρυσωμένον·
στέφανον [ὃν]
ἡ
θεὸς ἔχει χαλκοῦν
διάλιθον
περικεχρυσωμένον
καὶ ἐν τεῖ δε-
ξιᾶ<ι>
σκῆπτρον ξύλινον·
ζῶια λίθινα
δέκα· τούτων
τὸ ἓν [κα]νοῦν
with
doors in the precinct without keys; nor (do) the doors from the
sanctuary have a key; white wool chiton, dedication of the priestess
Eudora.
In
the Heraion: two statues half clothed in linen; two stone
tables; bronze censer; two stone statues; door with bronze nails,
one of which is missing; one draw(bolt); three small shields. In
the Prodomos: two wooden lattice gates; ten dedicatory plaques.
In
the Temple of Good Fortune: stone statue of Good Fortune with
gilded horn of Amaltheia; gilded bronze crown with stones which the
goddess wears and wood scepter in the right hand; ten stone figures,
the one of these holding
30
ἔχον ξύλινον·
τράπεζαν λιθίνην
καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτης
φιάλας λιθίνας
ΙΙΙΙ
καὶ
πινακίσκον
λίθινον· κόγχους
δύο θαλαττίους
ἐν θήκαις, τὰ
ἄκρα
ἔχοντας
ξύλινα περικεχρυσωμένα·
κέρας ἀληθινὸν
πρόσθετον ἔ-
χον
τὸ κάτω μέρος
ξύλινον ἐπίχρυσον
κα<ὶ> χεῖλος
ἀργυροῦν πρόσθετον,
ὡς
δακτύλων τεττάρων
τὸ πλάτος, ἐφ’
οὗ πλόκιον
χρυσοῦν διάλι-
35
θον οὐκ ἐντελές,
ἔχον ἀθύρματα
λίθινα Δ𐅃ΙΙ̣
καὶ κόσμον ξύλινον
ἐπίχρυσον·
ὄστρεια δύο
ἐπὶ κιονίων
ξυλίνων· πίνακας
ἐμβλήτους
γραφὰς
ἔχοντας δύο,
τὸν μὲν ἐνδέξια,
τὸν δὲ ἐναρίστερα·
χελώ-
νην
ὑπὸ τεῖ τραπέζει·
τρύφακτον ξύλινον
ἔχοντα ἥλους
ΔΙΙΙΙ· καὶ
ὀβελίσκους
σιδηροῦς ἓξ
καὶ κινκλίδα
Ι· πίλους λιθίνους
ἐμ πίναξι [λι]-
a
wood basket; stone table and on this 4 stone phialai and small stone
plaque; two seashells in cases, with gilded wooden tips; ornamented
true horn with the bottom part gilded wood and an added silver lip,
the width about four fingers, on which (was) a gold wig, not
complete, with stones and with 17 stone trinkets and gilded wood
ornament; two oysters on wood columns; two embossed plaques with
writing, one on the right, one on the left; lock/footstool under the
table; wooden railing with 14 nails; and six iron spits and 1
lattice gate; two stone piloi on stone plaques,
40
θίνοις δύο,
χαλκοῦς ἔχοντα<ς>
ἀστερίσκους
{ἀστερίσκους}
περιηργυρω-
μένους·
κριοῦ κεφαλὴν
λιθίνην ἐν πίνακι
λιθίνωι καὶ
φύλακα [χαλ]-
κοῦν
περιηργυρωμένον·
θυμιατήριον
λίθινον κατεαγός·
ἐπὶ τῶν
εἴσω
θυρῶν· ἀσπιδίσκας
χαλκᾶς δύο.
ἐν τῶι προδόμωι·
τραπέζι-
ον
λίθινον κατεαγός·
βάθρα λίθινα·
στήλας λιθίνας
δύο, τύπους
45
ἐκτυπωτοὺς
ἐχούσας χαλκοῦς
δύο καὶ πίνακας
χαλκοῦς [δύο
<ἐπι>γρα]-
φὰς
ἔχοντας· ἐπὶ
τῶν ἔξω θυρῶν·
ἀσπιδίσκην
χαλκῆν· κλεῖν
ἀνάπαιστον
λαβὴν ἔχουσαν
ξυλίνην. ἐν τ[ῶι
Κ]υνθίωι·
ἐν
τῶι οἴκωι ἐν
ὧι ὁ θεός· τὸ
ἄγαλμα χαλκοῦν
ὡς τριῶν ἡμιποδίων
ἐπὶ
βάσεως λιθίνης·
θυμιατήριον
χαλκοῦν πομπικόν·
κρατῆ-
with
small silvered bronze stars; stone ram's head on stone plaque and
silvered bronze guard; broken stone censer. On the inner doors: two
small bronze shields. In the Prodomos: small broken stone
table; stone pedestals; two stone stelai with two bronze relief
plaques and [two] bronze plaques with inscriptions. On the inner
doors: small bronze shield, draw-key with wood handle.
In
the Kyntheion. In the Oikos in which the god (is): the bronze
statue about three half-feet, on stone base; bronze processional
censer; Corinthian-made krater; stone kneeding trough?;
50
ρα κορινθιουργῆ·
κάρδοπον λιθίνην·
κλίνας σαν<ι>δωτὰς
δέκα δύο
ἐχούσας
τραπέζια ἐξ αὐτῶν·
πίνακας εἰκονικοὺς
δέκα καὶ ἄλ-
λον
μείζω ἀθύρωτον,
ἀνάθεμα Δημέου
τοῦ Αὐτοκλέους·
ἄλλον
ἔχοντα χειρογραφίαν
ἀθύρωτον, ἀνάθεμα
Θεμίσωνος τοῦ
Αὐτο-
κλέους·
θύρωμα ἔχον
ἥλους χαλκοῦς,
ἐλλείποντα
ἕνα· κλεῖν
ἀνάπαισ-
55
τον σιδηρᾶν. ἐν
τῶι ἄλλωι οἴκωι·
κλίνας σανιδωτὰς
ΔΙΙ ἐχούσας
τραπέ-
ζια
ὑπόσπαστα ἐξ
αὐτῶν· θύρωμα
ἐντελὲς ἔχον
ἥλους χαλκοῦς·
ἐσχάριον
χαλκοῦν παλαιόν,
πυθμένα οὐκ
ἔχον· τριαίνας
δύο ὧμ μ[ί]-
α
ὀδόντα ἕνα οὐκ
ἔχει· θερμάστριον
σιδηροῦν παλαιόν.
vac.
καὶ
τάδε ἐκ τοῦ
Σαραπιείου
ἅ ἐστιν ἐν τῶι
τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος
ναῶι·
ten
planked chairs two with small tables fastened to them; ten iconic
plaques and another larger without door, dedication of Demeas son of
Autokles; another with undoored handpainting, dedication of Themison
son of Autokles; door with bronze nails, one missing; iron draw-key;
old bronze brazier, without base; two tridents, one lacking one
tooth; old iron tongs.
And
from the Sarapieion the following which are in the Temple
of Artemis.
60
χρυσᾶ· στέφανον
ἐν κιβωτίωι
θαλλοῦ, λίθον
ἔχοντα, ὃν ἀνέθη-
καν
οἱ συμβαλόμενοι
ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Ἀριστονόμου,
φύλλα ἔχοντα
σὺν τοῖς
ἀποπεπτωκόσιν
ΔΔΔΔΙ καὶ ἡμίση
δύο καὶ ἐλαίας
δύο, οὗ ὁλκὴ
σὺν
τῶι
λίθωι καὶ τοῖς
λιναρίοις δραχμαὶ
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλον
ἐν κιβωτίωι
μυρρί-
νης,
λίθον ἔχοντα
καὶ φύλλα ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙΙ
καὶ μύρτα ΔΙΙΙΙ,
ἀνεπίγραφον,
οὗ
65
ὁλκὴ Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂.
καὶ τάδε ἀργυρᾶ·
ποτήριον ἐφ’
οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Καίβων
Καίβωνος
καὶ Ξεναινώ,
ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
<𐅄>Δ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ἀπάγει 𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ἄλλο
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
τὸ κοινὸν τῶν
θεραπευτῶν
ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Ἀ̣ρ̣κέ<ο>ν-
τος,
ὁλκὴ ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂,
ἀπάγει ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλο ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Σιμάκων,
ὁλκὴ
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ἄλλο ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· τὸ
κοινὸν τῶν θεραπευτῶν
ἐφ’ ἱερέ-
Gold:
branch crown in chest with stone, which the contributors dedicated
with Aristonomos priest, with 41 leaves including those fallen off
and two halves and two olives, whose weight with the stone and the
strings drachmai 14; another of myrtle in chest with stone and 44
leaves and 14 myrtle berries, uninscribed, whose weight 14. And the
following silver: cup on which is the inscription: Kaibon son of
Kaibon and Xenaino, weight drachmai 12.4+, minus 2.4; another on
which (is) the inscription: the group of doctors with Arkeon priest,
weight 49, minus .3; another on which (is) the inscription: Simakon,
weight 48.4; another on which (is) the inscription: the group of the
doctors
70
ως Σατύρου,
ὁλκὴ δὲ δραχμαὶ
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ·
ἄλλο ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· τὸ
κοι-
νὸν
τῶν θεραπευτῶν
ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Τέλλιδος, ὁλκὴ
δὲ 𐅄𐅂𐅂· ἄλλο
ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή·
Φονοτέλης Κεῖος,
ὁλκὴ ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂,
ἀπάγει ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλο ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή·
τὸ κοινὸν τῶν
θεραπευτῶν
ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Οἴκωνος, ὁλκὴ
δὲ 𐅄𐅂𐅂
ἀκριβῶς·
ἄλλο ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Ἀρίστων
Καλλικράτου
Καρπασεώτης,
75
ὁλκὴ δὲ δραχμαὶ
ΔΔΔΔ· ἄλλο
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
τὸ κοινὸν τῶν
θερα-
πευτῶν
ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Σωτίωνος τοῦ
Σωτίωνος, ὁλκὴ
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλ-
λο
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Ἀρτέμων ὑπὲρ
Σωφίλου, ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ 𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ἀπάγει
𐅂· ἄλλο ἐφ’
οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Ἀρχίδαμος, ὁλκὴ
𐅄𐅃, ἀπάγει vac.·
ἄλλο
ἐφ’
οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Θεοξενίδης
Τήνιος, 𐅄ΔΙΙΙΙ𐅁·
ἄλλο ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή·
with
Satyros priest and weight drachmai 45.4; another on which (is) the
inscription: the group of the doctors with Tellis priest, and the
weight 52; another on which (is) the inscription: the group of the
doctors with Oikon priest, and the weight precisely 52; another on
which (is) the inscription: Ariston son of Kallikrates of Karpaseon,
and the weight 40 drachmai; another on which (is) the inscription:
the group of the doctors with Sotion son of Sotion priest, weight
48.3; another on which (is) the inscription: Artemon on behalf of
Sophilos, weight drachmai 54.4, short 1; another on which (is) the
inscription: Archidamos, weight 55, short; another on which (is) the
inscription: Theoxenides of Tenos, 60.4 1/2; another on which (is)
the inscription:
80
τὸ κοινὸν τῶν
θεραπευτῶν
ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Ἀριστοβούλου,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄𐅂𐅂, ἀπά-
γει
ΙΙΙΙ· ἄλλο ἐφ’
οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Σεύθης ἀπὸ τῆς
ἐργασίας, ὁλκὴ
δραχ. 𐅄𐅃ΙΙΙΙ,
ἀπάγει
ΙΙΙ· ἄλλο ἐφ’
οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Χάρης Ἀδραίου
Τήνιος, 𐅄ΙΙΙΙ·
τοῦτο
ἄγει
ἔλαττον ὀβολοὺς
πέντε· ἄλλο
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπ[ιγρα]φή·
Στράτων Πρωτέου
Πάριος,
Φιλώτας Πρωτέου,
ὁλκὴ ΔΔ𐅃Ι, ἀπάγ[ει
․․․]· ἄλλο ἐφ’
οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
85
τὸ κοινὸν τῶν
θεραπευτῶν
ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Ἀριστονόμου,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂, ἀπά-
γει
𐅂· ἄλλο ἐφ’
οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Ποσίδεος
Ἡρακλεώτης
ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Οἴκωνος
τοῦ
Διδύμου, ὁλκὴ
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ,
ἀπάγει ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλο ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Βάχχι-
ος
Δε̣κκίου,
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ· ἄλλο
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Σαραπιασ[ταὶ
οὓς σ]υν[ή]-
γαγεν
Μεννέας, ὁλκὴ
𐅄ΔΔ, ἀπάγει
ΙΙΙ· ἄλλο ἐφ’
οὗ ἐπιγ[ραφή·
ἐ]π’ ἄρ-
the
group of the doctors with Aristoboulos priest, weight 52, short .4;
another on which (is) the inscription: Seuthes from the work, weight
drach. 55.4, short .3; another on which (is) the inscription:Chares
son of Adraios of Tenos, 50.4, this weighs 5 obols less; another on
which (is) the inscription:Straton son of Proteus of Paros, Philotas
son of Proteus, weight 25.1, short [...]; another on which (is) the
inscription: the group of the doctors with Aristonomos priest,
weight 62, short 1; another on which (is) the inscription: Posideos
the Herakleite with Oikon son of Didymos priest, weight 47.3, short
.3; another on which (is) the inscription:Bacchius son of Decius,
95.2; another on which (is) the inscription: Sarapiastai [whom]
Menneas gathered, weight 70, short .3; another on which (is) the
inscription:
90
χοντος Τλησιμένου
Σωτέλης Σωτέλου
ἱερατεύσας
τοῦ Ἀπόλλω-
νος
καὶ τοῦ Ἀσκληπιοῦ
ἀπὸ τῶν γερῶν
ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ· ἄλλο
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπι-
γραφή·
Ἄ̣ξιος Ἀντιγόνου
Μακεδών, ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ 𐅄𐅃, ἀπάγει
ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλο
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
τὸ κοινὸν τῶν
θεραπευτῶν
ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Ἀριστο-
βούλου
τοῦ Ἀριστοβούλου,
ὁλκὴ ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τοῦτο ἀπάγει
ἔλαττον
95
𐅂· ἄλλο ἐφ’
οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
τὸ κοινὸν τῶν
θεραπευτῶν
<ἐφ’ ἱερέως>
Ἀρχία τοῦ
Ἐμμενίδου,
ὁλκὴ δὲ δραχμαὶ
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλο τὸ πλέον
ἐν
τεῖ παραδόσει
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Ἀπολλώνιος
μελανηφόρος,
ὁλκὴ
ΔΔΙ·
σκάφιον ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Μεννέας
Κλέωνος, ἔχον
ἐν αὑτῶι
πρόσωπα
Σαράπιδος καὶ
Ἴσιδος, ὁλκὴ
δὲ σὺν τῶι καττιτέρωι
with
Tlesimenes archon Soteles son of Soteles priest of Apollo and
Asklepios from the awards 36.3; another on which (is) the
inscription: Axios son of Antigonos of Macedonia, weight drachmai
55, short .3; another on which (is) the inscription: the group of
the doctors with Aristoboulos son of Aristoboulos priest, weight 49,
this weighs 1 less; another on which (is) the inscription:the group
of the doctors Archias son of Emmenides (priest), and the weight
(is) 48.3; another, the greater in the paradosis, on which (is) the
inscription: Apollonios, wearer of black, weight 20.1; small tray on
which (is) the inscription: Menneas son of Kleon, with faces of
Sarapis and Isis on it, and the weight with the tin 49;
100
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλο ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Δάμων
Μενεκλέους,
λεῖον, ἔχον
ἐν
αὑτῶι πρόσωπον
Σαράπιδος καὶ
Ἴσιδος, ὁλκὴ
δὲ σὺν τῶι καττιτέρωι
𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλο ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Κρίτων
καὶ Ἀπολλώνιος
ἀπὸ τῆς ἐργασί-
ας
δεκάτην, ἔχον
ἐν αὑτῶι πρόσωπον
Σαράπιδος, ὁλκὴ
δὲ σὺν τῶι κατ-
τιτέρωι
𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· ἄλλο
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Σώπατρος Ἕρμωνος
Βαργυ-
105
λιήτης, ἔχον
ἐν αὑτῶι πρόσωπον
Σαράπιδος καὶ
Ἴσιδος, ὁλκὴ
δὲ σὺν τῶι
καττιτέρωι
𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλο
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Ἀριστόδημος,
ἔχον ἐν ἑαυτῶι
πρόσωπον
Σαράπιδος, ὁλκὴ
δὲ σὺν τῶι καττιτέρωι
𐅄𐅂𐅂· ἄλλο ἐφ’
οὗ ἐ-
πιγραφή·
Μέντωρ, ἔχον ἐν
αὑτῶι πρόσωπον
Σαράπιδος καὶ
Ἴσιδος, ὁλκὴ
δὲ
σὺν
τῶι καττιτέρωι
𐅄𐅂𐅂, ἀπάγει
ΙΙΙ· ἄλλο λεῖον,
ἐπιγραφή· Φίλων
another
on which (is) the inscription: Kriton and Apollonios a tithe from
the work, with the face of Sarapis on it and the weight with the tin
67.3; another on which (is) the inscription: Sopatros son of Hermon
of Baryulia, with faces of Sarapis and Isis on it and the weight
with the tin 73; another on which (is) the inscription: Aristodemos,
with the face of Sarapis on it and the weight with the tin 52;
another on which (is) the inscription: Mentor, with the faces of
Saraphis and Isis on it and weight with tin 52, short .3; another
smooth, inscription: Philon son of
110
Μητροδώρου
Μασσαλιήτης
ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Κτησικλέους
τοῦ Ἀντιγόνου,
ὁλκὴ δὲ
δραχμαὶ
ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλο ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Μεννέας
Κλέωνος καὶ
Ἀρίστων
Καλλικράτου
Καρπασεῶται,
ὁλκὴ δὲ σὺν τῶι
μολύβδωι 𐅄𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλο ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή·
Θεόξενος Αἰσχρίωνος
Κασσανδρεὺς
ἀπὸ τῆς ἐργασίας,
ὁλκὴ
δραχ.
<— —>· ἄλλο
κατεαγὸς λεῖον,
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Ἀλύπης Συρακόσιος,
ὁλκὴ
115
δραχ. vac.· ἄλλο
λεῖον, ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· οἱ
συμβαλόμενοι
εἰς τὸμ βωμόν,
ὁλκὴ
δραχ. ΔΔ· ἄλλο
λεῖον, ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Μέλας
Μενάνδρου τὴν
δε-
κάτην,
σὺν τῶι μολύβδωι
vac?· ἄλλο τεθλασμένον,
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Πολύφιλο̣ς̣
καὶ Καλλικράτεια
καὶ Ἁ̣γ̣ησίδικος,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
καττιτέρ<ωι —
—>·
ἄλλο
λεῖον, ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Μίνατος
Μινάτου ἰατρεῖ<α>
․․․․· φιάλην
κα-
Metrodoros
of Massalia with Ktesikles son of Antigonos priest and weight
drachmai 28.3; another on which (is) the inscription: Menneas son of
Kleon and Ariston son of Kallikrates of Karpasea and weight with the
lead 56.3; another on which (is) the inscription: Theoxenos son of
Aischrion of Kassandrea from the work, weight drach; another smooth
broken on which (is) the inscription: Alupes of Syracuse, weight
drach; another smooth on which (is) the inscription: the
contributors to the altar, weight drach. 20; another smooth on which
(is) the inscription: Melas son of Menander, the tithe, with the
lead; another shattered on which (is) the inscription: Polyphilos
and Kallikrateia and Hagesidikos, weight with the tin; another
smooth on which (is) the inscription: Minatos son of Minatos,
medicine;
120
ρυωτὴν ὡς τριπάλαστον,
ἔχουσαν πρόσωπον
Σαράπιδος, ἐφ’
ἧς ἐπιγρα-
φή·
οἱ συμβαλόμενοι
εἰς τὸμ βωμόν,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
καττιτέρωι καὶ
κηρῶι
<— —>· ἄλλην λείαν
ὡς ποδιαίαν,
ἐφ’ ἧς ἐπι[γραφή]·
Χαρ[ι]γνώ· φιάλι-
α
τέτταρα, ἐφ’ ὧν
τ[ῶι] πρώτ[ωι] ἐπιγραφή·
Αἰσχρίων Ἀριστοκράτου
χαριστήριον,
ὁλκὴ <— —>· τῶι
δευτέρωι ἐπιγραφή·
Δημότιλος Σαράπι-
125
δι, ὁλκὴ δὲ δραχμαὶ
<— —>· τὸ δὲ τρίτον
κατεαγός,
ἀνεπίγραφον,
ὁλκὴ <— —>· τὸ
τέ-
ταρτον
καταβεβρωμένον,
ἀνεπίγραφον,
ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
<— —>· σκῦφον
οὗ ἐ[λλεί]-
πει
[․․․․ κ]αὶ ἀπὸ
τοῦ ἄλλου τὸ
ῥοπάλιον ἀποπεπτωκός,
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπι-
γραφή·
Πάμπαινος Σολεύς,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
καττιτέρωι·
λιβανωτίδα ἐφ’
ἧς
ἐπιγραφή·
Παρμὼ Δεξίου,
ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
<— —>· στρόφιον
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Ἀρισ-
knobby
phiale about three palms, with face of Sarapis on which (is) the
inscription: the contributors to the altar, weight with the tin and
wax; another smooth about a foot (long) on which (is) the
inscription: Charigno; four phialia on the first of which (is) the
inscription: Aischron son of Aristokrates thanks, weight;
inscription on the second: Demotilos to Sarapis and the weight
drachmai; and the third broken uninscribed, weight; the fourth
corroded uninscribed, weight drachmai; skyphos lacking [...] and the
club has fallen from the other, on which (is) the inscription:
Pampainos of Soli, weight with the tin; incense box on which (is)
the inscription: Parmo son of Dexios, weight drachmai; sash on which
(is) the inscription:
130
τόδημος ἀπὸ τῆς
ἐλάφου, ὁλκὴ
δραχμαὶ vac.· οἰνοχοΐδιον
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπι-
γραφή·
οἱ συμβαλόμενοι
θεραπευταί·
λιβανωτίδιον
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Ἡρώιδης
Σαράπιδι Ἴσιδι,
ἄστατον διὰ
τὸν ῥύπον· ἄλλο
τεθλασμένον
καὶ
διακεκομμένον,
ἔχον{τα} Σαράπιδος
πρόσωπον, ἐφ’
οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Νύμ-
φων,
ὁλκὴ <— —>· καδίσκον
σαραπιακὸν ἔχοντα
ἓν ὦς, ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Ἡρώι-
135
δης, ὁλκὴ <— —>·
ἀρυσᾶς ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Ἀρίσταρχος
ὑπὲρ τῆς γυναικός,
ὁλκὴ
δὲ
δραχμαὶ <— —>·
ἔφηβον ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Νικάνωρ
κατὰ πρόσταγμα
ἐφ’
ἱερέως Ἵππωνος,
ὁλκὴ δὲ δραχμαὶ
<— —>· κύαθον
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Ἐπι-
γένης,
ὁλκὴ Η· ἄλ<λ>ον
ἐφ’ οὗ Ἐπιγένης,
ὁλκὴ δὲ σὺν τῶι
καττιτέρωι δραχ.
<— —>·
κάδιον
παλαιὸν ἠχρεωμένον,
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Βάχχιος Δεκκίου
Τή-
Aristodemos
from the deer, weight drachmai; small oinochoe on which (is) the
inscription: the contributing doctors; small incense box on which
(is) the inscription: Herodes to Sarapis Isis, unweighed on account
of the dirt; another shattered and broken apart, with face of
Sarapis on which (is) the inscription: Nymphon, weight; small
Sarapean jar with one handle on which (is) the inscription: Herodes,
weight; ladle another on which (is) the inscription: Aristarchos on
behalf of his wife, and the weight drachmai; ephebos on which (is)
the inscription: Nikanor per orders with Hippon priest and the
weight drachmai; kyathos on which (is) the inscription: Epigenes,
weight 100; another on which Epigenes and the weight with the tin
drach.; old unusable small jar on which (is) the inscription:
Bacchius son of Cecius of Tenos
140
νιος ἀπὸ τῆς
ἐργασίας, ἔχον
κηρὸν καὶ καττίτερον·
ὠιοῦ ἥμισυ ἔχον
ἐπι-
γραφήν·
Βάχχιος Δεκκίου
Τήνιος ἀπὸ τῆς
ἐργασίας, ὁλκὴ
<— —>. φύλακα
ἐπ’ ὀ[μ]-
φαλοῦ,
τὸν ἐπικείμενον
ἐπὶ τοῦ θησαυροῦ
ἐν τῶι Σαραπιείωι,
ἄστατον·
θυμιατήριον·
βωμίσκον, ἐφ’
οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Διόφαντος, ὁλκὴ
δὲ ὡς ἡ ἐπι-
γραφὴ
ἄστατον 𐅄𐅃·
κανοῦν μόνωτον
ἀστραγαλίσκους
ἔχον τρε[ῖς]
145
ἐ̣φ’ οὗ̣ ὁλκὴ
ὡς ἡ ἐπιγραφὴ
δραχ. Η̣Η̣Η̣ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ.
ἀπὸ τῶν ἐν τῶι
ναῶι·
χρυσᾶ·
vac. δακτύλιον
εἰκόνα σιδηρᾶν
ἔχοντα καὶ
προσηλωμένον
ἐφ’ [ὑ]-
δρίας
ξυλίνης, ἀνάθεμα
Ἀθηνίων[ο]ς
Ζακυνθίου,
ἄστατον. vac.
ἀργυρᾶ·
Ἀνούβιδ[ε]ς
δύο, ὧν ὁλκὴ
τοῦ μὲν ἑνὸς
δραχ. ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂,
τοῦ δὲ
ἄλλου
𐅃𐅂𐅂. καὶ τάδε
ἄστατα· ὀφθαλμοὺς
δύο ἐν πινακίωι,
ἀνεπιγράφους·
from
the work, with wax and in; half an egg with the inscription:
Bacchius son of Decius of Tenos from the work, weight.
Guard
on the omphalos, lying on the treasure in the Sarapieion,
unweighed; censer; small altar on which (is) the inscription:
Diophantes and the weight as the inscription 55 unweighed;
one-handled kanoun with three knucklebones on which the weight as
the inscription drach. 444.3. From that in the Temple. Gold:
image wearing iron ring and nailed to a wood hypria, dedication of
Athenion of Zakynthos, unweighed. Silver: two Anubises, the weight
of the one of which (is) drach. 49, of the other 7. And the
following unweighed: two eyes on plaque, uninscribed;
150
φιάλιον λεῖον
ἐμ πλινθείωι
ὡς διπάλαστον,
ἀνάθεμα Τρεβίου
καὶ Ἀθη-
ναΐδος·
βωμίσκον ἐπὶ
τριποδίου
ξυλίνου καθήμενον,
ἀνάθεμα Αὐ-
τοκλέους
τοῦ Σιλήνου·
κάδον ἐπὶ τριποδίσκου
<ξυ>λίνου
καθηλωμένον,
ἀνάθε-
μα
Ἀττίνου τοῦ
Σ̣ω̣σ̣ί̣κου·
ἄλλον ἐπὶ
τριποδαβακίου
ξυλίνου καθηλω-
μένον,
ἀνάθεμα τοῦ
κοινοῦ τῶν
θεραπευτῶν
συμβαλομένων·
ἄλλο[ν]
155
ἐπὶ κιονίου
ξυλίνου καθηλωμένον,
ἀνάθεμα τοῦ
κοινοῦ τῶν θερα-
πευτῶν
συμβαλομένων
εἰς τὰς θυσίας
καὶ τὰς σπονδάς·
ἄλλ[ο]ν ἐ-
πὶ
τραπεζίου
ξυλίνου καθηλωμένον,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀπολλοδώρου.
χαλκᾶ·
τὸ
ἄγαλμα τοῦ θεοῦ,
τῆς Ἴσιδος,
τοῦ Ἀνούβιδος·
Μητέρας Θεῶν
δύο·
τράπεζαν·
Δία ἐπὶ βάσεως·
ἄλλο ζωϊδάριον.
ἐν τῶι τῆς Ἴσιδος
να-
smooth
phialion on plinth about two-palms, dedication of Trebios and
Athenais; small altar seated on small wood tripod, dedication of
Autokles son of Silenos; jar nailed to small wood tripod, dedication
of Attinos son of Sosikos; another nailed to a small wood
three-footed stand, dedication of the group of the contributing
doctors; another nailed to a small wooden column, dedication of the
doctors contributing to the sacrifices and libations; another nailed
to a small wooden table, dedication of Apollodoros. Bronze: the
statue of the god, Isis, Anoubis, two Mothers of the Gods; table.
Zeus on base; another figure.
In
the Temple of Isis.
160
ῶι· χρυσᾶ·
στεφάνιον στάχυς
ἔχον δύο καὶ
στλεγγίδιον
μι̣κρόν, ὧν ὁλ-
κὴ
𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· ἀσπιδίσκην
πρὸς πινακίωι
ἄστατον, ἀνάθεμα
Νεφελίου.
ἀργυρᾶ·
πορπίον ἀσπιδίσκην
ἔχον περιτεθραυμένην,
οὗ ὁλκὴ δραχ.
𐅃.
καὶ τάδε ἄστατα·
φιάλην καρυωτὴν
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθεμα
Μενεκράτου
κατὰ πρόσταγμα·
φιάλην καρυωτὴν
ἐμ πλινθείωι
165
ὡς διπάλαστον,
ἔχουσαν ζωιδάρια
τρία, ἀνάθεμα
Αἴθωνος.
vac.
Gold:
small crown with two wheat sheaves and a small fillet, whose weight
(is) 1.4; disk on plaque, unweighed, dedication of Nephelios.
Silver: brooch with crushed disk, whose weight (is) drach. 5. And
the following unweighed: knobby phiale in plinth, dedication of
Menekrates in accord with the order; knobby phiale in plinth about
two palms, with three figures, dedication of Aithon;
1
ἄλλην λείαν
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθεμα Τιμοκράτου
τοῦ Ἀλκ[ιμά]χου·
φιάλι[ον]
λεῖον
ἐμ πλινθείωι
ὡς δακτύλων
ἕξ, ἀνάθεμα Ποσιδέου
Ἡρακλεώτου·
τ[ύ]-
πια
μικρὰ τρία ἐπὶ
σανιδίου, ἀνάθεμα
Ἀμμωνίας. χαλκᾶ·
ἱερακίδιον
σκέ[λος]
οὐκ
ἔχον. ἐπὶ τῶν
κινκλίδων·
κυνάριον· βοΐδιον.
ἐπὶ τοῦ ὀδοῦ·
θυμιατήρι[ον
ἐπὶ]
5
κιονίου ξυλίνου
ἐντε[λὲς] ἔχον
ἐπίπυρον καὶ
ὠτάρια δύο καὶ
πόδας τρεῖς·
Βού-
[β]αστ[ι]ν
ἔχουσαν ζωιδάριον
ἐπὶ τοῖς γόνασιν,
ἀνάθεμα Κλεοπάτρας.
ξύλινα·
τὸ ἄγαλμα τῆς
θεοῦ ἐπίχρυσον
ἐν ναιδίωι ξυλίνωι·
ἄλλ[ο ἀγαλ]-
μάτιον
κολοβάφινον(?)
[ἐν ναϊ]δίωι ξυλίνωι.
ἐν τῶι τοῦ Ἀνούβιδος
ναῶι· ἀργυρᾶ
ἄστατα·
φιάλιον λεῖον
ἐμ πλινθείωι
δακτύλων ἕξ,
ἀνάθεμα Δάμ[ωνος]
another
smooth in a plinth, dedication of Timokrates son of Alkimachos;
smooth phialion in a plinth about six fingers, dedication of
Posideon from Herakleon; three small reliefs on plank, dedication of
Ammonia. Bronze: small hawk without a leg. On the lattice gates:
puppy, calf. On the road: censer on small wooden column,
complete with grate and two handles and three feet; Boubastis with
figure on his knees, dedication of Kleopatra. Wood: the gilded
statue of the goddess in a small wooden shrine; another small
kolobaphine statue in a small wooden shrine.
In
the Temple of Anoubis. Unweighed silver: smooth phialion in
plinth six fingers, dedication of Damon
10
τοῦ Πάτρωνος·
Ἡλίου πρόσωπον
πρὸς ταινιδίωι,
ἀνάθεμα Δαμίννου
Θεττα-
λοῦ.
χαλκᾶ· θυμιατήριον·
ἐσχάραν λεοντόβασιν
ἐπίπυρον ἔχουσαν
π[υ]ρφόρον.
σιδηρᾶ·
λυχνία<ν>·
θερμαστρίν.
λίθινα· τὸν θεὸν
Ἔρωτα· ἄλλον
Ἀνούβιδα ἐ[λ]άττο[να]·
ἀφροδίσιον
ἐν ναιδίωι
ἀπηρεισμένον
ἐπὶ πηδαλίου·
τράπεζαν· θυμια-
τήριον.
ξύλινα· βοΐδιον
κολοβάφινον(?)·
Ἡρακλῆν. λίθινα
ἐν τῶι προνάωι·
15
ζωιδάριον ἐπὶ
βάσεως, ἀνάθεμα
Αἰσχύλου
Ἀθηναίου· ἄλλα
ζωιδάρια παιδικὰ
δύο
ἐπὶ
βάσεως, ἀνάθεμα
Κτησίππου Χίου·
ἄλλο εἰκονικὸν
ἐπὶ βάσεως,
ἀνάθε-
μα
Κτησίππου Χίου
μελανηφόρου.
ἐν τῶι παστοφορίωι·
κλίνην πυ-
ξινόποδα
ἔχουσαν ζώιδια
ἐν τοῖς ποσίν,
ἀνάθεμα Πύρρου
τοῦ Με-
νάνδρου.
ἐν τεῖ στοᾶι
τεῖ κάτω· ζωιδάριον
μικρὸν ἐν τῶι
τοίχωι
son
of Patron; face of Helios on ribbon, dedication of Daminnos of
Thessaly. Bronze: censer; lionfooted brazier with fire-bearing
grate. Iron: lampstand; tongs. Wood: kolobaphic calf; Herakles.
Stone in the Pronaos: figure on base, dedication of Aischylos
of Athens; two other figures of children on base, dedication of
Ktesippos of Chiois; another image on basse, dedication of Ktesippos
of Chios, wearer of black. In the Pastophorion: boxwood couch
with figures on the feet, dedication of Pyrros son of Menander. In
the Stoa below: small figure in the wall
20
ἐπὶ βάσεως,
ἀνάθεμα Σωγένου
ὑπὲρ τοῦ ὑοῦ·
ζώιδια λίθινα
δέκα
ἑπτά.
ἐν τεῖ ἐξέδραι·
ἀπολλωνίσκον
λίθινον ἐν τοίχωι,
[ἀ]νά[θε]-
μα
Πρώτου. καὶ τάδε
ἐν τῶι δρόμωι·
χαλκᾶ· ἀνδριάντα
ἐπὶ βάσεως,
ἀνάθε-
μα
Διονυσίου
τοῦ Ζωίττα·
ἄλλα ἀνδριαντίδια
δύο μικρά, ἀνάθεμα
Ἐλ-
πίνου
τοῦ Κλεοδήμου·
βοΐδιον μικρόν·
δελφῖνα ἐπὶ
κιονίου ἀνεπίγραφον·
25
ἀπολλωνίσκον
ἐπὶ βάσεως
ἔχοντα ἱέρακα
ἐπὶ τῆς δεξιᾶς·
θυμιατήριον
ἐπὶ
βάσεως, ἀνάθεμα
Κτησίππου Χίου·
τριποδίσκους
δελφικοὺς
δύο ὧν ὁ εἷς
οὐ-
κ
ἔχων τὸγ κόσμον,
ἀνάθεμα Ἕλληνος·
ἄλλον ἀπολλωνίσκον
ἐπὶ βάσεως
κιθά-
[ρα]ν
ἔχοντα καὶ
θυμιατήριον
ἐπὶ βάσεως,
<ἀνάθεμα> τοῦ
κοινοῦ τῶν
θεραπευτῶν·
[ἄλλ]ο
ἀνδριαντίδιον
ἐπὶ βάσεως,
ἀνάθεμα Χοιρύλου·
θυμιατήριον
ἐπὶ βάσε-
on
a base, dedication of Sogenes on behalf of his son; seventeen stone
figures. In the Exedra: small stone Apollo in the wall,
dedication of Protos. And the following in the Dromos.
Bronze: statue on base, dedication of Dionysios son of Zoittas; two
other small statues, dedication of Elpinos son of Kleodamos; small
calf; dolphin on a small column, uninscribed; small Apollo on a base
with hawk in his right hand; censer on base, dedication of Ktesippos
of Chios; two Delphic tripods one of which lacks its ornament,
dedication of Hellen; another small Apollo holding a lyre and a
censer on a base, from the group of the doctors; another small
statue on a base, dedication of Choirylos; censer on stone base,
30
ως λιθίνης,
ἀνάθεμα Κάλου
Σελγέως·
παλλάδιον ἐπὶ
βάσεως καὶ
θυμιατήριον,
ἀνάθεμα
Ἀρίστιδος καὶ
Ἀρκούσσης·
κρατῆρα μέγαν
ἐπὶ βάσεως,
ἀνάθεμα Ἕ[λλη]-
νος·
κῶνον πρὸς τῶι
τῆς Ἴσιδος
ναῶι, ἀνάθεμα
τοῦ κοινοῦ τῶν
θεραπευ-
τῶν.
καὶ τάδε [λί]θινα
ἐκτὸς τοῦ δρόμου·
ζωιδάρια δύο
πρὸς τῶι Μητρώιωι,
ἀνεπίγραφα·
ἄλλο παιδικὸν
δεξιᾶς εἰσιόντων,
ἀνάθεμα Σώτ[α]·
τύπ[ον ἀρισ]-
35
τερᾶς εἰσιόντων
ἐν τῶι τοίχωι
καὶ θυμιατήριον
χαλκοῦν, ἀνάθεμα
Αἰσχύλου
Ἀθηναίου.
καὶ τάδε ἐκ
τοῦ δρόμου
χαλκᾶ· χαλκίον
κατωικ[οδο]μη[μέ]-
νον
ἐν τῶι ἐσχαρῶνι·
λυχνουρέοντες
ΔΙ· χαλκωμάτων
[θραύματα] ἐν
χαλκίωι
παλαιῶι καὶ
ἠχρειωμένα
ἄστατα. ξύλινα·
κλίνη σφιγγόπους
ἀνέντατος·
πίνακας ἀναθεματικοὺς
παντοδαποὺς
οὓ[ς] διὰ τὸ πλῆθος
[οὐκ ἐγρα]ψ[ά]-
dedication
of Kalos of Selge; small Pallas on base and a censer, dedication of
Aristis and Arkoussa; large krater on base, dedication of Hellen;
pinecone on the temple of Isis, dedication of the doctors. And the
following stone outside the Dromos: two figures near the Metroon,
uninscribed; another small child on the right going in, dedication
of Sotas; relief in the wall on the left going in and bronze censer,
dedication of Aischylos of Athens. And the following from the
Dromos. Bronze: bronze (figure) built into the hearth?; 11
torchholders? [pieces} of bronze in an old bronze (pot) and useless
(bronze), unweighed. Wood: unstretched couch with sphinx feet;
various dedicatory plaques which we did not record because of their
number.
40
μεθα. καὶ τάδε
ἀργυρᾶ· καρχήσιον
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
ἐφ’ ἱεροποιῶν
Τιμη-
σιδήμου
καὶ Ἱερομβρότου
ἐκ τῶν αἱρεσίων,
Διὸς Κυνθίου
καὶ Ἀθηνᾶς Κυν-
θίας,
οὗ ὁλκὴ δραχ.
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
τοῦτο σταθὲν
ἤγαγεν 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ·
φύλακα
οὗ ὁλκὴ 𐅂· δάιδια
δύο ἄστατα·
φιάλην λείαν
ὀμφαλὸν ἔχουσαν,
ἀνάθεμα
βουλῆς καὶ
δήμου, ὁλκὴ
δρα. ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλην [λείαν
ἐφ’ ἧς] ἐπιγρα-
45
φή· ἡ βουλὴ
καὶ ὁ δῆμος,
ἧς ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
τ[ύπιον χρυσοῦν]
ὀφθαλμοὺς
ἔχον ἐπὶ σ{επισ}ανιδίου
{σανιδίου}, ἀνάθεμα
Χάρητος· τύπιον
ἀργυ-
ροῦν
ἐπὶ σανιδίου,
ἀνάθεμα Ὀνησακοῦς·
δάιδιον ὡς
ποδιαῖον περιηργυ-
ρωμένον
ἄστατον καὶ
ἀνεπίγραφον·
τύπια ἀργυρᾶ
ὧν ὁλκὴ [δραχμαὶ]
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂.
καὶ τάδε ἐν τῶι
Ἰσιδείωι·
τύπιον ἐπὶ σανιδίου,
ἀνάθεμα [Ἀγγελί]-
And
the following silver: karchesion on which (is) the inscription: with
Timesidemos and Hierombrotos hieropoioi from the cargo duties, of
Zeus Kynthios and Athena Kynthia, whose weight drach. 97, this when
weighed was 95.3; guard whose weight (is) 1; two torches unweighed;
smooth phiale with omphalos, dedication of Council and Demos, weight
dra. 48; another smooth on which the inscription: the Council and
Demos. whose weight drachmai 46.5; gold relief with eyes on small
board, dedication of Chares; silver relief on board, dedication of
Onesakes; small silvered torch about a foot, unweighed and
uninscribed; silver reliefs weight [drachmai] 8.
And
the following in the Isideion: relief on board, dedication of
Angelis;
50
δος· ἄλλο ἐπὶ
σανιδίου, ἀνάθεμα
Εὐπορίας· ἄλλο
ἐπὶ σανιδίου,
[ἀνά]-
θεμα
Εὐτέρπης· δάιδιον
περιηργυρωμένον
ἐπὶ βάσεως
ξυλίνης, [ἀνά]-
θεμα
Εὐκλείας·
φιάλιον λεῖον
ἐμ πλαισίωι ὡς
δακτύλων [ἕξ,
ἀνάθεμα]
Θερμουθρίδος
ἄστατον. χαλκᾶ
πρὸς τ[ὰ]ς [ἐξέδρας·
πανίσκον ὡς
τριῶν]
ἡμιποδίων,
ἀνάθεμα Πολιάνθου
Ἀθηναίου· κάδον
κ[αὶ οἰνοχόην?]
55
vac. ὀφ<θ>αλμοὶ
χρυσοῖ ἐπὶ
σανιδίου, ἐπιγρ[αφὴ
Γαίου Μεσσίου·
πρόσω]-
πα
δύο ἐμ πλινθείωι
Σαραπίδος,
Ἴσιδος, ἀνάθεμα
[Φιλέου Ἀλεξανδρέ]-
ως·
στέφανοι περικεχρυσωμένοι
τρεῖς, ἀνάθεμα
[Καλλικλέους
τοῦ Ἀπολ]-
λωνίου.
χρυσᾶ· στεγγίδια
τρία ἄστατα,
ἀ[νάθεμα Γαίου]·
τύπια τέττα-
[ρα]
ὧν ὁλκὴ 𐅂· ἄλλο
τύπιον ἐπὶ πινακίου·
στε[φάνιον] χ[ρυσοῦν
τετράφυλ]-
another
on board, dedication of Euporia; another on board, dedication of
Euterpe; silvered torch on wooden base, dedication of Eukleia;
smooth phialion in frame about [six] fingers, [dedication] of
Thermouthris, unweighed. Bronze near the [Exedra: small Pan about
three] half-feet, dedication of Polianthes of Athens; jar and [...];
gold eyes on board, inscript[ion, of Gaius Messius; fa]ces two in
plinth of Sarapis, Isis, dedication [of Phileas of Alexandr]ia;
three gilded crowns, dedication [of Kallikles son of Apol]lonios.
Gold: three fillets, uninscribed, d[edication of Gaius]; four
reliefs, whose weight 1; another relief on small plaque; gold cro[wn
four leav]ed,
60
[λ]ον ἄστατον·
σαγγαικὸν
βεβαμμένον
κ[όκ]κιν[ον ἐν]
κ[ιβ]ωτ[ί]ωι, [ἀνάθεμα]
Ἡρακλείου·
στεφάνι̣ο̣ν
ἐν τῶι Ἀνουβιδείωι
φύ[λλα ἔχον δέκα·
ἄστατα. ἐν]
τῶι
Ἰσιδείωι· πίναξ
ἐπίχρυσος,
ἀνάθεμα Δημέου
τοῦ Ἀριστοκράτου·
Ἀθηνᾶ
χαλκῆ [ἐπὶ στηλ]υδρίου,
ἀνάθημα Ἑρμογ[ένου
Ἀλεξα]νδρ[έως]·
ἄλλο
ἀνδριαντίδιον
ἐν τῶι ἐξεδρίωι
ὡς δακτύλων
[— —, ἀνάθεμα]
65
Ποπλίου Αἰμυλίου·
ἀργυρᾶ· ποτήριον
ῥοδιακὸν [ἐφ’
οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
τὸ κοι]-
νὸν
τῶν θεραπευτῶν,
ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
ΔΔΔΔ· φιάλην
[λείαν ὀμφαλὸν
ἔχου]-
σαν,
ἐφ’ ἧς ἐπιγραφή·
τὸ κοινὸν τῶν
θεραπευτῶν
[ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Κτησίππου]
Ἀνακα<ι>έως,
ὁλκὴ δραχμα[ὶ
Δ]ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂· ἄλλην
λεί[αν ἐφ’ ἧς
ἐπιγραφή· τὸ
κοι]-
νὸν
τῶν θεραπευτῶν,
ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Ἀμμωνίου, ὁλκὴ
[δρα]χ[μαὶ ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ].
unweighed;
sangaikon dyed red in small chest [dedication] of Herakleios; small
crown in the Anoubideion with [ten leaves, unweighed. In]
the Isideion: gilded plaque, dedication of Demeas son of
Aristokrates; bronze Athena on [small st]ele, dedication of
Hermog[enes of Alexandria]; another small statue in the Exedrion
about fingers [...] of Poplius Aemulius. Silver: Rhodian cup
[...gr]oup of the doctors, weight drachmai 40; phiale with [...], in
which the inscription the doctors' group [with Ktesippos priest] son
of Anakaios, weight drachmai [3]7; another smooth [...gr]oup of the
doctors with Ammonios priest, weight [drachmai 37.3].
70
καὶ τάδε προσπαρελάβομεν·
ποτήριον ῥοδια[κὸν]
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
Σω-
τήριχος
οὗ ὁλκὴ δραχμαὶ
𐅄Δ, ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Φιλοκράτου·
ἄλλο ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγρα-
φή·
τὸ κοινὸν τῶν
θεραπευτῶν
ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Φιλοκράτου,
ὁλκὴ [δραχμαὶ
— —]· And the
following we
κηρύκειον
οὗ ὁλκὴ 𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
σπάθιον ἐπὶ
ταινιδίου
ἄστατον· τύπια
τρία
[κ]αὶ
π[ο]δάρια δύο.
ἐν τῶι Ἰσιδείωι·
ἀργυρᾶ ἄστατα·
φιάλην λείαν
[ὀμ]-
75
φαλὸν ἔχουσαν
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθεμα Ὀλύμπου
Καρυστίου,
ὁλκὴ [ὡς ἡ]
ἐπιγραφὴ
ΔΔ ἄστατον, ἐφ’
ἱερέως Φιλοκράτου·
[ἄλλην] ἐμ πλινθείωι,
πρώσωπα
ἔχουσαν
τρία, ἀνάθεμα
Δαφνίδος, ἐπὶ
σανιδίου·
δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς [ἐπὶ]
σανιδίου
λίθον ἔχων, ὁλκὴ
ὡς ἡ ἐπιγραφὴ
𐅂ΙΙΙ· φιάλιον
ἀργυροῦν [ὡς
δακτύ]-
λων
[ἕξ], ἐπιγραφή·
Εὔτυχο[ς Δά]ζου
Τερ․․․τινος
ἄστατον· λαμπάδα,
took
over in addition: Rhodian cup on which (is) the inscription
Soerichos, whose weight drachmai 60 with Philokrates priest; another
on which (ois) the inscription the doctors' group with Philokrates
priest, weight [...]; staff whose weight 3.3; sword on ribbon,
unweighed; three reliefs and two small feet. In the Isideion.
Unweighed silver: smooth phiale with boss in plinth, dedication of
Olympos of Karystos, weight [as the] inscription 20, unweighed with
Philokrates priest; [another] in plinth with three faces, dedication
of Daphnis on board; gold ring on board with stone, weight as the
inscription 1.3; silver phialion [about six] fingers, inscription
Eutychos son of Dazos Ter[...]tinos unweighed; torch,
80
ἀνάθεμα vac. Βερενίκης,
ἄστατον· τύπια
ἐπὶ σανιδίου
ἀργυρᾶ δέκα·
στέφ[ανον χρυ]-
σοῦν,
ἀνάθεμα Νικομένους
Ἐλεάτου ἄστατον,
ὁλκὴ κατὰ τὴν
ἐπιγραφὴν
𐅂Ι̣,
ἐφ’ ἱερέως
Σαραπίωνος·
καὶ ἐπὶ σανιδίου
ὀφθαλμοὶ δύο.
ἐν τῶι τοῦ Ἀνού-
[βι]δος·
φιάλιον ἐν πλινθείωι
ὡς ποδιαῖον,
ἀνάθεμα Θεοφραστίδ[ου,
ὁλκὴ ὡς ἡ ἐπιγρα]-
[φ]ὴ
Δ, ἄστατον, ἐφ’
ἱερέως Λέον̣τ̣ο̣[ς?
․․․․․․]ι̣ο̣υ̣·
φίαλιον λεῖον
ὡς δακτύλων
ἕ[ξ],
85
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
ἐφ’ ἱερέως
․․․․․․․․․․․․․Η̣·
ζώιδια λίθιν[α
τρία, ἀνάθεμα
Ἀρίστωνος],
ἐφ’
ἱερέως Φιλοκράτου.
ἐν τῶι Σαραπιείωι·
πρὸς τῶι ναῶι·
Ἑρμῆς χαλ[κοῦς
ἔχων]
κηρύκειον,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀριστο[φάνους].
ἐν τῶι προν[ά]ωι·
ἔρωτε[ς χαλκοῖ
δύο. ἐν τῶι]
ναῶι·
φιάλην ἀργυρᾶν
ἐν π[λινθ]είωι
ὡς δακτύλων
ὀκτώ, [ἀνάθεμα
Γνα]-
ίου
Πετενναίου,
[ἄστατον. ἐν τ]ῶι
πρυτανείωι·
χαλκᾶ· Ἑστίαν
ὡς δί[πουν]
dedication
of Berenike, unweighed; ten silver reliefs on board; gold crown,
dedication of Nikomenes of Elea, unweighed, weight according to the
inscription 1.1 with Sarapion priest; and on a board two eyes. In
the Temple of Anoubis: phialion in plinth about a good,
dedication of Theophrastides [weight as the inscript]ion 10,
unweighed, with Leon priest [...]; smooth phialion about six fingers
on which the inscription with priest [...] 100; stone figures
[three, dedication of Ariston] with Philokrates priest. In the
Sarapieion, near the Temple: bronze Hermes with staff,
dedication of Aristo[phanes]. In the Pronaos: [two bronze]
Erotes [In the] Temple: silver phiale in plinth about eight
fingers [dedication of Gna]eus Petennaius [unweighed].
[In
t]he Prytaneion. Bronze: Hestia about two [feet]
90
[ἐ]πὶ βωμίσκο[υ
λιθίνου καθη]μένην
κα<ὶ> ἐπὶ βάσεως
λιθίνης· ἀπ[ολλωνίσκ]ον
ἀρχαικὸν
ὡς π[οδιαῖον
καὶ] θυμιατήριον
πομπικὸν ὡς
τριημιποδι[αῖον·
Ἑρ]-
μᾶς
ἐπὶ βάσ[εων
λιθίν]ων πέντε·
σατυρίσκον
ὡς τριπάλ[ασ]τον
[φέρον]-
τα
κρατηρί[σκον
ἐπὶ] βάσεως
λιθίνης· ὀμφαλὸν
καὶ φύλακα περὶ
αὐτόν·
τράχηλ[ον?·
ἀπολ]λωνίσκον
ἐν θυρίδι καθήμενον
ἐπ’ ὀμφαλοῦ
95
ὡς δίπου[ν·
ἄλλον? — — ἐν
θυρίδ<ι> ἐπιβεβηκότα
ἐπ’ ὀμφαλοῦ
λιθίνου· στέφα-
νον
ν̣ — — — — ἐν τῶι
προδόμωι· Ἑρμῆν
ὡς δίπουν ἐπὶ
βάσεως λιθίνης
ἔχ[οντα
․․․․․․]ιον
κ̣α̣ὶ̣ προσανακεκλιμένον
πρὸς δενδρυφίωι
․․․․․
[․․․․․
περι]ραντήριον
ἔχον ὦς ἓν ἐφ’
οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
[ἱε]ρὸν Ἀπ[όλλω]-
[νος.
ἐν τεῖ αὐ]λεῖ·
Ἑρμᾶς τέτταρας
ἐπὶ βάσεων λιθίνων.
[ἐν τῶι ἀρχείωι]·
seated
on small [stone] altar and on stone base; old small Apollo about a
f[oot and] processional censer about three half-fe[et; Her]mes on
stone bases five; small satyr about three palms [carry]ing a small
krat[er on] a stone base; omphalos and guard-chain around its nec[k?
small Apol]lo in a window seated on an omphalos about two feet
(high) [...] in a window mounted on a stone omphalos; crown [...].
In the Prodomos: Hermes about two feet (high) on stone base
with [...] and leaning on a small tree [...sp]rinkler with one
handle on which (is) the inscription: sacred to Ap[ollo. In the
Co]urt: four Hermes' on stone bases. [In the Archeion]
100
Ἑστ[ίαν] ὡς διποῦν
ἐπ’ ὀμφαλοῦ
καθημένην καὶ
ἐπὶ β[άσεως
λιθίνης].
[ἐν
τῶι] προδόμωι·
Ἑρμᾶς δύο ἐπὶ
βάσεων λιθίνων·
ἄλλον ὡς
π[οδιαῖ]ο̣ν
βάσιν οὐκ ἔχον·
λεπίδ<α>ς ἀσπίδων·
λημνίσκου̣ς.
[ἐν τῶι Ἀσ]-
κ[λ]ηπ[ι]είωι·
χρυσᾶ ἄστατα·
δακτύλ[ιο]ν ἐπὶ
ταινιδίου λίθο[ν]
ἔχοντα, ἀνά-
θεμα
Λυσιδίκης τῆς
Ἀπημάντου. ἀργυρᾶ
ἄστατα· φιάλην
φ[ο]λιδωτὴν
105
ὡς ποδιαίαν
ἐμ πλινθείωι·
σκάφιον λεῖον
ὡς δακτύλων
ἕξ, ἀνάθε-
μα
vac.· φιάλιον μικρὸν
ὡς παλαστῶν
δύο ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθεμα
Ἀριστοθάλου·
ἄλλο φολιδωτὸν
ὡς δακτύλων
δέκα ἀ[νεπίγρα]φον·
[ἄλλ]ο
λεῖον ὡς δακτύλων
δέκα ἀνεπίγραφον·
[φιά]λην [ὡς πα]λαστῶν
τριῶν
ἀνεπίγραφον·
σκάφιον ὡς
δακτύλων ὀκτὼ
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθεμα
Hestia
about two feet (high) seated on an omphalos and on a [stone base. In
the] Prodomos: two Hermes' on stone bases; another about a foot
(high) without base; pieces of shields; woolen fillets.
[In
the As]klepieion. Unweighed gold: ring on ribbon with stone,
dedication of Lysidike (daughter) of Apemantes. Unweighed silver:
pholidote phiale about a foot (wide) in plinth; smooth small tray
about six fingers (wide), dedication; small phialion about two palms
in plinth, dedication of Aristothales; another pholidote about ten
fingers, uninscribed; another smooth about ten fingers, uninscribed;
phiale about three palms, uninscribed; small tray about eight
fingers in plinth, dedication of
110
Βουληκράτου·
φιάλιον ὡς
δακτύλων ὀκτὼ
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθεμα [Μνησ]ι-
κλείδου·
φιάλην λείαν
ὡς παλαστῶν
τριῶν ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθεμα Κλεοκρίτου·
ἄλλην
ὡς παλαστῶν
δυ{ο}εῖν {δυεῖν}
ἐμ πλινθείωι
ἀνεπίγραφον·
ἄλλην ὡς δακτύ-
λων
ὀκτὼ ἐμ πλινθείωι
ἀπὸ τῶν δερμάτων·
φιάλιον μικρὸν
ὡς δακτύλων
τριῶν,
ἀνάθεμα Γο̣ρσ̣α?·
φιάλην λείαν
ὡς δακτύλων
ὀ[κτώ, ἀνάθεμα
Κλε]ο-
115
κρίτου· ἄλλην
λείαν ὡς δακτύλων
δέκα, ἀνάθ<εμα>
Σκυλλίχου
ἀπὸ τῶν δερ-
μάτων·
ἄλλο φιάλιον
ὡς παλαστῶν
[δ]ύ̣ο̣ ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀριστο-
βούλου·
ἄλλο καρυωτὸν
ὡς δακτύλων
ἓξ ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθεμα Ε̣ΙΧ̣ΕΙ․․
ου·
φιάλην καρυωτὴν
ἐπὶ κιβωτίου
ὡς παλαστῶν
ὀκτώ· ἔλαττον
τεττάρων ἐμ πλιν-
θείωι,
ἀνάθεμα Γερύλλου·
φιάλην φολιδωτὴν
ὡς παλαστῶν
τριῶν [ἐμ πλινθεί]-
Boulekrates;
phialion about eight fingers in plinth, dedication of Mnesikleides;
smooth phiale about three palms in plinth, dedication of Kleokritos;
another about two palms in plinth, uninscribed; another about eight
fingers in plinth from the hides; small phialion about three
fingers, dedication of Gorsa; smooth phiale about eight fingers
dedication of Kleokritos; another smooth about ten fingers, ded of
Skyllichos from the hides; another small phiale about two palsm in
plinth, dedication of Aristoboulos; another knobby about six fingers
in plinth, dedication of Eichei[...]; knobby phiale in small chest
about eight palms; smaller of four (fingers?) in plinth, dedication
of Geryllos; pholidote phiale about three palms [in plin]th.
120
ωι, ἀνάθεμα
Δημητρίου· ἄλλο
φιάλιον λεῖον
ὡς παλαστῶν
δύο ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθεμα
Κριτοβούλου·
ἄλλην φιάλην
καρυωτὴν ἐπίχρυσον
ὡς παλαστῶν
τριῶν
ἐμ
πλινθείωι, ἀνάθεμα
Ἀρισταγόρη̣ς·
ἄλλο ἔχον ζώιδια
ἕξ — — — — — — —
—
ὡς
παλαστῶν τετ<τ>άρων
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθεμα Γ[ερύλλου·
ἄλλο λεῖον]
[ὡ]ς
δακτύλων ὀκτὼ
ἐν πλινθείωι
ἀ[πὸ τῶν δερ]μάτων,
[ἀνάθεμα — — —]
125
․․νου· τοῦτο
ἦν ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Παρμε[νίωνος·
ἄλλο λεῖον
ὡς δακτύλων]
[ὀ]κ[τ]ὼ
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀντικράτου·
ἄλλ[ο λεῖον
ὡς δακτύλων
— —],
[ἐ]μ
πλινθείωι, ἀνάθεμα
Κλεοκρίτου·
τούτω̣ν ἐπὶ —
— — — — — — — — —
— — —
․τοτ̣․․λο̣κ̣ρ̣ου·
ἄλλο λεῖον
ὡς παλαστῶν
δυεῖν ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνά[θεμα Θεοδό]-
τ̣ου
τοῦ Εὐβίου·
ἄλλο λεῖον
ὡς δακτύλων
τεττάρων ἐμ
π[λινθείωι, ἀνάθε]-
dedication
of Demetrios; another smooth small phiale about two palms in plinth,
dedication of Kritoboulos; another gilded knobby phiale about three
palms in plinth, dedication of Aristagora; another with six figures
[...} about four palms in plinth, dedication of G[eryllos another
smooth] about eight dingers in plinth f[rom the hi]des [...]; this
was with Parmenion archon [another smooth about fingers] eight in
plinth, dedication of Antikrates; anoth[er smooth about fingers...]
in plinth, dedication of Kleokritos; of these [...]lokros; another
smooth about two palms in plinth, dedicat[ion of Theodo]tos son of
Eubios; another smooth about four fingers in p[linth dedic]ation of
130
μα Εὐβούλου·
φ̣ι̣άλη<ν> λείαν
ὡς δακτύλων
τε<τ>τά[ρων ἐμ
πλινθείωι, ἀνεπί]-
γραφον·
αὕτη ἦν φολιδωτὴ
ποδιαία· φιάλη<ν>
λείαν [ὡς δακτύλων
δέκα ἐμ]
πλινθείωι
ἔχουσαν ὀμφαλὸν
ἐπίχρυσον, ἀνάθεμα
Ἀν[τιγόνου ἀπὸ
τῶν γερῶν]·
ἄλλην
λείαν ἐμ πλινθείωι
ὡς δακτύλων
δέκα, [ἀνάθεμα
Κλεοκρίτου·
ἄλλην ἐμ]
πλινθείωι
φολιδωτὴν ὡς
δακτύλων ὀκτώ,
[ἀνεπίγραφον·
μήλην ἐπὶ σανιδίου,
ἀνά]-
135
θεμα Ἄ̣κ̣ρ̣ω̣νος
τοῦ Ἐπαμείνονος·
θυμιατή[ρι]ον
οὗ [ὁλκὴ δραχ<μαὶ>
𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂]
σὺν
τοῖς ὑπὸ τοὺς
πόδας βασιδίοις
χαλκοῖς· τέτραχ[μον
λυσιμάχειον
ἐπὶ ταινι]-
δίου
προσηλωμένον,
ἀνάθεμα Ν̣ο̣υ̣κρ̣ίτης?
στέφανον [ὃν ἔχει
ὁ θεὸς φύλλα
ἔχον]-
τα
𐅄ΔΙΙ ἐπικεχρυσωμένον
καὶ δαφνίδας
δέκα [δύο ὧν
ὁλκὴ ΙΙΙΙ· καὶ
ἄλλα]
ψηγμάτια
ἀργυρᾶ ἐμ πυξιδίωι
ὧν ὁλκὴ 𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλα [— — — — —
— — — — —· Ἀπόλ]-
Euboulos;
smooth phiale about four finders [in plinth unin]scribed; this was
pholidote about a foot; smooth phiale [about ten fingers in]linth
with gilded boss, dedication of An[tigonos from the awards]; another
smooth in plinth about ten fingers [dedication of Kleokritos;
another in] plinth pholidote about eight fingers [uninscribed; apple
on plank, ded]ication of Akron son of Epameinon; censer of which
[the weight drach 77] with the bronze bases under the feet;
tetradrachm [Lysimacheion on a rib]bon nailed, dedication of
Noukrite?; crown [which the god wears with leaves] 62 gilded and
tw[elve] bayberries [weight .4; and other] silver fragments in small
box of which weight 3; other
140
λωνα ἔχοντα
φαρέτραν καὶ
τόξον καὶ φιάλιον
ἐπηρεισμένον
[ἐπὶ κιονίου
χαλ]-
κο[ῦ],
ἀνάθεμα Γερύλλου·
βοΐδιον ἐπὶ
βάσεως λιθίνης,
[ἀνάθεμα Οὐίου
Ῥωμαίου]·
θυμιατήριον
πομπικὸν ἔχον
ἓν ὦς· ἐπίπυρον·
σικύαν· ἱπποκέντα[υρον
ἔχον]-
τα
δάιδια ἐπὶ βάσεως
λιθίνης, ἀνάθεμα
Γερύλλου·
πυξίδα ἐλεφαντίνην
․․․․
ὁ
θεός· ἄλλα
θ̣η̣λυκὰ ζῶια
τέτταρα· ζῶια
τρία παιδικὰ
ὧν ὁλκὴ Η·
145
πίνακας εἰκονικοὺς
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ· τὸ
θύρωμα τοῦ ναοῦ
ἔχον ἥλους
χαλκοῦς·
[κλεῖ]ν
ἀνάπαιστον λαβὴν
ἔχουσαν ξυλίνην.
ἐν τῶι οἴκωι
ἀριστερᾶς εἰσι̣-
[όντ]ων
εἰς τὸ ἱερόν·
τράπεζαν λιθίνην
κατεαγεῖαν·
ἀσκληπιοὺς
λιθίνους τρεῖς
[ὧν
τὸν] ἕνα ἐλάττονα·
ἀπόλλωνα λίθινον.
καὶ ἐν τῶι ν[α]ῶι
τοῦ Ἀσκληπίου·
φιά[λην]
․․․․․ι̣δ̣ος
ἀνάθεμα Πασιτίμου.
καὶ προσπαρεδώκαμεν·
φίαλην ὡς [δακτύ]-
[...
Apol]lo with quiver and bow and phialion leaning [on column of
br]onze, dedication of Geryllos; calf on stone base [dedication of
Ouios of Rome] processional censer with one ear; grill; cupping
gourd; horse-cent[aur...] the god; four other female figures; three
child figures whose weight (is) 100; 97 plaques with images; the
door of the temple with bronze nails; draw-key with wood handle. In
the Oikos on the left going into the sanctuary: broken stone
table; three stone Asclepius's, one smaller. And in the Temple of
Asklepios: phia[le...]is dedication of Pasitimos. And we gave
over in addition: phiale
150
λων δέκα πρόσωπον
ἔχουσαν, ἀνάθεμα
Μόλωνος τοῦ
Παρμένοντος
․․․․․․․
ἐν
τῶι Ἀρτεμισίωι
τῶι ἐν νήσωι·
ἀργυρᾶ· φιάλην
ἐπίχρυσον
ἔχουσαν
[ζώι]δια Ἀπόλλωνα
καὶ Ἄρτεμιν,
ἀνάθεμα Θεοτίμου
τοῦ — — —,
τὴν
διάμετρον ὡς
ποδιαίαν· ἄλλο
φιάλιον ἐπίχρυσον
ἔχον τὸ ἔδαφος
ὡς
δακτύλων ἕξ,
ἀνάθεμα Ἱέρωνος·
ἄλλην φιάλην
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἔχουσαν
155
Ἀπόλλωνα καὶ
Ἄρτεμιν, ἀνάθεμα
Πιστοξένου·
ἄλλην καρυωτὴν
πρόσω-
πον
ἔχουσαν Ἀρτέμιδος,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀθηνίωνος,
ὡς παλαστῶν
τριῶν·
ἄλλην
καρυωτὴν ὡς
δακτύλων δέκα
δύο, ἀνάθεμα
Καλλιφάνου
Ἀμορ-
γίου,
διαπεπτωκό[ς]
ἐστι ΘΡ̣Α̣ΚΑ̣
Μ̣ε̣γαρέως
ΔΔΔ· ἀσπιδίσκιον,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀριστακοῦς
τῆς
Φίλωνος, ὡς
δακτύλων τριῶν·
φιάλιον μικρὸν
πρόσωπον ἔχον
Διονύσου,
about
ten fingers with face, dedication of Molon son of Parmenon [...].
In
the Artemision on the Island. Silver: gilded phiale with
figures, Apollo and Artemis, dedication of Theotimos son of [...]
the diameter about a foot; another gilded phialion with the base
about six fingers, dedication of Hieron; another phiale in plinth
with Apollo and Artemis, dedication of Pistoxenos; another knobby
with face of Artemis, dedication of Athenion, about three palms;
another knobby about twelve fingers, dedication of Kalliphanes of
Amorgos, fallen apart it is Thraka of Megara 30; small disk
dedication of Aristoko, daughter of Philon, about three fingers;
small phialion with face of Dionysos
160
ὡς δακτύλων
τριῶν, ἀνεπίγραφον·
ἄλλο μικρὸν
πρόσωπον ἔχον
Γοργόνος,
ὡς
δακτύλων τεττάρων,
ἀνάθεμα Εὐβαίωνος·
ἄλλ[ο] ὡς δακτύλων
ἕξ, ἀνά-
θεμα
Νυμφοδώρου·
ἄλλο λεῖον,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀριστοβούλης
ἔχον πρόσω-
πον
Παλλαδίου,
ὡς δακτύλων
τριῶν
vac.
about
three fingers, uninscribed; another small with face of Gorgon about
four fingers, dedication of Eubaion; another about six fingers,
dedication of Nymphodoros; another smooth, dedication of Aristoboule
with face of Pallas about three fingers;
col.
II.1
1ἄλλην
[καρ]υωτὴν —
τριῶν
ἐμ πλινθείωι
—
ἡ
μήτηρ Διονυσίου
καὶ Καλλιφρονίδος·
φιά[λην] —
ὡς
ποδιαίαν, ἀνάθεμα
[Δ]ίωνος τοῦ
Στράτωνος —
5
πλινθείωι, ἀνάθεμα
Λυσακοῦ· φιάλην
λείαν π̣ —
δακτύλων
δέκα {ὡς δακτύλων
δέκα} αὐτῆς —
ἀπὸ
τῆς χειρὸς καὶ
ηΙ․․․․․․․․𐅃ΙΙΙ·
σκάφιον ἔχον
—
π̣ρ̣ό̣σ̣ω̣π̣ο̣ν̣
ἀνέθηκεν Π․․․․․․
Ἀστυπάλαιος̣·
σ․ι —
․․․․․α
περίχ̣υτα ὀκτώ,
ἀνάθεμα Ἅ̣ν̣[ν]ωνος
Κ —
another
knobby [...] in plinth [...] the mother of Dionysios and
Kalliphrontides; phia[le...] about a foot, dedication of Dion son of
Straton [...] plinth, dedication of Lysakos; smooth phiale [...] ten
fingers {about ten fingers} of it [...] from the hand and the [...]
5.3; small tray with [...] face dedicated P[...] of Astypalaia [...]
eight perichyta, dedication of Annon [...]
10
— — 8 — — ἀργυρ․․․․․․․σαι
ἐπὶ τῆς τραπέζης
—
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
καὶ ἐκτὸς τοῦ
τρυφάκτου·
φιάλην φολιδωτὴν
—
πλ̣υ․․․․․
του․․πτωιος
Ἀστυπάλαιος,
τὴν διάμ[ετρον
ἔχουσαν? ὡς
πο]-
διαίαν·
ἄλλην καρυωτὴν
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθε[μα — — —
— — πά]-
λαστον·
ἄλλην λείαν
ἐμ πλινθείωι,
ἀνάθεμα Φ̣ι̣
— — — — — — — —
15
․․του․․․․․․․
δίκρουνον ἔχοντα
ἐλαφίου κεφαλὴν
— — — — — — — —
φιάλην
λείαν, ἀνάθεμα
Σατύρου τοῦ
Τερ̣η̣κλέους
[— —· ἄλλην? — —
—]
—
— — ἀνάθεμα
Μνασέα Ἠλείου
ὡς διπάλαστο[ν
— — — — — — — — —
— οὐκ ἦν συνι]-
δεῖν
τὴν ἐπιγραφήν,
ὡς δακτύλων
ἕξ· ἄλλην λείαν
[— — — — — — — — —
— ὡς]
δακτύλων
ἕξ· <ἄ>λλη ἔχουσ<α>
ἐν αὑτῆι στέφανον
ἐπίχ[ρυσον· οὐκ
ἦν συν]-
on
the table [...] 8.2; and outside the railing: pholidote phiale [...]
ptoios of Astypalaia, with the diameter about a foot; another knobby
in plinth, dedication [...]palm; another smooth in plinth,
dedication of Phi[...] with deer head with two antlers [...] smooth
phiale, dedication of Satyros son of Terhkles [...] dedication of
Mnaseas of Elis about two palms [...not under]stand the inscription,
about six fingers; another smooth [...about] six fingers; another
with a gilded crown in it...
20
ιδεῖν τὴν ἐπιγραφήν,
ὡς διπάλαστον·
ἄλλη λεία —
— — — — — — —, ἀνάθημα
— —]
Ἀτηνίου
Χίου, ὡς δακτύλων
ἕξ· ἄλλη [πρόσ]ωπον
ἔχουσ[α — — —
ἀνέθηκεν?]
Παπᾶς
Φιλεταίρου
Παφλαγὼν Ἀρτέμιδι
Ἑκάτει — — — —
— — — — — — — —·
ἄλλη]
λεία
ὡς διπάλαστος,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀφθονήτου·
ἄλλη λεία,
<ἀ>νάθεμα — —
— — — — —
καὶ
Μικ․․․․․․․․․ΙΙ·
ἄλλη [λεί]α,
ἀνάθεμα Φίλης
Κώιας — — — —
— — — — — — —
25
[ὡς δακ]τύ[λων]
τρι[ῶν]· ἄλλο
λεῖον ὡς τριπάλαστον,
ἀνάθεμα — — —
— — — — —
․․․․
πρόσωπον
ἔχον Ἀπόλλωνος,
ἀνάθεμα Φίλωνος·
ἄλλην λ[είαν
ὡς]
δακτύλων
τεττάρων· ἄλλην
λείαν ὡς τριπάλαστον,
ἀνάθεμα Αὐτο
— — — — — — —
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
ὡς
παλαστῶν δύο,
ἀνάθεμα — — —
— — —
—
— — — — — — ὡς
διπάλαστον,
Ἀρτέμιδι εὐχήν·
ἄλλο λεῖον
οὔτε — — — — —
— — —
under]stand
the inscription, about two palms; another smooth [...] of Atenios of
Chios, about six fingers; another with face [...]Papas son of
Philetairos of Paphlagon, to Artemis Hekate [...] smooth about two
palms, dedication of Aphthonetos; another smooth, dedication [...];
another smooth dedication of Phile of Kos about three fintgers;
another smooth about three palms, dedication [...] with face of
Apollo, dedication of Philon; another smooth about four fingers;
another smooth about three palms, dedication of Auto[...] about two
falms, dedication [...] about two palms, vow to Artemis; another
smooth neither
30
[— — — — — — — — —
— — τ]ὰ προ[σανα]τεθέντα
ἐπ’ Ἀχαιοῦ
ἄρχοντος ὑπὸ
․․․․․
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
τύπια
τῶν προϋπαρχόντων
ἀπὸ το․․․․․
ἕξ·
ταῦτα ἐστάθη
ἐπὶ τοῦ αὐτοῦ
καὶ ε̣ὗρεν σὺν
τοῖς ἀποβε[β]λη[μένοις]
δραχ.
𐅂𐅂· ἀπάγει ΙΙΙ·
ἀσπιδίσκιον
ἐπὶ — — — 12-15 — — —
απιον ἄστατον·
φιάλην κα[ρυω]-
τὴν
ἔχου[σαν] πρόσωπον,
ἀνάθεμα Δη̣λ̣ι̣[άδ]ων?,
ἧς ὁλκὴ δραχ.
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂· τύπιον
35
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — Ἄρτεμιν·
φι̣α̣λ̣[— —,
ἀν]άθεμα Κλει-
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — ἀνάθεμα
[Πει]σι[κρα]τείας
τῆς
—
— — — — οὗ
ὁλ<κὴ> 𐅄ΔΔ․․𐅂𐅂․․·
ἀρτεμίσιον οὗ
ὁλκὴ δραχ.
ΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τύπια
ΔΙ̣Ι̣ ἄστατα
καὶ ․․․․․․․λλ̣․․ιοις·
ὀφθαλμοὶ τέτ<τ>αρες
— — — — —.
καὶ
τάδε χρυσᾶ·
στέφ[ανον ὃν ἡ
θ]εὸς ἔχει ἐπὶ
τῆς κεφαλῆς
νίκας ἔχοντα
[...]
the additional dedications with Achaios archon by [...] reliefs of
the proconsuls from [...] six; these were weighed in the same and
found with the discarded drachmai 2, short .3; small disk on [...]
unweighed; knobby phiale with face, dedication of the Deliades,
whose weight drach. 82; small relief [...] Artemis; phiale [...
de]dication of Klei[...] weight 72+; small Artemis statue whose
weight drach 129; 12 reliefs unweighed and [...]; four eyes [...].
And the following gold: crown which the goddess wears on her head
with ten boxwood Victories
40
πτελεΐνας δέκα
[σ]ὺν [τοῖς ἀποθρα]ύμασιν
καὶ λίνωι δραχ.
ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλον
δρύϊ-
νον
ὑπ[άργυρον? —
— — — — — — — — —]
σὺν τῶι λίνωι
καὶ τοῖς ἱμανταρίοις
οὗ ὁλκὴ
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — δραχ.
Δ𐅃Ι𐅂Ι· νίκας
ἃς ἔχει ἡ θεὸς
ὧν ὁλκὴ
[․․․․․․·
δα]κτύλιος
ἔχων τὴν σφενδόνην
διαβεβρωμένην
καὶ — — — — — —
— —
—
— — — — — — — γυναικεῖον
ζώιδιον οὗ ὁλκὴ
σὺν τῶι [λίθ]ωι
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁·
45
— — — — — — ὁλκὴ
σὺν τοῖς λιναρίοις
δραχ. 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅁·
ἀμφιδέξια δύο
καὶ
[—
— — — — — ὁ]λκὴ
Ι̣Ι̣Ι̣𐅁̣𐅀̣·
περιχειρίδιον
ἓν καὶ ἁλυσίδιον
ὧν ὁλκὴ σὺν τοῖς
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — διαπε]πτ[ω]κὸς
καὶ τύπιον καὶ
κίρ[κο]ι δύο
καὶ ἐνώι-
[δια
στρογγύλα δυο
— — — — — — — —
—]νου ἕξ, ὧν ὁλκὴ
𐅂𐅂ΙΙ𐅁· στλεγγίδιον
<διαπ>επτωκὸς
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — λιλιοι
ἄστατον· περίχειρον
οὗ ὁλκὴ δραχ.
𐅂𐅂𐅂 ἀκρι-
with
the broken pieces and string drach 34; another oak [...] with the
string and the reins, whose weight [...] drach 17.1; Victories which
the goddess holds whose weight [...r]ing with the bezel corroded and
[...] small female figure whose weight with the string 3.4 1/2 [...]
weight with the strings drach 3. 1/2; two bracelets and [...w]eight
.3 3/4; one small bracelet and one small chain whose weight with the
[...fal]len apart and relief and two circles and earr[ings two
twisted...] six, whose weight 2.2 1/2; fillet fallen apart [...]
unweighed; bracelet whose weight drach 3 pre[cisely...]
50
[βεῖς — — — — —
— — — — — —]α δύο
ὧν ὁλκὴ 𐅂, ἀπάγει
ΙΙ. καὶ τάδε
χαλκᾶ·
[ἀρτεμίσιον]
ἐπὶ βάσεως
λιθίνης καὶ
κυνάριον παρεστηκός·
ἄλλο ἀρτε-
[μίσιον
— — — — — — — — —
— — — —]· ἀρτεμίσιον
ἐπὶ βάσεως
χαλκῆς· κυνάριον
[παρεστηκός·
λιβανωτίδα
ἔχουσαν νίκη]ν
ἐπὶ τοῦ πώματος
θωρακαίαν·
θυμια-
[τήριον
— — — — — — — — —
— — —] ἀετός·
κυνάριον μελιταῖον·
ἀρτεμίσιον ἐπὶ
55
[βάσεως λιθίνης,
ἀνάθε]μα Ὀνομακρίτης·
μικρὸν ἀλεκτρυόνα
καὶ ἄλλα χαλκώ-
[ματα·
ταῦτα ἐν] τῶι
κρατῆρι· ἀετὸς
ἐπὶ ταινιδίου.
ἐπὶ τοῦ τρυφάκτου·
θυμιατήριον
[πομπικόν]. ἐπὶ
τῆς τραπέζης·
ἀρτεμίσιον ἐπὶ
βάσεως λιθίνης
[ἔχον
ἐν ἑκατέραι
δᾶι]δα καὶ παρέστηκεν
κυνάρια δύο,
ἀνέθηκεν Ἀφθόνη-
[τος·
ἀρτεμίσιον] τ[ὸ
μετ]ενεχθὲν ἀπὸ
τοῦ βωμοῦ, ἀνάθεμα
Ἀσκληπιάδου·
two
whose weight 1, short .2. And the following Bronze: [small Artemis]
on stone base and puppy standing by; another small Art[emis...];
small Artemis on bronze base, puppy [standing by; censer with
Vict]ory on the lid in armor; cens[er...] eagle; Mollosan puppy;
small Artemis on [stone base, dedic]ation of Onomakrite; small cock
and other bron[ze, these in] the krater; eagle on ribbon. At the
railing: [processional] censer. At the Table: small
Artemis on stone base [holding in either hand a tor]ch and two
puppies stand by, Aphthonetos dedicated; [small Artemis moved from
the altar, dedication of Ask two whose weight 1, short .2. And the
following Bronze: [small Artemis] on stone base and puppy standing
by; another small Art[emis...]; small Artemis on bronze base, puppy
[standing by; censer with Vict]ory on the lid in armor; cens[er...]
eagle; Mollosan puppy; small Artemis on [stone base, dedic]ation of
Onomakrite; small cock and other bron[ze, these in] the krater;
eagle on ribbon. At the railing: [processional] censer. At
the Table: small Artemis on stone base [holding in either hand a
tor]ch and two puppies stand by, Aphthonetos dedicated; [small
Artemis moved from the altar, dedication of Asklepiades
60
[— — — — — — — ἔ]λασ̣μα
λαμπάδος σιδηρᾶς,
ἀνάθεμα Τεισάνδρου·
κάτροπτον
τ[ετράγ]ωνον·
λύχνοι μονόμυξοι
δύο· νίκη πτέρυγα
μίαν ἔχουσα·
λιβανωτίδι[ον·
κυνά]ριον, ἀνάθεμα
Λεύκιου· λύχνοι
τρίμυξοι δύο
καὶ δίμυ-
ξοι
․․․· πινακίσκος
ἔμ̣βλη<το>ς·
θυμιατήριον
ἀρτεμίσιον
διεζωμένον
[ἔχον]
[κ]αὶ
α[․․․․․․․, ἀνάθημα
Εὐ?]κράτου·
ἀπολλωνίσκος,
ἀνάθεμα Περιάν-
65
δρου, ἐπὶ βάσεως
λιθίνης· ἐλάφιον
καὶ κυνάριον
ἐπὶ βάσεως
λιθίνης, ἀνάθε-
μα
Ἀγάθ[ωνος·
ἀνδ]ριαντίδιον
ἔχον ἐν τεῖ χειρὶ
πῆχυν σιδηρᾶν
καὶ
χελώνην,
ἀνάθεμα Νικομάχου·
ἀρτεμίσιον ἐπὶ
βάσεως λιθίνης
δᾶιδας
[ἔχον
ἐν ἑκα]τέραι
[τῶν χειρῶν]· τὸ
ἄγαλμα τῆς θεοῦ
καὶ κύων φύλαξ
παρεστη-
κὼς
εχ․․․․ξ̣ιων·
καὶ ἄλλα ζώιδια
ὑγιῆ ἐννέα καὶ
ἄλλα κολοβὰ
δέκα ἕξ·
[...h]older
of iron torch, dedication of Teisander; square mirror; two single
spot lamps; Victory with one wing; censer; puppy, dedication of
Lucius; two three spout lamps and [...] two spout; small embossed
plaque; censer [with] seated small Artemis and [...of Eu]krates;
small Apollo, dedication of Periander on stone base; fawn and puppy
on stone base, dedication of Agath[on; small st]atue with iron
plectrum and lyre in his hand, dedication of Nikomachos; small
Artemis on stond base [with] torches in either [of her hands]; the
statue of the goddess and a dog standing guard [...] and nine other
complete figures
70
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — χλιδῶνα
ὑάλινον. καὶ
τάδε ἐκτὸς τοῦ
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — λου
λιθίνου· ἄλλη
ἐπὶ βάσεως,
ἀνάθεμα Γε̣ρ̣ύ̣[λ]-
[λου·
․․․․․․]εις
ἀργυροῖ δέκα
πρὸς τῶι βωμῶι·
ἔλαφοι δύο
πρὸς τῶι βωμῶι
ἐπι-
—
— — — — — — — ε̣ρ̣ο̣ν̣κ․․․
καὶ ἐν τῶι οἴκωι
τῶι παρὰ θάλατταν·
κ̣α̣δίσκο̣ι(?)
․․
[—
— — — — — — ἐν τῶι
ο]ἴκωι τ[ῶι]
ἐναρίστερα τοῦ
ναοῦ· κλῖναι
ἐννέα· τράπε-
75
ζαν λιθίνην. ἐν
τῶι οἴκωι
․․․Λ̣Ι̣Ε̣ΡΟΥΣ·
κλί{κλι}νη {κλίνη}
μία. ἐν τῶι Ξενοκράτου
οἴκωι·
κλῖναι
δύο καιναί·
παλαιαὶ 𐅃·
τριόδοντες
τέτταρες ὧν ὁ
εἷς ἄνευ ὀδόν-
τ[ων
— — — — — — — — —
— — —]· διφρία
ξύλινα δύο·
δίφρος εἷς·
λυχνία σιδηρᾶ·
κλεῖδες
τοῦ ἱεροῦ. ἐπὶ
Καλλιστράτου
ἄρχοντος Σκιροφοριῶνος,
τάδε ἐμίσθωσαν
οἱ κε-
χειροτονημένοι
ἐπὶ τὰ ἱερὰ καὶ
ἐπὶ τὴν φυλακὴν
τῶν ἱερῶν χρημάτων
καὶ τὰς ἄλ-
and
sixteen other docked [...] glass ornament. And the following outside
the [...] stone; another on base, dedication of Gery[llos...] ten
silver at the altar; two deer at the altar [...]. And
in the Oikos by the sea: jars [... In the O]ikos on the
left of the temple: nine couches; stone table. In the Oikos
[...]: one couch. In the Oikos of Xenokrates: two new
couches; 5 old; four tridents one of which is without teeth [...]
two wooden chairs; one chair; iron lamps; keys of the temple.
80
λας προσόδους
[Καλλίας Θρα]σίππου
Γαργήττιος
καὶ Ἐφιάλτης
Ἀσκληπιάδου
Συβρίδης
[κ]α[ὶ?
ἀνέγρ?]αψ̣αν κατὰ
τὴν ὑπογεγραμμένην
συγγραφὴν ὧν
τε ἐξήκουσιν
οἱ
[χρόνοι? καὶ τῶν
τετελευτ]ηκότων
καὶ τῶν ἀπεληλυθότων
ἐκ τῆς νήσου.
χωρίον
τὸ [— — — — — — —
ὃ] ἐμεμίσθωτο
Διοσκουρίδης
ἐ<γ> Μυρρινούττης,
διὰ τὸ
ἐξεληλ[υθέναι
τὸν χρόνον, ἐμισ]θώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μετὰ Καλλίστρατον
85
[ἄρχοντα — — —
— — —] ἐγ Μυρρινούττης
δραχ. 𐅄𐅂 τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν
ἕκαστον· ἐγγυητ[ὴς]
—
— — — — — — — — —
ἐγ
Μυρρινούττης.
χωρίον τὸ καλούμενον
πωρίνην
ὃ
ἐμεμίσθωτο
Ἀ․․․πων Ἐπι[κ]ού̣ρου
Πάριος, διὰ τὸ
ἐξεληλυθέναι
τὸγ χρόνον, ἐμισ-
θώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μετὰ Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα Κτησωνίδης
Ἀπολλωνί-
[δ]ου
— — — — — — δρα[χ.
— — — — — —] τὸν
ἐνιαυτὸν ἕκαστον·
ἐγγυητὴς Νίκανδρος
Ἀ̣ρ̣[η]-
90
[σιμβρότου
Ἀχαρνεύς. χωρίον
ἐν Ῥην]είαι τὸ
καλούμενον
Πάνορμον, ὃ ἐμεμίσθω-
το
Διονύ[σιος —
— — —], διὰ τὸ
ἐξ[ελη]λυθέναι
τὸν χρόνον, ἐμισθώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέ[ν]-
τε
τὰ μετὰ Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα ἐφ’ ὧι
τε ἐπισκεῦαι
τὸμ πύργον καὶ
οἰκοδομ[ῆ]-
[σαι
— — — — —]ττ[— — —
— — — Ἐρμαιεὺς
δραχμῶν ΗΗ𐅄𐅃
τὸν ἐνιαυ-
τὸν
ἕκαστον· ἐγγυητὴς
Ἡραῖος Ἀπολλοδώρου
Σουνιεύς·
χωρίον ἐν Ῥηνεία<ι>
τὸ καλού-
95
μενον Διονύσιο̣ν
ὃ ἐμεμίσθωτο
Νίκανδρος
Ἀρησιμβρότου
Ἀχαρνεύς, διὰ
τὸ
δὲ ἐ[ξεληλυθέ]ναι
τὸγ χρόνον {διὰ
τὸ ἐξεληλυθέναι
τὸγ χρόνον} ἐμισθώσατο
[εἰς
ἔτη πέντε τὰ μετὰ]
Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα Εὐκλῆς
Ἡρακλείδου
Ταραντῖνος
ΗΗ̣Η̣Η̣𐅄𐅃
τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν
ἕκαστον· ἐγγυ.
Νίκανδρος
Ἀρησιμβρότου
Ἀχαρνεύς·
κῆπον
τὸν καλούμενον
Λυκώνειον
ἐμεμίσθωτο
Ἄπολλα μετὰ
τοῦ κυρίου,
100
ἧς κύριος Ἐχέδημος
Σουνιεύς·
διὰ τὸ ἐξεληλυθέναι
τὸγ χρόνον, [ἐμισθώσα]-
το
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μετὰ Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα Ἑρμαῖος
․․․․․․․․
ν̣[․․
Σι]δ̣ήτο[υ?] δραχμῶν
𐅄ΔΔ τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν
ἕκαστον· ἐγγ[υητὴς
․․․․․․․․․]
․δ․η̣․․․αν̣ου
Σιδήτης· κῆπον
τὸν καλούμενον
Θεανδριδῶν, [ὃν
ἐμεμίσθω]-
το
Ὀνάνιμος, οὗ
κύριος ἦν
Ο̣․․․․α̣ρ̣ε̣ύς,
διὰ τὸ ἐξεληλυθέναι
τὸγ χρόνον, [ἐμισθώσατο]
105
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μετὰ Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα Ἀντίπατρος
Ἀντι[πάτρου ․․․․]
ο̣ς
δραχμῶν ΗΗΔ τὸν
ἐνιαυτὸν ἕκαστον·
ἐγγυητὴς Πάπυλος
Π[απύλου?]
Στρατονικεύς·
κῆπον ἐν Ἀντίπ̣ερσιν,
ὃν ἐμεμίσθωτο
Διογείτ[ων ․․․․]
․․․․․α̣τεύς,
διὰ τὸ ἐξεληλυθέναι
τὸγ χρόνον, ἐμισθώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέν[τε]
τὰ
μετὰ Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα Εὔνους
Φίλωνος Ἀντιοχεὺς
δρα. Η𐅄Δ𐅂
110
τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν
ἕκαστον· ἐγγυητὴς
Γηρόστρατος
Θεοδότου ἐγ
Μυρρινούττης·
κῆ-
πον
τὸν πρὸς τῶι νεωρίωι
ἐμεμίσθωτο
Ἀνδροκλῆς
<Ε>ὐμνήστου
ἐξ Οἴου· διὰ
τὸ ἐξελ<ηλ>υθέ-
ναι
τὸν χρόνον ἐμισθώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μετὰ Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα Δημή-
τριος
— — — — — Φυλάσιος
δραχ. ΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂
τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν
ἕκαστον· ἐγγυητὴς
Σα-
ραπίων
Μι․․․․․ Ἡρακλεώτης·
κῆπον τὸμ πρότερον
προσόντα τῶι
ἱπποδρόμωι
115
[ἐμεμίσθωτο]
Μῆνις ἐγ Μυρρινούττης·
διὰ τὸ ἐξεληλυθέναι
τὸγ χρόνον, ἐμισθώσα-
το
[εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ] μετὰ Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα Σώφρων
Αὐτοκλέους
Ἀμόρ-
γιος
δραχ. ι․𐅃𐅂 τὸν
ἐνιαυτὸν ἕκαστον·
ἐγγυητὴς Σωτήριχος
Β̣α̣χ̣χ̣ί̣ο̣υ̣
[Νεα?]π̣ολί-
της·
τοῦ ․․υ— — —
— — τὸ ἄνω μέρος
καὶ τὸ προσευρεθὲν
ν̣ε̣ωρίδιον
καὶ τὸ̣ ․․υγ̣-
․․υτ․․․․
τ[ὸ προσ]ὸν τῶι
νεωριδίωι, ὃ
ἐμεμίσθωτο
Φιλοκράτης
Εὑρήμονος
[Σαλα]μίνιος,
120
[διὰ τὸ ἐξεληλυ]θέναι
τὸγ χρόνον, ἐμισθώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μ[ετὰ] Καλλί-
[στρατον
ἄρχ]οντα Φιλοκράτης
<Ε>ὑρήμονος
<Σ>αλαμίνιος
δραχμῶν ․․․․𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂
τὸν
[ἐνιαυτὸν
ἕκαστον· ἐγγυ]ητὴς
Ἀσκληπιάδης
Νικοδήμου
Ἀπολ[λωνιε]ύς·
τὸ κάτω
[μέρο]ς
τοῦ ․․․․․․․είου
καὶ τὴν προσοῦσαν
αὐτῶι συνοικίαν,
ἃ ἐμε[μίσθω]το
Εὑρήμων Ζ[ή]-
[νωνο]ς
Ἀναφλύστιος,
διὰ τὸ ἐξεληλυθέναι
τὸγ χρόνον, ἐμ[ισθώσα]το
εἰς ἔτη πέντ[ε]
125
[τὰ μετὰ] Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα Σωτὴρ
Νέωνος Ἀ[ναγ]υράσιος
δραχ(μῶν) ΗΗΔΔ𐅃
τὸν
ἐνιαυτὸν ἕκαστον·
ἐγγυ. Ἑρμαῖος
Δημητρίου Κικυννεύς·
κῆπον τὸν πρὸς
․․ν․τα․․․․,
ἐμεμίσθωτο
Μένων, διὰ τὸ δὲ
ἐ[πι?%⁸¹]μισθῶσαι
τοὺς ἐπὶ
[τὰ
ἱερά? — — — — —]
τόκου [τὸν] ἐνιαυτόν,
ἐμισθώσατο
Μενεκράτης
Ἡρακλείδου
[Ταραντῖνος]
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μετὰ Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα τὸν
ἐνιαυτὸ[ν]
130
[ἕκαστον δραχμῶν
— — —]𐅂𐅂Ι· ἐγγυητὴς
Ἀθηναγόρας
Ἀθηναγόρου
Αἰθαλίδη[ς]·
—
— — — — — — — — —
—·
ΕΙ̣Κ̣․․Χ̣ΙΩΙ,
ἐμεμίσθωτο
Ἰάσων Πάτρωνος
ἐγ Μυ[ρ]-
[ρινούττης,
διὰ τὸ ἐξ]εληλυθέναι
τὸγ χρόνον, ἐμισθώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μετ[ὰ]
[Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχ]οντα Ἰάσων
Πάτρωνος ἐγ
Μυρρινούττης
τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν
ἕ-
[καστον
δραχμῶν ․]ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἐγγυητὴς Παυσανίας
Μηνοδώρου
Μελιτεύς·
χωρ[ί]-
135
ον̣ — — — — — —
— χ̣ορ̣ε̣α̣
ἐμεμίσθωτο
Εὔνους· διὰ
τὸ δὲ ἀπεληλυθέναι
Εὔνουν ἐκ τῆς
[νήσου,
ἐμισθώσα]το
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μετὰ Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα Ἀφρο-
δί[σιος
․․․․]ιος τὸν
ἐνιαυτὸν ἕκαστον
δραχμῶν ΗΗ𐅄·
ἐγγυ. Μνασέας
Μνασέου
Ἀναγυράσιος·
κῆπον τὸν Θεανδριδῶν,
ὃν ἐμεμίσθωτο
Εὐμένης [Ο]ἰ-
ναῖος.
διὰ τὸ τετελευτηκέναι
Εὐμένη, ἐμισθώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ
140
μετὰ Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα Ἀγαθοκλῆς
Ἀπολλοδώρου
Παιανιεὺς τὸν
ἐνιαυτὸν
ἕκαστον δραχ.
ΗΗ𐅄Δ𐅃· ἐγγυητὴς
Σωτὴρ Νέωνος
Ἀναγυράσιος·
ἐργαστήριον
τὸ ἐχόμενον τοῦ
Σωσιλείου
ἐμεμίσθωτο
Δίων Διονυσίου
Τήνιος·
διὰ
τὸ [ἀπελη]λυθέναι
Δίων<α> ἐκ τῆς
νήσο<υ>, ἐμισθώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μετὰ Κα[λ]-
λίστρατον
ἄρχοντα Λυσίας
Στράτωνος Λαοδικεὺς
τὸν ἐν[ι]αυτὸν
ἕκαστο[ν]
145
δραχμῶν 𐅄Δ𐅃·
ἐγγυητὴς Σάτυρος
Λυκαίθου
Ν․․․․․ς· οἰκίαν
τὴν ἐπι․․․
․․․οις
ἐμεμίσθωτο
Διονύσιος
Νάξιος· διὰ τὸ
ἐξα[δυνατ]ῆσαι
Διονύσιον,
ἐμισθώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μετὰ Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα Ἔφορος
Νικάνο-
ρος
Πτ̣ε̣λεά̣σ̣ι̣ο̣ς
τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν
ἕκαστον δραχμῶν
𐅅ΔΔ[․․ ἐγ]γ̣υ.
Πρώταρχος
Πρωτάρχου
Φρεάρριος·
οἰκίαν τὴν πρὸς
τῶι ․․․ολω̣ι
Μ․․․․․ ἣν ἐμεμίσθωτο
150
[Ἕρμ]ων ἐκ Κοίλης,
διὰ τὸ ἀπειθῶσαι
Ἕρμωνα, ἐμισθώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ με-
τὰ
Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα Δάμων
Πάτρωνος Κοθωκίδης
τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν
ἕκαστον δραχ.
Η̣𐅄̣𐅃̣·
ἐγγυητὴς Αἵμων
Πρωτέου Φλυεύς·
ἐργαστήριον
ὃ ἐμεμίσθωτο
Ἀφροδί-
σιος
[Δ]ιονυσίου
Ἀντιοχεύς, διὰ
τὸ δὲ ἀπεληλυθέναι
Ἀφροδίσιον
ἐκ τῆς νήσου,
ἐμισθώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μετὰ Καλλίστρατ[ον
ἄ]ρχοντα Ἕρμων
Ἀπολ-
155
λωνίδου Κρωπίδης
τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν
ἕκαστ[ον δ]ραχμῶν
ΗΔΔΔ· vac.
ἐγγυητὴς
Δάμων Πάτρωνος
Κοθωκίδης·
ἐργαστήρι[ον]
ὃ ἐμεμίσθωτο
Τηρίας, δι-
ὰ
τὸ τετελευτηκέναι
Τηρίαν, ἐμισθώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μετὰ Καλλίστρα-
τον
ἄρχοντα Μητροφῶν
Δημητρίου Παιανιεὺς
τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν
ἕκαστον
δραχ.
𐅄̣𐅃· ἐγγυητὴς
Διοκλῆ<ς>
Φιλοκλέους
Πα[ρι]ανός· συνοικίαν
τὴν πρὸς τοῖς
160
Πυλαγόρου ἣν
ἐμεμίσθωτο
Τιμοκλείδης
Χῖος, διὰ τὸ
τετελευτηκέναι
Τιμ[ο]-
κλείδην,
ἐμισθώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μετὰ Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα
Βιοτέλης
Βιοτέλου
Ῥαμνούσιος
τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν
ἕκαστον δραχμ.
𐅅ΔΔ․․·
ἐγγυητὴς
Φίλιππος Φιλίππου
Κῶιος· τὸ
τεκτ[ο]ν[εῖον
ὃ] ἐμεμίσθωτο
Δη-
μήτριος
Ἡρακλεώτης,
διὰ τὸ δὲ τετελευτη[κέν]αι
Δημήτριον,
165
ἐμισθώσατο
εἰς ἔτη πέντε
τὰ μετὰ Καλλίσ[τρατ]ον
ἄρχοντα Ἕρμ[ων]
Ἀπολλων<ίδ>ου
Κρωπίδης τὸν
ἐνιαυτὸν ἕκα[στ]ον
[δρα]χμῶν ΗΔΔ·
ἐγγυητὴς
<Δ>άμων Πάτρωνος
Κοθωκίδης.
vacat
face
C right.col. II.
1
ὸ Κουρεῖ[ον
ὃ] ἐμεμί[σθω]- το
Ἀνδρόν[ικος],
διὰ δὲ τὸ ἐξ[ελ]-
5
θεῖν Ἀνδρόνι[κον]
ἐκ τῆς νήσου
[ἐμισ]- θώσατο
εἰς τὸν κατάλοι[πον
χρό]- νον Εὐπο̣[—
— — τὸν]
10
ἐνιαυτὸν ἕ[κασ]-
τον δραχ — — —
— — ἐγγυ. Εὑρ̣[ή]-
μων Ζή[νωνος]
Ἀναφλύστιος·
15
τὸ ἐγδοχ[εῖον]
τὸ ἐν — — — — —
․ΩΝΩΙ ὃ ἐμεμίσ-
θωτο Σ̣άτ̣[υρος?]
διὰ δὲ τὸ [ἐξελ]-
20
θεῖν ἐκ τῆ[ς
νή]- σου Σάτυ[ρον,
ἐμισ]- θώσατο
εἰς τ[ὸν κα]- τάλοιπον
χ[ρόνον] Ἀπέλλης
Κ[άλου]
25
Κοθωκίδης
[τὸν] ἐνιαυτὸν
[ἕκασ]- τον δραχ.
Η𐅄Δ· ἐγγυ. vac.
ἐμισθώσαμεν
30
δὲ καὶ τὸν [τόπον?]
τὸν πρὸς τῶι
[ἐργασ?]- τηρίωι
τῶι Καί- βωνος
διὰ τ[ὸ ἀ]- μίσθωτον
[τοῦ]-
35
τον εἶναι ․․․․․
δημόσιον εἰς
ἔ- τη δέκα τὰ [με]-
τὰ Καλλίστρατον
ἄρχοντα [ἐφ’ ὧι
ὁ]
40
[με]μισθω{ι}μένος?
{μεμισθωμένος}
οἰκοδομήσε̣ι̣
κ̣αὶ στεγάσει
ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων
ἀρξάμε- νος ἀπὸ
τῆς γω-
45
νίας τοῦ προθυ-
ρίου ἕως ἐπὶ
τὸ Ἀρτεμίσιον
τὸ ἐ- πὶ τῆς τριόδου
καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἀρτε-
50
μισίου ἕως
ἐπὶ τὴν γωνίαν
τοῦ προοικοδομήμα-
τος τῆς <σ>υνοικί-
ας τῆς Καίβωνο[ς]·
55
διελθόντος
δὲ τοῦ χρόνου
πα- ραδώσει τοῖς
ἐ- πὶ τὰ ἱερὰ γερὰ
καὶ στεγνά·
μισ-
60
θωτὴς Γλαῦκος
Γλαύκου Κορίν-
θιος τὸν ἐνιαυ-
τὸν ἕκαστον
δραχ. Η𐅄· ἐγγυ-
65
ητὴς Κρά̣-
της Εὐκράτου
Λακιάδης. ἐμισθώσαμεν
δὲ καὶ τὸν τόπον
70
τὸν πρὸς τῶι πυ-
λῶνι τοῦ ἱεροῦ
τὸν ἐγγώνιον
τὸν εἰς τὸ δύ-
σμα βλέπον[τα]
75
2 lines vacant τὸν
ὁμότοιχον τοῖς
Θεανδρι- [δ]ῶν
ἐργαστηρίοις
ἰς ἔτη δέκα τὰ
μετὰ Καλλίστρα-
80
τον ἄρχοντα ἐ-
φ’ ὧι τε ὁ μισθωσά-
μενος φράξει
καὶ στέγασαι
καὶ θυρῶσαι
ἐκ τῶν
85
ἰδίων καὶ το̣ῖν(?)
[ἐ]πιθυ[ρίοι?]ν
μὴ κω̣- θ̣ε̣σ̣․․․
καὶ παρα̣δ[ώ]-
σει τοῖς ἐπὶ
τὰ ἱερὰ πάντα
γερὰ καὶ
90
στεγνὰ καὶ τεθυ-
ρωμένα· μισθω-
τὴς Πρωτέας Ἀ-
πολλωνίδου
Μιλή- σιος τὸν
ἐνιαυτὸν
95
ἕκαστον Η𐅄Δ·
ἐγγυ. Δράκων
Δράκοντος Φλυε-
ύς. vacat
ID 1450 (140/139 BC)
and ID3.1450
http://epigraphy.packhum.org/text/63885
https://web.archive.org/web/20120603171137/http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/translations/1450eng2.htm
ἀγαθεῖ
τύχει.
[λόγος
τῶν κεχιροτονημένων
ἀνδρῶ]ν ἐπὶ τὴν
φυλακὴν τῶν
ἱερῶν χρημάτων
καὶ τὰς ἄλλας
εἰσόδους εἰς
τὸν ἐνιαυτὸν
τὸν ἐπὶ Ἁγνοθέου
ἄρχοντος, ἐπιμελητοῦ
δὲ [τῆς νήσου
— — c.17 — —]
[—
— —, κεχιροτονημένων
δὲ καὶ] ἐπὶ τὰ
ἱερὰ vac. Μνήσιδος
τοῦ Κτήσωνος
Ποταμίου καὶ
Σωσιγένου τοῦ
Σωσιγένου
Σημαχίδου vac.
καὶ δημοσίου
τοῦ κεχιροτονη[μένου
— — — — — —]
[—
— —. τάδε παρελάβομεν
παρ]ὰ τῶν πρότερον
κεχιροτονημένων
ἀνδρῶν ἐπὶ τὴν
αὐτὴν ἀρχὴν
Εὐθυδήμου
Ἀθμονέως καὶ
Εὐκτήμονος
Μελιτέως, καὶ
ἀ[πέδομεν — —
— — — — τοῖς μεθ’]
5
[ἡμᾶς κεχιροτονημένοις
ἀνδράσι]ν ἐπὶ
τὴν φυλακὴν τῶν
ἱερῶν χρημάτων.
vacat
[τάδε
παρελάβομεν?
σὺν τοῖς? — —]έροις
τοῖς ἐν τῶι τοῦ
Ἀπόλλωνος ναῶι
καὶ ἀργυρίωι
λογαίωι τῶι
πρότερον κοπέντι
[τ]οῦ στεφανηφόρου
ὃ παρελάβομεν
ἐν τῶι το[ῦ Ἀπόλλωνος
ναῶι? — — — — — —
— —]
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — ἀττικοῖς
τριωβόλοις
δυσίν. vac. ἐν τῶι
προδόμωι τοῦ
ναοῦ vac. δεξιᾶς
εἰσιόντων·
ἀργυρᾶ ἄστατα·
φιάλαι πρὸς
[τῶι τοίχωι ἐμ
πλινθείοις·
ἄρχει]
[ὁ
πρῶτος στίχος
κάτωθεν· φιάλη
λεία] ὡς ποδιαία,
ἡ ἐπιγραφή· ὁ
δῆμος ὁ Κώιων
Ἀπόλλωνι· ἄλλη
λεία ὡς τριπάλαστος,
ἀνάθεμα Μικίωνος
Κηφισιέως·
ἄλλη λεία ὡς
ποδ[ιαία, ἀνάθημα
Κώιων· ἄλλη]
[λεία
ὡς δακτύλων
δέκα τεττάρων,
ἀνάθεμα] Κώιων·
ἄλλη λεία ὡς
δακτύλων δέκα,
ἀνάθημα Ἀπολλωνίου.
ὁ δεύτερος
στίχος· φιάλη
λεία ὡς ποδιαία,
ἀνάθεμα Κώιων·
ἄλλ[η λεία ὡς
ποδιαία, ἀνάθη]-
With
Good Fortune
Account
of the men elected for the guarding of the sacred monies and the
other revenues for the year of Hagnotheos’ archonship, with
[...] overseer [of the Island... elected] for the sacred objects:
Mnesides son of Kteson son of Potamios and Sosigenes son of
Sosigenes son of Semachides and the elected public (scribe) [... The
following we took over fro]m those men elected previously for the
same office, Euthydemos of Athmonea and Euktemon of Melite and we
g[ave over... to those men elected after us] for (5) the guarding of
the sacred monies.
[...]eroi
those in the temple of Apollo and the stamped silver of the
crown-bearer collected earlier which we took over in the [...] with
two Attic triobols.
In
the Prodomos of the Temple. On the right going in. Unweighed
silver: phialai on [the wall in plinths. The first row from below:
smooth phiale] about a foot, the inscription: the demos of the Koans
to Apollo; another smooth about three palms, dedication of Mikion of
Kephisis; another smooth about a fo[ot, dedication of the Koans;
another smooth about fourteen fingers, dedication] of the Koans;
another smooth about ten fingers, dedication of Apollonios. The
second row: smooth phiale about a foot, dedication of the Koans;
anoth[er smooth about a foot dedication of the Koans and theoroi;
another smooth about finger]s
10
[μα Κώιων καὶ
θεωρῶν· ἄλλη
λεία ὡς δακτύλω]ν
εἴκοσι, ἀνάθεμα
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖο̣ν̣
ἐπιδόντων θεωρῶν
τῶν ἐκ Κῶ· ἄλλη
φολιδωτὴ ὡς
ποδιαία, ἀνάθημα
Παταίκου· ἄλλη
λεί[α ὡς ποδιαία,
ἀνάθημα Ζωίλου]
[Λοκροῦ·
ἄλλη ὡς πενταπάλαστος,
ἀνάθ]ημα Καλυμνίων·
ἄλλη λεία ὡς
ποδιαία, πρόσωπον
ἔχουσα Ἀπόλλωνος
Δηλίου καὶ
Ἀρτέμιδος, ἀνάθεμα
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖον
ἐπιδ[όντος Στράτωνος
Ἀραδίου· ἄλλη
λεία]
[ὡς
ποδιαία, ἀπερρωγεῖα
μέρος τι, ἔχο]υσα
ἐκτύπωμα τρίποδα
δελφικόν, ἀνάθεμα
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖον
ἐπιδόντων θεωρῶν
τῶν ἐκ Ῥόδου·
ἄλλη καρυωτὴ
ὡς ποδια[ία,
ἀνάθεμα Κλεομέδοντος].
[ἐν
τῶι τρίτωι στίχωι·
φιάλη ὡς τριπάλασ]τος,
ἔχουσα ἐκτύπωμα
ζωιδάριον ἐπὶ
δελφῖνος, ἀνάθημα
Ταραντίνων· ἄλλη
ποδιαία, ἔχουσα
πρόσωπον Ἀπόλλωνος,
ἀνά[θημα Ἱππάκου·
περικεφαλαία]
[περιηργυρωμένη
τις, τὰς δὲ
παραγναθί]δας
ἔχουσα σκυτίνας,
ἐφ’ ἧς ἐπιγραφή·
εὐχή· φιάλιον
λῖον ὡς δακτύλων
δέκα, ἀνάθημα
Μηνοφίλου·
ἄλλο λεῖον
ὡς τρι[πάλαστον,
ἀνάθημα Σωπάτρου
Συ]-
15
[ρακοσίου·
ἄλλο λεῖον
ὡς τριπάλαστον],
ἀνάθημα Μενεστράτου
Ἀθηναίου· ἄλλη
λεία ὡς ποδιαία,
ἀνάθημα Κώιων·
ἄλλη λεία ὡς
ποδιαία, ἀνάθημα
Δηλιάδων, χ[ορεῖον
ἐπιδόντων θεωρῶν
τῶν ἐκ Κῶ]·
[ἄλλη
καρυωτὴ ὡς
τριπάλαστος,
ἀνάθ]ημα Φιλώτου·
ἄλλη καρυωτή,
πρόσωπον ἔχουσα
Ἀπόλλωνος,
ἀνάθημα Ἡρακλίτου.
ἐν τῶι τετάρτωι
στίχωι· φιάλιον
φ[ολιδωτὸν ὡς
τριπάλαστον,
ἀνά]-
[θημα
Πάτρωνος· ἄλλο
λεῖον ὡς δακτύλων]
δέκα, πρόσωπον
ἔχον, ἀνάθημα
ἀρχιθεώρου
Φίλωνος· ἄλλη
[ἀκι]δωτὴ ὡς
παλαστῶν πέντε,
ἀνάθημα Ἀριστοφίλου·
ἄλλη λε[ία ὡς
ποδιαία, πρόσωπον
ἔχουσα, ἀνά]-
[θημα
Λυσιστράτου.
ἐν τῶι πέμπτωι
στίχωι· ἄλλ]η
λεία, πρόσωπον
ἔχουσα Ἀπόλλωνος,
ἀνάθημα Κώιων·
ἄλλη λεία ὡς
τριπάλαστος,
ἀνάθημα Σελεύκου·
φιάλιον μι[κρὸν
ὡς δακτύλων
τεττάρων, ἀνάθημα]
[Ἀπολλοφάνους.
<ἐν τῶι ἕκτωι
στίχωι>· φιάλιον
ἀκιδωτὸν ὡς
τρ]ιπάλαστον,
πρόσωπον ἔχον,
ἀνάθημα [Σ]ωθάλου·
φιάλη λεία ὡς
ποδιαία, ἀνάθημα
θεωρῶν τῶν ἐγ
Ῥόδου· περικεφαλάδ[ιον
πίλιον, ἀνάθημα
Κοσκάλου]·
(10)
twenty, dedication of the Deliades, with the theoroi from Kos donor
of the choreion; another pholiate about a foot, dedication of
Pataikos; another smoot[h about a foot, dedication of Zoilos of
Lokri; another about five palms ded]ication of the Kalumnians;
another smooth about a foot, with face of Delian Apollo and Artemis,
dedication of the Delaides, donor of the choreion [Straton son of
Aradios; another smooth about a foot with a part broken off, wit]h a
Delphic tripod image, dedication of the Deliades, the theoroi from
Rhodes donors of the choreion; another knobby about a foo[t,
dedication of Kleomedon. In the third row: phiale about three pa]lms
with an image of a figure on a dolphin, dedication of the
Tarantines; another a foot with face of Apollo, ded[ication of
Hippakos; a silvered helmet with cheek flaps] of leather, with the
inscription: vow; smooth phialion about ten fingers, dedication of
Menophilos; another smooth about three [palms, dedication of Sopater
of Syracuse; another smooth about three palms] (15) dedication of
Menestratos of Athens; another smooth about a foot, dedication of
the Koans; another smooth about a foot, dedication of the Deliades,
[donors of the choreion the theoroi from Cos; another knobby about
three palms ded]ication of Philetos; another knobby, with face of
Apollo, dedication of Heraklitos. In the fourth row: phialion
ph[oliate, about three palms dedication of Patron; another smooth
about fingers] ten with face, dedication of the chief theoros
Philon; another [ra]yed about five palms, dedication of
Aristophilos; another smoo[th about a foot, with a face, dedication
of Lysistratos. In the fifth row: ano]ther smooth with face of
Apollo, dedication of the Koans; another smooth about three palms,
dedication of Seleukos; phialion sm[all about four fingers,
dedication of Apollophanes. In the sixth row: rayed phialion about
thr]ee palms, with face, dedication of [S]othales; smooth phiale
about a foot, dedication of the theoroi from Rhodes; small helme[t
of felt, dedication of Koskalos; knobby phialion about three palms
with ]
20
[φιάλιον καρυωτὸν
ὡς τριπάλαστον
ἔχον ζωι]δάρια
δύο, ἀνάθημα
Χαρμίδου Μακεδόνος·
ἄλλο καρυωτὸν
ὡς τριπάλαστον,
ἔχον ζωιδάρια
δύο, ἀνάθημα
Χαρμίδου·
τρ̣[ιποδίσκον
δελφικόν, ἀνάθη]-
[μα
Ἀριστάρχου·
φιάλιον ὡς
ποδιαῖον ἔχον]
πρόσωπον Ἀπόλλωνος,
ἀνάθημα θεωρῶν
τῶν ἐγ Ῥόδου·
φιάλιον κάλχην
ὡς δακτύλων
ἕξ, ἀνεπίγραφον·
ἄλλη ἀκιδωτὴ
ὡ̣ς̣ [ποδιαία,
ἀνάθημα Καλυμνίων]·
[φιάλη
λεία ὡς ποδιαία,
ἀνάθημα Ῥοδίων]·
ἄλλη καρυωτὴ
ὡς τριπάλαστος,
ἔχουσα ζωιδάρια
δύο, ἀνάθεμα
Ἀρταπάτου·
ἄλλη ἀκιδωτὴ
ὡς ποδιαία,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀρχ[ίου·
ἄλλη — — — — —
— — — — — ἀνάθημα]
[Φιλοξένου·
φιάλη λεία ὡς
ποδιαία, ἀνάθη]μα
θεωρῶν τῶν ἐγ
Ῥόδου· ἄλλη
λεία ὡς ποδιαία,
ἀνάθημα θεωρῶν
τῶν ἐγ Ῥόδου·
φιάλη ἀκιδωτὴ
ὡς ποδιαία,
ἀνάθημα Δα[μασίου·
φιάλη καρυωτὴ]
[—
— —· ἄλλη ὡς
παλαστῶν πέντε,
ἀνάθημα] Ἐτεάρχου·
ἄλλη λεία ὡς
τριπάλαστος,
ἀνάθεμα Κώιων·
ἄλλη καρυωτὴ
ὡς τριπάλαστος,
ἀνάθεμα Ἀγίου·
ἄλλη λεία ὡς
ποδια[ία, ἀνάθεμα
Ἀκυ — — —· ἄλλη?]
25
[— — — — — ἀνάθημα
Χαρμύλου· ἄλλη
λ]εία ὡς ποδιαία,
ἀνάθημα Ἀγησιδήμου
Ῥοδίου· ἄλλη
λεία ὡς ποδιαία,
ἀνάθημα Τιμοστράτου·
φιάλας λείας
δύο [ὡ]ς πηχυαίας,
ὧ[ν τὴν ἐπιγραφὴν
οὐκ ἦν]
[συνιδεῖν·
φιάλας τρεῖς?
ὡς ποδιαίας,
ἀν]άθημα Στ[η]σίλεω·
ἄλλας τρεῖς
ὡς τριπαλάστους,
ἀνάθημα χορεῖον
Δηλιάδων ἐπιδόντος
βασιλέως Σελεύκου·
ἄλλη λεία [ὡς
ποδιαία ἧς τὴν
ἐπιγραφὴν οὐκ
ἦν]
[συνιδεῖν.
καὶ τὰς φιάλας
τὰς — — —]αν τοῦ
ἐντὸς θυρώματος·
φιάλη λεία ὡς
δακτύλων δέκα,
ἀνάθεμα Δαμοκρίτου·
ἄλλην λείαν
ὡς ποδιαίαν,
ἀνάθημα [Δηλιάδων
ἐπιδόντος Πτολεμαίου
τοῦ]
[Λυσιμάχου·
αὕτη διὰ τὸ
πεπτωκέν]αι ἦν
ἐν τῶι ναῶι καὶ
ἔχει ὑπογεγραμμένην
τὴν αἰτίαν· ἄλλην
λείαν ὡς ποδιαίαν
οὔκ ἔχουσα<ν>
πλινθεῖον, ἧς
ἡ ἐπιγρ[αφὴ οὐκ
ἦν συνιδεῖν?
καὶ αὕτη πέπτω]-
[κεν
καί ἐστιν ἐν τῶι
ναῶι· ἄλλην
λείαν, ἀνάθημα]
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖον
ἐπιδόντων Κώιων·
αὕτη ἐστὶν ὑπὲρ
τὸ ὑπέρθυρον·
ἄλλην λείαν
ὡς δακτύλων
δέκα, ἀνάθημα
[Δηλιάδων, χορεῖον]
ἐπιδόντων Κ[ώι]-
(20)
two figures, dedication of Charmides of Macedon; another knobby
about three palms with two figures, dedication of Charmides; [small
Delphic tripod, dedication of Aristarchos; phialion about a foot
with] face of Apollo, dedication of the theoroi from Rhodes; bronze
phialion about six fingers, uninscribed; another rayed about [a
foot, dedication of the Kalymnians; smooth phiale about a foot,
dedication of the Rhodians;] another knobby about three palms with
two figures, dedication of Artapatos; another rayed about a foot,
dedication of Arch[ias... dedication of Philoxenos; smooth phiale
about a foot, dedic]ation of the theoroi from Rhodes; another smooth
about a foot, dedication of the theoroi from Rhodes; rayed phiale
about a foot, dedication of Da[masias; knobby phiale... another
about five palms, dedication] of Etearchos; another smooth about
three palms, dedication of the Koans; another knobby about three
palms, dedication of Agias; another smooth about a foo[t dedication
of Aku... dedication of Charmylos; another s]mooth (25) about a
foot, dedication of Agesidamos of Rhodes; another smooth about a
foot, dedication of Timostratos; two smooth phialai about a cubit,
who[se incription was not legible; three phialai about a foot
de]dication of Stesileos; another three about three palms,
dedication of the Deliades with king Seleukos donor of the choreion;
another smooth [about a foot, whose inscription was not legible. And
the phialai...] the inner door: smooth phiale about ten fingers,
dedication of Damokritos; another smooth about a foot, dedication
[of the Deliades, with Ptolemy son of Lysimachos donor; this because
it had fallen was in the temple and has the reason inscribed;
another smooth about a foot without plinth, whose inscription [was
not legible?, this too fell and is in the temple; another smooth,
dedication] of the Deliades with the Koans donors of the choreion,
this is over the lintel; another smooth about ten fingers,
dedication [of the Deliades] donors [of the choreion] K[oans. On
the left going in. From above]
30
[ων. ἀριστερᾶς
εἰσιόντων·
ἄνωθε]ν ἀπὸ τῆς
φλιᾶς τοῦ ναοῦ·
φιάλην καρυωτὴν
ὡς τριπάλαστον
ἐμ π<λ>αισίωι,
ἀνάθημα Περιγένου
Χίου· αὕτη
πέπτωκεν [καί
ἐστιν ἐ]ν τῶ̣ι
ναῶ̣ι· ἄλλην
ἀκ-
[τινωτὴν
ὡς ποδιαίαν,
πρόσωπον ἔχουσ]αν,
ἀνάθημα Ἀθηνίδος·
ἄλλην λείαν
ὡς τριπάλαστον
ἐπάνω τοῦ πίνακος
τοῦ Ὠ̣κυ̣νίδου,
ἀνεπίγραφος·
ἄλλην λείαν
[ἐπὶ π]λαισίου·
ἄλλην λείαν
[ἐμ
πλαισίωι — —
— —, ἀνάθημα
Δημητρίο]υ Λοκ[ρ]κοῦ·
ἄλλην λείαν
ὡς τριπάλαστον,
ἀνάθημα Ἀν[τ]ιαίου·
ἄλλην λείαν
ὡς ποδιαίαν,
ἀνάθεμα Καλυμνίων·
ἄλλην λεί[αν
ὡς] τριπάλαστον,
ἀνάθη-
[μα
— — — — — — —· ἄλλην
λείαν ὡς τριπ]άλαστον,
ἀνάθημα Ἱεροκλέους̣,
ἀποτεθραυμένην·
ἄλλην κάλχην
ὡς τριπάλαστον,
ἀνάθημα Ἱεροκλέους,
περιτεθρα[υμένη]ν·
ἄλλη κάλχη ὡς
ποδι-
[αία,
ἀνάθημα Σιμμία
τοῦ — — — —· φι]άλιον
καρυωτὸν ὡς
τριπάλαστον
ἔχον ζωιδάριον
ἐπὶ χηνός, ἀνάθημα
Κώιων· ἄλλο
λεῖον ὡς τριπάλαστον,
πρόσωπον ἔχο[ν,
ἀν]άθημα Εὐκλέους
ΙΣ·
35
[κάλχην ὡς ποδιαίαν,
ἀνάθημα Διοκλέου]ς,
περιτεθραυσμένην·
σκάφιον ὡς
δακτύλων ἕξ,
ἔχον πρόσωπα
δύο, ἀνάθημα
Κώιων· ἄλλο
δακτύλων ἕξ,
ἀνάθημα Δαμοτί[μο]υ·
φιάλην καρυωτὴν
[ὡς
τριπάλαστον,
ἔχουσαν ἁρμάτιον]
καὶ ζωιδάρια,
ἀνάθημα Ἡρακλείδου·
ἄλλην λείαν
ὡς τριπάλαστον,
πρόσωπον ἔχουσαν
Ἀπόλλωνος,
ἀνάθημα Κώιων·
ἄλλην λ[εία]ν
ὡς τριπάλαστον,
ἀν[ά]-
[θεμα
Κώιων· τέτραχμον
κιστοφόρον,
ἀ]νάθημα Κλέωνος·
φιά[λην] λείαν
ὡς δακτύλων
δέκα, ἀνάθημα
Κώιων· ἄλλην
λείαν ὡς τριπάλαστον,
πρόσωπον ἔχουσαν,
ἀνάθημ[α Τ]ίμωνος·
ἄλλην καρ[υ]-
[ωτὴν
ὡς ποδιαίαν,
διαβεβρωμένην],
πρόσωπον ἔχουσαν
Ἀπόλλωνος,
ἀνάθημα Ῥησισθένου·
ἄλλην λείαν
ὡς πο<δι>αίαν,
πρόσωπον ἔχο<υσα>ν
Ἀπόλλωνος,
ἀνάθημα Δηλιάδ[ων]
χορεῖον καὶ
θ̣ε̣ω̣ρῶν
[τῶν
ἐκ Κῶ· ἄλλην
καρυωτὴν ὡς
τριπάλ]αστον,
ἔχουσαν κιττοῦ
φύλλα, ἀνάθημα
Ὑπερβάσσας·
ἄλλην καρυωτὴν
ὡς τριπάλαστον,
ἀνάθημα Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖον ἐπιδόντω[ν]
Μεγαλοπολιτῶν·
ἄ[λ]-
(30)
the doorpost of the Temple: knobby phiale about three palms in
frame, dedication of Perigenes of Chios; this has fallen [and is i]n
the Temple; another ra[yed about a foot, with face] dedication of
Athenis; another smooth about three palms above the plaque of
Okynides, uninscribed; another smooth [in f]rame; another smooth [in
frame... dedication of Demetri]os of Lok[r]is; another smooth about
three palms, dedication of An[t]iaios; another smooth about a foot,
dedication of the Kalymnians; another smo[oth about] three palms
dedi[cation...another smooth about three] palms dedication of
Hierokles, broken off; another bronze about three palms dedication
of Hierokles, crushed; another bronze about a fo[ot, dedication of
Simmias... phi]alion knobby about three palms with figure on goose,
dedication of Koans; another smooth about three palms with face
dedication of Eukles IS [bronze about a foot, dedication of Diokle]s
(35) crushed; bowl about six fingers with two faces, dedication of
the Koans; another six fingers, dedication of Damotimos; knobby
phiale [about three palms with small chariot] and figures,
dedication of Herakleides; another smooth about three palms, with
face of Apollo, dedication of the Koans; another s[moo]th about
three palms de[dication of the Koans; kistophoric tetradrachm
d]edication of Kleon; smooth phia[le] about ten fingers, dedication
of the Koans; another smooth about three palms, with face,
dedicatio[n of T]imon; another knob[by about a foot, leaky] with
face of Apollo, dedication of Rhesisthenes; another smooth about a
foot, w. face of Apollo, dedication of the Deliad[es], choreion and
the theoroi [from Cos; another knobby about three p]alms, with ivy
leaves, dedication of Hyperbassa; another knobby about three palms,
dedication of the Deliades with the Megalopolitai givin[g] the
choreion; a[nother smooth about a foot, dedication of the th]eoroi
40
[λην λείαν ὡς
ποδιαίαν, ἀνάθημα
θε]ωρῶν τῶν ἐγ
Ῥόδου· ἄλλην
λείαν ὡς ποδιαίαν,
ἀνάθημα Κώιων·
ἄλλην λείαν
ὡς ποδιαίαν,
πρόσωπον ἔχουσαν,
ἀνάθημα Δηλιάδω[ν],
χ[ο]ρ[εῖον ἐπιδόντων]
[θεωρῶν
τῶν ἐκ Κῶ· ἄλλην
λείαν ὡς π]οδιαίαν,
ἀνάθημα Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖον ἐπιδόντων
Ἰσθμιατῶν θεωρῶν·
ἄλλην λείαν
ὡς δακτύλων
δέκα, πρόσωπον
ἔχουσα<ν>,
ἀν[επίγραφον·
ἄλλην λείαν]
[ὡς
ποδιαίαν ἀνάθημα
Κώιων· ἄλ]λην
λείαν ὡς ποδιαίαν,
ἀνάθημα Κώιων,
πρόσωπον ἔχουσαν
Ἀπόλλωνος·
φιάλην λείαν
ὡς δακτύλων
δέκα, ἀνάθημα
Ποπλίου· [ἄλλην
λείαν ὡς ποδιαίαν],
[πρόσωπον
ἔχουσαν Ἀπόλλωνος,
δια]βεβρωμένην,
ἀνάθημα Δηλιάδων,
ἐκ Κῶ· ἄλλην
λείαν ὡς τριπάλαστον,
ἀνάθημα Παυσανίου·
ἄλλην λείαν
ὡς ποδιαίαν,
ἀνάθημα Κώ[ιων
καὶ θεωρῶν·
ἄλλην λείαν]
[ὡς
τριπάλαστον,
ἀνάθημα Κώιων]·
ἄλλην λείαν
ὡς ποδιαίαν,
πρόσωπον ἔχουσαν
Ἀπόλλωνος,
ἀνάθημα Δηλιάδων,
χορεῖον ἐπιδόντων
θεωρῶν τῶν ἐκ
Κῶ· ἄλλην [λείαν
ὡς ποδιαίαν,
ἀνάθημα]
45
[Δηλιάδων, χορεῖον
ἐπιδόντω]ν θεωρῶν
τῶν ἐκ Κῶ· ἄλλην
λείαν ὡς ποδιαίαν,
Δηλιάδων, χορεῖον
ἐπιδόντος Λαμέδοντος
ὑπὲρ βασιλέως
Σελεύκου·
ἄλλην λεία[ν
ὡς ποδιαίαν,
ἀνάθημα Κώιων],
[οὐκ
ἔχουσαν — — —
— — — —· φιάλ]ας
τέτταρας ἐν τῶι
δεξιῶι τοίχωι,
ἀνάθημα Ἁγνωνίδου·
ἄλλας τρεῖς,
ἃς ἀνέθηκαν
Λυσίθεος καὶ
Ἡγίας· ἄλλας
τρεῖς, αἷς ἐπιγραφή·
ὁ [δῆμος ὁ Ἀθηναίων
ἐπ’ ἄρ]-
[χοντος
Ἀριστόλα· μάχαιραν
ἱππικὴν ἐ]λεφαντίνην,
ἀνάθημα Θυμώιδα·
[θ]ύρωμα ἔχον
ἥλους περιηργυρωμένους
ἀκανθώτους
ἑξήκοντα, ὧν
κολοβοὺ[ς
τέτταρας καὶ
ἐν τῶι κρυπτῆ]-
[ρι
ἑπτά· ἐπίσπαστρα
ἔχοντα δύ]ο
ἀνθεμωτά, ὧν τὸ
ἓν ἀποκατεαγός,
τὸ δὲ κάταγμα
ἐν τῶι ναῶι·
ἀσπιδίσκας
δύο ἐχούσας
πρόσωπα Γοργόν[ων]·
τεῖ μιᾶι πρόσεισιν
πτέρυγες [δύο
καὶ ὄφεων κεφαλαὶ
τέτ]-
[ταρες
καὶ οὐραὶ
συμπεπλεγμένα]ι
δύο· τεῖ δ’
ἑτέραι πρόσεστιν
πτέρυξ μία καὶ
ὄφεων κεφαλαὶ
δύο· αἵδε νῦν
ἀποπέπτωκαν
καὶ εἰσὶν ἐν
τῶι ναῶι καὶ
οὐραὶ συμπεπλεγμέ[ναι
δύο αἱ ἐπὶ τῆς
Γοργό]-
(40)
from Rhodes; another smooth about a foot, dedication of the Koans;
another smooth about a foot, with face, dedication of the
Deliade[s], with the [theoroi from Kos giving the choreion; another
smooth about a f]oot, dedication of the Deliades, with the Isthmian
theoroi giving the choreion; another smooth about ten fingers,
wit[h] face, un[inscribed; another smooth about a foot, dedication
of the Koans; an]other smooth about a foot, dedication [of the
Koans, with face of Apollo; smooth phiale about ten fingers,
dedication of Publius; [another smooth about a foot, with face of
Apollo l]eaky, dedication of the Deliades, from Cos; another smooth
about three palms, dedication of Pausanias; another smooth about a
foot, dedication of the Co[ans and theoroi; another smooth about
three palms, dedication of the Koans] another smooth about a foot,
with face of Apollo, dedication of the Deliades, with the theoroi
from Kos donors of the choreion; another [smooth about a foot,
dedication of the Deliades, donors of the choreion] (45) the theoroi
from Cos; another smooth about a foot, of the Deliades, with Lamedon
giving the choreion on behalf of king Seleukos; another smoot[h
about a foot, dedication of the Koans, without... ph]ialai four on
the right wall, dedication of Agnonides; another three, which
Lysitheos and Hegias dedicated; another three on which is the
inscription the [demos of the Athenians with Aristolas archon;
cavalry sword] of ivory, dedication of Thymoidas; [d]oor with sixty
silvered acanthus nails, [four] sheare[d and seven in the
krypter; with two epispastra] flowered, one broken off and the
piece in the temple; two disks with Gorgon faces, on the one there
are also wings [two and four heads of snakes and intertwined tails]
two, and on the other there is one wing and two heads of snakes;
these have now fallen off and are in the Temple and the intertwined
tails [two of the Gorgon are on the posts of the do]or;
50
[νος πρὸς ταῖς
φλιαῖς τοῦ
θυρώμα]τος·
ἀστέρες ἀργυροῖ
ἐπικεχρυσωμένοι
ὧν τῆ<ς> μὲν ἐνδέξια
φλιᾶς ἐνλίπουσ<ι>ν
ἀπὸ τοῦ ὅλου
εἴκοσι ἐννέα,
τῆς δὲ ἐναρίστερα
τριάκοντα [τρεῖς.
καὶ ἐν τῶι]
[ἐναρίστερα
τοίχωι φιάλας
τρε]ῖς, ἃ ἀνέθηκεν
Μενεθάλης καὶ
Φιλωνίδης·
ἄλλας τρεῖς,
ἃς ἀνέθηκεν
Τιμάνθης καὶ
Λυκόφρων· πτερὸν
ἀνεπίγραφον,
ὁλκὴ 𐅃𐅂· φιάλας
τρ[εῖς? ἐμ πλαισίωι,
ἃς ἀνέθηκεν
Ἑστιαῖος]
[καὶ
Ἀρχικλῆς ὑπὲρ
Νικίου τ]οῦ
Νικηράτου Ἀθηναίου·
στεφάνια χρυσᾶ
τέτταρα μύρρινα,
ἀνάθημα Χαρμίδου,
ὁλ. ΔΙΙΙΙΙ· ἄλλο
χρυσοῦν μύρρινον,
ἀνάθημα Χαρμίδου,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅂𐅂[ΙΙΙ𐅁·
ἄλλα χρυσᾶ
μύρρινα]
[τρία,
ἀνέθηκαν ἐμπορίου]
ἐπιμεληταί,
φύλλα ἔχοντα
ὀγδοήκοντα
ἕν, ἄστατα· σκύφους
ὑαλίνους ἐν
κιβωτίωι δύο,
ἀνάθημα Λευκίου
Ἐρυκίου·
στεφάνιον χρυσοῦν
ἄστατ[ον ἐν τῶι
προδόμωι],
[ἀνάθημα
Θεοδώρου·
δακτ]υλίδιον
ἐπὶ ταινιδίωι
ὑπόχρυσον σιδηροῦν,
λιθάριον ἔχον
καὶ ἁ[λ]ύσιον
ἀργυροῦν, ἀνάθημα
Σέκτου Ῥωμαίου·
στεφάνιον χρυσοῦν,
ἀνάθη[μα Διονυσίου
Παιανιέως],
55
[ὁλκὴ 𐅃ΙΙΙΙΙ𐅁·
καθετῆρ]α διάλιθον,
ἄστατον, κηρίαν
ἔχοντα ὑπεραμμένην
καὶ θυρεοὺς
τετταράκοντα
ὀκτ[ὼ] καὶ ἡμίση
δύο, καὶ ἐμ μέσωι
μύρτα καὶ ἀθύρμα[τα,
ὧν ὁλκὴ σὺν τοῖς
ἀποπεπτωκόσιν]
[ἀθύρμασιν
δυσὶν καὶ μύρτοις]
τρισίν vac. δακτύλιον
σάρδιον ἔχοντα
γλύμμα Ἀπόλλωνος,
ἀνάθημα Στρατονίκης,
ὁλ. Δ· ἄλλον
δακτύλιον ἔχοντα
σάρδιον ἐν τῶι
γλύμματ[ι Νίκης?,
ἀνάθημα Στρατο]-
[νίκης,
ὁλ. σὺν τῶι κίρκωι
ΔΔΔ]𐅃𐅂· ἄλλος
δακτύλιος
πλατὺς λίθον
ἔχων, ἀνάθημα
Τίμωνος, ὁλ.
𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· ἄλλο
δακτυλίδιον
ῥωμαϊκὸν ἔχον
ἀνθράκιον
γεγλυμμένον,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ,
ἐν̣ [τῶι γλωττοτόμωι·
πορ]-
[πίον
ἐπὶ κιονίου
ξυλίνου, ἀν]άθημα
βασιλίσσης
Φίλας, ὁλκὴ
σὺν λιθαρίοις
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· σφαῖραν
ἐν ἐ<λ>ύτρωι
καὶ σιραῖς
ἅλυσιν ἔχουσαν,
ἀνάθημα Φίλας,
ὁλ. 𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
πετάλια ἀπ’
ἀνδ[ριάντων καὶ
ψηγ]-
[μάτια,
ὧν ὁλκὴ τῶν μὲν
χρυσ]ῶν 𐅃𐅂Ι, τῶν
δὲ ἀργυρῶν ΙΙΙΙ·
μετ’ αὐτῶν
καττιτέρινον
ἱστιαιικόν,
μακεδονικὰ
δύο, δινάριον,
στεφάνιον ἐπὶ
δαδίου καὶ
δερματίου
φοιν[ι]κοῦ ἔχο[ν
τρίφυλλα ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂]·
(50)
gilded silver stars of which twenty-nine from the whole are missing
from the right doorpost and from the left thirty [three. And in
the Left Wall: three phialai] which Menethales and Philonides
dedicated; another three, which Timanthes and Lykophron dedicated;
uninscribed wing, weight 6; phialai th[ree? in frame which Hestiaios
and Archikles dedicated on behalf of Nikias] son of Nikeratos of
Athens; four gold myrtle crowns, dedication of Charmides, wt 10.5;
another gold myrtle, dedication of Charmides wt 3 [.3 1/2; three
other small gold crowns dedicated by the market] overseers, with
eighty-one leaves, unweighed; two glass skyphoi in a small chest,
dedication of Lucius of Eryx; unweighed small gold crown unweigh[ed
in the Prodomos, dedication of Theodoros; small ri]ng on
ribbon gilded iron, with stone and si[l]ver chain, dedication of
Sextus of Rome; small gold crown, dedicati[on of Dionysius of
Paiania, weight 5.5 1/2; collar] (55) with stones, unweighed with
wax wrapped underneath and forty-eigh[t] windows and two halves, and
in the middle myrtle and toys [the weight of which with the two
fallen off toys and myrtles] three; ring with sardian carving of
Apollo, dedication of Stratonike, wt 10; another ring with sardion
in the
carving [Victory?, dedication of Stratonike, wt with the circle 3]6;
another ring flat with stone, dediction of Timon, wt 7.4; another
small ring with carved Roman flower, wt 4.3 in [the carving; pin on
small wood column, ded]ication of queen Phila, weight with the
stones 3.3; ball in case and in cords with chain, dedication of
Phila, wt 58.2; leaves from st[atues and scrapings the weight of the
go]ld 6.1 of the silver .4; with them a tin Istian, two Macedonians,
a dinarius, small crown on torch and leather p[a]lm with 28
trefoils, wt 4; 3 small gold crowns which Stratonike dedicated],
60
[στεφάνια χρυσᾶ
ΙΙΙ, ἃ ἀνέθηκε
Στρατο]ν̣ί̣κ̣η̣,
τὸ ἓν οὐκ ἔχει
τοὺς κίρκους
οὐδὲ τοὺς
δεσμούς, ὁλ.
𐅄ΔΙΙΙ· στέφανον
δρύινον, ὃν ἀνέθηκεν
Λύσανδρος, ὁλ.
𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλον
κίττινον, ἀνάθημα
Πτολ[εμαίου
βασιλέως, ἔχοντα]
[κορύμβους
πέντε διαλελυμένους,
ὁλ. Η]𐅃𐅂· ἄλλον
δάφνης, ὃν ἀνέθηκεν
ὁ βασιλεὺς
Δημήτριος, ὁλ.
𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂· ἄλλον
δάφνης, ἀνάθημα
Πολυκλείτου,
ὁλ. 𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλον δάφνης,
ἀνάθημα Φιλοκλ[έους,
ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλον]
[κιττοῦ,
ἀνάθημα Δηλιάδων,
ἔ]χοντα κορύμβους
τρεῖς κατεαγότας,
ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔ𐅃· ἄλλον
μυρρίνης, ἀνάθημα
Εἰμιλίκου
Καρχηδονίου,
ὁλ. ΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλον δάφνης,
ἀνάθημα βασιλέω[ς
Ἀντιγόνου, ὁλ.
𐅄Δ𐅂· ἄλλον]
[δάφνης,
ἀνάθημα βασιλέως
Ἀντιγό]νου, ὁλ.
𐅄Δ· ἄλλον δάφνης,
ἀνάθημα Ἀντιπάτρου,
ὁλ. ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
ἄλλον δάφνης,
ἀνεπίγραφον,
ὁλ. ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλον δάφνης,
ἀνάθημα Πν[υταγόρου,
ὁλ. 𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂· ἄλλον]
[δάφνης,
ἀνάθημα Φάρακος,
ὁλ. ΔΔ]ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλον δάφνης,
ἀνάθημα βασιλέως
Ἀττάλου, ὁλ.
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλον δάφνης
καινὸν ἀνεπίγραφον,
ὁλ. Η· ἄλλον
δάφνης, ἀνάθη[μα
Γαίου Ὀκταίου,
ὁλ.]
65
[𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλον μυρρίνης,
ἀνάθημ]α Τίμωνος
Συρακοσίου,
ὁλ. Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλους
δάφνης τέτταρας,
ἀνάθημα βασιλέως
Εὐμένους, ὧν
ὁλκὴ σὺν τοῖς
ἀποπεπτωκόσι
φύλλοις, τοῦ
π[ρώτου 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂,
τοῦ δευ]-
[τέρου
Η, τοῦ τρίτου
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂,
τοῦ] τετάρτου
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλον δάφνης,
ἀνάθημα Κοίντου
Φαβίου ὑπάτου
ὁλ. Η· ἄλλον
δάφνης, ἀνάθημα
Αὔλου Ἀττιλ̣ίου,
ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃[𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλον δάφνης,
ἀνάθημα]
[Τίτου
Κοινκτίου,
ὁλκὴ 𐅄ΔΔΔ]Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλον δρύινον,
ἀνάθημα Λευκίου
Κορνηλίου,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τοῖς
ἱμανταρίοις
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλον δάφνης,
ἀνάθημα Γναίου
Μαελλί[ου, ὁλ.
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ]·
[ἄλλον
δάφνης, ἀνάθημα]
Ποπλίου Κορνηλίου,
ὁλ. Η· ἄλλον
δάφνης, ἀνάθημα
Δηλιάδων, ἐπιδόντος
Λευκίου
Κορνηλίου, ὁλ.
[𐅄]ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλος δάφνης
καινὸς ἀνεπίγραφος,
ὁλ. [𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλον δάφνης,
ἀνά]-
[θημα
Γαίου Λιβίου
ὁλκὴ σὺ]ν τοῖς
ἱμανταρίοις
Η· ἄλλον δάφνης,
ἀνάθημα Κοίντου
Μααρκίου, ὁλκὴ
σὺν τῶι λιναρίωι
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
ἄλλον δάφνης,
ἀνάθημα βασιλέως
Ἀντιγόνου, ὁλ.
[ΔΔ𐅃· ἄλλον]
(60)
the one lacks its circles and bonds, wt 60.3; oak crown which
Lysander dedicated wt 64; another ivy, dedication of Ptol[emy king
with five separated clusters wt 10]6; another of laurel, which king
Demetrios dedicated wt 72; another of laurel, dedication of
Polykleitos wt 67.3; another of laurel, dedication of Philokl[es wt
77.3; another of ivy, dedication of the Deliades w]ith three broken
clusters, wt 75; another of myrtle dedication of Eimilikos of
Carthage, wt 21.3; another of laurel dedication of kin[g Antigonos,
wt 61; another of laurel, dedication of king Antigo]nos, wt 60;
another of laurel, dedicaiton of Antipater, wt 38.2; another of
laurel, uninscribed, wt 37; another of laurel, dedication of
Pn[ytagoras, wt 62; another of laurel, dedication of Pharax, wt 4]3;
another of laurel, dedication of king Attalos, wt 98.3; another of
laurel new uninscribed wt 100; another of laurel dedica[tion of
Gaius Octavius, wt 97; another of myrtle dedicatio]n (65) of Timon
of Syracuse, wt 13; four others of laurel, dedication of king
Eumenes, whose weight with the dropped leaves, the fi[rst 89, the
second 100, the third 94, the] fourth 98; another of laurel,
dedication of Quiintus Fabius consul, wt 100; another of laurel,
dedication of Aulus Atilius, wt 9[9; another of laurel, dedication
of Titus Quinctius, weight 9]9; another oak, dedication of Lucius
Cornelius, weight with the straps 99; another of laurel, dedication
of Gnaeus Maelli[us wt 98.3; another of laurel, dedication] of
Publius Cornelius, wt 100; another of laurel, dedication of the
Deliades, Lucius Cornelius donor, wt [4]4; another of laurel new
uninscribed wt [99; another of laurel, dedication of Gaius Livius
weight wi]th the straps 100; another of laurel, dedication of
Quintus Marcius, weight with the thread 99.2; another of laurel,
dedication of king Antigonos, wt [25; another of laurel new
unin]scribed
70
[δάφνης καινὸν
ἀνεπί]γραφον,
οὗ ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλον δάφνης,
πρόσωπα ἔχοντα
Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ
Ἀρτέμιδος,
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλον, ἐπιγραφή·
ἀνάθημα Μηνοδότου,
ὁλ. Δ· στ[έφανον
— — — —]
[—
— — — — — — —·
στε]φάνην περὶ
θωρακείωι ἐπὶ
κιονίου, ἧς
ὁλκὴ σὺν τοῖς
λιναρίοις καὶ
τοῖς ἄλλοις
ἱμανταρίοις,
ἀνεπίγραφος,
ὁλ. Η· ․․․․ω̣νίου
κατεαγὸς σὺν
λιναρίωι κα[ὶ
— — — — — —]
[—
— — — —· λειμώνιον
χρυσοῦν], ἀνάθημα
Σόλωνος, ὁλ.
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
στεφάνιον δάφνης,
ἀνάθημα Τίτου
Πορκίου, ὁλκὴ
σὺν τῶι ἱμάντι
καὶ λιναρίωι
𐅄, ἔχον τρίφυλλα
δέκα· ἄλλον
μυ[ρρίνης — — —
— —]
[στέφανον
χρυσοῦν — — —,
ἀνάθη]μα Ἀπολλοδότου,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλον
μυρρίνης, ἀνάθημα
Ἀμινίου, ὁλ.
𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι· ἄλλον
μυρρίνης, ἀνάθημα
Νεμερίου Γναίου,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅂· ἄλλα
δύο, Πατίρου
Νεμ— — — —
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — ὁλ.
𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ𐅁· ἄλλον
δάφνης, ἀνάθημα
Μαάρκου Καβινίου,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅂· ἄλλος,
οὗ ὁλκὴ σὺν
τοῖς λιναρίοις,
ἀνάθημα Σέκτου
Ῥωμαίου, ὁλ.
Η· φιάλας λε[ίας
ἑπτά, ἐπιγραφὰς
ἐχούσας Ἀπόλλω]-
75
[νος Δηλίου,
ὁλκὴ τῆς πρώτης]
ὁλ. ΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂,
τῆς δευτέρας
ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂,
τῆς τρίτης
ΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂,
τῆς
τετάρτης ΗΔΔΔ̣𐅂,
τῆς πέμπτης
ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ,
τῆς ἕκτης ΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂Ι,
[τῆς ἑβδόμης
ΗΔΔΔ — —· φιάλας
καρυωτὰς ἓξ
— — — — — —]
[—
— — ὁλκὴ τ]ῆς
πρώτης Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ,
τῆς δευτέρας
ΗΗ, τῆς τρίτης
Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ, τῆς
τετάρτης Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂̣𐅂ΙΙ,
τῆς πέμπτης
Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂· τῆς
ἕκ[της Η — — — —
— — — — —· φιάλην?
— — λίθους
ἔχουσαν]
[—
— — — — — — — — —
ἐλλείπουσ?]ιν
λίθοι δύο, ὁλκὴ
σὺν τοῖς λίθοις
Η𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂, ἀνάθημα
βασιλίσσης
Στρατονίκης·
ἄλλην, ἀνάθημα
Φιλίππου, ἧς
ὁλ. Η𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂· οἰνοχόας
δύο, ἐπιγ[ραφὰς
ἐχούσας· Ἀπόλλωνος
Δηλίου — — —
— — —]
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— —] ἐπὶ τοῦ ὠτός,
ἧς ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
κηρῶι 𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
τῆς δευτέρας
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
κηρῶι 𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ταύτης οὐκ ἔχει
τὴν κεφαλὴν ἡ
Σκύλλα· ἡδ[υποτίδιον
ἐπιγραφὴν ἔχον·
Ἀπόλ]-
[λωνι
Ἀφροδίτει οὗ
ὁλκὴ ΔΔ]ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
χύματα ἐν κιβωτῶι
[τ]οῦ καλοῦ
χρυσίου ἕνδεκα,
ὧν ὁλκή, τοῦ
πρώτου δραχμαὶ
Η𐅄̣ΔΔ[Δ𐅂], τοῦ
δευτέρου ὁλ.
ΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ,
τοῦ τρίτου ὁλ.
[— — —, τοῦ τετάρτου
ὁλ. — — — — —]
(70)
wt of which 99.3; another of laurel, with faces of Apollo and
Artemis, 99; another, inscription dedication of Menodotos wt 10;
cr[own..ia]dem around the thorakeion on pedestal, weight of which
with the strings and the other straps uninscribed wt 100 [...]onios
broken with string an[d...leimonion gold] dedication of Solon wt 99;
small crown of laurel, dedication of Titus Porcius, weight with the
strap and string 50, with ten trefoils; another of
my[rtle..edica]tion of Apollodotos wt 3; another of myrtle,
dedication of Aminius wt 8.1; antoher of myrtle, dedication of
Nemerius Gnaeus wt 2; another two, of Patiros Nem[...] wt 1.5 1/2;
another of laurel, dedication of Marcus Gabinius, wt 2; another
weight of which with the strings, dedication of Sextus of Rome, wt
100; smooth phialai [seven, with inscriptions of Delian Apollo,
weight of the first ] (75) wt 137; of the second 144, of the third
138, of the fourth 131, of the fifth 142.3, of the sixth 132.1 [of
the seventh 130 ... six knobby phialai ... weight o]f the first
199.3, of the second 200, of the third 190, of the fourth 192.2, of
the fifth 191, of the six[th ... are miss]ing two stones, weight
with the stones 163, dedication of queen Stratonike; another
dedication of Philip, wt of which 166; two oinochoai insc[ribed of
Delian Apollo...] on the handle, weight of which with the wax 689.2;
weight of the second with the wax 684; the Scylla of this one does
not have its head; hed[ypotidion with inscription to Apollo,
Aphrodite of which the weight 4]9.3; eleven ingots in chest of the
good gold, weight of the first of which drachmai 18[1] of the second
138.3 of the third wt [... of the fifth 115, of the si]xth
80
[τοῦ πέμπτου
ΗΔ𐅃, τοῦ ἕκ]του
Η𐅂, τοῦ ἑβδόμου
Η𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂, τοῦ ὀγδόου
Η𐅄ΔΔΙΙ, τοῦ
ἐνάτου 𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅁,
τοῦ δεκάτου
Η𐅄, τοῦ ἑνδεκάτου
Δ𐅂ΙΙ· τοῦ χίρονος
χρυσίου χύματα
τέττα[ρα, ὧν ὁλκή,
τοῦ πρώτου —
—, τοῦ δευ]-
[τέρου
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂, τοῦ τρίτου]
𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ,
τοῦ τετάρτου
Δ𐅂· ἄλλο χύμα
οὗ ἐπιγραφή
ἐστιν, ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλο, ἀπὸ τῶν
ἀγαλμάτων, ὁλ.
ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
χρυσο<ῖ> τέτταρες,
ὧν ἀλε[ξάνδρειος
εἷς καὶ φιλίππειοι
τρεῖς]·
[ψήγματα
— — — — —] ὁλ.
ΗΗΗΗ𐅄𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
λεπίδια τεθλασμένα
ἐν ὀθονίωι, ὁλ.
Δ𐅂𐅂· ταῦτα ἐν
κοιτίδι ἔχει
λεπίδας ἀργυρᾶς
ἐπιχρύσους
καὶ ὑποχάλκους,
κεχρυσωμέν[ας
— — — — — — — —]
—
— — — — — — — — —
— τούτων
αἱ ὑπόχαλκοι
ἄγουσιν Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλα χρυσίδια,
ἐν οἷς ἔνεστιν
καὶ χρυσοῦς,
ὧν ὁλκὴ χωρὶς
τοῦ χρυσοῦ
𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ𐅁· ταῦτα
ἔνεστιν ἐν κ[οιτίδι
— — — — — — — — —
—]
[στεφάνην
ἣν ὁ θεὸς ἔχει]
σάρδιον ἔχουσαν·
στέφανος δάφνης
πρὸς τῶι τοίχωι
κρεμάμενος·
στρεπτὸν πρὸς
τῶι τοίχωι
κρεμάμενον·
στέφανος δάφνης
ἐπ̣’ [ἀργυροῦ
κώνου, ἀνάθεμα
Περσέως]·
85
[ἄλλον δάφνης
ἐπ’ ἀργυροῦ
κών]ου, ἀνάθημα
Δημητρίου· ἄλλον
ἐν λημνίσκωι,
φύλλα ἔχοντα
τετταράκοντα
δύο σὺν τοῖς
προσδεδεμένοις
ἐν βιβλιδίωι,
ἀνάθημα Μιν[άτου·
στεφάνιον πρὸς
ται]-
[νιδίωι,
ἀνάθημα Μικίων]ος,
φύλλα ἔχον ΔΔΙΙ·
τοῦτό ἐστιν ἐν
γλωττοτόμωι·
ἄλλο στεφάνιον
χρυσοῦν δρυός,
ἀνάθημα Φερεκλέους,
φύλλα ἔχον ΔΔ·
ἄλλο πρὸς
ται[νιδίωι, ἀνάθημα
Θηρομάχου]
[Προβαλισίου,
ὁλ. — — —· ἄλλο]
περιειλημένον
λημνίσκωι, ἀνάθεμα
Κοίντου Ῥωμαίου,
φύλλα ἔχον
ΔΔΔ𐅃Ι· φιάλην
καρυωτὴν λίθους
ἔχουσαν ἐντελεῖς,
ἀνάθημα βασιλίσσης
Στρατονίκης
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — φιάλα]ς
ἐν πλαισίοις
καρυωτάς, πρόσωπα
ἐν ἑκατέραι, τὸ
μὲν Ἀπόλλωνος,
τὸ {υ} δὲ Ἀρτέμιδος,
ἀνάθημα Θέωνος
Χίου· θυμιατήριον
π[ομπικὸν χαλκοῦν
περικεχρυσωμένον],
[τινὰ
δὲ λελοπισμένον]·
ἄλλο ἔλαττον
πομπικὸν χαλκοῦν
κεχρυσωμένον,
τινὰ δὲ περιλελοπ̣ισμένον·
κανοῦν δελφικὸν
χρυσοῦν περικεχρυσωμέν[ον,
ἀνάθημα βασιλίσσης
Στρατονίκης,
οὗ ὁλ. Η]·
(80)
101, of the seventh 157, of the eighth 170.2, of the ninth 76.1/2 of
the tenth 150, of the eleventh 11.2; four ingots of the worse gold
[the weight of which...of the second 81, of the third] 64.3; of the
fourth 11; another ingot whose inscription is wt 99; another from
the statues wt 28.3; four gold pieces of which one alex[andrian and
three philippics; scrapings...] wt 452.3; shattered pieces of foil
in cloth wt 12; these in box have gilded silver and gilded bronze
foil [...] of these the bronze weigh 13; other gold pieces among
which is also a gold coin, weight of which apart from the gold coin
2.4 1/2; these are in b[ox..iadem which the god wears] with sardion;
crown of laurel hanging on the wall; collar hanging on the wall;
crown of laurel on [silver pinecone, dedication of Perseus; another
of laurel on a silver pine]cone (85) dedication of Demetrius;
another in a ribbon, with forty two leaves with the bindings in a
tablet, dedication of Min[atos; small crown on ribbon, dedication of
Mikio]n, with 22 leaves; this is in a casket; another small gold oak
crown dedication of Pherekles with 20 leaves; another on a rib[bon,
dedication of Theromachos of Probalisis wt ... another] wrapped with
a ribbon, dedication of Quintus of Rome, with 26 leaves; knobby
phiale with complete stones, dedication of queen Stratonike [...two
phial]ai in frames knobby, faces in each, the one of Apollo, the
other of Artemis, dedication of Theon of Chios; processional censer
[gilded bronze, some peeled] another smaller processional (censer)
gilded bronze, some peeled at the edges; Delphic basket gilded
gold[??] [dedication of queen Stratonike wt of which 100; oak crown,
dedicat]ion of
90
[στέφανον δρύινον,
ἀνάθημ]α Λευκίου
Κορνηλίου, ὁλ.
Η· ἄλλον στέφανον,
Λευκίου Ἀντωνίου
ἀνάθημα, οὗ ὁλ.
Η· ἄλλο<ν>, ἀνάθημα
Μαάρκου <Σ>αβινίου,
οὗ ὁλ. Η· ἄλλ[ους
δύο, ἀνάθημα
Φ̣α․․․ατου
Φιλα]-
[ίδου·
ἄλλο δάφνινον,
πρόσωπ]ον ἔχον
Ἀπόλλωνος,
ἀνάθημα Μαάρκου
Κοιντίου, ὁλκὴ
σὺν τῶ[ι] δερματίωι
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ· ἄλλο
στεφάνιον μικρόν,
οὗ ὁλκὴ σὺν
τοῖς ἱ[μανταρίοις
ΙΙΙΙ𐅁· δακτυλίδιον
ῥωμαιικὸν]
[σιδηροῦν
περίχρυσον]
ἔχον χαρακτῆρα·
βωμίσκον ὑάλινον
περικεχρυσωμένον,
βάσιν ἔχοντα
ἐξ ἐλέφαντος
καὶ θύας· καλιάδιον
ἐλεφάντινον
[— — — — —, ἀνάθημα
Ἅννωνος Καλχηδο]-
[νίου·
στλεγγίδιον,
ἀνάθημα Αἰγλ]άνορος
Κυρηναίου, ὁλ.
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂· πέταλα
χρυσᾶ ἀπ’ ἀνδριάντων,
ὁλ. 𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ· στεφάνια
δύο χρυσᾶ ἐν
θήκει, ἀνάθ[η]μα
Ἡγησίου Θυ[μαιτάδου·
— — — — — —]
[—
— —, ἀνάθημα
Φιλοκλέους
ἐκ] Κοίλης·
ἄλλο Βότρυος
Ἡρακλεώτου,
ὁλ. 𐅃· τύπιον
χρυσοῦν, ἀνάθεμα
Στράτωνος, ἄστατον.
ἀργυρᾶ· φιάλην
ἐν πλαισί[ωι,
ἀνάθημα Ἀλεξάνδρου
τραγωιδοῦ]·
95
[ἄλλην πρόσωπον
ἔχουσαν, ἀνάθ]ημα
Ἀρχίου. πρὸς
τῆι φλιᾶ τῆς
ἀριστερᾶς·
πετάλιον χρυσοῦν
ἀπ’ ἀνδριάντος,
οὗ ὁλ. 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
φιάλας λείας
δύο, ἀνάθημα
Κώιω[ν· ἄλλας
τρεῖς, ἀνάθημα
Ξενοκλέους]
[ΟΠ․․ΔΗ․․·
λεπίδια ἀπ’
ἀνδριάντων] χρυσᾶ,
ὧν ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂.
καὶ τάδε ἐξαιρεθέντα
ἐ[κ τῶν θησ]αυρῶν·
στεφανηφόρου
Δ𐅃𐅂· προυσιακὸν
τέτραχμον· δίδραχμον
[φιλίππειον·
τέτραχμον ἀλεξάνδρειον]·
[δραχμὴν
ἀλεξανδρείαν·
ἐφεσίας] τρεῖς·
δινάρια ἕξ· δίνομα
δύο· τροπαιοφόρα
[— — δραχμ]ὰς
π̣λιν<θ>οφόρους
ΔΔ, ἡμιρόδια
ΔΔΔΔ· ταῦτα
ἐν σταμνίωι οὗ
τ[ὸ Α· στεφάνιον
χρυσοῦν μύρρινον]
[καρδίαν
ἔχον χαλκῆν καὶ
φύλ]λα 𐅄ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ·
λεπίδα χρυσῆν
ἀπ’ ἀνδ[ριάντος],
ἧς ὁλ. ΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
ἄλλα πέταλα
ἀπ’ ἀνδριάντων
καὶ φύλλα ἀπὸ
στεφάν[ων — — —
— — — —· πέταλα
χρυσᾶ]
[ἀπ’
ἀνδριάντων, ὁλ.
ΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ· τέ]τραχμον
ἀντιόχειον καὶ
δραχμὴν τριποδηφόρον
καὶ κιρκίον
ἀργυροῦν καὶ
πετάλια καὶ
χαλκοῦ νομίσματ[ος
παντοδαποῦ καὶ
ΝΙ․․․․ΙΟΝ τὰ
πάντα 𐅄· στεφάνου
χρυσοῦ ἀστάτου]
(90)
Lucius Cornelius wt 100; another crown Lucius Antonius dedication wt
of which 100; another, dedication of Marcus Sabinius, wt of which
100; two oth[ers, dedication of Ph...atos son of Philaides; another
laurel] with face of Apollo, dedication of Marcus Quintius, weight
with the leather 4.4; another small crown weight of which with the
st[raps .4 1/2; Roman ring gilded iron] with impress; small gilded
glass altar, with base of ivory and citronwood; small ivory hut
model [... dedication of Hanno of Carthage; fillet, dedication of
Aigl]anor of Cyrene wt 13; gold leaves from statues, wt 3.2; two
gold crowns in a box, dedication of Hegesias son of Thy[maitades...
dedication of Philokles from] Koile; another of Botrys of Herakleon
wt 5; gold relief dedication of Straton, unweighed. Silver: phiale
in fram[e dedication of Alexander the tragic actor; another with
face, dedic]ation (95) of Archias. On the left doorpost: gold leaf
from statue wt of which 4; two smooth phialai, dedication of the
Koan[s; another three, dedication of Xenokles... pieces of foil from
statues] gold wt of which 84. And the following taken fr[om the
treas]ures: 16 stephanephorics; prusian tetradrachm; didrachm
[philippic; alexandrian tetradrachm; alexandrian drachm; ephesians]
three; six dinarii; two dinummi; triumphorics [...] 20 plinthophoric
drachmas; 40 half-rhodians; these in jar with the [A; small gold
myrtle crown with bronze heart and lea]ves 77; gold foil from the
stat[ue] wt of which 26; other leaves from statues and leaves from
crow[ns...gold leaves from statues wt 21.3; te]tradrachm antiochean
and tripodephoric drachma and silver circle and leaves and bronze
coin[s various and ... in all 50; of unweighed gold crown 10
trefoils in ...; small crown] wound
100
[τρίφυλλα Δ ἐν
— — — —τωι· στεφάνιον
π]εριειλιγμένον
ἐν λημνίσκωι,
ἀνάθημα Διονυσίας·
ἄλλο ἐπὶ ταινιδίου,
ἀνάθημα Ξενοφίλου,
ἄστατον· λεπίδας
[χρυσᾶς, ὁλ.
ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂, παρὰ
τοῦ ἑλόντος]
[ἱεροσύλου
Διογνήτου σὺν
δακ]τυλίοις
τρισὶν καὶ τοῖς
λίθοις τοῖς
ἐνοῦσιν ἐν αὐτοῖς,
ὧν ὁλ. ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
καὶ ἀργυροῦν
ἐλασμάτιον.
καὶ τὰ ἐξαιρεθέντα
ἐκ τῶν θησ[αυρῶν·
στεφανηφόρου
Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· καὶ
περσικὸν]
[τέτραχμον
καὶ δραχμὴν —
— — τ]έτραχμην καὶ
κισσ̣οφόρον
τέτραχμον·
φιλιππείους
δραχμὰς τρεῖς·
δινάρια Δ𐅃 ἥμισυ·
ἀλεξανδρείαν·
ἐφεσίας Δ𐅂[𐅂𐅂𐅂·
συμμαχικὰ ΙΙΙΙ·
ῥόδια 𐅃· — — —
—· στεφανηφόρου
δραχμάς]·
[—
— —· πλινθοφόρους
καὶ ἡμιρόδι]α
τρία καὶ διώβολα
τέτταρα καὶ
χαλκὸν ἀδόκιμον
ἐν ῥακίωι καὶ
λεπίδια χρυσᾶ
τὰ ἐκ τοῦ θησαυροῦ
Δ𐅃Ι· ταῦτα ἔνεστιν
ἐν στ[αμνίωι —
— — — — —· φιάλην
λείαν ἐν πλαισίωι,
ἀνά]-
[θημα
Α̣Ρ̣Η̣Μ̣ — — —
— — — — — — — —]
δύο, ἀνάθε̣μα
Χαίρωνος
[Λακ]εδαιμονίου·
σκάφιον, ἀνάθεμα
Αὔλου Γερραίου·
γραμματεῖον
δίπτυχον λελευκωμένον,
[ἐν ὧι γεγραμμένον
ἐστὶ τὸ δάνεισμα
τὸ Δηλίων ὃ ἔφασαν
δανεῖσαι Ἑρ]-
105
[νιεῦσι καὶ ἡ
συγγραφὴ ἡ κατὰ]
Ἑρμιονέων γεγραμμένη·
καὶ ἄλλα γραμματῖα
λελευκωμένα
ὀκτώ, ἐν οἷς
ἔνεισι γεγραμμένοι
χρηματισμοί·
φιάλας χρυσᾶς
ΔΔ καὶ δ[οκιμεῖον
αἷς ἐπιγραφή·
Δήλιοι Ἀπόλλωνι
Ἀρτέμιδι Λητοῖ],
[ὁλ.
σὺν τῶι δοκιμείωι
ΧΧ· ἄλλ?]ας φιάλας
ἀργυρᾶς ΔΔΙΙΙ,
αἷς ἐπιγραφὴ
ἡ αὐτή, ὧν ὁλ.
σταθισῶν ἐν τῶι
ζυγῶι ΧΧΗΗΗ𐅄𐅂𐅂·
κανᾶ τρία, ἐφ’
ὧν ἐπιγραφὴ ἡ
αὐτή, ὁλκὴ σ[ταθισῶν
ἐν τῶι ζύγωι —
— — —· καὶ τὰ
ἐξαιρε]-
[θέντα
ἐκ τῶν θησαυρῶν·
— — —]ια 𐅄ΔΙΙ·
δραχμὰς ἀττικὰς
τρεῖς· τέτραχμα
στεφανηφόρα
τέτταρα σὺν
καττιτερίνωι
ἑνί· δινάρια
δέκα· ἐφεσίας
Δ̣[— — — — — — —
— — τέτραχμον
φιλίππειον —
— — — — — —]
[—
— — — — — — — —·
τέτ?]ραχμα δύο·
συμμαχικὰς
τρεῖς, ὧν τὰ δύο
ἀχρεῖα· δραχμὴν
βοτρυοφόρον·
πέταλα χρυσᾶ
δύο, ὁλ. ΔΔΔ𐅃·
ταῦτα ἔνεστιν
ἐν στ[αμνίωι —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — —]
[—
— υς καὶ προσδέδεται?·
λεπίδα ἀ]π’
ἀνδριάντων τὴν
ἀνενεχθεῖσαν
ὑπὸ τῶν δημοσίων
καὶ ἄλλας λεπίδας
τὰς εὑρεθείσας
παρὰ τοῖς ἱεροσύλ[ο]ις
σὺν χύμ[ατι — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — —]
(100)
in ribbon, dedication of Dionysia; another on ribbon, dedication of
Xenophilos, unweighed; pieces of foil [gold wt 33, from the captured
temple-robber Diognetos with ri]ngs three and the stones in them wt
of which 48; and silver probe. And the following taken from the
treasure[s: 14 stephanephoric; and persic tetradrachm and drachm...
t]etradrachm and kissophoric tetradrachm; three phillipic drachmas;
15 dinarii half; alexandreian; ephesians 1[4; allied 4; rhodian 5...
stephanephoric drachmas; plinthophorics and half-Rhodia]ns three and
diobols four and unstamped bronze in a rag and 16 pieces of gold
foil from the treasury; these are in a ja[r... smooth phiale in
frame, dedication...] two, dedication of Chairon of [Sp]arta; bowl,
dedication of Aulus Gerraius; whitened folding writing tablet [in
which is written the loan of the Delians which they said they loaned
to the Hernieuts and the contract written against?] (105) Hermione;
and eight other whitened tablets in which business agreements have
been written; 20 gold phialai and prooftest with the inscription the
Delians to Apollo, Artemis, Leto, weight with the prooftest 2000...]
23 silver phialai, with the same inscription, wt of them weighed in
the yoke 2252; three baskets with the same inscription, weight [of
them weighed in the yoke...And the objects taken out of the
treasures...]ia 62; three Attic drachmas; four stephanephorics with
one tin; ten dinarii; ephesians [... phillipic tetradrachm..]rachmas
two; three allied, two of which are useless; drachma with
grapecluster; two gold leaves wt 35; these are in the ja[r... foil
f]rom the statues brought by the public officials and other pieces
of foil found among the temple-robbers with ing[ot ... these are in]
110
[— — — — — ταῦτα
ἔνεστιν ἐν] στάμνωι·
στεφάνιον χρυσοῦν,
ἀνάθημα Σμικυθίωνος
Ἀναγυρασίου,
ἄστατον διὰ τὸ
καρδίαν ἔχειν
χαλκῆν, ἔχον τὰ
[— — — — — —· — —
— — ἀνάθημα Ποπιλλίου
— — — — — — — —]
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — ψήγματα
ἀργυρᾶ, ἐν οἷς
καὶ ποδάριον
ἀπὸ θυμιατηρίου
καὶ ὀνφαλὸς
ἀπὸ φιάλης, ὧν
ὁλ. ΔΔΔΔ· τέτραχμον
προυσιακό[ν·
— — — — — ἀνάθημα?
Ἀναξίλεω — —
— — — — — — — — —]
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — α
δύο, ἀνάθημα
Λευκίου
Πετρωνίου. καὶ
τὸ ἐξαιρεθὲν
ἐκ τῶν θησαυρῶν·
δι<νά>ρια ΔΙΙ·
περσικὴν δραχμήν·
ἐφέσια τροπαι[οφόρα
— — — — — — —]
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — αιρει
ὧν ὁλ. 𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
φιάλην ὡς ποδιαίαν,
ἀνάθημα Σωκράτου
Ταραντίνου·
ἄλλη ὡς τριπάλαστος,
ἀνάθημα Διογένου
Ἱεροπολε[ίτου·
— — — — — — — — —
— —]
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — ενος,
ὁλ. ΗΗΔΔΔ. καὶ
τὸ ἐξαιρεθὲν
ἐκ τῶν θησαυρῶν·
στεφανηφόρα
τέτραχμα Δ𐅃·
δίδραχμον φιλίππειον·
δινάρια ὀκτώ·
— — — — — — — — —]
115
— — — — — — — —
ἀργυρᾶ ἐπίχρυσα
καὶ θραυμάτια
ἀργυρᾶ, ὧν ὁλ.
𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· καὶ
χαλκὸν ἀχρεῖον
ἐν βιβλιδίωι·
κα]ὶ ταῦτά ἐστιν
ἐν στάμνωι, οὗ
τὸ Δ· στε[φαν—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — —]
[—
— — — — — — —
περι]ειλιγμένον
λημνίσκωι, ἔχον
τρίφυλλα ὀκτὼ
περὶ λημ<ν>ίσκωι,
ἀνάθημα Αὔλου
Ποστομίου·
φιάλιον λεῖον,
ἔχον ῥωμαϊκὴν
ἐπι[γραφὴν — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — —]
[—
— — — — — — —·
χαλκο]ῦν ἐπικεχρυσωμένον
ἀπὸ τῆς τραπέζης·
φιάλην λείαν,
ἀνάθημα Διογένου
ἀρχιθεώρου
Κώιων· στεφάνιον
ἐπὶ βάσεως
φοινικ — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — —
—
— — — — — — — — —
ἐπὶ
βάσεως, ἔχον
φύλλα δέκα,
ἄστατον· στέφανον
ἐπὶ ταινιδίου
χρυσοῦν, ἔχοντα
φύλλα δέκα, οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· Γάιος
Ὀηράτιος, ἄστατ[ον·
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — —]
[—
— — — —, ἀνάθημ]α
Τημαλλάτου
Γερραίου·
ἐπιχυσ[ί]διον
ἐν θήκει, ἀνάθημα
τοῦ αὐτοῦ, ἄστατον·
στέφανον ἀργυροῦν
τὸν τῆς Ῥώμης,
ὁλκὴ σὺν καττ[ιτέρωι
— — —. καὶ τάδε
ἀργυρᾶ· φιάλας
εἴκοσι, ἐφ’
αἷς τὸ Α, ὁλ.
ΗΗΗ𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλας]
(110)
a jar; small gold crown, dedication of Smikythion of Anagurai,
unweighed because it has a bronze heart, with the [... dedication of
Popillius...] silver scrapings including the foot of a censer and
boss of a phiale wt of which 40; prusian tetradrach[m... of
Anaxileos...] two, dedication of Lucius Petronius. And that taken
out of the treasures: 12 dinarii; persic drachma; ephesian
trophy[bearer...] wt of which 2.3; phiale about a foot, dedication
of Sokrates of Taras; another about three palms dedication of
Diogenes of Hieropol[is...] wt 230. And that taken out of the
treasures: 15 stephanephoric tetradrachms; phillipic didrachm; eight
dinarii [...] (115) gilded silver and silver pieces wt of which 54;
and useless bronze in a tablet; and these are in the jar with the D;
cro[wn... wrap]ped around with ribbon, with eight trefoils around
the ribbon, dedication of Aulus Postumius; smooth phialion with
Roman in[scription... br]onze gilded from the table; smooth phiale,
dedication of Diogenes chief theoros of the Koans; small crown on
base palm [...] on base with ten leaves, unweighed; gold crown on
ribbon with ten leaves with the inscription Gaius Uratius(?),
unweigh[ed... dedicati]on of Temallatus son of Gerraios; small
beaker in case, dedication of the same, unweighed; the silver crown
of Rome, weight with ti[n... And the following silver: twenty
phialai with the A, wt 303; another seven with the B wt]
120
[ἑπτά, ἐφ’ αἷς
τὸ Β, ὁλ.] 𐅅ΗΗ· ἄλλη
λεία, ἐφ’ ᾗ τὸ
Γ, ὁλ. Η· ἄλλη
λεία, ἐφ’ ᾗ τὸ
Δ, ὁλ. Η ἄλλας
δύο, ἐφ’ αἷς
τὸ Ε, ὁλ. ΗΗ· ἄλλας
ΔΔ, ἐφ’ αἷς τὸ
Ζ, ὁλ. ΧΧ· ἄλλας
ΔΔ, ἐφ’ αἷς τὸ
Η, [ὁλ. ΧΧ· ἄλλας
ΔΔ, ἐφ’ αἷς τὸ
Θ, ὁλ. ΧΧ· ἄλλας
ΔΔ𐅃Ι, ἐφ’ αἷς
τὸ Ι],
[ὁλ.
ΧΧ𐅅Η· ἄλλας
ΔΔ], ἐφ’ ὧν τὸ Κ,
ὁλ. ΧΧ· ἄλλας
ΔΔ, ἐφ’ αἷς τὸ
Λ, ὁλ. ΧΧ· ἄλλας
τέτταρας, ἐφ’
αἷς τὸ Μ, ὁλ. ΗΗΗΗ·
σκάφια δύο, ἐφ’
ὧν τὸ Ν, ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
φιάλας [Δ𐅃Ι,
ἐφ’ αἷς τὸ Ξ, ὁλ.
Χ𐅅Η· σκάφιον,
ἐφ’ οὗ τὸ Ο, ὁλ.
𐅄· ἄλλο]
[πρόσωπον
ἔχον Π]ανός, ἐφ’
οὗ τὸ Π, ὁλ. 𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
φιάλας δύο,
ἐφ’ αἷς τὸ Ρ, ὁλ.
ΗΗ· ἄλλας δύο,
ἐφ’ αἷς τὸ Σ, ὁλ.
ΗΗ· ποτήριον,
ἐφ’ οὗ τὸ T, ὁλ.
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅀· φιάλη,
ἐφ’ ἧς τὸ [Υ, ὁλ.
Η· ἄλλη, ἐφ’ ἧς
τὸ Φ, ὁλ. ΔΔΔΔΙ·
ἄλλη, ἐφ’ ἧς τὸ
Χ, ὁλ. Η· ἄλλη,
ἐφ’ ἧς τὸ Ψ, ὁλ.
Η· σκάφιον],
[ἐφ’
οὗ τὸ Ω, ὁλ. ΔΔ]ΔΔ·
φιάλαι δύο, ἐφ’
ὧν τὰ ΑΑ, ὁλ. ΗΗ·
ἄλλαι δύο, ἐφ’
ὧν τὰ ΒΒ, ὁλ. ΗΗ·
ἄλλη, ἐφ’ ἧς τὰ
ΓΓ, ὁλ. Η· ἄλλη,
ἐφ’ ἧς τὰ ΔΔ, ὁλ.
Η· σκάφιον, ἐφ’
οὗ τ[ὰ ΕΕ, ὁλ.
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃Ι· φιάλας
δύο, ἐφ’ αἷς
τὰ ΖΖ, ὁλ. ΗΗ· ἄλλας
δύο, ἐφ’ αἷς
τὰ]
[ΗΗ,
ὁλ. ΗΗ· ἄλλας
δύο], ἐφ’ ὧν τὰ
ΘΘ· ἄλλη μία,
ἐφ’ ἧς τὰ ΙΙ, [ὁ]λ.
Η· τὰ Ι[Ι] {δύο}
κάππα {=ΚΚ} οὐ
παρεδόθη· ἄλλη,
ἐφ’ ἧς τὰ ΛΛ,
ὁλ. Η· ἄλλη, ἐφ’
ἧς τὰ ΜΜ, ὁλ. 𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλας [ΔΔ, ἐφ’
ὧν τὰ ΝΝ, ὁλ. ΧΧΔΔΔΔ𐅂·
ἄλλας ΔΔ, ἐφ’
ὧν τὰ ΞΞ, ὁλ. ΧΧ·
ἄλλην, ἐφ’ ἧς
τὰ ΟΟ, ὁλ. ΗΔΔ]·
125
[ἄλλας δύο, ἐφ’
ὧν τὰ] ΠΠ, ὁλ. ΗΗ·
ἄλλη, ἐφ’ ἧς τὰ
ΡΡ, ὁλ. Η· σκάφιον,
ἐφ’ οὗ τὰ ΣΣ,
ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂·
ἄλλο, ἐφ’ οὗ
τὰ ΤΤ, ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
φιάλας δ[ύο,
ἐφ’ ὧν τὰ ΥΥ, ὁλ.
ΗΗ· ἄλλην, ἐφ’
ἧς τὰ ΦΦ, ὁλ. Η·
ἄλλην, ἐφ’ ἧς
τὰ ΧΧ, ὁλ. Η· ἄλλην,
ἐφ’ ἧς τὰ ΨΨ],
[ὁλ.
Η· σκάφιον? ἐφ’
οὗ τὰ] ΩΩ, ὁλ.
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλο,
ἐφ’ οὗ τὰ ΑΑΑ,
ὁλ. 𐅄· ἄλλο,
ἐφ’ οὗ τὰ ΒΒΒ,
ὁλ. 𐅄· φιάλας
ΔΔ, ἐφ’ αἷς τὰ
ΓΓΓ, ὁλ. ΧΧ· ἄλλας
ΔΔ, [ἐφ’ αἷς τὰ
ΔΔΔ, ὁλ. ΧΧ· ἄλλας
ΔΔ, ἐφ’ αἷς τὰ
ΕΕΕ, ὁλ. ΧΧ· ἄλλας
δύο, ἐφ’ αἷς
τὰ ΖΖΖ, ὁλ. ΗΗ]·
[ἄλλας
δύο, ἐφ’ αἷς
τὰ ΗΗΗ], ὁλ. ΗΗ·
ἄλλην, ἐφ’ ἧς
τὰ ΘΘΘ, ὁλ. Η·
ἄλλας ΔΔ, ἐφ’
αἷς τὰ ΙΙΙ, ὁλ.
ΧΧ· σκάφιον, ἐφ’
οὗ τὰ ΚΚΚ, [ὁλ.
— —· φιάλας Δ𐅃,
ἐφ’ αἷς τὰ ΛΛΛ,
[ὁλ. ΧΧΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλας δύο, ἐφ’
αἷς τὰ ΜΜΜ, ὁλ.
ΗΗ· ἄλλην ἐφ’
ἧς]
[τὰ
ΝΝΝ, ὁλ. — —· σκ]άφιον
ἐφ’ οὗ τὰ ΞΞΞ, ὁλ.
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂· φιάλας
ΔΔ, ἐφ’ αἷς τὰ
ΟΟΟ, ὁλ. ΧΧ· ἄλλας
ΔΔ, ἐφ’ [αἷ]ς τὰ
ΠΠΠ, ὁλ. ΧΧ· ἄλλας
ΔΔ, ἐφ’ αἷς τὰ
ΡΡΡ, ὁλ. ΧΧ· [ἄλλας
δύο, ἐφ’ αἷς
τὰ ΣΣΣ, ὁλ. ΗΗ·
ἄλλας δύο, ἐφ’
αἷς τὰ ΤΤΤ, ὁλ.
ΗΗ]·
[ἄλλας
δύο, ἐφ’ αἷς
τὰ ΥΥΥ], ὁλ. ΗΗ·
ἄλλην κολοβήν,
ἐφ’ ἧς τὰ ΦΦΦ,
ὁλ. Η· ἄλλην, ἐφ’
ἧς τὰ ΧΧΧ, ὁλ. Η·
[ἄλλ]ας τρεῖς,
ἐφ’ ὧν τὰ ΨΨΨ, ὁλ.
ΗΗΗ· ἄλλας δύο,
ἐφ’ ὧν τὰ [ΩΩΩ,
ὁλ. ΗΗ· ἄλλας
ΔΔ, ἐφ’ αἷς τὰ
ΑΑΑΑ, ὁλ. ΧΧ·
ἄλλας δύο, ἐφ’
αἷς τὰ]
(120)
700; another smooth with the G, wt 100; another smooth with the D,
wt 100; two others with the E wt 200; 20 others with the Z wt 2000;
20 others with the H [wt 2000; 20 others with the Y wt 2000; 26
others with the I wt 2600; 20 others] with the K wt 2000; 20 others
with the L wt 2000; four others with the M wt 400; two bowls with
the N wt 87; phialai [16 with the J wt 1600; bowl with the O wt 50;
another with face of P]an with the P wt 58; two phialai with the R
wt 200; two others with the S wt 200; cup with the T wt 46; phiale
with the [U wt 100; another with the F wt 40.1; another with the X
wt 100; another with the C wt 100; bowl with the V wt 4]0; two
phialai with the AA wt 200; another two with the BB wt 200; another
with the GG wt 100; another with the DD wt 100; bowl with [the EE wt
45.1; two phialai with the ZZ wt 200; another two with HH wt 200;
another two] with YY; another one with the II wt 100; the KK was not
handed over; another with the LL wt 100; another with the MM wt 54;
[20 others with the NN wt 2041; 20 others with the JJ wt 2000;
another with the OO wt 120; two others with ] (125) the PP wt 200;
another with the RR wt 100; bowl with the SS wt 91; another with the
TT wt 96; two phialai [with the UU wt 200; another with the FF wt
100; another with the XX wt 100; another with the CC wt 100;
...with] the VV wt 83; another with the AAA wt 50; another with the
BBB wt 50; 20 phialai with the GGG wt 2000; 20 others [with the DDD
wt 2000; 20 others with the EEE wt 2000; two others with the ZZZ wt
200; two others with the HHH] wt 200; another with the YYY wt 100;
20 others with the III wt 2000; bowl with the KKK [wt...] 15 phialai
with the LLL [wt 2384; two others with the MMM wt 200; another with
the NNN wt...bow]l with the JJJ wt 91; 20 phialai with the OOO wt
2000; 20 others with the PPP wt 2000; 20 others with the RRR wt 2000
[two others with the SSS, wt 200; two others with the TTT wt 200 two
others with the UUU] wt 200; another docked with the FFF wt 100;
another with the XXX wt 100; three others with the CCC wt 300; two
others with the [VVV wt 200; 20 others with the AAAA wt 2000; two
others with the BBB(B) wt 200; two others]
130
[ΒΒΒ, ὁλ. ΗΗ· ἄλλας
δύο], ἐφ’ ὧν τὰ
ΓΓΓΓ, ὁλ. ΗΗ·
ἄλλας ΔΔΙΙΙ,
ἐφ’ αἷς τὰ ΔΔΔΔ,
ὁλ. [ΧΧΗΗΗ?· ἄλλ]ας
δύο, ἐφ’ ὧν τὰ
ΕΕΕΕ, ὁλ. ΗΗ·
ἄλλας ΔΔ𐅃Ι,
ἐφ’ ὧν τὰ ΖΖΖΖ,
[ὁλ. ΧΧ𐅅Η· ἄλλας
δύο, ἐφ’ αἷς
τὰ ΗΗΗΗ, ὁλ. ΗΗ?·
ἄλλη, ἐφ’ ἧς τὰ
ΘΘΘΘ, ὁλ. Η]·
[ἄλλην,
ἐφ’ ἧς τὰ ΙΙΙΙ,
ὁλ. Η· ἄλλη, ἐφ’
ἧς τὰ ΚΚΚΚ, ὁλ.
Η· ἄλλη, ἐφ’ ἧς
τὰ Λ[ΛΛΛ, ὁλ. Η]·
ἄλλας ΔΔ, ἐφ’
αἷς τὰ ΜΜΜΜ, ὁλ.
ΧΧ· ἄλλας δύο,
ἐφ’ αἷς τὰ ΝΝΝΝ,
ὁλ. ΗΗ· [ἄλλας
δύο, ἐφ’ αἷς
τὰ ΞΞΞΞ, ὁλ. ΗΗ·
ἄλλας ΔΔ, ἐφ’
αἷς τὰ ΟΟΟΟ,
ὁλ. ΧΧ· ἄλλη, ἐφ’
ἧς τὰ ΠΠΠΠ, ὁλ.]
[Η·
ἄλλας ΔΔ, ἐφ’
αἷς τὰ ΡΡΡΡ, ὁλ.]
ΧΧ· ἄλλ[ας δύο,
ἐφ’ αἷς τὰ ΣΣΣΣ,
ὁλ. ΗΗ]· ἄλλας
δύο· ἐφ’ αἷς
τὰ ΤΤΤΤ, ὁλ. ΗΗ·
ἄλλας δύο, ἐφ’
αἷς τὰ ΥΥΥΥ,
ὁλ. ΗΗ· ἄλλας
δύο, ἐφ’ αἷς
τὰ Φ[ΦΦΦ, ὁλ. ΗΗ?·
σκάφιον, ἐφ’
οὗ τὰ ΧΧΧΧ, ὁλ.
𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλο,
ἐφ’ οὗ τὰ ΨΨΨΨ,
ὁλ. 𐅄]
[𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλο, ἐφ’ οὗ
τὰ ΩΩΩΩ, ὁλ.]
𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ· ἄλλο,
ἐφ’ οὗ τὰ ΑΑΑΑΑ,
ὁλ. 𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλο, ἐφ’ οὗ
τὰ ΒΒΒΒΒ, ὁλ.
𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλο,
ἐφ’ οὗ τὰ ΓΓΓΓΓ,
ὁλ. ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλ[ας φιάλ]ας
[ΔΔ, ἐφ’ αἷς τὰ
ΔΔΔΔΔ, ὁλ. ΧΧ·
ἄλλας ΔΔ, ἐφ’
αἷς τὰ ΕΕΕΕΕ,
ὁλ. ΧΧ· ἄλλας
ΔΙΙΙΙ, ἐφ’ αἷς]
[τὰ
ΖΖΖΖΖ, ὁλ. ΧΗΗΗΗ·
ἄλλας δ]ύο, ἐφ’
αἷς τὰ ΗΗΗΗΗ, ὁλ.
ΗΗ· ἄλλας ΔΔ𐅃Ι,
ἐφ’ αἷς τὰ ΘΘΘΘΘ,
ὁλ. ΧΧΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
σκάφια τέτταρα
καὶ κυλίκιον
μόνωτον, [ἐφ’ οἷς
τὰ ΚΚΚΚΚ, ὁλ.
ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂. καὶ
τάδε ἄστατα·
φιάλη ἐν πλαισίωι],
135
[ὡς δακτύλων
ΔΔ, ἀνάθεμα ὑ[πὲρ
βασιλέως Ἀντιόχου·
ἄλλην ἐν πλαισίωι
ὡς δακτύλων
ΔΔ, ἀνάθημα Κώιων·
ἄλλην λείαν
ὡς δακτύλων
δέκα ἑ̣πτ̣ά,
[ἀνάθεμα Εὐέλθοντος·
ἄλλην ἐμ πλαισίωι,
ὡς δακτύλων
δέκα, ἀνά]-
[θημα
— — — — — — — — —
— — — —]· ἠθμὸς
ἐν πλαισίωι,
ἀνάθημα Γαίου
Ποστομίου·
ἐκτύπωμα ἐν
πλαισίωι ὑρκανοῦ
κυνός· φιάλας
ὀκτώ, ἐφ’ αἷς
τὸ Α, [ὧν ὁλκὴ
𐅅ΗΗΗ· σκάφια
ἓξ καὶ κιβώτιον
ἐφ’ ὧν τὸ Β, ὁλκὴ
ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ]·
[κλάσματα
καὶ φιάλια δύο,
κα]ὶ χελιδόνια
δύο καὶ ἀρυσᾶν
καὶ ἡδυποτίδια
δύο καὶ θηρικλείδιον
οὐκ ἔχον οὔτε
ὦτα οὐτε πυθμένα
καὶ σκύφιον
ἓν ὦς ἔχ[ον, ἐφ’
ὧν τὸ Γ, ὁλκὴ —
— — —· λιβανωτίδα
ἐκ]
[τεττάρων
ἐκτυπωμένην ἐφ’]
ἧς τὸ Δ, ὁλ. ΗΗΗ·
λιβανωτίδιον
τὴν βάσιν κεκολοβωμένον,
ἐφ’ οὗ τὸ Ε, ὁλ.
𐅄· φιάλια τέτταρα,
ἐφ’ οἷς τὸ Ζ,
ὁλ. Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ[𐅂·
φιάλιον? ἔμβλημα
ἔχον Ἀπόλλωνος
ἐφ’ οὗ τὸ Η — —
— — — —]
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — κα]τεαγότος
κλάσματα <λ>επτὰ
καὶ κηρύκειον
ἐν σανδαλοθήκει,
ἐφ’ ὧν τὸ Κ, ὁλ.
ΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
χύμα, ἐφ’ οὗ τὸ
Α, ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
ἄ[λλο χύμα, ἐφ’
οὗ τὸ Β, ὁλ. ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλο ἐφ’ οὗ
τὸ Γ, ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΙΙ·
ἄλλο ἐφ’ οὗ]
(130)
with the GGGG wt 200; 23 others with the DDDD wt [2300?] two others
with the EEEE wt 200; 26 others with the ZZZZ [wt 2600; two others
with the HHHH wt 200?; another with the YYYY wt 100; another with
the IIII wt 100; another with the KKKK wt 100; another with the
L[LLL wt 100] 20 others wiht the MMMM wt 2000; two others with the
NNNN wt 200 [two others with the JJJJ wt 200; 20 others with the
OOOO wt 2000; another with the PPPP wt 100; 20 others with the RRRR
wt] 2000; two others [with the SSSS wt 200] two others with the TTTT
wt 200; two others with the UUUU wt 200; two others with the F[FFF
wt 200?; bowl with the XXXX wt 59; another with the CCCC wt 58;
another with the VVVV wt] 57.3; another with the AAAAA wt 58;
another with the BBBBB wt 58; another with the GGGGG wt 42; oth[er
phial]ai [20 with the DDDDD wt 2000; 20 others with the EEEEE wt
2000; 14 others with the ZZZZZ wt 1400; two other]s with the HHHHH
wt 200; 26 others with the YYYYY wt 2388; four bowls and one handled
kylikion [with the KKKKK wt 292. And the following unweighed: phiale
in frame, about 20 fingers, dedication on] behalf of (135) king
Antiochos; another in frame about 20 fingers, dedication of the
Koans; another smooth about seventeen fingers [dedication of
Euelthon; another in frame about ten fingers dedication...] strainer
in frame, dedication of Gaius Postumius; relief of Hyrkanian
dog in frame; eight phialai with the A [weight of which 800; six
bowls and small chest with the B wt 380; pieces and two phialia and]
two swallows and ladle and two hedypotidia and small theraclean
without either handles or base and a skyphion with one ear [with the
G wt ... incense box worked in relief on four (sides) with] the D wt
300; small incense box with base docked, with the E wt 50; four
phialia with the Z wt 19[1; phialion? with image of Apollo with the
H... b]roken, small pieces and small staff in sandalwood case with
the K wt 332.3; ingot with the A wt 92; a[nother ingot with the B wt
142; another with the G wt 60.2; another with the D wt 89.2; another
with the E]
140
[τὸ Δ, ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
ἄλλο, ἐφ’ οὗ
τὸ Ε], ὁλ. 𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
ἄλλο, ἐφ’ οὗ
τὸ Ζ, ὁλ. Η𐅃ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂
{²⁷Η<𐅄>ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂
Tod}²⁷· ἄλλο {Ε̣Ι̣}
καμπύλον, ἐφ’
οὗ τὸ Η, ὁλ. ΔΔΔ·
ταῦτά ἐστιν ἐν
κιβωτίωι. καὶ
τάδ̣ε̣ [— — — —
— —· κανοῦν ἐντελὲς
κατεαγός, ὁλ.
ΗΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂, παρακα]-
[τεαγεῖαν?
— — — — —]ν 〚—
— — — —〛 παρακατεαγεῖαν,
〚—
— — — — — —〛 ἀνάθημα
Στησίλεω, ὁλ.
Χ𐅅Η· ἄλλην ἐντελῆ
παρακατεαγεῖαν,
ἀν̣ά[θημα τοῦ
αὐτοῦ· κάδον
οὐκ ἔχοντα ὦ̣τ̣α̣
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— ἐλλείπει?]
τοῦ τρίτου μέρος
τι, ὁλ. ὡς ἡ̣ ἐπιγραφὴ
Χ𐅅ΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
στατὸν κατεαγότα,
ἀνάθημα Μικύθου
Συρίου, οὗ
ὁλκὴ [ΧΧ𐅅Η· κρατῆρα
τοὺς ἐπὶ τῶν
ὠτῶν χενίσκους
οὐδὲ τὸ]
[ἀνθέμιον
τὸ ἐπὶ τοῦ ὠτὸς
ἔχ]οντα, ἀνάθημα
Παρμίσκου, ὁλκὴ
σὺν τῶι κηρῶι
ΤΧΧΧ𐅅Χ· οἰνοχόη,
ἧς ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
κηρῶι καὶ π̣αλινπίττει
ΓΡΙ[— — — — — —,
ἀνάθημα Μικύθου
— — — — — — — —]
[—
— — — — — — —, ὁλ.
— —]ΗΔ𐅂𐅂· ἄλλη,
ἧς ὁλκὴ σὺν
παλινπίττει
ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλην ἐντελῆ,
ἔχουσαν σιδηρᾶν
ἄγκυραν, ἀνάθημα
Ἡ[λιοδώρου,
ὁλκὴ σὺν τῶι
κηρῶι καὶ τεῖ
παλινπίττει
ΗΗΗΗΔΔ — — —]
145
[ἄλλην — — — —
ἔχουσαν] ἄνκυραν,
ἀνάθημα Ἡλιοδώρου,
ὁλ. ΗΗ𐅄𐅂̣𐅂𐅂·
σελευκίδας
δύο ἐχούσας
ἐπίσημον ἄγκυραν,
ὁλ. ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ·
φιάλα[ς τέτταρας
ἐχούσας ἐπίσημον
ἄνκυραν, ἀνάθημα
Ἡλιοδώρου],
[ὁλ.
ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ· θυμιατήρι]ον·
βωμίσκον ἐπιγραφὴν
ἔχον{τα}· θεοῦ,
ὁλ. ΔΔΔΔ𐅂·
λιβανωτίδα
σφιγγόπουν,
ἐπιγραφή· ἱερὰ
Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ
Ἀρτέμιδος, ἔχουσα[ν
ἐπὶ τοῦ ἐπιθέματος
σατυρίσκον
․․ καὶ ἐκτ— —
— — —]
—
— — — — — — — — —δα·
ταύτης ἀποπέπτωκεν
ἡ γ̣ρῦς καὶ
ἔστιν· λιβανωτίδιον
λεῖον τεθλασμένον,
ἀνάθημα Πυθέου,
ὁλ. 𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
ἄλ[λο λεῖον
οὗ ὁλκὴ σὺν
τῶι ῥύπωι ΔΔΔ𐅃,
ἀνάθεμα Πάτρωνος?]
[σκύφια
πέντε ὧν τὸ ἓν]
ὦ̣ς οὐκ ἔχον,
τοῦ δ’ ἑνὸς τὸ
ὦς ἀποπεπτωκός,
καὶ ἔστιν, ἀνάθημα
Μικύθου Συρίου,
ὁλ. ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅃·
χυτρίδιον, οὗ
ὁλ[κὴ ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂,
ἀνάθημα βουλῆς
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Τελεσαρχίδου]·
[σκάφια
σύμμικτα δέκα?
ἐφ’ ὧν τὸ] Α, ὁλ.
𐅅ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλα σύμμικτα
ἕνδεκα, ἐφ’ ὧν
τὸ Β, ὁλ. Χ𐅅· στάτιον
μικρὸν τετρυπημέν[ον,
ὦτα οὐκ ἔχον,
ἀλλὰ σκ̣υτά[λια
ὧν ἓν ἀποπέπτωκεν,
ὁλ. σὺν καττιτέρωι
𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂· ὑποφιάλια
δύο οἷς]
(140)
wt 4.2; another with the Z wt 193; another bent with the H wt 30;
these are in a chest. And the following [...basket complete broken
wt 124...]... part broken. dedication of Stesileos wt 1600; another
complete part broken ded[ication of the same; jar without
handles...] some part of the third, wt as the inscription 1836,
broken large bowl, dedication of Mikythos of Syria weight of which
[2600; krater with neither the geese on the handles nor the flower
on the handle] dedication of Parmiskos weight with the wax T,3600;
oinochoe weight of which with the wax and the dry pitch [...
dedication of Mikythos...] 112; another weight of which with the dry
pitch 442; another complete with iron anchor, dedication of
He[liodoros, weight with the wax and the dry pitch 420...with] (145)
anchor, dedication of Heliodoros, wt 253; two seleucids with anchor
sign wt 290; phialai [four with anchor sign, dedication of
Heliodoros wt 290; cense]r; small altar with inscription of the god
wt 41; sphinx-footed incense box inscription sacred to Apollo and
Artemis with [small satyr on the lid and...] the grus has fallen
from this and is extant; smooth small incense box smashed,
dedication of Pytheas, wt 64.2; an[other smooth weight of which with
the sealing wax 35, dedication of Patron? five skyphoi one of which]
lacks the handle, of one the handle has fallen off and is extant,
dedication of Mikythos of Syria wt 475; small pot weight of which
[44, dedication of the Council with Telesarchides archon; ten? mixed
bowls with the] A wt 932; eleven other mixed with the B, wt 1050;
small large bowl leaky without handle but small sta[ffs one of which
has fallen off, wt with tin 72; two phiale mounts on which
150
[ἐπιγραφή· Ἀπόλλωνος
Δηλ]ίου, ὁλ.
𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂· ἀρυσᾶς,
ὦς οὐκ ἔχων,
ἀλλὰ ἀποπέπτωκε,
ὃ καὶ συνεστάθη,
ὁλ. ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
κύαθον κατεαγότα
καὶ συν[βεβ]λημ[ένον,
ὁλ. ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂· ἄλλον
κατεαγότα,
ἐπιγραφή· θεοῦ
Ἀπόλλωνος]
[ὁλκὴ·
ΔΔΔ· φι]άλας
ΔΔΙΙΙ, <ὧν> τὸ
Γ, ὁλ. ΧΧΗΗΗ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλας ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ,
ἐφ’ ὧν τὸ Δ, ὁλ.
ΧΧ𐅅ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅂·
ἄλλας ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ,
ἐφ’ ὧν τὸ Ε̣, ὁλ.
ΧΧ𐅅Η𐅂· ἄλλα[ς
ΔΔ𐅃ΙΙ ἐφ’ ὧν
τὸ Ζ, ὁλ. ΧΧ𐅅ΗΗ·
ἄλλην μίαν ἐφ’
ἧς τὸ Η, ὁλ. Η]·
[ἄλλας
συμμείκτου]ς̣
ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ σὺν
τῶι προσευρεθέντι
φιαλίωι, οὗ τὸ
Α, ὧν ὁλ. ΧΧΧ𐅅ΗΗΗΔΔ𐅃·
ἄλλας 𐅄ΔΙΙΙΙ,
ἐφ’ ὧν τὸ Β, ὧν ὁλ.
ΤΗΗΗ· ἄλλας
[Δ𐅃ΙΙ ἐφ’ ὧν τὸ
Γ, ὧν μία καρυωτή,
ὁλ. Χ𐅃Η· ἄλλας
𐅄ΔΙΙΙΙ, ἐφ’ ὧν
τὸ Δ],
[ὧν
μία ἐκτυπωτή,
ὁλ. Τ]ΗΗ𐅃· ἄλλας
𐅄𐅃Ι, ἐφ’ ὧν τὸ
Ε, καὶ καρυωταὶ
δύο, ὧν μία πρόσωπον
ἔχουσα, ὁλ. 𐅆𐅅·
ἄλλας 𐅄𐅃ΙΙ,
ἐφ’ ὧν τὸ Ζ, ἐν αἷς
καρυωταὶ ΙΙΙ,
ὁλ. ΤΗ𐅄𐅂𐅂· ἄλλας
𐅄ΔΙΙ, ἐφ’ ὧν τὸ
[Η, ὁλ. ΤΗ𐅄․․·
ἄλλας 𐅄𐅃Ι, ἐφ’
ὧν τὸ Θ, ὁλ. 𐅆𐅅ΔΔΔ·
ἄλλας 𐅄ΔΙΙΙ],
[ἐφ’
ὧν τὸ Ι, ἐν αἷς
καρυωταὶ] δύο,
ἡ μία κεκομμένη,
ὁλ. ΤΗΔ· ἄλλας
𐅄ΔΙΙ, ἐφ’ ὧν τὸ
Κ, ἐν αἷς καρυωταὶ
δύο, ὧν ἡ μία
πρόσωπον ἔχουσα,
ὁλ. Τ𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλας 𐅄𐅃𐅂, ἐφ’
ὧν τὸ Λ, ἐν αἷς
[καρυωτὴ μία,
ὁλ. 𐅆𐅄ΔΔ· ἄλλας
ΔΔ]
155
[ΔΔΙΙΙ, ἐφ’ ὧν
τὸ Μ, ἐ̣ν αἷς
καρυω]ταὶ τρεῖς,
ὧν ὁλ. ΧΧΧΧΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλαι ἑξήκοντα
δύο, ἐφ’ ὧν τὸ
Ν, ὧν ὁλ. ΤΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλαι 𐅄ΔΙΙΙΙ,
ἐφ’ ὧν τὸ Ξ, ὁλ.
ΤΗ𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂· [ἄλλαι
𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙ, ἐφ’ ὧν
τὸ Ο, ὁλ. Τ𐅅ΗΔΔΔ·
σκύφους δύο
ἐκτυ]-
[πωτούς,
ὧν τοῦ ἑνὸς ὁ
καθήμε]νος οὐκ
ἔχι τὸν δεξιὸν
βραχίονα οὔτε
τὴν μάχαιραν, τὸν
δὲ μηρὸν τὸν δεξιὸν
διαβεβρωμένον
καὶ τὸν ἀριστερὸν
ὦμον ἀπ[οπεπτωκότα
καὶ συνίσταται
καὶ τοῦ ταὼ ἡ
κεφαλὴ καὶ
τράχηλος οὔκ
ἐστιν καὶ]
[τοῦ
Ἑρμοῦ κεφαλὴ
οὔκ ἐστιν κα]ὶ
τοῦ σκυταλίου
ἀποπέπτωκεν
ἡ χιρολάβη, ὁλκὴ
σὺν καττιτέρωι
καὶ κηρῶι 𐅅ΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλον, οὗ ὁ
καθήμενος [οὐκ
ἔχει τὸν δεξιὸν
βραχίονα ἀπὸ
τοῦ ὤμου οὐδὲ
ὁ]
[κατακείμενος
τὴν χεῖρα τὴ]ν
ἀριστερὰν οὐδὲ
ὁ Ἔρως τὸν δεξιὸν
βραχίονα οὐδὲ
τὰ πτερύγια
[οὐ]δὲ ὁ κύων
τὸ δεξιὸν σκέλος
καὶ τοῦ ὠτὸς
τὸ ῥόπαλον οὔκ
[ἐστιν οὐδὲ τὸ
φύλλον, τὸ δὲ
ἐμβόλιον διαβέβληται],
[οὗ
ὁλκὴ σὺν κηρῶι
καὶ καττιτέ]ρωι
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τρίποδα περιηργυρωμένον
λεοντόβασιν
<ἔχοντα>, ἀνάθημα
Στησίλεω, ὧν
τινα ἀποπεπτωκότα
ἀπὸ τοῦ τ[ριποδίου
καὶ τῶν ποδῶν,
ὧν καί τινά ἐστιν
ἐν τῶι ἱερῶι]·
(150)
the inscription of Delian Apollo] wt 72; ladle without ear but
fallen off which also was placed with it wt 42; broken and joined
kyathos [wt 36; another broken inscription of the god Apollo weight
30; phi]alai 23, the G wt 2304; 29 others with the D wt 2871; 27
others with the E wt 2601; others [27 with the Z wt 2700; one other
with the H wt 100; others mixed] 39 with the phialion discovered
afterwards with the A wt of which 3825; 64 others with the B wt of
which T,300; others [17 with the G, one of them knobby wt 1600; 64
others with the D, one of them relief wt T,]250; 56 others with the
E and two knobby, one of which has face wt 5500; 57 others with the
Z among which 3 knobby wt T,152; 62 others with the [H wt T,150..;
56 others, with the Y wt 5530; 63 others [with the I among which two
knobby] one beaten wt T,110; 62 others with the K among which two
knobby one with a face wt T,67; 56 others with the L among which
[one knobby wt 5070; 43 others with the M among which knob]by (155)
three wt of which 4284; sixty two others with the N wt of which
T,49; 64 others with the J wt T,162 [67 others with the O wt T,630;
two relief skyphoi, the seated figure of the one] does not have his
right arm or sword and his right thigh is corroded and his left
shoulder fell [off and has been reattached and the head of the
peacock and throat is missing and the head of Hermes is missing an]d
the handle of the small staff has fallen off, weight with the tin
and wax 833; (the) other whose seated figure [does not have the
right arm from the shoulder nor does the reclining (figure) have the
right hand nor the Eros his right leg nor wings n]or the dog its
right leg and the club is not on the shoulder [nor the leaf and the
attachment has been discarded, weight of which with wax and ti]n
803; silvered tripod with lion base dedication of Stesileos, some
parts of which have fallen from the t[ripod and the feet, some of
which is in the sanctuary; complete silvered wood table]
160
[τράπεζαν ξυλίνην
ἐντελῆ περι]ηργυρωμένην,
ὁλκὴ κατὰ τὴν
ἐπιγραφὴν
ΧΧΧΧ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ·
ἐλλείπουσιν
ἧλοι δέκα δύο
καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς
ποδὸς [τῆς ἀκροβάσεως
λεπίδιον ἐλλείπει
μῆκος]
[δακτύλων
τριῶν, πλάτος
δακτύλου] καὶ
ἀπὸ τῆς ἀποτύψεως
λεπίδιον δακτύλου·
τρίποδα παλαιὸν
περιηργυρωμένον
οὐχ ὅλον καὶ
τὴν ἀκρόβασιν
τ[οῦ ἑνὸς ποδὸς
οὐκ ἔχοντα·
Ἀπόλλωνα ὡς
ποδιαῖον]
[ἔχοντα
φιάλην καὶ κιθάραν
κ]αὶ στέφανον
χρυσοῦν τὸ μέσον
οὐκ ἔχοντα,
ἀνάθημα Βιβίου
ἐπὶ βάσεως
λιθίνης· θυμιατήριον
πομπικὸν περιηργυρωμέ[νον,
ἀνάθημα Φιλωνίδος
τῆς Ἡγησαγόρου,
ἐφ’ οὗ ἐπι]-
[γραφή·
ΧΗΔΔ𐅂𐅂, ἄστατον·
τούτου π]οδάρια
τὰ δύο ἀποπεπτωκότα
καὶ τῶν φυλλαρίων
τινὰ περιτεθραυσμένα
καὶ τῶν πτερυγίων·
λεπίδια παντοδαπὰ
ἀ[π’ ἀνδριάντων,
ἐν οἷς ἦν καὶ
ἡ χεὶρ ἡ ἀπὸ τοῦ
σκύφου]
[καὶ
ὠτάριον ἀργυροῦν
καὶ λυσ]ιμάχεια
τέτραχμα δύο,
ὧν ὁλκὴ πάντων
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂· ποτήρια
ῥοδιακὰ τέτταρα
δικότυλα, ὧν
ὁλ. Η̣ΗΗ𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂̣𐅂,
ἀνάθ[ημα Φιλωνίδος
τῆς Ἡγησαγόρου·
ἄλλα δύο δικότυ]-
165
[λα, ὧν ἐπιγραφὴ
τοῦ ἑνὸς Η𐅄Δ]𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂,
ἀνάθημα Φιλωνίδος,
τοῦ δὲ ἄλλου,
ὃ ἀποκατέστησεν
ὁ ἱερεὺς Φίλων,
Η𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂, ἀνάθημα
τῆς αὐτῆς· ἄλλα
τε[τρακότυλα
δύο, ὧν ὁλκὴ
ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅃․․, ἀνάθημα
τῆς]
[αὐτῆς·
κυάθους τρεῖς,
ὧν ὁλ. ΗΔΙΙΙ], ὧν
ὁ εἷς συνβεβλημένος
ἐγ μέσου· ῥοδιακὸν
τρικότυλον,
ἀνάθημα Μικύθου,
ὁλ. Η𐅄Δ· ἄλλο
πεντακότυλα
δύ[ο, ὧν ὁλ.
ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ,
ἀνάθημα τοῦ
αὐτοῦ· χυτρίδια]
[τέτταρα,
ὧν ὁλ. ΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃Ι·
σκάφ]ια δύο, ὧν
ὁλ. Η𐅃[𐅂𐅂], ἀνάθεμα
Στησίλεω· ἄλλο,
οὗ ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃,
ἀνάθεμα Θεανδριδῶν·
ἄλλο, οὗ ὁλ.
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂, ἀνάθημα
Ξε[νοτίμου·
ἄλλο, οὗ ὁλ.
ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂, ἀνάθεμα
Παταί]-
[κου·
σκύφιον, οὗ ὁλ.
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂, ἀνάθ]ημα
Εὐκράτου·
φιάλας δύο,
ὧν ὁλ. 𐅄Δ[Δ𐅃],
ἀνάθημα Ἀσκληπιάδου·
κύαθον συνβεβλημένον
ἀπὸ τοῦ κεφαλίου,
[ἀνάθεμα Φίλλιδος,
ὁλκὴ Δ𐅃· φιάλας
δύο]
[ἐμ
πλαισίοις
ἀνάθεμα Ἀθην]αίου
τοῦ Ἀττάλου,
ἀστάτους·
κυμάτια ἐν κιβωταρίωι
ἀργυρᾶ καὶ
ψήγματα ΔΔΔΔ·
φωκαιικὰ ἐν
ὑαλίνωι ποτηρί[ωι,
ὧν ὁλ. Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
φιάλην καρυωτὴν
ὀμφαλὸν οὐκ
ἔχουσαν]
(160)
weight according to the inscription 4990, twelve nails are lacking
and from the one foot foil [of the akrobasis is missing three
fingers in length, a finger in width] and from the moulding a finger
of foil; old silvered tripod not complete, lacking the akrobasis [of
the one foot; Apollo about a foot with phiale and cithara an]d gold
crown lacking its middle, dedication of Vibius on a stone base;
silvered processional censer [dedication of Philonis daughter of
Hegesagoras, with the inscription 1122, unweighed; the] two feet of
this have fallen off and some of the small leaves and wings are
crushed; various pieces f[rom statues including the hand from the
skyphos and a silver handle and] two lysimachean tetradrachms, the
weight of all 47; four two-kotyle rhodian cups wt of which 368,
dedicat[ion of Philonis daughter of Hegesagoras; two other
two-kotyle the inscription of the one 16]9, (165) dedication of
Philonis, of the other, which
the priest Philon removed 164, dedication of the same; [two other
four-kotyle weight of which 375. . dedication of the same; three
kyathoi wt of which 110.3] one of which is collapsed in the middle;
three-kotyle rhodian, dedication of Mikythos wt 160; two other five
kotyle [wt of which 433.3, dedication of the same; four small pots
wt of which 245.1] two bowls wt of which 10[7], dedication of
Stesileos; another wt of which 85, dedication of the Theandridai;
another wt of which 47, dedication of Xe[notimos; another wt of
which 34, dedication of Pataikos; skyphion wt of which 86,
dedi]cation of Eukrates; two phialai wt of which 7[5], dedication of
Asclepiades; kyathos collapsed from the top [dedication of Phillis,
weight 15; two phialai in frames, dedication of Athen]aeus son of
Attalos, unweighed; silver kymatia in a small chest and scraps 40;
phoceaens in a glass cup [wt of which 17; knobby phiale without boss
and three bowls wt of which 230];
170
[καὶ σκάφια τρία,
ὧν ὁλ. ΗΗΔΔΔ]·
ἡδυπότια δύο
καὶ φιάλια τρία
καὶ ὠταρί[ων]
κλάσματα καὶ
πυθμένος καὶ
ἄλλα ἀργυρώματα
παντοδαπὰ καὶ
{ἄλ̣[λα ἀργυρωμάτια
παντοδαπὰ?} καὶ
χηνίσκους δύο
τοὺς ἀπὸ]
[τοῦ
κρατῆρος, ὧν
ὁλ. σὺν τῶι καττιτέρ]ωι
𐅅ΗΗΗ𐅄· ταῦτά
ἐστιν ἐν κιβωτ[ίωι·
κα]ὶ ἄλλα παντοδαπὰ
καὶ κηρύκειον
καὶ ἐλαγμάτιον
καὶ χηνίσκος
ὁ ἀπὸ τοῦ κ̣[ρατῆρος,
ὧν ὁλκὴ πάντων
Η𐅄ΔΔ𐅂Ι]·
[ῥυτὸν
δίκρουνον,
παρακατεαγὸς]
ἀπὸ τοῦ χίλους,
ὁλκὴ σὺν καττιτέρωι
𐅅· ταινίαν
περιηργυρωμένην,
ἀνάθημα Ἀρχεστράτου·
κρατῆρες δύο
[μεγάλοι ἐντελεῖς
ἐπὶ βάσεως
λιθίνης, ἀνάθη]-
[μα
Στρατονίκης·
θυμιατήριον]
ἔχον ὠτάρια δύο
καὶ ἐρωτάρια
δύο, οὗ ὁλκὴ
σὺν τῶι ἀποπεπτωκότι
ἐπιπύρωι καὶ
κατεαγότι σὺν
τῶι ξυλίνωι τῶι
ἐνόν[τι ἐν αὐτῶι,
χωρὶς τοῦ χαλκοῦ
ἐπιπύρου, 𐅅ΗΔΔΔΔ],
[ἀνάθημα
Βουλομάγας·
ζωιδ]άρια δύο
Ἀπόλλων καὶ
Ἄρτεμις ἐπὶ
ἡμικυκλίου
καὶ φύλαξ, ὁλ.
ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
τετρήρη, ἧς ὁλκὴ
σὺν τοῖς προσοῦσιν
χαλκοῖς [καλυδρίοις
Χ𐅅ΗΗ, ἀνάθημα
βασιλέως Σε]-
175
[λεύκου· φιάλη
ὡς πενταπάλαστο]ς,
πρόσωπον ἔχουσα
Ἀπόλλωνος,
ἀνάθημα Κώιων·
ἄλλην ἐν πλινθείωι
ὡς ποδιαίαν
καρυωτήν, ἀνάθημα
Ἀριστοκράτ[ου·
ἄλλη καρυωτὴ
ἐν πλινθείωι,
ἔχουσα]
[Ἀπόλλωνα
κιθαρίζοντα,
ἀνάθ]ημα τοῦ
αὐτοῦ· ἄλλην
ἐν πλινθείωι
ὡς παλαστῶν
τριῶν, ἀνάθημα
Κώιων· ἄλλη
λεία ἐν πλιν[θ]είωι,
ἀνάθημα Κώιων·
ἄλλην [καρυωτὴν
ἐν πλινθείωι],
[ἀνάθημα
Ἀλέξιδος· ἄλ]λη
καρυωτή, ἀνάθημα
Νικάν[ορο]ς, ὁλ.
Η𐅄ΔΔ𐅃· ἄλλη
καρυωτή, ἀνάθημα
Νικηράτου, ὁλ.
ΗΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλας
λείας δύο,
ἀνάθημα βασιλ[έως
Ἀντιγόνου, ὁλ.
Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
φιάλην Κτησυλ]-
[λίδος·
κυμβίον Ἀμιάντου]·
σκύφιον, ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Ξενο[μή]δου·
ψυκτηρίδιον,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Ἀπολλοδώρου·
κυμβίον Ἀρτέμωνος
Μυνδίου· ἄλλο
Προξέ[νου καὶ
παιδίων· ἄλλο
Ἑστιιαιέως·
φιάλιον],
[ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Φωκαέως·
ἄλλο, ἐ]π’ ἄρχοντος
Φιλοξένου·
κ[υμβίον Στησ]ίλεω·
ἄλλο, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Μιλιχίδου·
ἄλλο, ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Καλλία· ἄλλο,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Σωτίων[ος· ἄλλο,
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
Πανταίνου· ἄλλο,
ἐπ’ ἄρχον]-
(170)
two hedypotia and three phialia and pieces of handles and base and
various other silver and ot[her... and two small geese from the
krater wt of which with the tin] 850; these are in a che[st an]d
various others and a staff and elagmation and the small goose from
the k[rater weight of all 171.1; two-spout rhyton broken off] from
the lip weight with tin 500; silvered ribbon dedication of
Archestratos; two kraters [large complete on stone base, dedication
of Stratonike; censer] with two handles and two little Erotes weight
of which with the fallen off and broken grate with the wood [in it,
apart from the bronze grate 640, dedication of Boulomagas] two
figures, Apollo and Artemis, on half-circle with guard, wt 44.3;
tetrareme weight of which with the added bronze [cables 1700,
dedication of king Seleukos; phiale about five palm]s (175) with
face of Apollo dedication of the Koans; another in plinth about a
foot knobby, dedication of Aristokrat[es; another knobby in plinth
with Apollo playing the cithara, dedi]cation of the same; another in
plinth about three palms, dedication of the Koans; another smooth in
plin[th], dedication of the Koans; another [knobby in plinth,
dedication of Alexis; an]other knobby dedication of Nikan[or], wt
175; another knobby, dedication of Nikeratos wt 113; two others
smooth, dedication of kin[g Antigonos wt 197; phiale of Ktesyllis;
kymbion of Amiantos] skyphion with Xeno[me]des archon; small cooler
with Apollodoros archon; kymbion of Artemon of Mende; another of
Proxe[nos and his children; another of Hestiiaeus; phialion with
Phokaeus archon; another] with Philoxenos archon; k[ymbion of
Stes]ileos; another with Milichides archon; another with Kallias
archon; another with Sotion archon [another with Pantainos archon;
another with
180
[τος Σωτέλου·
ὧν ὁλκὴ πάντων]
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἀργυρωμά[τια]
ἐν γλωττοτομί[οι]ς,
ὁλ. 𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂· φιάλας
λείας δύο, ὧν
ὁλ. Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂,
ἀνάθεμα Χαιρέα
καὶ Τε[λεστοκρίτου·
ἄλλας λείας
τέτταρας, ὧν ὁλ.
ΗΗΗΗ, ἀνάθημα]
[Τληπολέμου
καὶ Νικάρχου]·
ἄλλας λείας
δύο, ἀνάθημα
Μνησικλείους
καὶ Διογένου,
ὁλ. [Η]Η· ἄλλας
λείας ἐννέα,
ὁλ. Χ𐅅𐅂· ἄλλας
λείας τέτ<τ>αρας,
ἀνάθημα Δη[λιάδων,
χορεῖα, ἐπὶ
ταμιῶν Πολύβου
καὶ Ἀντιγόνου,
ὧν ὁλ. ΗΗΗΗ· ἄλλας
δύο],
[ἀνάθημα
Εὐξενίδου
καὶ Ἀντιγόνου],
ἐν αἷς ἔνεστι
ἀργυρᾶ παντοδαπὰ
καὶ ἱστιαιικὰ
τρία, ὁλ. ΗΗ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλας ΔΔ, ἐπὶ
ταμιῶν Καλλίου
καὶ Τελεσαρχίδου,
ὁλ. ΧΧ· ἄλλας
[ΔΔ, ἐπὶ ταμιῶν
Περιάνδρου
καὶ Εὐξενίδου,
ὁλ. ΧΧ· ἄλλας
ΔΔ ἐπὶ ταμιῶν]
[Διακρίτου
καὶ Τίμωνος?]·
〚—
— — — — — — — — —〛
ἄλλας
ΔΔ, ἐπὶ ταμιῶν
Ἐνπέδου καὶ
Ἀπατουρίου,
[ὁλ.] Χ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
vac. ἄλλας λείας
επ̣ — — — — —
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — ν̣ι
ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
ἠλακάτας καὶ
τὰ μετὰ τούτων,
ὁλ. Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
νόμισμα παντοδαπόν,
ὁλ. Η𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
φιάλας γοργ<ι>είους
ἕνδεκα, ἐν [αἷς
καρυωτὴ μία,
ὁλ. ΧΗ· σκάφια
Στησίλεω ἕξ],
185
[καὶ ῥοδιακὰ
δύο, ὁλκὴ 𐅅𐅄Δ]𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλα Φιλωνίδος
δέκα δύο, ἐφ’
ὧν τὸ Π, καὶ Στησίλεω
δύο καὶ Μικύθου
ἓν καὶ Μαντιθέου
ἓν vac. καὶ Δημητρίου
[ἓ]ν καὶ Μικύθου
[ἕν?, ὧν ὁλκὴ
Χ𐅅Η𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂· — —
— — — —]
[—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — ῥο]διακόν,
οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
ἱερὸν Ἀπόλλωνος·
καὶ ἄλλα ῥοδιακὰ
δύο, ὧν τὸ ἓν
τετρυ[πη]μένον
καὶ σφαιρίον
Φιλωνίδος, τὰ
σκυτάλια οὐ[κ
ἔχον — — — — — —
— — —]
[—
— — — — — — ἄλλην
καρ]υωτὴν ἔχουσα[ν]
πρόσωπον καὶ
ἐμ μέσωι κεραύνια,
ὁλ. Η· ἄλλην λείαν,
ἀνάθημα Ἑρμίου,
ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλην, ἀ̣νάθημα
[Εὐτύχου, ὁλ.
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλας τέτταρας,
ἃς ἀποκατέστησεν
Εὐβοεύς],
[ὁλ.
ΗΗ· ἄλλην λείαν,
ἀνάθημα Γο]ργίου,
𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλην λείαν,
ἀνάθημα Θυεσταδῶν,
ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλας λείας
δύο, ὧν ἡ μία
<μ>ίζων, ἀνάθημα
τ[ῶν αὐτῶν, ὁλ.
Η𐅄· φιάλας
τέτταρας τὰς]
[εὑρεθείσας
ἐν τῶι Ἀρτεμισίωι,
ὧ]ν ὁλ. ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλο λεῖον,
ἀνάθημα Φιλοκράτου
καὶ παίδων, [ὁ]λ.
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
[φι]άλην Λεοντίνων,
ὁλ. ΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλ[ην καρυωτήν,
πρόσωπον ἔχουσαν
Ἡρακλέους],
(180)
Soteles archon, weight of all] 904; silver in tongue-cuttings wt 62;
two smooth phialai wt of which 197, dedication of Chaireas and
Te[lestokritos; four other smooth wt of which 400, dedication of
Tlepolemos and Nikarchos;] two other smooth, dedication of Mnesikles
and Diogenes wt [2]00; nine other smooth wt 1501; four other smooth
dedication of the De[liades choreia with Polybos and Antigonos
stewards wt of which 400; two others dedication of Euxenides and
Antigonos] in which is various silver and three Istiaians wt 208.3;
20 others with Kallias and Telesarchides stewards wt 2000; others
[20 with Periander and Euxenides stewards wt 2000; 20 others with
Diakritos and Timon stewards...] 20 others with Empedos and
Apatourios stewards [wt] 1976; others smooth... 486; spindles and
their accoutrements wt 19; various coin wt 176; eleven gorgieian
phialai among [which one knobby, wt 1100; six bowls of Stesileos and
two rhodians weight 56]3; (185) twelve others of Philonis with the G
and two of Stesileos and one of Mikythos and [one of] Mantitheos;
and [on]e of Demetrios and of Mikythos [one? weight of which 1662...
rho]dian with the inscription sacred to Apollo; and two other
rhodians one with holes and a small ball of Philonis without the
leather [... another kn]obby [w]ith face and lightning bolts in the
middle wt 100; another smooth dedication of Hermias wt 98; another
dedication [of Eutychos wt 94; four others which Euboeus removed wt
200; another smooth dedication of Go]rgias 99.3; another smooth
dedication of the Thyestadai wt 99; two other smooth one larger,
dedication of [the same wt 150; the four phialai found in the
Artemision] wt of which 434; another smooth, dedication of
Philokrates and his children [w]t 49; [phi]ale from the Leontini, wt
147; another [knobby with face of Herakles, dedication of the
Mapsichidai]
190
[ἀνάθημα Μαψιχιδῶν,
ἧς] ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ἄλλην ἀκτινωτήν,
ἀνάθημα Θυεσταδῶν
καὶ Ὠκυνιδῶν,
ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔ[Δ𐅃]𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἄλλην, ἐφ’ ἧς
ἐπιγραφή· Δηλίων·
vac. χ[ύμα ἀργυροῦν
τὸ περιγενόμενον]
[ἀπὸ
τῶν ἥλων· φύλλα
χρυ]σᾶ ἀπὸ στεφάνων
τρία καὶ πέταλα
ἀργυρᾶ κεχρυσωμένα
καὶ δ[α]κτύλιον
χαλκοῦν π[ε]ρικεχρυσωμένον
καὶ λιθάριον
χυτ̣[ὸν ἔχον —
— — — — — — — —·
χρυσᾶ ἄστατα·
ἐν προχωι]-
[δίωι
τὸν τόκον? τὸν
εἰσπ]ραχθέντα
ὑπὸ Φερεκλέους
καὶ Θηρομάχου
τοῦ ἱεροῦ
ἀργυρί[ου ․․․]
π̣α̣ιδίας?
Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃 καὶ
ἱστιαϊκόν, ὃ
γίνεται εἰς
ἀττ[ικοῦ λόγον
ΗΔΔΔΙΙΙ?· φιάλην
— — — — — — — — —
— —]
[—
—, ἀνάθημα Προυσίου,
ἔχ]ουσαν ἐν μέσωι
πρόσωπον, ἄστατον·
φιάλια τέτταρα
[ὧν ὁ]λ̣. ΗΗ· φαρέτρα
χρυσοποίκιλτος
ἔχουσα τόξον
σκυθικ[ὸν καὶ
ταινίδιον, ἀνάθημα
Στρατονίκης
— — — — — — — — —
— —· ἄλλην]
[ἀργυρᾶν
ἑλληνικὴν διά]χρυσον
ἐπὶ κιονίου·
νόμισμα χαλκοῦ
παντοδαποῦ
ἀδοκίμου, [ὃ]ς
οὐκ ἠριθμήθη·
ὑδρίαν παλαιὰν
χαλκῆν πυθμένα
οὐκ ἔ[χουσαν
οὔτε οὖς ἕν·
ἐπιχυσίδιον
χαλκοῦν ἐν ὧι
δακτύλιοι]
195
[σιδηροῖ καὶ
ὑπόχρυσοι ἐ]ν̣
οἷς καὶ ὑπάργυροι·
ἀρύταιναν χαλκῆν
παλαιὰν πυθμένα
οὐκ ἔχουσαν,
μόνωτον· [λ]ίθους
ὀνυχίνους ΔΔ,
ὧν οἱ πέντε
ἐρρωγότ[ες —
—, ἐνδεδεμένους
κύκλωι ἐν χρυσίωι
— — — — — — — — —
ὧν]
[οἱ
δύο ἅλυσιν
ἔχοντες χρυσῆν
π]οδῶν δυεῖν
κα[ὶ ἡμιποδίου]·
μυοσόβας δύο
λαβὰς ἐχούσας
ὀνυχίνας καὶ
ποτηρίδιον
ὀνύχινον κατεαγός,
ἀνάθημα Κοίντο[υ
Ῥωμαίου — — —
— — — — —· φιάλην?
— — — — — κρυσταλλίνην]
[ἐν
καλιάδι ξυλίνηι,
ἀνάθεμ]α βασιλέως
Ἀν[τιόχ]ου· τρίποδα
λίθινον πόδας
ἔχοντα πυξίνους,
λεοντόβασιν·
ἡδυποτίδια
δύο ἐξ ὠιοῦ
στρουθείου
περιηρ[γυρωμένα·
ἄστατα· σκυτάλια
— — — — — — — — —
— — — —]
[—
— — χαρακτῆρας
σιδηροῦς] δέκα
ὀκτώ· ἄκμο[νας
πέντε]· Ἀπόλλωνα
χαλκοῦν ἐπὶ
βάσεως στρογγύλης
ὡς τριπάλαστον·
τραπέζας δρυίνας
δύο, ὧν ἡ μία
ἀ[νάθεμα Ἱέρωνος,
ἡ δὲ μία κατὰ
πρόσταγμα τοῦ
θεοῦ]·
[ἀπόλλωνας
ἀρχαιικοὺ]ς
ξυλίνους ΔΔΙΙΙ̣·
[ἀρτεμ]ίσια ξύλινα
Δ· Διοσκούρους
ἐφ’ ἵππων δύο
καὶ ἵππον· κιβωτοὺς
παλαιὰς κλεῖς
οὐκ ἐχούσας,
ὧν ἡ μί[α — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — —]
(190)
wt of which 98.4; another rayed dedication of the Thyestadai and
Okynidai wt 9[9]; another with the inscription from the Delians.
in[got silver left over from the nails; leaves go]ld from the crowns
three and gilded silver leaves and gilded bronze ring and ingot with
stone [... unweighed gold in pitcher ...ex]acted by Pherekles and
Theromachos for the sacred silver [...] 195 and histiaikon which
comes into the Att[ic account 130.3; phiale ... dedication of
Prousias, wi]th face in the middle, unweighed; four phialia wt 200;
gold ornamented quiver with Scythian bow [and ribbon, dedication of
Stratonike ... other gilded Hellenic silver (coin?)] on pedestal;
various unstamped bronze coins not counted; old bronze hydria
without base [or one handle; bronze pitcher containing iron rings
including gilded] (195) and silvered ones; old bronze ladle without
base, one handled; 20 onyx [s]tones, five broken, [bound in a gold
circle ... two of which have a two and a half foot gold chain]; two
flyswatters with onyx handles and small broken onyx cup, dedication
of Quintus [of Rome ... crystal in wood basket, dedication] of king
An[tioch]os; stone tripod with boxwood feet, lion-footed; two
hedypotidia from ostrich egg silv[ered, unweighed; staffs ... iron
stamps ] eighteen; [five] anvils; bronze Apollo on round base about
three palms; two oak tables one [dedication of Hieron the other by
order of the god; archaic Apollos] of wood 23; wood [Artem]is’s
10; two Dioskouroi on horses and a horse; old chests without keys of
which one [...];
200
[— — — — — — ἔχε?]ι·
ὁ τῆς Λητοῦς
χιτὼ[ν κ?]αὶ̣
․ε̣ι̣ρ̣ι̣ον
χρυσ[οῦ]ν ἐν
ὀθονίωι, οὗ
ὁλ. 𐅂ΙΙΙ· καὶ
ἀσπιδίσκας
χρυσᾶς δύο,
ὧν ἡ μία λίθον
ἔχει καὶ — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — —
[—
— — — — κύκλον
π]εριπόρφυρον
πεποικ[ιλ]μένον
διὰ χρυσίου
καὶ ζωνίον
διάχρυσον·
σ̣[κά]φιον, ἐφ’
οὗ ἐπιγραφή·
βουλῆς τῆς
ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος
[Διοκλέους,
ἀνάθημα Στησίλεω
τοῦ Διοδότου,
ὁλ. 𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
ἄλλο],
[ἐπ’
ἄρχοντος Χαρίλα,
ἀνά]θημα Στησίλεω
τοῦ Διοδότου,
ὁλ. 𐅄𐅂𐅂𐅂· φιάλιον
λεῖον, ἐφ’ οὗ
ἐπιγραφή· ἀντὶ
τῆς κύλικος,
ὁλ. 𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
θυμιατήρια̣
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — —
[—
— — — — — καὶ
κηρύκειο]ν καὶ
ἄλλα ἀργυρᾶ
λ[επτ]ά, ὧν ὁλκὴ
πάντων ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
πτερύγιον τὸ
ἀπὸ τῆς Γοργόνος
τῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ
θυρώματος
χαλκ[οῦν καὶ
δράκοντος
κεφαλή, ἄστατα·
παρμενίσ]-
[κους
δύο περιηργυρω?]μένους
τοὺς ἀποπεπτωκότας
ἀπὸ τοῦ θυρώματος·
χηνίσκου τράχηλον
ἀπὸ τοῦ κρατῆρος
καὶ δράκοντος
τρά[χηλον ἀπὸ
τοῦ αὐτοῦ, ὁλκὴ
ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
χυμάτια χρυσᾶ
ΙΙΙ, ὧν τὸ ἓν]
205
[μικρόν, ὧν ὁλ.
Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂· ψήγμα]τα
χρυσᾶ καὶ δακτύλιον,
ἐν οἷς καὶ λεπίδιον
ἀργυροῦν, [ὧν]
ὁλ. Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂· ἄλλα
ψήγματα, ὧν ὁλ.
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
πέταλα ἀργυρᾶ
ἐπίχρυσα, ἐν οἷς
[καὶ — — — —· καὶ
κλασμάτιον
ἀργυροῦν, ὁλ.
ΔΙΙ𐅂]·
[ψήγματα
ἀργυρᾶ καὶ]
δακτυλίδιον
καὶ ἀπὸ φιάλης
κ̣άλχη καὶ δραχμὴ
χία καὶ ῥόδια
ΔΔΔΔ· δακτυλίδια
ἀργυρᾶ ΔΙΙ, ὧν
ὁλ. ΔΔ𐅃· μάχαιραν,
ξυλί[νον ἔχουσαν
τὸ — — — — — — —
— —· ἐλέφαντος
ὀδόντα],
[ἀνάθ
ημα? — — ] Ἀρίστωνος·
πέταλα χρυσᾶ
καὶ ἐπάργυρα,
ὧν ὁλ. 𐅃𐅂𐅂̣ΙΙΙ·
ἄλλας λεπίδας
τὰς ἀπὸ τῶν ἀνδριάντων,
ὁλ. ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙ·
ἄλλο πέταλον
χρ<υ>σοῦ[ν — —
— — — — — — — — —]
(200)
the chiton of Leto [...] gold in cloth wt of which 1.3; and two gold
disks one of which has a stone and[...circle] porphyry ado[r]ned
with gold and gilded sash; b[o]wl inscribed from the Council with
archon [Diokles, dedication of Stesileos son of Diodotos wt 86;
another with Xarilas archon dedi]cation of Stesileos son of Diodotos
wt 53; smooth phialion inscribed instead of the kylix wt 63;
censer[s...and staf]f and other silver pieces weight of all 44;
bronze wing from the Gorgon from the door [and snake head,
unweighed; two silver statues of Parmenides] fallen off the door;
neck of goose from the krater and neck of snake [from the same wt
49; gold ingots 3 one small wt of which 17; scrapings] (205) gold
and ring including silver foil wt [of which] 13; other scrapings wt
of which 4.4; gilded silver leaves including [...and silver fragment
wt 13; silver fragments and] ring and bronze from the phiale and
chian drachma and 40 rhodians; silver rings 12 wt of which 25; sword
with wooden [... ivory tooth ...] of Ariston; gold and silvered
leaves wt of which 7.3; other pieces from the statues wt 40.3;
another gold leaf [...
face
B.
1
— [σ]τάμνος ἐφ’
οὗ τὸ Α ἔχων
νόμισμα —
—
[ἄλλον
ἐφ’ οὗ τὸ Γ ἔχοντα
νό]μ̣ισμ̣α ἱστιαιικὸν
δραχ. [Χ𐅅ΗΗ]𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ
σὺν
—
δραχ—
—
[σὺν]
δηλίοις τετρωβόλοις
χαλκοῖς —
5
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — —
D.
Athenian Acropolis Inventories
Hekatompedon
Inventory IG II2 1388 (398 BC)
GODS
[The
following the Treasurers of the sacr]ed chremata of Athena and of
the O|[ther Gods in Euthykl]es’ archonship, (namely) Epichares
of Euonym|[os, Protokles of Ikari]a, Kephisophon of Paianea, Charias
of P|[elex, Demokles of Kephal]e, (5) Diogeiton of Acharnae,
|[Diomedes of Phlya, Aris]tokles of Amazanteia, Philokrates |[of
Aphidnae, Anthemion] of Anaphlastia, for whom Mnesippos of
Athmo|[nai was secretary, gave over to the Treasurers in Soniades’
|[archonship (397 BC)...]atos of Euonymos, Charias of Araphenion,
Di|[...],
(10)
Eubios of Aithalidai, Eualthlon from Ker|[ameos...] Philotades of
Dekeleia (vac.) |[Xenon of
Anaphly]stia, for whom Morychos of Boutades was secretary,| having
received (them) from the earlier Treasurers in |[Aristokrates’
ar]chonship, (namely) Sokratos of Lamprai and his fellow
off[icial|s, for whom Chairi]on (15) of Eleusis was scribe.
In
the H|ekatompedon Temple by number and weight: first rh|ymos of
gold Nike: head, diadem, earrings, pendant necklace, beaded
necklace, two gold nails, | left hand, bracelet, small gold pieces,
weight of th|ese (2044.3); second rhymos: torso, sash, wei|ght
(20)
of these 2010; third rhymos: choker, two pins, |[two f]eet, weight
of these 1939.3; fourth rhymos: right |[hand], bracelet, crown, two
katorides, weight of these |(1968); fifth rhymos: gold-backed |
akroterion, two legs, weight of these 4002.3; silver censer | (25)
which Kleostrate dedicated (daughter) of Nikeratos, with bronze
fittings, weight of this 1300; gold apyron weight |[of this] (.3
1/2); [2] smooth gold bracelets, Polyippe (daughter) of Meleteon of
|[Achar]nai dedicated, weight of the two 1.4; gilded silver |
collar, weight of this 58.4; gold crown | aristeia
(30)
of the goddess, weight of this 272.3 1/2; 3 silver oinochoai, |
weight of these 1382.2; gold crown | which Lysander son of
Aristokritos of Sparta dedicated, | weight of this 66.5; gold olive
crown which Gelon | son of Tlesonides of Pellene dedicated, weight
of this 17.3; | gold olive crown (35) which Hierokles of Phaselite
dedicated, weight | of this (59); gold olive crown which the city
dedicated | (as) victory prize for the citharode, weight of this 85;
| gold olive crown which Aristomache (daughter) of Aristokles
dedicated, | weight of this 26.3; gold apeiron ring which Platthis |
of Aegina
(40)
dedicated, weight of this .1 1/2; gold crown | which the Nike in the
hand of the | gold statue has on her head, unweighed; 2 Phocean
staters; [12] Phocean sixths; | 11 silver Medic sigloi; gold stand,
unweighed; | gilded silver krater, unweighed; [one] Phocean sixth;
|[two] stone (45) seals, (the one) with the gold ring, the | other
silver; 100 bronze trays; (12) bronze stathmia; knife with |[ivory]
scabbard, this the Boule dedicated |[in Antigenes’ archonship
(407 BC); silver karche]sion of Zeus Polieus [weig|ht of this, 199];
of Brauronian Artemis [3 chrysid|es phialai] weight
(50)
[of these 503.1+]; 3 chrysides [and one bell|ed, Stephanos] son of
Thallos of La[mphri dedicated, wei|ght of these 649]; tablet
s[ilver, weight of this 109|3.3; hand basin sil]ver [weight of this
1050; of Brauronian Artemis | gold thrip]e[distos with gold chain
which | Kallion (55) wife of Aris]t[okles dedicated, weight of this
2.1 |...silver hydriai: | first, wei]ght 9[98; second, weig|ht 991;
th]ird we[ight 982; fourth w|eight 98]9 [fifth weight 1003.3; sixth
wei|ght 98]7.3; (60) seven[th weight 993; ei|ghth, weight 9]90[.5;
ninth, weight 1001.3; tenth w|eight 981;] elev[enth weight 995.3;
tw|elfth weight 9]9[0; thirteenth weigh|t 992.3; fou]rteen[th weight
990.|4; (65) fif]teen[th weight 993; six|teenth we]ight [999.3;
seven|teenth weight 9]9[1...[gap of 13 lines]...w|ei]ght of
th[is...silver oinochoe weight 9]|79; [silver kylix weight of this
105; kylix go]|ld, weight of th[is ... curse]|d gold (85) mi[xed
weight of this; cursed gol]|d mixed [unstamped weight 614.3; gilded
silver weigh]|t 6; from the [Anakion; 7 large silver phialai; 2
small; | karch]esi(on) silv[er 1 weight 368+; of Brau|ronian
Artem[is phiale [small silver; small kylix...wei|gh]t 136;
(90)
ph[iale silver which Kallisatratos son of Kalliades of Ach|arn]ai
dedicat[ed weight of this 100+; silver phiale wh|ich Ari]stola
ded[icated weight of this; gold ring | which Do]rkas in[Peiraeus
living dedicated weight of this |...]gild[ed silver 2...
GODS
The
following silver they gave over and unweighed [epeteia: gorgoneion
of gilded]| silver from the shield from the [temple; the counterfeit
silver]| from Eleusis 25; ivory cal[f; silver phiale which
Leokr]|ates son of Aischron of Phaleron dedicated wei[ght of this
110; phiale silve]|r (5) which Lysimache mother of Telemachos
(dedicated), in which the [gorgoneion (was), weight]| 3+; gold ring
on tablet which Kl[einomache dedicated to Artem]|is of Brauron; gold
ring and go[lden apyron with silve]r bound which Phrynichos
Thessalian dedi[cated weight of these]| 2+; 2 gold earrings of
Brauronian Artemis [...]|os (10) dedicated weight .4 1/2;
counterfeit staters [in chest sea]|led by those with Lakon; large
onyx of priapic goat-deer wei]|ght 32; gold with mixed stones and
earr[ing weight 100]|.
The
following epeteia we gave over: the gold from the base of the statue
which Aristokles | brought away from [...] weight 100+ [...oth]|er
(15) gold which was found with the goldsmith weight .3 1/2; gold
crown, | aristeia of the goddess, weight 245.1 1/2; gilded ivory
palladion | and the gilded shield which Archias living in Peiraeus |
dedicated; Andron of Elaiousia gave aparchai of gold 2; Thrasyllos
of Euo|nymous gold . 1/2; 2 Aeginetan staters of Brauronian Artemis;
go|ld (20) ring which Axiothea wife of Sokles dedicated, weight 1.3;
| mixed unstamped silver weight 8.3; unstamped gold wei|ght 3.
The
following in the Opisthodomos: from the Brauronian chest: |
equine bridle, reins, Xenotimos son of Karkinos dedicated; in
an|other chest: gilded ivory pipes-case; in chest: 2 pendant
necklaces, | (25) beaded necklace, two pairs of diopai, these gilded
wood; | physeton; 2 gilded wood apples; eight iron rings, | one with
gold apyron; [glass s]eal; | five tin earrings, these Thaumarete
wif[e of Timonides]| dedicated; in chest: ivory lyre and plectrum
[...]|on (30) wooden; in painted chest which Kleito wife of
Aristo[krates of Ol]|ia dedicated; in the chest there is in a
kyl[ichnis: se]|al with gold ring, Dexilla dedicated; ochthoibos |
with twelve gold; another ochthoibos with 12 gold; ochthoibos with 7
gold; | chlidon with 10 gold with the apryon; painted glass seals |
2; gilded alyses with gold; onyx [seal]| with gold ring; | jasper
seal [with] gold ring; | gold-encased jasper seal; gold-encased
glass seal | with gold ring; 2 seals with silver rings; | 7 painted
gold-encased glass seals, | (35) gold-encased seal, beaded necklace
on thread with [...]| gold apyron in the middle and bracelets...
Treasurers
of Athena Inventory IG II2 1424a (369 BC)
http://epigraphy.
packhum.org/text/3641?&bookid=5&location=7
1
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
—σ— — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — —]
—
— — — — — — — — —
— —κλ[․]ο․․․ο․․․․νοσι[․]χ—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —]
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — — — — — — — —
παραλ[α]β[ό]ντες
παρὰ τ[αμιῶν — —
— — — — — — — — —
—]
—
— — — — — — — — —
— — ἐπὶ Δ[υσ]νικ[ή]το
ἄ[ρ]χοντ[ος] {370/69}
Κοροί[βο — —
— — — — — — — — —
—]
...
having taken over from the t[reasurers...] in the archonship of
Dysniketos (370 BC) son of
Koroi[bos...]
col.
I.
5
․․․․․․․․․20․․․․․․․․․του[․]ρυ[․]ου
[πρῶτος ῥυμός·
κεφαλή], στεφά[ν]η,
ὅρμος,
[ἐνώιδια,
ὑποδερίς, ἧ]λοι
χρυσοῖ, χ[εὶρ]
[ἀριστερά, ἀμφιδέα],
χρυσία μικρά,
[στα]θμὸν
[ΧΧΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ]·
10
[δεύτερος ῥυμός·
θώραξ, στ]ρόφιον,
περι- [τραχηλίδιον,
στ]ολ̣ί[δε] δύο,
μικρὰ χρυσία,
vac.
[σταθμὸν
Χ𐅅ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂]·
[τρίτος ῥυμός·
ἀπόπτυγμα], περόναι
δύο, vac.
[πόδε
δύο, χρυσία
μικρά],
15
[σταθμὸν Χ𐅅ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ]·
[τέταρτος ῥυμός·
χεὶρ] δεξιά,
ἀμφιδέα, [κατωρίδε
δύο, στέφα]νο[ς],
χρυσία μι[κ]ρά,
[σταθμὸν] Χ̣․․ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂
[πέμπτος
ῥυμός]· ἀκρωτήριον,
ὀπίσθιον,
20
[σκέλη δύο,
χ]ρ[υσία μικ]ρά,
vac.
[στ]αθμὸν [ΧΧΧΧ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ]·
[κρ]ατὴρ [χρυ]σοῦς
ὁ ἐλάττων, [στ]αθμὸν
․․․․Δ𐅃— — [ὑδρί]α
[χρυσῆ], σταθμὸν
ΧΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
25
[ὑδρία χρυσῆ],
σταθμὸν ΧΗΗ𐅂·
[οἰνοχόη χρυσῆ],
σταθμὸν 𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
․․․․․13․․․․․․ου․․․8․․․․ε
vac. ․․․․․․․․18․․․․․․․․ΗΗ𐅄Δ·
vac.
[φιάλαι πτιλωταὶ]
ἕξ, σταθμὸν ΧΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
30
[φιάλαι] Αἰ[θι]οπίδες
τέτταρες, [σταθμὸν
𐅅ΗΗΗ𐅃]ΙΙΙ· [φιά]λη
[χρυσῆ, ἣν Στ]έφανος
Θάλλο [ἀνέ]θη[κεν,
στα]θμὸν Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
[στ]έφανος χ[ρ]υσο͂ς
τῆς θεο͂ ἀριστεῖον
35
[ἐκ] Παναθ[η]ν[αίων]
τῶν ἐπὶ Ναυσινίκο
[ἄρ]χοντος {378/7},
σ[τα]θμὸν Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
[κυ]μβίον [χρυσο͂ν],
σταθμὸν ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂Ι𐅀·
[χρ]υσί[ο]ν ἐγ
κιβωτίωι ἀπὸ
το͂ κανο͂, ἵνα
[τὰ]
ἐλεφάντ[ινα]
ζῶια, σταθμὸν
ΔΔΔΔ·
40
[δο]κιμε[ῖα] λε[ῖα]ι
χρυσαῖ τετταράκοντα
[ἕξ], σταθμὸν
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
[χρυ]σίον,
ὃ παρὰ Ἀριστάρχωι
[ηὑ]ρέθη, σταθμὸν
𐅂𐅂Ι· [εἱ]λικτε͂ρες
Ἀρτέμιδος
Βραυρωνίας
45
[χρ]υσοῖ, [στα]θμὸν
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
[φύ]λλον ἀπὸ [τῆ]ς
θύρας ἀπὸ τοῦ
Ἑκατο[μ]πέδο
[χρ]υσο͂ν
ἀπὸ [τοῦ] ἥ[λ]ο
ἄστατον· [στ]έφανος
χρυσοῦς, ὃν ἡ
Νίκη ἔχει ἐπὶ
τῆς
[κε]φαλῆς
ἡ ἐπὶ τῆς χειρὸς
το͂ ἀγάλματος.
50
[τῆ]ς Νίκης τῆς
ἐπὶ Σωκρατίδο
ἄρχοντος {374/3}·
[πρ]ῶτος ῥυμός·
κεφαλή, στεφάνη,
στέφανος [ὁ ἐ]πὶ
τῆι κεφαλῆι,
ἐνώιδια, ὑποδερίς,
[ὅρ]μος, χεῖρες
ἀμφότεραι, ἀμφιδέαι
δύο, [στ]αθμὸν
ΧΧΧ𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
55
[δε]ύτερος ῥυμός·
θώραξ, περόνα,
ζώνιον, [χρυσ]ίον
ὀπίσθιον, [στ]αθμὸν
ΧΧΧΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ·
[τρ]ίτος ῥυμός·
σκέλη ἀμφότερα
καὶ [κα]τω[ρ]ίδε
δύο· σταθμὸν
ΧΧΧΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
60
[τέ]ταρτος ῥυμός·
ἀπόπτυγμα, πόδε
δύο, [πε]ρονίδες,
μία κατακλείεται,
[στ]αθμὸν
ΧΧΗΔΔΔΔ𐅂ΙΙΙ·
[ὑδ]ρία χρυσῆ,
σταθμὸν ΧΗΗ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
[στ]έφανος
χρυσοῦς, ἀριστεῖον
τῆς θεο͂ 65 [ἐκ]
Παναθηναίων τῶν
ἐπὶ Σωκρατίδο
ἄρ]χοντος {374/3},
σταθμὸν Η𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙ.
vacat vacat vacat
(Column
One) [... first rhymos: head],
diadem, necklace {earrings, hypoderis, n]ails of gold, h[and lfeft,
bracelet], small pieces of gold, weight [2045.2; second rhymos:
breastplate, b]ra, peri[trachelidion st]oli[des] two, small pieces
of gold [weight 1938; third rhymos: apoptygma], two pins [two feet,
small pieces of gold weight 1939.3; fourth rhymos: hand] right,
bracelet [two karorides, crow]n small pieces of gold [weight] 1294+;
[fifth rhymos:] akroterion, opisthion [two legs, small pieces of
gold we]ight [4002.3]; the smaller gold krater weight 15+; [gold
hydri]a weight 1174.4; [gold hydria] weight 1201; [gold oinochoe]
weight 67.3...260; [feathered phialai] six, wt 1036; four Ethiopian
[phialai weight 805].3; [gold phia]le [which St]ephanos son of
Thallos dedicat[ed wei]ght 198; gold crown aristeion of the goddess
from the Panathenaia in the archonship of Nausinikos (378
BC), weight 197.6; [gold ky]mbion
weight 27.1 1/2; gold in chest from the basket where the ivory
figures (are), weight 40; smooth testers, forty [six] weight 89.3;
gold which was found with Aristarchos, weight 2.1; gold heilikters
of Brauronian Artemis, weight 3.5; gold leaf from the door from the
Hekatompedon from the nail, unweighed; gold crown which the Nike in
the hand of the statue wears on her head; first rhymos of the Nike
in Sokratides’ archonship (374):
head, diadem, the crown on the head, both hands, two bracelets,
weight 3077.4; second rhymos: breastplate, perona, girdle, gold
opisthion, weight 3391.3; third rhymos: both legs and two katorides,
weight 3288; fourth rhymos: apoptygma, two feet, pins, one is
broken, weight 2141.3; gold hydria weight 1200.3; gold crown,
aristeion of the goddess from the Panathenaia in Sokratides’
archonship (374 BC), weight
182.2. (3 blank lines)
70
[τά]δε χρυσᾶ καὶ
ἐπίτηκτα [κα]ὶ
ὑπόχαλκα
ἄστατα·
[κρ]ατὴρ ἐπίτηκτος
ἐπίχρυσος
ὑπάργυρος,
[ὑπ]όστατον κρατῆρος
ὑπόχαλκον
[ἐπ]ίχρυσον
γοργόνειον
χρυσο͂ν
75
[ὑπ]άργυρον
ἐπίτηκτον ἀπὸ
τῆς ἀσπίδος
[τῆ]ς ἀπὸ τοῦ νεώ
ἀσπιδίσκαι
ἐπίχρυσοι
[ὑπ]άργυροι
τέτταρες ἀκινάκης
[σι]δηροῦς τὴν
λαβὴν χρυσῆν
ἔχων, [τὸ] δὲ κολεὸν
ἐλεφάντινον
περίχρυσον,
80
[τὸ] δὲ πυγα̣ῖον
χρυσο͂ν ἀσπίδες
[ἐπ]ίχρυσο λεῖαι
δύο τρίτη ἀσπὶς
ἐπί- [χρ]υσος
γοργόνειον
ἔχοσα ἀνθέμιον
[χα]λκοῦν ἐπιτήκτωι
περικεχρυσωμένον·
[ὑπ]οδερίδιον
ξύλινον ἐπίχρυσον·
85
[κα]νοῦν κατάχρυσον
ὑπόχαλκον [χα]λκᾶ
διερείσματα
ἔχον. vacat
vacat
The
following gold and gilded and (gilded) bronze unweighed gilded
silver krater; gilded bronze krater stand; gilded silver gorgoneion
from the shield from the temple; four small gilded silver shields;
iron akinakes with gold hilt and gilded ivory scabbard and gold
pyglaion; two smooth gilded shields; a third gilded shield with
gorgoneion; gilded bronze flower; gilded wood necklace; gilded
bronze basket with bronze fixtures. (2
blank lines)
[τά]δε
σταθμῶι παρελάβομεν
χρυσᾶ
90
[κα]ὶ ἐπίτηκτα
καὶ ὑπόχαλκα·
[κα]νοῦν χρυσοῦν
ὑπόχαλκον, ἵνα
[ὁ Ἀ]πόλλων, σταθμὸν
ΧΧΧ𐅅𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂·
[ἕτ]ερον κανοῦν
χρυσο͂ν ὑπόχαλκον,
[ἵν]α ὁ Ζεύς, σταθμὸν
ΧΧΧ𐅅Η𐅄ΔΔΔΔ·
95
[φιά]λη χαλκοκρὰς
βαρβαρική, ἣν
Κλέων [ἀνέ]θηκεν,
σταθμὸν Η𐅄Δ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
[φι]άλη
ὑπάργυρος
ἀκυλωτή, σταθμὸν
Η𐅂̣ΙΙΙΙΙ·
[θυ]μιατήριον
ἐπίχρυσον ὑπόχαλκον,
ἵνα [τὸ] ἄλφα
παρασεσήμανται,
σταθμὸν
100
[σὺ]<ν> τοῖς ἥλοις
τοῖς χαλκοῖς
ΧΧΧΗΗ𐅂𐅂· [θυ]μιατήριον
ἐπίχρυσον ὑπόχαλκον,
ἵνα
[τὸ]
βῆτα παρασεσήμανται,
[στ]αθμὸν ΧΧΧΗ𐅄Δ𐅂𐅂·
[χρυ]σίον ἐπίτηκτον
105
[ὑπ]άργυρον, σταθμὸν
𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
[χρ]υσίον ἐπίτηκτον
ἀπὸ τῶν ἀκρωτηρίων
[το͂] νεὼ τῆς
Νίκης, σταθμὸν
𐅃𐅂ΙΙΙ· [χρ]υσίον
ἐπίτηκτον ἀπὸ
τῆς ἀσπίδος
[τῆ]ς πρὸς τῶι
νεώι, σταθμὸν
𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙΙ·
110
[ἕτ]ερον χρυσίον
ἐπίτηκτον [ἀπὸ]
τῶν ἀκρωτηρίων,
σταθμὸν Δ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
[σφ]ραγίδιον
ἀργυροῦν δακτύλιον
ἔχον. vacat
vacat
The
following we took over by weight, gold and gilded and (gilded)
bronze gilded bronze basket where the Apollo (is), weight 3596;
another gilded bronze basket where the Zeus (is), weight 3690;
bronze-headed barbaric phiale which Kleon dedicated, weight 167.5;
silvered akylote phiale weight 101.5; gilded bronze censer where the
alpha is marked, weight with the bronze nails 3202; gilded bronze
censer where the beta is marked, weight 3160.2; gilded silver,
weight 4.4; gilded gold from the acroteria of the Nike temple,
weight 6.3; gilded gold from the shield at the temple, weight 3.5;
other gilded gold from the acroteria, weight 13; seal with silver
ring. (2 blank lines)
col.
II.
161
τάδε ἀργυρᾶ
[ὑ]πόχαλκα·
θυμιατήριον
χαλκᾶ διερείσματα
ἔχον, ὃ Ἀριστόκριτος
ἀνέθηκ[εν], σταθμὸν
ΧΧΗΗ[Η]ΔΔ[Δ]·
165
θυμιατήριον
χαλκᾶ δι[ερ]είσματα
ἔχον, σταθμὸν
ΧΧΗΗ[ΗΗΔΔ𐅃]𐅂𐅂𐅂·
θυμιατήριον
χαλκᾶ διερείσματα
ἔχον, ὃ Κλεοστράτη
ἀνέθηκεν, σταθμὸν
ΧΗΗΗ[Δ]Δ.
169a
vacat vacat
(Column
Two)
The
following silvered bronze silver censer with bronze fixtures which
Aristokritos dedicated, weight (2330); censer with bronze fixtures,
weight (2428); censer with bronze fixtures which Kleostrate
dedicated, weight (1320). (2 blank
lines)
170
τάδε ἀργυρᾶ·
[πίν]αξ μέγας,
σταθμ[ὸν ΧΧ]ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
[πίναξ] ἕτερο[ς],
σταθμὸν Χ̣ΔΔ𐅃̣𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙ·
[πίναξ]
ἕ[τ]ερος, σταθμὸν
[𐅅ΗΗ]Δ𐅃̣[𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ]·
[χε]ρν[ιβε]ῖον,
σταθμὸν Χ𐅄·
175
[χε]ρνι[βε]ῖον,
σταθμὸν [𐅅ΗΗ]ΗΗΔΔΔΔ·
Ἄ̣μμω̣ν̣ος
φι[ά]λη, σταθμὸν
𐅅ΗΗΗ𐅂𐅂·
[οἰνοχ]όαι
τρεῖς, σταθμὸν
ΧΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙ]·
φιάλαι ἀργυραῖ
δύο, σταθμὸν
τῆς ἑτέρας Η·
180
οἰνοχόη ἀργυρᾶ,
σταθμὸν 𐅅Η𐅄𐅂𐅂.
180a
vacat vacat vacat vacat vacat
The
following silver large tablet, weight (2027.3); another tablet,
weight 1028.2; another tablet, weight [718.3]; hand basin, weight
1050; hand basin, weight (940); phiale of Ammon, weight 802; three
oinochoai, weight 1382.2; two silver phialai, weight of the one 100;
silver oinochoe, weight 652. (5
blank lines)
181
τῶ[ν πι]ν[άκ]ων
[πε]ριτμήματα,
σταθμὸν ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
[ξε]νικο͂ ἀργυρίο
σὺν τοῖν ἀμφιδειδίοιν,
σταθμὸν· [𐅅]ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
185
νῆττα ἀ[ρ]γυρᾶ
ἀπὸ τοῦ θυμιατηρίου
[τοῖ]ν θεοῖν,
σταθμὸν Δ𐅂[ΙΙΙ]·
[ὀμφα]λοὶ φιαλίων
δύο, σταθμὸν
𐅃𐅂· θυμιατήρια
τρία πα[ρὰ τ]ὴν
τράπεζαν [ἄσ]τατα
ἐπισκευῆς
[δεόμε]να·
190
[καν]οῦν, ἵνα τὰ
ἐλεφά[ντιν]α
[ζῶι]α, ἄστατον.
191a
vacat vacat
cuttings
of the tablets, weight 44.3; foreign silver with the two bracelets,
weight (83.3); silver duck from the censer of the Twain, weight
11.3; bosses of two phialai, weight 6; three censers from the table,
unweighed, lacking gear; basket where the ivory figures (are),
unweighed. (2 blank lines)
192
ὑδρίαι ἀργυραῖ
Ἀθηνᾶς Πολιάδο[ς]·
πρώτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
δευτέρα 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂·
195
τρίτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
τετάρτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
πέμπτη Χ𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἕκτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂[Ι]ΙΙ·
ἑβδόμη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
200
ὀγδόη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ·
ἐνάτη Χ𐅂ΙΙΙ·
δεκάτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂̣․․·
ἑνδεκάτη
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ[ΔΔ]𐅃ΙΙΙ·
δωδεκάτη
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ[Δ]·
205
τρίτη καὶ δεκάτη
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
τετάρτη καὶ
δεκάτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔΙΙΙΙ·
πέμπτη καὶ δεκάτη
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἕκτη καὶ δεκάτη
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ[𐅄]ΔΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
ἑβδόμη καὶ δεκάτη
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂·
210
ὀγδόη καὶ δεκάτη
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
ἐνάτη καὶ δεκάτη
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
εἰκοστὴ
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
μία καὶ εἰκοστὴ
Χ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂Ι· δευτέρα
καὶ εἰκοστὴ
[𐅅Η]ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂[ΙΙ]ΙΙ·
215
τρίτη καὶ εἰκοστὴ
Χ𐅂[․]Ι· τετάρτη
καὶ εἰκοστὴ
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂·
πέμπτη καὶ εἰκοστὴ
Χ·
ἕκτη
καὶ εἰκοστὴ
Χ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙΙ·
ἑβδόμη καὶ εἰκοστὴ
Χ[Ι]ΙΙ.
219a
vacat vacat
Silver
hydriai of Athena Polias
first
998; second 991; third 982; fourth 989; fifth 1003.3; sixth (998.2);
seventh 993; eighth 995.3; ninth 1001.3; tenth 991+; eleventh
(995.3); twelfth (990); thirteenth 992.4; fourteenth 990.4;
fifteenth 993; sixteenth 949.3; seventeenth 991; eighteenth 994;
nineteenth 994.3; twentieth 992; twenty-first 1004.1; twenty-second
(992.4); twenty-third 1001.1+; twenty-fourth 991; twenty-fifth 1000;
twenty-sixth 1009.4; twenty-seventh (1000.3).
(2 blank lines)
220
ὑδρίαι ἀργυραῖ
καιναί· πρώτη
𐅅ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
δευτέρα 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
τρίτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗΙΙΙ.
223a
vacat
224
Ἀθηνᾶς Νίκης
ὑδρίαι·
225
πρώτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄Δ·
δευτέρα 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
τρίτη Χ𐅂· τετάρτη
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂.
228a
vacat
229
Ἀρτέμιδος
Βραυρωνίας
ὑδρίαι ἀργυραῖ
230
πρώτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂·
δευτέρα 𐅅ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
τρίτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂·
τετάρτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
πέμπτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
235
ἕκτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗΔΔ𐅂𐅂·
ἑβδόμη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂.
236a
vacat
237
Ἀνάκοιν ὑδρίαι
ἀργυραῖ· πρώτη
𐅅ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂·
δευτέρα 𐅅ΗΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ·
240 τρίτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅂𐅂.
240a
vacat vacat
241
Δήμητρος καὶ
Κόρης ὑδρίαι
ἀργυραῖ· πρώτη
𐅅ΗΗΗΗΔΔ𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
δευτέρα 𐅅ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
τρίτη
𐅅ΗΗΗΗΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂ΙΙΙ·
245
τετάρτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂·
245bis
πέμπτη 𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄𐅃𐅂𐅂𐅂𐅂.
245a
vacat
246
Ἀφροδίτης ὑδρία
ἀργυρᾶ μία
𐅅ΗΗΗΗ𐅄.
246a
vacat
New
silver hydriai
first
893; second 907; third 900.3 (1
blank line)
Hydriai
of Athena Nike
first
960; second 982; third 1001; fourth 992 (1
blank line)
Silver
hydriai of Brauronian Artemis
first
979; second 882; third 987; fourth 992; fifth 922; sixth 922;
seventh 959.
(1
blank line)
Silver
hydriai of the Anakes
first
883; second 895.3; third 932. (2
blank lines)
Silver
hydriai of Demeter and Kore
first
924.3; secon d938; third 928.3; fourth 938; fifth 959. (1
blank line)
One
silver hydria of Aphrodite, 950.
(1
blank line)
247
σταθμία χαλκᾶ
ΔΙΙ·
μάχαιρα
σιδηρᾶ ἐλεφάντινον
κολεὸν
ἔχουσα,
ἣν ἡ βουλὴ ἀνέθηκεν
<ἡ>
250
ἐπὶ Ἀντιγένους
ἄρχοντος {407/6}
βοΐδιον
ἐλεφάντινον,
ὃ Σμικύθη ἀνέθηκεν·
παλλάδιον
ἐλεφάντινον
ἐπίχρυσον
καὶ
ἀσπιδίσκη ἐπίχρυσος,
ὃ Ἀρχίας ἀνέθηκε·
χρυσῖτις
λίθος ἐπὶ κίονος
ξυλίνο.
254a
vacat vacat vacat vacat vacat vacat vacat
12
bronze stathmia; iron knife with ivory hilt which the Boule
dedicated with Antigenes’ archon (407
BC); ivory calf which Smikythe dedicated; gilded ivory
palladion and gilded shield which Archias dedicated; chrysite stone
on wood column. (7 blank lines)
col.
III.
290
κυνῆ χαλκῆ
ἐ[πίχρ]υσος μία·
[γραμματε͂]ο[ν]
παρὰ
τῆς βου[λῆς]
τῆς [ἐξ Ἀρείου
πάγου σεσημασμένον]·
θρόνοι
μεγάλοι τρεῖς
οὐχ ὑγιεῖς
ἀνα[κλίσεις]
ἔχοντες
ἠλεφαντωμένας
ἕτερος [θρόνος]
ἀνάκλισιν
οὐκ ἔχων ὄνυξ
μέγας [κατεαγώς]·
295
φιάλη χαλκῆ,
ἣν Καλλίας
Πλωθειεὺς
[ἀνέθηκεν]·
θρόνος
Θετταλικός
συβήνη ἐλε[φ]αν[τίνη]
ἡ
παρὰ Μηθυμναίων
ἐπίχρυσος
δίφ̣[ρος κ]α̣τ̣[εαγώς],
ὑγιεῖς
δύ̣ο̣ θρόνοι
τέτταρες, τούτων
κ̣[α]τ[ε]αγ̣[ὼς
εἷς]·
κλῖναι
Μιλησιουργεῖς
δέκα ἐπισκευῆς
[δεόμεναι]·
300
ὀκλαδίαι δέκα
τράπεζα ἠλεφαν[τωμένη]·
ἀσπίδες
ἐπίχρυσοι ὑπόξυλοι
Δ[Δ𐅃 ἐπίσημοι],
τούτων
μία οὐκ ἔχει
τὸ ἐπίσημον [ὄνυξ
ἐγ κυλιχνίδι]
χαλκῆι
ἄνευ δακτυλίου
ξυστίς, ἣ[ν] Φ[α]ρ[ν]αβ—
—
ἀνέθηκεν
υ․․6․․․ λ[ύρ]ιον
ἐλεφάντ[ινον]
305
ἔχον τὸ σκ[ῦ]τος
[․]ο․․․ε․․․․ον
ἐπίχρ[υσον]·
ἀσπίδες
ἐπίχαλκοι —
— — — — — — — — —
— —
ἄστατος
․․․8․․․․οα․․․7․․․μ—
— — — — — —
τονε[․]αρισ[․]ω[․]
σφρα[γί]διον
ἐλεφάντ[ινον]
δακτύλιον
ἔχον σφραγιδίω
λιθίνω δύο, [τὸ
μὲν]
310
χρυσοῦν ἔχον
[δ]α[κ]τύλιον, τὸ
δὲ ἀργυροῦν·
στατῆρες
[κ]ίβδηλοι [ἐγ
κι]βωτίωι παρὰ
Λ[ά]κω[νος]
σεσημασμένοι
τῆι δημοσίαι
σφραγῖδι·
δοκιμεῖον
τῆς οἰνο[χ]όης
τοῖν θεοῖν,
σταθμὸν
χρυσίο
ΙΙ ἐγ κιβωτίωι
δοκιμεῖον τῆς
οἰ[νοχόης]
315
τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς χρυσοῦν,
σταθμὸν [ Ι𐅁𐅀]
ἐγ κιβωτίωι·
δοκι[μ]εῖον
τοῦ [χρυσ]ίου
τοῦ εἰς τὰς
φιάλα[ς]
ἐ[γ]
κιβωτίωι, σταθμὸν
Ι𐅁 δοκιμεῖον
τοῦ χρυ[σίου]
τοῦ
εἰς τὰ θυμιατήρια
ἐγ κιβωτίωι,
[σταθμὸν Ι𐅁𐅀]·
δοκιμεῖον
ἕτερον, σταθμὸν
Ι𐅁 κρανίδιον
μ[ικρὸν]
320
περίχρυσον
παρειὰς [χρυσ]ᾶς
ἔχον, τ[ὸν δὲ λόφ]ον
ἐλεφάντινον
κύαθος μυρηρὸς
ἀργυροῦς ἄστα[τος]·
Θήραια
ΙΙΙΙ φιάλιον
χαλκοῦν.
322a
vacat vacat vacat
(Column
Three) one gilded bronze helmet;
grammateion [sealed] by the Boule [of the Areopagus]; three large
thrones not sound with ivoried anaklises; another throne without
anaklisis; bronze large onyx; bronze phiale which Kallias of
Plotheia dedicated; Thessalian throne; the gilded ivory pipe-case
from the Methymnians; broken chair; two sound; four thrones, [one of
these broken]; ten Milesian-made couches [lacking] gear; ten
okladiai; ivoried table; (25) gilded wood shields, one of these does
not have the balzon; [onyx in a box] of bronze without ring; scraper
which Pharnab- dedicated; ivory lyre with skytos... gilded...
bronzed shields... unweighed... small ivory seal with ring; two
stone seals [the one] with a gold ring, the other with a silver one;
counterfeit staters in a chest from Lakon, sealed with the public
seal; tester of the oinochoe of the Twain, weight of gold .2, in a
chest; gold tester of the oinochoe of Athena, weight [.1 3/4] in a
chest; tester of the gold for the phialai in a chest, weight .1 1/2;
tester of the gold for the censters in a chest [weight .1 3/4];
another tester, weight .1 1/2; small gilded helmet with gold
cheekpieces and the crest ivory; silver myrrh kyathos unweighed; 4
Theraia; bronze phialion. (3 blank lines)
323
ἐκ τοῦ Παρθενῶνος·
γοργόνειον·
κάμπη [κατάχρυσα
ἵ]ππος· γρύψ·
325
γρυπὸς προτομή
[γρὺψ μέγας ]
λέοντος προτομή·
δράκων
ἐπίχρυσο[ς
κλῖναι Χι]οργεῖς
𐅃ΙΙ· vac.
ξιφομάχαιραι
𐅃[․․ ἐγχειρ]ίδιον
ξίφη 𐅃· vac.
θώρακες
Δ𐅃Ι πέ[λτη χαλκῆ]
λύρα κατάχρυσος·
λύραι
ἐλεφάντινα[ι
ΙΙΙΙ λ]ύραι
ξύλιναι ΙΙΙΙ·
vac.
330
κράνη χαλκᾶ ΙΙΙ
ἀ[σπί]δες ὑπόξυλοι
ἐπίχαλκοι —
—·
κράνος
Ἰλλυρικόν·
ἀσπὶς ἐγ Λέσβου
ἐπίσημος [Νίκη]·
ἀσπίδες
ἐκ Παναθηναίων
ἐπίχαλκοι Δ·
vac.
λέιον
στάχυες ΔΙΙ
περίχρυσοι
ἀλαβαστοθήκ[η]
ἅλυσιν
ἀργυρᾶν ἔχουσα
μάχαιρα χαλκῆ
ἐν ἐλύτρ[ωι]
335
ἐλεφαντίνωι
χαλινὸς κεχρυσωμένος·
vac.
ἀκινάκης
κεχρυσωμένος
κιβωτίω δύο·
vac.
ὀπισθοκρηπῖδες
συβήνη Μηδική
ἀλαβαστοθήκ[η]
[ξ]υλίνη
κοίτη ὑπόξυλος
κατάχρυσος
ἀσπίδες
[ἐπί]σημοι
ΔΔΔΙΙΙ τούτων
τρεῖς γε<γ>ραμμέναι·
340
[ἀσ]πίδες ἐπίχαλκοι
Δ𐅃ΙΙ κολεὸν
μαχαίρας
[ἰατρ]ικῆς
ἐλεφάντινον
κλῖναι Μιλησιουργεῖς
[𐅃ΙΙ]·
[κ]λινίδες
δύο κνημίδων
ζεύγη 𐅃Ι
[κυ]ναῖ
χαλκαῖ ἄνω ΔΔ𐅃Ι
κανᾶ χα[λκᾶ]
ΙΙΙ·
[στύ]ρακες
ΗΔ σώρακοι
𐅃ΙΙΙ κα[ὶ ἡ]μισωράκιον
345
τ[οξ]ευμάτων
σαπρῶν ἀχρήστων
δίφ[ρ]οι ΙΙ.
345a
vacat vacat
From
the Parthenon
gorgoneion;
gilded kampe; horse; vulture; head of a vulture; [large vulture];
head of a lion; gilded snake; Chian couches; 5+ sword-knives;
dagger; 5 swords; 16 breastplates; bronze helmet; gilded lyre; [4]
ivory lyres; 4 wood lyres; 3 bronze helmets; bronzed wood shields;
Illyrian helmet; decorated shield from Lesbos; 10 bronzed shields
from the Panathenaia; 12 gilded stalks of wheat; alabastotheke with
silver chain; bronze knife in ivory elytron; gilded bridle; gilded
akinakes; 2 chests; opisthokrepides; Medic pipe case; wood
alabastotheke; gilded wood koite; 33 decorated shields, 3
inscribed/painted; 17 bronzed shields; ivory scabbard for doctor’s
knife; Milesian couches; 2 small couches; 6 pairs of greaves; 26
bronze helmets, up; 3 bronze helmets; 110 spear shafts; 8 boxes and
a half box of useless rotten arrows; 2 chairs.
(2 blank lines)
346
ἐν τῶι ἀρχαίωι
νεώι·
στ[έφ]ανος
χρυσοῦς, ὃν
Κόνων ἀνέθηκεν,
ἄστατος·
στέ[φ]ανος
χρυσοῦς, ὃν οἱ
ταμίαι ἀνέθεσαν
οἱ
ἐπ’
Εὐβολίδο
ἄρχοντος {394/3},
ἄστατος στέφανος
χρυσο[ῦς],
350
ὃν οἱ πρέσβεις
ἀνέθεσαν οἱ
μετὰ Δίωνος·
vac.
στέφανος
χρυσοῦς ἄστατος,
ὃν οἱ ταμίαι
ἀνέθεσα[ν]
οἱ
ἐπὶ Δημοστράτου
ἄρχοντος {393/2}
στέφανος χρυσοῦ[ς]
ἄστατος,
ὃν Τιμαγόρας
ἀνέθηκεν στεφάνω
ὑποξύ[λω]
δύο
φιάλη ἀργυρᾶ
ἄστατος ἐγ
κα̣λ̣ιάδι, ἣν
Εὐκολί[νη]
355
ἀνέθηκεν φιάλη
ἀργυρᾶ ἄστατος,
ἣν Γλαύκωνος
γυνὴ
ἀνέθηκεν φιάλη
ἀργυρᾶ ἄστατος,
ἣν Δημὼ
Ἀκουμενοῦ
γυνὴ ἀνέθηκεν
ἀσπιδίω δύο
ἀργυρὼ
καὶ
κρανιδίω δύο
καὶ δοράτιον
ἀργυρᾶ· ἄστατα·
φι[ά]λη
ὑπόξυλος ἐπίχρυσος
χρυσίον ἄπυρον,
360
ὃ ἀνέθηκε Φιλτώ,
ἄστατον δακτύλιος
χρυσοῦς
ἄστατος,
ὃν Ἀρχεδίκη
ἀνέθηκεν ἀποραντήριον
{ἀπορραντήριον}
χρυσο͂ν
ἄστατον, ὃ ἀνδριὰς
ἔχει στεφάνη,
ἣν ἡ θεὸς
ἔχει·
πλάστρα, ἃ ἡ θεὸς
ἔχει· ὄχθοιβος,
ὃν ἔχει ἐπὶ τῶι
τραχήλωι·
ὅρμοι πέντε·
γλαὺξ χρυσῆ·
αἰγὶς χρυσῆ·
365
γοργόνειον
χρυσοῦν· φιάλη
χρυσῆ, ἣν ἐν τῆι
χειρὶ
ἔχει
στέφανος χρυσοῦς
ἄστατος, ὃν ἡ
βουλὴ ἡ ἐπὶ
Χαρισάνδρου
{376/5} ἀνέθηκεν στέφανος
χρυσοῦς, ὃν
Τιμόθεος
ἀνέθηκεν στέφανος
χρυσοῦς, ὃν
Φίλιππος
ἀνέθηκεν στέφανος
χρυσοῦς, ὃν
370
Καλλίκλεια
ἀνέθηκεν στέφανος
χρυσοῦς, ὃν
ἡ
βουλὴ ἡ ἐφ’
Ἱπποδάμαντος
{376/5} ἀνέθηκεν·
φιάλη ἀργυρ[ᾶ],
ἣν
Ἀριστοβούλη
ἀνέθηκεν ξιφομάχαιρα
χαλκῆ
πρὸς
τῆι παραστάδι
ξίφη δύο πρὸς
τῆι παστάδι
{παραστάδι}. vacat
In
the Old Temple
gold
crown which Konon dedicated, unweighed; gold creown which the
treasurers dedicated with Euboulides archon (394
BC), unweighed; gold crown which the ambassadors with Dion
dedicated; unweighed gold crown, which the treasurers dedicated with
Demostratos archon (393 BC);
unweighed gold crown, which Timagora dedicated; two gilded wood
crowns; unweighed silver phiale in a basket which Eukoline
dedicated; unweighed silver phiale which the wife of Glaukon
dedicated; unweighed silver phiale which Demo wife of Akoumenos
dedicated; two silver shields and two helmets and a spear, silver,
unweighed; gilded wood phiale; gold apyron which Philto dedicated,
unweighed; unweighed gold ring which Archedike dedicated; unweighed
gold sprinkler which the statue holds; diadem which the goddess
wears; plastra which the goddess wears; ochthoibos which she wears
on her throat; five necklaces; gold owl; gold aegis; gold
gorgoneion; gold phiale which she has in her hand; unweighed gold
crown which the Boule dedicated with Charisander archon (376
BC); gold crown which Timotheos dedicated; gold crown which
Philippos dedicated; gold crown which Kallikleia dedicated; gold
crown which the Boule dedicated with Hippodamas archon (375
BC); silver phiale which Aristoboule dedicated; bronze
sword-knife near the prastas; two swords near the pastas. (36
blank lines)
col.
I.
115
[ἐν] τῶι Ὀπισθοδόμωι·
[ζ]ώιδια ἀπὸ τῶν
θρόνων· [χ]εῖρε
ἐλεφαντίνα δύο·
[ὄ]φεως ἀργυρο͂
ἥμισυ· [ἄ]κμονες
σιδηροῖ ΙΙΙΙ
σφῦραι [ΙΙ]·
120
[χ]αρακτῆρε[ς]
ΔΔΙΙ⁶ κιβωτός·
[σώρα]κοι το[ξ]ευμάτων
ΗΗ𐅄ΔΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ·
[ἐ]πετείο ΔΔ.
vac. 122a
vacat vacat
In
the Opisthodomos
ivory
figures from the thrones; half a silver snake; 4 iron anvils; 2
hammers; 22 stamps; chest; 299 arrow boxes, 20 this year’s. (2
blank lines)
125
[ἐν] τῆι χαλκοθήκηι·
[ἀ]σπίδες ἐπί[χ]αλκοι
․․6․․․ΤΗΛ[․]Χ[․]Ο
ΗΗΗ𐅄Δ𐅃· [ἀσ]πίδες
ἐπίχαλκοι [τῶν]
παρὰ Πασίωνος
𐅅ΗΗ𐅄ΙΙΙΙ·
130
ἀσπίδες ἐπίχαλκοι
ἐκ Παναθηναίων
ΔΙΙ· ἀσπίδες
ἐπίχαλκοι ἀπὸ
τῶν τοίχων 𐅄𐅃·
[δό]ρατα
ΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ· κυναῖ
χαλκαῖ ΧΗΗΗΗΔΔΔΙΙΙ·
κρανίδια Δ𐅃ΙΙ·
κνημῖδες 𐅅ΗΔΔ𐅃Ι·
135
χαλινοὶ Μηδικοὶ
𐅄ΔΔΔ𐅃Ι· [κά]δοι
χαλκοῖ ΙΙΙΙ·
κυνῆ σιδηρᾶ·
κυν[α]ῖ ὑπόξυλοι
ΙΙΙΙ·
κράν[η]
ὑπόξυλα ἀσπίδες
λευκαὶ ΧΗΗΗ·
ἀσπίδες ἐπίχαλκοι
τῶν Πασίωνος
140
[ἄν]ευ πορπάκων
ΔΔΙΙΙΙ· [σκ]άφαι
πομπικαὶ Η· κοῖται
χαλκαῖ 𐅅̣ καὶ
ἐπίθημα κοίτης·
κανᾶ
καὶ πίνακες
ΗΙΙΙ· κανο͂ν
μέγα· κανᾶ νυμφικὰ
𐅄𐅃ΙΙΙ·
145
κανᾶ ἀρχαῖα ΔΔ
σφαγεῖα καὶ
φιάλια καὶ
πα[ν]αγρίδες?
καὶ σκάφια ΗΔΔ·
λεβητίσκοι
γαμικοὶ Δ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ·
[ὑ]δρίαι ΗΗΔΔΔ𐅃ΙΙΙ
οἰνοχόαι καὶ
κρημοφόροι ΔΔΔ·
150
κρατῆρες Ἀργολικοὶ
ΙΙ· ὑπόστατα
χαλκᾶ ΙΙ· κρατῆρες
Λακωνικοὶ 𐅃Ι·
ὑπόστατα ΙΙ·
ἠθμοὶ
ΙΙΙ κρατὴρ
τριηριτικός·
καὶ ἕτερος
μικός κάδοι
δύο·
155
ἀμφορεὺς χαλκοῦς
ἐλαιηρός·
καθετῆρες καὶ
καδίσκοι 𐅃Ι·
ἀμφορίσκος
ὁλκεῖα μεγάλα
ΙΙ· ἐλάττω ὁλκεῖα
𐅃ΙΙ χαλκία
κοῖλα ΙΙΙ γραμματεῖα
𐅅ΗΗ𐅄·
160
θυμιατηρίο
κλάσματα·
λεκανοψυκτήρ·
160a
vacat
In
the Chalkotheke
bronzed
shields from... 365; bronzed shields from Pasion 754; bronzed
shields from the Panathenaia 12; bronzed shields from the walls 55;
spears 38; bronze helmets 1433; small helmets 17; greaves 626; Medic
bridles 86; bronze jugs 4; iron helmet; wood-underneath helmets 4;
wood-underneath helmet; white shields 1300; bronzed shields of
Pasion without straps 24; processional trays 100; bronze beds 500
and bed-cover; baskets and tablets 103; large basket; bridal baskets
58; sphageia and phialia and panagrides and trays 120; small lebetes
gamikoi 19; hydriai 238; oinochoai and kremaphoroi 30; Argive
kraters 2; bronze stands 2; Laconian kraters 6; stands 2; striners
3; trieretic krater and another small; two jugs; bronze olive oil
amphora; 6 collars (? katheteres) and small jugs; amphoriskos; large
troughs 2; smaller troughs 7; hollow bronze 3; tablets 750; pieces
of a censer; lekanopsykter. (1
blank line)
col.
II.
255
λυχνεῖον τὸ
μέγα τὸ [ε]ἰς
θεοξένια· σκάφη
χαλκῆ· λεοντόβασις·
σκάφη στρογγύλη·
κύλιξ
μεγάλη ποδανιπτήρ·
λεκάνη κρατὴρ
μέγας·
260
ἐσχάραι μεγάλαι
χαλκαῖ ΙΙ· χοῦς
χαλκοῦς λέβητες
μεγάλοι· vac.
ἕτεροι
ἐλάττος· vac. λεβήτια
ἐχῖνος· καρχήσια
ἠθμοὶ ΙΙΙ ποτήρια
ΙΙ κύλιξ·
265
κώθων κισσύφιον·
ψυκτήριον·
κύαθος μέγας
καὶ μικός·
θυμιατήριον
μέγα· ἕτερον
μικρόν
ὀβελίσκοι
Δ𐅃ΙΙΙ· ἐπίστατον·
λυχνεῖον ἀργυροῦν
μέγα·
270
μικρὰ ΙΙ λυχνεῖον
χαλκοῦν καὶ
ἀνδριαντίσκος
ἀπ’ αὐτο͂·
καρ[κ]ίνος λιθάρτης·
ὑπόστατον, λοτήριον
[χ]αλκοῦν·
ὑδρίδιον
μικόν χει[ρ]οπέδαι·
275
ἀσπίδων ἐπίσημα
ΙΙΙ, δελφίς,
αἰετός, ἵππος·
κρηστήριον
σίδηρος ἀπὸ
τροχο͂·
κώθωνες
χαλκοῖ· κόραι
ἀπὸ τῶν κανῶν
ΔΙ·
280
χαρακτῆρες 𐅃
δίσκος· κυναῖ
ἀπὸ ἀνδριάντων
ΙΙ· κτεὶς σιδηροῦς·
χαλκίον τροχὸν
ἔχ<ο>ν· τροχὸς
χαλκοῦς λόφοι
ἀπὸ τῶν ἀνδριάντων
ΙΙΙΙ γοργόνειον·
285
παραβολίσκοι
τῆς τετρακύκλο·
χάλικες σιδηραῖ
ΙΙΙΙ· θερμαύστεις
ΙΙ, ἡ ἑτ[έ]ρα ἅλυσιν
ἔχει· τάλαντον
σταθμόν ζωμήρυσις
vac.
ζώιδια χαλκᾶ
μικὰ ΙΙΙΙ
289a
vacat vacat
(Chalkotheke
continued) the great lampstand for the Theoxenia; bronze
tgrays[?]; lion base; round trays; large kylix; foot basin; lekane;
large krater 2 large bronze braziers; bronze chous; large lebetes;
others small; lebetia; echinos; karchesia; 3 strainers; 2 cups;
kylix; kothon; kissyphion; coller; large and small kyathos; large
censer; another small; 18 spits; stand; large silver lampstand;
bronze lampstand and statue from it; stone-fastened crab; stand;
bronze lotharion; small hydria; handcuffs; 3 shield blazons:
dolphin, eagle, horse; kesterion; iron from wheel; bronze kothons;
11 korai from the baskets; 5 stamps; discus; 2 helmets from statues;
iron comb; bronze with wheel; bronze wheel; 4 crests from the
statues; gorgoneion; paraboliskoi for the tetracycle; 4 iron calyxs;
2 thermastes, one with chain; talent weight; zomerysis; 4 small
bronze figures. (2 blank lines)
col.
III.
374
ὦτα ὑδριῶν Δ𐅃ΙΙΙΙ
λεοντοβάσεις
ΔΙΙΙ·
375
πυθμένες ὑδριῶν
Ι— —· ἕτεροι
μικροὶ 𐅃Ι ξίφη·
μάχαιραι, ἀκινάκαι
ΗΗΗΔΔΔ𐅃·
διερείσματ<α
τ>ῶν Νικῶν 𐅃ΙΙ·
μηνίσκοι χαλκοῖ
ΙΙΙ δεσμοὶ
380
σιδηροῖ τετρακύκλων
ΔΔΔΔ· ἧλοι
κοῖλοι μεγάλοι
ΔΙΙ· ἕτεροι
ἐλάττους ΔΔ
δεσμοὶ
λίθων
ΔΔΔΙΙ Κρητικαὶ
ἀκίδες 𐅅Η𐅄·
στυράκια ΗΗ𐅄
κρατευταὶ
μεγάλοι 𐅃,
385
ἑνὸς πῆχυς μικοὶ
ΙΙΙΙ· ἀσπίδες
ἐπίσημοι ΙΙ
κλεὶς τοῦ
Ἑκατομπέδο
πνιγεύς· σίλφειον·
ἠθμοὶ ΙΙΙ κρεάγραι
σ[ιδ]ηραῖ ΙΙ
στλεγγίς ὦτα
λέβητος·
390
κύαθοι δύο
σειρά· κλ[ε]ῖδες
𐅃ΙΙ Λακωνικαί
σκαλίς· πε[λ]έκιον·
στέφανος χαλκοῦς·
ἵπ[π]ος μικός
κλεὶς ἀνάπαιστος·
ἑτέρα κατεαγῦα
{κατεαγυῖα}
ἑτέρα τῆς στοᾶς·
395
ἀσπίδια πομπικὰ
ΙΙ παλλάδιον
χαλκοῦν ἄμπρα
ΔΔΔ· ὑφάμματα
𐅄Δ𐅃ΙΙΙ τοπεῖα
ΙΙΙΙ· ὑπό<ζ>ωμα·
λύχνοι χαλκοῖ
ΙΙΙ· πτερύγια
κρανῶν ΙΙΙΙ.
400
vacat
(Chalkotheke
continued) 19 hydria handles; 13 lionbases; 1+ hydria bases;
6 others small; 355 swords, knifes, akinakes; 7 diereismata of the
Victories; 3 bronze meniskoi; 40 iron bonds from the four-spoked
(wheels); 12 large hollow nails; 20 other smaller (ones); 32 bonds
of stones; 650 Cretan akides; 250 styrakia; 5 large krateutai; elbow
of one; 4 small; 2 decorated shields; key of Hekatompedon; choker;
silpheion; 3 sieves; 2 iron meat hooks; scraper; lebes handle; 2
kyathoi; seira; 7 Laconian keys; ladder (skalis); ax; bronze crown;
small horse; draw key; another broken; another of the stoa; 2
processional shields; bronze palladion; 30 ampra; 68 weavings; 4
topeia; belt; 3 bronze lamps; 4 helmet wings. (1
blank line)
STUDIES
OF THE DELPHIAN TREASURIES (1)
STUDIES
OF THE DELPHIAN TREASURIES (2)
ACCOUNTS
AND INVENTORIES OF THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO ON DELOS
I.
Délos 442
The
temple of Apollo on Delos was one of the greatest of the panhellenic
shrines, and as such it was the recipient of dedications made by
kings, cities, commanders, and private individuals from all over the
Mediterranean world. It was at the same time an active financial
center. Loans at interest (generally 100%) were regularly made from
the great wealth of the sanctuary, houses and agricultural land
owned by the temple (these often representing property confiscated
from religious offenders) were rented out, and the temple itself
housed not only the treasure chest of the god but the public chest
of the city of Delos as well. The annually appointed officials of
the sanctuary, the hieropoioi, supervised both the more standard
operations of the sanctuary (e.g., sacrifices) and were responsible
besides for the accumulated dedications and the various financial
transactions. Each year they published their accounts on stone.
These contained the records of income and expenditure, first for the
god's chest and then for the public chest, and complete inventories
of the dedications located in all the temples of the sanctuary. The
accounts for 179 are among the best preserved and begin with the
statement "Gods. [Account] of the hieropoioi who held that
office for the year of the archonship of Demares, Amphoteros son of
Aristeas (and) Polyxenos son of Parmenion (and) Silenos son of
Silenos (and) Philippos son of Akesimbrotos". The selections
presented here are as follows. A: the list of the jars of money
deposited in the sacred chest during the year (I. Delos 442A.38-55;
this follows the list of what these hieropoioi took over from their
predecessors); B: list of monies expended from the sacred chest
(442A.55-75; this is followed by the analogous accounting for the
public chest); C: from the inventory of dedications in the temple of
Apollo (442B.1-17); D: additions to the lists of monies received
(442C - these represent late payments); E: final additions to the
list of outstanding debts (442D).
See
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/classics/bagnall/3995/readings/b-d2-9.htm
A
The
following money also was deposited in the sacred chest during our
tenure of office: a jar, on which the inscription "from the
(bank) of Philon and Silenos, in (the archonship) of Demares, (the
month) Aresion, the hieropoioi Polyxenos, Philippos, Amphoteros,
Silenos deposited the capital of the loan which Hermon son of Solon
paid back, 605 drs. I V2 ob., and the interest he said he owed, 242
drs. I ob".; another jar, with the inscription "from the
(bank) of Philon and Silenos, in (the archonship) of Demares, (the
month) Apatourion, the hieropoioi in the archonship of Phokaieus,
Krittis, Nikarchos, Synonymos, Hierombrotos deposited in the temple
the surplus from the account, 220 drs. 4 1/4 ob".; another jar,
(with the inscription) "from the (bank) of Hellen and
Mantineus, in (the archonship) of Demares, (the month) Posideon, the
treasurers"' Menyllos and Phokaieus deposited in the temple, in
accordance with the budget, 1000 drs. toward repayment of the city's
outstanding loans from the god, and 1350 drs. toward repayment of
the amount advanced for the crown for King Philip"' and King
Massinissa l" and toward the amount still owing on the crowns
in the archonship of Telesarchides"; another jar, (with the
inscription) "from the (bank) of Philon and Silenos, in (the
archonship) of Demares, (the month) Posideon, the treasurers
Menyllos and Phokaieus deposited 1303 drs. 3Y, ob., proceeds of the
market place rents"; another jar, (with the inscription) "from
the (bank) of Philon and Silenos, in (the archonship) of Demares,
(the month) Posideon, the treasurers Menyllos and Phokaieus
deposited 40 drs., from the tax on boundary markers"; another
jar, (with the inscription) "from the bank of Philon and
Silenos, in (the archonship) of Demares, (the month) Posideon, the
treasurers Menyllos and Phokaieus deposited 486 drs. 4 ob., the
choregic fund"; another jar, (with the inscription "from
the (bank) of Philon and Silenos, in (the archonship) of Demares,
(the month) Posideon, the treasurers Menyllos and Phokaieus
deposited 200 drs., from the tax on banks"; another jar, with
the inscription "from the (bank) of Nymphodoros and Herakleides
in (the archonship) of Demares, (the month) Posideon, the hieropoioi
in the archonship of Telesarchides, Euboeus and Parmenion, deposited
6998 drs. 41y, ob., the proceeds from farm rents, house rents,
taxes, and interest"; another jar with the inscription "from
the (bank) of Philon and Silenus, in (the archonship) of Demares,
(the month) Posideon, the hieropoioi in the archonship of
Telesarchides, Euboeus and Parmenion, deposited in the temple the
remaining sum which according to the stele they collected from farm
rents, house rents, taxes and interest, 1600 drs".; another
jar, with the inscription "from (the bank) of Nymphodoros and
Herakleides, in (the archonship) of Demares, (the month) Posideon,
the hieropoioi Polyxenos, Silenos, Amphoteros, Philippos deposited
500 drs., the capital of the loan which Paches paid back on behalf
of his father Diogenes and which the latter had borrowed from the
hieropoioi Euboeus and Parmenion, and 60 drs., the interest he paid,
saying that he owed it, for one year and two months"; another
jar, with the inscription "in (the archonship) of Demares, (the
month) Posideon, Menyllos and Phokaieus deposited in the temple 15
drs. I ob., the surplus from the (amount allocated for the
Dionysiac) artists". Total of what was deposited during our
tenure of office: 14,623 drs., 1 1/4 ob. Total of what was handed
over to us and deposited during our tenure of office, 75,553 drs.
1/12 ob. And (total) of the copper handed over to us by the
treasurers Menyllos and Phokaieus, 3733 drs. 2 ob.
B
In
the holy month we withdrew for (expenditure on) works, in the
presence of the archon of the city and the secretaries and the
monthly prytaneis, (the following): a jar, with the inscription
"from the (bank) of Nymphodoros and Herakleides, in (the
archonship) of Telesarchides, (the month) Posideon, the hieropoioi
Euboeus and Parmenion deposited, in accordance with the decree of
the demos, the capital of the loan which Ostakos son of Ktesikles
paid back, 500 drs., and the interest he said was outstanding, 20
drs. 5 ob., and the capital of the loan which Boethos son of
Orthokles paid back, 500 drs., and the interest he said was
outstanding, 20 drs. 5 ob., and the capital of the loan which Kaibon
son of Kaibon paid back, 500 drs., and the interest he said was
outstanding, 20 drs. 5 ob., and the capital of the loan which
Theodoros son of Sosibios paid back, 500 drs., and the interest he
said was outstanding, 20 drs. 5 ob". - the whole amount, 2083
drs. 2 ob.
On
the twentieth of the month Galaxion we withdrew from a jar with the
inscription "from the (bank) of Nymphodoros and Herakleides,
the hieropoioi in the archonship of Apatourios, Praximenes and
Telesarchides, deposited the surplus referred to in the stele, 4349
drs. 2 ob".: from this we withdrew 1350 drs. for the crown for
King Philip; the remainder in (the jar) is 2999 drs. 2 ob.; from
this we withdrew for works on the fifth of the month Thargelion 2000
drs.; the remainder in the jar is 999 drs. 2 ob. And the following
money also we withdrew for works in the month Bouphonion: a jar with
the inscription "from the (bank) of Philon and Silenos, in (the
archonship) of Phokaieus, (the month) Posideon, the treasurers
Kaibon and Mnesikleides deposited in the temple in repayment to the
god of what the city borrowed for the crown for King Philip and that
for King Eumenes "I and the one (sent) to Rhodes, 1300 drs".
In the month Posideon we withdrew from a jar with the inscription
"from the (bank) of Hellen and Mantineus, in (the archonship)
of Demares, (the month) Posideon, the treasurers Menyllos and
Phokaieus deposited in the temple, in accordance with the budget,
1000 drs. toward repayment of the city's outstanding loans from the
god, and 1350 drs. toward repayment of the amount advanced for the
crown for King Philip and King Massinissa and toward the amount
still owing on the crowns in the archonship of Telesarchides";
from this we, the hieropoioi in the archonship of Demares, withdrew
2200 drs. for work on the temple of Artemis, according to the decree
of the demos; the remainder in the jar is 150 drs. In the month
Posideon we withdrew from a jar with the inscription "from the
(bank) of Nymphodoros and Herakleides, in (the archonship) of
Demares, (the month) Posideon, the hieropoioi in the archonship of
Telesarchides, Euboeus and Parmenion, deposited 6998 drs. 4'Y,, ob.,
the proceeds from farm-rents, house-rents, taxes, and interest":
from this we the hieropoioi, Polyxenos, Amphoteros, Philippos,
Silenos withdrew for works in the month Posideon 1120 drs. (4 ob.);
the remainder in the jar is 5878 drs. ' Y, ob. In the month Posideon
we withdrew 500 drs. for the loan to Euboeus, according to the
decree of the demos, from a jar with the inscription "from the
(bank) of Philon and Silenos, in (the archonship) of Demares, (the
month) Aresion, the hieropoioi Polyxenos, Philippos, Silenos,
Amphoteros deposited the capital of the loan which Hermon son of
Solon paid back, 605 drs. I Y, ob., and the interest he said he
owed, 242 drs. I ob".; the remainder in the jar is 347 drs. 2Y,
ob. Total of what was withdrawn during our tenure of office: 11,553
drs., (2) ob. The rest we turned over to the hieropoioi after
ourselves, Demetrios and Meilichides, 63,999 drs. 4 1/2 ob. We
turned over also to the hieropoioi after ourselves the copper which
we received from the treasurers Menyllos and Phokaieus, 3733 drs. 2
ob.
C
We
received the following items in the temple of Apollo from the
hieropoioi Krittis son of Nikarchos (and) Synonymos of Hierombrotos,
in the presence of the boule and the secretary of the city
Poseidikos son of Soteles, and the (secretary) of the hieropoioi
Neokrontides son of Neokrontides, and we turned (these items) over
to the hieropoioi after ourselves, Demetrios son of Timoxenos (and)
Meilichides son of Kritoboulos, in the presence of the boule and the
secretary of the city Telemnestos son of Antigonos, and the
(secretary) of the hieropoioi Timoxenos son of Timoxenos: a gold
signet, with an image of Apollo in carnelian, which Stratonike ‘ll
dedicated to Leto: weight 10 drs.; a gold necklace set with precious
stones, which Stratonike dedicated to Leto, comprising 48
shield-shaped disks, and one (such disk) in two halves, and (two
more) one on either side of the central piece, and 141 pendants:
weight 106 drs.; a gold signet, which Stratonike dedicated to Apollo
(and) Artemis, with an image of Nike; weight with the ring, 36 drs.
4 ob.; 3 miniature gold crowns, which Stratonike dedicated to the
Graces, one without rings or fastenings, in pieces: weight 60 drs. 3
ob.; a gold ingot from the statue of Apollo: weight 98 drs. 3 ob.;
another gold ingot from (the statues of) the three (Graces): weight
27 drs. 3 ob.; 3 gold coins of Philip; I of Alexander; coin from
various places: weight 68 drs.; a gold drinking cup, dedication of
Echenike: 3 64 weight 49 drs. 3 ob.; a gold crown of oak leaves,
dedication of Lysander: 365 weight 63 drs. 3 ob.; a gold crown of
ivy leaves, dedication of King Ptolemy, 366 in pieces, and five
clusters: weight 107 drs.; a gold crown of bay leaves, dedication of
King Demetrius: 367 weight 71 drs. 3 ob.; a gold crown of bay
leaves, dedication of Polykleitos :361 weight 65 drs. 3 ob.; a gold
crown of bay leaves, dedication of Philokles: 369 weight 77 drs. 3
ob.; a gold crown of ivy leaves, dedication of the Delians, three
broken clusters: weight 76 drs.; a gold crown of myrtle, dedication
of Lomilkos: 111 weight 21 drs. 3 ob.; a gold crown of bay leaves,
dedication of King Antigonus: weight 26 drs.; golden snakeweed,
dedication of Solon to Asklepios: weight 88 drs.; a gold crown of
bay leaves, dedication of King Antigonus; a gold crown of bay
leaves, dedication of Antipatros: weight 39 drs. 3 ob.; a gold crown
of bay leaves, uninscribed: weight 37 drs.; a gold crown of bay
leaves, dedication of Pharax: weight 43 drs.; a gold crown of bay
leaves, dedication of Pnytagoras[?]: 3 7 1 weight 62 drs.; a new
gold crown of bay leaves: weight 61 drs.; a gold ball in a case,
dedication of Phila 17 1 daughter of Theodoros: weight 58 drs.; a
gold crown of myrtle, dedication of Xenophantos: 171 weight 48 drs.
3 ob.; 2 tetradrachmas; one part-copper coin of Lysimachus; one coin
of Antiochus; a drachma of Alexander; 18 silver signets and a small
cup and handle, two with stones, one of iron: weight 34 drs.; I I
gilt iron signets; a partly copper tetradrachm of Lysimachus; 5
phialai removed from cases: one a dedication of the Deliades,
presented by the theoroi and the chief theoros Kleanax: another a
dedication of the Pontic Chersonnetai, another a dedication of the
Pontic Chersonnetai, another a dedication of Bacchios of Kolophon,
another a dedication of the Pontic Chersonnetai - weight 480 drs.; 7
gold distaffs: weight 12 drs.; a tetradrachm of Lysimachus. (The
inventory of the temple of Apollo continues for another 150 lines.)
D
From
Charistias son of Antigonos (?), on behalf of his grandfather
Nikomachos, the interest on the sacred money which he said his
grandfather Nikomachos owed, on the loan he received from the
hieropoioi Praximenes and Telesarchides, for the year of Demares,
100 drs.; and on behalf of Euthytime daughter of Diodotos, the
interest he said he owed on the sacred money for the year of
Demares, 39 drs. I Y, ob. From Aristoboulos son of Aristoboulos, on
behalf of Orthokles son of Orthokles, the interest, arising from the
guarantee made for the sacred money, which he said was his share, 80
drs. From Tlepolemos son of Amnes, the interest he said he owed on
the sacred money, 101 drs. 3 ob. From Demochares son of Sotion, on
behalf of Antichares son of Authosthenes, the amount (for which) he
said his name had been entered by the hieropoioi in the archonship
of Ariston for the cargo-discharge tax... From Diaktorides son of
Aristotheos, the interest he said he owed on the sacred money, I I
drs. 4 ob. From Glaukyrios son of Tharsagoras, on behalf of
Ktesylis, the interest for the year of Demares, arising from the
guarantee made for the sacred money, which he said Ktesylis owed, 9
drs. From Demokritos son of Parmenion, the amount (for which) he
said the hieropoioi Kineas and Kallias entered his name for interest
at one-sixth, 50 drs. From Phokaieus son of Leukinos, on behalf of
his mother Aristako, the interest on the sacred money owing in the
archonship of Demares...
E
We
enter (the names of these debtors) also: Euphranor and his guarantor
Aristeides son of Aristeides, (for) the amount he did not pay for
rent on the sacred 'Episthenes' house,... and 24 drs. 2/3 ob.; and
Dionysodoros son of Marathonios and his guarantor Demeas son of
Phokritos, (for) the amount he did not pay for the ferry-toll to
Rheneia, 62 drs.; and Antigonos son of Charistias, (for) the amount
he did not pay for the harbor-tax, 19 drs.; and Orthokles son of
Orthokles, for interest on the sacred money, one half the principal
sum, 80 drs. If we have not entered any who are in debt to the god,
we enter them and their guarantors as being in debt to the god.
TREASURE
MAP: A GUIDE TO THE DELIAN INVENTORIES BY RICHARD HAMILTON
Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2015. Pp. xiii, 479, 3 pls.
Hamilton's
TREASURE MAP, published in 2015, is a paperback reprint of
his 2000 study of the Delian and Athenian inscribed inventory lists
of the classical and hellenistic periods.
The
bulk of the book deals with the little-studied, vast, and difficult
Delian material that was mainly excavated on the island by the
French School in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Despite the turmoil of two world wars, the corpus was published in
an exemplary manner by legendary epigraphers F. Dürrbach, P.
Roussel, and J. Coupry in the Inscriptiones Graecae XI,2 and
Inscriptions de Délos
volumes.
It has been further studied by J. Tréheux and more recently
by G. Reger and C. Prêtre
among others. Translations of some texts have been provided by
Prêtre
et
al. (in French) in Nouveau choix d’Inscriptions de Délos:
Lois, comptes et inventaires (Athens and Paris 2002) and
Hamilton (in English for the first time) in the volume under review
here. Current work underway by L. Migeotte and the author of this
review, among others, has aimed at improving some of the texts and
providing commentaries on the objects listed.
In
the late 1990s Hamilton undertook the Herculean task of making some
sense out of the Delian inventories. The book under review provided
a much-needed “treasure map” for scholars wishing to
navigate through this enormous and complex material. The
introduction offers a brief overview of the history of Delos from
the sixth century until its final devastation in 69 BC by pirates.
It also poses the difficult question of the purpose of the inscribed
annual inventories that were set up in the sanctuary from roughly
364 to shortly after 145 BC These long and tedious texts
meticulously recording dedications of varying values by dedicants
from all walks of life, including rulers, the elite,and common
worshippers, may appear at first glance to be a comprehensive
record. A close reading of the documents suggests, however, that
this was not the case, but rather, as T. Linders once put it, the
texts seem to be “a symbol more than a record that the
hieropoioi had fulfilled their duties.” 1
Although
I cannot pretend to have solved issues that have puzzled scholars
for at least 100 years, I tend to agree with Linders and
Hamilton,especially in light of the fact that my own research of the
Delian texts and of excavation reports indicates that the treasures
seem to have housed even more objects than the ones mentioned in the
lists, and that further reorganizations of their holdings took place
at later dates. The future publication of the buildings themselves
by the French School will undoubtedly shed more light on this
matter.
Chapter
One provides a discussion of the three major phases of the Delian
inventories. The earliest inscribed lists were modeled after the
Athenian inventories and date to the so-called Amphictyonic period,
which ended in 314 BC. This was followed by the Delian independence
(314–166) and eventually by the era of Athenian domination of
the island that started in 166 and ended with the destruction of
Apollo’s sanctuary, first by Mithridates in 88 and eventually
by pirates in 69. Six treasures are associated with the Amphictyonic
period (Artemision, Temple of the Athenians, Temple of the Delians,
bronze/iron/wood, Trireme, and Naxians). The texts that date to the
period of Delian independence are much longer, significantly more
detailed, and include more treasures (Artemision, Temple of Apollo,
Temple of the Seven Statues, Poros Temple, Andrians, Hieropoion,
Eileithyiaion, Chalkotheke, Neokorion, Temple of Hekate,
Asklepieion, Temple of Aphrodite, and Graphe). Finally, the
inscriptions of the Athenian period are laconic; only the
fluctuating weights and not the materials of which the dedications
were made are mentioned. These texts are associated with several
more treasures (Andrians, Anios, Aphrodision, Apollo, Artemis on the
Island, Artemision, Asklepieion, Egyptians, Eileithyiaion,
Ekklesiasterion, Good Fortune, Great Gos/Samothrakeion, Gymnasium,
1
T. Linders, “The Purpose of the Inventories", in D.
Knoepfler (ed.), Comptes et inventaires dans la cité
grecque (Neuchâtel
1988) 37–48, at 41.
Heraion,
Karystians, Kynthion, Letoon, Neorion, Oikos near the Diadoumenos,
Oikos Near Ekklesiasterion, Poros Temple, Posideion, Prytaneion,
Sarap[i]eion to Artemision, Temple of Seven Statues, Thesmophorion,
and Twelve Gods). The rest of the chapter offers valuable
observations on the contents, descriptions of weight, order of
treasures,and shifts in the treatment of various dedications. It
also offers comparisons among the phases of the treasuries and
addresses questions on the completeness of the lists on the basis of
Hamilton’s close reading of the texts.
Chapter
Two discusses in detail the five “core” treasures that
Hamilton has identified as the most important, i.e., the Artemision,
Athenian temple, Apollo, Hiropoion/Andrians, and Poros temple. These
five housed the largest collections of precious votives, and also
remained consistently used as treasures in all surviving inventory
lists and presumably until the end of the sanctuary’s life.
Hamilton’s research has shown that several reorganizations of
the treasures took place within individual phases, each represented
by a “master inventory", on which the rest relied, and
that there was no formula for arranging the holdings of each depot.
Chapter
Three treats the minor Delian treasures. Chapters Two and Three
together,the core of Hamilton’s book, consist of a valuable
catalogue of votives of the major and minor treasures based on the
most important and better preserved inventories. Highlights of the
catalogue include lists of objects and their life in the treasures,
as deduced from the most important and better preserved inventories,
as well as short commentaries and some corrections of the texts that
appear in footnotes.
The
second part of Hamilton’s book involves a similar and
much-needed discussion of the treasures of the Athenian acropolis.
The first chapter presents a history and short commentary on the
Athenian inventories of the fifth and fourth centuries
BC.
and distinguishes several phases in the texts. It is followed by a
lengthy catalogue of the objects in the Pronaos, Hekatompedon, the
Parthenon, the Athena Treasure, the Treasure of the Other Gods, and
the Old Temple. A conclusion presents a comparative study of the
Delian and Athenian materials and offers important remarks: the
inventory lists were not systematic and are only a reflection of the
real fiscal transaction that was conducted elsewhere. Indeed, it
would be a mistake to project our modern requirements for an
inventory on the ancient world. Last, but not least, the lack of
system did not affect the administration of the sanctuary, even
though epigraphical evidence suggests that Delian audits could be
confusing. On the other hand, the Athenian texts strongly suggest
that they were part of a large and complex organization since their
fiscal function required them to be accurate. Eight valuable
appendices cover, among other things: discussions of terms and
terminology; the translation of some terms, especially involving the
description of precious materials, which has always been a challenge
to scholars; a number of Tréheux’s im-proved texts (ID
135, 137, 145, 147, 150, 154, and inv. 765); commentaries on the
Hieropoion/Oikos of Andrians and of other non-precious Delian
inventories; observations on the weighed and unweighed objects;
topographic labels in major Delian inventories; an analysis of the
Athenian Treasurers of the Other Gods; a list of phialae endowments;
a list of the Acropolis Inventories after 341 BC.; and finally
indices of objects in the Acropolis and the Delian Treasures.
Hamilton’s
work on ancient inventories is and will remain one of the
fundamental studies of these complex and difficult texts. The author
should be congratulated for providing historians and art historians
with an important and timely tool that allows
for
a more nuanced reading of these documents, a better understanding of
sanctuary
administration,
bureaucracy, and religion, and a reference work for those studying
luxury arts.
UNIVERSITY
OF ILLINOIS SPRINGFIELD ELIZABETH KOSMETATOU
18
februari 2017 Link:
https://www.academia.edu/27113106/Treasure_Map_A_Guide_to_the_Delian_Inventories._By_Richard_Hamilton._Ann_Arbor_University_of_Michigan_Press._2015._Pp._xiii_479_3_pls._In_Phoenix_2016
An
Economic Evaluation of the Edict on Maximum Prices
Diocletian’s
Edict on Maximum Prices, promulgated in 301 CE, attempted to put a
stop to the runaway inflation resulting from the Crisis of the Third
Century. Many scholars, such as Alfred Wassink (1991), have
ridiculed Diocletian’s edict as poor economic policy, which
they argue was widely recognized at that time as poor economic
policy and was quickly abandoned.
However,
Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices must be reevaluated with
an open mind, relying on the modern economic theories of John
Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman. John Maynard Keynes published
the General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money in 1936,
revolutionizing the entire field of economics with his theories
concerning consumption, production, equilibrium, and fiscal policy.
In the 1960s, Milton Friedman founded the monetarist school of
economics, which focuses on the importance of the money supply in
affecting consumption, inflation, and the economy as a whole. Both
literary references to Diocletian’s economic policies and
numismatic evidence will be evaluated. Diocletian’s edict
should be considered a success because it broke a dangerous economic
cycle, which was driving towards the total collapse of imperial
monetary and fiscal policy.
The
Edict on Maximum Prices established a price ceiling, preventing
people from charging a price higher than the one prescribed. This
price ceiling certainly caused economic distortions, including
higher unemployment and a contraction in production. This was the
result of both producers deciding to no longer produce, because at
the edict’s prices they could no longer turn a profit, and an
increase in bartering, which, compared to monetary transactions, is
inherently inefficient and economically problematic. Nevertheless,
this shocking damper on the price level worked to cut inflation in
the long term. It did so by eliminating the popular assumption that
inflation would continue, since, according to the economic idea of
adaptive expectations, people’s expectations of further
inflation play an important role in driving inflation higher.
Therefore, breaking this negative economic cycle was, in the end, a
beneficial economic decision. To draw a comparison from recent
history, Paul Volcker, in combating the stagflation of the 1970s and
early 1980s, increased interest rates to reduce inflation, an act
which significantly increased unemployment and reduced GDP, which is
the sum of all goods and services produced within a particular
country. Nevertheless, by breaking the cycle of stagflation, he laid
the foundation for the solid economic growth of the late 1980s and
the 1990s.
Although
it is generally agreed by economists that setting a price ceiling is
never a good thing, the establishment of a price ceiling, in this
particular situation, stabilized the economic situation of the
empire. Scholars have too often viewed the people of the ancient
world, including Diocletian, as having a poor understanding of
economics. Of course, the field of economics only got started in the
late 1700s with Adam Smith and greatly picked up speed in the 20th
century. Regardless, this evaluation of the Edict of Maximum Prices
shows that Diocletian, relying on the history of imperial economic
policy and the knowledge of the imperial bureaucracy, was capable of
crafting sensible and relatively successful pieces of economic
policy.
Therefore,
by coming to a better understanding of Diocletian’s economic
policies and their effects, it will be possible to develop a better
understanding of the ways in which the reign of Diocletian serves as
an important transitional period between the intense instability of
the third century and greater stability of the fourth century.
Bibliography
Friedman,
Milton, and Anna Jacobson Schwartz. A Monetary History of the United
States 1867 1960. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963.
Howgego,
Christopher. “The Supply and Use of Money in the Roman World
200 B.C. to A.D. 300.” The Journal of Roman Studies 82 (1992):
1-31.
Keynes,
John Maynard. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.
New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936.
Wassink,
Alfred. “Inflation and Financial Policy under the Roman Empire
to the Price Edict of 301 A.D.” Historia: Zeitschrift für
Alte Geschichte, Bd. 40, H. 4 (1991): 465-493.
Edictum de pretiis
rerum venalium; Price Edict of Diocletianus
I.
De frugibus
II.
De vinis
III.
De oleo, aceto, liquamine, sale, melle
IV.
De carnibus
V.
De piscibus
VI.
De oleribus et pomis
VII.
De mercedibus operariorum
VIII.
De pellibus, coriis, segestibus
IX.
De formis caligaribus
X.
De loramentis
XI.
De saetis caprinis sive camelinis
XII.
De materiis
XIII.
De radiis
XIV.
De oneribus lignariis
XV.
De lignis in vehiculis
XVI.
De materiis satoriis
XVII.
De vecturarum mercedibus
XVIII.
De pluma
XIX.
De vestibus
XX.
De mercedibus plumariorum et sericariorum
XXI.
De lanariis
XXII.
De fullonibus
XXIII.
De sericis
XXIV.
De purpura
XXV.
De lana
XXVI.
De lino
XXVII.
De linteis
XXVIII.
De linteis
XXIX.
De clavis
XXX.
De auro
XXXI.
De pretiis mancipiorum
XXXII.
De pecoribus
XXXIII.
De marmoribus
XXXIV.
De feris Libycis
XXXV.
De chartis
XXXVI.
De aromatibus et medicamentis
XXXVII.
Ex quibus locis ad quas provincias quantum nauli excedere minime
sit licitum
I.
Pulse and cereals
II.
Wines
III.
Oil, salt etc.
IV.
Meat
V.
Fishes
VI.
Vegetables, fruits
VII.
Wages
VIII.
Hides, leather
IX.
Shoes
X.
Leather goods
XI.
Products made of camel- and goat’s hair
XII.
Timber
XIII.
Combs, spindles
XIV.
Poles, firewood
XV.
Wagons, wooden tools, metals and terracotta, pottery
XVI.
Ivory, needles
XVII.
Freight, fodder
XVIII.
Feathers, cushions, writing utensils
XIX.
Clothing
XX.
Wages for embroiderers
XXI.
Wages for weavers
XXII.
Wages for fullers
XXIII.
Silk
XXIV.
Purple thread
XXV.
Woollens
XXVI.
Linens
XXVII.
Linens
XXVIII.
Linens
XXIX.
Purple textiles
XXX.
Gold and silver
XXXI.
Slaves
XXXII.
Cattle
XXXIII.
Marbles and other stone
XXXIV.
Animals from the wild
XXXV.
For waxes and resins, etc
XXXVI.
For drugs, paints, dyes, glues
XXXVII.
Sea freight
I
De frugibus
1.
frumenti k(astrensem) mo(dium) [unum]
hordei
k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum
centenu<m>
sive sicale k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum
mili
pisti k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum
mili
integri k(astrensem) mo(dium) [unum]
panicii
k(astrensem) mo(dium) [unum]
speltae
mundae k(astrensem) mo(dium) [unum]
<farris
k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum
scandulae
sive speltae k(astrensem) mo(dium) [unum]
10.
<hervuli k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum
fab<a>e
fressae [k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum]
fabae
non fress<a>e [k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum]
lentic<u>lae
[k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum]
herbiliae
[k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum]
pisae
fractae [k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum]
pisae
non fractae [k(astrensem) mo(dium)] unum
ciceris
[k(astrensem) mo(dium) un]um
hervi
[k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum]
avenae
[k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum]
20.
faeni Graeci [k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum]
lupini
crudi [k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum]
lupini
cocti [Ital(icum) s(extarium) unum]
fasioli
sicci [k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum]
lini
seminis [k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum]
[oryz]ae
mundae [k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum]
[tisana]e
mundae [mo(dium) unum]
[alicae
mun]dae [mo(dium) unum]
[s]esami
k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum
faen<i>
seminis k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum
Medicae
seminis k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum
30.
cannabis seminis k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum
viciae
siccae k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum
papaveris
k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum
cymini
mundi k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum
seminis
raphanini k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum
sinapis
k(astrensem) mo(dium) unum
sinapis
confectae Itali(cum) s. unum
I. For pulse and cereals.
1a
Wheat 1 k. mod. 100
2
Barley 1 k. mod. 60
3
Rye 1 k. mod. 60
4
Millet, hulled 1 k. mod. 10
5
Millet, unhulled 1 k. mod.
6
Panic grass 1 k. mod. 5
7
Spelt 1 k. mod. 10
7a
... ... ...
8
Emmer 1 k. mod. 30
8a
Vetch ... ..
9
Broad beans, shelled ... 100
10
Broad beans, unshelled ... 6
11
Lentils ... 100
12
Sweet peas ... 80
13
Peas, shelled ... 100
14
Peas, unshelled 1 k. mod. 6
15
Chick peas 1 k. mod. 100
16
Bitter vetch 1 k. mod. 100
17
Oats 1 k. mod. 30
18
Fenugreek 1 k. mod. 100
19
Lupines, raw ... 60
20
Lupines, cooked ... 4
21
Kidney beans , dried ... 100
22
Flaxseed ... 150
23
Rice, hulled ... 200
24
Barley grits, hulled ... 100
25
Spelt grits, hulled ... 200
26
Sesame 1 k. mod. 200
27
Hay seed 1 k. mod. 30
28
Alfalfa seed 1 k. mod. 150
29
Hemp seed 1 k. mod. 80
30
Vetch, dried 1 k. mod. 80
31
Poppy seed 1 k. mod. 150
32
Cumin, cleaned 1 k. mod. 200
33
Radish deed 1 k. mod. 150
34
Mustard seed 1 k. mod. 150
35
Mustard, prepared 1 sextarius 8
36
37
II
Item de vinis
1.
Piceni Italicum s(extarium) unum
Tiburtini
Italicum s(extarium) unum
Sabini
Italicum s(extarium) unum
Aminnei
Italicum s(extarium) unum
Saiti
Italicum s(extarium) unum
Surrentini
Italicum s(extarium) unum
Falerini
Italicum s(extarium) unum
item
vini veteris primi gustus Ital. s(extarium) unum
vini
veteris sequentis gustus Italicum s(extarium) unum
10.
vini rustici Ital. s(extarium) unum
cervesiae
<sive> cami Italicum s(extarium) unum
zythi
Italicum s(extarium) unum
item
caroeni Maeoni Italicum s(extarium) unum
chrysattici
Italicum s(extarium) unum
decocti
Italicum s(extarium) unum
[def]ritis
Italicum s(extarium) unum
conditi
Italicum s(extarium) unum
apsinthi
Italicum s(extarium) unum
rhosati
Italicum s(extarium) unum
II. For wines
1a
Picene 1 sextarius 30
2
Tiburtine 1 sextarius 30
3
Sabine 1 sextarius 30
4
Aminian 1 sextarius 30
5
Setine 1 sextarius 30
6
Surrentine 1 sextarius 30
7
Falernian 1 sextarius 30 8 Falernian, one year old, first quality 1
sextarius 24
9
Wine, one year old, second quality 1 sextarius 16
10
Ordinary wine 1 sextarius 8
11
Wheat beer 1 sextarius 4
12
Barley beer 1 sextarius 2
13
Maeonian wine, boiled down one third 1 sextarius 30
14
Golden Attic wine 1 sextarius 24
15
Must, boiled down 1 sextarius 16
16
Must, boiled down one half 1 sextarius 20
17
Spiced wine 1 sextarius 24
18
Wine with wormwood 1 sextarius 20
19
Rose wine 1 sextarius 20
III
Item olei, aceti, liquaminis, salis, mellis
1.
olei floris Italicum s(extarium) unum
olei
sequentis Italicum s(extarium) unum
olei
cibari Italicum s(extarium) unum
olei
raphanini Italicum s(extarium) unum
aceti
Italicum s(extarium) unum
liquaminis
primi Italicum s(extarium) unum
l<i>quaminis
secundi Italicum s(extarium) unum
salis
<k(astrensem)> mo(dium) unum
salis
conditi Italicum s(extarium) unum
10.
mellis optimi Italicum s(extarium) unum
mellis
secundi Italicum s(extarium) unum
mellis
Phoenicini Italicum s(extarium) unum
III. For oils, etc.
1a
Olive oil, virgin, first quality 1 sextarius 40
2
Olive oil, second pressing 1 sextarius 24
3
Olive oil, ordinary 1 sextarius 12
4
Oil from radish seed 1 sextarius 8
5
Vinegar 1 sextarius 6
6
Fish sauce, first quality 1 sextarius 16
7
Fish sauce, second quality 1 sextarius 12
8
Salt 1 k. mod. 100
9
Spiced salt 1 sextarius 8
10
Honey, best quality 1 sextarius 40
11
Honey, second quality 1 sextarius 24
12
Phoenician date honey 1 sextarius 8
IV
Item carnis
1.
carnis porcinae Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
carnis
bubulae Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
carnis
caprinae si[v]e vervecinae Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
vulvae
Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
suminis
Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
ficati
optimi Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
laridi
optimi Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
per<n>ae
optimae petasonis sive Menapicae vel Cerritanae Ital(icum) po(ndo)
unum
per<n>ae
optimae petasonis Marsicae Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
10.
adipis recentis Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
axungiae
Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
ungellas
quattuor et aqualiculum
isicium
porcinum unciae unius
isicia
bubula Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
Lucanicarum
Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
Lucanicarum
bubularum Ital(icum) po(ndo) un(um)
fasianus
pastus
fasianus
agrestis
fasiana
pasta
20.
fasiana non pasta
anser
pastus
anser
non pastus
pullo[r]um
par unum
perdix
unus
turtur
singul[ari]s
turtur
agrestis unus
turdorum
decuria
palumborum
par
columbinorum
par
30.
attagena [una]
anatum
par
lepus
cunic[ulus]
[am]pe[liones
singulares (umero) decem]
[ampeliones
agrestes n(umero) decem]
[ficedulae
n(umero) decem]
[passeres
n(umero) decem]
[glires
n(umero) dec]em
[pa]bus
ma[s]
40.
[pabus] femina
coturnices
n(umero) <decem>
sturni
n(umero) decem
aprunae
Ital(icum) po(ndo) <I>
cerbinae
Ital(icum) po(ndo) I
dorci
si[v]e caprae vel dammae Ital(icum) po(ndo) I
porcelli
lanctantis in po(ndo) I
agnus
in po(ndo) I
haedus
in po(ndo) I
sevi
Ital(icum) po(ndo) I
50.
butyri Ital(icum) po(ndo) I
IV. For meat
1a
Pork 1 lb 12
2
Beef 1 lb 8
3
Goat’s meat or mutton 1 lb 8
4
Sow’s uterus 1 lb 24
5
Sow’s udder 1 lb 20
6
Liver of swine, fed on figs, best quality 1 lb 16
7
Pork, salted, best quality 1 lb 16
8
Ham, Menapian or Cerritane, best quality 1 lb 20
9
Marsic 1 lb 20
10
Pork fat, fresh 1 lb 12
11
Ointment of pork fat 1 lb 12
12
The four feet and the stomach are sold at the same price as the meat
13
Pork sausage 1 uncia 2
14
Beef sausage 1 lb 10
15
Smoked Lucanian pork sausage 1 lb 16
16
Smoked Lucanian beef sausage 1 lb 10
17
Pheasant, fattened 1 250
18
Pheasant, not fattened 1 125
19
Hen pheasant, fattened 1 200
20
Hen pheasant, not fattened 1 100
21
Goose, fattened 1 200
22
Goose, not fattened 1 100
23
Chickens pair 60
24
Partridge 1 30
25
Turtle dove, kept, in good condition 1 16
26
Turtle dove, wild 1 12
27
Thrushes 10 60
28
Wild dove pair 20
29
Pigeon pair 24
30
Francolin 1 20
31
Duck pair 40
32
Hare 1 150
33
Rabbit 1 40
34
Goldfinch, kept, in good condition 10 40
35
Goldfinch, wild 10 20
36
Figpeckers 10 40
37
Sparrows 10 16
38
Dormice 10 40
39
Peacock 1 300
40
Peahen
41
Quails
42
Starlings
43
Boar meat
44
Venison
45
Meat of gazelle, wild goat or roc
46
Suckling pig
47
Lamb
48
Kid
49
Suet, beef or mutton
50
Butter
V
Item piscis
piscis
aspratilis marini Ital(icum) po(ndo) I
piscis
secundi Ital(icum) po(ndo) I
piscis
flubialis optimi Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
piscis
secundi flubialis Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
piscis
salsi Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
ostriae
n(umero) centum
echini
n(umero) centum
echini
recentis purgati Italicum s(extarius) unum
echini
salsi Italicum s(extarius) unum
sphonduli
marini n(umero) centum
casei
sicci <marini> Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
sardae
sive sardinae Ital(icum) po(ndo) unum
V. For fish
1a
Sea fish, not boney 1 lb 24
2
Sea fish, second quality 1 lb 16
3
River fish, first quality 1 lb 12
4
River fish, second quality 1 lb 8
5
Salted fish 1 lb 6
6
Oysters 100 100
7
Sea urchins 100 50
8
Sea urchins, fresh, cleaned 1 sextarius 50
9
Sea urchins, salted 1 sextarius 100
10
Sea mussels 100 50
11
Dried cheese 1 lb 12
12
Sardines 1 lb 16
VI
[I]tem <de oleribus, pomis et ovis>
1.
cardus maiores n(umero) quinque
sponduli
n(umero) decem
intiba
optima n(umero) decem
<intiba>
sequentia n(umero) decem
malvae
maximae n(umero) quinque
malvae
sequent<e>s n(umero) decem
lactucae
optimae n(umero) quinque
<lactucae>
sequentes n(umero) decem
coliculi
optimi n(umero) quinque
10.
<coliculi> sequentes n(umero) decem
cymae
optimae fascem unum
porri
maximi n(umero) decem
<porri>
sequentes n(umero) viginti
betae
maximae n(umero) quinque
<betae>
sequentes n(umero) decem
radices
maximae [n(umero)] decem
<radices>
sequentes n(umero) viginti
rapae
maximae n(umero) decem
<rapae>
sequentes [n(umero) vig]int[i]
20.
ceparum siccarum I[tal(icum)] m(odum) I
cepae
viridis prim[ae] n(umero) [v]iginti q[uinqu]e
<cepae
viridis> sequentes n(umero) quinquaginta
alei
Ital(icum) m(odum) unum
sisinbriorum
fascis in n(umero) viginti
capparis
Ital(icum) m(odum) unum
cucurbitae
primae n(umero) decem
<cucurbitae>
sequentes n(umero) viginti
cucumeres
primi n(umero) decem
<cucumeres>
sequentes n(umero) viginti
30.
melopepones maiores n(umero) duo
<melopepones>
sequentes n(umero)quattuor
pepones
n(umero) quattuor
fasiolorum
fascis habens n(umero) XXV
asparagi
hortulan[i] fascis habe<n>s n(umero) XXV
asparagi
agreste[s] n(umer)o quinquaginta
rusci
fasc<i>s habe[n]s n(umer)o sexaginta
ciceris
viridis fa[sc]iculi n(umer)o quattuor
fabae
viridis pu[rg]atae Italicum s(extarium) unum
fasioli
viridis purg[a]ti Italicum s(extarium) unum
40.
germina palmae [s]i[v]e elatae n(umer)o quattuor
bulbi
Afri siv[e] Fa[b]riani maximi n(umer)o viginti
bulbi
minores n(umer)o <q>uadraginta
ova
n(umero) <q>uattuor
parstinacae
maximae fascis habens n(umer)o viginti quinque
<parstinacae>
seque[ntes fascis habens n(umer)o quinquaginta]
cuchlia[e
maximae] n(umer)o [v]iginti
<cuchliae>
sequente[s] n(umer)o quadraginta
condimen[torum]
praemiscuorum fa<sce>s n(umero) octo
castaneae
n(umero) centum
50.
nuces optimae virides n(umero) quinquaginta
nuces
siccae n(umer)o centum
amygdalarum
purgatarum Ital(icum) s(extarium) unum
nucium
Abellanarum purgatarum It(alicum) s(extarium) unum
nuclei
pinei purgati Ital(icum) s(extarium) unum
pistaciorum
Ital(icum) s(extarium) unum
zizyphorum
Ital(icum) s(extarium) unum
cerasorum
p(ondo) quattuor
praecocia
n(umero) decem
duracina
maxima n(umero) decem
60.
<duracina> sequentia n(umero) viginti
Persica
maxima n(umero) decem
<Persica>
sequentia n(umero) viginti
pira
maxima [n(umero) de]cem
<pira>
sequentia [n(umero) vi]ginti
mala
optima Mattiana sive Saligniana n(umero) X
<mala>
sequentia n(umer)o viginti
mala
minora n(umer)o quadrag(inta)
rosae
n(umer)o c[e]ntum
70.
pruna cerea maxima n(umer)o tr[ig]inta
<pruna
cerea> sequentia n(umer)o quadraginta
mala
granata maxima n(umer)o decem
<mala
granata> sequentia n(umer)o [v]iginti
mala
Cydonea n(umer)o de[c]em
<mala
Cydonea> sequentia n(umer)o [v]iginti
citrium
maximum
<citrium>
sequens
mora
fiscilla capiens Ita[l(icum)] s(extarium) unum
ficus
optimae n(umer)o viginti quinque
<ficus>
sequentes n(umer)o quadraginta
80.
u[v]ae duracinae seu bumastae po(ndo) IIII
dactulos
Nicolaos optimos octo
dactulos
Nicolaos sequentes n(umer)o sedecim
palmulas
n(umer)o viginti quinque
ficus
Caricas n(umer)o viginti quinque
Caricae
pressae s(extarium) unum
Damascena
moneaea sicca n(umero) octo
<Damascena
moneaea> sequentia numero sedecim
ficus
du[plices] p(ondo) unum
oli[v]ae
Tarsicae numero viginti
90.
oli[v]ae columbades numero quadraginta
oli[v]ae
nigrae s(extarium) Ital(icum) unum
u[v]e
passae fabriles s(extarium) Ital(icum) unum
u[v]ae
<p>assae maximae s(extarium) Ital(icum) unum
terracuberum
p(ondo) unum
lactis
ovilli s(extarium) Ital(icum) unum
casei
recentis Ital(icum) p(ondo) unum
VI. For vegetables and fruits
1a
Artichokes, large size 5 10
2
Hearts of artichokes 10 6
3
Endive, best quality 10 10
4
Endive, second quality 10 4
5
Mallow, largest size 5 4
6
Mallow, smaller 10 4
7
Lettuce, best quality 5 4
8
Lettuce, second quality 10 4
9
Cabbage, best quality 5 4
10
Cabbage, second quality 10 4
11
Cabbage sprouts 1 bundle 4
12
Leeks, largest size 10 4
13
Leeks, smaller 20 4
14
Beets, largest 5 4
15
Beets, smaller 10 4
16
Radishes, largest size 10 4
17
Radishes, smaller size 20 4
18
Turnips, largest 10 4
19
Turnips, smaller 20 4
20
Onions, dried 1 mod. 50
21
Onions, green, first size 25 4
22
Onions, green, smaller 50 4
23
Garlic 1 mod. 60
24
Watercress Fascis in n. viginti (20 bundles, or bundle of 20?) 10
25
Capers 1 mod. 100
26
Gourds, first size 10 4
27
Gourds, smaller 20 4
28
Cucumbers, first size 10 4
29
Cucumbers, smaller 20 4
30
Sugar melons, large 2 4
31
Sugar melons, smaller 4 4
32
Watermelons 4 4
33
Kidney beans? (fasiolorum) 1 bundle of 25 4
34
Asparagus, cultivated 1 bundle of 25 6
35
Asparagus, wild 50 4
36
Butcher’s broom 1 bundle of 60 4
37
Chickpea, green 1 bundle of 4 (?) 4
38
Beans, green, shelled 1 sextarius 4
39
Kidney beans, green, shelled 1 sextarius 4
40
Palm shoots 4 4
41
Onions, African or Fabrian, largest size 20 12
42
Onions, African or Fabrian, smaller size 40 12
43
Eggs 4 4
44
Parsnips, largest size 1 bundle of 25 6
45
Parsnips, smaller size 1 bundle of 50 6
46
Snails, largest size 20 4
47
Snails, smaller 40 4
48
Mixed herbs 1 bundle of 8 4
49
Chestnuts 100 4
50
Walnuts, green, best quality 50 4
51
Walnuts, dried 100 4
52
Almonds, shelled 1 sextarius 6
53
Hazelnuts 1 sextarius 4
54
Pine nuts, shelled 1 sextarius 12
55
Pistachios 1 sextarius 16
56
Jujubes 1 sextarius 4
57
Cherries 4 lb
58
Apricots 10 4
59
Peaches, firm fleshed, largest 10 4
60
Peaches, firm fleshed, smaller 20 6
61
Peaches, largest size 10 4
62
Peaches, smaller 20 4
63
Pears, largest size 10 ...
64
Pears, smaller 20
65
Apples, Matian or Salignian, best quality 10 4
66
Apples, Matian or Salignian, second quality 20 4
67
Apples, smaller 40 4
68
Rosehips 100 8
69
Plums, yellow, largest size 30 4
70
Plums, yellow, smaller size 40 4
71
Pomegranates, largest size 10 8
72
Pomegranates, smaller size 20 8
73
Quinces 10 4
74
Quinces, smaller size 20 4
75
Citron, largest size ... 24
76
Citron, smaller size ... 16
77
Mulberries 1 sextarius 4
78
Figs, best quality 25 4
79
Figs, second quality 40 4
80
Table grapes, hard fleshed or long 4 lb 4
81
Dates, Nicolaän, best quality 8 4
82
Dates, Nicolaän, second quality 16 4
83
Dates, small 25 4
84
Figs, Carian 25 4
85
Figs, Carian, pressed ? 4
86
Damsons, dried, Moneaean 8 4
87
Damsons, dried, Moneaean, second quality 16 4
88
Figs, delacere (?) 1 lb 4
89
Olives from Tarsus 20 4
90
Olives in brine 40 4
91
Ripe, black olives 1 sextarius 4
92
Raisins, smoke dried 1 sextarius 8
93
Raisins, largest 1 sextarius 4
94
Truffle 1 lb 16
95
Sheep’s milk 1 sextarius 8
96
Fresh cheese 1 lb 8
VII
de mercedibus oper[arior]um, de aeramento
1.
operario rustico p[asto diu]rni
[-
- - - - - - - - - - - diurni
lapidario
structori pas[to diurni]
fabro
intestina[ri]o ut sup[ra diur]ni
fabro
tignario ut supra [diurni
calcis
coctori ut supra [diurni]
marmorario
ut supra [diurni]
musaeario
ut supra diurni
tessellario
ut supra [diu]r<n>i
10.
pictori parietario ut supra diurni
pictori
imaginario ut supra diurni
carpentario
ut supra diurni
fabro
ferrario ut supra diurni
pistori
ut supra diurni
naupego
in navi maritima ut supra diurni
naupego
in navi amnica ut supra diurni
lateris
crudi ad laterculos diurnam mercedem, in lateribus quattuor pedum
vinum, ita ut ipse sibi inpensam praep[a]ret, pasto
item
lateris ex luto diurnam mercedem, in lateribus n(umer)o octo, ita ut
ipse sibi inpensam praeparet, pasto
camelario
sibe asinario et burdonario pasto diurni
20.
pastori pasto diurnos
mulioni
pasto diurnos
mulomedico
tonsurae et aptaturae pedum in capite uno
deple<tu>rae
et purgat<u>rae capitis per singula capita
tonsori
per homines singulos
tonsori
pec<o>rum in uno capitae pasto
DE
AERAMENTO
aerario
in orichalco mercedis in po(ndo) I
aerario
in cupri in po(ndo) I
aerario
in vasculis diversi generis in po(ndo) I
aerario
in si<g>illis vel statuis in po(ndo) I
30.
aerario ind<u>ctilis aeramenti in po(ndo) I
plastae
imaginario diurnae mercedis pasto
reliquis
plastis gypsariis p<as>tis diurnos
aquario
omni die operanti pasto diurnos
cloacario
omni die operanti pasto diurnos
samiatori
in spatha ex usu
samiatori
in casside e<x> usu
samiatori
in securi
samiatori
in bipenni
samiatori
vagina spat<h>ae
40.
membranario in [qua]t<erni>one pedali pergamen[i vel]
croca[ti]
scriptori
in sc<ri>ptura optima versus n(umero) centum
sequ[enti]s
scripturae versuum n(umer)o centum
tabellanioni
in scriptura libelli vel tabularum [in ver]sibus n(umer)o centum
bracario
pro excisura et <o>rnatura pro birro qualitatis primae
<bracario>
pro birro qualitatis secundae
<bracario>
pro caracalla maiori
<bracario>
pro caracalla minori
<bracario>
pro bracibus
<bracario>
pro udonibus
50.
sarcinatori in veste subtili replicat<u>rae
eidem
aperturae cum subsutura holosericae
eidem
aperturae cum subsutura supsericae
<eidem
aperturae cum> [sub]suturae in veste grossiori
[c]entunclum
equestrae quoactile album sive nigrum librarum trium
[c]entunclum
primum ornatum ab acu ponderis supra script[i]
[color]atori
[in] tunica muliebri vulgari rudi
<coloratori
in tunica muliebri vulgari> ab usu
<coloratori>
in strictoria virili de tela
<coloratori
in strictoria virili> ab usu
60.
<coloratori> in infantili rud<i>
<coloratori
in infantili> ab usu
<coloratori>
sagum sive rachanam rudi
<coloratori
sagum sive rachanam> ab usu
<coloratori>
in tapete rudi
<coloratori
in tapete> ab usu
ceromatitae
in singulis discipulis menstruos
paedagogo
in singulis pueris menstruos
magistro
instituto<ri> litterarum in singulis pueris menstruos
calculatori
in singulis pueris menstruos
70.
notario in singulis pueris menstruos
librario
sive antiquario in singulis discipulis menstruos
<g>rammatico
Graeco sive Latino et geometrae in singulis discipulis menstruos
oratori
sive sophistae in singulis discipulis menstruos
advocato
sive iuris perito mercedis in postulatione
advocato
sive iuris perito mercedis in cognitione
architecto
magistro per singulos pueros menstruos
capsario
in singulis labantibus
balneatori
privatario in singulis lavanti<b>us
VII. For wages
1a
Farm labourer, with maintenance For a day 25
1b
... ... ...
2
Stonemason, with maintenance For a day 50
3
Cabinet maker, with maintenance For a day 50
3a
Carpenter, with maintenance For a day 50
4
Lime burner, with maintenance For a day 50
5
Worker in marble pavements, with maintenance For a day 60
6
Worker in wall mosaics, with maintenance For a day 60
7
Worker in tessellated floors, with maintenance For a day 50
8
Wall painter, with maintenance For a day 75
9
Figure painter, with maintenance For a day 150
10
Wagon wright, with maintenance For a day 50
11
Blacksmith for wagons, with maintenance For a day 50
12
Baker, with maintenance For a day 50
13
Shipwright, working on seagoing vessels, with maintenance For a day
60
14
Shipwright, working on river vessels, with maintenance For a day 50
15
For a maker of bricks ready for firing, for every 4 bricks of two
feet and for the preparation of the clay, with maintenance For 1
unit (?) 2
16
For a maker of sun-dried bricks, for every 8 bricks and for the
preparation of the clay, with maintenance For 1 unit (?) 2
17
Driver of camels, asses or mules, with maintenance For a day 25
18
Shepard, with maintenance For a day 25
19
Mule driver, with maintenance For a day 25
20
Veterinary, for clipping and preparing the hoofs For each animal 6
21
Veterinary, for bleeding and (also interior?) cleaning of the head
For each animal 20
22
Barber For each client 2
23
Shearer, with maintenance For each animal 2
24
For bronze work
24a
Bronze smith For each lb of processed metal 8
25
Copper smith For each lb of processed metal 6
26
Copper smith, for small vessels of various kind For each lb of
processed metal 6
27
Copper smith, for figurines For each lb of processed metal 4
28
Copper smith for bronze inlays For each lb of processed metal 6
29
Maker of terracotta figurines, with maintenance For a day 75
30
Maker of plaster figurines, with maintenance For a day 50
31
Water carrier, full day, with maintenance For a day 25
32
Sewer cleaner, full day, with maintenance For a day 25
33
Armourer, for sharpening a used sword For 1 item 25
34
Armourer, for maintenance of a used helmet For 1 item 25
35
Armourer, for sharpening an axe For 1 item 6
36
Armourer, for sharpening a double bladed axe For 1 item 8
37
Armourer, for making (?) a sword scabbard For 1 item 100
38
Parchment maker for making a quaternion measuring a foot, of white
or yellow parchment 40
39
Scribe, for the best writing For 100 lines 25
40
Scribe, for writing of the second quality For 100 lines 20
41
Notary, for writing petitions or legal documents For 100 lines 10
42
Tailor, for cutting and finishing a hooded cloak (birrus) of the
finest quality For 1 item 60
43
Tailor, for cutting and finishing a hooded cloak (birrus) of the
second quality For 1 item 40
44
Tailor, for cutting and finishing a cloak, caracalla, largest For 1
item 25
45
Tailor, for cutting and finishing a cloak, caracalla, smaller For 1
item 20
46
Tailor, for cutting and finishing breeches For 1 item 20
47
Tailor, for making felt leggings For 1 item 4
48
Tailor, for folding and sewing a fine garment For 1 item 6
49
Tailor, for making and attaching silk bands on neck and sleeves For
1 item 50
50
Tailor, for making and attaching partly silk bands on neck and
sleeves For 1 item 30
51
Tailor, for stitching a seam in a coarse garment For 1 item 4
52
Tailor, for making a white or black horse blanket of felt, weighing
3 pounds For 1 item 100
53
Tailor, for making a first quality embroidered horse blanket,
weighing 3 pounds For 1 item 250
54
For bleaching or colouring a woman’s new ordinary tunic For 1
item 16
55
For bleaching or colouring a woman’s new ordinary tunic which
is already in use For 1 item 10
56
For bleaching or colouring a close fitting man’s shirt with
sleeves, new from the loom For 1 item 10
57
For bleaching or colouring a close fitting man’s shirt with
sleeves which is already in use For 1 item 6
58
For bleaching or colouring a close fitting child’s shirt with
sleeves, new from the loom For 1 item 6
59
For bleaching or colouring a close fitting child’s shirt with
sleeves which is already in use For 1 item 2
60
For bleaching or colouring a soldier’s new cloak, a sagum or
rachanam For 1 item 16
61
For bleaching or colouring a soldier’s cloak, a sagum or
rachanam which is already in use For 1 item 6
62
For bleaching or colouring a new cloth or rug used for covering For
1 item 24
63
For bleaching or colouring cloth or rug used for covering which is
already in use For 1 item 10
64
Gymnastic instructor Monthly for each pupil 50
65
Pedagogue Monthly for each charge 50
66
Elementary teacher Monthly for each pupil 50
67
Teacher of arithmetic Monthly for each pupil 75
68
Teacher for shorthand Monthly for each pupil 75
69
Teacher of manuscript writing or palaeography Monthly for each pupil
50
70
Teacher of Greek or Latin literature and of geometry Monthly for
each pupil 200
71
Teacher of rhetoric or public speaking Monthly for each pupil 250
72
Attorney for opening a case 250
73
Attorney for pleading a case 1.000
74
Teacher of architecture Monthly for each pupil 100
75
Guard of clothes in public bath For each bather
76
Bath superintendent in a private bath For each bather
VIII
<de pellibus, de coriis, de segestribus>
DE
PELLIBUS BABYLONICIS SEU TRALLIANIS VEL PHOENICEIS
pellis
Babylonica primae formae
<pellis
Babylonica> formae secundae
pellis
Tralliana
pellis
Phoenicea
pellis
lacc<he>na
DE
CORIIS BUBULI
corium
bubulum infectum formae primae
idem
confectum ad sol<er>anda calceamenta
<idem
confectum> ad loramenta et cetera
corium
secundae formae infectum
idem
[confectum
pell[is
ca]prina [maxim]a infecta
[ead]em
[con]fecta
pellis
[verve]cina maxima infecta
eadem
c[on]fecta
pellis
bellearis prima
pileum
factum
pellis
haedina infecta
eadem
confecta
pellis
hyaenae infecta
eadem
confecta
pellis
dorci infecta
eadem
confecta
pellis
cervin(a) primae formae infecta
eadem
[c]onfecta
pellis
oviferi infecta
eadem
confecta
pellis
lupina infecta
eadem
confecta
pellis
melina infecta
eadem
con[fect]a
pellis
castorina in[fecta
eadem
co<n>fecta
pellis
ursina maxima inf[ecta
eadem
confecta
pellis
lu<p>i cervari infecta
eadem
confecta
pellis
vituli marini infecta
eadem
confecta
pellis
leopardina infecta
eadem
confecta
pellis
leonina confecta
DE
SEGESTRIBUS
segestrae
de caprinis <v>illis n(umero) octo
pulicare
tenerrimum et maximum
VIII. For Babylonian, Trallian or
Phoenician hides
1a
Babylonian hide, first quality 500
2
Babylonian hide, second quality 400
3
Trallian hide 200
4
Phoenician hide 100
5
Hide dyed indigo 400
6
For ox hides
6a
Ox hide, untanned, first quality 500
7
Ox hide, tanned for shoe soles 750
8
Ox hide, tanned for harnesses, etc. 600
9
Ox hide untanned, second quality 300
10
Ox hide tanned, second quality 400
11
Goat skin, largest, untanned 40
12
Goat skin, largest, tanned 50
13
Sheep skin, largest, untanned 20
14
Sheep skin, largest, tanned 30
15
Sheep skin for a cap, first quality 100
16
Sheep skin cap, completed 200
17
Kid skin, untanned 10
18
Kid skin, tanned 16
19
Hyena skin, untanned 40
20
Hyena skin, tanned 60
21
Gazelle skin, untanned 10
22
Gazelle skin, tanned 15
23
Deer skin, untanned, first quality 75
24
Deer skin, tanned, first quality 100
25
Wild sheep skin, untanned
20
26 Wild sheep skin, tanned 30
27
Wolf skin, untanned 25
28
Wolf skin, tanned 40
29
Marten (Lauffer 1971) or badger (Graser 1940) skin, untanned 10
30
Marten (Lauffer 1971) or badger (Graser 1940) skin, tanned 15
31
Beaver skin, untanned 20
32
Beaver skin, tanned 30
33
Bear skin, largest, untanned 100
34
Bear skin, largest, tanned 150
35
Lynx skin, untanned 40
36
Lynx skin, tanned 60
37
Seal skin, untanned 1.250
38
Seal skin, tanned 1.500
39
Leopard skin, untanned 1.000
40
Leopard skin, tanned 1.250
41
Lion skin, tanned 1.000
42
For leather covers, used in wagons
42a
Leather cover of eight first quality goat skins 600
43
Finest and largest cover 600
(Note:
refers to types of hides and – in chapter IX and X- leather.
For instance: ‘Babylonian’ indicates the colour, red or
purple)
IX
de formis caligaribus, de caligis, de soleis et gallicis, de soleis
Babylonicis et purpureis et Phoeniceis etalbis, de furnis domesticis
DE
FORMIS CALIGARIBUS
formae
caligares maximae
formae
secundae mensurae
formae
muliebres
formae
infantiles
DE
CALIGIS
caligae
primae formae mu<li>onicae sive rusticae par sine clavis
caligae
militares sine clavo
calcei
patricii
calicae
senatorum
calicae
equestres
caligae
muliebres pa<r>
ca[m]pagi
militares
DE
SOLEIS ET GALLICIS
gallicae
viriles rusticanae bisoles par
gallicae
viriles monosoles par
[gal]licae
cursoriae par
[tau]rinae
muliebres bisoles par
[taurin]ae
muliebres monosoles par
[DE
SO]LEIS BABYLONICIS ET PURPUREIS ET PHOENICEIS ET ALBIS
[soleae]
Babyl<o>nicae par
[socci]
purpurei sive Phoenicei par
[socci
albi par
[DE
FURNIS DOMESTICIS]
[soc]ci
vi[riles par]
[so]cci
muliebres pa[r]
[socci
i]nauratae
socci
Babylonici purp[urei]
taurinae
inauratae
taurinae
lanatae
IX. For lasts for boots and shoes
1a
Lasts for boots, largest size 100
2
Lasts, second size 80
3
Women’s lasts 60
4
Children’s lasts 30
5
Boots
5a
Boots for mule drivers or farm workers, first quality, without hob
nails 120
6
Boots for soldiers, without hob nails 100
7
Shoes for patricians 150
8
Shoes for senators 100
9
Shoes for equestrians 70
10
Mule drivers boots 60
11
Soldier’s shoes 75
12
For sandals and Gallic sandals
12a
Gallic men’s sandals for farm workers, double soled 80
13
Gallic men’s sandals, single soled 50
14
Gallic sandals for couriers 60
15
Women’s ox hide sandals, double soled 50
16
Women’s ox hide sandals, single soled 30
17
For Babylonian and Phoenician purple or white slippers
17a
Babylonian sandals 120
18
Purple or Phoenician slippers 60
19
White slippers ...
20
... ...
20a
Men’s slippers, first quality 60
21
Women’s slippers, first quality 50
22
Gilded slippers 80
23
Babylonian purple slippers 80
24
Gilded ox hide slippers 75
25
Ox hide slippers, lined with wool 50
X
De locramentis, de zonis militaribus, de utribus, de scortiis
DE
LOCRAMENTIS
1.
averta primae formae in caruca
scordiscum
militarem
parammas
mulares cum flagello
capistrum
equestrae cum circulis et ducali
frenum
equestre cum salibario instructum
frenum
mulare cum capistello
capistrum
mu[la]re
DE
ZONIS MILITAR[IBUS]
zona
Babulonica [lata - -]
item
lata [Alexandrina]
10.
subalare Ba[bylonicum]
zona
alba [dig]itorum quattuor
item
digit[orum se]x
DE
UTRIBUS
utrem
primae formae
utrem
olearium primae formae
[in]
utrem mercedem diurnam
DE
SCORTIIS
scortia
in sexstario uno
thecam
cannarum n(umero) quinque par
flagellum
mulionicum cum virga
corigiam
aurigalem
X. For leather goods
1a
Traveling bag, first quality 1.500
2
Military saddle 500
3
Mule saddle, with whip 800
4
Halter for a horse, with rings and leading rein 75
5
Complete bride for a horse, with bit 100
6
Bridle for a mule, with halter 120
7
Halter for a mule 80
8
For soldier’s belts
8a
Babylonian belt, ... wide 100
9
Babylonian belt, ... wide 200
10
Babylonian chest strap 100
11
White belt, four digiti wide 60
12
White belt, six digiti wide 75
13
For leather sacks
13a
Sack, first quality 120
14
Sack for oil, first quality 100
15
Daily charge for rental of a sack 2
16
For leather articles
16a
Leather container holding one sextarius 20
17
Box for five reed pens 40
18
Mule whip with handle 16
19
Driver’s reins 2
XI
De saetis, de sagmis,de zabernis
DE
SAET<I>S CAPRINIS SIVE CAMELLINIS
pilorum
infectorum p(ondo) unum
pili
neti ad zabernas vel sacc<o>s p(ondo) unum
pilorum
ad funem confect<o>rum p(ondo) unum
DE
SAGMIS
sagma
burdonis
sagma
asini
sagma
cameli
DE
ZABERNIS
zabernarum
sive saccorum par habens pondo triginta
saccopathnas
latitudinis pedum trium, longitudinis quantum fuerit, pro singulis
libris
XI. For products made of camel- and
goat’s hair
1a
Unworked hair 1 lb 6
2
Hair, woven into bags or clothes sacks 1 lb 10
3
Hair, twisted to a rope 1 lb 10
4
For packsaddles
4a
Packsaddle for a mule 350
5
Packsaddle for an ass 250
6
Packsaddle for a camel 350
7
For bags for clothing
7a
Double sacks for clothing A pair weighing 30 lb 400
8
Bag, 3 feet wide and of any desired length For each lb weight (AK:
or carrying capacity?) 16
XII. For timber
1a
Fir planks, 50 cubits long, 4 cubits in perimeter 50.000
2
Fir planks, 45 cubits long, 4 cubits in perimeter 40.000
3
Fir planks, 40 cubits long, 4 cubits in perimeter 30.000
4
Fir planks, 35 cubits long, 80 digiti in perimeter 12.000
5
Fir planks, 28 cubits long, 4 cubits in perimeter 10.000
6
Fir planks, 30 cubits long, 72 digiti in perimeter 8.000
7
Fir planks, 28 cubits long, 64 digiti in perimeter 6.000
8
Fir planks, 25 cubits long, 64 digiti in perimeter 5.000
9
The prices above are also established for pine
10
Oak planks, 14 cubits long, 68 digiti in perimeter 250
11
Ash planks, 14 cubits long, 48 digiti in perimeter 250
12
Beech planks, 14 cubits long, 48 digiti in perimeter 250
13
Cypress planks, 12 cubits long, 48 digiti in perimeter 300
14
Fir or pine planks, 12 cubits long, 48 digiti in perimeter 250
16
Oak woord 1 cubit ...
16
... foot, a foot ...
16a
17
18
19
19a
20
21
22
XIII. For spindles, shuttles and
combs
1a
Shuttle of boxwood 14
2
Shuttles of other woods 30
3
Weavers comb of boxwood 12
4
Weavers comb of other woods 14
5
Spindle of boxwood, with whorl 12
6
Spindle of other woods, with whorl 15
7
Women’s comb of boxwood 14
8
Women’s scraping knife 12
9
Scraper made of tortoise shield 4
10
Scraper made of amber ...
XIV. For poles and firewood
1a
Round stakes 2 40
2
Medium reeds 2 50
3
Large reeds 2 100
4
Lance shaft of cornel wood 30
5
Shaft for long lance 50
6
Ordinary large ladder of 30 rungs 150
7
Plant stakes Bundle of 100 10
8
Wagon load of firewood 1.200 lb 150
9
Camel load of firewood 400 lb 50
10
Mule load of firewood 300 lb 30
11
Ass load of firewood 200 lb ...
12
Twigs and pieces of firewood, for use in ovens Bundle of 15 lb 30
XV. For wood for wagons, for wagons,
for wooden items and metals, for terracotta/pottery
1a
Turned axle 250
2
Axle, unturned 200
3
Hub of a wheel, turned 240
4
Hub of a wheel, unturned 200
5
Spoke of a wheel, turned 70
6
Spoke of a wheel, unturned 30
7
Seats, turned 200 plus
8
Seats, unturned 200
9
Wagon fork, turned ...
10
Wagon fork, unturned 175
11
Wagon tongue, turned 200
12
Wagon tongue, unturned 100
13
Straight piece, turned 75
14
Straight piece, unturned 35
15
Clamp, turned 75
16
Clamp, unturned 45
17
Prod or whip, turned 5
18
Prod or whip, unturned 4
19
Side pieces or ribs(?), turned ...
20
Side pieces or ribs, unturned 30
21
Hay implement (?), turned 16
22
Hay implement, unturned ...
23a
... ...
23b
... ...
24
... 40
25
... 20
26
... 70
27
... 70
28
... 70
29
... 30
30
... 36
31
For vehicles
31a
Freight wagon, best quality, with wheel-rims of one piece, ironwork
not included 6.000
32
Freight wagon, with joined wheel rims, ironwork not included 3.500
33
Four wheeled passenger wagon, with joined wheel rims, ironwork not
included 3.000
34
Sleeping wagon, with wheel-rims of one piece, ironwork not included
7.500
35
Sleeping wagon, with joined wheel rims, ironwork not included 4.000
36
Freight wagons with wheel-rims of one piece, and other wagons with
wheels fitted out with ironwork are to be sold at a price which
includes the ironwork
37
Four wheeled travelling wagon, with the wheel rims of one piece,
ironwork not included 7.000
38
For wagons
38a
Four wheeled wagon with yoke, not including the ironwork 1.500
39
A wagon with ironwork is to be sold at a price in which the value of
the wood and iron are included
40
Two wheeled freight wagon with yoke, not including the ironwork 800
41
Wooden threshing sledge 200
42
Wooden plow with yoke 100
43
Rammer or two-sided hoe(?) or fork 100
44
Double sided hoe? 12
45
Shovel 4
46
Three-pronged fork 8
47
Two-pronged fork 4
48
Five-modius trough 150
49
Wooden one-modius measure 50
50
Wooden one-modius measure, iron bound 75
51
Turned wooden bowl, one half modius 30
52
For mills
52a
Horse mill with millstones 1.500
53
Ass mill 1.250
54
Water driven mill 2.000
55
Hand mill 250
56
For sieves
56a
Leather sieve for threshing 250
57
Leather sieve for the finest wheat meal 400
58
Large woven sieve 200
59
Ordinary woven sieve 100
60
Woven sieve for pulse 50
61
Woven sieve for... 35
62
Woven sieve ... 60
63
For metals
63a
Brass 1 lb 100
64
Copper 1 lb 75
65
Hammered bronze plate 1 lb 60
66
Unworked bronze 1 lb 50
67
[for terracotta and pottery]
68
Ordinary tile with joint-tile ..
69
Brick for wall, two feet long ...
70
Brick for wall, one foot long 4
71
Round brick 4
72
Fluepipe for hypocaust heating 6
73
Exit-stack for fluepipe 6
74
Water pipe ‘qqualem modialem’(?) 12
75
Water pipe ‘sev. modialem’(?) 6
76
Water pipe, 4 digitus wide 4
77
Storage jar of 1000 sextarii 1 1000
78
Jar of 2 sextarii 1 2
79
Oil lamp 10 (?) 4
80
Jar of 20 sextarii 1 12
81
More containers with a price on the basis of capacity
XVI. For glass, ivory, needles
1
For glass
1a
Alexandrian glass 1 lb 24
2
Judaean greenish glass 1 lb 13
3
Alexandrian plain glass cups and vessels 1 lb 30
4
Judaean plain glass cups and vessels 1 lb 20
5
Window glass, best quality 1 lb 8
6
For ivory and tortoise 6a Ivory 1 lb 150
7
Shield of tortoise from India 1 lb 100
8
For needles
8a
Sewing needle, very fine 4
9
Sewing needle, second quality 2
10
Needle for sewing sacks or packsaddles 2
(Note
AK: sources for glass, see literature; for terracotta - including
pottery - see introduction)
XVII. For road transport charges
1a
Charge for one person For each mile 2
2
Charge for a full wagon For each mile 12
3
Freight charge for a 1.200 lb wagon load For each mile 20
4
Freight charge for a 600 lb wagon load For each mile 8
5
Freight charge for an ass load For each mile 4
6
For fodder
6a
Vetch fodder 2 lb 2
7
Hay or chaff 4 lb 2
8
Green fodder 6 lb 1
XVIII. For down, feathers and
cushioning
1a
Goose down 1 lb 100
2
Down of different birds 1 lb 50
3
Soft feathers of various birds 1 lb 2
4
Fluff from willows 100 lb 1.000
5
Cushioning of Verbascum 100 lb 1.000
6
Cushioning of reed tufts 100 lb 100
7
Cushioning of wool flocks 1 lb 8
8
Cushioning of wool flocks, second quality 1 lb 4
9
Peacock’s feather, finest 1 2
10
Vulture’s feathers 25 6
11
For writing reeds and ink
11a
Ink 1 lb 12
12
Reeds with one knot from Paphos and Alexandria 10 4
13
Reeds, second quality 20 4
XIX. For clothing
1a
Military mantle, best quality, as described in the indictio (note
AK: tax regulations) 4.000
2
Shirt, as described in the indictio 2.000
3
Shirt, as described in the indictio, without purple bands 1.250
4
Cover to be used as a tent, 16 by 16 feet, dyed 2.500
5
White cover for a bed, weighing 12 lb, best quality 1.600
6
A dyed cover, Arabian or Damascene or any other provenance, is to be
sold at a price in which the weight of the wool and the cost of the
embroidery are included
7
Ordinary cover, weight 10 lb 500
8
Women’s dalmatica (note AK: a wide sleeved tunic) of coarse
wool, striped with archil purple, weight 2 lb ...
9
Men’s dalmatica, with light purple bands, part silk unciae ...
10
Close fitting strictoria (note AK: close fitting undershirt with
narrow sleeves) part silk, with light purple bands ...
11
Close fitting strictoria with coloured bands 6.000
12
Dalmaticomafortium (Note AK: hooded wide garment with sleeves), part
silk, with light purple bands 44.000
13
Dalmaticomafortium, part silk, part wool from Mutina, with light
purple bands 46.000
14
Dalmaticomafortium, part silk, part ‘sea wool’ (Note:
‘wool’ made from the byssus thread of the Pinna nobilis
musle shell) with light purple bands 48.000
15
Men’s silk dalmatica with dark purple bands, ... lb 50.000
16
Men’s silk dalmaticomafortium with coloured bands, weighing 2
lb 135.000
17
(follows)
18
Silk strictoria with purple bands, weighing six unciae 40.000
19
... silk, without bands ... 45.000
20
... quality of the wool ... and the quantity of the gold thread and
the embroidering must be taken into account
21
Cloak of wool from Mutina, double, purple bands, dyed once ...
22
... cloak ... (follows) ...
23
Cloak of wool from Mutina, single, with purple bands.. five unciae
...
24
Women’s garment of wool from Mutina, closed with clasps,
single, with purple bands, once dyed, ... unciae ...
25
Women’s garment of wool from Mutina, from Laodicea, closed
with clasps, single, with purple bands, once dyed, four unciae (AK:
garment or paint?) 40 ...
26
Cloak of wool from Mutina or Laodicea, single, with purple bands,
once dyed, ... unciae 15.000
27
Women’s garment from Laodicea, closed with clasps, with purple
bands, first ... four unciae 4.000
28
Cover from Britannia, first quality 5.000
29
Cover from Britannia, second quality 4.000
30
Cover from Cappadocia or Pontia, first quality 3.000
31
Cover from Cappadocia or Pontia, second quality 2.000
32
Cover from Egypt 1.750
33
Cover from ... 4.000
34
Cover from ... for covering a reclining dinner sofa 4.500
35
Cover from Africa 1.500
36
Covers are to be sold according to the value of the weight of the
wool and the dying and the embroidery
37
Laodicean hooded cloak 4.500
38
Laodicean hooded cloak, resembling a Nervian cloak 10.000
39
Tunic from Laodicea, undecorated, without bands, twilled 2.000
40
The price of a bordered tunic from Laodicea must include the price
of the purple used
41
... ...
42
... ...
43
... ... 5
44
First quality Nervian hooded cloak, the colour of a lion 15.000
45
Hooded cloak of the type taurogastrico 12.000
46
Hooded cloak from the lower Danube 8.000
47
Hooded cloak from Noricum 10.000
48
Hooded cloak from Britannia 6.000
49
Hooded cloak from Melitomagus 6.000
50
Striped hooded cloak from Canusius (AK: Apulia), first quality 4.000
51
Hooded cloak from Numidia 3.000
52
Argolic hooded cloak, first quality 6.000
53
Achaean or Phrygian hooded cloak, first quality 2.000
54
African hooded cloak 1.500
55
‘Banata’ (AK: unexplained), double, from Noricum 20.000
56
‘Fedox’(AK: unexplained), from Noricum, first quality
10.000
57
Gallic ‘banata’ 15.000
58
Gallic ‘fedox’ 8.000
59
Singilio (AK: unexplained, shirt?) from Noricum 1.500
60
Singilio (AK: unexplained) from Gallia 1.200
61
Singilio (AK: unexplained) from Numidia 600
62
Singilio (AK: unexplained) from Phrygia or Bissicus 600
63
Hooded cape from Laodicea, best quality 5.000
64
Hooded cape from Balesium 4.000
65
Cloak with clasp from Rhaetia 12.000
66
Cloak with clasp from the Treveri 8.000
67
Cloak with clasp from Petovionicum (AK: Poetovio in Pannonia/present
day Slovenia) 5.000
68
Cloak with clasp from Africa 2.000
69
Short mantle from Dardenica, double, best quality 12.500
70
Short mantle from Dardania, single, best quality 7.000
71
Short cloak 1.000
72
Short cloak from Africa 500
73
Short cloak from Gallia, from the Ambiani or the Bituriges 8.000
73a
Close fitting strictoria (note AK: close fitting undershirt with
narrow sleeves) from the wool of hares or rabbits 6.000
73b
Dalmaticomafortium (Note AK: hooded wide garment with sleeves) from
the wool of hares (Lauffer 1971) or rabbits (Graser 1940) with
purple bands 7.000
XX. For Payments for embroiderers and
silk workers
1a
For embroidery on a close fitting strictoria (note AK: close fitting
undershirt with sleeves), part silk For one uncia of thread 200
2
For embroidery on a close fitting strictoria (note AK: close fitting
undershirt with narrow sleeves), pure silk For one uncia of thread
300
3
For embroidery on a light cloak of wool from Mutina For one uncia of
thread 25
4
For embroidery on a light cloak from Laodiceia in the way of Mutina
For one uncia of thread 25
5
For a brocade maker, working in gold thread, for work of the best
quality For one uncia of thread 1.000
6
For a brocade maker, working in gold thread, for work of the second
quality For one uncia of thread 750
7
For a gold embroiderer on pure silk For one uncia of thread 500
8
For a gold embroiderer on pure silk, in second quality For one uncia
of thread 400
9
Silk worker on part silk, with maintenance For a day 25
10
Silk worker on pure silk, with maintenance For a day 25
11
Silk worker on pure silk, checkered, with maintenance For a day 40
12
Woman weaver of tunica’s of soft cloth, according to the
indictio, with maintenance For a day 12
13
Woman weaver of tunica’s of cloth from Mutina and other
places, with maintenance For a day 16
XXI. (...) (Graser fills in:) For
wool weavers
1a
Wool weaver, working in wool from Mutina or ‘sea wool’
(Note: ‘wool’ made from the byssus thread of the Pinna
nobilis musle shell), with maintenance For 1 lb 40
2
Wool weaver, working in wool from Tarentum, Laodiceia or Altinum For
1 lb 30
3
Wool weaver, working in wool of the second quality For 1 lb 20
4
Wool weaver, working in wool of the third, coarse quality For 1 lb
15
5
Linen weaver for first quality work, with maintenance For a day 40
6
Linen weaver for second quality work, with maintenance For a day 20
XXII. For wages for fullers and
launderers
1a
Fuller, for a light new cloak, as described in the indictio (note
AK: tax regulations) 50
2
For a new strictoria (note AK: close fitting undershirt with narrow
sleeves) as described in the indictio 25
3
For a shirt without decoration, of coarser wool 20
4
For a new cover 30
5
For a new dalmaticomafortium (Note AK: hooded wide garment with
sleeves) of coarser wool 50
6
For a new dalmaticomafortium of pure soft-finished wool 100
7
For a new strictoria of pure soft-finished wool 50
8
For a man’s new dalmatica, part silk 200
9
For a new strictoria, part silk 175
10
For a new strictoria, part silk, without purple bands 125
11
For a new dalmaticomafortium, part silk 300
12
For a man’s new dalmatica in pure silk 400
13
For a new dalmaticomafortium, pure silk 600
14
For a new strictoria, pure silk 250
15
For a new strictoria, pure silk, without purple bands 200
16
For a new light cloak, double, of wool from Mutina 500
17
For a new light cloak, single, of wool from Mutina 250
18
For a new garment closed with clasps, of wool from Mutina 200
19
For a new garment closed with clasps, of wool from Laodiceia 200
20
For a light new cloak of wool from Laodiceia 200
21
For a new hooded cloak of wool from the Nervii 600
22
For a new hooded cloak of wool from Laodiceia 175
23
For a new hooded cloak from Ripensi or of the type taurogastrico 300
24
For a new hooded cloak from Noricum 200
25
For other hooded cloaks 100
26
For African or Achaean hooded cloaks 50
XXIII. For the price of silks
1a
White unprocessed silk 1 lb 12.000
2
For those unravelling silk, with maintenance 1 uncia 64
XXIV. For purple
1a
Unprocessed silk, dyed purple 1 lb 150.000
2
Wool, dyed purple 1 lb 50.000
3
Wool, dyed lighter purple 1 lb 32.000
4
Wool, dyed bright Tyrian purple 1 lb 16.000
5
Wool, dyed purple once 1 lb 12.000
6
Wool, dyed twice in the best Milesian purple 1 lb 12.000
7
Wool, dyed in second quality Milesian purple 1 lb 10.000
8
Wool, dyed scarlet-red with Nicene Kermes (AK: shield lice) 1 lb
1.500
9
Wool, dyed in the best quality archil purple (AK: a lichen) 1 lb 600
10
Wool, dyed in second quality archil purple 1 lb 500
11
Wool, dyed in third quality archil purple 1 lb 400
12
Wool, dyed in fourth quality archil purple 1 lb 300
13
For those unravelling unprocessed silk, dyed purple or ny other
colour 1 uncia 3(?) (AK: probably:) 50
14
For those spinning purple silk for pure silk cloth 1 uncia 116
15
For those spinning purple silk for part silk cloth 1 uncia 60
16
For those spinning purple wool of the first quality for
soft-finished cloth 1 uncia 24
17
(follows)
18
(follows)
19
(follows)
20
(follows)
21
(follows)
XXV. For wool
1a
Wool from Tarentum, washed 1 lb 175
2
Wool from Laodiceia, washed 1 lb 150
3
Wool from Asturia, washed 1 lb 100
4
Wool of the best middle quality, washed 1 lb 50
5
All other wool, washed 1 lb 25
6
Sea wool (Note AK: ‘wool’ made from the byssus thread of
the Pinna nobilis musle shell) 1 lb 150
7
Rabbit’s hair, unsorted 1 lb 100
8
Wool from Aria (AK: Persia?) 1 lb 150
9
Wool from the Atrebetes 1 lb 200
10
(follows)
11
(follows)
12
(follows)
13
(follows)
XXVI. For linen
1a
Combed, unspun flax, first quality 1 lb 24
2
Combed, unspun flax, second quality 1 lb 20
3
Combed, unspun flax, third quality 1 lb 16
4
For the different kinds of linen yarn, the prices below must not be
exceeded
4a
First quality 1 lb 1.200
5
Second quality 1 lb 960
6
Third quality 1 lb 840
7
Further, linen yarn inferior to the third quality mentioned above
7a
First quality 1 lb 720
8
Second quality 1 lb 600
9
Third quality 1 lb 450
10
Coarse linen, for common people, farmers and slaves
10a
First quality 1 lb 250
11
Second quality 1 lb 125
12
Third quality 1 lb 72
13
Linen unit of textile (AK: will be referred to below as ‘1
web’), woven for a shirt without colour bands 13a First
quality from Scythopolis 1 web 7.000
14
First quality from Tarsus 1 web 6.000
15
First quality from Byblus 1 web 5.000
16
First quality from Laodiceia 1 web 4.500
17
First quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 4.000
18
Second quality from Scythopolis 1 web 6.000
19
Second quality from Tarsus 1 web 5.000
20
Second quality from Byblus 1 web 4.000
21
Second quality from Laodiceia 1 web 3.500
22
Second quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 3.000
23
Third quality from Scythopolis 1 web 5.000
24
Third quality from Tarsus 1 web 3.500
25
Third quality from Byblus 1 web 3.000
26
Third quality from Laodiceia 1 web 2.500
27
Third quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 2.000
28
For a soldiers’ Strictorium
28a
First quality 1.500
29
Second quality 1.250
30
Third quality 1.000
31
(Strictorium?) of coarse linen for the use of common people or
slaves
31a
First quality ...
32
Second quality 600
33
Third quality 500
34
For a woman’s dalmatica without coloured bands 34a First
quality from Scythopolis 1 web 11.000
35
First quality from Tarsus 1 web 10.000
36
First quality from Byblus 1 web 9.000
37
First quality from Laodiceia 1 web 8.000
38
First quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 7.000
39
For a man’s dalmatica or for a short sleeved tunica, a Colobia
39a
First quality from Scythopolis 1 web 10.000
40
First quality from Tarsus 1 web 9.000
41
First quality from Byblus 1 web 8.000
42
First quality from Laodiceia 1 web 7.500
43
First quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 6.500
44
For a woman’s dalmatica
44a
Second quality from Scythopolis 1 web 9.000
45
Second quality from Tarsus 1 web 8.000
46
Second quality from Byblus 1 web 7.000
47
Second quality from Laodiceia 1 web 6.000
48
Second quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 4.500
49
For a man’s dalmatica or for a short sleeved tunica, a colobia
49a
Second quality from Scythopolis 1 web 7.500
50
Second quality from Tarsus 1 web 6.500
51
Second quality from Byblus 1 web 6.000
52
Second quality from Laodiceia 1 web 5.000
53
Second quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 4.500
54
For a woman’s dalmatica
54a
Third quality from Scythopolis 1 web 7.000
55
Third quality from Tarsus 1 web 6.000
56
Third quality from Byblus 1 web 5.000
57
Third quality from Laodiceia 1 web 4.000
58
Third quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 3.000
59
For a man’s dalmatica or for a short sleeved tunica, a colobia
59a
Third quality from Scythopolis 1 web 6.000
60
Third quality from Tarsus 1 web 5.000
61
Third quality from Byblus 1 web 4.000 62 Third quality from
Laodiceia 1 web 3.000
63
Third quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 2.000
64
For linen clothing without coloured bands
65
The following prices for linens below the third quality, which are
produced at the majority of weaving sheds, no one is permitted to
exceed
66
For a woman’s dalmatica
66a
First quality 1 web 2.500
67
Second quality 1 web 2.250
68
Third quality 1 web 1.750
69
For coarser linen for common people or slaves
69a
First quality 1 web 1.000
70
Second quality 1 web 800
71
Third quality 1 web 600
72
For a man’s dalmatica or for a short sleeved tunica, a colobia
72a
First quality 1 web 2.500
73
Second quality 1 web 2.000
74
Third quality 1 web 1.500
75
For coarser linen for common people or slaves
75a
First quality 1 web 800
76
Second quality 1 web 600
77
Third quality 1 web 500
78
For wraps
78a
First quality from Scythopolis 1 web 7.500
79
First quality from Tarsus 1 web 7.000
80
First quality from Byblus 1 web 6.000
81
First quality from Laodiceia 1 web 5.500
82
First quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 4.500
83
Second quality from Scythopolis 1 web 6.500
84
Second quality from Tarsus 1 web 5.500
85
Second quality from Byblus 1 web 5.000
86
Second quality from Laodiceia 1 web 4.000
87
Second quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 3.000
88
Third quality from Scythopolis 1 web 5.000
89
Third quality from Tarsus 1 web 4.000
90
Third quality from Byblus 1 web 3.500
91
Third quality from Laodiceia 1 web 3.000
92
Third quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 2.500
93
Wraps inferior to the third quality mentioned above
93a
First quality 1 web 2.250
94
Second quality 1 web 1.750
95
Third quality 1 web 1.250
96
For coarser linen for common people or slaves
96a
First quality 1 web 800
97
Second quality 1 web 600
98
Third quality 1 web 500
99
For a face cloth (sweat cloth), without coloured bands
99a
First quality from Scythopolis 1 web 3.250
100
First quality from Tarsus 1 web 3.000
101
First quality from Byblus 1 web 2.500
102
First quality from Laodiceia 1 web 2.250
103
First quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 1.750
104
Second quality from Scythopolis 1 web 2.500
105
Second quality from Tarsus 1 web 2.250
106
Second quality from Byblus 1 web 2.250
107
Second quality from Laodiceia 1 web 2.000
108
Second quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 1.500
109
Third quality from Scythopolis 1 web 2.250
110
Third quality from Tarsus 1 web 2.000
111
Third quality from Byblus 1 web 1.750
112
Third quality from Laodiceia 1 web 1.500
113
Third quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 1.250
114
For face cloths (sweat cloths), inferior to the third quality
mentioned above
114a
First quality 1 web 1.000
115
Second quality 1 web 750
116
Third quality 1 web 500
117
For coarser linen for common people or slaves
117a
First quality 1 web 350
118
Second quality 1 web 225
119
Third quality 1 web 200
120
Hooded cloaks (caracallae), short to medium
120a
First quality from Scythopolis 1 web 3.500
121
First quality from Tarsus 1 web 3.000
122
First quality from Byblus 1 web 2.500
123
First quality from Laodiceia 1 web 2.250
124
First quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 1.750
125
Second quality from Scythopolis 1 web 3.000
126
Second quality from Tarsus 1 web 2.500
127
Second quality from Byblus 1 web 2.250
128
Second quality from Laodiceia 1 web 2.000
129
Second quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 1.500
130
Third quality from Scythopolis 1 web 2.500
131
Third quality from Tarsus 1 web 2.250
132
Third quality from Byblus 1 web 2.000
133
Third quality from Laodiceia 1 web 1.750
134
Third quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 1.250
135
For short to medium hooded cloaks, inferior to the third quality
mentioned above
135a
First quality 1 web 1.000
136
Second quality 1 web 750
137
Third quality 1 web 600
138
For short to medium hooded cloaks for the use of women of the lower
classes
138a
First quality ... ...
139
Second quality ... ...
140
Third quality ... ...
141ff
... ... ...
XXVII. .... (For further linens)
1
... 1 web 1.250
2
For loin cloths which are inferior to the quality mentioned above
2a
First quality 1 web 1.000
3
Second quality 1 web 800
4
Third quality 1 web 600
5
For loin cloths for the use of common people or slaves
5a
First quality 1 web 400
6
Second quality 1 web 300
7
Third quality 1 web 200
8
For pocket handkerchiefs, first quality from Scythopolis 1 web 1.300
9
First quality from Tarsus 1 web 1.000
10
First quality from Byblus 1 web 800
11
Second quality 1 web 400
12
Third quality 1 web 300
13
Of coarse linen for the use of common people or slave women
13a
First quality 1 web 250
14
Second quality 1 web 200
15
Third quality 1 web 150
16
For bed linens
16a
First quality from Scythopolis 1 web ...
17
First quality from Tarsus 1 web ..
18
First quality from Byblus 1 web ..
19
First quality from Laodiceia 1 web 8.000
20
First quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 7.500
21
Second quality from Scythopolis 1 web ...
21
Second quality from Tarsus 1 web ...
23
Second quality from Byblus 1 web ...
24
Second quality from Laodiceia 1 web ...50
25
Second quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web ...750
26
Third quality from Scythopolis 1 web ...500
27
Third quality from Tarsus 1 web ...700
28
Third quality from Byblus 1 web ...
29
Third quality from Laodiceia 1 web 5.250
30
Third quality from Tarsus, Alexandrian 1 web 4.500
31
For bed linens inferior to the third quality mentioned above
31a
First quality 1 web 3.000
32
Second quality 1 web 2.500
33
Third quality 1 web 1.750
34
Of coarse linen for the use of common people or slaves
34a
First quality 1 web 1.400
35
Second quality 1 web 1.000
36
Third quality 1 web 800
37
Bands
37a
First quality, of linen from Scythopolis, Tarsus, Byblus, Laodiceia
or any other purest linen ... 1.500
38
Second quality 1 1.250
39
Third quality 1 1.000 ?
40
Those which are inferior to the third quality mentioned abovep
40a
First quality 1 750
41
Second quality 1 500
42
Third quality 1 400
43
Of coarse linen for the use of common people and slaves
43a
First quality 1 300
44
Second quality 1 200
45
Third quality 1 150
46
Bed ticking and pillow ticking from Tralles or Antinoe 2.750
47
From Damascus or Cyprus or other places First quality 1.750
48
Second quality 1.250
49
Third quality 800
50
Those which are inferior to the third quality mentioned above
50a
Bed ticking and pillow ticking First quality 600
51
Second quality 500
52
Third quality 400
53
Of coarse linen for the use of common people or slaves
53a
First quality 350
54
Second quality 300
55
Third quality 250
56
Bed cushion for the use of common people 100
57
Linen towels, Gallic First quality 1 web 2.500
58
Second quality 1 web 2.000
59
Third quality 1 web 820
60
Linen towels, ... and ...
60a
First quality 1 square 1.800
61
Second quality 1 square 1.200
62
Third quality 1 square ...
63
Towels..
64
(fragments)
65
(fragments)
66
(fragments)
67
...
68
(fragments)
69
...
70
(fragments)
71
(fragments)
72
(fragments)
73
(fragments)
74
....
75
....
76
(fragments)
77
(fragments) ....
XXVIII. Linens ???
XXIX. ... (AK: purple fabrics)
1
(follows)
2
(follows)
3
(follows)
4
(follows)
5
(follows)
6
(follows)
7
(follows)
8
(follows)
9
(follows)
10
(follows)
11
(follows)
12
(follows)
13
(follows)
14
(follows)
15
(follows)
16
(follows)
17
(follows)
18
(follows)
19
(follows)
20
(follows)
21
(follows)
22
(follows)
23
(follows)
24
(follows)
25
(follows)
26
(follows)
27
(follows)
28
(follows)
29
(follows)
30
Dalmatica, with purple bands, with 1 lb of archil purple 1 web 4.500
31
Dalmatica, with purple bands, with 6 unciae of archil purple 1 web
4.000
32
Dalmatica, with vertical purple bands, with 6 unciae of purple 1 web
32.000
33
With six unciae of light purple 1 web 22.000
34
With six unciae of bright Tyrian purple 1 web 13.000
35
With six unciae of simple or once-dyed purple 1 web 10.000
36
With one lb of archil purple 1 web 2.500?
37
With six unciae of archil purple 1 web 3.500
38
Face cloths, with purple bands, with six unciae of purple 1 web
30.000
39
With six unciae of light purple 1 web 22.000
40
With six unciae of bright Tyrian purple 1 web 12.000
41
With six unciae of simple or once-dyed purple 1 web 8.500
42
With one lb of archil purple 1 web 3.500
43
With six unciae of archil purple 1 web 2.500
44
Hoods (mafortia), women’s, with vertical purple bands, with 1
lb of purple 1 web 55.000
45
With 1 lb of light purple 1 web 36.000
46
With 1 lb of bright Tyrian purple 1 web 20.000
47
With 1 lb of simple or once-dyed purple 1 web 15.000
48
With one lb of archil purple 1 web 3.500
49
In all the aforesaid types of merchandise all the standards are to
be observed for women’s as well as for children’s and
for all other types. Any type of merchandise for which a standard
has not been specifically set is to be sold after a reckoning of the
quality of the purple and of the linen, and of the weight, and of
the workmanship, and of the standard (that) has been made between
the seller and the buyer.
XXX. For gold and silver
(AK:
see Crawford and Reynolds 1979)
1a
Gold, refined, in bars or in coins 1 lb 72.000
2
Spun gold (Graser: gold drawn out, gold wire) 1 lb 72.000
3
Goldsmith working in gold 1 lb 5.000
4
Gold cutters making gold foil 1 lb 3.000 58
5
For drawers of gold in the leaf 1 lb (Erim and Crawford 1979, p.
197: should probably be 1 uncia) 250
6
Maker of gold thread, gold spinner 1 lb 2.500
7
Goldsmith for simple work 1 uncia 50
8
Goldsmith for precise work 1 uncia 80
9
Refined silver of the first quality 1 lb 6.000
10
Silversmith for work of the first quality 1 lb 300
11
Silversmith for work of the second quality 1 lb 150
12
Silversmith for work of the third quality 1 lb 75
XXXI. On the price of slaves
(AK:
See Salway 2010)
1a
Slave, rural or urban, of the masculine sex, from sixteen years to
forty years 30.000
2
Woman of the above written age 25.000
3
Similarly, male from forty to sixty years 25.000
4
Woman of the above written age 20.000
5
Boy from eight years up to sixteen years and girl of the above
written age 20.000
6
Man above sixty years and boy below eight years 15.000
7
Woman of the above written age 10.000
8
For a slave trained in a skill, according to gender and age, and the
quality of the skill, it shall be proper to agree the price between
the buyer and the seller as long as double the price for a single
one should not in the least be exceeded
XXXII. For the price of beasts
(AK:
see Crawford and Reynolds 1979)
1a
Race horse 100.000
2
Best war horse, first category 36.000
3
Best she-mule, first category 36.000
4
Best hinny 36.000
5
Dark horse (?) 10.000
6
Bactrian camel 25.000
7
Camel with two humps 60.000
8
Camel, female, with two humps 30.000
9
Best Arabian camel 12.000
10
Best dromedary 20.000
11
Donkey for riding 15.000
12
Pack donkey 7.000
13
Female donkey for breeding 5.000+
14
Best oxen 1 pair 10.000
15
Best bull for breeding, first quality 5.000
16
Cow, best quality 2.000
17
Neutered ram, best quality 500
18
Sheep, best quality 400
19
Billy goat, best quality 500
20
Female goat, best quality 400
XXXIII. For marble and other kinds of
stone
1a
Porphyry from Egypt 1 cubic foot 250
2
Marble from Laconia 1 cubic foot 250
3
... 1 cubic foot 200
4
Dark or black marble from Chios or Melos 1 cubic foot 150
5
Red granite from Syene 1 cubic foot 100
6
Grey granite from Claudianus mons in Egypt 1 cubic foot 100
7
White marble (Alabastrene) 1 cubic foot 75
8
White marble with red veins from Phrygia 1 cubic foot 200
9
Euthydemian (?)marble 1 cubic foot 60
10
Anacasene (?) marble 1 cubic foot 40
11
Tripontic (?) marble 1 cubic foot 75
12
Green marble from Thessaly 1 cubic foot 150
13
Carystian (?) marble 1 cubic foot 100
14
Multicolour marble from Skyros 1 cubic foot 40
15
Heracleote (?) 1 cubic foot 75
16
Lesbian marble 1 cubic foot 40
17
Marble from Thasos 1 cubic foot 50
18
Stone from the river Gallos in Phrygia 1 cubic foot 40
19
Potamogallene (?) marble 1 cubic foot 40
XXXIV. For wild animals from Africa
(AK:
additional information and numbers taken from Crawford and Reynolds
(1979)
1a
Lion, first class 150.000
2
Lion, second class 125.000
3
Lioness, first class 125.000
4
Lioness, second class 100.000
5
Leopard, first class 100.000
6
Leopard, second class 75.000
7
Ostrich 5.000
8
Herbivore animals
8a
Bear, first class 25.000
9
Bear, second class 20.000
10
Wild boar, first class 6.000
11
Wild boar, second class 4.000
12
Stag, first class 3.000
13
Stag, second class 2.000
14
Onager 5.000
XXXV. ... (AK: waxes and resins etc.)
See
Crawford and Reynolds (1979), follows their numbering.
1a
...
2
...
3
For waxes
3a
Wax...?
4
Wax...?
5
Wax...?
6
Red wax 1 lb 25
7
Solid pitch 1 lb 8
8
Liquid pitch 1 lb 12
9
Terebinth resin 1 lb 40
10
Colophonian or Phrygian resin 1 lb 6
11
Split alum 1 lb 20
12
Alum 1 lb 10
13
Sulphur 1 lb 6
14
Dry candles 1 lb 4
15
Two dyed tapers (?) 1 lb 2
16
Cedar resin 1 lb 24
17
For hemp and esparto
17a
Prepared hemp 1 lb 4
18
Hemp spun for ropes 1 lb 6
19
A bag or net must be sold according to its weight
20
Ropes (?) of hemp or flax 1 lb 8
21
Ropes (?) of esparto 1 lb 8
22
Palm fibre 1 lb ...
23
Ropes of grass 1 lb 2
24
Papyrus ropes 1 lb ...
25
Ropes of pith 1 lb 2
26
Bundle of esparto 1 lb ...
27
Baskets of palm fibre, made by any method
28
Hamper of the ... quality 1 lb 2
29
For one modus capacity 4
30
...
31
...
32
...
33
...
34
...
35
...
36
Lauffer XXXVI 44 etc. Soap 1 lb 24
37
Soap .......1 lb ...
38
46 Sodium carbonate (?) 1 lb 100
39
47 Sodium carbonate (?) 1 lb ...
XXXVI. ... (AK: For drugs, paints,
dyes, glues, all sold by pigmentarii)
...
1a Costmary 1 lb 250
48
2 Leaf of malabathrum 1 lb 60
49
3 Unwashed leaf of malabathrum 1 lb 60
50
4 Washed nard 1 lb ...
51
5 Cassia 1 lb 120
52
6 Xylocassia 1 lb 125
53
7 Bdellium 1 lb 100
54
8 Bdellium from Petra 1 lb 175
55
9 Parsley 1 lb 120
56
10 Finest frankincense 1 lb 100
57
11 Storax resin from Cilicea 1 lb 500
58
12 Storax resin from Antioch 1 lb 200
59
13 Incense 1 lb 150
60
14 Saffron from Arabia 1 lb 2.000
61
15 Saffron from Cilicea 1 lb 1.000
62
16 Saffron from Africa 1 lb 600
63
17 White mastic from Chios 1 lb 175
64
18 Black mastic 1 lb 24
65
19 Absinth from Pontus 1 lb ...
66
20 Melilot 1 lb ...
67
21 Split alum (AK: cf. XXXV.1, 11 1 lb ...
68
22 Round alum 1 lb 30
69
23 Alum from Melia 1 lb ...
70
24 ... 1 lb ...
71
25 Arsenic 1 lb ...
72
26 ... 1 lb 20
73
27 ... ... ...
74
28 ... ... ...
75
29 ... ... ...
76
30 ... ... ...
77
31 ... ... ...
78
32 ... ... ...
79
33 ... ... ...
80
34 ... ... ...
81
35 ... ... ...
82
36 ... ... 500
83
37 Amomum 1 lb 125
84
38 Opobalsamum 1 lb 600
85
39 ... 1 lb 250
86
40 ... 1 lb 200
87
41 ... 1 lb 600
88
42 ... 1 lb 1.000
89
43 Rose oil, first quality 1 lb 80
90
44 Rose oil, second quality 1 lb 50
91
45 Storax oil 1 lb 30
92
46 Iris oil 1 lb 30
93
47 Henna oil from Canope 1 lb 50
94
48 Smoky oil (fumaria officinalis) 1 lb 30
95
49 Parthian oil 1 lb 30
96
50 Lily oil 1 lb 100
97
51 Rose honey 1 lb 75
98
52 Nard oil 1 lb 75
99
53 Marjoram oil 1 lb 100
100
54 Fresh oil 1 lb 25
101
55 Prepared ginger 1 lb 400
102
56 Dried ginger 1 lb 250
103
57 Euphorbia resin 1 lb 600
104
58 Troglitic myrrh 1 lb 400
105
59 Myrrh, for drops 1 lb ...
106
60 Myrrh, first quality 1 lb ...
107
61 Lead white 1 lb ...
108
62 Ripensis (?) red (AK: rouge) 1 lb ...
109
63 Litmus, ‘Orseille colouring’ 1 lb ...
109a
... ... ...
110
... ... ...
111
... ... ...
112
Curcuma (?) ... ...
113
66 Silphium 1 lb 16
114
67 Pepper 1 lb 800
115
68 Wood from the terebinth tree 1 lb 40
116
69 Wood from the buxus tree (Lauffer) or Judean balsam tree
(Crawford and Reynolds 1979) 1 lb 20
117
70 Asphalt 1 lb (?) 25
118
71 Naphta, crude oil (Lauffer) or mastic oil (Crawford and Reynolds
1979) 1 lb 50
119
72 Calamus (Lauffer) or cardamom (Crawford and Reynolds 1979) 1 lb
40
120
73 Indigo (?) 1 lb 750
120a
... ... ...
74
Dardanian cinnabar, that is minium 1 lb 500
75
Second quality cinnabar, that is minium 1 lb 300
76
Pontic castor oil 1 lb 600
77
Dalmatian castor oil 1 lb 400
78
Sandyx 1 lb 40
79
Mastic wood 1 lb 50
80
Ladanum, first quality 1 lb 100
81
Ladanum, second quality 1 lb 50
82
Iris 1 lb 25
83
Cyaneus, that is Vestorian (blue dye, AK) 1 lb 150
84
Cyaneus, second quality, that is Vestorian 1 lb 80
85
Cuprous oxide? (Aeraminis exusti)1 lb 150
86
Unalloyed copper? chalcoerytre v. os) 1 lb 150
87
Squama aeris, second quality 1 lb 50
88
Elecampane 1 lb 25
89
...
90
...
91
...
92
...
121
93 ... second quality ... ...
122
94 Penicillum (AK: funghi used in foods) 1 lb 6
123
95 Schoenianthus (AK: Iuncus odoratus) 1 lb 50
124
96 Aristolochia 1 lb 50
125
97 Halacanthi (Lauffer: unexplained) 1 lb 50
126
98 Rhubarb from Pontum 1 lb 50
127
99 Mastic gum from Chios 1 lb 150
128
100 Mastic gum, second quality 1 lb 80
129
101 Pine resin 1 lb 20
130
102 Pine resin from Colophonia 1 lb 16
131
103 Opium from Thebe 1 lb 1.000
132
104 Opium from Cyrene 1 lb 1.250
133
105 Coral (?) first quality 1 lb 2.000
134
106 Coral (?) second quality 1 lb 1.000
135
107 Ochre 1 lb 100
136
108 Rose-like drug ? (rodoides) 1 lb 150
137
109 Scammonia (AK: a purgative) 1 lb 500
138
110 Chalk for cleaning silver etc. 1 lb 10
-
111 Cimolean earth 1 lb 4
139
112 Glue made from fish bones 1 lb 80
140
113 Bovine bone glue 1 lb 20
141
114 Pot of ?, or: medicinal terracotta powder (?) (Gastraciae vasum)
1 lb 10
XXXVII ... (Sea freight)
1
The following sea rates must not be exceeded for transport between
the following regions in different provinces.
1a
Alexandria - Rome (Seidel: Ostia) 1k. mo. 16
2
Alexandria - Nicomedia 1k. mo. 12
3
Alexandria - Byzantium 1k. mo. 12
4
Alexandria - Dalmatia (Seidel: Salona) 1k. mo. 18
5
Alexandria - Aquileia 1k. mo. 24
6
Alexandria - Africa (Seidel: Carthago) 1k. mo. 10
7
Alexandria - Sicily (Seidel: Messana) 1k. mo. 10
8
Alexandria - Ephesus 1k. mo. 8
9
Alexandria - Thessalonica 1k. mo. 12
10
Alexandria - Pamphylia 1k. mo. 6
11
Syria (Seidel: Seleukeia Pieria) - Rome 1k. mo. 18
12
Syria (Seidel: Seleukeia Pieria) - Salona 1k. mo. 16
13
Syria (Seidel: Seleukeia Pieria) - Aquileia 1k. mo. 22
14
Syria (Seidel: Seleukeia Pieria) - Africa (Seidel: Carthago) 1k.
mo. 16
15
Syria (Seidel: Seleukeia Pieria) - Hispania (Seidel: Tarraco or
Carthago Nova) 1k. mo. 20
16
Syria (Seidel: Seleukeia Pieria) - Southern Hispania (Seidel: Gades)
1k. mo.22
17
Syria (Seidel: Seleukeia Pieria) - Lusitania (Seidel: Olisipo) 1k.
mo. 26
18
Syria (Seidel: Seleukeia Pieria) - Gallia (Seidel: Narbo) 1k. mo. 24
19
Syria (Seidel: Seleukeia Pieria) - Byzantium 1k. mo. 12
20
Syria (Seidel: Seleukeia Pieria) - Ephesus 1k. mo.10
21
Syria (Seidel: Seleukeia Pieria) - Sicily (Seidel: Messana) 1k. mo.
16
22
Ephesus – Rome 1k. mo. 16
23
Ephesus - Africa (Seidel: Carthago) 1k. mo. 8
24
Ephesus - Dalmatia (Seidel: Salona) 1k. mo. 12
25
Africa (Seidel: Carthago) - Rome 1k. mo. ...
26
Africa (Seidel: Carthago) - Salona 1k. mo.18
27
Africa (Seidel: Carthago) - Sicily (Seidel: Messana) 1k. mo. 6
28
Africa (Seidel: Carthago) - Hispania (Seidel: Tarraco or Carthago
Nova 1k. mo. 8
29
Africa (Seidel: Carthago) - Gallia (Seidel: Narbo) 1k. mo. 4
30
Africa (Seidel: Carthago) - Achaea (Seidel: Corinthus) 1k. mo.12
31
Africa (Seidel: Carthago) – Pamphylia 1k. mo. 14
32
Rome - Sicily (Seidel: Messana) 1k. mo. 6
33
Rome – Thessalonica 1k. mo. 18
34
Rome - Achaea (Seidel: Corinthus) 1k. mo. 14
35
Rome - Hispania (Seidel: Tarraco or Carthago Nova) 1k. mo. 10
36
Rome - Gallia (Seidel: Narbo) 1k. mo. 4
37
Sicily (Seidel: Messana) - Gallia (Seidel: Narbo) 1k. mo. 8
38
Nicomedia - Rome 1k. mo. 18
39
Nicomedia - Ephesus 1k. mo. 6
40
Nicomedia - Thessalonica 1k. mo. 8
41
Nicomedia - Achaea (Seidel: Corinthus) 1k. mo. 8
42
Nicomedia – Salona 1k. mo. 14
43
Nicomedia – Pamphylia 1k. mo. 8
44
Nicomedia - Syria (Seidel: Berytus) 1k. mo. 12
45
Nicomedia - Africa (Seidel: Carthago) 1k. mo. 14
46
Byzantium – Rome 1k. mo
47
Byzantium – Trapezunt 1k. mo. 18
48
Byzantium – Sinope 1k. mo. 8
49
Byzantium – Amastris and Sinope Tomis 1k. mo. 8
50
(follows)
51
(follows)
52
... 4
53
...
54
... - Rome 1k. mo...
55
For freight in official transport a special rate must be obtained
56
... 1k. mo. 2
57
...
58
... 1k. mo. 6
59
Nicomedia - ... 1k. mo. 8
60
Nicomedia - ... 1k. mo. 8
61
Nicomedia - ... 1k. mo. 14
62
Nicomedia - ... 1k. mo. 16
63
Nicomedia - 1k. mo. 8
64
Nicomedia - ... 1k. mo. 12
65
Byzantium - 1k. mo. 18
66
...
67
...
68
Amastri and Sinope - ..... 1k. mo. 8
69
(follows)
70
(follows)
71
(follows)
72
(follows)
73
(follows)
74
(follows)
75
(follows)
See
(66)
New English translation of the Price Edict of Diocletianus
An
English translation of the Edict on Maximum Prices, also known as
the Price Edict of Diocletian.
(Edictum
de pretiis rerum venalium).
Issued
between November 20 and December 10 of the year 301 AD, the price
edict gives maximum prices for more than 1.200 products, raw
materials, labour and services, transport, animals and even slaves.
Prices ranged from 1 denarius communis for fresh green animal fodder
to 150.000 denarii for a male lion or for purple dyed silk. The
price edict and the monetary edict issued some months before were an
attempt to check inflation.
The
edict came to us through (fragments of) inscriptions on stone slabs
(fig. 1) found at a number of sites, all but one in the eastern part
of the Empire where Diocletianus resided.
The
edict presents some questions. The edict was part of the legislation
of the first tetrarchy (293-305 AD): co-Augusti Diocletian and
Maximianus and their Caesares Galerius and Constantius ruled the
Roman Empire. The tetrarchs state in the preface that the maximum
prices are effective in ‘our whole realm’. We would
expect the edict to apply also to the western part of the Empire
where Maximianus resided. Why was the edict not displayed in stone
in the west, as the absence of surviving fragments seem to suggest?
After all, chapter XXXVII (maximum sea freight rates) does include
western harbours.
Was
the price edict effective and if so, for how long? From the
(hostile) account of Lactantius (De Mortibus Persecutorum 7.6-7.7)
we might conclude that the edict all but destroyed trade, caused a
lot of bloodshed and had to be withdrawn.
But
can we trust Lactantius on the outcome of the edict?
What
do we know about the coins and their values at the time of the price
edict?
Although
all prices are quoted in denarii communes, the denarius had in fact
transformed from an actual coin in mass circulation into a unit of
account.
Actual
payments were made in other coins.
The
aureus at the time functioned as gold bullion and did not circulate.
The
argenteus (nominal value 100 dc) was scarce and hardly formed a part
of regular circulation. The argenteus barely left a trace in hoards
and is rather scarce as a site find in many areas.
Diocletian’s
currency scheme, designed to be trimetallic, was in reality a
monometallic system, based on the slightly argentiferous nummus (25
dc) and on the new radiate fractal, and for a time on the old but
initially still circulating aurelianiani (both 4 dc).
In
the West, the old antoninianus filled the role of fractal adjunct to
the omnipresent nummus and we should consider the possibility that,
if the Currency Revaluation and Edict on Maximum Prices were
applicable in the West, this coin might have had a face value of 4
dc after 1 September 301, equal to that of the (in the west)
virtually absent aurelianiani and copper radiate fractals. The rare
small copper laureate never circulated.
The
nummus was in fact the pivot of the tetrarchic currency system and
it circulated in the entire Roman Empire. As neither aureus nor
argenteus were in fact available for payments, folles or sealed and
standardized bags of nummi were probably used for large payments.
See Kropff, A. 2017.
Diocletian’s
Currency System after 1 September 301 AD: an inquiry into values.
Revue
Belge de Numismatique et de Sigillographie 163, p. 167-187. Fig. 2.
Nummus Maximianus (28mm, 10.22 g). Heraclea mint, RIC VI 19b. ©
CNG, Inc.
This
webpage presents the first online translation in English of the full
text of the Price Edict. Translations of some selected parts of the
edict (for instance on the price of labour, of fish, of transport)
and selections or cross-sections of a range of prices were available
on the internet, but no translation of the entire 3 edict.
This
translation does not pretend to be a scientific contribution to any
discussion, as some of the published papers on my website
www.thirdcentury.nl do.
Latin
and Greek texts are not included and no provenances (CIL reference,
publication, and whereabouts of the fragments) are given. All this
can be found in the source material, summarized under ‘Literature’
below. Graser (1940) gives an English translation, but is based on
the then known sixty fragments.
Many
more fragments have been found since then and Graser is outdated
now.
Lauffer
(1971) has included 126 fragments but provided no translation in
English, only notes in German. Giacchero (1974) offers a more
complete edition, but translates in Italian. Some of the
publications on more recent finds include no translation at all, as
these were written with classicists in mind.
The
Latin text of the first ten chapters with numbered items (numbers
not always following Lauffer) can be found in the Bibliotheca
Augustana, at
www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost04/Diocletianus/dio_ep_i.html.
The
Latin text of some of the fragments, including an important one
found at Aphrodisias (CIL III, pp. 2208-2209) can be found at
http://droitromain.upmf-grenoble.fr/Constitutiones/maximum_CIL.html.
The items are in CIL format and consequently not numbered, so
locating a Latin text for any given item from chapter XI on will be
quite a challenge!
The
Aezani text (Crawford and Reynolds) in Latin can also be found at
http://www.mikoflohr.nl/data/texts/Aezani_Aezani/
An
extensive (but unnumbered and incomplete) Italian translation can be
found at http://www.circolonumismaticomonzese.org
where the link Editto dei prezzi di Diocleziano will open the xls
file of the translation.
We
hope the present translation will be useful for those interested in
Roman history and in ancient economy. Many items can be found in the
edict, from onions to linen garments, from Menapian ham to a travel
coach, from the wages of untrained farm workers to the tariffs of
solicitors and Latin grammar teachers.
Or
the price of a slave.
The
edict provides a fascinating read. Surprising are the relatively
high prices of garments compared to the relatively low prices of the
cheaply produced clothes of today. After all, every thread had to be
spun by hand, using a spindle.
The
translation follows the numbers used by Lauffer following Mommsen
(numbers added or inserted for new material) and is textually based
on Graser wherever possible. Her translation has been changed for
some entries. For instance: in chapter XII.1. (timber) her incorrect
‘inch’ (2,54 cm) was replaced with the original digitus
(‘finger’, 1,85 cm). Some comments, marked A(ntony)
K(ropff) were inserted by the present compiler. When an entrance
seems to require a clarification, one is proposed. For instance: the
garments strictoria, dalmatica and dalmaticomafortium are explained
at their first appearance. Also, for prices we followed Lauffer’s
reading rather than Graser’s wherever entries diverged. For
instance: where Graser gives a maximum price 3.500 d for linen
towels (XXVIII.57). This translation follows Lauffer and gives 2.500
d. Lauffer (1971) has been consulted for all entries. This filled in
many gaps in Graser’s text, for instance the metals (XV.63-67,
etc).
Also
included are some more recent publications (providing the prices of
glass, slaves, the correct prices of gold, additional items under
chapter XXXVI, etc.) See the list of literature for details.
A
translation of the edict can never be called complete, as new
fragments will probably be found in future. This translation
certainly is a work in progress. For some entries the indication
‘follows’ implies that a translation will be included in
next versions, which will also be published here.
If
you discover a mistake or would like an alternative comment or new
material to be included, please contact Antony Kropff at
info@thirdcentury.nl. Your
comments are welcome!
Literature
Crawford,
M.H. and J.M. Reynolds, 1977: The Aezani Copy of the Price Edict,
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Bd. 26, 125-151.
Crawford,
M.H. and J.M. Reynolds, 1979: The Aezani Copy of the Price Edict,
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Bd. 34, 163-210.
(Note AK: prices of gold, slaves, marble and other stone, domestic
and wild animals, etc.)
Erim,
K.T. and J.M. Reynolds, 1973: The Aphrodisias Copy of Diocletian’s
Edict on Maximum Prices, Journal of Roman Studies vol. 63, 99-110.
(Note AK: glass)
Giacchero,
M., 1974: Edictum Diocletiani et Collegarum de pretiis rerum
venalium in integrum fere restitutum a Latinis Graecisque
fragmentis, i-ii, Genoa.
Graser,
E.R., 1940: The edict of Diocletian on maximum prices, in: T. Frank
(ed), An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, V. Rome and Italy of the
Empire, Baltimore, 305-421.
Lauffer,
S., 1971: Diokletians Preisedikt, Berlin.
Naumann,
R. and F., 1973: Der Rundbau in Aezani mit dem Preisedikt des
Diocletian und das Gebäude mit dem Edict in Stratonikeia,
Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Abteilung Istanbul,
Istanbuler Mitteilungen Beiheft 10, Tubingen. (Note AK: text on
slaves and interpretation)
Salway,
B., 2010: Mancipium Rusticum sive Urbanum. The Slave Chapter of
Diocletian’s edict on Maximum Prices, in: U. Roth (ed), By the
sweat of your brow: Roman slavery in its socio-economic setting,
Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Supplement 109,
London, 1-20. (Note AK: text on slaves and interpretation)
Whitehouse,
D., 2004: Glass in the Price Edict of Diocletian, Glass Studies, Vol
46, 189-191.
325 (until c. May): V[alerius?]
Proculus et Anicius Paulinus
The
evidence of an Egyptian papyrus and one uncorrected dating in the
Theodosian Code combine to demonstrate that Proculus and Paulinus
were the original consular pairing in January 325. Proculus’
incomplete nomen, preserved in P.Oxy. VI 889, is convincingly
restored as Valerius and the consul prior has been identified with
Proculus, proconsul of Africa in 319–320.
If
so, then this ordinary consulship is likely to have been a second,
following an earlier suffect consulship. Alternatively, if the
Valerius was borne by Proculus as the dynastic nomen of the
Tetrarchs, then the consul may have been a former military commander
or imperial oficial of Constantine’s sometime ally and rival
Licinius and his designation as consul prior for 325 part of the
peace and abdication settlement of September 324 (cf. Diocletian’s
retention of Aristobulus, praetorian prefect of Carinus and cos.
285).
In
either case, Proculus’ removal and replacement as consul
suggests that he was caught up in the political manoeuvrings that
led to the execution of Licinius.
On
present evidence it is not possible to decide definitively between
these two possibilities. Anicius Paulinus the consul posterior is
generally presumed another member of the noble and patrician Anicii,
probably a brother of Iulianus (cos. 322), and identified with Sex.
Anicius Paulinus whose public career up to his prefecture of the
city in 331–333 is presented in abbreviated form on a
dedication from Rome (CIL VI 1680 + pp. 3173, 4732), which reads:
Sex(to) Anicio Paulino procons(uli) / Africae, bis co(n)s(uli),
praef(ecto) urb(i).
Regard
to parallels in the epigraphic Latin of Rome demonstrates that, as
in the inscription honouring Rufius Albinus (discussed above) and in
contrast to first-century usage, in texts of the second century and
later bis almost invariably modifies the noun or phrase following it
(i.e., here, consul), not that preceding it (proconsul Africae).
Given
that Paulinus did not enjoy a second ordinary consulship, this
inscription is explicit evidence that his ordinary consulship of 325
was a second term by classical reckoning, having been preceded by a
suffect consulship.
325 (from c. May): Anicius
Paulinus et Ionius Iulianus
The
peculiar nomen of Iulianus, the substitute consul posterior, as it
is transmitted in the papyrus documents has aroused suspicion but
little consensus as to its interpretation.
It
has generally been considered corrupt. The once fashionable
identification with M. Ceionius Iulianus signo Kamenius, a future
proconsul of Africa and praefectus urbi of 333,
has
been superseded by strong support for identifying the consul with
Iulius Iulianus, grandfather of the emperor Julian, an equestrian
oficial who rose to become praetorian prefect of Licinius.
Identification
with an otherwise unknown Iunius Iulianus has also been advocated.
If
we accept the testimony of the papyri, it is not impossible that
Iulianus belongs to an otherwise unknown senatorial gens Ionia but a
more elegant solution is to understand Ionius as a signum used in
the papyrological formulae in place of several nomina, as attested
for Populonius Proculus (= L. Aradius Valerius Proculus signo
Populonius) for his consulship in 340.
If
Ionius Iulianus was of senatorial background, it is not possible to
decide whether his ordinary consulship came as a second tenure, as
with his colleague Paulinus, or as a genuine first consulship at an
early stage in his career. If Iulianus was promoted from the ranks
of those designated as suffects, the latter is more likely.
See
(54)
‘Redefining the Roman imperial élite in the fourth
century AD’ in D. Okoń (ed.), Elites in the Ancient World
(Szczecińskie Studia nad Starożytnością, vol.
II, Szczecin: Minerwa, 2015), 189-220 | Benet Salway - Academia.edu
Septimius
Odaenathus
(Palmyrene:
['Dynt (Odainat)]; Arabic: أذينة
[Uḏaina];
circa 220–267), was the founder king (Mlk) of the Palmyrene
Kingdom who ruled from Palmyra, Syria. He lifted the status of his
city from that of a regional center subordinate to Rome to the
supreme power in the east. Odaenathus was born into an aristocratic
Palmyrene family that had received Roman citizenship in the 190s
under the Severan dynasty. He was the son of Hairan, the descendant
of Nasor. The circumstances surrounding his rise are ambiguous; he
became the lord (ras) of the city, a position created for him, as
early as the 240s and by 258, he was styled a consularis, indicating
a high status in the Roman Empire.
The
defeat and captivity of Emperor Valerian at the hands of the
Sassanian emperor Shapur I in 260 left the eastern Roman provinces
largely at the mercy of the Persians. Odaenathus remained on the
side of Rome; assuming the title of king, he led the Palmyrene army,
fell upon the Persians before they could cross the Euphrates to the
eastern bank, and inflicted upon them a considerable defeat. He took
the side of Emperor Gallienus, the son and successor of Valerian,
who was facing the attempted usurpation of Fulvius Macrianus. The
rebel declared his sons emperors, leaving one in Syria and taking
the other with him to Europe. Odaenathus attacked the remaining
usurper and quelled the rebellion. He was rewarded with many
exceptional titles by the Emperor, who formalized his
self-established position in the East. In reality, the Emperor may
have done little but accept the declared nominal loyalty of
Odaenathus.
In
a series of rapid and successful campaigns starting in 262,
Odaenathus crossed the Euphrates and recovered Carrhae and Nisibis.
He then took the offensive into the heartland of Persia, and arrived
at the walls of its capital, Ctesiphon. The city withstood the short
siege but Odaenathus reclaimed the entirety of the Roman lands
occupied by the Persians since the beginning of their invasions in
252. Odaenathus celebrated his victories and declared himself "King
of Kings", crowning his son Herodianus as co-king. By 263,
Odaenathus was in effective control of the Levant, Roman Mesopotamia
and Anatolia's eastern region.
Odaenathus
observed all due formalities towards the Emperor, but in practice
ruled as an independent monarch. In 266, he launched a second
invasion of Persia but had to abandon the campaign and head north to
Bithynia to repel the attacks of Germanic raiders besieging the city
of Heraclea Pontica. He was assassinated in 267 during or
immediately after the Anatolian campaign, together with Herodianus.
The identities of the perpetrator or the instigator are unknown and
many stories, accusations and speculations exist in ancient sources.
He was succeeded by his son Vaballathus under the regency of his
widow Zenobia, who used the power established by Odaenathus to forge
the Palmyrene Empire in 270.
Name, family and appearance
"Odaenathus"
is the Latin transliteration of the king's name; he was born
Septimius Odainat in c. 220. His name is written in
Palmyrene as Sptmyws 'Dynt. "Sptmyws" (Septimius), which
means "born in September", was Odaenathus' family
gentilicium (Roman surname), adopted as an expression of loyalty to
the Roman Severan dynasty and the emperor Septimius Severus who had
granted the family Roman citizenship in the late second century.
'Dynt (Odainat) is the Palmyrene diminutive for ear, related to
Uḏaina in Arabic and 'Ôden in Aramaic. Odaenathus'
genealogy is known from a stone block in Palmyra with a sepulchral
inscription that mentions the building of a tomb and records the
genealogy of the builder: Odaenathus, son of Hairan, son of Wahb
Allat, son of Nasor. In Rabbinic sources, Odaenathus is named "Papa
ben Nasor" (Papa son of Nasor); the meaning of the name "Papa"
and how Odaenathus earned it is unclear.
The
King appears to be of mixed Arab and Aramean descent: his name, the
name of his father, Hairan, and that of his grandfather, Wahb-Allat,
are Arabic; while Nasor, his great-grandfather, has an Aramaic
name. Nasor might not have been the great-grandfather of Odaenathus,
but a more distant ancestor; the archaeologist Frank Edward Brown
considered Nasor to be Odaenathus' great-great or great-great-great
grandfather. This has led some scholars, such as Lisbeth Soss Fried
and Javier Teixidor, to consider the origin of the family to be
Aramean. Byzantine historians of the sixth century, such as
Procopius, referred to him as "king of the Saracens",
meaning of the Arabs. The origin of Odaenathus' name does not
indicate that he identified as an Arab, or that his rule had an Arab
character. In practice, the citizenry of Palmyra were the result of
Arab and Aramaean tribes merging into a unity with a corresponding
consciousness; they thought and acted as Palmyrenes.
The
fifth-century historian Zosimus asserted that Odaenathus descended
from "illustrious forebears", but the position of the
family in Palmyra is debated; it was probably part of the wealthy
mercantile class. Alternatively, the family may have belonged to the
tribal leadership which amassed a fortune as landowners and patrons
of the Palmyrene caravans. The historians Franz Altheim and Ruth
Stiehl suggested that Odaenathus was part of a new elite of Bedouins
driven from their home east of the Euphrates by the aggressive
Sassanian dynasty after 220. However, it is certain that Odaenathus
came from a family which had belonged to the upper class of the city
for several generations; in Dura-Europos, a relief dated to 159/158
(470 SE [Seleucid year]) was commissioned by Hairan son of Maliko
son of Nasor. This Hairan might have been the head of the Palmyrene
trade colony in Dura-Europos and probably belonged to the same
family as Odaenathus. According to Brown, it is plausible, based on
the occurrence of the name Nasor in both Dura-Europos and Palmyra
(where it was a rare name), that Odaenathus and Hairan son of Maliko
belonged to the same family.
No
definite images of Odaenathus have been discovered, hence, there is
no information about his appearance; all sculptures identified as
Odaenathus lack any inscriptions to confirm whom they represent. Two
sculpted heads from Palmyra, one preserved in the Ny Carlsberg
Glyptotek museum and the other in the Archaeological Museum in
Istanbul, were identified by the archaeologist Harald Ingholt as
representing Odaenathus based on their monumentality and regal
style. The academic consensus does not support Ingholt's view, and
the heads he ascribed to the king can be dated to the end of the
second century. More likely, two marble heads, one depicting a man
wearing a royal tiara, the crown of Palmyra, and the other depicting
a man in a royal Hellenistic diadem, are depictions of the king. In
addition, a Palmyrene clay tessera, depicting a bearded man wearing
a diadem, could be a portrait of the king.
Odaenathus I
Traditional
scholarship, based on the sepulchral inscription from Odaenathus'
tomb, believed the builder to be an ancestor of the king and he was
given the designation "Odaenathus I". The name of King
Odaenathus' father is Hairan as attested in many inscriptions. In an
inscription dated to 251, the name of the ras (lord) of Palmyra,
Hairan, son of Odaenathus, is written, and he was thought to be the
son of Odaenathus I. Prior to the 1980s, the earliest known
inscription attesting King Odaenathus was dated to 257, leading
traditional scholarship to believe that Hairan, ras of Palmyra, was
the father of the king and that Odaenathus I was his grandfather.
However, an inscription published in 1985 by the archaeologist
Michael Gawlikowski and dated to 252 mentions King Odaenathus as a
ras and records the same genealogy found in the sepulchral
inscription, confirming the name of King Odaenathus' grandfather as
Wahb Allat; thus, he cannot be a son of Hairan son of Odaenathus
(I). Therefore, it is certain that King Odaenathus was the builder
of the tomb, ruling out the existence of "Odaenathus I".
The ras Hairan mentioned in the 251 inscription is identical with
Odaenathus' elder son and co-ruler, Prince Hairan I.
Rise
Palmyra
was an autonomous city within the Roman Empire, subordinate to Rome
and part of the province of Syria Phoenice. Odaenathus descended
from an aristocratic family, albeit not a royal one as the city was
ruled by a council and had no tradition of hereditary monarchy. For
most of its existence, the Palmyrene army was decentralized under
the command of several generals, but the rise of the Sasanian Empire
in 224, and its incursions, which affected Palmyrene trade, combined
with the weakness of the Roman Empire, probably prompted the
Palmyrene council to elect a lord for the city in order for him to
lead a strengthened army.
Ras of Palmyra
The
Roman emperor, Gordian III, died in 244 during a campaign against
Persia and this might have been the event which led to the election
of a lord for Palmyra to defend it: Odaenathus, whose elevation,
according to the historian Udo Hartmann, can be explained by
Odaenathus probably being a successful
military
or caravan commander, and his descent from one of the most
influential families in the city. Odaenathus' title as lord was ras
in Palmyrene and exarchos in Greek as revealed by bilingual
inscriptions from Palmyra. The ras title enabled the bearer to
effectively deal with the Sassanid threat, in that it probably
vested in him supreme civil and military authority; an undated
inscription refers to Odaenathus as a ras and records the gift of a
throne to him by a Palmyrene citizen named "Ogeilu son of
Maqqai Haddudan Hadda", which confirms the supreme character of
Odaenathus' title. The office was created for Odaenathus, and was
not a usual title in the Roman Empire, and not a part of Palmyrene
government traditions.
Hairan
I was apparently elevated to co-lordship by his father, as an
inscription from 251 testifies. As early as the 240s, Odaenathus
bolstered the Palmyrene army, recruiting desert nomads and
increasing the number of the Palmyrene heavy cavalry (clibanarii).
In 252, the Persian emperor, Shapur I, started a full-scale invasion
of the Roman provinces in the east. During the second campaign of
the invasion, Shapur I conquered Antioch on the Orontes, the
traditional capital of Syria, and headed south, where his advance
was checked in 253 by a noble from Emesa, Uranius Antoninus. The
events of 253 were mentioned in the works of the sixth-century
historian John Malalas who also mentioned a leader by the name
"Enathus" inflicting a defeat upon the retreating Shapur I
near the Euphrates.
Reign
Faced
with Shapur I's third campaign, the Roman emperor Valerian marched
against the Persian monarch but was defeated near Edessa in late
spring 260 and taken prisoner. The Persian emperor then ravaged
Cappadocia and Cilicia, and claimed to have captured Antioch on the
Orontes. Taking advantage of the situation, Fulvius Macrianus, the
commander of the imperial treasury, declared his sons Quietus and
Macrianus Minor as joint emperors in August 260, in opposition to
Valerian's son Gallienus. Fulvius Macrianus took Antioch on the
Orontes as his center and organized the resistance against Shapur I;
he dispatched Balista, his praetorian prefect, to Anatolia. Shapur I
was defeated in the region of Sebaste at Pompeiopolis, prompting the
Persians to evacuate Cilicia while Balista returned to Antioch on
the Orontes. Balista's victory was only partial: Shapur I withdrew
east of Cilicia, which Persian units continued to occupy. A Persian
force took advantage of Balista's return to Syria and headed further
west into Anatolia. According to the Augustan History, Odaenathus
was declared king of Palmyra as soon as the news of the Roman defeat
at Edessa reached the city. It is not known if Odaenathus contacted
Fulvius Macrianus and there is no evidence that he took orders from
him.
Persian war of
260 and pacifying Syria
Odaenathus
assembled the Palmyrene army and Syrian peasants, then marched north
to meet the Persian emperor, who was returning to Persia. The
Palmyrene monarch fell upon the retreating Persian army between
Samosata and Zeugma, west of the Euphrates, in late summer 260. He
defeated the Persians, expelling Shapur I from the province of
Syria. In early 261, Fulvius Macrianus headed to Europe accompanied
by Macrianus Minor, leaving Quietus and Balista in Emesa.
Odaenathus' whereabouts during this episode are not clear; he could
have distributed the army in garrisons along the frontier or might
have brought it back to his capital. The Palmyrene monarch seems to
have waited until the situation clarified, declaring loyalty to
neither Fulvius Macrianus nor Gallienus. In the spring of 261,
Fulvius Macrianus arrived in the Balkans but was defeated and killed
along with Macrianus Minor; Odaenathus, when it became clear that
Gallienus would eventually win, sided with the Emperor and marched
on Emesa, where Quietus and Balista were staying. The Emesans killed
Quietus as Odaenathus approached the city, while Balista was
captured and executed by the King in autumn 261.
Ruler of the East
The
elimination of the usurpers left Odaenathus as the most powerful
leader in the Roman East. He was granted many titles by the Emperor
but those honors are debated among scholars:
Dux
Romanorum (commander of the Romans) was probably given to Odaenathus
to recognize his position as the commander in chief of the forces in
the east against the Persians; it was inherited by Odaenathus' son
and successor Vaballathus.
Corrector
totius orientis (righter of the entire East): it is generally
accepted by modern scholars that he bore this title. A corrector had
overall command of Roman armies and authority over provincial
governors in his designated region. There are no known attestations
of the title during Odaenathus' lifetime. Evidence for the King
bearing the title consists of two inscriptions in Palmyrene: one
posthumous dedication describing him as MTQNNʿ of the East
(derived from the Aramaic root TQN, meaning to set in order); and
the other describing his heir Vaballathus with the same title,
albeit using the word PNRTTʿ instead of MTQNNʿ.
However,
the sort of authority accorded by this position is widely debated.
The problem arises from the word MTQNNʿ; its exact meaning is
unclear. The word is translated into Latin as corrector, but
"restitutor" is another possible translation; the latter
title was an honorary one meant to praise the bearer for driving
enemies out of Roman territories. However, the inscription of
Vaballathus is clearer, as the word PNRTTʿ is not a Palmyrene
word but a direct Palmyrene translation of the Greek term
Epanorthotes, which is usually an equivalent to a corrector.
According
to the historian David Potter, Vaballathus inherited his father's
exact titles. Hartmann points out that there have been cases where a
Greek word was translated directly to Palmyrene and a Palmyrene
equivalent was also used to mean the same thing. The dedication to
Odaenathus would be the use of a Palmyrene equivalent, while the
inscription of Vaballathus would be the direct translation. It
cannot be certain that Odaenathus was a corrector.
Imperator
totius orientis (commander-in-chief of the entire East): only the
Augustan History claims that Odaenathus was given this title; the
same source also claims that he was made an Augustus, or co-emperor,
following his defeat of the Persians. Both claims are dismissed by
scholars. Odaenathus seems to have been acclaimed as imperator by
his troops, which was a salutation usually reserved for the Roman
emperor; this acclamation might explain the erroneous reports of the
Augustan History.
Regardless
of his titles, Odaenathus controlled the Roman East with the
approval of Gallienus, who could do little but formalize Odaenathus'
self-achieved status and settle for his formal loyalty. Odaenathus'
authority extended from the Pontic coast in the north to Palestine
in the south. This area included the Roman provinces of Syria,
Phoenice, Palaestina, Arabia, Anatolia's eastern regions and,
following the campaign of 262, Osroene and Mesopotamia.
First Persian campaign 262
Perhaps
driven by a desire to take revenge for the destruction of Palmyrene
trade centers and to discourage Shapur I from initiating future
attacks, Odaenathus launched an offensive against the Persians. The
suppression of Fulvius Macrianus' rebellion probably prompted
Gallienus to entrust the Palmyrene monarch with the war in Persia
and Roman soldiers were in the ranks of Odaenathus' army for this
campaign. In the spring of 262, the King marched north into the
occupied Roman province of Mesopotamia, driving out the Persian
garrisons and recapturing Edessa and Carrhae. The first onslaught
was aimed at Nisibis, which Odaenathus regained but sacked, since
the inhabitants had been sympathetic towards the Persian occupation.
A little later he destroyed the Jewish city of Nehardea, 45
kilometres west of the Persian capital Ctesiphon, as he considered
the Jews of Mesopotamia to be loyal to Shapur I. By late 262 or
early 263, Odaenathus stood outside the walls of the Persian
capital.
The
exact route taken by Odaenathus from Palmyra to Ctesiphon remains
uncertain; it was probably similar to the route Emperor Julian took
in 363 during his campaign against Persia. If he did use this route,
Odaenathus would have crossed the Euphrates at Zeugma then moved
east to Edessa followed by Carrhae then Nisibis. Here, he would have
descended south along the Khabur River to the Euphrates valley and
then marched along the river's left bank to Nehardea. He then
penetrated the Sassanian province of Asōristān and marched
along the royal canal Naarmalcha towards the Tigris, where the
Persian capital stood.
Once
at Ctesiphon, Odaenathus immediately began a siege of the
well-fortified winter residence of the Persian kings; severe damage
was inflicted upon the surrounding areas during several battles with
Persian troops. The city held out and the logistical problems of
fighting in enemy territory probably prompted the Palmyrenes to lift
the siege. Odaenathus headed north along the Euphrates carrying with
him numerous prisoners and much booty. The invasion resulted in the
full restoration of the Roman lands which had been occupied by
Shapur I since the beginning of his invasions in 252: Osroene and
Mesopotamia. However, Dura-Europos and other Palmyrene posts south
of Circesium, such as Anah, were not rebuilt. Odaenathus sent the
captives to Rome, and by the end of 263 Gallienus added Persicus
maximus ("the great victor in Persia") to Odaenathus'
titles and held a triumph in Rome.
King of Kings of the East
In
263, after his return, Odaenathus assumed the title of King of Kings
of the East (Mlk Mlk dy Mdnh), and crowned his son Herodianus
(Hairan I) as co-King of Kings. A statue was erected and dedicated
for Herodianus to celebrate his coronation by Septimius Worod, the
duumviri (magistrate) of Palmyra, and Julius Aurelius, the Queen's
procurator (treasurer). The dedication, in Greek, is undated, but
Septimius Worod was a duumviri between 263 and 264. Hence, the
coronation took place circa 263. Contemporary evidence for
Odaenathus bearing the title of King of Kings is lacking; all firmly
dated inscriptions attesting Odaenathus with the title were
commissioned after his death, including one that is dated to 271.
However, Herodianus died with his father, and since he is directly
attested as "King of Kings" during his father's lifetime,
it is unimaginable that Odaenathus was simply a king while his son
was the King of Kings. An undated inscription, written in Greek and
difficult to decipher, found on a stone reused in the Palmyrene Camp
of Diocletian, addresses Odaenathus as King of Kings (Rex regum) and
was probably set during his reign.
According
to the dedication, Herodianus was crowned near the Orontes, which
indicates a ceremony taking place in Antioch on the Orontes, the
metropolis of Syria. The title was a symbol of legitimacy in the
East, dating back to the Assyrians, then the Achaemenids, who used
it to symbolize their supremacy over all other rulers; it was later
adopted by the Parthian monarchs to legitimize their conquests. The
first Sassanian monarch, Ardashir I, adopted the title following his
victory over the Parthians. Odaenathus' son was crowned with a
diadem and a tiara; the choice of Antioch on the Orontes was
probably meant to demonstrate that the Palmyrene monarchs were now
the successors of the Seleucid and Iranian rulers who had controlled
Syria and Mesopotamia in the past.
Assassination
Odaenathus
was assassinated, together with Herodianus, in late 267. The date is
debated and some scholars propose 266 or 268, but Vaballathus dated
the first year of his reign between August 267 and August 268,
making late 267 the most probable date. The assassination took place
in either Anatolia or Syria. There is no consensus on the manner,
perpetrator or the motive behind the act.
According
to Syncellus, Odaenathus was assassinated near Heraclea Pontica by
an assassin also named Odaenathus who was killed by the King's
bodyguard.
Zosimus
states that Odaenathus was killed by conspirators near Emesa at a
friend's birthday party without naming the killer. The
twelfth-century historian Zonaras attributed the crime to a nephew
of Odaenathus but did not give a name. The Anonymus post Dionem also
does not name the assassin.
The
Augustan History claims that a cousin of the King named Maeonius
killed him.
Theories of instigators and motives
Roman
conspiracy: The seventh-century historian John of Antioch accused
Gallienus of being behind the assassination. A passage in the work
of the Anonymus post Dionem speaks of a certain "Rufinus"
who orchestrated the assassination on his own initiative, then
explained his actions to the Emperor who condoned them. This account
has Rufinus ordering the murder of an older Odaenathus out of fear
that he would rebel, and has the younger Odaenathus complaining to
the Emperor. Since the older Odaenathus (Odaenathus I) has proven to
be a fictional character, the story is ignored by most scholars.
However, the younger Odaenathus could be an oblique reference to
Vaballathus and Rufinus could be identified with Cocceius Rufinus,
the Roman governor of Arabia in 261–262. The evidence for such
a Roman conspiracy is weak.
The children of Odaenathus and
Zenobia were:
Vaballathus:
he is attested on several coins, inscriptions, and in the ancient
literature.
Hairan
II: his image appears on a seal impression along with his older
brother Vaballathus; his identity is much debated. Potter suggested
that he is the same as Herodianus, who was crowned in 263, and that
the Hairan I mentioned in 251 died before the birth of Hairan II.
Andrade suggested the opposite, maintaining that Hairan I,
Herodianus and Hairan II are the same.
Herennianus
and Timolaus: the two were mentioned in the Augustan History and are
not attested in any other source; Herennianus might be a conflation
of Hairan and Herodianus while Timolaus is most probably a
fabrication, although the historian Dietmar Kienast suggests that he
might be Vaballathus.
Possible
descendants of Odaenathus living in later centuries are reported:
Lucia Septimia Patabiniana Balbilla Tyria Nepotilla Odaenathiana is
known through a dedication dating to the late third or early fourth
century inscribed on a tombstone erected by a wet nurse to her
"sweetest and most loving mistress". The tombstone was
found in Rome at the San Callisto in Trastevere. Another possible
relative is Eusebius who is mentioned by the fourth century
rhetorician Libanius in 391 as a son of one Odaenathus, who was in
turn a descendant of the King; the father of Eusebius is mentioned
as fighting against the Persians (most probably in the ranks of
Emperor Julian's army). In 393, Libanius mentioned that Eusebius
promised him a speech written by Longinus for the King. In the fifth
century, the philosopher "Syrian Odaenathus" lived in
Athens and was a student of Plutarch of Athens; he might have been a
distant descendant of the King.
Burial and succession
Mummification
was practiced in Palmyra alongside inhumation and it is a
possibility that Zenobia had her husband mummified. The stone block
bearing Odaenathus' sepulchral inscription was in the Temple of Bel
in the nineteenth century, and it was originally the architrave of
the tomb. It had been moved to the temple at some point and so the
location of the tomb to which the block belonged is not known. The
tomb was probably built early in Odaenathus' career and before his
marriage to Zenobia and it is plausible that another, more
elaborate, tomb was built after Odaenathus became King of Kings.
Roman
law forbade the burial of individuals within a city. This rule was
strictly observed in the west, but it was applied more leniently in
the eastern parts of the empire. A burial within a city was one of
the highest honors an individual other that the Emperor and his
family could receive in the Roman Empire. A notable person may be
buried in this manner for different reasons, such as his leadership
or monetary donations. It meant that the deceased was not sent
beyond the walls for fear of miasma (pollution), and that he would
be part of the city's future civic life. At the western end of the
Great Colonnade at Palmyra, a shrine designated "Funerary
Temple no. 86" (also known as the House Tomb) is located.
Inside its chamber, steps lead down to a vault crypt which is now
lost. This mausoleum might have belonged to the royal family, being
the only tomb inside the city's walls. Odaenathus' royal power in
itself was sufficient to earn him a burial within the city walls.
The
Augustan History claims that Maeonius was proclaimed emperor for a
brief period before being killed by soldiers. However, no
inscriptions or other evidence exist for Maeonius' reign, the very
existence of which is doubtful. The disappearance of Septimius Worod
in 267 could be related to the internal coup; he could have been
executed by Zenobia if he was involved; or killed by the
conspirators if he was loyal to the King. Odaenathus was succeeded
by his son, the ten-year-old Vaballathus, under the regency of
Zenobia; Hairan II probably died soon after his father, as only
Vaballathus succeeded to the throne.
Legacy and reception
Odaenathus
was the founder of the Palmyrene royal dynasty. He left Palmyra the
premier power in the East, and his actions laid the foundation of
Palmyrene strength which culminated in the establishment of the
Palmyrene Empire in 270. Hero cults were not common in Palmyra, but
the unprecedented position and achievements of Odaenathus might have
given rise to such a practice: a mosaic panel excavated in Palmyra
depicts a man in Palmyrene military outfit riding a horse and
shooting. According to Gianluca Serra, the conservation zoologist
based in Palmyra at the time of the panel's discovery, the tigers
are Panthera tigris virgata, once common in the region of Hyrcania
in Iran. Gawlikowski proposed that it is Odaenathus depicted as the
archer and the Persians as the tigers in the mosaic; the title of
mrn (lord) appears on the panel, an honor carried only by Odaenathus
and Hairan I. The panel indicates that Odaenathus was probably
treated as a divine figure, and may have been worshipped in Palmyra.
Odaenathus'
memory as an able king, and loyal Roman, was used by the emperors
Claudius II and Aurelian to tarnish Zenobia's reputation by
portraying themselves as Odaenathus' avengers against his wife, the
usurper who gained the throne through plotting. The King was praised
by Libanius; and the fourth-century writer of the Augustan History,
while placing Odaenathus among the Thirty Tyrants (probably because
he assumed the title of king, in the view of the eighteenth-century
historian Edward Gibbon), speaks highly of his role in the Persian
War and credits him with saving the empire: "Had not
Odaenathus, prince of the Palmyrenes, seized the imperial power
after the capture of Valerian when the strength of the Roman state
was exhausted, all would have been lost in the East". On the
other hand, Odaenathus is viewed negatively in Rabbinic sources. His
sack of Nehardea mortified the Jews, and he was cursed by both the
Babylonian Jews and the Jews of Palestine. In the Christian version
of the Apocalypse of Elijah, probably written in Egypt following the
capture of Valerian, Odaenathus is called the king who will rise
from the "city of the sun" and will eventually be killed
by the Persians; this prophecy is a response to Odaenathus'
persecution of the Jews and his destruction of Nahardea. The Jewish
Apocalypse of Elijah identifies Odaenathus as the Antichrist.
Modern scepticism
The
successes of Odaenathus are treated sceptically by a number of
modern scholars. According to the Augustan History, Odaenathus
"captured the king's treasures and he captured, too, what the
Parthian monarchs hold dearer than treasures, namely his concubines.
For this reason Shapur [I] was now in greater dread of the Roman
generals, and out of fear of Ballista and Odaenathus he withdrew
more speedily to his kingdom". Sceptical scholars, such as
Martin Sprengling, considered such accounts of ancient Roman
historians "poor, scanty and confused". However, the
coronation dedication of Herodianus' statue, which stood on the
Monumental Arch of Palmyra, records his defeat of the Persians, for
which he was crowned, thus providing Palmyrene evidence that
explicitly mentions the war against Persia; the victory attested is
probably related to the first Persian campaign and not the battle of
260.
The
historian Andreas Alföldi concluded that Odaenathus started his
wars with Persia by attacking the retreating Persian army at Edessa
in 260. Such an attack is rejected by sceptical scholars; Sprengling
noted that no evidence exists for such an engagement. The
Iranologist Walter Bruno Henning considered the accounts of
Odaenathus' attack in 260 greatly exaggerated. Shapur I mentions
that he made the Roman prisoners build him the Band-e Kaisar near
Susiana, and built a city for those prisoners, which evolved into
the current Gundeshapur; Henning cited those arguments as evidence
for Shapur I's success in bringing his army and prisoners back home
and Roman exaggeration regarding Odaenathus' successes. Sprengling
suggested that Shapur I did not have enough troops to garrison the
Roman cities he occupied, and he was old and focused on religion and
building; hence, Odaenathus merely retook abandoned cities and
marched on Ctesiphon to heal Rome's pride, while being careful not
to disturb the Persians and their emperor. Other scholars, such as
Jacob Neusner, noted that while the accounts of the 260 engagement
might be an exaggeration, Odaenathus did become a real threat to
Persia when he regained the cities formerly taken by Shapur I and
besieged Ctesiphon. The historian Louis Feldman rejected Henning's
proposals; and the historian Trevor Bryce concluded that whatever
the nature of Odaenathus' campaigns, they led to the restoration of
all Roman territories occupied by Shapur I – Rome was free of
Persian threats for several years after Odaenathus' wars.
Shapur
II (Middle Persian: 𐭱𐭧𐭯𐭥𐭧𐭥𐭩
Šābuhr, 309–379)
also
known as Shapur the Great, was the tenth King of Kings (Shahanshah)
of the Sasanian Empire. He took the title at birth and held it until
his death at age 70, making him the longest-reigning monarch in
Iranian history. He was the son of Hormizd II (r. 302–309).
His
reign saw the military resurgence of the country and the expansion
of its territory, which marked the start of the first Sasanian
golden era. Thus, along with Shapur I, Kavad I and Khosrow I, he is
regarded as one of the most illustrious Sasanian kings. His three
direct successors, on the other hand, were less successful. At the
age of 16, he launched enormously successful military campaigns
against Arab insurrections and tribes.
Shapur
II pursued a harsh religious policy. Under his reign, the collection
of the Avesta, the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism, was completed,
heresy and apostasy were punished, and Christians were persecuted.
The latter was a reaction against the Christianization of the Roman
Empire by Constantine the Great. Shapur II, like Shapur I, was
amicable towards Jews, who lived in relative freedom and gained many
advantages in his period (see also: Rava). At the time of Shapur's
death, the Sasanian Empire was stronger than ever, with its enemies
to the east pacified and Armenia under Sasanian control.
Etymology
Shapur
was a popular name in Sasanian Iran, being used by three Sasanian
monarchs and other notables of the Sasanian era. Derived from Old
Iranian *xšayaθiya.puθra 'son of a king', it must
initially have been a title, which became — at least in the
late 2nd century AD — a personal name. It appears in the list
of Arsacid kings in some Arabic-Persian sources; however, this is
anachronistic. Shapur is rendered variously in other languages:
Greek Sapur, Sabour and Sapuris; Latin Sapores and Sapor; Arabic
Sābur and Šābur; New Persian Šāpur,
Šāhpur, Šahfur.
Accession
When
Hormizd II died in 309, he was succeeded by his son Adur Narseh,
who, after a brief reign which lasted few months, was killed by some
of the nobles of the empire. They then blinded Hormizd's second son,
and imprisoned the third (Hormizd, who afterwards escaped to the
Roman Empire). The throne was reserved for another one of Hormizd
II's children, Shapur II; some sources say that Shapur was born
forty days after his father's death while others say that he was
infant at the time. A legend exists that Shapur was crowned while
still unborn, with the crown being placed upon his pregnant mother's
womb. This story was known to Western historians such as Agathias
(6th century), who writes that the magi had prophesied that the
child would be a boy. Modern historians C. E. Bosworth and Alireza
Shapour Shahbazi consider this story to be fictional. The sex of the
infant could not have been known before Shapur's birth, writes
Bosworth. The crowning of the infant Shapur after the elimination of
his older brothers was a means for the nobility and priesthood to
gain greater control of the empire. They maintained their control
until 325, when Shapur reached maturity at the age of sixteen.
War
with the Arabs (325)
During
the childhood of Shapur II, Arab nomads raided the Sasanian homeland
of Pars, particularly the district of Ardashir-Khwarrah and the
shore of the Persian Gulf. At the age of 16, Shapur II led an
expedition against the Arabs; primarily campaigning against the Iyad
tribe in Asoristan and thereafter he crossed the Persian Gulf,
reaching al-Khatt, modern Qatif, or present eastern Saudi Arabia. He
then attacked the Banu Tamim in the Hajar Mountains. Shapur II
reportedly killed a large number of the Arab population and
destroyed their water supply by filling their wells with sand.[
After
having dealt with the Arabs of eastern Arabia, he continued his
expedition into western Arabia and Syria, where he attacked several
cities — he even went as far as Medina. Supposedly because of
his cruel way of dealing with the Arabs, piercing the shoulders of
captives, he was called Dhu'l-Aktaf ("the man with the
shoulders") by them.[a] However, Theodor Nöldeke
considered this a later folkloric explanation of an honorary epithet
meaning "the man with the broad shoulders", i.e., capable
of bearing the weight of kingship. Not only did Shapur II pacify the
Arabs of the Persian Gulf, but he also pushed many Arab tribes
further deep into the Arabian Peninsula. Furthermore, he also
deported some Arab tribes by force; the Taghlib to Bahrain and
al-Khatt; the Banu Abdul Qays and Banu Tamim to Hajar; the Banu Bakr
to Kirman, and the Banu Hanzalah to a place near Hormizd-Ardashir.
Shapur II, in order to prevent the Arabs from making more raids into
his country, ordered the construction of a wall near al-Hira, which
became known as war-i tāzigān ("wall of the Arabs").
The
Zoroastrian scripture Bundahishn also mentions the Arabian campaign
of Shapur II:
During
the rulership of Shapur (II), the son of Hormizd, the Arabs came;
they took Khorig Rudbar; for many years with contempt (they) rushed
until Shapur came to rulership; he destroyed the Arabs and took the
land and destroyed many Arab rulers and pulled out many number of
shoulders.
With
Eastern Arabia more firmly under Sasanian control, and with the
establishment of Sasanian garrison troops, the way for
Zoroastrianism was opened. Pre-Islamic Arabian poets often makes
mention of Zoroastrian practices, which they must have made contact
with either in Asoristan or Eastern Arabia. The Lakhmid ruler Imru'
al-Qays ibn 'Amr, who was originally a vassal of the Sasanians, may
have suffered from Shapur II's raids in Peninsula. He seemingly
swore fealty to the Romans, possibly after the incident.
In
the accounts of the historians regarding Shapur's campaign against
the Arab lands, as well as his mistreatment of the Arabs, the
burning of cities, and the flooding of water sources, there are
undoubtedly significant exaggerations. These embellishments stem
from Persian sources that have been greatly overstated. However, the
Roman historians' narratives about this event do not support this
claim.
War
with the Romans
Ever
since the "humiliating" Peace of Nisibis concluded between
Shapur's grandfather Narseh and the Roman emperor Diocletian in 298,
the borders between the two empires had changed largely in favor of
the Romans, who in the treaty received a handful of provinces in
Mesopotamia, changing the border from the Euphrates to the Tigris,
close to the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon. The Romans also received
control over the kingdoms of Iberia and Armenia, and gained control
over parts of upper Media in Iran proper. Shapur's primary objective
was thus to nullify the treaty, which he spent much of his reign
trying to accomplish.
Another
cause for Shapur's wars against the Romans was their attempts to
meddle in the domestic affairs of the Sasanian Empire and hurt
Shapur's kingship by supporting his brother Hormizd, who had been
well received at the Roman court by Constantine the Great and made a
cavalry commander. Shapur had made fruitless attempts to satisfy his
brother, even having his wife sent to him, who had originally helped
him escape imprisonment. However, Hormizd had already become an avid
philhellene during his stay with the Romans, with whom he felt at
home. Another reason was Constantine's declaration of Christianity
as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 337. He had also
declared himself the defender of all the Christians in the world,
including those living in the Sasanian realm.
Diocletian
Emperor 284-305 and Maximian 286-305
St.
Marcellinus Pope 296-304
250-350?
Solinus.
The
shores of the coast of Gaul were the end of the world but that the
island Brittania of not inconsiderable size, might deserve the name
of another world; for it stretches 800 and more miles, if we measure
to the angle of Calidonia. In this fastness an alter inscribed with
greek letters proves that Ulysses was driven to Calidonia.
It
is surrounded by many not insignificant islands, of which Hibernia
approaches it in size, inhuman in the savage practices of its
inhabitants but otherwise so rich in fodder that if they were not
kept off the pastures the herds would gorge themselves to the point
of danger. There are no snakes there, few birds, and people who are
unfreindly and warlike. When they have drained the blood of the
slain the victors smear their faces with it. They make no
distinction between right and wrong. There are no bees, and if
anyone sprinkles dust or pebbles from there among the hives, the
swarms will leave the honeycombs... The sea which flows between the
island and Brittania is rough and stormy all the year, except for a
few days when it is navigable, and those who have investigated the
matter estimate that it is 120 miles wide.
A
rough strait also separates the island of Silura from the shore
which the Brittana tribe of the Dumnonii occupy. The inhabitants of
this island preserve the ancient customs; they refuse money, give
and accept things, obtain their necessities by exchange rather than
by purchase, are zealous in their worship of the gods, and both men
and women display a knowledge of the future.
The
island of Tanatus is washed by the Fretum Gallicum and is separated
from the mainland of Brittania by a narrow estuary. It rejoices in
fertile plains and a rich soil which is beneficial not only to
itself but to other places too: for whereas it is crawled over by no
snakes, earth brought from it to any other place kills snakes. there
are many other islands around Brittania, of which the most distant
is Thyle, where the summer solstice, when the sun is passing through
the sign of cancer, there is no night, and likewise at the winter
solstice no day. We hear that beyond Thyle the sea is sluggish and
frozen.
The
circumference of Brittania is 4,875 miles, within which there are
many great rivers and hot springs (fontes
calidi) richly adorned for the use of men. Over these springs
the divinity of Minerva presides and in her temple the perpetual
fires never whiten into ash, but when the flame declines it turns
into rocky lumps.
Further
to pass over in silence the large and varied wealth of mines with
rich veins in which the land of Brittania abounds, there is
especially the stone jet (gagates): if you ask its appearance, it is
like a black gem (nigrogemmeus), if its properties, it burns with
water and is quenched with oil, if its powers, when it is warmed by
rubbing it attracts things set by it, like amber.
The
region is partly occupied by barbarians who, even from boyhood, have
pictures representing various animals put on heir bodies by tattoo
artists, and the marks grow on their flesh thus inscribed as they
grow up.
The
Cassiterides look towards the side of Celtiberia, being rich in
lead. (Plumbi means lead, but plumbi albi means white lead, or tin).
SBG
St. Augulus, martyred Bishop of London. The Orthodox
Community of St. Constantine The Great in York keep 7 February as
the feast day of the Holy Martyr Augulus (Aule) of London who died
in 303.
SBG
St. Ursula. Before 355. Possibly in the persecution of
Diocletian and Maximian, i.e. in 300-304, certain virgins, few
apparently in number, suffered martyrdom at Cologne. Their names are
not recorded. The Clematian inscription makes it certain that there
was a martyrium over their bodies which had been wrecked in 355 and
which he rebuilt 355-375. They may have been refugees from the
persecutions in Britain who came to Batavia
and then Cologne. Among them it was reported that there was a
king's daughter, named Vinnosa, whom the people of Cologne called
Pinnosa. A Litany in the Cathedral Library at Cologne, of the end of
the ninth century, names Martha, Saula, Sambatia, Saturnina,
Gregoria, and Pinnosa.
SBG
St. Lleuci or Leiki or Lucia. Of this Lucia we have no
information beyond that she is stated to have suffered martyrdom,
with the famous British virgin and martyr, St. Ursula, with her
Eleven Thousand Virgins, at Cologne.
Galerius
Emperor 305-311 in asociation with Constantius I Chlorus &
Severus II & Licinius & Constantine I & Maximinus Daza.
305-306.
Eutropius.
These
emperors, then, having retired from the government of the state,
Constantius and Galerius were made emperors; and the Roman world was
divided between them in such a manner, that Constantius had Gaul,
Italy, and Africa; Galerius Illyricum, Asia, and the East; two
Caesars being joined with them. Constantius, however, content with
the dignity of emperor, declined the care of governing Africa. He
was an excellent man, of extreme benevolence, who studied to
increase the resources of the provinces and of private persons,
cared but little for the improvement of the public treasury, and
used to say that "it was better for the national wealth to be
in the hands of individuals than to be laid up in one place of
confinement." So moderate was the furniture of his house, too,
that if, on holidays, he had to entertain a greater number of
friends than ordinary, his dining-rooms were set out with the plate
of private persons, borrowed from their several houses. By the Gauls
he was not only beloved but venerated, especially because, under his
government, they had escaped the suspicious prudence of Diocletian,
and the sanguinary rashness of Maximian. He died in Britain,
at York, in the thirteenth year of his reign, and was enrolled among
the gods.
SBG
St. Coel. Coel Hen, or Coel Godebog son of Guotepauc, the son of
Tecmant Godebog being his father's name, and not his epithet, which
was Hen. According to these genealogies he was the father of
Garbaniaun and Ceneu. King of Ayreshire. Geoffrey of Monmouth, who
styles him Earl of Gloucester, says that he had only one child, Elen
Luyddog, or Helen, the wife of Constantius, and the mother of
Constantine the Great. However, the old Welsh saga, the Dream of
Maxen Wledig, makes Elen Luyddog the daughter of Eudaf, son of
Caradog, and the wife of Maxen, Emperor Maximus.
SBG
St. Elen. Helen, or as in Welsh, is generally known in Welsh
tradition as Elen Luyddog, or Elen of the Hosts. Elen, the British
Princess, was the daughter, variously, of Eudaf ab Caradog, Octavius
dux Wisseorum, Eudaf jarll Ergig ac Euas, who was ruler of either
Herefordshire, Essex, Carnarvon, or Gloucester.
She was the wife of
Maximus who established himself at Treves [Trier] as the capital of
his portion of the Empire, and doubtless Helen was there with him.
The tradition at Treves [Trier] is that the present Cathedral was
the palace of the Empress Helena, which she gave up to the Church.
To this day it bears evidence of having been adapted from a domestic
purpose to sacred usages. The atrium, open to the sky, was only
domed over comparatively late in Mediaeval times. At Treves [Trier],
however, Helen the British Princess, wife of Maximus, has been
confounded with Helena the mother of Constantine.
306.
Eutropius.
Galerius,
a man of excellent moral character, and skilful in military affairs,
finding that Italy, by Constantius's permission, was put under his
government, created two Caesars, Maximin, whom he appointed over the
east, and Severus, to whom he committed Italy. He himself resided in
Illyricum. But after the death of Constantius, Constantine, his son
by a wife of obscure birth, was made emperor in Britain,
and succeeded his father as a most desirable ruler. In the
meantime the praetorian guards at Rome, having risen in
insurrection, declared Maxentius, the son of Maximian Herculius, who
lived in the Villa Publica not far from the city, emperor. At
the news of this proceeding, Maximian, filled with hopes of
regaining the imperial dignity, which he had not willingly resigned,
hurried to Rome from Lucania, (which, on retiring into private life,
he had chosen for his place of residence, spending his old age in a
most delightful country), and stimulated Diocletian by letters to
resume the authority that he had laid down, letters which Diocletian
utterly disregarded. Severus Caesar, being despatched to Rome by
Galerius to suppress the rising of the guards and Maxentius, arrived
there with his army, but, as he was laying siege to the city, was
deserted through the treachery of his soldiers.
The
power of Maxentius was thus increased, and his government
established. Severus, taking to flight, was killed at Ravenna.
Maximian Herculius, attempting afterwards, in an assembly of the
army, to divest his son Maxentius of his power, met with nothing but
mutiny and reproaches from the soldiery. He then set out for Gaul,
on a planned stratagem, as if he had been driven away by his son,
that he might join his son-in-law Constantine, designing, however,
if he could find an opportunity, to cut off Constantine, who was
ruling in Gaul with great approbation both of the soldiers and the
people of the province, having overthrown the Franks and Alemanni
with great slaughter, and captured their kings, whom, on exhibiting
a magnificent show of games, he exposed to wild beasts. But the plot
being made known by Maximian's daughter Fausta, who communicated the
design to her husband, Maximian was cut off at Marseilles, whence he
was preparing to sail to join his son, and died a well-deserved
death; for he was a man inclined to every kind of cruelty and
severity, faithless, perverse, and utterly void of consideration for
others.
307.
Liber Britannicus. Constanst, king of Britain, was the
father of Constantine, son of Eiline (Helena), the concubine
of Constantin. Etrobus wrote that it was in the island of Britain
that Constantin took sovereignty at first; for his father had
exercised dominion over France and Spain in the life-time of
Dioclistan.
Nennius.
The fifth was Constantius the father of Constantine the Great.
He died in Britain; his sepulchre, as it appears by the inscription
on his tomb, is still seen near the city named Cair segont (near
Carnarvon). Upon the pavement of the above-mentioned city he sowed
three seeds of gold, silver and brass, that no poor person might
ever be found in it. It is also called Minmanton.
307.
Socrates Scholasticus. Chapter II. ― By what Means the
Emperor Constantine became a Christian.
When
Diocletian and Maximian, surnamed Herculius, had by mutual consent
laid aside the imperial dignity, and retired into private life,
Maximian, surnamed Galerius, who had been a sharer with them in the
government, came into Italy and appointed two Cæsars, Maximin
in the eastern division of the empire, and Severus in the Italian.
In Britain, however,
Constantine was proclaimed emperor, instead of his father
Constantius, who died in the first year of the two hundred and
seventy-first Olympiad, on the 25th of July. And at Rome Maxentius,
the son of Maximian Herculius, was raised by the prætorian
soldiers to be a tyrant rather than an emperor. In this state of
things Herculius, impelled by a desire to regain the sovereignty,
attempted to destroy his son Maxentius; but this he was prevented by
the soldiery from effecting, and he soon afterwards died at Tarsus
in Cilicia. At the same time Severus Cæsar being sent to Rome
by Galerius Maximian, in order to seize Maxentius, was slain, his
own soldiers having betrayed him. At length Galerius Maximian, who
had exercised the chief authority, also died, having previously
appointed as his successor, his old friend and companion in arms,
Licinius, a Dacian by birth. Meanwhile, Maxentius sorely oppressed
the Roman people, treating them as a tyrant rather than as a king,
shamelessly violating the wives of the nobles, putting many innocent
persons to death, and perpetrating other similar atrocities. The
emperor Constantine being informed of this, exerted himself to free
the Romans from the slavery under him (i.e. Maxentius), and began
immediately to consider by what means he might overthrow the tyrant.
Now while his mind was occupied with this great subject, he debated
as to what divinity’s aid he should invoke in the conduct of
the war. He began to realize that Diocletian’s party had not
profited at all by the pagan deities, whom they had sought to
propitiate; but that his own father Constantius, who had renounced
the various religions of the Greeks, had passed through life far
more prosperously. In this state of uncertainty, as he was marching
at the head of his troops, a preternatural vision, which transcends
all description, appeared to him. In fact, about that part of the
day when the sun after posing the meridian begins to decline towards
the west, he saw a pillar of light in the heavens, in the form of a
cross, on which were inscribed these words, BY THIS CONQUER.
The
appearance of this sign struck the emperor with amazement and
scarcely believing his own eyes, he asked those around him if they
beheld the same spectacle; and as they unanimously declared that
they did, the emperor’s mind was strengthened by this divine
and marvellous apparition. On the following night in his slumbers he
saw Christ who directed him to prepare a standard according to the
pattern of that which had been seen; and to use it against his
enemies as an assured trophy of victory. In obedience to this divine
oracle, he caused a standard in the form of a cross to be prepared,
which is preserved in the palace even to the present time: and
proceeding in his measures with greater earnestness, he attacked the
enemy and vanquished him before the gates of Rome, near the Mulvian
bridge, Maxentius himself being drowned in the river. This victory
was achieved in the seventh year of the conqueror’s reign.
After
this, while Licinius, who shared the government with him, and was
his brother-in-law, having married his sister Constantia, was
residing in the East, the emperor Constantine, in view of the great
blessing he had received, offered grateful thanksgivings to God as
his benefactor; these consisted in his relieving the Christians from
persecution, recalling those who were in exile, liberating such as
were imprisoned, and causing the confiscated property of the
prescribed to be restored to them; he moreover rebuilt the churches,
and performed all these things with the greatest ardor. About this
time Diocletian, who had abdicated the imperial authority, died at
Salona in Dalmatia.
Eusebius.
Life of Constantine
CHAPTER
VIII: That he conquered nearly the Whole World.
But
our emperor began his reign at the time of life at which the
Macedonian died, yet doubled the length of his life, and trebled the
length of his reign. And instructing his army in the mild and sober
precepts of godliness, he carried his arms as far as the Britons,
and the nations that dwell in the very bosom of the Western
ocean. He subdued likewise all Scythia, though situated in the
remotest North, and divided into numberless diverse and barbarous
tribes. He even pushed his conquests to the Blemmyans and
Ethiopians, on the very confines of the South nor did he think the
acquisition of the Eastern nations unworthy his care. In short,
diffusing the effulgence of his holy light to the ends of the whole
world, even to the most distant Indians, the nations dwelling on the
extreme circumference of the inhabited earth, he received the
submission of all the rulers, governors, and satraps of barbarous
nations, who cheerfully welcomed and saluted him, sending embassies
and presents, and setting the highest value on his acquaintance and
friendship; insomuch that they honoured him with pictures and
statues in their respective countries, and Constantine alone of all
emperors was acknowledged and celebrated by all. Notwithstanding,
even among these distant nations, he proclaimed the name of his God
in his royal edicts with all boldness.
Excerpta
Valesiana. The Lineage of the Emperor Constantine
Diocletian
ruled with Herculius
Maximianus
for twenty years.
Constantius,
grandson
of the brother of that best of emperors Claudius,
was
first one of the emperor's bodyguard, then a tribune, and later,
governor of Dalmatia.
With
Galerius he was appointed Caesar by Diocletian;
for
he put away his former wife Helena and married Theodora, daughter of
Maximianus, by whom he afterwards had six children,
brothers
of Constantine. But by his former wife Helena he already had a son
Constantine, who was later the mightiest of emperors.
This
Constantine, then, born of Helena, a mother of very common origin,
and brought up in the town of Naissus,
which
he afterwards splendidly adorned, had but slight training in
letters. He was held as a hostage by Diocletian and Galerius,
and
did valiant service under those emperors in Asia. After the
abdication of Diocletian and Herculius,
Constantius
sked
Galerius to return his son; but Galerius first exposed him to many
dangers. For when Constantine, then a young man, was serving in the
cavalry against the Sarmatians, he seized by the hair and carried
off a fierce savage, and threw him at the feet of the emperor
Galerius. Then sent by Galerius through a swamp, he entered it on
his horse and made a way for the rest to the Sarmatians, of whom he
slew many and won the victory for Galerius. Then at last Galerius
sent him back to his father. But in order to avoid meeting Severus
as
he passed through Italy, Constantine crossed the Alps with the
greatest haste, ordering the post-horses to be killed
as
he went on; and he came up with his father Constantius at Bononia,
which
the Gauls formerly called Gesoriacum. But his father Constantius,
after winning a victory over the Picts, died at York, and
Constantine was unanimously hailed as Caesar by all the troops.
In
the meantime, two other Caesars had been appointed,
Severus and Maximinus; to Maximinus was given the rule of the
Orient; Galerius retained Illyricum for himself, as well as the
Thracian provinces and Bithynia; Severus received Italy and whatever
Herculius had formerly governed. But after Constantius died in
Britain,
and
his son Constantine succeeded him, Maxentius, the son of Herculius,
was suddenly hailed as emperor by the praetorian soldiers in the
city of Rome. By order of Galerius, Severus took the field against
Maxentius, but he was suddenly deserted by all his followers and
fled to Ravenna. Thereupon Galerius, with a great army, came against
Rome, threatening the destruction of the city, and encamped at
Interamna near the Tiber. Then he sent Licinius and Probus to the
city as envoys, asking that the son-in-law, that is Maxentius,
should attain his desires from the father-in-law, that is Galerius,
at the price of requests rather than of arms. Galerius' proposal was
scorned, and having learned that through Maxentius' promises many of
his own men had been led to desert his cause, he was distressed and
turned back; and in order to furnish his men with whatever booty he
could, he gave orders that the Flaminian Road should be plundered.
Maximianus took refuge with Constantine. Then Galerius made Licinius
a Caesar in Illyricum, and after that, leaving him in Pannonia,
returned himself to Serdica, where he was attacked by a violent
disease and wasted away so completely, that he died with the inner
parts of his body exposed and in a state of corruption ― a
punishment for a most unjust persecution,which recoiled as a
well-merited penalty upon the author of the iniquitous order. He
ruled for nineteen years.
308.
Zosimus.
Three
years after Dioclesian died, and the reigning emperors, Constantius
and Maximianus Gallerius declared Severus and Maximinus (who was
nephew to Gallerius), the Caesars, giving all Italy to Severus, and
the eastern provinces to Maximinus. Affairs being all regulated and
the barbarians quiet, since the Romans had been so successful
against them, Constantine, who was the son of Constantius by a
concubine, and had previously an ambition of being emperor (but was
more inflamed with that desire, since Severus and Maximinus had
acquired the name and honour of Caesars), was now resolved to leave
the place where he had resided, and to go to his father Constantius,
who was beyond the Alps, and generally in Britain.
But being apprehensive of seizure by the way, many persons being
well acquainted of his anxiety for dominion, he maimed all the
horses that were kept for public service, whenever he came to any
stable where they were kept, except what he took for his own use. He
continued to do this throughout his journey, by which means he
prevented those that pursued him from going further, while he
himself proceeded toward the country where his father was.
It
happened that Constantius died at that time; the guards, therefore,
who thought none of his legitimate children to be fit for the
imperial dignity, considered that Constantine was a person capable
of sustaining it, and conferred the honour upon him, in hopes of
being remunerated with handsome presents. When his effigy according
to custom was exhibited at Rome, Maxentius, the son of Maximianus
Herculius, could not endure the sight of Constantine's good fortune,
who was the son of a harlot, while himself, who was the son of so
great an emperor, remained at home in indolence, and his father's
empire was enjoyed by others. He therefore associated with himself
in the enterprise Marcellianus and Marcellus, two military tribunes,
and Lucianus, who distributed the swine's flesh, with which the
people of Rome were provided by the treasury, and the court-guards
called Praetoriani. By them he was promoted to the imperial throne,
having promised liberally to reward all that assisted him in it. For
this purpose they first murdered Abellius, because he, being prefect
of the city, opposed their enterprise.
30?.
Zosimus.
Maximianus
Gallerius, when he had learned this, sent Severus Caesar against
Maxentius with an army. But while he advanced from Milan with
several legions of Moors, Maxentius corrupted his troops with money,
and even the prefect of the court, Anullinus, and thereby conquered
him with great case. On which Severus fled to Ravenna, which is a
strong and populous city, provided with necessaries sufficient for
himself and soldiers. When Maximianus Herculius knew this, he was
doubtless greatly concerned for his son Maxentius, and therefore,
leaving Lucania where he then was, he went to Ravenna. Finding that
Severus could not by any means be forced out of this city, it being
well fortified, and stored with provisions, he deluded him with
false oaths, and persuaded him to go to Rome. But on his way
thither, coming to a place called the Three Tabernae, he was taken
by a stratagem of Maxentius and immediately executed. Maximianus
Gallerius could not patiently endure these injuries done to Severus,
and therefore resolved to go from the east to Rome, and to punish,
Maxentius as he deserved. On his arrival in Italy, he found the
soldiers about him so treacherous, that he returned into the east
without fighting a battle.
At
this period Maximianus Herculius, who lamented the tumults which
disturbed the public peace, came to Dioclesian who then lived at
Carnutum, a town of Gallia Celtica, and endeavoured to persuade him
to resume the empire, and not to suffer the government which they
had preserved so long and with so much difficulty to be exposed to
the madness and folly of those who had possessed themselves of it,
and who had already brought it near to ruin. But Dioclesian refused
to listen to him; for he wisely preferred his own quiet, and perhaps
foresaw the troubles that would ensue, being a man well versed in
matters of religion. Herculius therefore, perceiving that he could
not prevail with him, came to Ravenna, and so returned to the Alps
to meet Constantine, who lay there. And being naturally a busy
faithless man, he promised his daughter Fausta to Constantine, which
he performed, but persuaded him to pursue Maximianus Gallerius, who
was then leaving Italy, and to lay wait for Maxentius. To all which
Constantine agreed. He then left him, designing if possible to
recover the empire, as he hoped to create a quarrel between
Constantine and his son Maxentius. But while he attempted these
things, Maximianus Gallerius assumed Licinius, as his colleague in
the empire, with whose assistance he hoped to cope with Maxentius.
But while Gallerius deliberated on these affairs, he died of an
incurable wound, and Licinius then also claimed the sole dominion.
Maximianus Herculius endeavoured, as I have said, to recover the
empire by alienating the soldiers from Maxentius. For which purpose,
by gifts and insinuating addresses, having brought them over to him,
he endeavoured to form a conspiracy against Constantine, in which
his soldiers were to join. But Fausta revealed it to Constantine,
and Herculius, who was now overborne by so many disappointments,
died of a distemper at Tarsus.
Maxentius,
having escaped this danger, and being of opinion that he was now
well enough established in the empire, sent persons into Africa, and
in particular to Carthage, to carry his image about that country.
But the soldiers in that country forbade it, out of regard to
Maximianus Gallerius, and the respect they had for his memory, until
they heard that Maxentius was coming to make war on them on the plea
of an insurrection. They then went to Alexandria, but meeting with a
great army with which they were not able to contend, they returned
to Carthage. Maxentius, being disturbed at this, resolved to sail
for Africa, and to punish the authors of the commotion. But the
soothsayers having sacrificed and given him ill omens, he was afraid
to go, not only because the entrails had that appearance, but also
lest Alexander, who was prefect of the court in Africa, should be
his enemy. To secure his passage thither from all doubt, he sent to
Alexander, desiring him to send his son as an hostage. But he,
suspecting that Maxentius did not desire his son for the mere
purpose of an hostage, but to deceive him, denied the request. After
this, Maxentius sending other agents to him to take him off by
treachery and stratagem, the plot was discovered; and the soldiers,
having then got a favourable opportunity to rebel, conferred the
purple robe on Alexander, though he was by birth not only a
Phrygian, but a timid cowardly man, and unlit for any difficult
undertaking, and was, moreover, of an advanced age.
At
that time a fire happened at Rome; whether it came out of the air or
earth is uncertain. It broke out in the temple of Fortune; and while
the people ran to extinguish it, a soldier, speaking blasphemy
against the goddess, was killed by the mob out of zeal, by which a
mutiny was occasioned among the soldiers. They would have destroyed
the whole city, had not Maxentius soon appeased their rage.
Maxentius after this sought every occasion to make war on
Constantine, and pretending grief for his father's death, of which
Constantine was the cause, he designed to go towards Rhaetia, which
is contiguous both to Gaul and Illyricum. For he imagined that he
should subdue Dalmatia and Illyricum, by the assistance of the
generals in those parts, and of the army of Licinius. But thinking
it better first to arrange affairs in Africa, he raised an army,
bestowing the command of it on Rufius Volusianus, prefect of the
court, and sent them into Africa. He sent Zeno also along with
Rufius, who was a person not only expert in military affairs, but
esteemed for his courtesy and affability. On the first charge,
Alexander's troops retired on a body of men in the rear, nor was the
other party left unconquered by the enemy. Alexander himself was
taken and strangled.
The
war being thus at an end, a good opportunity was afforded to
sycophants and informers of impeaching all the persons in Africa,
who had good estates, as friends to Alexander: nor were any of the
accused spared, but some of them put to death, and others deprived
of all their possessions. After this he triumphed at Rome for the
mischief done at Carthage. Such was the state of the affairs of
Maxentius, who conducted himself with cruelty and licentiousness
towards all the inhabitants of Italy, and even to Rome itself.
Meantime Constantine, who had long been jealous of him, was then
much more disposed to contention. Having therefore raised an army
amongst the Barbarians, Germans, and Celts, whom he had conquered,
and likewise drawn a force out of Britain,
amounting in the whole to ninety thousand foot and eight thousand
horse, he marched from the Alps into Italy, passing those towns that
surrendered without doing them any damage, but taking by storm those
which resisted. While he wns making this progress, Maxentius had
collected a much stronger army; consisting of eighty thousand Romans
and Italians, all the Tuscans on the sea coast, forty thousand men
from Carthage, besides what the Sicilians sent him; his whole force
amounting to a hundred and seventy thousand foot and eighteen
thousand horse.
St.
Eusebius Pope 309 or 310
St.
Miltiades Pope 311-314
312.
Zosimus.
Both
being thus prepared, Maxentius threw a bridge over the Tiber, which
was not of one entire piece, but divided into two parts, the centre
of the bridge being made to fasten with irons, which might be drawn
out upon occasion. He gave orders to the workmen, that as soon as
they saw the army of Constantine upon the juncture of the bridge,
they should draw out the iron fastenings, that the enemy who stood
upon it might fall into the river.
Constantine,
advancing with his army to Rome, encamped in a field before the
city, which was broad and therefore convenient for cavalry.
Maxentius in the mean time shut himself up within the walls, and
sacrificed to the gods, and, moreover, consulted the Sibylline
oracles concerning the event of the war. Finding a prediction, that
whoever designed any harm to the Romans should die a miserable
death, he applied it to himself, because he withstood those that
came against Rome, and wished to take it. His application indeed
proved just. For when Maxentius drew out his army before the city,
and was marching over the bridge that he himself had constructed, an
infinite number of owls flew down and covered the wall. When
Constantine saw this, he ordered his men to stand to their arms. And
the two armies being drawn up opposite to each other, Constantine
sent his cavalry against that of the enemy, whom they charged with
such impetuosity that they threw them into disorder. The signal
being given to the infantry, they likewise marched in good order
towards the enemy. A furious battle having commenced, the Romans
themselves, and their foreign allies, were unwilling to risk their
lives, as they wished for deliverance from the bitter tyranny with
which they were burdened; though the other troops were slain in
great numbers, being either trod to death by the horse, or killed by
the foot.
As
long as the cavalry kept their ground, Maxentius retained some
hopes, but when they gave way, he tied with the rest over the bridge
into the city. The beams not being strong enough to bear so great a
weight, they broke; and Maxentius, with the others, was carried with
the stream down the river.
When
the news of this victory was reported in the city, none dared to
shew any joy for what had happened, because many thought it was an
unfounded report. But when the head of Maxentius was brought upon a
spear, their fear and dejection were changed to joy and pleasure. On
this occasion Constantine punished very few, and they were only some
few of the nearest friends of Maxentius; but he abolished the
praetorian troops, and destroyed the fortresses in which they used
to reside. At length, having arranged all things in the city, he
went towards Gallia Celtica; and on his way sent for Licinius to
Milan, and gave him in marriage his sister Constantia, whom he had
formerly promised him, when he wished him to unite with himself
against Maxentius. That solemnity over, Constantine proceeded
towards the Celtae. It was not long before a civil war broke out
between Licinius and Maximianus, who had a severe engagement, in
which Licinius at first appeared to have the disadvantage, but he
presently rallied and put Maximianus to flight. This emperor,
travelling through the east into Egypt, in hopes of raising a force
to renew the war, died at Tarsus.
Constantine I
Emperor 311-337. In asociation with Licinius 311-324
312. Eusebius.
Life of Constantine. CHAPTER XXIV: It was by the Will of God that
Constantine became possessed of the Empire.
Thus
then the God of all, the Supreme Governor of the whole universe, by
his own will appointed Constantine, the descendant of so renowned a
parent, to be prince and sovereign: so that, while others have been
raised to this distinction by the election of their fellow-men, he
is the only one to whose elevation no mortal may boast of having
contributed.
CHAPTER
XXV: Victories of Constantine over the Britons.
As
soon then as he was established on the throne, he began to care for
the interests of his paternal inheritance, and visited with much
considerate kindness all those provinces which had previously been
under his father's government. Some tribes of the barbarians who
dwelt on the banks of the Rhine, and the shores of the Western
ocean, having ventured to revolt, he reduced them all to obedience,
and brought them from their savage state to one of gentleness. He
contented himself with checking the inroads of others, and drove
from his dominions, like untamed and savage beasts, those whom he
perceived to be altogether incapable of the settled order of
civilized life. (1) Having disposed of these affairs to his
satisfaction, he directed his attention to other quarters of the
world, and first passed over to the British nations, (2)
which lie in the very bosom of the ocean. These he reduced to
submission, and then proceeded to consider the state of the
remaining portions of the empire, that he might be ready to tender
his aid wherever circumstances might require it.
312.
Sozomenus. Extracts from the Eclesiastical History
Under
the government of Constantine the churches flourished and increased
in numbers daily, since they were honoured by the good deeds of a
benevolent and well-disposed emperor, and otherwise God preserved
them from the persecutions and harassments which they had previously
encountered. When the churches were suffering from persecution in
other parts of the world, Constantius alone, the father of
Constantine, accorded the Christians the right of worshipping God
without fear. I know of an extraordinary thing done by him, which is
worthy of being recorded. He wished to test the fidelity of certain
Christians, excellent and good men, who were attached to his
palaces. He called them all together, and told them that if they
would sacrifice to idols as well as serve God, they should remain in
his service and retain their appointments; but that if they refused
compliance with his wishes, they should be sent from the palaces,
and should scarcely escape his vengeance. When difference of
judgement had divided them into two parties, separating those who
consented to abandon their religion from those who preferred the
honour of God to their present welfare, the emperor determined upon
retaining those who had adhered to their faith as his friends and
counsellors; but he turned away from the others, whom he regarded as
unmanly and impostors, and sent them from his presence, judging that
they who had so readily betrayed their God could never be true to
their king. Hence it is probable that while Constantius was alive,
it did not seem contrary to the laws for the inhabitants of the
countries beyond Italy to profess Christianity, that is to say, in
Gaul, in Britain,
or in the region of the Pyrenean mountains as far as the Western
Ocean. When Constantine succeeded to the same government, the
affairs of the churches became still more brilliant...
As
soon as the sole government of the Roman empire was vested in
Constantine, he issued a public decree commanding all his subjects
in the East to honour the Christian religion, carefully to worship
the Divine Being, and to recognize that only as Divine which is also
essentially so, and which has the power that endures for ever and
ever: for he delights to give all good things ungrudgingly to those
who zealously embrace the truth; he meets their undertakings with
the best hopes, while misfortunes, whether in peace or in war,
whether in public or in private life, befall transgressors.
Constantine then added, but without vain boasting, that, God having
accounted him as a fitting servant, worthy to reign, he had been led
from the British sea to the Eastern provinces in order that
the Christian religion might be extended, and that those who, on
account of the worship of God had remained steadfast in confessions
or martyrdoms, might be advanced to public honours. After making
these statements, he entered upon a myriad other details by which he
thought his subjects might be drawn to religion. He decreed that all
acts and judgements passed by the persecutors of the church against
Christianity should be revoked; and commanded that all those who, on
account of their confession of Christ, had been sent to banishment -
either to the isles or elsewhere, contrary to their own inclination
- and all those who had been condemned to labour in the mines, the
public works, the harems, the linen factories, or had been enrolled
as public functionaries, should be restored to liberty. He removed
the stigma of dishonour from those upon whom it had been cast, and
permitted those who had been deprived of high appointments in the
army, either to re assume their former place, or with an honourable
discharge, to enjoy a liberal ease according to their own choice;
and when he had recalled all to the enjoyment of their former
liberties and customary honours, he likewise restored their
possessions. In the case of those who had been slain, and whose
property had been confiscated, he enacted that the inheritance
should be transferred to the next of kin, or, in default of heirs,
to the church belonging to the locality where the estate was
situated; and when the inheritance had passed into other hands, and
had become either private or national property, he commanded it to
be restored. He likewise promised to resort to the fittest and best
possible arrangements when the property had been purchased by the
exchequer, or had been received there from by gift. These measures,
as it had been said, having been enacted by the emperor, and
ratified by law, were forthwith carried into execution. Christians
were thus placed in almost all the principal posts of the Roman
government; the worship of false gods was universally prohibited;
and the arts of divination, the dedication of statues, and the
celebration of pagan festivals were interdicted.
The
church having been in this manner spread throughout the whole Roman
world, religion was introduced even among the barbarians themselves.
The tribes on both sides of the Rhine were Christianized, as
likewise the Celts
and the
Gauls
who dwelt upon the most distant shores of the ocean; the Goths, too,
and such tribes as were contiguous to them, who formerly dwelt on
either of the high shores of the Danube, had long shared in the
Christian faith, and had changed into a gentler and more rational
observance. Almost all the barbarians had professed to hold the
Christian doctrine in honour, from the time of the wars between the
Romans and foreign tribes, under the government of Gallienus and the
emperors who succeeded him. For when an unspeakable multitude of
mixed nations passed over from Thrace into Asia and overran it, and
when other barbarians from the various regions did the same things
to the adjacent Romans, many priests of Christ who had been taken
captive, dwelt among these tribes; and during their residence among
them, healed the sick, and cleansed those who were possessed of
demons, by the name of Christ only, and by calling on the Son of
God; moreover they led
a
blameless life, and excited
envy by their virtues. The barbarians, amazed at the conduct and
wonderful works of these men, thought that it would be prudent on
their part, and pleasing to the Deity, if they should imitate those
whom they saw were better; and, like them, would render homage to
God. When teachers as to what should be done, had been proposed to
them, the people were taught and baptised, and subsequently were
gathered into churches.
c
313. Nomina Provinciarum Omnium (Laterculus Veronensis.)
The
diocese of the Britanniae includes provinces to the number of six:
Prima, Secunda, Maxima Caesariensis, Flavia Caesariensis.
Barbarian
nations which have emerged under the emperors: Scoti, Picti,
Caledonii
St.
Sylvester 1 Pope 314-335
After
312. Zosimus.
When
he was delivered from the distractions of war, he yielded himself to
voluptuousness, and distributed to the people of Byzantium a present
of corn, which is continued to this day. As he expended the public
treasure in unnecessary and unprofitable buildings, he likewise
built some which in a short time were taken down again, because
being erected hastily they could not stand long. He likewise made a
great change in the ancient magistracy. Till that time there had
been only two prefects of the court, whose authority was equal; not
only were the court soldiers under their controul, but those also
which guarded the city, and who were stationed in its neighbourhood.
The person who had the office of prefect of the court, which was
esteemed the next post of honour to that of emperor, distributed the
gifts of corn, and punished all offences against military
discipline, as he thought convenient. Constantine altered this good
institution, and of one office or magistracy formed four. To one of
those prefects he committed all Egypt and Pentapolis in Libya, and
all the east as far as Mesopotamia, with Cilicia, Cappadocia,
Armenia, and all the coast from Pamphylia to Trapezus and the
castles near Phasis; to the same person was given all Thrace and
Moesia, as far as the mountains Haemus and Rhodope, and the town of
Doberus. He likewise added Cyprus and all the Cyclades, except
Lemnos, Imbrus, and Samothracia. To another he assigned Macedon,
Thessaly, Crete, and Greece, with the adjacent islands, |54 both the
Epiruses, the Illyrians, the Dacians, the Triballi, and the
Pannonians as far as Valeria, besides the upper Moesia. To the third
prefect he entrusted Italy and Sicily, with the neighbouring
islands, and Sardinia and Corsica, together with all Africa westward
of the Syrtes. To the fourth he committed all beyond the Alps, Gaul,
Spain, and Britain. Having
thus divided the power of these prefects, he invented other methods
likewise of diminishing their influence. For as there used to be in
all places, centurions, tribunes, and generals, he appointed
officers called Magistri militum, some over the horse and
others over the foot, to whom he gave authority to discipline the
soldiers, and punish those that had offended, by which the power of
the prefects was diminished. That this innovation was productive of
great injury to public affairs both in peace and war I will
immediately prove. The prefects had hitherto collected the tribute
in all places by their officers, and disposed of it in war expences,
the soldiers at the same time being subject to their authority,
whose offences they punished at discretion. Under these
circumstances, the soldiers, considering that the same person who
gave them their pay had the infliction of punishments whenever they
offended, did not dare to act contrary to their duty, for fear of
their stipend being withheld, and of being duly punished. But now
since one person is paymaster and another inspector of discipline,
they act according to their own inclination.
Constantine
likewise adopted another measure, which gave the Barbarians free
access into the Roman dominions. For the Roman empire, as I have
related, was, by the care of Dioclesian, protected on its remote
frontiers by towns and fortresses, in which soldiers were placed; it
was consequently impossible for the Barbarians to pass them, there
being always a sufficient force to oppose their inroads. But
Constantine destroyed that security by removing the greater part of
the soldiers from those barriers of the frontiers, and placing them
in towns that had no need of defenders; thus depriving those who
were exposed to the Barbarians of all defence, and oppressing the
towns that were quiet with so great a multitude of soldiers, that
many of them were totally forsaken by the inhabitants. He likewise
rendered his soldiers effeminate by accustoming them to public
spectacles and pleasures. To speak in plain terms, he was the first
cause of the affairs of the empire declining to their present
miserable state.
SBG ST Cadfrawd
was the same as Adelfius, who is recorded to have been present at
the Council of Arles in 314, the names being "almost a
translation of each other." Caerleon may have been the seat of
a bishopric, as Giraldus Cambrensis maintained, and Adelfius may
have been bishop of the see, but there is no clear evidence that he
came from this town or district. He is called in the entry
"episcopus de civitate Colonia Londinensium." There is
evidently some error here. Haddan and Stubbs and others have
suggested Legionensium for Londinensium, making it refer to
Caerleon.
SBG
St. Ifor. Bishop of York, present at the Council of Arles, 314.
314.
Acta Concilii Arelatensis.
Eborius
episcopus de civitate Eboricensi Provincia Britania.
Restitutus
episcopus de civitate Londenensis Provincia qua supra.
Adelfius
episcopus de civitate Colonia Londenensium, exinde Sacerdus
presbyter, Arminius diaconus.
(Ed,
There are Variant Latin spellings).
Ex
provincia Britannia civitas Tobracentium Aerburius episcopus.
Civitas
Londinientium Restitutus episcopus.
Civitas
Londinientium Adelfius.
(Variant).
Ex
provincia Britannia Tububiacensium Eburus episcopus.
Ex
civitate Londiniensium Restitutus episcopus.
Ex
civitate Colonia Londiniensis Adelfius episcopus et Menius diaconus.
(Variant).
Ex
provincia Britania civitas Tubeuriacensium Eburius episcopus.
Civitas
Londinensium Restitutus episcopus.
Colonia
... Adelfius episcopus Sacer episcopus Arminius diaconus.
(Variant).
Ex
provincia Brittinia civitas Tubiricensium Evortius episcopus.
Civitas
Coloniae Lonininsium Adelfus episcopus.
322.
Annals of the Four Masters.
Fiacha
Sraibhtine, after having been thirty seven years as king over
Ireland, was slain by the Collas, in the battle of Dubhchomar, in
Crioch Rois, in Breagh.
323.
The first year of Colla Uais, son of Eochaidh Doimhlen, as king
over Ireland.
324.
GENNADIUS of MASSILIA
Chapter
XIV. ― Letter written by the Emperor Constantine respecting
the building of Churches
“Constantinus
Augustus, the great and the victorious, to Eusebius.
“I
am well aware, and am thoroughly convinced, my beloved brother, that
as the servants of our Saviour Christ have been suffering up to the
present time from nefarious machinations and tyrannical
persecutions, the fabrics of all the churches must have either
fallen into utter ruin from neglect, or, through apprehension of the
impending iniquity, have been reduced below their proper dignity.
But now that freedom is restored, and that dragon, through the
providence of God, and by our instrumentality, thrust out from the
government of the Empire, I think that the divine power has become
known to all, and that those who hitherto, from fear or from
incredulity or from depravity, have lived in error, will now, upon
becoming acquainted with Him who truly is, be led into the true and
correct manner of life. Exert yourself, therefore, diligently in the
reparation of the churches under your own jurisdiction, and admonish
the principal bishops, priests, and deacons of other places to
engage zealously in the same work; in order that all the churches
which still exist may be repaired or enlarged, and that new ones may
be built wherever they are required. You, and others through your
intervention, can apply to magistrates and to provincial governments
for all that may be necessary for this purpose; for they have
received written injunctions to render zealous obedience to whatever
your holiness may command. May God preserve you, beloved brother.”
Thus
the emperor wrote to the bishops in each province respecting the
building of churches.
Chapter
XX. ―Of the destruction of the temples all over the Empire.
Now
the right faithful emperor diverted his energies to resisting
paganism, and published edicts in which he ordered the shrines of
the idols to be destroyed. Constantine the Great, most worthy of all
eulogy, was indeed the first to grace his empire with true religion;
and when he saw the world still given over to foolishness he issued
a general prohibition against the offering of sacrifices to the
idols. He had not, however, destroyed the temples, though he ordered
them to be kept shut. His sons followed in their father’s
footsteps. Julian restored the false faith and rekindled the flame
of the ancient fraud. On the accession of Jovian he once more placed
an interdict on the worship of idols, and Valentinian the Great
governed Europe with like laws. Valens, however, allowed every one
else to worship any way they would and to honour their various
objects of adoration. Against the champions of the Apostolic decrees
alone he persisted in waging war. Accordingly during the whole
period of his reign the altar fire was lit, libations and sacrifices
were offered to idols, public feasts were celebrated in the forum,
and votaries initiated in the orgies of Dionysus ran about in
goat-skins, mangling hounds in Bacchic frenzy, and generally
behaving in such a way as to show the iniquity of their master. When
the right faithful Theodosius found all these evils he pulled them
up by the roots, and consigned them to oblivion
The
Epistle of the Emperor Constantine, (extract) Quoted by
Theodoretus of Cyprus.
That
this impropriety should be rectified, and that all these diversities
of commemoration should be resolved into one form, is the will of
divine Providence, as I am convinced you will all perceive.
Therefore, this irregularity must be corrected, in order that we may
no more have any thing in common with those parricides and the
murderers of our Lord. An orderly and excellent form of
commemoration is observed in all the churches of the western, of the
southern, and of the northern parts of the world, and by some of the
eastern; this form being universally commended, I engaged that you
would be ready to adopt it likewise, and thus gladly accept the rule
unanimously adopted in the city of Rome, throughout Italy, in all
Africa, in Egypt, the Spains, the Gauls, the
Britains, Libya,
Greece, in the dioceses of Asia, and of Pontus, and in Cilicia,
taking into your consideration not only that the churches of the
places above-mentioned are greater in point of number, but also that
it is most pious that all should unanimously agree in that course
which accurate reasoning seems to demand, and which has no single
point in common with the perjury of the Jews.
BEDE
CHAP.
VIII. How, when the persecution ceased, the Church in Britain
enjoyed peace till the time of the Arian heresy.
When
the storm of persecution ceased, the faithful Christians, who,
during the time of danger, had hidden themselves in woods and
deserts and secret caves, came forth and rebuilt the churches which
had been levelled to the ground; founded, erected, and finished the
cathedrals raised in honour of the holy martyrs, and, as if
displaying their conquering standards in all places, celebrated
festivals and performed their sacred rites with pure hearts and
lips. This peace continued in the Christian churches of Britain
until the time of the Arian madness, which, having corrupted the
whole world, infected this island also, so far removed from the rest
of the world, with the poison of its error; and when once a way was
opened across the sea for that plague, straightway all the taint of
every heresy fell upon the island, ever desirous to hear some new
thing, and never holding firm to any sure belief.
At
this time Constantius, who, whilst Diocletian was alive, governed
Gaul and Spain, a man of great clemency and urbanity, died in
Britain. This man left his son Constantine born of Helena, his
concubine, emperor of the Gauls. Eutropius writes that Constantine,
being created emperor in Britain, succeeded his father in the
sovereignty. In his time the Arian heresy broke out, and although it
was exposed and condemned in the Council of Nicaea, nevertheless,
the deadly poison of its evil spread, as has been said, to the
Churches in the islands, as well as to those of the rest of the
world.
325.
Eusebius. Life of Constantine
CHAPTER
XIX: Exhortation to follow the Example of the Greater Part of the
World.
"Since,
therefore, it was needful that this matter should be rectified, so
that we might have nothing in common with that nation of parricides
who slew their Lord: and since that arrangement is consistent with
propriety which is observed by all the churches of the western,
southern, and northern parts of the world, and by some of the
eastern also: for these reasons all are unanimous on this present
occasion in thinking it worthy of adoption. And I myself have
undertaken that this decision should meet with the approval of your
Sagacities, in the hope that your Wisdoms will gladly admit that
practice which is observed at once in the city of Rome, and in
Africa; throughout Italy, and in Egypt, in Spain, the Gauls,
Britain, Libya, and
the whole of Greece; in the dioceses of Asia and Pontus, and in
Cilicia, with entire unity of judgement. And you will consider not
only that the number of churches is far greater in the regions I
have enumerated than in any other, but also that it is most fitting
that all should unite in desiring that which sound reason appears to
demand, and in avoiding all participation in the perjured conduct of
the Jews. In fine, that I may express my meaning in as few words as
possible, it has been determined by the common judgement of all,
that the most holy feast of Easter should be kept on one and the
same day. For on the one hand a discrepancy of opinion on so sacred
a question is unbecoming, and on the other it is surely best to act
on a decision which is free from strange folly and error.
CHAPTER
L: Embassy and Presents from the Indians.
ABOUT
this time ambassadors from the Indians, who inhabit the distant
regions of the East, arrived with presents consisting of many
varieties of brilliant precious stones, and animals differing in
species from those known to us. These offerings they presented to
the emperor, thus allowing that his sovereignty extended even to the
Indian Ocean, and that the princes of their country, who rendered
homage to him both by paintings and statues, acknowledged his
imperial and paramount authority. Thus the Eastern Indians now
submitted to his sway, as the Britons
of the Western Ocean had done at the commencement of his reign.
326.
Annals of the Four Masters.
The
fourth year of Colla Uais, in the sovereignty of Ireland, when
Muireadhach Tireach expelled him and his brothers into Alba Scotland
with three hundred along with them.
327.
The first year of Muireadhach Tireach in the sovereignty of Ireland.
At
the end of this year the three Collas came to Ireland; and there
lived not of their forces but thrice nine persons only. They then
went to Muireadhach, having been instructed by a druid. And they
scolded at him, and expressed evil words, that he might kill them,
and that it might be on him the curse of the finghal should alight.
As he did not oppose them, they tarried with him, and were faithful
to him.
331.
The fifth year of Muireadhach.
The
battle of Achadh Leithdheirg, in Fearnmhagh, was fought by the three
Collas against the Ulstermen, in which fell Fearghus Fogha, son of
Fraechar Foirtriun, the last king of Ulster, who resided at Eamhain.
They afterwards burned Eamhain, and the Ulstermen did not dwell
therein since. They also took from the Ulstermen that part of the
province extending from the Righe and Loch nEathach westwards. Colla
Meann fell in this battle.
St.
Marcus Pope 336
Jordanes
This
Visimar was of the stock of the Asdingi, which is eminent among them
and indicates a most warlike descent, as Dexippus the historian
relates. He states furthermore that by reason of the great extent of
their country they could scarcely come from Ocean to our frontier in
a year's time. At that time they dwelt in the land where the Gepidae
now live, near the rivers Marisia, Miliare, Gilpil and the Grisia,
which exceeds in size all previously mentioned. They then had on the
east the Goths, on the west the Marcomanni, on the north the
Hermunduli and on the south the Hister, which is also called the
Danube. At the time when the Vandals were dwelling in this region,
war was begun against them by Geberich, king of the Goths, on the
shore of the river Marisia which I have mentioned. Here the battle
raged for a little while on equal terms. But soon Visimar himself,
the king of the Vandals, was overthrown, together with the greater
part of his people. When Geberich, the famous leader of the Goths,
had conquered and spoiled Vandals, he returned to his own place
whence he had come. Then the remnant of the Vandals who had escaped,
collecting a band of their unwarlike folk, left their ill-fated
country and asked the Emperor Constantine for Pannonia. Here they
made their home for about sixty years and obeyed the commands of the
emperors like subjects. A long time afterward they were summoned
thence by Stilicho, Master of the Soldiery, Ex-Consul and Patrician,
and took possession of Gaul.
Here they plunderedtheir neighbors and had no settled place of
abode.
St.
Julius 1 Pope 337-352
Constantine
II Emperor 337-340 in association with Constantius II & Constans
337.
Liber Britannicus. Constantinus, son of Constantine the Great,
son of Helena, took the island of Britain, and died, and was buried
at Caersegeint, i. e. Minantia, another name for that city; and
letters on the gravestone point out his name, and he left three
seeds in the green of that city, so that there is not a poor man in
that city.
337.
Zosimus.
CONSTANTIUS,
after having acted towards Gallus Caesar in the manner I have
related, left Pannonia to proceed into Italy. But perceiving all the
Roman territories to be infested by the incursions of the
Barbarians, and that the Franks, the Alemanni, and the Saxons
had not only possessed themselves of forty cities near the
Rhine, but had likewise ruined and destroyed them, by carrying off
an immense number of the inhabitants, and a proportionate quantity
of spoils; and that the Sarmatians and the Quadi ravaged without
opposition Pannonia and the upper Moesia; besides which that the
Persians were perpetually harassing the eastern provinces, though
they had previously been tranquil in the fear of an attack from
Gallus Caesar; considering these circumstances, and being in doubt
what to attempt, he scarcely thought himself capable of managing
affairs at this critical period. He was unwilling, however, to
associate any one with himself in the government, because he so much
desired to rule alone, and could esteem no man his friend. Under
these circumstances he was at a loss how to act It happened,
however, that when the empire was in the greatest danger, Eusebia,
the wife of Constantius, who was a woman of extraordinary learning,
and of greater wisdom than her sex is usually endowed with, advised
him to confer the government of the nations beyond the Alps on
Julianus Caesar, who was brother to Gallus, and grandson to
Constantius. As she knew that the emperor was suspicious of all his
kindred, she thus circumvented him. She observed to him, that Julian
was a young man unacquainted with the intrigues of state, having
devoted himself totally to his studies; and that he was wholly
inexperienced in worldly business. That on this account he would be
more fit for his purpose than any other person. That either he would
be fortunate, and his success would be attributed to the emperor's
conduct, or that he would fail and perish; and that thus Constantius
would have none of the imperial family to succeed to him.
337-340.
Having
done this, and restored as many captives as it was probable had been
taken out of the forty cities which they had sacked, Caesar was at a
loss what course to adopt, perceiving the cities to be completely
ruined, and that the land had remained long without cultivation,
which occasioned great scarcity of provisions among those who were
delivered up by the Barbarians. For the neighbouring cities could
not supply them, having themselves felt the violence of the
Barbarians, and consequently having no great abundance for their own
use. Having therefore deliberated on what course to pursue he formed
this plan. As the Rhine discharges itself at the extremity of
Germany into the Atlantic ocean, and the |70 island of Britain
is about nine hundred stadia from its mouths, he cut timber from the
woods on the banks of the river, and built eight hundred small
vessels, which he sent into Britain for a supply of corn, and
brought it up the Rhine. This was so often repeated, the voyage
being short, that he abundantly supplied those who were restored to
their cities with sufficiency for their sustenance, so likewise for
the sowing season, and what they needed until harvest. These actions
he performed when he had scarcely attained the twenty-fifth year of
his age.
Constantius,
perceiving that Julian was beloved by the army, for his frugality in
pence and courage in war, and for the self-command he possessed in
regard to riches, and the other virtues in which he excelled all
persons of the age in which he lived, became envious of his great
merit, and concluded that Sallustius, one of the counsellors that
had been allotted to him, was the author of the policy that had
acquired Julian so much honour both in military and in civil
affairs. He, therefore, sent for Sallustius, as if he intended to
confer the government of the eastern provinces upon him. Julian
readily dismissed him, resolving to obey the emperor in all
respects. Though Sallustius was removed, Julian still advanced in
whatever was committed to his care; the soldiers improved in
discipline as well as augmented in number, and the towns enjoyed the
blessings of peace.
The
Barbarians in that quarter now began almost all to despair, and
expected little short of the complete destruction of all that
remained alive. The Saxons, who exceed all the barbarians in
those regions, in courage, strength and hardiness, sent out the
Quadi, a part of their own body, against the Roman dominions. Being
obstructed by the Franks who resided near them, and who were afraid
of giving Caesar a just occasion of making another attack on them,
they shortly built themselves a number of boats, in which they
sailed along the Rhine beyond the territory of the Franks, and
entered the Roman empire. On their arrival at Batavia,
which is an island, so formed by the branches of the Rhine, much
larger than any other river island, they drove out the Salii, a
people descended from the Franks, who had been expelled from their
own country by the Saxons.
This island, though formerlv subject to the Romans alone, was now in
the possession of the Salii. Caesar, upon learning this, endeavoured
to counteract the designs of the Quadi; and first commanded his army
to attack them briskly; but not: to kill any of the Salii, or
prevent them from entering the Roman territories, because they came
not as enemies, but were forced there by the Quadi.
As
soon as the Salii heard of the kindness of Caesar, some of them went
with their king into the Roman territory, and others fled to the
extremity of their country, but all humbly committed their lives and
fortunes to Caesar's gracious protection. Caesar by this time
perceiving that the Barbarians dared not again engage him, but were
intent on secret excursions, and rapine, by which they did great
damage to the country, scarcely knew how to act, until at length he
invented a stratagem to confound the Barbarians. There was a man of
extraordinary stature, and of courage proportioned to his size.
Being by nation a Barbarian, and accustomed to plunder with the
others, he had thought proper to leave his own country and go into
Gallia Celtica, which was subject to the Romans.
While
he was residing at Treves [Trier], which is the largest city in all
the nations beyond the Alps, and saw the barbarians from beyond the
Rhine, ravaging the cities on this side of the river, and committing
depredations every where without opposition, (which was before
Julian was made Caesar), he resolved in himself to defend those
towns. As he dared not attempt this without being supported by the
law, he at first went alone into the thickest part of the woods, and
waited there till the Barbarians made their incursions. In the
night, when they lay intoxicated and asleep, he fell on them and
slew them in great numbers, bringing their heads and shewing them to
the people of the town. This he practised continually to such an
extent, that he abated the keenness of the Barbarians, who though
unable to guess at the cause, yet were sensible of the losses they
sustained, the army diminishing daily. Some other robbers having
joined this man, and their number having increased to a considerable
body, Charietto, (which was the name of the man who first used (his
kind of ambuscade against the Barbarians) came to Caesar, and told
him the whole circumstances, which few persons knew before that
time. Caesar, was at this time unable to restrain their nocturnal
and clandestine incursions of the Barbarians, as they robbed in
small parties, straggling from each other, and when day appeared,
not one of them was visible, all hiding themselves in the woods, and
subsisting on what they gained by robbery. Considering therefore the
difficulty of subduing such an enemy, he determined to oppose these
robbers, not with an army of soldiers, but with men of similar
description.
For
this reason, he sent Charietto and his band, adding to them many of
the Salii, against the plundering Quadi, who though they lived on
what they stole, yet were probably less expert in the art of
robbing, than these men who had studied it. In the day he |72
guarded the open fields, and killed all that escaped his robbers. He
did this for a long time, until the Quadi were reduced to such
extremities, and to so small a number, that they and their general
surrendered themselves to Caesar, who had taken a great number of
prisoners in the former excursions and engagements, and among the
rest the son of their king, who was taken by Charietto. From this
cause, when they so lamentably petitioned for peace, and Caesar
demanded some of their chiefs as hostages, and required the king's
son to be one of them; the general, or king, broke out into a most
pathetic complaint, and declared with tears in his eyes that his son
was one that had been lost. Caesar perceiving this compassionated
his sorrow, and shewed him his son who had been nobly entertained;
but told him that he would retain the youth as a hostage as well as
other of the chiefs whom he had in possession. He condescended,
however, to make peace with them on condition that they would never
again take arms against the Romans.
Constantius
II Emperor 340-361 in association with Constans 340-350
343.
Anglo-saxon chronicle. This year
died St. Nicolaus.
The Carausian
Revolt
Marcus
Aurelius Mausaeus Valerius Carausius (died 293) was a military
commander of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century. He was a Menapian
from Belgic Gaul, who usurped power in 286, during the Carausian
Revolt, declaring himself emperor in Britain and northern Gaul
(Imperium Britanniarum). He did this only 13 years after the Gallic
Empire of the Batavian Postumus was ended in 273. He held power for
seven years, fashioning the name "Emperor of the North"
for himself, before being assassinated by his finance minister
Allectus.
Carausius
was of humble origin, a Menapian who distinguished himself during
Maximian's campaign against the Bagaudae rebels in northern Gaul in
286. This success, and his former occupation as a pilot, led to his
appointment to command the Classis Britannica, a fleet based in the
English Channel, with the responsibility of eliminating Frankish and
Saxon pirates who had been raiding the coasts of Armorica and
Belgica. He was suspected of keeping captured treasure for himself,
and of allowing pirates to carry out raids and enrich themselves
before taking action against them, and Maximian ordered his
execution. In late 286 or early 287 Carausius learned of this
sentence and responded by declaring himself Emperor in Britain and
northern Gaul. His forces comprised not only his fleet, augmented by
new ships he had built and the three legions stationed in Britain,
but also a legion he had seized in Gaul, a number of foreign
auxiliary units, a levy of Gaulish merchant ships, and barbarian
mercenaries attracted by the prospect of booty.
British
historian and archaeologist Sheppard Frere wonders how Carausius was
able to win support from the army when his command had been
sea-based, and speculates that he had perhaps been involved in an
unrecorded victory in Britain, connected with Diocletian's
assumption of the title Britannicus Maximus in 285, and signs of
destruction in Romano-British towns at this time. The campaign
against the Bagaudae, however, was evidently land-based and may have
been responsible for Carausius's popularity with the army. Equally,
if the accusations of larceny are true, he could perhaps have
afforded to buy their loyalty.
Maximian
prepared an invasion of Britain in 288 or 289 to oust him, but it
failed. A panegyric delivered to Constantius Chlorus attributes this
failure to bad weather, but notes that Carausius claimed a military
victory. Eutropius says that hostilities were in vain thanks to
Carausius's military skill, and peace was agreed. Carausius began to
entertain visions of legitimacy and official recognition.
This
situation continued until 293, when Constantius Chlorus (Constantius
I), now the western Caesar, marched into Gaul and reclaimed it for
the empire. He isolated Carausius by besieging the port of
Gesoriacum (Boulogne-sur-Mer) and invading Batavia in the Rhine
delta, securing his rear against Carausius's Frankish allies. He
could not yet mount an invasion of Britain until a suitable fleet
could be built. Nevertheless, Carausius's grip on power was fatally
undermined. Allectus, whom he had put in charge of his treasury,
assassinated him and assumed power himself. His reign would last
only three years, after which he was defeated and killed by
Constantius' subordinate Julius Asclepiodotus.
In
April 2010 a large hoard containing over 52,500 Roman coins was
unearthed in a field near Frome, Somerset. 766 coins were determined
to have been produced during Carausius' reign, of which only 5 were
silver denarii. This find roughly equates to four years' pay for a
Roman legionary, but the presence of later coin issues suggests that
the group was not deposited until after Carausius' death.
Allectus
was treasurer to Carausius, a Menapian officer in the Roman navy who
had seized power in Britain and northern Gaul in 286. In 293
Carausius was isolated when the western Caesar, Constantius Chlorus,
retook some of his Gallic territories, particularly the crucial port
of Bononia (modern Boulogne), and defeated his Frankish allies in
Batavia. Allectus assassinated Carausius and assumed command
himself.
His
reign has left little record, although his coin issues display a
similar distribution to those of Carausius. They are found in north
western Gaul, indicating that the recapture of Bononia did not spell
the end of the rebel empire on that side of the English Channel.
Constantius
launched an invasion to depose him in September 296. His forces
sailed in several divisions. Constantius led one division from
Bononia, but seems to have been delayed by bad weather. Another
division, under the praetorian prefect Asclepiodotus, took advantage
of fog to avoid Allectus's ships stationed at the Isle of Wight, and
landed near Southampton Water, where they burnt their ships.
Allectus's forces were forced to retreat from the coast, but were
cut off by another of Constantius's divisions and defeated. Allectus
himself was killed in the battle, having removed all insignia in the
hope that his body would not be identified. Archaeology suggests
that Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester) was the site of his defeat or
the area surrounding the town. A group of Roman troops, who had been
separated from the main body by the fog during the channel crossing,
caught up with the remnants of Allectus's men, mostly Franks, at
Londinium (London), and massacred them. Constantius himself, it
seems, did not reach Britain until it was all over, and his
panegyrist claims he was welcomed by the Britons as a liberator.
Carausius
had deliberately used his coinage for propaganda purposes, and some
of his slogans, such as a claim to have restored 'liberty', were
designed to appeal to British sentiment. Constantius answered such
claims in a famous medal struck on the morrow of his victory, in
which he described himself as redditor lucis aeternae, 'restorer of
the eternal light (viz. of Rome).'
An antique Brexit?
There
is some controversy as to why Roman rule ended in Britain. The view
first advocated by Wolfgang Mommsen was that Rome left Britain. This
argument was substantiated over time, most recently by A.S.
Esmonde-Cleary. According to this argument, internal turmoil in the
Roman Empire and the need to withdraw troops to fight off barbarian
armies led Rome to abandon Britain. It was the collapse of the
imperial system that led to the end of imperial rule in Britain.
However, Michael Jones has advanced an alternative thesis that
argues that Rome did not leave Britain, but that Britain left Rome.
He highlights the numerous usurpers who came from Britain in the
late 4th and early 5th centuries, and points out that the supply of
coinage to Britain had dried up by the early 5th century, so that
administrators and troops were not getting paid. All of this, he
argues, led the British people to rebel against Rome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-Roman_Britain
ROMAN AND SARMATIAN
CAMPAIGNS
of
Constantine were fought by the Roman Emperor Constantine I against
the neighbouring Germanic peoples, including the Franks, Alemanni
and Goths, as well as the Sarmatian Iazyges, along the whole Roman
northern defensive system to protect the empire's borders, between
306 and 336.
After
becoming controller of the western provinces along the Rhine limes
(in 306) following the death of his father Constantius Chlorus
(Augustus of the west) in 306, Constantine initially concentrated
his forces on defending this area of the frontier against the Franks
and Alemanni, making Augusta Treverorum his first capital for this
purpose. Having defeated the usurper Maxentius at the Battle of the
Milvian Bridge in 312, all Italia passed under Constantine's control
and he thus became the sole Augustus of the West.
In
February 313, Constantine (who had spent the winter in Rome) formed
an alliance with the Emperor of the East, Licinius, reinforced by
Licinius' marriage to Constantine's sister, Flavia Julia Constantia.
However, this alliance survived for only a few years, before the two
Augusti came into conflict in 316. Constantine defeated Licinius,
who was forced to cede Illyricum to Constantine, but not Thrace.
Constantine advanced ever further east with his territorial
acquisitions, now having to defend the important strategic region of
the limes sarmaticus (from 317).
In
the following years, Constantine mostly occupied himself in the
central section of the Danubian Limes, mostly fighting against the
Sarmatians in Pannonia, residing at Sirmium almost continuously
until 324 (when he moved against Licinius once more), making it his
capital along with Serdica. At this time Constantine also
demonstrated a very active military bent, travelling along the whole
of the limites of his newly acquired territory. From 320 he
appointed his eldest son, Crispus, Praetorian prefect, with military
command of Gaul.
When
he learnt that an army of Goths had crossed the Danube to raid Roman
territory in Moesia Inferior and Thrace, which belonged to Emperor
Licinius, he left his general headquarters in Thessalonica and
marched against them (323). The fact that he had trespassed into a
part of the empire which was not under his control unleashed the
final phase of the Civil wars of the Tetrarchy, which ended with the
complete defeat of Licinius and the consecration of Constantine as
the sole Roman Emperor.
The
final period of Constantine's reign, until his death (337), saw the
Christian Emperor consolidate the entire defensive system on the
Rhine and Danube, obtaining important military successes and
reasserting control over a large part of the territory that the
Romans had abandoned under Gallienus and Aurelian: the Agri
Decumates from the Alemanni, the area south of the Tisza from the
Sarmatians, as well as Oltenia and Wallachia from the Goths.
Historical context
With
the death of Emperor Numerian in November 284 (who had been
entrusted with Eastern Roman empire by his father Carus) and the
refusal of the eastern troops to recognise Carus' eldest son Carinus
as his successor, a proven general of Illyrian origins, Diocletian,
was raised to the purple. At the end of the civil war which
followed, Diocletian was victorious and in 285 he named Maximian as
his deputy (or Caesar) and then a few months later elevated him to
the rank of Augustus (1 April 286), thereby forming a diarchy, in
which two emperors divided the government of the empire on
geographic lines. This also entailed the division of responsibility
for the defence of the northern frontier from Germanic and Sarmatian
incursions.
Given
the increasing difficulty of containing the internal revolts and
those along the borders, a further territorial division was executed
in 293 to facilitate military operations: Diocletian named Galerius
as his Caesar in the east, while Maximian chose Constantius Chlorus
in the west.
However,
this tetrarchy fell into crisis only a year after the abdication of
the two Augusti in 305, beginning a new Civil War (306–324),
permitting new breaches along the Roman external border, with
populations attempting to settle within Roman territory.
It
was only with Constantine's accession to the throne, becoming sole
Augustus of the West after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312
and later still defeating Licinius and reuniting the Empire under a
single emperor (324) that the northern frontiers were adequately
defended once more. It is no coincidence that Constantine is
attributed the responsibility for perfecting the military reforms of
Diocletian and also for the reconquest or vassalisation of all the
territory which Trajan had controlled.
Background: the death
of Constantius Chlorus
With
the death of Constantius Chlorus at Eboracum (York) on 25 July 306,
the Tetrarchy entered a crisis: the eldest son of the dead emperor,
Constantine was proclaimed Augustus by the Alemanni general Chrocus
and the army of Britannia. His election was in accordance with a
dynastic principle rather than the meritocratic system of the
Tetrarchy created by Diocletian. Only Lactantius maintains that
Constantine was named Augustus by his father on his deathbed.
Galerius was displeased by this act and offered the son of his
deceased colleague the title of Caesar, which Constantine accepted,
allowing Flavius Severus to succeed his father Constantius instead.
A few months later, Maxentius son of the old Augustus Maximian was
acclaimed Emperor by the Praetorian guard with the support of
officials like Marcellianus, Marcellus and Lucianus (but not
Abellius, vicar of the Praefectus urbi, who was killed), reaffirming
the dynastic principle. It was in this period that Constantine began
to achieve important military successes against the Alemanni and the
Franks, along the stretch of the frontier attributed to him, as is
recounted by Eutropius.
Forces in the field
Regarding
the Roman forces garrisoned along the whole stretch of the northern
limites from Britannia to Moesia, it is important to note that at
this time there was a very important reform of the Roman army, a new
Deployment of the Roman legions along the borders and an increase in
the size of the Roman army. In fact, we know that, with Diocletian's
Tetrarchy reforms, the total number of legions was brought to 55 or
56 in the year 300. Constantine's accession to the throne and the
return of a dynastic monarchy brought about the final increase of
the number of Roman legions to 62 or 64 around the year 330.
Barbarians
Along
the Rhine limes the Franks and Saxons in particular pressed on Gaul
and Britannia. The Alemanni also made some incursions in these
regions, but the main goal of their attacks at this time was
Northern Italy via Pannonia (the western part of the Danubian
Limes). The major clashes occurred along the Lower Danube in the
Roman provinces of the Balkan region, where the Marcomanni, Quadi,
Sarmatians and especially the Goths (divided into the Tervingi and
the Greutungi) concentrated their attacks.
Phases of the
conflict
First
phase (306–316): defence of the Rhine limes
306
The
twenty-one-year-old Constantine, unable to get permission to visit
his ailing father Constantius Chlorus (Augustus of the west) from
the Augustus of the East, Galerius, in whose court he had lived
since the time of Diocletian, decided to escape in the spring of
this year. He found his father at Gesoriacum (Boulogne-sur-Mer)
about to cross the English Channel to Britannia and joined him in a
successful military campaign against the Picts and Scotti to the
north of Hadrian's wall. When his father died during the summer,
Constantine was proclaimed Augustus of the West by his father's
loyal troops at Eboracum on 25 July.
The
young tetrarch however needed his election to the Imperial office to
be recognised, particularly by Galerius, the most senior of the
Augusti. Gelerius preferred his friend and comrade in arms,
Licinius, to Constantine. Confronted with a fait accompli and in the
face of the "secession" of Gaul and Britannia, Galerius
appealed to precedent and named the former Caesar, Flavius Severus
as the new Augustus with control over Italy, Africa, and Spain and
recognised Constantine only as a Caesar. Constantine voluntarily
accepted this and in Autumn of the same year he returned to Augusta
Treverorum (Trier) whence he could more easily monitor the Gallic
frontier, which was being menaced by the Franks. He continued to
defend this important stretch of the limes for the next six years,
transferring his whole imperial court to Trier and transforming it
into his capital (with circa 80000 inhabitants), constructing the
imposing Aula Palatina in 310. During these years, not only did he
reinforce the defences of this region against the continued
incursions of the barbarians, but he also strengthened the forces
under his control, augmenting his forces through the creation of new
legions.
307
At
the beginning of spring, Constantine planned a new campaign in
German territory. He found it necessary to confront the Franks,
Chamavi, Bructeri, Cherusci and Alemanni. The young emperor had been
educated in the military training ground of the east by Diocletian
and Galerius and, despite his youth, conducted the war with the sort
of determination and energy which his father had not been able to
muster in the preceding years. In the course of the military
operations, he achieved important successes, managing to heavily
wallop the Franks who had invaded the Roman territory east of the
Rhine the previous year. It is reported that, while the Franks were
planning to cross the Lower Rhine, Constantine quickly crossed the
river in another location and surprised the enemy with an unexpected
attack, which prevented a new invasion. Many of the Franks were
killed, captured or enslaved – some of these were employed as
gladiators. All their livestock was seized and their villages were
burnt to the ground. As a result of these successes, Constantine was
awarded the cognomen Germanicus Maximus at the end of the year. In
the course of this campaign and those following it, Constantine may
have used the legionary fortress of Castra Vetera as a base and the
valley of the Lippe (as had been done in the time of Augustus and
again fifty years later under Julian) as an invasion route by which
to outflank the enemy, who were found to the north of this major
river, and catch them from behind after devastating their territory.
308
Further
successes were achieved by Constantine against the Bructeri over the
whole year, for which he received the title of GERMANICUS MAXIMUS
once again.
At
the end of this new military campaign against the Franks,
Constantine built the important "bridgehead" of Divitia
(modern Deutz) in German territory opposite Colonia Agrippina
(Cologne).
310
Once
more Constantine achieved important military successes over the
Alemanni and the Franks, whose king he is said to have captured and
fed to the beasts in the amphitheatre. In the course of this
campaign against the Franks, Constantine added a majestic bridge at
Divitia, 420 metres long and 10 metres wide.
Meanwhile,
however, Maximian had rebelled and Constantine had to cut his
campaign against the Franks short, marching rapidly to southern Gaul
where he captured Maximian and forced him to commit suicide.
311
With
the death of Galerius, the Tetrarchy became ever more unstable.
Probably as a result of this, no campaigns against the Germans
beyond the Rhine seem to have been undertaken this year. On the
contrary, Constantine fortified the Rhine limes ever further with
new construction (as at Haus Bürgel on the right bank of the
river, 30 km north of Divitia, or along the roads leading from
Colonia Agrippina (Cologne) to Augusta Treverorum (Trier) and with
the strengthening of preexisting fortifications. Since the auxiliary
fortress of Noviomagus Batavorum (Nijmegen) had, apparently, been
abandoned at the end of the third century, Constantine constructed
two new forts in the area: at Valkhof (on the banks of the river
Waal) and another along the coast at Valkenburg (near Hook).
312
Constantine
gathered a massive army, including barbarians from the recent wars
(Germanic peoples and Celts brought over from Britannia), and led it
into Italy, defeating his rival Maxentius at Turin, Verona, and
finally at the Milvian Bridge. Constantine thus became sole ruler of
the West. The eastern half fell under the control of Licinius the
following year, with whom Constantine entered into a marriage
alliance.
313
At
this time Constantine conducted another military campaign against
the Franks and the Alemanni in Gaul, which lasted until the end of
summer. Pretending to cross the river, he followed his earlier
course, marching against the Alemanni, but then turned back and
attacked the Franks with a rapid fleet. He devastated their
territories and captured one of their kings. Immediately afterwards
he retraced his steps and devastated the territories of the Alemanni
as well, a campaign commemorated on the coins of the year, which
celebrate the GAVDIVM ROMANORVM ALAMANNIA.
314–315
Once
again, Constantine made Augusta Treverorum (Trier) his general
quarters for these two years, in order to stay more in control of
the Rhine frontier, once again putting things in order against
possible incursions of Franks and Alemanni and continuing his
fortification works. In July of 315 he left the frontier in order to
travel to Rome and celebrate his triumph for the Battle of the
Milvian Bridge.
316–317
Conflict
arose between Licinius and Constantine, who defeated the former at
Cibalae and Mardia. In the following peace agreement, Licinius was
forced to cede Illyricum to Constantine. Constantine thereby
extended his territory to the east and now had another important
strategic sector to defend: the limes sarmaticus (or pannonicus),
also called the Pannonian Limes, where he had earlier fought in 305,
as an official of Galerius, managing to defeat a barbarian general
in single combat.
Second
phase
317–319
Following
the events described above, Constantine fought against the
Sarmatians on the Pannonian stretch of the limes, earning the
victory title of SARMATICUS MAXIMUS for the first time, as seems to
be demonstrated by an inscription found in Mauretania, indicating to
Mócsy that he remained as Sirmium almost continuously until
324 (when his armies moved against Licinius), employing it as his
capital. Horst too maintains that his preferred imperial residences
in the period between 317 and 323 were Serdica and Sirmium.
During
this year, Constantine again showed an active interest in military
activities, since he often travelled along the whole limes of the
territories he had acquired with the peace of Serdica (March 317).
He inspected the garrisons of Pannonia Inferior, overseeing their
repair and the construction of new bridgeheads towards the plain of
the Tisza River, to face the peril of the barbarians beyond Rome's
borders (Iazygi and Goths). He strengthened the river fleets of the
Danube, Sava, Drina, and Morava, as well as the maritime fleets of
the Adriatic and Aegean Seas, reinforcing the ports of Aquileia,
Pireus, and Thessalonica (formerly Galerius' capital) through the
construction of arsenals, shipyards, and the construction of further
naval squads. Clearly these reconstruction and strengthening works
could be employed not only against the barbarians, but also, one
day, against Licinius.
320
Constantine's
eldest son, Crispus (now fifteen, and therefore aided by a Prefect),
received the military command of Gaul and conducted military
campaigns along the Rhine, achieving victories over the Franks and
Alemanni within the year.
322
Constantine
managed to repulse a new invasion of Pannonia by the Sarmatians and
the Iazygi. After this, Constantine may have begun the construction
of a new stretch of border fortifications, the so-called Devil's
Dykes, which consisted of a series of north-facing embankments
starting by the Danube at Aquincum, heading to the Tisza, then
turning south towards the river Mureş, crossing the Banat and
reaching the Danube at Viminacium (it is possible that this
construction resumed earlier work under Diocletian). Accordingly,
the coinage of this year and the next declared SARMATIA DEVICTA
("Sarmatia vanquished") and name Constantine as
"Sarmaticus Maximus" for the second time.
323
Yet
again Constantine was able to repel an invasion of Sarmatian
Iazyges, as Zosimus seems to support, though he might have combined
or confused the Sarmatian invasions of two separate years, which had
unsuccessfully besieged a city of Pannonia Inferior, identifiable
with Campona, a little south of the legionary fortress of Aquincum.
The
Sarmatians first attacked a city which had a constant garrison,
where the part of the wall near the ground was built of stone and
the upper parts in wood (which could be Campona). The Sarmatians
thought they could easily conquer the city, if they could set the
wooden part of the wall on fire, so they lit a fire and shot the
people on the walls. But while these people returned fire with darts
and arrows, Constantine attacked them from behind, taking them by
surprise, killing many and taking numerous prisoners, while the
survivors fled. — Zosimus, New History, 2.21.1–2.
At
the same time, the Goths of Rausimodus decided to cross the Danube
(further downstream) too and tried to raid the Roman territory of
Moesia Inferior and Thrace. Informed of this, Constantine left his
general quarters in Thessalonica and marched against them. Hearing
of the arrival of the Emperor, the Goths decided to retreat to
Wallachia, but Constantine crossed the Ister, reached the Gothic
invaders and massacred them in the battle which followed, managing
to kill Rausimodus.
Constantine
crossed over the Ister and attacked him [i.e. Rausimodus] as he fled
towards a thickly wooded hill. He killed many barbarians, including
Rausimodus himself, and afterwards he captured many more. Taking
this multitude, which instantly raised its hands in surrender, he
returned with them to his general quarters. After posting them in
the cities [especially at Bononia] he returned to Thessalonica. —
Zosimus, New History, 2.21.3 & 22.1.
The
barbarians had requested peace and Constantine had nevertheless led
an army into parts of the Empire which were not under his competency
(i.e. Moesia), but that of the other Augustus, Licinius –
thereby initiating a new civil war between Constantine and Licinius.
Coinage continued to celebrate the Sarmatia devicta.
324
The
civil war which followed saw the complete defeat of Licinius and
Constantine's consecration as sole Augustus. Remembering the recent
war with the Goths, Constantine decided to construct some stone
bridges in order to frighten the Barbarians north of the Danube: One
connecting Oescus to the new fort of Sucidava on the north bank of
the Danube, another linking Transmarisca and the fort of Daphne
which was also on the north bank of the Danube. We cannot, however,
exclude the possibility that the construction of these new
fortifications dates to the later Gothic campaigns of 326–329.
Third
phase (324–337): the defence of the limes gothicus and the
"reconquest" of Dacia
In
this new phase, Constantine, now sole monarch of the Roman empire,
not only managed to consolidate the entire defensive system along
the Rhine and Danube, but also obtained important military successes
and regained "control" over a good part of the territories
which had been abandoned by Gallienus and Aurelian. This included
the Agri decumates from the Alemanni, the plain south of the Tisza
(Banat) from the Sarmatians and Oltenia & Wallachia from the
Goths. These gains seem to be demonstrated by the coinage of the
period and by new defensive constructions (Devil's Dykes and Brazda
lui Novac). Additionally, in this period, Constantine brought about
a new series of reforms, completing those began some forty years
earlier by Diocletian. This process was accomplished gradually over
the last thirteen years of his reign (324–337, the year of his
death).
324/325
In
the course of these two years, new military campaigns were conducted
against the federation of the Alemanni by Constantine's son Crispus,
which were celebrated coinage inscribed "ALEMANNIA DEVICTA
(Alemannia conquered"). From this time, Constantine began to
use Nicomedia as well as Serdica and Sirmium as his preferred
Imperial residences.
328-331/332
Once
again, Constantine, along with his son Constantine II was forced to
intervene on the Upper Rhine, to defeat the Alemanni who had
attempted to invade Gallic territory. This war seems to have lasted
many years, since the Emperor's sons were granted the title of
ALAMANNICUS MAXIMUS only in 331/2.
328
In
this year it seems that there were new clashes with Germans,
Sarmatians and Goths on the central and lower Danube and that
Constantine was forced to cross the Ister once more, constructed a
fortified bridge (between Oescus and Sucidava) to take the war to
Barbarian territory, such that the road leading to Romula was paved.
He devastated the local territory and reduced them to slavery,
according to the account of Theophanes the Confessor.
329
The
next year, all along the Lower Danube, the Goths went on the
offensive, managing to penetrate to Moesia Inferior and Thrace,
where they wrecked devastation, but Constantine managed to repel the
barbarian hordes, construct a new bridge in Scythia Minor and attack
their territory, as is recorded in his titulature for these years
and in Anonymus Valesianus. At the end of this campaign or that of
the previous year, he seems to have received the title of GERMANICUS
MAXIMUS for the fourth time and the title of GOTHICUS MAXIMUS for
the first time.
331/332
The
Visigoths, who had molested the allied Sarmatians, invading their
territory and then the Balkan provinces of the Romans, were defeated
near the modern city of Varna (Bulgaria), by Constantine and his
sixteen-year-old Caesar, Constantine II. Reportedly, cold, hunger,
and battle took the lives of 100000 Goths. The survivors were forced
to sue for peace with the Emperor, handing over hostages including
the King's son Ariaric as a guarantee, as well as a contingent of
auxiliaries, in exchange for seed and grain. Most importantly, a
treaty was concluded with these people (foedus), under which the
Goths (presumably the Visigoths) were employed to defend the
Imperial border and provide 40000 soldiers. This peace endured until
the time of Julian or even to 375/376. For these successes, he
received the victory title of GOTHICUS MAXIMUS for the second time,
as well as "DEBELLATOR GENTIUM BARBARARUM" ("Conqueror
of barbarian peoples") and the coins of 332 and 333 named
GOTHIA and SARMATIA as if they had become new Roman provinces.
Immediately following these events, Emperor Constantine may have
begun construction of a new stretch of border defences, the
so-called Brazda lui Novac, which runs parallel to the north bank of
the Danube from Drobeta, across the plain of eastern Wallachia to
the Siret River, surrounding the newly "reconquered"
territories. Not coincidentally, Aurelius Victor recounts that a
bridge was built on the Danube (referring to the bridge built in
328) as well as numerous forts and bastions in diverse locations for
protection of the borders.
334
Two
years later, the same Sarmatians who had requested the "friendly"
intervention of the Romans, created new problems for the Emperor,
when they were riven by internal conflict between the Limigantes and
the Argaragantes. It is said that the slaves (Limigantes) drove
their masters (Argaragantes) from Banat, forcing Constantine to
intervene militarily in order to settle an enormous mass of
"refugees" (allegedly 300000 people) in Scythia Minor,
Italia, Macedonia, Thrace, Moesia Superior and Pannonia Secunda.
Some maintain instead that Constantine launched a new military
campaign into the plain south of the Tisza to restore order among
the warring factions, at the end of which Constantine received the
victory title of SARMATICUS MAXIMUS for the third time. There are,
after all, archaeological hints that Constantine had occupied part
of the Banat mountains, along the "old" Roman roads which
led from Dierna and Lederata to Tibiscum seventeen years earlier.
circa
335
Jordanes
recounts an episode datable to this period, in which the Vandals of
Visimar, who inhabited the region between the Marisus and Danube
rivers (perhaps a little northwest of Banat), clashed with the Goths
of Geberic and were defeated. The survivors asked Constantine to be
allowed into Roman territory, got permission and settled in Pannonia
Inferior, where they remained in peace for around forty years,
"obeying the laws of the Empire like the other inhabitants of
the region".
336
Emperor
Constantine achieved new successes beyond the Danube in the
territories which had once been the Roman province of Dacia
(abandoned by Aurelian), receiving the honorific title "DACICUS
MAXIMUS". It cannot be coincidental that an inscription found
near the former legionary fortress of Apulum (modern Alba Iulia)
mentions a woman named Ulpia Constantia (reflecting connections to
Trajan and Constantine). This could give serious support to Emperor
Julian's claim that Constantine reconquered all the territories
controlled by Trajan – which included Dacia.
The
equilibrium along the lower course of the Danube, after all the
campaigns of Constantine and his sons, remained almost unchanged
until around 375. The focus of the Emperor turned to the east, where
a series of preparations were made for an imminent military campaign
against the Sassanids, which was never carried out by Constantine on
account of his death in May 337. For twenty five years, the Roman
armies of Constantius II and then Julian, fought against the
Sassanid armies with varying success (337–363). However the
Lower Danube and Eastern borders remained, for almost thirty years,
practically unchanged.
XXI
After these events, the Goths had already returned home when they
were summoned at the request of the Emperor Maximian to aid the
Romans against the Parthians. They fought for him faithfully,
serving as auxiliaries. But after Caesar Maximian by their aid had
routed Narseus, king of the Persians, the grandson of Sapor the
Great, taking as spoil all his possessions, together with his wives
and his sons, and when Diocletian had conquered Achilles in
Alexandria and Maximianus Herculius had broken the Quinquegentiani
in Africa, thus winning peace for the empire, they began rather to
neglect the Goths.
Now
it had long been a hard matter for the Roman army to fight against
any nations whatsoever without them. This is evident from the way in
which the Goths were so frequently called upon. Thus they were
summoned by Constantine to bear arms against his kinsman Licinius.
Later, when he was vanquished and shut up Thessalonica and deprived
of his power, they slew him with the sword of Constantine the
victor. In like manner it was the aid of the Goths that enabled him
to build the famous city that is named after him, the rival of Rome,
inasmuch as they entered into a truce with the Emperor and furnished
him forty thousand men to aid him against various peoples. This body
of men, namely, the Allies, and the service they rendered in war are
still spoken of in the land to this day. Now at that time they
prospered under the rule of their kings Ariaric and Aoric. Upon
their death Geberich appeared as successor to the throne, a man
renowned for his valor and noble birth.
East Roman management
of barbarians tribes in the Lower-Middle Danube frontier
zones,
A.D. 332-610
by
Alexander Sarantis
[...]
Eastern Roman strategic aims
Eastern
Roman emperors and their governments wanted to encourage and
maintain the security of the Danube frontier and peaceful relations
with barbarian groups beyond it. A politically
divided
barbarian world was preferable, consisting of numerous political
groups, not powerful enough to seriously threaten the empire, and
which could be played off against one another.
When
these conditions prevailed, the Eastern Roman government found it
easier to exploit barbarian tribes for their manpower resources;
recruiting soldiers for its armies and farmers to settle in the
Balkan provinces.
The
Eastern Roman emperors achieved this balance of power along the
Lower Danube frontier for the major part of Late Antiquity. Between
AD 284 and 332, the Tetrarchs’ and Constantine’s
energetic management of the Lower and Middle Danube frontiers
ensured that no major threats emerged.
The
peace of AD 332 with the Tervingi provided the foundation for over
three decades of peace along the Lower Danube before Valens’
campaigns against this group in the 360s. Aggressive military
campaigns against Sarmatian and Quadi tribes across the Middle
Danube in the 350s and 370s kept this section of the frontier
largely passive until the late fourth century. [...]
Eastern Roman
‘barbarian management strategies’
To
prevent the two crisis situations just discussed from occurring, the
Eastern Roman govern-ments needed to adopt a variety of
time-hono-ured diplomatic and military policies. Tese ensured that
barbarian groups remained divided but stable and involved a
balancing act between giving them what they wanted and concurrent-ly
intimidating them and limiting their power. Concessions included
manpower in the form of returned prisoners or refugees, trading
privileges, annual subsidies and military support against rival
groups. In addition, Roman em-perors could confirm Barbarians
in their occupation of specific territories, even if these
were outside the empire.
These
benefits were enjoyed by the Tervingi Goths in Wallachia
following their treaty with the emperor Constantine I in AD 332.
This seems to have included trading rights along the Lower Danube
and some sort of regular payment. In re-urn, these Goths served
periodically in Roman armies and defended the Lower Danube against
barbarian groups from further afield. [...] There is less that
can be said about the fourth century because the empire enjoyed
peace in the East from AD 298 to 332, and along the Lower Danube
from AD 332 to 367, during which wars were fought against the
Sassanian empire of Shapur II (especially in AD 337–351 and
359–363).
Constantius
II’s Middle Danube campaign of AD 358 later coincided with
peace on the eastern frontier. [...]
https://www.academia.edu/33845028/East_Roman_management_of_barbarians_tribes_in_the_Lower-Middle_Danube_frontier_zones_A.D._332-610?swp=rr-rw-wc-32358309
[Wikipedia]
According to Jordanes, who does not mention the Tervingi, the Gothic
ruler Ariaric was forced to sign a treaty with Constantine the Great
in 332 after his son Constantine II decisively defeated the Goths.
After that time, substantial numbers of valuable Roman gold
medallions was distributed in Gothic territories from Netherlands to
Ukraine, and have been discovered by archaeologists. They
demonstrate the Roman influence among the Goths.
Roman coins discovered in East
Java, Indonesia.
Studying
extra regional trade networks in Antiquity can be considered a
relatively popular field of research, but the intensity and patterns
of such complex system still leave lot of questions, particularly in
case of Rome’s Far Eastern trade. There is still a trend to
visualize a kind of globalized commercial activity between the
Imperium and communities on the eastern edge of the Silk Road(s).
However the facts provide us a more comprehensive picture. Due to
the meticulous work of international joint research projects working
in East and Southeast Asia followed by a raised interest in
collecting ancient objects among local people, increasing number of
Roman objects have been discovered in the region. These finds prove
the significance of mediator cultures in transferring Roman
artifacts beyond India – with their own imprints on forming
evaluation/acceptance of these non-local goods by the receiving
culture.
At
the same time, one must keep in mind that Roman objects discovered
in East and Southeast Asia have different backgrounds, and most
cases – due to extensive looting – are lacking
archaeologically secure context. Therefore, a careful approach
towards these finds is essential along with re-evaluation of earlier
discoveries. Detailed and objective report of Roman artifacts newly
discovered in East and Southeast Asia – whatever their
background may be – is a first step towards a more elaborative
study.
In
the following pages, fourteen Roman and Byzantine coins along with
eleven Chinese coins found in different locations in East Java will
be studied.
https://www.academia.edu/38753453/
Ariaric also known as
Ariacus
was
a 4th-century Thervingian Gothic pagan ruler (reiks, kindins).] He
was succeeded by Geberic. In 328, Constantine the Great constructed
a bridge across the Danube and built fortifications in the territory
of Oltenia and Wallachia. This caused a migration of the Thervingi
and Taifali to the west into Tisza Sarmatian controlled areas. The
Sarmatians joined forces with Constantine, who appointed his son
Constantine II to campaign against the Goths in late winter 332,
reportedly resulting in the deaths of approximately one hundred
thousand people due to the weather and lack of food. Ariaric was
forced to sign a treaty or foedus with Constantine in 332. Yet some
scholars dispute that this treaty was a foedus, but more like an act
of submission.
Ariaric's
son Aoric was raised in Constantinople, where a statue was erected
in his memory. Patrick J. Geary suggested that under Ariaric
branches of the western Goths became increasingly integrated into
the Roman empire and systems, providing troops for military
campaigns against the Sassanid Empire. [from Wikipedia]
The Taifals or
Tayfals (Latin: Taifali, Taifalae or Theifali)
were
a people group of Germanic or Sarmatian origin, first documented
north of the lower Danube in the mid third century AD. They
experienced an unsettled and fragmented history, for the most part
in association with various Gothic peoples, and alternately fighting
against or for the Romans. In the late fourth century some Taifali
were settled within the Roman Empire, notably in western Gaul in the
modern province of Poitou. They subsequently supplied mounted units
to the Roman army and continued to be a significant source of
cavalry for early Merovingian armies. By the sixth century their
region of western Gaul had acquired a distinct identity as Thifalia.
One
of the earliest mentions of the Taifals puts them in the following
of the Gothic king Cniva when he campaigned in Dacia and Moesia in
250 and the years following. They are sometimes classified as a
Germanic tribe closely related to the Goths, although some believe
they were related to the (non-Germanic) Sarmatians with whom they
might have emigrated from the Pontic–Caspian steppe.
In
the late third century they settled on the Danube on both sides of
the Carpathians, dividing the territory with the Goths, who
maintained political authority over all of it. In Spring 291 they
formed a special alliance with the Gothic Thervingi, forming a
tribal confederation from this date until 376, and fought the
Vandals and Gepids: Tervingi, pars alia Gothorum, adiuncta manu
Taifalorum, adversum Vandalos Gipedesque concurrunt. Along with the
Victufali, the Taifals and Thervingi were the tribes mentioned as
having possessed the former Roman province of Dacia by 350 "at
the very latest".
Archaeological
evidence suggests that the Gepids were contesting Transylvania, the
region around the Someş River, with the Thervingi and Taifals.
The Taifals were subsequently made foederati of the Romans, from
whom they obtained the right to settle in Oltenia. They were at that
time independent of the Goths.
In
328 Constantine the Great conquered Oltenia and the Taifals,
probably taking this opportunity to resettle a large number in
Phrygia, in the diocese of Nicholas of Myra. In 332 he sent his son
Constantine II to attack the Thervingi, who were routed. According
to Zosimus (ii.31.3), a 500-man Taifal cavalry regiment engaged the
Romans in a "running fight", and there is no evidence that
this campaign was a failure. Nonetheless, the Taifals largely fell
into the hands of the Romans at this time.
Around
336 they revolted against Constantine and were put down by the
generals Herpylion, Virius Nepotianus, and Ursus. By 358 the Taifals
were independent foederati of Rome and Oltenia lay outside Roman
control. They launched campaigns as allies of the Romans from their
own Oltenic bases, against the Limigantes (358 and 359) and the
Sarmatians (358). However, campaigns against the Thervingi by the
emperor Valens in 367 and 368 were inhibited by the independence of
Oltenia. It is possible, however, that the Taifals at this time were
still fighting alongside the Goths. In 365 the emperor ordered the
construction of defensive towers in Dacia Ripensis, but whether this
was Oltenia is unclear. Archaeological evidence evidences no sedes
Taifalorum (Taifal settlements) east of the Olt River.
https://archive.org/stream/letresordeclairv00lalo/letresordeclairv00lalo_djvu.txt
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bec_0373-6237_1902_num_63_1_448120#
http://www.persee.fr/doc/ccmed_0007-9731_2003_num_46_184_2865
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bulmo_0007-473x_1973_num_131_2_5229
TABLE
CHRONOLOGIQUE DES TEXTES ET DOCUMENTS ÉDITÉS DANS LES
TOMES 123 Á 147 DE LA BIBLIOTHEQUE DE L'ÉCOLE DES
CHARTES
28
October 312
THE POLITICS OF MEMORY AND VISUAL POLITICS:
THE
POLITICS OF MEMORY
COMPARING
THE SELF-REPRESENTATIONS OF CONSTANTINE AND AUGUSTUS
Mariana
Bodnaruk
Augustus
primus primus est huius auctor imperii,
et
in eius nomen omnes velut quadam adoptione
aut
iure hereditario succedimus.
The
first Augustus was the first founder of
this
empire, and to his name we all succeed,
either
by some form of adoption or by
hereditary
claim.
(Scriptores
Historiae Augustae, Alexander Severus 10.4)
I
begin with political history. To understand what happened after the
Battle of Milvian Bridge on 28 October 312 AD and how the new
political order of theempire was constituted I start with the
question: What does Constantinian artsay about imperial politics in
the aftermath of the year 312 CE? This article addresses this
question at the intersection of art, politics, and ideology,
comparing Constantine’s visual self-representation with that
of the first emperor, Augustus. The visual image Constantine created
incorporated a variegated mixture of messages that echoed
contemporary trends in the equally complex eulogistic writing.
It
all began with the Constantinian Arch in Rome. Constantine had just
overcome the army of the usurper Maxentius and captured Rome.
Maxentius died disgracefully and his head was paraded in triumphal
procession exhibited to the populace of Rome, his military forces –
the equites singulares and Praetorian Guard – were dissolved,
and his memory was obliterated. In the exultation of victory, the
time was ripe for Constantinian revenge, yet the Roman senators, the
very aristocrats who had supported Maxentius, retained their
offices. Like young Octavian, who chose to exercise the politics of
clementia towards supporters of Mark Antony after his Actian
victory, Constantine sought to maintain good relations with the most
influential members among the senatorial aristocrats. At that time
he appeared to be a glorious winner over the common enemy and as
such received the triumph traditionally granted by the senate.
What
is more, around 315 AD the emperor also received a commemorative
monument from the senate, the triumphal Arch; Constantine’s
defeat of his enemy was therefore put in the context of previous
famous imperial victories.
Having
liberated Rome from the rule of a tyrant, in terms reminiscent of
the claims of Augustus expressed in the Res Gestae three and a half
centuries earlier, Constantine evoked his ideological "father",
the founder of the empire Octavian, the future Augustus, had
received a triumphal arch from the senate in the Roman Forum about
29 BCE, after the naval victory over Mark Antony and Cleopatra. The
Roman revolution of Augustus was paralleled in the Roman revolution
of Constantine: An empire at peace with itself was founded on the
forgetting of civil conflict.
Constantine
reigned longer then any of the emperors had since the forty-five
years of Augustus, who had created the imperial system three
centuries earlier. For twenty-three of the thirty years of his
reign, Constantine ruled as a Christian, the first ever to sit in
Augustus’ place. Resembling the first Roman emperor,
Constantine launched an enormous urban building program and spread
imperial images all over the empire.
Evoking
a comparative perspective, Constantinian art can be assessed on a
large scale in its relation to earlier imperial imagery, apart from
specifically Christian affiliations. However, approaching
Constantinian visual politics, the samples of approximately fifty
surviving sculptural portraits of Constantine pose limitations when
contrasted to the samples of two hundred and twelve preserved
portraits of Augustus.
Eusebius
and the Theology of Augustus
Focusing
on the structural correspondence between the realm of the divine and
the empire, the domain of politics – following the original
Schmittian construct of political theology – Erik Peterson has
dealt with an ancient version of political theology that consisted
of an ideological correlation of political structure and religious
belief system: One God and one emperor on earth. In the Christian
version after the conversion of Constantine, this construct served
the same purpose as previous polytheist theories on kingship had; it
legitimated a monarchical government by authorizing the belief that
a single divine power is the ultimate source of political rule. It
demonstrated a particular affinity for theologies that emphasized
the subordinate character of the Logos (Word) to God the Father.
With
Melito of Sardis and Origen, a link between the establishment of the
Augustan Pax Romana and the birth of Christ became a topos. With
Eusebius, who historicized and politicized Origen’s ideas, one
encounters firstly a typological parallel connecting Augustus with
Constantine (not really conveyable by quotation), the moment of
imperial foundation with its ultimate accomplishment through which
both Augustus and Christ were finally manifested in the person of
the first Christian emperor, Constantine. For Eusebius, in
principle, monotheism – the metaphysical corollary of the
Roman Empire – began with Augustus, but had become reality in
the present under Constantine. When Constantine defeated Licinius,
Augustan political order was reestablished and at the same time the
divine monarchy was secured. Eusebius asserts that Augustus
inaugurated monotheism by triumphing over the polyarchy, the cause
of endless wars, and Constantine only fulfilled what Augustus had
begun. The political idea that the Roman Empire did not lose its
metaphysical character when it shifted from polytheism to
monotheism, because monotheism already potentially existed with
Augustus, was linked with the rhetorical-political idea that
Augustus was aforeshadowing of Constantine.
Peterson
has emphasized the "exegetical tact" – a "striking
lack" of which he found in Eusebius – that kept all other
ecclesiastical writers from binding the empire so closely to God’s
intentions that it would appear to be less an instrument and more
the object of divine blessing for its own sake. At stake in this
open political struggle was that, if monotheism, the concept of the
divine monarchy in the sense in which Eusebius had formulated it,
was theologically untenable, then so too was the continuity of the
Roman Empire, and Constantine could no longer be recognized as the
fulfiller of what had begun in principle with Augustus, and so the
unity of the empire itself was threatened.
Actium
and the Milvian Bridge as Sites of Civil War
Constantine’s
commemoration of the victory over his political rival referred to
the first and paradigmatic one in the imperial context, evoking the
Augustan victory over Mark Antony that constituted a precedent for
Constantine. Like Maxentius, Mark Antony suffered sanctions against
his memory soon after his suicide in Egypt; before victorious
Octavian returned to Rome, the senate had ordered the erasure of
Antony’s name along with the names of all his ancestors. This
severe action did not meet with Octavian’s approval, however.
Exercising clementia Caesaris, both Octavian and Constantine forgave
political opponents their previous loyalties to the losing side. By
the very proclamation of clemency and amnesty they strove to forget,
officially and institutionally, that there were two parties and the
winners themselves solicited the forgetting by making equal both
those who were on their side and those – no longer dangerous –
who were not.
Ordered
by the senate, born of a negative sentiment of repentance after
Maxentius’ defeat, the Arch of Constantine did not glorify a
splendid foreign victory, but a civil war between Roman armies,
radically different from most, if not all, of its precursors. Hence,
the only related monument was Octavian’s commemorative series
of Actian arches, and, in particular, the Arch in the Forum Romanum
that mirrored the Augustan politics of memory and forgetting. One of
the monuments honoring Actium, which Octavian dedicated to Neptune
and Mars in Nikopolis with a celebratory inscription and
ornamentation in the form of spoils of war – the prows and
warship rams of Antony’s fleet – was erected in 29 BCE
near the very site of the battle. Another one was the Actian arch in
the Roman Forum recorded on the coin reverses of 29–27 BCE.
What
unites early Augustan and Constantinian monuments is the idea of
inception; through momentous victories both cemented, first and
foremost, their positions as rulers, and, at the same time, the
conquest was presented to the populace of Rome as one over a despot
(Antony), a foreign queen (Cleopatra), and a tyrant (Maxentius).
This version of negation also concerns the positive content of
memory in relation to a military victory. In other words, the
triumphant one hesitates between not – or never –
evoking an enemy who must be forgottenand exploiting a procedure for
commemorating his own military achievement. Yet he could emphasize
the negation as such. Negation resulted in an official decree of
forgetting; the case of Mark Antony after his defeat in 31 BCE was
the first example of the "sanctions against memory," thus,
as with the striking resurrection of the practice in the early
fourth century, Maxentius became one of the first victims of the
damnatio memoriae decree.
To
Remember and Forget in Rome: A Founding Forgetting
A
panegyrist praises Constantine by referring to Virgil’s Fourth
Eclogue, implicitly evoking the Pax Augusta. The laudatory
inscription on the Arch of Constantine thanks the emperor for having
saved the state from a tyrant and his faction in a way that linked a
number of Augustus’ accomplishments: ending civil wars,
restoring peace, and returning power to the senate and the Roman
people. The Constantinian inscription – reminiscent of
Augustus’ Res Gestae – claims to have taken revenge over
the tyrant, stopped the factio, and saved the city. Alluding to the
founder of the Augustan Peace, the inscription characterizes
Constantine’s accomplishments by calling him liberator urbis
and fundator quietis. It is not surprising that the Christian
Lactantius eulogized Constantine for his unification of the empire,
the "illegitimate" division of which during the period of
tetrarchy is considered to be against God’s will.
It
was only later that Eusebius fully adopted the traditional language
of the panegyrists and the ideas that stemmed from the rhetoric.
Symptomatically – appearing as a "curious accident"
entirely in a Sherlock Holmesian sense of the term – there is
but a single explicit literary parallel to the growing resemblance
of Constantine to Augustus over time, which, on the contrary, is
wholly visible in representational art.
In
turn, Maxentius’ massive architectural program aiming to
restore Rome to her former glory as the capital of the empire was
appropriated by Constantine, who in fact did not launch an
architectural damnatio memoriae, destruction of the buildings of his
ill-fated predecessor. After Augustus’ demise, the buildings
of the first emperor became emblematic of the Golden Age he had
inaugurated, and restoring or rebuilding one of them constituted a
visible act of alignment with his memory: Maxentius thus
deliberately publicized his affiliation to the "founder of the
city," Augustus, the new Romulus-Quirinus. The resonant message
of Maxentius’ building campaign – that Rome had been
saved and reborn – was ideologically significant enough to
ensure Constantine’s unreserved expropriation of it. A quick
walk through Maxentian Rome would have included his major building
projects (appropriated by Constantine together with the disfigured
andre-carved portraits of his defeated enemy) – the basilica,
the circus complex on the Via Appia, the imperial baths on the
Quirinal. In effect, in an intricate play of metaphors, Constantine,
the expander of the city, reappeared as a new Augustus, the pater
urbis of Rome.
The
Revenue of Remembering: The Evocative Power of spolia
Once
again, forgetting was the foundation of the Pax Constantiniana;
traces of the internal war were quickly erased and replaced
metaphorically. While the re-use of sculpture and architectural
elements formerly belonging to the defeated rival was triumphant in
character (as such related to the spoils of victory and thus
reminders of the conflict), the treatment of spolia in the
Constantinian politics of memory appears revivalist. Whether in
opposition or affinity, Constantine bound himself with the symbolic
capital of its owners through spolia. It was not by chance that in a
series of alignments and juxtapositions he associated himself with
the victorious emperors of the second century – expanders of
the empire – appropriating Trajanic, Hadrianic, and Aurelianic
reliefs. Moreover, the civil war panels of the Constantinian
monument – the only representation of internal stasis in
imperial art – included representations of great victories
over barbarians, and metaphorically equated abominable domestic
conflict with the prestigious foreign campaigns of the Roman army in
a single narrative.
Jaś
Elsner has suggested a structural parallel between the aesthetics of
spoliation, e.g., Constantine’s Arch, and the cult of
Christian relics exemplified in his Constantinopolitan mausoleum.
The mausoleum rotunda bears are semblance to mausoleums of the age
of the tetrarchy, themselves referring to an Augustan precedent.
Although, Eusebius explains, Constantine had consecrated the
building to the Saviour’s apostles, he himself intended to be
buried there, to place his tomb in the midst of the "cenothaphs"
of the twelve apostles so that his soul would benefit from the
prayers that would be addressed to them.
Thus,
the late antique practice of using spolia structurally paralleled
(if it was not genealogically related to) the use of polytheist
trophies and, later, Christian relics like those kept in the
celebrated statue and its pedestal in the Forum Constantini, the
monument that later acquired symbolic status far above that of any
other non-Christian monument in Constantinople. One of the famous
spolia the Palladion, an ancient guardian statue of the armed Pallas
Athena, associated first with Troy and its fortunes and later with
Rome and its destiny, is reported to have stood under the porphyry
column Constantine brought from Rome. Similarly, the largest
collection of heroic statuary appropriated for Constantinople,
around three dozen in all, placed in the Baths of Zeuxippos, were
linked to the Trojan epic. The vision of Roman origins articulated
by Virgil in the Augustan age still retained its currency in the
Constantinian era.
If,
looking for the possible location of his new city, as is clear from
fifth-century commentaries on the foundation written by Zosimos and
Sozomen, Constantine had chosen Ilion, there could be little doubt
that the empire would have eventually reenacted its primary Augustan
model. The first Roman emperor was known for his foundation of a new
Ilium city on the alleged site of Troy. Constantine’s
foundation thereafter, itself an appeal to Augustus, would have been
grounded in the reality of its mythical origin.
An
Embarrassing Triumph: Augustus and Constantine as triumphatores
From
the day of Constantine’s entry into Rome in triumph on 29
October 312 CE, one parallel with Augustan times seems indisputable.
His battle resembled the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE in two
fundamental respects. As Timothy Barneshas phrased it, first, both
battles started with an awareness of a foregone result, for
Constantine could have been defeated by Maxentius no more then
Octavian could have been crushed by Mark Antony, and, second, both
conflicts provided a foundation myth for the victor to transform the
Roman state and its ideology. Both succeeded in a discursive
alteration of their internal enemy into a foreign one. Augustus
himself and the Augustan poets intentionally portrayed the campaign
of Actium as a war waged by a united Italy against an Egyptian queen
and her Oriental allies together with the Roman renegade, Mark
Antony, reinforcing it with cultural opposition by presenting the
conflict between Octavian and his adversaries a match between "our
Roman Jupiter" and "barking Anubis."
Constantine
denied that his defeated rival was the son of the legitimate
tetrarch Maximian and forced Maximian’s widow to confess in
public that she had conceived Maxentius in adultery with a Syrian.
Remarkably similar to Augustus’ transformation of Mark Antony
into the ideological figure of an eastern tyrant, Constantine, in
the guise of a legitimate defender of the Roman people, presented
Maxentius as a tyrannus.
When
Constantine entered Rome, his arrival was conducted and perceived as
a triumph, even if in the form of urban adventus. Roman emperors
never celebrated triumphs over foes in a civil war; in August 29 BCE
Octavian held triumphs on three successive days which officially
commemorated his victories over the Dalmatae, the defeat of
Cleopatra, and the conquest of Egypt. Although Roman forces marched
into the city in times of civil war, they had never been forced to
besiege the sacred Urbs Roma. His seizure of Rome was simultaneous
with the construction of the enemy within the imaginary discourse.
The degree to which art and ceremonies were used by both sides to
foster this discourse in the popular imagination is striking.
Octavian’s
naval victory was commemorated by founding the city of Nikopolis in
Epiros, beautified with a triumphal arch. Similarly, in 324 CE,
Constantine founded Constantinople in commemoration of his victory
over Licinius. The great Constantinian project of founding the city,
viewed from the perspective of a visual strategy that developed over
three decades, paralleled the Augustan exploitation of imagery.
Along
with a collection of statuary, Constantine brought a bronze statue
of the Ass and Keeper from Nikopolis to Constantinople, a monument
of Octavian’s victory at Actium.
Like
Augustus, Constantine was repudiating a system of power-sharing in
favor of the more traditional apparatus of the Principate, a mode of
rule defined by Augustus himself. One of the monuments Constantine
imported from Rome was an imperial portrait of Emperor Augustus
himself, which would have invited advantageous comparison. The
statue of Augustus would even have pushed the equation back in time
to imply similarity not only between Constantine and Augustus as
rulers, but also between the Principate and the Constantinian
Empire.
Circus
and Palace
As
much as the triumph staged political harmony by eliminating
conflict, the ritual of circus games enacted social consent. Meeting
eye-to-eye with the populus Romanus at the circus, Augustus firmly
recognized it as an emperor’s duty to attend the games and
when unable to be present he sent his apologies (petitia venia) to
avoid offence. Like Caesar, he used to watch games from the
pulvinar, in a way constructing the shrine as an imperial box that
allowed for his divine recognition. In Constantinople it was the
kathisma where the emperor appeared in his full splendor before the
public at the races, a box reminiscent of the pulvinar, the couch of
the gods at the Circus Maximus at Rome.
The
circuses’ spina was frequently adorned with obelisks, and if
one can believe Pliny the Elder, the earliest obelisk had been
installed on the euripus of the Circus Maximus on Augustus’
orders after the annexation of Egypt following his victory at
Actium. Constantine enlarged the circus eastwards and his son
bestowed an obelisk on it to match that of Augustus, still standing
in Constantius’ times. Although it is possible that
Constantine had already planned to remove the Theban (Lateran)
obelisk before 324 CE, the obelisk would have been the most
appropriate gift on the occasion of his twentieth anniversary visit
to Rome in 326 CE. The obelisk would have been seen by the
senatorial establishment as a pagan monument in the balance to the
imperially-funded church-building program. It would therefore have
been an offering to the capital from the newly re-conquered East,
for the unique single obelisk (a major cult-object, previously the
focus of its own small temple) could stand for the empire’s
unity under a single ruler. According to Ammianus, Augustus, who
beautified Rome with other obelisks, left it untouched for religious
reasons.
Yet
Constantine, as Ammianus continues shifting his focus from Augustus,
"rightly thought that he was committing no sacrilege if he took
this marvel from one temple and consecrated it at Rome, that is to
say, in the temple of the whole world." As Ammianus points out,
it was a solar symbol, and inscriptions confirm that Augustus
dedicated his obelisks in the Circus Maximus and the Campus Martius
to Sol. Egyptian obelisks with a pyramidal tip covered in gold
glorified the sun, as the likeness of Apollo-Helios extolled
Constantine on top of the porphyry column, another immense task of
transportation from Egypt to Constantinople that he had embarked
upon. Intending to move the obelisk which Augustus had not moved,
planning to place it in proximity to the existing Augustan obelisk
of the Circus Maximus in Rome, Constantine launched a project that
surpassed the height of the monolith Augustus had acquired,
aggrandizing his sole rule enunciated after civil wars. Although he
never acquired a genuine Egyptian obelisk, Constantine adorned the
central barrier of Constantinople’s hippodrome with one built
of masonry.
The
Chronicon Paschale, the Chronicle of Malalas, and the Parastaseis
Syntomoi Chronikai describe the ceremonial procession at the
hippodrome on the occasion of the encaenia of Constantinople on 11
May 330 CE. Recalling the pompa circensis of Caesar and early
Augustan Rome, Constantine’s gilded statue with the Tyche of
his new city in its right hand and, probably, the radiate crown, was
transported on a wagon from the starting gates of the hippodrome to
a point opposite the imperial box. After that, Constantine appeared
wearing a diadem and presided over chariot races. Augustus did not
dare to follow Caesar’s precedent of displaying his own statue
in a chariot in the procession of deities, but his keen interest in
the pompa is demonstrated by Suetonius. The parading statue of the
departing Constantine suggests that he was claiming to be a presens
deus, the concept behind the ruler cult in the Greek East that had
been articulated in Rome by Augustus’ time. The panegyrist of
310 AD refers to Constantine as the praesentissimus hic deus, this
most manifest god.
The
spatial context of the hippodrome in Constantinople, remarkably
similar to every one in all the tetrarchic capitals, included an
adjacent palace directly connected to the imperial box by a
stairway, evidently in direct imitation of the Domus
Augustana/Circus Maximus complex in Rome. Malalas reports that
Constantine completed the Severan hippodrome and built a kathisma
like that in Rome for the emperor to watch races, and also built a
large palace, closely patterned on that in Rome, near hippodrome,
with a staircase leading from the palace to the kathisma. The author
emphasizes that Constantine followed the pattern of Rome twice, once
in the construction of the kathisma and once in linking it with the
palace.
Consecratio
The
ritual of consecratio, the funeral ceremony and apotheosis of
deceased emperors from Augustus in 14 AD to Constantine in 337 AD –
the mostp roblematic for Christian ideology – was a
re-enactment of the elevation of the departed to heaven and his
divinization. As rare examples of well attested imperial funerals,
the consecrationes
of
Augustus and Constantine are remarkably parallel, for the latter
partially followed a model provided by the former.
Both
emperors died outside of their residential capitals. After the death
of Constantine the ceremonial began with a military procession that
carried the mortal remains to Constantinople, where the body,
crowned and in imperial robes, was displayed in the palace. As in
the case of Augustus in 14 CE, the official deification of
Constantine, the last emperor for whom consecration coins were
struck, came immediately after the funeral, but the ceremonial was
transformed for the burial. Imperial funerals traditionally included
ritualized deification of the emperor by staging a pompa funebris,
which, for Augustus, was said to have included almost the whole
population of Rome. Eusebius portrays scenes of lamentation evoking
the iconography of the apotheosis, noting that the people and
senateof Rome dedicated an image to Constantine with him seated
above the heavenly vault, and describing a coin type chosen by
Constantius II. It had a veiled effigy of the dead emperor on the
obverse and him driving a quadriga up to heaven, from which the hand
of God emerges, on the reverse. Gilbert Dagron has stressedthat
Christianization allowed the Classical image of the imperial
consecratio to be re-employed.
Augustus’
funeral was designed by the emperor himself, who left instructions
for the senate to follow. Similarly, Constantine initiated the
building of his own mausoleum. The mausoleum-rotunda, as Cyril Mango
has discovered, resembled tetrarchic imperial mausolea. It has been
also assumed that the sarcophagus in which the remains of
Constantine’s mother, Helena, were placed had been confiscated
from the mausoleum of Maxentius, for whom it was originally made.
Constantine
was buried in a holy place of apostles, inaugurated the cult of
relics initiated by the Roman Arch with its abundant spolia. The
circular mausoleum of Augustus on the Campus Martius, the ultimate
prototype for later imperial mausolea, was one component of a
tripatrite complex that also consisted of the Ara Pacis and
Horologium, which also used Augustus’ commemorative scheme and
references to the Actian victory. Just as Augustus inaugurated the
empire with his victory in civil war, so too did Constantine, who
began the empire anew, establishing a new residential capital,
palace, and burial place. The Constantinian mausoleum paralleled the
message of the Augustan one as a dynastic monument, but also as a
foundation of a new imperial line that had succeeded the original
line of Augustus.
Sculpture:
Memory in Marble and Bronze
The
Constantinian reorganization of imperial portraiture was instituted
in consequence of the civil war against Maxentius and affiliated
with an Augustan figure. Although it lost continuity with the
tetrarchic representation, Constantine’s representation became
a battleground for the different politics of memory. Iconography
confirms that the emperor was aware of the advantages of
representing himself in Rome in the fashion of a princeps, a
soldier, but a civilian at the same time, and images of Augustus
served as a model for Constantinian portraits.
At
least one marble head has been securely identified as a portrait of
Augustus re-utilized to represent Constantine. The iconography of
this colossal head from Bolsena suggests a date for the re-carving
due to its similarity with the emperor’s figure in reliefs on
the Constantinian Arch. As soon as his quinquennalia of 311 AD a new
portrait type was defined for Constantine. David Wright has outlined
the basic iconography of the Constantinian portrait: A youthful face
with a broad forehead and prominent cheekbones that give the upper
part of his face a rectangular character. This is complemented by
strongly modeled facial muscles flanking the nose, mouth, and chin,
and by a jaw-bone that expands outward slightly at the back of the
jaw, giving a clear-cut articulation between jaw and neck. The
image, in form and certainly in meaning, was modeled on the tall,
lean-faced, and youthful-looking portraits of Augustus.
More
than a dozen surviving versions of this basic type that follows
Augustus’ iconography embody diversity in the new clean-shaven
image. One example is a colossal marble statue of Constantine that
once occupied the west apse of the Basilica of Maxentius on the
Forum Romanum, the other is a large marble head displayed in the
Palazzo Mattei in Rome. After Licinius defeat in 324 AD and the
seizure of the East, Constantine adopted the diadem and the
heavenly-gazing Alexandrian type of representation, although the
physiognomy retained an idealized youthful face with an aura of
majesty developed on the basis of the Augustan model. It only
changed into a heavier and old-age style of portraiture around 333
CE.
Coinage
as a Medium of Commemoration
After
a short period of conventional tetrarchic iconography on his first
goldcoins, coin portraits of Constantine struck as early as 306–307
AD with the title "Caesar" abandoned the military image
and defined a new one of a beardless young caesar, appropriate for
Constantine’s political expectations of accession after 306
CE. Rare gold and almost equally rare silver coins of high artisticq
uality from Trier suggest different stylistic developments. The type
established at the Trier mint during the first months of
Constantine’s reign were perpetuated – with some
interruptions late in 307 AD when he assumed the title Augustus –
for nearly three decades with only slight modifications.
With
Maxentius’ defeat in 312 CE, the mints in Rome and Ostia,
along with Ticinum (Pavia), began to strike coins for Constantine.
Maxentius at the mint of Ostia and Constantine at Ticinum had
equally experimented with thin-faced frontal heads resembling the
lean-faced Augustan style. The type was modified to introduce more
facial subtleties and became the standard Augustan portrait of
Constantine. One can assess Augustan iconography on the famous
medallion of 313 AD that featured Constantine in a double profile
portrait with Sol and on frontal coin portraits of 316 CE.
After
his final victory over Licinius, Constantine remained represented as
a young ruler. About 324 AD he adopted the diadem of Alexander and
his heaven-gazing pose with strong evocations of divine kingship for
special issues of coins. The Constantinian portrait remained the
heroic Augustan type that had been standardized a dozen years
earlier; similar coins were struck in 324–325 AD at
Thessalonica, Sirmium, and Ticinum. However, from circa 326 AD a new
type was launched into circulation that eventually prevailed in the
330s CE. This type absorbed a placid Augustan tranquility yet kept
the diadem. That Augustus was a model for Constantine (Fig. 1) is
made explicit by a series of silver medallions minted late in
Constantine’s reign (336–337 CE) carrying the legend
"AVGVSTVS" and "CAESAR" in direct imitation of
Augustan coins produced three hundred years earlier.
Conclusion
The
ideological discourse of the Constantinian empire was construed in
remarkable resemblance to the Augustan one. Both the polytheist and
Christian narratives placed the reign of Constantine in a
typological relationship with that of the founder of the empire.
Constantine appeared to re-enact the actions of his ultimate
predecessor by putting an end to civil discontent and inaugurating
peace anew, completing the work initiated by Augustus. The impulse
toward typological thought and the desire to use this mode of
interpretation that arose in the fourth century AD led Constantinian
writers to see events that showed the way to the Augustan foundation
of the empire as those that prefigured or foreshadowed political
events in the time of Constantine. While the Christian texts are
preoccupied with reconciling the Roman emperorship and salvation
history, making Constantine the first Christian emperor and the
liberating agent of divine providence through a typological link
with Augustus, under whose reign Christ deliberately chose to be
born, the polytheist panegyrics figurally interpret Constantinian
rule as a return or indeed renewal of the Golden Age, referring to
Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue.
The
visual narratives addressed the typological functions of the emperor
insofar as Constantine was portrayed as a new Augustus, as a founder
of a city and dynasty, and ultimately, as an architect of a new
empire. Constantine’s visual politics thus stood in striking
parallel to the program of Augustan classicizing iconography,
imagining a Constantinian likeness typologically. Constantine thus
adopted a youthful and handsome clean-shaven portrait image from an
Augustan model. The cohesion and integrity of the empires of
Augustus and Constantine were therefore preceded by devastating
internal strife which they subdued. All this suggests a parallel:
whereas Octavian had established order and unity by putting an end
to the dying republic, the Pax Constantiniana was constituted due to
the final disintegration of a quarrelsome tetrarchic arrangement. In
this respect, Augustus became the primary model for the iconography
in for the Constantinian image that was worked out after his victory
at the Milvian Bridge in 312 CE. Although after the decisive defeat
of the last Constantinian rival, Licinuis, in 324 CE, the
typological focus shifted to Alexander the Great, it did not replace
the Augustan iconography, now imbued with the divine attributes of
Hellenistic kingship. The media of sculpture and coinage clearly
show an increasing tendency to introduce elements from the royal
iconography into the primary Augustan visual scheme first adopted by
Constantine.
Within
the typological scheme inherent in both polytheist and Christian
textual narratives, Augustus functioned as a forerunner of
Constantine, while, at the same time, the latter is iconographically
represented in visual narratives closely modeled on Augustan
sculpted and coin portraiture that similarly celebrated the
all-mighty triumphant emperor of the unified state. Every beholder
of Constantinian imagery was thus exposed to the power of this
bewildering ideological combination of intricately connected
imperial image-making, Augustan visual allusion, and historical
reference to contemporary Roman political concerns.
See
https://www.academia.edu/40288763/_The_Politics_of_Memory_and_Visual_Politics_Comparing_the_Self_representations_of_Constantine_and_Augustus
ITINERARY
FROM BORDEAUX TO JERUSALEM (in 333)
INTRODUCTION.
The
name of the author of the 'Itinerary from Bordeaux to Jerusalem' is
unknown; he was possibly a native of Guienne, perhaps of Bordeaux
itself; and he was in all probability a Christian, for, until the
Holy Land is reached, the 'Itinerary' differs little from the bare
official tables of the 'Antonine Itinerary'. The journey was made in
333 A.D., when Flavius Valerius Dalmatius (brother of the Emperor
Constantine) and Marcus Aurelius Zenophilus were joint Consuls. The
'Itinetary' is the earliest record of a pilgrimage extant, and that
part of it which relates to the Holy Places is highly interesting
and instructive from the marked absence of those minor traditions
that collected round every sacred site during the fifth and sixth
centuries. We hear nothing, for instance, of the cross and its
adoration; of the lance; of the crown of thorns; or of other relics.
With the single exception of the Column of the Flagellation, places
made memorable by some event in sacred history are alone mentioned;
and the legendary sites noticed, such as the crypt in which Solomon
tortured the devils, and the chamber in which he wrote the Book of
Wisdom, are connected with Jewish, not Christian history, and
cluster round the Temple of the Jews, rather than round the Tomb of
Christ.
The
Pilgrim seems to have gone to the Holy Land like Origen, 'to search
after the footsteps of Jesus, and His disciples, and the prophets';
or, perhaps, in the spirit of Constantine's mother, 'to seek
knowledge of a land so worthy of veneration', and to 'render
thanksgivings with prayers' on ground hallowed hy the Saviour's
feet, in accordance with the words of the Psalmist, 'Let us worship
at the place whereon His feet have stood'. Such, at any rate, appear
to have been the guiding motives of the earliest pilgrims, who were
as much earnest seekers after knowledge as devotees. Alexander, the
first pilgrim of whom there is any record, is stated to have gone to
Palestine 'for the sake of prayer, and of obtaining knowledge of the
(holy) places by inquiry'; and even as late as 386 A.D. we find the
same view expressed more fully by Jerome, in the Epistle of Paula
and Eustochium to Marcella. 'It would be tedious now to run through
every age from the ascension of the Lord to the present day, and
enumerate the bishops, the martyrs, the men eloquent in
ecclesiastical learning, who have come to Jerusalem because they
thought that they had less religion, less knowledge, and had not, as
the phrase is, received the finishing stroke of their virtues,
unless they had adored Christ in those places whence the Gospel had
first shone forth from the Cross'. The feeling which prompted these
early pilgrims to visit the Holy Land, and especially Jerusalem, has
been happily caught by Keble, and faithfully expressed in the
beautiful words:
'There
is a spot within this sacred dale
That
felt Thee kneeling — touch'd Thy prostrate brow:
One
angel knows it. O might prayer avail
To
win that knowledge! sure such holy vow
Less
quickly from th' unstable soul would fade,
Offer'd
where CHRIST in agony was laid.'
Towards
the close of the fourth century a change took place; pilgrimages
became the fashion; and the men and women who, following the example
of Paula, flocked to Jerusalem, appear, in the spirit of St. Thomas,
to have required some visible and tangible evidence of our Lord's
Passion to confirm their faith. For such persons the necessary aids
to faith were provided in gradually increasing numbers, until, in
the sixth century, we find not only the true cross, but the crown of
thorns, the reed, the sponge, the lance, the cup used at the Last
Supper, the stone that was rolled away from the sepulchre, and other
relics of minor importance, such as the 'charger' in which John the
Baptist's head was carried.
After
leaving Bordeaux, the Pilgrim followed a road, which lay to the
south of the Garonne to Toulouse; and it is interesting to notice
that in this section of the journey the distances are given in
leagues, from which it may perhaps be inferred that the Gallic
league was still in common use in those parts of Gaul which lay
beyond the limits of the old Roman province. At Narbonne he reached
the great line of communication between Spain and Italy, and
followed it thence to the first station out of Aries, where he
turned aside, up the valley of the Rhone, to Valence, on the road
from Vienne, over the Cottian Alps, to Milan. From Milan to
Constantinople the 'Itinerary' agrees, except for a short distance,
with the route laid down in the Antonine Itinerary (pp. 127-138
Wesseling). This route passed through Padua, Laybach, Pettau, Esseg,
Belgrad, Nisch, Sophia, Philippopoli, Adrianople, and Eregli. The
difference alluded to is in the section between Burdista (Mustafa
Pasha Keupri) and Virgoli (Lule Bergas); the Pilgrim omits
Adrianople, and appears to have made an excursion northwards, from
Burdista, to visit some unknown point of interest, but the text is
in any case defective. (Note 2, p. 10.)
The
route through Asia Minor, on which Professor Ramsay has kindly
contributed a valuable memoir (App. I.), coincides generally 'with
the military road, which was commonly used by the Byzantine armies
in marching from Constantinople to Syria'. It passed through Ismid,
Angora, Kiz Hissar, and the famed Cilician Gates to Tarsus, where
'the Apostle Paul was born'; and was thence continued through Adana,
Alexandretta, and over the Beilan Pass to Antioch. From Antioch the
'Itinerary' crosses the mountains to Latakieh, and thence follows
the regular coast road through Tartús, Tripoli, Beirút,
Tyre, and Acre, to Caesarea Palaestina. (Comp. 'Ant. Itin.', pp.
147-150, Wess.) At the last-named place the Pilgrim notices 'the
bath of Cornelius', which was, perhaps, a public building given to
the city by Cornelius, who appears to have been a wealthy man; that
such gifts were occasionally made may be inferred from the case of
the synagogue which was built by the centurion at Capernaum.
Instead
of following the direct road from Caesarea Palaestina to Jerusalem,
the Pilgrim proceeded to Jezreel, and thence by Scythopolis
(Bethshean) to Neapolis (Shechem). The object of this divergence is
not explained, but it was, possibly, to complete the tour of places
connected with the history of Elijah, whose remarkable character and
whose reappearance with Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration seem
to have made such a deep impression on the minds of the early
Christians. In making this détour the Pilgrim passed within a
day's journey of Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee, and it is very
remarkable to find that a man who had made the long journey from
Bordeaux should omit all notice of, and apparently not care to
visit, places so intimately connected with our Lord's early life and
ministry. Perhaps the explanation must be sought in the fact that
men, at that time, cared more about the resurrection and all that it
implied, than they did about the localities in which Christ had
passed His life on earth; and that general interest in places like
Nazareth and Capernaum was not aroused until Constantine had
attracted attention to the Manger and the Tomb by erecting
magnificent churches at Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
At
Neapolis the Pilgrim visited Joseph's Tomb and Jacob's Well, which
appear to have occupied then the positions now assigned to them;
and, like Eusebius, he makes a distinction between Neapolis, Sichem,
and Sichar. From Neapolis he travelled along the well-known road by
Bethel, where he dwells on the incidents connected with Jacob's
vision, and the fate of the prophet who was beguiled by the false
prophet, to Jerusalem.
The
description of Jerusalem, though wanting in fulness, is of great
interest.
The
writer commences with the northern end of the eastern hill, and
then, in the most methodical manner, proceeds southwards; crosses
the valley, above Siloam, to the western hill; returns north-wards;
and finally passes out of the city by the east gate to visit the
Mount of Olives and Bethany. The narrative is clear and connected;
and it is hardly possible, for anyone who knows the ground, to read
it without feeling that the Pilgrim from Bordeaux actually saw
Constantine's buildings standing on the site now occupied by the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This is not the place to discuss the
theory respecting Constantine's churches, which was for many years
so ably advocated by the late Mr. James Fergusson; but it is quite
impossible, as pointed out in Appendix V., to maintain the farced
construction which he placed on the passage relating to them.
Jerusalem in 333 A.D. could not have differed greatly from the Aelia
of Hadrian; and it is not unlikely that in several essential
particulars, such as the direction of the main streets and the
course of a large section of the city wall, modern Jerusalem
represents the lines upon which Aelia was founded on the ruins of
the old city destroyed by Titus. The two streets, running
respectively south from the Damascus Gate, and east from the Jaffa
Gate, which divide Jerusalem into four parts, evidently follow the
lines of ancient streets; and the same may be said of the street El
Wad, and of the street leading from it to St. Stephen's Gate. If we
suppose that the Pilgrim, on leaving Sion, passed along the street
east of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre towards the Damascus Gate,
his narrative becomes quite clear.
The
reasons for supposing that the Pool of Bethesda was situated near
the north-west angle of the Haram area, and that it is now
represented by the 'souterrains' connected with the Convent of the
Sisters of Sion, are given in Appendix III; and some notes on the
site assigned to Sion in the fourth century will be found in
Appendix IV. The absence of any allusion in the narrative to what
may be called the accessories of the Passion, excepting the Column
of the Flagellation, has already been noticed (p. iii.); and
attention may further be drawn to the small number of holy places
connected with New Testament history which are mentioned. The list
includes Bethesda; the pinnacle of the Temple with its 'great
corner-stone', rejected of the builders; Siloam; the house of
Caiaphas with the Column of the Flagellation; the Praetorium of
Pilate; the place of the Crucifixion; and the Tomb; and it omits
places such as the Coenaculum; the scene of St. Stephen's martyrdom;
and the birthplace of the Virgin, which afterwards became widely
celebrated. Beyond the limits of the city, to the east, the Pilgrim
mentions the place of the betrayal (Gethsemane); the palm-tree from
which branches were taken to spread in the way of Jesus (Matt. xxi.
8); the Mount of Olives on which Christ taught His disciples; the
scene of the Transfiguration; and the Tomb of Lazarus at Bethany;
but he makes no allusion to the Tomb of the Virgin, or to the
connection of the Mount of Olives with the Ascension.
From
Jerusalem the Pilgrim made two excursions; one to Jericho, the Dead
Sea, and the spot where the Lord was baptized in Jordan; the other
to Bethlehem, where Constantine's basilica had already been erected,
and Hebron. He then proceeded by Nicopolis, Lydda, and Antipatris,
to Caesarea Palaestina. At Caesarea there is a break in the
'Itinerary', which is taken up again at Heraclea (Eregli) and we are
left in doubt whether the Pilgrim retraced his steps through Asia
Minor, or went by sea to Constantinople. The home journey from
Heraclea calls for no remark; it was made through the provinces of
Rhodope, Macedonia, and Epirus to Aulon (Avlona) on the Adriatic;
thence by water to Otranto, and afterwards through Brindisi, Bari,
Capua, Rome, Trevi, Rimini, Bologna, Parma, and Piacenza, to Milan.
At Milan, where the homeward route joins that which had been
described on the outward journey, the 'Itinerary' ends.
The
known MSS. of the 'Itinerary' are: one of the eighth century in the
library at Verona, distinguished as V.; one of the ninth century in
the library at St. Gallen; and one of the tenth century in the
National Library at Paris, distinguished as P. The earliest printed
edition was published in 1589, and there have been eleven subsequent
editions; the best critical edition of the tejft is that published,
with notes in German, by Dr. Tobler in 'Palaestinse Descriptiones,
ex saec. iv., v., et vi'. It has not been considered advisable to
add critical notes, in the English edition, to those portions of the
'Itinerary' which refer to countries beyond the limits of the Holy
Land; but the names of the 'stations' are often corrupt, and the
forms generally used by classical writers have therefore been given
with, in some cases, the modern names. The variations in the
readings of the MSS. have been noted on each page.
[...]
= The perforated stone (lapis pertusus) is only mentioned by the
Bordeaux Pilgrim; it has been suggested that this stone may have
been the 'stone of foundation', aven sheteyah, and identical with
the sakhrah in the Dome of the Rock; but there is no clue to its
position except that it was near the statues of adrian, and
probably, therefore, within the limits of the Jewish Temple. After
th suppression of the revolt, during the reign of Hadrian, the Jews
were forbidden all approach to Jerusalem, and this prohibition
remained in force until the reign of Constantine; for Eusebius
states (Theoph.) that they were not allowed to set foot in the city,
or view it even from a distance. The law must have been revoked soon
after Constantine's accession as sole Emperor in 324 A.D., for the
Pilgrim (333 A.D.) mentions the visit of the Jews as an annual
custom. The Jews now wail every Friday at the well-known Jews'
wailing-place, outside the Temple enclosure. [...]
About
a stone's throw from thence is avault (crypta) wherein His body was
laid, and rose again on the third day. There, at present, by the
command of the Emperor Constantine, has been built a basilica, that
is to say, a church of wondrous beauty, having at the side
reservoirs (exceptoria) from which water is raised, and a bath
behind in which infants are washed (baptized).
Also
as one goes from Jesusalem to the gate which is to the eastward, in
order to ascend the Mount of Olives, is the valley called that of
Josaphat. Towards the left, where are vineyards, is a stone at the
place where Judas Iscariot betrayed Christ; on the right is a
palm-tree, branches of which the children carried off and strewed in
the way when Christ came. Not far from thence, about a
stone's-throw, are two notable (monubiles) tombs of wondrous beauty;
in the one, which is a true monolith, lies Isaiah the prophet, and
in the other Hezekiah, King of the Jews.
From
thence you ascend to the Mount of Olives, where before the Passion,
the Lord taught His disciples. There by the orders of Constantine a
basilica of wondrous beauty has been built. Not far from thence is
the little hill which the Lord ascended to pray, when he took Peter
and John with Him, and Moses and Elias were beheld. A mile and a
half to the eastward is the village (villa) called Bethany. There is
a vault (crypta) in which Lazarus, whom the Lord raised, was laid.
POSITION
OF GOLGOTHA AND THE HOLY SEPULCHRE ACCORDING
TO THE BORDEAUX PILGRIM.
The
full text of the passage relating to Golgotha and the Holy Sepulchre
is as follows: - 'Inde ut eas foras murum de Sion, eunti ad
portam Neapolitanam ad partem dextram, deorsum in valle sunt
parietes, ubi domus fuit sive pretorium Pontii Pilati. Ibi Dominus
auditus est, antequam pateretur. A sinistra autem parte est
monticulus Golgotha, ubi Dominus crucifixus est. Inde quasi ad
lapidis missum est crypta, ubi corpus ejus positum fuit, et tertio
die surrexit. Ibidem modo jussu Constantini imperatoris basilica
facta est, id est, dominicum mire pulchritudinis, habens ad latus
exceptoria, unde aqua levatur, et balneum a tergo, ubi infantes
lavantur.'
Some
twenty years ago the correct interpretation of this passage, and the
exact force of the words 'foras murum', were the subject of heated
controversy. On the one hand, it was maintained that foras murum
simply expresses the act of going outside the wall; that the 'Porta
Neapolitana' was so named from its being the gate by which the road
to Neapolis left Jerusalem, and that it occupied the position of the
present Damascus Gate; and that the buildings in course of erection
by Constantine occupied the site of the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre. On the other hand, the late Mr. Fergusson contended that
the Pilgrim meant 'that, passing outwards from the Sion Gate, a
person going to the Neapolitan Gate, outside the wall, "foris
murum", has the house of Pilate down in the valley on the
right...'; and he identified the 'Porta Neapolitana' with the gate
(Golden Gate) of the New Jerusalem of Eusebius; and Constantine's
church with the Dome of the Rock. In his latest work, however, Mr.
Fergusson, whilst maintaining his identification of Constantine's
church, did not insist on the forced meaning of foras murum; and
identified the 'Porta Neapolitana' with the 'Porta Speciosa' of the
Middle Ages in the west wall of the Haram Area.
There
can be no doubt that foras murum has not the meaning attributed to
it by Mr. Fergusson, and the interpretation of Porta Neapolitana as
Gate of the New City seems also somewhat strained. It must be
remembered that the Holy Sepulchre was discovered in 325 A.D., that
the buildings of Constantine were commenced in 326 and dedicated in
335 A.D., and that the Pilgrim visited Jerusalem in 333 A.D., two
years before the buildings were finished. It is unlikely that a town
large enough to be called Neapolis had sprung up round Constantine's
unfinished churches at the time of the Pilgrim's visit; and it may
be remarked that though the group of buildings at the Sepulchre is
often called New Jerusalem in early Christian writings, in
contradistinction to the old centre of worship on Mount Moriah, it
is never once called Neapolis or the New City. It seems more natural
to suppose that, according to a very prevalent custom in all
countries, the gate derived its name from the first important town
on the road which passed out through it from the city. In this case
the town would be Neapolis, whence the Pilgrim had just arrived; and
I believe the text can only be explained by supposing the Porta
Neapolitana to have been a gate in the north wall of the city
occupying a position at, or not far from, the modern Damascus Gate.
It follows from this identification that the buildings of
Constantine, mentioned by the Pilgrim, occupied the site of the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre; and it may be remarked that the
principal points of interest in Jerusalem are described in the most
methodical manner. The Pilgrim commences with the two large pools,
and the Pool of Bethesda at the northern end of the Temple hill; he
then proceeds southwards, and, after making a complete tour through
the city, passes out by the Eastern Gate to the Valley of
Jehoshaphat and the Mount of Olives. All the places are mentioned in
their proper order, first from north to south, and then from south
to north; the sites connected with the Temple, Siloam, the house of
Caiaphas, David's palace, Golgotha and the Tomb, and the gate in the
north wall (see map, p. 58). Some difficulty exists in identifying
the ruins which the Pilgrim believed to be those of the Praetorium,
from the fact that he places them in the valley. Several writers
have supposed that he referred to the ruins of the tower Antonia at
the north-west angle of the Haram Area, where modern tradition
places the Praetorium. This place, however, lies so high that any
ruins near it could not possibly be described as lying in a valley;
and the narrative seems to demand a site not far from the western
entrance of the old Cotton Bazaar (Suk el Kattanin.) For the
different sites assigned to the Praetorium see Tobler (Topog. von
Jerusalem, 220-229); and the English edition of Antoninus's
Itinerary (note to p. 19). The view held by some recent writers is
that the Praetorium, at the date of the Crucifixion, was the palace
of Herod, near the Jaffa Gate, which was certainly occupied by
Gessius Florus, and probably also by Pontius Pilate.
https://archive.org/details/cu31924028534158/page/n11/mode/2up
AGATHANGELOS
(Greek
for "messenger of good news"), the supposed author of a
History of the Armenians, which describes the conversion of King
Trdat of Armenia to Christianity at the beginning of the 4th
century. The Armenian version (Aa) of this History dates from the
second half of the 5th century. The first mention of a history by
Agathangelos in other Armenian sources is found in Lazar of P’arp
(ca. 500). A Greek version of Aa (Ag) was made soon after the
Armenian received its present form. On Ag depend an Arabic version
and numerous secondary versions in Greek, Latin, and Ethiopic.
In
addition to the "A" recension of versions, which all
derive from the known Armenian text, there is a less homogenous "V"
cycle derived from a lost Armenian text which has left no direct
trace in the later Armenian tradition. To the "V" cycle
belong two Greek, two Arabic, and a Karshuni version.
In
the prologue to Aa, Agathangelos introduces himself as an eyewitness
of the events he describes and claims to be writing at the express
request of King Trdat. But the History received its present form
well after the invention of the Armenian script (ca. 400). It is a
compilation of various traditions welded into a none too coherent
whole.
The
main divisions are the following:
-
war between Armenia and Persia after Ardašīr I’s
revolution;
-
the restoration of Trdat to the Armenian throne with Roman help and
the imprisonment of Gregory;
-
the martyrdom at Valarshapat of nuns supposedly fleeing from
Diocletian;
-
the release of Gregory and the conversion of king and court; the
destruction of pagan temples and the establishment in Armenia of a
regular Christian clergy and hierarchy.
After
the prologue, one manuscript of the Ag version (Florence,
Laurentianus, Plut. VII cod. gr. 25; 12th cent.) inserts the story
of Ardašīr’s revolt against the Arsacid Artabanus
V. It is derived from a lost Armenian version of the Pahlavi
romance, Kārnāmag ī Ardaxšīr ī
Pāpakān, and does not go back to the time of the
translation of Ag. There is no suggestion in Armenian tradition that
this episode was ever associated with the Armenian Agathangelos. The
Armenian History proper begins with an account of the wars between
Khosrov, king of Armenia, and the Persians after the fall of the
Parthian Arsacid dynasty. Khosrov attempted to avenge the Parthians;
for the Armenian Arsacids had second rank in the Parthian kingdom
(Aa 18). He organized a coalition of peoples from the Caucasus and
the "Huns;" but after ten years of war he was murdered by
a renegade Parthian noble, Anak, at Ardašīr’s
instigation. Armenia was then made into a Persian province,
Khosrov’s son Trdat having fled to the Roman empire. Trdat was
later restored to Armenia by an unnamed emperor (Diocletian in later
Armenian tradition). Agathangelos has thus condensed the political
events of some sixty or more years into the life of Trdat from
childhood to adulthood. When Trdat was restored he was accompanied
to Armenia by Gregory, the unrecognized son of the regicide Anak; he
had been brought up as a Christian in Caesarea.
Having
refused to sacrifice to Anahit (Mid. Pers. Anāhīd), he was
tortured and imprisoned for thirteen (or fifteen) years. Meanwhile a
group of nuns from Rome supposedly take refuge from Diocletian in
Armenia, but are martyred at Trdat’s capital, Vał?arshapat.
In retribution Trdat is turned into the form of a boar, but is cured
when Gregory is brought alive out of prison. The rest of the History
describes:
-
the conversion of the Armenian court;
-
the burial of the martyrs at sites revealed to Gregory in a vision;
the destruction of pagan temples;
-
Gregory’s consecration as bishop for Armenia in Caesarea (an
historical event, probably occurring in 314);
-
the building of churches and missionary work throughout Armenia;
-
the visit of Trdat and Gregory to the newly converted Constantine;
and
the attendance of Gregory’s son and successor Aristakes at the
council of Nicaea in 325.
The
History of Agathangelos is not of great value as a historical
document. Authentic reminiscences of the bishop Gregory, whose
episcopal see was at Ashtishat in western Armenia, have been
overlaid with elaborate inventions based on biblical and
hagiographical motifs. The missionary work of Gregory in Armenia has
been based almost verbatim on the life of Mashtotsʾ (inventor
of the Armenian alphabet) written by the latter’s pupil Koriun
soon after 440. The association of Gregory with the cathedral at
Vał?arshapat dates from after the division of Armenia in 387
into Roman and Iranian spheres of influence, when the patriarchs
moved to eastern Armenia. Trdat and Gregory’s visit to
Constantine is legendary, but the signature of Aristakes does appear
on the lists of bishops at Nicaea (see H. Gelzer, Patrum Nicaenorum
Nomina, Leipzig, 1898).
The
pagan deities and their cult sites mentioned by Agathangelos have
attracted attention, but little reliable information can be gleaned
from this hagiographical work. Indeed, the description of Anahit’s
cult at Erez (Aa 48-49) bears no relation to the account in Strabo
(11.14.16) but is based on a combination of passages from the Books
of Maccabees unrelated to Anahit. She is described by Agathangelos
as the special protectress of the Armenian people, source of life
and fertility, and as the "golden mother" or "golden-born
goddess" from the wealth of her sanctuaries. At Ashtishat
Gregory’s first church was built on the site of a "trinity"
of cults: Anahit, Aramazd (Mid. Pers. Ohrmazd, father of all the
gods, creator of heaven and earth), and Vahagn (Mid. Pers. Wahrām),
called vishapakʾał ("who handles dragons").
Other deities mentioned by Agathangelos are Asṭłik
("little star," spouse of Vahagn), Tir (called
"interpreter of dreams"), Name (Nanaia), Barshamin, and
Mihr.
Agathangelos
is also credited with a list of early Armenian kings supposedly
culled from Trdat’s archives and included in the so-called
"Primary History". This is an account of the early
mythical Armenian heroes, the settlement of Armenia, and the
establishment of the Armenian Arsacid dynasty. It is of unknown
authorship and date, and was later incorporated as the first chapter
into the seventh century History of Heraclius attributed to Sebeos.
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/agathangelos
and
for the following text
http://www.vehi.net/istoriya/armenia/agathangelos/en/AGATHANGELOS.html
AGATHANGELOS History of St.
Gregory and the Conversion of Armenia
Introduction
Though
we cannot date Agathangelos' History precisely, we know that it was
written earlier than the tenth century, and most likely did not
receive its final form before the year 450. There are several
versions of the History, and there is also at least one other
Armenian account of Saint Gregory's life which differs considerably
from Agathangelos' in the facts and details its presents.
The
name "Agathangelos" is probably fictional, even though the
writer introduces himself in the Prologue as a man from the great
city of Rome who is well versed in literary skills and knows several
languages. The Prologue also tells us that Agathangelos was an
eyewitness to the events he describes. It is unlikely that this is
true, especially because some of the words he uses are taken
directly from the life of Mesrob Mashdotz written by that great
monk's student, Koriun (about which you can read in the first volume
of this series).
What,
then, is this History? It is a piece of hagiography (a biography of
a saint, written usually with affection and admiration rather than
impartial judgment) which contains many of the traditional
characteristics of that genre. It is customary for a hagiographer to
say he witnessed the events he writes about, for example. It is also
typical for the writer to describe the saints' tortures at the hands
of pagans in great detail, as Agathangelos does here. The long
public prayers which Gregory recites as he is being tortured, and
his seeming imperviousness to the pain being inflicted on him, are
typical of the descriptions in many lives of saints. Another thing
that often appears, as it does here, is a "text" of an
anti-Christian edict that a pagan king makes when the Christians
threaten his price and power.
If
so much of the History, including its writer's name, is fictitious,
how can we accept it as a piece of history? What does it offer to
the modern reader? In fact it offers a very great deal. Agathangelos
does give us a history of Gregory's life and times; the people and
events he writes about really existed and had a great impact on the
life of the Christian Church and the Armenian people.
But
we cannot look at this History as merely an impartial recording of
events, for it was not written to be that. Agathangelos has produced
an account which is meant to describe Christian faith and its
powerful effects, and to inspire those who read it to greater faith.
We can see this in many of the History's characteristics. First, the
biblical references and similes are innumerable. The prologue uses
the nautical imagery so popular in Agathangelos' time, and ties it
directly to the Bible's story of the search for the pearl of great
price. The long prayers of Gregory and of Hripsime are filled with
Biblical phrases and references of those who preceded them in
suffering and enduring for the Lord.
Even
when Agathangelos describes well-known events, he borrows from the
Bible. Diocletian's persecution of the Church is talked about
completely in Bible images, with no reference to any actual events.
Gregory is nourished in the terrible pit as Elijah was; Drtad's
bestial transformation recalls that of Nebuchadnezzar. There are
also countless references to liturgical and patristic writings, and
it is unfortunate that we modern readers miss so many of these.
Agathangelos presumed on the part of his readers an intimate
familiarity with the Scriptures, Liturgy, and spiritual writings
that most of us today simply do not possess.
Agathangelos
had a purpose in mind as he wrote about Gregory. That purpose is
reflected in some of the differences in emphasis between
Agathangelos' work about the saint and the work of others. For
example, Movses Khorenatsi gives us much more detail about Gregory's
origins, and tries to tie him to the first enlightener, Thaddeus. In
general, he gives more detail about all aspects of Gregory's life
than Agathangelos does. But Agathangelos is not interested in
establishing an apostolic tie for Gregory, or presenting his life in
detail. His purpose is mainly to enhance Gregory's role as the first
bishop, first church builder, and first establisher of a hierarchy
in the Armenian Church. He wants to show the importance of the
hierarchical structure of the Church, and emphasize the authority of
the patriarch's position, and this he does by tying both to the
great saint so highly venerated in the Church.
Central
to this effort is Agathangelos' description of Gregory's vision of
the burial place of the martyrs. Gregory is shown a golden base
where the cathedral at Vagharshapat (later Etchmiadzin) is to be
built. Thus Agathangelos establishes a divine foundation for the
cathedral and for the church leaders who will reside there so
again, he makes a case for the "rightness" of the
hierarchs and the hierarchical structure of the Church.
The
History is, as we have said, hagiographical. To some people this
means that its value is diminished because of it is invented, some
facts are embroidered, and the writer is consciously trying to make
his subject "look good". In many modern dictionaries of
saints' lives, you will see events dismissed impatiently as "merely
legendary" or "invented by a pious biographer". But
we must remember that historical writing is always interpretive.
Nobody can write about things that happened and not assign some
meaning to them. And the truth is that the Christian saints and
martyrs did stand up against the most powerful rulers the earth had
ever known, so powerful that they were traditionally considered to
be divine. The truth is that saints changed the world in ways that
nobody else has ever done, and that they are known throughout the
world despite the absence of "advanced" communications
equipment in their time. They were persecuted by hard-headed kings;
they did change history; they did bring whole nations to Christ.
Agathangelos
wrote as those of his day wrote. It is not the way we write today,
and perhaps we can grumble that he did not "stick to the
facts". But if we believe that the greatest fact is Christ and
His salvation, then the History is a factual work. It does give us
the truth, for all the people in it lived through the things it
describes. But it gives us that truth in light of the coming of
Christ. In all the world, there is no brighter or clearer light than
that to illumine the truth.
Prologue
The
fervent wish of sailors, as their journey nears its end, is to reach
port safely. So amidst surging billows and tempestuous winds they
spur on their steeds made of wood and iron and held together by
nails. They fly over the mounting waves until, finally escaping the
troubled waters, they race to their homelands. They tell their loved
ones how they braved the fearful tumult of the sea in order to come
back home with the spoils of their perilous sea journey. With their
profits they settle debts, free their families from servitude to
kings and overlords, and make a name for themselves as being
generous and rich.
Such
people risk their lives not because they are greedy, but because
they really want to make their lives better. Some of them then use
their wealth for their country's good. They give the king treasures
of every description. They create jobs for the poor; from their sea
journeys they bring back new and wonderful things such as herbs that
are beneficial to health. And for this they are willing to put
themselves at the mercy of the sea, and allow the tumultuous winds
to plot their course.
Like
them, the one who writes this history now sets sail on the perilous
sea of wisdom. Like them, the writer is at the mercy of another
power that of the princes who command that an account of past
events should be written. It is impossible to oppose royal commands,
so here is the history, written to show forth the glory of God's
workers, the saints. They shine like the priceless pearls, adorning
the crowns of kings and consoling, refreshing, enlightening even the
poorest in the kingdoms. They give rest and hope to the work-worn,
and enrich the land by their prayers. They are guideposts on the
road to God's Kingdom. They were tortured and died for God, and they
gained life, leaving the fruits of their triumph for us to enjoy.
They fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and opened the gates of
Christ's compassion to all of us.
They
battled through the sea of sin, and when they reached the heavenly
port they offered the King of Light their prayers for us. Through
their intercession we receive God's mercy and love. And what can we
offer to be worthy of such a gift? Only a heart ready to hear God's
word. If we bow our heads we will receive the spiritual crown. If we
merely wash ourselves of sin, we will be clothed with an everlasting
shining garment that makes us more splendid than the lily. If we
just let ourselves be thirsty for His love, a living spring will
satisfy us eternally.
From
these historical writings, readers may gain some spiritual wisdom.
Therefore I have set them down, I, Agathangelos from the great city
of Rome and trained in the art of the ancients, proficient in Latin
and Greek, a not unskilled literary practitioner.
And
so we come to the Arsacid court during the reign of Drtad, who has
ordered me to narrate not a false account of his brave deeds, but
what really happened in the battles, the plundering of provinces,
the capture of towns, the struggles of men for renown or revenge.
Here are the deeds of the brave King Khosrov, and the equally
valorous exploits of his son Drtad, and the works of God's beloved
martyrs who rose like stars to scatter the mist of darkness from
this land of Armenia. These martyrs died for God's truth, and He had
mercy on the land, showing miracles through one man who endured
countless afflictions and then triumphed for Christ, even making the
mighty Drtad accept a salvation he had known nothing about.
This
history will tell how the teaching of the Gospel came to be honored
in Armenia, by the king and then by all his subjects. We shall see
how they undertook to destroy the pagan temples and establish the
foundations of the Holy Church, and how they appointed a man as
shepherd of the land and benefited by his teaching. We shall see how
Drtad visited and made a covenant with Emperor Constantine, and
returned to glory and honor, dedicating many places to God.
All
this we shall relate in detail, with the teaching of St. Gregory who
became bishop and inherited the patriarchal title as a champion of
virtue who he was, and from what descent and family he came.
Then,
when future generations look to their past, they will open this book
and come to know what happened. They will read how the Gospel was
preached in Armenia, and how a man appointed by divine grace did
teach and endure tortures, and how by his love for God the cults
were crushed. They will read how the first churches were built, and
how the people were pulled from the treacherous sea of sin by his
preaching.
Part 1
Artashir,
a Sassanian prince from the province of Stahr, put an end to the
Parthian kingdom when he murdered the Parthian ruler Artavan. He had
united the Persian forces, and now they rejected Parthian
sovereignty and chose him as their leader.
Khosrov,
king of the Armenians, was greatly distressed by this news and soon
took up arms to avenge Artavan's death. He gathered Albanian and
Georgian forces, and called on the Huns to invade Persian territory.
Khosrov and his armies ravaged the land, destroying towns and
cities, trying to overthrow the Persian kingdom and wipe out its
civilization. Even though the Parthians refused to help him, having
attached themselves to Artashir, Khosrov was able to inflict
devastating losses on the Persians.
Then
Khosrov returned victoriously to the Armenian city of Vagharshapat
to celebrate his conquests and reward his soldiers, whom he showered
with gifts and sent home. He also honored his family's ancestral
worship sites, with white oxen, white rams, white horses and mules,
and he gave a fifth of all his plundered booty to the priests. He
similarly honored the temples of the idol-worshipping cults
throughout the land.
The
following year, still full of his intoxicating victory, Khosrov
called his armies together again, and for the next ten years they
freely plundered all the far-reaching lands under Persian rule. So
completely did they scatter the enemy's forces that finally the
Persian king could stand it no longer. He called together all the
governors, princes, generals, and nobles of his kingdom, and said to
them: "If a man can be found to take vengeance against this
bloody Khosrov, I will elevate him to the second rank in the
kingdom. Only I will be above him, no matter how humble or honorable
his origin. I will bestow gifts and rewards without measure upon him
if only he will avenge me!"
Among
the king's council was a leading Parthian chieftain named Anak. He
stood up, strode forward, and offered to carry out the king's wish.
And the king said to him: "If you can manage this, Anak, I
shall honor you with a crown". Anak agreed to the plan, asking
only that the king look after the rest of his family during his
absence.
Then
he and his brother, along with their wives and children, made their
way to Armenia. Anak presented himself to King Khosrov at the winter
quarters in Khalkhal, saying he was emigrating to Armenia in revolt
against the Persian king. Khosrov received him gladly, honored him,
and passed the long winter days with him in good cheer and
happiness.
But
when spring came, thoughts of the Persian king's promises stirred in
Anak's mind. He began to yearn for his own country of Pahlav. So he
made a plan with his brother, and together they got Khosrov alone as
if they wanted to speak with him. Then they raised their swords and
struck the king dead.
When
the Armenian princes realized what had happened, they split into
groups to scour the countryside and find the killers. This they did,
and cast them from a bridge into the swollen waters of the Araxes
River. An then, according to the king's deathbed decree, they
slaughtered the murderers' families. But two infant sons were saved
by their nurses, one of whom fled with her charge to Persian and the
other to Greek territory.
The
Persian king rejoiced at his enemy's death. He took the opportunity
to invade Armenia, correctly surmising that the stunned and grieving
people would not offer much resistance. One of Khosrov's sons,
Drtad, survived this terrible raid; his tutors took him to the
emperor's court in Greek territory. Meanwhile, the Persian king
imposed his own name on Armenia, sending the Greek army in retreat
back to its own borders. He drove out the inhabitants of the land he
had conquered and made it his own.
Drtad
was raised and educated in the house of a count named Licinius. The
other exile, Gregory, was raised as a devout Christian in Caesarea,
capital of Cappadocia. In an effort to make amends for what his
father had done, he offered himself to Drtad as a servant, without
ever revealing his parentage. But Drtad had been taught to hate and
persecute the Christian Church, and when he heard that Gregory
belonged to it he made frightening threats, even imprisoning and
tormenting Gregory in order to get him to renounce the worship of
Christ, and worship instead the pagan gods of Armenia.
At
about the same time, the king of the Goths sent a message to the
Greek emperor. It said: "Why should both our countries suffer
the devastation of war? Instead, let you and I come forth as the
single champions of our armies, and fight. If I win, your Greeks
will submit to my rule. And if you win, my people shall become your
subjects".
The
Greek king, not a physically strong man, was terrified by this
proposal. He called all his troops and their commanders in from the
fields of battle to meet with him. Among those answering the summons
were the count, Licinius, and his soldiers, including Drtad. At a
place where they camped overnight there was no forage available for
the hungry horses. But there was a vast pile of hay locked in a pen
with a wall so high that no one though it could be breached. No one,
that is, except Drtad, who climbed over and tossed back heaps of hay
until there was plenty for all the horses.
Licinius,
amazed by this feat, hastened to meet with the emperor as soon as
they reached him the next morning. He told the king what Drtad had
done, and together they agreed that his young man from the family of
the Armenian king must be the one to meet the challenge of the
Goths. Drtad was called into the emperor's presence, and everything
was explained to him. Having obtained his consent, the emperor
arranged a duel for the very next morning.
So
the "false emperor," dressed in royal purple and wearing
the royal emblem, went out to meet the king of the Goths. He beat
the king handily, and was duly honored by the Emperor. Drtad
returned to Armenia with a great army. He beat back the Persians who
had subdued his native land, and brought it under his own rule.
During
the first year of his reign, Drtad and his courtiers visited a
provincial town to sacrifice to the goddess Anahid in her temple
there. He ordered Gregory to venerate her statue, and when Gregory
refused Drtad asked him: "You have served me well these many
years. Why in this one matter do you refuse to do my will?".
Gregory
answered: "You speak truly. I have served you as God commands
us to serve our earthly lords. But He alone is the creator of angels
and men, of heaven and earth. We can worship only Him".
Drtad
frowned and said: "By saying this you render all your service
to me completely worthless. I shall punish rather than reward you as
I had planned. It will be prison and bondage for you unless you
honor the goddess Anahid". Gregory replied: "My service to
you is not worthless; God values it as He promised always to value
our efforts for Him. It is He I seek to please. And if you punish
me, I rejoice, for my lord Christ suffered affliction and death, and
I will gladly follow Him into death so that I can be with Him in
everlasting life. You speak of Anahit, and perhaps demons did once
bedazzle men into building temples for them and worshipping them.
But I will not worship lifeless objects of stone. We must worship
the One who lives and gives life".
Drtad
then asked Gregory to tell him more about this living One. Gregory
proceeded to explain that Christ is the Lord of creation and the
true light for those in the darkness of idolatry. He exhorted the
king to use his intelligence and put away the mulishly stupid
devotion to mere images.
Drtad
exploded in anger. He shouted: "You have insulted the gods and
insulted me by calling me stupid for worshipping them. You had the
audacity to speak to me as if you were my equal. You said I was
stupid as a mule; now you shall feel the burden of such words".
With
that he ordered Gregory to be bound and strung up, with a muzzle
over his mouth and a heavy block of salt hung on his back. After a
week of this torture Gregory was brought before the king, who said:
"Now like a mule you have carried a load. But worse things can
happen to you if you further insult our deities".
Gregory,
however, had not been subdued by his suffering. He told the king
that he did not mind tortures, and that only those who worship idols
need fear the Lord's wrath.
So
Drtad tortured him further, hanging him by one foot for seven days.
But Gregory passed the time in prayer. He recalled in his prayer how
God had prepared mankind for eternal life, a gift which we threw
away with our disobedience. Yet God did not abandon us rather
He sent the prophets, and finally His own Son, to show us His will.
Christ became the image of God so that we, who love to worship
images, might finally worship the Truth. He gave us a wooden cross
rather than wooden idols. He called us to sacrifice as Christ had
sacrificed, and to partake of His body and blood as we had once
eaten sacrificial animals.
After
recalling these wonderful acts of God, Gregory asked Him for
strength and grace to endure torments and to fight for the truth,
receiving the crown promised to those who are steadfast. Then
Gregory praised God's creation of the light and the darkness, with
the sun and moon as their rulers. Finally, he prayed that his
tormentors might be shown the truth, and turn from false worship, so
that they could live everlastingly in God's Kingdom, along with
those whose faith was always true.
Even
this terrible torture, which broke his body, did not sway Gregory.
After a week of it, he was again brought before Drtad, who asked him
once more to pay homage to the idols. Gregory again refused, and
Drtad submitted him to many more hideous tortures. But Gregory
withstood them all and told the king: "I can endure all this
not through my own power but by the Lord's grace. Now you will see
that nothing can separate us from His love".
It
was about this time that a prince of the court told Drtad that
Gregory was the murderer Anak's son. Upon hearing this, Drtad
ordered Gregory to be put in a deep pit until he died. As it turned
out, Gregory would be there for thirteen years.
Part 2
King
Drtad spent much of his reign devastating the Persian kingdom. One
of the proverbial sayings of the Armenians was: "Like the
haughty Drtad, who in his pride devastated the dikes of rivers and
in his arrogance dried up the currents of seas". He was
exceedingly brave and daring, and also very proud. While Drtad was
thus flourishing, Gregory continued to survive, though still in a
pit that had killed all others condemned to it because of the filth,
the snakes, and the stench. But Gregory was secretly fed by a widow
who had heard God command her in a dream to toss a loaf of bread
into the pit each day. So the two men, each in his own way, were
moving toward the day when they would meet again.
Drtad,
still devoted to idol worship, remained an implacable foe of the
Christian faith. He issued two edicts, one commanding his people to
pay proper homage to the gods to insure that they would make Armenia
prosper. The other edict instructed all citizens to reveal any
members of the cult of Christians, because this cult was an
insuperable obstacle to the proper worship of the gods. Drtad even
threatened those who dared to hide Christians, and reminded his
subjects of the severe way he had dealt with Gregory, a member of
his own court. With Christians, there could be no leniency.
During
these days the Emperor Diocletian was seeking a wife. He sent
portrait painters out into the kingdom to find lovely women and
bring back portraits of them, so that from these pictures he could
choose a beautiful wife for himself.
The
painters found, in the city, a group of nuns living a monastic life
of constant prayer and ascetic fasting. Their abbess was named
Gayane, and one of them, Hripsime, was very beautiful. The painters
were quite taken with her, and rushed to complete her portrait to
show to the king. He was so smitten that he immediately wanted to
arrange a grand wedding. His arrogance and vanity led him to
persecute the Christian churches in order to show his power over
them.
This
was all terribly upsetting to the nuns. They were saddened by the
persecution of their fellow Christians, and worried by the king's
unseemly interest in Hripsime. They prayed fervently to God that he
would enable them, like the virgins in the parable, to keep their
lamps filled with oil and that worldly cares would not distract them
from His service. They asked for His protection against the pagan
powers assailing them.
The
women decided to flee, and that was how they came to be in
Vagharshapat, the residence of the Armenian kings. They lived by
selling the glass pearls which one of them made. But in the very
same city, King Drtad received an emissary from Diocletian. He
brought a royal edict which said: "Let my brother Drtad know of
the evils that constantly beset us because of this error-ridden
sect, the Christians. For they worship a dead man, adore a cross
because he was crucified, and consider their own death on his behalf
to be glory and honor. They teach dishonor for kings and hold as
nothing the power of the sun and moon and stars. Everywhere among
our people they discourage the worship of the gods, and our threats
and punishments against hem are to no avail.
"I
happened to see among them a lovely young girl, and wanted to have
her as my wife. But she and her companions have insulted my majesty
by fleeing to the regions of your kingdom.
"So,
my brother, find them for me and take vengeance. Send her back to me
unless you wish to keep her for yourself. And may you be well
by the worship of the gods".
Drtad
immediately ordered a search, and the nuns were soon found. For it
was ordained by God that their light should not be hidden under a
bushel, but shine out over the world. And since word of the
emperor's edict had spread across the land, there were soon crowds
of people straining to catch a glimpse of Hripsime's now-famous
beauty. The nuns, whose only wish was to have a holy and solitary
life, offered up constant prayers and lamentations to God.
Drtad,
having heard from those who saw her that she was indeed a great
beauty, sent a golden litter with attendants and filled with
magnificent robes so that Hripsime could adorn herself and come to
meet him in the palace. Seeing all this, the abbess Gayane told the
younger woman: "Remember, my child, that you have abandoned
your father's throne (for Hripsime was of royal lineage) and longed
instead for the never-ending life of the Kingdom of Christ. Do not
give up your choice now, and rish your holy virtue with these
infidels".
Inspired
by her abbess' words, Hripsime prayed intently, asking God to
protect her as He had protected all the Old Testament people who
faced danger. Her sisters prayed with her, and soon they heard a
voice like thunder, assuring them of God's love and care. The
thunderous sound caused panic among the throngs of people looking on
they trampled each other in their confusion. But when King
Drtad was told what had happened, he was not at all frightened. He
was furious that Hripsime would not come to him, and ordered that
she be brought to the palace by force. So she was dragged along,
with a great crowd following, and as she went she prayed that like
Daniel and Susanna, she would be saved from her tormentors.
Drtad,
seeing her at last, was enthralled by her beauty and tried with all
his great strength to seduce her. But Hripsime, delicate as she was,
struggled against him so hard that he could not overcome her.
Exhausted by his efforts, he ordered the abbess Gayane to intercede
with the young nun and tell her to accede. But Gayane took the
opportunity instead to strengthen Hripsime in her resistance to the
king. Drtad's attendants beat and threatened her, but she persisted
in encouraging the younger woman to stand firm and trust in God.
Hripsime
did so for many hours, and then finally escaped from the palace. She
ran through the city to the nuns' dwelling place to tell them what
had happened. Then she went out from the city to a high, sandy point
near the main road to Artashat. There she thanked God for keeping
her safe. She prayed that soon she might be allowed to leave the
temptations of the world behind and enter, by His mercy, the
heavenly realm. She thanked Him for the certainty that if torments
were to come, He would be there with her. Hripsime ended her prayer
with these words: "Let the light of the Lord God be over us".
That
very night, Drtad's men came and tortured Hripsime to death. Other
followers of Christ were also killed, and so were many of those who
came to wrap and bury their bodies. But all of them prayed to God
and thanked Him for making them worthy of martyrdom. The king's men
dragged their bodies out and threw them as food for the prowling
dogs.
Drtad
was unashamed of what he had done. Indeed his heart was more
inflamed against the Christians and especially against Gayane, who
had counseled his wonderful Hripsime not to yield to him. He
commanded that the abbess should be killed, and so she was taken to
the place used for criminals' executions. But like her companions,
Gayane was unafraid, and expressed her wish to join her sisters
speedily. She died as they had, with a prayer on her lips.
King
Drtad was not an introspective man, and after a week of grieving
over Hripsime's death, he had to have some strenuous activity. He
arranged to go hunting, and when the hounds and nets and traps and
beaters were all ready, he climbed into his chariot to leave the
city for the plain where he loved to hunt.
Suddenly,
Drtad fell from the chariot, as if struck down by a demon. He began
to rave and grunt, like an animal. As their king was crazed, so all
the people suddenly seemed to be, and there was chaos and ruin
throughout the city and from the highest to the lowest of the king's
household.
But
one person had a solution. The king's sister, Khosrovitookht, had a
heavenly vision which told her that only the prisoner in the pit,
Gregory, could end the terrible nightmare. At first people said she
too was mad; Gregory must be dead after so many years in the awful
place. But the vision came to her again and again, and each time it
disturbed her more. So it was finally decided to send one of the
young princes to Artashat. When he arrived, the prince convinced
some people there to lower long ropes into the pit, and he called
out: "Gregory, if you are down there, let us know!" They
felt a tug on the rope, and pulled it up out of the pit. There was
Gregory, his body blackened by dirt to the color of coal. The people
helped him get clean, and brought clean clothing for him, and he was
taken to Vagharshapat with joy and high hopes that he could remedy
the situation there.
A
pitiful sight greeted him in the great city the people, raving and
foaming at the mouth, rushed toward him like wild dogs. He knelt and
prayed, and at once the people regained at least enough of their
senses to listen to him. The king knelt before him and begged
forgiveness. But Gregory pulled Drtad to his feet and said: "I
am just a man like you. The One who has had mercy on you is your
creator, the Lord and Creator of all things".
Gregory
gathered up the remains of those who had been martyred no dog
had touched the bodies, and they were not decomposed and he
enshrouded them and took them to the nuns' former dwelling place. He
spent that night praying for the salvation and repentance of the
Armenian populace. The next morning, Drtad and a great crowd of
people came to see Gregory, and asked him:
"Intercede
with your God to save us, and not let us perish for all the crimes
we have committed against you". For they realized that whenever
he left them for a moment, the demons assailed them again.
Gregory
answered: "You say 'your God', but the One you speak of created
all things and is your creator. Recognize Him, as Father, Son and
Holy Spirit, and you will have everlasting life with Him. Do not be
like those who, even though they are His creatures, fail to
recognize Him.
"You
see how much He loves those who believe in Him. He kept firm the
maiden Hripsime so that she could fulfill her vow of chastity. Even
to such an unworthy one as myself He gave the great privilege of
suffering for His sake, and He granted me the endurance to survive.
"Now
recognize Him, and throw off the yoke of evil. What you did to
Hripsime and the others you did in ignorance. Ask them to pray to
God for His mercy on you. Know God; put away your idols. He is
long-suffering, pardoning, and nourishing in His mercy, and He cares
for you all.
"God
calls you; that is why He sent the martyrs to shine their light
among you. They were witnesses to the majesty of the Trinity, and
sealed their faith with martyrs' deaths. Recognize what they were
showing you that the Son of God humbled Himself in death so
that we might be exalted. You tortured me, but my sufferings did not
kill me; they exalted me instead. I endured so that, by His will, I
could offer you spiritual healing. Now will you hear the teachings
of the Lord?"
All
the people fell down, and tore their clothes, and said that they did
want to hear God's word so that they might live and be pardoned for
the things they had done to Gregory. He began to teach them.
"You
have seen the power of God. For who but the One who made all things
could change their character as He wishes to? Yet God changed the
poisonous snakes in the pit into harmless creatures for your sake
so that I, his unworthy servant, would be saved and you would see
the power of His miracles. And you saw a young girl defeat a
powerful giant of a man, your king. She was martyred so that you
might be healed. These are God's mighty works, done for your sake.
"And
if you will turn to Him, then I shall gladly tell you how He made
the world and showed Himself in it. For even though we cannot know
Him, being only creatures, still He sent men called prophets to tell
of eternal and divine life. They were men of the pious race of
Hebrews, the seed of Abraham who is called the father of all races.
Among these luminous men who spread God's words was one called
Moses. He handed down tru knowledge through the generations. So by
the grace of the Spirit will I also try to teach you, trusting that
He will place the proper words in my mouth. Let us begin".
Part
3
So
Gregory taught the people about God and His desires for our
salvation. Then he urged the people to build chapels for the
martyrs, as a way of showing reverence for God and in order that the
saints' intercessory prayers would enlighten them. He encouraged
them to fast, study, and pray to become ready for baptism, and
become worthy partakers in God's life and His eternal Kingdom.
Having said all this, he sent them home to get a good night's rest
before beginning the work of building the martyrs' sanctuaries.
But
King Drtad and the nobles would not leave Gregory's side because
they were still fearful and tormented. Day and night they fasted and
sat on ashes, dressed in hair shirts. Gregory used the time
for they were like this for sixty-five days to tell them the
whole long history of God's salvation for mankind. Many other people
also came to hear Gregory's tales of the saints and his explanations
of the word of God. They were a huge crowd, attentive and filled
with wonder at what they were hearing.
On
the morning of the sixty-sixth day, the king and nobles and the
crowd with them approached Gregory and begged him to free them
entirely from the torments which had beset them all this time. The
king especially was eager for this, because his form was still more
like a beast's than a man's. But it was God's will not yet to heal
them completely, and to give them only enough understanding to
comprehend Gregory's teaching. One way he taught them was by
describing a wonderful vision which had come to him, concerning the
chapels for the martyrs.
Gregory
said: "One night I heard a fearful thunderous sound like
roaring sea waves. The firmament of heaven opened, and a man
descended in the form of light. He called my name; I looked up and
saw him and fell to the ground, struck by terror. But he commanded
me to look up and see great wonders.
"I
did look up, and saw the firmament opened with the waters above it
divided as is the firmament itself. The waters were like valleys and
mountaintops, with infinite expanses that went far out of sight.
Light flowed down to the earth, and the light was filled with
shining two-winged creatures, human in appearance and with wings
like fire. Their leader was a tall and fearful man who carried a
golden hammer. He flew down near the ground in the middle of the
city, and struck the earth. The rumbling sounded even in the depths
of hell, and as far as the eye could see the earth was struck as
level as a plain.
"I
saw him in the middle of the city, near the palace, a circular base
of gold as big as a hill, with a column of fire on it. On top of the
column was a capital of clouds, and above that a cross of light.
There were three other bases at the sites where St. Gayane and St.
Hripsime were martyred, and one near the wine press where the nuns
lived. These bases were blood-red, and they had columns of clouds
and capitals of fire. From the columns, marvelous vaults fitted into
one another and above this was a dome-shaped canopy of clouds. Under
the canopy were thirty-seven holy martyrs in shining light I
cannot even describe them.
"At
the summit of all this was a wonderful throne of fire with the
Lord's cross above it. Light spread out in every direction from it.
And an abundant spring gushed forth, flowing over and filling the
plains as far as one could see. They made a vast bluish sea, the
color of heaven. There were numerous fiery altars shining like
stars, with a column on each altar and a cross on each column.
"There
were herds of black goats, which when they passed through the water
became sparkling white sheep. They gave birth to more sheep, filling
the land. But some of these crossed to the other side of the water
and became brown wolves which attacked the flocks. But the flocks
grew wings and flew up to join the shining host, and a torrent of
fire carried away the wolves.
"I
stood amazed at this sight. And the man who had earlier called my
name and said: "Why do you stand gaping? Pay attention to what
is being revealed to you. The heavens have been opened! Here is what
the vision means. The voice like thunder is the beginning of God's
mercy raining down upon mankind. The gates of heaven are opened, and
also the waters above them. There is nothing to keep us mortals from
rising up, for those who were martyred here have made a path for
others.
"The
light filling the land is the preaching of the Gospel, and the
fearsome man is the providence of God, who looks on the earth and it
trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke, as the psalm
tells us. This fear of God has flattened and destroyed error on the
earth.
"The
golden base is God's true Church, gathering all His people, and the
shining cross above it is Christ Himself. The three blood-red bases
are the martyrs' torments. But the columns of cloud show how quickly
they will rise to heaven at the universal resurrection. The capital
is fiery because they will love in the fire of divine light. And the
crosses show that they are fellow sufferers with their lord Christ.
"The
vaults joining the columns show the unity of the Church, and the
cloud canopy above shows the gathering place of all believers, the
celestial city. The throne, above which the whole structure is held
together, is almighty God, the head of the Church. The shining light
around the throne is the Holy Spirit, who glorifies the Son. The
spreading waters are the grace of the Spirit, which will save many
through baptism and make earth like heaven (that is why the plains
became the color of heaven.) The herds of goats are sinners, washed
clean by God's mercy, and worthy of His Kingdom. The flocks of sheep
give birth because many generations will hear the preaching of the
Word; but the flocks that became wolves are like those who depart
from the truth. They lead sheep astray with their falsehoods.
But
the sheep that endure will rise to Christ's Kingdom, and the wolves
will be handed over to eternal fire.'"
Gregory
continued: "And when he had told me the vision's meaning, he
said to be strong because I had a great task. I was to build a
temple to God on the place where the gold base had been shown to me,
and the martyrs' chapels in the places where they suffered and died.
After he told me all this, there was an earthquake, and I could see
him no more.
"God
showed me this vision of the future so that I could do His will
among you. Let us go now and build the chapels, giving the martyrs
rest".
"So
all the people took up tools, and gathered materials, and set to
work. Gregory himself took the architect's measuring line and laid
out the foundations. They built three chapels, and made a casket for
each saint's body. After Gregory had sealed the caskets, the king
and people brought sweet oils and incense and rich robes. But
Gregory said: "I am glad to see you honor these saints. But do
not offer gifts to the holy ones until you have been purified by
baptism. One day, we shall use all these beautiful things to adorn
God's altar. But until true worship is established in this land, let
them remain in the royal treasury".
The
time had come for the king and all the people to be completely freed
from their tormenting demons. Gregory knelt by the saints' caskets
and prayed for Drtad and all the rest. Then he turned to the king,
and by Christ's grace cured his hands and feet enough so that he was
able with his own hands to dig graves and bury the caskets in them.
His wife Ashkhen and sister Khosrovitookht helped him to arrange the
places. With his prodigious strength Drtad carried stones from Mount
Massis to make thresholds for the chapels.
When
the chapels were ready, the martyrs were laid to rest in them.
Gregory placed a cross in front of each, and told the people that
the proper place for worship was in front of that saving sign of
Jesus Christ. Then he took them to build a high wall around the
place where the golden base had been revealed, for that was to be
the site of the Lord's house. There too, a cross was placed so that
people could worship God truly.
Gregory
could see that the people were willing to heed his words, give up
idol worship, and give themselves to study, fasting, and prayer. He
gathered them to pray together for healing, and as they all prayed
the king was fully restored to his human appearance, and the people
were freed from their various afflictions. The news of this wonder
spread through the land, inspiring people everywhere to come to
Ayrarat and hear about Jesus Christ, and learn how to live as He
calls us to do.
Gregory
then asked the king for permission to overthrow and detroy the pagan
shrines and temples. Drtad readily issued an edict entrusting
Gregory with this task, and himself set out from the city to destroy
shrines along the highways. Together the men worked feverishly, and
they distributed the temple treasures among the poor. In all the
cities he visited, Gregory marked sites for Christian churches, but
because he did not hold the rank of priest he did not erect any
altars. At each place he set a cross, and he also placed crosses
along roads and at squares and intersections.
Drtad
and his family members were then thoroughly instructed in the faith
by Gregory. When they had all been convinced to worship the only
true God, Gregory and Drtad began traveling to other parts of the
country to instruct the people and to destroy the altars of the
false gods. In many of the provincial towns, demons in the form of
armed soldiers fought against the evangelist's efforts. They were
put to flight each time, and then Gregory would tell the people not
to be afraid, but to drive out their own personal demons of false
worship, and follow Christ. He performed miracles to show the people
how loving and powerful God is. And the king gave testimony about
his sinful acts, and the miracles and mercy of healing which God had
shown him.
So
they traveled through the provinces and everywhere they spread the
light of the Gospel and destroyed the dark pagan superstitions which
had held the people captive.
After
they returned to Vagharshapat, Drtad called together all his
courtiers and the leaders from every corner of the land. The king
wanted to make Gregory their pastor, so that everyone could be
baptized and begin in earnest to live the new life in Christ.
Gregory protested his unworthiness, but Drtad had a wonderful vision
from God urging him to carry out his plan, and the angelic vision
also appeared to Gregory, telling him not to thwart it. So Gregory
said: "Let God's will be done".
Drtad
then chose some of the leading princes to take Gregory to Caesarea,
in Cappadocia, with an edict for the bishop Leontius. The edict gave
the whole history of Armenia's pagan worship, the suffering of the
nuns, Gregory's witness and work among the people, and the king's
own desire to have Gregory be the spiritual leader of Armenia.
The
group set off with Gregory in a royal carriage, taking along gifts
for each of the churches they would pass. They were welcomed
heartily in the land of the Greeks, who rejoiced to hear of God's
miracles and the great conversion which had taken place. When the
men reached Caesarea, Gregory was duly ordained, and the bishops
laid their hands on him and prayed for him. He, too, was now
consecrated as a bishop for God's church.
With
joyous and loving farewells, the nobles and Gregory set out for
home, and as they stopped at various towns, Gregory persuaded some
good Christian men to return with him and be ordained to serve the
people. In all the towns, crowds of people gathered to see the new
bishop pass, and to receive his blessing.
Part 4
Back
within the borders of Armenia, Gregory heard that in a certain
region there was a large, richly-appointed temple devoted to the
cult of Vahagn. It was on a mountain peak near the Euphrates, and
contained three altars, one for Vahagn, one for his mother, and one
for his spouse Astghig who corresponded to the Greek Aphrodite.
People still made sacrifices at these pagan altars.
Gregory
had brought from Cappadocia some relics of John the Baptist and the
martyr Athenogenes. He intended to take these up to the mountain,
destroy the pagan temples, and build chapels for the relics there.
But as his carriage neared a small valley, the horses halted and
would not go any farther. An angel appeared and said: "It has
pleased God that the saints should dwell here". So the
entourage set to work and made a chapel for the relics.
While
they were doing so, Gregory took some of the men with him to destroy
the pagan altars. Pound as they might, they could not batter down
the gates. So Gregory took the cross and held it up saying: "Let
your angel drive the demons away, Lord". And a wind like a
hurricane blew from the cross and leveled the altars so that later
not a trace of them could be found. Many people seeing this cam to
believe in Jesus Christ, for as Gregory told them: "See, your
stumbling blocks have been removed". It was on that spot that
Gregory first laid the foundations of a church and erected an altar
to the glory of God, and then arranged a baptismal font. He was with
the people for twenty days, and more than one hundred and ninety
thousand of them were baptized. This was the beginning of Gregory's
effort to fill the land with church buildings and priests. And in
each place he left a tiny portion of the saints' relics so they
could be venerated.
King
Drtad, informed that Gregory was back in the country, set out from
Vagharshapat to meet him. He had to wait a month, because Gregory
was traveling far and wide to provide every region with churches and
priests to do services in them, and was also baptizing scores of
people.
Finally
Gregory did arrive, and the king went out to greet him on the banks
of the Euphrates. Everyone was filled with joy, and the nobles who
had gone with Gregory presented Drtad with Bishop Leontius' reply to
his edict. In it, the bishop praied God's loving mercy in showing
the Armenian people His will for them through the efforts of
Gregory, whom they at first had despised but who became their
spiritual champion. The bishop quoted Scripture: "The stone
which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner"
(Matthew 21:42). He asked the new Christians to remember him in
their prayers, and wished them well.
When
the welcoming festivities were over, Gregory once again settled down
to the task of instructing the people, and ever more of them came to
learn how to live in a new way. Then he and the men he had recruited
began a period of fasting and prayer, vigils and tearful repentance.
The royal camp also prayed and fasted for a full month. Gregory
built a church and placed in it the last of the relics he had
brought to Armenia. When all this was dome the month of preparation
was completed, the whole royal camp went down to the Euphrates one
morning at dawn, and he baptized them in the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. As this was being done, a bright light
appeared over the water, with the cross above it. The people were
amazed and blessed God's glory. That evening they went forth, more
than one hundred fifty thousand new Christians, with lighted candles
and in their white garments, praising god with psalms and prayers.
They received Holy Communion in the new church which Gregory had
built.
During
the next week, Gregory baptized more multitudes of people, and he
fixed a date for commemorating the martyrs. This date was the same
as that of a former pagan festival New Year's Day. He then
continued to travel around the land to give instruction and
blessings to all the people, urging them to give up their old
worship and pagan feasts, and come instead to know and worship the
one true God.
Gregory
was especially concerned with leadership and education. He made sure
that each church had a priest and each region had a bishop. Then he
persuaded the king to gather peasant children from all over the
country so that they, too, might learn from him and the men he had
chosen. The king was willing also to have some children taught to
read and become better acquainted with the Scriptures and other
sacred writings. Some learned Syriac and some Greek, but all found
new and precious knowledge in the word of God.
So
Gregory's work continued. He spread the gospel message everywhere;
he helped many in distress and despair, and established monastic
orders in the populous plains and the isolated mountain caves. He
educated many of the pagan priests' children and when they were
ready he made them bishops of the Church.
The
first of these, Albianos, was often left in charge of the court so
that Gregory could retreat to a lonely place and live austerely with
pupils from the monasteries. They would give themselves to prayer
and works of humility, proclaiming god's strength by their own
weakness. They did the worship services together, studied the Bible,
sang spiritual songs, and encouraged each other to live according to
God's way rather than the world's. But Gregory was always ready to
visit a city to work with the people in churches there, and met
often with priests and bishops. He was their best example of how to
live and do their work as the Lord would want, and constantly
reminded them to teach others as Christ had done.
King
Drtad lamented Gregory's absence very much, but at about this time
he learned that from a youthful marriage Gregory had two sons,
Vertanes and Aristakes. Both had been raised to be priests, but
Vertanes was living a secular life. Armenia's light shone so
brightly in the world in this wonderful time that other lands truly
admired her and felt she was blessed. Everything was flowering, and
the king continued to travel around the land to urge his people to
follow Christ. But Gregory no longer went with him; instead he lived
in the desert Aristakes, on the other hand, was living a stringently
ascetical life of prayer as a monk. Elated by the news, Drtad sent
for them both. Aristakes was at first reluctant to leave his desert
hermitage, but fellow Christians persuaded him to go and do whatever
God called him to.
As
soon as they arrived at court, Drtad went out with them to seek
their father. They found him on the mountain called the Caves of
Mane, in the province of Daranalik. Drtad asked Gregory to make
Aristakes a bishop, so he could carry on his father's work. This was
done, and Gregory himself visited some of the churches he had
established.
Drtad
was also a tireless servant of the Lord, both in his witness to
others and his personal spiritual life. He kept the feasts and
fasts, asked forgiveness for his sins, and strove to do God's will.
He used his royal authority to promote the teaching of the Gospel
everywhere, and tried to be a living example of it for his people.
While
all this was going on in Armenia, Constantine became emperor in
Spain and Gaul. He was a Christian and made a covenant with his
large and mighty army that they would work together to glorify God.
So
with his soldiers, Constantine marched against the heathen kings
Diocletian, marcianos, Macimianos, Licinius and Maxentius. He
rebuilt the Christian churches they had destroyed during the
persecutions, and built chapels for those they had martyred. He
destroyed the temples of idols and took the cross as his sign.
Constantine greatly fortified his rule over a large part of the
known world, honoring all who worshipped the true God and fighting
vigorously against all others.
King
Drtad was eager to pay his respects to another monarch who believed
as he did. He set out with Gregory, the bishops Aristakes and
Albianos, and some of the highest-ranking members of his own court.
As they traveled from Vagharshapat through Greek territory they were
honorably received along the way, and when they arrived in Rome the
emperor and the great Patriarch Eusebius greeted them warmly. After
the lavish ceremonies, Constantine pressed them to tell about the
miracles that had come to pass in Armenia.
So
Drtad told his spiritual brother all that had happened, not even
keeping back the details of his own bestial transformation. He spoke
about the brave sacrifice of the martyrs, and introduced Gregory to
the emperor as the man through whom God's will had been done.
Constantine was amazed by the story, and humbly asked Gregory's
blessing. The emperor was also able to tell Drtad more about the
martyrs, whom he had known of while they were still in his land. He
spoke of how he himself had come to know God, and made an alliance
with his fellow king to keep the love of Christ as a bond between
their kingdoms.
When
they returned to Armenia, Drtad offered all the gold and silver
gifts they had received to the service of the Church, and placed
several precious articles in the martyrs' chapels. Gregory and
Aristakes continued their travels and teaching across the land. It
was Aristakes, too, who journeyed to the city of Nicaea when
Constantine convened all the Christian bishops there for an
ecumenical council. At that council, doctrines were expounded and
canons were formed. Aristakes made these known when he came back to
Armenia, further strengthening the Church and insuring good
practices among the people.
Gregory
continued his teaching and writing to make the faithful think about
things of the Kingdom by his stories about things of this world.
With fasting and prayers, taking only minimal rest, Gregory spread
forth the word of the Lord until the end ofhis days. He had taught
his students well, and they too spent time in reading Scripture and
urging each other to follow the words of Saint Paul: "Take care
for yourself and your teaching, and persevere in the same. If you do
this you will save yourself and those who hear you". (Timothy
4:13-16). Thus it was that Gregory spent the days of his life in
acts like those of the Apostles, following God's commands until he
died. And immersed in the love of Christ, he shone forth to all.
Now
according to your command, King Drtad, we have written all this down
as a chronicle in the literary style of the Greeks. Like the Old
Testament prophets and rulers, we have put down these events for
future generations everywhere to read and learn from; we have not
set them down from old tales but according to what we ourselves saw
and heard. An like the writer Luke, we have put down the main
points, not including each small detail but passing over some things
and describing only those that are most important and illuminating.
We have made our story not to honor those who have already pleased
God with their service, but to inspire their children and all those
in every land who will receive these words. May they come, one day,
to say to Him, "You are our God," and hear His life-giving
answer, "You are my people".
MANICHEISM v.
MISSIONARY ACTIVITY AND TECHNIQUE
The
main primary sources on the beginning of Manichean missionary work
are the Cologne Mani Codex (henceforth CMC), especially pp. 107-91,
ed. Koenen and Römer, pp. 76-119, and Kephalaia 1 and 76, ed.
Polotsky and Böhlig, pp. 9-16, 183-88; tr. Gardner, pp. 15-22,
193-97. More information may be expected from the still unpublished
Dublin Kephalaia.
The
Manichean Missionary History, strictly speaking, consists of Middle
Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, and Old Turkish fragments of a
hagiographic description of the beginnings of the missionary
journeys of Mani and his first disciples (published or indicated by
Sundermann 1981, pp. 17-28, 34-49, 55-57 under nos. 1, 2.2-7, 3.1-4,
4a.1). These texts are parts of a comprehensive hagiographic and
homiletic description of Mani’s life and the beginnings of the
Manichean church preserved in Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, and
Old Turkish and also in the Third Coptic Homily (ed. Polotsky, 1934,
pp. 42-85; cf. Sundermann 1986a, 1986b, 1987). Some additional texts
add more information on the Manichean missionary activities, such as
MP. 5.1, 5.2 (Sundermann, 1981, pp. 93-95); these belong to Mani’s
Šābuhragān. Original Manichean traditions are also
faithfully rendered in Ebn al-Nadim’s (d. ca. 995) Fehrest
(ed. Flügel, pp. 51-52, 84-85; Ebn al-Nadim, tr. Dodge, pp.
774-75). An exhaustive collection of source material on the spread
of Manicheism in the Roman empire was compiled by Lieu (1988, pp.
383-99).
The
beginning of Manichean missionary activities. Hardly any other
religion has undertaken its missionary activities with a view to
winning the world for the truth of its faith in a better designed
and more systematic way than the Manichean church. According to its
hagiographical tradition, as attested in the CMC (pp. 17-19, 73; ed.
Koenen and Römer, pp. 10-13, 50-51; Cameron and Dewey, pp.
18-21, 56-57) and in Ebn al-Nadim’s Fehrest (ed. Flügel,
pp. 50.15-51.7, 84; tr. Dodge, p. 775), the missionary work is based
on a command given to Mani by his Sysygos (spiritual Twin) when he
had completed his 24th year of life. According to the CMC, the
command was: "You have not only been sent to this religion [of
the Baptists], but to every people, every school, every town and
place; for [by you this] hope will be explained and proclaimed in
all [zones] and regions [of the world]. [Men] in great numbers will
accept your word. So step forth and walk about; for I shall be with
you as your helper and protector at every place where you are
proclaiming all that has been revealed to you. So do not worry and
do not be distressed" (CMC, pp. 104-05; ed. Koenen and Römer,
pp. 74-75). Therefore, the worldwide mission is inseparably tied
with the separation of Mani and his followers from their paternal,
Elkhasaite community and with the foundation of the Manichean
church. What really happened is that Mani himself came to be the
first missionary of his community.
The
time of Mani’s first public appearance was connected by the
Manichean tradition with one of the coronations of the Sasanian king
Šābuhr [Šāpur] I (r. 241-372) which is
dated, on the strength of the Manichean dates, to 18 or 19 April 240
(on these two dates, see with further literature Sundermann, 1990,
pp. 295=2001a, pp. 103-4). This synchronism may reflect more or less
exactly the actual time of the beginning of the Manichean world
mission.
Manicheism
in Byzantium.
We
simply do not know by whom, when, and by which route Mani’s
gospel was taken to Asia Minor and to Byzantium, which from 330 AD
was the capital of the Roman empire. We can only state that by that
time Manicheism was already present there, more or less tolerated
until the end of the 4th century and even supported by adherents and
sympathizers in the ruling class, such as the dux, comes, and
magister peditum Sebastianus (d. 378) who was supposed to be a
Manichean auditor (which was, however, sheer calumny, according to
Tardieu, 1988, pp. 494-500); the pagan rhetor and literate Libanius
(d. 393?), who intervened in favor of the Manicheans (de Stoop,
1909, p. 70); and also the liberal Christian comes, proconsul, and
praefectus praetorio Strategius Musonius (d. 371) who informed and
advised the emperor Constantine the Great (r. 305-337, sole ruler
from 324) on Manichean affairs. All these personalities have a
Syriac background (Brown, 1969, pp. 96-97), and that points to Syria
as the immediate starting point of the Manichean mission to
Byzantium.
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/manicheism-iv-missionary-activity-and-technique-
While
in exile in Cappadocia, the Arsacid Tiridates received a Roman
education and acquired a good knowledge of Greek and Latin (Life of
St. Gregory, Gk. version 159, 183=Ar. version 145, 176=G. Garitte,
Documents pour l’étude du Livre d’Agathange,
Vatican, l946, pp. 97, 110). His restoration appears to have been
the result of a compromise agreed by Vahram II and Diocletian at
some uncertain date around 286-287. Under its terms the Persians
must have kept possession of the greater part of Greater Armenia,
because in 293 the Sasanian Narseh was still in residence in Armenia
as its "king" (Humbach and Skjærvø, op. cit.,
and W. B. Henning, BSOAS 14, 1952, pp. 517f.). It was only after the
defeat of Narseh, now the king of kings, by the Caesar Galerius at
Osxa (Oskikʿ in the canton of Całkotn) in Armenia that the
whole of the territory passed out of Persian control and the Arsacid
dynasty was definitely reinstated in Armenia under Roman suzerainty.
Under another clause of the treaty signed at Nisibis in 297, the
five old "Provinces" or districts of southern
Armenia—Sophene, Ingilene, Arzanene, Gordyene, and
Zabdicene—were ceded to the Romans (Petrus Patricius, fragment
14=Dindorf, Hist. Gr. Min. I, p. 434; cf. Ammianus Marcellinus
25.7.9; see below).
The Christian Arsacids
Tiridates
III and his successors until the partition. The reign of Tiridates
II was marked by an event of far-reaching importance for Armenia’s
future, namely this king’s adoption of Christianity as the
state religion at the urging of St. Gregory the Illuminator (i.e.
Baptist). The latter was probably a Greek from Cappadocia (Life, Gk.
version 40=G. Garitte, Documents, p. 37) rather than a nobleman of
the stock of the Suren family, as Armenian tradition maintains. At
the king’s behest, Gregory went to Cappadocia with an escort
of naxarars to receive consecration as bishop. (The Armenian church
remained dependent on the see of Caesarea until the reign of King
Pap). The chronology of Armenia’s conversion presents a
problem. The event used to be dated about 300, but more recent
scholars (notably P. Ananian "La data e le circostanze della
consecrazione di S. Gregorio Illuminatore," Le Muséon
84, 1961, pp. 43-73, 317-60) tend to change the date to 314/315 —
a surmise which seems probable but cannot be proved. B. MacDermot’s
arguments for 294 (in Revue des études arméniennes,
N.S., 1971, pp. 281-358) are ingenious but not convincing. The war
of Maximinus Daia in 311-312 (Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica
9.66.3) might provide a terminus ante quem if it could be proved
that "the Armenians allied to the Romans" were subjects of
King Tiridates.
Nisibis
Considerable
improvement must therefore have been made to its fortification under
Diocletian and Constantine. Ammianus (XXV.9.1) mentions a citadel
(arx) from which flew the Persian flag after the disgraceful
surrender of the city in 363. Malalas (XII, p. 336.14-15) calls it
"one of the towers" implying that there were several.
Ammianus who knew the city well echoes the views of many in
remarking that "the entire Orient might have passed into the
control of Persia, had not this city with its advantageous situation
and mighty walls resisted him (i.e. Šāpur II)" and
the city was undoubtedly "the strongest bulwark of the Orient"
(XXV.8.14). Besides the strengthening of her defenses, the morale of
Nisibis’ citizens was greatly raised by the growth of
Christianity in this region after the conversion of Constantine.
Jacob, one of the city’s first bishops, was active in raising
the morale of the garrison in the first siege. As Christians in
Persia came to be suspected as a pro-Roman fifth-column and openly
persecuted, the war between Rome and Persia acquired a new religious
dimension; it was no longer a conflict of Romans versus
"barbarians," but of the faithful against persecuting
"heathens".
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/nisibis-city-in-northern-mesopotamia
When
Hormizd II died in 309, he was succeeded by his son Adur Narseh,
who, after a brief reign which lasted few months, was killed by some
of the nobles of the empire. They then blinded the second, and
imprisoned the third (Hormizd, who afterwards escaped to the Roman
Empire). The throne was reserved for the unborn child of Hormizd
II's Jewish wife Ifra Hormizd, which was Shapur II. It is said that
Shapur II may have been the only king in history to be crowned in
utero, as the legend claims that the crown was placed upon his
mother's womb while she was pregnant.
However,
according to Alireza Shapour Shahbazi, it is unlikely that Shapur
was crowned as king while still in his mother's womb, since the
nobles could not have known of his sex at that time. He further
states that Shapur was born forty days after his father's death, and
that the nobles killed Adur Narseh and crowned Shapur II in order to
gain greater control of the empire, which they were able to do until
Shapur II reached his majority at the age of 16.
In
337, just before the death of Constantine the Great (324–337),
Shapur II, provoked by the Roman rulers' backing of Roman Armenia,
broke the peace concluded in 297 between emperors Narseh (293–302)
and Diocletian (284–305), which had been observed for forty
years. This was the beginning of two long drawn-out wars (337–350
and 358-363) which were inadequately recorded.
After
crushing a rebellion in the south, Shapur II invaded Roman
Mesopotamia and captured Armenia. Apparently, nine major battles
were fought. The most renowned was the inconclusive Battle of
Singara (modern Sinjar, Iraq) in which Constantius II was at first
successful, capturing the Persian camp, only to be driven out by a
surprise night attack after Shapur had rallied his troops (344-or
348?). The most notable feature of this war was the consistently
successful defence of the Roman fortress of Nisibis in Mesopotamia.
Shapur besieged the fortress three times (in 338, 346, 350), and was
repulsed each time.
Although
victorious in battle, Shapur II could make no further progress with
Nisibis un-taken. At the same time he was attacked in the east by
Scythian Massagetae and other Central Asia. He had to break off the
war with the Romans and arrange a hasty truce in order to pay
attention to the east (350). Roughly around this time the Hunnic
tribes, most likely the [...]
In
any case, Christian communities had unquestionably existed in
Armenia before the official conversion. In a passage in the church
history of Sozomenus (Historia ecclesiastica 2.8.2) it is stated
that the Persians began to become Christian as a result of their
contacts with the Armenians and the Osrhoenians; but as far as the
Armenians are concerned, this is not wholly true, because the first
penetration of Christianity into Iran was definitely not by way of
Armenia (see M. L. Chaumont, La diffusion du christianisme en Iran
au IIIe siècle, in Temporini and Haase, op. cit., II,
forthcoming). Christianization tended to strengthen Armenia’s
links with the Roman empire and to set back the Iranian cultural
influence.
Tiridates
III, the St. Tiridates of the Armenians, worked closely with St.
Gregory to spread Christianity through his kingdom and to suppress
the pagan cults (described below), which nevertheless did not
disappear altogether. While remaining a loyal ally of the Roman
emperor, Tiridates did not break off all links with the Sasanians.
Presumably he was on good terms with the prince Hormizd, who after
the death of his father Hormizd II in 309 had been excluded from the
throne and kept in prison until he escaped to the Armenian court
(Zosimus, Historia nova, [ed. Mendelssohn, 1887] 2.27; see P.
Peeters, in Bulletin de l’Académie Royale de Belgique
17, 1931, p. 37). Tiridates is said to have been killed in a plot
hatched by his adversaries (text published by Alishan=Langlois, pp.
193-94; Movsēs Xorenacʿi 2.92=Langlois, I, p. 131 ). From
the sources, his death would appear to have occurred not later than
320 (see Peeters, op. cit., pp. 17, 37), but some (Markwart,
Untersuchungen I, p. 220; R. Grousset, Histoire de l’Arménie
des origines à 1071, 2nd ed., Paris, 1947, p. 120; Ananian,
op. cit., p. 353) hold that his reign lasted until 330 or even later
(Asdourian, op. cit., p. 143, places his death in 337). The view of
H. Manandian reiterated by K. Toumanoff (in Revue des études
arméniennes, 1969, pp. 263f.) that Tiridates III was
succeeded by another king of the same name, Tiridates IV, seems
unfounded.
Information
about the successors of Tiridates, namely his son Khosrov Kotak
(Ḵosrow the Lesser) and his grandson Tiran, is available only
from the Armenian sources. Khosrov chose a site north of Artaxata on
which to build a new capital, Dvin, and an aparankʿ (Parthian
apadān) or royal palace (Pʿawstos 3.8=Langlois, I, pp.
216-18; Movsēs Xorenacʿi 3.8=Langlois, II, pp. 136-37).
The statement of Movsēs Xorenacʿi that dvin was a Persian
word meaning "hill" was generally doubted until V.
Minorsky ("Transcaucasica," JA, 1930, pp. 41f.) drew
attention to the use of dovīn with the sense of "hill"
in Persian place names. Khosrov Kotak had to contend with an
invasion by the Massagetae of Balāsagān, whose king, named
Sanesan or Sanatruk is said to have been related to him (Pʿawstos
3.7=Langlois, I, pp. 215-16; Movsēs Xorenacʿi,
3.9=Langlois, II, pp. 137-38). Another problem is said to have been
the defection of the vitaxes (bdeašx) of Arzanene, who sought
to become a vassal of the Persian king (Pʿawstos 3.9=Langlois,
p. 216; Movsēs Xorenacʿi 3.4=Langlois, II, p. 135); but
this defection, the date of which is unclear, cannot really have
affected the king of Armenia because Arzanene had not been Armenian
for many years, having been annexed to the Roman empire under the
treaty of Nisibis. King Tiran (incorrectly called Tigranes VII)
seems to have had serious conflicts with the Christian clergy and is
said to have put St. Gregory’s successor, the catholicos
Yusik, to death. In his foreign policy he was mainly concerned to
placate Šāpūr II of Iran. The latter made no secret
of his designs on Armenia (Libanius, Orationes 59.71-72; Eusebius,
Vita Constantini 4.56), where he could count on support from some of
the naxarars. Probably ca. 334/335 or perhaps a little later, Šāpūr
succeeded in capturing King Tiran, his queen, and the crown prince
Aršak (according to the rather picturesque account given by
Pʿawstos 3.20=Langlois, I, pp. 229f.). Tiran is said to have
been betrayed by his chamberlain (senekapet) Phisak, who delivered
him to the satrap of Arzanene, Šāpūr-Varāz (on
the chronology of these events, see N. H. Baynes, "Rome and
Armenia in the Fourth Century," English Historical Review 25,
1910, pp. 627-28; E. Stein, Histoire du Bas-Empire I, Paris, 1959,
p. l30). In 338, however, Šāpūr after his first
reverse outside Nisibis agreed to the release of the royal family of
Armenia and to the enthronement of Aršak, apparently at the
special request of the emperor Constantius II; the matter is the
subject of oracular comments by Julian (Orationes 1.20d; ed. J.
Bidez, p. 34 in which the personal name of the king of Armenia is
not mentioned).
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/armenia-ii
The
trilingual inscription of Šābuhr at "Kaaba i
Zardušt"
Res
Gestae divi Saporis
Kidarites,
whose king was Grumbates,
make
an appearance as an encroaching threat upon Sasanian territory as
well as a menace to the Gupta Empire (320-500). After a prolonged
struggle (353–358) they were forced to conclude a peace, and
Grumbates agreed to enlist his light cavalrymen into the Persian
army and accompany Shapur II in renewed war against the Romans,
particularly participating in the Siege of Amida in 359.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapur_II
Manichaeism's views on Jesus are
described by historians:
Jesus
in Manichaeism possessed three separate identities:
(1)
Jesus the Luminous, (2) Jesus the Messiah and (3) Jesus patibilis
(the suffering Jesus).
(1)
As Jesus the Luminous... his primary role was as supreme revealer
and guide and it was he who woke Adam from his slumber and revealed
to him the divine origins of his soul and its painful captivity by
the body and mixture with matter. Jesus the Messiah was a historical
being who was the prophet of the Jews and the forerunner of Mani.
However, the Manichaeans believed he was wholly divine. He never
experienced human birth as notions of physical conception and birth
filled the Manichaeans with horror and the Christian doctrine of
virgin birth was regarded as equally obscene. Since he was the light
of the world, where was this light, they asked, when he was in the
womb of the Virgin?
(2)
Jesus the Messiah was truly born at his baptism as it was on that
occasion that the Father openly acknowledged his sonship. The
suffering, death and resurrection of this Jesus were in appearance
only as they had no salvific value but were an exemplum of the
suffering and eventual deliverance of the human soul and a
prefiguration of Mani's own martyrdom.
(3)
The pain suffered by the imprisoned Light-Particles in the whole of
the visible universe, on the other hand, was real and immanent. This
was symbolized by the mystic placing of the Cross whereby the wounds
of the passion of our souls are set forth. On this mystical Cross of
Light was suspended the Suffering Jesus (Jesus patibilis) who was
the life and salvation of Man. This mystica cruxificio was present
in every tree, herb, fruit, vegetable and even stones and the soil.
This constant and universal suffering of the captive soul is
exquisitely expressed in one of the Coptic Manichaean psalms.
The Theban Legion
(also
known as the Martyrs of Agaunum) figures in Christian hagiography as
an entire Roman legion — of "six thousand six hundred and
sixty-six men" — who had converted en masse to
Christianity and were martyred together, in 286, according to the
hagiographies of Saint Maurice, the chief among the Legion's saints.
Their feast day is held on September 22.
According
to Eucherius of Lyon, ca. 443–450, the Legion was the garrison
of the city of Thebes in Egypt. The Legion were quartered in the
East until the emperor Maximian ordered them to march to Gaul, to
assist him against the rebels of Burgundy. The Theban Legion[4] was
commanded in its march by Saint Maurice (Mauritius), Candidus,
Innocent, and Exuperius, all of whom are venerated as saints. At
Saint-Maurice, Switzerland, then called Agaunum, the orders were
given — since the Legion had refused to sacrifice to the
Emperor — to "decimate" it by putting to death a
tenth of its men. This act was repeated until none were left.
According
to a letter written about 450 by Eucherius, Bishop of Lyon, bodies
identified as the martyrs of Agaunum were discovered by Theodore
(Theodulus), the first historically identified Bishop of Octudurum,
who was present at the Council of Aquileia, 381 and died in 391. The
basilica he built in their honor attracted the pilgrim trade; its
remains can still be seen, part of the abbey begun in the early
sixth century on land donated by King Sigismund of Burgundy.
The
earliest surviving document describing "the holy Martyrs who
have made Agaunum illustrious with their blood" is the letter
of Eucherius, which describes the succession of witnesses from the
martyrdom to his time, a span of about 150 years. The bishop had
made the journey to Agaunum himself, and his report of his visit
multiplied a thousandfold the standard formula of the martyrologies:
We
often hear, do we not, a particular locality or city is held in high
honour because of one single martyr who died there, and quite
rightly, because in each case the saint gave his precious soul to
the most high God. How much more should this sacred place, Agaunum,
be reverenced, where so many thousands of martyrs have been slain,
with the sword, for the sake of Christ.
As
with many hagiographies, Eucherius' letter to Bishop Salvius
reinforced an existing pilgrimage site. Many of the faithful were
coming from diverse provinces of the empire, according to Eucherius,
devoutly to honor these saints, and (important for the abbey of
Agaunum) to offer presents of gold, silver and other things. He
mentions many miracles, such as casting out of devils and other
kinds of healing "which the power of the Lord works there every
day through the intercession of his saints".
In
the late sixth century, Gregory of Tours was convinced of the
miraculous powers of the Theban Legion, though he transferred the
event to Cologne, where there was an early cult devoted to Maurice
and the Theban Legion:
At
Cologne there is a church in which the fifty men from the holy
Theban Legion are said to have consummated their martyrdom for the
name of Christ. And because the church, with its wonderful
construction and mosaics, shines as if somehow gilded, the
inhabitants prefer to call it the "Church of the Golden
Saints". Once Eberigisilus, who was at the time bishop of
Cologne, was racked with severe pains in half his head. He was then
in a villa near a village. Eberigisilus sent his deacon to the
church of the saints. Since there was said to be in the middle of
the church a pit into which the saints were thrown together after
their martyrdom, the deacon collected some dust there and brought it
to the bishop. As soon as the dust touched Eberigisilus' head,
immediately all pain was gone.
Thebaei
is the proper name of one particular military unit, the Legio I
Maximiana, also known as Maximiana Thebaeorum, recorded in the
Notitia Dignitatum.
According
to Samir F. Girgis, writing in the Coptic Encyclopedia, there were
two legions bearing the name "Theban," both of them formed
by Diocletian sometime after the organization of the original
Egyptian legion, stationed at Alexandria. It is not certain which of
these was transferred from Egypt to Europe in order to assist
Maximian in Gaul.
The
monastic accounts themselves do not specifically state that all the
soldiers were collectively executed; an eleventh-century monk named
Otto of Freising wrote that most of the legionaries escaped, and
only some were executed. It is possible that the legion was simply
divided during Diocletian's re-organization of units (breaking up
legions of 6000 men to create smaller units of 1000), and that some
of the soldiers had been executed, and that this was where the story
of the legion's destruction originated from. Henri Leclercq suggests
that it is quite possible that an incident at Agaunum may have had
to do not with a legion, but with a simple detachment.
Johan
Mösch, after comparing information from the various chronicles
on the events and geography of the martyrdoms of the legionaries,
concluded that only a single cohort was martyred at Agaunum. The
remainder of the cohorts (battalion sized units of which there were
ten to a legion) were either on the march or already stationed along
the Roman road that ran from Liguria through Turin and Milan, then
across Alps and down the Rhine to Colonia Agrippinensis (Cologne).
L.
Dupraz and Paul Müller, by examining the military titles and
ranks of the legionnaires and thereby determining the total number
of soldiers involved, estimated that the Thebans martyred at Agaunum
consisted of but one cohort whose number did not exceed 520 men.Thus
the execution of an entire cohors is equivalent to decimation of a
legion.
Denis
an Berchem, of the University of Geneva, proposed that Eucherius'
presentation of the legend of the Theban legion was a literary
production, not based on a local tradition. David Woods, Professor
of Classics at the University College Cork, alleges that the model
of Maurice and the Theban Legion based on Eucherius of Lyon's letter
was a complete fiction.
The
strength of the account is based on the historical reputation for
the first monks in the Christian tradition, the hermits of the
Egyptian desert known as the "Desert Fathers", and the
almost fanatical Christian following they inspired during the first
two centuries. The most famous of the Desert Fathers was Anthony the
Great. The persecution of high-ranking Christian nobility under
Emperor Valerian following his edict in 258 and the purge of
Christians from the military from 284 through 299 under Emperor
Diocletian indicate that noncompliance with emperor worship was the
common method for detecting Christian soldiers and eventually
executing them.
Donald
F. O'Reilly argues that evidence from coins, papyrus, and Roman army
lists supports the story of the Theban Legion. A papyrus dated "in
the sixth year of our Lord the Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Probus
Pius Augustus, Tubi sixteenth" (13 January 282), shows rations
which would sustain a legion for about three months to be delivered
to Panopolis to the "mobilized soldiers and sailors".
Coins from Alexandria from the same time period were minted in a
style used only when troops for a new legion were leaving port.
During the trial of the martyr Maximilian, it was noted that there
were Christians serving in the Roman army, and the existence of
Theban Christian legionnaires in the same units as mentioned in the
Notitia Dignitatum was shown.
Henri
Leclercq also notes that the account of Eucherius "has many
excellent qualities, historical as well as literary". L. Dupaz
countered Denis van Berchem's assertion by sifting through the
stories, carefully matching them with archeological discoveries at
Agaunum, thus concluding that the martyrdom is historical and that
the relics of the martyrs were brought to Agaunum between 286 and
392 through the office of the bishop Theodore. Dora Ruinart, Paul
Allard, and the editors of the "Analecta Bollandiana" are
of opinion that "the martyrdom of the legion, attested, as it
is by ancient and reliable evidence, cannot be called in question by
any honest mind".
Saints associated
with the Theban legion
According
to the hagiographical material, Maurice was an Egyptian, born
in 250 in Thebes, an ancient city in Upper Egypt that was the
capital of the New Kingdom of Egypt (1575-1069 BC). He was brought
up in the region of Thebes (Luxor).
Maurice
became a soldier in the Roman army. He was gradually promoted until
he became the commander of the Theban legion, thus approximately
leading a thousand men. He was an acknowledged Christian at a time
when early Christianity was considered to be a threat to the Roman
Empire. Yet, he moved easily within the pagan society of his day.
The
legion, entirely composed of Christians, had been called from Thebes
in Egypt to Gaul to assist Emperor Maximian to defeat a revolt by
the bagaudae. The Theban Legion was dispatched with orders to clear
the Great St Bernard Pass across Mont Blanc. Before going into
battle, they were instructed to offer sacrifices to the pagan gods
and pay homage to the emperor. Maurice pledged his men’s
military allegiance to Rome. He stated that service to God
superseded all else. To engage in wanton slaughter was inconceivable
to Christian soldiers he said. He and his men refused to worship
Roman deities.
However,
when Maximian ordered them to harass some local Christians, they
refused. Ordering the unit to be punished, Maximian had every tenth
soldier killed, a military punishment known as decimation. More
orders followed, the men refused as encouraged by Maurice, and a
second decimation was ordered. In response to the Theban Christians'
refusal to attack fellow Christians, Maximian ordered all the
remaining members of his legion to be executed. The place in
Switzerland where this occurred, known as Agaunum, is now
Saint-Maurice, Switzerland, site of the Abbey of St. Maurice.
So
reads the earliest account of their martyrdom, contained in the
public letter which Bishop Eucherius of Lyon (c. 434–450),
addressed to his fellow bishop, Salvius. Alternative versions have
the legion refusing Maximian's orders only after discovering
innocent Christians had inhabited a town they had just destroyed, or
that the emperor had them executed when they refused to sacrifice to
the Roman gods.
The statuary
collection held at the baths of Zeuxippus (Ap 2) and the search for
Constantine’s museological intentions
Carlos
A. Martins de Jesus
Constantine
intended to portrait his very own Constantinople as the new (third)
Troy, the most complete portrait of Greek and Roman [paidea]
paideia.
He and his team had no more than six years to redesign and rebuilt
an entire city, the old Byzantium; plastic arts, mainly sculpture,
played an important role in the entire public process. Looking once
again at the archaeological remains of the statuary collection held
at the baths of Zeuxippus, in relation to their literary description
by Christodoros (Greek
Anthology
II), the present paper essays a museological reading of these
statues as part of the global architectural plan of Constantine for
his own new capital of the Imperium.
1. Remodelling and adorning
Constantinople
"Dedicatur
Constantinopolis omnium paene urbium nuditate". It was with
these words, without mentioning any other political events, that
Jerome chose to refer to the foundation of Constantinople. Scholars
have agreed on reading this nudity
as the look of the cities that, under Constantine’s command,
saw their most precious sculptural works of art being taken to the
newly found capital of the Empire. Nevertheless, one must notice
that Jerome talks about nuditate
(the substantive), not simply about denuding
(any verbal form) the conquered cities. That is why I shall propose
the possibility of a different reading: that Jerome had in mind,
with such a choice of wording, an intentional ambiguity: certainly
he refers to the act of denuding other cities to adorn
Constantinople, but he also implies to the use of these cities’
own nudity
(their
pagan statues) to dress
up
the new capital, thus giving the latter an overall look of somehow
sinful nudity,
inevitably a characteristic of a whore.
Archaeology
and several Christian authors, like Eusebius, have shown - thus
giving credit to the view of a truly magnificent Constantinople
already portrayed since the Renaissance - that Constantinople, by
the time of its official dedication in 330, was everything but a
naked city. Furthermore, it was probably not naked even before
Constantine’s conquest; dressed up enough, at least, for the
new Emperor to see in it, in its already existing (and potential)
romanitas,
as Basset puts it, "a springboard for the implementation of
[his own] urban vision, probably as a result of the changes already
made during the previous Severan government. Indeed, scholars are
now sure of the magnificent buildings and streets of Constantine’s
Constantinople, all of these spaces adorned with the most exquisite
and rare statuary, in different dimensions and positions, always
intriguing the passer-by with both its beauty and its meaning. Such
was the city, very close to the one portrayed by Eusebius, a space
of architectonical and sculptural ποικιλία
(varietas),
one of the most identifying traces of the new Byzantine taste; a
completely different and, as Basset writes, "newly outfitted
urban core of monumental architecture and sculpture".
In
the course of my paper, by the reanalysis of the archaeological,
iconographical and literary data, I shall approach what I think is
the possible museological reading of the collection of statues held
at the Baths of Zeuxippus, following an interpretation already
implicit in several scholars, as recently in the book of Yegül
who, talking about the Zeuxippus, called it "a veritable museum
of classical art", the exact same words already used by Stanley
Casson when publishing the second report of the excavations
performed on the site. I therefore shall put together the evidence
of what must have been a very Constantinian intention - the
elaboration of a project, both public and urban, of a great
exhibition of statuary, itself formed by several minor collections.
More than the "intention of the collectors to display objects
of artJ (Saradi-Mendelovici), already noticed and studied by
scholars, I shall pursue the very steps of the creation of an art
collection with political and propagandistic purposes, the means and
the ends of what must have been one of Constantinople’s
greatest national galleries, even if it held works of art that were
in no way national.
By
now, a first evidence takes us a step closer to the reading we are
looking for: the remodelling and the provision with true art
galleries of an entire city in just six years, which could not have
happened without a detailed, coherent and well-organised plan.
Constantine and his collaborators set afoot a wide plan (both
architectural and museological) of transformation of a city in which
they saw potential enough to become a urban and public museum of
Greek, Roman and Hellenistic sculpture; a project that was only
possible in a city (the pre-Constantinian Byzantium) that already
counted several art
galleries
in itself, spaces that required remodelling - as any room or museum
nowadays still does, especially when the exhibition’s
importance demands it - in order to accommodate several minor
exhibitions that formed the huge National Identity Museum that was
Constantinople in its entirety.
If
Rome was the huge urban museum that it was, due to centuries of art
accumulation, the Severan Byzantium that Constantine finally
conquered in 324 was no Rome. The new city’s artistic spolia
weren no longer to be collected during decades, as the result of
military victories; they had to be identified, selected, collected,
transported and only then exhibited in their new public galleries -
and time was limited. Even if different from the primordial spolia,
at the end of the day they kept their original meaning, as they were
still an immediate and meaningful manifestation of imperial power
and domination. Much work was required in only six years. Sozomen,
in the fifth century, actually says that Constantine had to impose
taxes to cover the expenses of building and adorning the city.
Nevertheless, the Museum was ready to be seen in May 330, with every
single stage of its curacy carefully performed. For the moment, let
us make a tour of its major buildings and art collection.
2. The Zeuxippus, a special art
gallery
Part
of the Emperor’s first great architectural plan consisted of
remodelling or constructing from the ground up five buildings that
soon became the major symbols of his power and urban plan: the
Augusteion, the Basilica, the Hippodrome, the Great Palace and the
Baths of Zeuxippus. They were all public buildings in the neuralgic
centre of the city; all of them well connected by wide streets where
circulation was easy, the postcard picture of visitation that
Constantine wanted for his city. But they were also the main spaces
where, by means of sculptural exhibitions and their very
architectural grandeur, a new imperial image of power (of Roman
imperial power) should be reflected, a wide-ranging look of
romanitas.
The
Baths of Zeuxippus along with the Hippodrome and the Great Palace,
were one of the three sites where such romanitas
soon
became more evident. Nothing more Roman, everyone agrees, than a
public bath-gymnasium and a space for athletic competitions (as the
Hippodrome was), even if these activities were not the only ones
having place in these buildings. Constantine had already ordered the
building of such a complex in Rome, named after himself; but the new
capital of the Empire, his major personal achievement, should have
its own. From the eight great thermal complexes identified by the
Notitia
Vrbis Constantinopolitanae
in the mid-fifth century - apart from the 153 smaller bathing places
(balneae)
- the Zeuxippus was certainly the most important and the one more
intimately connected with the will of Constantine himself. In spite
of its achievements, archaeological excavations held in place
between 1927-1929 were not able to provide a very detailed plan of
the inside organization of the building. Nevertheless, later
excavations in
situ
unveiled
other buildings of the same complex, among which there was a
cistern, and provided more data for a better understanding of the
building and its functions.
The
Zeuxippus, Constantinople’s major bathing complex, stood in
the center of the city, between the northeastern corner of the
Hippodrome, the Great Palace and the public forum known as the
Augusteion (see Picture 1). Traditionally, literary sources ascribe
its construction to Septimius Severus, in the last years of the
second century. Even if we are not aware of Constantine and his
team’s level of intervention on the existing building - in
fact, when telling the rush of building activity leading up to the
dedication of Constantinople, the sixth century historian Malalas
only says that the emperor "completed"
or "filled in" (άνεπλήρωσε)
the building -, it seems to admit that it was largely
remodeled and amplified, besides being provided with a more direct
connection to the Great Palace and the Hippodrome, via the
Augusteion. Far beyond the installation of the gallery of statues,
the project must have included a series of new rooms and halls, some
of them meant to host the collection of statues. Constantine, in the
Zeuxippus as in many other sites of the so-long called Byzantium,
was preparing the galleries that were to receive the most impressive
works of classical sculpture.
As
said before, archaeological remains of the Zeuxippus are few when it
comes to reconstructing its inner architectural organization.
Nevertheless, scholars like F. Yegül seem to be correct when
seeing in the remains resemblances to the Baths of Faustina in
Miletus, which archaeology was able to uncover in a more efficient
way than in the case of the Zeuxippus. The Baths of Faustina are
also meaningful on the subject of statuary displaying, since,
besides the statues naturally displayed in this kind of building,
excavations identified a square hall with a broad apse and niches in
the walls that could have functioned as a lecture hall, a museion
or a room for the display of statuary (apud Yegül).
This
is the kind of physical gallery that we must have in mind from now
on. Although it is possible that there were rooms exclusively meant
to host the works of art - and one may think especially of the case
of sculptural portraits, usually smaller and more easy to
accommodate in a closed room -, the better known examples of
bath-gymnasia we have mentioned, as well as others, show very
clearly that the main works of art, those precious sculptures
brought from abroad, both in bronze and marble, were to be displayed
all-along the building, inside and outside of it. Therefore, one may
already distinguish two policies for display, both traditional and
part of Constantine’s project; one more monumental and public,
meant to be a part of the user’s routine - which somehow took
the outer communitarian space into the inner spaces of the Baths -,
alongside another one, more concentrated and possible to organise
thematically, chronologically or even artistically, probably meant
for more exclusive visitors; this might occupy several smaller
rooms.
The
reputation of the Zeuxippus is due mainly to the poetic description
of some of its statues, a poem in 416 hexametres by Christodoros
that was transmitted to us as book 2 of the Greek Anthology.
Presenting in all manuscripts of the Anthology the epigraph
Έκφρασις
των άγαλμάτων
των είς το δημόσιον
γυμνάιον του
έπικαλουμένου
Ζευξίππου, the
poem describes eighty statues or statue-groups, from the much larger
collection that was possible to see in the Baths. Scholars have been
divided on their approaches to the relations between the poem and
the statues themselves, giving more or less credit to the truth of
their description and to the words of Christodoros. Indeed, it is
datable in the first years of the sixth century, under the
government (and probable commission) of Anastasius, mentioned in
lines 403-404. Archaeology has shown that Christodoros worked upon a
real collection of sculptures, even if we are forced to believe that
it was no longer the same collection prepared by Constantine, at
least 170 years before. Among other remains, excavations unveiled
three base-statues, two of which had inscribed the names of Hecuba
(Base B) and Aeschynes (Base C), characters whose statues are
described in the Ekphrasis,
respectively in lines 175-178 and 14-17.
The
very re-appreciation of these bases will soon provide us new
arguments on the reading we are following. First, the bases must be
placed somewhere in the fifth century. Therefore, they are posterior
to Constantine, i.e., they were very probably not part of the
original exhibition in 330, "when Roman square bases were more
common" (Casson); on the other hand, being previous to the time
of Christodoros, it is highly possible that he saw them when
composing his poem. This hints at the constant remodelling of the
exhibitions inside the Zeuxippus, something that receives further
confirmation in the holes found in Bases A and B, enough to prove
that each base must have supported at least two different statues
and allowing the possibility of the existence of temporary
exhibitions. We must accept the idea of an open gallery, even
several open and multipurpose galleries, being constantly reformed.
And this is different from the simple accumulation of statues, as
the result of military spolia, for instance; the
archaeological data we now have support that idea that, in the
Zeuxippus, statues were moved and frequently added to the collection
also as a response to museological or artistic concerns.
In
spite of the (few) spatial indications provided by Christodoros and
the intricate attempts of reconstructing the order of the statues by
some scholars, we are actually unable to reconstruct the look of the
sculptural exhibitions in the Zeuxippus. Nevertheless, it seems that
Christodoros follows a somewhat linear order, and that is why we
give credit to the opinion of Bassett, when arguing for the
Ekphrasis as a description of the statues exhibited in the
frigidarium, which was, indeed, "the showpiece of any
Imperial establishment". There, statues could stand at ground
level - and that was Stupperich’s biggest mistake, to assume
that every sculpture was displayed this way -, but also in open
spaces (like halls and corridors) or niches and
aediculae,
in the best architectural tradition of similar buildings found
everywhere throughout the Roman Empire. The room on which
Christodoros focused, and with it the entire complex, would have
such a poikiliakos aspect, as poikiliakos was the poem
that describes it with such creative versification. Once again, the
three bases, contemporary as they are, can afford some confirmation.
Base C (the "Aeschynes’ base) is smaller (height 1,35 m;
shaft 58 cm) than Bases A and B (height 1,40 m diameter 1,08 m;
shaft 83 cm), but its inscription presents the same lettering than
Base B, which suggests that they were part of a same gallery
purpose. With all this evidence, Bassett seems to be correct when
arguing that "a concerted effort was made to provide a
homogenous display" and that "presumably all of the bases
in the collection were round". If so, even if the inner
structures of the building were also used to exhibit (its niches,
its corners, its halls), one may accept the idea that the very
conception of these bases was part of a museological plan.
Yet
another question requires an answer as we revisit
the Zeuxippus sculpture gallery: the medium in which these works
were sculpted. Christodoros, in the fifth century, persistently
mentions bronze (with chalkon and derivative forms), and
archaeologists actually detected remains of such material in the
uncovered bases of the statues (Casson); in the sixth century,
Malalas says that Constantine adorned the Zeuxippus "with
variegate marbles and statues of bronze" (κοσμήσας
κίοσι και μαρμάροις
ποικίλοις και
χαλκουργήμασιν)
and colourful marble seem to be mentioned not as medium of the
sculptures but as covering the walls and floor of the building. On
the other hand, in the twelfth century, Cedrenus
provides another description of the complex, mentioning, "many
painted marvels and well-made splendours of marble, stone and
mosaic, as well as bronze images that were the work of ancient men"
(ποικίλη
τις ήν θεωρία
και
λαμπρότης
τεχνων, των τε
μαρμάρων
και λίθων και
ψηφίδων και είκόνων
δια χαλκου
πεποιημένων των
άπ' αίωνος ανδρων
έργα)
but also this author is unclear on the media of the statues.
Nevertheless, nothing undeniably supports Christodoros’
exclusive references to bronze as the medium of the collection. Once
again, we face the limits of the reading of the Ekphrasis.
Is Christodoros working upon a single gallery, probably the one at
the frigidarium?
Or is he arbitrarily focusing on some statues he sees when walking
through the Bath? Once more, archaeology provides a possible answer.
The
main artefact recovered in the site of the Baths that can directly
be connected with the museological plan of Constantine is a fragment
of the face of a colossal female statue or bust, which is nowadays
lost but we are told is was found "among the debris at the very
bottom level" (Casson et alii). Because of that, the report of
the second excavation already stated that the marble fragment
"derived from a statue which once stood in the baths, quite
probably one of the early Greek statues looted from Athens by one of
the first Emperors of the fourth or fifth century AD." Even if
a direct relation to Constantine is unsafe, we obtain confirmation
for another characteristic of the exhibitions in the Zeuxippus:
there were, in the same space, statues of marble and bronze, from
the very beginnings of the building as a public bath and a art
museum.
3. Masterpieces at the Zeuxippus
(the possible guided tour)
The
fragment of a colossal head we are looking at is also the best proof
available to confirm the practice of importing sculpture to
Constantinople from the very first years of its foundation. As
mentioned before, Constantine’s use of sculptural spolia
is to be understood differently, since it was part of a detailed
plan to provide the city with some of the greatest masterpieces of
both Greek and Roman culture. From now on we shall look at some
examples of sculptures we know, mostly from Christodoros’
account, to have been displayed at the Zeuxippus. Samples of true
antique sculpture, that at least is how the inhabitants would have
looked at them - brought from several parts of the Empire. One must
also keep in mind the common use, at the time, of copies, some of
them ordered for a specific building, a practice that, besides not
being a sign of bad taste, must have had its own market.
Archaeological
interventions at the site of the Zeuxippus, apart from the
aforementioned fragment of a colossal head, have not been able to
uncover any complete or even partial statue that might have been
displayed in the Baths. Nevertheless, the better-known history of
other famous sculptures and their presence in the galleries of
Constantinople allow us to imagine that no less important works of
art must have stood in the rooms of the Zeuxippus, at first as the
result of Constantine’s museological plan. One single example
would be enough: the eleventh century historian Kedrenos records a
tradition according to which the fifth-century chryselephantine
statue of Zeus, the work of Pheidias first exhibited in the Temple
of Zeus in Olympia, was carried off to Constantinople, most probably
in the years of the preparation of the city for the official
dedication, where it was displayed at the Palace of Lausus, another
building renowned for the vast and rich collection of statues housed
within its walls.
As
for the Zeuxippus collection, the most recent and complete essay on
listing the sculptures displayed is the one by Bassett 2004. When
working on the Zeuxippus, Bassett does it probably in the only way
possible, i.e. from the list of statues and sculptural groups given
in the Ekphrasis. But the poem, in spite of the
aforementioned persistent indication of bronze and other indirect
information, says nothing on the statues’ provenance,
antiquity or authorship. In face of such a lack of information, both
literary and archaeological, the only way to forward is the way of
moderate imagination and comparison with known sculptural models of
each character, when such a work is possible. And some interesting
identifications have been made or suggested. I give here two
examples, and dare to make a suggestion. Richter 1965, for instance,
thought that the statue of Sappho described between lines 69-71 of
the Ekphrasis could be an original brought from Lesbos, not
necessarily from the classical period, since Christodoros mentions
the poetess as a seated female figure, an image frequent in coins
found at Mytilene, from the second century AD. In another example,
all the three descriptions of statues of Aphrodite (lines 78-81,
99-101, 288-290) fit the model of a series of half-draped fourth
century BC representations of the goddess, as the so-called
Aphrodite (or Venus) d’Arles, a first-century BC marble
sculpture now at the Louvre that is thought to be a copy of the
Aphrodite of Thespiae of Praxiteles, a work from his early career in
the 360s BC that could also resemble the model of the so-called
Cnidia Baldevere, nowadays in the Vatican Museum (N°
inv. 4260). Scholars have for long noticed this resemblance, but I
suggest what seems to me a strong possibility, that the statue
standing at the Zeuxippus may have been the original forth century
BC sculpture by Praxiteles. Besides Pausanias’ (second century
AD) mention of having viewed the statue at Thespiae in Boeotia, as
part of a group made up of Cupid, Phryne and Aphrodite, nothing else
is known about its destination. Therefore, if we only remember that
in the latter years of the fourth century Theodosius II brought the
Aphrodite of Cnidos of the same Praxiteles to his court in Lausus it
is not hard at all to suspect that Constantine himself or any other
emperor after him might have brought to the city this other
Praxitelean work.
4. A thematic
gallery on national identity?
Such
as the Zeuxippus in terms of statuary. As for Christodoros’
poem - which in selecting its characters seems to obey above all
artistic, poetic and commissioning interests - it mentions and
describes figures from the following main categories: mythical
characters that participated in the Trojan War (25),
mythical
characters not part of the Trojan conflict (6),
mythical
prophets or seers (8),
male
and female divinities (11),
poets
and other writers (16),
philosophers
(7),
political
men and other public characters (7) and athletes (3).
If
the collection prepared by Constantine might not have had the very
same statues, as said before, Christodoros’ account is still
useful for providing a sample of a collection with an intention akin
to those of Constantine. Indeed, it makes sense that some of the
ideological purposes were the same.
The
large amount of statues portraying mythical heroes from the Trojan
war, 25 (29 in other authors’ account), led Stupperich 1982 to
develop his very polemic theory that the Ekphrasis
was mostly a bronze Ilioupersis
- indeed, the most part of the characters are described as being in
a miserable situation, close to or as result of the fall of the
city; and that the Emperor himself had wanted to present
Constantinople as the new Troy, the third, after Rome. Furthermore,
Stupperich’s paper actually reads the Trojan iconography at
the Zeuxippus as Constantine’s intention, arguing, among other
things, from three literary testimonies that mention Constantine’s
first thought of founding his new capital in Troy (or at a nearby
location in Troad).
In
general, even if it remains impossible to determine how far the
mythical (Trojan and non-Trojan) statues described by Christodoros
in the late-fifth or early-sixth century were part of Constantine’s
inaugural collection, I think it might be assumed that this original
collection was composed mostly with mythical characters, models of
virtue, happiness and even learning from pain, all of them derived
from the very best characters of ancient Greek-roman culture. On the
other hand, it is also easy to understand that the portraits and
freestanding statues of political and more contemporary figures were
later added to the collection, as the result of successive
individual or group dedications. Yet, when thinking about its
origins, the exhibition had to reflect, as well said by Bassett, the
"desire to detach Constantinopolitan identity from the
confining agenda of local history and link it with the universal
cultural traditions of Greece and Rome". Myth, music, poetry,
rhetoric, politics and even sports, those were the bases that
Constantine wanted as the new Christian Empire’s paideia.
Constantine needed to provide his people with a plastic sample of
this paideia within
the walls of the Zeuxippus and other Constantinoplan public places.
And so these places became museums of art, but also museums of (yet
unspoken) very meaningful words (Bär 2012), where pagan gods
and seers were meant to transmit a message not to be the object of
any kind of cult. In 382, merely 50 years after the official
inauguration of Constantinople, an imperial decree from Theododius
I, referring to a certain temple at Osrhoene
in Mesopotamia [=Edessa, now Şanlıurfa, Turkey], commands
the local authorities to keep it open so that the inhabitants may
enjoy its precious gallery of statues. The text of the decree is
clear on saying that the statues were brought to the temple more
"artis pretio quam divinitate", a phrase unequivocal in
relation to the purely artistic importance ascribed to these
collections of statuary.
The
urban project prepared for the new capital, in spite of the
Christian tradition surrounding the foundation that gained voice
after it took place, insisting on seeing it as the naked
luxuriant whore possibly implied by Jerome; it was not permeable
to (or at least not defined by) the ideological demands of the new
official religion of the Empire. Far from being intimidated by the
popular beliefs of the pagan statues as containing evil demons one
may actually think that even that must have created an aura of
mysticism favourable to the existence and keeping of the statues
themselves. In other words, as recently concluded by Elsner, "the
very re-appropriation and redeployment into private collections of
these objects, many with pagan themes, helped to neutralize their
religious value to a sort of antiquarian chic which was hardly in
opposition to the new Christianising tendency." On the other
hand, as postulated by James, pagan statues were the medium of a
paradox that is no more than apparent: they are intentionally used
by Constantine (and by the emperors after him) as a means to unify
an officially Christian empire. And such a fact proves how far the
inhabitants accepted these works of art as part of their daily-life,
their collective and more immediate culture.
A
last plausible interrogation, in relation to Constantine’s
artistic agenda, may come from a literary and performative enquiry
on the Ekphrasis. The poem, with regard to its context of
production, commission and much-probable performance - and if it was
not for its literary value - could fit in the same group of texts
such as the so-called Παραστάσεις
ιύντομοι χρονικαί...
("Brief Historical Expositions"), a
confusing little book from the eighth or ninth century that consists
of a series of comments on Constantinoplan topography and monuments,
mainly its statues and their mystic relationto the inhabitants. More
than revealing the Byzantines’ distrust of classical statues,
this book (and others like it) is to be interpreted, if not as a
kind of tourist’s guidebook to the curiosities of
Constantinople (Mango), at least as having been compiled
also from such guidebooks, among the several and very distinct
sources most certainly implied in its composition.
As
James writes, "statues were perceived on both the
intellectual and popular level as animated, dangerous and
talismanic", which suggests an official intention to promote no
more than the artistic valour of the sculptures.
When
reading the full text of the Ekphrasis, we sometimes receive
the impression of being in front ofa text to be performed; several
marks of colloquialism, space indications (scenic indications
indeed) and other aspects of Christodoros’ verses make it easy
to imagine an actor (or the poet himself) at least reading his text
aloud to an audience, around and in dialogue with the statues
themselves. We can think, for instance, of a guided tour of some of
the masterpieces of the Zeuxippus, or even a poetical and dramatic
performance prepared for one of the several dedications of statues
we know to have taken place in the Baths. More than a simple
speculation, this chance becomes a real possibility if we think of
parallel poems that we know to have been performed for an audience
such is the case of the Ekphrasis of Eagia Sophia that Paul
Silentiarius wrote in the late-sixth century, after the rebuilding
of the temple, to be performed in the day of its dedication, in 563.
The only manuscript that transmits the text clearly shows marginal
annotations and other scenic indications destined for the actors.
That Christodoros’ poem could have been written for a similar
ceremony and performative end is a very plausible possibility. Maybe
we only lack the manuscript to prove it.
The
arguments provided so far seem to unveil a little more of
Constantine’s artistic convictions and careful plans for his
own city of Constantinople. Archaeology, literary sources and the
comparison with contemporary or neighbouring examples show how the
case of the Zeuxippus, as for its functioning as an art-gallery, is
indeed special. It was not the result of years of sculptural
integration in a public building, rather the best-known (and
documented) case of the construction of a national gallery of
antique sculpture, with very clear political and artistic purposes.
But the Zeuxippus, with its statuary, was also a space of memories.
It was the space where art was meant to forge the inexistent
memories of an entire people, the Byzantine people. A people to whom
past-references were not part of its own history; a people who
needed, more than any other and in a very crucial moment, to fulfil
its lack of paideia. And plastic art was an important part of
the imperial plan to do so.
See
https://www.academia.edu/w637w205/_The_statuary_collection_held_at_the_Baths_of_Zeuxippus_AP_2_and_the_search_for_Constantine_s_museological_intentions_Synthesis_2w_La_Plata_Argentina_20w4_w5_30
Eusebius,
The Life of Constantine: Mambre
CHAPTER
LI: That he ordered a Church to be built at Mambre.
SUCH
was the principal sacred edifices erected by the emperor's command.
But having heard that the self-same Saviour who ere while had
appeared on earth had in ages long since past afforded a
manifestation of his Divine presence to holy men of Palestine near
the oak of Mambre, he ordered that a house of prayer should be built
there also in honor of the God who had thus appeared. Accordingly
the imperial commission was transmitted to the provincial governors
by letters addressed to them individually, enjoining a speedy
completion of the appointed work. He sent moreover to the writer of
this history an eloquent admonition, a copy of which I think it well
to insert in the present work, in order to convey a just idea of his
pious diligence and zeal. To express, then, his displeasure at the
evil practices which he had heard were usual in the place just
referred to, he addressed me in the following terms.
CHAPTER
LII: Constantine's Letter to Eusebius concerning Mambre.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to Macarius, and the rest of the
bishops in Palestine.
"One
benefit, and that of no ordinary importance, has been conferred on
us by my truly pious mother-in-law, in that she has made known to us
by letter that abandoned folly of impious men which has hitherto
escaped detection by you: so that the criminal conduct thus
overlooked may now through our means obtain fitting correction and
remedy, necessary though tardy. For surely it is a grave impiety
indeed, that holy places should be defiled by the stain of
unhallowed impurities. What then is this, dearest brethren, which,
though it has eluded your sagacity, she of whom I speak was impelled
by a pious sense of duty to disclose?
CHAPTER
LIII: That the Saviour appeared in this Place to Abraham.
"SHE
assures me, then, that the place which takes its name from the oak
of Mambre, where we find that Abraham dwelt, is defiled by certain
of the slaves of superstition in every possible way. She declares
that idols which should be utterly destroyed have been erected on
the site of that tree; that an altar is near the spot; and that
impure sacrifices are continually performed. Now since it is evident
that these practices are equally inconsistent with the character of
our times, and unworthy the sanctity of the place itself, I wish
your Gravities to be informed that the illustrious Count Acacius,
our friend, has received instructions by letter from me, to the
effect that every idol which shall be found in the place
above-mentioned shall immediately be consigned to the flames; that
the altar be utterly demolished; and that if any one, after this our
mandate, shall be guilty of impiety of any kind in this place, he
shall be visited with condign punishment. The place itself we have
directed to be adorned with an unpolluted structure, I mean a
church; in order that it may become a fitting place of assembly for
holy men. Meantime, should any breach of these our commands occur,
it should be made known to our clemency without the least delay by
letters from you, that we may direct the person detected to be dealt
with, as a transgressor of the law, in the severest manner. For you
are not ignorant that the Supreme God first appeared to Abraham, and
conversed with him, in that place. There it was that the observance
of the Divine law first began; there first the Saviour himself, with
the two angels, vouchsafed to Abraham a manifestation of his
presence; there God first appeared to men; there he gave promise to
Abraham concerning his future seed, and straightway fulfilled that
promise; there he foretold that he should be the father of a
multitude of nations. For these reasons, it seems to me right that
this place should not only be kept pure through your diligence from
all defilement, but restored also to its pristine sanctity; that
nothing hereafter may be done there except the performance of
fitting service to him who is the Almighty God, and our Saviour, and
Lord of all. And this service it is incumbent on you to care for
with due attention, if your Gravities be willing (and of this I feel
confident) to gratify my wishes, which are especially interested in
the worship of God. May he preserve you, beloved brethren!"
Arbo,
also Terebinth. The Oak of Mambre - (Ramat al-Khalil)
The
site of Mamre, known in Arabic as Haram Ramet al-Khalil, lies
approximately 3 km north of Hebron on the ancient road linking the
main Hebron-Jerusalem and Bethlehem-Ziph routes. The Bible describes
Elonei (oaks of) Mamre as Abraham's dwelling place, where he built
an altar to God (Gen. 13:18, 18:1, 23:19). Some scholars locate the
biblical Elonei Mamre within the town of ancient Hebron (Tell
Rumeideh); others identify it with the enclosure of Haram Ramat
al-Khalil which was already considered a sacred site in the Second
Temple period.
Josephus
relates that Abraham resided near Hebron, by an oak called ogyges,
the oak of Genesis (Antiq. 1, 186). Elsewhere he mentions a
terebinth 6 stadia from Hebron that had stood there since creation
(War IV, 533); it is not clear whether both references are to the
same place. In Antiquities he tells the biblical story, calling the
tree an oak: whereas in War of the Jews he is describing a holy
place in his own time, calling it a terebinth. Josephus is mistaken
about the distance between Elonei Mamre and Hebron, which is not 6
but approximately 18 stadia (3 km). Neither does he mention a
structure around the terebinth. Modern excavations have made it
clear that the structure was already standing in his time.
The
book of Jubilees (29:17-19; 37:14-17) refers to Abraham's capital in
the Hebron Hills as a tower (migdal). The reference is probably to
Abraham's residence at Elonei Mamre. If so, the author, a
contemporary of the Second Temple, was describing the enclosure at
Elonei Mamre in terms associated with the Temple Mount - migdal or
birah - both meaning tower or fortress. Talmudic literature refers
to the place as Beth Ilanim or Botnah and it is mentioned as the
site of one of the most important fairs in Palestine: "There
are three fairs: the fair of Gaza, the fair of Acco, the fair of
Botnah, and the least doubtful of them all is the fair of Botnah,"
meaning that of the three fairs this was the one most definitely
associated with idolatry and therefore Jews were forbidden to
participate in it (J.T. A.Z. 39c; Gen. Rab. 47:10). The fair is
mentioned in two of Jerome's commentaries (In Hieremiam VI, 18, 6,
CCSL 74, 307; In Zachariam III, 4-5. CCSL 76A, 851), where it is
said that Hadrian brought the captive Jews to the famous marketplace
at Terebinth. There he sold many into slavery. For this reason the
Jews in Jerome's time shunned the annual fair. The same story is
told in the seventh-century Chronicon Paschale (PG 92, col. 613)
with some additions.
The
Bordeaux Pilgrim (Itin. Burd. 599, 3-7) states that the emperor
Constantine built a basilica there. Eusebius (Vita Constantini III.
51-53, GCS 7, 99-10 1) and Sozomenus (HE II, 4. GCS 50, 54-56)
report the circumstances and the official documentation referring to
the building. Both Julius Africanus (Chron. XVIII) and Eusebius
(Vita Constantini III, 53, 100; Onom. 6. 12-14; 76. 1-3) mention a
pagan altar at the site. The most detailed description of the site
is in the work of Sozomenos. He reports that the place situated 15
stadia from Hebron, was the site of the terebinth, where the angels
had appeared to Abraham. In summer, he states, a great fair was held
there, attracting hordes of people from far away, who came to offer
libations and burn incense, but also to trade; among them were
pagans, Christians and Jews. The Medeba map seems to differentiate
between Botna and Mamre, as the mosaic depicts both a church and a
terebinth. During the seventh century CE there was a monastery at
the site that continued to exist after the Arab conquest (Adamnanus,
De Locis Sanctis II, II. 6, CCSL 175, 211). In Crusader times, the
site may have been occupied by the Church of the Trinity.
Eusebius,
Onomasticon 6:8-12 (ca. 295 A.D.); Jerome 7:18-24 (ca. 390 A.D.)
Arboc.
Corrupte in nostris codicibus Arboc scribitur, cum in Hebraeis
legatur Arbe, id est quattuor, eo quod ibi tres patriarchae, Abraam,
Isaac et Iacob, sepulti sunt, et "Adam Magnus", ut in Iesu
libro scriptum est: licet eum quidam conditum in loco Calvariae
suspicientur. Haec est autem eadem Chebron, olim metropolis
Filistinorum et habita-culum gigantum, regnumque postea David, in
tribu Iudae civitas sacerdotalis et fugitivorum. Distat ad
meridianam plagam ab Aelia milibus circiter viginti duobus. (Jerome
7:11-18)
Et
quercus Abraam, quae et Mambre, usque ad Costantii regis imperium
monstrabatur, et mausoleum eius in praesentiarum cernitur, cumque a
nostris ibidem ecclesia iam extructa sit, a cunctis in circuitu
gentibus terebinthi locus superstitiose colitur, eo quod sub ea
Abraam angelos quondam hospitio susceperit. Haec ergo primum Arbe,
postea a Chebron, uno filiorum Chaleb sortita vocabulum est. Lege
Verba dierum. (Jerome 7:18-24)
Arbo
(Gen 23:2). In our codices it is written in a corrupted form,
'Arboc', while the Hebrew text reads 'Arba', that is, 'four',
because the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are buried
there, as well as 'the great Adam', as is written in the Book of
Joshua (Jos. 14:15), although some suppose that he is buried on the
Calvary. 'That is Hebron', today a large village, in ancient times
one of the main cities of the Philistines [Eusebius: 'the aliens',
i.e. the Cannanites in general] and a dwelling place of giants, and
later royal seat of David. It fell into the lot of the tribe of
Judah, and was a priestly city and one of the cities of refuge. It
is south of Jerusalem at a distance of about 20 [22] miles.
The
oak of Abraham, also called Mambre, could be seen standing until the
reign of Constantius, and the tomb of the same is visible to this
day and while a church has been erected there by our people, the
place of the oak is [greatly] venerated by all the pagan population
around, because under it Abraham gave hospitality to the angels. At
first the place was called Arbe, and later it was named Hebron after
Hebron, one of the sons of Caleb, as we read in the Chronicles. (1
Chron. 2:42).
Sozomenus,
Historia Ecclesiastica II, 4
I
deem necessary to declare now what was resolved about the oak of
Mambre by Emperor Constantine. The place is presently called the
Terebinth, and is situated at the distance of fifteen stadia from
Hebron, which is to the south... Every year, at summer time, the
inhabitants of that place and the Palestinians, the Phoenicians and
the Arabs, coming from far away, make a fair there. Many come there
for the sake of business, some to sell and some to buy. The feast is
celebrated by a very big congregation of Jews, since they boast of
Abraham as their forefather, of heathens since angels came there, of
Christians since he who should be born from the Virgin for the
salvation of humankind appeared there to that pious man. Everyone
venerates this place according to his religion: some praying God the
ruler of all, some calling upon the angels and offering libations of
wine, burning incense or sacrificing an ox, a pig, a sheep or a
cock. Constantine's mother in law (Euthropia), having come there to
fulfill a vow, gave notice of all this to the Emperor. So he wrote
to the bishops of Palestine reproaching them for having forgot their
mission and permitted such a most holy place to be defiled by those
libations and sacrifices.
Eusebius,
The Life of Constantine: Helenepolis/Drepana
CHAPTER
LXI: His Sickness at Helenopolis, and Prayers respecting his
Baptism.
AT
first he experienced some slight bodily indisposition, which was
soon followed by positive disease. In consequence of this he visited
the hot baths of his own city; and thence proceeded to that which
bore the name of his mother. Here he passed some time in the church
of the martyrs, and offered up supplications and prayers to God.
Being at length convinced that his life was drawing to a close, he
felt the time was come at which he should seek purification from
sins of his past career, firmly believing that whatever errors he
had committed as a mortal man, his soul would be purified from them
through the efficacy of the mystical words and the salutary waters
of baptism. Impressed with these thoughts, he poured forth his
supplications and confessions to God, kneeling on the pavement in
the church itself, in which he also now for the first time received
the imposition of hands with prayer. After this he proceeded as far
as the suburbs of Nicomedia, and there, having summoned the bishops
to meet him, addressed them in the following words.
"THE
time is arrived which I have long hoped for, with an earnest desire
and prayer that I might obtain the salvation of God. The hour is
come in which I too may have the blessing of that seal which confers
immortality; the hour in which I may receive the seal of salvation.
I had thought to do this in the waters of the river Jordan, wherein
our Saviour, for our example, is recorded to have been baptized: but
God, who knows what is expedient for us, is pleased that I should
receive this blessing here. Be it so, then, without delay: for
should it be his will who is Lord of life and death, that my
existence here should be prolonged, and should I be destined
henceforth to associate with the people of God, and unite with them
in prayer as a member of his. Church, I will prescribe to myself
from this time such a course of life as befits his service."
Eusebius,
The Life of Constantine: Aphaca
CHAPTER
LV: Overthrow of an Idol Temple, and Abolition of Licentious
Practices, at Aphaca in Phoenicia.
THE
emperor's next care was to kindle, as it were, a brilliant torch, by
the light of which he directed his imperial gaze around, to see if
any hidden vestiges of error might still exist. And as the
keen-sighted eagle in its heavenward flight is able to descry from
its lofty height the most distant objects on the earth, so did he,
while residing in the imperial palace of his own fair city, discover
as from a watch-tower a hidden and fatal snare of souls in the
province of Phoenicia. This was a grove and temple, not situated in
the midst of any city, nor in any public place, as for splendor of
effect is generally the case, but apart from the beaten and
frequented road, at Aphaca, on part of the summit of Mount Lebanon,
and dedicated to the foul demon known by the name of Venus. It was a
school of wickedness for all the votaries of impurity, and such as
destroyed their bodies with effeminacy. Here men undeserving of the
name forgot the dignity of their sex, and propitiated the demon by
their effeminate conduct; here too unlawful commerce of women and
adulterous intercourse, with other horrible and infamous practices,
were perpetrated in this temple as in a place beyond the scope and
restraint of law. Meantime these evils remained unchecked by the
presence of any observer, since no one of fair character ventured to
visit such scenes. These proceedings, however, could not escape the
vigilance of our august emperor, who, having himself inspected them
with characteristic forethought, and judging that such a temple was
unfit for the light of heaven, gave orders that the building with
its offerings should be utterly destroyed. Accordingly, in obedience
to the imperial command, these engines of an impure superstition
were immediately abolished, and the hand of military force was made
instrumental in purging the place. And now those who had heretofore
lived without restraint learned self-control through the emperor's
threat of punishment, as likewise those superstitious Gentiles wise
in their own conceit, who now obtained experimental proof of their
own folly.
Eusebius,
The Life of Constantine: Heliopolis
CHAPTER
LVIII: How he destroyed the Temple of Venus at Heliopolis, and built
the First Church in that City.
SUCH
actions as I have described may well be reckoned among the emperor's
noblest achievements, as also the wise arrangements which he made
respecting each particular province. We may instance the Phoenician
city Heliopolis, in which those who dignify licentious pleasure with
a distinguishing title of honor, had permitted their wives and
daughters to commit shameless fornication. But now a new statute,
breathing the very spirit of modesty, proceeded from the emperor,
which peremptorily forbade the continuance of former practices. And
besides this he sent them also written exhortations, as though he
had been especially ordained by God for this end, that he might
instruct all men in the principles of chastity. Hence, he disdained
not to communicate by letter even with these persons, urging them to
seek diligently the knowledge of God. At the same time he followed
up his words by corresponding deeds, and erected even in this city a
church of great size and magnificence: so that an event unheard of
before in any age, now for the first time came to pass, namely, that
a city which had hitherto been wholly given up to superstition now
obtained the privilege of a church of God, with presbyters and
deacons, and its people were placed under the presiding care of a
bishop consecrated to the service of the supreme God. And further,
the emperor, being anxious that here also as many as possible might
be won to the truth, bestowed abundant provision for the necessities
of the poor, desiring even thus to invite them to seek the doctrines
of salvation, as though he were almost adopting the words of him who
said, "Whether in pretense, or in truth, let Christ be
preached."
Eusebius,
The Life of Constantine: Aegae
CHAPTER
LVI: Destruction of the Temple of Aesculapius at Aegae.
FOR
since a wide-spread error of these pretenders to wisdom concerned
the demon worshiped in Cilicia, whom thousands regarded with
reverence as the possessor of saving and healing power, who
sometimes appeared to those who passed the night in his temple,
sometimes restored the diseased to health, though on the contrary he
was a destroyer of souls, who drew his easily deluded worshipers
from the true Saviour to involve them in impious error, the emperor,
consistently with his practice, and desire to advance the worship of
him who is at once a jealous God and the true Saviour, gave
directions that this temple also should be razed to the ground. In
prompt obedience to this command, a band of soldiers laid this
building, the admiration of noble philosophers, prostrate in the
dust, together with its unseen inmate, neither demon nor god, but
rather a deceiver of souls, who had seduced mankind for so long a
time through various ages. And thus he who had promised to others
deliverance from misfortune and distress, could find no means for
his own security, any more than when, as is told in myth, he was
scorched by the lightning's stroke. Our emperor's pious deeds,
however, had in them nothing fabulous or feigned; but by virtue of
the manifested power of his Saviour, this temple as well as others
was so utterly overthrown, that not a vestige of the former follies
was left behind.
Eusebius,
The Life of Constantine: Bethlehem
CHAPTER
XLI: Of the Erection of Churches in Bethlehem, and an the Mount of
Olives.
IN
the same country he discovered other places, venerable as being the
localities of two sacred caves: and these also he adorned with
lavish magnificence. In the one case, he rendered due honor to that
which had been the scene of the first manifestation of our Saviour's
divine presence, when he submitted to be born in mortal flesh; while
in the case of the second cavern he hallowed the remembrance of his
ascension to heaven from the mountain top. And while he thus nobly
testified his reverence for these places, he at the same time
eternized the memory of his mother, who had been the instrument of
conferring so valuable a benefit on mankind.
CHAPTER
XLII: That the Empress Helena, Constantine's Mother, having visited
this Locality for Devotional Purposes, built these Churches.
FOR
she, having resolved to discharge the duties of pious devotion to
the God, the King of kings, and feeling it incumbent on her to
render thanksgivings with prayers on behalf both of her own son, now
so mighty an emperor, and of his sons, her own grandchildren, the
divinely favored Caesars, though now advanced in years, yet gifted
with no common degree of wisdom, had hastened with youthful alacrity
to survey this venerable land; and at the same time to visit the
eastern provinces, cities, and people, with a truly imperial
solicitude. As soon, then, as she had rendered due reverence to the
ground which the Saviour's feet had trodden, according to the
prophetic word which says "Let us worship at the place whereon
his feet have stood," she immediately bequeathed the fruit of
her piety to future generations.
CHAPTER
XLIII: A Farther Notice of the Churches at Bethlehem.
FOR
without delay she dedicated two churches to the God whom she adored,
one at the grotto which had been the scene of the Saviour's birth;
the other on the mount of his ascension. For he who was "God
with us" had submitted to be born even in a cave of the earth,
and the place of his nativity was called Bethlehem by the Hebrews.
Accordingly the pious empress honored with rare memorials the scene
of her travail who bore this heavenly child, and beautified the
sacred cave with all possible splendor. The emperor himself soon
after testified his reverence for the spot by princely offerings,
and added to his mother's magnificence by costly presents of silver
and gold, and embroidered hangings. And farther, the mother of the
emperor raised a stately structure on the Mount of Olives also, in
memory of his ascent to heaven who is the Saviour of mankind,
erecting a sacred church and temple on the very summit of the mount.
And
indeed authentic history informs us that in this very cave the
Saviour imparted his secret revelations to his disciples. And here
also the emperor testified his reverence for the King of kings, by
diverse and costly offerings. Thus did Helena Augusta, the pious
mother of a pious emperor, erect over the two mystic caverns these
two noble and beautiful monuments of devotion, worthy of everlasting
remembrance, to the honor of God her Saviour, and as proofs of her
holy zeal, receiving from her son the aid of his imperial power. Nor
was it long ere this aged woman reaped the due reward of her labors.
After passing the whole period of her life, even to declining age,
in the greatest prosperity, and exhibiting both in word and deed
abundant fruits of obedience to the divine precepts, and having
enjoyed in consequence an easy and tranquil existence, with
unimpaired powers of body and mind, at length she obtained from God
an end befitting her pious course, and a recompense of her good
deeds even in this present life.
Basilica
Above
a cave in Bethlehem, Constantine built an octogon with a basilica
and a court enclosed by four porticoes in the front. During the
Samaritan revolt of 529 C.E. the building was destroyed. Justinian
rebuilt it in its actual shape, which was preserved by the Persian
invaders (612). In the crypts the traditional Nativity cave is
connected with other caves where the monastic sojourn of Jerome and
his community is commemorated (Vincent and Abel 1914; M. Avi-Yonah,
The Madaba Mosaic Map with Introduction and Commentary, Jerusalem
1954, Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, 4
vols., ed. M. Avi-Yonah, 1975 1:202-6; Heitz 1983:6-18;
Murphy-O'Connor 1983:12-13).
Eusebius,
The Life of Constantine: Nicomedia
CHAPTER
L: That he erected Churches in Nicomedia, and in Other Cities.
HAVING
thus embellished the city which bore his name, he next distinguished
the capital of Bithynia by the erection of a stately and magnificent
church, being desirous of raising in this city also, in honor of his
Saviour and at his own charges, a memorial of his victory over his
own enemies and the adversaries of God. He also decorated the
principal cities of the other provinces with sacred edifices of
great beauty; as, for example, in the case of that metropolis of the
East which derived its name from Antiochus, in which, as the head of
that portion of the empire, he consecrated to the service of God a
church of unparalleled size and beauty. The entire building was
encompassed by an enclosure of great extent, within which the church
itself rose to a vast elevation, being of an octagonal form, and
surrounded on all sides by many chambers, courts, and upper and
lower apartments; the whole richly adorned with a profusion of gold,
brass, and other materials of the most costly kind.
CHAPTER
LXVI: Removal of the Body from Nicomedia to the Palace at
Constantinople.
AFTER
this the soldiers lifted the body from its couch, and laid it in a
golden coffin, which they enveloped in a covering of purple, and
removed to the city which was called by his own name. Here it was
placed in an elevated position in the principal chamber of the
imperial palace, and surrounded by candles burning in candlesticks
of gold, presenting a marvelous spectacle, and such as no one under
the light of the sun had ever seen on earth since the world itself
began. For in the central apartment of the imperial palace, the body
of the emperor lay in its elevated resting-place, arrayed in the
symbols of sovereignty, the diadem and purple robe, and encircled by
a numerous retinue of attendants, who watched around it incessantly
night and day.
Eusebius,
The Life of Constantine: Jerusalem
CHAPTER
XXVIII: Discovery of the Most Holy Sepulchre.
THIS
also was accomplished without delay. But as soon as the original
surface of the ground, beneath the covering of earth, appeared,
immediately, and contrary to all expectation, the venerable and
hollowed monument of our Saviour's resurrection was discovered. Then
indeed did this most holy cave present a faithful similitude of his
return to life, in that, after lying buried in darkness, it again
emerged to light, and afforded to all who came to witness the sight,
a clear and visible proof of the wonders of which that spot had once
been the scene, a testimony to the resurrection of the Saviour
clearer than any voice could give.
CHAPTER
XXIX: How he wrote concerning the Erection of a Church, both to the
Governors of the Provinces, and to the Bishop Macarius.
IMMEDIATELY
after the transactions I have recorded, the emperor sent forth
injunctions which breathed a truly pious spirit, at the same time
granting ample supplies of money, and commanding that a house of
prayer worthy of the worship of God should be erected near the
Saviour's tomb on a scale of rich and royal greatness. This object
he had indeed for some time kept in view, and had foreseen, as if by
the aid of a superior intelligence, that which should afterwards
come to pass. He laid his commands, therefore, on the governors of
the Eastern provinces, that by an abundant and unsparing expenditure
they should secure the completion of the work on a scale of noble
and ample magnificence. He also dispatched the following letter to
the bishop who at that time presided over the church at Jerusalem,
in which he clearly asserted the saving doctrine of the faith,
writing in these terms.
CHAPTER
XXX: Constantine's Letter to Macarius respecting the Building of the
Church of our Saviour.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTIUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to Macarius.
"Such
is our Saviour's grace, that no power of language seems adequate to
describe the wondrous circumstance to which I am about to refer.
For, that the monument of his most holy Passion, so long ago buried
beneath the ground, should have remained unknown for so long a
series of years, until its reappearance to his servants now set free
through the removal of him who was the common enemy of all, is a
fact which truly surpasses all admiration. For if all who are
accounted wise throughout the world were to unite in their endeavors
to say somewhat worthy of this event, they would be unable to attain
their object in the smallest degree. Indeed, the nature of this
miracle as far transcends the capacity of human reason as heavenly
things are superior to human affairs. For this cause it is ever my
first, and indeed my only object, that, as the authority of the
truth is evincing itself daily by fresh wonders, so our souls may
all become more zealous, with all sobriety and earnest unanimity,
for the honor of the Divine law. I desire, therefore, especially,
that you should be persuaded of that which I suppose is evident to
all beside, namely, that I have no greater care than how I may best
adorn with a splendid structure that sacred spot, which, under
Divine direction, I have disencumbered as it were of the heavy
weight of foul idol worship; a spot which has been accounted holy
from the beginning in God's judgment, but which now appears holier
still, since it has brought to light a clear assurance of our
Saviour's passion.
CHAPTER
XXXI: That the Building should surpass all the Churches in the World
in the Beauty of its Walls, its Columns, and Marbles.
"IT
will be well, therefore, for your sagacity to make such arrangements
and provision of all things needful for the work, that not only the
church itself as a whole may surpass all others whatsoever in
beauty, but that the details of the building may be of such a kind
that the fairest structures in any city of the empire may be
excelled by this. And with respect to the erection and decoration of
the walls, this is to inform you that our friend Dracilianus, the
deputy of the Praetorian Praefects, and the governor of the
province, have received a charge from us. For our pious directions
to them are to the effect that artificers and laborers, and whatever
they shall understand from your sagacity to be needful for the
advancement of the work, shall forthwith be furnished by their care.
And as to the columns and marbles, whatever you shall judge, after
actual inspection of the plan, to be especially precious and
serviceable, be diligent to send information to us in writing, in
order that whatever quantity or sort of materials we shall esteem
from your letter to be needful, may be procured from every quarter,
as required, for it is fitting that the most marvelous place in the
world should be worthily decorated.
CHAPTER
XXXII: That he instructed the Governors concerning the Beautifying
of the Roof; also concerning Workmen, and Materials.
"WITH
respect to the ceiling of the church, I wish to know from you
whether in your judgment it should be panel-ceiled, or finished with
any other kind of workmanship. If the panel ceiling be adopted, it
may also be ornamented with gold. For the rest, your Holiness will
give information as early as possible to the before-mentioned
magistrates how many laborers and artificers, and what expenditure
of money is required. You will also be careful to send us a report
without delay, not only respecting the marbles and columns, but the
paneled ceiling also, should this appear to you to be the most
beautiful form. God preserve you, beloved brother!"
CHAPTER
XXXIII: How the Church of our Saviour, the New Jerusalem prophesied
of in Scripture, was built.
THIS
was the emperor's letter; and his directions were at once carried
into effect. Accordingly, on the very spot which witnessed the
Saviour's sufferings, a new Jerusalem was constructed, over against
the one so celebrated of old, which, since the foul stain of guilt
brought on it by the murder of the Lord, had experienced the last
extremity of desolation, the effect of Divine judgment on its
impious people. It was opposite this city that the emperor now began
to rear a monument to the Saviour's victory over death, with rich
and lavish magnificence. And it may be that this was that second and
new Jerusalem spoken of in the predictions of the prophets,
concerning which such abundant testimony is given in the divinely
inspired records.
First
of all, then, he adorned the sacred cave itself, as the chief part
of the whole work, and the hallowed monument at which the angel
radiant with light had once declared to all that regeneration which
was first manifested in the Saviour's person.
CHAPTER
XXXIV: Description of the Structure of the Holy Sepulchre.
THIS
monument, therefore, first of all, as the chief part of the whole,
the emperor's zealous magnificence beautified with rare columns,
anti profusely enriched with the most splendid decorations of every
kind.
CHAPTER
XXXV: Description of the Atrium and Porticoes.
THE
next object of his attention was a space of ground of great extent,
and open to the pure air of heaven. This he adorned with a pavement
of finely polished stone, and enclosed it on three sides with
porticoes of great length.
CHAPTER
XXXVI: Description of the Walls, Roof, Decoration, and Gilding of
the Body of the Church.
FOR
at the side opposite to the cave, which was the eastern side, the
church itself was erected; a noble work rising to a vast height, and
of great extent both in length and breadth. The interior of this
structure was floored with marble slabs of various colors; while the
external surface of the walls, which shone with polished stones
exactly fitted together, exhibited a degree of splendor in no
respect inferior to that of marble. With regard to the roof, it was
covered on the outside with lead, as a protection against the rains
of winter. But the inner part of the roof, which was finished with
sculptured panel work, extended in a series of connected
compartments, like a vast sea, over the whole church; and, being
overlaid throughout with the purest gold, caused the entire building
to glitter as it were with rays of light.
CHAPTER
XXXVII: Description of the Double Porticoes on Either Side, and of
the Three Eastern Gates.
BESIDES
this were two porticoes on each side, with upper and lower ranges of
pillars, corresponding in length with the church itself; and these
also had their roofs ornamented with gold. Of these porticoes, those
which were exterior to the church were supported by columns of great
size, while those within these rested on piles of stone beautifully
adorned on the surface. Three gates, placed exactly east, were
intended to receive the multitudes who entered the church.
CHAPTER
XXXVIII: Description of the Hemisphere, the Twelve Columns, and
their Bowls.
OPPOSITE
these gates the crowning part of the whole was the hemisphere, which
rose to the very summit of the church. This was encircled by twelve
columns (according to the number of the apostles of our Saviour),
having their capitals embellished with silver bowls of great size,
which the emperor himself presented as a splendid offering to his
God.
CHAPTER
XXXIX: Description of the Inner Court, the Arcades and Porches.
IN
the next place he enclosed the atrium which occupied the space
leading to the entrances in front of the church. This comprehended,
first the court, then the porticoes on each side, and lastly the
gates of the court. After these, in the midst of the open
market-place, the general entrance-gates, which were of exquisite
workmanship, afforded to passers-by on the outside a view of the
interior which could not fail to inspire astonishment.
CHAPTER
XL: Of the Number of his Offerings.
THIS
temple, then, the emperor erected as a conspicuous monument of the
Saviour's resurrection, and embellished it throughout on an imperial
scale of magnificence. He further enriched it with numberless
offerings of inexpressible beauty and various materials, - gold,
silver, and precious stones, the skillful and elaborate arrangement
of which, in regard to their magnitude, number, and variety, we have
not leisure at present to describe particularly.
CHAPTER
XXV: How he ordered the Erection of a Church at Jerusalem, in the
Holy Place of our Saviour's Resurrection.
AFTER
these things, the pious emperor addressed himself to another work
truly worthy of record, in the province of Palestine. What then was
this work? He judged it incumbent on him to render the blessed
locality of our Saviour's resurrection an object of attraction and
veneration to all. He issued immediate injunctions, therefore, for
the erection in that spot of a house of prayer: and this he did, not
on the mere natural impulse of his own mind, but being moved in
spirit by the Saviour himself.
CHAPTER
XXVI: That the Holy Sepulchre had been covered with Rubbish and with
Idols by the Ungodly.
FOR
it had been in time past the endeavor of impious men (or rather let
me say of the whole race of evil spirits through their means), to
consign to the darkness of oblivion that divine monument of
immortality to which the radiant angel had descended from heaven,
and rolled away the stone for those who still had stony hearts, and
who supposed that the living One still lay among the dead; and had
declared glad tidings to the women also, and removed their
stony-hearted unbelief by the conviction that he whom they sought
was alive. This sacred cave, then, certain impious and godless
persons had thought to remove entirely from the eyes of men,
supposing in their folly that thus they should be able effectually
to obscure the truth. Accordingly they brought a quantity of earth
from a distance with much labor, and covered the entire spot; then,
having raised this to a moderate height, they paved it with stone,
concealing the holy cave beneath this massive mound. Then, as though
their purpose had been effectually accomplished, they prepare on
this foundation a truly dreadful sepulchre of souls, by building a
gloomy shrine of lifeless idols to the impure spirit whom they call
Venus, and offering detestable oblations therein on profane and
accursed altars. For they supposed that their object could not
otherwise be fully attained, than by thus burying the sacred cave
beneath these foul pollutions. Unhappy men! they were unable to
comprehend how impossible it was that their attempt should remain
unknown to him who had been crowned with victory over death, any
more than the blazing sun, when he rises above the earth, and holds
his wonted course through the midst of heaven, is unseen by the
whole race of mankind. Indeed, his saving power, shining with still
greater brightness, and illumining, not the bodies, but the souls of
men, was already filling the world with the effulgence of its own
light. Nevertheless, these devices of impious and wicked men against
the truth had prevailed for a long time, nor had any one of the
governors, or military commanders, or even of the emperors
themselves ever yet appeared, with ability to abolish these daring
impieties, save only that one who enjoyed the favor of the King of
kings. And now, acting as he did under the guidance of the divine
Spirit, he could not consent to see the sacred spot of which we have
spoken, thus buried, through the devices of the adversaries, under
every kind of impurity, and abandoned to forgetfulness and neglect;
nor would he yield to the malice of those who had contracted this
guilt, but calling on the divine aid, gave orders that the place
should be thoroughly purified, thinking that the parts which had
been most polluted by the enemy ought to receive special tokens,
through his means, of the greatness of the divine favor. As soon,
then, as his commands were issued, these engines of deceit were cast
down from their proud eminence to the very ground, and the
dwelling-places of error, with the statues and the evil spirits
which they represented, were overthrown and utterly destroyed.
CHAPTER
XXVII: How Constantine commanded the Materials of the Idol Temple,
and the Soil itself, to be removed at a Distance.
NOR
did the emperor's zeal stop here; but he gave further orders that
the materials of what was thus destroyed, both stone and timber,
should be removed and thrown as far from the spot as possible; and
this command also was speedily executed. The emperor, however, was
not satisfied with having proceeded thus far: once more, fired with
holy ardor, he directed that the ground itself should be dug up to a
considerable depth, and the soil which had been polluted by the foul
impurities of demon worship transported to a far distant place.
Eusebius,
The Life of Constantine: Mambre
CHAPTER
LI: That he ordered a Church to be built at Mambre.
SUCH
was the principal sacred edifices erected by the emperor's command.
But having heard that the self-same Saviour who ere while had
appeared on earth had in ages long since past afforded a
manifestation of his Divine presence to holy men of Palestine near
the oak of Mambre, he ordered that a house of prayer should be built
there also in honor of the God who had thus appeared. Accordingly
the imperial commission was transmitted to the provincial governors
by letters addressed to them individually, enjoining a speedy
completion of the appointed work. He sent moreover to the writer of
this history an eloquent admonition, a copy of which I think it well
to insert in the present work, in order to convey a just idea of his
pious diligence and zeal. To express, then, his displeasure at the
evil practices which he had heard were usual in the place just
referred to, he addressed me in the following terms.
CHAPTER
LII: Constantine's Letter to Eusebius concerning Mambre.
"VICTOR
CONSTANTINUS, MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, to Macarius, and the rest of the
bishops in Palestine.
"One
benefit, and that of no ordinary importance, has been conferred on
us by my truly pious mother-in-law, in that she has made known to us
by letter that abandoned folly of impious men which has hitherto
escaped detection by you: so that the criminal conduct thus
overlooked may now through our means obtain fitting correction and
remedy, necessary though tardy. For surely it is a grave impiety
indeed, that holy places should be defiled by the stain of
unhallowed impurities. What then is this, dearest brethren, which,
though it has eluded your sagacity, she of whom I speak was impelled
by a pious sense of duty to disclose?
CHAPTER
LIII: That the Saviour appeared in this Place to Abraham.
"SHE
assures me, then, that the place which takes its name from the oak
of Mambre, where we find that Abraham dwelt, is defiled by certain
of the slaves of superstition in every possible way. She declares
that idols which should be utterly destroyed have been erected on
the site of that tree; that an altar is near the spot; and that
impure sacrifices are continually performed. Now since it is evident
that these practices are equally inconsistent with the character of
our times, and unworthy the sanctity of the place itself, I wish
your Gravities to be informed that the illustrious Count Acacius,
our friend, has received instructions by letter from me, to the
effect that every idol which shall be found in the place
above-mentioned shall immediately be consigned to the flames; that
the altar be utterly demolished; and that if any one, after this our
mandate, shall be guilty of impiety of any kind in this place, he
shall be visited with condign punishment. The place itself we have
directed to be adorned with an unpolluted structure, I mean a
church; in order that it may become a fitting place of assembly for
holy men. Meantime, should any breach of these our commands occur,
it should be made known to our clemency without the least delay by
letters from you, that we may direct the person detected to be dealt
with, as a transgressor of the law, in the severest manner. For you
are not ignorant that the Supreme God first appeared to Abraham, and
conversed with him, in that place. There it was that the observance
of the Divine law first began; there first the Saviour himself, with
the two angels, vouchsafed to Abraham a manifestation of his
presence; there God first appeared to men; there he gave promise to
Abraham concerning his future seed, and straightway fulfilled that
promise; there he foretold that he should be the father of a
multitude of nations. For these reasons, it seems to me right that
this place should not only be kept pure through your diligence from
all defilement, but restored also to its pristine sanctity; that
nothing hereafter may be done there except the performance of
fitting service to him who is the Almighty God, and our Saviour, and
Lord of all. And this service it is incumbent on you to care for
with due attention, if your Gravities be willing (and of this I feel
confident) to gratify my wishes, which are especially interested in
the worship of God. May he preserve you, beloved brethren!"
Arbo,
also Terebinth. The Oak of Mambre - (Ramat al-Khalil)
The
site of Mamre, known in Arabic as Haram Ramet el-Khalil, lies
approximately 3 km north of Hebron on the ancient road linking the
main Hebron-Jerusalem and Bethlehem-Ziph routes. The Bible describes
Elonei (oaks of) Mamre as Abraham's dwelling place, where he built
an altar to God (Gen. 13:18, 18:1, 23:19). Some scholars locate the
biblical Elonei Mamre within the town of ancient Hebron (Tell
Rumeideh); others identify it with the enclosure of Haram Ramat
el-Khalil which was already considered a sacred site in the Second
Temple period.
Josephus relates that Abraham resided near Hebron,
by an oak called ogyges, the oak of Genesis (Antiq. 1, 186).
Elsewhere he mentions a terebinth 6 stadia from Hebron that had
stood there since creation (War IV, 533); it is not clear whether
both references are to the same place. In Antiquities he tells the
biblical story, calling the tree an oak: whereas in War of the Jews
he is describing a holy place in his own time, calling it a
terebinth. Josephus is mistaken about the distance between Elonei
Mamre and Hebron, which is not 6 but approximately 18 stadia (3 km).
Neither does he mention a structure around the terebinth. Modern
excavations have made it clear that the structure was already
standing in his time.
The book of Jubilees (29:17-19; 37:14-17)
refers to Abraham's capital in the Hebron Hills as a tower (migdal).
The reference is probably to Abraham's residence at Elonei Mamre. If
so, the author, a contemporary of the Second Temple, was describing
the enclosure at Elonei Mamre in terms associated with the Temple
Mount - migdal or birah - both meaning tower or fortress. Talmudic
literature refers to the place as Beth Ilanim or Botnah and it is
mentioned as the site of one of the most important fairs in
Palestine: "There are three fairs: the fair of Gaza, the fair
of Acco, the fair of Botnah, and the least doubtful of them all is
the fair of Botnah," meaning that of the three fairs this was
the one most definitely associated with idolatry and therefore Jews
were forbidden to participate in it (J.T. A.Z. 39c; Gen. Rab.
47:10). The fair is mentioned in two of Jerome's commentaries (In
Hieremiam VI, 18, 6, CCSL 74, 307; In Zachariam III, 4-5. CCSL 76A,
851), where it is said that Hadrian brought the captive Jews to the
famous marketplace at Terebinth. There he sold many into slavery.
For this reason the Jews in Jerome's time shunned the annual fair.
The same story is told in the seventh-century Chronicon Paschale (PG
92, col. 613) with some additions.
The Bordeaux Pilgrim (Itin.
Burd. 599, 3-7) states that the emperor Constantine built a basilica
there. Eusebius (Vita Constantini III. 51-53, GCS 7, 99-10 1) and
Sozomenus (HE II, 4. GCS 50, 54-56) report the circumstances and the
official documentation referring to the building. Both Julius
Africanus (Chron. XVIII) and Eusebius (Vita Constantini III, 53,
100; Onom. 6. 12-14; 76. 1-3) mention a pagan altar at the site. The
most detailed description of the site is in the work of Sozomenos.
He reports that the place situated 15 stadia from Hebron, was the
site of the terebinth, where the angels had appeared to Abraham. In
summer, he states, a great fair was held there, attracting hordes of
people from far away, who came to offer libations and burn incense,
but also to trade; among them were pagans, Christians and Jews. The
Medeba map seems to differentiate between Botna and Mamre, as the
mosaic depicts both a church and a terebinth. During the seventh
century CE there was a monastery at the site that continued to exist
after the Arab conquest (Adamnanus, De Locis Sanctis II, II. 6, CCSL
175, 211). In Crusader times, the site may have been occupied by the
Church of the Trinity.
Eusebius,
Onomasticon 6:8-12 (ca. 295 A.D.); Jerome 7:18-24 (ca. 390 A.D.)
Arboc.
Corrupte in nostris codicibus Arboc scribitur, cum in Hebraeis
legatur Arbe, id est quattuor, eo quod ibi tres patriarchae, Abraam,
Isaac et Iacob, sepulti sunt, et "Adam Magnus", ut in Iesu
libro scriptum est: licet eum quidam conditum in loco Calvariae
suspicientur. Haec est autem eadem Chebron, olim metropolis
Filistinorum et habita-culum gigantum, regnumque postea David, in
tribu Iudae civitas sacerdotalis et fugitivorum. Distat ad
meridianam plagam ab Aelia milibus circiter viginti duobus. (Jerome
7:11-18)
Et
quercus Abraam, quae et Mambre, usque ad Costantii regis imperium
monstrabatur, et mausoleum eius in praesentiarum cernitur, cumque a
nostris ibidem ecclesia iam extructa sit, a cunctis in circuitu
gentibus terebinthi locus superstitiose colitur, eo quod sub ea
Abraam angelos quondam hospitio susceperit. Haec ergo primum Arbe,
postea a Chebron, uno filiorum Chaleb sortita vocabulum est. Lege
Verba dierum. (Jerome 7:18-24)
Arbo
(Gen 23:2). In our codices it is written in a corrupted form,
'Arboc', while the Hebrew text reads 'Arba', that is, 'four',
because the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are buried
there, as well as 'the great Adam', as is written in the Book of
Joshua (Jos. 14:15), although some suppose that he is buried on the
Calvary. 'That is Hebron', today a large village, in ancient times
one of the main cities of the Philistines [Eusebius: 'the aliens',
i.e. the Cannanites in general] and a dwelling place of giants, and
later royal seat of David. It fell into the lot of the tribe of
Judah, and was a priestly city and one of the cities of refuge. It
is south of Jerusalem at a distance of about 20 [22] miles.
The
oak of Abraham, also called Mambre, could be seen standing until the
reign of Constantius, and the tomb of the same is visible to this
day and while a church has been erected there by our people, the
place of the oak is [greatly] venerated by all the pagan population
around, because under it Abraham gave hospitality to the angels. At
first the place was called Arbe, and later it was named Hebron after
Hebron, one of the sons of Caleb, as we read in the Chronicles. (1
Chron 2:42).
Sozomenus,
Historia Ecclesiastica II, 4
I
deem necessary to declare now what was resolved about the oak of
Mambre by Emperor Constantine. The place is presently called the
Terebinth, and is situated at the distance of fifteen stadia from
Hebron, which is to the south... Every year, at summer time, the
inhabitants of that place and the Palestinians, the Phoenicians and
the Arabs, coming from far away, make a fair there. Many come there
for the sake of business, some to sell and some to buy. The feast is
celebrated by a very big congregation of Jews, since they boast of
Abraham as their forefather, of heathens since angels came there, of
Christians since he who should be born from the Virgin for the
salvation of humankind appeared there to that pious man. Everyone
venerates this place according to his religion: some praying God the
ruler of all, some calling upon the angels and offering libations of
wine, burning incense or sacrificing an ox, a pig, a sheep or a
cock. Constantine's mother in law (Euthropia), having come there to
fulfill a vow, gave notice of all this to the Emperor. So he wrote
to the bishops of Palestine reproaching them for having forgot their
mission and permitted such a most holy place to be defiled by those
libations and sacrifices.
Eusebius,
The Life of Constantine: Constantinopel
CHAPTER
XLVIII: How he built Churches in Honor of Martyrs, and abolished
Idolatry at Constantinople.
AND
being fully resolved to distinguish the city which bore his name
with especial honor, he embellished it with numerous sacred
edifices, both memorials of martyrs on the largest scale, and other
buildings of the most splendid kind, not only within the city
itself, but in its vicinity: and thus at the same time he rendered
honor to the memory of the martyrs, and consecrated his city to the
martyrs' God. Being filled, too, with Divine wisdom, he determined
to purge the city which was to be distinguished by his own name from
idolatry of every kind, that henceforth no statues might be
worshiped there in the temples of those falsely reputed to be gods,
nor any altars defiled by the pollution of blood: that there might
be no sacrifices consumed by fire, no demon festivals, nor any of
the other ceremonies usually observed by the superstitious.
CHAPTER
XLIX: Representation of the Cross in the Palace, and of Daniel at
the Public Fountains.
ON
the other hand one might see the fountains in the midst of the
market place graced with figures representing the good Shepherd,
well known to those who study the sacred oracles, and that of Daniel
also with the lions, forged in brass, and resplendent with plates of
gold. Indeed, so large a measure of Divine love possessed the
emperor's soul, that in the principal apartment of the imperial
palace itself, on a vast tablet displayed in the center of its
gold-covered paneled ceiling, he caused the symbol of our Saviour's
Passion to be fixed, composed of a variety of precious stones richly
inwrought with gold. This symbol he seemed to have intended to be as
it were the safeguard of the empire itself.
Eusebius,
The Life of Constantine: Constantinopel
CHAPTER
LVIII: Concerning the Building of a Church in Honor of the Apostles
at Constantinople.
AFTER
this he proceeded to erect a church in memory of the apostles, in
the city which bears his name. This building he carried to a vast
height, and brilliantly decorated by encasing it from the foundation
to the roof with marble slabs of various colors. He also formed the
inner roof of finely fretted work, and overlaid it throughout with
gold. The external covering, which protected the building from the
rain, was of brass instead of tiles; and this too was splendidly and
profusely adorned with gold, and reflected the sun's rays with a
brilliancy which dazzled the distant beholder. The dome was entirely
encompassed by a finely carved tracery, wrought in brass and gold.
CHAPTER
LX: He also erected his own Sepulchral Monument in this Church.
ALL
these edifices the emperor consecrated with the desire of
perpetuating the memory of the apostles of our Saviour. He had,
however, another object in erecting this building: an object at
first unknown, but which afterwards became evident to all. He had in
fact made choice of this spot in the prospect of his own death,
anticipating with extraordinary fervor of faith that his body would
share their title with the apostles themselves, and that he should
thus even after death become the subject, with them, of the
devotions which should be performed to their honor in this place. He
accordingly caused twelve coffins to be set up in this church, like
sacred pillars in honor and memory of the apostolic number, in the
center of which his own was placed, having six of theirs on either
side of it. Thus, as I said, he had provided with prudent foresight
an honorable resting-place for his body after death, and, having
long before secretly formed this resolution, he now consecrated this
church to the apostles, believing that this tribute to their memory
would be of no small advantage to his own soul. Nor did God
disappoint him of that which he so ardently expected and desired.
For after he had completed the first services of the feast of
Easter, and had passed this sacred day of our Lord in a manner which
made it an occasion of joy and gladness to himself and to all; the
God through whose aid he performed all these acts, and whose zealous
servant he continued to be even to the end of life, was pleased at a
happy time to translate him to a better life.
CHAPTER
LXX: His Burial by his Son Constantius at Constantinople.
THUS
did they there testify their respect for the memory of him who had
been honored by God. The second of his sons, however, who had by
this time arrived, proceeded to celebrate his father's funeral in
the city which bears his name, himself heading the procession, which
was preceded by detachments of soldiers in military array, and
followed by vast multitudes, the body itself being surrounded by
companies of spearmen and heavy armed infantry. On the arrival of
the procession at the church dedicated to the apostles of our
Saviour, the coffin was there entombed. Such honor did the youthful
emperor Constantius render to his deceased parent, both by his
presence, and by the due performance of this sacred ceremony.
Chapter
LXXI: Sacred Service in the Church of the Apostles on the Occasion
of Constantine’s Funeral.
AS
soon as [Constantius] had withdrawn himself with the military train,
the ministers of God came forward, with the multitude and the whole
congregation of the faithful, and performed the rites of Divine
worship with prayer. At the same time the tribute of their praises
was given to the character of this blessed prince, whose body rested
on a lofty and conspicuous monument, and the whole multitude united
with the priests of God in offering prayers for his soul, not
without tears, — nay, rather with much weeping; thus
performing an office consonant with the desires of the pious
deceased. In this respect also the favor of God was manifested to
his servant, in that he not only bequeathed the succession of the
empire to his own beloved sons, but that the earthly tabernacle of
his thrice blessed soul, according to his own earnest wish, was
permitted to share the monument of the apostles; was associated with
the honor of their name, and with that of the people of God; was
honored by the performance of the sacred ordinances and mystic
service; and enjoyed a participation in the prayers of the saints.
Thus, too, he continued to possess imperial power even after death,
controlling, as though with renovated life, a universal dominion,
and retaining in his own name, as Victor, Maximus, Augustus, the
sovereignty of the Roman world.
CHAPTER
I: Preface. - Of the Death of Constantine.
ALREADY
have all mankind united in celebrating with joyous festivities the
completion of the second and third decennial period of this great
emperor's reign; already have we ourselves received him as a
triumphant conqueror in the assembly of God's ministers, and greeted
him with the due mead of praise on the twentieth anniversary of his
reign: and still more recently we have woven, as it were, garlands
of words, wherewith we encircled his sacred head in his own palace
on his thirtieth anniversary.
But
now, while I desire to give utterance to some of the customary
sentiments, I stand perplexed and doubtful which way to turn, being
wholly lost in wonder at the extraordinary spectacle before me. For
to whatever quarter I direct my view, whether to the east, or to the
west, or over the whole world, or toward heaven itself, everywhere
and always I see the blessed one yet administering the self-same
empire. On earth I behold his sons, like some new reflectors of his
brightness, diffusing everywhere the luster of their father's
character, and himself still living and powerful, and governing all
the affairs of men more completely than ever before, being
multiplied in the succession of his children. They had indeed
previously the dignity of Caesars; but now, being invested with his
very self, and graced by his accomplishments, for the excellence of
their piety they are proclaimed by the titles of Sovereign,
Augustus, Worshipful, and Emperor.
Church
of the Holy Apostles
The
grounds of the first church of the Holy Apostles contained both a
rotunda mausoleum built by Constantine and a church built soon
afterward by his successor Constantius. Little is known of the
appearance of this original church except that it was cross-shaped,
but the historian Eusebius (c. 263–339) gives a description of
Constantine's mausoleum and the surrounding grounds before
Constantius' church was built.
Such
was the magnificence with which the emperor was pleased to beautify
this church. The building was surrounded by an open area of great
extent, the four sides of which were terminated by porticoes which
enclosed the area and the church itself. Adjoining these porticoes
were ranges of stately chambers, with baths and promenades, and
besides many apartments adapted to the use of those who had charge
of the place.
The
cruciform plan was a landmark development in Christian architecture,
because it replaced a basilica plan with the centralized shrine
plan. Dozens of cruciform church buildings in the late fourth and
early fifth centuries were rough imitations of the Constantine-era
Church of the Holy Apostles, such as St. Ambrose's Church of the
Apostles in Milan, the martyrium of St. Babylas in Antioch, and the
Church of Saint Simeon Stylites in Aleppo, Syria.
See
too CONSTANTINE'S CHURCHES by GREGORY T. AMSTRONG
The
original church of the Holy Apostles was dedicated in about 330 by
Constantine the Great, the founder of Constantinople, the new
capital of the Roman Empire. The church was unfinished when
Constantine died in 337, and it was brought to completion by his son
and successor Constantius II, who buried his father's remains there.
The church was dedicated to the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, and it was
the Emperor's intention to gather relics of all the Apostles in the
church. For this undertaking, only relics of Saint Andrew, Saint
Luke and Saint Timothy (the latter two not strictly apostles) were
acquired, and in later centuries it came to be assumed that the
church was dedicated to these three only.
By
the reign of the Emperor Justinian I, the church was no longer
considered grand enough, and a new Church of the Holy Apostles was
built on the same site. The historian Procopius attributes the
rebuilding to Justinian, while the writer known as Pseudo-Codinus
attributes it to the Empress Theodora. The new church was designed
and built by the architects Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of
Miletus, the same architects of the Hagia Sophia, and was
consecrated on 28 June 550. The relics of Constantine and the three
saints were re-installed in the new church, and a mausoleum for
Justinian and his family was built at the end of its northern arm.
For
more than 700 years, the church of the Holy Apostles was the
second-most important church in Constantinople, after that of the
Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia). But whereas the church of the Holy
Wisdom was in the city's oldest part, that of the Holy Apostles
stood in the centre of the newer part of the much expanded imperial
capital, on the great thoroughfare called Mese Odós (English:
Central Street), and was the city's busiest church. Most emperors
and many patriarchs and bishops were buried in the church, and their
relics were venerated by the faithful for centuries.
The
church's most treasured possessions were the skulls of Saints
Andrew, Luke and Timothy, but the church also held what was believed
to be part of the "Column of Flagellation", to which Jesus
had been bound and flogged. Its treasury also held relics of Saint
John Chrysostom and other Church Fathers, saints and martyrs. Over
the years the church acquired huge amounts of gold, silver and gems
donated by the faithful.
Emperor
Basil I renovated and probably enlarged the church, and in 874 the
remains of the historian and patriarch Nikephoros I, who had died
earlier in the century, were reinterred in the popular and rebuilt
church, where they became the site of annual imperial devotion. In
the 10th century Constantine of Rhodes composed a Description of the
building of the Apostles in verse, which he dedicated to Constantine
VII. The basilica was looted during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The
historian Nicetas Choniates records that the Crusaders plundered the
imperial tombs and robbed them of gold and gems. Not even
Justinian's tomb was spared. The tomb of Emperor Heraclius was
opened and his golden crown was stolen along with the late Emperor's
hairs still attached on it. Some of these treasures were taken to
Venice, where they can still be seen in St Mark's Basilica, while
the body of St. Gregory was brought to Rome.
When
Michael VIII Palaeologus recaptured the city from the Crusaders, he
erected a statue of the Archangel Michael at the church to
commemorate the event, and himself. The church was partially
restored again by Andronicus II Palaeologus in the early 14th
century, but thereafter fell into disrepair as the Empire declined
and Constantinople's population fell. The Florentine Cristoforo
Buondelmonti saw the dilapidated church in 1420.
Uit:
http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2013/12/18/more-on-the-tombs-of-the-emperors-at-the-church-of-the-holy-apostles-in-constantinople/
The
shape of the Heroon of Constantine is said by Mesarites to be
circular, with a dome. Mesarites tells us that the mausoleum
of Justinian had many “stoaed” (i.e. pillared) corners,
so perhaps that was octagonal or hexagonal or something like that.
However the arrangement of the tombs within the Heroon, by 400
AD, schematically, was as follows:
Entry
to the building was from the west. Mesarites tells us that, in
the principal place, at the east end, was the tomb of Constantine
the Great. To the south was that of Constantius II, while the
tomb of Theodosius the Great was to the north.
Let’s
hear from Mesarites:
XXXIX.
But let us, if you please, go off to this church which lies toward
the east, so that we may look at the things in it, in order to
admire and describe them–this church whose founder our
discourse has already declared to be Constantius. 2. This whole
church is domical and circular, and because of the rather extensive
area of the plan, I suppose, it is divided up on all sides by
numerous stoaed angles, for it was built for the reception of his
father’s body and of his own and of the bodies of those who
should rule after them. 3. To the east, then, and in first place the
body of Constantine, who first ruled the Christian Empire, is laid
to rest within this purple-hued sarcophagus as though on some
purple-blooming royal couch – he who was, after the twelve
disciples, the thirteenth herald of the orthodox faith, and likewise
the founder of this imperial city. 4. The sarcophagus has a
four-sided shape, somewhat oblong but not with equal sides. The
tradition is that Helen, his mother and his fellow-worker for the
orthodox faith, is buried with her son. 5. The tomb toward the south
is that of the famous Constantius, the founder of the Church. This
too is of porphyry color but not in all respects similar to the tomb
of his father, just as he who lies within it was not in all ways
similar to his father, but was inferior to his father, and followed
behind him, in piety and in mental endowment. 6. The tomb toward the
north and opposite this, and similar to those which have been
mentioned, holds the body of Theodosius the Great like an
inexhaustible treasure of noble deeds. 7. The one toward the
east, closest to this one, is that of Pulcheria. She is the honored
and celebrated founder of the monastery of the Hodegon; see how she,
a virgin herself, holds in her hands the likeness of the all-holy
Virgin. …
Additional
tombs, after Theodosius, were inserted later around the walls.
The
Chronicon Altinate gives a list of emperors and their lengths of
reigns. It is of interest to us for what it says about the
emperors in the mausoleum. Starting on p. 62 of MGH supplement
14:
Constantine,
son of Constantius, born in Britain from the concubine Helena –
the city in his name is in Thrace – … died on the 20th
of May, a great and most Christian emperor. His remains were
placed in the church of the Holy Apostles in the sacrarium, which he
himself also built, in a porphyry “pila”. …
Constantius
… son of Constantine reigned for 24 years. Constantine
[sic] died on 3rd November and his body was placed in the church of
the Holy Apostles in a porphyry “pila”.
Julian
the apostate His body was brought to Constantinople and placed in
the western part in the church of the Holy Apostles in a porphyry
“labrum”. …
On
the 27th September Juvian [sic] died, most religious emperor, in
Thichera a city of Galicia, and his body was brought to
Constantinople, in the church of the Holy Apostles, in the porphyry
“labrum” of the great Constantine. After this his
wife was placed in the same “labrum”. He reigned 8
months.
…
(the body of Valens
was not found) …
[Valentinian]’s
body was brought in the time of Theodosius the Great and placed in
the church of the Holy Apostles where Constantine the Great [was] in
a porphyry “lanarx”. …
On
the 7th of January died the emperor Theodosius the Great at
Milan. His remains were brought to Constantinople and placed in
the church of all the holy Apostles, in the sacrarium of Constantine
the Great, in a porphyry “pila”; where also his wife
Pracilla had previously been placed.
On
the 1st May died the emperor Arcadius and his body was placed in the
church of all the Holy Apostles in a porphyry “pilla”
[sic] in the middle portico with his wife Eudokia, who before she
died [acted] to the injury of St. John Chrysostom. …
The
Serpent Column of Delphi in Constantinople
There
is no record of the Serpent Column's removal from Delphi in the
early fourth century, but there are numerous references among Roman
sources to its arrival on the Bosphorus. Constantine I's importation
into the capital of a great many divine and profane statues was an
embarrassment to his Christian friends. Eusebius claimed that the
emperor collected and displayed the artworks only tot demonstrate
that the idols of the past were now decoration to be laughed at or
scorned. Sozomenus and Socrates echoed this in their continuations
of Eusebius' Church History. Eusebius did not mention the Serpent
Column directly, but rather that 'the Delphic tripods were deposited
in the Hippodrome.' Sozomenus, however, explicitly recorded that
among them was the famous tripod which Pausanias and the Greek
cities dedicated after their victory over the Persians.
Zie
https://www.academia.edu/3334914/The_Serpent_Column_of_Delphi_in_Constantinople_Placement_Purposes_and_Mutilations
The
Column of Constantine (Turkish: Çemberlitaş Sütunu,
from çemberli 'hooped' and taş 'stone'), also known as
the Burnt Stone or the Burnt Pillar, is a Roman monumental column
constructed on the orders of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great
in 330 AD. It commemorates the declaration of Byzantium (renamed by
Constantine as Nova Roma) as the new capital city of the Roman
Empire. The column is located on Yeniçeriler Caddesi in the
eponymous neighborhood of Çemberlitaş, Fatih, central
Istanbul, along the old Divan Yolu (the 'Road to the Imperial
Council') between the Hippodrome of Constantinople (now Sultanahmet
Square) and the Forum of Theodosius (now Beyazıt Square).
The
Column of Constantine is one of the most important examples of Roman
art in Istanbul. The column is 35 meters tall today. Restoration
work has been under way since 1955. Cracks in the porphyry were
filled and metal brackets renewed in 1972. Since 1985, the monuments
of the historic peninsula of Istanbul, including the column, have
been listed as a World Heritage Site.
The
column was dedicated on May 11, 330 AD, with a mix of Christian and
pagan ceremonies.
In
Constantine's day the column was at the center of the Forum of
Constantine (today known as Çemberlitaş Square), an oval
forum situated outside the city walls in the vicinity of what may
have been the west gate of Antoninia. On its erection, the column
was 50 meters tall, constructed of several cylindrical porphyry
blocks. The exact number of porphyry blocks is disputed, but common
figures range from seven, up to as many as eleven. These blocks were
surmounted by a statue of Constantine in the figure of Apollo. The
orb he carried was said to contain a fragment of the True Cross. At
the foot of the column was a sanctuary which contained relics
allegedly from the crosses of the two thieves who were crucified
with Jesus Christ at Calvary, the baskets from the loaves and fishes
miracle, an alabaster ointment jar belonging to Mary Magdalene and
used by her for anointing the head and feet of Jesus, and the
palladium of ancient Rome (a wooden statue of Pallas Athena from
Troy).
A
strong gale in 1106 AD felled the statue and three of the upper
cylinders of the column. Some years later, Byzantine emperor Manuel
I Komnenos (reigned 1143-1180) placed a cross on top in place of the
original statue and added a commemorative inscription that read
"Faithful Manuel invigorated this holy work of art, which has
been damaged by time". Bronze wreaths once covered the joints
between the drums, but these were taken by the Latin Crusaders who
plundered the city during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The cross was
removed by the Ottoman Turks after the fall of Constantinople in
1453.
Earthquakes
and a fire in 1779 destroyed the neighborhood surrounding the
column, leaving it with black scorch marks and earning it the name
'Burnt Column' (or, as referred to by Gibbon, the "burned
pillar"). The column was restored by Abdülhamid I, who had
the present masonry base added. The base was strengthened in 1779.
The original platform of the column is 2.5 meters below ground.
Reconstruction
of Constantinople, Byzantium 1200
Website
http://www.byzantium1200.com/xxx.html
(oud) en
https://twitter.com/Byzantium1200
(nieuw)
30
September 2011 Forum Constantine is updated. 13 June 2011 A new
color scale based on certainty is introduced. See the page 12 June
2011 page is added 10 June 2011 First 3D reconstruction of the greek
city Byzantion is added 30 May 2011 Byzantium 1200 is now on twitter
From now on no mail will be sent to anyone about the updates. If you
want to learn what is going on with the project, please follow
Byzantium1200. 28 May 2011 There is a new short clip at Vimeo from
Byzantium 1200. The original is in Full HD format. 30 April 2011
Tekfur Palace is updated. (Though it is not a subject of this
project, I had to update it for an exhibition). 03 March 2011 Aetios
Cistern is updated. 03 March 2011 All tile images are updated. 28
December 2010 Tile 10 is completed. All tiles of the model are now
complete. 25 December 2010 Tile 9 is completed 15 September 2010 4
new images of the city walls are added 8 June 2010 Constantine's
Statue in Forum Constantine is added, see also Constantine 22 May
2010 Hippodrome images are online 12 May 2009 Hagia Sophia Fountain
added 3 May 2009 Boukoleon "balcony" updated from the 1850
photolithograph 10 March 2009 Hippodrome statues are being updated 7
March 2009 Porphyry statues of Constantine & his father
Constantius Chlorus, also new information on the Philadelphion
Obelisk are added 28 February 2009 A new rendering of the quadriga
horses is added 31 January 2009 New website Arkeo3D is up 9 January
2009 Tile 7 is completed 8 November 2008 Porta Aurea is updated 15
October 2008 The scale model exhibition has ended 10 October 2008
Equestrian statue of Justinian is completed 27 August 2008 Seventh
tile of the Byzantium 1200 model is completed 25 August 2008 Tile 2
is updated 22 May 2008 The Delphi Tripod is updated 15 May 2008 2nd
edition of "Walking thru Byzantium" is available 4 May
2008 All monument locations are linked to Google Earth 1 May 2008
Saint John of Stoudios is textured 29 April 2008 Palace near
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19
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will be active shortly
THE
AIA SOPHIA. Consecrated fourteen centuries ago.
by
Prof. Dr. F. J. DE WAELE.
"Church
of fourteen centuries" I wrote as a variation on Schaepman's
song, in my diary a few years ago, when I was sitting all alone on
the long Turkish mats under the dome of Justinian's masterpiece in
Constantinople, officially: in Stamboul. There happened to be no
tourists, no guards, no praying Turks, no scaffolding. What a stroke
of luck, to be allowed to walk around all alone, without shoes on,
out of respect for the place, as well as out of aversion to the
ship's keels of Turkish slippers, which were prescribed when
entering the church. What a heart-warming feast of memories and
examination of history, to be alone for a few moments with the
shadows of the old masters, with the pages of history and the poets'
praises of this wonder of the world, which was a church, became a
mosque and is now a museum. On December 27 of this year it will be
exactly fourteen centuries since it was consecrated, and although we
know that there is human megalomania in celebrating such
anniversaries, we still believe that we should think less of human
ability now than of the psalm's word, which in this case would be,
that fourteen centuries for the Most High are but as many as
fourteen days or fourteen minutes. We have reason to rejoice in the
church of holy Wisdom, even though it is in foreign hands and
condemned to rigidity, even though we are now further than ever from
the prophecy of consolation in the famous lamentation on the fall of
city and church: "Comfort yourself, Mother, comfort yourself,
one day this church will be yours again; the Aia Sophia has now
become a museum and the "Allahoe Akbar", the Mohammedan
owl screeching has now come to an end, while the nightingale song of
Christian symbols still resounds. New nightingales have come to
light: the plastered faces of the Cherubs are indeed still hidden
behind their Islamic mask, but in the last years from 1931 to 1934,
the English Byzantinist Th. Whittemore, in the long inner hall
(esonarthex) exposed musical visions of piety and beauty and once
again the intimacy of the Byzantine churches begins to live,
although is the melancholic smile of the Mother of God still very
modest with the ostentatious curls of the beautifully calligraphed
letter shields of the caliphs under the Cherubs of the pendentives.
The
Holy Wisdom. In the eyes of Constantine it was not yet the Godhead
in her all-wise governance of all humanity, but, when he built the
first Aia Sophia in 325, it seemed as if the "Holy Wisdom"
was a compromise deity, to which the pagan symbolism could not take
offense and in which the Christians found a spiritual core for lofty
contemplations and Byzantine hair-splitting. Constantine's son,
Constantius I, expanded the basilica, which after an existence of
three-quarters of a century was completely destroyed in a fire with
the senate building; that fire was not only a material disaster, but
also a flaming symbol of the popular anger at the banishment of the
great Chrystomos. Once again the torch was thrown into the "new"
Wisdom Church, which Theodosius had built in place of the
Constantine and which had become 117 years old: this fire, during
the bloody unrest of the city revolution in 532, destroyed many
quarters, — such a mass destruction also happened in the
wooden Stamboul of 1911 and 1917 — also a part of the imperial
palaces and the baths of Zeuxippes. A few days later the emperor
conceived the plan to build a church, "such as never had been a
cult building since Adam's time and never will be", but the
site of the old basilica was much too small. How the one and a half
hectares, which were needed for the building itself, and the
surrounding square, were obtained by force, or cunning, or
otherwise, from the many owners in this densely populated quarter,
are told by many edifying legends, which perhaps conceal a violent
expropriation plan. But not only Constantinople, but also the entire
empire would contribute to the gigantic construction costs, although
the riches and ancient art treasures of this Empire were still
largely pagan. In Asia Minor and in the East, as in Greece, the
mighty temples were still standing, although the statues of the gods
had been abducted and the pious no longer brought an increase to the
temple treasure. But then they would give pieces from their own
bodies, and so the four green columns that separate the main space
from the side aisles are violent borrowings from the temple of
Artemis at Ephesus, while the red porphyry columns in the side
aisles were stolen from the sun temple of Aurelian at Heliopolis.
Just
as the Venetian sailors on the Levant supplemented their shipload
with antique sculptures and a travel gift each time brought with you
for the building of San Marco, ships and fleets now travelled to
Constantinople with stolen temple pieces, with white marble from the
Prokonnesos, green marble from Carystos on Eubea, red marble from
Iasos in Caria, verde antico from Numidia, not to mention the other
cargoes of gold and precious metals with this gigantic St. Peter's
or rather Holy Wisdom Medal from the "oikoumene".
A
whole lustrum passed before the two Asiatic master builders,
Anthemios of Tralleis and Isidoros of Miletus, made Justinian's
dream come true. In the meantime, the emperor himself had encouraged
the progress of the building work with word and deed: every day he
was in simple clothing among the 16,000 workers who worked "for
God and prince".
One
of the main concerns had been "the piling" for the new
church. Several times a century the city and the area around the
Bosporus are ravaged by disasters: for example, 80 years before the
construction of the Justinian church, an earthquake had razed the
walls and 57 towers of the city and buried the patriarch Euphrasius
under the ruins of his palace in 527. It could have been foreseen
that the largest church in Christendom would also suffer damage from
the many seismic vibrations and tremors, although no one would have
dared to foresee that the dome would collapse in such an earthquake
only 20 years after its completion. The underground work of the
church was gigantic: an extensive system of deep wells and colossal
pillars was constructed on the rocky ground with the intention of
increasing the elasticity of the entire building, which formed a
rectangle of 75 by 65 m. To which were added the annexes: the large
western forecourt, the two vestibules, the outer and inner narthex,
the baptistery and the "skevophylakion" or sacristy. We
must imagine ourselves without the later Turkish buttresses and the
many tombs, the four minarets, the school building, etc.
On
the third day of Christmas 537 it was the great day of the
dedication. On a triumphal chariot and with his entire court retinue
Justinian rode to the new church, the "megali Ekklisia",
as it was stamped in the bricks; at the entrance of the building the
patriarch Menas received him and the emperor himself hurried inside,
where, before the icononiasis, in ecstasy and with raised hands, he
exclaimed: "Glory to God, who has deemed one worthy to complete
such a work. Solomon, I have surpassed you!" However much has
disappeared, the idea of church lives on here, yes,
even more than, for example, in Rome in St. Peter's Church. What has
disappeared? The living blood of this work of art is gone, while the
beautiful mask has remained. No more altar, no iconostasis, no
amboon, no singers' tribune, and moreover that miserable Turkish
plastering over of so much beauty!
But
just as in the Asian Minor churches, which I found after the
disaster of 1922 as Christian churches even though they had been
converted into mosques, here the prayer niche carved out towards
Mecca can make the eye turn away from the apse built towards
Jerusalem, that is, in a south-eastern direction. Although we want
to leave out much pathos and rhetoric from the 900 hexameters that
the imperial secretary Paulus Silentiarius dedicated to the great
church as a poem of praise, as an "ekphrasis" (the poem
was however only recited in 563 on the feast of the blessing of the
water, our Epiphany), yet in reading his work the fairy tale of
splendor and wealth comes to life again before our eyes: precious
stones and pearls were fused together for the altar, the recess on
the altar was decorated with cameos, gems and enamels. Columns of
the purest gold and adorned with pearls and diamonds supported the
golden roof of the ciborium or tower-like tabernacle, of solid gold
was the globe with the cross above it. Of solid gold was also the
dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, in which the "immaculate
Mysteries" were preserved. Around the altar, — which in
itself was a wonder of the world — lay the choir stalls with
seven steps, — all gilded silver, — for the patriarch
and higher clergy, and twelve golden columns divided the
iconostasis, the end of the choir, into smaller parts. Under the
dome sat the numerous lower clergy and the amboon, the tribune of
honour for the emperor was in the middle of the church, where the
presbytery ended. When we speak of a "sea of light"
that put the church in full splendor, we use the poet's image: "Like
a fleet of barges you see there in the heights the silver lampwork,
it is a sea of light in which one could swim, it is a
fleet of light, that is not richly laden with goods and possessions,
but with shining rays. Like a man who adorns his royal bride with
love and veneration and chooses a necklace from the most precious
stones, so that it may shine in competition with the flaming glow of
the sun's lamp: so has my emperor on al1 vaults a fleet of lamps
hang"...
That's
how it was once, and today this memory may be recalled again,
although the Christendom so impoverished in Stamboul feels deep pain
for the disfigured Aia Sophia. I have walked around there for hours,
and repeatedly, laid my hands on the old marble, caressed the stone
lacework with my eyes, because one could not touch it with the
hands, even put my finger in the hollow of the "sweating
column", of course not to bring the moisture to our eyes, as
the thousands of superstitious Turks did, supposedly to obtain the
cure for their eye complaints, while in reality it usually meant a
worsening, but to live through the symbol of the greatest wound of
Eastern Christendom.
Finally,
one wanders back to the statues in the narthex, to Christ and the
dear Lady, who in this petrified museum now have a great jubilee
Christmas.
There
in the narthex we find another pure piece of Byzantium, there the
crosses and flower stars shine on the vaults and lunettes and speak
to us in the same symbolic language as that cryptographic confession
of faith in mosaic and in astronomical allusions, which glorified
the Logos (Father), Christ, the Son, and Sophia, the Wisdom of the
Holy Spirit (see Christmas number 1935). The abstract symbolic part
of the narthex decoration certainly dates back to the time of
Justinian and is related to the emperor's policy to win over the
Monophysites (the followers of Eutyches who claimed that in Christ
only one nature, the divine, existed, and were therefore averse to
the originally Syrian cross representation with the bloody body of
Christ) for the official church: in the mosaics only the cross trees
are depicted. But, although we gladly admire the image of the
enthroned Christ, before which Emperor Leo VI (886-912) kneels (two
medallions of the Mother of God and of the Archangel Gabriel flank
it) and which is already known through the discovery and restoration
work of Fossati in 1847, we are particularly attracted by the
"imperial Christmas" in the narthex: a variant of the Magi
is the representation of the seated Mother with the Child on her
lap, while the two fathers of Byzantium, Constantine with the model
of the city in his hand and Justinian, who carries the church, stand
next to it. It was not until the end of the 10th century, according
to Whittemore, when the church was solemnly put into use again after
a long period of abandonment, that this mosaic of the two great Magi
was installed. It does not seem to me a daring hypothesis to think
that the musivist wanted to glorify the glorious Christmas Day of
half a millennium ago (for the artist of that time) in such a
traditional artistic scheme, and it can hardly be otherwise than
that on this centenary we turn again to this "Christmas mosaic"
with the greeting of the Bethlehem angels, which Justinian repeated
on 27 December 537: Glory to God, who has given and preserved for us
this masterpiece of high art.
The
Serpent Column of Delphi in Constantinople
There
is no record of the Serpent Column's removal from Delphi in the
early fourth century, but there are numerous references among Roman
sources to its arrival on the Bosphorus. Constantine I's importation
into the capital of a great many divine and profane statues was an
embarrassment to his Christian friends. Eusebius claimed that the
emperor collected and displayed the artworks only to demonstrate
that the idols of the past were now decoration to be laughed at or
scorned. Sozomenus and Socrates echoed this in their continuations
of Eusebius' Church History. Eusebius did not mention the Serpent
Column directly, but rather that 'the Delphic tripods were deposited
in the Hippodrome'. Sozomenus, however, explicitly recorded that
among them was the famous tripod which Pausanias and the Greek
cities dedicated after their victory over the Persians.
See
https://www.academia.edu/3334914/The_Serpent_Column_of_Delphi_in_Constantinople_Placement_Purposes_and_Mutilations
The
Column of Constantine (Turkish: Çemberlitaş Sütunu,
from çemberli 'hooped' and taş 'stone'), also known as
the Burnt Stone or the Burnt Pillar, is a Roman monumental column
constructed on the orders of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great
in 330. It commemorates the declaration of Byzantium (renamed by
Constantine as Nova Roma) as the new capital city of the Roman
Empire. The column is located on Yeniçeriler Caddesi in the
eponymous neighborhood of Çemberlitaş, Fatih, central
Istanbul, along the old Divan Yolu (the 'Road to the Imperial
Council') between the Hippodrome of Constantinople (now Sultanahmet
Square) and the Forum of Theodosius (now Beyazıt Square).
The
Column of Constantine is one of the most important examples of Roman
art in Istanbul. The column is 35 m tall today. Restoration work has
been under way since 1955. Cracks in the porphyry were filled and
metal brackets renewed in 1972. Since 1985, the monuments of the
historic peninsula of Istanbul, including the column, have been
listed as a World Heritage Site.
The
column was dedicated on May 11, 330 AD, with a mix of Christian and
pagan ceremonies.
In
Constantine's day the column was at the center of the Forum of
Constantine (today known as Çemberlitaş Square), an oval
forum situated outside the city walls in the vicinity of what may
have been the west gate of Antoninia. On its erection, the column
was 50 m tall, constructed of several cylindrical porphyry blocks.
The exact number of porphyry blocks is disputed, but common figures
range from seven, up to as many as eleven. These blocks were
surmounted by a statue of Constantine in the figure of Apollo. The
orb he carried was said to contain a fragment of the True Cross. At
the foot of the column was a sanctuary which contained relics
allegedly from the crosses of the two thieves who were crucified
with Jesus Christ at Calvary, the baskets from the loaves and fishes
miracle, an alabaster ointment jar belonging to Mary Magdalene and
used by her for anointing the head and feet of Jesus, and the
palladium of ancient Rome (a wooden statue of Pallas Athena from
Troy).
A
strong gale in 1106 felled the statue and three of the upper
cylinders of the column. Some years later, Byzantine emperor Manuel
I Komnenos (reigned 1143-1180) placed a cross on top in place of the
original statue and added a commemorative inscription that read
"Faithful Manuel invigorated this holy work of art, which has
been damaged by time". Bronze wreaths once covered the joints
between the drums, but these were taken by the Latin Crusaders who
plundered the city during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The cross was
removed by the Ottoman Turks after the fall of Constantinople in
1453.
Earthquakes
and a fire in 1779 destroyed the neighborhood surrounding the
column, leaving it with black scorch marks and earning it the name
'Burnt Column' (or, as referred to by Gibbon, the "burned
pillar"). The column was restored by Abdülhamid I, who had
the present masonry base added. The base was strengthened in 1779.
The original platform of the column is 2.5 meters below ground.
Reconstruction
of Constantinople, Byzantium 1200
Website
https://twitter.com/Byzantium1200
(nieuw)
Plagues
The
Antonine Plague of 165 to 180 AD, also known as the Plague of Galen
(from the name of the Greek physician living in the Roman Empire who
described it), was an ancient pandemic brought back to the Roman
Empire by troops returning from campaigns in the Near East. Scholars
have suspected it to have been either smallpox or measles, but the
true cause remains undetermined. The epidemic may have claimed the
life of a Roman emperor, Lucius Verus, who died in 169 and was the
co-regent of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, whose family name,
Antoninus, has become associated with the epidemic. The disease
broke out again nine years later, according to the Roman historian
Dio Cassius (155–235), causing up to 2000 deaths a day in
Rome, one quarter of those who were affected, giving the disease a
mortality rate of about 25%. The total deaths have been estimated at
five million, and the disease killed as much as one-third of the
population in some areas and devastated the Roman army.
Ancient
sources agree that the epidemic appeared first during the Roman
siege of Seleucia in the winter of 165–166. Ammianus
Marcellinus reports that the plague spread to Gaul and to the
legions along the Rhine. Eutropius asserts that a large population
died throughout the Empire.
Rafe
de Crespigny speculates that the plague may have also broken out in
Eastern Han China before 166, given notices of plagues in Chinese
records. The plague affected Roman culture and literature, and may
have severely affected Indo-Roman trade relations in the Indian
Ocean.
The
Plague of Cyprian is the name given to a pandemic that afflicted the
Roman Empire from about 249 to 262. The plague is thought to have
caused widespread manpower shortages for food production and the
Roman army, severely weakening the empire during the Crisis of the
Third Century. Its modern name commemorates St. Cyprian, bishop of
Carthage, an early Christian writer who witnessed and described the
plague. The agent of the plague is highly speculative due to sparse
sourcing, but suspects include smallpox, pandemic influenza and
viral hemorrhagic fever (filoviruses) like the Ebola virus.
In
250 to 262, at the height of the outbreak, 5000 people a day were
said to be dying in Rome. Cyprian's biographer, Pontius of Carthage,
wrote of the plague at Carthage:
"Afterwards
there broke out a dreadful plague, and excessive destruction of a
hateful disease invaded every house in succession of the trembling
populace, carrying off day by day with abrupt attack numberless
people, every one from his own house. All were shuddering, fleeing,
shunning the contagion, impiously exposing their own friends, as if
with the exclusion of the person who was sure to die of the plague,
one could exclude death itself also. There lay about the meanwhile,
over the whole city, no longer bodies, but the carcasses of many,
and, by the contemplation of a lot which in their turn would be
theirs, demanded the pity of the passers-by for themselves. No one
regarded anything besides his cruel gains. No one trembled at the
remembrance of a similar event. No one did to another what he
himself wished to experience".
In
Carthage the "Decian persecution", unleashed at the onset
of the plague, perhaps inadvertently led to the criminalization of
Christian oath refusal. Fifty years later, North African convert to
Christianity Arnobius defended his new religion from pagan
allegations:
"that
a plague was brought upon the earth after the Christian religion
came into the world, and after it revealed the mysteries of hidden
truth? But pestilences, say my opponents, and droughts, wars,
famines, locusts, mice, and hailstones, and other hurtful things, by
which the property of men is assailed, the gods bring upon us,
incensed as they are by your wrong-doings and by your
transgressions".
Cyprian
drew moralizing analogies in his sermons to the Christian community
and drew a word picture of the plague's symptoms in his essay De
mortalitate ("On the Plague"):
"This
trial, that now the bowels, relaxed into a constant flux, discharge
the bodily strength; that a fire originated in the marrow ferments
into wounds of the fauces; that the intestines are shaken with a
continual vomiting; that the eyes are on fire with the injected
blood; that in some cases the feet or some parts of the limbs are
taken off by the contagion of diseased putrefaction; that from the
weakness arising by the maiming and loss of the body, either the
gait is enfeebled, or the hearing is obstructed, or the sight
darkened; - is profitable as a proof of faith. What a grandeur of
spirit it is to struggle with all the powers of an unshaken mind
against so many onsets of devastation and death! what sublimity, to
stand erect amid the desolation of the human race, and not to lie
prostrate with those who have no hope in God; but rather to rejoice,
and to embrace the benefit of the occasion; that in thus bravely
showing forth our faith, and by suffering endured, going forward to
Christ by the narrow way that Christ trod, we may receive the reward
of His life and faith according to His own judgment!"
Accounts
of the plague date from about 249 to 262. There was a latter
incident from 270 involving the death of Claudius II Gothicus,
though it's unknown if this was the same plague or a different
outbreak. The Historia Augusta says that "in the consulship of
Antiochianus and Orfitus the favour of heaven furthered Claudius'
success. For a great multitude, the survivors of the barbarian
tribes, who had gathered in Haemimontum were so stricken with famine
and pestilence that Claudius now scorned to conquer them further...
during this same period the Scythians attempted to plunder in Crete
and Cyprus as well, but everywhere their armies were likewise
stricken with pestilence and so were defeated.
The
population of Britain may have decreased by between 1.5 and 3
million after the Roman period, perhaps caused by environmental
changes (the Late Antique Little Ice Age) and, subsequently, by
plague and smallpox (around 600, the smallpox spread from India into
Europe). It is known that the Plague of Justinian entered the
Mediterranean world in the 6th century and first arrived in the
British Isles in 544 or 545, when it reached Ireland. It is
estimated that the Plague of Justinian killed as many as 100 million
people across the world. As a result, Europe's population fell by
around 50% between 550 and 700. The later medieval Welsh Lludd and
Llefelys mentions a series of three plagues affecting the British of
London.
Claudius
Gothicus (Latin: Marcus Aurelius Valerius Claudius Augustus; May 10,
214–January 270), also known as Claudius II, was Roman emperor
from 268 to 270. During his reign he fought successfully against the
Alemanni and decisively defeated the Goths at the Battle of Naissus.
He died after succumbing to "pestilence", possibly the
Plague of Cyprian that had ravaged the provinces of the Empire.
Measles:
Estimates based on modern molecular biology place the emergence of
measles as a human disease sometime after 500 (the former
speculation that the Antonine Plague of 165–180 was caused by
measles is now discounted).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
References
to the unique periodic fevers of malaria are found throughout
recorded history. Hippocrates described periodic fevers, labelling
them tertian, quartan, subtertian and quotidian. The Roman Columella
associated the disease with insects from swamps. Malaria may have
contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire, and was so pervasive
in Rome that it was known as the "Roman fever". Several
regions in ancient Rome were considered at-risk for the disease
because of the favourable conditions present for malaria vectors.
This included areas such as southern Italy, the island of Sardinia,
the Pontine Marshes, the lower regions of coastal Etruria and the
city of Rome along the Tiber. The presence of stagnant water in
these places was preferred by mosquitoes for breeding grounds.
Irrigated gardens, swamp-like grounds, runoff from agriculture, and
drainage problems from road construction led to the increase of
standing water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria
10
april 1204 Précis de l'histoire du moyen âge
§ II. QUATRIEME
CROISADE.
Empire
franc de Constantinople.
Jean
de Brienne était roi nominal de Jérusalem lorsque
l'Occident prépara un nouveau secours pour la Palestine. En
1197, une quatrième croisade avait été publiée
par de pape Innocent III. Les rois ne répondirent pas à
cet appel, mais les princes secondaires s’armèrent: les
croisés virent à leur tête Baudouin IX, comte de
Flandre; Dandolo, doge de Venise; Boniface II, marquis de
Montferrat. Le résultat de cette croisade fut la destruction
de l'empire grec.
Les
empereurs de Byzance, après avoir si souvent imploré
le secours des Occidentaux contre les mahométans, avaient
employé ensuite tous leurs efforts pour entraver le mouvement
des croisades. D'une part, ils craignaient que les richesses de
Byzance ne tentassent les guerriers de l'Occident, et c'est pourquoi
ils s’efforçaient de leur nuire; d'un autre coté,
ils voulaient enlever aux croisés le fruit de leurs combats.
Cependant des révolutions continuelles troublaient le palais
de Byzance; le crime était devenu le marchepied du trône.
En 1180 Andronicus, après avoir assassiné Alexis II,
se fit nommer empereur; cinq ans après, il fut renversé
lui-même par Isaac l'Ange; enfin ce dernier, en 1195, est
également dépouillé de la pourpre par son frère
Alexis III et jeté en prison, après avoir eu les yeux
crevés. Alexis l'Ange, fils d'Isaac, se rend en Europe afin
de rétablir son père sur le trône par
l'intervention des Occidentaux.
Ceux
qui avaient promis de tenter une quatrième expédition
en faveur de la terre sainte étaient alors réunis à
Venise, mais dépourvus de moyens de transport. La république
met ses vaisseaux à leur disposition, à condition
qu'ils l'aideront d'abord à reprendre Zara, en Dalmatie,
tombée au pouvoir du roi de Hongrie. Cette expédition
terminée, les Francs par enthousiasme, et les Vénitiens
par intérêt, cèdent aux instances d'Alexis, qui
les conjure de tourner leurs forces contre l'usurpateur du trône
de Byzance. Le désir de punir un peuple sans foi et le vague
espoir d'arborer leurs bannières dans la ville de Constantin,
l’emportèrent sur toute autre considération,
même sur les exhortations du pape, désireux seulement
de délivrer Jérusalem (1202). La flotte cingle vers
Constantinople, force l'usurpateur à s'enfuir et les
habitants à se rendre. Isaac l'Ange ayant été
rétabli, les croisés revinrent dans leur camp, situé
au delà du port. De la ils admiraient la beauté de la
Propontide et pouvaient embrasser l'étendue de
Constantinople: cette immense capitale apparaissait sur le rivage
avec ses hautes murailles, les dômes élancés de
ses palais, ses trois cent quatre-vingt-six tours, églises et
couvents. C'était vraiment la cité souveraine, car
elle surpassait toutes les villes de l'Occident en magnificence,
présentaient la tradition graduelle du goût sévère
des anciens aux combinaisons plus variées et plus brillantes
du genre oriental. L'église de Sainte-Sophie, cathédrale
du rit grec, surpassait tous ces édifices par la magnificence
de son architecture et la somptuosité de ses ornements (2).
Les places publiques étaient décorées des
monuments de l'empire de Rome et de l'ancienne Grèce. Sur la
place de Constantin, on admirait la statue en bronze de Junon et
celle de Paris offrant à Vénus le prix de la beauté;
sur celle du mont Taurus une statue équestre représentant
suivant les uns Josué, suivant d'autres Bellérophon et
Pégase. Dans l'hippodrome, on remarquait une colossale statue
d'Hercule, attribuée à Lysippe; une des colonnes du
cirque supportait un autre chef-d’œuvre de l'art
antique: c'était l'image d'une jeune femme, les cheveux
tressés sur le front et noués par derrière;
elle portait à la main droite un cavalier dont elle tenait le
cheval par un pied; le cavalier couvert d'une cuirasse, le cheval
hennissant, semblaient écouter la trompette guerrière
et ne respirer que les combats.
L'inexécution
des promesses faites aux Latins par Isaac l'Ange et l'usurpation de
Dumas Murtzuphle, déterminèrent la reprise des
hostilités. Après un siège de trois mois,
Constantinople fut prise d'assaut et livrée au pillage (10
avril 1204). Dans leur aveugle fureur, dans leur ignorance, les
rudes Occidentaux brisèrent même ces bronzes que l'art
antique avait fait vivre.
Tous
les croisés, dit Michaud, se laissèrent entraîner
à la soi du butin, et les chefs, comme les soldats,
exercèrent, sans ménagement et sans scrupules, le
droit que leur donnait la victoire de dépouiller les vaincus.
Les chefs rétablirent enfin l'ordre dans la cité de
Constantin, en proclamant empereur Baudouin, comte de Hainaut et de
Flandre: suivant l'ancienne coutume des Francs, il fut élevé
sur un bouclier et porté en triomphe dans Sainte-Sophie.
L'empire fut ensuite partagé entre les Francs et les
Vénitiens. Les premiers obtinrent la Bithynie, la Romanie ou
la Thrace, Thessalonique, toute la Grèce, depuis les
Thermopyles jusqu'au cap Sunium, et les plus grandes îles de
l'Archipel. Le lot des Vénitiens se composait ds Cyclades et
des Sporades dan l'Archipel, des îles et de la cote orientale
du golfe Adriatique, des cotes de la Propontide et de celles du
Pont-Euxin, des rives de l'Hèbre et du Vardas, des villes de
Cypsède, de Didymatique, d'Andrinople, des contrées
maritimes de la Thessalie, etc. "Mais des circonstances qu'on
n'avait point prévues, la diversité des intérêts,
les rivalités de l'ambition, toutes les chances de la fortune
et de la guerre, apportèrent bientôt, suivant la
remarque d'un historien, des changements à cette division du
territoire. On entreprendrait en vain de suivre les conquérants
dans les provinces tombées en leur pouvoir; il serait plus
facile de marquer le cours d'un torrent débordé et de
retracer le chemin des tempêtes, que de fixer l'état
des possessions incertaines et passagères des vainqueurs de
Byzance (1)". Ce fut d'ailleurs une triste domination que celle
des empereurs latins. Sans être aussi méprisables par
leur caractère personnel que les anciens souverains de
Byzance, ils restèrent au-dessous de leurs prédécesseurs
par leur faiblesse politique.
Ils
devaient lutter à la fois contre des vassaux aussi puissant
qu’eux-mêmes; contre les Bulgares, qui avaient recouvré
leur indépendance peu de temps avant la prise de
Constantinople; enfin contre les Grecs qui supportaient impatiemment
la domination étrangère et qui appelaient de leur vœux
le jour de leur délivrance.
Quelques
lambeaux de l'empire étaient restés à des
princes byzantins. Théodore Lascaris, gendre de l'empereur
Alexis III, se rendit successivement maître de la Bithynie, de
la Lydie, d'une partie des cotes de l'Archipel et de la Phrygie; sa
capitale était Nicée où il se fit couronner
empereur en 1204. David Comnène, petit-fils de l'empereur
Andronic, s'empara de la cote de la mer Noire, depuis Sinope
jusqu'au delà de Trébizonde dont il fit sa capitale;
cet État subsista jusqu'en 1461. Enfin Michel l'Ange Comnène
se créa une principauté également considérable:
elle s'étendait depuis Durazzo jusqu'au golfe de Lépante,
et comprenait l’Épire, l'Acarnanie, l'Étolie et
une partie de la Thessalie.
Le
règne de Baudouin Ier fut court: tombé en 1206 au
pouvoir des Bulgares, on ne le vit jamais reparaître, soit
qu'il eut été massacré, soit qu'il languit dans
les fers jusqu’à la fin de ses jours. La couronne
impériale avait été remise à son frère
Henri: Celui-ci repoussa les Bulgares, mais il ne put s'opposer aux
progrès de Lascaris. Ayant été empoisonné
en 1216, les barons lui donnèrent pour successeur son
beau-frère, Pierre comte d'Auxerre, de la maison de
Courtenai. Il ne vit pas Constantinople: en traversant les
montagne[s] de l'Albanie il tomba au pouvoir de Théodore
Comnène, successeur de Michel, dont il venait d'assiéger
la capitale (Durazzo); et il fit assassiné dans sa prison
(1219). Son fils, Robert de Courtenai, lui succède. Ce règne
est marqué par de nouveaux désastres; chaque jour le
territoire latin est resserré par les princes grecs régnant
à Nicée, à Trébizonde et en Épire.
Robert ne laissa qu'un fils âgé de neuf ans. Or, les
barons, ayant besoin d'un chef, résolurent de décerner
à Jean de Brienne, pour toute sa vie, le titre d'empereur,
qui retournerait à sa mort au jeune Baudouin. Les Latins
firent alors un prodige: une armée de cent mille hommes,
Bulgares et Grecs de la Thrace, s'était présentée
devant Constantinople; avec cent soixante chevaliers portant
bannière, et quelques sergents, Jean de Brienne dispersa les
barbares, tandis que la flotte vénitienne s'emparait de leurs
vaisseaux. A la mort de Jean de Brienne (1237), Baudouin se trouvait
en Europe pour solliciter l'assistance des Occidentaux; dans leur
triste position, les baron de Constantinople étaient obligés
d'aliéner les plus précieux trésors de
l'empire; Baudouin lui-même engagea le comté de Namur
pour 50000 livres parisis, au roi de Franc (Louis IX). Les faibles
secours arrivés de l'Occident ne purent sauver cet empire,
qui fut enfin réduit à sa seule capitale.
Michel
Paléologue, élu empereur de Nicée en 1258,
résolut de chasser les Latins. Telle était leur
détresse, qu'ils ôtaient de plomb qui couvrait les
églises pour en faire de la monnaie et qu'ils démolissaient
les palais pour se procurer du bois. Après s’être
emparé de tous les châteaux qui environnaient
Constantinople, Michel Paléologue entra dans la capitale le
25 juillet 1261. Les Grecs effacèrent alors des fastes
publics le règne éphémère des empereurs
latins, dont le dernier venait de se réfugier dans l’île
de Négrepont. L'empire grec restauré par les
Paléologues ne put toutefois se relever du coup fatal qui lui
avait été porté. Quelques provinces bornées
en Asie par le Méandre et le Sangarus, en Europe par le mont
Hémus et la chaîne du mont OEta: tel était le
patrimoine amoindri des héritiers de la puissance romaine. La
plupart des île de l'Archipel, et les provinces de la Grèce
proprement dite au midi de la Thessalie, restèrent au pouvoir
des Latins. Quant à la richesse et à la force morale
de l'empire, elles passèrent entre les mains des républiques
maritimes d'Italie. Venise, Gênes et Pise reconnaissaient à
peine, dans Constantinople, le pouvoir de l'empereur.
(1)
On a évalué cette population à un million
d'habitants.
(2)
"Que de trésors de tous genres en marbres, en porphyre,
en granit, dans l’intérieur, qui avait deux cent
quarante pieds de longueur sur deux cent treize de largeur! Quelle
splendeur dans les colonnes, les plus belles de tous les temples
célébrés du paganisme! quel art dans les
mosaïques qui ornaient les murs et même les voûtes!
La coupole, éclairée par vingt-quatre fenêtres,
s’élève sur quatre piliers semblables à
des tours, à une hauteur de cent quatre-vingts pieds; les
lignes ondoyantes du pavé de marbre représentaient les
quatre fleuves du paradis, qui, comme des ruisseaux, apportant le
bénédiction et la fertilité à toutes les
contrées du monde, paraissaient rouler leurs eaux vers les
quatre portes ouvertes". HURTER, Hist. du pape Innocent III et
de ses contemporains, liv. VII.
(1)
Nous devons pourtant indiquer les principales seigneuries féodales
érigées dans l'empire grec. - Le marquis Boniface de
Montferra reçut en partage l’île de Candie et
tout ce qui appartenait à l'empire au delà du
Bosphore. Plus tard, il échangea ses domaines contre le
district de Salonique, qui lui fut accordé à titre de
royaume; et en 1205 il vendit ses droits sur Candie aux Vénitiens,
qui, deux ans après, prirent possession de cette île.
Le principauté d'Achaie et de Morée échut à
Guillaume de Champlite qui la laisse en mourant à Geoffroy de
Villehardouin, historien de la quatrième croisade. Athènes
fut érigé en duché en faveur d'Othon de la
Roche, dont la petite fille le transmit à la maison de
Brienne. - De leur coté. les Vénitiens, pour rendre
plus facile la conquête des îles qui leur étaient
tombées en partage, offrirent à leurs concitoyens
l'investiture de celles qu'ils pourraient conquérir. C'est
ainsi que les familles les plus puissantes de Venise se répandirent
dans l'Archipel. Les Sanuto s’emparèrent de Naxos et
des îles voisines, et en furent investis sous le titre de ducs
de Naxos. Les Carceri de Vérone s’approprièrent
Négrepont (l'Eubee des anciens), et leur exemple fut suivi
par plusieurs autres nobles. Voy. KOCH, 4e période.
(1)
Voici, en suivant l'ordre chronologique, la liste de ces empereurs
francs ou latins:
MAISON
DE FLANDRE. 1. 1204-1206, Baudouin Ier,
2.
1206-1216, Henri, son frère,
MAISON
DE COURTENAY. 3. 1216-1219, Pierre, comte d'Auxerre,
4.
1219-1228, Robert, son fils,
MAISON
DE BRIENNE. 5. 1228-1237, Jean de Brienne, empereur viager,
MAISON
DE COURTENAY. 6. 1237-1261, Baudouin II.
Geoffroy de
Villehardouin
Jusqu’au
XIV° siècle, existe à Troyes, la rue de la Grande
Masquerie (boucherie). Au siècle suivant, en raison d’une
auberge qui s’y tient, elle prend le nom de rue de la Pie. Le
Conseil municipal du 23 août 1890, lui attribue le nom de
Geoffroy de Villehardouin. Geoffroy seigneur de Villehardouin,
célèbre chroniqueur, naît à 30 km de
Troyes, vers 1150.
Vassaux
du comte de Champagne, les Villehardoin ont suffisamment d’influence
pour qu’en 1185, Geoffroy devienne maréchal, fonction
enviée. Il devient le conseiller de la comtesse Marie, fille
de Louis VII et d’Aliénor d’Aquitaine, veuve
d’Henri 1er le Libéral. La charge de maréchal
impose à son titulaire qu’il accompagne son suzerain
dans ses déplacements, à plus forte raison lorsqu’il
s’agit d’une expédition lointaine en Terre
sainte. Thibault III, jeune homme de 18 ans, est le puissant comte
de Champagne au moment où le pape Innocent III, organise une
4ème croisade, pour reprendre Jérusalem aux musulmans.
Villehardouin,
dans La conquête de Constantinople, nous dit que le 28
novembre 1199, au tournoi d’Ecry-sur-Aisne, le prêtre
Foulques de Neuilly, mandaté par le pape, appelle les
chevaliers à se croiser. Thibault III, Villehardouin,
l’évêque de Troyes Garnier de Traînel,
prennent la croix. Le pape est partisan d’un transport
maritime de l’armée jusqu’en Égypte d’où
elle marchera vers la Palestine. Le rôle du maréchal de
Champagne commence à se préciser. Ayant l’entière
confiance de son suzerain, il est chargé de négocier à
Venise le passage des croisés. Il y part en février
1201, et se montre bon ambassadeur. Les Vénitiens acceptent
son marché, ils construiront des navires capables d’embarquer
4.500 chevaux, autant de chevaliers, 9.000 écuyers et 20.000
hommes d’armes. Les vivres seront assurés pour 9 mois.
50 galères vénitiennes escorteront le convoi.
Le
coût total de l’opération est fixé à
85.000 marcs d’argent dont 25.000 payables immédiatement
à titre d’arrhes. De retour à Troyes, au début
du mois de mai 1201, Villehardouin trouve le comte Thibault malade.
Il meurt le 24 mai. Notre chroniqueur choisit son ami Boniface de
Montferrat comme chef de la croisade.
En
mai 1202, les croisés partent pour Venise. N’ayant pas
suffisamment d’argent pour régler le solde du
transport, ils acceptent d’aider les Vénitiens à
prendre la ville de Zara, en novembre, après 5 jours de
siège.
Fin
juin 1203, la flotte, impressionnante armada de nefs, de galères,
arrive en vue de Constantinople, la plus riche cité de la
chrétienté.
40.000
hommes assiègent la ville qui tombe le 17 juillet. Mais
l’empereur de Constantinople ne tient pas ses engagements et
les croisés font un nouveau siège de la ville du 9 au
13 avril 1204. La vieille cité est saccagée. Massacres
(n’épargnant ni les femmes ni les enfants), incendies,
pillages font de Constantinople un enfer. Les statues sont fondues
pour récupérer le bronze, les pièces
d’orfèvrerie écrasées à coup de
masse pour en récupérer les pierres précieuses,
l’or et l’argent sont transformés en monnaie.
Villehardoin avoue lui-même: "Le gain fait fut si grand
que nul ne vous en saurait dire le compte, d’or et d’argent,
de vaisselle et de pierres précieuses, de satin et de drap de
soie et de robes de vair et de gris et d’hermine et de tous
les biens précieux qui jamais furent trouvés sur
terre".
On
n’épargne ni les sanctuaires, ni les églises et
les religieux font main basse sur les précieux reliquaires
renfermant les fragments du bois de la vraie Croix ou le fer de la
sainte Lance pour les expédier en Occident (une partie peut
être admirée dans le trésor de notre
cathédrale).
Le
16 mai 1204, Baudoin de Flandre est couronné empereur, et les
barons se taillent des fiefs en s’emparant des possessions
byzantines de Grèce.
Boniface
de Montferrat devient roi de Thessalie et confie le fief de
Messinople, en Thrace occidentale, à son ami et protégé
Geoffroy de Villehardouin qui a été nommé
maréchal de Romanie et prince d’Achaïe, dès
l’automne 1204.
C’est
là qu’il compose sa Chronique de la conquête de
Constantinople, la 1ère écrite en prose. Cet ouvrage
important offre un mélange de naïveté et de
grandeur qui procède de l’émotion d’une
âme forte à la vue des grands faits dont elle est le
témoin.
Geoffroy
se fixe à Kalamai où il édifie un château
franc en 1208. Le 1er août il participe à la bataille
de Philippopoli contre les troupes du roi bulgare Boril. Il harangue
les croisés avant le combat alors que des flottements se font
sentir dans leurs rangs et évite la catastrophe.
Geoffroy
de Villehardouin décède à Messinople en 1218.
Quoique
éloigné Troyes, il ne l’oublia jamais. Il dota
l’abbaye de Foicy et celle de Notre-Dame-aux-Nonnains, où
ses sœurs et ses filles étaient religieuses.
Constantinopel en
Constantijn, de Kruistochten
Capitulum XX. De Constantinopolitana
urbe. [p. 750]
INDEX
GENERALIS QUO NOMINA, QUAE AD RES, LOCOS ET HOMINES PERTINENT,
COMPREHENDUNTUR
en
Bibliothèque de l'École des chartres
Histoire
de [person] Jean de Brienne, roy de Jérusalem et empereur de
Constantinople [1727] en Maandelyksche berichten uit de andere
waerelt; of de spreekende dooden.
BRIENNE
(Jean de) Vassal des Comtes de Champagne
4.
Fils d'Erard II & d'Agnes de Montbeliard,
4.
Est fort negligé par son Pere,
7.
Il se dérobe & se retire à Clairvaux,
10.
Rencontre Simon de Broyes Seigneur de Château Villain,
11.
qui l’enlève,
ibid.
Il reçoit l'Ordere de Chevalerie & entre dans le monde
17.
Son air, sa taille,
18.
Il brille dans les Tournois,
20.
Son arrivée à Rome,
42.
Son retour à Paris, & ensuite à Rome,
46.
Il va seul joindre l'Armée des Croisez,
62.
& se distingue aux deux sieges & à la prise de
Constantinople,
74.
Digression, scavoir si Jean de Brienne étoit aux deux sieges
de Constantinople,
75.
jusq. 90. Il apprend la mort de Gautier de Brienne,
96.
regrette sa perte, arrive en Italie, y trouve un changement total &
repasse en France,
98.
On députe l'Eveque d'Acre pour demander en mariage Jean de
Brienne pour la Reine de Jerusalem,
106.
Il se rend à la Cour,
110.
accepte l'offre,
111.
Le contract est signé,
ibid.
Il va à Rome,
112.
emprunte 40000. livres sur sa Comté de Brienne,
114.
Le Roi Auguste lui donne pareille somme & 300. hommes d'armes,
ibid.
Il arrive à Constantinople,
115.
Prend la route pour aller à Acre, où il est reçu
par le Patriarche,
116.
& conduit à la Cathedrale pour accomplir son mariage avec
la Reine,
117.
Jean de Brienne, avec sa nouvelle Epouse va à Tyr, ils sont
couronnez
117.
118. Dans quel état se trouvoir alors le Roïaume de
Jerusalem,
118.
& suiv. Corradin attaque Acres, mais inutilement,
130.
131. Jean de Brienne met le siege devant la forteresse de Jusse,
d’où il emporte un grand butin,
133.
Les Sarrasins lui demandent une tréve,
ibid.
Pendant la paix il regle son état,
134.
Il reçoit & suit les conseils de Gautier de Montbeliard,
135.
Il perd sa femme,
147.
demande Isabelle fille de Lieveon en mariage, & l'épouse
à Acres,
153.
Il sollicite du secours de la Chretienté contre Corradin,
156.
Seigneurs & Princes qui arrivent à Acres,
156.
Avec ce renfort il se met en marche pour aller assieger de Sultan à
Damas,
167.
Il abandonne cette entreprise,
170.
tuë de sa main deux Emirs,
172.
La mesintelligence se met dans son Armée
173.
Il songe au siege de Damiette,
183.
y arrive,
188.
Les ordres qu'il donne pour faire réussir son entreprise,
191.
Il attaque la Tour du Nil,
192.
l'emporte,
204.
Les Allemans le quittent, il lui arrive un nouveau secours avec le
Cardinal Pelage,
206.
Chagrin que lui causent les caprices de ce Prelat,
212.
Il veut forcer la levée que Meledin avoit fait construire,
225.
Le Sultan fuit, il court sur les Sarrasins,
229.
investit Damiette,
231.
Corradin vient au secours avec une puissante armée,
232.
Action generale du jour des Rameaux,
237.
Autres attaques des Sarasins,
241.
Actions très valeureuses du Roi,
250.
Prise de Damiette,
261.
Il se rend maître de Tunis,
268.
Le Legat luit fait donation de la Ville de Damiette,
274.
Il s'en retourne dans la Palestine,
277.
Corradin assiege le Fort des Pelerins,
282.
Honorius confirme les droits du Roi Jean sur la succession du
Royaume d'Armenie,
292.
Il se rend au Camp devant Damiette,
294.
est forcé par le Legat d'aller contre Meledin,
299.
Sa Flotte est battuë & il se retire contre Damiette,
303.
terrible situation de son armée par l'inondation du Nil,
307.
Il est forcé de rendre Damiette & Tunis, de servir
d'otage avec le Legat,
313.
Le Roy revient à Acre,
317.
Il demande à l'Empereur sa fille en mariage
319.
va pour cette affaire en Italie,
330.
vient en Sicile,
331.
puis à Rome,
332.
Il s'accorde avec l'Empereur sur le mariage de sa fille Isabelle,
336.
Il vient en France, voit mourir Philippe Auguste,
339.
Il va prendre le Bourdon de Pelerin à Tours,
343.
Il va en Galice, palle par la Castille,
345.
On lui accorde en mariage Berangere,
346.
Il revient à Paris,
ibid.
Il passe en Angleterre,
347.
En Allemagne, de-la en Italie,
348.
Il voit marier & couronner sa fille à Rome,
351.
L'Empereur toujours perfide lui demande un désistement du
Royaume de Jerusalem,
352.
De Brienne dépoüillé, se sauve avec Gautier son
neveu,
353.
Le Pape le nomme son Vicaire ou Lieutenant General dans l'Etat
Ecclesiastique,
356.
Heureux succès du voyage du Roy Jean dans les Cours de
l'Europe,
361.
Armée de 60000. hommes se trouvent à Brindes,
362.
Le Pape le nomme Generalisseme de ses troupes,
386.
Il le met à la tète d'une armée,
ibid.
Les Grands du Royaume d'Orient, envoyent des Ambassadeurs au Pape
pour demander le Roy Jean pour Empereur,
412.
Le Pape lui dépêche un Courrier, il arrive à
Rome,
413.
On regle son Traité avec les Ambassadeurs,
ibid.
Il passe en France, revient à Rome, va à Venise,
s'embarque pour Constantinople, y arrive heureusement, & est
couronné avec Berangere sa femme, à Sainte Sophie,
427.
Il est deux ans dans Constantinople sans rien faire,
422.
[432?] Recommence la guerre, s'empare du Fort de Ceramide, & se
rend maître de Riga,
433.
Crainte de l'Empereur, il s'adresse au Pape pour avoir du secours,
437.
Il fait reparer avec soin Constantinople,
440.
Asen & Vatace mettent une armée sur pied,
441.
Ils attaquent Constantinople,
443.
L'Empereur sort de la Ville, met en desordre l'armée ennemie,
450.
L'Infanterie de son mouvement va dans le Port & dissipe la
Flotte,
452.
L'année suivante la Ville se trouve encore assiegée,
456.
Le siege est levé,
457.
De Brienne envoye Baudoin son gendre en Italie & en France,
458.
Il travaille à diviser Asen & Vatace,
464.
Il y reüssit,
466.
Il meurt,
467.
Ses vertus,
475.
Ses femmes,
489.
Ses enfans,
The Sack of 1204,
what happened?
By
Mark Bonocore
I've
recently been reading a book by John J. Robinson called "Dungeon,
Fire, and Sword - a history of the Crusades". Robinson is
clearly no friend of the Roman Catholic Church, and I will even go
so far as to say that he is anti-Catholic in his point of view, but
he does give an interesting account of the Crusader's sack on
Constantinople in 1204. I thought I'd share this with you, so that
we might explore the history. This is why I'm using "anti-Catholic
Robinson" as the source. While I am certainly not defending the
atrocities committed, I think many will find it enlightening that
the sack of Constantinople was not a "diabolical plan"
sponsored by the papacy. It was a very sad story all around.
The
Crusades began in the 1090’s – that is, 40 years after
the Orthodox desecrated the Latin Eucharist and holy books (because
they were in Latin rather than Greek). The Byzantine patriarch
attacked the Latin churches in Constantinople itself -
Latin-speaking churches which existed since the time of Constantine;
and he declared that their Eucharist was invalid because the Romans
use unleven (rather than leven) bread - something that the Western
Church (along with the Armenian Church) has always done since the
time of the Apostles (Jesus Himself used unleven bread at the Last
Supper, since it was a Passover feast and there would not have been
any leven bread in Jerusalem at the time). But, the Eastern
Patriarch Cerularius tried to force the Byzantine rite on the Romans
living in the Eastern Empire. So, he took armed soldiers into the
Latin churches in Constantinople, and had them open the Tabernacles
and throw the consecrated Eucharist in the streets. This is
discussed by both Kallistos Ware and by Meyendorff in their books.
This is the origin of Rome (a church which continued to permit and
encourage Byzantine worship in its own city) serving Cerularius with
a bull of excommunication in 1054. Cerularius did this because the
Franks who were vassals of the Roman Empire were gaining political
power in the Balkans and so the Emperor and Patriarch wanted to
brand them as heretics and thus reject their authority in the
Balkans.
Around
1201, Count Tibald of Champagne approached Pope Innocent III with
the idea of a new crusade to the Holy Land. Innocent agreed to the
proposal, especially since Tibald was not a king or emperor, and
wouldn't try to usurp authority and use the crusade for his own
purposes, as the kings of the 3rd Crusade had done.
In
the following year, the Crusade leaders met to plan strategy. It was
agreed that the point of attack would be Egypt, which Richard the
Lionheart himself had called the "soft underbelly of Islam".
The leaders therefore began negotiations with Venice - the only
naval force in the world at the time who could transport a Christian
army to that location.
The
Grand Council of Venice agreed to provide transport for 4500
knights, 9000 squires and sergeants, 20000 foot soldiers, and 20000
horses. They would also provide enough food for 1 year, and supply
50 war galleys manned with Venetian troops to fight alongside the
Crusaders in the Nile delta.
In
payment, the Venetians would receive 85000 silver marks, plus 50% of
all loot collected from the Muslims.
The
plan was for the Crusading armies to assemble at Venice by June of
1202. But, with the deal newly struck, Count Tibald died, and the
Crusaders elected Boniface of Monferrat as their new leader. The
choice of Boniface had to do with his being the uncle of Princess
Maria of Jerusalem; thinking that this would assure good relations
with the barons of the Holy Land.
But,
as fate would have it, Boniface spent that winter in Germany with
Philip of Swabia - the same prince from whom Pope Innocent had
recently denied the imperial crown. Philip's wife, however, was the
Byzantine princess Irene Angelina: the daughter of Byzantine emperor
Isaac Angelus, who had recently been deposed and blinded and was
languishing in a dungeon in Constantinople.
Irene
was concerned about her father, and even more about her younger
brother Alexius. He had not been imprisoned, but was living under
house arrest with their uncle Alexius III, who had seized the throne
for himself. Irene asked Boniface to find out what he could about
her brother while in the East.
But,
... as fate would have it again, Irene's brother Alexius arrived at
Philip's court before the end of the winter. He had escaped to
Sicily with the help of some friends, and was then taken safely to
his sister in Germany. The young heir to the Byzantine throne
thereafter decided to join the Crusade, seeing Boniface of Monferrat
as an ally who might help him regain his kingdom.
But,
meanwhile, the Venetians were up to intrigue of their own. They by
no means wanted a crusading army attacking Egypt, which would cut
off their lucrative trading centers there. So, while still
negotiating with the French crusaders, Venetian envoys were in Cairo
making even more favorable concessions. In an agreement signed in
April of 1202 - only 2 months before the launch of the Crusade - the
Venetians promised Sultan al-Adil that the crusaders would never
reach Egypt.
By
June, the Crusade was assembled, but not their money. For the next
three months they camped on an island in the Venetian lagoon, hard
pressed by their Venetian hosts, who refused to budge until they
were paid the remaining 35000 marks owed them.
Meanwhile,
the crusade leaders negotiated with the elderly Doge of Venice,
Enrico Dandolo, who was especially interested in the relationship of
Boniface Monferrat and young Prince Alexius. Dondolo had always
hated the Greeks - not only because they were Venice's commercial
rivals, but because as a youth he had suffered a face wound in the
streets of Constantinople that had almost totally blinded him. The
usurper Alexius III had taken a hard line with Venetian traders, who
depended upon the Greek trading stations to get furs from Russia and
silks from China, so the Doge was very "sympathetic" to
his young Byzantine guest.
In
September, the Doge revealed the first part of his plan. The
Venetians had lost the fortified city of Zara (on the Dalmatian
coast) to the king of Hungary. Venice wanted it back. The crusaders
objected bitterly to attacking fellow Christians, but had little
choice if they wanted to continue eating. So, in November of 1202,
they sacked Zara and retook it for the Venetians after much fierce
fighting. (So, note that this first battle of the 4th Crusade was
against Western Christians, not Eastern ones).
Upon
hearing this in Rome, Innocent III excommunicated the Crusaders, but
lifted the excommunication once he learned that they were pressed
into it by the Venetians.
The
Crusade wintered in Zara, and during that time Doge Dondolo, Prince
Alexius, and Boniface of Monferrat formed a plan. If the Crusade
would go to Constantinople and help Alexius regain the throne, the
young prince would assure the success of the Egyptian invasion. He
would pay the Crusaders' debt to Venice, as well as fortify the
Crusading army with 10000 Byzantine soldiers; and once the war was
over, he would maintain 500 mounted men in the Holy Land to help the
Christians hold Egypt. And, most important of all, he would
guarantee that the Greek Church would recognize the primacy of Rome.
It seemed like a very good deal... Especially to the Venetians, who
had their own ideas.
The
Crusade left Zara in April of 1203, arriving before the walls of
Constantinople two months later. After a few skirmishes, the
Venetians managed to break the chain that barred the harbor and
surround the city with their navy.
Surprised
by the Venetians' strategy, the usurper Alexius III fled the city;
and the officers of the court quickly took the sightless Isaac from
the dungeon, bathed and dressed him in imperial purple, and sent
word to the crusaders that the rightful emperor had been restored to
his throne. But, the crusaders' contract was with his son, Alexius;
and it was soon negotiated that the youth would reign as co-emperor
with his father; and so he was crowned Alexius IV in Hagia Sophia on
August 1, and the gates of Constantinople were opened to the
victorious crusaders.
But,
now that it was time for Alexius VI to keep his promises, he found
that this was impossible to do. Not only did the Greek patriarchs
refuse to recognize the authority of Rome, but Alexius III had raped
the imperial treasury of most of its money. Paying the crusaders'
debt and financing their Egyptian expedition was now out of the
question (or at least that's what the imperial court claimed). To
raise some of the capital, Emperor Alexius sent parties of soldiers
to seize gold and silver objects from the churches - something the
Crusaders would later imitate.
This
attempt to raise the money continued throughout the rest of the
year, while the Westerners wandered through the streets of the
capital drinking, whoring, and brawling. A band of "impatient"
French soldiers set fire to a mosque used by local Muslims, and the
fire spread, destroying an entire section of the city.
In
January of 1204, 5 months after the crusaders were admitted to the
city, the son-in-law of the usurper Alexius III, Alexius Marzuphlus
- apparently trying to make a play for the crown himself - organized
a riot against the unwanted Westerners. A few weeks later, an
embassy of the Crusaders was attacked by the crowd as they left the
imperial palace. Soon after, a mob of Byzantine citizens flooded
into Hagia Sophia and declared that Alexius IV was deposed,
nominating a nobleman named Nicholas Canabus in his place. But,
Marzuphlus, the usurper's son-in-law, had no intention of letting
someone else reap the rewards of the uprising he started. With a
band of armed soldiers, he stormed the imperial palace, and both
Canabus and Emperor Alexius IV were dragged off into prison - the
young Alexius being immediately executed; strangled to death with a
bowstring! ... As meanwhile, his blind father, Emperor Isaac, was
savagely beaten; dying a few days later.
With
the deaths of their imperial candidates, the crusaders camped
outside the city now knew they had no other choice but to storm the
walls of Constantinople. The attack began on April 6 1204, and
lasted just six days, with final victory coming about through a
strangely-built Venetian siege machine and a mysterious fire, which
many believe was started by Venetian agents inside the city.
With
victory in sight, the Crusaders took council to choose their own
Catholic emperor to rule when the city was theirs. The Venetians had
only one condition. If the new emperor was to be a Frankish
crusader, the new Roman patriarch must be a Venetian. With this
agreed, they divided up the spoils. The imperial palace, along with
25% of the city and Byzantine lands would go the the new emperor.
The other 75% would be divided between the Crusaders and the
Venetians equally. There was no mention of any expedition to Egypt.
All
seemed in reasonably good order that night when the Venetian Doge
and the crusading nobles gathered in the imperial palace. Then the
Doge made his announcement - his final act of vengeance on the
Greeks for the blinding facial wound he had received as a youth. As
a reward for all their suffering and hardships, the army would have
three days to plunder the city! This they did with wanton abandon -
killing, desecrating, raping, burning, destroying.
After
the 3-day debauchery, the army was brought to a reasonable state of
control, although many resisted the order that their plunder should
be delivered to three collection points throughout the city. A
French count hanged one of his own knights for hoarding some loot;
and Greek citizens were routinely tortured for hiding treasure.
The
first payment made from the plunder was the money owed to the
Venetians: the Crusader's debt, which Emperor Alexius had promised
to pay. These rest was divided equally with the Venetians, a sum of
400000 marks, which one chronicler noted was seven times the annual
royal revenue of the entire kingdom of England.
Next
came the division of the land. With the whole empire to hand out,
there was more than enough. Commander Boniface of Monferrat (the
patron of the late Alexius) received broad territories, including
the island of Crete, which the Venetians were more than happy to buy
from him with part of their treasure.
Then,
on May 16, 1204, in the restored cathedral of Hagia Sophia, the
imperial crown of Constantinople was placed on the head of Count
Baldwin of Flanders. This was the beginning of the Latin Empire of
Constantinople. The Egyptian Crusade was a dim, distant memory, and
the entire crusading army found itself excommunicated by Pope
Innocent III ... an excommunication which he was eventually
persuaded to revoke.
The
Varangian Guard was only used in battle during critical
moments, or where the battle was most fierce. Contemporary Byzantine
chroniclers note with a mix of terror and fascination that the
"Scandinavians were frightening both in appearance and in
equipment, they attacked with reckless rage and neither cared about
losing blood nor their wounds". The description probably refers
to berserkers, since this state of trance is said to have given them
superhuman strength and no sense of pain from their wounds. When the
Byzantine Emperor died, the Varangians had the unique right of
running to the imperial treasury and taking as much gold and as many
gems as they could carry, a procedure known in Old Norse as
polutasvarf ("palace pillaging"). This privilege enabled
many Varangians to return home as wealthy men, which encouraged even
more Scandinavians to enlist in the Guard in Miklagarðr
(Swedish: Miklagård= 'The Great City', i.e. Constantinople)
Sack
of Constantinople, 1204
Isaakios
II Angelos (1185-1195) belonged in the family of Angeloi, which
descended from Philadelphia of Minor Asia. Isaakios was crowned
emperor in 1185 but he proved incompetent, lavish and corrupted. He
imposed taxes in the popular classes, favored the aristocracy and
was indifferent for the proper organization of his empire. He spent
most of his time hunting. Nevertheless, his brave general Alexius
Vranas defeated the Normands who devastated Macedonia, on 7th
November 1185.
In
1187, during his administration the Third Crusade took place,
against Arabs, headed by Saladin, who had conquered Jerusalem on 3rd
October 1187. Saladin proved generous and did not harm the Christian
populations. The Crusade was headed by Frederic Barbarossa of
Germany, Philip II of France and Richard Lionheart of England.
Richard invaded Cyprus in 1191 and later the crusaders occupied
Palestine and massacred the whole population. In March, 1195 Isaac
II Angelos conducted an expedition against the Bulgars, in Thrace.
But he was arrested and blinded by his brother Alexius III Angelos,
who became emperor of the Greek Empire, in April 1195. Isaac and his
son Alexius were thrown in jail.
Pope
Innocent III, (1198-1216) despite manifold problems in the West, was
the first pope since Urban II to be both anxious and able to
consider the Crusade a major papal concern. In 1198 he broached the
subject of a new expedition through legates and encyclical letters.
In 1199 a tax was levied on all clerical incomes - later to become a
precedent for systematic papal income taxes - and Fulk of Neuilly, a
popular orator, was commissioned to preach. At a tournament held by
Thibaut III of Champagne, several prominent French nobles took the
cross, and others joined later. Among them was Geoffrey of
Villehardouin, who was to write one of the principal accounts of the
Crusade. Contact was made with the aging and blind but ambitious
Doge Enrico Dandolo of Venice to provide transport. The republic of
Venice had acquired considerable trading privileges within the
Byzantine Empire, and the growing number of Venetian merchants had
long incurred the hostility of the Greeks. The Crusade was supposed
to be directed against Egypt. An agreement was made providing for
payments to the Venetians for transportation of 30.000 men and 4500
horses and an equal division of conquests.
Alexius,
son of Isaac, managed to escape during a campaign against the
insurgent Emmanuel Camitzes, and sailed to Ancona. From there he
rode to Germany, to his sister Irene who was wife of King Philip of
Germany. Promising funds, supplies, and troops to conquer Egypt, the
maintenance of 500 Western knights in the Holy Land, and submission
of the Byzantine church to Rome, Alexius convinced Philip, Crusade
leader Boniface of Montferrat, and their Venetian allies to divert
the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople in order to reinstate Alexius
and his father as co-emperors. The crusader army that arrived at
Venice in the summer of 1202 was somewhat smaller than had been
anticipated, since some of the crusaders were travelling directly
from France. Even so, there were not sufficient funds to pay the
Venetians. Accordingly, the crusaders accepted the suggestion that
in lieu of payment they assist the Venetians in the capture of the
Hungarian city of Zara. This was done despite the opposition of many
crusaders both to the diversion of the enterprise and to the attack
on a Christian city. Innocent was informed of the plan, but his veto
was disregarded. Here is how Geoffrey de Villehardouin (1160-1213)
describes the departure from Venice in his Memoirs or Chronicle of
The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople:
Then
were the ships and transports apportioned by the barons. Ah, God
what fine war-horses were put therein. And when the ships were
fulfilled with arms and provisions, and knights and sergeants, the
shields were ranged round the bulwarks and castles of the ships, and
the banners displayed, many and fair. And be it known to you that
the vessels carried more than three hundred petraries and mangonels,
and all such engines as are needed for the taking of cities, in
great plenty. Never did finer fleet sail from any port. And this was
in the octave of the Feast of St. Remigius (October) in the year of
the Incarnation of Jesus Christ twelve hundred and two. Thus did
they sail from the port of Venice, as you have been told. On the Eve
of St. Martin (10th November) they came before Zara in Sclavonia,
and beheld the city enclosed by high walls and high towers; and
vainly would you have sought for a fairer city, or one of greater
strength, or richer. And when the pilgrims saw it, they marvelled
greatly, and said one to another, "How could such a city be
taken by force, save by the help of God himself?" The first
ships that came before the city cast anchor, and waited for the
others; and in the morning the day was very fine and very clear, and
all the galleys came up with the transports, and the other ships
which were behind; and they took the port by force, and broke the
chain that defended it and was very strong and well-wrought; and
they landed in such sort that the port was between them and the
town. Then might you have seen many a knight and many a sergeant
swarming out of the ships, and taking from the transports many a
good war-horse, and many a rich tent and many a pavilion. Thus did
the host encamp. And Zara was besieged on St. Martin's Day (11th
November 1202).
Zara
surrendered to the mercy of the Doge, on condition only that all
lives should be spared. The Venetians took the part of the city
towards the port, where were the ships, and the Franks took the
other part. A month later came envoys from Germany, sent by King
Philip and the heir of Constantinople, Alexius who was brother of
Philip's wife, Irene. According to the Chronicle of The Fourth
Crusade:
The
knights and the Doge of Venice assembled in a palace where the Doge
was lodged. And the envoys addressed them and said: "Lords,
King Philip sends us to you, as does also the brother of the king's
wife, the son of the emperor of Constantinople. "Lords,"
says the king, "I will send you the brother of my wife; and I
commit him into the hands of God - may He keep him from death! - and
into your hands. And because you have fared forth for God, and for
right, and for justice, therefore you are bound, in so far as you
are able, to restore to their own inheritance those who have been
unrighteously despoiled. And my wife's brother will make with you
the best terms ever offered to any people, and give you the most
puissant help for the recovery of the land overseas. And first, if
God grant that you restore him to his inheritance, he will place the
whole empire of Romania (Eastern Empire) in obedience to Rome, from
which it has long been separated. Further, he knows that you have
spent of your substance, and that you are poor, and he will give you
200,000 marks of silver, and food for all those of the host, both
small and great. And he, of his own person, will go with you into
the land of Babylon, or, if you hold that that will be better, send
thither 10,000 men, at his own charges. And this service he will
perform for one year. And all the days of his life he will maintain,
at his own charges, five hundred knights in the land overseas to
guard that land. Lords, we have full power," said the envoys,
"to conclude this agreement, if you are willing to conclude it
on your parts. And be it known to you, that so favourable an
agreement has never before been offered to any one; and that he that
would refuse it can have but small desire of glory and conquest."
The barons and the Doge said they would talk this over; and a
parliament was called for the morrow. When all were assembled, the
matter was laid before them.
The
knights had dispute about the outcome of the campaign. One party did
not like to attack a Christian city and wanted to sail immediately
to Syria, and the other party insisted to sail to Constantinople to
gain all those who had promised the thoughtless young prince.
Innocent was aware of a plan to divert the Crusade to Constantinople
in order to give the throne to Alexius. Accordingly, Innocent
ordered Boniface of Montferrat to publish immediately his original
letter excommunicating the Venetians, which he had refused to do,
and forbade any attack on Constantinople. But the papal letter
arrived after the fleets had left Zara.
On
7th April 1203, the crusaders destroyed the city and sailed to
Dyrachion, port of the Greek Empire. The city surrendered and swore
submission to the heir of throne. The fleet departed and came to the
island of Corfu. The inhabitants did not recognize Alexius as legal
heir and kept the gates of the city closed. The crusaders pillaged
the area around the city which was well fortified and burnt most of
the villages and fields of the island. They departed from the port
of Corfu on 24 May 1203 and reached the island Andros, in Aegean
Sea. The knights again pillaged the island and destroyed most of the
villages. Later the huge fleet entered the passage of Ellispontus or
Dardanelles, and reached to a city called Abydos. The Latins stayed
there a week, stole corn from the land, and sailed to the monastery
of St Stephen, on 23rd June 1203. Geoffrey de Villehardouin
describes the scene in his Chronicle.
There
had those on board the ships and galleys and transports full sight
of Constantinople; and they took port and anchored their vessels.
Now you may know that those who had never before seen Constantinople
looked upon it very earnestly, for they never thought there could be
in all the world so rich a city; and they marked the high walls and
strong towers that enclosed it round about, and the rich palaces,
and mighty churches of which there were so many that no one would
have believed it who had not seen it with his eyes - and the height
and the length of that city which above all others was sovereign.
And be it known to you, that no man there was of such hardihood but
his flesh trembled: and it was no wonder, for never was so great an
enterprise undertaken by any people since the creation of the world.
On
24 June 1203, the crusaders landed at Chalcedon. Chalcedon is a
place in the Asiatic side of Bosporus. There was a palace of the
Emperor Alexius. The counts and barons landed and lodged themselves
in the palace. Emperor Alexius saw this provocation and sent 500 men
to face the Latins. But the fight lasted a while and the Greeks
retreated leaving their horses and tents. Alexius III Angelos proved
incompetent and less worthy than his predecessor. The corruption of
his court was enormous and the moral of the army low. When the
leader of the army is coward then the army is ineffective. His
admiral Michael Strufnos was so wicked that he sold the gear of his
fleet and increased so his personal fortune. The Greek fleet was in
miserable condition. The situation of the empire couldn't be worst.
The two emperors, Isaac and Alexius III Angelos, managed in some
years to destroy the work of the Comnenus' dynasty. Two
personalities who brightened the dark years of Angelos' dynasty were
the brothers Michael and Nicetas Choniates. Nicetas' history is the
main source of the events which took place during the 4th crusade.
July
2 1203, the Emperor Alexius sent an envoy, under Nicholas Roux with
letters to the counts and to the barons. The envoy was received in a
palace of Scutari (Chrysoupolis), where the crusaders were holding a
council. Nicholas Roux, a Franc who lived for years in the Greek
capital, read the letters: Lords, the Emperor Alexius would have you
know that he is well aware that you are the best people uncrowned,
and come from the best land on earth. And he marvels much why, and
for what purpose, you have come into his land and kingdom. For you
are Christians, and he is a Christian, and well he knows that you
are on your way to deliver the Holy Land overseas and the Holy
Cross, and the Sepulchre. If you are poor and in want, he will right
willingly give you of his food and substance, provided you depart
out of his land. Neither would he otherwise wish to do you any hurt,
though he has full power therein, seeing that if you were twenty
times as numerous as you are, you would not be able to get away
without utter discomfiture if so be that he wished to harm you. The
Latins answered that he should deliver the power to his nephew,
Isaac's son who was the legal successor of the throne.
On
3rd July, the Doge of Venice and the Marquis of Montferrat entered
into one galley, took with them Alexius, the son of the Emperor
Isaac and sailed close to the walls of Constantinople to show the
young prince to the Greeks. There was no sympathy for the prince and
the Latins returned back and decided to attack Constantinople. First
they attacked the port. Their leaders were: Baldwin of Flanders, his
brother Henry, Matthew of Wallincourt, Baldwin of Beauvoir, Peter of
Amiens, Count Louis of Blois and Chartres, Matthew of Montmorency,
Robert of Ronsoi, Otho of la Roche, Richard of Dampierre, and
Marquis of Montferrat. They easily seized the port, because the
Greeks under their ruler Alexius, again retreated; The united
European forces (Germans, Italians, Belgians and French) who fought
bravely, managed to capture the tower of Galatas; where they broke
the chain that closed the Golden Horn (Chresus Keras), and came
closer to the sea walls of Constantinople. Theodoros Lascaris, who
later would become the emperor of the empire of Nicaea, tried
without success to drive back the enemy.
So
was the tower of Galata and the port of Constantinople taken. The
French advanced to the land walls, while the Venetians reached by
sea to the palace of Blachernae. The two allied armies stayed close
one to another. The Greeks under Theodoros Lascaris ceased not to
attack them, but without achieving a final blow to the besiegers.
During a fight, Constantine Lascaris, brother of Theodoros was taken
prisoner. A knight whose name was William of Gi was killed. On 17th
July I203 everything was ready for the assault. The Marquis Boniface
of Montferrat guarded the camp towards the fields, with the division
of the Burgundians and the division of the men of Champagne. Count
Baldwin of Flanders and his brother Henry, Count Louis of Blois and
Chartres and Count Hugh of St. Paul went to the assault. The
Italians under the semi blind Doge attacked to the sea walls and
after fierce fighting they captured twenty-five towers. They set
fire, that spread so quickly destroying houses and churches of a
large part of the Polis. Again the coward Emperor Alexius III came
out of the Adrianople Gate with huge forces, but despite the urging
of Theodoros Lascaris, he dared not to attack. That night the
Emperor Alexius of Constantinople took of his treasure as much as he
could carry, and abandoned his city, his people and his family.
Emperor Isaac and his wife Margarita of Hungary were liberated,
while Alexius' wife, Eufrosine was arrested. Isaakios sent envoys to
the Latins to announce the news of his return to the throne. They
demanded of the emperor to ratify the treaty made by his son; and on
1st August 1203 Alexius IV was crowned co-emperor. Here is how
Geoffrey de Villehardouin describes the entry of the Francs in the
city:
Now
you must know that many of those in the host went to see
Konstantinoupolis, and the rich palaces and great churches, of which
there were many, and all the great wealth of the city-for never was
there city that possessed so much. Of relics it does not behove me
to speak, for at that day there were as many there as in all the
rest of the world. Thus did the Greeks and French live in good
fellowship in all things, both as regards trafficking and other
matters. By common consent of Franks and Greeks it was settled that
the new emperor should be crowned on the feast of our Lord St. Peter
(1st August 1203). So was it settled, and so it was done. He was
crowned full worthily and with honour according to the use for Greek
emperors at that time. Afterwards he began to pay the moneys due to
the host; and such moneys were divided among the host, and each
repaid what had been advanced in Venice for his passage.
Alexios
IV confiscated the lands of Eufrosine, emptied the public treasury,
imposed taxes and gathered 100000 marcs to give to the Latins. This
was only one half of the promised sum. This attitude increased more
the hatred of Greeks for Latins. A hatred that would last for
centuries, during the middle ages. Among the Crusaders was dispute
about the course of the campaign. Should they continue to the Holy
Lands or should they stay to take all the money promised by young
Alexios? The Venetians insisted to take all the sum that Alexius had
promised, and so the young emperor left his capital, escorted by
Frankish knights, for the provinces in a desperate attempt to find
the promised money. While the Emperor Alexius was away, a conflict
arose between the Greeks and the Latins. The Latins again set fire
to the city, a fire which destroyed a large part of the capital near
the church of St. Sophia.
It
lasted two days and two nights, nor could it be put out by the hand
of man. And the front of the fire, as it went flaming, was well over
half a league broad. What was the damage then done, what the
possessions and riches swallowed up, could no man tell - nor what
the number of men and women and children who perished - for many
were burned. All the Latins, to whatever land they might belong, who
were lodged in Constantinople, dared no longer to remain therein;
but they took their wives and their children, and such of their
possessions as they could save from the fire, and entered into boats
and vessels, and passed over the port and came to the camp of the
pilgrims. Nor were they few in number, for there were of them some
fifteen thousand, small and great; and afterwards it proved to be of
advantage to the pilgrims that these should have crossed over to
them.
The
Emperor Alexius remained for a long time in Thrace and returned to
Constantinople in 11 November 1203. Nevertheless he did not manage
to gather enough money to satisfy the greed of the Francs. The
crusaders had an embassy sent to the emperor, to his palace of
Blachernae, lead by Conon de Bethune and Geoffry of Villehardouin.
They
dismounted at the gate and entered the palace, and found the Emperor
Alexius and the Emperor Isaac seated on two thrones, side by side.
And near them was seated the empress, who was the wife of the
father, and stepmother of the son, and sister to the King of Hungary
- a lady both fair and good. And there were with them a great
company of people of note and rank, so that well did the court seem
the court of a rich and mighty prince. By desire of the other envoys
Conon of Bethune, who was very wise and eloquent of speech, acted as
spokesman: "Sire, we have come to thee on the part of the
barons of the host and of the Doge of Venice. They would put thee in
mind of the great service they have done to thee - a service known
to the people and manifest to all men. Thou hast sworn, thou and thy
father, to fulfill the promised covenants, and they have your
charters in hand. But you have not fulfilled those covenants well,
as you should have done. Many times have they called upon you to do
so, and now again we call upon you, in the presence of all your
barons, to fulfill the covenants that are between you and them.
Should you do so, it shall be well. If not, be it known to you that
from this day forth they will not hold you as lord or friend, but
will endeavour to obtain their due by all the means in their Power.
And of this they now give you warning, seeing that they would not
injure you, nor any one, without first defiance given; for never
have they acted treacherously, nor in their land is it customary to
do so. You have heard what we have said. It is for you to take
counsel thereon according to your pleasure." Much were the
Greeks amazed and greatly outraged by this open defiance; and they
said that never had any one been so hardy as to dare defy the
Emperor of Constantinople in his own hall. Very evil were the looks
now cast on the envoys by the Emperor Alexius and by all the Greeks,
who aforetime were wont to regard them very favourably. Great was
the tumult there within, and the envoys turned about and came to the
gate and mounted their horses. When they got outside the gate, there
was not one of them but felt glad at heart; nor is that to be
marvelled at, for they had escaped from very great peril, and it
held to very little that they were not all killed or taken. So they
returned to the camp, and told the barons how they had fared.
So
there was war between the Greeks and the Francs, on November 1203.
The Greeks under the command of Alexius Ducas Murtzuphlus tried to
burn the European fleet, using fireships, but without success. The
Venetians were masters in the seamanship and seized the fireships,
using hooks. Only one merchant ship from Pisa was burnt. In these
difficult events the young emperor proved incompetent like his
uncle. Three men had the courage to face the barbarians: Alexius
Ducas Murtzuphlus, Constantine Lascaris and his brother Theodorus
Lascaris. The Greek people were furious with the inefficiency of the
young emperor and a revolution broke in 25th January 1204. Alexius
IV was thrown in jail and on 5 February 1204, Alexius V Ducas
Murtzuphlus was crowned emperor of the Eastern Empire. Alexius IV
was strangled in his jail on 8 February 1204 and Isaac died in
prison a few days later. So ended the worst dynasty that ruled the
Empire and disorganized the state to such extent that after 2 months
this state was to meet its destiny and fall to the crusaders. A fall
that would prepare the ground for the Turks to come and destroy
definitely the Greek medieval state.
The
Franks rode to the north and attacked to a city of Euxenus Pontus,
named Philea. They pillaged and destroyed the rich city and when
they returned back, the emperor assaulted them. But again the
crusaders defeated the Greek imperial army and not only the emperor
Alexius V was almost taken captive, but the holy icon of the Virgin
Mary that was made by Apostle Lucas was stolen by the Latins. This
icon was very important for the Orthodoxy and the Greeks grieved for
the loss of it.
Well
had these prepared all their engines, and mounted their petraries,
and mangonels on the ships and on the transports, and got ready all
such engines of war as are needful for the taking of a city, and
raised ladders from the yards and masts of the vessels, so high that
they were a marvel to behold. And when the Greeks saw this, they
began, on their side, to strengthen the defences of the city which
was enclosed with high walls and high towers. Nor was any tower so
high that they did not raise thereon two or three stages of wood to
heighten it still more. Never was city so well fortified. Thus did
the Greeks and the Franks bestir themselves on the one side and the
other during the greater part of Lent. Then those of the host spoke
together, and took counsel what they should do. Much was advanced
this way and that, but in the end, they devised that if God granted
them entry into the city by force, all the booty taken was to be
brought together, and fittingly distributed; and further, if the
city fell into their power, six men should be taken from among the
Franks, and six from among the Venetians, and these twelve should
swear, on holy relics, to elect as emperor the man who, as they
deemed, would rule with most profit to the land. And whosoever was
thus elected emperor, would have one quarter of whatever was
captured, whether within the city or without, and moreover would
possess the palace of Bucoleon and that of Blachernae; and the
remaining three parts would be divided into two, and one of the
halves awarded to the Venetians and the other to those of the host.
And there should be taken twelve of the wisest and most experienced
men among the host of the pilgrims, and twelve among the Venetians,
and those twenty-four would divide fiefs and honours, and appoint
the service to be done therefor to the emperor. This covenant was
made sure and sworn to on the one side and the other by the Franks
and the Venetians; with provision that at the end of March, a year
thence, any who so desired might depart hence and go their way, but
that those who remained in the land would be held to the service of
the emperor in such manner as might be ordained. Thus was the
covenant devised and made sure; and such as should not observe it
were excommunicated by the clergy.
So
the Latins decided to divide the Eastern Empire. The men who had
swore before the Holy Cross to go and liberate Jerusalem from
musulmans, had prefered to act like common thieves and attack to a
Christian city with only one purpose.
The sack.
The
Europeans attacked the sea walls on 8th April 1204. The ships drew
near to the city, and a fierce battle began in more than a hundred
places. The crusaders were repulsed in that assault, and those who
had landed from the galleys were driven back. After the defeat, the
Doge of Venice and the other barons were assembled in a church on
the other side of the straits and discussed. The Venetians insisted
that they should repeat the attacks to the same place, but this time
the ships should be bound together in order to reach the high
towers. The preparations lasted some days and the final assault was
repeated on 13th April 1204. The Greeks defended the towers with
success, but suddenly the wind changed and blew from the north. Two
ships that were bound together, the Pilgrim and the Paradise,
approached so near to a tower, that the ladder of the first vessel
joined on to the tower. Immediately a Venetian, and two French
knights, whose name was Andrew of Durboise and John Choisy, entered
into the tower. This was the beginning of the end. The tower was
taken and many other crusaders raised their ladders and conquered
many other towers. In vain the emperor Alexius Murzuphlus tried to
encourage his soldiers to counterattack. They fled and Alexius ran
to the castle of Bucoleon. He took with him Eufrosine and her
daughter Eudokia and left the Byzantine capital through the Golden
Gate. The Latins set again fire to the city.
And
the city began to take fire, and to burn very direfully; and it
burned all that night and all the next day, till vesper-time. And
this was the third fire there had been in Constantinople since the
Franks arrived in the land; and more houses had been burned in the
city than there are houses in any three of the greatest cities in
the kingdom of France.
When
Alexius V left the City, Constantine Lascaris one of the city's
leading defenders, was proclaimed emperor in the Cathedral of St.
Sophia. He tried with his brother Theodoros Lascaris to drive the
Varagkoi (Vikings mercenaries) against the invaders, but again the
attempt had no result and the two brothers fled the city. In Nicaea,
Theodoros Lascaris would later create a new Byzantine state, the
Empire of Nicaea. One of his successors Michael VIII Paleologus in
1261, would liberate the Greek capital.
The
richest city of the world was at the mercy of the Europeans. The
barbarians did horrible things that are beyond imagination. They
tortured and massacred a large part of the population, destroyed
churches, palaces, monasteries and even sculptures made by Phidias
and Praxiteles, stole thousands of priceless icons, relics and other
things, raped young girls and boys. Not to mention the countless
manuscripts of ancient Greek philology which were burnt by the
ignorant and illiterate Francs. So much was the hatred of the
Europeans for the Greek Empire! Nicetas Choniates or Acominatus
describes in his chronicle the detestable actions of the barbarians.
Nicetas experienced the looting of Constantinople and with the help
of a Venetian merchant, he managed to escape with his family, to
Nicaea, capital of a new Greek state, where he wrote the 21-volume
"History of the Times," a record of the rise and fall of
the 12th- and 13th-century Byzantine dynasties, beginning with the
Greek emperor John Comnenus (1118-1143) and concluding with the
intrusion of the first Latin Eastern emperor, Baldwin I of Flanders
(1204-1205). Geoffrey de Villehardouin gives his point of view:
The
Marquis Boniface of Montferrat rode all along the shore to the
palace of Bucoleon, and when he arrived there it surrendered, on
condition that the lives of all therein should be spared. At
Bucoleon were found the larger number of the great ladies who had
fled to the castle, for there were found the sister [Agnes, sister
of Philip Augustus, married successively to Alexius II., to
Andronicus, and to Theodore Branas] of the King of France, who had
been empress, and the sister [Margaret, sister of Emeric, King of
Hungary, married to the Emperor Isaac, and afterwards to the Marquis
of Montferrat] of the King of Hungary, who had also been empress,
and other ladies very many. Of the treasure that was found in that
palace I cannot well speak, for there was so much that it was beyond
end or counting. At the same time that this palace was surrendered
to the Marquis Boniface of Montferrat, did the palace of Blachernae
surrender to Henry, the brother of Count Baldwin of Flanders, on
condition that no hurt should be done to the bodies of those who
were therein. There too was found much treasure, not less than in
the palace of Bucoleon. Each garrisoned with his own people the
castle that had been surrendered to him, and set a guard over the
treasure. And the other people, spread abroad throughout the city,
also gained much booty. The booty gained was so great that none
could tell you the end of it: gold and silver, and vessels and
precious stones, and samite, and cloth of silk, and robes vair and
grey, and ermine, and every choicest thing found upon the earth. And
well does Geoffry of Villehardouin the Marshal of Champagne, bear
witness, that never, since the world was created, had so much booty
been won in any city. Every one took quarters where he pleased and
of lodgings there was no stint. So the host of the pilgrims and of
the Venetians found quarters, and greatly did they rejoice and give
thanks because of the victory God had vouchsafed to them - for those
who before had been poor were now in wealth and luxury.
For
four days the great City was subjected by the rank and file to
pillage and massacre. When order had been restored, the crusaders
and the Venetians proceeded to implement their agreement; Baldwin of
Flanders was crowned emperor in the church of St. Sophia and the
Venetian Thomas Morosini was chosen patriarch. But the lands
parcelled out among the leaders did not include all the former
Byzantine possessions. The imperial government continued in Nicaea,
and an offshoot Empire of Trebizond, at the eastern end of the Black
Sea, lasted until 1461. There was also established a Byzantine
Despotate of Epirus, and the Bulgarians under Skylogiannis or
Ioannitzes remained hostile. The rift between the Eastern and
Western churches widened, and Greek popular resistance to any
schemes of reunion with the empire intensified. The Byzantine
Empire, for centuries a bulwark against invasion from the East, was
damaged beyond repair. The Greeks never forgave the Europeans for
the destruction of their state. A destruction that would bring the
final end of the Greek Empire with the invasion of the Turks. An
invasion that had as result the slavery of the Greeks for 5
centuries and the irrevocable loss of ancient Greek lands.
Marquis
Boniface of Montferrat married the empress who had been the wife of
the Emperor Isaac, and was sister to the King of Hungary. He asked
from Baldwin the city of Thessalonica, the capital of the province
of Macedonia, which was granted to him. Alexius Murzuphlus who had
taken with him the empress, wife of the Emperor Alexius III, and his
daughter Eudokia, reached Messinopolis, a city of Thrace. There, the
former emperor received him and told him that he should be as
welcome as if he were his own son, and that he would give him his
daughter to wife, and make of him his son. But when he found the
chance he blinded him. Later Alexius V Murzuphlus was arrested by
the Latins who murdered him by casting him from the top of a column
in Constantinople. This was the end for the man who tried without
success to fight the Frankish invaders. Alexius III Angelos was also
arrested by the crusaders. On 1205, Baldwin and later Boniface were
killed by the king of Bulgars, Ioannitzes. The Empire of Nicaea
which faced three enemies: the Latins, the Bulgarians, and the
Seljuk sultanate, proved worthy of the Byzantine traditions of
fighting on many fronts at once and of skillful diplomacy. Theodore
Lascaris and his son-in-law John III Vatatzes built up at Nicaea a
microcosm of the Byzantine Empire and church in exile. The Latins
were thus never able to gain a permanent foothold in Anatolia.
CONSTANTINE XI
PALAEOLOGUS (1449-1453)
FALL OF
CONSTANTINOPLE "Ealo h Polis"
Constantine
XI Palaeologos (1404-1453), also called Dragases, last Byzantine
emperor, was born in 1404 in Mistra, was the son of Emperor Manuel
II. He was trained as a soldier, and in 1430 liberated the peninsula
of Morea in Greece, which had been under the Frankish principality
of Achaia, a state established by the Crusaders.
In
1442 Turks under Murad, sieged Constantinople which was defended by
emperor John VIII Palaeologos, while Constantine fought Turks in
island of Limnos. There he lost his wife Katherine. Constantine XI
was actually married twice and Katherine was his second wife.
In
1444 Constantine with his brother Thomas Palaeologos and a small
army liberated Roumeli and Thessalia. The Greek populations loved
and admired their leader. They called him "Drakos". Those
were the last victories of Byzantium.
His
friend was George Plithon or Gemistos a philosopher who created
school of Philosophy in Athens. He was teaching Greek Philosophy in
Mystras. He advised Constantine to take the property from church and
rich men and to give it to the poor farmers. When John VIII
travelled in Florence, he escorted him together with other Byzantine
intellectuals. There Europeans argued with the Greeks about religion
and Plithon told them:
Why
are you arguing to unify the two churches? In the future there will
be only one religion, and this is the union of Christianism and the
ideas of ancient Greeks.
In
1446, the Turkish ruler Murad II reconquered and devastated these
lands. The Turks had begun their invasions of the Balkans nearly a
century before, and now began to close in on Constantinople.
Constantine
was crowned emperor on Jan. 6, 1449, succeeding his brother, John
VIII. The last Christian Greek Emperor entered, two months later, on
March 12, the isolated Imperial capital. A little less than three
years later, on Dec. 12, 1452, the union of the Roman Catholic and
Greek Orthodox churches was proclaimed in Constantinople in the
presence of the papal legate and the Patriarch Gregory. Constantine
had been a strong advocate of this union, but the people were
generally opposed to it, and riots ensued. The popular insistence on
Byzantine religious autonomy furthered the estrangement between
eastern and western Roman Christendom and weakened Byzantine
resistance to the Turks. Catholics never sent army or navy as they
were commited to their agreement. They preferred the most glorious
Christian city to be destroyed and pillaged from the Muslims.
In
1452 the sultan demolished the old church of Archaggelos Michael and
constructed at the narrowest point of the Bosporus strait, a huge
complex of strong fortifications, Rumeli Hisar, whose task was to
shut completely, by its artillery, the route of western and
Byzantine vessels to and from the Black Sea (Euxeinos Pontus).
Indeed, on 26 November 1452, according to the Venetian doctor
Nicolao Barbaro, a Venetian vessel under the command of Antonio
Ritzo attempted to pass without paying the required tolls. It was
sank by the new fortress's guns, its crew of thirty men was taken
prisoners in Adrianople (Eridne). The officers and sailors were
brought in front of Mehmed, who ordered their immediate impalement.
The
Turkish sultan, Mehmed II, advanced on Constantinople in the
beginning of 1453. Troops came from every region of the Empire,
including thousands of irregulars, from many nationalities, who were
attracted by the prospect of looting. The regular troops were well
equipped and well trained. The elite corps of the Janissaries
composed of abducted Christian children, forcibly converted to
Islam, and subsequently trained as professional soldiers,
constituted the spear-head of the Ottoman army. The besieging army
included a number of artillery pieces, which were made with the help
of a Hungarian named Ourvanos. The hugest canons faced the Military
Gate of St Romanus, and were expected to cause heavy damage to the
1000 year old walls in that area. The army, accompanied by crowds of
fanatic Dervishes, started moving slowly towards Constantinople. A
few towns, still in Greek hands, near the capital were soon occupied
by the Sultan's army. Of those towns Selyvria resisted longer. His
army included 200000 soldiers (29.000 of them were Europeans).
Constantinople
was defended only by 10.000 soldiers (3.000 of them were Europeans
mostly Italians). Among the Europeans, who had come to help, was the
brave Giovanni Giustiniani. He was from Genoa where he had recruited
400 men and another 300 on the island of Chios. Others were the
cardinal Isidoros, who was of Greek origin, the latin bishop of
Chios, Leonardos, the Venetian captains Kokkos, Trevizas, Aloisio,
Contarini and a lot more people. Also, the help provided by the
German engineer Johannes Grant was of great importance. Grant
managed to destroy all the tunnels that the Sultan had attempted to
build in order to enter the city. So the greatest Christian city was
defended only by some Greeks and some Italians. No other European
leader accepted the emperor's appeal for help.
The
defenders lacked in training and armament but were possessed by
fighting spirit. Indeed, most of them were killed fighting. The
civilian population supported the emperor overwhelmingly. The
people, men and women, participated in the repairs of the walls and
in the deepening of the moat, volunteers manned observation posts,
food supplies were collected, gold and silver objects, held in the
churches, were melted to make coins in order to pay the foreign
soldiers. With the exception of about 700 Italian residents of the
city, who fled on board seven ships, on the night of February 26, no
one else imitated them. The rest of the population, Greeks and
foreigners, fought until the end. On April 2, 1453 the city's
harbor, the Golden Horn, was shut by a huge chain, and ten galleys
were put behind to protect it.
During
the first week of April, the Ottoman troops began taking their
assigned positions in front of the city walls. The Sultan had his
tent installed north of the Gate of St Romanus, near the river
Lycus. He ordered the big canon to be installed in the same area. To
protect the troops, a protective trench was opened in front of the
Ottoman units, the soil from it was accumulated on the city side and
on top of it was erected a palisade. On the 12th arrived from
Gallipoli the Ottoman fleet. Composed of approximately 200 ships of
various sizes and displacements, it sealed the byzantine capital
from the sea. Mehmed's admiral was the Bulgarian renegade Suleiman
Baltoghlu. On his side the emperor distributed his troops as best as
he could. It was impossible, with the available garrison, to cover
the entire walled circumference of the capital, about fourteen miles
long. However, it was clear to all that the main attack would be
delivered by the enemy along the land-walls, about four miles long.
With the exception of the Blachernae section of the walls, at the
north-eastern end of the land side, the city was protected, on the
land side, by a triple wall, with a deep moat in front of it. On the
sea side, including the Golden Horn port area, the city was
protected by a single wall.
Given
the availability of troops and the critical sections of the walls,
Giustiniani, with most of his men, as well as Constantine
Palaeologus and his best troops, took position in the St Romanus's
Gate sector, where heavy damage was expected to be inflicted by the
canon and the main Ottoman assault to be launched. The Venetian
Bailo (the Head of the Venetian Community at Constantinople)
Girolamo Minotto and his countrymen were charged with the defence of
the region of Blachernae, where the Imperial Palace was located.
Minotto and his men faced the European troops of Karadja Pasha.
Across the Golden Horn, to the left of Pera, ready to intervene,
stood the troops of Zaganos Pasha. Along the southern section of the
land-walls the defenders faced the Anatolian troops under the
command of Ishak Pasha. The Grand Duke Luke Notaras and Alexios
Disipatos with a reserve unit took position near the walls, at the
Petra neighborhood, in the north-eastern section of the city.
Another reserve unit of 700 men under the command of Theofilos
Palaeologus, Demetrius Cantakouzenos and Nicephorus Palaeologus was
stationed near the church of the Holy Apostles, at the center of the
city. Most units were positioned on and behind the land-walls. The
sea-walls were thinly manned. To protect the entrance to the port,
the Venetian commander of the small fleet of the defenders, Alviso
Diedo, ordered ten ships to take position behind the chain.
According
to Islamic tradition the Sultan, before the beginning of
hostilities, demanded the surrender of the city, promising to spare
the lives of its inhabitants and respect their property. In a proud
and dignified reply Constantine XI rejected Mehmed's demand.
Almost
immediately the Ottoman guns began firing. The continuous
bombardment soon brought down a section of the walls near the Gate
of Charisius, north of the Emperor's position. When night fell,
everyone, who was available, rushed to repair the damage. Meanwhile
Ottoman troops were trying to fill the fosse, particularly in areas
in front of the weak sections of the walls which were now constantly
bombarded. Other units began attempts to mine weak sections of the
wall. On the port area a first attempt by the Ottoman fleet to test
the defenders' reaction failed.
Until
the end of the siege the Ottoman guns did not stop pounding the
walls. Heavy damage was inflicted. The defenders did their best to
limit it. They hanged bales of wool, sheets of leather. Nothing
could help. The section of the walls in the Lycus valley, near the
Emperor's position, was heavily damaged. The fosse in front of it
was almost filled by the besiegers. Behind it, the defenders erected
a stockade, Night after night men and women came from the city to
repair the damaged sections.
The
first assault was launched during the night of April 18. Thousands
of men attacked the stockade and attempted to burn it down. Emperor
and his Greek comrades fought valiantly. Well armed, protected by
armor, fighting in a restricted area, they succeeded after four
hours of bloody struggle to repulse the enemy.
On
Friday, 20 April, in the morning, appeared in the sea of Marmara,
near Constantinople, five large vessels loaded with provisions for
the city. Four were Genoese and one, a big transport, was Greek. The
Greek captain's name was Flantanellas. Baltoghlu dispatched
immediately his fleet to attack and capture the ships. The operation
seemed easy and soon the ships were surrounded by the smaller
Ottoman vessels. Everyone in the city, who was not busy with the
defence, rushed to the sea-walls to watch the spectacle. The Sultan
on horseback, his officers and a multitude of soldiers, rushed to
the shore to watch the battle. Excited and unable to restrain
himself, screaming orders at Baltoghlu, the young Sultan rode into
the shallow water. Fighting, the big ships continued pushing the
smaller ones, and helped by the wind they were now close to the
south-eastern corner of the city. Then the wind dropped and the
current began pushing them towards the coast on which stood the
Sultan and his troops. Fighting continued, with the Christian
sailors hurling on the enemy crews stones, javelins and all sorts of
projectiles, including Greek Fire. Eventually the four vessels came
so close to each other that they became bound together, forming a
floating castle. Around sunset the wind rose and the big ships,
pushing their way through the mass, and the wrecks, of the enemy
vessels, hailed by thousands of people who were standing on the
walls, entered the Golden Horn. Next morning Baltoghlu was dismissed
by the Sultan, who was so furious that he ordered the beheading of
his admiral. The unlucky admiral was replaced by a favorite of
Mehmed, Hamza Bey.
This
event convinced the Sultan and his commanders that the city had to
be more tightly besieged and that the naval arm of the besieged had
to be neutralized. Mehmed's ingenious plan, formulated before the
events of April 20, consisted in bringing part of his fleet into the
Golden Horn. Indeed, thousands of laborers had been building, for
some time, a road overland from the Bosphorus, alongside the walls
of Pera, to a place called Valley of the Springs, on the shore of
the Golden Horn, above Pera. On April 22 to the horror of the
besieged a long procession of ships, sitting on wooden platforms
were pulled by teams of oxen and men, over the road, into the port
area. About seventy boats entered the Golden Horn. The leaders of
the defence held immediately an emergency meeting. Various plans
were discussed and it was finally decided to attempt to burn the
enemy boats, which were in the Golden Horn. After a succession of
postponements the attempt was carried out during the night of April
28. Betrayed by Italians from Pera, it failed miserably. Hit by
Ottoman guns the Christian ships suffered heavy damage. About forty
sailors captured by the enemy were tortured to death.
Despite
this failure the situation in the Golden Horn became, more or less,
stable. Superior naval training, and better naval construction,
eventually prevented Hamza's ships from inflicting serious damage on
the allied units. However, the Sultan's idea was a military success.
Indeed, in 1204 the Crusaders had assaulted the city from the
sea-walls and the Greeks had not forgotten it. They feared a
repetition of that assault.
On
the land side the bombardment continued, more walls collapsed, and
when night fell everyone rushed to close the gap, reinforce the
stockades, build here and there. Moreover, food was wanting and the
authorities did their best to distribute it equally. Worse, help was
not coming. Everyone was watching and waiting for the sails of the
Western ships to appear coming out of the Dardanelles. In early May
a fast boat "Byzantine dromon" was sent out, to seek the
allied fleet in the Aegean and tell its commanders to hurry.
During
the night of May 7 a new assault was launched against the damaged
section, where Giustiniani stood. It failed again and then in the
night of May 12 another came and failed. It was launched at the
junction of the Blachernae wall and of the old Theodosian one.
During that time mining and counter-mining continued. Sometimes
fighting went on underground. Sometimes the tunnels collapsed and
suffocated the miners. The German engineer Grant with barrels filled
with water all around the walls, managed to discover the underground
tunnels.
On
May 23 the dromon that had been sent out to locate the Christian
fleet returned to the city. Its crew brought bad news. Nothing was
in sight. The defenders were alone, no help was coming. The men of
the crew, obeying their duty, decided to return to the doomed city.
Realizing that everything was lost Constantine's chief advisors
begged him to leave the city. He could still get out and seek help.
His father Manuel II had done the same in 1399, at the time of the
blockade of the city by Sultan Bayazid. The Emperor refused to
discuss the issue. He had already decided to stay in his capital,
fight for it and perish.
Meanwhile,
rumors were circulating in the Ottoman camp about the Venetians
finally mobilizing their fleet, or about the Hungarians preparing to
cross the Danube. The siege was going on without end in sight. The
Sultan's Vizier Halil Chandarli, who was also informer of the
emperor, had strong reservations about the siege from the beginning.
He was worried about western intervention and he looked upon the
whole operation with anxiety. During a meeting of the Sultan's
advisors, held on May 25, the Vizir told Mehmed to raise the siege.
Pursuing it might bring unknown consequences to Ottoman interests.
The Sultan, also depressed because of the prolongation of the
operation, finally decided to launch a grand scale final assault on
the city. He was supported by younger commanders like Zaganos Pasha,
a Christian converted to Islam. Halil was overruled and all present
decided to continue the siege.
While
the artillery continued pounding the walls without interruption,
preparations for the big assault, which was to take place on Tuesday
29 May, were accelerated. Material was thrown into the fosse which
faced the collapsed ramparts, scaling-ladders were distributed. The
Magistrates of Pera were warned not to give any assistance to the
besieged. The Sultan swore to distribute fairly the treasures found
in the city. According to tradition the troops were free to loot and
sack the city for three days. He assured his troops that success was
imminent, the defenders were exhausted, some sections of the walls
had collapsed. It would be a general assault, throughout the line of
the land-walls, as well as in the port area. Then the troops were
ordered to rest and recover their strength.
In
the city everyone realized that the great moment had come. During
Monday, May 28, some last repairs were done on the walls and the
stockades, in the collapsed sections, were reinforced. In the city,
while the bells of the churches rang mournfully, citizens and
soldiers joined a long procession behind the holy relics brought out
of the churches. Singing hymns in Greek, Italian or Catalan,
Orthodox and Catholic, men, women, children, soldiers, civilians,
clergy, monks and nuns, knowing that they were going to die shortly,
made peace with themselves, with God and with eternity.
When
the procession ended the Emperor met with his commanders and the
notables of the city. In a philosophical speech he told his subjects
that the end of their time had come. In essence he told them that
Man had to be ready to face death when he had to fight for his
faith, for his country, for his family or for his sovereign. All
four reasons were now present. Furthermore, his subjects, who were
the descendants of Greeks, had to emulate their great ancestors.
They had to fight and sacrifice themselves without fear. They had
lived in a great city and they were now going to die defending it.
As for himself, he was going to die fighting for his faith, for his
city and for his people. He also thanked the Italian soldiers, who
had not abandoned the great city in its final moments. He still
believed that the garrison could repulse the enemy. They all had to
be brave, proud warriors and do their duty. He thanked all present
for their contribution to the defence of the city and asked them to
forgive him, if he had ever treated them without kindness.
Constantine asked Guistiniani to take his beloved Anna Notara to his
ship, so that she whould not fall in the hands of the enemy.
Everyone knew the fate of of those who would be alive when Turks
entered in the city.
Meanwhile
the great church of Saint Sophia was crowded. Thousands of people
were moving towards the church. Inside, Orthodox and Catholic
priests were holding mass (THE LAST CHRISTIAN SERVICE AFTER 1000
YEARS). People were singing hymns, others were openly crying, others
were asking each other for forgiveness. Those who were not serving
on the ramparts also went to the church, among them was seen, for a
brief moment, the Emperor. People confessed and took communion. Then
those who were going to fight rode or walked back to the ramparts.
They prayed and chanted for the last time the "Akathistos Hymn"
in front of the holy icon of "Odigitria", an icon of
Virgin Mary, made by Apostole Loukas. The next day most of them
would be dead.
From
the great church the Emperor rode to the Palace at Blachernae. There
he asked his household to forgive him. He bade the emotionally
shattered men and women farewell, left his Palace and rode away,
into the night, for a last inspection of the defence positions. Then
he took his battle position.
The
assault began after midnight, into the 29th of May 1453. Wave after
wave the attackers charged. Battle cries, accompanied by the sound
of drums, trumpets and fifes, filled the air. The bells of the city
churches began ringing frantically. Orders, screams and the sound of
trumpets shattered the night. First came the irregulars, an
unreliable, multinational crowd of Christians and Muslims, who were
attracted by the opportunity of enriching themselves by looting the
glorious city, the great capital of the East Roman Empire. They
attacked throughout the line of fortifications and they were
massacred by the tough professionals, who were fighting under the
orders of Giustiniani. The battle lasted two hours and the
irregulars withdrew in disorder, leaving behind an unknown number of
dead and wounded.
Next
came the Anatolian troops of Ishak Pasha. They tried to storm the
stockades. They fought tenaciously, even desperately trying to break
through the compact ranks of the defenders. The narrow area in which
fighting went on helped the defenders. The could hack left and right
with their maces and swords and shoot missiles onto the mass of
attackers without having to aim. A group of attackers crashed
through a gap and for a moment it seemed that they could enter the
city. The were assaulted by the Emperor and his men and were soon
slain. This second attack also failed.
But
now came the Janissaries (what an irony that they were born Greek
Orthodox), disciplined, professional, ruthless warriors, superbly
trained, ready to die for their master, the Sultan. They assaulted
the now exhausted defenders, they were pushing their way over bodies
of dead and dying Muslim and Christian soldiers. With tremendous
effort the Greek and Italian fighters were hitting back and
continued repulsing the enemy. Then a group of enemy soldiers
unexpectedly entered the city from a small sally-port called
Kerkoporta, on the wall of Blachernae, where this wall joined the
triple wall. Fighting broke near the small gate with the defenders
trying to eliminate the intruders.
It
was almost day now, the first light, before sunrise, when a shot
fired from a calverin hit Giustiniani. The shot pierced his
breastplate and he fell on the ground. Shaken by his wound and
physically exhausted, his fighting spirit collapsed. Despite the
pleas of the Emperor, who was fighting nearby, not to leave his
post, the Genoese commander ordered his men to take him out of the
battle-field. A Gate in the inner wall was opened for the group of
Genoese soldiers, who were carrying their wounded commander, to come
into the city. The soldiers who were fighting near the area saw the
Gate open, their comrades carrying their leader crossing into the
city, and they thought that the defence line had been broken. They
all rushed through the Gate leaving the Emperor and the Greek
fighters alone between the two walls. This sudden movement did not
escape the attention of the Ottoman commanders. Frantic orders were
issued to the troops to concentrate their attack on the weakened
position. Thousands rushed to the area. The stockade was broken. The
Greeks were now squeezed by crowds of Janissaries between the
stockade and the wall. More Janissaries came in and many reached the
inner wall.
Meanwhile
more were pouring in through the Kerkoporta, where the defenders had
not been able to eliminate the first intruders. Soon the first enemy
flags were seen on the walls. The Emperor and his commanders were
trying frantically to rally their troops and push back the enemy. It
was too late. Waves of Janissaries, followed by other regular units
of the Ottoman army, were crashing through the open Gates, mixed
with fleeing and slaughtered Christian soldiers. Then the Emperor,
realizing that everything was lost, removed his Imperial insignia,
and followed by his cousin Theophilus Palaeologus, the lord Branas,
the Castilian Don Francisco of Toledo, Katakouzinos, Mathaios
Sgouromalis and John Dalmatus, all seven holding their swords,
charged into the sea of the enemy soldiers, hitting left and right
in a final act of defiance. They were never seen again.
Now,
thousands of Ottoman soldiers were pouring into the city. One after
the other the city Gates were opened. The Ottoman flags began
appearing on the walls, on the towers, on the Palace at Blachernae.
Civilians in panic were rushing to the churches. Others locked
themselves in their homes, some continued fighting in the streets,
crowds of Greeks and foreigners were rushing towards the port area.
The allied ships were still there and began collecting refugees. The
Cretan soldiers and sailors, manning three towers near the entrance
of the Golden Horn, were still fighting and had no intention of
surrendering. At the end, the Ottoman commanders had to agree to a
truce and let them sail away, carrying their arms.
Bands
of Ottoman soldiers began now looting. Doors were broken, private
homes were looted, their tenants were massacred. Shops in the city
markets were looted. Monasteries and Convents were broken in. Their
tenants were killed, nuns were raped, many, to avoid dishonor,
killed themselves. Killing, raping, looting, burning, enslaving,
went on and on according to tradition. The troops had to satisfy
themselves. The great doors of Saint Sophia were forced open, and
crowds of angry soldiers came in and fell upon the unfortunate
worshippers. Pillaging and killing in the holy place went on for
hours. Similar was the fate of worshippers in most churches in the
city. Everything that could be taken from the splendid buildings was
taken by the new masters of the Imperial capital. Icons were
destroyed, precious manuscripts were lost forever. Thousands of
civilians were enslaved, soldiers fought over young boys and young
women. Death and enslavement did not distinguish among social
classes. Nobles and peasants were treated with equal ruthlessness.
According
to Historian Frantzis the invaders broke the heads of those women
who resisted, on the floor of the churches and they raped them dead.
The famous icon of Apostole Loukas was totally destroyed. The sultan
asked for the young sons of Duke Loukas Notaras. Their father
refused and Mehmed was ready to take their heads. Notaras asked him
to kill him after his sons so that he was sure that they were dead
and not disgraced from the pervert sultan. And this is what
happened.
In
some distant neighborhoods, especially near the sea walls in the sea
of Marmora, such as Psamathia, but also in the Golden Horn at Phanar
and Petrion, where local fishermen opened the Gates, while the enemy
soldiers were pouring into the city from the land Gates, local
magistrates negotiated successfully their surrender to Hamza Bey's
officers. Their act saved the lives of their fellow citizens.
Furthermore their churches were not desecrated. Meanwhile, the crews
of the Ottoman fleet abandoned their ships to rush into the city.
They were worried that the land army was going to take everything.
The collapse of discipline gave the Christian ships time to sail out
of the Golden Horn. Venetian, Genoese and Greek ships, loaded with
refugees, some of them having reached the ships swimming from the
city, sailed away to freedom. On one of the Genuese vessels was
Giustiniani. He was taken from the boat at Chios where he died, from
his wound, a few days later.
By
the evening of the first day of looting there was left nothing else
to steal. The Sultan, with his top commanders and his guard of
Janissaries, came into the city in the afternoon of the first day of
occupation. Constantinople was finally his and he intended to make
it the capital of his mighty Empire. He toured the ruined city. He
visited Saint Sophia which he ordered to be turned into a mosque. He
also ordered an end to the killing. What he saw was desolation,
destruction, death in the streets, ruins, desecrated churches. It
was too much. It is said that, as he rode through the streets of the
former capital of the Christian Greek Empire, the city of
Constantine, moved to tears he murmured: "What a city we have
given over to plunder and destruction".
The
sultan show in front of many houses the symbol of half moon. He
asked why was this symbol everywhere, and they told him that this
symbol was dated from the time of 340 b.c. when Philipos Macedonian
did not manage to take Byzantium. Ancient Byzantines has since that
victory, preserved this symbol. Sultan liked it and added to it a
star. So was formed the Turkish flag which terrorized for many
centuries the Christian states.
So
a civilization of 1100 years old was lost in some days. The
barbarians didn't respect anything holy icons, books, paintings,
mosaics. They demolished and vandalized churches, ancient monuments,
palaces dated from 4th century. Nevertheless the ideas did not
vanished. Turks didn't manage to vanish the Hellenic spirit. Many
Greeks like Byssarion, Dimitrios Kavakis, Georgios Xaritonimos,
Ieronimos of Sparta fled to Europe where they spread the ideas of
Socrates, Platon, Aristotelis, Aeschylus, Archimidis, Homer,
Euripides, Solon.
Turks
must be grateful to the "civilized" Europeans for helping
them taking and still keeping this City.
See
www.agiasofia.com
II — LE PILLAGE DE
CONSTANTINOPLE PAR LES CROISÉS DE 1204.
Si
l'on n'écoutait que les lamentations de Nicétas sur la
seconde prise de Constantinople, la ville impériale, théâtre
d'abominations sans égales, aurait vu périr, en 1204,
sous les coups de Barbares ignorants, aussi bien tous les
chefs-d'œuvre de l'art antique qui s'y trouvaient rassemblés
que les plus précieux et les plus vénérables
des objets consacrés par les souvenirs du christianisme.
Heureusement, sur tous ces faits, il faut se garder de prendre à
la lettre tant le récit de Nicétas, déplorant
la destruction de monuments qui existent encore aujourd'hui, que les
assertions de Nicolas d'Otrante, se plaignant de la disparition des
reliquaires de la Passion qui, en réalité, ne
quittèrent le palais du Bucoléon que pour passer,
trente ans plus tard, dans le trésor de la Sainte-Chapelle.
Mais, tout en faisant la part des exagérations des vaincus,
il est impossible de nier qu'à la suite du dernier assaut
donné à Byzance par les Latins, et malgré
l'accueil si humble qu'ils reçurent des Grecs, et surtout du
clergé, des scènes horribles de meurtre et de pillage
se succédèrent dans la malheureuse ville. Seulement,
il faut distinguer deux périodes différentes dans
l'histoire de ces faits regrettables: la première, courte et
violente, dura du 14 au 16 avril 1204; c'est pendant ces trois jours
qu'eurent lieu les profanations dont les Grecs se plaignirent si
justement au pape dans un curieux mémoire qui nous a été
conservé, et dont trois lettres d'Innocent III sont l'écho
indigné. C'est à peine si la garde mise par les chefs
de l'armée dans les palais impériaux put préserver
les chapelles de ces palais de la rapacité des soldats; aucun
sanctuaire ne paraît avoir été épargné,
et Sainte-Sophie dut à ses trésors merveilleux et à
l'immense renom dont ils jouissaient de se voir le théâtre
d'excès plus odieux que partout ailleurs. Aux profanations
des églises vinrent s'ajouter celles des tombes impériales,
dont Nicétas ne craint pas d'accuser Thomas Morosini,
patriarche latin élu, mais qui durent être stériles,
Alexis III s'étant chargé, sept ans plus tôt, de
les dépouiller de tous les joyaux qu'elles contenaient.
Dans
les premiers moments, la rage des conquérants paraît
avoir été extrême. «Quant li Latin, dit
Ernoul, orent prise Constantinoble, il avoient l'escu Damedieu
enbracé, et, tantost come il furent dedens, il le geterent
jus, et enbracerent l'escu au diable; il corurent sus a sainte
Iglise premierement, et briserent les abbaïes et les roberent.»
Les châsses des saints, dont beaucoup étaient en cuivre
émaillé, et par conséquent sans valeur pour les
pillards, furent brisées. On arrachait les pierreries et les
camées qui en faisaient l'ornement, et l'on en jetait au loin
les reliques. Un nombre infini de ces reliures de métal si
somptueuses qui recouvraient les livres de chœur eurent un
sort pareil; les images des saints furent foulées aux pieds
ou lancées à la mer. Au bout de quelques jours, les
Latins paraissent avoir eu honte de ces scandales et même
redouté la colère divine. Le conseil des chefs se
réunit, et l'on prit des mesures sévères pour
arrêter tous ces excès. Les évêques de
l'armée fulminèrent l'excommunication contre tous ceux
qui se rendraient coupables de nouveaux sacrilèges, et aussi
contre ceux qui ne viendraient pas mettre, en des lieux désignés
à cet effet, le butin déjà recueilli. Quelques
jours plus tard, d'ailleurs, l'élection et le couronnement de
Baudouin Ier (16 mai) vinrent substituer un pouvoir régulier
à l'anarchie; les différents corps de l'armée
furent cantonnés dans les divers quartiers de la ville, et un
ordre au moins apparent vint succéder aux scènes de
violence des premiers jours. Mais là commence, surtout en ce
qui concerne les trésors des églises et des reliques,
la seconde période du pillage, celle de la spoliation
régulière et méthodique; cette période
paraît avoir duré plusieurs mois, plusieurs années,
je dirai même presque autant que l'empire latin d'Orient.
Il
n'est pas impossible d'entrer dans quelques détails sur la
nature des objets sacrés plus particulièrement
recherchés par les Latins; il semble que ces objets peuvent
se diviser en deux classes: les reliques et les ornements
ecclésiastiques; mais, pour les uns comme pour les autres,
les croisés ne paraissent point avoir agi à
l'aventure.
Parmi
les reliques, ce sont les fragments du bois de la Vraie Croix,
depuis longtemps objet d'une vénération spéciale
en France, qui semblent avoir excité le plus vivement leur
convoitise. Constantinople avait sur ce point de quoi les
satisfaire; sans parler des reliques insignes, des τἱμια
Ξὑλα, grand était le nombre de ces
phylactères, de ces encolpia, destinés à être
portés au cou, et dont l'usage, parmi les familles riches,
était déjà général du temps de
saint Jean Chrysostome; tous contenaient, avec d'autres reliques,
une parcelle plus ou moins importante du bois de la Vraie Croix. Les
palais des familles princières, les couvents, renfermaient
d'autres croix plus grandes; les «couronnes de lumière»
des églises en portaient souvent de suspendues au-dessus des
autels. Au retour des croisés, les sanctuaires de l'Europe en
reçurent un grand nombre, presque toujours gratifiées,
soit par ceux qui les rapportaient, soit par ceux qui les recevaient
en dépôt, de quelque origine plus ambitieuse
qu'authentique. Presque toutes étaient censées avoir
appartenu à Constantin, à sainte Hélène
ou tout au moins à Manuel Comnène.
Après
la Vraie Croix, c'étaient les reliques de l'Enfance et de la
Passion du Christ, celles de la Vierge, des Apôtres, de saint
Jean le Précurseur, du protomartyr saint Étienne, de
saint Laurent, de saint Georges et de saint Nicolas que les Latins
recherchaient avec le plus d'avidité. Une idée dont
ils paraissent aussi avoir été pénétrés
et qui leur avait été sans doute suggérée
dès avant leur départ, c'est l'intérêt
que pouvaient avoir certaines grandes églises de l'Europe à
posséder des reliques considérables et authentiques
des saints orientaux sous le vocable desquels elles avaient été
dédiées; c'est ainsi que les cathédrales de
Châlons-sur-Marne et de Langres, qui reçurent chacune,
pendant le temps des croisades, trois envois successifs des restes
de saint Étienne et de saint Mammès, leurs patrons
respectifs, furent redevables à la prise de Constantinople
des plus considérables de ces envois.
Quant
aux objets destinés au service du culte et à
l'ornementation des églises, il suffit de parcourir les
listes des présents adressés à cette époque
de Constantinople en Occident pour être étonné
de la quantité considérable de vases sacrés en
or et en argent, d'encensoirs, de croix processionnelles, de
parements d'autels et de vêtements ecclésiastiques,
même de tapis et de tissus neufs d'or, d'argent et de soie,
qui prirent le chemin de l'Italie, de la France et de l'Allemagne.
Les dyptiques, les tables d'ivoire qui devaient servir à
enrichir les couvertures des manuscrits de l'Occident, figurent
aussi en grand nombre parmi les objets recueillis par les croisés.
Enfin, ce ne dut pas être sans penser de loin à
l'ornementation des châsses encore barbares de leurs saints
que les clercs de l'armée latine firent si ample provision de
ces anneaux, de ces pierres antiques, dont ils remplirent, à
leur retour, les trésors de leurs cathédrales, et que,
sans le vouloir, ils ont ainsi sauvés d'une destruction
presque certaine.
Que
devint tout ce butin religieux? Une partie considérable dut
en être détournée, ainsi que nous le verrons
plus loin; mais le reste, à la suite des mesures prises, vers
Pâques, par les chefs de l'armée, fut-il, avec les
autres dépouilles de la ville, rapporté aux lieux
désignés à cet effet—trois églises,
suivant Villehardouin, un monastère, selon Clari—et mis
en commun sous la garde de dix chevaliers et de dix Vénitiens?
Il n'y a guère lieu d'en douter en ce qui concerne les
ornements d'église et les vases sacrés. Pour les
reliques, il est certain qu'un grand nombre fut rapporté,
mais il y a lieu de penser qu'elles furent dès l'origine
séparées du reste du butin, car on voit qu'à
l'exemple des croisés de 1097, ceux de 1204 confièrent
au doyen des évêques, à Garnier de Trainel,
évêque de Troyes, la charge qu'avait remplie à
Jérusalem Arnould de Rohas, celle de procurator sanctarum
reliquiarum, et que ce fut dans la maison habitée par Garnier
que tous ces objets sacrés trouvèrent un asile.
Un
premier partage du butin fut fait entre le 22 avril et le 9 mai. Il
est à croire que les Vénitiens se remboursèrent
de leur double créance contre les croisés et contre
les Comnènes, et qu'une fois les sommes prélevées,
il fut fait, comme le dit Sanudo, deux parts égales, l'une
pour les Latins et l'autre pour Venise, parts dont un quart
retourna, après le couronnement de Baudouin Ier, au trésor
impérial: suivant Villehardouin, les trois huitièmes
des croisés montèrent à la somme de 400.000
marcs (20.800.000 francs). Mais le maréchal de Champagne ne
parle pas d'un second partage raconté en détail par
Robert de Clari. Suivant Robert, ces deux premières
répartitions n'auraient porté que sur le gros argent,
la monnaie et la vaisselle massive; quant aux joyaux, aux tissus
d'or et de soie, ils auraient été, vers le mois
d'août, furtivement enlevés par les chevaliers restés
dans la ville pendant la campagne de Baudouin Ier contre Boniface de
Monferrat, et divisés entre ces traîtres pour lesquels
Clari ne trouve pas d'injures assez fortes. C'est donc entre les
mains de ces chevaliers félons, et probablement sur l'ordre
et au profit du doge, qui commandait dans la ville en l'absence de
l'empereur, que tombèrent tous les trésors enlevés
aux églises, et rien ne nous indique de quelle manière
Vénitiens et Francs se les partagèrent entre eux.
Quant
aux reliques, il semble bien que les évêques latins,
l'empereur et les Vénitiens en aient eu chacun une part. —
Garnier de Trainel, qui disposa pendant près d'une année
des reliques mises en commun, en envoya de très précieuses
à Troyes par Jean L'Anglois, son chapelain; c'est de lui que
l'archevêque de Sens reçut le chef de saint Victor.
Nivelon de Cherisy, évêque de Soissons, enrichit de
reliques Soissons, la célèbre abbaye de Notre-Dame, et
un grand nombre de sanctuaires des contrées voisines. Conrad
de Halberstadt ne paraît pas avoir été moins
bien partagé que Nivelon, si l'on en juge par la valeur des
objets rapportés par lui, dont la plupart existent encore
aujourd'hui au trésor de la cathédrale d'Halberstadt.
— Le premier empereur latin de Constantinople adressa de son
côté en Europe quantité d'objets précieux,
et Baudouin Ier obéit en cela aux conseils d'une politique
éclairée. Devenu le chef d'un État aussi mal
affermi, il avait besoin d'autres sympathies et d'autres alliances
que celles dont avait pu se contenter le comte de Flandre, et devait
oublier le temps où, soutien de Philippe de Souabe et vassal
turbulent du roi de France, il avait eu à se plaindre des
deux personnages les plus influents de l'époque, Innocent III
et Philippe Auguste; aussi est-ce précisément à
eux les premiers qu'il notifie son avènement, joignant aux
lettres qu'il leur adresse des présents considérables.
Barozzi, maître du Temple en Lombardie, est chargé par
lui de porter au pape un véritable trésor, dans lequel
figure une statue d'or et une d'argent avec un rubis acheté
1000 marcs, et de nombreuses croix. Philippe Auguste reçoit,
outre des reliques de son patron et une croix admirable, deux
vêtements impériaux et un rubis d'une grosseur
extraordinaire. Après la défaite d'Andrinople, le
successeur de Baudoin Ier, Henri Ier, continua les envois commencés
par son père, dans l'espoir que ces libéralités
lui concilieraient les sympathies de l'Occident. Les princes laïques
ou ecclésiastiques qui avaient pris la croix, mais qui ne
s'étaient pas encore acquittés de leur vœu,
furent naturellement l'objet des premières libéralités
de l'empereur. C'est ainsi que le duc d'Autriche reçut un
fragment de la vraie croix. La Belgique et le Nord de la France,
d'où il avait lieu d'espérer les secours les plus
efficaces, reçurent de nombreuses marques de sa munificence:
Clairvaux, où se trouvaient les tombes de sa maison, Namur,
où régnait son frère, Bruges, Courtrai,
Liessies conservèrent longtemps ou conservent encore les
richesses qu'il leur envoya. Après Henri Ier, il faut
descendre jusqu'aux années lamentables de Baudouin II pour
voir reparaître en Occident de nouvelles reliques byzantines;
malheureusement, alors, il ne s'agit plus de dons gracieux, mais de
vulgaires engagements. Après avoir vendu, pour soutenir son
armée, jusqu'au plomb des toits de son palais, l'empereur se
voit réduit à abandonner en nantissement aux Vénitiens
les joyaux religieux de la couronne impériale. C'est en 1239
que saint Louis rachète le plus précieux de tous, la
Couronne d'épines; puis, en 1241, la Grande Croix, la Lance
et l'Éponge, jusqu'à ce que, en 1247, Baudouin II
vienne solennellement confirmer le transfert, dans la
Sainte-Chapelle de Paris, des grandes reliques impériales du
Bucoléon. —Quant aux Vénitiens, familiers de
longue date avec le martyrologe byzantin, ils n'éprouvaient
pas, comme les Latins, de difficulté à déchiffrer
les inscriptions des reliquaires, et leur choix dut être
promptement et bien fait. On voit par les récits des pèlerins
qui, dans les siècles postérieurs, s'embarquèrent
à Venise pour se rendre en Palestine, que cette cité
était devenue, depuis 1204, comme une ville sainte, tant
était grand le nombre des objets sacrés qu'elle
offrait à la vénération des fidèles. Ce
que, d'ailleurs, même après l'incendie du trésor
de Saint-Marc en 1231, la basilique ducale contient encore de
reliques de premier ordre et de spécimens sans prix de
l'orfèvrerie byzantine peut donner une idée de ce que
ce sanctuaire reçut de Constantinople après la
quatrième croisade.
Mais
en dehors du butin mis en commun, qui fut l'objet d'un partage
régulier, le récit du pillage a déjà
montré qu'il y eut un immense butin détourné
par les vainqueurs indisciplinés. Hugues de Saint-Paul fit
bien pendre, l'écu au col, des chevaliers coupables de
n'avoir pas rapporté leur butin particulier à la masse
commune; mais en fait de reliques, on croyait faire une bonne œuvre
en volant les Grecs. Martin de Pairis se laissait traiter par son
biographe de prædo sanctus; il dut donc y avoir sur ce point
une certaine tolérance, qui d'ailleurs devint légale
le 22 avril 1205, terme assigné à l'obligation du
rapport des objets trouvés. Or, quelques semaines plus tard
(juin), abordaient de toutes parts, de Syrie aussi bien que des
divers pays de l'Occident, une foule de gens qu'avait attirés
la nouvelle inattendue de la prise de Constantinople, et qui
venaient demander leur part des dépouilles de la ville
impériale. Deux ans après (sept. 1207) est signalée
l'arrivée des renforts amenés jusqu'à Bari par
Nivelon de Cherisy; ce furent de nouvelles convoitises à
satisfaire; enfin, pendant tout le règne de Henri, il paraît
y avoir eu entre l'Occident et Constantinople un mouvement non
interrompu de gens d'armes qui venaient chercher aventure en Romanie
et ne s'en retournaient jamais les mains vides. Nous voyons ainsi
Dalmase de Sercey et Ponce de Bussière passer un hiver entier
à combiner le vol du chef de saint Clément. Comment
d'ailleurs expliquer autrement que par des soustractions
frauduleuses le fait que de petits chevaliers portant à peine
bannière, comme Henri d'Ulmen, aient pu obtenir des trésors
tels (à parler seulement de leur valeur intrinsèque)
que ceux dont ce seigneur des environs de Trèves a enrichi
toute la Basse-Lorraine?
D'après
M. le comte RIANT, Des dépouilles religieuses enlevées
à Constantinople au XIIIe siècle, dans les Mémoires
de la Société des antiquaires de France, 4e série,
t. VI (1875).
See
https://gutenberg.polytechnic.edu.na/3/9/4/2/39429/39429-h/39429-h.htm#page_030
DESCRIPTION OF THE
TURKISH EMPIRE
ACCORDING TO ITS
PRESENT STATE AND RELIGION IN THE LAST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY, WITH MAPS AND PLATES, BY CHRISTOPH: WILH: LUDEKE,
Teacher of Theology,
first Preacher of the German Congregation, Chairman of the
Consistory in Stockholm, and Supervisor of the schools;
according to the High
German second edition translated under the motto:
ALTISSIMO ANNUENTE
VIRIBUS MEIS.
FIRST PART.
In LEYDEN, By A. and
J. HONKOOP, Booksellers
M D C C L X X X I I.
PREVIOUS NOTE TO THE
READERS.
In the year 1770 I
have made my credible reports of the Turkish Empire common through
the press. The ecclesiastical duties which I had to attend to in the
Levant from the year 1759 to 1768 demanded of me, in a certain
respect, a visible account; and the war which afterwards broke out
between the Russian and Turkish Empires did not render these
published reports concerning the latter Empire superfluous. By so
many books, either contradictory, or out-of-date, or in all
countries not very well known, which otherwise treat of Turkey, I
judged it my duty, not to relate any, of which I, as my own
eye-witness, had the most certain and perfect knowledge: especially
since, besides several journeys made in Turkey, and a long stay at
Constantinople and Smyrna, I had attended the Audiences of the
Sultan, Grand Vizier, Captain Pasha, and the Mullas, as well as paid
visits myself to the Eastern Patriarchs and Bishops. I must confess,
that such reports, far above my expectation, have been received; and
the judgments of so many learned Men in the Newspapers of Leipzig,
Jena, Gottingen, Helmstad, Halle, Berlin, etc., were, in every
respect, favourable concerning them. Since I promised besides that,
to improve such a work, when I received any remarkable additions of
importance, and to communicate them in an enlarged edition; so I
have now wanted to fulfill this promise, by the present issue of the
description of the Turkish Empire according to its political and
religious constitution. I have, beforehand, given this description
into the hands of those who had also stayed many years in the
Levant, partly in Constantinople, partly in Smyrna. They have tested
it, and compared it with the matters recorded therein, as if on the
spot; and thus the work has come into being in the form in which it
is at present, and is offered. I deemed the enclosed maps and plates
necessary, in order to understand it still better, at various
places. The first is the Archipelago, with a special representation
of the Channel between the Dardanelles, as it was directly followed
from a very accurate sea chart, which, by express order of the King
of France for the mariners of the Levant, was cut by Mr. Berthelot
at Marseilles. The second provides a View of Constantinople, to form
in general a peculiar idea of the excellence of the
layout of that city. It is borrowed from the general History, the
ground of the Seraglio alone, for the greater accuracy, being
covered with many Cypresses. Then follows the Plan of Constantinople
itself, which was made from the plate of the famous Imperial
Engineer van Reben, as it came to light by Homann in the year 1764,
only that which does not belong to Constantinople itself being
omitted. The further Tables or Lists, concerning the various Sects
among the Mohammedans and their Monastic Orders, I have made from my
own reports, and subsequently also by comparing Herbelot with Ricaut
and Businello; furthermore I have sent them to Turkey, and had them
examined there. An Efendy has tested them, approved them, and after
a few, but no remarkable changes, even declared them more complete
than they were hardly known among many Mohammedans there. Finally,
after the completion of this task set to me in the first and a part
of the second part, I will still leave in this last Historical
reports of the government, customs and habits of the Ottoman
Monarchy, as they were written down by the late Mr. Pet. Businello.
Who these were, and what I have observed concerning this his essay
in particular, my short Preface to it will show there. This I will
only mention here, that the Author, in his Life, gave me complete
freedom, to be allowed to publish it in our language. And, because I
found it excellent in its kind, in every way suitable either for the
elucidation, or to prove my presented matters, I have, about that,
wanted to make use of it, and, as I trust, just where it might
apply, given it a place. For the rest, let this my work be provided
for your use, as well as for your pleasure and amusement.
Stockholm,
April 24, 1778. The
Author.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST
PART.
FIRST PART,
containing a general INTRODUCTION.
Page
§. I. Concise
Geographical knowledge of the Turkish Empire. 1
II. Historical
knowledge of the Turkish Empire. 45
III. Various peoples
in the Turkish Empire. 55
IV. Physical
observations on Turkey, especially the region of Smyrna. 74
§. V. Of the
cities in general, which are treated of in the Revelation of John,
Chapters II and III, and of Smyrna in particular. 112
VI. Of
Constantinople. 121
VII. Of the Europeans
in Turkey. 160
VIII. Of the
Audiences of the European Ambassadors and Consuls to the Turks. 167
SECTION TWO. The
condition of the Christian religion in Turkey.
§. IX. Of the
religious freedom of Christians in Turkey in general. 184
X. Of the condition
of Christians in the Turkish Empire. 195
XI. The ignorance and
uncivilization of various Christian denominations. 201
XII. The admirable
preservation of the Christian religion in Turkey. 206
THIRD PART. Of the
GREEKS.
§. XIII. Of the
Greek Church, and its condition. 209
XIV. The distinction
of the Greek Church from other Christians. 220
XV. Religious customs
of the Greeks. 234
XVI. Of the Holy
places, and the worship of the Greeks. 248
XVII. Character and
domestic disposition of the Greeks, as well as other things
pertaining thereto. 256
FOURTH SECTION. Of
the ARMENIANS.
XVIII. Of the
Armenian Church and its disposition. 278
XIX. The beliefs of
the Armenians, and their distinction from other Christians. 284
XX. Religious customs
and ecclesiastical circumstances of the Armenians. 292
§. XXI. National
Character of the Armenians, and other things pertaining thereto. 299
FIFTH SECTION. Of
other Christian denominations in Turkey.
§. XXII. Of the
Roman Church. 304
XXIII. Of the
Monophyte and Nestorian Church. 308
XXIV. Of the Western
Christian denominations that arose after the Reformation. 31O
SIXTH DIVISION. Of
the Turks.
$. XXV. Of Muhammad.
313
XXVI. Of the Koran.
323
XXVII. Of the various
Sects among the Mohammedans. 344
XXVIII. Principal
contents of the Mohammedan Religion. 347
XXIX. Religious
customs of the Mohammedans. 356
§. XXX. The Holy
Places of the Mohammedans. 375
XXXI. Their religious
persons. 388
XXXII. Of the
difficulty of converting the Mohammedans, and of the apostasy to
them. 397
XXXIII. Of the
Turkish Emperor. 403
XXXIV. The Emperor's
procession. 418
XXXV. Of the Turkish
Court. 420
XXXVI. Of the Turkish
State Employees. 438
XXXVII. Of the Civil
Condition of the Turkish Empire in Itself. 457
XXXVIII. Of the
Political Condition of the Turkish Empire, with Relation to Other
Countries. 473
XXXIX. Of the
Military State of the Turks. 485
XL. Of the
Scholarship of the Turks. 507
XLI. Of the Civil
Condition and Other Things Pertaining Thereto. 520
§. XLII. Of the
Domestic Condition of the Turks. 530
XLIII. National
Character of the Turks, and Other Things Pertaining Thereto. 553
XLIV. Internal
Condition of the Turkish Empire. 563
§. II. The
Historical Knowledge of the Turkish Empire.
Nothing is more
difficult than to trace the genealogical registers of the Courts and
Families of such remote times. The ancients did not think of making
genealogical tables for such things; and the Person of Jesus Christ
alone has the privilege of having a genealogical list in the sacred
pages, with regard to the great importance of his descent. It should
not surprise us that the origin of the Ottoman House is subject to
so many difficulties and variations. - The Turkish Historians, to
whom one may naturally rely more than upon foreigners, testify
unanimously, that among the Scythians, who, after the time of
Genghiskans, advanced from great Tartary to little Asia, and were
divided into many tribes, one tribe, namely the Ogusians,
particularly excelled. Of these, a certain Dusalpes, called by the
Turks Kya Aleb, was born, and because of his excellent qualities was
elected Chief. His son and successor, Ogusalpes, is the same, whom
the Turks call Soliman Schach. His son, Ertogrul, was, on account of
his deeds, also famous, and bred Osman. Just as the former, was
accepted by a certain Sultan Aladin at Icony, first as General, and
afterwards as Co-regent; thus, after his death, the latter came to
the same Honour, and, when Aladdin was deceased, even became the
only Sultan. And, when the Great with the Army, about the year 1300,
acknowledged him as a Sovereign, and he exercised the rights of
Majesty; then he gave his subjects, instead of the name Ogusians or
Turks, as they had hitherto borne, that of Osman, and became the
progenitor of the present Imperial Line. — According to the
thoughts of the Turks, two principal lines have sprung from the
Ogusian tribe. The first is the Osman, (Ali-Osman, that is,
descendants of Osman,) which rules the Turkish Empire; the second is
the Dschengiskansche, (Ali-Genghizkane, that is, descendants of
Dschengiskan,) who reigns in small Tartary. The latter has, after
the extinction of the male line of the first Line, (for the female
is not considered,) the certain expectation and right of the Turkish
Throne. The name of the grandnephew of the last, who seized small
Tartary, was Dscherai, (Gerai) after whom the successors put the
Title by their name: for example Kaplan or Ibrahim Dscherai, just as
the Roman Emperors by theirs, Augustus.
To deal more
definitely with the Ottoman Line; Osman, besides the possession of
the Iconian Empire, took from the Greeks much in Asia Minor, among
others also the old Prustum, in which his son and successor, Orchan,
who had conquered it, established his seat in the year 1326. From
him come most of the customs and laws in the Turkish Empire. He made
a better arrangement concerning the soldiers; crossed the channel at
the Dardanelles, and thus came to Europe, where he took Gallipoli,
extended the Mohammedan religion everywhere, by cunning and
violence, and first of all erected mosques and dschamis, and lastly
schools and hospitals. His son, Amurat I, came to the throne in
1360; took, among several cities, Adrianople and Philippopolis;
conquered Serbia, invaded Macedonia and Albania, and founded the
Janistas. His Son, Bajazet I, in 1390, performed many heroic deeds,
and prescribed conditions to the Greek Emperor at Constantinople,
which he wanted, among other things, to build a Dschami (Temple)
there, and to establish a Mechkeme (Town House); but was defeated by
the so famous Tamerlan, and taken prisoner. Bajazet's Sons, Soliman
and Musa, governed the Empire in unrest and division; the Turks
regard this time as an intermediate Empire. And it is a special
arrangement of God, that the Greeks, at that time, made no end of
the Turkish Empire. The third brother, Mahomet I, finally, in the
year 1413, seized the whole Empire, and, besides many great deeds,
he made Wallachia culpable. His son, Amurat II, who came to the
government in 1422, was uncommonly successful against his enemies in
Asia, Hungary, Greece, and Albania, and twice resigned the
government, although circumstances pressed him to resume it. His
son, Mahomet II, in 1451, was the most successful and powerful of
all Turkish emperors, who in the year 1453 conquered the city of
Constantinople, and all the possessions of the Greek empire,
likewise Bosnia, Negroponte, the Archipelago, the Trapezium empire,
little Tartary, etc. In the possession of the latter he placed the
Line of Dschevay, which still reigns at the present time. His Son,
Bajazet II, after he had previously made the Pilgrimage to Mecca,
ascended the Throne in the year 1481. He was in Moldavia, and
against the Circuses uncommonly successful, and subdued the rest of
Bosnia and Croatia. His mutinous Brother, at his instigation, was
put to death by a Renegade at Naples; although he was, in a certain
respect, at last compelled to leave the Throne to his Son Selim. He,
the first of that name, ascended it in the year 1512. Two of his
brothers, Achmet and Corkud, were strangled. He humbled the
Persians, subdued Diarbekir, and transformed Syria, Palestine, and
Egypt into Turkish Provinces. When he was at Cairo, the Sherif of
Mecca delivered to him the keys of his city. After his secret death,
his Son, Soliman I, was brought from Asia, and in the year 1520,
proclaimed Emperor. He took Belgrade; conquered the island of
Rhodes, Hungary, and Opeu, besieged Vienna; Moldavia became culpable
to him; gained great advantages over the Persians, and subdued
Gurgistan. In Naples he suffered himself to be plundered, and
conquered a part of Arabia. He made an alliance with France, and
gave the King, because of a misunderstanding, as if a certain French
Lady, who came to the Seraglio, a daughter of a King of France, the
title Padischach, (great Prince,) and the French Ambassadors and
Consuls the rank above the other Christians. As formidable as he
made himself on land, so formidable was he also at sea. His death
was kept secret until his Son arrived. Selim II, (that was his
name,) began the reign in the year 1566, and followed, but not with
the same success, the conquests of his father. He clipped the wings
of the mutinous Arabs, conquered the island of Cyprus, and assisted
the Moors against the Spaniards, but lost the famous naval battle of
Lepanto. His son, Amurat III, reigned from 1575, and had the upper
hand in the long and bloody war with the Persians, but died at the
beginning of a war against Hungary. His son, Mahomet III, succeeded
him, after he had put nineteen brothers to death on his accession to
the throne in 1595, gaining considerable advantages. He was
succeeded by Achmet I, 1603, who was unfortunate in the war against
the Persians. His brother, Mustapha I, was indeed his successor in
1618; but was also deposed in the same year, and in his place,
Achmet's Son, Osman II, declared Emperor; but, after a successful
war with Poland, 1622, was deprived of Life by the Janistas, and
Mustapha again raised to the Throne, but, shortly afterwards, in a
mocking manner, dethroned, and Amurat IV, a Son, of Achmet, 1622,
placed thereon. He weakened the Persians exceedingly, even depriving
them of Bagdad. Of all Emperors he is marked in History for his
drunkenness, and was cruel and bloodthirsty. His brother, Ibrahim I,
reigned from 1639, beginning his reign by taking Asof. He did not
end the war with the Venetians for the island of Kandi. This was
preserved for his son, Mahomet IV, who from 1649 ruled the empire,
which the Cossacks subjected of their own accord, and who, by taking
Kaminiek, humiliated the Poles as much as he pleased. But from 1673
onwards his military fortunes were against him, just as, from that
time on, the Turkish empire has steadily and more diminished. For
the Poles broke the peace, and negotiated a better one; with the
Russians it did not go well either, and the siege of Vienna failed
so much that half of Hungary, as well as Oseu, was lost; and the
Venetians obtained no less advantages over him. All this resulted in
his formal deposition, and his brother, Soliman II, was appointed in
the year 1688. This had, at first, much to do with the Rebels, and
was, in his war against the Germans, so long unhappy, that he made
Kuprogli Grand Vizier, under whom even Belgrade, conquered by them,
was taken again. But the Venetians remained Master at sea and in
Morea. That Grand Vizier was the cause, that the Brother, Achmet II,
1691, came to the government, who likewise waged war with the
Austrian House and the Venetians, so, that through the hindrance of
France, peace was not concluded, although the Turks spun little side
in that war. Mustapha II, a son of Mahomet IV, followed him from the
beginning of his advent to the throne, that is, from the year 1695.
The Russians and Venetians did no small things against the Turks;
but the most important was done by Prince Eugenius with the German
army at the Theisse, where the Sultan with a part of his soldiers, a
few cannons and baggage, barely reached the other side of that
river, but when he had to see that the remainder, consisting of the
select troops and Janistaries, after they had risen up against the
Grand Vizier and the Pasha, whom they considered traitors, and had
killed them all, was cut to pieces by the Emperors. This caused such
a fright, that in the year 1699, the Karlowitz peace followed with
the German Emperor, Russia, Poland and Venice. Because he hereupon
resigned himself from the government, and gave himself up to his
pleasures, a general murmur arose against him, which, after the
beheading of the Grand Vizier, broke out in such a revolt, that the
Emperor himself, in order to prevent a violent deposition, and even
an assassination, greeted his brother, Achmet III, desired by the
mutinous, as Emperor, in 1703, and the government was overthrown. He
gradually had the rebels put to death, and had, because of Charles
XII, King of Sweden, a double war with the Russians, in which the
Turks were tolerably successful; as also the Venetians were deprived
of their previous advantages, and especially the remainder of Kandy,
as well as the whole of Morea; being, on the other hand, forced by
the Germans, after a heavy loss, to the peace of Passarowitz. The
disadvantages which he suffered in the war with the Persians made
him hated by the people, and in a riot which arose on account of it,
Mahmud, (*) the son of his brother Mustapha II, was put in his place
in the year 1730. As badly as the Persian war ended, so good luck
served him against the House of Austria, as Serbia and Belgrade were
taken from them. He governed with an unusual policy, but with very
great severity. Under him trade and commerce, and all the arts
flourished, so that his government was considered a golden age,
especially by the Europeans. Osman III, his Brother, and from the
year 1754 also his successor, enjoyed, in his reign, a time of
peace, and Mustapha III, a Son of Achmet III, who became Sultan in
the year 1757, also so long, until, in 1768, he got into a heavy and
fierce war with Russia, of which he did not live to see the end,
because, by death, he made way for his brother, Abdul Hamed, under
the name of Achmet IV, in 1774. In that same year, peace was
concluded, indeed to a great glory, and to the advantage of Russia,
but to an almost unbelievable disadvantage of the Turkish Empire.
(*) The European
historians call Mahmud, quite wrongly, Mahomed V. He never wrote
himself so, and is therefore the first of that name.
§. III. Of the
various peoples in the Turkish Empire.
Among the Christian
peoples in Turkey the Greeks are the most numerous, and of these
will be dealt with separately in the IIIrd Section.
Among such one may
conveniently reckon the Wallachians, Moldavians, as well as the
Bulgarians, who, although they have a different origin,
nevertheless, by reason of religion and continued intermingling,
have intercourse with them; however, they are more eager for war,
and on horseback most skilled in the handling of the sabre. Among
them belong the Mayonnais, descendants of the ancient Lacedemonians,
whom, as their ancestors, they also equal in everything. They have
received this name from the Greek word, μανια,
(rage), because they attack their enemies in a furious and mad
manner. They inhabit the southern part of Morea, especially its
mountainous regions from Cape Matapan to Cape St. Angelo. The
Sultans have never thought it worth the trouble to subdue them,
noting that to subdue them much blood would be shed in the
inaccessible mountains, and that the robbers of the neighbouring
places might soon nest there again. They are dangerous pirates in
the waters there. In their common and small vessels they spy at
night on the ships that are not on their guard, seize them on board,
murder the crew, plunder everything, and then sink the ships;
wherefore the Europeans, when they come so far, are very watchful,
and keep their big and small artillery loaded. Their priests also go
out on the plunder; for these robbers, in their unscrupulousness,
still want to hear masses and fast. They may amount to about 12 or
14,000 armed men. Even the Venetians could do nothing against them,
when they possessed the Morea.
The Copts are
descendants of the true Egyptians. Although the old sacred language
of Egypt, which is found on the Pyramids and other monuments, is no
longer understood; the old common Coptic, though generally with an
Arabic translation, is nevertheless still in their Missals and other
Church books. In them also they still observe their worship; but
read it exceedingly seldom: nay, most priests learn the liturgy by
heart, and only mumble it. The public religion is modelled on the
Greek. Their Patriarch is chosen from the unmarried monks; has his
See at New Cairo, supplying not only Egypt, but also Abyssinia, with
Bishops and Priests; for the religion of the Abyssinians is the same
as that of the Copts. The Coptic books are only manuscripts. The
Egyptian Mohammedans employ the Copts as accountants and stewards;
wherefore, in a certain respect, they cannot do without them. By
this means the Christian religion is still maintained. Otherwise
they are lazy and idle people, like all Egyptians. In their worship
they are, except their feasts and fasts, very careless and lukewarm.
They spend the nights before the Sundays and feasts in church,
listening to their long liturgy, without understanding it, but those
days themselves in idleness. They are Monophysites, and come quite
close to the Armenians, but otherwise, they have most customs in
common with the Greeks. Their ignorance is of such a great extent,
and very seldom is the people given instruction in a sermon. They
content themselves with reading the History of the Saints, and the
parts of the Bible in the Coptic and Arabic languages, on the holy
days.
The Armenians will be
spoken of in the fourth section. The Maronites come very close to
them in stature and manners. These, although they acknowledge the
Pope as their Supreme Head, nevertheless retain their particular
feelings and religious customs, for instance, to perform the worship
in their mother tongue, namely the Arabic, and to distribute the
Lord's Supper under both so-called forms. They live among the
Druses, and possess many monasteries on Mount Lebanon. Their clergy
are famous for a regular way of life and a very stately conduct.
Their Patriarch, who wants to present himself as a successor of
Peter, as the first Bishop of Antioch, has his seat at Kannobin, a
monastery on the aforementioned mountain. He is elected by the
Maronite Bishops and Archbishops, but confirmed for the present by
the Pope. In another monastery, Deir Hannah Schwoyer, they have a
printing house. At what places the Europeans have factories for
trade, will be indicated in §. VII.
Among the unbelieving
peoples in Turkey, mention must first be made of the Turks, as the
ruling nation of this country. But here only their origin and name
will be considered. They have not their name from the Land of
Turkistan, whereas the Turkmen come from there, who are mistakenly
mixed up with the Turks by many writers; but descended from the
Ogusian Tartars, and adopted, already in the 10th century, the
Mohammedan religion. That name has been in use long before Osman,
signifying in general Scythian hordes from great Tartary, who
followed Gengitzkhan, and spread everywhere in Persia and Asia
Minor. But they received the name Turks from the Persians, because
of their white face and black eyes and eyebrows; whereupon it came,
that, when Soliman, the grandfather of Osman, wanted to follow in
the footsteps of Gengitzkhan, and penetrated with his strong army to
Aleppo, but the rumour of these new warriors reached Persia, the
poets compared the ugliness of the Scythians with their countrymen,
and did not call them mocking Turks, that is, handsome ones, so that
the first honourable origin now became a name of abuse. When after
that invasion of Genghis Khan many of the Commanders of the
Provinces of the far-extended Persian Empire became rebellious;
among them was also a certain Aladdin, Sultan of Iconia: but he was
overcome by the Scythians, and had to take flight to the Greek
Emperor at Constantinople. His Son, Melekschach, first came into
possession of his native country, disarmed the Scythians, mixed them
with the country people, accustomed them to agriculture, and called
them Turks, yes, instead of a Sultan of Iconia, he assumed the Title
of a Sultan of the Turks. The above-mentioned Soliman lost his Life
in the Euphrates, and his Son, Ertogrul, was appointed General by
that Aladdin, and at the death of the latter his Son, Osman, came in
his place. Aladdin being subsequently deceased, Osman was
unanimously proclaimed Emperor. He changed the name of Turks into
Osmans; he himself called himself an Emperor of them, and the Turks,
to this day, will not tolerate the name of the Turkish Court, but
desire, expressly, the name of Osman Porte; and the people
themselves do not like to be called Turks, but Mussulmans, because
they attach to the word Turkish an idea of clumsiness,
but to the word Osman, that of graceful and handsome; and have
retained only the manner of speaking, the Turkish language. The
Arnauts, (among whom there are still some who have adopted the
Christian religion,) are the ancient Albanians of the western part
of Macedonia, and part of Epirus. They are by nature rough, warlike,
brave and indefatigable. They are robbers, and not on land what the
Mayots are at sea. After the death of Skanderbeg they were brought
under the Turkish yoke, and after Amurat II, by a violent
circumcision, nearly all forced to the Mohammedan religion. Many
thousands of them are always in the military, and are considered,
especially in the rifle, the best soldiers of the Turkish Empire.
Besides their mother tongue, which is a corrupt Slavonic, they also
use a bad Greek and Turkish dialect. The Arabians form one of those
nations which, as to the antiquity of their ancestors, have most
maintained themselves. They are a very extensive people. The Turks
even include the Moors of the barbarous coasts. Not to speak of
great empires in Arabia proper, of which they are the possessors and
inhabitants, very numerous hordes, of which we here properly speak,
are found in the states of the Great Lord, especially in Egypt and
Syria, Palestine also included. These are called Skenites, from the
tents under which they dwell, which are of an elongated shape, and
Beduins, which signifies inhabitants of the deserts. Their manner of
life, in all respects, still savours of the simplicity of the
Patriarchs, which they can retain all the more, as they do not enter
into any close alliance with other peoples, and even keep themselves
separate from the Turks. Their stature is medium, and their
countenance falls in the brown. They are, as a rule, of a lasting
health, and live under tents, which they change, generally,
according to the seasons, as well as the pastures for their cattle.
The Chiefs of the several Hordes bear the name of Emirs, which
denotes Lords or Princes, and which must be distinguished from those
Emirs, who, as descendants of Muhammed, will be spoken of
subsequently, although they pretend to be descended from him; but
the lesser commanders are called Scheiks, which expresses old and
aged persons. Of arts, except those which serve them to provide a
livelihood, and of sciences they know little, and seldom can any one
of them read or write. They seldom use our firearm, but hold the
sabre with bows and arrows more suitable for the people. Cattle
breeding is their main occupation. The covering of women, and the
jealousy of men, is, among these Arabs, perhaps even greater, than
among the Turks; although the unjustly so called Arab women, who are
actually African, go naked, and, for their ugliness, also can go. -
They are indeed subjects of the Sultan, but are uncommonly spared,
even drunk, only to keep them in dependence on the Porte, from which
they could easily escape, if they were of one mind among themselves.
Their religion is Mohammedan, but with great freedom, because they
know almost no external ceremonies. They have no Mosques, but
perform their worship in the tent, or under the open sky. They have
no Imams, (Priests), but the Chief of the fathers of the household,
and the wisest among them, occupy, by solemn prayers, their place.
Circumcision, Ramasan and Beiram they observe, and strive to live as
naturally honourable people. The plundering of travellers and
caravans is their handiwork, making an exception of their natural
decency, although they do not readily resort to murdering the
plundered. Whoever has once been recommended to their hospitality,
or has obtained it, finds in them true friends and protectors; and
the Christians living among them are much better treated than by the
Turks. Both races, like heathens or vagabonds, devote themselves to
fortune-telling.
The Druses are
inhabitants of the Anti-Lebanon, and special friends of the
Mohammedans, holding themselves, as they are under their obedience,
as such, and imitating everything, even if it is that they melt
Mohammed and his religion into their hearts, and express this, in
conversations with Christians, without any reservation. —
Their head is, after birth, pressed in length, and affords a fixed
distinguishing mark from other nations. They are, from an early age,
rudely and strictly brought up. Their various tribes obey various
Princes. They are courageous and warlike people, who are well
skilled in the handling of the harquebus and the sabre, and apply
themselves to robbery and plunder. Where they can, they provide
protectors for the Christians, just as they permit them to use bells
in their territory. They uniformly derive their origin from certain
Franks, under the leadership of a certain Count of Dreux, who, at
the time of the Crusades in the Holy Land, were abandoned by others,
and through lack of Teachers, had gradually lost the Christian
religion. — The jealousy of women goes, among them, even
further than among the Turks. Their articles of faith they keep as
secret, as the free masons their principal tenets. They go, when
they live among Christians, into their churches, just as among the
Mohammedans into their mosques. They have no proper priests,
although a kind of them they call wise men, who among the
Mohammedans neither eat nor drink, because they consider all the
possessions of the Turks to be plundered, and therefore sinful, and
unjustly obtained goods; but among the Christians, and especially
the Europeans, they eat and drink. Their supreme Prince has his
usual Seat in that part of Mount Lebanon which is called Kefrevan;
in their Books, which are more esteemed and destroyed by the Turks
than the forbidden Books by the Romanists, Muhammad is much
calumniated, and the indifference of Religion, the outward
assimilation to the prevailing Religious Party of a Country, and a
sort of transmigration of souls taught; wherefore they have no
public Worship for themselves, but observe that which is customary
in the Country where they dwell. It is certain, that they have
certain idolatrous, and extravagant Religious Customs in their
Houses and in Secret, though it is not exactly known what they
really consist in. The Mohammedans bear them a deadly hatred, as
they do them, in occasional disputes, in places where they may
venture, attack, and even kill.
The Turkmen, who have
their origin in Turkistan, and over whom, as far as they live in the
Turkish territory, the Porte sets a Chief, who is called
Turkman-Agafzi, are wandering Hordes of two hundred or more
Families, who, in a certain respect, form a middle sort between the
Arabs and Turks, but at the same time hate both, because of the
oppressions they have to endure from them: but this nation is not
strong, but loves its liberty exceedingly. It is a swift people, of
which the men occupy themselves with cattle breeding, especially
with horses, but the female sex with spinning, making coarse
blankets, etc. The oriental jealousy of women finds no place among
them; for they go and travel with a bare face. They stay in
uncultivated regions, live under round tents, erected like towers,
conducting a large trade in cattle. In the winter they move to
warmer regions, and in the spring they return to the previous ones.
In the meantime they move with their families, cattle and other
goods, often from one place to another. The men ride on horseback,
and are with lances and other weapons of their kind provided; but
the goods, children, and tender women are loaded on camels: the
others go on foot, doing various works with singing and shouting,
for example, winding wool, etc. Their cattle go, each according to
its kind, in divided heaps, under their conduct. They lead, in a
certain respect, the old patriarchal way of life, which, for the
rest, is very simple and moderate. They also have among them a kind
of patriarchal government, of which the chief collects the tribute
for the Sultan. The Pachas and Agas, in whose territory they stay,
or through which they pass, they must, for their freedom, give
reasonable presents. Although they are not open highway robbers, and
plunder by force; they are accustomed, however, to take with them
whatever they find on their way, and for this reason the inhabitants
of such regions are very much on their guard during their journeys.
They have little religion, except that they betray a certain
adherence to the Mohammedan language, but in a fairly free manner.
Napoli and Syria are their principal places of residence. They speak
corrupted Turkish, and also most closely resemble the Turks in their
customs. Amurath IV forced some of these Hordes to march to Europe,
near Mount Haemus, where they gradually changed their character. The
Kjurds, descendants of the Chaldeans, (for Kjurdistan is the old
Chaldea,) are of a hard and strong nature; generally wilder and more
cruel than the Arabs; but as to language, customs, and mode of life,
they are distinct from each other. They make many sorties into the
neighbouring countries, fleeing, when they meet with little
resistance, to their principal residence on the Amanian mountains.
Their corn-granaries are generally under the ground, and so artfully
covered, that it is difficult to find them.
The Jesiddes, as to
nation, are also Kurds. Formerly they were Sophys, that is, a
certain kind of Mohammedan fanatics, in the first century of
Mohammedanism; now they are neither Mohammedans, nor Christians, nor
Jews, nor Pagans. They inhabit the Caucasus mountain, and are strong
people, content with little, who, in spite of the Turks, drink wine,
and eat the flesh of pigs. They shun circumcision in the utmost, and
therefore do not mention Satan, because he is a creature of God, and
could indeed be received into grace again. The black garments, by
which they also swear, serve only for their kind of clergy, but the
white for the people. They have no proper buildings for worship; for
the beard they have a superstitious reverence; they can neither read
nor write, and therefore live in a far-reaching ignorance. They
worship God at the rising of the sun, but in their nature and way of
life they equal the evil Being, which they will not reject. Square
or oblong tents, made of black goats' hair, provide them with
dwellings, and they live together in hordes.
The Jews are, in a
numerous multitude, scattered throughout Turkey. The greater part of
those expelled from Spain and Portugal have fled thither, and they
also speak a corrupted Spanish language. Everywhere they enjoy, on
condition of paying a poll tax (Charatz), the freedom of religion,
although the erection and maintenance of their synagogues requires
great expense. They have their Rabbins or Chachams, and worldly
Primates. They do not apply themselves to learning. Their poll tax
is the same as that which Christians have to pay, but they are
treated much more severely by the Turks than they are. In matters of
commerce they are the brokers between the Europeans and the Turks.
By the indolence of the latter they have attracted a great trade to
themselves. They part with the Armenians, to carry out the affairs
of the Viziers, Pachas and other Grand Men. Then they are admitted
to their Secrets, and take care of their household, especially their
financial affairs. They are the Physicians and Interpreters of many
great Turks. Many of them are unusually rich, concealing this
outwardly, but living luxuriously and magnificently in their houses.
In addition, they are also the money-changers and money-grabbers,
and one will not easily find a toll where they are not employed.
They must wear a different dress from that of the Turks and the
Christians of the country, and the blue colour is prescribed for
them in their clothing and shoes. They cure themselves with crafts
and things, to which both of the aforementioned do not want or
cannot apply themselves; wherefore they are glaziers, stainers,
bookbinders, and especially sellers of old and new goods. The Jew
women wear, as an ornament, one or more strings of silver or gold
coins around their necks. These have access to the Turkish women in
their Harim, where they sell haberdashery, or are matchmakers in
courtships, and play fortune-tellers. The Jews are in demand by the
Turks, and for this reason they are accustomed to make use of their
dancing and conjuring. Otherwise they remain firmly and obstinately
with the
their religion and
old customs. The pilgrimage to Jerusalem is a matter of great
importance to them. Because their fanatical Rabbins inspire them
with the idea that at Safet, the principal, but otherwise in itself
a small place in Galilee, not far from Bethulie, the Messiah will
reveal his kingdom, and also many of their lawyers and supposed
saints are buried there; so many from the other provinces are wont
to go there, in order to die there, and to be buried; but which
freedom they must buy there, at great expense, from the Turks. In
this they nevertheless hold fast to the institutions of their
fathers, remaining thus, in fulfillment of Jesus' word, and in
confirmation of the truth of the Christian religion, that people,
which is captive among all peoples, and that generation, which shall
not perish, until all that Christ has said shall be fulfilled. Luke
XXl 32.
Often most of these
nations dwell together in one city, giving it, by its diverse
beings, statures and clothing, an enviable precedence over the
largest cities of Europe.
A multitude of
languages are spoken in the Turkish Empire. The
Turkish, as the dominant one, must be given the first place, with
which the Tartar has close ties. With the first one can, fairly,
come to terms with European Turkey and Asia Minor. The Arabic, but
in various dialects, extends further. By it one can help oneself
with all Scholars and Prominents, not to say, that it is spoken in
the vast Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and many other Countries. The Persian
is spoken in the Provinces bordering on Persia. Among all the Greeks
the Modern Greek is spoken, as is Armenian among the Armenians,
although they, often, understand only Turkish and Persian, or
Arabic. The Coptic can hardly be counted, because the Copts, mostly,
make use of Arabic. The Illyrian is spoken in Slavonia, Croatia and
Dalmatia. The Walachian, which closely resembles Latin, is in use in
Walachia and Moldavia. The Lingua Franca is understood and spoken by
almost all nations on the coasts of the Levant. This is a very
corrupted Italian, in which the nominative is taken for all cases,
and the infinitive for all tempora and modes of conjugation. The
Jews have, besides the prevailing language of the place, mixed their
peculiar Hebrew with the Spanish or Italian; for fear they say that
the latter, and also the French, is understood and spoken among the
principal merchants.
§. IV. Physical
observations on Turkey, especially the region of Smyrna.
The climate must
naturally vary greatly in such an extensive Empire; but in general
it may be assumed that the air is reasonably pleasant and healthy.
The winter consists, properly speaking, only of rainy months, when
after a rain, by a subsequent north wind, a sensible cold comes,
which, after the previously opened sweat-holes, goes through the
marrow and bone, but does not last long. The water seldom freezes,
and snow is even rarer. (*) Everyone then covers themselves with fur
coats, and warms themselves by a fire of coals, which stands in
large copper pans in the room; for stoves are not in use there at
all. Chimneys are seldom. Instead, they make use, especially by the
First Names [?], of the Tandur. This is a small, about 3 feet high
square table, which is provided with a bottom at the bottom, so that
one can put a fire of coals on it. It is covered with carpets, which
those who sit at it, and have their feet stretched out against the
bottom, are accustomed to draw up to their chest or neck. The rain
often lasts, with heavy showers, three or more days; but in Egypt it
is rare, and even rarer in high than in low Egypt. But it is also,
often, fine weather, and, especially in February, many flowers and
the almond trees are already in bloom. Everything then grows so
strongly, that one can see it. The fig tree does not bud until all
the cold is over. This is the allusion of Christ, Luke. XXI 29. 30.
Spring is exceedingly lovely, but does not last long. Summer comes,
usually, already in April, with a strong heat. Around Pentecost one
still sees everything green; but suddenly a south wind arises, and
within 24 hours, or at most 2 or 3 days, everything is white. By
that one will understand the place, Psalm CIII 15. 16. The days of
man are like grass, like a flower of the field, so he flourishes:
when the wind has passed over it, it is no more, and its place it
knows no more. Hereupon the Harvest begins. The corn cut with
sickles is brought together on the threshing floors in round heaps,
under the open sky. There it is threshed out, according to the
method also indicated in the Bible, by oxen as well as horses;
whereas they gradually flatten the round heaps of corn, and thereby
stamp out the corn, or else drag heavy wooden boards, 2 or 3 ells
long, worked high at the front, and at the bottom, very densely, set
with flints, round. Here the corn is thrown against the wind, so
that the pure corn, of course, flies away to a certain distance from
the shovel, but the chaff (*) is scattered. Many places in Holy
Scripture refer to this custom, e.g. Psalm I 4. and Matt. III 12.
Therefore, with such threshing, one does not get long straw, as
elsewhere in Europe: one does not need it either; for the houses,
which have proper roofs, are covered with tiles, but most of them
are provided with terraces. Notwithstanding that such threshing,
progresses easily, for a couple of months; yet it is not disturbed
by rain; for the summer is without rain, seeing then, in 3 or 4
months, not a cloud in the sky. And this must be considered, as a
special blessing, that, with the great heat in June, July and
August, it does not rain, because otherwise the corn on the
threshing floors, as well as the raisins and figs, would spoil, as
those which are dried under the open sky; and the silk-building
would then often fail. Observing this, one will be able, thereby, to
judge Samuel's act, Sam. XII 16-18. to raise up a sudden storm and
rain, at the time of the wheat harvest, at the surrender of the
kingdom to Saul, before the eyes of the people, upon his prayer to
the Lord, and learn to value it as a great and effective miracle. -
The dew is indeed very strong in the East, and therefore occurs very
often in the Bible; but is soon lifted up by the sun. For the rest
the air remains perfectly clear during the day and at night, and no
damp mist arises in it. In the period of 9 years such a one was once
noticed at Smyrna, but was considered a special rarity. Around June
all the grass on the plain withers, and the leaves only on the
trees, the gardens and regions that can be watered, as well as the
herbs and shrubs on the mountains remain green. - The heat in June,
July and August, (when, to quench thirst, and to cool drinks, much
snow and ice are used, which in winter is collected on the
mountains, and kept in ice-cellars,) is in fact extraordinary. Hence
a kind of vapours and exhalations are produced, which make the air
unbearably sultry, and darken the sun, although there is no humidity
accompanying it. The earth is greatly rent asunder; the rocks on the
mountains become hot, and a wind that blows over them, becomes as
burning. No one, except the common people, shows himself, in such a
season, from eight in the morning, till four in the afternoon, under
the open sky. The heat of the sun is not to be trifled with here. If
one otherwise went naked, the head must nevertheless be covered, so
as not to make a sudden end of life by the stinging sun, as by a
stroke. - Autumn is a very pleasant, and unusually moderate time,
extending until the new year. Then also the thunderstorms begin to
come, of which one in the summer almost entirely knows. - On a
sufficient rain in the autumn and in April almost depends the
fruitfulness of the whole year. The first is probably the early, and
the last the latter rain, of which, in the sacred writings, mention
is made as a special blessing, but also, if it did not come, as a
special curse. - One is seldom without winds, and when there are
none at all, one is in danger of earthquakes. During the whole
summer the Imbat, or sea wind, sometimes begins to blow before, or
long after the rising of the sun, and blows, fairly strongly, until
midnight, often also almost the whole night through, whereby the
country is eminently refreshed. —— Because the Levant
lies nearer the Meridian than Germany; so, there, in the summer the
days are a few hours shorter, but in the winter much longer. And
from this shines a special wisdom of the Creator, touching the
arrangement of the world-system; for if the countries, under the
meridian, or near it, had not the advantage of the short days; then,
because of the heat, they would have to perish. —— In
Smyrna there is no northern light, and therefore probably even less
in the more southern regions. The Vernae in this respect are as
incomprehensible to the inhabitants of the Levant, as ice is to an
East Indian Prince.
The earth, excepting
the rocky mountains and the real deserts, is fertile, producing
mostly, without great cultivation and expense, the necessities and
comforts of human life. Above many other countries, Turkey has a
precedence, as regards medicinal herbs. With respect to field and
garden fruits, several things may be observed. Among the corn, wheat
and barley are chiefly cultivated; oats little, rye and vetches none
at all. Barley is, in the warm regions, more palatable than in the
cold; and, because in the Levant, fresh barley bread is baked daily,
(although the bakers, except at rare times, are not allowed to sell
it openly,) it is pleasant, and therefore often appears in the Bible
as good bread. Barley is, there, also the usual fodder for horses.
Turkish wheat is not sown in all the provinces. Of a kind of Manna,
which is said to fall in Arabia, and which one could eat instead of
bread, as with the Israelites, the Caravans know nothing, and no one
travels there in hope of finding it, without taking with him the
necessary provisions. The Lentils in Egypt are the best, and the
Peas only a garden-fruit. Pleasure gardens with flower-beds,
spacious promenades, and other regular arrangements find no favour
with the Turks. Trees that give shade, sufficient spring or
well-water, (the latter being found in most Provinces beautiful and
in abundance,) at most a good arrangement, form with them the
greatest ornament. The Easterners are uncommonly careful that none
of the water that flows down from high mountains is lost, and they
understand the art of distributing it, and of guiding it skilfully
to their gardens or fields. The wells are, seldom, at small places
in their neighbourhood, but at some distance from them, probably to
have the water the purer, and because most places are built against
the hills. People still carry the large jars, provided with handles,
on their shoulders, as in former days. (Genesis XXIV 15.) Not only
common, but also women of a respectable rank fetch water there,
especially in small and less populated places. The machines, to draw
the water from low wells, not being deep, are very simple among the
Easterns. A larger or smaller wheel, provided all round with
water-scoops, which reaches into the water, is turned by means of an
upright disk, in which the teeth of the wheel are engaged. Above it
a strong stem of equal proportion, somewhat crooked, goes over the
wheel, to which an ass or horse is attached, which by its pulling
sets the machine in motion. The water then runs into high masonry
troughs; (Havuse,) in large gardens, for that purpose, a house is
usually built in the form of a tower, (Esaj. V 2.) and is, according
to convenience, led through pipes, or only through the strong
downpour from the Havuse, to the proper places. — For the
rest, everything grows naturally through each other. They have the
most, with us well-known ground-fruits, such as lettuce, white and
cauliflower, yellow and white carrots, radishes, etc., although
these are more watery than with us, but they do not have curly
cabbage at all; on the other hand they have Melisans, a fruit of
dark blue colour, which grow almost in the shape of large cucumbers
on fairly high stalks, and the Melons. These are of various kinds,
among which the water- and King-melons are the best. The first are a
special miracle of the great Creator, who wanted to prove by this,
how He could produce water from the rocks. They grow in the poorest
earth, hiding in a thick green shell a kind of reddish spongy
substance, which is full of a very unusually tasty liquid. One
cannot well imagine what a refreshment this is to the people in the
warm regions there. The onions and cucumbers around Smyrna are so
sweet and pleasant that they are eaten raw on all occasions as a
delicacy, and soups are cooked of them, although they do not yet
come up to those of Egypt, and one should therefore not wonder at
the complaints of the Israelites about having to forego them. The
best rice grows in Egypt, but before it is transported it is doused
with hot water, in order to render it unusable for sowing abroad.
The so-called Turkish, or properly Arabian Coffee comes from Yemen,
a Kingdom of happy Arabia, and is transported from Mocha, a port of
that country, over the Red Sea to Suez in ships, thence to Great
Cairo carried on camels, and then over the Nile to Alexandria, and
other Mediterranean cities of Egypt. This same country also produces
the best Flax. The Tree-wool is grown in most Provinces, as in
Napoli, Syria, and Greece; but that around Smyrna is one of the
best. It does not grow there on trees, but on a plant, the seed of
which is sown towards April, which reaches the height of a cubit;
leaves, like those of the small Mallow, but almost of a dark blue
colour, just as the blossom looks like this, and on it bears nuts
the size of medlars, which are united in length as in three
divisions, which, when they are perfectly ripe, split, and from
which the tree wool is picked.
Among the tree
fruits, the cherries and nuts are like ours. Of Apples and Pears
there are not so many kinds, nor so good, as with us. But our
Bergamots cannot come close to those of Angora. The Peaches do
indeed surpass ours in taste; but they are rarely allowed to ripen
properly there, but often cut off before the time. The blue Plums
are hardly found there at all. On the other hand, their Almond,
Pomegranate, Fig, and Olive trees have their precedence. The
Pistachio tree properly belongs to Syria, as the Palm tree with its
dates to Egypt. The latter does not wither in the largest measure,
and thrives better in a sandy than in a moist soil. The Olive trees
indeed shed their leaves in the winter, but others come forth again,
so that they are continually green. (Psalm XCII 13.) Many Provinces
have forests of Oak and Pine. (*) Otherwise, Cypress trees are found
everywhere, which are planted by houses, Mosques, and in cemeteries.
Vine is much planted, and the grapes are excellent, and of various
kinds. In June and July there are small blue ones, then white ones,
then large blue and white ones, and finally brown-red ones. They
often last until January and February of the following year. The
Turks themselves are not allowed to press wine from it, as is
permitted to Christians and Jews only, but not in all places; but
they dry, during the long summer, the wine grapes, which with us are
currants. From it also the Turks prepare strong spirits of brandy,
in which they, for want of wine, drink themselves drunk. The vines
for the grapes that are to be dried are not allowed to grow higher
than half a foot, but the other against the trees. The common wine
is there as cheap, as with us the commonest beers. The wine of the
island of Scopoli is the best, to drink it mixed with water; for the
rest, the muskadelle wine of Tenedos, Smyrna, and Samos, as well as
that of the island of Cyprus, is excellent. And the ancient custom
of preserving and transporting liquid things in leather bags, still
persists; as especially the oil, almost always, is transported in
them, from one place to another.
Among the domestic
fowl there are mostly pigeons, common chickens, and turkeys. Geese
and ducks are found less, and these do not taste as good as with us.
There is no lack of many kinds of wild fowl, for instance,
partridges, wild ducks and geese, and francolins, or a kind of small
pheasant. The turtle-dove is everywhere, and towards autumn the
beccasige, a small migratory bird, which there makes up for the lack
of larks. The quails are in Greece, and especially on the islands of
the Archipelago, in an uncommon number, which are caught and put in
vinegar, and taste very well. The storks are there, in a certain
respect, sacred birds, and the swallows enjoy an almost equal esteem
with the storks. No one dares to shoot them, and their nests on and
at the houses and farms are considered a lucky sign. Near
Constantinople one finds a kind of diver or sea raven. They fly, in
all seasons, on the Channel. This happens, constantly, on the
surface of the water. Because one seldom sees this bird rest;
therefore the foreigners have given it, because of its constant
flying, the name of damned soul, but the Turks that of Jel-Kowan or
wind-chaser. It swims very well, and also dives under. He lives more
on insects that fly over the water than on fish. During the day he
flies, continually, from the mouth of the Black Sea to the Princes'
Islands, following, by flying to and fro, the ebb and flow thereof.
Sheep with and
without horns, and goats, form the greatest number among the
domestic cattle. The tails of the former are unusually heavy and
fat. The flesh of both, (for the latter is, there, not so
unpalatable, as in Germany and elsewhere,) is most eaten by the
Turks. Among Angora one finds that kind of goat, from which the hair
comes, which we call camel-hair. This hair is fine and glossy,
hanging almost to the ground. It is not shaved off, but combed off,
and, as to beauty, does not yield much to the side. The goats
themselves are of a fairly tame nature, and only medium in size.
They are often washed in the small river that flows by, and grazed
on the dry ground there. If they are brought from there to another
country, they perish in a short time altogether. Cattle are found
mostly in places where Christians and Jews live; for the Turks do
not like beef very much. Bovines are still rarer, because neither
Jews nor Turks eat their meat. Hares, Rheinboks and wild Bovines are
also not wanting; but Deer are unknown there. The Turkish horses are
good for riding, but not for working, and do not equal those of
Arabia in continuous and rapid journeys. They are bred with uncommon
tenderness. On the warmest summer days, even in the stables, which,
because of the heat, have become as warm as a bath stove, a thick
woolen blanket is nevertheless put on them, which is fastened with
several straps around the belly, so that the body is covered both
above and below. On winter days, 2 or 3 are put on; but because of
this, these horses also become so tender, that when one has only one
hour to prepare them, they have to be led around slowly for a while,
before they can be brought into the stable, because otherwise,
because of a cold, they might become unfit for use. And this is the
reason, when they are brought to Christian countries, and are not
treated and cared for so tenderly, that they are not good for long,
but soon spoil. Otherwise they are often tamed by the Turks, so that
they follow the rider, come to him at his beck and call, or else,
without being tied up, stand still. They look fine to the eye, and
let themselves be easily trained, to endure the fire, and to
accustom them to all kinds of exercises. Of the noble Arabian
Horses, (for there are also common ones,) people have wanted to know
the origin for a few thousand years. They are also, concerning their
uncorrupted kind, reasonably certain, because the mares are always
covered in the presence of witnesses. Notwithstanding the Arabians,
when taking oaths, are not exactly good-natured; they are, however,
in the highest degree, when covering horses. It is even assured,
that regular, legal testimonies and genealogical registers are kept
of them. The Turks generally ride Stallions, and not Geldings, and
are good Horse-tamers. The Buffaloes draw the plough. They are
higher than our largest Oxen, and much thicker and bulkier, so that
they rather resemble monstrous beasts. They do not move otherwise
than by a very slow step; are generally ashen-grey or blackish, and
have, in proportion, very small eyes. They also draw the Arraba, or
heavy trolleys with 2 wheels, which are used for collecting the
corn, the chaff, and other household necessities. For the transport
of real loads and merchants' goods the Asses, Mules and Camels
serve. In Asia Minor there are only those Camels which have one
hump. 'There are several kinds of them. The large ones, of the
Persian frontiers, are usually called Turkman, after the Province of
Turkman, in distinction from the others, and are very strong. Around
Constantinople, and on the Asiatic coasts of the Archipelago, are
the smallest. They go very slowly, and, although they take wide
steps, they must nevertheless have the time of 15 hours for a
journey of 10 hours. But when they come to walk, this is surprising.
Of all animals they are the ones that rest the least; and no beast
of burden can be maintained so easily and at so little expense. They
can suffer hunger and thirst for many days. They live on the leaves
of shrubs. When they are on a journey, a wad of common dough is put
into their mouths, which they chew on for a day, and with it they
satisfy their hunger. The large ones have unusually long and rough
hair on their heads, necks, and joints of their legs. Their growling
is extremely unpleasant, and often disgusting. Their color tends
toward yellow and dark brown. They cannot be tamed completely. They
are not to be trusted, often striking out at someone's head and arms
with their long necks; although their drivers are fairly secured
against it. When loaded they must kneel, and 'crouch down to the
ground. It is a singular thing, that even when beaten, they do not
rise, if the burden is greater than the nature and strength of the
Camels permits. One is fastened to the other saddle, by means of a
long and strong rope. The small ones do not carry well above six
hundred, and the large ones above a thousand pounds. When travelling
they cannot be made to move, unless a man or an animal, such as a
horse, mule or ass, goes ahead. If the driver whistles for the first
time, and pulls the halter fastened round their head; then they fall
on their knees: if this is repeated again; then they fall completely
on the ground: if this happens a third time; then they rise. To
accustom them to this, when they come into the world, their legs are
bent under their bodies, and they are left in this position for some
days. - Of wild animals there is a kind of large and voracious
Foxes, which are called Schakals, which at night, often by many
hundreds, with a howling like that of dogs and cats, go out to prey,
and on their way they go to the villages; wherefore the ease of
catching a good number of them may be explained in the History of
Samson. (Judges XV 4.) There are also Hyaenes, larger than the
Schakals, being a mean between Foxes and Wolves. Both of them often
dig up with their paws the buried human corpses, and devour them;
they even tear the weaker animals to pieces; and, as the Schakals
are otherwise afraid of men, the Hyaens even attack them. They are
not so high as wolves, but their hair is rougher, and marked with
large black spots. The ancients thought that the backbone of the
Hyaens was like that of the Crocodiles, and had no joints; but
Russel, who had an opportunity of dissecting one, found it to have
regular joints, as in dogs. The skin of the Schakals, there, the
common people, as among us the First Nations use the furs of other
strange animals. — Rarely, there, excepting the great
mountains, are Tigers found, and still more rarely Lions.
There are no lack of
large and small Lizards of many kinds. Among these belongs the
Chameleon, which is distinguished from it only by a higher back and
longer legs. It cannot move its head separately without the whole
body. It catches insects with its sticky tongue. It sticks this out
to them when they fly, quite long, but so quickly that it can seldom
be seen. The most remarkable thing about this animal is the change
of colour, which is seen according to the variety of objects.
Although it assumes the dark colours most lightly, and therefore
looks brownish, green and blackish; yet these colours are usually
mixed with white and red patches. When it is in the wild; then the
colours it assumes are more vivid than when it is shut up. In sleep
they are not changed, and when dead they become pale. They have
unusually fiery eyes. — Scorpions are found in many places,
and snakes of various, but no extraordinary kinds. Tortoises run
free everywhere, on the mountains, in great numbers, because the
Greeks and Turks consider them unclean; but they are not large, and
one will not easily find one, whose shell in the circumference
amounted to more than one ell. The insects common to us are also,
and become, in certain seasons, very troublesome. For this reason
one must sleep under a mosquito net. This is a covering, suitable
for the bed, of very thin lyme, tree-wool, or silk, which covers the
bed like a sack, which, in order that the mosquitoes do not fly into
it during the day, is pulled together at the head, when it hangs on
two rods, but otherwise rolled up and tied together. — The
scale insects are, in most houses, a great plague. The waters have,
in general, an abundance of mussels and fish, where the sea fish
have the preference over those from the rivers, for the sake of
taste and health. Most of them are of the species known to us, such
as eels, perches, etc. But otherwise there is also a multitude,
which are not caught in the more northern seas. The Sea-lyre
(rouget) of the best kind, and other kinds are, meanwhile, also not
unknown on the shores of the Mediterranean. The Sword-fish is caught
at Constantinople, having its name from it, because the nasal bone,
according to its size, projects two or more feet, in the shape of a
sword. At Alexandria are the Sea-ashes, from which one gets the roe
dried in long and round pieces, which one calls Butarako. Besides
the large Sea-lobsters, there are two more kinds. That which is
called by the Greeks σακος
(Stakos), is larger, yes, about a foot and a half long, provided
with pointed spines or claws, and also tastes better. The smaller is
a medium size, and bears the name of Languste. Of Crabs one finds
nothing but the larger, but also the smaller, or so called
Taskrabbe. Oysters are caught at Smyrna, Mytilene, and in the
Channel, but the largest and tastiest at the Princes' Islands. Among
the sea animals one finds in the Archipelago and the Channel of
Constantinople, especially the Dolphin. Of these one sees,
especially in calm weather, whole flocks, which migrate to where the
wind and storm will come from. On such voyages they are wont to leap
up with great violence, and to throw themselves back into the water
in an arcing manner. They come close to the ships, not only
delighting the sailors, but also instructing them as of the rising
wind. How wonderful is not the Creator in his works!
Because of the great
heat most diseases are of a short duration, and many of our
long-lasting diseases are hardly found at all in Asia Minor. To this
I add, for instance, the Dropsy, the Podagra, the Tar, etc. The
women are there more easily delivered, than in the Northern
Countries, and also sooner recovered. The Smallpox, here and there,
among adults as well as young people, in certain years, makes a
horrible scourge. Although the vaccination thereof is customary in
little Tartary, as well as on many islands of the Archipelago; yet,
up to my time, it has not yet found a place on the mainland. The
Measles are not so common, nor so harmful, as with us. The Fevers
are a common Evil, and the hot ones, especially those that prevail
in the Autumn, soon put an end to man's Life. Many also die of
strokes. The red course is very common in the summer, especially
when eating unripe fruits. Very many are plagued by hypochondria,
which is probably caused by the much sitting of people, especially
in the hot seasons. Women are very exposed to hysterical fits
(ascensions), which often turn into madness (Mania). The strong heat
of the sun, and the much fine dust raised by the wind also makes
many people blind, of whom there are often more in a single city in
the Levant than with us in entire provinces. More rare, but not very
strange, is the Leprosy, with which the people on the Syrian coasts,
the island of Kandia, and elsewhere are infected, and which, by
prolonged association and contact, communicates itself to others,
whereby the flesh is gradually consumed, so that nothing but skin
and bones remain, but whereby even the skin is eaten away by a foul
rash. People may suffer from it for ten years or more, and often
still work and go and stand. The Lepers, at Smyrna and elsewhere,
live together with other people, or, when the Disease becomes very
bad, keep to the roads, to be able to beg. Where there are many;
there they are wont to keep themselves together, and apart from
other people, but at the same time to places where they can
conveniently beg.
The greatest Evil of
all is the Plague. This makes the most populous people deserts, and
the regions waste places. During my nine years' residence in Smyrna,
I have experienced, in the years 1759, 1760, 1762, and 1765, general
plagues, not counting the less general ones. Usually, at the end of
them, there were 15 to 20 thousand fewer inhabitants than before. In
the months of May, June, and July, this Evil rages most violently,
and daily, between 60 and 300 dead people were usually buried. At
Constantinople, the plague is first spoken of when the number of
people who die from it amounts to four or five hundred, and when
more than a thousand people are carried off daily, it is called a
great plague. As to the attack of the plague; it often confuses some
people, because of the different circumstances and accidents of its
outbreak, and, especially in the beginning, the symptoms are mostly
uncertain, and, in appearance, often, of little importance, and not
dangerous. Otherwise, he who is infected with it, is aware of a
strange headache. His back hurts, and the whole body loses all its
strength. This is followed by a strong fever, which makes people
fall into a frenzy, and in which he also dies, by a very malignant
plague. The peculiarity of this disease is the effect on the soul of
the sufferer; for at the moment he becomes despondent and
disconsolate. After death the plague boil then bursts out. But if
the plague is not so violent; then this happens before death.
Everything goes very quickly here. With some, illness and death are
almost in a moment, with others in a few hours, at the most in 3
days. The boils break out, mostly, on the softest parts of the body;
sometimes there is only one, then again there are several. There are
very clearly two kinds of them. With the malignant one, no cure can
be hoped for; with the soft one, the sufferer is still in danger of
death for 40 days. The good kind of boils, when they are quite ripe,
are opened, from which then flows a stinking Matter. During those 40
days a strict Diet must be kept, and if the Sufferer then may eat
any of meat, fish, butter, oil, eggs, etc.; then another plague boil
bursts out, from which, without help, he is a child of death. Rice,
herbs, barley-drink, etc., are its only food, — It has been
observed, that lepers, and people, afflicted with foul rashes, are
quite safe from this Evil. — As long as the Plague rages, all
other diseases usually cease, or decay in it. But, when they, and
especially the Smallpox, begin, and spread; then this is regarded as
a sign of the plague coming to an end.
Who has once had the
Plague; is therefore not free from it at another time. There are
examples that people who have had them twelve or more times have
finally died from them. Yes, he who has had them once is, in a
certain respect, more susceptible to them than another. Such a
person can even often know in advance when a Plague will occur;
because he has a sharp, stinging, and restless affection from the
plague sore he has had. But if someone has had another one, called
Carbuncle, in addition to the usual plague sore, and has recovered
from both; then it rarely happens that such a person gets the Plague
again. Such people also do not usually fear it any more, or take
care of it.
Remedies against this
Evil have no place. In the beginning it was customary to give a
person infected with the Plague a strong diaphoretic, to promote the
ripening and passing of the pimple. If it is of a good kind; then
the opening of it, and a good Diet, are the way to be restored
again. In the opinion of the Public, who regard drinking their own
water as a remedy for the Plague, the intelligent certainly think
otherwise. It is natural that a fluid already so much corrupted must
still increase the Evil. Wherefore the honest Physicians also
disapprove of this, and, with right, consider it an unfounded fancy
of the filthy Public. Otherwise garlic, burnt waters, wine, vinegar,
and strong incense are considered good preservatives. Drunkards at
least are not easily snatched away. The Plague spreads itself from
one place, very rapidly, to the other countries of the Turkish
Empire; for there is no known enclosure of the infected places. For
the rest, this Evil is like a fire. Notwithstanding that it is not
at all, as far as one can notice, continued by the air, for that
remains as healthy in Turkey as before; so the smell or the touching
of infected persons and things is more dangerous, since he, who
guards against it, remains unaffected. And, because the
communication takes place so unnoticed, David was right, when he
says, (Psalm XCI. 6.) that the pestilence walks in darkness. The
Plague kindles through everything, except bread, wood and liquid
things. The beginning, continuation and end of this Evil are
uncertain. Often it begins in the Fall, but mostly in the Winter;
increases in the Spring, and ceases about the time of the great heat
in July. By St. John the end, or at least the abatement of the
Plague, is mostly there, especially in Egypt. Not only the Levantine
Christians, but also the Mohammedans, depend on this. —
Experience teaches that the Plague from the Southern and Eastern
Provinces of the Turkish Empire is more dangerous to the Northern,
than when it spreads from these to none. For this reason the
Egyptian and Syrian Plague is more formidable for the Archipelago,
for Nato and Rumelia, than that of Constantinople and Smyrna in
Egypt and Syria; yes, the Smyrna at Constantinople is more dangerous
than that of Constantinople at Smyrna. The Egyptian Plague usually
comes from Ethiopia, and is formidable for Egypt. — The
influence of the earthquake on the plague, either to put an end to
it or to increase it, seems, upon careful observations, to be more a
national prejudice than anything real. — It is most dreadful
when animals, for instance, dogs, cats, etc. die of plague boils, as
formerly in Egypt. Exod. IX. 3. The Greeks, as well as the
inhabitants of the Levant, in their delusion, imagine the Plague as
a fearful monster, which, according to some, comes precisely at
noon, but according to others at night, and becomes visible. Many
even want to assert that they mark the houses where they want to
make a slaughter with an indelible mark.
If one asks for the
causes, why this Evil, the Plague, rages so often in Turkey? then
one can also give the following, among other things. It is certainly
bred from putrefaction. Unhealthy food; filthiness, not indeed in
the rooms, but nevertheless in the squares and streets; excessive
fear, which one can call the beginning of the Plague; terror, and a
sudden inactivity of the body, by which the exhalation is stopped;
all this subjects men, steadily, more and more to the Plague. But
the principal reason is this, that the spread is never stopped. The
infected houses, places and landscapes are never closed off; nor the
things subject to infection, such as clothes, beds, etc., are never
burned, buried under the ground, or properly purified, but openly
sold, or, if they are inheritances, even locked away in chests and
cupboards, and a few months or years afterwards brought out again:
and so the Plague breaks out anew. This unreasonable conduct rests
on the feeling of the Mohammedans concerning an absolute fate, so
that what happens must happen, whatever one may do or set oneself
to. And this is also the reason why no Mohammedan shuns a
contaminated place or house. The plague is in his eyes nothing else
than arrows of God, which hit the intended target; so that it is
therefore fruitless to want to avoid it. - For the rest I would also
hereby acknowledge the traces of God's Providence, in the
Heaven-provoking sins of the inhabitants of this country.
The Europeans are not
easily exposed to this evil. Their way of life protects them
possibly against it. In addition, their caution is unusually great,
(*) When the plague somewhat takes over; then they lock themselves
in their houses, or flee to the country. They let nothing into their
houses that cannot be purified by a strong fume, by vinegar or
water. The trade is then generally broken off, or only driven to the
distance of a few paces. All meetings are suspended; and the
Protestants close their churches, but the Roman Catholics seldom
theirs, and the Christians on land never theirs. But what always
seemed strange to me in this respect is this, that nevertheless, in
the most terrible times of plague, the English, the Dutch, the
Swedes and the Danes, load their stuff in their ships, and yet it
very seldom happens that they become infected. The earthquake is no
less great inconvenience in Turkey. Although it is, that this also
prevails in other countries, such as Portugal, Italy, etc.; it
seems, however, to belong there as if it were at home. One can,
often, know it in advance. When the sun, in clear weather, shines
reddish, the air sultry, and there is no wind; then this is an evil
omen. Before the earthquake itself goes a peculiar rushing, and,
when it will become strong, a noise beforehand. There are two kinds
of earthquakes. The first, and not so harmful, is when it proceeds
as a wave-like, or one after the other under the earth; but the
other, as the most terrible, is when the earth, by fits and starts,
rises up. The duration of this is, as is known, very different, and
usually it does not remain the same. A phenomenon in the world is
not more hideous than this. The terrible emotion caused by it is
seen both in men and animals. Therefore the Holy Ghost, in the
sacred pages, could not name a more fitting sign concerning the
dreadfulness of the end of the world, than to mention earthquakes. —
The wounds, which one might possibly receive in an earthquake, are,
according to the well-founded or unfounded opinion of many,
considered incurable. We will not investigate this further, but say
only that, if there is anything to it, the difficult healing may
well come from the fact that fear strikes the blood, and this cannot
be brought back to its usual course. — Whoever else is
somewhat calm in mind in an earthquake, takes refuge under the
pillar of a door, in order to be protected from the wood and stones
falling down. And this is also the reason that houses are built as
much as possible low and close, so that they will yield all the more
in the event of an earthquake, and will not collapse so quickly.
Since the manner of
building in a country is usually directed to the air, the climate,
the soil, and other natural circumstances; so here too, seems to be
the best place to speak of it. In the cities and in the villages it
is, everywhere, irregular.
The streets in the
cities are very narrow, and generally not more than two to four
yards wide. People try to protect themselves from the heat by this,
and to keep the strong sunshine out of the streets. They also do not
need wide streets, because there is no carriage in use, but the
burdens are carried by men or animals, namely donkeys, mules or
camels; and those who do not go on foot ride on donkeys or horses,
and great women, at most, have themselves carried in Tachtaravans, a
kind of horse litters. — The houses are never built regularly;
some of them are two, others more stories high. It cannot be
otherwise: for, except for large and public buildings, no house is
built according to a previously made plan, and the parts as a whole
are not finished before the actual erection, but one builds by
pieces, where the thoughts, at the beginning of a new part, can
change. But often, the natural position with the unforced layout of
the houses, the decorations added to them, the trees planted around
and the gardens, as well as the fountains, surpass our artistically
worked regularities. In large houses one usually finds baths, which
consist of two or more rooms, covered with lead above, lighted from
within, and provided with basins, pipes and all conveniences. - The
Turks abstain from splendor in building, because, according to their
thoughts, that is the sign of a puffed up and immoderate heart,
which promises itself, in this Life, as a permanent dwelling. They
are content when they are only protected against robbers and evil,
as travellers in inns. (*) Most houses, especially in the southern
provinces, have, instead of roofs, terraces; these are in the
middle, or on one side, somewhat raised platforms, so that the
rainwater may run off the easier. Around them runs a railing. On
these people go for walks, and also sleep on them in the summer;
which rightly serves as a source of many scriptures. — In the
middle of large buildings, at the height of one or two steps, there
is a large hall, completely open to the forecourt, from which one
can look over the gallery into the forecourt. This open Hall is,
certainly, the ανωγεον and
υπερωον in the Bible, which
served for all kinds of solemn uses, Mark XIV. 15. Acts I.13. IX.
37. XX. 8. and where also, probably, Christ was heard; so that he
could see Peter below in the forecourt, Luke XXII. 61. Through a
large gate one enters the forecourt from the street, and from this
the staircase goes upstairs.
In average houses
there is at least one forecourt; in noble ones there are at least
two. — The lowest floor is, almost always, used for
warehouses, stables and cellars: in the second and higher floors, a
gallery runs around the inside like a balcony, which is covered by
the roof of the house, and is very good for a walking place, as well
as for taking in fresh air. This also leads, for the most part, to
all the rooms. In these there is a double row of windows. The lower
ones, which are fairly low, and not exactly large, rarely have glass
panes, but only a more or less narrow latticework, and they only
serve, when sitting on the sofa, for looking out: the upper ones,
through which the light actually falls into the rooms, are still
smaller, of various shapes, and often covered with glass of various
colours. Average rooms therefore sometimes have more than 20
windows. — The open market-places or places of sale of the
Turks in the cities, where they, as well as the Christians and Jews,
put their goods for sale, are called Basars. Every branch of
commerce has its own special Basar, assigned to it. The sellers
bring their goods there; whether they lock them up in shops, or only
bring them there on market-days, and, when they cannot sell them,
take them back again. Therefore it is said: the price of the Basars,
or the Rate, may be so or so high. The Besestane, a kind of Halls,
are the actual shops, in which all kinds of goods, as well as
articles made of gold and silver, etc., are sold, and which are
rented to merchants, craftsmen and artists. They are, for fear of
fire, made of stone and vaulted, provided with iron doors, and
covered with domes, through which the light falls. Because each one
lets his goods in; so they are closed at night, and guarded by
special watchmen appointed for that purpose. Every nation and every
kind of commerce is accustomed to have its own particular places
there, or in large cities its own separate Besestane. The Tscharsu
does not differ much from this, being a multitude of shops built
together, both for craftsmen for their work, and for the sale of
goods, in a kind of streets, which are often protected from rain and
sunshine by awnings above. — For the rest, fire in Turkey is a
dreadful matter. For, as the streets are narrow, the houses, because
of the earthquakes, are very lightly built of wood, hung with
carpets for ornamental purposes, and provided with wooden galleries;
then also all the woodwork is covered with many kinds of olive
paints; so, especially in the summer months, everything burns away
like straw, and the Turks use no other means to extinguish the fire,
than by having a great number of houses pulled down around them.
Since there is now much to rob, and the Janistas, in extinguishing
fire, are mainly used; so they often even set it up, and in
extinguishing it to go slowly to work.
(*)
During my nine-year stay in Smyrna the ice in a river was only 2
days so strong that people could stand on it. The snow lay, seldom,
on the country so long.
(*)
The chaff is the winter shelter for the cattle; for in the East no
hay is won.
(*)
The firewood is, in many places of the Levant, for instance in
Smyrna and Jerusalem, bought and paid for by weight.
(*)
Most Christian nations have, in Constantinople, Smyrna, as well as
in other places, their hospitals with the necessary attendants, in
which they are accustomed to receive their, infected with the
plague, especially poor fellow believers, as well as foreigners.
(*)
According to the construction method of the East, one can very
naturally explain Dan. VI. 11. There one reads, that Prophet Daniel
in his summer house (as the Lutheran translation has it, in the
Dutch it is opperzaale,) had open windows towards Jerusalem. This is
either a hall built onto the house in the Eastern style, still in
use today, open on one or three sides and with a roof resting on
pillars, or a pleasure house built on a raised spot and open on all
four sides, which is called a kiosk there.
§. V. Of the
cities in general, of which in the Revelation of John, Head, II and
III, are spoken, and of Smyrna in particular.
Smyrna is a fairly
large place. It is, as is known, one of the 7 cities, of which
Revelation II and III are spoken: for the Biblical name, Church,
might not well be appropriate to it, considering that it might
differ greatly from the description of Revelation II. 8-10. In the
meantime, however, the praise that is found there seems to determine
the reason why it is spared, and has remained to this day. War,
pestilence and earthquake have often visited it, yes, completely
destroyed it; but nevertheless it has, continually, reappeared
again: as the other places, of which are spoken in the said Chapters
of Revelation, have mostly become a heap of ruins. — Ephesus,
by the Turks Aja'saluk, still points out an exceedingly great
quantity of remains of antiquity, in demolished churches, aqueducts,
chimneys, other buildings, and broken magnificent pillars; but it is
now no longer even a village, and the standing bits and pieces of
the Temple of Diana, besides that of an old St. John's church, are
only the shelter of shepherds with their cattle. The Candlestick of
the Angelium has been entirely banished from this place —
(Rev. II 5.) — Pergamus is, at present, a sort of a village,
almost under its old name; likewise Thyatira, under the name of
Akhifar, which is inhabited almost exclusively by Turks, and where a
great deal of tree-wool is collected: Sardis is a common village,
excepting the ruins of old buildings, which has retained its name by
abbreviation. Philadelphia, by the Turks Ala-Kair, is no better,
although the Christians there, after Smyrna, form the most
flourishing Church among the cities of which the Revelation speaks,
and thus also experience the promised blessing. (Rev. III 9, 10.}
But Laodicea would have disappeared altogether, if some inscriptions
on stones had not pointed out the former laying of this place,
favorably. It was therefore spat out of the mouth of him, on whom
the foundation and overthrow of human buildings depend. (Rev. III
16.) The Turks call it Eski-Hifa'r.
Smyrna bears the name
of Ismir among the Turks, and lies on the so-called Smyrna Sea-bay.
It is, for a very large part, built against the mountains, like an
Amphitheatre, on the top of which an old Castle is still found. In
some places there are old, in others new walls; in others clay
walls, and in many it is quite open. On the north side runs the
Meles. Although this, in ancient History, is mentioned, it remains,
however, in the Summer, after he has watered some gardens, scarcely
a small arm left, which is sufficient for the mills, bleaching and
weathering. The city contains, probably, more than a hundred
thousand inhabitants, and it is the strongest commercial city of the
so-called Levant. One must be at this place oneself, if one wants to
form a correct idea of the bustle of people in the
matter of Commerce. The Caravans and the Shipping cause such a
liveliness, on water and on land, that the contemplative eye can
only be satisfied with it. A Kadi is the Chief, and a Moslem the
Second-in-Command of the city. One finds here almost all the nations
of the world, which differ from each other in their dress and
religion. The Greek Church is, among the Christian denominations at
Smyrna, the strongest. It has one Bishop, under whom stand 12
Archpriests, a great multitude of Deacons, and many foreign
ecclesiastical Persons, who have also obtained the freedom to
perform various religious acts. It has 2 Churches, of which the
largest, dedicated to St. Photinus, burned down in the year 1763;
and the smaller one bears the name of St. George. The first had not
yet been rebuilt in the year 1777, and there was doubt whether it
would ever be rebuilt.
The Armenian Church
is also served by one Bishop, and 12 Archpriests. This Christian
disposition is, there, not nearly as strong as the Greek, and has
only one Church. The Roman Catholics have one Episcopal Vicar, and
three Churches, of which one belongs to the Franciscans, the second
to the Capuchins, and the third to the Jesuits. The Chapels in the
first were much damaged in the fire of 1763, but those of the
Jesuits were completely reduced to ashes. The restoration of the
Churches of the Franciscans and Capuchins could not be effected,
owing to the severity of the Turks, until the year 1776; but the
completely burnt down Church of the Jesuits will not be rebuilt
after the subsequent destruction of their Order, although it is
probable that they will subsequently be allowed to enjoy their
possessions in peace. The Protestants have, for the most part, their
Chapels by the Consuls, of which there are three, namely the
English, Dutch, and German. The Christian nations, as well as the
Europeans, for example the English, Dutch, French and Italians, as
of the Christians of this country, namely the Greeks and Armenians,
have Hospitals, where the sick, especially those infected with the
Plague, are taken care of and cared for.
The Jews there are,
for the most part, descendants of those who were expelled from
Portugal and Spain. Their number amounts to more than twelve
thousand, and they have 7 Synagogues.
The number of the
Turks amounts to 40 or 50 thousand. They observe their worship in a
great number of Mosques. There are there, as in most of the largest
places in Turkey, three religious days: Sunday for the Christians,
Saturday for the Jews, and Friday for the Turks.
The layout of Smyrna
is, in all respects, pleasant and advantageous; as one can see from
the plate, by the illustration of the Archipelago. It lies,
immediately, at the end of a bay, which extends from the Archipelago
to about 12 German miles in Asia Minor. This furnishes a rich
quantity of fish, oysters, and mussels, and makes the supply of
provisions to the city easy; not to say that it promotes
considerable navigation. The entrance is north-west between
Foglieri, (Foggio) and Cape Karaburno. Not far from the latter,
inward, are the English Islands, and still further inward the
Islands of Urla. It cannot be navigated everywhere by large ships,
owing to the number of sand-banks, which the Dutch call Riffen, and
which are especially formed by the Hermus which drains there, and
the channel for it becomes, a few German miles from the city,
unusually narrow. On an isthmus, which defines it still more on the
south side, lies a small fortress, enclosed only by a wall without
ramparts, which is called the water castle. The Ree by the city is
safe, very situated, so that ships, without danger, can lie fairly
close to the land, and is spacious enough for about a thousand. The
European residential quarter, or the so-called Frankenstreet, lies
northwards close to the sea. At the end of it, to the south, is the
large house, the Tol [Customs office], built in the water; and
beside it, inland, the building with domes provided the large
Visier-chans, and still more to the south the lower Castle provided
with old towers. The city itself runs, from the sea, against a
fairly high mountain, on one of whose peaks lies an old Castle for
the defence of the city. This, in ancient times, had as great a
circumference, as the top of the mountain is above, on whose side,
towards the city, a small fortress cut off from it has been
constructed. Of the larger one only the fallen walls are visible,
and in the vicinity large and unrecognizable heaps of ruins; a
small, now useless and open St. John's Church, of which the lower
part indicates a considerable antiquity, but the upper part is new;
and a very large, but partly ruined, and now completely unusable
cistern. The gate towards the city is complete, and shows itself
very well below and from the sea. To the west of it a large marble
slab is bricked in, on which the head of a supposed Amazon, Smyrna,
is depicted, after whom the city is said to have its name, which is
four times as large as a natural head; but the nose and face are
very mutilated. The smaller fortress mentioned has some cannons, and
janissary families for its defence. So it is also with the other
fortress, surrounded only by walls, situated near the sea, where the
old harbour used to be, but which is now filled, and for the greater
part built up with shops and houses: so that, if it were not an
abuse of the word, fortress or Citadel, one could say, the city was
protected by three Citadels. - On the north side is a plain, which
is watered by small brooks, well 3 hours long, and about two wide,
planted with olive, fig and other trees, as well as many vines, and
surrounded all around by high mountains. This is, besides the kyf,
one of the most pleasant and fruitful valleys. Of the mountains,
most are covered with various herbs and shrubs. In this plain, a
little hour from the city, is the bath of Diana. Some old stones are
considered to be the remains of the Temple of this Pagan Goddess.
This bath is filled only by some springs, which give up an
astonishing quantity of water from the ground, and make a large
basin. On the south side of the town, below on the hill, are the
remains of a church dedicated to the martyred Virgin Veneranda,
where the Greeks have their principal Plague-house and burial-place,
and the Dutch and English have theirs, very remote from their
habitations, walled up, but the Jews have their open cemetery.
Superstition holds the well-water at St. Veneranda to be miraculous.
Not far from it, but immediately on the sea, and therefore at the
very end of the town, are a number of houses for the soap-works, and
the public slaughter-place. In the town itself are considerable
Chans, Basars, and Baths. Monuments of antiquity are no longer
found, destroyed everything. The so-called St. John's Church in the
upper castle, and a Polycarpus church, not far from it on the
mountain, are indeed dilapidated old buildings, but hardly dating
back to the earliest times, and the remains of an old Amphitheatre,
in which Polycarpus suffered his martyrdom, were sold in the middle
of this century, and houses were built in the Jewish quarter. The
Polycarpus church seems, otherwise, to be of no small age. In front,
in the width, is a covered, but not very wide passage. This
building, which is damaged in the vault and otherwise, is not high
and without pillars. On each side is a Chapel of the length, but not
of the width of the main vault. Because Smyrna is also said to be
the birthplace of Homer; thus one points to the Castle-mountain of
its cave. Behind it, to the east, between the mountains are some
aqueducts, and the region of the land there is called Paradise
because of its beauty.
§.
VI. Of Constantinople.
Constantinople
is called by the Turks, by abbreviation, Stambo'l. From its position
this city seems to be the mistress of two parts of the world. The
ease of the waters, the glory of the air, the easy supply of
products from all parts of the world, the virtue and abundance of
the fishes, together with other advantages, give it the precedence
over most cities on earth. Europe and Asia are, here, only separated
from each other by the Canal, which comes from the Black Sea, and is
scarcely the eighth part of a German mile broad, called by the
ancients Bosphorus Thraciae. Both banks, through the fertility of
the soil, seem to dispute for precedence now by small valleys, now
by hills planted with vines, or by mountains, against the rises of
which pygmy and cypress trees are placed, and by other projecting
regions. The waters, which are in the middle, permit sufficiently to
see freely on all sides. From the North comes the above-mentioned
Canal; from the West, and therefore from the side of Europe, comes
the so-called Canal of the sweet waters, being the real harbour of
the Residence, and bearing the name of Horn because of its crooked
shape, into which a river, caused by two large brooks, empties, but
which, after mixing with the former, becomes salt, and is also just
as broad at the Seraglio or castle of the Turkish Emperor; to the
east is the Bay of Nicea, and to the south the Sea of Marmora.
If the former did not extend with the latter in a reasonable breadth
as far as Asia; then the waters would converge at Constantinople,
almost in the shape of a large cross.
-
Constantinople itself lies on the European soil, on the Sea of
Marmora and the Channel of the Sweet Waters, which
forms the harbour, and at the head, where these two unite, is the
Seraglio; the great suburbs, Pera, Galata, Tophana, etc., lie
between the Channel of the Sweet Waters, and that which comes from
the Black Sea; Scutari, Chalcedon, and an old Seraglio of the great
Lord lie on the Asian side, on the latter channel, fairly near the
Bay of Nicea. All these cities and suburbs are situated on hills,
which gradually become higher towards the land, and which, as
regards Constantinople without the suburbs, are counted in a number
of seven or eight, in the same way as ancient Rome. The high
buildings project. The Mosques, roofed with lead, and the Minnarets
belonging to them, and provided with gilded transepts, spread an
uncommon splendor, especially when the sun rises. The Cypresses
planted in the squares of the Mosques, and in the gardens of the
Seraglio, provide a special variegation. When one imagines all this
together; then, without having seen it oneself, one can justify the
proverb: "He who has not seen Constantinople, has not yet seen
anything glorious". - The interior of the city, certainly, does
not at all come close to the exterior. By this means another proverb
may be judged: "Constantinople must be seen only from without,
and not from within;" and it is related that an English
traveller, after having examined this city closely from without, had
departed again without setting foot in it, in order not to diminish
the advantageous idea which the external layout had given him. The
representation of this city in the accompanying plate will fully
prove this.
The
air at Constantinople is very healthy. The summer is very moderated
by the winds coming from the Black Sea; but the winter is, on
account of these same winds, often more severe and sensitive than in
Germany. This is caused, especially by the very rapid change of the
weather, when, on a sudden, a very cold follows, and so the body is
completely unprepared until the end.
From
the foregoing it may easily be inferred that it is not possible to
calculate the size of Constantineple accurately, especially since
the Mosques with their large circumferences and spacious cemeteries
are found therein: but, in all probability, one would not be giving
too high an estimate if one were to estimate the circumference of
the city itself and its extensive suburbs at about 5 German miles:
considering that for Constantinople proper, inland, one and a half
German miles, for the side of the suburbs, Kassum-Pascha, Pera, etc.
more than one, and seaward, including the harbour, also one and a
half, but for Constantinople alone, without the suburbs, one can
determine 3 miles. (*) — The inhabitants are estimated at one
million, of whom about two hundred thousand are Christians of the
Greek nation, about forty thousand Christians of the Armenian
nation, and about sixty thousand Jews, but the rest will be Turks. -
The Seven Towers form, to the south, towards the Sea of Marmora,
the extremity of the city; it lies, then, in a not very unequal
line, up to the point of the country, where the Canal of the sweet
waters, or the Haven, unites with the Canal, which comes from the
Black Sea. On this point lies the Serail. From this around the said
Canal, the actual Constantinople extends towards the land. In the
middle one finds, here, the headquarters of the Greeks, which is
called Fänär. It ends behind the Armoury, by the most
inland suburb Ejub, which has its name after the Ejubs- (Hiobs-)
Mosque situated therein, (*) in which the new Emperor is girded with
the Imperial dagger. From here one only has to draw, inland, a not
too crooked line to the 7 Towers, and one will see, that
Constantinople, in itself, is almost a Triangle, of which the Serail
forms an obtuse angle. To the quarter belonging to the Armoury,
which turns round on the other side of the Channel of the Sweet
Waters, are added still smaller parts, which extend to about Galata.
These are understood under the name of Kassum-Paschi. Herein is the
residence of Captain Pasha, the Armoury, and the shipyard, or the
place where the Imperial ships are built, as well as the docks for
the galleys. Not far from it is the Banje, or prison for the
Imperial slaves, who are treated very badly at this hateful place,
by a severe work. Galata is cut off from Kassum-Paschi and the other
suburbs by a cemetery, and besides by a special wall, and lies
opposite the Seraglio, on the Channel of the Sweet Waters, and that
which comes from the Black Sea. It is fairly built against the
mountains, on one of which is a fairly high round tower, erected by
the Genoese, and of such size that it can pass for a decent city in
itself, as there is a good number of suitable and solid houses in
it. Next to this lies, still further on the Channel of the Black
Sea, Tophana, (Top Chäanek) which bears that name after the gun
foundry, and where also an unusual number of metal cannons are used
to be placed on the streets and squares. Next to this, on the
Bosphorus, follow Thraciae, Fondukly and Besiktas, which with many
others also belong to the suburbs. On the upper heights of Galata
and Tophana lies Pera, where the European ambassadors always reside.
In the neighbourhood of the latter is the open cemetery of the
Europeans, and close by, on a mountain, lies another fairly large
suburb, mostly inhabited by Greeks, called St. Demitri. — Let
one cross from Tophana or Galata to the Asian coast; then one finds,
almost in the middle of the Channel, the Tower of Leander, which the
Turks call Kis-Kälä'fzy, which is built on a rock, being a
kind of fortress and prison, where some cannons are placed.
Fable-lore teaches, why it was built. Notwithstanding that it is
thus built in the sea, one finds there, however, sweet and delicious
water, which is attributed by some to a spring found there, but by
others to a cistern, in which the rainwater from the roof is
collected. From this small fortress one could fire the Channel to
[?] both seas. - On the Asian soil and ground lies Scutari, also a
city of a large circumference, and after the sea-bay of Nicaea an
old Seraglio, directly opposite that of Constantinople. Chalcedony,
formerly, especially in the history of the Church so famous, is
found in the neighbourhood, being, except for some remains of
earlier destructions, only a village. - The strength of
Constantinople, both on the water and on the land side, does not
mean much. On the sea-side there is a single wall, from 14 to 20
feet high, also reasonably thick, and reinforced with square towers;
inland it is doubled and stronger, of which the outer is noticeably
lower than the inner; but both are, in their entirety and
circumference, provided with many towers at a certain distance.
Since the invention of artillery, loopholes have also been made in
it. One part consists of hewn, another of baked bricks. - Six gates
go inland, among which the Adrianople is the most important, seven
to the side of the sea Marmora, and thirteen to the Haven. Others
may reckon more or less, according as they include or omit the small
gates on the water side. - A large part of the suburbs is entirely
open; but some parts are surrounded by an old wall, built by the
Greeks and Genoese, where, in many places, there is a deep and dry
ditch towards the land side, in others not.
What
has been said with regard to the manner of building in general, also
occurs at Constantinople, namely that most of the streets are
narrowly, but fairly well paved, and most of the houses are light
and built of wood. Among the streets, the one that runs from the
Seraglio to one side of the Hippodromus is the most beautiful, and
therefore serves for public entrances and exits. From this one can
understand why, when the by fire, thousands of houses, in a short
time, can be reduced to ashes. But there is also no lack of a great
number of open buildings, which are very thickly built of stones.
For the rest, one need not look here for regular houses or streets;
for to the Turks this would seem much too uniform, just as the
uneven ground, which alternates with mountains and hills, would not
permit this.
Among
the open buildings, one must certainly mention the Seraglio first.
This word is indeed of a general meaning among the Turks, so that it
is also used of the Palaces of the Grands of the Court, and of
foreign Ambassadors; but if one uses it without an adjunct, one
understands by it the residence of the Turkish Emperor. The Turks
therefore call it Padischah Serai, the Imperial Castle. Concerning
the laying, the necessary has already been mentioned in advance.
Constantine the Great, as some have supposed, had his residence at
another place, which is still shown. This is known under the name of
the Palace of the Blaconers, but of which nothing remains but ruined
walls and a few damaged marble pillars. The present Serail has a
very pleasant view; to the southeast it has the bay of Nicea, Asia,
and especially Scutari; to the northeast the beautiful regions of
the Channel, which comes from the Black Sea, and the suburbs,
Fondukli, Tophana, Pera, Galata, which on the other side of the
Channel from the harbor, are built almost gradually in height on the
mountains. It forms in itself, including the gardens, a moderate
city; is surrounded by a high wall, on which, after the canals, on
the rocky and stone-covered parapet, many cannons lie on Lavettes.
These cannons are only fired at the Emperor's arrival to the Throne,
at the delivery of a Sultana, the two Beyrams, and at public joyous
deeds in time of war. For at the Emperor's games, and other less
important occasions, the cannons serve from Tophana, (Top Chaäneh)
the armory and Kis-Käläh: and when a Janistar is
strangled, it is, for the present time, customary to fire a cannon
shot from and the citadel Rumeli-Hhifar. The inner seraglio is
covered with leaves, but the upper decorations, such as the knobs,
the half moons, etc., are gilded. On the forecourts and in its
gardens there is a great multitude of cypresses; which all gives it
a magnificent display from the outside. From the inside it has no
such beauty. The entrance to the first square is reasonably high and
wide, and is the main gate, which is certainly worth seeing. This
main gate of the first square of the Seraglio the Turks call Bah
Humajun or the Majestic Gate, and have great respect for it. At the
entrance into it the Dschjebehdschiv (Armourers and Harness Makers)
have their Armour House, in which the helmets, sabres, guns, suits
of armour, and all kinds of war supplies are kept according to the
old and new manner. Through this gate the public entrances and exits
of the Emperors, the Grands of the Empire, and the Ambassadors pass.
In front of it, on one side, is the former Sophia Church, and on the
other side a very beautiful Fountain. After the entrance, which is
occupied by a guard of Guards, a fairly large, much longer than
broader, but very irregular and badly paved Square opens up; further
on the left hand is the Mint, a hideous building; on the right are
the stables, a large hospital, in a word, all that which belongs to
the Seraglio in a remote way in buildings for people and cattle.
Here one also finds the Court Mosque. At a distance of about 1000
paces, calculated from the outer gate, comes the second gate. This
is even more ingenious, than the first, and is also guarded by
Guards. Here one comes to the second Square, which is not as large,
as the first, but is more beautiful. The buildings around are not of
the same height. Some rest on pillars, under which one can walk dry,
others do not. In this Square the Grand Vizier, and the principal
State and Court servants mount their horses, and descend from it;
while the other First Names and Europeans, on the days when audience
is granted, do so on the first, near the gate to the second. In the
middle is a beautiful Fountain, which is shaded by many Cypress and
wild mulberry trees. At this place, in former times, the heads of
the Grand of the Empire, the Pasha, and those who fell from grace,
were cut off. Almost directly opposite the second gate, a stone, not
inconsiderable building with a corner projects. This is the Divan:
it is higher than the other buildings. In the lower story are two,
not very high halls, which form two vaults, which rest on marble
pillars, and are joined above by a stone baluster. The arch of the
vault makes, above, a distinct division; but below is a free
passage, (*) whose posts, and especially the upper parts, are quite
well sculptured. In the front Hall are the principal State Servants,
in the other the scribes, the accountants, and the treasurers. Above
these two halls stood the Sultan, and watched when any one of the
Court was to be tried, and there, wishing to show mercy to the
condemned, he gave a sign with his handkerchief. From here one
comes, on the right hand, to the third Square, but the entrance to
which is forbidden to all who are not Turks, and even to these, if
they do not belong to the Court, or are expressly called in, and of
which therefore nothing can be said. From the outside they appear to
be many and large, but irregularly built houses, which converge in
Domes, covered with leaves. For the rest, here is the proper
residence of the Emperor and his wives, and ends with the extremity
of the ground, where the harbour unites with the other waters. Here
are several Kiosks, being a kind of Balconies, built outside, where
the Sultan and Sultans take fresh air. One can indeed see from
several houses in Galata and Pera, some parts of the Seraglio; but
it is accompanied by mortal danger, if someone, to satisfy his
curiosity, wanted to use a telescope, and there are examples, that
people, who had done so, were hanged for that reason.
Besides
this Main Seraglio, there is, almost in the middle of the city,
another old one, which Mahomet II built, of a fairly wide
circumference, and, like the convents of women, surrounded by a high
wall. From it, the concubines of the previous Emperors, who have
brought sons into the world, are never married off.
The
number of Mosques in Constantinople is unusually large. In general
it is estimated at 3 or 4 thousand: (*) but it is difficult to
determine the exact number of the other Mosques, except for the
Imperial ones. The principal of them, or the Dschjamis, stand apart
in large enclosed places, which are generally planted with Cypress
trees, and furnished with fountains; and these Mosques are roofed
with lead, and adorned within with marble, or other costly pillars.
- The oldest and most famous of all, as regards the order of
architecture, is that which, in the time of the Christian emperors,
was called the Church of St. Sophia, and is considered larger than
St. Peter's Church at Rome. (*) Before the Turks took possession it
seems to have been larger than it is now. The form is square, and
each side by the third half a hundred common paces long. The Dome
rests on pillars. of various marbles. The 4 Menarets or towers Selim
II had raised, with the fore-end, of a different construction order.
It stands quite free, and is surrounded by a Hall, as if by an
ambulatory. Of these, all the other Mosques are but Copies, except
that they are larger or smaller, or more expensively constructed,
and have fewer or more Towers. The Mosques of Selim, Mahmud, Achmet,
Solyman, of the Sultana Valide, of the Mother of Mahomet IV, and of
Bajazet are, furthermore, the most famous, and are called Imperial
Mosques, from which it is evident, that they have more than one
Tower. They are mostly covered with lead, and the knobs and
half-moons above are gilded. - The Grand Lord is accustomed,
according to the row, now to say his Friday prayers in this, then
again in one of the other Imperial Mosques. - Two particular
Mosques, in which the Dervish observe their supposed worship, will
be spoken of in the section of the Mohammedan Religion. By the
Imperial Mosques, for instance the Sophie Mosque, are also the
burial places of the Emperors. These are small, square buildings,
built of white marble, and provided with towers, which are called
Kubbe' or Turbe' after the Dome. The graves in them are closed off
by a fairly long gate. The Imperial body lies in the middle of a
large marble coffin, broader at the head than at the feet. Over this
lies a silk, in some cases a stitched spry, and at each end stands
an unusually thick and high wax candle. The women and children have
their place around it. The coffin of a woman is covered with only a
spry, whereas that of a Prince has, at the head, a Turban, by the
equipment of which one can distinguish the naturally dead from the
strangled. Alms are distributed to the poor at these cemeteries, to
pray for the repose of the souls.
The
Emperor has, besides the Seraglio at Constantinople, others at Pera
and Scutari, which he is accustomed to visit, but not to make his
permanent residence there, not to mention the multitude of
pleasure-houses and castles, both on the Channel and inland. That at
Pera is also called the Seraglio of the Idschochlans, because the
Sons of the Chiefs of the Empire, and other Young Men, whom the
Emperor is fond of, are educated and educated there. The seven
Towers form almost the same thing at Constantinople, which with us
is a Citadel. They bear that name in fact; for on their walls stand
seven fairly high and with leaves covered towers of the old order of
construction. They provide at the same time for a State and Military
dungeon of the Court. Previously the treasure of the Mosques would
have been kept there, although this is no longer done, because the
remainder of that must be delivered to the Myry (the Finance
Chamber). Since the time of Murad III the treasures have been kept
in the Seraglio. Otherwise, according to circumstances and the good
pleasure of the Court, those Princes of the blood were also locked
up there, against whom the Emperor had taken a suspicion; as well as
the deposed Emperors, as was the case with Mustapha; but usually the
most important prisoners of war, the Ambassadors of other Powers,
when a war with them broke out, and the Princes of Wallachia and
Moldavia, when they fell into disgrace. It goes without saying that
they are of a reasonably large circumference. Many of the deposed
State servants do not enter, as those who, after the deposition,
remain safely in their houses at Constantinople, except the Grand
Viziers, who either forfeit their lives, or are banished to this or
that island of the Archipelago, and must remain there until they
are, possibly, recalled, and put back into service.
The
Vizirate or Palace of the Grand Vizier is indeed a spacious and
fairly high building, but built only of wood, and has often been
burnt down; but the stairs in it are much better than in the usual
Turkish buildings, and the audience-halls are very large and airy,
and the Tapestries very skilfully worked.
The
Hippodromus, in Turkish Afmeidan, is an unusually large plain. The
meaning of the Greek and Turkish word indicates that it is adapted
for a race-course for horses, and it does serve that purpose. It is
a real ornament for so large a city, and at least three times as
long as it is broad; the width is now more than two hundred paces.
Several Palaces stand around it, and especially the Mosque of Achmet
with 6 towers, having a regular forecourt, which makes a magnificent
sight. On this spot stand two Obelisks; the first of which is of
Egyptian, reddish granite, stands on a large pedestal, said to be 50
feet high, is quadrangular at the top as if converging into a spire,
and is full of symbolic figures, which have remained fairly
undamaged. On the pedestal are also Greek and Latin inscriptions,
which indicate that he was raised on the spot where he was buried,
by order of Emperor Theodosius the Great, and that he was given the
present pedestal. The second is round, higher than the one just
mentioned, and thinner, but equal above and below, and made of
workpieces in the shape of millstones, 9 feet and 4 inches thick,
but without inscriptions, and badly damaged by fire. There is
another, though somewhat damaged, copper, 15 feet high Pillar of
three snakes, like a roll of tobacco, coiled together, with open
throats, but the time and insight of the raising is unknown. (*) It
runs, at the top, pointed together up to the throats; but the heads
are no longer there. Otherwise this plain is the usual meeting-place
of the rioters, as soon as they want to make their riot openly
known.
The
Bird-parlour of the Great Lord would have been a Greek Church before
this, and has, for the rest, nothing remarkable. - There are two
Casers for the Janistas; the new one, where their Aga lives, is very
spacious, and reasonably well, but the old one, although small, is
very magnificently built, the entrances to it, especially the upper
parts or Thawams, being heavily gilded. But, because many Janistas
have wives, and do needlework, so live in their own houses; only the
unmarried stay there. The public buildings also include the
Besestans, which are the vaulted shops of the merchants and various
workmen, especially the fine artists, such as goldsmiths and
jewellers; just as the trading places themselves are called Basar.
In Turkey, especially in large places, the merchants and workers are
not spread out in the cities, but are bound to fixed places. The
merchants, in silk and cloth, the druggists, the goldsmiths, etc.
have their special buildings, where they, in divided shops, put
their goods for sale, or work. The great Besestan is an unusually
spacious square hall, whose thick walls are built of hewn stone, and
whose very high vault rests on strong masonry pillars. Around it and
against the walls are the shops, (*) At the Basars there one can get
everything that the four continents produce. When they are lighted
up by lamps at night, at the time of Donalma (Feast for the delivery
of a Sultana) or Ramasan (Lent), it presents a most glorious sight.
- The Chans and Caravanseras are a kind of lodging-houses or inns. I
say, with fore-day, a kind; for they are not proper inns, because
one finds neither furniture, nor food, nor fodder in them, but must
provide for it himself. The former are, properly speaking, in the
cities; the latter on the highways, where, at a stretch of road, one
sometimes finds small villages or towns. On these Chans there are,
as a rule, neither doors nor windows, but only the bare walls, and
on them, all around, a height, like a parapet, to sit and sleep;
sometimes hearths for the people, and cribs for the animals; at the
best also a fountain built of stone. The traveller must provide for
wood, beds and food himself. The most beautiful is called
Valide'-Chan, after its founder, the Mother of Emperor Mahomet IV.
It is, like most Chans of this kind, a large square building, having
a spacious inner court, and being provided with a hall, as a
gallery. Behind it, on the ground, are the warehouses for the
storage of the merchants' goods. The stairs are very high, which
lead to the upper floor, there being also a corridor, from which one
goes into the rooms, which are reasonably large, and equal each
other. In each is a chimney. The walls of all the Chans consist of
buildings, or very thick baked bricks; the rooms, warehouses and
corridors are vaulted, and the roofs are either provided with good
terraces, or consist of domes, which, like this Valide'-Chan, are
covered with lead. In the middle of the courtyard stands a beautiful
fountain.
Baths,
in which the Levant women spend a great deal of time, are numerous
and splendid in Constantinople. Those of any importance are found to
be built thickly and strongly, in the manner of a dome, which is
covered with lead, in which glass balls, the size of a human head,
are placed, so that the light may fall through, because there are no
windows on the sides. On the inside, all around, are the sophas.
Emperors and wealthy people place honour in them, and supposed
religious empires make a merit of having such built.
About
in the middle of the city lies the square slave market, on the sides
of which are found all around partitions for the white slaves, whose
wives, when sold, are very expensively dressed, and are sold for
500, to 1000 and more piastres; the black ones, on the other hand,
sit almost naked, in the middle of the market. Such slave markets
are also in the great cities of Turkey. Touching people cannot enter
them without pity and horror, when they see creatures of their own
kind, which according to the destiny of the Creator should be
rightly free, being traded as merchandise and animals.
An
excellent relic of antiquity is still found, which has possibly been
spared, because it is under the earth. It is a subterranean vault,
which, it is said, would have been a Cistern or rain-tank. One
climbs down by a common wooden staircase, and is surprised to find
almost a labyrinth under the ground. The several, but united vaults
rest on 450 pillars, which are 100 feet high, if not higher. The
ground is very marshy, and therefore at the place where one has to
go, it is covered with planks. The light enters through several
openings from above. It serves for the present to wind the silk in
it.
The
Fountains in the principal places in Constantinople are magnificent,
and therefore look very well. Their circumference is about 20 feet
square, and on each side are pipes. There are always cups of water
ready to drink, for the filling of which, expressly, men are
appointed. These small buildings are of marble, and the front is
worked with foliage of flowers and horns and gilded.
On
this occasion it must also be noted, that, except for the cisterns,
there is no other water in Constantinople, than that which is
brought there by aqueducts, two or three miles long. And this is
also the reason, why, often, during dry summer months, there is a
great lack of water. In the neighbourhood of Belgrad, a village, at
the distance mentioned from the city, one sees therefore the
diligence of the Ancients, to remedy such a defect. It is a delight,
almost every quarter-hour, to see a large or small water-conduit.
Before one comes from the city to this village, one finds a large
one of more than 20 arches; but somewhat to the side three, of which
the first goes through a broad valley, and has more than 40 arches;
the second through a narrower, but deeper, wherefore 3 rows of
arches one above the other were necessary; the third is indeed not
so long, as the former, but, because the valley is still deeper,
necessity demanded, that each of the 3 rows of arches was made still
higher. Here below is only one arch, but of an astonishing height,
and the walls are about 20 feet thick. One can also, at the last
two, go over each ridge, and ride along regular roads. In these
lonely places one is amazed by the beauty of nature in the deep
valleys, and the art of man to lead the water over them. These
water-pipes
were indeed laid by the Greek Emperors; but, because they had
suffered much through the wars, as well as neglect, they were
restored by Solyman, the founder of the great Mosque of his name in
Constantinople.
Christian
churches are in a great multitude in Constantinople: but they may
not have towers or large bells. They must either be covered by walls
from view, or have the appearance of other buildings from the
outside. On the inside they may be as beautiful as they wish. - The
Greeks have, in the city and its jurisdiction, 22 churches, large
and small together. The Patriarchal church, but which, like all the
others, from the outside only shows a house, and is also much
smaller than the residence of the Patriarch, which forms a
reasonably spacious building, does not look bad. The bodies of St.
Euthymia and the Empress Theodora are shown in two coffins covered
with velvet. — The Armenians also have several, but not so
many churches as the Greeks. The principal is the Georgian church,
but which is very commonly built. Adjoining it are two chapels, in
one of which, they say, the general council was held. The Armenian
Patriarch has no fixed seat, but at the principal churches his
apartments, with whose habitation he is accustomed to interchange. —
At Pera there are four public Roman churches, and two chapels; for
at Constantinople itself they have none. Two of the first are parish
churches, namely, that of St. Mary, which belongs to the Barefooted
(Minores Observantes Reformati), and of St. Anthony, which belongs
to the Franciscans proper (Minores Conventuales); then the Church of
the Trinitarian, and finally the Church of St. Louis or the
Capuchins, which originally was nothing else than the Chapel of the
French Ambassador. Among the chapels is that which belongs to the
Fathers of the Holy Land of the Barefoot Orders, and one of later
foundation, which serves as an inn for the Capuchins, destined for
the Georgian mission. At Galata there are three public churches. The
Parish Church bears the name of the Apostle Peter, and is served by
the Dominicans, as is the Georg Church of the Capuchins, and the
Benedict Church of the Jesuits. Moreover, each Roman Ambassador has
a special Chapel, with the Parochial Right, in his Palace and his
own Chaplains. - Three Protestant Ambassadors keep Embassy
preachers, namely the English, Swedish and Dutch. In the Palaces of
the first and the last are Chapels for religious service. In the
Palace of the second, religious service is only held in a common
hall. The Dutch Ambassador may not use a newly built Chapel for
religious service, but as a Magazine, and has therefore, in order to
prevent great inconveniences, had to submit a written assurance to
the Porte. In that hall, where the Evangelical worship is held by
the Swedish Ambassador, there is, within a partition, an Outaar and
Pulpit placed.
At
Constantinople one finds Europeans of almost all nations: especially
a large number from Geneva, who enjoy the protection of France. All
the Ambassadors live in Pera; but the Merchants, for the convenience
of Commerce, in Galata. But one is, in several respects, more
definite there, than in Smyrna, but in the main the legal liberties
are the same. The cemetery of the Europeans is outside Pera, and
entirely open.
When
one sails on the water at Constantinople; then one has, besides the
magnificent layout of that city and regions, the special sight of
thousands of small vessels, serving to transport people from one
place to another. They are called Kayken there; the Greeks call them
τεραμίδια (vessels
for crossing), and the Europeans, by abbreviation, Permes. They are
long and narrow, and partly very costly ornamented, and besides
uncommonly light. One can move forward quickly with them; for the
Kayks, or rowers, are handy: but one can also be knocked over very
easily with them. Everything here has its order. The Kayks for the
Court are gilded all around inside and outside above the water; for
other First Names white outside, and for the rest painted black. The
Sultan's Kayk is rowed forward with 13, but that of the Grand Vizier
with 12 pairs of oars. The Grands of the Court, as the Pashas and
those equal in rank with them, the Ambassadors, as well as the
Russian Resident, since the times of Rumanzow, at the peace of 1739,
sail with 6 or 7 pairs of oars, according to each one's liking.
Other persons may not have more than 4 pairs of oars; just as these
are also not allowed a deck over the Kayken: and in the
neighbourhood of the Seraglio one may not even hold a sunshade above
one's head, because this is considered as something that would
diminish the Emperor's Highness.
Whereof
such a large city was meanwhile provided with necessary provisions,
is not inappropriate to speak here.
The
European land side would not be nearly sufficient for this; but this
deficiency is remedied by the great supply from all sides. Nearly
all the countries situated on the Black Sea, and especially the
Crimea, Wallachia and Moldavia, send an innumerable number of
vessels with all kinds of provisions to this capital. If these are
stopped by contrary winds, or run into a storm, or are lost; then
Constantinople is in distress. Asia also supplies very many
necessities. Finally, the islands of the Archipelago, Syria and
Egypt supply the rest. From this last kingdom comes the almost
indispensable rice for the Turks, and via Egypt the so-called Levant
or actually Arabian coffee is also transported to Constantinople.
Therefore, in time of peace, this Residency cannot lack supplies. If
the wind is south; then the Archipelago, and the countries situated
on the Mediterranean Sea offer the necessities: but if the wind
blows north; then the supply of the Black Sea remedies the
deficiency. For the rest, the waters near Constantinople are rich in
fish, lobsters, oysters and other sea creatures.
As
nearly all nations of the world may trade in Constantinople, it is,
of course, very extensive. Indeed, the large and small ships, and of
various makes, lie near Constantinople, and on both sides of the
Channel of the sweet waters, as well as on the Channel running from
the Black Sea, for a length of 2 or 3 German miles, everywhere so,
and often so close together, that their masts, from a distance,
resemble a forest. - The Channel of the sweet waters is the most
splendid harbour, which nature has made without art, having about 2
miles in circumference, and of which the two banks are, seldom, an
eighth part of a German mile apart. The ground is indeed boggy, but
nevertheless firm, and so deep, that not only warships lay there,
but also large merchant ships can come so near the land, that one
can go out, by means of a plank. Because it is very difficult and
dangerous for medium-sized ships, because of the strong current in
the Channel, to go out of the harbour into the sea of Marmora;
so they must first, after Besiktas, cross above Tophana, and sail
from there. The Channel, which runs downwards from the Black Sea,
is, certainly, one of the principal things worth seeing in the
world. From Tophana it runs upwards, by four German miles, to the
Black Sea. By two miles it is, for the most part, of such width,
that medium-sized guns, fired from both sides, can cover it. On the
European and Asian sides one sees several Imperial and other
Palaces, Mansions, and fine villages, which lie so close together,
that one, especially on the first side, hardly knows where one
begins and the other ends. They lie so close to the Channel, that
one can step out of the house into the barque; but the others are
built up against the wine and other mountains. At Terappia and
Bujukdere most of the Ambassadors and Europeans have their homes. Of
the French also many have theirs on the Princes' Islands, which lie
about 2 German miles from Constantinople in the Nicene Gulf, and are
inhabited only by Greeks, who have there the freedom of churches,
monasteries, towers and bells. But the most splendid pleasure-houses
are gradually falling into ruin, because the heirs of the Grands,
and even of the Viziers, are not rich enough to maintain them. The
voyage on this Channel furnishes one with beautiful and varied
views, which were worthy of being depicted. It is often as if
covered with dolphins, which come round the barges, and play
together; not to say, that a certain kind of migratory birds, in an
incredible multitude, are constantly flying up and down. - In order
that Constantinople, from the side of the Black Sea, may not be so
easily troubled by the enemies; Thus, at the distance of a large
German mile, 2 Castles are built on each side, of which that which
lies on the European ground, is called Rumeli-Hisar, but which on
the Asiatic ground is called Anatoli-Hisar, both consisting only of
walls without ramparts, and planted with Cannons, and were founded
by Muhammed II, before he undertook the siege of that capital, in
order to cut it off from communication with the Black Sea. The Canal
there is not much more than a quarter of a mile wide. But in a
serious attack they would be as little serviceable as the
Dardanelles and Castles on the other side of the city. The Emperor
uses them to keep the State prisoners in them, and also to have the
rebellious Janistas there taken their lives, and especially of the
former such as they do not wish to put in the 7 Towers. After the
mouth of the Channel, which is about half a mile wide, and 2 miles
distant from the preceding one, there are 2 more castles, called
Rumeli-Käläh and Anatoli-Käläh, built by Mürad
IV. In the war against the Russians, in the year 1770, they were
still provided with Batteries; just as, at the same time, 2 strong
Castles were built by the Knight Tott, one on the Asian, and the
other opposite on the European ground, very near the mouth of the
Black Sea. — Near the mouth lies, on the European side, the
village of Fanaratti, near which, on a small rock surrounded by the
sea, stands the supposed pillar of Pompey. From thence to the
above-mentioned village of Belgrad, there stands, in the open field,
a kind of a fairly wide, square and thick Tower, which is called the
Tower of Ovid, because that Poet, it is said, would have kept his
residence there. There is no roof on it, and moreover it is very
dilapidated; that he has nothing, which would be remarkable, to see;
just as 'there were around, before now, more such towers built, it
seems, at the time of the Cosak robberies, to protect these regions
against them.
Of
Constantinople, one will be able to form a complete idea, by the
accompanying illustration of the ground plan, to whose elucidation
the following statement of numbers and figures serves.
A.
The Seraglio.
B.
The entrance in the first square.
C.
The entrance in the second square.
D.
The Divan.
E.
The entrance in the third square, or in the inner Seraglio.
F.
The Auditorium.
G.
The Imperial residences and buildings.
H.
The Harim, or residence of the Emperor's wives.
I.
Residences of the Idschoglans, (Servants) and other persons of the
inner Seraglio.
K.
The Mint.
L.
The Tower, from which the Emperor, without being seen, can see the
Ambassadors riding to the Vizier.
M.
The Porte, or the Serail of the Grand Vizier.
N.
Bostandschi Kapi, or gardeners' gate.
O.
The Gate of the black carved ones.
P.
Bujuk-Kapi, the great Gate, through which the Emperor embarks on his
ship.
Q.
Kiosks, pleasure or garden halls.
R.
Stables.
S.
Eski-Serail, the old Serail.
T.
Ejub-Dschami.
V.
Fanale, or lighthouse for the ships.
Names
of the gates around the harbour.
1.
Bagdschjeh-gate.
2.
Baluk-Basar-gate.
3.
Sindan-gate. 4. Odun Gate.
5.
Ajasmah Gate.
6.
Uen-Kapan Gate.
7.
Dschjäbäly Gate.
8.
Ajan Gate.
9.
Jengy Gate.
10.
Padry Gate.
11.
Fener Gate.
12.
Balad Gate.
13.
A'ywan-Sferay Gate.
Names
of the gates towards the sea.
14.
Achar Gate.
15.
Tschadlady Gate.
16.
Kum Gate.
17.
Jengy Gate [as 9?].
18.
Daud-Pascha Gate.
19.
Samathya Gate.
20.
Narly Gate
Names
of the gates on the land side.
21.
Bricked-up gate. (porta aurea.)
22.
Jedi-Kuli-Kapi.
23.
Bricked-up gate.
24.
Selivri-Kapi.
25.
Jeni-Kapi. Here was Mahomet's attack.
26.
Top-Kapan. at the siege and conquest.
27.
Edrene-Kapi. of Constantinople.
28.
Bricked-up gate from the Palace of Constantine.
29.
Egiri-Kapi.
Mosques
and Churches.
30.
Hagia-Sofia-Dschami.
31.
Sultan-Achmet-Dschami.
32.
Sultan Bajazet-Dschami.
33.
Jengi, or Valide-Dschami.
34.
Sultan-Mahomet-Dschami.
35.
Sultan-Solyman-Dschami.
36.
Sultan-Selim-Dschami.
37.
Schech-zade-Dschami.
38.
Kutschuk-Hagia-Sophia-Dschami.
39.
Ali-Pacha-Dschami.
40.
Edrene-Kapi-Dschami.
41.
Small Mosques, in all quarters of the city.
42.
Greek Patriarchal Church.
Some
other remarkable places and buildings.
43.
Atmetaan, or Hippodromus.
44.
the great Obelisk, with 2 damaged Pillars.
45.
Ruins of the so-called burnt Pillars.
46.
Ed-Meïdan, Meat Hall.
47.
Horse Market.
48.
Vizir-Khan.
49.
Besestein.
50.
Large cistern.
51.
Large water tank.
52.
Water pipe.
53.
Ruined Palace of Constantine.
54.
Ruined Town Hall of the ancient Greeks.
55.
Bird enclosure.
56.
Madhouse.
57.
Sarfans, Leather Market.
58.
Egyptian Besestein.
59.
Idschoglan-Serai at Pera.
60.
Very beautiful Fountain on the plain at Tophana.
61.
Tophana, the building for the gun foundry.
(*)
The famous Danish traveller, Niebuhr, thinks the measuring stick on
the Map of Constantinople by Reben is too large. He found the
circumference of that city, without the suburbs, according to his
measurement, not more than thirteen thousand good paces, and
therefore not much more than two German miles in size. Perhaps one
can rely on him, here, much more than on the Lord of Reben, when he
had his Map before him.
(*)
The Ejubs-Moshee is the first that the Turks built in
Constantinople. Opposite the suburb in which it stands, between the
sweet waters and the Armoury, at the end of the harbour, is the
suburb of the Jews (Askjoy).
(*)
That there is a birdcage hanging in the Divan, at the top of the
ship, and in it a white dove, as some report, is unfounded.
(*)
At the time of Count Marsigli there were, in Constantinople, 485
principal mosques, among which seven Imperial ones; and in 4
thousand, 4 hundred, 85 quarters of the city inhabited by Turks,
there were, in each one or two common mosques, so that this last
number might well amount to 7 or 8 thousand. After his time, both
kinds of religious places have increased rather than decreased.
(*)
Concerning the first St. Sophie-church the writers do not agree at
all; but this is a settled matter, that Emperor Justinian, when it
had previously been burned down several times, and destroyed by
earthquakes, had increased the burdens, decorated it much more
beautiful and splendid than it was before, made the walls and vaults
of baked bricks, covered the inside with various precious marbles,
and the whole
(*)
When the Besestam or vaulted shops, at their usual time, are not
opened; then this is a sign, that 'there is already a commotion
among the people or certainly to be feared.
()??building,
at various places, fasten it with anchors. If it is not as large, as
the St. Peter's Church in Rome; then it follows immediately after
it. Although the Sophie-church is very large, and perhaps does not
yield to it in height; nevertheless it remarkably surpasses none in
length, for it is a cruciform church. The dome of the Sophie-church
is flat, and surpasses that of the Peters-church very much in beauty
and boldness of workmanship. This is indeed decorated with a great
deal of marble and paintings in mosaic work; but has not such fine
and precious pillars as none. Its form is square, and within the
walls the length is 42, but the breadth 38 fathoms. Thus Grelot
gives both, in his description and drawing, and it seems, that one
may rely on him here. If one fathom is reckoned at 6 feet, and
multiplied by it; then the length made 252, and the breadth 228
feet. This came pretty close to the statement of Gyllius, who places
one at 240, but this one at 230 feet, but at the same time says that
he had the measure taken by another.
(*)
Concerning this last pillar on the Hippodromus, some researchers of
antiquities assert that this monument was brought from the Temple at
Delphos, where it was dedicated to Apollo. — In the gardens of
the Seraglio, there is, otherwise, in the middle of the Cypresses,
another pillar, the inscription of which was made illegible some
time ago. Among the words that remain here and there, one can still
read: ob victos Gothos, (in memory of the victory over the Goths.)
It is thought that it originates from the time of Theodosius, if not
even of Constantin. (*) When the Besestam or vaulted shops are not
opened at their usual time; then this is a sign that a riot is
already brewing among the people or is certainly to be feared.
§. VII. Of the
Europeans in Turkey.
The Europeans, who
are called Franks in Turkey, are spread among the various principal
merchants. The name Franks probably comes from the warring peoples,
who in the so-called Holy Wars were to take the promised Land
(Palestine), and who consisted mostly of the then Franci. The
principal trading cities, where the Europeans settled with their
residence, are, in European Turkey, Constantinople, Adrianople and
Thessalonica, in Natolia or Asia Minor; Smyrna and Angora; in Syria,
Aleppo, Seyde, Jaffa, Ptolemais or St. Jean d'Acre; and in Egypt,
Greater Cairo and Alexandria. At other places of less importance in
Morea, Candia, Cyprus, the islands of the Archipelago, Barut,
Rosetto, etc., some nations, especially the French, as well as the
Venetians, of whom the former are, in general, the most numerous
among the Europeans in the Levant, also maintain warehouses.
Concerning these places, the necessary information has been stated
in § I. above.
Those Europeans now
have the liberty to trade in Turkey, whose government has concluded
a peace treaty with the Porte. These are the Roman-German Emperor,
the Russian Court, France, England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden,
Poland, Prussia, Venice and Naples. All these various Powers, Poland
excepted, have their ambassadors at Constantinople at the time; but
Poland sends there only on special occasions, for instance, when a
new Sultan has ascended the Throne, extraordinary Ambassadors. In
all the merchant cities one finds likewise Consuls or Agents, one of
whom, often, attends to the affairs of several nations.
Other Europeans are
not allowed to trade at all in the Turkish Territory, or must go
under the protection of a Power friendly to the Porte: formerly
Genoese were also in the Levant; but now they are no longer there
openly, but live, in such a case, under French or other protection.
For the rest, the
liberties are not small. The Europeans may observe all religious
ceremonies openly, that is, baptisms, marriages, burials, etc. This
is done even with persons, exalted above the common man, with more
stateliness, than elsewhere. At places where ships are moored,
equipped with artillery, the guns are discharged; the ships let the
pennants fly, and the flags on the flagpoles, kept in the houses of
the Consuls, are hoisted. But towers and bells are absolutely
forbidden. None of them can be forced to the Mahometan religion, and
if anyone, through imprudence or other circumstances, wishes to
oblige himself to do so, then the nation to which he belongs has the
right to question him three times solemnly before the Turkish
authorities. If he then answers by retracting his word, then he must
be extradited on the spot. The Europeans, and even their
ecclesiastical Persons, may also, in most places, go in their
ordinary dress. The disputes between persons of one Nation are
settled by its special Consuls; those of several Nations by their
Consuls; but the mixed disputes between Europeans and Turkish
subjects are, according to the treaties of peace made, also decided
between the Consuls and the Turkish Authorities. Each Nation has,
under its Ambassador or Consul, a proportionate settlement. It has
its Chaplains, Treasurers, Transcribers, Interpreters, Janistaries,
and, besides the members of its Nation, also its comrades among the
inhabitants of the Country, who are attached to it by means of a
Berat (Letter of Freedom), and on that account enjoy almost the same
privileges as they have themselves. The French must have a
certificate from the Chamber of Commerce at Marseilles, to carry on
Commerce, for a certain period, for instance ten or twelve years,
and when these years are over, they are obliged to return to France,
or to have it renewed. The trade is unusually large, and that all
the more, as there are few goods that are forbidden to import or
export. The taxes on the goods are very moderate, and set at three
per hundred. But, because this is an old stipulation, and the goods
are now almost three times higher in price, only two per cent is
paid by the bank. If a merchant is caught in subterfuge, he pays
double the tax as a penalty. This leniency not only surpasses, in a
natural and human fairness, the tolls of many Christian powers, but
also makes the trade flourish unusually. The shipping of the
Europeans is considerable, and is protected and promoted by the
warships and merchant ships of the Turks. The pirates on the
African, Greek, Nato and Syrian coasts nevertheless often make them
unsafe and dangerous. They especially take possession of the small
ships, either by cunning, or by suddenly attacking them, because
they are accustomed to approach them at night, and then with their
sabre in their fist.
The various nations
living together in Turkey live, as far as trade and conversation are
concerned, in good peace among themselves; but a familiar
intercourse has precisely no place. Each one among the Christians,
Jews and Turks limits himself to persons of his denomination, the
cause of this being not so much the religion, but rather the way of
life, which flows from it. Among the Easterners the women do not
take part in the companies in which men's sons come. They also live
quite differently in them, than the Europeans. Instead of that with
us many speak at once, so that the noise, even in an average
company, is quite great, so people speak seldom there. It is
considered improper to interrupt each other. Most sit quietly, under
a pipe of tobacco, and let their thoughts go over one thing or
another. The residence of the Europeans, in most of the places of
the Levant cited, is divided between the city and the country. They
are in general, and therefore also the Ambassadors and Consuls,
accustomed to spend the summer months outside the cities, both to
take fresher air, and to enjoy more liberty, and to protect
themselves better in case of a possible prevailing plague. Their
country houses, as regards natural graces, far surpass our
artificially made pleasure-houses. The alternation of mountains,
valleys, fountains, woods, bushes, etc., furnishes uncommonly
enchanting views, and the Europeans live there without ceremonial
constraint, with the enjoyment of all the ease in walking, making
short excursions, fishing and hunting. — The Ambassadors and
Consuls in Turkey represent distinguished persons. Their goods,
coming from abroad, are not examined, but they receive them without
cost, and without being opened and examined. - The Turks make no
distinction between an Ambassador and Envoy, and between an ordinary
or extraordinary Envoy; but use for all the name Eldschi. - Their
Palaces are filled with various persons belonging to the mission,
besides with Servants, Interpreters, Janistaries, etc.; their
Audiences with the Grand Vizier and the Grand Lord take place very
seldom, because everything must pass in writing through the hands of
the Interpreter of the Porte; yes, they must, before the Audience,
deliver everything in writing, so that the Turks can consider it
beforehand: but, when they take place, with all the greater pomp;
and the visits which one Ambassador pays to another, are also not
without many solemnities, for instance, that, on their entry into a
Palace, a small bell is rung, and they, like the Consuls, Janistas
and Interpreters, let them go or ride before them. Before this,
however, there was more Honour and Dignity associated with it, than
now, since the Ambassadors, because so many Courts have sought the
friendship of the Porte, which the Turks regard as a kind of homage,
are very common and therefore little esteemed. (*) Decent people
are, in the Levant, well received not only by their own, but also by
other nations. Generally there prevails a courtesy which is found
there only, and not in the most civilised countries. All Europeans
there regard each other as countrymen and good friends; wherefore a
traveller has a very good time at the place where he stays.
(*)
The Ambassadors, Consuls, and the Persons belonging to their nation
have great reason to behave cautiously and regularly in Turkey.
There one forgets less, than in other places, the mistakes once
committed; and those that one commits in particular, are, as a rule,
put on the account of his whole nation.
§. VIII. Of the
Audiences of the European Ambassadors and Consuls to the Turks.
The European
Ambassadors, at Constantinople, observe a certain rank, according to
which the Consuls in the various maritime cities of Turkey direct
themselves. First are the Envoys, namely the French, the English,
the Venetian and the Dutch; then come the Envoys, of the German
Emperor, who bears the name of Internuncio, the Swedish, the Danish,
the Prussian, the Russian, who is called Resident, and the Naples.
The last, in order not to detract from the Ceremonial of his Court,
goes to the Audiences eleven days after the others. - The visits of
the Consuls to the Cadis are the least frequent. Two or four
Janistas with their state caps, and four or five foot long staves,
and behind them the Interpreters, go in pairs before the Consul, who
follows at a certain distance, and according to the Consulate is
accompanied by more or fewer servants; whereupon the journey is
concluded by those sons of the men who are under his protection. On
arrival at the Mechkeme (meeting-place) he is conducted into the
audience-room, whither he has had a state-chair brought, and where,
after the Kadi has come and has taken his place on his sofa, raised
by some cushions, he sits down. All the other persons present remain
mostly standing. After the compliments and a short conversation, the
Kadi gives a sign to his Attendants, two of whom place embroidered
handkerchiefs on the laps of the Kadi and the Consul, instead of a
napkin, and two others hand each a cup of Coffee with Jams, which is
likewise offered to the principal Europeans, as well as to the
Officials of the Kadi. Then the Sorbet is handed over in large
porcelain bowls. Then, to put an end to the visit, the Attendants,
at a repeated sign, bring silver or gold sprinkling-pots filled with
fragrant water, with which they sprinkle the hands of those who have
had the honour of drinking Coffee, and then the Kadi and Consul,
holding a handkerchief over their heads, but the others without such
a handkerchief, incense with Aloe. At the farewell, at which the
Kadi remains seated, the Consul is honoured with a stitched
handkerchief or other handkerchief, as are also two or three of the
principal persons of his retinue. The audience of a Consul with a
Pasha differs from that with a Kadi only in that the latter receives
him sitting, and instead of handkerchiefs distributes Kastans. - The
Ambassadors of such Powers, who have many ships in Turkish waters,
pay an annual visit to the Captain Pasha or Grand Admiral, before he
sails with the Ottoman fleet to the Archipelago in the summer, in
order to recommend to him the ships of their nation. But this visit
is a trifle, compared with the Audience with the Grand Vizier, which
all Ambassadors have, on their arrival and departure, as well as on
all changes of Emperors and Viziers. In other cases an Ambassador is
not easily granted an Audience, but the matters are settled in
writing, and the proposals, in Latin or Italian, are handed to the
Interpreter of the Porte, who translates them verbatim, and must
deliver his translation with the Original to the Porte; and this is
followed again in writing, and in the Turkish language, by the
answer with a verbatim translation from that Interpreter of the
Porte; who forfeits his head, if there be but one word wanting in
that translation, or if he does not conceal the Secret. But no
Ambassador requests an audience, except in cases of necessity, in
order to save the expense of several thousand guilders, which it
incurs.
Because with the
Turks the main matters are settled early; Thus the Ambassador sets
out at about 4 o'clock. First go 12 or 24 Janistas, in pairs in
front, with Ceremonial staffs in their hands, and caps on their
heads, from which, at the back, hangs a white stripe of nearly 2
ells long and a quarter wide; then follow 5 or 7 beautifully adorned
hand-horses, at the head of which is the groom on horseback; then 12
to 24 Servants, accepted by the Ambassador, dressed in the manner of
the country; the House-Servants dressed in European style, preceded
by the Door-keeper; 4 or 8 Chamber-Servants with the Steward; the
Interpreter; the Secretary of the Ambassador, who carries the
credentials of his Court on a precious cushion; furthermore the
Ambassador himself, either on foot, or on horseback, or in a bier,
and when he has Heiduks, surrounded by them; the castle makes his
retinue, which consists of his nation, and also many foreigners, who
wish to see this ceremony. At extraordinary Audiences, when the
Ambassador has to deliver letters from his Court, he is also
accompanied by the Tschausch-Baschy (Chief Master of Ceremonies) and
several Servants of the Porte, as well as by several Janistas. This
journey goes as far as the Canal of the [zoete] water, or the
Harbour, where the Vizier has sent a sufficient number of Kayken to
ferry him across. On the other side is the Tschausch-Baschi, to
receive the Envoy. Both, with the principals of the latter's
retinue, are brought into a small, very common house, set apart for
the purpose, where they are offered Coffee. During this time the
Grand Vizier sends the horses to fetch the Envoy. Having mounted on
horseback, the journey continues in the order aforesaid, with this
difference only, that the Tschausch-Baschi rides at the right hand
of an Envoy, as an Ambassador does not readily permit him to do so,
but either lets him ride ahead, or at least can demand that someone
of his retinue rides at his left hand. When one has entered the
Vizier's Palace, the Ambassador is then brought into a hall by the
Interpreter of the Porte, in order to report it to the Vizier. A
while afterward the Ambassador is led into the Auditorium. The
Ceremonial is here very strictly calculated, so as not to yield to
each other; wherefore the Vizier does not enter by the door through
which the Ambassador has entered. This Auditorium, in which he is
received, is built exactly according to the four points of the sky.
It is somewhat longer than it is wide. To the north and east are the
windows. To the south is the door for the Ambassador, and to the
west that for the Vizier. Along the said windows are precious
Sophas, or Eastern couches. In the north-eastern corner is a height,
by means of a double Sopha for the Grand Vizier; before it, at the
distance of three paces, a chair without back or support for the
Ambassador; for since the Grand Vizier will not give him his right
hand on the Sofa, and he will not sit on his left hand, such a
middle way has been devised. On the right side of the door through
which the Ambassador enters, a row of the principal State servants
stands near the Ambassador's chair; and a similar row also stands on
the left side of the door through which the Vizier enters, up to his
seat. The Ambassador enters first, and passes through the middle,
but does not sit down, but remains standing until the Vizier comes
and takes his seat, because otherwise he would have to get up when
he entered; but his retinue may not pass through the middle, but
must pass between the row and the glasses, and thus step behind the
Ambassador. A moment later the doors of the Vizier are opened, and
he then also passes through the middle, to his seat, at the same
time receiving the Salam or a Turkish Vivat, three times, by all the
Turks present. Such a cheer also the other Viziers, Pachas and the
Captain-Pacha, make of theirs on solemn occasions. While he is
sitting down, the Ambassador also sits down, and they make each
other a sort of Compliment, being in the conversation of the Grand
Vizier with the Ambassador the Interpreter of the Porte the
translator. The Grand Men of the Court, and the retinue of the
Ambassador remain standing. The latter presents his credentials to
the Vizier, and also receives the written answer to them; for
everything has been settled beforehand. At the Audience no business
is transacted at all, as the bystanders would hear everything; but
only indifferent things are talked about, and after a few moments
Coffee with Jams is handed over, followed by a sort of Sorbet or
sweet drink. With fragrant water one is sprinkled on the head, hands
and clothing. Since there are now very many people who bring and
carry out these things, and each, according to Levantine custom,
receives only one cup of Coffee; so everything is settled very
quickly. At the same time the Kastans, or supposed Garments of
Honor, are also put on the Envoy and his retinue. These are of
tree-wool and interwoven flock-silk, thinly wrought, mostly whitish,
with a few misshapen pale yellow flowers. They resemble ours well,
except that the sleeves hang almost to the ground, and are so narrow
that the arm cannot pass through; for which reason they have an
opening at the bottom, through which the arm may be put. Give a sign
to the Grand Vizier that the perfume should be brought, and if the
Ambassador and his retinue are incensed with it; then it is a sign
that they will part. The Ambassador then stands up, and bows to the
Vizier, who also bows, but remains seated; he goes out of the palace
of the Vizier, (where, as in the Seraglio at the Audience with the
Grand Lord, the Turks show him and his retinue a respect, according
as his Court is respected by the Porte,) in the same order as he
came. The Audience itself lasts only half an hour, and the Europeans
are there, as also at the Audiences with the Grand Lord, covered
with their hats.
As for these last
Audiences; they are certainly the most solemn. The journey on the
other side of the Channel of sweet waters is the same; but must go
up to that to be done under the illumination of torches, because,
except during the longest days, it is usually still dark. The
crossing is then, because of the darkness, difficult, and one has
work to find the horses. At daybreak one arrives at the Palace of
the Vizier. Here one must wait in the open air, whatever the
weather, on horseback. This often takes a fairly long time. For many
Grands have to meet with the Vizier, to fetch him. They also ride
ahead, whereupon the Grand Vizier follows. The Interpreter of the
Porte closes the gate. Then comes the Envoy with his retinue. One
rides through the first gate of the Seraglio; but at the second gate
one must dismount, and go through on foot. This is, on account of
the thousands of people who must be in the Seraglio, exceedingly
difficult, and one is almost crowded and trampled upon. One then
goes to the Divan, which is opened a short time afterwards. This is
a vaulted room, about 50 feet square. The door is to the East. To
this and the South side are also the windows. Directly opposite the
door, in the wall, about 16 feet from the ground, is a golden
grating, which may be 4 feet high and 3 feet wide. By means of this,
in the room adjoining it, which is kept dark there, one can hear and
see what passes in the Divan, and the Great Lord makes use of it for
that purpose. One cannot therefore see him, and besides that one is
lectured by the Interpreter of the Porte not to look up much. Over
this, as well as on other places of the wall, are the words, written
in Arabic in large golden letters: There is no God but God, and
Muhammad is his Prophet. Under this latticework the Grand Vizier
sits alone on a divan, which occupies the whole side, and after the
south and north sides extends almost to the middle of the divan. On
the right hand of the Grand Vizier, in the corner of the divan, sits
the Captain-Pacha, when he is in Constantinople, as well as other
Pashas, when they are there, and beside him, on the
side divan, the Nischandschy; (great Chancellor,) and on the left
hand the two Kadhyleschkjer (Chiefs of the army) and beside these on
the side divan the Defterdar. (Chief Treasurer.) On the right side
near the door sits the Ambassador on a chair without backrest; the
Interpreter of the Porte stands on his left hand, and the
Ambassador's retinue stands behind him. Legal proceedings are begun.
There, sometimes, 12 or 18 persons are brought in. A judicial person
reads, in a few words, the case of each one, and the Grand Vizier,
with the Council of Byssisters, gives the verdict in a few but clear
words. This lasts from 6 to about 8 o'clock, in which 2 hours more
than 50 disputes are settled. Then they proceed to the coinage
matters; the newly minted coin is shown, and the multitude of purses
is counted out, which must be distributed among the Janistas for
Soldy. This may last until about 9 o'clock. Hereupon the Cooks of
the Grand Vizier appear. They carry as many small round, besides
very common, tripod tables, as there are Turkish Ministers in the
Divan. For each of these one is placed, and a silver table-top is
laid over it, on which some spoons are laid. Napkins are not given,
forks not at all, and only one knife, to cut up, what possibly had
not already been cut up in the kitchen, or could not be done with
the fingers of one. The Envoy is, on this occasion, placed at the
table of the Grand Vizier, opposite him. At every other table sit 2
or 3 Europeans. As the meat is cooked very soft, and is sprinkled
with pepper very heavily, and is served in greenish porcelain,
indeed strong and thick, but common dishes, (whereby the Turks have
the fancy, that one could see by this, when the food was poisoned,)
there is little desire to eat of it, so much the more, when one has
to touch it with one's fingers. There are several hundred dishes
served. One must say, served: for one is hardly set up, when it is
already taken away again, and another brought. But all this is done
in the utmost order and silence. For, because the multitude of cooks
is placed even in the Divan in such a manner, that the dishes from
the kitchen are given from one to the other, and so set before, are
also given back in the same manner; so there is no running back and
forth at all. At least in half an hour this whole meal is finished,
however big it may have been. During that whole time the second
square of the Seraglio is not empty either, but to several thousand
Janistries the pay for several months is paid. One company after
another their purses, of which there are 500 piastres in each, are
thrown, and because he who catches them first draws a reward for
them, so almost reaches the ground, because of the running of the
Janistas. Except for this, there is such a silence in the Seraglio,
as if there were no one there, and the soldiers do not dare to leave
their post without being called. These are also fed on such a day
with Pillau or rice. When the banquet in the Divan is over; then
water is given for washing, and the further arrangement for the
actual Audience is made.
All the Ministers of
State, after a bow to the Grand Vizier, leave the Divan. At the same
time, the Emperor makes known the desire of the Ambassador for an
Audience, by a written request, which, like all letters from the
Grand Vizier to the Emperor, is called Talkysch, and he likewise
gives written permission for it, which, like all immediate answers
from the Emperor, bears the name of Katischerif. The Ambassador,
after bowing to the Grand Vizier, but who remains seated, goes with
his retinue into the fore-court, and is brought, on the same side of
the Divan building, into a corner of the Seraglio to the North,
under the open sky, where a crowd of Attendants come with Kastans,
in order that the Ambassador and his retinue may be clothed with
them, in order to be worthy to appear before the Emperor in these
Turkish garments of honour. This Eastern custom clarifies the
allusions to the words of the Bible, that we, in our sinful
condition, need special garments of salvation, in order to be
considered worthy to stand before the Son of man, the Judge of all
flesh. The Ambassador with his retinue being dressed in this way, he
is placed at the wall under a somewhat projecting roof, where he
can, in any case, sit down on an old bench, so that he has the whole
forecourt before him, and at the same time the Janistas also place
themselves in a certain order.
On the left hand of
that corner, where the Ambassador stands, is the Auditorium of the
Great Lord. From it come 2 Chamberlains with silver rods, and go
straight to the Divan. The Grand Vizier comes out of it, to be led
to the Emperor. The serious attitude of his gait cannot well be
imagined. He lays, several times, his right hand on his heart,
greeting in this manner the several ranks of Janistas, and the
Ambassador and his retinue. After he has remained with the Grand
Lord for some time, as many pairs of Masters of Ceremonies come
forward, as there are persons allowed to enter the Auditorium, this
number being, including the Interpreters of the Ambassador and the
Porte, limited to 10 or 12 persons. Two of them lead a European
under their arms, and bring him in, fairly held fast. The Emperor
sits on a Sopha or Throne, which has almost the shape of a square
bed. The heaven rests on pillars. All the clothing is covered with
gold and pearls exceedingly richly. The Grand Vizier stands on his
left hand; but the Interpreter of the Porte lies flat on the ground
before the Sultan, with his face turned towards the Vizier, as if he
were unworthy to look at the Emperor. The Ambassador then makes a
bow to him, making at the same time his proposal by handing over the
letters of credence, which, if he is prudent, he kisses with a bow
from his Secretary, because he must show the same respect to the
Emperor's letters. The Interpreter of the Porte translates the
Compliment, and the Grand Vizier accepts the letters. He also
answers everything; for the Emperor does not deign to speak with the
Ambassadors. He hands him the letters at the same time, and in about
five minutes the Audience is over. When they leave, the Europeans
are called out to go outside the Seraglio. They do not let
themselves be told twice; for, because they know what a danger they
run at the second gate, where so many thousands of people have to go
through and out, everyone does his utmost to get out quickly and to
mount his horse. But they cannot get through the third gate until
all the State servants and soldiers are outside. As troublesome as
it is to wait after so many people, because one has to stop under
the open sky, so pleasantly is this trouble nevertheless rewarded,
because, besides a few thousand Janistries, one sees all the Civil
and Military servants, in their very different dresses, passing or
riding before one. After all this the Ambassador also, in the
previous order, takes his return, and arrives again at Pera about 11
or 12 o'clock. From this one sees how hearty not only such Audiences
are, but also how a barbarous arrogance of the Turks is combined
with boorishness and clumsiness, and the prestige of the European
Ambassadors is greatly diminished. Truly, one must wonder that the
Christian powers can tolerate the Titles of the Turkish Emperor, in
the letters written to them, in which he presents himself as no less
than a King of all Kings, calling himself among others
Schehin-Schah, and Tsill-ullah, that is, Emperor of the Emperors,
and the shadow of God on earth; and, when the Title of a Christian
king is set, he wishes thereby, whose end may be happy, which among
the Turks means, who may become a Mahometan!
SECTION TWO. The
condition of the Christian religion in Turkey.
§. IX. Of the
religious freedom of the Christians in Turkey in general.
The Christian
religious freedom among the Turks is based on various prescriptions
in their Koran, of which the so-called Testament of Mahomet may be
regarded as a brief summary. Namely, it is said that he came to the
monks on Mount Sinai, and was received very kindly by them, and
therefore, in gratitude, he gave them a letter of freedom under the
said Title. This writing remained in the hands of the monks until
the time of Sultan Selim, who judged that it was unholy to leave it
in their hands. Wherefore he had them requisition that supposed
treasure, giving them a copy in return, which they still preserve.
Solyman II confined this entire Testament of Mahomet, and the
Catecheriff of Selim resting upon it, to the monastery of Mount
Sinai alone, and it was not far off, but that he had destroyed both,
on the advice of Kuproli Ogli Mustapha Pacha. The Lord of Mosheim,
in his Church History, near the seventh century, gives the necessary
account of what our judicious scholars think of it. (*) Whatever
thoughts these may now entertain, this is certain, that the Turks
nevertheless acknowledge this Testament as genuine; and, because the
religious freedom of the Christians among them, in fact, rests on
it, I will follow it with a translation, which is this:
"God is great
and a Ruler; from Him have all the Prophets come, and before Him
there is no unjust testimony: by God's Grace Muhammad, the son of
Abdallah, the Messenger of God, and faithful guardian of the world,
has drawn up for all those who belong to his people and religion,
this present testimonial as a firm and express promise, which the
people of the Christians, and the followers of the Nazarene, of
whatever kind, great or small, honored, or whatever they may be,
will be held; and establish the following:"
I. "Whoever of
my people will dare to break my promise and my oath, contained in
this letter of freedom, break; he destroys God's promise, acts
contrary to the oath, and becomes a despiser of faith, (which God
forbid!) for he becomes guilty of the curse, he may be a King or a
pauper, or generally, whoever he will".
II. "If any of
these Monks, in his travels, should stop on any mountain or hill, in
a village or other habitable place, by the sea, in the desert, or in
any monastery, in a church or house of prayer; then I will be in the
midst of them, as the keeper and protector of their persons, goods
and means, with my soul, help and protection, and all my countrymen;
for they form a part of my own people, and are my Honour".
III. "I charged
all my servants, not to exact any poll tax, nor any other tribute
from them; for they shall not be compelled to do anything of this
kind".
IV. "No one
shall undertake to change their Judges or Overseers, but they shall
remain in their office, without being deposed".
V. "No one shall
molest them on the highways, in their journeys".
VI. "No one
shall deprive them of their churches".
VII. "Whoever
destroys any of these liberties granted to me, let him know that he
destroys God's order".
VIII. "Furthermore,
neither their Judges, Overseers, Monks, Servants, Pupils, nor any
others dependent on them, shall pay poll tax, or be taxed in this
matter; for I am their protector, whether they be by land or by
water, East or West, North or South; for they as well as all that
belongs to them are included in this oath and letter of freedom".
IX. "And from
those who live quietly and as hermits on the mountains, no poll tax,
nor the Tithe of their income, shall be exacted. Nor shall any
Orthodox take part in theirs, for they work only for their
maintenance".
X. "If the
fruits of the earth should prosper, the inhabitants shall be obliged
to pay them something of every measure".
XI. "In time of
war they shall neither be expelled from their habitation, nor
compelled to take the field, nor shall a poll tax be exacted from
them".
(Thus far goes that
which concerns the Monks of Mount Sinai; the rest
concerns all
Christians.)
XII. "Those
Christians, who are settled in the habitation, and by reason of
their wealth and trade are able to pay the poll tax, shall not give
more than 12 Drachmas".
XIII. "With this
exception, nothing further shall be exacted from them, according to
God's express command, which says: do not burden those who have
respect for the books that come from God; but share with them, in a
loving manner, some of your goods; associate with them, and keep
each one from their insults".
XIV. "If a
Christian woman should at any time marry an Orthodox, he shall not
force her inclination to deprive her of her church, prayers, and
religion.
XV. "No one
shall prevent them from improving their churches".
XVI. "If anyone
acts against this my letter of freedom, or believes the contrary; he
falls away from God and his Divine Apostle, in consideration of the
protection, which I have granted them, in accordance with this
promise".
XVII. "No one
shall make war on them; but the Ordinaries shall, rather, make war
for them".
XVIII. "And
hereby I command, that no one of my people dare to do or act against
this my promise, to the end of the world". "Witnesses
were: Ali, the Son of, Abu Thaleb (with fifteen others".)
"This present
was written by the Chief of the Army, the successor of Ali, the Son
of Abu Thaleb, when the Prophet, (in which peace be!) had signed it
with his own hand, in his Mosque, in the second year of the Hegire,
the third day of the month Mahorem". (*)
Those who are new to
History already know the reason why Mahomet, especially at certain
times, allowed the Christians so great liberties, namely, partly, by
means of their assistance, to subdue the heathen Arabs, partly to
avail himself of all Christian denominations, who were excluded from
the Greek Church, for the destruction of the Eastern Empire; partly
to attract to themselves, by such toleration of that Religion, the
more easily the Christians who were discontented under this Empire;
and how, therefore, in a certain respect, an absolute necessity has
extorted it from him. But, putting this aside, it remains certain,
that, when this so-called Testament was followed by the Turks, the
Christians must have lived very quietly among them, which is now
very much the case. Mahomet did indeed charge, that the Christians
as well as the Jews should be excused, as to their Life and
Religion; but on condition, that they would submit, with good will,
to the Mahometans, and pay the ransom, which is called Charatz, for
their Life. Most did the first, and all do the latter; henceforth we
see why they are tolerated. But nevertheless this liberty has
unusually great conditions. The instances are not rare, that whole
multitudes of Christians, and still more often, that individuals, in
all sorts of incidents, especially when false witnesses, said that
they had heard that such persons wished to adopt the Mohammedan
religion, and so also others, in order to escape the penalty of
death, were forced to it by force. The clearest examples of this are
found in the Lives of Osman and Orchan. Up to the time of Amurat IV,
there was a law that the tenth part of the sons born of Christian
parents was taken from them by force, and after circumcision was
incorporated into the Janistas; and Selim I was somewhat hindered by
the Grand Vizier and the Mufti from making all Christian subjects
Mohammedans. But this is the main rule of the Turks, to curtail and
to determine the public religion. In places where there have been no
Christian churches, or where they have fallen into disuse, the
establishment of them is usually impossible. In places where there
are still Christian meetings, they are steadily, more and more
suppressed. What is defective in the churches, and only in small
details, such as the roof, the tower, etc., may not be improved,
except with a special permission from the Court. And this is so
difficult to obtain, and also involves such great costs, that
especially smaller communities, one after the other, are ruined by
it. The wantonness of the common people in public wars, as well as
internal unrest in Turkey, very often causes plundering and damaging
of churches, and even complete destruction. But some provinces still
have some privileges in this respect, such as Moldavia, Wallachia,
many parts of Greece proper, and several islands of the Archipelago.
In these many churches are found with towers and bells, which are
not found elsewhere. The churches therefore everywhere, at least
from the outside, also look very sad, and are, especially in the
villages, hardly distinguishable from our stables. Monasteries are
usually found in places where no Turks live: but, contrary to
Mahomet's Testament, they must either pay all taxes from them, or an
even larger sum be raised for gifts to the Turks. European Turkey
allows the country's Christians somewhat more freedom than Asia,
where Christians are unequally more oppressed, and their religious
arrangements destroyed; and this is also the reason why the number
of Christians there is less than in the other.
Where there are
churches; there all religious customs can be observed fairly
undisturbed. For the public religion, baptism, marriage, etc., no
money is paid, but for burials one does, for which the permission
must be bought with one or more thalers. The freedom to hold
religious services on the night before the first Easter day, and on
that feast itself to be allowed to perform all kinds of Christian
merrymaking, without recourse or punishment, must be bought for
about 500 thalers, depending on the place, and for example in
Smyrna. This last is a real disgrace to the Christians. But, the
custom has been introduced once, and the Turkish authorities would
demand this money, even if no irregularities occurred. The
ecclesiastical persons of the Christians, as Patriarchs,
Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, etc., enjoy, with the exception of
special circumstances, a perfect safety, and go about everywhere in
their priestly garments unmolested; yes, they are respected because
of their position, and gifts are even made to them, when they are
called, here and elsewhere, to read the Gospel over their sick, and
to drive away the diseases by incantations. They are, according to
an Imperial charter, exempted from the poll tax, which the Bishops
for themselves and the ecclesiastical persons under them are obliged
to purchase. No Christian disposition is permitted to make Prophets
among the Turks. Whoever would risk this, would forfeit his head,
just as the Turk, who thought he would become a Christian. The death
penalty is in store for all those who speak against Mahomet and his
religion, or who wish to express his thoughts with contempt
concerning it. Criminals, if they are Christians, can often escape
punishment by becoming Mahometans. Apostate Christians enjoy the
privilege of being exempted from the poll tax; they can then be
raised to all kinds of honorary offices, and are capable of doing
great harm to their relatives who persist in the Christian religion.
Husbands, and those children who are over fifteen years old, need
not follow such a renunciation of religion. Sons of men who wish to
marry women of the Mahometan religion, must first renounce the
Christian faith; the female sex may, however, when marrying Turks,
continue in her faith; but is, according to the church laws of the
Eastern Christians, excommunicated, and is no longer admitted to the
Sacraments; all the children, born of such marriages, must be
brought up in the Mohammedan religion. A Christian woman, who has
once married a Turk, may not, after his death, enter into marriage
with a Christian. From this one sees how useless the missions of the
Roman Church among the Turks are, and how false are the boastful
statements printed in Paris, especially of the Jesuits, concerning
their works in the Turkish Empire; (*) also, how many mockers of the
Christian religion betray their, but unexcusable ignorance or
malice, when, in contempt of the Christian religion, they so broadly
declare the toleration of Christians among the Turks. The spirit of
persecution is not the Christian religion, but only a certain party
of Christians, who add human statements to the only source of truth,
namely the Holy Scripture, and indeed give the latter precedence
over the former.
(*)
See Mosheim's church history, 3rd part, page 60 etc. of the Dutch
edition of 1771.
(*)
As for the signing of Mahomet's so-called Testament; someone who had
stayed in Turkey for many years and had certainly heard of it,
testifies that, instead of a signet, the flat hand and fingers were
printed under it with Eastern ink, and the genuine copies thereof
were sealed in the same way.
(*)
See the Memoires des Missions au Levant par la Compagnie de Jesus.
§. X. Of the
condition of the Christians in the Turkish Empire.
The condition of the
Christians among the Turks is not of the same kind. Concerning the
European Christians, or rather such as are born in other countries,
living in peace with the Great Lord, the most important has already
been communicated in § VII., and it remains only to be noted
that the greater or lesser liberties which they enjoy depend on the
countries in which they reside. In Smyrna, Constantinople and Aleppo
they are best off, in other places worse, and in Egypt worst. In the
latter Empire they would expose themselves, by the European dress,
to much rough treatment from the common people, and in Great Cairo
not even a Euporean, except the Consuls, may ride on horseback, but
must make use of Donkeys. The native Christians, or the subjects of
the Great Lord who are devoted to the Christian religion, must, in
many respects, suffer much. The word, Raja or subject, is presented
to them by the Turks as if it meant Slaves. The Greeks they call
Thauschan, that is, Hares (*), and all Christians Jauer, that is,
unbelievers. The native Christians are also not allowed to wear the
kind and color of clothing, as the Turks. They are not allowed to
use the color green at all. White Turbans or a kind of rolled up
caps are also forbidden to them. The Charatz or the head-tax is
exacted from them by certain Gadermeesters, Charatzschies. The
female sex is exempted from it, but the male sex must pay it from
the 15th year. It must be paid every Turkish year, which is about a
third of a month shorter than ours, and is of three kinds. The least
amounts to one Dschindscherli; the second two, and the third four.
All Christians are excluded from testifying at legal proceedings,
when something has to be testified against Turks; and they are also
not admitted to any offices of honor or government functions.
In the meantime,
however, this last is subject to some regulation. The Patriarchs and
Bishops have another kind of jurisdiction, which the Emperor grants
them by his open letter, called Ferman, over their co-religionists,
but which does not extend to punishments, and still less to death
sentences. But the Bishops cannot, as a rule, exercise this
otherwise than with the consultation of the Chiefs of their nation,
who are called Primates, and are at certain times interchanged. If
the parties are not satisfied with this; then they go to the Turkish
courts. Then, one must give the greatest praise, that they direct
themselves according to the admonition of the Apostle, I Corinthians
VI 1. etc. They leave the decision of their disputes, rather, to
their Patriarchs, Bishops, and ecclesiastical Persons, with the
consultation of other mediators, than that they turn to the
tribunals of the Turks. The principalities of Moldavia and
Wallachia, having been transferred to the Turks by a sort of treaty,
have their Christian princes, who are chosen by the Grand Lord from
the principal Greek families at Constantinople. But notwithstanding
this election, they must purchase their appointment, which may
amount to 700, or even 1000 purses. In the event of a peace, it
sometimes happens, through the mediation of Christian powers, that
the sum of money which the princes of Moldavia and Wallachia would
otherwise have to pay to the Porte for their appointment, is not so
great: but this is a mere accidental advantage, and is of no use to
their successors. Their appointment usually lasts only 3 years, and
the same expenses are, in the event of renewed security, necessary
again; not to mention the unusually large gifts, which must be
continually given, in order not to be deposed before the time. A
rank of such a Prince is equal to the Bassas of 2 horse's tails.
Because he is not assured of his time, and also wants to keep
something for himself; so he rather emaciates his Principality. A
Prince of Wallachia could make more than 3000, but a Prince of
Moldavia about 2000 purses annually. If they are deposed; then the
Porte takes everything from them beforehand, and often they are
punished with Life. Mostly the Interpreters of the Porte are
accustomed to do this. This last Dignity is always held by a
Christian of the Greek nation, who receives it for nothing; but
besides Turkish must at least understand Latin and Italian. He must
be daily, except on Sundays, in the Palace of the Vizier, and in
foreign affairs he works under the Reis-Ejfendi, who is the Minister
of these affairs, and in this profession directly depends on the
Grand Vizier. - Moreover, the Greek Christians have a shadow of
jurisdiction on the smaller islands of the Archipelago, where there
are no Turks, and where, at the most, there is perhaps a Kadi, being
the supreme judge over one or more islands. - The Turks strictly
maintain the Greeks by these few privileges, in order thereby r to
feed upon them continually a tumult, since one seeks to rob the
other, by money, of his Dignity, and thus, by this means, to deprive
them of their treasures, as a sponge does of water. - Otherwise,
alas! one cannot deny that the Christians themselves are continually
worsening their condition. Ecclesiastical as well as secular persons
endeavored to dispute among themselves the precedence and
advantages, in obtaining Patriarchates, Principalities, and winning
Lawsuits: as, for instance, the dispute between the Armenian
Patriarch at Edschmiazin with that at Jerusalem, concerning the
preparation of the Holy Oil, his Nation, and the dispute between the
Greeks and Romans, concerning the possession of the Holy Sepulchre,
both cost incredible sums. The decisions of the Porte on such
occasions are, generally, of such a nature, that both Parties are
given right or wrong, or the sentence is rendered equivocally, in
order that the dispute may soon begin again, and may bring in money.
This is an unfortunate source of the impoverishment of Christians,
from which, often, arises the despair of passing over to
Mahometanism.
(*)
When the Greeks, especially of the Islands of the Archipelago, are
called by the Turks Thanschan, that is, Hares; it can be determined
with no certainty, whether they were given that name from their
skill in running, even on rocks and mountains, or from their former
shameful flight before the Turks.
§. XI. The
ignorance and uncivilization of various Christian denominations.
One would not at all
think that in those countries, from which the heathens obtained
their knowledge, and where the Christian religion was planted by the
Apostles themselves, such ignorance and uncivilization in divine and
human matters have prevailed. And yet the greatest number there live
in a dark night, mostly without reading and writing. The latter in
particular is something rare. The Bible is only known in name, and
what is still known of it, consists of a few Psalms and parts of the
Gospels. Of which hardly anyone has a Bible, but only a prayer book.
The Armenians deserve some exception, as they are much more fond of
the Bible, and among them respectable families, very seldom, are
accustomed to be without a House-Bible. The female sex, which is
especially sad, is left almost without all instruction and knowledge
of religion. One might naturally wonder at such a perverse conduct.
But, as the female sex does not appear in public at all, but almost
always has to keep the house, it cannot go in schools; and to have
teachers come to the house, would partly be expensive, partly,
because of the general suspicion, bring such women into a bad
reputation. In addition, the parents think how the old custom is
thereby violated, and so the ignorant mothers also prefer to keep
ignorant daughters. The Greek and Armenian Monks, like most of the
Roman Church, do not apply themselves to literary exercises, but
spend their time, outside the appointed times, in some manual work,
in collecting alms, and in idleness; the few apply themselves to
schoolwork and learned things. The actual Priests also, seldom, have
more ability for it; for the greatest number are chosen from the
Common People, who seldom know more than, as if it were a business,
to read the Liturgy, and to observe the other Ceremonies. Except
those they call Professors, there are few who can compose a Homily
or any kind of Sermon. The Bishops, it is proper, should have
studied; but, because money is most used to obtain bishoprics, it is
natural that the necessary gifts are very often lacking. There are
reading schools almost everywhere; but such that could be compared
with our city schools are unusually few; proper universities not at
all. For the higher schools at Constantinople, Smyrna, etc., hardly
serve to teach something of ancient Greek, the Aristotelian
philosophy, and as much theology from the Church Fathers as is
necessary to cobble together a sermon. The Greeks still have schools
and seminaries on Mount Athos, which is called the holy mountain
(Monte Santo) because of the multitude of monasteries; but they do
not progress there further than in the aforementioned schools,
except that ancient Greek is learned better. Few understand this
right, and some books, translated from Italian or French, or
composed from them, are their guides. Those who wish to study
Medicine, go to Italy, Holland, and sometimes also to Germany and
England. The most learned are oppressed by others, or accused of not
thinking purely, of deviating from the old custom, etc., so that
they are now forbidden the pulpit or the chair of learning. —
The Armenians are not much better off; but not so much from neglect
and their own fault, as from the sad circumstances in which their
nation is placed. Because their fatherland, for a long time, has
been the bone of contention between the Persians and Turks; so the
inhabitants have been dispersed, the schools destroyed, and the
monasteries and churches demolished. From this one can conclude how
much all good arrangements, especially those concerning learning and
religion, have been destroyed. The prejudice of antiquity and the
attachment to their old school and church teachers is, according to
the custom of most Easterners, so great, that they remain with it,
and adhere to what they say. Now, since the Jews, as mostly with us,
live in a completely learned wilderness, and the Turks, as will
subsequently appear, are great promoters of ignorance; one may
easily conclude from this the general darkness of learning in
Turkey. Linguistics has completely decayed; the knowledge of
antiquities is entirely unknown; the best Philosophy is corrupted
Aristotelian; History, Chronology, Mathematics are covered with
great errors and obscurity. The best Physicians have studied in
Europe; the others have been servants of these, or mere pharmacies,
who have become Physicians from pretended experiences and books. Of
Jurisprudence and Theology we shall be able to speak more
conveniently next. Public libraries are not found at all. In
monasteries, as almost privileged dwelling places of superstition
and ignorance, one must not to search. A
few persons are accustomed, here and there, to have a moderate, at
least small stock of books. The
Patriarchs of Constantinople, as well as those of Jerusalem, and
other Bishops residing there for the continual Synod, have fairly
good collections; but for such large
countries this does not mean much. One
would be disappointed in the hope of seeing and possibly buying old
Manuscripts. Credible persons assert
that there are few, and that they were preserved and hidden as great
sanctuaries in places where the Turks had so often not committed
plunderings and devastations, for instance, in the monasteries on
Mount Athos and the Islands of the Archipelago.
One is seized with a kind of sadness, when one reads in these
regions, where the former learning is so very degenerate, and
considers the present situation. There
also no improvement can easily be hoped for before a general
introduction of printing, considering the small printing of the
Armenians, as well as that of the Maronites on Mount Lebanon, do not
yet want to say much.
§. XII. The
admirable preservation of the Christian religion in Turkey.
Here an observation
is made, which flows quite naturally from the foregoing, namely,
that under such circumstances the preservation of the Christian
religion is an admirable thing. One would think that, with such
great ignorance of Christians, nothing would be more common than the
renunciation of their faith; and yet the cases are rare. The
profession of Jesus' religion exposes them to great difficulties;
the names Thauschan (Hazen) and Jauer (Infidels) they must hear,
openly, from the filthy common people; in the courts their causes
are, for the most part, badly treated, and the insults done to them
by Turks are left unpunished. There is no lack of various special
taxes; and the poll tax is for the poor, as well as for numerous
families, a very heavy burden. They could avoid all these
inconveniences by a renunciation of religion, and obtain the
opposite advantages. Daily examples teach, that if the Apostates are
at all capable, they can go unusually far, and that most Bassas, as
well as the principal Ministers, yes even Grand Viziers are
Apostates, or children of them. Crimes, if they are Christians,
usually escape the death penalty by an abjuration of the Christian
religion. To this, often, comes the cruelty of the Turks with a
barbarous compulsion. There are instances, that many provinces and
places have proposed the embrace of the Mahometan religion, or its
complete extermination, and the sons of whole provinces and cities
have been circumcised by force, and thus with their own have been
brought to Mahometanism. This also happens, often, with a few
persons, who seem to the Turks capable of war, or other affairs.
Finally, the Porte has not lacked any advisors, that at least the
Greek Christians, by circumcision, could be forced to the Mahometan
religion, and in the year 1760 it was rumoured, that the Emperor
himself was of this opinion. But this cruelty has nevertheless been
constantly renewed. Yes, there is no lack of examples, that little
children, who fell to the Turks, would be violently led to apostasy,
but who would rather lose their lives than consent to it.
Now, after so many
centuries, one sees such a large number of Christians; the service
of the true God is solemnly maintained, and the name of Jesus Christ
openly confessed; yes, the attachment to the Christian religion is
so deeply pressed into the hearts, that all kinds of temporal
advantages are forsaken, Christians undergo the greatest hardships,
yes, in multitudes, they would rather give up their lives than deny
faith in Jesus; then one can still conclude from this, to this day,
the truth of Christ's promise: the gates of hell shall not prevail
against my Church. Matth: XVI 18. A statement, which must give us
the well-founded hope, that she will never cease, however many
weapons, writings and mockeries her enemies may continually use for
her corruption and downfall.
It is true, and one
must, alas! admit it, that the general Christian religion professed
in Turkey, has been darkened by many impurities; but nevertheless
there remains, always, a standing signpost to the truth, and an easy
possibility, to come to the knowledge of salvation.
PART THIRD. OF THE
GREEKS.
§. XIII. Of the
Greek Church, and its constitution.
The Greek Church has
its name from the famous Greece and its inhabitants, the ancient
Greeks; and therefore it bears it for the same reason as the English
and French Churches. It prefers to call itself the orthodox Eastern
Church. By this is understood the great number of Christians, who
either stand under the Patriarch of Constantinople, as their highest
Head according to the laws of the Council, or at least maintain an
ecclesiastical communion with him. In our regions it has become a
custom to understand under the Greek Church only the first kind of
Christians; and to this belong the four Patriarchates of
Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, but which in
external circumstances differ greatly from each other. The
Alexandrian is much weakened, because nearly all the Christians
living in Egypt and the surrounding Provinces have become
Monophysites. The Antiochian is, partly for the same reason, partly
for a still worse one, namely, the devastation of Syria, and the
apostasy of the Christians to Mahometanism, caused by various
incidents, very much decayed. The Jerusalem has suffered greatly
both from the Crusades, and from the particularly severe governments
of the Bassas in the Holy Land, and from the plunderings of the
wandering Arabs. The Constantinople is still in the best
circumstances; and to it belong European Turkey, the Islands of the
Archipelago, and Asia Minor or Nato. The other Patriarchs, in fact,
do not come into comparison with the Constantinopolitan, as the
latter far surpasses the others in power and prestige, although
otherwise all four are independent in their Parishes. The
Constantinopolitan has its residence at Constantinople, the
Alexandrian at Cairo, the Antiochian at Damascus, and the
Jerusalemian at Jerusalem. They often stay all together at
Constantinople, to attend the Synod that is permanently held there,
which consists of the Patriarch of Constantinople, 12 Archbishops,
and 4 other notable Greeks, and provides for the welfare of their
Church, especially at Court. On it depends the desire of all the
Bishoprics, and all ecclesiastical affairs must come before it. The
Patriarch of Constantinople, who calls himself a general
(οικουμενικον),
and presides at such a Synod, formerly contended with the Pope at
Rome for rank. He still considers himself equal with him, although
the submission to the Turks, under which the Greeks sighed, has put
an end to the public dispute. With the Turks he has the dignity of a
Bassa of two horse-tails. Formerly it was still more respectable
than at present. The Turkish Emperor, at the time of his
appointment, for which he paid no money, made a present of a white
horse, a ceremonial robe, and 1000 zecchins or ducats. But after the
time, that rank and self-interest, often caused the deposition of
the Patriarchs, not only has the just mentioned generosity of the
Turkish Emperors ceased, but also an infinitely greater Evil has
been introduced. That Patriarchate is sold by the Porte. If this, or
the Greek nation, is not satisfied with the Patriarch, or if another
offers more than he has given; then he is immediately deposed, and
whoever then pays the most, gets his place. The expenses, incurred
on this, are indeed uncertain, but formerly amounted to about 30
thousand, and now to almost 100 thousand Piastres; and it is to be
feared, that, through the rank and greed of the Greeks, they will
subsequently run still higher. As great as this Evil is, because it
usually exalts very incompetent persons to Dignity; it is
nevertheless, with respect to another arising from it, still small.
And this consists in the fact that the new Patriarch places all the
Bishops under him, if they wish to retain their Bishoprics, under a
heavy Contribution, to pay his debts, and these in return seek to
recover their damages from their Clergy, who in turn, for the most
part, by illicit means, try to make up for their own, with their
Congregations. — If the Patriarch has purchased that Dignity;
then he receives from the Grand Vizier the Ferman, or a sort of
letter of confirmation, and is brought to the Parochial Church by a
Tschaus or Master of Ceremonies, under the guidance of a multitude
of Janistas, on horseback. The principal Archbishops and
ecclesiastical Persons receive him, with wax candles in their hands,
and lead him in. The Tschaus reads the Firman; the new Patriarch
takes his place on the special Patriarchal See, and the Greeks must,
without further contradiction, acknowledge him in his Dignity. The
consecration is, in fact, previously performed by the Archbishop of
Heraclea, who in his Pontifical robe leads the new Patriarch by the
hand to the Patriarchal See, and after that he is seated thereon,
puts on him the Crown, and gives him the shepherd's staff. The
Liturgy being sung, the ceremony of this introduction ends. - The
deposed Patriarchs are usually, unless they have been accused of a
crime, sent into exile, for which purpose the monasteries on the
islands of the Archipelago are mainly intended, but from which they
are also often recalled, and can even be restored to their office. -
In times of war between the Christians and the Turks, the Patriarch
always stands at a dangerous post, because he is almost always
accused of an understanding with the former, subsequently deposed,
and then even put to death. For the rest, no Patriarch or Bishop can
hold office unless he has obtained a Barat or Letter of Freedom, at
great expense, from the Sultan. By means of this he can maintain the
rights of the Church, over the lower Clergy, yes, in a certain
respect, rule over his Parish, and protect the monasteries. —
The surrender of the other Patriarchates takes place in a freer, and
not subject to so much noise, way and manner; for they are further
from the Court, and the greed cannot be satisfied so much, because
of the small income. But even then there is no place for so many
expenses. The Patriarch of Constantinople resides constantly in the
Emperor's Residence, unless the calling of his office calls him to
his Parish, or he retires to a country house for a recreation. His
dress, outside the church, is not distinguished from that of other
Bishops, or even common Priests, consisting of a black wide Surplice
with fairly large sleeves over the long Eastern garments, and a
black cap, which in the same circumference, as it is pressed on the
head, is one and a quarter of an ell high, and then flat. From it
hangs, above, a sort of bag down to the neck, which is made of thick
crape. If this bag is lacking; then the cap can only serve a Monk,
or Deacon, or lower Clergy. In the Church they are clothed with
mantles and ceremonial vestments, also wrought with gold and silver,
and the Bishops then wear a Crown on ceremonial occasions. For the
rest, the Patriarchate of Constantinople is a place that brings in
very much. The newly appointed Bishops must, according to the
condition and income of their Dioceses, give the Patriarch a few
more or less thousands of Piastres, and give him, on many occasions,
considerable presents; not to say, that he is the usual heir of the
deceased Bishops, and of the Priests, who are immediately under him.
(*) But, besides the expenses at the acquisition of the
Patriarchate, he must also, annually, for confirmation in it, make
great presents, and moreover, have his mind on his Existence after
the deposition, or even to obtain it again.
In most cities of any
size one finds a Bishop, who is called Despot; (δεσπότης)
and each has an Assistant, (πρωτοσυγγελος)
whom he himself chooses, and to whom he, as often as he pleases,
gives over a certain part of his business. The appointment of the
Bishop depends on the Synod; the consecration is performed by the
Patriarch, and the Porte grants the security. All this demands very
great expenses, and, when a Bishop comes with the Barat (letter of
freedom) of the Porte to his Parish, then this always happens with
more or less thousands of Dalers, the payment of which falls at his
charge; wherefore most Foundations also are in great debt, and many
gradually fall into debt. - Most Bishops come to their Dignity, by a
sort of Simony, they seldom understand, what is necessary, to
satisfy it. They must be unmarried; but widowers are not excluded.
They seldom concern themselves with ecclesiastical and spiritual
affairs: because they form a sort of Christian Authority; so worldly
disputes are their main business. For the rest they are reasonably
esteemed, even by the Turks, and their Bishop's staff, which is
black and reasonably long, gives them, when they go out, a great
authority. As the Patriarch bears the name of Most Holy; so they are
called Your Holiness. To them belongs the votive offering of the
Priests and lower Clergy, and on high Feast days they are accustomed
to say Mass. With them there are the same Cabals, as with the
Patriarchs, or after better Bishoprics, or even after the
Patriarchate. When a Patriarch or Bishop dies; then he, in his
Pontifical robe, is placed on a Throne, and every Greek considers it
a religious duty to kiss the hand of the deceased. Failure to do so
would be considered a sin by them. Priests are in the congregations
in a greater number than is necessary, and it may be calculated that
there are many more without than with parishes. These they have to
buy for money from every new bishop, and these costs are again
extorted from the congregations. These two circumstances today cause
and nourish the great corruption in the Greek church. The
congregations impoverish themselves without being noticed, and the
priests, in order to obtain their existence, resort to lawful and
unlawful means, whereby ignorance is nourished, and superstition is
increased. Among these belong the showing or selling of common, or
so-called miraculous images and relics; the use of powerful
prescriptions of prayers that are supposed to have a magical power;
the release from fasting for money, etc. For the rest, they may
marry once, but nevertheless not otherwise than with a lover, who
must be honorable, young, healthy, and beautiful. If they violate
this law; then they forfeit their priestly dignity, and must become
deacons. Their occupations are to say masses, to hear confessions,
to baptize, to marry, and to bury the dead. Preaching is not their
work; for few understand this, and, also, during the Lent before
Easter, and a few feast days excepted, no sermons are preached. In
the meantime some apply themselves to founding and maintaining
reading schools for the benefit of the youth. Among the people they
are held in great esteem, and are called Papas, just as a Priest's
wife is called παπαδια (Papadia.
If a Priest misunderstands himself, so that he is unworthy of his
Character; then the Bishop has his beard shaved off, and thus he is
forever deprived of his Priestly office.
The Deacons take care
of the common things in the Church. They have even more freedom to
marry than the Priests. They must assist the latter in all
ecclesiastical matters, observe the Ceremonies at the Mass with
incense, etc., read and sing many pieces at the Liturgy, light the
candles, keep the church clean, etc. They are therefore excluded
from all priestly works, but are ordained as Priests when they are
deemed capable. The by the Priests lack a little pocket attached to
the Cap above, and distinguish them from it; and if they should lose
their office of Deacon, then their beard is also shaved off. I
consider it unnecessary to mention the lower orders of readers,
precentors, etc. in particular.
The Monks (καλόγεροι)
are not comparable in number or in prestige with those of the Roman
Church. Among them there is only one Order, namely that of St.
Basil. Those who live on Mount Athos still devote themselves, in
part, to some ecclesiastical learning; but the greater part, in
general, observes the Mass and many religious ceremonies by day and
night, observes a much stricter fast, and is occupied with manual
labor, especially in the cultivation of the vineyards, olive groves,
etc. The former is, properly speaking, the work of the Abbot or
Archimandrite (ήγούμενος)
with the active Monks, and the latter that of the lay brothers or
people who wish to isolate themselves from the world, and imagine
the common labors in the monasteries to be more sacred than
elsewhere. They keep to their strict, supposed ancient customs, and
the modesty in their monasteries, as well as the Turkish rudeness,
do not permit them to aim at higher things.
There are also
monasteries for the female sex. The Nuns (καλουρια,
good old one) also follow the rule of St. Basil, but not in so
strict a manner as the Monks, under a Supreme. (ήγουμένισσα)
- In Greece proper one also finds Hermits, who dwell in the caves of
the mountains, and, by their rough and strict way of life, deprive
themselves of common sense, health of body, and Life; people,
possessed with a far-reaching fanaticism.
(*)
Of the inheritance which falls to the Patriarch, on the side of the
Bishops, and of the Priests immediately under him, the Porte
nevertheless takes its own, and often the greater part. The Bishops
also inherit the goods of the unmarried Priests who have died in
their Parish, if they do not fall to certain monasteries; which is
not a fixed and general rule here. The goods of the married fall to
the wife and children. In the meantime, however, it is not lacking
in all these cases that the Commander of the place would not
appropriate a part of it. - The costs in the forgiveness of the
Bishoprics are constantly increasing. Whereas a new Bishop in
Smyrna; previously, perhaps paid 10 or 20 grants; this has now risen
to about 100.
§. XIV. With
distinction of the Greek Church from other Christians.
In order that the
distinction of the Greek Church from other Christians may become
clear, its separation from them must first be noted. Up to the 9th
century it was united with the Western Church, as regards faith. For
although many disputes had taken place between the two; yet these
were more about church customs, boundaries of the Patriarchates,
etc. than about actual articles of faith. In this they remained
reasonably in agreement, even in their misunderstandings; peace was
restored by various treaties, and the erring Teachers were condemned
in common. But from the aforementioned time the ground was laid for
that great schism, which continues to this day with great violence.
The famous Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, had been long and
often persecuted by the Roman Pope, Nicholas; whereupon he
excommunicated him, together with the whole Roman Church, solely for
the following, but in his opinion very important errors, which he
mentions in the general letter sent to the Eastern Patriarchs: 1)
that the Roman Church fasted on Saturday; 2) that in the first week
of Lent before Easter they should permit the use of milk and cheese;
3) that they should absolutely forbid the marriage of ecclesiastical
women; 4) that they were of the opinion that the Bishops alone could
administer Confirmation with the Holy Oil, and thus reconfirm those
who had received it from the Priests; and finally 5) had falsified
the Constantinopolitan creed with the addition, and from the Son,
and therefore the doctrine that the Holy Ghost proceeds not only
from the Father, but also from the Son. Photius' successors indeed
continued to hold this opinion, but the ecclesiastical ban was no
longer thought of, and an outward peace was maintained. But in the
eleventh century all unity was broken, by the rashness of Patriarch
Cerularius, and the lust for power of Pope Leo IX. The former added
to the accusations of Photius others; for instance, that the Latin
Church used unleavened bread at the Lord's Supper, did not abstain
from the blood in the stitched bread; its monks used pig's fat; its
bishops wore rings; the priests were without beards, etc. The Greeks
fell upon their patriarchs, and excluded the westerners from their
church community. When Leo IX had tried in vain to bring them under
his yoke again, he likewise openly excommunicated them. From that
time this schism lasted; and the means tried for union, especially
the Council of Florence, in the year 1438, have all been fruitless.
Nay, the hatred of the Greeks against the Roman Church has, since
the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, increased still further,
because they regard the popes as the cause of the fact that the
western powers did not render them any help against it. In addition
to this there is also a great deal of mischief which befalls them
from the side of the Turks, through the agency of the Roman
Catholics, and the seduction of many by the Roman missionaries. As
often as one speaks to the Eastern Patriarchs and Bishops, so often
do they show their very unusual aversion to everything that is
Roman; and one sees that it is only a pretext, what the Roman Church
presents concerning its agreement with the Greek, as well as with
other Eastern churches, and how little one can rely on Leo Allatius
and similar writers.
Having let this pass,
we must now present the principal doctrines of the Greek Church. We
will present these, with reference to a book very much regarded as
symbolic by her, which is called ορθόδοξος
ομολογια της
πίσεως της
καθολικης
εκκλησίας της
ανατολικης,
and with a Latin translation, published by Laurentius Normann, at
Leipzig, in the year 1695, and reprinted by D. Hoffman, at
Wittenberg, with a preface, and Hoogd: translation at Breslau, 1751.
As a first foundation of religion, not only the Holy Scripture
serves the Greeks, and indeed as with the Protestants, only and
exclusively in the Canonical books, but the Apocryphe also has with
them almost the same authority. In addition, there are the
statements of the church, made at the Councils. In the 96th question
of the first part in the aforementioned book it is said: "although
the Church is a creature, and consists of men; she has nevertheless
Christ, the true God, as a Supreme Head, and with him the Holy
Ghost, who teaches her everywhere. — Therefore we are moved to
believe not only the Holy Gospel, but also all other scriptures, and
Synodical ordinances". The quotation from the Old Testament is
made according to the 70 Translators. Of God's essence, attributes,
and the mystery of the Holy Trinity they have the same conceptions
as the other Christian denominations, except that they deny the
communication of the Divine essence of the Son to the Holy Spirit,
and assert that he proceeds from the Father alone, they refer in
this respect solely to the passage of John XV 16.
Of Jesus Christ, his
Person, divine and human nature, his threefold mediatorial office
and both States, they have the same concepts with the Evangelical
Church. But concerning Christ's descent into hell they express
themselves (1 part, question 49) thus: "The soul of Christ was
indeed separated from the body, but nevertheless it remained always
united with the Godhead; with it it also descended into hell. We
have indeed, in this place of the confession of faith, (in the
second article) nothing of that; but nevertheless it is confirmed by
all the church hymns that deal with it. — As when it is said:
You, Lord Christ, were bodily in the grave, in Hell as God with the
soul, in Paradise with the murderer, and on the Throne of Glory you
fill with the Father and the Holy Spirit, as the immeasurable,
everything. And from Hell he has delivered the souls of the Holy
Fathers, and led them into Paradise, and with them also the murderer
converted on the cross". Concerning the Angels they teach the
same with other Christians, but they still believe that, according
to the statement of Pseudo-Dionysius, the good were divided into 9
Choirs, and these into 3 Orders. To the first they bring those who
should be next to God, namely the Throne, the Cherubim, and
Seraphim; to the second the Powers, Dominions, and Strengths; and to
the third the Angels, Archangels, and Principalities. Of all these
they also have the opinion that they brought our prayers, alms, and
other good works before God, and were our Advocates with Him.
Here also seems to be
the best place to quote the opinion of the Greeks concerning Mary,
the Saints, and the worship of images. For the first, the Greek
Church has appointed this congratulation: "O Virgin Mary, most
divine, hail! the Lord be with thee! blessed art thou among women,
and blessed be the fruit of thy body; for thou hast born unto us the
Saviour of our souls!" The Church has enjoined to use this
congratulation frequently in prayer. "She has exalted her (42
question, 1 part,) "above the Cherubim and Seraphim. She now
also excels all the Choirs of Angels, since she is placed at the
right hand of the Son with all Honour and Glory; as the Psalm says:
(XLV 10.) The Queen stands at thy right hand, in all precious gold.
Every Christian must use this congratulation with reverence, and
stand by the intercession of that Virgin, &c". They also
maintain, with all zeal, her constant virginal state until her
death. The intercession of the Saints must therefore be humbly
requested, that they may pray for men; they declare thereby, that
they should not be invoked as Gods, but as friends of those whom
they serve, and not to help us by our own strength, but to obtain
God's grace through their intercession. The passages which are
quoted from Holy Scripture in proof of this, indicate nothing else,
than that the faithful on earth pray for one another, and the
perfectly Just in Heaven call upon God to destroy the enemies of his
church. They themselves object, however, that the Saints do not hear
our prayers knew; but they answer by saying that God makes them
known to them. The objection that the invocation of the Saints
conflicts with the first commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods
besides me, they seek to remove in two ways; because they partly
think that the honour shown to them passes over to the Majesty of
God, to whom they, by their faith and virtuous conduct, had been
well-pleasing; partly they make a distinction between adoration
(λατρεία) and invocation
(δουλεία), and thus
grant them the latter, because they invoked them as their brothers
and friends of God, to seek His help for them, and to take their
place with Him. In proof of this, it is only brought from the Bible
that the prayer of the Righteous avails much with God on earth.
(Jacob: V 16.) — With regard to the worship of images, after
the rejection of pagan images, the invocation (highägting)
(δουλεία) of the
images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the Saints, (55 question of
the 3rd part) as well as the Crucifixes, is given up as permissible
under this pretext, because people did not honor the images, but
those whom they represent; and in proof it is said that the
Israelites worshiped the Cherubim in the Temple, (which is
nevertheless untrue,) and that the Seventh Council condemned the
iconoclasts. Concerning the matter of which they are teachers of
creation, Providence, election, God's image, and the fall of the
first men, one finds precisely no diversity of the Evangelical
Church. And the same can be said of them, with respect to the
article concerning sin and its divisions.
Touching upon the
free Will they are teachers: (27 question of the 1st part) "although
the Will in the desire of the good or evil has remained unblemished;
yet he is in some more inclined to evil, and in others to good.
Although man's Will is stained with original sin; yet it is in all
this in everyone's power to be good and a child of God, or evil and
a child of Satan. This depends on the person. God's grace helps to
the good; from evil she draws man away, but without forcing his
freedom".
They count the 10
commandments, like the Reformed, so that 4 are counted to the first,
and 6 to the second table.
They do not attribute
the justification and forgiveness of sins to faith alone, but also
to good works; although it seems that they understand by faith such
a thing, which is without works, and they therefore do not so much
attribute justification to faith and good works, as to a living and
active faith.
They count seven
Sacraments, or, as they express themselves, mysteries; (98 question
of the 1st part) "baptism, anointing or confirmation, the Holy
Supper, Penance, the Priesthood, marriage, and the olympic".
The essential
concerning Baptism is by the Greeks so, as taught by us; of the
extraordinary, something more will be said next. They consider it
especially as a cleansing and washing away of the corruption, which
is transmitted from the parents to the children. The confirmation
takes place after Baptism, and is performed with an oil, consecrated
by the Patriarch and the Bishops, on Good Friday, which is mixed
with other ingredients, such as Myrrh and Balm. But in proof thereof
nothing is added, except such passages, which treat of the laying on
of hands, and the sealing of the Holy Ghost. Their opinion
concerning the Holy Supper is more remarkable. A private confession,
in which the sins, as much as one knows them, are related by name
and piece by piece, must precede the enjoyment, which is fixed at
twelve, four, at least once a year. The administration of the Lord's
Supper to the sick is highly recommended by them. The wying is
considered an unbloody sacrifice. The Creed Teacher, (Part I,
Question 107) "when the Priest consecrates bread and wine; then
one must believe that the Essence thereof was changed into the
Essence of the true body and blood of Jesus Christ. This is done by
the operation of the Holy Spirit, for whom, in order that this
Sacrament may be rightly performed, thus is prayed: send upon us and
these proposed gifts thy Holy Spirit, make of this bread the
precious body of thy Christ, and of that which is contained in this
cup, the precious blood of him, while thou changest it by thy Holy
Spirit. After these words the change continues. The bread is changed
into the true body, and the wine into the true blood. There remains
only, according to a divine destiny, an appearance falling into the
senses". The proof of this is derived from the words of the
institution: that is my body, that is my blood; and, in order to
hold the interpretation of the Greeks to be true, they quote
Christ's saying: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have
believed. (John XX 29.) For the rest, they want that not only the
Priests, but also the Laymen should partake of the cup, and that the
same Honor should be shown to the consecrated Elements as to Christ.
One cannot enter into the feelings of some Teachers and persons
concerning this Sacrament, who are often as sensual as the Roman
Catholics, but often agree with the Evangelical creeds. What was
taught of the other alleged Sacraments does not deserve further
presentation. From this it follows of itself that their
presentation, concerning conversion, must differ much from ours.
Their faith is indeed not much different, than a historical
knowledge of religious truths; their good works consist in only
external acts, as in a civilly honorable behavior, or in a multitude
of recited or read prayers, the giving of alms, fasting,
pilgrimages, etc.
They extend the name
of Catholic or universal Church to all Christian denominations. They
consider the Church of Jerusalem to be the mother church of
Christianity; but, by an Imperial command, and according to the
decision of the Council of Nicea, the churches of Rome and
Constantinople are allowed precedence over the rest.
Concerning the state
after death; they reject Purgatory, which the Roman doctors; they
assert a feeling of joy among the pious, and pain among the ungodly;
(I part 61-66 question) but of the latter, they think, many were
delivered from hell, not well by their penance and confession, but
nevertheless by the alms of the deceased, the intercession of the
church, and by the bloodless sacrifice of the mass. This strange
feeling is proved still more strangely, namely from Christ's words:
fear him who has the power to cast into hell. (Luke XII 5.) For (as
Theophilactus concludes from it,) in order that Christ does not say,
who always and forever casts into Hell, but only, who has the power
to cast into Hell; thus one must pray for the deliverance of the
dead, distribute alms, and say Mass.
The Greek Church
differs, in several respects, from all Western churches. It denies
the going forth of the Holy Spirit from the Son; it maintains the
necessity, that to a legitimate Baptism belongs the immersion of the
Baptized person under water; the use of leavened bread at the Holy
Communion seems to it absolutely necessary, and very small children
are with it partakers of the Communion: the marriage of priests is,
as we saw before, determined by it, and a third or fourth marriage
is held by them as fornication. No less does it differ in many
points from the Roman Church. The high opinion of the Romans
concerning the Pope at Rome, as a visible Governor of Christ and the
Supreme Head of the Church, appears to the Greeks blasphemous; their
graven images and statues are in their eyes abominable; the
withdrawal of the drinking cup they consider a mutilation of the
Sacrament, and the prohibition of the marriage of priests as
unlawful; Purgatory appears to them ridiculous, and the persecutory
spirit of the Romans [Catholics] they utterly reproach.
§. XV. Religious
customs of the Greeks.
Since the Greeks
follow the old style in the Almanac, and therefore the year also
begins 11 days later than we do; so their and our Feasts, except the
movable ones, never agree in the days; and, since they never want to
celebrate the Easter Feast at the same time as the Jews, this
already causes a remarkable deviation from our Feasts. Besides the
Apostles and Church Fathers, they have a great multitude of general
and special Saints; so that the Sundays with the Feasts take up
something more than a third of the year. But the latter are, for the
most part, Church Feasts, that is, such as are celebrated by
ecclesiastical Persons and Monks alone: for there are
those who celebrate them in Chapels, near the cities and villages,
or far away from them, in ruined churches, and supposed Holy places,
and on which, after Mass, they pass the time in eating, playing, and
dancing. At such times there is almost no end of Ceremonies and
solemnities. — The first day of May is still always spent in
walking and merrymaking. On Corpus Christi, in the Episcopal
Churches, the Bishop washes the feet of 12 Priests. For that purpose
a stella is erected there, on which the Bishop sits in his Mass
vestment with 12 Priests. To represent Judas, a priest with a red
beard is brought from outside, if such a priest cannot be found in
the city. While this person is seated, a bishop or priest reads from
the pulpit the Gospel story of the washing of feet; and at the
words, Jesus took an apron and girded himself, (John XIII 4.) the
bishop stands up, lays aside his vestment, puts on an apron, and
performs everything according to the contents of the story; even he
who represents Peter speaks his words to the bishop. Before this
ceremony the Holy Communion is celebrated, in which he first
distributes himself, and then the priests. - The Easter feast lasts
6 days. On the first day, from the rising of the sun, one hears
χριςες ανέςη,
Christ is risen; to which the acquaintance to whom it is shouted
answers: άληθως άνέςη,
he is truly risen; and after these spoken words one kisses each
other three times, namely on both cheeks and on the mouth. Since the
Lent of 40 days has come to an end beforehand; so the people then,
by far-reaching extravagances, make great display, and one sees
whole rows, hand in hand, passing through the streets, singing and
playing, in a sort of religious dance. — The Pentecost
festival lasts only 2 days with them.
The Lent days cover
at least half a year. The first great fast begins on the 15th of
November, and lasts until Christmas; the second is that of 40 days
before Easter. This is the most difficult; for then nothing of any
kind of meat, fish, butter, eggs, oil, cheese, etc., may be eaten.
One must content oneself with foodstuffs, which can be boiled with
water, almond milk, vinegar, etc. Rice, groats, mealy foods,
vegetables, mussels, oysters, therefore, constitute the food alone.
But they are also free to eat caviar, or dried roe of sturgeon and
other fish: about which the Romans mocked them, because they ate the
eggs of fish, but considered the eating of the fish itself to be
unlawful; but the Greeks pay in the same coin, and reproach them,
because, in the forbidden enjoyment of fowls, they nevertheless used
the eggs. But on the 25th of March, being the Feast of the
Annunciation, when this does not fall in Holy Week, and on Palm
Sunday, they may eat fish; just as they are permitted to do with
eggs and milk-meats in the first week of Lent. The third Lent is
named after the Holy Apostles, beginning after Pentecost week, and
ending with St. Peter's and Paul's day. As they may eat fish in
this, although milk is forbidden, it does not trouble them as much
as the others. The fourth Lent precedes the supposed Assumption of
Mary, and lasts, with the utmost strictness, from the 1st to the
15th of August, excepting the 6th, when, as on the celebrated Feast
of the Declaration of Christ, they may use oil and fish. All
Wednesdays and Fridays are fast days, except Saturday, as with the
Roman Catholics, except the silent Saturday before Easter. There are
also other single fast days; but at certain times they have no place
at all, as from Christmas to Epiphany, the Easter and Pentecost
week, and a few weeks before Lent of 40 days. But this only affects
the Laity in general. Even those among them who are after a greater
holiness, likewise the Priests, and especially the Monks, increase
the number of fast days, and go much further in the abstinence of
all kinds of food. They are also usually so strict and strict about
this, that they would rather die, than, for instance, in illness,
break their fast, and eat meat. They must have a special permission
from the Bishop or other Priests, but from whom they do not easily
obtain it. Many even consider murder, fornication, adultery, theft,
etc., as minor sins, compared with the violation of Lent. The
strictness and rigor which they observe in this respect is
wonderful, and they endure them with great patience, in the hope of
making up for their loss at the following Feasts; which they do not
fail to do; wherefore great joys and excesses are wont to occur at
them. The sign of the cross is held in an uncommon esteem by them,
as it, in all fairness, ought to be by all Christians, so much the
more, as all enemies of the Christian religion hate the thing
indicated by it, and it is the best outward sign of distinction
among Jews and Turks. But they do not stop there, but believe that
there is an uncommon power in it against the Devil and all Evil.
Therefore it is made on all occasions, when rising, going to bed,
before and after eating, likewise innumerable times in church, for
instance, when in their Liturgy the words occur: In the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen! They make this
sign of the cross, while at the words, in the name of the Father,
they raise the three fore fingers to the forehead; then at the
words, and of the Son, they lower the hand; then at the words, and
of the Holy Spirit, they direct it to the right side of the arm, and
with a movement of it to the left side, they end at the word, Amen.
At the prayers in church they do not kneel, but stand, bowing
themselves only according to the circumstances, especially when they
make the sign of the cross, deep on the ground; Pentecost excepted,
when they kneel three times at their prayers. - They have, like the
Armenians and Turks, Rosary beads, of which they do not make the
proper religious use, like the Roman Catholics, but nevertheless,
often, when counting the corals, they pronounce the words, Lord,
have mercy on us! or, God be praised!, just as the Turks, besides
playing with them, add God's attributes to them.
As soon as a woman in
childbirth is delivered, a priest is brought, who pronounces certain
prayers over her. On the eighth day the child is brought to the
church; at the door with the sign of the cross on the forehead, the
mouth and the body are consecrated, and a prayer is pronounced over
it. This is called the Sealing, and is considered a preparation for
Baptism. This is not long delayed, and the child is assigned
godfathers. Baptism is done in houses. The child is undressed, and,
after the Priest has blown upon it three times, he holds it above
the body under the arms, cuts through it three times with its feet,
but in the form of a cross, the water, which reaches the child to
the belly, and, while he holds it, further, with one hand in the
water, he pours it, with the other, three times with it. Then after
the Baptism the anointing with oil takes place; it also receives the
Lord's Supper; and then the Parents always let it go to the Lord's
Supper with them. The woman in childbirth may not come into the
church before the time, appointed in the Mosaic religion.
The Mass is read with
and under long and many Ceremonies. The Romans reproach the Greeks
with much mockery, that they worship bread and wine, even before the
communion. They use leavened bread at the Lord's Supper, having a
round shape, and with the words, but abbreviated, Ιησους
χριςος νικα
(Jesus Christ has conquered), drawn, as the figure next to it shows.
It consists of two,
but baked on top of each other, two-baked or rusks, so that one can
see where they are baked together. The upper one is about three, the
lower two fingers, and all around it is equally thick. Small pieces
are broken off from it, and put in a measured spoon with some
consecrated wine, which is mixed with water, and both are thus given
to the communicant. The bread consecrated on the proper altar, like
such a drink, if there be any left over, is consumed by the Priest
alone; but all other bread, lying on a side table, over which
prayers have been said, but which was not consecrated on the proper
altar with the words of the institution, is distributed among the
people, who, with great devotion, keep it for a holy use. It is
indeed brought to the sick, but not worshipped; just as no
Processions or walks are made with it. Otherwise, the Greeks observe
a very strict Lent before they go to the Lord's Supper. Marriage is
performed among them without previous proclamation of marriage
orders, and is performed by the Bishops in the case of important
Persons, but by other Priests in the case of Minors. The examples
are not rare, that the Bride and Groom were only 26 years old
together, just like the premature marriage is very much in vogue
among all Eastern peoples. In it there is a great multitude of
ceremonies, which are partly modest, partly ridiculous. It takes
place mostly under the open sky. There some holy images, especially
the image of the Virgin Mary, are exhibited; two lighted wax candles
are placed on a chair or table, and two crowns and two rings are
laid by them. Bridegroom and bride must have invited fathers (*) to
this ceremony, at the beginning of which the bystanders place their
marriage gifts in dishes or baskets. After several incenses and
prayers, the rings of the bridegroom and bride are lit and taken off
several times, as well as the crowns are put on and taken off again.
After that they, further, take each other by the hand, and in front
of the said table or chair, have turned several times around the
Fathers; while the Priest, rather inattentively, reads the Form,
they drink, at last, a little wine from a glass offered them, which
the Priest then drinks down completely, and then breaks into pieces.
— The forbidden degrees in the Mosaic law are strictly
observed, and there are many other ecclesiastical regulations. Blood
relations may not marry together until after a certain degree; and
those who have been godfathers by a baptized person are forbidden to
themselves and their descendants, up to certain degrees, all
marriage alliances. But such parties, who do not wish to submit to
these laws, or where one wishes to marry more than twice, apply to
the Turkish courts, seeking permission from them to live together as
spouses. This is called Kapin, and is obtained for a small sum; but
the church usually excommunicates such people. Divorces are not
rare, and the Patriarch, for want of money, can easily be persuaded
to grant permission.
The dead are not kept
long in the house. He who dies in the evening is buried early the
next day; but he who dies in the morning is buried after noon. The
dead, of whatever opinion he may be, are dressed in his best
clothes, and, because the Levantines do not use a coffin, he is laid
on a stretcher with no side rails, and on it open is carried to his
resting-place; wherefore the youth, who, according to Luke VII
12-15, was carried to the grave in this manner, could not, at the
emphatic word of Christ, arise, stand up without hindrance. More or
less priests, according to the circumstances of the persons, go
before the corpse, bring it, with singing and much incense, into the
church or cemetery, and then masses are said for the deceased, but
not in such number as among the Roman Catholics. An unfortunate
premonition is derived from it, when a corpse, after the lapse of a
year, has not yet decayed, except in the case of one who was
canonized as a saint, when then the non-decay is considered a
special grace of God: otherwise it is believed that this body was
animated by an evil spirit; and the soul that previously occupied it
as its abode is considered lost. At the burials there is a horrible
wailing of the blood relatives, even of very strange persons; people
even pull out their hair, and walk with their heads against the
walls. This real or feigned commotion takes place both with the
dead, whom one once loved, and with such, from whom one wishes to be
freed, and in order to remove this already in former times, Paul
wrote to the Thessalonians: (1 Thessal. IV 13.) We will not withhold
from you because of them that sleep; that ye sorrow not, as others
which have no hope. (*) The Greeks make some great work of painted
images. The poorest man has many or few of them in his house, the
richer more and more beautiful. They are accustomed to hang them by
the bedsteads, as well as inside at the headboards. Every evening
before Sundays and feast days, or on other occasions, lamps and
candles are lighted, hanging before them, as well as incense
offered. They are attributed a magical power for the preservation of
all kinds of ailments, as well as for the healing of diseases; and
here and there many images are even held in special esteem, and are
borrowed for the aforementioned purposes.
Before someone lives
in a house, it is consecrated by certain prayers and other
ceremonies. But it does not stop there, but on Epiphany or Three
Kings' Day such a consecration is repeated, and often extends to
certain waters, fields, etc. They attribute a magical power to many
parts of the Holy Scripture, forms of prayers and customs, and on
that account they are used for the healing of common and
extraordinary diseases, as well as for the conjuring of Elements and
Spirits.
A church custom,
which fills the Greeks with fear and terror, is the Excommunication
or ecclesiastical ban. This is done after a solemn mass. A certain
number of candles are lighted beforehand, and these are extinguished
according to the forms of ban pronounced in their anathemas. The
Bishop alone, or in his absence another ordained ecclesiastical
person, can perform the excommunication; and he who is afflicted by
it, sees one of each released. But it does not only concern persons
who can be named; but is also pronounced over unnamed persons who
have committed this or that, for example, stolen, and on whom it
would attach, if no restitution or compensation was made. A
multitude of true or fictitious examples of God's judgments, which
are said to have come upon the Excommunicated, and are everywhere
related and believed, the horrible curses in the Form also included
among them, keep this Church usage in its power, notwithstanding
that it is often, and even on minor occasions, abused, and one must
therefore think that its impression and authority would be greatly
diminished.
The Patriarchal See
at Constantinople has reserved for itself the Canonization or
Canonization. But, in order to make someone, because of his holy
Life and alleged Miracles, a sharer in such an Honor, not only the
examination of the Patriarch and the Bishops at a Synod is required,
but also thousands of witnesses, besides many other circumstances,
are required. Since it now entails much expense, not to speak of any
other circumstances and objections; so this ceremony now almost
entirely falls away.
(*)
These Fathers on the wedding-day are, with the Greeks, not that, but
in a stronger sense, what with us the playmates are.
(*)
Christians and Infidels in the Levant are accustomed, at certain
times, to visit the graves of their ancestors; the former usually on
one of the Easter days.
§. XVI. Of the
Holy Places, and the Worship of the Greeks.
That the church
buildings of the Greeks are of a diverse construction, has been
remarked before. It depends mostly on the Provinces in which they
are situated, and in which there is a greater or lesser freedom, as
well as whether there are many, few, or no Turks at all living
there. The old churches, which they have had since the times before
the Turkish conquest, are unusually different from the later ones.
These are, often, so badly built, that here and there they resemble
common huts. In other places, for instance on the islands of the
Archipelago, where one finds a great number of such common churches,
they serve as housing for foreigners, and other common uses.
Otherwise the arrangement in all large churches is about the same,
namely in the form of a Greek, that is, on the four sides equally
long cross. Its layout is from the East to the West; and to the
first point of the sky the altar is also always situated. This
stands, according to an imagined necessity, under a vault, and is
separated from the rest of the space of the church, which is usually
lower, by a fence, through which a Holy of Holies is created. This
partition is, on the side towards the church, painted with a great
multitude of images, which form the object of their worship, and in
it, besides two doors on the sides, in the middle, is a double door
of reasonable size, through which the congregation can look at the
altar, and which, therefore, is called the Holy Gate. No
unconsecrated person may pass through this middle or so-called Holy
Gate. The altar has no backrest, on which ornaments or images stood.
On it stand one or more Crucifixes and Candlesticks, and so it has
only the form of a raised table. Behind it, at a little distance, is
a circle in the wall, and in it a special seat, like a Throne on
which the Patriarch or Bishop, on high Feasts, sits down with the
crown on his head, and pronounces the blessing over the altar,
through the above-mentioned gate, over the assembly. On both sides
of the altar, opposite the side doors, stand two tables. On the
table on the left hand side one places the Communion bread, and the
cup with wine and water; on the table on the right side books, the
Holy vessels and priestly garments are placed. In the church itself,
not far from the partition, on the left hand, one finds the usual
and somewhat elevated seat of the Patriarch or Bishop, and somewhat
lower the seats of the other ecclesiastical persons according to
their rank. Opposite the seat of the Bishop is the Pulpit, and next
to it are, often, the seats for the foreign Bishops. Furthermore,
there are also other seats for ecclesiastical persons opposite the
aforementioned, so that they form a double Choir, and can answer
each other in the chants. The seats of the women are, as a rule,
within partitioned galleries, and provided with lattices, so that
they cannot be seen, although outside that they are covered with a
veil. By a great multitude of candlesticks and lamps the churches
are not only decorated, but also, because they are generally quite
dark, lighted. In front of the partition in the church stand
candlesticks of various metals, which are partly of a man's height,
partly lower, and partly also higher; and according to the height
and thickness are also the wax candles sticking on them. The lamps
are, according to the wealth of the church, often of silver, hanging
on small chains in a certain order in the churches, which decorates
them very much on the inside. When entering and leaving the church
the Greeks always make the sign of the cross, in the manner and
manner mentioned above.
There is no lack of
monasteries; but the cruelty of the Turks seems to have greatly
reduced them in Asia. In European Turkey, and on the islands of the
Archipelago, there are still quite a few. The church stands in the
middle of the Square, and around it are the Monks' Cells. The most
famous monasteries are on the Princes' Islands, not far from
Constantinople; also on Mount Athos, where the large and small ones
extend to twenty; then also on the island of Pathmos by the Cave,
where, according to tradition, John set up the Revelation; and
chiefly on Mount Sinai. From the principal monasteries one or more
monks are usually sent out everywhere to collect support money for
the monastery, in order to be able to make good the expenses,
especially the exactions of the Turks. — Most monasteries are
under the Patriarch at Constantinople, who has the priests warded
there, and appoints the guardians of the monastery; but some, like
those on Mount Athos, do not depend on him. Most of them also have
to pay an annual tribute, not to mention other extortioners.
There is no lack of
places where the Greeks go to make pilgrimages. The principal
pilgrimage is to Jerusalem to the Holy Sepulchre. As this, with the
church built over it, had been since the Crusades fairly in the
power of the Romanists, who abused it with contempt for the
Easterners; so the later Turkish Emperors have greatly reduced it,
and assigned the principal share to the Greeks, as their subjects.
The pilgrimage there takes place in Lent, to celebrate Holy Week and
the Easter festival in Jerusalem. They are especially drawn thither
by the Holy fire, which, in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, is
said to descend from Heaven on the Saturday before Easter, to which
the Greek Patriarch, and afterwards the Patriarchs or principal
Bishops of the other Eastern Christians light wax candles, and to
them the people theirs. (*) But, because this is not seen to come
through the church, and from above into the Cave of the Holy
Sepulchre; no one is admitted therewith, except the Patriarchs; thus
the deception is evident, which, in familiar conversation, is not
denied, but is partly excused by the custom, partly by the
prevention of difficulties about Religion among the common people,
and by the oppressors of the Turks, who, if such a deceitful Miracle
were stopped, would have to forfeit much money. But the Roman Clergy
in Jerusalem has no part in it. Otherwise there are still many
Pilgrimages. Here and there are even holy Caves; and places, where
before there were Churches, Chapels and Monasteries, as well as
tombs of Martyrs and supposed Saints, also cause the holy journeys.
The worship is done
in the ancient Greek Language. It is incomprehensible, how so many
Denominations, because of an excessive adherence to custom and
antiquity, observe the worship in dead languages. The Greeks would
fear to desecrate it, if they had to perform it in modern Greek.
There are few Scholars among them, who understood ancient Greek so
well, that they could understand the Religion in it. At the most, in
the Sermons, for better comprehension, some modern Greek is spoken.
Now let one judge how little use the common man can derive from it.
The prejudice of an old custom is also the reason that the worship
is held more by night than by day, and, except on the longest days,
is usually not ended until the break of day. Now and then, as on
Good Friday, Saturday before Easter, and on the first day of Easter,
it lasts day and night, so that almost everyone, especially the
priests, faint from fatigue. It consists of a fabric of Psalms,
short and long prayers, moral lessons, which began with the priests,
but are continued and ended by the people; of hymns, which are sung
very uniformly, and of the reading of Epistles, Gospels, as well as
other parts of the Holy Scripture, and the Legend of the Saints. All
this is done according to four distinct Liturgies, namely, that
which is wrongly attributed to the Apostle James, and those which
bear the name of Chrysostom, Basil, and Gregory the Great, and are
divided according to the week, Sundays, and feast days. Sermons are
seldom delivered, and those which otherwise last long and are
obscure, are most esteemed. During and during the Mass, incense is
also very strongly burned. For the rest, there is no peculiar
edifying attention to their worship, neither by the Priests nor by
the Laity; attention is almost entirely lacking, because most of
them, besides the unknown language, understand only a few words even
when reading quickly. Of them nothing is noticed, except that they
make upon themselves the sign of the cross, in the manner described
beforehand, whereby, at large assemblies, a great noise is caused. —
Sunday has the special freedom, that Christians may not be disturbed
by the Turks on account of taxes and lawsuits, on it. — Church
books are not kept at all; and therefore no one can obtain
testimonies of baptisms, marriages, and deaths.
(*)
By the pretended holy fire in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre in
Jerusalem, as formerly in the Tabernacle, and the Temple of Solomon,
God's presence at the Holy Sepulchre would be made visible.
§. XVII.
Character and domestic disposition of the Greeks, with other things
pertaining thereto.
One must allow the
Greek nation, in general, a natural understanding. In children, the
capacities of the soul and the dexterity of the body develop much
earlier than in us. They also learn to speak earlier, learning
usually two, or even three or more languages, without much trouble,
at once; but the purity in this respect tends to falter greatly,
because art and culture are neglected. With the years all these
capacities increase noticeably, and come to a sharpness of
understanding, which other peoples, through great diligence and
trouble, cannot obtain. But in the communication of the power to
judge, nature has not been so favorable to them. They run over
everything easily, and things that require a continuous, long and
active reflection are none of their business. Yet a good judgment is
not thereby denied to a few persons, here and there. History seems
to confirm this even in ancient times. The most famous Greek
philosophers, with the exception of Plato and Aristotle, have made
themselves famous more by mere ingenious sayings, than by a really
coherent system, and in every way the understanding shines through
in their philosophical thoughts. The modern Greeks (and probably the
ancients were also) are fiery in their proposals and undertakings,
lively in their intercourse, jocular and full of sense in their
expressions. Their passion leads them, as in a moment, to
innumerable different objects. In disputing they are indeed fierce,
but they also fade away just as quickly. They find much taste in
little stories and romantic tales. Their disposition and manner of
conduct betray a great instability. The most important things are
only passed over by them in passing; their sorrow does not last
long; and, as difficult as the Turkish yoke is at other times, they
nevertheless bear it so easily, when the outward exercise of
religion and the amusements on the feast days are only permitted to
them. - Deceit is a crime, peculiar to the wit, and the Greeks are
not lacking in it. To fish something out, and to find out, they
succeed more easily than others. The ancients have all considered
them mendacious, and, when they spoke of Greek loyalty and faith,
they always understood by that, deceit and falsehood. The modern
Greeks give their ancestors nothing in this respect. They lie,
without thinking it themselves, and support their lies, without
gravity, by swearing by God, their Soul, their Life, their and other
people's eyes, and by their and other people's children. — The
imagination and pride concerning the excellence of their Religion
and their nation above others, is peculiarly theirs. And the
Europeans have therefore the proverb, that in the Levant and among
the Greeks no one could live, unless they were kept in check by the
Turks. But, however much this is done, their haughtiness and
splendor in clothing cannot be restrained. — As proud as a
Greek is, so dismayed is he, as soon as he sees a Turk. The
flatteries which they show to the latter, the cringing patience with
which they endure their insults and severe treatment, and the
baseness in the title of them, (*) make one feel an uncommon
aversion; and yet there is no lack of a very far-reaching boasting
behind the back. This one sees, in an apparent way, in the Princes
of Wallachia and Moldavia. When they attain to that Dignity, and
possess it; then their puffed-up and conceitedness, their wanton
pride, their spiteful, nay cruel and inhuman conduct exceeds all
that one can think of: but in their misfortune, when they are
deposed, one can think of nothing baser, more dejected, more
cringing and cowardly than them. Self-interest, greed and avarice
are with them as home. For money the Europeans use the Greeks, as
they please, and therefore they also tolerate everything. This is
the main source, why they spoil themselves with the Turks themselves
in the ground, and let what is theirs be taken away. And it is sad
to see how their accusations before the Turkish courts arise from
this, and how religion, honor, life and property are destroyed
there.
One cannot well
imagine, what deep roots credulity and superstition have taken among
them. However insignificant a priest may have become among them, who
has quarrelled with them, drunk himself, or behaved basely in any
other way; they still ask his blessing, and kiss his hand, or lay it
on their head. (*) The most wicked men, generally, make the most
considerable Legacies in their Testaments, in order to atone for
sins by such a liberality, and to obtain the intercession of
Priests, Monks, and the Poor. In the Provinces, where they are
fairly free, as on the countries of the Archipelago, the rich, at
their death, fix a certain sum of money, to build a chapel; and this
is the reason, why one finds such a great number of chapels. —
Many springs and waters, both in forests and caves and mountains,
which are naturally mineral, have been made miraculous, and thus
become holy. The Greeks call them hallowed or atonement waters.
(αγιαςματα.) By
them, as well as on those images, which are supposed to have a
healing power, they hang up cloths, as a sign, that they hope for
healing. Not only other Eastern Christians do it this way, but also
the Jews and Turks. Of miracles, which are supposed to have happened
here and there, one hears daily. Apparitions have occurred there;
Crucifixes fall from Heaven, which disappear again; there are
changes seen in the images; the deceased show themselves at night,
etc. When the writer once went into the Greek church in the
Dardanelles, because it was somewhat dark there, he saw, by the
screen before the altar, a heap in which something was moving;
coming closer, it was a sick woman on a bed, who, for some time, had
had herself carried into the church, because she pretended that she
was greatly refreshed by the sight of a painted image of Mary. (*)
Had not the miserable nature of this sufferer proved the truth of
her illness; what should not a natural suspicion have thought about
such a thing? Meanwhile the priests approved of such superstition,
and that at a place so considerable, and not far from
Constantinople. During his second stay there he visited the
Patriarch Karatscha, who had been recalled from his exile on the
island of Lemnos, and whom he had come to know in his dignity during
his first stay. At the same time he had many archbishops and
bishops, as well as important worldly persons, visiting him with
congratulatory messages. Can one imagine that this patriarch had the
audacity to boast before this assembly of the appearance of the
Virgin Mary in a dream, (*) announcing that he would be recalled
from his exile, and that he found approval from all? But even
prominent worldly persons are not free from this superstition. About
the year 1763 the Dutch Consul of Negroponte, a Greek by religion,
had a trial for many previously committed subterfuges. Could one
believe that this man, on all occasions, turned to his images, and
asked them for advice, what he proposed, and how he should answer?
When those who hold Dignities and Offices think and act in this way;
what should one expect from the Common People? They adhere very much
to vanity, and those vices, which the Apostles, especially Paul in
the letters to Timothy and Titus, charged their ancestors with, and
punished them for, have been propagated to their descendants. For
the rest they help themselves very commonly in eating and drinking,
if they can only dress themselves excellently. (*)
The language of the
Greeks is modern Greek. According to the assurance that was given to
the writer in Constantinople and Smyrna, one would have difficulty
in finding a dozen people in the Turkish Empire who understood
ancient Greek at the bottom and could speak it unadulterated. Modern
Greek does not deviate much from this, and the difference is no
greater than between Latin and Italian. The artificial words and the
principal expressions are ancient Greek; nothing but the inflection
of them, and especially the declensions and conjugations are modern.
The purer it is spoken, the closer it comes to ancient Greek. This
takes place chiefly round Athens, and on Mount Athos, as well as in
all those places, where there are few or no Turks at all,
consequently the mixing with other languages has not
taken hold. In pronunciation they are themselves, with the more or
less tenderness of some Provinces excepted, fairly similar.
Generally they are for the Itacismus. The β sounds, in their
pronunciation, like bh, nay almost like our V; theirs βαλεριάνος
Valerianus of the Romans; the γ not, as in many Provinces of
Germany, like j, but like the true g; the δ almost like ds;
the θ almost like ths; the η entirely like i; the ζ
like a soft s; the σ like a sharp s; the αι as ae;
the ει and οι as i, the αυ
as av; the ευ as ev; and finally the ου
as u. If they wish to express our proper b; then they use for it, as
μπ, as μπορο (borò) I can;
μπάλα (bála) a bullet. Of the
Erasmian pronunciation, therefore, the Greeks know nothing, and it
would sound barbarous in their ears, since Greek, according to their
pronunciation, is very pleasant to hear. One may think of them, that
they have the true pronunciation; for, since, notwithstanding their
subjection to the Turks, they have constantly observed their worship
in the ancient Greek language, and for the recitation of its parts
the Deacons, Monks and priests are regularly taught; they are also
uncorrupted in many places of the Turks, and their religious
customs, in many monasteries, have remained unimpaired in the daily
worship; so one cannot well dispute the true tradition of the
sayings, except for trifles. — In their chronology they follow
the old style.
Their opinion about
various Denominations is not too scriptural. They keep a reasonable
amount of each other, often calling themselves brothers and sisters.
Because of the agreement of faith with the Russians they bear them a
natural affection, often admitting that, to know the Turks, by which
they, here and there, bring upon themselves great inconveniences.
They generally regard them as those who will, at some time, deliver
them from the Turkish yoke. The Turks know this, and according to
their superstition they also imagine that this will happen; yes,
from this cause prophecies have arisen which wish to foretell this,
without nevertheless determining in advance times, persons, and
other circumstances necessary for the fulfilment, which so clearly
distinguish the prophecies of the Bible from the lying ones. The
Porte, meanwhile, seeks to prevent all communication between the
Greeks and the Russians, and the Russian ambassador at
Constantinople is not even allowed to enter a Greek church, because
otherwise he would expose the Greek nation, and especially its
principal ones, especially the Patriarchs, to misfortune and
calamity. - Towards the Protestants the Greeks are most friendly
disposed, because they allow them in their countries the freedom of
religion, the Protestant ambassadors and consuls also render them
many services with the Turks, and do not seek to make them apostate
from their religion; but would not a union of religion between the
two be so easy to expect, considering that, putting aside the Pope
and religious coercion, the same causes almost separate us, which
separate us from the Romans. From the latter they have not received
what they received from the Protestants; rather they must ascribe to
them many persecutions, and therefore they bear them a natural
hatred. To the Armenians they have not such hatred, as to the
Romans; but nevertheless they have less love for them than for the
Protestants, because they have been excluded by a general church
council, and that ban has never been withdrawn. They have the most
extreme aversion to the Turks, calling them nothing else than dogs.
This has become such a habit for them that they are surprised when
someone asks them the reason for it, and shows the impermissibility
of such a course of action from scripture. Otherwise they have not
yet ceased to be hospitable.
To what offices the
male race among the Greeks can come, has been indicated in §
X.. But the Turks also employ them very much for domestic affairs.
They conduct their trade, mostly, in the interior of the Empire; but
many also go to the European countries, and conduct it there. The
common people are much supplied with agriculture and gardening, or
are in the service of Christians and non-Christians. The dress of
these common people differs from that of the First Names, while the
former use short garments, over which, if they possess any means,
they wear on feast days a long fur coat hanging down to the ground;
but the latter wear long garments, although the trousers are in all
cases very wide, and reach to the feet. (*) The Priests wear
moustaches, and also let the hair grow on the chin; but worldly
Persons have only the first. (*) In companies they give coffee and
tobacco. Of the first, only one cup is always given without milk,
and often without sugar. The Tobacco is offered in long pipes, which
are of various kinds. The commonest come from Moldavia and
Wallachia, and are called Jermessee. The best are those which are
made in the Levant itself from Jasmine and Cherry trees, and a black
kind, which bears the name of Mussa. Of these a piece may cost 6,
12, and more Piastres. Such a Tobacco pipe is 2 or 3 ells long, and
it is considered pleasant to smoke from it, because the smoke comes
cold to the mouth. — They carry, like the other Levantines, in
companies, especially a kind of rosary with them, which the Rich
have of amber, which they serve to play with, because they count the
beads with their fingers, and let them pass through their hand.
During the visits, not only the Greeks, but also all Levantines, of
both sexes, take off their shoes or slippers at the door, or at
least when coming to the Sopha. The Firstnames also sometimes have a
pair carried by their Servants, Maid or Slave, in order to exchange
the good with the bad or the latter with none.
The Women have, just
as with us, the domestic duties; but for the rest they abstain from
all such, in which they should have uncovered the face. They are
thus, in their work, and in their trade and conversation, for all
not visible, certain places, where greater freedom reigns, excepted.
They spin the yarn, the wool and silk on the spindle, weave the
lyves themselves; they sew, stitch and embroider. The latter is
especially the work of great women. If all the modes of dress in
different countries, in certain respects, differ; yet no real change
of fashion takes place. In their house, the court and garden they
wear slippers or shoes, (Sandalia) but immediately over the
stockings socks of fine leather (μεςια)
with which they slip their slippers or shoes; and when riding out,
or when they want to go far, they wear yellow boots. The shoes are,
often, artfully made, inlaid with mother of pearl, and the straps
stitched over it. The wooden sole, a finger thick, has two
cross-pieces underneath, to make it the height of a hand broad. This
is, probably, the cothurnus of the ancients. The Greeks all wear,
according to the uniform custom of the East, trousers, which hang
down to the shoes. Over this hangs the very wide shirt, which,
therefore, for adults is made in one way and in the same size, being
very fine, or made of tree wool and flax or silk. The sleeves on it
are wide, hang almost over the whole hand, and cover the place of
the lobes of the hand. In front of the neck it is made with a button
of small or great value, or only with a pin. Over this goes a dress,
which fits the body just, only that it is somewhat wider at the
bottom, one side folded over the other, and at the chest somewhat
cut out, so that it is reasonably transparent through the fine
shirt. The outer garment, Feredsche, consists, when it is winter, of
a fur skirt; in summer time of a light material, which is completely
open at the front. The undergarment, such as the men, and both ideas
among the Armenians, Jews and Turks wear, is fastened around the
body by the girdle. This is often, and especially with the women,
very beautiful and expensive, so that such a one can cost a thousand
or more Dutch ducats. The necklaces and bracelets usually consist of
gold chains. The cloth around the head of the women is made of many
kinds and colours, as well as gold and silver threads, and is called
Tschember. Their hair is braided in a multitude of small locks,
which are twisted together three or five times, and tied in rows
around the Tschember. With others these locks hang around them, and
down on the shoulders. One sees easily how naturally they wear it,
and how beautifully it must suit the body. When the women go out;
then they are obliged to wear a white cloth over their head, to
cover their face. (*) It consists of muslin, and is covered with
gold threads, a few fingers wide, by the Nobles. It is called
Mahraman. In Constantinople, and in many other places, they must,
like the Turks, cover themselves almost entirely with this veil; but
in places where more freedom prevails, they only let it hang down
over their shoulders. The fan of the Greek women is by the Nobles
fairly large, made of peacock feathers, and provided with an ivory
handle. In the side towards the inside, at the top of it, is a small
mirror. When they are in the house, or under a tree; then they let
maids or slaves guard them with it. For the rest, the domestic
condition comes very close to the Turkish. The children are
restrained, and kept under a fairly sharp discipline, and the women
by their husbands strictly. The love of the children to their
parents, and that of the latter to none, is generally great. The
maids are not allowed to speak alone with the sons of men. If any
one from outside enters the room, the daughters go away, and do not
come in again, unless they are called by their parents. They sew,
spin, sew, and do their other work by and before the lattice of the
windows, that they may watch the passers-by without being seen. Many
Greek women, notwithstanding that they are otherwise fairly
well-made, and have a lively colour, paint themselves, laying on all
sorts of places of their faces little muffs of various sizes. They
also often paint their eyebrows black; but this is more proper to
the Jew women. To express love and joy, or a feast, they have their
heads covered with many flowers. — The Minnemoeders are still
used, under the name παραμανα,
paramana, (as a second mother) by the principal Greeks. They are,
often, incorporated into the families as familiars, and remain,
during their lives, in the house.
Of furniture or
household goods they know little, who have had no intercourse with
the Europeans, and have adopted customs from them. In most of the
halls and rooms there is a stool or footstool, which occupies a
third or half of it, covered with a Mat or a Carpet. (*) Around the
wall at this height is the Sopha, the coverings of which are of very
great value according to the condition of the families. Yes, in the
various kinds of cushions each one seeks to show his taste and
wealth. In front of the Sopha, cushion, stands a small box of more
or less size, and according to the condition of the owner, inlaid
with mother-of-pearl and other ornaments. In it the man has his
paper, writing equipment, book, etc. and the woman her embroidery,
silk, etc. lay. Tables and chairs are in the fewest houses. One sits
on the knees crossed one over the other. The food is placed in small
dishes on large copper plates in the middle. Bedsteads are also not
in use. There are no feather beds, but they use such mattresses as
are filled with wool; and the upper beds are filled with tree wool,
and quilted. These are spread out at night on the said height of the
footstool, rolled up in the morning, and then put away in the
cupboards in the wall. If light is brought into the room at night;
then all those present, and the inferiors the superiors, wish
themselves a good evening. This is observed as sacredly as by the
ancient Greeks. - The secret comforts consist among the Levantines
of a triangular hole, which is nevertheless not too large, so that
no one falls into it; and the opening is covered with a somewhat
raised piece of wood. (*) Not only when discharging, but also when
making one's water, one crouches down on it. One always has clean
water at hand to wash oneself. This the Turks never fail to do,
because religion obliges them to such a purification. — The
Greeks do not lack amusements of various kinds; and where is a
place, where the people were not very fertile, to invent them? Most
of their games are of such a nature, that bodily exercises are
combined with them. They are uncommonly fond of dancing. This they
do a great deal on the feast days; but then it consists, in fact,
only in a row, or a kind of marches, processions, and leaps. Among
their games belongs the jumble of money, whether heads or tails
fall. They like to play even or odd with axes, nuts, beans, or
pieces of money. The game of cards, so corruptible in Europe, is
only played by those who have learned it from the Europeans. Their
alternate singing, as in choirs, is still very much in use among
them. All sorts of merry tunes and love songs are in fashion among
them, and are to be found in great abundance, although they have
neither Sappho nor Anacreon among them. To avoid the former, the
Lyre is still a necessary, at least agreeable instrument among them.
European music very seldom pleases the Oriental. The instruments and
chants are, with a few exceptions, Turkish; but the words and
meaning of them are Greek. The Jews and Armenians have, here, with
the Turks even more, nay, almost everything in common. — The
walks of the Greek women are taken with their children, the maids
and slaves, if they may have such. This journey is done both with
splendor, and for the sake of propriety, in distinction from the
whores. - At weddings, not only do the guests themselves enjoy
themselves with games, dances and merrymaking; but hired jumpers and
dancers must also try to entertain them with the music. With the
corpses, it is no strange thing to hear the mourners' conversations
with the dead, as if he were still alive.
(*)
Regarding the Titles, the First Names are very inflated. The Men
want to be called Princes (αρχοντες)
and the Women Princesses (αρχοντισσααι).
The Spouse of the Interpreter of the Porte lets herself be called
the illustrious Lady. (*) The Greek lords and ladies give their
hands to children, servants and slaves, and the Firstnames also
their coat, first to kiss, and when this is done, as a sign of still
greater reverence, to press it to the forehead. Those in love or
tender-hearted people are accustomed to kiss their eyes, and
therefore one often hears them say: I want to kiss your eyes. (να
Φιλησω τα ματια
σου.)
(*)
In the East the custom is still, as it was in the time of Christ,
that a sick person is carried on a bed (κραββατον,
Mark II 3. etc.), to beg, or to be seated before the Churches. And
on the Princes' Islands, so near Constantinople, there is a
monastery, where they often bring sick people, who lie and sleep in
the church, to be restored, as they think, by the action of an
image.
(*)
The Greeks place much reliance on dreams, and some apply themselves
to their interpretation, which is certainly, like all divinations,
uncertain and deceptive.
(*)
At a marriage the greatest part of the expenditure consists in
jewels and clothes, which are put on display. What was reproved in 1
Timothy II 9. and 1 Peter III 3. is still in use. With regard to the
braiding of the hair the opinion still prevails: the more, the more
beautiful!
(*)
The r is often and usually pronounced as a d by modern Greeks after
v: for example, παντα ταλαντα,
panda talanda, and ντομνιτζα
domnitza. The pronunciation of Greek has naturally, as with all
languages, even those that have remained free from the influence of
foreign nations, undergone some change over time; but from this one
would very wrongly conclude that the Greeks did not have them more
authentically than the foreigners. This would not be a valid
objection either, if one were to say that the present Italian
pronunciation of Latin was not the old Roman one, notwithstanding
that the worship in Italy was held in the Latin language. The case
is different with the Greeks. All their churches in Asia and Europe
have only one pronunciation during worship, without organ and music.
The sayings are clearly recited, and then sung. The Greeks are
unusually fond of this. The yoke of the Romans, Persians and Turks
has never been able to move them to renounce their language.
(*)
The long outer garment, especially the rough and hairy one among the
common man, {Kapot") or the Fur among the First Names, still
serves at night as a covering, both at home and especially when
travelling. (Exod. XXII 26, 27.) The long petticoat fitting to the
body is fastened by a girdle. Such a one is often worn more for show
than out of necessity. Its use is, according to scripture, very old.
It serves to tie the money-bag to it, or to put the money in it.
(Matth. X 9.) Our leather money-bags may perhaps have been stripped
of them. Nowadays most people put their money-bag, as well as their
watch, in a pocket, which is found in the lining of the body-fitting
garment near the heart.
(*)
Among the Turks it is still by Persons, who nearly equal each other
in condition, and request something of each other, the touching and
kissing of the beard in use. (2 Sam. XX 9.) The Inferiors among all
the Levantines embrace the knees of the First Names. This is the
falling down and adoration (προςκϋνειν)
in the Bible.
(*)
The veil of women is an ancient custom, and chiefly depicting
modesty. - Gen. XX 16. XXIV 65. But they know how to hang it so,
that it increases beauty.
(*)
Before this height in the room the house servants among Christians
and Turks keep themselves; by which we can explain the Latin
expression, ad pedes stare, (to stand before the feet). By the First
Names they must administer the coffee, sweets, etc. on their knees.
(*)
All Orientals are, by, the natural discharge of the body, very
shameful. They wrap their long clothes around the body, and so
crouch down. By this one understands, what it means, to cover one's
feet, I Sam. XXIV 4.
FOURTH PART, Of the
Armenians.
§. XVIII. Of the
Armenian Church and its constitution.
The Armenian Church
has its name from the people, the inhabitants of Armenia, and the
Armenian language, which they employ in their worship; and this name
is all the more due to them, as the natives of Armenia, or their
descendants only, on the other hand, no people of other nations
belong to this Church. Church history shows that it is a Branch of
the Monophysite religious party, whose adherents, for a certain
reason, are called Jacobites and Copts. The rejection of the
Chalcedonian council has separated it from the Eastern and Western
Church. This separation could have been effected and maintained all
the more easily, if the Armenians had nothing to do with the
Patriarch at Constantinople. They agree with the Monophysites in the
main points; but they have their particular customs, and would not
accept their Church teachers from them. As none regard the great
Patriarch of Alexandria, but his seat is actually at Cairo, as the
supreme head in matters of religion; they regard the Patriarch of
Edzmiazin as such. The Armenian people, in the change of their
country, because it was now a kingdom of its own, now under Persia,
now under Turkey, have had peculiar fortunes. The greater part of
them have left it voluntarily, or have been carried away by the
conqueror. The Persian Kings have sought chiefly to depopulate it,
in order to make a desert there, which kept the Turks from warlike
attacks on Persia. In such a state of affairs an incredible
multitude of people has been carried away, and the suburb of Julsa
before Isfahan alone has become populated with about a hundred
thousand people. There is no principal city in Persia, as well as in
Turkey, especially Asia, in which there were not considerable
populations of Armenians; not to mention the great multitudes
residing in Poland and Russia, as well as smaller groups in Italy,
France, England and Holland. Of the Greeks and Romanists they are,
everywhere, looked upon with squints, and called schismatics; but
they themselves, with all humility, have a good confidence in their
cause.
Although they have
several Patriarchs; some are, however, only in name, as that of
Constantinople; others in fact; but nevertheless they all give
precedence to the one at Edschmiazin, which otherwise had its seat
at Schaste in Armenia proper. This Edschmiazin, which is called by
the Turks Uetsch-Klissie, in Dutch Driekerken, is a monastery, not
far from the mountains of Ararat, in the city of Erivan, lying on
the borders of Turkey and Persia. It has the Turkish name after
actually three churches, but of which the largest is actually only
used; but the Armenian name because of the descent of God's only
begotten Son, because, as is alleged, Jesus Christ had visibly
appeared to St. Gregory, who was the first Patriarch there. In this
monastery, the main seat of the Armenian religion, the Patriarch
resides. This is the nursery of the principal Church teachers and
Bishops. There are, here, also of them, always, a good number,
besides many Monks, who provide the general welfare of the Armenian
Religion, besides the Worship and the education in the monastery.
The Patriarch is chosen from one of the Bishops; but he lives
without outward splendor and pomp; and the Dignity alone
distinguishes him from the other Churchmen. He has indeed a large
income, but must also spend an unusually large amount, to maintain
his Character and the Religion among the Mahometans. The Bishops are
all unmarried. The greater part is sent from Edschmiazin, where they
are also ordained. They are from there every 3 years exchanged in
their Bishoprics, or confirmed anew. This confirmation, both of the
Bishops and of the Patriarchs, is held in very high esteem by the
Mahometans. Wherefore Simony is not unknown to the higher and lower
Clergy. In their calling they are more zealous and diligent than the
Greek and Roman Bishops. They preach themselves, but sitting down,
and visit the Churches belonging to their Parish very accurately.
The Vartabets (*) are a kind of Monks; who come fairly near the
Bishops, in the absence of these preaching, and as their Vicars, and
often at the same time are Bishops. They form at the same time a
kind of Teachers in Theology, who have a certain oversight over the
Church. The number of monks among the Armenians is not so great,
because they are not kept to go idle, but in the hope of making them
teachers of the church at some time. They all follow the rule of
Basil. They must read the book of Psalms through, at least on the
day of their initiation; at other times it depends on their zeal and
devotion. With regard to this last, the Book of Psalms is divided
into 8 large divisions, and each of these is again divided into 8
smaller ones, at the end of which: Glory to God the Father, etc.
must be said. Their ecclesiastical duties consist only in reading
Masses; for other pastoral duties are forbidden to them. They must
often endure a long period of probation, and are not easily dressed
for manly old age. In this dressing, very strict exercises of
solitude, of fasting and prayer are prescribed. Their hair is then
cut into the shape of a cross, and, when it has grown again, into
the form of a crown, which they endeavor to maintain. This last is
customary among all Armenians, in remembrance of Christ's crown of
thorns. The Eastern males, in general, do not have long hair hanging
down over their shoulders, like the Western ones. The priests, who
bear the name of Derder, must necessarily marry once, and besides
the religious service, also attend the elementary schools. By a
second marriage they would lose their priesthood. Outside of the
services in the church, the Armenian clergy are not distinguished
from secular persons in their clothing, except by the dark colours.
At the religious service they wear cloth choir-gowns, and the
Vartabets a kind of high, pointed, but hanging over the back black
Capuchin hood; the latter are also accustomed to wear such hoods in
the street. One must give the Armenian clergy the praise that they
have a precedence in modesty and restraint above any other
denomination.
Besides the usual
revenues of baptisms, marriages, and burials, she has a special one,
to sell from the Holy Olive, which the Patriarchs refuse, and to the
Bishops, but these again to the Priests, and which to the people
sell very dearly, and to which great powers are attributed; not to
say, that they do not forget themselves, in the imposed penances and
excommunications. Otherwise the Patriarch of Edschmiazin alone had
to refuse the great revenues from the Holy Olive; but about the year
1670 the Patriarch of Jerusalem also took upon himself this, and the
very costly dispute about it has been decided by the Porte, just
like all such disputes, from which the Turks draw much money, so
that both parties can do what they please.
(*)
The Armenian Honorific, Vartabet, signifies an ecclesiastical
Dignity, as for instance Prelate in the West, and is given to
Bishops, Archbishops and Patriarchs. Of the so-called degrees in
Theology and other sciences they know nothing.
(*)
A letter from Smyrna, of the year 1777, reports that the printing of
the Armenian Bible had not yet been accomplished, and in the
Armenian translation the Septuagint, that is, the Greek translation
of the so-called seventy translators, was followed.
§. XIX. The
Creeds of the Armenians, and their Distinction from other
Christians.
The Creed, which
Schroeder has had printed in his work, Thesaurus linguae Armenieae,
is so accepted by the Armenians, that they refer all those who wish
to have knowledge of their faith to it. It reads thus: "We
confess and believe with all our hearts in God the Father, who was
not made, nor begotten, nor had a beginning; who begets the Son, and
from whom proceeds the Holy Spirit. We also believe in God the Word,
who was not made, but from eternity begotten and generated by the
Father, neither later nor less; for as the Father is Father; so also
is the Son, Son. We believe in the Holy Spirit, who was not made,
but eternal, not begotten, but proceeds from the Father, of one
Being with him, and of one and the same glory with the Son. We
believe in the Holy Trinity, one Nature, one Godhead. There are not
three Gods, but one God, one Will, one Kingdom, one Dominion, the
Creator of visible and invisible things. We believe one Holy Church,
the forgiveness of sins, the communion of saints. We believe that
one of the three Persons, God the Word, who was born of the Father
from eternity, in time, descended into the Mother of God, the Virgin
Mary, took her blood, and united it with his Godhead; that it was
preserved nine months in the body of the immaculate Virgin, and thus
God became a perfect man in his infusion, mind and body; one Person,
one manifestation, and indeed united in one nature. God became man
without deformation, without change. Without seed was his
conception, and without corruption his birth. Just as his Godhead is
without beginning; so is his humanity without end. For Jesus Christ
is yesterday, and today, and the same also forever. We believe that
the Lord Jesus Christ, after he had walked on earth for thirty
years, was baptized; that the Father testified, this is my dear Son,
and that the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove;
that he was tempted by the devil, but that he overcame him; that he
preached salvation to men, experienced bodily infirmities, became
weary, hungered and thirsted, then voluntarily came to suffer, was
crucified, and died bodily, but remained alive according to the
Godhead; his body, united with the Godhead, lay in the grave; that
he in the Spirit, he the undivided Godhead, descended into hell,
preached to spirits, destroyed hell, and delivered spirits; that
after three days he rose from the dead, and they appeared to his
disciples. We believe that our Savior, Jesus Christ, ascended into
heaven with the same body, and sits at the right hand of the Father;
also in that same body and glory of the Father shall come again, to
judge the living and the dead, which is also the resurrection of all
men. We believe finally in a reward of works, namely, eternal life
to the righteous, but eternal pain to sinners".
The Armenians are, in
the first principles of divine truths, much purer than all
non-Protestant Christians. The reverence for the Bible is among them
unusually great; and the Church and Church teachers count for them
no more than human, though otherwise excellent testimonies. Have
they now nevertheless accepted much leaven from their ancestors, and
do they retain it; this comes from the immoderate respect, which
they have for antiquity in all things. — Everyone has the
liberty to read the Bible, and it is also read aloud in church, for
a reasonable long time. They have, since 1767, begun to collect the
oldest manuscripts of their Bibles, the most learned among them To
call together the ecclesiastical people, and to make an apparatus
for a printing-office, in order to publish an improved Bible at
Edschmiazin, and to leave it to their nation, in a larger quantity,
for a more moderate price, than has hitherto been possible. It is to
be wished, that God will let a work, in every respect so salutary,
come to pass. (*)
The Confession of
Faith itself shows us the healthy and Christian thoughts, which the
Armenians have of God in general, and the Mystery of the Holy
Trinity, their particular opinion, concerning the outgoing of the
Holy Spirit from the Father alone, excepted. In the Doctrine of
Christ, and especially the union of his two natures into one Person,
the error charged against them, as many Scholars think, seems to
rest only on indefinite, or different artificial words from us. What
in the aforementioned translation is brought out by representation,
bears in Syriac the name of Barsopa, and is the same as the Greek
πρόσωπον. But the words,
united in one nature, they do not understand in the sense in which
they are taken by us and whereby they destroyed the distinction of
natures; because they add further:
"God became man,
without deformation, without change".
The Doctrine
concerning justification by faith in Christ is not so very pure,
because much is built on supposed good works, for instance Fasting,
etc. They retain the intercession of the Saints, and the reverence
for images, because of tradition and custom, because this seems to
them to be something innocent; and to the images of the Saints they
show an internal and external Honor.
To express the idea
of a Sacrament, they have no proper word, but call it
a Mystery. They have seven after the manner of the Romans, and also
the same, although with some other Explanation and use; for the
formation, for instance, they continue after baptism, and the last
Olyzel usually takes place with them concerning ecclesiastical
persons, and that only after death. But if one finds them in this,
and in other new errors, agreeing with the Greeks and Romans; this
should not surprise anyone. It is natural that the later
missionaries can quite unnoticed inspire many things as orthodox in
a people who were previously very ignorant, and not yet sufficiently
vigilant against the wiles and baseness of the Roman Court; not to
say that, in the union with the Greek and Roman Church that had
often been in view, they may have accepted many things in such
negotiations: as is evident in their feelings concerning the Mass
and Transubstantiation. At Baptism they also make use of Godparents,
who hand the Baptized person over to the Priest. The Priest
sprinkles his head three times with water, while he pronounces the
words of the institution. He is also immersed three times under the
water, and the whole body is washed. This is followed by
confirmation with oil; in which the Armenians have something special
above other Eastern Christians. The Priest anoints with it, in the
form of a cross, the forehead, the eyes, the ears, the lower body,
the flat of the hand, and the soles of the feet. Then he also smears
the lips of the Baptized person with the consecrated forms of the
Lord's Supper.
Before the enjoyment
of the Holy Supper, Confession must precede. This must extend to all
particular sins. The penances imposed for sins are very severe, and
the priests do not forget their purses at all. The Mass is with them
about the same as with the Greeks and Romans. They use leavened
bread and only wine without water. They also believe in the change
of the consecrated bread into the body, and of the consecrated wine
into the blood of Christ. This deserves some attention. The
Lutherans and Reformed, in the diversity of their thoughts
concerning the Holy Supper, appeal to the opinion of the early
Church. The clergy is of the opinion that the latter fell short
before its judgment seat. The question is in fact questionable:
which thought could have educated all Christians, before the
Reformation, to Transubstantiation? Those which the Reformed
nourish, that in the Supper there is nothing but bread and wine? or
those which the Lutherans, concerning the real presence of Christ's
body and blood in this Sacrament, nourish? Of these, in the dark
times, the Transition, light, to Transubstantiation, was, but not of
none. But, if all Transubstantiation is believed by the Armenians,
yet the carrying of the Host is unknown to them. They also give the
cup to each one. But the two forms are administered together,
because the consecrated bread is dipped in the consecrated wine.
Their opinion
concerning the deceased does not seem to be pure, however much they
contradict the Purgatory of the Romans. They have several candles
lighted above their graves, at certain times also prayers said, and
other Ceremonies performed; especially they are very careful in this
for their deceased blood relatives, and for this purpose the Easter
Monday is appointed. Although they do not now believe that the souls
of the Righteous will come to the immediate sight of God before the
resurrection; nevertheless they do not consider the invocation of
the Saints absurd.
The ecclesiastical
ban is in use among them, as among the Greeks.
§. XX. Religious
customs and ecclesiastical circumstances of the Armenians.
As to the feast days
the Armenians are not so extravagant as the Greeks and Romans. The
number of these is much smaller. They make a distinction between
those who celebrate the Church and those who also affect the people.
Of the former there are many, and the priests must observe the
public worship; but each one remains at ease with his calling, at
the most he attends one Mass, and then goes back to his work. Of the
latter there are very few: Christmas, New Year and Epiphany are
celebrated by them on the latter feast day at the same time. Then
the congratulations are much stronger among them than among us. But
they are accustomed to go to church the night before, and come out
again at the break of day. During this whole time a multitude of
ceremonies must be performed. Corpus Christi is also very solemn
with them, marked in the afternoon, after a very long service, the
feet of all the sons of men are washed by the priests, and a cross
is smeared on them with butter. Easter is a great feast with them.
The preceding strict fast of 40 days makes that they wait for it
very seriously. On Saturday afternoon before, when they come out of
church, they have the liberty to break it, except for the use of
meat. Then the Easter believers must observe it exceptionally. The
Greeks are wont to mock them on this account, (*) as with people who
cannot wait a few hours until the end of the great Lent. The greater
part of the night between Saturday and Easter is, likewise, spent in
church on account of the many ceremonies. The feast of Pentecost is
also very solemn among them.
The fasting is
unusually strict among them. That which the Romans observe is
slight, in comparison with the Greek, and this slight, in comparison
with the Armenian. Wednesday and Friday are the usual fasting days
in every week. There is also a great difference between the fasting
of the ecclesiastical and that of the people. The latter lasts
nearly half a year; that of the former will probably account for
two-thirds of the days of a year. It is of three kinds. The first
only commands the abstinence from meat; the second also forbids the
use of fish, eggs, milk food, oil and all fat; the third consists in
the abstinence from all food until the evening, etc. The clergy are
often subject to the latter, and the monks never eat meat, and never
drink wine. Eggs, milk, butter and fish they may eat only on
Saturday and Sunday outside Lent.
Pilgrimages to
Jerusalem and other supposed holy places are also not lacking among
the Armenians; meanwhile, that after Edjchmiazin is the most
important.
The religious service
is among them, often, at night and generally held in such a way
that, except on the longest days, it is ended before the sunrise. It
lasts unusually long, by three, four and more, yes on the high feast
days by six or eight hours. The Armenians are unusually zealous in
attending him. The worship itself, namely the Mass, the reading of
the Holy Scripture, the Psalms, the principal confessions of faith,
etc., are done in the old Armenian language, of which, alas! the
common people understand nothing. Everyone does not sing with it,
but, except the priests, only certain appointed people. Their
Liturgy consists partly of that which is attributed to the Apostle
James, and partly of that of which Chrysostom and Basil are said to
be the authors. The sermons are done in a new Armenian language;
yes, in order to understand them better, translations into Turkish
and Syriac are mixed with them, according to the Provinces, which
makes them excessively long. From this we see what Antiquity can do
over the East. Whereas the first Christians, on account of the
heathen persecutions, observed the worship by night; so, although
that reason has ceased, they continue with such a custom; and,
because their ancestors, in their former mother tongue, served God,
so they do it in the same, although a newer one has come in its
place. Music is 'not used with it', unless one had to reckon thereto
the ringing of a small bell, and the assembly of thin metal disks,
which are round, and on which, sometimes, bells hang round; but all
the more church ornaments, incense burners, candles, etc., take
place with it: although in this respect it is with them simpler and
less glittering, than with the Greeks and Romans. The use of dead
languages in public worship, and, in order to make
them at least somewhat understandable, the mixing in of one or more
living languages, must be charged to all Eastern Christians. For
there are provinces where, in public worship, one can hear Armenian,
Arabic, Syriac, Turkish, and many other languages.
The weddings take
place under great ceremonies; - the marriage lasts unusually long.
It takes place in the church, where the bridegroom and bride must
enjoy the Holy Communion, and the bride is covered with a veil under
which it is also administered to her, so that she remains covered.
She is not seen by her bridegroom during the day, even on the
wedding day, and among the strict Armenians in 3 days. She sits,
like a statue, in the most important corner of the room on the
Sopha, with a broad cap on her head, over which a red, fine veil
hangs down to her feet. Suitors must marry suitors, and widowers
widows. To marry for the third time is considered by them as
fornication, and with regard to the forbidden degrees they think,
like the Greeks. Burials take place there in the country with them,
as with the Greeks, after death. The Bishops and the principal
ecclesiastical bodies are, beforehand, anointed with a consecrated
oil, but all others are only washed. The dead man is wrapped in
linen and sewn up, so that nothing of him can be seen. Before he is
carried away, many prayers are said and sung over him by the
ecclesiastical bodies, during which time the nearest blood friends,
in very common clothes, and the women covered, embrace him and mourn
him, yes, they act as if they would hardly let him be carried away.
When the prayers are ended, the body is then laid on a stretcher.
The priests go, or almost walk in front; and those who follow the
body follow one after the other. The body is placed in the forecourt
of the church, after which prayers follow; then it is carried to the
grave, where one or two men stand and receive it. This whole
Ceremony is very disagreeable to a spectator, and a European feels a
chill through all his limbs, to see a body so sewn up, and treated
without a coffin.
In the Churches there
is just nothing to be noticed, except that they have no such
farewell before the altar as the Greeks, nor so many images as
these. But the seats of the women are entirely separated from the
men, and provided with latticework. Monasteries there are, in
comparison with the Greeks and Romans, very few, and not nearly so
rich as with the latter, but in every Armenia they are more
considerable. They are left by the Mohammedans quite undisturbed in
their state, and by gifts to the Great, as well as certain taxes, to
the enjoyment of their other goods.
(*)
The custom of this nation, before the breaking of the great Lent of
40 days, of eating Easter eggs, which is much ridiculed by other
Eastern Christians, is declared to be very sensible by an
experienced European physician at Surinta. He has found that to him
and other physicians, because of the all too rapid transition from
Lent to fatty foods, more sick Greeks and Turks than Armenians came,
because the latter had at least a short interval to accustom their
stomachs to something else.
§. XXI. National
Character of the Armenians, and other things pertaining to it.
The Armenian nation
has, above many others, something in advance, as regards its
disposition of mind. One would think that its warm Fatherland made
it loose and exuberant; but in this one would be mistaken. It is ??l
and serious; not nearly as noisy and quarrelsome as the Greek; lives
unusually reserved, and helps itself with little. Constancy is its
own, and the change of religion of an Armenian something very
unusually rare. It is also not subject to so many lapses and vices,
as other peoples. The Armenians remain with the utmost obstinacy in
their once adopted feelings. They have no great share in
intelligence. Their judgment does not seem to extend itself to
learned researches; but to commerce they seem as if born. In this
they are so cunning, that they are called Christian-Jews, and it is
maintained, that they could not be deceived by any Jew. There is
hardly any important Merchant in the three ancient parts of the
world, but there are Armenians in it. With the Turks of rank they
are the Money-changers and Agents. Their loyalty is praised,
although they do not lose sight of their own interest. Their
uncommon avarice becomes a proverb with other nations. Their desire
for trade prompts them to make the most difficult journeys through
the whole world, and they learn many languages by
intercourse, but seldom pure and complete. Both thoughts are only of
average size, but generally somewhat compact. The head is strong;
the being full and flat; and their bodily movements, by nature, not
so rapid as with others. The parents still give themselves a
patriarchal appearance in their houses. The women live in a
submissiveness to the men, which indicates little more than their
preference over the girls. The fourth (fifth) commandment is so
strictly observed by the children, that their respect for the
parents can serve as an example to other peoples. Among the Turks,
the Armenians are also usually held in the highest esteem among all
Christians. Their adherence to the customs of their forefathers has
already been noted. They propagate them, in an admirable way, to
their children, and their modest way of life makes this all the more
possible. In their clothing they resemble the Turks most, except for
the green colour and the turban. Instead of the latter they wear a
small undercap, which just covers the head, and over that another,
which is fairly high, and made of single skins, to which the hair is
curled. Such a one is also used by the principal Greeks, and this is
called Kalpak.
Up to the present
they have not singularly applied themselves to learning. This is
almost exclusively confined to the ecclesiastical; of whom only a
moderate number devote themselves to study, so that one cannot, of
course, expect such great things from them. And, as these hardly
ever come outside the bosom of their nation, they seldom understand
other languages than their own, and can therefore make
almost no use of foreign aids at all. The books printed in their
language in Holland and England they give precedence over all
others, because they found those printed in Roman countries to be
very falsified. At Constantinople and Smyrna they had small printing
presses, but these were sent to the Bible printing press after
Edschmiazin with more printing type bought in Europe, and other
necessary things belonging to it. The abductions from their native
country have caused the manuscripts to become unusually rare among
them. The old Armenian is very different from what they now speak;
the pronunciation sounds rough and hard; but the letters look
elegant (*). They praise their language very much, because it
expresses everything very well, especially the old Armenian. But all
the Easterners are great braggarts in boasting of old things. In
domestic customs the Armenians come unusually close to the Turks.
They go to bed early, but rise early again. They do not eat at noon,
but have a good breakfast early, at 8 o'clock, and have their main
meal at 5 o'clock in the evening. Of chairs, tables, cupboards, etc.
they know little. A sopha and many cupboards in the wall serve them
for their necessities. The women keep themselves unusually hidden.
Except for their closest friends, no one gets to see them. In the
streets they are so covered that one sees only a little of the tip
of their nose, and almost nothing of both eyes, so that then, like
the similarly disguised Turks, they look like ghosts. Indeed, a
bridegroom does not see his bride until the day of the engagement.
Those who still live in Armenia have this additional arrangement,
that no son of a man, not even a young man in the tenderest years,
travels outside the country, unless he is betrothed to a son of a
woman of his own age, and must be of older years. To perform the
marriage, return to his native country; whereupon he then travels
and returns, according to his calling.
Superstition also
prevails, in all respects, among the Armenians, but in matters of
religion it is not so great, as among the Greeks and Romans.
For the rest, one
must account for their religion as something good, that he has much
more love for man and Christianity towards other religions and their
adherents, than he can promise himself of these. For the Protestants
he has a true affection; and a Bishop at Smyrna, in the year 1762,
openly prayed in church for them, which would also happen elsewhere
often. As regards the Greeks they behave in a friendly manner. The
Romans are a thorn in their side. For since much mischief is done to
them by the Turks, and their missionaries draw away many members of
their church, and the wealthy especially seek to gain all kinds of,
especially temporary advantages; so they have constant disputes with
them at the Porte; and the name, Pope, is almost as repugnant to
them, as others are to the name, devil. From which one can judge
again, what those Roman scholars are making the world believe, who
present the Armenians, as well as almost all Eastern Christians, as
being of one mind with them in faith. They are and remain all
equally of one mind, in contradicting the main article of the Roman
Church, that the Pope is the Governor of Christ, and the visible
Supreme Head of the Church.
(*)
Their letters, especially in old Armenian, provide a kind of
figurative language. Its shape is apparently borrowed from humans,
animals, plants, etc.
FIFTH SECTION. Of
other Christian denominations in Turkey.
§. XXII. Of the
Roman Church.
The Roman Church has
also in the Turkish Empire fairly large congregations. To them
belong all Europeans from Roman countries, and their descendants who
remained in Turkey; not less a large number of families, who lived
in provinces, formerly belonging to the Imperials or Venetians. Many
Greeks have, likewise, now and then, exchanged their religion with
the Roman. The Propaganda in Rome has the supreme oversight over
them, and there is also in Constantinople an Archbishop, but who
must be under French protection. To be observed, namely, that the
Roman Churches and ecclesiastical arrangements, the monasteries and
clergy are neither directly nor indirectly subject to the Porte, but
by means of a European protection, principally of France, but also
of other Powers, yes even of England and Holland, are only tolerated
as foreigners. They have places where European Roman Catholics live,
Churches or Chapels, also Monasteries; and the latter possess, on
the islands of the Archipelago, considerable lands. There are monks
of all kinds of Orders in the Levant who are accustomed to have
their superiors at Constantinople. They are looked at askance by the
Turks, and they gradually lose much of their cunningly acquired, or
legitimate privileges, as they then usually lose in the disputes
with the Eastern Christians before the Porte, and not very long ago
in the Trial, arose about the Holy Sepulchre, they have come very
short. For the rest they have the same trouble with them, in the
restoration of Churches destroyed by old age, or fire, or other
accidents. The greater part of the Monks are at the same time
Missionaries; but among the Turks they are not allowed to venture.
The Jesuits have indeed, in the third volume of their Levant
letters??, or memoirs of the Missions au Levant par la Compagnie de
Jesus, published in Paris, given up on many conversions wrought by
the Turks; but these are the most complete untruths that have ever
been conceived. But for the other Christian denominations these
missions are extremely disadvantageous. Partly they cause such very
unfortunate schisms and divisions, which have a great influence on
their religious and civil condition, of which the Syrian Christians
have had sad experiences; partly they seek to make the most wealthy
people averse to them, which the Armenians in particular have
experienced; partly they cause them, and that often even by the
European ambassadors and consuls of their religion in Turkey, great
and expensive lawsuits with the Turks. It is not only oral
proposals, but especially also temporary promises that are the
reason by which the Eastern Christians are moved to convert to the
Roman Catholics, but also the books printed in the vernacular
languages, which are occasionally brought among the people. It is a
pity that the Protestants have not tried the latter way, in order to
open a wider door for the knowledge of the truth to godliness.
Because the Roman Catholics, for the rest, live entirely in ecclefia
prejfa??, or under pressure, among the Turks; so they are much more
flexible towards the Lutherans and Reformed there, than they are
otherwise accustomed to be in those countries, where they are the
ruling church.
They often have the
sorrow to see their greatest enemies in those who were converted in
Rome and in Italy, or in France, and educated there; and those in
the East who have gone over to them for various reasons, when they
cease, change their minds again, or adopt the Roman religion only on
certain conditions.
§. XXIII. Of the
Monophysite and Nestorian Church.
The Armenians are
indeed a branch of the Monophysite church, because they have adopted
the thesis of the same, concerning one nature in the Redemption, as
has been previously noted, in their doctrine, although, because of
many particular customs and sentiments, they nevertheless maintain
no particular church community, but have their various church forms
of worship and ecclesiastical persons. The Monophysites form a very
popular denomination, which began in the ??th century under
Eutyches, an abbot at Constantinople, and has spread into Syria,
Egypt, and Abyssinia, and is divided into the Asiatic and African.
The former bear the name Syrian after Syria, and after one of their
principal teachers, Jacob Baradaeus, the name Jacobites; but which,
outside Syria, also inhabit the countries on the Euphrates and
Tygris, whose chief Patriarch is the Antiochian, although he has not
his See at Antioch, a city now entirely destitute of its former
prosperity, but transfers it now to Aleppo, now to another place or
monastery. A second Patriarch on the Persian borders has the
ecclesiastical oversight of the Churches there. All these Patriarchs
bear the name after the Martyr Ignatius. The African Monophytes are
the Copts, of whom § III has been treated.
The Nestorians form
the opposite party to those mentioned above, and have seemed to
assert not only two Natures, but also two Persons in Christ; for
which reason they were also excluded from their church community by
the old Christians. Their origin in religion they have from
Nestorius, a Constantinopolitan Patriarch in the 5th century. They
have, in the following times, made themselves exceedingly famous,
because of the extension of the Christian religion, and have planted
very considerable communities throughout the East, even in great
Tartary and China. These have indeed perished in the latter
countries; but in Mesopotamia, from which they are also called
Chaldeans, and in the surrounding countries, and in Arabia, there is
still a good number of them; even the St. Thomas Christians on the
coasts of Mediæval belong to them. The Nestorians have the
reputation, among all Eastern Christians, of having preserved the
purity and simplicity of the first Church the most. By the Roman
missionaries great commotions have arisen among them. The principal
Patriarch of the true Nestorians is called Catholicus, and has his
See at Mosul, or in the neighbourhood. For two centuries past he who
is raised to this Dignity has been wont to take the name of Elias.
When the old
controversies have been calmly judged, it has been found that the
principal sentiments of the Nestorians and Monophytes, the sound of
the words being set aside, do not differ much as regards the matter
itself from the opinion of the other Christians. In an unfortunate
way, the antiquity of the separation is a cause of the still
continuing division, and the Mahometans chiefly prevent the union of
the various Christian denominations to the utmost, by fostering
among them, most carefully, all possible hostilities and tumults.
§. XXIV. Of
Western Christian denominations that arose after the Reformation.
These have all, up to
now, formed only small communities in Turkey, consisting of persons
who, while they were there, stay for the sake of trade and commerce,
or who, while they were married to Christian women of this country,
have left children, brought up in their paternal religion. They
enjoy their ecclesiastical protection only from the European
ambassadors or consuls, and they are not regarded by the Porte as
natives, but as foreigners.
There are four
Lutheran churches in Turkey, namely in Smyrna, Constantinople,
Bukhareil and Bilipschi. The first was at first founded by private
persons, and maintained by the Community, until the Royal House of
Denmark and the Free City of Danzig took care of it. It is
maintained, under the supervision of the Danish missionary college,
according to a strict church order. The second, at Constantinople,
is solely a matter for the Swedish Ambassador. In his Palace the
divine service is held in a common hall, which serves as a passage
to the apartments. The reports are untrue, that the Swedes had built
a public Lutheran Church there. The Church at Bucharest in Wallachia
is in bad circumstances, because the supporters of that Community
were not wise enough with the money. The institution at Bilipschi
has been well laid out. This place is on the Moldavian soil and
ground, on the Niejier, opposite the Polish spot Salisch-Tschik; by
which the Lutherans in the surrounding Provinces keep themselves.
Reformed Churches are
only in Constantinople, Smyrna and Aleppo. In the first two cities
there are two, namely by the English and Dutch Nation. By the latter
keep themselves the Genevans and Swiss who are in Turkey. In Aleppo
there is only one English Chapel.
The Remonstrants and
Mennonites are accustomed, for the most part, to keep themselves by
the Dutch Churches.
It has pleased the
Count of Zinzendorf, to dedicate his work, published in the year
1739, the good word of the Lord and, to the Hernhutsche
Congregations, and among a multitude of them, also to give some in
the Levant; but these are fictions, and no one there knows anything
about them.
SIXTH PART, Of the
Turks.
§. XXV. Of
Muhammad.
'The news concerning
the Turks and the Mahometan religion to which they adhere, demands a
preliminary treatise concerning Muhammad or Mahomet himself. A
detailed biography of him, however, must not be expected here,
because that would be contrary to the purpose of this work, and one
can come to the right elsewhere. The Englishman Sale, in his preface
to the Koran, (*) is in this respect, in the opinion of all
intelligent men, the best teacher; but, whoever would take issue
with Boulainvilliers, in his work, vie de Mahomet, hond. 1730. 8vo.;
he would be just as deceived as he who would believe a novel.
Herbelot was, by his Oriental Linguistics, and by the sufficient
number of books, pertaining to these matters, able to deliver
something genuine, and he gives us, in his Oriental Dictionary, (*)
on the article, Muhammed and Ajat or his Wonders, and Hegrah's??
following report, which, as regards the main points, is literally
this. "The commentators of the Koran, and other Mahometan
Teachers, have extolled this supposed Prophet as highly as the
Arians, Paidicians, and other Heretics have praised Jesus Christ,
although they deny his Godhead: for they assert that he was created
before all time, that the world was made for him alone, and that he
is finally the only Mediator between God and men; not to speak of so
great a part of the mysteries which they relate of him. The first
thing which God created, they say, was light, in which they agree
with the Holy Scripture; but they assert that this light, which they
call Nur, was a Substance, out of which the Soul of Muhammad, and
afterwards the souls of all other creatures, among whom those of the
Patriarchs and Prophets had the preeminence, were produced. As to
his earthly origin, the Arabia, among whom he was born, and who are
the most accurate people in the investigation of genealogical
records, say unanimously that he was a son of Abdallah, a nephew of
Abdal-Mothleb, and a second cousin of Haschem. They let the
genealogy of the latter go up to Adnan, and from him to Ishmael, Son
of Abraham: but they confess, that one does not have the same
certainty concerning it from Ishmael to Adnan, as from him to
Mohammed". Although the year of his birth is subject to much
doubt, and falls in the last half of the sixth century; one knows
with perfect certainty, however, where he was born. "He was
born in Mecca, of the Family of the Koraishites, which was
considered one of the oldest and most famous of Arabia, and was
distinguished above others by the fact that the preservation and
supervision of the Kaaba or Temple was entrusted to them. (*) To
understand the Mahometan History and the numbers of several persons
concerning the succession of Mohammed, it must be known, that
Abdal-Mothleb, his grandfather, had 10 sons: Hareth, Gaïdak,
Abuleheb, Abdalkabah, Dheran, Abbas, Hazmah, Zobeir, Abuthaleb, and
Abdallah. This last was Mohammed's father. Of the rest, as well as
his uncles, Abuleheb was his greatest and most implacable enemy.
Abbas also was for some time his enemy, even making war against him;
but, being taken prisoner, he was reconciled with him, and accepted
his doctrine. Abuthaleb, the ninth Uncle of Muhammed, was the Father
of Ali, Muhammed loved them both exceedingly, and chose the latter
for his Son-in-law, because he gave him his only Daughter, Fatima,
to wife".
Since the necessary
of the Koran will occur in the following Paragraph; it seems not
amiss to us to speak here of the Hegire. "This is the time,
when Muhammed with his followers departed from Mecca, to escape the
persecution of the Koranites, who were very powerful there, and
could not tolerate that he abolished idolatry, and established his
new Religion. This flight, which was not the first, but nevertheless
the most remarkable, happened after Muhammad had for fourteen years
set himself up as a Prophet and Messenger of God, made known the
Koran, and preached his religion. It happened, according to the
report of some, during the day, and in the company of a few persons,
although more followed afterwards, who did not think themselves safe
enough in Mecca. Muhammad fled to Jatreb; for so Medina was called,
before his stay there, and arrived there at the end of the month
RdbUal-aual, which is the third in the Arabian years, which are only
lunar years, and therefore only of 354 days. In the meantime the
Mohammedans begin the Hegire of the preceding month Muharram, which
falls in the middle of Julius in the year 622 after the birth of
Christ. This must be observed, as the commonest sentiment of the
most famous chronologists, in order to determine the years of the
Hegire, or of the Mahometan calendar".
"As to the
Miracles of Muhammad, it is said that the Kordishites, who rejected
his Doctrine, turned to him. We said: You tell us that when Moses
struck a rock in the desert with his rod, fountains gushed out from
it, and that Jesus, the Son of Mary, raised the dead; we believe it:
do you also for that reason some such miracle; then we will believe
that you are a Prophet and a Messenger of God; to teach us His law:
pray to God that He will turn this mountain of Safa into gold; for
if you obtain this from God, then every one of you will follow and
be obedient. Then Muhammad began to pray to work this miracle; but
the Angel Gabriel, who always helped him out of his embarrassment,
came to his aid, and made him understand, that if men doubted the
mission of God's Prophets, and demanded some miracle in proof
thereof, he granted their request, but on this dreadful condition,
that if after the miracle they continued in their unbelief, they
should perish without mercy, as had happened in the time of the
Prophets, Heber and Salah; when the nations to whom they had
preached, and for whom they had wrought miracles, had been punished
for their unbelief with the entire extermination of their persons,
and the utter destruction of their country. Choose therefore, said
Gabriel to Mohammed, one of these two, either to do this Miracle,
with which so terrible a punishment is attached, or not to do it,
until the Korahites, for their infidelity, shall have done penance,
and shall have returned to God. Mohammed made no difficulty in
choosing the latter, according to the great love for his countrymen,
whom he did not wish to expose to such great danger; therefore the
mountain of Safa remained, without being changed into gold. He has
always been reproached, that he did not do Miracles, to prove his
mission. In the Chapter of the Thunder, we find these words: the
Infidels say, when he did a Miracle; then we could believe in him.
They put it to him, you are but a fool, doing nothing but preaching
to others. The commentators, to whom this passage gives trouble,
pretend, that the Infidels had desired, that God should have given
to Muhammad, like Moses, a rod, or like the Messiah, the power of
raising the dead; but, according to their opinion, they endowed
every Prophet with the gift of working miracles, in that sort of
things which are most in esteem in the country in which he preaches;
just as, therefore, magic was in use in Egypt in the time of Moses,
but the healing of the sick in Judea in the time of the Messiah, so
also the miracles of Moses and Jesus Christ were suited to the times
of these Prophets. And, as the eloquence and purity of language were
especially in esteem among the Arabs in the time of Muhammad, the
Koran was his greatest miracle. For, said he, when he boasted of its
beauty, who among you can produce a single chapter equal to it in
beauty or purity? This is certain, that Muhammad, in order to make
this miracle the greater, often spoke of it, and even increased his
ignorance in many places".
"In the Chapter
of the Koran, which bears the name of Aaraf, it is written, that
those who shall follow this ignorant Prophet, shall find his name in
the law and the Gospel, that is, in the Old and New Testament. And
of this deceitful deception he makes use, to prove to the Jews and
Christians the Divinity of his mission. To this end he introduces,
in the Chapter, Surat Saf, Jesus Christ thus speaking to the Jews:
Ye children of Israel, I am he whom God hath sent unto you, to
confirm unto you all that hath been revealed of me in the law of
Moses, and to fulfil it, and to announce unto you another Messenger
of God, who shall come after me, and shall be called Achmeo (which
is as much as Mohammed). But these and more such places are not in
the Holy Scripture".
Among Muhammad's
remarkable deeds, which his followers give as Miracles, they
especially count the victories which he gained over his enemies; —
and they endeavor to attribute to him almost all that which the
Prophets have said of the Messiah. They also assert that he, like
Jesus, was preserved from original sin and evil lust by the Angel
Gabriel. But they confess that he had 21 wives, although the law
permitted only 4. Of these he repudiated six, and five died before
him. From the story of An Ben Malek it appears that he boasted of 4
privileges above all other people, namely, of surpassing them in
courage, generosity, strength of fist, and power in the married
state. As the Arabs speak ill of his customs; so they spare still
less his religion, which they consider to be a fraud, and give to
its founder the surnames of a Sabi, Zendik, and Medschiuschy, that
is, of a man who concocts many religions, and consequently has none
at all. They describe him as a light-hearted man, and in the
promulgation of his law a fickle man, who afterwards destroyed the
laws once established, as the establishment of the Ke??a, or the
place to which one must turn for prayer, because for that purpose he
first prescribed the Temple at Jerusalem, but afterwards that at
Mecca. He forbids all compulsion for the acceptance of his religion;
but afterwards he commands to wage war with all unbelievers,
permitting his own not to make peace with them, but only to conclude
a standstill of arms. In support of his doctrine he appeals, almost
generally, to the Old and New Testaments; in the meantime he
annihilates both, on the pretext that both were falsified. He almost
contradicts himself in all the Histories, which he here or there
quotes; — and, though he broke the idols, he nevertheless
retained all the Ceremonies which were in use with the Pagans in the
Temple at Mecca. The Mahometan Historians are not agreed as to the
time of his death; but in this they agree, that he died of a
slow-working mistake, which was suggested to him by a woman, seduced
thereto by his Enemies. — Medina, whither he had betaken
himself, in his flight from Mecca, became the Seat of his Kingdom,
and finally also his burial place. — He left no male heirs".
(*)
This work bears, in English, the following Title: "the Koran,
commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed, translated into the English
immediately from the original Arabie &c. by George Sale".
Land. This work has indeed been translated into High German by
Theod. Aknold, and printed in Lemgo ?? but the best High German
translation, directly from Arabic, is so far that of F. C. Boysen,
Halle 1773-??.
(*)
This was published in Paris in the previous century, under the Title
Bibliotheque Oriëntale, fol.
(*)
Muhammed, or according to the Turkish pronunciation Muua'mmid, as a
Koraischit, did not descend from a minor, but in a certain respect
Princely Family, which also waged war with the multitude of small
Arab tribes, in which then, as now, this Nation was divided.
§. XXVI. Of the
Koran.
The Koran, which is
wrongly called Alkoran, marked Alm. the Arabic word, the, signifies,
is that book, which Muhammad has placed in the hands of the world as
a Divine Revelation. Herbelot gives us, in his aforementioned
Oriental Library, on the Article, Alkoran, the following
well-founded report of it. "The Mohammedans have very exalted
thoughts of it. They say: it is taken from the great book of the
divine decrees, since the creation of the world detached from it,
and preserved in one of the seven heavens, which are under the
firmament; from this, from verse to verse, Gabriel, one of the
principal orders of angels, delivered it to Muhammad. In the seventh
chapter of the Koran he introduces God concerning this supposed
mystery, saying thus: we have caused it to descend from heaven on
the night of the decree, and we declare to you that this night is
more worthy than a thousand full months, because the angels descend
in it to the earth, and among them also the Spirit of God by his
Will! Concerning this night the Mohammedans have various opinions, —
but in them they are they agree that from that time Gabriel
communicated the Koran, verse by verse, within 23 years, to
Muhammad, according to the need of the people and the circumstances
that occurred. They claim that the verse that he received is in the
?? Chapter. He received it in a cave on the mountain of Harah near
Mecca. Gabriel appeared to him, saying: God has sent me to you, to
teach you, that he has made you a Prophet and Apostle to this
people; take and read! Having said this, he held up the following
verse to him: Read in the name of your Lord and, who created all
things, made men from one blood, and united them in his parts.
Muhammad confessed to the Angel that he could not read, and saw no
writing on the paper that was held up to him. Whereupon Gabriel
seized him, plopped him three times on the ground, and enabled him
to read. This has, among several Sects of the Mahometans, given rise
to great disputes and persecutions, because one party considered the
Koran to be created, but another considered it uncreated.
After Abubaker had
collected the scattered leaves of the Koran here and there, and
brought them into a volume, he called it Moschaf, that is, the book,
as all books; which Ketab also indicates. When the Mahometan writers
quote any passage from it, it is done with these words, written in
large or red letters: God says it, without mentioning Chapter and
Verse. There are principal editions of the Koran, of which two were
made at Medina, one at Mecca, one at Kufa, one at Bassora, one in
Syria, and lastly one, which is called the common. They differ only
in the verses, — but not in the words and letters, because in
all the editions 77639 words, and 323015 letters are found. —
Abubekker entrusted this arranged Copy to Hafessah, daughter of
Omar, and Widow of Muhammad. —- Since Muhammad, in his Koran,
wished to imitate the language of the Prophets; he thought to effect
this, when he made use of a frequently broken style, which had no
coherent propositions; and there is, in fact, almost no connection
of verses with each other. — He borrows, often, passages from
the Old and New Testaments, but which have always been changed, and
bases all his authority and pronouncements on them. The commentators
unanimously say, that the most eloquent passage of the entire Koran
is in the Chapter H??d, where God, in order to put an end to the
flood, speaks these words: Earth, swallow up your water! Heaven,
scoop up what you have poured out! Immediately the water flowed
away, God's command was fulfilled, the Ark descended upon the
mountain, and the words were heard: Woe to the godless! The Arabic
is, here, in fact, very emphatic. These same commentators also
observe, that the most excellent passage of all in the entire Koran,
at the end of the Chapter Aaraf, is contained in this verse: Forgive
easily, do good to all, and do not contend with the ignorant. A
certain writer reports that Muhammad asked for an explanation of
this verse, sent to him by Gabriel from God, and he gave it to him
in these words: seek not him that persecuteth thee; give him that
robeth thee; forgive him that offendeth thee; for God willeth that
thou shouldest be perfect, even as he is! It is easy to see that
this is taken from the Bible. The most probable thing concerning the
composition of the Koran is, that some Nestorians, Eutychians, etc.,
condemned by the Councils, and banished from the Greek territory,
communicated to Muhammad unfaithful and misunderstood drafts of the
Old and New Testaments, with which he thought to cover up his
deceits. The Jews, who had then greatly expanded in Arabia, also
contributed their part to this. One is all the more entitled to
believe this, if the Koran is full of the sentiments and errors of
the aforementioned Heretics and Jews".
The Arabic word,
Koran, signifies a reading, therefore a book, which must be read in
particular; and this name is given to it, perhaps, for the same
reason, as we call the Divine Revelation the Bible. Among the
Mohammedans it is considered unlawful to let someone, who is not of
their faith, come to it, because he would be desecrated thereby.
Therefore it costs extraordinary difficulty, that a Christian can
get a copy of it. If a Mohammedan sat on it, that would be
considered a sin, and, if a Christian did it, a punishable crime.
They also consider it, in the Arabic language, so sacred, that they
do not approve of any translation of it into other languages, so
much the more, if, in their opinion, it his exaltation, cannot even
be translated into it. He is not only considered a Revelation
necessary to salvation, but also the principal source of all useful
human knowledge. For this reason Omar, the successor of Abubekker,
burned the famous Library at Alexandria, because, possessing the
Koran, one could do without all other books. In schools it is the
principal textbook. In the chapels of mosques, where the bodies of
important persons may be interred, it is customary, often, to place
some copies fastened in chains, in which religious Mahometans read
for one or more hours for the repose of their separated souls; yes,
for that purpose certain readers are also kept and paid. As a proof
of the whole Koran, the following remarkable passages, according to
the true and excellent translation of Sale, will be recorded.
The First Chapter.
The Preface or
Introduction, with the Title: Revealed at Mecca. (*)
"In the name of
the most merciful God!
"Praise be to
God, the Lord of all creatures, the most merciful, the King of the
Day of Judgment! To Thee do we worship, and from Thee do we pray for
help. Guide us on the right path, on the path of those on whom Thou
hast been gracious; not of those against whom Thou art angry, nor of
those who go astray!"
From the Second
Chapter.
"It is He (God)
Who created for you everything that is on earth, and then cast His
thoughts upon the creation of the Heavens, and formed them in 7
Heavens. He knows all things. When thy Lord said unto the angels, I
will appoint a Governor in the earth, they said, Wilt thou appoint
therein one who will do evil upon it, and shed blood? But we declare
thy praise, and extol thee. God said, Verily I know that which ye
know not. And He taught Adam the names of all things, and commanded
them to the angels, and said, Show me the names of these things, if
ye speak the truth. They said, Praise be to thee, we have no
knowledge save that which thou teachest us; for thou art
All-Knowing, All-Wise. Then God said, O Adam, tell them their names.
And when he had told them their names, God said, Did I not tell thee
that I know the secrets of the heavens and the earth, and know that
which ye reveal, and that which ye conceal. And when We said to the
angels: Worship Adam, they all worshipped him, except Ihlis; (*) who
refused, and was puffed up with pride, and became one of the number
of disbelievers. And We said: O Adam, dwell thou and thy wife in the
Garden, and eat of its fruits in abundance wherever thou wilt. But
come not near this tree, lest thou become among the number of
transgressors. But Satan led them astray, to lose Paradise, and
drove them out of the state of bliss in which they had been. So We
said: Go, get you hence; let one of you be an enemy to the other,
and it will be a dwelling place for you on earth, and a provision
for a time. And Adam learned words of prayer from his Lord, and God
turned to him; for he is easily reconciled, and full of mercy. We
said: Go, take all of you from here. Then you will receive a precept
from me, and all who will follow my precept, on such will come no
fear, neither will they be tormented. But those who are unbelievers,
and accuse our signs of falsehood, they will increase the company of
hell fire, there it will remain forever. O ye children of Israel,
remember my favor, wherewith I have favored you, and fulfill your
covenant with me; then will I fulfill my covenant with you, and
honor me, and believe the Revelation which I have sent down to you,
which confirms those that you already have, and be not the first to
disbelieve. So also do not exchange my signs for a small price, and
fear me. Clothe not the truth with vanity. Neither hide the truth
from your own conscience. Observe the times of prayer, and give alms
commanded you in the law, and bow down with them that bow down.
Would ye command men to do righteousness, and forget your own soul?
Yet ye read the book of the law; understand ye not therefore? Pray
for help with perseverance and prayers. This is indeed difficult,
but not for the humble, who seriously consider that they find their
Lord, and shall come unto him at last. O children of Israel,
remember my grace wherewith I have favored you, and that I have
chosen you above all people. Fear the day when no soul shall equal
another: then no intercession will be accepted from them, nor will
they receive any reward, nor will they be helped. Remember when We
delivered you from Pharaoh's people, who oppressed you terribly, so
that they killed your children of the males and left alive those of
the females. Therein was a great trial from your Lord. And when We
divided the sea for you and delivered you, and drowned Pharaoh's
people because you were looking on. And when We spoke with Moses
forty nights, then you took the calf for your God and did evil. Yet
We pardoned you afterwards, that you might give thanks. And when We
gave Moses the Book of the Law and taught him the difference between
good and evil, that you might be governed. And when Moses said to
his people: O my people! Surely you have sinned against yourselves
in that you have taken the calf for your God. So turn to your
Creator, and slay those of you who are guilty of such a sin. That
will be better for you in the sight of your Creator. And he turned
to you. For He is easy to appease, and full of mercy."
From the Third
Chapter.
"It was God who
hears and knows. Remember the wife of Imran (*) who said: My Lord,
I, have betrothed to thee, that which is in my body, that it may be
consecrated to thy service. Therefore accept it of me. For thou art
he that hearest and knowest. And when she was delivered thereof, she
said: Lord, verily I have brought forth a girl, (and God wills well,
what she brought forth,) and a boy is not as a girl. I have called
her Mary, and commended her to thy protection, as well as that which
shall come of her, against Satan, who was driven away with stones.
Wherefore the Lord received her with a gracious consent, and caused
a sticking out branch to grow from her. And Zacharias took care of
the child. Whenever Zacharias went into her chamber, he always found
her cared for, and said: O Mary, whence hast thou this? She
answered: This is from God. For God provideth whomsoever he will,
without measure. Then Zacharias called upon his Lord, saying, Lord,
let me bring forth of thee a good Branch; for thou hearest prayer.
And the angels called unto him, as he stood and prayed in the
chamber, and said, Of a truth God hath promised thee a Son, called
John, who shall bear record of the word which is of God; an
honourable person, chaste, and one of the righteous prophets. He
answered, Lord, how shall I have a son, seeing I am well advanced in
years, and my wife is barren? The angel said, So doth God that which
seemeth him good. Zacharias answered, Lord, give me a sign. The
angel said, Thy sign shall be, that within three days thou shalt not
speak with any man, save with signs. Remember your Lord often, and
praise Him in the evening and in the morning. And when the angels
said: O Mary, verily God has chosen you and purified you, and chosen
you above all women in the world. O Mary, be religious to your Lord,
and worship, and prostrate with those who prostrate themselves.
This: is a hidden story. We reveal it to you, if indeed you were not
present with them when they cast their rods to cast lots as to who
should have the upbringing of Mary. Likewise, you were not with them
when they fought among themselves. When the angels said: O Mary,
verily God sends you good tidings that you will bear the Word, which
proceeds from Himself. His name shall be Christ Jesus, the Son of
Mary, worthy of worship in this world and in the world to come, and
shall be one of those who approach the presence of God; and he shall
speak to men in the cradle, and when he is grown up, and he shall be
one of the Just. She answered: Lord, how shall I have a son, seeing
I know not man? The angel said: God creates what he pleases. When he
decrees a thing, he only says: She! then it is done. God shall teach
him scripture and wisdom and the law and the gospel, and shall
ordain him to be his apostle to the children of Israel; and he shall
say: Surely I come to you with a sign from your Lord. For I could
make of clay like the figure of a bird before your eyes. Then will I
blow upon it, and by the permission of God it shall become a bird.
And I will heal him that was blind from his birth; and the leprosy:
and I will raise the dead by the permission of God: and I will
foretell you what ye shall eat, and what ye shall lay up in store in
your houses. Verily in this shall be a sign unto you, if ye believe.
And I come to confirm the law which is revealed from me, and to
grant you a just portion of that which was forbidden you; and I come
unto you with a sign from your Lord. Therefore fear God, and obey
me. Verily God is my Lord, your Lords. Therefore serve him. This is
the right way. But when Jesus saw their unbelief, he said: Who will
be my helpers before God? The apostles answered: We will be God's
helpers. We believe in God, and bear Thou witness unto us, that we
are true believers. O Lord, we believe in what Thou hast sent us
down, and we have followed Thine Apostle. Write us therefore down
with those that testify of him. And the Jews devised a plot against
him, but God devised a plot against them, and God is the best
discoverer of plots. When God said: O Jesus, verily I will cause
thee to die, and will take thee unto myself, and will separate thee
from among the unbelievers: and I will make them that follow thee
rulers over the unbelievers until the day of resurrection: then
shall ye return unto me; and I will not judge between you any thing
concerning which ye differ. But I will punish the unbelievers with a
severe ?? and there will be none to help them. But to those who
believe and do what is right, He will give them their reward. For
God does not love those who do evil. These signs and this wise
exhortation we recite to you. Surely the likeness of Jesus in the
sight of God is as the likeness of Adam. He created him from dust,
and said to him, Be! and he was. This is the truth from the Lord.
Therefore not one of those who doubt. And whoever wants to contend
with you according to the knowledge given to you, say to such: Come,
let us call together our sons and your sons, and our wives and your
wives, and ourselves and you, then let us use curses and put the
curse of God on those who lie. Verily this is a true History. And
there is no god but God, and God is Omnipotent and Wise. When they
return, God knows best the wrongdoers. Say: O you who have been
given the Scripture! Come to a just decision between us and you,
that we worship no one besides God, nor associate with him any
creature; and that none of us take others as lords besides God. But
if they return, say: Bear witness that we are true believers. O ye,
to whom the scripture was given, why contend ye about Abraham,
seeing the law and the gospel were not sent down till after his
time? yet understand ye not? Behold, ye are they that contend about
that which ye have no knowledge of. Why then contend ye about that
which ye have no knowledge of? God knoweth, but ye know nothing.
Abraham was neither a Jew, nor a Christian; but he was one of the
true religion, who had surrendered himself unto God, and not of the
number of idolaters. Surely the men that are next unto Abraham are
they that follow him; and this Prophet, and they that believe in
him. God is the protector of the believers."
From the Eighth
Chapter.
"Surely the
worst cattle in the sight of God are those who are hardened
unbelievers, and will not believe. When you encounter in war those
who enter into a covenant with you, and then, at every suitable
opportunity, break their covenant, and do not fear God; then make
them an example, and scatter also those who will come after them,
that they may be warned. Or if you fear treachery from a people,
then throw back their covenant with the same treatment. For God
loves not the treacherous, and do not think that the unbelievers
have escaped the vengeance of God. For they will not weaken the
power of God. Therefore make such strong military preparations
against them as is possible, with troops and horsemen, whereby you
may terrify God's enemies and your enemies, as well as other
unbelievers besides them, whom you do not know, but God knows very
well. And whatever you spend in defense of God's service, that will
all be repaid to you, and will not be taken ill of you in the least.
And if they are inclined to peace, let them also find you inclined
to it, and put your trust in God. For it is he who hears and
understands. But if they seek to deceive you, then God will be your
protection. It is he who has strengthened you with his help and with
that of the believers, and has united their hearts. And if ye had
devoted to it all the wealth that is in the world, yet ye could not
have united their hearts. But God united them. For he is Mighty and
Wise. O Prophet! God is your protection and your help, and such of
the true believers as follow you. O Prophet, encourage the believers
to war."
From the Thirty-third
Chapter.
"O believers,
when ye marry women who are believers, and afterwards put them away
before ye have touched them, then no certain time is prescribed for
you, which ye must fulfill concerning them after their divorce; but
give them a present, and let them go voluntarily with an honourable
discharge. O Prophet, We have granted to you your wives, to whom you
have given their captivity, and the slaves whom your right hand
possesses from the spoils which God has granted you; and the
daughters of your nephews and the daughters of your nieces, both on
your father's side and on your mother's side, who fled with you from
Mecca, and every believing woman, if she surrenders herself to the
Prophet himself; in case she desires to take the Prophet for a wife.
This is a liberty specially granted to you above all other true
believers. We know that We have revealed it to them for their wives
and for their slaves whom their right hand possesses, so that it
might not be explained to you as an evil thing if you make use of
the liberty granted to you. For God is gracious and merciful. You
may set aside such of your wives as may come to your bed, at your
pleasure, and take with you those whom you like best, and those whom
you have put away before, and it will be no mischief on your part.
This will be easier, that they may be perfectly content and not
grieved, but with what you shall give each one, they may be well
contented: God knows all that is in your heart, and God is
omniscient and merciful. It will not be at your liberty to take
others for wives afterwards, nor to exchange any of your wives for
them, though their beauty may please you: except the female slaves,
whom your right hand shall possess: and God see all things. O true
believer, do not enter into the Prophet's house, unless it were
lawful for you to eat with him, without waiting for his convenient
time: but, when you are invited, go in; and when you have eaten, go
away again, and do not stay there to engage in familiar
conversation; for this wearies the Prophet. He is ashamed to order
you to depart. But God is not at all ashamed of the truth. And, if
you want or desire to obtain anything from the Prophet's wife, then
demand it from her behind a covering. This will be purer for your
hearts and their hearts. So it is not fitting that you should
displease the Apostle of God, or marry his wives after him for
eternity; for that would be an abomination in the sight of Allah.
Whether you spread a matter openly or conceal it, surely Allah knows
all things. It will be no wrong for them, as for their fathers, or
their sons, or their brothers, or their brothers' sons, or their
sisters' sons, or their wives, or the slaves whom their right hand
possesses, if they speak to them openly: and fear ye Allah, for
Allah is Witness to all things."
From the Sixty-second
Chapter, the collection, under the Title, revealed at Medina.
"In the name of
the most merciful God!
"All that is in
heaven and in earth praise God, the King, the Holy, the Mighty, the
Wise. It is He who raised up among the unlearned Arabians an Apostle
from among them, to recite to them his signs, and to purify them,
and to teach them the scripture and wisdom; since before, certainly,
they were in open error; and others of them have not yet come to it
by accepting the faith, although they will be converted at the time
acceptable to God. For he is mighty and wise. This is God's free
grace; he grants it to whom he will. And God is endowed with great
bounty. The likeness of those who were burdened with keeping the
law, and yet did not keep it, is like the likeness of a Donkey,
laden with books. How contemptible is the equality of the people who
accuse the signs of God of falsehood! And God does not rule the
unjust people. Say: O ye who follow the Jewish religion, when ye
pretend to be friends of God above other men, ye desire death when
ye speak the truth, but they will never desire it, because of what
their hands have sent before them. And God is well aware of the
unjust. Say: truly death, from whom you flee, will surely meet you
enough: then you will be brought before him, who knows as well what
is hidden as what is discovered, and he will show you what you have
done."
(*)
This chapter is used by the Mahometans, as the Christians use the
Lord's Prayer.
(*)
The Angel, who by this, according to Mahomet's grounds, has become
the Devil.
(*)
Is, according to the opinion of the Mahometans, the Father of the
Virgin Mary.
§. XXVII. Of the
various Sects among the Mahometans. (*)
It makes a great
difference that the Mahometans should be unanimous in their faith:
because no religion has more Sects than they count among themselves,
Mahomet himself wanted to predict that in his doctrine 70 Sects
would arise; but the Turks themselves confess that there were more,
and they do not consider this a disgrace either. Party-taking
already took hold in his time, but it increased and enlarged in his
successors. The greatest schism is made by the Sunnites and the
Scyites. The Sunnites have their name from the Arabic word, Sunnah
or Sunnet, which means the second or oral law, which was not written
down by the Legislator, but derived solely from his reasons and
actions, and preserved by the tradition of credible persons. This
Sunnah is obligatory for the greater part of the Mohammedans, and
serves them, as the Jews the Mishna, and the Romans the Traditions??
traditions, as a rule of faith and life. The Turks, Tartars, Arabs
and Africans generally accept it. But they are by no means entirely
agreed in religion, and the Tartars, for example, are considered
heretics by the Turks. (*)
The Schiytes have
their name from the Arabic word Schiah or Eschya't, which generally
denotes a group of people united together, or a particular religious
party. The orthodox Mohammedans who call their faith Sunnah, give
the name Schiah to that party who are followers of Ali, and have
many special customs and sentiments. A Shiite is therefore the
opposite party to the Sunnit, and the principal difference between
the two consists in the fact that the former believes and professes
that the Supreme Imamat, that is, all spiritual and temporal power
over the Mohammedans, according to the divine right, belongs to Ali
and his descendants. The Persians and partly also the Mughals are
Shiites, who are again divided into various Sects. All these Sects
are very hostile to each other. From this a great many persecutions
have arisen, and the wars have been quite bloody. But all agree in
this, that they consider Muhammad to be God's last Prophet, whom
every one, if he wishes to be saved, must follow, and that they
consider his Koran to be the obligatory Revelation of God. They
covet the name of Mussulmen, that is, Orthodox. When Christians
therefore give them this name, they either do not know what it
means, or they declare themselves by it to be Irreligious or
Unbelievers.
Many Mohammedans,
especially in Arabia, and of a more practical than contemplative
kind. But in the latter case they have reason to be very on their
guard, and to keep quiet.
(*)
Concerning these Sects the attached lists give the clearest
instruction.
(*)
The Tartars, especially the Kasan, Astrakhan, Nogai, and Circasian,
are not considered by the Turks to be strict observers of the law.
But the Tartars in the Crimea, as being the most civilized, are
considered as orthodox as the Turks themselves. In general, in
Turkey it is sufficient for Orthodoxy to be achieved when only the
sovereign and the lawyers nourish orthodox principles, because the
whole is judged and estimated by them.
§. XXVIII. The
principal contents of the Mohammedan religion.
Many are accustomed
to speak of the Turkish religion; but this is just as wrong as if
one wanted to speak of the German or French religion. One should
therefore really say the Mohammedan religion, which the Turks
profess; namely as Sunnites, which expression has been explained in
the preceding paragraph. One might well think that there could be no
sects in Mohammedanism, considering that the disputes about the God
who is very strictly forbidden them; but, according to the preceding
paragraph, there are nevertheless more of them than in other
religions. This gives rise, meanwhile, among Mohammedans of a
certain sect, to a very special kind of conversation in companies
about matters of religion. Instead of others having heated
discussions about the latter, because of the different opinions, and
the reasons for and against them being brought forward; it is much
more calmly done among the Mohammedans about it. Even if someone has
proposed the opinions that are traceless, yet no one contradicts
him, but one person nods his approval with a nod - another
immediately expresses his astonishment; a third with a silence his
indifference: possibly the exact opposite will come to light shortly
afterwards, and his proposal will have to expect the same behaviour
from all those present. In Turkey no division in the religions once
adopted is tolerated, because the government fears danger to the
State by it. For that reason also no synods and religious
discussions are permitted among the Mohammedans; but they prefer to
leave everyone in ignorance, so as not to see themselves divided in
their opinions. This being supposed, their doctrinal works must now
be considered more closely.
The sources of their
religious knowledge deserve the first place. Because in Muhammad's
time, not only among the Jews, but also among the Christians, a
great multitude of apocryphal books was found; thus he has
attributed a great number of Divine Revelations to these and no Holy
Men, such as Adam, Seth, Enoch, Abraham, etc. The Old and New
Testaments are especially praised, (*) and some parts of them,
especially David's Psalms and the Gospels, are also still read with
reverence by the Mohammedans. But it is pretended that the Bible was
falsified by the Jews and Christians, and that instead of it the
Koran was made known by Muhammad, as the seal of all Divine
Revelations; that one must adhere to it alone, and thereby dispense
with all the rest. From the Koran, therefore, and the accepted
traditions, of Muhammad's first helpers and followers, for example
Abubekker, Omar, Othman, Aly, etc., the Mohammedan religion must be
learned. But how uncertain are these two sources? The confusion, in
which a Chaos of divine, civil and historical things is presented in
the Koran; the broken and bloated style, in which the matters are
presented, do not at all allow, to make a certain meaning, which is
laid in the words, or 'derived from them, but only to guess and
guess. The Traditions or traditions are covered with still more
darkness. Some blunt Free-spirits, but who nevertheless have heard
of Turks and Mohammedans, have been of the opinion, that in the
Christian religion we have very many articles of faith, and on the
other hand in the Mohammedan religion only a few, and this because
the latter prescribe nothing but this short confession: I believe
that there is no God besides God, and that Mohammed is his Prophet.
One must confess, if this is taken according to the words, that it
is short enough; but an equally short one can make of the Christian
religion. But if one takes it, as it must be taken justly, according
to the meaning and opinion; then this confession becomes so verbose,
that one finds no end to it: for to prove that Muhammad is a Prophet
of God, and to deduce from an accepted truth of this eternally
unprovable proposition the system of religion, which would naturally
follow from it, leads to infinite verbosity. — The Mohammedans
are strict defenders of the Unity of God's Being, and this is laid
down in the preliminary formula of the confession, which is
proclaimed from the Mosques, to indicate the hour of prayer. The
single word, God, is so venerable to them, that they lay their hand
on their foreheads, and they can move other Denominations not to
profane God's name. In this they go so far, that they do not let any
written paper be laid on the ground, or used for common things, for
fear that the word, God, might stand upon it, but keep it, or put it
in chinks and crevices, that it may not be trampled underfoot. No
greater enemies of the religion of healing are found than they, and
therefore they regard those Christians who worship images as no
better than heathens. Of God's attributes they have very exalted
ideas, but more of the so-called natural, than moral. Thus they
think of omnipotence, for example, much better and more exalted,
than of God's holiness, will, justice and goodness. They fiercely
oppose the mystery of the Holy Trinity, because they consider it to
be polytheism, because they lack a faithful instruction concerning
it. They do not have the same thoughts concerning the Person of
Jesus Christ. Many place Muhammad above him only because he was
God's last Prophet in their judgment, and therefore had to be heard.
The Koran could give no other account of him, than that which
corresponded with the misgivings of the then unorthodox. Muhammad
appeals to him, as to the one who had done miracles before him, and
for whose sake the world was obliged to obey him, because he had
testified of him. Jesus Christ is even called the Spirit of God; an
expression which has remained unanswerable to Mohammedans, when this
conclusion has been drawn from it against them: whoever is the
Spirit of God; he must belong to God, or be of one essence with Him,
consequently also Jesus Christ. They therefore do not honor in him
the Sacrifice of mankind. Of the Saints they have such notions,
which indicate that they regard them as a sort of intercessors; for
they make pilgrimages to their graves, pray over the last, etc.
The creation of the
world, as the Bible relates it, and the arrangement of the heavenly
and worldly bodies, they have, by childish and ridiculous fables,
deformed. Just as God's decrees, in their presentation, are a
mixture of great and wallis?? sheep absurdities; so the Doctrine of
God's Providence will not differ much from the blind fate of the
Pagans with them. They call it Kismet. And, when this word goes out
of their mouths; then it is as much as if a Pagan Poet speaks of the
Parcae or Fates. With them, by this, human freedom is almost
destroyed, and they think, that, just as, without their seeking, the
destined happiness must come to them, they also, with all prudence,
could not escape the misfortune that befell them.
- Of the Angels they
have, besides the but very falsified, biblical reports, a multitude
of fictions, which are better suited to the ipinkarhers??, than this
work.
That they think, that
God has given many Revelations at various times, has been noted
beforehand. They imagine, that this happens because God often
changes His Will, and by new Revelations clarifies the old ones.
Therefore we should not be surprised, that the number of Prophets
among them exceeds a hundred thousand, even though they differ among
themselves concerning the determination of them. Concerning their
Morals, many more cases will occur. It is not presented to them in
any connection, but only in scattered proverbs. A good part of it is
borrowed from the precepts of Holy Scripture, especially Jesus'
speeches, from which they derive even more Miracles than are in the
Bible. These are good; but the rest, which Mohammed has added,
betrays its fanatical and deceitful inventor. And what can one
expect from a Morals which does not recommend to man a complete
conversion, instruct him about it, and impart the necessary powers
to it, but leaves it to rest solely and exclusively with proposals
for an outward change. The future state after this Life is not
unknown to them, though with much superstition. They believe in a
resurrection of the dead; a judgment on the world, whose permanence
the Koran fixes at very many years, to wit, up to a thousand and
fifty thousand, and therefore contradicts itself in this respect; a
recompense according to the various works; the refreshment of the
Righteous in Paradise, which however, according to the description
in the Koran, is placed almost in the enjoyment of carnal pleasures,
and after a previous atonement for the sins will take place in Hell;
and finally they believe the hellish punishments of the ungodly.
Reland, who has made
a plan of the Mohammedan religion, especially after the system of
the Sunnites, is accused by the Scholars, of having presented it on
the best side, by the observance of hard places, and by a most
possible flexible explanation of the indubitable statements of the
Koran. This should not seem strange to anyone who knows the nature
of man. In what one wants to praise and defend, appearances are
never lacking. One then presents persons and things, not as they
really are, but as they should be according to our ideas. In this,
one part ends in improper exaltation, and another in contempt; and
thus, often, the truth is diminished through no fault of its own,
and untruth is raised without reason. This can easily be transferred
to Reland. Just as, according to Bossüet, the Roman religion is
not as he arranges him, but as he must be regarded by others; so it
is with Reland, with respect to the Mohammedan religion.
Besides the
previously mentioned articles of faith, there is a multitude of
religious observances, which are just as necessary, as none, which
one can consider as the practical?? part thereof, and which will be
booked next.
(*)
As to the respect, which many Mohammedans have for the Bible;
concerning this, a special example of an Arabic language master from
Damascus comes to mind. He read the New Testament as attentively, as
if by a Christian, and showed a kind of reverence at the name of
Jesus, almost always.
§. XXIX.
Religious customs of the Mohammedans.
One will be able to
perceive, with a little knowledge, that all false religions build
the salvation of their adherents on the holiness of works, or
promise them the same, if they only experience the external
religious duties in a certain measure. This takes place among the
Mohammedans in the highest degree. A multitude of religious works
commanded in the Old Testament, but mostly arbitrary, will pave the
way for them to Paradise.
Circumcision is
considered by them as the distinguishing mark, by which the
believers are incorporated into Mohammedanism. It is not charged in
the Koran; but is nevertheless strictly observed in imitation of
Muhammad, who is said to have been circumcised. With boys it is
usually performed from the seventh year onwards, and in case of some
hindrances up to the fifteenth year; but with apostates it is
performed after the apostasy. The place as well as the time, as well
as the person who performs it, is left to the discretion of the
parents or guardians. The circumcision of Jews is considered lawful;
the apostates are not circumcised again, but are only obliged to
recite the short Mohammedan creed under the upraised index finger.
It is performed otherwise with great solemnity, especially with
children of important parents, who are previously led around the
towns or villages on horseback, in costly finery; and it is
considered a good work, when a rich father has the sons of poor
parents circumcised at the same time, who are also among the stately
retinue of his son. It is performed in the houses. At the
circumcision the first names are accustomed to have music played, so
that the children are encouraged, and their cries are not heard by
those present. The latter are received with dignity; also some
cattle are killed, as victims, while the name Allah (God) is called
out, and the meat thereof, with recommendation of intercession, is
distributed among the poor. The name is not given to the children at
the circumcision, which extends beyond that only to the sons, but
from the father, after birth. Prayer is considered by them to be a
necessary duty. According to the Koran it must be done three times a
day, shortly before the rising of the sun, about 2 hours before the
setting of the sun, and as much time afterwards. The Mohammedans are
invited to this, instead of bells, by the priests, who from the
towers of the mosques, or, if they have none, next to them, from an
elevated place, according to the 4 points of the sky, cry out: God
is great / There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his Prophet!
This being proclaimed twice, it is added: come ye people to the
place of quarrel and truth?? come to the place of sanctuary of
salvation. This sign for public prayer is called Efany and is given
eight times on Friday, but on the other days five times. On Friday
it is done for the solemn worship, two hours before noon. To pray
three times a day God would have charged Muhammad; but to do it five
times he commanded, as a pretended Prophet of God. And it will not
easily be found a Mohammedan who will not pray five times, to wit,
besides at the times aforesaid, also at noon, and in the first
quarter of the night. Now he who lives in places, goes to the
Mosques; he who is in the field, seeks out a green place; and he who
rides on horses, asses, or camels, gets down, to prepare himself for
prayer. After this, before the prayer, follows a purification and
washing with water, to cleanse oneself from sins, which the Turks
call Abdefi; or, if there is no water at hand, the rubbing of the
forehead and hands with dust. To wit, in ordinary faults it is
sufficient with them to wash the feet, the arms up to the elbows,
the neck, the face up to behind the ears, the eyes, the mouth and
the private parts; but in serious crimes the whole body must be
washed. For this reason the sanctity of works has installed
fountains and water-conduits on the highways, wherever possible, so
that travellers can also make use of them for their prayers. It is
indeed worthy of note to see a multitude of travellers and workers
in the fields in their devotion at the time of such a prayer. The
face must be directed towards the Temple of Mecca while praying;
for, although Muhammad, first of all, destroyed the direction of the
face towards a certain region, he nevertheless changed, in order to
gain the ??, he their superstitious esteem for the Temple, of
thoughts. The positions of the body change very often during prayer.
At first the hands are raised to Heaven, and then they let them
fall, holding them before the lower abdomen, in that form as slaves
stand before their Lords. Then the body is bent forward, and the
hands are placed on the knees; but, after that then one straightens
up again, and then has knelt on the ground, the praying person sits
on his legs stretched out behind him, and finally he throws himself
down so long that even his head touches the ground. Putting aside
these gestures, which they judge to be important, they have a rule
of prayer, namely that one should beware of strange thoughts, and if
they have disturbed someone in the devotion, the prayer should begin
again from the beginning; a rule which the Christians also had to
follow. Besides, they also shame them in the boldness with which
they, in these mostly very humble bodily postures, pray in all
places, and in the presence of all kinds of people, without reserve,
since we often falsely shame ourselves because of prayer, and
especially more appropriate gestures with it. But one knows, because
of the innate corruption, how to abuse the good in all religions. If
one of them is in company and negotiations that he does not like;
then he pretends to prayer, and breaks off, going away, as he thinks
fit. The prayer, if it is not done in the mosques, is very short,
and lasts only a few minutes.
In public worship the
Mohammedans tolerate no music, for the same reason, which they
pretend, why they suffer no bells on the towers of the mosques. They
are of the opinion that God should be honored only with human
voices. In this respect there is only one exception among the monks,
who are called Draajers. On working days it consists only in the
previously mentioned prayer exercise, which in the mosques therefore
lasts longer, because a chapter from the Koran is also read out; but
in the time of a quarter of an hour, also in ?? or 12 minutes
everything is finished. Friday is, in fact, their Holy day, and when
examining the reason why Muhammad chose it, besides that that day
was already suitable for the religious meetings of the Arabs, it is
the most important, because he wanted to distinguish his religion,
by that, from the Christians and Jews; although the Mohammedans
maintain that this happened because Muhammad had to flee from Mecca
to Medina on such a day. Then the service lasts three quarters of an
hour. Besides the prayers and the reading of passages from the
Koran, sermons are also preached in larger places, in which, instead
of arranging the proposals morally and emphatically, they are
usually about worldly affairs, political events, bad weather, wars,
etc., and with such imprudent expressions that simple minds were
more inclined to dissolute subjects, and incited to them, than
deterred and restrained from them; unless a fanatic or
spirit-driver, such as have always been and still are in the warm
countries, would advocate an excessive and extravagant morality
concerning the sanctity of absolute poverty, a fanatical
introspection in God, the usefulness of alms, pilgrimages, laying of
ashes and renunciation of human reason, etc. The Christians and Jews
are forbidden, under penalty of death or under the risk of being
forced to convert to Mohammedanism, to be present there. The female
sex may also not appear there at the same time as the male.
Otherwise they are very strict about this, and the Emperor himself
never misses a Friday to go openly to this or that Mosque. Apart
from this longer religious exercise, the Friday is almost equal to
the working days. The First Names employ it in visits, walks, and
other amusements: a reproach which is often made against Christians
for observing Sunday! the Merchant goes to his trade, and the common
man to his handicraft. The traveller by water and land, if possible,
postpones his journey till Friday, and sets out on it when he comes
out of the Mosque. (*) Besides, there are extraordinary services on
their festivals and fast-days. Fasting is, with the Mohammedans,
likewise, a very obligatory article of faith. There are fixed and
voluntary Fasts. Of the first kind, that which falls in the month of
Ramasan is the most important. This does not always fall in the same
season, but he shifts the shorter years of the Turks, annually,
eleven days, so that Ramasan, within 33 years, falls in all seasons.
Concerning this Fast it is strange: for during the day one may not
eat anything dry or wet; but, as soon as the stars become visible in
the sky, until the time that they disappear, everyone makes up for
his loss in eating and drinking, without making a distinction in the
kinds of food. Then the night is only changed into day, and the day
into night. The walk above the Minnarets is then lighted with a
certain kind of lanterns, to indicate that it is the permitted time
for the meal, which they do in the Mosques after the prayer. The
travelers and the sick are well aware of it excepted, but for that
they must, afterwards, fast at another time. If this Fast falls in
the hot months with long days; then it is, especially for the
laborers, very troublesome. For the rest, the violation of this Fast
can also be made up for by feeding a poor person. If it ends at the
setting of the sun on the last day; then the revelries are
incredible. — On the day after Ramasan the so-called Beyram,
or the Feast of Sacrifice, begins. On this feast the Radja, or such
subjects, who are not of the Mohammedan religion, must give presents
to the principal Turks, with whom they have intercourse, as also the
Europeans to the Grand of the Porte, as well as to the Pachas and
Kadhys in the place where they live and trade. The Turks are
accustomed, about that time, to arrange themselves and their house
anew, and the chiefs among them to send presents to the lesser ones.
This Beyram, to distinguish it from a second Beyram, or
Kurban-beyram, which falls 70 days later, when the Pilgrims arrive
at Mecca, is called by many the great (Bujuck), just as this is
called the small (Kiutschuck). This is said to be a memorial of
Ishmael's sacrifice by Abraham. The lambs killed on the last are,
usually, distributed among the Poor, so that they may pray for the
Rich. The beginning of the Barnajan and Beyram must be reckoned from
the first day of the new moon. This reckoning is not done according
to an Almanac, but according to the Moon seen by persons expressly
appointed for that purpose. For this reason the places are divided
into four, especially when they lie deep in the country, or the air
is overcast. The large places give notice of their discoveries, and
the firing of guns and cannons gives the surrounding regions notice
of the invaded Beyram, which, as mentioned above, is called the
great Beyram, in distinction from a second Beyram. On such feasts
the people are very wild and exuberant; and the Christians and Jews
usually keep themselves, as much as possible, at home, in order not
to incur any inconvenience. The great Beyram is celebrated for
three, but the small one only for two days.
The distribution of
alms is, in the Koran, not only very seriously recommended, but
every one is also urged to be willing to do so, under great
promises. The Mohammedans therefore consider themselves obliged to
give necessary, and also voluntary alms. But how far one should go
in this, according to each one's circumstances, they do not agree.
Some set the tenth, others the twentieth, still others even the half
part of the income. The first seems to be the most natural. But
there is also a reduction; (*) for, because the subjects of the
Great Lord must bring the tithes to him, the greater part already
considers this as alms. In the meantime, however, many distribute
something considerable; and this extends not only to men, but also
to animals, especially to dogs, of which there is an unusually large
number in the cities and villages, and to which one throws bread and
meat. Yes, the animals often have more to expect than the people,
especially the Christians. For the Turks are not infrequently of the
opinion, that, because God has given the latter reason, but has
refused it to the former, they in a certain respect deserve less
compassion, because they have not used it rightly, and therefore,
through their own fault, suffer want. There is also no lack of
people who buy a multitude of captured birds, then let them fly
again, and thus grant them freedom. To treat animals harshly, or to
torture them, when they have not deserved it, is considered the
greatest cruelty, nay, a formal godlessness. Most of them,
meanwhile, spend their alms on more lasting causes. They spend much
on Mosques and schools, on the construction of fountains for
travellers, on the improvement or making of paved roads and bridges,
as well as water pipes, on the building of Caravanseras or buildings
on the highways, especially in regions where there are no towns or
villages, so that the travellers, under the roof, may be safe from
storms and cold. The Mohammedans highly value such public good
works, which tend to the best of the Common Good. But ambition and a
work sanctity have the greatest share in it, which is why the name
of the Founder, where it could happen, is carved somewhere in a
stone.
Concerning the
Pilgrimages, the necessary will occur in the following Paragraph.
But here some mention must be made of them, because they are imposed
on the Mohammedans as an essential duty of religion. Several outward
things which are forbidden are also religious with them. Mohammed
had indeed, at first, permitted the use of wine; but afterwards he
forbade it with all games. But his followers know how to avoid both
an. Many, in fact, do
not drink wine, but use drinks that are much stronger. And if anyone
drinks wine; he is accustomed, however, to abstain from it at least
in Ramasan. They must also abstain from that which has been
strangled, from blood, and from that which has been killed by an
unfortunate accident, as well as from pigs' meat, etc.; all which,
as well as many other such things, Mohammed has borrowed from the
Levitical law; but they do not take this so strictly, but say
without hesitation, to the pure all things are pure. Usury is indeed
strictly forbidden, and, if there are complaints before the court
for debts, no interest is allowed: but, nevertheless, nowhere is
there more usury than in the Levant. One accepts from 10 to 25 per
cent interest, but also notes this in the debt notes, so as not to
fall short for the courts. So that he who, for example, accepts 100
piasters, must sign for it a bond of 110 to 125 piasters, according
to the extent that one has agreed on the interest.
Marriage takes place
with many ceremonies, and is there a ceremony that affects not only
the Church, but also the Government. The method concerning this in
Turkey is actually this. After the proposal for the bride has been
made, and her mortuary has been determined, the freedom to marry is
requested from the Kadhy (Judge). The Bridegroom and Bride then
usually send Proxies to the Imam (Chief of the Priests), who asks
the one on the Bridegroom's side: whether he is prepared to give
such a dowry? and the one on the Bride's side: whether he is
satisfied with it? This being answered in the affirmative, the
Bridegroom and Bride appear before him; he places their hands
together, the morning's dowry is paid, and the treaty is concluded
with a prayer from the Koran. The Bridegroom can then take his Bride
to himself at his pleasure. — Poor men often make do with one
wife. The Koran allows those who can support them four. Wives can
each take as many as he likes. Not only can he repudiate this at any
time, but a second divorce of the woman against her will is also
permitted, but for the third time it is not granted otherwise than
with her consent. But if a man takes back the divorced woman, and
she has not been married to another since the divorce, then the
shameful law is this, that she must first be slept with by another.
This is disguised with the pretext, that thereby the capriciousness
of men may be kept in check, and that a shame may be done to those
who abuse the freedom of divorce. But in order to lessen the shame,
which the man would undergo, who marries a divorced woman again, he
first brings her before the Judge, to conclude the marriage contract
anew. Then he asks a good friend, who in the presence of the man
lies down with this woman on the bed, as if it were by sleeping
together, and therewith she is accepted again. — Forbidden
degrees in marriage take place among the Mohammedans, almost in the
same way, as among the Jews. For the rest, women can also insist on
divorce.
If a Mohammedan sick
person is in mortal danger, then an Imam, if one can get one, reads
certain prayers. As soon as he has died, the head is laid to the
side of Mecca. Then other pious people come with the Imam, wash the
corpse with warm water and soap, and kick it on the abdomen, in
order to squeeze out the filth everywhere. Finally, they plug it,
the ears, the nose, the mouth, and the back with tree wool.
Burials, finally,
form a special religious ceremony. The dead has hardly become cold,
or he is buried. The body is wrapped in a linen cloth, and thus laid
on a bier. The coffin is spared in many places, and, if one is used
at all, then it consists of common planks joined together. It is
carried away very quickly, and those who follow it, run after it
without order. People, who meet it on the way, continue to lay hands
on the bier, to show the dead the last honor. Even travelers and
horsemen dismount from their horses, at least to touch the bier.
This is, with persons who have died of the plague, a dangerous
opportunity to spread the Evil in all houses. The dead are carried
to the grave with their heads forward. In the grave it is laid
towards the side of Mecca, and the body is surrounded with small
pieces of planks, if no coffin has been used, and covered with earth
on top. Prayers are said on the graves at various times by the
survivors of both deceased. They sprinkle them with various flowers.
It is also customary for names and rich people not only to place
standing stones with inscriptions on them, but also very often to
plant cypresses. This may well be derived from the ancient custom of
the Fathers and Israelites to
to bury the dead, as
an indication of the resurrection they expected, under trees. Genes:
XXXV 8. i Sam: XXXI 13. In these cemeteries one also finds, not
infrequently, pieces and fragments of old columns and monuments of
the finest marble, and other fine stones. At the top of it a turban
is carved. And, because its various forms indicate the state or the
way of life of the deceased; thus one knows of what rank he was.
Under the r?? one usually finds a golden inscription on a blue
field. The tombstones are always erected upright by the Turks, so
that God's name is not, in their opinion, trampled underfoot in this
respect; and on that account they blame our lying graves. By persons
of rank, at the four corners of the circumference of a grave, a wall
of hewn or baked stones, also marble, is customary, to be erected to
the height of an ell, and the hollow between the two is left empty,
or is to be raised with square and other large stones, but without
an inscription, like that on the pillar. The common man has only one
oblong stone at the head, and one similar at the foot. — In
many places, from the multitude of gravestones, one can see that
there must have been large cities there before. (*) Because one
never buries another on the spot where someone has already been
buried; but, when a place is filled with corpses, it is then left
unused, and new places are sought; Thus, in populous places, the
surrounding fields become mere burial grounds: and if Turkey were as
populated as, for example, Holland; then it would already have
become a cemetery, or would soon become such a one.
(*)
Although the Levantines are indifferent about the other days of the
week; they are not so about Tuesday. On such a day, as an
unfortunate one in their opinion, neither the Turk nor the Greek
etc. will set out on a journey. If there is an urgent need; then one
breaks off in the last hours of Monday, and then, on Tuesday,
continues the journey without difficulty.
(*)
Many think, in their opinion, to satisfy the ordered distribution of
alms, or to give a certain portion of one's to the poor, also by
this means. Someone, for example, must give a hundred out of 1000
piastres. Now he may have such a high, but uncertain, debt, so he
puts some ready money with it, calls the first one for the best
poor, and asks him; whether he, what he wanted to give him, would
accept for a thousand, or so and so much? He, who must naturally
fear, that if he refuses, he will receive nothing, answers: Kabul, I
accept it. In this or a similar way they feed and clothe the poor,
setting, for example, worn-out things and rags at a price, as they
think fit.
(*)
Accounting for the prayers, gestures, and other customs belonging to
the public Worship or Religion of the Turks, one can read about them
with profit: Tractatus Alberti Bobonii &c. de Turcarum Liturgia,
peregrinatiane Meccana, circumcisione, aegrotorum vifitatiene £fr.
ex editiane Th: ??yde. ?? 1690.
§. XXX. The Holy
Places.
Among the Holy Places
the Mosques deserve the first place. In Turkish they bear the name
of Mesdschjid. They are with the Turks that which with us the
churches are. In Turkey they may not be built without the express
permission of the Emperors. Above the common Mosques the Dfschamis
have the precedence, because in these, but not in none, the solemn
Friday prayers can be said, and public schools (Madras) and
hospitals (Imarets) are usually built there. The principal ones,
which are also called Imperial Mosques, because they were founded by
the Sultans, after a victory over the infidels, are usually only at
such places where they had their seat, namely at Brussa, Adrianople
and Constantinople. They are like our churches, from the outside, by
their construction, distinguished from other buildings. The most
important ones are provided with Menarets (Towers), vaulted in the
manner of a Dome, and the roofs covered with lead. The Menarets are
round towers, and only of such thickness that a spiral staircase can
go up from within. Below the roof one finds at the Mosques a walkway
or gallery, and at the Dschamis two or three, from which the Imam,
at fixed times, calls the people together to prayer. These walks or
galleries below the roof of the Menarets (not of the Mosques) are,
in the fasting month, at night, hung with lamps or lanterns, which
in cities, where there are many Mosques, makes for a pleasant sight.
In order that these Menarets may not be easily overthrown by
earthquakes, the stones are united with very many iron supports. The
best old churches of the Christians have been changed into mosques,
after the images, crucifixes, altars, and other signs of the
Christian religion have been removed from them. On the inside,
according to their size, they are without or with pillars. The Turks
are very careful, wherever they have mosques or prayer-places
(Namas-Kjah), to take the best precautions, so that one may know
where one must turn one's face during prayer or worship. For this
reason there is in it, towards the region where Mecca lies, a table
or case in the wall, in which perhaps copies of the Koran are laid,
with the characteristic that this is the region of the sky towards
which the praying must turn their eyes, which is called Kebla or the
sight. In front of this Kebla is a raised place, to which one climbs
by means of some steps, and on which prayers and sermons are said,
which one can therefore compare with our pulpits. For the rest one
finds no benches or chairs in it, but the ground is only covered
with mats, made of thin reeds, or with carpets, so that the praying
does not find it so difficult to kneel down on the ground. The
principal ones are, on the inside, artfully hung with many precious
lamps, and between these usually also ostrich-eyes or all kinds of
rarities are placed. Otherwise the Mosques enjoy great liberties and
revenues, which no Government may encroach upon. This causes an
extraordinary disorder in the State; for persons and Families of all
persuasions, who do not think themselves safe from the Emperor in
their houses and possessions, make them for a Mosque, which they
please, on such conditions, as they think good, so that, for
instance, they pay one or more Piastres annually to it, but retain
the rest of the full possession thereof for themselves and all their
descendants. — The goods of the Mosques are calculated in
order, and of those that lie in Turkey, an account must be made to
the Grand Lord: but he can take nothing from it, and at the most he
is only allowed support from it for war against the enemies of
Religion. To none but the Mohammedans is the entrance into the
Mosques open, because, according to their opinion, they would be
desecrated by the entrance of persons of other Denominations; but
the possessions which are made to them are called Vakuf. The
Stewards of the Ecclesiastical Revenues bear the name of Mutewelly,
and they are co-supervisors of the goods of one or more Mosques.
These are generally under the Kislar-Aga; but often they must also
render accounts to the Myry, according to the Government's pleasure.
The respect of the Turks for the Mosques is extraordinary. They do
not spit in them; they do not allow filth to pass outside them, and
they do not allow animals, such as dogs, etc., to run into them. In
the squares, or in the neighbourhood, fountains are laid out for
religious washing. Whoever enters to pray, after having purified,
leaves his slippers at the door, or takes them under his arms, so as
not to spoil the mats and carpets. If one has to spit, then one uses
his handkerchief. No one greets another, but each one gives his
attention to God alone.
In Constantinople,
with regard to the prohibition not to enter a Mosque, two exceptions
take place. The former St. Sophia church is shown in order,
according to an old custom, to the Venetian ambassador, after his
audience with the Emperor; (*) and whoever offers the Overseer of it
two or more Zecchins, also receives the freedom to be led around it,
at sunrise, on one of the galleries, for a shorter or longer time.
Moreover, there are 2 Mosques of Dervish or Turkish Monks, which,
besides the freedom to enter, also grant another, namely to be
allowed to attend their worship, at least at certain times. We could
give one kind of them the name of Draajers, and the other the name
of Roepers. But both permit all Confessions to behold it, because
they think to bring them to Mohammedanism. From what we shall
observe concerning both, it will soon be seen whether this can
easily move an intelligent person to it. The Mevelevi, after their
Founder Mevelane, who, because of one of their principal religious
practices, may not unjustly be called Draajers, have their Mosque
and Cells at Pera, where they practice therein not only on Fridays,
like the other Mohammedans in other Mosques, but also on Tuesdays,
their supposed alluring and strange Religion. The Mosque is round;
it has, on the inside, a row of pillars, which stands about 6 paces
from the wall, and is closed off with a gate, so that the space
within the pillars remains completely free. The spectators stand
outside it. To the heavenly region of Mecca was the previously
explained Kebla, as well as a height, resembling not so much a
pulpit, as an altar. Before it sat the Sheik or Chief of the Monks,
somewhat elevated, and they sat as if at his feet. Instead of music
never being permitted in the Mohammedan worship, because it is
thought that instrumental music is unworthy of it, and that God can
only be honored with human voices; so here, however, he began with
Arabic chants, accompanied by instrumental music, but so
disagreeable to European ears, that one was glad when it ceased. The
Chief of the Monks is also accustomed, at this worship, to make a
proposal. The Monks kept quiet until the sign of their Chiefs; but
when it was given, the first stood up, and made a deep bow to him.
Their dress is singular. An ash-gray cap, as long as a reasonable
sugar-loaf, and nearly equally thick above and below, covered each
head; the hair hung down behind, somewhat shortened; a close
dark-brown dress covered the upper body; over it was girt a skirt,
like our women's skirts, but innumerable full of folds; the color of
it drew toward black; and hung a foot longer than the feet. When the
monk arose, he had his pleated skirt thrown about his legs; but when
he, after bowing to the Supreme, turned himself round quickly, like
a top, the air entered him, and also expanded it, under him, for a
width of some yards in the round. Both arms wheeled in length,
extended. The rapidity with which he turned round is incredible.
When the first monk, by this turning round, was about three paces
from the Supreme, the second of these received a sign, and brought
himself in a similar motion behind the first. Finally all seven came
to the plain, which, one behind the other, within the row of
pillars, moved so quickly, and then in time around the pillars, that
one could see their faces and the backs of their heads. One of us,
in such an exercise, would soon fall to the ground; but these Monks
not only held themselves upright, but also lay down, in the space of
about twenty minutes, their turn round in the Mosque, and, when they
came again to the Supreme, they made a deep obeisance to him; the
air went out of their coats, and they sat down again at his feet, as
calmly as if they had not moved. When they were all in their places,
I thought that the Furies, of whom the Pagan Poets sew up so many
fables, had become real. The music, with the accompanying Arabian
songs, continued, by which they seemed to be inspired, and with the
end of that the whole supposed worship ended. These Monks, besides
their other follies, are uncommonly humane, and have no such
religious hatred of the Christians as other Mohammedans. Their
principal monastery is at Iconium. Its Chief is the General of the
Order. They are accustomed to dance from an early age, which they do
in memory of the Founder, of whom it is said that he endured it for
a fortnight without taking any food. — The Kadri, who, from
their religious shouting, may justly be called Shouters, are not of
this good sort, but rather look surly. They shout, in their
religious dance, the Arabic word, Hu??, which is the same as Allah,
namely God, means, so long, until they fall to the ground as if
beside themselves, and foam stands before their mouths, yea, in many
cases even the blood runs out of them. These have their monastery at
Tophana.
The principal place
to which the Mohammedans make their pilgrimage is Mecca. According
to the Koran they must all do this. But its expositors have
moderated this severity, and thus it is asserted, that he who has
many occupations, may send another in his place. And, because the
necessity of the pilgrimage extends only to those who can afford the
necessary expenses, consequently the poor are not obliged; so they
let themselves be sent there by the rich, to a very great extent,
and even several times. The Great Lord himself cannot fail to send
there annually a camel very richly laden with gifts, especially
precious materials. These materials are used to hang the Kaaba
(Temple, Mosque). (*) The camel is then considered sacred and is not
used any further. Mecca is considered so sacred that no one who is
not a Mohammedan may show himself within a radius of nine miles. In
this city, according to their opinion, is the most holy Temple,
which is called the Haram, and in the middle thereof the Kaaba, or
an ancient building of the Arabs, in the wall of which, on one side,
is built a black stone, inset with silver, more than two cubits high
from the ground, which seems to have been an idol before the time of
Mohammed, and by him was destined for the Kabla, that is, for an
object for the direction of the face in prayer. He foresaw the harm
which would be done to him by the Arabs in the destruction of their
highly esteemed Kaaba, and the destruction of its black stone. Hence
he supposed that the first built by Adam, was indeed destroyed by
the flood, but had been restored again by Abraham and Ishmael, and
that with the intention that the only God of the faithful was
worshipped in it. By this device the superstition of the Arabs was,
by a slight perversion, consecrated to the worship of God. Within
the Haram, at some distance from the Kaaba, is the spring Zemzem,
from which the Mohammedans drink with great reverence, and which,
according to their pretense, is the spring pointed out by the Angel
to Hagar. The Pilgrims have to make several very arbitrary
preparations, both at home and on the way. As they must arrive at
one time for the pilgrimage ceremonies at Mecca; but some
travellers, from the insecurity, could not escape the danger; so the
Pilgrims from particular countries form small Caravans or travelling
companies, to which, on their journeys, several others continually
join, and who, for better order, choose a Caravan-Baschi or Head of
the Caravan. There are three principal Caravans, to which the others
usually join. The first starts from Great Cairo in Egypt, with
extraordinary ceremonies, after the African Caravans have first
arrived; the second from Damascus, to which the Mohammedan Pilgrims
from Europe usually join; the third from Bagdat, to which the
Persian and Indian Pilgrims belong. The Bassas of these places are
obliged, with several thousand soldiers, to accompany, or to have
accompanied, the Caravans that depart from thence; and yet it often
happens, that although they may amount to fifty thousand men, they
are nevertheless attacked, plundered, and scattered by the wandering
Arabs in the deserts. They all three meet at one place, at a certain
distance from Mecca. Up to this point each has its Chief; but from
there the Pasha of Damascus receives the government of all, and is
therefore called Emir Hadschi (leader of the Pilgrims). He then
leads them to Mecca, and from there back to the former place. To
these 3 Caravans would, generally, belong 200,000 men and 300,000
beasts of burden. For the rest, the pilgrimage ceremonies are more
ridiculous, than serious, I say nothing, than sensible and
religious. The Pilgrims, on their arrival in the neighbourhood of
Mecca, are instructed by the Imams concerning their duties. This
accomplished, they go into the city, and seven times around the
Kaaba, where they begin from the black stone, which they touch, and,
if possible, also kiss. The first three times they go quickly, the
remaining four times more slowly, when, as they pass by the black
stone, they touch or kiss it; and finally, after this circuit, they
go into the Kaaba, and perform their prayers. They must, in memory
of Hagar seeking water for her Son, go seven times, from Mount Safa
to Mount Merva, partly walking slowly, partly on foot. They remain
day and night on Mount Arafat in prayer exercises. They have their
heads shaved, and in the valley of Mina they sacrifice cattle, of
which they eat themselves, and the leftovers
to distribute among
the poor. Then they are given testimony that they have accomplished
everything properly. Finally they are accustomed to visit the Kaaba
again, to take leave of it. On the seventeenth day they all
assemble, and receive, after a solemn prayer, in a certain respect,
the blessing with these words: "May God let you return in peace
to the place from whence you came." Furthermore, this Kaaba
also has an astonishing income; for there is hardly a city in the
Turkish territory where houses, lands, land taxes, etc. have not
been made for it. — Those Pilgrims who wish to do a really
good work also visit Medina and Jerusalem on their return journey in
a religious manner. And otherwise pilgrimages are also sometimes
made to the graves of various supposed Saints, especially of the
first Caliphs, such as Ali, Otilman, etc.; but these are of less
importance, and do not compare with the pilgrimage to Mecca.
(*)
Notwithstanding that the Venetian ambassadors are shown only the
Sophie Mosque openly; nevertheless, the other ambassadors would not
be refused the public viewing of it, if they so desired. But they
leave this, in order to save unnecessary expense, visiting it, like
other private persons, for a gift of ?? or more ducats.
(*)
At each Kurban-Beyram, (Sacrifice-feast) when the new cloths donated
by the Sultan for the Kjiïbet (the Temple at Mecca) arrive at
Mecca, the covering of the previous year is taken away, and left to
the Pilgrims as a precious Relic. The gifts of the Great Lord
include 500 zecchins and a gold-plated Koran.
§. XXXI. Of
religious persons.
Among the Mohammedans
there are many religious persons, but who, often, have to do not
only with spiritual, but also with worldly affairs. Thus the
Kadhy-Leschkjer, (supreme judge of the army), the Mulla (Governor)
and the Kadhy (Judge) belong to the Clergy, although they are also
civil persons. They are namely also charged with civil affairs,
because the Koran, just as the books of Moses among the Jews,
contains not only the precepts of religion, but also the sum of
civil knowledge, and therefore, what belongs to these two objects
must be decided from there. A clergyman and a lawyer by profession
are therefore with them almost the same, and the boundaries between
theology and law are therefore difficult to determine. The whole
group of them is called Uleua, or, as we would express ourselves,
the Geejlelykheid. The most important of them all is the Grand
Muftif, who is also called Sheik-Ulifam, that is, the Chief of the
chosen ones, or the Elder of the Faith. He is chosen by the Emperor
himself, and, after he has had him called into the Seraglio, is
raised to this Dignity. On that occasion, it is said, the Emperor,
while he stoops to brush his coat, gives him a kiss on the shoulder.
And otherwise he has also the privilege of being allowed to kiss the
Emperor's shoulder on other occasions, whereas otherwise even the
Grand Vizier may not kiss more than the hem of his coat. He is one
of the most distinguished in the Turkish Empire, having only the
Grand Vizier above him. With him is taken counsel in all important,
both spiritual and state matters. Although the Emperor receives
everyone, yes even the Grand Vizier, sitting; yet when the Mufti
enters he stands up, or receives him standing. Without his approval
nothing can be done, no war announced, and no peace made. If he has
set this down in writing according to his approval; then it is
called a Fetfah. If, for certain reasons, certain cases are withheld
from him, and his Fetfah is nevertheless necessary; then the
question is put to him, without naming the persons, etc., thus: for
example, what does someone deserve, who has done this or that? what
should be done about a Kingdom, which behaves in this or that way
towards the Porte? etc. Whereupon, in very few words, he gives the
decision, and, signing his name, at the bottom on the edge of the
paper, always adds: the lowly servant of God. Since the punishment
of honor, in putting to death the great, consists in strangling;
such a punishment cannot be inflicted on him, as long as he is in
his Dignity; but another means is used: the Emperor deposes him for
minor crimes, but confiscates to him the revenues of some courts, or
banishes him to a certain place. As an assistant he has an Eetf'ah -
Emini, or his Secret Scribe, who supports him, and in matters of
less importance writes the decision, and submits it for signature,
or at least predicts it; so that, when such a one is bribed, two and
indeed contradictory Fetfahs may come forward in one and the same
case. — In great men one finds a Sub-Mufti, who cannot buy his
appointment from the Grand Mufti, but nevertheless does not receive
it without considerable presents. The Muftis are very modest in
their dress and carriage. In this, and by their large Ceremonial
turban, they distinguish themselves from others.
Those ecclesiastical
Persons, who make the announcement of the prayer of the Menarets,
have the name of Muedsin; but those who perform the worship in the
Mosques everywhere, are called Imam. These are therefore actually
the Mohammedan Priests, and they are taken from the first. The Imam
in the Seraglio bears the name of Imam-Efendy, or Chunkjar (that is,
Imperial) Imam, but a Preacher that of Scheych. In their dress they
are not distinguished from the people, except that the head-ornament
or the Turban makes some exception. They draw their income from the
Mosques, which have received the necessary Legacies from their
Founders or charitable persons. A kind of co-helpers of the Imams,
who read in the Mosques, or do the prayers, especially the public
intercessions for the Sultan, are called Chatibs. The Dervish are,
among the Mohammedans, that which the Monks are among the Romans.
There are several kinds of them. Of two of them at Constantinople we
have spoken in the preceding paragraph. Besides these there are also
the Bektaschi and the Seyah. The former have their name from a
Hadschi Bektaschi, whose tomb is named at the village Beflktaschi??,
not far from Tophana, on the Channel of the Black Sea; and according
to their rule they must travel in Mohammedan countries, and call
upon their fellow believers one of God's names, and one of his
attributes, viz., his love. The latter are, probably, the most
numerous. They do not all live together in monasteries, but also
keep themselves here and there, especially on the roads, to offer
travellers a drink of water, etc. Some marry, others do not. The
greater part of them, especially of the Seyah, consists of
melancholy, melancholy and wandering people, such as one finds many
in the climate there. Wherefore it is true, as the Church history
also shows, that monasticism with all its arbitrary cults,
fanaticism and extravagances had its beginning there, and
subsequently, by degrees, spread from the East to the West. Many of
them, especially of the latter kind, are also the most subtle and
hateful deceivers, yes even highway robbers. They generally wear
high, and pointed, but withal blunt caps, of grey felt, by which
they are recognizable. They have free access everywhere, take in the
markets and in the shops, what they like, sit down, without
circumstances, with the principal ones at table, and go away again
in the same way.
Of the Emyrs they
often speak even the newspapers. They are also called Sharifs
(Saints), and are not considered as ecclesiastical Persons, before
they are actually accepted among them. These are the descendants of
Mohammed and his Family. They distinguish themselves by a very green
Turban, which is entwined round over the head, from all other
Mohammedans. They have, generally, fallen into great poverty and
want, earning their bread, often, by the lowest handicrafts. They
are very great in their descent; more foul than others, and the
masters of riots and mutinies. They are generally much esteemed,
and, as their testimony is decisive in court, so, when their mode of
life is regulated, they are much respected. They are under the
Nakyb, or, as it is fully stated, Nakyb-ul-Eschraf, (Holy Overseer)
who always belongs to the Ue'lema, in dignity next to the Mufty, is
in a certain respect the Overseer of Mohammed's standard, and has
under him the Ae'lemdav or Ensign, who bears it on solemn occasions.
They are free from the general burdens of the country, and cannot be
summoned before any worldly Judges. If they are punished; then, out
of respect for their state, they first take off their green Turban.
From the Emyrs are taken the Scheyks or Heads of the Sophie and
Ejubs, and also other Dschamis, and one of the two represents the
Great Scheyk. These ecclesiastical Scheyks, or Heads of the great
Mosques, may, in a certain respect, be compared with the public
Teachers of Theology, such as formerly were the Bishops at the
Cathedral Schools; as they always have to instruct a certain number
of Students (Sochtahs) in the Mohammedan Religion. They not only
preach before the Sultan in their Mosques, but are also employed in
political affairs. The Sheik of the Ejubs-mosque is a Vicar of the
Head of the Order residing at Joco?iien, who has the privilege of
girding the sword on the Emperor, on his ascension to the Throne,
but usually hands it over to the former.
The Preachers among
the Mohammedans are taken from the Imams, Dervishes and Emyrs.
Concerning the contents of their sermons, the necessary has already
been mentioned beforehand. They are always admirable by the
Authorities; for not so much the truths of religion, but rather
state and civil affairs are, as a rule, the subject of their
treatises. They are the public firebrands, and, when they agree with
the Janistas at Constantinople, then it is over with the Great Lord.
Those who have made
the Pilgrimage to Mecca are called Hadschies. This name is also
given to those Greek and Armenian Christians who have been as
Pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Now, since the
Mohammedan Hadschies make this pilgrimage solely and solely out of a
work-holiness, or for others to do it for money; that pilgrimage is
also not capable of improving people; but that journey tempts them
to idleness, theft and other irregularities; so they are considered
the most reckless, and the Mohammedans themselves judge that whoever
does not yet know evil enough, learns it by and on his pilgrimage.
The idea that they have for the rest of a Saint, Dely in their
language, (which word also means a Fool,) is the strangest that
anyone can ever form. All mad and senseless people, in a word, all
Fools are considered by them to be Saints. As strange as this
feeling is, so foolish is the reason that is brought forward for it.
They pretend, namely, that these people, in thinking strongly about
divine things, are so deeply in thought, that they have lost all
communication with the lower world. To the Fools also the most
liberality in alms extends with them. A Mohammedan considers it a
happiness to be allowed to touch and spy them.
In Egypt they are
most, and there also most seen. Therefore, they are considered to be
the best of all rashness. And the result of this is that many a
villain shows and adopts such a foolishness, and then appears in a
torn garment, whereby, in idleness, they live on other people's
simplicity and expense, commit great irregularities, and often cause
great mischief to those who do not wave the desired incense to their
holiness. Otherwise, at least from the intelligent, they are
regarded with an almost incredible pity. But if they cause public
disturbances or insults; then they are locked up in a madhouse.
§. XXXII. Of the
difficulty of converting the Mohammedans, and of the apostasy to
them.
Let no one be
surprised that it so seldom happens that the Mohammedans are brought
to the Christian religion. The reasons for this are tangible. If one
deplores that the prejudice of education is general, and that
children remain with the religion of their parents, for no other
reason than because they lived in it; so also this prejudice of
education is with the Mohammedans as at home. With them, the hatred
of other denominations is instilled in the children, with such
unintelligence, that it cannot be expressed. They learn to pronounce
the word, Jatter, that is, Infidel, sooner than the word Allah, that
is, God. They grow up; then they see nothing but the hatred of
adults against other co-religionists and their insults, noting no
less the great oppressions under which they sigh. What is therefore
more natural with them than an absolute aversion to everything that
has not sworn by the banner of Mohammed? But, even supposing that
they would think about matters of the Christian religion, will not
the danger that accompanies a change of religion deter them from
further investigation? Mohammedans do not settle in a Christian
country, but live only under governments of their faith. The
wandering Tartars under Russian protection make, here, no real
exception. But what punishment is set for the apostasy of a
Mohammedan from his faith? None less than the death penalty. In
addition, they are the strongest enemies of all idolatry and
image-worship. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Christians who
live among them are great advocates of the latter, and the offences
given by them are no less than those in use among us; what
temptation can there be among them to the Christian religion? If we
add to this, that they lack almost all instruction in the Christian
religion in their language; that in general, with the exception of
the New Testament, little is printed in Arabic and Turkish, and that
even this does not easily come into their hands; printed books are
generally despised by them, but manuscripts are of great value; yes,
finally, the greater part cannot even be read, and the death penalty
is imposed on all oral instruction; then we need not at all wonder
at the difficulty of bringing the Mohammedans to the Christian
religion. Should the Gospel therefore take root among them; then the
prohibition must be annulled, that among them its Teachers shall not
be killed, and the rightful liberty of conscience must be permitted.
This depends, in the meantime, on great changes of the Empire, which
God's Providence alone can arrange, and through which the necessary
door to the knowledge of the truth can open.
One would hardly
believe, that people of other Religions, especially if they rest on
truly divine Revelation in gene??, as Christians and Jews, could
convert to Mohammedanism: and yet there is no lack of such
Apostates. That there are such among the Christians, in Turkey, or
otherwise in Mohammedan countries, can surprise no one. What can a
wicked man, who has no religion besides that, lose by gaining at the
same time some temporal advantages, as previously mentioned? Can a
criminal, he who has already seared his conscience, find it
difficult to exchange Jesus Christ for Mohammed, only to escape the
punishments that his deeds deserve? Many, through unfortunate
circumstances, become Apostates, who, after having acknowledged the
fall, would gladly rise again and return, if the death penalty
imposed upon them did not frighten the weak flesh. These are
accustomed, then, to honor Christ inwardly, but Mohammed outwardly;
such double-minded men there are even many among the Turks, who,
through no acquired complete conviction, or through fear of man,
remain doubters. All these have, in the meantime, some semblance of
excuse; but what shall we say of Europeans who adopt the Mohammedan
faith? Some take flight from European States or ships, to escape
responsibility for crimes committed, of which the Count Bonneval has
given a notorious example. On the ships of war one finds the foulest
scum of the people, and they seldom land in a Levantine port, but
some escape, and become Mohammedans. But one would think that it at
least did not happen, that sober men, and to whom one must ascribe a
sound mind, nay, who even boast of great erudition, would commit
such rashness, or rather such impiety. In the meantime there are
Petit-Maitres and Abbes, as well as other persons, who leave their
native country, and come to Turkey, to become Mohammedans. One is
perhaps eager to know the motives and temptations of these
presumptuous men to such an undertaking. These are usually but two
in number. The reading of liberal books, especially of the French,
who almost always, by wittily dressed proposals concerning the
Turks, degrade Christianity, confuses the little understanding which
these people still possess to this degree. In addition, the freedom
of thought, this beloved word and the motto of the supposed strong
Spirits, but at the same time the freedom, or rather the audacity,
of living according to their own taste, and by the Turks to bathe in
the so beloved lusts of the flesh, unpunished and without gnawing of
conscience, is so attractively depicted, that they, as Mohammedans,
here, tried to obtain a Paradise, for which unbelief left them no
hope after this Life. One sees from this, what harm the letters,
memoirs, composed in the style of the Romance do to people, who,
because nature has not provided them with a sufficient capacity to
judge, are blinded by a playful and false wit. But all these poor
and pitiful bloods soon become aware of their error. The Turks count
few such windbreakers. The sweet dreams of the Apostates, at their
conversion to Mohammedanism, concerning offices of honour, riches,
women, etc., disappear further after circumcision, because they can
only become doorkeepers, grooms, or something so lowly. They
experience shame and confusion, after they see themselves deceived
by witty rhapsodies and groundless proposals. And, if their
Conscience cannot awaken, because they have none, the freedom to
think, it no longer deceives them so strongly, but they try to
escape from this labyrinth by flight, which is indeed dangerous,
because if they are caught, they must forfeit their Life, but to
which, however, compassionate persons still always offer their hand.
Thoughtful Turks also do not think much of such Christian apostates,
if they are not people of exalted circumstances and great treasures;
for their fundamental principle is: a lying Christian cannot be a
good Mohammedan. Jews also fall away; but the examples concerning
this are nevertheless not so many; and the Turks do not count them
much either, because they consider them very little. (*)
(*)
That the Jews, in the renunciation of their religion, first had to
be Christians, and also baptized, is untrue: but they must,
according to the Mohammedan religion, consider Jesus a true Prophet.
§. XXXIII. Of
the Turkish Emperor.
Of the origin of the
Imperial House § II. has been treated beforehand. The Turkish
Emperor is named with the Arabic word Sultan, which means a Lord or
Regent in an absolute sense, and expresses Schach in Persian.
Padischah is considered higher by the Porte, and the Turkish Emperor
assumes this honorary title, as Schach is given to the Emperor of
Persia. Schach is more than Chan, having such a one as a subject
under him. Padischah means the Regent very briefly. When one asks
for example: who comes there? then the answer is: Padischah! But,
since the Turks have given this title to some Christian powers, it
has lost much of its great significance with them. The Sultans now
so often no longer make use of this in enumerating their Titles, but
rather of the Title, Schah or Schehinscha, which is never given to
Christian Princes. In addition, they add, after their other Titles,
and indeed after their own name, the distinguishing Title of Chan,
for instance, Ibrahim-Chan, in order to indicate their Royal descent
from another Royal Line of the Tartars, which bears the name of
Ogusian. For this word, Chan, which signifies a King and Emperor, is
given to all reigning Princes of the Family of DschjingJiys-Chan.
The Succession to the
Throne of the Turkish Emperors differs from all other Governments;
for, as by this either a free election, or primogeniture gives one
the right to govern, so in Turkey not always the Sons, but often the
Brothers, according to age, succeed the deceased Emperor; and if
there are no more of these, then the Throne falls to the eldest
Prince of the Main Line, and the Princes of the last Emperors are
passed over. (*) The salutary purpose of such an arrangement is
undoubtedly to avert the inconvenience which the Bible presents with
these words: "Woe to the land whose King is a child!" and
consequently to obtain no other than Emperors of mature years, who
are no longer subject to the laxities of childhood; but also the
depravity of man has destroyed this desired benefit. In the
destroyed good intentions of the Founders of worldly governments we
see the truths ?? holy saying: "men have all turned aside, and
altogether become wicked; there is none that doeth good, no, not
one". For although they in the Monarchical, or Aristocratic, or
Democratic, or mixed forms of government, wanted to secure their
welfare in every possible way, they have nevertheless also, in this
respect, had to find: "the Lord hath cursed the earth, for
man's sake". In Turkey it has happened the same way. Because
the Emperors fear that their successor, before the time, might gain
desire for the Throne, or that the people, if they promised
themselves anything good from him, might elect him in a rebellion;
so he, like a child, is kept and preserved in useless occupations
among women and eunuchs. From which one may conclude, how immature
in understanding, at older years, the Turkish Princes come to the
government. In former times the education of these was indeed very
free, as with other Princes; but now it depends entirely on the
permission of the Sultan, to what extent they will be freer and
nobler or not. The history of the Turkish Empire forms a principal
subject of instruction. A Turkish Emperor has, for the most part,
had a pitiful education. Except for the Mohammedan religion, and
some Arabic and Persian, he knows almost nothing at all. In his
former company he is deprived of all knowledge of the world, and
much more deprived of the disposition necessary for government.
Since, as in his dungeon, even the name of freedom has remained
unknown to him, and he sees himself, at the opening of it, idolized
by the Seraglio and the people, and exalted to the Throne of his
Ancestor; one can easily imagine what an impression such a sudden
and blinding change must make on him. - The death of a Turkish
Emperor is, in order to prevent adieu and unrest, as much as
possible kept hidden outside the Seraglio until the successor to the
Throne has been raised to the vacant Dignity by the Grand Vizier,
the Mufti, the Aga of the Janistas and the principal persons of the
Seraglio. Then the great Divan is summoned, by it the new Emperor
does homage, and his name is proclaimed by the Telals or public
Heralds. He shows himself to the people, while riding to the Mosque.
The actual appointment is not done by an anointing or crowning, but
by the girding of the Sabre, which in the Ejuhs-Mosque in
Constantinople, by the Sheik, is performed with these words: go,
yours is the victory, but only by God!
The Title of the
Turkish Emperor is Eastern, that is, blown up to the point of being
lost. A part of which exists only in imagination, but nevertheless
does not signify much less than a King of other Kings, a shining
sun, a crown of many, a shadow of God, the gate of salvation, and
such vaunts more; another part is spurious, giving up small
Provinces, which are already included in the larger ones, or very
particular cities, which are situated in them; still another part
mentions things, which signify nothing at all, as when he is called
a Lord of the Holy Places. Nevertheless the Title is not the same
with all Sultans, but, as with other Princes, according to the
increase or decrease of their possessions, is subject to many
changes. Muhammid IV gave himself the following Title: "the
Governor (namely of God) on the face of the earth, the Lord of Lords
on the face of the earth, the Ruler of the necks of men, the King of
the faithful and unbelievers, the King of Kings in the world, the
Emperor of the East and West, the Emperor of Emperors, great in
power, the Prince and Lord of the happiest heavenly signs, the
Majesty's Emperor, the seal of victory, the refuge of mankind, the
shadow of God spreading rest on the face of the earth, the King of
Greece and Asia Minor, of Arabia, Persia, Turkistan, Tartary, the
happy and rocky Arabia, of Egypt, Syria, Karmali Kjurdijlan,
Circalli, the Abasites and Georgians, a Lord of the white and black
Sea and of the Ocean, Lord of Hungary, Wallachia and Moldavia, of
Africa, Algiers and Barbary, no less the Heir of many other
thousands of Kingdoms and Provinces, Sultan Muhamm?? Cte. a Son of
Sultan Ibrahim Chan, a Son of Sultan Achmed Chan, etc". And
otherwise the Title of a Sultan, in a letter to a German Emperor,
was abbreviated thus:
"I, the Lord of
all Lords, the Ruler of the East and West, who have the power to do
and to leave undone what I please, the Lord of all Greece, Persia
and Arabia, the ruler of all that a King and Lord can be subjected
to, the great Hero of this time, and the strong Giant of the
spacious globe, the Lord of the white and black sea, and of the
Holy, with God's splendor shining city of Mecca, the city of Medina,
and the Holy and pure city of Jerusalem; the King of the famous
Empire of Egypt; the Lord of Jonia, and the cities of Athens,
Senamim, the Holy Temple of God Zabilon and Bajjio, Rethfan and
Magodvn; the Seat and Throne of the great King Nashin Retram; Lord
of the island of Algiers, and the Prince of the Empires, Tartary,
Mesopotamia, Media, Georgia, and all Greece, of Morea and Natolia,
Asia, Armenia, Wallachia, Moldavia, and very many other Kingdoms and
Principalities, of which I am Ruler; the greatest Emperor, Sultan N.
N. a Son of the great Emperor, Sultans, N. N. who has the power from
God to keep all peoples in check, and to open the gates and locks of
all cities and auctions; into my hand are delivered all the ends of
the earth, without exception; I, the Lord of the East, from the
Kingdom of Chin (China), to the ends of Africa, whom God has
appointed as a brave warrior; among whose brave Kingdoms the
invincible Castle, Caesarea, is considered small, and among my
hereditary kingdoms the territory and dominion of the Great
Alexander is considered small; with me is the strength of the whole
world, and the power of the Firmaments: peace be upon the King N. N.
who is the mighty Lord of all Christendom, and the chosen vessel of
the mighty Christian faith, the real and chosen Emperor of the Roman
people, etc." By the Holy places, of which the Sultans commonly
call themselves Lords, are understood, as appears from the last
Title, Jerusalem, and especially Mecca and Medina. Of the first the
Sultan calls himself a Protector, but of the two last only a
Servant. But this Title nevertheless includes much with the
Mohammedans; because the Sultan, as Supreme Lord of these places, is
therefore held to be the Chief of the Religion, and a true Successor
of Mohammed.
On the seal is not
the crescent, as which, properly and solely, is a symbol of the
nation and of the Empire; but his and his Father's or Ancestor's
name, with the suffix: victorious and invincible Emperor.
As for the
occupations of a Sultan; they must be infinite, if he wanted to
burden himself with them: but it depends, as with other Princes,
mainly on his own inclination, whether he wants to take much or
little part in them. And the Eastern Greatness seems to entail, that
he must, as much as possible, show himself and speak seldom, in
order to remain in an all the more unknown Highness with those who
approach him. Nevertheless it must have the name, that the most
important matters happened as if under his eyes; and, since these
must be taken off in the Divan, and he can observe everything that
goes on in the adjoining room, through the aforementioned golden
latticework, without being seen, therefore the Grands of the Empire
treat everything in order: or else he causes secret councils to be
held, to discuss and settle matters of importance in his presence.
Since in the meantime most State servants in the Provinces and
places where they are, have almost an indefinite power, yea even the
right over Life and Death; so one sees, that so many things do not
come before the highest government, or before the Divan, as with us.
In this Divan the Grand Vizier decides almost everything, and only
matters of the utmost importance come before the Emperor, who
nevertheless adheres to his opinion, unless the Favorites and women
of the Seraglio make him change his mind. The Grand Vizier also
executes most of it in the Emperor's name. Such orders and answers
are called Verman: but if they come directly from the Emperor; then
they bear the name of Chath-Scheryf, that is, holy noble writing,
under which he has written these words with his own hand: my command
shall be done according to its form and content. But usually he only
lets his name be printed above the commands by the
Nischandschy-Pascha (Grand Chancellor). This command is irrevocable,
even supposing it were ever so unreasonable. Between this and the
Papal Bulls there is a perfect agreement. By this the Persian
custom, of which mention is made in Eph. 1. 19. and Dan. VI. 9. 13.
16. is made, may be elucidated. He pardons the highest offices of
honour, but seldom without consulting the Grand Visier. He and the
other Grands of the Empire pardon the lower offices. Every Friday,
unless he be detained by any weighty impediment, he rides openly,
and with great solemnity, to the Mosque. This time the oppressed
often take advantage of, to convey their distress by petitions,
delivered to him during this ride, as if before his Throne. For this
purpose, in order to discover the weight of their petition, and to
attract his attention, or to induce him to take part in their
circumstances, they have well covered their heads with a piece of
reed mat, which they either light above, or hold a burning candle
over it. As soon as this is seen, let them fetch the Emperor, and
receive their petition. (Rom. XII 20.) Woe then to him against whom,
in this manner, a complaint is justly made! He takes most of his
pleasures in journeys by water to his country castles. Here and
there he pays a visit to a Great Man of the Kingdom; but nothing is
more troublesome and costly to the Tranquillity than such a one. —
On all sorts of occasions, as on the Beyram festival and other
times, the Great Men must bring him presents, an ancient custom
which already occurs in Sam: X 27. 2 Chron: XVII 5. He often gives
the Great Men such things; but this demands return presents, which
must amount to ten or twenty times more. — He often goes out
in disguise, especially when the times are troublesome. Disguised
guards follow him, who understand a sort of language, by speaking
signs, and on such occasions what is stated in Prov. XVI 14. is
fulfilled: The King's wrath is a messenger of death. In this manner
the Emperor Mahmud discovered the many plots against him, and 'there
were for a time so many people thrown into the Channel, that every
one had an aversion to eating fish. The number of his wives and
concubines is great. These are indeed Secrets to all those who are
not in the Harim or the habitation of women; but yet so much is
known, that the Emperor is accustomed to divide his time among them,
although it is not easy to decide whether he takes much pleasure in
it. For, as they must love him even against their Will; each of them
seeks to fetter his heart; one is against the other; and thus,
besides the slavish determination of their freedom, jealousy and
commotion are common among them; so, often, unpleasant
investigations, nay, even sharp executions may be necessary. The
Sultan associates with no one in confidence, except his wives and
one or other of his favourites. Few persons have the privilege of
speaking with him, for instance the Grand Visir, the Mufti, the
Kisler-Aga, the Bostanschi-Baschi, the Lyfarts, etc. All others may
not speak with him until after a previous permission. No one may eat
with him. Everyone approaches him with downcast eyes, and hands
placed together in a cross-like manner towards the abdomen. This
brings with it the Eastern Ceremonial; and a Sultan would be
relieved who would abolish it.
For the rest, the
Turkish Emperor need not be a false or untrue politician, nor a
Machiavellian. This is only necessary for small Princes at its
highest, in order to thereby obtain for themselves Dignity,
greatness and prestige, which, in their vanity and ambition, the
small extent of their country would not grant them. The Great Lord,
in his Dignity, proceeds absolutely. He commands as Emperor, and as
a vice-regent of Mohammed. The greatest hope considers him as having
died a blessed death, who is strangled at his command. He is almost
worshipped in his dignity. His Seraglio, which only lasts as long as
he is Emperor, regards him as the sun, on the setting of which a
night of death would follow for it. He who is given his
Chath-Sheriff (writing) rises, and presses it to his forehead when
he receives it. The streets through which he rides are made clean,
and in the summer sprinkled with water. In a word, his whole
government is despotic, and the respect which the people show him,
almost divine. But this despotism or absolute power rests solely on
the foundations of the Koran, and the customs which flow from it. By
it he is often very much limited. In addition, the nature of man, by
all this Majesty, cannot be eradicated. It retains its freedom. As
great as in general the Sultan's power is over the State servants
and the Great, who are considered his slaves, and are also called
so; he must nevertheless proceed cautiously, when it concerns the
rights of the people, or a State in particular, or the well-being of
an entire Province. Then one takes no delay in maintaining one's
rights. The Mohammedan religion does not change men, but leaves them
as corrupted as they are by nature. The people begin to mutiny,
abandoning their otherwise customary respect because of a just, or
at least supposedly just, displeasure. The Emperor's Person is then
no longer sacred. His star??, his wink and his commands have then
lost their enchanting power. 'It is a crime against him.' Happy is
he, when he is thrown into the dungeon, in which he, hitherto, kept
the successor to the Throne locked up, and which is raised to the
same pinnacle of Honour from which he was made to tumble. But there
is also no lack of examples, that he has become a victim of the
people's anger. And this always happens, under the appearance of
justice, or under the real protection and defence of the law. The
Mufti or one of the Sheiks of the Sophie or Ejubs Mosque, or at
least one of the principal Judges and Lawyers must, on the side of
the discontented, give him the reason for his incompetence and
unworthiness to govern, and at the same time announce the sentence.
Let no one imagine that the Turks are worse in this respect than
other peoples. But that, among Christians, such scenes in the
oppression of their subjects, take place so seldom, and many
centuries show us scarcely one King of England in this kind, the
Princes owe this solely to the Christian Religion, which makes a
multitude of their subjects from natural men to patient Christians,
and among the rest, especially by the public intercessions from the
pulpits, leaves such an impression, that they are even in the
burdens subject to the Government, who have power over them, Rom:
XIII 1.5. and that not from necessity, for the punishment, but also
for the sake of Conscience. Would to God, that all Princes would
think of this! and, when even the English Scene is caused by a
wrongly understood Religion; nothing should go more to their hearts,
than a purified one.
(*)
In general, this is the rule concerning the succession, that, upon
the death of a Sultan, the eldest Prince of the blood becomes
Emperor; unless he is declared incapable, or there has been a
rebellion. In such a case, one does not look at the distant or near
relationship with the deceased Sultan.
§. XXXIV. The
Emperor's Procession.
Although all the
districts of Constantinople are provided with sufficient guards,
courts of justice, and other civil arrangements; the Emperor,
nevertheless, often goes about the city in disguise, and he is
accompanied by disguised persons, who at his beck understand his
will, and carry it out. But, at certain times, he holds public
processions. The most magnificent among the usual is on the great
Beyram festival, when all the First Names greet him in the Seraglio,
give him gifts, and from there must sail to the Mosque. Every Friday
he rides with him to a Mosque. The streets through which he rides on
horseback, (for riding in a carriage is not at all customary,) are
cleaned, and in the summer sprinkled with water. From the Seraglio
to the Mosque, on either side, stand Janistas or other guards, but
without guns, who, as a sign of slavish submission, have their hands
laid downwards against their bellies, crosswise over each other. The
principal servants of the Seraglio walk or ride before him. His
horse is surrounded by about a dozen Schurbahdschys, who wear on
their ceremonial caps thin, but extended in length, and at the same
time standing quite high, plumes, and walk close around him. In such
a procession he also rides, often, at other times, through the
streets of the city, also paying visits to the Grand Men of his
Court. The Tractant must indeed do everything in his power to
entertain such a great Guest properly; but he may not draw anything
for it, and must also make him a suitable present. When riding
through the streets, every one who is in the shops and before the
glasses must stand; if he were to sit he would run great danger. The
Emperor is accustomed to salute the guards and people on both sides,
while he turns his head with a little bow, and lays his right hand
on his left breast; whereupon the people answer with an applause:
just as, according to the Turkish custom, the Greater salutes the
Lesser first. When sailing on the water, the Emperor is accompanied
by the Servants of the Court or Seraglio, but the Grand Vizier by
the State Servants; but both never sail together in one barge; and
then the Guns of the Seraglio are fired: but both may never remain
outside the city for a night, unless a Kaym-Maekam (Respondent) were
appointed.
§. XXXV. Of the
Turkish Court.
After the Turkish
Emperor, in a natural order, the Osman Porte, or, which is the same,
of the Turkish Court, must be dealt with. Concerning the name and
origin of the word, Osman, there is no objection, since it is
derived from one of the principal Founders of the Empire, namely
Osman; but concerning the word, Porte, opinions are divided. The
most probable is determined by the Bible, according to which the
Easterners regarded the gates of a city as the principal places for
negotiation and legal proceedings. Because therefore, from the first
foundation of this Empire, the residence of the Princes was united
with the main court; hence the name of the Osman Porte arose. That
this derivation is the real one, is still secured by custom, since
one hears the Palace of an Envoy, a Cashier, etc., given by the
inhabitants of the country, the name of Porte. And if one speaks in
Constantinople simply of the Porte, without using the adjective,
high; then everyone understands by it the Palace of the Grand
Visier, in which most business is conducted. As the Turkish Empire
has expanded; so also the Porte or Court has been transferred to
other cities, for example ??en, Brussa, Adrianople, but finally,
after the capture of Constantinople, to this city. There now in the
Seraglio the Turkish Court has established its seat. Everything that
belongs to this Court, and stays in the Seraglio, consists of many
thousands of people. After the Emperor, Imperial women deserve the
first place here. These consist of the most select beauties. They
are not only bought, and then brought to the Seraglio, but the
Paqhas (Raffas) and the Great also make a merit of bringing them
there, by way of a present. For if they have won the favour of the
Prince; then they generally promote the happiness of their
benefactors. The consorts of the Emperors are, by the Europeans, by
a mistake, called Sultans. The Turks call them the first, second,
third wife, etc. Actually that title belongs only to the Princesses
of the Great Lord, or to a really and effectively appointed Consort
of him. These so-called Sultans of the former Emperors were,
formerly, often put to death, but now they are preserved with due
decorum in certain State prisons, and generally in the Old Seraglio:
but the mother of the reigning Emperor, who is called Sultana-mother
(Walidet-Sultan), has a special prestige. Her Chief Steward bears
the name of Walidet-Kjetchudafzy. — Among the active Sultans,
as is known, he has none as precedence as the first Prince brought
into the world. Of females there is no certainty, but nevertheless a
great number. It is remarkable, that according to a fixed
arrangement, which has the force of a law, no Turkin, at least never
of respectable parents, comes into the Seraglio. All the Sultans are
brought there as slaves. The reason for a thing which seems to us so
strange, rests partly on their religion, on that the holy race of
the Turkish Princes does not require mothers who are connected with
families, but such as must be considered as familyless; partly on
political grounds, in order that no Turkish Family, through a
Sultana, may be related to the Imperial, and thus may lay claim to
the Throne. At least this custom has been maintained since Bajazet
I. For when he, with a lawful Spouse, got into Tamerlan's prison,
and was very badly treated; nevertheless the shame and disgrace
which she had to endure in his presence seemed to him the only thing
that mattered most. And therefore his successors do not marry lawful
wives, so that in such misfortune no similar shame may befall them:
unless one would place the cause of this not marrying, actually, in
the economy, namely not to establish and maintain a special court
for such a Sultana, which would cost half a million Piastres
annually. There would be no end of commotion among these Sultans and
concubines. If one of them is pregnant; then she is almost carried
on the hands. Around and in the Seraglio there then reigns an
unusual silence. The European ships, which otherwise make their
arrival known by a few cannon shots, this shooting is already
prohibited at the Dardanelles in advance. Yes, because otherwise,
during the Emperor's recreational voyage on the Channel, the cannons
are fired around the Seraglio, this shooting is then stopped. For
the rest they are all deprived of their liberty, and shut up in the
Harim or the Seraglio or the country castles. If they go out to
play, or sometimes walk in a garden; then this is done where one can
be seen from mountains or some other place, so covered, that one can
hardly breathe, and always under the supervision of the eunuchs, who
see and observe everything with an Argus eye. Nothing is more
confused, than when by the Emperor's wife when a Physician is
needed. It would end badly with such a one, if he should desire to
see the tongue, the eyes, and the sight, to judge of the disease;
and the danger is most great, and he would be seen especially at
Court, when he has the liberty to feel the pulse, without the hand
being covered with a veil. For the rest they pass the time in an
idle idleness, such as visits, which they pay each other in their
shut-up dwellings, dancing, music, embroidery, &c. But I break
off here, so as not to be rambling on in useless trifles, and even
to incur suspicion of a reprehensible judgment of the way of life at
many European Courts. Now comes a Sultana in childbirth; then a
great Donalmaoi Feast is celebrated for the birth, and indeed for a
Prince in the whole Empire, but for a Princess only in
Constantinople. The streets and lanes are then illuminated at night,
and the revelries last for three or more days. The Princes of the
reigning Emperors are, at first, educated by women, but afterwards
all have their tutors, (Chodschjah) and are well treated; but the
fate of the other Princes is sad. But these are now no longer, as
otherwise happened before, deprived of Life by their brother's
coming to the Throne. They are locked up within a small
circumference of the Seraglio, are very carefully guarded, and are
cut off from intercourse with all others. They may only make their
appearance at the Emperor at a few times, such as on the Beyram
Feast. Otherwise they usually do not see him; and if they show
anywhere that they wish to stand for higher things, or if the people
seem to place any confidence in one or the other, only in name, then
his Life is in danger, and strangling or mistake is the last mercy.
The Circumcised are their strict rulers, and when they come to
manhood; then they are given only wives who are barren; and if it
should happen that children, especially of the male sex, are born,
then they are put to death by poison. - With the Princesses the
Great Lord uses to conduct a common trade. He marries them off, when
they are only 2 years old, to old Visiers or Bassas. But the
Bridegroom does not see his Bride. In the meantime he must give her
considerable presents, which the Great Lord takes to himself. If
that man dies; then everything falls to the supposed Spouse, or
actually to the Great Lord. Such a game lasts so long, until it is
actually given to a man already previously, or newly engaged to her,
which happens under ridiculous ceremonies, that, for example, she
draws a dagger against him at his show, but also at public
ceremonies in Constantinople. Nothing is more foolish, than such a
marriage. When the man, as usually happens, has his office abroad;
then the Spouse, who by reason of her descent is still always called
Sultana, remains, according to a fixed law, in the Residence. The
man has, without her special permission, no freedom to keep
co-wives; for more wives are not allowed to one who has a Sultana.
This blood relationship with the Emperor also seldom helps him in
time; for he can be deposed, sent into exile, and strangled by all
this. If the fate of the children, borne by Imperial Princesses by
their husbands, is sad, because they are sometimes deprived of Life
after birth; yet the children of the female sex are better off: for
they are allowed to live, and are called Kanum Sultanen (women of
the blood). If such marry, then all their children remain alive.
Sometimes the sons of the first are also allowed to live; but they
have no rank or part in the Imperial Family. Besides, all this
depends on the Sultan's caprice, according to whether he wishes to
deal kindly or cruelly with his sisters or daughters. The object of
these arranged marriages is therefore only this, to attract to
himself the Estate of great and wealthy persons, to whom the Great
Lord can under no pretense of right come; or to allay the fear which
he must have from their prestige, acquired in the Provinces, since
they must often come to Constantinople on account of their Wives,
and one can always seize upon their persons on such an occasion. —
No one may refuse the offered marriage; and, when he himself is
married, he must, by the proposed union with the Imperial blood,
repudiate his former Wife. As for the number of the Persons of the
Imperial Family, as well as other things that happen in the
Seraglio; these are for those who are not admitted to anything in
person, Secrets that are covered with thick darkness. Of adult
Princes and Princesses one knows from many circumstances whether
they are still alive or not; but by new births, as well as deaths of
young Princes, the people are greatly deceived. The former are often
concealed, none of the women having been with child. The latter are
kept hidden from the world, as long as it pleases; they are still
counted among the living, when they have long since died and
decayed. For these and all other Secrets the Engraved Ones are
employed. These creatures, which no one of either sex otherwise
assumes, or acknowledges as his own, are the secret motives of the
Seraglio. They are of two kinds, namely, black and white. Among the
white Engraved Ones is the Chief Chamberlain, or the Overseer of the
Chafz-Ocla, that is, the Chafz-Oda-Baschy, the Chief Treasurer,
Chafynehdür-Bajchy; the Chief Kitchen and Cellar Master,
Kjilardschjy-Baschy; and the Casteschi of the Seraglio,
Sheraydar-Agafzy. Their Chief is called Kapi-Aga, who is in a
certain respect the Chief Court as well as the Reqaejl??-master in
the Seraglio. The blacks are most powerful; for they best fit the
evils of the Seraglio; they also have less attractiveness than the
white; and one wishes to have perfect monsters in them. From these
is taken the Kislar-Aga or Chief of the Disciples, (*) who, after
the Great Lord, is the most important in the interior of the
Seraglio. This office, so contemptible to human nature, is reckoned
among the first of the Court; for it permits immediate access to the
Emperor, to the Sultans, and to the innermost of all affairs of the
Empire and State. Everything lies and bows before him in the
Seraglio, and even the Grand Vizier and all the Grands of the Court
must respect him, and seek to make himself a friend. Under him he
has a very large body of Chief Surgeons, among whom then their
numerous bands are gradually distributed. His Secretary, under the
name of Jafydschy-Efendy, is also an important person, especially
because of the immediate influence on the Grand Lord. For the rest,
according to true descriptions, nothing is more untamed than the
disposition of these Emasculates. Because they are not only, at some
time, cut off, but also that which is wholly taken away from them,
by which nature has wished to distinguish the two sexes from each
other; so they betray on all occasions, that they have expelled
themselves from humanity, and renounced human nature, since they are
neither married, (*) nor can ever expect a Family; so all those who
show inclinations of tenderness under their care, are the hated
objects of their jealousy and envy. They have been treated
unmercifully; therefore they endeavor, by mercilessness, to make
themselves harmless. Noted that they have abandoned all blood
relationship, because they were taken from their parents at an early
age, and they can hope for no new kindred; thus they are alienated
from all natural connection with men, and a filthy avarice,
ambition, and pride rule their souls. In order to burn incense to
these idols, the very lowest means are chosen. A cowardly flattery
towards those who are above them, a blind obedience to execute their
most unreasonable commands, the deepest silence, filthy calumnies of
women and other persons under them, the fostering of disputes among
them, and an inviolable loyalty in all this are their own. To these
Servants, who seem so necessary to the Turkish Court, belongs,
besides some old women, appointed to oversee the Seraglio, another
class of people, and these are the Mutes. The aforementioned Eunuchs
would already seem to us very useless; but the Turks consider them
as bars for the preservation of chastity and marital fidelity, and
the most capable among them occupy the place of teachers: but what
should we think of the mutes? Nevertheless they have their use. It
is not fitting that one should speak in the presence of the Emperor,
and in his vicinity. There must therefore be mutes, who are such by
nature, or at least have renounced the use of speech, but are
otherwise able to communicate the commands of the Great Lord and
their thoughts among themselves, by certain signs. And in this they
would have come so far, without words, that, besides the imagery
during the day, they could even express their opinion at night, by
touching their limbs. To this we must add the dwarves, who are just
as useless, do not observe serious matters, but merely occupy the
place of court jesters. As to these Dumbs and Dwarves; it all
depends on the Emperor's inclination and caprice, whether they be
many or few, and whether they are esteemed or not. The Cooks, among
whom the first is called Aschaschjy-Baschy, but the Chief of all
Muthpaech-Emyny, also form a Band of some hundreds: of them often
become great State servants; and it has happened, that one of them,
who dissected the meat into larger parts, came out the country's
Courts as Envoy. It would be very wordy, without any use, if one
wanted to speak of the other Servants, for instance the cup-bearer
(Kaedaehkjar), the ?? of (Tschaschnyghyr-Baschy), the Tschoadars,
that is, Chamber servants, Groomsmen and servants, the Ibrikdars,
who offer the Great Lord the lamps and basins before prayer, the
Berber-Baschy or body-healer, etc. The Silahdar-Aga (Sword-bearer in
Chief), the Tschoadar-Aga (Grand Chamberlain), the Rikjahdar-Aga
(Sultan's Styrofoam-bearer), the Dulbend-Aga (who puts on his
Turban), the Ibrykdar-Aga (Lampet-bearer), and the Berber-Baschy
(first surgeon) are the first Officials in the Seraglio. They are
called, together with the other persons belonging to them,
Chafz-Odaly, that is, Chamberlains of the Great Lord. Their number
extends to forty, and the Sultan, whose person they serve
immediately, is their Chief. Some, such as the Bostandschy - Baschy
(Head of the Guard) and the Equerries, with some others, are called
Kpltuk-Wefyr, that is, Vizier,s of the shoulders, and are often made
Pachas (Bassas) of 3 horsetails. Besides these worldly Courtiers,
there are also ecclesiastical or Ulema, who at least become great
Mullas or Kudileskiers, (chiefs of the army), when they leave the
Seraglio; namely the Hod??, Instructor of the Sultan; the Hekim
Effendi, first Body Physician; the Munejin-Baschi, first Soothsayer;
and the Dscherrah-Baschi, first Physician.
To the Seraglio,
although not so immediately, many important Servants still belong.
Of the Nischandschjy-Pacha, when he is of the Masse of the Pachas,
because otherwise he is only called Nischandschjy-Effendi, has been
spoken of before, who must always be near the Emperor. If the Grand
Vizier has duties which separate him from the Emperor, then he
appoints him a Nischandschjy-Effendi, (*) to express the Tura or
name of the Sultan. The Bostanschi-Baschi, having his name from
Bostan, which in Turkish means a Garden, is the Overseer of the
outer part of the Seraglio and its gardens, as well as the Chief
Overseer of the entire Canal, and all the Imperial pleasure-houses
situated thereon. He constantly accompanies the Sultan on his
pleasure-boat trips on the water, and keeps the rudder of the
Imperial vessel in view. He alone has, like the Emperor, as a sign
of freedom, the privilege of wearing a beard in the Seraglio, since
all the others, like slaves, must shave it off, and may only wear a
moustache. Such a Bostanschi-Baschi is not only at Constantinople,
but also at Adrianople. He has many thousands of Bostanschi under
him, who in a certain respect keep watch at the Seraglio and that
pleasure-house where the Emperor stays; they are also his rowers,
and secret executioners. The Court Marshals and Ceremonial
Attendants bear the name of Tschausch, and the principal one that of
Tschausch Baschy, which, according to our title, one might well
bring out by a Chief Court Marshal, a Chief Master of Ceremonies, as
well as a State Petitioner. To him are referred for decision the
less important cases by the Grand Visier and the Kadhy-Leschkjers
(chief judges). The Chief Master of Ceremonies at the ceremonies in
the Seraglio itself is called Kapudschjylar-Kietchndafzy. On such
occasions he often performs services at the same time as the
Tschausch-Baschy, who is actually the Porte-Master of Ceremonies
outside the Seraglio. Under him are the Kap??dschy, of Kapu, door,
and could be brought out by Doorkeepers; as they then actually keep
watch not only at the gates of the Seraglio, but also in times of
war around the tent of the Sultan, and are at the same time often
the foreign executioners of the Porte. Of these the Kapudschy-Baschy
(Chamberlains) differ entirely. These are men of a good Family, who
do not belong to the inner but outer Court of the Seraglio. For
instance, at the Audiences they conduct the foreigners into the
Sultan's auditorium. Outside Constantinople they execute the more
important commands of the Emyr-A'lem, that is, the Governor of a
small Province. — The Chief Groom is called Bujugh Emyr
Achori, the Under-Groom Kjutschugk Emyr Achor; both in general, in a
corrupt pronunciation, Imbrahor. The training school of all high and
low Court and State offices are the Ytsch-oglaus, Chamber servants,
Pagiën or Youths, to serve with the Prince, and to pass over to
State offices; and the Adschjam-oglaus, Youths for lower duties. The
former are under their Chief Oda-Baschy, and the latter under the
Bostandsckjy-Baschy. From these are taken the Bastandschjys, as well
as the Baltahdschjys or Hellebardiers, a kind of Guards, provided
with axes, whose Chief is called Baltahdschjylar, Kjetchada. Both
enjoy, among the Gesnedenen, an unusually sharp and strict education
in the Seraglio, especially to teach obedience, silence, and
moderation.
They are kept under a
severe restraint, for the slightest misdeeds, they are punished with
flogging, and after the years of apprenticeship the former, as has
been said, are even raised to the highest offices, but the latter
are destined for the low, and are raised to Bostandschjys,
Kapudschjys, etc. The actual State servants live outside the
Seraglio, appearing there only at the time of the Divan. For the
rest, no one is allowed in the Seraglio, except those summoned,
although admission is also granted to the Doctors and such Christian
and Jewish women who have galantries to sell. Where there are no
fixed characteristics that reveal one's sex with certainty, or
because of a familiar intercourse; there one is kept outside, or
sharply investigated beforehand. But, if they are allowed in; then
they are accompanied everywhere by the Genedenen, and kept in view,
so that no Secrets may be discovered or heard, or anything else may
happen that one does not want to tolerate. And hereby one can
understand, why it always remains Secrets to the world, what
actually goes on in the Seraglio.
(*)
The Kislar-Aga and other prominent Ge??n have, likewise, their
Haerem, (women's residence), but not for their need, but because
their Dignity and the Character of an orthodox Mohammedan entail, to
have wives. These poor women are very bad at it. All satisfaction
for their suffering, which they have to endure from their
emasculated husbands, consists only in riches. (*) The Kislar-Aga
and other great Gene??n have, likewise, their Haerem, (women's
residence), but not for their want, but because their Dignity and
the Character of an orthodox Mohammedan entail, to have wives. These
poor women are very bad at it. All satisfaction for their suffering,
which they have to endure from their emasculated husbands, consists
only in riches.
(*)
The Nischandschjy is in this respect nothing, what a
Grand-Chancellor is with us. As a State servant he properly belongs
to the Divan. His post gives more Honour, than advantage and
influence over others, unless he is a Favourite of the Emperor.
Nijl??ian gives a sign, and here the drawing of the name.
§. XXXVI. Of the
Turkish State Servants.
In Turkey, with the
exception of the Imperial Family, there is no distinction between
the Families. Consequently, no one serves, in fact, his descent, to
recommend him. One finds only exceptions in this respect among the
descendants of Ibrahim-Chan-Oglu and Kjuprogli-Oglu, none of whom
ever accept public offices of honour, but do not refuse them so
sternly. The former descend from the Grand Visir, Ibrahim, at the
time of Mahomed I, who, after his death, was succeeded by his
successor Amurat II very deserved, received the Title of Chan, with
the privilege, that his Family should be free from all the Offices
of Honour, which are so dangerous in Turkey, and usually involve the
loss of Life and property, and not, like the Turkish Emperors, mix
with foreign blood, but might propagate themselves through slaves.
The latter descend from the famous Grand Vizier Kuprogli, and
content themselves, without accepting Offices of Honour, to be
Mutewellys of their property, which are all Vakuf. But both Families
are, nevertheless, at Court and among the people in the greatest
respect. — Each serves therefore from below, and, according to
Providence, which of unknowing men by the word, happiness, so often
forgotten, governs the fallen in the world, so he rises or falls. Of
which nothing is more common than to see the children of the meanest
people raised to the dignity of Visiers, but those of the great
placed in needy circumstances. One would therefore think that, as
hardly any one is educated in youth, except in a remote way, to what
he will become in time, the places were very poorly filled; and yet
one is mistaken. A little experience, which they gain in filling
various offices, enables them, with a naturally good understanding,
if they are not corrupted by malice, self-interest, and other views
and vices, to fill with decency the higher offices of honour, of
which one sees constant examples there. Nor does the manner of
government suffer at all by such changes, noting that the
subordinate officials, who are trained in business, remain, or even
rise, and thus become the leaders or assistants of him who first
received an office. Then, from this one might form a wrong idea, and
imagine that all offices were given according to merit. This had to
happen; but money decides for each. No one can get to a place,
unless he makes presents to those on whom the recommendation at
Court or the appointment itself depends, according to the offices of
honour. Now this is, among many other circumstances, one of the
principal reasons for the falsification of Turkey. Everyone must
think of four kinds of expenditure, partly to get an office; partly
to maintain his rank; partly to be able to exist afterwards, until
he gets another, because the offices, usually, are only forgiven for
one to three years; partly finally to be able to bring in the gifts
again in order to obtain a new office. What source is left for him,
therefore, to make up for his loss? None other, than the most
hideous extortions, injustices, or cunning deceits.
The Divan is the
highest State Council of the Turkish Court. It is generally held,
twice a week, namely on Sunday and Tuesday, (*) and before noon, in
the hall of the second Court of the Seraglio, which is therefore
also called the Divan, as well as Kubbh (Dome in a special sense).
The number of its members is not always the same, but depends on the
time and the circumstances. The Grand Vizier presides therein, the
Mufti only appears there when he is expressly invited to do so. The
Aga of the Janistas, the Spahilar-Aga, Silhadar-Aga and others keep
to the door outside the Divan. Each in particular then appears in
his official robes. — In times of war extraordinary council
meetings, which are there called Muschawaret, are also held by the
Mufti, in the presence of the Emperor. Therein are present the
Mufti, Kaym-Maekam, (Vicar of the Sultan or Grand Vizier)
Reys-Efendy, (Chief Secretary of State) and some of the Chiefs of
the Uelema, (Scholars of the Law) as well as the two
Kadhy-Leschkj'er, (Chief Judges of the Army) and the Istanbul-Efendy
(Secretary of Constantinople). The great council meetings, in which
at the same time the civil councils (Khodschjah-Aefan) and the
Chiefs of the various warring nations are consulted, are held in the
Seraglio, or with the Grand Vizier. But the first and usual Divan,
which bears the name of Galïbï-Divan, is distinguished
from that in the Palace of the Grand Vizier, in a room open on the
fourth side, called Divan-Chane. In Zen he usually presides himself,
and on Mondays he has the Mullas of Ejub and Scutari, on Wednesdays
the Stanibol-Efeniy, on Fridays the Kadile Kiers of Rumelie and
Notolie, and on Saturdays the Mulla of Galata to Bystanders. Here
are lawsuits settled, and the Spahis paid; whereas on the contrary,
in the Galir be-Divan the payment of the Janistas is made. For the
rest, the courts of the Mullas or Kadis are called Mechkeme.
The Grand Vizier
(Visir Asem) is the most important of all the State servants, and
his Dignity is equal to that which Pharaoh gave to Joseph. (Genesis:
XLI 40 etc.) His Title, as well as that of the Emperor, is in the
m?? far exalted, above what we call Highness and Majesty. One finds,
for example, the following Titles in the Imperial written answers to
him: "Most honorable state, most excellent Counselor, Governor
of the world, Ruler of the State in a lofty way of thinking,
Executor of human affairs with an attack that reaches the target,
Guardian of the building of Ottoman well-being, Builder of the
foundations of Ottoman Majesty, Dispenser of the Dignities of the
highest Calyphat, Executor of the law of the greatest Empire, the
Forest Lion in war, the Mountain Lion in battle, who is loaded with
many favors and benefits from the highest King, etc." Many an
Emperor has not been distinguished from the Visier in much more than
name, unless he were known as Mustapha III in the last years, the
power itself reserved. He is as the born Generalissimo of the Army.
At the Courts of Europe nothing comes near his Dignity, and the
so-called Premiers Ministers (first Ministers) are scarcely a
shadow, compared to him. He executes the most important things,
using, at the most, only the Emperor's name. As the Imperial Seal
Keeper, he wears the seal constantly around his neck. Hanging it
with it constitutes his appointment, and taking it away also his
deposition. Without further inquiry and account, having printed this
seal, he executes all orders for the Empire. He may indeed be
appointed by the Sultan alone, but often the Sultans, the Grands of
the Seraglio, and often even the Janistas, or the people of
Constantinople, may bring much or little to his appointment.
Everywhere he is the real Governor of the Emperor. On the
water-tours he accompanies the Sultan, but is nevertheless never
with him in one and the same barge. At the regular meetings of the
Divans he must appear at the Seraglio, and is, besides that, invited
there to the secret conversations with the Emperor. In this last
case he is accustomed, when the circumstances are dire, to prepare
himself for death before he goes there; for it is often the place of
justice of the Grand Viziers. The gates of the Seraglio are closed
after he has been admitted; then it is a sign that his life is over.
Those who are next to the Emperor, such as the Sultana-mother, the
Kisler-A'ga, the Bostanschi-Bafc??, and other favourites, he tries
to oblige by services, and especially by gifts. He must also do the
same to the Grand Lord, several times, for the trifles, which he
receives from him. For this now his fixed annual salary would not
suffice; for that can be estimated at 80 purses, or 40 thousand
piastres; but his other income amounts, annually, to several
millions. All requests of subjects, especially the gift of offices,
bring in so much, that, if he holds his post for only a short time,
he leaves behind a treasure of several millions. His Court is in
fact Kingly. But all this Highness is very uncertain: because in his
Person all the Offices of Honour are united, and he is the highest
Judge, the supreme governor of domestic and foreign affairs, and the
real General; so he has an astonishing responsibility, and
innumerable enemies against him. — During a campaign the
Emperor, in sight of the army, takes one of the three black and
beautiful Candid heron plumes fastened to his headdress, and puts it
on the Turban of the Grand Vizier. This is a badge, that he commands
on the Emperor's side, and the army therefore shows him the same
obedience. Happy is he, when he is only deposed, and banished to an
island of the Archipelago, or to another province or city of the
Empire, with or without confiscation of his goods. But he is seldom
so happy. The strangulation usually puts an end to his Life. —
As dangerous as such a Dignity seems to be for a chief Empire; so
advantageous is it for the Turkish. The Grand Vizier, in case of
rising riots, is like the Sultan's stab, against which he can stop
all attacks, when he throws the blame for the supposed or real
irregularities on him, and then makes him the victim of the Rebels.
Because it would be impossible in the meantime, in such an extensive
Empire, to observe so many things; so he has, like most State
Servants, two Kihajas or Governors. The chief adds him Emperor, and
by him is called Kjetchuda Begh, but the other he accepts as an
accomplice or Kjetchuda himself. After the Grand Vizier there were
formerly six others, who were only called Vizier,s, or
Kubbeh-Welyre, and were the real State Councilors. They had their
seat in the Divan, saying their opinion at the questioning of the
Grand Vizier, and had only to carry out the things which he charged
them with. But Ibrahim Pascha considered them disadvantageous to the
Grand Vizier, persuading, under the pretext of saving expenses,
Muhammid III, to make them depart for the most advantageous
Stadtholderships. Otherwise the Porte still gives the Title Vizier,s
to all Bassas of 3 Horsetails, and these only, because they are so
by virtue of their Stadtholderships; for the word Wesyr (Visier)
signifies one who carries out the Prince's command.
Of the Mufti, who is
the first Counsellor in matters of Religion and State, § XXXI.
has already been treated of.
A Bassa or Pascha is,
hereinafter, one of the principal State Persons. This word, Pascha,
is composed of the words Pa, (foot,) and Scha, (great Regent,) and
therefore signifies a Governor of the Prince. Such a one is indeed
appointed by the Sultan. but in his appointment the Divan, and
especially the Grand Visier, nevertheless has a great deal to say. A
lesser one has two, but a more important one three Horsetails. The
latter are also called Beglerbegs, Princes of Princes, from Beg,
Prince; although three of them in particular receive this name,
namely those who have their seat at Sophia, Kutaja and Damascus. The
Beglerbeg of Sophia is called Rumeli??, that of Kutaja Anadoli?? and
that of Damascus Schaem-Begler-Beg. The origin of Horsetails is said
to have originated from the invention of a War Hero, who in a
battle, when the standards were lost, cut off a horse's tail, stuck
it on a pole, and kept the soldiers in order with it. The Turks call
them Tugs. Such a Tug consists of a long pike, at the top with a
golden apple, from which a white horsetail hangs down. When the
Sultan takes the field in person, he must carry seven such Tugs or
Horsetails before him; the Visier has, as a rule, but three, as do
all the Bassas of his rank, whether they be Sfer-Askjir
(Army-Chiefs) or not; except in the case when he is in the army,
when, like the Tartar-Chan, he has five. On journeys and when
entering cities they have them carried before them; and in the army
the tents of the Bassas are distinguished by the number of these
tokens of honour erected before them. — These Bassas are civil
soldiers, and commanders over larger or smaller Provinces, and are
therefore called Baschalics. They are indeed accustomed to be
changed several times every three years, here and there. The
Baschalic of Babylon (Bagdat) is the most considerable, and its
Bassa has even opposed the Emperor. The principal Bassas have indeed
the dignity of a Vizier, but have nothing to do, than the
Stadtholderships of their Provinces, which were formerly Kingdoms,
as of Babylon, Cairo, Diarbekir, etc. The journeys of the Bassas
through the Turkish Empire are uncommonly desolate, being, namely,
often, done with small armies. These they keep at their own expense,
partly for their bodyguard, partly to have their orders most
strictly executed. Their cavalry is called Seradsche, and their
infantry Seimen. During these journeys the Tschaus-Baschi goes
before with a horse's tail, sticking it up at the Konak, that is, at
the place, where one wants to rest and stay the night. On the
arrival of the Bassa, the second and third horse's tail are also
stuck up. During these journeys they must be kept free from the
places through which they pass. Is it not known that the Bassa
maintains a very strict military order; then everyone runs away,
except the inhabitants of the cities, leaving house and yard, and
whatever he cannot take with him to the mountains or elsewhere,
behind him. If he therefore keeps a day of rest somewhere; then he
sets out to places, where there are no equal or greater Commanders
than he, his Divan or court, to hear legal cases, ??rest, etc. and
the usual courts must be silent at that time, and approve of his
actions and omissions, which causes an astonishing confusion, not to
mention the crying injustices that are then committed. If, after
complaints have been brought in, he is deposed by the Porte, and
also strangled; then the Sultan approaches all his soldiers, who
have been discharged from service by the death or deposition of a
Bassa, and Kapuszies, that is, people called outside the Porte or
Palace of a Bassa, then go in droves, and plunder the Provinces.
After the Bassa comes a Beg or Bey., and then a Sandschiak. A Bey
has two horsetails; the Sandschiak but one horsetail, or one banner,
as this word also means. And a Sandschiak-Beg is someone who has a
Fief or a small Stadtholdership. In Jerusalem there is no Bassa, but
a Sandschiak appointed, who indeed does not have his qualities, but
otherwise observes the same duties, and possesses all the
privileges, whereas the Sultan himself, under his own Titles, uses
the name of a Stadtholder of the Holy Places. Although it is now,
that the Begs (Beys) and Sandschiaks are lower, than the Bassas;
they nevertheless have their Dignity, immediately, from the Porte.
The deposition of a Visier or Bassa takes place in the following
words. "You, for instance?? Ibrahim! so notorious are your
crimes, that you are absolutely guilty of death, and are condemned
to it. Nevertheless, we want to acquit you of this, by an operation
of our grace. But the high command, proceeding from us, is, that you
raise the Dignity of Vizier (Bassa), and go to the place of your
exile Candie etc." All offices of honor, except the Grand
Vizier and the actual Courtiers, are, usually, forgiven by the
Divan, under the Emperor's ratification. It is the same way with
Captain Bassa, who is actually the Grand Admiral of the Empire. As
such he is also a member of the Divan itself. This place he seldom
holds longer than a year, and is the Chief Overseer of the Sea
State, of which he usually understands nothing. His rank depends on
whether he is Bassa of 2 or 3 horsetails. If he has 3 horsetails;
then he is called Denies- or Derja-Begler-Begh, that is, supreme
Prince of the sea. His main work is the summer voyage to the
Archipelago with a part of the Turkish fleet. For this purpose he
receives an Imperial plenipotentiary power, which has its force as
soon as he is outside the Dardanelles, being drawn up in such
high-flown terms, as if the Pagan Poets spoke of Neptune. The
purpose of this voyage would be to exercise the fleet, and to
receive the Imperial revenues of the whole Archipelago; but
otherwise he holds judgments there, as well as in the ports and
sea-cities, like the Visiers and Bassas at their places, and
exercises justice.
The Defterdar is the
Chief Overseer of Finance and of the 12 Chancellors under him, and
the Grand Treasurer; but the Kasnadar-Baschi is the proper treasurer
of the Sultan for his special Fund; and both are, according to the
nature of things, only civil persons: just as the Aga of the
Janistas, before he is made Bassa, is a proper soldier. He is, in
times of peace, always at Constantinople, figuring, as General of
the Janistas, especially in times of commotion, a distinguished
person, according as he joins one party or another. He alone is the
Judge of his soldiers, and lets them be arrested according to their
merit, likewise appointing the Serdars or Under-Janistar-Agas to
other places. The Spahilar-Aga is the General of the Horsemen. The
two Chief Judges or Cancelliers of European and Asian Turkey bear
the name of Kadhy-Leschkjers. (*) These have their rank after the
Mufti, and often take his place: they are called Judges of the Army,
because it is judged by them alone. In the part of the Empire under
them they appoint the Kadhys. or Judges. The Reys-Efendy, who is
also called Reyful-Kittal, that is, Director of writings and
Cancellary, is the Head of the Chodschjah-A?jan, civil-councilors
and Secretaries, and the Court-chancellor and Chief-secretary of
state. He thus directs and executes both the domestic and foreign
Cancellary affairs. The Teskjerehdschjy (writer) is like the
Sub-Reys-Efendy, in whose custody are the registers of the
Cancellarye. The Istanbul - Efendy has the supervision of the means
of subsistence in Constantinople, in order to prevent dearness and
fraud concerning it. He is thus like the enforcer of the City laws,
only one degree lower than the above-mentioned Kadhy-Leschkjers;
and, what these are over European and Asian affairs, he is over
Constantinople. The Reis-Kitab is the State or Secret Writer of the
Sultan. The words, Mulla and Kadhy, indicate almost the same person,
this difference being only that the first has a higher rank, namely
that of Chief Judge in civil and criminal cases, and which is also,
often, the Governor of large cities, but then is changed annually;
note the Arabic word, Mulla, a Governor, just as Kadhy means a
Judge. They must be Learned, and in the laws and customs of the
Empire, which are everywhere the same, well practiced. They have a
great power; for their sentences are, furthermore, carried out both
until further notice in civil, and absolutely in criminal cases,
whether death or other life sentences. Their accommodation is at the
Mechkjeme (Town Hall). Upon their arrival they must be entertained
for three days, at the expense of the city. Each of them keeps a
Kiaja or Advocate, and states, when he remains absent for a longer
time, a Naib or deputy, who, in that absence, is a sub-judge, and
also the real scribe. Under the Mulla or Kadhy is the Moslem, who
executes the sentences of the court, and could not badly be called a
Commander under a Governor. His appointment seldom lasts more than
one year. Wherefore also every Bassa has a Moslem, who differs from
his Kiaja in that he accompanies him everywhere, and passes judgment
under him, which a Moslem only does in his absence. An Aga generally
means a Chief, as Janista Aga, Meimar-Aga (Chief Architect), etc.,
but in the Provinces it is the commander of a larger or smaller
circle, or only of a village. Baschi also means a Chief, as
Tschaus-Baschi, but of less importance than Pascha. Efendy is an
honorary title of all kinds of State persons. All these honorary
offices are, in Turkey, of great importance; each requires a sort of
court retinue, and the power, to judge about life and death, without
inquiry of the Court, goes with it. It would be useless to speak of
other further offices, which, by reason of necessity, take place
among the Turks as well as among us, and to give an extensive
register of Turkish titles. But of 2 honorary offices, mention must
be made, in the right understanding of the reports in the newspapers
and elsewhere, namely the Sfer-Askyr and Kaym-Maekam. A Sfer-Askyr
is a General-Field-Marshal; a Dignity of very indefinite power,
which on special occasions, especially in times of war, is conferred
by the Sultan upon the deposed Grand Vizier or Bassas. For the
actual Grand Vizier, as long as he is really such, cannot be made a
Sfer-Askyr, since, according to his Post, he is already the natural
Generalissimo. Rather, he has to command a Sfer-Askyr, and can even
depose him; but must then be assured of the Sultan's approval. A
Kaym-Maekam is the substitute of a Grand Vizier, who, in his absence
from Constantinople, or upon his deposition and death, is appointed,
in case the Emperor cannot then decide to appoint a new one:
wherefore this Dignity also ceases upon the appointment or presence
of the Grand Vizier. He may not decide on important matters, unless
they suffer no delay, but must await his orders beforehand.
Moreover, the Emperor also appoints, in his own absence from the
Residence, a special Kaym-Maekam, to whom he then, within
Constantinople, is accustomed to give a power almost equal to that
of the Vizier,; but whose reign also ends upon the Emperor's return.
According to the nature of the case and the meaning of the word,
there can be no permanent Kaym-Maekam.
(*)
Under the reign of Mustapha III, the Divan was held only on
Tuesdays, and only once every 2 or 3 weeks, to collect the large
coins that are made from the special treasure of the Sultan's
{Ciafyiehj estate, as which, every journey, on account of the Pilait
fry?? for the Janistas, and the tables of the State servants, amount
to about ?? purses.
(*)
Selim I did indeed appoint a Kadhy-Leschkjer in Cairo. But he is not
so much a third party, as the Great Kadh?? of Egypt, whose
jurisdiction extends also over Arabia, Syria, and some parts of
Armenia.
§. XXXVII. Of
the civil condition of the Turkish Empire in itself.
The foundation of the
entire civil condition is the Koran, which, as has been said, like
the books of Moses among the Jews, contains not only the
prescriptions of religion, but also those for worldly government.
But, because its style is broken and does not cohere, the decision
that must be derived from it in doubtful cases is so uncertain that
one and the same place is made the basis for completely conflicting
decisions. Moreover, its pages bend, without great weight, to the
weight of the money offered for the settlement of a case: not to
say, that the Koran, which at first was composed only for a small
group of Arabs, is very defective in the great empires which
subsequently arose, such as, for instance, the Turkish, and
therefore has had to be explained and made more complete by a
multitude of Commentaries. — Certain Travellers have indeed
reported, that, besides the Koran with its Commentaries, the corpus
juris civilis Romani, as well as the Codex of Justinian and
Theodesius, had been translated into the Turkish language, and were
taught in the schools; but I have been absolutely assured that
neither the Arabs nor the Turks have ever thought of such a
translation, since in Jurisprudence they refer solely and
exclusively to the Koran and the Fetwa collections or legal
expositions on all sorts of cases, which their principal Kadhys have
drawn up. These Fetwa books are therefore legal prescriptions and
questions, which have been collected with their solutions and
decisions. And, since these are all known to Jurists, the disputing
parties need only turn to the Fetwa-Emyny (advocacy of the Mufti),
and demand the solution of such or such a legal question. Generally
they provide themselves with several Fetwas for all those cases to
which their cause could be subject, and they present them before the
Judge, according as they think they fit the circumstances of their
case. It is the Judge's duty to decide whether or not the Fetwa
presented to him can be applied to it. These Fetwas therefore always
correspond with their law, and are therefore considered sacred.
Should one party lose the trial, although the Fetwa was in its
favour; then the reason is that it was not judged applicable to the
disputed case. And so it is the same with it, as in other places
with the legal Consultations. — One poses, according to the
collected regulations, the question in a few words: for example,
whether this or no act deserves death? whether one may announce war
to a Power that has behaved in this or that way? The Mufti answers,
below, to the question presented to him, with the single word:
Olfun! (yes! — one can,) or with the negation: OU mas! (no! —
it cannot be done!) without adding a further signature, because
without such a one these Fetwas already bring with them the marks of
their legality, marked they agree with the Fetwa books and
regulations, which are in the hands of all jurists, and can be
secured from each one. — For the rest, the Turkish
administration of justice is not entirely like the European: now it
seems more advantageous; but then again more disadvantageous. For
the most part, the cases are settled very quickly, and further. A
poor blood, in legal complaints, often has the advantage over a
well-to-do man. The former is safe, but the latter is burdened with
the payment; and the former, often, wins with the Judge at the same
time. Yes, the false accuser is never punished; but perhaps still
has use for a false accusation; and this is the reason that naughty
people gladly let themselves be used for this. Every man is his own
Advocate, and cases are more settled than decided. The saddest thing
is when in a dispute it comes to witnesses; for for little money one
can get as many as one wants. Yes, many Turks consider it a merit to
take false oaths against Christians and Jews. But when an oath has
to be taken, then the Christians must lay their fingers on the
Evangelists, the Jews on the law, and the Mohammedans on the Koran.
Otherwise money has the strongest influence on the Judges, who are
mostly only for one year, and must provide for the future Existence.
The written judicial records are short; the disputing parties pay
not nearly so much, because of sealed papers and salaries to
advocates and solicitors, as in other countries. All judicial
decisions are sealed by the Judge with his own signet. When these
are shown before a higher Court in proof of what has been decided,
then the seal is left with the Mufti; for with him are found the
impressions of all the signets of those who have been appointed
Mulas or Kadhys. A Ylarn or judicial decision is signed by no one
but the Judge alone with his Signet. Other judicial writings, such
as Contracts, etc., which come before the Judge, bear the name of
Hudschjet, and are, according to the cases, sealed by witnesses, or
rather their names are expressed under the writing. Other, decided
among private persons, are, sometimes, ratified by many seals or
signatures, and then one can say: it seems that their number gives
them a greater force or emphasis. For the rest, the judicial
writings always retain their generally accepted form and simplicity
according to the form and usage. — In all Processes, the tenth
part of what is disputed belongs to the justice. They can also be
renewed at greater or lesser cost, at a constant pace, upon the
arrival of a new Judge, or upon the passage of a higher Judge. If a
Trial is renewed by new witnesses or motives and pretexts, then,
however, the first sentence passed is considered true and legal,
with respect to the reason presented therein. It is never heard to
be said that a sentence passed was unjust. That would be considered
blasphemy. Nor can one find any example of a sentence being quashed
as unjust, unless it had been pronounced by an ignorant person, who
had not known how to observe the formalities required for it,
namely, to reconcile the decision and the application of the law
with the previous judicial investigations presented in the sentence.
But the injustice is committed in the organization of the Trial.
Incorrect circumstances are stated; the case is presented in a
completely different way than it actually is; and the parties are
allowed to speak to the witnesses, as they think fit, in order to
achieve the aforementioned goal. The worst evil of justice is the
Avani, that is, someone can summon me to court without any semblance
of right he wants; I am responsible for it; great expenses are
demanded to release me from it; and if it concerns money and goods,
then I must often consider myself lucky if I get away with the
payment of the tenth part: this also includes that a house, a
neighborhood, a region remains responsible for a murdered person for
so long, and, where there is a blood avenger, must pay the blood
money, until the actual perpetrator is discovered. These Avani are,
in fact, not subject to the Europeans, because they are released
from them by treaties; but examples to the contrary are not entirely
lacking, and one must seek to prevent them, with a gift, before the
outbreak.
For the rest, the
City Servants can maintain their duties, on the spot, with great
sharpness, if they were not, as everywhere, also in Turkey, bribed
by money and yeast. But here and there punishments are exercised,
which one must wonder about, and by which, in an otherwise so badly
constituted country, the frauds are still fairly counteracted. For
example, 'an unexpected investigation of weights, measures,
merchandise and provisions takes place. If irregularities are now
found; then, if one sees that action has been taken, the fraudster
is laid on his back, and receives, besides other punishments,
usually 100 lashes under the soles of the feet. Criminal cases are
also dealt with much more quickly than with us. Criminals are not
allowed to eat useless bread for so long. Lesser crimes are punished
with lashes under the soles of the feet. Among them the Jewish law
still applies, to give forty lashes less one. But this divine
forbearance of punishment is destroyed by the Turks in another way;
for they only allow 39 lashes to be given at once, but these by
repetition, so that the criminals die under these lashes, or
afterwards. Dishonorable women, false witnesses, and people of a bad
stamp are mounted backwards on donkeys, led through the city, and
then mostly banished from that place for their lives, or for certain
years: although this seldom happens, because otherwise the Judge
would soon be deprived of the means of getting money through the
disappearances of such people. A more severe punishment is
banishment from a place to this or that island, where the banished
must remain, until he is, possibly, recalled from there. The death
penalty is something common in Turkey: but money can also ward them
off. This latter occurs especially in the case of manslaughter, if
it can be shown that it was committed in haste and in the course of
some dispute; but it is more seldom sustained if it was committed
treacherously; and in such a case it usually depends on the consent
of the relatives of the dead, whether the punishment shall be
completed by the forfeiture of life, or by a blood-money. If any one
kill a married man, then such a one is also condemned to marry his
wife. The Turks laugh at our formalities, courts, executioners, etc.
If someone, for example, has to be hanged; then they hang him on a
tree or house, or other place, where the theft or murder has been
committed, or on a place where they think it good. In the latter
case, they erect four wooden ones, almost in the shape of St.
Andrew's crosses, put a cross over them, and hang the criminal on
them without any circumstances. The first, the best one hangs him,
and if 'possibly, not one more' offers to do it, then someone from
the crowd, or a passing traveler, is forced to carry out this good
work. If he is faint-hearted in doing so; then he is still
ridiculed, or ill-treated, for which reason the Christians and Jews
do not like to be present at such punishments. (*) Although the
punishments are now so severe, there is nevertheless, except for the
cities, where houses are only slightly kept, and of thefts in actual
fact seldom heard, of street rioting and murders there is no end. A
city or a village, or even a whole district must 'assure it; but the
Commissioner of the Porte puts the tax imposed on it in his pocket;
the murderers or robbers flee to a distant Province, and the
offended or his own is not compensated for the damage. Insignificant
people are even impaled for gross crimes. Prominent people and the
Janistas are strangled, and either buried further, or their heads
cut off, and left unburied for three days. In general, no criminal
who has been put to death remains hanging in the open air any
longer. The heads of rebels are also sometimes sent to the Porte
from the most remote provinces. The slain or put to death are
usually buried on the spot where they were killed or slain, unless
this may have been done in houses or towns, and two oblong stones
are erected, one at the head and one at the foot. A number of such
burial places are found on the roads of the Lord. Burial places are
even sewn into a bag and thus thrown into the water. The stamping of
the head in a mortar would actually be the punishment of the Muftis
and Judges; but that is no longer in use. (*) That the offices of
honour and offices are purchased throughout Turkey, or at least
obtained by gifts, has already been noted. This brings in
extraordinary sums. The Kadi of Smyrna alone pays for his Post,
which lasts only one year, more than 40 purses. Of corn, oil, wine
grapes, etc., the tithes must be paid, which the Porte leases to the
Agas and other persons. The tolls are, as has been said beforehand,
perhaps the fairest in Turkey. The Turks and Europeans pay three in
all, but the land registers and Jews five per hundred. In trifles it
is not even taken very seriously. On the other hand, the right of
inheritance is a crying injustice. He who observes this for the
Great Lord is called Beytul-Maldschy. (†) If there are male
heirs present; then, in fact, the tenth part should be paid. But,
because the Beytul-Maldschy values everything very
highly, on the other hand, has himself paid in cash; in that case
the tenth part goes double. If there are only children of the female
sex and a widow; then they may consider themselves lucky if they
keep the tenth part. If there are no children at all, or very close
friends; then parents, if they do not want to sell their goods, are
accustomed to adopt someone for a child. This last is done mostly by
the country Christians. They choose a child according to their
wishes, and bring it, if it still has parents, with them before the
government, to legally adopt it for a child. Those parents then also
solemnly relinquish their child, and it cannot be disinherited
again. It is called a child of the soul. (*) Besides these
inconveniences, to which all the inhabitants of the Turkish Empire,
without distinction of religion, except the Europeans, are subject,
the native Christians and Jews feel a special one, and that is the
Charatz. By virtue of the payment of this, as a head and ransom, all
those who are not Mohammedans or Europeans, retain their freedom of
religion. The female sex never pays this, but the male sex only,
from the 14th year onwards. It varies according to the state and the
goods, amounting, annually, from one to 4 Turkish Zechines, and of
that kind, which is called Dschindscherli. If one makes a small
assumption about these submitted documents, and considers that the
Great exploit the Small, and that the Emperor finally takes
everything away first, or by confiscation, and finally that these,
except for the expenses of his Court, the military affairs and the
soldiers of the Janistaries, are deducted from his income, which is
so astonishing
end his, spends
nothing, but leaves everything in the treasury; then one can easily
imagine how full it must be. According to the Turks' own proverb,
the Imperial Treasure is like a water-bowl in a valley, from which
indeed everyone draws water for his need, but which soon falls back
again. The usual treasure is kept in 4 chambers, (*) but the whole
remains in bags, in each of which are fifteen thousand Zecchins, and
which are placed in strong chests, in a subterranean vault. The
chests, as they are filled, are closed and sealed, and not opened
until the necessity of war demands it; in which case the treasure of
the Mosques is also allowed to the Emperor, but only under the
pretext of defending Religion. And such a one is very easily found,
because according to the opinion of the Turks, everything that
opposes the Sultan, as Mohammed's Governor, is considered
unbeliever, and therefore every war can be considered a matter of
religion.
For the rest, the
policy with which this Empire is governed and maintained is strange.
To the highest offices of honor come either bought, or slaves stolen
in war, or other persons drawn up in the Seraglio, who know nothing
but an indefinite subjection to the Sultan, and who, because they
rarely have considerable families as next of kin, can all the more
easily be deposed, banished, and put to death. The offices remain in
the hands of one person only for a short time, and the children of
the First Names rarely attain to a Dignity. The slightest faults,
even the slightest insincerity, are punished most emphatically as
crimes of the State. If one has something to fear from the subjects
because of a Judge or Stadtholder, wealth, prestige and acquired
love; then he is now publicly, now again cunningly humiliated. All
those subjects who are not Turks, such as Christians, Arabs,
Turkmen, Druses, etc., are emaciated by extortions, provoked
disputes, and other tricks and tricks?? The Provinces, which form
the boundaries of the Empire, are devastated, and the inhabitants
thereof drawn to the inner States. To what extent the Princes of the
Blood are kept from rebellions, and the Princesses are used for the
downfall of the Great, has been indicated beforehand, § XXXV.
(*)
There are examples of a strange judicial procedure, when field mice
or other vermin devastate the country. In the years 1760, etc., the
region around Smyrna was visited by an astonishing number of
locusts. The complaints of the inhabitants became general, and the
then Mula Helde set to work the following judicial procedure: He had
the magistrates summoned, sent a Muhhdhir or Summoner, summoning the
troops and bands of locusts before the Divine court, to be tried
against the inhabitants. This having been done three times, but in
vain, he declared them, in his judicial sentence, to be rebels
against the Divine laws and the Judge, and gave everyone freedom to
exterminate them. Scarcely had this been done, when the air in the
city was darkened by the locusts, which covered the roofs, houses,
streets, and the sea-bay to a considerable extent, and were either
drowned, or else killed. Their defeat caused a horrible slump.
(*)
The great mortar, in which the head of a Mufti, it is said, was once
vaporized, is still in Constantinople, but is overturned, and is now
unfit for use.
(†)
Beytul-Maldschy is an Arabic word, signifies one who provides for
the Fiscus, in a certain respect a Fiscal, or household
goods-leaseholder. In the appointment of such an Official there
seems in itself nothing unreasonable. By this means an inheritance
will be secured for absent heirs, and they will be handed over to
them, after having proved their rights, against a fair compensation
for the trouble. Whoever occupies this place, leases the Sultan's
rights to the hereditary estates, so that the profit arising from it
is legitimate, and does not seem to correspond with what takes place
elsewhere in a different form.
(*)
The main provision, which is made to the Sultan by the inheritances
and estates, consists in the fact that the heirs enter into a treaty
with the Myry; not to say, that the women are usually allowed to
keep their matrimonial property, and the children something for
their education, and also the fixed property of their ancestors.
(*)
Actually there are 2 treasuries in the Capital. That which belongs
to the Emperor in particular, (Chdfyneh) is in a part of the vaults
of the Seraglio, which the Sultan inhabits. The Treasury or Finance
Chamber (Myry) (is under the management of the Defterdariat, and
serves to defray public expenses. This is often exhausted, whereupon
a loan is made from the former, which is afterwards made good. Many
Sultans have also collected a special treasure, a legacy.
§. XXXVIII. Of
the Political Condition of the Turkish Empire, with Relation to
Other Countries.
The external
condition, or the relation of the Turkish Empire to other States,
also deserves a special explanation. With which European countries
the Porte has concluded peace treaties, is mentioned in § VII.
The King of France, Francis I, preceded the other Christian powers
in an alliance with the Turks, and in the year 1535 concluded the
first Commercial Treaty with the Porte. Most European Powers
followed him: and with Persia, as well as all African Countries
bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, the Porte also maintains
friendship.— It has cost many of the European Princes great
difficulty to purchase peace by considerable gifts; others, in all
their searching, have not succeeded to this day. The Porte does not
easily enter into novelties; and the design to obtain its friendship
has made it so proud, that it considered it the greatest favour, to
grant it a European country. Therefore one should not wonder at its
haughty conduct towards the Europeans, but it must surprise one,
that our Powers can stand such an exaltation of them above them in
Titles and the whole treatment, which can hardly be reconciled with
their rest of their affectation. The peace treaty, which the Porte
grants, bears the name of Capitulation, by the Turks Aelid Nameh
Humajun, that is, open Imperial letters, or by these permitted and
fixed conditions: being such a one with all European nations, the
secret Articles excepted, as to the principal points, the same, and
of the French pass something else than a copy. It is always drawn up
in the Turkish language. In treaties of peace it is sometimes
permitted that the other party should have a translation ratified by
the Interpreter of the Porte; but in fact the Turkish original is
only considered obligatory. By this the Turks sometimes find
occasion to stir up subtle and deceitful disputes about the meaning
of words, the full force of which they know, or at least pretend to
know them better than the foreigners. Nevertheless, the Turks must
be praised for being fairly punctual in coming to and keeping the
Capitulation. They grant the Europeans many things that would hardly
be granted to them in other countries. Otherwise their policy
towards them is strange, and not easy to reduce to fixed rules. Most
things are obtained by the Porte with money; on the contrary, in
other things, which we would even consider trifles, the largest sums
of money and all motives can avail nothing. If the friendship is
sincere; then that State sends an Envoy, who is received at the
borders of Turkey, with many ceremonies, by some Court servants.
From that day on he is also maintained at the expense of the Grand
Lord. This provision concerns the Transport, the provisions and a
certain sum of money, together with a guard of Janistas, called
Tain, and which after the arrival of the Envoy remains at
Constantinople, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, and, according to
circumstances, continues for more or less months. From these
journeys of the foreign Envoys, the places through which they pass
also have great inconveniences. Their inhabitants are forced, by
blows and violence, to provide the necessary carriages and
provisions; whereas, on the contrary, the Master of Ceremonies, who
is called Vizier,-Aga, with his people and the Janistas, is
accustomed to make use of the money fixed for this purpose by the
Emperor. — The Audiences have already been dealt with in §
VIII. After them, the Ambassador is given Letters of Freedom
(Berate) by the Porte, the number of which used to be between 30 and
50, (*) which he may hand over to the Christians and Jews of the
country for the service of his mission and nation, who are thereby
regarded as Europeans, and are exempted from all land taxes. Since
they do not now need so many Letters of Liberty for this purpose,
they sell the rest, and receive, according to the times, for each
open letter between 2 or 3 thousand Piastres: but after the death of
the purchaser it reverts to the Ambassador, and he can sell it
again. —- If the Porte sends Ambassadors to a Power with which
it is on friendly terms; then they must be provided for and
maintained in the same manner as its own. Although it now sometimes
sends persons of little reputation as Ambassadors to foreign Courts;
yet, generally, persons from the Chancelleries are taken in, who,
before, have held all kinds of offices, and after the mission is
ended, are often elevated to the most important offices. As many are
hungry for such embassies, so dearly do they cost the Court,
according to which they are done: for according to Eastern
Ceremonial it would be unseemly, to admit such an Envoy to an
Audience at once, but one must postpone it for a long time, in order
to show that one is pleased to have the Guest; for after the
Audience he must, in all fairness, take his return journey.
According to the
prescription of the Koran, no Mohammedan Power, and therefore not
even the Great Lord, can conclude a permanent peace with a Christian
state. The famous name of an eternal peace, which often has the
power to oblige Christian powers for a few years, is unknown to the
Turks. Besides a standstill of arms, they have, at the most, in
later times, out of necessity, concluded a permanent peace, as in
the year 1718, with Venice, and in the peace of Belgrade with
Russia. For in general the Koran charges, on all occasions, the Gaur
(Infidels) to be brought to the Mohammedan Religion by means of
arms. But otherwise they are of the opinion, that that party, which
breaks a standstill of arms, before the elapse of time, by a war, is
unfortunate. Therefore also various circumstances must occur, if
this is to happen on their side. But if otherwise a war should
begin, then the first step of their declaration is taken by having
the Envoy of the hostile Power placed in the 7 Towers, where he is
now worse, now better treated; This is indeed considered cruel
according to our missionary law, and in fact not without reason; but
it must be observed, that the Turks regard the permanent and
constant ambassadors at Constantinople almost as nothing else, than
as plenipotentiary state spies, and those none but as real
ambassadors, who, like the Persian, Polish, Moroccan, etc., come for
certain negotiations, and after the execution of them go away again.
(*) Moreover, they also retain those ambassadors as hostages, so
that, if a Grand Vizier or any other great man should be taken
prisoner, an exchange may be made the more easily. With the arrest
of the ambassadors also goes the imprisonment of all persons
belonging to his nation, and the confiscation of their goods.
Moreover, certain, but not always the same ceremonies are usually
performed at the declaration of war at Constantinople. Thus all the
crafts and guilds, before the departure to war, must hold a
procession through the Capital with some of their tools or goods,
such as bakers, furriers, grocers, smiths, etc. who thereby offer
themselves as being at the service of the Great Lord, but at the
same time must give considerable presents. When the Court was still
at Adrianople, Mohammed's standard was hung at the Seraglio, and a
horse's tail at that gate from which the people were to march to
war. Whereby the Turks relate, that, when Selim I ordered the Grand
Vizier to hang up the horse's tail, and he asked at which gate? he
had him put to death; which was done by two others, until the Grand
Vizier appointed thereupon, by the same command, had one put up at
every gate, and further, to the Emperor's question, where the
horse's tail was put up, answered: "at all gates! Your Majesty
can go out wherever she pleases!" whereupon he would have been
considered a particularly capable Person.
Concerning the
opinion of the Turks, what one should think of other Kingdoms and
Powers, various reports from writers who deal with Turkey, very
much. Every European claims in Turkey of his Nation, that it is most
esteemed. But all are in general in the case, to be feared according
to circumstances, more or less highly esteemed, according as one
needs their friendship more or less. This is generally the course of
human affairs, and therefore this rule has been almost everywhere
adopted in Policy. There is hardly a nation in Turkey which,
notwithstanding its supposed pre-eminence, has not had to experience
many unpleasantnesses. By the natural instability and ferocity of
the Turks, the most extreme indignities are here and there inflicted
upon those who were a short time before their favour. The Turks are
too puffed up and too much pleased with themselves to allow those of
them who are treated as infidels to compare themselves with them and
their nation. They are always seeking an opportunity to degrade
those who wish to exalt themselves, because this offends their
national pride; and they seldom care for the consequences, because
every civil servant does not long retain his office; to satisfy
their self-will and revengefulness, this moves them most for that
moment and at the present time. Morocco is treated courteously by
the Porte; and both States, as co-religionists, maintain a mutual
friendship. The distance only prevents a closer union. Persia was,
about the middle of this century, much hated and also feared by the
Turks; but, after the old Imperial family died out there, and the
Empire is so much troubled, fear has changed into indifference, and
the size of the Turkish Empire has somewhat prevented the Porte from
profiting from its internal disturbances. The alliances with
Christian powers are either old or new. Among the old belong France,
the German Empire, Russia, Poland, Venice, England and Holland.
France trades as much in Turkey as all other Christian empires put
together; but the high esteem of the Turks for it is not determined
by this. The Turks never place a right of trust in it. The French
must, here and there, suffer humiliations which are not made to
experience by other nations; and even the common people look at them
with eyes of contempt. Do they believe that they are misguided by
the French? or is their conduct concerning the Imperial Court, when
they fell upon it in the rear in the wars with the Turks, doubtful?
or do they stumble at their national character? That would be
difficult to determine. But this is certain, that nevertheless they
often yield to them in many things, because they count on their
assistance, in case they should come to war with other Christian
kingdoms. They deal cautiously with the German Imperial Court. The
German soldiers are always a terror to them, and, if they have
overcome them, then, according to their own statements, it was not
due to the soldiers, but to other circumstances. Russia is for them,
for various reasons, the most formidable of all Christian kingdoms.
Its inner greatness is questionable to them. The agreement in
religion with the Greeks causes them much suspicion. With the
Russian soldiers they can hardly come to an agreement, because they
either stand and conquer or die. In addition, there are predictions
according to the Turkish ideas, which will make Russia their
conqueror. — Poland and Venice are considered by them as
small, and as countries that depend on their mercy. The English and
the Dutch are the most beloved among all Europeans. They have high
respect for both, because they have never had war with them, but
only trade and intercourse are sought, and the Turks, by all kinds
of treaties and mediations, have at some time enjoyed advantages.
The alliances of the Prussian, Danish, Swedish and Naples Courts are
new, and therefore the degree of respect is by no means determined.
But in general the Turks consider them either as small, or very
remote kingdoms, whose friendship or enmity can have no strange
influence on their State. With Spain, Portugal and Sardinia they
have, up to now, nothing at all to do.
(*)
Berat actually means an open letter or diploma ??t to appoint
someone, for instance a Pasha, to his office, at the same time being
clothed, according to his Dignity, with a Fur or Chestnut. The
Berate issued for the Europeans are therefore Imperial orders, that
this or that person must be considered as Consul of his nation at
such or such a place. The same is the case with Interpreters, who
would not be recognized in their post without a Berat. The
advantages allowed therein are, that such a one may, for his Person,
of the Charad (the poll tax is exempted, in his house then necessary
stock of wine, which is otherwise generally forbidden, although it
is tolerated in private), dress according to his condition, wear
yellow slippers, etc. He may also, if he trades, easily obtain from
the Publicans the reduction of the toll up to 3 per hundred,
although other good merchants may also come to that, since the
Publicans find their own account in it. The French, English and
Dutch have, from former times, the most Berate, although they have
also begun to determine it. The later, friendly nations with the
Porte, such as the Swedish, Danish, Prussian, and Naples, have only
Berate for 4 Interpreters in Constantinople, and for one at the
Consulates in the Levant. Consequently, the Berate are no longer as
advantageous as before, and there is no longer so much money spent
on them: only perhaps the freedom to wear yellow slippers usually
induces a Petit-maitre to buy one.
(*)
The Turks themselves do not keep a permanent Ambassador to other
Courts, because they do not need to spend much money on messages
from other countries. Their Rajas, (subjects) Greeks, Armenians, and
especially the Jews, who are scattered everywhere for the sake of
commerce, give them these in order to gain favor by doing so. These
spies are, in other States, less noticed. In the year 1750, and
probably before that time, it was the duty of the Princes of
Moldavia and Wallachia to deliver reports from the Christian States,
and the Interpreter of the Porte had to hand over the Leydsche
Fransche Courant translated.
§. XXXIX. Of the
Military State of the Turks.
It seems very
unfortunate to someone who has spent some time in Turkey when he
reads European writings in which the military state of the Turks is
described as either formidable or merely mediocre. Such novels (for
they cannot be considered higher) are either hatched out of greed in
the rooms of those who have never seen Turkey, and cobbled together
from former military histories, or by those who have travelled
rapidly through the Ottoman Empire, according to the custom of
writing about foreign countries not so much true as wonderful
things, among other things making known fictitious cases.
In Turkey everyone
travels armed, because of the many street robberies. No traveller is
without a harquebus, pistols and sabre. The farmer goes with the
last two behind his plough. No one is forbidden to hunt either.
Wherefore it should not surprise us, that, while every one carries
the murder-guns, murder and manslaughter are very common, every
farmer is almost a land-soldier, and the Turkish horses can
fearlessly endure the shooting with the harquebus. But without
preparing for war in the least, all this does not mean much. The
actual Land and Naval Forces require a further discussion. The Land
Forces belong first of all to the soldiers. The real infantry are
the Janistas. But these are no longer the old ones, which, in former
times, were such a terror to the enemies of the Porte. They do not
consist at present of Christian children and Christian slaves, but
are nearly all born Turks, yea, sons of Janistas, who have received
by inheritance the pay of their fathers. This pay is not one of a
kind; for because of old age or wars experienced, it is greatly
increased. A soldier has, at the beginning, no more than 6 Aspers
per day, and, when he advances in time, 15 Aspers. This pay is paid
every quarter of a year; but the necessary provisions of bread,
rice, and meat are given with it. At the same time they are free to
observe the agriculture, the trade, and what each has learned
differently. For with regard to the trade of arms they are
completely free, and exempted from it, because it finds no place.
For what it means to exercise, to march on the Parade and to be on
guard, is completely unknown to them. From which one can easily
judge that closing in ranks and lines, marching, turning right and
right, evolutions, firing in Battalion and Platoon, a Battalion
square, and still more important matters of war are things which
they do not understand at all. The Turks consider themselves
fortunate to belong to this militia, not so much because of the
small pay, as because of the great privileges. - They are divided
into 126 Odas or Regiments, each of which would be about 800 men
strong, but they are never complete. Each Ode is under a Captain,
Shvrbalidschjy, who commands outside the barracks or Odas, and under
a Sub-Captain, Oda-Baschy, who commands within them. From these
Janissaries a bodyguard of the Emperor is taken, which are called
Solak and Karipi. The former consist of 500 men, and are the
bodyguard on foot; the latter amount to a number of 3 thousand, and
form his bodyguard on horseback. The Peygk are ceremonial youths and
footmen, who march with the soldiers at the side of the Sultan.
Their general Chief is the Janissary Aga at Constantinople, where
the principal body is of 8 or 10 thousand, and forms the garrison of
that city, while the latter are divided into smaller parties in the
largest cities. They are so little trained in military affairs, that
they are even forbidden to bear arms, because their rebellion should
thus be thought of before; for of that they are the ringleaders and
the troublemakers. But the lust for power, by which this militia,
now of a changed nature, could heretofore demand from the Emperor
the deposition or the killing of the Ministers of State, is now
quite destroyed. They are not soldiers, therefore, because they
understand the craft of war, for that does not take place; but
because they must go to war for their pay, while for the rest
everyone can remain at home. Their remuneration, which with that
which the Spahis (horsemen) receive, amounts annually to about 4
thousand purses, is distributed to them on the Divans days in the
Seraglio. On that occasion they are also always fed with Pillau. The
Seraglio trembles, if they refuse to use it; for that is a sign,
that they are making sharp demands on the head of one or other
Minister of State, or are dissatisfied with the whole Government;
and if they are not satisfied on the spot, then a riot is the
result. There is already danger, if they do not attack the plates
with Pillau at once, and swallow him greedily. In the war itself it
is a restless and easily injured militia. If there is no rice and
coffee, and no fresh bread is baked daily; then grumbling and riot
are to be expected.
In one battle they
can only be brought to an attack three times. If the enemy does not
then give way; then they recoil and if he still presses forward,
then they take flight and seek a good escape. — The Horsemen
of the Turks are called Spahi or Sipahy. Their soldiery is, like
that of the Janistas, unequal, and can amount daily to from 12 to
100 Asprs. Mutejerrikeh are about five hundred Horsemen of good
descent, selected from the Spahis, who serve as a bodyguard and for
dispatches of the Sultan, and form a militia of higher rank, even
above the Tschausche, under the Muteferrikeh-Baschy. The Sultan
himself is their Chief, and they therefore only fight when he takes
the field in person. Whoever imagines that the Spahis are a Cavalry
like ours, and imagines that their horses are as difficult to keep
up as ours, and that they can separate from each other and get back
into order, would be very much mistaken. They are an irregular
party, who have voluntarily taken up the race, and whose whole
exercise consists in one chasing the other, and trying to throw a
club of about one and a half yards long (Dscherid) at his head, but
the one after whom it must be thrown tries to avoid or catch it in
flight and speed. They are divided into 6 Standards, and are said to
number more than 12 thousand men. They, who with the lands, taken
from the Christians, as a kind of fief, are endowed, according to
their value, in one or more persons on horseback in the field. Their
number is, especially because of the Provinces, the Venetians are
deprived of, very considerable. The Firstnames and Riches bear the
name of Zaims, but the others Th??riots,
The above-mentioned
types of soldiers are the usual war-people, which name they do not
deserve, because they were possibly regulated, but because they have
to serve on account of pay. But these form the smallest part of the
Turkish Army. There is a general summons in the country; In the
Mosques a war prayer is openly read, and in it an encouragement to
take the field against the Heretics, that is the Persians, or
against the Infidels, that is the Christians, and from this arises a
general desire for war. These are only Volunteers. All highway
robbers and filthy riffraff go to the appointed place of war.
Everyone who has nothing to lose; people burdened with debts, take
the field; even many who have something, sell it, and go to war, in
the hope of rich booty. They do not actually receive any soldiers,
but only some provisions; on the other hand, everything they capture
is their own property. These Volunteers often do not spare the
Turkish places themselves: but they do spare an enemy country, into
which they penetrate! But if the enemy power can secure its borders,
so that no plundering and subsistence can be seized from the
plundering class, or if things do not go according to plan in
attacks and battles; then these Volunteers very quickly leave the
Janistas and Spahis, and return to their country, or run elsewhere.
Wherefore a large Turkish Army, in a few days, can melt down to
several thousand. For the rest there is neither among the ordinary
soldiers, nor among the Volunteers a true subordination. The former,
at the least displeasure, cause a riot; and the latter come and go,
flee and cease this, as they please. So that a Turkish army, in the
present state of affairs, is an irregular group, in which, besides
the soldiers mentioned, servants, murderers, street violators,
idlers, etc. are considered soldiers, who, as long as things go well
and there is something to rob, increase in size like a snowball in
the march, but also by an unfortunate chance, when the snow melts
suddenly due to warm weather. In the Eastern Kingdoms in general,
and in Turkey in particular, the so necessary military support is
lacking. And woe to us! if this, with the ease of raising such
numerous armies, were to take place. Europe would then soon be
devoured. In addition, the soldiers are not divided among sufficient
officers. A Commando of soldiers of various kinds is called Buluk,
and its leader Buluk-Baschy. No European State of any importance
need fear the naval power of the Turks. Their ships are neither
dangerous to the enemy, neither by their number nor by their
construction. The warships of the Great Lord (caravels) are of an
astonishing size and resemble castles. They also project, especially
behind, about three medium-sized levels from the sea, and can be hit
and shattered all the more easily by the cannons. The heavy and
large construction naturally causes a great difficulty and
clumsiness to turn them. In proportion to their terrible size, there
are also by no means enough cannon holes bored in them. All of the
ship life and motion, is bad and misshapen. Masts, rudders, ropes,
sails, etc. do not correspond at all to the size. They do carry very
large guns; but the height of the bearing prevents hitting, and in
their direction they are also badly adjusted; not to say that
loading is slow and takes a long time. They have galleys of various
kinds. But the defects that occur in warships on a large scale, are
also found in these on a small scale. Then, the ships are floating
houses and auctions, powerless in themselves, unless the sailors on
them can make the right use of them. These bear the name of Leventi;
and everything that has been said before about the inexperience and
disobedience of the land soldiers, applies equally to these.
Besides, what can be expected of them, since Captain Pacha (Grand
Admiral) himself does not understand seafaring? For the rest, their
navigation has neither art nor safety. Their pilots know nothing of
rules, but have some experience as a teacher. They make no use of
sea charts, and understand almost nothing at all the daily
calculation of the distance travelled and the region where they are,
if they do not see the coasts, and have other guesses before them.
They also do not know how to make proper use of the compass, so that
they would thaw out in the wide and open sea and perish. Their
sailors make no use of a light breeze, but usually wait half a day,
to see whether the wind will continue to blow, whereby much is often
neglected; not to say that they do not know how to resist the wind,
and therefore let themselves be driven back by slight headwinds. The
Turkish warships are a mockery of the European merchant ships,
because of their ignorance and singular mode of trading. The chief
of these is done by slaves, condemned criminals, and Greeks. How
little one can rely on all these, was proved by another example from
the year ??60, when on the Admiral's ship, on a Friday, when Captain
Pacha had landed on the island of Stanchio, a riot arose, the
above-mentioned people set themselves free, and brought the ship,
which, as the most important of the warships, had been called
Sultana, to Malta. The naval officers are therefore bad, the sailors
worse still, and the gunners worst of all. The latter bear the name
of Toppedschis, and are about 2 thousand strong, to whom one must
add about as many Dschebedschis, who take care of the ammunition,
and also a certain number of Bombardiers.
The Turkish
fortresses do not deserve a lengthy report. The fortifications have
not risen to such a degree among them that one could learn anything
from them. What can still be found about them, can be seen in places
that have been in Christian hands, and whose fortifications have
come into their power either completely, or at least damaged. The
cities within the country are either still surrounded by old Greek
walls, and also have a ruined castle, or are open, like the villages
with us. The roads and harbours, as well as the sailors, are
accustomed to have castles, which originate from the Genoese or
Venetians; in particular, the almost incredible labour of the former
is still visible to this day. But such fortifications are useless in
our times; and a few well-directed shots from warships render the
garrison incapable of loading and defending themselves. The manner
of the Turks in waging war is not at all such as to entice European
warlike volunteers to join them. In dangerous campaigns, Mohammed's
banner is taken along. To this old rag of red colour, which will be
the remainder of the real banner of this deceiver, the same, and
almost a greater power is attributed than in the dark times was
attributed to the banners which the Pope had consecrated. It now
mostly remains in the Seraglio; but the water in which it is put is
considered strong, and is at least communicated to the war chiefs.
When in the field, it is not allowed to fly freely, lest the wind
should tear it to pieces, but it remains rolled up round the
topmast. The principal military ensigns are the Horse-tails; and the
lesser the banners (Sandschak) of green colour, for which the model
is taken from Mohammed's banner. A kind of rather broad banners is
called Bairak. — A Turkish army, which wants to take the
field, is a misfortune to all the Provinces of the Empire which it
attacks. These are made deserts. The Land-Christians are especially
ill-fated at such times. The rich lose their lives and goods, under
the charge of treason, secret correspondence with enemies, etc.
Young persons, capable of war, are taken away, forcibly converted
into Mohammedans by means of circumcision, and then under the
Janistards, not to mention the heavy and extraordinary ??all,
plundering of their churches and houses, and other acts of violence.
Among the oppressions to which the countries are exposed in the
Turkish war, belongs also this: that the Great Lord declares this or
that Province, rightly or wrongly suspected, guilty of treason. Then
its inhabitants can be made slaves, and their property, without
circumstances and responsibility, be taken away. — The food
and military provisions are brought to the Army, mostly on camels
and mules, and only to places where the roads permit it, on Arrabas.
As sad as the shortage is in all armies; so dangerous is it
especially in a Turkish army. Should the Turks proceed in a more
defensive manner; then they are unusually quick to retreat, to
protect themselves by raised ramparts or sorts of fortifications,
etc. If they make the attack; then it is done, by the infantry, with
a fierce shouting, and almost with a bestial fury. What then does
not stand firm or is well closed; that is divided, or run over. This
attack is, with the larger parties, repeated three times. But if
they are then received with the Cannon or a good fire from the guns
and repulsed; then no Turk can be brought to a further attack; and
if the party then presses on, then a complete defeat of the Turks,
the desertion of their Generals, and the abandonment of the
artillery, the Baggage, the provisions and the war-supply is
certain. Whoever tried to stop them here; he ran the risk of being
thrown over. — It has generally been observed, that if a
Christian army, in sight of a Turkish one, holds out for a few days,
the latter entirely loses courage, and one must endure its first
fire for some time, in order to be able to conquer with ease. That
they attack in ranks and ranks in a savage manner, is a mere
fiction. — In special circumstances a few, whose brains are
heated by their feelings concerning the Kismeth or an absolute fate,
make a mad beginning, which more others imitate, in the hope of
penetrating the more easily through the openings made by none. They
are not a little prompted to this by another feeling of their
Religion, which declares those who die in the war against the
Christians to be Martyrs, and promises an excellent and very
pleasing place in Heaven. Besides these Daredevils, Dely, (which
word properly signifies Fools, but here in the aforesaid respect
courageous, good men, who are with a Turkish Army,) a certain Guard
of the Grand Vizier also bears this name, and their leader is called
Dely-Baschy. — Their cavalry does not make a regular attack in
closed ranks and ranks. Nor is it trained for it. It comes running;
turns, if it is opposed, and comes again. Where it finds little
resistance, or the enemy defenseless or in flight, it inflicts a
great slaughter; for the Turks are trained to slash, when they are
allowed to do so. But their soldiers cannot hold their own against a
closed Army. Their commanding army chiefs understand nothing of the
art of war. The Renegades, as well as the foreigners, who are base
and godless enough to want to teach them anything, make little
fortune with them in this respect. They will learn nothing from
them, and they are regarded by the Turks as the Bear in Gellert's
sabre, who, on his return from foreign lands, was bitten by his
fellow-bears on account of the learned dancing, because they could
not bear that he understood more than they. Bonneval, with his
otherwise great Credit, has sufficiently experienced this. They have
accepted nothing else from him than this principle, never to lead
their Army against the enemy at once, but to divide it, so that when
one part was beaten, another had to repair it; and besides, they
have only allowed themselves to be better instructed in the
artillery foundry. — Against this proposition, concerning the
bad military condition of the Turks, the objection might perhaps be
made concerning former victories. But against this it must be
observed, that they were, formerly, very different Heroes, than at
present, now that their military Character has so much declined and
degraded. If they keep to a war in the condition in which they were,
or even win it; then nothing can be thought of as prouder than they:
the whole world seems too small to them, and the propositions
concerning it are so Eastern and pompous, that the cases of Don
Quixote seem to one in comparison only common affairs. In the
meantime, woe to the conquered Provinces! For fear that they might
not keep them, and especially to grant the soldiers their plunder,
the people are made slaves, the places are burned, and, as has been
said before, all goods taken away. But if they are subdued and lose,
then nothing is more fearful than a Turkish army. When this is once
driven to flight, then there is no thought of stopping it again.
Because it almost completely disperses, it strikes fear and terror
into all the remaining soldiers, placing the whole Empire in the
utmost dismay. This happened several times, in the time of Eugenius,
and still in the year 1739, when the Count of Munich defeated the
Turks at Choczi??n. The Porte does everything it can to prevent
disadvantageous consequences, and although one loss follows another,
it nevertheless, in order to deceive the people, lets the cannons
fire at Constantinople. — For the rest, the Turks do not lack
military supplies. Gunpowder and lead, cannons, pistols, sabres, and
harquebuses, they either have themselves, or receive them from
outside in abundance; but nothing is in order, and not even in
unison.
The defense of those
places, where there are mosques, is very unusual. The law obliges
them to defend themselves there, until they surrender by force, or
by a storm. They therefore do not think of capitulation, even though
they knew that they would die by the sword or hunger. Therefore,
during the sieges of their auctions, one must prepare oneself for
patience and violence.
During sieges, the
Turkish soldiers are very zealous; for the Emperor and Generals
promise them, with the exception of the buildings, and what belongs
to the government of the country, a general plunder. What is this
not a powerful motive for courage and diligence? In conclusion of
this consideration of the Turkish military equipment, I must remark
that we have very extensive explanations on this subject from Count
Marsigli. He was himself a soldier, and had stayed with the Turkish
army. His reports are partly drawn from the regulations and
arrangements, drawn up in the Turkish language. The irregularities,
which have now crept into their Armeen, have arisen partly from the
neglect of their first military force, the inexperience of their
Generals, and other causes, and have therefore had the same evil
consequences as in other States.
In order to see the
Turkish army with one glance of the eye, I will present the
following illustration. (*) “The Turkish Army consists of four
kinds of forts of troops. To the first belong the Kapikuli, whose
name means to confess, just as, in former times, in Germany and
elsewhere, soldiers were called Landsknechts. They are actually
standing in zoldy, and according to the Ottoman manner regular
soldiers, and form the first and most important part of the Turkish
Army. They are either Infantrymen, or Cavalrymen, or Artillerists.
The Infantrymen bear the name of Janistaries, besides whom the
Ottomans have no troops on foot, on whom one can make any
dependence. Their number amounts, at present, to scarcely 40,000
men, and of these one must deduct at least 16 thousand, who are
stationed in the fortresses, and in the cities of Constantinople,
Adrianople, and Bursa, as well as those who, because of old age or
other reasons, do not need to take the field, and are a kind of
invalids. There remain only 24,000 men, who can actually appear in
the field. For the rest they are divided, both in peace and war,
into 196 companies (Odas, chambers). 2) The cavalrymen are called
Spahis. They would be 20 thousand men strong; but there can hardly
be brought into the field 15 thousand; the rest remain behind for
various reasons. 3) The Artillerists, in the last war with Russia
(1773), formed two Corps, each of 3000 men, but in times of peace
they are only half as strong".
"To the second
kind of troops belong Toprakli or Provincial soldiers, who have to
supply the Pashas (Bassas) from the Provinces over which they are
placed. They form irregular light troops on horseback; they are now
never more than 75 thousand men strong, but usually much less.
Because they do not draw soldiers, they decrease with every
campaign, and go home, especially when the first or second does not
turn out well, and they lose their Equipagie".
"To the third
kind of troops belong those, which the Countries, under the
supremacy and protection of the Sultan, supply. The first would be
the Wallachians and Moldavians, and the last the Tartars; but none
are completely exhausted, and these cannot now yield much, after
that, by the peace treaty of 1774, the Crimsche-Khan has been
declared an independent Prince".
"The fourth kind
constitutes Serradknly (Serhaedkuly), that is, those troops, which
protect the borders of the Turkish Empire. They consist of Infantry
and Cavalry. To the first belong, besides the Reserve Corps for the
Artillerists, which may amount to 4000 men, mainly the Azaps, who
are a national militia, and, when this is too weak, about 10
thousand Bosnians and Arnauts are taken into service in the same way
as the Swiss by some European powers. The cavalry does not exceed 10
thousand men. If we now add up these above-mentioned sums, we can
calculate:
i. In troops on foot
1) Janistries proper,
who can take the field, about - - - 22000
2) Egyptian
Janistries - - -
3000
3) Border soldiers to
supplement and reinforce the Janistries - - - 10000
4) Regular
artillerymen - - -
6000
5) Artillerymen,
lying on the borders - - - 4000
45000
ii. To troops on
horseback:
1) Spahis - - -
20000
2) Provincial -
riders, at most - - - 75000
3) Border riders - -
- 10000
105000(*)
(*)
This following essay is literally in A.F. Buschings (Hoogd.) weekly
reports of new maps, etc. being the piece of the year, and is an
extract from the Etat préfent des forces Turques par terre
1774. from a (probably Russian) officer, and is found in detail in
Buschings (Hoogd:) Magazine of the year 1777. With this Etat &c.
as well as Buschings extract from it, it is indeed, as stated,
situated. But one must not forget that the description of the
Turkish land power only refers to a war with Russia, namely from the
year 1774, and therefore also suffers various changes in wars with
other powers at other times.
(*)
The power calculated according to this statement in the year 1774,
in the war against the Russians, would therefore, according to the
state of the Turkish Empire at that time, have amounted to 150
thousand men.
§. XL. Of the
learning of the Turks.
Learning owes an
extraordinary amount to the Arabs and Caliphs (Governors of the
Prophet); for in the dark times it was nourished and maintained by
them. But the Turks have no share in this gain. Their former warlike
government has choked all desire for it in them. In the villages,
with the exception of the Imam, there is seldom anyone who can read.
There are schools among the people, (Maedras), which also vary
according to the size of the cities. But most of it does not consist
so much in public as in private schools. Besides reading and writing
in Turkish, one mainly applies oneself to the Persian and Arabic
languages: but those who do so are few in number. Such Pupils and
Students, who often grow quite old, generally form the worst people.
The female Sex is, for the most part, left out of all instruction;
and the Common People also receive no education. Only those remain
who wish to become merchants, or something else in the State. One
must not think of Universities. Public Libraries are not found,
except those which belong to the great Mosques, and are sometimes
reasonably numerous, but are not open to any Christian. A few
persons often possess a fair stock of books. To purchase these
requires all the more money, if they consist solely of manuscripts.
The printing press, namely, has not made great progress among the
Turks, up to now. That of Constantinople was established in the
first half of this century, under the promotion of a Grand Visir,
and the instigation of a certain Ibrahim Efendy. That one is still
there, but is no longer used. The Armenians and Jews also have small
printing-offices, where they print all sorts of trifles, for
instance the prices of goods, but no Bibles or parts thereof, in
their languages. The manuscripts are sold in the bookshops, just as
books are sold with us. (*) But none that touch religion are left to
Christians; and when buying other books they are even ridiculed and
mocked. In the above-mentioned city there are, possibly, 20 thousand
people, (and how many will there not be in the whole Empire?) who
either entirely or partly live by the copying of books, and
therefore, if printing were established, would have no existence.
When printing was invented in Europe, this difficulty was but
slight, because most of the copyists of books were monks, who earned
their living outside that. Such a deficiency now protects the Turks
against an inundation of so many useless and harmful books; but at
the same time it prevents so many sciences, and their more general
spread. It would also encounter difficulties, if one wanted to make
use of printed Korans, and the state of their religion might
especially oppose it, as they had to fear that many un-Mahomedan
books would be imported into the country from Europe, and the people
would be brought to other thoughts. Even the Turkish policy prevents
the establishment of book printers, in order that no rebellious
writings or unpleasant reports may come so easily among the people.
In general, the Turks do not like printed books as much as they do
manuscripts. And this disdain arises among other reasons, because
their manuscripts, often, are beautifully written, and they, because
of the Arabic letters hanging together, certainly look much more
elegant than almost the still so beautifully and elegantly printed
books. Their copyists of books are also book binders. The books are
covered with common or Turkish leather, and very artfully covered
with gold in all sorts of figures. Their style is pompous and
long-winded. The high-flown with conceit makes it unnatural. —
In poetry they claim to have done something special. They observe
the measure in this respect, with and without rhyme. The figurative
in it climbs so high in symbols, that one almost needs a divine
understanding, to be able to understand the contents. What they now
know as genuine of the description of the geography, that still
comes from Ptolemy, but it is very falsified by many spurious
additions. Their descriptions of the country are very defective and
wrong; and their ignorance concerning other countries and peoples is
incredible. Their history is full of fables; the chronology, except
their Hegire, very confused; the Biblical history entirely wrong;
the general History a hodgepodge. They find a special taste in
descriptions of lives, which are not so much true as wonderful. The
Antiquities, instead of being preserved, are steadily, more and more
spoiled, and, the matter continuing in this way, there will be
scarcely any more remains of them to be found in a short time. This
is experienced by those who have read the descriptions of travels,
at the beginning of this century or in the previous set up, with the
present view, because the Weather, and still more superstition, has
made the then legible Inscriptions illegible, and the Pyramids,
Figures, Statues, etc. unrecognizable, or even mutilated. The
Inscriptions namely always arouse the suspicion among the Turks,
that they contained an announcement of hidden treasures, and that
the Europeans therefore so eagerly sought them out. But their
Religion induces them to destroy the Figures in the Bas-reliefs, and
still more the Statues, because they consider them on the one hand
as objects of idolatry, and on the other hand imagine, that the
image or statue representing a person was in some way inspired by
such a one, and that its soul cannot therefore be completely at
rest; wherefore at least the heads are cut off, or the faces are
defaced. They also imagine that the statues of men were entitled to
demand souls from their makers, and, because they could not give
them, that the Devil makes use of them to disturb men; but that this
should be prevented when they are mutilated. For this reason they
tolerate no paintings on which men are depicted, and no statues,
except those of the Sultans, which are preserved in the Seraglio at
Constantinople. (*) — They calculate the months strictly
according to the Moons; wherefore their years are shorter than ours,
as consisting of 354 days, as one can clearly deduce from the
following list, according to which, in 33 years, their shorter
months fall again at the same time: for example,
Lunar months. 30
Muharrem
29 Safur
30 Rabial-aual.
29 Rabial-achar.
30 Dschemafiul-aual.
29 Dschemafiul-achar
30 Redscheb.
29 Schaban.
30 Ramassan.
29 Schewal.
30 Silkade.
29 Silhidsche.
Solar months.
September 16.
October 16.
November 14.
December 14
January. 13.
February. 11.
March 12.
April 11.
May 10.
June 9.
Julius 8.
August 7.
The account of time
bears the name of Hegire. They esteem Mathematics highly, but make
little use of it, and lack the instruments to make a proper use of
it. Archimedes and Euclid are known to them. Their Philosophy is
that which Averroes and Avicenna have learned from Aristotle,
consisting more in imitated subtleties than in independent and free
investigations; which the Koran prevents them from doing. In Physics
they have not got far. With them it contains little more than the
common knowledge of a Farmer. Their Medicine rests solely on
experience. Averroes and Avicenna are indeed mentioned, and quoted
in boast, but partly not rightly interpreted, partly wrongly
applied. Anatomy is not even allowed to take place on the corpses of
men, and they do not think of making experiments on the bodies of
animals. Of chemistry, for the sake of medicine, they know nothing
at all. With aschemy only here and there one and another is so much
occupied, that he and his family come to the beggar's pocket. A
Doctor of Physician is called by them Hekim, and the chief Physician
at Constantinople Hekim-Baschi, who must always be a Turk. But
there, as in other countries, three special and different sciences
do not belong to medicine, which also require three different men,
namely a Doctor, Apothecary and Surgeon; but one and the same person
must be knowledgeable in all these things. As great as this elf is;
so badly is it satisfied by the physicians there, and such a medical
polymath would not be considered a slob among us, in all such cases.
The main cure consists in prescribing a very strict diet. The
sufferer is only allowed water with rice or white bread and some
lemon juice in it. Therefore the European physicians, as well as
those Jewish and Greek, who have studied in Europe, do not make much
headway among the Turks. But they are accustomed, because they are
bad payers in healing, and especially in death, to make a contract
at the beginning of the cure, and then to have the first half paid,
so that if the second does not follow, they are in any case free
from compensation. Their barbers would not be at all right with us;
for they are not at all handy. Namely, they sit down on a high
place, take the head of the one who is being shaved between the
legs, pull his skin upwards to the resin pan, and shave his beard in
this way. The washing is done so clumsily that one must fear to lose
the skin in the process. Touching theology and jurisprudence, one
knows, from what has been said before, that, according to the
Mohammedan religion, they go together. Their morality is not in any
connection, but in short and witty, even often ambiguous, phrases
which, after the Eastern manner, are symbolically disguised. They
are especially great in that they exorcise the incantations of
spirits, the rigid witch-doctor, the soothsayer and magic in general
among the sciences known to them. Sultan Mustapha III occupied
himself with the prediction from the stars; and this was the reason,
that, in his war against Russia, nothing was taken up in important
matters, before and until the Star-dowser of the Seraglio
(Munefckjm-Bafcky) had been consulted. He calculated the days, and
indicated, when the army had to break up, cross a river, yes, a
battle had to be fought. No journey of a Great was undertaken, in
matters of importance, for the Sultan, unless the hour and minutes
for the departure were determined and calculated in advance. The
result, on all occasions, clearly showed, that one had been
deceived; but nevertheless there was no lack of excuses, to excuse
oneself.
Note that the Turks
form a branch of the Tartar nation; thus one can also very easily
understand that their language is a daughter of the Tartar. It
sounds very rough to the ears, and is not rich in words in itself.
They need Persian to give their language grace and elegance in
conversation, poetry, and indulgences that do not belong to a fine
taste; and Arabic to express artistic, learned, and divine matters
properly. This mixture of the manifold Arabic and Persian under
Turkish makes the latter unusual for the foreigners, and very
difficult for the natives themselves. It suffers not only from the
various Provinces, but also from a profession and the duties of the
office, extraordinary changes, since, according to the matter and
its content, now more, now less Arabic or Persian is mixed in. And
this difficulty of that language is, moreover, increased beyond
measure by the various Characters of the letters, together with the
usual utterance of the vowels, which have besides that few, and many
sounds. — They use Arabic letters with some slight changes,
and also read, like the Jews and Arabs, from the right to the left
hand. They also write in the same manner. They get their paper from
Europe, especially from Venice, but have it, before use, made so
smooth that it looks like our folded linen. Their pens are cut from
a fine reed, and their ink resembles our printer's ink. They write
on their knees, and at the most a board serves as a support. The
masters, even among the Christians and Jews, who can write, still
carry their writing instrument on the left side in their belt, as
Ezekiel IX 2, 3, 11. says. The vowels, which consist of straight or
curved strokes, and are now placed above, now again below the
consonants, are, except in the Koran, seldom expressed. The manner
of writing in these is almost as in our printed books: but that used
in judicial essays, accounts, letters, and other essays, differs
from it. In the Koran everything is written straight; but in this
crooked, like a fourth part of a chariot wheel. The letters to
important persons are not sealed in an envelope, as is often the
case with us, but put in a purse, which, according to the dignity of
the person to whom they are addressed, is less or more precious. On
their Signets are never figures, but flecked names, or something
from the Koran, or else a motto. The material on which they print
the Signets is a multifaceted wax, consisting of many soft, but
hardening Compositions: by which one can easily add Dan: VI 18. and
similar passages from the Bible. That manner of writing, which
serves for inscriptions, and becomes very artful by many strokes,
bears the name of Kufi. No one should have the desire to travel to
them, in order to learn the Music. Their vocal music is not
harmonious, but falls into the rough and wild, and seems to be
suited to indicate and express the strong and pleasant emotions of
the mind. Their instrumental music is more for the gardens and the
open field, than for a closed room. Thus a strong affect prevails in
their songs, but mostly in a melancholy manner. Although they
understand the Measure; the way to write notes, however, is wanting
to them. They learn only by hearing, and yet the Measure is kept,
when several play together. They have neither a Bass, nor other
changes in the Music, but all play the same. (*) Very simple kinds
of Zithers, Violins, Lyres, Toggles and Timpani are the usual
instruments, which express something wild by rustling and croaking
tones. The commonest, which even women use, to accompany the voice
and other instruments, is a round bent, thin piece of wood, about
the width of a hand, in which a stretched skin is fastened. In the
round there are also 5 or 6 holes, in which pieces of broadly beaten
white can be turned on thin shafts. This instrument is called,
shaken in a trembling manner, in the hand, and with the fingers,
according to the measure, struck on the sheet.
(*)
In a Greifwald newspaper of the year 1773 it was reported: "that
old manuscripts were not seldom, and often for a reasonable price to
be had by the booksellers in Cairo and Constantinople". But
this is unfounded. It may, perhaps, have happened about this or
that, by a special coincidence; but in general it will never happen.
(*)
The images of the Sultans in the Seraglio are said to have been
painted with watercolour without shadow; of which subsequently other
Turks also had copies made, without bothering themselves about the
superstition of their co-religionists. (*) Mr. Murat, Swedish
interpreter at Constantinople, invented the art of setting Turkish
music to notes, and published the following work: Essai sur la
Melodie Oiëntale, ou explication du système des modes &
des mesures de la Musique Turque par Antoine du Murat. This report
can be read in Prof. Biornstahl's letters of the Schloezersche
Correspondence, part II. piece 8. No. 23.
§. XLI. Of the
civil condition, and other things pertaining thereto.
The various kinds of
money, and their Value, must be known, one will rightly understand
the Turkish reports and affairs. At Constantinople, Adrianople and
Great Cairo are large mints, to mint money, on which never busts,
but only the Emperor's engraved name is stamped. On the obverse is
written: Sultan N. N. Ibn Sultan N. N. El-Sultan, Ibn El-Sultan;
that is, "Emperor N." N. a Son of Emperor N. N. who
himself is "Emperor and a Son of an Emperor:" and on the
reverse is written: Sultan el-Ben-eyn, we Chakan el-Bahhreyn. Which
Title rhymes, and in both, relative words, Berreyn and Bahhreyn,
would, according to the opinion of the Turks, convey something
exalted and much expressive. They are of an Arabic origin, and stand
in the twofold number. This rhyme actually means: Lord of both
lands; Lord of both seas. By the heathlands are understood Europe
and Asia, and by the two seas the black and white, that is, the
Mediterranean Sea. One does not want to be grand about Africa and
the Indian and Red Sea, in the imagination, that the twofold number,
here, indicates something more exalted. Chakan is a Tartar Title,
which means something like King of Kings. Even when the Emperor
takes the field, money is minted in the army, with this inscription:
Fi Ordüi humajun; that is, under the tent of the Most
Illustrious. There is silver and gold money. To the first belong the
Asper, the Para and the Piaster. An Asper is the smallest kind of
money. Three of them go into a Para. There are not many of them, and
the merchants in their accounts counted one, of which two and a half
go into a Para. Forty Para make a Piaster. There are single, five,
ten, twenty, thirty Para-pieces, as well as Piasters, and also one
and a half Piaster-pieces. A Piaster is a (German) Specie-guilder or
?? Groseen. Of gold-money only Dir caats, which are expressed by the
Italian word Zechinen, are minted; but they are of various Values.
Some are of a hundred and five Para; others, and indeed the most
common, of a hundred and ten Paras are called, after the various
places where they are minted, Dschindscherli and Sermapuppen; the
Arabic are of 130 Paras; the Fondukli of 155 Paras. Of foreign
silver money, only Raguser pieces to one and a half Piastres, and
Imperial Dollars to ?? Piastres are current; on the other hand, all
European Ducats are accepted. The Venetian are considered equal to
the Fondukli; but the Dutch and all others are reckoned at 146 and 2
thirds Para, and therefore three to 11 Piastres. Here and there,
also, in merchant cities a variable Exchange takes place, although
it is prohibited by Imperial regulations. Five hundred Piastres make
up a Purse; and besides these usual Purses in accounts, as well as
in trade and commerce, (*) there are also gold purses, in which go
15 thousand Turkish Ducats. Of the great Interests which the money
gives, has been spoken of before; but the least among good Friends
are 7 or 8 per hundred. The Money Doubters, who also shoot money to
high per cent, are called Saraphs. — There is no doubt that a
country so rich in mountains would not also be rich in Mines, as
such are then, from time to time, actually discovered; but the Turks
are bad at constructing mountain works, and for Christians this is
also a very questionable and dangerous matter, because they can
expose themselves to great Avanis. Of good kinds of stones.
Marble, Porphyry,
etc., there is no lack. There is an abundance of sea salt, and the
mountain salt comes from Moldavia.
Trade and commerce
is, in the Turkish Empire, reasonably free. There is no hunting
right there, but everyone may shoot the Game. A tax is imposed on
the Fisheries, although the Europeans may fish freely. Monopolies,
which are so common in European States, under many apparent
pretexts, to the detriment of the largest number of the country's
inhabitants, were in my time, up to now, not yet introduced. An
unusually large quantity of goods is brought from Europe, especially
much English, Dutch, and French cloth. The Armenians and Jews are,
between the Europeans and the country's inhabitants, mostly the
Brokers (Censals). Otherwise, the Persian trade was also very
considerable; but, since Persia, about the year 1740, with the
extinction of the Royal Tribe, became a scene of internal wars and
devastations, it has almost ceased. Turkey in itself supplies the
merchant with considerable goods. The wool stands almost at the top.
Very many ships are loaded with it. What we call Camel's hair is
goat's hair from Angora. The Turkish yarn is dyed at Adrianople and
Smyrna. This, however much the Europeans have tried, has not been
able to be imitated, although they knew even the ingredients for
this dye. And, since this can not even be done to all places in
Turkey, this is a characteristic that it is due to the water and
other circumstances of the country. More detailed reports concerning
the Levantine trade in Corn, Tree Oil, Figs, Razines, Coffee, Rice,
Medicines, Spices, Silk, etc., are found elsewhere. — In the
Levant almost everything, even wine and firewood, is sold by weight.
At Smyrna the weight consists of Drachmas, Okkes and Kanthars. An
Okke is two and a half our pounds, and the Kanthar resembles 100 our
pounds by weight. As for the rest wagons are not common; so
everything is transported from one place to another 3 by means of
Camels and Mules, whereby a necessary number of men are found for
the delivery and safety. A certain company of such travellers with
merchandise is called a Caravan, and a road which they can cover in
one go with Camels, Konak. Yet one Konak is never the same as
another in width and distance, but is adapted to the condition of
the road, thus requiring more or less hours. But, as Camels and
Mules keep almost everywhere a fairly constant pace; so one can
reckon 2 hours to a German mile, and from that conclude to the day's
journeys, which occur in the Levant travel descriptions, which can
amount to between 4 and 6 German miles. It should be noted that the
Camels never go side by side, but always behind each other, so that
a Caravan, depending on its size, extends half a mile, or even a
whole mile in length. — Such posts as we have with us, are not
in Turkey; but every fortnight, letters from Constantinople to
Vienna, and also back, are brought by mounted Janistas; and from the
first mentioned place to Smyrna, Angora and Aleppo are fixed letter
carriers; to other places and in extraordinary times one must make
use of the opportunities that arise. On the principal roads, certain
guards are indeed posted for their safety; but if the commanding
Bajfaoi' Aga himself is not strict; then they are, not infrequently,
highway robbers themselves, or at least make themselves pay dearly
for the safety they provide. Otherwise, the trade by water, within
the various Provinces of the Empire, is carried on by means of
various kinds of ships. Between Constantinople, Egypt, and Syria,
this is done with armed frigates, in order to be able to defend
themselves against the Maltese; but in the Archipelago and the
Hellespont with Voliken. These have only one mast, but long sprits
to stretch the reasonably large sails. The stern projects higher out
of the water than it is under it. Above, it is often decorated, and
hung with garlands of flowers and other things. The ship itself is
flat, and has a widely projecting prow. — Rich or
distinguished travelers provide themselves with a Ferman from the
Porte. Then, without contradiction, they can take away the horses
for the continuation of their journey anywhere. This same power is
also possessed by all messengers sent out by the Porte. Although
those arts do not flourish in Turkey, which necessity, convenience
or splendor has produced with us; nevertheless they do not lack all
this, according to their country's manner or customs. Although they
are not far advanced in mechanics; yet they have no lack of gold,
silver, copper and ironsmiths. They do not come close to ours in
hammered work, in new models, and in purity in large pieces; but
they know, nevertheless, that in making gold arm-ornaments and other
pieces, in use there in the country, as well as in working copper
and tinning it, advantages which we do not have. (*) For fine work
in gold, the artist is allowed to come into the house, who brings
his tools and furnace, and, where he wants, sets up his workshop. —
The silk-bow succeeds, with a reasonable ease and still greater
profit, on the islands of the Archipelago, and the Greek, Natolian
and Syrian coasts. Cloth-manufacturers are entirely absent; but all
the more there are manufactories, in which silk, tree-wool,
camel-hair fabrics, and indeed according to their taste, are made
very beautifully and costly. Constantinople, Angora, Aleppo, and the
island of Scio are very famous in this respect. The silk shirts for
the more affluent women, belts, veils, as well as a kind of velvet
for the sofa-cushions are made with great beauty. In this the
inhabitants of Brussa excel in particular. Embroidery is brought
there to the greatest perfection. In Turkey they embroider images
and flowers from life; and this is the work especially and mostly of
women, not only of the great, but also of slaves. The Turkish
carpets in all their thickness, variety of colours and flowers, and
various sizes, are worked with large needles. They also make,
especially in Egypt, mats, which are of fine reed on thin rope, very
pure, and worked after all kinds of models. In Smyrna and other
places are good Cotton-Printing-Houses; also there, and especially
at Kanea on the island of Candia, much soap is made.
The same crafts are
there, as with us, and indeed by way of guilds, as masons, tailors,
shoemakers, carpenters, etc. What they cannot make themselves, they
get from Europe, or from European and resident artists. Among the
latter, however, the watch-makers made a great fortune; since
clocks, instead of other imperfect time-keeping, for instance by
water-glasses, have become fashionable among the Turks. The Painters
do not know much more, than to make some shoddy work, or at the most
common figures and trees. Becoming a master at the crafts is fixed
at certain times, when solemn processions are held with Music in the
cities. Agriculture is diligently practised, and in the winter,
which is the rainy season there, most is sown. It is there almost as
in Europe, but easier, because the ground is light, and with the
plough, which is generally made of wood without any iron, one does
not cut the earth at all deep, but only about a hand's breadth. One
ploughs the land once, sows it, and harrows the seed under. No
trouble is made to weed out the weeds. All fields rest and bear one
year after the other. No horses are used for ploughing, but oxen,
and chiefly buffaloes. The greatest diligence is still expended in
planting olive trees and vine, where it thrives. Cattle breeding is
mostly limited to stud farms and herds of goats and sheep. But,
because of everything large tributes must be given, and no one knows
whether he, what he has, his heirs will receive, and the
encouragements, and even more the rewards are usually lacking; thus
the greatest hope does not work more, than he needs for himself and
his age.
(*)
It is strange, that the true calculation of the Purses, so often, is
done wrong. Still the greatest geographic writer of our time, Mr. D.
Busching declared, in his (Hoogd:) weekly reports ?? Maps for the
year 1773 No. 40. 15 hundred Purses for 7 hundred and 50 thousand
Prussian Reichsthalers: because it is only so many Piastres, of
which one is only three quarters of such a Taalder. And in that for
the year 1775 5 Piasters are declared for one Ducat (page 410) and 4
thousand Purses for 2 millions of Daalders (page 412.). Will these
be Prussian Daalders, as it seems; then it is untrue. There are only
so many Piasters or Lion-Daalders.
(*)
The frequent use of copper vessels in the Levant is, as much as is
generally believed, not harmful because of the there holding, very
protruding and often repeated tinning.
§. XLII. Of the
domestic condition of the Turks.
Among the Turks,
almost all families are esteemed equally; none is excluded from the
ascent of the highest offices of honour; as also none, by their
actual possession, is insured against a complete fall. —
Marriages take place in a manner very different from ours; they are
concluded before both parties have seen and spoken to each other;
although it sometimes happens that the Bridegroom, through his
mother or some other person, may obtain a picture of his future
wife. On the wedding day, the dowry is sent to the Bridegroom's
house. When the Bride is fetched, then this is done in disguise, and
her Father's house; mourns and weeps over it as if someone had died.
At the wedding feast as well as at all other solemn visits the male
and female sex have their company and amusements separate and apart
from each other. — The condition of most Turkish women is
severe, and the man's good nature makes at most an exception.
Because a well-to-do man has several wives; this alone causes
jealousy and envy among them, not to mention other passions. The man
can, on all occasions, repudiate them, and, by threatening to do so,
make them afraid. The rule of the man can therefore be tyrannical,
and otherwise he can also, by using slaves, break the marital
fidelity as often as he pleases. These are kidnapped or bought
Christian women, who fall into the hands of the Turks on the
Russian, Polish, Hungarian and Italian borders; and besides that
Georgia and Circas with the neighboring countries must also pay a
common human tribute; yes, the inhabitants there are so dehumanized,
that the husbands and wives, not less the parents the children, and
these sell them either by force or cunning. — The number of
white and black slaves, which are brought annually to
Constantinople, can indeed be determined with no certainty; but they
will amount, one year counted by the other, to no less than ??5
thousand. What one cannot get rid of there at a reasonable price;
that is carried to other provinces, especially to Egypt, where the
white slaves are rare and expensive. Otherwise the Christians and
Jews might also buy slaves of the Christian religion; but Mustapha
III has forbidden this, under severe punishment, which can extend to
death. (*) A man may sell the bought or stolen slaves, when he is
tired of them; although they usually then obtain their freedom, if
they have brought children into the world. A real, but divorced
woman must be returned her matrimonial property, except when she has
given occasion for divorce by an indecent act. Women do not obtain
these so easily; but they may desire them, when the man does not
give her the necessary maintenance, or has wanted to abuse her
unnaturally. In order to indicate this latter point to the Judge,
they are accustomed, without saying a word, merely to turn over the
thin undershoes they have taken off, with which they go into the
rooms. The Judge understands this metaphor further. Meanwhile, among
the Turks, the children bred from co-wives have the same rights, as
well as the same paternal inheritance with those who are born of
legitimate women.
It is almost
unnecessary to mention how, in polygamy, the discipline of children
is placed. The understanding, especially in the female sex, is left
very untrained; no one thinks of the real improvement of the will
and heart. The necessity of it is not even understood. Wild and
licentiousness is considered something unconstrained. The children
of common people run, without any instruction or discipline, along
the streets; those of nobles, whose sons are called Tschelebi, have
Slaves and Enslaved Men as Tutors and Stewards; certainly, very
unfit persons for such an important matter. The Mohammedan religion
is not able to produce anything good in children, and domestic
examples are able to further pervert nature, which is already
corrupt in itself. The Eunuchs are also by the Chief overseers of
women, and are entirely deprived of their manhood, so as not to give
the landlord the least suspicion in expiation of his lusts with his
wives.
With regard to the
long garments of the Turks in general, I thought it worthy of remark
here, that the Chiefs not only wear a light long outer garment over
the long petticoat, and 'also a' fur over it, but moreover, on their
journeys and otherwise, take several with them, to be able to
exchange for convenience and splendor. This is very conveniently
transferred to the prohibition of Christ, whereby he forbade the
Apostles to carry more than one coat on their journey; just as he
would not allow them to use shoes, but instead to tie on shoe soles.
X 10. Marc. VI 9. Their shirts are made nearly like the European
women's shirts. The trousers are, in many classes, of an unusual
width, and so full of pleats, that for a pair well over 40 yards of
linen three-quarters wide are needed. The turban gives them a
special dignity, and is of very different kinds and shapes,
according to the rank of the persons who wear it. Gold and silver
are not seen at all on the clothes of the men's sons, as it, in
their opinion, does not belong to the ornament of men; but they
spend a great deal of money on horsebacks and saddles, daggers,
pistols and harquebuses. The Emperor himself makes no exception
here, plumes with precious stones on his Turban, besides three
plumes of Candid herons, one in front, and two on either side,
somewhat distinguishing him from others. The principal Bassas have
of the first kind one of the same on the left side, and lesser
persons only one in common. It is known that the Turks have
appropriated the colour green; and no one, who is not a Mohammedan
or a European, may wear such a colour in their country, as a colour
in a certain respect sacred to them. — When riding they use
boots; but when walking only slippers, which they take off in the
apartments and when praying. This last serves to explain those
passages in the Bible, where the taking off of shoes is given as a
sign of outward reverence for God and man. The Easterners of the
male race seldom wear stockings. When therefore the first Christians
were baptized among them, it happened very easily, by their climbing
into the edge of the water. Handel. VIII 38. — The watch is
worn in a purse on the breast near the heart. The undergarment,
(Dtiaman) over which the outer garment, (Feredsche) often hangs
open, only from the shoulders down, is provided with narrow sleeves,
and tied around the hips with a belt, in which the pistols are
stuck, as well as the Hattagan or a certain knife, in the shape of
our sabres, three quarters long or a perfect El. This is seldom
seen, because it is covered by the outer garment; and one can
understand by this, ??the Ehud, (Judge: III 20. etc.) Joab, (2 Sam:
XX 10.) and others could use their Eastern swords, unnoticed, to
pierce. The outer garment is, in the summer, of very light material;
but in the winter of cloth, lined with fur. The Turks are
exceedingly fond of the beard. They consider it an essential
privilege, by which God has wanted to distinguish the male from the
female thought. And so one can easily understand, why in David's
time it was considered the greatest insult, that one had cut off his
ambassador's. 2 Sam. X 4. 5. They are also accustomed to comb it, to
puff it up, to incense it, and to anoint it with fragrant waters and
ointments. And since they remain unyielding in this ancient custom,
as in the mode of dress in general; so one can, without mistake,
conclude with certainty from the present to the former customs. —
Even the meanest people wear gold or silver rings, which in the case
of the better-off are set with stones, on which their names or an
inscription are engraved. And, since these rings serve the Easterns
as insignia, seal and inscription are identical expressions. (2
Timothy ii 9.) These seals are printed with black ink, similar to
our printer's ink; wherefore the passages from the Holy Scripture,
Rev. vii 2. etc. Ezek. ix 4. will not seem strange or absurd to
anyone. The greater part of their names, especially male ones, are
taken from the Old Testament, and are bent and changed somewhat to
the Arabic or Turkish pronunciation. The Turkish women in their mode
of dress come fairly near the Greek, and, however concealed they may
be, are never idle. There are special days and places in Turkey,
when they sell and buy, but covered, raw wool and silk, as well as
wool, silk and all kinds of woven materials. At Smyrna, Angora and
elsewhere are common women's markets. And their work is still, as I
have often seen, that they, covered with a veil, fetch water from
the often remote springs. Wherefore the punishment which Joshua
inflicted on the Gibeonites, (Joshua IX 21. etc.) consisted in their
degradation from military affairs to womanly occupations. The female
sex is, as is known, exceedingly modest. For Christians and Jews it
is a very dangerous business to have to do with a Turkin. They
either forfeit their lives, or must adopt the Mohammedan religion,
and marry her; at least it costs them a great deal of money to
settle the matter. The common women of all kinds go out of the
rooms, even covered with a white veil. The Turks, for instance, are
of the opinion that beautiful women cannot be looked at without the
evil desires of men, and that they are therefore considered and
concealed. If they go walking alone; then they often disregard the
rules of European politeness: and this is the reason that male sons,
especially of other persuasions, gladly get out of the way, to avoid
their attacks and presumptuous impudence. But otherwise this is
done, for the most part, in a large company, under the supervision
of Eunuchs or black Arabs. Since carriages are not at all in use,
the men ride as well as the women. — If prominent male sons go
out for pleasure; then a certain number of servants go ahead in
pairs, carrying the things necessary for eating and drinking, as
well as for changing clothes. To ride on donkeys is, in most
Provinces, not contemptible. Their saddles differ much from ours.
These are long and soft, and the children are usually placed behind
them. The stirrups are short and broad, so that the slippers do not
fall out so lightly. There is a great difference between these
saddles and those for camels and asses (Sphemer). These are mainly
fitted for girding up the burdens, of wood and leather, therefore
hard and uncomfortable; wherefore one must put either coverings, or
the long Eastern garments on them, in order to ride at all
comfortably: as this was also observed by Christ's disciples at the
time of his entry into Jerusalem. Matth: XXI 7. —- In European
Turkey there is indeed a kind of carriages: but these are not so
much used for travelling, as for taking a rest. They have long
wheels, are small, with latticework, and hung with common or
precious material. The latter can be moved aside to create air, so
that the latticework remains, so that those who sit in it are not
seen on their sofa cushions.
Companies of both
ideas are considered indecent. Each one joins his peers. Brothers
and sisters-children of different generations will not easily see
each other, I am not mentioning any further kinship. No one asks
after the health of another's wife or daughter, because this would
be completely against their politeness, and would be taken as an
insult. A familiar intercourse with other religious parties does not
take place. They are merely visits for action or ceremony. The
offering of coffee is begun, if rank does not permit a pipe of
tobacco to be offered. Immediately before the coffee, some preserved
fruit is also offered. Only one cup of coffee is served, only half
full, and usually without sugar. This is followed by a sorbet or
sweet drink. During this time, business is transacted. If they wish
the visit to come to an end, then a sweet-smelling water is brought,
and the guests are sprinkled with it; then follows an incense, with
which very fine cloths are spread over the heads, so that it does
not evaporate so quickly. The Turks of rank are very industrious,
both in their visits and in their intercourse with other peoples,
and the Europeans are despised by them with their much chatter and
laughter. But as silent as the male sex is in its intercourse, the
louder and more talkative is the female. Wherefore the Turks have
this proverb: "Two Asses make a noise like a Caravan; but two
Wives like a Council". — Persons of a low rank stand
before the Great in a very humble form. The hands hang down against
the lower abdomen, one over the other, and the eyes are cast down to
the ground. With deep Compliments the custom so often found in the
Bible still holds good among them, namely, that the inferior should
fall on his knees before the Great: and before the Princes and Great
in the East no one may appear without a present. — It would be
very improper if a woman were to go to the door of her husband, even
after a long journey, and receive him. — In common intercourse
they regard no rank; but in ceremonies and ceremonies each is
assigned his own place. With men of the law (Ulema), as with us, the
right hand is the place of honour, but with soldiers the left; so
that the Grand Vizier and the Mufti, when they come together, have
no difference in this respect, since each, according to his opinion
and the prevailing custom, has the higher hand. Their greetings
among themselves and toward others consist in these words:
Salam-aleikom, that is: peace be with you, with which they, while
bowing their heads, lay their left hand on their breast: but
Christians and Jews may not address them with this, just as if they
could not wish them peace. The turban is never taken off in
greetings, and a Turk would believe that a European was making fun
of him if he took off his hat in his presence. The inferiors, when
addressing and departing, kiss the hem of the coat of a noble, or
press it against his forehead. The Orientals are not fond of
walking. When the weather is good they go to a pleasant place, where
there is water and shade, and stay there from morning till night.
Many even stay the night under tents. They are not accustomed to sit
on chairs, but either on the grass, over which a carpet is sometimes
spread, or on a low sofa, and indeed with their legs crossed over
each other. The domestic servants of the Orientals of both sexes are
not only sent out with the children alone, but are also taken along
when the husband and wife go out. The servants take children,
especially when they are a bit bigger, usually on their backs, so
that they put their hands around their necks, but keep their legs at
their sides, and look over them with their heads. Although the
furniture is not so abundant among the Turks as it is among us;
nevertheless there is an exception in this respect. For one finds
the Grands of the Empire, who have furnished their apartments, after
the European manner, with costly mirrors, armchairs, cupboards,
tables, etc. from France and England, or else with paintings of
landscapes and country views, but without human figures. In the
apartments, where they keep house, everything is so clean and neat,
that no one wears shoes in them; but the floors, stairs and
forecourts are not lightly swept and dusted; for they are very
indifferent about their houses and palaces. This is done partly from
a true principle of religion, because they were only foreigners
there; partly also for political reasons, because no one knows
whether he will long possess them, and whether their descendants
will inherit them. For this reason one seldom sees them improve a
house. They inhabit it as long as they can. If they are still alive
then; then they break it down completely and build a new one. The
most secluded part in larger houses serves as a dwelling place for
the women, and bears the name of Haerem. (*) The attics in the rooms
are painted, sometimes gilded, and the floor is covered with mats or
carpets. On the walls all around is the Sophar.
The preparation of
their food differs a great deal from ours. Instead of butter, which
does not succeed there, as it does with us, they not only use their
excellent oil, but also have the fat of curdled milk, which can be
eaten fresh on bread, and is probably the Cherriah (ntf??) of the
Hebrews. Judge: V 25. The rest they dry or use as an ingredient in
certain dishes; or use it as sour milk for food and drink. Meanwhile
the European Turks, in many provinces, use butter in abundance. As
to the use of spices, especially pepper and camel, they are
excessive. Their thin bread is baked not only in Nato, but also in
an unusually large number of regions of Arabia, Syria, and towards
the Euphrates, for want of wood, over cow and camel mist. And so it
can surprise no one that Prophet Ezechiel (Chapter: IV 12.) had to
bake his bread over the dung of man's extremity, instead of camel
mist, as a foreshadowing of impending punishments. These cakes, like
their bread, are put on the table almost as warm and fresh as they
come from under the ashes. Because no leaven gets into them, they
only last the day they are baked. Otherwise they are white, of a
good smell, and only half a finger thick. If they are used the next
day, out of necessity; then they must be warmed over coals, because
otherwise they would be too tasteless. A liquid, that which is
pressed from Susam-seed (Tachin'), and another, that which is called
Petmes, and is also sweetish, are poured together, and are like
their butter. Without the well-known Pillau or boiled rice, a meal
is not easily done. According to proportion, for instance one
measure of rice and two measures of water, they boil the latter
first, and then put the rice in, to let both boil together. Then
they leave the pot open, and, without covering it further, or
stirring the rice, let it boil until the water has consumed, and it
has become very thick. Then they pour in melted or brown butter or
fat, stir it with a spoon handle, cover the pot for about five
minutes, and then ladle up the Pillau. Otherwise it is also
sometimes finished with fowl or mutton, and boiled with raisins,
and, when it is put on the table, sprinkled abundantly with pepper.
Mutton and goat meat, with fowl is their favourite food. But in
general they are not great meat eaters, but are more fond of garden
and tree fruits. In eating Turks are generally very moderate. The
lesser ones content themselves with salt and bread, garlic or onions
and sour milk, to which occasionally olives are added, and on
ceremonial occasions other food; so that a Turk, according to our
way of living, generally helps himself to little food. Important
persons
use spoons made of
tortoise shells, smaller ones of horn, and the common ones of wood.
Knives and forks are not used on the table, and the meat is already
cut into small pieces in the kitchen. Besides, the meat is cooked so
soft that it falls to pieces when touched. Their way of eating is
therefore repugnant to us, because what we eat with spoons, they put
into their mouths with their fingers. With respectable people the
tablecloth consists only of a round piece of leather, which is
spread out on the floor. They use tinned copperware, and the
drinking vessels are large dishes of copper or porcelain. The guests
of equal rank sit on their feet crossed under them, and the lesser
ones on their knees all around. On the leather they place the bread
cakes all around. With their right hand they only touch the dish,
putting food on the bread, or sometimes on the leather, they break
the meat into pieces with their fingers, and then eat at will. When
they get up from eating; then they say, God be praised! Water is
their principal drink. After the meal they always wash themselves.
For refreshment they use the Sorbet, which is not made in any way,
and is seldom to the taste of the Europeans. The coffee pot with
them only gets cold, because on a summer day it stands in the
kitchen, but in the winter on the cooking-pan in the room: but,
because the cups are small, and are often poured barely half full, a
strong coffee-drinker there only drinks as much, as an average one
with us. The coffee is fairly strong, but is never drunk with milk,
and as saucers are not in use, the cup, to avoid burning the
fingers, is placed in a sort of saucer, which among common people is
made of copper, but among nobles is made very purely of broken
silver or gold. A Turk does not easily live without tobacco. Both in
the country and at home he has his pipe almost always in his mouth;
and from a sort of cleanliness it is, that he, at least in company,
swallows his saliva. But the tobacco is smoked very slowly, and
indeed from pipes, the stems of which are from 2 to 4 ells long;
through which nothing but an airy vapour comes to the mouth, which
does not bite the tongue, nor is it as intoxicating as with us. The
stems are often covered with silver or gold, and sometimes even
wrapped in some kind of material, which, especially in summer, is
moistened with a sponge, so that the smoke may come very cool into
the mouth. The landlord himself or a servant hands the lighted pipe
to all. The opium is taken by many in such a measure that they
become intoxicated in a certain sense, and thus, as if enraptured,
give themselves up to their dreams. At first they become waking
dreamers; but gradually all the powers of mind and body are so
weakened that, while the body is still alive, they become senseless,
insensible and inactive. Rich and distinguished Turks keep a great
number of servants and slaves of both kinds. If they buy the latter
by the more mature years; then they will not easily force them to
their religion; nor do they deal with them so mercilessly as the
Mohammedans do on the coasts of Barbary. Their cruelty is well
understandable. For the scum of those Turks, whom, except by death,
they wish to punish most severely, are banished from Turkey to the
coasts of Africa, or, in some places, are taken by the Moors and
employed, where they make a great fortune there in a short time. For
the rest, the Slaves of both kinds, who are not robbed in their
youth, or bought and then brought up, are generally the worst
creatures. Otherwise, their worldly condition could not be
considered unhappy. In their native country they are for the most
part no better than the Savages; but now they are well maintained
and clothed; instructed in many things, and often make a great
fortune; as one finds examples of this in the earliest Histories,
that they, behaving well, are adopted by their owners as children,
and made sons-in-law, Genes: XV 3. 1 Chronik: II 34. 35. The
beautiful slaves are described as exuberant, proud and self-willed,
and those who are stolen in tender youth, are inspired by the Turks
with a great hatred against the Christians. The children of slaves
are, according to the law, their own, unless the owner grants them
their freedom.
The Turks, as a lazy,
idle people, are uncommonly fond of pastime; but not of such as they
should exert their energy in, but of such as they can act as
dreaming spectators. Tightrope walkers, fighters, wrestlers, and
indeed in a coarse taste can gain something by it. There is also no
lack of such rabble of men and women. While showing their works of
art, in which they often express the most lustful movements, they
always let a music be heard, which with a common drum and some
hoarse wind instruments are made. Actual plays, comedies and operas
are not a fashion with them. The fighters, after the custom of the
ancients, smear themselves with oil, and have no other clothes on,
except a pair of leathern stockings. As they behave like monkeys,
with their various swings and simulated attacks; one becomes
dissatisfied in oneself, that one can thus degrade people below
their natural dignity. The games are short in their separate
performances, and at each end the principal spectators are asked for
a tip. Gambling is not so common among the Turks, except the game of
chess, the draughts-board and the Mangala, or the counting of a
multitude of beans or small stones in 12 hollowed-out holes in a
thick board. In winning or losing they show neither joy nor sorrow.
It is also done for no money; for gambling with money is considered
a great sin by them. Both thoughts seek the greatest amusement in
gardens or pleasant regions, especially where there is a rushing
water, or a strong passage of travellers, to pass the time as if
dreaming, while listening to music or smoking tobacco. For this
reason, coffee houses are also built not only in the cities and
villages, but also on popular highways. The Dscherid or stick game
is for the riders, and is considered by them, in a certain respect,
as a martial exercise. One spurs the horse on with all one's might,
and, while one lets it run around, one tries to get behind the back
of one's party, and to throw the stick at its shoulders, because one
should never aim at its belly. They pick up the sticks from the
ground at full gallop without dismounting, turn themselves around
the belly of their horse, and make several swings, to avoid the
throw intended for them. In this bodily exercise they are very
skilled. Among the pastimes belong the Baths, (*) which, on a
medicinal pretext, are visited by the women during the day, and by
the men's sons towards the evening, several times a month. Now,
because large companies of one sex, but nevertheless of all peoples
and denominations and ranks, usually come there, and converse with
each other without ceremonies; thus they stay there, while bathing,
drinking coffee and talking, for 3 or 4 hours. These are the proper
places of meeting: for the women to tell each other all sorts of
news, and to show each other their precious things. Should a man's
son sneak in; then, when he is undressed, he would not only be
easily known, but even be in danger of his life.
When the inhabitants
travel in Turkey; then they take with them a Mat or a Carpet, to sit
and sleep on, some blankets, a cooking-kettle and a bowl with a
drinking-bowl and a coffee-pot. These are all their utensils; and if
they have no Servants or Slaves, then they boil their own coffee and
rice.
(*)
Notwithstanding this Prohibition, they are still allowed to buy
them, for the benefit of the Turks, as their owners. But the buyers
close the deal before the court, and have a Tlam?? or judicial
testimony given concerning it, in order to be assured against all
the Avanien?? in the future.
(*)
Haerem not only means, as in a similar Hebrew word, a holy place,
but also the women and their dwelling. Haeremcyn, in the double
number, expresses the two supposed holy places, Mecca and Medina.
(*)
Bathing has become almost a necessity with them. It must, for
example, be done before marriage; and they do not take a slave into
the house who has not first been bathed.
§. XLIII.
National Character of the Turks, and other things pertaining
thereto.
In such a large
Empire as the Turkish, which is composed of so many Provinces
situated under many climates, the inhabitants cannot well have one
national Character: for example, the Turks in Greece proper, in
Egypt, on Kandia, Cyprus and elsewhere are more wicked than those
living around Constantinople, Smyrna, etc. The Europeans are
considered active, impetuous, brave, rough in their morals; the
Asiatic, on the other hand, are considered cowardly, tender,
effeminate and lazy. But the following will generally be true and
sufficient for their representation.
The Turkish nation
has a natural intellect and judgment. This can be inferred from the
fact that the Turks, without much justification, by themselves, in
all sorts of things, come reasonably far. The examples are many,
that men of the lowest state attain to the highest dignities, and
know very well how to conform themselves to them. It is a great
amusement to the hearers, in judicial, and often very delicate
investigations, with what subtlety and ignorance the Judges, without
being instructed in our legal matters, question the parties, and are
able to discover the most secret acts. Their ideas are, often,
singular in their kind. But this does not prevent them from being
uncommonly superstitious. There is not a people who could be more
attached to superstition. Almost all chance things, yes, even the
colours of their clothes, furnish them with matter for good or evil
premonitions. They consider dreams as a kind of divine inspirations.
Supposed astrologers, soothsayers, and enchanters are always very
popular among the principal people. Many carry talismans with them
during their lives. These superstitious signs, to protect themselves
from injuries and accidents, are not of one kind. One of them
consists in certain sayings from the Koran, or in prayers, which are
written on paper or parchment, and worn in a little bag on the naked
body on a cord. Another contains certain forms, cut on metal or
stone, and is fastened by means of a ring passing round the arm, or
elsewhere. They are even hung on the necks of horses. None of them
is free from the imagination that one can do much harm to another by
an evil glance of the eye. Charms to make a person fall in love are
believed to be used there, besides by the Mohammedans, also by the
Jews and Eastern Christians. Various charms are used with the sick;
indeed, passages from the Gospels are read for their cure, and
recourse is had to the graves of supposed Saints among the
Christians and Turks. If they have a strong and constant pain, in
whatever part of the body it may be; then they hold a small burning
blade or cloth to it; with which various words are spoken by
Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans, and crosses are made by the
former over the painful place. This is called the holy fire, and
great power is attributed to the ceremonies customary with it. —
In Egypt it is generally believed that the Feast of John the Baptist
puts an end to the plague. Their stature is well-made, stout and
manly. Their strength is not small, and they can bear burdens which
one must resist. Their bodily posture and movements are simple, not
so made, as ours, and they do not fence, while speaking, so much
with the limbs, especially with the hands. The Turkish women are
described as beautiful. Their skin, because of the covering, must
naturally be more tender. — A high opinion of themselves is
theirs in a very high degree. But which peoples are free from this
pride? Are not a Spaniard, Englishman, Frenchman, etc., in their own
eyes exalted above all others? According to the imagination of the
Turks, no State is better constructed than theirs; no nation equals
theirs to precedence; no religion more wholesome than theirs. What
we have previously remarked concerning their learning, enables us to
judge whether they may be considered infallible judges in these
respects. — They give all nations epithets; the Greeks they
call Tauschein, hares; the Jews Schifud, dogs; the Armenians
Boktschi, dung-eaters; the Germans Dschurur-Kiafir, filthy swearers,
etc. In their conduct they are serious, and one cannot well imagine
what dignity they are able to display constantly. As to customs,
habits, and manner of dress, they are extremely constant and
obstinate. They regard these as things connected with religion, so
that he who would change them, seems to change religion along with
them. When therefore Sultan Mahmud, in this century, borrowed some
arrangements and customs from the Europeans, he had to tolerate that
he should adopt the Frankish ??auer or the European Infidel was
called. Their way of life is very uniform. They go to bed early,
except for Ramasan, and rise early again. At 7 or 8 o'clock they
have a moderate breakfast, and towards evening their main meal. They
spend the day either in idleness or in occupation. City clocks for
dividing time are not at all in use. The calling of the Mosques to
prayer serves for this purpose, and one would believe that by the
construction of the first their Imam and the Dignity of the Religion
itself would lose something. The largest group lives moderately,
making do with little and small food; and, as their main drink is
water, the table does not require great expense. Of soups they know
almost nothing; and many live, in the season of fruit, only on
bread, fruit, and water. — Avarice is also with them the root
of all evil; and generosity is an almost entirely unknown virtue to
them. With money one can get the most from them. One can make
everything right with it, buy off life sentences, and procure as
many false witnesses and perjurers as one needs. Even the First
Names of the Court, the women, the eunuchs, and other Trustees are
won by this metal. And therefore things that are not of gold and
other precious materials are of no Value to them. Our taste in
paintings, furniture, porcelain, etc., is despicable to them. Has
one given a present to a Turk, of whatever state he may be, on a
certain occasion, as on a solemn day; then he regards this as an
obligation to a superior, and demands a new one in return: why also
the word, Baechschysch (gift), which is none, which one hears so
often in Turkey. They have little inclination for fine arts. They
love idleness more than work, so that they often spend the whole day
in playing. — If the earth, with a little effort, did not
produce almost everything of itself, and if the Turks did not live
so moderately; then they would soon have to perish. In business and
conduct they seldom keep the middle way, but are either naturally
just and hypocritical, or very malicious and deceitful. They can
become very easily angry and irascible. They are idle, and can
dissemble unusually. They incline to cruelty and tyranny. Their
desire for revenge is not easily sated. Trifles can set them to
second thoughts, which can seldom be taken from them. Their love, as
a rule, results in cruelties, of which one or the other party
becomes a horrible victim. Not infrequently, young men or women are
found murdered in lonely places or in the water, their faces
mutilated, so as to remain unknown. As insatiable as the Turks are
in their desire to amass wealth, so wasteful are they when it comes
to satisfying their lust or splendor. Their lust is worldly; and
both minds, to satisfy it, devise the most cunning means, or fall
into the most unnatural tracelessness: so that in them the very
remarkable word of the Apostle, Rom. 1 26-28. is fulfilled. This
should surprise no one. The climate is hot; and the Mohammedan
religion, instead of restricting and appeasing the lusts of the
flesh, rather leaves them complete freedom, and, instead of
providing means to subdue them, gives them food to follow. Among
them unnatural sins are in vogue, whose names must be covered with
eternal silence, and which nevertheless often form the substance of
their songs, and furnish matter for conversation, especially among
the Great. They have only base thoughts of the female sex,
considering women to be an inferior sort of people. On this account
no care is taken for their education, but they grow up without any
knowledge, and are wild and dissolute. Very few of them have any
understanding of religion. It is considered a matter of indifference
whether they pray or not; whether they go to the Mosque or not. When
a crowd of them is in the street or elsewhere; then they go as far
out of the way as they can, to be protected against their excesses.
— For the rest, the Turks are great lovers of tame cattle.
Most common fathers of the house have a sheep, which goes with them
to the fields, and follows them everywhere. Such a custom probably
took place in David's time; and therefore, on a certain occasion,
the Prophet Nathan spoke to him of a sheep, which had been fed and
maintained with such care by its owner. 2 Sam. XII. 1, etc.
Dogs and cats are so
well cared for by them, that the former are nowhere better off than
in Turkey. The streets are full of them, and it is considered a good
work to throw them bread and meat. If they were as quick-witted as
we are, then the pedestrians would be unhappy: but they are lazy and
do not stir, even greater would be the misfortune, if they became
mad; but of this they know nothing there. But the cats alone are
tolerated in the houses and rooms, and not the dogs, which are
considered unclean animals. From this one can understand, why they,
Rev. XXII 15. are presented as a symbol of reprehensible people, and
unworthy of salvation. Because now, because of a wrong and
ill-conceived conception of love, they do not let them be killed; so
they multiply in the streets and on all corners unusually. They are
extraordinarily fond of horses, and take almost more care of them,
than of people. Each horse, while grazing, is fastened to a pole by
means of a rope on one leg, in such a way, however, that it can walk
around freely up to a certain distance. In addition, they are all,
according to the owner, covered with a bad or expensive covering, to
be protected against heat or cold. The Turks generally ride on
stallions, and not on geldings. They are good horse-tamers,
straightening the horses more with good and gentle words, than with
cursing and beating. The bits and bridles are also different from
ours, oppressing the tongue at the slightest pull, so that the
horses let themselves be controlled further.
The thoughts of the
Turks about other nations and beliefs are not the best. They
consider it not only permissible, but even a work of religion, to
revile and mock them, in order that, to avoid this, they might be
induced to adopt the Mohammedan religion. Although the free gift is
not exercised among them to the same degree as among the Tartars;
yet it is not easy for anyone to perish of hunger among them. For
the Mohammedans of other sects they have as little love as the
Romanists have for the Protestants. The hatred against the
Christians is great, and among them those who worship images are a
scandal to them, nay, a horror. As for the Jews they have an
uncommon contempt, and they are an object of their ridicule.
But this reproach may
also, alas! be made of many Christians.
§. XLIV.
Internal condition of the Turkish Empire.
As great as the
Turkish Empire is, so weak is it in all this. The population does
not at all correspond to its size. (*) In many places the whole is
destitute of people. One need not travel to the borders between
Turkey and Persia, or to the Arabian deserts, to convince oneself of
this; but the best Provinces show this fully. The regions around
large cities are still quite well populated; but in places that are
further away, the inhabitants decrease imperceptibly, and the few
that remain, also leave them at last, and go to large cities. These
are, according to all observations, the abyss in which the human
race is devoured. The Polygamy, as experience teaches there, does
not populate the countries, but it does depopulate them. There are,
in comparison with our families, but few, in which, with many wives,
there are as many children, as we find among us in the succession of
the divine laws of marriage. — The reason why the people of
the country go to the great cities, is the severity and cruelty with
which the farmers are oppressed. — The wild regions are
steadily increasing, and one finds not only a few houses, but even
whole villages, which no one inhabits any more. Many kingdoms and
provinces bring little to the Porte. The Emperor, in comparison with
this rich country, draws little from the fat Egypt. Moreover, it is
full of internal unrest. It is the same with Morea, Georgia, Kandy,
and other countries. Many nations wandering wildly in Turkey
increase the disorder, and diminish the strength of the Empire,
among which belong the Turkmen, the Druses, and the Arab Hordes. —
Although many and various denominations are tolerated; yet this
tolerance is so badly regulated, that mutual oppressions,
hostilities, and hatreds are never wanting. — The Mohammedans
indeed constitute the dominant religion; but of Christians and Jews
there is no less an extraordinary number. — The Turkmen and
Druses, in a certain respect also the Arnauts, seem only outwardly
to profess Mohammedanism, but to abhor it in their hearts; which
latter the Jesids also do. The oppressions which the inhabitants of
Turkey, especially by the Avanians, and under the government of the
Bassas, Kadis, etc., have to endure, are terrible and infinite.
Wherefore they also seek to hide their treasures, as much as
possible. The rich therefore live, in appearance, poor and lowly,
and their houses do not look very strange from the outside. This
makes them all discontented, and in times of war the Great Lord
cannot rely on them. - The whole Empire is badly disposed within.
Many Bassas and Agas obey only as far as they please. For this
reason there is never any lack of internal unrest. The Porte often
sees this gladly, allowing such to arise and be caused between them,
in order that they may consume themselves among themselves. It
mostly approaches the treasures of the underlying party; but the
country suffers irreparable damage from it. Thousands of inhabitants
are spoiled by it; others are driven away; towns and villages are
destroyed; and fields and pastures are devastated. — From all
this it appears how easy it would be to put an end to the Turkish
Empire. Possession of it in part or in whole would certainly be too
advantageous for one European Power, and would give it too great a
preponderance over all others. But this difficulty would disappear
if one of the principal countries were appointed King or Emperor. It
needs no proof what advantages would arise for humanity, the
Christian religion, and the European, as well as other countries,
from the destruction of the Turkish Empire. (*) For the rest, one
must wonder that such an irregular Empire can still exist; and this
must be attributed to God's permissive Providence alone, which
allows such a monstrosity to maintain its permanence for the
humiliation of the European Powers.
(*)
The population in Turkey, up to now, cannot be calculated with
certainty at all, not even in a single large Turkish city. No lists
are kept of those who are born, nor of those who marry or die; and
the poll tax is only collected from those who are not Mohammedans,
and indeed only from the male, thought to have reached the age of
thirty.
(*)
This proposal, to make one of the principal Christians of the
country King or Emperor, upon the destruction of the Turkish Empire,
would also, I admit, encounter great difficulty. Of the former
Imperial Families there may well be no descendants left, although
many still claim to be descended from them. In this connection one
need only recall what I have previously stated, § XVII.
concerning the Charaer of the Greek nation, especially if it is
going well with it.
End
of the first Part.
NOTICE.
The
Maps and Places belonging to this first Volume will be supplied in
the coming year, when the second and last Volume is published.
DESCRIPTION OF THE
TURKISH KINGDOM ACCORDING TO ITS PRESENT STATE AND RELIGION IN THE
LAST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, WITH MAPS AND PLATES, BY
CHRISTOPH: WILH: LUDEKE,
Teacher of Theology,
first Preacher of the German Community, Chairman of the Consistory
in Stockholm, and Supervisor of the schools;
according to the High
German second edition translated under the motto:
ALTISSIMO ANNUENTE
VIRIBUS MEIS.
SECOND PART.
Behind which follow
HISTORICAL REPORTS Of the Government, Customs and Habits of the
OTTOMAN MONARCHY BY
PETER BUSINELLO,
Secretary of State of
the Republic of Venice. At LEYDEN, By A. and J. HONKOOP, Booksellers
M D C C L X X X I I.
CONTENTS OF THE
SECOND PART. SEVENTH SECTION. Comparisons of religion and state from
the previous sections.
§XLV. Priority
of the Christian religion, according to the Bible, above the
Mohammedan religion. 1
XLVI. Priority of the
Christian-biblical religion above the other Christian denominations.
22
XLVII. Priority of
the Christian modes of government above the Turkish. 25
XLVIII. Priority of
the domestic situation in Christian countries above the Mohammedan.
29
XLIX. Assessment of
the Free Spirits and Mockers with the Religion among the Christians.
31
CONTENTS. EIGHTH
SECTION. Indication and evaluation of the best-known travel
descriptions and reports of Turkey.
§L. Of the
travels in Turkey. 37
LI. — Turkish
travel descriptions and reports of Turkey in general. 43
LIL. Of some writers
of the sixteenth century, contents of their works, and evaluated. 56
LIII. Writers of the
seventeenth century, contents of their works, and evaluated. 94
LIV. Some writers of
the eighteenth century, contents of their works, and evaluated. 185
DESCRIPTION OF THE
TURKISH KINGDOM, etc. SEVENTH SECTION,
COMPARISONS OF
RELIGION AND STATE FROM THE PRECEDING SECTIONS.
§. XLV. The
precedence of the Christian religion, according to the Bible, above
the Mohammedan.
The basic principles
of a religion can indeed be learned from its textbooks, without
having to stay in the countries where it is practiced; but the
consequences, effects, and other circumstances, which accompany
them, can best be learned by seeing them, and the grounds themselves
are thereby placed in a clearer light. For this reason I considered
myself obliged, notwithstanding many trials of the Christian and
Mohammedan religions, to make such remarks as may reassure
Christians, but may shame unbelievers.
— When I now
speak of the Christian religion, I mean only that which rests on the
Bible: whereby, furthermore, a great multitude of mockeries fall,
which are produced by Roman or ignorant Freemen, who do not touch
the Christian religion according to the fundamental principles of
the Bible, but only in general, but according to their narrow
concepts, or actually the Roman religion. The first foundation of
the Christian and Mohammedan religions, where the first acknowledges
the Bible, the second the Koran, already offers very clear
characteristics to distinguish the divine from the ungodly. This
appears as clear as day, when one compares them both together. The
writers or compilers differ greatly from each other. Among the
writings of the Old and New Testaments, one finds, according to
number, many, of which a part in a rather broken series, and indeed
in a period of about a thousand years, and, four centuries before
the birth of Christ, the first; but another part after the same,
indeed in a shorter period of time, but nevertheless from many
purposes, and in several places, the last has been left in writing;
whereby, however, in the principal ends, for which a divine
revelation is necessary, they agree with each other in every way;
yet so that one can see how they did not agree together on what they
wanted to write. Of the Koran, Mohammed is the only author who lets
in many main parts of it implausible contradictions flow in, which
one does not hold to the best of any writer, even if he does not
claim to have any divine inspiration; I say nothing of the fact that
one could forgive him a supposed Messenger of God, for whom Mohammed
nevertheless wanted to be regarded. — An actual Revelation of
God also brings with it undeniable characteristics of Divinity. The
Bible is confirmed by Miracles, by which the Jews and Christians
were moved, to often, against their will, become obedient to the
faith; which the Koran and Mohammedans by no means deny, but allow
them, and even increase. There are predictions in it, which neutral
and unprejudiced minds clearly see fulfilled, and which Mohammed
himself, by a perversion and a wrong quotation, attempts to apply to
himself. How much these characteristics are wanting in the Koran?
since its author always refuses to comply with the demand made of
him to work miracles, and appeals to Christ, by means of perverted
predictions of scripture, as having done miracles before him; and
since his supposed predictions are of such a nature, that every
guess, subsequently, may as well be considered a prediction. The
content and presentation of sowing in both, likewise, differ greatly
from each other. One need not be a great Scholar to see, by their
comparison, the vast difference which exists between the Biblical
proposals for arriving at the knowledge of God and eternal Life, and
those of the Koran. One may, without fearing a well-founded
contradiction, boldly assert that all that is good in it, is taken
from Scripture, especially Christian Morality, and that consequently
this alone, out of ignorance and malice, can be abused to belittle
and disparage the Christian Religion. What then must one think of
Writers, who, from the entire Koran, on a few pages, devise a brief
conception of its teachings in good ideas, and thereby wish to
persuade the Readers that there are principles in it which equal the
Biblical sublimity? How deceitful and malicious is not the design of
the conduct of such? And how easy would it be to think that even
from a common book of some size a few pages of good thoughts could
not be gathered, especially when they were drawn from a certain
source, such as the Bible is in comparison with the Koran? The
manner in which they both make their doctrines known to man for
salvation is decisive in favor of the first. He commands him to test
himself, and, since his particular parts proceed from men who
possessed the gift, to speak of several languages, and which each
people in its own language proclaimed the religion orally; thus the
first Christians saw themselves authorized to translate it for
general publication into different languages. The Koran shuns both
the test and the translation.
The Christian
religion surpasses, infinitely, the Mohammedan in the proposition of
the condition of mankind, its present corruption, and the
restoration of it. The latter treats man as a creature, which is
only pathetic, and must be guided by pathetic feelings; the former
deals with him as a rational creature, which can be guided and
improved by reason and convictions. The latter flatters man's
natural inclinations, yea, his carnal lusts, as if they were
indifferent emotions, so much so, as if man had no reason, and had
to act according to them chiefly, and had to try everything: the
former explains to him, that between the emotions and inclinations
in themselves, as they are created in him by the Creator, and the
use or abuse of them by man, in a corrupt nature, a great
distinction must be made. The Koran gives a very defective and wrong
account concerning the origin or origin of sin; man's present
condition in his moral relation to good and evil is presented very
superficially, and thus also the sad consequences of natural
depravity are extremely diminished; This now is as harmful to the
soul of man, as if one were to be negligent in his bodily disease,
and not consider its real danger. Just as little as one thinks here
of powerful remedies, and of the disease at its root; just as
powerless are, in the face of the real sinful evil of man, the
remedies of the Mahamedan religion, and consequently also small,
nay, insignificant, the improvement and restoration of man sought
thereby. It is true, the Bible gives, in the statements: "the
whole world is in evil, (John V, 19) and all the writing and
endeavoring of the heart of man is evil from youth, and only,
(Genes. vi, 5. vin, 19) an explanation against which the heart of a
natural man rises up: but should we be surprised by this? Does a
dangerous sufferer love the announcement: that his Evil is incurable
for man? Nevertheless, the Bible proceeds as a faithful and true
Physician. He tells us the first origin of our entire decline; he
describes to us its consequences in a general depravity of all our
powers; but he conceals from us as little the means by which we can
be helped in the bottom, as the order in which we must use them, in
order to save ourselves from to cure our spiritual disease, so that
we may, in a certain and sensible manner, safely err.
The Christian
religion gains a very decisive victory, when its Founder is compared
with that of the Mohammedan. The birth of both affords the first
ground for this comparison. At the birth of the first, special
evidences of God's Providence were seen. The nation from which he
came; the family from which he descended; the place where he saw the
light of life; the time when he would appear; these circumstances,
in many more strict determinations, had been indicated, thousands of
years before, by so many Prophets; so that in the lapse of about
four thousand years after the creation of the world, the coming of
the Savior of the world was expected. Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled,
by his birth, the predictions previously briefly mentioned, and a
short time afterward such changes took place, that they can no
longer be fulfilled by anyone. The birth of Mohammed has nothing
extraordinary, nor in that respect different from other men; no one
had a divine prediction to expect him; and when, against all the
thoughts of the Arabs, he presented himself as a Prophet, he saw the
necessity of resorting to violent perversions of the Bible passages;
and, in order to defend these, to pretend in an absurd manner that
the Jews and Christians had falsified the Bible. Both lay claim to a
divine mission; but what a diversity is not visible in this? Christ
said in his earliest youth, "Know ye not that I must be in that
which is my Father's?" Luke II, 49; Beginning, to accomplish
his mission, was announced by John the Baptist, a man for whom the
Turks have the greatest respect. Christ himself accepted his
mission, by the open announcement of God's command to call men to
repentance, and to fulfill the law for them, with the declaration:
that he needed no angel to give him knowledge of God's will, but
that he knew all things, because he was one with the Father.
Mohammed, first of all, at a great age, came to the thought, to
present himself as a Prophet, whereupon his wife and relations
considered him a madman; and, as his affairs took a favourable turn,
his supposed Revelations gradually came to light with many changes
and contradictions. The Angel Gabriel was, as he pretended, his
executing Messenger from God. But how far one can rely on this, the
preceding 25. and 6. Paragraphs in the first part concerning
Mohammed and the Koran do not obscurely teach us. — As diverse
as the mission of both is; so diverse was also the execution
thereof, and their conduct in it. Christ, in his doctrine, presented
without respect to persons, laid this, as its principal content, for
a foundation: "the Kingdom of God is come near: do penance, and
believe in the Gospel." Mark. I, 15. His Doctrine and Way of
Teaching remained the same, and no violence or outward coercion
accompanied it. Could one think that Jews and Gentiles would have
accepted this Doctrine? But the Miracles that accompanied it
convinced them of its Divinity: Miracles that Christ performed by
His own power, but His Apostles by the power that He communicated to
them: Miracles that the Jews did not deny. One of their Superiors
said to him: "We know that you are a Teacher come from God: for
no man can do these Signs that you do, except God be with him."
John III, 2. And the Jews of the present day know of no other escape
than this: Christ did them by sorcery, or by the workings of Satan;
an evasion, too simple, to refute, or to dwell upon. The miracles of
Christ were so well known to Paganism, that the apostate Julian,
that idol of Free Spirits, expressly acknowledged them, and sought
to weaken the proof of the divinity of the Christian religion which
arose from them, that they should be attributed to magic, a pretext,
which to a truly free or neutral person can only appear ridiculous.
How convinced the Mohammedans are of the miracles of Christ, has
been previously recorded. — He moreover confirmed his doctrine
by the holiest example, so that his enemies could find no apparent
ground of accusation in him, and a Pagan judge openly testified that
he condemned him innocently. And, as he came chiefly to give up his
Life in death for the atonement of mankind, he also fulfilled this
principal object of his mission, and became, in death on the cross,
a curse to God's enemies, that he might thereby deliver them from
the curse. Mohammed accomplished his mission quite differently. The
substance of his Religion is presented in §. 28. of the first
part, and a mediocre intellect is conceived, that to concoct it,
neither inspiration nor anything supernatural was necessary. And, as
he lacked the gift of working Miracles, he sought to remedy this
defect by the facility which is permitted to corrupt men in
following the lusts of the flesh, as well as by the force of arms.
For the rest he has no merit whatever with mankind. It cannot be
taught by him as it is done by the Bible. His way of life serves as
no example to be followed, and he has not even thought of the
reconciliation of man with God. —- The principal enmities to
life, and the moral character of both founders of religion, differ,
likewise, greatly from each other. Christ's birth was the only one
of its kind. His education took place in an obscure place; and yet
everyone, when accepting his teaching, must ask in amazement: whence
comes this such wisdom? Matt. xiii, 54. A deep poverty was his lot
in this world, with a special abstinence from all earthly things, by
this explained in: my kingdom is not of this world. Joh. Xvii??, 36.
Friends and enemies alike had to admire his holy conduct. A
Pharisee?? fancy, which places holiness without inward change of
heart in gestures, clothing, and such habits as are proper to
hypocrites, objected to him, that he was a friend of Publicans and
Sinners; but this set the design of his mission beyond all
contradiction, that he had come to save the souls of men without
respect of persons. He proved by his example, how one should regard
the worldly Powers, and pay tribute without deceit. He was the
highest example of the strictest chastity. His humility, in his
conduct towards people of the lowest estate, and even children, was
endearing. His meekness was equally great towards high and low,
friends and enemies; yet he also showed, on suitable occasions, what
he ought to show as a Teacher sent from God, an earnestness and zeal
in the punishment of the ungodly. Such love, as he showed to the
people
sensibly, is without
example. He has sought everywhere to do good and to make healthy.
Handel, x, 38. And, since according to the thoughts of men no one
has greater love than this, that he lays down his life for his
friends, or for the fatherland; a love, by which one, usually, in an
almost fanatical manner, encourages the soldiers in battles,
conquests and sieges; so Christ had this love, which surpasses all
our conceptions, that he laid down his life for his enemies. His
last suffering and his death, with what would follow, he foretold.
He endured everything with an admirable patience, which was neither
an insensibility, nor even less a hardening. He proved himself,
after his resurrection, the one visibly, who would be the sufficient
witnesses thereof to the world. After his Ascension he partly
fulfilled the promise made to the Apostles, to endow them with a
never heard of miraculous gift of God's Spirit; partly the threat
pronounced upon the Jewish people, that their spiritual and civil
state should be destroyed, and that it should be scattered among all
nations, and among them should live as a separate people to the end
of the world. In this respect also Mohammed differs entirely from
Christ. His purest adherents allow him no other birth, as they can,
according to a credible history, allow him no other, than that which
agrees with the natural order in the generation of men. He devoted
himself to commerce; a clear proof that he was not so ignorant as he
pretended to be. The desire for earthly goods tempted him to commit
open highway robbery. His Life was, according to the principles of a
natural Morality, scandalous. Against his own Government he became a
bloodthirsty Rebel. In the shame of an unbridled lust and carnal
impurity he placed his Honour. Of humility, humanity, patience, and
other virtues he gave no, but of his impetuous and cruelty, horrible
examples, by which many thousands of men lost their Lives. His death
was, like the death of other men, and his grave, as it is found at
Medina, does not distinguish his body from other dead.
Perhaps someone could
admire in Mohammed the duty of charity and almsgiving, so
emphatically prescribed by him. But could he have recommended it
with more emphasis than Christ did in the so-called Sermon on the
Mount, and in the proclamation of the rewards of good works on the
day of judgment? It cannot serve in the least to defend his other
moral character. It was a mere political invention to provide his
new religion with the most general acceptance; for the poor, who
need alms, are always the most among a people, and the rich were
also provided for. For they could, with their wealth, bathe
themselves in all sorts of pleasures, and yet boast of their good
deeds before God and man, and even by them, with their other
irregularities, earn Paradise. Moreover, Mohammed, in this and many
other pieces, thought and acted as it is now the manner of all
crafty and cunning enemies of revealed religion; namely, to conceal
from the eyes of men the renunciation and neglect of far more
important truths and duties, they choose some virtue or other, which
they know is easy for earthly-minded men (of whom the greatest
number consists), and has the most general approval, endeavoring to
excel others in it. Many a man, merely from hatred of Christianity,
is in such cases outwardly virtuous. The celebrated Mosheim, on
proposing the question, Whether Mohammed was among the enthusiasts
or impostors?, is of the opinion that he was both; and he is
probably right: for hot Arabia nourishes many of the former, and the
bodily and mental weakness to which he was subject at first, to the
great relief of his own, as well as the idea that one has there of a
Saint, could easily make him such a one. An Enthusiast has by his
imagination, of seeing that which he does not see, and of hearing
that which he does not hear, a good disposition for artifices and
the finest deceptions. What has been said for the rest, in this
comparison between Jesus and Mohammed, flows impartially from the
Koran, and what the Mohammedans themselves profess. They seek the
shameful in the customs of their Legislator. by which to justify,
that it was free to him, as a Prophet, especially through Divine
Revelations, and that his manliness, courage, bravery, etc., shone
through in it. - A small comparison of the principal turns of both
Religions, will soon give the Christian the preference. When
Mohammed himself confesses, that Jesus of Nazareth led a very holy
Religion on earth, but which is too difficult for man, in his
present condition, to observe, and that he had come to present a
more convenient one; then one may infer from it, what one ought to
adhere to in conscience. As to the pretext, that the Mohammedan
religion has few articles of faith, and the Christian so many; this
has been answered beforehand; and whether the former is more
intelligible than the latter, may also be easily decided. For
whoever can nevertheless hold Mohammed, according to the confession
made by himself, and according to the reports of his adherents, to
be an ambassador of God, and commend his religion, and even set this
against Christ and the Christian religion, proves not unequivocally,
that the limits of intelligibility and incomprehensibility are very
unknown to him.
One may, with right,
expect from a truly divine religion such a report of our future
state, which can exist with God's attributes and the spiritual
disposition of man. Here now one sees a remarkable difference
between the proposals, which the Bible and the Koran give us
concerning it. The first sets the future state of the pious and the
impious in a complete light; and, because it is written for
everyone, without exception of sex, rank and age, it expresses
itself about it not only with proper, but also with improper and
symbolic proposals, which are derived, from that which in this Life,
either in a legitimate way is pleasant, joyful and splendid, or else
unpleasant, painful and loathsome. This makes a very powerful
impression on the minds of most people. But what is one to think of
the proposals of the Koran in this respect, which describes Paradise
so carnally, as if the lusts could not be followed more
licentiously, and the passions nowhere better satisfied, than just
there? Let us not bring the symbols of the Bible and the Koran into
one class. The former, however sensual they may be, to suit us, may
be represented, to none other than divine and rational; but the
latter, visibly, to irrational and animal pleasures. The condition
of the female sex would indeed be deplorable, if it had to be
decided according to the Koran, because the Paradise of women, from
that which men inhabit, differs infinitely in perfection, and the
parents are, by it, little comforted at the death of their children.
People appeal, as proof of the divinity of a religion, to the good
effects which it must produce in its adherents. This may be
expected, with right, from a divine religion. I do not refer here to
the wrong and often fanatical notions which many have of piety. The
question is not what someone thinks of it according to his
imagination, but what he must think of it, according to the sources
of his religion. The Bible now gives this description of it: a
Christian, by the saving grace of God, who has appeared to all men,
may be so instructed, that he may deny the ungodly deeds and the
worldly lusts, and live moderately, justly and godly in this world;
and wait for the blessed hope and appearance of the Judge of the
world. (Tit. II, 11-13.) What a happy person then is not a true
Christian for himself, and what an excellent fellow-member is he not
for the State? What, according to the fundamental principles of
Mohammedans, belongs to a godly man, and how far this differs from
Christian virtue, is fully evident from what has been said before.
In order to see by experience the apparent influence which both
religions have on men, one must go to countries where they prevail.
The irregularities which have taken the upper hand in all States in
Turkey, street desecration, extortion, murder, unnatural sins, etc.,
are in vogue there everywhere. Severe punishments are indeed imposed
on many of these; but yet it is clearly seen that these, even to the
suppression of outward sins, are powerless without sharper bonds of
conscience. However much one complains of licentiousness among us,
and is justified in it, because of the neglected use of
opportunities and means for improvement; we still live in the light,
when we compare ourselves with the people in Mohammedan countries.
If one is there; then one clearly understands what advantages arise
from the Christian religion for particular persons, entire societies
and states, and what a general improvement of morals follows from
it. Since the Mohammedan religion freely permits very many sins,
does not sufficiently define others, and leaves the hearts of its
adherents untouched and unchanged; so their immoralities must also
be placed at his account. But if there are vices among us, then this
would be wrongly charged against the Christian religion; the false
Christians one must blame it alone, who will not follow his
teaching, and give no place to its salutary power for improvement.
For the rest, the finding that here and there one naturally finds
honorable and sincere Turks, cannot be used to abuse the common
phrases, which one so often hears used to diminish the power of the
Christian religion: there are good and naughty people in all
denominations. For the question here is not, what kind of people
there can be in a denomination; but how people, by a true adherence
to their religion, by a pure adherence to its grounds, - and by the
influence thereof on their minds, become. If one does this, and
imagines a Mohammedan, according to the grounds of his religion;
then it will be found, that man by that not at all can become so??
Text can, if it must be written, to please God, and therefore to be
saved.
Freedom of
conscience, which the Christian religion allows every neutral mind,
to investigate it for itself, in a proper way, is an uncommonly
noble thing, which the Mohammedan does not grant to anyone. While
therefore the Founder of the first cries out to us: if any man will
do the Will of my Father; he shall acknowledge, whether this
Doctrine be of ??, or whether I speak of myself; (??, 17.) Thus the
founder of the latter forbids the investigation of his religion,
begging to exterminate those who would not accept his doctrine, or
to allow them to live only on payment of a ransom, and not to
conclude peace with strangers but only one of arms.
§. XLVI.
Precedence of the Christian-Biblical Religion over the other
Christian denominations.
From the contents of
the preceding paragraph flows a very clear consequence, namely that,
if by comparing the Mohammedan religion with the Christian religion,
in succession the grounds of the Holy Scripture, the latter obtains
a divine predominance over the former, among the Christian
denominations that do not have the precedence over the rest, which
accepts the Bible as a sole first source of doctrines for salvation.
Those who do not remain alone with this, either allow reason too
much; or follow the established doctrines of supposed great or holy
men too slavishly; or they imagine that they still receive
Revelations from God. Who can wonder that, by so many errant ways,
men have also deviated from Christ's own religion so strangely, and
have fallen into great errors, whereby they have been greatly
corrupted? Because men have thus chosen themselves or others as
leaders; thus the corruption of man, of which learned philosophers
among the heathen so much complained, has been greatly diminished,
and the proposition concerning a Savior of the world and the work of
redemption accomplished by him, has lost much of its force. One
party has wished to make religion and its principal object, God,
very accessible to the human understanding, and to separate all
mysteries from it altogether; but makes itself, by that, extremely
suspect, especially among actively thinking people: for, upon the
discovery of many secrets in the creatures, to persuade oneself,
that for us there were none to be found in the infinite Creator, is
to assert the most incomprehensible thing. Another party has
succeeded definitively, and invented secrets, wherefore and the
religion there has increased with immoderate doctrines, to which
belongs in particular the so very conspicuous idolatry, worthy
especially of extraordinary offense to Mahmedans. The state after
this life has, by the way, become. One party has given the godless
hope, that after death they may still be cleansed of their sins,
while another, by their complete destruction, has wished to put an
end to their punishments. Another party has allowed such unbridled
freedom in religion, that every one, without generally arrived at
and established principal doctrines, can think what he will, and
thereby open a free course for the extravagant mind and the corrupt
heart of man: but the opposing party has forbidden the freedom of
man's religion according to God's word, under threat of prison and
death sentences, and has attempted to spread the religion, which in
its own opinion is solely and exclusively saving, by fire and sword.
I have only examined the external side of this unscriptural system
of religion; what will one find when considering the internal? What
great advantages will one not gain, if one directs oneself in the
Christian religion solely to the grounds of Holy Scripture? Then all
real scandals, together with the well-founded attacks of Mohammedans
and other infidels, will cease, and they will be made more willing
to accept Christianity.
§. XLVII.
Precedence of Christian modes of government over the Turkish.
The complaints about
the modes of government are as common as those which the Lords have
over the servants, and which they have over them. Perhaps they are
never unfounded; for the Monarch, Aristocratic and Democratic, or of
a single or mixed disposition, have their many defects. But should
this surprise us? We must indeed perceive precisely that everything
here is imperfect, and the earth is oppressed by the curse of sin,
and that we must therefore strive for a better world. But in
Christian countries this discomfort is felt less than in Turkey. In
the former the relation of the Authorities and Subjects to each
other is more clearly defined; Religion, if it has not been able to
show all its power, by a wilful opposition, yet has in a certain
respect taken care of the hearts, so that the Authorities do not
easily fall into tyranny and cruelty, and the subjects into
disobedience and rebellion. Few in both cases harden themselves to
such a degree, that they do not feel remorse in conscience because
of an approaching account. In Turkey this is wanting. The Mohammedan
religion does not at all, instruct and tame the Authorities and
subjects, in a convincing manner. When one compares our civil laws
and legal arrangements, with what has been said concerning them,
beforehand, of the Turks; then one might at first think, that with
us everything was more regular, but there more quickly done. But
these thoughts will soon be abandoned, when one considers that
everything is decided there by force, that usually one, and at most
only a few persons pass judgment, and who can therefore become very
unjust through ignorance, haste and bribery; that the law itself is
very indefinite and ambiguous, and, by the mixing of religious and
state laws, the confusion must be increased. Therefore, in our
country, in most cases, one will gain by the multitude of judges,
and the prolongation of the course of justice. This circumstance
becomes still more important, when one considers that in Christian
countries the judges may never assume the tenth of the disputed
case, and we know nothing of the unjust Avani. Criminal affairs also
have a completely different form among Christians than among the
Turks. It is unbelievable how little the latter esteem the Life of
men. It is astonishing that so many Visiers, Bassas, Kadis, etc.
have the power over Life and Death, and can maintain them without a
wide-ranging investigation. If, in many Christian countries,
possibly on good grounds, the death penalty is very quickly
established after broken laws and committed crimes, this case
nevertheless differs very much from the first, in which one proceeds
without many circumstances, and not seldom from rashness and other
unfounded reasons. The waging of war raises the Christian methods of
government infinitely above the Turkish. From this, certainly, arose
the proverb, that when one speaks of soldiers who behaved inhumanly,
one says: the Turks could not have done it worse! However great an
evil the war may be with us, it is small, compared with a Turkish
one. The cruelty extends first of all to our own countries. These
are plundered by the dissolute military people; the places where the
inhabitants do not wish to submit to plundering, or which they have
abandoned for fear of it, are laid waste; the children are stolen;
people, not of the Mohammedan religion, are horribly maltreated, and
forced to their religion by force, and the female sex violated. What
must the enemy countries now expect? Everything that can ever be
called misery is brought upon them by a Turkish army. If defeat does
not compel a hasty and fearful flight; then everything is destroyed,
and men are made slaves. Among Christians this is almost unheard of,
and from recent times one will hardly find examples of it.
Now to whom do
Christian countries owe this better fate? Jesus' religion alone.
For, whatever one may say of equity and humanity, these are words
without meaning among peoples who are not Christians, and
Christianity has first determined them, and attached a force to
them. From which we can conclude how happy all countries would be,
if all the inhabitants were true Christians.
§. XLVIII.
Precedence of the domestic condition in Christian countries above
the Mohammedan.
The Christians may
consider themselves happy not only because of their religious and
political disposition, but also because of their domestic condition.
Without involving myself in the decision of the question, whether
slavery is permitted among us, according to the grounds of our
religion, or not? without determining whether the corporal property,
as it still persists in some countries, is of the same nature as
slavery among the Turks and Mohammedans? This is at least certain,
that Christians do not obtain slaves in the same way as the Turks,
nor generally treat them in the same way. The relationship that must
take place between parents and children, if mutual well-being is to
be promoted, is lacking among the Turks. Excepting the natural
tenderness, which is even peculiar to animals, there is a want of
that bond of conscience, by which parents are induced to a true love
and care for their children, and these to a pure respect and
obedience towards them. As also in general moral improvement is very
little, or hardly at all, sweetened among the Turks, no strange
instruction, and still less good examples for the civilisation of
the children, can be expected from the parents. Their usual
irregularities, their beating and fighting with each other, their
reviling of strangers, and other wantonness, are almost entirely
overlooked. - In a family among us, a very great godlessness must
certainly have prevailed, if the parents did not regard their
children as co-heirs of eternal life, and both, on that account,
would treat each other lovingly. The closest bond of human society
is found in the married state. But if there are causes that break
this bond; then, of course, the real state is dissatisfied. Now,
when women are considered by the Turks as an inferior species of
humanity, and the natural equality between the sexes is thereby
destroyed; can the wife of a man who is only somewhat unfair, expect
anything but contempt on the slightest occasion? Since polygamy is
permitted among them; must not the jealousy, with which every woman
seeks to win the heart of her husband, make them all dissatisfied?
Since divorce, even according to their supposed divine laws, can be
so easily accomplished among them; must not this fill the heart of
every right-thinking woman with fear for the future? These
inconveniences of the aforesaid inequality of both sexes, of
jealousy and divorce, are common to all true Christians; and where
they are found, they are signs of a prevailing godlessness. To what
exactly must we attribute this pre-eminence of the domestic
condition among us? Precisely also to the Christian religion, which
teaches us the creation of man and woman after the image of God, and
produces in us the renewal to it.
§. XLIX.
Judgment of the Free Spirits and Mockers of Religion among
Christians.
A person who has had
occasion to see the workings of the Christian and Mohammedan
Religion in various countries, cannot be angry enough with the Free
Spirits and Mockers of Religion, who, in devising new tricks for
their cause, have fallen into the habit of elevating the latter by
various pretexts, and thereby degrading the former. What else can
one expect, than that, by this, many immature minds will be
confused, and at least doubted in the faith? In order to remedy
this, and to show such an artifice in its true form, I have written
down the aforementioned matters in a few words, and thereby proved
myself a true Free Spirit. Then, do they, to whom this name is so
dear and worthy, consider well what it signifies? and how it does
not allow itself to be brought into agreement with blinding and
deceptive partying, and just as little with the servitude of
self-will, pride, superstition, sins and vices? Do they consider
with other mockers of Religion, that in that of Mohammed their
calumnies would not be permitted? that they must thank the Christian
Religion for this pardon of their abused freedom, which has an
aversion to the coercion of conscience, and calls out to its true
Disciples in general: you gladly bear with Fools, because you are
wise. (Corinth. XI, 19.)
After that now the
necessary, touching Mohammed, the Koran, the Turkish Empire, etc.,
has been presented in the first part; thus one will be able to judge
the liberal exaltation of the Mohammedan religion above the
Christian. Nothing but a punishable ignorance, or a wilful malice
can be the cause of it. That the Bible is so variously interpreted,
is an old objection that is made against it. Experience confirms it;
but the conclusion that one wishes to deduce from it, that there is
no certain meaning to be found in it, is false. This is even seen by
the erring Denominations among Christians; for this reason they do
not derive their proofs from the Holy Scripture, but from prejudices
and false conclusions, which they call conclusions, or from the
pronouncements of the Church, or from new revelations. If only the
Mohammedans were somewhat unanimous about the interpretation of the
Koran; What would not be inferred from this to the humiliation of
the Christian religion? Nothing has been more dear to the Free
Spirits than that they might humiliate its servants to the utmost.
But can they have the power and right to do so, since they do not,
like the Imams, present their listeners with earthly things, and are
still less the ringleaders of State unrest? Does not from them, as
the instruments of religion to the whole people, still proceed that
improvement of morals which sets some limit and restraint to the
innate and general depravity of men? To whom must one attribute the
good order in the domestic state? Who keeps the greatest number of
the inhabitants of a State, even without external punishment, in
submission and obedience, and this by means of the firm bonds of
conscience? Apparently the dogmatic order. And, when it has ceased
in any country, how (one has the experience of it in Asia and
Africa!) have men, very quickly, become exuberant, and animals in
human forms? - Nothing is more agreeable to natural man than to
satisfy the lusts of the flesh. Whoever would expect anything else;
he must have little knowledge of the general depravity. But this
must surprise us, when one arranges this abomination, presents
polygamy and whoredom?? as useful to the population of countries,
yes, even wants to appear an animalistic succession of carnal lusts
as harmless. Sophistry does not detract from this; one should pay
attention to experience: and, whoever is not taken in by prejudice,
can fully justify Turkey in this respect. For the rest, the cry of
reason cannot at all be reconciled with the conduct of the Free
Spirits, who, by the commendation of such licentiousness, and the
further destruction of the essential great distinction between good
and evil, wish to make men into animals again, from which the
Creator, by a sound reason, has so clearly distinguished them. The
imagination has arisen since the creeping in of free spiritism, and
is steadily increasing, so that according to it the times have been
more and more clarified. It is true, every Free Spirit imagines
himself to be a Philosopher, a Historian, a Theologian, in a word, a
Know-it-all; whatever is not written in a sharp and mocking tone,
is, with all brevity, declared to be trifle. But do they consider
that even among the most stupid and unlearned Turks there are no
lack of scoffers against religion? as proof that with an evil heart,
a tendency to sins and vices, a bold impudence, and some corrupt
wit, nothing is easier for a man than to become a mocker of
Religion. And he openly betrays the deepest ignorance, which denied
the former times to learning, and would deny that the Christian
Church was the preserver of it. How have not, in the darkest times,
the ecclesiastical persons made themselves deserved for the writing
out of manuscripts, and the preservation of libraries? The Christian
Religion and learning have always risen and fallen together; a sign,
that they are well tolerated together: whereas Mohammedanism, on the
contrary, except the time of the Caliphs, has always shunned free
learning, and still shuns it. Superstition is rightly considered a
great Evil, and every one is encouraged to rid himself of it. But
what has best discovered and banished it? The Christian religion
according to the grounds of the Bible. That has freed us from so
many sinful and strange things, under whose yoke other peoples
slavishly sighed, not because they lacked reason, but because they
were not enlightened by a further Revelation, and educated to that
truth, which is indeed reasonable, but to whose discovery reason
itself would not have come. Where now there is still superstition
among Christians; of that they alone are the cause, which do not
surrender themselves purely to Jesus' religion, who discovers and
destroys it; whereas, on the contrary, it is inseparably associated
with all false religions, and especially with the Mohammedan
religion, and the traces of which are also seen in those Christians
who live intermingled with the Mohammedans. May they, who abuse
Mohammedanism to the contempt of Christianity, consider that by the
latter they offer a strong support: for Mohammed gives, in the
Tonsera, the clearest and most emphatic testimonies of the miracles
of Jesus and those of his Apostles, as well as the credibility of
all that the scoffers so willingly wish to make uncertain with
religion. From my own experience I derive for myself, and from my
lecture for my readers, the obligation to be thankful for that light
which we have received through the extensive knowledge of the Holy
Scripture, and the Christian religion based upon it, and to walk in
this light, so that darkness may not overtake us.
§. L. Of the
travels in Turkey.
One often falls into
a kind of ecstasy when one inhabits or travels through those places
and regions where, in ancient times, so many famous men lived, so
many remarkable cases occurred, and of which so much has been
written.
Therefore I venture
to make some proposals to those who wish to travel profitably in the
Levant, either for themselves or at the expense of others. - They
must especially try to find out whether they possess the necessary
health and physical strength to endure all kinds of discomforts that
go with it. In many places one must be content to sleep under the
open sky. In summer travels one makes there of the day night, and of
the night day, in order to travel by night because of the heat, and
to rest during the day. In Winter one is almost paralysed by the
rain and the cold winds; and in Summer one is almost suffocated by a
stifling heat. The bad condition of the Turkish inns, or Chans and
Caravanseras has been mentioned before, and in many regions there
are not even such. - In order to learn the national languages,
especially Greek, Turkish and Arabic, the easier, one must have laid
the groundwork for it in Europe beforehand: for otherwise the
wind-breaking language masters will take a very long time with it.
One must also, in advance, draw up a certain Plan, or have one drawn
up, of which regions one wants to travel through, and read the
principal travel descriptions about them, so as not to set out on
the journey without all instruction; but to have already been made
aware of the remarkable things, in accordance with that excellent
arrangement which the Lord Hofraad Michaelis, at Gottingen, has made
for the Danish travellers. - Before actually starting on the
journey, one must stop in the Levant at a place where there are few
or no Europeans at all, in order to associate more with the
inhabitants of the country, to learn the languages more
quickly, and to accustom oneself to the Eastern dress, customs and
way of life, as well as to the food and drink. Many Europeans have
had to pay for their waywardness or recklessness in this respect
with their lives. - One must provide oneself for the journey itself
with a Passport (Ferman) from the Porte, by means of a European
Ambassador; just as one also needs and can very well use the letters
of recommendation of these, as well as the Consuls, Merchants and
Roman Monasteries, also the Greek and Armenian Patriarchs and
Bishops. One does much with them, everywhere, and can usually
promise oneself good results, much help and charity. For the
Europeans of all nations and denominations, even the Roman
Monasteries, are, when receiving recommendations, there, much more
courteous to a Foreigner, than in any other country. — From
Magistrates-Persons among the Turks, unless they bring along special
circumstances and relations, one should not seek recommendations or
Addresses; otherwise one seems to them too respectable, and they
would not only be a burden to the purse, but also to others, who
become suspicious that much can be extracted from someone. Merchants
and needy Scholars are the most useful intercourse.
The expenses run high
in the journeys, in many ways, and yet great caution is required, in
order not to show that one can do them. - One cannot travel through
many Provinces or Cities without not giving the commanders,
especially the Bassas, a present; those places alone are excepted,
because the Europeans have much intercourse; and in the Holy Land,
at very many places, the Kaff thief must pay a toll on the roads,
and a certain amount for going into cities and churches, which is
often not small, and can consist of twelve or more Piastres. - The
less expense one makes; the better it is and the less one is
stopped. For the rest, one must not make a note of posts, or good
roads, or vehicles and other conveniences; but one must provide
oneself with horses or mules, tents, provisions and other
necessities, of which one obtains sufficient instruction there. On
the journeys one succeeds best with such servants, especially of the
Armenian nation, who have already been formerly at the place where
one intends to travel or to stay. If one hires the animals and the
persons belonging to them; then one usually pays half in advance,
and the rest at the end of the journey. — For the rest one
must conceal the purpose for which one travels, as much as possible,
from the Turks. A European is easily suspected of seeking treasures,
and then he is exposed to Avani??. — With caravans one travels
most safely, especially when one is a merchant or a physician, or at
least can pass for one. Many went disguised as Roman Catholic
Fathers, especially Franciscans and Capuchins, and traveled in that
way, because they were considered poor. — One must not think
of wanting to travel alone or with a few persons, especially in
certain Provinces; because one would soon run the risk, especially
if one were taken for a foreigner, of being plundered or even
murdered.
One must keep a
watchful eye on one's goods, so as not to be robbed by the robbers
during the day, or by the fellow-travellers of the Caravan itself at
night. - Travelling is everywhere difficult and expensive, and
voyages by water with Levantine vessels are besides that dangerous.
But short voyages on them, for instance from Constantinople to the
Archipelago, or in general around the coasts, are, especially in
Summer days, not so unsafe, because they are very often done by the
sailors there, and at the appearance of the least danger, are sought
for the harbours or roads.
The sea voyages in
general have certain advantages over the land voyages, but also
their inconveniences. One is on the ships like at home; but with a
strong wind, and in sunny storms the movement is often so great,
that what is below, is above, and what is above is below. This
causes with most people, especially when they travel by sea for the
first time, that seasickness, which is accompanied by illness,
vomiting, etc., so that one seems more dead than alive, although he
continues to pass over, as soon as one is brought ashore. For the
rest, one cannot imagine anything more beautiful than to have a
circle of German miles on the flat sea around oneself in clear
weather, and then especially to see the rising and setting of the
sun. But nothing is more terrible than the violence of the waves,
stirred up by a storm, and rising sky-high, and the roaring thereof,
when they beat against each other or against a ship. The latter is
often covered by them with deposits. During calms one sees many
kinds of fish, which often pass in an innumerable multitude before
the ships. — At night, by rapid navigation, one learns to
understand the seething of the sea, and the lighting thereof. Job
XLI, 22. 23. What is there attributed to Leviathan, can be pointed
out par excellence to the course of a ship. The lighting there
mentioned, or the coming out of the water like sparks, and the
electrical matter caused by it, remains for physicists an
inexplicable phenomenon. From later researches it appears that it is
caused by the illumination of several species of small, slimy marine
animals, which are produced when the sea-water is rubbed against
each other.
§. LI. Of the
Turkish travel accounts, and the reports of Turkey in general.
One has reason to be
cautious when reading the reports and travel accounts of Turkey.
Many of them are composed in book rooms, without ever having been
there, from other books and hearsay. When good sources have been
used; however, much will be lacking in true accuracy, unless the
writer, by appearance, has brought the knowledge to himself, or
arranged it in some other way. Many things are made known by
travellers, who have passed through Turkey as if in passing.
Prominent and wealthy, and at the same time curious young people
appear in Turkey; stay for a short time in various places, where
Europeans live; take part in their amusements, and see and travel,
in order to be able to say that they had seen and traveled. Of this
kind one sees so often Travelers in Turkey, when new Ambassadors are
sent to Constantinople; and one understands, without my needing to
remark, what one must make of their reports. Many even want to
achieve one-sided aims by such descriptions, as is visible in so
many Lettres, Memoirs, etc. (*)
Therefore I do not at
all think it superfluous, but rather advisable, to let a factual
report of the best-known writers on the Levant follow.
I leave the travel
descriptions before the 16th century there, because, with the
exception of the researcher of ancient history, they contribute
little to the knowledge of the present state of the Turkish Empire.
Anyone who now desires instruction in this regard and wants to read
a lot of it, should I refer to the Voiages faits principalement en
Asie dans les XII. XIII. XIV. et XV. sicles par Benj. de Tudele Jean
du Plan-Carpin, N.A Scelth, Guillaume de Rubriquis, Marc Paul
Venitien, Haiton, Jean de Mandeville et Ambroise Contarini,
accompagnès de l'histoire des Sarrassins et des Tartans ??.
par Pierre Beugeron, la Haie 1735. 2 tom. in fol. Arias Montanus
published the Itinerarium Benjamini Tudelensis, in Antwerp,
separately in the year 1578. in 8. He found the Hebrew manuscript of
this well-known travel writer, a Jew of the 12th century, in Trent,
and published it in a Latin translation; but otherwise it had been
printed in Hebrew a few times long before him. The translation was
published again in Leipzig in 1764 in 8. with various additions and
clarifications.
I may not, however,
omit to mention two works of the 15th century, of which the first
actually belongs, and the other in a certain respect also belongs to
it; namely Breydenbach itinerarium, and the travel book of the Holy
Land.
Bernh. the
Breydenbach itinerarium Hj??rtfol. is, in small fol. without mention
of the printing place and the year, but probably in Ments in the
year 1490. This man undertook, in the year 1483, with a considerable
retinue, the voyage by water via Venice to the Holy Land, where he
made the Holy Pilgrimages; whereupon he gives a short description of
it, and then of the various Denominations in it, the Mohammedans,
and indeed very extensively, but much more briefly, of the Jews,
Greeks, Syrians, Jacobites, Nestorians, Armenians, Abyssinians,
Maronites, and finally speaks of the Latins or Romanists. He laments
the state of the promised land, and exhorts the Christian princes to
its defence, or new Crusades. From Jerusalem he travelled, through
the desert, to Mount Sinai, and was on his way from the 27th of
August to the 22nd of September. On the 27th of that month he set
out on his usual journey to Cairo. At the end of the Red Sea he saw
remarkable monuments of the former great undertaking to unite it
with the Nile by a canal. At Matharea, near Cairo, where he arrived
on the 6th of October, he was taken into the balsam gardens which
were then still in existence. His description of Cairo is a pleasure
to read, as is also his return via Rosetta and Alexandria to Venice.
In the appendix one finds a short account of the conquest of
Jerusalem, the taking of Negropont, the siege of Rhodes, and the
taking of Id??runt. There are enclosed impressions of the alphabets
of several Eastern languages, as well as several wooden plates with
representations of cities, but which still visibly reveal the
infancy of this art at that time. Although this work is full of many
religious and other prejudices of that age; it is nevertheless one
of the first good travel descriptions, and contains various reports,
which make it still worth reading today. This itinerarium is a
translation of a German original, which would have been published
around the year 1486. The contents of this book will
be discussed in the following article.
Credible travel book
of the Holy Land etc. (*) Neurenb. 1569. and a second part, Frankf.
aan den Main, 1609. both in Folio. This is a collection of 21
journeys made in the Holy Land and its surrounding regions, which
are hereby included
are printed together,
and, besides their descriptions, also report various things
concerning the nations and denominations living there. The list of
works contained therein, and differing greatly in importance and
credibility, is as follows. 1) Ruperti, Abbot of Bergen, description
of the mighty army of Christians in the Holy Land, in the year 1095,
under Godfrey, Duke of Bulion. 2) Description of the journey to the
Holy Land of Duke Alexander, Count Palatine on the Rhine, etc. in
the years 1495 and 1496. 3) Journey of Bugislaus X, Duke of
Pomerania, to the promised Land, in the year 1496. 4) Joh. Count of
Solms etc. journey to the Holy Land and Mount Sinai, in the year
1483 and described by Mr. Bernh. of Breitenbach. 5) Joh. Werli of
Zimpern pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in the year 1484, described by
Brother Feux etc. 6) Pilgrimage of Albrecht, Count of Löwensteint
etc. to the Holy Sepulchre, Egypt, and Mount Sinai, in the years
1561 and 1562. with 7) an added Pilgrim's Book. 8) Jac. Wormsers
etc. journey to the Holy Land and Egypt, in the years 1561. and
1562. 9) Steph. van Gumpenberg etc. journey to the promised land, in
the year 1449. 10) Mesch, van Seydlitz etc. journey and pilgrimage,
from 1556. to 1559, described in order by himself. 11) Joh. Van
Enrenberg journey to the Holy Sepulchre, in the year 1556. 12)
Leonh. Rauchwolf, M. D. journey to the Holy Land and other Eastern
countries, in the year 1573. 13) J. Tuchers van Nuremberg, journey
to the Holy Sepulchre and other surrounding places, 1479-14??. 14)
Helffrichs van Leipzig, journey to the Holy Land and other adjacent
places, in the year 1565. 15) Dan. Eckleigs van Arm travels to the
Holy Sepulchre, in the years 1552 and 1553. 16) Joh. de Monteville
travels through the promised land, India and Persia, in the year
1350. 17) Travel of Rudolph, Churchmaster at Suchen in Westphalen
etc. to the Holy Land, as well as a clear description of that and
other countries and important places, from the years 1336 to 1350.
18) Brother Brocard's diligent description of the Holy Land, as it
was in the year 1283. 19; Sal. Schweigger's travels to the Holy Land
in the year 1576. 20) Nicol Christ. Radzivil, Duke etc. travels to
Jerusalem, 1583. 21) Joh. Schwallart's Pilgrimage to the Holy Land,
in the year 1586. As thick as this work is, as thin it would become,
if it were to be taken out of what is contained therein ten or more
times. Several of these descriptions, which describe the journey,
made almost at the same time, are almost of the same content. Most
of the earlier ones rarely contain more than the names of the
so-called Holy places to which one is taken, and the legends which
are usually told to travellers and pilgrims. Some are filled with
the most absurd fables, for example those of Motteville; others only
provide the supposedly serious pilgrimage histories, and their
compilers did not even consider it worth the trouble to visit those
places where no indulgence was to be obtained; and some others, of
which I shall subsequently speak separately, as a Rauchwolf,
Radzivil, etc. (*) also deserve to be read in our vieden, as they
can also serve to compare matters as they were in former times and
are now, and to gain knowledge of the then times and circumstances
of the world. I content myself with merely recording a little,
partly to point out to the reader who may desire it. Breitenbach
gives (pp. 117-138.) a regular description of the Holy Land.
Concerning the Sea Maron he reports (page 121.) what is otherwise
well known, that it becomes completely dry in the summer, and trees,
grass and shrubs grow in it; but he adds: that there then hide
themselves lions, bears, and other wild animals, for the instruction
of those who will not admit that there were such in the Holy Land.
Touching the Dead Sea, he reports (page 129.) that it sometimes
rises, as the snow melts on Mount Lebanon and other mountains, and
that there the Jordan and many other rivers swell, as if by rain. He
took the highway from Jerusalem to Mount Sinai, through the desert,
which is seldom chosen by travellers. He reports that the costly
work, by which an Egyptian King had wished to unite the Red Sea by
means of a Canal, for the accomplishment of which, certainly, great
mountains and dunes had to be dug through, and many rocks had to be
broken up, had for that reason remained stuck, because the fertile
Nyl water would thereby have become salty, and a large part of Egypt
might have been flooded by it. The Balsam Garden, he says, page 195,
by Matharea, two German miles from Cairo, was very carefully guarded
and kept closed. Of the companions of the journey, only six were
allowed in at one time, and that under strict threat not to touch
anything, much less to take anything with them. The one who led them
around, took a branch
, bent it against the
Sun like a hoop, and, when it pressed, a clear fluid like oil ran
out of it, with which the air around was completely filled; yes,
when one of the travellers anointed his hand from the inside with
this oil, he had, according to his report, so penetrated it, that
one had seen and smelled it on the other side. When one only rubbed
the leaves or branches vigorously between the hands, they even
smelled strongly. The balsam bushes grew to the height of a man, and
resembled currant trees. In December they cut the branches three
times in the bark, and hung glasses under the incision, from which
the oil dripped into them. What was gathered from the first cutting
was for the Sultan; whoever took anything of it and kept it, was
punished with death. The balsam of the second and third cutting was
as good as of the first, and was sold openly. The Prince of
Radzivil, who travelled a hundred years after, in the interval
between which the country had come under the obedience of the
Turkish Emperors, also saw this garden, and some plants in it, which
were nearly two ells high, but withered. For Hassan, who had been
Governor in Egypt a short time before, had caused the Moor who had
had the superintendence of it, and had collected much money by it,
to be strangled; whereupon it had followed, that the balsam bushes
had entirely perished, because no one could be found who knew how to
look after them. He also relates, that in happy Arabia, by the
arrangement of the Emperor Soliman, the balsam bushes grew in
abundance, which had been transplanted thither from the Egyptian
Garden, and were now brought from Mecca by the Caravans. Concerning
the Pyramids, one finds, and several of these travelogues, for
instance, Löwenstein, Helfrich, and Radzivil, reports which
others have made use of; but touching the largest, I will quote the
following from the first (page 366.) books among others, there was a
deep cistern, which had three partitions, and, when we had let three
of our companions down on one side, three of us also had to go to
them; upon this we let them go further, then three more had to come
to us, who let us down; but the others waited above, until we had
examined everything. (I leave untouched, what he reports of the care
to keep lanterns and lights burning.) When we were now completely on
the ground, we found 2 dead bodies standing leaning against the
wall, which, as soon as we touched them, fell into ashes. We also
saw a bricked-up door under the ground there, which we broke open
with pickaxes, for we had always been told that a treasure was
hidden there, but no Turk or Arab had dared to go down so deep,
whereupon we found a very fine, smooth, vaulted passage, so that a
man could stand upright in it and walk. We also went quite far into
it, but, because night overtook us, we had to go further. We were
told that this passage ran to Axandria. - All this was the treasure
that we found there. "Touching the usual bread of the wandering
Arabs, Löwenstein reports (page 376.) when he was among them as
a prisoner: "it was baked under camel dung; as was their
custom, to carry flour and dried camel mist everywhere. Now when
they are in the field, or in their houses; then they make cakes, lay
them on the ground, put camel-mist over them, which burns easily,
and gives great heat; then they turn them over, and thus they bake.
Wurmser reports the same, (page 414.) saying, when he had come to an
Arab house: "we found the bread there tasteless; for it was
baked of flour on the ground in the sand, by means of dry
camel-mist, noting that there was no wood. But we thanked God, that
we had it".
(*)
How difficult it is to get thorough information about Turkey, even
the English Ambassador ??Porter confesses. In order to prove this
more forcefully, and at the same time to make the readers of Turkish
travelogues attentive to an accurate, nay, almost suspicious,
judgment of the information contained therein, I cannot pass over
the words of the High Hon. Björnstahl, when he stayed in
Constantinople in the years 1776 and 1777, and as one reads in
Schlözer's (High Hon.) correspondence, 2,?? piece 8. 0. 23.
finds, to be placed here: "it is infinitely difficult, (he says
there) to obtain a complete and full knowledge of the Turks'
character, way of thinking, customs, habits, arts, amusements,
festivals, games and pastimes, their way of governing and living,
offices and occupations of their servants. -- The only way to do
that is a long stay in that country."
(*)
In the Hoogd. Bewahrtes Reisbuch?? des heilige Landes &c.
(*)
Nicol. Christ. Radzivilii Principis Hierosotymitana peregrinatio &c.
in latinam translata & correctius in lucem edita. Antw. 1614.
fol. This description consists of 4 pieces, in which the diary
according to the travels, in the year 1583 in various countries, is
divided. There is an image of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and
the external design as well as the mediaeval of the Holy Sepulchre
itself, as well as the Liturgy of the Procession with it, and the
ceremony added, when someone is succeeded as a Knight of the Holy
Sepulchre.
§. LII. Of some
writers of the 16th century; contents of their works, and judgment
thereof.
Among the travellers
and writers of the 16th century I notice especially the following,
giving first place to Auger Gislen of Busbek. He was in Commines, in
the year 1522 born of a distinguished family; was highly respected
for his learning, and employed by Emperor Ferdinand I in state
affairs, but especially as extraordinary ambassador sent to
Constantinople. Because he did not find the Turkish Emperor,
Soliman, there, he had to go to Amasia in Asia Minor, where he could
only obtain a rest from arms for 6 months. He then returned; but was
again sent to the Sultan, and remained in Turkey for 7 years, also
bringing about a standstill of arms for 8 years. In the meantime he
acquired great knowledge of the Turkish state, having made it known
in four Latin letters under the title, Itinerarium Turcicum, which
work was also printed among others, at Leiden, in the year 1633. It
is indeed not an actual description; but nevertheless one finds in
it a report of the Turkish form of government, the state of war, and
some customs, not to speak of weighty remarks, very well-founded
information, and those letters can be read very well in Latin. In
his time it was still the custom, (as he also mentions this with
melancholy,) that the Janissaries were taken by force from Christian
children of the inhabitants of the country. He died 1592.
To this we follow:
Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum Barthol. de Saligniaco equitis et
jureconsulti Galli. Magd. 1587. He made his journey in the year
1522. This work is half an Alphabet in 4to size; but is, by the
later, made very redundant. Turkey, Chronika, Glaube, Gesetz,
Sitten. From a Siebenburger, so that he was born in Turkey, and
lived happily ever after, Zwickau 1530. col. 4. One would almost
think that this work, written in old High German by a Zevenberger,
is the same, which is cited here and there under the title:
Septem-Castrensis de moribus Turcarum. This work mentioned here,
according to the title, would have been composed already in the year
1436, dealing in 25 sections with its subject neither so detailed
nor so pleasant, that one could have a desire to read it. It remains
fairly true, but is not precise nor punctual enough in its
expressions. Whoever is therefore not interested in reading the
reports of a writer of that time, can, in our times, leave it
completely at that.
The observations of
several singularities & memorable things, found in Greece, Asia,
Judea, Egypt, Arabia & other foreign countries, edited in three
books by Pierre Belon du Mans. Reveus de nouveau & augmenté
de figures. In Paris 1588. 4to large 468 pages. This Author, born
about the year 1518, became an early Scholar, Doctor Medicinae in
the Faculty at Paris, and was murdered in 1564. The accusation is
not sufficiently proven, that he took away a part of the writings of
P. Gyl, after his death, and published them afterwards for his own
work. His journey falls in about the year 1537, making a
considerable part of it with the then French Ambassador, Fumet. -
After a short introduction he describes, in the first book, the
island of Crete, mentioning at the same time much of the Greek
nation. He travelled through some islands of the Archipelago,
especially Lemnos; saw Mount Athos and a part of Greece; stayed at
Constantinople, on that occasion recording all sorts of observations
about the Turks. The second book contains the actual Eastern voyage.
He sailed through the Hellespont and Archipelago, where he touched
at the Dardanelles, Tenedos, Scio, Samos, Pathmus, Rhodes, to
Alexandria. On the Thracian soil one finds many, artificially
raised, fairly high round hills, which can also be seen from the
Marmore Sea. These are the tombs of the former Kings and Emperors of
Thrace. In his time one saw more of Troy than at present; from him
the aforementioned Abbot de la Porte has borrowed the report that
one can see the remains of it on the sea between that ruined place
and the island of Tenedos. From Alexandria he took the usual road
via Rosetta and Cairo. Here he stayed for a fairly long time, viewed
the Balsam Garden at Matarea, and the Pyramids. In the largest he
found the Base (ground) 380 somewhat wide steps, from one end to the
other. In ascending he counted 250 steps, each at the height of five
feet, the foot being counted to 9 Points. He thinks that the best
archer, who shot down from the top of the Pyramid, could hardly
shoot the arrow so far that it did not fall down on the steps. I
leave there what he says of the other Pyramids, the Sphinx-head, the
Mumien, etc. He then travelled to Mount Sinai, assuring by the
roundabout way which he, like usually happens, around the Red Sea
had to assume that it, like the Ocean, has ebb and flow. (*) The
journey to Jerusalem was made from Cairo by land. This was a
laborious journey through the sandy desert to Gaza. From there it
went via Ramah to Jerusalem. For this, 9 or 10 days are usually
required. He saw the Jordan in November near Jericho. He found the
bed of that river not wider than about 7 or 8 fathoms, so that a
small boy could throw a stone over it, as it was also not very deep.
He certainly saw it at a season of the year when many rivers there
are almost completely dried up. In the laying of Jerusalem he
observes that, from whichever side one comes there, the road always
goes upwards, clarifying there by the expression of Holy Scripture,
in which it is always said of the travelers to Jerusalem, that they
went up. (Mark x, 32. 33 etc.) The further journey he made by land
through Galilee to Damascus, Mount Lebanon, Caesarea, (modern
Balbek,) Tarsus, to Aleppo, the old Berrhoeen or Bereen, from here
to Antioch over the mountains
(*)
Mr. Niebuhr has confirmed this even more accurately, on his travels,
by ordinary observations, and has put it beyond all contradiction.
Amanus to Adana, and
from there over the Taurus mountains to Iconien. In the third book,
in several principal parts, the Turks, Mohammed, the Mohammedan
religion, the customs of the Turks, the Armenian and other
Christians in Turkey, and the Jews are spoken of. The latter
printed, in his time, Hebrew books, but without points, at
Constantinople; likewise also Spanish, Italian, Greek, German
writings; but Turkish and Arabic they were not allowed to print. He
continued his journey to Constantinople via Brussa. In his time,
according to his report, the former would have been richer and more
populous than the latter, but which now has no place. — This
is, certainly, a very good travel description, especially for
natural history, because the places, animals, and generally the
Naturalia of all the countries traversed are accurately noted. For
learned travellers of those regions it is very useful, and according
to its Value, certainly not by far sufficiently known. It is very
accurate, although many things, as to places, antiquities and other
circumstances, have naturally changed with time, and the former have
either been diminished or entirely destroyed. Thus, for example, the
German Imperial Ambassadors must no longer reside in the actual city
of Constantinople, nor must the ships leaving through the Hellespont
stay three days at the Dardanelles for inspection. For the rest, the
author reasonably well satisfies the Title of his work, describing
mostly only the particularly remarkable things. (Singularities)
Travel remarks, which one often finds too much with other
travellers, are almost entirely absent from him. He is in all
respects a serious travel writer and it is strange that the
following ones do not follow his example, but have often cobbled
together such bad and uncertain stuff. The arrangement could have
been a little better. It goes without saying that the French is as
it was written before the third half century. Many wooden plates
have been added to illustrate regions, plants, trees and animals,
but those that are supposed to serve as maps are the least good. It
is truly a pity that an index, at least in the aforementioned
edition, is lacking.
Barth. Georgieuitz de
Turcarim moribus epitome seems, according to the dedication, to have
been published in Rome in the year 1552, but was published with all
kinds of small appendices in Geneva, 1629, measuring 184 pages. and
then with the addition: Autore Joh. PICKERO, in Hanau 1686,
reprinted again. This booklet can now be completely missed.
P. Gyllii de Bosphoro
Thracio, lib. 3. Lugd. Batav. 1632, large 379 pages in 12. He was
born in the year 1490. in Albi, and, after completing studies in
languages and natural history, was ready to travel. In
a work, dedicated to Franciscus I King of France 1533, he encouraged
him in the dedication, to let some Scholars travel at his expense;
about which he found approval, and was himself sent to the Levant.
But, because he had not drawn an annual stipend during the King's
lifetime, he found himself forced, after his death in 1547, if he
wished to survive, to take service among the soldiers of Soliman II.
Three years later he returned from the Levant with the French
ambassador, and died in the year 1555. - After a reasoned
introduction to the description of the Bosphorus, it is dealt with,
but solely and exclusively according to the old Geography, so that
the places found about it by the old land-describers are collected,
and partly, according to the way he found them and imagined them,
are compared. - His Topographia Constantinopoleos, lib. 4. is to the
above-mentioned place, in the same year and format, published in the
size of 428 pages. In the preface hy describes the whole
extraordinary good legging this city very circumstantially, and in
the first book, probably among all writers the most completely, its
fortunes, building, seven hills and valleys, walls and gates. In the
following books he goes, equally elaborately, through all the Wykent
city, comparing, what Strabo, Stephanus, Euagrius, Procopius,
Suidas, Cedrenus, Tzetzes, Zonaras, and Nicephorus did not mention,
very accurately, without what he himself said. Later added Anonymi
cuiusdam (which lived before the time of Justinian,) libellus de
regionibus nova Roma Constantinopolitana, with the comments of Guido
Pancirolus. - Otherwise, the writer has fulfilled his purpose in
both works.
Turkish Chronicle.
True, actual and brief description of the Turks. Arrival, Management
&c. It. of the Turkish Religion und Gesetz &c. from Italy.
translated into German by the Licensee Muller, with plates, Frankf.
on the Main, 1577. 3 volumes of 300 leaves. It is reported in the
supplies, that a Genoese, Joh. Ant. Menavin, the writer is, who was
imprisoned in the Turkish Court. It is not worth it, to continue
reading this book. The cases are better and more accurately
presented by other writers. The wooden plates, which are fairly
gross, and the Emperors, battles and other incidents imagined, are
solely and solely from the power of the imagination. The style is so
sloppy, and so old-fashioned, that one must, at least, guess at the
phrase. Weshalven it would be useless, say with the content to want
to stop.
André Thevet
Cosmographie de Levant, à Lyon 1556. in 4. met fig. large 418
pages. Of these the Dictionaire historique portativ, published in
Paris, reports that he made the voyages as a Franciscan monk, and
died as a Historian of France in 1590, having been otherwise
childish, superstitious, and possessing little judgment, and
therefore worthy of being read. This judgment, being perfectly true,
I co-sign. He traveled in the Levant, between the years 1550 and
1552, and wrote down everything he saw and heard, old and new,
without distinguishing the true from the false; yes he is so
superstitious and stupidly sad, that he wants to impress readers
with his last as essentially believable: for example, page 146. that
Muhammad was buried in Mecca; that the Nile, Tiger, and Ganges had
their origin in the earthly Paradise, on a high mountain, from which
water pours down a Sea, and that it makes such a great noise, that
all who were near them were deafened; A bladder. 148. that there is
a country of Dwarves, to the size of half or two Ellen, zy, who
also, on ??Hamels and Bokken fighting with the Crane-birds, are
depicted in one plate. The truth of this is proved by the fact that,
in his time, there were some Dwarves at the Castle at Cairo, which
he himself had seen. It would hardly be worthwhile, therefore, to
give the contents of the Principals; but we prefer to trace the
beginnings of the writers and their works in the 16th century.
Nicolo di Nicolai
navigation and trips made in Turkey. Translated by Franc, in hal. in
Venice 1580. Fol. with 67 plates, on which people of both sexes are
depicted in various dresses. The writer made these voyages with the
French Envoy, in the year 1551. The voyages to the Barbary Coasts he
narrates very briefly. (Book I.) more extensive is hy by the
description zyner voyages from Malta to Constantinople, both in
respect of some islands of the Archipelago, than the said city
itself. (Book II.) In the further description of Turkey he assigns
to the Adschjamoglans, Janistaaren, Solaks, Peygks, Worstelaars and
Kampers, Koks des Sultan, Physicians, KadhyLeschkjers, Monks, Emyrs,
Hadschjys and others. {Book III.) Further hy nopens brings forth the
Persians, Armenians, Jews, and Greeks various things, and presents
the Persons in their various costumes. — Notwithstanding now
the principal case therein has almost always remained the same;
there are, however, many things although the length, brevity, and
other such incidental circumstances of dress have changed, happiness
can be very clearly deduced from the comparison of your time with
the present. In several respects, and even to satisfy curiosity,
this work also retains zyne value two centuries after it was
written.
C. Furers von
Haimendorf Travel description in Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Syria
&c.. Nurnb. 1646. with plates, large 360 leaves.
in 4. Zyne reis takes place in the years 1565 and 1566. It is, as
the Title also indicates, a tamely executed diary, with appended
dialogues and histories. - He landed at Alexandria, taking the usual
route from there to Cairo. Of both places, especially the last, hy
speaks very circumspectly rather indefinitely about the
circumference and position of the Pyramids. "The largest of
these is, (according to his story,) of some large, considerable
square stones, of which one was about 7 feet long, and so high, that
many of them came to my breast; but one is nevertheless larger than
the other. Below, at the ground and the stones, it is, at all four
corners, very much fallen down, especially in the middle; but we
have measured the length of one side, which was about 300 and a few
my paces long, and yet they did not measure it entirely at the
bottom, because it is broader. When one stands below, it appears,
because of its great height, to be pointed at the top, but
nevertheless has about 52 my feet in circumference. From below, to
the top, there are about 212 steps or square stones, and has a fine
entrance at the north-north-west; but the opening, through which one
must pass, is not very large, &c." - He undertook the
journey to Mount Sinai with several others, among whom was also J.
Helffrich, of whom was spoken in the preceding paragraph. At the Red
Sea it was just low tide, so that he could enter it almost half a
mile away. On the return journey he ventured to cross the Ebbe with
some, having been taken through an arm of it, but they nearly lost
their lives. For however they hurried, the water still went up to
their oxen. He found the Arabs in those regions, as all travellers
describe them, very bold and shameless, because they consider
themselves lords in their deserts, and spare no one. The famous
Greek Monks' Monastery lies in a narrow valley on the Mount Sinai,
built quadrangularly of square stones, reasonably strong and high.
The one side is 125 common paces long, makes 500 paces square,
without the little triangular forecourt, through which one enters.
He traveled again via Rosetta, to Alexandria, and from thence again
via Rosetta to Damiate. Here still stood the Tower, on which the
dead pigeons were kept, which were then used to convey some message
to Alexandria and Cairo. In the first of these cities there was also
a Tower, built for that purpose; but they no longer kept such
pigeons there. Now he took the highway to the promised land at Gaza,
covering it, according to the usual day's journey of the Camels, in
ten days. Thus he traveled through the former country of the
Palestine, and thus came via Jaffa and Ramah to Jerusalem. Here
occurs the usual description of this city with its pretended holy
places. He also made several journeys in the neighbourhood, such as
to Bethlehem, the Monastery of Sr. Saba, the Dead Sea and Jericho.
On this occasion the entire travelling party fell into the hands of
the rapacious Arabs, from which nothing came, except with much
difficulty and danger. He travelled from Jerusalem through the
promised land to the Gallic Sea, came to the beautiful Balbek and so
to Tripoli. Via Cyprus he returned to Europe. — This work is
not one of the best, but also not one of the worst. It contains
several things, which one possibly does not find in other travel
accounts in such detail, although everything is not described with
the skill and accuracy of a Belon and Rauchwolf. One naturally finds
in him many things, which at his time, but were not found
afterwards. In what he himself has seen, he seems to deserve credit;
but often it is difficult to distinguish what he himself saw from
what he relates from hearsay. In Egypt and the Holy Land he quotes,
everywhere, the Biblical Histories in their entire circumference
often unnecessarily, often even incorrectly; whereby this book has
become more verbose than was necessary.
Itinerario di Marc
Antonio Pigafetta. Londra 1585. klein 4to. One would hardly believe
that in this old work, the size of 140 pages, there were so many
real and beautiful things, as are actually found in it; so that even
now, were it not so rare, it can be read with great pleasure by
someone who understands Italian; and one must wonder that the
writers who subsequently wrote about the Turkish Empire did not
prefer to make use of it, rather than of other works, less valuable.
— The writer found himself among the great mission that
Emperor Maximilian II, in the year 1567, sent to the Sultan Selim
II. The reason and occasion of this embassy, the
journey from Vienna to Belgrade, further through Rascia, Bulgaria
and Thrace to Constantinople, he relates in the first four; and the
Audience, but the circumstances of which at that time differed
somewhat from those of the present, in the fifth Chapter. From the
6th to the 16th he interweaves reports concerning Turkey in a good
order. He describes Constantinople with its curiosities, Pera and
the Thracian Bosphorus; he treats of the origin of the Turks in
general, and how their empire increased up to his time, and the
condition of the Christians in it; furthermore he gives an account
of their manner of dress, their customs, and religious persons;
speaks of the Soldiers, to whom, at that time, the tenth Christian
child was enrolled, and was brought up in the Mohammedan religion;
particularly of the Seraglio, and the persons belonging to it, who
lived either in or without it; next of the Janissaries, Solaks,
Sipahys, and their order; the several Visiers, their rank and
number, of the Person of the Great Lord himself, and the number of
the Soldiers under the several Beghler-begs, who were then under the
Ottoman Empire. The 17th, with the remaining Chapters to the end,
contains the return journey, with what he remarked touching the
several places through which they passed, and particularly of
Adrianople; forgetting also, on occasion, without becoming too
wordy, to add good historical and geographical remarks.
Historia universale
dell' origine & imperio de Turchi; raccolta da M. Francesco
Sansovino in Venezia, 1568. in 4. large 430 pages. This Sansovino
was, in his time, a prominent writer in Italy, who had this work,
consisting of treatises by various writers, printed. It is therefore
a kind of collection, but whose parts are nevertheless worthy of a
mention. The first book provides, without indicating the sources,
from various writers the way of life, laws and customs of the
Turkish nation, as well as the court of the Sultan and the condition
of the Christian slaves. Added to all this are treatises by a
certain Luigi Bassano of Zara, and by a Greek, Theodori Spandugini,
on the customs of the Turks, and concluded with the latter's
biography of the Persian Kings, Shah Ismaël and his Son Shah
Tamas, as well as the letters of Pope Pius II to the Sultan Mohammed
II., to admonish him to adopt the Christian religion. - In the
second book are collected a treatise by an Andr. Cambini of
Florence, on the origin of the Turks; the above-mentioned Th.
Spandugini's treatise on the origin of the Turkish Princes; an
argument by Bishop Paul Jovius concerning the Turks before Emperor
Charles V; Jac. Fontanus's description of the war waged over the
island of Rhodes; acts of Sultan Suleyman after the taking away of
this island, up to the year 1533, and a letter from a Secretary of
Sigism. Malatesta, concerning what Muhammid II has accomplished in
Morca. In the last book one finds a short Chronicle of the Saracen
and Turkish History; a treatise by an unknown person on Mahomed and
his successors; letters from the Archbishop of Metelino, Leonhardus,
and Cardinal Isidore to Pope Nicolaus V, concerning the conquest of
Constantinople, as well as reports from a certain Christ. Richerius
on the same subject. The other Treatises treat of Dalmatia,
Negroponte, Skanderbegh, and the failed undertaking of King
Philippus Catholicus concerning Africa.
Leonh. Rauchwolf, M.
D. (High) proper description of the journey etc. to the East, etc. 4
parts in 4to, Laugingen 1583. covering the first 3 487, and the last
42 pages. In the first book, the 1st chapter begins with the journey
from Augsburg, in the year 1573. to Marseille, and from there to
Tripoli in Syria. That city is described in chapter 2., and in the
3rd a report is given of the Turks of high and low status, male and
female persons, as well as their offices, customs, habits and
clothing, but in the following of all kinds of crops, as much as the
writer could observe about it, during his stay in Tripoli. His
journey from there to Aleppo is described in the following chapter
at whose end he remarks, that neither there, nor in the other
Turkish cities, a stranger may ride in on horseback, but which is
now permitted in most cities. The four remaining chapters of this
book treat of the city of Aleppo, its buildings, tasty fruits and
herbs; the Bassas and their court, as well as of the Turks' way of
life, liberties, nobility and conduct; the great trade there, as
well as the Turks' food, drinks and ceremonies, and their reading of
herbs. In August of the year 1574. (Book 2, chapter 1.) he departed
thence, and sailed over the Euphrates. The water of this river, he
says, is turbid, and therefore not good to drink, unless it has
previously stood in earthen pots and jars, and the sand and dirt
therein have sunk. He sailed (chapter 2.) down this river in a
vessel, describing the neighbouring regions, the wandering Arabs
there, the city of Raka, (chapter 3.) the inhabitants of the
mountains and the great desert, (chapter 4.) the city of Anna,
(chapter 5.) the journey from there to ancient Babylon, (chapter 6)
with the ruined remains and surrounding regions, (chapter 7.)
besides his journey to Baghdad and that city itself, its situation,
crops, trade, nations and other things, quite extensively. (chapter
8.) His report concerning the supposed Tower of Babel I want to book
here. "It has indeed half a mile of road in the vicinity, but
is so dilapidated that it is no longer high, and is also infested
with so many vermin that one should not come near it for half a
mile, except in the winter for a month or two, when it is still in
sight". From there he returned (Chapter 9.) through Assyria,
the land of the Kurds, to the river Tyger, via Mosul, at the
beginning of the year 1575, as well as through Mesipotamia via Orpha
(Chapter 10.) to Aleppo. He concludes this book with a report
concerning the Turkish physicians and chemists, and some particular
observations, (Chapter 11.) Mount Lebanon, its inhabitants and
herbs, (Chapter 12.) and the plans of the Turks, (Chapter 13.) to
make war on those who are Druses and Maronites. The 3rd book
describes the Holy Land. He travelled from Tripoli via Jaffa
(Chapter 1) to Jerusalem, (Chapter 2.) Before starting his journey
there he had to give 9, but a Greek 5 ducats for the freedom to
travel, and safe-conduct. Of present-day Jerusalem and its
surrounding regions he first speaks in general, (Chapter 3.) and
then more particularly. He viewed, as much as was permitted him,
Zion and its holy places, (H. 4.) as well as Moria, and the
pretended Temple of Solomon, or actually the Mosque built by Omer,
the third Mohammedan Chief of Army after Mohammed, to which entrance
is forbidden to all who are not Mohammedans. (H. 5.) Here he inserts
true and false information concerning the Saracen and Turkish
religion, ceremonies, way of life, etc., together in a special
treatise. (H, 6.) He was further shown the houses of Pilate and
Herod, (H. 7.) Mount Calvary, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
(H. 8.) at which Eastern Christians entering had to pay from two to
five, and the European five ducats, and finally the epitaphs of the
Christian Kings. (H. 9.) This gives him occasion to give a general
account of the various Christian denominations there; (H. 10.) which
is followed by a special, but very short, therefore superficial and
defective report, concerning the Greeks, (H. 11.) the Syrians, (H.
12.) the Georgians, (H. 13.) the Armenians, (H. 14.) the Nestorians,
(H. 15) the Jacobites or Copts, (H. 16.) the Abyssinians, (H. 17.)
the Maronites, (H. 18.) and the Roman Catholics. (H. 19.) These sent
two monks to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on each journey, to
remain there for a fortnight at a time, to guard the Holy Sepulchre,
to attend to the Getae, and to keep burning the very precious lamps
venerated there by Kings and Princes. For the same purpose there are
also Clergymen of other Christian denominations. These are all
usually obliged to stay there for 14 days. The doors are bound shut
by the Turks. In the largest are three holes of various sizes,
through which the necessary provisions are given. All European
travellers are accommodated by the Roman Catholics, and according to
the circumstances there are well received. In recent years there
have been complaints that they have to pay a bit dearly for the
accommodation, but this is rarely the cause of the Fathers, but
rather the Oppressions to which they are exposed according to their
position there, and which always involve great costs. Here follows
(H. 20.) a report concerning the Orders of St. John, or, as they now
say there, the Knightly Orders of the Holy Sepulchre, which the
Father Guardian, that is, the Pope's Overseer over all the Roman
Clergy in the Holy Land, distributes. He also visited Mount Olivet
and the Holy Places, (H. 21.) as well as Bethlehem and the mountains
of Judah. (H. 22.) Then he returned via Tripoli to
Venice, and so to Augsburg, (H. 23.) where he arrived in February
1576. The fourth book contains 42 wooden plates of foreign herbs. —
One would hardly think that two centuries ago such a good travel
description had been drawn up as this one actually is. He certainly
inserted strange, and often untrue, reports into it; but, where he
speaks and describes himself, he seems, generally, to deserve the
absolute credence. He has carefully observed the Eastern customs.
This book would not be unworthy, that one 'for the general service,
made a good extract of it.
Sal. Schweigger
(Hoogd.) neue herausgegebene Reisbeschreibung nach Konstant. und
Jerusal. Numb. 1664. with many wooden plates, 4to, large 346 pages.
The first book contains ?? pages describing in brief the journey
from Tubingen via Vienna to Constantinople, as well as the places
through which it passed, with added comments. The second book deals
with Turkey. The 9 first chapter describe the then residence of the
German Imperial Ambassadors in Constantinople proper, their care by
the Sultan and their audience with him, as they then still had to
kneel before him on the ground, and the Imperial gift that was
considered by the Turks nothing more than a tribute. Here is also
mentioned the Seraglio, the succession of the German-Imperial
Ambassadors at Constantinople, the expenses incurred on the mission,
the freedom of religion in the residence of the Ambassadors, and of
the burials of the Germans. Of the 27th Head, several cases are
mentioned, which occurred during the Author's stay at Constantinople
with Georgian Princes, a Persian mission, etc.; and herein he
relates in detail the sad fate of the Christians who fell into
slavery. In the 2nd Head, he gives a description of Constantinople,
in the ??st, of the Turkish Temples and burial chapels; in the 30th
and 31st of the Turkish schools; in the 3rd of the Tibypials; in the
33rd of the Baths, and in the 34th of the Caravanserai. — But
Constantinople has since then been remarkably changed and enlarged,
so that the descriptions are mostly incomplete for one who has not
been there. — The 35th Chapter treats of the Monastery and the
residence of the Greek, and the 36th of the residence of the
Armenian Patriarchs. Both have now been changed. — The 37th
Chapter describes the Hippodrome and the Pillars; the 38th the
Emperor's pleasure gardens and the snow and ice trade; the 3??th the
water buildings in and outside Constantinople; the 40th the rare
animals; the 41st the Bezestein; the 42??th the Eski-Serail; the
43rd the 7 Towers and other ancient buildings. In the 44th and 45th
Chapters. he ends the description of Constantinople with Galata,
Tophana and Scutari. The 46th contains observations on the
usefulness of the Turkish Empire, the Tyranny, and the causes of its
long endurance, as does the 47th of the Table, the servants,
stables, pharmacies and the Sultan's ride to the Mosque. In the 48th
he examines the then reason of the Turkish victories over the
Christians. After having described in the 4th Chapter, the Sultan's
Officers and Commanders, he treats in the 50th of the Turkish
courts, authorities and punishments of criminals. In the 5th it is
reported that the Turks cheered beforehand, while they took the
field against an enemy. The following 10 Chapters. are mostly
devoted to describing the religion of the Turks, namely their
confession of God and Mohammed, the Koran, their worship, method of
preaching, circumcision, vain and feasts, monks, funerals, household
and clothing, marriage and divorce. The ??th to 64th Chapters speak
of the Greeks, mainly their religion, as does the 65th, but both
very briefly and incompletely, of the Armenians. The third book
provides a description of the journey from Constantinople to
Jerusalem. In the 9?? first Chapter, the arrangements for the
journey are partly described, partly the navigation through the
Propontis, Hellespont and Archipelago to Alexandria is described: in
the following 11 Chapters. one finds the description of the
aforementioned city, Rosetto, the Nile, the fertility of Egypt, the
buildings there, the camel, the languages, the currency, the
clothing, customs and Mumien. — But the whole description does
not say much. The 21st and 22nd Chapters contain the Sea voyage to
Palestine.
From the 23rd to the
36th Chapters we deal with Ptolemais, Joppa, Rama, the Arab escort,
the arrival at Jerusalem, the Patriarch there, the going to the Holy
Sepulchre, of this, the Temple and its sanctuaries, of the
Ceremonies to make someone a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, of the
present city of Jerusalem, the surrounding region, and of Bethlehem.
In the 37th Chapter he tells of his departure from Jerusalem, and up
to the 4311th?? his return journey via Damascus, Tripoli and Kandia
to Germany. The style was good for the times then, but not at all
now. The wooden plates are not bad, but those that are supposed to
depict places are not the best. The journey from Constantinople to
Egypt was made from 3 March 1581. to November of the same year to
Germany. From which one can easily conclude that everything is
almost short and incomplete. Also, much hearsay is mixed in. A
Tournefort and Pococke make the whole work superfluous.
I. Leunclavii annales
Sultanorum Othmanidarum a Turcis sua lingua seripti, Francoph. 1588,
4to 519 pages. C) The Ottoman Yearbooks in the Turkish language had
an Austrian Nobleman
(*) The well-known
Swedish Prof. Björnstahl, who stayed in Constantinople in 1770
and 1777, and had ample opportunity, through his intercourse with
Mr. Muradschja, (see I. Part, genealogical register of the Turkish
Emperors, opposite page 46, below the remark.) to learn the quality
of the Christian historians concerning the Turkish Empire from
himself, about this in a letter written from there (zicSciilozers
((lied.) briefvethfel. 2 part, 8 fiêh 11. 23.) in this way.
"There is still no good history concerning the Turks. The last
published Hist. de l'Empire Ottoman from his origins until the peace
of Belgrade in 1740. by Mr. l'Abbé Mignot, in Paris 1771. in
is, in several parts are badly written, and in many places
nothing but a
Romance, although the author affirms that he has drawn from good
sources, in the Royal Library at Paris. Mr. Mignot is a Nephew of
Voltaire, and in fact equals this great Poet, who uses fiction even
in History; but in style he certainly does not equal him. The
History of Prince Cantimir is likewise no good; but his added
observations are good; for they concern the Turks and their state.
Leunclavius is reasonably good, but too old: he came
out in the year 1596, (to wit, in a later edition,) and therefore
nearly two centuries are lacking to our time. Ricaut, de Guer and
others contain many apocryphal and other absurd reports. The same is
also true of Chalkokandytes, and other Greek historians. They were
enemies of the Turks, in whose mouths even the truth is suspected.
It seems strange to me that such a great collector as Mr. Büsching
did not know Leunclavi?? Annales Turci, or at least did not use it.
Otherwise it would have considerably reduced the number of his
misdeeds. We shall speak of this reproach elsewhere. It is much too
indefinite, and also too unfounded, to be approved.
bought at
Constantinople and brought them as a gift to Emperor Ferdinand.
Leunclavius had also been there, having brought with
him good knowledge of the Turkish Empire, and was requested by the
latter to translate them into Latin. These annals extended only to
the year 1551. He added to them the history of the following 37
years, and a multitude of observations, which he calls Pandelles, in
which he compares the Turkish stories with the Greek, Latin,
Italian, French and German history. The whole work is finally
concluded with a history of the siege of Vienna in the year 1529. A
list of about 60 writers or manuscripts, which were used in
compiling the Pandelles, is added to the preface. The first, the
history with the supplement, occupies 184 pages, but the last extend
to page 482; and the history of the siege forms the rest of the
work. These annals do not really concern me; at the most they serve
only, as far as they reach, to clarify §. II. in my first Part;
but the Pandects?? deserve here, justly, a place, containing besides
the descriptions of the countries and places, which gradually came
under the Turkish obedience, also the old Geography, the State and
Military Condition of the Turkish Empire, and the explanations of
the words, with respect to offices as otherwise occurring, which one
searches in vain elsewhere, and remains an important book in this
field. The explanation of the Porte of Constantinople (page
409-419.) is, with the exception of Gill, the most complete, that I
have ever seen on it. It is a pity, that in the said edition an
index is missing, and therefore the search for many useful Articles
is made so difficult.
Epistola continens
Hodoeporieon navigationis ex Constantinopoli in Syriam, Palastinam &
Aegyptum, '6? montem Sinai, Vienn. 1583. in 4t0 consists of only one
and a half pages, being not much more than a scanty list of places.
H. von Lichtenstein
(Hoogd.) Reisz auf Constantinopel im jahre 1584, described by
Meschior Besolt, is only a day-narrative of the journey from Vienna
to Constantinople, in 16 pages in folio, in which not much can be
said.
Joh. Sanderson, an
English merchant, made several journeys between 1584 and 1602 in the
Levant. The first went in the first year mentioned to
Constantinople, and from there to Cairo and Tripoli in Syria; the
second in the year 1591 again to Constantinople and the Syrian
coasts; the third in the year 1598, again to Constantinople, and
from there to Syria in Palestine. There is also added a special
description of Constantinople.
M. Heberer van
Bretken Aegyptiaca servutus, that is, a true description of a
three-year slavery, which began in Alexandria and ended in
Constantinople, has been published in Heidelberg, without mentioning
the year when it was printed, in the size of 522 pages. In 1585 the
author had the misfortune to end up in a very hard prison of the
Turks. He relates this with all the remarks that of course cannot be
read without emotion. But to know the provinces, this work does not
say much, and one can therefore, in this respect, do without it very
well. The wooden plates added to it also do not say much. Since it
could not come into many hands in the meantime, I want to place his
report concerning the notorious Neuser (page 348.) here, which he
received from the mouth of one of his fellow apostates, namely, who
had been a learned reformed preacher in Heidelberg, had later
apostatized, become an Arian, and was imprisoned for his apostasy,
but nevertheless escaped, fled from Germany to Turkey.
omen, had travelled
through Zevenbergen, and had urged him and one of his companions to
be a travelling companion, and had incited and moved him to a
similar apostasy from religion. — After they had all three
arrived at Constantinople, they had adopted the Turkish faith, and
offered themselves to serve the Turkish Emperor. They were then
circumcised, and promoted to Tschaus, that is, to travelling
services. But, because Neuser had thought that he would climb a
higher ladder of honour, he had, when this had not happened, led an
Epicurean and bestial life; was finally attacked by the plague, and
died in that disease in the utmost despair, so that his last words
were: after this life nothing more".
Jules Turci??
Othomannitique imperii descriptio ab Antonio Gen??eo gallice edita,
deinde latine reddita, Basil. 1587. ??, is a collection, which we
can do without.
A. Hoeniger von
Königshofen aan de Tauler Hofhaltung (Court) des Turkischsn
Keizers. (Hoogd.) Basel 1596. 2 parts in small folio, is, according
to the author's own report, a collection, which we now no longer
need.
Fvnes Moryson
itinerary, hond. 1617. fol. In it are European and Asian travels.
From page 210. begins the Eastern journey, which he 1596. of Venice
to Palestine.
He visited Jerusalem,
travelled to Jaffa, Tripoli in Syria, Aleppo, Scanderona, and
returned to Venice the following year by sea via Constantinople. In
the third part are the practical descriptions of his travels, as
(Book I.) of travelling in general, and the geographical
description, as well as the location, fruitfulness, trade of Turkey,
and way of life of the Turks, book III. Everything is of course
presented very briefly.
Some treatises on the
Turks, published around this time or later, are in the following
work: Herm. Conringii h??ri varii de bello contra Turcas prudenter
gerendo. Helmst. 4T0. 1664. In it are found the following Treatises
in Latin. 1) Lazari Sokanchii Patrieii Veneti Ottomannus feu de inu
perio Turcico. Ex Italico vertit Jac. Geuderus üb??
Herolzberga. This work was written in the year 1598. was good for
those times, but now unnecessary. 2) Achillis Tardücii ?? ca
venerabilis in Ungaria fifo also came out at the end of the 16th
century, belonging to the great, and then occupied, subject of many
writers, how to resist and overcome the Turks. In the first part the
writer points out the means and ways by which the Turks had come to
such a power, and proves that it was not by mere luck, but by
cunning and courage. Hungary and Germany are, according to the
second part, perfectly sufficient to subdue the Turks, showing at
the same time in detail how one should conduct the war itself. The
third part, as the application of the two preceding ones, concerns
itself with the number and disposition of the soldiers, as well as
the armies, their distribution in their various stations, and how
one should conduct oneself in a battle with the Turks themselves.
This treatise is very regularly written, lays a good knowledge of
the Turkish State in its entire vicinity as a basis, and would
perhaps still be worthy, by one who understands the present
circumstances, by consulting with a Warnery and Marsiglt, civilized,
and those who wage war with the Turks, to be given into the hands.
Of the rest I need
only mention the Titles. 3) Anonymi cujusdam dissertatio de fiatu
imperii Turcici, cujusmodi fub Amurathe III fuit, deque ejus
evertendi modo. 4) A. G. Busbeqjjii exclamatio, feu de re militari
contra Turcam instituenda confilium. 5) John Tarnovii de bello cum
Turcis gerendo disputatio. 6) Lazari Stuendii &c. quomodo Turcis
fit refistendum confilium. 7) Fierce. Petancii libellus de itine.
rite aggrediendi Turcam. &) Francii dolium Diogenis, slrepitu
fuo collaborans dynastis ïïhrijHk nis, helium in Turcas
parantïbus. 9) H. de Tourenne 'de bello Turcico oratio.
Johannis
Cotovici itinerarium Hierofolymitanum& Syriacum, Antw. 1619. 4.
518 pag. This is an excellent and original travel description, which
would have been worthy of having been printed with better plates,
which occurs in the years 1598 and 1599, and must be equated with a
Boxen Rauciiwolf. What these have in Natural History, they have in
Antiquities and the illustration of customs. Instead of a preface,
the author has preceded with a practical instruction for those who
wish to travel those regions, and then treats of his subject in five
books. The first describes his sea voyage from Venice to Jaffa, in
which he learns of the islands, regions and places, for example.
Ragusa, Corfu, Serigo, Morea, Rhodes, Cyprus, Sydon, Tyre,
Ptolemais, etc., which he encountered on the way. The second
concerns his Palestinian journey, especially to Jerusalem and the
surrounding provinces. Here one is referred to Jaffa, Karna,
Jerusalem itself, Bethlehem, Jericho
etc. very extensively maintained.
Many will not find
it unpleasant to find the Liturgies here recorded, which are prayed
or sung at various, whether real or pretended holy places, many of
which are very moving and powerful.
The third book
elucidates his Syrian or further journey from Jerusalem to Aleppo.
He begins with a
general introduction to Syria, and leads his readers to Shiloh,
Shechem, Sebaste, Nain, the mountains Gilboa and Hermon, Nazareth,
Tabor, the Sea of Tiberias, Damascus, Mount Lebanon,
(where he also speaks of the Druses), Emesjen, Heman and Aleppo.
Everywhere he
remains the same in treating important subjects.
The fourth book
gives his acquired knowledge concerning the religion, customs,
manners, and habits of the Mohammedans as well as Christians living
in Syria, for which a stay of three months in Aleppo was very
profitable to him.
He begins with the
Turks, their and the Mohammedans' origin and different disposition,
as well as their feelings of religion;
speaks of their
washings, baths, public worship, fasts, ecclesiastical persons,
pilgrimages, monks, public customs, alms and good works, the
condition of the dying, and the burials, as well as the churchyards
of Christians and Jews;
notes the necessary
concerning the Bassas, Sandjaks and Snbaschys, as well as the
Soldiers of the Turks and the punishments, ending this book with the
manners and condition of the native Syrian Mohammedans and
Christians, the Turkish Coins, dwellings and furniture, food and
drink, clothing of the Turks;
Moors, Christians
and Jews of the male and female sex, as well as the ornaments and
way of life of the latter.
The fifth or last
book contains his reports concerning Aleppo, Antioch, Mount Amanus,
and Alexandria, as well as his return journey by water almost along
the same route that he had taken on the outward journey.
This is one of the
best travel descriptions that one has of Palestine and Syria, and a
masterpiece for the time in which the author lived.
In the first three
books most has been elucidated by plates.
Many have made use
of these as well as his reports, without naming him.
A Latin reader will
be able to gather from this work an unusually large number of useful
and pleasant things, which should be much better known than they
actually are. Georg Douser de itinere fuo Constantinopolitano
epistola.
The journey took
place in 1598. The description of it is very short, and especially
remarkable because of the added old inscriptions, which are found in
Constantinople. Voiage du Mont Lihan trauit de ïtalien du R. P.
Jeröme Dandini &c.
or it was treated
with the creation of the customs of the Maronites, which touched
upon the many particularities of the Turks and the few literary
places of the Orient, with remarks on the Theology of the Christians
of the Levant and the Cells of the Mahometans, by R. S. P. in Paris
1685, in 12 ??
pp. The original,
under the Title: Missione Apostolica al Patriarca e Maroniti del
Monte Libano, was printed in 1656, much more extensively than it
appears here in the translation.
But the translator
reports that he considered it useless to translate the account of a
journey to Jerusalem contained therein, because it contained almost
nothing that other travellers had not already said about it.
In this abbreviated
form the journey made in the year 1599, occupies 198, but the
translator's comments occupy the remaining pages.
It contributes
nothing to a correct knowledge of Turkey, because it abounds in
errors, which the translator has partly, but by no means all,
corrected.
Therefore it serves
no other purpose than as a report concerning the Maronites, and in
particular the author's activities, who was sent to them as Papal
Nuncio.
§. LIII. Writers
of the seventeenth century; contents of their works, and judgment of
them.
Joh. Baptista
Tavernier, Baron of Aubonne, was born in Paris in 1605, and began to
travel through Europe from the 22nd year of his age. Subsequently,
within 40 years, he made six journeys through Turkey, Persia and
India. Because he spoke French poorly; he used partly the pen of de
Chappuzeau, who assures that, with the exception of certain memoirs,
the former had given him the rest from Memory in his pen; partly
also of de la Chapelle. He also published, in Tavernier's name, the
report concerning the Turkish Seraglio. From which one can
understand why the style is different and bad. The High. Title is:
J. B. Tavernier sechs Reisen in Turkey, Persien und Indien &c.
Geneva 1681. fol. with many (but common) plates. (xl yearly Travels
of Tavernier, Amji. 1682, 3 parts in 40) Only the first part
contains reports concerning Turkey. The first book deals with
various roads from Paris to Isfahan through the northern provinces
of Turkey, especially in the 2nd, 33rd and 7th Heads. In the 10th
the Caravanseras and Caravans are discussed, and in the 11th the
Camels. In the 2nd Head, the book, there are observations on the
Trade on the island of Kandy and the principal islands of the
Archipelago. Everywhere the places and the most important cases of
the author are described. In the 4th book, Chapters 9-14, an account
is given of the Armenians, and in particular of their Communion,
Priest-Winging, Baptism, Marriages, Burials, and permanence in the
Worship. To the 3rd part is added a new description of the internal
condition of the Seraglio of the Great Lord. This matter, recorded
in Chapters 19, etc., I have nowhere read so completely, and, as far
as I know, not so accurately, as treated as here. In the 4th Chapter
of the Hall, in which the Sultan listens to the Ambassadors, he
reports that on the left side of the Throne there is a small seat,
covered with red velvet, and lined with gold braid, on which the
Ambassadors sit down, after they have kissed the Emperor's coat.
This is either generally untrue, or it is no longer customary.
George Sandys has published an account of his voyage in English. He
made it from the year 1610, went by water from Venice to
Constantinople, and on the way visited several islands of the
Archipelago. In describing Constantinople his proposition will not
easily be approved, to wit, that the Turkish Empire was, possibly,
the largest of all the Empires that had existed since the creation
of the world; for the Roman Empire surpassed it in size. The
condition of the Turkish Empire, the manner of life of the Turks, as
well as the condition of the Greeks under the Turkish yoke, he
represents, and seems to deserve credit in what he himself has seen,
but which has not always been accurately distinguished from what has
been heard elsewhere. From Constantinople he sailed to Egypt. Here
he made the usual voyage from Alexandria to Cairo on the Nile; from
Egypt he travelled to the Holy Land. He viewed Jerusalem with all
its antiquities and neighbourhood, Mount Carmel, and several cities,
such as Seyde, Damascus etc. This travel description does not seem
to have to be put aside, considering that he was actually on the
places themselves, although many of the later ones are more accurate
and detailed.
W. Lithgow discourse
of a peregrination from Scotland to the most famous Kingdomes in
Europe, Asia and Africke, Lond. 1614. large 14 pages in 4 to. In it
everything is so short, that one finds little more, than the names
of the places and some remarks.
Voiages de Pietro
della Valeöefau la Turquie, ?? Egypte, la Palestine, la Perse,
les Indes Orientales & autres lieux, T. I-VIII. a Paris 1645. 8
(Travels of P. della Valla, ??mst. 1666. 6 vols. -) The author was
born in Rome in 1586, and has described his journey in several
letters, which were subsequently translated from Italian into
several languages. The first letter, written in 1614, describes the
voyage from Venice to Constantinople by water. On this occasion he
visited the coasts of Troy, finding there a fair number of ancient
buildings and pyramids. In the second letter he describes
Constantinople in its layout, size, fortifications, houses, Mosques,
the Bosphorus of Thrace, places, Columns, cisterns, markets, the 7
Towers, the Seraglio, Dervishes, Ramasan, with the death of a Grand
Vizier, and the riding of a Sultan to the Mosque. In many respects
he gives preference to Naples. In the third letter his own and the
Turks' domestic affairs appear, also speaking of Coffee, as a drink
then still unknown in Italy. The fourth is a single special letter.
In the fifth he describes the still customary entry of a new
Venetian Envoy to the Porte in the suburb of Pera, and his Audience
with the Great Lord. These two Articles are detailed and precise.
The remark is offensive when it says: that the Ambassador, as little
as his retinue, the Grand Vizier and the other Ministers in the
Divan, had greeted with their hats, because they had not been
greeted by them. For the Turks would consider the taking off of the
hat as a mockery, or at least laugh at it. The sixth letter gives a
very detailed account of the departure of a Turkish Army to war
against the Persians. In the seventh to tenth, mostly special
matters occur. In the ninth he mentions the difficulty of buying
books from the Turks; also refuting Belon, who had praised the
Church of St. Sophia (which has now been converted into a Mosque) as
superior to the Rotonda in Rome. The two following letters are
written from Cairo, and contain his sea voyage from Constantinople
to Egypt. He came to the island of Stanchio (for this Colony) and
Rhodes, describing what he saw remarkable at Alexandria, Rosetta,
and finally Cairo. The new travellers, such as Pocock and Niebuhk,
are certainly more accurate and detailed about all this; but
nevertheless one reads with pleasure what he reports of it, as well
as of the Pyramids, Mumi, Copts, Arabs, the Monastery on Mount
Sinai, this mountain itself and Mount Horeb, the Red Sea, and some
animals. Here and there very good remarks, even examples, concerning
the caution so necessary there in travelling are inserted. The
reports concerning the horrors of lust that grip the Hand there
dishonour humanity. He speaks of Pigeons, which were trained in some
places for carrying letters; (which is certainly not common, but
only a rare thing,) of the so-called Palace of Pharaoh; the
beautiful burial-places of the Turks, and the Ovens in which the
eggs are hatched; but he found that the chicks were not nearly so
tasty as those hatched under a hen. In the 2nd part follows the
1.3rd letter concerning Aleppo. He travelled with a Caravan from
Cairo, through the desert, via Gaza, Ramah, Emmaus to Jerusalem, and
from thence to the Jordan, Bethlehem, Hebron, then via Shechem,
Samaria, (where he relates some things concerning the Samaritans and
their books,) Nazareth, Tabor, in the neighbourhood of the Sea
Genezareth, finally to Damascus. After a stay there the journey
went, with a caravan, overstem, (formerly Hemesfa??) and Hamah
(formerly Apamea) to Aleppo. Notwithstanding that all this is to be
found more extensively and accurately, and by means of the plates
for the imagination clearer, in Pocock, and as for Egypt, also in
Niebuhr; nevertheless it will not be unpleasant and useless to
anyone, and especially to him who wanted to travel to these regions,
to read the things themselves and their incidents on the journey. It
goes without saying that he was shown all those places and things,
which are supposed to have become remarkable by this and not by
Biblical history. Several times he corrects places and rivers
Belojst, which he praises for the rest. How money is extorted from
the Christian pilgrims on their journeys to the Holy Land, is
evident from the fact that in his time each had to pay five ducats
for going to the city of Jerusalem, eight or nine for going to the
Holy Sepulchre, four or five for the journey and the protection of
the Turks on the road to the Jordan, and as many ducats for the
journey to Hebron. The three following letters contain indifferent
matters. The 17th was written about the end of the year 1616, and at
Baghdad. The writer provided himself, at Aleppo, before his
departure, with the necessary necessities, which were required for
such a difficult route, through the sandy deserts of Arabia and
Mesopotamia, which were bare for many days' journey from towns and
villages. In this one is as on the Sea, and in the sand one needs
special guideposts, just as on the Sea one needs pilots. He also
gives some account of the Turks and Arabs; but d'Arvieux is more
circumstantial about them. He approached the Euphrates, the banks of
which are here and there fairly inhabited, and came to the city of
Anna. There he heard of a Mohammedan sect, but which had to keep
very quiet, in order not to be persecuted, but whose doctrines he
found to be the same as those which the Magi had accepted. Here he
went with the caravan over the Euphrates, and came, by dangerous
roads from Mesopotamia, to Bagdad, through which the Tiber flows, so
that nevertheless the principal and strongest part of this city lies
on the Persian side, and both are united by a bridge of boats. The
Tiger he holds to be a fifth part wider than the Euphrates. No stone
bridge can be made over either; for as low as they are in times of
drought, so exceedingly do they increase when the snow melts, so
that they overflow high lands, and by their rapid course sweep away
everything. He shows very clearly that Bagdad is not the old
Babylon; noting that the first to lay on the Tiger, and the last to
have lain on the Euphrates. He also, on a journey made thither,
inspected the demolished remains, finding among them clear signs of
the Tower of Babel described in the Bible. It was a confused heap of
various building materials, which had the size of a mountain, was
almost square, and had the shape of a Tower or Pyramid, the four
sides of which were directed towards the four points of the compass,
and was about 1140 paces in circumference. He also made a journey to
the region of the Tiger, where at one time Seleucia towards Turkey,
and Ctephiphon towards Persia were said to have been situated so
that they were only separated from each other by the said river. In
the letter, also at Bagdad ??, he describes some Apothecary's goods.
- The last two in this part form a beginning of the Persian
correspondence, which is followed in the third part until the middle
of the sixth. Then follow the journeys to India, which end with the
seventh part. In the last one finds the tenth letter of Bassora,
describing his journey from Mascat to the said city, which is
situated on the united rivers, the Euphrates and the Tiger, before
their division into ?? arms, and their course in the Persian Sea.
Various reports occur of this as well as of Bassora. The following
letter is a diary of his journey from there to Aleppo, through the
Arabian deserts. He finished this in the months of June and July.
This diary would be useful to those who wanted to make a journey
there. The wandering Arabs, the winds by day, which blow up the dust
and sand, but at the same time lessen the otherwise unbearable heat,
the cold by night, and the deceitfulness of the Arab guides, are
equally troublesome to the travellers. The other letters were
written from Cyprus, Malta, Syracuse, Messina and Rome, and their
contents do not concern us. This travel description is, for its
time, above all expectation good, has every credibility, and can not
only be read with pleasure now, but will also be of use to many a
traveller. But the newer ones quoted by me here and elsewhere are,
certainly, much more complete and detailed. Although this is not the
place to make remarks, I must nevertheless place this, that the
writer, at??, married a Mesopotamian Christian woman, who left her
native country, and accompanied him bravely on his journey. She died
in Persia. He had the body embalmed, placed in a strong coffin,
taking it with him, with great and costly trouble, on his East
Indian and other journeys, until he had it interred in his own tomb
at Rome. Whether one should admire the certainly rare love of the
Knight, or the excellence of the Lady, who had made himself so
lovable to him, I leave aside. In the meantime she is worthy to be
included here: her name was Sim Rob??Wither, an Englishman, has
published a description of the Seraglio, being at the same time a
treatise of the Porte and the whole Ottoman State. I find this in
Purchas Pilgrimes, the second part, Lond. 1625 fol. from pages
1580-1613. inserted by paragraphs, without knowing exactly whether
the author himself composed them in order, and when. But the latter
seems to have happened about the year 1618. The laying and division
of the Seraglio, the Divan and the administration of justice, the
Audience of the Ambassadors, the inhabitants of the Seraglio,
especially the female sex, the Adschjamoglans and their education,
the Eunuchs and important Servants of the Seraglio, the way of life
and ceremonies in it, the old Seraglio, and then the Religion,
feelings and customs of the Turks are here and mostly described so
accurately that one must wonder that this treatise is not better
known and has been omitted by a multitude of useless sketches?? on
this subject. Trattato delle Piante ed image of the factory edifizj
of ierra Santa defegnate in Jerusalemme fecendule regole della
Prospettiva [e vera mifura della lor grandezza dal R. P. F.
Bernardino. In Firenza, 1620. Here on about 60 pages, in small fol.,
the Church at Bethlehem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the city
of Jerusalem, and the other remarkable buildings, partly in
sketches, partly in designs, are so clearly represented that one can
form correct ideas of all these things. But it is a pity that few
will be able to obtain this book.
Voïage de Levant
par-le Commandement du Roi (to wit, deFrance) en fannée 1021,
parle Sr. D. C. feconde Edition h Paris, 4*0; large 495 pages. with
some good plates, drawings of places and maps of those regions. The
first 98 pages give an account of his journey through Germany and
Hungary to Constantinople; which is then described very accurately.
Many things have changed with time, as everywhere else. Helling is,
as everyone knows, unfounded, (page 123) that the Supreme Head of
the Armenian Church, namely its Patriarch, in Great Armenia the Pope
for the general Supreme Head of the Church acknowledges; also the
two churches belonging to the Roman Catholics in the city of
Constantinople itself were taken from them. Concerning the Seraglio
follows (from page 127.) a special report. Here he places the
following lists of the supply of meat for its use: annually 400a
oxen; daily 200 lambs; 100 lambs or goats; 10 calves; 50 geese; 200
head of birds; 400 chickens, 200 pigeons. Concerning the Audiences
of the Ambassadors some change occurred; and the children's tribute
customary at the time of the writer has also ceased. Here he treats
(page 157.) of the Emperor's wives, and of the gardens of the
Seraglio, (page 167.) where also the private life of the Sultan
among his courtiers and wives, his pleasures, religious exercises,
conduct towards his children, etc., occur. "When riding to the
Mosque, he who believes he has suffered an exceptionally great
injustice, holds a lighted torch above his head, to indicate to the
Great Lord that if he does not do him justice, his soul, like this
torch, will burn in the future Life. — After the Mosque he is,
as a rule, accompanied by seven or eight hundred horses and four
thousand Janistars. He sits down in it on a raised place, where he
is separated from the people. — The deawi/aarro go ahead on
foot, and have no other weapon than an Indian reed in their hand.
They are led by forty of their Headmen on horseback. Finally their
General, the Janistar-J ga, comes. After him follow three or four
hundred Kapudschjys, all on foot, except their Headmen, who lead
them. Behind them ride 300 Tschausche, who are clothed with gold or
silver, and whose horses are adorned with precious saddles and
bridles. On these come 200 Mutefertikeh, still more splendidly
dressed. From 12 to 15 hand-horses of the Great Lord are each led by
two servants. One cannot easily see anything more beautiful, because
of the costliness of their saddles, which are in every way set with
precious stones. The Sultan himself rides in the midst of 40 or 50
Sfolaks. (Guardians.) His first groom, who lays his hand behind the
saddle-tree of his horse, walks beside him with many Peigks
(Lakeys). The Sfolaks make loud wishes for the well-being of his
government, to which the people respond with a not too loud voice.
Although the Turkish horses never hold their heads stiff, 5 his is
nevertheless almost without any movement, which does not tire him at
all, because he has not been allowed to sleep for three nights
before. The Vizier,s and many of the Seraglio's servants, Engraved
as well as Idsch-Oglans, (Pages) make the castle. "Under the
Title: Relation de ïEtdt du Gr. Seigneur (page 183.) there is
actually a description of the State of the Turkish Empire, with
regard to its size, and yet its small population, the Land Militia,
the Naval State, and the many defects, which must naturally arise
from the depopulation, the diversity of denominations and nations,
the lack of auctions, and the difficulty and length of time to
gather soldiers. While he speaks of the Finances (page 226.) and the
Government (page 231.); he also brings up the most remarkable,
concerning the State and judicial employees, as well as the
Processes in criminal cases, on which follows from page 254. to 274.
a treatise on the Mohammedan Religion, especially that Sect, to
which the Turks adhere. After that he, herein, has generally
remarked the necessary concerning the form of government in the
Provinces and also in Algiers; he gives the reason of the general
obedience to the even cruel commands of the Great Lord. (page 281.)
He finds it in the skill of their execution, whereby the subjects
had no time to flee, and at the same time the principle of Religion,
that they then died happily! Persons, who held the highest Posts,
were mostly of a Low descent; had therefore no support to hope from
a powerful Family; could not easily come beyond the borders; were
ignorant of the Gcographic, and thought that most of the other
Princes under the Sultan (showed, or would, like him, take
possession of their money, by murdering them: large rewards and
severe punishments, the marriage of the sisters or daughters of the
Sultan to the Great, kept the State standing. The war is troublesome
for them. (page 288.) Many months pass before the army from the
great Empire can go to the theater of war, and with the middle of
November the troops, who are not in a fixed wage, part. Their field
army is well and magnificently organized. They easily hold out in
the field, because they are accustomed to a modest way of life. The
Empire falls under great state defects; the previously unknown, but
now completely introduced sale of honorary titles, the distribution
of commanderies or Tymare to Persons who draw the income but keep no
Soldiers, and the acceptance of Turkish instead of Christian
children in the Seraglio, and drawn into the Mohammedan religion,
certainly cause, in time, a great weakening of this State. In
presenting the interests of the Christian powers in their treaties
with the Porte (page 396.) France would have only the maintenance of
the Christian (he means Roman) religion, the preservation of the
Holy Places, the release of captive Christians, and the welfare of
all Christendom in view. His observations on the interest of the
German Emperor, the Republic of Venice, of Poland, Russia, Persia,
Abyssinia, with the Porte, are no longer appropriate in our times,
when circumstances have almost entirely changed. — His journey
to Jerusalem follows from page 332. It is no longer customary now
that ships coming from Constantinople must stop for three days at
the Dardanelles, whether perhaps an inquiry might be made from there
concerning concealed fiaves or a smuggling trade. I leave the
description of the voyage to Jerusalem through the Archipelago
untouched, as well as that of the Holy Land (page 377), as it is of
no use at present. A report concerning Jerusalem and the Holy places
in and outside its Veilen is found from page 389 to 419. But,
because he stayed there only 22 days, the reports concerning various
regions and places in the Holy Land seem to come from others, and
not from himself, although they agree reasonably well with other
credible travel descriptions. The return journey from Jerusalem
(page 429.) to Europe, with the presentation of the usual routes
from France to Constantinople, together with a not unpleasant
description of the most remarkable regions and places, through which
they pass, constitutes the essence of this work, which was certainly
accurate in its time, and is still usable today, although many
things have changed since then, and the writer only stayed six weeks
in Constantinople.
Henr. Rantzowen
(High) Reisebuch auf Jerusalem, Cairo und Constantinopel, Copenhagen
1669. 4t0, large 92 pages. One notices easily from the small number
of pages, that here not much more than a meager, and almost too
short diary occurs, in which more is seldom indicated, than that one
has seen this or that. Moreover, it is written in an unpleasant
style, and with many Italian and Latin periods interspersed. Because
of the short time, not much more could be done than has been done.
For on the 7th of February 1623, the writer travelled from Venice,
and returned on the 4th of December of the same year. The first 24
pages deal with his journey to Cyprus. He landed on the way at
Saide, and thus arrived at Acre. From there he rode to Galilee,
Samaria and Jerusalem, page 29. Here he was led around with other
pilgrims, making the journey with them to the Jordan. From Jajfa
(page 40) he travelled to Damiate, (page 41) and up the Nile to
Cairo. (page 42.) He found that river so rich in fish that one could
catch the fish with one's hands. He stayed in the last-mentioned
city for twenty days. At Matharea he found the garden, where the
excellent balm grew for it, but eight years before it had been
spoiled by a too great flood of the Niles, and now no balm grows in
all of Egypt. (page 44.) He climbed the well-known great Pyramid by
means of 225 steps, many of which were so high that one alone
reached his chest. He had to climb down a hundred steps from the
plane of terribly large square stones on top of the Pyramid to the
well-known entrance into it. He, like all travellers, is in the
greatest astonishment at it, saying: "I can write no more of
it, than that it is an "astonishing work, and of great
expense." "He is of the opinion that one can ride round
the actual city of Fözzo, which is rightly inhabited, in five
hours; but if one were to include Old Cairo and Bulak, as is
commonly done, then they would be eight German miles in
circumference. He sailed on the Nile to Rosetta, and rode from there
to Alexandria. Here he apparently went to Constantinople (page 65.)
where he stayed nearly two months, and thus returned to Venice by
way of Dalmatia. Here, except for the places and the description of
the things, there is nothing to be sought, and, what may have been
read of reports here and there, seems moreover to be based on a
suspected hearsay.
Purchas Pilgrimage,
Lond. 1626. fol. fourth edition, is by the same author Pilgrim
distinguished work. Here, in the third book, a treatise drawn
together by several writers on the Arabs, Saracens and Turks occurs.
The religion and political condition of the latter is treated quite
extensively, from pp. 223-342.
The description of
the travels of Balthasar of Monconys to Asia and Palestine is such
that it is not worth the trouble to give a content of the main part,
although they are in the year 1697. in Leipzig in 4t0 in the High
German were published. The bad style, the unimportant circumstances
of his intercourse with common people, and the widely reported
purchase of Turkish things are still bearable, in comparison with
the Recipes of supposed Secrets, the signs of a far-reaching
superstition, and the multitude of foolish fortune-tellings.
Joh. Mocquet (High
D.) Reise-begebnisse in Africa, Asia und Oost- und West-Indien
translated from the French, Lunenburg, 4t0. probably 1688*. The
Original came out in Rouen 1645. Hyde made a journey from Syria to
Jerusalem and the Holy Land around the year 1630. In it are the
usual Pilgrim's reports concerning the Holy Land, an extensive
description of old Jerusalem, the Temple, etc., which no one would
look for there, and for the rest travel notes, so that one can do
without this book without any disadvantage, and a special statement
of its contents would be quite useless. He refers very much to the
following travel description of Neitzschitz.
G. C. von Neitzschitz
(High Rev.) fiebenjalu ngeund gefahrliche Reisebeschreibung &c.
after his death, from his handbook published by M. Chr. Iëger,
Budissin 1663. in kl. 4to, 389 pages. The author, a Saxon nobleman,
made this journey from 1630 to 1637. First he took the route across
Italy, by water, to Smyrna and Constantinople, and so back by land
to Vienna. From there he made a second journey to Constantinople
with an Imperial mission. He relates this in the first two main
divisions. The third treats, in several books, of his journey to the
Levant. This went from Vienna through Austria via Venice, (book 1.)
to Egypt, (book 2.) and according to custom to Alexandria, Rome and
Cairo. (book 3.) The journey to Mount Sinai, where he stayed for 7
days (books 4-6.) is the best and most detailed in this work. One
will hardly find so many reports about this elsewhere. The journey
to the Holy Land, and through it, he did not make with the pilgrims
in their own way and along their usual, and almost always the same
roads; but the anxieties about it did not extend further than what
the Roman monks told him. The return journey forms the last main
division. During his stay in Egypt he visited Matharea, in the
neighbourhood of Cairo, and there was still a beautiful garden of
Balm, (*) Palm, Lemon and other fruitful trees unknown to him.
Qag-l63-)° On one (but he does not state which) side he climbed
the great Pyramid, and counted 320 stones or steps, each from one,
one and a half, to two ells high" and a third half, also three
ells long, which were squarely worked, and very flat, like a
well-polished Marble stone. At the opening or the entrance in this
Pyramid he measured exactly 160 to each corner, and thus found the
one whole side 320 common paces wide, from which he judges that it
(*)
Pantzow, who traveled in 1623., reports that the balm jars had
already perished 8 years before, in a very great flood of the Nile.
itself whole
circumference must amount to 1280 such paces. (page 168, 169.) On
the journey to Mount Sinai the Arabs showed him, at several places,
(page 185, 188, 195, 192.) old inscriptions, hewn in hard rock,
which, according to them, were Hebrew, and of the Children of
Israel, as a sign of their former passage there. But they had rather
perished. According to his report the letters were longer than one
finger, and many had become almost equal to the stone. At one place
there were also all kinds of Egyptian characters, but which had
rather faded away, and were no longer recognizable: the Manna is
usually found at a certain season; (page 221.) it was, when it was
shown to him, a thick dew of a sweetish taste; it can be collected
and preserved as melted wax, or rather as a soft dough. On his
return journey from Mount Sinai, in the fore-journey to the Red Sea,
there was just ebb in it, as it then, according to his report, page
231, runs out daily, at a certain time, so that he rode with his
Camel to the deserted place there, but where, because of the
slippery ground, he had almost been unhappy. At Damiate he was very
surprised at the Pigeons, which were used as letter carriers to
Cairo, when a ship had arrived there; page 248. they tie the letters
under their wings or to their legs, and let them fly with them. The
writer seems to tell the story honestly everywhere, but does not go
further than he has seen and heard. His own reports are not
accurately distinguished from hearsay, rather according to the old
taste, and therefore seldom sufficiently definite. It was a pity
that he did not travel with the knowledge of a learned man, and of
natural history, as well as mathematics, he seems to have understood
nothing. It is therefore, as the title shows, a world-view, but not
a perusal and comprehension.
Itinerarium orientale
Philippi a SanStisstma Trinitate Carmelitee, ab ipso conseriptum &c.
Lugd. 1649. 8. groot 431 peg. This monk made that journey 1629 to
the East, stayed nearly eight years in East India, and returned 1639
via Goa. He traveled from Italy over the Mediterranean to Syria,
arrived at Aleppo, passed through the Arabian deserts, and arrived
via Bagdad at Ispahan, and from there via Bassora, the Persian Gulf
and the Indian Sea at Goa. This is the contents of the first book,
and relates on 39 pages the outward journey, just as the tenth or
last, on as many pages the return journey, which he took almost
along the same route; with this difference only, that instead of
taking the road through the Arabian deserts, he took it through
Armenia, and tarried on the coasts of Syria and the Holy Land. If
one could fully rely on this writer, his travel book would be much
more worthy: but in this respect we may encounter difficulties. That
he adopts the usual song of his Order, and asserts its origin from
Prophet Bias, one may at least take it to his credit, as if a
certain Order wanted to derive his from Noah. But this betrays an
almost unforgettable belief, and makes his own observations very
uncertain, when he does so. as a true event relates, that before his
departure from Rome, he took the Holy Communion, and after partaking
of it saw fresh drops of blood in the chalice and on the fingers
with which he had touched the Court: page 8. His use of other
reports might become just as uncertain, if he did not deceive
himself somewhat cautiously. He reports in person, p. this
unbelievable incident, which is said to have happened at his
residence in Goa, that a Crucifix, during the ceremonies of Lent,
the Passion, and especially on Good Friday, the GQgeq had been
opened, had its face distorted, moved, and once the whole attitude
became so expressive, as if it had been animated. But nevertheless
he is so circumspect in this, that he does not relate it in his own
words, but places the translated report of the Nuns of the
Augustinian orders at the Archbishop's See at Goa, and then only
reports, that this incident was, justly, declared to be a Miracle,
and was publicly celebrated by a Te Deum (which is so often abused
even in civil and war cases), as well as by Processions, etc. - His
learned guesses are often wrong; for instance, after he had
investigated and rejected foolish feelings concerning Paradise; (pa.
128.) thus he presents his own account, according to which it would
now be situated on earth, and indeed in a pleasant plain, temperate
with cold and heat, on top of a mountain in great Armenia, near
Erivan, where Enoch and Elias still lived, and by the enjoyment of
the fruit of the tree of life, were freed from all the infirmities
of old age and disease. For the rest it would be to be desired, that
still that which he himself has certainly seen and experienced, were
clearly separated from that which he has heard of. Between the first
and last single and real chapters of travel he now inserts his
acquired Eastern knowledge and reports, that they are certainly of
the same value. The more 2 dTief"ZyV°0r dQGaphie, the
second and third books. The first contains 16 main parts: of the
Turkish Empire; the Holy Land; His wild and happy Arabia; of
Mesopotamia; Chaldea; Armenia; of the Persian Empire, its
description and the Parthian Empire East in general, its sea coasts
and the islands of the Indian Sea; but especially the island and the
city of Goa. The last aforementioned treats, in a main objects, of
the Mediterranean Sea; the Persian Gulf; the Ar?? Greene Z- enabyde
S ? and Orontes-For the »4*« in the 7th book the wdk in
* the *-* other flesh of animals, snakes and worms, East Indian
birds and fish, fruit-bearing bulb one d besides other trees and
plants is described. The knowledge of the four so-called Monarchs of
the Ashrymians and CJtó*»», of the Jv ƒ«
and Jfifi* of the Greeks - *ede of the Turkish Emperors, the Indian
Kotiingen, and the Kings and Princes of the Holy Land, one can leave
for him alone. Not many important things are found in the 5th and
6th book. The first is suitable for the Colonies of the Portuguese
in the East, their government and trade there, then the other
Eastern Christians, namely the Armenians, Greeks, Nestorians and
Jacobites; the latter is for the knowledge of the Turks, Arabs,
Persians, heathen Indians, the unjustly so called St. John's
Christians and Eastern Jews; but both books are far below the
expectation of a man who lived so long in those regions, and could
well have gathered better knowledge. The 8th and 9th books may,
possibly, be of service to one or other. They treat of the Roman
missions in the East in general, and then in Persia, India, Arabia,
Syria and the Holy Land in special, and relate many, in such
Kingdoms, in his time, events that occurred. Of the Armenians he
reports, page 243. the following, of which I, in my frequent
intercourse with important and ancient Families among this Nation,
have heard nothing, and which seems to me, at least in our time, as
incredible, as the assertion of the Jews, that they still have
somewhere in a country, (but which is never mentioned,) a King of
David's lineage. "The Armenians obey the laws of those Princes,
under whose rule they stand; for they have no visible Armenian King.
The Turkish Emperor and the King of Persia have divided themselves
in Armenia. But secretly they have a King, who descends from the old
Armenian Royal Family, and is secretly anointed by the Patriarch, as
he himself assured our Fathers (Patres), although few know
otherwise. "The following report (page 403.) concerning a
Persian settlement is all the more certain: "because in Persia
there are no permanent stopping-places, where the horses necessary
for a post may be taken; so the King's Messengers can, at their
pleasure, take the horses that come to them, and take the Life of
those who resist; and thus, often, the travellers, After the horses
were taken from them, they were forced to remain on the road."
Pauxli Strasburgii,
Suecics Regis quondani Consiliarii secretioris Aulici & ad
Amurathem IV, legati, relatio de Byzantino itinere ac negotiis in
Ottomannica aula perattis, no non de Jlatu ac facie Orientalis
imperii, qualis er at circa. A. 1633. This is a very short, but
otherwise very humane message, covering 41 pages. in 4 to.
A. Olearii, (Hoogd.)
Beschreibung der oriental. Reife, Schleszwig 1647, M with plates,
large 546. pages. (published in Dutch under the Title: A. Olearius
Persian travels of the Holstein Ambassadors, Amst.1691. 4-) The
author's journey went with the Holstein Ambassadors to Persia, in
the years 1035-1639. over the Baltic Sea, through Russia, over the
Caspian Sea, and so through Persia's Mediterranean, and from there
along the Caspian Sea almost the same route back to Holstein. The
usefulness of this book for the countries travelled is certain; but
it has no real relation to Turkey, and so I am exempted from its
further assessment. — The same applies to J. A. von Mandelslo
Hoogd.) Travel description, which was also published in Paris in
1679, in French, in 2 parts in 4C0. John Graeves description of the
Pyramids b c mth a description of the Gr. S. Seraglio, Lond, ï737.
2volk in 8/0. These are the well-known, and often, even as regards
the description of the Pyramids, miden, especially in the general
History produced fruits of a journey, which the writer made after
the year 1638. to the Levant.
Historiea.,
Thealogica & raoralis Terrce S. dilucidatio. Auctore Fr.
Ojjaresmio, olim term £. Prafule ac Commrio Apost'jii, 2 parts
infol. Antw. 1639. This work contains indeed an unusually large
number of things, for our times and way of thinking not at all
suited; but, whoever wants to know, of what the Pilgrimage used to
be shown there, as well as of the state of the Order of the Patres
de Terra S. will find here an extensive explanation. There are also
some plates added.
A completely
different writer is Lorent d'Arvieux. He was born in Marfeille 1635
and traveled 1653. to Sayd, where he stayed for 12 years, learned
the Eastern languages, and at the same time studied the ancient
history, customs, habits and learning of the ancient peoples. The
King of France sent him 1668. to Tunis, 1672 to Constantinople, then
made him Consul in Algiers, and finally in Aleppo. He died in the
beginning of the 1.8th century in his native country. His work was
published in High German under the following title; *ow Arvieux
Nachriehten, worin er feine Reifen nach Constantinopel, in Asten,
Syrian, dem gelobten Lande, Aegypten und der Rarbarey &c.
heschreibt,6B. 8. Kopp-und Leipzig 1753-1759. The first part begins
with the author's journey to Smyrna, and is dealt with in the first
four chapters; just as his journey to Egypt is dealt with in the
four following chapters. From the 9th to the ttzHead, one finds his
journey to the Holy Land, so that nevertheless many chapters are
filled with matters of commerce, biography and observations. The
second part describes the Holy Land, and a part of Syria. In the
third part appear the reports concerning the Arabs and Tunis. The
fourth part continues the accounts of Tunis, and describes the
journey to Constantinople and Adrianople, and the stay there. The
fifth part treats of Algiers, and many matters of Commerce, and
Treaties of France with the Powers of Barbary and the Sultan, as
well as of the author's recent stay at Aleppo; which is continued in
the sixth part, and concluded with several military, commercial, and
private histories. Innumerable, and often rambling, stories and
quotations, and a multitude of useful* empty remarks have made this
work grow to such a thickness, which otherwise, if they were
omitted, would constitute a very useful travelogue; all the more so,
if the writer remains faithful to the truth. Small errors, for
instance when he gives the Armenian nation at Smyrna two churches,
are unavoidable. In his time all Europeans in the Levant had to wear
beards; but this custom has now ceased in most places; also, since
that time, they have been determined in many privileges and
liberties.
De Turcarum moribus
Commentarius, autiore Joh. Bapt. Montalbano, Lugd. Bat. 1654, in
i6mo. large 120 pag. seems to have been collected partly from
personal experience, partly from other reports.
Clas Kalams
Constantinopolitaniske Resd, Stokholm 1679. in 4. large 93 pp. At
the conclusion of the work it is shown that many more and more
detailed things are in the writer's diary than in this description,
which were worthy of being made known by the print. One may not
doubt that when one reads these abbreviated travel reports. He
collected them as extraordinary ambassador of the King of Sweden,
Karel Gustavus, in the years 1657. and 1658. Despite all their
brevity, they are, nevertheless, still worthy of reading because of
their accuracy. One will read there many events of that time, and
especially the Porte, as well as the course of his negotiations with
them, and his journeys there and back, not without amusement. The
state of the Turkish Empire (pp. 70-79.) he relates according to the
faithful instruction of a certain Alb. Bobowski, a Pole of reformed
parents, who was taken prisoner in his youth, and brought up in the
Mohammedan religion, but nevertheless always retained an inclination
to Christianity, and was a very learned man, especially in
languages.
JüRGEN ANDERSEN
and VolQUARD IVERSEN (High) Orientalische Reischeschreibungen,
published by OLEARius, Schleswig 1669. kl. foh of about 200 pages.
They mostly go over the East Indies, and only briefly, on about 6
pages, touch upon a part of the journey, from there over Bagdad,
Moful, Aleppo, Jerusalem and Skanderona to Malta.
Eduward Melton's Sea
and land journeys through Egypt etc. translated from the own notes
and letters of Mr. Melton, Amst. 1681. and 1691, 4. with pl. The
preface with the title assures that these journeys were made in the
years 1660-167-., and the collected reports, above many other
writings of this kind, were worthy of translation. In this I agree
with the publisher, with regard to the time, and I think I have
discovered clear traces elsewhere that this writer, without quoting
his name, has mostly written out. The plates do not depict
countries, places and antiquities, but almost exclusively events,
for instance judicial executions, and therefore they can usually be
dispensed with. The first part (of 119 pages) deals only with Egypt,
and is also possibly not yet redundant with a Maillet, Pococe and
Norden. The second part (from pages 121-226.) describes the West
Indian journeys, and the third (from pages 227-357) the Turkish and
Persian. Via Livomo he travelled to Smyrna, visited Ephesus,
describes from experience the inns and journeys in the East, as well
as his journey via Sardis, Philadelphia and Tokkat to Erzerum.
Hylascht, everywhere, '6 remarkable, both about places and
countries, as well as peoples and their customs. He was in the main
monastery Driekerken. His journey went to Isfahan. This gave him the
opportunity to report much about the Turkmen, the Armenians, the
Gwebers and Persians. The fourth and last part relates his return
journey from Isfahan to the Asian Turkey, and his five months' stay
in Constantinople. The comments given about this city, the Seraglio,
the Porte, the Turkish religion and the religious ceremonies are
quite true, but what he heard from others is not so certain. He says
nothing about the Turkish Empire in general and its form of
government. The rest concerns Persia, the East Indies and the
African coasts, and does not belong to my Plan.
Franz. Ferd. von
Troilo &c. (High.) Orientalische Reisheschreihungen êfV.
Leipz. and Frankf. if-ip 8. large in p. The writer made this journey
in the year 1666. etc. He traveled from Germany via Venice to the
Gulf of Venice to Candida, p. 1-30; from there to Cyprus, which he
describes according to its fruitfulness, cities and inhabitants, to
p. 53. ' On his further journey he treats of Tripoli in Syria, Mount
Lebanon, of Balbek, Barut, Sidon, Sarepta, Cana, and therewith of
the fountain of living water, of Fyrus, Ptolemais, Mount Carmel, of
Cefarea and Jaffa to p. 101. At this city he notes that every
traveler, for his person, must pay 24 piastres poll tax upon his
arrival there. Now this sum has been reduced to 11, at least for the
poor. As for the Holy Land, of its fertility in general, even at the
time of the writer, (*)
(*)
Since still in our days, the mockers of religion dispute the
credibility of the O. T. also for the reason that in the Holy Land
such a multitude of people as is stated therein, cannot live, and
therefore the well-known Mr. du Luc, te Gerieve, writer of the
Observations for the Savans incredules, desired sufficient
testimony; so I have procured him such a, in the year 1-69 from the
Chevallier de Montagu, who there can almost be regarded as a native
of those countries and therefore no mocker; with religion will be,
nor can be suspected. Of course this was made known openly from the
first in a writing, or somewhere else, and no one will -with gTondj
anything, amnen fabw _ notes that Chevalier has drawn up, signed
with his own hand, and ratified with his Family fignette, but in
which he has indicated in detail and assured that, in proportion to
the cultivated lands and their yieldability to the uncultivated, the
H. Land would certainly have contained and could feed the specified,
large number of inhabitants.
Of Jaffa, Rama, Lidda
and other places and churches up to Jerusalem he speaks until page
120. He gives reports of his reception there in the Monastery of the
Holy Redeemer, of old Jerusalem and its builders; of the owners of
the Holy Land and that old city up to the time of Christ; of the new
city of Jerusalem, as well as its and the country's possessors and
inhabitants in the first centuries after Christ's death, and on this
occasion also of the Maronites, the Eastern Greeks, their laws and
errors; the Eastern Armenians and their errors; the Nestorians,
Syrians or Jacobites, Georgians, Abyssinians, and their errors;
where also the old fable of the Priest John, as an Emperor of
Abyssinia and the East Indies, occurs; and of the Iciscan monks, to
page 194. - Certainly what is related here is far from sufficient to
know those religious parties, and the saying is, often, also
unfounded. the report, concerning the possessors and inhabitants of
the Holy Land from the 6th to the 12th century, he follows up to
page 2ii. - Dealing with the Church and Monastery of St. Salvador to
page 214, he also mentions the various curiosities in Jerusalem,
namely what is said there concerning the house of Hannah, the old
and so-called Temple of Solomon, the house of Herod, the Palace of
Pilate, the road to Calvane, at the same time citing all the fables
concerning them. From page 256, etc. he gives a description of the
Church of the Resurrection, its furnishings, and other truly or
falsely impersonated holy and remarkable places, chapels, hills,
stones, caves, springs, valleys, graves, especially the Holy
Sepulchre. On this occasion he gives a full account of the deception
concerning the so-called Holy Fire, and wishes to prove from many
examples of the pious and the impious, that one cannot enter the
Holy Sepulchre without a holy fear, which makes a strong impression
on the mind; he also relates the manner and method of the Orders of
the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Procession, which the
Supreme of the Monastery of St. Salvador, belonging to the Roman
Catholic Church, with his fellow believers, and all who wish, makes
openly from Bethphage to Jerusalem, on Palm Sunday, on an ass, and
during that journey causes the History from Matthew to be read aloud
in certain places. The Author adds, on all occasions, the actual
history of all the places from the Bible, as well as the History
thereof from the Middle Ages and later times, besides the modern
traditions, or rather fables. In the treatise, page 380, etc.
touching the road to Bethlehem, of Bethlehem itself and the
surrounding places, as well as of Hebron, the road to the Jordan,
this river and the superstitious solemnities occurring there, of the
city of Jericho and the Dead Sea, there appear, in detail, the
traditional feelings of the supposed Holy houses, springs, caves,
deserts, mountains and chapels. On page 454, etc. he mentions how he
traveled from Jerusalem to Cairo, and from there to Mount Sinai and
the Red Sea. He completed the journey by land in sixteen days, and
gives a general description of Egypt. Of Cairo he says that one
needs four good hours from one end of the city to the other, but
nine to go round it. He reckons in it and in the foremen 24 thousand
streets and three hundred thousand houses. Among these must
certainly have been counted the very smallest streets, otherwise
each street, counted together, would have had only 12 or 13 houses.
According to page 491, etc. he speaks of the Nyl, the rice, the flax
and the sinker, as well as of Heliopolis. — P. 512, etc. the
journey to Sinai, the description of the mountain and the Monastery
there, of the city of Suez and the Red Sea occur, besides the
viewing of the Pyramids, the Sphinx and the Manden. Then he
travelled, page 527. via Jerusalem to Damascus, where he speaks of
Silo, Shechem, the field of Esdraelom, Nazareth, Tabor, the Galilean
Sea, Tiberias, Capemaum and Damascus itself, and at the same time
mentions the many, dangerous and costly troubles of the Arabs and
Turks, because in some places they exact an arbitrary toll for each
person of up to 6, 10 and more Piastrs. From Damascus he travelled
to Aleppo, page 602. etc. which he briefly describes, as well as the
further journey to Antioch and Alexandria, as well as the unpleasant
conditions of travel to Constantinople. Of this he leaves a short
description, page 662. etc. When he puts the number of Christian
churches in that city at 447; then this, being the reason of the
actual churches, is undoubtedly too great, although there were more
then than at present. According to page 673 he speaks of Mohammed's
progress; the pilgrimage to Mecca; the Mohammedans in general, and
the Arabs and Turks in particular. The latter he considers with the
Turkmen as one people. Of the Turks' ecclesiastical government,
religion and ceremonies he treats imperfectly. Although even that
which he further reports of their and all Eastern customs is not
sufficient; one sees, however, that they have made no change at all
in this respect up to the present. The adventures of his journey
from Constantinople to Alexandria by land he gives page 728. etc. as
well as page 750. etc. that of his journey to Tripoli in Syria,
Ioppe, Jerusalem, Damiate, Cairo, Rosetta to Alexandria. Finally he
reports his return journey to Europe, and various things concerning
Algiers, where, on this return journey, he ended up in prison. The
style in this book is by no means attractive. Many Italian words
have been left unseen, and therefore unintelligible to many; for
example Turcolmen, (Translator) Caffarierer, (a Tax collector on the
roads in the Holy Land) Vaschallen, (Schepen) Avangardi, Retrogardi
etc. One finds many remarks and events everywhere, although the
fortunes of the places, especially in whose hands they were, are
very well recorded. His assertion is, by far, generally not true,
that in all of Turkey, in all cities and villages, the Turks had
burial places outside them and without walls and fences. Otherwise
the work generally has the stamp of truth. Since the writer probably
made his journey for pleasure; so his intention seems to have been
only to provide a description of what he saw and heard, and in this
respect he must also be judged. Whoever is therefore open to
criticism; he will be better satisfied here, than he who desires
precise descriptions of things.
J T Struis travels,
noting the wreck etc. with pi Amst. The writer was finally a
sailmaker on a Dutch East Indies ship, and from 1647-1673 on land
and water on voyages. His reports consist more in the rare cases
that came to him, than in actual descriptions of countries, places
and peoples. These are not reported only on occasion, and do not
seem to correspond with the truth everywhere. So little is said
about Turkey, that this work could very well do without in a Turkish
Library.
Steph. Gerlachs
(High) Tagebuch einer Reifean die Ottomannische Pforte &c.
Frankf. a M. 1674. Fol. large 552 pages. It is written in the manner
of a diary, and a collection of all kinds of true and untrue things
that the writer has seen and heard. The style is not at all
pleasant. Many untrue things he has either written down himself, or
have been inserted by the publisher, S. Gerlach. Many very strange
histories, for example. what has happened in the meantime in the
other parts of Europe, and strange stories with remarks are mixed
with it. It is perhaps pleasant to many a one to find here a part of
the negotiations, between the Tubingen and other theologians of our
(Lutheran) Church with the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Greek
Church, to give them an idea of ours. One reads more
than once, one and the same thing repeated. The circumstances then
oppressive for Hungary and the House of Austria are very clearly
depicted; as well as the astonishing perfidy of the Turks, and their
unbearable pride concerning the Christians, yes all European Powers.
One also finds in it various letters from German and Turkish
Emperors, from some Kings, Envoys and Baifas. One can do without it
completely, to know the Turkish Empire; unless one wanted to look
specifically at the times in which he lived.
Q. F. von der Groeben
(Hoogd.) Orientalische Reisebeschreibung. Marienwerder, 1694 it!
4:0. large 399 pages. He made this journey in the year 1675, and
passed through Malta, Kandy, Rhodes, Cyprus, Jaffa and Jerusalem.
From here he made several journeys to Emahus, Bethany, Jericho, the
Dead Sea, and the Jordan, as well as to Bethlehem, and show the
curiosities in and outside Jerusalem itself. Then he took his way
through Galilee to Ptolemais. Here he embarked, landed at Tripoli,
travelled to Lebanon, came to Damascus, and departed with a caravan
via Ashdod and Ascalon to Cairo. He climbed, like all travellers,
the great Pyramid, found the length of each of its four sides,
below, 324 paces, and climbed by 250 steps, of which each was five
feet, (*) and these each were reckoned to 9 inches, to the top,
which exists in a plain, where about 50 persons can stand side by
side. He also made a journey to Mount Sinai, returning then via
Cairo, Damiata, Rosetta and Alexandria to Europe. The author seems
to have travelled with great zeal for religion. He is extensive,
where one does not
(*)
In this respect he differs from other travellers, who testify that,
according to the height, the thickness of the steps decreases, and
they become thinner.
desired, as with the
insertion of whole extensive and unsacred histories, and very short,
where one nevertheless wanted to read more; so that, with a
reasonable thickness of the book, curiosity is nevertheless not very
satisfied. But in his apology one can say, that he refers, in
remarkable things, to Be. Ion, Breidenbach, Radzivil, Rauchwolf and
others, and points to them, to read them further. There are many,
but fairly coarse wooden plates of countries, churches, etc. added
to this work. A not very well known, and yet in many respects
strange book is the following: L'état present de la Turquie,
ou il est traité des vies, moeurs & coutumes des Ottomans
& other peoples of their Empire &c. by Michel Febure in
Paris 1675. 8. large 450 pages. Although the author's style is not
exactly enticing, one is nevertheless kept going because of the
content, and especially many examples. In the dedication to the King
of France, he is very flatteringly presented as the future Conqueror
of Turkey, which the peoples there, according to the author,
desired, and which their pretended Prophets confirmed. But here
either an untruth is told, or the matter must have changed a lot
since then. The first part treats of the infidel nations, and the
first main part of the Turks. Here in 16 divisions the following
subjects are found: their policy, and that it will still cause the
downfall of their empire; their religion, superstition, festivals
and fasts; their mosques, dervishes, pilgrims, marriages and
domestic circumstances of women; their conduct at deaths; their
disposition, manners and inclinations; cruelties; their maintenance
of justice and the abuses therein; their ignorance and many customs.
The 17th division considers their peculiar customs, opposed to ours:
for instance, they wash themselves after eating; cut the hair of
their head, and let the beard grow; wear clothes of very many bright
colours; write from the right to the left hand; never uncover their
heads, to salute and show respect; let those who visit them come and
go alone; keep the place in a corner for the most important; cover
the floors and not the walls; sit on carpets, and sleep on them;
destroy the frontiers and boundary-places; have seldom windows into
the streets; tolerate and honour the magicians; change the offices
of honour almost annually; have their grand meal in the evening; let
no one enter their houses lightly; request, besides the Mohammedans,
also the Christians and Jews, to pray for them openly and secretly;
are cruel to the vanquished, humble and friendly in defeat, and
hasty in winning, &c. With us the opposite occurs. The three
following Sections represent the power and weakness of the Turks, as
well as their opinion of the Christian princes; as he then in two
other councils partly to bring and keep Turkey under France, partly
to make the Turks Christians, and finally all Christians in Turkey
Roman Catholics. To the first he reckons, besides a general peace of
the Christian powers, a sudden attack on Constantinople with a
fleet, and a war of the German Emperor as well as of the German
Empire on land against the Turks, whereby he absolutely assures,
that the various discontented nations in the Empire would not sit
idle, the war of Spain against the Coasts of Barbary, not to stop at
sea with other places, but to continue to seize the Dardanelles,
because there the whole Empire was divided in the middle; - to treat
the conquered peoples with gentleness, and to allow the Soldiers no
plundering; but the neighbouring Christian powers had to come to an
understanding, peacefully, because of the provinces situated near
them. To the latter he proposes to change the Turkish Empire into
one or two Christian empires, in which the Princes should be chosen
from the House of Bourbon. The Levantines were to be left to the old
customs under Christian governors, but the Christians were to be
increased, and the Mohammedans were to be decreased; which would
happen if the latter were placed in the circumstances in which the
former are now among them. But in order to unite the Christians
among themselves, the same advantages should be granted to all; all
churches should be arranged for general use, and no special Roman,
Greek, Armenian, etc. churches should be built; in the schools
everything should be taught only in the Turkish and Arabic
languages, and if they did not formally want to convert to the Roman
Church, they should be charged with half of what the Turks had to
give. The principal ports in Turkey, and the goods which are
imported and exported, he describes in the 23rd section. At that
time the English cloth was in use, but now the Dutch, and especially
the French, are the most popular. As the Venetian were too dear to
the Turks; so now the English, and almost also the Dutch, are; but
the French, being cheap and of very bright and beautiful colours,
were most in demand. In the last two parts he speaks of the manner
of travelling, especially with caravans, and especially of the
principal offices of government in the Turkish Empire. The second
head treats of the Arabs; the third of the Kurds; the fourth of the
Turkmen; the fifth of the Jesids; the sixth of the Druses; the
seventh of the Jews. Here he remarks, that before they were admitted
to the Mohammedan religion, they had first to confess that the
Messiah was come, and to have learned the Gospel. Other writers go
still further in this respect, even stating, that they had to be
baptized. Both have either never been true, as at least the latter
seems incredible; or it is now altogether out of use, although,
according to the accepted Mohammedan doctrines, they must consider
Christ, and subsequently the Koran, as a great Prophet. In the last
six nations the author praises the special esteem and affection for
Frry??. The second part, dealing with the Christian nations, begins
with an introduction to the customs of all Eastern Christians,
where, besides a fairly extensive account of their objections to the
Roman Church, it is observed that the Bishops and Patriarchs, before
they attained to their Dignities, had to put on the habit of a monk,
but the Priests and Deacons were married. Hereupon he speaks of the
marriage itself, the Holy fire at Jerusalem, and the deceptions
concerning it; of the difference between their traps and those of
the Romans; of their tributes, and that they were not allowed to
keep Turkish servants. The added information, that the young
women-Persons need to go to church, at the most only four times in
one year, and that the Christians there did not differ in their
attire, is untrue; unless such freedom were so limited to a few
places. Hereupon he comes to a special, but for the most part only
short and superficial treatise. In the first chapter, of the Greeks,
he adds many things, concerning the disputes of the Romans with
them. Of the Armenians, in the second chapter, he seems to speak
much too harshly, out of a general hatred of the Romans against
them. Of the Syrians Jacobites, he shows, in the third Head, how
they are drawn to their Church by the Roman Missionaries. Of the
Nestorians or Chaldeans, the Maronites, the Copts, and Abyssinians,
he speaks in the following Heads. In the sixth he makes mention of
the Shamfi, of whom it is believed that they worship the Sun. They
were not numerous, and very secret in their doctrines; they had no
Churches, but held only secret meetings until, by the compulsion of
the Turks, they professed a Religion accepted in the Empire, and
then, in a certain respect, joined the Jacobites. In conclusion he
makes a long address to the Cahinists, as he calls them, asserting
the agreement of all Eastern Christians with the Roman Church, but
with which he apparently contradicts what he had previously related.
Everywhere he shows that all Christian denominations in Turkey were
also very inclined to accept the King of France as their sovereign,
but which, with the exception of the Romans, is by no means the
opinion of the others at present.
It is thought that
George Guillet, who was born in Auvergne around the year 1625, and
was appointed first hororiographer of the?? Academy of Sculptor and
Painter in Pau in 1682, is the author of the following work:
Guilletiere Athene ancienne & moderne ?? The State Present of
the Turkish Empire in Paris 1678. 8. Large 456 pages. In it one
finds a multitude of insignificant, yet extensive histories of
pirates and mischief, as well as disputes of the French Consuls on
account of rank with others, and a long dispute of a Greek priest
with the Europeans, that they had obtained their knowledge from the
Greeks, and had deserted them, in their sad circumstances under the
Turks. A journey from Athens to the army for Candie will form the
description of the then state of the Turkish Empire, but is not at
all sufficient. One side object of this work is, to discover the
coasts, fresh water sources on them, and several courses in the sea
for the use of navigation; but the principal object is certainly,
partly to furnish a history of Athens from the ancient writers and
in the state of his time; partly to give a picture of the
antiquities, which were no longer there, and of the construction of
the old theatres; partly by occasion to place the doctrines of the
ancient philosophers, who read in Athens. This book can be entirely
dispensed with.
George Wheler and
Jacob Spon made, 1675 and 1676, a journey to the Levant. The first
was an Englishman, and his work bears, in the French translation,
the following title: George Wheler Voïage de Dalmatie, Grèce
& du Levant, à Amst. 1689. 2 part. 8. with plate.
together large 607. pag. In the first part the 1st book describes a
journey from Venice to Constantinople, and in particular the coasts
of Dalmatia, and the islands of the Venetians, Corfu, Zante,
Zephalonia, etc. and those islands of the Archipelago, which the
writer touched on his journey to Constantinople, such as Serigo,
Lino, Delos, Mykonos, Lesbos or Mytilene, furthermore the Trojan
shore, the Hellespont, Gallipoli, Lampfaco and Heraclea, with many
both Latin and Greek inscriptions, and a decent list of herbs. The
second book contains no bad description of Constantinople and the
neighbouring places, but without plates of the Channel and
Constantinople. Here one finds, besides several former inscriptions,
also the representation of all the Pyramids, and a Botanical
register, as well as the doctrines of the Greek Church, especially
in the part of the Holy Communion. The third book relates the
journey in Natolie to Brussa, Thiatyra, Magnesia, Smyrna, Ephesus,
Pergamus, Sardis, Laodicea, Philadelphia, Phoce, Melasso, and
several small places, where not only many pictures of cities,
antiquities and plants, but also many inscriptions and explanations
of old coins occur. In the first book of the second part one finds
the journey from Zante to Athens, and the description of many places
in Greece, such as Patrasso, Lepanto, Salone, Delphos, Parmsus,
Thebes etc. with the pictures of many places and plants. The 2nd
book provides the description of Athens and the surrounding places.
Here the writer is quite extensive, and by many plates and
inscriptions the matters are also clarified, and various
observations concerning the Greek Church and language are added. The
third book contains the journey from Athens to the surrounding
regions of Greece, as well as to the Attic region, to Corinth,
Megara and Negroponte, where many things, concerning the Greek
monasteries, as well as great lists of plants, and the illustrations
of many of them, not less the explanations of the ancient places
mentioned in Classical writers occur. Of the Turks little is
mentioned, and that only in passing. The plates of cities and
islands are common, but the illustrations of antiquities more
accurate. I do not answer for all the descriptions. At least that of
Smyrna concerning the listing of the inhabitants, in particular the
relation of the Europeans to the native Christians, as if the former
outnumbered the latter, is absolutely untrue; although there may
have been more of the former then than now. Otherwise this work is
very readable.
The Italian,
Dalmatic, Greek and Oriental Description of Reie by Jacob Spon, a
Frenchman and travelling companion of the aforementioned, was
translated from French into High German, and published in Nuremberg,
1690 in fol. 2 part. large 240 pages with plates. [in Dutch in
Amsterdam, 1689 with pl. in 4. under the Title: Jac. Spon and
Whelers travel through Italy, Dalmatia, Greece and the Levant.] Here
one finds the same places described, as Wheler has done, but he does
not at all enter into the Botanical field, looking more at the
antiquities. This book is, at least in the (High) translation,
precisely not pleasant to read. The plates are common, but possibly
better in the Original. By Negroponte one finds information,
concerning the Ebb and Flood of the Euripus. At the back is placed a
small dictionary of the modern Greek language, and with each part a
great multitude of Latin and Greek inscriptions with a German
translation are added.
Jean Chardin, a
jeweler's son, was born in Paris in 1643, and was subsequently
knighted by Charles II, King of England. He started traveling early
and came from P for the first time in 1666. After a second journey
he had his Journal du Voïage de Persie printed in a volume, ??,
with beautiful plates, in London, whither he had fled for the
freedom of religion. (In Dutch known under the title: Chardyns reize
naar Persien en Oostindien, met ??. Amsterd. 1685 4to) the first
part, after the introduction, something comes before the trade at
Smyrna, and at the stay at Constantinople a long story of the
difficulties at that time, which the French encountered in the
restoration of their Capitulation. Furthermore he gives an account
of his journey from there over the Black Sea to Caffa, and further
over the same to Mingrelien. In the description of this country is
placed the report of a Theatian monk, Zampi, who had been there for
23 years, concerning the religion of the Mingrelien, to which the
writer adds his remarks about the Principalities of Guriel and
Imirette; all of which inhabitants adhered to a very degenerate
Greek religion, very ignorant and the ecclesiastical and secular
Persons are so barbarous, that they leave their own to the Turks for
a tribute, or sell them as slaves. He relates the difficulties and
dangers of his journey in this wild Mingrelian; his plunderings
suffered by the inhabitants; while the writer remarked, when he paid
his visit to the Prince, to complain that he himself had been among
the robbers; and the manner of undertaking war, or rather
plunderings, among themselves, or of enduring it from the Turks. He
inserts an account of the rebellions of the Princes of this country,
as well as of his own incidents, which testify to the injustices of
this country, and the Tyranny towards foreigners, with a short
description of the Caucasus mountain. In the journey, the stay and
the description of Georgia, and in particular; the capital Tiblis,
he notes, that the Georgians with the Mingretians are one, although
in the national Charader somewhat better, and the women are famous
for their beauty and cleverness, but besides faithless. The journey
to Armenia he made over the Taurus mountains, where he gives a short
description of Armenia, as well as necessary information about
Erivan, Edschmia, ?? and Ararat. The rest with the second part deals
only with Persia, and therefore does not belong to this field. This
entire travel description has the stamp of truth, and one can learn
from it, in particular, the Avanis concerning travelers.
The book, Relation
nouvelle d'un Voïage de Constantinople à Paris 1681.
with ?? plates, in 8vo, is, as the almost extravagantly flattering
dedication to the King of France indicates, published by Greeot.
After the preface are printed some testimonies of learned
eyewitnesses concerning the authenticity of the plates, which are in
fact quite accurate. The description of the Hellespont and the
Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora and the places around
is filled with so many indifferent things, that one could write
folios on all kinds of subjects on this basis. Constantinople is
treated in detail, but very incompletely, but on the contrary very
extensively of the Sophie-, Ackmets-, Solimans-, and Valide-mosques.
Under the Title: Performance of the Christian Religion in the Sophie
Church, the general appearance of the Greek Worship is described,
such as the ecclesiastical Persons, Liturgy, Monasteries, as well as
the Worship itself; but under that: the exercise of the Mohammedan
Worship in the Sophie Mosque, the external observation of the entire
Mohammedan Worship. Finally, the author gives some, but, except for
the comments, little information of interest about the winds in
Constantinople, the visits to the Mosques by the Mohammedans, the
Divan and the Turkish justice, and the activities of the Turks. For
the rest, this work remains very useful for getting to know
Constantinople, although there is neither an image nor a drawing of
this city among the plates. Meschis. Thevenot, a famous traveller of
Europe, Royal Librarian, who died in 1692, has also earned himself a
place among the Levantine and Oriental writers of the 17th century,
although he did not see those countries himself, but only from the
mouths of travellers and credible writers, especially Arvieux,
collected the materials for his work. The title is: Voïages de
Mr de Thevenot &c. en 5 tomes, 3 edit. U Amst. I72?. 8. with
plates. (in Dutch 1 hevenots reizen, 3 parts with pi. Amst. 17 q O
In the first 2 parts he treats extensively of Turkey. He pretends to
have made the journey there in the years 1655 and 1656, presenting
all the circumstances as if he had actually made them. One cannot
dispute that he made good use of another's knowledge; but
nevertheless one can see that he has been in those regions -eleven '
with. He gives, for example, for, of the ship on the Asian shores,
opposite Tenedos, the ruins of Troja; he makes no mention of the
outer castles of the Hellespont, on the JanitCaaren cape; asserts
that the present-day Dardanelles stood where Sectos and Abydos once
lay; says of Scutari, it was a village; and makes no distinction
between the Divan and the Serail, and the Palace of the Grand
Vizier. He reports to many places that he wishes to record credible
reports concerning this or any place and circumstances, which had
come into his hands.
Voïage au Levant
&c. translated from the Dutch by Corneille le Bkvn,"u Delst
1700. fol., 408 pages in size, with many maps and plates. (In 't
Nederduitsch, C. de Bruin travels through Muscovia, Persia and
India, with pl. Amst. 1714. fol. and through Asia, with lp/. Delst
1698. fol.) In the preface the author reports that he had prepared
for his travels by means of the works of della Valle, Thevenot and
Grelot, indeed had them at hand, and had mainly devoted himself to
accurately recording the drawings (for he was a painter) on the
spot. His travels fall in the years 1678 to 1684. The first five
chapters contain short reports of his European travels, and the next
two of Smyrna and Ephesians; the eighth of his journey to
Constantinople, and the three following of that city itself, its
suburbs, the Bosphorus Thracians, the Sea of Marmora,
(Propontis,) the places adjacent thereto, and the external
appearance of Constantinople. From thence to the 29th Chapter the
following treatises are placed: special observations on the religion
of the Turks and Greeks; by the first-mentioned prayers and feasts
prescribed in the law, besides the forbidden things, such as images,
various kinds of meat, wine, and interests; the esteem of the Turks
for the various Orders of their clergy; their feelings about Jesus
Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Prophets; their marriages and
divorces; their mourning and sorrow over the dead; as well as their
thoughts concerning the last judgment and the resurrection; their,
and also the Jews', both men's and women's clothing; food and drink;
gay advice; punishments; virtues and vices, besides their conduct
towards the female sex; learning; the hunting, travelling, table,
and other circumstances of the Sultan who was living at the time of
the author; about his military force, etc. which is concluded with
the description of an entry of a Grand Vizier who had returned
victorious from the war, as well as some observations on the
character of the Greeks and Greek women, besides that of the Jews,
especially with regard to their early marriage. I cannot say that I
have found anything extraordinary here, and the author himself says:
he borrowed all that from Grelot. In the 3rd Chapter. he describes
his return journey to Smyrna, and in the following his stay there.
From the 32nd onwards his journeys through the Archipelago to Egypt,
especially to Damiate, Cairo, the Pyramids, the Mumien field, to
Rosetta and Alexandria; all of which he describes, as well as other
curiosities of Egypt, for instance, the inhabitants, the Nile, etc.,
mostly in Thevenots and other words. chapter 45 follows the journey
to the Holy Land, Jaffa, Rama, Jerusalem, Bethany, Bethlehem,
Tripoli in Syria, Mount Lebanon, to Ptolemais, Nazareth, Tyre,
Sayde, Aleppo, Scanderona, Cyprus, Sattalia, etc. via Smyrna back to
Europe. — A large part of the descriptions occurring here is,
so to speak, taken verbatim from the aforementioned writers, whereby
one can believe him, as often as he gives them his permission, and
in what he himself declares to have seen, because, what I know with
certainty, has been described by him accurately: but with time one
thing and another has changed. The views and plates are correct; but
possibly they are even more accurate in the Dutch edition; and
therein lies, in my opinion, the greatest priority of this work.
J. Dappers
Beschreibung von Asien, translated from the Dutch, Nurnb. 1681. fol.
with many plates. (In Dutch, J. Dapper beschryving van Asia, of het
Rijk van den grote Mogol Atnjl. l6?2.) In it Mesopotamia, tfatyfo.
me, Assyriën, Anatolia and Rafoe are described. Concerning the
Mohammedan religion an extensive appendix is added.
Everything is a collection from other writers.
Critique de la
Cróance & des Coütfumes des nations du Levant
publiée par le Sr. de Mont, a Francf. 1684 large 229 pp. (Low
German: du Mont reizen naar de Levant, 2 parts with pl. Utrecht
1695. 4.) The author declares in the preface that this is a writing
by an unknown person, and was of great service to him during his
travels in the Levant; that only the appendix comes from him. The
work will actually serve to settle the disputes then taking place
between the Reformed and Roman Catholics in France concerning the
Doctrine of the Holy Communion, and indeed to unite them among
themselves, because it is shown that the Eastern Churches agree in
most of the pieces with the Roman Church. One must almost in every
respect do justice to the author, whoever he may be, for the
historical truth. He often refutes the Roman writers, who, in a
deceptive way, attribute to the Eastern Christians sentiments which
they do not have, or pretend to have more agreement with the Roman
Church than there really is. The previously mentioned main object of
this work would almost lead to the idea that it has been compiled
with good advantage from other reports. It has indeed nothing
special; but can nevertheless be read with great profit. —
This is the content of the sections.
I. Of the Doctrine
and Customs of the Contemporary Greeks.
II. Of the
Tranfubstantiation. Whether it was also permitted to those Greeks
who are called Schismatics, that is, such as did not wish to unite
with the Roman Church?
III. Of the adoration
of the Sacrament in the Holy Supper, and whether it is customary
among the Greeks?
IV. Of the creed of
the Meschites.
V. and VI. Of the
religious positions and customs of the Georgians and Iberians, as
well as of the inhabitants of Coschis and Mingrelia.
VII. Of the religious
sentiments and customs of the Nestorians.
VIII. Of the St.
Thomas Christians in the East Indies.
IX. Of the ceremonies
and customs of the Jacobites.
X. and XI. Of the
sentiments and customs of the Copts and Abyssinians.
XII. Of the
Armenians.
XIII and XIV. of the
Maronites.
XV. Of the doctrines
and sentiments of the Mohammedans.
The appendix consists
of
1) two registers of
the Churches, which depend on the Patriarchate of Constantinople, of
which the first is taken from Leo Allatius de confenfu ecdef.
Occid.tf Orient, the second from the slatus prcef. ecdef. Greece;
2) three testimonies
for and against the Transubstantiation; finally
3) Uscan's register
of the Armenian Churches] which depend on the Patriarch at
Edschmiazin.
Voïages du Sr.
du Mont and Frame, en Italië, en Allemagne, a Malthe & en
Turquie. 4 part in kl. 8" with pi. a la Haye, 1699. (Low
German: du Mont reizen door Europa en Asta naar H Oojlen, met pl.
Utrecht 1699. 4C0 This work consists of letters. In the second part,
with the 3rd Mef, the stories concerning Turkey begin. This and the
following describe, in the usual way, Constantinople, so that I have
often thought that the words were borrowed from other writers, and
especially Grelot. He confesses his ignorance concerning the reason
why that city and other Turkish cities had such narrow streets,
since there was no lack of space. But, besides the first design of
old cities, which almost always have narrow streets, there is
another natural reason, namely this: to keep the great heat out of
the streets, and thereby the traffic in the cities during the day
easy Biaks. Wherefore often the outer narrow streets with coarse
linen, or with light and movable wooden awnings, at least during the
time of the greatest heat, are covered. In the 5th letter, a
triumphant entry of the Sultan into Constantinople occurs, in
detail, together with the history of a tried Vannel. To this is
added a historical appendix, under the title: Constantinople thrice
besieged. The 6th letter treats of the islands of Metelino and Scio;
the 7th of Delos, Nicaria, Kalami, Lango, Rhodes, Cyprus, and the
Knights of St. John; the 8th of Axandriax, the customs, religion and
chronology of the ancient Egyptians, the various revolts in Egypt,
the Column of Pompey, the earlier and later Arabs, besides their
customs and religion; the 9*8 of the Pyramids, the Sphinx, the
Mumien and their preparation, as well as a history of Cairo, and the
description of that city, of the Castle and the magnificent spring
therein, of the soil and its produce, and of the Crocodile. This is
concluded with a treatise on the origin of the Nile and the cause of
its growth, as with the last letter of this volume partly on Smyrna,
the earthquake, the Turkish ships and slaves. The third part treats
almost exclusively of the Mohammedan religion, and is everywhere
secured with translated passages from the Koran. The author makes,
in all honesty, general remarks on it; letter x. relates hereto,
letter 2. their doctrines and fundamental teachings concerning God,
the angels and men, predestination, ascension and the last judgment,
Paradise, Hell and the middle state between the two; treats of the
Koran, Mohammed and his mission, and the sentiments of the Turks
concerning the Christians and all erring ones, in letter 3.1. From
Ricaut he propagates, page 69. the error that Mohammed's so-called
Testament was given to the monks on Mount Carmel; and from its
contents he infers, page 70. the result is that those writers are
very wrong who say that it is lawful for the Turks to kill
Christians or to oppress them. Here is an extract from the Biblical
history according to the sense of the Mohammedans are in their
rightful place, (letter how namely their, and especially the Koran
follow, raving the creation of the world, the flood and some
Prophets after Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses and the exodus of the
children of Israel from Egypt, the journey of Moses, Job, Alexander
the Great, (as who according to their dreams also belongs to the
Prophets,) the 7 Sleepers, David and Salonion, Zacharias and John
the Baptist, Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mother, and finally
Mohammed himself. This piece is worth reading, to see at a glance
the deformed perversions of the Holy Scripture and the fixed
reckoning of time that occur in the Koran. - Then, further, in the
5th letter, the duties towards God are enumerated, and in addition
to that circumcision, washing, fasting, the pilgrimage to Mecca,
prayer, abstinence from wine and forbidden foods. These are
followed, letter 6. by the social, as well religious, as civil
duties, as works of charity concerning people and animals, and
marriage. Here he accuses Thevenot of a mistake, who wrote: "the
Turks do not believe that women came to Paradise; scarcely did they
consider them to be reasonable creatures, and they regarded them as
nothing else than horses in their "services;" which is in
every way crude and too harshly expressed. He does not forget the
legal proceedings, the punishments, the lawsuits concerning marriage
and divorce. On this occasion he quotes from the chapter of the
Koran, bearing the Title, the Cow, the following passage: "He
who has put away his wife three times, cannot take her again, "until
she has married someone" who has put her away likewise. Then
"they can come together again, and without sin marry again,
when they think that they can live according to God's commandments,
which he has revealed to the wise and prudent. "This letter
ends with adultery, testaments, sleeping with slaves, murder and
manslaughter, false oaths and ecclesiastical orders. Concerning the
superstition of the Turks he brings many things worth reading,
especially in comparison with the superstition of other peoples; he
dwells most extensively on the evil glances of the eyes, letter 8.
The effeminacy and inactivity of the Turks; their attachment to old
customs; their greedy nature and ignorance; way of life, skill on
horseback, manner of dress, inclination towards the female sex;
various marriages; slaves; irregular love of women and their
weeding; public baths, pastimes, music, dancing, ceremonies, etc.
close the last letter. Of the fourth part the first letters still
belong to Turkey. The author begins with the Greeks: a brief account
of their history, their present slavery, clothing, dances, feelings
of the East concerning the virgin state, greetings, religious
feelings: of their Bishops and Priests, especially of Cyril Lucaris,
their Churches and images: of the Armenians and their fasts: of the
Greeks' thoughts concerning unperished corpses, and their ceremonies
at burials: of the Jews in the Levant (letter 1) To the report that
the Greeks accept the Transubstantiation, he adds, under the
assurance that he was an eyewitness to it, the following: "that
the Greeks, on Good Friday, came in Pro"ceffie to the Parish
Church of the French, to worship the Sacrament exhibited there, and
even 500 Piastres" paid, to have the freedom to do so. "So
true it is, that they did not wish to be separated from the Roman
Church. "Concerning the Jews, he says, as his opinion, with
Ricaut's words, in the Life of Murad IV. "Secretly cursed, but
in general they are loved. Everywhere they are slaves; meanwhile
they are sought. They seem to possess nothing; yet they live in
abundance. They are vagabonds; but wherever they dwell, they find a
fatherland. They may possess no lands; yet they accumulate
immeasurable treasures. Their number increases daily, for they all
marry, and war does not destroy them. They are the Confidants of the
Turks, and the sworn enemies of the Christians. In a word, at
Constantinople avarice is the open whore, before whom every one
makes his appearance, and where the Jews are the negotiators of such
traffic. "Of the beauties, or, as we say, the Pagans, the
Tschakals, the extraordinary strength of some Turks, their burials,
the Plague, the Opium, the peculiar land and sea products of Nato;
of the intermediate kingdoms and the pride of the Sultans. In this
he greatly deceives himself, nay, speaks again himself, when he
considers the Plague as a necessary Evil, to relieve the large
population in Turkey, which was so much promoted by Polygamy; for
this could, with so many uncultivated lands, support five times more
people than are actually there. He remarks, very emphatically, the
great pride with which the Sultans regard other Princes. (letter 2)
Of the Coffee, its condition and preparation he speaks at length in
the 3rd letter; but thereby falls into a great error. Namely he
wants to describe the many kinds of dearness of it in the Levant,
mentioning that it is better bought in Marseille than there, and
that therefore they have it brought from there to Turkey; but
forgets the great difference that exists between the Arabian and
American coffee, so that the former would not be available for the
same price in Turkey and France, but that the American, as of a
lower price, is often brought to the Levant, and not only mixed with
the Arabian, but also, if it is good, in a deceptive manner,
out-spirited for the latter, and sold dearly. In the three following
letters, which still belong to them, he relates various incidents at
Smyrna, the history of the reign of Muhammad IV, and some of the
affairs of the time in the peace negotiations with the German
Emperor. All these letters were written, mostly in the years 1690
and 1691, as one imagines, at Constantinople, Alexandria, Smyrna,
etc. At first I thought that it was a collection, because too many
books are cited, which a traveller can hardly carry with him; but
because of the various particular reports, which a foreigner can
hardly give so well, I have changed my mind, and think that the
writer, perhaps, after his return, may have composed those letters
first, or at least revised them anew. He has quoted Belon, Croix,
Gill, Grelot, Monconys, Ricaut, Spon, Tavernier, Thevenot, Thevet,
Wheler and others, now with approval, then again with disapproval
and even refutation of their reports, added many comments to them,
and interwoven all kinds of treatises from the history of other
peoples, so that this work belongs to the good books of this kind;
but the plates do not say much.
Ricaut Etdt prefent
de Empire Ottoman &c. traduit de l'Anglois par Bespier, T. I &
II. h Rouen, 1677 8. with pl. (Low German: Ricaut story and state of
the Turkish or Ottoman Empire, next to the Life of the last four
Turkish Emperors and, with pl. Amsterdam 1670 4} The text with the
publisher's notes amounts to 720 pages. He has put the names of 90
writers, such as historians, poets, etc., from which he wants to
have such observations taken, although it is difficult to understand
how they will all contribute to this. — In the first book the
following subjects gradually appear. The last chapter serves as a
general introduction: the government of the Turks differs from most
other forms of government in the entire world, also requiring
special principles and rules for its maintenance. Therefore (chapter
2) the absolute rule of the Emperor is the most important support of
the Empire, and (Chapter 3) the obedience which was shown to the
Sultan, was among the Turks more a principle of Religion than of
State. In the 4th Chapter, he places a detailed account of the
remarkable conspiracy of the Sultana Kiosem against her Nephew, the
Sultan Mohammed. The 5th gives a description of how the youth were
educated in the Seraglio. From these are taken sons who reach the
most important offices of State; and it is a fundamental principle
of Turkish Policy, that the Sultan has no other persons in his
service, than such as he can raise without envy, and take from power
without danger. Five Chambers, like so many chambers, are appointed
for the youth. The first two differed according to the number of the
intellects, and were therefore divided into large and cringe,
although otherwise they stood equal in Dignity. From thence they
passed to the third, which was called Kilar-Oda (Spice-perfume-etc.
chamber), then to the fourth, Haf na-O de (Treasury chamber), and
from thence to the highest, Has-Oda or special chamber, that is,
that to which the Sultan's Nobles belong. Hereupon he relates in the
next Head, the manner of instruction, according to which the young
men in the Seraglio were instructed in the arts and sciences
appointed for them, speaking, by way of an appendage, of the
unseemly inclination and friendship, which, notwithstanding all
strictness and regard, they nevertheless had for each other. In the
8th Head, he speaks of the Dumb and Dwarfs* of whom the Seraglio now
holds less, than then; chaptero. of the black and white Sentences,
and the women in the Seraglio, and chapter10. of the Adschamoglans.
The following Heads treat, that which has not so much with the
Seraglio, as with the Empire proper, go in common. The i'?th Head,
begins with the Great Vizier and his exalted post. The places of the
Vizier,s of the Bank mentioned therein have been destroyed since
that time. Speaking of the horsetails, he reports, that only
dnchajfas, to be known of Babylon, Great Cairo and Or and, (which
then also belonged to the Turks) had the liberty to conduct three
such, but that the others might have only one. This is untrue,
contradicting even that none, what he himself says, page 160., that
2j8 and more Beglerbegs or Bassas of the first rank had three. The
Divans-days' customary at his time (page 14r.) have been changed
afterwards. In the 12 fe chapterhe gives an account of the highest
State offices and the various Stadtholderships of the Empire,
concerning which, according to the present situation, one is further
informed in Businello; chapter 13 of the Tartars, their Clan, and
how they depend on the Turks; and chapter 14 of the Princes, who pay
tribute to the Sultan, to wit, of Moldavia, Wallachia, Sevenbergen
and Ragusa. Hereupon he gives the reason for the stability of the
Turkish Empire. To this he adds, Chapter 15, the devastation which
the Turks wrought in the Asian and other Provinces remote from the
Capital; the custom (Chapter 16) of not allowing any important
office and Governorship to pass from the Father to the Son, and of
exterminating the old important Families; the fundamental principle
(Chapter 17) of frequently changing the State officials, of
elevating them and of not depriving any of their power; and finally
(Chapter 18) their intention to increase the number of their
subjects in every possible way, especially by plundering and in war.
The last four Chapters concern the foreign affairs at the Turkish
Court, to wit, how the Turks regard and receive the foreign
Ambassadors, but concerning which, for some time, changes have
occurred; how they must conduct themselves towards them in their
negotiations; how the Turks regard the other Princes, and how they
keep the Treaties and Treaties which they conclude with them. The
remarks which the second translator of the English original,
Bespier, (for it was already an earlier, but imperfectly
translated,) has added, refer especially to the spelling and
explanation of the Turkish words, and other circumstances, and are
important. But this can hardly be forgiven him, that, at the end of
it, in the first part, against Ricaut, he greatly exalts the moral
Character of the Turks, and this by justifying the unlawful
Thevenot, that is nothing else, than to wax the Moor. It is
improper, in a remote country, to assert such a thing against a
writer, who by many years' experience could know the more precise
concerning it. The 2nd book deals with Religion. The first head,
contains a general introduction. The second deals with the promises,
which Mohammed made at the beginning of his Kingdom, to tolerate
other Denominations, and how badly they are fulfilled. On this
occasion he places his so-called Testament; but commits two almost
incomprehensible errors, by pretending, partly, that this is in the
Monastery of Mount Carmel, near Mount Lebanon, and partly, that the
latter is a day's journey from Mecca. What various devices the Turks
employ to extend their religion, forms the content of the third
chapter The next two report what the work and power of the Muftis
is, and how they conduct themselves with regard to religion, in
which mention is also made of the Kadileskirs, Mollas, Kadis, etc.;
what the income of the Muftis is, and from what they receive it. For
this purpose a new Mufti also received a visit and presents from the
Christian ambassadors; but this has long ceased. The sixth Head,
gives an account of the Emirs, and the next of the revenues of the
Imperial Mosques, as well as of the manner in which the Turks bring
in the Tithes for the support of their Clergy. On page 347 it is
asserted that the Sophie Mosque has, annually, about 100 thousand
ducats. The eighth Head: considers the Doctrine of the Turks
concerning predestination; the next their several Sects and
sentiments concerning Religion in general. The three following Heads
give an account of the two principal Señors, the Sonnites and
the Schiiten, with an annexed list of their errors, by a Mufti of
Constantinople, and the earlier as well as later heresies. Of the
Dervish or Mohammedan Monks in general, and of the various Monastic
Orders in particular, the 13th to the 20th Head treats of them more
fully than I have found elsewhere. While he mentions the various
Sects, page 39*, he adds the remark, that every Hodschia or Teacher
of the Mohammedan Religion, who possesses any more ability than a
single Pedant, and has read some books of fables composed by Arab
writers, would imagine that he is doing his Honour a disservice, if
he did not distinguish himself from other Teachers by some
particular sentiments, (but which must not run counter to their
principal religious principles,) but in this respect they give
imaginary insights into other Denominations, even Christian ones.
The sixth Head deals
with the Marriages and Divorces of the Turks, with which the Priests
have nothing to do, but only the Judges; the 22nd of the
circumcision; the 23rd (12th of the five main articles of
Mohammedanism, viz. washing, praying, fasting, distributing alms,
and the pilgrimage to Mecca; the 24th of the Beiram and its
ceremonies, especially in the Serail the following of the
prohibition of eating pig's meat and drinking wine, the Last Head
ends with the observation that the moral virtues of the Turks seldom
have any other basis than to be seen and praised by men; of which he
cites the building of the Chans, and the public eating of the
leagues and other animals as examples.
The military state is
described in the third book. "The first Head, paints it in
general, representing him as already then very much deteriorated. He
has since become even more aggravated. In the following Chapters he
shows himself in particular pieces in, after the assurance
previously given, how he may be dealt with in all things, since he
had received these reports from a well-experienced Turkish military
commissioner. He divides, (Chapter 2.) the Militia into horsemen and
infantry, and the first again into two classes: 1) that which has
its income from lands, and is called Zaims and Timariotes, which in
the third Head, are calculated, as in the fourth certain customs
pertaining thereto are added; on which in the fifth the of the
Egyptian militia, commanded by the 12 Beghs, and the auxiliary
troops of the Turks on the side of the Tartars, Moldavians, etc. is
dealt with. 2) Which is paid from the Sultan's treasury. These are
the Spahis. (Chapter 6) When the Great Lord himself takes the field;
then he must make each of these, as well as each fanatic, a present
of five thousand extortions. The writer observes that the
first-mentioned, because of their mutinies, had lost all their old
prestige; that their payment was from 12 to 100 extortions daily. —
In the treatise on the infantry, the 7th Head begins with the
Janiifars, describing their organization, strength, and disposition;
the next relates the various means of humiliating this rebellious
Militia; the 9th Head treats of the Tschaufen, and the 10th of the
other types of Turkish militia, namely the Toppedschis,
Dschebedschis, etc. In the next Head, one finds observations on the
manner of camping of the Turks, the splendor of their tents, and the
cleanliness of their quarters. — The unfounded feeling,
concerning the so-called Paulliners living in Sophia, the Miss of
Montagüe, probably, copied from him, and revived it in her
letters. The last Head, represents the state of the Turkish navy,
which in the writer's time already did not want to say much, so that
the Turks themselves had this proverb: God had given the Christians
the sea, but them the earth.
This writer has been
an eyewitness of everything, and very credible. He deserves all
possible praise. Almost everyone has copied him, even down to the
few mass days; and, instead of so many collections published in
Germany and other countries, he should have been given to the
readers only with comments on the new changes. Memoires heloriques &
geographiques du Roïaume de la Morée, Negropont & de
places maritimes jusques a Theffalonique per P. M. Coronelli,
translated from Italian into French, Amst. 1686 8o with many plates,
size 232 pages. The author is the, because of so many writings,
mainly of a mathematical and geographical content, well-known
Geographist of the Republic of Venice. When it is said of these
Memoires, that they were collected by him; then this actually means:
he took the geographical and historical observations about the
described countries from other authors. This also seems to be
testified by the unnamed French translator in the preface, but in
such a way, that it was done with great accuracy; which must be left
at his place, because no guarantee has been given concerning it.
Descriptio imperii Turcici: das ijl: Beschreibung und Entwerfung des
Turk. Reichs unter Muham. IV mit kupf. Wurzb. 1687 4to. The Asian
Turkey covers 154, the African 72, and the European 162 pages.
According to the title, this description is drawn from the later and
most credible Cosmo-Geo-Choro-Topo- and Historiographi, and
therefore a collection. P. della Falie, Struis, Vansleb, Oleerius
and some others are quoted verbatim. The plates are common. Since we
have later and better Originals and collections; we consider it
unnecessary to give an extensive account of the contents of this
book, which is otherwise not badly written for its times. Voïage
en divers et dis d'Europe d\4fie, entrepris pour decouvririr un
nouveau chemin a la Chine, a Paris 1693 8. Dejefuit P. Avril is the
author of it. (In Dutch German considers this work to be entitled:
P. Avril travels through Turkey, Persia and Armenia, with pl.
Utrecht 1694 4.) The journey went by water to Scanderone, and then
by land through Astatic Turkey, Armenia and Tartary to Russia,
Poland, European Turkey, and so back to France. To get to know
Turkey, this work does not say much, but it can be of service to a
traveller there, and not unpleasant to a reader.
Stato militare dello
imperio Ottomanno, incremento e decremento del medefimo del Sgr.
Conté di Marfigli éfc. Opera ornata di tavole,
tagliate in ram. Part.I. inHaga, 1732. Opposite is the French, but
the Italian seems to be the original. The writer belongs neither to
the travelogues, nor to the Collectors, but to the few original
writers* who have seen, found and investigated everything
themselves. Not only a stay at Constantinople with the Venetian
Ambassador, which was like a preparation for the following
remarkable life, but also a slavery of several years under the
Turks, during which he was an eyewitness of the last siege of
Vienna; finally a German-Imperial task assigned to him at the
conclusion of the peace at Carlonitz, enabled him to write with
certainty what he wrote. As a foundation he has laid the so-called
Kanon-name; these are the State registers of the Empire's income,
military conditions, etc. to which he came by money. Everything has
been clarified by pure and clear plates. The first part contains 151
pages. The first seven chapters give, in a certain respect, a
preliminary introduction to the work, concerning the condition of
the Ottoman Empire; the difference between the earlier and later
Turks; the progress and prosperity of the Ottoman Empire; the
decline of this flourishing condition; a general proposal of the
laws, finances and military state of the same; various languages
and denominations therein, besides an investigation
concerning the prestige of the Sultan, the Vizier and the Baf as
well as a consideration of the character of the Turks. — I
content myself with merely recording from it a few things which are
either the author's own, or very well presented by him. This
includes almost the entire 2nd Chapter, in which he clearly
indicates that the present Turks, because of the multitude of either
bought or robbed people, are a mixture of Syrians, Armenians,
Greeks, Illyrians, Poles, Russians, Hungarians and Germans,
Italians, French, Jews, etc. Regarding the astonishing extent of the
Empire, which is in many places very wild, he remarks that, since
everything must nevertheless be kept in obedience, the expenses
amount to more, and more garrisons are required, than many large
Provinces are worthy of; certainly an important lesson for Princes,
not so much to look to the possession of many countries, but rather
to their real good governance. In the Turkish Empire there were, in
his time, forty-eight different Sects among the Mohammedans, and
seventeen Dervish orders. He believed that the supposed Paullicians
were to be found between Adrianople and Philippopolis. The Armenian
Patriarch carried the Title of Catholicos, (general), and his Parish
extended far into the States of the Prince of Persia. This proves
him much esteem; let him sit beside him, perform his office, and
enjoy his considerable incomes, which he draws from Persia and
Turkey. He must also have his letters of confirmation from the
Princes of both Empires. The outward splendor of the Sultans and the
Bassas, besides the tyrant abuse which they often make of their
power, and the almost incredible respect which the people seem to
show them outwardly, but at the same time also the great regulations
which are imposed by the Uilema and the military state, these
provincial Divans, consisting of lawyers, generals, elders of the
militia and guilds, leave the Count in doubt whether the Ottoman
Empire should be called a monarchy or an aristocracy, or a
democracy. The many baths weakened the people and made them
effeminate; wherefore "they were also obliged to use the
pelfen" and could endure heat rather than cold. To indulge
their lust, they spared no expense, and even in the field, where
they were not allowed to carry off any female sons, they knew how to
keep themselves harmless. In smoking much tobacco, they never spat
out the saliva, but let it pass; as a result, the hairs on their
bodies fell out everywhere. In general, they, and especially the
Most Eminent and Courtiers, were great hypocrites, in order to
deceive the world. They did indeed make great foundations; but this
was not so much done on account of piety, as for their descendants,
in order to provide them, by the principal share of their income,
with a large income, which the Sultan must not be allowed to
indulge. The Turks, he seeks to acquit from the reproach of complete
ignorance, while, as is also true, relates that no learned man was
found who did not understand, besides Turkish, also Persian and
Arabic; and he possessed a book list of 86 thousand writers of the
last century. Although this defends this nation, to some extent,
against the all too great uncivilization charged to it by others;
nevertheless, the state of learning there may not in the least be
compared with that in France, Germany, England, etc. The printing of
books was also, in his time, in the Capital, prevented by a number
of 90 thousand copyists, who earned their living by writing. He is
of a different opinion, that not easily a State could be found,
which had such good registers for its Traditions, receipts,
publications, Ceremonial, services and regulations, as the Turkish.
In general they were, and especially the Chiefs and Courtiers, great
hypocrites, to deceive the world. They did indeed make great
foundations; but this was not so much done for the sake of piety, as
for their descendants, in order to provide them, by the principal
share of their revenues, with a fixed income, which the Sultan may
not abuse. The Turks, he seeks to acquit from the reproach of
complete ignorance, while he relates, as is also true, that no
learned man was found, who did not understand, besides Turkish, also
Persian and Arabic; and he possessed a book list of eighty-six
thousand writers of the last century. Although this defends this
nation, in some way, against the too great uncivilization charged
against it by others; however, the state of learning there may not
in the least be compared with that in France, Germany, England, etc.
The printing of books was also, in his time, in the Capital,
prevented by a number of 90 thousand copyists, who earned their
living by writing. He is of a different opinion, that not easily a
State could be found, which had such good registers for its
Tra&aaten, receipts, expenditure, the Ceremonial, the services
and regulations, as the Turkish.
He praises the
patience of the Turks as such, one whose equal was not found at all
among other nations. In the example cited he is completely right.
When namely a modern Vizier is robbed of all his Dignity; then he
tolerates that with a kind of absolute indifference; and if, as has
happened here and there, he is again exalted to it; then he is as
grand as if no accident had befallen him. But the old Stoics and
fateful men could hardly give them anything in this. He rightly
reproaches them with their dissimulation, the duplicity of their
expressions, and their avarice; but do not forget to remark that one
must not think of obtaining everything, especially from the
Ministers of the Porte, by money. - I should have to write out an
unusually large amount if I were to furnish such extracts from all
the Chapters as from the first seven. Of the following, which almost
mostly concern the Court and Military servants, I will only set down
the Titles: of the kinds of money, but concerning which, since the
Count's time, some change has occurred; the weight and measure at
Constantinople; the trade of the Turks; the income and expenditure
of the Ottoman Empire. From the beginning to the end of the first
part, one finds the treatise on the Military State. Here are Tables,
concerning the Army and the various military peoples belonging to
it, on foot, on horseback and at sea; as well as concerning the
Paschals and the Beghs, Sae'yms and Tymariotes belonging to them,
their income and the soldiers they have to provide, added. The lists
concerning the Paschals differ frequently from the statement of
Businello, and may well have undergone various changes since
Marsigli's time, as is visible in those who closed the Persian and
Hungarian borders. - The second part (Parte II. SV) was printed in
the same year and format, and is 199 pages large. with very many
plates, well. can depict the war machine, army, marches, battle
order, and battles of the Turks. It deals entirely with military
affairs, and ends with the final remark, how little one has to fear
the Turkish armies, with the current decline of the Ottoman military
state, and with the answer to some objections against it. - This
work cannot be missed by a soldier who has to fight with the Turks;
one probably finds it at all courts, and is very useful for all who
want to know the internal condition of the Turkish Empire,
especially with regard to its true strength, accurately. It is a
pity that most Turkish words in Italian as well as French have been
very distorted in print, and here and there almost unrecognizable.
H. Maundrel Travels from Aleppo to Verufalem. Utrecht (1713-14) The
writer made them from Aleppo, where he was Chaplain of the English
Pastory, in the year 1696. The journey once via Lattakia, Tortofa,
Tripoli, Barut, Sidon, Trus, Ftolemais, Sebaste, or the former
Samarie, Naplufa, (the old SrchemJ to Jerusalem. Here he attended
the Easter diplomacies. About the rarities and antiquities he does
not expand himself in much, if not as others, but refers to Sandys.
He made the usual journey with the pilgrims "aden fordaan",
the region of Jicho, the Dead Sea, as well as to Bethlehem. The city
of Jerusalem he went carefully around on foot and finds it in its
circumference 46 30 his paces large. The return journey he took over
Nazareth, Sidon, Mount Lebanon, Damascus, Bal. bek, Lebanon, and the
Maromosque principal monastery of Kannobin, and over Emessen Aleppo.
Because he came to Jerusalem with a French Consul, he could enter
with him and the entire retinue on horseback and with arms, which is
otherwise absolutely forbidden. This travel description not only
bears the stamp of truth; but also contains many useful and genuine
remarks concerning the antiquities, Geographic and the Bible, which
&g to be read.
A. de la Mortraye
Voïages: 2 vol. in fol. with maps and plates. For Turkey only
the first part serves, a la Haye, 1727. In the 5. and 6. Heads, is
the description of his journey to the Syrian and Egyptian coasts, in
the year 1697. I have found there, except for the description of a
bathing stove and the bathing itself, mostly only travel notes.
After Napoli he travelled in the year 1698. From the ?? Head, to
almost the end of the first part, he describes his almost ten years'
stay in Turkey. He was in Smyrna for half a year, during which time
he visited several islands of the Archipelago. He stayed in
Constantinople for several years. Of that city itself, the Seraglio,
the Turkish marriages, and various religious ceremonies, as well as
the public buildings, he delivers quite extensive reports. He made a
journey to Nicomedia, Brussa, Angora, Synope, some islands of the
Archipelago, Salonike, Adrianople and Troja. The description of
these places does not occupy many pages. There occur important and
less important cases, which happened in his time in Turkey, both in
State and religious affairs, not only at the Porte, but also by
foreign ambassadors, among the Eastern and Western Christians. The
magnificent entry of Sultan Mustapha into Constantinople he
describes in chapter 13. and relates many things of Prince Tokeli
and King Carl XII. Concerning coins and antiquities he reports
various things, and also depicts them on plates; just as such plates
are more suitable, to know the clothing, religious ceremonies,
amusements, etc. there. In general this book will be pleasant and
useful to the great mass of ordinary readers. This is certain, that
very many collectors have borrowed an unusually large amount from
him, whereby they have wanted to make their works attractive and
engaging.
§. LIV. Some
writers of the eighteenth century; content of their works, and
assessed.
At the beginning of
this century, Joseph Pitton le Tournefort made a journey to the
Levant, at the expense of the King of France. He was, as is known,
one of the greatest herbalists of his time. His travel description
consists of twenty-two letters written to the Secretary of State,
Count de Pontehartraust, under the title: Relation du Voïage du
Levant, fait par ordre du Roi de France fif c. par J.P. de
Tournefort. Tom. I. & II. a Paris, 1717. 4. with very many
plates: (in the Dutch P. de Tournefort travels to the Levant, with
pl. Amst. 1736. 4. and in the High D. at Nuremberg, 1776. in 8™.)
The first two letters describe the island of Kandia, and the third
the present state of the Greek church, rather neutral. The following
7 letters mention his journey to the principal islands of the
Archipelago. In the 11th and 2nd ?? one finds the description of the
Dardanelles, Gallipoli and Constantinople. The 13th treats of the
form of government, and the 14th of the religion, customs and habits
of the Turks. In the 15th there is a description of the Channel and
the Black Sea. The 16th and 17th contain the journey after, and the
description of the southern coasts of the Black Sea from the Channel
to Sinope, and from there to Trapezium. The journey through Armenia
and Georgia is found in the letter. Here he relates in detail to how
many unjust insults one is exposed, when one travels from Turkey to
Persia. He also describes the Kurds, but is mistaken, when he
considers them together with the Sesides as one people. The 19th
letter gives the journey to Edschmiazin, Ararat, and the return
journey to Erzerum, concerning which he agrees reasonably with
Chardin. The 20th letter provides an appendix to the two preceding
ones, by illustrating the customs, religion and trade of the
Armenians. Here he seems somewhat bitter and partisan, although the
matter is generally true, and in many respects very circumstantial.
The 21st and 22nd letters conclude the journey of Tokkat and Angora,
and of Smyrna and Ephesus. Smyrna has certainly changed much since
its time, and the number of its inhabitants has become much greater.
— This travelogue deserves, in general, all possible praise.
It is correct and accurate; and the islands, cities, antiquities,
modes of dress, plants, etc., are depicted on beautiful and clear
plates. Everywhere the old Geography is compared with the present. A
series of Antiquities is found in it, and probably a third part of
this work is well devoted to botanical researches. These, as they
are unintelligible and of no service to most readers, had been
omitted from this edition, placed in the Systema Botanicum
Tournefortianum, and there a third part could be shortened by this
travel description. Otherwise one reads the travel notes with
pleasure, and the style is graceful. In his time the German
Imperial, Polish and Ragusian Ambassadors were still housed in
Constantinople. This no longer happens. The former have a regular
Palace in Pera, and for others, upon their arrival, houses are
rented there.
Travels through a
part of Europe, Little Asia, several islands of the Archipelago,
Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Mount Sinai etc. by I. A. van Egmond van
der Nyenburg etc. and Joh. Heyman. II parts. Leyden, 1757. 1758.
in4. The latter, Professor of Oriental languages at
Leyden, made his travels from 1700-1709; but the former,
extraordinary Dutch Ambassador at Naples, in the years 1720-1723.
Both travelled through almost the same regions, and from their
papers J. W. Heiman, M. D. produced this travel description by way
of letters. The first six letters, which deal with Europe, do not
belong to my field. The 7th speaks briefly of some islands of the
Archipelago. In the four following, Smyrna, Ephesus, Scala nova,
Tiria, Sardis, with the surrounding countries, and added, numerous
Greek and Latin inscriptions, such also occur elsewhere in
abundance, are described. The 12th and 13th contain a journey by
water and land from Smyrna to Constantinople, with the places
visited on the way; like the two following, a description of the
capital itself, an audience with the Sultan, the public ceremonies
and rejoicings, as well as many customs and usages. Scio, Rhodes and
Cyprus occupy the 16th-18th letter. The remaining letters up to the
??th treat of Palestine, and especially of Jaffa, Rama, Jerusalem,
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Easter ceremonies, the
Jordan, the Dead Sea, Bethlehem, and the curiosities there. However
much information we have of all this; one will nevertheless, to
one's amusement, be informed of many things unnoticed by others. —
In the second part one reads, letter. 27-29. news, touching Mount
Carmel, Nazareth, Mount Tabor, Cana, Tiberias, Bethsaida, Saphet,
and the present condition of the Jews at the last place, where they
had a printing-office and a high school. Then the journey to Egypt
continued, (Letter 30-34.) via Damiate and Cairo, and from there
back via Rosetta to Alexandria. On this occasion the cities as well
as the curiosities there are described, and observations on the
Coptic scripts and Pyramids are given. The 35-39 letters deal with
the journey to Mount Sinai, to Suez, the Red Sea, and some reports
concerning the Nyl, the Caravan to Mecca, the Mumien, the natural
condition of Egypt, and the qualities of its inhabitants. The
remaining 40-50 letters deal with Syria, especially Tyre, Sidon,
Damascus, Balbek, Mount Lebanon, besides the Cedar Trees, the
monastery of Kannobisn and the Maronites; about Tripoli, extensively
about the Druses, Lattakia, Antioch, Aleppo and Alexandre, also
about various Eastern Christians and the Carden??. — The
publisher has, in the appended notes, pointed to other writers,
where one is either instructed more extensively about the matters,
or where also illustrations and plates, which one does not find in
this work, are found. I can assure with complete conviction, that
this is in every respect one of the best travel descriptions that we
have; much more satisfactory, than most, give, and would have been
worthy of a good extract. The Turkish words are also, here,
sometimes incorrectly stated; but this does not detract from the
excellence of this work. Maillet's description of Egypt is too well
known for me to have to speak of it in detail, and it also belongs
here only in a special respect, namely insofar as this Kingdom is
one of the countries now under the Sultan. Here is the title:
description de l'Egypte &c. composed on the memoirs of Maillet
by Mr. l'Abbé le Mascrier, a la Playe, 1740 2 tom. 8. with
maps and plates. (in Dutch: Maillet beschryving van Egypten, 2 parts
with pl. Amst. 1737. 4.) Maillet was, from 1692 onwards, French
General Consul in Egypt for 16 years, collecting the materials that
Le Mascrier described in letters. Many would have preferred to read
those materials as they were at first, rather than in the form of
letters; but possibly they have become more attractive there. I will
do no more here than set down the contents of the letters. The first
part is 328 pages long. The first letter deals with Egypt in
general, its extent, borders, pleasure, number of cities and
inhabitants: the 2nd letter, with the Nile, its origin, course,
mouths, causes and effects of its growth. The 3rd letter contains
the division of the country into Upper and Lower Egypt, where also
the so-called Delta and the coasts, the cities Damiate and Rosetto,
the Sea Sirbon, and some other remarkable sights in this part of
Egypt are dealt with. The 4th letter contains a description of old
and new Alexandria, its monuments, and in particular the Pyramid of
Pompey. The fifth letter is about the city of Cairo, its origin, its
climate, antiquities, and especially Joseph's corn-magazines and
springs. Then follows in the 6th letter a description of the famous
Egyptian Pyramids, especially the largest, their interior, and the
secret places in them. The second part is large 397 pages. The 7th
letter treats of the places of the Mumien, and the famous city of
Memphis: the 8th letter of Upper Egypt, its climate, cities, riches
and antiquities, the deserts of St. Macarius and Thebes, the famous
Monastery of St. Anthony, etc. the 9th letter of the natural history
of Egypt, fruitfulness of the land, trees, plants, flowers, fruits
and animals: the 10th letter of the religion and religious customs
of both the former and later inhabitants of Egypt: the 11th letter,
of their customs, together with a comparison of their former and
later customs: the 12th letter, of the government over Egypt, and
the various arrangements of the warriors formed for the defence of
this kingdom: the letter, of the present state of the arts and trade
in Egypt, with a proposal for the union of the European and Asian
Trade, by means of the Red Sea. The last letter gives a description
of the Caravans, especially of those that go annually from Cairo on
pilgrimage to Mecca, with remarks on Mecca, Medina, the tomb of
Mohammed, and the so-called house of Abraham. How much such an
important description of Egypt is used by others, and how it justly
deserves it, can be fully gathered from the single statement of the
main parts.
Damni Anselmi Banduri
imperium orientale, sive antiquitates Constantinopolitanae in IV
partei distributa, 2 Fol. U Tom. Parisiis 17??. The preface, large
54 Wa?? contains, besides some necessary preliminary remarks, 111
the last and largest half, a chronological register of the Emperors
and Patriarchs of Constantinople, which began with Constantine the
Great until the conquest of Constantinople.
In the 1st and 2nd
parts, 214 pages in size, the following parts are provided: the
Emperor Constantine's Porphyrogenneta, two so-called books de
thematibus Orientis & Occidentis, and Hieroclis Grammaticus
Synecdemus, or work of the Provinces and cities of the Eastern
Empire, etc. In the third part, 440 pages in size, various reports
concerning the Antiquities of Constantinople are printed in eight
books, namely in the Greek originals with a Latin translation. Added
to this are Petri Gyelii de Bosphoro Thracne, Ub. 3. and his
Topographia Constantinopoleos, sif de illius antiquitatibus, Ub. IV.
The second part continues with the third part of the pages, and
together makes up 1017 pages. It is decorated with approximately 50
pure plates in fol. and maps, which partly depict many coins, partly
many things from Grelot about Constantinople, but in a larger
format, partly in particular very detailed the so-called historical
Pyramid, with what was on it. In it are eight books Commentaries of
the author about the antiquities of Constantinople, etc. From this
list one will easily notice with what advantage this work can be
used, to know the earlier and later History of Constantinople, the
Eastern Empire, and the Greek Church.
Frodnuan (High)
reports the working use of the Turks, Tartam, and the in foschen
Landen unter ihnen walmenden Christen. Stralsund 1715. I do not know
with certainty whether the author has given his true or merely a
fictitious name. According to his pretense he had been in Turkey
with Charles XII. and writes, according to his report, from a fresh
memory. This work consists of 8 pages, in kl. 8vo, and seems to have
been composed more for the common man than for other readers. It
would not be worth the trouble to report the contents further.
G. C. von den Driesch
(High) historical Nachricht von der Römisch-Kaiserlichen
Grossbotschaft nach Constantinopel Nurnb. 1723, large 494 pages in
4to. In it one finds, according to the indication on the title, very
special reports of the Turkish politics, religion, Greek
antiquities, and other remarkable, elsewhere in vain sought matters,
in which many things are clarified with the most accurate plates.
But it is a, filled with an unusually large amount, and for most
readers indifferent matters, actually a Gezandschap-dagverhaal, in
which, according to occasion and circumstances, this and that about
Turkey is noted, outside all order and coherence, and not at all in
an enticing style. There are indeed all kinds of things in it;
times; those are found, by other writers, collected much more
regularly and concisely. One will certainly find, here and there,
some important remarks; but to obtain a sufficient knowledge of the
Turkish Empire, it is not worth the trouble, to read it through.
From him and others come the masses; for example, page 283 that at
Mecca is Muhamed's grave; his pretended Testament (page 334) was
granted to the monks of the Monastery on Mount Carmel by Mount
Lebanon, and this lay only one hour from Mecca; on Mount Sinai (page
366) there were 22 monasteries, and there were no women to be found;
since this of the Monastery mentioned only applies to the so-called
Holy Mountain (Athos); the Mufti girded the Sultan (page 429) at the
Ascension to the Throne, the Sabre around, etc. The plates serve
little to elucidate Turkish. Paul Luke's travels have been published
(in the High German) in some small parts. — mass to the Levant
etc. transferred, Hamburg 1709. 8 is 165 pages large. Here is the
journey from France to Egypt, and the journeys made there; and from
there to Cyprus, Tripoli in Syria, to Lebanon, to Balhek, Damascus,
Aleppo, the Euphrates, to Erzerum and Kars. — The plate
touching the Nile, from Cairo to the Waterwalls seems to have been
laid by Pocock as a good foundation. For the most part they are more
travel stories and short events, than actual descriptions. Pocock
and Tournefort provide better information. — Journey to the
Levant, Armenia, Persia, Turkey etc. Hamb. 8. 208 pages large. This
is a single diary, in which he mainly reports on his travels, and
what he has seen in passing; but where, rarely, descriptions of
places, and much less of the various maps occur. Most places have
also only been traveled through quickly, and so Chardin is a
completely different man. The scornful treatment can be learned well
from it, to which not only the inhabitants of the country, but also
the travelers have been exposed. - Most recent journey in Asia Minor
and Africa etc. by order of the King of France made by Paul Lukas
etc. with an accurate map. (Hoogduits) Hamberg 15 8. large 370
pages. Here one reads the journey from France to Constantinople by
water; from there via Chalcedon, Nicomedia, Nicea, Brussa, Kutaja,
Angora, Cesarea, Kogni, Scutari, back to Constantinople, and thence
after Adrianople, Philippopolis, Salonica, Monte Santo, Negroponte,
Athens, the islands of Andros and Scio, Smyrna, Sardis, Kogni,
Adama, Antioch, Aleppo, Sidon, Jaffa, Jerusalem, and the surrounding
countries, St. Jean Sacre, Cyprus, Fiume and Arfinoë in Egypt,
Alexandria, Tripoli in Barlnrye??, Cyrene and Tunis to Marseilles. -
His stay at most places was too short to be able to do much. His aim
was mainly to buy up old coins for the King of France, under the
pretext of a medical journey. He inserts his travels in detail, as
well as reports from others. The map seems to have been laid partly
by Pocock as a foundation for his. It is a single diary; wherefore
one must seek the materials in two or more of these travel pieces
together. The credibility may not be easily doubted. — P.
Lukas travel to Turkey, Syria, the Holy Land, as well as High and
Low Egypt etc. Hamburg 1721 and 1722 2 parts 8vo. Here one finds the
journey to the aforementioned countries, with many comments, and is
more detailed than the previous one. The second part describes Egypt
in particular, being added in the sixth book a general illustration
of Egypt-land, concerning its layout, advantages, power, trade
customs, and a map of Lower Egypt. — It is conceivable that
the Original is more pleasant to read than the translation. In many
pieces, very well known to me, and belonging suitably to the travel
description, I have found this work very accurate. But the
aforementioned writers relieve one from the trouble of reading it
now. Except for a few remarks made in passing, one finds nothing
important in it concerning Turkey and the Turks.
De la Roque voïage
de Syria & du Mont Liban. part 8. a Paris, 1722. On the title is
the entire content of this book, thus a description of the entire
country known under the name of Lebanon, An??bon, Kes?? etc. besides
the origin, religion, members of the peoples who inhabited that
country; the description of the ruins now called ??m, and a ??action
on this city; with a short biography of a Pro??maaden Noblemen and
Hermit on the mountain L??, ?? Prince Juxes, who died for the
Christian religion. "If one wanted what ?? then such few pages
would exist. Most of it looks at the minor red-marks- Demetrius
Kantemirs i.» r Empire Othoman & c tradition and Francois
pa de [oNCuiERES, h Paris, i743- * W* the Highd. published in
Hamburg *74*M originally written in the Literary. The OnX neel is
said to be in Petersburg, and is still with Jedmkt. The author's son
had begun, an Italian translation From the A»** translation rs
the W ƒ makes In the preface he compares the HeZe with the
Christian chronology, under, investigating both the name of the
Turks, and the origin of the Ottoman House. The history of the
Turkish emperors is described up to Achmet III., and taken from
sources, which our historians either do not possess, or do not
understand; although also many errors either on the account of the
translators, or of the first publisher, certainly, must be stated.
And the spelling of the Turkish words in particular is not at all
the best, but better is that in the German edition, where one has
referred to Meninski. For the rest, those who have compared Kantemir
with the Turkish original pieces assure that he has used them either
superficially, and by no means with a proper accuracy.
Th. Shaw, an English
physician, has published travels to Barbary and the Levant, where he
stayed for a considerable time about the year 30 of this century.
They differ, unusually, from the largest mass of other travel
descriptions. For they do not yield cases, isolated observations,
fables and ideas, but a treasure of geographical, physical,
philological and other knowledge, which the writer has not collected
on a fleeting journey, but during a longer stay in those regions.
The French translation is in The Hague, 1743 in 2 tem in 4to, with
many maps and plates, (and in two separate translations into Dutch,
under the Title: Th. Shaw travels through Barbaryen and the East,
with pl. at Utrecht and Amsterdam, 177& 4-) — It is not a
travel diary, but a compilation, and as a result of discoveries,
which the author has made, having placed for it a very useful
preface, from which I will materially set down that which may be
useful to readers of my work, and which nevertheless is not
included. "To travel in the East in a manner (he says) which
may make a noise, and excite the suspicion of riches, is very
dangerous. In the sandy deserts, for want of water, one travels not
with horses or mules, but with camels. These are made to camp in a
circle around the party, so that the heads are outward. Ag
on them they lay the
saddles, goods, and whatever they carry with them, thus making a
bulwark around them. The Kanwelen are by nature lively, awake at the
least noise, and are therefore almost sentinels. _ With leather bags
for water, with flour, oil, wine, olives, dried meat, a wooden dish
to bake bread, and a copper pot for cooking, are preferred. _ The
dried camel-mist of a previously drawn caravan serves for wood. -
The presents, which one receives from the Arabs in Barbary, demand
return presents of needles, maces, scissors, etc. — In Syria
and Egypt one cannot travel otherwise than with caravans, and not
nearly so safely, as among the Arabs in Barbary. — A traveller
does well to dress like them. "The first part does not really
belong, or only in a remote way, as far as Algiers and Tunis are
countries, under Turkish protection, to my profession. Namely, he
delivers in 414 pages geographical, natural, and mixed, but
everywhere excellent observations on the two countries mentioned.
The second part contains, in 192. pages, five main parts of the
following content: geographical observations on Syria, Phoenicia and
Palestine, on Egypt, rocky Arabia, and the travels and camps of the
children of Israel, natural observations, or a sample of the natural
history of Syria, Phoenicia and the Holy Land; such on rocky Arabia;
and finally natural and other observations on Egypt. All this is
concluded with an excellent appendix of extracts from old writings,
verses and other additions, which serve as testimonies and
explanations of the entire work. Therefore it is useful and useful
for the researchers of scripture and nature, as well as for him who
devotes himself to literature, geography and antiquities, and has,
in this field, few equals. For those who wish to travel to those
countries, it serves, in advance, as an excellent instruction, what
they should pay attention to, and how they should conduct themselves
in their reports to him.
Nouveau voïage
de Grece, #'Egypte, de tale. fine, d Italië, de Suffe, ff
Al/ace & des Pats-bas, fait en * * H W. Oïl$* this broad
Title, with which one would expect some folios or quartines, are 25
letters on 382 pages. printed in ottavo, which have no other stamp
than that of a high and superficial collection of the best-known
travel descriptions. Two circumstances seem to confirm this; partly
that the writer has not expressed his name, partly that it has been
dedicated to a lady. If the writer had really been to those places,
as he imagined, this would not make his work more commendable. The
thought expressed in the preface, that in the Levant the Christian
religion would soon come to an end, if the Jesmts did not maintain
it, I will not leave for the Protestants, but for the Roman
Catholics alone to ponder. Fifty Families, in Egypt, who, according
to his story, only follow the law of nature, and would speak about
the fundamental truths of Christianity, like the Free Spirits, are
nothing more than a fiction of the author. P. Angeligüs Maria
peregrinans in Jerusalem: stranger in Jerusalem, or extensive travel
descriptions. (Hoogd.) Vienna and Nuremberg, 1735. in 4. with many
plates, large 964 pages. This is a large Magazine of working
descriptions, and observations of all kinds, which the author, on
his travels from 1726 onwards, has collected over Italy, the
Archipelago, Constantinople, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, in which
many good and genuine pieces on Geography, Physics, Antiquities,
Nations etc. occur; but first of all a careful reader and
researcher, with a good judgment, must search for them in the mass
of extensive and confused reports. The plates are mostly made after
those of Tournefort and others.
Twdnne Stora Swenska
Herrars (v. Hopken and Carlson, Swedish Ambassadors to the Pore)
Reise-Beskrifning ifran Cypera til Asien, Jerusalem éfV.
Stockholm 1768. As this travel description, apart from the
publisher's preface, consists of only two pages; so one cannot
search much in it: but nevertheless she sees nothing, except what is
certain, and how it looked in the year 1733, when this journey was
made, in the Holy Land and in Jerusalem; and in that respect she is
also useful.
Jean Bell
l'Antermony, Voyages &c. a Paris 1767 8. translated from
English. (In Dutch known, under the Title: John Bell reize van
Petersburg naar de hoofd' gewesten van Asia, 2 parts, with pl.
Leiden 1770 8.) Here one finds, at the end of the third part, a
short account of a journey from Petersburg to Constantinople. What
he says of the latter city, is, according to his own confession,
indeed little, but true; but his guess, that there were probably no
more than four hundred thousand people in it, is certainly
unfounded. Among the few remarkable and outstanding Turkish families
he counts the two Tschigal-Ogiu and Kuperli, among whose privileges
also this is, that the Sultan could not condemn her to death.
The given, and calculated in miles, travel route between the
two previously mentioned cities will not be unpleasant to many.
He reckons it at 1925 English miles.
Voïage d'Egypte
& de Nubia par Mr. Fred. Louis
Norden. Ouvrage enrichi de cartes &
de figures destintes fur les lieux par / Auteur même, Copenh.
1755. fW. This work is as
beautifully printed, as possible no travel description.
Besides the preface and the register the work contains 2?8
pages and is provided with 159 equally magnificent plates.
The writer, em Holjkiner, made this journey, equipped with
the necessary knowledge, in the years 1737 and 1738. Since this is
not really what the title promises; one
only finds, in passing, remarks on the condition of the Turkish
Empire, and therefore I need do nothing more than give the main
contents of the Chapters, so that one knows what one should look for
in them. The first section contains the
description of old Alexandria, in 24 pages;
the second, of new Alexandria, to page 44 and the third, of
old and new Cairo, to page 70. Here he had to stay longer than he
thought, due to various circumstances; why
in the fourth he gives a description of the Pyramids, with remarks
on the needle columns, to page 104. The
following main objects provide his travel story from Cairo to
Dschlrdfdie, the capital in Upper Egypt, to page 150. Continuation
of the journey to Essuan, to page 190. and from there in Nubia, but
with much difficulty, great expense and dangers to the city of Deir
or Derri, to page 238. He wanted to travel from there to the second
great waterfall of the Nyh; but met, in
the last-mentioned city, so many really insurmountable obstacles,
which were placed in his way by the inhabitants there, and
especially the Aga, that he had to consider himself happy with the
Life of it, and thus to return by the same road to Cairo.
\i Kortens Reis mar het beloften Land, (Hoogd.) was published
in the year 1741. at Altona, with five plates depicting the city of
Jervfalem and the Holy Sepulchre. The
author, a bookseller, who, according to his own confession,
possessed no learned languages or other sciences, made
that journey in the year 1738. This work is large 544 pages, but
could be two-thirds smaller, if the mixed, not at all pertaining to
the matter, mostly edifying, but here not sought-after remarks had
been left out. As a travel description
it is one of the least important books. Two
traps deserve attention, and he himself recommends their further
investigation, especially by a mathematician, most emphatically.
First, the present Jerusalem, almost contrary to the
generally accepted opinion, would stand exactly on the site of the
old one, with this only difference, that it is much smaller than it;
and he seems to have no unfounded proof for it, to wit, this:
that the valleys which enclose it would not permit any displacement
to that side, where it must have taken place, if it had been so.
Secondly, that the Holy Sepulchre was not at all the true
burial place of Christ, but that of the present rather, and that, in
Constantine's time, it was laid out on the present site, and the
Church built over it, in order to contain, as in a brief summary,
all the supposed sacred peculiarities of Christ's death and burial.
— The writer took almost the same road that Hasselqutst
took, but may not be compared with him at all.
The following passages (page 33.) from him I will here quote
only, which serve to further elucidate the learned Swedish travel
description. "At Jaffa I paid the
Roman Procurator of the Pilgrims 66 Piastres, whereby he told me
that they did not earn the least, but that everything was spent for
tolls to the Turks, and for expenses for horses and conductors. For
that they provided me free to Jerusalem and back again. They ask
nothing for food and good reception in their Monastery, but each
gives for that according to his condition and ability, 20, 30, 50
and more Piastres; and they told me that I had four weeks to stay in
Jerusalem for that. "That is how it ended with him.
For he would have liked to have stayed there longer, but they
pressed him so strongly that he had to leave Jerusalem again at the
time mentioned. Further on, page 38, he
writes: "In various travelogues I have read that people
complain that the haughty Turks do not allow a Christian to ride
into the city on horseback, but must go there on an ass or on foot;
but we rode, on our horses, to the gate of the Roman monastery. From
which one sees that such things change, depending on the disposition
of a Bajfa, or whether his favor is bought by gifts."
Mrs. van Moniague, Wife of an English
her Envoy at
Constantinople, has made herself famous by her letters, (known in
Dutch under the Title: M. W. Montague letters, written during her
journey in Europe, Asia and Africa, 1 part, 8. Amst. 1765. etc.).
One must indeed admire in her the knowledge of many languages, of
heathen antiquities, the intelligent ideas, a pictorial style and
other excellences. But, whoever would seek in it a system concerning
the condition of Turkey, would be extremely deceived. She maintains,
besides unbelievable things, and the all too flatteringly painted
Character of the Nation, complete untruths. She ascribes great
liberties to the Turkish women, which they possessed, by means of
their Procuresses, the Jewish women; she considers her way of life
happy, because she did not have to work in public and outside the
house, as if an idle life were the happiest. In the 3rd letter she
diminishes the Plague to such an extent, as if it were scarcely
equal to one of our common Epidemic diseases, of which yet the
opposite is evident. She denies that the images and statues were
destroyed by the Turks, because they nevertheless left the symbolic
figures on the Needle Columns (Obelisks) untouched; which is
contrary to general experience, and moreover rests on untruth,
because the Hieroglyphs or Symbols do not consist in the forms of
men, but in birds, trees, and other arbitrary signs, which the Turks
themselves paint. In the 27th letter she speaks of the so-called
Paueiners at Sophia, as followers and special respecters of the
Apostle Paul, who had a church there, in which he is said to have
preached; since these are the Pauliciani, a branch of a Manichean
Se&e. There she also asserts that our translations of the Koran
were made from the copies of Greek Christians, who did not fail to
falsify it with the utmost malice. In the same letter she judges of
the Armutes, that they, in a sensible manner, professed the
Christian and Mohammedan religion. Would others think so strangely,
and not attribute understanding to a people who read in the utmost
uncultivated heathen ignorance? Concerning the Armenians she reports
in the 4th letter that they did not believe in Transubstantiation,
and in the 43rd that Chalcedon is still a large city; both of which
are nevertheless untrue.
With Tournefort one
can, without any difficulty, equate the work of the learned
Englishman, Richaro Pocock: Travele to the East witb cuts and maps
&c. Lond. 1743. 2 vol. fol. in the High Rev. bearing the Title:
Beschreibung des Morgenlandes und einiger anderer Länder.
Erlangen 3 Th. in 4. mit viel kupfern itfsla etc. by Windheim, and
republished by Prof. Breier and D. Schreber. (and in Dutch,
Description of the East and of some other Lands etc. Utrecht, Rott.
and Amst. 1776 etc.) In the first part the first book deals with
Lower Egypt; the second relates a journey of the writer from Great
Cairo over the waterfall of the Nyls, and down to Cairo and Damiate;
the third contains the journey from Great Cairo along the Red Sea,
in rocky Arabia, to Mount Sinai, and back to Cairo, Rosetto and
Alexandria; the fourth contains the government, customs and natural
history of Egypt; and finally the fifth contains mixed observations,
mainly concerning the antiquities and natural history of Egypt. In
the second part the first book deals with Palestine or the Holy
Land; the second with Syria and Mesopotamia; the third of the island
of Cyprus, and the fourth of the island of Kandida. In the third
part the author comes, in the first book, to the islands of the
Archipelago, but of which he describes only Scio, Mytilene, Tenedos,
Lemnos, Samos, and Pathmos. The journey through Natolia, according
to the old division of Ionia, Caria, Great Phrygia, Galatia,
Paphlagonia, Bithynia, Pontus, and Propontis, forms the second book;
as does that through Thrace and Greece, with the description of
antiquities and plants, the third. To this are added three books as
an appendix, in which remarks on some parts of Europe, the old
description of the earth and on travel, customs and manners, and
finally on the great change of things in the world occur. —
Although in this travelogue, with the exception of Egypt, almost
nothing is said about the condition of the Turkish Empire, 5 it is
nevertheless, in its kind, one of the most complete, and is
exceptionally clarified by the beautiful maps and plates. The writer
often wanders in his guesses, and it surprises the reader, on one
page, in the reports, sometimes several times to read: according to
my thoughts; according to my judgment, etc. But perhaps he becomes
all the more credible by that, in all those descriptions, in which
one finds such additions. The style is otherwise often broken, and
by no means attractive;
and the whole work
is, in general, not for the unlearned, but for the learned.
Salmons and van Gochs
modern History, cf. current State of the Turkish Empire etc.
described in High German: first part, containing the Turkish
countries in Asia and Africa, Alt and Flensb. 402 pages in 4t0- Dlt
Jf a work compiled by various writers, in which Ricaut, Mortraye,
Thevenot, Maundrel, Toumefort, Rauchwolf, Lucas, della VaVe,
Hamilton, Tavemier etc. are explicitly mentioned. The first Heading,
is like an introduction, Inclining the layout, size, and various
Provinces of this Empire for, just like the following, the mcires,
seas and rivers in it. In the listing of miles there is certainly an
error here. The harbour of Constantinople is said to be (page ro.) 8
miles in circumference, and the sea of Marmora yet
only 15 or 20 miles broad, and 40 long. The third head, deals with
the origin, inclination and disposition of the Turks, form, dress,
manner of life, food and drink, amusements and ceremonies. The
alleged inability of the Turks, to carry on trade without keeping
accounts, and to get to it more quickly than we do, needs an
explanation. Because they know nothing of a trade of exchange, and
they give no Credit to foreign nations; thus the trade is much
simpler than with us, and does not require so many subtle accounts
and accounts - The proposition that with the Turks, when they have a
quarrel, it seldom comes to blows, and that it does not come to a
duel at all, should have been put forward somewhat more widely. The
rash ceremonial duel is indeed unknown to them; but otherwise they
either go for the dagger and harquebus, or, on occasion, set their
revenge to work in a treacherous manner. - Whether it is true, but
not in general, that the Turks are respectable people in person, the
reason given for it is nevertheless unfounded, because the greatest
Beauties from Georgia and Circus are brought to Turkey, and the
Turks buy the most beautiful Girls, because this could only take
place among the First Names and Rich, that is, only among a few, and
not among the great multitude. - Mortraye is brought forward, page
22, as a witness, that one can travel very cheaply; because one only
had to go to the Porte or the Stadtholder of the place through the
Ambassador or Referee of his nation, whereupon a request was not
refused, to make the entire journey at the Sultan's expense. This is
a misconception, and entirely beside the truth. Such freedom is
accorded only and exclusively to the Governor of a foreign Power, or
to any other person, who travels on behalf of the Sultans, and then
of course at their own expense. The fourth Head, describes the
Imperial power, Court and State servants, women, and other
inhabitants of the Seraglio or the Haram. I will not speak of the
confusion, if the Seraglio and the Haram were one and the same; for
these are very different things. This also is not so generally true,
as is said further in the beginning; that the Emperor's rule was not
determined by laws and treaties. Not the Mufti, page 26. but the
Sheik of the Eiubs-mosque protects the Sultan- Regarding the
remuneration of the Grand Vifitrs, page 35.which is set at 00
pounds, must certainly be a printing error; otherwise it would be a
gross mistake.
What is said about
the so-called Visiers of the Bank and the Divan, is taken from old
writers, and concerning it, great changes have now been made. Some
ground, rules of Turkish policy are given in the fifth Head, to
which in the following are added the tricks which the Turks use to
increase their people, and to make neo-converts. The seventh Head,
about the reception of the Ambassadors, and their conduct in the
negotiations with the Porte, is full of errors. Here the Turkish
Army and land militia are described; also the income of the Sultan,
the State in which he openly appears, his appointment and deposition
are recorded. Here, in the girding of the Sabre in the Ejüks-Dscha,
in my opinion, this unfounded remark comes up, page 82. "This
must be done by the Adgi-Bassa, who, according to the report of
tradition, is always a descendant of Hiob. "The tenth Head
speaks of the maintenance of justice, and the punishments imposed on
certain crimes in Turkey, and the next examines that Sect of
Mohammedanism to which the Turks are devoted. In the 12th Head, of
trade, weights and measures, as well as of currencies, the following
should not have been included at the time this work was composed;
page 117. "that the Genoese had a Resident at Constantinople;
the trade and commerce of the French and Italians had greatly
diminished since the Dutch and English had come thither; at least
that their trade, in comparison with the latter, was very small; the
Venetians alone had the liberty of sailing to Caffa in Crimean
Tartary; and finally (p.
.
118.) the Dutch, annually, sent 12 ships in two fleets,
accompanied by two warships, there". Marriages, divorces and
funerals occur in the fifteenth chapter The other Heads belong to
Geography, and so I will not mention them. What use one should make
of this work, is not so difficult to decide. One should consider it
as a collection, and not at all as a first source. In the first
respect one can use it, but not in the last. The reports concerning
all places are not equally credible. The city of Bir, in Diarbek
(formerly Mesopotamia,) would, according to page 147, lie one,
according to page 155. four days' journey from Aleppo. But it is
possible in the first place that it is a printing error, and should
be several days' journey. It seems to me so
well-known Smyrna resembles not so much a triangle, as an
unequal square. The Befestein is no
Exchange, page 235. The dove-posts in the Levant the recorder
reckons, page among the old Hiltorien, which one had to laugh at;
but many credible former, and quite new travellers will
testify against him. The same will have
regarded the carelessness of the Turks, related in the Text (page
236.), in sowing no more corn than they necessarily need, as the
happiest contentment which the Saviour had commanded.
But in this he is mistaken. The
Turk must pay the great burdens of his crops to the Government, and
he knows in advance that a considerable part of his inheritance will
not come to his heirs; therefore he is
slow. Thevenot's story that many of the
Mohammedan Saints went to Egypt quite naked, without covering
themselves with any rags, the same annotator, page 322, wants to
make uncertain, saying: he had never seen this, and hardly believed
it, because the Turks had an aversion to showing the limbs that
nature teaches us to keep covered. But
here, according to irrefutable witnesses, Thevenot, who otherwise
cannot always be relied upon, is nevertheless right.
— Second part, containing the Turkish countries in
Europe, 1749. 192 pages in size in 410, to which is added, in an
appendix, a brief history of the Turkish wars, especially from the
16th century onwards, up to our own times, waged in Europe, 115
pages in size. First of all, one finds,
(Hoofd, ??.) a report of a narrow?? mentioned,
concerning the Crimea or Little Tartary, and Oczakow or the
Budziackian Tartary, which is concluded in the following with a
description of Besarabia and the residence of King Karl I??.
Bulgaria, Bosnia, Serbia, Moldavia and Wallachia are treated
very briefly (chapter 3.), but Romania or Thrace, and especially
Constantinople (chapter 4.) are treated more extensively.
The introduction to the description of this city is singular.
"Constantinople, the old Byzantium, is generally called
the Porte by the Turks Stambour, (probably Stambul,) and by the
Europeans par excellence, because there is the finest harbour in the
whole world, although some think that it received its name, Porte,
from the Great Sultan's Seraglio or Palace, whose principal gate
leads to the city. "It is equally shocking to hear Hansen or
Canvanserese speak on page 50. At Pera, it says on page 52. the
Christian ambassadors had their residence, with the exception of the
Imperial and Polish, who were free to have houses within the walls
of Constantinople. Whoever has read the
old travel writers, will soon find that this was a very bad freedom;
for they were, in a certain respect, kept as prisoners in the
city, and now live, like all the others, at Pera.
On page 56 it is indeed pretended that the Hellespont between
the Dardanelles is too wide for the ships to be stopped by the
castles lying there; but it is beyond
question that, in that respect, it is not too wide.
In order to remedy the scantiness of the geographical
description, the state of the Christian religion in Turkey, and in
particular the Greek Church, is recorded, as is expressly assured
(Chapter 5). This has been extensively
collected from Tournefort, Smit, Ricaut, Covel, and the
disturbances, which arose in Constantinople because of the Greek
Patriarch, Cyril Lucaris, the result of which was his death, have
been included. Macedonia and Albania,
Epirus, Achaia, Thessaly and Greece proper are, as well as Morea,
treated very briefly, and Athens alone is treated at length.
Chapters 6-9. Kandia occupies
Chapter 10 and in the remaining Chapters (11-16) the islands of the
Archipelago are discussed. This part on
European Turkey seems to me to be worse edited than the first.
Otters voïage en Turquie et en Perse, à Paris 1747. 2
tom. in 8 with a map on which the
author's Asian travels are depicted. He
made (Book L, Chapter, ??) in the year 1734 his journey to
Constantinople, of which he, Chapter 2, as well as of the Audientien
by the Great of the
Empire, Chapter 3. gives a short description. He also reports, from
his own experience, in some examples, (Chapter 4.) to what
inconveniences the Europeans expose themselves, because of their
dress and way of life. He visited, (Chapter 5.) the nearby resorts.
Because at that time the Turks were at war with the Russians, but
made peace with the Persians; (Chapter 6.) he found an opportunity,
with the Persian Ambassador, 1736. to travel to Persia. They passed
through Iconia, Addma, Alexandria, Antioch, Aleppo, over the
Euphrates, to Urfa, to Mosul, and via Kierkiuk to Bagdad. (Chapters
7-15.) From here the journey went to Persia, on whose borders the
heat, in one day, and the thirst, with bad water, were so great,
that fourteen people died, and many were sick for a long time.
Concerning the wind Samum, which blows frequently in those
countries, he gives the following description: "it is burning,
mixed with sulphurous fumes, and kills the persons who breathe, on
the spot. In those deserts it blows, chiefly, in Julius and August.
It comes as a whirlwind, but does not last long. As soon as they
noticed it from afar, they threw themselves down on their bellies on
the ground, covered themselves well, and pressed their faces into
the sand. He did not kill the hairy animals, but they stood out a
lot from it, and experienced a tremor with a heavy sweat. On his
journey to Persia and his stay there, I do not follow him. This
description, as well as the reports concerning the undertakings of
Tamas-Kuli-Chan, and the return journey to Bagdad, 1739, I leave
there, as not belonging to my purpose. He now proceeded to Bassora,
(Book II. chapter 4.) and that by water. On the vessel he saw doves,
which are used between the two cities just mentioned, to convey
news. He asked a merchant how they could travel this route without
wandering; and received the answer that, in order to accustom them
to it, they were first let fly from a place only a little distant,
and so gradually further and further, until finally at Bassora: as
soon as they were let loose, they flew very high in the air, but
then descended, and took their flight directly to Bagdad, following
the river Tiger as their guide. At Bassora he stayed a long time.
Besides describing this city, he also relates everything he heard of
Persia and the government of Thamas-Kuli-Khan. Among these is the
following, which one has read in various books: that this ruler of
Persia, about the year 1740? had given orders to translate the Bible
and the Koran into Persian at Isfahan. The European missionaries,
Armenian prelates, rabbis and Mullas had assembled daily for this
purpose, and had laboured for a long time on this great work, under
the supervision of Mir Mafum, Imam of the Royal Mosque. As soon as
the translation was finished, he had ordered the principal
translators to bring them to him at Tahran. They had also gone
there, and had the honour of handing them over to him. When they had
now been read to him, he had jested with the mysteries of the
Christian religion, ridiculed the Jewish religion, laughed at
Mahomet and Ali, and had all the works locked up in a chest, with
this declaration, that if God would give him life, he hoped to
deliver to men a much better religion than any hitherto known. This
absurd hope was shattered. For that Hero, or rather Tyrant, fell
into the folly of wishing to compel the Persians to adopt the
principles of the Turks, and was thereupon, in an uprising, put to
death. (Chapter 5-26.) In May 1743 he departed from Bassora, chapter
27. he suffered many inconveniences on his voyage by water, over
Hilla, in whose neighbourhood the once so famous Babel lay, over
Bagdad through the deserts, over Kierkiuk to Mosul, and thence over
Mardin to Diarbekir, (Chapter 28-39.) which was otherwise called the
fortress of the Amid. On his further journey he saw the gold and
silver mines at Argana and Kiebban, but they were no longer in their
former state. The former had, formerly, had about 400 smelting
furnaces; but the latter now had only eight or ten. (Chapter 40.) On
his journey to Arebkir and Divringi (Chapter 41, 42.) he suffered
much under his treacherous guides. People were surprised that he had
taken such a dangerous route, where probably no European had ever
been. But this did not seem strange to him, because he saw how
mercilessly the Turkish Militia dealt with the Sultan's own
subjects. (Chapter 43.) When he expressed his surprise at it to the
Chief, he received the answer: "The Bassas were obliged to
maintain a certain number of soldiers, but withheld their pay, and
were therefore forced to tolerate their debauchery. Some of these
could do nothing else, because they received too little and had to
spend too much. Others were uncertain whether
they would remain
long in the governorship, which the Porte gave them, or how long
they themselves buy expensive pensions. They
had therefore to watch the time, in order not to get what they had
shot back, yes, if it were possible, to seek to enrich themselves.
They were therefore, in a word, the destroyers, and not the
protectors of the Provinces. After so
many dangers he finally arrived at Sivas, (the old Sebaste,) then at
Tokkat, Amafia, (Chapter 44-46.) and so gradually over several less
important places of Napoli back to Constantinople.
- This travel description deserves much praise.
What other travellers have already actually described, he
speaks of very briefly, and does well. In
this he has a special merit, that he gives sufficient and good
descriptions of Provinces, cities, mountains, rivers, products etc.
At the principal places he also notes the location according to the
geographical longitude and latitude. This
book is therefore necessary for every land writer, from a certain
point of view, considering the regions travelled, and every future
traveller to them will find it a very useful preliminary instruction
concerning the necessary caution. Moeurs 6?
usages des Turcs, leur réligion, leur gouvernement
civil, militaire ??if politique avec un Abregé de l'histoire
Ottomanne par Mr. Güer, in Paris 1747. 2 Tom.
in 4w. of which the first 45??,
the second 537 pages large, very beautifully printed, and provided
with plates. In the preface the author
declares that he has not been in Turkey, but has compiled from
Mirkond, Condemir, Pietro della Falie, Septem-Castrensts, le P.
Maracci, du Ryer, Busbec, Grelot, Belon, Roland, Ricaut, le Comte de
MarfigU, de Maillet les Ah. hés
Banier ??f leMaserier, Kant emir, Boulain villiers, Vét??
présent de l'Empire Ottoman, ??pion Turc, the
Dictionaire Geographique, the letters Persannes, the letters Juives,
and their scattered reports for the benefit of the public, of
merchants and travellers to the Levant, he will bring them into a
system. The first book provides a
sketch of Turkish history. In which the
first chapter deals with the origin of the Turks;
the second a Plan of their history from Osman to Bajazet II.,
as well as the third of these to Mahomed V. This is mostly drawn
together from Kantex??, and only arranged with a few remarks, or
verses from French poets. In the fourth
chapter he tackles the description of the Turkish Empire.
As to its vast extent he is mistaken, when he includes the
threefold Arahe, and all the Coasts of the Mediterranean from Egypt
to Longer; these are partly
self-existing Empires, partly at most alone, and not even everywhere
remote Protected Empires, which cost the Porte more than they bring
in, but give it the advantage of extending to good boundaries.
Under the article of the beauty of the Turkish Empire he
mentions the mountains, rivers, Mynas, etc., as well as Commerce,
but only very superficially; just as
under that of the various peoples who inhabit it, the Greeks;
the Jews, concerning whom he incorrectly states that they
must be dressed in black; the Arabs;
the Kurds, who, in his opinion, would mortally hate the
European Turks, and consider them heretics, as if the Asiatics had
another religion; the Turkmen, the
Tesulians, whose number he estimates, from unnamed sources, at more
than two hundred thousand people, and reports that they sing hymns
of praise to Jesus and the Virgin Mary at their graves;
and finally the Druses. Then he
comes to the most famous cities, Alexandria, Cairo, Jerusalem,
Constantinople, in which he places two millions of inhabitants.
That the historical Pyramid was burned in 1660 is a slight
mistake. The second book treats (Page
147, etc.) of the religion of the Turks. After a brief remark, that
man in general has an impression of religion, by which one, if one
knows how to make use of it, can easily gain entrance, he comes
(Chapter 1.) to Mohammed, whom he describes neutrally from the
well-known writers, and leaves a short historical account,
concerning the interval between this and the first Turkish Emperor.
The second Head, treats of the Koran, from which he quotes the
contents of the principal chapters, and concludes with a body of its
traceless doctrines. In the meantime, the added assertion, that it
is written in very bad Arabic, will not be approved by those who
understand it. The third Head, states the Mohammedan
creeds, as well as the fourth their Moral Doctrine, and that
in such a way, that the matter is stated correctly.
In the fifth chapter follow their religious ceremonies, and
therein especially their rules concerning prayer;
ablutions; pilgrimage to Mecca"
where he finds a Caravan-Baschi and Emir-Hadschi as one and the same
spirit; circumcision; fasting, where he wonders how Mohammed, by his
Sense and Religion, so difficult a matter, though it may easily be
explained; the Mohammedan Festivals; the Saints; the Miracles and
Relics, among which he reckons Mohammed's figure, and his Coat of
white Camelot, both of which are sacredly preserved in the Seraglio.
The seals impressed on paper with the former, and the water in which
the latter is dipped, and sealed with the Sultan's ligature, are
venerated as great and sacred rarities, but which cost the recipient
dear. The conclusion is made by some other laws of the Koran, such
as to read it diligently, not to eat pig's flesh, and not to drink
wine. The sixth Head describes the Mosques, Imams, and Emirs; the
seventh the Turkish Monks and their Saints. Finally, he remarks on
all their occupations, that they are either fanatics, or harlots, or
soothsayers, &c., and that there were also nuns, whose
occupations were quite similar to those of the aforesaid. The eighth
Head, treats of the divisions among the Mohammedans. This is almost
all taken in a Ricatian way. In the ninth Head, he considers the
reason of the uncertainty of the Turks in matters of religion, which
arises from the doubtful expressions of the Koran, and the
astonishing variety of its interpreters, as well as the prohibition
of Mohammed to dispute about matters of religion. He might well have
added, that this uncertainty is increased by the light which they
receive, in a remote manner, from the Christians living among them,
and the Christian slaves and slave-girls adopted into the Turkish
families. The first chapter describes the Myjiīk of the Turks;
shows how extravagantly they present their religious propositions;
and adds, as proof, an extract from the work of Echialle, an
Arahifdi writer and former Mufti, which was printed at Brussels in
the year 1764. In the last Head, he ends with several, both
favourable and aversive prejudices for and against the Mohammedan
Religion, where he rather emphatically collects all that has been
brought forward in its defence, but also what can be brought against
it on good grounds. The contents of the third corner look upon the
habits of the Turks, and the first Head, their Character. He
reproaches them with deceit and ingratitude, elucidating this
clearly by very suitable examples from History. He describes them as
clever, melancholy, and therefore attentive to everything,
especially to the Great. He acquits them of the accusation, because
they had little intercourse with each other, and the female sex was
especially marked: their anger broke out in great disputes, and
often in murder and manslaughter: real friendship found no place
among them: they were serious in public, but exuberant at home, and
insatiable in their lust. He says that their superstition extends
far, and that their fixed reference to a passage in the Koran,
opened by chance, to the influence of the stars on the fortunes of
men, to divination, interpretations of dreams, pronouncements of the
dying, charms, and benefits to animals, furnishes sufficient
examples concerning it; that their finace is rough, in the contempt
of true learning and fine sciences, especially of antiquities,
illustrations, etc., and finally their avarice is in the highest
degree shameful. The fairly general subjection of children to their
parents, as in the time of the patriarchs, is praised, and the
writer of the Jewish biography, who so often brings forward
untruths, is at the same time refuted. In the second chapter he
describes the habits of the Turks, and their manner of life as to
food, drink, housework, exercises, ceremonies, amusements in games,
dancing, comedies, puppets and jugglery, the public merrymaking in
the processions of the various trades, illuminations and fireworks.
In the third Heading he speaks of the Turkish women, the marriages
and funeral stations. This is a fitting and credible refutation of
what Madame de Moniague had said concerning the first. On this
occasion as well as with the marriages, he describes the many
irregularities concerning lust, which are in vogue among the
Mohammedans. In the reviews he places the report of some travellers,
who maintained that the wives and daughters were not present, but
stayed at home to entertain the Imams on their return. But this is
unfounded. With common people they follow at some distance, with
nobles they stay at home. Apart from that, Turkish women generally
have nothing to do with entertaining foreigners, and therefore also
with the Imam. The fourth Heading ends with the arts and sciences.'
After he has noted their rudeness in general, and refuted Count
Boulainviloers; he then reports how things now look, and notes, but
without naming his guarantors, that certain historians have the
annals of the Empire, which were put away in the Sultan's private
book room. In another library there would also be found 120
beautiful manuscripts in very large folio, which still came from the
Library of Constantine the Great, but where the Sidtans were also
very secret, and they did not show them to anyone. But concerning
this the writer is wrong, that he thinks that the books of all kinds
printed in Christendom, and brought to Turkey, would, there, kindle
a great light. For the Turks do not understand that, and also do not
count the printed books much. A small appendix, concerning the
Mosques; the Chans, the Baths, the Caravanseras and prisons, besides
a list of the Christian powers living together with the Turkish
Emperors up to Achmet III ends the first part. In the second part
the 4th of the Turkish Court is treated. The first 106 pages treat,
in the first Head, of that which concerns it most nearly and
immediately. A beginning is made with the explanation of the word
Sultan, and the description of his high-flown Titles. Then follows
his appointment and Coronation, if one may otherwise call the
girding with a sword so, which, wrongly, is attributed to the Mufti
(page 9.). He commits a special blunder, when he reports a
magnificent conduct of the Emperor to the Ejubs suburb, which was
different from the procession to the Ejubs mosque, mentioned on the
previous page, for the girding of the Sabre; because it is only one
procession and one place. In the manner of life of the Great Lord he
observes his religious exercises, his work, his meals, his
amusements in the water games, his hunting, his stay in the women's
apartment, and his other travels. He divides the Emperor's wives
into only Favourites (Odalike) and into Aphekis. The latter are
those who have brought Princes into the world, and thereby, in a
certain respect, become as much as Empresses. He who brought the
first Prince into the world is called Bujuk-Apheki, great Favourite.
He also relates her dissensions, commotions and avarice. In the
representation of the buildings of the Seraglio, the statement is
unfounded that the Chief of the White Engraved is the Chief Overseer
of the Imperial Mosques. Here is a not unpleasant digression
concerning the Enclaves and their occupations inserted, as well as
concerning the lower Court servants and subordinate treasuries. The
second Head, represents the State and Empire servants. The fifth
book deals with the Government of the Turks. In the general
introduction to it, it is said (page 142.) either through an error
of writing, or through a printing error, that the Begkrbeg vatfmelis
is always Bassa of Kutaja; whereas this is indeed the Beglerbeg of
Natolie. The main parts belonging to this contain the following
texts: 1) the maintenance of the law, in which also necessary
reports concerning the Divan, the Magistrates and their clothing,
the decisions of cases and punishments occur. The page 153 standing
from the bed of the latticework in the Divan is wrongly equated with
the ground, because it is indeed about 12 feet from the ground. 2)
In the Finances he makes, wrongly, a distinction between Carache and
Haraï, to which he has probably been led, by the different
spellings of the word, Haradsch, among travel writers, considering
both to mean one and the same thing, namely the head-money of those
who are not Mohammedans. This is followed by 3) the Policey, and
finally the Mint, which, in most books, is a confused Article. Thus
it is also stated here, page 190: that a Para amounted to four
Aspers, and 260 Aspers made up a Hungarian or Dutch Ducat. The
expression on the following page: la bourse d'or est de quinze mille
sequins, oü de trok mille kus, I find, either by a mistake of
the writer or a misprint, contradictory and unintelligible. That
there is a mint at Smyrna, is taken from Kantemir, and untrue; as is
also the statement that only gold money was minted at Cairo. - The
article concerning the military power of Turkey, because of its
extent, is divided into two sections. In the first, the land and
naval power are dealt with very vividly; but concerning the
statement that there were only 1,200 Janistries at Constantinople,
one is very much mistaken. In the second Section, which in order
forms the 7th book, one finds the continuation of the state of war;
the description of the Artillery and arms, Battle signs, music and
horses, their thoughts about war, their way of collecting an army,
marching it and defeating it, and providing it with food, their way
of fighting, and their ideas about war. The 8th book describes the
power of the Turks, as the departure of the Emperor to war, the
ceremonies at the Beiram, the circumcision of the Turkish Princes
and the marriage of the Princesses, as well as the treatment of
foreign Sentinels. Here we see he seeks to refute Ricaut, who wanted
to assert that the English Ambassadors to the Porte were more
respected than the French; where, however, in the description of the
Audiences, several errors are committed; not to say that here,
according to the rest, a remarkable defect prevails. He ends with
some remarks on the truly indescribable treasure in the Seraglio and
the Sultan's tent, and in the Palaces and tents of the State and
Military servants.
In the lying book the
Policy of the Turks is described. General remarks on it form the
introduction, chapter 1. He places, (chapter 2) its principal
principles partly in the hypocrisy and perfidy; partly in the desire
to extend Mohammedanism. In one of these he appropriates, after an
error received from Ricaut, Mohammed's so-called Testament to the
Monks of Mount Carmel, because he had nevertheless drawn it up for
them on Mount Sinai. In both he is angry with Ricaut, who, according
to his thoughts, had spoken too unfavourably of the French in
Turkey. In the third Head, he shows that the indefinite power of the
Great Lord is the foundation of the Turkish government, because he
was Lord over the Life and Property of all his subjects, and
(chapter 4.) there was no Nobility in Turkey, who had obtained any
respect among the people, and could oppose the Emperor, to which was
added (chapter 5) that all elevation of his Descendants was
carefully prevented. He adds (chapter 6.) that the other
Denominations permitted Freedom of Conscience, under the name of a
privilege, which could always be destroyed, and often had been
destroyed, and the permitted polygamy had contributed much to the
confirmation and extension of the Turkish Empire. In the tenth book
there are observations on the power of the Turks, and on the
weakening of their Empire. The former are the contents of the first
in the main; the latter the contents of the rest. Among the causes
of the weakening he counts (chapter 2.) the great number of abuses,
which had crept into war and naval affairs, into the maintenance of
justice, and into the government of the Provinces; the polygamy,
which does not increase the number of subjects, whereas on the
contrary the Enslaved, and the lusts prevailing among the East
diminish it. On this occasion he proposes a thought which is not
improbable: "this Empire, he says, would perish, if any Power
should tap the springs from which the Turks draw so many slaves, and
deprive it of the support of those slaves, who maintain the
greatness of the Empire. "Perhaps this is fulfilled by the
peace concluded between the Russians and the Turks in 1774, in which
the latter, according to one of the articles of peace, must renounce
the plundering of all slaves. In the third Head, the author shows
how much the frequent uprisings in the Turkish Empire and the
Artists of the Seraglio have weakened it. He brings the reason of
the uprising on the side of the Janistas, the Ministers of State and
Bassas, the Sultans, etc., and then gives several examples of the
practices of the Seraglio, as well as of the mistresses that occur
therein; not forgetting also the great misfortunes that arise from
the Sultans interfering with the affairs of the government. In the
fourth Head, he clarifies, by the deposition of Achmet III and the
death of Osman, how the ambition of the State servants makes the
Throne wobble; and how unstable the Osman Throne is, is pointed out
in the last Head.
I have, with
forewarning, dwelt somewhat longer on this work; for, except for the
evident errors which I have touched upon, it is one of the best,
most complete and most regular collections which have come to my
attention in this field. The inserted digressions are not badly
placed, and the presentation is kept lively, by a multitude of
remarks and examples. The Turkish words and names, as in most works
of that nature, have remained very mutilated; and this is, here,
much less excusable, if the compiler could use the subsequent new
edition of Rteaut, in which its spelling has been noticeably
improved.
Fred. Hasselquist's
M. D. iter Palcestinum. 8. Stockh. 1757. (in Dutch known under the
title: Hasselqutst reize naar Paleslina, 2 parts, with plates, Amst.
8V°.) This is the original in the Swedish language, except for
the learned in natural history, which is described in Latin. The
work, large 619 pages, was published after the author's death, which
occurred in Smyrna, by the famous Linnaeus, and he has placed a
short preface concerning the life and manuscript of the author. He
traveled in 1749, from Stockholm to the sea, and arrived at Smyrna
towards the end of the same year. About this, as well as about a
journey made to Magnefia, he gives very good and readable reports,
relating here, ev
and as a matter of
all, with a special distinction made, what he himself has seen, and
what he has heard; he usually speaks of the first only. On the
occasion of the Turkish cemeteries, which are heavily covered with
Cypresses and Rosemary trees, he remarks how beneficial this is to
the health, because the air, by the fragrant and aromatic
exhalations of both, is protected against that of the decayed
corpses. The Armenians at Smyrna had, according to his opinion,
(Wsld«.5iO Second' fasting Bishop, but adhered to the Bishops
of other councils, and were only visited there by these heels. This
is not so, but it is true that he was very often away from home.
Concerning the external appearance of religion and ceremonies among
the Greeks and Armenians he is very detailed, and reports the real.
In the year 1750. he travelled to Egypt. In describing Alexandria
and Rosetta he gives an account of things of nature, and customs
both in joy and in sorrow. A story of the large number of crutches
and sticks, which he found in a Coptic church, (page 69. 7o.)
possibly clears up a misinterpretation of them in certain Roman
Catholic Churches, where it is imagined that those of the lame and
the halt were used, but having been restored by an image or
something of the kind, in remembrance of the pretended Miracle, were
left there. He was told that at the time of the persecution they had
served to defend themselves against the possible attacks of the
enemies, but were now used to lean on, because there were no pews or
chairs in their Church. Concerning the Snake-charmers, several
reports occur, especially pages 70-72, of which the main thing is
this: that many Egyptians, and, it is said, particular Families
among them, knew the hitherto impenetrable Secret of handling the
most vile Snakes with their bare hands, as they pleased, without
suffering the least Injury thereby. — He remained in Cairo 9
months. With so many reports concerning this city, his are not
superfluous. Among them we find the description of the caravan going
from thence to Mecca. Here, in so accurate a writer, two
circumstances are very shocking. According to his report namely
(page 88.) Mahomed's grave would be in the last mentioned city,
since it is nevertheless generally known, that it is in Medina. The
second is the assurance given to him, page 89, that among the
presents of the Sultan for Mecca no Koran is found, although many
travel writers assured it; and yet he had previously, page 6,
related, that he, by an illuminator of an unusually rich Turk, saw a
picture of the Machine, or rather the Chest, in which, annually, the
Koran was sent with the caravan to Mecca. This now apparently
contradicts itself. — At Damiate, one, in his and everyone's
opinion, for a European the most unpleasant place and in all of
Turkey, he was only a few days. In the spring of 1751 he came to
Jaffa, and then made the usual journey with the pilgrims to
Jerusalem, Jereho, Bethlehem, and back via Ramah to Jaffa, and from
there via Acre to Nazareth, Tiberias, Cana in Galilee, Tyre and
Siddes. Then he returned via Cyprus, Rhodit and Scio to Smyrna,
where he was prevented by his death from communicating more
information about his journey to Constantinople, etc. — Here
and there there seem to be gaps, which, according to all accounts,
would not have been there if he himself had been the publisher. —
Arriving ashore at Jaffa, he had to pay 22 piastres for the freedom,
62 piastres for his journey from that city to Jerusalem and back
again, and 10 piastres for the permission to travel to Jericho to
the Governor of Jerusalem. — His admiration (page 153.) for
two lions carved in stone by the Turks above a new gate at Nazareth
should surprise no one, for the reason that they do not suffer from
statues; for this refers solely to statues of people and not to
other objects. — Among many proofs of the author's good
thinking, with respect to religion, is a remark (page 558.) on the
occasion of circumcision, offensive: the "females circumcise
their children on the eighth day, which seems to be a hard and
dangerous operation for so tender a child. The Turks act more
sensibly, who postpone this useful religious observance until their
sons have reached the eighth year. "For as long as it pleased
God to charge it as lawful under these or no circumstances, all
human prudence that determines otherwise is foolishness - nay,
godlessness. But perhaps this remark does not originate from the
author himself; for otherwise he has proceeded very diligently,
carefully and cautiously, and is an example of an accurate travel
description, which philologists and naturalists, if they wish to
travel to those countries, may make use of. — Concerning the
Turkish Empire in'
in general nothing is
recorded; on the other hand his descriptions of Nature (page t87. to
the end,) are excellent, and arranged according to the Method of
Linnaeus.
Alex. Rcssel, an
English physician, has published Natv.ral history of Aleppo and
parts adjacent, in London, US- in gr. 4- the size of 266 mg. with
pure plates, which is exceptionally beautiful. (In Dutch known,
under the title of A. Russel description of Aleppo, with pi. Amst.
1762. $vfi) By the manner of treatment one would only wish that he
had divided the contents of the first part by Main Parts or Sections
from each other, so that one could find what one wants to look for
the more easily. He so satisfies the title of the work, that he
leaves few things undone, and may serve as an example to those who,
according to their calling, remain long in the Levant, in order to
be of service to others by instruction. The first part treats of the
city of Aleppo, its layout, buildings, etc. (page 1. etc.) in
general; and further of the condition of Syria, of the weather,
agriculture, fruits, herbs, tame and wild animals, birds, fish, etc.
(page 10.) of the inhabitants, their mode of living, provisions,
amusements, clothing, studies in general; (page 77.) of the Turks,
their food, customs, marriages, baths, and burials; (page T05.) Here
he places a burial form at a Mohammedan burial: "O man, out of
the earth you were first created; you must now return to it. This
grave is the first step in your progress to the dwellings of the
world to come. Have you been beneficent in your actions; then you
will be acquitted before God; but if not, God's mercy is greater
than all things. Remember that in this world you believed: God was
your Lord, and Mohammed your Prophet; call to mind all the Prophets
and Apostles, and may much be forgiven. The burial form of the bards
differs from this, and thus reads: "have you taken; then you
must "give back: have you done something; then you will find
it: have you not believed; then you will 3, now you see. "Here
follow not many, but only true things concerning the religion and
the government of the Turks, (page 119. ras.) Because of the Feasts
of the various Eastern Christian denominations (page 123.) he adds
the following Table oy;
Orisks, Syrians,
Blaremtets, rmsniers, "Fasting before Pafiben 43 days, 48
days, 48d.igen, have in everything
hnFecfi Mi, whereby
derjptfele»,
12; - 12 -. 4 ., still free.
y - -.»;--
tetF"st willing vaslti,
of Mary 15 - -, s. -
xs -. ic"a, jfa for one r.
fCersmis 40 - - 05 -.
10 - -
ïi5 l?o 8?
By their Marriages
(page 125.) f&Mf a detailed description of a Moroccan Wedding,
because from this one, with little change, one can conclude to the
others; mentioning at the same time the behavior of the women
towards their husbands, as well as the burials; then (page 130.) of
the Jews, and the Europeans. (page 132.) The first part ends with a
general treatise on Epidemic diseases, page 130 144 - The second
part provides, in regularly divided Chapters, the following: remarks
on the Weather in general; (chapter 1.1) special observations on the
Weather, of the year 17-1747, and of 1752 and 1753; (chapter 2.)
reports of the temporal diseases that prevailed at Leppo in the
years mentioned above. (Chapter 3O YW» the Plague is spoken of
in the following fourth Chapter, so that first of it in general,
then of its outbreaks in the years 1742-1744, and finally of the
precautionary measures of the Em-oer* in plague-time are treated.
These are, probably, the certain reports concerning this evil,
differing from mine only in that they come from a learned Physician,
who describes everything according to his knowledge. He quotes
Morellus in appropriate words: the terrible pestil. cap. 5. "the
dreadful circumstances accompanying the plague cause that our senses
deceive, and I" think, that Hippocrates himself would be
deceived". "Perhaps one is eager to know his good advice
against it. Here is by: "not sobering up in the morning to go
out; to avoid as much as possible all irregularities, violent
affections, and too strong discharges of the body, but then also to
live "neither in eating nor drinking more moderately" than
one is accustomed to; one or a few glasses of good wine more, than
one's usual, might be more useful; and a strong use of acidic drinks
is not only "pleasant, but also useful. — When one enters
the room of such a patient, or passes a corpse, or any other
contagious thing, then one must not swallow the saliva, but breathe
through a handkerchief or a sponge, dipped in pure vinegar or
vinegar mixed with wine. — "If one had to feel the pulse,
or other circumstance, examine a patient's dexterity from nearby,
then one had to take the breath, as
5, as much as
possible, to hold back, and as soon as one is out of the room, wash
the mouth, the face and the hands with wine; when one comes home 5,
put on different clothes and hang the clothes one has put on in the
air. He also thinks it advisable to fumigate them with sulphur, and
again to wash the mouth, the face and the hands. "The last main
part, with the description of the Aleppian Sea, makes a rash of the
body, the Heart of this, for the naturalist and physician, yes for
all kinds of readers, over useful and credible work.
Tableau de VEmpire
Ottoman, a Francf. 17S7 consists of 227 pages in 12. The unnamed
author says in the short preface, that he has drawn from the first
sources, and has therefore published this small work, because in the
French language (for he could not understand another language,
because he writes French, and yet speaks of our language,) one has
no such extensive work on the subjects presented here. The first
mentioned is a laudable confession, and this Traétaat is
therefore a collection in this field; but the latter is untrue,
because one has had other translated works in this field for a long
time. — In this book the Religion, the Military State and the
Government of the Turks are treated. Since we have already so many
such collections from other works; it is not worth the trouble to
speak at length of this, which belongs to the mediocre, and it would
be useless to point out the untruths and mistakes found therein, or
to properly correct the often mutilated Turkish customs.
Eduard Ives Rcifen
nach Indien und Persiën, in het Hoogd. translated by C. W.
Dohm: (in Dutch Edward Ives travels from England to India, and from
Persia to England, Rott. and Utrecht, ms.) The English original has
a very long title, the beginning and end of which are as follows: a
voyage from England to India, in the year 1754'. £fY. by
Edward Ives, Lond. 1773. A'°- 'The (High) translator has
delivered this work in 2 parts in 8*o ge, delivered. The first part
contains the voyage to India, .and a party of the translator's
appendices, as well as a map of India, and 2 plates, Leipz. 1774-8.
Of this part I speak not here, as it does not belong to my
profession. But the second part belongs to it; for it contains the
journey from Persia to England, with a map of the journey from
Bassora to the Mediterranean, and 6 plates, Leipzig 1775. One finds
(Chapter 1.) the description of Bassora and the surrounding country,
and an account of the voyage on the Euphrates to Koma, Kota and Se,
.mava; furthermore (Chapter 2.) the continuation of the journey via
Dewana, or Haska, and Hilla to Bagdad. Of the Aga at Dewana Ives
relates, 'that, TURKISH KINGDOM etc. 251 notwithstanding that he,
according to the Imperial tribute, had to bring annually only one
thousand and five hundred purses into the treasury of the Bassa at
Bagdad, yet he used to deliver as much again, namely three thousand
purses, to maintain himself in his Stadtholdership. This seems
terse, incomprehensible to Mr. D. Husching, according to a note in
the translation. And why? He reckons a purse at 500 daald. Prussian
money. But this is wrong. It is only so many piastres, and one of
these is no longer valid, at 18 or 20 Prussian grosseri. Instead of
the sum of one and a half million thalers given by him, it amounts
to only a little more than one million and two hundred thousand
thalers; which does not seem so incredible to me, considering that
the territory of that Aga extends in length from Korna to Uilla,
that is, over four degrees, or more than 60 German miles, and indeed
on fertile and reasonably well inhabited banks of the Euphrates, and
is the largest Stadtholdership in that province after that of
Bagdad, yes, only a few of the Scheygks under it have 500 purses,
accordingly the sixth part of that sum found to be so large must be
paid to the Aga - The journey from Bassora to Uilla was made on the
Euphrates, but the rest by land. In the third head, he gives
accounts of the wind Samum, of a litter, and the great city of
Bagdad, as well as observations concerning its former Bassa, the
military state there, the Turks in general, and some ruins, among
which also belong the aforementioned remains of the Tower of Babel.
In the translator's Notes (page 93-Chapter) concerning the multitude
of the people in Constantinople, as if it amounted to not much more
than five hundred thousand, or half a million people, and Tavcmier
and Thevenot are cited as witnesses of the small population of the
city of Bagdad, many things were indeed to be noted; but they are to
be found in my description. - In the neighbourhood of this city he
saw the extensive remains which are called Nimrod's Tower, but which
he and the translator, and rightly, deny; although no one would
think it incredible that they were converted into other buildings in
later times.
n used thus to be
mixed with these. From Bagdad the journey went to Moful. (Chapter
4.) As journeys are here calculated according to hours, as is almost
generally done in the East; so the translator is in doubt how he
should understand this calculation, but finally thinks that it is a
distance of an hour, and this is also so. According to the almost
always equal pace of camels, donkeys and mules, according to which
the horses must usually orient themselves, one can reckon two hours'
journey on one German mile. On that road itself he passed through a
place whose inhabitants were mostly worshippers of the Devil. -
Moful is (Chapter 5.) according to his reports, one of the best
built cities in Turkey, and gives, according to the unusually
extensive ruins lying around it, the surest suspicion that here,
once upon a time, an unusually large city, and because in this
region no other, besides Nineveh, is known, this one must also have
been located here. Here the writer was asked by the Turkish
authorities whether he wanted to travel by post or by caravan? This
seems strange to the translator, because he does not know of having
read something somewhere about a post in the Turkish Empire, and he
had always thought that one could not travel there otherwise than by
caravan; think therefore, that they have no agreement with our
Posts, and were possibly only Couriers, through whom the Governors,
at certain times, dealt with State affairs, who then, undoubtedly,
had a good protection, under which private Persons could also travel
safely. This suspicion is true. For the Porte, as well as the High
and Sub-Stadholders of Provinces and cities, do not send, not the
Kapudschjy, these the Tschokahdars, or Janistas with their open
commands, not indeed at certain times, but according to the
circumstances, to this and no places, often alone, often with some
Janistas or Servants, who, everywhere have the right, not only to
certain places, but also elsewhere to take horses, by if their own
became tired. They are almost. also just as safe, as the Couriers in
Europe, because every Commander must vouch for their safety, and,
when it is not safe in his District, provide for it by special
cover. Ives had previously also (page 150) related an example of
this. He reports, (page 21 o.) that, Merdin and Nifibin were indeed
in the Governorship of Mosul, but nevertheless both were under the
Bassa of Bagdad, who also designates them as their Sub-Commanders:
where the translator remarks, that according to Mr. D. Busching,
they were under the Paschal Diarbekir. This remark seems to be true,
and must be a misprint in Ives, because the layout on the map is
decisive for Mr. Büsching, and Ricaut also reports it as
follows: unless, because of the trade with Persia, (which is not
impossible,) the Bassa of Bagdad might have had an extraordinary
authority over those places. - Now the journey went to Diarbekir
(Chapter 6.), of which he gives as much account as could be made
during the short stay there. With the great multitude of people
there is such. he also had given of Bagdad and Mosul, mostly,
according to the story of the Roman monks residing there, the
translator accuses the calculation of it of untruth, because he
finds it all too large, and one cannot have any certainty about the
Turkish cities. Now, I cannot contradict him directly on this point;
he also relies on the credible testimonies of Mr. Niebuhr on this
point. But I must not conceal one thing. The large cities, namely,
in which the most important Bassas auction their seat, are against
all expectation populous, however wild and destitute of people,
often the flat country is, because they are too much pressed by the
small bloodsuckers and robbers, and then are urged to take refuge in
the cities; wherefore also a pestilence, famine and similar plagues
make such incredible slaughters among the people in them. — At
Bir he crossed the Euphrates, and thus arrived at Aleppo. —
Further I do not follow him, except that I add his travel register,
which may not be unpleasant to feel;
from Bafora to Korna
75 miles
—r Korna —
Kota 91
Kota Dcwana 211 \
Dewana Uilla fa —
-
Nilla Kirkoote 167 -
Kirkoote Arvela 54,
Arvela — Mosul
49 - _
Mosul. —
Nifibin 103 .,
Nifibin Arm 26
Ann Diarbakir 58
Diarbekir Aleppo 54 -
j.
together from Têri
to Aleppo 990 English miles
This journey made in
those regions of Asian Turkey lasted from April to September. 1758,
and he was, because of the heat, flies, mosquitoes and other
insects, as well as because of the Arabs, Turks, and other peoples
living on this way, exposed to so many inconveniences, - and the
journey was accompanied by such great expenses, that one need not
wonder, when so few do it. In the description one learns, as in
others, in detail,
the deceitful and
terrible injustices, which in Turkey, especially in the places
remote from Constantinople, Smyrna and Aleppo, are inflicted on the
traveller. Who in the meantime wanted to make the journey to the
regions of the Euphrates and Tyger; this work would be very useful
to him, and it deserves to be compared with Otter, yes to be put on
a par with him.
Petro Businello,
Secretary of State and Embassy at the Bailo, historical reports of
the government, customs and habits of the Ottoman Monarchy. These
are in J. F. Zêbret (High) Magazine, for the use of State and
Church History, part ??. pages 52-160. and part 2, pages 107-232.
Ulm?? etc. 8. (and will be placed after this work, translated
according to the author's handwriting.) They consist of 80.
Sections, of which the first forms the introduction, and the second
speaks of the Founder of the Turkish (Mahometan) Religion, as well
as of the motive which prompted him to establish it. Here one finds
a good natural explanation concerning it; although the error at the
same time (which I shall mention here and elsewhere in this work)
occurs, that Mahomet's so-called Testament was found in the
Monastery on Mount Carmel, and the Original was brought into the
Library of the King of France. In the third section he shows in what
the Religion of the Turks consists. In mentioning the Pilgrimage to
Mecca he does the matter an injustice, when he reckons the number of
the Pilgrims at only fifty or sixty thousand, considering that
almost each of the three principal caravans is by itself so strong.
Of the Beiram, the marriages and divorces of the Turks, how far they
extend the concubine, and of their moral deeds, the fourth division
treats, and of the Servants of Religion the fifth division. Here is
inserted the Title which the Sultan gives to the Mufti: "to
you, N. N. who are the wisest of all wise men, instructed in all
knowledge, the most excellent of all excellent men; who abstain from
unlawful things; who are the source of virtue and true knowledge,
and the heir of the Prophetic and Apostolic Doctrine; you solve the
questions of faith; you make known the articles of true faith; you
are the key to the treasures of truth; the light of doubtful
Allegories; you are strengthened with the grace of the supreme guide
and legislator of mankind! The 3, great God perpetuate your virtues!
The income of the Mufti is certainly a misprint; for as this is
reckoned at four and a half Venetian Ducats daily, it makes this not
two hundred, but two thousand Aspers. Of the Monastic Orders among
the Turks the sixth section speaks. He relates their unfounded
boasting, to exalt their origin, but observes, that they did not
originate earlier than under Orchan, who, out of gratitude to God
and Mohammed for the conquered countries, appointed persons, who
would observe prayer according to fixed rules, and would educate the
conquered peoples. This is indeed so; but nevertheless the Turks,
probably, adopted the monkhood of the Christians there. Of the
Mosques, their revenues and privileges, is only briefly dealt with,
of the principal divisions in the Mohammedan Religion, section. 8,
and of other Sects therein, section. 9. Here comes that foolish
rabble, which almost solely arose from the directly opposed
sentiments of all kinds of articles of faith. In the tenth section,
of the unbelief of the Turks, he asserts, that 'there are among them
Atheists and Naturalists in great numbers, who partly from the evil
foundations of their Religion, partly from the impiety of the
Christian and Jewish Apostates, became doubters of, and deniers of,
everything. The Religion of the Turks, he says in the eleventh
section, rests solely on views of State, and is very accurately
judged of its importance. His observation, that the Turks,
continually, more and more doubted their Religion, and his hopes
derived from it of a good future State, we leave in their place. He
often makes Mohammed a Politician; when he is certainly nothing more
than an Enthusiast. With the ??de section, he goes over to the civil
government, speaking also of the Seraglio, its guard and population.
The number of those there, amounting to about 8 thousand people, he
calculates as follows:
People at the stud
farm 500
Bostandschi or
gardeners 2000
Baltadschi or wood
splitters 400
White subjects 120
Black subjects 300
Women's sons about
430
Idschoglans, (Chamber
servants) 700
In the Kitchen etc.
??00
The 13th section
deals with the stud farms. Besides the three thousand horses of the
Sultan, there will be just as many for the Ministers, since some,
like the Kislar-Aga, have about three hundred. Besides that, there
are four hundred Imperial mules, to meet the necessities.
and.
(Section 14.) Of the Bostandschi and Baltadschi he speaks of
section 15. of the white and black Encyclopedes;
section 16. of the chambers of the Idschoglans.
As many as possible, Christian children were taken there.
— Section 17. deals with the manner in which the young
people in the Seraglio are instructed in the sciences.
To this he adds the reading and writing of Arabic and
Persian; the reading of Histories,
especially of high-flown Novels; the
study of the Koran; Poetry, Music, and
some painting. Of the Mutes and
Dwarves, (Section 18.) The number of the first was, in his time,
about forty. In describing the
apartments of the Harem (section 19.) he states that the Sultans
themselves had to appease animal lust, and that they were only
permitted, on solemn occasions, to take a new wife as their
bedfellow, because the arrangement of the Court state demands too
much expense for a woman impregnated by the Sultan.
- (Section 20.) Of the tendency which prevails in the
Seraglio between persons of the same sex. Very
cautiously is spoken of the dumb sins which are not only in vogue
there, but also throughout the whole Turkish Empire.
Of the first Vizier and his Kiaja.
(section 21.) This last word is everywhere, incorrectly,
printed Chiafa, just as one finds more such errors in other words in
the section, in the Visions of the Bank, the Bef ter Aar, etc. In
the first section, he observes, by the civil government and the good
order in the city of Constantinople, that the courts would have to
be loaded with many more cases, if the various nations did not
decide their disputes among themselves, by their Primates and
imported customs. In the next section,
of the nations, who live as subjects of the Sultan in
Constantinople, the Jews and Christians, the author contradicts
himself. He asserts, that the first,
whom he estimates at 20 thousand families, were the most numerous.
The same he says, next, of the Greeks: unless one, and thus
all conflict would fall away, had to consider the latter, with
respect to the other Christian-religious parties, as the most
numerous. In the translation or in the
printing the error has been made, that the Quarter of the Greeks in
Constantinople is called Feuer, where it means Fener of a watchfire.
The city laws and the maintenance of justice are spoken of in
the 25th section, as well as the Empire's offices in the 26th. After
he had here observed, that every Bajfa, by the five thousand
extortions fixed revenues, in time of war is bound to deliver one
Soldier for the army; he makes the
following list of it, which, generally speaking, is true, but in
which I shall remark in the Notes, in what way Ricaut differs from
her. I will almost go into this more
here. because he does not express the
numbers with numerals, like Businello, but with words, as I shall
do: although this can be changed after wars, when Provinces are won
or lost, and this is the reason why Ricaut himself, on both
occasions, when he deals with this, is not always the same, namely,
Search I. chapter 12. and Book III. chapter
3. A. Beglerbeg, who draw their income from their stadtholderships.
j. in Afi'è. Bassim* three has un-1 annual income- delivers
in ear- horse-tail- zigst to Atpen logst ten.
Sand- 2oo Zoldna- schakken I ten' 1) of Nato- fourteen \ one
million Hè', (lives in Rutajaij yanW seven six hundred sixty
hundred r,L Huizend (a) two and der- manme (te ciuuum V "\ tig.
KogntO 3) of O) Ric. six hundred sixty thousand and seventy-four. f
snT"egemien I one million and two hundred behroïMe- |
two times a hundred and forty phopotamy, I thousand (£)
(at Diarbekir, formerly Amida.-) övwGreat six nine hundred
hundred and Armenia' (at thousand Sivai). 5Damascus\ ten one mi-Hoen
two hundred 6) £OT, a veera one million, two hundred j (O two
hundred and forty, thousand, 00 7) Of or fourteen one million, one
two hundred Medle' hundred, two and six and twenty. thirty
thousand,(0 tig. 8) ƒ#/;(ƒ). nine
nine hundred, one hundred five I twenty-five and eighty. |
thousand, (g) 9J Aleppo | nine()
one million (/) J two hundred (b) Ric. one
million, two hundred thousand, six hundred and sixty.
(0 Ric eleven, 00 Ric, one million, two hundred thousand, six
hundred and sixty. (O Ric one million, one hundred thirty-two
thousand, two hundred and nine. (ƒ) Is probably what is called
by Ricaut Tschildir, on the borders of Georgia, around Great Ar.
vtenia. O?) Ric. nine hundred twenty thousand. (h-) Ric. Seven. 00
Ric. eight hundred seventeen lasting, seven hundred and seventy-two,
loZittaQt) four | six hundred,
thirty-hundred six (w) j tig thousand (/) and twenty. 11 Tripoli di
four eight times hundred hundreds Soria.
thousand, sixty. \2)Trebifon- four C») seven hundred,
one hundred seven- five and thirty doves and for- sending
(0) tig.
13) Kan six eight
hundred and one hundred and four twenty thousand and sixty.
14) Mosul five six
hundred one hundred seven eighty thousand and thirty.
(*)
Probably this is by Ricaut Marasch, on the Euphrates between
Mephopotamia and Aleppo, the capital of a Province of the same name
situated on Mount Amanus.
(/) Ric. six hundred
twenty-eight thousand, four hundred and fifty.
(jn) Ricaut adds
here:
Scheherezul in
Afyria, the capital of Kurdislan, of two hundred Sandschakken, and a
million revenue.
Larnica on Cyprus, of
seven Sandschakken and five times a hundred thousand, six hundred
and fifty Aspers. The first was probably lost in a war with Persia,
(») Ric. does
not count one.
(e) Ric. seven
hundred, thirty-four thousand, eight hundred and fifty.
(†) Ric. eight
hundred and twenty thousand, six hundred and fifty.
(?) Six hundred and
eighty-one thousand, six and fifty;.
15) Urstf(r) | seven
I eight hundred eighty I hundred ze?
I, thousand (Y) one
and seventy.
II. In Europe (†).
1) of Ru- four and I
a million hundred- I two hundred melia lives twenty. third thousand
As- and twenty, in Sophia. pers
2) of Bos. eight one
million eight three hundred
times a hundred
thousand and sixty. send. («)
3) The Kapi- thirteen
nine times hundred and tenin-Bafa. thirty thousand. (V) eighty.
4) Belgrade. six
eight times a hundred hundreds
thousand. sixty.
5) Morea thirteen
nine times a hundred and
third thousand.
eighty.
6) Choczim four seven
times a hundred and
third thousand.
forty.
7) Bender three eight
times a hundred hundred and
thousand. sixty. S)
Kandië. eleven nine times a hundred and I third thousand. |
eighty.
$0 Km
(r) This is probably
Rica by Ricaut.
CO K-Ic- six hundred,
eighty thousand. Businello seems to be right, according to the
calculation of the Soldiers, which Ricaut has entirely omitted, and
according to which one Soldier must be placed on five thousand
Aspers. (0 Many of these Ricaut does not have; on the other hand he
still has Paschalike at Ofen, Temeswar eiz. which the House of
Austria has taken back into possession.
(ti) Ricaut does not
specify a sum here.
Cr) Ric. eight
hundred, five and eighty thousand.
g-) Karna five six
hundred five hundred and
ty thousand. thirty.
10) Retimo four six
times a hundred a hundred and
thousand. twenty.
,0 Silislria seven
seven hundred and '
fifty thousand.
fifty.
Nidiri I six seven
times a hundred | hundred and third thousand. forty
13) Negro- two five
hundred du- hundred zend
14) Lepatitè
five four hundred, five j ninety thousand.
B. Sandschakken, (y)
which are paid from the Empire treasury.
1) Cairo sixteen
sixty thousand du- five hundred ducate(s)
of Babylon two one
million, seven- three hundred twenty and a hundred thousand and
forty, send Aspers.
3) Bajjora four six
hundred thousand and ten Aspers.
Consequently, in all
Bafas were 32 7 which
Sandschakken 281 3 at
their own expense, in time of war had to supply 597* men.
Each of such
Stadtbouderschappen has its own Mufti, Reis-Effendi, Grand
Treasurer,
j) Businello says so;
but it should be Bcglerbegs.
O) Ricaut is
apparently wrong when he states six times a hundred thousand ducats.
of the Janistas-Aga and Spahilar-Aga. In the 2nd Section it is said
of the and the government at Cairo: that it was very much determined
by the 24 Beys in the country and the rebellious people. With regard
to the government over Wallachia (section 28.) he notes that this
Province formerly gave sixty thousand Piastres, but since 1665. has
to deliver 1) the Sultan two hundred and thirty thousand (a)
Piastres, 15 thousand Ukken of honey, and nine thousand Okken of
wax; 2) the Grand Fisherman five thousand Piastres, as well as a
Sable Pelt; 3) his Kiaja five hundred piastres, and an equal Pelt;
4) the Grand Treasurer five hundred piastres; (T) the Kislar-Aga,
two thousand piastres. Mol davië (Division 29.) is not much
better off ' When Mahomed II made it cynsible, it paid only two
thousand piastres, afterwards eight thousand. But, after it has been
brought under the Ottoman yoke, it pays 1) the Sultan one hundred
and sixty thousand piastres, (c) ten thousand ocks of wax and as
much honey; 2) to the Armoury 600 pounds
(a) Ricaut says: one
hundred and thirty thousand; but at the same time declares that
IVMacHia and Moldavia had to give even as much as was determined.
(b) Ricaut adds: and
a sable pelt.
(c) Ric. states only
sixty thousand, but is mistaken in all circumstances.
the sulphur, one
thousand three hundred and twenty ochres of wax, five hundred skins
of skins, and as many pieces of kanephas for clothing for the slaves
on the galleys; 3) the GmouVistervxi one thousand piastres and a
sable pelt, 4) its Kiaja five hundred piastres; 5) its Treasurer (d)
five hundred piastres. The 30th division deals with the Tartars and
Allies of the Porte on the Barbarian coast. Among the culpable
nations of the Turkish Empire are counted by (section 31) the
Georgians, MinGreliens and Ragusans. Of the two first, the Porte
receives Slavs; of the latter, the Turkish protection comes to pay,
every three years, about 16 thousand Venetian ducats. By the
household of the Turkish Empire, its public treasuries, and the
persons, the government there. Speaking of which, (section 32) he
testifies, how difficult it is, to know anything certain about it,
because of the far-reaching arrogance of the Turks. The Mirl or the
Reichs-kasse and their annual income he calculates (section 33-5
thus:
The usual poll tax
three million piastres.
Salt mines and
fishery three Lettings, leases, Contribution of Offices two —
(d)
Ricaut understands by this, and certainly better, the
Reich.-Treasurer or Destetdar
From the public goods
two million piastres.
From the Tollen Five
million piastres.
From the other income
about five,
so 20 million
piastres.
The Hafna or treasury
of the Great Lord brings in just as much, without having the
expenditure of the Miri, and consists of the tribute of Cairo,
Waüachïè, Moldavia, Ragusa, the confiscated goods
of the Baf as, income due to experiences, the fines, the mines of
Erzerum, Diarbekir, etc. (e) The following six sections deal with
Trade, as the 34 of the Turkish. Wolocken will mean Volikèn,
a kind of vessel, but Echim-Bassi the first Doctor, Hekim Bafelh. He
represents the Vietnamese trade as very much in decline, but also
the means to make it flourish again. The French trade is (as it
still is) the strongest; but that of the English and Dutch has never
flourished so much before. The Russian is very advantageous to
Russia, especially with regard to derpeltery; the German can,
because of the
(e) Kantemr reports
that in his time, only fourteen millions had come into each of the
two; the Turkish Emperors had understood the art so well, to
increase their income by taxes, as other Princes.
asks the Goods, never
to become great. The Swedish trade with ironwork did not mean much,
and is more a Levantine shipping; that of the Neapolitans consists
in trifles. He comes (section 40.) to the causes of the decline of
the Economy in the Turkish Empire. He finds these 1) in that the
Europeans export a lot of money for worked Goods and Diamonds.
Mainly he should have reported, that most of the country's products,
such as silk, goat hair, tree wool, wool etc. go out unworked.
2) Because the
government is mostly in the hands of the Neighbours, who draw all
the money into the Seraglio, but spend little, whereby the
circulation of it among the people stops;
3) because of the
unfortunate wars. — This is followed by the *t«è
section, the military state of the Turks. After a general
introduction he describes (section 42) the Topschi and Kumbaradschi.
The former are the Artillerists, the latter the Bombardiers. Both
would number 18 thousand men, but they were far from complete. The
three following sections on the Maritime State, the Turkish ships
and their construction methods are accompanied by the observation
that shipbuilding is extremely deceptive, because the Overseers and
builders, for example, darkened the iron nails and hammered in
wooden ones. The 46 11th section deals with the Armoury at Colonial.
The Turks had everything that belongs to shipbuilding, at little
expense, such as wood, iron, canvas, ropes, etc., but everything was
in disrepair. But they had a supporting navy. (section 47) They
received ten ships from the Barbarian coasts, and 24 from Egypt,
which were used as merchant ships in time of peace, but all could
pass for ships of fifty guns and 600 men. The fanistaries, (section
48) which are at Constantinople, he estimates at thirty thousand.
The Mectors, Bostanschi, Leventis, and Serads are described in the
49th section. The first are intended to break up the army, to take
away and transport the tents, and would amount to six thousand; the
last are the soldiers of the Bassas, who must look after the baggage
in time of war, and form the reference corps. The Spahi follow in
the 50th division. They have lost much of their old Dignity, which
they often abused. Among these were also included the Zaim and
Timariotes. (section 51) They could be called the feudal militia,
because the feudal lords were obliged to provide men according to
their income. The former had, annually, income from 20 thousand to
99 thousand seven hundred and 99 Aspers; the latter partly from
three thousand to five thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, partly
from six thousand to 19 thousand 9 hundred and ninety-nine. The
former had to provide a well-ridden horseman against five thousand
(because 500 is a misprint) Aspers, the latter against three
thousand, (here too 300 is a misprint) a common mounted horseman
Rellen. The sum of which amounted to one hundred and thirty-one
thousand, 9 hundred and 64 men. The Dschedschi (section 52) were, at
first, only a foe of armourers, and 630 men strong; but now served
as the principal Spahi, and would be 30 thousand men strong,
although they were not nearly so. The Segbani had to be supplied by
the Bas/as, and came near the Dragoons. The Mukladschi were the
servants of the officers. From this, section 53- the following
account of the troops is then drawn up.
Foot soldiers
Janistaars, 162
chambers, each for 700 men,
113400
Toppedschis, —
Kumbaradschi, -
2000
Bostanschi, —
12000
Mekterfi, —
6000
Seradsche, —
6000
Kairo Militia, —
3000
Leventi, ——
32000
Naval troops. —
— —
1?000
Summa
207400
Ridery.
Spahi,
10000
Zaitn and Timariotes,
- 132054
Dschedschi,
18000
Segbani,.
4000
Mukladschi, ——
6000
Free willing,
1000
Tartars, (although
they, justifiably, had to deliver 100000, —
60000
Summa
240054
Infantry and cavalry
thus made up 447454 men; but of these, 120000 went to the occupation
of Constantinople and other places, and 50000 men to the crew of the
ships. The political system of the Porte (section 54) was very
changeable. With regard to the State economy (section 55) the policy
of the Turks was strange. The Families, by the right of inheritance
of the Great Lord, were allowed to become impoverished, and the
Bassas were deprived of the goods extorted in their Provinces, and
either sent them into exile, or strangled them. As a result the
country became subjection, and the power of the Families quite
pretended. As to the Policy with regard to the Government, (section
56) there was a general dissimulation. The highest State officials
were drawn up as slaves, who can gain adherence, but are still
hated. In their Policy, with regard to war, (section 57) he
observes, how that they kept or sent out their Missionaries
everywhere, and for that purpose employed their native subjects
among Christians and Turks, by whom they allowed themselves to be
instructed in everything without cost. If they lost a battle, the
General was blamed for it. After a conquest of the Provinces they
sought further to make peace, and to depopulate them of their native
subjects, in order to occupy them with Mohammedans. For the Militia
they had the greatest respect, and the Great Lords enrolled
themselves in their registers. The Porte especially provided for the
provisions with which Constantinople could be supplied. The laws
were so arranged, and were so enforced, that the power of the
Monarch was supported by them, but the subjects were oppressed, and
the treasuries were enriched. This was easily put into operation by
the current false testimony, and arbitrary power of the Judges, and
these were finally shaken off. They had their Policy, with respect
to punishments, (section 60) which are sudden and cruel; as also to
rewards (section 61) which, excepting the offices of honour, consist
in trifles, as a fur or a sabre, and yet were considered as gifts
from Heaven. Since therefore (section 62) the nature of Turkish
policy ends in the support of the Sultan's power, the oppression of
the subjects, and the enrichment of the treasuries; therefore they
made use of the oppression of families, the destruction of the
natural right of inheritance, the exchange of state servants, and
rapid and severe punishments. In the following ten sections he
presents the Porte's way of thinking about Persia; — about the
Mughals and Ushecken; — about Muscovy; — Prussia and
Sweden; (of both they sought to take advantage against Muscovy,) —
about Poland, which they considered only to determine the Russians
by it; — concerning the House of Oojlenryk, which for them,
especially when the Imperial Dignity, and therefore the union with
Germany were therewith, is formidable 5 concerning France, England
and Holland. With Spain there was, in a certain respect, an
antiquated enmity; Naples they respected, because it has such close
ties with Spain and France. Coming to Vmetia, he naturally shows
some nationalism. With regard to the peace treaties and treaties
with foreign Powers, (section 73-) the Turks held the religious
position that they not only could, but also had to break them, if
they thereby enlarged their Empire and could propagate their
Religion. They had also, many times, made use of it, especially when
they clearly saw the advantages ahead. The last 7 sections concern
the foreign ambassadors to the Porte. They honour them as
representatives of their courts, but they also regard them as
pledges of loyalty, which must be observed in times of war, as well
as otherwise. He relates the ceremonies that occurred at the
departure of an ordinary ambassador of the Republic of Venice to
Constantinople; - an honour that she has, by virtue of an old
custom; furthermore the audiences with the Grand Vizier and Sultan,
and the circumstances at the presentation of the presents, in
particular the
none" which the
Venetian Ambassadors let the Imperial Harem handle. The necessary
knowledge of an Ambassador refusing to the Porte, and the requisite
rules of conduct, form the conclusion of this work, which is,
certainly, the most extensive and accurate of its kind, and cannot
be recommended enough to those who wish to know with what eyes a
Political Scientist has viewed the Turkish Empire. I have dwelt so
long on the evaluation and extracts thereof, with forewarning,
because my work itself receives many good additions therefrom, and I
shall be all the more brief with others.
Observations fur le
Commerce é? fur les arts d'une part ie de l'Europe, de l'Asie
cfc. par Jean Claude Flachat, 2 Tom. a Lion, 1766 8. De plates
usually represent Machines, but are small and not at all beautiful.
— The author travelled through France, Italy, Germany,
Hungary, and Wallachia, beginning on page 377, with mention of
Constantinople. — On page 383 he assures us that he measured
the former St. Sophie's church well, and found it to be about 213
feet long, and 150 feet wide (*). Up to page 490 he writes only the
truth concerning the Turks. — On page 491 Reland is wrongly
called Ecclesiastique Suedois. — On pages 518-562 the whole of
the Ca-
(*)
This is, certainly, far too little. Grelot says: "elle" a
de long en dedans quarante deux toiles fur trente-huit" de
large. "These were (the Toife reckoned to six feet,) 252 feet
for the length, and 228 for the breadth. Gii.l, in his Topogr.
Constant. Ub. 2. cap. 3. states the utmost height of the interior at
140, the length at 240, and the breadth at 230" feet.
pitulation. Of these
the peace treaties with other Christian powers are no more than
Copies. What he writes, at the end of the first part, concerning the
prophecies, which would not be very strange in Turkey, is for his
account. Each, according to his particular understanding, either
accepts such things, or does not believe them. - In the second part
there are detailed anecdotes and remarks concerning the governments
of Mahmud and Osman, of whom the first died in his time, and the
other became his successor. These are very useful for the History of
those times and secret Court negotiations, because he, as
Basserian-Baschi (chief negotiator) of the Kislar-Aga, is well in
could experience. In virtue of that post he once had the opportunity
to see the Seraglio from the inside, of which he relates as much as
he could retain in his memory on pages 164-224. For he was not
permitted to write anything down during the visit, much less to draw
anything. In the remaining pages to the end he expands on other
subjects, such as water pipes, the trade of France with Turkey, the
dyeing of tree wool, etc. in which I am not knowledgeable, but
nevertheless must judge from various circumstances that there are
many useful things for merchants of the commercial colleges of other
countries. His pretense that Mohammed's grave is in Mecca, and the
Zetnzem well there in a public place, is unfounded. Otherwise this
book bears the stamp of truth, although it is not apparent from the
title that it is a travelogue, and the remarks in it are only made
by chance. For me the description of the Seraglio is remarkable from
the inside, and I think I can fill a gap in my work with it, and at
the same time give my readers pleasure, when I communicate the most
important of it; because I consider it, for various reasons, to be
the most genuine, that we know of it, so far.
One enters the third
Court, or the third Square, through a very projecting Portal.
Sixteen pillars of porphyry stone decorate it on either side. The
vault is heavily gilded, and painted with somewhat raised leaves and
flowers. Here one finds two rooms. The doors are closed; then the
white Engraved are so safe, that they could withstand a siege. From
their windows they see everything that goes on in the second and
third Square. This is not so much because of its size, but rather
the ornaments that are lavished on it, the most beautiful. The walls
are covered with slabs of porphyry and other choice marble, on which
one sees a great multitude of Turkish inscriptions in gold letters.
The floor is special, of marble, but carved with stripes, so that
the horses should not slip. The Ambassadors go from here to the
famous Audience Hall of the Sultan. This consists of an open
gallery, which is gilded, and well provided with sculptural and
plasterwork. Pillars of inestimable value form the principal
ornament of this free-standing Hall. It is square, and covered with
a large dome, which ends in a long gilded spire, on which stands a
half moon. The Sultan's Throne is worthy to be seen. — The
outer rooms, courts and gardens, in fact, by their vastness, give
the Palace
of a great Prince.
But, if I except the great number of precious pillars, and some
other remains of the splendor of the Eastern Emperors, then one sees
no masterpieces of various arts. These could have exhausted
themselves here, if the Sultans had had more taste. — The
Audience Hall would lie quite free, if it had not been united on one
side with the Gallery leading to it. The Sepher-Oda Hall, where the
Sultan's Guards are kept, is at the right hand at the end of the
Square. The front part of a building, which is made of several large
pillars of porphyry stone, raises the magnificent floor, to which
one comes by a large marble staircase. It leads to a spacious hall,
around which run two galleries, resting on square beams. The Seferli
sleep there on a sofa a hand's breadth high. In the morning each
rolls up his mattress in the place which has been assigned to him,
and fastens it to the wall with the sheet and the blanket. Under the
sofa is a chest, in which they can lock away their best things. —
They almost always walk under the pillars of the Gallery, to keep
watch. From there one enters a bath.
The Hasne or Imperial
Treasure is, on the same side, eastward, and on a floor, at the end
of which is the first of the two doors, which one carefully closes,
when the Hasne-Kiaja counts out the currencies, and makes his
account. — They are first examined, counted and weighed,
before they are thrown into the large bag, in which five thousand
Zechines go. — Then the seal is pressed on it. — That
Hafne consists of very many rooms. There are many under the ground,
which receive their light through windows, which are opened from the
side of the sea. Everything is kept there that cannot be damaged by
damp. But in the rooms, laid out on the same level as the floor of
the Seraglio, one sees on shelves in various compartments, or cases,
materials of all kinds, vessels of infinite value, rough and worked
stones; in a word, the Emperor's greatest treasures. A story of this
would be too long, and seem incredible.
The workshops of the
Jewelers are near the Hafne, and almost next to the forecourt. They
are very active. They are paid daily. For each piece they receive,
according to the effort expended on it, a reward.
A steeply ascending
underground passage leads to the Hall of the White Engraved, to whom
the guarding of the door is also entrusted. Before one enters the
Allee, which separates two beautiful flower arrangements, one
encounters a small, very beautiful Mosque, whose dome is covered
with lead. Two lattices are in this passage to the Allee. The view
here is admirable; for it lies on high Terraces, from which one sees
over the Sea and the Asian coasts.
The Boyanshi keep
watch at the door, which is opposite the subterranean passage; they
also have their dwelling there, just as the white Engraved ones at
the said passage in the rooms, which have been constructed above it
and to the side.
Then one goes down to
the place of the stone pillars. The Chafz-Oda (Chamber of the
Sultan's servants) and the rooms of the Seliktar are at the end of
one of the two previously mentioned flower arrangements, and
opposite the Hall of the Seferli. They are not far from the new
Kiosk, which Mohammed V. had built for the amusements in the spring.
It is near the great city wall. One enters, on the same ground, the
flower arrangements, which are here maintained with extraordinary
care, because they come up against the principal rooms of the
Seraglio.
The large square
Kiosk is visible from afar, and seems to rise from the midst of
flowers, orange and other trees. It is the most beautiful of all,
and built as if on a bulwark with two wings. The dome rests on
painted wooden pillars. The door is to the south; the other sides
are provided with glass windows. — The Orangery is below on
the wall to the north. — The water runs in abundance from the
upper garden there into a basin of old marble, which is carved with
extraordinary skill. I return to the door where the white Engraved
keep watch, and from which one comes to the Chambers of the black
Engraved and the Kislar-Aga. The Mosque of the Chasz-Oda has no
other decoration than a beautiful Carpet on the floor. It lies
westward on the great wall. The Idschoglans have their dwelling in
this court, doing their prayers in it. The Sultan also sometimes
goes there, when the weather is rainy or cold. Here, opposite the
floor in front of the Hasne, is a covered passage with pillars of
granite stone, which serves as a foundation and support of a large
building, to which one climbs by a beautiful marble staircase. The
entrance is from the western side. Around the Mosque one enters a
wide antechamber covered with marble, from which many fountains
spring from a beautiful basin. The Seliktar, the Rikiabdar Aga and
the Tscho adar-Baschi occupy the rooms on the first floor, which
look out on the great Square, and the Kaffedschi-Bassi the open one,
which is below it, next to the great staircase. In the sockets of
the inner wall, by which the pillars are united, are kept the
clothes, trinkets, horse-harnesses, and in general everything that
serves for the usual ceremonies, and cannot be brought into the ??to
other than with difficulty, and even danger. When one has passed the
corner, which forms the western side of the Square; then one sees
the great door of the Chasz-Oda, through which the Sultan enters the
Harem. On each side are two Terraces, raised one foot above the
ground of the Square, and paved with beautiful square stones, where
the Gentlemen and Servants of the Court stay, because they are not
allowed to go any further.
The buildings, which
form the front part of the north side, are regular and uniform. This
piece of architecture would be admired everywhere. A large number of
free-standing pillars provide a beautiful corridor, in which one can
go to all the rooms.
The Treasurer's room
has his room in the corner of a very spacious hall. It looks very
much like the Sefer-Oda. On both sides, as long as it is, one finds
a wide Sofa, on which 50 people could sleep comfortably. — The
same also on the upper gallery.
Each floor or section
is lit by well-placed windows. From this first room one goes into
another, which is just as large, and laid out in the same way, and
is intended for the same use.
The warm room, where
one smokes tobacco on the sofas, is the last, and is only separated
from it by an antechamber. — The walls of the bath stove and
its antechamber are furnished with imitation porcelain vessels. —
The aforementioned other room occupies the entire front part of the
third square on the north side; the two doors and the windows
provide a pleasant view, notwithstanding the fact that the
construction method is very simple. It is on the side of the
above-described Audience Hall. — Between these two Sowings of
the Idschoglans a special building has been constructed. In it are
three rooms, level with the ground. — The Hasne-Kiaja gives
Audience there. There is another, at the same distance from this and
the Sultan's Audience Hall. From there he sees the exercises and
games which are arranged in the square for his amusement. It is two
stories high, regularly built, and covered with very beautiful
marble.
The noon-time of the
Minnarets is announced everywhere. The Imam climbs, to that end, on
the third square of the Seraglio, on a pillar of porphyry stone.
This rises only six feet above the ground. The rest with the foot is
under the ground. From what one sees of it, one must regret that it
is intended for this use, so admirably is it wrought.
On returning to the
gardens I saw with pleasure the large square Kiosk again, which lies
to the north. The light falls in through 40 windows. The panes were
22 inches wide. The lead roof runs in a square pointed shape, and
carries an octagonal lantern with glass. The small dome, which
covers it, and the spire placed on it are heavily gilded.
There is another,
also large Kiosk, although of a different construction, in the upper
garden, but also northward, in the shape of a cross. Each wing is
supported by seven arches. The Hall is laid out according to the
same design. — The main building consists of 4 sections, and
gets its light by a lantern from the large dome. — These two
buildings with a smaller Kiosk make up the entire outer side of the
gardens northward. You see them from far away.
When you come to the
third square of the Serail; then the Audience Hall was at the right
hand. At the end of this square is the entrance to the interior of
the Serail. — The Chasz-Oda (the Hall of the Idschoglans) is
the first room level with the ground towards the west, very
spacious, and covered with marble. — In it they keep watch day
and night. I do not repeat here, that all the rooms are covered with
lead, and most of the domes are gilded. Through a lantern on the
large dome the light falls into each room.
From here one goes
into two vaulted rooms, which are kept by black carvings. A small
square separates them from each other, and each has stoves on the
side, to heat in the winter.
A gallery, which is
covered with five domes, and runs towards the south, leads to a
large place. It is the ante-room to the first chamber of the Sultan.
One can also reach it through an upper gallery, which is attached to
the residence of the Kislar-Aga. The principal servants of the Porte
are also brought in there, who have to deal with important matters
with the Sultan. A large number of black Ennemies live around in
small rooms. This room has two doors; the first is to the north; the
other to the south; none for the Sultan, this one for the
Kislar-Aga. The first leads to a corridor, to which the boundaries
of the Harem. They are of medium size built of stone; they overlook
a garden, which is surrounded by a very high wall; they are clear,
and furnished with fine furniture. These consist of carpets,
hangings, curtains, mirrors, clocks, and small chests, which are
placed in the corners of the sofa, which goes all around, and on
which one stays day and night. — From this first garden one
goes into a second. The two-story high Kiosk is in the middle, and a
pleasant place to stay. The Sultan often goes there with the
Sultans.
The principal inner
court of the Seraglio is at the end of this garden. It consists of
four principal buildings. The Sultan occupies that which lies to the
west, whose outer walls are upholstered with porcelain. In the
others, which also all rest on arches, the Sultans live. This square
rather resembles the Place Royale in Paris. It is longer than it is
wide. The rooms are heated by stoves, standing on the ground below.
After the Grand
Duke's room, one climbs a magnificent staircase. The floor is
square; the anteroom is much larger; the room itself extends to the
corner of the square, and on this side forms an end of the building
of the Seraglio.
Here one can form an
idea of the opulence of the Sultans. Everything is in
the utmost splendor. Everywhere one sees unusually fine porcelain,
with excellent flowerwork. The walls are hung with gold fabrics. The
sofa is of the same rich material. The mirrors, clocks, small
chests, in a word, everything is remarkable. The most remarkable
thing is that it is almost always masterpieces of foreign artists
with which one tries to arrange this room.
Then one comes to the
Gallery, where the rooms of the 12 Sultans are. These are large, and
furnished with excellent furniture. There are lattices in front of
the windows, and they have a view of the square. On the garden side
they have Saxons or small projecting balconies, in which they sit,
and can see the country, and what is going on in the gardens,
without being seen.
In the middle of the
north side they have a projecting building. This is like the meeting
room; there the women come, to be on the lookout for the Great Lord,
and to make themselves comfortable with him by a thousand pleasures.
- From there one goes to the large bath. This consists of three
divisions, all of which are covered with marble. The middle one is
the most elegant; its vault rests on marble pillars; through inset
crystals the light falls in. Between both are only doors with glass,
to see everything one does. - The women's sons of a lower rank, and
the black Engraveds have their special, very pure and comfortable
baths.
When one comes out of
the great Harem; one takes one's way through a very gloomy passage;
this goes through the principal residence of the Engraveds, and
leads directly to the prison-house of the Princes, who as Sons of
the Sultans can stand to the Throne. It resembles a strong fortress,
and is surrounded by a great wall. - One enters through two gates,
carefully guarded from within and without by Engraveds, each of
which has a double iron gate, the stay there seems to be sad. There
is a very pretty garden with good water by it. The Princes have
beautiful buildings and baths in the principal buildings, which
enclose the court. The Engraveds appointed to their service, inhabit
the apartments that are level with the ground.
So far I have spoken
only of the buildings that one inhabits in the Seraglio. — In
general, an admirable simplicity reigns in this vast Palace, to the
eyes of the Connoisseurs. Although one finds few masterpieces of
architecture and other arts that they sail away; one must
nevertheless admit that everything announces the Palace of a great
Emperor. — I should have to digress too far; if I were to
mention and describe all the apartments and subterranean
water-basins. I am less surprised at the astonishing vastness of
these places, than at their manner of construction. Under the
apartments, and even under the squares of the Seraglio, there are
vaults, which rest on large stone pillars. The walls can withstand
all tests. - The Sultans are there, as in an invincible fortress,
completely safe. In times of unrest Mahmud came back quickly from
the other Imperial pleasure houses where he did not consider himself
safe enough. In the meantime it seemed that he left the shores of
the Sea with dissatisfaction, because he took great pleasure in
them. And this was the reason why he decided, in the year 1745, to
build the Serail of Top-Kapi, even in the vicinity of the great
Serail.
This was built on the
Sea. The residence of the Great Lord is between East and South,
opposite Scutari. The Court occupies the main buildings from North
to West. One enters from the Sea side through two gates. One
(Top-Kapi) is defended by two towers rising high. The entrance is
very dark. One goes for a long time under a surprisingly long vault,
on which a beautiful garden has been laid out, and to which one can
come directly from the second floor of the Harem. — The
apartment of the Sultan surpasses in the costliness of its furniture
that of the great Seraglio. — The prisons of the
Bostanschi-Baschi are near the Sea-Kiosk. This rests on 9 high
vaults, whose pillars are of an unusual thickness. — The
Kiosk, which is before the second gate (Jali Kioske-Kapi), where the
Bostanschi and Kapidschi keep watch, has only one floor. — The
Hall, where the Sultan gives audience to the Captain-Bassa, receives
its light from the lantern of the great dome. — One climbs it
from the four sides by a large, white marble staircase. The Throne
or Sofa of the Sultan is at the end; a gate prevents one from coming
near it; the vault, which is painted, decorated with sculptures, and
gilded in a reasonably good taste, rests on 24 pillars. It is
generally one of the most beautiful Kiosks in the Imperial Palaces.
When one goes through
the gate Jatli-Kioske; then an Allee leads to the Kioske, a gate of
the Harem, which is called Kalfaje. — From there one goes, by
various Alleys, to the rooms of the Bostanschi-Baschi, the new
Kioske of Aganum-Harem, the Harem of the Sultan, the Chasz-Oda and
the old Seraglio, which is decorated with beautiful pillars and
Mo??. - From there I came to the so-called iron gate Demir-Kapiy
Tower Alai-Kiosïe, which is opposite the Palace of the Grand
Visir. - Continued on the right hand; then one could continue to the
place Tfiragan, where the apartments of the Kislar-Aga are. - When
one approaches the sea from here; one can go down to a square, which
is longer than wide, and at the end of which is a large wooden
surface, which forms an ante-room of small rooms, as well as a
covered corridor, from which one goes into a magnificent, longer
than wide Hall - This is equipped with precious, European furniture,
even with an Organ and Clavier. - attached to this is a square,
richly decorated Cabinet, from which one comes into the Harem
described above. My description would have become too long if I had
wanted to mention all the valuables. - The Sultans have made it a
law to themselves not to let anything leave the Imperial Palace.
They either buy or receive, as a gift, what the whole world has in
the way of more ornaments or rare things. - In the choice of these,
no less attention has been paid to the perfection of the work than
to the material from which it is made. I saw nothing in common. Each
gem was found in its rightful place. - It would have taken whole
days if one had only wanted to examine quickly the products of any
art. - Everything is displayed in open cases. The most beautiful
crystalline vessels, full of new Zecchins, seem to be intended only
to separate the gems from each other. — But this is only, so
to speak, the Cabinet of jewels; many others follow, where one finds
in a very excellent order, hanging candlesticks, cabinets, chests,
writing desks, boxes for tea, coffee and chocolate, mirrors, tables,
armchairs, sofas, all kinds of fabrics, watches, gold and silver
work, etc. Nothing is uniform; everything is different. — From
these rooms one enters a long Gallery, which is loftier than the
great wall, for the defence of which a great number of towers are
placed, like the walls of the city, which enclose the houses and
gardens of the Seraglio. It receives its light through 15
cross-windows; and from it one sees the walls, Scutari and all the
waters nearby. From here one comes, on one side, to a small Kiosk,
and on the other side to a beautiful bath. There is another one just
like it for the upper rooms.
Here I was led back
over a Terrace, and through a small garden to the large court, from
which one comes to the previously described Chasz-Oda, and had thus
seen the whole Seraglio, and even the most secret places. — In
general I must declare, that everywhere the ancients and later ones
have been imitated. One has made use of what time has left. At every
step one discovers remains of the ancient splendor of the Greek
Emperors.
Voiage litteraire de
la Gréce, ou lettres fur les Grecs anciens & modernes
avec un Parallele de leurs moiurs Tom. 1. pag. 420 Tom. II. pag. 244
a Paris 1771. 8. This book has been translated into High German,
under the Title: Literary journey to Greece etc. Leipzig 1772 2
parts. The author is a French merchant from Marseille, who was very
well experienced in the Greek language and ancient writers, and
described his journey in letters from Constantinople, Adrianople and
Smyrna to a Mr. Bourlat de Montredon, for the use of his children,
but was subsequently persuaded by his friends
to publish the
edition. The first letter is written as a preface, and 1750. For the
benefit of those who do not understand Italian, it would have been
necessary to translate the expression, ü paterna nido (the;
fathers hm). — Letter 2 contains general observations on the
Turks, Armenians and Jews. This is a very useful illustration of
these peoples for those who have to do with them. But this is far
from the truth, (unless the translation were wrong,) that the
Armenians formed the most numerous, wealthiest and most intelligent
nation. In the third letter one finds real general observations on
the later Greeks, they were still the old ones, only with the loss
of freedom and knowledge under the Turkish yoke. In the fourth
letter, of houses, apartments, lamps, sofas, fire-pans, women,
embroideries, etc., a passage is quoted from Madame Dacier from
Hesvchius, according to which, in the Greek apartments, a fire-pan
was placed, and dry wood was burned in it, to warm themselves by.
This is not so; for then they had to swallow the smoke: they put
extinguished cages in it. — Letter five treats of lovers,
mistresses, maids, daughters, who live very modestly, and of honors,
by kissing the hands. — Letter six of the dressing-table, the
hair-toysel, clothing, precious stones, fanes. — Letter seven
of the head-veils. — Letter 8. national character,
conversations, liveliness, expressions, proverbs, nobility. —
Letter nine, belts, face covering, painted eyebrows, black eyes. —
Letter ten, Feasts, meals, far-reaching extravagance at banquets,
entertainment with flowers, songs, etc. In the eleventh letter,
about the Greek religion, superstition, predictions, dreams, etc.
one must wonder that a Roman Catholic can write so much about the
ignorance of the Greeks in matters of religion. He thereby, always,
silently rebukes his own denomination. - From the i2d to the 18th
letter he describes dreams, dances, games, baths, marriages, nymphs,
women in childbirth, love for children, hospitality and burials. In
the i0th letter, about the graves, burial places and ruins, he
wrongly denies that the former were surrounded by walls; for many
have, where there is a strong passage, a wall about three or four
feet high. Thus also the assertion is groundless, that they are all
outside Reason. Within Constantinople and Smyrna there are many. In
the letter of reconciliation of the Turkish counts he praises the
steadfastness of an old Father, thinking that it was more than
Christian; but it must be ascribed to the Turks the fanatical
feeling concerning an absolute fate. — Letter 21 he quotes a
great number of Greek stories (rupapuh*). — Letter 22. treats
of the oaths of the Greeks: letter 23 of trade and navigation:
letter 24 of fishing and the origin of the mandrakes for catching
tony, that is, to show how the mandrakes or drag-nets, for catching
tony by the roe, originated with the ancient Greeks. The four
following letters contain various customs, and a review of the
preceding ones. Here he quotes, from hearsay alone, two customs on
the island of Mi-:telin, which are discussed further on. —
Letter 29. treats of the Libatien, for example, when a new ship is
launched; then the builder takes wine, and pours it into the stern,
and expresses good wishes for the success of the voyage and of the
bystanders, then he drinks, and lets the bystanders drink with it.
Nor does one ever end a solemn Greek meal, not even at burials,
without, as of old, pouring wine, while at the same time one makes
good wishes for the Tractant and the Guests. — The thirtieth
letter provides observations on various passages in the book, Esprit
des ioix, on some customs of the Turks, and Mahomed, in which
Montesquêteu was wrong. When the writer, in the four following
letters, treats of the Arts; he observes therein, that, although
they had almost all perished under the Turkish rule, yet among the
Greeks there was still all the genius to practice the ancient arts,
if they had but the freedom to do so. — In Architecture
(letters) he assures, that for public buildings, (for the private
houses do not look pretty from the outside,) there were still good
Greek architects. — The Music of the Greeks and other Eastern
peoples (letter 36) he certainly exalts, because of a strange
one-sidedness, above ours. On the Plague (letter 37) he quotes very
good observations, especially from ancient History; In the meantime
I did not like to follow the writer Hippocrates, who thinks: "that
it arose from the frequent rains and south winds, which always blow
before the summer, and which were followed by a great calm and heat.
"I do not deny in the least the great influence of the weather
on health and disease; but I have clearly noticed that the plague by
all kinds of
i Weather and in all
seasons has come out. He further relates how the Jesuits on the
island of Scio formerly pretended that of the Romans hardly any had
died, and only of the Greeks so many had been carried off; but this
is natural; for the former do not compare with the latter, as to
numbers. He hereby places an essay by a certain English physician,
Mackenzy, on the Plague, who attributes its first origin to the
wind, but maintains of the plagued, who suddenly fall down and die,
that they must have had the plague beforehand, and had only tried to
conceal it, in order not to be abandoned by their friends. But this
last point is entirely rejected, because the Turks, especially the
common people, with their sense of absolute doom, are not accustomed
to abandon their own. — He represents the love of the
Fatherland among the present-day Greeks (briest) as still as great
as among their ancestors; and it really is; for otherwise they would
have long since abandoned it under the tyranny of the Turks,
especially when they have little or nothing to lose. — In the
30th letter he gives the following contents of an inscription
discovered above one of the Constantinople gates: "in less than
two months" the victorious Conjlantyn, on the orders of
Theodosius, had these walls built. "Palias himself would hardly
have erected such a strong citadel in so short a time. "The
three other letters have no specific subject, except that in the
last he gives his children instructions on how to compare the
earlier and later Greeks in travel, and how to judge the travel
descriptions written beforehand. He recommends those who had the
opportunity of entering the gardens of the Sultan to draw an
obeliscus on which he had read the words: Theodofio Magno ob Gothos
devictos; and adds the following in the first letter the two customs
mentioned on the island of Mytilene are the real solution of the
former French Consul at Smyrna, Mr. de Peyssonnel by: " 'there
is on this island a village, Katotrito, where an arriving foreigner
is addressed in the following words, to give himself in marriage:
avö putros èurut', Travrpevtrovl If you are a man, enter
into marriage! This is all that has been retained from the old
custom." For the rest it is true that the old laws of this
island grant the inheritance of father and mother to the eldest
daughter, without the sons being able to demand the least of it. The
inhabitants adhere faithfully to this law, when they are not forced
by the Turkish Commanders to accept the succession in the
inheritance introduced by the Koran. The author has written, as an
accurate eye-witness, with such good proof, that it might seem to
many as if he had gone too far, and even to trifles. One cannot find
any real mistake in his work, and he remains, in his profession, a
leading writer for those who wish to hear the ancient Greeks and
Latins on such subjects. He provides a multitude of quotations from
Greek and Latin writers, y whose true opinion, as far as it rests on
usage, is very well elucidated.
C. Niebuhrs
Reischeschreibung nach Amerika und andere umliegenden Landern,
Koppenh. 1774 in 4. (in Dutch reize naar Amerika etc. Amsterdam en
Utrecht 1776). Preceded by a short travel description from
Copenhagen to Constantinople. Regarding this last city he further
provides some remarks, suspecting on probable grounds that the
measuring rod on Reben's map (which is also laid down in my
description) has been made a third too small, and consequently the
city has been made just as much too large. In the further
calculation of the number of inhabitants he found very clearly, that
many travellers, who judge them solely by the number of people
during the day in the principal districts, are very much mistaken,
partly because the streets are very narrow, partly because thousands
of traders, artists, craftsmen, etc. stay there during the day
because of their business and work, but in the evening, at some
distance, even two miles or more, return to their own homes by water
or by land. Of the Pyramid with symbolic figures on Atmeidan he
provides a drawing. Then follows the voyage by water to Alexandria,
with remarks about it. Thence the voyage went to Cairo; then over
the Red Sea to Temen, and after some stay there from Mecca, by
water, to Bombay. In the last treatises this travel description is
therefore, in accordance with its purpose, most extensive, deserving
all the praise that has been given to it elsewhere.
Travels in small Asia
by Richard Chandler. Translated from English into High German,
Leipzig 1776 in 8 large 396 pages (in Dutch R. Chandler's travels
through small Asia etc. Utrecht 1777 in 8.) I have this traveller
with his two travelling companions in person, and as diligent
researchers known. In the preface one finds an instruction, which
the Society of the Amateur in London gave this traveling society,
and from which it appears, that the principal aim was indeed to make
such discoveries and observations, as the traveling society found
itself, of the old state of these countries, but nevertheless by no
means to limit them to that; that they were rather to record
everything, which could attract the attention of curious and
observant travelers. And at the same time it is said, that the
works: Ruins of Athen, and Jewish antiquities, as well as
Opfichristen had already been published, and possibly still, when
the journeys in Asia Minor were well received, also those that were
made in Greece would be published, (as they were published in Dutch
translation, under the Title: R. Chandler travels through Greece,
Utrecht 1779.) The journey related here takes place in the year
1765, describing the region around the Dardanelles, Troy, Smyrna,
Ephesus, Miletus, Laodicea, Philadelphia, Sardis and Magnifica,
provided with a map, which represents the Archipelago and the
adjacent part of Asia Minor. This work, which can be read very well,
is more suitable for scholars than unlearned, although some travel
notes are inserted; provides the old, and partly also new History of
the places; is occupied with the old and new Geography; and gives
good extracts from Pocock, Wheler, and Chishull. The climate and the
changes of Weather in the four seasons are fairly accurately noted,
and for the rest the regions and customs are very naturally
described, as they appear to a foreigner.
Sir James Forter
observations on the Religion, the Government, and Manners of the
Turks, (Ch.) from the English. Leipzig 1768 8vo4 186 pages. The
author was, about the year 1760, for some time English Ambassador to
Constantinople, and for this he provides important and true news. In
the first Head he represents the difficulties of obtaining true news
in Turkey; by which one can understand, Why, for example, Madame
MonTaöue, in many respects, records untruths. He at the same
time paints the Character of the Turks according to Truth, but in an
imperfect manner. The second Head, treats of the Mohammedan Religion
and the Pilgrimage to Mecca; the third of the Setton of the
Mohammedans; the fourth of the Mohammedan Church Government and
their civil laws, and the fifth of the Koran, mostly supplying
scattered but genuine observations, the sixth of Despotism and its
appeasement, is not ill-suited to refute Montesquieu. The two
following main parts supply, in the incidents, for the elucidation
of the preceding Chapter, and on the Turkish Government, besides the
Vizirate of Rahib Mehemet Bassa, fine observations of the same kind
also in the ninth and tenth parts. on the change of the Visier, the
order concerning affairs, the Policy of the Turkish Ministers, and
the maintenance of justice with choice examples. Of the Ambassadors
and their Audiences he speaks, from his own experience, in the
following main part. The mixed observations on the customs of the
Turks, in the twelfth chapter, provide things worth reading. The
last two chapters deal with the Greeks and their religion, in which
their disputes with the Roman Catholics before the Turks about the
so-called Holy places are related truthfully and accurately. A few
unfounded propositions do not detract from the value of this work.
One never hears, it is said on page 23, of executions, pains,
punishments or fines among the Turks, which were inflicted on and
imposed on anyone for religion. This conflicts with what is recorded
on page 27, that death is the punishment for an apostate. On page 26
he asserts in the observation that, since the beginning of the
Hegire, not a single example of the conversion of a Turkish to
another religion can be brought forward. Now this proposition is, in
general, not only difficult to prove; (for who can give the
necessary historical guarantee for it?) but is also apparently
unfounded. Kantemir, in the Life of Solyman I §. 12. relates a
very extraordinary and readable example concerning this, presented
more fully below. (*) And the cases are also lacking
(*)"
The civil unrest of that time was followed by another, which
concerned religion, and 1527- broke out. In Constantinople there was
namely a scholar of the first rank, in religion and sciences
exceptionally sad, by name Kabyzi Aijie, who openly maintained that
the Christian religion rested on better grounds than the
Mohammedans, and did not at all conceal his thoughts on this. He
defended this both in the schools and in the mosques, doing
everything possible to convince the people of it. Not only the
common people stumbled at this, but also the lawyers, who heard this
reason with displeasure.
and, and with
believing, that a man of his learning could do it. They sought in
vain to induce him to recant; he stuck to his language; so that they
saw themselves forced to arrest him, and bring him to the Mufti.
There he repeated with great boldness, what he had so zealously
impressed upon the people, living by the strongest proofs and the
comparison of the Koran with the Euan«lium, that the Christian
religion with its precepts had an infinite precedence over the
Mohammedans. He was again pressed to accept his opinion; they even
sought to win him by self-love, representing to him that a holy
Life, like his, seemed to exist with his apostasy, and that his
acquired fame of virtue was sullied by a hateful error. He despised
the admonitions and threats, remaining steadfast in his opinion; so
that the Emperor could not fail to approve the sentence of his
beheading. On this occasion a law was made, in which all those who,
even under the pretext of disputing, should dare to give the
Christian Religion the precedence over the Mahogany. Although for
the reason stated it is rare for the Turks to go to Christian
countries and become Christians. The remark, page 59 below, that a
thaler makes 120 Aspers, is, at least for the Germans, expressed
indefinitely. This is a so-called Leeuwenr thaler or Piajler, of
which eleven make three Dutch ducats. — This work has been
translated into French, and has been published under the following
title: Observations for the religion, the law, the government, &
the customs of the Turks &c. by Mr. Porter, Nouvelle édition
confiderablement augmentèe de nptes, faites par w Vdiageur,
qui afait unféjour enTurquie, Neuschatel 1770. This title is,
with regard to the added notes, very deceptive. One must wonder that
one can so shamelessly deceive the public in our days by additions
to newly improved and enlarged editions. The notes made, which are
said to have been made by a traveller, do not at all refer to the
improvement or enlargements of Potter's work, but are generally
remarks which one can make in one's study, without travelling. For
instance, when on pages 53 and 54 of the French edition, the
far-reaching religious disputes were discussed; one finds, below,
this remark: "from old times it has been said: "tantum
religio potuit fuadere malorum! (so many misfortunes can religion
bring about')" These errors, imbibed by religious zeal, have
not only devastated Asia; but the whole world has also become the
horrible scene of devastation, caused by a furious and armed
fanaticism. For 16 centuries one sect has destroyed another. The
Christians have nothing to reproach the Muslims with in this
respect. Should one not be surprised to read again such a remark,
the groundlessness of which, when it is so generally put down, has
been demonstrated so many times? It is not religion in itself, not
Christianity according to the Holy Scripture that brings about
devastation, but so-called Christians, who have departed from the
latter, and others who want to express their own conceived
sentiments under the name of Christianity, by fire and sword, to
impose. - After Porter had spoken of the various Sects among the
Turks, the annotator makes the following observation on page 60:
"the Turks, indeed, in matters of religion, show no tolerance
towards unbelievers, but nevertheless among themselves. This cannot
be said of the Christians. The various Sects among the Turks live in
peace, and do not judge each other. How groundless is this
observation! Can we deny the Turks all tolerance concerning the
religion of others, whom they call unbelievers, since so many
Christians and Jews actually live among them? But do they exercise
it among themselves, when they strictly forbid investigations into
matters of religion, and absolutely do not tolerate strange feelings
among their own co-religionists? Are these Christians according to
the Holy Scripture, who persecute their fellow Christians with fire
and sword? - The remark, page 100, is of this content: "Mr. van
Bre?? ?? presents us, in an excellent essay, 5, in the collection of
the Academy of Inscriptions in Paris, tom. 32., Mahomed in a quite
different light, than that in which he has hitherto been generally
exhibited. If we may concern this famous Academician; then Mahomed,
by his birth, and by the example of his ancestors, was called to
that role, which he played in Arabia. As he was the heir of the
priestly and princely Family; so he had no other aim, than the
preeminence of his House, and the purity of the ancient Religion,
which it maintained.
This essay is full of
new prospects, deep investigations, and the most enlightened
judgment. "I have not read that essay; but I wonder at its
design and intention. What will it profit to present Mohammed from
time to time in a different light, so long as one can instruct
oneself, as to his business, character, and religion, from his
Koran, and the wit expended in his veneration will be wasted? It
would then have to come to the point that, as the unbelievers do
with the writers of the Holy Scripture, one would deny him this. —
I will only quote the addition on page 192: "the extraordinary
ambassadors of Poland (to the Porte) have also some special
advantages; perhaps because, at the Audience, they appear in the
Seraglio in long robes. They are, by the Porte, from their arrival
in the Empire and during their stay kept free etc. "Now this is
confused and unfounded. The Venetian Ambassador is also, at the
Audience, long dressed; and as for the advantages; they are, in a
certain respect, due to all Ambassadors; concerning which the work
of Porter, in the same Head, should only have been checked.
Lord Baltimore has
published: travel in the East, in the years 1763, in 1764 and
observations on the city of Constantinople and the Turks, together
with some selected samples of the wit and poetry of the East. (at
least that is the title of this book according to the High German.)
Augsburg 1770 large 100 pages in large 8vo. The Lord, known for his
treasures and literary exercises, describes, in the first 26 pages
his journey from Naples through the Archipelago to Constantinople.
His stay there lasted from August 1763 to May 1764. He communicates
his observations on this capital up to page 46, and from there to
page 74 the samples of the Eastern way of thinking, learning, wit
and poetry. The rest contains the return journey by land. On many
occasions the places of the Latin poets are quoted. The title does
not correspond with the content, because a journey to the East
promises more than a single journey to Constantinople. No one may
doubt the truth of the reports, since the Lord, during his stay in
Constantinople, tried to live entirely according to the customs of
the Turks. The short time he was there certainly prevented him from
judging the Plague better than he actually does, when he asserts
that "it is not nearly so dangerous there as is generally
imagined. He considers it no more contagious than other epidemic
fevers. He is right in thinking that in the Eastern countries the
Levantine Plague is too dangerous, and as it is wont to rage among
us; but a longer stay would nevertheless have informed him better.
Here I must discover another error concerning the Plague, which is
found in a travel description to the island of Cyprus. (Viaggi per
Vifola di Cipro de Giov. Mariti Lucca. According to the Higher
Göttingische Anzeigen 1770, 139 St.) "Egypt would have the
Plague of Constantinople. For from here, from Smyrna and
Thessalonica, the Plague would spread, unusually easily, to Egypt.
Such and similar untruths propagate themselves unnoticed, especially
among the writers.
We have now also
received a Thevenot of the present century in France in an Abbot de
la Porte, (translated into Dutch and known by the name of the new
traveller, ger. Dordrecht 1709 etc. 8.) of whose work the first and
second parts of Turkey deal. They are fictional letters from a
Frenchman to a Lady; and who would doubt that this work was not
ingeniously written? The writer also plays his part not badly, and
understands the art of composition very well; but nevertheless she
has not been able to protect him against several, and fairly gross
mistakes. He asserts in the tenth letter, that the islands of Corfu,
Zephalonia and Zante, which are under Venetian obedience, belong to
the Turkish Empire: in the thirteenth letter, "it seemed from
afar, as if the castles of the Dardanelles could cover Europe and
Asia with cannons, which, when the reason is the Hellespont, does
not only seem, but is in reality as if the size of Constantinople
were only a fourth part of Paris. — Almost to the 7 towers
extends one corner of the city, because it extends all the way to
that. And the middle square of the Seraglio is larger, than the
outer one, which is untrue. In the 14th letter he places the city of
Abydos and Leander's tower very near each other; notwithstanding the
former on the Hellespont not far from the present Dardanelles, but
the latter between Galata and Scuiari in the Bosphorus Thracia lies.
The assurance that the Turkish women had more than once allowed him
to lift and take off their veils is indeed only an endearing idea
for those with whom he corresponded. The writer of the (High)
remarkable facts from the best writers for those who do not read
great works; Tubingen 1772-1778. for he testifies in the preface
that, because the great works were too precious and too verbose, and
the French were full of misdeeds, he wanted to provide an extract
from the best. To that end he has drawn together Cantemir, Arvieux,
Deguignes, la Croix, Ricaut etc. and especially the first two,
almost word for word, in his work, and divided them into the
following Chapters. In the first he treats of the name, origin,
former residence, and principal cases of the Turks, up to the
foundation of the Ottoman Empire; and in the second Head, of the
Religion, and the Religious customs of the Turks. In this I would
not fully approve of the comparison of the Kadileskier there with
our General Auditors. The prestige and the position of the first are
more important, and include more. In the third Head, treated of the
Constitution and the principal offices of the Ottoman Empire,
several errors are found. It is untrue that the Bostanschi-Baschi is
the Chief Overseer of the suburbs of Constantinople, for they have
their Molla or Voivodes; that the Nidschanschi-Pascha sits in the
Divan just under the window, for that is the place of the Grand
Vizier; that at Smyrna there is a Mint, for this is not so. The
Article, concerning the Audience of an Envoy to the Sultan, is
confused, for instance: the Envoy sits next to the Grand Vizier and
the other Vizier,s of the first rank; — the money being
divided, he goes to table with the Vizier and Testerdar; —
after the meal he is conducted into a private room; — the
squares through which the procession from the Divan to the Emperor
passes are occupied by Janistaries; — the Sultan himself
answered, in a few words, to the proposal of the Ambassador. One see
on this the work of Porter and my book, where one will find all this
more accurately. It is further ambiguous, that the Divan is under a
vault in the outer square of the Seraglio; it is in the second. The
fourth Head, deals with the Military State of the Turks, where
Cantemir, Marstgli and others are very well compared with each
other; just as in the fifth Head, the Court of the Ottoman Emperor,
and something of the way of life of the Turks occurs. It is stated
here, that the Seraglio is divided into the inner and outer court.
But there are, in fact, three Courts: that the Eski-Serail or old
Palace is a large building surrounded by high walls, and by it
separated from the other parts of the Serail; which is not so,
because they are separated from each other by reasonable quarters of
the city, as the illustration of Constantinople shows. The author
complains, in this Chapter, of the quarrels of travellers, and he is
right; for they have, generally, not time enough to learn fully the
Character of the Turks and their customs. The last Head, delivers a
concise History of the Ottoman Emperors from the foundation of their
Empire; in which page 252, contrary to the established custom, the
castles of Constantinople towards the Black Sea are called
Dardanelles at the mouth thereof. Otherwise this work is well
composed and useful. A. F. Buschings (Hoogd.) new description of the
land, five parts of the first part, etc. Hamb. 1768. 580 pages in 8.
(in the Dutch new Geographie etc. fifth part first part, containing
various countries of Asia, Amsterdam and Utrecht 1770. 8.) The
preface contains a list of the great number of travel descriptions,
from which the famous author made extracts, compared them with each
other, and compiled them into a system. In this part, after a
general introduction to Asia, the countries of the Turkish Empire
appear on 446 pages (of the Dutch edition), the remainder deals with
Arabia. In my opinion this piece is one of the most difficult works
that can be thought of, and everywhere one notices the uncommon
accuracy with which the author has treated his subject. We have not
yet had such a work in this field, and we wished to have such an
appropriate composition (I take the word here in a good sense)
concerning the rest of Asia, and then of Africa and America. He
recommends his book to travellers as a special manual, but then also
for improvement and perfection. That Mosques and Mescheds are taken
for two kinds of religious buildings; Anatoli Eski Hifar attributed
to Bajazet I, as the Founder, (page 55.) and Brussa was given up as
the Ottoman Capital for so long, until it became Constantinople, and
certain, partly small villages around Smyrna were recorded as towns,
etc. (page 73.) can neither diminish nor detract from the value of
this work.
N. E. Kleemans Reifen
von Wien über Belgrad in die Krim (fc. in the years 1768-1770
with an appendix about Crimean Tartar, came out in a second and
enlarged edition (in High German) with plates, in Leipzig, 1773
large ??8 pages in 8. (in the Dutch daily story of the travels of N.
E. Kleeman. Haarlem 1774?? This is a single travel description,
which does not say much about Turkey, but about Little Tartary is
somewhat more satisfactory and for him who wanted to make such a
journey, it would be very useful to read, in order to learn the
necessary caution with the ingenious deceptions and acts of violence
of those peoples. The author is wrong, when on page 195 asserts,
that the Channel is narrower at the Castles than at the Dardanelles.
Reife durch Sicilien
und Grosz-Griechenland. (Hoogd.) Zwiobmi. 8. large 272 pages. The
title of this book, published by Baron van Riedesel, could give rise
to the misconception, as if here also of the real Greece, under the
Turks, was treated. This did not happen, but this journey only goes
over Sicily and the lower part of the Kingdom of Naples.
Neueste
Reisbeschreibung durch die vornehmsten Provinzen der Ottomannischen
Pforte &c. (Hoogduits=German) Berl. en Leipz., large 169 pages
without name of the author. He testifies, that he has composed this
work in a political manner, contrary to the title, as which a travel
description suggests. - The State changes of the Turkish Empire go
to § 21. By the origin of the Turks, which was correctly stated
at the beginning, he thinks, that Turkomanie had received the name
of, the first invasion of the Turks in it; since the Turkmen are a
nation different from the Turks, and inhabiting Turkomanie. The
following under the Title: Boundaries and principal rivers of
European Turkey, is stated too definitely; for, as the sequel shows,
it deals not only with European, but with the whole of Turkey. But
in § 11. the length and breadth of European, and in §. 22.
with Asian, are stated more than half longer and wider than it
really is, unless other than German miles are meant. In §. 25.
Constantinople is described as 15 Italian miles in size, but it is
somewhat larger. Adrianople is estimated at 8, probably also Italian
miles in size. The assertion in §. 43. that the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre is only 100 paces long, and 60 broad, is untrue; not
less, that the Latins alone observed there the public worship, which
the Greeks and Armenians do just as well, yes, according to the
institution, Christians of all denominations can do. In the given
size of Damascus and Smyrna it is not stated what kind of miles they
are, but they must be Italian. In §. 45. it is said of Tripoli,
that it is a small city in Napoli; but it lies in Syria. It is
equally strange, that in §. 48. Tyre is reckoned to Napoli,
since it nevertheless lies in Palestine or Syria, in a wider sense.
It is strange, that according to §. 49. Comana is not far from
Toccat, and yet would border on Muscovy and the Caspian Sea; since
between the first and these last two lie fairly large kingdoms,
compared to which Comana is a trifle. The author is very much
mistaken in §. 52, when he considers Tenedos as 50 German miles
in the vicinity; there are hardly so many Italians; and similar
mistakes are found with the islands of Sciro, Jcaria and Pathtnos.
In the saying concerning Candia it will probably be a misprint: "the
inhabitants were" mostly Greek, most of them adhered to the
Mohammedan religion. "Instead of most, the least should often
stand. Such a mistake must also be suspected in the statement in §.
53, concerning the island of Cyprus: "the inhabitants are
partly Christians, partly Turks; the latter, when they are rich,
hide their treasures here under the earth, so that they are not
taken from them". "This refers to the first, namely the
Christians; for the Turks have no great need of this caution. The
air at Smyrna is described in §. 85. as unhealthy. At the end
of it he says, according to the statement of others, that on most of
the islands of the Archipelago, in the summer, it seldom rains or
thunders; now this certainly happens seldom. In §. 88. the
customs of the East are declared to be strange and hideous; which I
would not assert. They certainly pass this judgment of ours also.
The customs are, everywhere, of a mixed nature. §. 90. treats
of the state of religion, and gives the following principal parties:
"Armenians, Nestorians, Jacobites, Marabutes, Malekites,
Ilanefites, Scha'feits, and Hanbalites. The last four are to be
noted in particular, because all Maho'medans, except the Persians
alone, "usually belong to one of these names. "Here the
two principal parties of Mohammedanism, namely, Sonnites and
Schiites, should have been mentioned before the Subsidiaries.
Notwithstanding the Jews are so numerous; yet no mention is made of
them. It is very strange to want to call the Jesids, §. 91.
Disciples of Jesus. Of the Mosques, §. 99. assured that: around
them were six Towers (Minnarets}"from which the Muessins called
the people to prayer. This is untrue. There is but one Mosque of
this kind in Constantinople; even the Sophie Mosque has but four,
most have but one Minaret: and not from this, but from the Gallery
that goes round it, the proclamation for prayer is made. It is
equally untrue that women may not enter Mosques; they may only not
be there at the same time as men for the Divine Service. At the end
of §. 102. he says: the other Christian denominations had only
Patriarchs in name, whom the Pope appointed. This applies only to
the Maronites, and to those who apostatized from the Armenians,
Copts and Nestorians, and to the so-called united Schismatics with
the Roman Church. Thus it must also be said that §. 103. Of the
Eastern Christians it is related, that they held the Patriarch at
Constantinople for the visible Supreme Head of the Church, of the
Greek Christians only is understood. That the lesser Clergy mostly
live from Commerce, is not true; but they often soothe themselves
with tillage, gardening and gathering silk. What occurs §. 104.
concerning the Monastic Orders, is very ambiguous. If he speaks only
of the Eastern; then it is too much; but if he includes the Roman,
then it is too little, the report concerning monasteries, §.
106. is uncertain; but it is untrue, that all Churches in the whole
country are called Monasteries; as well as that none, which §.
107. It states that those who entered the Monastery of the Holy
Father were not allowed to marry; because marriage is not permitted
to the consecrated, but only to the secular ecclesiastical, although
only once. In this place §. 108. states: "Mahomet" is
said to have been born in the Monastery on Mount Sinai," it
should have said: he would have come there, and have been well
received by the Monks, and have given them the well-known Testament
on the way. From §. 114 to 118. the learning there, with a
neglected distinction between Turks and Christians, has been dealt
with very ambiguously for the uninformed. According to §. 119.
the Commerce would mostly be left to the Christians; since the Jews
nevertheless have just as much part in it, and the Genoese have,
there, openly nothing more to do. The Commerce of the English and
Dutch does not disappoint compared to that which the French and
Italians drive. The price of slaves is ten, nay twenty times higher,
than is stated in §. 121. In the Turkish money §. 125. the
calculation of the Aspers to three pence, (Prmssischf) and therefore
of the Para to 9 pence is false, and the Titci of the Emperor, §.
128. is very briefly condensed. The following words, §. 129.
suffer many changes: "as soon as an Emperor comes to the
Throne, he is led, with great state, to the alleged monument of the
Prophet Job. Here they pray that God may bless the new Emperor, and
enlighten him with wisdom. Hereupon the Mufti embraces him, and
pronounces the blessing, etc. It is asserted §. 137- absolutely
contrary to the truth, that the Kislar-Aga and Kapi-Aga were from
the number of the Dumb and Court Madmen; for they are indeed the
Chiefs of the Enlightened, but at the same time also the principal
Ministers of the Seraglio. In §. 141, the error so often
recounted is stated, that only an Imperial Envoy, when entering the
Turkish frontiers until his return journey, is kept free in
everything. For the Porte shows this honour to every extraordinary
Envoy, of whatever nation he may be; but it also expects the same
from other Courts, when it sends someone. To the Audiences, §.
142. and 43 several things are incorrectly stated; just as this §.
174- it is absolutely untrue, that the brothers of the Sultan could
never become Kapidischi-Baschi again. "- Just as it seems very
uncertain to me, when the unnamed writer assures in the preface,
that he had seen much on his travels; just as the fulfillment of his
request seems unnecessary to me, to express himself widely, more
bitterly in another work; because that would in fact be of no use,
if it were to consist only of a collection,
Staats-und
Kriegsgeschkhte des russischen und turkischen Reichs. Leipz. 1772.
groot 34 Hoogd, Madz. in 4to. On the 14 first page the writer deals
with the Russian Empire. This is followed by a historical
description of the Turkish Princes, and page 16. a geographic one of
the Turkish Empire. Regarding the assertions occurring therein: that
Osman raised the Janistas, and Selim II Cyprus taken away, one can
consult the second paragraph of my work. In the description of the
inhabitants and the way of government, page 18. says in general that
every Christian must pay a ducat poll tax annually. In the
discussion of the Turkish faith, which sounds just as if one wanted
to speak of the German, Swedish, etc. faith, he mixes Critics and
Satyrs of his kind. On the remaining pages, which deal with the
previous Turkish war, many things occur (and everyone will wonder
how that fits in here) concerning penny disputes and the stupidity
of the Christian cliques for, which, according to the author's
opinion, were al, too, an appendix to these. When one despairs of
offering to the world so few, hastily composed, and as regards the
war, drawn from the newspapers, under a splendid and very promising
title; then the complaints about the multitude and boldness of the
authors, as well as the deceptive titles of the books, will be
steadily, more and more justified.
Rémarques fur
le militaire des Turcs & des Russes; fur la facon de combattre
les prémiers 6? c. for the Georgians, Coschidois, Mainottes,
Montenegrins, Albanois, Chrêtiens Gfecs (tfc. avec Plans par
Mr. de Warnery, Major General. Breslau 1771. 12. large 264. pages.
In the first Heading, he treats of the Military State of the Turks
very nicely. One must allow him minor errors: for instance, in the
beginning, that the dead three Turks were buried only about one foot
deep under the earth, whereas it is nevertheless about two yards:
the Commando in a Turkish Army was not separated, (Wade. 48.) and
the General does indeed hold a Divan, but decides according to his
own judgment; which is only true of a Seraskian. According to his
assertion (page 49.) the Bassa of Runielië would have led the
Turkish army command, if it were in Europe; but the Bassa of
Natolia, if it were in Astë, because these were like the native
SetasBërs. He assures (page 61.) quite, that one counts all
Servants, Merchants, etc. in a Turkish Army, and thus constitutes a
large Army, but that one can consider only the third part as
Soldiers. That these for the rest, (page 6a.) excepting the men in
the service of the Porte, are only administered from the day of
George to Demetrius, according to the old style. — In the
second chapter he judges not bad of the Russian Army, the Fleet and
the character of that Nation. The idea, common to Voltaire (page
142.), that men could not have proceeded from an earlier Pair,
because they were so different in several Provinces, I leave to the
judgment of the readers. — When, in the third Heading, he
speaks of the Georgians, Cossidae, and other peoples, who could take
up arms in favor of the Russians; he expresses the misunderstanding,
as if the greater part of the subjects of the Porte consisted in
Christians of the same Denomination as the Russians. By Asia he
mentions the old Czschis, to which at present Mingrelia, Imirette,
and Guriel are reckoned, of Georgia proper and Armenia; but by
Europe, of the Greeks, Maroons, Albanians, Montenegrinese, in short.
The last Chapter presents the manner of fighting the Turks on nearly
a hundred pages. The whole work is a very good instruction, which no
Officer, I do not mention a General, can do without in the war
against the Turks. But I must not forget that the remarks, very
inappropriate, are ordered in the Text. Description of the City of
Constantinople and of the Bardanellen. (Hoogd.') Berlin, *7?i. 8.
large one and a half pages, without the name of the author. This is
a, according to his confession, drawn together from ïournefort,
Thevenot, Spon and others, and not a bad description. To give
Thevenot a Rem is, according to what I have previously reported of
him, indecent. In the meantime, one rarely remains without misdeeds,
when one draws from even the most certain sources, but has not
oneself been to the place or in the provinces. For example, on page
18 it is said: that an Asper is about three pence, which is much too
high; it is noted that three of such Aspers go to a Para, and 146!
of these to a Dutch Ducat. According to page 25, the Genoese were
still Patrons of the Georgian Church, since they were nevertheless
cast entirely outside the Levant, and had to move there, in trade,
under foreign protection. On page 26, it is stated of the Hungarian,
or German-Imperial, as well as of the Polish Ambassadors, that they
lived in the city of Constantinople: this was so in former times,
but no longer; for now they dwell with the other Ambassadors at
Pera.
These are the
principal Authors, of whose works, as far as they belonged to my
profession, I have set down my judgment, with that impartiality, as
I myself wish, that the readers may pass their judgment on my essay.
END of the SECOND and
LAST PART.
HISTORICAL REPORTS OF
THE GOVERNMENT, CUSTOMS, AND CUSTOMS OF THE OTTOMAN MONARCHY
BY PETER BUSINELLO,
Secretary of State of the Republic of Venice.
PREFACE.
The Author of these
reports, of which I have given a material extract in my work, §.
LIV. by quoting and judging the writers of the eighteenth century,
died in the year 176??, in Venice, and was, in his lifetime,
considered one of the greatest politicians of his time. Formerly he
was Secretary of the Embassy of the Bailo or Venetian Envoy to the
Porte; and on that occasion he collected the materials for this
work, which he sent and appropriated to the then Doge of Venice. The
famous Professor and first Librarian, ??e Bret, at Stuttgart, has
divided it, and made it known in the first and second part of his
Magasin for the use of History. I have looked it over again with an
Italian Manuscript, and changed several things in the notes, but
especially restored the often completely mutilated Turkish words and
names. Otherwise the Text, with the exception of a few minor
improvements, is printed as it was, only the unnecessary dedication,
as well as the repeated transitions from one section to another
being omitted, because they are indicated above each section itself.
STOKHOLM, in March
1778.
D. CHRISTOPH. WILL.
LÜDEKE.
I. INTRODUCTION.
You, Most Illustrious
Prince, have charged me, when I left Venice, to write to you often,
and I have promised you to do so.
I know your noble
curiosity; I know therefore also that you desire essential, and not
small and common things from foreign countries. For what use is
there in the knowledge of the condition, the state, the factories,
the customs, etc., when they are only such things that one finds in
all countries? Since, I now know that you require essential
knowledge; I want to enable you to form a right idea of this
great Empire, which, perhaps, will differ entirely from what one
forms about it in Italy.
I will therefore give
you a description of the origin, the religion, the doctrine, the
customs, and various religious arrangements of the Osmanis. Hereupon
I shall conduct you into the Seraglio, and concerning the
distinction of the people and offices of that same jurisdiction.
Then I shall speak of the Ministry, the variety and prestige of the
Ministers, of the manner of government in the subjected cynical and
united Provinces, of the order in maintaining the law, and of the
Policy in the capital. Then I shall proceed to the State-household,
and distinguish the funds, revenues and State charges, as well as
speak of the Commerce which the subjects and inhabitants of Asia,
Africa and Europe now carry on here. Whereupon the Military State
will follow, which I shall indicate accurately: I shall also treat
of the Artillery, the State of War, and of the Militia. Finally you
will find, what kind of Policy the Ottomans observe in the
government of their own Kingdom; as also, how they regard foreign
Princes, their Ministers, and with what Ceremonies they receive
them; and lastly, what must be observed in the negotiations with
this Court.
If you do not find in
these documents that accuracy which corresponds to this vast Empire;
then permit me to tell you, that the size of the Empire itself makes
a greater accuracy impossible. How can you desire that a Minister,
who, during his Ministry, must employ Interpreters, should know
everything? He learns to know the Nation, with which he stays, from
a certain Ministerial point of view. But of this you may be assured,
that what I write to you is true and credible. It is true, that this
is the usual assurance of every one who writes of a foreign country;
but perhaps this assurance is not always well founded. To convince
you now of my sincerity, I need only assure you that I have not the
least interest in this nation, which could induce me to exalt its
virtues. I have therefore no other motive than pure justice, which
teaches me not to charge it with those faults which it has not, and
not to magnify those which it has. I will therefore not be
one-sided, nor show hostility and prejudice against this nation; and
I will not even blind my place of residence, which otherwise keeps
many writers captive. I will report nothing but what I have either
seen myself, or about which I have many credible witnesses.
II. Of the Founder of
the Mohammedan Religion, and the Motives which moved him to
establish it.
Everyone knows that
Mohammed is the Founder of that Religion which the Osmanis profess.
All writers also agree in this, that Mecca was his birthplace; but
all differ in respect of the nature of his origin, and the Motives
which determined him to set himself up as Legislator.
After that I have, in
this respect, examined many old original writings, which are found
here in the Library of a distinguished Greek; I will now inform you
of what seemed to me most probable in this respect concerning this
fortunate Chief of Army. To know him aright, it must be known, that
Arabia, which, because of its fruitfulness, is called the happy one,
in which also Mecca, the fatherland of Mohammed, lies, was at the
time of his birth, (as it is now,) inhabited by peoples, who were
divided into several Republics. Each Republic, which was called a
Tribe, had at its head or Head, the oldest and most distinguished of
one of the principal Families of which the Republic consisted. The
tribe of which Mohammed was, bore the name of Kureysch, whose
principal Family was called Haschem. This had at that time for Head
Ae'bdal, Mothleb, whose first-born son was called Ae'bdullah, being
Mohammed's Father. This Family dwelt on the coasts of the Red Sea,
and Ae'bdal-Mothleb was Priest in the Temple at Mecca, where the
Idols of the country were worshipped. As Head of the Tribe he was
Prince over these places, and in this capacity he waged wars against
the Persians and Ethiopians; which proves that Mohammed was not, as
many pretend, descended from the lowly common people. His father
died before his grandfather ?? Mohammed's youth caused him to lose
his own rights, when his uncle placed himself in possession of the
sovereignty. In this way Mohammed, who was born to command, found
himself in the sad necessity of going into the service of a rich
widow, Chadiga. The writers are not agreed whether they traded with
camels and mules in Syria, or whether they only had a shop at Mecca.
But however it may be, whether he served as a boy in that shop, or
as a mule-driver; this much is at least certain, that he was in the
service of this Widow; that, afterwards, through her close
intercourse with Mohammed, who had no common strength, she fell in
love with him, and married him, whereby she made him one of the
richest Merchants in Mecca. Mohammed was then thirty years old, but
at the same time subject to epilepsy. He desired that his wife
should not perceive his weakness. His wealth made him ambitious to
reassert his own rights, and to place himself again in that post
which his uncle had taken from him. Intercourse with the Christians
of Egypt, and with the Jews of Judea, whom he had become acquainted
with in his business, had instructed him concerning the variety of
Sects, from which he concluded what a consequence the variety and
zeal of sentiments might have in matters of Religion. On this
resolution he built his own interest, and resolved to become a
Legislator of a new Religion. The circumstances of the time could
not have been more favourable to his purpose. The Arabs were weary
of their old Idolatry, and were falling into a sort of Ungodliness;
therefore Mohammed began to lead a sober and exemplary Life, and
spent most of his time in a few contemplations. When his illness
came upon him; then he told his wife, he fell because he could not
bear the face of Gabriel, who, in God's name, revealed to him many
important things concerning religion. Chadiga, who was either really
deceived, or pretended to be deceived, spread in all houses that her
husband was a prophet, which he had confirmed by his servants, and
by another trusted person, whom he had instructed for that purpose.
When he saw that he had admirers, he began to speak more freely of
his revelations and visions, knowing well that these are the most
powerful means to attract the people.
In the meantime his
uncle, the governor of Mecca, died; and, not being strong enough to
obtain the government, he was obliged to yield to one of his blood
friends, who, on account of Mohammed's designs, became jealous, and
forced him to leave Mecca, and flee to Medina, where the greater
part of the inhabitants, who were Arians, were seduced by his
intrigues, and adhered to him. Seeing his followers daily
increasing, he ceased to prove his new sect by reason, and persuaded
his friends that his doctrine must be extended by force of arms. To
this end he sought to strengthen his own party by alliances, and
married the daughters of the four most important inhabitants of
Medina. With the help of these he began to conquer one tribe after
another until he finally became master of the city of Mecca. But,
because he had wars with the Arabs, and had much reason to fear from
the Christians; he was, as a good politician, anxious to protect
himself against this danger, and concluded with them a solemn
treaty, of which the original was found in the monastery on Mount
Carmel (*), and brought to France, where it is still preserved in
the King's library. According to this treaty he bound himself to
protect the Christians in their Persons, Churches, Monasteries and
Properties, not to disturb the Clergy in their Parishes, never to
compel them by force to renounce their faith, nor to compel the
Monks to give up their Orders, not to destroy any Church, nor to
convert it into a Mosque, not to burden them with greater taxes than
the Mussulmans, to relieve their Ecclesiastical Fathers from all
burdens, not to compel them to perform military services, but rather
to be concerned with their defence, not to compel the Fathers and
Mothers of Christians to marry their daughters to Mussulmans, and,
if a Christian woman married a Mussulman, he would allow her freedom
with regard to her religious practice. He further commands the
Mussulmans not to compel the Christians living in their States to do
slave-services, nor to act tyrannically towards them in any way.
On the other hand,
the Christians, according to this Treaty, bound themselves not to
help an enemy of the Mussulmans, to support him, nor to receive him,
nor to shelter him in their houses, but rather to treat the
Mussulmans well, and to exercise hospitality towards them. —
This Treaty, which Mohammed himself, afterwards, so little followed,
protected him then from danger, and made him accomplish his own
Plan. His hypocrisy and deceit helped him, at last, to the
Sovereignty, to which he stood, having the happiness, so rare for
impostors, to see the progress of his Religion, and to transmit his
Dignity, at his death, to his posterity.
This is the History
of the false Prophet, which I hold among so many to be the most
probable, because it agrees most with the thing itself, and the
nature of Policy.
(*)
This is a mistake: it must be Sinai. Also, the alleged Original is
from the Secretary of the Seraglio in the Library of the King of
France.
III. Of the Religious
Postulates of the Turks.
The law of the Turks
is contained in three books, the first is the Koran, which
prescribes the articles of faith. The second bears the name of
Esfunnet, explaining the traditions of the Prophet, and the
sentiments of the Wise Men. The third treats of the consequences
which may be drawn from the first two. — The Koran was written
by Mohammed himself, who, besides the religious commandments, also
added a rule for civil government. The other two were drawn up by
his four first successors, namely Ebubekr, Omer, Osman, and A'ely.
Also the decisions and decrees of the Chaldeans of Babylonia and
Egypt were considered infallible, because they were teachers and
expounders of the law. But, as their temporal power has diminished,
so has the feeling of their infallibility diminished. — In the
explanation of the law itself there is a great difference between
these Teachers, especially between Omer and Ae'ly, the two
successors of Mohammed, who directly contradict each other, and who
have produced the two Sects hostile to each other, namely Omer the
Ottoman, and Ae'ly the Persian. (*) Here I will speak only of the
religious tenets of Omer's followers, as it is the religion of this
kingdom.
They have only one
article of faith, namely, that there is one God and Mohammed his
Prophet. But, if one would be a good Mohammedan, there are five
practical articles which he must observe, which they call the
fundamental parts of the religion. The first is washing; the second,
prayer repeated five times a day; the third, fasting in Ramasan; the
fourth, the blind observance of the Sfaedaeket, or giving of alms;
the fifth, the pilgrimage to Mecca, when there is no legal
impediment. To these five principal articles are added some others,
which are indeed of a lower class, but nevertheless make him, as we
might say, a sinner who does not observe them. But they are not
observed with much care by the Turks, and are not regarded by many
of their teachers as essential parts of the religion, but as such
things by which men are turned to fulfil the necessary commandments
of the law. Among these are the abstinence from pig meat and wine,
circumcision, and the observance of Friday as a day of devotion.
Concerning each of these Articles of both classes I will tell you
something. I will begin with washing, which is the first necessary
Article for a true Mussulman. Of this there are three kinds. The
first is called Ahdest, by which one prepares oneself for prayer.
This is observed before one goes to the Mosque. The second is called
Guful, and is done by the use of baths, after intercourse with the
other thought, or some other chance at night. The third is called
Thaeharet, and is done after one has done one's business. Of the
first I must tell you a little more, especially since I have not yet
come across any writer who has spoken of it. First they both wash
their hands, and say: "Blessed be God, who created pure water,
and gave it the power of cleansing, and has made our faith
glorious." Then they take water with their right hand into
their mouths three times, saying as they wash: "I pray thee,
Lord my God, to give me to taste of the water which thou didst give
to the Prophet Mohammed in Paradise, which is more fragrant than
balm, whiter than milk, and sweeter than honey, and has the power to
quench the thirst of him that thirsteth for ever. Then they draw
water through their noses, and say: "Give me, O Lord, to smell
the odor of Paradise; let me enjoy it, and let me not taste the
stench of Hell." Then they wash their whole face to the ears
three times, and say: "Cleanse, O Lord, my face, as, on the day
of judgment, the face of your Prophets and all those who will have
obeyed you will be. Then they take water in the flat of their right
hand, and say: "Let me, Lord, on the last day, give the book of
my works into my right hand, which is the hand of the Elect, and
forgive me my crimes. Then they take water, as before, in their left
hand, and say: "Let me not give the book of my Sins from the
left hand or from behind, and do not enter into judgment with me,
because of my crimes. Then they wash their foreheads, saying:
"Receive me, O Lord, with thy mercy, when I shall appear before
thee, and impress upon my head the virtues, and not the vices."
- Then they take water with both hands, wash their ears with the two
thumbs, and say: "Let me, Lord, be of thy servants, who give
ear to what is written in the holy books, and direct themselves
thereto." With the other fingers they wash their necks, and
say: "Free me, Lord, from Hell and the bonds, which one, here,
the neck and feet".
They wash their feet,
without ever failing to do so, at one of the five prayer hours. At
other times it is enough when they touch the right foot with their
fingers, which they always do with the left hand, and say the
following prayer: "Hold me fast, O Lord, and do not let me slip
from the bridge of Hell". They say bridge; because they believe
that a bridge leads to Paradise, under which Hell is, but which is
as narrow and narrow as the cutting part of a knife.
Finally they also
wash the left foot, and close with the following prayer: "Receive,
O Lord, my prayer; forgive me my guilt: accept the offer which I
make to you, that this my prayer may not be unfruitful. These are
the ceremonies of washing, when they prepare to go into the Mosque
and pray there. In the other two washings they do not speak a word.
Now I pass on to
their prayer. The Koran commands that they should pray five times
every twenty-four hours; first at the rising of the sun; second at
noon; third between noon and the setting of the sun; fourth after
the setting of the sun; five and a half hours after midnight. To all
these five times they are exhorted from the Menaret or tower, by
certain appointed men, who chant prayers and pious invitations. They
perform their prayer with an attention and collection of thoughts,
which is worthy to be imitated by the lovers of the true religion.
They so exert their minds, that nothing may distract or distract
them from it; yes, according to their superstition, they go so far
in this respect, that, when either coughing or sneezing disturbs
them in their prayer, they consider themselves obliged to begin the
prayer again from the beginning. Now these prayers are not taken
from the Koran, but from the writings of the four principal
teachers, Ebubekr, Osman, Omer and Ae'ly. In these prayers they make
endless turns and twists of the body. They stretch out their arms,
raise them upwards, fall down, and touch the ground with their
foreheads. The third article concerns fasting and in Ramasan. This
lasts a whole month, which has the same name. I do not believe that
there is a Confession in the world that fasts more strictly. From
the rising of the Sun until its setting they may neither eat nor
drink, nor smell anything; in a word: they may do nothing that
affects one of their five senses. Poor people observe it with the
utmost severity; for the most severe punishments are imposed for the
transgression. It is said that in former times molten lead was
poured into the mouth of a man who had not kept Lent. But whether
people have become wiser in the meantime, or have adopted a
reasonable zeal for religion, I at least, as long as I have been
here, have not yet seen anyone punished for it. I also believe that
this commandment has never been less observed than at present,
especially by people of rank. But, as strict as the mode of life
during this month is during the day, it is just as extravagant at
night. People then go from one house to another; they hold banquets,
and spend whole nights in drinking and revelry. The fasting consists
chiefly in changing day into night, and for the present time,
besides that, it is usually observed only by the common people and
the common people.
The fourth article
prescribed by the Koran is Sfaedaeket or giving alms. By this every
one is obliged, annually, to give a part of a hundred from his
income, to maintain the poor.
But it is difficult
to think, that at least among people of rank, the Police and avarice
would not oppose the strict observance of this commandment. It seems
to me impossible, that avarice would permit someone to deprive
himself of a sum, which in itself can become very considerable.
Rather, prudence advises everyone not to let the true condition of
his wealth be openly known. The fifth article concerns the
pilgrimage to Mecca. The Koran commands this to all who are able to
perform it, unless they have important positions in government or
other legal impediments. The pilgrims usually depart from
Constantinople in the month of May, going to Damascus, to join the
pilgrims from Vaio?? and other Asian countries. Then they join those
who come from Persia, Egypt, and other Ottoman (*) kingdoms, which
amounts to a number of fifty or sixty thousand people every year,
(†) who assemble on a mountain near Mecca, and there make an
offering, consisting in killing some amels, and then distributing
them among the poor. Then they take off their clothes and wrap a
coarse blanket around their bodies, in which clothing they climb the
mountain. — The Great Lord sends, every year, five hundred
Zechines and a Koran covered with gold, as a precious cloth, to
cover Mohammed's grave with. (*) When the new cloth is laid over it;
the old is taken away beforehand, and divided into small pieces
among the Pilgrims, who keep them as Relics.
After that I have
told you as much as I know concerning the principal articles of
their Religion; I now come to the other less important ones.
Circumcision is not prescribed in the Koran, but the Turks observe
it as a custom transmitted to them from their ancestors, and
consider it a necessary sign of a true Believer. It is performed by
a surgeon, without the assistance of a Priest. Many Ceremonies are
associated with it, but which resemble more a Bacchus festival than
that they would be signs of a Religious ceremony. The observance of
Friday has no other cause than convenience and amusement. Women have
more advantage by it than men: for, while pretending to keep that
day holy, they find, under the pretext of bathing, convenient time
to communicate their ideas to each other. - As for eating pig's meat
and drinking wine; I must tell you, that this is a commandment or a
custom, of which now scarcely anything but the name remains. The
Turks call such things Haerem, that is, filthy and disgusting
things. (*) For at present, certainly, more wine is used in
Constantinople than in Venice; and, if I told you, that they use
twice as much, I should say no more than the truth. There is no one
left, then, but a few hypocrites or sharp wits, who are by nature
enemies of the name and all customs of the Christians. These people
still look upon drinking wine with contempt. But among men of rank
there is no one, who does not use wine, and endeavors to have the
best and from the most distant countries in the house. On the other
hand, they use the Liqueurs and Rofolis [Rosolis??] incredibly
strongly, because they believe, that these things have more
resemblance to water; as I can assure you, that I have seen them, at
one time, drink whole cups full, of which we use for drinking water.
Rofolis they give the name of breast-water.
(*)
Instead of Osmansche it should have been Secte der Sinnitessche, ??
of Persian, Secte der Schiiten.
(*)
This must be Mohammedan.
(†)
Their number is much greater. Each particular Caravan?? is almost as
strong.
(*)
But this is not at Mecca, but at Medina.
(*)
Actually, forbidden, unlawful things.
IV. Of the Beyram,
the principal Feast of the Turks; their marriages and divorces; how
far they extend their marriage; and of their moral works.
The Beyram is the
greatest Feast of the Turks, and corresponds to our Easter. It
commences at the moment that the moon is discovered, which follows
the month of Ramasan. It is made known to the people by the sound of
many instruments, and by the firing of the Artillery from the
Seraglio and the suburb of Thöpchaneh, and the Common People
rejoice for the three days that it lasts. On this occasion many
ceremonies take place in the Seraglio. The Grand Lord, at daybreak,
proceeds with all his retinue, in the greatest splendor, to the
Mosque, and having returned he receives the Compliments of the
Vizier, of all the Ministers and Lawyers, who, one after the other,
prostrate themselves at his feet, and say Gianscherif, that is, Hail
to the Prince, (*). The last who compliments the Grand Lord on this
occasion is the Aga of the Janistas. - In these days the Sultans,
locked up in the old Seraglio, have the liberty to visit the Grand
Lord, which happiness also the Sultana's mother and consort, when
they are present, have with the other women. On this day the Grand
Lord has the principal officials of the Empire entertained
magnificently, presents sixteen of them with Furs, and with that the
Ceremony ends. Seventy days after this, which is called the ??roeten
Beyram, follows the other, which is called the small or Kurban, that
??ijer-beyram. On this day the Sultan also rides out with great
state, and goes to the Mosque before he enters it, at the door three
large camels?? are prepared, which, by their beauty and size,
distinguish themselves from others; they are somewhat decorated, and
in some places the moon is painted on them. The Great Lord slays
one, whereupon the others are also slayed. All are distributed among
the people as an alms. Everyone makes, on this day, an offering,
according to his ability, and these lambs are also distributed among
the poor. This offering takes place on the first day; but the joy
and this Feast last, as with the others, three days. Marriage is
held sacred by the Turks, although none of the Ministers of their
Religion take part in the ceremony; for it is only ratified by a
Kadhy or Judge of the place. The Bride is not present at the
ceremony itself, but in her place her Father or one of her Relatives
goes for her to the Kadhy, and attends the ceremony. The Bride is
then conducted to the house of her husband, who in person undresses
her and puts her to bed.
The Turks have a
second kind of marriage, called Kjabin, which is also concluded
before the Kadhy. By means of it a man may marry a woman for a
certain time, and then leave her again, when he has paid the Somme,
fixed by the Contract, and which is always very small. This kind of
marriage is ordained for the benefit of travellers. — The
Turks may marry any woman, of whatever religion she may be, if such
a religion has books written for its benefit. (*) Even the Ennemies
are free to marry, and there are some who have more than one wife.
Polygamy is permitted
by their religion; but according to political laws it is forbidden,
after the example of the legislator Mohammed, to have more than four
wives, because the man is obliged to pay each her own dowry. But, in
order that this law may not take away the freedom to be able to use
women, who, according to them, are given to them by God, they are
free to keep slaves, the number of which has no other limits than
each one's caprice and ability. It is strange, and one sees clearly,
how much first impressions and an old custom with such a people can
do, that the women, because of such a Concubinage, show a jealousy.
- The man is bound, indeed, to admit each of his wives into his bed
once a week; and, if he does not wish to do this, his wife can
complain to the Court, and have him compelled by a Judge. Many such
complaints are also related; but generally they are only made by
people of the lowest kind. People of a higher position know well how
to help themselves, without so much commotion, and in a way more
agreeable to their wives. - The insult for the unchastity of a woman
falls among the Turks not on the man, but on the elders of the
women, who have the displeasure that their daughters are sent home
to them. As for the children; those who are brought into the world
by the woman are considered as children of the Father; but the
children of the Slaves become Slaves of the first-born Son of one
among the women, when otherwise the Father has not made provision
for them in his Testament.
The Sultan is not
obliged to marry, but has the freedom to take as many wives as he
pleases. But it seems to be a rule of state that he may not take a
wife. But I think that the only reason for abstaining from it is to
save the astonishingly great expenses that were incurred in marrying
the former Sultans.
The Turks have two
gates of divorce, which all take place in the presence of the Kadhy.
The first only separates from the bed; the second also separates
completely from the house. The man must pay the woman the sum fixed
in the marriage contract, and the woman has the freedom to marry
whom she pleases. If the man, after the divorce, regrets that he has
divorced his wife, and wishes to marry her again; then he is not
permitted to do so by law, if he does not previously tolerate
another sleeping with his wife in his presence. But it is natural
that there has never been a Turk who has taken a wife back on such a
mocking condition. (*)
The moral deeds of
the Turks consist, mostly, in giving alms to their fellow men. These
extend so far that they build public houses or Chans, for the
convenience of travellers, of which buildings are very expensive,
which have considerable income. To this they also include the
construction of bridges for the convenience of travellers over the
rivers, the water pipes and fountains for the same purpose, the
public hospitals for the care of the sick, the public schools for
the education of children and for their instruction, not only in the
Koran, but also in the Persian and Arabic languages. The most
distinguished Turks seek to perpetuate their name by erecting
Mosques, and on all kinds of aforementioned buildings they are wont
to spend much money, according to their taste. But this part of
Turkish morality is also accompanied by many prejudices and
superstitions. Their love extends even to the dogs they see in the
streets, and to the Camels, which they load less heavily in their
freight from one place to another.
They never throw a
written piece of paper on the ground; indeed many pick it up when
they find it, even when such letters are written on it that they
cannot read, on the ground that such letters, with which one writes
God's name, may not be trampled underfoot. According to this
principle, it was very offensive for a Turk, who saw one of our
Latin Churches, to see inscriptions on gravestones.
The most
praiseworthy, and I would almost say, the most enviable part of
their morality is, certainly, their esteem for, and their trust in
God. (*) In their language one does not know what blasphemy is; and
they never undertake anything without saying, In Sha Allah, that is,
if it pleases God. Thus, even in the most absurd and simple Religion
there is something from which one can derive benefit.
(*)
Should probably be: Indschjahh-Scheryf.
(*)
This is: reads books that contain a Co??te Revealed, such as the
Christian and Jewish.
(*)
Yet it would not be without examples. But how man can moderate this,
one sees after §. ??. page 371. in my description of the
Turkish ??
(*)
This trust in God loses much of its value, prayer, when one thinks
of the absolute predestination believed in by the Turks. According
to this one seems to prove a trust in God, since it is nevertheless
nothing else than this predicate: what happens, that must surely
happen.
V. Of the Religious
Governors among the Turks.
After I have given
you an account of the origin and condition of the Turkish
(Mahometan) Religion; I now come to those who maintain the affairs
of Religion. The Mufti is the Head and Oracle of Religion and the
law, consequently the highest Priest. His choice depends solely and
exclusively on the Great Lord, who usually appoints men of standing,
understanding and proven integrity. The decrees of the Mufti are as
many laws for all Judges, but not for the Prince, who, when he asks
him about a matter, and does not receive an answer that pleases him,
takes away his dignity as well as his infallibility, and appoints in
his place another Oracle, who solves the difficulties in a way that
is more suitable to his wishes. Nevertheless, the Sultans always
have great respect for the Mufti, and seldom oppose his decisions.
These always end with the expression: God knows what is better. When
the Sultan writes to the Mufti; then he uses the following words:
"To you, Effad, who are the wisest of all the Wise, instructed
in all knowledge, the most excellent of all the Excellent; who
abstain from unlawful things; who are the source of virtue and true
knowledge, and the heir of the Prophetic and Apostolic Doctrine; you
solve the questions of faith; you make known the Articles of true
faith; you are the key to the treasures of truth, the light in
doubtful Allegories; you are strengthened with the grace of the
supreme Guide and Lawgiver of mankind; the great God eternalize your
virtues!"
When a Mufti is
elected; then the Grand Vizier calls him to the Seraglio, appoints
him himself to his dignity, and has him put on a fur coat, which is
lined with white cloth; on which he has a handkerchief with a
thousand piastres put in his hand. Then the Mufti goes to the house
of the Vizier, who receives him at the stairs, gives him the higher
hand, and likewise clothes him with a fur coat, but lined with green
cloth, and has rich presents brought to the house on top of it. The
Sultan allots him, daily, two thousand Aspers, which amounts to
about four and a half Zechines of our Venetian money. He has no
other fixed income; but, as he has the right to grant many offices
to the Imperial Mosques, and all promotions of the lawyers must pass
through his hands, he draws a considerable income from it. In former
times his income was about fifty thousand lion dollars; but now,
when avarice and luxury supplant all strict and scrupulous honesty,
I believe that the income of this highest priest amounts to four
times as much. The magnificent house in which the present Mufti
lives, and the numerous court which he keeps, testify to this. His
physician, who has visited his sick wives in her haerem, assured me
that he has about sixty of them. For the rest, this is the only
dignity by which, even if the person falls into disgrace, his goods
are not yet declared confiscated. What the Mufti possesses is
considered something sacred, and cannot therefore be touched, even
if he is guilty of a crime of state. Now since everything is in his
Children, it follows that a House which has had a Mufti, always
remains a large and wealthy Family.
This exalted Dignity
is followed by that of a Kadhy Leschkjer. Of these there are two,
one from Rumelia, and one from Natolia. Their first destiny was to
judge the legal cases of the Soldiers, one in Asia, the other in
Europe. But now their right extends over all kinds of Persons; they
hear and decide legal cases of all kinds. This Dignity is the step
to the highest Priesthood.
Then follows the so
considerable Dignity of a Mula. Of these there are two kinds. Those
of the first class have, daily, five hundred Aspers, and the
jurisdiction of a Bassa of three Horsetails. The Kadhy in the cities
depend on them. Those of the second class are the principal Judges
in the smallest Provinces; and, as they have only Kadhy of small
places and poor towns under them, they have consequently only
moderate incomes. From the first class are usually drawn the
Kadhy-Leschkjer, consequently such Persons as can attain the Dignity
of a Mufti. These Mula and Kadhy, who are called men of the law
(Ué'lema), are, like the Mufti, counted among the Religious
Governors. For, considering that the civil law as well as the
Religion comes from their Prophet, the Turks never separate these
two classes. The College of the Mula is held in great esteem, and is
also treated with extraordinary respect by the Monarch himself. As
they are the interpreters of Religion and the Law; Thus, in previous
times, many examples have been seen that they, because of emotional
and religious difficulties,are always prepared to be supported in
their decisions, even when the reason is the deposition of the
Monarch.
Since they know well
how strong this impression is; thus they will always know how to
gain respect from the people and the Monarch. The principal
overseers of the Mosques, who are called Imam, are chosen by the
first Visier. (*) The people of their wisdom must recommend them to
the first Minister, who then appoints them by his command, without
needing any other Character or Order to perform their office. They
must be able to read the Koran, and have observed the ministry of
those who from the Towers call the people, with a loud voice, to
prayer. The Mufti has no jurisdiction over them, because each of
them is independent in the government of his district, but in civil
and capital matters they are all subject to the usual Authorities.
(†)
Among the
ecclesiastical Persons one may also count the Emyrs, who distinguish
themselves from the other Turks by the green Turban, which is the
color of the Prophet. Emyrs are those who descend from the Prophet
himself, and are divided into an infinite number. This right of
descent is possessed both from the Fathers and Mothers. For when an
Emyr marries someone who is not an Emyr; then the children born from
this marriage have the privilege of the Emyrate, which they
propagate to all their Children, both of the male and female kind.
These Emyrs have their Chief, who is called Nakyl-al-Efchraf. His
principal work is to increase the number of the Emyrs as much as
possible; wherefore he enrolls all those as Emyrs who can prove
their descent from Mohammed in any way. Their Chief has an
indefinite power over them; but never lets them be punished openly,
to prevent scandal, and to keep their thought in good esteem with
the people. He has a Governor, who bears the name of Je Umdar, and
has the right to carry the Prophet's banner on all solemn occasions,
as often as the Sultan thinks fit to take it into the field.
The Emyrs are capable
of all offices, and can attain to the highest dignities of the
Empire. They have very excellent privileges, among which the most
remarkable is, that they may not be offended or insulted, without
the guilty one raising his hand. But the Turks soon devised means to
divide this privilege: for if disputes arise, or they find an Emyr
drunk, they take from him the green turban, which is the sign of the
Emyrate, and afterwards, without any gravity, they pass him through
clearly. The greater part of those who carry on the slave trade are
of this kind. For this, besides their innate hatred of Christians,
they were also in esteem because in obeying the commandments they
were the most zealous Mohammedans, and in keeping their promises and
treaties the most honest Turks. But, I can assure you, that it is
now quite the reverse. For the Emyrs excel others in the greatest
vices of lust and drunkenness.
(*)
If this may happen here and there, it does not happen always.
(*)
This is, by far, not to be expected of all Mosques.
(†)
One should remember from the foregoing that the actual Judges are
ecclesiastical and civil Persons alike.
VI. Of the Monastic
Orders among the Turks.
The Turks have also,
after the example of many Christians, a kind of Monasteries; in
which Ecclesiastical Persons live. I have taken much pains to
discover, when and how such an arrangement arose. If one speaks with
these Monks themselves; then they tell one such extraordinary and
fabulous things about this, that, whoever has the slightest
understanding, cannot possibly believe it. What they say, is also so
contradictory, that it appears to be untrue.
Some of them assert,
that the Orders of the Dervish, were ordained and instituted by
their Lawgiver himself; others attribute it to his four Disciples;
still others to a very recent origin. Some believe that he was
charged, in a trance of the first Founders of the Mohammedan faith,
by a voice from God himself; others will that he was presented to
the Disciples and Descendants of Mohammed, in a trance, by their
Prophet himself, as in a picture. Others still bring forward more
absurd things, which are not worthy of being quoted. The most
probable thing I have been able to ascertain concerning it, is this:
that the Monastic Orders arose under the reign of Orchan. This
warlike and fortunate Emperor conquered many Kingdoms; extended his
dominion almost over the whole of Nato, and established his Imperial
Seat at Bursa. Then, to give a witness of his gratitude to God and
his Prophet, he appointed Persons, who, according to established
rules, said prayers, and instructed the newly conquered peoples in
the Religion. It is said that for this purpose he made use of two
Persons, who had the reputation of pious at his Court, the name of
one being Nackschbendy, and that of the other Chaelwety. The first
had as pupils Ebrbuhar and Mewlana; and the last six others, Kadry,
Bektasch, Herevy, Edhemy, Kalendery, and Nimetulahy. All these
founded a special Order according to certain obligations and
Methods. It is difficult to give a true description of their
Doctrine, customs, and Monasteries: but I will say something about
it. The Mewelewites, founded by Mewlana, have their principal
Monastery at Kogni, consisting of four hundred (*) Monks. On this
Monastery depend all others of these Orders, and even that at
Constantinople. They are called Dervish; (†) and I was
assured that they have the greatest respect for their Superiors,
before whom they never appear otherwise than with their hands on
their breasts, with downcast eyes, and with their heads bent
forward. They wear a shirt of coarse linen, a robe of dark wool, a
surcoat of white wool, and always go with their breasts and feet
bare. On their heads they wear a kind of round and long caps of
camel's hair, and gird themselves with a leathern belt. They
generally have a rosary in their hands, and make their prayers
according to its beads, and repeat the name of God. Except the fast
of Ramazan, they fast every Thursday. On Tuesdays and Fridays the
Superior of the Monastery preaches a sermon, in explanation of the
Koran and other books of the Teachers of the Mohammedan religion.
When this is finished, they make a deep bow to their Superiors, and,
accompanied by a symphony of instruments, they turn about with such
a rapidity that one can no longer distinguish their faces, and with
such grace that they follow in a certain respect the tone of the
instruments. As soon as these cease, they also cease to whirl
themselves about, and it is wonderful that after whirling about,
which may have lasted at least an hour (*), they do not finally
become quite intoxicated. That much does custom; for after this they
practice from their childhood, after the example of Mewlana, their
Founder, of whom they tell the fable, that he had whirled about in
this manner for a fortnight together, without taking the least food,
and that he fell into a trance, and had apparitions and revelations,
which moved him to found these Orders. These Dervish have
Monasteries in all the considerable cities of Turkey, where they
receive all the pilgrims of their Orders, and all the Turkish Monks.
For no one travels more in all the Mohammedan countries than they.
All these Dervish use Opium in great abundance, to which they
gradually become accustomed, and at last bring it so far, that there
was not one among us, who, without fainting, could eat but the
fourth part of it. After they fall asleep by this, they lie as if
intoxicated, and become aware in their Mind of a certain joy, but
without order and reason. Upon this they remain senseless, which
they call a rapture, saying, that their Founder brought it about by
such means. Now they also accomplish such things by wine, noting
that no one in Turkey commits greater excess in wine, than the
Dervish.
Monks of the Orders
of Honour fast on Mondays and Fridays, and with such strictness that
they even abstain from smelling. They are the strictest in Morals,
and constantly occupy themselves with speculations. But nevertheless
they are held heretics, because they say that the journey to Mecca
is not necessary for salvation. These are the two Orders of
Nachsci-ibendy.
Among the six Orders
that came from Chaelwet, the most important are those that Kadrv
founded. The Founder of this Order, it is said, lived very
virtuously and moderately. At present the Pilgrims still make
pilgrimages to his grave, which lies in the region of Baghdad.
According to their Order's rule, which rests entirely on moderation,
none of them may eat more food during the day than eight Ours
weighed by us (*) Every Tuesday they spend the greater part of the
night in turning themselves round to the sound of a small drum, and
in constantly repeating the word Hajji, that is, the lively, a
property which they attribute to God. They follow this Ceremony with
such vehemence that often the blood runs from their mouths, and
their breath fails them. They always go barefoot, and never shave.
They also say a kind of prayer, which they listen to each other in
the ear. - Marriage is not forbidden to them; but in such a case
they must live in a house, and may only go to the Monastery at the
time of prayer. These Orders also often produce delights through
Opium and wine.
The Herewites have
the giving of alms as a rule of the Order. But they extend this love
to animals, and one of their greatest cares is that they take care
of the dogs that run in the streets. They take a vow of poverty, and
boast that the Founder of their Order was very knowledgeable in
chemistry. Of these Orders, most are found in Baghdad, Cairo, and in
the city of Bursa, where he was founded.
Ibrahim Edhemy was an
Abyssinian by birth, and it is said that he led a very strict,
religious, and edifying Life. His disciples tried to follow him, and
their institution has preaching as its aim. This Order is not in
Constantinople, but flourishes mainly in the Persian Empire.
Calendar is called the great Saint, because of the holiness of his
Life. It is said that he went bareheaded, completely naked, covered
only with the skin of a wild animal. His disciples, on the other
hand, live quite differently, banishing all kinds of abstinence and
melancholy. They say, when God lets them live a day, that He does so
so that man may have use of it; now the use that one can have of it,
is this, that one may make good use of it. On this account they
often say: "Today is for us; tomorrow will be for him who will
live, and he may enjoy it." They make no distinction between a
Mosque and a Pub; and maintain as an article of faith, that one
serves God just as well by using one's creatures as by abstinence
and a strict way of life. Nimetulahy founded another Order, which
observes no abstinence. This Order consists only in the monks
singing praises to God in Arabic verses. The probationary period
before one is accepted is the most severe; for they lock up a novice
for 40 days in a room, and give him only 24 drachmas of food per day
for his food, after which probation he is received into the Orders.
Bekïasch, the
sixth Pupil of Chaelwety is the last among all the founders of the
Orders. He was the first Imam with the army of Sultan Murad I in his
famous campaigns. A large number of Janissaries accept his Teaching,
according to which they are exempted from observing prayer, as a
thing not necessary for salvation. This Order easily finds a
following among the Soldiers, who have little inclination for a
religious Life and prayer. This Legislator is accused of having
extended the stupid sins among the Turks.
Besides these eight
Orders, there are many others in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt, of which
many traceless things are told. But, because I have not seen them,
and have not been able to obtain any real reports from them, on
which one can rely; I will not speak of them either, so much the
more, as, if I wanted to write something about them, I would have to
report nothing but annoyances and traceless things.
(*)
There is no fixed and definite number.
(†)
This name is borne by the Monks of all Orders.
(*)
When I saw it, it did not last a full half hour.
(*)
Perhaps this should only be understood of the time of their trial
and acceptance into the Orders.
VII. Of the Mosques,
their Revenues and Benefits.
The most magnificent
buildings that one sees in the countries of the Turks are the
Mosques. (*) They all have almost the same figure, a Dome, and on
the side a Menaret or tower, but some have four or more, which give
the Mosques a great ornament. These as well as the towers are
covered with lead. Some of them bear the name of Imperial Mosques,
and these are the richest. The cities of Bursa, Adrianople and
Constantinople, where the Emperors had their Seats, have Mosques of
this kind. The Kislar-Aga, or Chief of the Black Slits, and Chief
Overseer of the Sultan's Wife, has also the Superintendence of the
Imperial Mosques, which bring him large sums, because the granting
of places in them depends on him. In the city of Constantinople
there are ten such Mosques, first, Santa Sophia, a Church formerly
built by the Emperor ??fufiiniaus; then the Mosque of Sultan
Muhammid, which took Constantinople; third, the Mosque of Sultan
Bajsyd; (Bajazet,) fourth, Sultan Se'lym's Mosque; fifth, Sultan
Suleyman's (Soliman's) Mosque; sixth, the Mosque of Schah-Sadeh,
that is, of the Sultan's Son; seventh, Sultan Achmed's Mosque;
furthermore one, that a Sultana, and then two more, which the
mothers of the Sultans have had built.
The Mosque of S.
Sophia surpasses in splendor and wealth the income of all the
others. I have been assured that its income, annually, at present,
amounts to more than 100 thousand Zechines, which it draws all from
buildings and rents within the City of Constantinople. The Sultan
himself pays it, annually, one thousand and one Aspers a day for the
ground, on which a part of the Seraglio is built, which depends on
this Church, and in the time of the Greeks belonged to its environs.
The exterior of this building was magnificent before them, but is
now defaced and spoiled. The Turkish Emperors have had some Prayer
and similar Chapels built around that Church, in which are the
burial places of the Imperial Family. In these Chapels lamps burn
continually, and men are paid there, who must pray there for their
souls. At certain hours, daily, alms are distributed among the poor.
— Some of these Imperial Mosques have certain privileges, to
instruct the youth in the law; there are also Hospitals for the
sick, and dwellings for strangers and Pilgrims. There are even some,
which have Kitchens, where they cook for the Poor. Many have their
income from certain lands, villages, and entire Provinces. The
inhabitants of such places have extraordinary privileges, chiefly
that they are exempt from the quartering of troops, military
services, and oppressions of the Bassas, since they depend solely on
the Kislar-Aga. The Mosques, founded by private persons, have not
these privileges, and may not draw any income from lands. All their
income consists therefore in interest, which amounts to eighteen out
of a hundred per year; a privilege which is only allowed to the
Mosques and the Wise, because otherwise, according to the Mohammedan
law, on pain of losing the Capital, one may not give money on
Interest. All Mosques have something which attracts the attention of
foreigners. Everywhere they are so rich in pillars of rare Marble,
that one will hardly find such a large number elsewhere. Among these
Mosques I must say something in particular about one, which the
Turks call Imbrahor-Dsthami?? that is, Mosque of the Chief
Stablemaster. It was dedicated to St. Matthias, and, if I am
correct, the first building of Constantine at Constantinople, and
his Imperial Chapel. Two rows of pillars divide it into three
sections; each pillar has two and a half ells in circumference, and
a length of three men. They are of very beautiful old green, and
have a capital of Greek marble, which is so finely carved, that it
was even in wood worthy of admiration. There are 28 pillars. Many of
the second row were taken away, and used for the buildings of the
Seraglio. Fourteen are still below, and remain a precious monument
of the ancient splendor.
(*)
The word Moschee (Mosque) originates from the Persian word,
Musekkju. Mesdschjia is the name of such Temples, where daily,
raaaf?? Dschjaw?? of that which is done in the solemn Friday worship
service.
VIII. Of the
divisions in the Mohammedan Religion, and the two Sects, of Omer,
which the Turks follow, and of Ae'ly, which the Persians follow.
The Mohammedan
Religion is one of those which has the most Sects. The common
opinion counts seventy-two of them. But I believe there are more.
For almost every Turk, with whom one has any conversation, betrays
some diversity in the Religion. I will here speak only of a few of
the principal ones, because it is impossible to get an account of
them all. The two Sects which differ most from each other, and which
bear the greatest hatred to each other, are the Sect of Omer, which
the Turks follow, and of Ae'ly, which the Persians follow.
It is almost
incredible how much these two Sects hate each other. I have often
looked into the matter, spoken to many of them, and endeavored, if
possible, to obtain an accurate account, so as to discover not only
the difference between them, but also the real motive of such a
violent hatred. But I have been unable to obtain anything certain of
it; wherefore I will give you some thoughts on the subject. I
consider it very natural that such an ingrained and violent hatred
should have a very remote origin, and that one must consequently go
back to the times of the Lawgivers. I have already told you that
Omer and Aely were two of Mohammed's four disciples. It is also
known that Mohammed appointed this Aely as his successor and heir.
Now when he was then in Arabia; 20 In his absence the other three
united to exclude him from that place to which he was destined.
Ebubekr, by the force of arms, succeeded to a post which Omer
received after his death. When Omer took over the place of
commander-in-chief, and kept Aely in constant oppression with an
armed hand, he could neither resist nor defend his own rights. As
long as Omer reigned, Aely remained in Arabia, and showed to the eye
such esteem as may be expected from a man who is unable to avenge
himself. But by the succession of nature, which, through lack of
strength, reveals its violence in words, he sought to make his enemy
feel sorry. Namely, he composed explanations of the Koran, mixing
among them such doctrines as were contrary to Omer's doctrine. In
this he had the political purpose of attracting to himself a greater
number of adherents, while he convinced his friends that Omer was no
true disciple of Mahomet, but a heretic. Both rivals gave each other
this name in turn, and when, after Omer, Ae'ly became the supreme
head of the religion, he had the more power to extend his doctrine.
He also extended it, in effect, throughout all Persia and all the
provinces dependent on that empire. After this extension, the sect
of Ae'ly opposed that of Omer; each remained obstinate in his
opinion; the disputes increased, caused much bloodshed, and continue
in our own times. This I hold to be the true origin of the so
far-reaching hatred between these two Sects. Now I will say
something more about the difference between them. This consists
chiefly in the Hierarchy, especially as regards the Supreme Head of
Religion. For the Turks accept the Mufti of Constantinople, the
Persians on the contrary that of Persia, as their Supreme Head.
Besides this difference concerning the Heads of Religion, the Turks
ascribe many Heresies to the Persians. The first is this: that they
reject the three great Teachers of the Laws of Mohammed, Eubekr,
Osman, and Omer; further, that they do not permit the washing of
bare feet; that they use the green colour, which is the colour of
Mohammed's banner, only for their shoes and clothes; that they eat
all kinds of meat, and drink wine, without any heaviness; that they
do not consider it a sin when more than one man has to do with one
woman. (*) — From this the Turks draw the conclusion, which
they maintain as an article of faith, that a Persian not only cannot
be saved, but also cannot convert. This prejudice goes so far that
in the Seraglio, where children of all denominations and nations are
accepted, no Persian is accepted, because they consider it
absolutely impossible that he can become a good believer. When
Sultan Murac conquered Babylon, he had all the Korans and religious
books collected, and locked up in the Seraglio of Constantinople,
forbidding at the same time, under penalty of a curse, to read them.
Now I must tell you another peculiar prejudice, which prevails among
the Turks, and which they hold as certain as their creed, viz., that
the souls of the Hebrews (Jews) after their death are changed into
Asses, which carry the souls of the Persians to Hell. Nay, they
maintain, that a true Mohammedan acquires as much merit for himself
by killing a Persian, as by killing five Christians.
Man falls into such
tracelessness, when he judges matters of faith according to his
passions alone. One hears many other extravagances in this regard
among the common people; but I only write that no, otherwise
sensible people, and true Muslim (that is, Sunni) clergymen accept.
(*)
My manuscript adds: "finally they state, that one may steal a
country of the Sunnis, and also rob their women naked, and make them
slaves".
IX.
Of other Sects among the Turks. I now proceed to the other
Sects, which are very numerous in the Mohammedan Religion.
The Turks regard four Sects as orthodox, namely those of
Hanysch, of Schast??, of Meligs, and of Hanbaly.
Those of Hanysch are followed by the Turks, Tartars, and
Usbekens. The Sect of Schafiy is
followed by most Arabs; that of Meligk
by all Africans, especially Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers.
The Sect of Hanbaly has only a few Arabs as adherents.
These four Sects are regarded as orthodox, and differ in
almost nothing, except in respect of the Teacher, after whom they
bear the name. (*) Of the heretical
Sects I will only mention to you a few of the most important.
A certain Alassan put a question to his own Teacher, and gave
his opinion, without expecting an answer. He
called himself Mi??tafalite, which with us signifies a Separatist,
because he separated himself from all others.
— He formed a Sect, and took the name of a defender of
God's Unity and Justice. But his
Disciples are not even agreed in the ideas of God's Unity and
Justice, but have rather divided themselves into twenty-two distinct
Sects. One of these, called the
Hajethytic Sect, believes that the Messiah was eternal, and became a
man, as the Christians believe. They
have therefore added an Article to their creed, that Christ will
come at the last day, and judge the world.
They also use the words, Messiah and Christ,
indiscriminately. — Another Sect
of these (*) maintains that the Koran was nothing else than a Copy
which Mohammed had stolen from the Original, which God Himself had
written, and which had remained in the Celestial Library. The Sect
which chiefly opposes that of the Mu'tafalites is that of the
Sphephatites. They admit eternal
properties in God; but are so ignorant,
that they say, He has bodily senses and organs;
this they assert very obstinately, and appeal to the Holy
Scripture itself, in which they literally take and understand the
passages which represent God on a Throne, and ascribe to Him wrath
against sinners, etc. The Sect of the Kadarites is equally
unreasonable. They deny God's
commandments, Predestination, and attribute to man a free Will, from
which all good and evil that he does proceeds, and consequently that
nothing, whether or not deserved by God, must be derived. The Sect
of the Djibbaryjites stands directly against this.
They maintain that man is guided by a higher Being, and that
man's Will and actions are only means to enlighten the will of this
Being; that man's actions proceed from
a natural principle, just as water flows away, a river swells, and
heavy bodies fall, according to natural causes.
The most serious defender of the Mohammedanism is the Sect of
the Murdschjytes, who maintain that, just as the good works of the
Infidels never work their Salvation, so also the evil works and the
Sins of the Mussulmans can never cause them to perish. The Sect of
the Waeydites contradicts the aforementioned, and maintains that a
Mussulman, for serious sins, can be damned, just as an Infidel, but
with this distinction, that he will not be tortured so cruelly as
this one. In this great diversity of
sentiments in so important a matter, the Turks adopt the opinion, as
most agreeable to their faith, that the greatest sinner, after his
death, if he has done no penance, is left to the mercy of God, and
that man, through the mediation of Mohammed, after he has suffered
some punishment from him for his sins, can be received into
Paradise. (*) For this reason also the
Turks pray for the dead. The Sect of the Scythians prevails very
strongly in Persia. They even place
Ae'ly above Mohammed, and assert that Ae'ly alone had the gift of
prophecy, received his instruction and the mysteries of religion
from God's own mouth, and they expect, like the Jews, that their
Prophet Ae'ly will return in the clouds.
Against these the Khawaridschites oppose themselves, who
maintain that no man has ever been a Prophet of God, and that God
has never sent anyone into this world with an infallible power, and
that this was not necessary when a new Religion had to be
established; but if this were
necessary, God would not have made use of any man or place. The
Seydytes maintain that God had to send a Prophet to the Persians,
who should utterly extirpate the memory of Mohammed's Religion.
They say that the Believers will see God in the other world
as we see the Sun in this; which runs
counter to the Koran, which teaches that God is seen no more in the
other than in this world. Another Sect maintains that man, even in
this
e world, can come to
a perfect knowledge of God, when he first knows himself perfectly.
This bears the name of the Sect of Mae'hmites. Others, who are
called Medfichu??n, say, that even an imperfect knowledge of God is
sufficient for Salvation.
The Fabaphaisi (*) do
not allow that God knows the future. They say, just as a Prince
governs his State, so God governs the world, and adjusts himself to
the circumstances, while he daily gains more experience. It is
remarkable, that in all these Sects no novelty has arisen either in
the five practical articles, or in those articles of faith, which
constitute the Essence of the Mohammedan Religion. But in recent
times other Sects and sentiments have arisen, which may well have
dangerous consequences for their Religion and the State.
The
Tschop-Meszyhhytes, or followers of the Messiah, are a Confession of
this kind. They hold that Christ is God and the Savior of the world.
Men of rank, the most cultured Men, and a great part of those who
come from the Seraglio, are of this opinion. This has produced a
sort of proverb among the Turks, because, when they wish to praise
someone, in one word, as an honest man, they say to him: you are as
courteous and cultured as a Servant of the Messiah.
The Kadhyphadehites
take great care of the dead; pray much for them, even going to the
graves, where they cry to the dead, they may remember that there is
but one God and one Prophet.
The greater part of
the people is possessed with this prejudice. Some of this Sect make
a strange mixture of Christianity with the Mohammedan faith, saying:
that Mohammed is the
Spirit, the Comforter, whom God promised to send. This Sect has an
uncommon aversion to images. (*)
The Bektaschites
follow all the superstitions of the Mohammedan law very closely; but
they deny God all attributes, saying, that, as God is an
incomprehensible and infinite Being, it is too bold for the Spirit,
finite for man, to ascribe to him the attribute of mercy. In
practice the followers of this S??le foster another error, although
it seems to be accompanied by an aversion to nature. The nearest
Blood Friends mingle among themselves, without excluding the
Children, under the vain pretext that whoever has planted a vineyard
or a tree, has also the right to eat of its fruits.
Another Sect I
consider to be much more dangerous to the State. (†) It is
not altogether unknown in Constantinople, but prevails, chiefly, in
the Astatic Provinces, and most of all in Me??ia. They are in a
certain respect idolaters, and are therefore opposed to the true
Mohammedans, who make it an honour to be enemies and exterminators
of idolatry. They attribute a Deity to the Sun and Moon, because of
the influences that these Planets have on the creatures. They are
convinced of the immortality of the soul (*), but nevertheless
remain idolaters, and are not at all vengeful, because they regard
the insults done to them as natural effects of the Heavenly
influences: a feeling that makes them regard the most hideous things
with indifference, just as people endure cold and heat. When a false
doctrine makes so much impression on unbelievers; then we must be
ashamed that the holy lessons of our law do not produce the same
effect in us.
The Turks also have
their Pythagoreans. This sect bears the name of Munafichites among
them. They believe in the transmigration of souls, and therefore
cannot bear an image of a living creature. (†) Concerning
this they bring such traceless things to light, that one would
consider it impossible, how an intelligent Being could think so. And
yet they are the most numerous among all Sects.
In a certain respect
there are also Gartesians: they are called Hayretites. Their first
fundamental principle is, to doubt everything, and to establish
nothing. They also mix something Pyrrhonian with it. For when they
speak of a matter in dispute, they usually say: God knows it, and,
this is unknown to us. These fundamental principles make them
flexible in all things. Wherefore people of that Sect can easily
attain the dignity of a Mufti. For they gladly regulate their
decisions according to the will of the Court, which is a necessary
characteristic, to attain that Dignity. Yet they observe the
ceremonies of the Mohammedan religion with the utmost strictness.
The Sect of the
Ishramites I have reserved for the last, because I give it
precedence over all others. A great part of the lawyers, and
especially of the Imams of the Imperial Mosques, are of this Sect,
which is entirely Platonic, and has exalted ideas of the Godhead.
They believe in the unity of God, and do not deny the Trinity; but
they regard it as a number, proceeding from the unity. They allow
the Koran, so far as it agrees with their grounds, but the rest they
reject as something that is simple and unreasonable. They teach that
one cannot be loved by God, without loving his neighbour, which
makes them very compassionate towards the poor, and friendly and
charitable towards strangers. They speak with much more freedom,
than all other Mahoganyans, living sincerely, without harshness.
They are above all others for an honest and agreeable intercourse.
They do not so much despise and shun Christians, but rather regard
them as blind, and therefore pray to God that He will enlighten them
to the true faith, which they sometimes say to a person as a
courtesy, and as a proof of their good heart, as I have had to hear
more than once. Besides all these Sects, there are innumerable
others, of which I will not speak, because I cannot speak of them
otherwise than with confusion. However, to form an idea of it,
I must observe, that innumerable sentiments have crept into the
Mohammedans, from the Greeks, by means of their ancient
Philosophers. Other errors have their origin from the Muscovites,
Georgians, and others. For, when these peoples converted to the
Mohammedan religion, they all brought something of their faith with
them. From which you can judge how many sects must have arisen among
the Mohammedans, and what a mixture their religion is.
(*)
Regarding these and the following facts, see the Lasten na, in the
description of the Turkish Empire, against page 344. (Overview)
(*)
These are the Tsiten or Meidarites.
(*)
This proposition is unfounded. Businello, who has often, and
especially in this section Ricaut qit?? written, or compiled, has
misunderstood this, because he says thus: "the deceased sinner
must be left to God's Will, either to be punished for his crimes, or
to obtain forgiveness because of Mohammed's past".
(*)
In the French translation of Ricaut they are called Jabvakites, but
in my Italian manuscript of Euhneuo Se??jajti. Whatever I have asked
or checked about this, I have not been able to find out anything
further.
(*)
This is what all true Mahometans do without exception.
(†)
My Italian manuscript calls them ??. Per? are they the ??
(*)
My manuscript adds little to it: and so it must be according to
Rïcalt.
(†)
My Italian manuscript has, here, certainly better, and therefore
Aachten no living animal".
X. Of the Unbelief of
the Turks.
After having spoken
so extensively of the Religion of the Turks, I must now tell you
something of their unbelief, in order that you may see how far
Ungodliness has spread in this country. I can assure you that it has
penetrated even into the most secret rooms of the Seraglio. The
Bassas of the Empire and the places at Court are likewise infected
with it.
It is said that the
origin of this comes from Sultan Murad, (*) who, as a greedy Prince,
was pleased to see his subjects break all ties of Religion, and
plunder the Provinces, in order that he might enrich himself the
easier with their booty, when he had them put to death, under the
guise of justice, as a punishment for their extortions. But, leaving
this aside, it is certain that not only Deisiery?? but also
Ungodliness has now greatly expanded among the Osmani. Very many
profess this freely, without shame or hesitation. They deny the
Godhead, acknowledging nothing but Nature. By Nature they understand
the internal principle of every Being, which arranges, regulates and
guides all things that we see. From this principle, the Sun, moon
and stars have with them their origin and their motion; from this it
comes that man has the power to rise up, to bow down, and to grow
like plants. Their chief proof for such a detestable Doctrine is a
fallacy. They say: there is either no God, or he is not as wise as
our Teachers themselves assert; for he would never have placed such
men as we are in the world, who are enemies of his Existence, and
laugh at his Godhead. Either there is no God, or, if there is one,
he is not wise, and he is not that perfect Being, as we represent
him to be. The great multitude of apostate Christians have spread
this so foul poison, and their uncivil deceits have easily made an
impression on a people, who are above all others in the knowledge of
Religion. Wherefore this godless Doctrine has also taken strong
roots among the lawyers. These godless among the Turks give
themselves the name of Muszerrin, which means something like men,
who possess the Secret. Those who are attached to this delusion,
take great pains to show themselves courteous and hospitable towards
strangers, to speak freely, and to conform to the prevailing vices,
through which they easily find entrance among men.
Besides this Plague,
which infects the Mohammedan Religion, I must tell you, that in no
Denomination do so many people doubt the truth of their Religion, as
the Turks do theirs. Now, through intercourse with Foreigners, they
have become somewhat more civilized; they have acquired more
insights, and thus learned to think, and to seek the truth.
Just as their
Religion, in reality, is nothing else than a collection of ideas,
through which one seeks to promote the welfare of the State, rather
than true virtue; so they now begin to investigate this fundamental
principle, and from this knowledge innumerable doubts arise among
them. The learned Turks are rare, with whom one would not, when one
speaks with them about matters of religion, notice some heaviness
and uncertainty in their imagination, which, in their faith, does
not allow them any stability. I have made this observation with
pleasure, because this may be a fundamental principle, which, in
time, may do this Empire great harm.
(*)
Probably the fourth of that name.
XI. The Religion of
the Turks rests solely on political views, and is judged quite
agreeably with the State's interest.
That the Mohammedan
Religion has its origin solely in Policy, and is founded solely on
political views, is so evident, that I need not first prove it at
length. Then, having told you what I have found remarkable in this
respect, I must nevertheless tell you something more in proof of
this truth, in order subsequently to unfold the fundamental
principles of the Turks, according to which they maintain and extend
it, because it is exceptionally useful to their political views.
When from the history
concerning the Founder of this Religion, on the one hand, the
simplicity and wickedness of an uncivilized Legislator appears; so I
believe, that on the other hand, one cannot deny his policy. In
fact, as in his rules there is nothing that can lead to true virtue,
as to the source of salvation, so it seems to me rather that
everything is meant for the great purpose, which he had proposed to
himself, to set himself up as sovereign, and to lay the ground for a
kingdom, which could become fruitful.
If one goes to the
contents of Mohammed's religion in general, then one sees, that its
first aim was to attract the people. He left the examples of all the
religions that then flourished, and only concentrated on that, that
which he wished to introduce, should permit all the ease that was in
keeping with the evil inclination of man. He allowed, therefore, a
perfect sensual freedom; made the atonement of sins easy, and
consequently lightened the hope of salvation. These were only baits
to seduce the credulous ignorance of the common people. All other
little regulations, which could be regarded as inconvenient to man,
who by nature loves liberty, and cannot endure moderation and
inconveniences, were only ordained from political views, because
they were considered necessary to the State, which the wicked
Legislator, according to his wide views, intended to establish. In
proof of this truth I will go through the rules of the Mohammedan
religion from piece to piece, because I think they clearly
demonstrate my position. — The only article of faith of the
Turks, that there is but one God and Mohammed his Prophet, shows
that it was adopted only to give the false Legislator the more
respect, and to extend among the people the blind belief in his
deceits, which was necessary for his political purposes.
As to the five
practical Articles, of which that concerning washing is the first;
Mohammed understood very well that the true power of the States
consists in the power of the people, and that the first care of a
Prince must be to keep it, as much as possible, numerous. To this
end he not only permitted polygamy and the use of co-wives, (*) but
also ignored none of the other rules of policy which he deemed
necessary for his purpose. He saw that he had to place himself at
the head of a bad people, to expose himself to discomforts in a very
warm country, where he had to provide for the necessary purity, so
that the people would not be infected. He made it 'therefore' a duty
of religion to wash himself often, and brought it about that people
did not consider that a spiritual means, which really only served to
preserve his people. The second duty is the prayer repeated five
times a day. Mohammed saw well that the heaviest yoke for people is
slavery, which he nevertheless had set as a principal target in his
new Empire. He believed, therefore, that the people must be
accustomed to this yoke by degrees, and that it would be much easier
to begin with it, when a people are brought under the yoke in the
matter of religion, so that when they were once accustomed to it,
the political yoke would seem the less strange to them. To this end
he imposed repeated prayers at certain hours, which is very
inconvenient, and a perpetual slavery to those who observe the
Mohammedan religion. The third article obliges the Turks to give one
in a hundred of their income in alms. Mohammed understood very well
how useful it was that a Prince should know exactly the wealth of
his subjects, so that he would never be disappointed in the measures
of the State economy, which he had to take either from a certain
necessity, or from some other view, for the service of his State.
For this reason he ordained this religious duty, as a certain means,
which he, in his taxes, according to the needs of the State, could
make use of, or which also in the case of arbitrary avarice could
serve a Sultan for all kinds of extortions. (*)
The fourth Article
contains fasting in Ramasan, which, according to the description
given above, consists only in that one should fast the night in the
day changed. The fame of a Conqueror, after whom Mohammed stood,
made him foresee well, that certain occasions might come, in which
his people had to endure extraordinary hardships and inconveniences.
For this he wished to prepare it by a commandment of Religion, well
understanding, that, when men were accustomed by this, to suffer
hunger and thirst in the daytime for one whole month every year, and
to watch at night, they would become the less sullen, when they were
forced to endure the same inconvenience in the service of the State.
The last duty of God's service is the journey to Mecca. Here was his
goal, on which all his wide designs came to fruition, to found a
great Empire. On this account he obliged the descendants to make a
pilgrimage to the place of their forefathers, who had extended the
Empire so far, as each one had to travel from his place of
residence, in order that the descendants might be the more incited
to follow their example. He ordered this as the greatest proof that
people believed in his divine mission, with which he wanted to cover
himself, while he made his own Fatherland as holy and divine. The
other prohibitions, to eat pork and to drink wine, evidently have
the State's aims in mind. The first is an unhealthy food in the
whole Levant, and especially in Arabia. Therefore he forbade them to
prevent diseases. The second weakens and bewilders man, and nothing
can be worse than a Soldier who is deprived of his reason here. —
From this you may sufficiently gather, why I judge, that Mohammed's
Religion had its origin in Policy, and that he sought nothing else
here, than to give the Legislator prestige, and to preserve the
people, to accustom them to slavery and inconveniences, and to
achieve by this all the purposes, which a Prince, with respect to
his own States, is necessary.
These same political
purposes also appear in the preservation and extension of that
Religion. For, although the Turks outwardly show, that they tolerate
other Denominations, they nevertheless legalize the temptations and
violence, by which men are persuaded and forced to the Mohammedan
faith. When a person converts to their Religion, then his Sons, if
they are not yet 14 years old, must follow the example of their
fathers. If a person is caught in a forbidden intercourse with a
Turkin; then he either raises his head, or he must become a Turk. If
someone says either in anger, or in drunkenness, that he wants to
become a Mohammedan; or if he utters in an unthinking manner the
words in which their articles of faith consist, namely, that there
is but one God, and that Mohammed is his Prophet; then he must also
become either a Mohammedan, or a Martyr.
Just as the Turkish
Empire has been steadily extended by arms and violence; so it has
been made a principle of religion not to give up places where a
Mosque had been established. Thus with them the Goa service serves
as a state service, and so the people are encouraged by the gift of
religion to regain what they have lost. For the same reason they
also believe that he who dies in a battle against the Christians
will certainly enter Paradise without having done any meritorious
work. This idea of the Turks is the principal motive
by which they, as the Histories show, are incited to such bold
undertakings.
Besides, these
principles of religion are no longer followed so strictly as before.
Their power has diminished, and the people are weakened by vice and
lust. The Empire is surrounded by much more formidable Powers than
before. They therefore no longer stand so strongly on many of their
old fundamental principles, allowing their weakenings which they
would not have permitted sixty years ago. They have given up cities
and auctions in the last peace, in which there were many mosques, of
which the peace concluded with Moscow, Austria, and Venice is a
clear proof.
As long as I have
been in Constantinople, I have seen that Christian subjects of
neighboring powers, who wanted to adopt the religion of the Turks,
were not accepted by them, out of fear of the power whose subjects
they were. I have also seen that a fallen Christian adopted the
Christian religion again, without the Turks making the least
movement to get him back. So much can the interest of the state be
with a people, whose religion is too entirely political. I now pass
on to their civil government.
(*)
Here the writer, in my opinion, is very wrong in his guess. In order
to permit polygamy, the tendency to great lust did indeed work more
in Mahomed, as a purpose of State. At least this would not have been
achieved in a hoped-for strong population. Experience proves this.
(*)
In this piece, as in the Feasts and the Pilgrimage, the writer,
apparently, but wrongly, makes Mahomed a much greater politician
than he ever was: because there is no fixed sum of a hundred fixed
for the expenditure of alms; therefore the calculation of the goods
of the subjects cannot be made by it, and it has never been made
with regard to this expenditure of alms. The writer's judgment
concerning the reason for these religious propositions does not go
through at all. The life-history of Mohammed, and the first
institution of his religion, do not at all allow such far-seeing and
artful state-objects to be suspected on any ground.
XII. Of the civil
government of the Turks. Of the Seraglio, its guard and population.
It is difficult to
form a correct idea of the government of the Turks, if
one does not know in advance what the Seraglio and the Porte are.
Both have such a share in the civil government, that, in order to
know them thoroughly, one must examine both separately. I will
therefore first speak of the Seraglio, and then pass on to the idea
concerning the Porte.
Everyone knows that
by the Seraglio one understands that Palace, where the Ottoman
Monarch lives. But all do not know, that this residence deserves the
name of a city, rather than of a Palace. It covers the entire
terrain, where the old Byzantium stood before; it contains therefore
the first of the 7 hills, on which Constantinople is built, which
has its view towards Asia. Its circumference covers more than three
(Italian) miles. The building is completely surrounded by very high
walls, provided with spires and towers according to the taste of
ancient military architecture. From the large circumference one can
conclude the multitude of squares and gardens that are there. The
population also corresponds to the extent of the place. According to
the reports that I have received from people who are knowledgeable
and who have lived in the Seraglio for more than thirty years, ten
thousand persons live there. People who belong to the stud farms and
guards form a large part of this population, of which I want to
provide you with a list, according to accurately drawn up reports:
People to the horse
stables and stud farms. 3500
Bostandschjy or
gardeners, — —
2000
Baltahdschjy or wood
splitters, (*) —
400
White Entrants, —
—
120
Black Entrants, —
—
300
Woman with sons
about, — —
430
Tdsch-Oglan about —
- 700
By the Kitchen etc. —
— 400
All others up to 10
thousand consist of persons who hold the principal Dignities, and of
their Servants, living in the Seraglio.
According to this
general idea of people of various status, I will
indicate in the following sections, what their office consists of,
and how they are maintained and paid. Now I will only tell you in
general, that they are mostly Christian children, who in their early
years, through war, fell into slavery, and were honored by the
Princes. For they always had, and still have, the rule, that they
let themselves be served by such people, who do not know their own
origin, do not know their own parents, and are consequently bound to
no one but the Monarch, who clothes and supports them. If one of
these Youths comes into the Seraglio; then they first check whether
he has a natural defect, and in such a case they do not accept him,
because the Turks are all too much taken with the idea, which is
otherwise often true, that in a body, having a natural defect, can
hardly house a soul, that is not defective. If they are found
without defects; then their names, their age, the name of their
country are written on a list of the Treasury, and the Treasurer is
ordered to pay the salary that is imposed on such a person. This now
amounts to only four Aspers per day. Then they are sent to a
Seraglio or to Tera, or Constantinople; but those who are sent to
the latter are, as a rule, the first to be raised to office. This
was formerly done for all who were in the service of the Seraglio,
as also the many successful wars of the Sultans, partly by presents,
partly by tribute, produced a very large number of slaves. But now,
when the military fortunes of this Empire have declined, only the
Tdjch-Oglan are of such origin in the Seraglio. All other Servants
either transmit the office from the Father to the Son, or they
attain to it by services and practices rendered. — The
Seraglio is guarded in the following manner. The whole circumference
is entrusted to the care of the Bostandschjy or gardeners, who form
the first guard; (*) the second guard consists of the Baltahdschjy
or Hellebardiers, who are armed with axes; after these follow the
guard of the white Cutthroats, and finally the guard of the black
Cutthroats, who are next to the Sultan. This is sufficient to form a
general idea of it.
(*)
These are not only the actual wood-splitters, but also a kind of
Hellerbardiers, who, instead of other weapons, carry an axe after
the old military equipment.
XIII. Of the persons
belonging to the stables and stud farms.
The number of 3500
persons, which I determined in advance for the service of the Stud
Farms, might seem too high; but one will easily understand it, when
I say, that, for the service of the Sultan alone, 3000 horses are
always kept, which number may neither be increased nor decreased. As
soon as a horse is donated or bought above this number; then one of
the smaller ones is given away; and if one dies, then another is
bought, so that the number always remains the same. They are all
from Arabia or Egypt; for the horses from Asia and Rumelia are
considered far too common. In order to be sure that the best horses
should be brought to Constantinople, there is an ancient law,
according to which the owners of horses, as well as of the ships on
which they are brought, are required, under penalty of death, to
bring them before their introduction into the city to the Seraglio,
in order that the best may be selected there first. They are divided
into three stables; in the first are eighteen hundred, in the second
seven hundred, and in the third five hundred horses. Besides these
horses of the Sultan's own, there are also four hundred mules for
the transport and hauling of so many things necessary for the Court
of so great a Monarch, and for so many people. To these animals,
belonging to the Sovereign, are added the horses and mules of his
Ministers, residing in the Seraglio, of which some, for instance the
Kislar-Aga, the Chafynehdar-Aga, and the Silahdar-Aga, have about
three hundred for their special service. Each, even the meanest
Page, has three. Consequently there may be in all about six thousand
horses in the stables. — The Turks are accustomed every year,
in the month of May, to drive their horses into the meadows, to eat
the green grass. But the horses of the Sultan's stables have their
meadows within the Seraglio, from which one may judge of their size.
(*)
It is strange that the Kapudschjy are let out here.
XIV. Of the
Bostandshjy and Baltahdshjy.
The Bostandshjy, who
form the first guard of the Seraglio, (*) are under their Chief, the
Bostandshjy-Baschy, who has general supervision not only over the
gardens of the Seraglio at Constantinople, but also over all the
other Seraglios, fountains and pleasure-houses of the Grand Lord,
which are situated in many places on the harbour and the Bosphorus.
His jurisdiction extends to the mouth of the Black Sea, Since now
all the numerous and populous villages, on the shores of Asia and
Europe, lying on the Channel, are under him, so he has a large
income. — When the Sultan sails in a Kandschjabasch or rowing
yacht; then the Bostandshjy-Baschy is always at the helm. Because he
is therefore, by reason of this office, near the Sultan, and has
easy opportunity to speak with him; he is considered by the Turks
themselves as a very respectable State servant.
He has his residence
on the shore of the harbour, which has communication with the
Seraglio itself, and is the place where the guilty are made to
suffer the punishment.
The duty of the
Bostandschjy is now this: they have the outer guard of the Seraglio;
they guard the pleasure-houses of the Great Lord; they plant and
cultivate his gardens, they row on all the barges of the Seraglio,
and perform the cruel office of putting the guilty to death. Among
all the servants of the Seraglio, who are mostly civilized and
courteous people, these are the most uncivilized and cruel. Next
come the Baltahdschjy, whose office is to chop wood and bring it to
the Seraglio. They take the second watch, and are therefore one
degree higher than the Bostandschjy. But they are dressed in almost
the same manner, except that they have on their garments a small
collar of blue colour, such as some of our soldiers wear, only with
this difference, that in their case it is longer, and extends almost
to the breast. The head of the Bostandschjy and Baltahdschjy is
covered with a long cap of scarlet, hanging down nearly half a yard.
These two kinds of
guards exercise themselves in running, leaping, wrestling, and
throwing the javelin, in which they are very skilled, as they are in
all such exercises, by which the body is made strong and fit.
All these sorts of
people consisted, for the present, of young Christian slaves, which
had been obtained in the war. From them were also taken all the
following sorts of servants: first the Ashdschjy or Cooks, who wear
on their heads a high cap, which has a backward-falling point;
secondly the Candidates, wearing a cap of camel's hair, almost like
a sugar loaf, of a dark yellow colour; thirdly the Butchers, who
also wear such a cap; fourthly the Peygk or Lackeys, wearing a short
coat, lined with gold trimmings, and caps of gilded metal, with a
plume, more than an ell high; then the servants for the Hospital of
the Noblemen, besides many other lowly and servile offices. But for
the present time, when there are few Christian slaves left, they
take in their place children of common people, who are taken into
the Seraglio either because of certain services in the interest of
their parents, or because of their poverty.
These are the lowly
ministries of the Seraglio, or the persons who make up the outside
guards.
(*)
The Kapudschjy have the guard at the main gate to the city.
XV. Of the Lame and
Black Engraved,
Just as the
Mohammedans have no religious bond, by which they restrain the
impure flames of nature; so no one is easily more exposed to them
than they. For this reason the Ottoman Emperors, like other Eastern
Princes, employ Engraved, for the internal seraglio of the Imperial
Families. The white Engraved form a sort of bodyguard of the
Monarch, and the black ones the bodyguard of the women.
The Chief of the
white Engraved is the Kapu-Aga, who commands all the Pages and white
Engraved of the Court. Under him he has three principal Officers.
The first is the Chasz-Oda-Baschy, or Grand Chamberlain: the second
the Sferay-Kjetckada or Chief Steward, who has the superintendence
of the Pages and other court servants. The third is the
Kjilar-Dschjy-Baschy, or Chief Kitchen and Cellar Master. There are
other Servants of the white Engraveds, for instance the first and
second Teachers, the first Chief Overseer of the Mosques of the
Great Lord, and fifty other Officials, who have fifty Aspers every
day. (*) Of these Engraveds they also take some, whom they call
Teachers of the Imperial Mosques, whose revenues are much greater,
because some of them have a hundred Zechines (†) every day. —
The black Engraveds serve in the charge of the women. They are
entirely carved, and the blackest of all, who come from Africa.
Their Chief is the Kislar-Aga, who has general charge of the Harem,
being the place where the women are guarded. He also has charge of
the Imperial Mosques, which brings him a great deal.
The second Dignity is
that of the Chafynehdar-Aga, or Grand Treasurer of the Seraglio.
Next to him comes the Bnjugk-Oda-Aga, who has charge of the large
Chambers of the Pages. Next to him comes the Kjutschugk-Oda-Aga, who
is placed over the small Chambers; the Basch-Kapn-Oglany, or the
Chief of the Doorkeepers of the Women's Apartments; and finally the
two Imams of the Imperial Mosque of the Empress-Mother, where the
women of the Seraglio say their prayers.
When there is a
Sultana-Mother or a Consort of the reigning Sultan; then there are
four more principal Dignities among the black Engraved, among whom
some have the rank next to the Grand Treasurer. The first is the
Dignity of Valikt-Aga, being the chief doorkeeper at the
Empress-mother. The second is the Schafadehlar-Aga, or first Steward
of the Sultan's Sons. The third is the Chafyneh-Aga, or treasurer of
the Empress-mother. The fourth is the Kjuar-Aga, set over the Jams,
and other delicacies of the Empress-mother. These Dignities take
place, when there is a Consort of the Sultan; but in such a case,
they follow the Attendants of the Empress-mother.
(*)
My manuscript mentions ten other Officials, who have 12 Aspers every
day.
(†)
Here is a great mistake; for the Grand Mufti does not have, daily, a
perfect five Zekhinas.
XVI.
Of the Chambers of the Ydsch-Oglans or Pages of the Seraglio.
The Pages in the Seraglio are all Christian children, (*) who, in
their tender youth, have been captured in times of war, or are
honored by the Generals or Ministers of the Monarch.
When they are examined, and then received in the Seraglio;
then they are placed under the supervision of the Chief of
the white Ennemies, who places them either in the large or small
chamber or school. None are called
Bujugk but these Kjutschugk-Oda. Generally
there are four hundred in the first, and two hundred and fifty in
the second. They are kept under strict
discipline, and instructed in courtesy and modesty.
Their first studies consist in the religion of Mohammed, and
in learning the Persian and Arabic languages, in order that they may
speak Turkish as beautifully as it is used in the Seraglio.
They are constantly clothed with good cloth, and sparingly
supplied with rice and healthy food. They
all sleep in one place together, and their beds are one behind the
other, as is the custom in our Seminaries; but
the attention is paid to the fact that every four or five beds have
the bed of a Disciplined man, who watches them. These Disciplines
keep a close eye on them, to keep them from the vices that are all
too common in the Seraglio. When they
reach manly old age; then they are
given physical exercises, by which their constitution becomes
stronger. They train themselves with
the lance, the bow, the javelin, and other weapons, both on foot and
on horseback. In the javelin they excel
all other nations. The constant
practice makes them shoot the javelin with such emphasis that they
are even capable of breaking a leg. Besides
these strong bodily exercises, they are also instructed in
mechanical and liberal arts; for
example, they make bows, arrows, horse harnesses, etc. They are
instructed in painting, but mainly in Turkish music.
From these Chambers they are promoted to many important
offices, because they serve the person of the Monarch;
then their pension is increased to eight Aspers a day.
They are distributed either in the treasury of the Seraglio,
or in the Chambers of spices, cordials, and elixirs of uncommon
value, which are kept in abundance for the use of the Sultan.
From these two Chambers they come to the Chafz-Oda, which is
the most important Chamber in the Seraglio, consisting of only 40
Persons. These have the Title of Aga,
and are in great esteem, because they are constantly near the Person
of the Sultan. From these 40 persons
are drawn the thirteen principal offices of the Court, which are 1)
the Silahhdar-Aga who bears the sword of the Great Lord;
2) the Tschokahdar-Aga, its train-bearer;
3) the Rikjahdar-Aga, who holds its stirrup;
4) the Ibrykdar-Aga, who holds his Lampet;
5) the Dulbendar-Aga, who prepares and carries his Turban;
6) Iskjetnlehdschjy-Aga, who carries the footstool for his
mounting and dismounting from the horse; 7)
Kaemiszar-Aga, the Chief Overseer of the Wardrobe, who has the Great
Lord's linen washed; 8)
Tschaschnyghyr-Aga3, the Chief of those who taste the food which is
set before the Great Lord; 9)
Sagardschjy-Aga, or Chief Overseer of the hunting dogs;
10) Themakdschjy-Raschy, who cuts the Sultan's nails;
11) Berber-Baschy, or his first barber;
12) Muhafebehdschjy-Baschy, or his first accountant;
13) Teskjerehdschjy-Baschy, his first Secretary. There are
still at the Court two other very important offices, namely the
Thogandschjy-Baschy, or great Falconer, and the
Haemmamdschjy-Baschy, or chief overseer of the baths;
but these are never changed, - and they therefore have no
hope of reaching higher offices. These
two do not even have the honor of being allowed to enter the
Chambers of Sidtan. Nine persons have
the honor of handing the Sultan the petitions;
they are called Aerdhs-Agaler Four are in the great Chamber
of 40, namely the Silahdar-Aga, the Tschokahdar-Aga, the
Rikjahdar-Aga and the Dulbendar-Aga. The
five others are: the first Official at the treasury;
the Chief Overseer of the provisions and Jams;
the Chief Huntsman; the first
Commander of the Imperial Chamber; and
the first Instructor of the Pages.
These 9 Persons have
the nearest hope, to come out of the Seraglio, and to be raised to
the principal Empires, especially to the office of a Bassa. The
others of the great Chamber are often sent either to the Visier, or
to the Bassa, or to the Princes, who pay tribute, on which occasions
they receive considerable presents, because it is well known, that
the Monarch therefore only sends people of such rank. Now, according
as one of these Persons comes out of the Seraglio, and is raised to
such principal Empires; thus his vacant place in the great Chamber
is again filled, for which purpose the honors are taken from the
lower Chambers. - This is the order, with respect to the Dignities
of the Seraglio, and by such steps and offices one must go, before
one comes out. From which it may be inferred, that a man seldom
comes out before he is forty years old, and is therefore able to
fill a place which is entrusted to him. The offices which those who
go out of the Seraglio generally receive, are either important
Bassa-places, or the Dignity of an Aga of the Janistas, of a General
of Spain, and sometimes even the place of a first Visier. I am told,
that they have incredible Compliments and Ceremonies, when they go
out of the Seraglio, and take leave of their friends in it. I have
been assured, that in the most civilized countries, they do not make
so much use of Compliments, and that even the ceremonies of a
certain Court in Italy do not come far short of those which the
Turks observe on such occasions. It is certain that all who are
brought up in the Seraglio are very courteous and polite; and, as
they show no grandeur or contempt for the customs of other peoples,
not even for Christians; so one may well imagine how uncommonly
friendly they must be towards their comrades.
(*)
The Kapudschjy keep watch at the principal gate to the city.
XVII.
Of the manner in which the young men in the Seraglio are instructed
in the sciences.
In
comparison with all other nations, the Turks do not seem to make
much of the sciences. It is seen that they continually give
preference to the soldiers over the scholars, because they promote
them only to the great offices at the Court, or to the principal
stadtholderships in the Provinces. Nevertheless, they do not neglect
to promote a kind of sciences in their schools, and in particular
they take great pains to ensure that the youth in the Seraglio learn
something. They teach these young men to read and write. In this
they must apply themselves to the Arabic language; for, as all the
doctrines of their religion, and all their civil laws, are written
in Arabic, this language becomes necessary to all those who wish to
excel either in religion or in government. They also instruct them
in the Persian language, because it is rich in lively and pleasant
expressions, and improves the coarseness of the Turkish language.
They let young people read many novels and romances in the Persian
language, which are full of lively, witty, and charming expressions,
in order that they may be accustomed to be quick and lively. Do they
find, among these young people, people of a melancholy and serious
disposition; then they must apply themselves, with an uncommon
diligence, to the improvement of their style in writing, in order
that he may be elevated as much as possible, being such a necessary
quality, if one wishes to attain the important positions of a
Secretary of State, a Grand Chancellor, a Secretary at the Treasury,
a Grand Treasurer and others, but especially of such ecclesiastical
persons, who, so to speak, are Teachers of an important Mosque of
Imperial foundation.
After
these first studies, some apply themselves to learning the Koran by
heart; others translate books on the Mohammedan religion from Arabic
into Turkish, and make comments and explanations about them, in
order to instruct ignorant people. Still others devote themselves to
Arabic and Persian poetry, in which they make great progress, and,
often to astonishment, know how to express themselves well. Music
also keeps a great part of the youth in the Seraglio busy. It cannot
be denied that there is something rough in Turkish music, as regards
the humming; but equally it cannot be denied that it nevertheless
has a certain endearing harmony.
Up
to now it was forbidden by a state rule to print books, because it
was considered dangerous for the State. But for the present, now
that the desire to know something has become greater among the
Turks, and they no longer have such a great aversion to dealing with
Christians, they have abandoned that rule, and have begun to print
books. (*) They have also supplied maps and sea charts; but both
have turned out so badly, that I almost consider them as altogether
useless. Other sciences they understand almost not at all, such as
reasoning, physics, arithmetic and mathematics, if one does not want
to say that in the latter they know the most necessary propositions,
having its regard to Artillery.
(*)
This printing house had already ceased at the time the author wrote
this, and the hope that it will start up again, given the present
prosperity of the Turkish Empire and other circumstances, is
steadily disappearing more and more.
XVIII. Of the Dumb
and Dwarfs in the Seraglio.
In order that the
Ottoman Emperors should not neglect anything by which they might
display their Highness; thus, after the example of the ancient
Princes, they have collected Dumb and Dwarfs in their own Seraglio.
People of that stamp, who at other Courts serve only for the
amusement of the Prince, serve at the Ottoman Court not only for the
amusement of the Monarch, but also serve to instruct the Pages in an
art which is not used among other nations, namely, in the art of
expressing themselves by signs of movement and significance. The
respect which the Turks have for their Monarch makes that silence
becomes a duty with them, so that he will never be in the least
disturbed by their voices. To this end there are in the Seraglio, at
all times, forty men, (*) who were born deaf and dumb, who can
express themselves only by significant signs. At night they sleep in
the Chamber of the Pages, and during the day they are either in
their schools, or stand before the Mosque, to teach by their example
the art of signifying, which is highly esteemed in the Seraglio. I
am assured that in this art there are such excellent men, that they
know how to tell a long story by significant signs alone. Two or
three of the oldest Dumb Men are admitted into the Sultan's Chamber,
or serve as Court Jesters, to amuse him. The Dwarfs are used in the
same way; and, if anyone is also dumb and cut, then he is considered
a great rarity in the Seraglio.
(*)
Under the last governments, not as much work has been made of the
Dumb and Dwarfs as under the previous ones.
XIX. Of the Room of
the Women in the Seraglio.
All the women in the
Seraglio are for the sole use of the Great Lord, and it is not
lawful for any one to bring one even within the first gate. (*)
These women are shut up in a large apartment, which is called Harem,
in a secluded place, which has a view of the Sea of Marmora.
No one may see them, except the Monarch and the Enthroned, when they
amuse themselves in the gardens. When they go from the Seraglio with
the Great Lord to the country; then they make this journey either in
barges or in wagons, which are provided with lattices: and, when
they climb out of the barge or from the wagon, silks are stretched
on the little road to their departure, so that it is impossible to
see them. All of them are either captured in war, or sent as a gift
by cynical peoples, because for the Seraglio, women of perfect
beauty and certain purity are always chosen. They are separated into
two Chambers, like the Pages, and their work consists in sewing and
embroidery. Besides these feminine occupations, they are also
instructed in Music, in dancing, and other pleasant arts, which I
may not mention out of modesty, but are unknown to many other
nations. By this means they seek to attract the Monarch, and to win
his affection. Their number depends on the inclination of the
reigning Sultan. It is said, Sultan Selym has had two thousand,
while on the contrary the reigning Sultan (*) has no more than three
hundred. These two Chambers of women's sons have many Instructors,
but no maids to serve them. They serve each other themselves
according to the order, when they have come into the Seraglio. The
last, who has come there, must serve the last but one, and this
again the one who has come before her, and so it is with all, so
that only the first serves no other, and the last herself and the
one but one is the last; and the others serve, and are served. They
all sleep in one place, but all on separate beds one after the
other; after the fifth bed always lies, one of the sober tutors, who
takes care of her behavior.
Her Chief Court
Mistress bears the name of Kadun-Kjechuda, or Court Mistress of the
women of State. If there is an Empress-mother; then she chooses her
Court from the Ladies of these Chambers, because she has the liberty
to choose those that please her best. — The Great Lord
sometimes permits them to take a rest in the gardens. In this case,
each of them must go there. At all posts, the Snipes are placed in a
guard with a sabre in their fist; others go around, and if anyone is
caught within the forbidden place, whether he has come from
carelessness or ignorance, he is beheaded without any mercy: and the
Snipes do indeed shy away from such occasions; for if they bring
such a head to the Monarch, they are generously rewarded for it.
Sometimes the Sultan
also comes into the gardens to amuse himself there. Then there is
not one of the women who does not, by dancing or singing, or by
talking, appeal to the Sultan's love, and to that end make the most
indecent gestures and movements. It is believed in Italy, that the
Great Lord, for the service of his bed, may take any one or more, as
he pleases. But this is groundless. Before, it was so; but the great
expense, which was required, to maintain all the women employed by
the Great Lord, introduced here, under the name of household,
certain regulations. Now the Sultan may indeed take any one, when
and where he pleased; but this was an act of violence against the
law, which the Monarchs themselves are accustomed to observe, and
the chosen person could thereby lose her life. For it is related as
a certainty, that under Sultan Achmet III many women were therefore
put to death by poison, because they had, untimely, by artifices,
procured the Sultan's love. Now the Sultan is not at liberty to take
a new wife into his bed, except on solemn days, and on an
extraordinary occasion; for instance, on the celebration of the
second Beyram, on the birthday of Mohammed, on the birthday of the
Sultan, on the day of his coming to the Throne, on the occasion of a
victory, or some other occasion joyful to the Empire. On such
occasions, when the Monarch has to seek a new concubine, he goes
into the women's apartment, where the women are placed in rows by
the Chief Stewards, from whom he then says, who pleases him best.
For it is a fable, that they say in Italy (and elsewhere), that he
throws her his handkerchief. The chosen wife then falls on her
knees, and kisses the hem of the Great Lord's robe. Then she is
taken to the bath by her companions, washed, incense is poured upon
her, and, splendidly adorned with songs and instruments, led to the
Sultan's Chamber; there she receives the Encircled of the guard, and
brings her into the Sultan's Chamber, who is usually already in bed.
As soon as she has entered, she falls on her knees, and, when the
Sultan calls her, then she comes from the foot of the bed under the
blanket, unless the Sultan gave her orders, to climb in in another
way. When the Sultan has amused himself with her; then she is, by
the Chief Stewards and her companions, led back with the same state
to the apartment of the Great Lord. If she is now with child, and
bears the first-born son; then she is called Chassekjy Sultana,
which means Princess mother of the first-born; she is given the
honour of crowning them, and she has the liberty of appointing her
Court, choosing from the Chambers of the women those which she most
pleases. Her particular Offspring are given her as a Guard. But
those who bring forth Sons after her are neither crowned, nor
treated with such special distinction, involving expenses; but such
have a listless journey as Princesses. — After the death of
the Sultan, the mothers of Princes are locked up in the Seraglio of
the old Ladies, from whence they do not come, unless the Son of one
of them ascends the Throne. The women who have brought forth
Princesses may marry again after the death of the Sultan; and she
never lacks the opportunity of marrying the most distinguished men
of the Empire, whom she willingly marries, in order to promote their
happiness the better by the followers and friends they have in the
Seraglio. Those whom the Sultan has already had as a bedfellow are
locked up in the old Seraglio; and those who remain virgins are
locked up in their own chambers, at the service of the new Sultan.
(*)
But well-known commercial women are, by the black Engraved, brought
to certain apartments, and under special rules of prudence.
(*)
It was Machmud.
XX.
Of the lust that reigns in the Seraglio between Persons of the same
sex.
A
matter of which no mention should be made! But whoever writes of the
Seraglio must also report the passions that reign there. It is
unbelievable how fierce the love, and consequently also the love,
that one Page bears to another are. Notwithstanding the severity of
their Overseers, they have often committed such horrors in their
Chambers that one had to resort to the death penalty to exterminate
them.
This
filthy passion reigns not only among the youth, but there are even
examples that the most important persons, who held the greatest
offices of the Empire, were infected with it, yes, the Sultans
themselves were not free from it. Ottoman history furnishes us with
the example of the famous Murad, who was madly in love with an
Armenian youth, and raised him to the distinguished office of
Silahdar (Court Marshal). Mahomed IV made the famous Culoghi his
chief favourite, who reigned supreme. Besides these, there are many
others, which prove how old this vice is within these walls. Now
this can be applied to the whole Ottoman State; for there is no
estate, no office, not even among ecclesiastical persons, free from
this vice. But what strikes me most astonishing in this respect, is
the folly of them saying so openly, and naming and determining
places and people, which are tolerated. What I say of the Men, can
also be applied to the female Sex, especially those who are in the
Seraglio. I am told that they have an incredible lust for each
other. The eldest wait for the youngest, they become impoverished at
last, to give her all that they possess. (*) This unfruitful love
has penetrated everything, and against it neither walls nor
sharp-sighted Guards can help.
(*)
This place is dark, and possibly placed so by chance, in order not
to express clearly the ambiguous meaning that lies therein.
XXI. Of the first
Vizier of the Turkish Empire and its Kjetchuda.
By the Ministry I
understand such persons, who have influence on the government of the
State. The first Person in rank is the Grand Vizier, of whom I will
now speak. The Turks call him Wefyr-aé'tzem, which means
approximately, Head of the Council and Governor of the Empire. He
has the great Seal, on which the Sultan's name is carved, having
thereby a share in the Prince's entire power.
This Dignity was
established by Murad I, who wanted to reward his own Chief of Staff
Lala Schahyn, because of the conquest of Adrianople, with this. From
that time on the Emperors, until now, have considered it useful to
maintain this Dignity. His Court is very numerous in Officers and
Servants. I have been in his Palace, when I had to go to the Divan,
and I should not write an untruth, if I said, that his Court amounts
to more than a thousand Persons.
He is always Bassa of
three horse-tails, this being a sign of a great Dignity in this
Empire. His salary, which he draws from the Treasury, is very small,
consisting annually of only 20 thousand Reals. (*) But the presents,
which the Bassas make him, when they obtain their office, and wish
to maintain themselves in it; that which he draws from the Envoys of
the Provinces; and finally that which he extorts from every one who
has anything to do at Court; all this taken together, amounts to
immeasurable Sums. Therefore it is not possible to give the true
income of the Grand Vizier accurately: for it depends on the
circumstances of the time and the inclination of the one who holds
this office, how much he wants and can gain. The extortions of a
Grand Vizier are, generally, tolerated by the Monarch, who remains
silent in the face of his oppressors, because the treasures which
his Minister collects, return to his own treasury, since the Vizier
either makes presents, or the Court has to pay money, or everything
is declared forfeit, when the Vizier, by an unfortunate chance, or
arbitrarily, is deposed from his office. The great treasures were,
often, the only cause why a Grand Vizier lost his Dignity and his
Life.
The power of the
Grand Vizier was, before this, almost entirely absolute. He
commanded not only the Life of the Subjects, but also the Life of
the Bassas and Favourites of the Great Lord himself, without his
knowledge. But for the present, now that the Government within the
Seraglio, namely the Enthroned, rule over the mind of the Monarch
entirely, he can no longer let one's Life be taken away, without the
Great Lord permitting it, or at least notifying him of it.
Even in public
Imperial Affairs, the Vizier received, before this, the letters of
the Generals and Governors of the Provinces, which he presented to
the Sultan, only when and as he pleased. But this communication was
always done by means of certain extracts and reports, which the
Vizier had made by the Travel-Efense, but in which he omitted
everything that could be disadvantageous to his particular purposes.
He kept silent about the disorders, which he either hoped to remove
by himself, or which, according to his thoughts, might disturb the
Sultan's peace, and interrupt his own happiness. But now the Grand
Vizier has no more this considerable privilege. He must now send the
letters sealed to the Seraglio, where the affairs are investigated
by the Favourites, Moors and Ennemies, and often they conceal from
the Grand Vizier, now, that which he formerly concealed from the
Seraglio.
A so special and
sensible change has taken place under the present Vizier, who,
however seen otherwise for his military valour and honesty, has very
little experience in government affairs, since he cannot even write.
He still retains the Appeal of all the other Tribunals. For this
reason he lives in Divanby, where he goes, with a large retinue of
officers and servants. Twice a week he holds Divan in his own house.
There only the two Kadhyleschkjer of Natolia and Romania may sit on
his bench, who are the two highest judges of the law. These have
full authority to pass sentences; but the Vizier can, by his
prestige, quash them of his own free will. All petitions to the
Sultan must first pass through the hands of the Grand Vizier, so
that, without his previous knowledge, nothing can be delivered to
the Monarch. If, however, he committed any injustice, or a private
person, for some other reason, wanted to complain about him; then
the way is continually open to petition the protection or justice of
the Great Lord, while, when he passes by, he shows himself, and
holds something burning above his head, by which sign he who
petitions anything is not only protected from all opposition and
insult, but also has always someone at his side who takes the
petitions out of his hands, to present them to the Monarch to hand
over.
For the rest, the
Vizier has the power to punish the Spahy and Janistas; but this he
cannot do without the consent of their commanders. He always has his
Kjetchuda; a considerable office, because he attends to everything
that the Grand Visier, by reason of his many duties, cannot do. This
post is usually filled by persons of merit and virtue, who are able
to give the Grand Vizier good advice.
When the Grand Vizier
grants audience to foreign Ambassadors and Ministers; then he sits
alone in the corner of the Sofa; on the left side, next to him
stands the Kjctchuda, and on the right side the Reis-Efendy. The
foreign Ambassador places himself on a chair without backrest,
directly opposite the Visier. But if one has an audience, either in
the Imperial Armoury, or in an Imperial Palace on the Black Sea
Canal; then the Kjetchuda is not present, because either the Vizier,
or he, must necessarily always be at Constantinople.
If the Vizier goes to
war; then he not only follows him, but also all the Ministers of the
Secretary and Chancellor, and even the Christian of them is taken
with them to the army. Although the experience of the loss of them,
in the flight after the siege of Vienna, must have convinced the
Turks of the folly of this custom; yet they have not yet, up to now,
abandoned it. When the Vizier is on the march, then only his
Governor remains at Constantinople, but he has only a semblance of
power. For, since all the registers are in the army, he cannot
decide on anything without sending it to the Grand Vizier, in order
that the necessary knowledge and information may be obtained from
the Archives. This Kaym-Maekam, for the rest, observes the same that
the Grand Vizier had to observe; but his office lasts only so long,
until the Grand Vizier, who was in the army, returns. In case at
that time, when the Grand Vizier serves in the field, the Great Lord
goes to Adrianople or another city, as Achmed III, in time of war,
went from Candia to Thessalonica; then, besides the Kaym-Maekam of
Constantinople and his Minister, another with his Minister is
elected on the spot, where the Sultan is staying. On such occasions
one counts one Grand Visier, two Kaym-Maekams and three Ministers;
but these two last only so long, until the most important one, who
is in the army, returns to Constantinople.
(*)
So it is in Ricaut, and so it was before. Now the fixed pension is
doubled.
XXII. Of the Viziers
of the Bank, the Desterdat, Nischandschjy, Reis-Efendy and the
Teskjerehdschjy.
Besides the first
Vizier,, the Sultans were accustomed to keep six other Vizier,s at
Constantinople, who were called Vizier,s of the Bank.
These attended the
Divan, but were not allowed to express their opinion, unless the
Grand Vizier asked them. Nevertheless, as often as one had to
deliberate on a matter, they were always admitted to the Cabinet
college, where they expressed their thoughts with complete freedom.
But, because these Vizier,s seemed dangerous to the first Vizier,s,
who feared that they could be deposed all the more conveniently,
because others could be appointed in their place; as they were,
moreover, an obstacle to the Grand Vizier in the council meetings
themselves; so the latter thought of means to be discharged from
them, and under the cloak of zeal for service and the pretext of
economy, persuaded the Sultans to deprive them of their office, and
to send them to the richest Provinces as Stadtholders. The sharpness
of the first Vizier Ibrahim Pascha succeeded in bringing about this
important affair, because he knew how to make good use of the
propensity of Sultan Mahomed III (*) to avarice. Under the
appearance of favor to these Vizier,s, the most advantageous offices
in the Provinces were assigned to them, ??confiscations of lands,
loans, the annual gifts of the Bassas, Sandschaken, and all other
regulations in this Empire. He gives every ship that sails from the
harbor a toll-ticket, for which five reals must be paid. This brings
in a great deal, considering that ships constantly sail from this
great harbor, which may easily be gathered from the uncommon
population of this great city, and from the great trade, which many
nations from Africa, Asia, and all European nations carry on here.
In addition, he has the advantage of the Cancellation, which is
proportional to the number of the Provinces and subjects of the
Empire. From this it may be concluded what an advantage he can draw
from these rich sources, but which are all legitimate with his
Dignity. Add to this what he can gain by unjust means, noting that
there is no office of the Empire which could extort more and more
easily than this, since a Travel Agency need only tire people by a
slow execution of affairs; then his income increases still more. He
has no seat in the Divan; on the contrary, this place is usually
filled with people who possess virtue and a quickness of mind;
qualities which, with the multitude of occupations, are absolutely
necessary in so great an Empire. The Defterdar is the Great
Treasurer of the Empire, and must be distinguished from the
Treasurer of the Seraglio, who manages the private treasury of the
Great Lord. His office involves collecting the income of the Empire,
and making good the public expenditure; that he must always be on
the lookout to increase the former, and to diminish the latter. I
shall speak of his Cashier, when I come to the State-household. For
the rest, this office is very considerable; he has, on solemn
occasions, the precedence over the Court-Chancellor, and sits in the
Divan on the bench directly opposite the Nischandschjy. He has many
people under him; a College, which we might call the Chamber. The
place where he exercises his office is a room near the Hall of the
Divan.
The Teskjerehdschjy
is a sort of Sub-Court-Chancellor, an equally considerable office,
because he has all the registers of the Cancellary in his keeping.
He has the supervision of the registers themselves, the execution of
the Fermans, (orders of the Porte.) the preservation of the
writings, and is obliged to vouch for the diligence and accuracy of
his servants at the Travel Office, who work in great numbers in the
Chancellery. He has a share in all State secrets; attends the most
secret conversations, and also often says his opinion. From this
post one usually arrives at the Dignity of a Travel Office.
(*)
My Italian manuscript is called here, and rightly so, Achmed III.
XXIII. Of the
services for the civil government, and good order in the city.
The Tschausch-Baschy
is a Dignity, which, in our respect, represents two persons. For on
the one hand he is Judge over civil affairs, on the other hand he is
Court Marshal. As Court Marshal he receives the foreign Ambassadors
outside the city, accompanies them on their entry, leading them to
Audience. This brings him much, because all the Ambassadors present
him with rich Manufactures from their countries. But even more
advantageous is his other office, in deciding legal cases. The
Visier and highest Judges or Kadhy-Leschkjer refer all legal cases
to him, which are either of little importance, or in which no
things, touching Religion or State, take place. Since he now draws a
fixed money from a hundred of all the Capitals, on which he judges;
so he has a fair income from this. He is the Chief, and on him
depends the whole state of the Tschauschen, which is more or less in
agreement with our Commanders.
Another considerable
Dignity is that of an Istanbul-Efendy, or Governor of
Constantinople. He has the oversight of all the food and provisions.
He endeavors to maintain the abundance of these in that city; he is
vigilant that the price of them does not rise through bribery; and,
if there is a shortage of anything, he takes care that it is
distributed in such a measure that the city in general suffers no
shortage. This office is always held by a man of policy and
standing, who draws so much from it that he can live magnificently
and respectably. In judging his income, it must be remembered that
he draws his share from everything, even from the least things,
which are demanded for the consumption of such a numerous multitude
as is at Constantinople.
The Kadhy decide
minor disputes, and in this way the multitude of occupations in the
high offices is diminished, so that they are not hindered by minor
matters in more important ones. A similar object also has the
appointment of Chiefs in each trade, who decide disputes which arise
either between men of the same trade, trade, or between a trade and
a foreign merchant, whereby the higher courts are relieved of
innumerable difficulties.
With regard to the
new building of houses, which is a source of disputes in all
countries, there is no special court to have the oversight thereof.
All disputes concerning this are settled by the Memar-Baschy, that
is, the general overseer of the buildings. There is no appeal
against his verdict, and, when it is once struck at a place where
one is building, then it decides for or against the legality of the
building. One either continues with this, or, what has been built,
is pulled down. But, just as he knows how to interpret the law
according to his interest, so he is always right who offers him the
most money; and so he who holds this office is always a man of
means.
But the greatest
relief for the Turkish Tribunal, with such a great number of cases,
which such a strong population could produce in Constantinople, is
this, that the inhabitants of this city seldom go to the Judge. This
is because they govern themselves almost entirely.
XXIV. Of the Nations,
who are subjects of the Turks, and live at Constantinople, namely,
the Jews, Armenians, and Greeks.
The population of
Constantinople would be much smaller, if it consisted of Turks
alone; but it is considerably increased by other nations, who are
indeed under the Turks, but otherwise, as regards language and
religion, differ entirely from them.
The most numerous are
the Jews, (*) who live partly in the city, partly in the villages
around it. They form 20 thousand Families. They have an Aristocratic
government, under which the people stand in religion, manners, and
customs. The most notable among them are the Teachers of the law,
called Chacans, who decide disputes that may arise in the Families.
And none of them dares to appeal to a Turkish one from a sentence
passed before their court. They possess no goods, and yet they are
all reasonably well-off, and many even rich. The reason for this I
will mention when I speak of Commerce. For the present it is
sufficient for me to have merely mentioned their aristocratic
position, according to which they do not cause the Turkish courts
any trouble. But now I must also mention how they behave in
Constantinople.
Just as there is no
respectable Turkish house to which a Jew has not been admitted; so,
more naturally, the number and condition of their protectors give
them great prestige. There is indeed no nation which is more
mistreated and cursed by the Turks than they; but on the other hand,
none is more cherished than they. They are like slaves; but always
retain a certain character of mastery. They possess nothing, and yet
they live with ease and in abundance. They cannot acquire lands, but
accumulate immeasurable goods. They increase daily; for they all
marry, and none of them goes to war. They are the greatest
Confidants of the Turks. In a word: at Constantinople avarice is
indeed abhorred in outward appearance, but in reality it is
nourished; and the Jews are the negotiators of the most shameful
usury. The other nation living at Constantinople are the Armenians.
Their number amounts to about forty thousand, who are mostly
schismatics(*) and a few Roman Catholics. The first are the
Aechychians; they deny the one nature in Christ, having an aversion
to the Council of Chalcedon. The poorest of them, of whom there is a
great number, are mostly servants, and the others devote themselves
to Commerce. In their dealings they all depend on their Overman,
having no need to apply to Turkish courts for that purpose.
Above all nations the
Greek is the most numerous. She has indeed lost authority with the
Empire; but nevertheless, besides the cunning, cunning and proud
nature of her forefathers, she has retained some power, as well as
the praiseworthy, intelligent and lively Charaster, always
characteristic of that Nation, is still perceived in her. By this
they know how to take the Court, and obtain, through the favour of
the Ministers, the government of Wallachia and Moldavia, over which
they exercise an almost absolute dominion. There are also among them
some of the old distinguished Families, but who now bear nothing but
a famous name without emphasis. They live almost all in Fener, being
a suburb, which is united to the walls of Constantinople without.
They possess very few
lands, and their principal existence lies in the two Principalities
mentioned, where they hold the offices of a Protospadar,
Grand-Chancellor, Treasurer, House-steward, Lyfarts, and Agents of
the Porte, because all these offices may have certain lands in these
Provinces for their use. Although previous experience has
sufficiently shown how dangerous rocks these two Principalities and
the Dignities dependent upon them are, because there are very few
who have occupied them to their death, or have enriched themselves
thereby; the Greeks, however, as soon as they have accumulated any
goods, are, according to their usual ambition, so strongly in it,
that they willingly sacrifice the most sacred ties of blood and
nature, when they deem it necessary to attain their purpose. The
interpreters of Captain Bassa and the Bassas on the borders with
European Princes are also all together Greeks, and are uncommonly
good at it, because they not only understand Turkish and Greek, as
their mother tongue, but apply themselves strongly to Italian and
French. They take part in the business, and are employed in the most
important affairs. The Turks rely on them especially, because they
were born under their rule, and are bound to them by the ties of
kindredship; yes, when their ambition is satisfied by a share in the
affairs of state of the empire, they easily forget their misfortune,
and gladly bear the chains of their slavery. Others become
ecclesiastical, by obtaining, by the favoring of the principal
Ministers and Vizier,s, the highest Ecclesiastical offices and
Patriarchates. These are the offices of the principal Greeks. The
inferiors apply themselves to Commerce and mechanical arts. They
serve as Sailors on Turkish and Greek ships, and work in the
Armoury. Now since all these people depend on their Overmen, or on
the highest Ecclesiastical, or the principal Dignities of their
nation; so they, usually, settle their disputes among themselves,
and very seldom go before the courts of the Turks, who are therefore
little burdened by such a numerous nation.
(*)
This is untrue. Then the writer himself says, that the Greeks are
the most numerous.
(†)
At least it happens seldom.
(*)
To wit, according to the opinion of the Roman Catholics.
XXV. Of the
government of the city, and the maintenance of justice.
Having spoken of the
offices, intended for the civil government and good order, I must
now bring something concerning the way, to observe the laws, and to
maintain justice. The guard consists of a certain number of men at
each gate, under the command of a captain of the janissaries. In the
most populous districts sentries are posted, and in the streets
patrols go round, who prevent all disorder. These men are provided
with nothing but sticks; but men fear them more than in other
countries soldiers who carry guns. The Turks know how to handle
these sticks so skillfully, that they stop every fugitive with them.
They also throw them to an incredible distance, and are sure to hit.
Thus this great city is guarded; rarely is a murder committed there,
in peacetime; and, when one is committed, the perpetrator is known
to man. The penalty for this is death, and nothing can free him from
it, except in case the guilty one should satisfy himself with the
blood relations of the murdered. In such a case he is not only freed
from death, but also from all punishment. Besides, since the
offended, by this, becomes almost the judge of the offender, this
case of mercy is very rare; the more so, if it had to be brought
about in the first instance, when, in a more human way, one thinks
of nothing but revenge. Every man respects and honors the life of
his neighbor as much as the other loves his own. Otherwise it is
impossible that such a murderer should not be discovered. For the
whole district where the murder was committed must answer for it
until the guilty party is discovered.
This strict law is
extended so far that when a body is washed up from the sea on the
shore of a village in which signs of violence are discovered, that
village must pay a certain sum, which, in the absence of friends of
the deceased, falls to the Bostandschijy-Baschy. In such
circumstances everyone makes an effort to discover the perpetrator,
and it almost never happens that the guilty party remains hidden.
Justice is
administered in the following manner. The Divan is a court of
justice, which is open to all who wish to go there, and is held on
appointed days. The ??ten Divan is held once a week by the Grand
Lord in the Seraglio, always on Tuesday. (*) He attends him, without
being seen, sitting at a window above the head of the Grand Vizier,,
who sits directly opposite the door through which those who have
anything to plead enter. In this way the Emperor hears everything
his Ministers do, as well as all complaints and requests of his
subjects. In legal cases no Advocates are used; each presents his
own case, and hands his petition to the first Minister. If he shows
clemency, he signs the petition with his name. If he refuses the
request, he tears the petition to pieces, and thus the most
important cases come to an end. Legal cases are dealt with briefly;
for the evidence consists, as a rule, only in the examination of
witnesses. If the case is obscure, and requires further
investigation; then she appoints the Visier a lesser Minister, and
determines the time when she shall be finished.
In Turkey they know
nothing of long Processes; therefore they do not know the judicial
tricks which in other countries are so disadvantageous to the
subjects. Almost always the two Kadhy-Leschkjer are present, to whom
the Visier, although he otherwise has complete freedom, usually
assigns matters of Religion. Among these are matters concerning
divorce, complaints against an unchaste woman, against those who
seduce girls, immoral Imams or Priests, investigations concerning
the property of the Mosques, etc. On Mondays and Fridays there is no
Divan, but otherwise it is always open either at the Porte or in the
Grand Visier's own house. It is strange that so great a Minister,
upon whom the whole care of the State rests, and who must deal with
such important matters, in such a vast Empire, which daily happens,
spends almost the whole morning alone with it, that he listens to
the complaints of shameless women and affairs, who make much noise,
however little they have to do, to all which he listens with a
dogged patience. It is truly hard to believe how much long-suffering
is required, and how much patience he actually shows. But where is
it with, that the affairs, in advance, are already purified of all
ambiguities. For he could really not possibly get ready, if he had
not a multitude of Assistants, who already presented the matter to
him in order.
(*)
Under the last governments, to save costs, this has only been done
once every two or three weeks. In general, this depends on the
Sultan's caprice.
XXVI. Of the Empire
offices, by which the Empire provinces are governed.
The Stadtholders of
the Provinces of the Turkish Empire are divided into three classes,
namely Begler-Begh or Bassa, Begh and Sandschjakken. One
distinguishes itself from the other by the number of horse tails,
which is the badge of honour that one carries on the marches before
them. A Beghler-Begh has three, a Begh two, and a Sandschjak one:
therefore one says, a Bassa of one', two or three horse tails. (*)
This badge of honour actually consists of a horse's tail, which
hangs from a long peak, like our sticks of the standards of the
Infantry; above is a thick gilded knob, and at the side hang silk
tassels. The origin of such a horse tail is very old. It comes from
a war-case, when a brave man, when the Turkish Army was beaten and
scattered, and could find no standard, fastened a horse's tail to a
stick, gathered a troop of people, and on this gained a complete
victory. The fortunate result caused them to be regarded as a good
omen, instead of standards, to be carried for the Commander, and
used as insignia of rank. — The Beghler-Begh are of two kinds,
the first is called Chasz-Iieh-Begler-Begh, carrying their
(*)
This is not at all true; a Sandsjah receives only a standard or
banner.
income from the lands
of their Stadtholderships. The others bear the name of
Sfalyan-Beghler-Begh, who receive their pension from the Mury's Fund
or the Defterdar's Rich Fund. — After the Grand Vizier,
Beghler-Beghs are the most important persons of the Empire; they
hold the Stadtholderships of the Provinces and Empires, and have
many Beghs and Sandjaks, as well as other Officers under them.
From these
Stadtholderships they draw an astonishing income; and, when the
Bassa of Damascus died recently, whose Stadtholdership is
nevertheless not the most profitable, he left five millions of
piastres in cash. It is impossible to mention all the means they use
to scrape together such sums: confiscations, breaches of covenants,
sale of vacant religious offices, extortion, acts of violence, are
only means they use. The government tolerates them according to the
Constitution, of which I shall speak more fully subsequently. Here I
will only mention the number of the Beghler-Beghs with their fixed
income. For every 5000 Aspers of fixed income, one Beghler-Begh is
obliged in time of war to supply a Soldier for the army. On the list
which I here give of the Bassa and their income, therefore also
stands the number of Soldiers which they must supply at their
expense; from which one sees how many Soldiers this government can
count on in case of incidents.
Each of these
Stadtholderships has its own Mufti, Reis-Efendy, Grand Treasurer,
Janista-Aga, Spahidar-Aga, of whom the first is General over the
Janistas, and the latter over the cavalry of the Province.
When going to war, the Beghler-Begh of Napoli, Babylon, Cairo
and Rome have precedence over all others. The
rank of the others is regulated by the time when the country over
which they are placed has been conquered by the Turks.
— It would be too lengthy to mention the other
Stadtholderships, dependent on the above-mentioned.
I do this all the less, because my report cannot be as
detailed as I would like it to be. It
is enough for me to have given a brief conception of the external
government of the Provinces, or rather of the continuing misery
which is caused by the cruelty and avarice of the rulers.
Among the above mentioned I have also placed that of Cairo.
But, because this government, which embraces all the Egyptian
Kingdoms, has more the appearance than the deed of a
Stadtholdership, I believe that a more extensive account of it will
not be out of place.
(*)
My Italian manuscript has only 885000.
XXVII. Of the Bassa
and the Government of Cairo.
The Bassa of Cairo
has his seat in Cairo, the capital of Egypt, the former Empire of
the Mamluks. Sultan Selim I formerly subdued these brave peoples;
wherefore this country is governed under Turkish suzerainty, by a
Bassa sent from the Porte, and 24 Begh or Princes, whom he chooses
from the principal Families of the Empire. The Bassa and they
together form a Divan or Council of State. They meet on certain
fixed days, to deliberate on military and state affairs, which are
mainly entrusted to their supervision. But the Bassa, as Sultan's
Governor, exercises an indefinite rule over them, and they must
direct themselves according to his Will. For the rest this country
is governed according to its laws, and this is still the shadow of
freedom, which it alone enjoys, by a special favour of the
conqueror. The land militia amounts to 20 thousand foot soldiers and
cavalry, which are partly in occupation in the city, partly in the
surrounding provinces. The Sultan can, in time of war, command only
three thousand of this militia, because all the rest remain there in
occupation of the Empire. This country is very populous, fertile and
rich, to which the fortunate inundations of the Nile, the influence
of the Climate, and the great domestic and foreign trade contribute
unusually much. The wealth of this country is proved by the
Jasteiij?? which it bears annually, or to maintain 20 thousand men;
the tribute which it pays the Sultan; the satisfaction of so many
magistrates, as well as so many other expenses; without counting
what the avarice of the higher and lower commanders extorts. For the
rest, it is well understood that the government of the city is
indeed a mixed government, but that nevertheless the Sultan alone is
really competent to act as sovereign. But the wealth of the Beghs,
their exclusive character, the dependence and inclination of the
subjects for them as natives, and finally the renunciation of the
Imperial See, make them almost always proud and bold to throw off
the yoke. Wherefore the rebellions are frequent, the Bassas are
often in danger, and in the meantime the disorder and licentiousness
continue. 'Civil wars arise; they fight among themselves; they drive
each other away, and sometimes even refuse, according to the
commotion and the confusion, to give the Sultan the annual tribute.
The Bassa must always govern them; but he governs with that
moderation which is more used with regard to allies than subjects.
The Porte always
endeavors to send capable men to this Empire. At present there is a
man of distinction, who, for many years, has been here Reis-Efendy,
in which dignity he has acquired the esteem and affection of all
foreign Ministers. (*) I knew him as a refined and honest man, who
possessed much ability, and, which is a rare quality among the
Turks, was not at all set on his own interests. Although he is now a
man of very much experience in affairs of state, and of exalted
qualities; yet he cannot quell the disturbances in this Province,
which, for a few years, has not sent tribute to the Porte. One of
the Beghs has set himself up as Prince; governs arbitrarily; exacts
the revenues; and the Bassa is forced to tolerate everything, and to
flatter him, because he lacks the means to bring him under the yoke.
— This is the present state of Cairo. From which it may be
inferred, that the Sovereignty of the Porte over Egypt exists only
in a single semblance. When it is brought to peace again, and the
annual tribute is again sent to the Porte; then I cannot, however,
regard this rich country as anything but a single cynical Empire of
the Turkish Empire. (*)
(*)
His name was Mehhmed.
XXVIII. Of the
government of Wallachia.
The old Dacia, which
was always famous for the bravery of its inhabitants, included the
three Provinces, Sevenbergen, Wallachia and Moldavia. All three
suffered for a long time much from the marauding now by the Germans,
then by the Poles, then again by the Turks, so that they were
finally forced to buy the Turkish protection for an annual tribute.
Sevenbergen, because it bordered on the Imperial States, which Power
had many auctions on its borders, first agreed for the small sum of
six thousand Zechines, which was then brought to ten thousand,
besides 3.00 Scudi and two silver barrels for each of the seven
Vizier,s, who then still existed, namely the six Vizier,s of the
Bank and the Grand Vizier,. But when this country was taken from the
Turks, it came, by the peace of Carlowitz, to the Emperor, and thus
passed from the rule of the Turks to that of one of the most pious
Princes on earth.
But the two other
Provinces, Wallachia and Moldavia, are still under the Porte. This
always assigns the government of them to a Greek, who is usually
chosen from the Families that live in Fanari (*). But these
elections are mostly effected by presents, which the competitors
distribute among the Turkish Ministers. These Stadtholders have the
Title as Taywodah or Begh, which gives them the distinguishing sign
of two horsetails. They are obliged to collect the tribute in the
Provinces, and to send it to the Porte. Here I will speak only of
Wallachia. This paid, up to now, only sixty thousand Reals (*) a
year. But, after the Waywodah of Wallachia had risen against the
Turks in the year 1655, and the rebels were beaten thereupon, the
tribute was increased to the same rate as she now pays it. Namely,
she pays to the Great Lord 230 thousand Reals, 15 thousand Oks of
honey and 9 thousand Oks of wax; to the Great Vizier five thousand
Reals, besides a Pels; to his Kjetchuda five hundred Reals and a
Pels; furthermore to his Treasurer five hundred Reals, and finally
to the Kislar-Aga 20 thousand Reals.
These are the taxes
which the Prince of Wallachia must pay. But sometimes there are
extraordinarily great gifts, to maintain himself or his dignity, or
to free himself from wiles and deceits or other accidents, and these
sums often amount to more than the usual tribute. Thus these sums,
the maintenance of the Court of the Stadtholders, and the care of
their Subsistence, when they are deposed, must be demanded of the
subjects of this Province; and thus its inhabitants suffer. Their
misery is so great, that I can affirm, according to credible
reports, that in the last three years only, more than two thousand
families have left this Province, who would rather go under the
Bassa of Nidiri (*), under whom they live more happily, than under
their own Prince.
In this manner this
country is robbed of its inhabitants; the Field is not cultivated;
the Products diminish; the extortions are increasing every year; and
so this Province must either become very desolate, or the few
inhabitants who are left live in the utmost misery. That the burdens
must continually increase is a necessary consequence of the custom
of the Greeks, introduced a few years ago, having its basis in their
avarice and ambition. For whereas, formerly, they did not spend 100
purses to obtain this office, the present Prince has had to pay a
million for it. Thus, out of blind ambition, they waste immeasurable
sums, from which nothing else can arise than that they, by much
extortion, try to get back their spent sums. At the end of their
reign they generally have little use for it; In the meantime they
have sacrificed their own name, and are often in danger of losing
their lives and their goods. For often, when they are deposed, there
is this misfortune added to it, that they have to give an account of
their government. The last deposed Prince not only ran the risk of
losing his head, which he retained only by paying a sum of 150
thousand reals, but he has also been banished for more than a year
on the island of Metelino.
(*)
In the meantime, the Porte, with their great dissimulation, always
plays the boss again, now or soon. Compare the Hot of §. I. in
my description of the Turkish Empire, page 43.
(*)
The principal district of the Greeks in Constantinople.
(*)
This must be Piastres.
(*)
In my manuscript it says, and probably ?? Widin.
XXIX. Of the
government of Moldavia.
Moldavia is not
happier than Wallachia. It has also a Greek Prince who governs it.
Since this one, in the same way, comes to his Principality; so this
unhappy Province must therefore also experience the same misery.
When Mohammed I made this Empire cynical, it paid, annually, only
two thousand Reals. This tribute was, afterwards, steadily increased
to eight thousand Reals. But, after she is brought entirely under
the obedience of the Turks, she pays, annually, to the Grand Lord
160 thousand Reals, 10 thousand Oks of Wax, and 10 thousand Oks of
Honey: furthermore, for the service of the Armoury, 600 centeners of
Sulphur, 1320 Oks of Wax, 500 Ox-hides, and 500 pieces of Kanefas
for clothing for those condemned to the Galleys, and for other
necessities of the Galleys themselves: furthermore, to the Grand
Vizier,, five thousand Reals and a Fur; to his Kjetchuda, five
hundred Reals, and finally his Treasurer, 500 Reals. This is the
annual tribute of Moldavia.
I will not give you a
long list of the expenses which these two Princes must make, when
they receive their offices. For these depend upon the circumstances,
according to whether many or few are in this office, according to
whether the Ministers of the Porte are more or less satisfied, and
whether the Ambition is great or small with the impatience of the
Competitors. On such occasions the costs mount very high. Since now
also the maintenance of the Prince's Court is added to this, it
follows that the Moldayans bear the same burdens with the
Wallachians; therefore the population of these Provinces must daily
decrease more than increase.
If they were governed
differently, and the neighbouring peoples urged to come and populate
them, then these two Provinces would be very rich; for the soil
could not be more fertile. It has been calculated that even in not
very fertile years the Corn increases a hundredfold. They have
rivers enough for the convenience of Commerce, as well as abundant
products of their own to carry on Commerce. Corn, wine, wool,
leather, honey, wax, oxen, sheep are there in a fair abundance. As
the land is little cultivated; the rivers are not made navigable;
the country is depopulated; the wealthiest men cannot get a desire
to improve the happy circumstances in a Climate which has the sad
characteristic, that he who has any money is easily considered
guilty of a crime; so everyone is content with what is sufficient
for a mediocre Existence. The fear and malice of men therefore makes
that so many gifts of nature remain useless.
XXX. Of the Tartars
and Allies of the Porte on the Barbarian Coasts.
Having spoken of all
the Provinces under the Turkish Empire, I now come to its Allies.
These are the Tartars and the three provinces on the Barbarian
Coast.
The Tartars of
Perecop, the Tauric Chersonesus, or inhabiting the peninsula of
Crimea, and the Nogai Tartars, who live between the Volga and the
Don on the Mo??otic marsh, are indeed peoples dependent on the
Porte, but they deserve more the name of Allies, because of the
mutual treaty they have entered into together, that if the male Line
of the Osmans should die out, the Tartars, and likewise if the
Princes of the Tartars should die out, the Osmans should succeed.
This holds them together with the strongest bond, and makes the
Tartars gladly suffer that the Porte should choose the Chan of the
Tartars. - By virtue of an old treaty the Great Lord possesses the
city of Caffa. For this purpose the first-born Son of the Chan of
the Tartars had to remain at Constantinople as pawnbroker??; but the
Tartars have, for some years, opposed this second treaty, as an
injustice.
As often as the Great
Lord himself goes to war, the Chan of the Tartars is obliged,
according to old covenants, to accompany him with an army of 100
thousand men. But if the Grand Visir or another Bassa, such as Sfer
Askyr, leads the army; then he is obliged to send at most 40
thousand soldiers. It should be noted that this is a militia which
does more harm than good, because it devastates the country of both
friends and enemies, and is not good for regular battles; the Turks
have seen the matter somewhat more deeply, and only use a moderate
number of them in cases of extreme necessity. This year the Sultan
demanded twelve thousand Tartars, to send them against the Persians;
but not even 9 thousand came, but zebras and more than 40 thousand
horses. From this it followed quite naturally that they devastated
the whole country through which they passed, about which violence
the subjects complained very much. It is already foreseeable that
after such a great disadvantage these troops will be of little use.
And the Osmans will therefore see more and more that the Tartar
militia does them more harm than good. For the rest, the Sultan does
not treat the Tartars so supremely as he treats his other subjects.
When he has to send them an order, it is not done by a Ferman, but
by letters, which are otherwise just as perfectly obeyed. The Title,
which the Great Lord uses, when he writes to the Chan of the
Tartars, is this: "You, to whom the power of ruling belongs,
share in the government, lineage of happiness, gain of Bliss, rich
in perfect power and glorious fame; you, who walk in the path of
valor and happy chances, planted in the row of fame and Majesty,
chosen by the great Grace of the favorable King; (that is, God,) you
combative Gheray Chan, Emperor and Lord of the Crimea, of No?gay,
Circassia, Albi-Kjerman, of That and Taman and other great holy
armies; the Most High perpetuates your Highness, etc. These peoples
pay no annual tribute, but send, from time to time, the Sultan and
his principal Ministers some presents, mostly in horses, wives,
slaves, and other products of their country.
The provinces of
Barbary, Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers, are treated almost in the same
manner as the Tartars; the only difference is that the Tartars honor
and obey the Sultan's orders, which the Barbarian countries do only
when it suits their interests. These are also obliged, in time of
war, to join the Turkish fleet with all their vessels. It is
reckoned that all three of them can now supply eleven ships of the
line. The old treaty, according to which these Provinces are obliged
to help the Porte, also obliges the Porte to assist them in case of
necessity, when they should be attacked by a Power. They pay no
tribute, but usually come every three years with presents of animals
and slaves; in return, the Great Lord generally gives them a fully
equipped Warship, but without a crew. Therefore, these peoples could
also be considered Allies of this Empire on such terms.
XXXI. Of the taxable
Peoples of the Turkish Empire.
Taxable peoples of
the Porte are three in number, namely those of Georgia, Mingrelia
and Ragusa. The tribute which the Georgians pay to the Turkish
Empire has its origin in earlier times. When Solman the Magnanimous
took Erzerum, he concluded a treaty with the Persians, to divide
with him the tribute of the Kingdom of Georgia, which consisted of 7
Provinces. It was agreed that three would be taxable to the Great
Lord, and three to the Sophia of Persia, and over the seventh a
Prince of the country, who then bore the name of Achjach-Basch,
would be Sovereign, who at the same time as Stadtholder would also
have the supreme oversight of the other six taxables. These
Provinces then paid their tribute regularly, but when, instead of
the Prince Stadtholder over the six, and the Sovereign over the
seventh, a new Prince had to be appointed, dissensions arose in the
Empire, which were partly fed by the Turks, partly by the Persians.
Each Power appealed to the obligation to assist its taxable peoples.
From this arose long-lasting wars, which were waged by both Empires
with a mutual jealousy, the luck of Persian arms gained the upper
hand under the government of Sophi Thomas Kuiikan, and the Turks
lost the tribute of Georgia, so that not but a few peoples of these
extensive Provinces remained to them: these consist in the district
of Auchasja, which belongs to Georgia, and lies between Mingrelia
and Persia. The country is barren, full of forests and barren,
therefore poor. This country can now provide no other tribute than
that it sends the Porte some slaves as a present. The Mingrelians
are also poor people, paying a similar tribute. Every three years
they send 7 young slaves, and as many young female slaves to the
service of the Great Lord, and some other slaves for the Ministers.
The female sex of this country is in a special esteem above all the
female slaves of other nations. They are not only richly endowed
with the gifts of nature, especially an uncommon beauty, but also
have a quick mind and a very flattering and modest character, as one
might expect from a woman who wants to make the happiness of her
Lord or Husband. The experience of these excellent gifts has then
raised the price of the slaves of this nation beyond measure. The
small Republic of Ragusa, formerly called Epidaurus, and is situated
in Dalmatia. She pays, likewise, every three years, to the Porte a
tribute, which she sends by two men of her Nobility, to whom she
gives the Title of Ambassadors. To these the Porte pays the Tain,
but it does not amount to much, consisting only of one and a half
Reals per day. These Ambassadors must wear a long robe, and appear
with a beard. The tribute consists of twelve thousand and five
hundred Zecchines, to which must be added the presents which they
bring to the Visier, Kjetchuda, Reis-Efendy and Defterdar and other
Ministers of the Porte, so that, including the costs of the
Ambassadors, this amounts to at least sixteen thousand Zecchines for
the Republic, every three years.
XXXII. Of the
Household of the Turkish Empire, the Public Treasury, and those who
have the Administration thereof.
Nothing costs more
trouble than the Household of the Turkish Empire, if one wishes to
have a true account of it. The natural pride of the nation, which
causes it to magnify all its affairs, never lets us hope to obtain a
true and credible account from the persons who have their hands in
it. The extraordinary size of the Empire and the number of Provinces
of which it consists, place it impossible for a Foreigner to obtain
the exact knowledge of it that he desires. The many writers who have
written about Turkey are so little agreed that some have been misled
by the false reports of the Turks to put the income of the Reich's
treasury at 40 millions. Others, on the contrary, doubting with
reason the authenticity of the reports which were given to them,
have given too little, and have only fixed eleven millions. I think
that in this piece one must choose the middle way, to which the many
reports which I have obtained, and subsequently also by many
experiences, have been secured, determine me.
Then, before I speak
of the quantity and condition of the income, I must give an idea of
the treasuries into which they flow, and the persons
who have the management of them. All the revenues of the Turkish
Empire are divided into two classes, one of which is outside the
Serail, and is called Myry, but the other is in the Serail, and
bears the name of Chafyneh. The first is the Empire-casse, under the
Defterdar or Great-treasurer. The second is managed by the
Chafynehdar-Aga, which is a considerable office, which is always
held by a black Ensign, and this is the special Cash of the Sultan.
XXXIII. Of the Myry
or the Kingdom-cash, and of the Chafyneh or Kasse of the Great Lord,
its receipt and expenditure.
The Kingdom-cash,
under the Defterdar, may amount to about 20 millions according to
the most convenient account. This flows from various sources; but I
will speak only of the principal ones.
The poll tax is a
tribute, which everyone pays, living in the Turkish Empire, except
the women, and who are under the protection of the Ambassadors and
Consuls. Every male son begins to pay this tribute from the 14.1st
year, amounting to a Zechine. This is the least sum; but increases,
according to the public need and necessity. The tribute of the poll
tax is appropriate to the ability of the subjects, and is divided
annually into three Classes. The most well-to-do pay 12 piastres,
the middle-class 8, and the poorest 4. But if the Empire needs
money, then these sums must be paid twice a year instead of once a
year. According to the calculation of persons who had to do with the
leasing of this tax, it brings in three millions a year. Three
millions are brought in by the salt mines and fish-rich waters; two
millions are received from the leases, leases, and those offices
which have to give a certain tribute. Two other millions are
received from public goods. The Customs houses bring in five
millions. The three principal ones are those of Constantinople,
Smyrna, and Salonica. These would yield much more, if they were
observed with the same exact severity on the same footing, as the
Europeans observe, times the tolls are otherwise very moderate, and
do not exceed three per hundred among Europeans; even the penalty
imposed on illicit traffic is moderate; for in this case one pays
only a double toll.
Another considerable
sum is brought in by the tolls imposed on things that serve the
pleasure and enjoyment of life, such as tobacco, coffee and spices,
which are more burdensome than all other things necessary to man's
life. Still some other minor incomes, which I leave untouched, with
those that I have recorded, constitute the annual income of the
external government fund, under the Defterdar, and these amount
together to 20 millions of reals. This Fund makes good the expenses
of the fleet, the maintenance of the militia, the remuneration of so
many officers in war and in the city, as well as the extraordinary
accidents, which usually either consume or exceed the entire amount
of the revenue. This Fund is, at present, in the worst
circumstances. So many wars, which the Porte has continually waged,
and which have ended unhappily, especially the so destructive
Persian war, which has lasted so many years, have not only weakened
it, but also brought it into the utmost confusion. Besides a debt of
16 millions, which this Fund owes the Sultan, and the advance
expenditure in the revenues of two years, it cannot pay many things
above that. Wherefore the confusion is so great, that, according to
the confession of some persons working therein, no other means can
be thought of to keep it standing, than that the Great Lord, from
his own Treasury, should give a few millions into the State
Treasury. This was also done several times, and this is indeed a
means, to keep the Treasury standing, which is not common to the
Treasurys of other Princes.
The Chafyneh or
Treasury of the Great Lord is in a very different state. Its income
cannot be determined precisely, because it is coincidental and
arbitrary, and consequently, to a very great extent, subject to
change. Of fixed incomes flow into it those of Cairo, Wallachia,
Moldavia, Ragusa and Mingrelia. This last Province yields no money
at present; for she is so poor, that she can only deliver a few
slaves as tribute,
Cairo delivers,
annually, Reals --
600000
Wallachia — —
230000
Moldavia — —
60000
Ragusa — —
16666
The incidental
incomes, which are still much more considerable, flow from the
confiscated goods of the deposed and executed Bassas; from the
goods, which, for want of heirs, fall to the treasury; from the
fines; from the tithes of all profits, and from the income of the
mining. This last source is, at present, for various reasons, very
weakened. The Silver Mines, which lie in the district of Erzurum,
and otherwise yielded very much, may be considered as lost, because
in that country there is too great a lack of wood to work them, and
the transportation of wood is too expensive. Even the mines of
Diarbekir, which yielded very much gold of the best alloy, yield
s not nearly those
great advantages which they previously delivered, For, since the
population of this Province, by the constant raids of the Persian
troops, is very weakened in these regions, so the work is either not
always continued, or by very few workers.
In the meantime, it
cannot be otherwise, or this Kasse must be very rich. One only
considers how many Bassas lose their goods, which provide the
Sultan's Kasse with incredible sums. The only old Bassa of Damascus,
who died last year, left five millions in cash. Furthermore, the
Monarchs, for many years now, have been collecting money with the
utmost vigilance; but are very frugal in spending; the Sultan's own
maintenance is regulated, and the pension of the Servants is fairly
determined. Even the ostentation of one's own concubines is no
longer so excessive as before, when the Sultans wasted incredible
sums on them. Formerly it cost much less to declare one as Consort
or Favorite. But now this is no longer done, in order to recover
expenses. The only case in which Economy has no place is the birth
of a Prince: for then one must do what custom and courtesy require.
Sultan Achmet has even in the Seraglio abolished many offices which
he considered superfluous; but the incomes of those which could be
considered necessary, he has cut back. (*) The Court expenses, which
are now only made good from the Chafyneh, are therefore very
moderate, and reduce very little the large sums which flow into it
annually. All other arbitrary expenses, serving the pleasure of the
Monarch, for instance, buildings, furniture, haberdashery,
illuminations, amusements, are made good by his Ministers as a
dispute; wherefore the Chafyneh has no further charges concerning
them, as she nevertheless had, before this, to the great
disadvantage of the Treasury.
The Sultan alone has
to command over this unusually rich treasury, and he very
reluctantly resolves to meet the Imperial Treasury by a loan. If he
does so, then the need must be great. The Ministers also avoided in
every possible way to turn to him on this matter, in order not to
receive reproaches for bad management, and not to give the Monarch
an opportunity to become angry. This nevertheless often forces them
to do so, and in such a case they avail themselves, under the
present government, of remarks concerning a fearful revolt; for fear
alone is able to impress a Sultan, and to increase his natural
passions, which are common to almost all Turks. There are also
political considerations and rules, having their basis in the
Seraglio itself, why the Monarchs are so reluctant to let money go
out of the Seraglio. I will speak of this when I shall treat of the
Politics of the Turks.
{*)
My Italian manuscript gives, augmented, ???.
XXXIV.
Of the Commerce of the Turks and their Subjects at
Constantinople, and in general. I am writing to you about Commerce,
a matter which does not belong to my ministerial object, and which I
have not learned either. Therefore I do
not promise you any Merchant's knowledge concerning the essence of
Commerce, such as I leave to the Merchants. It
is enough for me to give such reports concerning it, as agree with
my general determinations, and which I have been able to learn from
old, good and experienced Merchants. I
will therefore report something concerning the sources of this
Commerce, the condition of the costs and effects, the property and
the various prices of the materials, as well as the virtue of the
Manufactures; and hereby say something
of the accidental determinations and quality of the persons through
whose hands the Commerce passes. Here I
shall begin to speak of the Commerce which the Turks and the nations
subordinate to them carry on here. Then
I shall speak of the European nations and their Commerce.
— The Turks trade, very seldom, with foreign countries;
for they can content themselves with the use of their
extensive Empires and Provinces. Therefore
they have two kinds of Commerce. One is
the Commerce on the Black Sea, which they carry on with their
so-called Saïks, Voleken, and other small ships.
The cargo of these is varied, according to the various things
which they fetch on the shores of this Sea, and according to the
places where they load the Goods. On
the side of ??fe, and especially in the neighbourhood of the river
Phafis, they load some wood. On the
European coasts they fetch coal, and in the more remote regions
towards the Danube they load corn, wax and cattle. As the Crimea has
an abundance of leather, small cattle, wax, honey, butter and corn;
they make their cargoes there at such advantageous prices,
that the merchants who carry on this branch of trade gain an
unusually large amount of money by it. The
other considerable and more profitable trade is carried on in the
Mediterranean, with ships called Kaikes. The
spices and coffee are brought over the Red Sea to Suez.
Here camels are loaded with them, which carry them to Cairo.
From this city the goods are brought, in large barges, over
the Nile to Rosetta and Damiate, where they are loaded into larger
ships. Egypt has an abundance of other
products mentioned above. The cloths,
which the common people use, and with which the militia is usually
also clothed, are made at Salonike, which they also have the
reputation of making better and finer than at Constantinople.
The cameltoes are prepared in the neighbourhood of Angora, a
country which has very fine wool, or rather the finest hair of
goats, silk ribbons and other manufactures of this kind.
On the island of Scio, especially in the city, are made
cloths of tree wool and silk, but cloths of tree wool are made
chiefly at Alexandria, and on the island of Cyprus.
Sailcloth for the ships, and linen for the Army, are made in
various countries, but that which is required for the use of the
fleet, at Sifanio, an island in the Archipelago, which supplies it
annually on account of its tribute. The
price of such Goods and Manufactures is, generally, determined by
the custom and way of thinking of the Turkish Merchants, who,
however, are generally satisfied with a moderate profit.
In all the Contracts of the Merchants, it is reckoned in
Piastres, of which each, according to us (Venetian) money, amounts
to about six Lire. (*) The Turks,
therefore, in their Commerce, confine themselves only to the
Transport of their own Products and Manufactures from one Country to
another, and content themselves with a less profit, against which
they also venture less. Among the Turkish subjects, many of the
Greeks apply themselves to the Commerce on the Black Sea, and many
hundreds of Saïks are occupied with Greeks, who procure
themselves employment by this trade. The
other Greeks apply themselves to arts and other branches of
commerce; they also trade in European
countries with such Products, which I shall mention, when I shall
speak of those Nations. The Armenians do not venture much upon the
Sea. Their greatest Trade consists in
precious Stones, which they buy rough from the Europeans, then have
prepared and set according to the Eastern taste, and thereby gain
much Money. The Jews also do not much concern themselves with
Shipping, but nevertheless venture great Capitals in the Sea Trade,
which they carry on with all Nations in Europe.
Many of them apply themselves to Medicine, with the
permission of the Hekjym-Baschy, upon whom all Physicians depend,
except the few who are in the Service of Foreign Ambassadors.
Very many of them also find it a good Profit, that they are
the Brokers with other Merchants. For
according to a privilege no one but they can be a Broker in
Constantinople. The European Merchants
have often tried to avoid such troublesome people to get rid of;
they have also been freed from it for some time. But, since the Jews
have the Ministers of the Court on their side, with whom they
converse familiarly; so they had to employ them again in their
business of commerce.
The Persians, for
this, also carried on a heavy and profitable trade at
Constantinople. The Chan or their warehouse, where they live, and
deposit their goods, is one of the country's most beautiful
buildings. Indian fabrics, woollen cloths, silk goods of all kinds,
were the principal articles of this rich trade. He does not want to
say much now. The long-lasting war between the two kingdoms caused
the journeys of the great caravans, which came annually from Persia,
to cease.
(*)
Concerning the value of money, one can consult my description, §
XLI, page 52?
XXXV. Of the Commerce
of the Venetians at Constantinople.
Since the Venetians
are considered the oldest Merchants in this country; I will speak of
their Commerce, first of all, before all other nations of Europe.
This is, at present, by innumerable accidents, considerably
weakened. Many irregularities have crept in, which have given it a
great blow. So many wars, waged with the Turks, which often lasted
many years together, have stopped and broken it up. Other nations
have taken advantage of this opportunity, and used the loss of the
Venetians to their own advantage. The English, Dutch, French, and
others have put themselves in possession of the harvest, and have
drawn to themselves a great part of the goods, which, for many
centuries, passed through the hands of the Venetians. To this end
the factories established in their countries, chiefly the cloth
factories, which the French promoted by the moderate and low prices,
helped. Their silk fabrics were praised by the beauty and good
colours, which gave them a beautiful appearance. Then also the
mirror and crystal factories in France, not only, but also in
England and Germany, did great harm to the Venetian trade. But the
greatest harm was done to it by the shipping, which the Portuguese
and Dutch, with such good success, undertook to the East Indies.
For, since these nations now, immediately, traded with the
inhabitants of these coasts, they thus withdrew from the Venetian
merchants, who for the latter, by the distribution of such goods,
gained infinitely much, the most excellent and most sought-after
effects of spice goods. At present the greater part of the trade of
the Venetians consists in gold and silk fabrics, which are called
Damasks. These still remain in some respect, and are placed above
those which have been made, to lower the price of the Venetian
Damasks. It is incredible, how great the amusement of them is among
the Turks for their Families. (*)
The Venetian cloths
are still highly esteemed; the amusement of them would be much
greater, if the price were not too high. Those Turks, who want to
save, are more in favor of the English and Dutch cloths. The most
economical buy French cloths, because they look beautiful, are
pleasing because of their mixed colors, and can be bought for a very
moderate price. The Turks have made the experiment of setting up
factories of cloth, drap d'or, silk, etc. in the capital and in
other places, in order to break down other nations there, and to
keep in the country the large sums of money that annually leave
their country. They have made much effort, and spent much money for
it. But their intention failed, either through ignorance of the
masters, or because the climate and water were not favorable for it.
For gold and silk fabrics, and for velvet, many spinning houses and
looms were built, partly in Constantinople, partly in Bursa, partly
also in Scio. The manufactures that are made there are also very
good. But they do not come close to the Venetian, neither in
brilliance and beauty, nor in the arrangement and liveliness of the
colors. Therefore the amusement of them is also very small in
comparison with ours. Besides the cloth and silk materials, other
articles belong to the essential trade of the Venetians in
Constantinople. Ready money, glass, caps, paper, apothecary's goods,
processed wax, pickled goods, and other things promote a profitable
trade, which is not to be despised.
From the Turks, on
the other hand, the Venetians take leather, wool, tree wool, impure
wax, smoked meat, powder, oil of Candia, etc., but chiefly coffee.
It is not possible to determine exactly how much the cloth, damask,
silk materials, and other effects amount to, which go from Venice to
the Levant, any more than what the goods amount to, going from the
Levant to Venice. For this is very unmerciful, and depends on all
sorts of treaties, on a greater or lesser abundance, on the fine and
condition of the work, and especially also on the taxes, expenses
and demand.
These are the
external and unavoidable causes, which have done damage to the
Venetian trade. But, before I close this article, I must say
something about other causes, on which their free Will has an
influence, which they calmly allow, and either do not count, or do
not understand, notwithstanding that they are still much greater
damage. After that the Venetians were deterred from this trade, by
the multitude of dangers and the small profit, that they 'withdrew
from it, compared with former times, and because of their wealth and
other conveniences gradually became negligent; Thus they left their
affairs to foreign correspondents, to whom they sent their goods,
for instance Jews, Armenians, Greeks and Frenchmen, who took part in
the trade and profit, under the obligation to treat the goods sent
well. They determined their correspondents to give a certain
provision per hundred of the Capital, yea, they even left them to
what they could possibly gain above the fixed price.
As great as the
advantage was, that they drew for their trouble; the Correspondents
were not yet content with that; they wanted to gain still more,
making use of the unlawful means of filthy bankruptcies, so that
many of the Vmetian Merchants either had to go bankrupt themselves,
or yet weakened themselves, and lost all desire for such a trade.
This notwithstanding,
since all the articles of trade are very peculiar to the Venetian
nation, without other nations having a share in them, because they
cost much, and yet are very soft; however, the Venetian trade could
revive again, if one, as much as possible, moderated the price, made
the entertainment easy, and in addition took honest people and
native Venetians, who conducted the trade properly, and did not, as
I see with displeasure in many, draw the whole profit to themselves,
while they caused the Venetian merchants extraordinary expenses,
partly by charging the costs too high, partly by falsifying the
accounts, partly by delaying the reclaims.
I find two ways, by
which one could prevent the fraudulent corruption of our Commerce:
first, when one had in the Levant itself Families, who possessed
their own Capital. For these themselves conducted their Commerce;
then they would not be exposed to the dirty management of the
Merchants, who are after all their Commissioners: furthermore, when
classes were made, and certain prices were set for each, for
instance, sheets, mirrors with gilded frames, damasks, etc. Of each
class three kinds could be set, fine, medium, small. For each kind a
certain price could be set, and corresponding to the condition of
the Goods, which one had to prohibit or to raise or to diminish. In
the same way one had to prohibit also the various stamps of the
Manufacturers. For with these one only plays, and they serve more to
deceive the Merchants, than to the good thoughts one has of a Good.
I know by experience, how much the Capital of trade suffers by this.
In this way, not only would all disputes be removed, but also the
wiles and bases of our own merchants would be curbed and appeased,
since now one brings the goods of the other into discredit. They
conclude double contracts, of which one goods, but the other, seems
only advantageous. They tolerate the great disadvantage of accounts,
since everything is swallowed up by counter-accounts; they sell and
allow that the payment is only made after many months.
But most of all, an
oversight over these commissioners would be necessary, in order to
make a balance of their cash and the condition of the warehouses
every year, and these people did not take the liberty of giving the
money belonging to the owners to the inhabitants of the country at
interest. For in that way they alone draw the profit; the place
Venice suffers, in all respects, partly by the delay of the
requisitions, partly and sometimes also by the total loss of the
Capital.
But above all it were
necessary to exclude all foreigners who have mixed themselves in the
Venetian trade, and to follow in this the example of all other
trading companies. I could say more, concerning the manner of the
delegation of Venetian goods, the time when the dispatch must take
place, as well as the quantity, so that it does not exceed the
amusement. But if I wanted to say something about every circumstance
and every irregularity by which our Commerce is hindered; then I
should have to say things that are all too much against my grain.
(*)
Mr. Grifelini has only made many new designs for the damasks a few
years ago, in order to continue this trade as a new life, which have
turned out well.
XXXVI. Of the
Commerce of the French.
The Commerce of the
French is the richest and s??. No nation surpasses the French. (*)
It is reckoned that the annual montant thereof amounts to nearly 20
millions of Reals, that not counting also what they bring from
France to the Levant, and from the latter back again. From France
come sheets, silk fabrics, caps for the Turks, paper, sugar,
Conchenille, Indigo, gold braid, and a multitude of other Galanterie
goods. In return for these go back to France corn, coffee, camel
hair, tree wool, and especially wool. These are the principal
articles.
Cloth is the
principal branch of their Commerce. They bring cloths of three kinds
of quality to Turkey: the best they sell for three piastres, the
average for two and a half, and the least for two and a quarter
piastres. But these prices may be subject to change, if, in case of
war between France and England, the insurance costs too much. The
cheap price, but not the real quality of the cloths, makes the Turks
give them preference above all others. Besides that, it also makes
the mixture of colours so beautiful, that they have held up until
now, without any harm.
The greatest
advantage of these cloths is this, that the Turks are accustomed to
dress their numerous servants, whom they support, twice a year in
new clothes. For this purpose they prefer French cloth, which looks
beautiful, costs little, and can be worn very comfortably. This
trade is managed by certain persons, who depend on the Chamber of
Marseilles. They must remain here for a certain time, after which
they return to France, and send others in their place.
No one can sell this
cloth, without the French Ambassador, and all the French Merchants
being aware of it. For the sale must be regular, and have a certain
agreement: a custom, worthy of being followed, because it prevents
all disputes, frauds, and forgeries, which are always
disadvantageous to the Capital of trade.
That nation has its
Treasury, and for every bale of cloth a certain sum of money comes
into the Treasury. But this burden is not heavy for the Merchants,
because they derive so great profit from this branch of trade.
Without burdening Commerce by the maintenance of this Treasury, they
obtain the following advantages: first, they secure the Capital of
the Merchants of their nation. For, if a Merchant goes bankrupt;
then they enable themselves in advance, not to suffer any loss
thereby. For they observe, in their Contracts, an invariable custom.
The French sell their cloth, usually, on Credit of eight months. The
Purchaser must pay in three installments, each one third of the
Somme. If he does not pay his debt; then, as interest, ten per
hundred is put into his account. This makes the Purchasers,
generally, keep their word, and therefore the return purchases are
not stopped, and the Capitalists convert their money steadily. If
the Purchaser does not pay; then the national Treasury has the
advantage of ten per hundred, which comes into it under the name of
Interest. From this source, and from what is paid for every bale of
cloth sold, the Treasury, in case of bankruptcy, pays the whole sum.
And, as in this way the interest continues, the Capital of the
Merchants suffers nothing. This Treasury, furthermore, pays all the
extraordinary necessities of the nation; from it the Palace of the
Ambassador is maintained, and every year a certain sum is
distributed as alms to the poor, which often goes so far that whole
Families are supported from it.
By this arrangement,
from which this clever nation has Honor, the Royal Household finds
its advantages; Religion has its share in it; and that nation
quickly maintains its interest, its peace and Honor. I cannot deny
the inventor of it the praise due to him. It was the Lord Marquis de
Villeneuf, who was French Ambassador at Constantinople. The next
Ambassador, the Count of Chatelet, kept a very watchful eye over
them, and had them observed still more strictly,
Besides this
profitable trade, the inhabitants of Provence gain much more by
their Tartans and other ships, with which they provide Transport.
They transport people, and goods of all kinds, from one place to
another. They are never idle; as soon as they have unloaded their
goods, they look again for new orders. There is, so to speak, no
inhabited rock, and no harbour, without a French Consul or
Vice-Consul, who protects and promotes Commerce,
From this one sees
how much trouble this idle nation takes, to seek in every corner of
the Empire sources of income and employment. With such a happy
result the French trade in these provinces.
(*)
Namely in the Levantine trade.
XXXVII. Of the
Commerce of the English and Dutch.
The Commerce of the
English is no longer nearly so extensive as it was before.
Nevertheless it is very profitable and rich. The French cloths, by
the beauty of their colors and the cheap price, have diminished the
great amusement of those of the English, who, before, have sold 25
thousand baizes at Constantinople, Smyrna, and Aleppo. Another
considerable loss has their Commerce suffered. Formerly this was a
rule in the English Commerce in the Levant: neither cloth nor other
goods, neither to be given on Credit, nor to be exchanged; a very
commendable rule, but which, as soon as the other nations, to the
great disadvantage of the trade, put it out of sight, the English
also had to abandon, if they did not want to see their Trade
completely spoiled.
A certain number of
Englishmen is appointed over this trade, who depend on a Company of
trading Merchants. Every year, by a single Convoy, the quality of
Goods is sent to them, which can be sold in Turkey. (*) But one
always looks at the state of the need, so that the Goods, through
abundance, do not lose their Credit and their high price. A
prudence, which is advantageous for the Trade, and worthy of being
followed. The articles of their Commerce are Lead, Tin, Watches, and
other Manufactures, and Cloths of divers Makes, from three Piastres
the El to higher Classes. The Attention with which this Commerce is
conducted, may serve as an Example. Now, as these Goods are at a
high Price, are certainly entertained, and one has a certain Profit
by them; so it cannot fail, but this Trade must be Useful and
Prosperous.
At Constantinople
there is no Article, which the English bring back, and their Return
Ships could load. On that Account none of their Ships land at this
Port. They all go to Smyrna, where they load Wool and Tree Wool, but
mostly Goats-hair of Angora and Persian Silk. But since the Russians
have become masters of the trade on the Caspian Sea, most of the
Persian silk goes to Afiracan, and from thence over the Volga to the
Canals of Petersburg. Wherefore the abundance at Smirna has much
diminished, and so the English ships do not always find cargo enough
for their ships in this port.
The trade of the
Dutch has also, in comparison with former times, much diminished.
What they now do of trade at Aleppo, Constantinople and Smirna, is a
very mediocre remainder of the great, which they formerly carried on
there. Their principal articles are cloth, pepper, metals and
velvet. The metals and pepper they sell for ready money. But as to
the cloth and velvet; they are in the same unhappy condition, as
other nations, and must give them on credit for many months. Their
principal requisitions are the Camel Hair of Angora, which they need
for their Camels. At present, in Constantinople, there is not one
single Good, and original Dutch Merchant firm. The whole trade is
therefore scattered, and divided among the Foreigners, who observe
them, but without paying the least attention to the general welfare
of the trade of the nation. (*) They care for nothing, but their own
interest, directing themselves, sometimes, solely to their needs. In
this way, therefore, that formerly so flourishing Trade also
declines.
(*)
Both found no place in the years 1770, etc., The number of English
Merchants was indefinite; and, except in times of war, the ships
came, sometimes singly, sometimes more together, to Constantinople
and Smyrna.
(*)
That is how it seemed to me too. But native Hollanders assured me
that the State gains all the more from Consulate fees, and from the
demands of the certainly very flourishing and considerable shipping;
not to say that their Republican principles did not permit any
provision in this matter.
XXXVIII. Of the
Commerce of the Russians and Germans.
The Commerce of the
Russians is a silent business, which makes not much noise, but it is
the most profitable and flourishing of all the kinds of commerce of
the European nations. It consists in furs of all kinds. The rarest
and most expensive are the skins of black foxes and of sables. The
ermines, water sables, and foxes of all kinds are most drawn, are
indeed small, but nevertheless bring in a great deal of money.
Since the Turks and
all the inhabitants of the Empire, both male and female, wear furs
at all times of the year; it is almost unbelievable how great the
amusement, and consequently the advantage, is in the Russians'
drawing. Besides this principal article, they also bring into the
Turkish States leather, linen, and other manufactures, which make
the trade of the Russians with the Turks profitable. On the other
hand, they draw few and cheap things, prepared leather for shoes,
limes, and dried fruits. (*)
The Germans have been
seeking, for several years, to open a source of trade with Turkey,
and for that purpose they have sent able men there to find them. Two
ways (†) would make the matter possible: one is the land
road, when the goods were brought on wagons; the other is the road
on the Danube, over which the goods can go into the Black Sea. (§)
But, since all the principal articles, from which they can promise
themselves profit, are heavy and large, their trade will always be
less profitable, because of the heavy freight costs.
I believe, that it
will always be a mediocre trade, whose result is uncertain. For
everything that can go from Germany to Turkey, comes in great
abundance from so many other countries, and from other nations, who
have been in possession of it for a long time. The articles, which
can serve for their trade, are steel, tin, iron, glass, etc.
From the nature of
these things, one can always conclude to the small Capital of this
trade.
At present there is
no Merchant of this nation in Constantinople, and the little trade,
which is conducted here by Germans, is divided among the Merchants
of other European nations, and other subjects of the Porte.
(*)
That is, figs and raisins.
(†)
My handwriting says three.
(§)
My manuscript adds, and rightly so, that the third and principal way
is via Trieste, by means of the Adriatic Sea.
XXXIX. Of the
Commerce of the Swedes and Neapolitans.
It is but a few years
since the Swedes and Neapolitans sent ambassadors, with the
character of extraordinary ministers, to the Porte. Sweden sent its
ambassadors when they wanted to break with Russia; but Naples, after
the King had taken this kingdom from Emperor Charles VI.
The ministers of
these two courts have formed two new nations of Franks at
Constantinople, and both have taken great pains to introduce some
trade for their nations. Although it now means so little that it
hardly deserves the name of trade, I will nevertheless, in order not
to omit anything, report what it consists of, and how it is
conducted.
The Swedes conduct
their trade in small, well-equipped ships, which they furnish with
skilled men. There comes there every year only one ship, (*) laden
with Swedish products. These consist of iron and other things, of
which that cold country has an abundance. The other ships go more to
the Barbarian Coasts ?? because the advantage of this nation, with
respect to the Turkish State, consists more in shipping than in
trade.
The advantage that
the Neapolitans derive from the Commerce with this Kingdom is even
more definite: for they lack the means to derive their profit from
shipping, like the Swedes. In the space of three years I have seen
only one small ship arrive here. All their other shipping consists
of Tartans and small Polakers. With these they navigate the Coasts;
but those ships are small, consequently the profit from freighting
is also small. They are averse to goods, with which they could gain
so much, that it would be worthy to be called a trade. The principal
article consists in silk, which they work at Messina. Although the
materials made of it are not good in longevity, and have no colours
which will last; nevertheless they present themselves beautifully to
the eye, and find amusement. Their whole trade consists in works of
tortoiseshell, boxes, and other smaller things. Their goods, which
they bring, therefore do not cost much, and the demand is
consequently just as small. This cannot generally be determined. In
the few opportunities which they have to provide for themselves with
something, they adapt themselves to the circumstances, look for the
cheap, and take what they like.
Furthermore, I cannot
say anything of the trade. I would only report a little of each
nation which trades at Constantinople. But whether this entire
Commerce, taken together, as it is carried on by so many nations, is
active or passive for Turkey, that is, advantageous or
disadvantageous for the household of the Turkish Empire, we shall
see later.
(*)
This has changed. Now and then there is not a single ship in the
year, but then again several have arrived. The latter happens,
mainly, in times of war.
XL.
Of the causes of the decay of the economy of the Turkish Empire.
I
maintain quite that the Commerce which the Franks carry on in Turkey
is a passive trade for the economy of the Turkish Empire,
consequently one of the principal causes of its decay.
One
need only make a comparison between the articles which are brought
from the European countries to the Turkish States, and between those
which they export from Turkey; and one will see that the Goods which
are imported, consist mostly of things which have a small extent,
and yet are at a high price, and that, on the contrary, what is
exported is of great extent and low cost. Now since the Merchants
have not the means to send their return goods in smaller effects;
thus they do it in great measures, robbing, in this way, annually,
the country of very considerable sums of cash. (*)
Among
the Turkish money the best is the bondukly, because it is of pure
gold and of the weight of our Zechine; (†) But it has become
very rare, because they have almost all gone to France, where the
merchants find some advantage in it.
A
considerable sum of money goes for a commodity, which above all
others yields great advantage. I have not hitherto made mention of
it, because this trade is divided between three different nations,
namely the Dutch, English and Venetians. This is the diamond trade,
of which one can count one year through the other, a pleasure of one
million reals at the least. Seldom do the Merchants, who deal there,
wish to receive Returns. They all seek ready money, which they spend
all the more quickly on new Capital, in order to be able to multiply
the circulation of money and the profit thereof all the more. (*) As
often as a Courier departs from European nations, he has many
bundles of money with him. Every ship that sails has something like
that. There is also no law that prohibits the export of money. From
which one can deduce how strong the export of money is annually. It
is beyond doubt that the more one diminishes the circulating mass of
money, the more the people suffer, and the Prince's Treasury has the
less profit. This I consider to be one of the principal causes of
the decline of the State economy of the Empire. I have already dealt
with the lack of mining works. The Silver Mines cannot be promoted
for want of wood, and the Gold Mines for want of men. This is the
second reason which greatly weakens the State economy.
The
third cause is the present system of government. All power is in the
hands of the Enlightened, who have an indescribable desire for
money, and let as little of it as possible come among the people.
They remain permanently locked up in the Seraglio, and care very
little about the People. Consequently, the large sums that fall into
their hands remain buried, and have no influence on the real course
of the State. And so the people, as before, cannot possibly pay the
Imperial charges. The principal and most deadly shock is finally
received by the Government by so many wars, which the Porte has
waged with great loss. Seldom or never does it make such booty as
this, and which was the most profitable source of this Empire. The
Persian war in particular has devoured immeasurable sums, which far
exceeded the income, and brought the State economy into the most
miserable condition. If the fortune of this Empire does not change;
then it must, steadily, become more and more confused. At least I
see it in such a state, that it will hardly be able to recover
itself again, without a complete reversal of the present condition.
By
this one can form an idea of the unhappy state of the
household of the Turkish Empire, and remove the reasons which have
brought it into the present bad condition.
(*)
There goes, now, indeed an unusual amount of Spanish, Venetian,
German Imperial, and other gold and silver money to f??bye: but it
does not remain there, but only goes through to the East Indies.
(†)
That is, Venetian. Of its value, in my time, one can consult my
description of the Turkish Empire ?? XL1. page 521. etc.
(*)
The diamond trade and export of money decreased, in my time,
noticeably, because the Turkish had become much worse.
XLI. Of the State of
War of the Turkish Empire in General.
The Turkish Empire
has begun to strengthen itself by arms, and by these it has come to
that pinnacle of power, which made it formidable to other Powers.
The bold and courageous deeds, as well as the almost unbelievable
Discomforts, which the Turkish militia has endured, prove also in
deed, that it was by nature and by practice exceptionally strong and
brave. But, because it, like all human things, was subject to
change, it began to lose its first prestige, and the irregularities
that crept in have gradually so spoiled it, that it is now no longer
so formidable to its neighbors. It may be said that all kinds of
this militia are corrupt, and that, instead of the old Krygstugt,
vices and absences have gained the upper hand.
There are among the
Turks many kinds of militia, both among the infantry and among the
cavalry. To the infantry belong the Janistas, (Jen Ttschjery,} the
Thopdschjy, the Kumbarahdschjy, the Bostandschjy, the Mehterdschjy,
the Sferradschjy and the Leventen. To the cavalry belong the Spahy,
(Sipahy-) the Sfae'yms, the Tymars, the Dschjebehdschjy, the
Sfeghban and the Maklahdschjy. They are not all paid in the same
way; the Sfaeyms and Tymars receive their payment from the revenues
of the lands, which the Sultan grants them, and which are almost to
be regarded as our fiefs. All others are paid from the Myry, that
is, the Empire Treasury.
Since in all
Principalities the War State is divided into three branches, namely,
Artillery, Militia and Navy, - I will now deal with each separately
to speak, in order to get a correct idea of what
knowledge the Turks have of their power, and how they use it.
XLII. Of the
Thopdschjys and Kumbarahdichjys, the Artillery and the Gunpowder.
The Thopdschjy and
Kumbarahdschjy are the Artillery-militia; the first correspond with
our Bombardiers, and the others with our Bombers. The Commander of
the first is the Topdschjy-Baschy, a considerable office, who has to
say about everything that belongs to the Artillery.
The Chief of the
second bears the name of Kumbarahdschjy-Baschy, being usually a
Bassa of two horsetails, but who always depends on others.
The number of the
Thopdschjy in the whole Turkish Empire amounts to 18,000 men, of
whom 6,000 lie in the capital, and the others are distributed in the
Provinces. They are divided into Chambers or Regiments, like the
Janistries. Few of them understand the right way to handle the guns.
They lack the theory altogether; therefore they do everything
according to a certain experience. They do not know how to hit the
right line according to the art of sight; they miss the diameter of
the guns above and to the side; therefore they cannot direct the
height of the gun correctly; they know nothing of the parallel line
of sight. They aim therefore only with an eye to an adventure,
directing their eye to the loading hole; wherefore also the bullets,
generally, only hit where they happen to come. Nevertheless they
sometimes practice this, and by habit some of them bring it to a
fixed experience; but the number of these will always be very small.
The Kumbarahdschjy do not number two thousand men. Six hundred of
them are said to be at Constantinople; but their officers, in order
to draw the pay in the meantime, usually wait until the war begins,
when they recruit their men. This kind of men is therefore, of
course, very inexperienced; and the more so, because they are hardly
ever trained by their officers. As long as I have been at
Constantinople, they have not even practiced throwing bombs. In this
way, therefore, the Sultan will always pay men for the
Kumbarahdschjy, but he will not get good soldiers by it; and, if a
war should arise, it will only depend on bribes, on frequent
practice, or on blind chance, when a masterpiece will be executed by
such men. Are those who are in charge of the Artillery so ignorant;
then on the contrary, those who are used by the gun-foundries
deserve less reproach.
The gun-foundries in
this Kingdom are in truth so constituted that they yield nothing to
the experienced nations in this. They have brought the mixing of
metals to a reasonable perfection, and the casting is, possibly,
performed with more precision and skill than with us. (*) The only
fault that I have been able to observe in some of their guns,
consists in the little relation to the laying, where they place the
ears. In some these are so far to the rear, that they have too great
a preponderance in front. Therefore the front preponderance must
produce the effect that the guns skip to the detriment of the
carriages themselves, whereby the shots, naturally, become very
uncertain. The tin used therewith comes from England, and this is an
article which not only from the Emperor's treasury, but also from
the State itself, annually brings a great deal of money to foreign
States. The famous mortars also have the defect that they are much
shorter than ours; when they are used therefore, especially on
ships, especially under the wind; then this must be accompanied, as
regards the fire, with much danger. Besides the warships, which
nevertheless have been built in advance to make use of such cannons,
they make use of them in the Sea-castles, and especially in the
Castles of Sefto and Abido, which are commonly called the
Dardanelles. They are planted there on beams, and are so placed,
that they always stand motionless, and strike horizontally with the
water. I have counted 32 in the Castle of Afiey and 28 in that of
Europe. On the occasion of the Artillery I must also mention
something of the gunpowder. If it is not more perfect, it
nevertheless equals ours. But in its preparation such deceits take
place, which, according to experience and an accurate comparison
made on this subject, can have no place at all in our countries. The
gunpowder makers here always increase, in the mixture, the parts of
coal and sulphur, but add less saltpetre, which is nevertheless one
of the principal ingredients. This they use to their own advantage,
and cheat in the work. According to the last change the gunpowder
must be of 5?? ace. On each ace, that is, on each 5: part of
saltpetre, one part of coal and one of sulphur is reckoned. But now
I have been assured by those who have made an accurate experiment of
it, that for every 7?- pounds there are not even 5 whole pounds of
saltpeter taken, since it should be 5?- pounds. Notwithstanding this
foul deception, gunpowder is nevertheless well proved well, and is
so well preserved, that, if it does not exceed the working of ours,
it is nevertheless equal to it.
The Carriages at the
Artillery are made of Oak, but are not at all beautifully worked.
The iron fittings do not correspond with them, and this is the
reason, that their artillery carriages, usually, do not last long.
As to the figure, so do the Sea, as well as the Land and Auction
guns, correspond with ours.
But as to the gun
foundries themselves; of these I can say nothing, because that is
what foreigners are allowed to go there. Otherwise it is a very
beautiful building, entirely of stone, and provided with 17 Domes,
roofed with lead. The space from outside indicates that there must
be numerous workshops inside. In the vicinity of them very spacious
magazines have been constructed, to store the lightest pieces; the
heaviest serve as ornaments to the street on the side, and for the
large square in front of the foundry on the shore of the sea. It
stands opposite the Seraglio in a street, near Galata and Pera,
which therefore received the name Thopchaneh after the gun foundry.
In the neighborhood is the Palace of the Thopdschjy-Baschy, who
always has a numerous guard of people of his profession.
(*)
Businello means the Venetians alone, and then he is quite right.
XLIII.
Of the Naval Power in General, and the Offices by It.
Nothing
is in a greater decline in the Turkish Empire than the Naval Power.
Before this, very numerous fleets appeared at sea; but after the war
of Candia, which the Porte waged for 25 years with the Republic of
Venice, this Empire was so weakened at sea that 'there never
appeared again a fleet that constituted even a third part of ships,
compared to the fleets of former times. The heavy and constant loss
in that war has been of such effect to the Turks that they still
firmly believe that God has destined the land for them, but the sea
for the Christians. From that time their desire for maritime affairs
has considerably diminished, and although they have somewhat
strengthened their power at sea, on the occasion of the last war
with the Venetians, they have nevertheless, after the peace, almost
entirely changed their minds. To this end the continued and
long-lasting unfortunate wars against Russia and Persia have also
brought their share. For in them they have had to make so many
expenses, that they were almost reduced to the impossibility of
making good those which are required for a fleet. Their maritime
power is now so weak, that not only can they hardly protect so many
seas, coasts and isolated kingdoms, in the possession of which the
Porte is, but that not even the necessary duties at sea on the ships
and galleys can be properly performed; and one sees almost every
year that either no one who has such a service leaves the harbour,
or, if he does sail, leaves no ship behind. At present this Empire
has only eleven galleys, and eleven partly ships, partly caravels. I
count in this harbour no more than twelve already old dismantled
ships, which can no longer do service. The services at sea are
almost all given to men who are very ignorant in maritime affairs.
The supreme Commander of the navy, namely Captain Bassa, is one of
the Empire's most distinguished persons. The present one is of a
high birth, descends from several Bassas, and is related to the
Imperial Family through his wife. But he is very unskilled in
maritime affairs, never noting navigation as his profession. Of the
same stamp are the lower Commanders. On the ships there are three
Officers' offices. The first is the Captain of the Ships, - the
second the Patrona, corresponding to our (Venetian) Admiral; and the
third the King's, agreeing with our (Venetian) Patrona. Each ship
has its Captain, Lieutenant, and 10 Officers, including the
Navigators, and Sailors.
The
Terschaneh-Emyny commands, in the absence of the Captain-Bassa, the
small fleet, and is as much as our (Venetian) Proveditor d'Armaia.
The Commanders of the Galleys bear the name of Begh; they are almost
all rich, Sons of Nobles, and mostly Bassas of two Horsetails, to
whom, for the maintenance of their own Galleys, the revenues of
certain countries are assigned, or the government of Metelino,
Rhodes, Chio and others islands. The Sultan grants them the whole
Galley, giving them some money for equipment; but all the rest is
for the account of the Begh. These expenses are richly reimbursed to
them by the income of the Stadtholderships, which the Porte allows
them to enjoy; and the oldest of them are, as a rule, gradually
promoted to the richest Stadtholderships.
The
Turks also make use of Barques and other small vessels, which they
call Kantschabasz, and which may be compared with our Brigantines.
They are used for rapid dispatches because of the shallows, which
are on all the Coasts of the Black and White Sea. These are under
the Menexis-Bey (*) or Sfer-Askjir of the Barques, to which, on the
best islands of the Archipelago, the principal income is allocated.
The
Commanders of the Fleet of Galleys take precedence over the others,
who command the ships. (†) An old custom and a certain
respect, which one has for the Beghs, on account of their descent
and their wealth, makes that they maintain the precedence of their
offices.
(*)
This must perhaps be Ghemy-Begh, Head of the Aldermen; for otherwise
the word, standing in the text, has no meaning.
(†)
My Italian manuscript says: have the same rank.
XLIV. Of the Kinds of
Ships, and their Equipment.
Three different kinds
of ships are used in the Turkish fleet: ships of three decks, the
Sultana and the Carvel. The length of the ships of three decks,
calculated from the long ground beam, is 62 ells. The ell of this
Arsenal has 2 and a half geometrical feet, which is half our stride.
Each of these ships has 106 metal pieces of Cannon: namely, on the
first deck ?? 15 gates on each side, only pieces of 50 pounds; on
the second deck also in 15 gates pieces of 30 pounds; on the third
deck, in 14 gates, pieces of 30 pounds; on the stem in 7 gates,
pieces of 14 pounds 5 on the stern two for pieces of 14 pounds, and
two culverins to 30 pounds; which together make up 106 pieces.
In order to give this
heavy body a greater speed, they have provided it with high masts
and ropes, which can carry much larger sails than usual. But these
ships have lost their prestige among sailors, because they cannot be
turned without a strong and violent wind. The equipment of these
ships, in times of war, amounts to 1200 Leventi, and 100 Greek
sailors. Leventi are the sea soldiers, mostly young Greeks, many of
whom have learned seafaring on merchant or plunder ships. Their
salary is fixed at six months to sixty Reals, upon which the ships
are usually disarmed; then they receive their farewell, going in the
winter to their own homes, to rest there from the inconveniences
suffered. Besides this money they also receive, for their daily
maintenance, a certain portion of rice, pickled meat, butter, peas
and beans, besides other trifles, with which they are quite content.
But what most induces them to such troublesome naval services, is
the hope of promotion, or a pension for all their lives, which they
receive, according to the services rendered. Before they go on
board, they are paid three months' wages in advance, and when they
return home they receive the other half. The ground beam of the
Sultana is 54 ells long. Some have 13, many 14, and most 15
gun-holes: and each has on the first deck pieces of 50, on the
second deck of 30, on the prow of 12, on the after two pieces of 12,
and two culverins of 30 pounds. Each Sultana has therefore about 66
pieces, 800 Leventi, and 50 Greek sailors. The Caravelles (Carvels)
have at the base the length of 40 ells and are almost equal to our
Frigates. They have 36 to 48 pieces, 200 Leventi, and 30 Greeks.
XLV. Of the manner in
which ships are built.
The shipbuilders who
build the Turkish ships are mostly Greeks from the Archipelago.
Although they lack all theory, and work everything only according to
a certain experience; they nevertheless build the ships with such
correct measurements, that the Turkish ships in proportion and
beauty yield nothing to the most famous ships of other nations. The
crooked timbers and the whole frame, which goes under water, are of
oak; the upper part of pine; which makes them lighter, and in a
battle also causes less loss of men, because the pine wood splinters
less than the oak. The outermost crossbeams at the stern, and the
Argana (*), are of elm; and the outer parts are united with those of
the inside by strong wooden pins, to make them durable. At least the
ships should have been built in this way, with respect to the
various kinds of wood.
But this is not so,
but the malice and greed of the people who are employed in it,
changes and confuses everything. Slaves are made to work on it. I
have heard from some of our countrymen, who, during their slavery,
were employed in shipbuilding, that they mix the weak with the
strong wood in advance, in order to make the frame less durable, to
which a certain religious zeal moves them, in which they are out to
inflict as much damage as possible on the enemies. To this,
furthermore, comes the greed, because everywhere, where it is
necessary, the wood is not joined with nails; in many places only
weak wooden pins are used, in order to have an opportunity to steal
the iron bolts. The persons, placed over the shipbuilding, agree
with the slaves, share the necessities and the advantage, causing
the Empire an extraordinary disadvantage. This is the reason, that
the Turkish ships burst and break so easily, and do not last half as
long, as ours. A proof of this can serve, that of the ships, built
in the last war, not one can serve any more. This dirty way of
building also makes that they are not beautiful on the inside. ??
the outer skin are planks of pine, oak, and other kinds of trees
united together, whereby not only the strength of the vessel itself
is weakened, but also the external appearance of the ship loses
much. The masts consist of several pieces, which are joined together
with iron bands, which method I consider better than ours, at least
in that they can be repaired more easily in certain accidents.
The sails could not
be finer. They are all of fine woolen material, catch the wind
easily, and require much less manpower than our sails. The ropes
could not be worse, whether this is due to the bad choice of the
hemp, or to incompetence in working them. All their ropes are much
coarser than ours, consequently less competent, and do not last half
as long as ours.
They are exceedingly
fond of tar, and on every voyage the ships are tarred once, which is
sometimes done in an interval, to protect the ships from harm, and
to make them sail faster.
(*)
My handwriting makes it doubtful whether it should not mean Argine,
and therefore the ship's gunwale.
XLVI. Of the Armoury
at Constantinople.
The Armoury at
Constantinople lies across the harbour on the shore of the city, at
the very spot where the harbour forms a sea bay. A part of it serves
for the large, another for the small ships. Many sheds are erected
for the building of ships, but the shipbuilders always build the
ships, either from habit or for convenience, in the open air. The
galleys and other small vessels are built under sheds, at a special
place designated for this purpose. There are many warehouses there,
in which the things necessary for shipbuilding are kept. The entire
circumference of an (Italian) mine?? is surrounded by walls, to
protect it against fire and theft. Nevertheless, a few months ago, a
fire broke out in the largest and richest warehouse; this consisted
again of 24 warehouses; it was entirely built of stone, and covered
with lead: everything burned, and caused a damage of several
millions. But this building was, within a few months, much more
solid and beautiful, than before, repaired; but it will not be so
easy to restore the lost building materials in the former abundance.
For it will cost a great deal and require a long series of years,
until everything is put in order again. The Captain Bassa lives in a
Palace in the Arsenal, and has the first supervision and command
over it. When he is absent, then the Terschaneh-Emyny or Chief
Overseer of the Fleet lives there, who is the chief Official after
the Captain Bassa.
This Armoury is
therefore a sufficient and well-regulated building, to equip
numerous fleets. There is no lack of skilled Chief Builders, and
Ship Carpenters are plentiful. There is wood in abundance; and, as
it is only brought from the near Sea-bay, so also the Transport is
easy. There is no lack of iron-work, and from the whole Archipelago
one gets enough cloth for sails. There can be no lack of Sailors,
because the Kayak-navigators of the city, and so many people, who
sail on many thousands of Kayaks in the Black Sea, on the shores of
the Mediterranean, and in so many special Provinces, can furnish
sailors enough, to man the most numerous fleets. Notwithstanding
this great facility, which the nature and disposition of the
country, together with the uncommon extent of the Empire, offer, the
Maritime State is in decline, and the fleet consists of the small
number of ships, which I have mentioned above. They are now building
two ships in this port, and seven others in the Armouries of
Metelino and Sinope, where they are also building fine ships. But
the small remuneration, which is generally the cause of the decline
of the Maritime State, also causes these particular works to proceed
slowly. To conclude this subject, nothing remains for me, but to
show how considerable is the assistance which the Porte, in time of
war, receives from its Allies.
XLVII. Of the Allies
of the Turks at Sea.
In a time of war the
Porte receives considerable help, to strengthen its fleet. The
auxiliaries come from two sides; from the Cantons of Barbary, and
from Cairo. The Allies of Barbary can furnish ten ships, namely
Algiers four, Tunis three, and Tripoli three. As these ships are
manned with numerous and experienced men, because they are trained
by the pirates; so they can do good service in a sea battle. They
are also, because of their skill, very useful for cruising, for
preventing supplies, and for guarding the coasts.
Still more numerous
and considerable is the help of ships, which Cairo furnishes. There
are 24 in all, which serve the Porte in time of war; they are
generally called Cairon (or Alexandrian). In times of peace they
serve as merchant ships, and belong to special merchants of Cairo.
It was a good idea of the Vizier,s, who devised this
reinforcement, and by it hindered the Knights of Malta, that they
could not take away so many cays and other small ships, with which
the rich Egyptian trade was then carried on, with so great danger.
They therefore obliged the merchants to unite among themselves, and,
who could not, they helped him; whereby they brought it so far in a
short time, that private persons could safely trade. But still
greater was the advantage to the Empire itself, because of the
service, which they can render on occasion. In size they equal the
Sultana, but neither the make, nor the form is so beautiful. In
times of war they carry fifty pieces, and six hundred Kairiners of
the most valiant men who live in the Turkish Empire.
From this it may be
seen how much the Turkish maritime state is in decline. It cannot be
denied that, on certain occasions, it can be given still more
strength, by which the Turkish fleet could become very considerable.
Even in its present decline it would, however, consist of forty-five
ships of the line, namely eleven from the Empire, twenty-four from
Cairo, and ten from the Barbarian Coast.
XLVIII. Of the
Janissaries. (*)
Among all the Turkish
Militia the Janissaries are the most important. In this Empire they
are the same as the Praetorians under the Roman Emperors. Their
Founder was Murad I. But according to the first design there were to
be only seven thousand men. He accepted only Christian children, and
even in later times officers went about in the villages to select
the strongest young men. They tore them from the hands of their
parents, educated them in the Turkish religion, and made them fit
for this service. But this cruel custom has now been abandoned, and
the Janissaries are recruited at the whim of the officers. One
hundred and sixty-two Chambers or Regiments make up, for the
present, the entire Corps of Janistaries of the Turkish Empire. Each
Regiment was to consist of 1000 men; but now, counting one by the
other, they amount to only 500. About thirty thousand are in this
Capital; the others are distributed in the Provinces. In their
Chambers they live with the greatest regularity and strictness. No
woman's son may enter there; no wine may be brought to them;
disputes and all indiscretions are forbidden, and everything is
strictly observed.
Each Chamber has its
Oda-Baschy or Colonel, its Treasurer, Ensign and Cook. Besides the
Soldiers, they receive their own maintenance from the Prince in the
Chambers. The Gagie begins with one Asper a day, and increases
according to the years and merits. For the rest, this is a Militia
of which one may rightly say that it is still susceptible to the
feeling of Honour. For it is not possible that anyone would be
tolerated who had committed the least theft, or had married a common
whore, which so much dishonors our Militia. They have many
privileges, and are regarded with such respect, that the Sultan
himself has himself registered in one of the Chambers, with the
fixed sum of 7 Aspers a day. The association, prevailing among these
Regiments, makes them Honorable, and feared by the Sultan himself,
who sees well that his own preservation depends on them. In the
Provinces the Janistas have, in each their own particular Chief,
commanding all the Janistas, who are in the Province. Their weapons
are a harquebus and a saber. They fought without order, not knowing
what military exercises are. In peace-time they are exercised in
nothing, but in shooting at the mark, and in bodily strength, in
order that their body may become the more agile. But at present they
have no longer that agility and bravery which they once possessed.
The avarice and carelessness of their officers have caused the old
military establishment to decay, and that young boys and useless men
have crept in among them.
Ten important offices
are always filled by persons of this militia. The first is the Aga
of the Janistas, who is their commanding General, and is always
chosen from the Imperial Chamber of the Seraglio. The second is the
Kul-Kjetchuda, or their General-Lieutenant}, the third is the
Sfegkban-Baschy, the overseer of the dogs, at a so-called Janista
Chamber; the fourth, the Thurnadschy-Baschy, who has the
superintendence of the Cranes of the Grand Lord. The fifth is the
Sfansznndschy Baschy, the Chief of those who guard the dogs for the
Sultan's Bull-hunt; the sixth, the Sagardschy-Baschy, who has the
superintendence of the Brakken. The seventh is the Solack-Baschy, or
Captain of the Archers, commanding the Janistaries armed with bows.
The eighth is the S??u-Baschy, the Chief of the Sergeants, who, on
public ceremonies, go by the side of the horse of the Grand Lord.
The ninth is the Peigk-Baschy, who commands the runners of the Grand
Lord; and last is the Muhdhir-Jga, or Chief of the Sergeants of the
Janistaries' militia. (*)
(*)
Jen-Tytschjery, that is, new Militia. But I have left Janissaries,
everywhere, because we are generally accustomed to this word.
(*)
The Titles borrowed from Dogs and Cranes serve here, to distinguish
certain Chambers or groups of Janissaries from others.
XLIX. Of the
Mehterdschys, Bostandschys, Sferradsch and the Leventi.
After the
Janissaries, among the Infantry, the most important are the
Thopdschy and Kumbarahdschy. But, having spoken of these in §
42., I did not consider it necessary to dwell on them here in
detail; and of the other militia of the Leventi I spoke above §
44., when I treated of the ships, etc. Here I will only add that
this Militia also has its Chambers, but it does not live according
to the arrangement and with the severity that the Janissaries live
in their Chambers. The number of these sea soldiers cannot be
determined, because it depends on the number of ships that the
Empire must keep equipped. She is entirely under Captain Bassa, and
forms the guard of the Armoury.
Of the Bostandschy I
have spoken above, when I treated of § 12 and 14. of the Guard
of the Seraglio. I said then, that two thousand of them form the
first outer guard, adding what their work consists of. But in time
of war, when the Sultan takes the field, they form a kind of
Militia, which is increased to 12 thousand men; they keep guard
around the tent of the Great Lord.
The Mehterdschy are a
kind of militia, which is not well found at the Courts of other
Princes. Their work is to set up camp, pitch tents, take them down,
and in case of a march to transport them. It is incredible how
quickly these people can erect a large tent, pack it up again in a
few moments, and load it on their beasts of burden. I consider this
militia to be a very useful institution, for the Economy as well as
for good order. As this is their only duty; they take care of the
preservation of the tents, which cost every Prince a great deal of
money. They also make such a regular arrangement in the camp, that
everyone can find what he needs; and everything is so arranged, that
everyone can do his thing without confusion, and have the advantage
that is possible in an army. The number of this militia will amount
to about six thousand men. Their Chief bears the name of
Mehterdschy-Baschy, a distinguished and respectable office, from
which one usually comes to that of a Dschjebehdschjy-Baschy, being
one of the principal Commanders of the cavalry. The Sferradsch are a
portion of those troops, which each Bassa, according to the income
of his Stadtholdership, is obliged to bring into the field. Their
number can therefore be calculated perfectly according to the
Bassas, and this I shall do, when I shall draw up the general
calculation of the Troops, which the Turkish Empire can bring into
the field. The work of this militia consists in taking care of the
baggage; they form a sort of Corps de reserve, and are armed with
harquebuses and sabres, like the Janistas.
L. Of the cavalry of
the Spahi.
The Spahi were,
before this, in great esteem in the Turkish Empire. They formed in
every way the Corps de reserve, and served the Monarch as a guard.
The precedence and the esteem which they enjoyed, made them so proud
and mutinous, that they often rose up against the person of the
Prince himself. The love for them and their esteem thus changed into
fear and hatred. Sultan Mahomed III, on the advice of the famous
Visier, Kiuperli??, took advantage of the disputes of this militia
with the Janistas, and found an opportunity to humiliate them, while
he sacrificed their principal Commanders to his hatred. In this way
they became hated and despised by the whole nation, and there is now
no longer any prospect that they will ever again bring themselves
into the former esteem.
This militia is
considered, according to the various methods of payment, in two
ways. The most important are the Sae'yms and Tymariotes, who draw
their Soldiers from the revenues of the lands assigned to them as a
fief. The other kind is paid from the Empire's treasury, and these
are the properly so-called Spahi, of whom I speak here. Their Corps
is 12 thousand men strong; and these are divided into two distinct
classes. The oldest, having a yellow banner, bear the name of
Silahdari, that is, Sword-bearers, the later, having a red banner,
are called Spahy-Oglan, that is, servants of the Spahi. Although
these, according to their foundations and their name, follow the
first; yet they have the precedence over them on marches, as a
special favor, because under Sultan Mahomed II they resumed a
battle, and gained a complete victory, after the Spahi of the former
class had already taken flight. The Chief of this militia bears the
name of Spahilar-Agafy, being the first General in the cavalry.
They carry a long
sword with a very broad blade, pistols and a carbine. But many, and
especially those from Asia, make use of a pike, bow and arrows. This
is a militia, which cannot handle a gun; but for cutting with a
saber in their fist they are very good: the Spahi from Asia are also
better mounted, than the European; but these are much braver, than
none. Their wages vary according to the more or less wealthy
Chambers by which they are paid. In general their minimum wage is 12
aspers a day, but it can rise to 100; but in this case it is
required that a Soldier has acquitted himself particularly in the
war. The Sons of the Spahi have the privilege of being able to
enlist among the Spahi, whenever they wish; but their wages cannot
rise higher than 13 aspers a day, while the Father, on the other
hand, is deducted so much; consequently this privilege has no other
advantage than that one has the certainty of being taken into
service.
Besides these two
kinds of Spahi, in case of emergency, four other kinds are
recruited, which are distinguished by the colours of their banners,
and from which they also receive their special name. The first kind
has a white and red one; the second a white and yellow one; the
third a green, and the last a very white colour. The number of these
four kinds of Spahi cannot be determined; for it depends on the
circumstances of necessity, but even more on the Will of the
subjects, according as they wish to be recruited for this Corps.
LI. Of the Sae'yms
and Tymariotes.
These two are
included under the Spahi, and form the largest number of the Cavalry
of the Turkish Empire. They draw their Gagie from the countries,
which are granted to them as a fief; wherefore the militia of the
Sae'yms and Tymariotes is the Turkish feudal militia. The difference
in their names consists in the difference of income, since the least
income of the Sae'yms amounts to 20 thousand Aspers per year, and
may rise to 100 thousand; whereas on the contrary the least income
of the Tymariotes amounts to six thousand Aspers per year, and may
rise to 19 thousand 9 hundred and 99. But among the Tymariotes there
are two classes. The one receives letters open from the Sultan for
their countries, and these have the previously mentioned revenue of
six thousand Aspers a year at the least, and of 19 thousand, 9
hundred and 99 at the most. The others receive their letters open
only from the Stadtholders of the Provinces, having at the least
three thousand Aspers a year, and at the most six thousand. The
Sae'yims are obliged, for every five thousand Aspers revenue they
possess, to furnish one Horseman for the army; and the Tymariotes
must likewise furnish a man on horseback for every five thousand
Aspers revenue. But the Sae'yms must make greater expenses, with
respect to the Equipagie, which with them, generally, must be more
splendid and costly, than the equipment of the Tymariotes. This
entire militia is divided into Regiments, which have a Colonel at
their head. These Captains are under a Sandschjak, and he is under a
Beghler-Begh.
In order to calculate
exactly how many horsemen the militia of the Sae'yms and Tymariotes
comprise, it must be observed that a Sae'ym can bring no fewer than
four men on horseback, and at the most twenty with him to the war;
but a Tymariote can have no fewer than one, and at the most six men.
But it is certain that this feudal militia is not always ready to
march; and, when they do march, they do not always bring with them
as many men as the Imperial laws require.
Now to give the most
probable calculation of them, as I have received it from several
persons, who, on several occasions, have seen this militia with the
Armenians; thus I can calculate that, counted together, a Sae'ym
delivers four men, and a Tymariot two. According to this proportion
I will draw up a list of all Sae'yms and Tymariots, who are in the
Turkish Empire, and hereby very probably determine their number.
In the
Stadtholdership of Natolia there are 295 Sae'yms and 7740 Tymariots,
which amounts to 1180
Horsemen for the first
others 15480
in all — —
16660
When the Seat of the
Turkish Empire was in Bursa, consequently Natolia was a Province
adjacent to the Christians, it delivered to the army thirty thousand
horsemen; but the Turkish Empire further expanding its conquests,
and consequently with the expansion of the countries also increasing
the population, which was then only limited to Natolia; thus this
Province now alone supplies the above-mentioned sum.
In Carmania there are
73 Sae'yms and 2165 Tymariotes.
The first provide 292 horsemen
the others 4330
In all. — —
4522
Diarbekir has 106
Sae'yms and 540 Tymariotes.
The first provide 424 horsemen
the others 1080
In all — —
1504
Damascus has 128
Sae'yms and 873 Tymariotes.
None provide 512 horsemen
these 1746
In all — —
2258
Sivas has 108 Sae'yms
and 3029 Tymariotes.
The first provide 432 horsemen
the last 6058
Total - - 6490
Erzerum has 122
Sae'yms and 5548 Tymariotes.
The first provide 488 horsemen
the last 11096
Total —
11584
Van has 185 Sae'yms,
and 826? Tymariotes.
Geen provide 740 horsemen
these 1652
In everything -—
2392
Idin has 110 Sae'yms,
and 4325 Tymariotes,
no troops 440 horsemen
these 8650
In all — —
9090
Musul has 27 Sae'yms,
and 512 Tymariotes.
No troops 108 horsemen
these 1024
All — —
1132
Tripoli in Syria has
63 Sae'yms, and 500 Tymariotes.
None provide 552 horsemen
These 1140
In all —
1392
Urfa has 60 Sae'yms,
and 666 Tymariotes,
The former provide 240 horsemen
the latter 1332 horsemen
In all —
1572
Trebisonde has 56
Sae'yms, and 389 Tymariotes.
The former provide 224 horsemen
the others 796
In all — —
1020
Silistria has 40
Sae'yms, and 1067 Tymariotes.
The former provide 160 horsemen
the latter 2134
In all — —
2294
The territory of
Aleppo has 117 Sae'yms, and 1044 Tymariotes.
The first provide 468
riders
the others 2088
In total 2556
In the district of
Captain Bassa there are 124 Sae'yms and 1152 Tymariots.
The first provide 496
riders
the others 2304
Whole — —
2800
The Governorate of
Rumelia has 1057 Sae'yms, and 8194 Tymariots.
None provide 4300
horsemen
these 16388
In total —
20688
5t Government of
Bosnia is the most numerous of all, and has: 4000 Sae'yms
and 14000 Tymariotes,
of which
the first provide
16000 horsemen
and the latter 28000
is all — —
44000
Of which the whole
Sum amounts to 132054
In addition, there
are still volunteers, who at their own expense, serve among the
Sae'yms and Tymariotes, in the hope, of bringing about the Honor by
an excellent deed, that they, when one of the others raises Life in
war, they are endowed with his land. When a Sae'ym or Tymariot of
Rumelia dies in war; then his Sia'met or Tymar is divided into as
many parts, as he leaves Sons. If a Tymar leaves only three thousand
Aspers income; then the Firstborn of the deceased receives it all.
But if they die, outside this opportunity, or in the Army a natural
death; then the Fief is left to the arbitrary decision of the
Stadtholder of the Province.
If a Sae'ym or
Tymariot becomes old and out of state; then he can give his Sia'met
or Tymar to one of his Sons or Next of Kin, in Natoïè
there are many privileged Sia'mets and Tymare, which are hereditary,
and come from the Father to the Son. Whoever possesses them need not
serve in person, but may send someone in his place with the troop
that must deliver his fief.
LII. Of the
Dschjcbehdschjy, Seghban and Mikladschjy.
The Corps of the
Dschjebehdschjy, in its first establishment, according to the former
Plan, amounted to only 630 men. Their purpose was to clean and
maintain the gun. They were therefore more armourers than a real
Corps of Soldiers. But now it is different with them. Their Corps
consists of 30 thousand men, who are divided into 60 Chambers, of
which each should be 500 men strong, but which is seldom so strong.
Their General, who commands them, bears the name of
Dschjebehdschjy-Bassa, a considerable office, from which one often
rises to a Bassa of three horsetails. For the present they are
regarded as a kind of Curassiers; they ride the strongest Spahi
horses, and are armed, like them.
The Seghban form
another kind of cavalry, which each Bassa, according to his
Stadtholdership, must lead into the field. They correspond with our
Dragoons, and also fight on foot. Their work is to guard the baggage
of the Empire; wherefore this militia also usually forms the Corps
de reserve. The number of these we shall, in the next division,
state in the general order, when we shall determine how many
Soldiers each Bassa, according to his income, must provide.
The Makladschjy are
indeed considered by the Turks as a kind of militia, but are, in
fact, nothing else than Servants of the Beghler-Begh and of the
Bassas. As every person who holds one of these important offices,
usually keeps a large number of servants, who cost them nothing but
their living and clothing, while no one is paid any money; so,
generally, the number of these in the Turkish army is very
considerable. They are all young, strong, well-made men, but more
suited to the practice of the javelin than to the real use of arms.
Nor is there to be found in the whole of Turkish history an example
of this kind of people having done any work worthy of being passed
down to posterity.
LIII. Calculation of
the troops which the Turkish Porte can bring into the field in case
of emergency, and of the arrangement concerning the march of a
Turkish army.
Having spoken of each
type of Turkish militia, both cavalry and infantry, I will now
calculate their number, in order that one may judge how many troops
the Turks can bring into the field in case of emergency.
Infantry.
The Janissaries in
each Chamber were to be a thousand men strong, consequently their
number made 162 thousand. But, because each Chamber, at present, has
many incapable or old, often also too young men; I believe,
especially when I also consider the avarice of the Officers in this
respect, that each Chamber is only 700 men strong; of which 162
Chambers would amount to at most
113400
The Thoptschjy or
Cannoniers, who were to be 18 thousand men strong, are not in that
disorder, as the Janistas, but can hardly amount to
15000
The Kumbarahdschjy or
Bombardiers, according to the order, were to make up two thousand
men, but of them there are now only 400; but they could, in case of
emergency, be brought back to the specified number, that is
2000
The Bostandschjy,
having the guard at the Sultan's tent, who in case of emergency,
would certainly march themselves, would, infallibly, appear in their
specified number, that is
12000
The Mehterdschjy
would be reduced little or not at all, if the Sultan marched
himself; consequently they amount to
6000
The Serradsch,
according to the calculation of the income of the Bassas, should be
3000 men strong; but, as every Bassa, in case of necessity, tries to
excel by his service-zeal, so this militia, without doubt, would be
much stronger, and could, at the least, be counted at
6000
The militia of Cairo
is always complete, so 3000
The Leventi or
Sea-soldiers cannot be determined, because their number depends on
that of the vessels and ships. But I reckon that, in case of
emergency, this Empire can send 40 ships, each of 800 men, to sea,
which amounts to 32000
Twenty Caravels, up
to 300 men, that is 6000
Forty Galleys up to
150 men, makes 6000
A hundred Galleons or
Kandschjabasse up to 60 men, makes 6000
Thus the entire
Infantry of this Empire amounts to
207400
Cavalry.
The number of the
Spahi is determined at 12 thousand men; they would also, in case of
emergency, be reduced little, so that they can be set at
10000
The Sae'yms and
Tymariotes I have already calculated in advance, after some
reduction they will amount to
132054
The Dschjebehdschjy
or Curassiers can be determined just as little precisely, as the
Janistas. Each Chamber had to be five hundred men strong 5 but they
cannot be set higher, than three hundred men, which of 60 Chambers
amounts to 8000
The Seghban are, like
the Serradsch, brought by the Bassas, and their number would
therefore, according to the income of the Bassas, be increased more
than decreased. According to the above-mentioned account they would
amount to only 2000 men; but in case of emergency they had to be set
even higher, that is 4000
If we suppose that
there are 20 Bassas of three Horsetails in the army; then the
Mikladschjy, each Tassa reckoned to 300 men, would amount to
6000
The Volunteers, as I
have heard from many who have been present with the Turkish armies,
usually amount to four thousand men; but in case of need they could
rise to
10,000
To this cavalry one
must add the Tartars, who, in case of need, could be strong, but
amount to at least
60,000
This brings the
cavalry in the entire Turkish Empire to
240,054
207,400
Consequently,
infantry and cavalry, together,
447,454
But all these troops
can never, for the following reason, take the field together. The
sea soldiers, who are estimated at 50,000 men, must serve on the
ships.
The Garrison of
Constantinople requires at least 20,000 men; the Garrisons of so
many other people and fellings likewise 100,000 men; this in all
makes a reduction of 170 thousand men, consequently the Turkish
Army, at its highest, can amount to ff277454. But, when the Sultan,
or the Vizier advances alone; then the number of people is much
greater. For in this case he is followed by the Chancellery, the
Ministry, and a part of each Guild from the city, which together
make up at least 50 thousand persons. These people indeed increase
the number, but not the strength of an army, by which they are,
rather, a very great burden.
Now a word about the
arrangement for the procession. Twenty thousand Janistas, armed with
harquebuses and sabres, and the two Bassas of Damascus and Aleppo
with the troops of their Provinces, have the honor of forming the
vanguard. The Beghler-Begh of Rumelia with his Sandjaken covers the
right wing; the Beghler-Begh of Natolie with his Sandjaken the left
wing; the Bassas of Carthanie and Erzerum with the Spahi-Oglan of
the red banner make up the right wing, the Bassas of Diarbekir and
Kars with the Spahi-Silahdary make up the left wing: the other
Bassas divide themselves right and left, according to the age when
their Provinces came to the Turkish Empire. The four eldest make up
the rear guard. In the middle is the Sultan with the Tdsch-Oglan,
the Standards and the Music, which is always placed in the safest
place, as it is the main banner, which is guarded with the utmost
care.
LIV. Of the Politics
of the Turks in general.
It will always be
difficult to give an idea of the Politics of a supreme
government, which never observes firm principles and stability in
its aims and directions. Everything depends on the whim and the way
of thinking of the Monarch, and on the particular insights of the
Ministers who surround him. (*)
History also teaches
us fully, that the most and cruelest wars, and the most violent
changes of the State of the Empires had their first source in very
small causes, and that either the arbitrariness and self-will of the
Prince, or the self-interested aims of the Ministers who were around
him, brought about most of it. But if there is ever a form of
government in the world subject to unstable fundamental rules,
unexpected changes of directions and aims, and traceless designs of
the internal constitution of the State; then it is certainly the
Turkish. Consequently it is altogether impossible to give an idea of
a political government, which to all appearance has no
System.
In fact, whoever
knows the internal arrangement of the Turkish State; he sees that it
consists only of Slaves. The Great Lord is, always, a Son of a
Slave. The brothers and sons of the reigning Sultans are kept as
prisoners, until they ascend the Throne. All the people in the
Seraglio are locked up there for 30 or 40 years, and the sons of
women remain in a permanent prison.
The greater part of
the most important persons are not born as free men. For the Turks,
as a rule, have more Sons from their Slaves than from their Wives.
Now, since men who are to govern the Empire, generally have an
education that is in accordance with their birth, whether custom or
political aims have a share in it, the youth are never taught rules
of government, nor are they given any insight into the aims and
designs of a State. This may arise from the same jealousy that
causes future Princes to remain so long in prison. In this way,
Princes, as well as their Ministers, are slaves by birth; and, after
they are raised in blindness and ignorance, the former ascend the
Throne, and the latter are set over affairs of State, of which they
have not the least idea. To this we add the indefinite power of the
Turkish Vizier,s, who, however little understanding and virtue they
often possess, often with a single word, and with a still so
irrational act, give examples and prescribe laws.
Virtue is seldom
rewarded. Often incompetent persons, men of low birth, men without
merit, come to the most important offices of government by flattery,
sometimes even by witty ideas. The government servants are often
changed, and this change, so often repeated, results in a constant
change and alteration of rules and insights. (*) From this confused
and irregular method, everyone can gather what ideas one must form
about the policy of the Turks.
I can compare them
nowhere better than to a sea, on which many ships constantly sail,
but not one of them leaves any trace of where it has sailed. But
this nevertheless, since there is no government, be it as confused
and without a trace as it will, which has no fixed fundamental
rules, on which the whole building rests as on a foundation; so also
the Turkish Court must have certain fixed fundamental principles, of
which I shall now attempt to give an idea. I shall add some
observations which I have made, as long as I have dwelt in this
country; for I have collected many samples on account of the
negotiations which I have myself seen carried out.
In order now to bring
what I have to say on this subject into a System, I will first
explain what the Turks, in their method of government, have for
rules and aims, with respect to all parts in which, according to the
common opinion of politicians, the policy of every State is
analysed. I shall then add those fundamental rules of the Turks,
which cannot be applied to other States. Hereupon I shall come to
their Policy with regard to foreign Princes, and finally make some
observations on the knowledge that foreign Ministers residing at the
Turkish Porte must have, in order to direct themselves, on occasion.
Just as I believe
that a Prince must pay attention, in the main, to seven points, in
which he needs a complete knowledge of circumstances, which is
precisely called Policy; so I will give, piece by piece, an idea of
the Policy of the Turks. For this I shall first speak
of the State-household, then of Policy, both in times of peace and
war, as well as with regard to the means of subsistence, with regard
to the laws, and finally with regard to rewards and punishments.
(*)
This is so a generally not, as it is presented here. There are
certain general rights of religion, the people and certain states in
it, which, when they were disregarded and offended, not infrequently
caused the corruption and downfall of the Sultan and his Ministers.
(*)
This is true; but it almost exclusively and exclusively takes place
with the Heads of a rank or the Advocates of a College. Those
persons, on whom the main matters depend, and who must submit the
devised matters to the Heads for judgment and decision thereof, have
generally served from below, so that, with the changes of State
officials, the matters themselves do not undergo so much change.
LV.
Of the Politics of the Turks, with respect to the State Economy.
With
regard to the care of the household, I have observed among the Turks
everything that one can ever observe touching prudence and policy in
the most regular States. I have observed both among the Ministers of
the Household; they are just as careful about the preservation of
what belongs to the household, as they are attentive to make these
sources more fruitful.
To
this is added a complete knowledge to impose taxes and tributes
without the danger of a riot, and an ability to remove the first
principles of even a seeming danger. So that the Turks, in this
matter, yield nothing to the most legitimate and attentive
governments. But I also notice with them more Rules in the
State-household, which do not agree with the strictest justice,
consequently cannot be applied to other States.
The
first is this, that they deprive the Sons of the goods of their
fathers, when they die. The Sultan takes possession of these goods,
and leaves the Sons only what is necessary to be able to live. (*)
This rule, which seems to mean the improvement and enlargement of
the State-household solely and exclusively, has nevertheless real
aims, which rest on Turkish Policy. Its aim is, that in the Turkish
Empire there shall be no rich and noble Families.
This
is one of the most important Rules of State; it is also almost
necessary in such a form of government, which rests entirely on the
despotic Will of the Monarch. Everything is accompanied by violence;
everything must be done on one side, which can induce the subjects
to throw off the yoke. Generally, people are moved to bold
undertakings, by ease and wealth and by the feeling of Honour, which
is united with an original Nobility; for from this arises the
tendency to obtain more freedom. This Rule serves very well, to
banish all danger from that side.
It
should be noted that the Bassas are always people who possess
wealth, have enough ability to undertake something, and can
strengthen themselves by their followers and their friends, for
which reason it would often be dangerous to sacrifice them; thus the
Turks have a political means to make them poor, during the time that
they distinguish them, in outward appearance, from others. The
Sultan obliges such a Bassa to marry either a Sister or Daughter of
his. The Bridegroom must, before the marriage-bond, give his Bride
considerable presents, after the betrothal make heavy expenses, and
by this means his treasures gradually diminish. But, because he is
at the same time the Emperor's blood, his ambition is satisfied. The
Sultan provides for a Princess, without it costing him anything,
acts economically, and ensures the peace of the State.
The
Sons, born of such marriages, according to the laws, seldom rise
higher than to the office of a Kapudschjy-Baschy; a law, which is
seldom violated, because it is too much in accordance with the
fundamental rule, of humiliating the Nobility, and not allowing the
succession of great Families. Another political Rule, useful to the
State Economy, consists in the frequent change of the State
officials. From this the Monarch derives real advantages. As often
as a man is promoted, he must give rich presents. The shortness of
time, which they spend in the great offices, does not permit those
who hold them, to carry out designs which are contrary to blind and
slavish submission, and this always remains the foundation of
government.
For
it is, that such men, in order to make good the expenses which they
had to make when assuming their Dignity, are placed in the necessity
of committing oppressions, robberies and acts of violence; so this
also agrees very well with the policy of the Empire, to dampen the
courage of the subjects and the common people by heavy taxes, and to
accustom them not to rebel against every injustice. The rule, to let
the Stadtholders emaciate the Provinces, has therefore a double
purpose.
In
fact, there is not a kind of oppression or any other artifice, which
the Bassas and Sandjaken would not use, to enrich themselves. The
Government knows this very well, and allows it. Sometimes one or
other is allowed to have his head cut off, and thereby the people
are led up the garden path, so that they may believe, how zealously
they maintain the right; and how ardent the love towards the
subjects is.
There
are two cases usually, in which the Stadtholders are sacrificed to
public vengeance. The first is when the people of the Province, from
impatience at the exactions, begin to mutiny: they immediately cut
off the head of the Bassa and quell the murmuring of the Commons.
The other is when the State deems it necessary to exempt itself by
the exception of a Cityholder to enrich the governor. This is a
cruel, but at the same time very fine policy. The Prince, by means
of the Stadtholders, emaciates the people, and yet has the
appearance of committing no injustice. But in reality these
Stadtholders are nothing else than agents, through whom the Treasury
gains immeasurable sums. The subject oppressed, and the Treasury
enriched, then the latter has sufficient means to make good the
necessities of the State; but the former is unable to disturb the
public peace. Consequently the fundamental rule of Turkish policy
achieves its purpose.
(*)
This is generally not true. With most persons, who die a natural
death, and are previously of the civil state, the goods, after a
reduction of legal percentages, go to the Sons.
LVI. Of the Politics
of the Turks, with respect to the Government of the State.
One of the principal
occupations of a well-regulated Government is the Government of the
State, and this the Turks understand very well. In this Art they
bring it to a great perfection, because they understand the art of
dissimulation in the highest degree.
They are so much
taken with the excellence of this quality, very necessary for a
Prince, that they sacrifice to it their most agreeable and dominant
passions. Avarice and pride disappear, when they want to
dissimulate. They know very well how to distinguish with whom they
live in peace, make alliances, keep friends, do deeds. Prove without
words, and about which they must use good words without deeds; yes,
how, how much, when, how far, on what occasions, openly or in
confidence, they must employ such means.
I should have to
enlarge too much if I were to prove all this by particular examples.
In general, I only assure that, if they have an advantage by it,
they know how to relate every healing. Of all the ideas that are
generally formed of the Turks, this is the most wrong, when one
believes that the Turks were exposed to hastiness and rashness, in
the art of governing well.
It is true that
sometimes they act somewhat hastily in matters; but this only
happens because they make use of a prejudice that is well suited to
them. They know very well that the threats that they make sometimes
cause fear. From fear always arises a complacency in the party; and,
when they use this means, they almost always achieve their aim. But
it is incredible what an art they possess in the highest degree, to
mix the lie with the truth, to spread it, if necessary, among the
people, and to profit from the credulity of others, to assure
themselves of the external. For with regard to the internal they
observe two rules, from which they do not depart. They oppress the
people, as I remarked above with regard to the State economy, by
extortions, so that the mind, choked by injustice, may bear all the
misery in which it is placed, with the more resignation. The other
they observe, with regard to the Stadtholderships and important
offices. None last long, and these are not transmitted to the
descendants. The Stadtholderships are usually given to people who
have been educated in the Seraglio. Such people know neither their
Family, nor their Descendants; they have no help or refuge to hope
for from anywhere, and therefore can do nothing against the Sultan.
Some restless spirits have sometimes raised their heads; but usually
they have also had to bear the punishment for their blindness,
without the Sultan being forced to use open violence. It is no work
to help someone by secret tricks and stratagems in the ground, whose
followers consist of people who were born in slavery, and are all
strangers to him, while he has neither parents nor friends who
seriously and emphatically look after his cause.
It cannot be denied
that more than once, bold and presumptuous people have caused unrest
in the capital, which were dangerous to the Sultan himself and his
life. But of this the rule of state was no cause, but the misfortune
came, rather, from the fact that one had put its observation out of
sight. It is certain, that the succession of ordinary and fixed
fundamental principles causes no change in the hearts of subjects.
On the contrary, extraordinary incursions and the Prince's
wilfulness, all too evident injustices, and neglect of respect for
the militia, are the three rocks against which the Prince can suffer
shipwreck. Each of these pieces arouses anger; from anger arises the
spirit of revenge; the spirit of revenge breeds parties; from party
lust follows disorder and confusion; and from disorder arises the
entire ruin.
Let the Turkish
Monarchs beware of that which can arouse such movements; then,
furthermore, because of the tranquility of the Empire, they have
nothing to fear, which is the other part of the State.
LVII. Of the Policy
of the Turks, with respect to war.
Have the Turks a
Policy, agreeable to their State-system in State affairs and the
State-household; they have also certain State-principles with
respect to war. They know very precisely, when it is time to begin
it; by what means they continue it, and how they bring it to an end.
But, just as the
Porte well understands how necessary it is, it wants to consider
every circumstance in a true point of view, that it understands the
State-interest of all other Princes, not only of its allies and
neighbours, but also of all others, who unite with them or can
declare against them; so it spares no expense, and omits nothing,
which can give it the surest, most definite and most true
information concerning it. For this reason she keeps in all, even
the most remote countries, attentive spies, mostly Greeks and Jews,
who help each other, and find means, to send her the messages.
If one examines the
custom, to keep such spies; then one easily notices here, the most
refined Policy, apparently with respect to the State and its
household. The prestige and Dignity of the Sultan, in so many
incidents, which can occur, is never exposed to the fate of a
Minister, who clothes the Character of an Ambassador. The household
gains by it: for one does not need the splendor, with which a
characterized Minister must appear; and one only makes those
expenses, which are useful for the true State interest, because one,
partly, reports with certainty, and hears the intentions, partly
also brings the matters to an end quickly. These veiled people can
mingle in all societies, without any attention being paid to them.
As one can deal with them with less reserve; so they have less
difficulty in penetrating into the Secrets, and often hear that
which an openly characterized Minister would find difficult to
discover.
In this way the Porte
is served, without the Sultan's reputation being injured, and
without it costing much. He learns everything with more precision
and accuracy, than any Prince in the world. He knows with all
certainty, how powerful a King is; who can and will associate with
him; what disputes a Prince has with others; what kind of native
unrest arises in each Kingdom, and what a Prince is like for
himself. From this knowledge he draws consequences for his own
circumstances, behaving towards the Ambassadors of foreign Powers,
being at his Court, as he judges necessary. He flatters; he is
proud; he arouses in one distrust of another, as he deems advisable
for his purposes.
Now since the Porte
has such complete reports concerning the condition of other
countries; then it is not likely that they will engage in a war,
without probable hope of concluding it happily and well. And once it
has begun, they know exactly when it is time to lay down their arms.
But in order to be assured that the war is waged with all emphasis,
it is a rule: the Turkish commander must win the battles, and be
happy; otherwise the blame is given to him. The Generals are mostly
innocent; but, as it is a fixed rule that their lives are at an end
when they lose a battle; so every one of them is driven to despair.
For the rest, the
Turks do not know the means which civilized nations employ to
preserve their conquests. They employ no other means than violence,
by which they compel the inhabitants of such Provinces, which lie
far from the capital, to move into the neighbouring towns, in order
that they may always be under the eye of the Stadtholders, and that
they may be watched the more closely and accurately.
Two political aims
induce the Turks, as much as possible, to depopulate newly conquered
Provinces. The first is to prevent rebellions, and, if one should
arise, to be able to suppress it the more easily, while the rebels
lack the means to fortify themselves in a distant country. The other
is to make it difficult for their enemies to enter with an army.
For, the less a country is populated, the more it suffers from want
of provisions. One may also, according to Turkish history, make the
observation that the Turks, as often as they have conquered an
important province, have readily concluded a peace, because they
were very anxious to establish themselves there, and to have time to
do so. This happened most easily, when they denuded the country of
inhabitants, and on the other hand populated it with Mohammedans.
For the Militia, the
Turks, among all the Princes of the earth, have the greatest
respect. This is evidenced by the custom of the Sultans to enroll
themselves as common Janistas in one of their regiments, in order to
give the people an even more exalted idea of the
excellence of the militia. And this purpose they have so well
attained, that 'there is not a man in the Turkish Empire, be he
fortunate or unfortunate? who did not consider it an honour to be
enrolled in the army. Every prince will do it service, when his
people have lofty ideas of the military state.
LVIII. Of the Policy
of the Turks, with respect to the provisions at Constantinople.
Experience itself
teaches how great the diligence of the Turks is, and how serious
their care is, with respect to the provisions. Constantinople, much
more populated than any city in Europe, always has an abundance of
provisions, and can buy them better than even one of the most
fertile countries. (*)
But the care and
judgment of the Turkish government are not yet satisfied with this.
They know very well with which peoples they must keep friendship, in
order to have the abundance and supply of provisions constantly
open. For this reason they turned a blind eye to many acts of
violence by the Tartars, and on several occasions they paid little
attention to their disobedience. For the Crimea is one of the most
generous sources from which the capital is supplied. For this very
reason they were at all times very active to maintain free
navigation on the Black Sea. For the same reason they used tricks,
and spent immeasurable sums, to bring the Cossacks under the
obedience of the Turks; and this was also the reason why they stuck
steadfastly to the fundamental principle of prohibiting other
nations from trading on this Sea.
The Porte is so
jealous of this point, that they never consent to tolerate a French
Consul in the Crimea. For this step was regarded as a source from
which such consequences could flow in time, as would affect their
rules of conduct concerning the means of subsistence.
The Porte is equally
averse to a war with Persia. For, since many Provinces in Asia lack
the necessary supplies, she understands very well how much she risks
when she starts a war in these regions, where the lack of provisions
can make it necessary for her to withdraw the army with little
Honour, or to conclude a standstill of arms and peace at an
inopportune time, to the greatest disadvantage of her Honour with
Foreigners, and to the displeasure of her subjects.
I could add several
more remarks, how careful the Turks are to determine and stop
purchases, arbitrary undertakings of Merchants, and price increases.
But it is enough for me to give a general idea, how vigilant and
good Politicians they are with regard to the care of the provisions.
(*)
The alleged population is, as is known, an uncertain matter. The
price of provisions has risen exceedingly since the author's time;
but it may also change again according to times and circumstances.
LIX. Of the Politics
of the Turks, with respect to the laws.
The laws, which in
all States are the foundation of justice, consequently also the
foundation of peace and general order, seem to me to have an
entirely different object in Turkey.
The outward
appearance is the same. But, as essentially as the legislative
Method of the Turks differs from that in other countries, so is the
operation different. In other States the laws mean the maintenance
of justice; but in Turkey the three principal aims of Turkish
Politics must be supported by them, namely the indefinite power of
the Monarch, the oppression of the subjects, and the enrichment of
the Imperial Treasury.
The entire judicial
process of the Turks consists in the examination of the witnesses,
and the evidence drawn from them. But it is not at all difficult to
find a witness, such as one would like him to be. And so it often
happens that one testifies and swears against the truth.
As much as this
Method offends the right; so useful is it, on the other hand, to
support the absolute power and arbitrary lust for power of the
Monarch, which always remains the foundation of the Political
government of the Turks ?? the Judge is always free to accept the
testimonies as true, or to reject them as false, according to
whether or not they agree with his own interest, or according to the
interest and the Will of the Prince.
In this way the right
remains in the arbitrariness of the Judge, which in various cases
can be determined by regulations and orders. Thus the way is open
for the State to bend the right to the intentions of the Sovereign.
Such a liberty keeps
the subject in oppression, and sometimes, by the chastisement and
plunder of an unjust Judge, brings considerable sums into the
Emperor's coffers. Against this kind of people, who maintain
justice, the Government often acts in the same way as against the
Stadtholders of the Provinces.
They like to see them
act according to their own arbitrariness, and their acts of violence
are tolerated until the clamour of the subjects brings near the
moment to enrich the treasury.
LX. Of the Politics
of the Turks, with respect to punishments.
As to punishments, no
country can be more severe, and no Prince more hasty, than they do
in Turkey. Among the Turks there is almost no difference between
crimes. Everything is punished with death, whether it be a serious
crime of state, or a minor error, to which ignorance or a single
case often gave rise.
Such a cruel way, by
which one necessarily, very often, sins through injustice, is
however almost necessary in such an extensive Empire, as the Turkish
is, where everything is done by force, and which is governed more by
the Prince's wilfulness, than by a Stelzei.
The many changes of
the Empire's offices, which are held by people, whom the Sultan has
exalted by his wilfulness; who usually have no education; who often
lack the ability to observe them, produce so much confusion, and
cause so many wounds to the political body, that one cannot punish
otherwise than by such a strict and rapid law. Therefore the Rule,
however cruel it may seem, is necessary for the durability of the
Turkish Empire.
As for the persons
who serve in war; they are dealt with with the same strict rapidity.
For this reason one seldom finds examples of commanders carrying out
base deeds; on the contrary, one reads in Turkish history of
examples of the boldest and most desperate deeds. Therefore the
severity fetters the persons of war and peace; they must do their
duty: the people, on the other hand, are kept in such calmness and
patience, that one seldom finds examples of it in other countries.
Truly, it is a strange thing, that in a city so uncommonly populated
as Constantinople, where people of such different nations and
customs are, hardly ever or very seldom a murder or any disorder is
committed.
The whole merit of
patience and obedience rests on the severity of the punishments. The
rapidity with which unruly spirits are removed, increases fear, and
besides that city enjoys the tranquillity which is justly admired by
all foreigners.
LXI. Of the Politics
of the Turks, with respect to rewards.
There is no
government where services are less and worse rewarded than in
Turkey. With common people everything consists of a small sum of
money; people of rank receive a fur or sabre from the Monarch.
These are the
extraordinary rewards with the Turks, with which one rewards merits.
I do not want to speak of the promotions, which one receives
according to the rank of age and service to the Porte. The domestic,
political and military services are all considerable; one has enough
Honour, and they also bring in reasonable sums. These small,
extraordinary rewards are considered the greatest gifts that one of
our Princes could give, whose favor nevertheless goes so far that
they enrich an entire Family now with considerable estates and
generous annual salaries, then again bestow upon the Nobility and
distinguished Titles.
This is an effect of
the Policy of the Turks, according to which the people are already
taken with the ideas of an absolute power of their own Monarch, and
of the blind obedience due to the Prince. The youth, who are
educated in the Seraglio, and usually attain such Dignities that
they sit at the helm of State, already form the idea in their first
years, that the most blind obedience is the most necessary quality
of a true subject.
With regard to this
obedience there is no exception or determination. Educated with such
impressions, they undergo death with complete resignation. They are
assured that they die as Martyrs, and enter Paradise, when they die
by the command of their Monarch. For this very political reason they
give all those who hold Dignities dependent on the Crown the Title
of Kul or Slave.
The first Vizier
himself gives himself this name, which is much more illustrious
among the Turks than the Title, Subject. For a Kul can oppress the
subjects with impunity, and the subjects may not oppose him, without
being guilty of the severest punishments.
Now if the heart is
taken with such ideas; then it considers every reward, coming from
the hand of the Monarch, as a gift from Heaven. They also, in fact,
give their Monarch the Titles of a God on earth, a Shadow of God,
and the like. The Teachers of the laws teach that the Monarch is
exalted above the laws. They assert that he can revoke his promises,
and withdraw his oaths, when he believes that they are
disadvantageous to his highest power. For, when he swears and
solemnly promises, at his coronation, to defend the Mohammedan
religion and the laws of the Prophet, the same law nevertheless
calls him the Interpreter of the law. Besides, there are wiser
interpreters of the laws and of the Koran, who deny that the Monarch
has any power in matters of religion, and who attribute to him all,
even absolute power in civil matters.
From this saying one
can easily see how the constitutions in the policy of the Turks are
connected.
LXII. Of the nature
of Turkish Politics.
So far I have spoken
of the political attempts of the Turks, with regard to the
household, the State, the war, the means of subsistence, the laws,
the punishments and rewards, because I believe that every Prince
must pay attention to these seven points, if he wants to govern his
country well.
It will have been
observed that the Turks, in their method of governing, have quite
different ideas than those in Italy. Since they are not
inexperienced in the art of governing, and know the system of every
other Prince; so they do not act at all like blind men, only
according to their own instincts, but according to reasons, and pay
attention to their State's interest. I have observed that their
Policy has three principal objects: first, to support the despotic
power of the Sultan, which is not determined by any laws, and almost
also not bound by Religion; next, to oppress the subjects; and
finally, to enrich the Treasury. I have shown that from this may be
explained the rule according to which obedience to their Prince is
instilled in the youth, more as a fundamental principle of Religion,
than of State; according to which, further, the maintenance of the
powerful Houses, and the succession in their estates, is prevented,
and the newly conquered countries, far distant from the capital of
government, are depopulated. From this same reason also flows, that
the Stadtholderships and Ministers are frequently interchanged; and
that, finally, justice, at the least suspicion of a crime, is
enforced with the greatest haste and severity. Whatever this
political system may be, it is in accordance with the fundamental
principles on which the system of the entire Turkish Empire rests.
The Turks have actually begun to base their political government
during the war, and during a war that had as its aim to build an
Empire on plunder and violent land reclamations.
In the essential
grounds nothing has changed. Wherefore one should not be surprised
that the entire State still agrees with the circumstances on which
it was founded. The great extent of the Empire has rather secured it
even more. For in a large body one must remove evil from its first
birth. This is the reason why with the Turks, often the slightest
suspicion is a sufficient motive to proceed to the utmost death
penalties. The only difference between the former and latter times,
which I have discovered among the Turks, is this, that in State
negotiations they are now somewhat more tractable, and in Military
affairs somewhat more judicious.
This change, however,
is very natural. For it depends upon the circumstances of fortune,
to which all human affairs are exposed. In former times, when the
Turks were constantly victorious, enriched themselves with a fat
booty, amassed immeasurable treasures, and were consequently dreaded
by all Princes, they gave themselves up more to blind chance; and,
however unreasonable the manner in which they then proceeded, they
nevertheless, by their boldness and steadfastness, removed the
greatest obstacles out of the way, because the circumstances were
favourable to them. But now that fortune has changed, their militia
has fallen into disarray, and the household, for the reason
mentioned, has fallen into disorder; so, in respect of manner, they
have also changed somewhat. But in deed they have accomplished
nothing else than that they refined their policy, and have now
learned the art of covering the unjust violence of their rules with
the cloak of reason and common sense. On that account they have
adopted the most flattering and polite manners that one can expect
from the most refined Cabinet ministers in Europe.
As much as I have
been able to discover during the time that I have had the honor of
being at this Court, this is the essence of Turkish policy. But how
they are disposed towards other foreign Monarchs, both in Europe and
in Asia, with whom their Empire has some connection, we shall
examine subsequently.
LXIII. How the Turks
are disposed towards Persia.
Three nations have
only a mutual relation of importance with the Turkish Empire, the
Persians, the subjects of the Mogul, and the Ushuaks. Here I shall
speak only of Persia.
The Persians are a
Power, which, because of the extent of their Empire, the number of
their armies, and the distinction of their Doctrine, is no less
detested than feared. There is no more formidable enemy for the
Turks, for several reasons. The principal is, that all the Turkish
people fear nothing more, than when they have to serve in a war on
the borders of Persia. The discomfort of the long and remote
journey, the difficulty of the climate, which is deadly for all
European nations, the lack of provisions in wild and sparsely
populated provinces, the Turks have learned by experience that
usually the least return from these regions.
The very great extent
of the borders from Cabarta (Circassia) to Bassora makes it
necessary for the Turks to keep more and more armies in the field,
consequently incurring expenses that are detrimental to their
household.
This, furthermore,
also suffers a considerable disadvantage, because then the trade is
broken off, which consists of the richest articles, and consequently
brings great profit to the Imperial toll houses. In addition, there
was the sad experience since the war with the Persians, when the
Sofi Thamas Kulikan came to the throne, which caused that, when all
the fortunes of war changed, the Turks understood well, that, if
they made any conquests, they could not keep them, because of the
great distance from the heart of the Empire. Even religion
contributes something to wishing for peace with Persia. Many of the
Turks, namely, accept the same doctrine of Ali, and adhere to the
Persian creed. For this reason the government always nourishes a
certain distrust of those whom it chooses as commanders in such
defensive wars. Wherefore, for this and similar reasons, it is a
rule of the Turkish government to avoid war with Persia, because the
Porte foresees that it is ruinous for it, still more so, if it is
not ended in a few campaigns.
Because Sofi Kulikan
is a brave and sensible man, and understands the way of thinking of
the Turks; therefore he conducts his war in that way, which is the
most sensitive and deadly for the Turks. He does not seek to make
conquests; he marches from one corner of the frontiers to the other;
he wanders everywhere, and lives at the expense of his enemies; he
drags along people of all ages and sexes; lets his troops rest in
his country during the winter, and seeks, in a word, to prolong the
war, considering this to be the best means to weaken the Turkish
Empire, and to make it so weak, that it can henceforth undertake
nothing against Persia.
That is how I regard
Persia, and in this I am protected by the Turks' own way of thinking
about Persia. At present there is no prospect of peace; but if the
Turks get it, then they will hardly start unrest again so easily.
For they know their own interest only too well, and do not get
involved in war, without a moral certainty, that they will profit
from it. (*)
(*)
The author's thoughts. concerning the way of thinking of the Turks
concerning the wars with Persia, is so real, that, notwithstanding
that Persia, after the death of Thamas-Kuii Khan, has fallen into
the utmost confusion, the Porte trembles not to undertake to attack
that Empire. She is content, if she is only left in peace on that
side.
LXIV. How the Turks
think of the Moguls and Ushuaks.
The war which the
Turks wage with Persia has caused the Mogul Emperor to offer to make
a diversion against the Shah. The Mogul Ministers made designs which
were otherwise ineffective. The real reason for this was that the
Moguls are held in little esteem by the Turks.
They know that they
do not understand military strategy, and after the Persian
destruction of this country they are poor in money, and they lose
courage. The great distance, which makes fixed designs almost
impossible, and prevents one from proceeding with emphasis and
certainty, has caused the Porte to abandon this negotiation. But she
has shown much respect for the Mughal Ministers, to which the
uniformity of Religion and the aims concerning Commerce also brought
it. For in fact the Commerce which she carries on with the Mughal
Empires is very great. This is done through the Persian Gulf over
Bashora, where one of the richest Custom-houses of the Turkish
Empire is. The Porte nourishes and maintains the friendship with the
Mughal countries from views of Commerce; but further alliances are
considered useless, because of the distance and the natural
condition of the Mughal peoples. The Usbeks also sent Ambassadors to
the Porte, to propose to her a diversion against Persia, because
they were angry about the depredations which the Shah had committed
in their countries. The Usbek Empire borders on the Caspian Sea to
the West, on Persia to the South, on the Karakalpak Tartars to the
North, and on Turkestan to the East. But, because these peoples are
not respected by the Porte because of their military valor, it has
not deemed it necessary to involve itself with them in military
projects. The Usbeks, seeing that the first subject of their mission
was fruitless, made proposals for commerce. Their country is rich in
diamond mines of the most perfect and rarest kind. They offered the
Turks that they could discuss with them a plan for such a rich
trade, which would be very useful to both States. Several
conferences were held on this subject. But, because the only way was
by means of the Caspian Sea, they soon saw the difficulty that arose
because of navigation. For this is in the hands of the Muscovites,
who profit from this precious trade. Now that the Porte is at war
with Persia, (*) it has seen fit to reject this affair, which will
never be easily accomplished.
The Porte has no
dealings with other Asiatic States. Neither state aims nor interests
unite it with anyone else; for it does not believe that it should
place the Kurds and Dagestanis in this class, who are peoples
without religion, laws and customs, who almost constantly wander
about, and know nothing more than how, like animals, they defend
their dens.
(*)
The writer speaks of the time of his stay in Constantinople, namely
1760.
LXV. Behavior of the
Turks toward Russia.
The Turks, who are
naturally proud, despise the Christian princes. But intelligent men
and the ministers of state among them do not think so. I will only
report how they think of each one who has influence on their State
or their trade.
The Russians are, at
present, among all the Christian powers, the most formidable to the
Turks. The numerous armies which this Power keeps on its feet even
in peacetime, and the troops which constantly keep watch on the
Turkish borders, give the Turks a correct idea of the
power and strength of the Russians. They understand therefore how
dangerous it is for them to have Russia as an enemy. The Turks have
experienced enough at Choczim, Oczakov and in the Crimea what they
have to expect from the power of the Russians. The alliance entered
into by Russia with Austria or some other Power, makes the Porte's
affair still more anxious, and she must therefore redouble her high
esteem for Russia. It is certain that the Porte takes great pains to
maintain Russian friendship, because she has reason to fear that
Russia might unite with the Persians. But, as much as the Porte, in
appearance, treats the Russians with respect, and spares them, so
much does she hate them in her heart, and longs for a favourable
opportunity to curtail the power of the Russians. To this end the
Porte continually seeks to arouse distrust of the Russians among the
neighbouring Princes and their friends, using everything to stir up
a Christian power against that Empire in one way or another, so that
when the hostility between the Porte and Persia is finally ended,
they may take advantage of the opportunity to gain some advantage
over Russia.
The growth of Russian
power has, in fact, also greatly reduced the population and the
profit of the Turkish Empire. The Russians are continually active on
the frontiers, and the Tartars can no longer commit those raids
which they then continually dared to do, as long as Russia was less
warlike and regular.
Consequently, that
astonishing multitude of slaves no longer comes, which the Tartars
otherwise, annually, like a branch?? of Commerce to Constantinople.
It has been calculated that by this means, every year, the
population of that capital increased by 20 thousand people. The
Tartars supplied men enough for the service of the galleys, which,
notwithstanding their small number, are now very poorly provided
with sailors. With the reduction of the Turkish Empire, it is
difficult to think that the Turks will ever gain great advantages
over the Russians. (*)
(*)
The war, waged about the year ?? between the Russians and the Turks,
has fully confirmed the author's judgment.
LXVI. Behavior of the
Turks toward Prussia and Sweden.
Prussia was, until a
short time ago, still an almost unknown Power to the Turkish
Government. But, after the Prussian House, in later times, waged
wars against the Austrian House, and entered into alliances with
many powerful Princes, the rumor concerning the strength and bravery
of the Prussian troops also reached the Turkish Court. The new blood
relationship of the Prussian House with the Crown of Sweden, has, in
particular, aroused in the Turks the desire to live in friendship
with the King of Prussia, and they began to flatter themselves that
they could maintain a good friendship with him. The Porte
understands very well that, by reason of the constitution of the
States, and by reason of the numerous armies, this is a Power that
can do much in the North and in Germany. It is certain that the
Porte will make every effort to bring all the Powers on its side
that border on the Empire or on Russia, in order to divide them
among themselves when the opportunity arises. This will always be a
false maxim of the Turks. Sweden is a Power that has been on good
terms with the Turks for many years. She was held in good esteem by
them under Charles XII. The Turks have indeed lost some of their
esteem for the Swedes after the misfortune that this Crown had with
Russia in Finland; but nevertheless they continue to maintain the
closest friendship with them, in order to maintain the same
political views against Russia for which they also seek friendship
with the King of Prussia.
LXVII. What the Turks
think of Poland.
Up to this time there
was no Power more formidable to the Turks, for whom they had greater
respect, than Poland. The wealth, the extent and population of this
Empire, the number of horsemen, which it could bring into the field,
and which of the Turks were considered very brave, was a motive, why
the Porte had so great respect for this Power.
A stronger reason for
fear were the Cossacks, dependent on this Crown. These came, often,
with all their power from the Black Sea, devastated and plundered
the villages almost to the gates of Constantinople, which city they
often placed in great want of provisions, while they disturbed the
trade of the Turks. As imprudent as the Poles were in their conduct
towards this warlike nation, so attentive were, on the contrary, the
Turks. They flattered and caressed them so long, until they finally
obtained what they had desired for so many years. They moved the
Cossacks to a revolt, and made them submit to the protection of the
Sultan.
After they had
obtained safety on the Black Sea in this way, they saw themselves
freed from a dangerous enemy, and the Crown withdrew from Poland a
strength, by which this Empire otherwise made itself formidable.
When, in addition to this, the native unrest arose in this Empire,
the Turks saw its weakness more and more. The more hospitable they
are towards Poland, the less is their respect for the Poles.
Notwithstanding this, they endeavor to live in good confidence with
them; for they consider Poland as one of the strongest means to
bring Russia under the yoke. When therefore unrest arises in this
Republic, then the Turks take every care to receive news of all
internal events. They use all artifices, so that the Russian party
does not gain the upper hand among the Vagabonds. The Princes of
Wallachia and Moldavia and the neighboring countries have orders to
keep a watchful eye on everything that goes on, and to give the
Polish nation all possible signs of friendship and good confidence,
only to flatter it.
LXVIII. What the
Turks think of the Austrian House.
The Austrian House
was always a Power that was treated with great respect by the Turks.
The frequent experience of the bravery of the Austrian troops has
taught the Turks, through their own disadvantage, to have very great
respect for the German militia. They give it the testimony without
contradiction, that it is the bravest among all European nations.
When the Imperial Crown is united with this Illustrious House; then
the Turks treat the Emperor with the utmost respect. They understand
well, that when the German Princes assist him, he has a Power,
against which that of the Great Lord cannot stand. The only
consolation for the Turks was otherwise the discontent of the
Hungarian States, who, under the pretext of religion, were always
prepared to stir up trouble. The Turks always secretly rejoice in
it, because, in case of war, they could use this pretext to make a
diversion.
It was very sensitive
to them, when this Empire so unanimously decided, with the utmost
force and all emphasis, to support and obey the reigning Queen of
Hungary, Daughter of Charles VI. For by this they were cut off from
the only means of hoping for internal trouble, if they should come
to war with this Power.
It would be even more
sensitive to them, if the Imperial Crown remained with this House.
But, whatever may happen, the Turks will always have high respect
for the Archhouse of Austria. For they know well, that this House,
even without the Imperial Crown, because of the great following and
the close alliance with the German Princes, can obtain powerful help
on occasion.
Another strong thorn
for the Turks, and which hurts them very much, is the alliance with
Russia. The Porte will never cease, if possible, to arouse distrust
between both Courts, and with all its strength seek to break a
chain, which is the strongest of all, and greatly hinders it, to war
the Christian countries. When, for the rest, a favorable opportunity
for the Turks presents itself; then, they will certainly not neglect
to draw after them the Banat of Temeswar, and possibly more. Besides
that they see how much without the possession of this country
Belgrade is weakened, and how much it concerns them, for reasons of
State, to have the rule over such an important place; so the
government will also be urged to do so, by the proposal of many
private people, who have an interest in it. For many distinguished
Turks possessed, in this Banat, rich lands, and the Sultan granted
there much Saeyme and Tymar??.
But, as long as the
Turkish Empire remains in its present weakness, it will be very
difficult, that the Porte decides on such an important undertaking.
LXIX.
What the Turks think of France.
The King of France
was the first among the Christian princes, whose States do not
border on the Sultan's lands, who, because of the freedom of
Commerce, entered into negotiations with the Porte, and obtained the
Title as Emperor. Since the mutual
alliance of Francis I with the Turks, these two Courts have
maintained a good friendship. The Turks
have the most accurate and certain knowledge of the French Power and
the prestige that this Crown holds among all Christian powers. But
the Turks will, not only because of the power of the French, but
also for their own interest, constantly endeavor to maintain the
most intimate friendship with the Crown of France.
They understand that France is the Power that, above all
others, can keep the Austrian Power in balance, and in case of
necessity can make a strong diversion. On the other hand, this is
also certain: as much as the Turks will do all they can to seek
assistance from the Crown of France against the enemies of the
Porte; so it will be difficult for the
French, in case of need, to prudently assist the Turks, if they do
not see their own advantage crystal clear. The rich and liberal
Commerce, which the French carry on in Turkey, also provides them
with advantages, and makes them good friends together.
For the Imperial Customs Houses derive extraordinary
advantage from it. But, just as the
Turks know the French nation as very fine politicians, who
understand the handling of affairs well; so,
at present, they deal with the French with the utmost caution,
playing the hypocrite with them in everything.
They do not trust them, always fearing that this intelligent
and active nation might outdo them.
LXX. What the Turks
think of England and Holland.
The Crown of England
was always regarded with special respect by the Turks, because of
its naval power, its great and extensive trade, and because of the
merit of so many peace treaties concluded with the Porte under
English mediation.
But at present it is
very sensible to the Turks to see that England has such a power at
sea, and so numerous fleets, which sail around in the Mediterranean
and in the Ocean. On the contrary, the Turks lament the decline of
their own naval power, finding it a sorrow, to which so proud a
nation is susceptible, which, from the earliest times, regarded
itself as the most powerful on water and on land.
Besides, the Turks
conceal their sorrow, trying rather to cover it up by the attention
with which they treat this Crown. Although the Commerce of the
English in these countries is no longer so great as in former times;
the English Crown nevertheless deserves to be treated with respect
by the Turks. For they need many English Manufactures, especially
such as serve for pleasure and luxury.
The great distance of
England from the Turkish Empire, the special position of this
island, its great power at sea, protect it from all danger and
insults of the Turks, who see well that it is much easier to be
attacked by England, than that they could on the contrary again
trouble this Crown. England's friendship will therefore bring more
advantage to the Turks, than that of any Monarch and such Powers,
which, because of the proximity of their States, can have disputes
with this Empire. The Dutch were, until the year 1660, in no special
esteem in Turkey, because they conducted their trade there under the
protection of the English. But, after the Turks have learned what a
power Holland has at sea, and what rich trade they conduct in India;
they now esteem this power very highly, and treat their Ministers
more respectfully.
LXXI.
What the Turks think of the Kings of Spain and Naples. The
Spanish Crown is, because of its first principles, an enemy of the
Turks. There are always some armed
ships at sea, which disturb the commerce of the Turks in the
Mediterranean. These would also often
have gladly made peace with the Spaniards, if their old enmity and
natural pride had not kept them from it. For
the rest, they know that the Spanish Crown is no longer as powerful
as it used to be, and that, notwithstanding the help which it
receives from its fleets from the West Indies, it has noticeably
diminished in its household, through the many wars, and has no very
populous country. The King of Naples is
highly esteemed by the Turks, not only because of his alliance with
the Crown of Spain, but also because of that with France.
It may happen that peace is also made with the Spanish Crown
by him on occasion. In the meantime,
the King of Naples keeps a Minister here, with the Character of an
extraordinary ambassador, who is treated by the Turks in the same
way as the Ministers of the oldest Crowns. The
Turks have also concluded a Commercial Treaty with the Court of
Naples, but that does not mean much. For
the rest, the Turks know well that Naples lays claim to some States,
now under the rule of the Turks. Often
the Kings of Naples could also, if opportunity arose, come forward
with the old demands of their Kings; but
on the other hand, the Turks also pay attention to every step that
the Court of Naples takes.
LXXII. What the Turks
think of the Republic of Venice.
The Republic of
Venice is held in the highest esteem by the Turks, and is now
regarded by them as uncommon. (*)
The long durability
of its rule, which they regard as a result of the shrewdness of the
Council, causes the Turks to regard the Venetian government as the
wisest in Europe. The long experience which they have gained of
their bravery in repeated naval battles, but mostly in so many
battles in the well-known Candidate War, has inspired in the minds
of the Turks a very exalted idea of the bravery of the
Venetians at sea, and of their knowledge in naval affairs.
They frankly admit
that from that time on the Turkish naval power has begun to decline.
Then she was so weakened by so many defeats, that from that time on
no more so numerous and powerful fleet appeared in the sea, as in
former times. Since, above that of the Venetians, they have found in
all negotiations, a certain sincerity, and from all Venetian
merchants loyalty and honesty in their contracts; so the Turks
consider the Venetian nation to be an honest and punctual nation,
dealing, perhaps, with her with more sincerity, than with any other.
In former times, on
the other hand, no nation was more hated by the Turks, than the
Vmetian. The many wars, which arose from time to time, increased the
hatred on both sides. But, after they concluded an eternal peace
with the Venetians, which Venice also maintained, and even in the
last disturbances observed a strict neutrality; Thus disaffection
has changed into affection, and the Turks now consider the Venetians
their best friends. I can assure you that on certain occasions, as
soon as I said that I was a Venetian, I was received in the most
friendly and courteous manner, and people dealt with me openly. It
is beyond dispute that the wise measures of the Venetian ambassadors
have contributed infinitely to the foundation of this familiarity,
who by their amiable intercourse, their wise plots, their
illustrious conduct, have brought honor, esteem, and affection to
the Venetian nation. In order to maintain this precedence, it will
be very useful that men should always be chosen for this office who
have experience in negotiations, and who possess the ability to
perform the office of a public ambassador with that decency which is
useful everywhere, but very necessary at the Turkish Court.
This being assumed, I
consider it almost impossible that a great dispute could arise which
could induce the Turkish Empire to a breach of peace with Venice.
Besides the fact that the Turks have favourable impressions of the
wise and uprightness of the government, and of the honesty of the
nation, they see very well that, under the present System of Europe,
it is not at all advisable or useful for them to wage war with
Venice.
There is also, in
fact, no longer any proportion between their danger and their hope.
Everywhere, in the Levant and in Dalmatia, they would meet with the
strongest places, which would cost blood, time and treasure, if they
would bother to conquer them. And, if they did conquer any, the gain
would not be as great as the loss. In addition, since the treaty of
the Archduke of Austria with Russia is the most dangerous thorn for
them, they must always give the Commonwealth good words, so that it
takes no part in it. For since Venice is a maritime power, she would
always be able with her strong fleets to make the Turkish Empire a
tremendous diversion. The Porte would be forced to occupy as many
separate Empires and Coasts well, and to provide them with strong
Garrisons, because the Republic could attack them very easily. If
therefore an imprudent Sultan should ascend the Throne, or any other
accident should occur; yet, for all the aforementioned reasons of
affection, policy and interest, the Turkish Empire would hardly
decide to trouble the Republic of Venice.
When the Sultan
writes to the Republic of Venice; then he uses the following words:
"To the most illustrious among the great Princes of Jesus
Religion, housekeepers of notable persons of the nation of the
Messiah, deciders of the affairs of the Christian nations, with the
mantle of glory and majesty clothed Lords, possessors of Honor and
fame, our Venerable Friend, the Doge and the Republic of Venice,
whose end may be happy!" (*)
(*)
One will well hold this assurance to the best of a Venetian writer.
One cannot accuse it of falsehood; but in general every writer
testifies something of his Nation.
(*)
These words, whose ending is happy! form the conclusion in the
Titles which the Porte gives in all their letters to the Christian
powers, and so much meaning: that they might find happiness in
adopting the Mohammedan religion.
LXXIII. What the
Turks think of the Peace Treaties and Treaties with Foreign Princes.
The Code of the
Mohammedans, Kitah Adia, (†) establishes as a rule of
religion that the Turks not only can, but also must break the Peace
Treaties, when they expand their Empire there and propagate their
religion.
To support this
principle, say ?? Mohammed, when he was forced to lift the siege of
Mecca, made peace with the inhabitants of that city, and then
attacked them again when they least thought of it: by this example
he taught his descendants that peace treaties should only be used to
the extent that the interest of the Empire and the religion entails.
Turkish history is full of examples of how the Turks have behaved in
such cases, among which the Treaty of 1604 is the most
extraordinary. The Plenipotentiary Ministers of the Porte and of the
Emperor were assembled at Pest, to work there for a peace. The Turks
treated the Imperial Plenipotentiaries in the most stately manner;
but, during the Treaty, the garrison of Osen, in the hope of not
finding the walls well garrisoned, set out to attack that place, but
found them so well guarded that they had to retreat in shame. This
proves that everyone is deceived who thinks to find any honesty or
justice in the Treaty of the Turks. Wherefore it will always be a
rule of policy for a Prince, to have his Ministers in Turkey, at
every movement of the Turks, continue to work on the matter.
Otherwise it is certain, that, when they rely entirely on Treaties,
they will, at the first opportunity favorable to the Unbelievers,
have a painful experience of this Turkish rule of religion, to their
disadvantage.
(†)
I do not guarantee, whether the Title of this book is correctly
given: s. In the meantime it is also so in my manuscript.
LXXIV. How the Turks
regard the Ambassadors of foreign Powers.
The Turks make no
distinction between the rank of foreign Ministers residing at the
Porte. They call the Ambassadors, Envoys and Residents all by the
name of Eltschjy. Their Law and the Koran regard the rank of an
Ambassador as inviolable: and this notwithstanding, we have
innumerable examples to the contrary.
The reason of this is
this: because the Turks regard the Ministers in two senses, as if
they were two very distinct people. First, they regard them as such
as represent their Lord who sends them, in whose name they execute
something with the Great Lord, and complain of breaches of peace and
other violations of the Treaties. Secondly, they regard them as mere
Hostages, to secure the treaties concluded between their Lord and
the Sultan. In this second respect they make no difficulty at all in
violating the right of the people, and arresting the Minister of
each Power, or putting him in the seven Towers. When a war breaks
out; then this violence is almost a necessary consequence. For the
cases are very rare, that, on the occasion of a breach of peace, the
Minister is not imprisoned in the seven towers, or in one of the
Castles of the Bosphorus. As soon as they have but a small dispute
with a Prince; then his Minister must suffer violence. Among all
foreign Ministers, two of them, with respect to ceremonies, are
treated with special respect, namely the Imperial and Venetian. As
soon as an Imperial Minister arrives in the Turkish States, he is,
furthermore, entertained at the expense of the Grand Lord, until he
departs again. But recently this respect has also been shown to a
Russian and Polish Minister.
As for the Imperial
Minister: he usually brings the Sultan rich presents, which he also
returns through his Minister. In the same way do the French, English
and Dutch Ambassadors; but this difference exists, that the Sultan
does not return their presents: for he considers them as a right,
and as a reward for the protection which he allows the Merchants of
these nations to enjoy.
The difference which
the Venetian Ambassador enjoys above others, consists in the fact
that he makes a public entry into the city; a ceremony which is
reserved for the extraordinary Ambassadors of other Princes, and
which the Ambassadors of the Republic have enjoyed since ancient
times. This is a distinguishing Honour for the Ambassador of Venice,
which is indeed small in itself, but deserves all remark, because no
other Minister enjoys this Honour.
On the day of St.
Mark, as the National Feast, he, according to an old custom, lets
some mortars be fired in his Palace, which the Porte has never been
willing to permit other Ministers, not even at the marriage, birth
and coronation ceremonies of their Princes. For the rest, the Turks
are careful not to admit foreign Ministers to the Audience of the
Great Lord, except on such days, when their Court appears with pomp
and splendour. For this reason they usually grant audience on such
days as the militia is paid. This true Weden of these Audiences, and
the manner in which they take place, are worthy of being reported in
particular. When one knows them by one Minister; then one knows them
by all. There is no difference, except in that the Venetian makes
his entry openly.
LXXV.
Ceremonies at the Entry of an Ordinary Ambassador of the Republic of
Venice.
The
first work that a Venetian Ambassador performs, in distinction from
all other Ambassadors, is his public entry into the city. In the one
I attended, it went as follows:
Early
in the morning of the appointed day, at 2 p.m. according to our
time, the Ambassador proceeded in a litter from his residence to
Thopchaneh. His retinue went partly before, partly after. Having
arrived at the shore, they embarked on kaykes, which were provided
with several oars. The Ambassador separated himself, and went in a
projecting kayke, which the Terschaneh-Emyn, who in the absence of
Captain Bassa took his place, had sent to him. She had cushions and
coverings, covered with gold, and twelve pairs of oars. In these
went the Ambassador, the Secretary, and an Interpreter of the
Republic. They sailed very smoothly, and with the favor of a good
wind and clear sky, under a constant shooting of three Venetian
ships and many barges and merchant tartans, to the staircase
Meez-Skeleafy, where they usually go ashore.
From
here the Ambassador with all his retinue went to a house, where he
was received by the Tschausch Baschy and other Turkish Ministers.
They complimented each other, took refreshments according to the
Turkish custom, and ate for some time, until the numerous retinue,
standing on the wide shore, could be put in order to be ready for
the voyage.
This
was done in the following order. In front marched 300 Janistas, each
with a Kjulah on his head, being a long cap of white cloth, hanging
down over his shoulders. Behind them went their Cook in a dress of
black fur, from which hung on many silver chains forms of
implements, necessary for the Kitchen. Then came 60 Tschauschen on
horseback with the Tschausch-Kjulah, or their Ceremonial cap on his
head.
Them
followed 36 Slavonians of the Ambassador in their livery with their
leader at their head; the Equerry's Master of the Horse, at the head
of six beautifully equipped riding horses, half in Turkish, half in
Italian equipment. These were led by six Groomsmen in their livery.
The House-steward, and another house servant on horseback, led 56
Footmen on foot in costly liveries. Furthermore came 14 Chamber
servants on horseback, the Page of his Excellency on horseback, ten
language boys (*) and six Interpreters on horseback; the Chief of
the Janistas on horseback, with six Tschokahdars on foot; the
Waiwode or Governor of Galata with six Tschokahdars; the Interpreter
of the Republic Ralli; the Tschauschlar-Kjctchuda or Master of
Ceremonies with another Officer of the Spahilar Aga with four
Tschokahdars; the Tschauschlar Eniyn or Chief Overseer of the
Tschausch with four Tschokahdars; the Tschausch-Baschy or General of
the Tschaufen with ?? Tschokahdars. At last the Ambassador came in a
red silk armour, richly decorated with gold. He had the ducal cap of
the same material on his head, and rode on a horse, which the Court
had sent him. Around him were six Slavonians in their livery. Three
nobles of Venice, the two secretaries of the Embassy, and
others of his Court, together 20 persons, rode on Court horses. Then
followed 49, partly merchants, partly other Vetians on horseback.
The procession was closed by one Tschausch, one Kapudschjy, and two
Janistas on horseback, with other persons on foot, who were all
subjects of the Republic, about a hundred persons. In this order and
with this splendor the procession lasted two hours, first through
the streets of Galata, then through those of Pera to the Palace of
the Bailo. The Envoy rode into the Court, and with this the ceremony
of the entry came to an end.
(*)
Several nations, such as the Imperial, French, Venetian and others,
keep a certain number of young men, who are instructed in the
languages for the future service of their nation.
LXXVI. Ceremony at
the visit of the first Visier.
The public entry is
followed by the visits to the Court. The Ceremonial entails that the
Grand Visier is visited before the Grand Lord.
On an appointed day,
in the same order, and with the same retinue, the Ambassador
proceeded to Thopchaneh, where he embarked and sailed with Kaiken
across the Canal of Pera to Constantinople. He, the Secretary of the
Embassy and the Interpreter sat in the Kaiken of the Tschausch
Baschy; the Venetian ships and vessels fired their guns. When the
Ambassador stepped ashore on the other side, he received the
compliments of the Tschausch-Baschy and other Turkish Ministers; he
mounted his horse and arrived with his entire retinue, the same as
at the entry, within half an hour at the Palace of the Grand Visier.
At the stairs he was received by the Interpreter of the Porte, who
conducted him, and brought him into the Audience-hall, in the corner
to the Sofa of the first Vizier,.
Here the Ambassador
enjoyed a special Honour. For otherwise it is the custom, that the
Ambassadors are first made to sit in an anteroom, and wait a while,
whereupon they are led into the Audience-hall, where they must
nevertheless wait, until the Vizier comes. When the Ambassador
entered, he was made to sit on a chair without backrest, on which
lay a beautifully wrought sheet cushion. Around him stood his whole
considerable Court, on the right hand the Interpreter of the Porte,
on the left hand the Interpreter of the Ambassador, and nearer to
his side stood the Secretary of the Embassy with the letter of the
Council, which he held in both hands. It was in a purse of crimson
cloth, embroidered with gold, but the seal pressed on a solid gold
box. The whole apartment was full of the principal Turks; they all
stood in a line, to make their Court to the Grand Vizier,, who came
a few moments after, and was greeted by the Turks with a loud voice.
Before him went the Kjetchuda and the Reis-Efendy, who stood
opposite at the corner, where he sat. His dress was a long Tabbert
of green colour, with broad sleeves, and lined with sable. On his
head he had a long, tapering turban, which was square after the
blows of the head. It was lined with white silk, and had a border
with a gold plate, four fingers thick, which suited him properly.
As soon as he
appeared, the Ambassador rose, (*) but remained covered, as did all
his retinue, as is the custom among the Turks. After they had
greeted each other, the Ambassador, at the same time, sat down with
the Vizier,. Thereupon the Ambassador made a suitable speech, which
was answered by the Vizier with a frankness and courtesy unusual
among the Turks. The Vizier even indulged in several friendly
expressions and questions, touching the person of the Ambassador.
After that, both the Coffee, then the Sorbet, and finally the
sweet-smelling water and the perfume, all in very precious vessels,
had been offered, the Envoy was presented with a fine Chestnut, as
well as his entire considerable retinue of 40 persons. This Ceremony
being at an end, the Vizier presented the request of the Envoy,
fixing for him the Audience with the Sultan on the following
Tuesday.
This Audience ended
thus. At the farewell, the Envoy was presented with two
Handkerchiefs by the Vizier,, - one of which was interwoven with
gold, and the other with silver. After the end of this entire
ceremony, the Envoy went back to his own Palace.
(*)
It is customary for the Ambassadors not to sit down, so as not to
have to get up when the Vizier enters. For he would certainly not
get up, just as he does not do so when the Ambassador departs, but
remains seated.
LXXVII.
Solemnity at the Audience of the Great Lord. On the day
appointed for the Audience, the Envoy proceeded, an hour before
sunrise, from Pera to Constantinople, where he found at his landing
the Tschausch-Baschy, in a magnificent dress of silver and gold,
lined with fur, and with many horses from the Imperial stables.
After he had consumed the coffee in a small house there, and
it had gradually become day; he took
the long journey to the Seraglio of the Great Lord and the Divan,
where the Envoys are received. When they arrived at the great gate
of the first square, they encountered the numerous guards, which, at
the entrance of the Envoy, drew up in ranks.
He came with his whole retinue, among an innumerable crowd of
Turks, who were spectators, to the gate of the second square, where
he dismounted, because no one (that is to say, Europeans) may enter
further on horseback. There he was received by the Interpreter of
the Porte, and, after he had spoken with him for a while in the
inner court, he entered the Divan. Before
him went the Tschausch-Baschy and the Master of Ceremonies,
(Kapudschjylar-Kjetchudafy,) both likewise dressed, with a silver
staff in their hands, with which, from time to time, after certain
steps, they struck the stones that lie in the middle of the square,
and immediately end at the door of the Divan. As they proceeded, it
is worth noting the great company of Janissaries that paraded.
There were ten thousand of them, standing on the right side
of the square. At a sign, which was
given them, they walked with the utmost haste, as was possible, to
the aforesaid road, to take after them the P??
or rice, which stood on the ground, and which is usually
given them on such occasions. The Ambassador having entered the
Divan, and having made the usual Compliments to the Grand Vizier,,
he was shown the usual place to sit. Next
to him stood the Interpreter of the Porte and many of his own
people, the Secretary of the Embassy, the Venetian
Nobles of his retinue, and still others of his Court, all with
covered heads, as is the custom there. The Divan is an almost
square, vaulted, and not very high Hall. The
whole length of this, opposite the door, serves as a Court.
In the middle sat the Grand Visier on a carpet of golden
cloth, at the height of two feet. He
had on the aforementioned dress, and the Turban on his head.
At some height above his seat is a window with lattices of
gilded iron, through which the Sultan can see into the Hall, without
being seen himself. One is not aware of
his presence otherwise than by the shine which the jewels of his
clothes give of themselves. On the right side of the bench sat no
one, on the left in the back corner sat the two Chief Judges, called
Kadhy-Leschkjer, with their very thick Turbans, of which one had a
green, the other a white side. Further
into the Hall, after entering, sat, on the right side, the
Nischandschjy, or he who expresses the name of the Great Lord in
numerals; opposite him the Defterdar or
Treasurer. Behind the bench of the Divan the wall opens out through
a broad vault, which is just as high, where one saw another place,
in which many other important Ministers and Judges assemble, who
hold sessions on special matters of the Kingdoms of this great
Empire. Since the Divan is the place where the Grand Vizier receives
petitions with open doors; so he
performed this work for a while, and in the meantime called the
Interpreter of the Porte by him, who stood at the side of the
Ambassador. By him he had a Compliment
made to him. As soon as he had finished
the petitions, the payments began, which the Turks gladly prove to
the Ambassadors, because they consider it a mark of their power and
wealth. 'Sixteen hundred purses were brought into the Divan, and
placed before the Grand Vizier,. They
were all of yellow leather, one as large as the other;
in each were five hundred Piastres. On
the bench were placed many other purses of white linen, which were
partly filled with Zecchins, partly with small silver coins, to make
up the sums, as the necessity required. This cash, taken together,
amounted to more than a million, and yet this was only a payment for
three months for the militia, which serves only in the capital.
After all this ready money had been brought into the Divan,
the Visier had one of all these purses opened, to see the specie
that was in it; and then the payment
began. First come the Janistas. At the
door appears the oldest Commander of the Regiment;
and then, by specially appointed persons, as many purses are
thrown out as are required for their payment.
Outside the door the purses are counted again, and thrown out
on the square. The Commander then makes
his bow before the Divan, and walks backwards to the square. As soon
as he appears there, the Janistas of his Regiment run like arrows to
the purses, considering it among themselves as a bravery, the more
of them one receives. Each Regiment has this ceremony. The other
Soldiers follow the Janistas, who are very numerous.
After them come the
Seraglio's Attendants, according to their rank, into the Hall, and
collect their payment very calmly and quietly. Finally the Lackeys
of the Great Lord also appear. Truly a very difficult function,
which lasts about three hours.
This being done,
three tables were set, one for the Grand Visier, the second for the
Nischandfichjy, and the third for the Defterdar: At the first sat
the Envoy alone; and to the other two the Secretary, the Venetian
Nobles, and other distinguished persons of the retinue, eight
persons in all. They did not stay long at the table, although they
served various dishes. They were all served in very fine dishes of
green porcelain. According to their custom, they leave each dish on
the table for only a few moments.
After eating, the
Ambassador went back to his place. After this, the Travel-Effect
approached the Visier with a writing to the Emperor, in which it was
stated that the Ambassador requested to be admitted to an audience
with the Emperor. He read it, signed it, did it in very fine silk,
and sealed it with his own hand. Then he put it in another fair
paper, sealed it again, and sent it by the Tschausch-Baschy, who
served in the office, to the Grand Lord.
When he returned with
the answer, the Visier went to the door of the Divan to receive it.
After he had kissed it, and held it to his forehead in token of
respect, he returned to his place, where he opened the paper, and
read it, and made a sign to conduct the Ambassador to his usual
place. This is a bench under a gallery, near the great door that
leads to the Imperial apartments.
There the Ambassador
put on the mantle of golden cloth over the ducal crimson, overlaid
with gold, which he already had on. And over both he added the
Imperial Chest, as he also had distributed among the Chiefs of his
retinue by the forty Chests, to put on. In the meantime the Grand
Vizier and the Aga of the Janistas had gone to the Great Lord, and
the Ambassador was led in by two Kapudschjys-Baschys, as
Honour-chamberlains of the Sultan. With him went the Secretary of
the Embassy, and held the Duke's letter in both hands.
After him came the other Venetian Nobles, and the Noble retinue of
ten persons. Before we entered the Monarch's apartment, we passed
through a Hall, by which from outside we found, besides a multitude
of Ministers, also a row of Tschauschen, who held the presents of
the Republic in their arms. From this Hall the Ambassador entered
the Imperial Apartment, which is everywhere of uncommon splendor,
and came just before the Monarch. Mahmud sat on a spacious Throne,
inlaid with precious stones and large pearls. He himself appeared in
the utmost splendor that can ever be expected from one of the
greatest Powers of the world. The Ambassador made a deep bow, and
made a speech in accordance with the rules of the Republic,
according to which it expressed its desire to maintain good
friendship and peace with the Porte. He concluded, and wished the
Monarch a long life and a happy reign. Then he beckoned to the
Secretary to present his letter of credence, which he delivered into
the hands of the Master of Ceremonies. The latter delivered him to
the Aga of the Janistas; the Aga delivered him into the hands of the
Grand Vizier, who laid him down on the Throne.
Then the Sultan spoke
for a while, and gave the Grand Vizier orders to answer the
Ambassador to his presentation. At this every one stood astonished,
as at an uncommon courtesy, because the Turkish Monarchs are not
accustomed to speak more than a few words. (*) The Grand Vizier
repeated in a loud voice what the Monarch had ordered him. After the
Interpreter of the Porte had explained it, it was learned that his
Majesty was pleased to see the Ambassador of a Power that was a good
friend of the Porte; that he on his part wished to maintain peace;
and that not only the Ambassador, but also all the Venetian subjects
would enjoy his Imperial protection in all his States, as well as
his own subjects.
Then they went out of
the room, (and so also out of the second square,) and the Envoy
mounted his horse with all his retinue. In the meantime it was a
delight to see how all the Janistas and all the Servants went out of
the Seraglio. After the Janistas came an innumerable crowd of
Tschauschen, on whom, each in his rank, all the Ministers with their
Servants, all on excellent, well-equipped horses, gradually
followed. Finally the Grand Visier also came with a retinue,
according to his considerable Dignity. Hereupon we began our journey
again. The Ambassador was accompanied to his ship, and with it,
under the firing of the Venetian ships and vessels, brought back to
his residence.
(*)
He was a Friend of the Europeans.
LXXVIII. Ceremonies
when Presents are Brought to the Sultan.
It is an old custom
of the Republic to have presents sent to the Sultan's Mother and
Wife. In the absence of this, as was the case at present, the
presents are handed over by the Secretary to his Majesty's
Favorites.
I must also report
something of this transaction. I placed myself at the usual place at
Thopchaneh, with the Chancellor, two Interpreters and two
Chamberlains, in a Kaike of six pairs of oars with a Janistar on the
stern. In other Barques went the Liverymen and the Slavonians with
the presents. Arriving at the steps of Constantinople, I proceeded
in the following order to the Palace of the Grand Vizier,: for the
custom is that they are shown to him before they are brought into
the Seraglio. Four Janistas with their ceremonial caps went before
them; these were followed by six Footmen in gala livery; then 30
Slavonians with the presents in flat baskets covered with a crimson
cloth, which they carried on their heads; these were two
Chamberlains, and then two Interpreters on horseback; and after them
the Chancellor also on horseback; lastly the Secretary on a horse,
equipped in the Italian manner. Arriving in this order at the
residence of the Grand Vizier,, the presents were then taken from
the hands of the Slavonians, and brought into the Hall, where he
usually gives audience to foreign Ministers. He had me led in at
once, and before me went two Venetian Interpreters with their hats
on their heads, after the Turkish custom. Entering the room, I found
the Grand Vizier sitting on a Sofa, but the presents had been placed
before him. Three paces from the Vizier I stopped, and said: "The
Most Illustrious Republic of Venice, which is always equal in
constancy to maintain the holy and perpetual peace with the
illustrious Porte, remains also equal in the zeal to give proofs of
its high esteem to all who are in favor with the Majesty of the
Sultan. Wherefore I have the honor to deliver to your Highness a
proof of the Manufactures of the capital Venice for the Favorites of
his Majesty. I am assured that this proof of high esteem, on the
part of my Most Illustrious Republic, will be favorably regarded by
your Highness as a consequence of the holy and perpetual peace,
which was signed in the name of this Empire with your own hands,
when you formerly held the office which to this day, by your
virtues, the true happiness of the greatest of the Empires."
The Visier replied:
"the proofs of the friendship of the Republic are always
pleasing to the Monarch; and, if she, on her side, continues in this
way, then, on the side of the Porte, the treaty of a holy peace will
be sacredly maintained." He then called one of his Secretaries,
and gave him orders to conduct the Venetians with the Interpreter of
the Porte to the Seraglio Ejüb, where the Court was then
located, three miles from Constantinople, at the extreme end of the
harbor, where the fresh water flows into the sea.
When I arrived there,
I was taken with the Chancellor and the two Interpreters into a room
of the Chiefs of the Forest, who form the first guard. After I had
taken coffee, and smoked a pipe of tobacco, I was conducted by the
guard of the Bushmen into the first square. Here the Baltahdschjy
received me, and I was conducted into another room of the captain of
this guard. There, after we had sat down on the sofa, we were given
coffee, tobacco, sherbet, jams, and sweet-smelling water, and I and
the two interpreters were each intoxicated with a handkerchief
interwoven with silver.
Then this same
officer conducted me into the second square, where the Imperial
guard of the white eunuchs took me over. In the third square the
guard of the Moors conducted me into a room on the same ground. I
had hardly entered there, when the Kislar-Aga, the chief of the
eunuchs and favorite minister of the monarch, appeared. He sat down
on a bench, and, after the presents were brought in, I addressed him
in this manner: "These presents are a consequence of the holy
and eternal peace which has been sworn between the glorious Porte
and my Most Illustrious Republic. They are a living proof of their
esteem, and I have, in that respect, the honour to present them to
your Excellency for the Favourites of his Majesty. The Most
Illustrious Republic and my Ambassador, who has charged me to
congratulate your Excellency in his name, flatter themselves that
they will be favourably regarded by the Monarch, and by the
Favourites, as a public token of the confidence of a Prince who is a
friend of the glorious Porte. Just as the Ambassador will endeavour
to continually strengthen and confirm the confidence; so I am I also
assure you that your Excellency, by his prestige, will confirm the
good understanding and promote happiness, bbetween the mutual
subjects, and will cooperate for the benefit of Commerce".
The Kislar-Aga
answered: the presents which I see are worthy of the magnanimity of
the Most Illustrious Republic. They will be received with respect,
because they come from a Prince who is beloved by the Monarch, and
especially esteemed by me". Then he turned to his Entourage,
and ordered them to prepare the Kastans, with which I, the
Interpreter of the Porte, the Chancellor, and the two Venetian
Interpreters were to be clothed.
After I had
distributed the usual drinks; said the Kislar-Aga: "Greet your
Ambassador, and assure him that I shall always seek an opportunity
to prove my friendship to him. I wish that the friendship between
the two Powers may be maintained unalterably, and that these
presents may last for many years, so that the peace may also remain
unbroken, which will be faithfully maintained on the side of the
Porte." I answered: "If these be the sentiments of the
Porte; then I assure your Excellency that the peace will last
forever. For the rest, I also wish that these presents may last for
many years, but that they may always be placed in the hands of your
Excellency, to whom I wish happiness and a long life, as your
virtues deserve, which make you, justly, a favourite of the greatest
of monarchs." The old Moor answered with a cheerful
countenance: "I am too old; but I shall die contented, when I
shall see the friendship of my Lordship with the Republic lasting.
In the meantime I wish you a happy journey to Pera, and a happy stay
there always." I answered: "To make it contented, the
favour of your Excellency, with respect to the affairs of the
Republic, will do most, which is the only wish of your Servant."
Thus ended the visit, and I was conducted by the Interpreter of the
Porte to the Kaike again. These are all the ceremonies which, on the
arrival of an Ambassador of a crowned Head at the Porte, are usually
observed.
LXXIX. Necessary
knowledge of a foreign Minister residing at the Porte.
From what I have thus
far reported of the political measures of the Turks, and their way
of thinking, one will be able to fully conclude that they are now
very different people than they were before. They are becoming more
civilized every day. It is therefore increasingly necessary that
such Persons, whom the European Princes send to the Porte, possess
such knowledge, which is not common to all. One has to deal with a
Cabinet entirely educated in political groups, and with Ministers of
almost all the most important Princes of Europe. Therefore much is
required of a Person, when he, in the midst of so many
circumstances, which usually conflict with each other, wishes to
appear with Honor. Nothing is in fact more difficult than to give
rules how a foreign Minister must behave. For the prudence of men
must change them very often, and adapt themselves to the
circumstances of time, place, affairs and persons.
For this reason I
will only speak of general qualities and rules, which, if they are
absolutely necessary for a foreign Minister, are nevertheless more
necessary for those who have to reside at the Turkish Court. Here I
will speak only of those skills which I judge necessary for them.
Then I will give rules which I have found necessary by experience.
The first skill which
a Minister at this Court must possess is the knowledge of the world.
Namely, one must know its manners and fundamental principles. To the
first I reckon courtesy; to the last I require knowledge. One must
understand the manners of the world, know all the rules of
politeness, customary in a country, and converse with men of
understanding and judgment. One must understand the principles of
the world, and the motives of its actions.
If one understands
manners; then one can show oneself with grace, behave with
understanding, and promise oneself a pleasant reception. If one
understands their fundamental principles; then one can derive
benefit from their absences, guard oneself against their wiles and
deceits, and protect oneself against all kinds of accidents. This
twofold knowledge is necessary for every Minister; but most of all
at this Court, where there is no abundance of men of great learning.
If one has but knowledge of manners; then he can conceal his
ignorance, and yet enjoy all the pleasure of intercourse. Just as
the intercourse with people of less insight is more frequent than
with persons of great merit, who are usually not only seldom, but
also more active; so the knowledge of the way of life at this Court
is of daily use.
Still more difficult,
but just as necessary is the knowledge of the fundamental principles
of the world. For by that one learns to know the characters of
people, who usually all differ as much as their Beings. By this
means one learns to behave cautiously, in order to know their
distrust or confidence, their discomfort or ease, their generosity
or avarice, their pride or modesty, their duplicity and cunning or
sincerity, their stupidity or their intelligence, their moderation
or passion, their ability or ignorance, their disinclination or
inclination to pleasure, but especially their selfish or unselfish
way of thinking in the handling of affairs. It is very difficult to
name all the motives of men's passions, but at the very least a
Minister at this Court must have a general knowledge of them, in
order to know how to behave well in his own negotiations. The second
necessary skill for a Minister is the knowledge of the interest, not
only of his own Prince and the Porte by which he is employed, but
also of all the Princes of Europe. In fact, all the various States
of Europe, with respect to the Turkish Empire, form a kind of
Republic; the interest of all such States being so intertwined and
connected, that each can give knowledge and rules, how to conduct
itself happily with the Turks, in negotiations with them. On this
account it is necessary to know their State power, their mutual
relations, their alliances, friendship, and the Treaties by which
they have united themselves. In a word, one must know their entire
system of religion, state, and trade, insofar as it has any
influence on Turkey. The third skill, perhaps the most necessary of
all, is the knowledge of languages. This would be desirable, but is
seldom found, because the Turkish language is not in use in Europe.
Therefore the European Princes will always have to suffer the
disadvantage to which the handling of their own affairs, by means of
third persons, is exposed. For however zealous and capable these may
be, it is nevertheless not possible that six would not take away
something either from the force, or the grounds, at least with
regard to the manner of explanation, of that language, in which they
are presented by the Ministers.
Wherefore the
Princes, in the choice of Interpreters, had to use extraordinary
attention, of which I shall now speak.
LXXX. Necessary rules
for the Ministers who reside at the Turkish Court.
I now come to the
necessary rules which a Minister at the Porte must observe. I will
not unfold all those which are common to the Ministers at all
Courts. I will only mention those which are peculiar to the Turkish
Porte.
Just as here the
Government is always in the hands of such people who are in special
favour with the Monarch; and, because there are always many who seek
such Offices, so a Minister must especially take care that he knows
which favourites are most seen from time to time. Otherwise he must
proceed when they are persons of the Ministry, and otherwise when
they serve in the Seraglio. The first he must flatter freely and
openly, so that in case of necessity they may not be disfavored. But
the friendship of the others he must endeavor to win in a suitable
manner, and proceed secretly in so doing, so that it does not come
to the ears of the Ministers of the Porte. For they would
necessarily be angry by it, because they show jealousy and
displeasure to everyone who turns to the persons of the Seraglio.
For they believe that they are thereby prevented from using the
whole circumference of their power. If he takes this into account,
and deals cautiously with both, gradually learns to know their
constitution, knows their virtues and vices; then it will not be at
all difficult for him to win them, and he will always find great
advantage in the outcome of his affairs. In his dealings with them
he must, according to a fixed principle, always enlarge the idea of
his Lordship's power by a wise course of action; that
is, he must behave in a becoming manner, as if he did not count the
contemptible manners which are peculiar to the pride of the Turks,
and show firmness, without the least fear of their threats.
A Minister must have
perfect courage to oppose himself, but at the same time possess a
noble dissimulation, to be able to yield in due time, so that he
never lets matters come to sharp points, and may escape the danger
of seeing the esteem due to his Character offended. To protect
himself against such tricks, he must, in the negotiation of affairs,
use firm and strong evidence, appeal to their laws and customs, and
stand by their examples, even to the point of self-will.
Indeed, no Minister
would be worse off with the Turks than one who readily yielded and
readily complied. For it is certain that when one grants the Turks
only one thing, they will then desire another, and this is sometimes
enough to make a habit. For this reason I thought it necessary that
one should never show too much desire to seek the familiar
friendship of the Turks. One proceeds much more cautiously when one
lives with them in an apparent friendship, and always keeps oneself
under wraps. For, as nothing can be obtained from the Turks without
money or presents, their familiar friendship is very useless to
foreign Ministers, as who in case of necessity, even if they had
numerous, yea all Great and Dear Friends, will still obtain nothing
without money. Therefore their familiarity, on certain occasions, is
of no advantage and extremely troublesome, because they have the
rule that it is free to demand as much as they want from their
familiar friends.
A third rule is,
likewise, very necessary for the Ministers residing at the Porte.
They must deal kindly with all sorts of people. For it has already
been experienced more than once, that a common and poor
Kaiken-vaarder has become Grand Visier. But this friendliness must
be used with moderation, and his esteem must always be preserved; in
one word, to behave in such a way that one obliges the people, but
at the same time keeps them in awe.
To live in the
greatest confidence with all Christian ministers will certainly be
very useful. For such an association can inspire the Turks in
particular moderation and respect in all negotiations.
The last and most
important rule is this, that one chooses and uses one's own
Interpreters. In fact, too many qualities are required to make an
Interpreter who can rightly be called good. Courage, fearlessness,
wisdom, skill and eloquence are really necessary qualities, in order
that he can explain the thoughts of his Ministers with the necessary
steadfastness. (*)
Now it will be
impossible to find these qualities, as long as the Princes do not
come to that, that they use their own subjects, and provide people
of good descent with such an important service. At present the
persons, whom one chooses for this, are mostly subjects of the
Turkish Emperor, who are seated in the Turkish countries, where they
consequently also have their families and goods. Therefore they have
a natural respect for the Prince, who has goods and friends in his
power; and this causes them to seldom, nay never, with zeal and
constancy do their duty, when circumstances demand that they show
constancy. For it is natural, that men of this origin and such a
condition, if not more, yet are just as much concerned to obtain and
retain the favour of the Turks, as to attend to the affairs of the
Prince, in whose service they are. They always do not tell the Turks
what they have been charged; at least they do not say it as they
have been ordered. They sweeten the main point; they foresaw the
force of expressions; they also do not always faithfully state what
the Turks have given them in answer. They are unreasonable in their
demands, and want them to be continually given large presents. For
this reason they do not, finally, make it a hardship to sometimes
sacrifice the State-interest of the Prince whom they serve, to their
own interest, their fears and their own reservations.
It will be expedient,
and very necessary for the State-interest of every Prince, to choose
his own subjects as Interpreters, who are obliged by their Religion,
the law of nature, their descent and customs, to serve the Prince
well, and in case of necessity to sacrifice themselves without
hesitation, and to be assured that in all cases their own Families
will receive rich rewards from the favor of their own Princes.
Everyone can acknowledge this truth; but to know it rightly and
fundamentally, one must be at Constantinople, where one has, daily,
proof enough of it. Now I have sufficiently treated of the Religion,
the Court, the Government, the State, the Household, the Militia and
Policy of the Turks. These conceal their affairs very carefully.
Wherefore I have only attempted to collect the essential; and I
succeeded in obtaining more and truer reports than I have yet found
from others.
(*)
This and the following are worthy of all the attention of the
Christian princes, because, in certain cases, the Interpreters can
either do as much use, or even more harm, as possibly the
Ambassadors themselves.
End of the second
and last Part.
CONTENTS
OF HISTORICAL REPORTS, ETC.
I.
Introduction. 336
II.
Of the Founder of the Mohammedan Religion, and the motives which
prompted him to establish it. 339
III.
Of the Religious Postulates of the Turks. 345
IV.
Of the Beyram, the Marriages and Divorces of the Turks; how far they
extend the By-law, and of their moral works. 356
V.
Of the Religious Governors among the Turks. 363
VI.
Of the Monastic Order among the Turks. 370
VII.
Of the Mosques, their Income and Privileges. 378
VIII.
Of the divisions in the Mohammedan religion, and the two sects, of
O'mer, who follow the Turks, and of Ae'ly, who follow the Persians.
382
IX.
Of other sects among the Turks. 386
X.
Of the unbelief of the Turks. 397
XI.
The religion of the Turks rests solely on political insights, and is
judged very agreeably with the interests of the State. 400
XII.
Of the civil government of the Turks. Of the Seraglio, its guards
and population. 408
XIII.
Of the persons belonging to the stables and stud farms. 412
XIV.
Of the Bostashjy and Baltahdschjy. 414
XV.
--- white and black Encyclopedes. 417
XVI.
--- Chambers of the Ydsch-Oglans or Pagen des Serails. 419
XVII.
Of the manner in which the young men in the Serail were instructed
in the sciences. 424
XVIII.
Of the Dumb and Dwarfs in the Serail. 427
XIX.
Of the departure of the Women in the Serail. 429
XX.
Of the lust, which reigns in the Serail between persons of the same
sex. 434
XXI.
Of the first Visier of the Ottoman Empire, and its Kjetchuda. 436
XXII.
Of the Visiers of the Bank, the Defterdar, Nischandschjy,
Reis-Efendy and the Teskjerehdschjy. 442
XXIII.
Of the offices for the civil government, and good order in the city.
447
XXIV.
Of the nations, who are subjects of the Turks, and live in
Constantinople, namely the Jews, Armenians and Greeks. 450
XXV.
Of the government of the city, and the maintenance of law. 454
XXVI.
Of the Empire offices, by which the Empire provinces are governed.
458
XXVII.
Of the Bassa and the government of Cairo. 464
XXVIII.
Of the government of Wallachia. 467
XXIX.
--- Moldavia. 471
XXX.
Of the Tartars and Allies of the Porte on the Barbarian coasts. 474
XXXI.
Of the cynical peoples of the Turkish Empire. 477
XXXII.
Of the household of the Turkish Empire, the revealed Casses, and
those,
who
have the government over it. 480
XXXIII.
Of the Myry or Kingdom-cash, and of the Chasyneh or cash of the
Great Lord, its receipt and expenditure. 482
XXXIV.
Of the Commerce of the Turks and their subjects at Constantinople,
and in general. 488
XXXV.
Of the Commerce of the Venetians at Constantinople. 493
XXXVI.
Of the Commerce of the French. 500
XXXVII.
Of the Commerce of the English and Dutch. 504
XXXVIII.
Of the Commerce of the Russians and Germans. 508
XXXIX.
Of the Commerce of the Swedes and Neapolitans. 510
XL.
Of the causes of the decay of the household of the Turkish Empire.
512
XLI.
Of the War State of the Turkish Empire in general. 516
XLII.
Of the Thopdschjys and Kumbarahdschjys, the Artillery and the
Gunpowder. 518
LIII.
Of the Naval Forces in general, and the services therein. 523
XLIV.
Of the kinds of ships, and their equipment. 526
XLV.
Of the manner in which ships are built. 529
XLVI.
Of the Armoury at Constantinople. 531
XLVII.
Of the Allies of the Turks at Sea. 534
XLVIII.
Of the Janistaries. 536
XLIX.
Of the Mehterdschjys, Bostandschys, Sferradsch and the Leventi. 539
L.
Of the Cavalry of the Spahi. 541
LI.
Of the Sae'yms and Tymariotes. 544
LII.
Of the Dschjebehdschjy, Seghban and Mikladschjy. 551
LIII.
Calculation of the troops which the Turkish Porte, in case of
emergency, can bring into the field, and of the arrangement
concerning the march of a Turkish army. 553
LIV.
Of the Politics of the Turks in general. 558
LV.
Of the Politics of the Turks, with respect to the State household.
563
LVI.
Of the Politics of the Turks, with respect to the State government.
568
LVII.
Of the Politics of the Turks, with respect to the war. 571
LVIII.
Of the Politics of the Turks, with respect to the means of
subsistence in Constantinople 576
LIX.
Of the Politics of the Turks, with respect to the laws. 578
LX.
Of the Politics of the Turks, with respect to punishments. 580
LXI.
Of the Politics of the Turks, with respect to rewards. 582
LXII.
Of the nature of Turkish Politics. 584
LXIII.
How the Turks are disposed towards Persia. 588
LXIV.
What the Turks think of the Moguls and the Ushuaks. 591
LXV.
Behavior of the Turks towards Russia. 593
LXVI.
--- regarding Prussia and Sweden. 596
LXVII.
What the Turks think of Poland. 597
LXVIII.
--— of the House of Austria. 599
LXIX.
What the Turks think of France. 601
LXX.
--- of England and Holland. 603
LXXI.
--- of the Kings of Spain and Naples. 605
LXXII.
--- of the Republic of Venice. 606
LXXIII.
—-- of the Peace Treaties and Treaties with Foreign Princes
for Thoughts. 610
LXXIV.
How the Turks consider the Ambassadors of foreign Powers. 612
LXXV.
Ceremonies at the entry of an ordinary Ambassador of the Republic of
Venice. 615
LXXVI.
Ceremony at the visit of the first Vizier,. 618
LXXVII.
Ceremony at the Audience of the Grand Lord. 621
LXXVIII.
Ceremonies when bringing the presents to the Sultan. 630
LXXIX.
Necessary skills of a foreign Minister residing at the Porte. 636
LXXX.
Necessary rules for the Ministers residing at the Turkish Court. 640
BBOOK
GUIDE FOR BOTH PARTS.
Alms, distribution of
these, by the Mohammedans. I 366 etc.
Earthquake, seems to
belong in Turkey as if it were at home. I 105 etc.
Potatoes in the East.
I 82 etc.
Abdul-Hamed, see
Achmet IV.
Abydos, I 14
Abyssinians, their
Religion. I 57
Achmet I I 50, 51,
--- II I 53
--- III I 54.
--- IV I 55.
Adrianople, lies in
Romania, by whom founded. I 13.
Adschjam-eglans,
their ministry. I 437.
Ae'lemdar, Ensign. I
394
Afmeïdan, what
it may be. I 140
Aga, Chief. I 455
Agriculture in the
East. I 529.
Acre, port of
Palestine. I 26
Aladin, Sultan.
1.46.60,61.
Aleppo, capital of
Syria, I 20. there is an English Chapel. 312
Alexandrette. I 21.
Alexandria, in Egypt.
I 30
Algiers. I 35.
Amurat I I 48
--- II I 49. 62,
--- III and IV I 51.
Ananes, small Island.
I 34.
Andersen and Iversen,
their travel descriptions assessed, II 127
Andros, island. I 33
Angora, Koopstad, I
10. there one finds Goats, from which the Camel's hair comes. 88
Antermony, (Jean Bell
d') reis etc. judged. II 205
Antilibanon,
described I 11.
Antimilo, small
island. I 34.
Antiparos, island. I
33,34.
Arabians, described.
I 62
Ararat, mountain on
the Persian borders. I 10.
Archipelago and its
islands. I 3 etc. 32 etc.
Argentiera, small
island. I 34.
Armenians, their
Churches, I 149. their condition. 278 etc.
Arnaud, that is what
the Turks call Macedonia and Albania I 13.
Arnauts, described. I
61.
Arraba, what. I 90.
Arvieux, {Lorent d')
works judged. II 124 etc.
Aschaschjy-Baschy,
first Cook. I 433
Asiatic Turkey. I 17
Asper in Turkey,
what. I 521
Athens, its ruins,
what to show. I 17
Athos, mountain. I
17. 203
Audiences of the
European Ambassadors and Consuls with the Turks. I 167
Avarnien, what with
the Turks. I 453, 565.
Av.il, {P.) voïagt,
judged. II 176.
Baard, the Turks love
him exceedingly much. I 536
Babylon. I 20.
Baden, are
Constantinople many and beautiful, I 145. belong to the pastimes of
the Turks. 552.
Baechschysch, a gift,
I 558.
Bagdad, city. I 20
Bajezet I I 48.
--— II 1,49
Bairak, ensign. I 496
Balkan, the great, a
mountain. I 10.
Balsum, a tree. I 37
Baltahdschjy,
Hellebardier. I 437
Baltimore, his
journey in the East judged. II 314 etc.
Banduri, D. A. his
work judged. II 193
Baradaeus, Jacob. I
308
Barbers by the Turks,
how. I 515.
Baruth, trading
place. I 22.
Basars or Basestane,
what are. I 111. 143
Baschi, Chief. I 455
Bassa, what do they
mean. I 447
Bassora, city. I 20
Beduins, who. 1 62.
Begh, Prince. I 448
Beglerbeg, Prince of
Princes. I 448. their incomes. II 263
Cemeteries of the
Turkish Emperors, where. I 138
Beiram, sacrificial
feast by the Turks. I 365
Bekkasige, a small
migratory bird. I 87.
Bektaschi, who by the
Turks. I 392.
Belon, Pierre, his
observations &c. judged. II 58.
Promised land, see
Palestine.
Berat, a letter of
freedom I 163. 476 ann.
Berber-Baschy,
body-surgeon. I 433
Mountains in the
Turkish Empire. I 10.
Bynardino's work
assessed. II 105
Description of the
city of Constantinople and the Dardanelles, I 121 etc. assessed. II
331 etc.
Besesteins, or
vaulted shops in Constantinople. I 143.
Besiktasch, suburb of
Constantinople. I 127. 392
Beurs, in one go 500
Piasters in Turkey, I 522. gold purses, ald.
Bey, see Begh.
Beytul-Maldschjy,
which means. I 468 ann.
Bishops in most
cities. I 216.
Printing in Turkey. I
508.
Boktschi, that is
what the Turks call the Armenians. I 556.
Tree wool, where they
build, and which are the best. I 84. 524.
Bosnia. I 13.
Bosphorus Thracia. I
122
Bossuet, cited. I 355
Bostandschy-Baschy,
head of the bodyguard. I 434
Boulainvilliers vie
de Mahomet. I 314.
Firewood is bought
according to weight in many places. I 85 annotation.
Breidenbach
itinerarium. II 46.
Bretken, (of) his
work judged. II 86 etc.
Sources. I 81.
Bruin, (of) his work
judged. II 153 etc.
Brussa, city in
Natolia. I 18
Buffalos. I 90.
Bulak. I 28 etc.
Bulgarians. I 56.
Bulgaria. I 13.
Buluk, a Commando
Soldiers. I 492.
Buluk Baschy, leader
of a Commando Soldiers. I 492
Busbek, Aug.
Yesterday. his work assessed. II 56 etc.
Busching, cited, I
522 announcing his work assessed. II 319
Businello, contents
of his works, assessed, II 257 etc. the work itself. 336 etc.
Butarako, what in
Turkey. I 95.
Bywyven des Sultans.
1 422
Caesarea; Koopstad. I
19.
Candie, island. I 32.
Canonization by the
Greeks. I 247.
Caucasus mountain. I
10. 69.
Cedars, where the
famous. I 12.
Censals, brokers. I
523.
Chachams, Rabbins by
the Jews in Turkey. I 70.
Chakan, King of
Kings. I 521.
Chalcedon, I 123.
128.
Chalyphen, who. I 36.
Chan, which means. I
404
Chans, are a kind of
inns in Turkey. I 144
Charatz, or head tax.
I 197 470.
Chandlers travels
judged. II 305 etc.
Chardin, (Jean) his
travels judged. II 148 etc.
Chasyneh, Sultan's
Treasure, I 441. ann. 471 ann.
Chasynehdar-Baschy,
Chief Treasurer. I 429.
Chasz-Oda. I 429.
Chafz-Odaly,
Chamberlains. I 433.
Chat-scheryf, holy,
noble script. I 412
Chatibs, who are so
called. I 392.
Chodschjah-Ae'jan,
civil councils. I 442.
Christian churches in
Constantinople, I 148 etc.
Chunkjar. I 398
Conringii libri de
bello contra Turcas. II 88.
Constantinople, how
the Turks are called. I 121 further described, ald. etc. climate
there, 124. how food is provided, 152.
Coronelli memoirs &c.
judged. II 175.
Cotovici itinerarium,
contents and judged. II 90 etc.
Crete, see Candië.
Croatia. I 13.
Cypress trees, where
to be found. I 85
Cyprus, island. I 31
Dew in the East. 1
78.
Day's journey, how
much do I 525.
Dalmatia, I 13.
Damascus, city,
described. I 21.
Damiate, city on the
Nyl. I 31.
Dandini voïage
&c. contents and assessed. II 92. etc.
Dappers description
etc. assessed. II 156.
Dardanellen, I 4. 14.
Defterdar, chief
treasurer. I 177. 452.
Deir Hannah Schwoyer.
I 59.
Delta, vast plain,
where situated. I 27.
Dely, which means by
the Turks, I 396. 499.
Third, Priests by the
Armenians, I 283.
Dervisses, are Monks,
I 392
Diana, (bath of) I
119.
Diarbekir. I 17.
Poetry of the Turks.
I 510
Divan. I 133 etc.
441.
--- Chane, I 442.
--- Galibè, I
442.
Dolaman,
undergarment. I 535.
Dolfyn, where is seen
most. I 96.
Domite, see Damiate.
Donalma, a festival
of the Turks. I 143. 425.
Dead Sea. I 6.
Dauser the itinere
&c. judged. II 92.
Draajers, Monks among
the Mahometans, I 361 their religious exercises. 380 etc.
Driesch (of the) work
assessed. II 195 etc.
Drusen, I 59.
described, 65.
Dsamyat, see Damiate.
I 31
Dschami, a principal
mosque. I 136. 375.
Dschingiskan. I 47.
Dschjebehdschjy,
armourer and armour maker. I 132.
Dscherai, who. I 47.
Dscherid, a club, I
490 stick game. 551.
Dscherrah-Baschi,
first surgeon. I 434.
Dschindscherli. I
197. 470, 521.
Dusalpes. I 46.
Fools, the Turks
consider them Saints. I 396.
Dwarves, in the
Seraglio. I 432
Edschmiazin, Armenian
Patriarch there. 200. 280
Efendy, an honorary
title. I 455
Aegean Sea, see
Archipelago.
Egino, small island.
I 34.
Egmond and Heymans
travels, assessed. II 188 etc.
Egypts, further
described, I 27.
Islands of the
Archipelago, I 32. burnt. 34
Ejub, suburb of
Constantinople. I 126.
Eldschi, general name
for Emissaries. I 166.
Emir, who. I 393.
--- Achor, deputy
steward. I 437.
--- Ae'lem, governor
of a small province. I 437.
--- Hadschi. leader
of the pilgrims. I 386
Emirs, who, and what
to indicate. I 63. 393.
English islands. I
117
Ephesus is now a
village. I 113.
Epistola continens
&c, judged II 85.
Heremites in Greece,
I 220.
Erivan, city, on the
borders of Turkey and Persia. I 280
Ertogrul. I 46. 6t.
Erzerum, merchant
city. I 19
Esan, a sign among
the Turks for public prayer. I 358.
Esky-Mosul, I 19.
Euphrates, described.
I 9.
Europeans in Turkey.
I 160
Excommunication by
the Greeks. I 246.
Factories in Turkey.
I 527 etc.
Falkonera, small
island. I 34
Fanaratti, village. I
156.
Febure Etat préfent,
contents thereof and judged. II 138 etc.
Holidays among the
Armenians. I 292.
Feredsche, upper
garment. I 535.
Ferman, open letter.
I 197. 412.
fetsah, and
Fetsah-Eminy, what among the Turks. I 390. 391. 459.
Fetwa collections. I
458.
Flachat observations
&c. contents of his work judged. II 278 etc.
Fondukli, suburb of
Constantinople, I 127. ducats 521.
Fountains in
Constantinople, I 146.
Franks, as the
Europeans in Turkey are called I 160.
Frankenstraat in
Smyrna, I 118.
Frankolines, a kind
of small pheasants. I 86.
Frodnuan Report
assessed. II 194.
Galata, suburb of
Constantinople. I 123
Galibe-Divan. I 442.
Gallipoli. I 4. 15.
Garen, Turkish, where
is mentioned. I 524.
Gaur, Unbelievers. I
478
Prayer by the
Mahomedans. I 358.
Genfraeus, work
assessed. II 87.
Georgia, Turkish. I
17.
Georgiewitz de
Turcarum moribus, reviewed. II 62
Reformed people have
churches in Constantinople, Smyrna and Aleppo. I 312.
Gerlachs Tagebuch,
content and assessed. II 135 etc.
Genealogy of the
Turkish Emperors. I 46.
Gesneedenen, I 428.
two kinds. 429.
Companies with the
Turks, capacity, I 539
Gill, the bosphoro
Thraciae. II 63.
--- Topogr.
Constantine. II 63.
Gosh, see Salmon.
Religious customs of
the Mahomedans. I 356.
Golden Gate, in
Jerusalem. I 25.
Greaves, (John)
description of the Pyramids &c. judged. II 123.
Grelot, Relation &c.
judged. II 150 etc.
Greeks, their
Churches in Constantinople and its jurisdiction, I 148. their
feelings. 224 etc.
Greek Church its
condition. I 209
Groeben, (van der)
reisbeschreibung, judged. II 136 etc.
Great Cairo, capital
in Egypt, described. I 128
Great Visier. I 443
Guer moeurs &
usages des Türcs &c. judged. II 226 etc.
Guillet, Ahène
&c judged. II 144.
Hadschi Bektasch. I
392
Haemus, mountain in
Remanie. I 10.
Haerem, residence for
women. I 544.
Haeremeyn, expresses
Mecca and Medina. I 544 ann.
Lizards, many kinds.
I 93
Harah, mountain near
Mecca. I 324
Harim, dwelling of
women. I 414
Hasselquists iter
Palaestinum, contents judged. II 240 etc.
Hattagan, a knife, in
the shape of a sabre. I 536.
Havuse, bricked box,
I 82.
Hegire, whatever it
may be. I 317 513
Holy mountain, see
Athos.
--- gate, I 249.
Saints, among the
Mohammedans. I 393. 396.
Heiman, see Egmond.
Heinendorf (Fuhrer
of) travel descriptions etc. judged. II 67.
Hekim-Baschi, a chief
physician among the Turks. I 514
Hekim-Efendi, I 434.
Hellespont. I 3
Herbelot Bibl.
Orient. I 314. 323.
Autumn in the East. I
79.
Hernhutters in the
Levant verdichtt. I 312.
Hippodromus in
Constantinople. I 140 etc.
Hidscha, Teacher of
the Sultan. I 434.
Hoeniger's work
assessed, II 87.
Hay is not won in the
East. I 77 aanm.
Hudschjet, juridical
writings. I 461
Humajun, Ae'hd Nameh,
public Imperial letters. I 474
Marriages in the
Turks. I 530
Hyenen, a middle
battle between Foxes and Wolves. I 92.
Hysterical fits. I 97
Jaffa, port in
Palestine. I 26.
Janistars, I 486.
--- (Aga der) I 442.
455.
--- Cape, I 3.
Jasydschy-Efendy. I
430.
Jauer, unbelievers,
that is what the Christians of the Turks are called. I 197. 397.
Ibrahim I I 52.
Ibrykdar and
Ibrykdar-Aga. I 433.
Idschoglans. I 139.
437.
Jerusalem, capital of
Palestine, described. I 23.
Jesyden, described. I
69
Illyria, (the
Turkish,) I 13
Imam, al Priest. I
64. 391.
--- Effendi. I 391.
Imarets, guesthouses.
I 375
Imbat, Seawind. I 79.
Imbrahor. I 437.
Interests, by the
Turks. I 522 etc.
Jews are scattered
throughout Turkey. I 70.
Joppe, see Acre.
Jordan, flows into
the Dead Sea. I 7.
Istanbul-Efendy,
secretary of Constantinople. I 442.
Julfa, suburb for
Ispahan. I 279.
Iversen, see
Andersen.
Ives travels,
contents and judged. II 250 etc.
Kaaba, Temple,
Mosque. I 384.
Kabul, which means, I
367. ann.
Kadhy, judge over one
or more islands. I 200. 388.
Kadhy Leschkjer,
chief of the army. I 177, 388. 442.
Kadri, who among the
Turks, I 383.
Kafar, a toll on the
roads. II 40.
Kastan, a garment
among the Turks. I 174.
Kaike and Kaikschi, I
151.
Kaim-Mackam,
vicegerent of the Great Visier, I 456.
Kairo, (old) I 28.
Kalam, (Cl.) his work
judged. II 126.
Kalis, a Canal. II
30.
Kalpak among the
Greeks, what, I 301.
Camels, various
kinds, I 90.
Camel hair comes from
the Goats. I 88. 524.
Chameleon belongs
among the Lizards. I 93.
Fighters among the
Turks, I 550.
Canal by the
Dardanelles, I 3. 14. by Constantinople, 122. 154.
Kannobin, seat of the
Armenian Bishop. I 59.
Kantemir, (Demetr.)
history judged. II 199 etc.
Kanthar, weighted by
the Turks, how much does it amount to, I 154.
Kanum Sultans, women
of the blood. I 427
Kapi-Aga, chief of
the white Ennemies. I 429.
Kapin, what they. I
244
Kapot, long upper
garment among the Greeks. I 268 att.
Captain-Pacha. I 169.
452. 493.
Kapri, small island.
I 35
Kapudschjy,
doorkeeper. 14 361
--- Baschy,
Chamberlains. I 436.
Kapudschjylar-Kjetchudaszy,
chief master of ceremonies I 436.
Kapuszies, men
outside the Porte. I 450.
Karaburno, Cape. I
117.
Caravan from Mecca. I
386
--- in Commerce, I
525.
Karavansera, are a
kind of inns in Turkey. I 144.
Caravels, warships. I
492.
Karipi, bodyguard on
horseback, I 487.
Karmel, mountain,
described. I 11.
Kasnadar-Baschi,
treasurer of the Sultan. I 452.
Kassum-Paschi. I 126.
Castles near
Constantinople. I 13.
Kitischerif, answer
of the Emperor. I 180.
Cotton-printing-houses
at Smyrna. I 528.
Caviar. I 236.
Kayk, small vessel, I
151 various kinds, ald.
Kaym-Maekam, Vicar of
the Sultan or Grand Visier. I 442.
Kebla, what is
called. 1 377.
Imperial Mosques at
Constantinople, I I37. 375. women. 421.
Kihaja,
administrator, I 447 intercession. 455.
Kija-Aleb, who. I 46.
Kjetchuda-Begb,
principal administrator. I 447.
Children of the
Turkish Emperors, I 425 etc. Kindertugt, 533.
Kioske, a kind of
Balconies. I 134.
Kislar-Aga. I 378.
429.
Kismet, absolute
fate, I 498.
Kjurden, described. I
69.
Kjurdistan. I 17. 69.
Kjutschuck, what
among the Turks. I 365.
Kleemans travels
judged. II 320 etc.
Monasteries among the
Greeks. I 251.
Koffi, Turkish, comes
from Yemen, I 84. how used. 547.
Kogni, shopping city.
I 19.
Koltuk-Wesyr, Viziers
of the shoulders. I 434.
Konak, camp, I 449. a
road that is traveled. 525.
Fever, I 96.
Copts, described. I
57. 278.
Koran, report of the
Koran, I 323 etc. which means. 327. 457.
Korkud. I 50.
Koron. I 17.
Kortes, (J.) journey
judged. II 207 etc.
Krim, or little
Tartary. I 35.
Kubbe, a Cupola. I
138. 441.
Kudileskiers,
commanders of the army. I 434.
Kufi, what among the
Turks. I 518.
Kuprogli, Grand
Vizier. I 52.
Kurban-Beyram, what
among the Turks. I 365.
Kutaja, Merchant
city. I 19.
Quails are, in
Greece, in abundance, I 87.
Lampsacus. I 15.
Laedicea, how now. I
114
Spring, how long
lasts. I 76
Leo Allatius, one can
do little about him. I 223.
Leunclavii annales,
contents of this work and judged. II 82 etc.
Levant. I 35.
Levante, a small
island. I 35.
Leventi, Seamen. I
493.
Lebanon, described. I
11.
Lichtenstein, (H.
von) travels etc. assessed. II 85
Lingua franca, where
is spoken. I 74
Lithgow, discourse
&c. assessed. II 96.
Air region in Turkey.
I 74.
Lukas, Paul, his
travels assessed. II 196 etc.
Lutherans in Turkey.
I 312 etc.
Months, how the Turks
calculate. I 512.
Madras, public
schools. I 375. 507.
Mahmud, I 54. Mosque
of him. 137.
Mahomed I I 49.
--- builder of
castles, I 13. of a seraglio. 135.
--- III I 51.
--- IV I 52.
Mahomet (Life of) I
313 etc.
Mahometans, various
sects among them. I 344
Mahraman, white cloth
of Greek women over the head. I 273.
Mailler's description
of Egypt assessed. II 190 etc.
Mainotes. I 56.
Brokers in Turkey,
who. I 523.
Mangala, a game among
the Turks. I 551.
Manna. I 81.
Maria, (P. Angel:)
his work assessed. II 204
Marketplaces in
Turkey I 110.
Marmora, Sea and
Islands, I 4. Sea of Marmora. 122
Maronites, described.
I 58
Maundrel's travels,
assessed. II 183 etc.
Measles. I 96.
Mechkjeme, Town Hall.
I 455
Medicinal herbs in
Turkey. I 80.
Medina, I 36 there
Mahomet fled. 317.
Meimar-Aga, Chief
Architect. I 455.
Mecca, I 36 etc.
there Mahomet was born, 315. there the Mahomedans make their
pilgrimage. 383.
Leprosy, most common.
I 97.
Meles, river. I 10.
114.
Melisans. I 83.
Melons. I 83.
Melton's Sea and Land
Travels reviewed. II 127.
Memoires des missions
au Levant. I 306.
Menaret, tower of a
Mosque. I 137. 376.
Mennonites in Turkey.
I 312
Remarks, this work
assessed. II 317 etc.
Mesdschjid, Mosques
among the Turks. I 375
Furniture among the
Turks. I 543
Mevelevi, who among
the Turks. I 380.
Mikjas, upright
sounding rod for the Nyl. I 8.
Mass among the
Greeks. I 241.
Mocquet, (Joh. of
his) work assessed. II 113 etc.
Modon. I 17.
Moldavia, I 37. has
its Christian princes. 198.
Moldavians. I 56.
Monconys, (Balth.)
cited and assessed. II 113.
Monks by the Greeks,
I 219. by the Armenians 282.
Monophysites, I 278
etc. their Church. 308 etc.
Mont, (du) hist.
critique, content reviewed. II 156 etc.
Mont, (du) voïages
&c. assessed. II 158 etc.
Montague, her letters
reviewed. II 209 etc.
Montalbani
Commentarius reviewed. II 126.
Montanus, Arias, has
itinerar. Benj. del. issued. II 46.
Mortraye, (A. de la)
voïages, reviewed. II 184.
Moryson, Fynes
itinerary, reviewed. II 87.
Mosques in
Constantinople, I 135. Imperial, by which are recognizable, 137. are
H. places. 375.
Muslim, who it is. I
455.
Mosul. I 19.
Muedsin, who among
the Turks. I 391.
Mufti. I 442. the
great Mufti. I 389.
Mulla, governor. I
388.
Munedschjim-Baschi,
first soothsayer. I 434. 515
Coins in Turkey,
where, I 520.
Musa, Son of
Bajazeth, I 48.
Muschawaret,
extraordinary council meeting, I 442
Muslimmen, want to be
called the Turks. I 61. 346.
Mustapha I I 51.
--- II I 53.
--- III I 55. 515.
Muteserrikeh, who
they are among the Turks. I 489.
--- Baschy. I 489
Mutewelly. I 439.
Muthpaech-Emyny,
chief of the Cooks. I 433.
Music of the East. I
277. 518.
Myry, finance
chamber. I 139 471.
Mytilene, island. I
32.
Naïb,
vicegerent. I 455.
Nakyb, who are under
it I 394.
Nakybul, Eckraf, H.
Overseer. I 394.
Namas-Kjah, prayer
places, I 376.
Napoli di Malvasia. I
17.
--- Romania. I 17.
Natolia. I 17.
Naxia, island. I 32.
Neizschitz (G. C.
von) contents of his work and assessed. II 114 etc.
Nestorians. I 309
etc.
Nicea, Sea-boezem of.
I 122.
Nic. di Nicoiai,
contents of his work, navigations &c. and assessed. II 66.
Niebuhrs Travel
assessed II 304 etc.
New Cairo. I 28.
New Castles. I 4. 13.
Nischan, which means.
I 345 n.
Nischandschjy. I 177.
Nischandschjy-Pascha. 412.
Northern lights are
not at Smyrna. I 80.
Norden, (Fred. Lou)
voyage &c. assessed. II 205 etc.
Nouveau voïage
de Grece, assessed. II 203 etc.
Nyl, described. I 7
etc.
Obelisks at
Constantinople, I 141.
Oda, a Regiment. I
487.
--- Baschy. I 437.
487.
Oysters, where are
fished. I 95.
Ogusalpes. I 46.
Ogusian Tartars. 1
47. 59.
Ojevaars. I 87.
Okke, (eene) is two
and a half pounds. I 524.
Olearii beschreibung.
assessed. II 123.
Olympus, mountain in
Natolia. I 10. 18.
Harvest, when begins
in Turkey. I 76.
Opium by the Turks. I
548.
Orchanes. I 18.
Ορθοδοξος
Ομολογια &c.
a symbolic book of the Greeks. I 223.
Osman I I 48.
--- II I 51.
--- III I 55.
Osmannen, I 47. 61.
Osmansche Porte. I
61. 420
Otters voïage,
assessed. II 221 etc.
Antiquities in
Turkey, how things are now concerning them. I 511.
Horses, (Turkish) I
88 etc. Arab, 89. the Turks are very fond of horses. 561
Horse tails, origin
of this among the Turks. I 448.
Paascheijeren among
the Armenians. I 293 and ann.
Easter of the Greeks.
I 235.
Padischach, Title, I
50. 403.
Palestine, how
compared, I 17.
Palm tree, actually
belongs in Egypt. I 85.
Papas, that is what
the priests are called in Turkey. I 218.
Para, what in Turkey,
I 521
Pascha see Bassa.
Patmos, island. I 33.
35.
Patriarchates of
Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. I 209 etc.
Peigk, who are. I
487.
Pilgrims among the
Turks. I 386 etc.
Pera, suburb of
Constantinople. I 123. 127.
Pergamus is, now, a
kind, of a town. I 113.
Permes, small
vessels. I 151.
Plague the greatest
evil in Turkey, further described. I 98 etc. causes thereof. 103
etc.
Philadelphia, how now
is situated. I 113.
Piaster, what in
Turkey. I 521
Pigasetia, contents
of his work, itinerario, and assessed. II 70 etc.
Pillau, or rice. I
179. 488. 545.
Pistacia-boom, I 85.
Pocock, his work
assessed. II 211 etc.
Smallpox. I 96.
Porte, Turkish, why
so called. I 420. Interpreter of the Porte. I 170. 199.
Porte, (Abbot de la)
his new traveller assessed, II 315 etc.
Porter, cited, II 44.
on his remarks assessed. 307 etc.
Priests in most
cities of Turkey. I 217.
Primates among the
Christians, I 197. among the Jews. I 71.
Princes' Islands. I
154.
Prusia, see Brussa.
Purchas pilgrimage,
assessed. II 113.
Pylar of Pompey. I
146.
Pypes of the Turks. I
548.
Quaresmii dilucidatio
be-judged. II 123.
Raaja, who they are
among the Turks. I 365. 479. ann.
Rabbins, among the
Jews in Turkey. I 70.
Radzivilii princ.
hierof. peregrinatio. II 51 ann.
Ragusa Republic. I
37.
Raguser-stukken,
silver money, I 521.
Ramasan, Fasting
among the Turks. I 143. 364.
Rantzow, contents of
his travel book assessed, II 111.
Raugah, island in the
Nyl, I 28.
Rauchwolf, his work
and bejudged. II 74 etc.
Rain in Egypt. I 75,
spade the and early. 79.
Rainboxes in
Constantinople. I 461.
Judiciary of the
Turks, I 460. strange. 466.
Travel through Sicily
etc., assessed. II 321.
Travel description,
latest, assessed. II 321 etc.
Travel book of the
Holy Land and assessed. II 48 etc.
Travel-Efendy, chief
secretary of state. I 442.
--- Kital, director
of the Chancellery. I 453. 454.
Travel in Turkey. II
37.
Reland cited because
of a draft of the Mohammedan religion I 355.
Remonstrants in
Turkey. I 312.
Rhodes, island. I 32.
Ricaut état
present &c. assessed. II 166 etc.
Reefs. I 117.
Rikjahdar-Aga,
Stygbeugelhouder. I 433.
Roepers, who by the
Turks I 383.
Roode loop, very
common. I 97
Roode Zee, from which
its name has. I 6.
Roman Churches in
Pera and Galata. I 149. in the Turkish Empire. 304 etc.
Roque (de la) voïage
de Syrie, assessed. II 198.
Rosetto, city on an
arm of the Nyl. I 31.
Rumelia. I 13.
Russel, natural
history &c. contents assessed. II 244 etc.
Ryst, the best, where
grows, I 83.
Safrania, small
island. I 34
Salam-aleikam,
greeting by the Turks. I 542.
Saligniaco, (Barth.
de) judgment on his work. II 57.
Salmons and van Gochs
contemporary history assessed. II 213 etc.
Salonica, lies in
Macedonia I 16.
Salomons Tempel,
principal Mosque in Jerusalem. I 25.
Sanderson, (Joh.) his
travels. II 85.
Sandschjak, which
means. I 451.
--- -Beg, who they
are. I 451.
Sandys, his work,
assessed, II 95 etc.
Sansovino, contents
of his work, historia &c. and assessed. II 72 etc.
Santoni, small
island. I 34.
Saraf, money-changer.
I 523.
Sardis, now a common
village. I 113.
Sayd, a small town. I
23.
Schach, which means.
I 403.
Schakals, are foxes.
I 92.
Scherif, which is by
the Turks. I 393.
Scheik, which means.
I 63. 391.
--- Ulislam, who is
by the Turks. I 389.
Schyiten, who are. I
345.
Turtles. I 94.
Schroeder Thesaur.
ling. Armenian. I 284.
Schurbahdschjy, I
419. 487.
Schweigger, contents
of his work, and reviewed. II79 etc.
Scio, island. I 32.
Seimen, foot
soldiers. I 449.
Selim I I 50.
--- II builder of the
Menarets of the Sophia church. I 137.
Seradsche, cavalry. I
449.
Serail, which means,
I 130. further described, 131 etc. II 280 etc. at Pera
and Scutari. I 139.
Seraskier, Army
Chief, I 448. 456.
Serdar, who with the
Turks I 453.
Sermapuppen, ducats
in Turkey. I 521.
Serradkuly, who with
the Turks. I 505.
Serbia. I 13.
Seslos, what. I 14,
Seyah, who with the
Turks. I 392.
Shaw's travels,
contents and assessed. II 200 etc.
Sidon, see Sayd.
Signettes of the
Turks. I 518.
Silahdar-Aga, chief
sword-bearer. I 433. 442.
Sipahy, horsemen
among the Turks. I 489.
Skanderona, city on
the Mediterranean, I 21. in Egypt. I 30.
Skenites, who. I 62.
Skutari, city. I 128.
Slave market at
Constantinople. I 145.
Snakes of various
kinds. I 94.
Smyrna, described. I
112. 114.
Sochtah, who among
the Turks I 394.
Solak, bodyguard on
foot. I 487.
Soliman, Schach. I
46. 48.
--- I I 50.
--- II 15. 52.
Sonnites, see
Sunnites.
Sopha, what they. I
172. 275.
Sophia church, I 132.
by whom built. 136 annotations.
Soranchius, his work.
II 88.
Sorbet, by the Turks.
I 540.
Spahi, horsemen by
the Turks I 489.
Spahilar-Aga. I 442.
453.
Spalmadori, small
island. I 34.
Spon, see Wheler.
Politics of the
Turks. I 472 etc.
Staats- en
Krygs-geschiedenis, assessed. II 176 etc. 328 etc.
Stanchio, island. I
32.
Stommen, in the
Seraglio. I 432.
Strasburgii relatio,
assessed. II 122.
Ostruisreizen,
reviewed. II 135.
Sultan, which means,
I 403. its Title, 407. occupations, 411. procession, 418. women.
422.
Sultans, who are so
called. I 422.
Sunnites, who are. I
345.
Syria. I 17.
Language of the
modern Greeks. I 263.
Languages, which are
spoken in the Turkish Empire, I 73. of the Turks. 516.
Tobacco, of which the
Turks are very fond. I 548.
Tableau de l'Empire
Ottoman, reviewed. II 249 etc.
Tachtaravan, a kind
of horse-bearer. I 107.
Tain, which is so
called by the Turks. I 475.
Talismans, which the
Turks carry with them. I 554.
Talkysch, letter of
the Grand Visier to the Emperor. I 180.
Tandur, what. I 75.
Tapyten, Turkish. I
528.
Tardueil, his work.
II 88
Tartars, described. I
39. 345 ann.
Tartary, Crimean. I
35.
Tauschein, that is
what the Turks call the Greeks. I 556.
Tavernier, his
travels and assessed. II 94 etc.
Telal, public herald.
I 407.
Tenedos, island. I
32. 33.
Terraces, what, and
how made. I 109.
Testament of Mahomed,
I 184. contents thereof. 185 etc.
Thawan. I 142.
Thessalonica. I 16.
Thevenot's work
assessed. II 152.
Thevet, Andrè,
Cosmogr. de Levant, assessed. II 65.
Thyatira, now a town.
I 113.
Timariotes, who. I
490.
Title of the Turkish
Emperor. I 407 etc.
Interpreter of the
Porte. I 170. 199.
Tolls by the Turks
how stated. I 468.
Tophana, suburb of
Constantinople. I 123. 127.
Toppedschis, Gunners.
I 494.
Toprakli, provincial
soldiers by the Turks. I 504.
Tower of Leander, I
128. of Ovidius. 156.
Tournefort's journey
assessed. II 185 etc.
Trinitate, Ph. a S.
S. his work assessed; II 117 etc.
Tripoli. I 35.
Tripoli di Soria,
harbour. I 22.
Troilo, {von) his
work assessed. II 128.
Marriage by the
Greeks I 242. by the Turks. 370.
Tscharsu, his a
multitude of shops built together. I 111.
Tschaschnyghyr-Baschy,
carver. I 433.
Tschausch-Baschy,
chief master of ceremonies. I 171.436.
Tschelebi, sons of
important people. I 533.
Tschember, cloth of
Greek women around the head. I 272.
Tschoadar-Aga, great
chamberlain. I 433.
Tug, what they by the
Turks. I 448.
Garden and field
fruits in Turkey. I 80.
Turban. I 197. 534
--- Aga. I 433.
Tunis. I 35.
Tura, name of the
Sultan. I 434.
Turbe, a Dome. I 138.
Turks, from whom they
have their name, I 59. make no distinction between an ordinary or
extraordinary ambassador, 166. their long clothes. 534.
Turkmen, I 59.
described. 67:
Turkish Empire is
advantageously situated, I 1 etc. Horses. 88.
Uë'lema, by the
Turks. I 389. 541.
Urla, (islands of) I
117.
Vakuf. I 439.
Validè, Mother
of Mahomed IV, her Mosque. I 137.
Valide-Chan, what it
is I 144.
Valle, Pedro della,
voïages, contents of his work and assessed. II 97 etc.
Vartabet means an
ecclesiastical Dignity. I 281 ann.
Fast days of the
Greeks, I 236 etc. of the Armenians, 294. of the Turks. 363.
Verkens in Turkye. 1
88.
Viaggi per l'Isola di
Cipro cited II 315.
Visier, what means. I
447
--- Aga. I 476.
--- Asem, great
Visier. I 443.
Viziraat or Palace of
the great Visiers. I 140.
Voiage litteraire,
assessed. II 297 etc.
Volike, a ship, such
I 526.
Fig tree, when
budding. I 76.
Walidet-Kjetchudaszy.
I 422
Wallachia, I 37. has
its Christian princes. 198.
Wallachians. I 56.
Warnery remarks
assessed. II 329 etc.
Weigh lice. I 94.
Wheler and Sponge
voyages assessed. II 146 etc.
Exchange in Turkey. I
522.
Wither, Rob. assessed
his work. II 104.
Usury, the Turks
forbade. I 369.
Word, good of the
Lord, of Zinzendorf. I 312.
Vine, is much
planted. I 85. 529.
Wise men, who by the
Druses. I 66.
Ylam, a judicial
testimony. I 532. ann.
Yesiden, see Jesyden.
Zaims, who with the
Turks. I 490.
Zechinen, I 470.
ducats in Turkey. 521.
Sea, white. I 32.
Sailor, fish. I 95.
Naval power of the
Turks, how. I 492.
Zemzem, source. I
385.
Seven Towers. I 125.
139.
Summer, how in
Turkey. I 76
Swordfish, is caught
near Constantinople. I 95.
Swallows, how
esteemed. I 87.
Black Sea, from which
its name has. I 5.
Swedes have no public
Church. I 311.
Silk-building, where
best succeed. I 527.
Geschichte
des osmanischen Reiches
1833
Zie
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken1/gview?query=businello&coll=boeken1&page=1&maxperpage=40&identifier=sGNSAAAAcAAJ
49)
Venedig.
Schon i. J. 1408
schloss Venedig met S. Suleiman, dem Sohne S. Bajefid's I, einen
vertrag (II. 607);
zur Zeit der
Alleinherrschaft S. Mohammed's I im J. 1413 erneuerte Franz Foscari
den Frieden (I. 363);
venezianische
Gesandte wünschten zur Thronbesteigung S. Murad's II Und S.
Mohammed's II Glück,
und nach der
Eroberung Constantinopel's I J. 1454 erneuerte der Bothschafter
Marcello den Frieden (II 12);
i. J. 1478 Thomas
Malipieri Gesandter (II 153);
i.
J. 1479 schliesst Giovanni Dario den Frieden, und Pietro Vettore
vertritt die Stelle des Bailo
(II. 169);
der
Bothschafter Melchior Trevisan brachte Reliquien des Blutes Christi
und der Salbe Magdalena's (Commentarii
della guerradi Ferrara,
di Marino Sanuto. Venezia 1828, p. 56);
Tosto che furono
queste cose al Senato raccontate, furono fatti consigli, ed a tutto
fu proveduto. Nel Consiglio de'Pregadi fu eletto ambasciatore al
Turco Melchiore Trevisan, il quale era Patrone all'Arsenale, quello
cioè
che dopo fatta la pace con il Turco Maometto, era primo Capitano
delle gallere di Romagna, che per le mercanzie vi andavano; quello,
che a Venezia portò
quella piccola reliquia del Sangue di Cristo, e dell'Unguento di
santa Maria Maddalena, trovato dai Turchi in una Chiesa chiamata
Χαριστίχορα
(cioè Delle Grazie) che donò alla chiesa dei Frati
Minori. Al Trevisano adunque fu commesso, che se abbisognasse,
dovesse pregare il Turco, che secondo li capitoli ci volesse dare
aiuto: ed in verità se li nostri avessero voluto fare un
minimo segno, il Turco sarebbe venuto con la sua armata, che era
alla Vallona nella Puglia, e poi fino a Roma, cosa che sommamente
desiderava. Ma li nostri mai nol vollero, abbenchè fossero
esortati dall'Ambasciator del Turco a ciò, perchè non
si dicesse, che i Viniziani avessero messo i Turchi nell'Italia,
come il duca di Calabria, che venuto contro la Chiesa, elesse questo
Ambasciatore sì per le cose, che gli abbisognavano, come pure
per far timore, e paura alli Signori d'Italia.
As soon as these
things were reported to the Senate, councils were held, and
everything was provided for. In the Council of Pregadi, Melchiore
Trevisan was elected ambassador to the Turk, who was the patron of
the Arsenal, that is, the one who after peace was made with the Turk
Mahomet, was the first Captain of the Romagna galleys, which went
there for merchandise; the one who brought to Venice that small
relic of the Blood of Christ, and of the Ointment of Saint Mary
Magdalene, found by the Turks in a Church called Χαριστίχορα
(that is, Of the Graces) which he donated to the church of the
Friars Minor. It was therefore instructed to the Trevisan that if
necessary, he should ask the Turk, that according to the agreements
he would give us help: and in truth if our men had wanted to make
even the slightest sign, the Turk would have come with his army,
which was in Vallona in Puglia, and then as far as Rome, something
which he greatly desired. But our men never wanted it, although they
were exhorted by the Turkish Ambassador to do so, so that it would
not be said that the Venetians had placed the Turks in Italy, like
the Duke of Calabria, who, having come against the Church, chose
this Ambassador both for the things he needed, and also to instill
fear and terror in the Lords of Italy.
i. J. 1481 wünschte
der Bothschafter Antonio Veturini zur Thronbesteigung S. Bajefid's
II Glück (II. 287);
i. J. 1483 Domenico
Bolani, und sein Bruder Francesco Aurelio, zur Bestätigung des
erneuerten Friedens (II. 287);
im selben Jahre
Giovanni Dario Ueberbringer der Urkunde der Ausfuhr von Schafen, i.
J. 1484 (Mar. Sanuto Commentarii p. 187);
i. J. 1487 die
Bothschafter Antonio Ferra und Giovanni Dario (II. 295);
i. J. 1497 verhandelt
Andrea Gritte die Geschäfte, und i. J. 1498 Andrea Zanchani,
Bothschafter zur Erneuerung des Friedens (II. 315);
i. J. 1503 Gritti
Bothschafter, und Aloisio Sagundino ihm beygegeben (II. 331);
i. J. 1517 die
Gesandten Bartolomeo Contarini und Aloisio Mocenigo in Kairo bey S
Selim I (II. 508 u. 525);
i. J. 1521 erneuert
der Bothschafter Marco Memmo den Frieden (III. 16);
i. J. 1526 der Bailo
Pietro Bragadin, abgelöset durch Pietro Zen (III. 50);
i. J. 1530 Mocenigo,
als glückwünschender Bothschafter zum Beschneidungsfeste
(III. 96);
i. J. 1536 der
Secretär der Pregadi, Daniele di Federici; dann der
Bothschafter Tomaso Mocenigo, um zum persischen Feldzuge Glück
zu wünschen (III. 181);
i. J. 1537 Orsini
Bailo (III. 183);
i. J. 1539 Pietro
Zen, zum dritten Mahle als Bothschafter nach Constantinopel, und da
er auf dem Wege gestorben, an seine Stelle der vier und
achtzigjährige Greis Tomaso Contarini (III. 218);
i. J. 1552 Bernardo
di Navagiero Bailo a) (III. 315);
i. J. 1554 u. 1555
Bernardo Trevisan (Relation im Hausarchive);
i. J. 1556 Antonio
Barbarico (Rel. im H.);
i. J. 1559 Martin de
Cavalli (Rel. im H.);
i. J. 1562 Andrea
Dandolo (Rel. im H.);
i. J. 1564 Daniele
Barbarico (Rel. im H.);
im selben Jahre der
Secretär Bonrizzo (Rel. im Hausarchive; im selben fehlen aber
die Relationen des Bailo Soranzo und des Bailo Barbaro, von desen
dieser jenen i.J. 1569 abgelöset)(III. 525);
i. J. 1571 der
Bothschafter Alessandro Donado (III. 590), dann Giacomo Ragazzoni,
Bailo (III. 591, dessen Relation im Hausarchive);
im selben Jahre
Antonio Barbaro, Bailo (III. 602), und Rel. im H.), dann Andrea
Baduer, als ausserordentlicher Bothschafter,
und Antonio Tiepolo,
Bailo i. J. 1572 (III. 602, und Rel. im H.);
i. J. 1575 Giacomo
Soranzo, zur Thronbesteigung Sultan Murad's III (IV. 18, und Rel. im
H.);
i. J. 1576 Antonio
Barbaro, Bailo (Rel. im H.);
im J. 1578 Giovanni
Correr, Bailo (IV. 38, und Rel. im H.);
i. J. 1582 Giacomo
Soranzo, Bailo (Rel. im H.);
im selben Jahre
Maffeo Venier, Bailo (eben da);
i. J. 1584 Giacomo
Soranzo, Bailo (eben da);
i.
J. 1585 Francesco
Morosini,
Bailo (eben da);
i. J. 1590 Lorenzo
Bernardo, Bailo (eben da).
Von hier eine Lücke
im Hausarchive, bis ins Jahr 1609.
Im J. 1590 der Bailo
Moro (IV. 212);
i. J. 1591 der Bailo
Zani (eben da), dann der Bailo Lipomani (eben da);
i. J. 1595 der Bailo
Veniero, dann im folgenden Jahre der Bailo Capello (IV. 276);
i. J. 1604 Ottavio
Bon, Bailo (IV. 362, und Rel. im H.), dann Mocenigo, Bailo zur
Thronbesteigung S. Ahmed's I (IV. 362);
i. J. 1612 Simone
Contareni, Bailo (IV. 482);
i. J. 1614
Christiforo Valier (Rel. im H.);
im selben Jahre der
Bailo Moro Nani (IV. 482 u. 504; seine Relation fehlt im
Hausarchive, in welchem eine Lücke bis 1634);
i. J. 1619 der
Bothschafter Contareni (IV. 504);
i. J. 1624 Simon
Contareni, ausserordentlicher Bothschafter (V. 24);
i. J. 1628 Veniero,
Bothschafter (V. 89, seine Relation fehlt, wie die des vorigen, im
Hausarchive);
i. J. 1634 Giovanni
Capello (Relation im Hausarchive);
1. J. 1637 Pietro
Foscarini (eben da);
i. J. 1638 Luigi
Contareni, Bailo (V. 280, und Rel. im Hausarchive);
i. J. 1641 Pietro
Foscarini, Bothschafter, erneuerte die Capitulation (V. 302, und
Rel. im H.);
i. J. 1652 Capello,
Bothschafter (V. 558 u. 647, die Relation fehlt im Hausarchive);
i. J. 1657
underhandelt der Secretär Ballerino den Frieden (V. 647 u. VI.
179);
i. J. 1664 Andreas
Holz (Rel. im H.)
i. J. 1668 Luigi
Molino, Gesandter zu Larissa (VI. 214, 215 u. 242);
i. J. 1667 der
Secretär Giavarino, und Padavino Unterhändler des Friedens
(VI. 227);
i. J. 1672 Giacomo
Quirini, zur Auswechslung der Gefangenen (VI. 277 u. 307, und Rel.
im H.);
i. J. 1676 Giovanni
Morosini, Bailo (VI. 320, und Rel. in H.);
i. J. 1680 Pietro
Cuirano (VI. 359 u. 375, und Rel. in H.), Bailo;
i. J. 1682 Giovanni
Battista Dona (Rel. im H. und die gedruckte);
i. J. 1684 der
Bothschafter Capello erklärt den Krieg (VI. 443);
i. J. 1699
unterzeichnet Lorenzo Soranzo den Carlowiczer Frieden und geht dann
als Bothschafter nach Constantinopel (VII. 24);
i. J. 1706 erneuert
Carlo Ruzzini den Frieden (VII. 120, und Rel. im H.);
i. J. 1725 der Bailo
Giovanni Emmo, abgelöset durch Francesco Gritti (VII. 312, und
Rel. in H.);
i. J. 1733 verewiget
Simone Contareni den Carlowiczer Frieden (VIII. 449);
i. J. 1745 wird der
Bailo Erizzo durch den B. Giovanni Donado abgelöset (VIII. 59),
Businello war de Bothschaftssecretär (VIII. 87).
14) Chania (Canea),
auf Creya die bekannte Festung, von Constantinopel 150 Moglien;
monathlich 450 Asp.
222) Retimo,
auf Candia, von Constantinopel 750 Miglien; monathlich ... 150 Asp.
654)
Eskijagh kapani mes., d. i. Moschee des alten Schmalz-magazins;
Erbauer der ermordete Grosswesir Ibrahimpascha,
der seinen Stamm von Constantin dem Grossem ableitete, und die
Moscheen zu Selanik, Hissargrad und Kawala gestiftet, dessen Serai
zu Constantinopel am Hippodrom, und dessen Grab im Arsenale an der
Zelle Dschanfefa (Seelenvermehrend) auf besonderem Soffa, wo hernach
auch der hingerichtete Grosswesir Nassuhpascha an seiner Seite
bestattet ward.
831) Schreiben des
Kaisers an den Wesir Mohammedpascha, Statthalter von Ofen {Osen],
dass ein Constantin Constantinopel erbaut, ein Constantin dasselbe
verloren, so auch Constantinopel von Mohammed erbaut, unter einem
Sultan Mohammed (III.) wieder werde verloren werden; v. J. 1002
(1593). (Venez. Inscha Nr. 5, und Nabi's Inscha Nr. 132.)
1345)
Sicherheitsurkunde an den Provveditore
von Canea, bey Uebergabe der Festung, auf des Feldherrn Jusufpascha
Vortrag ertheilt; Ende Dschemafiul-achir 1055 (22. August 1645).
(Eben da Nr. 75)
1530) Schreiben
(aufgefangenes) Morosini's an den Dogen, über den wirklichen
Stand der Festung Candia, v. J. 1077 (1666). (Eben da Nr. 54.)
1532) Schreiben des
Grosswesirs an der Vertrauten Wesir Mustafapascha, über die
Belagerung Kandia's; arabisch; (Rami in meiner Sammlung Nr. 126.)
1533) Schreiben des
Grosswesirs an der Vertrauten des Sultans, den Wesir Mustafapascha,
vor Kandia (Eben da Nr. 127.)
1546) Schreiben S.
Mohammed's IV an der Grosswesir Ahmed Köprili, demselben zu
seiner Ankunft auf Kreta Glück zu wünschen; v. J. 1077
(1666). (Inscha des Reis Efendi Mohammed Nr. 80.)
1553) Schreiben des
Grosswesirs an den Kiflaraga (Abbasaga), ihm von den Fortschritten
der belagerung Kandia's Bericht zu geben. (Eben da Nr. 260.)
1572) Schreiben des
Grosswesirs Ahmed Köprili an den Mufti: Die Unruhen Bassra's
und der Krim seyen, Gott sey Dank! beygelegt; am 25. Silkide 1079
(26. April 1668) sey die kaiserl. Flotte zu Fodella angekommen, und
am selben Tage habe sich die feindliche Flotte gegenüber vor
Kandia gezeigt; es fehle an Kugeln, zu deren Herbeyschaffung von
Selanik der Kapudanpascha abgeordnet worden sey; mit den details der
fortschreitenden Belagerungsarbeiten. (Rami in meiner Sammlung Nr.
298.)
1578) Zweytes
Chattscheriff S. Mohammed's IV an den Grosswesir Ahmed Köprili,
denselben und das Heer neuerdings zur Eroberung Kandia's
anzuspornen. (Ahmed Köprili's Geschichte Nr. 64.)
1579) Schreiben des
zu Canea in Verhaft gehaltenen venezianischen Gesandten an den
Grosswesir Ahmed Köprili, um Gehör zu erbitten; vom
Redscheb 1079 (Dec. 1668). (Ahmed Köprili's Geschichte Nr. 65.)
1580) Antwort des
Grosswesirs Ahmed Köprili, an den zu Canea zurückgehaltenen
venez. Gesandten: Ihm sey unbekannt, warum der Sultan zornig, der
Zurücksendung des Gesandten befohlen habe; er müsse ihm
genau aus einander setzen, was zwischen ihm und dem Kaimakam
vorgefallen; wenn er aber mit keinen anderen Aufträgen gekommen
sey, als mit den zu Theben verworfenen, so sey es thöricht
gewesen, ihn zu senden; die Zeit erfordere andere Worte. (Eben da
Nr. 66.)
1581) Schreiben des
Grosswesirs Ahmed Köprili, an den zu Canea verhafteten venez,
Gesandten, wodurch er ihm die Erlaubniss, ins Lager zu kommen,
ertheilt (Eben da Nr. 70.)
1585) Schreiben des
Secretärs Giovanni, des venezianischen Bothschafters (im
türkischen Lager), an Morosini, dass man ihn von Retimo nach
Neu-Kandia gebracht, in eines der Häuser einquartiert habe,
dass man aber mit Niemandem unterhandeln wolle, der nicht zur
Abtretung des Festung bevollmächtiget sey. (Ahmed Köprili's
Geschichte Nr. 53.)
1586) Vortrag des
Grosswesirs Ahmed Köprili an den Sultan, über die Landung
des Kapudan Kaplanpascha zu Fodella, und die fortgesetzte belagerung
Kandia's; v. J. 1079 (1668) (Eben da Nr. 59.)
1587) Drittes
Chattscherif S. Mohammed's. an Ahmed Köprili, seine Tapferkeit
vor Kandia belobend. (Eben da Nr. 63.)
1588) Schreiben des
Grosswesirs an der Vertrauten des Sultans, den Wesir Mustafapascha,
von den Fortschritten der Belagerung Kandia's Bericht erstattend.
(Rami in meiner Sammlung Nr. 124.)
1620) Chattscherif S.
Mohammed's IV nach Kandia's Eroberung (Ahmed Köprili's
Geschichte Nr. 77.)
1621) Siegesschreiben
nach Kandia's Eroberung. (Eben da Nr. 80.)
1622) Siegesschreiben
zur Kündigung der Eroberung Kandia's auf Kreta; Ende
Dschemafiul-archir 1080 (24. Nov. 1669).
1623) Urkunde des mit
Venedig durch die Eroberung Kandia's wieder hergestellten Friedens;
aus der Feder Ssidki Efendi's; v. J. 1081 (1669.). (Rami in meiner
Sammlung Nr. 156.)
1630) Schreiben des
Grosswesirs an die Griechen von Maina, nach Kandia's Eroberung,
denselben Amnestie gewährend. (Rami in meiner Sammlung Nr.
450.)
1633) Schreiben des
Sultans an der Scherif von Mekka, Saad Ben Said Ben Muhsin,
demselben die Eroberung Kandia's und den mit Venedig geschlossenen
Frieden zu künden; arabisch; v. J. 1080 (1669). (Inscha des
Reis Efendi Mohammed Nr. 137.)
1635) Schreiben des
Grosswesirs an den Chan der Chane, nach der Beendigung des
cretischen Feldzuges durch Kandia's Eroberung; v. J. 1080 (1669).
(Rami in meiner Samml. Nr. 28.)
1641) Schreiben des
Grosswesirs, als nach Kandia's Eroberung der erste Stallmeister,
Huseinaga, mit Säbel und Kaftan kam. (Eben da Nr. 306.)
2558) Schreiben des
Grosswesirs an den Statthalter von Kandia, Achmedpascha, demselben
das Einvernehmen mit dem neu ernannten Befehlshaber von Canea ze
empfehlen; vom 23. Silhidsche 1114 (10 May 1703). (Eben da Nr. 286.)
3526-3527)
Bittschreiben (zwey) Newres Efendi's an Schehsuwarfade Mustafapascha
und den abgesetzten Köprili, Statthalter von Canea; aus Retimo.
(Eben da Nr. 25-26.)
3528) Bittschreiben
Newres Efendi's an Baltadschifade Silihdar Mustafapascha. (Eben da
Nr. 27.)
3529) Schreiben
Newres Efendi's aus Retimo, an den Mirachor Mustafapascha,
Statthalter von Canea. (Eben da Nr. 28.)
3531) Schreiben
Newres Efendi's, aus dem Exil von Retimo, am Kamil Ahmedpascha, den
Defterdar. (Eben da Nr. 30.)
3547) Schreiben
Newres Efendi's aus Retimo, an den Kiaja des Statthalters von
Kandia. (Eben da Nr. 46.)
3548) Schreiben
Newres Efendi's an den Secretär des Statthalters von Kandia, um
für ein erhaltenes Geschenk von Aloe, Ambra und Tabakpfeife zu
danken. (Eben da Nr. 48.)
3538) Schreiben
Newres Efendi's aus Kandia, an den Richter von Kairo (Eben da Nr.
37.)
3552) Schreiben
Newres Efendi's aus Retimo, an den Mufte. (Eben da Nr. 52.)
3553) Schreiben
Newres Efendi's aus Chios, als Antwort auf das Schreiben des nach
Retimo bestimmten Diwitdar Ahmedaga. (Eben da Nr. 53.)
3539) Schreiben
Newres Efendi's aus Retimo, an Chodschafade Mohammed Said Efendi.
(Eben da. Nr. 38.)
3577) Bittschrift
Newres Efendi's, als er verwiesen zu Retimo, an Abdullahpascha,
Statthalter von Aegypten. (Eben da Nr. 6.)
3619-3624) Schreiben
(sechs) Newres Efendi's an den Muft Murtefa Efendi; aus Retimo.
(Newres's Inscha Nr. 8-13.)
3900)
Empfangsbestätigung eines Schreibens des Beglerbegs,
Commandanten von Retimo. (S. 158.)
3930) Schreiben
desselben an den zu Retimo commandirenden Osmanpascha, ihn zum
Ausharren in seiner Pflicht, trotz der schwierigen Umstände,
ermunterend. (S. 183.)
3932) Schreiben
desselben an den Commandirenden von Kandia, bey Ernennung
Huseinbeg's zum Baschbogh der ägyptischen Truppen auf Creta,
und Absendung von 200 Reitern, 50 Kawassen (Trabanten) und 5
Koghoschaga (Quartiermeistern). (S. 185.)
3949) Schreiben
desselben an den zu Canea commandirenden Wesir, denselben damit zu
trösten, dass er bald von seiner dermahligen misslichen Lage
erlöst werden solle. (S. 202.)
Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches
in Europa
1856
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken1/gview?query=marino+sanuto+candia&coll=boeken1&identifier=dFlVAAAAcAAJ
Geschichte Griechenlands von der
Eroberung Konstantinopels durch die Türken im Jahre 1453 bis
auf unsere Tage
Von
Karl Mendelssohn Bartholdy. 1870
In
zwei Theilen. Erster
Theil.
Die Insel Kreta und der nationale
Kampf gegen die Türken.
in
Unsere
Zeit 1869
p. 321-349
Von
Professor D. Karl Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.
Zweiter
Artikel.
Vgl.
den ersten Artikel in “Unsere Zeit”, Neue Folge, V, 1.,
481-499.
Bilder aus Kreta.
in
Unsere
Zeit 1874
p. 338-356
Von
Elpis Melena
NOTABEL SCHRYVENS UYT VENETIEN,
Volgens de Brieven van den GENERALISSIMUS MOROSINI,
Aen
d'Heeren Senaet vande SERENISSIME REPUBLYQUE, AENGAENDE De Successen
vande Wapenen der Christenen, tegens de Turcken in 't Coninckrijck
CANDIA.
Gedruckt
in 't Jaer ons Heeren 1660.
1660
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken1/gview?query=notabel+schryvens&coll=boeken1&identifier=hiLdA_pXnV4C
NOTABEL
SCHRYVENS UYT VENETIEN
Volgens
de Brieven van den Generalissimus Morosina
aen
d'Heeren Senaet vande Serenissime Republique, Aengaende De Successen
vande Wapenen der Christenen tegens de Turcken in 't Koninckrijck
Candia.
MYNHEER,
Terwijl Godt den Vrede in Europa / heeft gelieven te planten / onder
de Christene Potentaten / voornamentlich tusschen de
Grootmachtichste Monarchen van Vranckrijck / ende Spaingen ende den
bloedighen oorlogh in't Noorden / tusschen de Croonen / Poolen /
Denemarcken / Sweden heeft doen cesseren / daermede meest alle
Potentaten besich waren / welke generalick naer hun trocken / het
Lantverderf / ende eene onveplige navigatie in't Christendom: waer
door nu het meeste ooghmerck is omtrent den oorlogh / tusschen de
Christenen / ende Zarasijnen en niet wonder isset want sulckx het
algemeene intrest der Christenen is: dat ten anderen oock de
curieusheden ontrent verder Nouvelles van oorlochs-faicten / door de
steriliteydt der selvige / niet konnen gedient werden / als een
weynich / wegens de Poolen / Carters / Cosacken / ende Moscoviters /
die noch seer traegelick inkomen / en dienvolges op ver naer niet so
considerabel / als dien / die om de sake Christi gevoert wert / daer
toe alle Christene machten / ende Potentaten in desen genadigen
ouyst / van Godts gesegenden Vrede / behoorden te contribueren /
ende soodanige hant te bieden / dat nu in dit Hemels-saysoen / uyt
der Turcken Clauwen weder gerucht wierden / de schoone Europische
Peerlen van 't Christendom / t'sedert anvanck der Christenen
oneenicheyt / ende oorlogen / het Christendom ontweldicht.
Dit
Jaer 1660 heeft Europa veel wonders / en groots belooft: van over de
dertich jaren heb ick voorname Astrologanten vande wonderen welcke
in't selfde geschieden souden hooren spreken / en van verscheyde
hare annotatien / ende memorialen noch bewaert: en sonder dat ick
wil anraken den kelck daer het gront-zop / dat Tycho-bra / ter syden
gestelt heeft / noch in is: soo staet met my uwe ooghen op de
geschiedenissen / siet Spaingen / ende Vranckrijck eens aen / siet
waer dat Konincklick wonderlick instrumeet Gusradus is. Want nu de
17 Nederlanden sijn / ende pondereert / doch rijpelick de wonderen
van Engelant / 't welck onze naerkomelingen / voor Homayns / ende
voor ongeloovige Historien sullen opnemen.
Onder
deze wonderen bidde ick u t'examineren / de kloeckmoedigheydt vande
Venetianen / welcke alleen soo veel jaren groorlocht hebbende met
geen / oft seer weynige assistentie / tegens de Orthomansche macht /
de selfde in't resisteren / ende defenderen van het Bollewerck des
Christenrijckx / so veel werckx gevonden / dat den Turck geene
progressen siende te doen / tegens die voortreffelicke Helden / die
in Candia den Standaert Christi maintineren / altijdt met schade /
ende schande wierden afgewesen / tot dat sy dit jaer in Sevenbergen
gevallen sijnde / daer in twee maenden meer Steden winnen / als in
20 Jaeren / voeten aerde / op die Manhaefte Venetianen. On-aengesien
de macht des Keysers / ende vande Hungersche gespanschappen / daer
ontrent.
Den
Alder-Christelickxsten Koninck / hebbende / te Mardijck lest door
kranck leggende / belofte aen Godt ghedaen / de Venetiaenen / tegens
den algemeenen vyant t'assisteren / so haest den Vrede soude
gesloten wesen / so heeft hy eyndelick / onder den Modeenschen Prins
Almerick d'Este tusschen de 3 a 4000 Soldaten naer de Levant
gesonden/ om de Venetiaenen aldaer te conjungeren.
Deze
Conjunctie eyndelick geschiet sijnde / so wiert geresolveert /
volgens d'Instructie vande Serenissime Republicque / om Canea te
belegeren / 't welck de Turcken in t koninckrijck Candia inhielden
met eenighe andere plaetsen / daer mede de Turcken de Christenen /
uyt de reste des Koninckrrijckx meenden te verdrijven / ghelijck so
daer toe eenige jaren gearbeyt hadden / maar te vergeefs / ende daer
hielden de Venetianen stant/ teghens de gansche Turckxsche Macht te
Water ende te Lande / tot dat sy nu finalick geassisteert sijnde
alle de Turcken daer uyt soecken te verjagen / ghelijck sy haer daer
toe als Leeuwen sijn aenstellende: maer eer ick tot 't verhael van
hare Chrijghs-daden kome / so gelieft geimportuneert te sijn / niet
te weten / d'hoedanicheydt van Candia met welckx winste de Turcken
Sicilien ende Malta / souden hebben komen te veroveren.
De
qualiteyt van het Eylant en Koninckrijck Candia door / on aengesien
seer berghachtigh / heeft nochtans veek Valeyen / seer abondant /
ende extraordinary vruchtbaer / door dien t'selbe bespringht werdt /
door menichte Fonteyen / en bevochtigt door veel Beken ende
Rivieren. Den Wijn-stock wast daer naer wensch / en in overvloet
wast daer d'alderdelicaetste Malvasepe / melch en honigh isser oock
overvloedige en vleesch in soussisance / soodanigh dat d'Oude 't
selfde ten rechte ghenoemt hebben / het wel-geluckigh Eylant. Daer
wassen oock d'alderschoonste Cypres diemen met oogen zien magh /
ende Boomen van alle slagh / bequaem om Schepen te bouwen / 't welck
tot groot proffijt voor de Sereniss. Republ: is. Men heeft er oock
niet een schadelijck Gedierte / dat wreet ende fenijnigh is / als
uytgesondert den Phalanges, welche zijn als Spinnen; maer binnen
Candia zijnde niet dangereus. Dit Coninckrijck is noch overvloedigh
van Septen / Herten en wilde Bocken / maer men ziet weynich wilde
Swijnen / als naer de sijde van Canea / daer rondom den Veneetschen
Standaert nu in 't veldt uytzwaeyt. Daer zijn noch Bouchestains, die
niet grooter als een Geyte zijn / en hebben nochtans soo veel
vleesch als den grootsten Hert / heeft het hayr beuckel en
kortachtigh / ende draeght eenen langen zwartachtigen baert. Men
vanght hem somtijts als hy noch seer kleyn is / om met de Septen
t'samen op te voeden / ende daer van andere te queecken / soo om
sijn schoonheyt / als om de delicatesse ende smakelijckheyt sijns
vleesch. Sijn Hoorns zijn seer groot / sijn Corps is de Septe
ghelijck / maer nochtans soo veerdigh dat hy de Herten ont loopen
overtreft / ende d'Honden int riechen / want hy de Jagers 100 passen
verrieckt / sulcx darmen om hem te vangen / tamme Septen moet binden
ontrent d'aenkomsten ende passagien vande geberghten / en soo komt
den Bouchestain, dese riechende / tot haer / en dan wert hy vande
Jagers gequetst / maer niet doodelick sijnde / ende of schoon
fenynich pier [pijl?] noch in 't lijf blijft / soo gaet hy echter
door / ende etende het cruyt Dictame geneest. Dits 't Cruyt / daer
van Dioscoride secht / welckx reuck alleen Serpenten ende andere
fenijnige beesten doet sterven.
Aengaende
d'ouwde manieren vande Candiotten / de selfde hebben so gefloreert /
dat hare Koningen / by naer gantsch Grieckenlant geteugelt hielden /
sy sijn geweest de beste Schutters vander aerden / hebben den wijdt
bekenden Dans Syrrique verdicht / ten tijde haers Koninckx Eydon /
en vanden hoofde tot den voete waren sy ghewapent / doen sy dien
dansten / en die so gecontinueert / dat de Boeren / op Feestdagen /
inde grootste hitte des daechs dien dansten, sonder naer de schaduwe
te kijcken / gewapent / te weten met den boogh / Pijl-koker / ende
't Rappier / als of 't dansen sonder t'selfde geen goede gratie
hadde.
D'Alder
uytmuytenste Griecken / hebben hare wetten vande Candiotten ghenomen
/ selfs Plato / ende boven al / die van Lacedemonien / volghden de
practicque. Een haerder wetten hielt / datmen de kinders in 't
gemeen moeste opvoeden / op datmen / 't voetsel so wel als de rijcke
hebbende / geen oorsake mochte opnemen / om deselvige te haten: en
verders warender noch Statuyten / datmen om de kinders te gewennen /
om niets te vreesen / maer veel eer / om alles met gedult / ende
patientie te boven te komen / ende te supporteren / die van dat sy
konden gaen / inde wapenen souden oeffenen / en haer leeren
verachten / hitte / koude / honger / ende dorst / ende dat sy in 't
danssen boogh / ende Pijlen souden gebruycken / ende kleederen aen
hebben / op d'oorloghstoerustinge gefatsoenneert. Item alle
Candiotten / waeren genootsaeckt te trouwen op de jaren van
Majoriteyt / en doen trockense uyt de menichte / die als vooren
gesecht is / onder de minderjarige opgevoet wierden / doch leyden
hare getrouwde niet strackx naer huys / maer sy lietense blijven /
so lange tot dat sy bequaem waren / om het Huys-houden te regeren.
Ende de Vrienden trouwden hun indifferentelick / d'een met d'andere
/ en verders verklaerde de Weth / dat so de Zuster met haren Broeder
ghetrouwt was / dat hy haer met sijn half Patrimonie moest doteren.
Het vervoeren van Dochters / wiert meer geestimeert / dan ofmen die
niet uryen wille hadde verworven. Maer eyndelick de Candiotten
latende hare ouwde discipline / wierden Zee-Roovers / als die van
alle tijden / d'eerste ter Zee hadden geweest / en haer so
kloeckmoedich gequeten hadden / dat sy d'Attiques overwonnen / ende
voerden hare Legerscharen geluckelick tot in Sicilien.
Ende
een weynigh seggende vande manieren deser tijt / weet dat de
Candietten veerdigh zijn om quaet te doen. d'Oude selfs hebben haer
den naem van Logenaers gegeven / sy zijn schalck / gierigh / en
tegenwoordigh konnen sy den arbeyt qualijck dragen / ende en leeren
konst noch wetenschap volkomentlijck. Doch het is waer / volgens 't
schrijven van Beilon, dat sy haer van haer kintsheyt af oeffenen int
schieten met den Boogh / daer in sy doch de Turcken over-treffen.
Ter Zee zijn sy gauw / dispoost ende vailiant / soo wel als sy
t'anderen tijde gheweest zijn.
De
sterckte deses Eylants en Coninckrijcx / is Candia principael / dat
de Christenen hebben / en Canea dat de Turcken possederen / beyde
seer machtigh sterck / soo door de nature / als ter oorzake van hare
gelegenthede. Maer Rettimo ende Seytien konnen niet gerenomeert
werden / als ten opsichte vande plaets / waer sy in gelegen zijn.
Binnen Candia is een schoon Arsenael voor de Galeyen. Aengaende de
Religie / d'Inwoonders volgen meest de Latijnen. Dus ver van de
gestaltenis deses Koninckrijcx gesproken hebbende / soo sal ick
voortgaen met de saecke vande tegenwoordighe verrechtinge vande
Christenen Veyrkracht in dat Lantschap.
Sondagh
avont arriveerde hier een Schip van die Landen met brieven aen de
Sereniss: Heeren / dat de Veneetsche Armada / ghekomen sijnde inde
Haven van Suda / hadt ghelandt aen de genaemde plaets Colata /
ontrent 9000 strijtbare mannen / die te gelijck ordentelijck
advanceerden naer het Fort d'Apricorni / dringende soo voorts tot
onder de wal / ende naer dat die van binnen lange defentie en
tegenstant gedaen hadden / wierden overweldicht / ende verlieten 't
Fort met groot verlies / ende liepen met d'andere Garnisoenen van
Cisterne / Calamo ende Calogero / binnen Canea / achterlatende 35 a
40 stucken / met menichte Amonutie.
Dijnsdaeghs
daer aen / genoeghsaem met het krioel des daegs / aeriveerde noch
eene Galiote / gedepescheert van den Capiteyn Generael / met
Pacquetten aen 't Senaet / en relateerde het naervolgende / op de
bovenste wijse / maer met dese bysondere distinctie: seggende dat
d'Armada Maratim vande Sereniss: Seigneurie / consisterende in 30
Oorloghs-Schepen / 28 subtile Galeyen / met de 7 van Malta / (item
naer dat 4 van den Paus / ende de 3 van de Grooten Herrogh van
Florencen / wederom na hare Havens waren gekeert) 6 Galeassen / en
soo veel Galioten Avonturiers. Het volck naer dat het gelant was /
annumereerde tot 6000 Voetknechten (daer onder 2000 in Candia
gelicht) item 3500 Franchoysen / en ontrent 800 peerden / dewelcke
naer dat sy ingenomen hadden de 4 boven gementioneerde Forten /
togen recta tot de belegeringe van Canea / maer doch eer sy de Linie
begonden / so quam den Bassa Commandant uytvallen / met een deel van
het Garnisoen / de Schermutsel nam furieuselik begin / en wedersijts
kost het veel bloets en so het gemeen is / dat honden voor Menschen
loopen / soo liepen de Turcken eyndelick oock voor de Christenen.
Den Bassa Commandant bleef / met een van sijne Soonen / onder de
voeten doot. Vande sijde der Christenen / is het considerabelste
verlies / den Heer d'Ardena Luytenant vande Cavaillerye van welckx
doode Lichaem de Turcken het hooft hadden afgezabelt / maer doen de
Turcken 't selfde in Canea meenden te brengen / so rende een Frans
Capiteyn hun naer / en recupereerde het selvighe / met verlies van
het leven / van die daer mede meende te triumpheren.
Den
Prins Almerigo d'Este Generael over 't Fransche leger / van secours
liep groot perijckel van doot te blijven / soo in 't veroveren van
Apicorno / als inden uytval vanden gementioneerden Bassa Commandant
/ want alsdoen trefte / ende doode achter hem / een Canonkogel
sijnen Paige.
Kort
naer desen uytval en goede successen voor de Christenen, daer over
Godt moet gedanckt zijn, soo ontfingen de Generaels advijs, dat uyt
Candia nova 4000 Turcken tot ontset van Canea quamen hier over
vielen dispuyten tusschen den Veneetschen Capiteyn Generael, en den
Prins Almerico, d'een meende men behoorde haer tegens te trecken, en
daer mede te strijden, d'andere vreesde men mocht op wegh omringht
werden, terwijl binnen Canea, boven 't verlies van den uytgevallen
Commandant en de sijne, noch 2500 voetknechten en 300 peerden waren,
en dat het nutter ende nootsakelijcker was de retraicte te slaen,
ende in versekertheyt te rugh te trecken, tot dat het Heyr der
Christenen gerentforceert was vande Boeren, diemen uyt verscheyde
gewesten des Coninckrijcx verwachtede, gelyck van Sfacchia elle
uyren duysent man stonden te volgen.
In
desen stant bevonden daer de saken, doen het Galioot gheexpedieert
wiert, versoeckende van het Senaet promptelyck gelt en Amonitie,
stracx wiert geresolveert dat den nobelen Heer Francisco Barbaro,
80000 Ducaten soude overvoeren, en dat de Keyserl: assistentie soude
gelast werden datelyck te vertrecken.
Kort
daer aen volghden noch 2 Advijsen, d'eene vande 3 Eylanden,
refererende dat de onse het recours van Candia de hovo geslagen
hadden, maer dat zyn Particuliere tijdingen, welcke naerder
sekerheydt vereysschen. Het ander komende over O?trante, dat de
Christenen de belegeringe van Canea te heet voelende, te rugh
geweken waren.
Ende
eyndelijck soo heb ick hier noch een advijs by te doen van den
Proveditor vande Fortresse Suda, bevestigende dat de Christenen van
ontrent Canea waren opgebroken, ende dat sy haer tot Calamo gingen
beschanssen, een plaets alwaer sy bequamelyck allesints konnen zien
passeren dat in Canea te lande soude willen, ende dat sekerlyck van
Candia nova quam, het bovengeschreven bystant ende secours voor de
Turcken: en vreesende dat sy om 't Leger niet al te veel te zwacken,
niet en souden konnen belet houden de ingenomen Forten, so hebben sy
laten mineren en springen het Fort van d'Apricorno. 1000 Ffacchioti
waren int Leger der Christenen gearriveert, en ten eersten werden
4000 boeren verwacht, daer mede het Christen-Generalen meene bestant
te zijn, om formelyck Canea te belegeren, dat ter zee alreede vande
Armade nauw besloten is.
Dits
is mijn Heer d'hoedanicheden in een korte descriptie van het befaeme
Koninckrijck Candia, beneffens de publicque / ende particuliere
advijsen / omtrent het Leger der Christen aldaer / voorgevallen /
hope dat Godt / wiens sake het is deselve sal Croonen / met heyl /
ende verder victorie / ende dat ick alsoo in vreucht / ende met een
vrymoedicheyt H E. van tijdt tot rijdt / daer van noch sal
deelachtig maken Ec.
Venetien
den 8 Octobers 1660.
NOTABLE
WRITINGS FROM VENICE
According
to the Letters of Generalissimo Morosina to the Lords Senate of the
Serenissime Republique, Concerning the Successes of the Arms of the
Christians against the Turks in the Kingdom of Candia.
MY
LORD, While God has pleased to plant Peace in Europe among the
Christian Potentates, especially between the most powerful Monarchs
of France and Spain and has caused the bloody war in the North
between the Crowns, Poland, Denmark and Sweden to be ceded, whereby
most all Potentates were concerned, who generally sought after their
country's destruction and an inevitable navigation in Christendom:
whereby the greatest attention is now paid to the war between the
Christians and the Zarezins, and it is not surprising, because such
is the general interest of the Christians: that on the other hand
the curiosities concerning further News of war facts, due to the
sterility of the same, could not be served as a little / because of
the Poles / Carters / Cossacks / and Muscovites / who still come
very slowly / and consequently not nearly as considerable / as those
/ who were led for the sake of Christ / to which all Christian
powers / and potentates in this gracious east / of God's blessed
Peace / ought to contribute / and to offer such a hand / that now in
this Heavenly season / from the Turkish claws / the beautiful
European Pearls of Christianity were again heard / / since the
beginning of the Christian disunity / and wars / have disproved
Christianity. This year 1660 has promised Europe many wonders / and
great things: for over thirty years I have heard important
astrologers speak of the wonders which would occur in the same
history / and of various their annotations / and memorials I have
still preserved: and without that I want to touch the chalice in
which the ground-soap / that Tycho-bra / has set aside / is still
in: so stand with me your eyes on the histories / look at Spain /
and France / see where that Kingdom miraculous instrument Gusradus
is. For now the 17 Netherlands are / and ponder / yet mature the
wonders of England / which our descendants / will take up for
Homayns / and for unbelieving Histories. Among these wonders I beg
you to examine / the courage of the Venetians / who alone have
prospered for so many years with no or very little assistance /
against the Orthoman power / the same in resisting / and defending
the Bollewerck of Christendom / found so much work / that the Turks
saw no progress / against those excellent Heroes / who in Canada
maintained the Standard of Christ / were always repulsed with damage
/ and shame / until they fell this year in Sevenbergen / where in
two months more cities gained / than in 20 years / feet of earth /
on the Manly Venetians. Notwithstanding the power of the Emperor /
and of the Hunger troops / around there. The Most Christian King,
having recently, while lying ill, promised God to assist the
Venetians against the general enemy as soon as peace would be
concluded, finally sent between 3 and 4,000 soldiers to the Levant
under the command of the Modern Prince Almerick d'Este, to conjugate
the Venetians there. This Conjunction having finally happened, it
was resolved, according to the Instruction of the Serenissime
Republicque, to besiege Canea, which the Turks held in the kingdom
of Candia, with some other places, with which the Turks intended to
drive out the Christians from the rest of the kingdom, as they had
labored for some years to do, but in vain, and there the Venetians
held out against the entire Turkish Power on Water and Land, until
now, finally assisted, they sought to drive out all the Turks, as
they appointed them as Lions: but before I go into the story of
their The deeds of Christianity come / so gladly imported / not to
know / the quality of Candia with which profit the Turks would have
come to conquer Sicily and Malta.
The
quality of the Island and Kingdom of Candia by / seen very
mountainous / nevertheless has many Valleys / very abundant / and
exceptionally fertile / by which it was sprinkled / by many
Fountains / and watered by many Streams and Rivers. The wine-stock
grows there according to desire / and in abundance grew there the
most delicate Malvasia / milk and honey are also abundant and meat
in sustenance / such that the ancients have rightly called the same
/ the happy Island. There also grow the most beautiful Cypress that
one may see with one's eyes / and trees of all kinds / suitable for
building ships / which is to great profit for the Sereniss. Republ:.
There is also no harmful Animal / that is cruel and venomous /
except the Phalanges, which are like Spiders; but within Candia they
are not dangerous. This Kingdom is still abundant with Septen / Deer
and wild Bucks / but one sees few wild Boars / as towards the side
of Canea / around which the Venetian Standard now spreads out in the
field. There are still Bouchestains, which are no larger than a Goat
/ and yet have as much flesh as the largest Deer / it has its beak
and short / and wears a long blackish beard. He is sometimes caught
when he is still very small, to be raised together with the Septen,
and to feed on others, both for his beauty and for the delicacy and
taste of his flesh. His horns are very large / his body is like a
septum / but nevertheless so strong that he outruns the deer / and
the dogs in scenting / because he entices the hunters 100 paces /
such intestines to catch him / tame septums must be tied around the
arrivals and passages of the mountains / and so the Bouchestain,
this scenting / comes to them / and then he is wounded by the
hunters / but not mortally / and although a phoenix arrow [arrow?]
remains in the body / he nevertheless passes on / and eating the
herb Dictame heals. This is the herb / of which Dioscoride speaks /
whose smell only kills serpents and other venomous beasts.
As
for the ancient manners of the Candiots, the same flourished so much
that their Kings held almost all of Greece in check, they were the
best archers of the earth, they invented the widely known Dance
Syrrique, in the time of their King Eydon, and from head to foot
they were armed, when they danced it, and it continued so much that
the Farmers, on Feast Days, in the greatest heat of the day, danced
it, without looking at the shadow, armed, namely with the bow,
quiver and rapier, as if dancing without it had no good grace. The
most excellent Greeks took their laws from the Candidates, even
Plato, and above all those of Lacedaemonia followed the practice.
One of their laws was that children should be brought up in common,
so that, having the same food as the rich, one should not take cause
to hate them: and furthermore there were also statutes, that in
order to accustom children to fear nothing, but much honour, to
overcome everything with patience and patience, and to support them,
so that they could go, to practice in arms, and to teach them to
despise heat, cold, hunger and thirst, and that they should use bows
and arrows in dancing, and wear clothes fashioned in warlike attire.
All Candidates were required to marry at the age of Majority, and
were drawn from the crowd, who, as mentioned above, were raised
among minors, but did not immediately send their spouses home, but
allowed them to remain until they were fit to manage the House. And
the Friends married them indifferently, one to the other, and
furthermore the Law declared that if the Sister was married to her
Brother, he had to endow her with half his Patrimony. The transport
of Daughters was more enthusiastic than if one had not acquired them
willingly. But finally the Candidates, abandoning their ancient
discipline, became Sea Robbers, as those of all times had been the
first at sea, and had served so valiantly, that they overcame the
Attica, and led their armies happily to Sicily. And saying a little
of the manners of this time, know that the Candidates are quick to
do evil. The ancients themselves have given them the name of
Logenars, they are cunning, greedy, and at present they can ill bear
labor, and learn neither art nor science perfectly.
But
it is true / according to the writing of Beilon, that they have been
practicing shooting with the Bow since their childhood / in which
they surpass the Turks. At sea they are quick / dispatch and vassal
/ as well as they have been at other times. The strength of this
Island and Kingdom / is Candia in principle / that the Christians
have / and Canea that the Turks possess / both very powerful
strength / both by nature / as well as by reason of their situation.
But Rettimo and Seytien cannot be renowned / as in view of the place
/ in which they are situated. Within Candia there is a beautiful
Arsenal for the Galleys. As for the religion / the inhabitants
mostly follow the Latins. Thus far having spoken of the form of this
Kingdom, I will now proceed to the matter of the present fate of the
Christian Forces in that Country.
Sunday
evening a ship arrived here from those Countries with letters to the
Sereniss: Gentlemen / that the Venetian Armada / having arrived in
the Port of Suda / had landed at the named place Colata / about 9000
fighting men / who at the same time advanced in an orderly manner to
the Fort d'Apricorni / pressing further to under the wall / and
after that they had made a long defense and resistance inside, they
were overwhelmed / and left the Fort with great loss / and walked
with the other Garrisons of Cisterne / Calamo and Calogero / inside
Canea / leaving behind 35 to 40 pieces / with many Ammunition.
Dijnsdaeghs there aen / enough with the crowd of the day / did not
arrive nor a Galiote / delegated from the Capiteyn General / with
Pacquettes to the Senaet / and related the following / in the
highest manner / but with this special distinction: saying that
d'Armada Maratim of the Sereniss: Seigneurie / consistende in 30 War
Ships / 28 subtile Galeys / with the 7 of Malta / (after that 4 of
the Pope / and the 3 of the Grand Duke of Florence / had again
returned to their ports) 6 Galeases / and so many Galeoten
Adventurers. The people, after they were landed, numbered 6000 foot
soldiers (among them 2000 raised in Candia), item 3500 Frenchmen and
about 800 horses, who, after they had taken the 4 forts mentioned
above, went straight to the siege of Canea, but before they had
begun the line, the Bassa commander came out with a part of the
garrison, the skirmish began furiously and in return cost much blood
and as it is common for dogs to run before men, so the Turks
eventually also ran before the Christians. The Bassa commander, with
one of his sons, was killed underfoot. On the side of the
Christians, the most considerable loss was that of Lord d'Ardena,
Lieutenant of the Cavalry, whose dead body the Turks had cut off the
head, but when the Turks thought they would bring the same to Canea,
a French Captain ran after them and recovered the same, with the
loss of life, of the man who thought he would triumph with it.
Prince
Almerigo d'Este, General of the French army, of secours, ran a great
risk of remaining dead, both in the conquest of Apicorno, and in the
sortie of the commended Bassa Commandant, because in doing so a
cannon ball struck and killed his Paige behind him. Shortly after
this sortie and good successes for the Christians, for which God
must be thanked, the Generals received advice that 4000 Turks had
come from Candia Nova to the relief of Canea, where there had been
disputes between the Venetian Captain General and Prince Almerico,
one thought it was right to go against them and fight with them, the
other feared that they might be surrounded on the way, while within
Canea, besides the loss of the fallen Commander and his, there were
still 2500 infantry and 300 horse, and that it was more useful and
necessary to retreat and retreat in safety until the army of
Christians had been repatriated from the Peasants, who were expected
from various provinces of the Kingdom, like from Sfacchia, a
thousand men were following every hour.
At
this time the affairs were there, when the Galiot was sent out,
requesting money and ammunition from the Senate promptly, it was
immediately resolved that the noble Lord Francisco Barbaro would
bring over 80,000 Ducats, and that the Emperor's assistance would be
ordered to depart immediately.
Shortly
thereafter followed two more Councils, one from the three Islands,
referring that ours had beaten the recourse of Candia the hovo, but
these are private tidings, which require more certainty. The other
thing coming over O?trante, that the Christians, feeling the siege
of Canea too hot, had retreated.
And
finally I have to add here another advice from the Proveditor of the
Fortress Suda, confirming that the Christians had broken up from
near Canea, and that they were going to fortify themselves to
Calamo, a place where they could conveniently see everything passing
that would want to land in Canea, and that certainly from Candia
nova came the above-mentioned bystander and security for the Turks:
and fearing that in order not to weaken the army too much, they
would not be able to prevent the captured Forts from being held, so
they had the Fort of d'Apricorno mined and blown up. 1000 Ffacchioti
had arrived in the army of the Christians, and first of all 4000
farmers were expected, with whom the Christian Generals thought they
were, to formally besiege Canea, which is already closely enclosed
by the sea from the Armadé.
This
is my Lord the qualities in a short description of the famous
Kingdom of Candia, besides the publicque / ende part specific advice
/ concerning the Christian Army there / occurred / hope that God /
whose cause it is will crown it / with happiness / and further
victory / and that I thus in joy / and with a freedom of speech H E.
from time to time / will still partake of it Ec.
Venice,
October 8, 1660.
Zie
ook De beschryving van de leste oorlog in 't koningrijk Kandia
(1671)
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken1/gview?query=gerola&coll=boeken1&identifier=D7RpAAAAcAAJ
DE
BESCHRYVING Van de leste Oorlog in 't Koninkrijk KANDIA.
In
vier Delen onderscheiden;
I.
D'oorsprong van deze Oorlog, en de Verövering van 't Koninkryk
Kandia.
II.
De Reis van de Markgraaf Villa, en zijn Bedrijf in de Stat
Kandia.
III.
D'Intreê des
Markgraafs van S. André Montbrun, en des Graafs de
la Fueillade in deze Vesting.
IV.
De Koomst der Lunenburgers, gelijk ook die van de leste Bystant der
Franschen, onder de Hertogen van
Beaufort, en Navaille, en hun Bedrijf tot aan
d'Overgeving van deze plaats, en 't Vertrek der Venecianen uit dit
gewest.
Alles
door J.H. GLAZEMAKER in de Nederlantsche Taal gebracht.
Ottoman era
(1453–1922)
On 29 May 1453, the
then-emergent Ottoman Empire conquered the city of Constantinople
following a lengthy campaign wherein the Ottomans constructed
fortifications on each side of the strait, the Anadoluhisarı
(1393) and the Rumelihisarı (1451), in preparation for not only
the primary battle but to assert long-term control over the
Bosphorus and surrounding waterways. The final 53-day campaign,
which resulted in Ottoman victory, constituted an important turn in
world history. Together with Christopher Columbus's first voyage to
the Americas in 1492, the 1453 conquest of Constantinople is
commonly noted as among the events that brought an end to the Middle
Ages and marked the transition to the Renaissance and the Age of
Discovery.
The event also marked
the end of the Byzantines — the final remnants of the Roman
Empire — and the transfer of the control of the Bosphorus into
Ottoman hands, who made Constantinople their new capital, and from
where they expanded their empire in the centuries that followed.
At its peak between
the 16th and 18th centuries, the Ottoman Empire had used the
strategic importance of the Bosphorus to expand their regional
ambitions and to wrest control of the entire Black Sea area, which
they regarded as an "Ottoman lake", on which Russian
warships were prohibited.
Subsequently, several
international treaties have governed vessels using the waters. Under
the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi of 8 July 1833, the
Bosporus and Dardanelles straits were to be closed on Russian demand
to naval vessels of other powers. By the terms of the London Straits
Convention concluded on 13 July 1841, between the Great Powers of
Europe — Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Austria and
Prussia — the "ancient rule" of the Ottoman Empire
was re-established by closing the Turkish Straits to any and all
warships, barring those of the Sultan's allies during wartime. It
thus benefited British naval power at the expense of Russian, as the
latter lacked direct access for its navy to the Mediterranean.
Following the First
World War, the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres demilitarized the strait
and made it an international territory under the control of the
League of Nations.
GREECE
UNDER THE TURKS. I
From
the second half of the fifteenth century to the end of the
seventeenth century, a large part of what now constitutes the
Kingdom of Greece belonged to Turkey; and beginning with the second
half of the sixteenth century, only a few Ionian Islands and a few
Cyclades were free from Turkish rule. For the first time since the
Frankish conquest, a deathly uniformity, broken only by a few local
privileges, replaced the feudal states whose fortunes had helped
shape the annals of at least two centuries earlier. Greece, so often
prey to division, had at last found unity, but at the cost of its
freedom: and the Turkish conquerors, following in the footsteps of
ancient Rome, had trampled on the last vestiges of Greek
independence. Once again (with relatively minor exceptions), the
Greek world obeyed a foreign ruler, who resided in Constantinople,
and whose minions more or less arbitrarily governed the affairs of
the Greek subjects.
There
is, however, an important difference between the two periods in
which Turkish rule in those regions must be divided. During the
first of the two
1)
According to W. Miller in the August issue of the Westminster
Review.
(ending
with the conquest of the Morea by Venice), Turkey was a power that
inspired awe throughout Europe; but in the second (ending with the
foundation of the Kingdom of Greece), the Ottoman Empire
increasingly declined, except in the art it never lost: martial
arts. Like the ancient Romans, the Turks were also good soldiers at
all times: but, although they equaled their predecessors in some
other respects, in one respect this was certainly not the case: they
were poor administrators. Even if (as was often the case) their
regulations were impeccable, practice tended to undermine all that
was good.
The
political structure of Greece under the Turks was essentially
simple. The Greek regions were included within the administrative
circle of the Beylerbeg (i.e., lord of lords) of Rumelia (Rumili),
who held his official residence in Sofia. They were divided into six
"sandzhaks," so called after the flag that symbolized each
region of any size—a division that reflected the warlike
nature of all Turkish regulations. Since 1470, when the conquest of
Euboea crowned the Greek conquests of Muhammad II, the six sandjaks
were as follows: Evripos (Euripos or Euboea), Trikkala, Lepanto,
Karlili, Joanina, and Morea.
Number
One of these six encompassed Euboea, Boeotia, and Attica. The
capital of this important region was Chalcis; and among its other
cities of some importance were Athens, Thebes, and Livadia. Karlili
encompassed Aetolia and Acarnania, as well as the immediate vicinity
of the Gulf of Arta or Ambracia: its name was derived from a certain
Carlo Tocco, whose extensive possessions had fallen to the Turks. As
for the Morea, the capital of that peninsula alternated between
Corinth, Mistra, and Leondari (the ancient Megalopolis), until the
conquest of Nauplia from the Venetians in 1540 made that fortress
the official residence of the Turkish Pasha. When the Duchy of Naxos
ceased to exist shortly thereafter, a seventh Greek sanjak was
formed from the Cyclades and the island of Santa Maura, the ancient
Leucas. Some Cyclades were excluded from this because they were
venerated by the Sultana Favorite. And later, when Crete was
conquered, three new sanjaks were formed from that large island:
Candia, Canea, and Rethymno.
In
turn, each sanjak was divided into a certain number of cazas, or
districts, 23 of which belonged to the Morea. Athens appears to have
been the capital of such a caza (belonging to Evripos: see above)
from 1470 to around 1610. Just as each sandjak was governed by a
Pasha (in the Cyclades by a Capudan Pasha, i.e., an Admiral), so too
was each caza under the administration of a lower-ranking official,
called a Voivode, who was assisted in jurisprudence by a Kadi.
Faithful
to the Turkish feudal system, which had been established in Thessaly
at the end of the 14th century and introduced in Aetolia and
Acarnania after the fall of the aforementioned Tocco dynasty,
Muhammad II divided Morea and Hellas (in the narrower sense) into
fiefs and granted them to his former comrades-in-arms.
These
fiefs belonged to two kinds: the zaimet and the timar. The first
included the large fiefs and required their holders to equip and
deploy fifteen horsemen each. The timar was the name of the smaller
type, of which each owner (feudal lord) was required to provide only
two men for the cavalry. The banner of the sandzhak-bey (Pacha) was
the united point for all those feudal lords and the horsemen they
provided, when the need arose. Around the middle of the 17th
century, the six existing sandjaks had been fragmented into 267
zaimets and 1,625 timars, together representing a total of 7,255
horsemen.
The
numerical difference between the large and small fiefs became even
more pronounced when the same system was also applied to Crete. That
island had to be able to provide 5,350 horsemen, divided between
2,550 timars and only seventeen zaimets. Initially, this system was
not based on a hereditary aristocracy. Originally, the timars were
simple annuities, awarded as a reward for services rendered to the
Sultan by senior warriors, who could perhaps still be summoned to
appear with their subjects at the summons of their feudal lord. In
the golden age of Turkish rule (assuming one can ever use the word
"golden" of anything Turkish), the son of such a vassal
was usually only favored with a large fief after he had proven his
suitability with a smaller one. However, the Turkish system of
government soon developed, as almost everywhere such systems do:
starting with no other criterion for reward than competence, it
ended up replacing competence with favor as much as possible. The
abuse increasingly crept in that it was the Beglerbeg in Sofia to
whom the Great Lord entrusted the endowment of large and small
fiefs; And it was quite natural that this powerful ruler would favor
his own favorites, just as an English cabinet chief, given free rein
by weak or biased monarchs, is wont to grant peers and other titles
to men he believes he can rely on, or whom he hopes to win over by
doing so.
It
should therefore come as no surprise that in the second half of the
seventeenth century, both in Sofia and Constantinople, the custom
had crept in that, if the holder of a zaimet or timar died on the
field of honor, his fief was divided into as many parts as he left
sons, unless the annual income did not exceed three thousand aspers,
in which case the eldest son was favored with the entire fief.
However, if the feudal lord died otherwise than in battle for prince
and country, his fief fell to the Beglerbeg, who could, at his
discretion, grant it to the deceased's heirs, or make someone else
happy with it, or sell it for his own profit.
1)
The asper is the smallest Turkish coin, worth barely four cents.
Initially,
the Turks had enough common sense not to interfere with the local
government of the Greeks, which had existed for centuries before the
Turkish conquest. Under the Byzantine emperors, Greek communities
often had themselves represented at the court in Constantinople by
men who were not always chosen from their own ranks. This was also
sometimes the case with an association of communities. Thus, we read
that in the eleventh century, Michael Psellos represented the
Cyclades in the great court city. It also happened that, instead of
a permanent representative, an envoy or embassy from a municipality,
an island, etc., would occasionally travel to Constantinople to
discuss special matters with the high government. Such
representations also seem to have been common under the Venetian
administration. At least it is attested that when the island of
Tenos belonged to Venice, there was a council of notables whose task
it was to oversee the administrative measures of the Italian
officials.
Like
the Romans, the followers of Muhammad II, etc., were perfectly
willing to grant the Greek municipalities a certain degree of
autonomy. Therefore, these municipalities were given free rein to
promote trade and industry, establish schools, etc., while the Greek
language remained in use for all public affairs. There seem never to
have been any fixed rules regarding all this; But we may assume as
common custom that each community had its own officials (Greeks, of
course), that these men were elected (albeit indirectly) by the
Christian population (or a portion thereof), and that these
representatives (if one may use that term) were given the names of
Presbyters, Archons, Foremen, or, in Turkish, "Khodzja-baskis."
Thus, even in the late period of Ottoman rule, on the island of
Psara the entire community gathered annually to elect forty
electors, who in turn appointed four "Elders (Presbyters) of
the community." We also read that around the same time on the
island of Spetsai, the five foremen were elected annually by the
ship's commanders and the wealthy citizens—and, well into the
eighteenth century, the important island of Hydra was still governed
by its priests with two laymen as assessors.
As
for the mainland of Morea, it enjoyed special municipal privileges.
It was allowed to send two or three Foremen to Constantinople, whose
residence in the metropolis enabled them to exert their influence to
mitigate the extortions of the Pashas. Moreover, each province of
the peninsula was allowed to send two of its leading citizens to the
Pasha's see once or twice a year to discuss the interests of Morea
with him. Both there and in Thessaly, it was not uncommon for
municipal positions to be passed down from father to son.
Unfortunately, this also applied to the irreconcilable feuds that
were common among the prominent Christians of Morea. The official
duties of these gentlemen included levying local taxes, managing the
municipal treasury, deciding civil cases, and protecting the
oppressed with advice and deeds. Some performed the latter duties
without regard to persons; but there was also no shortage of
individuals whose behavior earned them the name "Christian-Turks."
Both
the law of "the great Prophet" and that of humanity
opposed the complete conversion of the Greeks to Islam. Mohammed II,
who spoke Greek fluently and knew the Greeks well, demonstrated his
statesmanlike wisdom by his plan to govern his Greek subjects
through their own clergy. He was convinced that he and his followers
constituted, as it were, a foreign garrison in a hostile country;
And he believed that a new crusade of Roman Catholics against the
conquerors of "the East" was by no means impossible. The
bitter hatred that Eastern and Western Christians bore each other
provided the wily Sultan with a powerful incentive not only to
tolerate the "Orthodox Church," but even to protect it. He
realized that by favoring one branch of Christianity, he would
prevent collusion with the other; and, to bring this
well-thought-out plan to fruition, he chose a particularly suitable
instrument.
Among
the most vigorous and able opponents of the reunification of the two
Churches was George Scholar, a man as influential among the Eastern
as he was hated by the Western leaders of the Church. No sooner had
Constantinople fallen into the hands of the Turks than the Sultan
ordered a search everywhere for this unwavering champion of the
"Orthodox": and when he was finally located, he issued
orders aimed at having him elevated to "Ecumenical Patriarch."
For centuries, this was the name used in Constantinople to refer to
a sort of Eastern pope. Scholarios was naturally elected,
specifically under the name of Gennadios II. The Sultan received him
ceremoniously, showed him the utmost kindness, and after the
festivities, escorted him to where his horse was waiting, and
personally helped him into the saddle. An imperial decree (berat)
defined the position, power, and privileges of Gennadios and his
successors. In this document, they were declared "exempt from
taxation and irremovable." It is a pity that the text of this
important document has been lost; So we cannot judge to what extent
the chronicler Phrantzes is correct when he claims that in that
state document, the conversion of Christian churches into mosques
was prohibited. Incidentally, the loss of the original text is not
so regrettable, since so much was later changed that the privileges
in question were increasingly curtailed.
One
thing is certain: Mohammed II vested the Patriarch with the supreme
authority over all Greek Orthodox churches and monasteries, the
right to depose bishops and archbishops, and supreme jurisdiction
over his entire clergy. He was also granted jurisdiction over all
matrimonial matters and all other points of civil law, in which the
parties involved, being Christians, preferred not to submit to the
judgment of a Turkish court. He was authorized to levy taxes on
behalf of the Church, and this from both clergy and secular persons.
But the most important point was that all church property would be
honored, and no Christian would be forced to convert to Islam. It's
a pity, however, that on all these points, the history of Greek
Christians in Turkey reveals an ever-increasing denial of the
original intentions of Mohammed II. A later decree, for example,
stipulated that the Patriarch could be deposed in three cases, the
oppression of his flock, violation of ecclesiastical law, and high
treason—all flexible expressions that could easily lead to
abuse.
Mohammed
II himself provided an example of this when he deposed Patriarch
Joseph I for refusing to ratify the marriage that the widow of the
last Duke of Athens had contracted with Amoiroutzes, the traitor who
had betrayed Trebizond to the Turks, and whose wife was still alive.
During the seventeenth century, three Patriarchs were deposed; and
there are even examples of Sultans imposing punishments on
Patriarchs reminiscent of the gruesome mutilations of the Byzantine
emperors. How quickly the Cathedral of St. Sophia became a mosque is
well known; and the number of other Christian churches that later
suffered the same fate is legion. Thus, while traveling through
Greece, I saw, among other places, dilapidated buildings in Larissa
and Livadia, which had first been churches and later mosques. The
Patriarch's office was also not respected. Connected to the Church
of the Apostles by Mohammed II, it was subsequently moved repeatedly
until it finally (at the beginning of the seventeenth century) found
its present location in Phanar.
Phanar
is the Greek quarter of Constantinople located on the northern shore
of the Golden Horn. Trans.
Also,
payments were occasionally levied, which were demanded of the
churchwardens; and it was not long before the elections of the
Patriarch were dominated by bribery.
The
Greeks had only themselves to blame for this regrettable innovation.
After the fall of Trebizond (1461), many prominent figures from that
place sought a good opportunity in Constantinople to recover. Among
the prestigious positions they coveted was that of Patriarch. This
was already evident in 1467, when they attempted to oust Marcus II,
the third successor to the aforementioned Gennadios, from his
throne. They succeeded only too well. Marcus was deposed; and one of
their own took his place, but only after he had pledged to pay the
Sultan a thousand gold pieces annually and relinquished the annual
stipend his four predecessors had drawn from the imperial treasury.
Once the first step had been taken on the disastrous path of simony,
their example was increasingly imitated. Just two years later, the
displaced man was ousted when a wealthier admirer offered double the
amount. Later, the annual "tribute," or rather bribe, rose
to three thousand gold pieces; Moreover, large sums were often spent
bribing courtiers, eunuchs, janissaries, Sultana Favorites, and the
like, while, to make matters worse, these enormous expenses were
recovered as much as possible from the community and the lower
clergy.
Thus
we see that the unsavory history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate
bears striking similarities to the medieval papacy, which also did
not shy away from such base tactics. And, as for the Eastern supreme
churchwarden, after the Western Reformation, that high office became
even more the object of all sorts of intrigue, as Jesuits and
influential Protestants vied in attempts to secure the Patriarchate
for men who might advance their respective interests. In the 76
years preceding 1700, no fewer than fifty Patriarchal elections took
place; and most of them were marred by large-scale bribery. Colossal
debts began to burden the Patriarchate so much that the newly
elected dignitary usually resorted to selling the well-paid
positions he was to fill. No wonder this increasingly widespread
problem became a primary cause of the aversion the Greek Church
instilled in the many Christians living in the Turkish Empire who
belonged to a nationality other than Greek. The history of the
Balkan Peninsula abounds with examples of the extortion perpetrated
by Greek bishops against the common people, who were condemned to
compensate their clergy as much as possible for the financial
sacrifices they had made to obtain their office.
Another
cause later contributed significantly to the Turkish government's
weakening of the dignity and privileges of the Ecumenical Patriarch.
Though Mohammed II had considered and honored it as a powerful
bulwark against the Roman Powers, more than a century later Rome, as
a result of the Protestant secession, had become considerably less
dangerous, while Venice had lost its last possessions in the Morea,
and Spain, too, inspired less and less fear. There was more. France,
the "oldest daughter of Mother Church," and for a long
time a great protector of the Jesuits, had become Turkey's ally; and
when these dangerous people first appeared in Constantinople in
1609, they, relying on France, plotted against the Patriarch with
all their might. Thus, the Sultans had little to fear from a
hopelessly divided Europe and a clipped Papacy: and therefore the
Grand Lord could safely degrade the Patriarch. Beginning in 1657,
this spiritual ruler was no longer installed by his secular overlord
in person, but by the Grand Vizier; and in other respects as well,
the honors granted him were later increasingly curtailed.
Yet,
the Patriarchs continued to exercise a power in all of the Sultan's
possessions, which was to be reckoned with from both a political and
an ecclesiastical perspective. It was a power, such as many a
Patriarch under the Christian Emperors had not even enjoyed, nor was
they granted it when the secession from the Kingdom of Greece
significantly curtailed their authority. Before the Greek War of
Independence, the Ecumenical Patriarch was the ecclesiastical, and
in a certain sense also political, head, not only of the Greeks, but
also of all Bulgarians, Serbs, Armenians, etc., belonging to the
same Church. The general name commonly given to all these
nationalities in Turkish territory was "Romans"; because,
especially in Turkey at the time, origin was paid much less
attention than the fact that they all professed the religion of the
"Roman" Constantine the Great. Furthermore, the Modern
Greek language, unlike the ancient Greek, was, and still is, labeled
"Roman."
Returning
to the Ecumenical Patriarchs, these high clergymen were also the
ecclesiastical heads of all "Orthodox" communities, which
were among the Venetian conquests; and as long as a permanent
Venetian envoy remained in Constantinople, he negotiated no less
with the Patriarch than with the Porte. About a year after the fall
of Constantinople, Muhammad II concluded a treaty with Venice, in
which the Patriarch was permanently guaranteed all the revenues that
had been paid to his predecessors by the Christians in the Levant.
In many places in the chronicles, mention is made of the Patriarchs'
intervention on behalf of the Orthodox who lived in Venetian
territory. At times, they intervene on behalf of the Greeks of Crete
or southern Morea, at other times (and successfully) they urge the
preservation of the Julian Calendar in the Venetian Levantine
possessions. In one place, we are pleasantly surprised by a
philippic against the co-religionists in Crete, because of their
persecution of Jews.
The
peculiar relationship of The Patriarch's role as representative of a
remarkable imperium in imperio is particularly striking, as
evidenced by the fact that the Porte used to negotiate with him
through the intermediary of Reis Effendi, the Minister of Foreign
Affairs. We see, then, that there was good reason to call such a
powerful personage a "supreme lord," even a "king."
This involuntarily reminds me of the Pope's relationship with the
outside world since the loss of the Papal States. Like the Pope, the
Patriarch had no secular authority, but his spiritual power extended
far beyond the capital, where another ruled. Like the Pope, he
negotiated with foreign powers, even where religion was
non-existent, and occasionally conspired against the monarch, who
had guaranteed him full enforcement of his spiritual rights.
Although
the Koran forbade violent conversion, a combination of circumstances
worked to swell the ranks. to swell the Muslim population. Since the
Turks were few in number compared to the millions of Christians who
groaned under their yoke, they soon realized that in the long run
they would not only be unable to expand their conquests, but not
even to maintain them, unless they also included Christians (and
many of them) in their ranks. Therefore, they early decided to
follow the example (though in reverse) of some Christian rulers in
the Levant, who included young Turks in their armies. In response,
Sultan Orchan had already, in the first half of the fourteenth
century, established the later notorious army corps of Janissaries.
Until the mid-sixteenth century, these corps consisted exclusively
of Christians, raised from childhood in the teachings of the
Prophet.
Initially,
the number of children employed for this purpose averaged a thousand
per year. At the tender age of six or seven, they were taken from
their parents, until later (probably not long after the fall of
Constantinopel) a regular levy of prospective soldiers was
prescribed by all Turkish dependencies. Only a few places were
exempt from this. Gradually, this levy of Christian children, who
were to become Muslim warriors, became a systematic and ruthlessly
enforced means of proselytizing. While initially these levyings were
far from annual, they later became so. Each levy was preceded by the
appearance of a Janissary officer, accompanied by a scribe, in the
main town of each district, where he demanded from the local
government a complete list of all Christian families living there.
This resulted in every Christian father being forced to declare
which children he had who were eligible and then to have them appear
before the court of the military commissioner.
Initially,
only one boy from each family was designated for this purpose, and
then only if there were at least five sons. Later, however, this was
no longer observed, but the government, in addition to the number of
boys it deemed necessary, selected the fittest, and had no qualms
about taking away even an only son. Even adults (at least those over
fifteen) were sometimes conscripted. I need not dwell here on the
misery brought upon the wretched parents by a system reminiscent of
the fable of the Minotaur sacrifices. An eyewitness tells us that he
saw mothers praying to God to deliver their sons by killing them on
the spot. The institution did not apply to married sons; and
therefore, it sometimes happened that children, even under ten years
of age, were married off for the sake of convenience. But it was not
long before the conscripting officers spared even these "married"
ones. These blood edicts could be circumvented in only two ways. One
was bribery, the other flight to the Venetian possessions in Greece.
The latter, however, was abandoned when Venice lost its Greek
provinces.
Now,
one would think that such a shocking and recurring example of
oppression would likely have led to rebellion. And yet, in the long
list of uprisings against Turkish tyranny, we find only one (in
1565) attributed to that cause; and that was not even a Greek
uprising, but an Albanian one. What is recorded in this regard is
typical. As the Janissaries became increasingly pampered and
powerful, many Greeks came to consider membership in that elite band
a blessing rather than a curse. In the mid-sixteenth century, the
Venetian ambassador to Constantinople wrote that the induction of
children as future Janissaries was usually considered a special
favor by Christian parents, guaranteeing their sons a comfortable
and profitable position. There was even no shortage of Muslim
parents who did not hesitate to lend their boys to Christians, so
that they might share in the same fine privilege.
We,
who view all this with entirely different eyes, lament it, because
this preoccupation with male potential has resulted in an immense
loss for both Christianity and Greece. When we remember that for two
centuries the Janissaries were composed exclusively of Christian
sons, that the Christian population of Turkey was mainly confined to
the European provinces, and that the young men not incorporated into
the elite army were generally the weakest, then we can imagine how
heavily all this must have weighed on the propagation and
development of Christianity in southeastern Europe. Moreover, the
Janissaries, as is the case today with some African bodyguards, were
prohibited from marriage. The modern Greek historian Paparrigopoulos
calculates the number of Christian boys incorporated into the
Janissaries during the first two centuries at at least one million.
This does not alter the fact that this incorporation was abolished
in the seventeenth century, or at least was no longer required.
Several causes contributed to the decline of an institution that had
long hardened the Turkish army, at the expense of the Christian
population. First and foremost, the abolition of the marriage ban
comes into consideration, as married bodyguards increasingly managed
to force their sons into the "elite band." A second cause
is the continued increase in induction through bribery. Furthermore,
the Sultans likely came to distrust their bodyguards, in the same
way the Roman emperors had done with the Praetorians. It is no
wonder that they increasingly devoted less effort to a supplement.
In addition, the decline in the Christian population also reduced
the choice. Finally, the increasing unscrupulousness and
indifference of the officers must also be taken into account. All
this led to the complete abolition of the bodyguard in the
nineteenth century, and already in the second half of the
seventeenth century to the abolition of the forced conscription of
Christians.
Another
reason for the adoption of Islam by many Greeks lay in the offices
assigned to them at that time. When the uncivilized Turkish people
saw themselves masters of a large and powerful European empire, they
lacked all the ability, both financially and diplomatically, to
maintain such an empire as required. Turkish arithmetic was terribly
cumbersome, the Turkish language unsuitable for writing of any
importance; and the Turks had the same weakness that we English
still tend to have today: they understood no language but their own.
Hence, they consistently entrusted the drafting of documents
intended for foreign countries to Greeks who understood Turkish.
Yet, it is undeniable that it is not linguists, but men of character
who have a future as conquerors; and it is equally certain that the
Greeks possessed precisely those qualities that the Ottomans lacked.
It is therefore no wonder that the astute Mohammed II, who, as a
rare exception, understood Greek, was convinced that the innate
adaptability and acquired knowledge of his new subjects could be of
incalculable use to him in governing his vast possessions.
However,
an undeniable difficulty arose. Almost all more or less learned
Greeks had fled to Western and Central Europe after the fall of
Constantinople; And it is to this that it is attributable that
during the first two centuries after that fall, the Greeks generally
did not advance beyond the ranks of scribes in the departments of
Finance and Foreign Affairs in the Turkish service. However, there
was a striking exception early on: the high post of Grand Vizier. Of
the five Grand Viziers who served Mohammed II, two were of Greek
nationality, the first of whom, Mahmud Pasha, was the first
Christian to be entrusted with this high position. Under Bajazet II,
we again find two Greek Christians as Grand Viziers, and under the
great Soliman, two more. Later, even a son of a Pope was appointed
to this position. The fearsome Barbarossa, the scourge of Christians
at sea, was also of Greek descent. Around the middle of the
sixteenth century, the Venetian ambassador to Constantinople could
assure us that the most important positions in Turkish government
service usually fell to Greek Christians, and that the Turks
complained bitterly because the unbelievers had better prospects
than they themselves.
It
took a long time, however, before these positions, with the
exception of the very highest, could be obtained by anything other
than conversion to Islam; therefore, the temptation to take that
step was great. In Greece, however, the number of these converts was
much smaller than in Bosnia and neighboring regions among Slavs and
Albanians; And when (around the middle of the seventeenth century)
the Turkish government began to become less strict in demanding
apostasy, and even opened several important positions to the rayas,
it was a great satisfaction for the Greeks that they could fulfill a
laudable ambition without qualms.
1)
Horus, nicknamed Barbarossa, was a renegade and pirate in the early
sixteenth century. He defeated the Dey of Algiers and became Dey in
his place. Trans.
The
aforementioned lack of educated Greeks in the principal Turkish
cities had ceased to exist; and the Porte took advantage of this by
immediately granting the important post of Grand Dragoman to a Greek
Christian, who managed to conduct the negotiations regarding Candia
with the desired results. From then until the War of Independence,
his successors were generally Greek Christians.
Similarly,
the important position of Dragoman of the Navy was usually filled by
a Greek from the mid-sixteenth century onwards; and the island of
Paros still possesses numerous reminders of the Mavrogenes family,
two of whose members managed the naval affairs of the Kapudan Pasha
(head of the Navy). One of this remarkable family, Nicholas, was
elevated to the position of Feudal Prince of Wallachia (first half
of the eighteenth century). For almost the entire eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, the two thrones of Wallachia and
Moldavia, which were more or less dependent on Turkey, were
continuously occupied by Phanariotes (Greeks from Constantinople),
and unfortunately, were all too subservient to their particular
interests and desires.
Eighteenth-century
sultans even seriously considered doing the same in Morea, but it
remained limited to the elevation of that peninsula to a government
under a Christian governor. Such elevations of Greek Christians were
always very advantageous and pleasant for those individuals;
however, as soon as the interests of the governed did not entirely
align with the whims of the rulers, the latter usually carried the
brunt.
But
we lack the right to expect the virtues of heroes and saints in the
offspring of men who, century after century, had groaned under the
yoke of foreign rulers. Yet, while fully acknowledging this
mitigating circumstance, we must acknowledge from the heart that the
loss of Euboea and Crete, and other such terrible blows inflicted on
Hellenism in Turkey, are primarily attributable to Greek Christians.
Moreover, denial of nationality was commonplace in Turkey at the
time, including among Albanians and Slavs (especially Bosnians and
Serbs), who, like a multitude of Cretans, had also exchanged their
faith for Islam and from that moment on, largely became the
staunchest supporters of a regime that enabled them to oppress their
fellow tribesmen. This is still often more or less the case with
Turkish Greeks today, even when they are not Muslim. For example, in
1897, a Greek of this ilk did his utmost to thwart the interests of
his fellow tribesmen when, as Turkish ambassador in London, he
discussed the Greco-Turkish war. And so, even today, it is almost
always men of Greek descent who are presented by the Porte to the
Christian powers as models of impeccable statesmanship. And the
island of Samos, with its Greek Christian prince at its head, can be
considered a remarkable reminder of the time when the Sultans
regularly sent out degenerate Greeks north of the Danube to
subordinate the well-being of the inhabitants to their own interests
and those of their feudal lord.
Twice
(once under Selim II, in 1514, and once during the early part of the
Cretan War, in 1646) there was serious talk of exterminating all
Christians in Turkey. Fortunately, more sensible plans prevailed; so
that even before the eighteenth century, the Porte had been intent
on increasing rather than decreasing the number of Christian
taxpayers. Not without reason, the Turkish rulers feared that their
Christian subjects were slowly but surely disappearing; and that
would be an insurmountable blow to Turkish finances. For much more
could be gained from such a Christian dog than from a believer.
However, to avoid driving the rayas to despair, the Nizam Jiddid
(New System) was introduced in 1691, which ordered the provincial
governors to levy no other tax on these people than the harash,
i.e., poll tax. Aside from the blood tax for the Janissaries'
replenishment, this poll tax had originally been the only standard
Christian tax in Turkey. It had to be paid by all "unbelievers"
over the age of ten, except for clergy, the elderly, the blind, the
lame, and the maimed. Moreover, the import and export duties for
unbelievers were double those for Muslims.
That,
one might say, was oppressive enough; but from ancient times, and
still today, the harshness of taxes in Turkey lies less in the legal
amount than in the illegal collection. A pitiful example of this was
provided in 1571. At that time, the Christian subjects of the Great
Lord were driven to despair by extortion, while the vast majority
were so poor and miserable that they shuddered to look a Muslim in
the eye, imbued as they were with the realization that their
oppressors would deprive them of everything that even remotely left
them with their necessities. Bearing this in mind, the reader will
realize that the introduction of the Nizam Jeddid, combined with the
de facto abolition of the Janissary blood tax, allowed Turkish
Christians to breathe more freely, and from that time on, examples
of apostasy kept pace with the diminished temptation. The Venetians'
conquest of Morea at the beginning of the eighteenth century crowned
this salutary change, because, on the one hand, many who had more or
less been forced to become Muslims now returned to the Church of
their fathers, and, on the other hand, the Turkish government began
to treat its Christian subjects better, for fear of comparing too
unfavorably with the Italians. And it was not long before Russia's
claim to patronage over the rayas contributed even more to
preventing their apostasy.
It
was however, not only in the number, but also in the quality of the
population, the Greek provinces of Turkey had reason to regret their
forced incorporation into the Empire of the Crescent. The vast
majority of the highly cultured, almost all the notables, in short,
the flower of Greek nationality—all of these, after the fall
of the Byzantine Empire, had preferred voluntary exile. True,
Mohammed II had a Greek proclamation issued, addressed to the nobles
of Morea, in which he promised to respect their families and
property and to promote their prosperity; but this remained almost
ineffective. So widespread was the emigration of families of any
significance that only four or five of the Peloponnesian clans (if I
may so call them), who had played a major role in the Middle Ages,
remained in the land of their fathers; and in the rest of Greece,
the situation was not much better. Since these "aristocrats"
had a significant impact, this exodus was no less dangerous for the
maintenance of Greek nationality than the emigration to America
today, in which so many Greek peasants participate that the press in
Athens, Patras, etc., is alarmed.
It
was natural that most of the aforementioned emigrants settled in the
Venetian colonies on ancient Greek territory, which, as a result,
became a thorn in the side of the Turkish conqueror. I will give a
few examples of such emigrants here. Michael Ralles, one of the
foremost Laconian (Spartan) Archontes, a champion of the
Turkish-Venetian war, and the Daimonogiannes brothers, prominent
figures, also from Laconia, settled in the Venetian possessions on
the peninsula; And Palaiologos, who can be considered the last
defender of Morea, entered Venetian military service. Yet other
high-ranking Greeks accompanied Sophia, the daughter of another
member of that famous family, which had last headed the Byzantine
government, on her journey to Moscow, where she was to marry Grand
Duke Ivan of Muscovy. As a result, the Muscovite court soon became a
favorite residence of the prominent Greeks who had known her father
and whose descendants, three centuries later, played a prominent
role in or after the failed uprising that took place in Morea at
that time.
A
large number of Greeks, eager to fight the enemies not only of their
own but also of their adopted homeland, volunteered to enlist as
light cavalry of the Venetian commonwealth. The research of Sathas,
a distinguished Greek scholar of our time, has shed all the desired
light on this remarkable elite troop. The name "Stradiotians,"
by which they are known, is not the Greek (= soldiers), but the
Italian word "strada" (= road), with a Greek suffix—thus
meaning "roadmen," i.e., men without a permanent
residence. Composed of Greeks and Albanians (Arnauts), the corps
drew its largest component from Laconia (the Mayonnais) and its
bravest from Nauplia (Argolis). In the list of its commanders, we
find names such as Palaiologos and others, once belonging to men who
sacrificed their lives for the freedom of the Peloponnese. The
golden age for the Stradiotians was the sixteenth century, when
Europe resounded with the praise of their daring. A Stradiot even
served in the English military under Henry VIII, for whom he
achieved fame in Scotland and was rewarded with the command of
Boulogne, then an English fortress. 2)
The
Stradiots were also widely known in other respects, and not always
with praise. Their boastfulness and vanity were a favorite subject
of mockery in Venetian theatricals, just as Plautus of old
entertained Roman audiences with the snarky antics of his
Pyrgopolynices (in his comedy "The Boastful Soldier").
Thus, Tasso speaks of the rapacity of the Stradiots. Other poets,
however, have sung their praises. It is certain that some of them
made a name for themselves in science and poetry. Their name,
especially as lyricists, still resonates well.
1)
However, not runaways, nor vagabonds. 2) Only for six years
(1544-1550).
Even
today, some of these songs, written in a mixed language based on
Greek, are still sung from time to time. Overall, however, the
Stradiotians excelled more in their feats of arms than in their use
of the lute. Their most formidable weapon was a long spear, equipped
with a razor-sharp point at both ends, which made the weapon equally
sharp from behind.
If
it ever (which rarely happened) failed the rider, he had an
effective substitute on his saddle—a club; and woe betide the
skull on which that formidable object landed. How unfortunate that
all that force and skill was usually directed not against Turks, but
against Christians, who had the misfortune to stand in the way of
the Venetians!
Even
more lamentable is the fact that the classical soil of Greece also
lost its centuries-old fame in arts and sciences when the Turks took
control. All traces of higher education disappeared from the
favorite seat of the Muses. Most literate Greeks emigrated to Italy;
and, just as once, in the words of Horace,
"Captivated
Hellas knew how to captivate its conquerors,"
so,
sixteen centuries later, it knew how to kindle the light of
Hellenism in the twilight of Christian Europe. A few examples will
suffice here. The Athenian Demetrius Chalcocondyles became the tutor
of one of the sons of the great Florentine Lorenzo dei Medici, while
Georgios Hermonymos, a Spartan, was the first Greek to openly teach
his language in Paris. Two Peloponnesians, Demetrius Ralles, a
learned warrior, and Isidore, who had distinguished himself as a
theologian and also in the defense of Constantinople, spent the rest
of their lives in Italy; and the historian Phrantzes wrote his
chronicle on the island of Corfu, where he lived until his death
under Venetian protection.
We
owe a great deal of our civilization to this fifteenth-century
dissemination of Greek scholarship; but what Europe gained, Greece
lost. More than two hundred years passed before that unfortunate
country could at least partially compensate for the loss it incurred
through the emigration of so many bright minds. Although they did
their best to interest numerous influential men in the fate of their
beleaguered homeland, the practical benefit was small compared to
the irreparable loss their unfortunate fellow tribesmen had suffered
in their persons. Had they remained in Greece, their influence would
undoubtedly have been felt: they would have obtained important
positions in Turkish service, which would likely have enabled them
to alleviate the plight of their fellow citizens; and their example
would, in any case, have prevented the majority of Greece from
falling prey to the most lamentable ignorance for more than two
centuries.
In
the absence of an aristocracy and literate people, the peasantry and
the clergy (mostly the sons of farmers) now became the sole, or at
least the most important, representatives of the Greek nation. And
now we are faced with a remarkable phenomenon. Never before has
Greece suffered such great losses as under the Turks (through
apostasy and emigration); And yet, Greece, under foreign rule, never
experienced a time when its descendants were so free from mixing
with other races as in the long years between the Turkish conquest
and the decisive war of liberation. There is no reasonable doubt
that after the prolonged period of confusion that followed the fall
of Frankish authority in Greece, even the Turkish government
(because it was strong and decisive) was, to a certain extent, a
true blessing for the vast majority of the Christian population.
There is another important point. The settlement of foreign
invaders, which had been commonplace during the centuries of
Christian rule, now came to an end; and the natural consequence was
that for nearly four centuries the Hellenic race remained free from
foreign taint.
Traces
of the Franks settled in Greece were only of any significance on the
islands; there was no longer any talk of Slavic incursions. And the
Greeks who had remained loyal to the Orthodox Church never married a
Turkish woman, while a Greek woman who married a Muslim was
immediately excommunicated. Thus, an abyss remained between
Christianity and Islam in Greece: and (miracle of miracles) there
was harmony between Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, and
Rumenians. The irritability that otherwise alienated all these
nationalities ceased under the Turkish system of government at the
time, which tarred all Christians with the same brush, thereby
causing them to regard each other only as fellow sufferers.
In
the Greek regions that obeyed Venice, intellectual development was
certainly not great, but nevertheless much better than in Turkish
Greece. For more than two hundred years, literally nothing was done
there to teach the people even to read and write; and only in
exceptional cases was it found that an archbishop who could properly
write his name. Larissa was still the largest and wealthiest city in
Thessaly; and yet it is a fact that a modern scholar who examined
the archiepiscopal archives from that period was shocked by the
barbaric Greekness of those records. It is even surprising that, in
all those years, some literary work was occasionally done. Among the
scribes of that period rescued from utter oblivion by Sathas, only
four, not counting some theologians, belong to Greece proper. The
first two of these soon emigrated to Italy, namely the learned
Chalcocondyles brothers. The aforementioned Demetrius, of whom the
aforementioned brother, provided critical editions of Homer, etc.,
in Milan, where a tomb was erected for him, while the other brother
published a History of the Turks. The other two mentioned here were
citizens of what was then Venetian Nauplia, and lived around the end
of the sixteenth century, mostly in Constantinople. One of them
(Zygomalas) wrote a History of Constantinople from 1391 to 1578.
Another
historical work was more important. I mean the "Chronicle"
by Dorotheos, later Metropolitan of Monembasia; the author was from
Moldavia. This curious book contained the entire history of the
world from Adam to the year 1629, and was later continued by others
until the year 1685. Until very recently, this work was the only
popular history book of the Greek people.
Around
the middle of the seventeenth century, some effort finally began to
be made towards school education in Greece. This was thanks to the
"Haggineion," a Greek school still existing today in
Venice, which took its name from a certain wealthy Greek merchant,
Haggines, who founded it in 1621. Just as the leading Greek
merchants still do today, based in London and elsewhere abroad, the
wealthy seventeenth-century colony of such merchants in Venice also
took a keen interest in the well-being and progress of their
fatherland. To this end, spurred on by Haggines' example, they
occasionally sent delegates to Greece, who were to promote the
higher interests of the old country as much as possible by
establishing schools and acting as apostles of the gospel of
literary civilization. And so, as early as 1647, one of those
Venetian Greeks founded two model schools, one in Joanina (now in
southern Albania), his birthplace, the other in Athens, where,
around the same time, Roman Catholic monks were also teaching the
youth the very basics of science.
{Conclusion
follows.)
GREECE
UNDER THE TURKS. II
One
would be mistaken to believe that the Greeks always patiently
acquiesced to Turkish rule. The prolonged rule of the "Franks"
had resulted in them becoming much more warlike than they had
previously been; but the awareness of the crushing superiority of
the Ottomans made them averse to rebellion if they could not count
on foreign aid. In the immediate period after the conquest of
Constantinople, it truly seemed that such aid would not be long in
coming. The East expected a new Crusade; and the West was planning
one. Georgilas, a Greek poet of the period, appealed to "French
and English, Spaniards and Germans" to join forces for the
reconquest of the new Byzantium. The many learned Greeks, who had
been dispersed across a large part of Western Europe by the loss of
that capital, attempted to rouse the rulers of Christendom to the
fate of their remaining compatriots. This was particularly
successful for Cardinal Bessarion, who was twice considered for the
papal throne and who crisscrossed Europe with unwavering zeal in the
cause of oppressed Hellenism. The popes of that era supported
Bessarion as much as they could; and Pius II even temporarily
relocated to Ancona, where the Crusaders were to assemble. But the
death of that church prince in that famous seaport brought the great
enterprise to ruin; And the crusade, for which such elaborate
preparations had been made, ended in a miserable fiasco.
Meanwhile,
war between the sultan and the Venetian republic had become
inevitable. The Venetians, after all, were convinced that the great
"infidel" conqueror would attempt to complete his Greek
territories by conquering the colonies they had left on Greek soil.
A pretext for hostilities was quickly found. An Arnautic (Albanian)
slave, belonging to the Pasha of Athens, had run away with his
master's valuables and had sought refuge in the city to the banner
of Saint Mark flying in Methone. The Venetian commander of the
fortress refused the extradition; whereupon the Turks, in turn,
seized Argos, which had been handed over to them by a treacherous
priest. Moreover, they burned down the area around Methone. No
wonder the war party in Venice then got its way, so that in 1463
hostilities began on both sides. Bertoldo d'Este became
commander-in-chief of the Venetian army, with orders to proceed to
Nauplia and cooperate as much as possible with Admiral Loredan,
while the famous Albanian Skanderbeg received ample support to
create a formidable diversion in the wild mountainous regions of his
native land.
The
Venetian commander-in-chief received considerable reinforcement by
opening the gates of the Cretan prisons and converting their forced
inmates into soldiers. At the same time, he issued a proclamation
calling on the oppressed Greeks to gain their freedom with his help.
This call was immediately echoed by the Spartans, who took up arms
under the valiant Michael Ralles, head of a renowned Lacedaemonian
family. Sparta's example was followed not only by the indomitable
Mayans, but also by the Arcadians, commanded by Bua, the same
Albanian who (strangely enough) had waged war against the Greeks
nine years earlier. With united forces, Argos was soon recaptured;
whereupon d'Este ordered the rebuilding of the famous wall that
closed off the Isthmus of Corinth and had been destroyed by the
efforts of Sultan Murad II. In the incredibly short time of fifteen
days, that six-mile-long and twelve-foot-high wall, secured by a
double moat and 136 small towers, was rebuilt by the combined force
of approximately thirty thousand Greeks, Albanians, and Italians
(d'Este's united army).
However,
prosperity was followed by adversity. In a battle near Corinth,
d'Este lost his life; and Mahmud Pasha, the first Greek to hold the
high office of Grand Vizier, led the victorious Turkish army, which
had just put an end to the Kingdom of Bosnia, to the recently
repaired enclosing wall of the vast peninsula. Fear gripped the
hearts of the defenders when a battle-worn force, three times their
own, prepared to besiege the great defensive structure. Without a
fight, they abandoned the magnificent creation of their hands and
sought refuge in the heart of the Peloponnese. Once again, the
isthmus was stripped bare of defenses, and Argos was abandoned to
the victorious Turks, who then vented their fury on the Venetian
colony of Corone, whose leading members, dispatched to
Constantinople, were sawn to pieces by order of the Sultan. When the
Spartans realized that the Venetians were abandoning them, they
retreated to the inaccessible recesses of the southernmost headland,
where the Turks tried in vain to lure them with offers of complete
impunity.
Yet
Venice was not discouraged. Sigismundo Malatesta, the well-known
founder of Rimini's cathedral, was appointed in d'Este's place, but
his Peloponnesian campaign did not achieve much recognition. The
grand castle of Mistra, now an imposing ruin, withstood all his
efforts; and he returned to Italy with no other booty than the bones
of Gemistos Plethon, a late philosopher, whose Neo-Platonic
teachings he adored, and whose bones he had interred in his
magnificent foundation at Rimini, where his own tomb stands beside
that of the sage. Barberigo, the Venetian governor of the Morea,
continued the war with even less luck than Malatesta. Disregarding
the advice of Ralles, who was fully acquainted with the local
situation, he decided to besiege Patras; and, attempting to repel a
false sortie, he fell into an ambush and was killed. Even more
unfortunate was poor Ralles, who fell alive into the enemy's hands
and was speared by them. The pitiful remnants of the Venetian force
retreated to Kalamata, where they were defeated once again.
Meanwhile,
the Venetian fleet had been very busy cruising the Aegean Sea,
conquering some islands, and plundering others. In 1466, Capello,
the admiral, anchored at the Piraeus and landed troops to launch an
attack on Athens. Since the conquest of that famous city, nothing
had become known of it in the literary world of the rest of Europe,
except what can be read about it in a fantastic description of it,
written by an unknown person around the year 1460. I mean the Greek
manuscript titled "Athens" Theaters and Schools,"
discovered much later in Vienna. Now, however, Athens once again
briefly acquired a modest place in world history. Initially, the
Turkish garrison drove back Capello's troops; but when they returned
in larger numbers, they seized the city proper, massacred the Turks
who stood in their way, and plundered the citizens. Capello,
however, did not attempt a storming of the Acropolis; and when the
Turkish commander showed no inclination to evacuate that famous
citadel, he embarked again and landed in Argolis, where he learned
of Barberigo's death. He then sailed to Euboea, where he soon died
of heartbreak.
From
that moment on, Athens disappears from the pages of history for well
over a century. However, a Greek chronicle among the manuscripts of
Oxford University, dated 1606, reveals that Athens suffered horribly
from the plague seven times between 1480 and 1554, and that the
citizens regularly had to enlist their boys to support the
Janissaries. Moreover, we know of three Athenian Metropolitans
during that period; and a little later, an Athenian became
Ecumenical Patriarch. The jealousy that Venice's power had inspired
in the other Italian states prevented them from supporting the
powerful republic in this unequal struggle; and when the new Pope,
Paul II, though a Venetian by birth, showed little enthusiasm for
combating the Crescent, the ambitious republic had no other armed
ally than Skanderbeg, whose death (1468) placed Venice in the
greatest straits. In the early years of the thirteenth century,
Venice had established a foothold on the large island of Euboea; and
later, it became its undisputed master. However, especially since
the incorporation of Thessaly into Turkey, the Venetian colonists on
Euboea increasingly became troublesome neighbors to the Turks. Their
raids there became increasingly frequent; and on each trip, they
kidnapped a number of inhabitants, some of whose places were taken
by Albanian colonists from Thessaly. Added to the enormous nuisance
the population suffered as a result was finally the formidable
plague of plague; so it was no surprise when, on the island, now
christened "Negroponte," one heard the common saying that
only a good peace or a good war could bring salvation. This saying
was all the less exaggerated because it included "a plague of
Jews." Gradually, almost all land ownership on Negroponte had
passed into the hands of these clever guests; consequently, the
Venetian government finally prohibited any further land purchases by
Israelites, raised their taxes, and prohibited them from keeping
Christian slaves or serfs. Conversely, the executioner was regularly
chosen from their ranks. Yet, all this was not enough. The island's
Catholic rulers observed with ever-increasing distrust that their
Greek Orthodox subjects here, as almost everywhere else, preferred
Islam to the Church of Rome. From the perspective of the Italian
rulers, we must admit that they were right, when, increasingly
provoked by the growing Turkish threat, they refused to accept into
their ranks a single non-Catholic comrade-in-arms, who, encompassing
all Catholic islanders over the age of eighteen, armed them with
sword or bow against the Ottomans. Even membership in the Council of
Governors, previously open to the Greeks, was now taken away from
them. Negroponte retained that sharply defined Italian-Catholic type
until the Venetian government ceased to exist there. Only in a few
other places, for example, Corfu, did the rule of that mighty
republic take such deep root.
Such
was the state of affairs when Mohammed II, whose armies had
conquered Athens and almost all of Morea, began seriously to
consider annexing the large island, situated so close to the
mainland. Spies soon informed the Venetian government of the
impending storm. From Cyprus, from Rhodes, and from wherever else,
even from Burgundy, people sought help against the great sultan, who
had already conquered so many Christian states and was now preparing
to lose such an important island to Christendom. However, Venice was
generally abandoned. When the going got tough in 1470, the Venetian
forces proved unequal to the daunting task that awaited them.
Muhammad II had carefully surveyed Negroponte beforehand; and now he
carefully planned his attack accordingly. While a large Turkish
fleet sailed there, he personally led the land army to the spot
where Chalcis, the capital, was only just a stone's throw from the
mainland.
It
is separated by a very narrow strait. Land and naval forces arrived
almost simultaneously at that famous spot for many centuries. The
Venetian naval commander was not strong enough to effectively oppose
the landing of the troops on the Turkish ships, or the construction
of a pontoon bridge across the Euripus, which brought Mohammed and
his men to the Negropontian shore. Shortly thereafter, Chalcis was
besieged by land and sea.
For
four weeks, the city was defended with all the courage of
desperation by the Venetians and the majority of the citizens, and
heavy losses were inflicted on the besiegers; but in the end, the
commander's faintheartedness, combined with the treachery of some
citizens, tipped the scales in the Turks' favor. The sultan had
discovered (through treachery?) a weak point in the defenses; And
when he stormed that point with all his troops, a furious battle
that lasted for hours, in which even women and children
participated, could not prevent the enemy from entering the city.
They still did not surrender, but defended themselves for a
considerable time behind the chains stretched across the streets.
More than six thousand townspeople and soldiers paid for this with
their lives; and when at last the garrison of the citadel
surrendered, after having been solemnly promised their lives, that
solemn promise was horribly broken. The lesser soldiers were flayed
and speared alive, and the general was sawn to pieces. The remaining
fortified points on the island soon surrendered to the Turks, who
slaughtered the Italians and carried off the Greeks as slaves. The
sultan, who had suffered enormous losses, was finally satisfied with
his revenge and returned to Constantinople, congratulating himself
on having dealt the formidable republic a blow unlike any it had
ever received. This was also the sentiment of the Venetians
themselves, who rightly described the news of Euboea's defeat as
"the worst news that had ever befallen the republic."
That
there was little enthusiasm in the city of St. Mark for the
remaining defenders of Negroponte is quite natural, though it did
not achieve anything. The commander, who had proven to be as
unenterprising as he was heroic, was punished with lifelong exile.
As for the Italian families of the island, who, having escaped the
enemy's sword, had sought refuge in Venetian colonies or in the city
of Venice—the fate of those people was pitiful. Many of them
had lost everything; And there was no shortage of noblewomen, who
had led a glorious life on Negroponte on large estates, the family's
property from generation to generation, and who were now forced to
live out the remainder of their lives in convents with meager
government support. And yet, even in appearance, the memory of the
Venetian era has not yet disappeared in the capital of this
beautiful island: even today, the ramparts of Chalcis are adorned
with the proud Lion of Saint Mark, and a citizen of that charming
city will likely show you in one of its squares a large pile of
stone cannonballs that served in the memorable siege. But since that
sad event, although there have been no shortage of vigorous attempts
at reconquest, Euboea has had no other masters than the Turks, until
it finally, as for many centuries, once again formed an important
part of the Greek homeland. Despite this heavy blow, the Venetians
remained undeterred. Pope Sixtus IV successfully attempted to
persuade the rulers of Naples and Cyprus, and the Order of St. John
on Rhodes, to join a "holy alliance" in support of Venice
against the Turks, who were being attacked by Persia in Asia, while
the partners of the Holy Alliance would keep them busy in Europe.
Now, the tide seemed to turn. The Venetian general Mocenigo
plundered several Turkish-occupied islands in the Aegean Sea and
bombarded Smyrna; so that Sultan Mohammed reluctantly agreed to make
peace proposals. Venice would hear nothing of it; but now the
promising alliance collapsed due to the defection of the King of
Naples. He would grant Cyprus to no one but himself; And when he saw
that Venice laid claim to that glorious island, he not only broke
the alliance but even sided with the sultan. This is the first, but
by no means the last, example of a Christian prince aiding the
Muslims in fighting his fellow believers. It was as if this
treachery had no blessing; for the Venetian-Greek garrison of
Lepanto (Naupactus) thwarted all attempts by the Turks, who finally
transferred the battlefield to Albania, where the Venetians had some
possessions.
After
a sixteen-year struggle, Venice, however powerful, longed for peace.
In 1479, peace was concluded with Mohammed. Venice retained
possession of the island of Aegina, Lepanto, and seven fortresses on
the Morea, of which Nauplia, Argos, and Navarino are the best known.
Thus, the republic retained possession of some important settlements
in Greece; but the island par excellence (Negroponte) remained lost
to it. This loss, however, was nothing compared to what the Greeks
suffered. Venice's naval power was far superior to the Turkish; and
to it it owed all its victories and conquests; but the poor Greeks
had to pay for this all too often, just as, during the most recent
Greek revolt against Turkey, the Greek population of Smyrna, for
example, undoubtedly would have paid the price for the consequences
of a possible bombardment. In the fifteenth century, thousands of
Greek inhabitants were deported as slaves or little better from the
fortresses and coasts contested by Venice; and thus these poor
oppressed people often suffered no less from the Christians than
from the Muslims.
The
sixteen-year war had proven that the Greek nation had not yet
degenerated to the point of ceasing to produce champions of the
highest caliber. One example is appropriate here: that of Maroula,
the heroine of Lemnos, who deserves to be placed on a par with the
noblest women of ancient Sparta. The island of Lemnos, belonging to
Venice, had been invaded by the Turks; and its only city was
besieged by them. Already the courage of the Christians began to
fail when Maroula wrenched his sword and shield from her dying
father's stiffened fingers, placed herself at the head of the
islanders, and drove out the Turks. As a reward, she was given the
freedom to choose a husband from among the most noble of the
unmarried officers; and Venice provided a rich dowry.
The
twenty-year peace that followed the Venetian War was by no means a
period of tranquility for the Greeks. Hardly had peace been
concluded when a formidable uprising broke out on the central tip of
the Morea Peninsula, the well-known Maina. The soul of this uprising
was the chieftain Korkodeilos Kladas, after whom the
nineteenth-century leaders who played such a significant role in the
great war of independence seem to have been modeled. Kladas was
among the last Peloponnesian chieftains who submitted to Mohammed
II; and the shrewd conqueror had deemed it expedient to win him
over, if possible, by granting him the fertile plain of Helos,
bordering the northern border of Maina, as a military fief. While
the highly debatable assertion that the Helots of antiquity derived
their name from it is true, it is at least certain that Kladas
resembled an old Spartan more than a Helot. The Venetians also
attempted to win him over by appointing him captain of the
Stradiotians mentioned in the first part of this essay; and as such
he proved himself useful in the Sixteen Years' War. But it soon
became apparent that a leader of irregular troops, who considers
himself indispensable in wartime, is likely to become a bone of
contention after peace is concluded. Kladas refused to acknowledge
the cession of the Maina to the Turks. He secretly left the fortress
of Corone, which remained in Venice; and the Maina became a safe
haven for him. There he raised the standard of revolt; and soon
gathered thousands of armed men around him. The Venetian rulers
feared that the Sultan would suspect them of complicity and break
the recently concluded peace. To this end, they captured Kladas's
remaining relatives and demanded that the Mayonnais hand over the
rebel leader to the Turkish governor of Morea. A large bounty was
also placed on Kladas's head. However, the freedom-loving Mayonnais
refused to betray their brave leader; and a Turkish army sent
against him suffered a heavy blow. Unfortunately, heated disputes
broke out between Kladas and Theodoros Boua, another rebel leader.
The Turks did not hesitate to capitalize on this, penetrating into
hidden corners where no follower of the Prophet had ever set foot.
Yet, Kladas was their master. After a desperate and successful
attack on a small Turkish force, he found safe refuge on a galley
belonging to a Neapolitan squadron anchored in those waters. That
ship landed him safely in Naples, where he received an excellent
welcome from the king, who was worried about an impending Turkish
invasion of the eastern coasts of the kingdom. Cladas now ceased to
play a role in the history of his homeland; but in the chronicles
from the Kingdom of Naples, we find him fighting alongside
Skanderbeg's son in southern Albania in Neapolitan service. King
Ferdinand later rewarded him with a generous pension, which passed
on to his son.
In
1489, a new revolt broke out among the Mayans; but a far more
important event was unfolding around that time in southeastern
Europe. Andreas Palaiologos, the eldest son of the last feudal
prince (Despotes) of Morea (who was a brother of Byzantium's last
emperor), had made vain attempts to obtain aid from the King of
Naples in his attempt to regain his father's principality. He was
more successful with the ambitious King of France, Charles VIII. In
1494, a solemn meeting took place in Rome between the Greek prince
and Cardinal York, King Charles's representative. The result of the
discussions held at that time was that Palaiologos transferred all
his rights to the Byzantine throne to His Most Christian Majesty. He
did not do this for free, however, but in exchange for an annual
payment of 4,300 ducats and a gift of lands whose annual yield was
estimated at an average of 5,000 ducats. Furthermore, Charles,
through the cardinal, promised to return to the other his fief
(Despotate) of Morea if possible, in return for which Palaiologos
pledged to present the king with a magnificent grey horse annually
on St. Louis's Day, as a form of feudal homage. In that same year,
1494, the French king marched on Naples, having sent ahead an
exaggerated proclamation announcing his grandiose plans against the
Turks, while a court poet made a point of sounding the prediction
that "I pass, the man; then Greece enters, and we shall be
acclaimed by the king by his progress."
Shortly
after entering Rome, the adventurous king came into contact with
Prince Jim, an older brother of Sultan Mohammed's successor, Bajazet
II, whose throne he contested and by whom he had therefore been
banished. Having resided in Rome for several years under papal
protection, he had struck King Charles as a suitable lord to use for
his purposes. However, nothing came of it. The wretch, who at the
time was dishonoring the papal throne, had hastened to warn the
Sultan; and this promised him 300,000 ducats if he ensured that Jim
was "withdrawn from the misery of earthly life" as soon as
possible. The shameful bargain was concluded; and shortly
thereafter, Jim breathed his last, one of the victims of the
terrible poisonous powder, the secret of which was held by the dear
Borgia family.
Meanwhile,
fame had spread the brilliant and dazzling plans of the French king
beyond the Adriatic and Ionian Seas. Now that he had driven
Ferdinand of Arragon from his kingdom of Naples, he was expected as
a savior not only in southern Albania but also in Thessaly. Fear
gripped the hearts of the Turks, and Bajazet considered crossing the
Bosporus with all his baggage. False alarm! Charles's comprehensive
plans had aroused the jealousy of Europe's rulers; Venice captured
the French chief agent and forbade all ships in the ports under his
control to oblige the French king. He made a virtue of necessity,
returned to France, and abandoned the unfortunate Greeks, who had
counted on him, to their fate, which was terrible for many because
of Bajazet's vengeance. Such has been the usual outcome of Europe's
many attempts to intervene in Greek affairs. Quidquid
deïrirant reges, plectuntur Achivi. l)
The
services rendered to the Sultan were not long enough to deter him
from his plans for Venice's possessions in the Levant. As early as
1499, war flared up again. It was primarily aimed at Lepanto, so
fortified by Venice that the Venetian historian Cappelletto called
it "the principal stronghold of the Christian peoples in the
East." But to wrest Lepanto from the republic, the Turkish
fleet had to force its way into the Corinthian Gulf, which was
blocked by Venetian ships. A formidable naval battle took place in
the open sea. Two Venetian captains boarded one of the largest
Turkish ships of the line on either side; but the intrepid sailor in
command set it on fire; and all three ships and their heroic crews
were soon reduced to rubble. The remaining Venetian ships retreated
to Corfu; the Turkish fleet sailed into the vast bay; and Lepanto
surrendered. To secure access in the future, Bajazet had the forts
of Rhion and Antirrhion built at the point where the two shores were
closest together, which are known as to cover the "Little
Dardanelles."
The
loss of Lepanto compelled the republic to make peace proposals.
However, the sultan imposed such exorbitant conditions that the war
resumed with renewed vigor on both sides. Bajazet personally
presented himself as head of the land army; and already in the
following year (1500), a second Venetian fortress, the formidable
Methone, fell to the Turks after a stubborn defense, who slaughtered
almost half the population. Corone and Navarino surrendered at the
first requisition. Since the loss of Euboea, no such heavy loss had
befallen the Venetian authorities in the East. Methone, in
particular, was greatly deplored, as this now-insignificant seaport,
according to a Venetian archival document, was "the refuge par
excellence for our galleys and other ships on their way to the
Levant." Methone and Corone were Venice's oldest possessions in
Greece; but the Doges and their councilors had the unfortunate habit
of exploiting these two important assets to the fullest, simply to
free up funds for other ventures. And so it came about that, in the
Lagoons, it was realized too late that if an overseas territory is
valuable to the mother country, it must also be given considerable
money. Regarding Methone specifically, Sultan Bajazet valued this
acquisition so highly that he implemented a peculiarly practical
measure: all the Peloponnesian cities were each required to
surrender five families, who would form the core of the new
population. Stirred by this example, Venice soon after did something
similar: when, with the help of Spanish troops under the famous
Gonsalvo de Cordova, it wrested Cephallonia from the Turks, it
granted new settlements on that rather large island to the refugees
from Methone and Corone.
It
was fortunate for the Venetians that the sultan rested on his
laurels, so that in 1502 they conquered the island of Santa Maura
(Leucas) without much difficulty. The following year, peace was
concluded, stipulating that Venice would retain possession of
Cephallonia but return Santa Maura. The overall outcome of the war
was disadvantageous for both the Greeks and the Italian Republic.
This was also evident, among other things, from what happened to
Megara. This ancient city was quite important at the time as a
foraging point for the Turks; But precisely for that reason, it
suffered so much from the Venetians that its population almost
disappeared, only to be gradually revived by the influx of
Albanians.
For
more than thirty years, Greece was no longer a theater of war for
the Venetians and the Sultan. Both sides had their hands full
elsewhere: and so it was that the Doge even congratulated the famous
Soliman the Magnificent on the sad fact for Christendom that the
Turk had wrested the island of Rhodes from the Knights of St. John.
In Greece, things were calm, and the population recovered somewhat
from the formidable blows they had suffered; but the well-meaning
exhortations of some popes, combined with the patriotic eloquence of
Greek exiles like Lascaris, failed to rouse the European rulers to a
new Crusade. Emperor Charles V was not the man to liberate Hellas as
a tribute to the memory of those great men of antiquity, whose names
Lascaris so eloquently invoked. This scholar and ardent patriot lies
buried in Rome, as does that other great advocate of the Greek
cause, Bessarion. What a pity that reborn Greece is not endowed with
a Pantheon, where the remains of its noble exiles may finally rest
in free, native soil!
In
1531, Methone was besieged again, this time by the Johannites, who
contented themselves with plundering. Of far more significance was
an invasion of the Greek coasts the following year, when Emperor
Charles waged war against the sultan. Charles, who cared far more
about harming the Turks than benefiting the Greeks, contented
himself with sending a fleet under the renowned Genoese Andrea Doria
to the Levant. A series of rapid victories justified the trust
placed in him. Corone, for example, was taken with the cooperation
of the population; but the emperor, realizing he could not sustain
such a remote possession in the long run, offered it to the
Johanniters. When they declined this difficult offer, and the sultan
prepared to besiege Corone, Charles turned necessity into a virtue
and decided to have the entire population of the city relocated.
This came as a thunderbolt to those poor people (mostly Albanians),
especially since the plague had broken out among them. Yet, it seems
the vast majority embarked on imperial vessels.
They
embarked, where many of them succumbed to the plague. When the
survivors were brought ashore in Messina, they looked so miserable
that the terrified citizenry did not rest until they were
transferred to the hospital. The few who survived all this moved to
Naples, where the emperor granted them an annuity, as well as some
dispensations, such as the use of an Orthodox (Greek) church. Out of
gratitude, they enlisted as imperial Stradiotes, in which capacity
they displayed a heroism that would have served them well had they
gone into battle against the hereditary enemies of their homeland.
Meanwhile,
Doria continued to make the sultan tremble. For example, he forced
the Turkish garrison of Patras to surrender and seized the two forts
dominating the aforementioned "Little Dardanelles."
Deceived by his pretenses and blinded by his victories, the Greek
population revolted; and all the Turks they could find were
slaughtered. Alas! this cost them dearly. It was not long before the
Genoese naval hero departed, leaving his Greek allies pitifully in
the lurch. They paid terribly for their momentary blindness: and
they were fully justified in praying: "Lord, deliver us from
our saviors!"
In
1537, Soliman declared war on Venice; and hostilities began with the
siege of Corfu, one of the mainstays of Venice's power. Although the
Turks lost their lives to that important fortress, they inflicted
considerable damage on their enemies in the Levant. The Turkish
fleet, led by the notorious pirate Haireddin, nicknamed Barbarossa,
a man of Greek origin, visited one Greek-Venetian island after
another, leaving burning villages, destruction, and misery in its
wake. Even the Ionian Islands were not spared his chastisement,
after which he skirted the Morea and unexpectedly appeared before
Aegina. At that time, the ancient and renowned capital of that
wealthy island was uninhabited, and the population, fearing the
pirates, had built a new city on a nearly inaccessible rock, which
is still full of ruins to this day. For Haireddin, this new city
also proved to be accessible. Everything became his prey; the adult
males were murdered without exception; and the women and children
were mercilessly carried off as slaves. There were more than six
thousand of them! So steadfastly and meticulously did the victors
proceed that a French nobleman, who visited the unfortunate island
with a French squadron not long afterward, found literally no one
there. As for Morea, the Turks had laid siege to Nauplia (Napoli di
Romania). This important port city defended itself heroically. The
besiegers had planted their artillery on a nearby hill, where today
a prison seems to cast a piteous glance at the city below. But
despite the multitude of bullets that threatened the garrison and
civilians, there was not a moment's thought of surrender; and
finally, the siege was lifted. Until then, Venice had stood alone,
and the sultan had found an ally (at least nominally) in Francis I,
who had signaled a pro-Turkish policy, which later had an undeniable
influence on the much-discussed Eastern Question. Now, however, Pope
Paul III succeeded in forging an alliance between the emperor,
Venice, and himself. Corfu became the gathering place for the Triple
Alliance fleet; from there, they sailed to the Gulf of Arta
(Ambracia), where sixteen centuries earlier the Battle of Actium had
decided the fate of the Roman Empire, and where the red-bearded
buccaneer was now prepared for a naval battle. Unfortunately,
command of the allied fleet had been entrusted to Doria, who,
however capable and brave, was jealous of Venice as Genoa's sworn
enemy, and from whom no great effort could therefore be expected. No
wonder, then, that Haireddin won an easy victory, and that the
unworthy alliance collapsed.
Thus,
Venice was once again forced to fend for itself. More or less at the
Sultan's mercy, it concluded a peace treaty with him in 1540,
surrendering Nauplia and Monembasia (Malvasia), its last possessions
in the Morea. What a humiliation for the proud Lion of St. Mark, now
that he had to withdraw completely from the Greek mainland, where he
had been ensconced for almost three and a half centuries! Aside from
the Ionian Islands and half-Greek Cyprus, nothing remained of all
his Greek possessions except Crete and two insignificant Cyclades
(Tenos and Myconos). The loyal population of Nauplia and Monembasia
was transferred to Corfu, where they formed a significant part of
the citizenry, and where the name of the town of Stradioti still
keeps alive the memory of that great migration.
The
disappearance of the Venetian flag from mainland Greece deprived the
inhabitants (or at least the vast majority) of their last refuge.
Most of their leaders, following the example of Michael Ralles, had
found a safe haven in Venetian territory (Crete, Corfu, etc.). While
there is no shortage of examples of Greeks who placed Turkish rule
above Venetian rule, it is nevertheless a given that the Greeks of
that time were wont to do as Westerners promised them liberation
from the Turkish yoke. Before 1540, the Venetian settlements in the
Peloponnese certainly had the advantage of making those regions
accessible to Western civilization; But on the other hand, the
sorely tried country had at least enjoyed relief since 1540, after
the unrest and disasters of the clashes between the Cross and the
Crescent. Among the Turks, dull monotony reigned, but at least
tranquility; and that tranquility served to hold together, if not
strengthen, the disparate elements of Hellenism.
During
the first thirty years after the disappearance of the Venetian
banner from Morea, the Greek mainland was quiet, although some
continued to eloquently advocate on its behalf. The fall of the
Duchy of Naxos in 1566 and the expulsion of the Genoese from Chios
by the Turks that same year further diminished Italian influence in
the Levant; but it was not until Selim II attacked the Venetian
island of Cyprus in 1570 that the Greeks once again witnessed a
momentous struggle. The first military operations were directed
against the coast opposite Corfu and against a fort the Turks had
recently built to control a natural harbor near Cape Matapan. The
Turkish galleys under the protection of this fort could probably
bombard the ships sent by Venice to defend Cyprus. Thanks to the
help of the Mayots, always ready to vent their wrath on the Turks,
the Venetians succeeded in capturing the fort in question. Unable to
hold it, they destroyed it and then sailed to the island of Andros,
whose Greek population, however, suffered even more than the Turkish
garrison from the excesses of the Venetian visitors.
Meanwhile,
the powerful republic had done its utmost to forge an alliance
against the Sultan. Consequently, in the spring of 1571, an alliance
was concluded between Pope Pius V, the Spanish King Philip II, and
the Republic, aimed at the destruction of the Ottoman Empire. This
was now the thirteenth time that a "Holy Alliance" with
the same goal had been announced to the world. Now, however, it
seemed that it would finally achieve its goal. A colossal fleet was
assembled, commanded by Don John of Austria, a bastard son of
Charles V. However, almost five weeks before that Armada left the
Sicilian coast, Cyprus had already fallen; and, while the allies
were not yet fully in agreement on their plans, the Turkish fleet
had already ravaged the coast of Crete and carried off more than six
thousand people from Cephallonia.
It
was not until the morning of October 7 that a naval battle broke
out. The Turkish fleet commander awaited the enemy off Lepanto,
while the Christian fleet lay at anchor outside the Corinthian Gulf
near the Echinades (a group of islands near the northern coast).
Ali, the Turkish admiral, against the advice of wise men, left his
favorable mooring and sought out the enemy, who did the same. They
met a good distance west of Lepanto. It was a striking spectacle. A
brilliant sun reflected off the colorful Turkish ships, off the
steel armor of the Christian warriors, and off the calm waves, where
almost two thousand years earlier a bloody naval battle had taken
place between Corinthians and Corcyraeans. The Christian warriors
numbered approximately 30,000, the Turks some five thousand fewer.
Several Venetian galleys were commanded by Greeks, including two
Cretans. But the foremost among the Greek naval heroes, indeed the
jewel of the entire Christian fleet, was Kondokallis, a scion of
Corfu.
Parata,
a Venetian historian of the time, unequivocally awards the palm of
honor to all the Greeks who participated in this unforgettable naval
battle, specifically in three respects: daring, skill, and
discipline. So, precisely the three essentials. To sugarcoat the
pill a little for his Italian readers, he adds that the Greeks are
more accustomed to naval warfare than the Italians and Spanish.
The
Turkish defeat was crushing. Well over two hundred ships were
captured or destroyed, and nearly thirty thousand men were killed,
compared to fifteen ships and eight thousand Christian deaths, among
whom, however, were numerous prominent Venetians. Among the Turkish
dead, I mention only the commander-in-chief. Among the wounded was
the world-famous author of "Don Quixote," who, like
Aeschylus at Marathon, had his hand severed, also for Greece against
the Barbarians.
The
first impression of this tremendous defeat was so crushing that
Sultan Selim did not eat any food for three days. And no wonder. The
Turkish fleet (one of the largest in the world) was destroyed; the
Greeks became rebellious; and a coolly calculating French diplomat
expressed his conviction that the allies could have conquered
Constantinople with little difficulty. But the disunity of those
allies and the spirit of Sokolli, the Grand Vizier, were the
salvation of the venerable Turkish empire. Eight months after the
"Battle of Lepanto," a new fleet sailed out of the
Dardanelles, numbering 250 ships, fifteen of the largest of which
were a gift from a wealthy Greek merchant, a citizen of
Constantinople, known to his tribesmen as "Son of Satan."
And Sokolli rightly said that Venice had shaved off the sultan's
beard, but that he (the Vizier) had severed an arm of the republic
(referring to Cyprus).
The
Battle of Lepanto threw the world into turmoil; but as far as the
Greeks were concerned, it would have been better if that bloody
victory had never been won. With enthusiasm, those unfortunates had
awaited the arrival of the Armada, which would free them from the
hated yoke; The intoxication of their magnificent victory prompted
them to take up arms, urging the victors to support the rebellion on
the Morea with their fleet, which had proven irresistible. But, as
usual, everything was now also ruined by a lack of unity among the
allies. They soon held a major council of war aboard the admiral's
ship; but Don John proved to be little more than a trooper in the
face of the prevailing discord. One advocated a grand naval display
along the Peloponnese coasts, another an attack on Euboea, a third a
similar attack on Santa Maura (the only of the Ionian Islands that
belonged to the Turks), while a fourth advocated an attack on the
forts of the "little Dardanelles." Ultimately, they did
nothing, because "winter was approaching," and they
retreated to Corfu, from where the Spanish and papal ships sailed
further west. Meanwhile, many Peloponnesians had crossed the Gulf of
Corinth and, in the port town of Galaxidi (south of Delphi), joined
a large contingent from Salona (ancient Amphissa). In the church of
Galaxidi, these patriots swore an immediate, mortal war against the
Turks. But among those who took part in this most solemn oath was a
traitor who secretly crossed the Gulf and revealed the plot to the
sultan's henchmen. Seething with anger, the sultan then took revenge
on the poor Archbishop of Patras, who was burned alive. Unaware of
this, the rebels, three thousand strong, marched north of the Gulf
of Corinth toward Salona, then a relatively important
city. Instead of the expected "Frankish" aid, they found
access to that fortress blocked by Turkish troops. The wily Bey, who
resided in Salona, had them kindly invited to come and
openly plead their grievances before him. They fell into a trap.
Eighty of them were sent to the Bey, who received them with honors
and listened to them with great sympathy. But hardly had night
fallen when he had all the delegates thrown into the castle dungeon,
where they were soon executed, with the exception of a priest, who
owed his survival to the strength of his fists.
The
rebels who had remained outside now crossed the inlet again; and
with many reinforcements, they found refuge in the Maina, where not
long afterward the two Melissenos brothers from Epidaurus gathered
an army of 28,000 men under their banners, and with them bedeviled
the Turks in that almost inaccessible region for two whole years.
Don John, who led an idle life in Messina, was reluctant to resume
his command, as Spain became increasingly at odds with France.
Therefore, he wrote a letter to one of the two heroic brothers,
urging him to keep the revolt going until the liberators' fleet
arrived. He did not rush: it was not until August 1572 that he
resumed command of the allied ships. Off Messenia, they encountered
the Turkish fleet; but no engagement took place. Attempts to capture
Methone and Navarino were unsuccessful to seize; and when the season
was already too far advanced, they retreated westward. The broken
rebels held out for a short time in the recesses of the Maina; but
finally they abandoned their desperate resistance and were accepted
with favor after the Melissenos brothers fled. In the city of
Naples, both found an excellent welcome and, after their death, a
tomb.
Before
the summer of 1573, peace was restored between Venice and the
Sultan. The republic resigned itself to the loss of the beautiful
island of Cyprus; and for its immense sacrifices of blood and money,
the meager laurels of Lepanto were its only compensation. As for the
Turks, it soon became clear that they knew how to capitalize on the
lessons of experience. They built a strong fortress that guarded the
entrance to the Bay of Navarino and also fortified the Peloponnesian
coast at many other points. In another way, the disappointed Greeks
demonstrated that they had become wiser. A letter from the Venetian
ambassador in Constantinople, which has come down to us, reveals
that the sultan distrusted the Grand Duke of Muscovy as a designated
protector of his Greek Orthodox co-religionists. This letter is
dated 1576; and it also reveals that the Greek subjects showed a
willingness to place themselves under Muscovite protection in order
to escape the Turkish yoke. The shadow of the Russian bear became
increasingly visible, while that of the Venetian lion faded.
February
13, 1855 DESCRIPTION OF CRIMEA.
(Taken
from the work "De Oorlog," which is continually published
by H. NIJGH, Rotterdam). The Crimean Peninsula, which stretches so
gracefully and elegantly into the Black Sea on the map, is divided
by nature into two completely different parts: the beautiful
southern coast, which can be called a true paradise, and the lonely
steppes of the north. Crimea is connected to the mainland only by
the narrow Isthmus of Perekop; this strip of land also forms the
boundary between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
The entire circumference of the peninsula is 140 German miles long
and its area is 360 square German miles, making the area of Crimea
slightly larger than half the area of our homeland.
To
the east, the Kerch Peninsula, which borders the Sea of Azov
to the south, extends to the Taman Peninsula, which belongs to
Caucasia, from which it is separated by the Kerch Strait or Kaffa
Strait. Behind that eastern point, near Kaffa, rises steeply from
the sea the Tauric or Jaila Mountains, a continuation of the
Caucasus. This mountain range extends along the entire southern
coast of Crimea and spreads northward in several parallel arms,
covered with forests that gradually disappear into the flat, uniform
steppes that make up most of Crimea.
But
this southern mountain range, crowned by the Shadir-Dagh, which
rises 4,740 German or 5,812 English feet high, is, especially on the
seaward side, one of the most beautiful and charming places in the
world. The valleys, which partly wind their way to the heights like
narrow rocky paths, partly widen into mountain gorges or form
meandering valleys, are crisscrossed by small rivers and streams,
everywhere cascading and foaming down, and adorn themselves with all
the splendor of tropical vegetation, under the influence of the
softest and most pleasant atmosphere, as the high mountains prevent
the harsh north winds from penetrating further. Picturesquely
nestled in the depths or clinging to the rocks, the Tartar villages
here reveal a Greek monastery, while there a mosque with its tall,
spindly tower is visible. Steep rock faces alternate with gentle
slopes, where lush green pastures are covered with numerous cattle;
Charming Swiss houses form a striking contrast to the ruins of
castles and towns from centuries gone by, while the eye rests with
pleasure on the magnificent estates and castles of Russian nobles,
wreathed by olive trees, fruit trees, and vineyards. Corn and
tobacco sprout in abundance from the fertile fields; grapes grow
luxuriantly on the rocks, brought here from Burgundy and Champagne,
or from the banks of the Rhine, or from Hungary, Spain, Portugal,
Madeira, and their vines gracefully twine around the tall trees. In
the gardens, the gaze is treated to an abundance of fruits: melons
and figs, almonds and oranges; while flowers from all quarters
display their colors and fragrances, and myrtle and cypress trees
arch their dark foliage over them. Opposite this so richly blessed
place, which in Russian bears the name of Juschnoi-bereg and which
is teeming with towns, villages and pleasure gardens.
The
northern part of Crimea stands out bleakly. Here one finds a
continuation of the Nogai steppe, which covers the entire southern
Russia from Astrakhan to Odessa. There is little water and almost no
trees; only in exceptional cases is the land cultivable, and then
only where the steppe is covered with dense grass; but usually, the
soil is only sand or sparse grass; the numerous salt marshes found
there prove that the sea once washed over these plains; in winter it
is bitterly cold and in summer scorching hot.
Crimea
has a population of approximately 300,000. More than two-thirds of
this population consists of Tartars, the remainder of Russians,
Greeks, and many German colonists. Although the climate is generally
quite healthy, fevers are frequent; foreigners are especially
susceptible to them. The Tartars, on the other hand, know nothing of
it, but they suffer from dropsy, gout, and smallpox, as they have
not yet learned to vaccinate their children.
The
capitals of Crimea are Sevastopol, Simferopol, and Bacchus.
Sevastopol,
which has now acquired European fame through the siege, lies on the
southwestern tip of the peninsula. This seaport was founded in 1786,
during the reign of Catherine II, on the site previously occupied by
the Tartar village of Akthiar, and in the last twenty years has
become one of the strongest fortresses in the world; it soon became
the major base and staging area of the Russian navy in
the Black Sea. A promontory points out the harbor to sailors from
afar. Once one has rounded the reef-fringed promontory and reached
the narrow channel at the entrance to the Bay of Sevastopol, one
finds oneself an hour's distance from the city, recognizable from
afar by a few white limestone cliffs and situated on the right or
southern shore of the bay, which extends two hours inland, west to
southeast.
In
the crooks of the partly rocky mountain range that surrounds this
bay, itself an excellent anchorage, on all sides, lie five inlets,
each forming a natural harbor basin; these include: the quarantine
harbor, the artillery or arsenal harbor, the small war port or naval
arsenal harbor, and the shipyard or calf dock. These natural harbor
basins are deep enough for the largest ships, and the steeply
sloping rock walls that surround them facilitate mooring. The bay is
exceptionally well protected by the heights that enclose it; other,
even higher mountains rise further up; the slope near the large
naval port is so steep that at a certain distance one can no longer
see even the masts of the largest warships.
The
city, which rises amphitheater-like, was poorly fortified on the
landward side before 1852 and dominated by the surrounding heights;
but since then, with astonishing effort, these heights have been
partially leveled, and the city has been surrounded by a rampart or
rampart, fitted with casemates. These casemates are bombproof
vaults, built of stone, in which the artillery is housed;
earthworks, lunettes, and several batteries have also been erected
on the landward side. Sevastopol, however, is especially strongly
defended on the seaward side. All the protruding points on both
banks of the bay are covered with stone forts or fortified
batteries. There are twelve of them in all, six of which are located
on the southern and six on the northern bank, almost opposite each
other. The artillery of these fortifications, consisting of
approximately 1,350 guns, covers the entire bay, from the buoys out
to sea, and can be positioned in such a way that a fleet attempting
to approach the roadstead by force would have to cover a distance of
approximately 3,000 feet under a threefold, extremely intense
crossfire.
In
addition, there are a number of batteries scattered here and there.
On the heights to the north lies a strong star redoubt, called the
Noorderfort (Northern Fort), which commands the beach on that side.
On the south side, an important fortification, the rond fort,
protects the city. A mile and a half from Sevastopol lies a
fortified camp. Finally, on the opposite side of the maritime
establishments and the artillery park, four more fortified barracks
are found. As one approaches the entrance to the bay or channel,
which extends about four cable-lengths wide between the reefs of the
northern and southern shores, the fortifications of Sevastopol
present a truly formidable sight. Starting from Cape Constantine on
the northern shore, one first encounters a battery armed with 17
guns and barbettes, called the Telegraph Battery; nearby, at the end
of the headland lies Fort Constantine, armed with 104 guns; next
comes Fort Katharina, armed with 120 guns, then a smaller battery
with 30, and further inland, a battery with 34 guns. Behind this
second battery rises the Noorder-fort, armed with 50 guns. The
Russian fleet anchors between this second battery and Forts Nikolaas
and Paul, located just below the city, of which the former has 192
guns, the latter 80. Now returning seaward along the southern bank,
one first comes to a battery on the left edge of the city, with 50
guns, then Fort Alexander, armed with 64 guns, which, unlike Fort
Constantine, located opposite, guards the entrance to the bay, and
finally, the Quarantaine fort or battery, situated closer to the
sea, with 51 guns. All these forts and batteries are equipped with
casemates. However, the fortifications are not, like those of
Kroonstad, built of granite, but of sandstone. It is calculated that
the costs for the construction of these fortifications and those
spent on the repair of the military buildings, the water supply, and
the harbor works totaled two hundred and fifty million guilders.
The
city itself, as we mentioned, is situated on a slope: the lowest
part is 20, the highest built-up point 150 feet above the sea level.
The entire length of the city is 1,200, the width 400 paces. Before
the outbreak of the last war, the population amounted to
approximately 40,000 souls, of which the numerous garrison of the
navy and land forces and the various personnel constituted
three-quarters. In the city's innermost part, one finds the
magnificent Greek church, the lavishly furnished library, and the
market; In the lower section: the large admiralty building, the
arsenal, and other maritime establishments; opposite these
buildings, on the other or right bank of the small or southern naval
port—whose entrance is protected by Forts Nikolaas and Paul
and by a submarine chain—the docks, the naval hospital, the
extensive warehouses, and the troop barracks form a kind of suburb.
The
vast docks, located behind Fort Paul, were constructed according to
the plans and under the supervision of the English engineer John
Hupton; the basin is supplied with water by a water conduit, ten
versts long, connected to the Chernaya Rechka stream, or Black
Stream, which itself flows into the Bay of Sevastopol. In addition,
there is a reservoir into which seawater can be pumped by means of a
steam engine. Sevastopol is built evenly on the uneven, bare, white,
chalky soil; but the city is difficult to navigate and, apart from
the main street and the magnificent steps along the quay, features
only insignificant squares and alleys, and, apart from the rural
buildings, only insignificant houses. The quays, however, are
magnificent and lined with pillars and granite parapets. Although
situated very close to the most beautiful part of Crimea, Sevastopol
does not enjoy the favorable climate prevailing there. The mountain
range, which blocks the north winds, begins to descend towards the
west and, around Sevastopol, presents only barren and stony heights,
which do not rise high enough to completely protect the city.
However, the cold is less severe there than in the central Crimea,
and the harbor remains open in winter. In summer, the sun beats down
on the white stones, while the wind stirs up clouds of sand and
dust. Overall, Sevastopol does not make for a pleasant place to
stay.
The
neighboring quarries of Inkerman, formerly a Genoese fortress but
now a small town, provided the materials for the extensive works
undertaken in Sevastopol.
The
old town of Inkerman was situated at the end of the large bay or
nave of Sevastopol, near the mouth of the Chernaya River; the new
town, recently destroyed by the Allies, contained two churches, a
beautiful, wide main street, and a fine quay; also warehouses,
barracks, and a few shops. It was built by the Russians around 1790,
and the excellent harbor where it was situated—this harbor,
here called Inkerman Bay, with a depth of between 21 and 70 feet and
where the largest ships could anchor within a cable's length of the
beach—promised a brilliant future for it. However, Inkerman
never rose to the important position it could have achieved:
merchant ships were, by a strange provision of the protective
system, kept out of the port unless they were in distress, and as a
result of this foolish law the commercial spirit among the
inhabitants was completely extinguished, and Inkerman, which would
otherwise have become a flourishing commercial town, declined into a
small, insignificant town.
The
environs of Inkerman enchant travelers. It is indeed a city of
caves, for in the white cliffs that overhang the Bay of Aktiar or
Sevastopol, a multitude of strange grottoes are found, partly
naturally formed, partly carved into the hard rock, revealing
chambers with Gothic window arches, chapels with altars, monastic
cells, and burial vaults. These caverns are believed by some to be
the refuge of Christians during their persecution; but they, like
the ruins of the old city, among which various remains of Greek
architecture can still be found, were not spared by the Russian
soldiers.
The
second city of Crimea, Simferopol or Akmeshed, lies further inland,
at the northern end of the mountainous region, not far from the
source of the Salghyr River, and has 3,000 inhabitants. The
foundation of this city is of more recent date, and it therefore
boasts straight, wide streets and many attractive houses, their
facades adorned with columns.
(Continued
below.)
February
14, 1855 DESCRIPTION OF CRIMEA.
(Taken
from the work "De Oorlog" (The War), which is continually
published by H. NIJGH, in Rotterdam.)
(Continued
from No. 44.)
But
infinitely more important for the lover of antiquities and history
is Bakchisarai, the capital of the former Tartar Khans, situated
between Simferopol and Sevastopol. Bakchisarai is a garden in
Tartar, and Bakchisarai means: the Serail or the palace of the
gardens. This city is one of the most peculiar that one can see; It
lies in a narrow valley and, from a distance, with its numerous
minarets, incredibly tall chimneys, and no less tall poplars,
resembles a forest of nothing but turrets. The houses, trees, and
gardens still cover a small portion of the surrounding rocks, the
uppermost of which presents a steep, bare, light-gray limestone
cliff. Here, for several centuries, was the headquarters of that
important state, the last remnant of the Mongol Empire in Europe,
that state which, from the Crimea, extended its authority over the
lands through which the Dnieper and Dniester rivers meander. Here,
where the mountains border the steppes, was the abode of those
mighty khans, before whom Russia's czars trembled even in the 17th
century, whose friendship the Poles, Russians, and Turks alike
flattered, until Catherine, the brave and cunning, finally conquered
and drove them out. Even today, the Tartars, who have remained
faithful to their mountains since the destruction of their empire,
cherish a great fondness for the old capital, which still displays a
shadow of its former grandeur. The Khan's palace is still standing,
and the population, except for the few Russian officials, consists
entirely of Tartars. No one belonging to another nation is even
allowed to live in the city; among the 14,000 inhabitants, only
2,450 are Russians. Bakchisarai can therefore rightly be considered
a remnant of the old Tartar empire. The city is lively; its numerous
inhabitants love music and song; symbals and timpani resound through
the exceptionally long main street, which runs between the rocks and
is divided into two almost equal parts by the old Khan's palace.
This single main street is more than two versts long, yet extremely
narrow; It is where the trade and commerce are concentrated, not
only of the city itself, but also of the entire western Tauride
region. The shops are filled with all the products of Tartar and
Turkish art, and here and there one sees the workshops where all
these things are made. The small, tightly packed houses have almost
no windows, yet the entire facade, consisting entirely of wooden
shutters, can be opened. These shutters are partly removed, partly
lowered like tables projecting over the street, and one sees the
open houses, as if in cross-section. The residents perform their
various tasks before the eyes of the public: here a baker is busy
preparing his bread; there the bussa, that beloved Turkish drink, is
being produced; further on sits a tailor with his companions; There
again, the vapors and aromas of a soup kitchen spread, where one can
enjoy one's midday meal as one passes by; or one delights for a
moment in the contemplation of the fantastic spectacle presented by
yonder forge, where a Gypsy or pagan family works valiantly,
illuminated by the bright reflection of the flames kindled by the
mother with the bellows and splashed by the playful sparks that leap
from under the father's hammer. In the shops, merchandise is
displayed for the eye, and one is most drawn by the ornate saddles
and harnesses, and the beautifully woven whips, with their handles
of silver wire and red morocco; in the tobacco shop finely chopped
herbs are piled high in the streets, and beautiful pipe stems hang
for sale; the fruit shops boast the treasures of the neighboring
valleys, while finally, the covered galleries of the coffee houses,
which stretch along the street, are bustling all day long. The
street itself is teeming with Russians and Tartars, while the
slender, elegantly formed mountain dwellers are quickly
distinguished from their brown, plump brethren from the plains.
Here, the white turban of a Hadshis is visible, for even from these
far northern regions, a pious pilgrim sometimes makes the pilgrimage
to the holy Mecca. There, again, a Tartar woman, wrapped in her
white veil, timidly pushes through the crowd; while her Russian
sisters are recognizable by their flashy red, green, blue, or yellow
cloths and dresses. Beautiful, proud Greek women in their black
robes adorned with gold. Talmudic and Karaite Jews also frequently
visit the city. Camels laden with goods trot majestically through
all these people in their various costumes, and riders constantly
pass by, or you have to give way to the clumsy carts, drawn by
buffalo and equipped with oversized, creaking wheels.
The
palace, spared by Empress Catherine II, is well-maintained; however,
enclosed by high walls, through which only a single large gate can
be seen, the exterior is not very appealing. However, the interior
is different. Once through that gate, you find yourself in a square
shaped like a parallelogram, and you behold the mosque belonging to
the palace, the largest in the entire city. Some tombstones of the
ancient Tartar princes lie further on, and on the other side, one
sees the main building of the palace itself, which contains several
magnificent halls and before which a terrace has been created,
decorated with vineyards, flowers, and fountains. There are also
several kiosks, as well as the walled lawn where the khans' wives
once entertained themselves.
The
other cities in Crimea are: in the eastern part, Karasubazar, with
3,700 inhabitants; on the southwestern coast, north of Sevastopol,
the small seaport of Koslov, or Eupatoria, with 4,000 inhabitants,
mostly Tartars and Jews; south of Sevastopol, Balaklava, with an
excellent harbor enclosed by high mountains; on the southeastern
coast, Kaffa, near the bay of the same name; further on, Kertsch, on
the Kertsch Strait, or Yenikale Strait. Near this fortified seaport,
one can still see the extensive ruins of Panticapaea, the former
residence of Mithridates the Great, king of Pontus and Bosphorus.
Yenikale itself, situated at the entrance of the strait to the Sea
of Azof, is a small fortress with 600 inhabitants.
Finally, the fortress of Perekop, on the isthmus of the same name,
has a population of between 3,000 and 4,000 souls. Near this place,
one finds a wide, deep moat, defended by a strong wall, which has
bisected the isthmus since time immemorial.
History
of Crimea.
To
properly assess the importance of Crimea, this peninsula, which, due
to its location in the Black Sea, simultaneously dominates the
coasts of Asia, the mouths of the Danube, and the entrance to the
Bosphorus, it is necessary to consider the significant events that
have occurred there over time.
In
the middle of the seventh century B.C.E., the Milesians from Asia
Minor first visited the northern coasts of the Pontus Euxine and
established colonies on the present-day Kerch Peninsula, which they
took complete possession of. The flourishing agriculture, which the
colonists soon enjoyed, became known in Greece and prompted many
Greeks to migrate to Tauria, where the ports of Theodosia, Nymphaea,
Panticapaea, and Mermiciona soon arose. Encouraged by the favorable
results obtained by the Milesians, the inhabitants of Heraclea in
Thrace also conceived the plan to establish several colonies in
Tauria. They focused on the western part and set foot on land near
Cape Pharthenica. They drove the uncivilized Taurians back into the
mountains and settled on the headland of Trachaea, now known as the
ancient Chersonesus. Thus were laid the first foundations of the
famous republic of Cherson, which flourished for more than fifteen
centuries.
While
the Heracleans consolidated their authority and saw their industry
and trade grow, the Milesian colonies developed with astonishing
rapidity. Cities were also founded on the Asian coast, where they
expanded: Phanagoria, Hermonassa, and Cepos arose. All these various
Milesian colonies were initially independent of one another; but at
last they followed the flow of events, and, 480 years before Christ,
from its political union arose the Empire of the Bosphorus.
The
great wealth of the Milesians had found a principal source in
agriculture, and the new government devoted its attention to this
fertile branch of national existence. King Leucon exempted the
Athenians from the tax that burdened the export of grain. As a
result of this generous measure, exports rose to an unprecedented
level, and Crimea became the storehouse of Greece. Theodosia and
Panticapaea rose to become very prominent trading cities, where
numerous foreign merchants came to supply themselves with woolen
cloth, furs, and all the salted goods that still constitute one of
the principal resources of southern Russia.
Certainly,
the inhabitants of Crimea received in exchange for these products
all the precious manufactured goods that luxury had brought into use
in Athens, and probably all the beautiful works of art that can
still be admired today in the museum at Kerch were created by Greek
artists. The materials with which the Taurian colonists built their
cities and palaces were also likely imported from Greece. Yet, no
trace of white marble can be found in either the Crimea or the
northern shores of the Black Sea; and yet, during excavations at
Kerch, a multitude of pieces of this marble were found; it is even
quite possible that the large sculptures used for public and private
carving were sent fully finished from Greek workshops to
Panticaptaea.
For
more than three centuries, the Bosphorus Empire enjoyed a desirable
tranquility, despite the dangerous proximity of the Sarmatians, a
Scythian tribe settled east of the Don. Through a bold and
enlightened policy, the empire gained in prosperity and wealth,
until the Roman conquest of Greece disrupted all trade relations in
the East. Around this time, the Bosphorus were attacked by the
Scythians, and feeling powerless to resist, they threw themselves
into the arms of Mithridates the Great, who incorporated their state
as a province into the empire of Pontus and bestowed it upon his son
Makhares.
When
Rome had defeated and lost its implacable enemy by death, it
bestowed the crown of the Bosphorus empire on Pharnaces, who had
betrayed his father; but the rule of this son of Mithridates existed
only in name, and his successors, powerless as they were and devoid
of all that the Milesians had previously possessed on the Asian
coast, were entirely at the whim of the Roman emperors.
(Continued
below.)
February
17, 1855 DESCRIPTION OF CRIMEA.
(Taken
from the work "De Oorlog," which is continually published
by H. NIJGH, in Rotterdam.)
(Continued
from No. 45.)
Around
the middle of the first century AD, the Alans invaded Tauria; they
devastated most of the country and destroyed the city of Theodosia,
which had attempted to resist them. They were followed by the Goths,
who in turn ruled the peninsula; but they, far from abusing their
superior power, allied themselves closely with the conquered,
established numerous colonies in the northern plains, and cultivated
the fields. A new era of peace and prosperity now began for Tauric
Chersonesus.
Unfortunately, however, Greece, under Roman rule,
was in great decline at the time; while Egypt, Sicily, and Africa
alone supplied the Roman world with grain. Despite all efforts,
Tauria could not rise above the humble position it had been placed
in by the momentous events of the first century CE.
Amidst
those first barbarian invasions, the small republic of Cherson,
remote and difficult to reach as it was, had maintained its
independence. During the time of Emperor Diocletian, the
Chersonites, whose territory extended across almost the entire
mountainous region, had attracted all the trade still flowing
between Tauria and some parts of the lands bordering the Black Sea.
Their republics constituted the most powerful state on the peninsula
when war broke out between them and the Sarmatians. These Sarmatians
had already seized the Bosphorus kingdom and given it a king from
among themselves. The struggle between these two nations lasted for
almost a century; The Sarmatians were finally driven out, and the
Bosphorus, freed from the foreign yoke, once again enjoyed the sweet
fruits of peace and freedom for several years.
This
peace, however, was short-lived and would soon be replaced by the
most terrible plague yet to ravage the peninsula. The ferocious
Huns, emerging from the distant steppes of Asia, echoed their war
cry on the shores of the Sea of Azof, and soon the
terrified inhabitants saw the Crimeans, crossing the sea, their wild
hordes flooded the peninsula, and the ancient empire of the
Milesians was destroyed forever (375). The numerous colonies of the
united Alans and Goths suffered the same fate, and all the
prosperous places that flourished through agriculture were reduced
to ashes. The Chersonites, always protected by their western
location, were the only ones who escaped destruction, thanks to the
tremendous speed with which the Hunnic stream rushed towards western
Europe.
Taurias
was still groaning under the terrible disasters that the arrival of
the Huns had brought upon it, when, after the death of Attila, their
returning, scattered hordes once again brought devastation and
misery. Now the Chersonites were also threatened, and the fear of
the barbarians caused them to call upon the Eastern Roman Empire for
help. Emperor Justinian, then reigning in Constantinople,
immediately granted their request; but this favor cost them dearly:
under the pretext that their defense required it, the emperor had
two forts erected on the southern coast, and soon the republic
became tributary to the empire.
At
the end of the 7th century (679), Tauria was invaded by the Khazars.
These hordes, who had followed the Huns and settled in Lithuania,
where Attila himself had founded an independent empire for them, as
rulers of a vast territory, caused Constantinople to tremble at
their approach. The Eastern emperors sought to win their friendship,
and the Byzantine court even asked the daughter of the Kalgan, or
the chief, in marriage to the son of Emperor Leo. The imperial
court's fears proved well-founded, for less than a century and a
half had passed before the Khazars, who had given their name to the
Crimea, established an empire whose borders extended across Europe
to the Danube and across Asia to the foot of the Caucasus.
But
the Khazars, in turn, succumbed to a nomadic tribe descending from
the banks of the Volga. The victorious Peschenegs established rule
over the entire region, with the exception of the southern territory
of Cherson, which was united with the Eastern Empire.
Under
the rule of the Peschenegs, trade and industry began to flourish
again on the peninsula; Trade with Constantinople became
increasingly lively, and Byzantine traders came to the ports of
Tauria to stock up on purple and fine fabrics, embroidered sheets,
ermine, tiger skins, and all kinds of furs, pepper, and other
spices, which the Petschenegs were buying in the eastern part of
Russia and as far as the banks of the Cyrus and Araxes rivers in
Armenia.
For
a century and a half, Crimea, then still called Khazaria, flourished
under the rule of the Petschenegs; then they were driven out, just
as they had once driven out the Khazars. The development of the
Mongol Empire had driven the Komani from their land; they attacked
the Petschenegs and threw them back into Asia. The Komani elevated
Solda, located on the southern coast of Crimea, to their capital;
But scarcely had they established their authority when they had to
yield to other conquerors and seek refuge in regions further west.
With
the expulsion of the Komani, all those fleeting incursions ceased,
which for more than ten centuries had drenched the soil of Tauria
with blood. After all these diverse hordes, most of whom left their
names only in history, came two peoples, both equally worthy of
attention: one, conqueror of Asia, had founded the most colossal
empire of the Middle Ages; the other, born in a trading city of
Italy, would elevate Khazaria to the center of trade between Europe
and Asia.
In
1226, that memorable invasion of the Mongolian Tartars took place,
ushering in that unfortunate era of slavery and oppression for the
Tsarist empire, which has left such disastrous marks on the national
character of the Muscovites. Russia, Poland, and Hungary were
successively plowed through by the bands of the famous grandson of
Tschinkis Khan, and Khazaria, which they added to their countless
conquests, soon became, under the name of Little Tartary, the cradle
of a powerful state that maintained its independence until the end
of the 18th century. Under Mongol rule, Tauria was initially
oppressed, but later it experienced a revival and soon emerged from
its decline. Soldaia, returned to the Christians, soon began to
flourish and proved that the sources of wool trade were far from
dry, and that, now as before, only peace and tranquility were needed
to develop the elements of wealth with which nature had endowed this
region so richly.
had
wisely endowed. In a few years, Solda rose to become the most
important port on the Black Sea, becoming one of the great centers
of trade between Europe and Asia.
However,
this city's great prosperity would not last long; another people,
more zealous than the Greeks and gifted with a bolder commercial
spirit, would soon give new life to the peninsula. The Genoese
already owned important factories in Constantinople and had long
appreciated the favorable situation of the Black Sea, calculating
all the advantages that a centralization of trade relations between
Europe and Russia, Persia and India, by means of that waterway,
would yield. Fearing that Venice might preempt them, they managed,
partly through cunning and partly through force, to seize possession
of the territory where ancient Theodosia once stood. There, around
1280, they founded the famous city of Kaffa, which guaranteed the
Genoese Republic dominion over the Black Sea and the trade therein.
The Genoese raised Tauria to unprecedented heights: the city of
Kaffa, through its size, its population, and its wealth, became a
rival to Constantinople. And when their consuls also managed to gain
control of Cerco, Soldaia, and Cembalo, they soon became masters of
the entire southern coast of Crimea. Later, the Genoese also
extended their conquests beyond the peninsula. Their galleys
penetrated the Palus Maeotis (Sea of Azof), they
wrested Tana, situated at the mouth of the Don, from Tartar rule,
founded a fortress at the mouth of the Dniester, erected numerous
warehouses in Colchida or Mingrelia and on the Caucasian coasts, and
forcibly established a major trading post in the imperial city of
Trebizond.
Thus,
the Genoese colonies became the universal storehouse for the rich
products of Russia, Asia Minor, Persia, and India; they held a
monopoly on trade between Europe and Asia, and for more than two
centuries enjoyed astonishing wealth, dazzling grandeur, and
prosperity. But finally, the radiant sun of happiness, in whose rays
they had basked for so long, also waned. In 1453, the moon standard
fluttered from the pinnacle of Saint Sophia Church, and relations
between Crimea and the Mediterranean were severed. The Genoese
foundations fell into disrepair, and the republic, despairing of
their preservation, transferred them to the Bank of St. George. This
transfer, concluded on November 15, 1453, severed the bond between
the colonies and the mother city; discouragement and a division of
forces were the result. The consular government, formerly so
renowned for its honesty and virtues, soon, through treacherous
actions, enraged the Tartars, instead of seeking to ally them and
unitedly resist the Porte; indeed, it offered its aid in gold to all
the parties that were then tearing Crimea apart. Such a situation
could not last long. On June 6, 1473, Kaffa was forced to surrender
to the Turks, whether at all, and a few months later, all the points
occupied by the Genoese had fallen into the hands of the Ottomans.
All trade relations with Russia and Asia ceased; the Venetians had
vainly purchased from the Turks the right to navigate the Black Sea
for an annual tribute of 10,000 ducats. They too were expelled.
Passage through the Bosphorus was denied to all the western peoples,
and only the Turks and the Greek inhabitants of the Archipelago,
their subjects, were allowed to visit the Black or Azov Seas. Other
routes were now opened for trade: Smyrna was now elevated to a
trading post, while the discovery of Vasco de Gama soon brought
about a complete revolution in that trade. (Continued below.)
February
18, 1855 DESCRIPTION OF CRIMEA.
(Taken
from the work "De Oorlog" (The War), which is continually
published by H. NIJGH, in Rotterdam.)
(Continued
from No. 48.)
Under
the rule of the first Khans, liable to tribute from the Porte,
Crimea lost all the importance that agriculture and trade had
previously conferred upon it. Constant wars, incessant uprisings,
instigated by ambitious leaders, now favored, now condemned by the
Porte, and, moreover, the still deeply ingrained habits of a nomadic
life—all this hindered all new development for a number of
years.
Finally,
however, the wealth and fertility of the soil, which could so amply
provide for the needs of its inhabitants, triumphed over the
volatile character of the Tartars; valleys and hills were covered
with villages; the internal tranquility allowed all branches of
industry to flourish again. the grain rippled again on the lush
fields, the livestock improved, fishing revived, the salt pits were
reclaimed.
The
forests once again yielded their tribute, and soon Lesser Tartary
saw a multitude of ships returning to its ports. Trade with Central
Asia was indeed lost forever, but the export of native products and
those brought from Russia along the Don and across the Sea of
Azof—these exports were more than sufficient to
spread prosperity among the population. Kaffa also began to recover
and, as in the Genoese era, became the center of the country's
trade; the city's prosperity even increased to such an extent that
the Turks gave it the name Koutchouk-Stamboul, meaning Lesser
Constantinople.
The
Khans' dominion at that time extended throughout Europe and Asia,
from the banks of the Danube to the foot of the Caucasian Mountains,
and even the indomitable mountaineers of Circassia frequently paid
tribute to the rulers of Tauria. The Mohammedan population separated
into two major groups: the descendants of the first conquerors, more
specifically called Tartars, and the Nogais, or Nogayers, nomadic
tribes who, after the conquest of Khazaria, came under the
protection of the successors of the famous Batou Khan. The former,
the Tartars, who had intermingled with the remnants of the ancient
populations of Tauria, constituted the civilized portion of the
nation; they occupied the mountainous regions, inhabited the towns
and villages, and successfully applied themselves to industry and
agriculture. The Nogais, on the other hand, lived to a certain
extent independently on the vast plains of southern Russia, where
they were exclusively engaged in cattle breeding. They were divided
at that time into five main hordes: that of Boujiak, who inhabited
the plains of Bessarabia, from the mouths of the Danube to the
Dniester; that of Jedisan, the most important, who could muster
80,000 horsemen and pitched their tents between the Dniester and the
Dnieper; those of Djamboïlouk and Jedickhoul, whose descendants
can still be found in the territory their ancestors occupied from
the banks of the Dnieper to the western shores of the Sea of Azov;
finally, the tribes of Kouban, who roamed the steppes between the
Dnieper and the Don, today the domain of the Black Sea Cossacks. All
these different tribes could, if necessary, mobilize more than
400,000 troops. Such was the political situation of Lesser Tartary
when the Russians sought to subdue the coastal regions of the Azov
and Black Seas. We must now examine how Crimea became connected to
the Russian Empire. Russia's first attempts to gain possession of
Crimea date back to the mid-17th century; but it wasn't until 1689
that Crimea was attacked with armed force. Peter the Great suddenly
appeared with a powerful army near Perekop, then called Orkapi, and
penetrated the peninsula. It seemed as if he could take possession
without a fight; but Khan Selim rallied his loyalists, met the
enemy, and drove them back.
This
defeat, which cost the Tsar a large part of his best troops, seemed
to have instilled in him some respect for the Tartars, whom he had
previously counted very little; it was, however, several years
before he returned to harass them. In 1696, he undertook a new
campaign, and this time, though not without great effort, he
succeeded in capturing the important cities of Azov and Taganrog.
Now the idea also dawned on Peter the Great to gain control of the
Black Sea, whatever the cost. He issued a ukaze, urging his people
to offer monetary sacrifices to enable him to launch the holy and
glorious attack he intended. Nobles, merchants, and priests all
strove to bolster the treasury, and Peter felt able to assemble a
formidable army. However, he would not command that army in person.
From his carpenter's cottage in Zaandam, he sent the order for the
attack, and the army, obedient to the imperial word, even though it
was given from afar by Peterbaas, advanced toward the Crimea and
soon captured the fortress of Perekop.
When
Peter returned to his empire, he began building fleets, increasing
his armies, and strengthening his border fortresses. Turkey, always
keeping a watchful eye on Russia, demanded an explanation for these
warlike preparations; but the Tsar replied that he was master of his
own country and that he could do whatever he pleased without asking
the Sultan's permission. This answer was not very suitable to
satisfy and reassure Turkey; moreover, the loss of Azof had not yet
been forgotten, and they were eager to regain that city. The Porte
declared war on them.
A
neighbor, and Khan Dewlet invaded Russian territory.
Tsar
Peter immediately planned measures for a major and, he hoped, final
campaign against Turkey. Admiral Apraxin was sent to Azof, and Peter
himself hastily marched to the Pruth River in support of one of his
army commanders, who was threatened by a hundred thousand Turks
under the Grand Vizier, Baltigie. It was on this occasion that
Empress Catherine, the former soldier's wife, saved the Russian army
from utter destruction. When Tsar Peter arrived at Jassy, he
received bad news: the hospodar of Wallachia, on whose help he had
counted, had secretly gone over to the Turkish side; a long-awaited
shipment of provisions failed to arrive; the troops had been struck
by disease; swarms of insects ravaged the fields, and the burning
sun dried up the streams and brooks. Peter understood that he had to
try as quickly as possible to place the Pruth between him and the
enemy. He crossed the river and wanted to prevent the Turks from
following him, but it was too late; the enemy was already on the
other side. The two armies were now close together; but the Russians
were in a miserable condition; hunger and thirst ravaged them
terribly, and within sight of a river, hundreds of them died of
thirst, for the Turks held the opposite bank and prevented the
Russians from approaching the water with their artillery. Peter
attempted to withdraw unnoticed under cover of night; but the Turks
had occupied all the passages, and on July 20, 1711, a battle broke
out in which the Muslims emerged victorious. During the night
following the battle, Empress Catherine discovered a plan she had
devised to prevent further bloodshed, and the next day it was put
into action. She sent all her jewels and furs as a gift to the Grand
Vizier, who commanded the Turkish army, along with a sum of money to
be distributed among the members of the council. In the letter
accompanying these gifts, Peter wrote to the Grand Vizier, "that
if he had been so unfortunate as to displease His Highness, he was
ready to remove the grounds for complaint; but that he adjured him
to prevent further bloodshed and to silence his guns." A few
hours after sending that letter, Baltigi actually ordered a
cessation of hostilities, but he demanded as a first condition for
peace the immediate withdrawal of the Russian armies, the
abandonment of Azov and the surrounding territory, and the
demolition of several fortresses. The peace treaty, known as the
Treaty of the Pruth, was concluded on these grounds.
Twenty
years later, the Russians violated the peace they themselves had
desired and destroyed Azov. They then advanced into Crimea,
devastated most of the peninsula, and occupied it for three months.
It now became clear that Russia had set its sights on conquering
Crimea, and the following year the Turks preempted the Russians,
having assembled a sufficient force to repulse them in the event of
a renewed attack. Catherine II, who ascended the Russian throne in
1762 after the death of her husband Peter III, zealously followed
Peter the Great's policy toward Crimea. When the Porte forced her to
declare war in 1770, she sent Count Romanzow at the head of a
powerful army to Crimea. The city of Bender was besieged in vain by
this general, and Khan Kaplan advanced against the enemy at the head
of 80,000 Tartars. A month of mixed success had already elapsed on
the banks of the Pruth when the Russian general made a retreat; the
Tartars abandoned their camp and attacked the retreating enemy, but
the latter soon formed a front and, despite a Turkish army coming to
the Tartars' aid, Romanzow achieved a complete victory. The cities
of Ismailov, Bender, and Ackerman subsequently fell into the hands
of the Russians. But Crimea was still not conquered. To finally
achieve this long-desired goal, the Empress sent secret agents to
the peninsula in 1772 to incite the population to revolt; moreover,
Prince Dolgoroucki appeared with an army before Perekop. The sword
completed what the ruse had begun: the Tartars, who attempted to
defend their borders, were defeated, and Dolgoroucki triumphantly
entered Crimea, receiving from the Empress the honorific of Krimsky.
Shortly thereafter, an armistice was concluded between Turkey and
Busland, and the terms of peace were discussed at Fokshiani.
However, the Empress's demands proved too high, the negotiations
remained fruitless, and hostilities resumed. Katharina, however, had
managed to take advantage of the lull; she had secretly won over the
Khan of Crimea and persuaded him to declare independence from the
Porte and place himself under the protection of Russia.
The
war between Russia and Turkey was only ended by the well-known
Treaty of Kainardji, concluded on July 25, 1774, in which the Sultan
recognized the independence of Crimea.
(Continued
below.)
February
19, 1855 DESCRIPTION OF CRIMEA.
(Taken
from the work "De Oorlog," which is continually published
by H. NIJGH, in Rotterdam.)
{Continued
from No. 49.)
But
Dewlet III, who was called to the position of Khan, was pro-Turkish;
Katharina sought to gain support through money and valuables, and
when the population began to revolt, a Russian army invaded the
peninsula: the Khan was deposed, and a favorite of the empress,
Sahim Gheraï or Guereï, was appointed in his place. Porte
Dewlet III attempted in vain to restore his rights. Dahim Gheraï
remained master of the Crimea. He sent an embassy to Petersburg to
request the empress to take the Crimea under her high protection;
Katharina readily complied with this request and, together with the
Khan, began providing a guard of Russian soldiers. It is said that
this bodyguard was deliberately sent to the Crimea to be murdered
there, so that the empress, under the pretext of avenging their
deaths, could have the peninsula reoccupied. Be that as it may, it
happened thus: the bodyguard was attacked and defeated by the
Tartars, and Katharina sent a new expedition to the Crimea,
commanded by Prince Prozorowsky, at whose approach Sahim's enemies
fled.
In
1779, after a new war with Turkey, Russia allied itself to evacuate
the Crimea again; but the Khan was and remained merely a tool in the
hands of the Empress, and while she, at his request, sent him an
appointment to the Russian army and decorated him with the Grand
Cross of the Order of St. Anne, she, on the other hand, used these
favors, through her agents and her gold, to incite the population
against the poor Khan, who so completely forgot his dignity and
trampled on nationality.
Soon
Sahim was forced to flee to Taganrog; now a Russian army under
Potemkin advanced to support him. He was brought back to his capital
and once again recognized as Khan by the chiefs. The Empress had not
suspected this, but she was undeterred; she instructed her envoy in
Constantinople to ensure that the Sultan remained neutral in any
unrest that might arise in the Crimea. Deeply indignant at Russia's
insinuations, the Porte sent a Pasha to the island of Taman to take
possession of it in the Sultan's name. Whereupon Sahim, urged by the
Empress, in turn sent an envoy to that Pasha with orders to
withdraw. However, instead of complying with this impudent summons,
the Pasha had the Crimean envoy publicly executed. The Empress had
now found a new pretext to seize the Crimea, without sparing the
Porte. She forced the Imans and other Tartar chiefs to swear an oath
of allegiance to her on pain of death and issued a manifesto to
justify her deceitful behavior. It included the following: "Since
our last war against the Ottoman Empire was entirely successful, we
undoubtedly had the right to incorporate Crimea into our empire.
Nevertheless, in our ardent desire to ensure public peace and to
establish good relations between our court and that of Turkey, we
did not hesitate to abandon this and other conquests. This was the
reason that moved us to demand the freedom and independence of the
Tartars, who had already been conquered by our weapons, in the hope
of thus permanently removing all cause of discord or reflux between
Russia and Turkey...”
Thus
ran the opening of the manifesto, while the conclusion was worded as
follows:
“Inspired
by the sincere desire to confirm and maintain the peace concluded by
treaty with the Porte, we believe we are justified in putting an end
to the unrest in Crimea. To this end, we must annex the
aforementioned Crimean peninsula, the island of Taman, and Kuban to
our empire; this is no more than a fair compensation for the
disadvantages we have suffered and for the difficulties encountered
in our attempts to maintain peace and tranquility.” On June
27, 1783, Potemkin advanced with an army of 70,000 men to the
borders of Crimea; General Repnin followed him with 40,000 men,
while a third army under Romanzov gathered at Kyiv. At the same
time, the fleet in the Black Sea was prepared for battle. But Turkey
was too weak to wage war; the first of a variety of negotiations
were held. The following year, a new treaty was concluded, whereby
Turkey recognized the empress as sovereign over Crimea, the island
of Taman, and part of Kuhan. Thus, Katharina finally saw her demand
fulfilled, while she secured an extensive territory, one and a half
million subjects, and control of the Black Sea.
But
she also had to try to preserve what she had acquired, and fearing
that many among the freedom-loving Tartars would not willingly
submit to her yoke for long, she had several thousand of them
deported to Siberia. Three years later, Katharina made her solemn
entry into Crimea, and her visit to the peninsula was a succession
of splendid festivities that formed a strange contrast with the
miserable state of the conquered province. Thus the Tartar Empire
had fallen entirely under the control of Russia, after fifty years
of that colossus's sometimes secret, sometimes open, and armed
attacks had shaken and disturbed it, gradually exhausting it and
finally dissolving it entirely.
Soon,
the last vestiges of the flourishing Tauria, so often devastated,
yet always rising again from its ruins, disappeared. As early as
1778, Russia had facilitated the emigration of all the Armenian and
Greek inhabitants of the peninsula, and an industrious population
had voluntarily, as Russia claimed, left fertile regions to settle
in the wild steppes of the Don and the Sea of Azof. At
the same time, also under the influence of imperial authority, the
emigration of the Tartars and Nogais began; Some of them sought
refuge in Turkish territory, while others united with the Caucasian
mountaineers. When the Russians finally took full possession of the
peninsula, even more Muslims left their native land. The entire
Jedisan tribe had already disappeared by the time the Czars'
authority extended to the Dniester; the Tartars, who inhabited the
regions between the Dnieper and the Sea of Azov,
migrated less widely, for even before the conquest of the Crimea,
they had been surrounded by imperial armies. The peninsula itself,
where the population had settled more permanently and firmly and
which formed the center of Tartar civilization and power, also
suffered the most. It was devastated and drenched in blood; it lost
more than nine-tenths of its population; the cities were plundered
and destroyed; the fields remained uncultivated and desolate; misery
and poverty replaced prosperity and prosperity. Sixty years have
passed since then, during which the Russian authorities encountered
the slightest resistance and had no revolt to suppress. Yet, even
despite the restoration of free passage through the Bosphorus,
Tauria could not rise from the deep abyss into which it had fallen
as a result of the events at the end of the 18th century.
Magnificent country houses arose on the southern hills, and luxury
and abundance reigned there; but the vital forces of the people were
suppressed and undermined, and native industry and agriculture were
destroyed. It is precisely this undisturbed tranquility in which the
diminished Tartar population has sunk, without deriving any benefit
from it, that proves that all sources of prosperity have dried up,
that all moral energy has been extinguished, and that the
death-dealing system of Russian administration has suffocated. When
Russia had definitively established its authority in the Crimea and
calm had followed the ravages of the Muscovite armies, it seemed as
if the imperial government wanted to rekindle the peninsula's last
sparks of prosperity. Emperor Alexander, in particular, was imbued
with good intentions for the Crimea, whose resources he knew. But
the poor state of administration remained, and half-measures were
resorted to: customs and quarantines were regulated; Kaffa was
renamed a Milesian colony; several German villages were founded, now
numbering nine, with a population of 1,800; considerable portions of
land were ceded to Russians and foreigners; vineyards were planted,
and even attempts were made to cultivate olives, but the vital
questions remained unresolved. There was no concern for exploring
means of entertainment or establishing trade relations, and the
government, true to its prohibition system, excluded all freedom of
trade, thus depriving Crimea of its only means of
revitalization.
Kaffa,
which at first seemed destined to become one of the principal ports
of southern Russia and suited itself particularly well to this end,
was soon ousted by Kerch. The old Theodosia had to give way to the
old Panticapaea, the Milesian colony had to make way for the old
capital of the Bosphoric empire, and this despite the fact that the
port of Kerch, sometimes inaccessible for three to four months, was
far less safe and good than the excellent, always open and free port
of Kaffa, and although the latter city is infinitely better situated
near fertile areas than Kerch, which lies at the edge of a sparsely
populated and barren peninsula.
Nevertheless,
Kerch was elevated to a first-class port in 1827 and equipped with
customs for export and import and a hospital for quarantine, which
is very strict and lasts more than thirty days. The city soon began
to develop, but this development was only artificial, and the
quarantine and customs measures, which are very costly and hinder
ships sailing to and from the Sea of Azof, naturally
cause trade to languish. The port city of Kerch has thus, as was to
be expected, failed to realize the brilliant expectations that were
foolishly harbored for it; it has hampered the redevelopment of the
once-famous Genoese colony, robbed Crimea of its
commercial importance, and harmed the ports in the Sea of Azov
by impeding navigation, all without deriving any lasting benefit
from it itself.
June
25, 1855 Kerch and Yenikale
The
second edition of a work entitled:
“The
Crimea with Sevastopol, Balaklava, and other cities, together with a
description of its rivers, lakes, mountains, and valleys, as well as
its history, inhabitants, laws, customs, and way of life, by Th. A.
Fedorov. With three city views and maps.” This monograph
contains a description of Kertsch and Yenikale, cities so easily
captured by the allies these days. The following lines, taken from
the aforementioned work, provide a glimpse into the significance of
this conquest, not only from a political or commercial perspective,
but also from a scientific one, assuming that appropriate use is
made of the antiquities located there, some of which are very
valuable, and that preliminary reports of the wanton robbery of the
Kertsch museum do not materialize. Kertsch, the ancient Pantikapea,
the seat of the Bosporian ruler, lies 2,057 versts from Petersburg,
1,413 from Moscow, and 201 from Simferopol, on a deep bend or bay
that closes off the Cimmerian Bosporus. It covers a fairly large
plain, extending along the bay's northern shore, on its level,
surrounded by hills. Pantikapea, like all cities situated on both
banks of the Cimmerian Bosporus, was founded by the Milesians in the
first half of the sixth century BC. The government of this city, as
in all trading colonies, was probably initially democratic, but
history is silent about the first and possibly most successful years
of its political existence, and Pantikapea first appears as the
capital of the Bosporian ruler. Present-day Kertsch is the capital
of the district that makes up the separate Kertsch-Yenikah
city-government, and was formerly called "Krtschew" by the
Russians, and "Tscherkio" by the Italians and Genoese,
based on its sound. In the last twenty years, Kertsch has acquired
the present appearance of a European city through various additions.
Kertsch
is the Turkish name for a fortress known in fourteenth-century
geographies as Bosporus, Waspro, and Pandiko. It was most likely
built by the Genoese on the harbor side of ancient Pantikapea, at
the foot of the hills where the ruins of that city were located.
When
Kertsch came under Russian rule in 1771, five to six hundred low
huts surrounded the fortress, which was built of sandstone and had a
rounded shape with projecting corners. Most of these huts were
demolished, and a fort in the shape of a star was built to defend
the harbor. However, this fortification was very insignificant, as
it was dominated by Mount Mithridates, causing Kertsch to fall into
poverty and oblivion. In 1821, the location of this town, with its
trade implications, attracted the attention of Emperor Alexander,
who declared Kertsch a seaport. The fort no longer exists, and a
public market has taken its place. A tower on the beach, the only
remaining medieval monument, is a tower, which is therefore
preserved today.
Grain
shipments from the Don and the northern coasts of the Azov Sea used
to pass through Taganrog; but the sandbanks of this sea, the strong
winds and the precautions which had to be observed along this entire
coast, delayed this voyage considerably, so that a ship from the
South of Europe could only sail once a year. It could take on cargo
in the Azov Sea. The establishment of a deliberate facility at Kerch
made observing the quarantine much easier than was previously the
case throughout the Azov Sea, and the construction of extensive
warehouses made sailing to Taganrog all the less necessary, as an
excellent roadstead was also found at Kerch. The quarantine
buildings were built four wersts from the city on a stony promontory
jutting out into the sea, where the Greek city of Marmikion once
stood. Due to the muddy waters, ships cannot approach the Kerch
quay, but they remain in the vicinity of the quarantine, where the
sea is very deep and provides excellent anchorage.
The
Kerch quarantine facility, thanks to everything that prudence and
care for the prevention of the spread of disease can dictate, is one
of the most excellent of its kind in Europe. It alone encompasses
everything good and useful found in the quarantines of Marseille,
Genoa, Livorno, and Trieste. Moreover, it was built according to a
new plan, which can be expanded as traffic increases. All ships
arriving from the Levant and bringing Russian goods, brought in by
coastal vessels from Taganrog, remain in the Kerch quarantine
facility. Over time, Kerch could become one of the most important
depots for trade between Europe and Asia.
One
advantage of the Kerch port can also be considered the possibility
not only of offering the inhabitants of the Black Sea a place to
sell their goods, but also of establishing relations with even the
rough Caucasian tribes, which could be fostered by the staff of
Mercury.
In
Kerch, a church is particularly noteworthy, bearing the name of John
the Baptist, which has existed for twelve centuries. The dome of
this magnificent building is supported by four gigantic columns of
gray marble, whose bases have sunk deeper into the earth than a
sash. A multitude of inscriptions, bas-reliefs, column ruins, etc.,
found in this church lead to the conclusion that it was built by the
first Christians who settled in these regions, specifically from the
ruins of the temple of the famous Aesculapius of Pantikapea, of whom
ancient writers often mention. Tradition also holds that this church
was built on the site where another had been erected by one of the
apostles who had come to the shores of the Black Sea to preach the
Holy Gospel. Here is an inscription on parchment, which, according
to the opinion of several archaeologists, must date at least from
the sixth century. Many broken Greek bas-reliefs and columns lie
scattered in the various corners of the cemetery, including a female
statue, the work of a powerful chisel, while the torso of a male
statue, also found there, is of much less value. It is a pity that
the head of one of these statues rarely survives. During their first
invasion of the Crimea, the Tartars, out of barbarity and
superstition, destroyed the temples, crushed the monuments of the
fine arts, and used the precious remains of Greek and Roman art to
build fortifications and mosques. Within the city, and almost in its
center, rises a fairly large mountain, descending perpendicularly
into the sea, called the Mount of Mithridates. On its summit stands
a grave mound covered with enormous stones, called the Tomb of
Mithridates. The mountain has been searched in many places, and a
wealth of human bones and coins of great antiquity have been found.
Today, a museum stands on the summit of the mountain, where all the
objects found in this tomb and its surroundings are preserved. The
facade of this museum recalls the ancient Temple of Theseus in
Athens. From the museum, one enters the city via a magnificent
staircase that leads to the arcaded market square.
Among
the buildings of Kertsch, we must also mention the imperial steam
engine factory, which manufactured the steamboats of New Russia and
the Caucasus and was founded in 1846.
Kertsch
has 13,106 inhabitants, most of whom are Greek. It is regrettable
that these Greeks, like their predecessors, the Tartars, have not
been able to extract from their new, so richly endowed homeland the
advantages it is capable of offering them. The charming valleys and
hills of Pantikapea remain uncultivated to this day and are used
exclusively for food for numerous herds of cattle and sheep, while
the skilled hand of the farmer could produce from them all the
grains and fruits known on earth. In this regard, it is sufficient
to mention here that the caper bush, so delicate and so sensitive to
cold that it thrives on its own in the vicinity of Kertsch on the
seacoast without any human care, and that the wine produced there is
among the best of the Crimean peninsula.
The
Greeks of Kertsch are largely engaged in fishing, especially herring
and sturgeon, from which this place derives great profit. The
sturgeon is salted here in the Dutch manner and transported to the
interior of Russia. The necessary salt is provided by the Aputski
and Cherufski lakes near Kertsch, from which nearly half a million
pounds of salt is obtained annually. In the vicinity of Kertsch
there are also sulfur and naphtha springs, from which the
inhabitants are equally unable to make any profit. Moreover, one
finds here the remains of an ancient waterfall and considerable
shell-lime quarries. Twelve versts from Kerch lies the Bay of
Kamusch-Burunn, known for its lucrative herring fishery, which takes
place there annually.
Trade
from Kerch is not very substantial, as ships only come here to
observe their quarantine. After the quarantine in Kerch has expired,
the majority of foreign merchandise is brought to Taganrog on ships
from foreign ports, as well as on coastal vessels, to pay the toll.
Only a small portion of foreign goods is declared at the Kerch
customs office, such as tree oil, raw sugar, coffee, dried and fresh
fruits, Greek wines, tobacco, Turkish cottons and silks. These
products are largely consumed in Kerch and in the neighboring towns
of the Crimean peninsula. The principal item exported from Kerch is
Crimean salt, of which one to two million puds are loaded annually
in the ports of the Azov and Black Seas. Close to the city, besides
the sulfur springs, one also finds slate quarries, mountain oil,
yellow ochre ore, and many mounds of that exceptionally fine clay,
which the ancient inhabitants of these coasts undoubtedly used to
make those precious vases, new ones of which are constantly found in
the ruins of their old capital. This clay was destined to become a
new, significant branch of trade and industry, as it can be used to
make exquisite porcelain.
Straight
streets are not found in the city; they are mostly crooked, and the
city consists of a few houses scattered along the slopes of Mount
Mithridates. However, these are mostly built of stone, for which the
surrounding area provides the finest building materials. The houses
built more recently have a European appearance, while the older
buildings, such as the Bazaar, bear the stamp of Asiatic influence
and still vividly recall the former Tartar rule. Tartar, Greek, and
Russian are spoken everywhere here. Englishmen also frequently visit
Kerts. For example, it is said that two English travelers, one from
Petersburg and the other from Calcutta, had designated Kertsch as
their rendezvous, and were so meticulous that one arrived only four
days earlier than the other.
In
the vicinity of Kertsch, approximately [a thousand] burial places
can be seen; in one of them, precious gold ornaments such as crowns,
scepters, shields, etc., were found. In another, a tomb with
crossbows was discovered, consisting of enormous square blocks of
stone, unconnected by any trass. No more magnificent tomb than this
has been found in the tombs of any Roman emperor, but it was
completely empty; the objects within were robbed, and thus it is
unknown which of the great men of this world were buried there. In
other burial mounds, numerous Greek vases, statuettes, and urns of
various sizes, often masterfully crafted, were found. Besides the
skeleton of a woman, even the remains of her beloved bird were
found; nets and a beautifully crafted basket woven from small wooden
rods were also discovered, along with statues and gravestones with
inscriptions dating back to before the birth of Christ.
Among
the multitude of these burial mounds of Kertsch, the most remarkable
are: first, the golden or princely one, called Alty Oba by the
Tartars, and second, the Kurgan Kulodach.
The
golden or princely Kurgan, located three versts from Kertsch on the
road to Feodosia, deserves attention, indeed even a particularly
careful study, by archaeologists, as it is an excellent monument
that illustrates two architectural periods: the Cyclopean and the
Bosporan. The golden Kurgan has for countless years been considered
the repository of immense treasures, and popular superstition has
surrounded it with fearsome apparitions and monsters; but now it is
acknowledged as true that this Kurgan served as the burial place of
the princes of the Bosphorus.
Evidence
of this is provided by the princely crowns found there, shaped like
laurel branches with long leaves of beaten gold, bracelets, and
other ornaments, which offer admiration for the fine and masterly
workmanship of that remote antiquity. A number of these precious
objects, signs of the wealth and prestige of the Pontic dynasty,
have already been transported to the capital of the Russian monarchy
and are preserved in the Imperial Hermitage.
The
Kurgan Kulodach lies six versts from Kertsch, also on the Strait of
Feodosia. In this burial mound, a cell measuring two squares in
length, two squares in width, and three squares in height was
discovered; its groin vault consisted of very large square stones.
Two skeletons, one male and one female, were found here. The
female's head wore a gold diadem with enamel stars, and a braided
gold chain hung around her neck. On the chest lay two gold
medallions, and the arms were adorned with bracelets. On either side
of the female robe were gold vases with Scythian images, and next to
the head lay a silver scepter and a sacrificial knife with a gold
handle. Similar objects were also found on the male skeleton; in
addition, a gold shield (depicting a fish, a snake, a Medusa's head,
and Scythians), gold statuettes depicting Scythians, and other
objects. To the left of the entrance stood three very large
cauldrons of red copper, filled with ash and burnt bones. More than
40 pounds of gold alone were found in this cemetery.
The
first impetus for investigating the ancient monuments in the
Kerchian graves came from Chancellor Count N. P. Rumjanzow.
Following his decree, a Kertsch resident, Lord du Bruiks, examined
the Kurgans located there for several years and reportedly brought
the count many curious discoveries. Captain Patanioti discovered a
second burial vault in the aforementioned golden or princely Kurgan,
containing numerous valuables encircling a skeleton whose bones were
of unusual size.
Behind
the village of Glinische, a marble sarcophagus was found in a burial
vault, containing a multitude of gold, silver, and bronze objects of
unusual artistry. This is said to be the burial place of the wife of
the Bosporian prince, Riskoporis IV, a contemporary of Caracalla;
thus, it would date from the beginning of the third century. The
most remarkable object found in this grave was a gold mask of the
queen's face; a gold diadem, bracelets, and a censer studded with
Syrian garnets. a ring with a stone on which Amor was depicted in
relief resting on his bow; a large bronze offering bowl, in some
places of which the gilding was still visible; a small, square,
striped column on which stood a satyr wreathed in vine leaves; a
round, flat silver platter with the Greek inscription "To
Prince Riskoporis," several silver vessels of various kinds,
silver ingots, etc.; a multitude of small gold ornaments, flowers,
and stars, some belonging to the clothing and some to the domestic
luxury of the ancients, which testify to their taste, their love of
splendor, and the high degree of their artistic skill.
A
number of burial mounds are located on the road leading from Kertsch
to the quarantine facility, on the site where the ancient city of
Marmikion once stood. Major excavations are undertaken here every
year; for example, in 1843 alone, seventeen Kurgans were opened, in
which thirty-three burial sites were discovered.
The
excavations are now carried out at the expense of the government,
which has hired special workers for this purpose. The objects found
here are kept in the museum in Kertsch, and some are also sent to
St. Petersburg. At the exhibition of antiquities in the museum A
chronological order is observed as much as possible.
Antiquity
researchers and antiquity enthusiasts will find almost nowhere as
fertile a territory as in the vicinity of Kerts.
Yeni-Kale
is 212 versts from Simferopol and 12 versts from Kerts. This city
has belonged alternately to the Genoese and then to the Turks, and
is now almost exclusively inhabited by Greeks. In the northern part
of the city stands a small fortress, built by the Turks and improved
by the Russians. Noteworthy are an Eastern-style gate and an
enormous square tower, whose architecture recalls the Genoese
warfare. The majority of the city's inhabitants make their living
from fishing and conduct a brisk fish trade, primarily in Kerts.
Close
to Yeni-Kale stands a beacon, which guides ships in the Azov Sea.
"The
Latin Civilization"
April
24, 1936 THE LATIN CIVILIZATION I
ITS
SIGNIFICANCE FOR OUR REGION A PIECE OF HISTORY
As
the years go by, one becomes accustomed to being surprised by
nothing and to honoring the wisdom of the old Horace Flacius, who,
about 1900 years ago, wrote to his friend Numicius:
"Nil
admirari prope res est una Numici,
"Solaque
quae potest facere et servare beatos."
Yet
even the elder, who sees the ordinary "??? Those who do not
usually smile indulgently at the influence of spiritual trends and
parties, sometimes find their peaceful patience put to a severe test
in our turbulent times when they are forced to witness the values
of life, which they have learned to value highly from
childhood, being dragged into the mud with ruthless audacity.
This
naturally applies primarily to the transcendental goods, whose
sacred protection has long been entrusted to Mother Church, which we
Catholics, in these gloomy times, must defend more than ever against
the partly open, partly sneaky attacks of their undisguised, or
worse, cunningly crafty enemies.
But
this also applies to the highest natural cultural assets of
humanity, and particularly of Latin civilization. For centuries and
centuries, no educated person has doubted the value of that
civilization. And from its first appearance in Rome to this day, the
Holy Church has considered it its duty to educate the youth, who
were preparing for the holy priesthood under its care, in the
language and literature of ancient Latium. But behold, nineteen
centuries after Christ's death, a new "Movement" has
emerged. It has trampled upon everything that had previously been
held in high regard and venerable. With the loyalty to the Pope and
the Bishop, which the Southern Netherlands has been able to claim
for sixteen centuries, it also rejects Latin as "alien"
and "contrary to the nature of the Germanic race," a group
it very wrongly considers us Southerners to belong to. Therefore, it
seems useful to us to examine, using established historical sources,
with an unbiased and impartial eye, what Limburg was like before the
arrival of the Romans and what it is now, with God's help, under the
influence of Latin civilization.
What
we know of prehistoric Limburg is thanks to the investigative skills
of both earlier and later archaeologists, especially in recent years
to that of Dr. Beckers, a physician in Beek. Their work essentially
confirms what we already knew from similar research both
domestically and abroad: the Limburgers of prehistoric times stood
on a low level of culture; they lived in wooden and clay huts, wore
very primitive jewelry, possessed few practical tools, and practiced
pottery as their only known craft. 1) Only with the arrival of the
Romans did higher forms of civilization enter these regions, which
for over a hundred years experienced the beneficial influence of
Latin colonization to a large extent. While the Rhine (even then!)
served as the boundary against barbarism, the Meuse, the river in
the peaceful land, was the natural conductor of higher culture. The
second century AD, in particular, was a completely peaceful and safe
era for the regions: unprotected country houses and farms here and
there, especially in the charming hilly landscape along the Geul
River, and a prosperous population lived carefree and well-protected
from the threat of war. One of the centers of this Roman
agricultural colony in South Limburg has already been discovered,
discovered some time ago on the plateau of the present-day
Ravensbosch Monastery. A large number of farmsteads, scattered
throughout a wide area, were located there, with a mausoleum or
burial temple at their center, where the cremated remains of the
deceased were placed in stone coffins. That, under the protection of
the Roman eagles, alongside a relatively high culture, great
prosperity also prevailed in these regions is evident from various
excavations carried out in the first quarter of this century by the
late Dr. Goossens in collaboration with Professor Dr. Holwerda. Near
Bocholtz, a luxurious country house ("villa") was
excavated, built entirely on masonry foundations, and featuring a
bathing facility as well: central heating! No, don't shake your head
in disbelief, modern again. Here's what Professor Holwerda's book,
page 153, literally states: Some rooms (of the excavated villa) were
heated according to the well-known hypocausal system: a double
masonry floor, the upper layer of which rested on stone columns,
received the warm air from a fireplace outside against the building
wall, and stone pipes carried it further up the walls. The bathing
rooms were also heated this way, and even the masonry washbasin has
its foundation in the ground.
Thus
writes the highly learned researcher, who concludes with the
following: That a highly civilized Roman population inhabited our
South Limburg needs no further explanation: alongside the simpler
farmer, the great Roman gentleman farmer lived here, in his
luxurious country house, on the same footing as he was accustomed to
in classical countries. It is, in fact, virtually the same farm that
is still found today as the typical Limburg farmhouse in these
regions. (Editor's note: Ours in bold.) We would have nothing more
to add to this—the quotes speak loud and clear!—were it
not for the fact that the highly learned author had specifically
drawn attention to the significance of Heerlen in this earliest
period of Limburg's history. "Objects from almost the entire
Roman period," he writes on page 154, "have been found in
Heerlen: even from the earliest period, that of Emperor Augustus,
several finds seem to have been made. And the first decades of the
fourth century AD (so, more than three hundred years after Caesar
Augustus, Ed.) are certainly represented by a number of objects."
He then continues literally: "We believe we can deduce that
Heerlen was a kind of rural town, a hub for the farming population,
from the discovery of a number of pottery kilns at various points in
the municipality, workshops where various types of Roman pottery
were produced." "We now find this same pottery in the
remains of Roman farms in Limburg: these Heerlen potters seem to
have primarily worked for the farming population. Apparently,
Heerlen was the place where this population went to market for its
household needs." One can see that there's nothing new under
the sun. For 1,800 years later, the farming population of the
surrounding area still goes to market in Heerlen. If one wants to
know exactly how Latin civilization in these regions came to an end,
one need only read what Professor Holwerda writes at the end of his
chapter on Roman land colonization: "As if a scorching breath
had passed over the land, we see all that Latin life, those
prosperous country houses, that truly Roman luxury in South Limburg
suddenly destroyed at the beginning of the third century AD; and the
same phenomenon is also observed in neighboring Belgium. Many
remains still show traces of fire and brutal violence, other farms
are simply abandoned: the pottery suddenly breaks off everywhere,
and the coins also speak of an abandonment around the beginning of
the third century. There's no doubt that a Germanic invasion here at
that time suddenly destroyed Roman life, which had been able to
develop undisturbed for over a hundred years, razing the country
houses and driving out the population. From then on, the prosperous
Limburg of the past has been an almost deserted region, repeatedly
exposed to barbarian raids. No sooner had the Rhine border succumbed
to a swarm of Germanic people than the first incursion of those
plundering barbarian bands was enough to destroy that peaceful
culture and make it disappear forever. (The boldfaced text is the
author's). Tomorrow we hope to continue this instructive story and
draw a number of conclusions from it. But we would like to note this
now: let the N.S.B. boast of its Germanic ancestors: we feel much
safer on the civilized side of the barricade! And thank God!
Catholic Limburg belongs on that side, as we will demonstrate
further tomorrow.
1)
We have borrowed these and the following details from the excellent
work of Prof. Dr. J. H. Wolwerda {Holwerda}: "Dutch Earliest
History" (S. L. van Looy — Amsterdam).
April
25, 1936 In our previous article, we saw how South Limburg, after
being opened to Latin civilization around the beginning of our era,
experienced its beneficial influence for over two centuries, until,
at the beginning of the third century AD, a furious invasion by
arsonist and plundering Germanic bands violently drove the high
culture of Rome from our region. But that culture certainly did not
disappear completely. After all, while the countryside had been made
uninhabitable for the Gallo-Roman population, in the fortified
settlements they found a safe refuge from the plunder and fury of
the barbarians. The rulers of the world empire, incidentally, had a
paramount interest in defending the remote corner now known as South
Limburg. After all, the wide highway ran straight through our region
from Tongeren to Cologne, which at the time held the same strategic
significance as today's bullet-straight highways. This road
traversed our current province from west to east: Maastricht served
as a fortified bridgehead, where the river was initially crossed by
ferry and later by bridge. From there, it flowed via Meerssen
through the Geuldal to Valkenburg and then most likely via Ransdaal
to Heerlen, after which it led via Jülich to Cologne, where it
ended at the border of barbarian land. Cologne was known to be one
of the oldest and most famous Roman settlements on the Rhine: as one
may recall, the fortified city was founded 20 years before Christ by
Marcus Vispanius Agrippa, who gave it his name: Colonia Agrippina.
For over 400 years, it remained one of the cornerstones of the
Empire! No wonder the Romans placed such great value on an
uninterrupted connection between Tongeren and Cologne. Therefore,
under Emperor Diocletian, they built a whole series of "casemates"
— nothing new under the sun!—to protect their highway
from the attacks of the warlike Germans. Only in our time have three
of these casemates, which the Romans called "burgi," been
discovered in these regions: the first on the Hussenberg near
Geulle, the second on Rondenbosch north of Sint Gerlach, and the
third on the Goudsberg between Valkenburg and Ransdaal. This last
"burgus" was excavated under the care of Professor
Holwerda. According to the pottery found, this small fort, measuring
over twelve by nine meters, was still under military occupation in
the first half of the fourth century. The discovery of coins bearing
the image of Emperor Constantine also irrefutably demonstrates the
maintenance of this defensive belt well into the fourth century for
Rondenbosch. Thus, by following the line of irrefutable stone and
metal evidence from long-gone centuries, we arrive at the era of the
conversion of the Limburg population by the missionaries of Rome,
particularly by Saint Sarbatius or Servatius. Rarely, if ever, is
the life story of a saint so distorted over time as that of
Limburg's oldest preacher of the faith. What legend tells of him is
known to almost every Limburger: but what history reveals is quite
different! Sarbatius was an Armenian disciple of the Church of
Jerusalem: he journeyed from the holy city, where he had been
ordained a priest, to the far northern border of the Empire, there
to win souls for Christ. But in these regions, he did not encounter
Germanic barbarians in animal skins, as is customarily portrayed in
religious processions at the septennial holy festivals, but rather
well-civilized Gallo-Romans, who, nevertheless, in this remote
corner had mostly remained pagans even after the capital had been
largely won over to Christianity. Throughout his life, he stood as a
courageous soldier of Christ against the enemies who at that time
besieged Mother Church: the barbarians on the other side of the
imperial border, who constantly threatened invasions, the Arians,
who denied the Divinity of the Redeemer, and his pagan compatriots,
who were still very numerous, especially in the army. That, despite
the quarrels between commanders that broke out almost every time a
succession took place, order and tranquility still prevailed in the
vast world empire is proven by the repeated, very long journeys the
bishop-missionary undertook. During his forty-year episcopate (from
342-383), he traveled alternately to Sardica in Thrace (now Sofia in
Bulgaria) and to Rimini in Italy, where he defended orthodox Church
doctrine at councils; He proceeded to Antioch in Asia Minor, where
he attempted in vain to bring about a reconciliation between Emperor
Constantius in the East and the pretender to the throne, Magnentius,
in the West, who had been proclaimed Caesar by his soldiers. He
undertook the long journey "ad limina" at least three
times to seek advice and assistance from the Vicar of Christ.
II
(End).
But
he could not prevent the Gaul Magnentius from massing his legions in
the south of France to deliver a decisive blow to his rival (which
he lost), from the Germans immediately seizing the favorable
opportunity to attack the severely depleted garrisons of the
northern cities. In the disastrous year of 354, the entire
northeastern border of the Empire, from Strasbourg (Argentoratum) to
Tongeren (Aduatica Tungrorum), collapsed. The casemate line was
overrun and razed to the ground. And after a months-long siege,
besieged Cologne was forced to surrender in the year 355. Of course,
the Germans did what Germans typically did: whether one reads
Ammianus Marcellimis 1) or consults the "Overvuleling van
België" (The Surviving of Belgium) by the journalist
Mokveld 2), it amounts to exactly the same thing: murder, arson,
pillage, and virginity toute la lyre!
But
then Emperor Constantius appointed his nephew Julian Caesar of Gaul.
The very next year, the young general (he was not yet 25!) managed
to defeat the Germans in a battle on the Meuse and advanced, along
the military road through Limburg and the Rhineland, to recapture
the border fortress of Cologne. Then he marched south with his
legions across the Rhine, and in the summer of 357, he inflicted a
crushing defeat on the Allemanni at Strasbourg. He turned north
again, and in 358 we find him at Tongeren, where, according to his
historian, he received the submission of "the Franks, whom we
call Salians," but who were never Germanic! Thus, the "pax
romana" was re-established in the bishopric of Saint Servatius
by one of the most stubborn and dangerous enemies of Christianity.
For it was this Caesar Julian, who became Emperor two years later,
who was and remained notorious to both contemporaries and posterity
as "Julian the Apostate"! Perhaps an echo of the
inevitable spiritual conflict between the Catholic bishop and the
apostate "Führer" has come down to us in the
tradition that Sarbatius moved his episcopal see to Maastricht under
pressure from malicious elements in his original residence. But be
that as it may, the fact remains that the conversion of Limburg,
four centuries before the rest of the Netherlands, was only possible
through the influence of Latin civilization, which had already
thoroughly permeated these regions when, north of the then-imperial
border, our "Germanic ancestors" were still pure-bred
savages.
We
may recall how in the year 406 the Wandalians descended upon Gaul
like an unstoppable torrent, chanting "Wandalia über
alles" (Wandalia above everything) as they trampled upon the
centuries-old culture of Imperial Rome. But although their Germanic
trail was marked by ruins, blood, and tears, they were unable to
wrest the holy faith from the hearts of the cruelly oppressed
people. Limburg remained Catholic, and Limburg continued to bask in
the sun of Latin civilization. For centuries, it knew no other
written language than Latin. And it is under the dual and
inseparable influence of Rome's religion and Rome's superior culture
that the mixture of peoples and races, fused on our soil in the
melting pot of centuries, has become a strong unity, loyal to
sovereign and fatherland, but above all inseparably bound to its
spiritual cradle: the Church of Christ, whose Vicar resides in Rome.
Let our popular press then safely misuse the holy feast of Pentecost
to celebrate their racial solidarity with their Germanic ancestors
on the "faded old days" and to immerse themselves once
again in the "old traditions"—God forbid! — of
their lineage: we Catholic Southerners, who, thank God, were never
Germanic, remain faithful to the Eternal City "Rome aeterna,"
the Mother of Latin civilization throughout the centuries!
1)
Ammianus Marcellinus (330-390) is a historian of the Roman Empire in
the later Imperial period. His work comprises 31 books, of which the
last eighteen have been preserved. In the fourteenth book, he
outlines Julian's campaign against the Germans in numerous
interesting details. But his harsh, soldierly language is not easy
to read, and we cannot recommend his books as entertainment.
2)
"The Surrender of Belgium" was written by L. Mokveld, war
correspondent for "De Tijd." The collection, "Experiences
as a Dutch journalist gained during a four-month stay with the
German troops in Belgium," was published in 1916 by Brusses
Uitgeversmaatschappij in Rotterdam. It is a life-like account, hot
off the press, without fuss, and truthful. And it is much easier to
read than Ammianus Marcellinus.
April
29, 1936 THE FAITHFULNESS OF CATHOLIC LIMBURG IN PREVIOUS CENTURIES
AND IN OUR DAYS
Regarding
our double article on Latin civilization, we have received two
esteemed comments. The first concerns the time period between the
conversion of Limburg and that of the rest of the Netherlands, a
time period which, according to our informant, we would have set
somewhat broadly. After all, Saint Servatius became Bishop of
Tongeren around 342, and Saint Willebrord was consecrated Bishop of
Utrecht by Pope Sergius in the year 695. This therefore makes a
difference of 353 years, not "four centuries," as we
wrote. The comment is entirely correct regarding the annual figures.
It should be remembered, however, that St. Servatius likely had
several unknown predecessors in the episcopal see of Tongeren—after
all, freedom to preach the Catholic faith was officially permitted
in the Roman Empire as early as 313 by the Edict of Milan—while,
on the other hand, it is certain that St. Willibrord was the first
bishop of Utrecht. Moreover, the north of our country remained pagan
for well over half a century after St. Willibrord's consecration, as
the Frisians, who at that time occupied a large part of present-day
Utrecht.
Those
who ruled Holland, showed themselves so hostile to Christianity
that, as late as 754, they cruelly murdered Saint Boniface, the
Apostle of the Germanic people, near Dokkum. When one considers
these facts, one sees that our estimate of the time between the
conversion of the Southern and Northern Netherlands is not as
unfounded as it might seem at first glance. The second observation
from the esteemed quarter speaks of Limburg's faith. Is our region
still as inseparably linked to its spiritual cradle, Rome, in our
time, as it used to be during the nearly sixteen centuries that have
elapsed since the arrival of Saint Servatius? Doesn't the Catholic
Church in these regions also suffer from the common disease of our
time: an overestimation of the material and the passive alongside an
underestimation of the spiritual and eternal values of
life? And hasn't Limburg's unwavering religious unity, especially in
the mining region, been eroded by the influx of a multitude of
dissenters, both from within and from abroad?
These
are three questions we will attempt to answer to the best of our
ability, based on the figures and facts known to us. Regarding the
problem of religious laxity, we believe that the current generation
need not fear a rational comparison with previous generations.
Halfhearted and fainthearted Catholics have always existed
everywhere in all parts of the world, including in Limburg.
Especially in the sixteenth century, the moral and religious
situation, both here and elsewhere, was much less favorable than it
is today. At that time, the moral decline among Catholics was not
only more extensive, but it was also concealed and covered up to a
much greater extent than it is now, including by the clergy, who
themselves were affected to a regrettable degree by the moral
laxity. We do not intend to go on a scandal-hunting spree in the
chronicles and memoirs of that unfortunate time: which, moreover,
would not cost us the least effort. But when one knows that even in
well-meaning and faithful circles, sentiment was stirred against
priestly celibacy, because it was not being maintained, then one
will understand how far the corruption of morals had come, even
among "the salt of the earth." The fact that Catholic
Limburg overcame this cruellest of trials without lasting damage to
the Holy Faith, which was wholly or largely lost in so many other
regions, may rightly be considered convincing proof of the
unwavering attachment of the inhabitants of this region to the
religion and teachings of Rome. Afterward, the faithfulness of the
Limburgers was repeatedly tested, by Joseph II, by the French
Directory, by Napoleon, and last but not least, by King William I of
the Netherlands. But neither in the eighteenth nor in the nineteenth
century was there any sign of moral decay or relaxation among the
clergy! And where the priests lead the faithful people in unwavering
steadfastness and purity of morals, the preservation of the highest
values of life is assured. Although for each of us,
"suffering, struggling, and overcoming remains the daily fate."
Now
a few words about the influx of dissidents to our region. As you
know, there are accurate statistics on this, dating from 1930, the
year of the eleventh general census.
The
data are therefore already more than five years old: but since then,
the situation has improved rather than worsened due to the return of
a large number of foreigners to their native region or homeland. We
can therefore safely consider the number of dissidents, which at the
time amounted to over six and a half percent (exactly 6.55 percent),
as a maximum; from which it follows that Limburg is currently
approximately 94 percent Catholic! This will surprise many who tend
to focus only on the mining region: after all, the relationship
between fellow believers and dissidents there is much less
favorable! On December 31, 1930, Heerlen had over 20, Hoensbroek
Nearly 24 percent of non-Catholics live in Brunssum, while
Geleen-Lutterade recorded only 14 percent dissidents. All other
municipalities remain below this percentage: Kerkrade has less than
ten percent, and Maastricht no more than six percent, including all
"non-churchgoers." It goes without saying that the rest of
the province exhibits a picture of religious cohesion unlike any
other region in the Netherlands. Thus, there are 52 municipalities
with no more than ten dissidents. And north of Maasbracht, there are
eighteen adjacent municipalities on the left bank of the Meuse with
a total of 31,386 inhabitants, of whom 31,337 are Catholic! The two
most populous of the twelve municipalities, where all residents are
Catholic without exception, are Limbricht with 2,088, and
Schimmert—the birthplace of Bishop Lemmens — with 1,766
inhabitants. Anyone who calmly and impartially examines these series
of figures, which we could supplement with numerous others if
desired, will come to the conclusion that the invasion of dissidents
poses no significant threat to the Catholic Church in Limburg. This
danger is even less, however, because the religious bond that binds
them together is exceptionally weak, and the confessional divide
among Protestants has also reached alarming proportions in our
region. The Dutch Reformed Church, the heir to the formerly infamous
State Church, which caused our ancestors so much suffering,
currently comprises only 2.91 percent of the population. And this
small group lives almost exclusively under the smoke of the chimneys
of the State Mines. Everywhere else, their numbers are completely
insignificant. Therefore, the danger for Catholic Limburg most
certainly does not lie there! Where it does lie, we have already
demonstrated so often that this time we will not repeat ourselves.
But the danger is well known: and we are working hard to avert it.
With
God's help, Limburg will also overcome National Socialism!
May
22, 1936 It is our firm principle to provide an opportunity for
unhindered discussion in our columns on all open issues. Indeed,
just as it is our duty to exclude false teachings on religious and
moral matters from our publication, we consider it equally useful
and necessary to accommodate orthodox fellow believers in the
presentation of their opinions, even when they differ from ours in
many respects. Therefore, we now gladly give the floor to two young
foster children of our Nijmegen Alma Mater—vulgo: to two
students of the Catholic University—to enable them to share
their ideas about Latin civilization and its significance for our
region widely. Here is what they have to say on the matter: By
analogy with "virtue in the middle," one could also say
"truth in the middle," in the sense that untruth usually
originates in some exaggeration or one-sidedness. This was
regrettable in the follow-up articles "Latin Civilization"
in the Limburgsch Dagblad of April 24th and 25th. The author saw
classical culture in Limburg in danger. He took on the role of its
defender, but in his impetuous zeal he killed not only its enemies,
but also its allies and its entire foundation, leaving his protégé
herself bare and uneasy in a plain devoid of lifeblood. The
classical cultural treasure is a great asset, and dangers may loom
over it, but this is no reason to distort the truth. This serves no
purpose, and certainly not Limburg. The impression given by the
aforementioned article is not that we should be wary of discarding
cultural gifts handed down to us through the centuries, but that in
past centuries the Romans were the sole bearers of culture and
civilization, far superior to the murderous, burning, plundering,
and virgin-desecrating barbarians, also known as Germans. That
these, in a murderous rampage, eradicated that entire civilization
root and branch from our region, yet left so much of it that the
author can claim that we Limburgers have preserved Gallo-Roman
civilization intact and were never Germans. That we must therefore
stand firm against the Germanic hordes—in this case, the
Germans, who, as evidenced by the World War, have remained just as
murderous and uncivilized—hand in hand with our southern
neighboring states. This representation is absolutely one-sided and
incorrect. If we confine ourselves for the moment to the present, it
is undeniable that we Limburgers, like the people of Brabant and the
Dutch, are Germanic. The migration certainly had the consequence
that the Germanic people advanced from the Rhine border to the coal
forest, which roughly coincides with the present-day border between
Flanders and Wallonia. Even the most superficial observer must be
struck by the physical differences between the average Limburger and
the average Walloon, and surely no one would want to claim that
general civilized Dutch or the Limburgish dialect are Romance
linguistic forms. And although many may still harbor a distrust of
anything beyond the Moerdijk, and although many Limburgers may not
feel entirely at home when walking around Delft or Zwolle, they will
certainly feel like strangers in France. The Limburg people's
background is core Germanic, just as the background of the entire
Dutch people, the English, the German, and the Scandinavian peoples,
is Germanic. However, we must take into account the fact that, due
to its geographical location in (South) Limburg, of all Dutch
regions, the clash of these two elements, Gallo-Roman and Germanic,
has personally experienced. It borders directly to the south on the
Romance-Germanic language border, which is the ultimate exponent of
this friction between Gallo-Romans and Germanic peoples. The area on
either side of this language border, which in Belgium roughly covers
the course of the Roman road from Boulogne to Cologne, was once the
major friction point on which Gallo-Romans and Germanic peoples
moved in motley intermingling. The further north one moved from this
line, the more numerous the Germanic peoples became and the fewer
the Gallo-Romans. Towards the south, however, the Gallo-Romans
became increasingly numerous, and in a corresponding measure the
number of Germanic peoples diminished. Which is also self-evident:
after all, the Gallo-Romans advanced from the south, while the
Germanic peoples in the fourth century AD... began to descend from
the North. The lines of the two centers of radiation not only
touched but also slid over and through each other, resulting in the
colorful amalgam we mentioned, between which, over the centuries,
the language border was to emerge. This border is nothing other than
the expression of the ultimate, still relative, stabilization in the
opposition of these two forces. In other words, both Gallo-Roman and
Germanic influences, to the extent they could advance, pushed
against each other. This push and counter-push was long associated
with a fluctuation of forces, but ultimately, a state of equilibrium
emerged: the two opposites remained firmly pressed against each
other, but each retained its own territory. South of this tangent,
the Gallo-Roman element gained dominance and absorbed all that was
available of Germanic; North of it, Germanic finally gained the
upper hand and absorbed everything Gallo-Roman. Therefore, we find
neither a purely Gallo-Roman population south of the line, nor a
purely Germanic one north of it. Nevertheless, we call the
population south Gallo-Roman, because that is essentially what it
is, and likewise that north Germanic, because that is essentially
and originally what it is.
I.
This
by no means denies that both adopted much from each other and
therefore have much in common. And regarding the exchange of
cultural goods, it is undoubtedly true that here the Gallo-Romans,
precisely because they possessed a higher culture, were the givers
par excellence, and the Germans primarily the receivers. But that
did not mean all Germans became Gallo-Romans. This did, as it were,
happen with the Germans who lived south of the current language
border; They were absorbed into the Gallo-Roman dominance. North of
the language border, however, the exact opposite happened: the
Gallo-Romans who were once there were dissolved into the Germanic
dominance. The population of Walloon Belgium and Northern France
thus absorbed Germanic blood from the invading Franks, who perished
there as such, that is, as Germans—for that is what they were;
yet, they would not have left behind their name tag: France, i.e.,
the Empire of France, owes its name to them. Conversely, among the
Limburgers and Rhinelanders, blood mixing occurred with the
Gallo-Romans who were already present there, which greatly favored
their national character. Moreover, they benefited most from
Gallo-Roman civilization. Yet, they remained Germans nonetheless.
Peoples form in an inscrutable way, but at a certain point they
exist, and this existence can no longer be denied. Race, language,
psychological characteristics, historical and economic ties—all
work together to form a single collectivity that feels united and
desires to remain so. However, cultures, guided by reason, which is
fundamentally the same in all people, thus being without boundaries,
expand across different peoples or segments of the population
without regard to national boundaries. Not that a culture undergoes
no changes on its journey of conquest. For the non-intellectual
elements in humans—character, mentality, taste, and so many
other factors—also contribute to the construction of a
culture. And these factors are connected to the soul of people. The
Romans, who carried the light of civilization into the darkness of
the North, were themselves rough and hard farmers when they adopted
Greek civilization in the second and third centuries BC and
imprinted upon it the stamp of their own sense of justice and their
own striving for practical utility. Thus, this civilization acquired
a Gallic influence in France and all the lands up to the Rhine, even
to Cologne, so that it is rightly called Gallo-Roman. On the other
side of the Rhine lived the Germanic peoples with their very special
national character and their own, albeit still low-level, culture,
which we still know primarily from the Germanic law that has come
down to us. In the period of the Migration of Peoples, now an
exchange of Roman and Germanic cultural elements took place, in
which the much superior Roman civilization had the lion's share, but
was transformed into the Germanic national character. Limburg, too,
preserved the Latin cultural treasure, transformed into the Germanic
national character and blended with Germanic cultural elements.
Classical civilization also penetrated the Northern Netherlands, but
the Germanic factor remained much more dominant here than,
particularly, in Limburg. In Limburg, two civilizations
interpenetrated, and the classical one was preserved there the most
strongly of all the regions in our country. The same thing happened
in the Rhineland, which is contrasted with the land on the right
bank of this river, whose civilization has remained much more purely
Germanic. Instead of orienting our region one-sidedly towards the
South and raising it in contempt and aversion for anything
non-classical, it would be better to emphasize that the Netherlands,
but Limburg and the Rhineland in particular, constitute the area
where two cultures, upon which our Western civilization rests,
reconciled and united. These are very elementary concepts that are
assumed to be familiar to anyone who studies Latin civilization, and
particularly its influence in Limburg. However, when, instead of
considering the issue purely objectively, one conflates politics,
sentiment, religion, and science and sacrifices them to a political
standpoint, one ends up with such a one-sided view of things, as we
pointed out in the aforementioned articles. Let us not follow the
example of some and regard history as a piece of modeling clay,
which anyone can shape and mold according to their current political
or other thinking. Science exists for the sake of truth, not for the
N.S.B., the Roman Catholic Church. To provide St. P. or any other
parties with propaganda material. Had the author considered the
matter more calmly, he certainly would not have been able to claim
that the Franks were never Germanic. If he could provide even a
little evidence for this, he would undoubtedly have made one of the
greatest historical discoveries of the last centuries. The discovery
of the foundations of several Roman villas certainly points to a
highly developed civilization of the Roman colonists in these
regions, but says nothing about the cultural status of the original
population, who likely stood at a much lower level of development.
As for the destructive effect of the Migration of Nations, the
author would do well to read the book by the French author F. Lot,
La Fin du Monde Antique, or the report of the speech delivered by
Professor Gosses at the sixteenth Dutch philologists' congress, in
which he states, among other things, that a peaceful infiltration of
Germans had already taken place before four hundred, and that the
Roman Empire, with Germanic soldiers, fought against the Germans of
the Migration of Nations. We quote:
"A clear national
antagonism between the inhabitants of the Empire and the Germanic
people is rarely expressed, though there is, of course, a sense of
hostility toward those who plundered the borderlands and toward
those who arbitrarily and violently sought to establish themselves
within the Empire. Yet, once such invaders had established
themselves there, a passable relationship soon developed between
native and foreign invaders. A few aristocratic literati might have
been justified in a certain haughty contempt; the lower classes
apparently felt more comfortable in a state of simple structure
under a barbaric king and his followers than in the Empire, which no
longer offered security, had become top-heavy due to its
bureaucratic apparatus, and where people enjoyed little freedom.
Moreover, only smaller Germanic bands took possession of the
Empire—which they did not want to destroy; Charlemagne was the
first to assume the imperial crown. Therefore, there was no question
of a migration of peoples; entire tribes did not cross the Rhine.
There are many more errors that could be listed in this emotionally
inspired article. However, the intention is not so much to denounce
errors as to present the truth without bias and without politicizing
science. Limburg is Germanic with a strong Latin influence; no
region in our country has preserved this as strongly as Limburg,
which represents a tremendous cultural treasure for our province.
This influence gives the Limburger that special nuance in their
civilization that the average Dutchman, for example, so often
misses. However, this should not make us close our eyes to the
cultural heritage we have received from the Germanic side, nor
should it cause us, because of a political form of government, to
harbor a one-sided hatred against a people with whom we have so much
in common. At the end of these reflections, we ask the reader to
suspend his judgment until he has read our response in the next
issues of our magazine.
May
23, 1936 It is easy to forgive young people for not yet devoting the
meticulous care to the definition of their ideas that people usually
acquire only later in life. Therefore, we are only mildly surprised
that the reader is already presented with a completely incorrect
representation of our train of thought in the first paragraph of the
voluminous work of our Nijmegen friends, which we published in its
entirety in our previous issue. Indeed, the notion that we consider
"classical culture in Limburg" to be threatened is a pure
fabrication. In our nearly four-column double article, we didn't
mention a single word about classical Rome! And rightly so! After
all, when Latin civilization penetrated our regions, the classical
period in Rome was already well and truly over. True, the
inhabitants of these lands had experienced a military occupation
with Roman garrisons since Caesar's triumphal march through Gaul,
but peaceful land colonization only began in the last years of the
first century AD, reaching its peak of prosperity towards the end of
the second century. However, Tacitus, the Roman historian with whom
the line of classical authors ends, died in the year 119; and one
can easily surmise that the influence of his works on the
respectable farmers in the far north of the Empire must have been
very limited in scope and very limited in its penetration. No,
Limburg only became permanently acquainted with classical culture
during the Renaissance, which was indeed a movement "foreign"
to our region, although its influence on The more highly developed
part of the nation should not be underestimated. It was not
classical culture, but Gallo-Roman civilization, that prevailed in
Limburg for over a hundred years. And how widely it was spread
across our hills and valleys, how towering it towered above the
barbarity on the other side of the Rhine, is proven far better by
its remains in the soil of our region than by long and learned
arguments. That this civilization was violently eradicated is firmly
established by the fire marks revealed in almost all excavations,
which have left their indelible mark in the marlstone time and
again. And that, ultimately, after the fall of the Empire, the
Christianized civilization of Rome continued to prevail in these
regions, surely we do not need to teach these young people!
And
therefore we repeat our final conclusion, which has remained
completely untouched by the arguments of the young writers about
"classical culture," and which we formulated in our April
25th issue. as follows: Limburg remained Catholic, and Limburg
continued to bask in the sun of Latin civilization. For centuries,
it knew no other written language than Latin. And it is under the
dual and inseparable influence of Rome's religion and Rome's
superior culture that the mixture of peoples and races, fused on our
soil in the melting pot of centuries, has become a solid unity,
loyal to sovereign and fatherland, but above all inextricably linked
to its spiritual cradle: the Church of Christ, whose Vicar resides
in Rome.
Against
the completely distorted image that the young authors attempt to
foist upon us at the beginning of their piece, they then present
their own, in which they have mixed "Wahrheit und Dichtung"
in a rather deft, yet by no means opaque, manner. Their argument
essentially boils down to this: that the current language border
also constitutes the racial border, and that we are therefore
Germanic. Moreover, The Franks, who from the beginning of the fifth
to the end of the ninth century—for almost five hundred
years—set the tone in Gaul, and who dominated at least the
north and center of the country to such an extent that it still
bears the name France, were, according to the authors, without the
slightest doubt, purebred Germans! And they are so convinced of this
"truth" that they signal its denial in advance as "one
of the greatest historical discoveries of recent centuries." On
the other hand, they downplay the migration of peoples, with its
devastating and destructive consequences, as a kind of peaceful
penetration, which at least the lower classes were not unwelcome:
besides—as they present it—"only smaller Germanic
bands have taken possession of the (Roman) Empire." And then
follows their final conclusion: "Limburg is Germanic with a
strong Latin influence," accompanied by the sincere warning
against popular hatred "because the political form of
government" in the Third Reich.
History
is certainly not solely a sequence of facts and dates. But although,
especially when writing the history of civilization and peoples, the
spirit that speaks from historical data and that animates and
enlivens actual events, are never neglected. Yet, facts, not
fantasies, constitute the only correct and sound foundation upon
which the historian must build. And now, our readers will
undoubtedly have been struck by the fact that the voluminous
document by our two young Nijmegen natives overflows with assertions
and observations, but is completely devoid of any factual material.
The current dialect of Limburg is the only fact they invoke to
support their Germanophilic theses. We continue to search in vain
for any positive fact or any date! Therefore, allow us to refresh
the memory of the esteemed contributors and present them with the
history of these regions at the time of the migration. We therefore
resume the thread of our story where we left it off at the end of
our article of April 25th: with the invasion of the Vandals or
Wandalians in the year 406 of Our Lord. And then we see that this
"small Germanic band," originating from the Oder River
basin, not only razed the Roman fortresses of Coriovallum,
Maastricht, and Tongeren to the ground in our region, but also
ravaged Gaul with fire and sword, and, continually destroying and
plundering, penetrated all the way to Spain! Here, eight years
later, they were stopped in their tracks, defeated by the Romans
with the support of the Visigoths, and finally pushed back into
Galicia. But in 428, the Vandals undertook a second plundering raid
in the increasingly decaying Roman Empire. Once again, they traveled
through Pannonia (present-day Hungary), Rhetia, and Gaul to Spain,
after which they crossed over to Africa two years later, from where
they made all the coastal regions of the Mediterranean unsafe with
their raids and plunder. What happened to them afterward, and how
their national existence came to a bloody end a century later, lies
beyond the scope of this article. But that the idea of a
peaceful penetration by "smaller bands of Germans" pales
in comparison to such brutal events, perhaps our young Germanophiles
will now understand for themselves. What remained of the original
population in Limburg and North Brabant after the passage of these
wild hordes is easier to surmise than to describe. For to describe
it truthfully, either reliable historical sources or relics in the
soil were required. And both are so completely lacking that
Professor Holwerda, on page 171 of his standard work on "Dutch
Early History," can rightly say that "a state of
desolation must have set in here." Indeed, for the entire fifth
century, there exists nothing but popular tradition that names a
series of successors of Saint Servatius, or perhaps invented their
names later to fill the painful gap in the Episcopate of Limbura. 1)
This latter supposition gains in plausibility when we consider how
the devastating raid of the Vandals was followed, less than half a
century later, by the even more formidable storm of the Huns under
their chieftain Hetzel or Attila. This "small band,"
however, was not of Germanic origin, but, according to the unanimous
testimony of contemporaries, of Mongolian origin, which shows that
it was virtually indifferent to the Christian peoples of those days
whether they were bitten by the Germanic or the Mongolian tomcat. It
is known that through the collaboration of Franks and Romans, whose
general Aetius was appointed commander-in-chief of the allied
troops, these precursors of the Bolsheviks were decisively defeated
in the Marne Valley near Chaloras in the year 451 AD. How many
original "natives" remained after this double hurricane of
fire and steel in this formerly so captivating region, where not
only a few villas but entire villages with farmhouses, some
opulently built of stone, some simple ones of wood and clay,
testified to Latin culture, and where St. Servaes stood at the head
of a devout Christian people, is now impossible to determine. But
that despite everything, a number of Gallo-Romans must have lost
their lives is evident from the efforts the Franks made at the end
of the fifth century to reclaim these regions for Latin
civilization. And here we come to the crux of our argument: the
origins of the Franks, about which we hope to provide a number of
interesting details in the next issue.
1)
The "Acta Sanctorum" names St. Agricola, St. Ursinicus,
St. Designatus, St. Renatus, St. Supplicius, St. Quirillus, St.
Eucherus, and St. Falco as successors of St. Servaes. But since
further details of his life are either entirely or purely legendary,
this nomenclature doesn't get us much further.
May
25, 1936 In our previous article, we saw that the invasions of the
Vandals and Huns wiped out Latin civilization in this region, and
that the areas through which the "Gccsci of God" had made
its way were left behind as virtually deserted places, as is also
evident from the absence of remains in the soil. Finally, we saw
that this desolation ended when, in the year 491, the Franks reached
and occupied Limburg from the south. The author who tells us this is
St. Gregory of Tours, who wrote the history of the Franks in Latin
in the second half of the following century. This Holy Bishop was
born in the year 540 and in 573 was invested with the episcopal
dignity, which he held until 594, the year of his death. Besides his
twelve-book "Historia Francorum," we possess several other
works by him, among which "De Gloria Confessorum" stands
out, which, like the first, is of paramount importance for the
history of these regions in the sixth century AD. And now, it is
quite remarkable that this authoritative writer locates the origins
of his compatriots not in the North, but rather in the Southeast.
According to "the opinion of many," he writes, "the
Franks originated from Pannonia" (i.e., the Hungarian plains).
Now, this opinion might not have been given much weight if it were
not fully supported by the "silent witnesses" found in
abundance in the graves of this tribe. And here we once again
encounter the tireless researcher of "early Dutch history,"
Professor Dr. J. H. Holwerda. It must be due to the lightheartedness
of their youth that our two Nijmegen natives did not consult this
work before taking up their pens to establish the Germanic origins
of the Franks as an indisputable fact. After all, we had already
referred with due insistence to this eminent scholar of antiquity in
our first article on Latin civilization. Had the young contributors
heeded this urge, they would have made the "discovery" in
this work, published eighteen years ago, that, given the undeniable
evidentiary value of the numerous discoveries from this period,
virtually nothing remains of the alleged Germanicity of the
Franks.
Professor Holwerda begins the eighteenth chapter of
his source study with an explanation of the prevailing view
regarding the origins of the Franks, as it can be found in all
history books and booklets, both major and minor. The Franks are
said to have lived north and northeast of the Lower Rhine and formed
a confederacy there, which expanded more and more until all the
Germanic tribes living in this region were absorbed into it. Two
main groups are distinguished in this Frankish confederacy: the
Ripuarians, inhabitants of the right bank of the Rhine, and the
Salians, who are said to have played an important role in our
country and originated from Salland in Overijssel, from where they
increasingly pushed south, lured by the wealth of the Gallo-Roman
regions. From our region, therefore, the Frankish influence that
destroyed Roman power in Gaul would have originated. "The
presentation given here," the author continues, "certainly
contains nothing new for anyone, but does it also contain the truth?
— When we look around in our quintessentially Frankish
regions, in North Brabant or the Betuwe, for the remains of Frankish
culture, we find NOTHING!" But elsewhere the antiquarians of
the Ie have found more! After all, it was more than two centuries
ago that that remarkable royal tomb was unearthed in Tournai, with
its wealth of gifts—gold, precious stones, weapons, jewelry,
and whatnot—in which a gold finger ring bearing the seal
"Childerici regis" proved it was the resting place of that
Frankish prince who died in the year 481. And those same
characteristic objects—weapons, ornaments, pottery, and
glass—all equally peculiar and undeniably recognizable, have
since been recovered in almost overwhelming quantities in the vast
cemeteries of northern France and Belgium, or along the Middle Rhine
(p. 164). And then, using various historical sources, the scholar
carefully examines what ancient writers say about the Franks. The
author then refers both to the German Brenner, whom he calls "the
best expert on Frankish culture," and to the ???.
Frenchman
Fustel de Coulanges then concludes briefly and powerfully: "After
our acquaintance with the texts of the Latin writers, we preferred
to illustrate, in the words of a well-known historian, how our
historical ideas regarding the Franks, however much they may have
been accepted as dogma, are completely at odds with how those
conquests had taken place.
"The
invasion of Gaul by a Frankish people, how the formation of a
Frankish confederation in our regions and the settlement of those
Franks in our homeland—how all of this is nothing but a
product of modern historical fantasy" (p. 109). And now, on p.
170, follows a quotation that we especially recommend to the
attention of our Nijmegen friends: "That a dialect is spoken
here in these regions, which our linguists are accustomed to calling
Frankish, means nothing in this respect, as long as it has not been
proven that this name is rightly given to this linguistic phenomenon
and that the population who first spoke this language did not come
to these regions either long before the fifth century or long
afterward." May the esteemed contributors learn from this that
linguistics is a very fine science, but that it has only relative
significance for history. Whoever clearly envisions this truth is
already well on the way!
But
when the Franks were not "Nordic people", where did they,
with their peculiar cultural forms, come from? Professor Holwerda
also provides a clear and straightforward answer to this: they came
from Southeast Europe, and specifically from the shores of the Black
Sea. "There, in southern Russia and further in the lands north
of the Balkans, in the plains of Hungary, ancient Pannonia, lies the
cradle of what is so characteristic of Frankish civilization"
(p. 185). We cannot possibly reproduce in detail the argument of the
Leiden professor, who devoted twenty pages of his book to the
description and comparison of numerous cultural remains discovered
before and afterward along the long and distant path the Franks
followed in their migration from the shores of the Black Sea to the
banks of the Seine and Loire. We refer those interested to the
interesting work, illustrated with numerous photographs, which can
be found in any good library. But our younger opponents will surely
already have understood that a quiet A well-considered historical
perspective must lead the astute researcher to recognize that the
Franks, although they were certainly not purebred Scythians
(Southern Russia was then called Scythia) or Hungarians, should
certainly not be called Germans. This is further confirmed by the
examination of skulls from a Frankish burial ground near Katwijk,
which, according to the remains, is undeniably Frankish. The
anthropologist Dr. Sasse, who conducted this research with
scientific rigor, expressed his disappointment at the time in the
Antiquity Reports of the National Museum of Antiquities (Volume V)
that "the skull types found displayed such a mixture of races."
No wonder! says Professor Holwerda: "After all, history had
taught him to see in the Franks purebred Germans from the North!"
But he concluded that little or nothing of the typical
characteristics "of Nordic people" could be found in the
Franks. We will conclude for this time with a heartfelt Advice to
our Nijmegen friends. It is a rather unpleasant habit these days for
young people to think and speak disparagingly of the knowledge of
their elders. One senses this disparagement in the way they all too
often try to break the staff of the work of the elderly. But when
they themselves begin to work, it usually soon becomes apparent that
the youthful shortcomings of frivolity, thoughtlessness, and lack of
serious study play their ugly tricks. And therefore, this is our
free advice to the young people of Nijmegen: begin with a scholarly
study of Limburg's history. Don't limit yourself to the cursory
knowledge that a superficial reading of magazines and journals like
"De Dietsche Gedachte" and similar trend-setting
periodicals can provide. But consult serious and reputable authors
and antiquarians; and don't try to turn your study into a kind of
entertainment. Then you will be able to form a calm, thoughtful, and
well-documented judgment of Latin civilization in Limburg. And then
the author will It is an honor and a pleasure to exchange thoughts
with you once again.
May
26, 1936 We apologize for the excessive length of our reply to the
young contributors from Nijmegen, who wrongly attempted to diminish
Limburg's Latin civilization and ascribe a Germanic origin to
Frankish culture. However, we consider the correct knowledge of
Limburg's past too important for the current generation to allow it
to be buried under the delusions of a historical system distorted by
"alien science." Therefore, in this final article of our
new series, we are permitted to provide a brief overview of the
history of these regions during the Frankish rule.
The
kings.
The
first to regain a foothold here after the devastating storms of the
Vandals and Huns was the famous King Clovis, whose baptism on
Christmas Day in 493 opened a new era in the development of Gallic
Christianity. We know how this king succeeded his father, Clovis, in
481, whose famous royal tomb in Tournai we mentioned in our previous
article, and how, a year later—even before his convert—he
established Frankish rule in the land of Tongeren. The low level of
culture at which the few natives who survived the horrors of the
Germanic and Mongolian invasions led their miserable lives in these
regions is evident not only from the almost complete absence of
remains from this period, but no less from a famous passage in the
work "De Gloria confessorum" by St. Gregory of Tours
(540-594). Here is what we read in this work about the state of
decay in which the tomb of Limburg's saint, Bishop Servatius, was
found by his successor in the sixth century, Saint Monulfus: "The
faithful had repeatedly built a chapel from wooden beams and planks,
which, however, was always destroyed by storms or collapsed of its
own accord. But when, in due course, Monulfus became bishop of this
city (Maastricht), he built a large temple in honor of his
illustrious predecessor, which he richly decorated, and into which
he had the saint's remains transferred with great pomp and
splendor." (Gapul LXXII) 1) This remarkable quotation, which
dates from the end of the sixth century, reveals many things: first,
that approximately sixty years after the arrival of the Franks "in
the land of Tongeren," on the site of Maastricht, which had
been twice destroyed, a settlement had already arisen that, with a
little good will, could be called a "city"; Secondly, that
despite the devastating storms of migration, the memory of the first
Bishop of Tricht was by no means lost; thirdly, that therefore,
despite everything, "Limburg continued to bask in the sun of
Latin civilization," as we rightly wrote in our April 25th
issue; fourthly, that by the middle of the sixth century, this
civilization had already made such progress among the relatively
recently converted Franks that the son of one of their nobles could
be consecrated bishop and attain the crown of sainthood; and
fifthly, that simultaneously with the rise of Rome's influence,
culture also rose to such an extent that the construction of a large
and richly decorated temple on the tomb of St. Servatius once again
bore witness to the life-giving power of the inseparable twin
sisters: the Catholic Church and religious art!
Outside
the influence of devastating Germanic rule, Latin civilization was
able to flourish over the next three centuries amid a population
undoubtedly composed of numerous disparate elements, in which the
descendants of the Eburones had intermingled with Roman colonists,
with a few remaining immigrants, and with the far-from-purebred
Franks. But these descendants reappeared like a flower after a
thunderstorm as soon as they were once again nurtured by the
spiritual warmth of Roman religion and culture. Once more in
Limburg's history, this culture was threatened with destruction. And
once again it was the Germans who brought fire and plunder, death
and destruction to these peaceful lands. "Furo Normannorum,
libera nos Domine"2) sang the pious crowds as they marched in
the Procession of the Cross, making the hymns of all the Saints
resound through streets and squares, fields and meadows, just as
they do today.
How
this new and expanded edition of the old furor Teutonicus ravaged
these regions is demonstrated by the telling fact that not a single
monument remains from the Frankish Christian period, which lasted
over three centuries in this region, although the example of St.
Monulfus undoubtedly found widespread imitation. Like the Vandals or
the Huns, the Normans spared not a single church or farmstead on
their destructive path. And when Count Arnolf finally averted the
storm at the Dyle in 951, Latin civilization could begin to rebuild
what the Germanic destructiveness had burned down. Look, when one
examines this series of established key facts from Limburg's past
through history, one has every right to be astonished by the
unreasoned parroting of the palpable fable from the Third Reich
about a "Nordic race" with its own "national
character," which supposedly made not only Prussia or
Pomerania, but also the North and South of the Netherlands happy
with the benefits of a noble character and a high-quality culture.
That the NSB parrots such follies is easy to understand, and
dubious.
It's
easy to forgive. She is, after all, the mouthpiece of "purebred"
National Socialism. But that young Catholics from good families
allow themselves to be so deceived by the false illusion of German
science that they retell such Germanic nursery tales with faithful
faces—well, that's what we call a most ominous sign of the
times. Of course, we must not "conceive hatred" for our
kindred spirits in the Rhineland, who are currently paying for their
attachment to the religion and civilization of Rome with the
persecution and torture of the best of their priests and leaders.
But we may and must detest with all the strength of our soul the
"political system" that currently prevails in the Third
Reich. For this system is inextricably linked to a worldview that
propagates the most dangerous heresy the Church of God has ever
faced in its centuries-old existence. Let our young friends from
Nijmegen, therefore, reflect deeply on this question and diligently
research the historical sources. Undoubtedly, science exists for the
sake of truth, not to provide some party with propaganda material.
But truth resides in the chair of St. Peter in Rome, from where
first Gallo-Roman civilization, and later Christianized
civilization, originated on its salutary path to this region.
Therefore, let us Catholics not be blinded by racial delusions and
pseudo-scholarship, but exert all our strength for the untainted
preservation of this civilization, which is now once again
threatened by a Germanic horde of "Nordic people." And let
us unreservedly follow our bishops on the path they have once again
pointed out to us, which leads not to Germanism, but to "Roma
aeterna," the eternal abode of Latin civilization and the seat
of true and indestructible Christianity.
1)
This quotation can be found, among other places, in the interesting
work of Mgr. Fr. Bock, Canon of Aachen and Chaplain Willemsen,
treasurer of St. Servatius in Maastricht, in which they extensively
described and richly illustrated the history of the "Antiquités
sacrées" in the two old collegiate churches (St.
Servatius and Our Lady) (Jos. Bussel, 1873).
2) Translation:
"From the wrath of the Normans, deliver us, Lord."
June
17, 1936 We received the following letter from the two Nijmegen
students who had previously appeared in our newspaper:
It should
be noted in advance that the following defense to the three
editorial articles published in this newspaper on May 23, 25, and
26, 1936, is extremely brief, as the editors limited our space.
To
the point: When our article of May 22nd spoke of "classical
culture" and the editorial of May 23rd speaks of the "classical
period in Rome," every high school student knows that
"classical" in the second expression means something
different than in the first. By ignoring this distinction in
meaning, our opponent could be guilty of misleading word-juggling.
We reiterate our objection to the author for presenting the complex
phenomena of migration and the fall of the Western Roman Empire
one-sidedly and simplistically, thereby giving a false impression to
readers who are incapable of independent judgment in this case. We
refer to Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis issue 1, 1936, pp. 5-42. In
addition to his own opinion, Prof. Gosses (especially on pages 7-13)
includes statements by, among others, the French Fustel de Coulanges
and F. Lot, the great Belgian historian Pirenne, and Bishop
Salvianus. Who will accuse them of "Germanophilia"?
Romantic but scientifically untenable are the views of, among
others, the Germanic peoples outside the borders of the Roman Empire
as "purebred savages," his idea that the Germanic
invasions began only to fuel a Germanic urge for destruction. The
opponent is guilty of a particularly dangerous kind of cultural
Bolshevism, by having cultures or peoples "violently"
"exterminated" in more than one place, only to later
include them as reality in his argument. History is not that simple,
and few cultures and peoples have died a purely violent death. Even
the Western Roman Empire "est mort de maladie interne," as
the Frenchman F. Lot puts it. The opponent wrongly believes that our
proof that the Limburgers are Germanic by origin rests on the
argument "that the current language border also constitutes the
racial border." We never argued this, but we did argue that the
Romance-Germanic language border constitutes the border between
Romance and Germanic; and this is something different. One can only
surmise which unscientific conception of "race" and
"Germanic" the author must be harboring. We fear that he
equates Germanic with Germans or perhaps even with Nazis. The
opponent brings up the Normans unnecessarily, but again one-sidedly
from the perspective of an unhistorical point of view. A single
statement by a professional historian might give him pause for
thought: "Our West India Company in the 17th century still
clearly displays the dual aspect of a trading company and a
privateering company" (Prof. Gosses). That a different
historical representation of Germanic peoples, Norsemen, etc., is
also possible in journalism, is demonstrated by an article "German
and Roman" in the Nieuwe Eeuw of May 12th, by Sapiens. The
Frankish Question: According to Caesar "de Bello Gallico"
11:4, most "Belgae" descended from the Germanic peoples on
the other side of the Rhine. They had driven out the Gauls who had
previously inhabited this country. Present-day Belgium was therefore
inhabited by any remaining Gauls and by the invading Germanic
peoples who had arrived from the north and the east. A few lines
further on, Caesar mentions the Germanic tribes: Condrun, Eburones,
Caerosi, and Paemoni, who, according to further reports from him and
others, must have inhabited roughly the area of Belgian
Limburg, Dutch Limburg, and the region between the Meuse and the
Rhine. And Tacitus speaks of the Germanic Tungri, who had their
center in present-day Tongeren. Along with the Betuwe and South
Holland, South Limburg is the only part of the Netherlands that
experienced Roman colonization. This lasted from 100 BC to
approximately 200 AD, when the flourishing of Roman culture ended.
Germanic troops then repeatedly flooded Limburg, and the peace
before colonization was over. Only south of the Maastricht-Heerlen
line does Roman influence remain. By approximately 300 AD, the
Romans had definitively abandoned everything north of this line.
What happened to Limburg during the fourth century and the migration
of peoples is unknown. What is certain, in any case, is that after
the disappearance of the Roman colonists, only Germanic elements
were added to the population of Limburg, as all the classical
writers of the time (Ammianus Marcellinus, the Panegyrici, Zosimus,
etc.) show that the Germans, and especially the Franks, overran the
area north of the Cologne-Boulogne road. In 358, the Salians appear
to have been living in Toxandria (roughly present-day North Brabant)
for quite some time. The quotations cited by the opponent from the
work of Professor Holwerda do not prove that the Franks were not
Germanic, only that many cultural elements in Frankish civilization
were borrowed from Eastern peoples such as the Scythians and
Sarmatians. "People" and "culture" are not
geographically coherent concepts. The Franks achieved a relatively
high level of culture, enabling them to "adopt" a large
part of Roman civilization, namely in Wallonia, but also in Western
Flanders and Northern France. At the same time, they absorbed
cultural elements from the aforementioned Eastern peoples,
specifically through the mediation of the Goths. A powerful cultural
current, in fact, flowed from East to West in the 4th century. This
is also how the appearance of St. Servatius (an Armenian!) in
Limburg can be explained (cf. Prof. van Ginniken: "Onverwachte
oud-Nederlandscheaansluitingen" (Unexpected Old Dutch
Connections), in Onze Taaltuin 1933, pp. 1-18). The opponent makes
it seem as if we hadn't paid sufficient attention to the work of
Prof. Holwerda, published in 1918. We can only reply that a second
edition of this work appeared in 1925, which, according to the
preface, became virtually a completely new book. In it, Prof.
Holwerda mentions On p. 248, the Franks are explicitly called
Germans, which invalidates the opponent's entire argument. The
Germanic origin of the Franks is, incidentally, not doubted by any
serious historian, least of all by the French (F. Lot, G. Kurtih,
Fustel de Coulanges). The troops of King Clovis, who occupied
Limburg from the south in 491, encountered a Germanic population
there; the Franks themselves under Clovis had certainly not yet been
transformed into Gallo-Romans. But apart from that, Clovis's troops
were small, and migrations did not occur under him. Therefore, if
Gallo-Romans or Romanized Franks did come and stay, they would have
been absorbed into the Germans due to their small numbers (the
reverse process south of the language border). However, they brought
with them the adopted Roman civilization mixed with Frankish
elements, and this was precisely what developed for various reasons
(the Meuse as a road, Tongeren, later Maastricht, the episcopal see,
the foundation of the Roman colonization had a very significant
influence in South Limburg. This succinctly demonstrates 1) that the
opponent wrongly disputed the Germanic origins of the Franks and
even more so of the Limburgers, and 2) the proper place that Latin
civilization occupies in our region.
It
is regrettable that the opponent, in his article of May 26th, again
raises irrelevant issues. This includes digressions about the Third
Reich, the NSB, expressions such as "Nordic race," and
"Germanic nursery tales.", "foreign science"
(sic) and the phrase about "Catholic youth, etc." All this
serves to arouse suspicions in the reader, which are simply absurd.
The passage about the ecclesiastical teaching authority, since this
authority never ruled on the Germanic origins of Franks or
Limburgers, can only foster more irresponsible associations. We
cannot have any respect for this journalistic method. Nor does it
demonstrate particular sensitivity that the opponent feels he should
give us good advice for our scientific education, when he should
know that this should be better entrusted to the University of
Nijmegen than to a newspaper editorial team. Only, let us remember
that "science" does not suffer from Germanophobia.
Postscript
from the Editor-in-Chief.
We
did not want to deny the young Nijmegen residents the opportunity
for a rejoinder, even though their argument barely touches on the
issues at stake, let alone resolves them. Therefore, after reading
and rereading their concluding remarks, we need not alter a single
word in our initial proposition:
"It
is under the dual and inseparable influence of Rome's religion and
Rome's superior culture that the mixture of peoples and races that
have melted together on our soil in the melting pot of centuries has
become a solid unity, loyal to Queen and Fatherland, but above all
inseparably connected to its spiritual cradle: the Church of Christ,
whose Vicar resides in Rome.
Has
this main proposition been shaken by our Nijmegen friends? Or has it
remained clear, distinct, and unassailable, both before and after?
Have the esteemed contributors even offered a shred of evidence that
Limburg's population, whether in earlier or later centuries, was
even approximately racially pure and Germanic?
Indeed,
no! At most, one can differ in opinion about the extent to which the
various elements in the Over time, they have been intermingled, and
how large a percentage of each of the constituent parts must have
been!
The
same applies to the Franks. Let the young people now go and see for
themselves the artistic products of Franco-Gallic culture, and in
particular the rich finds brought to light as early as 1653 with the
discovery of Childeric's royal tomb in Tournai. Then they will see
that this culture bears the clearest traces of both Latin
civilization—e.g., in the inscriptions—and of Eastern
decorative art, but that no trace or shadow of Germanic influence
can be detected in it.
Meanwhile,
these Franks were also undeniably of mixed race: their skulls prove
it! Most likely, during their long journeys, they were mixed with
numerous foreign, also Germanic, elements, but certainly, through
art and culture, they originally belonged to a people from the
Southeast, where Germans have never lived! Professor Holwerda has
demonstrated this with the evidence. Irrefutably demonstrated in the
hand: and this conclusion can also be found in the second revised
edition of his book! Indeed, "a mighty cultural current moved
from East to West in the fourth century," but this brought us
anything but Germanic, but thoroughly Gracco-Roman civilization:
Saint Servatius, called "Sarbatios" by his colleague
Athanasios, is a living example of this! And the Franks, who, a
hundred years after his death, revived the old, despite everything,
still living tradition, provide us with a second, equally striking
example.
Finally,
the esteemed contributors are absolutely right in their assertion
that it was not only a thirst for destruction that drove the Vandals
and Normans on their raids: for it was also land hunger, in its most
brutal form.
And
again, they are right in their assertion that the Roman Empire
collapsed from internal decay, just as, for example, the Republic of
the United Provinces did on the end of the eighteenth century.
But
this seems to us the least an apology for the mischief of the
barbarians during the migration, nor for that of the Sans-culottes
in their invasion of our fatherland.
All
this may perhaps seem "simplistic" to the esteemed
contributor. But we are simply so simple-minded that we reject
robbery and plunder as detestable acts of violence, regardless of by
whom or when they were committed.
And
if this is to be called "misleading word-juggling," then
we accept this qualification without a hint of ill humor, with an
indulgent smile for the well-known tendency to use strong words
among our modern youth.
Could
the students perhaps have become a little displeased with our
friendly encouragement to study?
That
would not be as surprising as it seems at first glance. For studying
has traditionally been something different from being a student.
Be
that as it may, we now conclude the discussion and hope to welcome
the gentlemen again when they have successfully completed their
studies.
Roman Culture and
the Roman Curriculum
If
Rome inherited the civilization of Greece, it was not because the
Roman mind was constituted like the Hellenic, but rather from the
force of those circumstances which established her power throughout
the Mediterranean coasts. For among the Romans there was little
evidence of a natural versatility of interest, little power to
elevate facts into ideals, or to construct new worlds of
imagination, little disposition even to wander into untrodden paths
of thought. They looked often to the practical side of life and
seldom to the theoretical; their prose was the expression of legal
formulae or the practical eloquence of the forum, their very poetry,
until the period of so many translations from the Greek, no more
than a form of worship.
In
the field of drama, the Romans had a native form of comedy, but were
indebted to the Greeks for the beginnings of tragedy. The original
types of Roman comedy included the Fescenninae practised at rustic
festivals and harvestings, the Saturae performed by rural clowns
with music, dancing or gesticulation, and the Mimi or mountebank
representations, scurrilous yet sententious, which held a
subordinate place in literature from the period of the fall of the
Republic to the final stage of imperial culture. Types of comic
characters were developed in the Atellanae, plays of a burlesque
sort, often performed as afterpieces. There was no material for the
education of the young in the indigenous Roman comedy, which was not
only licentious in the extreme, but written always in an undignified
plebeian strain.
Roman
comedy of the more pretentious kind was an imitation of Greek
originals and applied itself to Greek subjects. From Livius
Andronicus to Terence, it appears to have gained in refinement of
expression rather than originality of idea. The plays of Terence
were favored by literary students of the empire, and in general the
palliata or comedies from the Greek were studied in academic circles
to the exclusion of the coarser but more national togata which dealt
with Roman situations and characters of a more realistic, but a
baser type.
Tragedy
was not indigenous to Rome, but an exotic flower of Greece. At best
the tragic poets were few and their genius of a secondary character.
Seneca, for example, was read rather than acted; but his tragedies
furnished a part of the subject - matter of literary studies under
the later empire.
Epic
poetry began to be used in the Roman schools under the Republic,
with the Latinized version of the "Odyssey" by Andronicus.
Naevius followed with a poem on the Punic war, and Ennius with an
epic version of the Roman Annals. Even Cicero and Octavianus
attempted the epic, while the imperial period produced Lucan's
"Pharsalia", together with a host of courtly and
antiquarian epics which tended to express ingenuity and scholarship
rather than patriotism or feeling. Epics of the heroic rather than
the historical type were usually written on Greek subjects which
necessitated pedantry, imitativeness and a labored recourse to
foreign mythology. These limitations were surmounted with great
success by Vergil, whose "neid" became the standard text
of grammarians, its sonorous lines being recited everywhere in the
schools. In the meantime numerous Christian epics were written; but,
naturally enough, they found no place in the schools as centres of
pagan learning.
Certain
poems, however, of a purely didactic though seldom of a religious
character, were written expressly for the use of students. Some of
the poems of Ausonius, such as those on the calendar, belong
evidently to this class, while there were also treatises in verse
upon letters, prosody, rhetoric and other subjects which might be
schematized and committed to memory. Such verses were written by the
grammarians of the later empire exactly in the spirit and mode which
was afterwards to become common among the more enterprising
mediaeval schoolmasters.
The
so-called Disticha Catonis, probably written previous to the period
of the official adoption of the Christian religion, comprised a
collection of moral sayings arranged in couplets for the use of
schools and actually retained their vogue to the end of the middle
ages. But it is probable that greater attention was bestowed upon
the form of poetry than its content. Scholars were practised in the
use of various metres, and in the composition of imaginary epistles
both in verse and prose. Towards the close of the empire
considerable attention began to be paid to fables, riddles,
acrostics and similar trifles; and hexameters began to be
embellished with rhyme.
While lyric poetry was less congenial to
the Roman disposition than narrative, it is clear that epigrams
became extremely fashionable, while elegies were written and studied
in schools as exercises in style. The mastery over poetic form
appears to have increased in proportion to the diminution of
inspiration and power.
Prose occupied a subordinate place in the
curriculum of Roman education, as it had done with the Greeks. It
had a rhetorical character, partly owing to the practical use that
was attached to the command of prose; and partly, perhaps, from the
influence of Cicero, who first made it worthy of study in the
schools. Prose was employed in history, but as long as this study
flourished more in the interests of rhetoric than fact, history
meant little for education, although the annalists preserved many
facts and traditions that were more often embodied or summarized
from their several predecessors than dictated by their own
experience or observation.
Antiquarian
learning was not without its devotees, and Ausonius depicts for us
the type of a research student who knew more about recondite studies
than the history and literature of Latium. The most learned of the
Romans was M. Varro, the greater part of whose work has perished.
From the period of Varro, which was also that of Cicero, an academic
and erudite class was rapidly developed which took possession of the
schools at the same time that it sacrificed the ancient connection
of theory with the practical affairs of life. Learning became the
monopoly of the grammatici, who gave themselves largely to
etymology, grammar and the making of dictionaries. The textbooks of
Latin grammar by Donatus in the fourth century, and Priscian early
in the sixth, retained their celebrity throughout the middle ages.
The grammatici were critics as well as grammarians, so that as
Suetonius says their business was the emendation of texts, the
discrimination of meanings, and the compilation of critical notes.
They did little, however, beyond the imitation of the Greeks. Each
new work on grammar embodied copious extracts from its predecessors,
usually without acknowledgment, until there finally arose an
incredible confusion of authorities. Meanwhile the grammatici taught
not only etymology and grammar but also mythology in their schools.
The mythology was borrowed from Greece; but the etymology might have
either a Greek or a Latin basis according to the grammatical school
to which the teacher happened to adhere. Oratory, more than any
other study, occupied the attention of the talented Roman youth. In
politics, jurisprudence or war, oratorical skill was equally
indispensable. A manual of oratory is ascribed to the elder Cato. In
the words of Livy, some were carried forward to the highest offices
by jurisprudence, others by eloquence, others by miUlitary glory.
Oratory then was recognized in the Republic and earlier Empire as a
high road to advancement and fame. Cicero regretted that whereas for
the Greeks it had been an end in itself, for the Romans it was but a
means to success at the bar. The youths trained in oratorical
schools would begin to speak in the forum at eighteen or nineteen
years of age, at times making their debut in a funeral oration. From
the time of the elder Cato it became customary for speakers to write
down and publish their orations which had previously been delivered
without notes. The speeches of Cicero, Quintilian and others were
taken dowrt by clerks, probably in shorthand, and published with or
without the consent of the author, sometimes in garbled versions.
Under these conditions the study of rhetoric in Rome was anything
but the perfunctory occupation that it seems to be at the present
time.
It
was a practical and profitable thing, frowned upon by the
old-fashioned Censors (who decreed the expulsion of the rhetors from
Rome in 92 B.C.), but welcomed by the ambitious youth. One reads
that only four years after the decree above cited a freedman of
Pompey, one Vultacilius Plotus, skilled in Latin rhetoric, had
opened a school in the city. There were also numerous teachers of
Greek and Asiatic oratory in Rome during and subsequent to the age
of Cicero. Under the Empire oratory became less genuine and more
servile. Forced to renounce serious topics, the schools became the
centre of a host of fictions. The ancients had been orators, the
moderns were but rhetoricians ; at least, such was the judgment of
Tacitus. The Empire was never so sure of maintaining a check upon
freedom of speech as after it had begun to pay the salaries of
eminent professors of rhetoric, the first being Quintilian himself
in the reign of Vespasian. Gaul and Africa in the third century
became important centres of rhetorical study, Gaul being signalized
by the skill of her professors in the manipulation of forms of
style; Africa by the energy of her rhetors, including Tertullian,
Arnobius, Cyprian and Augustine, in the defence of Christianity.
When
a pupil had completed his task under the grammaticus he went
naturally to the school of the rhetor, where his work began with
demonstrations, and proceeded to declamations, deliberations and
controversies. Controversies included case law, the subdivision of
the subject, and the appeal to mitigating circumstances. But the
cases cited in the schools were strangely unreal. Pliny, Petronius,
Tacitus and others ridicule the questions that were accustomed to be
raised and disputed, dealing with tyrants, or pirates, or the
sacrifice of maidens. Contemporary politics were practically
tabooed. It was the opinion of Petronius that such instruction made
youths into fools. Little realism was attached even to historical
debates about Sulla and Hannibal; none at all to declamations on
subjects taken from Vergil, Ovid, or Homer. But the same stereotyped
empty fictions continued to be treated in the time of Ausonius, the
same in the days of Augustine, the same even as late as the sixth
century. The subjects appointed for prose composition were no more
vital than topics of debate. In particular, among the favorite
exercises of the schools was the composition of fictitious letters;
for example, an advanced pupil would be called upon to write a
letter from Cicero to Caesar, or from Seneca to the Apostle Paul.
Fairy
tales, romances and love stories were licentious and unsuitable for
declamation in the schools, but as they had been suggested even in
Homer, and by the time of Ovid had come to furnish a part of the
staple material of literature, they were actually employed in
education to an extent difficult to determine, but certainly
appreciable. The romances were at first of the nature of Greek
translations, and were generally called "Milesia". The
Metamorphoses of Apuleius were to become the prototype of a certain
kind of mediaeval romance. It was alleged that the schools of the
later empire were addicted more to fiction of this kind than to the
books of Plato. At least it appears to have been the policy of the
emperors to encourage the study of trifles in order to divert
attention and criticism from the field of politics.
While
the bent of the Roman mind was distinctly more practical than
theoretical, and accordingly not so much addicted to philosophy as
law, it could not escape from the influence of Greek speculation
upon the constitution of the universe and the nature and destiny of
man. It was unfortunate that the contact of Rome with Greece was
altogether subsequent to the fiery creative epoch of Greek thought.
It was but an afterglow of Greek philosophy that warmed the stubborn
intellects of the Romans to attempt ambitious flights. Epicureanism,
Stoicism, the Peripatetic philosophy, the New Academy,
Neo-Platonism, and a degenerate form of the Pythagorean philosophy
became domiciled in Rome, but were looked upon with suspicion and
regarded as exercises rather than paths to objective truth. The bare
shoulder and cloak of the professional philosopher were often the
marks of a mere charlatan.
Philosophers
were actually banished from Rome by Vespasian and Domitian, but at
other times they conducted their informal schools without
molestation, and even with honor, so that one philosopher, Marcus
Aurelius, came to occupy the throne. In the earlier imperial period
Epicureanism, in the later Stoicism, was the most popular form of
philosophical creed. The study of philosophy revived in the fourth,
fifth and sixth centuries because of the fact that the pagans were
driven to its tenets in order to maintain themselves against the
Christian propaganda. A last desperate attempt to preserve the
ancient philosophy was made not without success in the sixth century
by Boethius. His partial translation of Aristotle into Latin and his
book on the "Consolations of Philosophy" were studied in
the early mediaeval schools. The opinion of Gellius as to
professional philosophical teachers was that they would run and sit
at the gates of wealthy youths and persuade them to waste the whole
night in drinking wine, ostensibly as a vehicle, no doubt, for
discussions and dialectic. The opinion of the average Roman was
certainly that philosophy was irreligious, a waste of time, and a
veil for mercenary motives.
Totally
different was the Roman estimation of Law. From the earliest times
the Romans had a natural genius for law and order, a shrewd
practical intelligence, and a disposition to dispute any conceivable
infringement on their individual or collective rights. It is
declared among the Roman traditions that there were schools for
reading and writing in the forum from the earliest days of the
Republic; and whether this be an exaggeration or not, the origin of
the custom of teaching the laws of the twelve tables to the children
is lost in the same obscurity with the origin of these elementary
schools. Collections of the sources of law were made as early as 204
B. C, and by degrees the habit of collecting decisions in typical
cases developed a new field for study alongside the examination of
the laws themselves. For law the Romans were by no means primarily
indebted to Greece, and it has been remarked that the more national
a Roman poet may be, the more promi^nt the position the law holds in
his writings.^ The schools of oratory were obliged to devote
considerable attention to the study of jurisprudence, but the
relative emphasis upon good oratory or good law appears to have
varied according to the legal knowledge or conscientiousness of the
teacher. A consulting lawyer learned his business by accompanying a
distinguished jurisconsult and listening to his opinions. Cicero's
opinion of the jurisprudence of his day is sometimes respectful but
here and there contemptuous. It was not under the Republic, however,
but under the later empire that Roman law attained its majority and
became the chosen field of the ablest and most honorable minds.
Gaius became the first professor of civil law, and began to write
his " Institutions " by way of an introduction to the
subject. His most notable successor was Ulpian. The codification of
the laws ensured their place once for all as a subject of study in
the universities of the later Imperial period. Masters of law and
students of law are mentioned in inscriptions, the latter with
frequency.
For
the purposes of this introduction, other subjects of study in the
Roman schools require no more than a cursory reference. Arithmetic
was taught in the schools, as is indicated by Horace, but we know
little of what was done in the subject in his day, although there
are some indications that the decimal system of notation may have
been known much earlier than has been supposed. No advance was made
upon the knowledge formerly passessed by the Greeks in arithmetic
and geometry, which suffered in the estimation of scholars by their
supposed alliance with astrology. The Romans were by no means the
equals of the Alexandrian Greeks in mathematical attainments.
Neither did they study natural history at first hand, but only from
Greek texts, which were gradually corrupted and confused by the
introduction of superstitious auguries and credulous allegories and
fables.
The
study of agriculture flourished among the Romans, but in a private
and individual way, and by means of books rather than schools.
Medicine was a purely Greek art, although under the later Empire the
Arabic physicians had already begun to dispute the palm with the
Greeks; this art also depended upon books and individual instruction
but not schools. The same general status is characteristic of
architecture and military science. Geography, music and astronomy
were actually taught in school, but only in the first of these
subjects did the Romans show any originality or tendency to add to
the sura of human knowledge. The measurement of land, however, was
so important from a legal and military point of view that special
schools of surveying were established under the Empire, the first
impulse having been given by Caesar, who summoned Greek teachers in
this field from Alexandria to Rome.
The
Limburgish national character, like the Limburgish language itself,
is a fiction.
Those
who have written about the nature of Limburgers up to now have
always had only the inhabitants of a specific part of our
southernmost province in mind.1) Prof. Dr. Jos. Schrijnen, who —
as evidenced by his numerous folkloristic and dialectological
studies and publications — may be considered the best expert
on the character of the Limburgish land and people, believes "that
Limburg, as regards farmsteads, customs, and language, is divided
into a southern, central, and northern part. The South, he writes,
"stands virtually alone (or is connected to southern Belgium,
France, and southern Germany), the center indicates more contact
with Brabant and Flanders, and the North—north of the line
connecting Arcen, Sevenum, and Meijel — with the Betuwe and
Saxony... The national character conforms to this division."2)
Indeed,
the linguistic and folklore geographic studies of the Limburg region
conducted thus far, broadly speaking, repeatedly arrive at this
division as suggested by Professor Schrijnen.3)
Since
our personal research into the nature of the inhabitants of the most
recent Dutch region is still in full swing, we can only briefly
point out differences between the aforementioned regions. We will
primarily highlight those characteristics that are essential to the
people of South and Central Limburg (and often also to those of
North Limburg), in the hope that many who are called, in whatever
capacity, to come into contact with the inhabitants of our native
region will better understand the spirit of the Limburg people for
the good of the region and the fatherland.
Although
it cannot be our intention to strive for completeness in this study,
a certain depth should not be lacking, despite the intention that it
must be "universally understood."
When
Byvanck says that "a nation is as much a product of race as of
culture and history,"4 he mentions three factors that determine
not only the typology of the population of a country, but also that
of a region. And if we add that the soil exerts a strong influence
on race, history, and culture, then we have exposed the roots that
supply the vital juices of the national character. What Bruneau
observes for the Ardennes region: 'The relief is based on the
significance of the determination, the origins, the history of the
settlement and the colonization; The conditions for the
impossibilities of nature due to the different nature of the matter
for exercising their influence on the race and the language'5) also
apply to Limburg with regard to the national character.
Anyone
who looks at the latest geological map of this region in our
'Wortund Sachgeographie Südostniederlands und der umliegenden
Gebiete'6), will immediately notice an area division that
corresponds quite closely to that of Prof. Schrijnen indicated
above.
The
fertile loess [löss] formation found in the hilly landscape
south of the Sittard-Grevenbicht line, an area encompassing the
present-day mining region, is associated with the period of ice
formation. These water-rich, virtually treeless loess plains were
eminently suitable for very early habitation due to the presence of
materials (including flint) from an older period— which
served to make the tools of the primitive inhabitants — as
well as the loess walls.
The
formation of sand, gravel, and peat soils from Central and North
Limburg, as well as East Brabant, up to and including Etten-Leur, is
generally considered to be the deposits of the "old" Rhine
and Meuse rivers, where conditions for habitation were also
favorable from the outset, although the soil here — except for
the river clay regions — was much more infertile than in
southern Limburg. In the center and north of our region, the
predominance of low terraces and river clay between
Sittard-Papenhoven; Stamproy-Helden-Maasbree;
Sevenum-Horst-Tienraai-Haps, as well as the middle terrace and the
poor peatlands in the northwestern part, is striking.
Without
a doubt, a thorough investigation of land use, toponymy, and land
use will yield a classification and orientation that largely
corresponds to the geological, dialectological, and folklore
situation outlined. It is certain that, just as over time the
inhabitants of the fertile riverside area of the Meierij founded
villages closer to the Peel — including Uden, Volkel, Boekel,
Handel, Gemert, Mortel, Bakel, Deurne, Liessel, Maarheeze, and Budel
— a series of new villages also arose from the oldest
settlements along the Meuse in North Limburg—including
Maasbree, Sevenum, Horst, Venray, etc. — and that only in more
recent times, with the construction of better roads, did settlements
— with a highly diverse population—penetrate the Peel,
including Helenaveen (1853), Griendtsveen (1860), Terraveen,
IJsselstein, and Rips.
Before
1820, Venray could only be reached from Deurne via winding heathland
roads through the marshes. The old maps show us difficult roads,
which in summer could only be used by those well-versed in the
terrain, while in winter they were completely impassable.
All
this points not only to a cohesiveness of the North Limburg Maas and
Peel villages, but also to a strongly individual character of the
Peel villages and many other places in the western part of Central
and North Limburg, as well as to a more difficult existence for the
inhabitants of these sandy, gravel, and peat regions.
Although
racial theory has often been treated so strangely in the last two
decades that it significantly detracts from its scientific merit, it
cannot, as the sober prehistorian Menghin has demonstrated8), be
ignored when studying national character. If, on the one hand, this
scholar is of the opinion that: 'the Fundamente more ererer
Wissenschaften erschüttern (müssen wird), wenn man there
will be, that principle Berechtigung of Annahme zu combattreiten,
that sich Race, Sprache und Kultur are simply covered', on the other
hand, according to him, it is still 'a untouchable Tatsache, that is
in the Jetztzeit kein Volkstum gibt, that racially pure truth'; that
is why he considers 'that the Entscheidende in den Beziehungen
zwischen Volkstum und Rasse, that your People are a specific Mix of
Races entspricht'.9)
We
have to seriously take these facts into account for the Limburg
area. Studies by Bolk, Holwerda, and van Giffen, as the brunette
line on the Isethne map in Schrijnen's "Nederlandsche
Volkskunde" (Dutch Folklore)10) demonstrates, have proven that
Homo alpinus is strongly represented in Limburg (37-41% brunettes).
The
hyperbrachycephalic skull found in 1923 in the Neolithic flint
workshop near Rijckholt definitely points southward regarding the
origin of the South Limburg inhabitants of that period. It bears a
strong resemblance to that of the Grenelleman and thus to French and
Belgian finds. An invasion from the south can safely be assumed.11)
The
dark type in our region cannot have originated from pure Celts,
since, according to ancient authors, these had, among other things,
blond or red hair and blue or gray eyes; Moreover, they
"represented, as is generally accepted today, only a warlike
superstructure, which has rapidly emerged in the mass of the
pre-population." Moreover, according to the exceptionally broad
and instructive research of Dr. F. Petri, it is questionable whether
long-dorsal people ever lived in the western areas inhabited by the
Celts. According to Bijvanck, the Linear Pottery race (thus, in any
case, a southern race), into which the Celts, Romans, and Germans
are said to have merged, is likely responsible for the dark
complexion of the South Limburg population.
As
late as the early Middle Ages, the ruling Germans in the Southern
Netherlands spoke of the dark-skinned population as something
inferior, which proves nothing more than that the dark type in these
regions was then considered either conquered or non-indigenous.
It
remains difficult to determine whether the influence of the Celts'
character was significant; The same applies to the character of the
Romans. The great extent of the Romans' cultural influence is beyond
doubt.
That
Celtic tribes from southern Germany and France invaded our country
and inhabited the area south of the major rivers is proven, among
other things, by the Gallic princely grave from around 500 BC near
Oss. Perhaps, however, only Celticized Germans lived in South
Limburg, as in Belgium. Towards the end of the second century, we
find in eastern Belgium, as in South Limburg, exclusively pure
Germans: the Germani Cisrhenani, to which the Eburones and the Ubii
belonged, so that Homo nordicus, the so-called Norse or Teutonic
race, had a considerable influence.
The
Romans did not add any significant new ethnic groups to the
predominantly Germanic population of South Limburg and the Kempen
region. The Franks, who in the 4th century AD—advancing
westward from the Peel marshes, according to Bolk—conquered
the south of our country, likely absorbed the other inhabitants of
those regions. The division of the Franks into Salians and
Ripuarians offers no specific criteria for the Limburg national
character: some claim that the former, crossing the Meuse from the
west, occupied parts of the Rhine Province, while others, based on
legal sources, assume the opposite. For the time being, neither the
Lex Ribuaria nor toponymy studies allow for a decisive conclusion.
How
far the Saxons penetrated Limburg is difficult to say. The cultural
influence of this tribe, which, like the Ripuarii and Salii, did not
form an ethnic unity, was felt in the north of the province,
reaching as far as Venlo.
This
has been demonstrated, among other things, by folkloric research by
Prof. Jos. Schrijnen.12)
If
we consider the archaeological finds, we observe the same trends and
general territorial demarcations that we distinguished above based
on anthropological and ethnological data.
The
South Limburg culture from the Neolithic (3rd millennium and the
first quarter of the second millennium BC) originates from the
south. The finds of Banded Pottery in the Meuse Valley from Caberg
to Sittard point to connections with both the south and the
southeast.
The
north of our region may have been influenced by the more complex
cultural trends of the central part of our country, where rope,
bell, collared, and Tiefstich ceramics coexist, indicating contact
with Saxony, Thuringia, southern Germany, England, and the English
Channel region. We come to know this part of the Netherlands during
this period as a typical transit area for both population and
culture.
It
is striking that products of the La Tène culture, found in
South Limburg, near Wychen, and in West Brabant, which point to a
connection with the pottery of the Celtic tribes in Gaul, are absent
from the rest of Limburg and North Brabant. In these latter areas,
however, urns are found, which indicate contact with Germanic tribes
in the southeast of the Lower Rhine.
Roman
culture was particularly prevalent south of the major rivers, more
specifically in South Limburg and near Nijmegen. Here, one can speak
of a Romanization of the population.
Briefly
summarizing the preceding anthropological, ethnic, and
archaeological influences, we can conclude that in Limburg—apart
perhaps from the Celtic element—there was no unity of
orientation up to and including the time of the migrations. While we
may assume southern influence throughout the entire region during
the Roman period, except perhaps in the northwest, it was strongest
in the south and the far north. Incidentally, the south, up to
Sittard, seems to have been predominantly oriented toward Southern
Europe, while the central and northern regions were most strongly
oriented toward the north and east.
Limburg
has been a unit since approximately 1000, even less so than in
prehistoric and early history. Just as the Limburg mentality,
according to Knuvelder, is largely explained by the country's
geographical position, the territorial division (i.e.,
fragmentation) since the Middle Ages is also evident in the region's
geographical situation. Here, however, the location relative to the
core areas of the French, German, and later Dutch-Republican empires
also exerted its influence.13)
That
all the currents and factors discussed thus far have contributed to
the formation of the Limburg national character goes without saying.
The nature and scope of the diachronistic data make it impossible to
examine the effect of each of these influences on our national
character. Nor do we consider the time to fully analyze and
substantiate the character of the inhabitants of all parts of our
region.
The
characteristics we will discuss apply, as mentioned, to South and
Central Limburg, unless we emphasize the special presence in a
specific part of our region. Moreover, space is limited, and
therefore we will focus primarily on the characteristics we consider
most important in relation to the purpose of this work. The
Limburger, at least the South and Central Limburger, can certainly
be considered one of the primal, emotional natures. He is a man of
temperament.
This
southern temperament is demonstrated, among other things, in the
liveliness and cheerfulness with which he conducts his high-pitched
conversations, accompanying them with more or less appropriate,
vigorous gestures. The calm, thoughtful Dutchman thinks it will end
in a brawl; thus, arms wave in various directions at every
opportunity and voices run through the most "ominous"
tones, but soon it turns out to be nothing more than a... lively
conversation. One day, during field service, the leader of a
training class of militiamen gave the same assignment to a Limburger
and a Dutchman. When both had to explain how to proceed, the latter
told his story while staring almost impassively at the map, while
the former, on the other hand, turned from right to left and
described the route to be followed with many gestures in the air.
And the officer said: "Here's the Limburger."
Every
"foreigner" is struck by the musicality of our fellow
Limburgers, who continue to demonstrate their dialect even after
years of absence from Limburg. The ever-fiery General Hoefer, who
spent most of his life outside his native province, can no more
conceal it than the politician Jhr. Ch. Ruys de Beerenbrouck could.
The Limburger is musical and loves music: in every village, every
hamlet the festivities are enhanced by a brass band. When a Limburg
regiment receives its refresher marches, it marches out after two
days with music, and I assure you, there's plenty of blowing! But
hamlets and villages aren't satisfied with a brass band, so they
each have a singing club. Indeed, often the same club has both an
instrumental and a vocal section. Limburgers sing just like
Rhinelanders, and the further south they live, the more they sing.
During the summer evenings, not only did people "joy"
(14), as in Geleen, for example, but after work, they also gathered
at some farm or home, sat on a bench or on the ground in front of
the house, and sang songs, often polyphonic, which the whole
neighborhood enjoyed. During the mobilization, the Limburg soldier
would sing "to keep up the courage and to wash away the
fatigue" during the day, and in the evening, he and his
comrades would give a free concert at his second home in Brabant.
When
a Limburger celebrates, it's loud and exuberant. Grand festivities
begin with the firing of "kameren" (thunderbusses) and the
ringing (not: ringing) of bells. He usually finds the Dutchmen's
celebrations stiff and dry, and the Northerner happily joins in the
Southerner's relaxed, exuberant revelry.
It's
no small feat to get a Limburger excited about something. He easily
catches fire and tackles a cause with enthusiasm,15 but, like the
ancient Gauls, he also quickly becomes depressed. If he encounters
unexpected setbacks, he's quick to say: "That's it, I'm going
out of the sjutterie," or in plain Dutch: "I refuse to
continue." But his attitude is completely different when his
honor or justice is at stake; then he can persevere and persevere
with the stubbornness of a Frisian, and he won't yield to anyone or
anything. His temperament makes the Limburger more aggressive than
defensive, and in this, feeling and enthusiasm play such a
significant role that, in the face of unexpected disappointment, he
forgets not only aggression but even defense!
His
southern love of colorful display makes him a fan of shooting clubs,
parades—serious as well as comical—and processions,
where he has the opportunity to demonstrate his talents as an
organizer and leader. His cheerfulness and geniality, his élan,
his quick wit, and his wit make him a qualified leader. In his
external leadership, he owes much to his interactions with people
from different countries and nationalities: the location and history
of his region endow him with great adaptability. It wasn't only in
ordinary village, city, or provincial life that the Limburger
demonstrated his innate organizational and leadership talents.
Wasn't Dr. Nolens a political organizer of extraordinary stature and
international renown? Isn't Dr. Poels recognized as an
unsurpassable, indeed irreplaceable, social leader, not only of the
famous Rolduc study weeks, but especially of the large labor
movement in Limburg, which in many respects can be considered a
model for the rest of the Netherlands as well as for other
countries—especially for the mining regions?
The
Limburger's intuition often plays tricks on him. It's often easier
to convince him through intuition than through reason. A kind man,
who impresses with his good nature and joviality, stands a chance of
garnering more votes from the council members when applying for a
job than a more robust fellow who is less adept at touching the
heartstrings.
It's
not those who command, but those who appeal to the emotions, who
have the best chance of achieving the desired effect with the
Limburger. While in the North, only women are allowed to shed tears
in times of joy or sorrow, in Limburg it's not at all unusual for a
man to express his joy or sorrow through tears.
Limburgers
excel in music and painting. In the latter, they are more poetic and
romantic than the Dutch, and as language artists, they are not
novelists but poets.16) They have a keen sense of touch, which, in
addition to their innate tendency to imitate, makes them
particularly suited to acting: every village, every hamlet, every
association has a theater club. This tendency to imitate and their
cheerful spirit explain their penchant for comic or caricatural
imitation in language, music, and dress: carnival parades are
flourishing in Limburg as well as in the Rhineland. And who doesn't
know that humorous prose triumphs over seriousness?17)
I
would also like to connect the typical Limburgish "vreigele,"
which originally meant nothing more than criticizing—sometimes
against one's better judgment—and gradually acquired the
meaning of obstruction and political sabotage, with emotionality.
Every
Dutchman knows the candor of Limburg, or at least the candor of
South and Central Limburg.
If
you're on the train with a Limburger for the first time and you
don't give him a sour, surly impression, there's a good chance he'll
tell you his entire story and that of his family in no time. The
extreme of this characteristic was once shared with me by someone
who, in connection with a job interview, was asked for information
about a subordinate. The boss in question gave the inquirer the
simple advice: "Let him come to you and talk, and I guarantee
that within half an hour—perhaps unasked—you'll know
everything." This is the downside: the Central and South
Limburger is often inappropriately confidential, doesn't pay enough
attention to whom he confides, and can hardly limit the extent of
his trust. The North Limburger is more cautious in this regard;
indeed, he himself gives a somewhat stern impression. This candor
leads the Limburger to readily express his opinion about people and
often leads to gossip of the worst kind. For a long time, in the
provinces, one could not express one's opinion about people and
matters in public, but only "among us": back then,
criticism was "gevreigeld," meaning criticism with a fist
in one's pocket, which never had any favorable effect. This was
known, and yet the "vreigeleers" (literally,
"fear-mongers") repeatedly gathered. Is it any wonder that
they still exist in Limburg today and that people now also
"vreigelt" in public?
Although
this constant criticism points towards individualism, this—Waterink
considers it a characteristic of the Dutch character—is not
part of the Limburger's essence. The village layout, especially on
the fertile soil of the south, does not indicate a self-reliance. We
don't know the lonely farmsteads here, such as we find in the less
fertile Saxon regions and in North Limburg. Don't think that the
Limburger doesn't have his own opinions—their squabbling
suggests the opposite—but... he doesn't express them easily.
How could it be otherwise? For several centuries, he was politically
and socially immature. As a resident of the province, he didn't have
to think; others thought for him, and the results of those thoughts
were communicated to him by decree.
So,
even if the Limburger has defended his opinions ever so vehemently,
privately or in the neighborhood club (while squabbling!), he often
abandons them very easily in a public meeting when an authority,
i.e., another, has stated theirs. The unconscious inferiority
complex (see below) and the responsibility—which he never
learned to bear, after all!—sometimes even the idea of
solidarity quickly make him change his position, especially when
emotional arguments are also presented.
Yet,
the Limburger is exceptionally fond of freedom, a possession that
neither Celt nor German wanted to forgo.19) The numerous small
states of the NE, which remind us of ancient Greece, are like
symbols of the desire for independence in every region of our
province. However attached to authority, in Limburg, people want
nothing to do with dictators; one shouldn't approach them with the
"you sollst" (you so). The Limburger has had to fight too
hard to preserve his inner freedom, his own nature. With a request
steeped in humor or feeling, however, you can get anything from him.
Major Evenwel rightly says of the soldier: "It is very easy for
the commander, for example, at the start of an exercise, to rouse
his Limburgers with a short speech and appeal to their abilities.
Especially if a little humor is introduced into that speech, it
resonates with the men, and they give their all.’20) A
despotically decreeing mayor or priest turns the whole village
against them; the administrator who cleverly asks gets more done
than he expects. The mine foreman who makes requests literally moves
mountains in a short time, but he who haughtily commands and chases
breeds resentment in the naturally industrious miner.
This
attitude is not without its good nature. The Limburger must be able
to address the mayor, the priest, or any other superior without
requesting an audience a day in advance: if necessary, he must be
allowed to ‘bother’ him in the street. I knew a mine
inspector who, for goodness sake, wasn't a pushover, but considered
himself a comrade of the workers and called most of them by their
first names. It was precisely this good-naturedness that ensured the
"inspectorate" (a he was called by the workers) had
exemplary discipline and maximum work output, plus... a good
atmosphere. And it certainly wouldn't be easy to replace such a
supervisor with someone from the North, unless they could adapt to
that friendly atmosphere. There are still plenty of mayors in
Limburg who call their council members by their first names.
I
am not shy about speaking their dialect, if necessary. It is well
known that not so long ago, the Domaniale Mine organized a festival
several times a year, in which the entire "Belegschaft"
(Legship) participated, and where the management and senior
officials mingled freely among the workers, chatted with them, and
enjoyed a beer.
The
Celts and Germans are often praised for their hospitality, which,
according to Schayes, is a characteristic of all primitive peoples.
No matter when you enter a Limburg family home, you are welcomed;
you are, as it were, briefly incorporated into the family. However,
they don't offer you "a cup of coffee," as in Brabant, but
a glass of beer, a shot of liquor, or a glass of wine. If it happens
to be mealtime, and you happen to meet a Limburg acquaintance (and
that happens quite often, because people, especially in a southern
village, prefer to eat five times a day!), you have to join them at
the table. And if you happen to be too far from the acquaintance's
house, you absolutely have to go along to the café (there are
plenty!) to be entertained. There's no region where you're so easily
invited to dinner and to stay the night as in Limburg. I remember a
maneuver in the south where a group of soldiers couldn't find
shelter in time. In no time, there were about ten enthusiasts: "Come
on, boys, you'll have a child with me to eat and sleep."
Hospitality certainly explains the well-known Limburg
round-giving—with all its consequences! -: when a couple
enters a café, it's as if they all suddenly feel like hosts;
one treats, the other returns, and often the entire "hospitality"
wavers.
The
urge for conviviality—a primitive trait that characterizes the
southerner in particular—is very striking among Limburgers.
Neither the sense of community nor the convivial atmosphere is found
in the North to the extent that it is found in Limburg—except
perhaps in the North. All Limburg towns have their own brass band,
singing club, neighborhood and youth association, their shooting
club, etc. Each of these associations has its own annual festival.
Then one thinks of the ubiquitously celebrated fairs, the exuberant
and sometimes extravagant carnivals; the silver, golden, and...
diamond weddings, which everywhere develop into neighborhood
parties; the coffee tables at baptisms, deaths, etc., where the
"street residents" also sit, and one understands that
there is plenty of opportunity to "make it cozy."21) It is
striking that even the most serious, even sad, ceremonies often end
"cozily." Here, too, the Limburger has retained something
of the more primitive medieval person, who couldn't immediately go
home after a serious game: the ending had to be happy, and therefore
a clute or sotternie followed. Everything and anything is made into
a party, and then one truly feels united. Especially during the fair
and carnival, the porte-brisé divisions of class disappear:
they are swept aside as if by the leveling mood. That the otherwise
prevailing boundaries are sometimes seriously overstepped on these
occasions is understandable but not defensible. Not only in the
consumption of beer does the Limburger then overstep the mark, but
also in their sense of duty. "If there's a fair in the Limburg
soldier's village, it seems like quite a feat to get home on time.
He doesn't hesitate to extend his leave by, say, a day, on his own
authority. He doesn't seem to consider this a serious offense,"
Major Evenwel believes.
That
all this encourages out-of-home behavior goes without saying. But in
most of the cases cited here, we're dealing with out-of-home
behavior of a certain kind. The entire neighborhood is considered
one big family. In one of the houses, the young men and women gather
to discuss, tell stories, play cards, sing, play tricks, and...
drink a beer. And because "true" hospitality would become
too expensive here, the most popular—that is, the most
visited—neighbor is proclaimed the pub owner; whether the pub
has a sign or not is irrelevant! This is how the many
"heiligehuuskes" (holy houses) in Limburg came into being.
We see how a flaw can develop into a good quality, which,
incidentally, is more common among Limburgers!
Sincerity,
loyalty, and dedication are qualities that adorn Limburgers.
Wasn't
it the sincerity that was praised on all sides in the statesman Jhr.
Ch. Ruys de Beerenbrouck? Isn't Dr. Poels the personification of
frank Limburg sincerity when, as a spiritual social leader at the
Rolduc study week, he stands before his workers and speaks off the
cuff. When he claims to simply say what he has to tell his comrades,
he does nothing but give free rein to this sincerity.
But
why did the great Dr. Nolens remain so silent? Was it perhaps
because he had more of a northerner on his father's side? Or did he
know himself so well that he knew that if he began to speak, he
would likely become too frank? Was the silent one really the true
Nolens? And would it apply to him, as an exception, what, according
to Waterink, generally does not apply to the Limburger: "What
you don't see on display, you will find inside"?22)
Just
as Ruys saved our Royal House in 1918 through his Limburg loyalty,
so Poels, through his loyalty to the workers—despite all the
vilification—defended the social and spiritual existence of
the miners with lionlike courage. And was it a coincidence that
Nolens carried the motto "Utrique fidelis" in his coat of
arms?
Major
Evenwel says of the soldier: "Dedication to military service
and the associated loyalty to his superiors is a typical
characteristic of the Limburg soldier." I have never
encountered this characteristic to such a strong degree in any other
nationality of our population.’ This officer also praises ‘the
unaffected honesty and simplicity’, which struck him
repeatedly.
When
Waterink judges that the social feeling is still the strongest in
the Saxon regions, that seems one-sided to me.
In
my opinion, this is not the least weaker in the Limburger either.
Even in our southernmost province, ‘people share in days of
joy and sorrow, of birth and death, of illness and need.’ The
women from the neighborhood not only come ‘for coffee’
on the day of the baptism ceremony, but they also consider it their
duty to assist at the birth if necessary and, if necessary, to act
as godmother or to baptize the child.23)
If
someone is seriously ill, the young daughters from the neighborhood
make a pilgrimage to the church or the chapel of Our Lady for nine
days. When someone dies, the entire "neighborhood" goes to
pray in the evening at the house of the deceased or in the church,
as long as the body is "in the yard." The girls make
wreaths, and the men's "neighbor duties," from the ringing
of the bells to the burial of the neighbor, are determined by
customary law. The entire neighborhood ('de put') or street—both
men and women—attends to the funeral. Neighbors often take
children who have lost their mothers into their homes for a longer
or shorter period—and sometimes even permanently.24) If there
is a neomist, the entire street is decorated by the young men and
young women, a collection is taken in the neighborhood for a
"lasting memory," and the youth are invited to the coffee
table where the neomist sits.
In
the event of serious offenses in the neighborhood, the entire
population "administers justice." If a man abused his
wife, at the end of the last century, a cart carrying a riverbank
would be driven past the offender's house at night, making a
tremendous racket. The so-called "kettle music" that
expressed general disapproval for certain offenses still exists in
many places.
This
idea of neighborliness, however, also has its drawbacks. It fosters
a kind of separatism. For example, in elementary school, every
street "had" its own corner (the area where the boys from
a particular street played). And woe betide anyone who dared to
trespass on "another man's" territory: that was considered
a desire for annexation, and then... you often saw general "pushing
matches," which after school often degenerated into formal
youth battles, usually involving clogs and stones. If a young man
from one hamlet gets into a fight with someone from another at the
fair, it usually becomes a battle of hamlet against hamlet; Such a
type of fighting also occurs in many places during the "torch
stake" on St. Martin's Day.25)
This
particularism results in council members and aldermen being
appointed by hamlet in many places, which is not always in the
municipality's best interest.
The
Limburger is strongly attached not only to the people but also to
the land around him. It may be true that, as Fons Tuinstra says, one
encounters the Limburger everywhere and that he has a wandering
nature—for my part, I would prefer to speak here of forced
wandering or relocation due to a lack of suitable means of
subsistence—yet, especially with regard to his region, he is
generally a stickler for his own interests. What Blink says about
the East Brabanter also applies to him: "Attachment to the land
where he grew up, where he played as a boy, to the village where he
goes to church... is almost nowhere as strong as here."26) If
the Central Limburger works in the mine, he would rather travel by
train or bicycle for a few hours every day than live in the mining
region. This rigidity in his hometown doesn't seem to me to be
specifically Limburgish, nor does the extreme conservatism. It's
more a typical trait of the farmer in general, which the Limburger
is, after all, by nature. "The farmer sits at his school
firmly".
Don't
let them be discouraged, they feel close to each other, they love
each other. ’ says Menghin.27) And this also explains the
homesickness for Limburg and the Limburgish dialect. If a Limburger
meets a fellow-provincial ‘abroad’, he greets him
cheerfully in... his dialect, without thinking of social
differences. ‘Love for one's native region’, says Major
Evenwel, ‘is also found in great measure in the Limburger,
just as it applies to the Zeelander and the Frisian. I would say
that the attachment to their native soil is even stronger among
Limburgers from Roermond southward than among North Limburgers.
Living in border regions, where much fighting took place and which
belonged now to one prince, then to another, and finally became part
of the Netherlands as a colony, has given the Limburger a sense of
insecurity and inferiority. Certainly, the sense of solidarity
reinforced this in him—except perhaps for the inhabitants of
the area north of Arcen—but for too long he lacked the feeling
of belonging to a larger entity, which gave him a greater sense of
self-worth and self-confidence. Other factors contributed to the
development of this inferiority complex. Until recently, the civil
servants, "the gentlemen," were almost exclusively
"Dutchmen," who impressed the Limburger with their "posh"
language, which he didn't always understand, or at least only had a
weak command of. He also felt that, due to a lack of educational
opportunities, the "Dutch" were superior to him in terms
of development. Not only universities and grammar schools, but even
junior high and trade schools often had to be attended abroad.
Generally, the "Dutch" and those who had been abroad "set
the tone," despite the fact that Limburgers are born leaders!
The result of all this is that, after a prolonged stay in Holland,
where they had to shake off their feelings of inferiority,
Limburgers react by becoming authoritarian in order to rise above
them. Woe betide anyone who thinks they have to treat Limburgers
condescendingly: they are a bare-bones "Dutchman" and...
are out for good. Well, yes: "The Limburger is backward!"
"The South is dark!" Does it surprise you that the son of
a farmer, a miner, or even a minor civil servant, who has no other
prospect than to plow as quickly as possible, chop coal, or perform
miserable crutch work, shows little or no concern for intellectual
development? Don't you understand that children who had to help
their parents earn a living from an early age, who didn't go to
school in the winter because of the bad roads, etc., and who in the
summer—if they cared for education at all—were taught in
the meadow, with a black-painted plank nailed to a tree serving as a
"board," weren't very well-informed? Certainly, that's no
longer the case, but that's how it was in the second half of the
last century. And isn't there such a thing as an unconscious
aftereffect for a few generations? And are they—despite the
exceptionally good educational conditions, thanks in particular to a
Dr. Moller and Dr. van Gils—weren't the prospects often such
that they don't strongly stimulate educational ambitions? Does it
surprise you that Limburg didn't produce many intellectuals,
considering that the pressure on the population was high, property
was limited, and study opportunities in our eccentric region were
meager? The geographical location and the political situation were
to blame! The Limburger is not to blame! It cannot be a disgrace to
him! In my opinion, the publications published thus far on
intelligence relations in the Netherlands do not do Limburg justice:
neither Groenewegen's in the "Militaire Spectator" of 1926
nor Stuiveling's in 1935. The psychological significance of the
geographical, historical, and social factors is not sufficiently
addressed. Major Evenwel says: "In this respect (in
intelligence), the Limburg soldier is definitely inferior to several
of our compatriots... This, of course, does not in any way mean that
he is inferior to his fellow soldiers in terms of academic aptitude.
I have always noticed that the Limburger generally possesses a great
innate inner refinement, which manifests itself, without the
individual even realizing it, as soon as he comes into contact with
those in his superior ranks." Ask the professors at our
universities what they think of the intelligence of the Limburg
student. Does the Limburger, as a result of the notoriously poor
relations of previous centuries, now harbor a so-called "hatred
of the north"? No, on the contrary! It goes without saying that
one cannot expect him to welcome with open arms and shower them with
kindnesses newcomers who do not wish to adapt to the Limburg spirit
in their attitude and conduct. But he who shows that anyone who
understands Limburger will find a friend in this regard—even
if they fail to master the Limburgish language, the ultimate
instrument for complete understanding and empathy—because of
the hospitality, the accommodating attitude, and the candor of the
Southerners.
Those
who fail to respect them will be ostracized, and those who, in
absolute conflict with Dutch interests, seek to Dutchify them will
incur lasting antipathy, and sometimes even hostility.
Standardization based on the Dutch model is impossible and entirely
undesirable. For the Limburger is a good Dutchman and patriot,
which, after Charles Thewissen's brochure,28) no longer needs
further argument. With a few exceptions—which, however, occur
in every border region, and certainly in a region that has been a
border region throughout its history—they have a great
devotion to their sovereign and fatherland. And didn't the
statesman, the soldier, and the ordinary citizen demonstrate this in
1918? The Limburg Prime Minister vetoed those who wanted to
overthrow the Orange throne, the Limburg soldier threatened any
attackers with annihilation, and the citizen sang: "Limburg and
Holland remain one." I may quote the opinion of the non-Limburg
Major Evenwel about the soldier here: "This (patriotism, R.) is
strongly developed among the Limburgers and expresses itself in a
great love for the Royal House. They are proud to be Dutch, although
they do not feel at home in Holland." Respect for authority in
general stems from the obedience innate to the Catholic Limburger.
Obedience to God and therefore to his representatives: bishops and
parents, clergy and secular leaders, is something self-evident.
Major Evenwel says of the soldier that he definitely has a sense of
discipline. "I would like to make an exception for the
so-called politically contaminated from the mining region and the
factory workers of Maastricht.... Under good leadership, especially
with prolonged periods of service under arms, excellent soldiers can
be made of the latter. It seems that then the foreign influences
have lost much of their power and the true Limburg national
character gradually resurfaces." Precisely because the
Limburger is constantly reminded of the duty to obey from his youth,
it is easy for any tactful superior, whoever and wherever he may be,
to lead him.
Although
there is no scientific reason to consider Catholicism a racial
condition — a possibility suggested by J.P. Kruijt29) —
it is a fact that Catholicism, just as it was on the Rhineland, has
left its mark on the Limburg national character. "Where you
have kruuts hungt woont neemes" is a typical Limburgish saying.
Customs and language, which so clearly illustrate the essential
nature of a people, prove the truth of this saying for our
southernmost region.
It
was not so long ago that the miners of the Domaniale Mine, before
entering the lift, would say a prayer together. When the Limburg
housewife cuts a loaf of bread, she first makes the sign of the
cross on it with a knife or finger. The marksmen open and close the
annual shooting competition with a church service, while prayers are
said under the "voeëjelsjtang" (football tongs)
before firing the first shot.30) To protect the harvest from the
cruel forces of nature, the farmer places a consecrated palm branch
or a piece of herbage in the ground at the corners of the field.31)
In the event of a serious illness, a relative of the sick person
calls the doctor, but the young women from the neighborhood
simultaneously make a pilgrimage to the church or a nearby chapel of
Our Lady. The Limburger doesn't celebrate their birthday, but "der
nametsdaag" (the day of the saint after whom they are named).
Yes, I know that the members of a neutral first-class football club
insisted that a certain anniversary be marked by the attendance of a
Holy Mass.
The
religious element is evident in thousands of expressions in the
language. I'll quote a few. In the North, the servant moves; in
Limburg, "maakt er Sintermeis" (= St. Remigius). In
Holland, someone comes to the table when dinner is almost over; in
South Limburg, when "'t bóch umjedrare" (the feast
is over). If the angry father, lacking self-control, gives his
naughty son a beating, then "kriet e ze jekristeliert"
(screams and screams). If a young lady passes by in Kerkrade, whose
petticoat happens to peek out from under her dress, one hears: "That
girl has come to her vespers."32)
The
fact that such expressions apply to the most diverse areas of life
is evidence of the Limburger's deep connection to his faith.
Although
this religiosity does not always express a persistent, deep
consciousness—which, in my opinion, is impossible—and
although religious life—as with all our daily activities—is
often routine.
It's
clear to a Limburger when someone deliberately tries to offend his
faith; then he even becomes aggressive: consider the "Daagseraad"
action a few years ago. This shows that faith is a strong binding
cement that unites Limburgers. Even the most brutal miner won't
tolerate an attack on his faith, though he might occasionally launch
his defense with a "curse." With the acceptance of faith,
the most important things are taken care of for the Limburger. Our
Lord and the Saints will take care of the rest. His trust in the
Highest Guidance is exceptionally strong. Besides the southern bias
in his character, this explains not only his often exuberant
cheerfulness and boisterous cheerfulness, but also his frequent
lightheartedness and carefreeness, as well as the resulting
frivolousness, which is incomprehensible to the Northerner. From
their daily intimate contact with God and the Saints often
arises—unintentional—irreverence in religiosity
and—especially among the South Limburgers—the so
frequent occurrence of "cursing," which we also notice in
France, Italy, and Spain. People invoke God and their Saints so
often where special help is needed that they also use Their names as
an invocation where it is inadmissible. And it is precisely this
inadmissibility that the less educated and cruder are unaware of,
because through frequent daily use they do not fully sense the
sublimity, and the form of the words, under the influence of strong
affect, usually deviates from the "ecclesiastical"
soundscape. But I do not mean to justify this evil: it is a serious
weakness—even if we understand the mitigating
circumstances—that increasingly disappears with increasing
education. And don't think that the Limburger, so steeped in
Catholicism, is intolerant! I've never heard of anyone being treated
unfairly or thwarted because they held different views. Nowhere are
institutions of dissidents, such as schools, so readily supported as
in Limburg. Relations between Catholic and Protestant clergy, as
well as between Catholics and Protestants, are generally very good.
But no one dares to bother a Limburger about their faith, no one
should openly try to attack their faith in their own "country"...
then the Limburg temperament kicks in, and its spontaneously
effervescent ferocity knows no bounds, as De Dageraad (The Daily
News) was shocked to discover! The Limburger also, as Tuinstra aptly
puts it, "has life here at its best"; he hates hypocrisy,
which he fiercely denounces with the words: "has God of the
cross and shit in the temple." He respects every honest
conviction, but demands the same for his own. I have already pointed
out some weak traits in the Limburger's national character.
Ouwerling, in his book entitled "Uit donker gewesten"
(From Dark Regions), knows even more and observes, among other
things, "a very high level of alcohol abuse, especially during
Carnival and during the shameful Bacchante festivals, which were
called fairs, but also on Sundays; a very high level of
criminality..." During the mobilization—to begin with the
last weak point—the Limburg soldiers, especially those of the
13th Reg., were called by the epithets ornantia: knifemen, goat
riders, and Russians. The actions of the "goat riders" in
South Limburg during the 18th century are notorious. The crimes
committed by these gangs were truly of the worst kind. But the
complex set of events raises so many questions that only a new
investigation, which takes ethnological, historical, social, and
psychological factors into account to a greater extent than has been
done thus far, can provide a satisfactory scientific explanation of
this criminological problem. Only then can one assess the role
played by the Limburg national character in these terroristic,
sometimes inhumane, atrocities.33) I myself knew a few individuals
in South Limburg around 1915 who were constantly looking for a
fight, drank so they could start a fight, and took pleasure in
stabbings. But... these were absolute exceptions and decidedly
inferior types, some of whom later became respectable family men.
That doesn't change the fact that a certain class of people, at
least during the last century, had fighting—usually after
digesting the necessary beer—in their blood. Jos. Russell
tells us that around 1850, fighting was popular "between
residents of neighboring municipalities... to whom the inhabitants
of Geleen were well known by name and deed as courageous and bloody
participants." Revenge battles ensured that the idea of war
remained alive!34) It can be noted, however, that these "battles"
were almost exclusively attended by the lowest classes of the
population. The fighting spirit was certainly present in the South
Limburgers. But here, besides temperament, much must be attributed
to location, history, and development.
In
the south of Limburg, one war followed another; robberies and
plunder were not unusual occurrences, in which mercenaries from all
over the world participated. The population was completely
impoverished. Given the limited development of the provinces, such
facts and conditions must have had repercussions for several
generations.
That
Limburg was traditionally notorious for the high frequency of the
crime of assault certainly finds a very important explanation in
this and says something positive only about its outward
civilization, but not yet about its inner civilization or
intellectual nobility.
All
this aligns with the important data I received from the
Criminological Institute at Utrecht State University.35) Statistics
for the years 1901-1931 show that the three most uncomplicated
crimes are more frequent in our region than in the national empire,
which would then be explained by the more primitive forms of
society, which must be a necessary consequence of the historical
development of the country and its people. If the editor of the
statistics for the Criminological Institute believes "that the
high frequency of abuse in Limburg is based not only on increased
alcohol abuse, but also on differences in national character,"
then I believe we are dealing with a general Celtic and Germanic
primitive characteristic, which, among a certain segment of the
Limburg population, could not be sufficiently mitigated by the
aforementioned factors. For a proper assessment, one should also
compare the "refined" criminality, which is almost unknown
to the Limburger.
Alcohol
abuse is an undeniable weakness of the Limburger. I do not wish to
dismiss or excuse this either.
It
is said of the Germanic people: "on buvait partout et à
toute oute, en l'honneur des dieux, aux public assemblies, comme aux
naissances, aux marriages et aux décès" (they
could digest "mead" in considerable quantities). And the
Celts? "They don't remind their life of a glass of wine."
The conservative Limburger retains a fair amount of both, as
evidenced, for example, by the "hero" of "De Zoondag
vaan 'ne mestrechteneer" (The Sunday of the Manure Rights
Honor). The Limburger doesn't serve cups of coffee outside the
official coffee table, and he doesn't use them in the café
either. What wine is for the Frenchman and Italian, beer is for him,
which he often enjoys with his sandwich. He prefers a glass of beer
to wine, and he serves it on every occasion, and often drinks both
large and small beer. It seems to have happened in South Limburg
that godfathers, godmothers, and midwives visited so many alehouses
after a baptism that they... came home without the baptized child.
In previous centuries, the rewards and fines of various
associations, especially the shooting clubs, consisted of beer. For
example, in the Geleen militia, founded in 1639, a member who swore
during the meeting had to immediately pay "four vanes (6
liters) of beer." Expressions in Limburg dialects for
overindulging in alcohol are legion. However, how little the
Limburger appreciates alcohol abuse and its potentially serious
consequences—not least of which stems from hospitality,
temperament, social circumstances, and history—is evident from
the frivolousness with which they associate religious terms with the
drinking world. They go to the "heiligehuuskes" (holy
houses) or "kapellekes" (chapels), where they drink
themselves "a spiritual rush" upon arriving at the café
"Zum Himmel".
But
I dare not assert whether alcohol abuse is worse in Limburg than
elsewhere. In 1901, the percentage of convicted drinkers throughout
the country was certainly higher than in Limburg. And let's not
forget that the average Limburger is more likely to drink than the
"Dutchman." And that alcohol abuse in the southernmost
province is perhaps less acute than in other regions is evident not
only from the aforementioned statistics but also from the assessment
of Major Evenwel, who says: "In general, the Limburg soldiers I
observed for many years behaved more disciplinedly off duty, even
somewhat under the influence of alcoholic beverages, than, for
example, their counterparts from Zeeland, North Holland, and North
Brabant."
I
had to base the above characterization on repeatedly observed
special cases, which understandably often pertain to specific social
groups that were not always named. Except in a few obvious cases, I
have adhered to the nature of the masses, the less educated or more
or less alogical; and even there, I have mostly chosen prominent
figures (favorably or unfavorably) as my motivation. I often made
the inaccuracy—and it has always been made, as far as I
know—of not sharing the form in which the various
characteristics mentioned become evident in other social groups.
I
think.
Well,
that I have characterized the Limburg people, despite this
forgivable one-sidedness, in this brief sketch with their favorable
and unfavorable qualities, the latter of which are increasingly
losing their weaknesses due to increasing national development.
May
the "Dutchman" learn to appreciate the good of his
southern compatriot and understand the weaknesses; may the
Limburger, feeling his responsibility towards his region and the
state community, cultivate the good qualities and refine the weak
ones for the good of the entire Dutch people and the Dutch tribe, to
which he not only gave much in the past but also, precisely because
of his country and southern orientation, has much more to give
today.
1)
among others: Fons Tuinstra, De ziel van Limburg (Maastricht, 1931);
M. Kemp, De geest in Limburg (Sittard, 1925); J. Jacobs M.S.C., On
religious conditions in the mining region (Roeping, vol. 5 (1926);
Jan Hul, De Zoondag vaan 'ne Mestreechteneer (Maastricht, 1933);
Gerard Lemmens, Miners' folklore in Limburg (Maastricht, 1936). This
booklet—despite the author's laudable diligence and good
intentions—should never have been published, not only because
of its unscientific nature.
2)
Personal communication.
3)
See, among others, Jos. Schrijnen: De isoglossen van Ramisch in
Nederland (Bussum, 1920); Win. Roukens, Wort- und Sachgeographie
Südostniederlands und der surliegenden Gebiete (Nijmegen,
1937).
4)
A.W. Byvanck, The Origin of the Dutch People and the Archaeology of
the Netherlands (Yearbook of the Society of Dutch Literature in
Leiden, 1935-36, p. 51). I have borrowed extensively from this
important summary article, as well as from the highly commendable
essay by A.E. van Giffen, "On the Oldest Population Elements of
Our Country" (Mensch en Maatschappij, vol. 1 (1925), p. 257
ff.).
5)
Ch. Bruneau, "The Limitation of Walloon, Chapenois, and
Lorraine Dialects" (Paris, 1913).
6)
Part I B. Atlas, Section I.
7)
I borrow this term from Prof. Jan de Vries (See Tijdschr. voor
Nederl. Taal- en Letterkunde, vol. 56 (1937), p. 276). We provided
indications for a toponymic division in our 'Wort- und
Sachgeographie'. We hope to address this issue in detail soon.
8)
Oswald Menghin, Geist und Blut (Wien, 1934).
9)
a.a.O., S. 134 and 135.
10)
vol. 2, p. 381.
11)
See also the works of J.H. Holwerda, including Prehistory and
ancient history (History of the Netherlands, Amsterdam, 1935).
12)
including Nederlandsche Volkskunde, vol. 2, p. 381.
13)
See, among others, J.J. de Wit and A.J.A. Flament, The Formation of
Dominions on the Territory of Limburg (Publications de la Société
hist. et arch. dans le Limbourg, 47th year); Gerard Knuvelder, Vanaf
Wingewesten (Hilversum, 1930), p. 330 ff.; Win. Roukens, Wort- und
Sachgeographie usw., Part I B. Atlas: Abt. I.
14)
i.e., the utterance of long, drawn-out cries, which were adopted by
other groups.
15)
This is less true for the people of North Limburg.
16)
The artistry of the people of North Limburg is less highly regarded.
17)
Cf. the works of Olterdissen and the content of the magazine
‘Veldeke’.
18)
See Jan de Vries, Volk van Nederland; II. Het Nederlandsche
Volkskarakter (Dutch National Character). 19) For the characteristic
of the Celts, see: A.G.B. Schayes, La Belgique et les Pays-Bas avant
et pendant la domination romaine (Bruxelles, 1877) p. 41-56; H.
d'Arbois de Jubainville, Les Celtes jusqu'en l'an 100 devant notre
ère (Paris, 1904) p. 1-17; Camille Jullian, Histoire de la
Gaule (Paris, 1909) II p. 415-448 and Ethnographie der germ. Stämme
von Otto Bremer (in: Grundriss der germ. Philologie III p. 768 ff.).
20)
According to personal communications.
21)
See, among others, J. Huijsmans, Morals, Customs, and Practices in
Roermond (Civitas Ruraemundensis, Roermond, 1932).
22)
Jan de Vries, People of the Netherlands, p. 34.
23)
See, among others, H.H.J. Maas, Outcast (Amersfoort, 1907), p. 29.
Incidentally, the Limburg spirit is often lacking in this book.
Also: Wort-u. Sachgeographie, pp. 306-323.
24)
Em. Seipgens, Toen Leneke dood was (Uit Limburg, Arnhem, 1881).
25)
Win. Roukens, Wort- und Sachgeographie, etc., p. 231.
26)
H. Blink, Studies on Settlements in the Netherlands - North Brabant.
(Journal of the Royal Dutch Geographical Society, 21 (1904), p. 25
ff.).
27)
a.a.O., p. 110.
28)
Charles Thewissen, Limburg and Orange (Maastricht, 1937).
29)
J.P. Kruijt, De onkerkelikheid in Nederland (Groningen-Batavia,
1933). Chapter XI. For the Rhineland, see, among others, Justus
Hashagen, Rheinischer Volkskarakter und rheinische
Geistesentwicklung (Bonn-Leipzig, 1922).
30)
See, among others, J.A. Jolles, De Schuttersgilden en Schuttererijen
in Limburg (Publications, 1936), p. 29.
31)
Win. Roukens, Wort- und Sachgeographie usw., Part I A, p. 213 vgg.
32)
't bóch is umjedrare = the book has been turned over; then
the Mass is almost over; kristeliere = to teach catechism; that
meedje etc. means: that girl has finished high mass during vespers.
33)
See, among others, J.J. Michel, Die Bockreiter von Herzogenrath,
Valkenburg and its surroundings. (Aachen, 1905).
34)
J. Russel, De Heerlijkheid Geleen (Sittard, 1861).
35)
I sincerely thank Prof. Pompe and his colleagues for the information
they provided. I also sincerely thank Major Evenwel from Venlo,
Chaplain F. Schleiden from Heerlen, Mr. Müller from Venlo, and
the painter René Smeets from Gennep for their support.
36)
Schayes, l.c., p. 144.
[p.
*37] illustration MAN FROM MELIK (LIMBURG)
[p.
*38] illustration FARM GIRL FROM ST. ODILIËNBERG (LIMBURG)
See
The Limburgers by Dr. Win. Roukens, De Nederlandse volkskarakters,
P.J. Meertens, Anne de Vries - DBNL
Excavations
in Trier
February
20, 1835 In the municipality of Niedaltorf, near Trier, near the
French border, excavations have uncovered a wall that, upon
examination, was found to be 17 feet long and 11 feet wide,
decorated with beautiful mosaic work depicting flowers in blue, red,
and white, made of small, square stones. A section of this wall had
already been demolished before the government became aware of it, so
it preserved only a portion of this remnant of a Roman
building.
April 23, 1844 COLOGNE, April 18.
The accidental
discovery of the mosaic floor here has proven that the Roman city
lay 8 to 12 feet below its current foundation. Ancient Trier lay 20
feet lower, and ancient Rome 20 to 30 feet lower. The discovered
floor ran north to south and appears to have been part of several
separate buildings (insula); that is, the palace and its
outbuildings were completely detached, just as the Romans had built
their palaces since Nero's time. The excavated mosaic floor is 20
feet long and 18 feet wide and surrounded by continuous border
decorations. The central section covers a regular hexagon, which is
itself divided into six corners. In the center, one sees a man's
head with a white beard. A green robe hangs from the left shoulder,
so that the right shoulder, arm, and chest appear bare. This head is
surrounded by red and black circles, bearing the inscription
ΔIΙΓΕΝHC. Regular quadrilaterals appear
on the sides of the polygon, and equilateral triangles lie between
them, creating a regular dodecagon. The quadrangles are decorated
with rosettes of various shapes and colors: red, green, yellow,
blue, black, and white alternate. The triangles between the
quadrangles are inlaid with smaller triangles, alternating between
black and white, yellow and red. In the hexagon facing west, on a
white background, one sees a head with gray hair and a beard, turned
from east to west. The robe covering the chest is light gray; under
this head is written CΩKPATHC. A head on the east side has
dark, hanging hair and a long beard, with the letters EIΛ,
probably XEIΛON, one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Under
another head with a gray beard, wearing a blue-green robe over his
left shoulder, is written CΩΦΟKΔHC. Some
other heads have suffered greatly; Under one of these are the
letters OBOA, which would have been KOEOBOOTOC, one of the seven
sages from Lindas. No mosaic floor is known to be so decorated with
busts of sages and poets. In that respect, this one is
unique.
September 12, 1852 — In Trier, during the
construction of a house, a magnificent, very well-preserved mosaic
floor was discovered today, 10 feet underground, with figures in the
most vibrant colors, as beautiful as any ever found in that region.
This piece will be preserved in the museum there.
January 1,
1861 Constantinople and Urbs Roma.
...
The above opinion of Mr. Soret is supported by a recent coin hoard
discovered near Bitburg, Trier administrative district.
A
farmer found in his field a hoard of small coins covered with slate,
dating from Roman times, containing 402 coins, beginning with
Maximinus Daza and ending with Constantine II. My esteemed friend,
Professor Namur, acquired the hoard for the local collection. More
detailed descriptions and information about the results can be found
in the next chapter of the review of Belgian numismatics. I was
permitted to examine the hoard; it contained some rarities, for
example, the inscription of Constantine the Great: Soli invicto
comiti, and the emperor depicted with helmet, armor, and lance.
Then, more details regarding the minting location: MSL, which is
also given as Sabatier and which I interpret as Moneta Sacra
Londinensis. However, these inscriptions were not uncommon in
various forms under Crispus and Constantine II. I am glad that the
Fund is worth it over the year 326; Constantine II was only 10 years
old in this year, but had a fine victory with his stepbrother
Crispus, who died in this year, inheritances. Constantine now tries
in two copies of the following young people, fast childproof Cups of
the Laurel Crown, both coins since minted in the same birthplace
Arles; The right to the laurel wreath in Slovenia was already
granted during the lifetime of Crispus. This is a matter of great
concern for the younger generation of the Funds of the Year 337, in
the Year of Constantine the Great and Constantine II resigned the
epithet junior.
November 14, 1862 — The government has
made 22,000 thalers available to carry out excavations in Trier, on
the site of a Roman palace.
In
order to preserve this important ruin, which it is hoped will be
discovered in its entirety for art, the government has purchased the
surrounding land for a short period. Excavations will begin this
winter.
February
9, 1874 In Euern, near Trier, work was underway to level the ground
for the construction of a new church. A floor of Roman mosaic, 14.5
feet square with beautiful four-colored figures, was discovered.
November
2, 1880 — Three months ago, a resident of Ermsdorf,
Luxembourg, discovered over 7,000 Roman coins while excavating a
plot of land. Mr. Van Werveke, professor at the Athenaeum and
curator at the Coin Cabinet of the Historical Association in
Luxembourg, cleaned them and arranged them in the cabinet. They are
coins of the emperors Licinius I, Licinius the Younger, Constantine
the Great and his sons Crispus, Constantine II, Constans I and
Constans II, as well as of the empresses Theodora, Helena and
Fausta, as well as some of Alexander Severus, Maxentius, Claudius
Gothicus, Maximianus Herculeus, Maximinus Daza, Tranquillinus and
Dalmatius.
April
10, 1883. Recently, the museum in Trier received as a gift some very
remarkable remains from the distant past, found in the ground near
Wasserbillig. During the construction of a vineyard in the latter
town, many graves were excavated. Most of the bodies had been
cremated, and the remaining bones placed in urns and thus entrusted
to the earth. Limestone membranes had been placed around the
multitude of urns discovered here. In addition, other bodies were
buried. They were laid on roof tiles; one of these bodies had been
placed on 14 roof tiles, forming, as it were, a bed for the
brickmaker—as can be seen on similar objects used in the
construction of a Roman bathhouse excavated in St. Barbara's Church
in Trier. Similar objects, bearing the same mark, were used in the
construction of the oldest part of what is now, but later enlarged
and expanded, the main church of Trier. It follows that these graves
must have been excavated between 824 and 385.
August
29, 1897: A discovery. The remains of a Roman house have been
excavated in Trier, on a plot of land owned by the manufacturer
Schabb. It is a large house, the facade of which stood on the city's
main street (Augusta Trevirorum) in Roman times. Among other things,
a window was discovered there—the first ever discovered in a
Roman house—as well as a very beautiful, colorful mosaic
floor. According to experts, the house dates from the first half of
the 4th century, the heyday of Trier under Roman rule.
September
2, 1903 ROMAN EXCAVATIONS IN TRIER. Government activities in Trier
daily unearth more or less important Roman antiquities. In
Pfützenstrasse, an extremely solid Roman road paved with white
limestone was discovered at a depth of 2.5 meters. The street
originates from the city theater and runs to the Imperial Palace. A
large number of Roman coins and "Trier Charter coins" were
also discovered on this occasion. In other parts of the city,
well-preserved bronze vases, Roman furniture, and the remains of
terra sigillata dishes were unearthed. The newly uncovered sections
of the Baths complete the picture of this well-preserved bathing
facility.
March
23, 1906 — During repairs to the West Choir in the Cathedral
of Trier, large Roman mosaics were unearthed at a depth of two
meters beneath the floor.
February
25, 1925: Trier as a residence of the Romans.
Dr.
Loeschcke from Trier spoke yesterday to the Natural History Society
about Trier as a Roman residence. Several decades before Christ,
Emperor Augustus was said to have founded the city of Trier. Before
this time, there was no city or town in that region of the Moselle.
The residents lived high up in the mountains and hid near a
June
22, 1931 TREASURE HUNTERS
[...]
A similar discovery was made about 30 years ago by Mayor Britz from
Dockscheid near Maxweiler in the Eifel region. While plowing, he
came across a large collection of coins, silver and copper pieces.
The coins bore, among other things, the images of Emperor
Constantine the Great and Saint Helena. The find is now in the
Provincial Museum of Trier. The recovered coins are valuable
testimonies to the country's past.
October
12, 1931 The German Delphi.
I
already wrote an article under this title a few months ago. Now new
details have come to light. Until now, it was believed that the
Roman Emperor Augustus was the founder of the city of Trier.
Excavations in the Altbach Valley have actually revealed...
A
different opinion has emerged. This has established that Trier
already existed before Roman rule. Cultural layers dating back many
thousands of years lie on top of each other here.
It
was customary for the Romans to choose the ancient cultural sites of
their conquered peoples as their own. Moreover, Trier enjoyed an
exceptionally favorable geographical location, as the military
routes from Paris and Reims, and from Lyon via Metz, converged here
and continued on to Cologne and Mainz.
With
all the luxury of the imperial period, Trier was established as a
trading and administrative center for the Roman provinces of Belgium
and Upper and Lower Germany.
After
the division of the Roman Empire into western and eastern parts,
Emperor Diocletian even elevated this city to an imperial residence
in 286, from which the entire western empire, including Spain and
Britain, was governed. Trier thus became one of the largest cities
of the Roman Empire and acquired the impressive buildings from that
period that still remain on German soil. Although these buildings
were later destroyed, the remaining remains still clearly
demonstrate their former significance.
In
recent years, foundations of large Roman buildings and palaces have
been discovered, all situated along a main street. It is believed
that the imperial palace, the university, and numerous temples of
Roman deities are still to be found.
This
temple city can be compared to the national sanctuary of the Greeks,
Delphi, which was also a sacred city with a large number of
magnificent temples, priests' residences, and a theater. The
distinction here was that most of Delphi's art was made of marble.
Delphi also housed the world-famous oracle of Apollo. A wealth of
masterpieces of art were preserved here, gifts from all the peoples,
cities, and kings of the ancient world. Already 50 years ago, during
the construction of a railway line to Saarbrücken and Metz, a
number of idols, as well as inscribed stones, were discovered. When
a road was to be built on the same site in 1924, Professor Siegfried
Loerschke of the Provincial Museum in Trier began excavating the
ground. He made discoveries that can be considered the largest on
German soil in decades. This involved the discovery of an entire
"holy city," a vast collection of temples within the walls
of the Roman imperial residence.
To
date, no fewer than 60 temples and chapels, a theater, houses, large
columned halls, water conduits, springs, and small structures have
been uncovered.
Our
knowledge of Roman worship has been significantly expanded as a
result. It has been discovered that the ancient Trevors also
venerated animal-shaped idols in historical times. For example, a
statue of a water god in the form of a bull was found. Animal and
human forms have been combined in two other idols found, but the
animal is already the subservient element in these. This applies to
the riding Jupiter or Wode, the Germanic god of the sky, and to the
patron saint of horse breeding, Epona, who is already venerated here
as a rider and no longer as a horse.
Furthermore,
an idol was found representing maternal blessing. In one instance,
this goddess sat in an armchair at the entrance to the temple,
holding a basket of fruit on her lap; in another, she wore a diadem
on her head and a full grain of corn in her left arm. Two small
children rested their arms on their mother's lap.
Approximately
one hundred figures representing goddesses were found in a temple
cellar. The most beautiful thing found, however, was the statue of a
young mother carrying her child in her arms.
Male
idols were also found, including, for example, the Deus Vertumnäs.
Human sacrifices were still made to this god in historical times.
December
12, 1933 [...] In 1825, a farmer from the neighboring village of
Fliessem was searching for stones and tiles from the old building to
use—according to common custom—for his own house, when
he unexpectedly stumbled upon a mosaic floor. He spoke about his
discovery, and it soon attracted public attention. The first
excavations were carried out by Mr. Malegaux from Bitburg, by the
Society for Useful Research, and by the government of Trier. [...] A
remarkable discovery was made years ago by a farmer who was leading
his plow, drawn by two horses, across his land. Suddenly, something
unexpected happened: the earth seemed to open up and swallow the
entire team. The horses sank into the ground, and it turned out that
beneath the field was a brick vault belonging to the Roman estate of
Otrang. It took considerable effort to retrieve the horses from the
deep pit. The farmer found two beautiful gold cups, each with a
30-centimeter-long base. He presented this discovery to the artistic
king Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, and received 24 taler for it.
December
25, 1934 TEMPLE QUARTER IN TRIER
Major
archaeological works. The entire quarter exposed. Via archaeologica.
A
German collaborator writes to us:
It
has now been definitively decided to completely expose the old Roman
temple quarter in the city of Trier, Augusta Treverorum, the German
Delphi, as is sometimes called. As is known, this city, perhaps the
oldest in Germany, was originally a settlement of the Treveri, a
Gallic tribe; In the third century, it was the seat of Roman
emperors, and under Emperor Constantine I, it was even the
metropolis of one of the four prefectures of the great Roman Empire.
The
major project now decided upon will be completed in four to five
years. The costs will be borne by the Prussian state, the Rheinische
Provinzial Verband (Rhine Provincial Association), and the
Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (Community of German
Science); the Roman Germanic Central Commission (Römisch-Germanische
Zentral Kommission) in Frankfurt will bear the costs of the project.
A
publication on the results of the excavations is underway. This work
has already been partially published and will now also be completed.
Moreover,
the entire temple area will be made accessible to the public in the
spirit of an open-air museum, designed by the Trier urban planner
Schmidt. The most beautiful temple will be rebuilt; conveniently
located viewing points will also be provided to provide a
characteristic overview of this ancient temple area of Trier.
An
even more far-reaching plan is also currently under serious
consideration. An archaeological via will be constructed from the
Porta Nigra across the main square, past the Cathedral and the
Basilica, to the museum in the former palace of the Electors. This
via will then lead from this palace to the imperial baths and to the
temple area, as well as the amphitheater. The plan is to implement
this plan within ten years, depending on available funding, in
collaboration with the Trier city council and the Rheinische
Provinzial Verband (Rhine Provincial Association).
February
7, 1936 LECTURE BY PROF. DR. S. LOESCHCKE.
Last
night, Professor Dr. S. LOESCHCKE, an archaeologist in Trier, spoke
before the Frisian Society of History, Antiquity, and Linguistics.
His topic was:
"The
Conquest of Nordic Power over the Roman World Power of the Rhine,
Danube, and Moselle."
The
speaker pointed out that the Rhine region was inhabited by Celts and
Germanic people at the time the Romans arrived. The Germanic people
arrived around 1300 BC; the Celts, also a "Nordic" people,
previously lived there alone. At that time, the Illyrians, unrelated
to the Germanic people, lived in eastern Germany. Research by Dutch,
Belgian, German, Scandinavian, and Austrian researchers has shown
that around 400 BC, Germanic peoples inhabited all of the
Netherlands, most of Belgium, and northern Germany. The Celts were
pushed south and especially west (France). Celts and Germanic
peoples also intermingled. The Illyrians disappeared completely from
the area. The speaker recalled the many mountains fortified as
fortresses in the Moselle and Rhine regions and recounted how Caesar
conquered modern-day France for Rome. Under him, and around the time
of Christ's birth, under Augustus, the Rhineland was next. From
approximately 50 BC to 450 AD, this land was under Roman rule.
Emperor Augustus, the greatest of the Roman emperors, allowed his
troops to invade Germania. All the mountain fortresses were
conquered by the Romans. Trajan and Marcus Aurelius later fought on
the Danube, and they had such assaults immortalized in monuments.
No
people could have resisted the Romans; working consistently, he had
conquered empire by empire, country by country. Like living walls,
the legionaries, their shields held side by side, pressed forward.
On the German mountains, the gigantic ruins of the Celtic and
Germanic walls conquered by the Romans still lie. In what is now the
Netherlands, the Batavians were present, in Belgium, the mixed
Germanic-Celtic Nervii. The Romans founded the provinces of Upper
and Lower Germany and built Trier (Colonia Augusta Treverorum), the
city of the Treveri, on the Moselle. On the Rhine, the present-day
cities were established as fortresses against the Germanic peoples,
including Nijmegen. In these fortresses, the legionaries were
stationed with troops from the conquered peoples, with the Treveri
serving as cavalry. Numerous finds from the Rhineland and Eifel
region illustrate this and the appearance of the Germanic people,
with their long beards and matching trousers, which aroused the
amazement of the Romans. In the year 9 AD, Augustus summoned three
large Roman legions to seize the Rhine. The Roman fleet had to sail
up the Elbe, because the entire land up to the Elbe and the Danube
Bend was to become Roman. The outcome is well known: the three
legions and their auxiliaries were destroyed in the battle in the
Teutoburg Forest by Arminius (Hermann) with his Sicambri and other
tribes. Even the banners, the eagles, were lost to the barbarians,
the Germanic people. Therefore, Hermann's statue rightly stands in
the Teutoburg Forest, saying to everyone: "Woe to him who
seizes Germany when Germany is united." Despite all attempts to
erase the insult, the Germanic lands east of the Rhine remained
free. The Parthians had first defeated the Romans; however, Germania
put an end to their advance once and for all. An inner force must
have dwelt within the Germans that brought this about. It took Rome
a hundred years to recover: only then did it manage to establish a
foothold in southern Germany, where Celts and Germans lived
together. They now wanted to advance from the south, because in the
north, where the Batavians and the warlike Frisians lived, it was
not so easy. The Romans built a large border wall with 76 castles
and 170 watchtowers protected the Germanic people. The Baalburg, now
rebuilt, was one of these castles. Trajan's Column in Rome depicts
the alarm towers and other fortifications, along with the alarm
signals on the limes Germanicus. The rebellious young Germanic
people were tied to a column with shackles or chained neck to neck
as slaves. Trajan's Column depicts approximately 2,500 human
figures, all immortalizing the Emperor's military deeds. Marcus
Aurelius crossed the Danube and built his fortresses and castles
there. During this campaign, the Romans were astonished that the
Germanic people sought to recover the wounded and even the dead
during battle. The statues on the Roman column depict these examples
of Germanic loyalty. The Germanic leaders, the speaker continued,
were beheaded one by one after their defeats, to frighten the
tribes. Thus, Dacia on the lower Danube was conquered. Like all
subjugated countries, it had to order tribute after tribute.
Ultimately, payment was refused, and the Emperor himself went to
Dacia to see what was happening. One of the rebels spoke for all,
for he had given impetus to the movement. He refused to renew the
oath; the motto was: better a new war than subjugation.
Unfortunately, there was a traitor among the leaders, a Dacian,
whose tribe was the first to flee. Once again, the Romans were
victorious; they killed the men; the women, who protected their
children to the last, were taken away!
In
truth, the speaker said, the statues on the column in Rome are not
only a glorification of Roman glory, but above all, though not
intended as such, a hymn to Germanic courage and loyalty. Some of
the old men, women, and children managed to hide in quarries and
caves. The inner strength of the women would live on in the
children, in the new generation. This generation retook Dacia and
conquered the limes Germanicus. The Germanic tribes invaded Gaul and
destroyed numerous towns and villages. Trier was also burned—as
the speaker himself discovered in his excavations. However, Rome was
so immensely strong that only the land to the right of the Rhine
remained free; the area to the left of the river was forged even
more firmly into the Empire. Trier became one of the largest cities
and for a hundred years the seat of an emperor or crown prince.
Much
of the fortifications remains, which was virtually indestructible.
Enormous baths were constructed, and large workshops were built on
the outskirts of the city, including numerous potteries. In the
Frisian Museum, one can admire so-called Orpheus dishes from
Switzerland, which resemble the finds in Trier. After the break,
Professor Loeschcke discussed the products of the potteries in
Trier; the old Germanic pots and vases are black, the Roman ones
red. The Trevian people also made black pots in the Roman period,
the so-called Terranigra pots, a beautiful collection of which can
be found in Nijmegen. Wooden pots were also imitated in clay.
The
Romans increasingly taught the indigenous population to master the
technique. Cups, boxes, and bottles were made for Moselle wine,
which was transported from Trier along the Rhine. Drinking mottos
also appeared on the bottles: among others, "Spare the water;
put undiluted wine in here." A protest against the Roman custom
of drinking wine mixed with water, still valid in the Moselle
region! Vases and pots bearing the swastika were also in use at that
time. These were likely intended as a sign of Germanic aversion to
Rome. The speaker displayed on the white canvas the image of a piece
of leather, depicting a banner between two swastikas. According to
him, this was perhaps a symbol of the Treveri, proud of their
Germanic heritage. They were also known for their well-fed pigs and
wool production. Horse breeding was also highly regarded. The Romans
understood the art of exploiting indigenous industries and cultures
to their advantage. Wine cultivation flourished along the Moselle
very early; Emperor Probos did not introduce it, as is often said;
he only provided the initial support to the winegrowers after their
vineyards were destroyed by the invading Germans in the third
century. The wine was transported in typical Germanic ships
resembling Viking boats. In the land of the Treveri, Bacchus was not
the god of wine, but a bearded Germanic deity.
There were also
barrels there, which were unfamiliar to the Romans. Professor
Loeschck reported that he had succeeded in discovering the oldest
temple remains in Trier, temples dedicated to the indigenous gods.
The excavations have already identified 75 temples and chapels. In
the center stood the Imperial Temple, requisitioned by the Romans;
alongside it, the Germanic and Celtic gods were worshipped in
temples. The Trier temple district was three times as large as the
temple complex at Delphi and twice as extensive as the Acropolis in
Athens.
Discoveries
have shown that a settlement existed in Trier long before the
arrival of the Romans. Trier is therefore an ancient cultural land.
The 500-year Roman occupation could not erase the original
indigenous character, any more than that would have been possible in
the Netherlands. However, much was learned from Rome, including
building in stone.
Several
examples of this still remain. Beneath many Christian churches lie
the old pagan temples. In these, the Gallic warrior god was depicted
with three heads; this depiction was later transferred to the
Christian Trinity, but was ultimately forbidden. The bull god was
also worshipped in Germania and Gaul; there is even a legend that a
golden bull statue is said to have existed near Trier. For the
Celts, the bull was the water god: the great fertilizing element in
nature. The Rhine was sometimes depicted as a god with two bull
horns; It was also found on a stone beneath Notre Dame.
This
bull was always accompanied by three birds, three cranes. In this
context, the speaker recalled that, in earlier folklore, storks
carried children from the water to their parents. And the hare still
brings us Easter eggs. Originally, the Germanic people did not
depict their gods; they held them in too high esteem; their worship
of the gods took place in nature. Professor Loeschcke pointed out
that the names of the Germanic gods and goddesses, as well as those
of the Romans, still live on in the names of the days. However,
there is a significant difference between Freya, the mother goddess,
and Venus, both of whom gave their names to the sixth day of the
week. All sorts of symbols have defied the centuries. Even today,
for example, children in the land of Trier wear lucky horns around
their necks. On the coast, in the Netherlands, Nehalennia was
worshipped as the mother goddess, and this was the case throughout
Germanic lands. The Romans, on the other hand, revered women only as
sensual Venus, not as faithful mothers. Herein lies the great
distinction.
The
indigenous element, the professor concluded, not only rose up
against the Romans with weapons, but also conquered them spiritually
and morally. The speaker depicted the Great Migration, when the area
left of the Rhine was liberated from the Romans and the world empire
collapsed under their power. Not a single Germanic became Romani;
they left that to the Celts. However, beyond the boundaries set by
nature, the Germanic people could not establish a new empire either;
the unnatural borders of countries and peoples never endured.
August
10, 1940 Coins from the time of Constantine the Great.
The
excavations on Kruisstraat—N. Lindestraat—Coriovallumstraat
in Heerlen have recently led to an important discovery. Near the
large heating furnace, which is slowly being uncovered, coins from
the time of Constantine the Great have now been discovered. This is
of great significance because several historians — including
Holwerda and Peters — were of the opinion that around 250 AD,
no Romans had settled in South Limburg and that the country had been
an almost entirely deserted wasteland. This coin discovery now
contradicts that theory, as the Roman period of residence is
extended by at least 100 years to approximately 350 AD. The
discoverers of these coins, including the renowned archaeologist Dr.
Becker from Beek (L.), are now leaning toward a theory that
discoveries from the early Christian period may also be made. During
Constantine the Great's reign, as is well known, the Edict of Milan
granted Christians religious freedom in 318. It is therefore highly
likely that there were Christians in South Limburg around the year
350, and that some remnants of these Christians may also be found.
April
23, 1942 THE ROMAN WALL PAINTINGS OF TRIER
The
"Nationalzeitung Essen" contains a detailed report on the
major archaeological discoveries in Trier, which have been described
as the oldest Pompeian wall paintings on German soil. To give our
readers an overview of these discoveries, we present an excerpt
here. In 1920, during the excavation of a wine cellar, an
archaeological discovery was made, the full significance of which
was not immediately recognized and therefore remained undiscovered
for almost twenty years before science officially intervened. The
director of the Rheinland National Museum in Trier, Prof. Dr. von
Massow, the restorer of the Pergamon Altar in Berlin, who was then
an assistant there, immediately began devoting himself to this task
after becoming the museum's director. At the time, more than one
hundred crates containing fragments of ancient Roman wall paintings
were recovered, which, according to current scientific knowledge,
amounted to approximately 100 AD. A series of significant sections
were successfully restored and it was established that the paintings
certainly originate from only two rooms. The decorative principle
could also be established to a certain extent. The first room is
divided into a series of rectangular panels by vertical stripes,
half a meter wide, each with a double frame, blue-green on the
outside and yellow-red on the inside. The further divisions have not
yet been discovered.
In
contrast, the decoration of the horizontal stripes is perfectly
clear. These are decorated with candelabra; the candelabra stem
emerges from a green chalice with a dark red base, resembling a
goblet. The base of the chalice is flanked by two green shields, red
ibexes stand on the chalice rim, winged amorets with flower baskets
leap on a central panel, and a fallow deer stands on the uppermost
panel. This fantastic group is held aloft by two tritons. Another
candelabrum has a similar grouping, but instead of ibexes, blue
birds, instead of amorets, red jars with ears, and instead of the
fallow deer, a sphinx. All depictions, in terms of fluidity and
splendor of color, are no match for any magnificent piece from
Pompeii. Immediately above the fallow deer is a square painting
depicting the hero Hercules, with his left hand strangling the
hydra, his right hand raising to strike with his club. The second
room must have been even larger and more elaborately painted. The
most striking section is a half-life-size Apollo, the upper half
nude, the lower half clad in a brilliant blue cloak. He leans on the
lyre to his left and rests his right hand on his head. Below him
hangs a large decorative bronze disk with a blue head in the center;
garlands radiate from this disk, which blend seamlessly into the
surrounding architecture. The most surprising feature is a larger
group, which depicts a monumental tripod before a tabernacle. On the
beams, a whip-lashed Cupid drives a team of seahorses forward, and
within the tabernacle, remnants of further architectural elements
appear. Another beautiful fragment shows a laurel tree between blue
columns under purple beams. This suggests that this room was used
for worship; after all, everything seems to revolve around Apollo,
whose sacred animals, tools, and trees can be found here. The
composition of the whole remains uncertain. However, the division of
the wall into three sections is already established: an upper floor,
containing the black plinth discovered during the excavation, with
yellow interspersed fields. Plants are painted on the black
surfaces.
For
the individual motifs, but also for larger complexes, Professor Van
Massow was able to point out surprising similarities from Pompeii.
It should also be noted that the quality of the Trier paintings,
although partially affected by weathering, must have been originally
excellent. Yet, they differ in detail from Pompeian pieces, insofar
as even in these works of art, the provincial element within Roman
imperial art can be clearly distinguished from the classical works
of the South.
February
11, 1943 Archaeological discoveries in Trier.
— In
a lecture in the "Gesellschaft für Nützliche
Forschungen," according to the "Frankfurter Zeitung,"
the director of the Landesmuseum in Trier, Professor Dr. van Massow,
spoke about the archaeological discoveries made within the Trier
city area over the past year. Among other things, a mosaic measuring
3.40 by 3.90 m was discovered, closely related in style and
technique to the Nennings mosaic and, like it, likely dating from
the end of the second century AD. Its special significance lies in
the fact that all nine muses are depicted here. Furthermore, the
wallwork of a Roman hall, measuring 10.60 by 7.20 m, was discovered,
also covered with mosaic. Above this hall was medieval brickwork
with Romanesque murals. The discoveries made north of the
amphitheater were a real sensation. Written accounts already knew
that a circus had existed in Trier during the Roman period, which,
in a eulogy to Emperor Constantine in 310, was equated with the
circus maximus in Rome. While it was previously assumed that this
circus was located on the temple grounds in the Altbach valley,
Professor von Massow believes, based on the latest discoveries, that
it should be located in the Gartenfeld district of Trier. (E.K.B)
November
2, 1943 Sensationelle Funde im Raum von Trier
A
Quellsanctum de Treverer entdeckt
Trier,
November 2.
Trier
had a great deal of rain and overheated Bodenfunden. Let's consider
the visual impact of the circus maximus and a review
The
discovery of the surviving mosaics of the Muses was announced. Now,
the director of the Rhineland State Museum, Professor Dr. von
Massow, announced sensational reports on the truly "groundbreaking
excavations" in front of Trier Cathedral and on the discovery
of "vast quantities of remnants of ancient wall paintings"
that were rediscovered in Trier's Palace Square and whose study and
reconstruction have been underway for several months. According to
Dr. von Massow, these ancient finds will far surpass anything
previously known in this field, stand comparison "with the
treasures of Pompeii," and certainly represent the most
magnificent finds ever unearthed north of the Alps, and especially
on German soil.
Furthermore,
Professor Dr. von Massow was able to report the discovery of a
spring sanctuary of the Treveri in the Idarwald forest in the
Simmern district. Initially, simple, hewn slabs were discovered
during work on a water conduit in the middle of the dense forest.
Finally, the outline of a temple emerged, revealing a considerable
size and clearly a national sanctuary, an ancient pilgrimage site of
the Treveri. The altar was located outside the temple, while the
statue of the worshipped god stood inside, facing the altar through
the temple gate. Numerous grave goods and votive offerings in the
form of clay figurines and bronze busts were found in the
sanctuary's spring. Coins of Trajan, Hadrian, and Faustina the
Younger allow for a dating between 100 and 150 AD. A statue of a
cheerfully smiling Apollo was also discovered in this sanctuary.
However, the most important statues of the sanctuary were a
larger-than-life Apollo, of which only fragments could be recovered,
and a statue of his consort, the Treveri goddess Sirona—an
exceptionally valuable and likely unique find. This is a
larger-than-life high relief in front of a stone slab resembling the
back of a chair. The goddess is dressed in a richly draped gown,
with a cloak and diadem, and holds a snake that is sucking an egg
from a vessel the goddess presents to it. This depiction of
fertility also explains two sculptures from Metz in Sainte Fontaine.
W. L.
November
5, 1943: ARCHIVAL DISCOVERIES NEAR TRIER AND IDARWALD.
Including
a temple from the Roman period.
BERLIN,
Nov. 4 (S.P.T.) — In recent months, sensational excavations
have been conducted in Trier and Idarwald, far surpassing all the
results achieved thus far in German excavations into Roman
antiquity. Prof. Dr. von Massow, director of the "Rheinische
Landesmuseum" in Trier, compares the finds to the treasures of
Pompeii and calls them the most astonishing results of excavations
north of the Alps. During work to protect the Cathedral of Trier,
the foundations of a large basilica from the fourth century were
discovered. On the Cathedral Square, during the construction of air
raid shelters, Roman houses from the early fourth century were
discovered. Emperor Constantine had his seat of government
established here and, for that purpose, had several rows of houses
demolished. In the remains of these houses, an extraordinary
quantity of ancient wall paintings was discovered, probably dating
from the second century.
A
third, no less sensational discovery was made in Idarwald. When new
pumps were to be installed here, a "spring sanctuary" from
the Roman period was discovered, which must have been intended for
the local population. Further excavation then took place, revealing
the outline of a large temple, making the excavation one of the
finest finds of this century.
August
15, 1944 MANNHEIM AND TRIER ATTACKED.
Under
closed cloud cover.
BERLIN,
August 14 (Interinf). — Formations of Anglo-American bombers
again took advantage of the poor weather conditions prevailing over
southwest Germany today to launch terror attacks on Mannheim and
Trier. Under almost complete cloud cover, they repeatedly dropped
their high explosive and incendiary bombs, completely
indiscriminately, on residential areas, outskirts, and cultural
monuments. The German fighters were severely hampered by the
unfavorable weather conditions. Only a few of the squadrons launched
at the alarm signal made contact with the enemy. In contrast, the
batteries of heavy antiaircraft guns stationed in southwest Germany
engaged in defensive combat against the American formations with
effective barrage fire. Despite the difficult conditions, they
succeeded in destroying several four-engine American bombers. So
far, reports have been received of the downing of ten aircraft.
According to the International Information Bureau, American bombers
have laid a carpet of bombs in Trier amidst the most valuable
cultural monuments in the old city. According to reports received so
far, the cathedral, the basilica, the Church of Our Lady, and the
Electoral Palace, among others, were severely damaged or partially
destroyed. There are no military or industrial targets in the
vicinity.
June
4, 1951 The ancient Roman Imperial City of Trier is discovered from
the rubble.
The
Basilica is believed to have been originally built as a throne room
for Constantine the Great.
NEW
LIGHT ON THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD BETWEEN ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE
AGES
Although
the aerial bombardments of the last World War destroyed sixty
percent of Trier's buildings, while grand and precious historical
monuments such as the Basilica from the time of Emperor Constantine
the Great, along with the adjacent Electoral Palace from the 17th
and 18th centuries and the renowned early Gothic Church of Our Lady
(built between 1235 and 1260), were severely damaged, and others,
such as the magnificent rococo convent of St. Irmine, were
completely destroyed, still enough remains to allow us to see for
ourselves the nature and quality of both pre-Roman and ancient
cultural heritage, and its aftermath in later times. Yes, one could
even say—with a touch of bitter humor—that the bombings
had at least one positive aspect: that, while destroying ancient
structures, they revealed many older ones that might otherwise never
have become known to us. As a result, the bombings have provided us
with new and transformative insights into all sorts of questions of
art and cultural history, particularly regarding late Roman and
early Christian art and its aftermath in the Middle Ages. So
important were the discoveries that an archaeological conference was
convened in Trier the week after Pentecost, chaired by Dr. Kutsch of
the Wiesbaden Museum, to give the scientific community the
opportunity to assess the discoveries on site and also to discuss
various related topics.
The
research led to findings that completely differ from the views
previously held regarding the architectural history of these two
impressive churches. Both the largely Romanesque cathedral and the
graceful central section of the Church of Our Lady were found to
stand above the remains of two enormous early Christian basilicas,
whose construction, according to completely reliable coin finds,
began around 326, thus still under Emperor Constantine. The floor
plan of these basilicas is particularly remarkable, as together they
form a double cathedral, as it were. Against the west wall of the
wide transepts on the east side and of the three-aisled cathedrals,
an adjoining rectangular tribuna (altar) was found, flanked on
either side by two smaller square rooms each. These can be
interpreted as diaconicon and prothesis (sacristy rooms), a layout
that remarkably prefigures the later Syrian and Ravennatic early
Christian basilicas. It is somewhat difficult to grasp that
Constantine erected such a massive complex as these two grand
basilicas here in Trier. In 326, thus simultaneously with his St.
Peter's Church in Rome (presumably begun in 324) and his Golgotha
Basilica in Jerusalem. This makes one realize the
significance of the city, Treveris, which will be mentioned later,
since it was designated the capital and residence of Gaul by Emperor
Diocletian I at the division of the Roman Empire in 286, and
especially since Constantine, ruler of the Western Roman Empire,
preferred to reside here from 306 to 316. The pompous emperor,
deeply conscious of his calling, wanted to make his residence the
equal of Rome. This is also evidenced by the well-known so-called
"Basilica of Constantine," the red-brick colossus located
near the current cathedral complex, a characteristic example of
Roman "practical" architecture. During an aerial
bombardment on August 14, 1944, the Baroque church interior was
completely destroyed by fire; The Roman wall, however, held firm
unscathed, striking evidence of the strength of this masonry
technique. Here too, the disaster had the fortunate consequence of
providing an opportunity for closer examination of the structure.
First, it was established with complete certainty that the strict
vertical movement of the heavy wall piers, rising in a single
course, was originally interrupted in two places by galleries
running under the two window areas, which thus functioned as two
heavy horizontal frames. The heating system, with its familiar Roman
hypocausts, was also discovered. It has been concluded that we are
dealing here not with a "basilica," but with an
"auditorium," the Constantinian throne room, which forms
the east wing.
The
ruins of the imperial palace complex.
On
the eastern bank of the Moselle, on the opposite side of the city,
lies the ruined Monastery of St. Irmine, which we have already
mentioned. Only a few walls remained standing, but, stripped of
their Baroque plaster and stucco by the bombs, these once again
displayed Roman red sandstone masonry, interspersed at irregular
intervals, with two layers of brick each. It could now be determined
that they belonged to two large buildings that formed the "Horrea,"
silos that stored the city's supplies. The Franks also later used
these warehouses, which were converted into nunneries from the 7th
century onwards. Among the most important works of art that were
further unearthed, we must consider above all the ceiling paintings,
which were found, broken into pieces, beneath the floor of the
aforementioned Constantinian basilica, which preceded the
present-day cathedral. The busts of princely figures belonging to
this group, painted as frescoes on a layer of plaster, are set
against a wickerwork of coniferous wood, unique in art history.
Among these busts is that of a woman, whom one reasonably believes
to be Constantine's mother, Saint Helena. The publication of these
paintings, as well as that of an exceptionally large mosaic floor
discovered beneath a destroyed house, depicting scenes likely
related to a secret pagan cult, should be awaited with great
interest in the near future.
Thus,
from the ruins of present-day Trier, the late Roman imperial city of
Treveris has risen before us, richer and more complete than anyone
could have imagined, a center of ancient culture whose influence
radiated throughout Eastern Gaul and the Rhine Province well into
the Middle Ages. And here we touch upon the still-murky question of
the transitional period between "Antiquity" and the
"Middle Ages," which was addressed in the closing sessions
of this congress. In an excellent paper on the survival of Roman
cities along the Rhine and Danube, Dr. H. van Petrikovits
demonstrated how the Roman cities of the 4th century AD established
numerous connections to the medieval city, with the episcopal sees,
such as Trier, forming the strongest bridge. Dr. K. Böhner
discussed the question of continuity between Antiquity and the
Middle Ages, seen in the light of Frankish antiquity. In conclusion,
the Hamburg professor, Prof. Dr. Aubin, delivered a masterful
argument on "the question of the boundary between Antiquity and
the Middle Ages." The period in which this separation occurred
spans eight centuries: from the birth of Christ to Charlemagne, an
era full of momentous events heralding a new era. All these mark
either the significance of Christianity as the beginning of a new
era, or the downfall of the ancient world, or finally, the impact of
the actions of the Germanic peoples. The year 476, when Romulus
Augustulus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was
deposed and the empire permanently disintegrated into Germanic
states, is undoubtedly a major milestone, but it is not yet
decisive, and no other date is entirely delimiting. Aubin concluded
that a true separation in all areas can be observed in the
Merovingian period, around the middle of the seventh century. All in
all, this archaeological conference in Trier proves to be of
extraordinary significance for our entire Western European cultural
history. The Roman and early Christian monuments that came to light
here are of the utmost importance, not only for archaeology, but for
historical scholarship as a whole. In particular, the historiography
of early Christian art will have to be completely revised.
FRANS
VERMEULEN
Photos:
DOM AND CHURCH of Our Lady in Trier seen from the northwest, before
the 1944 bombing.
BASILICA
(auditorium) of Constantine the Great before 1944 in Trier.
June
21, 1956 Meetings with the Treveri, the Romans, and the Four Sons of
Aymon
[with
some photos of the paintings]
[...]
A remarkable contrast in the cityscape is formed by the very Baroque
bishop's palace and the enormous Roman "Emperor's Hall";
the intention was to make the latter a wing of the former, but it
seems more like a jostling between two completely different ways of
thinking (and therefore also of building). They form the backdrop of
a beautiful park with flowering shrubs and people enjoying
themselves on benches. The "Emperor's Hall" —
incorrectly called a basilica — was severely damaged during
the war but will be restored, at enormous financial cost. The
enormous hall—one undivided space — 60 m long, 27 m
wide, and 30 m high, was the largest room in northwestern Europe in
the fourth century AD. Charcoal fires were located under the floor,
from which the heat was led upwards through the walls. For this
heating, the hall was divided into three separate sections, each to
be heated. At the end of the hall, the wall formed a semicircular
arch, the apse. There sat the emperor in all his majesty, and those
who came to greet him—the envoy from a distant land, the
defeated ruler of a conquered people, the subjects paying him
homage—must have felt quite insignificant as they crossed that
overwhelming space, which transformed the distance between them and
their mighty emperor into a breathtaking journey. Ceiling Paintings
But
the most beautiful thing among the countless treasures Trier has to
offer visitors are the ceiling paintings. They were created 1,500
years ago, remained in place for only a few years, and were
recovered after the war in more than 50,000 fragments, now being
patiently pieced together by human hands like a gigantic jigsaw
puzzle!
An
imperial palace must have stood on the site where the cathedral now
stands, and the ceiling came from one of the palace halls. Shortly
after its installation, the palace was demolished—one can date
this, among other things, based on the women's fashions of the
time—and Emperor Constantine, who played such a significant
role in the Christianization of his empire, commissioned the
construction of a church. The paintings, which, due to their short
life, had not suffered any damage, emerged from the ground in
magnificent condition—albeit in small fragments.
The
ceiling must have consisted of squares alternating between playing
angels (putti) and portraits. Some of these squares have now been
restored, and it's difficult to convey the impression these
paintings make on twentieth-century people. As if the master had
recently painted these works of art, in the beautiful green and
terracotta-painted frames, separated by a golden-yellow cord border,
the dark eyes of the slightly larger-than-life female portraits gaze
at the group of assembled tourists. From the attributes (the halo,
the crown, and other ornaments), one might deduce that, among
others, Emperor Constantine's wife—Maxima Fausta—and his
mother—Flavia Helena—are depicted here. The lively
cherubs, with playful hands and feet—the delicate veils of the
imperial princesses—it's incomprehensible that all of this was
created fifteen hundred years ago!
28
oktober 2016 Interpretations of the frescoes in Trier
The
interpretation of the frescoes is still a matter of debate. The
frequent use of the colour purple seems to indicate that the
portraits represent imperial figures. This is true especially of the
ladies depicted. Unlike the men, all four women are shown with a
nimbus and with costly attributes. Some scholars have identified
these women as members of the Constantinian family, symbolising the
prosperity of the dynasty. Others do not believe that the portraits
should be identified with historical figures, but should rather be
considered allegorical representations.
When
only a few panels had been found and reconstructed, A. Alföldi
interpreted the frescoes as an expression of the imperial laetitia,
gaudium and hilaritas. He identified the woman holding the jewel-box
as Helena representing the hilaritas populi Romani, and the putti on
either side as expressions of the gaudium and laetilia which
Constantine's reign had brought to the world. M.R. Alföldi
agrees with this interpretation and with the identification of the
woman with the jewel-box as Helena. But on the basis of the
depiction of attributes like the cornucopia and veils, she thinks
that the frescoes refer to a marriage. According to W.N. Schumacher
the frescoes not only picture the women of the imperial family but
also in an allegorical way refer to a marriage.
The
marriage in question must have been that of Crispus and Helena the
younger, which took place in circa 321. The frescoes decorated the
bedroom of this Helena. The woman with the kantharos in the centre
of the ceiling Schumacher identifies as the younger Helena.
Nowadays
most scholars-those at any rate who think that the women represent
imperial figures-believe that the young woman with the lyre is
Crispus' wife. Unfortunately, it was this very fresco which had to
undergo large-scale reconstruction. The woman holding the jewel-box
is identified as Constantia, Constantine's half-sister and the wife
of Licinius; the woman holding the mirror is supposed to be Fausta,
Constantine's wife, and the woman with the kantharos is thought to
be Helena, mother of Constantine. Other scholars do not accept that
these frescoes should be identified with the women of the imperial
family. A strong argument is presented by H. Brandenburg. He
believes that there can be no question of the depiction of imperial
ladies, because the depicted men definitely do not belong to the
Constantinian dynasty. The portraits of the ladies should be
interpreted as personifications of the prosperity of the age and the
happiness of life. Others think that the portraits are allegories of
the various seasons, or that they personify Sapientia, Pulchritudo,
Iuventus and Salus.
28
oktober 2016 Trier
Under
the rule of Constantine the Great (306–337), the city was
rebuilt and buildings such as the Palastaula (known today as the
Constantine Basilica) and the Imperial Baths (Kaiserthermen), the
largest surviving Roman baths outside Rome, were begun under
Constantius and completed in 314, constructed by his son
Constantine, who left Trier in the hands of his son Crispus. In 326,
sections of the imperial family's private residential palaces were
extended and converted to a large double basilica, the remains of
which are still partly recognizable in the area of the Trier
Cathedral (Trierer Dom) and the church "Liebfrauenkirche".
A demolished imperial palace has left shattered sections of painted
ceiling, which scholars believe once belonged to Constantine's young
wife, Fausta, whom he later put to death.
From
318 onwards, Trier was the seat of the Gallic prefecture (the
Praefectus Praetorio Galliarium), one of the two highest authorities
in the Western Roman Empire, which governed the western Roman
provinces from Morocco to Britain. Constantine's son Constantius II
resided here from 328 to 340.
Pattern on shields of Roman military units/Patronen op
schilden van Romeinse militaire eenheden
uit
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/luke/ueda-sarson/NotitiaPatterns.html
Magister
Equitum
42
units are listed as being under the overall command of the Master of
the Horse:
10
Vexillationes palatinae:
Comites
seniores
Equites
promoti seniores
Equites
brachiati seniores
Equites
brachiati iuniores
Equites
Batavi seniores
Equites
cornuti seniores
Equites
cornuti iuniores
Comites
Alani
Equites
Batavi iuniores
Equites
constantes Valentinianenses seniores
32
Vexillationes comitatenses:
Equites
armigeri
Equites
primi Gallicani
Equites
octavo Dalmatae
Equites
Dalmatae Passerentiaci
Equites
Mauri alites
Equites
Honoriani Taifali iuniores
Equites
Honoriani seniores
Equites
Mauri feroces
Equites
Constantiani felices
Equites
scutarii
Equites
stablesiani Africani
Equites
Marcomanni
Equites
armigeri seniores
Equites
sagittarii clibanarii
Equites
sagittarii Parthi seniores
Equites
primo sagittarii
Equites
secundo sagittarii
Equites
tertio sagittarii
Equites
quarto sagittarii
Equites
sagittarii Parthi iuniores
Equites
cetrati seniores
Comites
iuniores
Equites
promoti iuniores
Equites
sagittarii iuniores
Equites
cetrati iuniores
Equites
Honoriani iuniores
Equites
armigeri iuniores
Equites
secundi scutarii iuniores
Equites
stablesiani Italiciani
Equites
sagittarii Cordueni
Equites
sagittarii seniores
Cuneus
equitum promotorum
Comes
Africae
12
infantry units are listed as being under the command of the Count of
Africa, drawn from those under the overall command of the Magister
Peditum:
Celtae
iuniores (an auxilia palatina unit)
Armigeri
propugnatores seniores (a legiones palatinae unit)
Armigeri
propugnatores iuniores (a legiones palatinae unit)
Secundani
Italiciani (a legiones comitatenses unit)
Cimbriani
(a legiones palatina unit)
Primani
(ie. Prima Flavia Pacis, a legiones comitatenses unit)
Secundani
(ie. Secunda Flavia Virtutis, a legiones comitatenses unit)
Tertiani
(ie. Tertia Flavia Salutis, a legiones comitatenses unit)
Constantiniani
(ie. Secunda Flavia Constantiniana, a legiones comitatenses unit)
Constantiaci
(ie. a pseudocomitatenses unit)
Tertio
Augustani (a legiones comitatenses unit)
Fortenses
(a legiones comitatenses unit)
along
with 19 cavalry units, drawn from those under the overall command of
the magister Equitum:
Equites
stablesiani Italiciani (a vexillationes comitatenses)
Equites
scutarii seniores (ie. Equites scutarii, a vexillationes
comitatenses)
Equites
stablesiani seniores (ie. Equites stablesiani Africani, a
vexillationes
comitatenses)
Equites
Marcomanni (a vexillationes comitatenses)
Equites
armigeri seniores (a vexillationes comitatenses)
Equites
clibanarii (ie. Equites sagittarii clibanarii, a vexillationes
comitatenses)
Equites
sagittarii Parthi seniores (a vexillationes comitatenses)
Equites
cetrati seniores (a vexillationes comitatenses)
Equites
primo sagittarii (a vexillationes comitatenses)
Equites
secundo sagittarii (a vexillationes comitatenses)
Equites
tertio sagittarii (a vexillationes comitatenses)
Equites
quarto sagittarii (a vexillationes comitatenses)
Equites
Parthi sagittarii iuniores (ie. Equites sagittarii Parthi iuniores,
a
vexillationes
comitatenses)
Equites
cetrati iuniores (a vexillationes comitatenses)
Equites
promoti iuniores (a vexillationes comitatenses)
Equites
sagittarii iuniores (a vexillationes comitatenses)
Equites
Honoriani iuniores (a vexillationes comitatenses)
Equites
scutarii iuniores scolae secundae (ie. Equites secundi scutarii
iuniores,
a
vexillationes comitatenses)
Equites
armigeri iuniores (a vexillationes comitatenses)
Magister
Militum per Orientem
32
units are listed as being under the command of the Master of the
Soldiers in the East:
10
Vexillationes comitatenses:
Comites
catafractarii Bucellarii iuniores
Equites
armigeri seniores Orientales
Equites
tertio Dalmatae
Equites
primi scutarii Orientales
Equites
secundi stablesiani
Equites
tertii stablesiani
Equites
promoti clibanarii
Equites
quarti clibanarii Parthi
Equites
primi sagittarii
Cuneus
equitum secundorum clibanariorum Palmirenorum
2
Auxilia palatina:
Felices
Arcadiani seniores
Felices
Honoriani seniores
9
Legiones comitatenses:
Quinta
Macedonica
Martenses
seniores
Septima
gemina
Decima
gemina
Balistarii
seniores
Prima
Flavia Constantia
Secunda
Flavia Constantia Thebaeorum
Secunda
Felix Valentis Thebaeorum
Prima
Flavia Theodosiana
11
pseudocomitatenses:
Prima
Armeniaca
Secunda
Armeniaca
Equites
tertio Dalmatae
Fortenses
auxiliarii
Funditores
Prima
Italica
Quarta
Italica
Sexta
Parthica
Prima
Isaura sagittaria
Balistarii
Theodosiaci
Transtigritani
Comes
limitis Aegypti
31
units or detachments of units are listed as being under the command
of the Count of the Egyptian border:
Legio
quinta Macadonica
Legio
tertiadecima gemina
Equites
stablesiani
Equites
Saraceni Thamudeni
Legio
tertia Diocletiana
Legio
secunda Traiana
Ala
Theodosiana nuper constituta (ie. recently constituted)
Ala
Arcadiana nuper constituta (ie. recently constituted)
Ala
secunda Armeniorum
Ala
tertia Arabum
Ala
octava Vandilorum
Ala
septima Sarmatarum
Ala
prima Aegyptiorum
Ala
veterana Gallorum
Ala
prima Herculia
Ala
quinta Raetorum
Ala
prima Tingitana
Ala
Apriana
Ala
secunda Assyriorum
Ala
quinta Praelectorum
Cohors
tertia Galatarum
Cohors
secunda Astarum
Ala
secunda Ulpia Afrorum
Ala
secunda Aegyptiorum
Cohors
prima sagittariorum
Cohors
prima Augusta Pannoniorum
Cohors
prima Epireorum
Cohors
quarta Iuthungorum
Cohors
secunda Ituraeorum
Cohors
secunda Thracum
Cohors
quarta Numidarum
Comes
Britanniarum
3
infantry units are listed as being under the command of the Count of
Britain, drawn from those under the overall command of the Magister
Peditum:
Victores
iuniores Britanniciani
Primani
iuniores
Secundani
iuniores
along
with 6 cavalry units, said to be drawn from those under the overall
command of the magister Equitum:
Equites
catafractarii iuniores
Equites
scutarii Aureliaci
Equites
Honoriani seniores (ie. a vexillationes comitatenses unit)
Equites
stablesiani
Equites
Syri
Equites
Taifali
Comes
litoris Saxonici per Britanniam
9
commanders and tribunes along with their units are listed as being
under the command of the Count of the Saxon Shore of Britain:
Praepositus
numeri Fortensium
Praepositus
militum Tungrecanorum
Praepositus
numeri Turnacensium
Praepositus
equitum Dalmatarum Branodunensium
Praepositus
equitum stablesianorum Gariannonensium
Tribunus
cohortis primae Baetasiorum
Praefectus
legionis secundae Augustae
Praepositus
numeri Abulcorum
Praepositus
numeri exploratorum (ie. scouts?)
[...]
while the men under the praepositus Equitum stablesianorum
Gariannonensium would appear to be the Equites stablesiani listed
under the Comes Britanniarum.
Dux
Pannoniae primae et Norici ripensis
26
tribunes and prefects with their associated units are listed as
being under the command of the Duke of first Pannonia and riverine
Noricum (ie western Hungary and Danubian Austria):
Cuneus
equitum Dalmatarum (no officer given)
Cuneus
equitum stablesianorum (no officer given)
Equites
promoti (no officer given, split over 4 separate locations)
Equites
sagittarii (no officer given, split over 4 separate locations)
Equites
Dalmatae (no officer given, split over 5 separate locations)
Equites
Mauri (no officer given)
Tribunus
gentis Marcomannorum (no officer given)
Praefectus
legionis decimae geminae (2 prefects at separate locations)
Praefectus
legionis quartaedecimaegeminae militum liburnariorum (ie. naval
units;
2
prefects at separate locations)
Praefectus
classis Histricae (ie. naval unit)
Tribunus
cohortis (5 tribunes at separate locations)
Praefectus
legionis secundae Italicae (3 prefects at separate locations)
Praefectus
legionis primae Noricorum (2 prefects at separate locations)
Praefectus
classis (ie. naval unit, 2 prefects at separate locations)
Dux
Raetiae
21
tribunes and prefects along with their units are listed as being
under the command of the Duke of Raetiae (ie. Switzerland):
Equites
stablesiani seniores (no officer given)
Equites
stablesiani iuniores (no officer given, recorded at two separate
locations)
Praefectus
legionis tertiae Italicae (5 prefects at separate locations)
Praefectus
militum Ursariensium
Praefectus
alae primae Flaviae Raetorum
Tribunus
cohortis novae Batavorum
Tribunus
cohortis tertiae Brittorum
Praefectus
alae secundae Valeriae singularis
Tribunus
cohortis sextae Valeriaae Raetorum
Tribunus
cohortis primae Herculeae Raetorum,
Tribunus
cohortis quintae Valeriae Frygum
Tribunus
cohortis tertiae Herculeae Pannoniorum
Tribunus
gentis per Raetias deputatae
Praefectus
numeri barbaricariorum
Praefectus
alae secundae Valeriae Sequanorum
Tribunus
cohortis Herculeae Pannoniorum
Further
information on Constantine and military units/Verdere informatie
over Constantijn en de leger-onderdelen
Samenvatting
van de eenheden met de naam "stablesiani"
Magister
Equitum
Equites
stablesiani Africani
Equites
stablesiani Italiciani
Comes
Africae
Equites
stablesiani Italiciani
Equites
stablesiani seniores
Magister
Militum per Orientem
Equites
secundi stablesiani
Equites
tertii stablesiani
Comes
limitis Aegypti
Equites
stablesiani
Comes
Britanniarum
Equites
stablesiani
Comes
litoris Saxonici per Britanniam
Praepositus
equitum stablesianorum Gariannonensium
Dux
Pannoniae primae et Norici ripensis
Cuneus
equitum stablesianorum
Dux
Raetiae
Equites
stablesiani seniores
Equites
stablesiani iuniores
Enige opmerkingen m.b.t. de
Stablesiani/Some remarks on the Stablesiani
-
About half the cavalry consisted of heavy cavalry (including the
stablesiani). They were armed with spear or lance and sword and
armored in mail. Some had bows, but they were meant for supporting
the charge instead of independent skirmishing.
-
The majority of Roman cavalry regiments in the comitatus remained of
the traditional semi-armoured type, similar in equipment and
tactical role to the alae of the Principate and suitable for mêlée
combat. These regiments carry a variety of titles: comites, equites
scutarii, equites stablesiani or equites promoti. Again, these
titles are probably purely traditional, and do not indicate
different unit types or functions.
-
There are two Equites stablesiani units listed under the Magister
Equitum, both listed as being stationed in Africa: the Equites
stablesiani Italiciani and the Equites stablesiani seniores. This
British Equites stablesiani unit is just possibly one of these two,
but it is much more likely to be the men under the command of the
Praepositus equitum stablesianorum Gariannonensium listed under the
Comes litoris Saxonici per Britanniam and drafted into the field
army of the Comes Britanniarum in the same way as the Equites
catafractarii iuniores.
-
Wij vinden dus de benaming van de volgende legeronderdelen terug:
Equites stablesiani
Equites stablesiani
Africani
Equites
stablesiani Italiciani
Equites
stablesiani seniores
Equites
stablesiani iuniores
Equites
secundi stablesiani
Equites
tertii stablesiani
Praepositus
equitum stablesianorum Gariannonensium
Cuneus
equitum stablesianorum
-
De cavalerie-onderdelen met de naam stablesiani erin hebben over het
gehele Romeinse Rijk gediend. Het waren eenheden die te paard zwaar
bewapend optraden.
-
Evelein schrijft erover:
alleen
aan de rechterkant, ter hoogte van het middenstuk b, wordt zij
onderbroken door een ingekraste inscriptie, STABLESIA
o VI o, waarover straks.
[...]
Als tweede inscriptie op onzen helm zagen wij rechts op den helmrand
die van Stablesia VI. Zij duidt een afdeeling aan der equites
Stablesiani, een ruitercorps, dat zooals uit de Notitia Dignitatum
blijkt, tijdens het latere romeinsche keizerrijk uit twee
inscripties, te Brescia en Sitifi (Africa) gevonden, waarvan op de
eerste sprake is van een vexillatio van dit corps.
Is,
zooals Prof. Bohn mij doet opmerken, naar analogie hiervan, alsmede
door het feit, dat het woord vexillatio reeds op het einde der 3de
eeuw een ruiter-afdeeling beteekent, onze inscriptie aldus aan te
vullen: (Vexillatio) Stablesi(na) VI, des te meer zijn wij daartoe
geneigd, waar in de door ons ook genoemde Not. Dign. dit ruitercorps
vermeld wordt onder de vexillationes comitatenses van Africa en
Brittanië. Zoo behoorde dus de drager van onzen helm tot de 6de
afdeeling der equites Stablesiani en draagt onze helm iets bij tot
de geschiedenis van dit corps, dat thans blijkt zich ook in onze
streken eenmaal te hebben opgehouden.
Comitatenses
and limitanei (284–395 AD)
A
distinction between frontier guard troops and more mobile reserve
forces had emerged with the use of certain troops to permanently man
frontiers such as Hadrian's Wall in Britannia in the 2nd century AD,
and may have extended as far back as the late Republic's use of
"provincial" and "emergency" legions. By the
late Empire the competing demands of manned frontiers and strategic
reserve forces had led to a division of the military into four types
of troops. Border fortifications were manned by a "settled and
hereditary" militia (Latin: limitanei or riparienses ) that
were "tied to their posts". In the rear lay more mobile
troops in field armies known as the comitatenses, which were held in
strategic reserve. Somewhere between the two were more local
provincial reserves known as cunei (cavalry) and auxilia (by this
time, referring to infantry alone) that may have evolved from
earlier auxiliary cavalry units. From the time of the emperor
Constantine I there were also two small central reserves (Latin:
scholae) held to the strategic rear even of the comitatenses, one
each in the presence of the emperors of West and East respectively.
Created and expanded from the core troops of the Emperor's personal
bodyguards, the central field armies by 295 AD seem to have been too
large to be accounted for as simple bodyguard forces, but were still
too small to be able to campaign independently of legionary or
vexillation support.
Of
the four troop types, the limitanei (border guards) are generally
considered to have been of the lowest quality, consisting largely of
peasant-soldiers that were both "grossly inferior" to the
earlier legions and inferior also to their counterparts in the
mobile field armies.
While
the limitanei were supposed to deal with policing actions and
low-intensity incursions, the duty of responding to more serious
incidents fell upon the provincial troops. The countering of the
very largest scale incursions on a strategic scale was the task of
the comitatenses or mobile field troops, possibly accompanied by the
emperor's scholae. Both border and field armies consisted of a mix
of infantry and cavalry units[ although the weight of cavalry was,
according to some authorities, greater in the mobile field armies.
Overall, approximately one quarter of the army consisted of cavalry
troops but their importance is uncertain. Older works such as the
Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) state
that the Roman military of the late Empire was "marked by that
predominance of the horseman which characterised the earlier
centuries of the Middle Ages," but many more recent authors
believe that the infantry remained predominant.
There
is some dispute about whether this new military structure was put
into place under the Emperor Diocletian or Constantine since both
reorganised the Roman Army in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries
to some degree. Both Diocletian and even his predecessor of thirty
years Gallienus may already have controlled mobile strategic
reserves to assist the empire's border forces; either Diocletian or
Constantine expanded this nascent force into permanent field armies.
Recruitment
from amongst Roman citizens had become greatly curtailed as a
consequence of a declining population, "cripplingly numerous"
categories of those exempted from military service and the spread of
Christianity with its pacifist message. Together, these factors
culminated in "the withdrawal of the urban class from all forms
of military activity." In their place, much of Rome's military
were now recruited from non-Italian peoples living within the
empire's borders. Many of these people were barbarians or
semi-barbarians recently settled from lands beyond the empire,
including several colonies of Carpi, Bastarnae and Sarmatians.
Although
units described as legiones existed as late as the 5th century in
both the border and field armies, the legionary system was very
different from that of the principate and early empire. Since the
term legion continued to be used, it is unclear exactly when the
structure and role of the legions changed. In the third or 4th
century, however, the legions' role as elite heavy infantry was
substantially reduced and may have evaporated entirely. Instead,
those "legions" that remained were no longer drawn
exclusively (and perhaps hardly at all) from Roman citizens. Either
Diocletian or Constantine reorganised the legions into smaller
infantry units who, according to some sources, were more lightly
armoured than their forebears. Their lighter armament may have been
either because they "would not consent to wear the same weight
of body armour as the legionaries of old" or, as in at least
one documented instance, because they were prohibited from wearing
heavy armour by their general in order to increase their mobility.
4th-century legions were at times only one sixth the size of early
imperial legions, and they were armed with some combination of
spears, bows, slings, darts and swords, reflecting a greater
contemporary emphasis on ranged fighting. The auxilia and numeri had
also largely disappeared. Constantine further increased the
proportion of German troops in the regular army; their cultural
impact was so great that even legionaries began wearing German
dress. At the start of Diocletian's reign, the Roman army numbered
about 390,000 men, but by the end of his reign he successfully
increased the number to 581,000 men.
The
army under Diocletian and Constantine
The
Eastern Empire dates from the creation of the Tetrarchy
("Quadrumvirate") by the Emperor Diocletian in 293. His
plans for succession did not outlive his lifetime, but his
reorganization of the army did by centuries. Rather than maintain
the traditional infantry-heavy legions, Diocletian reformed it into
limitanei ("border") and comitatenses ("field")
units. There was an expansion of the importance of the cavalry,
though the infantry still remained the major component of the Roman
armies, in contrast to common belief. For example, in 478, an
Eastern field army consisted of 8,000 cavalry and 30,000 infantry
and it can be calculated that in 357 Emperor Julian had 10,000
infantry and 3,000 cavalry at Strasbourg. But the importance of
cavalry for the commanding officers, though not the numbers, did
increase, and by the time of Justinian, the numbers had increased,
too.
The
limitanei and ripenses were to occupy the limes, the Roman border
fortifications. The field units, by contrast, were to stay well
behind the border and move quickly where they were needed, whether
for offensive or defensive roles, as well as forming an army against
usurpers. The field units were held to high standards and took
precedence over Limitanei in pay and provisions.
Cavalry
formed about one-third of the units, but as a result of smaller
units, about one-quarter of the Roman armies consisted of cavalry.
About half the cavalry consisted of heavy cavalry (including the
stablesiani). They were armed with spear or lance and sword and
armored in mail. Some had bows, but they were meant for supporting
the charge instead of independent skirmishing. In the field armies
there was a component of some 15% of cataphractarii or clibanarii,
heavily armoured cavalry who used shock tactics. The light cavalry
(including the scutarii and promoti) featured high amongst the
limitanei, being very useful troops on patrol. They included horse
archers (Equites Sagittarii). The infantry of the comitatenses was
organized in regiments (variously named legiones, auxilia or just
numeri) of about 500–1,200 men. They were still the heavy
infantry of old, with a spear or sword, shield, body armour and a
helmet. But now each regiment was supported by a detachment of light
infantry skirmishers. If needed, the infantry could take off (some
of) their armour to act in a more flexible way as Modares did
(according to Zosimus) during the Gothic War of the 370s. The
regiments were commanded by a tribunus ("tribune") and
brigaded in pairs (cavalry units did, too) under a comes. These
brigades probably were tactical and strategic units only, as no
traces survive of brigade staff corps.
On
the other hand, little is known of the limitanei. The old legions,
cohorts and cavalry alae survived there, and newer units were
created (the new legions, or auxilia and vexillationes, amongst the
cavalry. The limitanei infantry may have been lighter-equipped than
the comitatenses infantry, but there is no evidence whatsoever. They
were paid less than the field troops and recruited locally.
Consequently, they were of inferior quality. However, they were in
the line of fire. They countered most incursions and raids. Thus, it
can be assumed they did have superior field experience (except in
periods of long campaigning for the comitatenses), though that
experience did not extend to large battles and sieges.
The
Scholae Palatinae units, which were more properly known as the
Schola Protectores Domestici and the "Protective Association of
the Royal Escort" (also called the Obsequium), were the
personal guard of the Emperor, and were created to replace the
Praetorian Guard disbanded by Constantine I.
The
legions in the third and fourth century were not the legions of the
Republic or earlier Roman empire, that they consisted largely or
solely of equites troops,[citation needed] and that they tended to
be far short of the Augustinian legion component of 5,000 men. [uit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_army]
Constantine
I
After
defeating Maxentius in 312, Constantine disbanded the Praetorian
Guard, ending the latter's 300-year existence. Although the instant
reason was the Guard's support for his rival Maxentius, a force
based in Rome had also become obsolete since emperors now rarely
resided there. The imperial escort role of the Guard's cavalry, the
equites singulares Augusti, was now fulfilled by the scholae. These
elite cavalry regiments existed by the time of Constantine and may
have been founded by Diocletian.
Constantine
expanded his comitatus into a major and permanent force. This was
achieved by the addition of units withdrawn from the frontier
provinces and by creating new units: more cavalry vexillationes and
new-style infantry units called auxilia. The expanded comitatus was
now placed under the command of two new officers, a magister peditum
to command the infantry and magister equitum for cavalry. Comitatus
troops were now formally denoted comitatenses to distinguish them
from the frontier forces (limitanei). The size of the Constantinian
comitatus is uncertain. But Constantine mobilised 98,000 troops for
his war against Maxentius, according to Zosimus. It is likely that
most of these were retained for his comitatus. This represented
about a quarter of the total regular forces, if one accepts that the
Constantinian army numbered around 400,000. The rationale for such a
large comitatus has been debated among scholars. A traditional view
sees the comitatus as a strategic reserve which could be deployed
against major barbarian invasions that succeeded in penetrating deep
into the empire or as the core of large expeditionary forces sent
across the borders. But more recent scholarship has viewed its
primary function as insurance against potential usurpers.
Constantine
I completed the separation of military commands from the
administrative structure. The vicarii and praefecti praetorio lost
their field commands and became purely administrative officials.
However, they retained a central role in military affairs, as they
remained responsible for military recruitment, pay and, above all,
supply. It is unclear whether the duces on the border now reported
direct to the emperor, or to one of the two magistri of the
comitatus.
In
addition, Constantine appears to have reorganised the border forces
along the Danube, replacing the old-style alae and cohortes with new
units of cunei (cavalry) and auxilia (infantry) respectively. It is
unclear how the new-style units differed from the old-style ones,
but those stationed on the border (as opposed to those in the
comitatus) may have been smaller, perhaps half the size. In sectors
other than the Danube, old-style auxiliary regiments survived.
The
5th-century historian Zosimus strongly criticised the establishment
of the large comitatus, accusing Constantine of wrecking his
predecessor Diocletian's work of strengthening the border defences:
"By the foresight of Diocletian, the frontiers of the Roman
empire were everywhere studded with cities and forts and towers...
and the whole army was stationed along them, so it was impossible
for the barbarians to break through... But Constantine ruined this
defensive system by withdrawing the majority of the troops from the
frontiers and stationing them in cities which did not require
protection." Zosimus' critique is probably excessive, both
because the comitatus already existed in Diocletian's time and
because some new regiments were raised by Constantine for his
expanded comitatus, as well as incorporating existing units.
Nevertheless, the majority of his comitatus was drawn from existing
frontier units. This drawdown of large numbers of the best units
inevitably increased the risk of successful large-scale barbarian
breaches of the frontier defences.
Gallia
Belgica
During
the 1st century AD (estimated date 90 AD), the provinces of Gaul
were restructured. Emperor Domitian reorganized the provinces in
order to separate the militarized zones of the Rhine from the
civilian populations of the region. The northeastern part of Gallia
Belgica was split off and renamed Germania Inferior, later to be
reorganized and renamed as Germania Secunda. This included the
eastern part of modern Belgium, the southernmost part of the modern
Netherlands, and a part of modern Germany. The eastern part was
split off to become Germania Superior (parts of western Germany and
eastern France) and the southern border of Gallia Belgica was
extended to the south. The newer Gallia Belgica included the cities
of Camaracum (Cambrai), Nemetacum (Arras), Samarobriua (Amiens),
Durocorter (Reims), Diuidorum (Metz) and Augusta Treverorum (Trier).
Emperor
Diocletian restructured the provinces around 300, and split Belgica
into two provinces: Belgica Prima and Belgica Secunda. Belgica Prima
had Treveri (Trier) as its main city, and consisted of the eastern
part. The border between Belgica Prima and Belgica Secunda was
approximately along the River Maas.
Equites stablesiana
Africani and Italiciani
De kantharos van
Stevensweert
Verantwoording
In
het onderstaande bestand wordt ingegaan op details betreffende de
vondst van de Peelhelm. De auteur vermoedt dat de Peelhelm een deel
is van een volledige uitrusting van een Romeinse
cavalerie-officier, omdat de kleding en wapenen van een persoon
en het tuig van een paard zijn gevonden. Resten van een persoon of
van een paard zijn niet gevonden. Daaruit kunnen we slechts
concluderen dat de officier zelf tijdens zijn leven of dat zijn
nabestaanden alle voorwerpen verstopt hebben in het veen. Zodanig
verstopt dat de weinige voorbijgangers die er geweest zullen zijn,
de zaken niet direct zagen liggen. Waarschijnlijk was men er zich
destijds ook van bewust dat venen groeien en dat de voorwerpen in de
loop der tijd onder een steeds groter veen-pakket zouden komen te
liggen.
Verrassend
voor de auteur was de enorme waarde van zilveren voorwerpen, zeker
als die door een zilversmid zijn bewerkt. Er waren maar weinig
personen die een dergelijk fijn gedreven helm konden maken, en als
zodanig was de helm extra kostbaar. Waarschijnlijk was de helm een
zilver-product dat vanwege de waarde door meerdere personen is
doorgegeven en gebruikt, zeker omdat de gemiddelde levensduur van
een Romein destijds niet zo groot was.
Er
zijn in het gebied van Germania Inferior maar zeer weinig van dit
soort voorwerpen gevonden. Veel is ongetwijfeld door de tand des
tijds vernietigd en zijn de edele metalen omgesmolten.
Enkele
maanden na de vondst van de helm en de andere voorwerpen wordt het
in de kranten genoemde deel van de voorwerpen door het Rijksmuseum
van Oudheden in Leiden aangekocht. De verantwoordelijke
functionarissen hebben de vindplaats zelf nooit bezocht of wat
uitgebreider met andere personen dan de vinder zelf gesproken.
Daarom is veel 'circumstantial evidence'
verloren gegaan. Toch vinden we in de kranten en tijdschriften
verschillende details. Tevens was er enige correspondentie naar het
museum betreffende de vondst. Het meest interessant daarin is de
brief die Adrianus Bos, directeur van de N.V. Maatschappij
Helenaveen, anderhalf jaar na de vondst naar het museum stuurt.
Daarin geeft hij een precieze beschrijving van de vondsten, we mogen
aannemen van die vondsten van de eerste paar dagen. Opvallend is dat
de functionarissen van het museum niet reageren in de zin van: zeer
interessant, weet u waar deze voorwerpen zich nu bevinden? Men laat
alles op zijn beloop: na de verwerving door aankoop lijkt de
feitelijke interesse verdwenen, ongetwijfeld omdat het niet een
eigen opgraving betreft.
Een
wetenschappelijke studie wordt geschreven waarin duidelijk
uiteengezet wordt hoe de helm in elkaar zit, de bijvondsten worden
echter summier beschreven.
Als
zilver zo kostbaar was, en gegeven het feit dat het bezit van een
paard ook maar weinigen gegeven was, is het verleidelijk te
onderzoeken welke andere waardevolle voorwerpen nog meer in de ruime
omgeving van de vindplaats tevoorschijn zijn gekomen.
Bekend
was al dat in het veen van de Peel praktisch geen oude voorwerpen
zijn gevonden. In de venen in het noorden van het land en ook
bijvoorbeeld in de aangrenzende venen in Duitsland zijn vanaf circa
1800 wel degelijk oude voorwerpen gevonden, zelfs een
kilometers-lange houten brug over het veen, maar deze stamt al van
voor de Romeinse tijd. Verder zogenaamde veen-lijken, overblijfselen
van een walvis en van een paard; een bewijs dat een lichaam bewaard
kan blijven als het direct na de dood in geschikte zuurstof-loze
grond begraven is.
Als
ander kostbaar voorwerp komt direct de zogenaamde kantharos van
Stevenweert in zicht; wellicht het enige andere voorwerp van
zilver uit de Romeinse tijd in de Nederlanden dat kan wedijveren met
de Peelhelm.
Alle
Nederlandse juristen kennen de term kantharos van Stevensweert als
voorbeeld van 'dwaling'; hierover is elders zeer veel te vinden.
Voordat de werkelijke waarde van deze drinkbeker bekend was, hebben
zich andere duistere zaken voorgedaan, die de auteur nog eens met
een kritische blik heeft bekeken.
Als
de wetenschappelijke wereld rond 1950 de drinkbeker onder ogen
krijgt, wordt onderzocht waar en wanneer deze gevonden is.
Aangewezen worden door de zogenaamde vinder Borgers drie
verschillende jaren voor de vondst en wel 1939, 1942 of 1943 en drie
verschillende vindplaatsen in Stevensweert. Bij gebrek aan betere
informatie is de drinkbeker toen de kantharos van Stevensweert
genoemd, hoewel het volstrekt niet zeker is dat Stevensweert de
echte vindplaats is.
Naar
de mening van de auteur is dit juist zeer ongeloofwaardig, want als
we duiken in de kranten met de beschrijving hoe in de Maas het grind
gewonnen werd rond 1940, dan komen we al snel tot de conclusie dat
door de zeef- en sorteer-proces in grootte van de stenen de
drinkbeker er gehavend uit zou moeten hebben gezien, wellicht al
veel eerder in zijn samenstellende delen zijn uiteengevallen en
nooit meer als een geheel te tonen zijn geweest. Bovendien is er
geen melding gemaakt door een bemanningslid van het baggerschip van
Bongers dat hij het voorwerp ook heeft gezien. Tevens moet men weten
dat er een controleur van Rijkswaterstaat meevoer, en deze zou een
dergelijke vondst zeer zeker gemeld hebben.
In
2006 is van de hand van mevrouw Witteveen van het museum de Valkhof
een boekje geschreven over de drinkbeker. Daarin noemt ze ook wel de
tegenstrijdigheden en onduidelijkheden, maar kan verder geen andere
versie benoemen dan die door Bongers is gegeven.
Zou er een verband kunnen zijn
tussen de kantharos van Stevensweert en
de vondst van een volledige officier-uitrusting in Helenaveen?
Uit
de gegevens verstrekt door een dienstbode bij A. Bos in Helenaveen
weten we dat er een geheime bergplaats was in diens woning, waarin
hij door hem verworven delen van de vondsten bewaarde. Ze heeft niet
alles in detail gezien, maar heeft vooral gesproken over leren
stukken, die hij inderdaad vlak na de vondst heeft verzameld, omdat
de lokale schatzoekers daarvoor geen interesse toonden. Ook wordt
elders vermeld dat er een wijnvaatje met een kraantje en een mooi
versierde drinkbeker, met een haak om aan het paardentuig te hangen,
was gevonden en in bezit was van A. Bos. Deze voorwerpen hoorden ook
bij de uitrusting van een Romeins soldaat en werden op reis door de
soldaat meegevoerd.
Als
we de verdwenen zilveren oren van de drinkbeker als haak zien, dan
heeft de zoektocht hiernaar wel degelijk zin.
Over
de drinkbeker wordt geschreven dat die bij een belangrijk persoon
van de Maatschappij Helenaveen in Loosdrecht op een jachtslot
terecht gekomen zou zijn.
Naspeuringen
hiernaar geven geen duidelijke aanwijzing dienaangaande, maar we
komen hieronder hier nog uitgebreid op terug. Het wijnvaatje met
zilveren kraantje overigens zou al eerder verloren gegaan zijn.
De nalatenschap van Adrianus Bos
Waarschijnlijk
wordt eind 1930 directeur Bos ernstig ziek, in ieder geval zodanig
dat hij zijn dagelijkse werkzaamheden niet kan uitvoeren. In maart
1931 overlijdt hij, tamelijk onverwacht. Hij had al een groot stuk
grond gekocht op de Belgenhoek in de provincie Limburg (direct ten
zuiden van de autoweg A67), waar hij later een eigen huis hoopte te
kunnen bouwen. Zie ook http://www.belgenhoek.nl/
en http://www.belgenhoek.nl/page2.html.
Enkele broers, verre familie via de tak van Gilse van der Pals,
hebben dit 19 ha grote natuurgebied nu in bezit.
Want
als A. Bos sterft, leeft alleen zijn schoonzus Bos-van Gilse-van der
Pals nog. Zij maakt volgens overlevering het huis leeg en moet
daarbij veel papieren verbrand hebben. Ze zal bij dit werk wel zijn
bijgestaan door haar dochter Annie en haar man en haar ongetrouwde
zoon Cor.
Op
foto's van het interieur van de woning in Den Haag van mevrouw
Bos-van Gilse van der Pals laten geen Romeinse voorwerpen zien, wat
wel niet zo verwonderlijk is. Toch mogen we aannemen dat het gehele
interieur van de GENA-villa in Helenaveen bij de schoonzus en/of de
neef en nicht (met haar man) van A. Bos is terecht gekomen.
Zoon
Cor komt op zijn beurt in het huis in Den Haag wonen als zijn moeder
overlijdt in 1936. Neef Cor Bos was al zeer snel na het overlijden
van zijn oom benoemd tot commissaris van de vennootschap.
Dochter
Annie was dus getrouwd met Rutger W.C. Baron van Boetzelaer, en
mocht zich dus Baronesse noemen. Het huwelijk was niet gelukkig, de
baron zou meer interesse hebben in het geld dan in de persoon Annie
Bos.
Al
snel na het overlijden van haar moeder in 1936 scheidt Annie Bos van
de baron. Deze hertrouwt al in 1938 met een Jordens en later trouwt
Annie met een Groote; zij woonde nog lange tijd in Hilversum onder
de naam J. Groote-Bos. Zij was intussen grootaandeelhouder van de
Maatschappij Helenaveen en bleef dat haar gehele leven, met meer dan
de helft van het aantal aandelen.
De
erfenis kwam dus vrij tijdens het huwelijk van Annie Bos met R.W.C.
van Boetzelaer die later in Laren woonde. Het is verleidelijk te
denken dat het merendeel van de spullen van A. Bos in het huis van
de baron en baronesse is terecht gekomen, dus ook de Romeinse
voorwerpen uit de geheime kast. Als de drinkbeker zich daar bevond
dan was het duidelijk afkomstig van de vondsten rondom de Peelhelm,
en alleen daarom al uiterst waardevol. Daartegenover stond dan dat
deze voorwerpen eigenlijk in een museum thuis horen en niet in een
privé-verzameling, van wie praktisch niemand wist dat die
bestond.
De
dienstbode die ook in de Gena-villa woonde, schrijft zich eind juli
1931 uit de gemeente Deurne en verhuist naar Wassenaar. Daar werkt
ze enige tijd als dienstbode, maar ze komt later terug naar
Helenaveen. Daar wordt ook een onechte zoon geboren, waarbij het
woord onecht later is doorgestreept.
De
voorwerpen kunnen dus het meest waarschijnlijk op drie plaatsen
terecht zijn gekomen: bij de schoonzus Cornelia E.A. Bos-van Gilse
van der Pals, haar zoon Cor Bos en bij haar dochter Johanna van
Boetzelaer-Bos met echtgenoot Rutger W.C. van Boetzelaer.
Waarschijnlijk
had de moeder minder interesse in Romeinse antiquiteiten, de beide
mannen hadden er wellicht wel belangstelling voor. Later wordt
schoonzoon van Boetzelaer adjunct-conservator van het Gooisch
Museum, en had dus zeker belangstelling voor kunstvoorwerpen. Na
zijn scheiding van Johanna (=Annie) Bos, rond 1937, kunnen de
voorwerpen ook op een vierde plaats terecht zijn gekomen. Als de
schoonzus in 1936 sterft, verhuist zoon Cor naar haar woning in Den
Haag, en in 1938 als van Boetzelaer hertrouwd is, hebben we weer
drie mogelijke vindplaatsen.
Tezelfdertijd
was een medewerker van het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden dr.
F.C. Bursch assistent van de directeur Holwerda.
De
arrogantie van het museum blijkt wederom uit een stukje over
opgravingen in de buurt van Vlodrop. Dat artikel van 28 oktober 1933
eindigt als volgt:
Toen vóór een paar jaren op mijn
herhaald verzoek Dr. Holwerda uit Leiden zijn
assistent, den Heer Bursch, met eenige gravers naar
hier zond om een gedeelte der
Knippeheide te ontgraven waarin ondergeteekende vóór
dien tijd reeds tal van urnen
aan de oppervlakte had gebracht, en waar nu ook door
den Heer Bursch weer 18 urnen
werden gevonden, plus een stuk zwaard bij een
Germaansche cultusplek, en ik later
weer meer vindplaatsen ontdekte, heette het, dat men
op deze exploitatie zou
terugkomen.
Dit heele gebeuren werd in een verslag in de
Publications jaarg. 1932 met de
volgende paar woorden vermeld "Er werd daar
(d.i. Vlodrop) een merkwaardig
urnenveld ontgraven, op een terrein, waarvoor verlof
was verkregen (d.w.z. van den
eigenaar uit België) door de welwillendheid der
H.H. van Cruchten en Linssen te
Roermond"
(Van het feit, dat dit merkwaardig veld door
ondergeteekende na veel zoeken was
ontdekt, en dat het graven eerst geschiedde na mijn
herhaalde correspond. met het
Museum van Oudheden, werd met geen woord gerept.)
Dit alles nu resumeerende, doet het wel een beetje
vreemd, pijnlijk zelfs aan,
achteraf te moeten vernemen, dat er eens door een
bevoegd persoon zou gezegd zijn:
"in de omgeving van Vl. valt niets te leeren".
De lezer voelt hier zelf wel, hoe
klinkklaar deze onwaarheid is.
GERH. KR.
14
Dagen na het begin van de oorlog wordt deze Bursch benoemd tot hoofd
van een commissie voor oudheidkundig bodemonderzoek. Er wordt direct
gerept over Germaansche cultuur en men wil een inventarisatie maken
per gemeente van vondsten die zich bij particulieren bevinden. En
bovendien:
Betreft het daarenboven unieke vondsten van waarlijk
nationale beteekenis, dan
zullen wij vanzelfsprekend moeite doen om deze
voorwerpen een plaats te geven in
het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden, eventueel
door ruiling met andere
museumstukken, maar de hoofdoorzaak waarom het ons
te doen is, is een volledig
overzicht te hebben van hetgeen de Nederlandsche
bodem aan archaeologica heeft
opgeleverd en nog zal opleveren.
Hoewel
het met deze zaak niets te maken had, had het museum in Leiden in
conservator Bursch wel een meeloper voor de Duitse zaak in huis
gehaald. In februari 1941 werd hij al op de “zwarte lijst van
de universiteitswereld” geplaatst en na de oorlog werd hij als
hoogleraar geschorst. Hij was nl. tot hoogleraar benoemd van de
universiteit van Amsterdam en had o.a. in Oekraïne in 1943
opgravingen verricht.
Bij
de erven van Adrianus Bos moet het bovenstaande over het melden voor
inventarisatie van antieke voorwerpen bekend zijn geweest.
Waarschijnlijk was dat de reden om zich te 'ontdoen' van de
voorwerpen. Zij konden weten, zij wisten praktisch zeker dat de
voorwerpen afkomstig waren van de uitrusting die gevonden was in
1910 in Helenaveen en dus behoorde tot de unieke vondsten van
waarlijk nationale beteekenis.
In
de grote rivieren werden nu en dan antieke voorwerpen gevonden en
blijkbaar heeft de eigenaar van de drinkbeker, waarschijnlijk R.W.C.
van Boetzelaer, gemeend te doen voorkomen alsof de beker zo ook in
de Maas is gevonden, bij de grindwinning, bijvoorbeeld in
Stevensweert. Daarbij werd echter voorbij gegaan aan een nauwkeurige
bestudering van de werkwijze bij de grindwinning: er kwam zoveel
kracht vrij bij het baggeren en het sorteren naar grootte in
draaiende trommels dat een teer voorwerp als de kantharos er nooit
ongeschonden uitgekomen kon zijn.
De
auteur meent te kunnen concluderen dat op een of andere manier de
eigenaar in contact is gekomen met Jaak Bongers die de drinkbeker na
vele jaren zou moeten presenteren als een vondst uit de Maas. Dit
natuurlijk tegen een fikse vergoeding en plicht tot strikte
geheimhouding. Daarmee was ook de eer van de familie gered, in die
zin dat de naam van Boetzelaer en Bos nooit in het nieuws zou komen
als 'heler' van de drinkbeker.
Het
vervolg van deze zogenaamde vondst van de kantharos, nl. het
ingewikkelde spel van overdracht van de beker in een familie en in
het bijzonder de jarenlange rechtspraak over het eigendomsrecht
ervan, hadden de erfgenaam van Bos en de nieuwe eigenaar Bongers
nooit zelf kunnen bedenken. Voor hen was de waarde vanaf het
allereerste begin wel duidelijk.
Resumerend:
-
De zogenaamde Peelhelm was maar een deel van een officier-uitrusting
van een cavalerie-officier uit het Romeinse leger in het begin van
de vierde eeuw.
-
Na een kort onderzoek na de vondst werd de grote waarde ervan
ingezien en met financieel power-play van het Rijksmuseum van
Oudheden in Leiden aangekocht. Evelein schrijft over de helm en de
aanwezige vondsten een wetenschappelijk verslag dat een half jaar na
verwerving door het museum uitkomt. Al direct is het een van de
topstukken van het museum.
-
Dat er aanmerkelijk meer vondsten zijn gedaan dan die welke na
enkele maanden in het museum terecht zijn gekomen, is zeker. Het
museum koopt nog enkele voorwerpen aan, de directeur Bos van de N.V.
Maatschappij Helenaveen meldt dit nog uitdrukkelijk in een lange
brief. Ook de allereerste schriftelijke melding van dominee de Jong,
twee dagen na de eerste vondst, geeft een omschrijving die niet
overeenkomt met de voorwerpen die nu in het museum te vinden zijn.
-
Blijkbaar waren de functionarissen onmachtig en ook ongeïnteresseerd
om serieus op zoek te gaan naar bijvoorbeeld de ontbrekende
wangklep. Zij probeerden dat wel via de burgemeester van Deurne,
maar een dergelijke voorzichtige en halfslachtige aanpak had geen
succes.
-
Als directeur Bos in 1931 overlijdt gaan zijn bezittingen naar zijn
nog levende schoonzus en/of haar kinderen. Als de schoonzus zelf
overlijdt in 1936 dan komen de die bezittingen definitief in handen
van haar vrijgezellen zoon en/of haar dochter en haar man.
-
Deze laatste scheiden dan al zeer snel. De zoon trekt in het huis
van zijn moeder. De Romeinse voorwerpen zouden best bij de nu
ex-schoonzoon van Boetzelaer terecht zijn gekomen.
-
Hoe dan ook, direct na het begin van de bezetting komt er druk om
antiquiteiten aan te melden en te laten registreren en fotograferen.
Topstukken horen eigenlijk in een museum. Hierbij wordt
uitdrukkelijk gewezen op het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden; dat
is de meest geschikte plaats daarvoor.
-
Niet iedereen was gediend van de bemoeizucht van “Leiden”.
Wellicht is dat de reden dat de eigenaar van de kantharos van
Stevensweert - toen nog gewoon een mooi bewerkte zilveren drinkbeker
- af wilde.
-
Op welke manier dat dan moest gebeuren? Waarschijnlijk heeft men
zich laten inspireren door soortgelijke gebeurtenissen in het
recente verleden. Waarschijnlijk heeft men de zogenaamde vinder
Bongers zover gekregen dat hij - tegen betaling - voordeed alsof hij
de vinder was op een baggermolen bij Stevensweert. Stevensweert was
als vindplaats van fossielen, menselijke resten, aardewerk en
wapenen al eerder in het nieuws geweest.
-
Een vriendelijkere uitleg kan zijn dat de bezitter van de drinkbeker
beducht was dat die door de bezetter kon worden geconfisqueerd en
dat hij dat wilde verhinderen door de beker af te staan aan een
niet-te-verdenken persoon. Hiertegen spreekt dat hij na de oorlog de
drinkbeker niet heeft terug gevraagd.
-
Het is in het geheel niet zeker dat in de vierde eeuw de Maas
stroomde waar nu Stevensweert ligt. Meer oostelijk ligt de Oude
Maas.
-
Ondanks de vele onduidelijkheden en de hele nasleep van het
juridisch eigendom, heeft men met Bongers' verhaal genoegen genomen,
en kon veel later het Museum Kam in Nijmegen zich eigenaar noemen
van de kantharos 'van Stevensweert'.
-
Beide voorwerpen zijn van verguld zilver, fijn versierd. Een
materiaal-vergelijking zou zeer misschien iets meer duidelijkheid
kunnen verschaffen over eventuele 'verwantschap'. De kantharos heeft
een dergelijk onderzoek al meegemaakt.
Overigens
kunnen de uiterlijke kenmerken ook goed zonder veel moeite
vergeleken worden.
Is de kantharos van Stevensweert
een deel van de officier-uitrusting?
Deze
vraag lijkt waarschijnlijk dwaas, maar de auteur heeft redenen te
geloven dat dat wel eens het geval zou kunnen zijn.
De
kantharos is in het geheel niet in Stevensweert gevonden, want er
zijn genoeg aanwijzingen dat over de exacte vindplaats en zelfs het
vind-jaar door de zogenaamde vinder elke keer weer gelogen is. Wat
daarvoor de reden zou kunnen zijn, lijkt onduidelijk.
De
auteur meent dat de drinkbeker aan de zogenaamde vinder is
overhandigd, met het verzoek over enige tijd het bestaan van de
beker te openbaren, met een daarbij gefingeerde vindplaats en
vind-jaar.
De
zogenaamde vinder kon dit verhaal echter niet consequent volhouden,
bijvoorbeeld omdat de gehele zaak niet goed genoeg was
doorgesproken. Daarbij heeft men vergeten - of is juist de
gebeurtenis de aanleiding geweest tot deze cover-up - dat de talloze
overstromingen van de Maas de beker erg beschadigd zouden moeten
hebben. Juist in januari en februari 1926 was geheel West-Europa in
de ban van hoogwater van de rivieren. Ook Stevensweert was daarvan
slachtoffer: er wordt gemeld dat de Maas daar tussen 4 en 5 km breed
was geworden! Onder deze omstandigheden zou een tere constructie als
de drinkbeker tenminste in stukken zijn gevallen, en waarschijnlijk
meegevoerd naar zee, waardoor de kantharos definitief verloren was
gegaan.
Neen,
als de drinkbeker netjes in het veen was opgeborgen dan zou hij na
vele eeuwen in praktisch onbeschadigde toestand zijn teruggevonden.
Vindplaats van de kantharos van
Stevensweert
Om
maar met de deur in huis te vallen:
Over
de vindplaats en de omstandigheden van de kantharos zijn veel
twijfels. A.M. Gerhartl-Witteveen schrijft in haar publicatie van
2006:
p.
48 [...] vervaardiging en levensloop van de beker.
Wat dit laatste betreft is het opvallend dat zowel op de binnen-
als de
buitenbeker geen beschadigingen zijn aangetroffen die het gevolg
zouden kunnen
zijn van verplaatsingen in stromend water, waarbij onvermijdelijk
deuken en
krassen zouden zijn ontstaan door het stoten tegen grind en
dergelijke. Het is
daarom naar onze mening weinig aannemelijk dat de vinder, J.
Bongers, de kantharos
tussen stenen langs de Maas heeft aangetroffen, zoals hij later
heeft beweerd. Het
verhaal van zijn zwager, dat Bongers de kantharos op de
baggermolen heeft gevonden
in enkele kluiten klei, is aannemelijker omdat de kleilaag waarin
de kantharos
zich op de rivierbodem bevond deze eeuwenlang heeft beschermd,
totdat de
baggermolen de rust verstoorde.
[p.
19] En het jaar 1939 is in 1966 uit de mond van Bongers
opgetekend, toen de
kantharos tijdelijk naar Stevensweert was teruggekeerd ter
gelegenheid van het
700-jarig bestaan van de parochie Stevensweert. Bongers heeft
toen bovendien
verteld dat hij de beker niet op de baggermolen had gevonden,
maar bij het jagen
had zien liggen op een strook kiezel langs de Maas. Op een kaart
had hij een
vindplaats aangewezen op de westelijke over van de rivier,
tegenover Stevensweert,
op Belgisch grondgebied dus!
Bongers overleed in 1969 en nam de waarheid mee in 't graf.
16
oktober 1951 [...] De
kantharos in kwestie werd in 1942, dus tijdens de
bezetting, gevonden te
Stevensweert op ongeveer achttien kilometer van Roermond in
de diepe grindbanken van
de Maas. De vinder zag in het met leem overdekte en grauw
roestige voorwerp niet
veel bijzonders. Hij schonk het aan een particulier
liefhebber van oudheden,
die het onopgemerkt, dus veilig bewaarde zonder precies
te vermoeden, wat het was.
In 1949 liet hij de stof, waaruit de beker gemaakt was,
deskundig toetsen.
24
oktober 1952
De beker werd in 1942 door de Stevensweertenaar J. Bongers gevonden
op een hoop grind gelegen
op een terrein op de Koeweide te Stevensweert het waren
twee in elkaar passende
delen die geheel overklonterd waren door klei. Deze had
zich als een huls op de
buitenwand vastgezet. Hier en daar was deze huls
afgebrokkeld en werd de
blinkende ondergrond zichtbaar. Hij nam de beker mee naar
huis, maakte hem schoon en
zette hem op een commode in de huiskamer.
De
zogenaamde vinder Jaak Bongers noemt maar liefst 3 verschillende
vindplaatsen. Op een kaartje staat aangegeven op de Nederlandse
oever, recht tegenover de plek waar de Belgisch-Nederlandse grens
haaks op de Maas staat, vlakbij grenspaal 126. Deze grenspaal was
trouwens al lang verdwenen. De tweede is ergens op de Belgische
oever. De derde op de Koeweide, die destijds noordelijker lag op de
noordelijke (westelijke) oever richting Maasbracht.
In
coördinaten: [5,8570 en 51,1440], onbekend, [5,8740 en
51,1490].
Wellicht
is de Koeweide hier op de kaart niet het bedoelde, want er zou ook
nog een Stevensweerterkoeweide of Stevenweertsche koeweide bestaan,
maar dat maakt de zaak niet wezenlijk anders.
Op
14 mei 1966 heeft de directeur van het Rijksmuseum Kam onder
toeziend oog van burgemeester J. Kelleners, een gesprek gehad met de
vermeende vinder. Waarschijnlijk is er geen proces-verbaal gemaakt
van dit gesprek. Maar duidelijkheid heeft het niet gebracht over
omstandigheden, plaats en tijd van de vondst.
Het
museum het Valkhof houdt dus maar vast aan de lezing van de
baggermachine. Wat dat betreft stuiten we dan op een
eigenaardigheid: aannemende dat er meerdere personen op een
baggervaartuig werken, zouden deze achteraf het verhaal van Bongers
hebben kunnen ondersteunen, maar hiernaar is klaarblijkelijk nooit
gevraagd.
De zogenaamde vinder Bongers
Al
vermeld is het feit dat de zogenaamde vinder verschillende versies
van de vondst heeft gedaan.
Als
we de baggerindustrie bestuderen, dan werd in 1939 bijna zeker nog
niet veel grind in Stevensweert opgehaald, waarschijnlijk pas vanaf
de tweede helft van 1941. De bemanning bestaat vooral uit
Sliedrechtenaren, aangevuld met lokaal personeel die er werkten als
dekknecht, bakkenschippers en walknechts. Als Bongers de drinkbeker
bij die werkzaamheden gevonden zou hebben, en direct schoongemaakt
zou hebben, dan hebben anderen dat ongetwijfeld gezien. Hij zal ook
niet een schoongemaakte beker in zijn jas stoppen; het is juist een
voorwerp om mee te pronken. Indien er anderen op de een of andere
manier bij betrokken waren dan hadden deze personen zich
ongetwijfeld gemeld in de jaren vijftig toen er zoveel ophef was
over de beker die toen de kantharos van Stevensweert werd genoemd!
Collega's of ex-collega's zouden in die periode Bongers en
waarschijnlijk ook de pers benaderd hebben om hun werkzaamheden uit
te leggen en de rol van Bongers te benoemen. Dat alles is niet
gebeurd.
De
baggermachine haalt met emmers zand en grind uit de bodem. Deze
emmers hebben een volume van tot wel een halve kubieke meter. Dan
wordt de last uitgestort en komt in een reeks trommels en zeven
terecht en zo wordt het grind in vier soorten gescheiden. Het zand
wordt ook verzameld en het water teruggevoerd in de rivier.
De
massa van het grind in de draaiende molen moet vele honderden kg
zijn. Een teer, zilveren voorwerp wordt hierin vermorzeld. De delen
komen zeker los van elkaar en dan is niet te verwachten dat een
drinkbeker uit één stuk eruit gehaald kan worden. Als
de drinkbeker met klei en zand in de molens en zeven terecht is
gekomen dan kan de beker nooit zo ongeschonden tevoorschijn zijn
gekomen.
Waarschijnlijk
zou de drinkbeker in zijn geheel niet door de zeven komen, want de
grootste zeef heeft gaten van 10 cm, maar de losse delen zouden
verspreid zijn over de gesorteerde keien.
Bovendien
was er voortdurend controle door een controleur van Rijkswaterstaat,
zoals we lezen in de krant van 21 april 1933:
In de ruimten onder het
dek, aan weerkanten van de geul voor den emmerketting,
bevinden zich ruime
verblijven voor machinist, molenbaas en dekpersoneel, en voor
den controleur van
rijkswaterstaat, die steeds aan boord moet zijn ter controle
van de opgehaalde
hoeveelheid specie.
Het
bovenstaande en de minstens drie verschillende versies die Bongers
heeft gegeven kan maar tot een enkele conclusie leiden: de
drinkbeker is NIET in de Maas gevonden. Het is ook zeer merkwaardig
dat hij de beker zonder tegenprestatie aan een zwager geeft en niet
tijdens de ophef zich erin mengt. Hij is de aangewezen persoon om de
precieze uitleg te kunnen geven, maar hij heeft dat uitdrukkelijk
niet gedaan. Bij een soort ondervraging in 1966 levert hij weer een
andere versie als daarvoor. Als vind-jaar wordt opgegeven 1939, 1942
of 1943. Als je de datum dan niet ergens noteert, dan weet je wel of
het voor of na het begin van de inval van de Duitsers was geweest.
Elders
wordt gemeld dat de kiezels in de grindwinninggebieden zo dicht op
elkaar gedrukt is dat de drinkbeker volledig verpletterd zou zijn
geweest.
Het
waarom van zijn leugens en stilzwijgen kan niet anders zijn dat hij
op de een of andere manier is omgekocht om een valse verklaring over
de vondst van de beker te doen en deze zo uit te dragen.
De voorganger van Museum het
Valkhof
Het
museum G.M. Kam in Nijmegen heeft geen goede hand gehad bij de
verwerving van topstukken. Enkele topstukken zijn op wel zeer
discutabele gronden na de Tweede Wereldoorlog verworven:
Begin
april 1956 was er veel te doen over de exacte vindplaats van het
Trajanusbeeldje. Een jaar later had het museum het beeld nog in
bezit.
Baggeraars
in Xanten zouden de Kop van Trajanus verdonkeremaand hebben en
daarna naar Nijmegen gesmokkeld en verkocht hebben aan een
antiquair.
Ook
de Phrygische Ganymedes (puer pileatus) is op twijfelachtige gronden
aangekocht.
Oudheidkundig onderzoek tijdens de
bezetting
Op
31 juli 1940 verschijnt de volgende mededeling in de kranten:
31
juli 1940 MEDEWERKING
VAN HET PUBLIEK GEVRAAGD.
Bij
beschikking van den secretaris-generaal, waarnemend hoofd van het
departement van Onderwijs, Kunsten en Wetenschappen is d.d. 24 Mei
j.l. ingesteld een commissie voor het oudheidkundig bodemonderzoek
in Nederland, terwijl tegelijkertijd werd ingesteld een rijksbureau
voor het oudheidkundig bodemonderzoek, tot welks directeur werd
benoemd dr. F. C. Bursch, conservator aan het rijksmuseum van
oudheden te Leiden, als voorzitter der commissie voornoemd treedt op
prof. dr. N. J. Krom, hoogleeraar aan de Leidsche Universiteit.
In
tegenwoordigheid van dr. W. D. van Wijngaarden, directeur van het
museum van oudheden en lid der commissie, hebben wij dezer dagen een
onderhoud met deze heeren gehad, waarin zij ons doel en werkwijze
der commissie en van het bureau nader hebben uiteengezet. Het
gelijktijdig afgekondigde wetje, aldus dr. Bursch, bedoelt in de
eerste plaats een verbod te zijn voor onbevoegden om opgravingen te
verrichten en heeft ongeveer dezelfde strekking als de wet voor de
monumentenzorg. De voorwerpen, welke in Nederlandschen bodem worden
gevonden, zijn voor de bestudeering van de oudste geschiedenis van
ons land van evenveel belang als de archiefstukken uit den lateren
tijd en hebben derhalve recht op dezelfde behandeling. De eerste
taak, welke de commissie zich ten doel stelde, was om na te gaan
welke instellingen in ons land bevoegd zijn tot het verrichten van
wetenschappelijk bodemonderzoek om vervolgens te komen tot
coördinatie op dit gebied. Weliswaar werd tot dusverre in die
richting ook wel gewerkt door de gewestelijke en plaatselijke musea,
maar zonder samenhang.
Momenteel
zijn daartoe gerechtigd het rijksmuseum te Leiden en 't
biologisch-archaeologisch instituut te Groningen voor het geheele
land en het rijksmuseum G. M. Kam te Nijmegen voor die omgeving,
althans zoolang dit museum onder leiding staat van dr. J. H.
Holwerda, den vroegeren directeur van het Leidsche museum. Alle
locale musea en provinciale genootschappen zullen erkenning moeten
aanvragen voor het verrichten van opgravingen, welke erkenning
alleen wordt verleend nadat de rijkscommissie daarover haar advies
heeft uitgebracht.
Het
rijksbureau is thans bezig een lijst samen te stellen van alle
terreinen in ons land, welke in oudheidkundig opzicht van belang
zijn, opdat bijtijds maatregelen kunnen worden genomen, wanneer het
incultuur brengen van deze gronden de daarin verborgen
archiefstukken dreigt verloren te doen gaan. Met behulp van deze
lijst zal het in de toekomst mogelijk zijn dergelijke terreinen te
beschermen. Blijkt dit niet mogelijk, dan streeft het bureau ernaar
de bij ontginning te vinden resten met alle zorgen te omringen en
voor het nageslacht te bewaren. Voorts ligt het in de bedoeling ook
eventueele vroegere vondsten te inventariseeren, welke zich in de
locale musea bevinden of waarover in de litteratuur van de laatste
decennia is geschreven, zoodat het bureau te allen tijde kan nagaan,
waar zich een bepaalde oudheidkundige vondst bevindt.
Daarnaast
geven typische, oude namen van grondstukken vaak aanwijzingen, dat
er overblijfselen uit het verleden te vinden zijn zoodat het
aanbeveling verdient ook daarvan een lijst aan te leggen.
Tenslotte
zijn er in bijna elke plaats wel enkele voorwerpen in particulier
bezit, zooals steenen bijlen, pijlspitsen, e.d., die eveneens in
teekening en foto vastgelegd dienen te worden.
Deze
omvangrijke inventarisatie, aldus dr. Bursch, kan niet tot stand
komen zonder de medewerking van het groote publiek. Wij moeten
overal over het geheele land verspreid onze vrijwillige medewerkers
hebben, die ons van het bestaan der hierboven bedoelde terreinen in
kennis stellen en ons inlichten over de in hun omgeving zich
bevindende oudheidkundige vondsten. Het liefst hadden wij in elke
gemeente zoo'n medewerker, het is best mogelijk, dat ons dan de
vondst van de zooveel-duizendste Germaansche urne wordt
gerapporteerd, maar per slot van rekening kan ook die weer
aanwijzingen geven over de verbreiding der Germaansche cultuur, enz.
Binnenkort
zal hiervoor de medewerking van alle burgemeesters in Nederland
worden ingeroepen.
Maar
daarmede zijn wij er niet, al kunnen zij ons grootelijks van dienst
zijn. Wat wij noodig hebben, zijn medewerkers uit het volk zelf, die
ons regelmatig op de hoogte houden, wanneer zich in hun gemeente
iets bijzonders op oudheidkundig gebied voordoet. Begrijpt u mij
goed: het is allerminst onze bedoeling om eventueele vondsten voor
ons museum te winnen; integendeel de verspreiding van materiaal over
de bestaande oudheidkamers, gewestelijke en locale musea kan de
aantrekkelijkheid [verbeterd!] ervan slechts verhoogen en evenmin
willen wij, dat de rechtmatige eigenares ons hun bezit afstaan.
Natuurlijk,
het liefst zien wij deze voorwerpen geplaatst in een museum, omdat
wij daar de grootste waarborgen hebben, dat de deskundig bewaard
zullen blijven, maar deze overname zal alleen mogelijk zijn met
volledige instemming van den eigenaar en tegen een billijke
vergoeding.
Betreft
het daarenboven unieke vondsten van waarlijk nationale beteekenis,
dan zullen wij vanzelfsprekend moeite doen om deze voorwerpen een
plaats te geven in het rijksmuseum van oudheden te Leiden, eventueel
door ruiling met andere museumstukken, maar de hoofdzaak waarom het
ons te doen is, is een volledig overzicht te hebben van hetgeen de
Nederlandsche bodem aan archaeologica heeft opgeleverd en nog zal
opleveren.
Het
is de bedoeling dat vondstmeldingen in de drie noordelijke
provinciën worden gericht tot prof. dr. A. E. van Giffen te
Groningen en voor de rest van het land tot dr. F. C. Bursch,
directeur van het rijksbureau voor het oudheidkundig bodemonderzoek,
Rapenburg, 28, Leiden.
Deze
brief legt een grote druk op personen die archeologische vondsten in
huis hebben en al zeker als het
unieke vondsten van waarlijk nationale beteekenis
zijn. De kantharos van Stevensweert hoort hier zeker toe!
Hoe past de drinkbeker in het
geheel van de vondst?
De
helm was zó kostbaar dat het verlies ervan voor de eigenaar
een enorme strop zou zijn. Als je de sierhelm met andere voorwerpen
verstopt dan doe je dat opzettelijk. De waarde van de karanthos was
- gegeven de hoeveelheid zilver - nog veel hoger. Dus gezien vanuit
het gezichtspunt van degene die alle voorwerpen in het veen
verstopt, is het verlies wel groter, maar kon hij dat verlies
gemakkelijk dragen. Ieder ander zou bij onopzettelijk verlies van
een dergelijk voorwerp alle moeite doen het terug te krijgen.
Je
zou een vergelijking kunnen maken met een graf dat naast het lijk
wordt gevuld met attributen die betrekking hebben op de overledene,
en levensmiddelen voor in het hiernamaals. Je doet dat in de hoop
dat het graf niet geplunderd wordt. Daartegen probeer je dan
maatregelen te nemen.
Met
dergelijke gedachten zou de kantharos wel degelijk een deel van de
Man en paard-uitrusting die in het veen bij Helenaveen terecht is
gekomen.
Kluijtmans
schrijft: Een
zilveren beker is ook nog gevonden, voorzien van een haakje om hem
aan het getuig te hangen.
De
kantharos voldoet overduidelijk aan de beschrijving van de eerste
woorden, met het haakje kan één van de oren zijn
bedoeld. Deze zijn niet teruggevonden, terwijl ze volgens de
geleerden wel degelijk aan de beker hoorden. Kluijtmans schijnt te
suggereren dat de drinkbeker, net als het door hem vermelde mooi
klein wijnvaatje, met een paar liter inhoud, in 1911 gevonden zijn.
Al
met al voldoende aanleiding om het vermoeden uit te spreken dat
directeur Bos van de N.V. Maatschappij deze voorwerpen in 1911 in
bezit had.
Op
de conferentie van 23 juni 1910 is tussen de belanghebbenden een
zeer duidelijke afspraak gemaakt over de nog-niet beschreven en nog
te vinden voorwerpen.
Adrianus
Bos was de aangewezen persoon om deze voorwerpen te verwerven. De
Maatschappij Helenaveen voerde een nauwkeurige boekhouding, maar
directeur Bos kocht de voorwerpen persoonlijk op en hield die dus
uit de boeken van de vennootschap.
Deze
voorwerpen werden zodoende in de directeurswoning bewaard, maar zo
dat slechts weinigen het te zien kregen, en dan nog alleen getoond
door de directeur zelf.
Een
inventarisatie van personen die tijdens het leven van de directeur
de Romeinse voorwerpen gezien kunnen hebben, heb ik ook gemaakt. Het
betreft hier natuurlijk vooral de dienstboden. Jootje, of Johanna,
van de Bovenkamp kwam uit Helenaveen en was in de nadagen van Bos
(vanaf circa 1925) dienstbode. Van haar is het verhaal, overgeleverd
door Kluijtmans, dat de directeur haar op een gegeven moment de
inhoud van de kast heeft laten zien. Vooral de grote leren
voorwerpen zijn haar toen opgevallen. Ze zal wel niet in de
gelegenheid zijn geweest alles goed te bekijken, laat staan alles op
te schrijven, als ze er al interesse in zou hebben.
Anderen
die de vondst wellicht gezien hebben zijn de commissarissen van de
vennootschap, en dat gedurende bijna 25 jaar. Deze personen waren in
het algemeen maatschappelijk gezien zeer geslaagde figuren, zoals de
directeur van de Staatsspoorwegen. Zij kwamen minstens één
maal per jaar naar Helenaveen voor een vergadering, die anders
meestal elders gehouden werd. Op 1 juli 1910 was er een dergelijke
vergadering in de villa van de directeur, dit was dus ruim 2 weken
na de vondst, maar in de notulen van de bijeenkomst wordt er geen
melding van gemaakt, terwijl de vondst al duidelijk in de kranten
was beschreven en maar op ongeveer 2 km afstand was gedaan.
Twijfels over de herkomst van de
kantharos
Rijksmuseum
Kam heeft vanaf het allereerste begin getwijfeld aan het verhaal van
de vermeende vinder Bongers. Hierboven is dat al verschillende malen
geschreven. Dat betreft dan de oorlogsjaren en die tot circa 1950.
De juridische nasleep levert nog meer informatie.
Zo
lezen we in
[1998]
Het geheim van de smid door mr. W.M.J. Bekkers: [...]
Niet
alleen bestaan over de herkomst en de leeftijd van de Kantharos
verschillende
theorieën.
Dat geldt ook voor het jaar, de plaats en de omstandigheden
waaronder de
beker
is gevonden. In de juridische literatuur en de jurisprudentie worden
genoemd
1942
en 1943, terwijl Swinkels uitgaat van 1939. Hij weet dat op verzoek
van drs.
A.V.M.
Hubrecht, directeur van het (toen nog) Rijksmuseum Kam van 1964 tot
1978,
de
burgemeester en pastoor van Stevensweert in november 1966 hebben
gesproken met
de
vinder van de Kantharos, J. Bongers te Echt. Bongers vertelde toen
dat hij de
Kantharos
had gevonden in januari of februari 1939 tijdens het jagen. Op een
kaart
gaf
hij aan waar hij de beker had gevonden. Dat zou op Belgisch
grondgebied zijn
geweest,
aan de westzijde van de Maas. Eerder had Bongers, volgens Swinkels,
andere
vindplaatsen
opgegeven. De burgemeester heeft over dit gesprek aan Hubrecht op 14
november
1966 onder meer geschreven: '... ik geloof de heer Bongers niet of
beter
gezegd:
hij liegt. Hij heeft reeds drie verschillende vindplaatsen van de
Kantharos
opgegeven.
Welke is de juiste? Ik weet het niet'(7).
7.
De door Bongers in 1966 opgegeven vindplaats heeft Hubrecht niet
gepubliceerd,
wel
het jaar 1939 als datum van de vondst (A.V.M. Hubrecht, De Kantharos
van
Stevensweert,
in Numaga 13 (1966) 243-251, met foto van de heer Bongers op
p. 250).
Museum
Kam en de opvolger Museum Het Valkhof hebben ook getwijfeld aan de
herkomst van de drinkbeker, maar net als de juridische kant was voor
het museum het bezit van belang, niet de herkomst. Toch vinden we in
publicaties van het museum hierover verschillende opmerkingen.
[2006]
Als Bongers de kantharos inderdaad in 1943 op de baggermolen heeft
opgeraapt,
heeft hij die vervolgens mee naar huis genomen en niet aangegeven.
Volgens
de baggervergunning moesten namelijk oudheidkundige vondsten worden
gemeld
en
afgestaan aan het rijk. Dan ligt het ook voor de hand dat Bongers al
snel heeft
geprobeerd
zijn vondst te gelde te maken.
[elders
2006] Bij de voorbereiding van dit artikel hebben we de kantharos
meermaals
intensief
bestudeerd en daarbij bijzonder gelet op aanwijzingen voor de
vervaardiging
en levensloop van de beker.
Wat
dit laatste betreft is het opvallend dat zowel op de binnen- als de
buiten-
beker
geen beschadigingen werden aangetroffen die het gevolg zouden kunnen
zijn van
verplaatsingen
in stromend water, waarbij onvermijdelijk deuken en krassen zouden
zijn
ontstaan door het stoten tegen grind en dergelijke. Het is daarom
naar onze
mening
weinig aannemelijk dat de vinder, J. Bongers, de kantharos tussen
stenen
langs
de Maas heeft aangetroffen, zoals hij later heeft beweerd. Het
verhaal van
zijn
zwager, dat Bongers de kantharos op de baggermolen heeft gevonden in
enkele
kluiten
klei, is aannemelijker omdat de kleilaag waarin de kantharos zich op
de
rivierbodem
bevond deze eeuwenlang heeft beschermd, totdat de baggermolen de
rust
verstoorde
(zie p.18).
[1972]
De vondst bleef destijds vrijwel onopgemerkt: door J. Bongers werd
de beker
-
in twee delen - tussen de stenen aan de Maas gevonden, de klei werd
er afgewassen
en
hij werd mee naar huis genomen.
Documenten over de familie Bongers
en over het baggerbedrijf
19
december 1934 DROEVIG ONGELUK OP DE MAAS TE STEVENSWEERT
Vier
personen te water geraakt. Eén dezer verdronk.
Dinsdagvoormiddag
tegen tien uur heeft op de Maas onder de gemeente STEVENSWEERT een
droevig ongeluk plaats gevonden.
Aldaar
oefent de firma van Hasselt uit Nijmegen reeds enkele jaren het
baggerbedrijf uit. Zondag was er een sleepboot aangekomen om de
baggermachine, welke herstellingen moest ondergaan, weg te sleepen.
Dinsdag
zou zulks plaats vinden en tegen tien uur hadden een viertal
opvarenden van de boot in een roeibootje plaats genomen en voeren
vanaf de baggermachine naar den oever om de tros los te maken. Zij
gleden langs de kabel. Daarbij hebben ze wellicht op een bepaald
oogenblik aan één zijde in het bootje gestaan, met het
gevolg, dat dit water schepte en omsloeg, zoodat alle vier in het
water vielen.
De
sleepboot, die bij de baggermachine lag, voer snel naar de plaats
van het ongeluk, halverwege den oever, en wist twee hunner te
redden; de derde had door te zwemmen den oever weten te bereiken. De
vierde is jammerlijk verdronken, ondanks nog getracht werd hem te
redden. Zijn lijk is nog niet gevonden.
Het
slachtoffer is gehuwd en 37 jaar oud, en heet H. Peperkamp uit
Doornenburg, gemeente Bemmel in Gelderland.
4
augustus 1945 De grintbaggeraars
DE
VRIJE STEM, het orgaan van de G.0.I.W.,
bevat een gedegen artikel over de samenwerking in de oorlogsjaren
van de Grintbaggeraars ten bate van het bouwen van de Atlanticwal.
Uit
dit artikel nemen wij enige cijfers over om onze lezers de kwestie
duidelijk te maken.
De
fa. Paes te Nijmegen produceerde in 1939 209.349 ton ... in 8
maanden van 1944 537.960 ton.
De
fa. van Hasselt te Lent produceerde in 1939 270.634 ton en in 1943:
915.212 ton. De N.V. Grint Mij te Arnhem steeg van 184.291 ton in
1939 tot 483.938 ton in 1943. Voor de N.V. van Roosmalen Transp. en
Handelsmij te Maastricht waren deze cijfers: 108.905 ton en 210.851
ton.
De
fa. Hovestad en Dekker te Roermond begon er in de oorlogsjaren mee
en produceerde in 1943 reeds 211.421 ton.
De
Ballastmij de Merwede te Rotterdam produceerde in 1940 225.526 ton
en in 1943: 235.205 ton.
Over
al deze firma's zijn bij de Mil. Commissaris de officiële
klachten ingediend.
En
nu vervolgt de Vrije Stem:
Alle
in Nederland geproduceerde grint werd doorverkocht door de N. V.
grintverkoopkantoor te Nijmegen. Directeur dezer N.V. was de Hr. Mr.
Zuidema. Genoemd kantoor heeft de distributie van grint gedurende
dit tijdperk geleverd en heeft o.a. in een schrijven aan de
aangesloten producenten aangemaand de productie op te voeren. Wij
verzochten sluiting van dit verkoopkantoor en inbeslagname van de
administratie. Dit is geschied.
De
Duitse firma "Niba" voerde haar productie op van 350.685
ton in 1938 tot 1.522.949 ton 1943. Deze firma heeft echter twee
Nederlandse directeuren n.l. de heren Müller
en van Sprang. Ook dit is zelfs nog met een grote dosis
lankmoedigheid te verdragen. Dat de Heer Müller
echter benoemd is tot lid van het tribunaal te Nijmegen doet ons
"enigszins vreemd aan".
Dat
de heer Wagemaker als Directeur van het Grint Verkoop Kantoor meende
de Duitse Wehrmacht hulp te moeten bieden kan liggen aan zijn wel
zeer "zakelijke" opvattingen Dat hij echter benoemd werf
tot beheerder over Nat. Soc. vermogen doet ons alweer "enigszins
vreemd aan".
En
de heer van Roosmalen, die zijn productie ongeveer verdubbelde, werd
belast met het lichten van de door de Duitsers tot zinken gebrachte
schepen in de haven van Maasbracht. Tot grote ergernis van de
honderden schippers.
16
juni 1964 Aanleg gegund [...]
Van
Hasselt Gendt (Gld.) 5, 5, 2, en 1 cent
Niet
geaccepteerd werden de inschrijvingen van {...] en van de Niba
3
april 2013 Jacobus Antonius Bongers was getrouwd met Hubertina
Cornelia van der Riet (gehucht Diepstraat?). Het echtpaar woonde te
Echt op de Maasbrachterweg 100.
Enkele
dagen voor 1 februari 1937 werd Theodorus Lucienne geboren. Deze
Theo is overleden.
Enkele
dagen voor 8 maart 1943 werd Helena Henrica Johanna geboren.
Een
(andere) zoon (van 77 of 78 jaar)
Een
zoon en een dochter zouden nu in Zuid-Afrika wonen. Jan Bongers zou
in Roermond wonen. Informatie verkregen via een neef van Jaak
Bongers uit Stevensweert, Bernard Bongers.
Jaak
Bongers werd in de familie een fantast genoemd.
3
april 2013 De baggermolen waarop Jaak Bongers werkte was niet
(meer) van Dekker maar van de firma van Hasselt uit Nijmegen (of
Lent of Gendt). Deze firma van Hasselt had de baggermolen gekocht
van Dekker. Waarschijnlijk was het een eenvoudige baggermolen, met
stilstaande zeef of zeven.
In
het bovenstaande zijn argumenten gegeven die twijfel doen ontstaan
dat de kantharos ook werkelijk gevonden is in de gemeente
Stevensweert. Hieronder worden de argumenten nog eens herhaald.
-
Het is in het geheel niet zeker dat in de vierde eeuw de Maas
stroomde waar nu Stevensweert ligt. Meer oostelijk ligt de Oude
Maas.
-
De talloze overstromingen van de Maas zouden de beker erg beschadigd
moeten hebben. Juist in januari en februari 1926 was geheel
West-Europa in de ban van hoogwater van de rivieren. Ook
Stevensweert was daarvan slachtoffer: er wordt gemeld dat de Maas
daar tussen 4 en 5 km breed was geworden! Onder deze omstandigheden
zou een tere constructie als de drinkbeker tenminste in stukken zijn
gevallen, en waarschijnlijk meegevoerd naar zee, waardoor de
kantharos definitief verloren was gegaan.
-
Er zijn drie varianten op de omstandigheden, de vindplaats en het
jaar van de vondst:
En het jaar 1939 is in 1966 uit de mond van Bongers opgetekend,
toen de
kantharos tijdelijk naar Stevensweert was teruggekeerd ter
gelegenheid van het
700-jarig bestaan van de parochie Stevensweert. Bongers heeft
toen bovendien
verteld dat hij de beker niet op de baggermolen had gevonden,
maar bij het jagen
had zien liggen op een strook kiezel langs de Maas. Op een kaart
had hij een
vindplaats aangewezen op de westelijke over van de rivier,
tegenover Stevensweert,
op Belgisch grondgebied dus!
De kantharos in kwestie
werd in 1942, dus tijdens de bezetting, gevonden te
Stevensweert op ongeveer
achttien kilometer van Roermond in
de diepe grindbanken van
de Maas. De vinder zag in het met leem overdekte en grauw
roestige voorwerp niet
veel bijzonders. Hij schonk het aan een particulier
liefhebber van oudheden,
die het onopgemerkt, dus veilig bewaarde zonder precies
te vermoeden, wat het was.
In 1949 liet hij de stof, waaruit de beker gemaakt was,
deskundig toetsen.
De beker werd in 1942 door
de Stevensweertenaar J. Bongers gevonden
op een hoop grind gelegen
op een terrein op de Koeweide te Stevensweert het waren
twee in elkaar passende
delen die geheel overklonterd waren door klei. Deze had
zich als een huls op de
buitenwand vastgezet. Hier en daar was deze huls
afgebrokkeld en werd de
blinkende ondergrond zichtbaar. Hij nam de beker mee naar
huis, maakte hem schoon en
zette hem op een commode in de huiskamer.
De
zogenaamde vinder Jaak Bongers noemt dus maar liefst 3 verschillende
vindplaatsen. Op een kaartje staat aangegeven op de Nederlandse
oever, recht tegenover de plek waar de Belgisch-Nederlandse grens
haaks op de Maas staat, vlakbij grenspaal 126. De tweede is ergens
op de Belgische oever. De derde op de Koeweide, die destijds
noordelijker lag op de noordelijke (westelijke) oever richting
Maasbracht.
In
coördinaten: [5,8570 en 51,1440], onbekend, [5,8740 en
51,1490].
Wellicht
is de Koeweide hier op de kaart niet het bedoelde, want er zou ook
nog een Stevensweerterkoeweide of Stevenweertsche koeweide bestaan,
maar dat maakt de zaak niet wezenlijk anders.
-
Het jaar 1942 heeft Brom menen te kunnen opmaken uit een gesprek dat
hij met Bongers in april 1950 heeft gevoerd, waarin die suggereerde
dat de beker al een tijd bij hem op de kast had gestaan voordat hij
hem aan Schoonenberg had laten zien. [...]
-
Op 14 mei 1966 heeft de directeur van het Rijksmuseum Kam onder
toeziend oog van burgemeester J. Kelleners, een gesprek gehad met de
vermeende vinder. Waarschijnlijk is er geen proces-verbaal gemaakt
van dit gesprek. Maar duidelijkheid heeft het niet gebracht over
omstandigheden, plaats en tijd van de vondst.
Niet
alleen bestaan over de herkomst en de leeftijd van de Kantharos
verschillende
theorieën.
Dat geldt ook voor het jaar, de plaats en de omstandigheden
waaronder de
beker
is gevonden. In de juridische literatuur en de jurisprudentie worden
genoemd
1942
en 1943, terwijl Swinkels uitgaat van 1939. Hij weet dat op verzoek
van drs.
A.V.M.
Hubrecht, directeur van het (toen nog) Rijksmuseum Kam van 1964 tot
1978,
de
burgemeester en pastoor van Stevensweert in november 1966 hebben
gesproken met
de
vinder van de Kantharos, J. Bongers te Echt. Bongers vertelde toen
dat hij de
Kantharos
had gevonden in januari of februari 1939 tijdens het jagen. Op een
kaart
gaf
hij aan waar hij de beker had gevonden. Dat zou op Belgisch
grondgebied zijn
geweest,
aan de westzijde van de Maas. Eerder had Bongers, volgens Swinkels,
andere
vindplaatsen
opgegeven. De burgemeester heeft over dit gesprek aan Hubrecht op 14
november
1966 onder meer geschreven: '... ik geloof de heer Bongers niet of
beter
gezegd:
hij liegt. Hij heeft reeds drie verschillende vindplaatsen van de
Kantharos
opgegeven.
Welke is de juiste? Ik weet het niet'.
-
31 oktober 1941 [...] Te Linne en ook te Roermond vindt men onder
een dekking
van
enkele meters klei en zand, de kiezel soms tot een diepte van 15 à
16 M. Af en
toe
treft men voorhistorische vondsten aan in deze kiezellagen, o.a.
mammouthtanden
en hertegeweien enz., die uit wetenschappelijk oogpunt waarde
hebben.
Behalve
te Roermond is ook te Stevensweert een particuliere maatschappij
begonnen
met
de kiezelwinning. Al deze werken geven vele handen werk.
-
28 augustus 1951 Voormelde beker heeft mijn zwager de Heer J.
Bongers (...) mij
voor het eerst in het
najaar van negentienhonderd drie en veertig vertoond. Mijn
zwager Bongers was
destijds werkzaam op de baggermolen "de Dekker" welke
grind
baggerde in de
uiterwaarden van de Maas genaamd "de Sleyen", nabij
Stevensweert.
Bij het vertonen van de
beker deelde mijn zwager mij mede, dat enkele dagen
daarvoor, toen de
baggermolen was ingesteld op een graafdiepte van zestien meter
beneden de waterspiegel,
hij het voorwerp in twee afzonderlijke delen had
opgevangen uit de
afvoergoot van de molen waarin de emmers hun inhoud overstorten.
Daarna had Bongers de
beide delen thuis van klei en slik gereinigd en toe bleek
[...]
-
Als we de baggerindustrie bestuderen, dan werd in 1939 bijna zeker
nog niet veel grind in Stevensweert opgehaald, waarschijnlijk pas
vanaf de tweede helft van 1941. De bemanning bestaat vooral uit
Sliedrechtenaren, aangevuld met lokaal personeel die er werkten als
dekknecht, bakkenschippers en walknechts. Als Bongers de drinkbeker
bij die werkzaamheden gevonden zou hebben, en direct schoongemaakt
zou hebben, dan hebben anderen dat ongetwijfeld gezien. Hij zal ook
niet een schoongemaakte beker in zijn jas stoppen; het is juist een
voorwerp om mee te pronken. Indien er anderen op de een of andere
manier bij betrokken waren dan hadden deze personen zich
ongetwijfeld gemeld in de jaren vijftig toen er zoveel ophef was
over de beker die toen de kantharos van Stevensweert werd genoemd!
Collega's of ex-collega's zouden in die periode Bongers en
waarschijnlijk ook de pers benaderd hebben om hun werkzaamheden uit
te leggen en de rol van Bongers te benoemen. Dat alles is niet
gebeurd.
De
baggermachine haalt met emmers zand en grind uit de bodem. Deze
emmers hebben een volume van tot wel een halve kubieke meter. Dan
wordt de last uitgestort en komt in een reeks trommels en zeven
terecht en zo wordt het grind in vier soorten gescheiden. Het zand
wordt ook verzameld en het water teruggevoerd in de rivier.
De
massa van het grind in de draaiende molen moet vele honderden kg
zijn. Een teer, zilveren voorwerp wordt hierin vermorzeld. De delen
komen zeker los van elkaar en dan is niet te verwachten dat een
drinkbeker uit één stuk eruit gehaald kan worden. Als
de drinkbeker met klei en zand in de molens en zeven terecht is
gekomen dan kan de beker nooit zo ongeschonden tevoorschijn zijn
gekomen.
Waarschijnlijk
zou de drinkbeker in zijn geheel niet door de zeven komen, want de
grootste zeef heeft gaten van 10 cm, maar de losse delen zouden
verspreid zijn over de gesorteerde keien.
Bovendien
was er voortdurend controle door een controleur van Rijkswaterstaat,
zoals we lezen in de krant van 21 april 1933:
In de ruimten onder het
dek, aan weerkanten van de geul voor den emmerketting,
bevinden zich ruime
verblijven voor machinist, molenbaas en dekpersoneel, en voor
den controleur van
rijkswaterstaat, die steeds aan boord moet zijn ter controle
van de opgehaalde
hoeveelheid specie.
-
Elders
wordt gemeld dat de kiezels in de grind-winninggebieden zo dicht op
elkaar gedrukt is dat de drinkbeker volledig verpletterd zou zijn
geweest.
-
Museum Kam en de opvolger Museum Het Valkhof hebben ook getwijfeld
aan de herkomst van de drinkbeker, maar net als de juridische kant
was voor het museum het bezit van belang, niet de herkomst.
Toch
vinden we in publicaties van het museum hierover verschillende
opmerkingen.
[2006]
Als Bongers de kantharos inderdaad in 1943 op de baggermolen heeft
opgeraapt,
heeft hij die vervolgens mee naar huis genomen en niet aangegeven.
Volgens
de baggervergunning moesten namelijk oudheidkundige vondsten worden
gemeld
en
afgestaan aan het rijk. Dan ligt het ook voor de hand dat Bongers al
snel heeft
geprobeerd
zijn vondst te gelde te maken.
[elders
2006] Bij de voorbereiding van dit artikel hebben we de kantharos
meermaals
intensief
bestudeerd en daarbij bijzonder gelet op aanwijzingen voor de
vervaardiging
en levensloop van de beker.
Wat
dit laatste betreft is het opvallend dat zowel op de binnen- als de
buiten-
beker
geen beschadigingen werden aangetroffen die het gevolg zouden kunnen
zijn van
verplaatsingen
in stromend water, waarbij onvermijdelijk deuken en krassen zouden
zijn
ontstaan door het stoten tegen grind en dergelijke. Het is daarom
naar onze
mening
weinig aannemelijk dat de vinder, J. Bongers, de kantharos tussen
stenen
langs
de Maas heeft aangetroffen, zoals hij later heeft beweerd. Het
verhaal van
zijn
zwager, dat Bongers de kantharos op de baggermolen heeft gevonden in
enkele
kluiten
klei, is aannemelijker omdat de kleilaag waarin de kantharos zich op
de
rivierbodem
bevond deze eeuwenlang heeft beschermd, totdat de baggermolen de
rust
verstoorde
(zie p.18).
[1972]
De vondst bleef destijds vrijwel onopgemerkt: door J. Bongers werd
de beker
-
in twee delen - tussen de stenen aan de Maas gevonden, de klei werd
er afgewassen
en
hij werd mee naar huis genomen.
-
De verwerving door Museum Kam
Het
museum G.M. Kam in Nijmegen heeft geen goede hand gehad bij de
verwerving van topstukken. Enkele topstukken zijn op wel zeer
discutabele gronden na de Tweede Wereldoorlog verworven:
Begin
april 1956 was er veel te doen over de exacte vindplaats van het
Trajanusbeeldje. Een jaar later had het museum het beeld nog in
bezit.
Baggeraars
in Xanten zouden de Kop van Trajanus verdonkeremaand hebben en
daarna naar Nijmegen gesmokkeld en verkocht hebben aan een
antiquair.
Ook
de Phrygische Ganymedes (puer pileatus) is op twijfelachtige gronden
aangekocht.
-
Niet alleen zijn er geen mede-arbeiders op de baggermolen naar voren
getreden die zeggen dat Bongers het voorwerp heeft gevonden, maar er
zijn ook geen getuigenissen bekend van familieleden die kunnen
getuigen over de kantharos ten huize Bongers.
-
Noch Jaak Bongers noch familieleden e.d. zijn ooit gehoord over het
voorwerp. Tenminste de auteur heeft hierover niets kunnen vinden.
Een
neef noemt Jaak Bongers anno 2013 een fantast, zo werd hij in de
familie tenminste benoemd.
-
De kantharos is zo broos dat hij alleen door enkele personen
aangepakt mag worden. In 60 jaren kan de toestand van de drinkbeker
toch niet zoveel verslechterd zijn dat hij destijds uit een
baggermolen o.i.d. kwam en nu niet meer aan te raken is.
The
Stevensweert Kantharos
Acknowledgements
The
file below discusses the details of the discovery of the Peel
helmet. The author suspects that the Peel helmet is part of a
complete outfit worn by a Roman cavalry officer, as the clothing and
weapons of a person, as well as the harness of a horse, were found.
Remains of a person or a horse were not found. From this, we can
only conclude that the officer himself, or his relatives, hid all
the objects in the peat during his lifetime. Hiding them in such a
way that the few passersby who were there probably didn't
immediately see them. People were likely aware at the time that peat
grows and that the objects would eventually be buried under an
increasingly large layer of peat.
The
author was surprised by the enormous value of silver objects,
especially those worked by a silversmith. Few people could make such
a finely hammered helmet, making the helmet particularly valuable.
The helmet was likely a silver object passed down and used by
several people due to its value, especially since the average
lifespan of a Roman at the time was not very long.
Very
few such objects have been found in the region of Germania Inferior.
Many have undoubtedly been destroyed by the ravages of time, and the
precious metals have been melted down.
A
few months after the discovery of the helmet and the other objects,
the portion of the objects mentioned in the newspapers was acquired
by the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden. The officials
responsible never visited the site themselves or spoke in detail
with anyone other than the finder. Therefore, much circumstantial
evidence has been lost. Nevertheless, we find various details in the
newspapers and magazines. There was also some correspondence to the
museum regarding the discovery. The most interesting of these is the
letter that Adrianus Bos, director of the N.V. Maatschappij
Helenaveen, sent to the museum a year and a half after the
discovery. In it, he provides a precise description of the finds,
presumably from the first few days. It's striking that the museum
officials don't respond with anything like: "Very interesting,
do you know where these objects are now?" They let things take
their course: after the acquisition, actual interest seems to have
disappeared, undoubtedly because it wasn't their own excavation.
A
scientific study is written that clearly explains the helmet's
construction, but the additional finds are described briefly.
If
silver was so precious, and given that few people owned a horse,
it's tempting to investigate what other valuable objects have been
unearthed in the wider area surrounding the site.
It
was already known that virtually no ancient objects had been found
in the Peel peat bogs. In the peat bogs in the north of the country
and also in the adjacent bogs in Germany, ancient objects have
indeed been found since around 1800, even a kilometers-long wooden
bridge over the peat, but this dates back to before Roman times.
Also found are so-called bog bodies, the remains of a whale, and a
horse. Proof that a body can be preserved if buried immediately
after death in suitable, oxygen-free soil.
Another
valuable object immediately comes to mind: the so-called
"Stevensweert kantharos"; perhaps the only other Roman
silver object in the Netherlands that can rival the Peel helmet.
All
Dutch jurists are familiar with the term "Stevensweert
kantharos" as an example of "error"; much can be
found on this elsewhere. Before the true value of this drinking cup
was known, other obscure events occurred, which the author has
examined with a critical eye.
When
the scientific community saw the drinking cup around 1950, they
investigated where and when it was found. The so-called finder,
Borgers, pointed to three different years for the discovery: 1939,
1942, or 1943, and three different locations in Stevensweert. In the
absence of better information, the drinking cup was then named the
Stevensweert kantharos, although it is by no means certain that
Stevensweert was the actual discovery site.
In
the author's opinion, this is highly implausible, because if we
delve into newspaper accounts of how gravel was extracted in the
Maas around 1940, we quickly conclude that the sieving and sorting
process, which had reduced the size of the stones, would have left
the drinking cup in a battered condition. It may have disintegrated
into its component parts much earlier and never been visible as a
whole again. Moreover, no mention has been made by a...
A
crew member of Bongers' dredger also claimed to have seen the
object. It should also be noted that an inspector from
Rijkswaterstaat (the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water
Management) was on board, and he would certainly have reported such
a find.
In
2006, Mrs. Witteveen of the Valkhof Museum wrote a booklet about the
drinking cup. In it, she mentions the contradictions and
uncertainties, but cannot offer any other version than that given by
Bongers.
Could
there be a connection between the Stevensweert kantharos
and
the discovery of a complete officer's outfit?
From
information provided by a servant at A. Bos's in Helenaveen, we know
that there was a secret hiding place in his home, where he kept
parts of the finds he had acquired. She didn't see everything in
detail, but mainly spoke about leather pieces, which he indeed
collected shortly after the discovery, because local treasure
hunters showed no interest in them. Elsewhere, it is also mentioned
that a wine barrel with a tap and a beautifully decorated drinking
cup, with a hook for hanging on the horse's harness, had been found
and were in the possession of A. Bos. These objects were also part
of a Roman soldier's equipment and were carried by the soldier on
his journey.
If
we consider the missing silver handles of the drinking cup to be a
hook, then the search for them is indeed worthwhile.
It
is written that the drinking cup ended up in the possession of an
important person from the Helenaveen Company in Loosdrecht at a
hunting lodge.
Research
into this has not yielded any clear indication, but we will return
to this in more detail below. Incidentally, the wine barrel with the
silver tap was apparently lost earlier.
The
Legacy of Adrianus Bos
Director
Bos likely became seriously ill at the end of 1930, at least to the
point that he could not perform his daily duties. He died, rather
unexpectedly, in March 1931. He had already purchased a large plot
of land on Belgenhoek in the province of Limburg (directly south of
the A67 highway), where he hoped to later build his own house. See
also http://www.belgenhoek.nl/ and
http://www.belgenhoek.nl/page2.html. Several brothers, distant
relatives through the Gilse van der Pals branch, now own this
19-hectare nature reserve.
For
when A. Bos died, only his sister-in-law, Bos-van Gilse-van der
Pals, was still alive. According to tradition, she emptied the house
and burned a great deal of paperwork in the process. She would have
been assisted in this work by her daughter Annie, her husband, and
her unmarried son, Cor.
Photos
of the interior of Mrs. Bos-van Gilse-van der Pals's home in The
Hague show no Roman artifacts, which is not surprising.
Nevertheless, we can assume that the entire interior of the GENA
villa in Helenaveen ended up with A. Bos's sister-in-law and/or
nephew and niece (with their husband).
Son
Cor, in turn, came to live in the house in The Hague when his mother
died in 1936. Nephew Cor Bos had been appointed a member of the
company's supervisory board very soon after his uncle's death.
Daughter
Annie was thus married to Rutger W.C. Baron van Boetzelaer, and was
therefore entitled to the title of Baroness. The marriage was not a
happy one; the baron was said to be more interested in the money
than in Annie Bos herself.
Soon
after her mother's death in 1936, Annie Bos divorced the baron. He
remarried in 1938, to a man named Jordens, and later Annie married a
man named Groote; she lived in Hilversum for a long time under the
name J. Groote-Bos. Meanwhile, she had become a major shareholder in
the Helenaveen Company and remained so for the rest of her life,
owning more than half the shares.
The
inheritance was thus released during Annie Bos's marriage to R.W.C.
van Boetzelaer, who later lived in Laren. It's tempting to think
that most of A. Bos's belongings ended up in the Baron and
Baroness's house, including the Roman objects from the secret
cupboard. If the drinking cup was there, it clearly came from the
finds around the Peel helmet, and for that reason alone is extremely
valuable. On the other hand, these objects actually belong in a
museum, not in a private collection, the existence of which was
practically unknown.
The
servant who also lived in the Gena villa deregistered from the
municipality of Deurne at the end of July 1931 and moved to
Wassenaar. There, she worked as a servant for a while, but later
returned to Helenaveen. An illegitimate son was also born there,
with the word "illegitimate" later crossed out.
The
objects are therefore most likely to have ended up in three places:
with her sister-in-law Cornelia E.A. Bos-van Gilse van der Pals, her
son Cor Bos, and her daughter Johanna van Boetzelaer-Bos and her
husband Rutger W.C. van Boetzelaer.
The
mother was likely less interested in Roman antiquities, the The two
men may well have been interested. Later, Boetzelaer's son-in-law
became assistant curator of the Gooisch Museum and was therefore
certainly interested in art objects. After his divorce from Johanna
(=Annie) Bos, around 1937, the objects may also have ended up in a
fourth place. When his sister-in-law died in 1936, his son Cor moved
to her home in The Hague, and in 1938, when Boetzelaer remarried, we
again have three possible locations.
At
the same time, Dr. F.C. Bursch, an employee of the National Museum
of Antiquities in Leiden, was assistant to director Holwerda.
The
museum's arrogance is again evident in a piece about excavations
near Vlodrop. That article, dated October 28, 1933, ends as follows:
A
few years ago, at my repeated request, Dr. Holwerda from Leiden sent
his assistant, Mr. Bursch, with some diggers to excavate a section
of the Knippeheide, where the undersigned had previously unearthed
numerous urns, and where Mr. Bursch now also found 18 urns, plus a
fragment of a sword at a Germanic cult site, and where I later
discovered more sites, it was said that this exploitation would be
revisited.
This
entire event was reported in the Publications year. 1932, with the
following few words, "A remarkable urn field was excavated
there (i.e., Vlodrop), on a site for which permission had been
obtained (i.e., from the owner in Belgium) through the kindness of
Messrs. van Cruchten and Linssen of Roermond."
(Not
a word was said about the fact that this remarkable field was
discovered by the undersigned after much searching, and that the
digging only took place after my repeated correspondence with the
Museum of Antiquities.)
Summing
all this up, it seems somewhat strange, even painful, to learn in
retrospect that an authorized person once said: "There is
nothing to learn in the area around Flanders." The reader can
sense for themselves how blatantly untrue this is.
GERH.
KR.[ekelberg]
Fourteen
days after the start of the war, this Bursch was appointed head of a
committee for archaeological soil research. Germanic culture is
immediately mentioned, and they want to create an inventory per
municipality of finds held by private individuals. Furthermore:
If,
moreover, these are unique finds of truly national significance, we
will naturally make an effort to find a place for these objects in
the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, possibly through
exchange with other museum pieces, but the main reason we are
interested is to have a complete overview of the archaeological
wealth that Dutch soil has yielded and will continue to yield.
Although
it had nothing to do with this case, the Leiden museum had brought
in curator Bursch as a collaborator for the German cause. In
February 1941, he was already placed on the "university
blacklist" and after the war, he was suspended as a professor.
He had been appointed professor at the University of Amsterdam and
had conducted excavations in Ukraine, among other places, in 1943.
The heirs of Adrianus Bos must have been aware of the above
information about reporting antique objects for inventory. This was
likely the reason for "disposing" of the objects. They
should have known, they were practically certain, that the objects
came from the equipment found in 1910 in Helenaveen and thus
belonged to the unique finds of truly national significance.
Ancient
objects were occasionally found in the major rivers, and apparently
the owner of the drinking cup, probably R.W.C. van Boetzelaer,
wanted to make it appear as if the cup had also been found in the
Maas, during gravel extraction, for example, in Stevensweert.
However, this overlooked a careful study of the gravel extraction
process: so much force was released during dredging and sorting by
size in rotating drums that a delicate object like the kantharos
could never have emerged undamaged. The author believes he can
conclude that the owner somehow came into contact with Jaak Bongers,
who, after many years, was supposed to present the drinking cup as a
find from the Maas. This, of course, came at a hefty price and was
subject to strict confidentiality. This also saved the family's
honor, in the sense that Boetzelaer and Bos's names would never
appear in the news as the "receiver" of the drinking cup.
The
sequel to this alleged discovery of the kantharos—namely, the
complex process of transferring the cup within a family and, in
particular, the years of legal proceedings concerning its
ownership—could never have been imagined by Bos's heir and the
new owner, Bongers. For them, the value had been undeniable from the
very beginning.
In
summary:
-
The so-called Peel helmet was only part of an officer's outfit worn
by a cavalry officer in the Roman army at the beginning of the
fourth century.
-
After a brief investigation following the discovery, its great value
was recognized and it was purchased with financial leverage from the
National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden. Evelein wrote a scientific
report about the helmet and the finds present, which was published
six months after the museum acquired it. It immediately became one
of the museum's highlights.
-
That considerably more finds were made than those that ended up in
the museum after a few months is certain. The museum is acquiring
several more objects, as director Bos of the Helenaveen Company
explicitly mentions in a long letter. The very first written report
from Reverend de Jong, two days after the initial discovery, also
provides a description that does not correspond to the objects now
in the museum. Apparently, the officials were powerless and
uninterested in seriously searching for, for example, the missing
cheek plate. They did try to do so through the mayor of Deurne, but
such a cautious and half-hearted approach was unsuccessful.
When
director Bos died in 1931, his possessions went to his surviving
sister-in-law and/or her children. When the sister-in-law herself
died in 1936, those possessions finally ended up in the hands of her
bachelor son and/or her daughter and her husband.
The
latter divorced very quickly. The son moved into his mother's house.
The Roman artifacts could very well have ended up with Boetzelaer's
now ex-son-in-law.
In
any case, immediately after the start of the occupation, pressure
arose to register, record, and photograph antiquities. Masterpieces
should actually be in a museum. The National Museum of Antiquities
in Leiden is specifically mentioned here; it is the most suitable
location for this. Not everyone was pleased with Leiden's meddling.
Perhaps that's why the owner of the Stevensweert kantharos—at
the time just a beautifully carved silver drinking cup—wanted
to get rid of it.
How
was that supposed to happen? They were likely inspired by similar
events in the recent past. They probably persuaded the so-called
finder, Bongers, to pretend—for a fee—that he was the
finder on a dredger near Stevensweert. Stevensweert had previously
been in the news as a discovery site for fossils, human remains,
pottery, and weapons.
A
more benign explanation might be that the owner of the drinking cup
feared it could be confiscated by the occupying forces and wanted to
prevent this by giving it to someone unsuspected. The fact that he
didn't ask for the cup back after the war contradicts this.
It
is by no means certain that the Maas River flowed where Stevensweert
is now located in the fourth century. Further east lies the Oude
Maas.
-
Despite the many uncertainties and the entire aftermath of the legal
ownership dispute, Bongers' story was accepted, and much later, the
Kam Museum in Nijmegen could claim ownership of the "from
Stevensweert" kantharos.
-
Both objects are made of gilded silver, finely decorated. A material
comparison might perhaps provide more clarity about any possible
"relationship." The kantharos has already undergone such
an investigation.
Incidentally,
the external characteristics can also be compared easily.
Is
the Stevensweert kantharos part of an officer's equipment?
This
question probably seems silly, but the author has reason to believe
it might be.
The
kantharos was not found in Stevensweert at all, because there are
sufficient indications that the alleged finder repeatedly lied about
the exact location and even the year of discovery. The possible
reason for this remains unclear. The author believes the drinking
cup was handed over to the supposed finder, with the request to
reveal its existence sometime in the future, along with a fictitious
location and year of discovery.
However,
the supposed finder couldn't consistently maintain this story,
perhaps because the entire matter hadn't been thoroughly discussed.
Furthermore, they forgot—or perhaps the event itself was the
reason for this cover-up—that the numerous floods of the Maas
River would have severely damaged the cup. In January and February
1926, all of Western Europe was gripped by high river waters.
Stevensweert was also a victim: it is reported that the Maas River
there had become between 4 and 5 km wide! Under these circumstances,
a delicate structure like the drinking cup would have at least
shattered and likely been carried out to sea, causing the the
kantharos had been permanently lost.
No, if the drinking cup had
been neatly stored in the peat, it would have been found after many
centuries in practically undamaged condition.
Location
of the Stevensweert kantharos
To get straight to the point: There
are many doubts about the location and circumstances of the
kantharos. A.M. Gerhartl-Witteveen writes in her 2006 publication:
p. 48 [...] manufacture and life cycle of the cup.
Regarding the
latter, it is striking that no damage was found on either the inner
or outer cup that could have been the result of movement in flowing
water, which would inevitably have caused dents and scratches from
bumping against gravel and the like.
Therefore, in our opinion,
it is unlikely that the finder, J. Bongers, found the kantharos
among stones along the Maas River, as he later claimed. His
brother-in-law's story, that Bongers found the kantharos on the
dredger in a few lumps of clay, is more plausible because the clay
layer in which the kantharos lay on the riverbed protected it for
centuries, until the dredger disturbed the peace. [p. 19] And the
year 1939 was recorded by Bongers in 1966, when the kantharos had
temporarily returned to Stevensweert on the occasion of the 700th
anniversary of the Stevensweert parish. Bongers also said at the
time that he had not found the cup on the dredger, but had seen it
lying on a strip of gravel along the Maas while hunting. On a map,
he had indicated a location on the western bank of the river,
opposite Stevensweert,
thus on Belgian territory!
Bongers died
in 1969 and took the truth with him to his grave.
October
16, 1951 [...] The kantharos in question was found in 1942, during
the occupation, in Stevensweert, approximately eighteen kilometers
from Roermond, in
the deep gravel banks of the Maas River. The
finder saw nothing unusual in the clay-covered and gray rusty
object. He gave it to a private antiquities enthusiast, who kept it
unnoticed, thus safely, without exactly suspecting what it was. In
1949, he had the material from which the cup was made
expertly
examined.
October 24, 1952 The cup was found in 1942 by J.
Bongers, a resident of Stevensweert,
on a pile of gravel located
on a site on the Koeweide in Stevensweert. It consisted
of two
interlocking pieces completely covered in clay. This
had attached
itself to the outer wall like a shell. Here and there, this
shell
had crumbled, revealing the shiny underside. He took the
cup home, cleaned it, and placed it on a dresser in the living
room.
The so-called finder, Jaak Bongers, mentions no fewer than
three different locations. A map indicates one on the Dutch bank,
directly opposite the spot where the Belgian-Dutch border runs
perpendicular to the Maas River, near border marker 126. This border
marker, incidentally, had long since disappeared. The second is
somewhere on the Belgian bank. The third is on the Koeweide, which
at the time was located further north on the northern (western) bank
towards Maasbracht.
In coordinates: [5.8570 and 51.1440],
unknown, [5.8740 and 51.1490].
Perhaps the Koeweide shown here on
the map is not the one meant, as there is also supposedly a
Stevensweerter koeweide or Stevenweertsche koeweide, but that
doesn't significantly change the situation. On May 14, 1966, the
director of the Rijksmuseum Kam, under the watchful eye of Mayor J.
Kelleners, had a conversation with the alleged finder. No official
report was likely made of this conversation, but it did not clarify
the circumstances, location, or time of the discovery.
Therefore,
the Valkhof Museum is sticking to the dredger version. In this
regard, we encounter an oddity: assuming that multiple people worked
on a dredger, they could have corroborated Bongers' story in
retrospect, but this was apparently never asked.
The alleged
finder: Bongers
It has already been mentioned that the alleged
finder offered several versions of the discovery. If we study the
dredging industry, it's almost certainly not much gravel was
collected in Stevensweert in 1939, probably only from the second
half of 1941 onwards. The crew consisted mainly of Sliedrecht
residents, supplemented by local staff who worked there as
deckhands, barge skippers, and barge hands. If Bongers had found the
drinking cup during those activities and cleaned it immediately,
others would undoubtedly have seen it. He wouldn't have put a
cleaned cup in his jacket either; it's an object to show off. If
others were involved in some way, they would undoubtedly have come
forward in the 1950s when there was so much commotion about the the
one then called the Stevensweert kantharos! Colleagues or former
colleagues would have approached Bongers, and probably the press as
well, during that period to explain their work and to acknowledge
Bongers's role. None of this happened.
The
dredger uses buckets of sand and gravel to extract sand and gravel
from the ground. These buckets have a volume of up to half a cubic
meter. The load is then discharged into a series of drums and
sieves, separating the gravel into four different types. The sand is
also collected, and the water is returned to the river.
The
mass of the gravel in the rotating mill must have been many hundreds
of kilograms. A delicate, silver object is crushed in it. The pieces
would certainly separate, and it would be unlikely that a drinking
cup could be removed in one piece. If the drinking cup, containing
clay and sand, ended up in the mills and sieves, it could never have
emerged unscathed. The drinking cup likely wouldn't have passed
through the sieves in its entirety, as the largest sieve has 10 cm
holes, but the loose fragments would have been scattered among the
sorted boulders.
Moreover,
there was constant monitoring by a Rijkswaterstaat inspector, as we
read in the newspaper of April 21, 1933:
In
the spaces below deck, on either side of the channel for the bucket
chain,
there
are spacious accommodations for the engineer, mill master, and deck
crew, and for the Rijkswaterstaat inspector, who must always be on
board to monitor
the
quantity of sediment collected.
The
above and the at least three different versions Bongers has given
can only lead to one conclusion: the drinking cup was NOT found in
the Maas. It is also very remarkable that he gave the cup to a
brother-in-law without compensation and didn't intervene during the
commotion. He is the best person to provide the precise explanation,
but he explicitly declined to do so. During a sort of interrogation
in 1966, he offered a different version than before. The year of
discovery was given as 1939, 1942, or 1943. Unless you note the date
somewhere, you know whether it was before or after the start of the
German invasion.
Elsewhere,
it is reported that the pebbles in the gravel extraction areas were
so densely packed that the drinking cup would have been completely
crushed.
The
reason for his lies and silence can only be that he was somehow
bribed to make a false statement about the cup's discovery and thus
publicize it.
The
predecessor of the Valkhof Museum
The
G.M. Kam Museum in Nijmegen was not very successful in acquiring
masterpieces. Several masterpieces were acquired after the Second
World War on highly questionable grounds:
In
early April 1956, there was much discussion about the exact location
of the Trajan statue. A year later, the museum still had the statue
in its possession.
Dredgers
in Xanten allegedly embezzled the Head of Trajan, then smuggled it
to Nijmegen and sold it to an antique dealer.
The
Phrygian Ganymede (puer pileatus) was also purchased on questionable
grounds.
Archaeological
research during the occupation
On
July 31, 1940, the following announcement appeared in the
newspapers:
July
31, 1940, PUBLIC COOPERATION REQUESTED.
By
order of the Secretary-General, Acting Head of the Department of
Education, Arts and Sciences, dated May 24th, 1940, A committee for
archaeological soil research in the Netherlands was established,
while simultaneously a national bureau for archaeological soil
research was established. Dr. F. C. Bursch, curator at the National
Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, was appointed director. Prof. Dr.
N. J. Krom, professor at Leiden University, is chairing the
aforementioned committee.
In
the presence of Dr. W. D. van Wijngaarden, director of the Museum of
Antiquities and member of the committee, we recently had a meeting
with these gentlemen, during which they further explained the
purpose and working methods of the committee and the bureau.
According to Dr. Bursch, the simultaneously promulgated law is
primarily intended to prohibit unauthorized persons from conducting
excavations and has roughly the same scope as the law on monument
preservation. Objects found in Dutch soil are just as important for
the study of the earliest history of our country as archival
documents from more recent times and are therefore entitled to the
same treatment. The committee's first task was to determine which
institutions in our country are authorized to conduct scientific
soil research, and then to achieve coordination in this area. While
regional and local museums have also worked in this direction to
date, this has been without coherence.
Currently,
the following are authorized:
The
National Museum in Leiden and the Biological-Archaeological
Institute in Groningen will serve the entire country, and the
National Museum G. M. Kam in Nijmegen will serve the surrounding
area, at least as long as this museum remains under the direction of
Dr. J. H. Holwerda, the former director of the Leiden museum. All
local museums and provincial societies will have to apply for
recognition to conduct excavations, which recognition will only be
granted after the National Commission has issued its recommendation.
The
National Bureau is currently compiling a list of all sites in the
Netherlands that are of archaeological importance, so that timely
measures can be taken if the cultivation of these lands threatens to
destroy the archival documents hidden within. This list will make it
possible to protect such sites in the future. If this proves
impossible, the Bureau will endeavor to carefully preserve the
remains found during excavation for posterity. Furthermore, the
intention is to inventory any earlier finds that may be in local
museums or have been reported in recent decades, so that the office
can always determine the location of a particular archaeological
find.
Furthermore,
typical, old names of plots often indicate that relics from the past
can be found there, so it is recommended to compile a list of these
as well.
Finally,
in almost every location, there are some objects in private
possession, such as stone axes, arrowheads, etc., which should also
be recorded in drawings and photographs.
This
extensive inventory, according to Dr. Bursch, cannot be accomplished
without the cooperation of the general public. We need our
volunteers spread throughout the country, who inform us of the
existence of the aforementioned sites and inform us of the
archaeological finds located in their vicinity. Ideally, we would
have such a staff member in every municipality; it's quite possible
that the discovery of the thousandth Germanic urn will then be
reported to us, but after all, that too can provide clues about the
spread of Germanic culture, etc.
Soon,
the cooperation of all the mayors in the Netherlands will be
requested for this purpose.
But
that's not all we need, although they can be of great assistance to
us. What we need are staff from the people themselves, who will
regularly keep us informed when something special in the field of
antiquity occurs in their municipality. Please understand me well:
it is by no means our intention to acquire any finds for our museum;
on the contrary, the distribution of material among the existing
antiquity rooms, regional and local museums can only increase their
attractiveness [improved!], and nor do we want the rightful owners
to relinquish their possessions to us. Naturally, we would prefer to
see these objects placed in a museum, as there we have the greatest
guarantees that they will be expertly preserved. However, this
acquisition will only be possible with the full consent of the owner
and for a reasonable fee.
Furthermore,
if the finds are unique and of truly national significance, we will
naturally make every effort to find a home for them in the National
Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, possibly through exchange with
other museum pieces. However, our main goal is to have a complete
overview of the archaeological findings that the Dutch soil has
yielded and will continue to yield.
The
intention is that reports of finds in the three northern provinces
should be addressed to Prof. Dr. A. E. van Giffen in Groningen, and
for the rest of the country to Dr. F. C. Bursch, Director of the
National Bureau for Archaeological Soil Research, Rapenburg 28,
Leiden. This letter places great pressure on those who possess
archaeological finds, especially unique finds of truly national
significance. The Stevensweert kantharos is certainly one of them!
How
does the drinking cup fit into the overall find?
The
helmet was so valuable that its loss would be a huge setback for the
owner. Hiding the decorative helmet with other objects is
intentional. The value of the karanthos—given the amount of
silver—was much higher. So, from the perspective of the person
who hid all the objects in the peat, the loss is indeed greater, but
they could easily bear it. Anyone else would do everything they
could to recover such an object if it were accidentally lost.
You
could draw a comparison with a grave that is filled next to the body
with items related to the deceased, and food for the deceased.
Or
in the afterlife. You do this in the hope that the grave won't be
plundered. You then try to take measures against that.
With
such thoughts, the kantharos would indeed be part of the Man and
Horse equipment that ended up in the peat near Helenaveen.
Kluijtmans
writes: A silver cup has also been found, fitted with a hook to hang
it on the harness.
The
kantharos clearly matches the description of the first words; the
hook could be one of the handles. These have not been recovered,
even though scholars believe they certainly belonged to the cup.
Kluijtmans seems to suggest that the drinking cup, like the
beautiful small wine vessel he mentioned, holding a few liters, was
found in 1911.
All
in all, sufficient reason to suspect that director Bos of the N.V.
Maatschappij (Dutch Society) had these objects in his possession in
1911. At the conference of June 23, 1910, the stakeholders reached a
very clear agreement regarding the undescribed and
yet-to-be-discovered objects.
Adrianus
Bos was the designated person to acquire these objects. The
Helenaveen Society kept meticulous records, but director Bos
personally purchased the objects and thus kept them off the
company's books.
These
objects were therefore stored in the director's residence, but in
such a way that only a few people saw them, and then only the
director himself.
I
also compiled an inventory of people who may have seen the Roman
objects during the director's lifetime. This primarily concerns
servants, of course. Jootje, or Johanna, van de Bovenkamp came from
Helenaveen and was a servant in Bos's later years (from around
1925). Kluijtmans relates that the director at one point showed her
the contents of the cupboard. She was particularly struck by the
large leather objects. She probably didn't have the opportunity to
examine everything properly, let alone write it all down, even if
she were interested.
Others
who may have seen the find were the company's directors, and had
done so for almost 25 years. These individuals were generally very
successful social figures, such as the director of the State
Railways. They came to Helenaveen at least once a year for a
meeting, which was usually held elsewhere. On July 1, 1910, such a
meeting was held at the director's villa, more than two weeks after
the discovery. However, the minutes of the meeting make no mention
of it, even though the discovery had already been clearly reported
in the newspapers and had occurred only about 2 km away.
Doubts
about the origin of the kantharos
Rijksmuseum
Kam has doubted the story of the alleged finder, Bongers, from the
very beginning. This has already been mentioned several times above.
This concerns the war years and those up to approximately 1950. The
legal aftermath provides even more information.
For
example, we read in [1998] The Secret of the Smith by Mr. W.M.J.
Bekkers: [...]
Not
only are there different theories about the origin and age of the
Kantharos.
This
also applies to the year, the place, and the circumstances under
which the cup was found. Legal literature and case law mention
1942
and 1943, while Swinkels assumes 1939. He knows that at the request
of Drs.
A.V.M.
Hubrecht, director of the (then still) Rijksmuseum Kam from 1964 to
1978,
the
mayor and pastor of Stevensweert spoke with the finder of the
Kantharos, J. Bongers of Echt, in November 1966. Bongers then stated
that he had found the Kantharos in January or February 1939 while
hunting. On a map,
he
indicated where he had found the cup. This was supposedly on Belgian
territory,
on
the west side of the Maas River. According to Swinkels, Bongers had
previously reported other locations. Regarding this conversation
with Hubrecht on November 14, 1966, the mayor wrote, among other
things: "... I don't believe Mr. Bongers, or rather, he's
lying. He has already reported three different locations for the
Kantharos.
Which
one is correct? I don't know" (7).
7.
Hubrecht did not publish the location Bongers reported in 1966,
but
he did report the year 1939 as the date of the discovery (A.V.M.
Hubrecht, De Kantharos van
Stevensweert,
in Numaga 13 (1966) 243-251, with a photo of Mr. Bongers on p. 250).
Museum
Kam and its successor, Museum Het Valkhof, also questioned the
provenance of the drinking cup, but just like the legal aspects, the
museum was interested in possession, not the provenance.
Nevertheless, we find various comments on this in the museum's
publications.
[2006]
If Bongers did indeed pick up the kantharos from the dredger in
1943,
he
then took it home. According to the dredging permit, archaeological
finds had to be reported and handed over to the government. It is
therefore obvious that Bongers quickly attempted to monetize his
find.
[elsewhere
2006] In preparing this article, we studied the kantharos
intensively
several
times, paying particular attention to indications of the manufacture
and life cycle of the cup.
Regarding
the latter, it is striking that no damage was found on either the
inner or outer cup that could have been the result of movement in
flowing water, which would inevitably have caused dents and
scratches from bumping against gravel and the like. Therefore, in
our opinion, it is unlikely that the finder, J. Bongers, found the
kantharos among stones along the Maas, as he later claimed. His
brother-in-law's story, that Bongers found the kantharos on the
dredger in some lumps of clay, is more plausible because the clay
layer in which the kantharos lay on the riverbed protected it for
centuries, until the dredger disturbed the peace (see p. 18).
[1972]
The discovery went virtually unnoticed at the time: J. Bongers found
the cup
—in
two pieces—among the stones along the Maas River, washed off
the clay, and took it home.
Documents
about the Bongers family and the dredging company
December
19, 1934 SAD ACCIDENT ON THE Maas RIVER IN STEVENSWEERT
Four
people fell into the water. One of them drowned.
A
sad accident occurred on Tuesday morning around ten o'clock on the
Maas River near the municipality of Stevensweert.
The
Van Hasselt company from Nijmegen has been operating a dredging
business there for several years. On Sunday, a tugboat arrived to
tow away the dredger, which was undergoing repairs.
This
was scheduled for Tuesday, and around ten o'clock, four of the
boat's occupants had boarded a rowboat and sailed from the dredger
to the shore to cast off the mooring line. They slid along the
cable. They may have been standing on one side of the boat at some
point, causing it to take on water and capsize, causing all four to
fall into the water.
The
tugboat, which was moored near the dredger, quickly sailed to the
scene of the accident, halfway along the shore, and managed to
rescue two of them; the third had managed to reach the shore by
swimming. The fourth tragically drowned, despite further attempts to
save him. His body has not yet been found.
The
victim is married and 37 years old, named H. Peperkamp from
Doornenburg, in the municipality of Bemmel, Gelderland.
August
4, 1945 The Gravel Dredgers
DE
VRIJE STEM, the organ of the G.O.I.W., contains a thorough article
about the wartime collaboration of the Gravel Dredgers for the
construction of the Atlantic Wall.
We
have included some figures from this article to clarify the matter
for our readers.
The
Paes Company in Nijmegen produced 209,349 tons in 1939 ... 537,960
tons in the eight months of 1944.
The
Van Hasselt Company in Lent produced 270,634 tons in 1939 and
915,212 tons in 1943. The N.V. Grint Mij in Arnhem increased from
184,291 tons in 1939 to 483,938 tons in 1943. For the N.V. van
Roosmalen Transp. and Handelsmij in Maastricht, these figures were:
108,905 tons and 210,851 tons.
The
Hovestad en Dekker company in Roermond began operations during the
war years and produced 211,421 tons by 1943.
The
Ballastmij de Merwede in Rotterdam produced 225,526 tons in 1940 and
235,205 tons in 1943.
Official
complaints about all these companies have been filed with the
Military Commissioner.
And
now the Vrije Stem continues:
All
gravel produced in the Netherlands was resold by the N.V. gravel
sales office in Nijmegen. The director of this company was Mr.
Zuidema. This office provided gravel distribution services during
this period and, among other things, sent a letter to the affiliated
producers urging them to increase production. We requested the
closure of this sales office and the seizure of its records. This
was done.
The
German company "Niba" increased its production from
350,685 tons in 1938 to 1,522,949 tons in 1943. However, this
company has two Dutch directors, Messrs. Müller and van Sprang.
This, too, is tolerable even with a large dose of forbearance.
However, the fact that Mr. Müller was appointed a member of the
tribunal in Nijmegen strikes us as "somewhat strange."
The
fact that Mr. Wagemaker, as Director of the Gravel Sales Office,
felt compelled to assist the German Wehrmacht may be due to his very
"businesslike" views. However, the fact that he was
appointed manager of the National Socialist assets strikes us as
"somewhat strange."
And
Mr. van Roosmalen, who had approximately doubled his production, was
charged with raising the ships sunk by the Germans in the port of
Maasbracht. To great dismay of the hundreds of skippers.
June
16, 1964. Construction awarded [...]
Van
Hasselt Gendt (Gelderland) 5, 5, 2, and 1 cent.
The
registrations of {...] and the Niba were not accepted.
April
3, 2013. Jacobus Antonius Bongers was married to Hubertina Cornelia
van der Riet (hamlet Diepstraat?). The couple lived in Echt at
Maasbrachterweg 100.
A
few days before February 1, 1937, Theodorus Lucienne was born. This
Theo has passed away.
A
few days before March 8, 1943, Helena Henrica Johanna was born.
Another
son (aged 77 or 78). A son and a daughter are said to now live in
South Africa. Jan Bongers is said to live in Roermond. Information
obtained from a cousin of Jaak Bongers from Stevensweert, Bernard
Bongers. Jaak Bongers was called a fantasist in the family.
April
3, 2013 The dredger Jaak Bongers worked on was no longer owned by
Dekker, but by the Van Hasselt company from Nijmegen (or Lent or
Gendt). This Van Hasselt company had purchased the dredger from
Dekker. It was probably a simple dredger, with a stationary sieve or
sieves.
The
arguments above have been presented that cast doubt on whether the
kantharos was actually found in the municipality of Stevensweert.
These arguments are repeated below.
-
It is by no means certain that the Maas River flowed where
Stevensweert is now located in the fourth century. The Oude Maas
River lies further east.
-
The numerous floods of the Maas River would have severely damaged
the cup. In January and February 1926, all of Western Europe was
gripped by high river waters. Stevensweert was also a victim: it is
reported that the Maas River there had become between 4 and 5 km
wide! Under these circumstances, a delicate structure like the
drinking cup would have at least shattered and likely been carried
to sea, resulting in the kantharos's permanent loss.
-
There are three variations on the circumstances, the location, and
the year of discovery:
And
the year 1939 was recorded by Bongers in 1966, when the kantharos
had temporarily returned to Stevensweert on the occasion of the
700th anniversary of the Stevensweert parish. Bongers also stated at
the time that he had not found the cup on the dredger, but had seen
it lying on a strip of gravel along the Maas while hunting. On a
map, he had indicated a location on the western bank of the river,
opposite Stevensweert, thus on Belgian territory!
The
kantharos in question was found in 1942, during the occupation, in
Stevensweert, approximately eighteen kilometers from Roermond in the
deep gravel banks of the Maas. The finder didn't see anything
unusual in the clay-covered, gray, rusty object. He gave it to a
private antiquities enthusiast, who kept it unnoticed, thus safely,
without suspecting precisely what it was. In 1949, he had the
material from which the cup was made expertly examined.
The
cup was found in 1942 by J. Bongers, a resident of Stevensweert, on
a pile of gravel located on a plot of land on the Koeweide in
Stevensweert. It consisted
of
two interlocking pieces completely covered in clay. This had adhered
to the outer wall like a shell. Here and there, this shell had
crumbled, revealing the shiny base. He took the cup home, cleaned
it, and placed it on a dresser in the living room.
The
so-called finder, Jaak Bongers, mentions no fewer than three
different locations. A map shows one on the Dutch bank, directly
opposite the spot where the Belgian-Dutch border runs perpendicular
to the Maas River, near border marker 126. The second is somewhere
on the Belgian bank. The third is on the Koeweide, which at the time
was located further north on the northern (western) bank towards
Maasbracht.
In
coordinates: [5.8570 and 51.1440], unknown, [5.8740 and 51.1490].
Perhaps
the Koeweide on the map isn't the one meant, as there also
supposedly exists a Stevensweerter koeweide or Stevenweertsche
koeweide, but that doesn't fundamentally change the situation.
-
Brom believes he can deduce the year 1942 from a conversation he had
with Bongers in April 1950, in which Bongers suggested that the cup
had been on his cupboard for some time before he showed it to
Schoonenberg. [...]
-
On May 14, 1966, the director of the Rijksmuseum Kam, under the
watchful eye of Mayor J. Kelleners, had a conversation with the
alleged finder. Probably no official report was made of this
conversation. But it did not clarify the circumstances, place, and
time of the discovery.
There
are variou theories about the origin and age of the Kantharos. This
also applies to the year, location, and circumstances under which
the cup was found. Legal literature and case law mention 1942 and
1943, while Swinkels assumes 1939. He knows that at the request of
Drs.A.V.M. Hubrecht, director of the (then) Rijksmuseum Kam from
1964 to 1978, the mayor and pastor of Stevensweert spoke with the
finder of the Kantharos, J. Bongers of Echt, in November 1966.
Bongers then stated that he had
found the Kantharos in January or
February 1939 while hunting. On a map, he indicated where he had
found the cup. This was supposedly on Belgian territory, on the west
side of the Maas River. According to Swinkels, Bongers had
previously mentioned other locations. Regarding this conversation
with Hubrecht on November 14, 1966, the mayor wrote, among other
things: "... I don't believe Mr. Bongers, or rather, he's
lying. He has already listed three different locations for the
Kantharos.
Which one is correct? I don't know."
-
October 31, 1941 [...] In Linne and also in Roermond, gravel can be
found under a layer of clay and sand of several meters, sometimes to
a depth of 15 to 16 meters. Occasionally, prehistoric finds are
found in these gravel layers, including
mammoth teeth and deer
antlers, etc., which are of scientific value. Besides Roermond, a
private company has also started gravel mining in Stevensweert. All
these activities provide work for many people. - August 28, 1951. My
brother-in-law, Mr. J. Bongers (...), first showed me the
aforementioned cup in the autumn of nineteen hundred and
forty-three. My brother-in-law, Mr. Bongers, was working at the time
on the dredger "De Dekker," which dredged gravel in the
floodplains of the Maas River called "De Sleyen," near
Stevensweert.
When showing me the cup, my brother-in-law told me
that a few days previously, when the dredger was set to a digging
depth of sixteen meters below the waterline, he had collected the
object in two separate pieces from the discharge chute of the mill,
into which the buckets pour their contents. Afterward, Bongers had
cleaned both parts of the clay and silt at home, and it turned out
that [...]
- If we study the dredging industry, then almost
certainly not much gravel was collected in Stevensweert in 1939,
probably only from the second half of 1941 onwards. The crew
consisted mainly of Sliedrecht residents, supplemented by local
staff who worked there as deckhands, barge skippers, and barge
hands. If Bongers had found the drinking cup during those activities
and cleaned it immediately, others would undoubtedly have seen it.
He wouldn't have put a cleaned cup in his jacket either; it's an
object to show off. If others were involved in some way, they would
undoubtedly have come forward in the 1950s when there was such a
fuss about the cup, then called the kantharos of Stevensweert!
Colleagues or former colleagues would have approached Bongers, and
probably the press as well, during that period to explain their work
and acknowledge Bongers's role. None of this happened. The dredger
extracts sand and gravel from the ground using buckets. These
buckets have a volume of up to half a cubic meter. The load is then
discharged into a series of drums and sieves, separating the gravel
into four grades. The sand is also collected, and the water is
returned to the river.
The gravel mass in the rotating mill must
be several hundred kilograms. A delicate, silver object is crushed
in it. The fragments will certainly separate, and it's unlikely that
a drinking cup could be removed in one piece. If the drinking cup
containing clay and sand had ended up in the mills and sieves, it
could not have emerged unscathed.
The drinking cup likely
wouldn't have passed through the sieves in its entirety, as the
largest sieve has 10 cm holes, but the loose fragments would have
been scattered among the sorted boulders. Moreover, there was
constant monitoring by a Rijkswaterstaat inspector, as we read in
the newspaper of April 21, 1933:
In the spaces below deck, on
either side of the bucket chain channel,
there are spacious
accommodations for the engineer, mill master, and deck crew, and for
the Rijkswaterstaat inspector, who must always be on board to
monitor
the quantity of sediment collected.
- Elsewhere, it is
reported that the pebbles in the gravel extraction areas were so
tightly packed that the drinking cup would have been completely
crushed.
- Museum Kam and its successor, Museum Het Valkhof, also
doubted the origin of the drinking cup, but, just like the legal
aspects, possession was important to the museum, not the provenance.
Yet,
we find various comments on this in the museum's publications.
[2006]
If Bongers did indeed pick up the kantharos from the dredger in
1943, he subsequently took it home and did not declare it.
According
to the dredging permit, archaeological finds had to be reported and
handed over to the government. It is therefore also obvious that
Bongers quickly attempted to monetize his find.
[elsewhere
2006] In preparing this article, we studied the kantharos
intensively several times, paying particular attention to
indications of the cup's manufacture and life cycle.
Regarding
the latter, it is striking that no damage was found on either the
inner or outer cup that could have resulted from movement in running
water, which would inevitably have caused dents and scratches from
bumping against gravel and the like. Therefore, in our opinion, it
is unlikely that the finder, J. Bongers, found the kantharos among
stones along the Maas River, as he later claimed. His
brother-in-law's story, that Bongers found the kantharos on the
dredger in some clods of clay, is more plausible because the clay
layer in which the kantharos lay on the riverbed protected it for
centuries, until the dredger disturbed the peace (see p. 18).
[1972]
The discovery went virtually unnoticed at the time: J. Bongers found
the cup —in two pieces—among the stones along the Maas
River, the clay was washed off, and it was taken home.
-
Acquisition by Museum Kam
The
G.M. Kam Museum in Nijmegen has not been very successful in
acquiring masterpieces. Several masterpieces were acquired after the
Second World War on highly questionable grounds:
In
early April 1956, there was much commotion about the exact location
of the statue of Trajan. A year later, the museum still had the
statue in its possession.
Dredgers
in Xanten allegedly embezzled the Head of Trajan, then smuggled it
to Nijmegen and sold it to an antique dealer.
The
Phrygian Ganymede (puer pileatus) was also acquired on questionable
grounds.
-
Not only have no co-workers on the dredger come forward to say that
Bongers found the object, but there are also no known testimonies
from family members who can testify about the kantharos at the
Bongers household.
-
Neither Jaak Bongers nor any family members or the like have ever
been heard about the object. At least, the author has been unable to
find anything on the subject.
A
nephew calls Jaak Bongers a fantasist in 2013, at least that's how
he was described in the family.
-
The kantharos is so fragile that only a few people should handle it.
Surely the condition of the drinking cup couldn't have deteriorated
so much in 60 years that it came from a dredger or something similar
and is now untouchable.
ON
THE GOLD NECKLACES AND RINGS FOUND IN VELP, NEAR ARNHEM
BY
Dr. L. J. F. JANSSEN, CONSERVATOR AT THE MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES IN
LEIJDEN.
With
illustrations.
NOT
SOLD SEPARATELY.
IN
ARNHEM, WITH IS. AN. NIJHOFF. 1851.
Among
the rarest discoveries recently made in our country are the gold
ornaments mentioned at the beginning of this article, which are
reproduced hereinafter in precise illustrations. This great rarity
is the reason why we are publishing them soon and accompanying them
with a brief explanatory note. We found this all the more compelling
reason because an earlier report, circulated by the newspapers, had
given rise to the erroneous belief that these objects were from the
chivalric era or from some noble family, thus of very late origin
(*). Before I proceed to clarify this, I would first like to offer
my sincere thanks and appreciation to Mr. T. BRANTSEN, mayor of
Reeden et al., for his cooperation in preventing these objects from
being scattered or thrown into the melting pot, as well as for the
opportunity he gave me to examine them accurately.
(*)
See, for example, Algemeen Handelsblad, January 15, 1851.
to
examine them, and, with the owner's consent, to have them reproduced
under my supervision. Indeed, even if my illuminating notes were of
no value, these images would still be of great importance, as they
prevent science from being too severely damaged in the event of the
possible loss of the original pieces, and because images of single
memorials like these significantly enrich the building material of
archaeology.
I
will 1.) briefly report the discovery, with regard to the exact
location and manner in which the objects were found, according to
the finder's reports and an autopsy; 2.) describe the found objects
in those details that could not be determined by the images; 3.)
attempt to shed some light on their age, origin, and intended
purpose.
1.
On
January 16, 1851, the gardener CARRO of Velp, in the garden of Mr.
J. J. JOBIUS [JORIUS], accidentally discovered eleven gold ornaments
while turning the soil: neck and finger rings, all hanging from one
of the large neck rings (see Fig. 1), and apparently placed in the
ground deliberately, though in ancient times. The depth at which
they were found was over half a Dutch ell, and they lay on the usual
sandy soil of the area. This garden was formerly communal land; near
the spot where the objects were found, the villagers used to collect
their sand; only later was the land cultivated and transferred to
private ownership. The discovery site is situated quite high and
appears to have been somewhat higher in the past than it is now.
Apparently, it is situated at the same elevation as the Reformed
Church, which is approximately 250 yards south of it. Neither under
nor around the objects was anything other than ordinary sandy soil
found; no trace of burning was discovered, nor any evidence that the
pieces had originally been enclosed in a cloth, box, or similar
object. This is all the more certain because the entire garden and
even adjacent fields were carefully turned over after the discovery,
in the hope of finding something, but this effort was entirely
fruitless. The precise location of this discovery is not without
importance, because in 1715, in the same village, a treasure of
ancient gold objects was also discovered (mentioned below), from
which these ornaments receive some clarification.
2.
Of
the eleven rings, only eight are depicted here, because four were
similar in shape and decoration, so that three can be sufficiently
identified by reference to a single illustration.
Fig.
1. Neck ring; heavy 7 lead, 7 wedges; fineness 18 carats; gold value
f95.50.
Fig.
2. Neck ring; only the front part of the clasp is depicted, because
the rest corresponded exactly to Fig. 1; heavy 5 lead, 7 wedges, 3
grains; fineness 18 carats; gold value f71.
Fig.
3. Neck ring; heavy 5 lead, 8 wedges, 3 grains; fineness 18 carats;
gold value f72.05. There are three more of this type, which are not
depicted, because their shape and decoration were completely
identical to this one. Only one of these three is missing the small
cluster of decorations seen on both sides of Fig. 3. The weight of
one of these three is 7 lead, 3 wedges, 8 grains, the gold value
f91. The weight of the second is 7 lead, 5 grains, worth 87.40
guilders in gold; the weight of the third is 8 lead, 7 wedges, 7
grains, worth 106.20 guilders in gold. All are 18-carat fineness.
Fig.
4. Necklace; weight 4 lead, 1 wedge, 6 grains; fineness 18 carats;
worth 51.55 guilders in gold.
Fig.
5. Spiral, as a finger ring; heavy 3 lead, 9 wedge; fineness 18
carats; gold value 48.35 guilders.
Fig.
6. Fragment of a ring, deliberately bent, and very likely a ring
like Fig. 4 or 5. Heavy 7 wedge, 2 grains; fineness 24 carats; gold
value 11.20 guilders.
Fig.
7. Finger ring, provided with an oval, hollowed-out shield, which
would originally have contained an engraved stone. However, the
stone was missing when it was found, and was probably already
missing when the ring fell into the ground, as the finder assured me
that he found nothing but sand in the hollow of the shield and
searched in vain for the missing stone. This ring shows signs of
having been worn extensively. Heavy 1 lead, 2 grains; fineness 24
carats; gold value 15.90 guilders.
Fig.
8. Finger ring, on whose square shield the bust of a warrior is
deeply engraved (en crux) and surrounded by a pointed border; the
warrior appears to be a barbarian, not a Roman. Weight 1 lead;
fineness 18 carats; gold value ƒ12.40.
This
statement shows that the eleven gold rings together weighed 53 lead
4 grains, with a gold value of ƒ652.95 (*), and that they were
made of 18 carat gold, with the exception of Figs. 6 and 7, which
were fineness 24 carats.
*
The appraisal was done by M. C. MENTE, a goldsmith here.
All
objects showed signs of wear, some more, some less; the finger rings
Figs. 7 and 8 showed the most. The round portion of the neck rings
had several small curves, which could have been caused by frequent
putting on and taking off, which forced the rings to bend, or by
repeated pressure from other objects that may have rested on them.
All
were hand-worked; even the round portion of the neck rings, evident
from small irregularities, has been hammered out of the band. The
flat portion is three-sided on the outside; see the cross-sections
in Fig. 1. b, c, and d. The decorations were stamped in, not
hand-engraved, which is especially evident from their perfect
uniformity. They demonstrate great taste and artistry. The circles
in Fig. 6 are only on one side, which would have been the outer edge
of the ring. The bust in Fig. 7 appears to have been hand-engraved.
The
closure of the neck rings is the same on all of them; namely, an
acorn-shaped eyelet (see Fig. 1a), through which a pointed button
was inserted. Furthermore, the neck rings, especially at the front
and on the outside, have a brownish color, from which the goldsmith
charged with the appraisal concluded that they were originally
deliberately colored.
3.
To
judge the age, origin, and purpose, we have, due to the lack of
inscriptions (such as coins and memorial stones), only the objects
themselves as guides, and must therefore seek light from these,
compared with others found elsewhere.
The
eye is involuntarily drawn first to the finger ring Fig. 7, which
bears a bust. One hopes that the portrait will be recognized and
verified by history. But in the rough features in which that image
is depicted, we have searched in vain for a known person. It is not
a Roman emperor. The head is adorned with dense and small curls, or
with a fur cap. On the chest and shoulders, one sees the folds of a
cloak, and possibly the upper edge of a shield is indicated under
his chin. He appears to be a barbarian, although I have not found
the image among known barbarian princes. However, one would more
likely suspect him of being a barbarian than a Roman, because the
specific characteristics of the Roman character and costume are
lacking. Meanwhile, the workmanship and shape of the ring itself are
similar to those of Roman rings from a later period. In shape and
rough workmanship, it is similar, for example, to the ring at
ARNETH, Gold- und Silberwerke u. s. f., Tab. G, S. XX No. 152, S.
33, on whose square shield the busts of Constantinus Jun. and his
wife are engraved; as well as to the ring from Louisendorf, with the
inscription FIDEM CONSTANTINO, depicted in my "Memorials of the
Germans and Romans, etc.," pl. XVI, 6-8, and to another from
the same region, exactly identical to the latter, in the possession
of Mr. P. C. G. GUYOT in The Hague (*). But I would consider our
Velp ring to be from even later than the Constantinian period. This
is prompted by the consideration of the gold treasure found in the
same village in 1715, which included coins from the period of the
(*)
Mr. GUYOT's ring was found in the vicinity of Kleve in 1850 and is
so excellently preserved that it could be considered new. Since two
finger rings have now been found, completely identical, including
the inscription, and from the same region, one may assume that they
were donated by one of the Constantinians.
municipal
commanders, probably of barbarian auxiliaries, were given, as was
very common, especially in that period.
Constantinians were,
and later ones too, the youngest of the tyrant John, whose last coin
(MEDIOBARBI, p. 537) is from the year 425. This golden treasure, not
unimportant for elucidating our ornaments in general, may be briefly
mentioned here, especially because it is little known and can only
be known incompletely from written works in Dutch. Some reports
about it can be found in ENGELBERTS, Aloude staat, IV. 336; G. VAN
HASSELT, Arnhemsche Oudheden, IV. 1-3; REUVENS AND WESTENDORP,
Antiquities, III. 148, where mention is also made of STARING, in the
Verh. der Haarlemsche Maatschappij, XI. 451 (1822); IS. AN. NIJHOFF,
Wandelingen in de Omstreken van Arnhem, 5th ed., p. 107, where
KILIAAN, Etymol. voce thunderstone, was also mentioned; but the most
voluminous and contemporaneous documents can be found in G. CUPER,
Lettres de critiques etc., Amsterdam 1742, 4°, p. 179, and in
the saggi di Dissertat. Accadd. di Cortona, tom. IV. p. 255 sqq.
(Roma 1743, 4°), Dissert. YI*, sopra alcune medaglie d'oro,
divisa in tre letterse, due di GISBERTO CUPERO ed una di Mr.
FRANSCISCO BIANCHINI.
In both of the latter works, there are also
two images of medallions by Honorius and Galla Placidia, rounded up
from that treasure (*). The following report is taken from these
documents.
At Laar(§), in Velp, in 1715, workmen and
soldiers, while digging and leveling a barren and hilly piece of
pastureland (sterile prato), belonging to a tobacco merchant,
discovered this treasure.
(*)
ARNETH, who in his Gold- und Silberw., p. 7, cites this Velp gold
treasure as one of the most important gold discoveries in Europe,
and who cites the Lettres de critiques l. c. as his source,
incorrectly named Velperg as the discovery site, instead of Velp,
and listed Cuper GISBERT as the describer, instead of the renowned
scholar GISBERT CUPER.
(§) Laar, ed. Lár ~ dwelling,
house; see GRAFF, althochd. Sprachschatz;, II, 143; cf. MEIJER
Zurich. Ortsnamen S. 10 (1849); and L. P. C. VAN DEN BERGH, Krit.
Woordenb. der Ned. Myth., p. 124.
While
he wanted to improve it into tobacco land, a gold treasure was found
with a gold value of 10,000 to 12,000 guilders. It consisted of a
necklace (collier), bracelets (brasseletten), coins, and medallions.
Everything lay in the loose earth, but the necklace and bracelets
were laid in a circle; the center of this circle was covered with
medallions, which had decorative borders and were placed next to
each other in such a way that they formed a kind of floor, five of
these medallions being attached to the necklace (*). On these
medallions, the smaller gold coins were placed side by side. The
finders immediately divided the treasure, made off with it, and sold
the majority to goldsmiths, who threw it into the melting pot, so
that the combined find has never been seen by any connoisseur or
enthusiast. Meanwhile, Cuperus had the privilege of viewing another
thirty of the gold coins found in Arnhem and even purchasing two of
them, one by Honorius and one by Valentinian; the others he had seen
belonged to Constantine the Great and his sons, to Valens, Gratian,
and other emperors of the time, as well as one by John. He also saw
a few more medallions in Arnhem, specifically one by Honorius and
one by Galla Placidia (§). According to the information of
Cuperus (who cites Baron Van Spaen of Biljoen as an informant), the
brasselets and the necklace
(*)
For examples of how such medallions hung on the necklaces, see the
Hist. Ant. Mittheilungen of the Society of Antiquities in
Copenhagen, pages 97-98, fig. 1, and in Arneth 1. c. Table G. L., p.
8.
(§) Both of these were published in the aforementioned
treatises. The medallion of Honorius was then in the possession of
Mayor De Groot of Arnhem, and that of Galla Placidia was with Baron
Van Spaen of Biljoen. Later, the Galla Placidia came into the
collection of Mr. Van Damme; see Engelberts 1. c., and from there
passed into the Royal Collection in The Hague; see J. C. De Jonge,
Notice, p. 99.
have
melted down. ENGELBERTS, on the other hand, reports that the
necklace "is still kept as a baptismal ornament by a certain
family." ENGELBERTS had not seen it with his own eyes, nor did
he describe it or name the family; but his assurance seems beyond
doubt. If it were still kept by any family, they would certainly
oblige science by reporting it (*). ENGELBERTS also reported that
Mr. VAN DAMME from the same area (Velp) owned an unusually large
medal of Constantine the Great, which, however, had not been
attached to the gold necklace, as well as a heavy gold finger ring,
or ring, decorated with inlaid figurines of the early Christians
(and?) with a sapphire stone, depicting the Empress Helena. From
this report, one seems to infer that these objects also came from
Velp. Regarding the discovery site, Het Laar, we read in CUPER's
account that some, because of the mounds that had formerly been in
that field, had thought this golden treasure came from a burial
ground. However, CUPER considered this improbable because, according
to him, not the slightest trace of a burial ground was found during
the demolition of the mound where these objects lay, and because
burial with treasure was no longer common among the Romans at that
time.
We
agree with CUPER on this point; But we must not fail to note that it
has not been proven that the treasure was hidden there by the
Romans, and that barbarians at that time were indeed in the habit of
burying it with their deceased treasures. —
(*)
But it probably no longer exists. After all, the aforementioned Mr.
Brantsen told me that he had only a vague idea that the necklace had
been in his family, but that it had been converted into currency
during the French occupation.
From
these statements, one may conclude without presumption that the gold
discovery at Laar dates from the first half of the fifth century,
because the youngest coins were from the beginning of the fifth
century. And this is the reason why we have raised the suspicion
that our gold ornaments date from a slightly later period than that
of the Constantines. Indeed, both gold discoveries may well be
considered simultaneous or nearly so, since Laar is only 10 minutes
away from the site where our objects were found, and because neither
find yielded any traces of burial, but rather that they were
deliberately buried in the ground and not lost by chance.
The
finger ring, Fig. 8, which originally contained an engraved stone,
is so strikingly similar in form and workmanship to Roman finger
rings that we need not cite any examples for comparison. However,
the situation is different with the other ornaments, particularly
the neck rings. These do not correspond in either form or
ornamentation to the Roman ones we know. At first glance, one might
even suspect that they were rather head rings, diadems; after all,
their shape is somewhat similar to that of some diadems from
classical antiquity: see, for example, the illustrations in CAYLUS,
Recueil, I. partie 4, ri. LXXXV, 4; MONTFAUCON, Antiq. expliq. III
PI. XX. and XXV, and BOLDETTI, i cimiteri etc. p. 526. Mr.
HIIDEBRAND, supervisor of the Museum of Antiquities in Copenhagen,
who (28 August) saw the drawings of our Velp ornaments here, also
recently told me that gold diadems of a similar shape had been found
in Sweden, which were suspected there of being of Eastern origin.
Meanwhile, these Swedish diadems were so different from ours that
they were closed at the back and open at the front (perpendicularly
cut) and therefore elastic. However, our Velp rings cannot be
mistaken for diadems, because the wide, flat portion of the clasps
runs counter to the back closure, so that if they were used as
diadems, they would not lie flat against the forehead, but would
injure the head with the sharp point of the front; whereas, placed
around the neck, they fit very effectively with the flat front
against the breastbone, and the decorated portion is therefore
visible to everyone. This purpose is beyond doubt, and if any doubt
remains, it will disappear upon consideration that similar rings
have been found elsewhere fastened around the necks of corpses.
However, these rings found elsewhere are few in number and extremely
rare. They were found in a region that has so far been little
explored for comparative archaeology, and we are all the more
willing to mention them because they are the only examples from all
antiquity (at least as far as I know) that closely resemble our Velp
neck rings.
In
Livonia, east of the Baltic Sea, DR. F. KRUSE, the tireless
researcher of monumental antiquity, has recently conducted many
excavations, particularly in burial mounds of the oldest inhabitants
there. He shared his findings in the work "Necrolivonica,"
published in Petersburg in 1842. There, Tab. 4, fig. N. (cf. p. 7 of
the text), one finds a bronze neck ring depicted, found in an old
grave at Aschenraden and still attached to the skeleton's neck. This
neck-ring is remarkably similar in shape to ours (namely Figs. 1, 2
and 3); it is, like ours, hammered out on three sides at the front,
while the rest is round. It differs only in that the ornaments are
not entirely the same, and that the closure is not exactly at the
back, but on the right side of the neck. On the wide front, there
are also some bronze clasps, which are almost shaped like spoons
from ancient hair tongs (tweezers). This last detail, however, does
not detract from the similarity in the least, because according to
Kruse's reports, such neck rings without clasps have also been found
in Livonia. At Ronneberg, in an old grave, he discovered two such
neck rings, one above the other, around the neck of a male skeleton;
these are depicted at the top of Table 27, fig. 8. A neck ring was
found at Kerklingen, in Kurland, and at the top of Table 27, fig. 8.
41, fig. 3, depicted, is decorated on the front, on the wide part,
with a decoration that completely resembles the triangular
decorations of our rings; but this neck ring is rope-shaped at the
back. Furthermore, what KRUSE reports regarding the decorations on
the Aschenrade antiquities is noteworthy. These decorations
generally consisted of circular eyelets (sometimes one eyelet with a
double outline, sometimes two single eyelets below and one above),
zigzags, and small squares. Such decorations are also found on our
rings. Regarding the rarity of these objects, KRUSE states that he
had never encountered a ring similar to the Aschenrade one, neither
in Germany nor in Scandinavia. This testimony is significant coming
from an antiquarian with as much experience as KRUSE. We permit
ourselves to add only that we are not aware of any such neck rings
from Britain (*), France, and Belgium (§), while the classical
art
(*)
In this connection, I must also note that, according to ARNETH I.
c., a gold torque, broad on one side like a diadem, was found in
Cornwall in 1783, depicted in LYSONS, Magna Britt. III. p. CCXXI,
and a bronze one, depicted in the Archaeologia, XIV, 94. But the
rings mentioned in those works bear very little resemblance to ours.
(§)
It should be noted that this by no means denies that the Germans,
Britons, and Celts living in those countries generally did not wear
neck rings. The opposite is well known; there is ample evidence for
this, which can be found from ancient writers and monuments; We
will, however, save this discussion for another occasion, as we must
now concentrate on brevity and will only touch upon the most
necessary points that serve as clarification here.
works
from Greece and Italy (including the Etruscans) offer no comparison
other than the aforementioned, rather inconspicuous, diadems (*).
The evidence will undoubtedly have demonstrated the extreme rarity
of these objects; even rarer than the Aschenraden by KRUSE, insofar
as these were made only of bronze, while ours, on the other hand,
are made of gold.
The
few explanations KRUSE has provided regarding the origin and age of
the Aschenraden rings cannot be of any use to us, as they consist
only of quotations from ancient Nordic and Russian authors, relating
to the use of neck rings in general and dating back no further than
the eleventh century. KRUSE may have judged his Aschenraden objects
to belong to that late medieval period, although he doesn't
explicitly say so. However, if he were of that opinion, our Velp
neck rings would certainly lead him to a different conclusion.
*
A small, flat, diadem-shaped gold finger ring, found near Wijk bij
Duurstede and now in the Museum of Antiquities here, may be compared
from afar. This one is decorated on the outside with triangular
figures, provided with eyelets, and enclosed in a pointed edge; it
is open at the narrow end and therefore elastic, unlike the
aforementioned Swedish diadems, although in those cases the opening
was on the wide side. This Wijk finger ring was judged by the
Swedish antiquarian, Mr. HILDEBRAND, to belong to the fifth century.
For the shape of this Wijk ring, compare the arm ring in WORSAAE,
Dänemarks Vorzeit, p. 46, and for the decoration, p. 47.
Regarding
the specific tribe from which they supposedly originated, KRUSE also
offers no clues. But if the graves he found at Aschenraden belong to
a people indigenous there, then in our view they belonged to a
Nordic tribe, for it is plausible that the peoples who formerly
lived close to the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea (specifically its
southern part) were of the same tribe as those on the western coast,
which now belongs to Sweden. According to MONE, Gesch. des
Heidenth., I.7,66, the Livonians, Ehstlanders, and Kurlanders were
attributed to the Finnic lineage; but regarding the oldest peoples
on the Baltic coasts, see especially Grimm, History of the German
Language, p. 716 A.D.
The
neck ring Fig. 4, which consists entirely of round, hammered gold
wire, must be attributed a similar origin due to its similar closure
and similar gold content. We will not dwell on this in detail; it is
apparently of the simplest type; but it was possible that it
originally held ornaments; at least, the completely round clasp is
very suitable for this, and such round neck rings, with objects
hanging from them, have sometimes been found (*).
The
heavy spiral ring Fig. 5, which could have been used as a finger
ring, although its size and weight must have somewhat hindered the
free movement of the finger, seems, like the previous one, not to be
Roman, but barbarian in origin or purpose. One could argue against
this that the Romans in the later imperial period took the luxury of
wearing many and heavy finger rings to great lengths, and that they
sometimes covered all their fingers, up to the top, with them
without taste; see QUINTILIAN. XI, 3, MARTIAL. XIV, 123, and
especially XI, 59, where he lashes Zoilus with bitter mockery.
(*)
For example. in Normandy; see the yearbooks of the Societé
des antiquaires de Normandie, 1827—1828, pl. 20 No. C.
Tombeaux Gaulois-Romains.
Zoile,
quid tota gemmam praecingere libra
Too
juvat et miserum perdere sardonycha?
Annulus
iste tuis fuerat mode cruribus optus,
Non
eadem digitis pondera conveniunt.
But
spiral finger rings as heavy as ours are not known to me from the
Romans, neither in figurines nor in originals. On the other hand,
they have been found among Germanic-Nordic objects. We will mention
only one example, which offers the greatest resemblance to our ring.
In 1833, a gold treasure was discovered in Fühnen, consisting
of arm rings, brasselets, cloak hooks, medallions, etc., together
weighing 8 pounds 7 lead (Nordic weight); among these was a heavy,
solid gold spiral finger ring, similar to ours; see the illustration
in the Hist. Antiq. Mittheilungen der Societät für Nord.
Allerth., Table V, 13, compare the text S. 92-97. This Fühnen
ring is only slightly shorter than ours, and tapers at both ends;
But it was possible that our Velp ring had originally been somewhat
thinner at both ends, and that those ends had been removed for
commercial use (see below). It is also worth noting that the
medallions with which the Fühnen ring was found were barbaric
imitations of coins of Constans and other successors of Constantine
the Great, and that the learned Nordic reporter correctly concludes
that this gold treasure, which was of Nordic manufacture, must be
dated to the fifth century. (*)
(*)
Germanic gold spiral finger rings found in Meklenburg, see mentioned
and illustrated in the Frederico-Francisceum, Table XXIII, 1,4, 6-8,
compare the text of LISCH, Table 137, 138, and LISCH, in the Jahrbb.
für Meklenb. Gesch. u. Alterth., W, 269, 270; and in the
Holstein, b[j RHODE, Holst. Cimbr. antiq. Rom. p. 137, fig. 1, 4,
pp. 142-143, fig. 2, 3. All these rings, however, are noticeably
thinner and finer than the Fühnen and our Veluws rings.
This
similarity with Germanic-Nordic rings is no less striking in the
decorated fragment Fig. 6. For among the Fühnen objects were
four similar broken and bent pieces of rings (some spiral-shaped),
which were roughly hung together like a chain; see the illustration
in the aforementioned Mittheilungen, Tab. V. Fig. 15. The publisher
quite rightly characterizes these as "broken, bent, and linked
rings, for the purpose of trade" (trade and circulation). Ring
money was in use among many ancient peoples, not only among the
Norwegians, but also among the Celts, and even among the Hungarians;
see for brevity's sake SCHREIBER, Taschenb. für Gesch. u.
Alterthümer in Süddeutschland 1840, and Nachtrag in den
Jahrg. 1841, p. 401.
From
what has been presented thus far, the following conclusions may be
drawn.
1.
The gold ornaments found in Velp, in terms of their antiquity, can
most likely be dated to the first half of the 5th century.
2.
The large rings were men's neck rings; one person could wear more
than one at a time (one over the other). are. This may also clarify
why the rings are so bent and dented; after all, men would have
handled them more roughly than women tend to; and if these men were
warriors, as is likely, then the rings could also have been bent by
weapons that may have pressed against them.
3.
The smaller rings were finger rings; due to their size and weight,
probably also men's; while the spiral ring and the curved fragment
would also have been intended to be cut into pieces during trade,
purchase, or exchange.
4.
Most rings exhibit a non-Roman, barbarian style in shape and
decoration, and in this respect most closely resemble objects from
the north, found on the coasts of the Baltic Sea.
5.
The non-Roman character of the rings does not yet allow us to
conclude with certainty that they were made by barbarians; for it
was possible that they were made by Romans in a barbarian style and
given by the Romans as gifts to barbarians to gain their favor,
reward their loyalty, or buy off their threats; of which numerous
examples from that period are found in history. (*)
6.
The earlier discovery, in the same village, of a treasure of Roman
coins, medallions, etc., might reinforce the idea that the ones
found now were also made by Romans. But it was also possible that
the previously discovered treasure had been plundered by Roman
barbarians, or captured in victory and temporarily stored there. In
this case, one should not draw any conclusions from this regarding
the Roman production of our ornaments.
7.
The similar manner in which both treasures were buried in the
ground, and the proximity of the two discovery sites, lead to the
conclusion that both treasures were buried simultaneously, or on the
same occasion and by the same people, or by people of the same
people. —
I
think I should refrain from making any conjectures regarding the
specific tribe that made our ornaments
(*)
How dependent the Romans were on the bat baron at that time, and
what extorted gifts cost them, is important evidence of the
testimony of SALVIANUS Massiliensis (from the fifth century), the
governor. Dei, VI. 211, p. 129 (edit. Brem. 1688). For the rest, we
refer to GIBBON, Gesch. des Röm. Weltreiches, uebers. von
SPORSCHIL, Leipzig 1840, Th. VII. Chap. LVI. P. 4-90, where the main
sources are cited.
buried
in the soils. Too large a field lies open here. What peoples from
the North, East, and West did not harass the Roman Empire in the
first half of the fifth century! The increasingly sinking Western
empire was alternately assaulted and undermined by Getae, Gepids,
Avars, Quadi, Alans, Suevi, Wandalans, Franks, and Huns, sometimes
friendly to each other (*). Aetius, a Scythian by birth (§),
who matured under the Hunnic tents, having risen to the head of the
Western empire (433-454), spent twenty years solely delaying its
fall by defending it against barbarians, while in numerous battles
in Gaul (†) he subdued the Franks on the Rhine and the
Burgundians (**). I hope to return to this subject in due time and
to be able to recommend a specific conjecture. For now, I will only
permit myself the observation that no traces of a battle fought
there have yet been found in the vicinity of Velp. Even in the
unfortunate forest, I have searched in vain for undoubted burial
mounds. A single funerary urn, reportedly discovered earlier at the
Essop (§§), and the few remains of an old burial, which I
excavated in a hill in the spring of this year in the so-called
Stadsbosch near Arnhem, above Valkenhuizen, prove too little (††).
The Germanic graves in Apeldoorn are somewhat distant.
(*)
See JORNANDES, the reb. Gethsemane, c. 34; MEROBAUDES, Panegyr. cn.
CORRIPUS, de laudibus Justin. min. (Corp. Scriptt. Byz. edit.
BEKKERI) passim; compare GIBBON 1. c. VII.
(§)
According to REN. FRIGERIDUS. He was actually born in Dorestena in
Moesia; see the note on MEROBAUDES 1. c. p. 15.
(†}
"Galliam bis quinos certamina traxit in annos
And
senior post bella redit".
MEROBAUDES
1. c. p. 16, vs. 147.
(**)
See GIBBON 1. c. VII. chap. 35 S. 3 u. i.
(§§)
IS. AN. NIJHOFF, Walks in the vicinity of Arnhem 5th edition, b1.
108.
(††)
G. VAN HASSELT collected on his estate Daalhuizen near Velp, besides
rare Roman coins, also urns or coffins and javelins (frameae)",
as NIJHOFF, t. a. pl. p. 89, according to oral information from Mr.
VAN HASSELT, but neither their number nor Neither the type nor the
discovery sites are known, so no conclusions can be drawn from them.
The
simplicity of the contents and the lack of weaponry suggest that it
dates back to the fifth century and not to having been killed in
battle (*). It is possible that those who buried these treasures in
the Velp soil fled from the left bank of the Rhine to the right, the
Germanic one, and considered their temporary preservation safe at
this isolated spot between the Rhine and the IJssel. All this does
not deny the possibility of what has been suspected regarding the
previously discovered gold treasure: that it was part of an imperial
treasure; but even in such a quantity, it would certainly not have
been recovered by order of an emperor, who would have provided
better clothing, but rather should be considered stolen, as looted.
Leiden,
September 15, 1851.
POSTSCRIPT.
After
the above had already been largely printed, I found, in my work,
Neues vaterländ. Archiv — von SPIEL, fortgesetzt von
SPANGENBERG, B. IV. Heft 1 S. 184 (Luneborg bei Herold 1823, 8°),
which is rare in our country, a report concerning the discovery of a
golden treasure in Hanover, not mentioned elsewhere as far as I
know, and which included a collar that seems to have had some
similarity to our Velp treasure and also belonged to around the same
time. We
(*)
Regarding the Apeldoorn graves, see my essay: Ancient Germanic and
Frankish Antiquities in Apeldoorn, in these Contributions, D. VII,
pages 320 et seq.
I
will include that report here, also in the hope that it may help to
elicit a more accurate and illustrated description of this treasure,
or an indication of where it can be found? The aforementioned report
is by Dr. KOELER of Zelle and reads as follows: "On May 31
(1823), the treasurer CLAUS BÖSCHEN of Mulsuwer Wiede, in the
office of Dorum of the Wursten district, near the Hollseler forest,
in the Heidestatt region, while cutting sods, found a gold ornament
belonging to an old leader from the past, just below the surface of
the ground. It is most likely to be mistaken for a necklace and
weighs about half a pound. Where it is somewhat wider, a few small
half-moons have been added for decoration. At the same location,
five ancient Roman coins were found, all fitted with eyelets and
which appear to have hung from the thin end of the necklace. On them
are the names of ANASTASIUS and VALENTINIANUS, and repeatedly the
words victor and victori (VICTORINUS?). On one, which appears to be
the oldest and is already quite worn, there is a head with the
inscription RESTITVTOR REIPVBLICAE and below the head ANT ... S. If
this is to be called ANTONIUS, the piece would be older than the
Christian era. Each coin weighs slightly more than a ducat, and the
goldsmith declares it to be 24-carat gold. Four of them and the
collar were purchased by the court or the Landstuba, and these
pieces of antiquity will probably be offered to the government, for
the Museum in Göttingen or for another public collection. The
collar is broken in two, and it appears to have been hooked together
on one side and attached to the other by two sliders (Schieber),
which are still present.
December
17, 1920 — In Westerkappeln (Westphalia), a clay vase
containing 37 gold coins was found in a field during digging. The
broken vase was carelessly discarded, but later, at the site where
it was found, a ring with three stones and a worked piece of solid
gold were found. The large, heavy coins are of Roman origin and
represent an important numismatic asset.
August
12, 2007, GOLD TREASURE FROM VELP APPEARS TO BE PARTLY IN MOSCOW!
The
early medieval Velp Gold Treasure, looted from Berlin by the Red
Army in 1945, is located in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. This was
reported by Jos Bazelmans, head of research at the Rijksdienst
(National Service for the History of the Netherlands). for
Archaeology, Cultural Landscapes and Monuments (RACM). He recently
saw the treasure, excavated in 1851 and sold to Germany a few years
later, prominently featured in the catalog of an exhibition on
Merovingian art at the Moscow museum.
The
fact that this has only now become known is entirely due to a degree
of political openness to the West by former President Vladimir
Putin. The treasure now has two sides: archaeologically very
interesting for the Netherlands, but also historically charged! This
is also historically interesting because the reason the treasure is
in Moscow relates to the outcome and history of World War II. The
treasure was taken in crates from Berlin to Moscow by Russian troops
in 1945, as one of the means of reparation for all the enormous
damage the Germans had caused in Russia. Because the treasure was
purchased by the Germans in the Netherlands at the time, the
Netherlands will never be able to claim the objects. The Germans are
negotiating with the Russians about restitution or, for example, the
creation of replicas. This issue, even 65 years later, remains very
sensitive. The Municipality of Rheden has already contacted the
Pushkin Museum in Moscow, purely with the intention of updating each
other on the current state of affairs. There are plans to send a
Dutch research team to Moscow under German supervision for further
investigation. More to come!
Dutch
archaeologists want to dig up the treasure and study the hoard, said
Emeritus Professor of Archaeology Tjalling Waterbolk on Thursday,
because it resembles other gold treasures from the Netherlands, such
as the Beilen hoard he excavated in 1955. Bazelmans has asked the
Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to arrange for a Dutch
archaeologist to study the hoard in Moscow. The Velp hoard was
originally larger and, in addition to these medals, also consisted
of a large number of gold coins, bracelets, neck rings, and a gold
chain. Only the coin jewelry has been preserved.
THE
VELP TREASURE; GISBERT CUPER, FRANKS AND ROMANS
Speaker:
Drs. P. Beliën.
The
hoard discovered in Velp in 1715 is one of the most spectacular
treasure finds ever made in the Netherlands. The lecture will
discuss the discovery of the hoard and what subsequently happened to
the gold from the find. After this, we'll take a step back in time,
to the beginning of the fifth century AD. This was the period when
the treasure was entrusted to the earth. We'll try to answer the
question of how the gold ended up in Velp and who owned it.
Gold
objects have been found in two locations in Velp. The gold hoard,
found at the former Villa den Heuvel, can be admired either
partially or entirely in Moscow. A second find containing gold
objects is said to have been sold to Paris. Nothing more is known
about this. All in all, a very international treasure story!
Germanic
Necklaces
In
1916, four solid gold necklaces were discovered on the floodplains
of the Gelderse IJssel near Olst. They were made around 400 AD from
melted solidi. Solidi, the plural of the Latin solidus, are late
Roman gold coins. Precious metal jewelry was highly valued in
Germanic society. In the British epic Beowulf (8th century), the
author speaks approvingly of the generosity of a king who showers
the best warrior with royal gifts.
The
Olst hoard is not unique; similar finds have been made elsewhere in
the Netherlands. For example, in 1955, five gold neck rings and a
bracelet were discovered in Beilen. This hoard also contained 22
coins. More than a century earlier, in 1850, a neck ring and a coin
were already known from this site, but were subsequently lost. The
Beilen neck rings are also thickened in the middle and bear typical
Germanic decorative motifs. It has been calculated that more than
one hundred solidi must have been melted down for the six pieces of
jewelry from the Beilen hoard. The Beilen hoard is now on display at
the Drents Museum in Assen.
Other
sites where such remarkable jewelry has been found are Rhenen, near
the early medieval burial ground, and Velp. Part of the latter gold
hoard, discovered in 1751, is in the National Museum of Antiquities:
two medals, crafted into medallions, minted in Ravenna around 425.
The Velp hoard was originally larger and, in addition to these
medals, also consisted of a large number of gold coins, bracelets,
neck rings, and a gold chain. Only the coin ornaments have been
preserved.
The
gold hoards share the fact that they were buried at the end of the
4th century or the beginning of the 5th century. The reason for the
burial of such valuables cannot be determined with certainty. In any
case, these objects must have belonged to prominent Germanic
chieftains who maintained contacts with the Roman Empire. They may
have received the gold as a reward for services rendered to the
Romans, such as participation in military operations. For example,
the Germanic tribes who protected the Roman Empire's border from
their own kind undoubtedly received generous payments, in gold. A
centurion may also have received Roman gold in exchange for a
promise not to engage in hostilities against the Romans.
The
great political unrest, internal strife, and invading plunderers
during the period of the migrations may have led the owner to hide
his treasures. Perhaps he himself participated in military
expeditions and therefore had to find a safe hiding place for his
valuables. Perhaps he was unable to unearth the hidden treasure
afterward, for example, because he had been killed in action. If no
other survivors were informed, the location of the treasure was
forgotten
Recently,
another possible reason for burying such valuables has been
suggested. The gold treasures may also have been used as offerings
to appease the gods, or to gain their support in turbulent times.
Splendid offerings of prestigious neck rings (symbols of worldly
power) and other gold objects conferred prestige on the ??
and
whom the gods honored so princely. The gold treasures from the late
4th and early 5th centuries, found both north and south of the
Rhine, certainly reflect the unstable political situation of this
period. Moreover, these riches demonstrate the Romans' desire to
defy the threat to their empire from external invasions through
alliances. Quite a few gifts would have been necessary to improve
relations with Germanic chieftains and maintain the alliances.
Ultimately, it was to no avail, because in 406, Germanic tribes
finally crossed the Rhine border, marking the end of Roman rule in
the Netherlands.
Кулаков
В.И.
Римские
наградные
гривны из Велпа
(Нидерланды)
В
2003 и 2005 гг. в рамках
выполнения
договора между
Институтом
археологии
Российской
академии наук
и Государственным
Музеем изобразительных
искусств им.
А.С. Пушкина
автору этих
строк выпала
честь работать
по теме «Научный
анализ и каталогизация
западно-европейских
находок IV-VII вв.
н.э. из собрания
ГМИИ им. А.С.
Пушкина».
Необходимо
отметить
доброжелательную
помощь, непременно
оказывавшуюся
мне в ходе этой
непростой
работы со стороны
директора
Государственного
Музея изобразительных
искусств им.
А.С. Пушкина
И.А. Антоновой,
заведующего
Отделом Искусства
и археологии
Древнего мира,
хранителя
коллекции В.П.
Толстикова,
а также помощника
заведующего
Отделом по
хранительской
работе, заведующего
Сектором Античного
искусства О.В.
Тугушевой.
Пользуюсь
случаем высказать
мою глубокую
благодарность
этим коллегам.
В
процессе разборки
группы находок,
ранее хранившийся
в фондах Музея
Древней и Ранней
истории (Берлин,
дворец Шарлоттенбург),
а ныне находящихся
в фондах ГМИИ
им. А.С. Пушкина,
моё внимание
привлёк комплекс,
состоящих из
семи золотых
гривен (Кулаков
В.И., Толстиков
В.П., 2007, с. 278, 279). Этот
комплекс входил
в состав клада,
найденного
в 1851 г. в южной
части Нидерландов
(провинция
Гельдерланд),
в историческом
регионе Северный
Брабант. Кроме
гривен, в составе
депозита обнаружены
два перстня
со щитками,
спиральное
кольцо и петля
проволочная,
изготовленные
из золота. Клад
был случайно
обнаружены
во время
сельскохозяйственных
работ в саду
в окрестностях
селения Велп
(Velp), которое
расположено
к востоку от
города Арнхайм
(Arnhem), при впадении
реки Ийссель
(IJssel) в один из рукавов
дельты р. Рейн
– в Недер Pийн
(Nederrijn = голл. «Нижний
Рейн»)), на правом
берегу последнего
(рис. 1). Гривны
были проданы
находчиком
(?) и оказались
на рынке художественных
произведений
(антикварном
?) в г. Лейдене.
Там они в 1852 г.
были приобретены
для Королевского
музея в Берлине
(ныне - Музей
Древней и Ранней
истории) (Менгин
В., 2007, с. 42 и опубликованы
в Нидерландах
(Janssen, 1852, p. 161-180). Типологическая
принадлежность
находки (инвентарь
погребения
или клад) долгие
десятилетия
оставались
не ясными. Известно
лишь, что в начале
весны 1945 г. этот
комплекс вместе
с остальными
более чем 700
золотыми музейными
экспонатами
был депонирован
в бункере (третий
этаж 7-этажного
комплекса
противовоздушной
обороны Люфтваффе
– Fleckturm «Zoobunker») в районе
Берлинского
зоопарка и 4
мая того же
года передан
представителям
Красной Армии
(Bertram M., 1995, S. 16). Оказавшийся
в английской
зоне оккупации
Берлина Fleckturm
Zoobunker представители
Великобритании
позднее получили
уже без музейных
экспонатов.
Информация,
связанная с
комплексом
гривен из Велпа,
интересна и
заслуживает
специального
рассмотрения
ввиду уникальности
упомянутых
музейных экспонатов
(рис. 2). В европейской
археологии
известны золотые
шейные украшения
(die Halsringe), именуемые
«гривны типа
Велп» и происходящие
из:
2.
(здесь и далее
- №№ по карте
на рис. 2). Ниймеген,
Нидерланды
(Nijmegen, Holland) - фасетированная
гривна со
штемпельным
орнаментом;
3.
Ренен, Нидерланды
(Rhenen, Holland) - 2 фасетированные
гривны весом
85 и 55 г со штемпельным
орнаментом,
одна из гривен
имеет пластину
со вставками
из гранатов
(?), фрагмент
плоской гривны
с надписью
«ER.E.F(ecit)V(uncial=136,44 г)Proclu(s) (Roes A., 1947,
p. 186);
4.
Ольст, Нидерланды
(Olst, Holland) - 4 фасетированные
гривны (die Facettenhalsringe),
три из которых
имеют штемпельный
орнамент, их
вес достигает
22 карата золота;
5.
Байлен, Нидерланды
(Beilen, Holland) – 4 фасетированные
гривны со
штемпельным
орнаментом,
гривна из 8-гранного
дрота, свёрнутая
до размера
браслета, 1
фасетированный
браслет со
штемпельным
орнаментом,
вес гривен –
43,2 г, 66,9 г, 67,8 г, 80,8 г, 93,4 г,
всего их вес
составляет
100 солидов из
расчёта веса
одного позднеримского
солида 4,55 г), в
составе клада
– 23 солида (?) эпохи
правления
Гонориуса и
другие римские
монеты;
6.
Ёстрих-Летмате,
Германия
(Ostrich-Letmathe, Deutschland) - фасетированная
гривна со
штемпельным
орнаментом,
браслет из
дрота с круглым
сечением, с
расширяющимися
концами и со
штемпельным
орнаментом;
7.
Вестеркаппель,
Германия
(Westerkappeln, Kr. Tecklenburg, Deutschland) – фасетированный
браслет со
штемпельным
орнаментом,
римские монеты,
чеканенные
в 337-378 гг. н.э.
Все
перечисленные
выше гривны
в западноевропейской
археологии
принято считать
происходящими
из единой мастерской
(оттиски штемпелей
их декора вполне
идентичны).
Гривны считаются
ранговыми
знаками вождей
германских
дружин конца
IV - начала V в. или
его первой
половины,
сопутствующие
гривнам в кладах
монеты интерпретируются
как римский
donatium/stipendium германским
наёмникам
(«цена крови»).
Клады с гривнами
типа Велп трактуются
как жертвы
богам отдельных
германских
племён (указаны
на рис. 1) низовий
Рейна (Steuer H., 2006, S. 120-123).
Используя
представившуюся
возможность
непосредственного
осмотра и фиксации
гривен из Велпа
был создан
каталог этих
находок. В нём
гривны выступают
под номерами
фондового
хранения в
ГМИИ им. А.С.
Пушкина (далее
– ГМИИ). Номера
хранения в
фондах Музея
До- и Протоистории
(Берлин) даны
в скобках.
Каталог
гривен из Велпа
Аар
1479 (II 3694) – гривна
золотая (проба
800°), разм. 14,9x14,1 см,
вес 41,52 г (9 солидов),
изготовлена
из дрота, имеет
застёжку в
виде крючка
и 8-видной петли.
Петля спаяна
из гнутого
конца дрота
гривны. В тыльной
части дрот
гривны имеет
диам. 1,9 мм, в лицевой
части – 3,1 мм.
Сечение дрота
по всему периметру
гривны круглое,
в пределах
петли застёжки
- миндалевидное.
Эта гривна,
как и остальные
предметы из
комплекса,
найденного
у пос. Велп, имеет
дрот волнистых
очертаний. Это
– результат
распрямления
дрота, поступившего
в 1945 г. в ГМИИ смятым.
На рисунке в
первой публикации
этой гривны
она имеет
уплощённо-овальную
форму (рис. 2,8).
Однако искривлённость
дрота гривны
видна и на этом
рисунке. Соответственно,
гривны были
найдены смятыми,
что прямо указывает
на характер
комплекса –
клад, компоненты
которого были
смяты для большей
компактности
клада и удобства
его сокрытия.
Аар
1478 (II 3689) – гривна
золотая (проба
750°), разм. 17,5x14,4 см,
вес 76,77 г (17 солидов),
является имитацией
гривен и браслетов
типа «с расширенными
концами». Эти
концы у этой
и последующих
гривен из Велпа
не разделены.
Гривны надевались
так, чтобы их
широкая уплощённая
часть (в сечении
имела вид весьма
плоского
треугольника
с усечённой
вершиной) находилась
на груди их
хозяина. Тыльная
половина обода
гривны имеет
вид дрота. Он
ещё на уровне
восковой литейной
модели был
уплощён на
лицевой стороне
и приобрёл
видимость
соединённых
расширенных
концов гривны.
Гривна украшена
оттисками
штампа (чекана).
Гривна Аар
1478 – единственная
из гривен клада
в Велпе, расширенная
часть которой
покрыта оттисками
4 различных
видов штампов
(рис. 3) целиком,
что находит
полную аналогию
в гривне из
Ренен (Rhenen). Гривна
имеет форму
ассиметричного,
вытянутого
вправо овала.
Аар
1477 (II 3692) – гривна
золотая (проба
800°), разм. 19,2x15,7 см,
вес 57,32 г (12,6 солидов),
однотипна
гривне Аар
1478. Гривна Аар
1477 – единственная
из гривен из
Велпа, имеющая
особую композицию
декора. Она
состоит из
поперечных
линий чеканного
орнамента,
вытянутых
горизонтально
вправо и влево
от центра широкой
лицевой части
гривны. Линии
оттисков штампа
завершаются
стреловидными
фигурами (рис.
3, 4). Гривна, как
и остальные
гривны из Велпа,
имеет застёжку
в виде крючка
и 8-видной паяной
петли.
Аар
1474 (II 3690) – гривна
золотая (проба
800°), разм. 18,8x13,6 см,
вес 58,05 г (13,8 солидов),
однотипна
гривне Аар
1478. Эта и последующие
гривны декорированы
стандартно
при помощи
ромбоидальной
композиции,
образованной
оттисками
различных
штампов и
разделённой
полосой из
оттисков полукруглых
и угольчатых
штампов (рис.
2, 3). На пограничных
участках при
переходе с
дрота к пластине
гривны её плоскость
укроашена
локальной
группой оттисков
штампов.
Аар
1475 (II 3693) – гривна
золотая (проба
800°), разм. 24,3x16,7 см,
вес 85,43 г (18,8 солидов),
однотипна
гривне Аар
1478, по орнаменту
– аналогична
Аар 1474. На пограничных
участках при
переходе с
дрота к пластине
гривны её плоскость
украшена локальной
группой оттисков
штампов.
Аар
1476 (II 3691) – гривна
золотая (проба
800°), разм. 18,8x14,4 см,
вес 70,25 г (15,4 солида),
однотипна
гривне Аар
1478, по орнаменту
– аналогична
Аар 1474.
Аар
1473 (II 3688) – гривна
золотая (проба
800°), разм. 24,3x16,7 см,
вес 73,73 г (16 солидов),
однотипна
гривне Аар
1478, по орнаменту
– аналогична
Аар 1474. На пограничных
участках при
переходе с
дрота к пластине
гривны её плоскость
украшена локальной
группой оттисков
штампов.
Типологизация
гривен из Велпа
усложнена
редкими для
Barbaricum видами их
формы и орнамента.
В кладах, представленных
на рис. 1, обнаружены
сходные гривны
и браслеты,
изготовленные
из золота. При
этом гривна
из Ёстрих по
орнаменту и
параметрам
является
типологически
полной аналогией
шейным украшениям
из Велп (Аар
1474, Аар 1475, Аар 1476, Аар
1473). Браслет из
Ёстрих имеет
в своей лицевой
части реальные,
а не мнимые
(как на гривнах)
утолщения,
украшенные
чеканным орнаментом
типа гривен
из Велпа (Radig W., 1939,
S. 109, Abb. 108).
Дротовая
гривна Аар
1479 вполне типична
для различных
германских
и балтских
древностей
второй четверти
I тыслет. н.э. К
сожалению,
именно эта
типичность
не позволяет
осуществить
точную культурно-этническую
идентификацию
этого предмета.
Ясно лишь, что,
обладая самыми
малыми среди
гривен из Велпа
размерами
(14,9x14,1 см), эта гривна
непосредственно
примыкали к
шее своего
хозяина. Судя
по стёртости
(скорее – полировки)
ношение гривны
Аар 1479 было
долговременным.
Кстати, этого
нельзя сказать
о других гривнах
из клада в Велпе.
Все они, в особенности
гривна Аар
1478, не носят
значительных
следов употребления.
Края лицевых
пластин гривен
настолько
остры, что о
них можно
порезаться.
При этом эти
края в ряде
мест носят
следы механических
воздействий
(поперечные
вмятины), являющиеся,
скорее всего,
следствием
сминания гривен
при их депонировании.
Особенности
формы лицевой
части гривен
(рис. 3, 4) позволяет
полагать в
данном случае
имитацию гривен
и браслетов
с расширенными
концами. Такие
детали убора
(браслеты типа
Kolbenring, поздний
вариант - тип
Szentendre) являлись
у членов древнегерманского
«героического
общества»
символами
власти «варварских»
principes III-VI вв. н.э. (Lund Hansen U.,
1998, S. 348). Также они
могли отмечать
членов семей
из состава
«варварской»
аристократии.
Несмотря
на то, что гривны
из Велпа имитируют
детали «варварского»
убора, особенности
их формы и декора,
приёмы изготовления
гривен (следы
волочения
дрота, аккуратная
расковка лицевых
частей гривен,
разнообразные
формы штампов,
чётко выдержанные
орнаментальные
композиции)
позволяют
уверенно причислять
их к продукции
провинциально-римских
мастеров. Указание
на типологическую
принадлежность
уникальных
гривен (включая
дротовую) из
Велпа содержится
в особой 8-видной
форме петель
их застёжек.
Доказано, что
гривны такими
петлями появляются
на рейнском
лимесе Империи
около середины
III в. н.э. (Stjernquist B. 1955. р. 137) и
являются прототипами
для шейных
украшений с
так называемыми
«грушевидными»
замками.
Особый
интерес вызывает
декор гривен
из Велпа. Он
представлен
композициями
из оттисков
круглых, полукруглых
и треугольных
штампов. В старой
немецкой
историографии
они относятся
к декору типа
еingestempelte Ornamente, нанесённому
одиночными
пуансонами
(рис. 5, №№ 1-4, 6, 7, 17 и 18 в
нижней части
рисунка). Как
правило, они
характерны
для скандинавских
древностей
ранней фазы
эпохи Великого
переселения
народов. На
север Европы
они поступили
непосредственно
из римских
провинций.
Показательно,
что для прусского
материала
стиля Sosdala, позднего
относительно
скандинавских
пуансонных
декоров, упомянутые
формы штампов
не характерны
(Aberg N., 1919, 47, 49). В исторической
Пруссии орнамент
стиля Sosdala существует
на фазах C2/D2 (возможно
– с фазы D1), на
Неманском
правобережье
– на фазах C2/D1. В
эти регионы
Балтии обычай
наносить такой
декор на металлические
детали воинского
убора принесли
с собой вернувшиеся
на родину (?)
ветераны (пешие
воины-ауксиларии
и кавалеристы),
служившие в
римских войсках
на рейнском
или на дунайском
лимесе (Кулаков
В.И., 2006, с. 64, 65).
Клад
из Велпа обнаружен
как раз в одном
из районов
эвентуальной
дислокации
этих «варварских»
подразделений
на службе Рима.
К сожалению,
на закате Империи
иными войсками
она уже не
располагала.
Поэтому, в
частности,
ясно, почему
форма гривен
из Велп ориентируется
на образцы
престижных
германских
украшений,
характерных
исключительно
для «варварской»
дружинной
элиты.
Гривны
из Велпа не
обладают орнаментов
в стиле Sosdala, типичными
для которого
являются звёздные
композиции.
Зато на одной
из этих гривен
представлен
оттиск миндалевидного
штампа со слабым
углублением
в центре (рис.
4, Aap 1478, по краям
каждого из
оттисков
треугольного
штампа). Аналог
этого штампа
представлен
на пряжке из
Бриже (Brizа, Bez. Litomerice) в
Чехии (Tejral J., 2001, S. 40),
типичной для
древностей
горизонта
Унтерзибенбрунн
(Untersiebenbrunn), относимых
в Центральной
Европе к фазе
D2 (ок. 380/400-ок. 440/450 гг.
н.э.) (Kazanski M., Koch U., 2001, S. 85). Такие
углубления
создавали
эффект плоского
рельефа у
изображений,
на самом деле
изготовленных
гравировкой,
акцентированной
точечным штампом.
Этот орнаментальный
приём, представленный,
в частности,
на обломке
серебряного
блюда из клада
В в Млотечно
(тип Eggers 115), появляется,
судя по этой
находке, ещё
на фазе В1 (Кулаков
В.И., 1998, с. 99) и являются
древнейшим
предшественником
декора гривен
из Велпа и,
соответственно,
орнамента
стиля Untersiebenbrunn.
Отсутствие
следов деградации
орнамента на
гривнах из
Велпа позволяют
датировать
их началом
этого горизонта.
Не исключено,
что орнамент
на гривнах –
своеобразная
предтеча декора
стиля Untersiebenbrunn. В целом
приведённые
аргументы
позволяют
предварительно
отнести гривны
из Велпа ко
времени ок.
370-400 гг. н.э.
Само
происхождение
декора Untersiebenbrunn
чрезвычайно
интересно и
нуждается в
развёрнутом
искусствоведческом
анализе. Пока
можно предполагать,
что этот тип
орнамента
является финальной
формой развития
декора деталей
провинциально-римского
воинского
снаряжения
и должен находится
в конце типологического
ряда, начатого
в эпоху Юлиев-Клавдиев
декором в стиле
Opus interrasile, продолженном
в эпоху «солдатских»
императоров
уплощённым
рельефом,
углублённые
части которого
со временем
теряли свою
глубину. В конечном
итоге утратившие
навыки своих
предшественников,
мастера эпохи
заката Империи,
слабо помнив
о необходимости
изготовления
на своих изделий
неких углублённых
частей, стали
имитировать
их скоплениями
различных
штампов. Издалека
изделия с таким
декором (стиль
Untersiebenbrunn) производили
впечатление
предметов со
стёртыми, еле
видными остатками
рельефных
изображений.
Мода на протяжении
веков (в том
числе – современная)
даёт серию
примеров сходной
утраты первоначального
смысла декора
или же предмета
убора при его
долговременном
изготовлении
(превращение
цилиндра в
кепи, мутация
джинсов как
рабочей одежды
в бессмысленно
затёртый аксессуар
«от кутюр»).
Если
вопросы типологии
и хронологии
гривен из Велпа
решаемы с
привлечением
сходных по
признакам
предметов
материальной
культуры Barbaricum
конца IV в. н.э., то
семантическое
значение этих
предметов
можно раскрыть
лишь с привлечением
сугубо римских
аналогий, причём
– довольно
ранних.
Перед
выяснением
семантики
интересующих
нас гривен
следует попытаться
установить
принципы их
ношения. Вотивный
характер этих
гривен явно
исключается,
ибо со времени
Миланского
эдикта (313 г. н.э.),
проведения
Никейского
собора (325 г.) и
неудачной
попытки воссоздания
отеческих
культов при
Императоре
Юлиане «Отступнике»
(355-363 гг. н.э.) христианская
религия стала
господствующей
в Империи.
Принесение
драгоценных
даров римским
богам в конце
IV в. н.э. уже не
было возможно.
Слабые
следы стёртости
присутствуют
почти у всех
гривен (кроме
Aap 1479 и Aap 1478) в верхней
части расширения
в центре их
лицевой стороны.
Можно предполагать
факт ношение
всех этих гривен
одновременно,
причём так,
что гривны с
меньшим диаметром
находились
поверх гривен
с большим диаметром
и, соответственно,
частично их
перекрывали.
В
соответствии
с этим принципом
проведена
реконструкция
схемы ношения
комплекса
гривен из Велпа
(порядок гривен
показан на
рис. 6). В этом
комплексе
своими крупными
параметрами
выделяются
две нижние
гривны – Аар
1475 и Аар 1476. Они явно
рассчитаны
для расположения
на предплечье.
Остальные
гривны, обладающие
математически
убывающими
параметрами,
составляют
в схеме ношения
некую цилиндрическую
фигуру. Иными
словами, эти
гривны покрывали
собственно
шею своего
хозяина. Пространство,
образовавшееся
между тыльными
частями трёх
нижних гривен
и четырёх верхних
гривен (рис.
6), могло быть
заполнено,
например, шейным
платком. Эта
непременная
деталь убора
римского легионера
могла выгодно
оттенять сияние
золота гривен
и оберегать
шею их хозяина
от натирания
острыми гранями
гривен. Несмотря
на внушительный
вид всего комплекса
гривен, их ношение
всех вместе
ввиду их незначительного
веса, было вполне
достижимым.
Упомянутый
выше феномен
возрастания
параметров
гривен в значительной
мере дублируется
их весовыми
значениями
в следующей
последовательности,
реализованной
в характерной
для римского
времени мере
веса, использовавшейся
при ювелирных
работах – в
скрупулах
(1,137 г):
Перед
выяснением
семантики
интересующих
нас гривен
следует попытаться
установить
принципы их
ношения. Вотивный
характер этих
гривен явно
исключается,
ибо со времени
Миланского
эдикта (313 г. н.э.),
проведения
Никейского
собора (325 г.) и
неудачной
попытки воссоздания
отеческих
культов при
Императоре
Юлиане «Отступнике»
(355-363 гг. н.э.) христианская
религия стала
господствующей
в Империи.
Принесение
драгоценных
даров римским
богам в конце
IV в. н.э. уже не
было возможно.
Слабые
следы стёртости
присутствуют
почти у всех
гривен (кроме
Аар 1479 и Аар 1478) в
верхней части
расширения
в центре их
лицевой стороны.
Можно предполагать
факт ношение
всех этих гривен
одновременно,
причём так,
что гривны с
меньшим диаметром
находились
поверх гривен
с большим диаметром
и, соответственно,
частично их
перекрывали.
В
соответствии
с этим принципом
проведена
реконструкция
схемы ношения
комплекса
гривен из Велпа
(порядок гривен
показан на
рис. 6). В этом
комплексе
своими крупными
параметрами
выделяются
две нижние
гривны – Аар
1475 и Аар 1476. Они явно
рассчитаны
для расположения
на предплечье.
Остальные
гривны, обладающие
математически
убывающими
параметрами,
составляют
в схеме ношения
некую цилиндрическую
фигуру. Иными
словами, эти
гривны покрывали
собственно
шею своего
хозяина. Пространство,
образовавшееся
между тыльными
частями трёх
нижних гривен
и четырёх верхних
гривен (рис.
6), могло быть
заполнено,
например, шейным
платком. Эта
непременная
деталь убора
римского легионера
могла выгодно
оттенять сияние
золота гривен
и оберегать
шею их хозяина
от натирания
острыми гранями
гривен. Несмотря
на внушительный
вид всего комплекса
гривен, их ношение
всех вместе
ввиду их незначительного
веса, было вполне
достижимым.
Упомянутый
выше феномен
возрастания
параметров
гривен в значительной
мере дублируется
их весовыми
значениями
в следующей
последовательности,
реализованной
в характерной
для римского
времени мере
веса, использовавшейся
при ювелирных
работах – в
скрупулах
(1,137 г):
Аар
1479 – 36,52 скрупул
Аар
1477 – 50,41 скрупул
Аар
1474 – 51,05 скрупул
Аар
1476 – 61,78 скрупул
Аар
1473 – 64,84 скрупул
Аар
1478 – 67,84 скрупул
Аар
1475 – 75,13 скрупул
Разумеется,
не полностью
кратные значения
веса гривен
в римской весовой
систему зависит
как от возможных
ошибок изготовителей
этих предметов,
так и от микроскопических
утрат (царапин,
трещин и проч.),
со временем
исказивших
заданный в
древности вес
гривен. Однако
более наглядно
выглядит весовая
стопа, разделяющая
гривны:
Между
Аар 1477 и Аар 1474 –
0,64 скрупул, то
есть 1/40 унции
(в унции – 24 скрупулы)
Между
Аар 1474 и Аар 1476 –
10,73 скрупул, то
есть 1/5 унции
Между
Аар 1476 и Аар 1473 –
3,06 скрупулы, то
есть 1/12 унции
Между
Аар 1473 и Аар 1478 –
2,68 скрупулы, то
есть примерно
1/12 унции
Между
Аар 1478 и Аар 1475 –
7,6 скрупул, то
есть 1/6 унции
Если
между указанными
выше гривнами
видна довольно
чёткая римская
двенадцатеричная
стопа, то дротовая
гривна Аар
1479 весит в римской
весовой системе
36,52 скрупул и не
обладает кратным
различием
(стопой) ни с
одной из остальных
гривен комплекса.
Это прямо
свидетельствует
об изготовлении
этих гривен
в мастерской,
в которой работали
мастера, неукоснительно
придерживавшиеся
римской весовой
системы. Напротив,
творец дротовой
гривны Аар
1479 (вес – 9 солидов)
указанной
системы не
придерживался
и ориентировался
на более грубую
весовую стопу
солидов, популярную
в Barbaricum. Не столь
чётко выглядят
золотые пробы
гривен, исчисляемые
в основном
значением
800°. Лишь самая
крупная, с лицевой
стороны орнаментированная
полностью
гривна Аар
1478 имеет золотую
пробу 750°.
Интересно
сравнение
последовательности
гривен по нарастанию
их метрических
и весовых
параметров.
Их динамика
в целом совпадает
в следующем
виде:
По
возрастанию
метрических
параметров
По возрастанию
весовых параметров
Аар
1478 Аар 1474
Аар
1477 Аар 1473
Аар
1477 Аар 1476
Аар
1474 Аар 1478
Аар
1473 Аар 1475
Аар
1476 Аар 1475
Важен
вопрос поло-возрастной
и социальной
принадлежности
хозяина гривен
из Велпа. Обычай
ношения гривен
как украшения
шеи римлянками
и римлянами
не только не
использовался
на всём протяжении
римской истории,
но и считался
для них чуждым.
Не следует
забывать о
том, что носители
традиции
использования
гривен (лат.
torques) кельты, позднее
– германцы,
являлись
традиционными
противниками
Рима.
Тем
не менее (скорее
- благодаря
этому атрибуту
«варваров»,
воспринимавшемуся
римлянами как
трофей – Махлаюк
А.В., 2006, с. 328) в римской
армии гривны
наряду с браслетами
и фалерами
(нагрудные
бляхи) в начале
нашей эры стали
знаками отличия
для рядовых
легионеров.
Уже в эпоху
Августа на
надгробии
центуриона
первой когорты
XVIII легиона Марка
Целия, погибшего
в 9 г. н.э. в битве
в Тевтобургском
лесу и похороненного
у Ксантена
(Нидерланды),
видны наградные
браслеты (рис.
7), привязанные
тканевыми
жгутами к наплечным
пластинам
панциря. Шею
центуриона
украшала наградная
витая (тордированная
?) гривна. Если
в эпоху ранней
Империи наградные
гривны крепились
замками на
тыльной части
шеи, то в середине
– второй половине
IV в. н.э. такие
шейные награды
на своей лицевой
части имеют
утолщения,
имитирующие
расширенные
концы гривны.
Они украшают
шеи телохранителей
(лат. singularis) Императоров
Констанция
II (рис. 8) и Феодосия
I Великого (рис.
9), представленных
на серебряных
блюдах, хранящихся
в музеях Санкт-Петербурга
и Мадрида. Кстати,
именно императоры
единолично
могли вручать
(видимо – и
утверждать)
награды не
только «офицерам»,
но и рядовым
солдатам (лат.
caligaе) легионов
(Махлаюк А.В.,
2006, с. 324). Такие гривны
застёгивались
на тыльной
стороне шеи
воина (рис. 5,1).
Точно так же
устроены и
гривны из Велпа.
Очевидно, этот
принцип использовался
и в ранней Византии,
наследовавшей
часть римских
воинских обычаев.
Правда, в эпоху
Юстиниана I
Великого его
телохранители,
судя по мозаике
из базилики
Сан Витале в
Равенне, носили
гривны с медальонами
на лицевой
стороне. При
этом медальоны
либо украшались
вставками
камней, либо
декорировались
эмалями. Пример
таких гривен
имеется в кладе
в Ренен. Обнаруженная
на оборотной
стороне этой
плоской детали
гривны подчёркивает
важность её
весового значения,
соответствующего,
очевидно, приказу
о данной награде.
Таким образом,
типологическая
линия развития
римских наградных
гривен-torques в первой
половине VI в.
Прерывается.
Уже
с эпохи Принципата
в римской армии
существует
традиция
множественных
награждений
– dona militaria. Фалеры
вручались
отличившимся
в бою легионерам
в комплексе
из 6-и и более
металлических
или даже стеклянных
блях, соединённых
ремнями для
крепления на
груди воина
(на доспехах).
Гривны при
награждении
сопровождались
браслетами
(рис. 10,2). В нашем
случае процесс
сложения комплекса
наградных
гривен можно
попытаться
реконструировать
следующим
образом. Воин,
обладавшей
своей персональной
дротовой гривной,
указывающей
на его «варварское»
(возможно –
германское)
происхождение,
за некий подвиг
был награждён
одиночной
гривной Аар
1478. Её лицевая
пластина полностью
покрыта чеканным
орнаментом.
Неорнаментированными
остались боковые
и тыльная дротовые
части гривны,
скрывавшиеся
плащом. Далее
происходит
следующее
награждение,
также – одиночной
гривной Аар
1478 (рис. 3). Правда,
мастер, видимо,
осведомлённый
о вторичности
этой награды,
украшает на
этой гривне
лишь часть
лицевой стороны.
Остальная
поверхность
её лицевой
пластины частично
скрыта более
ранним награждением
– гривной Аар
1478 и не нуждается
в декорировании.
С таким же принципом
экономии своей
работы этот
же (или другой
?) мастер подошёл
к третьей, уже
множественной
награде – четырём
гривнам Аар
1473, Аар 1474, Аар 1476 и
Аар 1475. Прямой
связи между
весами этих
гривен в виде
стопы скрупул
не отмечается
(см. выше). Упомянутые
четыре гривны
стереотипно
снабжены
симметричными
сериями треугольных
композиций
из оттисков
штампов в
центральной
части лицевой
пластины гривны.
Это третье
награждение,
выделяемое
эвентуально
и характерное
для воинских
традиций Рима
(Колобов А.В.,
1999, с. 67), могло стать
для воина последним
воздаянием
за его подвиги
во славу Рима.
Учитывая находки
аналогичных
гривен в Ёстрих
и в других пунктах
бассейна Нижнего
Рейна, можно
выдвинуть
предположение
о существовании
в конце IV в. н.э.
на рейнском
лимесе стандартных
золотых наградных
гривен.
Ввиду
некоей внезапной
ситуации или
сам воин депонировал
свои награды
вместе с персональной
гривной, или
(что предпочтительней)
некий противник
Рима, повергнув
в схватке этого
героя, сорвал
с него и dona militaria, и
личную гривну,
сокрыв это уже
на правом,
германском
берегу р. Рейна.
Вместе с этими
предметами,
соединявшимися,
очевидно, петлёй
из обрывка
золотого дрота
(рис. 2,6), оказались
в земле и золотых
два перстня
со щитками.
Эти предметы
римского ювелирного
искусства (на
щитке одного
из перстней
– профильное
изображение
Императора
/?/ - рис. 2,7) могли
также входить
в состав инвентаря
безвестного
римского воина.
Трактовать
эти перстни
в качестве
наград (как и
явно «варварский»
спиральный
перстень –
рис. 2,5) не представляется
возможным.
Ещё
со времён Юлия
Цезаря враги
стремились
позаимствовать
у поверженного
легионера его
ценные и по
материалу, и
по общественному
статусу награды
(Кован Р., 2005, с. 28,
29). Отметим, что
и в последующих
войнах, включая
Вторую Мировую
войну, солдаты
многих европейских
армий проявляли
особое внимание
к наградам
врага, считая
их престижными
трофеями и
первым делом
пополняя им
свои вешки и
ранцы. Такие
трофеи на рубеже
IV-V вв. при прорыве
рейнского
лимеса попали
в руки воинов
различных
племён и осели
в земле на их
родине (рис.
1).
Как
уже отмечалось
выше, уникальная
форма гривен
из Велпа не
позволяет
найти им близкую
аналогию в
римском и
«варварском»
археологическом
материале
позднеантичного
времени. Это
является результатом
чрезвычайной
редкости находок
римских наградных
гривен, которые
весьма высоко
ценились как
их обладателями,
так и врагами
Рима. Автору
этих строк
известна лишь
одна из немногих
находок сходной
dona militaria. Это - фрагмент
гривны из Карнунтума
на дунайском
лимесе. Гривна
представляла
собой фрагмент
кольцевидно
изогнутой
пластины,
заканчивавшейся
грушевидной
в плане застёжкой.
На этой пластине
ещё на стадии
создания восковой
матрицы была
нанесена рельефная
латинская
надпись, от
которой сохранился
лишь фрагмент
«felices tun…». Возможно,
полностью
надпись должна
выглядеть как
«felices Tungri» и упоминать
представителя
германского
племени тунгров
(совр. Бельгия),
составлявших
во II-III вв. н.э. I пограничную
алу тунгров
в провинции
Дакия (Roes A., 1947, p. 181). На
внутренней
стороне гривны
слабо видно
руническое
(?) граффити
(Beninger E., 1934, Taf. 300,6). Как гривны
типа Велп, так
и гривна из
Карнунтума
– плоские, но
производят
впечатление
массивных
предметов и
при этом не
обременительны
при их ношении.
Итак,
ясна принадлежность
гривен типа
Велп – dona militaria. В
современном
антиковедении
сложилось
мнение о том,
что «в эпоху
Антонинов (II
в.) начинается
вытеснение
dona militaria, включая
браслеты и
ожерелья (= гривны
– К.В.), чисто
материальными
методами
стимулирования
отличившихся
воинов...» (Колобов
А.В., 1999, с. 71). В позднем
Риме, кроме
того, наградами
служили золотые
медальоны с
надписями,
возвеличивавшими
подвиги защитников
Империи (Махлаюк
А.В., 2006, с. 331). Находки
из Велпа показывают
факт существования
во всяком случае
одной из разновидности
dona militaria – гривен-torques
в эпоху битвы
при Адрианополе.
Памятники
искусства V-VI
вв. содержат
изображения
наградных
(статусных ?)
гривен у имперских
воинов развитой
фазы эпохи
Великого переселения
народов. Длинные
волосы у телохранителей
Феодосия I Великого
и Юстиниана
I Великого (традиция
древнегерманских
дружинников-capillati)
справедливо
позволили
трактовать
их как германцев
(Fuchs S., 1943, S. 150). Ношение
ими (тем более
– в присутствие
Императора)
гривен указывает
на то, что они
не исполняют
здесь роль
языческих по
происхождению
украшений, а
являются знаками
отличия воинов,
своей храбростью
завоевавших
право составлять
ближнее окружение
Императора.
Мнение
о культурно-этнической
и социальной
принадлежности
гривен из Велпа
недавно высказано
директором
Музея Древней
и Ранней истории
(Берлин) Проф.
Др. Вильфридом
Менгином. Он
считает, «... что
клад из Фельпа
принадлежал
одному из франкских
вождей, взявших
на себя со второй
половины IV в.
в качестве
федератов Рима
границ Империи
на участке
между Маасом
и Шельдой»
(Менгин В., 2007, с.
42). Приведённая
выше серия
доказательств
свидетельствует,
напротив, о
том, что:
1.
Гривны из Велпа
изготовлены
в конце IV в. н.э.
провинциально-римскими
мастерами.
2.
Эти предметы
являются не
украшениями
и, тем более,
не статусными
аксессуарами
статусного/сакрального
достояния
«варварских»
королей, а являются
римскими воинскими
наградами dona
militaria.
3.
Гривны из Велпа
по статусу
относятся к
наградам,
традиционно
выдававшихся
в римских легионах
воинам рядового
состава (caliga), в
эпоху битвы
при Адрианополе
набиравшихся
преимущественно
из «варваров».
Члены командного
состава легионов,
к которому мог
принадлежать
в легионах
некий франкский
король (по версии
В. Менгина), в
позднеримское
время представлялись
к награждениям
почётными
знамёнами и
копьями (vexilla et
hastae) (Махлаюк А.В.,
2006, с. 329).
Таким
образом, становится
явной ошибочность
выводов о
принадлежности
гривен из Велпа,
сделанных
берлинским
коллегой,
специалистом
по двулезвийным
мечам эпохи
раннего средневековья.
Местоположение
клада гривен
из Велпа соответствует
северной части
рейнского
лимеса (рис.
1). 31 декабря 406 г.
Галлия впервые
подверглась
с востока мощному
наступлению
«варваров»,
среди которых
были представители
племён гуннов,
вандалов, аланов,
свевов и бургундов
(Perin P., Feffer L-Ch., 1987, p. 80). Это
нашествие, для
многих из его
участников
ставшее последней
битвой, могло
не миновать
и одного из
воинов рейнского
лимеса, охранявшего
в составе одной
из ауксилий
или же отряда
воинов-limitanei неспокойную
имперскую
границу. Этот
воин (скорее
всего – военачальник)
пал на защите
римских рубежей,
его награды
и перстни стали
добычей некоего
германского
«варваров»,
поместившего
свои трофеи
в землю поблизости
от места битвы
на лимесе, скорее
всего, в жертву
отеческим
богам. Менее
чем через столетие,
в начале эпохи
правления
конунга Хлодвига
(в 481 или 482 гг.) данный
участок былой
имперской
территории
будет окончательно
оккупирован
франками (Perin P.,
1995, p. 252).
Литература:
Кован
Р., 2005. Римские
легионеры 58
г. до н.э. – 69 г. н.э.,
М.
Колобов
А.В., 1999. Римские
легионы вне
полей сражения
(Эпоха ранней
Империи). Пермь.
Кулаков
В.И., 1998. Holibo. Междуречье
Ильфинг и Фришинг
в 5 в. // Гiстарычна-археалагiчны
зборник, № 13.
Мiнск.
Кулаков
В.И., 2006. Комплексы
с оружием горизонта
Сёсдала-Унтерзибенбрунн
в Балтии // Археалогiя
эпохi сярэдневякоўя.
Матэрыялы па
археологii Беларусi,
вып. 12. Мiнск.
Кулаков
В.И., Толстиков
В.П., 2007, Каталог
(ГМИИ) Эпоха
Меровингов.
Европа без
границ. Археология
и история V-VIII
вв., Берлин.
Махлаюк
А.В., 2006. Солдаты
Римской Империи.
Традиции военной
службы и воинская
ментальность,
СПб.
Менгин
В., 2007, Эпоха Меровингов
– Европа без
границ. Вводный
обзор к теме
выставки // Эпоха
Меровингов.
Европа без
границ. Археология
и история V-VIII
вв., Берлин.
Aberg
N., 1919, Ostpreussen in der Volkerwanderungszeit. Uppsala-Leipzig,
Beninger
E., 1934. Die Quaden // Reinerth H., Vorgeschichte der deutschen
Stamme. Germanische Tat und Kultur auf deutschen Boden, Bd. 2.
Berlin.
Bertram
M., 1995. Die merowingischen Altertumer in Berliner Museum fur Vor-
und Fruhgeschichte // Merowingerzeit. Die Altertumer im Museum fur
Vor- und Fruhgeschichte. Mainz.
Fuchs
S., 1943. Bildnisse und Denkmaler aus der Ostgotenzeit // Die
Antike, 19. Bd., 2. H. Berlin.
Janssen
L.J.F., 1852. Over de gouden halsbanden en ringen te Velp, bij
Arnhem, gevonden // Bijdragen voor vaderlandsche geschiedenis en
oudheidkunde, t. 8.
Kazanski
M., Koch U., 2001. Die Chronologie im Barbaricum zur Zeit der
grossen Volkerwanderungen // Das Gold der Barbarenfursten. Schatze
aus Prunkgrabern des 5. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. zwischen Kaukasus und
Gallien. Stuttgart.
Lund
Hansen U., 1998. Goldring // Reallexikon der Germanischen
Altertumskunde, Bd. 12. Berlin-New York.
Maxfield
V.A., 1981. The military decorations of the Roman Army. London.
Perin
P., 1995. Les tombes de «chefs» du debut de l’epoque
merovingienne. Datation et interpretation historique // Les Noblesse
Romaine et les Chefs Barbares du IIIe au VIIe siecle.
Conde-sur-Noireau.
Perin
P., Feffer L-Ch., 1987. Les Francs, t. 1, A la Conquete de la Gaule.
Paris.
Radig
W., 1939. Westgermanischer Schmuck der Eisenzeit // Tracht und
Schmuck im nordischen Raum, 1. Bd., Leipzig.
Roes
A., 1947. Some gold Torcs in Holland // Acta Archaeologica, vol.
XVIII, Kobenhavn.
Steuer
H., 2006. Velp // Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, Bd.
32, Berlin-New York.
Stjernquist
B., 1955. Simris. On Cultural Connections of Scania in the Roman
Iron Age. Acta Archaelogica Lundensia. Series in 4o, No 2. Lund.
Tejral
J., 2001. Auswirkungen der Foederaten-Kultur im Barbaricum: Das Grab
von Brizа, Bez. Litomerice // Das Gold der Barbarenfursten.
Schatze aus Prunkgrabern des 5. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. zwischen
Kaukasus und Gallien. Stuttgart.
Сокращения:
М.
– Москва СПб
– Санкт-Петербург
Подписи
к рисункам к
статье В.И. Кулакова
«Гривны горизонта
Унтерзибенбрунн
из Велпa (Нидерланды)»:
Рис.
1. Распространение
гривен типа
Велп на римском
лимесе (по: Steuer
H., 2006, Abb. 24 с добавлениями
автора): а – клад
с гривнами
типа Велп; b –
единичная
находка гривны
типа Велп.
Рис.
2. Клад, найденный
в 1851 г. в Велпе
(по: Janssen L.J.F., 1852, p. 162).
Рис.
3. Гривны из Велпа
(Северный Брабант,
Нидерланды)
(Gelderland!).
Рис.
4. Орнамент на
гривнах из
Велпа.
Рис.
5. Варианты
звёздчатых
фигур и виды
отдельных
штампов, характерные
для стилей
Сёсдала и
Унтерзибенбрунн
(по: Aberg N., 1919, S. 43, 44).
Рис.
6. Гривны из Велпа:
порядок их
расположения
на шее воина.
Рис.
7. Надгробие
центуриона
первой когорты
XVIII легиона Марка
Целия, погибшего
в 9 г. н.э. в битве
в Тевтобургском
лесу и похороненного
у Ксантена
(Нидерланды)(Duitsland!)
и реконструкция
битвы (по А.
Мак-Брайд).
Рис.
8. Блюдо Констанция
II из склепа в
имении Гордиковых
на горе Митридат
(Керчь).
Рис.
9. Телохранители
Феодосия I Великого
из Мадридского
музея.
Рис.
10. Римские воинские
награды: 1 - реконструкция
наградных
гривен и браслетов
по воинским
надгробиям
(по: Maxfield V.A., 1981, p. 89); 2 – надгробие
Ц. Вибиуса Мацера
(эпоха Августа)
с наградными
короной, фалерами,
копьями, гривнами
и браслетами
(по: Maxfield V.A., 1981, fig. 5).
Рис.
11. Телохранители
Юстиниана I на
мозаике из
базилики Сан-Витале
(Равенна)
Литература:
Кулаков
В.И., 1996. Трусо и
Кауп (протогородские
центры в земле
пруссов) // Российская
археология,
№ 3.
Кулаков
В.И., 1997б. Варникам.
Древности
прусских вождей
// Гiстарычна-археалагiчны
зборник. № 12.
Мiнск.
Кулаков
В.И., 1999. Ирзекапинис
// STRATUM plus, Санкт-Петербург
- Кишинёв - Одесса,
№ 5.
Кулаков
В.И., 2004а. Боги Видевута
// Letonica, Riga, Nr 10.
Кулаков
В.И., 2006. Меморативный
комплекс на
могильнике
Кауп (раскоп
2005 г.) // Археология
Верхнего Поволжья
(к 80-летию К.И.
Комарова), Москва.
Кулаков
В.И., Скворцов
К.Н., 2000. Клинки
из Кляйнхайде
// Гiстарычна-археалагiчны
зборник, № 15.
Мiнск.
Bertasius
M., 2005. Marvele. Ein Graberfeld Mittellitauens, I Bd. Vidurio
Lietuvos aukstaiciu II-XII a. Kapinynas, Kaunas.
Grunau
S., 1876. Preussische Chronik. Bd. I, Leipzig.
Kulakov
W., 1997. Die Tracht der Prussen im Fruhmittelalter // The Balts and
their Neighbours in the Viking Age. Archaeologia Baltica, T. 2,
Vilnius.
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V.I.
Kulakov.
Roman
Award Torques from Velp (Netherlands)
In
2003 and 2005, as part of an agreement between the Institute of
Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the A.S. Pushkin
State Museum of Fine Arts, this author had the privilege of working
on the topic "Scientific Analysis and Cataloging of Western
European Finds from the 4th-7th Centuries AD from the Collection of
the A.S. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts."
I
would like to acknowledge the generous assistance I received
throughout this challenging work from I.A. Antonova, Director of the
A.S. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; V.P. Tolstikov, Head of the
Department of Ancient Art and Archaeology and Curator of the
Collection; and O.V. Tugusheva, Assistant Head of the Department for
Custody and Head of the Sector of Ancient Art. I take this
opportunity to express my deep gratitude to these colleagues.
While
sorting through a group of finds previously housed in the
collections of the Museum of Ancient and Early History (Berlin,
Charlottenburg Palace) and now housed in the collections of the
Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, my attention was drawn to a
complex of seven gold grivnas (V.I. Kulakov, V.P. Tolstikov, 2007,
pp. 278, 279). This complex was part of a hoard discovered in 1851
in the southern Netherlands (province of Gelderland), in the
historical region of North Brabant. In addition to the grivnas, the
deposit also included two rings with shields, a spiral ring, and a
wire loop, all made of gold. The treasure was discovered by chance
during agricultural work in a garden near the village of Velp, which
is located east of the city of Arnhem, at the confluence of the
IJssel River with one of the branches of the Rhine delta – the
Nederrijn (Dutch: "Lower Rhine"), on the right bank of the
latter (Fig. 1). The torcs were sold by the finder (?) and ended up
on the art (antique) market in Leiden. There, in 1852, they were
acquired for the Royal Museum in Berlin (now the Museum of Ancient
and Early History) (Mengin V., 2007, p. 42) and published in the
Netherlands (Janssen, 1852, pp. 161-180). The typological
affiliation of the find (burial inventory or treasure) remained
unclear for many decades. It is only known that in the early spring
of 1945, this complex, along with more than 700 other gold museum
exhibits, was deposited in a bunker (the third floor of the 7-story
Luftwaffe anti-aircraft defense complex - Fleckturm "Zoobunker")
in the area of the Berlin Zoo and on May
4 of the same year was handed over to representatives of the Red
Army (Bertram M., 1995, p. 16). Fleckturm, which ended up in the
British occupation zone of Berlin was later the UK representatives
received the Zoobunker without the museum exhibits.
The
information related to the Velp torc complex is interesting and
deserves special consideration given the uniqueness of the
aforementioned museum exhibits (Fig. 2). European archaeology is
aware of gold neck ornaments (die Halsringe), referred to as
"Velp-type torcs," originating from:
2.
(hereinafter, numbers according to the map in Fig. 2). Nijmegen,
Netherlands (Nijmegen, Holland) - a faceted torc with a stamp
ornament;
3.
Rhenen, Netherlands (Rhenen, Holland) - two faceted torcs weighing
85 and 55 g with a stamp ornament; one of the torcs has a plate with
garnet inserts (?), a fragment of a flat torc with the inscription
"ER.E.F(ecit)V(uncial=136.44 g)Proclu(s)" (Roes A., 1947,
p. 186);
4.
Olst, Netherlands (Olst, Holland) - 4 faceted torcs (die
Facettenhalsringe), three of which have a stamp ornament, their
weight reaches 22 karat gold;
5.
Beilen, Netherlands (Beilen, Holland) - 4 faceted torcs with a stamp
ornament, a torc made of an octagonal dart, rolled to the size of a
bracelet, 1 faceted bracelet with a stamp ornament, the weight of
the torcs is 43.2 g, 66.9 g, 67.8 g, 80.8 g, 93.4 g, their total
weight is 100 solidi (based on the weight of one late Roman solidus
of 4.55 g), the hoard contains 23 solidi (?) from the reign of
Honorius and other Roman coins;
6.
Ostrich-Letmathe, Germany (Ostrich-Letmathe, Germany) - a faceted
torc with a stamped ornament, a bracelet made of round wire with
flared ends and a stamped ornament;
7.
Westerkappeln, Germany (Westerkappeln, Kr. Tecklenburg, Germany) - a
faceted bracelet with a stamped ornament, Roman coins minted in
337-378 AD.
All
of the above-mentioned torcs are generally considered by Western
European archaeologists to have originated from a single workshop
(the stamp impressions of their decoration are quite identical).
Torcs are considered to be rank insignia of Germanic warlords of the
late 4th - early 5th centuries or the first half of the 5th century;
coins found in hoards accompanying torcs are interpreted as Roman
donatium/stipendiums for Germanic mercenaries ("blood price").
The hoards of torcs of the Velp type are interpreted as offerings to
the gods of individual Germanic tribes (shown in Fig. 1) of the
lower Rhine (Steuer H., 2006, pp. 120-123).
Using
the opportunity to directly examine and record the torcs from Velp,
a catalog of these finds was created. The torcs are listed under
their storage numbers in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
(hereinafter referred to as the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts).
Storage numbers in the collections of the Museum of Pre- and
Protohistory (Berlin) are given in parentheses.
Catalogue
of Velp Torcs
Aar 1479 (II 3694) – gold torc (800°
fineness), dimensions 14.9x14.1 cm, weight 41.52 g (9 solidi), made
of wire, with a hook-and-eye clasp. The loop is soldered from the
bent end of the torc's wire. The diameter of the wire on the back is
1.9 mm, and on the front – 3.1 mm. The wire is round around
the entire perimeter of the torc, and almond-shaped within the clasp
loop. This torc, like other items from the assemblage found near the
village of Velp, has a wavy shaft. This is the result of
straightening the shaft, which arrived at the Pushkin Museum in a
crumpled state in 1945. In the drawing in the first publication of
this torc, it has a flattened oval shape (Fig. 2.8). However, the
curvature of the torc's shaft is also visible in this drawing.
Accordingly, the torcs were found crumpled, which directly indicates
the nature of the assemblage—a hoard whose components were
crumpled for greater compactness and ease of concealment.
Aar
1478 (II 3689) is a gold torc (750° fineness), measuring
17.5x14.4 cm, weighing 76.77 g (17 solidi), is an imitation of torcs
and bracelets of the "widened ends" type. These ends of
this and subsequent torcs from Velp are not separated. Torques were
worn so that their wide, flattened portion (in cross-section, it
resembled a very flat triangle with a truncated apex) rested on the
wearer's chest. The back half of the torque's rim resembles a dart.
Even at the wax casting stage, it was flattened on the obverse,
taking on the appearance of the connected, widened ends of the
torque. The torque is decorated with stamp impressions (coinage).
The Aar 1478 torque is the only torque from the Velp hoard whose
widened portion is entirely covered with stamp impressions from four
different types of stamps (Fig. 3), a feature completely analogous
to the Rhenen torque. The torque is shaped like an asymmetrical,
right-elongated oval.
Aar 1477 (II 3692) – gold torque
(800° fineness), size 1800 mm. 19.2x15.7 cm, weight 57.32 g
(12.6 solidi), identical to the Aar 1478 grivna. The Aar 1477 grivna
is the only one of the Velp grivnas with a unique decorative
composition. It consists of transverse lines of chased
ornamentation, elongated horizontally to the right and left from the
center of the wide obverse of the grivna. The lines of the stamp
impressions end in arrow-shaped figures (Figs. 3, 4). The grivna,
like the other Velp grivnas, has a clasp in the form of a hook and a
soldered figure-8 loop.
Aar 1474 (II 3690) – gold grivna
(800° fineness), size 18.8x13.6 cm, weight 58.05 g (13.8
solidi), similar to the Aar 1478 grivna. This and subsequent grivnas
are decorated in a standard manner using a diamond-shaped
composition formed by the impressions of various stamps and divided
by a band of semicircular and charcoal stamps (Figs. 2, 3). At the
border sections, when transitioning from the rod to the grivna
plate, its surface is decorated with a local group of stamp
impressions.
Aar 1475 (II 3693) – gold grivna (800°
fineness), size 24.3x16.7 cm, weight 85.43 g (18.8 solidi),
identical to the Aar 1478 grivna, similar in ornamentation to the
Aar 1474. At the border sections, when transitioning from the rod to
the grivna plate, its surface is decorated with a local group of
stamp impressions.
Aar 1476 (II 3691) – gold grivna
(fineness 800°), dimensions 18.8x14.4 cm, weight 70.25 g (15.4
solidi), identical to the Aar 1478 grivna, similar in ornamentation
to the Aar 1474.
Aar 1473 (II 3688) – gold grivna (fineness
800°), dimensions 24.3x16.7 cm, weight 73.73 g (16 solidi),
identical to the Aar 1478 torx, similar in ornamentation to Aar
1474. At the borderline sections where the torx transitions from the
drot to the torx plate, its surface is decorated with a localized
group of stamp impressions.
The typology of the Velp torxes
is complicated by their shapes and ornamentation, which are rare for
Barbaricum. Similar torxes and bracelets made of gold were
discovered in the hoards shown in Fig. 1. Moreover, the Östrich
torx, in its ornamentation and dimensions, is typologically
identical to the neck ornaments from Velp (Aar 1474, Aar 1475, Aar
1476, Aar 1473). The Östrich bracelet features real, not
imaginary (as on torcs) thickenings on its face, decorated with a
chased ornament similar to the torcs from Velp (Radig W., 1939, p.
109, Abb. 108).
The Aar 1479 drot torc is quite typical of
various Germanic and Baltic antiquities from the second quarter of
the first millennium CE. Unfortunately, it is precisely this
typicality that prevents a precise cultural and ethnic
identification of this object. It is only clear that, with the
smallest dimensions of the Velp torcs (14.9x14.1 cm), this torc was
worn directly against the neck of its owner. Judging by the wear
(more likely polishing), the Aar 1479 torc was worn for a long time.
Incidentally, the same cannot be said of the other torcs from the
Velp hoard. All of them, especially the Aar 1478 torc, show no
significant signs of use. The edges of the torcs' faceplates are so
sharp that they can cut one's skin. However, in some places, these
edges bear traces of mechanical impact (transverse dents), which are
most likely the result of
The
crumpling of the torceniums during their deposit.
The shape of
the torceniums' faces (Figs. 3, 4) suggests that these are imitation
torceniums and bracelets with widened ends. Such headgear (bracelets
of the Kolbenring type, a later variant of the Szentendre type) were
symbols of the power of the "barbarian" principes among
members of the ancient Germanic "heroic society" in the
3rd-6th centuries AD (Lund Hansen U., 1998, p. 348). They could also
identify members of families from the "barbarian"
aristocracy.
Although the Velp torcs imitate details of
"barbarian" attire, the distinctive features of their
shape and decoration, as well as the manufacturing techniques used
(marks of wire drawing, careful hammering of the torc faces, varied
stamp shapes, and precisely maintained ornamental compositions),
allow us to confidently attribute them to provincial Roman
craftsmen. The typological identity of the unique torcs (including
the wire torc) from Velp is indicated by the distinctive 8-shaped
loops of their clasps. It has been proven that torcs with such loops
appeared on the Rhine limes of the Empire around the mid-3rd century
AD (Stjernquist B. 1955, p. 137) and serve as prototypes for neck
ornaments with so-called "pear-shaped" clasps.
The
decoration of the Velp torcs is particularly interesting. It is
represented by compositions of impressions from round, semicircular,
and triangular stamps. In old German historiography, they are
classified as eingestempelte Ornamente, a type of decoration
applied by single punches (Fig. 5, Nos. 1-4, 6, 7, 17, and 18 in the
lower part of the figure). As a rule, they are characteristic of
Scandinavian antiquities of the early phase of the Great Migration
Period. They arrived in northern Europe directly from the Roman
provinces. It is significant that the aforementioned stamp forms are
not characteristic of Prussian Sosdala style material, which was
later than Scandinavian punch decorations (Aberg N., 1919, 47, 49).
In historical Prussia, Sosdala style ornamentation exists in phases
C2/D2 (possibly from phase D1), and on the right bank of the Neman,
in phases C2/D1. The custom of applying such decoration to metal
parts of military attire was brought to these Baltic regions by
veterans (auxiliary foot soldiers and cavalrymen) who had served in
the Roman armies on the Rhine or Danube Limes (Kulakov V.I., 2006,
pp. 64, 65) upon returning home (?).
The Velp hoard was
discovered in one of the areas where these "barbarian"
units were likely deployed in the service of Rome. Unfortunately, by
the end of the Empire, it no longer had any other troops. Therefore,
it is particularly clear why the shape of the Velp torcs is based on
prestigious Germanic jewelry, characteristic exclusively of the
"barbarian" warrior elite.
The Velp torcs do not
feature Sosdala-style ornamentation, typical of which are
star-shaped compositions. However, one of these torcs bears the
impression of an almond-shaped stamp with a slight depression in the
center (Fig. 4, Aap 1478, at the edges of each of the impressions of
a triangular stamp). An analogue of this stamp is presented on the
buckle from Briža (Bez. Litomerice) in the Czech Republic (Tejral
J., 2001, p. 40), typical of antiquities from the Untersiebenbrunn
horizon, attributed in Central Europe to the D2 phase (c. 380/400 -
c. 440/450 AD) (Kazanski M., Koch U., 2001, p. 85). Such depressions
created the effect of flat relief on images that were actually made
by engraving, accentuated by a dot stamp. This ornamental technique,
represented, in particular, on a fragment of a silver dish from
hoard B in Mlotechno (Eggers type 115), appears, judging by this
find, as early as phase B1 (Kulakov V.I., 1998, p. 99) and is the
earliest precursor to the decoration of the Velp torcs and,
accordingly, to the Untersiebenbrunn style ornamentation.
The
absence of traces of ornamental degradation on the Velp torcs allows
them to be dated to the beginning of this horizon. It is possible
that the ornamentation on the torcs is a unique precursor to the
Untersiebenbrunn style decoration. Overall, the presented arguments
allow us to tentatively date the Velp torcs to a time of ca. 370-400
AD.
The origin of the Untersiebenbrunn decoration itself is
extremely interesting and requires a comprehensive art historical
analysis. For now, it can be assumed that this type of ornament
represents the final form of development in the decoration of
provincial Roman military equipment and should be located at the end
of a typological series that began in the Julio-Claudian era with
decoration in the Opus interrasile style, continued in the
era of the "soldier" emperors with flattened relief, the
recessed parts of which lost their depth over time. Ultimately,
having lost the skills of their predecessors, the craftsmen of the
twilight of the Empire, having little memory of the need to create
certain recessed parts on their products, began to imitate them with
clusters of various stamps. From a distance, products with such
decoration (the Untersiebenbrunn style) gave the impression of
objects with erased, barely visible remnants of relief images.
Fashion over the centuries (including modern) provides a series of
examples of a similar loss of the original meaning of decoration or
an object during its long-term production (the transformation of a
top hat into a cap, the mutation of jeans from workwear into a
pointlessly worn haute couture accessory).
While the typology and
chronology of the Velp torcs can be resolved by incorporating
similar objects from the Barbaricum material culture of the late 4th
century AD, the semantic meaning of these objects can only be
revealed by incorporating purely Roman analogies, and quite early
ones at that.
Before clarifying the semantics of the torcs in
question, we should attempt to establish the principles of their
wearing. A votive nature for these torcs is clearly excluded, since
from the time of the Edict of Milan (313 AD), the Council of Nicaea
(325 AD), and the unsuccessful attempt to recreate the patristic
cults under Emperor Julian the Apostate (355-363 AD), Christianity
became dominant in the Empire. Offering precious gifts to the Roman
gods was no longer possible by the end of the 4th century AD.
Faint
traces of wear are present on almost all the torcs (except Aap 1479
and Aap 1478) at the top of the widened center of their obverse. It
can be assumed that all these torcs were worn simultaneously, with
the smaller-diameter torcs placed on top of the larger-diameter
torcs, partially overlapping them.
According to this
principle, a reconstruction of the wearing pattern of the Velp torc
complex has been conducted (the order of the torcs is shown in Fig.
6). In this complex, the two lower torcs — Aap 1475 and Aap
1476 — stand out due to their large dimensions. They were
clearly designed to be worn on the forearm. The remaining torcs,
with decreasing dimensions, form a cylindrical figure in the wearing
pattern. In other words, these torcs actually covered their owner's
neck. The space created between the backs of the three lower and
four upper torcs (Fig. 6) could have been filled, for example, with
a neck scarf. This essential part of a Roman legionary's attire
could have complemented the shine of the torcs' gold and protected
the wearer's neck from chafing from the torcs' sharp edges. Despite
the impressive appearance of the entire torc set, wearing them all
together was entirely feasible due to their light weight.
The
aforementioned phenomenon of increasing torc parameters is largely
duplicated by their weight values in the following
sequence, expressed in the scruple (1.137 g), a unit of weight
typical of Roman times used in jewelry.
Aar 1479 –
36.52 scruples
Aar 1477 – 50.41 scruples
Aar 1474 –
51.05 scruples
Aar 1476 – 61.78 scruples
Aar 1473 –
64.84 scruples
Aar 1478 – 67.84 scruples
Aar 1475 –
75.13 scruples
Of course, the non-exact multiples of tornine
weights in the Roman weight system depend both on possible errors by
the makers of these items, and on microscopic losses (scratches,
cracks, etc.), which distorted the appearance over time. The weight
of the hryvnia, as defined in ancient times. However, the weight
stop dividing the hryvnias is more visually clear:
Between Aar
1477 and Aar 1474 – 0.64 scruples, or 1/40 of an ounce (there
are 24 scruples in an ounce).
Between
Aar 1474 and Aar 1476 – 10.73 scruples, or 1/5 of an ounce
Between
Aar 1476 and Aar 1473 – 3.06 scruples, or 1/12 of an ounce
Between
Aar 1473 and Aar 1478 – 2.68 scruples, or approximately 1/12
of an ounce
Between
Aar 1478 and Aar 1475 – 7.6 scruples, or 1/6 of an ounce
While
a fairly clear Roman duodecimal foot is visible between the
above-mentioned grivnas, the Aar 1479 drot grivna weighs 36.52
scruples in the Roman weight system and does not have a multiple
difference (foot) with any of the other grivnas in the complex. This
clearly indicates that these torven coins were produced in a
workshop staffed by artisans who strictly adhered to the Roman
weight system. In contrast, the creator of the Aar 1479 torven coin
(weight: 9 solidi) did not adhere to this system and relied on the
coarser solidi weight unit popular in Barbaricum. The gold fineness
of the torven coins, generally measured in 800°, is less clear.
Only the largest torven coin, Aar 1478, fully ornamented on the
obverse, has a gold fineness of 750°.
It
is interesting to compare the sequence of torven coins according to
their increasing metric and weight parameters. Their dynamics
generally coincide as follows:
By
increasing metric parameters By increasing weight parameters
Aar
1478
Aar
1474
Aar
1477
Aar
1473
Aar
1477
Aar
1476
Aar
1474
Aar
1478
Aar
1473
Aar
1475
Aar
1476
The
question of the gender, age, and social class of the owner of the
Velp torceniums is important. The custom of wearing torceniums as
neck ornaments by Roman men and women was not only not used
throughout Roman history but was also considered alien to them. It
should not be forgotten that the bearers of the tradition of using
torceniums (Latin: torques) — the Celts, and later the
Germans—were traditional adversaries of Rome. Nevertheless
(more likely due to this "barbarian" attribute, which was
perceived by the Romans as a trophy - Makhlayuk A.V., 2006, p. 328)
in the Roman army, grivnas, along with bracelets and phalerae (chest
plaques), became insignia for ordinary legionaries at the beginning
of our era. Already in the era of Augustus, on the tombstone of the
centurion of the first cohort of the XVIII legion Marcus Caelius,
who died in 9 AD in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest and was
buried near Xanten (Netherlands), award bracelets are visible (Fig.
7), tied with fabric cords to the shoulder plates of his cuirass.
The centurion's neck was adorned with an award twisted (tortured?)
grivna. If in the era of the early Empire award grivnas were
fastened with clasps on the back of the neck, then in the middle -
second half of the 4th century AD. Such neck awards have thickenings
on their front, imitating the widened ends of a torc. They adorn the
necks of the bodyguards (Latin: singularis) of the Emperors
Constantius II (Fig. 8) and Theodosius I the Great (Fig. 9),
depicted on silver dishes kept in the museums of St. Petersburg and
Madrid. Incidentally, it was the emperors who could personally
present (apparently, approve) awards not only to "officers"
but also to ordinary soldiers (Latin: caligae) of the legions
(Makhlayuk A.V., 2006, p. 324). Such torcs were fastened on the back
of the warrior's neck (Fig. 5.1). The torcs from Velp are
constructed in exactly the same way. Apparently, this principle was
also used in early Byzantium, which inherited some of the Roman
military customs. True, during the reign of Justinian I the Great,
his bodyguards, judging by a mosaic in the Basilica of San Vitale in
Ravenna, wore torcs with medallions on the obverse. These medallions
were either adorned with stone inlays or decorated with enamel. An
example of such torcs is found in the Rhenen hoard. The flat detail
found on the reverse of this torc emphasizes the importance of its
weight, which apparently corresponded to the decree for this award.
Thus, the typological development of Roman award torcs (torques) in
the first half of the sixth century is interrupted.
Early
on, the Roman army had a tradition of multiple awards — dona
militaria — since the Principate. Phaleres were awarded to
legionaries who distinguished themselves in battle as a set of six
or more metal or even glass plaques, connected by straps for
fastening to the warrior's chest (or armor). When awarded, torcs
were accompanied by bracelets (Fig. 10.2). In our case, the process
of putting together a set of award grivnas can be reconstructed as
follows. A warrior, who possessed his own personal drot grivna,
indicating his "barbarian" (possibly Germanic) origin, was
awarded a single Aar 1478 grivna for a certain feat. Its front plate
is completely covered with chased ornamentation. The side and back
drot parts of the grivna, hidden by a cloak, remained unadorned.
Then comes the next award, also a single Aar 1478 grivna (Fig. 3).
However, the master, apparently aware of the secondary nature of
this award, decorates only part of the front side of this grivna.
The rest of the surface of its front plate is partially hidden by an
earlier award - the Aar 1478 grivna - and does not require
decoration. With the same principle of economy in his work, the same
(or another?) master approached the third, already multiple special
award – four grivnas Aar 1473, Aar 1474, Aar 1476, and Aar
1475. There is no direct connection between the weights of these
grivnas in the form of a stack of scruples (see above). The four
aforementioned grivnas are stereotypically provided with symmetrical
series of triangular compositions of stamp impressions in the
central part of the grivna's obverse plate. This third award,
possibly distinguished and characteristic of Roman military
traditions (Kolobov A.V., 1999, p. 67), could have been the
warrior's final reward for his exploits for the glory of Rome.
Considering the finds of similar grivnas in Oestrich and other
locations in the Lower Rhine basin, it can be hypothesized that
standard gold award grivnas existed on the Rhine limes at the end of
the 4th century AD. Due to some unexpected situation, either the
warrior himself deposited his awards along with his personal grivna,
or (more likely) some enemy of Rome, having defeated this hero in
combat, tore off both his dona militaria and personal grivna, hiding
them on the right, German bank of the Rhine. Along with these
objects, apparently connected by a loop made from a fragment of a
gold dart (Fig. 2.6), two gold rings with shields were also found in
the ground. These pieces of Roman jewelry (on the shield of one of
the rings is a profile image of the Emperor /?/ - Fig. 2.7) could
also have been part of the inventory of an unknown Roman warrior. It
is impossible to interpret these rings as awards (like the clearly
"barbarian" spiral ring - Fig. 2.5). Ever since the time
of Julius Caesar, enemies have sought to steal the awards of a
defeated legionary, valuable both in terms of material and social
status (Cowan R., 2005, pp. 28, 29). It is noteworthy that in
subsequent wars, including World War II, soldiers in many European
armies paid particular attention to the enemy's awards, considering
them prestigious trophies and first adding them to their poles and
knapsacks. Such trophies, during the breakthrough of the Rhine limes
at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries, fell into the hands of
warriors from various tribes and were deposited in the soil of their
homelands (Fig. 1).
As noted above, the unique shape of the
Velp torcs prevents any close parallels from being found in Roman or
"barbarian" archaeological material from the late antique
period. This is due to the extreme rarity of finds of Roman award
torcs, which were highly prized by both their owners and Rome's
enemies. The author of these lines is aware of only one of the few
finds of a similar dona militaria. This is a fragment of a torc from
Carnuntum on the Danube limes. The torc was a fragment of a
ring-shaped curved plate, ending in a pear-shaped clasp. A relief
Latin inscription was applied to this plate during the wax matrix
creation stage, of which only a fragment, "felices tun...,"
has survived. It is possible that the full inscription was intended
to read "felices Tungri" and refer to a representative of
the Germanic Tungrian tribe (modern Belgium), who constituted the
first border ala of the Tungrians in the province of Dacia in the
2nd-3rd centuries AD (Roes A., 1947, p. 181). On the inside of the
torc, runic (?) graffiti is faintly visible (Beninger E., 1934, Taf.
300.6). Both the Velp-type torcs and the torc from Carnuntum are
flat, yet they give the impression of being massive objects and are
not burdensome to wear.
Thus, the torcs of the Velp type are
clearly related to dona militaria. Modern classical studies have
come to the conclusion that "in the Antonine period (2nd
century), the dona militaria, including bracelets and necklaces (=
torcs – K.V.), began to be supplanted by purely material
methods of rewarding distinguished warriors..." (Kolobov A.V.,
1999, p. 71). In late Rome, gold medallions with inscriptions
extolling the exploits of the Empire's defenders also served as
awards (Makhlayuk A.V., 2006, p. 331). Finds from Velp demonstrate
the existence of at least one type of dona militaria — torques
— during the Battle of Adrianople. Artwork from the 5th and
6th centuries contains images of award (status?) torques worn by
imperial warriors during the developed phase of the Great Migration
Period. The long hair of the bodyguards of Theodosius I the Great
and Justinian I the Great (a tradition of ancient Germanic capillati
warriors) has justifiably led to their interpretation as Germanic
(Fuchs S., 1943, p. 150). The fact that they wore torcs (especially
in the presence of the Emperor) indicates that they do not serve as
pagan jewelry, but are insignia of warriors whose bravery earned
them the right to be part of the Emperor's inner circle.
The
opinion on the cultural, ethnic, and social origins of the Velp
torcs was recently expressed by Professor Dr. Wilfried Menghin,
Director of the Museum of Ancient and Early History (Berlin). He
believes that "...the Velp hoard belonged to one of the
Frankish leaders who, from the second half of the 4th century,
assumed control of the Empire's borders between the Maas and the
Scheldt as Roman foederati" (Mengin V., 2007, p. 42). The above
series of evidence, on the contrary, suggests that:
1. The
Velp torcs were made at the end of the 4th century AD by provincial
Roman artisans.
2.
These objects are not jewelry, and certainly not status accessories
of the status/sacred property of "barbarian" kings, but
are Roman military awards, dona militaria.
3.
The Velp torcs are considered awards traditionally issued to
rank-and-file soldiers (caliga) in the Roman legions, who were
recruited primarily from among the "barbarians" during the
Battle of Adrianople. Members of the legionary command staff, to
which a certain Frankish king may have belonged (according to V.
Mengin), were presented in late Roman times with honorary banners
and spears (vexilla et hastae) (Makhlayuk A.V., 2006, p. 329). Thus,
the erroneous conclusions about the origin of the Velp torcs drawn
by a Berlin colleague, a specialist in early medieval double-edged
swords, become clear.
The
location of the Velp torc hoard corresponds to the northern part of
the Rhenish Limes (Fig. 1). On December 31, 406, Gaul was subjected
for the first time to a powerful attack from the east by
"barbarians," including representatives of the Huns,
Vandals, Alans, Suevi, and Burgundians (Perin P., Feffer L-Ch.,
1987, p. 80). This invasion, which was the final battle for many of
its participants, could have easily taken its toll on one of the
warriors of the Rhenish Limes, guarding the volatile imperial border
as part of one of the auxilia or a detachment of limitanei warriors.
This warrior (most likely a military leader) died defending the
Roman borders; his awards and rings became the loot of a certain
Germanic "barbarian," who buried his trophies in the
ground near the site of the battle on the limes, most likely as a
sacrifice to the ancestral gods. Less than a century later, at the
beginning of the reign of King Clovis (in 481 or 482), this section
of former imperial territory would be finally occupied by the Franks
(Perin P., 1995, p. 252).
References:
Kovan
R., 2005. Roman Legionaries 58 BC – 69 AD, Moscow
Kolobov
A.V., 1999. Roman Legions Off the Battlefield (The Early Empire).
Perm.
Kulakov,
V.I., 1998. "Holibo. The Ylfing and Frisching Interfluve in the
5th Century." // Historical and Archaeological Collection, No.
13. Minsk.
Kulakov,
V.I., 2006. Weapon Complexes from the Sösdala-Untersiebenbrunn
Horizon in the Baltics. // Archaeology of the
Sösdala-Untersiebenbrunn Period. Materials on the Archaeology
of Belarus, Issue 12. Minsk.
Kulakov,
V.I., Tolstikov, V.P., 2007. Catalogue (Pushkin Museum) The
Merovingian Age. Europe Without Borders. Archaeology and History of
the 5th-8th Centuries, Berlin.
Makhlayuk,
A.V., 2006. Soldiers of the Roman Empire. Traditions of Military
Service and the Military Mentality, St. Petersburg.
Mengin,
V., 2007. The Merovingian Era – Europe Without Borders.
Introductory Review of the Exhibition Theme // The Merovingian Era.
Europe Without Borders. Archaeology and History of the 5th-8th
Centuries, Berlin.
Aberg,
N., 1919. Ostpreussen in der Volkerwanderungszeit. Uppsala-Leipzig,
Beninger,
E., 1934. The Quadruples // Reinerth, H., Vorgeschichte der
deutschen Stamme. Germanische Tat und Kultur auf deutschen Boden,
Vol. 2. Berlin.
Bertram,
M., 1995. The Merowingian Altertumers in the Berliner Museum fur
Vor- und Fruhgeschichte // Merowingerzeit. Die Altertumer im Museum
fur Vor- und Fruhgeschichte. Mainz.
Fuchs
S., 1943. Bildnisse und Denkmaler aus der Ostgotenzeit // Die
Antike, 19. Bd., 2. H. Berlin.
Janssen
L.J.F., 1852. Over de gouden halsbanden en ringen te Velp, bij
Arnhem, gevonden // Bijdragen voor vaderlandsche geschiedenis en
oudheidkunde, t. 8.
Kazanski
M., Koch U., 2001. Die Chronologie im Barbaricum zur Zeit der
grossen Volkerwanderungen // Das Gold der Barbarenfursten. Schatze
aus Prunkgrabern des 5. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. zwischen Kaukasus und
Gallien. Stuttgart.
Lund
Hansen U., 1998. Goldring // Reallexikon der Germanischen
Altertumskunde, Bd. 12. Berlin-New York.
Maxfield
V.A., 1981. The military decorations of the Roman Army. London.
Perin
P., 1995. Les tombes de "chefs" du debut de l'epoque
merovingienne. Datation et interpretation historique // Les Noblesse
Romaine et les Chefs Barbares du IIIe au VIIe siecle.
Conde-sur-Noireau.
Perin
P., Feffer L-Ch., 1987. Les Francs, t. 1, A la Conquete de la Gaule.
Paris.
Radig
W., 1939. Westgermanischer Schmuck der Eisenzeit // Tracht und
Schmuck im nordischen Raum, 1. Bd., Leipzig.
Roes
A., 1947. Some gold Torcs in Holland // Acta Archaeologica, vol.
XVIII, Kobenhavn.
Steuer
H., 2006. Velp // Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, Bd.
32, Berlin-New York.
Stjernquist
B., 1955. Simris. On Cultural Connections of Scania in the Roman
Iron Age. Acta Archaelogica Lundensia. Series in 4o, No. 2. Lund.
Tejral
J., 2001. Auswirkungen der Foederaten-Kultur im Barbaricum: Das Grab
von Briza, Bez. Lithomeric // The Gold of the Barbarenfurs. From the
Prunkgrabern of the 5th century. Chr. of Kaukasus and Gallien.
Stuttgart.
Abbreviations:
M.
– Moscow; St. Petersburg – St. Petersburg
Figure
captions for V.I. Kulakov's article "Torques of the
Untersiebenbrunn Horizon from Velp (Netherlands)":
Fig.
1. Distribution of Velp-type torcs on a Roman limes (after: Steuer
H., 2006, Abb. 24 with additions by the author): a – hoard of
Velp-type torcs; b – single find of a Velp-type torc.
Fig.
2 A hoard found in 1851 in Velp (after Janssen L.J.F., 1852, p.
162).
Fig. 3. Torques from Velp (North Brabant, Netherlands)
(Gelderland!).
Fig. 4. Ornamentation on the torcs from Velp.
Fig.
5. Variations of star-shaped figures and types of individual stamps
characteristic of the Søsdal and Untersiebenbrunn styles
(after Aberg N., 1919, pp. 43, 44).
Fig. 6. Torques from Velp:
their order of arrangement on the warrior's neck.
Fig. 7.
Tombstone of Marcus Caelius, a centurion of the first cohort of the
XVIIIth legion, who died in 9 AD. in the Battle of the Teutoburg
Forest and buried near Xanten (Netherlands) (Duitsland/Germany!) and
a reconstruction of the battle (after A. McBride).
Fig. 8. Dish
of Constantius II from the crypt at the Gordikov estate on Mount
Mithridates (Kerch).
Fig. 9. Bodyguards of Theodosius I the Great
from the Madrid Museum.
Fig. 10. Roman military awards: 1 -
reconstruction of award torcs and bracelets based on military
tombstones (after: Maxfield V.A., 1981, p. 89); 2 - tombstone of C.
Vibius Macer (Augustus era) with award crown, phalerae, spears,
torcs, and bracelets (after: Maxfield V.A., 1981, Fig. 5).
Fig.
11. Bodyguards of Justinian I on a mosaic from the Basilica of San
Vitale (Ravenna)
References:
Kulakov, V.I., 1996.
"Truso and Kaup (proto-urban centers in the land of the
Prussians)" // Rossiyskaya Archeologiya, No. 3.
Kulakov,
V.I., 1997b. "Varnikam. Antiquities of the Prussian leaders"
// Gistarychna-archealagichny zbornik, No. 12. Minsk.
Kulakov,
V.I., 1999. "Irzekapinis" // STRATUM plus, St. Petersburg
- Chisinau - Odessa, No. 5.
Kulakov, V.I., 2004a. Gods of Videvut
// Letonica, Riga, No. 10.
Kulakov, V.I., 2006. Memorial Complex
at the Kaup Cemetery (Excavation 2005) // Archaeology of the Upper
Volga Region (on the 80th Anniversary of K.I. Komarov),
Moscow.
Kulakov, V.I., Skvortsov, K.N., 2000. Blades from
Kleinheide // Historical and Archaeological Collection, No. 15.
Minsk.
Bertasius, M., 2005. Marvelous. A Graveyard of the Middle
Ages, I Bd. Lithuanian Archaeological Museum of the II-XII a.
Kapinynas, Kaunas.
Grunau, S., 1876. Preussische Chronicle. Bd.
I, Leipzig.
Kulakov W., 1997. "The Tracht der Prussen im
Fruhmittelalter" // The Balts and their Neighbors in the Viking
Age. Archaeologia Baltica, Vol. 2, Vilnius.
July 10, 2018
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OVER DE GOUDEN
HALSBANDEN EN RINGEN, TE VELP, BIJ ARNHEM, GEVONDEN
DOOR
Dr. L. J. F. JANSSEN. CONSERVATOR BIJ HET MUSEUM VAN OUDHEDEN TE
LEIJDEN.
Met
afbeeldingen.
NIET
AFZONDERLIJK IN DEN HANDEL.
TE
ARNHEM, BIJ IS. AN. NIJHOFF. 1851.
Onder
de zeldzaamste ontdekkingen, die in den jongsten tijd in ons
vaderland hebben plaats gevonden, behooren de gouden versierselen,
aan het hoofd dezes gemeld, en die hiernevens in naauwkeurige
afbeeldingen worden uitgegeven. Die groote zeldzaamheid is oorzaak,
dat wij de uitgave spoedig doen plaats vinden en van een kort
ophelderend berigt vergezellen. Wij vonden daartoe te dringender
aanleiding, omdat een vroeger bericht, door de nieuwsbladen
verspreid, aan de onjuiste meening ingang moest verschaffen, dat die
voorwerpen uit de riddertijden of van de eene of andere adellijke
familie, dus van zeer laten oorsprong, zouden zijn (*).
Eer ik tot de opheldering overga, zij vooraf openlijk hulde en dank
toegebragt aan den heer Mr. T. BRANTSEN, burgemeester van Reeden c.
a., voor zijne medewerking ter voorkoming dat die voorwerpen nog
niet verstrooid of in den smeltkroes geworpen werden, alsmede voor
de gelegenheid waarin hij mij gesteld heeft om ze naauwkeurig
(*)
Zie b. v. Algemeen Handelsblad, 1851 den 15 Januarij.
te
onderzoeken, en, met bewilliging van den bezitter, onder mijn
toezigt te laten afbeelden. Immers, wanneer ook de ophelderende
aanteekeningen van mijne hand geene waarde mochten hebben, zouden
die afbeeldingen toch van groot aanbelang zijn, omdat daardoor
verhoed is, dat, bij mogelijk verlies van de oorspronkelijke
stukken, de wetenschap niet al te zeer benadeeld zijn zou, en omdat
door afbeeldingen van geheel éénige gedenkstukken, als
deze, de bouwstof der archaelogie eene wezenlijke aanwinst erlangt.
Ik
zal 1.) de ontdekking kort vermelden, met betrekking tot de juiste
plaats en de wijze waarop de voorwerpen gevonde zijn, naar
mededeelingen van den vinder en volgens autopsie; 2.) de gevonden
voorwerpen beschrijven, in die bijzonderheden, die door de
afbeeldingen niet konden worden aangewezen; 3.) over den ouderdom,
de afkomst en de bestemming eenig licht trachten te verspreiden.
1.
Op
den 16 Januarij 1851 werden, door den tuinman CARRO, te Velp, in den
tuin van den heer J. J. JOBIUS [JORIUS], toevallig, bij het omzetten
van den grond, gevonden: elf stuks gouden versierselen, zijnde hals-
en vinggerringen, allen aan een' der groote halsringen (zie Fig. 1.)
hangende, en klaarblijkelijk met opzet, doch in ouden tijd in den
grond gelegd. De diepte waarop zij gevonden werden, was ruim eene
halve Nederl. El, en zij lagen op den gewonen zandgrond, waaruit de
bodem daar bestaat. Eertijds was die tuin gemeentegrond; digt bij de
plek waar de voorwerpen lagen, waren de dorpsbewoners vroeger gewoon
hun zand te halen; eerst in lateren tijd werd de grond gekultiveerd
en ging in bijzonder eigendom over. De vindingsplaats ligt tamelijk
hoog en schijnt vroeger nog iets hooger geweest te zijn dan thans;
oogenschijnlijk is zij even hoog gelegen als de hervormde kerk, die
er p. m. 250 el ten zuiden van verwijderd is. Noch onder, noch
rondom de voorwerpen werd iets anders dan de gewone zandaarde
gevonden; men ontdekte geene spoor van verbranding, noch eenig
bewijs, dat de stukken oorspronkelijk in een' doek, kistje of
dergelijke besloten geweest waren. Men heeft hiervan te meer
zekerheid, omdat de geheele tuiu en zelfs belende akkers na de
ontdekking zorgvuldig zijn omgewoeld, in de hoop van nog iets te
vinden, doch welke arbeid geheel vruchteloos is geweest. De juiste
aanwijzing van deze vindingsplaats is niet zonder aanbelang, omdat
in het jaar 1715, ia hetzelfde dorp, eveneens een schat van antieke
gouden voorwerpen gevonden is (beneden te vermelden), waaruit deze
versierselen eenige opheldering erlangen.
2.
Van
de elf ringen zijn er hier slechts acht afgebeeld, omdat vier
in vorm en versiering aan elkander gelijk waren, zoodat er drie door
verwijzing naar éene afbeelding genoegzaam kunnen gekend
worden.
Fig.
1. Halsring; zwaar 7 lood 7 wigtje; gehalte 18 karaten; goudswaarde
f95,50.
Fig.
2. Halsring; doch waarvan slechts het voorste gedeelte van den
beugel afgebeeld is, omdat het overige geheel overeenkwam met Fig.
1; zwaar 5 lood 7 wigtje 3 korrel; gehalte 18 karaten; goudswaarde
f71.
Fig.
3. Halsring; zwaar 5 lood 8 wigtje 3 korrel; gehalte 18 karaten;
goudswaarde f72,05. Van deze soort zijn er nog drie, die niet
afgebeeld zijn, omdat zij in vorm en versiering volkomen met dezen
overeen kwamen. Slechts op één dier drie ontbreekt het
kleine groepje versierselen, hetwelk op beide zijden van Fig. 3
gezien wordt. Het gewigt van den éénen dier drie is 7
lood 3 wigtje 8 korrel, de goudswaarde f91; het gewigt van den
tweeden is 7 lood, 5 korrel, de goudswaarde f87,40; het gewigt van
den derden is 8 lood 7 wigtje 7 korrel, de goudswaarde f 106,20. Het
gehalte van allen is 18 karaten.
Fig.
4. Halsring; zwaar 4 lood 1 wigtje 6 korrel; gehalte 18 karaten;
goudswaarde f51,55.
Fig.
5. Spiraal, als vingerring; zwaar 3 lood 9 wigtje; gehalte 18
karaten; goudswaarde f48,35.
Fig.
6. Fragment van een' ring, met opzet ineen gebogen, en zeer
waarschijnlijk van een' ring als Fig. 4 of 5. Zwaar 7 wigtje 2
korrel; gehalte 24 karaten; goudswaarde f11,20.
Fig.
7. Vingerring, voorzien van een ovaal, uitgehold schild, waarin
oorspronkelijk een gegraveerde steen zal gezeten hebben. De steen
echter ontbrak bij het vinden, en had waarschijnlijk reeds ontbroken
toen de ring in den grond geraakte, aangezien de vinder mij
verzekerde, in de holte van het schild niets dan zand gevonden en
vruchteloos naar het ontbrekende steentje gezocht te hebben. Deze
ring draagt sporen van veel gedragen te zijn. Zwaar 1 lood 2 korrel;
gehalte 24 karaten; goudswaarde f15,90.
Fig.
8. Vingerring, op welks vierkant schild het borstbeeld van een'
krijgsman diep (en creux) gegraveerd en van eene
gepuntcerde lijst omgeven is; de krijgsman schijnt een barbaar, geen
Romein, te zijn. Zwaar 1 lood; gehalte 18 karaten; goudswaarde
f12,40.
Uit
deze opgave blijkt, dat de elf gouden ringen te zamen het
gewigt hadden van 53 lood 4 korrel, ter goudswaarde van f652,95 (*),
en dat zij van 18 karaats goud waren, met uitzondering van Fig. 6 en
7, wier gehalte 24 karaten was.
(*)
De waardering ia geschied door M. C. MENTE, goudsmid alhier.
Alle
voorwerpen droegen blijken van gebruikt te zijn, sommige meer,
andere minder; de vingerringen Fig. 7 en 8 het meest. Het ronde
gedeelte van de beugels der halsringen had onderschcidene kleine
bogten, die veroorzaakt konden zijn door dikwijls om- en afdoen,
waardoor de beugels moesten verbogen worden, of door herhaalde
drukkingen van andere voorwerpen, die er op kunnen gerust hebben.
Allen
zijn uit de hand bewerkt; zelfs het ronde gedeelte der halsringen
is, blijkens kleine onevenredigheden, uit de band geklopt. Het
platte gedeelte vertoont zich aan den buitenkant driezijdig; zie de
doorsneden Fig. 1. b, c en
d. De versieringen zijn er met een' stempel in geslagen, niet
uit de hand gegraveerd, hetwelk vooral blijkt uit hare volkomene
gelijkheid. Zij getuigen van veel smaak en kunstvaardigheid. De
cirkeltjes op Fig. 6 beviuden zich slechts aan ééne
zijde, die de buitenzijde van den ring zal geweest zijn. Het
borstbeeld op Fig. 7 schijnt uit de hand gegraveerd te zijn.
De
sluiting der halsringen is bij allen dezelfde; te weten, een
eikelvormig oogje (zie Fig. 1a), door hetwelk een puntig knopje
gestoken werd. Voorts hebben de halsringen, vooral van voren en aan
de buitenzijde, eene bruinachtige kleur, waaruit de goudsmid, die
met de waardering belast was, het besluit opmaakte, dat zij
oorspronkelijk opzettelijk gekleurd waren.
3.
Om
over den ouderdom, de afkomst en de bestemming te oordeelen, hebben
wij, bij gebrek aan opschriftelijke stukken (gelijk munten en
gedenksteenen zouden zijn), enkel de voorwerpen zelve tot gidsen, en
zullen dus uit deze, vergeleken met andere elders gevondene, licht
moeten zoeken.
Onwillekeurig
vestigt zich het oog in de eerste plaats op den vingerring Fig. 7,
die van een borstbeeld voorzien is. Men hoopt, dat het portret
erkend en door de geschiedenis geverifieerd zal kunnen worden. Maar
in de ruwe trekken, waarin ziek dat beeld verloont, hebben wij
vruchleloos naar een bekend persoon gezocht. Een Romeinsch
keizer is het niet. Het hoofd is voorzien van digte en kleine
krullen, of van eene pelsmuts. Op borst en schouders ziet men vouwen
van een' mantel, en mogelijk is onder zijne kin de bovenrand van een
schild aangeduid. Het schijnt een barbaar te zijn, ofschoon ik de
beeldtenis onder bekende barbaarsche vorsten niet gevonden heb. Men
zal er echter eer een' barbaar dan een' Romein in vermoeden, omdat
de bepaalde kenmerken van het Romeinsche karakter en kostuum
ontbreken. Intusschen komen bewerking en vorm van den ring zelfen
met die van Romeinsche ringen uit laten tijd overeen. In vorm en
ruwe bewerking is hij bij voorb. gelijk aan den ring bij ARNETH,
Gold- und Silberwerke u. s. f., Tab. G, S. XX Nº
152, S. 33, op welks vierkant schild de borstbeelden van
Constantinus Jun. en zijne vrouw gegraveerd zijn; alsmede aan den
ring uit Louisendorf, met het opschrift FIDEM CONSTANTINO,
afgebeeld in mijne Gedenkteekenen der Germanen en Romeinen
enz., Pl. XVI, 6—8, en aan eenen anderen uit dezelfde streek,
volkomen gelijk aan den laatstgenoemden, in bezit van den heer P. C.
G. GUYOT te 's Hage (*). Maar ik zou onzen Velpschen ring nog eer
iets later, dan uit den tijd der Constantijnen afkomstig achten.
Hiertoe dringt de overweging van den in 1715 in hetzelfde dorp
gevonden gouden schat, waarbij èn munten uit den tijd der
(*)
De ring van den heer GUYOT werd in het jaar 1850 in de omstreek van
Kleef gevonden en is zoo uitmuntend bewaard, dat hij als nieuw zou
kunnen beschouwd worden. Daar er thans twee vingerringen gevonden
zijn, geheel gelijk, ook wat het opschrift hetreft, en uit dezelfde
streek, mag men veronderstellen, dat zij door een' der Constantijnen
als donaria
aan verdienstelijke bevelhebbers, waarschijnlijk van barbaarsche
hulptroepen, geschonken tijn, gelijk, vooral in dien tijd, zeer veel
plaats vond.
Constantijnen
waren èn
ook latere, de jongste van den tiran Johannes, wiens laatste munt
(MEDIOBARBI, p. 537) van het jaar 425 is. Die gouden schat, niet
onbelangrijk tot opheldering van onze versierselen in het algemeen,
moge hier kort vermeid staan, te meer, omdat hij weinig bekend is,
en uit Nederduitsch geschreven werken ook slechts onvolledig gekend
kan worden. Men vindt er eenige berigten over bij ENGELBERTS, Aloude
staat,
IV. 336; G. VAN HASSELT,
Arnhemsche
Oudheden,
IV. 1—3; REUVENS EN WESTENDORP, Antiquiteiten. III. 148, waar
nog wordt aangeroerd STARING, in de
Verh. der Haarlemsche Maatschappij,
XI. 451 (1822); IS. AN. NIJHOFF, Wandelingen
in de Omstreken van Arnhem,
5e uitg. bl. 107, waar nog is aangeroerd KILIAAN, Etymol. voce
dondersteen; maar de meest uitroerige en meest gelijktijdige
bescheiden vindt men in G. CUPER, Lettres
de critiques
etc., Amsterdam 1742, 4° p. 179, en in de saggi
di Dissertat. Accadd. di Cortona,
tom. IV. p. 255 sqq. (Roma 1743, 4º),
Dissert.
YI*, sopra alcune medaglie d'oro, divisa in tre lettere, due di
GISBERTO CUPERO ed
una di
Mr. FRANSCISCO BIANCHINI.
In
beide laatstgemelde werken bevinden zich, t. a. p., ook twee
afbeeldingen van medaillons van Honorius en van Galla Placidia, bij
dien schat geronden (*). Uit deze bescheiden is ons navolgend berigt
ontleend.
Op
het Laar(§), te Velp, werd in het jaar 1715, door werklieden en
soldaten, bij het omspitten en gelijkmaken van een onvruchtbaar en
heuvelachtig stuk weiland (sterile prato),
toebehoorende aan een' tabakskoopman, die
(*)
ARNETH, die in zijne Gold- und Silberw., p. 7, dezen
Velpschen goudschat aanvoert als behoorende onder de belangrijkste
goudvondsten in Europa, en die als zijne bron noemt de Lettres de
critiques l. c., heeft verkeerdelijk als vindingsplaats Velperg
genoemd, in plaats van Velp, en als beschrijver opgegeven
CUPER GISBERT, in plaats van den bekenden geleerde GISBERT CUPER.
(§)
Laar, oudd. Lár ~ woning, huis; zie GRAFF,
althochd. Sprachschatz;, II, 143; vergel. MEIJER Zürich.
Ortsnamen S. 10 (1849); en L. P. C. VAN DEN BERGH, Krit.
Woordenb. der Ned. Myth., bl. 124.
het
tot tabaksland verbeteren wilde, een gouden schat gevonden ter
goudswaarde van f10,000 tot f12,000. Hij bestond in een' halsband
(collier), in armringen (brasseletten), in munten en
medaillons. Alles lag in de losse aarde, maar de halsband en de
armringen waren in de rondte gelegd; het midden van dit rondlje was
met de medaillons bedekt, die van sierlijke randen voorzien waren en
die zóó naast elkander lagen, dat zij eene soort van
vloer vormden, zijnde vijf dier medaillons nog aan de collier
bevestigd geweest (*). Op deze medaillons waren de kleinere gouden
munten, op den kant, naast elkander gezet. De vinders verdeelden den
schat onverwijld, maakten zich er mede uit de voeten en verkochten
het grootste gedeelte aan goudsmeden, die het in den smeltkroes
wierpen, zoodat de gezamenlijke vondst door geen' kenner of
liefhebber ooit gezien is. Intusschen had CUPERUS het voorregt, te
Arnhem nog een dertigtal der gevonden gouden munten te bezigtigen en
er zelfs twee van te kunnen koopen, ééne van Honorius
en ééne van Valentinianus; de overige die hij gezien
had waren geweest van Constantijn den Groote en zijne zonen, van
Valens, Gratianus en andere keizers van dien tijd, alsmede een van
Johannes. Ook zag hij te Arnhem nog enkelen der medaillons, met name
een van Honorius en een van Galla Placidia (§). Volgens de
mededeelingen van CUPERUS (die als zegsman den Baron VAN SPAEN van
Biljoen noemt), zouden de brasseletten en de collier
(*)
Hoe zulke medaillons aan de colliers hingen, daarvan zie
voorbeelden in de Hist. Ant. Mittheilungen van
het Genootschap voor Oudheden te Copenhagen, S. 97—98, fig. 1,
en bij ARNETH 1. c. Taf. G. L. p. 8.
(§)
Deze beiden zijn in de voornoemde verhandelingen uitgegeven. Het
medaillon van Honorius was toen in bezit van den burgemeester DE
GROOT te Arnhem, en dat van Galla Placidia bevond zich bij den Baron
VAN SPAEN te Biljoen. Later kwam de GALLA PLACIDIA in de verzameling
van den heer VAN DAMME; zie ENGELBERTS 1. c., en ging uit deze over
in de Koninkl. verzameling te 's Hage; zie J. C. DE JONGE, Notice,
p. 99.
versmolten
zijn. ENGELBERTS daarentegen berigt, dat de collier »nog
als doopstuk bij zekere familie bewaard wordt."
ENGELBERTS had het wel niet met eigen oogen gezien, hij geeft er ook
geene beschrijving van en noemt de familie niet; maar zijne
verzekering schijnt niet betwijfeld te mogen worden. Indien het
thans nog bij eenige familie mogt bewaard zijn, zou
deze zeker de wetenschap verpligten door daarvan kennis te geven
(*). ENGELBERTS heeft nog berigt, dat de heer VAN DAMME »uit
denzelfden omtrek (Velp) bezat, eene buitengemeen groote medalje van
Constantijn den Groote, die echter niet aan de gouden collier
bevestigd was geweest, alsmede een' zwaren gouden vingerring, of
ring, versierd met ingewerkte beeldjes van de eerste Christenen
(en?) met een' saphirsteen, verbeeldende de keizerinne Helena."
Uit dit berigt schijnt men te mogen opmaken, dat ook die voorwerpen
van Velp afkomstig waren. Ten aanzien van de vindingsplaats, het
Laar, leest men nog bij CUPER, dat sommigen, wegens de
heuvelen die vroeger op dien akker geweest waren, gemeend hadden,
dat deze gouden schat van eene begraafplaats afkomstig zoude zijn.
CUPER hield dit echter voor niet aannemelijk, omdat er, volgens hem,
bij de slechting van den heuvel waarin deze voorwerpen lagen, niet
de minste sporen van eene begraafplaats gevonden waren, en omdat het
begraven met schatten in dien tijd bij de Romeinen niet meer
in zwang was.
Wij
zijn het hierin met CUPER eens; doch mogen niet nalaten op te
merken, dat het niet bewezen is, dat die schat er door Romeinen
geborgen is geweest, en dat barbaren in dien tijd de gewoonte wèl
hadden, om met hunne afgestorvenen schatten te begraven. —
(*)
Maar vermoedelijk bestaat het niet meer. Immers voormelde heer
BRANTSEN zeide mij, dat hem flaauw voor den geest stond, dat de
collier in zijne familie geweest, maar dat zij ten tijde der
Fransche overheersching tot geld gemaakt was.
Men
mag uit deze opgaven zonder vermetelheid besluiten, dat die
goudvondst op het Laar uit de eerste helft der vijfde eeuw
is, omdat de jongste der munten uit den aanvang der vijfde eeuw was.
En hierin is de reden gelegen, waarom wij boven het vermoeden geuit
hebben, dat onze gouden versierselen uit iets lateren tijd dan dien
der Constantijnen zouden zijn. Immers men zal beide goudvondsten wel
als gelijktijdig of nagenoeg gelijktijdig mogen aanmerken, omdat het
Laar slechts 10 minuten van de plek waar onze voorwerpen gevonden
zijn verwijderd is, en omdat beide vondsten geene sporen opleverden
van begrafenis, maar wel, dat zij opzettelijk in den grond geborgen,
niet bij toeval verloren geweest waren.
De
vingerring Fig. 8, waarin zich oorspronkelijk een gegraveerd
steentje zal bevonden hebben, komt in vorm en bewerking zoo in het
oogvallend met Romeinsche vingerringen overeen, dat wij daarvoor
geene voorbeelden ter vergelijking behoeven aan te voeren. Anders is
het echter gelegen met de overige versierselen, bepaaldelijk met de
halsringen. Deze komen noch in vorm, noch in versiering met de ons
bekende Romeinsche overeen. Op het eerste gezigt zou iemand zelfs
vermoeden kunnen, dat zij veeleer hoofdringen, diademen, waren;
immers hun vorm is eenigermate met dien van enkele diademen
uit de klassieke oudheid overeenkomstig: zie b. v. afbeeldingen bij
CAYLUS, Recueil, I. partie 4, ri. LXXXV, 4;
MONTFAUCON, Antiq. expliq. III PI. XX. en XXV,
en BOLDETTI, i cimiteri etc. p. 526. Ook zeide mij onlangs de
heer HIIDEBRAND, opzigter van het Museum van Oudheden te Kopenhagen,
die (28 Aug. jl.) alhier de teekeningen onzer Velpsche versierselen
zag, dat er in Zweden gouden diademen van soortgelijken
vorm gevonden waren, welke men daar vermoedde van Oostersche
afkomst te zijn. Intusschen waren die Zweedsche diademen voor zóó
ver van de onze onderscheiden, dat zij van achteren digt en van
voren open (perpendiculair doorgesneden) en daardoor elastiek waren.
Intusschen
zal men onze Velpsche ringen niet voor diademen kunnen houden, omdat
het breede en platte gedeelte der beugels eene tegengestelde rigting
heeft met de sluiting van achteren, in dier voege, dat, wanneer zij
als diademen gebruikt werden, zij niet plat tegen het voorhoofd
zouden liggen, maar met de scherpe punt der voorzijde het hoofd
zouden verwonden; terwijl zij daarentegen, om den hals gelegd
zijnde, zeer doelmatig met de platte voorzijde tegen het borstbeen
sluiten, en het versierde gedeelte dan ook voor ieder zigtbaar is.
Aan deze bestemming is niet te twijfelen, en wanneer daaromtrent nog
twijfeling mogt overblijven, zoo zal die wijken bij overweging, dat
gelijksoortige ringen elders nog om den hals van de lijken bevestigd
gevonden zijn. Die elders gevonden ringen zijn echter weinig in
getal en hoogst zeldzaam. Zij werden gevonden in een gewest, hetwelk
tot nog toe voor de vergelijkende archaeologie weinig geraadpleegd
is, en wij gaan tot de vermelding daarvan te gereeder over, omdat
het de eenige voorbeelden zijn uit de gansche oudheid (voor zoo veel
mij althans bekend is), die met onze Velpsche halsringen grootelijks
overeenkomen.
In
Lijfland, ten oosten van de Baltische zee, werden in den
jongsten tijd door DR. F. KRUSE, den onvermoeiden navorscher der
monumentele oudheid, vele opgravingen bewerkstelligd, vooral ook in
grafheuvels der oudste bewoners aldaar. De uitkomsten daarvan zijn
door hem medegedeeld in het werk Necrolivonica, in 1842 te
Petersburg uitgegeven. Daar vindt men, Tab. 4. fig. N.
(vergel. p. 7 van den tekst), een' bronzen halsring afgebeeld, te
Aschenraden in een oud graf gevonden en nog om den hals van
het scelet bevestigd. Die halsring komt in vorm buitengemeen met de
onze (namelijk Fig. 1, 2 en 3) overeen; hij is, even als de onze,
van voren driezijdig uitgeklopt, terwijl het overige rond is.
Slechts daarin verschilt hij, dat de versierselen niet geheel
dezelfde zijn, en dat de sluiting niet juist van achteren maar ter
regterzijde van den hals is, en er aan de breede voorzijde nog
eenige bronzen kleppertjes aanhangen, die nagenoeg den vorm hebben
van lepeltjes van antieke haartangetjes (pincetjes). Deze laatste
bijzonderheid doet echter aan de overeenkomst geen de minste
afbreuk, omdat volgens KRUSE's berigten in Lijfland ook zulke
halsringen zonder kloppertjes gevonden zijn. Te Ronneberg
namelijk ontdekte hij, in een oud graf, om den hals van een
mannelijk scelet, twee zulke halsringen over elkander; deze zijn
t. a. pl. Taf. 27, fig. 8, afgebeeld. Een halsring te Kerklingen,
in Kurland, gevonden en t. a. pl. Taf. 41, fig. 3, afgebeeld, is van
voren, op het breede gedeelte, van eene versiering voorzien, die
volkomen overeenkomst heeft met de driehoek-versieringen van onze
ringen; doch die halsring is van achteren touw-vormig. Voorts is nog
opmerkelijk wat KRUSE aangaande de versieringen op de
Aschenradensche oudheden meldt. Die versieringen bestonden in het
algemeen uit cirkelvormige oogjes (soms één oogje met
dubbele omtrekslijn, soms twee enkele oogjes beneden en één
er boven), uit zigzags en uit kleine vierkantjes. Zulke versieringen
nu bevinden zich ook op onze ringen. Ten aanzien van de zeldzaamheid
dier voorwerpen verklaart KRUSE, dat hem noch in Duitschland, noch
in Scandinavië immer een ring was voorgekomen overeenkomstig
met die van Aschenrade. Deze getuigenis beteekent veel in den mond
van een' oudheidkundige, die zoo groote ervaring als KRUSE heeft.
Wij veroorloven ons, er alleen nog bij aan te t, dat ons ook uit
Brittanië (*), Frankrijk en België zulke halsringen niet
zijn bekend geworden (§), terwijl de klassieke kunstge-
(*)
Ten deze moet ik nog opmerken, dat, volgens ARNETH 1. c. te Cornwall
in bet jaar 1783 een gouden torques zou gevonden zijn, die
aan eene zijde diadeemachtig breed was, afgebeeld in LYSONS, Magna
Britt. III. p. CCXXI, en eene bronzen, afgebeeld in de
Archaeologia, XIV, 94. Maar de in die werken voorkomende
ringen hebben met de onze zeer weinig overeenkomst.
(§)
Men gelieve wèl in het oog te houden, dat hierdoor geenszins
ontkend wordt, dat de Germanen, Britten en Kelten, in die landen
woonachtig, in het algemeen geene halsringen zouden gedragen hebben.
Het tegendeel toch is genoeg bekend; vele zijn de bewijzen, daarvoor
uit oude schrijvers en uit monumenten aan te voeren; wij besparen
echter de behandeling hiervan tot eene andere gelegenheid, daar wij
ons thans op kortheid moetende toeleggen, slechts het
noodzakelijkste, hier tot opheldering dienende, aanstippen.
wrochten
uit Griekenland en Italië (de Etrurische daaronder begrepen)
mede geene vergelijking aanbieden, dan de genoemde, weinig in het
oog loopende, met enkele diademen (*). Uit het aangevoerde zal dan
wel de uitstekende zeldzaamheid dezer voorwerpen gebleken zijn;
zeldzamer nog dan de Aschenradensche bij KRUSE, voor zoo ver die
slechts uit brons bestonden, de onze daarentegen van goud zijn.
De
weinige ophelderingen, die KRUSE over de afkomst en den ouderdom der
Aschenradensche ringen heeft bijgebragt, kunnen ons van geene dienst
zijn, omdat zij slechts bestaan in aanhalingen uit oude Noordsche en
Russische schrijvers, betrekking hebbende op het gebruik van
halsringen in 't algemeen en niet hooger dan de elfde eeuw
opklimmende. Mogelijk heeft KRUSE geoordeeld, dat zijne
Aschenradensche voorwerpen tot dien laat-middeleeuwschen tijd
behoorden, ofschoon hij dit niet uitdrukkelijk zegt. In geval hij
echter in die meening verkeerde, zou hij door onze Velpsche
halsringen zeker tot een ander gevoelen geleid worden.
(*)
Van verre mag er nog mede vergeleken worden een kleine, platte,
diadeemvormige, gouden vingerring, bij Wijk bij Duurstede gevonden
en thans in het Museum van oudheden alhier. Deze is van buiten
versierd met driehoekige figuurtjes, van oogjes voorzien, en
besloten in een' gepunteerden rand; hij is aan het smalle gedeelte
open en dus elastiek, hierin niet de voornoemde Zweedsche diademen
overeenkomstig, hoewel dáár de opening aan de breede
zijde was. Deze Wijksche vingerring werd door den Zweedschen
oudheidkundige, den heer HILDEBRAND, geoordeeld tot de vijfde eeuw
te behooren. Voor den vorm van dien Wijkschen ring, vergelijke men
den armring bij WORSAAE, Dänemarks
Vorzeit,
S. 46, en voor de versiering S. 47.
Aangaande
den bepaalden volksstam, waarvan zij zouden afkomstig zijn, brengt
KRUSE mede niets in het midden. Maar indien de graven, die hij te
Aschenraden vond, van een volk zijn dat dáár inheemsch
was, dan behoorden zij onzes inziens tot een' Noordschen stam, want
het is aannemelijk, dat de volkeren die oudtijds digt aan de
oostkust der Baltische zee (en wel aan haar zuidelijk gedeelte)
woonden, van denzelfden stam waren, als aan de westkust, thans tot
Zweden behoorende. Door MONE, Gesch. des Heidenth.,
I.7,66, worden de Lijflanders, Ehstlanders en Kurlanders tot den
Finniscben stam gebragt; maar zie over de oudste volken aan de
Oostzeekusten vooral GRIMM, Gesch. der deutschen Sprache, S.
716 n. f.
Aan
den halsring Fig. 4, die geheel uit rond geklopt gouddraad bestaat,
moet, wegens gelijke sluiting en gelijk goud-gehalte, eene gelijke
afkomst worden toegekend. Wij zullen daarbij niet uitvoerig
stilstaan; hij is blijkbaar van de eenvoudigste soort; doch het was
mogelijk, dat er oorspronkelijk versierselen aan hadden gehangen;
daarvoor is althans die geheel ronde beugel zeer geschikt, en zulke
ronde halsringen, met voorwerpen daaraan hangende, zijn soms
gevonden (*).
De
zware spiraalring Fig. 5, die als vingerring kan gebruikt zijn,
ofschoon hij door zijne grootte en zwaarte eenigermate de vrije
beweging van den vinger moet belemmerd hebben, schijnt, even als de
voorgaaande, niet Romeinsch maar barbaarsch van afkomst of
bestemming te zijn. Men zou hiertegen kunnnen aanvoeren, dat de
Romeinen in den lateren keizertijd de weelde in het dragen van vele
en zware vingerringen zeer ver dreven, en dat zij zonder smaak
daarmede soms alle vingers, tot boven toe, bedekten; zie QUINTILIAN.
XI, 3, MARTIAL. XIV, 123, en vooral XI, 59, waar hij met bitteren
spot Zoilus geesselt.
(*)
Bij voorb. in Normandië; zie de jaarboeken der Societé
des antiquaires de Normandie, 1827—1828, pl. 20 No. C.
Tombeaux Gaulois-Romains.
Zoile,
quid tota gemmam praecingere libra
Te
juvat et miserum perdere sardonycha?
Annulus
iste tuis fuerat mode cruribus optus,
Non
eadem digitis pondera conveniunt.
Maar
spiraal-vingerringen zoo zwaar als de onze, zijn mij van de Romeinen
niet bekend geworden, noch op beeldwerken, noch oorspronkelijke.
Daarentegen zijn zij tusschen Germaansch-Noordsche voorwerpen
gevonden. Wij willen slechts één voorbeeld vermelden,
hetwelk de meeste overeenkomst met onzen ring aanbiedt. Op Fühnen
werd in het jaar 1833 een gouden schat ontdekt, bestaande in
armringen, brasseletten, mantelhaken, medaillons enz., tezamen 8
pond 7 lood (noordsch gewigt) zwaar; daartusschen bevond zich een
zware, massief-gouden spiraal-vingerring, overeenkomstig met den
onzen; zie de afbeelding in de Hist. Antiq. Mittheilungen der
Societät für Nord. Allerth., Taf. V, 13,
vergel. den tekst S. 92—97. Die Fühnensche ring is
slechts een weinig korter dan de onze, en aan beide einden dunner
bijloopende; maar het was mogelijk, dat onze Velpsche ring
oorspronkelijk ook aan beide einden iets dunner was geweest, en dat
die einden er waren afgenomen tot handelsgebruik (zie beneden). Het
verdient ook nog opmerking, dat de medaillons, waarmede de
Fühnensche ring gevonden werd, barbaarsche nabootsingen waren
van munten van Constans en andere opvolgers van Constantijn den
Groote, en dat de geleerde Noordsche berigtgever op goede gronden
vaststelt, dat die gouden schat, welke van Noordsch fabrikaat was,
tot de vijfde eeuw moet gebragt worden (*).
(*)
Germaansche gouden spiraalvingerringen in het Meklenburgsche
gevonden, zie vermeld en afgebeeld in het Frederico-Francisceum Taf.
XXIII,
1,4, 6—8, vergel. den tekst van LISCH, T. 137, 138, en LISCH,
in de Jahrbb. für
Meklenb. Gesch. u. Alterth.,W,
269, 270; en in het Holstein'sche, b[j RHODE, Holst.
Cimbr. antiq. Rom. p.
137, fig. 1, 4, p. 142—143, fig. 2, 3. Alle die ringen zijn
echter merkelijk dunner en fijner, dan de Fühnensche en onze
Velusche.
Deze
overeenkomst met Germaansch-Noordsche ringen valt niet minder in het
oog bij het versierde fragment Fig. 6. Want onder de voorwerpen van
Fühnen bevonden zich vier even zulke afgebrokene en
ineengebogene stukken van ringen (sommige spiraalvormig), die ruw
als eene keten in elkaâr
gehangen waren; zie de afbeelding in genoemde Mittheilungen,
Tab. V. Fig. 15. Zeer teregt kenmerkt de uitgever die als
«stukgeslagene, ineengebogene, en zamengeschakelde ringen, ten
behoeve van het verkeer" (handel en roulage). Het ringgeld is
bij vele oude volkeren in zwang geweest, niet slechts bij de Noren,
maar ook bij de Kelten, en zelfs bij de Hongaren; zie kortheidshalve
SCHREIBER, Taschenb. für Gesch. u. Alterthümer in
Süddeutschland 1840, en Nachtrag in den Jahrg.
1841 S. 401.
Uit
het tot dus ver aangevoerde zal men deze gevolgtrekkingen mogen
maken.
1.
De te Velp gevonden gouden versierselen zijn, wat hunne oudheid
aanbelangt, met waarschijnlijkheid te brengen tot de eerste helft
der 5e eeuw.
2.
De groote ringen zijn halsringen van mannen geweest; waarvan er door
ëénen persoon meer dan één te gelijk (over
elkander) kan gedragen zijn. Hierdoor wordt misschien ook meer
duidelijk, waarom die ringen zoo gebogen en gedeukt zijn; immers
mannen zullen daarmede ruwer hebben omgegaan, dan vrouwen plegen te
doen; en zijn die mannen krijgslieden geweest, gelijk waarschijnlijk
is, dan kunnen de ringen ook door wapentuig, hetwelk er op gedrukt
kan hebben, gebogen zijn.
3.
De kleinere ringen zijn vingerringen geweest; wegens hunne grootte
en zwaarte waarschijnlijk ook van mannen; terwijl de spiraal-ring en
het gebogen fragment tevens bestemd zullen zijn geweest, om bij het
verkeer, bij koop of ruil, in stukken gesneden te worden.
4.
De meeste ringen vertoonen in vorm en versiering eenen
niet-Romeinschen barbaarschen, stijl, en komen ten deze het meest
overeen met voorwerpen uit het noorden, aan de kusten der Baltische
zee gevonden.
5.
Uit het niet-Romeinsche karakter der ringen is nog niet met
zekerheid af te leiden, dat zij door barbaren zouden vervaardigd
zijn; want het was mogelijk, dat zij door Romeinen in barbaarschen
stijl vervaardigd en door de Romeinen als geschenken aan barbaren
gegeven waren, om de gunst van deze te winnen, of hunne trouw te
bcloonen, of hunne bedreigingen af te koopen; waarvan uit dien tijd
eene menigte van voorbeelden in de geschiedenis gevonden worden (*)
6.
De vroegere ontdekking, in hetzelfde dorp, van een' schat van
Romeinsche munten, medaillons enz., zou misschien de meening kunnen
versterken, dat de thans gevondene eveneens door Romeinen
vervaardigd waren; maar het was ook mogelijk, dat die vroeger
gevonden schat door barbaren van de Romeinen geroofd, of bij
overwinning veroverd en tijdelijk daar ter plaats geborgen was. In
dit geval zou men daaruit geen gevolg mogen trekken op de Romeinsche
vervaardiging van onze versierselen.
7.
De gelijke wijze waarop beide schatten in den grond geborgen waren,
en de nabijheid van de bcide vindingsplaatsen, geven aanleiding om
te stellen, dat beide schatten gelijktijdig, of bij eene gelijke
gelegenheid en door dezelfde personen, of door personen van
hetzelfde volk, begraven zijn. —
Ik
meen mij als nog te moeten onthouden van gissingen omtrent den
bepaalden volksstam, die onze versier-
(*)
Hoe afhankelijk de Romeinen toen van de batbaron waren, en wat al
afgeperste geschenken hun deze kostten, daarvoor ia belangrijk de
getuigenis van SALVIANUS Massiliensis (uit de vijfde eeuw),
de gubern. Dei, VI. 211, p. 129 (edit. Brem. 1688). Voor het
overige verwijzen wij naar GIBBON, Gesch. des Röm.
Weltreiches, uebers. von SPORSCHIL, Leipz. 1840, Th. VII. Kap.
LVI. S. 4—90, waar de voornaamste bronnen aangevoerd zijn.
selen
in den grond geborgen heeft. Hier ligt een te groot veld open. Wat
al volkeren toch uit het Noorden, Oosten en Westen hebben niet in de
eerste helft der vijfde eeuw het Romeinsche Rijk bestookt! Het meer
en meer zinkende Westersche rijk werd beurtelings door Geten,
Gepiden, Avaren, Quaden, Alanen, Sueven, Wandalen, Franken, Hunnen,
soms onderling bevriend, bestormd en ondermijnd (*), en Aëtius,
van geboorte een Scyth (§), onder de tenten der Hunnen rijp
geworden, heeft, aan het hoofd van het Westersche rijk gekomen
(433—454), twintig jaren besteed alleen om diens val te
vertragen, door het tegen barbaren te verdedigen, terwijl hij in
vele veldslagen in Gallië (†)
de Franken aan den Rijn en de Burgondiërs bedwong (**). Ik hoop
ter geschikter tijd op dit onderwerp terug te komen en eene bepaalde
gissing te kunnen aanbevelen. Thans veroorloof ik mij nog slechts de
opmerking, dat er in den omtrek van Velp nog geene sporen gevonden
zijn van eenen daar geleverden veldslag. Zelfs in het onzalige
bosch is vruchteloos door mij naar ontwijfelbare grafheuvels
gezocht. Ééne enkele doodsurn, vroeger aan den Essop,
naar men zegt, ontdekt (§§), en geringe overblijfselen van
oude begrafenis, door mij in de lente van dit jaar in het
zoogenaamde Stadsbosch bij Arnhem, boven Valkenhuizen, in
een' heuvel opgegraven, bewijzen te weinig (††).
De Apeldoornsche Germaansche graven liggen wat ver, en
schijnen mij ook toe, we-
(*)
Zia JORNANDES, de reb. Get., c. 34; MEROBAUDES, Panegyr.
cn CORRIPUS, de laudibus Justin. min. (Corp. Scriptt. Byz. edit.
BEKKERI) passim; vergel. GIBBON 1. c. VII.
(§)
Volgens REN. FRIGERIDUS. Hij was eigenlijk geboren te Dorestena
in Moesië; zie de aant. op MEROBAUDES 1. c. p. 15.
(†}
»Galliam bis quinos certamina traxit in annos
Et senior post bella redit."
MEROBAUDES
1. c. p. 16, vs. 147.
(**)
Zie GIBBON 1. c. VII. kap. 35 S. 3 u. i.
(§§)
IS. AN. NIJHOFF, Wandelingen in de omstreken van Arnhem
5e druk, b1. 108.
(††)
G. VAN HASSELT verzamelde op zijn landgoed Daalhuizen bij
Velp, nevens zeldzame Romeinsche munten, ook urnen of lijkbussen en
werpspiesen (frameae)” zoo als NIJHOFF, t. a. pl. bl. 89, naar
de mondelinge mededeeling van den heer VAN HASSELT, verzekert; maar
noch hun getal, noch soort, noch vindingsplaatsen zijn bekend,
zoodat daaruit geene gevolgtrekkingen kunnen gemaakt worden.
gens
eenvoud van inhoud en gebrek aan wapentuig, onder dan de vijfde eeuw
en niet van in een' slag gesneuvelden te zijn (*). Mogelijk zijn
zij, die deze schatten in den Velpschen bodem borgen, van den linker
Rijnoever naar den regter, den Germaanschen, gevlugt, en hebben op
deze eenzame plek, tusschen Rijn en IJssel, de lijdelijke bewaring
veilig geacht. Met dit alles wordt de mogelijkheid niet ontkend van
hetgeen aangaande den vroeger gevonden goudschat vermoed is, dat die
namelijk een gedeelte van een' keizerlijken schat
zoude zijn; maar ook in zulk getal zou hij zeker niet op last eens
keizers geborgen zijn, die voor betere omkleeding zou gezorgd
hebben, maar veeleer als ontvreemd, als geroofd, moeten worden
aangemerkt.
Leiden,
den 15 Sept. 1851.
NASCHRIFT.
Nadat
het bovenstaande reeds grootendeels gedrukt was, vond ik, in heb bij
ons te lande zeldzame werk Neues vaterländ. Archiv — von
SPIEL, fortgesetzt von SPANGENBERG, B. IV. Heft 1 S. 184 (Luneborg
bei Herold 1823, 8°), een berigt aangaande de ontdekking van
een' gouden schat in Hannover, zoo ver ik weet nergens elders
vermeld, en waarbij zich een halsband bevonden, had, die eenige
overeenkomst met onze Velpsche schijnt gehad te hebben, en ook tot
omstreeks denzelfden tijd behoord heeft. Wij
(*)
Zie, over die Apeldoornsche graven, mijn opstel: Oud-Germaansche
en Frankische oudheden te Apeldoorn, in deze Bijdragen,
D. VII. bladz. 320 en volgg.
laten
dat berigt hier nog volgen, ook in de hoop, dat het medewerken moge
om eene juistere en van eene afbeelding voorziene beschrijving van
dien schat uit te lokken, of eene aanwijzing, waar men die kan
vinden? Voormeld berigt is van de hand van Dr. KOELER te Zelle en
luidt aldus: »Op den 31 Mei (1823) heeft de ontvanger CLAUS
BÖSCHEN te Mulsuwer Wiede, in het ambt Dorum van het land
Wursten, nabij het Hollseler bosch, in de streek van Heidestatt, bij
het steken van plaggen, even onder de oppervlakte van den grond, een
gouden versiersel gevonden van een' ouden aanvoerder uit den
vóórtijd. Het is met de meeste waarschijnlijkheid voor
een' halsband te houden en weegt omstreeks een half pond. Daar, waar
het iets breeder is, zijn er tot versiering enkele kleine halve
maantjes op aangebragt. Ter zelfder plaats vond men vijf stuks oude
Romeinsche munten, allen van oogjes voorzien en die aan het dunne
einde van den halsband schijnen gehangen te hebben. Men vindt daarop
de namen van ANASTASIUS en VALENTINIANUS, en herhaaldelijk het woord
victor en victori (VICTORINUS ?). Op eene, die de oudste schijnt te
zijn en reeds tamelijk afgesleten is, bevindt zich een hoofd met het
opschrift RESTITVTOR REIPVBLICAE en onder het hoofd ANT ... S.
Wanneer dit ANTONIUS heeten moet, zou dat stuk ouder dan de
christelijke jaartelling zijn. Elke munt weegt iets meer dan een
ducaat, en de goudsmid verklaart, dat het goud van 24 karaten is.
Vier er van en de halsband zijn van wege het geregt of de Landstuba
aangekocht, en men zal deze stukken der oudheid waarschijnlijk aan
het gouvernement, voor het Museum te Göttingen of voor eene
andere openbare verzameling, aanbieden. De halsband is in twee
stukken gebroken, en het schijnt dat hij aan de ééne
zijde over elkaar gehaakt en aan de andere door twee schuivers
(Schieber), die er nog op aanwezig zijn, bevestigd geworden
is."
17
december 1920 — In Westerkappeln (Westfalen) heeft men in een
akker bij het graven een leemen vaas met 37 gouden munten gevonden.
Men wierp de gebroken vaas achteloos weg, maar vond later op de
plaats, waar ze gevonden werd, nog een ring met drie steenen en een
bewerkt stuk massief goud. De groote, zware munten zijn van
Romeinschen oorsprong en vormen een belangrijke aanwinst voor de
numismatiek.
12
augustus 2007 GOUDSCHAT VAN VELP BLIJKT VOOR EEN DEEL IN MOSKOU TE
ZIJN!
De
vroegmiddeleeuwse Goudschat van Velp, die in 1945 door het Rode
Leger uit Berlijn is geroofd, bevindt zich in het Poesjkin Museum in
Moskou. Dat meldt Jos Bazelmans, hoofd onderzoek van de Rijksdienst
voor Archeologie, Cultuurlandschap en Monumenten (RACM). Hij zag
onlangs de schat, die in 1851 is opgegraven en een paar jaar later
aan Duitsland is verkocht, prominent vermeld in de catalogus van een
tentoonstelling over Merovingische kunst in het Moskouse museum.
Dat
dit nu pas bekend is geworden heeft alles te maken met een stukje
politieke openheid naar het westen door voormalig prsident Vladimir
Poetin. De goudschat heeft nu twee kanten, archeologische erg
interessant voor Nederland maar ook historisch beladen! Dit is
eigenlijk ook weer historisch interessant omdat de reden dat de
goudschat in Moskou ligt, te maken heeft met het afloop en de
historie van de Tweede Wereldoorlog. De goudschat is in 1945 in
kisten door de Russische troepen vanuit Berlijn mee genomen naar
Moskou, als een van de goedmakers voor alle enorme schade die de
Duitsers in Rusland hadden veroorzaakt. Omdat de schat destijds
gekocht is door de Duitsers in Nederland, zal Nederland nooit
aanspraak kunnen maken op de voorwerpen. De Duitsers zijn over
teruggave of bijv. het aanmaken van replica's in onderhandeling met
de Russen. Dit punt ligt, ook 65 jaar na dato, nog erg gevoelig.
Vanuit de Gemeente Rheden is er al wel contact geweest met Poesjkin
Museum in Moskou. Zuiver met de intentie om elkaar op de hoogte te
stellen van de stand van zaken. Er zijn plannen om onder Duitse
supervisie een Nederlands onderzoeksteam naar Moskou af te laten
reizen voor verder onderzoek. Wordt vervolgt dus!
Nederlandse
archeologen willen de schat graag bestuderen, meldde donderdag
emeritus hoogleraar archeologie Tjalling Waterbolk, omdat hij lijkt
op andere goudschatten uit Nederland, zoals de door hem in 1955
opgegraven goudschat van Beilen. Bazelmans heeft aan het ministerie
van OCW gevraagd ervoor te zorgen dat een Nederlandse archeoloog de
schat in Moskou kan bestuderen. De goudschat van Velp is
oorspronkelijk groter geweest en heeft naast deze penningen ook
bestaan uit een groot aantal gouden munten, armbanden, halsringen en
een gouden ketting. Alleen de muntsieraden zijn bewaard gebleven.
DE
SCHAT VAN VELP; GISBERT CUPER, FRANKEN EN ROMEINEN
Spreker:
drs. P. Beliën.
De
schat die in 1715 in Velp werd ontdekt is eén van de meest
spectaculaire schatvondsten die ooit in ons land is gedaan. Tijdens
de lezing zal worden ingegaan op de ontdekking van de schat en wat
er vervolgens met het goud uit de vondst gebeurde. Hierna wordt een
sprong terug in de tijd gemaakt, naar het begin van de vijfde eeuw
n. Chr. Dit was de periode dat de schat aan de bodem werd
toevertrouwd. Geprobeerd zal worden de vraag te beantwoorden hoe het
goud in Velp terecht is gekomen en wie de eigenaar is geweest.
Er
zijn in Velp op twee plaatsen gouden voorwerpen gevonden. De
goudschat, gevonden bij de voormalige Villa den Heuvel, is deels dan
wel geheel in Moskou te bewonderen. Een tweede vondst met gouden
voorwerpen zou richting Parijs verkocht zijn. Hier is verder niets
meer over bekend. Al met al een zeer internationaal schatverhaal!
Germaanse
halssieraden
In
1916 werden aan de uiterwaarden van de Gelderse IJssel bij Olst vier
massief gouden halssieraden aangetroffen. Ze zijn omstreeks 400
vervaardigd uit omgesmolten solidi. Solidi, het meervoud van het
Latijnse solidus, zijn laat-Romeinse gouden munten. In de Germaanse
samenleving werd erg veel waarde gehecht aan edelmetalen sieraden.
In het Britse heldenepos Beowulf (8ste eeuw) spreekt de maker
goedkeurend over de vrijgevigheid van een koning die de beste
strijder overlaadt met koninklijke geschenken:
De
goudschat van Olst staat niet op zichzelf; ook op andere plaatsen in
Nederland zijn vergelijkbare vondsten gedaan. Zo werden in Beilen in
1955 vijf gouden halsringen en een armband aangetroffen. Deze
goudschat telde ook nog eens 22 munten. Ruim een eeuw daarvoor, in
1850, waren er van deze vindplaats al een halsring en een munt
bekend, die daarna weer kwijt zijn geraakt. Ook de halsringen van
Beilen zijn in het midden verdikt en dragen typisch Germaanse
versieringsmotieven. Er is berekend dat voor de zes sieraden uit de
schatvondst van Beilen meer dan honderd solidi omgesmolten moeten
zijn. De goudschat van Beilen is nu te bezichtigen in het Drents
Museum te Assen.
Andere
vindplaatsen van dergelijke bijzondere sieraden zijn Rhenen, in de
buurt van het vroegmiddeleeuwse grafveld, en Velp. Een deel van
laatstgenoemde goudschat, gevonden in 1751, is in het Rijksmuseum
van Oudheden: twee tot medaillons verwerkte penningen, die omstreeks
425 in Ravenna geslagen zijn. De goudschat van Velp is
oorspronkelijk groter geweest en heeft naast deze penningen ook
bestaan uit een groot aantal gouden munten, armbanden, halsringen en
een gouden ketting. Alleen de muntsieraden zijn bewaard gebleven.
De
goudschatten hebben met elkaar gemeen dat ze aan het einde van de
4de eeuw of in het begin van de 5de eeuw in de grond terecht zijn
gekomen. Wat de reden voor het begraven van dergelijke kostbaarheden
is geweest, is niet met zekerheid te zeggen. In ieder geval moeten
deze voorwerpen toebehoord hebben aan vooraanstaande Germaanse
stamhoofden, die contacten met het Romeinse rijk onderhielden.
Mogelijk hebben ze het goud gekregen als beloning voor diensten die
ze de Romeinen geleverd hebben. Daarbij kan gedacht worden aan
deelname aan militaire acties. Zo zullen de Germaanse stammen die de
Romeinse rijksgrens tegen hun eigen soort beschermden zich
ongetwijfeld vorstelijk, dus in goud, hebben laten betalen. Ook kan
een hoofdman het Romeinse goud ontvangen hebben in ruil voor de
belofte geen vijandelijkheden tegen de Romeinen te ondernemen.
De
grote politieke onrust, onderlinge strijd en invallende plunderaars
ten tijde van de volksverhuizingen kunnen de eigenaar ertoe hebben
gebracht zijn schatten te verbergen. Misschien nam hij zelf deel aan
militaire expedities en moest hij daardoor een veilige bergplaats
voor zijn kostbaarheden vinden. Misschien was hij daarna niet meer
in staat de verborgen schat op te graven, bijvoorbeeld omdat hij
gesneuveld was. Indien geen andere overlevende op de hoogte was
gebracht, raakte de bergplaats van de schat in vergetelheid.
Recentelijk
heeft men op een andere mogelijke reden voor het begraven van
dergelijke kostbaarheden gewezen. De goudschatten kunnen namelijk
ook gebruikt zijn als offers om de goden gunstig te stemmen, of om
de steun van de goden in onrustige tijden te krijgen. Schitterende
offers van prestigieuze halsringen (symbool van wereldlijke macht)
en andere gouden voorwerpen verleenden aanzien aan hen die de goden
zo vorstelijk eerden. De goudschatten uit het einde van de 4de en
het begin van de 5de eeuw, die zowel ten noorden als ten zuiden van
de Rijn zijn gevonden, weerspiegelen in ieder geval de onstabiele
politieke situatie in deze periode. Bovendien tonen deze rijkdommen
het streven van de Romeinen om door allianties de bedreiging van hun
imperium door invallen van buitenaf te trotseren. Er zullen nogal
wat geschenken aan te pas zijn gekomen om de relaties met Germaanse
stamhoofden te verbeteren en de allianties in stand te houden.
Uiteindelijk mocht het niet baten, want in 406 overschreden
Germaanse stammen definitief de Rijngrens en kwam er in Nederland
een eind aan de Romeinse overheersing.
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken1/gview?query=louisendorf+romeinsche&coll=boeken1&identifier=kXVfAAAAcAAJ
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/tijdschriften/view?identifier=MMKB07%3A000749001%3A00175&query=halsbanden+ringen+velp&coll=dts&page=1&sortfield=date
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken1/gview?query=engelberts+cuper&coll=boeken1&identifier=Mioq1a0aDuEC
OUDHEIDKUNDIGE
MEDEDEELINGEN
VAN HET
RIJKSMUSEUM
VAN OUDHEDEN
TE LEIDEN
V
UITGEGEVEN VANWEGE HET
MINISTERIE VAN BINNENLANDSCHE ZAKEN
ALLES KOMT TEREGT
'S-GRAVENHAGE
MARTINUS NIJHOFF
1911
EEN ROMEINSCHE
HELM UIT DE PEEL.
[Inleiding]
In den zomer van 1910
kwam het museum in 't bezit van een
Romeinschen
helm, die in de Peel onder Deurne gevonden
was.
Hij is van verguld zilver met oorspronkelijk ijzeren
binnenkap,
die op enkele ijzerdeeltjes na, geheel is wegge-
roest,
zoodat het alleen de verguld zilveren buitenbekleeding
van
den helm is, die ons bewaard is gebleven. Zeer gedeukt
en
gedeeltelijk uit elkaar gevallen, werd hij gerestaureerd door
den
goudsmid L. Verkuil, werkzaam aan het atelier van den
heer
v. Rossum du Chattel te Leiden. De opbouw van den
helm
wees zich geheel van zelf uit, zoodat hierover niet de
minste
twijfel kan bestaan. Eenmaal gerestaureerd, bleek welk
een
schitterend stuk het museum rijker was geworden, dat, in
vergelijk
met dergelijke helmen in het buitenland, zelfs een
unicum
mag worden genoemd.
Met
onzen helm werden verder in het veen gevonden 37
bronzen
munten van Constantijn, een bronzen fibula, een dito
spoor
en klokje, een stuk van een leeren dolkscheede met bij-
behoorend
zilveren beslagstuk, een drietal leeren schoenen,
groote
stukken leer, waarschijnlijk resten van een schabrak,
en
enkele reepjes wollen stof, die tot de kleding van den
krijgsman
hebben behoord. Met de munten zijn de helm en
133
verdere
bijvondsten vanzelf gedateerd op de 4de eeuw na Chr. geb.,
wat
des te belangrijker is, omdat daarmee ook de parallellen
van
onzen helm in het buitenland een zekerder dateering ver-
krijgen.
Op een nauwkeurige beschrijving van onzen helm (I)
zullen
wij dus een vergelijking met andere exemplaren laten
volgen
(II); een korte beschrijving der bijvondsten (III) zal
dienen
tot besluit.
[beschrijving]
I.
Onze
helm is van een tamelijk ingewikkelde samenstelling, die
zich
in hoofdtrekken aldus laat beschrijven (zie Afb. 61 en 62):
de
helmkap bestaat uit 2 losse symmetrische helften, die elk voor
zich
weer bestaan uit drie onderling verbonden stukken, allen van
een
zelfde plaatdikte van 0,06 m.m. Beide helften worden over de
koplengte
te zamen gehouden door een kam. De aldus gevormde
helmkap
wordt van onderen afgezet door een breeden rand,
die
aan de voorzijde boven elk der beide wenkbrauwen boog-
vormig
is uitgesneden. Tusschen deze bogen in is een losse
neusbeschermer
aangebracht. De wijdte van den helmrand be-
draagt
200 m.m., de hoogte van den helm, met inbegrip van
helmkam,
177 m.m., terwijl de neusbeschermer van af den
neuszadel
65 m.m. lang is.
Tot
den helm behooren verder (zie Afb. 63, 1-3) een nekbescher-
mer,
twee wangkleppen, waarvan nog één over is, eindelijk
twee
smalle
reepjes met een klinknageltje in het midden, en een
rij
van gaatjes aan de beide breedte- en aan één der
lengte-
zijden.
Hun juiste bestemming is echter niet met zekerheid aan
te
geven (zie blz. 138), doch de overeenstemming in versierings-
techniek
met die der overige helmdeelen laat geen twijfel, of zij
hebben
tot den helm behoord. De nekbeschermer is met twee
kleine
zilveren gespen voorzien, wier scharnierstukken niet boven
op
de nekklep zijn vastgeklonken, doch door een gleuf gestoken,
aan
den achterkant naar boven en beneden omgeslagen zijn.
Uit
deze gespen blijkt dat de nekbeschermer door leeren riem-
pjes
aan den helmrand bevestigd werd. Ook de wangkleppen
134
moeten,
zooals we straks zullen zien, wel door middel van een
of
ander leeren tusschenstuk aan den helmrand verbonden zijn
geweest.
Vergelijken wij haar afbeelding 63,2, dan liep,
evenals
dat bij gelijksoortige wangkleppen aan een Budapester
helm
(zie Afb. 64,7) het geval is, haar rechte zijde a langs den
helmrand,
terwijl de zijde b bij het oog uitkwam. Het is dus
de
linker wangklep, die ons bewaard is gebleven. Haar afme-
tingen
zijn: a = 180 m.m., b = 105 m.m., c = 50 m.m.
De
maten van den nekbeschermer en smalle bandjes zijn als volgt:
a
= 152 m.m., b = 30 m.m., c = 182 m.m.; a = 193
m.m.,
b
= 188 m.m.
Alle
deelen van den helen helm hebben dezelfde soort versiering
van
knopjes en reliefornamenten, welke wij echter later zullen
beschrijven, om eerst de constructie van den helm verder in
detail
te bezien.
Wij
zagen hoe de beide helften van de helmkap elk be-
stonden
uit drie losse stukken, welke wij gemakshalve willen
noemen
a, b, c. Door middel van 5 zilveren kegelvormige
klinknageltjes
zijn de beide zijstukken a en c aan b geklonken,
en
wel zóó dat het middelstuk b 9 m.m. over elk
der beide
andere
heen ligt. Van binnen gezien blijken deze stukken ieder
voor
zich naar binnen even te zijn omgelegd of omgezoomd,
terwijl
de klinknageltjes niet door die omzooming heen, doch
daar
bezijden blijken geklonken te zijn en wel op de gewone
wijze
met den klinkhamer te zijn behandeld.
De
min of meer geronde helmkam, van dezelfde plaatdikte
als
de overige deelen van de helmkap, loopt naar beide uit-
einden
smal en plat toe, zoodat zijn breedte, van rand tot
rand,
op het midden 29 m.m. is tegen 16 m.m. aan de
beide
uiteinden en evenzoo de hoogte successievelijk 17 m.m.
en
8 m.m. bedraagt. Op de beide uiteinden zijn elk met twee
klinknageltjes
dikke zilveren sluitstukjes van 9 m.m. lengte
aangebracht
om den kam de noodige stevigheid te geven.
De
aldus geconstrueerde helmkam verbindt de beide boven-
135
beschreven
kaphelften in dier voege, dat beide helften elk voor
zich
door 8 klinknageltjes aan den rand van den helmkam
geklonken
zijn. daartoe doen voor de beide uiterste dienst
dezelfde
klinknageltjes, die de bovengenoemde zilveren sluit-
stukjes
aan den helmkam verbinden. Evenzoo zijn de beide
middelste
dezelfde nageltjes, die de zijstukken a en c met b
verbinden.
De aldus aan den helmkam bevestigde kaphelften
blijken
van binnen gezien niet over elkaar heen te liggen, noch
nauw
aan elkaar aan te sluiten: zij komen slechts even onder
den
rand van den helmkam uit, zoodat tusschen beide een open
ruimte
is, die, evenals de helmkam, op het midden breeder is
dan
aan de beide uiteinden, n.l. 15 m.m. bij 4 m.m.
De
39 m.m. breede helmrand, die niet gesoldeerd is, doch
wiens
uiteinden tusschen de wenkbrauwen 23 m.m. over elkaar
heengrijpen,
is 12 m.m. in de helmkap ingeschoven en vastgeklon-
ken
door klinknageltjes. Deze zijn aangebracht op die punten,
waar
de losse deelen van de helmkap aan elkaar zijn geklonken,
m.
a. w. het zijn dezelfde klinknageltjes, die de meer genoemde
stukken
a en c met b verbinden, en die, welke de
zilveren sluit-
stukjes
op den helmkam en aan beide kaphelften vasthechten.
Slechts
twee klinknageltjes komen hierbij, n.l. één op het
midden
van elk der middenstukken b van beide kaphelften. De
klinknageltjes
zijn, evenals wij bij die der losse deelen der
beide
kaphelften zagen, langs de omzooming geklonken, die
zich
namelijk ook bij den helmrand voordoet.
Op
de zoo in den helmkap bevestigde helmrand is de neus-
klep
geklonken, wier vorm Afb. 61 duidelijk te zien geeft. Zij
is
van dezelfde plaatdikte als de overige helmdeelen en loopt
naar
den vorm van den neus aan weerszijden een weinig af.
Met
5 klinknageltjes is zij op den helmrand bevestigd, twee
op
elk der wenkbrauwen, die zuiver passen op de boogvormige
uitsnijdingen
van den helmrand, één in het midden op den
neuszadel,
waardoor tevens meer stevigheid is gegeven aan
den
overslag der beide uiteinden van den helmrand. De piek
van
de neusklep, die even onder het zilveren sluitstukje van
136
den
helmrand ingeschoven is, valt vrij wel langs de lijn van
den
bovengenoemden overslag. Behalve als ornament aan de
neusklep,
diende zij dus tevens om de scheiding van den over-
slag
te bedekken. De klinknageltjes, die de neusklep op den
helmrand
vasthechten, zijn evenals de overige tot nu toe be-
sprokene,
meer of minder kegelvormig, doch op een eenigszins
andere
manier behandeld, meer omgeslagen dan geklonken. Het-
zelfde
is het geval met de drie, die zich aan de neuspunt
bevinden,
op welke wijze van bewerking wij nog straks terug-
komen.
Tot
nu toe lieten wij van den helmrand nog één bijzonder-
heid
buiten bespreking, waartoe wij eerst thans overgaan, omdat
daarmede
de binnenbekleeding van den geheelen helm ter
sprake
komt. Langs den geheelen onderrand, ook langs de
boogvormige
uitsnijdingen, die door de wenkbrauwen der neus-
klep
bedekt worden, zijn op kleinen afstand van elkaar gaatjes
geslagen
tot het doorhalen van klinknageltjes. Daarvan zijn
nog
twee aan den linkerkant en evenveel aan den achterkant
over.
Ze zijn van het gewone klingsel als de eerste door ons
besprokene,
verschillen echter hierin, dat zij achter het klingsel
een
vierkant koperen plaatje hebben, wat voor niets anders kan
gediend
hebben dan om het doortrekken van een leeren binnen-
bekleeding
te voorkomen.
Behalve
deze leeren bekleeding spraken wij in den beginne
reeds
van een ijzeren binnenkap. Hoewel niets meer daar van
overig
is dan enkele ijzerdeeltjes aan de verguld zilveren buiten-
kap,
spreekt daar verder voor de groote elasticiteit van den
helm,
zoo als hij voor ons ligt. Vooral de helmrand, die aan
het
geheel de noodige stevigheid zou moeten geven, is zóó
zwak,
dat een enkele leeren binnenbekleeding niet toereikend
zou
zijn. Deze ijzeren binnenkap, over wier aanwezigheid geen
twijfel
kan bestaan, blijkt uitsluitend met dezelfde nageltjes te
zijn
bevestigd, waarmee de leeren binnenkleeding aan den
helmrand
vast zat. Ze zijn n.l. de eenige aan den helm, die
lang
genoeg zijn om daarvoor in aanmerking te komen. Geen
137
der
overige klinknageltjes, zoowel zij, die de losse helmdeelen
aan
elkaar verbinden, als zij, die, zooals we straks zullen zien,
ter
versiering dienen, laten eenige speling over, dat zij tot
bevestiging
van welke binnenbekleeding ook kunnen hebben
gediend.
Blijken dus de klinknageltjes aan den helmrand het
eenige
middel van bevestiging te zijn geweest, dat de binnen-
kap
met de verguld zilveren buitenbekleeding verbond, dan
moeten
voor de overige beide stukken nauw in elkaar hebben
gepast
om het geheel de noodige eenheid te geven.
Evenals
de helmkap, blijken ook de wangkleppen en nek-
beschermer
een ijzeren binnenbekleeding te hebben gehad;
aan
den laatsten althans werden nog sporen van ijzerdeeltjes
aangetroffen.
Behalve met ijzer zijn zij van binnen zeker ook
met
leer bekleed geweest. Voor de wangkleppen bewijzen dit de
twee
klinknageltjes, die nog in den rand aanwezig zijn. Zij hebben
dezelfde
vierkante plaatjes als die aan den helmrand. Een
leeren
binnenbekleeding moet van zelf ook de neusbeschermer
hebben
gehad. Tot zijne bevestiging dienden de klinknageltjes,
die
wij boven zoo eigenaardig zagen omgeslagen. De reden,
waarom
zij niet gewoon geklonken en met plaatjes als die bij
den
helmrand voorzien zijn geweest, mag daarin worden gezocht,
dat
omgeslagen de nageltjes minder scherp waren en daardoor
het
dragen op den neus veraangenaamden.
Hoe
wangkleppen en nekbeschermer aan den helmrand
bevestigd
waren, duidden wij in den beginne reeds kort aan.
Wij
zagen hoe de gespen op den nekbeschermer er op wezen,
dat
hij met riempjes aan den helmrand verbonden is geweest.
Uit
een gleufje boven elk der gespen (zie Afb. 63,4) blijkt verder,
dat
de riempjes van af den helmrand niet dadelijk over den
nekbeschermer
heenliepen, doch aan den achterkant door die
gleufjes
werden heengehaald, om eerst dan aan de gespen te
worden
vastgemaakt.
Ook
de verbinding van de wangkleppen aan den helmrand
moet
eene van leer zijn geweest. Daarop wijst nog een stukje
leer,
dat aan een der klinknageltjes boven op den helmrand
138
aanwezig
is. Nemen wij aan, dat die bevestiging uit breede
tusschenstukken
bevond, dan zijn hierop wellicht onze smalle
reepjes
(zie blz. 133) bevestigd geweest, en wel in dier voege,
dat
hun schuine zijde aansloot aan die van den nekbeschermer.
In
verband met de bevestiging der wangkleppen moeten wij
nog
wijzen op drie gaatjes in het midden van den helmrand,
vlak
boven de rij der gaatjes, waardoor de klinknageltjes
geklonken
waren (zie Afb. 63,5). Dicht bij elkaar liggend, vormen
zij
een driehoek en zouden aan een scharnierbevestiging kunnen
doen
denken, zooals aan den Peterburgschen helm te zien is (zie
Afb.
64,2). Waar echter de wangkleppen door leder aan den helm-
rand
verbonden zijn, is dit buiten gesloten. Trouwens zij bevinden
zich
alléén aan den linkerkant van den helm, zoodat ook
daarom
reeds zij met de wangkleppen in geenerlei verband
kunnen
staan. Vermoedelijk hebben zij gediend tot het door-
laten
van klinknageltjes, die op den helmrand een plaatje met
ring
bevestigden, waaraan de helm kon worden opgehangen.
Dat
onze helm kon worden opgehangen is niet bijzonders.
Bij
sommige bronzen helmen is daarvoor op den nekbescher-
mer
de ring nog aanwezig. 1) Daar bij deze helmen de nek-
beschermer
vast aan de helmkap zit, was hij daarvoor de
aangewezen
plaats. Waar onze nekbeschermer echter los aan
den
helm hangt, was hier de plaatsing van bedoelden ring
onpractisch,
zoodat men daartoe het midden van den helmrand
gekozen
mag hebben.
Hebben
wij hiermee de constructie van den helm in al zijn
onderdeelen
besproken, thans willen wij overgaan tot een be-
schrijving
der versiering, waarvan wij op blz. 133 reeds met
een
paar woorden melding maakten. Zij bestaat uit een relief-
versiering
van geperste bloempjes of kruisjes en dito parelrandjes,
die
op alle stukken, waaruit de helm is saamgesteld, voorkomen,
1)
Vgl. o.a. Lindenschmit, Die Altertümer unserer heidnische
Vorzeit, Bd. V.,
p.
116, 118, Pl. 22, p. 189, Afb. 2. Ook op een bronzen helm in het
Leidsch
museum
(Ned. Cat. E III, b, 141) zijn daarvan nog resten aan te wijzen.
139
terwijl
op den helmrand en neusklep na, ook alle deelen bovendien
met
kogelvormige knopjes zijn versierd, die van binnen gezien,
gewoon
geklonken zijn. Naast deze overeenkomst in de wijze
van
bewerking staan echter verschillende versieringsmotieven,
zoodat
wij hiervoor de helmdeelen elk afzonderlijk moeten be-
schrijven.
Beginnen
wij met de drie stukken, waaruit de beide kap-
helften
bestaan, de stukken a b c. Langs hun randen loopt
een
rij bloempjes of kruisjes, ingesloten door parelrandjes,
welke
laatste op elk der vier hoeken worden onderbroken door
een
cirkeltje in relief, met pareltje als middelpunt. Hetzelfde
geldt
van een tweede binnen-parelrandje, dat evenwijdig
aan
de buitenrand loopt, en door een tamelijk diep geultje
van
dezen gescheiden wordt. Het binnenvak wordt versierd door
een
ankerfiguur, eveneens van pareltjes, die hoog zijn opgeperst
om
het relief van het ankerfiguur te verhoogen. Het anker-
figuur
ligt zuiver in het midden en is versierd met 6 knopjes,
voorzoover
het ankerfiguur der stukken a en c betreft, met 11
knopjes
dat van het middenstuk b. Dit laatste heeft in zijn
binnenvak
bovendien nog twee parelrandjes, evenwijdig aan
den
steel en verder doorloopende over de armen van het anker-
figuur
tot aan den binnenrand.
De
helmkam heeft een versiering van dubbele parelrandjes
langs
zijn beide randen, en op het midden, in de lengte van
den
schedel. Tusschen deze laatste dubbele parelrandjes is een
ondiep
geultje, waarin een rij van 13 knopjes den helmkam
verder
versieren.
De
helmrand is versierd met twee evenwijdig loopende bolle
reliefbandjes,
waartusschen een zelfde randversiering als de
buitenranden
der stukken a, b, c. Zij loopt, evenals wij van
de
gaatjes voor de klinknageltjes zagen (zie blz. 136), den ge-
heelen
helmrand, ook dus achter den neusbeschermer, langs;
alleen
aan de rechterkant, ter hoogte van het middenstuk
b,
wordt zij onderbroken door een ingekraste inscriptie,
STABLESIA
o VI o, waarover straks. Hoe deze onder-
140
breking
van het randornament reeds bij het maken van den
helm
is aangebracht, om hetzij dadelijk, hetzij later een in-
scriptie
te kunnen inlasschen, geeft Afb. 62 duidelijk weer,
waar
wij zien dat het ornament niet willekeurig afgebroken is,
doch
op de desbetreffende punten zijn bepaalde afsluiting
vindt.
De
neusbeschermer heeft langs zijn randen en op het midden
een
versiering van parelrandjes, terwijl aan de punt twee
cirkeltjes
in relief, met pareltjes als middelpunt, zijn aangebracht.
Op
den nekbeschermer komt weer dezelfde randversiering
voor
als op de stukken a, b, c, terwijl de binnenversiering
bestaat
uit 3 knopjes, parelrandjes en puntcirkels, waar-
voor
wij naar Afb. 63,1 verwijzen. Verder is in het binnenvak
een
latijnsche inscriptie, in cursief schrift, ingekrast, die wij
met
de inscriptie van den helmrand aanstonds afzonderlijk
zullen
bespreken.
De
wangklep heeft eveneens eenzelfde randversiering als de
stukken
a, b, c. Het binnenvak vult zulk een ornament van parel-
randjes,
in den vorm van twee naast elkaar liggende bladeren,
wier
beide toppen eindigen in een puntcirkeltje als boven om-
schreven.
Een dergelijk cirkeltje bevindt zich op het punt, waar
beide
bladeren bij elkaar komen. Verder dienen nog tot versiering
5
knopjes, waarvoor men Afb. 63,2 vergelijke.
Bezien
wij ten slotte de losse reepjes, dan vinden wij ook hier
een
combinatie van parelrandjes en puntcirkels, voor welke
versiering
wij eveneens naar hun afbeelding 63,3 kunnen ver-
wijzen.
Zooals
wij reeds opmerkten, zijn op nekbeschermer en helm-
rand
inscripties aangebracht, die wij thans nader willen bezien,
en
wel het eerst die van den nekbeschermer, waarvan wij een af-
zonderlijke
photo geven onder Afb. 63,6. Zij is, naar Prof. O. Bohn,
uit
Berlijn, zoo welwillend was mij mee te deelen, als volgt te
lezen:
? TIT VA_ON VRS LIbRI - £
en wat het laatste
gedeelte
betreft aldus uit te schrijven: libram (LIbR) unam (I)
141
unciam
(-) semiunciam (£),
d.i. 1 Pond, 1 uncia, ½ uncia. Wij
vinden
hier dus een gewichtsopgave vermeld, die, in grammen
herleid,
blijkt overeen te komen met het tegenwoordig gewicht
van
den helm (een 2de wangklep meegerekend). Vergelijken
wij
n.l. de volgende berekeningen:
1
Pond = 327.45 gr. │ Helmkap
= 282.50 gr.
1
Uncia = 27.288 “ │ Nekbeschermer
= 32.50 “
½
“ = 13.644 “ │ 2
Wangkleppen
│ (2
x 17.10) = 34,20 “
│ 2
Smalle bandjes = 10.70 “
___________ │ __________
368.382
gr. │ 359.90
gr.
dan
zien wij, hoe beide uitkomsten met elkaar kloppen. Een
volkomen
overeenstemming immers valt bij dergelijke herlei-
dingen
nooit te bereiken, daar het vast staat dat de Romeinsche
gewichten
zeer varieeren (vgl. C. I. L. XIII, 3 , 10030, 26, 29,
37
en 42). Waar nu onze helm en bijbehoorende stukken
alleen
de overtrek op de oorspronkelijk ijzeren kap zijn ge-
weest,
geeft dus het gewicht in kwestie slechts dat van den
verguld
zilveren overtrek van den helm aan, zooals ook
naar
vele andere vondsten te oordeelen, slechts voorwerpen van
edel
metaal met gewichtsopgaven werden voorzien.
Wat
het eerste gedeelte der inscriptie ? TIT VA_ON VRS
betreft,
het eerste teeken is niet te ontcijferen, waardoor
jammer
genoeg de interpretatie van dit inscriptiegedeelte niet
met
zekerheid is vast te stellen. Geven in 't algemeen de
inscripties
op helmen den naam aan van den drager met
vermelding
van de centuria, waarin hij diende 1), toch lijkt
ons,
in verband met de gewichtsopgave, voor onzen helm
1)
Zoo 2 bronzen helmen in het Leidsch Museum, Ned. Cat. E III, b, 141
en
142.
Zie Lindenschmit Altert. V, p. 186, e.v., waar meerdere worden
genoemd. Naar
analogie
hiervan zond mij prof. Bohn, behalve een tweede lezing met den naam
van
den drager allééen: (M?) Tit(ii) Val(l)on(is) Urs(i),
de volgende met vermelding
van
de afdeeling, waarin hij diende, in dit geval van de turma of de
decuria,
daar
zooals wij straks zullen zien, het hier een ruiterhelm geldt: (ex
turma? decuria?)
Tit(i),
Val(l)on(ii) Urs(i).
142
een
dergelijke interpretatie minder waarschijnlijk. Waar
wij
n.l. zagen, dat het gewicht gold dat van den overtrek,
kan
moeilijk in het voorafgaande ? TIT VA_ON VRS
de
naam van den drager schuilen. Het gewicht immers van
den
overtrek kon deze nooit vaststellen, zonder den overtrek
van
de ijzeren binnenkap af te nemen, wat intusschen een
onmogelijkheid
was, waar wij boven gezien hebben hoe overtrek
en
ijzeren binnenkap door een dichte rij van nageltjes aan
elkaar
geklonken waren. Dat hij het gewicht van den fabrikant
zou
hebben gehoord is evenmin aan te nemen. Wij moeten er
dus
wel toe besluiten dat het gewicht in de fabriek zelve op
den
helm is aangegeven. Wil men nu de bovenbedoelde
algemeene
interpretatie vasthouden, dan zou dus de naam
van
den drager eerst later op de nekklep zijn aangebracht,
wat
intusschen het schrift zelf, dat van eenzelfde hand blijkt
te
zijn, uitsluit. Waar we echter later zullen zien dat onze
helm
in een der rijkswapenfabrieken van het Romeinsche rijk
vervaardigd
moet zijn, lijkt ons het meest aannemelijk dat wij
op
onzen helm den persoon vermeld vinden, die belast was met
de
helmen te wegen en te verifieeren. Dat toch de Staat in
zijn
fabrieken verificateurs had om deze helmen van edel
metaal
te waarmerken, is geenszins onwaarschijnlijk, waar
blijkens
de vondsten ook op gewichten een ex auctoritate
van
den magistraat gestempeld werd (vgl. C. I. L. XIII, 3
10030,
10). Zoo zouden wij dan in onze inscriptie willen lezen
den
verificateur Tit(us) Valon(ius) Urs(us) en mag - evenals
op
de bovengenoemde bronzen helmen het woord centuria zijn
bijzondere
afkortingsteekens had 10 - het onleesbare eerste tee-
ken
een afkorting voor een examinavit of iets dergelijks zijn.
Als
tweede inscriptie op onzen helm zagen wij rechts op den
helmrand
die van Stablesia VI. Zij duidt een afdeeling aan der
equites
Stablesiani, een ruitercorps, dat zooals uit de Notitia
Dignitatum
blijkt, 2), tijdens het latere romeinsche keizerrijk in
1)
Zie C. I. L. XIII, 3, 10027, 214 e.v.
2)
Zie Ed. Seeck, Index s.v. Stablesiani.
143
verscheidene
provincie's verspreid lag. Verder is het ons bekend
uit
twee inscripties, te Brescia 1) en Sitifi (Africa) 2) gevonden,
waarvan
op de eerste sprake is van een vexillatio van dit corps.
Is,
zooals Prof. Bohn mij doet opmerken, naar analogie
hiervan,
alsmede door het feit, dat het woord vexillatio reeds
op
het einde der 3de eeuw een ruiter-afdeeling beteekent 3),
onze
inscriptie aldus aan te vullen: (Vexillatio) Stablesi(na)
VI,
des te meer zijn wij daartoe geneigd, waar in de door ons
ook
genoemde Not. Dign. dit ruitercorps vermeld wordt
onder
de vexillationes comitatenses van Africa en Brittanië.
4)
Zoo
behoorde dus de drager van onzen helm tot de 6de af-
deeling
der equites Stablesiani en draagt onze helm iets bij
tot
de geschiedenis van dit corps, dat thans blijkt zich ook in
onze
streken eenmaal te hebben opgehouden.
[vergelijking]
II.
Met
onzen helm laat zich een rij van helmen vergelijken,
wier
nauwe verwantschap in constructie en versieringstechniek
de
moeite waard is hier nader te bezien. Het zijn een helm
uit
Kertsch (Z.-Rusland) afkomstig, en aanwezig in de Ermitage
te
St. Petersburg, twee helmen van Pfersee bij Augsburg, waar-
van
de een te Augsburg zelf, de andere te Neurenberg in het
Germaansche
Nationaal-museum bewaard wordt, verder een
helm
te Worms en een in den Donau bij Budapest gevonden,
welke
successievelijk daar ter plaatse in het Paulus-museum
en
het Budapester National-museum zijn ondergebracht.
Allen
van ijzer, hebben zij, evenals de onze, een verguld-
zilveren
of enkel zilveren overtrek met een zelfde reliefver-
siering
van kruisjes, puntcirkeltjes, parelrandjes en dgl. In
vorm
en onderdeelen van de helmkap komt onze helm het meest
1)
C. I. L. V, 4376.
2)
C. I. L. VIII, 8490.
3)
Zie Marquardt, Röm. Staatsverwaltung II², 467.
4)
Not. Dign. Occ. VI, 64, 82, VII, 180, 182, 203.
144
overeen
met dien van St. Petersburg (zie Afb. 64,2), waarvan een
korte
beschrijving te vinden is bij Reinach, Ant. du Bosphore Cim-
mérien
(p. 77/78 n°. 5 en
6), die verklaart haar onveranderd
te
hebben overgenomen uit het groote werk Ant. du Bosph.
Cimm.
conservées au musée impérial de l'Ermitage.
Volgens
deze
beschrijving bestaat de met verguld zilver overtrokken
helmkap
uit 2 x 3 losse stukken en een breeden onderrand,
terwijl
over de koplengte een met beugeltjes voorziene helmkam
loopt.
Evenals bij onzen helm zijn ook hier de losse stukken
der
helmkap door nageltjes aan elkaar verbonden. Hoe intus-
schen
de helmkap en helmkam aan elkaar zijn vastgehecht,
vermeldt
de beschrijving niet.
Beter
zijn wij in dit opzicht ingelicht bij de helmen van
Augsburg
(Afb. 64,6) en Worms (Afb. 64,5), waarvan wij
een
uitvoerige beschrijving vinden bij Lindenschmit in zijn
Altertümer
Bd. V, p. 222-226, terwijl de helm van Worms
bovendien
besproken wordt door Reinecke in het Korrespondenz-
blatt
der Westd. Zeitschr. XXV, p. 65 e. v. Deze helmen
bestaan
uit twee kaphelften en een kam, waaraan de kaphelften
elk
voor zich door nageltjes verbonden zijn. Van binnen gezien
liggen
de kaphelften niet over elkaar, noch raken zij elkander,
doch
laten een ruimte open, precies op dezelfde wijze dus als bij
onzen
helm. Van de nageltjes aan den helm van Augsburg zegt
Lindenschmit
verder, dat zij niet zijn geklonken, doch zijn om-
geslagen.
Wij zien hier dus dezelfde bewerking als bij onzen
helm
met de nageltjes aan den neusbeschermer het geval was.
Ook
de overtrek is een van verguld zilver, en vormt, evenals
bij
den onze, een afzonderlijke buitenbekleeding. Hij is met
dezelfde
nageltjes aan de binnenkap verbonden, waarmee haar
beide
helften aan den kam werden vastgehecht, terwijl, naar
Lindenschmit
vermoedt, voor het overige een of ander plak-
middel
de verdere stevigheid mag gegeven hebben, een opmer-
king,
die misschien ook op onzen helm toepasselijk kan zijn.
De
helm van Worms heeft eveneens een vergulden overtrek,
die
echter slechts op enkele plaatsen nog duidelijk zichtbaar
145
is,
voornamelijk op den nekbeschermer, op welk stuk van den
helm
wij straks terugkomen.
De
Budapester helm (zie Afb. 64,7), uitgegeven door Ham-
pel
in Arch. Ertésitö 1900, p. 361 e. v. en in het Zeit-
schrift
für Hist. Waffenkunde, Bd. II, Heft 6, p. 192 e. v.,
heeft
een op het ijzer vast zittende verguld-zilveren overtrek,
die
behalve met reliefversiering, met glaspasten rijkelijk is ver-
sierd.
Die niet hooge helmkam is daarentegen met een afzon-
derlijken
zilveren overtrek bedekt, die men met nageltjes daar-
aan
bevestigde. Van onder is de helmkap afgezet door een
breeden
rand, die, evenals de onze, boven de wenkbrauwen
boogvormig
is uitgesneden, en dus ook een neusbeschermer
heeft
gehad, al is die niet bewaard gebleven. Beter is het
hierin
gesteld met den Neurenberger helm, waarvan nog een
stuk
van zijn neusbeschermer gevonden werd. Zooals Afb. 64,3.
te
zien geeft, stemt dit fragment volkomen met den onze
overeen.
Overigens is deze helm (Afb. 64,4) van een zelfde
constructie
als die van Augsburg, behalve dat zijn zilveren
overtrek
niet verguld is (Zie Lindenschmit en Hampel, l.l.).
Vergeleken
wij tot nog toe slechts de kap der verschillende
helmen,
ook in de overige helmstukken, met name de wang-
kleppen
en nekbeschermer, vinden wij groote overeenkomst met
die
van onzen helm. Onze eigenaardig gevormde wangkleppen
vinden
wij in meer of mindere afwijking terug bij den Budapester
helm,
bij de helmen van Pfersee (zie het Neurenberger stuk, Afb.
64,3)
en bij dien van St. Petersburg, welke laatste met schar-
nieren
aan den helmrand verbonden waren, zooals aan den
helmrand
nog duidelijk is te zien (zie Afb. 64,1 en 2). Een
geheel
ander soort wangkleppen, n.l. van langen ovalen vorm,
heeft
de helm van Worms, die daartegen een nekbeschermer
bezit
van bijna geheel dezelfde constructie als die aan onzen
helm.
Afb. 64,5 doet ons zien, hoe hij door middel van leeren
riempjes,
die door twee gleufjes werden gestoken, aan den helmrand
werd
vastgemaakt. Het eenige verschil met onzen helm is, dat tot
bevestiging
der riempjes op den nekbeschermer zelfs geen gespen
10
146
dienden,
doch enkel nageltjes, die op de photo nog even zichtbaar
zijn.
Een dergelijke losse nekbeschermer heeft, naar Lindenschmit
vermoedt,
ook de helm van Augsburg gehad. daarop zouden de
resten
van een beslag aan de achterzijde van den helm wijzen,
dat
z. i. tot bevestiging van een lossen nekbeschermer kan
hebben
gediend. Onmogelijk is deze veronderstelling niet, waar
wij
tusschen den Augsburgschen helm en den onze reeds zoo-
veel
gewichtige punten van overeenkomst hebben gezien.
Wat
de versieringen der helmen betreft, wij merkten reeds
op,
dat op allen dezelfde soort reliefversieringen voorkomt van
geperste
kruisjes, parelrandjes, puntcirkeltje en dergelijke. Daar-
mede
zijn voornamelijk de randen der verschillende helmdeelen
versierd,
zooals ook bij onzen helm het geval is. Hoe deze
versieringen
bij verschil in details, toch een en hetzelfde karakter
dragen,
kan men zien op Afb. 64,8, waar sub 1 is afgebeeld het
versieringsmotief
van onzen helm, sub 2 dat van den Augs-
burgschen
helm, sub 3 van dien te Neurenberg, sub 4, 5 en 6
successivelijk
dat van de helmen van Worms, Kertsch en Buda-
pest.
Als no. 7 is daaraan toegevoegd de versiering van een
helm
uit Thorsbjerg 1), wiens constructie wel is waar een
geheel
andere is, doch juist om zijn versieringstechniek door
Lindenschmit
e. a. is aangevoerd om onze helmen te kunnen
dateeren.
Voor
de dateering n.l. van onze helmtypen is men voor-
namelijk
uitgegaan van de techniek en wijze van versiering,
die
op verschillende vondsten in N. en O.-Duitschland, als in
de
Donaulanden terugkeert. Daartoe behoort o.a. de genoemde
helm
van Thorsbjerg, wiens kap gevormd wordt door kruis-
gewijze
over elkaar loopende verguld-zilveren banden, die een
versiering
hebben als sub 7 afgebeeld, en van techniek
als
die op onze helmen. Op grond van andere bijvondsten werd
deze
helm gedateerd op 4e of 5e eeuw na Chr. 2) en worden
1)
Engelhardt: Thorsbjerg Mosefund, p. 23, Pl. 5.
2)
Sophus Müller: Nordische Altertumskunde, Bd. II, p. 147.
147
in
het algemeen onze helmen beschouwd als laat-Romeinsch
werk
uit den tijd kort voor het begin der groote volksverhui-
zingen.
Des te belangrijker is voor hun chronologie de munten,
die
bij onzen helm gevonden zijn. Waar de vondst in de Peel
geen
grafvondst is, doch de drager van den helm op een of
andere
wijze hier is verongelukt, vormen de munten het gang-
bare
geld, dat hij “op zak” had, en zijn dus een zeker
dateerings-
middel
voor onzen helm. Allen van Constantijn, plaatsen zij ons
dus
onzen helm in de 4e eeuw, om welken tijd dus ook de
door
ons vergeleken helmen en verder boven aangeduide vond-
sten
te groepeeren zijn.
Hoe
onze helmen onderling in tijdsorde tot elkaar staan is
moeilijk
vast te stellen. Allerminst is daartoe de typologie aan
te
wenden, zooals wel is geschied. Immers hoe zeer ook ver-
schillende
in vorm, zagen wij tusschen onzen helm en die van
Pfersee
en Worms een zoo groote overeenstemming in con-
structie,
dat zij, in weerwil van hun afwijkende vormen, haast
uit
eenzelfde fabriek moeten zijn voortgekomen.
De
vraag, welke fabriek dat moet geweest zijn, kunnen wij
in
zóóverre beantwoorden, dat onze soort helmen
vervaardigd
zijn
in een der rijkswapenfabrieken van het Romeinsche
keizerrijk,
zooals er waren in Constantinopel en Antiochië.
Reeds
lang heeft men n.l. met onze helmen in verband ge-
bracht
een plaats in den Codex Theodosianus (X, 22, 1),
waar
sprake
is van metaalarbeiders in 's rijks wapenfabrieken, speciaal
belast
met helmen te overtrekken met zilver en te vergulden
(tegere
argento et deaurare). Barbaricarri 1) worden zij genoemd,
een
benaming, die er op wijst hoe deze arbeiders van vreemde
herkomst
waren.
Wordt
hiermede de versieringstechniek onzer helmen van zelf
als
een niet-Romeinsche gekenmerkt, ook het type onzer hel-
men
is daarmee in overeenstemming. Hebben zij ook al hun
1)
Zie ook Not. Dign. Or. XI, 45, en verder Seeck, Pauly-Wissowa
Real-Encycl.
s.
v. barbaricarii.
148
beweegbare
wangkleppen met Romeinsche helmen gemeen,
onromeinsch
is de neusbeschermer en wenkbrauwen in den
helmrand,
welke aan Grieksche, met name Korinthische helmen
herinneren,
terwijl ook de losse nekbeschermer op vreemde
invloeden
schijnt te wijzen, welke met de barbaricarii van zelf
de
Romeinsche wapenfabrieken moesten binnenkomen.
[bijvondsten]
III.
Onder
de bijvondsten zijn de 37 bronzen munten het belang-
rijkste.
Hoewel het meerendeel sterk is afgesleten en gedeeltelijk
afgeknapt,
kenmerken zij zich, hetzij door haar voor- hetzij door
haar
keerzijde, allen als munten van Constantijn. Voor zover haar
exergues
te lezen zijn, is zeker 1 exemplaar geslagen te
Siscia
(off. B), 3 te Rome (off. P en T) en 9 te Trier (off. S),
terwijl
de overige door een volkomen zelfden muntslag van voor-
zijde
of keerzijde onder die van Rome en Trier te rangschikken
zijn.
Deze beide laatste muntsoorten zijn, voor zoover is na te
gaan,
elk in één type vertegenwoordigd, waarvan wij met
dat
van Siscia de beschrijving hier laten volgen, om overigens
te
verwijzen naar J. Maurice, Numismatique Constatinienne,
Tom.
i, p. 208 e.v., p. 423 e.v. en Num. Chron. 1900, p. 322.
Siscia:
Vz. IMP
CONSTANTINUS P F AVG
Gedrapeerd
borstbeeld van Constantijn naar rechts,
met
lauwerkrans om het hoofd.
Kz. IOVI
CONSERVATORI
Jupiter
steunend op een scepter, dien hij vasthoudt
met
de opgeheven rechter hand. Over den schouder
een
afvallend kleed, overigens naakt. Zich wendend
naar
links, draagt hij in de linkerhand eene Victoria
op
een globe. Links aan zijn voeten een adelaar
met
krans in den bek. rechts in het veld B.
Ex. ˑSISˑ
149
Rome:
Vz. IMP
CONSTATINUS P F AVG
Borstbeeld
van Constantijn n.r. gedrapeerd en ge-
harnast.
Om het hoofd een lauwerkrans.
Kz. SOLI
INVICTO COMITI
Sol
geheel naakt, met stralenkrans om het hoofd.
Wendt
zich naar links met opgeheven linkerarm.
Over
den rechter arm hangt een kleed, op de hand
houdt
hij een globe.
Ex. RP
of RT
Trier:
Vz. IMP
CONSTANTINUS MAX AVG
Geharnast
borstbeeld van Constantijn n.r., met
helm
en lauwerkrans.
Kz. VICTORIAE
LAETAE PRINC PERP
Twee
Victoria's, tusschen welke een altaar, met
ster
aan de voorzijde. Op het altaar houden zij
een
schild vast, waarop de linksche Victoria met
een
stylus schrijft: VOT PR
Ex. STR
Van
enkele exemplaren geven wij een afbeelding op Pl. 65
Onder
No. 1 is de munt van Siscia afgebeeld, onder 2 een
van
die te Rome geslagen, onder 3 en 4 de beste voor- en
keerzijde
der Triersche exemplaren. Dezelfde plaat geeft verder
de
afbeeldingen der overige bijvondsten in zilver of brons.
Van
brons zijn het klokje, de spoor en fibula. De laatste is
van
het z.gen. handboogtype en komt in dateering met de
munten
overeen. De afbeeldingen dezer voorwerpen spreken
overigens
genoeg voor zich zelf, om ze nog nader te behoeven
te
beschrijven. Het zelfde geldt van het zilveren beslag, dat
tot
versiering diende van de tot de vondsten behoorende leeren
scheede.
Het beslag is met 8 gaatjes voorzien, waardoor het
op
het leer moet zijn vastgenaaid. De scheede is uit één
stuk
gesneden
en aan elkaar genaaid.
150
Van
de overige leervondsten laat zich omtrent de groote
stukken
weinig naders zeggen, evenmin als wij dat kunnen
van
de losse reepjes wollen stof. Vermoedelijk hebben wij
bij
de groote stukken leer de resten van een schabrak. Daar-
onder
is n.l. een vierkant stuk leer met een omzooming,
waarin
gaatjes zijn geboord, zoodat een tweede stuk daaraan
schijnt
vastgenaaid te zijn geweest. In het midden is een gat
gesneden,
waardoor de riem van den stijgbeugel of de buik-
riem
getrokken kan zijn.
Belangrijker
is wat aan leeren schoenen werd gevonden.
Het
zijn een linker-exemplaar (Afb. 65a),
waarbij de resten van
den
bijbehoorenden rechterschoen, verder een rechter buiten (b)
en
een rechter binnen-schoen (c),
die niet in elkaar passen,
dus
tot twee afzonderlijke exemplaren hebben behoord.
De
sub a genoemde is door zijn betrekkelijke gaafheid het
belangrijkst.
Hij bestaat uit een buiten- en binnen-schoen, met
een
extra binnenzool en blijkbaar twee buitenzolen, die succes-
sivelijk
aan den binnen- en buiten-schoen met een smallen leeren
draad
zijn vastgenaaid. De schoen, 26 c.M. lang bij een
grootste
breedte van 11 c.M., is uit één stuk leer gesneden,
naar
een patroon, zooals Afb. 66,1 te zien geeft, waar de schoen,
van
de buitenzool gezien, uitgeslagen is afgebeeld. Slaat men
het
patroon naar buiten om dicht, dan loopen dus de punten
van
aansluiting langs den rand van den hiel (a) en de Achilles-
pees
(b), van voren langs langs de teenen (c) en over den neus
van
den voet (d). Dáár is het leder dus telkens aan elkaar
ge-
hecht,
en wel, evenals bij de zolen, met een leeren draad ge-
naaid.
De wreef heeft op het midden, als mede links en rechts
een
reeks van insnijdingen, terwijl haar rand gekarteld is uit-
gesneden.
Op het midden van de wreef is bovendien een oogje
(e)
in het leer aanwezig, dat blijkbaar verband hield met het
vastrijgen
van den schoen. (Vgl. Jacobi, Saalburg, Taf. 80,7).
Een
gekartelden rand heeft ook het hielstuk, dat verder een
ingeperste
versiering heeft, waarvoor wij naar Afb. 65a
en
66,
1 verwijzen.
151
Ook
de rechter buitenschoen, dien wij sub b noemden, heeft
aan
de wreef een fijn gekartelden rand en een versiering, die
Afb.
66, 2 te zien geeft. Van een lengte van 27 c.M., en 9 c.M.
op
zijn breedst, is ook hij uit één stuk leer gesneden.
Het-
zelfde
geldt van den binnenschoen, sub c genoemd, die een
maat
heeft van 27.50 bij 8.50 c.M. Hun uitgeslagen patronen
vinden
wij op Afb. 66, 2-3. Daarop is te zien, hoe zij in het
voorstuk
met elkaar overeenstemmen, aan den hiel daarentegen
anders
zijn gesneden. Het hielpatroon van den binnenschoen
komt,
zooals we zien, overeen met dat van den onder sub a
beschreven
schoen. Hetzelfde vinden wij terug bij een schoen
op
Afb. 66, 4, die ook overigens in veel op onzen eerste gelijkt:
het
is een schoen uit het Thorsbjerger Moor (Engelhardt, op.
cit.
p. 18, Pl. 3), waaruit wij ons herinneren dat ook de helm
afkomstig
was, dien wij met den onzen vergeleken.
Leiden.
Dr. M. A. EVELEIN.
[overgenomen door Paul
Theelen te Eindhoven, 27-30 oktober 2010, onder het motto: “Wij
honden vangen de hazen, zei het keukenrekeltje.”
Foto's toegevoegd op 1
december 2010. In het origineel werden de afbeeldingen separaat
opgenomen. Versie 15 december 2010.]
A
ROMAN HELMET FROM THE PEEL.
ANTIQUES
COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE ROYAL MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES IN LEIDEN V
ISSUED
ON BEHALF OF THE MINISTRY OF HOME AFFAIRS
EVERYTHING
WILL COME FINE
'S-GRAVENHAGE
[The Hague]
MARTINUS
NIJHOFF 1911
[Introduction]
In
the summer of 1910 [find on June 15, 1910], the museum came into
possession of a Roman helmet that had been found in the Peel,
{Helenaveen] Deurne. It is made of gilded silver with an original
iron inner cap, which, except for a few iron particles, has
completely rusted away, so that it is only the gilded silver outer
covering of the helmet that has been preserved. Very dented and
partially fallen apart, it was restored by the goldsmith L. Verkuil,
who worked in the studio of Mr. Rossum du Chattel in Leiden [winter
1910-1911]. The construction of the helmet was completely
self-explanatory, so that there cannot be the slightest doubt about
this. Once restored, it became clear what a beautiful piece the
museum had acquired, which, compared to similar helmets abroad, can
even be called unique.
[ooggetuige
meldt vondst veen Meyel als zilververgulde bolronde helm met
parel-banden schouderbedekkingen mantelspeld zwaardkaf 41 munten
Constantijn gevon-den door Smolenaars veenarbeider Meyel vondst
heden raadhuis Meyel gedepo-neerd direct deskundig onderzoek
hooggewenscht vanBeurden Secretaris "Limburg Roermond"]
With our helmet, 37 bronze coins from Constantine, a bronze fibula,
a ditto spur and bell, a piece of a leather dagger scabbard with a
matching silver fitting, three leather shoes, large pieces of
leather, probably remains of a scaffold were also found in the peat,
and a few strips of woolen cloth, which belonged to the warrior's
clothing. The coins automatically date the helmet and other finds to
the 4th century AD, which is all the more important because it also
gives the parallels of our helmet abroad a more certain dating. An
accurate description of our helmet
(I)
will therefore be followed by a comparison with other examples
(II)
a brief description of the incidental finds
(III)
will serve as a conclusion.
[description] I.
Our helmet has a fairly complicated composition, which can be
described as follows (see Fig. 61 and 62): the helmet hood consists
of 2 separate symmetrical halves, each of which consists of three
interconnected pieces, all of the same plate thickness of 0.06 mm.
Both halves are held together along the head length by a comb. The
helmet hood thus formed is bordered from below by a broad edge,
which is accurately cut at the front above each of the two eyebrows.
A loose nose protector has been fitted between these arches. The
width of the helmet rim is 200 mm, the height of the helmet,
including the helmet crest, is 177 mm, while the nose protector from
the nose saddle is 65 mm is long.
The helmet also includes (see Fig. 63, 1-3) a neck protector, two
cheek flaps, of which one remains, finally two narrow strips with a
rivet in the middle, and a row of holes on both width and one of the
longitudinal sides. However, their correct destination cannot be
indicated with certainty (see page 138), but the similarity in
decorative technique with that of the other helmet parts leaves no
doubt as to whether they belonged to the helmet. The neck protector
is equipped with two small silver buckles, whose hinge pieces are
not riveted to the top of the neck flap, but are inserted through a
slot and folded up and down at the back.
These
buckles show that the neck protector is attached to the helmet rim
by leather straps. The cheek flaps also have to go through, as we
will see later may have been connected to the rim of the helmet by
means of some kind of leather intermediate piece. If we compare
image 63.2, then, as is the case with similar cheek flaps on a
Budapest helmet (see Fig. 64.7), the straight side a ran along the
helmet rim, while the side b ended at the eye. So it is the left
cheek flap that has been preserved to us. Its dimensions are: a=180
mm, b=105 mm, c=50 mm.
The
sizes of the neck protector and narrow straps are as follows:
a=152
mm, b=30 mm, c=182 mm; a=193 mm, b=188 mm.
All parts of the entire helmet have the same type of decoration of
buttons and relief ornaments, which, however, we will describe
later, in order to first examine the construction of the helmet in
further detail.
We
saw how the two halves of the helmet hood each consisted of three
separate pieces, which for convenience we would like to call a, b,
c. Both side pieces a and c are riveted to b by means of 5 silver
cone-shaped rivets, in such a way that the center piece b is 9 mm
lies over each of the other two. Seen from the inside, these pieces
each appear to have been edged or edged inwards, while the rivets do
not appear to have been riveted through that edge, but on the sides
thereof and have been treated in the normal manner with the riveter.
The
more or less rounded helmet crest, of the same plate thickness as
the other parts of the helmet hood, runs narrow and flat towards
both ends, so that its width, from edge to edge, in the middle is 29
mm is against 16 mm at both ends and likewise the height
successively 17 mm and 8 mm amounts to. At both ends there are thick
silver closing pieces of 9 mm each with two rivets. length to give
the comb the necessary strength.
The
crest constructed in this way connects the two hood halves described
above in such a way that both halves are each riveted to the edge of
the crest by 8 rivets. To this end, the same rivets that connect the
above-mentioned silver finials to the crest serve the same rivets at
both ends. Likewise, the two middle nails are the same nails, which
connect the side pieces a and c to b. Viewed from the inside, the
hood halves thus attached to the crest appear not to lie over each
other, nor to fit closely together: they only extend slightly below
the edge of the crest, so that there is an open space between them,
which, just like the crest, which is wider in the middle than at
both ends, i.e. 15 mm at 4 mm.
The 39 mm wide helmet brim, which is not soldered, but whose ends
between the eyebrows are 23 mm overlap each other is 12 mm pushed
into the helmet hood and riveted by rivets. These are placed at
those points where the loose parts of the helmet hood are riveted
together, i.e. these are the same rivets that connect the
above-mentioned pieces a and c to b, and those that attach the
silver closing pieces to the crest and to both halves of the hood.
Only
two rivets are included, namely: one in the middle of each of the
center pieces b of both shade halves. The rivets, just as we saw in
those of the loose parts of both hood halves, are riveted along the
edge, which also occurs at the helmet edge.
The nose flap, whose shape is shown in Fig. 61 clearly visible. It
is of the same plate thickness as the other helmet parts and slopes
slightly on either side to match the shape of the nose.
It
is attached to the helmet rim with 5 rivets, two on each of the
eyebrows, which fit neatly on the arc-shaped cutouts of the helmet
rim, one in the middle on the nose saddle, which also gives more
strength to the overlap of both ends of the helmet rim. The peak of
the nose flap, which is retracted just below the silver cap of the
helmet rim, falls almost along the line of the above-mentioned
overlap. In addition to serving as an ornament on the nose flap, it
also served to cover the parting of the flap. The rivets that attach
the nose flap to the helmet rim are, like the others discussed so
far, more or less cone-shaped, but treated in a slightly different
way, more folded than riveted. The same is the case with the three
located at the tip of the nose, to which method of processing we
will come back later.
Until now we have left one detail of the helmet rim out of
discussion, to which we will only now discuss, because it discusses
the inner lining of the entire helmet. Along the entire lower edge,
also along the arcuate cutouts, which are covered by the eyebrows of
the nasal valve, holes have been punched at small distances from
each other for the passage of rivets. Of these, two remain on the
left and an equal number on the back. They are of the normal blade
like the first one we discussed, but differ in that they have a
square copper plate behind the blade, which could not have served
any other purpose than to prevent the penetration of a leather inner
covering.
In
addition to this leather covering, we initially mentioned an iron
inner hood. Although nothing remains of it other than a few iron
particles on the gilded silver outer cap, this further speaks for
the great elasticity of the helmet as it lies before us. The helmet
rim in particular, which should provide the necessary strength to
the whole, is so weak that a single leather inner covering would not
be sufficient. This iron inner hood, about whose presence there can
be no doubt, appears to you only to have been attached with the same
nails with which the leather inner covering was attached to the
helmet rim. They are namely the only ones on the helmet that are
long enough to qualify for this. None of the other rivets, either
those that connect the loose helmet parts together or those that, as
we will see later, serve as decoration, leave any room that they
could have served to attach any inner lining. If the rivets on the
helmet rim appear to have been the only means of attachment that
connected the inner cap to the gilt silver outer covering, then the
other two pieces must have fit closely together to give the whole
the necessary unity.
Like the helmet hood, the cheek flaps and neck protector also appear
to have had an iron inner lining; at least at the latter, traces of
iron particles were still found. In addition to iron, they were
certainly also covered with leather on the inside. For the cheek
flaps, this is proven by the two rivets that are still present in
the edge. They have the same square plates as those on the helmet
rim. A leather interior lining must also have had the nose
protector. The rivets, which we saw so strangely turned above,
served to secure him. The reason why they were not simply riveted
and provided with plates like those on the rim of the helmet may be
that when folded the nails were less sharp and therefore made
wearing them on the nose more pleasant.
We
briefly indicated at the beginning how the cheek flaps and neck
protector were attached to the helmet rim. We saw how the buckles on
the neck protector indicated that it was connected to the helmet rim
with straps. A slot above each of the buckles (see Fig. 63.4) also
shows that the straps did not immediately run over the neck
protector from the helmet rim, but were passed through those slots
at the back, only to then be attached to the buckles.
The connection of the cheek flaps to the helmet rim must also have
been made of leather. This is also indicated by a piece of leather,
which is present on one of the rivets on top of the helmet rim. If
we assume that this attachment consisted of wide intermediate
pieces, then our narrow strips (see page 133) may have been attached
to this, in such a way that their sloping side was aligned with that
of the neck protector.
In
connection with the attachment of the cheek flaps, we must point out
three holes in the middle of the helmet rim, just above the row of
holes through which the rivets were riveted (see Fig. 63.5). Lying
close to each other, they form a triangle and could be reminiscent
of a hinge attachment, as can be seen in the Peterburg helmet (see
Fig. 64.2). However, where the cheek flaps are connected to the
helmet rim by leather, this is closed outside. Besides, they are
only located on the left side of the helmet, so that is why they
have no connection whatsoever with the cheek flaps. They probably
served to allow rivets to pass through, which attached a plate with
a ring to the rim of the helmet, from which the helmet could be
hung. The fact that our helmet could be hung is not special. With
some bronze helmets the ring is still present on the neck protector
for this purpose. 1) Since the neck protector is attached to the
helmet hood on these helmets, it was the appropriate place for this.
However, where our neck protector hangs loosely on the helmet, the
placement of the ring in question was impractical, so the middle of
the helmet rim may have been chosen for this purpose.
Having
discussed the construction of the helmet in all its components, we
now want to proceed to a description of the decoration, which we
already mentioned in a few words on page 133. It consists of a
relief decoration of pressed flowers or crosses and ditto pearl
edges, which appear on all pieces of which the helmet is composed,
1)
Cf. among others Lindenschmit, Die Altertümer unserer
heidnische Vorzeit, Bd. V., p. 116, 118, Pl. 22, p. 189, Fig. 2.
Remains of this can also be found on a bronze helmet in the Leiden
Museum (Dutch Cat. E III, b, 141).
while,
except for the helmet rim and nose flap, all parts are also
decorated with ball-shaped buttons, which, seen from the inside, are
simply riveted. In addition to this similarity in the method of
processing, however, there are different decorative motifs, so that
we must describe each helmet part separately.
We
start with the three pieces that make up the two halves of the hood,
pieces a b c. Along their edges runs a row of flowers or crosses,
enclosed by pearl edges, the latter being interrupted at each of the
four corners by a circle in relief, with a pearl as the center. The
same applies to a second inner bead edge, which is parallel to the
outer one runs along the edge, and is separated from it by a fairly
deep gully. The inner compartment is decorated with an anchor
figure, also made of pearls, which are pressed high to increase the
relief of the anchor figure. The anchor figure is exactly in the
middle and is decorated with 6 buttons, as far as the anchor figure
of pieces a and c is concerned, with 11 buttons that of the center
piece b. The latter also has two pearl edges in its inner
compartment, parallel to the stem and continuing over the arms of
the anchor figure to the inner edge.
The helmet crest has a decoration of double pearl edges along both
edges and on the middle, along the length of the skull. Between
these last double pearl edges is a shallow groove, in which a row of
13 buttons further decorate the crest.
The helmet rim is decorated with two parallel convex relief bands,
between which the same edge decoration as the outer edges of pieces
a, b, c. It runs, just as we saw the holes for the rivets, along the
entire helmet rim, including behind the nose protector; only on the
right side, at the height of the center piece b, is it interrupted
by an incised inscription, STABLESIA o VI o, about which later. Fig.
62 clearly shows, where we see that the ornament is not broken off
at random, but finds its specific closure at the relevant points.
The nose guard has a decoration of pearl edges along its edges and
in the middle, while two circles in relief, with pearls as the
center, are applied to the tip.
The same edge decoration appears on the neck protector as on pieces
a, b, c, while the inner decoration consists of 3 buttons, pearl
edges and pointed circles, for which we refer to Fig. 63.1 refer.
Furthermore, a Latin inscription, in cursive script, is scratched
into the inner compartment, which we will discuss separately with
the inscription of the helmet rim shortly.
The cheek flap also has the same edge decoration as pieces a, b, c.
An ornament of pearl edges fills the inner compartment, in the shape
of two adjacent leaves, both tops of which end in a pointed circle
as described above. Such a circle is located at the point where both
leaves meet. Furthermore, 5 buttons serve as decoration, see Fig.
63.2.
Finally, if we look at the loose strips, we also find here a
combination of pearl edges and pointed circles, for which decoration
we can also refer to their image 63.3.
As
we have already noted, inscriptions have been made on the neck
protector and helmet rim, which we would now like to examine in more
detail, first of all on the neck protector, of which we provide a
separate photo under Fig. 63.6. She is, after Prof. O. Bohn, from
Berlin, was kind enough to inform me, to read as follows: ? TIT
VA_ON VRS LIbRI - £ and as regards the last part should be
written thus: libram (LIbR) unam (I) unciam (-) semiunciam (£),
i.e. 1 Pound, 1 uncia, ½ uncia. So we find a weight statement
here, which is in grams, appears to correspond to the current weight
of the helmet (including a 2nd cheek flap). We compare: the
following calculations:
1
Pound=327.45 g │ Helmet hood=282.50 g
1
Uncia=27.288 g │ Neck protector=32.50 g
½
“=13,644 g │ 2 Cheek valves
│ (2 x 17.10)=34.20 g
│ 2 Narrow straps=10.70 g
368,382 g │ 359.90 g
then
we see how both results match each other. After all, complete
agreement can never be achieved with such reductions, as it is
certain that the Roman weights vary greatly (cf. C. I. L. XIII, 3,
10030, 26, 29, 37 and 42). While our helmet and associated pieces
were only the covering on the original iron hood, the weight in
question therefore indicates only that of the gilded silver covering
of the helmet, as can be judged from many other finds, only objects
made of precious metal weight specifications were provided.
What is the first part of the inscription? TIT VA_ON VRS
As
regards the first sign, it is indecipherable, which unfortunately
means that the interpretation of this inscription part cannot be
determined with certainty. In general, the inscriptions on helmets
indicate the name of the wearer and the centuria in which he served
1), but in connection with the weight statement it seems to us that
for our helmet
1)
So 2 bronze helmets in the Leidsch Museum, Netherlands. Cat. E III,
b, 141 and 142. See Lindenschmit Altert. V, p. 186, et seq., where
several are mentioned. Professor Bohn sent me by analogy, except for
a second lecture with the name of the bearer only: (M?) Tit(ii)
Val(l)on(is) Urs(i), the following indicating the division in which
he served, in this case the turma or the decuria, since as we will
see later, this is an equestrian helmet: (ex turma? decuria?)
Tit(i), Val(l)on(ii) Urs(i).
such
an interpretation is less likely. Where we seeing that the weight
was that of the cover is difficult in the foregoing? TIT VA_ON VRS
conceal the name of the bearer. After all, he could never determine
the weight of the cover without removing the cover from the iron
inner hood, which was an impossibility, as we saw above how the
cover and iron inner hood were riveted together by a dense row of
nails. It is also impossible to assume that he would have heard the
weight of the manufacturer. We must therefore conclude that the
weight is indicated on the helmet at the factory itself. If one
wants to maintain the above-mentioned general interpretation, the
name of the wearer would only have been applied to the neck flap
later, which in the meantime excludes the writing itself, which
appears to be from the same hand. However, since we will later see
that our helmet must have been manufactured in one of the imperial
weapons factories of the Roman Empire, it seems most likely to us
that our helmet mentions the person who was responsible for weighing
and verifying the helmets. It is by no means unlikely that the State
had verifiers in its factories to authenticate these helmets made of
precious metal, as the finds show that an ex auctoritate of the
magistrate was also stamped on weights (cf. C. I. L. XIII, 3 10030,
10). So we would like to read in our inscription the verifier
Tit(us) Valon(ius) Urs(us) and may - just as on the above-mentioned
bronze helmets the word centuria had its special abbreviation signs
10 - the illegible first sign be an abbreviation for an examinavit
or something similar.
As
a second inscription on our helmet we saw that of Stablesia VI on
the right of the helmet rim. It designates a division of the equites
Stablesiani, an equestrian corps, which, as appears from the Notitia
Dignitatum, 2), during the later Roman Empire in
[See
Naspeuringen
van Paul Theelen: De Notitia Dignitatum]
1)
See C. I. L. XIII, 3, 10027, 214 et seq.
2)
See Ed. Seeck, Index s.v. Stablesiani.
was
spread out in several provinces. Furthermore, it is known to us from
two inscriptions, found in Brescia 1) and Sitifi (Africa) 2), the
first of which mentions a vexillatio of this corps.
Is, as Prof. Bohn reminds me, by analogy with this, as well as by
the fact that the word vexillatio already at the end of the 3rd
century meant an equestrian division 3), to supplement our
inscription thus: (Vexillatio) Stablesi(na) VI. We are all the more
inclined to do so, as in the Notitium Dignitatum this equestrian
corps is mentioned among the vexillation comitatenses of Africa and
Britain. 4)
So
the wearer of our helmet belonged to the 6th division of the equites
Stablesiani and our helmet contributes something to the history of
this corps, which now appears to have once been in our region.
[comparison] II.
A
series of helmets can be compared with our helmet, whose close
relationship in construction and decorative techniques is worth
examining in more detail here. These are a helmet from Kertsch
(Southern Russia) and present in the Ermitage in St. Petersburg, two
helmets from Pfersee near Augsburg, one of which is kept in Augsburg
itself, the other in Nuremberg in the Germanic National Museum,
furthermore a helmet was found in Worms and one in the Danube near
Budapest, which are successively housed there in the Paulus Museum
and the Budapester National Museum.
All made of iron, they have, like ours, a gilt-silver or single
silver covering with the same relief decoration of crosses, pointed
circles, pearl edges and the like. Our helmet comes the most in
terms of shape and parts of the helmet hood
1)
C.I.L.V, 4376.
2)
C.I.L.VIII, 8490.
3)
See Marquardt, Röm. Staatsverwaltung II², 467.
4)
Not. Dign. Occ. VI, 64, 82, VII, 180, 182, 203.
corresponds
to that of St. Petersburg (see Fig. 64,2), a brief description of
which can be found in Reinach, Ant. du Bosphore Cimmérien (p.
77/78 no. 5 and 6), who states that he has taken it unchanged from
the great work Ant. du Bosph. Cimm. preserved in the imperial museum
of the Ermitage. According to this description, the helmet hood
covered with gilt silver consists of 2 x 3 separate pieces and a
wide bottom edge, while a helmet crest with brackets runs along the
length of the head. Just like with our helmet, the loose pieces of
the helmet hood are also connected by nails. The description does
not state how the helmet hood and helmet crest are attached to each
other.
We
are better informed in this respect by the helmets of Augsburg (Fig.
64.6) and Worms (Fig. 64.5), of which we find a detailed description
in Lindenschmit in his Altertümer Bd. V, p. 222-226, while
Worms' helmet is also discussed by Reinecke in the
Korrespondenz-blatt der Westd. Zeitschr. XXV, p. 65. These helmets
consist of two hood halves and a crest, to which the hood halves are
each connected by nails. Seen from the inside, the hood halves do
not overlap, nor do they touch each other, but leave a space open,
exactly in the same way as with our helmet. Lindenschmit further
says of the nails on Augsburg's helmet that they were not riveted,
but turned over. So we see the same treatment here as was the case
with our helmet with the nails on the nose protector.
The
cover is also made of gilded silver and, like ours, forms a separate
outer covering. It is connected to the inner cap with the same nails
with which both halves were attached to the comb, while, according
to Lindenschmit, some adhesive may have provided further strength, a
comment that may also apply to our helmet.
Worms'
helmet also has a gold-plated covering, which, however, is only
clearly visible in a few places, mainly on the neck protector, to
which part of the helmet we will come back later.
The Budapester helmet (see Fig. 64.7), published by Hampel in Arch.
Ertésitö 1900, p. 361 and in the Zeitschrift für
Hist. Waffenkunde, Bd. II, Volume 6, p. 192, has a gilt-silver
covering attached to the iron, which, in addition to relief
decoration, is richly decorated with glass paste. The not high
helmet crest, on the other hand, is covered with a separate silver
covering, which was attached to it with nails. The helmet hood is
bordered at the bottom by a broad rim, which, like ours, is
accurately cut above the eyebrows, and therefore also had a nose
protector, although this has not been preserved. The situation is
better with the Nuremberg helmet, of which a piece of its nose
protector was found. As Fig. 64.3 shows, this fragment agrees
completely with ours. Incidentally, this helmet (Fig. 64.4) is of a
similar construction to that of Augsburg, except that its silver
covering is not gilded (See Lindenschmit and Hampel).
So
far we have only compared the hood of the different helmets. We also
find that the other helmet parts, in particular the cheek flaps and
neck protector, are very similar to those of our helmet. Our
peculiarly shaped cheek flaps can be found, to a greater or lesser
extent, in the Budapest helmet, in the helmets of Pfersee (see the
Nuremberg piece, Fig. 64.3) and in that of St. Petersburg, the
latter connected to the helmet rim by hinges were, as can still
clearly be seen on the helmet rim (see Fig. 64.1 and 2). A
completely different type of cheek flaps, namely of a long oval
shape, the helmet of Worms, which has a neck protector of almost
exactly the same construction as that on our helmet. Fig. 64.5 shows
us how it was attached to the rim of the helmet by means of leather
straps, which were inserted through two slits. The only difference
with our helmet is that no buckles were used to attach the straps to
the neck protector, but only nails, which are still visible in the
photo. Lindenschmit suspects that Augsburg's helmet also had a
similar loose neck protector. The remains of a fitting on the back
of the helmet would indicate this, i.e. could have served to attach
a loose neck protector. This assumption is not impossible, as we
have already seen so many important points of similarity between the
Augsburg helmet and ours.
As
for the decorations of the helmets, we have already noted that they
all have the same type of relief decorations of pressed crosses,
pearl edges, pointed circles and the like. This mainly decorates the
edges of the various parts of the helmet, as is also the case with
our helmet. How these decorations, despite differences in details,
still have one and the same character, can be seen in Fig. 64.8,
where sub 1 depicts the decorative motif of our helmet, sub 2 that
of the Augsburg helmet, sub 3 of that in Nuremberg, sub 4, 5 and 6
successively that of the helmets of Worms, Kertsch and Budapest.
Added as no. 7 is the decoration of a helmet from Thorsbjerg 1),
whose construction is indeed a completely different one, but
precisely because of its decoration technique by Lindenschmit e. a.
was used to date our helmets.
For the dating of our helmet types are mainly based on the technique
and method of decoration that recurs in various finds in Northern
and Eastern Germany and in the Danube countries. This includes the
aforementioned helmet of Thorsbjerg, whose hood is formed by
gilt-silver bands running crosswise over each other, which have a
decoration as shown in sub 7, and of technology like that on our
helmets. Based on other discoveries, this helmet was dated to the
4th or 5th century AD. 2).
1)
Engelhardt: Thorsbjerg Mosefund, p. 23, Pl. 5.
2)
Sophus Müller: Nordische Altertumskunde, Bd. II, p. 147.
Our
helmets are generally regarded as late Roman work from the time
shortly before the start of the great migrations. The coins found
near our helmet are all the more important for their chronology.
Where the find in the Peel is not a grave find, but the wearer of
the helmet had an accident here in one way or another, the coins
form the current money that he had "in his pocket", and
are therefore a certain means of dating our helmet. All from
Constantine, they therefore place our helmet in the 4th century,
around which time the helmets we compared and the finds further
mentioned above can also be grouped.
It
is difficult to determine how our helmets relate to each other in
time order. The typology can certainly not be used for this purpose,
as has been the case. After all, although very different in shape,
we saw such a great similarity in construction between our helmet
and those of Pfersee and Worms that, despite their different shapes,
they must almost have come from the same factory.
We
can answer the question of which factory that must have been
inasmuch as our type of helmets were manufactured in one of the
imperial weapons factories of the Roman Empire, such as there were
in Constantinople and Antioch.
For
a long time now, people have associated with our helmets is a place
in the Codex Theodosianus (X, 22, 1), where there is mention of
metal workers in the government's armament factories, specially
charged with covering helmets with silver and gilding them (tegere
argento et deaurare). They are called barbaricarii 1), a name that
indicates how these workers were of foreign origin.
[Imppp.
Valentinianus, Valens et Gratianus aaa. Tatiano comiti sacrarum
largitionum. Cum senae per tricenos dies ex aere tam aput Antiochiam
quam aput Constantinopolim a singulis barbaricariis cassides, sed et
bucculae tegerentur, octo vero aput Antiochiam cassidas totidemque
bucculas per dies triginta et tegerent argento et deaurarent, aput
Constantinopolim autem tres solas, statuimus, ut Constantinopoli
quoque non octonas singuli cassidas per tricenos dies, sed senas sic
pari numero buccularum auro argentoque condecorent. Dat. V id. mart.
Antiochiae Gratiano a. III et Equitio conss. (374 mart. 11)]
While the decorative technique of our helmets is therefore
automatically characterized as non-Roman, the type of our helmets is
also in accordance with this.
1)
See also Not. Dign. Or. XI, 45, and further Seeck, Pauly-Wissowa
Real-Encycl.
s.
v. barbaricarii.
The
movable cheek flaps in common with Roman helmets, non-Roman is the
nose protector and eyebrows in the helmet rim, which are reminiscent
of Greek, especially Corinthian helmets, while the loose neck
protector also seems to indicate foreign influences that had to
enter the Roman arms factories with the barbaricarii themselves.
[incidental finds] III.
Among the incidental finds, the 37 bronze coins are the most
important. Although most of them are badly worn and partly chipped,
they are all characterized, either by their obverse or by their
reverse, as coins of Constantine. As far as her exergues can be
read, at least 1 copy was minted in Siscia (off. B), 3 in Rome (off.
P and T) and 9 in Trier (off. S), while the others were struck by a
completely identical coinage of obverse or reverse can be ranked
below those of Rome and Trier. These last two coin types are, as far
as can be determined, each represented in one type, the description
of which follows here with that of Siscia, with reference to J.
Maurice, Numismatique Constatinienne, Tom. i, p. 208 ff., p. 423 ff.
and Num. Chron. 1900, p. 322.
Siscia:
Vz.
IMP CONSTANTINVS P F AVG
Draped bust of Constantine facing right, with laurel wreath around
the head.
Rev.
IOVI CONSERVATORI
Jupiter leaning on a sceptre, which he holds with his raised right
hand. A falling garment over the shoulder, otherwise naked. Turning
to the left, he carries a Victoria on a globe in his left hand. On
the left at his feet an eagle with a wreath in its beak.
Ex.ˑSISˑ
Rome:
Vz.
IMP CONSTATINVS P F GDPR
Bust of Constantine draped and armored. A laurel wreath around the
head.
Rev.
SOLI INVICTO COMMITI
Sol completely naked, with a halo around her head. Turns to the left
with left arm raised. A cloth hangs over his right arm, and he holds
a globe in his hand.
Ex.
RP or RT
Trier:
Vz.
IMP CONSTANTINVS MAX AVG
Armored bust of Constantine with helmet and laurel wreath.
Rev.
VICTORIAE LAETAE PRINC PERP
Two Victorias, between which an altar, with a star on the front. On
the altar they hold a shield, on which the left Victoria writes with
a stylus: VOT PR
Ex.
STR
an
image of some specimens on Pl. 65. Under No. 1 shows the coin of
Siscia, under 2 one of those minted in Rome, under 3 and 4 the best
obverse and reverse of the Trier specimens. The same plate also
shows images of other finds in silver or bronze.
The
bell, spur and fibula are made of bronze. The last one is of the
so-called longbow type and matches the coins in dating. The images
of these objects speak enough for themselves that they require
further description. The same applies to the silver fittings that
served to decorate the leather sheath belonging to the finds. The
fitting has 8 holes, so it must be sewn to the leather. The sheath
is cut from one piece and sewn together.
Of
the other leather discoveries, little more can be said about the
large pieces, just as we cannot about the loose strips of woolen
cloth. We probably have the remains of a scrap piece among the large
pieces of leather. Below that is: a square piece of leather with a
border in which holes have been drilled, so that a second piece
appears to have been sewn to it. A hole has been cut in the middle,
through which the strap of the stirrup or the abdominal strap could
have been pulled.
What is more important is what leather shoes were found. It is a
left-hand copy (Fig. 65a), with the remains of the corresponding
right shoe, a right outer shoe (b) and a right inner shoe (c), which
do not fit together, therefore belonging to two separate copies.
The one mentioned under a is the most important due to its relative
integrity. It consists of an outer and inner shoe, with an extra
insole and apparently two outer soles, which are successively sewn
to the inner and outer shoe with a narrow leather thread. The shoe,
26 cm long with a maximum width of 11 cm, it is cut from one piece
of leather, according to a pattern, as Fig. 66.1 shows where the
shoe is shown folded out when viewed from the outsole. If the
pattern is turned outwards to close, the points of connection run
along the edge of the heel (a) and the Achilles tendon (b), from the
front along the toes (c) and over the toe of the foot (d ). There
the leather is always attached to each other, and, just like with
the soles, sewn with a leather thread. The instep has a series of
incisions in the middle, as well as on the left and right, while its
edge is cut in a serrated shape. There is also an eyelet (e) in the
leather in the middle of the instep, which was apparently related to
the lacing of the shoe. (Cf. Jacobi, Saalburg, Taf. 80.7). The heel
piece also has a serrated edge, which also has a pressed decoration,
for which we refer to Fig. 65a and 66, 1.
The right outer shoe, which we mentioned under b, also has a finely
serrated edge and a decoration at the instep, which is shown in Fig.
66, 2. Of a length of 27 cm, and 9 cm at its widest, it is also cut
from one piece of leather. The same applies to the inner shoe,
referred to under c, which has a size of 27.50 by 8.50 cm. We find
their unfolded patterns in Fig. 66, 2-3. It shows how they
correspond with each other in the front part, but are cut
differently at the heel. The heel pattern of the inner shoe, as we
can see, corresponds to that of the shoe described under a. We find
the same thing with a shoe in Fig. 66, 4, which is also very similar
to our first: it is a shoe from the Thorsbjerger Moor (Engelhardt,
op. cit. p. 18, Pl. 3).
Leiden. Dr. M.A. EVELEIN.
Letter of A. Bos to J.H. Holwerda
Helenaveen
December 9, 1911.
The
Honorable Gentleman
Dr.
J.H. Holwerda Leiden
Sir,
I
hereby have the honor to inform you the following in response to
what I read in your work “Netherlands' Earliest History in
Pictures” page 29 regarding the find in the Peel under the
municipality of Deurne.
What
I read your description it gives me the impression that you were not
properly informed about some things and that not everything that was
found was provided.
The
day after the discovery was made, I went to the spot and looked at
everything, and I also collected all the leather, which had been
lost due to ignorance of the finders was torn to pieces.
The
objects were found in the upper layers of the black peat, almost at
the transition from the gray peat. The thickness of the black peat
present was too great for the people who died there to have been on
horseback. Horses cannot ride over such layers of peat.
Among
the leather were the remains of two beautifully crafted shoes, a
third shoe very simply made was found about 15 m from the first site
with the money and the leather probably from a leather bag. From
this I thought I could deduce that the suspected nobleman was
accompanied by an inferior, and that two people had thus died.
I
collected all the leather separately, like the shoes, the bag, etc
that had been torn from the helmet, etc. The woven fabric had
already pulled apart too much to be able to make much of it, it most
looked as if they had been bands, wider and narrower.
It
could be determined that the armament probably consisted of a spear
or lance, a bow and a sword. The remains of this had to be partially
dug out of the dug peat, so that they were cut into pieces when
digging the peat.
1°
Pieces of round cut wood ±3 c/m Ø, some were flat and
showed grooves as if they had been covered with metal, probably the
metal point or point.
2°
Pieces of flat wood, beautifully decorated in the middle with metal
remains as if a steel spring had been through the wood, everything
pointed to the wood of an arch.
3°
A block of wax with grooves, to smooth the bowstring.
4°
A piece of peat ±30 cm long in which the imprint of a sword
blade was ±2½ cm wide. The metal was completely
consumed and was only present as a dark blue-gray powder.
I
wrapped all these objects individually and returned them to the
finder, asking him to later hand everything over to the buyer or to
a museum where the objects would probably go.
However,
the property was later much tampered with, the man went to the fairs
with it, and when I saw it again later, it had suffered a lot.
However,
the little interest that there was at first for this find in
general, and the dispute among those entitled to it, was the reason
why I further kept myself out of it, but now that I read your
description, I now found reason to share the above with you.
In
the illustration in your piece I am missing a large piece on which
there were signs or letters, I thought this was very important, is
this not in your possession?
Later,
a third party brought me a pin, which was still in a piece of
leather, an arm had broken off, and a stone was included, which had
two flat sides and must have served as a confirmation, as everything
came together from one place, and was brought to me.
Here
in the Peel, rarely anything was found in the peat, in the past a
few leather headgear, a pair of large horns and something similar
have emerged, but everything else has been lost.
If
you would like any further information about any further
information, I will be happy to provide it to you as far as
possible.
Yours
faithfully
A.
Bos.
Leo
Kluijtmans reports in his book WHITE MAGIC (1970) some
interesting facts:
One
year later, when the last bench [peat] was excavated, they found a
nice small wine keg, with a few liters of content, the rest of the
totally clouded wine was still there.
The
keg was subsequently lost. The vessel was held together by toes
straps, and had a silver tap, too bad it has been lost.
A
silver cup has also been found, provided of a hook to hang it on the
rig.
It
must still be present somewhere privately in a hunting lodge in
Loosdrecht, which belonged to [family of] the then management of the
NV Maatschappij Helenaveen.
Archeologische
vondsten in Deurne en omgeving,
inzonderheid
de sierschijf van Helden
Inleiding
In
de Peel zijn weinig archeologische vondsten gedaan. Dit werd in de
krant opgemerkt direct na de vondst van de Peelhelm in juni 1910 en
ook later door de directeur van de N.V. Maatschappij Helenaveen die
veel vondsten rond de Peelhelm zelf heeft verworven en in zijn villa
in Helenaveen bewaarde. Na zijn dood in 1931 zijn deze voorwerpen
uit het zicht geraakt.
Bij
nader onderzoek is er wel degelijk meer gevonden: begin 1837 vonden
militairen die bij Deurne {Huub Kluijtmans zegt bij St.
Jozefparochie, de kranten van destijds noemt het de Kempensche
heide] veel urnen en andere voorwerpen gevonden. Deze opgegraven
voorwerpen waren direct geschenken en handelswaar. Een deel is later
in het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden terecht gekomen.
In
de jaren vijftig en zestig heeft Leo Kluijtmans als
amateur-archeoloog meerdere vondsten in de Peel gedaan, vooral van
stenen die als werktuig gebruikt zijn. Ook heeft hij meerdere
pijlpunten gevonden bij de plek waar ook de Peelhelm is gevonden.
Deze pijlpunten kwamen in 1963 te voorschijn na een verwoestende
maandenlang durende veenbrand in 1959. Daarvoor had hij al een
maalsteen gevonden. Tevens kwam ook een bronzen ringetje te
voorschijn die bij de man-en-paard-uitrusting heeft behoord.
Overzicht van archeologische
vondsten in de Peel
Van
de hieronder gevonden voorwerpen heeft de auteur een opsomming
gemaakt:
4
februari 1837 [1] Verscheidene urnen of potten van verschillende
grootte, allen met asch van verbrande ligchamen en kleine beentjes
opgevuld
[2]
terwijl in sommige stukjes van metaal en gedeelten van wapenen
gevonden zijn
4
mei 1837 [1] Kempensche heide
[2]
eerst 5, daarna 50 urnen gevonden
[3]
Niet één penning of muntstuk is opgedolven; alleen een
stukje metaal, hetwelk men meent voor een mondstuk van een
blaasinstrument te moeten houden.
[4]
De opgravingen worden op sommige plekken nog voortgezet, doch men
vindt in de urnen, zoo als gezegd is, niets dan asch en de
bovengemelde menschenbeenderen.
3
juni 1837 [1] urnen of potten van verschillende grootte, allen met
asch van verbrande lichamen en kleine beentjes opgevuld;
23
april 1839 [1] werden
ons een aantal urnen toegezonden, die kort te voren te Deurne, in
Noord-Braband, ontdekt waren geworden; en werd het aantal nog
vermeerderd door de opbrengst eener opzettelijke daartoe verordende
opdelving, door den burgemeester dier plaats, de heer van Riet, aan
het Museum ten geschenke
gegeven.
[2]
[wellicht NBD
2, vRD
4a, vRD
2, vRD
3, ND
3, GtD 15a, k 1942/6.1, k 1925/1.1, NBD
1, k 1942/6.2, vRD 7, k 1925/1.2, ND 2, k 1942/6.3, ND 13, vRD
4b, vRD 5a, ND 4, GtD 13a, ND 8, k 1932/12.9, ND 10, ND 5, vRD 8,
vRD 5b, ND 11, k 1942/6.4, GtD 14b]
[3]
De urnen blijken niet uit de Romeinse tijd te dateren, maar van vele
honderden jaren daarvoor.
18
maart 1840 [1] Van den heer S. H. van der Noordaa, te Dordrecht,
twee tufsteenen vijzels met stampers, in den omtrek van Deurne
in Noord-Braband opgedolven;
[2]
Deze objecten zijn NIET gevonden in de gegevens van de ruim 40.000
objecten online.
29
juni 1840 [1] Gemeente
Deurne Liessel.
Er
zijn te Deurne geene lijkurnen meer verkrijgbaar. de Heer
burgemeester zoude door trachten er
door graving er nog te krijgen, welke hij alsdan, indien dit
gelukken mogt gaarne zoude afstaan. -
De
Districts Commissaris / DD.
Wesselman.
[2]
Hieronder het gedeelte van het antwoord dat betrekking heeft op
Deurne en Liessel, maar verwijst naar Meijel.
[3]
15 foto's zijn te vinden op de website van het Rijksmuseum, zoals
dit detail
1
oktober 1840 [1] Alzoo bezit het Noord-Brabandsch
genootschap reeds urnen van drie Heidensche begraafplaatsen, als:
van Deurne in 1837, van Genderen in 1839 en van
Gemonde in 1849 gevonden.
26
januari 1841 [1] Van
den heer P. O. P. Guyot,
te Nijmegen, eene allerbelangrijkste verzameling van bronzen en
andere voorwerpen bij Deurne, in de provincie Noord-Braband,
opgedolven, en die voor het grootste gedeelte door den Ritmeester
Baron van Voorst bijeengebragt, en aan den heer Guyot afgestaan
waren.
[2]
is het Museum thans in het bezit gesteld van de voornaamste en
zeldzaamste stukken, die bij de ontdekkiug te Deurne gedaan, voor
den dag zijn gekomen, en die, langs verschillende wegen, eindelijk
wederom bij elkander gebragt, een geheel vormen, dat [...]
12
januari 1842 [1] Van den heer P. C. G. GUYOT, te Nijmegen, nog een
aantal van tien urnen, potjes en schalen, te Deurne in Noord-Braband
gevonden;
[2]
Van
den Heer S. H. van der Noordaa te Dordrecht, nog een drietal kleine
voorwerpen in urnen te Deurne gevonden.
20
januari 1843 [1] Van de heer S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA ontvingen wij
wederom een mortier van tufsteen, in den omtrek van Deurne gevonden.
1
januari 1844 [1] Een
merkwaardig stuk werd in 1844 in een moeras van de Peel, niet ver
van het gehucht Maris gevonden, en bevindt zich thans in het Leidsch
Museum (Cat. ML, alsook Stark, dl. 1876 bl. 7-56; P 1881, 272-274;
voorts HKN) Het is een medaillon (afb. 149) van verguld zilver van
ruim 21 cM. middellijn, dat in vrij hoog relief een voorstelling
vertoont van in het midden een man, die een leeuw worgt, daaromheen
dierengevechten, o.a. twee dieren, die elkander een runderkop
betwisten; in den rand met geciseleerde lijstjes zijn vier gaatjes
aangebracht om het medaillon misschien op een schild te hechten; in
twee gaatjes zitten nog de nagels met ronde kopjes. Naar den stijl
der figuren oordeelt men het stuk van Oost-Europeesche afkomst te
zijn.
[2]
Dr.
H.C. Gallois maakte ons er op opmerkzaam, dat zich in het Cabinet
des Médailles te Parijs twee schijven bevinden, waarvan één
slechts fragmentarisch bewaard, die sterke overeenkomst vertoonen
met het hier besproken exemplaar.
[3]
zie ook 1922:
Iranians and Greeks in South Russia
[4]
de omchrijving van GL672 in het inventarisboek luidt:
Zilver
(verguld). Ronde schijf of schild, gedreven en
bijgegraveerd, in bijzonder hoog uitkomend werk, voorstellende in
het midden een worstelaar, die op de knieën liggende, zijne
armen om de hals van eenen door hem overmeesterden leeuw heeft
gekneld. Rondom twee leeuwen die een ram bespringen en twee panters
op elkaar toeloopende, tusschen hen een runderkop, de geheele
voorstelling omringd van vier randen of banden, twee in de vorm van
gedraaid koord, de derde eene golvende, de vierde of buitenste
wederom van een gedraaid koord. Aan den buitenkant op gelijke
afstanden vier openingen, in twee die openingen de knoppen, waarmee
de schijf op eenig ander voorwerp bevestigd is geweest.
31
maart 1864 [1] Romeinsche
voorwerpen uit de nalatenschap van wijlen den heer S. H. VAN DER
NOORDAA werden ook eenige overgenomen, van de vroegere bewoners van
ons Vaderland afkomstig:
[2]
eene zeer fraai gepolijste vuursteenen BIJL, 12 dm. lang;
[3]
een ruw bewerkte BAL van trachiet, 4 dm. in doorsnede;
[4]
eene URNE van gebakken aarde, gevuld met verbrande
menschenbeenderen, hoog 19 dm.;
[5]
eene andere URNE, 18 dm. hoog, met de daarin gevonden brokken van
eene bronzen HAARNAALD;
[6,
7, 8] nog een drietal URNEN met verbrande beenderen en
[9]
overblijfsels van bronzen RINGEN enz.; de urnen van 10, 15.5 en 16
duim hoogte;[10] twee KOMMETJES, 9 en 7 dm.;
[11]
4 POTJES van verschillende vormen, 6 5 tot 9.5 dm. hoog;
[12]
een bekervormig VAATJE, 5.5 dm. hoog, en eenige brokstukken van
potten.
[13]
Al deze voorwerpen, met uitzondering welligt van de WIGGE, waren in
1837 op de oude begraafplaats te Deurne in Noordbrabant opgegraven;
[14]
een paar trachietsteenen MORTIEREN met STAMPERS uit den omtrek van
Deurne afkomstig en tot de reeds meermalen genoemde nalatenschap van
wijlen den heer S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA behoorende;
[15]
zij vormen nu met de stukken die, ter zelfder plaats gevonden, in
1840 en 1841 door wijlen den heer P. O. G. GUYOT aan het Museum
geschonken werden, een aanzienlijk geheel.
10
maart 1890 [1] evenzeer
als de in zilver en haut-relief gedreven umbo of schildplaat, (Bas
Empire, =de tijd van de door het leger aangestelde en vaak weer
spoedig onttroonde of vermoorde soldatenkeizers.)
[2]
Zoowel het steen- als het bronstijdperk zijn ruim vertegenwoordigd,
terwijl de verzameling Germaansch aardewerk, waaronder vele urnen
met de asch onzer Germaansche voorvaderen, tot de rijkste mag worden
gerekend. Ook het Romeinsche glas- en aardewerk, urnen, enz.,
14
april 1929 [1] Een
zeer mooi en merkwaardig stuk is de verguld zilveren Romeinsche
helm, in de nabijheid van Deurne in de Peel gevonden.
[2]
Ook zij de aandacht gevestigd op de groote belegstukken van zilver,
welke op leder genaaid deel uitmaakten van een Romeinsch
paardentuig. Deze stukken werden hiertelande uit den Rijn
opgevischt.
25
augustus 1937 [1] Bij
het verrichten van ontginningswerkzaamheden, welke onder leiding van
de Nederlandsche Heide Mij. op het grondgebied der uitgestrekte
Peelgemeente Deurne worden verricht, werd dezer dagen een skelet
aangetroffen,
2
april 2013 Het volgende heeft betrekking op de zogenaamde
"Sierschijf van Helden" die onder inventarisnummer
GL 672 te vinden is in het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden. Als
datering wordt opgegeven na 100 BC, materiaal zilver, diameter 21
cm, vindplaats Helden.
[1]
Verdere omschrijving: Deze unieke schijf is afkomstig uit Thracië
(het moderne Bulgarije en Roemenië) en werd gebruikt als
sieraad. De sierschijf is gemaakt van zilver en vervolgens verguld.
[2]
De hieronder volgende beschrijving uit 1840 is NIET van de
Sierschijf van Helden:
Naar
het berigt Ik heb het berigt dat een landbouwer te Deurne
Liessel in het bezit
zoude zijn van een
oud romeinsch zwaard en een goud schild welk in den
peel zoude
zijn uitgegraven,
zeer betwijfeld, wijl ik er nooit iets van vernomen had. ook is
mij bij onderzoek
verzekerd gebleken dat er niemand iets van weet.
waarschijnlijk
heeft men dit
verward met ?? het geen in de naburige gemeente
Meyel heeft plaats
gehad. In
het jaar 1807 men heeft men aldaar een
goud schild gevonden.
voor eenige jaren
te Meyel zijnde heb ik mij naar het huis van den toenmaligen
burgemeester
Goossens begeven om deze merkwaardigheid te zien. hij vertoonde mij
een schild welk in
den peel in het jaar 1807 omtrent vijf voeten onder het
onder
de
oppervlakte van den
grond in
den peel
bij gelegenheid eener turfgraving gevonden
was, hetzelve was
van goud of althans zwaar verguld gedreven
werk,
op
hetzelve
waren hyroglyphen
en andere figuren van leeuwen, tijgers &c gedreven, en had de
vorm van een halve
maan, veel gelekende naar een ringkraag zoo als de kapiteins der
infanterie
voor
?
nog niet zeer lang geleden op de borst droegen.
[3]
In het hoofdstuk THE SARMATIANS van het boek Iranians
and Greeks in South Russia
uit 1922 vinden we enkele overeenkomstige schijven op PLATE XXVII.
Verrassenderwijze wordt de sierschijf van Helden daar ook opgenomen
met als omschrijving SILVER
PLAQUE FROM RAERMOND (HOLLAND). Rijks Museum, Leyden.
Zie voor een kopie van het gehele boek: 1922:
Iranians and Greeks in South Russia door M. Rostovtzeff.
p. 138 e.v.: Finally, the same style and the same
main ideas appear in certain
finds from Germanic lands. I am thinking of the phalarae from
Raermond in Holland
(pl. XXVII, 3), with a frieze of animals and a figure of Hercules
strangling a lion
which presents the same peculiarities - beardlessness, local
costume - as the
Hercules of Panagürishte;
and of the famous cauldron from Gundestrup. I agree with
Salomon Reinach and Drexel in attributing
these monuments to a peculiar branch of
art which they call Irano-Celtic: [...]
[4]
De sierschijf stamt uit de collectie Guillon, en wordt blijkbaar ook
in 1876 genoemd door B. Stark.
[5]
Na een jaren durende briefwisseling, met maar één
onderwerp: loven en bieden, werd het voorwerp in 1890 door het
Rijksmuseum van Oudheden aangekocht tegen het toen exorbitant hoge
bedrag van f1550,-.
[6]
Een soortgelijke versie van de schijf in de vorm van een halve maan
(lunula) komt ook in bovengenoemd boek voor als figuur 20.
2
april 2013 De Peelhelm, ook in het Museum van Oudheden,
heeft als omschrijving: Deze verguld zilveren ruiterhelm, een waar
topstuk, is in 1910 gevonden bij het turfsteken in een voormalig
moeras in de Peel. Het is in feite alleen de buitenkant van de helm,
die oorspronkelijk opgebouwd was uit een ijzeren kap met een lederen
bekleding. De helm lag helemaal uit elkaar na de ontdekking en is
dan ook grondig gerestaureerd. De rechter wangklep, die verloren is
gegaan, is aangevuld. De paradehelm is waarschijnlijk van een hoge
officier geweest. Volgens een inscriptie op de helm maakte hij deel
uit van de zesde ruitereenheid Stablesia, een eenheid die we ook uit
de antieke literatuur kennen. Een tweede inscriptie geeft de naam
van de maker en het oorspronkelijk gewicht van de zilverplaten. Bij
de helm zijn resten van kleding en uitrusting gevonden, evenals een
aantal muntjes. Die wijzen uit dat de uitrusting waarschijnlijk rond
319 na Chr. in het veen is geraakt. We weten niet precies hoe de
spullen in het moeras terecht zijn gekomen. Misschien is de eigenaar
verdronken of was het een offer aan de goden.
Inventarisnummer
k 1911/4.1-5, datering 319-323, plaats Deurne, afmetingen hoogte
28,5 cm, 359,9 gram
[1]
Hierbij behoort de opmerking dat de op de helm zesde afdeling van de
ruitereenheid niet in de antieke literatuur te vinden is, wel de
eerste en tweede.
[2]
Een belangrijk facet is het volgende:
Dergelijke
tere voorwerpen kunnen de tand des tijds niet overleefd hebben
zonder de beste bescherming tegen weerinvloeden, rovers, e.d. Als je
die "verstopt", dan heb je er een bepaalde bedoeling mee.
Een verongelukte Romein in het moeras is uiterst onwaarschijnlijk.
Immers bij een ongeluk van een vooraanstaand Romeinse officier
zouden de nabestaanden en soldaten op zoek zijn gegaan naar de
vermiste persoon. Men wist dan ook dat de vermiste persoon
waardevolle voorwerpen bij zich had die men terug zou willen hebben.
Men zou niet alleen het lijk, zonder kleren, gevonden en meegenomen
hebben.
Een
overval door anderen is ook onmogelijk, immers dan zou men alle
waardevolle spullen hebben meegenomen, dat is ook het doel van
rovers, nietwaar?
Jammer
dat ik het verhaal over verbrande hoeven niet kan verifieren, omdat
ik niet weet van wie, waar, wanneer. Want dat zou duiden op een
paard, maar waarom dan geen botten teruggevonden van het paard?
De
gevolgtrekkingen kunnen geen andere dan deze zijn:
Een
zeer hoge Romeinse persoon die zich klaarblijkelijk in de buurt
bevond, vond het nodig zijn gehele militaire outfit te verstoppen of
te verbergen als gave voor de goden. Rond 320 begon de
Christianisatie ook hier, wellicht was dat de reden om afstand te
doen van de oude (heidense) oorlogsvoorwerpen en die in te ruilen
voor een christelijk leven met bijbehorende kleren. Of ging de
officier met pensioen en kon hij de kleren die bij zijn rang hoorden
niet aan een even hoog geplaatste opvolger overgeven. Of is de
persoon overleden en willen, kunnen en mogen de nabestaanden de
attributen niet zelf dragen.
Mijn
vermoeden is dat de persoon werkelijk ook zeer vooraanstaand was.
Dat duidt erop dat hij vermoedelijk in Trier gestationeerd was, want
dat was toen het regeringscentrum. Maar duidelijk is dat er destijds
al vele nederzettingen, militair en civiel, langs de Maas lagen. De
afstand schat ik op maximaal 20 km. Veel verdere veilige
verbergplaatsen waren er niet in de buurt, want we mogen aannemen
dat er geen echte bewoning in de straal van 5 of 10 km rond de
vindplaats is geweest, ook later niet.
Wat
kunnen we hieruit nu besluiten? De volledige uitrusting (van
officier, paard en zeer waarschijnlijk ook knecht) is opzettelijk
begraven in een zeer verlaten streek. Waarschijnlijk wist men dat de
veenplanten er verder overheen zouden groeien en dat de
grondverstoring in zeer korte tijd niet meer waar te nemen was. Men
zal ook wel gedacht hebben dat de voorwerpen daar tegen verwering
beschermd waren, wat maar gedeeltelijk waar is gebleken.
Als
de voorwerpen tijdelijk begraven waren, dan heeft de eigenaar geen
gelegenheid gehad ze weer op te graven.
2
april 2013 De omschrijving van de kantharos van Stevensweert,
die zich in het Museum het Valkhof in Nijmegen bevindt:
Stevensweert, eind 1ste eeuw voor - midden 1ste eeuw na Chr.
zilver, deels verguld, h. 10,5 cm
Kantharos
is de Griekse naam voor een kelkvormige drinkbeker met twee grote
oren. Die laatste ontbreken bij dit zilveren exemplaar, dat in 1943
of kort daarvoor is gevonden bij grindwinningen langs de Maas, ten
noorden van Stevensweert. De uitbundige versiering op deze beker
staat volledig in het teken van de wijngod Bacchus, die zelf heel
vaak met een kantharos in de handen wordt afgebeeld.
Op
de voet en aan de bovenrand is de beker versierd met gestileerde
bloem- en bladmotieven. De decoratie daartussen is over twee zones
verdeeld en van binnenuit in het zilver uitgedreven, zover zelfs dat
de bladeren van de klimop- en wijnranken onderaan soms bijna lijken
los te komen van de wand. Beide planten zijn aan Bacchus gewijd en
keren terug in tal van voorstellingen van de god.
In
de zone daarboven zien we koppen van mythologische figuren,
afgewisseld met allerlei voorwerpen. Van de oorspronkelijk zes
koppen zijn er twee verloren gegaan. De hele fries verbeeldt de
wereld van de wijngod, maar over de precieze identificatie van de
koppen zijn verschillende ideeën ontwikkeld.
Onmiskenbaar
is de karakteristieke kop van de bosgod Pan aan één
kant van de beker, naast die van een bebaarde man met hoofddoek,
hoogstwaarschijnlijk Bacchus zelf. De ontbrekende kop rechts moet
die van Hercules zijn geweest, vergezeld van zijn knots, boog en
pijlkoker. Pan en Hercules verkeren vaak in het gezelschap van
Bacchus, evenals de twee bacchanten (vrouwelijke volgelingen van
Bacchus) aan de andere kant, ieder met een krans van klimopbladeren
om het hoofd. De kop tussen hen in ontbreekt, op enkele restanten
van een wilde haardos na, vermoedelijk die van een satyr, eveneens
een trouwe metgezel van de wijngod.
Tussen
de koppen zien we allerlei muziekinstrumenten als verbeelding van de
feestroes waaraan iedereen zich overgeeft, en versierde stokken en
boomtakken die de afgebeelde figuren in andere voorstellingen vaak
in de hand hebben.
De
beker is vermoedelijk gemaakt in het oostelijke deel van het
Middellandse Zeegebied. Een Romeinse eigenaar heeft hem meegenomen
naar het noorden en daar is hij, inmiddels beroofd van zijn oren, in
de Maas beland. Na de ontdekking volgde opnieuw een bewogen
geschiedenis: in de jaren 50 van de vorige eeuw vormde de ‘kantharos
van Stevensweert’ het middelpunt van een geruchtmakend proces
tussen koper en verkoper. Sinds 1961 is de beker in Nijmegen een
museumstuk van uitzonderlijke kwaliteit en betekenis.
Er
zijn heel wat parallellen te trekken tussen de vondst van de
Peelhelm en de (her)ontdekking van de kantharos.
Het
gaat in eerste instantie altijd om geld voor de vondst. Later blijkt
dat het voorwerp veel meer waard was, en gaan de oorspronkelijke
vinders/eigenaars protesteren, omdat ze zich benadeeld voelden. Dat
gold voor Smolenaars, maar ook voor de bezitters van de kantharos.
Beide
(helm en drinkbeker) zijn waarschijnlijk aanmerkelijk ouder (één
of twee eeuwen) dan de overige objecten rond man-en-paard. Ze waren
dus tijdens als bezit goed verzorgd en doorgegeven of verkocht. Dat
laatste is het geval bij de kantharos omdat een naam is doorgekrast.
Beide hebben ook een gewichtsaanduiding (van het zilver), wat erop
wijst dat het object destijds al als uiterst waardevol werd herkend.
Zowel
door Evelein als Brom met zijn onderzoekers zijn (wetenschappelijke)
uitspraken gedaan die later niet houdbaar bleken. Zo is de afkorting
van de naam op de helm gewijzigd, maar is de laatste interpretatie
nu de juiste? Een zogenaamd gedicht op de kantharos werd later een
Griekstalige gewichtsaanduiding.
Beide
mooi bewerkte zilveren voorwerpen zijn uiterst zeldzaam, destijds
wellicht minder, want de nodige exemplaren zullen wel zijn
omgesmolten.
Ook
de verwerving door de musea, vooral de gretigheid waarop, is
opmerkelijk. Maar daarna is de nieuwsgierigheid verdwenen. Een
verklaring moet zijn dat de wetenschappelijke functionarissen niet
de vinders waren, zodat ze eigenlijk niet zelf met de eer konden
strijken.
Documenten en
krantenartikelen met betrekking tot de sierschijf e.d.
5
april 1803 TOT SCHOUTEN CIVIEL: [...] Jan
Willem van de Mortel,
voor Deurne; Carel
Frederik Wesselman Jr.,
voor Mierlo; [...]
circa
1805: Tranchot-kaart van de Peel
[met
dank aan Huub Kluijtmans! De kaart bevat enkele moderne wegen en
kanalen ingetekend.]
25
augustus 1807 Over
het begraven der Dooden bij de Ouden.
12
september 1813 Gemeenten Deurne en Liessel.
1ste
Lot. Art. 25. De 1/4 van de hierna volgende tienden, 1°.
groote Klamptiend van Peelklamp, 1ste, 2de en 3de gedeelte, 2°.
groote Klaptiend de Middelklamp, 1ste, 2de en 3de gedeelte, 3°.
groote Kamptiend de Heijklamp, 1ste, 2de en 3de gedeelte, en 4°.
Klamptiend van Dongen, herkomstig van de teutomische orde; de (helft
van deze tienden behooren aan verschillende particulieren) een 1/4
aan de latijnsche school van Gemert en 1/4 aan het gouvernement. de
1/4 aan de domeinen toebehoorende is geschat op een revenu van 924
fr. 78 c. en op een kapitaal van ............... 23,119 fr. 50 c.
2de
Lot. Art. 26. De helft van de Klamptiend van den Moesdijk,
herkomstig als boven, (de 1/2 van deze tiend behoort aan den heer
Berenstein,
te Vugt), het aandeel aan het gouvernement toebehoorende; is geschat
op een revenu van 267 francs 90 cent. op een kapitaal van
.................................................. 6697 fr. 50 c.
3de
Lot. Art. 27. De Klamptiend de Lijssel en 1/4 der tienden van het
gehucht den Grooten Bottel en Valkenakker, herkomstig van de
teutonische orde, (de 3/4 der tienden van het gehucht den Grooten
Bottel en Valkenakker behooren aan de amortisatie-kas; het aandeel
aan de domein toebehoorende, is geschat op een revenu van 377 fr. 96
c. en op een kapitaal van ...................... 9449 fr. 0 c.
4
februari 1837 Deurne
3 Februarij 1837.
Aan
de Redactie van den Noord-Brabander.
Sedert
acht dagen levert de gemeente van Deurne een bewijs op, dat ook dit
gewest schatten in zich bevat, wat oudheid en geschiedenis betreft,
gerust met de andere deelen onzes lands gelijk kan gesteld worden.
De aandacht onzer Vaderl. geleerden wordt derhalve op het volgende
gevestigd: waardoor zij mogelijk in de gelegenheid gesteld zullen
worden, niet alleen om hunne collectien van antiquiteiten met
belangrijke artikelen te vermeerderen, maar ook om de geschiedenis
met gewigtige bijdragen, dienst te bewijzen.
Door
het corps offic. van het Regt. Huss. N°. 6 begonnen en door
particulieren, in hoop van schatten te vinden, voortgezet, is men
hier bezig, met het opdolven eener kamp of leger, of wel
begraafplaats; denkelijk afkomstig, van eene door de Romeinen, uit
de Ardennen verdreven, en hier, achter de moerasgronden der Peel,
verscholene volksstam. Verscheidene urnen of potten van
verschillende grootte, allen met asch van verbrande ligchamen en
kleine beentjes opgevuld, zijn reeds opgegraven; terwijl in sommige
stukjes van metaal en gedeelten van wapenen gevonden zijn. Deze
potten zijn door heuveltjes van differente hoogte bedekt, en die
even als de potten, zekerlijk na het aanzien en rang, dat de aldaar
begravene bekleed heeft, in grootte en hoogte hebben toegenomen. De
pot is bijna gelijk eene kloot, eenigzins naar het boven- en
benedeneinde ovaal toeloopende, terwijl ze aan het boveneinde eene
schuins opslaande rand heeft, die genoegzaam dezelfde omtrek als de
pot zelve zal hebben, en het deksel dat in evenredigheid der pot
zeer klein is, sluit goed en schijnt digt bestreken te zijn. De
grootste potten zullen eene diameter van 3 palmen hebben terwijl de
kleinste naauwelijks 1 a 1½ zullen reiken en de heuveltjes
ook wel een verschil van bijna ééne el zullen
opleveren, daar men er vindt, die schier 2 en anderen die meer dan
vijf voeten hoog zijn. De potten zijn van potaarde (welke ook hier
gevonden wordt) gemaakt, en toonen aan dat zij de kunst van draaijen
reeds tot eene aanmerkelijke hoogte gebragt hadden.
P.
[elders
nog:] - De aandacht onzer vaderlandsche geleerden en oudheidkundigen
wordt op deze ontdekking, die tot aanwinst voor hunne verzamelingen,
of tot opheldring der geschiedenis, van nut kan zijn, ingeroepen.
4
mei 1837 NEDERLANDEN.
-
In het laatst uitgekomen nommer van het Nederlandsch Magazijn
treft men een artikel aan over de onlangs opgedolven urnen in
Noord-Braband. Hetzelve houdt hoofdzakelijk in dat men onlangs
in onderscheidene onzer dagbladen, berigten vond wegens het opdelven
van oudheden in de gemeente Deurne, provincie Noord-Braband,
en thans bij de Redactie van boven gemeld magazijn eenige
bijzonderheden nopens die opdelving zijn ingekomen, voornamelijk
hierop nederkomende: Een Ritmeester bij het regiment huzaren n°.
6, bij eene vroegere gelegenheid, ontwaar geworden zijnde, dat
eenige heuveltjes op de Kempensche heide, bij opdelving, bleken
grafheuveltjes te zijn, en urnen of aschkruiken te bevatten, kwam op
het denkbeeld, dat eenige dergelijke heuveltjes, welke op de heide
nabij Deurne, zijn tegenwoordig kantonnement, aanwezig waren, tot
dergelijke einden mogten gediend hebben en oudheden bevatteden. Met
toestemming des burgemeesters aldaar, hebbende doen graven, vond men
vijf urnen of asch-kruiken, welke bij opvolgende delvingen
vermeerderden, en thans reeds het getal van vijftig te boven gaan.
Jammer is het, dat de landlieden, hiervan gehoord hebbende, ook van
hunne zijde aan het graven gingen, in de hoop om schatten te vinden;
de door hen opgedolvene urnen in stukken sloegen of beschadigden;
groot was de teleurstelling dezer lieden, toen zij in dezelve niets
dan asch en eenige half vergane kennelijke menschen-beenderen, als:
schedels, ribben, dijbeenderen enz. vonden. Niet één
penning of muntstuk is opgedolven; alleen een stukje metaal, hetwelk
men meent voor een mondstuk van een blaasinstrument te moeten
houden. De gevonden urnen zijn van verschillende grootte, doch alle
van nagenoeg ééne gedaante, sommige van deksels
voorzien. Het heide-veld, waarin de urnen gevonden zijn, is omtrent
vier bunders groot, de heuveltjes zijn vrij regelmatig, doch het
geheel terrein schijnt tot begraafplaats gediend te hebben, dewijl
men ook urnen buiten de heuveltjes en op eenigen afstand van dezelve
heeft gevonden. De urnen zijn meestal met eene laag houtskool
bedekt; immers zoodra men deze vindt, is men zeker nabij eene urn te
zijn. Sommige zitten zoo hoog, dat men boven in de asch de
vezelworteltjes der gewone heide vindt; andere zijn dieper gevonden,
doch op ongelijke diepte. De zelfstandigheid, waaruit deze potten of
urnen zijn zamengesteld, is glad, gedegen, en van eene donker bruine
kleur; geen verglaassel is op dezelve zigtbaar, noch eenig in- of
opschrift. Indien dezelve te Deurne vervaardigd zijn, alwaar thans
nog twee pottebakkerijen gevonden worden, dan moet men bekennen,
dat deze kunst aldaar in 10 of 15 eeuwen geene vorderingen gemaakt
heeft; want deze urnen zijn zuiverder en gladder bewerkt en met meer
zorg behandeld dan thans geschiedt. De opgravingen worden op sommige
plekken nog voortgezet, doch men vindt in de urnen, zoo als gezegd
is, niets dan asch en de bovengemelde menschenbeenderen.
3
juni 1837 HAARLEM, 30 Februarij
Uit
de gemeente Deurne (Noord-Braband) wordt een berigt medegedeeld
wegens het ontdekken, in de nabijheid dier plaats, van een kampleger
of wel begraafplaats; zoo men denkt afkomstig van een ouden
volksstam, die door de Romeinen uit de Ardennes verdreven, willigt
daar ter plaatse, achter de moerasgronden der Peel, eene veilige
wijkplaats zochten. De eerste ontdekking dier leger- of
begraafplaats werd gedaan door officieren van het in den omtrek
gekantonneede regiment huzaren no. 6, en sedert worden de
opdelvingen door particulieren, in hoop van schatten te vinden,
voortgezet. Onder hetgeen tot dus ver gevonden is noemt men
verscheidene urnen of potten van verschillende grootte, allen met
asch van verbrande lichamen en kleine beentjes opgevuld; in sommige
dier potten zijn, naar men meld, stukjes metaal en gedeelten van
wapenen gevonden. De genoemde potten zijn bedekt door heuveltjes van
verschillende hoogte, die, even als de potten waarschijnlijk naar
het aanzien en den rang, welke de daar begravene bekleed heeft, in
grootte en hoogte hebben toegenomen. De potten zijn van pot-aarde en
goed gedraaid; de grootste hebben eene middellijn van 3, de kleinste
van ruim 1 palm; sommige heuveltjes zijn bijna 2, andere meer dan 5
voeten hoog.
3
oktober 1837 OPENBARE VERKOOPING op het Buitenverblijf STIL
GENOEGEN, aan den Hoorn, nabij de stad Delft.
Men
is van meening om op Maandag den 9 October 1837 en volgende dagen,
dagelijks, van des voormiddags ten 10 ure af tot des namiddags ten 2
ure toe, ter plaatse bovengemeld, in het openbaar te verkoopen: Een
netten en zindelijken INBOEDEL, bestaande in eenig Goud- en
Zilverwerk, als: Gouden Ringen, Zilveren Lepels en Vorken, dito
Theekistje, Presenteerblikjes, een Ringkraag, een Degen met Zilver
Gevest en meer; [...]
24
juni 1838 Necrologie
van Maximilien Jacques de Man, directeur des archives de la
guerre et du bureau topographique
23
april 1839 MUSEUM VAN OUDHEDEN TE LEIJDEN
[...]
Op de afdeeling der Germaansche
en Noordsche
oudheden
nam,
vooral in het afgeloopen jaar, wederom tot in rijkdom en
verscheidenheid van voorwerpen.
Door
gunstige beschikking van het departement van Binnenlandsche zaken,
werden ons een aantal urnen toegezonden, die kort te voren te
Deurne, in Noord-Braband, ontdekt waren geworden; en werd het aantal
nog vermeerderd door de opbrengst eener opzettelijke daartoe
verordende opdelving, door den burgemeester dier plaats, de heer van
Riet, aan het Museum ten
geschenke gegeven.
19 september 1839 — De heer
C. R. HERMANS,
heeft
in het Provinciaal
Dagblad van dit gewest
het volgend berigt doen plaatsen, wegens te St.
Michielgestel gevonden
Lijkurnen. «Sedert eenigen tijd kwam mij ter kennis, dat men
te Gemonde,
gemeente St.
Michiel-Gestel, van
tijd tot tijd, lijkurnen had uitgegraven. Den lOden dezer ging ik
mij in persoon van de waarheid overtuigen. Ik vond aan de rivier
de Dommel eenen akker,
hooger dan de bijliggende landerijen, ongeveer 14 loopensen groot,
genaamd de Dommelakker,
beboorende aan den eigenaar van de groote
Wielsche Hoeve. Bij
dezen akker ligt een Heilig
Weike, aan twee zijden
door de Dommel,
en aan de derde zijde door eenen diepen met geenen vaarboom
peilbaren wiel bespoeld. Deze hoeve en erve behoorden, vóór
de verkooping van den 7den April 1803, onder de dominiale goederen
van den heer van St.
Michiel-Gestel. Gemonde
zelve is thans wel een kerkdorp, maar geen gemeente en behoort
gedeeltelijk onder de gemeenten St.
Michiel-Gestel, Boxtel en Schijndel.
De oude kerk van Gemonde,
welke in 1824 door eene nieuwe werd vervangen, droeg alle blijken
van aloude stichting; men heeft zelfs wel eens gezegd, dat zij
vroeger eene Romeinsche sterkte zou geweest zijn. Al deze
omstandigheden doen ons vermoeden, dat Gemonde voor de prediking des
Christendoms, een heilig oord geweest is, en dat deze Dommelakker en
dit heilig weike, betrekking hadden op de godsdienstige instellingen
onzer vaderen gedurende het Heidendom; hetgeen nog daarenboven
bevestigd wordt door den zoogenaamden St.
Maartens-cijns, door de
opgezetenen aan deze hoeve vroeger betaald, en door het cijnsmaat
(een overblijfsel van een doodenmaal
der heidenen). De landlieden verhaalden mij, dat zij omtrent 0. L.
V. Lichtmis dezes jaars een pot hadden uitgegraven, waarin zij
beenderen met asch en zand vonden; doch dat dezelve, zeer bros
zijnde, aan stukken viel, waarom zij dien weder onder den grond
groeven. Men berigtte mij verder, dat er sedert eenige jaren nog
vijf dergelijke urnen waren uitgegraven. Zoo gaarne had ik handen
aan het werk laten slaan, ten einde de overige lijkurnen welke er
ongetwijfeld in den grond zitten, te bekomen, doch daartoe was geene
mogelijkheid, omdat deze Dommelakker, sedert onheugelijke tijden
bebouwd is, en daardoor met teelaardo, ter hoogte van ongeveer drie
voet, is opgehoopt. Daar de landlieden onledig zijn om den akker uit
te zanden, zoo ben ik met ben overeengekomen, dat mij al te vinden
urnen tegen billijke belooning zullen worden afgestaan. In de
papieren en transporten, tot de hoeve hehoorende, vond ik wel niets,
dat mij het vroeger gebruik van den Dommelakker en het heilig weike
nader in het licht stelde, maar een stuk, betrekkelijk den St.
Maartens-cijns en het
cijnsmaal, waarvan wij boven spraken, is zoo gewigtig voor de
geschiedenis der Heidensche godenleer, dat wij gelooven, eene
wezenlijke dienst te bewijzen aan alle oudheidkundigen, met hetzelve
in ons Geschiedkundig
Mengelwerk over Noord-Braband,
in zijn geheel te plaatsen. Al onze geleerden, die over inlandsche
oudheden geschreven hebben, merken aan, dat er geene provincie zoo
rijk is in aloude overblijfsels of sporen van den voortijd, als
Noord Braband
en verwijten ons dan tevens dat wij dezelve schandelijk
verwaarloozen. Mogten wij dit verwijt weldra kunnen logenstraffen!
Elk Noord-Brabander durf ik dus uitnoodigen, om mij alle
bijzonderheden, die hun vreemd voorkomen mede te deelen, of al wat
er van eenig gewigt gevonden wordt, te zenden. Vooral noodig ik de
heeren Burgemeesters en Secretarissen der gemeenten uit, die ik in
dank, elke billijke belooning, aan de bezitters of vinders van
penningen, lijkurnen, steenen-strijdbijlen, enz., enz., gegeven, zal
teruggeven; terwijl ik voor elken Romeinschen zilveren of gouden
penning, in Noord-Braband
gevonden, het dubbelde van de innige waarde uitloof."
24
september 1839 Lijk-Urnen, een litt. hum. doct.phil.
maget rector,
en
het Heilig Weike te Gemonde.
Het
was in de eerste dagen der maand September. — Ik wilde de
buitenlucht inademen; ik liep uit en zonder te weten waarheen,
volgde ik onbezorgd de bogten der Dommel: zeer verwonderd toen ik
mij verre van de stad verwijderd zag en mij in de nabijheid van het
kerkdorp Gemonde
(niet Gemeente, lompe lezer:) bevond, De werkzaamheden van den oogst
maakten den Dommelakker
levendig en zij vestigden mijne aandacht. — Eensklaps zag ik
de kerklieden hunne taak vaarwel zeggen en eenen mij onbekenden
persoon, doch welke ik aan zijne kleeding voor een stedeling aanzag,
omringen. De nieuwsgierigheid deed mij ter plaatse naderen- De
onbekende Heer stond met den rug naar mij toe; ik mogt zijn
aangezigt niet aanschouwen: hij was in levendig gesprek: gapende en
verbaasd stonden de landlieden hem aan te hooren. — Met
gespannen aandacht luisterde ik toe, en ik konde de volgende woorden
vernemen:
De
Onbekende. Sedert eenigen tijd kwam mij ter kennis, dat men te
Gemonde, gemeente St. Michiels-Gestel van tijd tot tijd lijk-urnen
had uitgegraven. Heden
kom ik mij in persoon
van de waarheid overtuigen:
dit is voor de oudheidkunde en de antiquarii
eene belangrijke
ontdekking en mijn heilige pligt is daaraan kenbaarheid te geven; de
wetenschap vordert het, en ik, ik
streef na de onsterfelijkheid;
alom wil ik de vinding der Lijk-Urnen bekend maken: ik
weet mijne denkbeelden in het latijn en nederduitsch goed en
gemakkelijk op het papier te brengen.
Een
Boer. Wasseet dieen
heer?
Een
Ander. Hij sprikt
latijn net as de Stedenten te Gestel.
Een
Derde. Menheer, ge mot
es nie kwaolik nemen, maore enen boer kan bij ons gein laotijn
sprëeken.
De
Onbekende. Ik spreek,
mijne goede vrienden, geen latijn, doch noemde slechts het woord
latijn. — Ik wilde u vragen of gij hier Lijk-Urnen hebt
opgegraven?
De
Boer. Nee-je Menheer,
die zên hier op de gemeinte nie.
De
Onbekende. Gemonde is
niet eene gemeente,
beste vriend, het is een kerkdorp
en behoort gedeeltelijk
onder de gemeenten St. Michiels-Gestel, Boxtel en Schijndel.
— Maar versta me wel, Lijk-Urnen,
zijn vasen, anders gezegd een soort van potten waarin onze
voorvaderen, eeuwen herwaarts, de asch en ook de beenderen hunner
bloedverwanten of vrienden na den dood bewaarden — hebt gijl.
zulke lijkpotten niet hier gevonden?
De
Boer. Nee-je Menheer,
ze begraoven hier de dooijen in kieslen op 't kerkhof.
De
Onbekende. Mijn beste
vriend, je verstaat mij niet. Hebt gij ook hier in 't land met
spaden een of meerdere potten gèraakt?
De
Boer. Dakkes weet nie.
Een
Andere. Meugelik sprikt
die-en heer van die-en pot van Peer die we bij zen heujs hebben
gebroöken met werken bij het heilig wëekke.
Een
derde. Toen i nog
schaovergoeijing hee willen hebben voor de pot en de soep en de
beinen die er in waoren,
De
Onbekende die in zijne tevredenheid van geslaagd te zijn in zijne
veldontdekking, de laatste woorden niet goed verstaan schijnt te
hebben. Waren er
beenderen in die urn, vaas of pot?
De
Boer. Jao, Menheer ,
maoï 't is al laong afgemaokt — Peer wou toen porces
verbaol laoten maoken; toen hebben wet afgemaokt! Zoueze ons daor
nou nog wat voor kunnen doen?
De
Onbekende. Het ware
zeker voorzigtig geweest eene zoo merkwaardige opgraving door een
proces verbaal te doen constateren; dan had men een en ander
stelligs daaromtrent kunnen weten.
De
Boer. Menheer is sekker
avokaot of van de heeren uit den Bosch; maor 't is aolles afgemaokt
en uit de werreld.
De
Onbekende. Dat grieft
mij... (zich bedenkende)
Intusschen trachten wij te hooren hoe die urn was. - Beste vriend,
hoe zag er die Lijk-Urn uit?
De
Boer. As minheer 't
maar nïe aangift.
De
Onbekende. Wel neen —
gij hebt niets laakbaar's gedaan — Gij waart niet met de
wetenschappelijke oudheid bekend en men kan u dus niet ten kwade
duiden, dat gij het belangrijke overblijfsel der voorbijgevlogene
eeuwen niet gespaard hebt. Doch, zeg mij, ik bid u, hoedanig was die
gebroken pot?
De
Boer. Beh ge zaauwd
zeggen! ... 't Was ene pot met twee aoren — zonne breuinne
pot, geel van binnen, krek ene p.. pot...
De
Onbekende in vervoering, zonder op de woorden van den Boer te
letten. Twee ooren! dat
is Romeinsch! Geen twijfel meer! O heilige ijver! — Dank
mijne neiging voor de studie, die mijn grootste geluk op de aarde
uitmaakt! twee ooren!
ja! dat is Romeinsch! — Wanneer gijl. wederom Lijk-Urnen
of steenen Strijd-Bijlen
vindt, kom dan bij mij! (meer
en meer verrukt.) Voor
u zij welzijn, fortuin! voor mij onsterflijkheid! onsterflijkheid!
Om 's Hemels naam breng mij de overblijfselen der oudheid, die gij
zoudt kunnen vinden! ontrukt ze aan de verdelging! O! Ik bid u, dat
niets verloren ga!
Zich
zelven niet meer meester trad hij eenige passen achterwaarts vol
verrukking en gebaarden, en, als iemand met
de regelen der uiterlijke weisprekenheid goed bekend, den toon der
redevoering van den kansel
aannemende:
„Al
onze geleerden," zegt hij plegtig, „die over inlandsche
oudheden geschreven hebben, merken aan, dat er geene provincie zoo
rijk is in aloude overblijfsels of sporen van den voortijd, als
Noord-Braband en verwijten ons dan tevens, dat wij dezelve
schandelijk verwaarloozen. Mogten wij dit verwijt weldra
logenstraffen! Elk „ Noord-Brabander durf ik dus uitnoodigen,
om mij alle bijzonderheden, die hun vreemd voorkomen mede te deden,
of al wat er van eenig gewigt gevonden wordt, te zenden. Vooral
noodig ik daartoe de heeren Burgemeesters en Secretarissen der
gemeenten uit, die ik in dank, elke billijke belooning, aan de
bezitters of vinders van penningen, lijk-urnen, steenen
strijdbijlen, enz. enz., gegeven, zal terug geven, terwijl ik voor
elken Romeinschen, zilveren of gouden Penning, in Noord-Braband
gevonden, het dubbelde van de innige waarde uitloof."
En
eensklaps: nu vlieg ik
mijne ontdekking in ons geschiedkundig mengelwerk over Noord-Braband
en in alle jaarboeken der wetenschap verhalen.
— En, men hield hem terug, men vroeg hem waar de potten
gebragt moesten worden voor zoo veel gelds ... doch hij snelde
voort: alleen de woorden ik
litterarum humaniorum doctor, philosophiae magister et rector
kwamen nog tot mijne ooren.
De
snelle gang van den vervoerden Oudheidkenner liet mij niet toe met
hem in gesprek te treden: ik wilde hem opmerkzaam maken dat hij in
zijne verrukking den
gebroken POT van Peer
voor eene Romeinsche LIJK-URN hield en de beenderen
van zijne soep voor
beenderen van onze voorvaderen.
De
boeren stonden verstomd — en ik te lagchen. — Ik keerde
terug stadwaarts en meermalen hoorde ik nog de woorden
Lijk-Urnen en
Steenen-Strijdbijlen
in de lucht weergalmen.
Eenige
dagen na dit voorval, las ik in het provinciaal Dagblad van 17
September dat C. R. HERMANS (?) te Gemonde de opgraving van
Lijk-Urnen ontdekt had. B. M.
26
september 1839 Ik lees in het Prov. Dagblad
van Noord-Braband,
van
den 17 dezer No. 75 een artikel over Lijk-Urnen
te St. Michiels Gestel ontdekt.
De
aankondiging dier ontdekking en de bepaalde aanwijzing van de plaats
kan haar nut hebben en verdiende als zoodanig kortelijk aangeteekend
te worden in zoodanige schriften als welke ten doel hebben alle de
omstandigheden en bijzonderheden te verzamelen, welke tot de kennis
onzer landstreek kunnen bijdragen, doch de ontdekking schijnt mij
niet zoo belangrijk en zeker niet zoo nieuw toe, dat dezelve bij den
oudheidkenner en oudheidminnaar, een vreugdekreet kon doen opgaan,
welke door de geheele Provincie moest weêrgalmen.
Indien
het de eerste ontdekking van dergelijken aard in het aangewezen oord
ware, zou ik de geestdrift van den schrijver toejuichen, en ik zou
zeer gepast vinden, dat men het publiek op die gebeurtenis
aandachtig maakte, om de navorschingen aan te wakkeren, doch nu moet
ik dien schrijver opmerken dat de ophef die hij van zijne ontdekking
maakt, hem blootstelt aan de verdenking dal hij met den toestand van
onzen grond en de daaruit gedane opgravingen niet zeer juist bekend
is, vooral wanneer ik hem hoor zeggen, dat de door hem waargenomene
bijzonderheden hem doen
vermoeden dat Gemonde
vóór de prediking des Christendoms een heilig oord is
geweest enz. Immers is het reeds meer dan genoeg bekend en wordt het
hier en ginds in onderscheidene schriften gevonden, dat St.
Michiels Gestel en
omliggende gronden klaarblijkelijk tot verblijf of standplaats der
Romeinen gestrekt hebben; het is dus geen enkel vermoeden uit des
schrijvers waarnemingen geboren, maar het is eene zaak van algemeene
bekendheid. Er zijn aanduidingen genoeg dat de oude kerk van Gemonde
lang voor het Christendom bestond en er zijn te veel overblijfselen
voorhanden om dat punt te betwijfelen.
Maar
buiten en behalve dat de ontdekking mij zoo belangrijk niet
voorkomt, dat dezelve door eenen kenner als een wonder behoort te
worden uitgekreten, is de gedane opgraving mijns erachtens door de
opsporingen van den schrijver geenszins voldoende bewezen noch tot
duidelijkheid gebragt. Niets toch vind ik hetwelk mij waarborgt dat
daar werkelijk Lijk-Urnen
gevonden zijn: het eenige wat de schrijver ons leert, is dal de
landlieden daar éénen
pot met beenderen, asch en zand
gevonden hebben, en dat men sedert eenige jaren nog vijf dergelijke
Urnen heeft opgegraven. Dergelijke
Urnen. Welke Urnen? dat
zegt de schrijver ons niet en volgens hetgene ons wordt kenbaar
gemaakt kan het gevondene even zoo zeer eene verleerde hazen-partij
geweest zijn, als eene Romeinsche Lijk-Urn.
Wat hier van het meeste belang was te weten, namelijk de vorm van
den pot, de wijze van sluiting, de kleur der aarde of ander
zamenstelsel, de diepte waarop de pot gevonden is enz. schijnt de
schrijver niet onderzocht te hebben, en hij neemt op dat gezegde al
aanstonds aan dat het Urnen waren , want hij zegt dat men nog vijf
dei gelijke Urnen gevonden heeft, en tevens dat die Urnen Lijk-Urnen
zijn, zoo als uit het opschrift van hel artikel blijkt. Mij is het,
uit hetgene de schrijver ons mededeelt, volstrekt niet bewezen, noch
dat die potten Urnen zijn, noch dat het Lijk-Urnen
zijn. Ik neem zulks te minder gereedelijk aan, omdat de opgave van
de landlieden dat zij beenderen
asch en zand daarin
bevonden hebben, mij zeer verdacht voorkomt eerstens wel omdat asch
en zand of aarde
niet zoo aanstonds te onderscheiden zijn, vooral door onbedrevene
landlieden die het voorwerp zekerlijk met weinig zorg en
opmerkzaamheid onderzocht hebben; en ten tweede omdat de bevinding
van beenderen in eene Lijk-Urne
vreemd is, althans zouden alle de omstandigheden tot den pol en de
beenderen betrekking hebbende, naauwkeurig moeten geconstateerd zijn
om in hel oog der wetenschap eenige waarde te hebben; want het is
toch bekend dat de Urnen
welke dienden tot bewaring der asch van verbrande lijken, de
eigenlijke Lijk-Urnen,
welke men wel moet onderscheiden van de Urnen
of liever Vazen
waarmede de grafkelders versierd werden, naar boven meestal
kegelvormig bijliepen en slechts eene naauwe opening hadden, zoodat
het niet wel mogelijk zou zijn beenderen daarin te brengen. Het
bewaren van beenderen in eenen Pot kan zeker plaats gekregen hebben,
doch dan behoort er meer toe dan hetgeen de schrijver te weten
gekomen is, om het er voor te houden dat die pot met beenderen eene
Romeinsche Urne,
en wel eene Lijkurne
is. — Wanneer men daadzaken waarneemt om dezelve op te nemen
als bijdragen tot de geschiedenis, en de beschrijving daar van wil
doen strekken om die daadzaken voor vergetelheid te betuigen en tot
de nakomelingschap over te brengen, dan behoort men eerst en vooral
in zijne opgave duidelijk en omstandig te zijn, bij gebreke daarvan
is het beter tot nader onderzoek, nadere ervaring, en nadere
opheldering te zwijgen en bij het publiek niet met onvoldragene
vrucht te voorschijn te komen; doch ten tweede moet men in de
afleidingen uit die daadzaken voorzigtig en oordeelkundig te werk
gaan, ten einde geene gewaagde stellingen en gissingen veld te doen
winnen en wanbegrippen in geschiedkundige werken te consigneren,
want het ligt in den aard der zaken dat de oudheid langzamerhand aan
de oordeelvellingen der schrijvers meerder gewigt bijzet en dal na
verloop van tijd zijne afleidingen voor waarheden worden aangenomen,
en dikwerf bij gebrek aan beter, voor zoodanig moeten worden
ingenomen.
De
schrijver van bedoeld artikel duide mij deze aanmerkingen ten goede;
hetzelve houdt mijns inziens wat de verhaalde opgraving betreft
niets opmerkelijks in, althans niets dat genoeg tot klaarheid is
gebragt om van nut te zijn voor onze geschiedenis, en de
gevolgtrekkingen zijn te gewaagd om niet gevaarlijk te zijn en
mitsdien schadelijk voor de zuiverheid en opregtheid welke iedere
geschiedenis behoort te kenmerken. Ik vermeen deze aanmerkingen te
eerder te moeten doen, omdat het mij uit het artikel blijkt dat de
schrijver, die ik de eer niet heb te kennen — trouwens het is
ieder geleerde niet gegeven eenen Europeschen naam te hebben, —
ook onder handen heeft een Geschiedkundig
Mengelwerk over Noord-Braband,
en het mij van hel hoogste belang voorkomt dat hij zich wachtte van
in dat werk zoo ligtvaardig daadzaken en gevolgtrekkingen te stellen
Een
tweede raad welke ik aan den schrijver geve, is deze: dat zijne
schriften zoo zeer den schijn niet mogen hebben van veeleer te
moeten strekken tot treeft zijner eigene roemzucht dan wel tot
gedenkstuk der geschiedenis. De omslagtige beschrijving zijner
waarneming (eigenlijk op niets anders neerkomende dan op de
mededeeling dat eenige
landlieden hem gezegd hebben eenen pot met beenderen, asch en zand
gevonden te hebben op den Dommelakker, nevens het Heilig weike te
Gemonde) en de
uitbazuining van zijnen warmen ijver voor de oudheidskennis in onze
provincie, zoodanig dat bij alle Noord-Brabanders tot zoeken, graven
en delven oproept met belofte van de vrucht van hunne navorschingen
te beloonen, zoo doende zijn geld tot prijs stellende en
belangloosheid en geldsopofferingen ten toon spreidende, zijn zeer
geschikt om de Lezers te doen denken dat de schrijver vermeend heeft
door zijne waarneming en de mededeeling daarvan eene aanzienlijke
dienst bewezen te hebben en in de vervaardiging der geschiedenis
onzer provincie eene hoofdrol te spelen.
v.
v. v.
14
maart 1840 MUSEUM VAN OUDHEDEN TE LEIJDEN.
[...]
Van den heer S. H. van der Noordaa, te Dordrecht, twee tufsteenen
vijzels met stampers, in den omtrek van Deurne in
Noord-Braband opgedolven; zijnde deze de eenige voorwerpeu van die
soort welke het Museum bezit, en die, voor zoo verre ons bekend is,
elders nog niet zijn voorgekomen. De nabijheid van de uitgebreide
begraafakkers aldaar, in de heide voor een paar jaren ontdekt, geven
veel waarschijnlijkheid aan het vermoeden dat èn
die vijzels, èn de urnen die in zoo grooten getale in dien
omtrek voorkomen, tot denzelfden volksstam behooren, en leveren
alsdan eene allerbelangrijkste bijdrage tot de kennis van het
huiselijk leven der oude Germaansche volken, van wier huisraad,
behalve in het noordelijk Europa, betrekkelijk zoo weinig meer is
overgebleven.
17
april 1840 [Bijzondere correspondentie]
No
2 'S Hertogenbosch 17 April 1840
Afdeeling
Kunsten en Wetenschappen
Bijzondere
Correspondentie
Aan
mij zijn eenige vraagpunten opgegeven, tot welker beantwoording UWEG
welligt in de gelegenheid zal zijn, en waartoe ik de eer heb,
deszelfs goede diensten in te roepen, zijnde de vraagpunten de
volgende:
Gemeente
Asten
1°.
Op de grenzen dezer gemeente, naar de zijde van het dorp Meyel, ligt
een Willebrordsput; waarvan heeft deze put den naam gekregen?
2°.
Is de put met gebakken of levenden steen opgetrokken?
3°.
Ligt daar omstreeks een kapel aan den H.
Willebrord
gewijd?
4°.
Welke wonderdadige of genezende kracht wordt aan het water van dezen
put toegeschreven, en ter genezing van welke kwalen wordt dat water
gebruikt?
Gemeente
Bakel
1°.
Blijkens de kaart van Verhees, ontspringt de kampsche
loop
bij den Enschydse
of booze
put;
waarvan wordt die put zoo genoemd?
2°.
Is de put met gebakken of levenden steen opgetrokken?
3°.
Welke vreemde kracht wordt aan het water van dezen boozen
put
toegeschreven?
Gemeente
Aarle-Rixtel
1°.
Op de kaart van Verhees
komt voor wolfput,
niet ver van het riviertje de
Aan
Den Heere District Commissaris
van
het 3de District 1ste Gedeelte.
Bakelsche
Aa,
is dit eene gemetselde put of slechts een wel?
2°.
Welke volksoverleveringen zijn er in omloop, die den oorsprong van
deze benaming zouden doen kennen?
3°.
Wordt van het water van deze wolfput
eenige vreemde kracht toegeschreven?
4°.
Wie is thans de bezitter van het Guldenhuis
en waarom wordt dat gebouw zoo genoemd? Is het of was het vroeger
een kasteel?
5°.
Bestaan er nog overleveringen in den mond des volks wegens de
Tempelheeren
en de Ridders van Maltha,
die te Rixtel gewoond hebben?
Gemeente
Helmond
Binnen
die gemeente bestaat een klokkenspel, en voor de geschiedenis der
Klokkengieterijen en der Toonkunde wordt het van belang geacht te
vernemen:
1°.
Wanneer hetzelve het eerst is daargesteld?
2°.
Wie de maker er van is en op wiens kosten dit heeft plaats gehad?
3°.
Uit hoeveel klokken hetzelve bestaat?
4°.
Welke gedeelten van het uur door dat klokkenspel, /behalve door het
uurwerk/ worden aangekondigd?
5°.
Of hetzelve ook bespeeld wordt, zoo ja, op welke dagen der week?
6°.
Door wie de klokkenist wordt betaald, en hoe groot zijne bezoldiging
is?
7°.
Of dat klokkenspel vele kunstwaarde heeft, of in vervallen staat
verkeerd?
Gemeente
Deurne
en Liessel
Volgens
medegedeelde berigten bezit een landbouwer aldaar van de Mortel
genaamd, een Romeinsch zwaard en een gouden schild, welke in de Peel
zoude zijn uitgegraven.
1°.
Is dit werkelijk zoo, en, in dat geval, wanneer en waar ter plaatse
heeft hij dat zwaard en dat schild gevonden?
2°.
Zoude er gelegenheid zijn, om dezelve voor de verzameling van Oud en
zeldzaamheden van het Provinciaal Genootschap van Kunsten en
Wetenschappen aantekoopen?
3°.
Zoo ja, tot welken prijs?
4°.
Wanneer de eigenaar tot den verkoop niet mogt kunnen besluiten zoude
hij dan die voorwerpen, tegen bewijs, ter beoordeeling en
afteekening willen overmaken?
5°.
Is er gelegenheid om nog eenige der aldaar onlangs gevonden
lijkurnen of andere aldaar opgegravene merkwaardigheden te koopen?
6°.
Hoe is de benaming der plaats waar die urnen opgegraven zijn?
Op
de welwillendheid UWEG rekenende, zal het mij aangenaam wezen, die
vraagpunten zoo naauwkeurig mogelijk opgelost te zien.
UWEG
gelieve de verzekering te ontvangen en mijner bijzondere hoogachting
en onderscheiding.
BV?denteegen
[?]
12
mei 1840 [brief aan de burgemeester van Deurne]
Burgemeester
van Deurne Liessel Helmond, den 12 Mei 1840
De
Heer Gouverneur dezer provincie (waarschijnlijk door het bestuur van
het genoodschap ter bevordering van wetenschappen en kunsten in
Noord Braband daartoe aangezocht) heeft mij een groot aantal
vraagpunten ter beantwoording opgegeven betrekkelijk oudheden in
mijn District.
deze
vragen, voor zoover zij de gemeente Deurne Liessel betreffen zijn de
navolgende:
volgens
een medegedeeld berigt zoude een landbouwer van de Mortel genaamd,
een romeinsch zwaard en een goude schild bezitten, welke in den peel
zoude zijn uitgegraven.
1°.
Is dit werkelijk zoo? en in dat geval, wanneer en waar ter plaatse
heeft men dat zwaard en schild gevonden?
2°.
Zoude er gelegenheid zijn om hetzelve voor de verzameling van oud en
zeldzaamheden van het provinciaal genoodschap van kunsten en
watenschappen aantekoopen?
3°.
Zoo ja, tot welken prijs?
4°.
Wanneer de eigenaar tot verkoop niet mogt kunnen besluiten, zoude
hij dan die voorwerpen tegen bewijs ter beoordeeling en afteekening
willen overmaken?
5°.
Is er gelegenheid om nog eenige der aldaar onlangs gevonden
lijkurnen of andere aldaar opgegraven merkwaardigheden te koopen?
6°.
Hoe is de benaming der plaats waar die urnen opgegraven zijn?
Een
eenigzins spoedig antwoord op deze vragen zal mij aangenaam zijn
D
Distr.
29
juni 1840 O?boeking van het kadaster, sommige liggen in veele
boekjes thuis, vergeten kleine ?atjes, verwarring, dit zoude kunnen
voorkomen worden wanneer de wet van de perceelsgewijze legger in het
transport wierd aangehaald. -
29
juni 1840 Provinciaal Bestuur RANB 17 inv. nr. 12419
n°
1
Missive
van 17 april ll n° 8. / Antwoord op de missive van
afdeeling
kunsten en wetenschappen / 17 april ll no 8.
Helmond
den 29 Juny 1840.
[Aan
den gouverneur]
Bij
de aangehaalde missive/missieve heeft UWEG mij eenige vraagpunten
betrekkelijk oude monumenten die zich in sommige gemeentens van mijn
district/District zouden bevinden, ter beantwoording opgegeven.
Eenige dezer vraagpunten zoude ik dadelijk hebben kunnen
beantwoorden, [doch] tot het bekomen van inlichtingen heb ik de
gelegenheid mijner rondreize waar genomen, als wanneer de leden van
den raad vergaderd zijnde, ik vermeende beter te kunnen geinformeerd
worden. Ik zal de volg orde in acht nemen, zoo als zij in uwe
missieve voorkomt.
Gemeente
Asten
[1]
Sommige leden van den raad hadden wel ooit van de St. Willebrordsput
horen spreken, doch niemand wist mij de plaats op te geven alwaar
zij zich zoude bevonden hebben. Zeker is het dat zij sedert menschen
geheugen niet meer bestaat. Even op of aan de limietscheiding van
Deurne Liessel en Meyel staat eene steene paal die nog onder den
naam van Wilbertsput bekend is, indien er eene put bij die paal
bestaan heeft dan moet dit op het territoir van de gemeente Meyel
geweest zijn, voor het overige wist men er niets van te zeggen.
Aan
Z. E. den Heere Staatsraad
Gouverneur
der provincie NoordBraband
[2]
men heeft wel ooit van eene St. Willebrord put horen spreken, en
deze benaming is hier nog zeer wel bekend, doch niemand heeft er
eene put bekend. Er staat een steene paal die den naam van
Wilbertsput draagt, even op of aan de limietscheiding tusschen
Deurne en Meyel als er eene put geweest is, dan moet dit op het
meylsche territoir zijn. voor het overige heb ik er niets van kunnen
ontdekken. -
Gemeente
Bakel.
[1]
de naam van boze put was bij de meeste leden van den raad niet
onbekend, doch de juiste plaats wist men niet aan te geven. een oud
man van omstreeks tachtig jaren had van zijne voorouders gehoord dat
de boze put eene kleine laagte, vennetje of kuil boven in
den peel was was boven in den peel, ter
grootte van omstreeks twee nederlandsche roeden, gelegen boven in
den peel naar Venrooy achter eene streek bekend onder den naam van
de Putten. in zijne jeugd waren de schaapsherders gewoon bij groote
droogte hunne schapen aldaar te drenken. In deze streek der meyery
verstaat men onder den naam van putten veelal laagtens of kuilen in
de heide/heiden of gebroektens, zonder dat hiermede gemetselde
putten bedoeld worden. het is bijna zeker dat er nooit geene
gemetselde put in den peel bestaan heeft.
[2]
sommige leden van den raad hadden wel ooit van den bozen put horen
spreken, maar niemand wist te zeggen waar dezelve gelegen was. een
lid herinnerde zich dat een klein vennetje, laagte of kuil in de
heide, ter grootte van omstreeks twee nederlandsche roeden, gelegen
in den peel achter de zoogenaamde putten de naam van put of booze
put draagt. zoo veel is zeker dat er geen gemetselde put, bij
menschen geheugen en waarschijnlijk ook nooit bestaan heeft. -
Gemeente
Aarle-Rixtel.
[1]
Wolfsput is een gehugt of liever kleine buurtschap
onder Aarle gelegen op de grenzen van Bakel, naast het goed
Schipstal. volgens eene oude overlevering zoude er eertijds een wolf
in de put alhier gesprongen en doodgeslagen zijn, waarvan de naam
ontleend is.
De
eigenaar van het Guldenhuis is Albert Bots te Helmond, de hogere
muuren dan die van een gewoon huis, schijnen aan te duiden dat het
in vroeger jaren een soort van kasteeltje moet geweest zijn.
na
bij de afgebrokene kerk van Rixtel bevindt zich eene boerderij, die
van de Tempelieren afkomstig naderhand en wel tot aan de omwenteling
van 1795 door de ridders van Maltha bezeten is, waarvan nooit een
enkelde ridder te Rixtel gewoond heeft. deze hoeve is in 1818 door
het bestuur der domeinen aan een boer verkocht.
[2]
Wolfsput is een gehugt onder Aarle gelegen, op de grenzen van Bakel.
hetzelve bestaat uit vier huizen. volgens eene overlevering zoude er
een wolf in eene put alhier gevangen zijn waarvan de naam ontleend
is. -
Guldenhuis
behoort aan ? Albertus Bots, in het zelve is eene door hem
katoenspinnerij gevestigd die in verval is. het huis hoewel onder
den naam van kasteel van rixtel bekend is, eenigzins hooger dan een
gewoon huis, en diende in vroeger tijd tot verblijf van de Heeren
van Rixtel, eertijds eene zeer belangrijke heerlijkheid
van
de ridders van maltha blijkt alleen dat zij hier tot regte eene
hoeve hadden, die naderhand aan het domein is overgegeaan en in
1808 aan een pad?lies is verkocht geworden.
Gemeente
Helmond.
Er
bestond te Helmond een elendig klokkespel van elf klokjes, welk nu
onlangs door een ander vervangen is. de klokjes van het vorige zijn
door den klokkengieter Fritsen te Aarle in ruiling overgenomen. ik
heb niet kunnen ontdekken wanneer het vorige klokkespel is
daargesteld, doch het moet zeer oud geweest zijn. de klokjes droegen
geene kenmerken hoegenaamd noch van derzelver maker, noch van het
jaargetal waarin zij gegoten zijn.
Gemeente
Deurne Liessel.
Naar
het berigt Ik heb het berigt dat een landbouwer te Deurne
Liessel in het bezit zoude zijn van een oud
romeinsch zwaard en een goud schild welk in den peel zoude zijn
uitgegraven, zeer betwijfeld, wijl ik er nooit iets van vernomen
had. ook is mij bij onderzoek verzekerd gebleken
dat er niemand iets van weet. waarschijnlijk heeft men dit verward
met ?? het geen in de naburige gemeente Meyel heeft
plaats gehad. In het jaar 1807 men heeft men
aldaar een goud schild gevonden. voor eenige jaren te Meyel zijnde
heb ik mij naar het huis van den toenmaligen burgemeester Goossens
begeven om deze merkwaardigheid te zien. hij vertoonde mij een
schild welk in den peel in het jaar 1807
omtrent vijf voeten onder het onder de oppervlakte
van den grond in den peel bij gelegenheid eener
turfgraving gevonden was, hetzelve was van goud of althans zwaar
verguld gedreven werk, op
hetzelve waren hyroglyphen en andere figuren van leeuwen, tijgers &c
gedreven, en had de vorm van een halve maan, veel gelekende naar een
ringkraag zoo als de kapiteins der infanterie voor
? nog niet zeer
lang geleden op de borst droegen. de Heer van Keverberg, destijds
sousprefet te Cleef, had dit stuk mede naar Parijs genomen en
na zijne terugkomst, volgens zeggen van den Burgemeester veel geld
voor geboden, doch men was het over den prijs niet eens kunnen
worden. -
Er
zijn te Deurne geene lijkurnen meer verkrijgbaar. de Heer
burgemeester zoude door trachten er
door graving er nog te krijgen, welke hij alsdan, indien dit
gelukken mogt gaarne zoude afstaan. -
De
Districts Commissaris / DD.
Wesselman.
1
oktober 1840 [...] Alzoo bezit het Noord-Brabandsch genootschap
reeds urnen van drie Heidensche begraafplaatsen, als: van
Deurne in 1837, van
Genderen in 1839 en
van Gemonde
in 1849 gevonden. [...]
26
januari 1841 MUSEUM VAN OUDHEDEN TE LEYDEN.
[...]
Bij de afdeeling der Germaansche en Noordsche oudheden, van den
Generaal Majoor Rottiers, aan wiens ijver en zorg het Museum het
bezit van zoo vele Grieksche kunststukken te danken heeft, een
bronzen Goden-beeldtje, in den omtrek van Aken gevonden.
Van
den heer P. O. P. Guyot, te Nijmegen, eene allerbelangrijkste
verzameling van bronzen en andere voorwerpen bij Deurne, in de
provincie Noord-Braband, opgedoken, en die voor het grootste
gedeelte door den heer Ritmeester Baron van Voorst bijeengebragt, en
aan den heer Guyot afgestaan waren. Door deze aanzienlijke aanwinst,
vereenigd met de urnen en andere voorwerpen, waarvan wij in onze
vorige berigten (Staats-Courant
1838 en 1839) gewaagden, is het Museum thans in het bezit gesteld
van de voornaamste en zeldzaamste stukken, die bij de ontdekkiug te
Deurne gedaan, voorden dag zijn gekomen, en die, langs verschillende
wegen, eindelijk wederom bij elkander gebragt, een geheel vormen,
dat tot de kennis van een der oude volksstammen, die vroeger ons
land bewoonden, eene zoo onverwachte als aanzienlijke bijdrage
leveren kan. In den Konst-
en Letterbode 1838,
Mei. pag. 379—395, zijn de meeste der voorwerpen door den heer
Conservator Dr. Janssen, beschreven. [...]
De
belangrijke oudheidkundige ontdekkingen bij Nijmegen gedaan, bij
gelegenheid der practische oefeningen van het korps mineurs en
sappeurs, zullen eerstdaags insgelijks eenen nieuwen schat aan het
Museum voor de afdeeling der ROMEINSCHE oudheden toevoeren. [...]
12
januari 1842 [...] Van den heer P. C. G. GUYOT, te Nijmegen, nog
een aantal van tien urnen, potjes en schalen, te Deurne in
Noord-Braband gevonden; benevens zeven andere waarschijnlijk van den
omtrek van Hunnebedden in Drenthe afkomstig.
Van
den Heer S. H. van der Noordaa te Dordrecht, nog een drietal kleine
voorwerpen in urnen te Deurne gevonden. [...]
25
februari 1842 M. P. O. P. Guyot à Nymègue d'une
collection très-remarquable de bronzes et d'autres objets
trouvés près de Deurne dans le Brabant-Septentrional
et qui pour la plupart avaient été rassemblés
par M. le capitaine baron Van Vorst qui les remis à M. Guyot.
Cette importante acquisition jointe aux urnes et autres objets dont
il a été rendu compte en 1838 et en 1839, met le Musée
en possession des principaux et des plus rares résultats de
la fouille près de Deurne. Toutes ces découvertes
éparses, réunies maintenant, forment un ensemble qui
pourra jeter un grand jour sur la connaissance des anciens peuples
qui ont habité jadis notre pays. La plupart de ces objets
sont décrits par M. le conservateur Janssen dans le Kunst
en Letterbode de 1838, pages 370-—395.
20
januari 1843 Van de heer S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA ontvingen wij
wederom een mortier van tufsteen, in den omtrek van Deurne gevonden.
1
januari 1844 Een merkwaardig stuk werd in 1844 in een moeras van de
Peel, niet ver van het gehucht Maris gevonden, en bevindt zich thans
in het Leidsch Museum (Cat. ML, alsook Stark, dl. 1876 bl. 7-56; P
1881, 272-274; voorts HKN) Het is een medaillon (afb. 149) van
verguld zilver van ruim 21 cM. middellijn, dat in vrij hoog relief
een voorstelling vertoont van in het midden een man, die een leeuw
worgt, daaromheen dierengevechten, o.a. twee dieren, die elkander
een runderkop betwisten; in den rand met geciseleerde lijstjes zijn
vier gaatjes aangebracht om het medaillon misschien op een schild te
hechten; in twee gaatjes zitten nog de nagels met ronde kopjes. Naar
den stijl der figuren oordeelt men het stuk van Oost-Europeesche
afkomst te zijn.
[hierbij
behorende opmerking] Dr. H.C. Gallois maakte ons er op opmerkzaam,
dat zich in het Cabinet des Médailles te Parijs twee schijven
bevinden, waarvan één slechts fragmentarisch bewaard,
die sterke overeenkomst vertoonen met het hier besproken exemplaar.
Hij wees ons ook op een opstel van Fr. Drexel in het Jahrbuch des
Kaiserlich deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, XXX (1915), S.
1 ff., volgens wien deze schijven gemaakt zouden zijn in het begin
van de eerste eeuw vóór Christus in de omgeving van de
Zwarte Zee, en op de beschouwing van M. Rostovtzeff
in zijn boek Iranians and Greeks (Oxford, 1922), p. 138 ss. Deze
laatste, die in het menschfiguurtje op het Leidsche stuk Hercules
ziet, is van meening, dat de schijven tusschen de derde en de eerste
eeuw vóór Christus zijn ontstaan in Zuid-Rusland, als
het werk van Sarmatische kunstenaars. De drie schijven zijn
afgebeeld bij Rostovtzeff t.a.p., de Leidsche en alleen de gaaf
bewaarde Parijsche ook bij Drexel.
Zie
wellicht ook
http://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ead.html?id=FRBNFEAD000091538
?
9
april 1847 Van den luitenant-kolonel jhr. VAN DER BRUGGHE VAN CROY,
eene bronzen zoogenaamde framea, van een oortje voorzien, en
het fragment van eene tweede dergelijke, beiden niet ver van het
kasteel van Croy, in eene weide aan den binnenweg op Helmond
gevonden.
1
januari 1850 [...] Uit zijn [=Limburgs] bodem zijn in vroegeren en
lateren tijd tal van voorwerpen uit de steen, brons- en ijzerperiode
voor den dag gekomen. De wetenschappelijke onderzoekingen om daarvan
op het spoor te komen, dagteekenen het eerst van omstreeks 1825.
Deze werden door den heer CHARLES GUILLON, notaris te Roermond,
ingesteld. Een zeer bemiddeld man, legde hij eene groote verzameling
van oudheden aan, van allerlei soort en uit verschillende
tijdperken, die tot aan zijn overlijden op 10 Nov. 1873 geregeld
werd aangevuld. Later is zij door verkoop verspreid geraakt, maar de
meeste voorwerpen uit de voorhistorischen tijd hebben in het
Rijksmuseum te Leiden gelukkig een onderkomen gevonden. [...]
5
december 1856 Op MAANDAG 15 December 1856 en Vijf volgende dagen,
des Voor- en Namiddags, zal de Boekhandelaar G. THEOD. BOM, te
Amsterdam, in ODEON Publiek Verkoopen: het uitmuntende KABINET
GEDENK- EN LEGPENNINGEN, EERE- en DRAAGTEEKENEN, VROEDSCHAPS-,
GILDE-, SCHUTTERS-, RELIGIEUSE-, VRIJMETSELAARS-, PRIJS- en
BRANDSPUITPENNINGEN, NOODMUNTEN EN MUNTEN, MUNT-, PENNING- EN
WAPENKUNDIGE BOEKEN, NAGELATEN DOOR WIJLEN DEN HEER S. H. VAN DER
NOORDAA, Lid van verschillende Binnen- en Buitenlandsche Letterk.,
Histor. en Oudheidkundige Genootschappen, te Dordrecht. KIJKDAGEN:
VRIJDAG en ZATURDAG 12 en 13 December. De CATALOGUS is op franco
aanvrage a 20 Cents te bekomen bij G. THEOD. BOM, Kalverstraat, E
10. (19573)
20
april 1863 Uit Stadskanaal wordt aan de Veend. Ct. het
volgende gemeld: Bij de vergraving van het veen van G. Schuur
alhier, gelegen in den Boerveenster mond, heeft men dezer dagen een
zilveren lepel gevonden, onder eene veenlaag van 9 voet. Aan het
uiteinde is hij aan weerzijden van het getal 33 voorzien, waarom
eene bloem is gewerkt. Het is niet onwaarschijnlijk, dat het cijfer
het jaartal van de bewerking aanduidt, want mogen ook zilveren
tafelgereedschappen door onze voorvaderen uit dien tijd niet of
slechts hoogst, zelden zijn gebruikt, de Romeinen, die ook deze
streken niet onbezocht lieten, maakten niet alleen een veelvuldig
gebruik van dit edele metaal, maar hadden het in de ciseleerkunst
ver gebragt. Deze vondst levert, dunkt ons, ook weder een van de
talrijke bewijzen op, dat de bodem hier in de grijze oudheid, zoo
niet bewoond, dan toch wel bezocht is geworden.
22
april 1863 N. B. Wij geven dit berigt, zoo als wij het vinden, doch
merken er bij aan, dat wanneer deze lepel, niet eene steel- of
wijnlepel “trulla”, maar een “cochlear” is,
zij onmogelijk van het jaar 33, dus den tijd van keizer Tiberius,
kan dateren.
31
maart 1864 Voor de VADERLANDSCHE oudheden
werden
onderscheidene aanwinsten gedaan. Met de hierboven vermelde
Romeinsche voorwerpen uit de nalatenschap van wijlen den heer S. H.
VAN DER NOORDAA werden ook eenige overgenomen, van de vroegere
bewoners van ons Vaderland afkomstig: eene zeer fraai gepolijste
vuursteenen BIJL, 12 dm. lang; een ruw bewerkte BAL van trachiet, 4
dm. in doorsnede; eene URNE van gebakken aarde, gevuld met verbrande
menschenbeenderen, hoog 19 dm.; eene andere URNE, 18 dm. hoog, met
de daarin gevonden brokken van eene bronzen HAARNAALD; nog een
drietal URNEN met verbrande beenderen en overblijfsels van bronzen
RINGEN enz.; de urnen van 10, 15.5 en 16 duim hoogte; twee
KOMMETJES, 9 en 7 dm.; 4 POTJES van verschillende vormen, 6 5 tot
9.5 dm. hoog; een bekervormig VAATJE, 5.5 dm. hoog, en eenige
brokstukken van potten. Al deze voorwerpen, met uitzondering welligt
van de WIGGE, waren in 1837 op de oude begraafplaats te Deurne in
Noordbrabant opgegraven; zij vormen nu met de stukken die, ter
zelfder plaats gevonden, in 1840 en 1841 door wijlen den heer P. O.
G. GUYOT aan het Museum geschonken werden, een aanzienlijk geheel.
[...]
Eenige
MIDDELEEUWSCHE EN LATERE VOORWERPEN, afkomstig uit de ontgravingen
voor de legerplaats te Nijmegen, een paar trachietsteenen MORTIEREN
met STAMPERS uit den omtrek van Deurne afkomstig en tot de reeds
meermalen genoemde nalatenschap van wijlen den heer S. H. VAN DER
NOORDAA
behoorende; [...]
28
november 1874 OUDHEDEN.
De
belangrijke verzamelingen van oudheden, kunstvoorwerpen, boeken en
archieven, nagelaten door den Heer G. Ch. H. GUILLON, in leven
Notaris te Roermond, zullende ten verzoeke van den heer Mr. C.
Guillon, Procureur aldaar, ten overstaan van den te Roermond
residerenden Notaris MAX. CORNELIS, ten sterfhuize, op de volgende
dagen, iedere reis te beginnen des voormiddags ten 9 ure, openbaar
verkocht worden, te weten:
De
Gothische kasten en andere voorwerpen van Kunst op maandag den 30
November eerstkomende.
De
schilderijen en gravuren op den 1sten en 2den December
daaraanvolgende.
De
Archieven op den 9 december en volgende dagen.
De
prehistorische, Romeinsche, Germaansche en Frankische oudheden op
den 11 Jan. 1875 en volgende dagen
De
intaglio’s (intailles), Romeinsche munten en medailles,
benevens de Middeleeuwsche munten en andere penningen, op den 18
Januarij 1875 en volgende dagen.
Alle
verzamelingen, met uitzondering der bibliotheek, zullen tegen
contante betaling en tien percent verhooging voor kosten, verkocht
worden.
Voor
de voldoening der boeken wordt drie maanden crediet verleend.
Aan
heeren liefhebbers zal daags voor de pespectieve verkoopingen, van
des voormiddags 9 tot des namiddags 5 ure, de gelegenheid gegeven
worden om de te verkoopen verzameling te bezigtigen.
De
vereenigde Catalogussen zijn tegen betaling van 60 cents
verkrijgbaar bij den uitgever dezer Courant, terwijl daarenboven
voor aanvragen buiten Roermond het porto der post bedraagt als
volgt: voor Nederland en België 22, voor Duitschland 55 en voor
Frankrijk 56 cents.
Ter
voldoening van koopprijs en porto worden postzegels aangenomen.
30
januari 1875 - In de gemeente Obbicht zijn dezer dagen, naar men
meldt, bij het uithalen van kiezel eenige potten te voorschijn
gekomen, die bevonden werden Romeinsche graf-urnen te zijn. Door
broosheid zijn ze echter gedeeltelijk uit elkander gevallen. Het
belangrijkste van de vondst moet zijn een groote glazen urn, van
blaauwachtig glas, gevuld met eenige beenderen. Naast die voorwerpen
werden gevonden een stuk van een slot, alsmede eenige koperen
voorwerpen, zooals een groote speld, twee keurig bewerkte
handvatten, gelijk men die aan kisten ziet, twee ringen, waarvan de
draad achtkantig is, en een holle plaat, voorstellende een
leeuwenhoofd, met een koperen ringetje in den muil.
1
maart 1890 Antiquiteiten.
Het
beroemde MUSÉE GUILLON gedurende meer dan een halve eeuw
bijeenverzameld door den bekwamen oudheidkundige CHARLES GUILLON,
Notaris te Roermond, zal publiek worden VERKOCHT op Dinsdag 11-15
Maart a.s. te AMSTERDAM door G. THEOD. BOM & ZOON, Spuistraat
135.
De
verzameling omvat meest in Limburg opgegravene Romeinsche,
Germaansche, Celtische en Middeleeuwsche Oudheden, Romeinsche en
Geldersche Munten en Medailles, Limburgsche Muntstempels, Japansch
gelakte en oude eikenhouten Meubelen, Porceleinen, Schilderijen,
Kostbaarheden, enz.
Catalogusf
0 25.
8
maart 1890 De catalogus der kunstvoorwerpen, nagelaten door wijlen
den notaris Guillon alhier, noemt wel duizend in Limburg opgegravene
Romeinsche, Germaansche, Keltische, Frankische en middeleeuwsche
oudheden, uit het steen- en uit het bronstijdperk, lijkurnen,
Romeinsch glas- en aardewerk, ruim 70 stuks van het fraaie roode
aardewerk van Samos, een eenige in zilver gedrevene schildplaat,
waarschijnlijk uit de laatsten tijd van het Romeinsche keizerrijk,
ruim 80 gesneden steenen of cameeën, 1400 antike gouden,
zilveren en bronzen munten, eenige middeleeuwsche Geldersche en
Limburgsche munten, muntstempels en zegels, benevens eene kleine
verzameling zilveren drijfwerken, oude meubelen, enz.
De
met zorg bewerkte catalogus bewijst wel, dat hier voor onze
antiquaren en oudheidkundigen veel belangrijks te vinden is.
10
maart 1890 Twee zeer belangrijke veilingen zullen dezer dagen weder
bij de auctionarissen G. Theod. Bom & Zoon, te Amsterdam, plaats
hebben.
De
eerste, bevattende de verzameling oudheden en munten, nagelaten door
wijlen den Heer Charles Guillon, notaris te Roermond, is voor de
beoefenaars der geschiedenis van ons vaderland vooral van groot
belang. Nimmer toch werd eene dergelijke collectie van 1000 in
Limburg opgegraven Romeinsche, Germaansche, Keltische, Frankische en
middeneeuwsche oudheden in veiling gebracht. Zij doet ons een blik
werpen in de zeden en gebruiken van die tijden. Zoowel het steen-
als het bronstijdperk zijn ruim vertegenwoordigd, terwijl de
verzameling Germaansch aardewerk, waaronder vele urnen met de asch
onzer Germaansche voorvaderen, tot de rijkste mag worden gerekend.
Ook het Romeinsche glas- en aardewerk, urnen, enz., waaronder van
het fraaie roode aardewerk van Samos, verdient belangstelling,
evenzeer als de in zilver en haut-relief gedreven umbo of
schildplaat, een meesterstuk van drijfwerk uit den tijd van het Bas
Empire. Voorts behoort tot deze collectie nog eene verzameling van
ruim 80 meest antieke gesneden steenen of cameeën, antieke
gouden, zilveren en bronzen munten, eenige middeneeuwsche Geldersche
en Limburgsche munten, enz., enz.
De
tweede, van beperkter omvang, bevat een collectie antiquiteiten,
zilveren drijfwerken, antieke meubelen, historische en Amsterdamsche
rariteiten, kostbaarheden, porselein en Delftsch aardewerk, horens
en schelpen, schilderijen, stereoscopen, glazen stereoscoopplaten,
enz.
Een
en ander is te bezichtigen in het verkooplokaal der firma,
Spuistraat 135, Zaterdag, Zondag en Maandag 8-10 Maart, van 10-3
uur.
10
maart 1890 Dinsdagochtend Tien uur: VERKOOPING bij G. THEOD.
BOM & ZOON, Spuistraat 135 naast Die Port van Cleve.
Collectie
Guillon Antiquiteiten uit het Steen- en Bronstijdperk, Germaansche
urnen, No.1-813.
Des
avonds te Zes uur antieke Romeinsche Munten, te beginnen met No. 1.
Met
terugzending van den Catalogus Guillon zal men de Verkoopers ten
zeerste verplichten.
14
maart 1890 De verzameling Limburgsche oudheden, die bij G. Theod.
Bom & Zoon, op de Spuistraat alhier, thans wordt verkocht en van
den Heer Ch. Guillon te Roermond afkomstig was, blijkt algemeen de
aandacht te hebben getrokken.
Gelukkig
blijft het grootste gedeelte daarvan in ons land en is voornamelijk
voor het Rijksmuseum van oudheden te Leiden en voor het
Maastrichtsch museum van oudheden aangekocht. Het overige ging in
handen van particulieren, terwijl enkele zeer fraaie stukken voor
Engelsche rekening werden gekocht. No. 79 steenen bijl bracht op
f14; no. 38 een dito f11.50; no. 160 steenen pijlpunten f15; no. 167
een steenen ponjaard f26; no. 199 een bronzen scheermes f10; no. 200
een lemmet voor een zwaard f28; no. 300 een germaansche beker f12;
no. 314 en 315 2 bronzen beeldjes f39; no. 321 2 koperen ornamenten
van een drievoet f14; no. 329 een dito reukdoosje met lepel f13; no.
336 een plaat met Jupiter en Hébe f48; no. 410 een Romeinsche
flesch f35; no 411 een dito kleiner f20; no. 427 een vaas van
aardewerk van Samos f32. De veiling duurt voort.
7
mei 1893 Tentoonstelling
te Eindhoven.
Het
welvarend Eindhoven mag zich reeds sedert lange tijden verheugen in
het bezit van uitstekend werkvolk. Geheel in tegenstelling met
andere plaatsjes in Noord-Brabant en Limburg heeft men daar begrepen
dat aan de nijverheid de kunst moet zijn gepaard, en zoo ontstond er
eene breede rij van werklieden, die zich met de besten in den lande
kunnen meten. Goud- en zilversmeden, beeldhouwers, schilders,
bouwkundigen, metselaars en timmerlieden, die in den vollen zin van
het woord uitmuntend werk leveren, zijn hier niet zeldzaam.
Eenige
jaren geleden werd te Eindhoven door eenige patroons eene
vereeniging opgericht, genaamd De Bouwkundige vakken, en
waarvan de naam de bestemming voldoende aanduidt. Het was door de
goede zorgen dezer Vereeniging, dat de tentoonstelling tot stand
kwam, waarop elke Eindhovenaar thans met onmiskenbare rechtmatigheid
trotsch gaat. De producten van kunsten handwerksnijverheid, hier
bijeengebracht, bewijzen dat hierboven van de Eindhovensche
werklieden niet te veel is gezegd. Natuurlijk vindt men onder het
tentoongestelde ook leelijk werk, dat hier had kunnen gemist worden,
maar veel, zeer veel kan den toets der meest strenge critiek veilig
doorstaan.
Ten
einde de belangstelling voor deze onderneming in ruimer kring uit te
breiden, kwam de vereenïging De Bouwkundige vakken
indertijd op het uitstekend denkbeeld daaraan ook eene
tentoonstelling van oude kunst te verbinden, aan welke laatste
afdeeling ten slotte eene historische en topographische
tentoonstelling betreffende Kempenland en Peelland werd toegevoegd.
Met het bijeenbrengen dezer laatste verzameling heeft zich de heer
Aug. Sassen, archivaris van Helmond, belast, en het mag niet worden
ontkend dat, wanneer de tentoonstelling in ruimer kring de aandacht
zal trekken, dan ook voor een groot deel aan zijne goede zorgen zal
te danken zijn. Die historische en topographische afdeeling heeft de
eigenlijke tentoonstelling niet in de schaduw gesteld, maar daaraan
eene eigenaardige bekoring gegeven, die de onderneming ongetwijfeld
zeer ten goede zal komen.
Wanneer
men den catelogus der door Sassen bijeengebrachte verzameling ter
hand neemt, dan mag men ongetwijfeld verbaasd staan, dat van een zoo
kleine en voorheen zoo onbelangrijke streek als Peel en Kempenland,
zooveel merkwaardigs is kunnen verzameld worden, te meer nog indien
het waar is, wat verzekerd wordt, dat nog zooveel, wegens gebrek aan
plaatsruimte, in portefeuille moest blijven.
Eene
menigte historische en topographische schilderijen, prenten en
teekeningen, munten, penningen, zegels, wapens en oudheden roepen
ons hier de historie dezer streken in aangename vormen voor den
geest. Er zoude voor een vakblad van deze afdeeling een uitvoerig en
belangrijk opstel kunnen worden samengesteld; in een dagblad, als
dit, zullen wij natuurlijk moeten volstaan met eene korte opsomming
der voornaamste zaken.
Allereerst
wordt onze aandacht getrokken door de horens en een gedeelte van den
schedel van een uitgestorven rund van buitengewone afmetingen,
eenige jaren geleden te Stiphout opgegraven. Wanneer wij de
verdwenen punten der horens in onze gedachten aanvullen, kunnen wij
ons den kop voorstellen van dezen reus uit het dierenrijk, die
eeuwen geleden het Peellandsche woud van zijn geloei deed
weergalmen. Een enkele horen van een kleiner of jonger exemplaar van
dit dier werd uit de Peel onder Deurne opgegraven en is hier mede
tentoongesteld. Uit de in 1840 onder Westerhoven en omliggende
plaatsen door den heer P. N Panken ontdekt Germaansche kerkhoven
werd door hem de merkwaardigste urn bewaard en hier tentoongesteld.
De Kelten zijn vertegenwoordigd door een drietal vuursteenen
beitels, waarvan eene (cat. nr. 6) door groote afmeting, een ander
uit het jongere tijdperk (cat. nr. 4) door zijn keurige afwerking
uitmunt. De herrinnering aan de Romeinsche legerscharen, die hier
zoo langen tijd hebben vertoefd wordt bij ons opgewekt door eenige
verzamelingen van in die streken opgegraven Romeinsche munten,
waarvan die van den heer Alph. Schellens door keurig onderhouden
exemplaren en geschiedkundige rangschikking de aandacht verdient.
Van de eerste christelijke tijden spreekt een Romeinsch kruisbeeld
van hoogen ouderdom, dat in 1847 bij het afbreken der Kerk van Aarle
werd opgegraven en ruim een zestal eeuwen geleden waarschijnlijk met
het lijk eens priesters is begraven geworden. Onder de kerkelijke
oudheden verdienen voorts onze aandacht een paar fraaie beelden, 15e
eeuw, afkomstig uit de kerk te Liessel, en twee reliëfs in
albast van uitnemend Italiaansch werk, die te Stiphout met den
platten kant naar boven in eenen vloer waren ingemetseld en aldaar
in 1887 dooreen toeval werden ontdekt.
Onder
de oudheden van latere tijden mogen hier vermeld worden eene
volledige apotheek, afkomstig uit Bergeyk, een gedeelte van het
ameublement van het hôtel
De Zwaan te Oorschot, en twee prachtige statie-kostuums,
onlangs gevonden in eene kast op het kasteel Croy, alles
dagteekenende uit de vorige eeuw, terwijl mede melding verdienen de
kostbare geschenken, die in 1796 door de representanten van
Bataafseh Brabant en de municipaliteit van Oorschot werden gegeven
aan Arn. van Heumen, primus van Leuven, alle met de desbetreffende
oorkonden, gelegenheidsgedichten en jaarverzen.
Onder
de zegels en penningen is veel merkwaardigs te zien. In het
bijzonder verdient onze aandacht de gedenkpenning op het 50-jarig
huwelijk van Joha Josselin en Gerard de Jong, heer van Beek en Donk,
1764, in goud. Eene door den heer Aug. Sassen vervaardigde kopie van
een reusachtig schoorsteenstuk van 1688 in het kasteel te Helmond
zal ongetwijfeld de belangstelling der heraldici in niet geringe
mate opwekken.
De
afdeeling historische en topographische schilderijen en prenten telt
meer dan 100 nummers, voor het meerendeel eigendom van den heer Aug.
Sassen.
Onder
hetgeen door anderen werd ingezonden, dient vooral te worden gelet
op een superbe teekening van het kasteel van Gemert Ao 1675,
eigendom van jonkheer mr. Victor en Stuers.
Een
40 tal portretten van beroemde personen, heeren geestelijken en
ambtenaren, die tot deze streken in eenige betrekking stonden,
waaronder schilderstukken van groote afmetingen, uitmuntende
kopergravuren en 18de-eeuwsche silhouëttes, zetten deze
afdeeling nieuwe aantrekkelijkheid bij.
Onder
de andere tentoongestelde zaken verdienen onze beschouwing o. a een
reusachtig charter van 1508, betreffende de grensscheiding tusschen
Oorschot en aangrenzende gemeenten, dat in de zeer hooge
tentoonstellingszaal van den zolder tot aan den vloer reikt, eene
menigte aanplakbiljetten uit de vorige eeuw, oude vlugschriftjes en
bibliographische zeldzaamheden, alle op deze streken van toepassing
en grootendeels het eigendom van den heer Aug. Sassen. Aan het einde
der zaal aanschouwt men eene reusachtige tropee, samengesteld uit
een groot aantal vaandels, trommen en ontelbare zilveren hanen en
koningschilden alle eigendom van de vele Peel en Kempenlandsche
schutsgilde, die in hun taai leven hier in zoo groot aantal tot
heden voortbestaan. Van deze merkwaardige gedenkstukken van eene der
aanzienlijkste zijden van het vroegere volksleven zal in ons land
wel nooit zulke belangrijke verzameling zijn bijeengezien.
Alles
te zamen genomen mag de historische en topographische afdeeling der
Eindhovensche tentoonstelling als zeer merkwaardig worden geroemd.
1 december 1894 Verkooping van
Wapens en Kunstvoorwerpen TE KEULEN.
[...]
2º.
Kunst-verzamelingen van wijlen den WelEd. Gestr. Heer C. Guillon,
advocaat te Roermond, [...] Verkooping 12-18 December 1894.
Prijs
van den geïllustreerden catalogus 3 Mark.
J.
M. Heberle (H. Lempertz’ Söhne), Keulen.
16
februari 1895 Oudheden.
— De Heer G. M. Kam, te Nijmegen,
heeft,
bij akte van 4 Februari 1905, aan den Staat der Nederlanden
geschonken zijne hoogst belangrijke verzameling oudheden, doch zóó,
dat deze schenking eerst na zijn dood door de Regeering worde in
bezit genomen. Deze verzameling bestaat in hoofdzaak uit: eenige
voorhistorische vaten, steenen en bronzen beitels, wapenen,
Romeinsche grafurnen, legioen-steenen, kannen, vazen, lampen, terra
nigra en terra sigillata, zoogenaamde Belgische waren, borden,
vazen, kommen, enz.; bronzen vazen, spiegels, beelden, fibula's,
enz.;
Romeinsch
glaswerk, gesneden steenen, pastes, kralen, Romeinsche en Frankische
wapenen, eenige Frankische vaten en voorts Romeinsche munten,
gouden-, zilveren- en bronzen-, uit den tijd der Bepubliek en den
Keizertijd;
een
zilveren medaillon van Constantijn den Groote.
De
verzameling Romeinsch is voor het overgroote deel uit den
Augusteïschen tijd. Voorts een aantal middeleeuwsche oudheden,
als: vazen, tegels, enz. Inzonderheid de Romeinsche en
voorhistorische oudheden zijn voor het overgroote deel in Nijmegen
en omgeving gevonden.
21
februari 1896 Helmond, 19 Febr. Naar men verneemt, zijn op
het landgoed Eerenbeemt te Meyel, toebehoorende aan den heer
P. C. van den Eerenbeemt te Rome, twee romeinsche graven ontdekt.
De
heer Schulte, oudheidkundige alhier, heeft verzocht de opgravingen
te mogen doen, ten einde de urnen, die er gevonden zullen worden,
met andere van elders te kunnen vergelijken.
26
januari 1897 - Donderdag morgen heeft men te Eelen bij het omdelven
van een stuk grond, eigendom van den heer Powis de Tenbossche, een
aanzienlijke partij Romeinsche potten en wapens, alsook een 17-tal
doodshoofden gevonden. Men groef tevens een volledig groot lijk op,
hetwelk met het hoofd noordwaarts lag met eene lans aan zijne
rechterzijde.
De
heer Jos. Gielen, oudheidkundige te Measeyck, is reeds bezig met de
uitvoerige beschrijving der voorwerpen en der plaats, welke volgens
genoemden heer een Romeinsch kerkhof is.
27
maart 1914 Oude vondsten, stille getuigen.
In
den grond zit meer dan je denkt, maar de groote kunst is maar het te
vinden. Dat je al "roedelooper" of "schatgraver"
bent, geeft je niemendal. Bij die oude vondsten moet het toevallige
geluk of het gelukkig toeval je dienen, anders is het niemendal
gedaan.
Maar
dat er, vooral in onze drogere streken, nog tal van "stille
getuigen" uit lang vervlogen tijden in den grond zitten, is wis
on zeker, want af en toe lees je weer eens in de nieuwsbladen, dat
daar en daar, dit en dat gevonden is. De laatste merkwaardige
vondsten werden gedaan te Cuyk a. d. Maas in Noord-Brabant —
oude potten en pannen, wapens en munten — en te Jemmingen,
even over de Groningsche grens, waar in 1538 door de Hollanders en
de Spanjaarden werd gevochten — zes mannen on zes paarden in
één kuil en ze hadden de sporen nog aan! Maar van
zulke vondsten, vertel ik niet; 't is te griezelig.
Ziehier
evenwel, wat ik uit mijn notitiên van den laatste tijd opdiep;
datums laat ik maar weg; 't gebeurde in de twee of hoogstens drie
laatste jaren.
Te
Valthe in Drente, in de buurt van Valthermond, waar eertijds in het
veen de oude Romeinsche brug werd ontdekt, te Valthe werd een urn
van bijzondere afmetingen opgegraven en er werden beenderen in asch
in gevonden.
In
het Aamsveen, gedeeltelijk tot ons land, gedeeltelijk tot
Duitschland behoorende en waaruit reeds in 1325 turf werd gestoken,
zou terrein ontgonnen worden. De Nederlandsche Heidemaatschappij
waarschuwde het bestuur der Twentsche Oudheidkamer en men vond
urnen, steenen ruitersporen, bijlen, wat bewees, dat men een
oudhistorische plek had gevonden, wat te meer uitkwam, toen men
later de fundamenten ontdekte van een burcht in het z.g. Hölterhof.
In
de Peel, in Noord-Brabant-Limburg, nabij Helenaveen, vond een
veenwerker eerst vier munten, verder stukken leer, die tot een
militaire uitrusting moeten behoord hebben, en een helm, benevens
nog een soort haak of pen om kleedingstukken vast te hechten. Op
eenigen afstand werden later 38 oude munten gevonden met 't
randschrift Constantinus en de beeltenis van een regeerend vorst. In
hetzelfde Noord-Brabant vond men in de hei tal van antiquiteiten en
wel te Oorschot, te Best, te Veldhoven, te Hoogeloon. Meestal oude
wapens, bijlen, pijlen en pijlspitsen, steenen zagen en beitels,
waarvan de Kelten en de Menapiërs, en de Taxandren, die daar
vroeger woonden, zich moeten hebben bediend.
Bij
het afgraven der terpen in Friesland, worden ook vaak allerlei
vondsten gedaan: bronzen ringen, hakken on bijlen, primitieve
landbouwwerktuigen, schoppen, beitels werden daar al vele malen
gevonden; 't laatst b.v. bij Ferwerd.
Zeer
menigvuldig zijn de vondsten in Drente. Daar werd in eenzelfde jaar
gevonden: In de Wolfsbergen bij Emmen eene komvormige urn van
roodbruine aarde, waarin weer een urn zal van donkerbruine aarde met
omgebogen rand, verder twee steenen hamers, een bronzen mes en
eenige beenderen.
Achter
de Emmerdennen vond men eene komvormige bruine urn met beenderen. Te
Wachtum in de gemeente Dalen werd op ongeveer een halven meter diep
in den grond een bronzen beitel met oog gevonden. In het Gravenveld
bij Weerdinge, gemeente Emmen, vond men een beitel van grijzen
vuursteen en bij de vroegere Roswinkeler Schans in het ijzererts
(oer) een steenen hamer, donkergrauw en ruw bewerkt ter lengte van
ruim 1 decimeter. In het veen te Klijndijk bij Odoorn, een stuk van
een steenen hamer. In het Schipmeer onder Norg een ijzeren bijl; te
Oud-Orvelte in het Stobbenveen twee metalen schotels en een oude
kruik (een "baardmanskruik") en in het veen te Zuidwolde
bij Hoogeveen een slijpsteen, terwijl men op drie plaatsen houten
wegen of veenbruggen ontdekte, zooals vroeger hij Valthermond,
waarover we boven spraken. In de "Nieuwe Drentsche
Volksalmanak" is daar een en ander van te vinden. De bruggen
werden ontdekt:
lo.
Te Buinerveen, gemeente Borger, op een half uur afstand van 't
station Ruinen
2o.
In de gemeente Emmen langs den weg van Nieuw-Dordrecht naar
Klazinaveen-Noord.
3o.
In de gemeente Emmen, ook te Klazinaveen-Noord, bij Sluis 2 aan het
Scholtenskanaal en dicht bij den Dedemvaartschen tram van Coevorden
naar Ter Apel.
Die
bruggen zijn meestal gemaakt van dennenhout, dat rust op berken
onderliggers en moeten dagteekenen uit den tijd der Romeinen. Ik zou
nog kunnen vertellen van de opgravingen bij de z.g. Hunenschans aan
het Uddelermeer op de eluwe, waar prof. Holwerda van Leiden druk
werkte, van verschillende buitenlandsche plaatsen — waaronder
Hallstadt in Boven-Oostenrijk de voornaamste is — waar
oudheden werden gevonden, van "stille getuigen" als de
Hunebedden en de Paalwoningen (Zwitserland), van vondsten van
jachtgereedschappen en oud vischtuig, kammen, ringen, weefsels en
uitgeholde boomstammen, die voor schepen dienden, maar dat bewaar ik
maar weer voor later.
?
W. ?. d. V.
1
februari 1921 Heling- van effecten en kostbaarheden. —
De
Arnhemsche rechtbank heeft Vrijdag — de Tel. meldt — de
zaak behandeld tegen den 57-jarigen taxateur J. H. Peperkamp uit
Nijmegen, die in 1917, 1918 en 1919 in Nederland eene gewoonte
maakte van het opzettelijk koopen, inruilen, in pand nemen en
verbergen van door misdrijf verkregen voorwerpen. Hij had te
Nijmegen en elders een groot aantal effecten en geldswaardige
papieren gekocht, ingeruild of gedeeltelijk als geschenk, aangenomen
en. uit winstbejag verborgen. P. nam de door misdrijf verkregen
effecten van den Belg, H. Wijnen, in ontvangst, beleende ze op eigen
naam bij een, bankier, behield een deel van de aldus ontvangen
gelden zelf en verzilverde bovendien ten eigen bate eenige coupons.
Hetzelfde
had zich te Amsterdam en te Rotterdam afgespeeld: in laatstgenoemde
stad kocht bekl. Antwerpsche loten en ook flacons en miniauren ter
waarde van duizenden van iemand, die zich Van Dijseldank noemde,
wetende, dat alles van misdrijf afkomstig was.
Peperkamp
bekende; eerst had hij tegenover Wijnen bezwaar gemaakt tegen,
dergelijke transacties, was daarna gezwicht en ontving 10%
commissieloon, later echter behield hij de geheele opbrengst.
De
president wees er op, dat bekl. die bemiddeld was en in de stad
zijner inwoning vertrouwen genoot, gebleken is te zijn vrijwel "de
grootste snees van Nederland," zooals dat in de dierenwereld
wordt genoemd. Jarenlang fungeerde hij als handlanger van dieven en
inbrekers.
De
verkochte effecten waren, zooals uit het getuigenverhoor kwam vast
te staan, gestolen tijdens den inbraak, die in 1917 te Ilpendam was
gepleegd, van de bekende inbraak bij de Amsterdamsche uitgeversfirma
P. N. van Kampen en van eenige diefstallen te Rotterdam.
De
miniaturen en flacons waren afkomstig uit kasteel Nijenrode, waar in
het laatst van 1917 een monteur, die daar de centrale verwarming
aanlegde, de kostbaarheden had gestolen, waaronder zich o.m. bevond
het zilveren kruis met edelsteenen, door Admiraal Tromp van Karel II
ontvangen, een voorwerp van historische beteekenis. Door bemiddeling
van Peperkamp en andere tusschenpersonen zijn de antiquiteiten ten
slotte terechtgekomen bij de firma Frederik Muller, die gesommeerd
werd, ze tegen den door haar betaalden prijs terug te leveren aan
den oorspronkelijken eigenaar, de kasteelbewoner, Michiel Onnes van
Nyenrode is toen door de firma Muller een zeer hoog bedrag genoemd,
wat zij dan ook heeft ontvangen. Een jaar later, toen aan het licht
kwam, dat de firma een gefantaseerd en veel te hoog bedrag had
opgeven, heeft zij het door den kasteelheer teveel betaalde
gerestitueerd.
De
substituut-officier van Justitie Mr. Visscher noemde Peperkamp de
grootste heler die ons land de laatste jaren heeft gekend; bij eene
huiszoeking trof men effecten aan, afkomstig van zes diefstallen. En
ook had beklaagde de hand in tal van smokkelzaken, waarin, hij
achter de schermen werkte, maar zelf buiten schot bleef. De
gemakkelijkheid, waarmede men te Nijmegen gestolen goederen bij
Peperkamp kon afleveren, heeft tal jongelui op den slechten weg
gebracht. Dit alles stempelt hem tot een gevaarlijk misdadiger, al
zijn verzachtende omstandigheden aan te voeren. Spreker requireerde
slotte vijf jaren gevangenisstraf.
Mr.
van Ditzhuizen, de verdediger, legde er den nadruk op, dat Peperkamp
slachtoffer der normale omstandigheden is geweest. Het willekeurig
optreden van N. O. T.- en andere ambtenaren bracht hem nogal eenige
schade toe en zoo verviel hij in onverschilligheid, welke hem tot de
strafbare feiten dreef, waarvan echter schurken als van Dijsseldonck
en Wijnen zijn te beschouwen als de intellectueele daders, die door
hun handelwijze bekl. tot heling aanspoorden. De schade, die P. door
zijn optreden heeft veroorzaakt, wil hij zooveel mogelijk vergoeden;
ook in dit verband riep pleiter de clementie der rechtbank in.
Uitspraak
8 Februari.
14
april 1929 Hellas en Rome.
Tentoonstelling
in het Rijks-Museum te Amsterdam
[...]
Een zeer mooi en merkwaardig stuk is de verguld zilveren Romeinsche
helm, in de nabijheid van Deurne in de Peel gevonden. Ook zij de
aandacht gevestigd op de groote belegstukken van zilver, welke op
leder genaaid deel uitmaakten van een Romeinsch paardentuig. Deze
stukken werden hiertelande uit den Rijn opgevischt.
11
juni 1932 GESCHIEDENIS
VAN ASSELT
[...]
Toen de paters Trappisten der abdij van Achel onlangs een onderzoek
begonnen naar de bezittingen, die gedurende de Fransche Revolutie
voor hun klooster verloren gingen, in de hoop het oude altaar weer
te kunnen reconstrueeren in zijn ouden vorm werden zij van Deurne
naar Asselt verwezen. Zij vonden er het betreffend altaar niet meer,
maar wel resten er van in het Museum, aan oude foto's erkenden zij
het. De beschrijving die zij er van gaven en hadden kwam in alle
details overeen met het oude altaar van Asselt, het schilderij dat
er toe behoord had als retabel, vonden zij terug thans ingeraamd als
kostbaar stuk.
Ofschoon
de paters de noodige overtuigende bewijzen overlegden en het gaarne
weer in hun bezit hadden, moesten zij toch wijken voor het
Asseltsche argument, dat zijn rechten op dit stuk, als reeds lang
verjaard, kon handhaven. Bij de onderhandelingen bleek verder, dat
de mogelijkheid niet uitgesloten is, dat men in den Asseltschen
Christus een werk van den vermaarden Titiaan (1477—1576) heeft
te zien Deze toch onderhield met de Trappisten-orde te zijner tijd
vriendschappelijke betrekkingen, en Achel kluis beweert uit
rekeningen, dat het bewuste schilderij een stuk van den
Italiaanschen meester geweest is.
25
augustus 1937 GEHEIMZINNIGE
VONDST IN DE PEEL.
Volksfantasie
uit grijze oudheid herleeft.
Bij
het verrichten van ontginningswerkzaamheden, welke onder leiding van
de Nederlandsche Heide Mij. op het grondgebied der uitgestrekte
Peelgemeente Deurne worden verricht, werd dezer dagen een skelet
aangetroffen, meldt de Prov. 's-Hert. Crt. Het menschelijk geraamte
moet reeds zeer lang ter plaatse aanwezig zijn geweest; het zat diep
onder de zandlagen. Sensationeel min of meer was de bijkomstigheid,
dat in de nabijheid van 't skelet een verweerd mes werd
aangetroffen.
Het
behoeft weinig betoog, dat deze geheimzinnige vondst de
volksfantasie ruimschoots stof bezorgt voer het weer ophalen van de
velerlei geheimzinnige verhalen waarmede de geschiedenis van de
vroeger zoo intens verlaten Peelstreek is aaneengeweven.
Het
nu gevonden geraamte, hoe lang heeft het in den Peelbodem gerust?
50, 100, 200, 300 jaren of nog langer? Wordt hier een tipje heel
even weggelicht van een onopgehelderd gebleven drama uit ver
vervlogen tijden? Een slachtoffer van een roofoverval toen lang,
heel lang geleden dat Peel nog ontoegankelijk en bijna
ondoordringbaar was? Of het verteerde overschot van een verdwaalden
eenzame "die het spoor in de wildernis was kwijtgeraakt en van
wien, behalve het gebeente, slechts het mes, dat hij bij zich droeg,
den tand des tijds heeft weerstaan?
Het
zal alles wel een open vraag blijven, zooals zooveel andere
geheimzinnigheden het bleven die nu weer worden opgerakeld, als
onvergane restanten van Peelsche romantiek. Weer hoort men thans
vertelsels opgeld doen van de “zwarte waters” uit het
oude Peelgebied. Griezelige gebeurtenissen uit 't diepe verleden.
Zij gingen van mond tot mond in de tijden, toen de Peel volmaakte
wildernis was, toen er geen wegen waren, geen kranten gedrukt
werden, geen boerderijen in den wijden omtrek vielen te bespeuren en
toen men, bij gemis aan alle moderne comfort, des avonds bij de
haardvuren, elkander bij kout en buurt de uren kortte. De “zwarte
waters” zijn de donkere Peelvenpoelen, waar, om de een of
andere reden, de klokken uit de kerktorens waren weggezonken.
Duistere onbekende vreemdelingen had men de klokken zien wegvoeren.
Men hield hen voor handlangers van den duivel of ook wel voor Satan
zelf. Met doffen slag waren de klokken in de moerassen neergestort;
het water bleef er sindsdien zwart en bevroor nimmer. In den
Kerstnacht hoorde men ze nog luiden, maar wee wie haar klanken
volgde en poogde op te sporen; hij verdoolde, om in de zwarte waters
te verdrinken... Een der “zwarte water” lag ter hoogte
van de huidige Peelvlek IJsselstein.
28
januari 1944 DE PEEL EEN GRENS
Brieven
over de Peel
Waarde
Vriend
Het
is, nu ik hier zit en u schrijf, nog niet zoo heel lang geleden, dat
de voerman, die geregeld reed tusschen Deurne en Venray, midden in
de onherbergzame Peelvlakte bij de Kraayenhut de as van zijn kar
placht te verstellen. Er was toen tusschen beide dorpen nog slechts
een losse, diep uitgevaren zandweg en daar, bij den Grootenberg,
veranderde de spoorwijdte — het Limburgsche spoor is ook thans
nog aanzienlijk breeder dan het Brabantsche — en zoo kon de
vrachtrijder zijn rit niet vervolgen vooraleer hij den stand van de
as zijner zware kar had aangepast aan het wagenspoor. Bij zijn
voertuig was dat mogelijk; 't was er op gebouwd. De meeste gewone
karren en wagens hadden evenwel geen verstelbare assen en konden dus
niet voor het verkeer tusschen de genoemde plaatsen gebruikt worden.
Toont
dit merkwaardige feit niet duidelijk aan dat de Peel een grens was,
een scheiding tusschen twee landen of landstreken? Menige breede
rivier was niet zulk een dichte afsluiting tusschen twee gebieden
als deze ontoegankelijke streek, deze
"moerassige
plaetse" en dit "sunderlingh verlaten oird", zooals
't in oude stukken genoemd wordt, tot voor kort — wat
beteekent een halve eeuw in de groote grijze ruimte van het
verleden? — bestonden er dan ook maar heel weinig betrekkingen
tusschen de Brabantsche en de Limburgsche Peelstreek en kwamen de
lngezetenen van Venray, Horst en Sevenum slechts zeldzaam in
aanraking met die van Bakel, Deurne en Liessel. Aan weerskanten van
de Peel ontwikkelde het volk zich geheel afzonderlijk en richtte het
zich in verband met het bestuur geheel tegenover gesteld: terwijl de
dorpen van het Brabantsche Peelland naar Helmond en Den Bosch
trokken, togen de Limburgsche Peeldorpen naar Venlo, Boxmeer, Cuijk
en Roermond.
De
Peel was een natuurlijke grens. Met haar moer en "vlazen",
bosch en hei was zij een vrijwel onoverkomenlijke hindernis en
scheidde zij van zelf gebieden en volksstammen. Het schijnt, dat men
het in de Middeleeuwen dan ook niet noodig achtte door dit moeras
nog een zuivere grenslijn te trekken: dat deed men eerst later, toen
men bemerkte, dat deze streek toch niet zoo waardeloos was als men
voordien meende, omdat ze een groote hoeveelheid turf bleek te
bevatten. Langen tijd was de hoogveenrug van de Peel dus de grens
tusschen het kwartier Peelland van de Meierij van 's-Hertogenbosch
en het Overkwartier van Gelder. In de Geldersche oorlogen, welke in
het eerste kwart der zestiende eeuw werden gevoerd, vielen meermalen
Geldersche benden door de Peel het hertogdom Brabant binnen. In 1511
en 1512 werden de dorpen Deurne, Bakel en Asten door de Gelderschen
uit Venlo grootendeels in asch gelegd. Om de grens te beveiligen,
werd dus onder Liessel ter plaatse waar het nu nog "het Sloot"
heet, tusschen de jaren 1516 en 1527 een blokhuis gebouwd. Door de
aanwezigheid van een vrij breede zandige hoogte, lag daar, bij
Meyel, inderdaad, zooals men ook in Ouwerlings groot
geschiedeniswerk kan lezen, het zwakke punt bij uitnemendheid in
deze afscheiding.
Anderhalve
eeuw lang na den vrede van Munster, welke in 1648 geteekend werd,
liep door de Peel de staatsgrens. Tijdens het bestaan der Republiek
der Vereenigde Nederlanden scheidde dit hoog veengebied het
wingewest of generaliteitsland Noord-Brabant van Spaansch en
Oostenrijksch en later van Pruisisch Gelderland. Van die grens
maakten de Brabantsche katholieken gebruik om hun kerkschatten in
veiligheid te brengen. Priesters en kloosterlingen vluchtten er over
om aan de "plakkaten" der Hoogmogende Staten Generaal te
ontkomen. Reeds in 1649 bouwde de Deurnesche pastoor Mr. Gerard
Jacobs vlak over de grenslijn nabij den Grootenberg, een kerkje voor
zijn parochianen. Geruimen tijd bediende hij van daar uit de
geloovigen van Deurne, Bakel, Liessel en Vlierden. We zien voorts de
zusters der adellijke abdij van Binderen, bij Helmond, de Peel en
daarmede de grens toevluchtsoord te vinden en die van "Mariaschoot"
van Ommel met haar wonderbeeldje naar Neer in het graafschap Hoorn
reizen.
Natuurlijk
rezen er nogal eens geschillen over deze grens. Het was immers
moeilijk uit te maken waar in die wijde streek nu juist de lijn
moest loopen, welke het Brabantsche van het Geldersche scheidde. Van
Brabantsche zijde beriep men zich dan steeds op de verkrijgbrieven
der gemeene gronden van Deurne van 1326 en 1467. Ook bij den vrede
van Munster kwam het niet tot een nauwkeurige afbakening, al werd er
reeds twee jaren eerder een bijeenkomst over deze aangelegenheid
gehouden tusschen de dorpen van Peelland en die van het Overkwartier
en werd toen deze zaak voor den Raad van "paalsteden"
werden gesteld door den fiscaal van Brabant in tegenwoordigheid van
die van Venray, bleken naderhand laatstgenoemden toch weer niet
accoord met de getrokken linie. We lezen in Ouwerlings "Geschiedenis
der dorpen en heerlijkheden van overtrekken om in Venray een Deurne,
Liessel en Vlierden", dat zij zelfs zoo ver gingen, dat zij de
grenspalen "clandestinelyk" bij nacht en ontijden
uittrokken en ze aan kettingen onder hun toren deden ophangen, waar
ze als zegeteekenen jarenlang werden bewaard. Den 20sten November
1716 kwam er bij het Tractaat van Venlo tusschen de Staten-Generaal
der Vereenigde Nederlanden en den koning van Pruisen een behoorlijke
grensregeling tot stand doch eer de afbakening was uitgevoerd, rezen
er opnieuw moeilijkheden: Deurne schikte zich noode in het verlies
van acht honderd hectaren goeden veengrond en het kwam dus voor, dat
ingezetenen dier heerlijkheid des nachts, zooals Van Heurn in zijn
werk over de Meijerij van 's-Hertogenbosch verhaalt, zeven honderd
en acht honderd karren turf, welke volgens de nieuwe grensscheiding
op het gebied van Venray geraakt waren, in brand staken.
Na
de ineenstorting der Republiek liep door de Peel de grens tusschen
het Fransche departement van de Nedermaas en de Bataafsche
Republiek. Toen herhaalde zich de geschiedenis in zekeren in
omgekeerde richting: thans zochten kloosterlingen uit het
Limburgsche een goed heenkomen over de Peel op het Brabantsche
gebied. Zoo vond de laatste priorin van het Norbertinessenklooster
Keizersbosch onder Neer een toevluchtsoord te Deurne. Eerst toen in
1810 de Nederlanden bij het Fransche keizerrijk werden ingelijfd,
hield de Peel voorgoed op staatsgrens te zijn. Later, na de
stichting van het koninkrijk der Nederlanden, scheidde ze de
provincie Noord- Brabant van die van Limburg, dat, toen het zich na
den Belgischen opstand bij den Duitschen Bond aansloot, het
hertogdom Limburg heette.
Nadat
in de zestiger jaren der vorige eeuw de spoorlijn tusschen Eindhoven
en Venlo reeds een vaste verbinding tusschen de dorpen aan
weerskanten van het Peelmoeras tot stand bracht, werd kort voor het
uitbreken van den eersten wereldoorlog de eerste harde weg dwars
door de Peel tusschen Deurne en Venray aangelegd. Omstreeks tachtig
kwam er al een weg van Deurne naar de Limburgsche grenzen bij Meyel.
Na den oorlog werd later de Peel ook doorbroken in de richting van
het land van Cuyk: een grintweg verbindt Deurne thans met Boxmeer.
Werkloozen uit Helmond legden voor een tiental jaren een breede
aarden baan aan tusschen Helenaveen en Sevenum. Zoo werd allengs
deze scheidsmuur geslecht, dit dichte grensland open gelegd in het
belang van het algemeen. Nog steeds is de Peel een grens — dit
hoog gelegen veen- en tuinbouwland vormt ook nu een niet
onbelangrijke waterscheiding en bakent daarbij twee geheel
verschillende gewesten met hun eigen, volkomen andere volksgroepen
af — ze is echter thans geen scheidsboom en lastige hindernis
meer. Deze voorheen zoo weinig getelde grensstreek levert zelfs als
vooruitstrevend ontginningsgebied een waardevolle bijdrage voor de
samenwerking en de welvaart binnen de ruimte, waarin ons volk leeft
en is dat niet iets — en daarmee wil ik sluiten —
waarover wij ons oprecht moeten verheugen?
DEURNE,
Louwmaand 1944.
W.
A. M. VAN HEUGTEN.
18
februari 1944 Merkwaardig pronkstuk
Waarde
Vriend,
Ge
vraagt me naar een merkwaardig pronkstuk, dat te Deurne te zien moet
zijn en zelfs in de kringen van hen, die zich bijzonder voor het
schoone in het eigene onzer streek interesseeren, maar weinig bekend
is. Ik begrijp wat ge bedoelt: het is het afgietsel van den
Romeinschen helm, dat in de burgemeesterskamer van het Deurnesche
raadhuis staat opgesteld. Een merkwaardig pronkstuk is het zeer
zeker, al is het slechts een vervangingsmiddel voor het echte. In
weinige oudheidskamers, Ja zelfs in weinig musea, hier te lande
vindt ge zulk een zeldzaam voorwerp. Wat het eigenlijk beteekent en
hoe het er kwam?
Op
een Junidag van het jaar 1910 was de veenarbeider G. Smolenaars uit
Meyel aan het werk in de Peel tusschen de z.g. Hermanshuizen en
Helenaveen, aan den linkerkant van den weg (als men van Liessel
komt). Hij was bezig in het grauwe veen. Opeens stiet hij op iets
hards, ditmaal echter geen kienhout. Was het een ineengeslagen pot?
Hij groef hem uit, ging er mee naar een sloot en toen hij hem had
afgespoeld, zag hij, dat het een oude helm moest zijn. Vlakbij vond
hij in een kuiltje als een vogelnestje nog een aantal munten en
verder andere kleine voorwerpen van metaal alsmede resten van
schoeisel en een schabrak. Hij droeg het naar huis en verborg het
als iets kostbaars in zijn bedstede.
Dat
er in de Peel een schat was opgegraven, was weldra tot ver buiten de
streek bekend. Velen togen naar Meyel om het gevondene te zien; de
eenvoudige man, die nu in veler oogen een onnoemelijk groot fortuin
bezat en tot wien burgemeester Truyen van Meyel gezegd zou hebben:
"Ik ben rijk, maar gij bent nog veel rijker!", toonde zijn
ongewone vondst aan de talrijke bezoekers. Al gauw kwamen er ook
kooplustigen opdagen. Gelukkig werd echter het Rijksmuseum voor
Oudheden te Lelden tijdig gewaarschuwd. Het zond een deskundige, die
het gevondene schatte en er een bepaalde som voor bood. Smolenaars
werd het met hem eens en zoo werd 't gevaar, dat deze zeldzame
vondst in verkeerde handen zou geraken, bezworen.
Daarmede
was deze zaak evenwel nog niet afgehandeld. De veenarbeider kon
immers slechts voor de helft als eigenaar van den schat worden
beschouwd. Van wien de andere helft eigenlijk was, viel niet zoo
gemakkelijk uit te maken. De vinder was bezig met het steken van
turf voor de firma Steegh en Esser en wel in het grauwveen, dat door
de gemeente Deurne als eigenares der veengronden verpacht was aan de
firma Terwindt en Arnzt. Een niet alledaagsch en dus moeilijk op te
lossen vraagstuk! Na rechtskundig advies ingewonnen te hebben,
achtte de gemeente Deurne zich evenwel eigenares der tweede helft en
besloot baar raad op 18 November 1910 ze voor den geboden prijs van
duizend gulden aan de wetenschappelijke instelling af te staan.
Het
Rijksmuseum voor Oudheden liet het gedeukte uitrustingsstuk, waarvan
aanstonds werd aangenomen, dat het moest hebben toebehoord aan een
Romeinsch officier, herstellen. Dit moeilijk werk werd met goed
gevolg uitgevoerd door den goudsmid L. Verkuil, werkzaam in het
atelier van Van Rossum du Chattel te Leiden. "Eenmaal
gerestaureerd", schreef later Dr. M. A. Evelein in een
geïllustreerd tijdschriftartikel, "bleek welk een
schitterend stuk het museum rijker was geworden, dat, in
vergelijking met dergelijke helmen in het buitenland, zelfs een
unicum mag genoemd worden". Volledig is de helm echter niet:
alleen de verguld-zilveren buitenbekleeding bleef bewaard; de
ijzeren binnenkap roestte geheel weg. De helmkap bestaat uit twee
losse gelijkvormige deelen, welke elk weer in drie onderling
verbonden stukken verdeeld zijn en door een kam tesamengehouden
worden. Het uitrustingsstuk had verder een nekbeschermer, een
neusbeschermer en twee wangplaten. Een dezer laatste onderdeelen
vond men niet terug.
Van
het wapentuig der Romeinsche legioenen, welke toch eeuwenlang ons
land en een groot gedeelte van ons werelddeel bezet hielden, is maar
heel weinig bewaard gebleven. Er zijn voor zoo ver bekend in het
geheel slechts zeven helmen gevonden, welke van de Romeinen
afkomstig moeten zijn; die van de Peel is daarvan wel de meest
waardevolle. Eén kwam er aan het licht bij Kertsj aan de
bekende zeestraat tusschen de Zee van Azow en de Zwarte Zee, twee
werden er te Pfersee bij Augsburg en een te Worms in Duitschland
opgegraven, in Hongarije vond men er een in de Donau bij Boedapest
en in Denemarken werd er bij Thorsbjerg een in het veen
aangetroffen. Opmerkelijk is, dat ze, volgens Dr. Evelein, veel
overeenstemming in bouw en bewerking vertoonen. Deze geleerde is van
meening, dat ze wel in dezelfde werkplaats van Constantinopel
vervaardigd zouden kunnen zijn. De helm is kunstig bewerkt en toont
aan, dat de Romeinsche ambachtslieden bekwaam waren. Het geheel
pleit overigens voor de veronderstelling, dat de drager ervan een
honderdman geweest moet zijn. Staat zijn naam er in gekrast? Prof.
O. Bonn van Berlijn zag, naar we in het artikel van Dr. Evelein
kunnen lezen, in de inscriptie in den nekbeschermer eerder een
gewichtsopgave met den naam van den verificateur Titus Valonius
Ursus. Het woord "Stablesia VI" op den helmrand moet een
afdeeling aanduiden van het ruitercorps der Equites Stablesiani,
vooral uit het latere tijdperk van het Romeinsche Rijk bekend.
Wat
nu de groote waarde voor de geschiedeniswetenschap van deze Vondst
in de Peel is? Dat ligt eigenlijk buiten den helm op zich zelf. Er
werden immers ook munten gevonden. Deze bleken alle te dateeren uit
den tijd van keizer Constantijn; men kon zelfs vaststellen waar ze
geslagen werden. Ze bieden een vast uitgangspunt voor vergelijkende
studie. Men mag toch aannemen, dat de centurio slechts geld bij zich
droeg, dat in die jaren gangbaar was. Zoo valt niet alleen de helm
van de Peel ten naastebij te dateeren, doch kan door vergelijking
ook geschat worden uit welken tijd de elders gevonden Romeinsche
helmen zijn. Van belang is deze vondst overigens, omdat ze bewijst,
dat het ruitercorps der "Equites Stablesiani" zich ook in
de Lage Landen moet hebben opgehouden en dat het grauwe veen in onze
streek in de derde eeuw onzer jaartelling nog niet gevormd was.
Natuurlijk
blijven er om den dood van den Romeinschen honderdman in het
Peelmoeras nog vele raadsels zweven. Van waar kwam hij en waar reed
hij heen? Waarom werd er bij hem zwaard noch dolk, lans noch schild
gevonden? Is de dolk of het korte zwaard, dat gestoken moet hebben
in de korte scheede, welke wel in het moer bewaard bleef, evenals de
ijzeren binnenkap van den helm geheel vergaan, of is het verloren,
gestolen of misschien eerder gevonden? In dit verband is een briefje
uit de eerste helft der vorige eeuw interessant, dat ik in het
Deurnesche gemeente-archief aantrof: de districtscommissaris van
Helmond vraagt daarin den burgemeester van Deurne en Liessel of 't
waar is, dat een boer onder Deurne een gouden zwaard gevonden
heeft.
Al haar scherpzinnigheid ten spijt zal de hedendaagsche wetenschap
op al deze vragen wel nooit een afdoend antwoord vermogen te geven.
We weten, dat er zich hier in dien verren, donkeren voortijd een
drama moet hebben afgespeeld; meer niet.
Eerst
in 1934 keerde de helm van de Peel in onze streek terug, zij het dan
in den vorm van eenige afgietsels. Behalve in het Deurnesche
raadhuis valt er een te bezichtigen in het gemeentemuseum van
Helmond. De rest van de zeldzame en opmerkelijke vondst —
zooals boven al geschetst echter van niet minder belang voor onze
geschiedenis — zal nog wel te Leiden bewaard worden.
Deurne,
Sprokkelmaand 1944.
W.
A. M. VAN HEUGTEN.
1
januari 1988 CAVALRY EQUIPMENT OF THE ROMAN ARMY IN THE FIRST
CENTURY A.D.
door
M.C. Bishop
Archaeological
discoveries in Deurne and surrounding areas,
particularly
the Helden ornamental disc
Introduction
Few
archaeological discoveries have been made in the Peel region. This
was noted in the newspaper immediately after the discovery of the
Peel helmet in June 1910, and also later by the director of the
Helenaveen Company, who personally acquired many finds related to
the Peel helmet and kept them in his villa in Helenaveen. After his
death in 1931, these objects disappeared from view.
Further
investigation did reveal more: in early 1837, soldiers working near
Deurne (Huub Kluijtmans says at St. Jozefparochie, newspapers of the
time call it the Kempensche Heide) found many urns and other
objects. These excavated objects were immediately gifts and
merchandise. Some later ended up in the National Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden. In the 1950s and 1960s, amateur archaeologist
Leo Kluijtmans made several discoveries in the Peel region,
primarily stones used as tools. He also found several arrowheads at
the site where the Peel helmet was discovered. These arrowheads
emerged in 1963 after a devastating peat fire that lasted several
months in 1959. He had already discovered a grinding stone before
that. A small bronze ring, which belonged to the man and horse's
equipment, also came to light.
Overview
of archaeological finds in the Peel region
The
author has compiled a list of the objects found below:
February
4, 1837 [1] Several urns or pots of various sizes, all filled with
the ashes of burned bodies and small bones.
[2]
While in some, pieces of metal and parts of weapons were found.
May
4, 1837 [1] Kempen heathland
[2]
First 5, then 50 urns were found.
[3]
Not a single penny or coin was unearthed; only a piece of metal,
which is believed to be the mouthpiece of a wind instrument.
[4]
Excavations are still continuing in some places, but as mentioned,
nothing but ash and the aforementioned human bones are found in the
urns.
June
3, 1837 [1] Urns or pots of various sizes, all filled with the ashes
of burned bodies and small bones.
On
April 23, 1839 [1], a number of urns were sent to us, which had
recently been discovered in Deurne, in North Brabant; and the number
was further increased by the proceeds of a deliberate excavation
ordered for that purpose, donated to the Museum by the mayor of that
place, Mr. van Riet. [2] [probably NBD 2, vRD 4a, vRD 2, vRD 3, ND
3, GtD 15a, k 1942/6.1, k 1925/1.1, NBD 1, k 1942/6.2, vRD 7, k
1925/1.2, ND 2, k 1942/6.3, ND 13, vRD 4b, vRD 5a, ND 4, GtD 13a, ND
8, k 1932/12.9, ND 10, ND 5, vRD 8, vRD 5b, ND 11, k 1942/6.4, GtD
14b]
[3]
The urns appear not to date from the Roman period, but from many
hundreds of years earlier.
March
18, 1840 [1] From Mr. S. H. van der Noordaa, in Dordrecht, two tuff
mortars with pestles, excavated in the vicinity of Deurne in North
Brabant;
[2]
These objects were NOT found in the data of the more than 40,000
objects online.
June
29, 1840 [1] Municipality of Deurne Liessel.
There
are no longer any mortuary urns available in Deurne. The Mayor would
try to obtain more by excavation, which he would gladly release if
successful. -
The
District Commissioner / DD.
Wesselman.
[2]
Below is the part of the answer that concerns Deurne and Liessel,
but refers to Meijel. [3] 15 photos can be found on the Rijksmuseum
website, such as this detail.
October
1, 1840 [1] The North Brabant Society already possesses urns from
three pagan cemeteries, namely: those found in Deurne in 1837, in
Genderen in 1839, and in Gemonde in 1849.
January
26, 1841 [1] From Mr. P. O. P. Guyot, in Nijmegen, a very important
collection of bronze and other objects excavated near Deurne, in the
province of North Brabant, most of which were assembled by Captain
Baron van Voorst and given to Mr. Guyot. [2] The Museum has now been
given possession of the most important and rarest pieces that came
to light during the discovery in Deurne, and which, through various
means, have finally been brought together again to form a whole that
[...]
January
12, 1842 [1] From Mr. P. C. G. GUYOT, of Nijmegen, a number of ten
urns, pots, and bowls, found in Deurne in North Brabant;
[2]
From Mr. S. H. van der Noordaa, of Dordrecht, three more small
objects in urns found in Deurne.
January
20, 1843 [1] From Mr. S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA, we received another
tuff mortar, found in the vicinity of Deurne.
January
1, 1844 [1] A remarkable piece was found in 1844 in a swamp in the
Peel, not far from the hamlet of Maris, and is now in the Leiden
Museum (Cat. ML, as well as Stark, vol. 1876 pp. 7-56; P 1881,
272-274; further HKN) It is a gilt silver medallion
(fig. 149), over 21 cm in diameter, which depicts in fairly high
relief a depiction of a man strangling a lion in the center,
surrounded by animal fights, including two animals disputing a ox's
head. Four holes have been drilled in the edge with chiseled frames,
perhaps to affix the medallion to a shield; the nails with round
heads are still visible in two of the holes. Based on the style of
the figures, the piece is considered to be of Eastern European
origin.
[2]
Dr. H.C. Gallois pointed out to us that there are two discs in the
Cabinet des Médailles in Paris, one of which is only
fragmentarily preserved, that bear a strong resemblance to the
example discussed here.
[3]
See also 1922: Iranians and Greeks in South Russia
[4]
The description of GL672 in the inventory book reads:
Silver
(gilt). Round disc or shield, chased and engraved, in particularly
high-profile work, depicting in the center a wrestler kneeling with
his arms around the neck of a lion he has overpowered. Around it are
two lions pouncing on a ram and two panthers approaching each other,
with a cow's head between them. The entire image is surrounded by
four borders or bands, two in the form of twisted cord, the third a
wavy one, and the fourth or outermost one again of twisted cord. On
the outer edge are four openings at equal distances, with the knobs
in two of these openings, with which the disc was attached to some
other object.
March
31, 1864 [1] Some Roman objects from the estate of the late Mr. S.
H. VAN DER NOORDAA were also acquired, originating from former
inhabitants of our country:
[2]
a very beautifully polished flint axe, 12 dm long;
[3]
a roughly worked trachyte ball, 4 dm in diameter;
[4]
a baked earthenware urn, filled with burnt human bones, 19 dm high;
[5]
another urn, 18 dm high, containing fragments of a bronze hair
needle found inside;
[6,
7, 8] three more urns containing burnt bones and
[9]
remains of bronze rings, etc. The urns, 10, 15.5, and 16 inches
high; [10] two bowls, 9 and 7 dm.;
[11]
four pots of various shapes, 6.5 to 9.5 dm. high;
[12]
a cup-shaped vessel, 5.5 dm. high, and some fragments of pots.
[13]
All these objects, with the possible exception of the WIGGE, were
excavated in 1837 from the old cemetery in Deurne, North Brabant;
[14]
a pair of trachyte stone mortars with pestles from the vicinity of
Deurne and belonging to the estate of the late Mr. S. H. VAN DER
NOORDAA, already mentioned several times; [15] They now form a
considerable whole, together with the pieces found at the same
location, donated to the Museum in 1840 and 1841 by the late Mr. P.
O. G. GUYOT.
March
10, 1890 [1] as well as the umbo or shield plate, embossed in silver
and high relief (Bas Empire, = the period of the soldier emperors
appointed by the army and often quickly dethroned or murdered).
[2]
Both the Stone and Bronze Ages are amply represented, while the
collection of Germanic pottery, including many urns containing the
ashes of our Germanic ancestors, may be considered among the
richest. The Roman glassware and pottery, urns, etc., are also
included.
April
14, 1929 [1] A very beautiful and remarkable piece is the gilded
silver Roman helmet, found near Deurne in the Peel region. [2]
Attention is also drawn to the large silver ornaments, which were
sewn onto leather and formed part of a Roman horse harness. These
pieces were fished out of the Rhine in this country.
August
25, 1937 [1] During reclamation work carried out under the
supervision of the Dutch Heath Society on the territory of the vast
Peel municipality of Deurne, a skeleton was recently discovered.
April
2, 2013 The following concerns the so-called "Ornamental Disc
of Heroes," which can be found under inventory number GL 672 in
the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden. It is dated after 100
BC, material silver, diameter 21 cm, found in Helden.
[1]
Further description: This unique disc originates from Thrace (modern
Bulgaria and Romania) and was used as jewelry. The disc is made of
silver and then gilded.
[2]
The following description from 1840 is NOT of the Helden ornamental
disc:
I
have heard that a farmer in Deurne Liessel is said to be in
possession of
an
old Roman sword and a gold shield, which were supposedly dug up in
the Peel.
I
have serious doubts, as I had never heard anything about it.
I
have also been assured by research that no one knows anything about
it.
This
has probably been confused with what happened in the neighboring
municipality of Meyel.
In
1807, a gold shield was found there.
A
few years ago, while I was in Meyel, I went to the house of the then
mayor
Goossens to see this curiosity. He showed me
a
shield that had been found in the Peel in 1807, about five feet
below the
surface
of the ground in the Peel during a peat excavation.
It
was made of gold, or at least heavily gilded, embossed with
hydroglyphs
and other figures of lions, tigers, etc., and had the
shape
of a crescent, closely resembling a gorget such as the captains of
the
infantry
wore on their chests not so long ago.
[3]
In the chapter "THE SARMATIANS" of the book "Iranians
and Greeks in South Russia" from 1922, we find several similar
discs on PLATE XXVII. Surprisingly, the decorative disk of Helden is
also included there with the description SILVER PLAQUE FROM RAERMOND
(HOLLAND). Rijks Museum, Leiden. For a copy of the entire book, see:
1922: Iranians and Greeks in South Russia by M. Rostovtzeff.
p.
138 ff.: Finally, the same style and the same main ideas appear in
certain
finds
from Germanic countries. I am thinking of the phalarae from Raermond
in Holland
(pl.
XXVII, 3), with a frieze of animals and a figure of Hercules
strangling a lion
which
presents the same peculiarities - beardlessness, local costume - as
the
Hercules
or Panagürishte; and of the famous cauldron from Gundestrup. I
agree with
Salomon
Reinach and Drexel in attributing these monuments to a peculiar
branch of
art
which they call Irano-Celtic: [...]
[4]
The decorative disc comes from the Guillon collection and was
apparently also mentioned in 1876 by B. Stark.
[5]
After years of correspondence, with only one subject: haggling, the
object was purchased in 1890 by the National Museum of Antiquities
for the then exorbitant price of 1550 guilders.
[6]
A similar version of the disc in the shape of a crescent (lunula)
also appears in the aforementioned book as figure 20.
April
2, 2013 The Peel helmet, also in the Museum of Antiquities, has the
following description: This gilded silver cavalry helmet, a true
masterpiece, was found in 1910 while cutting peat in a former swamp
in the Peel region. It is, in fact, only the exterior of the helmet,
which was originally constructed from an iron cap with a leather
covering. The helmet was completely disassembled after its discovery
and has therefore been thoroughly restored. The right cheek flap,
which was lost, has been replaced. The parade helmet likely belonged
to a high-ranking officer. According to an inscription on the
helmet, he was part of the sixth cavalry unit, Stablesia, a unit
also known from ancient literature. A second inscription gives the
name of the maker and the original weight of the silver plates.
Remains of clothing and equipment, as well as several coins, were
found near the helmet. These indicate that the equipment likely
ended up in the peat around 319 AD. We do not know exactly how the
items ended up in the bog. Perhaps the owner drowned, or it was an
offering to the gods. Inventory number k 1911/4.1-5, dated 319-323,
location Deurne, dimensions height 28.5 cm, 359.9 grams
[1]
It should be noted that the sixth division of the cavalry unit on
the helmet is not found in ancient literature, but the first and
second are.
[2]
An important aspect is the following:
Such
delicate objects could not have survived the ravages of time without
the best protection against the elements, robbers, etc. If you
"hide" them, you have a specific purpose for them. A Roman
killed in a swamp is extremely unlikely. After all, if a prominent
Roman officer had been killed, the relatives and soldiers would have
searched for the missing person. They knew that the missing person
had valuable items that they would want returned. They would not
have simply found and taken away the body, naked. A robbery by
others is also impossible, because then all valuables would have
been taken, which is also the goal of robbers, isn't it?
It's
a shame I can't verify the story about the burned hooves, because I
don't know whose, where, or when. Because that would point to a
horse, but why weren't any bones of the horse found?
The
conclusions can only be these:
A
very high-ranking Roman official, apparently in the vicinity, felt
it necessary to hide or conceal his entire military uniform as a
gift to the gods. Around 320, Christianization also began here;
perhaps that was the reason for renouncing the old (pagan) war
implements and exchanging them for a Christian life and appropriate
clothing. Or perhaps the officer retired and couldn't pass on the
clothes that belonged to his rank to an equally high-ranking
successor?
Or
is the person deceased, and are the relatives unwilling, unable, or
permitted to wear the artifacts themselves?
My
suspicion is that the person was indeed very prominent. This
suggests he was likely stationed in Trier, as that was the center of
government at the time. But it's clear that many settlements, both
military and civilian, were already located along the Meuse at the
time. I estimate the distance to be a maximum of 20 km. There
weren't many other safe hiding places nearby, as we can assume there
was no real habitation within a radius of 5 or 10 km from the site,
not even later.
What
can we conclude from this? The complete equipment (of officer,
horse, and very likely also servant) was deliberately buried in a
very desolate area. They likely knew that the peat plants would
continue to grow over it and that the ground disturbance would
disappear within a very short time. They may also have thought that
the objects were protected from weathering there, which has proven
to be only partially true. If the objects were temporarily buried,
the owner would not have had the opportunity to excavate them.
April
2, 2013 The description of the Stevensweert kantharos, located in
the Valkhof Museum in Nijmegen: Stevensweert, late 1st century BC -
mid-1st century AD, silver, partly gilded, h. 10.5 cm
Kantharos
is the Greek name for a chalice-shaped drinking vessel with two
large handles. The latter are missing from this silver example,
which was found in 1943 or shortly before during gravel extraction
along the Meuse River, north of Stevensweert. The lavish decoration
on this vessel is entirely dedicated to the god of wine, Bacchus,
who is often depicted holding a kantharos.
The
foot and rim of the vessel are decorated with stylized floral and
leaf motifs. The decoration between them is divided into two zones
and extruded from the inside into the silver, to such an extent that
the leaves of the ivy and vine tendrils at the bottom sometimes
almost seem to detach from the wall. Both plants are dedicated to
Bacchus and recur in numerous depictions of the god.
In
the zone above, we see the heads of mythological figures,
interspersed with various objects. Of the original six heads, two
have been lost. The entire frieze depicts the world of the wine god,
but various ideas have developed regarding the precise
identification of the heads.
The
characteristic head of the forest god Pan is unmistakable on one
side of the cup, next to that of a bearded man wearing a headscarf,
most likely Bacchus himself. The missing head on the right must have
been that of Hercules, accompanied by his club, bow, and quiver. Pan
and Hercules are often seen in the company of Bacchus, as are the
two Bacchantes (female followers of Bacchus) on the other side, each
with a wreath of ivy leaves around their heads. The head between
them is missing, except for a few remnants of a wild mane of hair,
presumably that of a satyr, also a faithful companion of the wine
god.
Between
the heads, we see various musical instruments, representing the
festive frenzy to which everyone is surrendering, and decorated
sticks and tree branches that the depicted figures often hold in
other scenes.
The
cup was probably made in the eastern Mediterranean. A Roman owner
took it north, where, now deprived of its ears, it ended up in the
Meuse River. A turbulent history followed its discovery: in the
1950s, the "Stevensweert Kantharos" was at the center of a
sensational lawsuit between buyer and seller. Since 1961, the cup
has been a museum piece of exceptional quality and significance in
Nijmegen.
Many
parallels can be drawn between the discovery of the Peel helmet and
the (re)discovery of the kantharos.
Initially,
the discovery was always about the money for the find. Later, it
turned out that the object was much more valuable, and the original
finders/owners protested, feeling wronged. This applied to the
people of Smolen, but also to the owners of the kantharos.
Both
(helmet and drinking cup) are likely considerably older (one or two
centuries) than the other objects related to a man and horse. They
were therefore well cared for during their lifetime and passed on or
sold. The latter is the case with the kantharos, as a name has been
crossed out. Both also have a weight indication (of the silver),
which indicates that the object was already recognized as extremely
valuable at the time.
Evelein
and Brom, along with their researchers, made (scientific) claims
that later proved untenable. For example, the abbreviation of the
name on the helmet was changed, but is the latter interpretation the
correct one? A supposed poem on the kantharos later became a Greek
weight indication.
Both
beautifully crafted silver objects are extremely rare.
Perhaps
less so at the time, as the necessary specimens were likely melted
down.
The
acquisition by museums, especially the eagerness with which they
were acquired, is also remarkable. But after that, curiosity faded.
One explanation must be that the scientific officials were not the
discoverers, so they could not really take credit for themselves.
Documents
and newspaper articles relating to the ornamental disc, etc.
April
5, 1803 TO THE CIVIEL Bailiff: [...] Jan Willem van de Mortel, for
Deurne; Carel Frederik Wesselman Jr., for Mierlo; [...]
circa
1805: Tranchot map of the Peel region
[Thanks
to Huub Kluijtmans! The map includes some modern roads and canals.]
August
25, 1807 On the Burial of the Dead by the Ancients.
September
12, 1813 Municipalities of Deurne and Liessel.
1st
Lot. Art. 25. The 1/4 of the following tithes, 1st. large Klamp
tithe of Peelklamp, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd parts, 2nd large Klap tithe of
Middelklamp, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd parts, 3rd large Kamp tithe of
Heijklamp, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd parts, and 4th Klamp tithe of Dongen,
originate from the Teutonic Order; (half of these tithes belong to
various private individuals) a 1/4 to the Latin school of Gemert and
a 1/4 to the government. The 1/4 belonging to the domains is
estimated at a revenue of 924 francs 78 c. and a capital of
............... 23,119 francs 50 c.
2nd
Lot. Art. 26. Half of the Klamptiend from the Moesdijk, originating
as above, (half of this tithe belongs to Mr. Berenstein, in Vugt),
the share belonging to the government; is estimated at a revenue of
267 francs 90 cents on a capital of 6697 francs 50 cents.
3rd
Lot. Art. 27. The Klamp tithe of Lijssel and 1/4 of the tithes of
the hamlet of den Grooten Bottel and Valkenakker, originating from
the Teutonic Order, (the 3/4 of the tithes of the hamlet of den
Grooten Bottel and Valkenakker belong to the amortization fund; the
share belonging to the domain is estimated at a revenue of 377
francs 96 cents and a capital of ...................... 9449 francs
0 cents.)
February
4, 1837 Deurne, February 3, 1837.
To
the Editors of the Noord-Brabander.
For
eight days now, the municipality of Deurne has provided proof that
this region also contains treasures in terms of antiquity and
history, which can easily be compared to other parts of our country.
The attention of our Dutch scholars is therefore drawn to the
following: which may provide them with the opportunity will be
established, not only to expand their collections of antiquities
with important articles, but also to contribute significantly to
history.
Begun
by the official corps of Regt. Huss. No. 6 and continued by private
individuals hoping to find treasures, work is underway here to
unearth a camp or army, or even a cemetery; likely originating from
a tribe driven out of the Ardennes by the Romans and hidden here,
behind the marshlands of the Peel. Several urns or pots of various
sizes, all filled with the ashes of burned bodies and small bones,
have already been excavated; while in some, fragments of metal and
parts of weapons have been found. These pots are covered by mounds
of varying height, which, like the pots themselves, have certainly
increased in size and height in proportion to the prestige and rank
afforded by the person buried there. The pot is almost like a globe,
slightly inclined towards the top. The lower end tapers ovally,
while the upper end has a slanting rim, which will have
approximately the same circumference as the pot itself. The lid,
which is very small in proportion to the pot, closes well and
appears to be tightly covered. The largest pots will have a diameter
of 3 palms, while the smallest will barely reach 1 to 1.5, and the
mounds will also vary by almost a yard, as some are nearly 2 feet
high, while others are more than five feet high. The pots are made
of potting clay (which is also found here) and demonstrate that they
had already advanced the art of turning to a considerable extent.
P.
[elsewhere:]
- The attention of our national scholars and antiquarians is called
to this discovery, which may be useful for adding to their
collections or for elucidating history.
May
4, 1837 NETHERLANDS.
-
In the latest issue of the Nederlandsch Magazijn (Dutch Magazine),
one finds an article about the recently unearthed urns in North
Brabant. It mainly concerns the recent publication of several of our
daily newspapers reporting the excavation of antiquities in the
municipality of Deurne, province of North Brabant. The editors of
the aforementioned magazine have now received some details regarding
the excavation, primarily as follows: A captain in the Hussar
Regiment No. 6. On an earlier occasion, having discovered that some
mounds on the Kempen heathland, upon excavation, turned out to be
burial mounds and contained urns or ash jars, the idea arose that
some similar mounds, present on the heath near Deurne, his current
cantonment, might have served similar purposes and contained
antiquities. With the permission of the mayor there, after
excavation work was carried out, five urns or ash jars were found,
which increased with subsequent excavations and now number more than
fifty. It is unfortunate that the farmers, hearing of this, also
began digging on their own side, hoping to find treasures, smashing
or damaging the urns they unearthed. Great was the disappointment of
these people when they found nothing but ash and a few half-decayed,
apparently human bones, such as skulls, ribs, thighbones, etc. Not a
single penny or coin was unearthed; only a small piece of metal,
which one assumes to be the mouthpiece of a wind instrument. The
urns found are of various sizes, but all of more or less the same
shape, and some have lids. The heathland in which the urns were
found is about four acres in size; the mounds are fairly regular,
but the entire area appears to have served as a burial ground, as
urns have also been found outside the mounds and at some distance
from them. The urns are usually covered with a layer of charcoal;
after all, as soon as one finds this, one is certain to be near an
urn. Some are so high that the fibrous roots of common heather can
be found above the ash; others have been found deeper, but at uneven
depths. The material from which these pots or urns are composed is
smooth, solid, and dark brown in color; no glaze is visible on them,
nor any inscription or inscription. If they were made in Deurne,
where two potteries are still found, then one must admit that this
art has made no progress there in 10 or 15 centuries; for these urns
are worked more precisely and smoothly and with more care than is
currently the case. Excavations are still continuing in some places,
but, as mentioned, nothing is found in the urns except ash and the
aforementioned human bones.
June
3, 1837 HAARLEM, February 30
A
report has been received from the municipality of Deurne (North
Brabant) concerning the discovery of a camp or cemetery near that
location. It is believed to originate from an ancient tribe, driven
from the Ardennes by the Romans, who sought refuge there, behind the
marshlands of the Peel. The first discovery of this military or
burial ground was made by officers of the Hussar Regiment No. 6,
stationed in the area, and since then, excavations have continued by
private individuals in the hope of finding treasure. Among the finds
thus far are several urns or pots of various sizes, all filled with
the ashes of cremated bodies and small bones; in some of these pots,
it is reported, pieces of metal and fragments of weapons have been
found. The aforementioned pots are covered by mounds of varying
height, which, like the pots themselves, have likely increased in
size and height according to the appearance and rank of the person
buried there. The pots are made of clay and are well-turned; the
largest have a diameter of 3, the smallest just over 1 palm. Some
mounds are almost 2 feet high, others more than 5 feet.
October
3, 1837 PUBLIC AUCTION at the Country Estate STIL GENOEGEN, on the
Hoorn, near the city of Delft.
It
is planned to publicly sell at the aforementioned location on
Monday, October 9, 1837, and the following days, daily from 10:00
a.m. until 2:00 p.m.: A neat and clean FURNITURE, consisting of some
gold and silverware, such as: gold rings, silver spoons and forks, a
tea caddy, presentation tins, a gorget, a silver-hilted sword, and
more; [...]
June
24, 1838 Obituary of Maximilien Jacques de Man, director of the
archives of war and the topographical bureau
April
23, 1839 MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES IN LEIJDEN
[...]
The collection of Germanic and Nordic antiquities has once again
increased in wealth and diversity, especially in the past year.
By
favorable arrangement with the Department of Internal Affairs, a
number of urns were sent to us, which had recently been discovered
in Deurne, North Brabant; and the number was further increased by
the proceeds of a specially ordered excavation, donated to the
Museum by the mayor of that town, Mr. van Riet.
September
19, 1839 — Mr. C. R. HERMANS, has in the Provinciaal Dagblad
of this region published the following report regarding the
discovery of corpse urns in St. Michielgestel. "For some time
now, I have been aware that corpse urns had been dug up from time to
time in Gemonde, municipality of St. Michiel-Gestel. On the 10th of
this month, I went to personally verify the truth. I found a field
on the Dommel River, higher than the adjacent lands, about 14 loops
in size, called the Dommelakker (Dommel Field), belonging to the
owner of the large Wielsche Hoeve farm. Near this field lies a
"Heilig Weike" (Holy Meadow), bordered on two sides by the
Dommel River and on the third by a deep, unfathomable wheel. Before
the sale on April 7, 1803, this farm and its estate belonged to the
estate of the Lord of St. Michiel-Gestel. Gemonde itself is now a
parish, but not a municipality, and partly belongs to the
municipalities of St. Michiel-Gestel, Boxtel, and Schijndel. The old
church of Gemonde, which was replaced by a new one in 1824, bore all
the evidence of ancient foundation; it has even been said that it
was once a Roman fortress. All these circumstances lead us to
suspect that Gemonde was a sacred place for the preaching of
Christianity, and that this Dommelakker and this holy meadow
referred to the religious institutions of our fathers during the
pagan era; this is further confirmed by the so-called St. Martin's
tax, formerly paid by the residents of this farm, and by the tax
measure (a remnant of a funeral meal of the pagans). The farmers
told me that around Candlemas Day of this year, they had dug out a
pot containing bones, ash, and sand; but that it, being very
brittle, shattered, so they buried it again. I was further informed
that five more similar urns had been dug up a few years ago. I would
have loved to have them work to retrieve the remaining urns, which
are undoubtedly still in the ground, but this was impossible because
this Dommelakker has been cultivated since time immemorial, and as a
result, it has been piled up with topsoil to a height of about three
feet. Since the farmers are unable to clear the field of sand, I
have agreed that any urns found will be given to me for a reasonable
fee. In the papers and documents belonging to the farm, I found
nothing that sheds further light on the former use of the
Dommelakker and the holy meadow, but one piece concerning the St.
Martin's tax and the tax meal, which we mentioned above, is so
important for the history of pagan theology that we believe we are
rendering a real service to all antiquarians by including it in its
entirety in our Historical Miscellany on North Brabant. All our
scholars who have written about indigenous antiquities note that no
province is so rich in ancient remains or traces of prehistory as
North Brabant, and then accuse us of shamefully neglecting them. May
we soon be able to refute this accusation! I therefore dare invite
every resident of North Brabant to share with me any details that
strike them as odd, or anything of significance they find. I
especially invite the Mayors and Secretaries of the municipalities,
to whom I will gratefully return any just reward given to the owners
or discoverers of coins, funeral urns, stone battle axes, etc., etc.
while I offer double the true value for every Roman silver or gold
coin found in North Brabant."
September
24, 1839 Burial Urns, a minor human doctor, philanthropist, rector,
and
the Holy Week in Gemonde.
It
was the first days of September. — I wanted to breathe the
fresh air; I went out and, without knowing where to, I carelessly
followed the bends of the Dommel: very surprised when I saw myself
far from the city and in the vicinity of the parish of Gemonde (not
the municipality, clumsy reader:). The harvest activities made the
Dommel field lively and they drew my attention. — Suddenly I
saw the parishioners saying goodbye to their duties and surrounding
a person unknown to me, but whom I took for a townsman by his dress.
Curiosity made me approach the spot— The unknown The gentleman
stood with his back to me; I was not allowed to look at his face: he
was engaged in lively conversation. The farmers stood gaping and
astonished, listening to him. — I listened with rapt
attention, and I could hear the following words:
The
Unknown. For some time now, I have learned that in Gemonde, in the
municipality of St. Michiels-Gestel, people had been excavating urns
from time to time. Today I come to convince myself of the truth in
person:
This
is an important discovery for archaeology and antiquarian
booksellers, and it is my sacred duty to make it known; science is
advancing, and I, I strive for immortality; I want to make the
discovery of mortuary urns known everywhere: I know how to put my
ideas on paper well and easily in Latin and Dutch.
A
farmer. Was that gentleman?
Another.
He speaks Latin just like the townspeople in Gestel.
A
third. Sir, you mustn't take it amiss, but a farmer can't speak
Latin in our country.
The
unknown. My good friends, I don't speak Latin, but I only mentioned
the word Latin. — I wanted to ask you if you have unearthed
mortuary urns here?
The
farmer. No, sir, they aren't here in the town. The Unknown. Gemonde
is not a municipality, my dear friend; it's a parish and partly
belongs to the municipalities of St. Michiels-Gestel, Boxtel, and
Schijndel. — But understand me, Burial urns are vases, in
other words, a kind of pot in which our ancestors, centuries ago,
preserved the ashes and also the bones of their relatives or friends
after death — haven't you found such burial pots here?
The
Farmer. No, sir, they bury the dead here in pebbles in the
churchyard.
The
Unknown. My dear friend, you don't understand me. Have you also
found one or more pots with spades here in the country?
The
Farmer. I don't know.
Another.
Perhaps that gentleman of that pot from Peer, which we broke at his
hillsides during the holy week, pricks it.
A
third. When he still wanted compensation for the pot and the soup
and the bones that were in it, the Unknown Man, who, in his
satisfaction at having succeeded in his field discovery, seems not
to have understood the last words properly. Were there any bones in
that urn, vase, or pot?
De
Boer. Yes, sir, but it's been finished a long time ago—Peer
wanted to have a report drawn up then; then they finished the law!
Could they do anything for us now?
De
Unknown. It would certainly have been prudent to have such a
remarkable excavation confirmed by a report; then we could have
known a few things for sure about it.
De
Boer. Sir, it's certainly an avocado or one of the gentlemen from
Den Bosch; but it's all finished and out of the world.
De
Unknown. That grieves me... (thinking) Meanwhile, we try to hear
what that urn was like. - Dear friend, what did that Burial Urn look
like?
De
Boer. As long as you don't report it, sir.
The
Unknown. Well, no—you did nothing reprehensible—You were
not familiar with scientific antiquity, and therefore one cannot
blame you for not having spared the important relic of the past
centuries. But, tell me, I pray you, what was that broken pot like?
De
Boer. Why do you say sowed! ... It was a pot with two ears—sun-brown
pot, yellow inside, exactly a p... pot...
The
Unknown in ecstasy, without paying attention to the Boer's words.
Two ears! That's Roman! No more doubt! Oh, holy zeal! — Thank
my inclination for the study, which constitutes my greatest
happiness on earth! Two ears! Yes! That is Roman! — When you
again find corpse urns or stone battle axes, come to me! (More and
more enraptured.) To you be prosperity, fortune! To me immortality!
immortality! For Heaven's sake, bring me the remains of antiquity
you might find! Save them from destruction! Oh! I pray you, let
nothing be lost! No longer in control of himself, he stepped back a
few paces, full of rapture and gestures, and, like someone
well-versed in the rules of outward eloquence, adopted the tone of
the pulpit speech:
"All
our scholars," he says solemnly, "who have written about
indigenous antiquities note that no province is so rich in ancient
remains or traces of prehistory as North Brabant, and then accuse us
of shamefully neglecting them. May we soon disprove this accusation!
I dare, therefore, invite every resident of North Brabant to send me
any details that strike them as strange, or anything of any
significance that may be found. I especially invite the Mayors and
Secretaries of the municipalities to do so, to whom I gratefully
offer every reasonable reward to the owners or finders of coins. "I
will return any given urns, stone battle axes, etc., etc., while for
every Roman, silver, or gold penny found in North Brabant, I offer
double its true value."
And
suddenly: now I'm throwing my discovery into our historical
miscellany on North Brabant and into all the annals of science. —
And, they held him back, they asked him where the pots were supposed
to be taken for so much money... but he hurried on: only the words
"I, litterarum humaniorum doctor, philosophiae magister et
rector" reached my ears.
The
rapid pace of the exuberant antiquarian prevented me from engaging
in conversation: I wanted to point out to him that, in his ecstasy,
he had mistaken Peer's broken pot for a Roman mortuary urn and the
bones of his soup for the bones of our ancestors.
The
farmers were stunned—and I laughed. I returned to town and
repeatedly heard the words "mortuary urns" and "stone
battle axes" echoing in the air.
A
few days after this incident, I read in the Provincial Dagblad of
September 17th that C. R. HERMANS (?) had discovered the excavation
of mortuary urns in Gemonde. B. M.
September
26, 1839 I read in the Provincial Dagblad of North Brabant, of the
17th of this month, No. 75, an article about mortuary urns
discovered at St. Michiels Gestel.
The
announcement of this discovery and the specific designation of the
location may have been useful and deserved to be briefly noted in
such notebooks as those intended to collect all the circumstances
and details that can contribute to the knowledge of our region.
However, the discovery does not seem to me so important, and
certainly not so new, that it could provoke a cry of joy from the
antiquarian and antiquity lover that would resound throughout the
entire Province. If this were the first discovery of such a nature
in the designated location, I would applaud the author's enthusiasm,
and I would find it very appropriate that the public's attention be
drawn to this event, in order to stimulate research. However, I must
point out to the author that the fuss he is making about his
discovery exposes him to the suspicion that he is not entirely
familiar with the condition of our land and the excavations carried
out therein, especially when I hear him say that the details he
observed lead him to suspect that Gemonde was a holy place before
the preaching of Christianity, etc. Indeed, it is already more than
enough known, and it is found here and there in various writings,
that St. Michiels Gestel and surrounding lands apparently served as
a residence or settlement for the Romans; thus, it is not a mere
conjecture born from the author's observations, but a matter of
common knowledge. There are ample indications that the old church of
Gemonde existed long before Christianity, and there are too many
remains to doubt that point.
But
besides the fact that the discovery doesn't seem so significant to
me that it should be declared a miracle by an expert, the excavation
has, in my opinion, not been sufficiently proven or clarified by the
author's investigations. I find nothing to guarantee that mortuary
urns were actually found there: the only thing the author tells us
is that the farmers found a single pot containing bones, ash, and
sand, and that five more such urns have been excavated in the past
few years. Such urns. Which urns? The author doesn't tell us, and
according to what we've been told, the find could just as easily
have been a forgotten hare's nest as a Roman mortuary urn. What was
most important to know here—namely, the shape of the pot, the
manner of its closure, the color of the earth or other composition,
the depth at which the pot was found, etc.—seems not to have
been investigated by the author, and he immediately assumes, based
on this, that they were urns, because he states that five similar
urns have been found, and also that these urns are mortuary urns, as
appears from the article's title. From what the author tells us, it
has not been proven at all to me that these pots are urns, nor that
they are mortuary urns. I accept this all the less readily because
the farmers' statement that they found bones, ash, and sand in them
seems highly suspicious to me, firstly because ash and sand or earth
are not immediately distinguishable, especially by untrained farmers
who certainly examined the object with little care and attention;
And secondly, because the discovery of bones in a mortuary urn is
unusual, at least all the circumstances relating to the pole and the
bones would have to be meticulously documented to have any value in
the eyes of science; for it is known that the urns used to store the
ashes of cremated corpses, the actual mortuary urns, which must be
distinguished from the urns or rather vases used to decorate burial
vaults, were usually conical at the top and had only a narrow
opening, so that it would not have been possible to place bones in
them. The storage of bones in a pot may certainly have occurred, but
there is more to it than what the author has learned to believe it
to be true.
that
the pot with bones is a Roman urn, and indeed a mortuary urn. —
When one observes facts to include them as contributions to history,
and wishes the description to serve to save those facts from
oblivion and pass them on to posterity, then one should first and
foremost be clear and detailed in one's account. Failing that, it is
better to remain silent until further research, further experience,
and further clarification, and not to present oneself to the public
with unfinished work; But secondly, one must proceed cautiously and
judiciously in deducing these facts, so as not to allow daring
assertions and conjectures to gain ground and introduce
misunderstandings into historical works. It is in the nature of
things that antiquity gradually adds weight to the judgments of
writers, and that over time, their deductions are accepted as
truths, and often, for lack of anything better, must be accepted as
such.
The
author of the aforementioned article, please accept these
observations; in my opinion, it contains nothing remarkable
regarding the excavation described, at least nothing sufficiently
clarified to be useful for our history. The conclusions are too
daring not to be dangerous and therefore detrimental to the purity
and sincerity that should characterize all history. I feel compelled
to make these observations all the sooner, as it appears from the
article that the author, whom I do not have the honor of knowing—for
that matter, it is not given to every scholar to have a European
name—is also working on a historical miscellany on North
Brabant, and it seems to me of the utmost importance that he refrain
from presenting facts and conclusions so hastily in that work.
A
second piece of advice I offer the author is this: that his writings
should not appear to serve his own ambition rather than as a
monument to history. The elaborate description of his observation
(which actually boils down to nothing more than the report that some
farmers told him they had found a pot containing bones, ash, and
sand on the Dommelakker, next to the Holy Meadow in Gemonde) and the
proclamation of his fervent zeal for antiquity in our province, such
that he calls upon all North Brabant residents to search, dig, and
excavate with the promise of rewarding the fruits of their research,
thus placing his money at a premium and displaying selflessness and
sacrifice, are very well-suited to lead readers to believe that the
author supposedly performed a significant service through his
observation and the communication thereof, and played a leading role
in the development of the history of our province.
v.
v. v.
March
14, 1840 MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES IN LEIJDEN. [...] From Mr. S. H. van
der Noordaa, of Dordrecht, two tuff mortars with pestles, excavated
near Deurne in North Brabant; these are the only objects of this
kind in the Museum's possession, and which, as far as we know, have
not yet been found elsewhere. The proximity of the extensive burial
grounds there, discovered in the heathland a few years ago, lends
considerable credibility to the suspicion that both these mortars
and the urns, which are found in such large numbers in that area,
belong to the same people, and thus provide a crucial contribution
to the knowledge of the domestic life of the ancient Germanic
peoples, of whose household goods, except in Northern Europe,
relatively little remains.
April
17, 1840 [Special Correspondence]
No.
2 's-Hertogenbosch April 17, 1840
Department
of Arts and Sciences
Special
Correspondence
I
have been given some questions which UWEG may be able to answer, and
for which I have the honor to enlist its good offices. These
questions are as follows:
Municipality
of Asten
1.
On the borders of this municipality, towards the village of Meyel,
lies a Willebrordswell; how did this well get its name?
2.
Was the well built with baked or live stone?
3.
Is there a chapel dedicated to Saint Willebrord located nearby?
4.
What miraculous or healing powers are attributed to the water from
this well, and to which ailments is this water used?
Municipality
of Bakel
1.
According to Verhees's map, the Kampsche stream originates at the
Enschydse or bad well; why is this well so named?
2.
Was the well built with baked or live stone?
3.
What strange power is attributed to the water of this bad well?
Municipality
of Aarle-Rixtel
1.
On Verhees's map, a ?? well appears, not far from the small river.
Aan
Den Heere District Commissioner of the 3rd District, 1st
Section.
Bakelsche Aa, is this a brick well or merely a
spring?
2. What folklore is circulating that might reveal the
origin of this name?
3. Is any strange power attributed to the
water of this wolf well?
4. Who currently owns the Guldenhuis
(Golden House), and why is the building called that? Is it, or was
it formerly, a castle?
5. Are there still popular traditions
concerning the Templars and the Knights of Maltha, who lived in
Rixtel?
Municipality
of Helmond
Within that municipality, there is a carillon,
and for the history of bell foundries and music, it is considered
important to know:
1. When was it first erected?
2. Who built
it, and at whose expense did this happen? 3. How many bells does it
consist of?
4. Which parts of the hour are announced by the
chimes, besides the clockwork?
5. Is it also played, and if so,
on which days of the week?
6. Who pays the chimes, and how much
is their salary?
7. Does the chimes have any artistic value, or
is they in a dilapidated state?
Municipality
of Deurne and Liessel
According to reports, a farmer there
named Mortel owns a Roman sword and a gold shield, which were
allegedly excavated in the Peel region.
1. Is this actually the
case, and if so, when and where did he find the sword and shield?
2.
Would there be an opportunity to purchase them for the collection of
antiques and curiosities of the Provincial Society of Arts and
Sciences?
3. If so, at what price?
4. If the owner is unable
to agree to the sale, would he be willing to hand over these
objects, against proof, for assessment and signature?
5. Is there
an opportunity to purchase any of the recently discovered mortuary
urns or other curiosities excavated there?
6. What is the name of
the place where these urns were excavated?
Relying on the
goodwill of UWEG, I would be pleased to see these questions resolved
as precisely as possible.
UWEG, please accept the assurance and
my highest consideration and distinction.
BV?denteegen
[?]
May
12, 1840 [letter to the Mayor of Deurne]
Mayor of Deurne Liessel
Helmond, May 12, 1840
The Governor of this province (probably
requested to do so by the board of the Society for the Promotion of
Sciences and Arts in North Brabant) has given me a large number of
questions to answer regarding antiquities in my District.
These
questions, insofar as they concern the municipality of Deurne
Liessel, are as follows:
According to a reported report, a farmer
named Mortel allegedly possesses a Roman sword and a gold shield,
which were allegedly excavated in the Peel.
1. Is this really the
case? And if so, when and where were the sword and shield found?
2.
Would it be possible to purchase it for the collection of antiques
and rarities of the provincial society of arts and water boards?
3.
If so, at what price?
4. If the owner is unable to decide to
sell, would they be willing to hand over the objects for appraisal
and signature, against proof?
5. Is it possible to purchase any
of the recently discovered mortuary urns or other curiosities
excavated there?
6. What is the name of the place where these
urns were excavated?
A somewhat prompt answer to these questions
would be appreciated.
D. Distr.
June
29, 1840. Registration of the land registry; some are scattered in
many books at home, forgotten little notes, confusion; this could be
prevented if the law of the parcel-by-parcel register were cited in
the conveyance. -
June
29, 1840 Provincial Board RANB 17 inv. no. 12419 no. 1
Missive of
April 17, 111, no. 8. / Reply to the letter from
Department of
Arts and Sciences / April 17, 111, no. 8.
Helmond,
June 29, 1840.
[To the Governor]
In the aforementioned letter,
UWEG [=You] has given me some questions to answer regarding ancient
monuments that are said to be located in some municipalities of my
district. I could have answered some of these questions immediately,
[but] to obtain information, I took advantage of my travels, as when
the council members are in session, I believed I could be better
informed. I will observe the order as it appears in your letter.
Municipality
of Asten
[1] Some council members had heard of the St.
Willebrordsput, but no one could tell me where it might have been.
It is certain that it no longer exists within living memory. It is
located just on or near the boundary between Deurne, Liessel, and
Meyel.
There
is a stone post still known by the name of Wilbertsput. If a well
existed near that post, it must have been in the municipality of
Meyel. Nothing else was known about it.
To
His Eminence the State Councillor Governor of the Province of North
Brabant
[2]
People have heard of a St. Willebrord well, and this name is still
very well known here, but no one knows of a well there. There is a
stone post bearing the name of Wilbertsput, just on or near the
boundary between Deurne and Meyel. If there was a well, it must have
been in the Meyel municipality. Nothing else was known about it. -
Municipality
of Bakel.
[1]
The name "boorput" was not unknown to most members of the
council, but they were unable to pinpoint the exact location. An old
man of about eighty had heard from his ancestors that the "boorte
put" (bad well) was a small depression, pond, or hole in the
upper part of the Peel, about the size of two Dutch rods, located in
the upper part of the Peel towards Venrooy, behind an area known as
"de Putten" (the wells). In his youth, shepherds were
accustomed to watering their sheep there during severe droughts. In
this region of the Meyery, the term "putten" (wells) often
refers to depressions or holes in the heathland or heathland,
without referring to brick wells. It is almost certain that no brick
well has ever existed in the Peel.
[2]
Some members of the council had heard of the "boorte put,"
but no one knew where it was located. A member remembered that a
small pond, depression, or hollow in the heath, about the size of
two Dutch rods, located in the Peel behind the so-called wells,
bears the name of a well or bad well. It is therefore certain that
no brick well has existed there, and probably never has, to human
memory.
Municipality
of Aarle-Rixtel.
[1]
Wolfsput is a hamlet or rather small hamlet below Aarle, located on
the borders of Bakel, next to the Schipstal estate. According to an
old tradition, a wolf is said to have once jumped into the well here
and killed it, from which its name derives.
The
owner of the Guldenhuis is Albert Bots of Helmond. The walls, higher
than those of an ordinary house, seem to indicate that in earlier
years it must have been a kind of small castle. Near the demolished
church of Rixtel stands a farm, which originated in the Knights
Templar and was subsequently owned by the Knights of Maltha until
the revolution of 1795. No knight of this family ever lived in
Rixtel. This farm was sold to a farmer by the estate board in 1818.
[2]
Wolfsput is a hamlet located below Aarle, on the borders of Bakel.
It consists of four houses. According to tradition, a wolf was
supposedly captured in a well here, from which its name derives. -
Guldenhuis
belongs to Albertus Bots; a cotton mill he established there is now
in disrepair. The house, although known as Rixtel Castle, is
somewhat higher than an ordinary house and formerly served as a
residence for the Lords of Rixtel, once a very important lordship.
The
Knights of Malta only know that they legally owned a farm here,
which later became part of the estate and was sold to a farmer in
1808.
Municipality
of Helmond.
There
was a miserable carillon of eleven bells in Helmond, which was
recently replaced by another. The bells of the previous carillon
were acquired in exchange by bell founder Fritsen in Aarle. I have
not been able to discover when the previous carillon was installed,
but it must have been very old. The bells bore no markings
whatsoever, neither of their maker nor of the year in which they
were cast.
Municipality
of Deurne Liessel. I very much doubt the report that a farmer in
Deurne-Liessel was in possession of an old Roman sword and a gold
shield, which had supposedly been dug up in the Peel, as I had never
heard anything about it. Research also assured me that no one knows
anything about it. This was probably confused with what happened in
the neighboring municipality of Meyel. In 1807, a gold shield was
found there. A few years ago, while in Meyel, I went to the house of
the then mayor, Goossens, to see this curiosity. He showed me a
shield which had been found in the Peel in the year 1807, about five
feet below the surface of the ground in the Peel during a peat
excavation. It was made of gold or at least heavily gilded work, and
on it were hammered hydroglyphs and other figures of lions, tigers,
etc., and had the shape of a half-moon, very similar to to a gorget
like the kind worn by infantry captains not so long ago on their
breasts. Mr. van Keverberg, then deputy prefect in Cleef, had taken
this piece with him to Paris and, according to the Mayor, offered a
lot of money for it after his return, but they could not agree on
the price. -
There
are no longer any burial urns available in Deurne. The Mayor would
try to find some by digging, which he would gladly relinquish if
successful. -
The
District Commissioner / DD.
Wesselman.
October
1, 1840 [...] Thus, the North Brabant Society already possesses urns
from three pagan cemeteries: those found in Deurne in 1837, in
Genderen in 1839, and in Gemonde in 1849. [...]
January
26, 1841 MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES IN LEYDEN.
[...]
In the department of Germanic and Nordic antiquities, belonging to
Major General Rottiers, to whose zeal and care the Museum owes its
possession of so many Greek works of art, a bronze statuette of a
god, found near Aachen.
A
most important collection of bronzes and other objects, belonging to
Mr. P. O. P. Guyot, in Nijmegen, was discovered near Deurne, in the
province of North Brabant, most of which had been assembled by
Captain Baron van Voorst and bequeathed to Mr. Guyot. This
significant acquisition, combined with the urns and other objects we
mentioned in our previous reports (Staats-Courant 1838 and 1839),
now provides the Museum with the most important and rare pieces
unearthed during the discovery in Deurne. These, finally reunited
through various means, form a whole that can make an unexpected and
significant contribution to the knowledge of one of the ancient
tribes that formerly inhabited our country. In the Konst- en
Letterbode 1838, May, pages 379-395, most of the objects were
described by the Curator, Dr. Janssen. [...]
The
important archaeological discoveries made near Nijmegen during the
practical exercises of the corps of miners and sappers will soon
also provide a new treasure trove for the Museum's department of
ROMAN antiquities. [...]
January
12, 1842 [...] From Mr. P. C. G. GUYOT, of Nijmegen, another set of
ten urns, pots, and bowls, found in Deurne in North Brabant; along
with seven others, probably originating from the area around the
Hunnebedden in Drenthe.
From
Mr. S. H. van der Noordaa, of Dordrecht, another set of three small
objects in urns found in Deurne. [...]
February
25, 1842 M. P. O. P. Guyot in Nymègue, a very remarkable
collection of bronzes and other objects found near Deurne in
Septentrional Brabant, which, for the purpose of collecting, was
assembled by Mr. Captain Baron Van Vorst, who left them to Mr.
Guyot. This important acquisition joint with urns and other objects
was completed in 1838 and 1839, with the Museum and possession of
the principals and the additional rare results of the fouille près
de Deurne. After all, the preparations for maintenant reunions form
an ensemble that lasts a long time over the connaissance of the old
people that they used to live in. La part de ces objets sont décrits
par M. le conservator Janssen dans le Kunst en Letterbode de 1838,
pages 370-—395.
January
20, 1843 From Mr S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA we again received a tuff
mortar, found in the vicinity of Deurne.
January
1, 1844 A remarkable piece was found in 1844 in a swamp in the Peel
region, not far from the hamlet of Maris, and is now in the Leiden
Museum (Cat. ML, as well as Stark, vol. 1876, pp. 7-56; P 1881,
272-274; also HKN). It is a medallion (fig. 149) of gilded silver,
over 21 cm in diameter, which depicts in fairly high relief a
depiction of a man strangling a lion in the center, surrounded by
animal fights, including two animals disputing a ox's head. Four
holes have been drilled in the edge with chiseled frames, perhaps to
attach the medallion to a shield; two of the holes still contain the
nails with round heads. Based on the style of the figures, the piece
is considered to be of Eastern European origin.
[Related
note] Dr. H.C. Gallois pointed out to us that in the Cabinet des
Médailles in Paris there are two disks, one of which is only
fragmentarily preserved, that bear a strong resemblance to the
specimen discussed here. He also referred us to an essay by Fr.
Drexel in the Jahrbuch des Kaiserlich deutschen Archäologischen
Instituts, XXX (1915), p. 1 ff., according to whom these disks were
made at the beginning of the first century B.C. in the vicinity of
the Black Sea, and to the view of M. Rostovtzeff in his book
Iranians and Greeks (Oxford, 1922), p. 138 ff.
The
latter, who sees Hercules in the human figure on the Leiden piece,
believes that the discs originated between the third and first
century BC in southern Russia, as the work of Sarmatian artists. The
three discs are depicted by Rostov-on-Trent, the Leiden one, and
only the well-preserved Parisian one, also by Drexel.
See
also
http://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ead.html?id=FRBNFEAD000091538?
April
9, 1847 From Lieutenant Colonel Jhr. VAN DER BRUGGHE VAN CROY, a
bronze so-called framea, provided with a handle, and the fragment of
a second similar one, both found not far from Croy Castle, in a
meadow along the back road to Helmond.
January
1, 1850 [...] Numerous objects from the Stone, Bronze, and Iron
periods have been unearthed from his [=Limburg] soil in earlier and
later periods. The scientific investigations to track them down
first date from around 1825. These were initiated by Mr. CHARLES
GUILLON, a notary in Roermond. A very wealthy man, he amassed a
large collection of antiquities of all kinds and from various
periods, which was regularly supplemented until his death on
November 10, 1873. Later, it was dispersed through sale, but most of
the objects from the prehistoric period have fortunately found a
home in the Rijksmuseum in Leiden. [...]
December
5, 1856 On Monday, December 15, 1856, and the five following days,
in the morning and afternoon, the bookseller G. THEOD. BOM, in
Amsterdam, at ODEON for Public Sale: the excellent CABINET OF
MEMORIAL AND TOKENS, HONOUR AND CHARACTER MARKS, MEETING COINS,
GUILD, SHUTTERS, RELIGIOUS, FREEMASONIC, PRIZE AND FIRE ENGINE
TOKENS, EMERGENCY COINS AND COINS, COIN, MEDAL AND HEROMICAL BOOKS,
BEQUESTED BY THE LATE MR. S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA, Member of various
Domestic and Foreign Literary, Historical and Archaeological
Societies in Dordrecht. VIEWING DAYS: FRIDAY and SATURDAY, 12 and 13
December. The CATALOGUE can be obtained, postage paid, upon request
for 20 cents from G. THEOD. BOM, Kalverstraat, E 10. (19573)
April
20, 1863 The following is reported from Stadskanaal to
Veend[amsche]. Ct.: During the excavation of the peat by G. Schuur
here, located in the mouth of Boerveen, a silver spoon was recently
found under a 9-foot layer of peat. At the end, it is marked on both
sides with the number 33, around which a flower is carved. It is not
unlikely that the number indicates the year of its creation, for
while silver tableware may not have been used, or only very rarely,
by our ancestors at that time, the Romans, who also visited these
regions, not only made extensive use of this precious metal but also
achieved considerable success in the art of chiseling. This
discovery, we believe, provides yet another of the numerous pieces
of evidence that the soil here was, if not inhabited, at least
visited in ancient times.
April
22, 1863 N.B. We report this information as we find it, but note
that if this spoon is not a stemmed or wine spoon "trulla,"
but a "cochlear," it cannot possibly date from the year
33, thus the time of Emperor Tiberius.
March
31, 1864 Several acquisitions were made for the Dutch Antiquities
Department. Along with the aforementioned Roman objects from the
estate of the late Mr. S.H. VAN DER NOORDAA, some items were also
acquired from former inhabitants of our country: a very beautifully
polished flint axe, 12 dm long; a roughly worked trachyte ball, 4 dm
in diameter; a baked earthenware urn filled with burnt human bones,
19 dm high; another urn, 18 dm. high, containing the fragments of a
bronze HAIR NEEDLE found inside; another three URNS containing burnt
bones and remnants of bronze RINGS, etc.; the urns measuring 10,
15.5, and 16 inches high; two CUBS, 9 and 7 dm; four POTS of various
shapes, 6.5 to 9.5 dm high; a beaker-shaped VESSEL, 5.5 dm high, and
some fragments of pots. All these objects, with the possible
exception of the WIGGE, were excavated in 1837 at the old cemetery
in Deurne, North Brabant; they now form a substantial whole, along
with the pieces found at the same site, donated to the Museum in
1840 and 1841 by the late Mr. P. O. G. GUYOT. [...]
Some
MEDIEVAL AND LATER OBJECTS, originating from the excavations for the
Nijmegen army barracks, a pair of trachyte stone MORTARS with
PESTLES from the vicinity of Deurne and belonging to the already
mentioned estate of the late Mr. S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA; [...]
November
28, 1874 ANTIQUITIES.
The
important collections of antiquities, works of art, books, and
archives, bequeathed by Mr. G. Ch. H. GUILLON, living Notary in
Roermond, will be preserved at the request of Mr. C. Guillon,
Attorney there, in the presence of Notary MAX. CORNELIS, residing in
Roermond, at the deceased's house, on the following days, each
journey beginning at 9:00 a.m., the following items will be sold
publicly:
The
Gothic cabinets and other art objects on Monday, November 30th.
The
paintings and engravings on the following December 1st and 2nd.
The
Archives on December 9th and subsequent days.
The
prehistoric, Roman, Germanic, and Frankish antiquities on January
11, 1875, and subsequent days.
The
intaglios (intails), Roman coins and medals, as well as the Medieval
coins and other tokens, on January 18, 1875, and subsequent days.
All
collections, with the exception of the library, will be sold for
cash plus a ten percent surcharge for expenses. Three months' credit
will be granted to cover the purchase price of the books.
Gentlemen
enthusiasts will be given the opportunity to view the collection on
the day before the prospective sales, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The
combined catalogs are available from the publisher of this newspaper
for 60 cents. In addition, for requests outside Roermond, the
postage is as follows: 22 cents to the Netherlands and Belgium, 55
cents to Germany, and 56 cents to France.
Postage
stamps are accepted to cover the purchase price and postage.
January
30, 1875 - In the municipality of Obbicht, it is reported that some
pots were recently discovered during the extraction of gravel, which
were found to be Roman burial urns. However, due to fragility, they
have partially disintegrated. The most important of the finds must
be a large glass urn, made of bluish glass, filled with several
bones. Along with these objects, a piece of a lock was found, as
well as some copper objects, such as a large pin, two finely crafted
handles, like those found on chests, two rings with octagonal wires,
and a hollow plate depicting a lion's head with a copper ring in its
mouth.
March
1, 1890 Antiquities.
The
famous MUSÉE GUILLON, collected over more than half a century
by the accomplished antiquarian CHARLES GUILLON, Notary in Roermond,
will be publicly SOLD on Tuesday, March 11-15, 2018, in Amsterdam by
G. THEOD. BOM & ZOON, Spuistraat 135.
The
collection includes Roman, Germanic, Celtic, and medieval
antiquities excavated primarily in Limburg, Roman and Gelderland
coins and medals, Limburg coin stamps, Japanese lacquered and old
oak furniture, porcelain, paintings, valuables, etc.
Catalog
0 25.
March
8, 1890. The catalog of works of art, bequeathed by the late notary
Guillon here, lists no fewer than a thousand Roman, Germanic,
Celtic, Frankish, and medieval antiquities excavated in Limburg,
from the Stone and Bronze Ages, mortuary urns, Roman glassware and
pottery, over 70 pieces of the beautiful red pottery from Samos, a
single silver-engraved shield plate, probably from the latter period
of the Roman Empire, and over 80 carved stones or cameos. 1,400
antique gold, silver, and bronze coins, some medieval Gelderland and
Limburg coins, coin dies and seals, as well as a small collection of
silver chased coins, old furniture, etc.
The
carefully edited catalog clearly proves that there is much of
interest here for our antiquarians and archaeologists.
March
10, 1890 Two very important auctions will be held in the coming days
by the auctioneers G. Theod. Bom & Zoon, in Amsterdam.
The
first, containing the collection of antiquities and coins bequeathed
by the late Mr. Charles Guillon, notary in Roermond, is of
particular interest to students of the history of our country. Never
before has such a collection of 1,000 Roman, Germanic, Celtic,
Frankish, and medieval antiquities excavated in Limburg been
auctioned. It offers us a glimpse into the customs and traditions of
those times. Both the Stone and Bronze Ages are well represented,
while the collection of Germanic pottery, including many urns
containing the ashes of our Germanic ancestors, is considered one of
the richest. The Roman glassware and pottery, urns, etc., including
the beautiful red pottery from Samos, are also noteworthy, as is the
umbo, or shield plate, embossed in silver and high relief, a
masterpiece of embossed work from the Bas Empire period. This
collection also includes over 80 mostly ancient carved stone objects
or cameos, ancient gold, silver, and bronze coins, some medieval
Gelderland and Limburg coins, etc., etc.
The
second, more limited collection contains a collection of
antiquities, silver embossed work, antique furniture, historical and
Amsterdam rarities, and valuables, porcelain and Delftware, horns
and shells, paintings, stereoscopes, glass stereoscope slides,
etc.
All items can be viewed in the firm's salesroom, Spuistraat
135, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, March 8-10, from 10 a.m. to 3
p.m.
March
10, 1890 Tuesday morning, Ten o'clock: SALE at G. THEOD. BOM &
ZOON, Spuistraat 135, next to Die Port van Cleve.
Guillon
Collection: Stone and Bronze Age Antiquities, Germanic urns, No.
1-813.
At Six o'clock in the evening: Ancient Roman Coins,
starting with No. 1.
The Sellers will be greatly obliged to
return the Guillon Catalog.
March
14, 1890 The collection of Limburg antiquities, held at G. Theod.
The collection of items currently being sold by Bom & Zoon,
located on Spuistraat here and originating from Mr. Ch. Guillon of
Roermond, appears to have attracted widespread
attention.
Fortunately, the majority of these items remain in our
country and were purchased primarily for the National Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden and the Maastricht Museum of Antiquities. The
remainder went to private individuals, while a few very fine pieces
were purchased for English clients. No. 79, a stone axe, fetched 14
guilders; No. 38, a similar 11.50 guilders; No. 160, stone
arrowheads, 15 guilders; No. 167, a stone poniard, 26 guilders; No.
199, a bronze razor, 10 guilders; No. 200, a sword blade, 28
guilders; No. 300, a Germanic cup, 12 guilders; Nos. 314 and 315,
two bronze statuettes, 39 guilders; No. 321: Two copper ornaments of
a tripod, 14 guilders; No. 329: A similar incense box with spoon, 13
guilders; No. 336: A plaque with Jupiter and Hebe, 48 guilders; No.
410: A Roman flask, 35 guilders; No. 411: A similar smaller one, 20
guilders; No. 427: A Samian earthenware vase, 32 guilders. The
auction continues.
May
7, 1893: Exhibition in Eindhoven.
Prosperous Eindhoven has long
boasted an excellent workforce. In stark contrast to other towns in
North Brabant and Limburg, they understand that industry must go
hand in hand with art, and thus a broad range of workers emerged who
can compete with the best in the country. Goldsmiths and
silversmiths, sculptors, painters, architects, masons, and
carpenters, who produce excellent work in the full sense of the
word, are not uncommon here.
A few years ago, an association
called "De Bouwkundige vaken" (The Architectural Trades)
was founded in Eindhoven by some patrons, the name of which
sufficiently indicates its purpose. It was through the good work of
this association that the exhibition came about, of which every
Eindhoven resident is now undeniably proud. The products of art and
craft, brought together here, prove that the Eindhoven workers have
not been overstated above. Of course, among the exhibits, there is
also some unattractive work that could have been spared, but much,
very much, can safely withstand the test of the most stringent
criticism. To broaden interest in this undertaking, the association
"De Bouwkundige vakder" (The Architectural Trades)
conceived the excellent idea of combining it with an
exhibition of old art, to which a historical and topographical
exhibition concerning Kempenland and Peelland was eventually added.
Mr. Aug. Sassen, archivist of Helmond, was charged with assembling
this collection, and it cannot be denied that if the exhibition
attracts wider attention, it will be largely due to his efforts.
This historical and topographical section did not overshadow the
exhibition itself, but gave it a unique charm that will undoubtedly
greatly benefit the undertaking. When one examines the catalogue of
the collection assembled by Sassen, one may undoubtedly be surprised
that so much remarkable information has been collected from such a
small and previously insignificant region as Peel and Kempenland,
especially if it is true, as is assured, that so much had to remain
in the portfolio due to lack of space.
A wealth of historical and
topographical paintings, prints and drawings, coins, medals, seals,
weapons, and antiquities evokes the history of these regions in
pleasant forms. A detailed and important essay could be compiled for
a specialist journal of this department; in a daily newspaper such
as this, a brief summary of the most important items will naturally
have to suffice.
First, our attention is drawn to the horns and a
portion of the skull of an extinct bovine animal of extraordinary
size, excavated a few years ago in Stiphout. When we fill in the
missing points of the horns in our minds, we can imagine the head of
this giant of the animal kingdom, which centuries ago inhabited the
Peelland forest.
His
bellowing resounded. A single horn from a smaller or younger
specimen of this animal was excavated from the Peel region near
Deurne and is exhibited here. From the Germanic cemeteries
discovered in 1840 by Mr. P. N. Panken near Westerhoven and
surrounding areas, he preserved the most remarkable urn and
exhibited it here. The Celts are represented by three flint chisels,
one of which (cat. no. 6) is distinguished by its large size, while
another from the more recent period (cat. no. 4) is distinguished by
its exquisite workmanship. The memory of the Roman armies, which
remained here for so long, is revived by several collections of
Roman coins excavated in those regions, of which that of Mr. Alph.
Schellens deserves attention for its meticulously preserved
specimens and historical arrangement. A Roman crucifix of great
antiquity speaks of the early Christian era. It was excavated in
1847 during the demolition of the church in Aarle and was likely
buried with the body of a priest more than six centuries ago. Among
the ecclesiastical antiquities, also worthy of our attention are a
pair of beautiful 15th-century statues from the church in Liessel,
and two alabaster reliefs of excellent Italian workmanship. These
were cemented into a floor in Stiphout, flat side up, and discovered
there by chance in 1887. Among the antiquities of later times, we
may mention a complete pharmacy from Bergeyk, some of the
furnishings of the De Zwaan hotel in Oorschot, and two magnificent
state costumes recently discovered in a cupboard at Croy Castle, all
dating from the previous century. Also worthy of mention are the
precious gifts given in 1796 by the representatives of Batavian
Brabant and the municipality of Oorschot to Arn. van Heumen, first
of Leuven, all accompanied by the corresponding charters,
commemorative poems, and anthems.
Among
the seals and medals, there is much of note. Particularly noteworthy
is the gold medal commemorating the 50th wedding anniversary of Joha
Josselin and Gerard de Jong, Lord of Beek en Donk, 1764. One by Mr.
Aug. Sassen's copy of a huge mantelpiece painting from 1688 in
Helmond Castle will undoubtedly arouse considerable interest among
heralds.
The
section of historical and topographical paintings and prints
contains over 100 works, most of which are the property of Mr. Aug.
Sassen.
Among
the works submitted by others, particular attention should be paid
to a superb drawing of Gemert Castle from 1675, owned by Jonkheer
Mr. Victor en Stuers.
Some
40 portraits of famous individuals, clergymen, and officials with
some connection to this region, including large-scale paintings,
excellent copper engravings, and 18th-century silhouettes, add new
appeal to this section. Among the other items on display, worthy of
consideration are a gigantic charter from 1508 concerning the
boundary between Oorschot and neighboring municipalities, which
extends from the attic to the floor in the very lofty exhibition
hall. A multitude of posters from the previous century, old
pamphlets, and bibliographical rarities, all applicable to this
region and largely the property of Mr. Aug. Sassen, are also on
display. At the far end of the hall, one beholds a gigantic trophy,
composed of a large number of banners, drums, and countless silver
roosters and royal shields, all the property of the numerous Peel
and Kempenland shooting guilds, which, in their tenacious existence
here, still exist in such large numbers to this day. Such a
significant collection of these remarkable monuments to one of the
most significant aspects of former national life has probably never
been seen in our country.
All
in all, the historical and topographical section of the Eindhoven
exhibition can be praised as very remarkable.
December
1, 1894 Sale of Weapons and Works of Art in Cologne.
[...]
2nd. Art collections of the late Honourable Gestr. Mr. C. Guillon,
attorney at law in Roermond, [...] Sale December 12-18, 1894.
Price
of the illustrated catalogue: 3 Marks.
J.
M. Heberle (H. Lempertz’s Sons), Cologne.
February
16, 1895 Antiquities. — Mr. G. M. Kam, of Nijmegen,
donated,
by deed dated February 4, 1905, his highly important collection of
antiquities to the State of the Netherlands, but in such a way that
this donation would only be taken possession of by the Government
after his death. This collection consists mainly of: some
prehistoric vessels, stone and bronze chisels, weapons, Roman burial
urns, legion stones, jugs, vases, lamps, terra nigra and terra
sigillata, so-called Belgian wares, plates, vases, bowls, etc.;
bronze vases, mirrors, statues, fibulas, etc.;
Roman
glassware, carved stones, pastes, beads, Roman and Frankish weapons,
some Frankish vessels, and Roman coins, gold, silver, and bronze,
from the Republic and Imperial periods;
a
silver medallion of Constantine the Great.
The
Roman collection is largely from the Augustan period. Furthermore, a
number of medieval antiquities, such as vases, tiles, etc. The Roman
and prehistoric antiquities, in particular, were largely found in
Nijmegen and the surrounding area.
February
21, 1896 Helmond, February 19. It is reported that two Roman graves
have been discovered on the Eerenbeemt estate in Meyel, belonging to
Mr. P. C. van den Eerenbeemt in Rome. Mr. Schulte, an antiquarian
here, has requested permission to conduct the excavations so that
the urns found there can be compared with others from elsewhere.
January
26, 1897 - On Thursday morning, during excavation work on a plot of
land owned by Mr. Powis de Tenbossche in Eelen, a substantial
quantity of Roman pots and weapons, as well as 17 skulls, were
discovered. A large, complete body was also unearthed, lying with
its head facing north, a lance to its right side.
Mr.
Jos. Gielen, an antiquarian in Measeyck [Maaseik], is already
working on a detailed description of the objects and the site,
which, according to the aforementioned gentleman, is a Roman
cemetery.
March
27, 1914 Ancient finds, silent witnesses.
There
is more in the ground than you think, but the real art is to find
it. Being a "treasure hunter" or "rod walker"
doesn't mean anything. With those old finds, chance or lucky chance
must serve you, otherwise, it's all over.
ut
that there are still numerous "silent witnesses" from
times long past buried in the ground, especially in our drier
regions, is certainly not certain, because every now and then you
read in the newspapers that this and that has been found here and
there. The last remarkable discoveries were made in Cuyk-aan-d-Maas
in North Brabant—old pots and pans, weapons, and coins—and
in Jemmingen, just across the Groningen border, where the Dutch and
the Spanish fought in 1538—six men and six horses in one hole,
and they still had their spurs on! But I won't tell you about such
finds; it's too gruesome.
Here,
however, is what I've unearthed from my recent notes; I'll leave out
the dates; it happened in the last two or at most three years.
At
Valthe in Drenthe, near Valthermond, where the old Roman bridge was
once discovered in the peat, an urn of unusual dimensions was
excavated, and bones in ashes were found inside.
In
the Aamsveen, which belongs partly to the Netherlands and partly to
Germany and from which peat was already being cut in 1325, land was
to be reclaimed. The Dutch Heath Society alerted the board of the
Twente Antiquity Chamber, and urns, stone spurs, and axes were
found, proving that an ancient historical site had been discovered.
This was all the more evident when the foundations of a castle were
later discovered in the so-called Hölterhof.
In
the Peel region of North Brabant-Limburg, near Helenaveen, a peat
worker initially found four coins, along with pieces of leather that
must have belonged to military equipment, a helmet, and a kind of
hook or pin for attaching clothing. Some distance away, 38 ancient
coins were later found bearing the inscription "Constantinus"
and the image of a reigning monarch. In the same North Brabant
region, numerous antiquities were discovered in the heathland,
specifically in Oorschot, Best, Veldhoven, and Hoogeloon. These were
mostly old weapons, axes, arrows and arrowheads, stone saws and
chisels, which the Celts, Menapii, and Taxandri, who once lived
there, must have used.
Excavations
of the mounds in Friesland also frequently yield various finds:
bronze rings, picks and axes, primitive agricultural implements,
shovels, and chisels have all been found there many times; most
recently, for example. Near Ferwerd.
Finds
in Drenthe are very numerous. In the same year, the following were
found: In the Wolfsbergen near Emmen, a bowl-shaped urn of
reddish-brown earth, within which another urn of dark brown earth
with a curved rim was found, as well as two stone hammers, a bronze
knife, and some bones.
Behind
the Emmerdennen, a bowl-shaped brown urn with bones was found. At
Wachtum in the municipality of Dalen, a bronze chisel with an eye
was found about half a meter deep in the ground. In the Gravenveld
near Weerdinge, municipality of Emmen, a chisel of gray flint was
found, and at the former Roswinkeler Schans, in the iron ore
(primeval), a stone hammer, dark gray and roughly worked, over a
decimeter long, was found. In the peat bog at Klijndijk near Odoorn,
a fragment of a stone hammer was found. In the Schipmeer near Norg,
an iron axe was found. in Oud-Orvelte in the Stobbenveen two metal
sheets and an old jug (a "bearded man's jug"), and a
grinding stone in the peat bog at Zuidwolde near Hoogeveen, while
wooden roads or peat bridges were discovered in three places, such
as those at Valthermond, which we discussed above. Information about
this can be found in the "Nieuwe Drentsche Volksalmanak"
(New Drenthe Folk Almanac). The bridges were discovered:
10. At
Buinerveen, municipality of Borger, half an hour from Ruinen
station.
20. In the municipality of Emmen along the road from
Nieuw-Dordrecht to Klazinaveen-Noord.
30. In the municipality of
Emmen, also at Klazinaveen-Noord, at Lock 2 on the Scholtenskanaal
and near the Dedemvaart tram from Coevorden to Ter Apel.
These
bridges are usually made of pine wood resting on birch girders and
must date back to Roman times. I could still tell you about the
excavations at the so-called Hunenschans on the Uddelermeer lake on
the Eluwe, where Professor Holwerda from Leiden was busy working,
about various foreign locations—of which Hallstadt in Upper
Austria is the most important—where antiquities were found,
about "silent witnesses" such as the dolmens and the pile
dwellings (Switzerland), about discoveries of hunting tools and old
fishing gear, combs, rings, textiles, and hollowed-out tree trunks,
which served as ships, but I'll save that for later.
? W. ?. d.
V.
February
1, 1921. The receiving of securities and valuables. —
The
Arnhem court on Friday — the Tel.[egraaf] reports — the
case against 57-year-old appraiser J. H. Peperkamp from Nijmegen,
who in 1917, 1918, and 1919 made a habit of deliberately buying,
exchanging, pawning, and concealing objects obtained through crime
in the Netherlands. In Nijmegen and elsewhere, he had purchased,
exchanged, or partially accepted as gifts, a large number of
securities and negotiable instruments, and concealed them for
profit. P. accepted the securities obtained through crime from the
Belgian, H. Wijnen, loaned them to a banker in his own name,
retained part of the money thus received, and also cashed in some
coupons for his own benefit.
The same thing had happened in
Amsterdam and Rotterdam: in the latter city, the appellant bought
Antwerp lottery tickets, as well as bottles and miniatures worth
thousands, from someone calling himself Van Dijseldank, knowing that
everything was the proceeds of crime.
Peperkamp confessed; He
initially objected to such transactions with Wijnen, then relented
and received a 10% commission, but later retained the entire
proceeds.
The president pointed out that Bekl., who was wealthy
and trusted in the city where he lived, had proven to be practically
"the biggest snitch in the Netherlands," as they say in
the animal world. For years, he acted as an accomplice to thieves
and burglars.
The securities sold, as evidenced by the testimony,
were stolen during the burglary committed in Ilpendam in 1917, the
well-known burglary of the Amsterdam publishing firm P. N. van
Kampen, and several thefts in Rotterdam. The miniatures and bottles
originated from Nyenrode Castle, where, at the end of 1917, a
mechanic installing the central heating system had stolen the
valuables, including, among other things, the silver cross with
precious stones received by Admiral Tromp from Charles II, an object
of historical significance. Through the mediation of Peperkamp and
other intermediaries, the antiquities eventually ended up with the
Frederik Muller company, which was ordered to return them to the
original owner, the castle resident Michiel Onnes van Nyenrode, for
the price it had paid. The Muller company then quoted a very high
sum, which it received. A year later, when it came to light that the
company had declared a fictitious and far too high amount, it
refunded the overpayment made by the castle lord.
The
deputy public prosecutor, Mr. Visscher, called Peperkamp the biggest
receiver of stolen goods the Netherlands has seen in recent years;
During a house search, securities from six thefts were found. The
defendant also had a hand in numerous smuggling cases, in which he
worked behind the scenes, but remained unscathed. The ease with
which stolen goods could be delivered to Peperkamp in Nijmegen led
many young men down the wrong path. All this marks him as a
dangerous criminal, citing all his mitigating circumstances. The
speaker finally requested a five-year prison sentence.
Mr. van
Ditzhuizen, the defense attorney, emphasized that Peperkamp was a
victim of normal circumstances. The arbitrary actions of the N.O.T.
and other officials caused him considerable harm, and thus he lapsed
into indifference, which drove him to commit criminal acts, of
which, however, scoundrels like Van Dijsseldonck and Wijnen can be
considered the perpetrators, who by their actions incited the
receiving of stolen goods. He wishes to compensate P. as much as
possible for the damage caused by his actions; in this context, too,
the pleader appealed to the court's clemency.
Verdict
February 8.
April
14, 1929 Hellas and Rome.
Exhibition
at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
[...]
A very beautiful and remarkable piece is the gilded silver Roman
helmet, found near Deurne in the Peel region. Attention is also
drawn to the large silver decorations, which, sewn onto leather,
formed part of a Roman horse harness. These pieces were fished out
of the Rhine in this country.
June
11, 1932 HISTORY OF ASSELT
[...]
When the Trappist Fathers of Achel Abbey recently began an
investigation into the possessions lost to their monastery during
the French Revolution, hoping to reconstruct the old altar in its
original form, they were referred from Deurne to Asselt. They no
longer found the altar in question there, but they did find remnants
of it in the museum, which they recognized from old photographs. The
description they gave and had of it matched the old altar in every
detail in Asselt. They found the painting that had belonged to it as
an altarpiece, now framed as a valuable object.
Although
the Fathers submitted the necessary convincing evidence and were
eager to have it back in their possession, they had to yield to the
Asselt argument that their rights to this piece, which had long
since expired, could be upheld. During the negotiations, it further
emerged that the possibility cannot be ruled out that the Asseltsche
Christus (Christ) is a work by the renowned Titian (1477–1576).
Titian maintained friendly relations with the Trappist order at the
time, and Achel Kluis claims, based on accounts, that the painting
in question was a work by the Italian master.
August
25, 1937 MYSTERIOUS DISCOVERY IN THE PEEL.
A
folk fantasy from ancient times revived.
During
reclamation work, which is being carried out under the direction of
the Dutch Heath Society on the territory of the vast Peel
municipality of Deurne, a skeleton was recently discovered, reports
the Provincial Council of 's-Hertogenbosch. The human skeleton must
have been present at the site for a very long time; it was buried
deep beneath the layers of sand. A more or less sensational incident
was the discovery of a weathered knife near the skeleton.
It
goes without saying that this mysterious discovery has provided
ample fodder for popular imaginations, reviving the many mysterious
stories that weave together the history of the once so desolate Peel
region.
How
long has the skeleton now been found resting in the Peel soil? 50,
100, 200, 300 years, or even longer? Is this a glimpse of an
unsolved tragedy from times long past? A victim of a robbery long,
long ago, when Peel was still inaccessible and almost impenetrable?
Or the decayed remains of a stray lone individual "who had lost
his way in the wilderness and whose only remnant, besides his bones,
was the knife he carried, has withstood the ravages of time?"
It
will all remain an open question, just as so many other mysteries
remain, now being dredged up again, as undecayed remnants of Peel's
romanticism. Tales of the "black waters" from the old Peel
region are once again being told. Eerie events from the distant
past. They were passed around by word of mouth in the days when the
Peel was a complete wilderness, when there were no roads, no
newspapers were printed, no farms were to be seen for miles around,
and when, lacking all modern comforts, people would spend their
evenings by the fireside, chatting and chatting. The "black
waters" are the dark Peel fen pools, where, for some reason,
the bells from the church towers were... sunk away. Dark, unknown
strangers had been seen carrying away the bells. They were mistaken
for accomplices of the devil, or even Satan himself. With a dull
crash, the bells had crashed into the swamps; the water there
remained black ever since and never froze. On Christmas Eve, they
were still heard tolling, but woe betide anyone who followed their
sounds and tried to find them; they lost their way, drowning in the
black waters... One of the "black waters" lay at the
present-day Peelvlek IJsselstein.
January
28, 1944 THE PEEL A BORDER
Letters
about the Peel
Dear
Friend
It
is not so very long ago, as I sit here and write to you, that the
driver, who regularly drove between Deurne and Venray, would adjust
the axle of his cart in the middle of the inhospitable Peel plain
near the Kraayenhut. At that time, there was only a loose, deeply
rutted dirt road between the two villages, and there, at den
Grootenberg, changed the track gauge — the Limburg
The
Dutch track is still considerably wider today than the Brabant
one—and so the freight driver couldn't continue his journey
until he had adjusted the axle position of his heavy cart to the
wagon track. This was possible with his vehicle; it was designed for
it. Most ordinary carts and wagons, however, did not have adjustable
axles and therefore could not be used for traffic between the
aforementioned places.
Doesn't this remarkable fact clearly
demonstrate that the Peel was a border, a separation between two
countries or regions? Many a wide river wasn't such a tight barrier
between two areas as this inaccessible region, this "marshy
place" and this "strangely abandoned area," as it is
called in old documents, until recently—what does half a
century mean in the vast gray space of the past? —there were
therefore very few connections between the Brabant and Limburg Peel
regions, and the inhabitants of Venray, Horst, and Sevenum only
rarely came into contact with those of Bakel, Deurne, and Liessel.
On either side of the Peel, the people developed entirely separately
and, in terms of government, adopted completely opposite
orientations: while the villages of the Brabant Peel region migrated
to Helmond and 's-Hertogenbosch, the Limburg Peel villages moved to
Venlo, Boxmeer, Cuijk, and Roermond.
The Peel was a natural
border. With its bogs and "vlazen," forests, and
heathland, it was a virtually insurmountable obstacle, separating
even regions and tribes. It seems that in the Middle Ages, it was
therefore not deemed necessary to draw a clear boundary line through
this swamp: this was only done later, when it was realized that this
region was not as worthless as previously thought, because it turned
out to contain a large quantity of peat. For a long time, the raised
bog ridge of the Peel formed the border between the Peelland
district of the Meierij of 's-Hertogenbosch and the Overkwartier of
Gelderland. During the Guelderian Wars, which took place in the
first quarter of the sixteenth century, bands of Gelderland
repeatedly invaded the Duchy of Brabant through the Peel. In 1511
and 1512, the villages of Deurne, Bakel, and Asten were largely
reduced to ashes by the Gelderlanders from Venlo. To secure the
border, a blockhouse was built near Liessel, where it is still
called "het Sloot" (the Ditch), between 1516 and 1527. Due
to the presence of a relatively wide sandy ridge, the weak point in
this separation lay there, near Meyel, as one can also read in
Ouwerling's great historical work. For a century and a half after
the Peace of Münster, signed in 1648, the national border ran
through the Peel region. During the existence of the Dutch Republic,
this high peatland separated the province or Generality Land of
North Brabant from Spanish and Austrian Gelderland, and later from
Prussian Gelderland. Brabant Catholics used this border to secure
their church treasures. Priests and monks fled across it to escape
the "edicts" of the High and Mighty States General. As
early as 1649, the Deurne pastor, Mr. Gerard Jacobs, built a small
church for his parishioners just across the border near the
Grootenberg. For quite some time, he served the faithful of Deurne,
Bakel, Liessel, and Vlierden from there. We also see the sisters of
the noble abbey of Binderen, near Helmond, finding refuge in the
Peel region and thus the border, and those of "Mariaschoot"
from Ommel traveling with her miraculous statue to Neer in the
county of Hoorn.
Naturally, disputes about this border arose
frequently. It was difficult to determine precisely where in that
wide region the line separating Brabant from Gelderland should run.
The Brabant side consistently invoked the deeds of acquisition of
the common lands of Deurne from 1326 and 1467. The Peace of Munster
also failed to produce a precise demarcation, although a meeting on
this matter had already been held two years earlier between the
villages of Peelland and those of the Overkwartier. When this matter
was brought before the Council of "paalsteden" by the
fiscal of Brabant in the presence of the fiscal of Venray, it later
turned out that the latter again disagreed with the drawn line. We
read in Ouwerling's "History of the villages and lordships of
crossing over to include Deurne, Liessel, and Vlierden in Venray"
that they even went so far as to "clandestinely" remove
the boundary markers at night and at odd hours and hang them on
chains under their tower, where they were kept for years as
commemorative tokens. On November 20, 1716, the Treaty of Venlo
between the States-General of the United Netherlands and the King of
Prussia established a proper border settlement, but before the
demarcation was completed, new difficulties arose: Deurne submitted
the loss of eight hundred hectares of good peatland distressed the
residents of that domain, and it thus happened that, at night, as
Van Heurn recounts in his work on the Meijerij of 's-Hertogenbosch,
residents of that domain set fire to seven hundred and eight hundred
carts of peat, which, according to the new border, had fallen within
the territory of Venray.
After
the collapse of the Republic, the border between the French
department of the Nedermaas and the Batavian Republic ran through
the Peel. Then history repeated itself, in a somewhat reverse
direction: monks from Limburg now sought refuge across the Peel to
Brabant territory. Thus, the last prioress of the Norbertine
monastery Keizersbosch, near Neer, found refuge in Deurne. Only when
the Netherlands were incorporated into the French Empire in 1810 did
the Peel cease to be a national border for good. Later, after the
founding of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, it separated the
province of North Brabant from that of Limburg, which, when it
joined the German Confederation following the Belgian uprising, was
called the Duchy of Limburg.
After
the railway line between Eindhoven and Venlo had already established
a permanent connection between the villages on either side of the
Peel Marsh in the 1860s, the first paved road was built across the
Peel between Deurne and Venray shortly before the outbreak of the
First World War. Around the year 1880, a road was already built from
Deurne to the Limburg border at Meyel [Meijel]. After the war, the
Peel was also breached in the direction of the Land van Cuyk: a
gravel road now connects Deurne with Boxmeer. Unemployed people from
Helmond built a wide, earthen track between Helenaveen and Sevenum
about ten years ago. Thus, this dividing wall was gradually
demolished, and this dense borderland was opened up for the common
good. The Peel region still constitutes a border—this elevated
peat and horticultural land now forms a significant watershed,
demarcating two entirely different regions with their own, entirely
distinct ethnic groups—but it is no longer a dividing tree or
a burdensome obstacle. This previously under-regarded border region,
even as a progressive development area, makes a valuable
contribution to cooperation and prosperity within the area in which
our people live. And isn't that something—and with this I
would like to conclude—about which we should truly rejoice?
DEURNE,
Louwmaand 1944.
W.
A. M. VAN HEUGTEN.
February
18, 1944 Remarkable showpiece
Dear
Friend,
You
ask me about a remarkable showpiece that should be on display in
Deurne and is little known, even in the circles of those who are
particularly interested in the beauty of our region. I understand
what you mean: it's the cast of the Roman helmet, which is on
display in the mayor's office of Deurne's town hall. It is certainly
a remarkable showpiece, even if it's only a substitute for the real
thing. In few antiquity rooms, indeed in few museums, do you find
such a rare object in this country. What does it actually mean and
how did it come to be?
On
a June day in 1910, peat worker G. Smolenaars from Meyel was working
in the Peel region between the so-called Hermanshuizen and
Helenaveen, on the left side of the road (coming from Liessel). He
was working in the gray peat. Suddenly, he came across something
hard, but this time not driftwood. Was it a crushed pot? He dug it
out, took it to a ditch, and after rinsing it off, he saw that it
had to be an old helmet. Nearby, in a small hole like a bird's nest,
he found several coins and other small metal objects, as well as the
remains of shoes and a saddlecloth. He carried it home and hid it as
something precious in his box bed.
That
a treasure had been unearthed in the Peel region soon spread far
beyond the region. Many traveled to Meyel to see the find; the
simple man, who now possessed an immense fortune in the eyes of
many, and to whom Mayor Truyen van Meyel is said to have said, "I
am rich, but you are much richer!", showed his unusual find to
the numerous visitors. Soon, buyers also showed up. Fortunately,
however, the National Museum of Antiquities in Lelden was alerted in
time. They sent an expert who appraised the find and offered a
certain sum for it. Smolenaars agreed with him, and thus the danger
of this rare find falling into the wrong hands was averted. However,
this matter wasn't yet settled. The peat worker could only be
considered half-owner of the treasure. Determining who the other
half actually belonged to wasn't so easy. The finder was busy
cutting peat for the firm Steegh and Esser, specifically in the gray
peat bog, which had been leased by the municipality of Deurne as the
owner of the peatlands to the firm of Terwindt and Arnzt. An unusual
and therefore difficult problem to solve! After seeking legal
advice, the municipality of Deurne considered itself the owner of
the second half and decided on November 18, 1910, to donate it to
the scientific institution for the offered price of one thousand
guilders.
The
National Museum of Antiquities had the dented armor, which was
immediately assumed to have belonged to a Roman officer, restored.
This difficult task was successfully carried out by the goldsmith L.
Verkuil, who worked in the workshop of Van Rossum du Chattel in
Leiden. "Once restored," Dr. M. A. Evelein later wrote in
an illustrated magazine article, "it became clear what a
magnificent piece the museum had acquired, which, compared to
similar helmets abroad, may even be called unique." However,
the helmet is not complete: only the gilded silver outer covering
remained; The iron inner cap rusted away completely. The helmet cap
consists of two separate, identical parts, each divided into three
interconnected pieces and held together by a comb. The equipment
also included a neck protector, a nose guard, and two cheek plates.
One of these last pieces was never recovered.
Very
little has been preserved of the weaponry of the Roman legions,
which occupied our country and a large part of our continent for
centuries. As far as is known, only seven helmets have been found,
which must have originated from the Romans; the one from De Peel is
the most valuable. One came to light near Kerch on the well-known
strait between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea; two
were excavated at Pfersee near Augsburg and one at Worms in Germany;
in Hungary, one was found in the Danube near Budapest; and in
Denmark, one was discovered in peat near Thorsbjerg. Remarkably,
according to Dr. Evelein, show considerable similarity in
construction and workmanship. This scholar believes they could well
have been made in the same workshop in Constantinople. The helmet is
skillfully crafted and demonstrates the skill of the Roman
craftsmen. The overall effect, however, supports the assumption that
the wearer must have been a centurion. Is his name carved into it?
As we can read in Dr. Evelein's article, Prof. O. Bonn of Berlin
saw, in the inscription on the neck guard, a weight indication with
the name of the verifier Titus Valonius Ursus. The word "Stablesia
VI" on the helmet rim must indicate a division of the
equestrian corps of the Equites Stablesiani, known primarily from
the later period of the Roman Empire.
So,
what is the significant value of this discovery in the Peel region
for historical science? That lies beyond the helmet itself. Coins
were also found. These all appeared to date from the time of Emperor
Constantine; It was even possible to determine where they were
minted. They offer a solid starting point for comparative study. It
is reasonable to assume that the centurion only carried money, which
was current in those years. Thus, not only can the Peel helmet be
roughly dated, but comparison also allows us to estimate the period
from which the Roman helmets found elsewhere originate. This
discovery is significant, moreover, because it proves that the
cavalry corps of the "Equites Stablesiani" must also have
resided in the Low Countries and that the gray peat in our region
had not yet formed in the third century AD.
Naturally,
many mysteries remain surrounding the death of the Roman centurion
in the Peel swamp. Where did he come from and where did he ride to?
Why was neither sword, dagger, lance, nor shield found with him? Did
the dagger or short sword, which must have been stuck in the short
scabbard, which was preserved in the mortise, like the iron inner
cap of the helmet, completely decay, or was it lost, stolen, or
perhaps found earlier? In this context, a note from the first half
of the last century, which I found in the Deurne municipal archives,
is interesting: in it, the district commissioner of Helmond asks the
mayor of Deurne and Liessel whether it is true that a farmer near
Deurne had found a golden sword. Despite all its acumen, modern
science will probably never be able to provide a conclusive answer
to all these questions. We know that a drama must have taken place
here in that distant, dark time; nothing more.
The
Peel helmet only returned to our region in 1934, albeit in the form
of a few casts. Besides being on display in Deurne town hall, one
can be seen in the Helmond municipal museum. The remainder of the
rare and remarkable find — as outlined above, however, is no
less important for our
History
— will probably still be preserved in Leiden.
Deurne,
February 1944.
W.
A. M. VAN HEUGTEN.
January
1, 1988 CAVALRY EQUIPMENT OF THE ROMAN ARMY IN THE FIRST CENTURY
A.D.
by
M.C. Bishop
The
Medusa head of Blerick
15
november 2016 Minerva and Medusa
Olim
Medusa, puella pulchra, in terra obscura habitabat ubi neque sol
neque luna apparebat. Terra obscura puellae grata non erat. Medusa
igitur Minervam adoravit.
"Dea
sapientiae, audi me," puella misera oravit. "Juva me!
Terra obscura, ubi habito, mihi grata non est. Pulchra sum; pulchram
comam atque faciem pulchram habeo. Nemo autem in terra obscura me
videre potest. Desidero in terra clara habitare."
Dea
autem Medusam juvare recusavit. Tum puella irata Minervae dixit,
"Invidiosa es quod tam pulchra sum! Populum me videre non
desideras!"
Tum
dea irata pulchram comam puellae mutavit.
"Tu
fuisti superba propter comam pulchram atque faciem pulchram. Ego
comam tuam in serpentes mutavi," dea dixit irata. "Non jam
tua coma erit pulchra. Tua facies erit pulchra, sed nemo te spectare
poterit. In saxa tua facies viros mutabit."
Minerva
and Medusa (Translation)
Once
upon a time Medusa, a beautiful girl, was living on dark land where
neither the sun nor the moon appeared. The dark land was not
pleasing to the girl. Therefore Medusa adored Minerva.
"Goddess
of wisdom, hear me," the miserable girl begged. "Help me!
The dark land, in which I have lived, is not pleasing to me. I am
beautiful; I have beautiful hair and a beautiful face. No one
however is able to see me on the dark land. I want to live on bright
land."
However
the goddess refused to help Medusa. Then the angry girl said to
Minerva, "You are jealous because I am so pretty! The people do
not want you to see me!"
Then
the angry goddess changed the beautiful hair of the girl.
"You
were arrogant because of beautiful hair and a beautiful face. I
changed your hair into serpents," said the angry goddess. Your
hair will no longer be beautiful. You will be made beautiful, but no
one will be able to see you. You will make men change into stone."
Commentary
Throughout
this passage, the genitive case is used quite often. For example,
the genitive of description is shown in the phrase, "dea
sapientiae" meaning the goddess of wisdom. In addition, the
imperative is utilized as well when Medusa addressed Minerva. This
is an instance where the imperative is present: "Juva me!"
Starting from line five to line six, a form of repetition - parallel
structure is shown by the recurrence of the adjective "pulchra"
and the accusative case. This line proves to be significant because
of the way Medusa praises her own beauty, causing Minerva to become
irritated.
Zie
https://imythology.wikispaces.com/Minerva
25
oktober 2016 Plutarchus:
Τοιαύτῃ
μὲν οὖν ὁρμῇ καὶ
παρασκευῇ
διανοίας τὸν
Ἑλλήσποντον
διεπέρασεν.
ἀναβὰς δ’ εἰς
Ἴλιον, ἔθυσε
τῇ Ἀθηνᾷ καὶ
τοῖς ἥρωσιν
ἔσπεισε. τὴν
δ’ Ἀχιλλέως
στήλην ἀλειψάμενος
λίπα, καὶ μετὰ
τῶν ἑταίρων
συναναδραμὼν
γυμνὸς ὥσπερ
ἔθος ἐστίν,
ἐστεφάνωσε,
μακαρίσας αὐτὸν
ὅτι καὶ ζῶν φίλου
πιστοῦ καὶ
τελευτήσας
μεγάλου κήρυκος
ἔτυχεν. ἐν δὲ
τῷ περιϊέναι
καὶ θεᾶσθαι
τὰ κατὰ τὴν πόλιν
ἐρομένου τινὸς
αὐτόν, εἰ βούλεται
τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου
λύραν ἰδεῖν,
ἐλάχιστα φροντίζειν
ἐκείνης ἔφη,
τὴν δ’ Ἀχιλλέως
ζητεῖν, ᾗ τὰ κλέα
καὶ τὰς πράξεις
ὕμνει τῶν ἀγαθῶν
ἀνδρῶν ἐκεῖνος.
With
such vigorous resolutions, and his mind thus disposed, he passed the
Hellespont, and at Troy sacrificed to Minerva, and honoured the
memory of the heroes who were buried there, with solemn libations;
especially Achilles, whose gravestone he anointed, and with his
friends, as the ancient custom is, ran naked about his sepulchre,
and crowned it with garlands, declaring how happy he esteemed him,
in having while he lived so faithful a friend, and when he was dead,
so famous a poet to proclaim his actions. While he was viewing the
rest of the antiquities and curiosities of the place, being told he
might see Paris's harp, if he pleased, he said he thought it not
worth looking on, but he should be glad to see that of Achilles, to
which he used to sing the glories and great actions of brave men.
August
19, 1880. Venlo seems to be the place where the Maas River prefers
to return its swallowed-up treasures. For example, in 1858 we
purchased an exceptionally heavy and long sword with an ornately
crafted handle, retrieved from the Maas with a fishing net between
Blerick and Venlo. A few years later, no fewer than five Gothic gold
agrafes, set with diamonds, sapphires, and rubies, were found in the
Maas near Venlo. They were sold to various goldsmiths, from whom
they came into the possession of the late Mr. Hugo Garthe, an art
collector in Cologne. These valuables, publicly auctioned in May
1877, fetched astonishing prices. — Even today, Mr. Lienders,
a goldsmith in Venlo, has a precious object, probably washed away by
the Maas into a nearby ditch. It is a gilded plaque with a Medusa's
head and other ornaments, carved in exceptionally high copper.
According to a brochure by R. Gaedechens, a professor in Jena, this
work of art, dating from the first century AD, would have served as
a magnificent or parade shield.
April
4, 1885 [...] You have heard of the objects found and excavations on
or near Venlo's territory by Messrs. Hub, Michels, Colonel Rudolph,
Lieutenant Ort (currently rhythm), and foreman Frans Deserière,
of Mr. Dr. Boetzkes (at Wambach), and of the Medusa shield owned by
the Lienders family. While these gentlemen had, until now, mostly
been, so to speak, "practical" practitioners, the memory
naturally comes to mind of our fellow citizen, Mr. Martin Jansen,
who unfortunately passed away so early, who possessed so much
knowledge in the field of archaeology and, as a "theoretical"
collaborator in the research, could have contributed so much. [...]
September
26, 1885 In 1872, a bronze shield was unearthed in Blerick and four
objects resembling small horseshoes. The shield, a Medusa head, came
into the possession of the late Mr. G. Lienders, a goldsmith from
here. From the September issue of the Bulletin mensuel de
numismatique et d'archéologie, by Raym. Serrure, we learn
that this shield has left the country. We can state with certainty
that the shield has actually been in the hands of Mr. Frans Merkins
of Cologne, a lover of antiquities, for about a year now, and who
will preserve it in his museum for the rest of his life.
October
6, 1934: Antiquity discoveries in Hout-Blerick in the 19th century.
The
small hamlet of Hout-Blerick, located fifteen minutes south of
Blerick, opposite Tegelen, deserves the attention of antiquities,
wrote the learned national archivist Jos. Habets in his day,
specifically because of the following two discoveries: First, it is
in Hout-Blerick that traces of a Belgo-Roman settlement can be
found. Twenty minutes from the Maas River in the direction of
Maasbree, not far from the last houses, called "Doovend,"
lies a field, situated higher than the rest, called Veldenkamp. This
name was given in memory of one of the last owners, named Van
Velden. Over an area of twelve to fifteen acres, one
finds Roman antiquities, fragments of pottery and pans, building
blocks, red cement, wood ash, and iron fragments. At the side of
this field flows the small river called "de Breebeek,"
where the famous head of Medusa, which will be discussed shortly,
was found. According to Greek and Roman mythology, Medusa is one of
the three so-called Gorgons. These were three sisters named Sthenyo,
Euryale, and Medusa.
They
were hideous creatures, surrounded by a belt of hissing serpents; on
their heads they had dragon scales; their large, sharp teeth
protruded far; their claws and wings were made of copper. So
terrifying were they that their mere sight could turn a human to
stone. They lived at the very edge of the Western Ocean. The hero
Perseus, who led the charge against these monsters, cut off the head
of Medusa, the only mortal of the three, while she lay deep in
sleep. From Medusa's torso sprang the winged horse, Pegasus.
Swift
as the wind, Perseus, who had leaped onto the Pegasus, sped through
the air and flew over Africa. Blood still dripped from Medusa's
head, and the drops that fell to the earth there turned into
serpents.
When
Perseus wanted to rest a while with the giant Atlas, who, at the
point where the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean meet,
carried the pillars of heaven on his shoulders and was not received
hospitably, he was annoyed. He held up Medusa's head to him, and
Atlas was immediately transformed into a massive rock, its crown
rising into the clouds. So a Medusa head was not an out-of-place
symbol on a warrior's shield.
However,
after this digression, let us return to the Veldenkamp and the
Breebeek.
Around
1861, the owner of the site was cleared of the tiles and masonry
from that field and thrown into the stream. This event attracted the
attention of several antiquities enthusiasts, who began perusing the
ruins. In 1879, Messrs. Pleijten, curator at the Rijksmuseum in
Leiden, and J. A. Ort, lieutenant in the 4th Hussar Regiment,
formerly garrisoned in Venlo, conducted some excavations at that
site, the results of which are unknown.
The
second discovery made in the vicinity of Hout-Blerick was that of a
precious Medusa head and horse harness decorations in bronze.
This
discovery occurred around the autumn of 1872 in the Breebeek stream,
a few meters from the Beldenkamp substructures. A worker digging in
the stream discovered this treasure at a depth of 9 to 10 feet
underground. He sold it to the goldsmith J. G. Lienders in Venlo,
who still owned it in 1879.
This
treasure contains the following objects: A very beautiful "umbo,"
or navel from a Roman shield. It is a copper plate, fire-gilded in
the shape of a discus and richly sculpted in round molding. Its
diameter is 26 centimeters. The rim of the "umbo" consists
of a wreath of oak leaves interspersed with acorns. The center of
the navel consists of a Gorgon head in raised sculpture, exquisitely
carved. It is of majestic beauty, with a terrifying appearance like
all the Medusa heads. The eyes are wide open. The beautiful
proportions of the face recall the beautiful Greek style. The curls
of long hair encircle the head. She wears a short beard below the
chin. Snakes are coiled in her hair, forming an elegant knot beneath
the child. Two serpent heads emerge from beneath two small wings
that adorn the hair; a third slants over the center of the forehead.
On top of the head, the artist has placed a flower bud. This richly
adorned head is surrounded by a wreath of oak leaves, from which
hang acorns; it is similar to the one that forms the edge of the
navel. Below the sculpture is a garland of leaves and small petals.
The
Medusa head is one of the most common representations on ancient
shields. Homer places a Gorgon on the shield of Agamemnon.
Phidias
appears to have decorated the shield of Minerva with the same
symbol. This representation can also be seen on the shields of Mars,
Achilles, Victory, the Amazons, etc., which adorn Roman and Greek
vases. Several holes are found in the rim of the navel, which appear
to have been made either by an arrow or by the nails that served to
attach it to the shield.
The
depiction of our Medusa head is nothing unusual. The only thing
worth mentioning is that it wears a short beard around the chin. But
even that fact is not without antecedents. This Medusa head must
date from the first century AD.
Seven
other bronze objects were found alongside the aforementioned shield
navel, which were part of a horse harness. These are primarily a
decoration of the collar with two rings through which the reins
pass; then another set of rings for the reins. All these objects
have small holes to allow the nails to pass through and show genuine
traces of gilding.
Eindhoven,
November 5, 2015
Dear
Mr. Timmermans,
I
assume that I will receive a file shortly showing details of the
Medusa head. Fittings were also reportedly found, which Habets
writes about, in accordance with the Golden Helmet or Peel Helmet in
Helenaveen:
"Seven
studded fittings from a yoke for two draft animals." From this
combination of objects, pastor and national archivist Jos Habets
concluded a few years after the discovery that a Roman officer,
traveling with his chariot and carrying his parade shield, had
driven into the stream and possibly drowned.
Furthermore,
other objects were found in Blerick and moved to Brussels. Do you
know more about these, and in which Brussels museum might the urns
have ended up? See article:
Hidden
Treasures under Blerick [May 29, 1883]
In
the Publications de la Société d’archéologie
dans le duché de Limbourg, volume XVIII, Mr. Jos. Habets
spoke of the search for hidden treasures near Blerick, "in
which even officers from Venloo are said to have participated."
Captain J.A. Ort, currently employed at the Royal Military Academy,
now recounts in a short work published in Roermond under the title:
"Places in Blerick where prehistoric Germanic and Roman objects
have been found," what remains of this search for hidden
treasure and who participated. His writing reveals that it was not
officers but Mr. Franssen, pastor of Ittervoort, who searched in
vain for the Roman settlement.
The
priest, who had been searching in Blerick, told the farmers that a
treasure was hidden on the Römerheide there in a beautiful red
earthenware pot with a lid. People began searching and digging for
it, and the priest hoped to find the settlement without any expense
or effort. That's why he had given the farmers the description of a
Roman pot made of terra sigillata! Mr. Ort further reports that the
priest had damaged funerary urns smashed and that, although a
correspondent for the former Board of National Advisors for
Monuments of Dutch History and Art, he sold the proceeds of his
excavations to the museum in Brussels.
For
some time now, I have been working on the inventory of
archaeological objects (primarily Roman) in the Peel region and
along the banks of the Maas in the Netherlands. Do you have the work
by J.A. Ort? Paul Theelen 040-2814621 l.theelen@on.nl
November
10, 2015 Dear Mr. Theelen,
Mr.
Timmermans forwarded your questions to me.
For
information about the shield boss with Medusa's head and the yoke
fittings found with it, I refer you to the following publications:
L.
Swinkels, Medallion with Medusa's Head, in: A.A.J.J. van Pinxteren
et al. (eds.), Showpieces. Venlo 650 Years as a City, Venlo 1993,
25-28
L.
Swinkels, The Shield Boss of Blerick, in: M. Schrover (ed.), From
Trajan to Tajiri. Collection of the Valkhof Museum, Nijmegen 2009,
58-59.
The
shield boss is included in the permanent display of the Valkhof
Museum. The fittings are currently on display there (until January
24) in the exhibition "High Tech Romans." Last year,
Maarten Dolmans and Xavier van Dijk published articles on Roman
Wood-Blerick and the shield boss in Venlo's "Katernen" no.
20 (see:
http://www.academia.edu/12250706/Romeins_Hout_Blerick_Roman_Hout_Blerick_Venlo-Blerick_NL_).
I
am not aware of any finds from Blerick in Brussels.
Sincerely,
Louis
Swinkels
Curator
of Archaeology
Roman
coin hoards and the Germanic invasions in Gaul
38.
Near Bristol, bronzes from Gallienus to Constantine II. (John Evans,
Num. Chron., 1883, p. 118).
39. At Bishop's Wood, two vases
with 1 7,530 small bronzes from Diocletian to Constantius II
(Bagnall-Oakeley, Num. Chron., 1896, p. 209).
40. At
Salisbury, small bronzes of Licinius at Constantius II (C. Roach
Smith, Num. Chron., 1869, p. 47).
44. At East Harptree, near
Bristol, Constantine the Great to Gratian (John Evans, Num. Chron.,
1888, p. 22).
[BOOK II INVENTORY OF MONETARY HOOKUPS, p. 107
in green]
7. At Famars (municipality of Valenciennes), in 1824, a
considerable find was made, composed as follows: 1° silver
denarii predating Septimius Severus and others from the time of
Diocletian and Constantine, contained in five copper vessels holding
together approximately 18,200 coins; 2° Antoniniani and denarii
later than Septimius Severus (Balbino, Pupianus, Gordian III, Philip
I and II, Otacilia Severa, Trajan Decius, Herennia Etruscilla,
Hostilian, Trebonianus Gallus, Volusianus, Carinus) were contained
in four earthenware vases together containing 9,515 coins. The find
thus comprised approximately 28,000 coins, probably buried between
306 and 308 AD. (Journal des Débats, October 2 and 12, 1824,
January 15 and 18, 1825; Lettres du Baron Marchant sur la Num. et
l'histoire, 2nd ed., 1851, p. 411 et seq.; Mém. de la Société
des Antiques de France, vol. VII, 1826, p. lxxxiv; Mommsen-Blacas de
Witte, H.M.R., vol. III, p. 130. — See also H. Feneulle,
Analyse des monnaies d'argent romaines trouvas à Famars in
the Mém. de la Société d'émulation de
Cambrai, 1825, vol. X, p. 282.)
30. In the Boves forest
(municipality of Sains, arrondissement) (from Amiens), 20 to 25
small bronze coins from Constans and Valens. (Bulletin of the
Society of Antiquities of Picardy, vol. VII, 1859-1861, p.
243.)
31. At Glisy (municipality of Boves, district of
Amiens), a brass basin containing a large number of Roman coins was
found. (Catalogue of the Picardy Museum, 1876, p. 83, no. 575.)
39.
Near Falvy (municipality of Nesle, district of Péronne), in a
plot of land located in the commune of Ennemain, on April 23, 1868,
two vases containing 6,000 coins, medium and small bronze, from
Probus to Constantine, were discovered. Many of these coins had been
minted at the Trier mint. (Alfred Danicourt, Note to the Secretary
of the Picardy Antiquaries Society on a find of Roman coins made at
Falvy, near Péronne, Péronne, 1872; Yearbook of the
Société d'Antiquaires, 1868, vol. III, p. 405.)
40.
At Fricourt (municipality of Albert, district of Péronne), in
1874, several thousand coins belonging to the same period as those
of find no. 43. (O. Gaudechon, op. cit., p. 7.)
47. Near the
hamlet of Agnicourt (municipality of Méru, district of
Beauvais), in 1746, an earthenware vase containing a large number of
Roman bronze coins. (Graves, Archaeological Notice, p. 134.)
52.
Near Compiègne, at Mont-Chipray or Chyprès (between
Vivier-Corax and Croix-Saint-Ouen), in 1824, a vase containing 590
coins was found. In 1825, an amphora with 5,200 bronze coins was
discovered (one group of coins from this find included coins of
Nerva, Constantine, Fausta, Crispus, Constantine II, and Constans).
In 1826, a vase containing 2,235 bronze coins was found. In 1813, at
the Old Mint Crossroads, 366 silver coins were collected. (Graves,
Notice pp. 167, 169; E. Woillez, Répert. col. 127 and 128.)
I
have been unable to gather information on the exact composition of
these finds, the first of which is believed to have been acquired by
the Library (there is no record of this acquisition in the registers
of the Cabinet de France). I also do not know the composition of the
following three finds: (53, 54, 55)
57. At Choisy-au-Hac, in
the Compiègne forest, in 1818, a bronze vase with a handle.
This vase, which is kept at the Musée de
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, contained approximately 3,000 bronze coins,
most of them of Constantine. (S. Reinach, Catalogue (summary) of the
Saint-Germain Museum, 2nd ed., p. 188.)
62.
At Grandrû (municipality of Noyon, district of Compiègne),
at a place called Le Cadeau, in 1846, a gray earthenware vase
containing nearly 9,000 small bronzes from the time of Constantine
the Great and his sons was discovered; many pieces bore the
inscriptions Urbs Roma and Constantinopolis. Tiles, pottery, and
various other fragments were also found in the surrounding area.
(Bulletin of the Archaeological Commission of the Diocese of
Beauvais, 1847, vol. II, p. 66; Graves, Notice p. 162; cf. E.
Woillez, Repertory, col. 144.)
72.
At Lappion (municipality of Sissonne, district of Laon), in 1820, an
earthenware vase containing 8,000 small bronzes and some billon
coins dating from the time of Gallienus to the time of Constantine
(?) (Louis-Lucas, Notice on some discoveries, etc. Reims, 1843, p.
14.)
79.
On the land of Quicy (municipality of Guny, municipality of Coucy,
district of Laon), at Mont-Notre-Dame, pottery fragments, a
millstone, and a red earthenware vase containing 700 coins, large,
medium, and small bronzes of Probus, Diocletian, Maximian Herculius,
Constantius Chlorus, and Galerius Maximian. (Bulletin of the
Historical and Archaeological Society of Soissons, 1849, vol. III,
pp. 162 and 189).
81.
Near Frontigny (municipality of La Malmaison, municipality of
Neufchâtel, district of Laon), in 1897, a grayish earthenware
vase with 1,500 to 2,000 coins from the 4th century (Constantine and
contemporary emperors). The find was dispersed; Thirty-five pieces
were acquired by the Reims Museum. (Bulletin of the French Society
of Antiquities, 1897, p. 331.)
82.
Near Clermont (municipality of Rozoy-sur-Serre, district of Laon),
an earthenware vase containing 11,000 well-preserved Roman coins.
(Bulletin of the French Historical Society, 1849, p. 141.)
86.
Between Villemontoire (municipality of Oulchy, district of Soissons)
and Taux, an earthenware vase, covered with a red tile, containing
2,300 coins of Diocletian, Maximian Herculius, Severus, Constantius
Chlorus, Constantine, Galerius, and Maximinus Daza. These coins were
all follis. (Bulletin of the Historical and Archaeological Society
of Soissons, 1845, vol. II, pp. 38 and 166.)
91.
Between Crécy-sur-Serre and Vervins, a large number of bronze
coins of Licinius, Constantine I and II, and Crispus were found.
(Memoirs of the Society of Antiquities of France, 1823, vol. IV, p.
49.)
111.
At Soulosse (municipality of Coussey, district of Neufchâteau),
in a garden where a 4th-century ivory statuette and a silver
medallion of Constantine the Great were also found, 2,000 bronze
coins of Constantius Chlorus, Constantine, and his sons were
collected. (Bulletin of the Society of Antiquities of France, 1881,
p. 150.)
117.
At Marac (municipality of Langres), in 1835, a chest containing
1,500 small bronzes from the beginning of the 4th century. (Luquet,
in the Écho de la Haut-Marne, November 1, 1835; Antiquities
of Langres, p. 285.)
134.
At Merfy (municipality of Burgundy, district of Reims), in 1813,
under a stone, 400 bronzes of Diocletian, Maximian Herculius,
Constantius Chlorus, Constantine, Galerius, Maximian, Severus II,
and Maximinus Daza. (Annuaire de la Marne, 1824, p. 271; Société
d’Agriculture, Commerce, Sciences et Arts de la Marne, 1859,
p. 150.)
137.
At Tours-sur-Marne (municipality of Ay, arrondissement of Reims), in
1833, numerous coins of Gallienus, Telricus, and Constantine, and
two silver rings, were found covered by a tile. The coins were
heavily oxidized and clumped together as if they had been placed in
rolls. (Archaeological Congress of France, 22nd century, at
Châlons-sur-Marne, in 1855, p. 53; Society of Agriculture,
Commerce, Sciences and Arts of the Marne, 1859, p. 160.)
138.
At Trépail (municipality of Verzy, district of Reims), in
1874, 300 bronze coins of Gallienus, Maximian, Constantius Chlorus,
and Constantine were discovered. (Archaeological Congress of France,
13th century, 1875, p. 154.)
141.
At Damery (municipality and district of Épernay), in 1830,
ruins were discovered which were considered to be those of the
ancient Bibe. In one of the substructures, coin molds and vases
containing numerous coins were found. In one of the vases, there
were 2,000 coins, including 1,500 of Postumus; the others belonged
to the emperors since Gordian III. Another vase contained 4,000
small bronzes of Constantius and Constantius, including 3,900 with
the reverse of the phoenix {Fel. temp. reparatio.)(Revue num., 1837,
p. 172; 1839, p. 465; 1843, p. 364; Louis-Lucas, op. laud,, p. 19;
F. Lenormant, La Monnaie dans l’Antiquité, t. III, p.
207.)
152.
In Saint-Mard-sur-le-Mont (commune of Dommartin-sur-Yèvre,
district of Sainte-Menehould), in 1867, 6,000 poorly preserved small
bronzes of Gallienus, Tetricus and Constantine. {Archaeological
Congress of France, 13th century, 1875, p. 153.)
162.
In a garden in the village of Chervey, near Bar-sur-Seine, on
December 15, 1842, a red earthenware vase containing approximately
8,000 small bronze coins was discovered. Two thousand of the
examined coins dated from the reigns of Gallienus, Postumus,
Victorinus, Tetricus, Claudius II, Aurelian, Severina, Tacitus,
Probus, Carus, Carinus, Numerian, Magnia Urbica, Nigrinian,
Diocletian, Maximian Herculius, Carausius, Allectus, Constantius
Chlorus, and Galerius Maximian. The coins of Probus represented a
quarter of this collection. A short distance from Chervey runs a
road known as the Roman Road. (Archaeological Congress of France,
Troyes, 1853, pp. 51 and 55; Memoirs of the Society of Agriculture,
Sciences, Arts and Belles-Lettres of the Aube, 1842-1843, vol. XI,
p. 95.)
166.
In the ruins of Membrey (municipality of Dampierre-sur-Salon,
district of Gray), near Tantique Segobodium (Seveux), between 1838
and 1841, a vase containing 280 coins of Trebonianus Gallus,
Postumus, Claudius II, Tetricus, Aurelian, Probus, Galerius
Maximian, and Constantine the Great was found. (Matty de Latour,
Roman Ruins of
Membrey,
Angers, 1847, p. 25; extract from the Memoirs of the Society of
Agriculture, Sciences and Arts of Angers, vol. VI.)
178.
At Bredannaz (municipality of Doussard, municipality of Faverges),
near Annecy, approximately 3,000 small bronze coins from the reigns
of Licinius to Constantius II. (Soret, Memoirs of the Geneva
Historical Society, vol. I, p. 241.)
194.
At Saint-Vincent-de-Mercuze (municipality of Touvet, district of
Grenoble), on February 25, 1870, just a few kilometers from the road
still called the Chemin-de-l’Empereur at Mas-de-la-Branche, a
red earthenware vase containing a silver bracelet, 54 silver and
billon coins, 123 medium bronze coins and 117 small bronze coins
from Caracalla to Constantine (65 p.). (G. Vallier, in the Bulletin
of the Statistical Society of Isère, 1878, p. 336.)
195.
At Saint-Vincent-de-Mercuze, at a place called La Bellangère,
at the end of January 1899, on a plateau where foundations and
fragments of tiles were found, a red earthenware vase was discovered
that had been covered with a sheet of lead. This vase contained
approximately 1,550 coins distributed as follows: 2 Valerian; 350
Gallienus; 10 Salonina; 6 Postumus; 2 Victorinus; 170 Claudius II; 7
Quintillus; 80 Aurelian; 4 Severina; 15 Tacitus; 1 Florian; 80
Probus; 5 Carus; 3 Numerian; 10 Carinus; 1 Magnia Urbica; 90
Diocletian (plus 120 follis), 160 Maximian Herculius and Maximian
Galerius (plus 200 follis); 1 Allectus; 5 Constantius II and 20
frustes. (H. Muller, Bulletin of the Dauphiné Society of
Ethnology and Anthropology, vol. VI, 1899, pp. 78-80; the same
author analyzes the previous find, pp. 80-81.)
210.
At Saint-Chef (municipality of Bourgoin), in April 1760, bronze
paterae and basins, with 40 coins from the reigns of Augustus to
Constantine. (Caylus, Recueil d'Antiques, vol. V, p. 289, and pl.
CIV; H. Thédenat and A. Héron de Villefosse, Les
trésors de vaisselle d’argent trouvés en Gaule
1885, p. 45.)
215.
Near Saint-Paul-lez-Romans (municipality of Romans, district of
Valence), a few kilometers from Saint-Nazaire, on the right bank of
the Isère River, around 1835, 600 small bronze coins of
Diocletian, Maximian, Constantius Chlorus, and Galerius were found.
(Rev. archéologique, 1860, p. 406, note 3.)
229.
Near Tourves (municipality of Brignoles), in 1366, according to
Nostradamus, an enormous quantity of coins was discovered: Terrant
evomentem pecuniam argenteam viginti mulorum onus. (Baron
August/Gustave von?) de Bonstetten, op. laud., p. 37.
Photo
of the Roman bridge near Tourves
239.
On Mont-Barbe, where the church and castle of Chatellenot are
located (municipality of Pouilly), in 1806, three-thirds of a gold
sol of Magnentius and Constantius and eighteen pounds of mark weight
of Tetricus's coins were found. (Girault, op. laud., p. 17.)
245.
One hundred paces from the village of Sommeville, near Monéteau
(municipality of Auxerre West), in 1820, three earthenware vases
containing a large number of coins from the 3rd and 4th centuries,
and in particular from Diocletian, were found. (M. Quantin, op.
laud., col. 19.)
250.
At Appoigny (municipality of Auxerre), at the place called Les
Ruelles, around 1847, an earthenware vase containing approximately
5,000 coins of Maximinus Thrax (only 1), Valerian, Gallienus,
Salonina, Saloninus, Postumus, Victorinus, Tetricus, Claudius II,
Quintillus, Aurelian, Severina, Tacitus, Florian, Probus, Carus,
Numerian, Carinus, Magnia Urbica, Diocletian, Maximian Herculius,
Constantius Chlorus, and Galerius Maximian. (Abbé Duru, in
the Memoirs of the Society of Historical and Natural Sciences of the
Yonne, 1847, vol. I, p. 221 and vol. II, pp. 57 and 221, 9 plates;
cf. Yearbook of the Yonne), vol. I, 1837, p. 299).
254.
At Bussy-en-Othe (municipality of Brienon, district of Joigny), a
vase filled with coins of Constantine, Constantius, Magnentius, etc.
(M. Quantin, op. cit., col. 136.)
256.
At Mézilles (municipality of Saint-Fargeau, district of
Joigny), in an ironworks, a cache of 200 small bronze coins of
Probus (one coin), Licinius, Constantine I and II, and Crispus.
(Information provided by M. H. de Flamare.)
258.
At Saint-Romain-le-Preux (municipality of Saint-Julien-du-Sault,
district of Joigny), a vase containing bronze coins of Constantine,
Constantius, etc. (M. Quantin, op. laud. col. 169.)
260.
At Molinons (municipality of Villeneuve-l’Archevêque,
district of Sens), at the place called Pont-de-Pierre, near the
Roman road, a large pot filled with coins of Gallienus, Tetricus,
Constantine, etc. (M. Quantin, op. laud. col. 227.)
263.
A fairly large number of finds have been briefly reported. I will
cite these as appearing to be the most clearly defined: Esnon,
around 1650 and 1730 (Roman coins of the 2nd and 3rd centuries);
Charbuy, in 1665 (middle 3rd century); Avallon, 1709 (3rd century);
Champeaux, 1723 (small 3rd century coin). Vermanton, Lucy-sur-Cure,
1725 (small br. from the 3rd century); Bouy-le-Vieux-en-Othe (small
br. from the 3rd century); Vaux, 1730 (Roman bronze m.); Auxerre,
1734 (pet. br. from the 3rd century); Beaumont, 1750 (pet. br.);
Thunder, 1757 (pet. br.); Avallon, 1765 (m. of Antoninus and
Hadrian); Villeneuve-l’Archevêque, 1816 (pet. br. from
the 3rd century); Champlost, 1819 (pet. br. from the 3rd and 4th
centuries); Sommeville, 1829 (small br. of the 3rd and 4th c.);
Pourrain, 1849 (small br. of the 3rd c.); Heurtebise near Vandeurs,
1850 (small br. of the 3rd c.); Saint-Julien-du-Sault, 1850 (small
br. of the 3rd c.). (Abbé Duru, Memoirs to serve as a general
work on the finds of medicine in the Yonne region, in the Memoirs of
the Society of Sciences of the Yonne, 1852, vol. V, pp. 486-488.)
266.
In this same locality of Chantenay (municipality of
Saint-Pierre-le-Moulier, district of Nevers), around 1863, a hoard
was found, considered to be a military chest, containing more than
80 kilograms of small bronze coins of (California, Severina, Probus,
Carus, Carinus, Maximian, Hercules, and Constantine (this list is
obviously incomplete)). According to M. F. Pérot, this find
(the "two military chests") consisted of more than 100
kilograms of small bronze coins from Claudius II to Constantine.
267.
In 1878, another find of Two vases containing 1,764 bronze coins
distributed as follows: 1 Valerian; over 700 Gallienus; Salonina; 8
Postumus; Victorinus; Tetricus, father and son; over 700 Claudius
II, including only one specimen with the head facing left;
Quintillus; Aurelian; 1 Carus; 1 Diocletian; 1 Maximian Herculius; 1
Constantius Chlorus. (Proceedings of the Numismatic Society, 1877,
2nd series, vol. I, p. 69; ibid., 1878, pp. 241-243; Catalogue of
the Moulins Museum, 1885, p. 134, nos. 508 and 511.)
270.
Previously, around 1770, a hollowed-out stone containing a large
quantity of Domitian coins had been discovered near the
Saint-Saturnin farm. Antoninus, Faustina, Commodus, Julia Domna,
Alexander Severus, Maximinus, Gordian III, Philip, Gallienus,
Saloninus, Postumus, Diocletian, Maximian, and Constantine. (P.
Gillet, Annuaire du départ de la Nièvre pour l'an XI,
an X, pp. 63 and 64; O. de Soultrait, Répert., col. 148.)
278.
At the hamlet of Spouse (municipality of Ougny, municipality of
Châtillon-en-Bazois, district of Château-Chinon), in
September 1898, four to five kilograms of medium and small bronze
coins of Gallienus, Claudius II, Constantius Chlorus, and Diocletian
were found. In the field opposite the one where this discovery was
made, foundations had apparently been found previously. (Information
communicated by M. H. de Flamare.)
283.
In Marré-le-Bas (or Marré-les-Bois?), a hamlet in the
commune of Cervon (commune of Corbigny), a bronze vase was found
containing approximately 3,000 pieces by Gallienus, Salonina,
Postumus, Victorinus, Tetricus, Claude II and Constantine. (Revue
num. 1838, p. 298; cf. Baudiau, Le Morvan vol. II, p. 153.)
288.
In Lancié, 2 kilometers from Romanèche (district of
Mâcon), in 1880, earthen urn containing approximately 1,806
pieces distributed as follows: 2 Gallien; 9 Claudius II; 1 quintil;
236 Aurélien; 5 Séverine; 87 Tacitus; 13 Florian; 438
Probus; 31 Carus; 35 Numerian; 47 Carinus; 384 Diocletian; 430
Maximian Herculius; 1 Carausius; 1 Allectus; 43 Constantius Chlorus;
43 Galerius Maximian. Buried around 298. (Emile Lépaulle,
Note on the Lyon mint at the time of Diocletian's reform, Concerning
a find made at Lancié in 1880. Lyon, A. L. Perrin, 1883,
quarto, pp. 5 and 6.)
292.
Near Autun, in 1889, a discovery of gold coins was made. In
particular, two gold medallions, mint condition, of Gallienus and
Constantine were noted. (Yearbook of the Numismatic Society, 1890,
p. 251.)
302.
Near Lagnieu (district of Belley), in 1807, approximately 300 bronze
coins of Diocletian, Constantius Chlorus, Galerius Maximian,
Severus, Maximinus Daza, and Constantine. (A. Sirand, 5th
archaeological dig, in Journal d’Agriculture de l’Ain,
1843, p. 138.)
303.
At Ambérieu-en-Bugey (district of Belley), in 1845, coins
from Probus to Diocletian, Maximian, and Constantius Chlorus.
(Sirand, Journal d’Agriculture de l’Ain, 1847, p. 116.)
304.
At Groslée (municipality of Lhuis, district of Belley), a
find of similar composition. (Journal of Agriculture of the Ain,
1847, p. 116.)
310.
Near the Château de Montréal, not far from Brion
(municipality of Nantua), in November 1853, woodcutters found, under
an oak tree, in a single cavity, nearly 10,000 medium and small
bronze coins of Diocletian, Maximian Herculius, Constantius Chlorus,
Constantine, and Crispus. The find was dispersed. (A. Sirand, 14th
archaeological survey, in the Journal of Agriculture of the Ain,
1854, p. 141.)
314.
At Lyon, a find of 12,000 small bronze coins. Of the 1,200 that
could be examined, there were a few pieces from the reign of
Claudius II, but the majority belonged to the reigns between
Maximinus Daza and Constantius II. (Numismatic Chronicle, vol. XI,
proceedings, p. 13; Mommsen-Blacas-de Witte, H.M.R., vol. III, p.
135.)
328.
In Paris, in 1807, during the excavation of the Tourcq Canal basin
at La Villette, an earthenware vessel containing approximately 2,500
bronze coins (follis) of Diocletian, Maximian Herculius, Constantius
Chlorus, Galerius Maximian, Severus, Maximinus Daza, Maxentius, and
Constantine the Great was discovered. (Grivaud de La Vincelle,
Recueil de monuments antiques, vol. II, pp. 257 and 270. This author
(p. 275) places the burial around 310.
344.
In the commune of Larchant (municipality of La Chapelle-la-Reine,
arrondissement of Fontainebleau), in 1879, 208 medium and small
bronze coins were found, distributed as follows: 5 Licinius the
Elder, 2 Licinius the Younger, 100 Constantine, 3 Helena, 2 Fausta,
16 Crispus, 6 Urbs Roma, 16 Constantinopolis, 35 Constantine II, 4
Constans, 19 Constantius II. (Communication from Mr. E. Thoison;
Revue num. 1899, p. 388.)
354.
At Derchigny-Graincourt (municipality of Offranville), in 1853, on
the roadside, an earthenware vase containing 800 bronze coins of
various sizes, of Diocletian, Maximian Herculius, Constantius
Chlorus, Galerius Maximian, Licinius, Maximinus Daza, and
Constantine the Great. (Abbé Cochet, Répert. col. 69.)
393.
At Neuville-du-Bosc (municipality of Brionne, district of Bernay),
near the Bosc farm, around 1802, 1,600 to 1,700 medium and small
bronze coins of Probus, Maximian, and Constantine. (Information
provided by Mr. L. Coutil.)
402.
In January 1897, at the hamlet of Surcy (municipality of Mézières,
district of Les Andelys), 300 to 400 small bronze coins were found,
most of which Mr. L. Coutil communicated to me. The composition of
this small hoard is as follows: 1 Tetricus; 4 crudely made Telricus;
one small bronze, a deformation of the Urbs Roma type, Constantine
II, Constans I, Magnentius, Valentinian I and Valentinian II,
Valens, Gratian, Theodosius, Arcadius (numerous examples, two with
LCVP), Honorius (numerous examples), Magnus Maximus, Eugenius
(392-394; only one example). (Bulletin of the French Society of
Antiquities, 1897, p. 368.)
403.
At the Sarrazine marsh between Surcy and Mézières, in
1865, a black earthenware vase containing approximately ten
kilograms of large, medium, and small bronze coins was found. It
contained coins of Nero, Nerva, Trajan, Lucius Verus (a large gilded
bronze), Commodus, Valerian, Gallienus, Postumus, Claudius Gothicus,
Aurelian, Probus, Carinus, Diocletian, Maximian, Severus, and
Constantine. (Bulletin of the French Society of Antiquities, 1897,
p. 369.)
406.
During the construction of the Poses lock (Pont-de-l’Arche,
Louviers district), in 1851, a pot containing 1,200 bronze coins was
found amidst a pile of stones. Among those examined were coins of
Philip, Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian, Maximian, and Constantius.
(Archaeological Congress of France, Nantes, 1856, p. 261.)
415.
At Moult (Bourguébus commune, Caen district), in September
1846, a gray earthenware vase containing approximately 6,000 bronze
coins was found. Of the 2,000 coins examined, some were identified
from the following reigns: Valerian, Gallienus, Salonina, Postumus,
Victorinus, Tetricus (father and son), Claudius II, Quintillus,
Aurelian, Severina, Tacitus, Probus, Garus, Carinus, Numerian,
Diocletian, Maximian-Herculius, and Constantius Chlorus. The most
numerous coins were those of Gallienus, Aurelian, Probus, Claudius
II, Tetricus, and Diocletian. (Bulletin monumental, 1846, vol. XII,
p. 632.)
424.
At Helleville (municipality of Les Pieux, district of Cherbourg), in
1780, 8 aurei and 6 gold medallions of the Constantinian dynasty
were found. These pieces, which entered the Cabinet of France, were
stolen in 1831. There were 4 medallions of Constantine, 1 of
Constantine II, and 1 of Constantius II. (Revue num., 1858, p. 279.)
428.
At Sainte-Mère-Église (district of Valognes), in a
field called Le Hutrel, in 1853, approximately 4,500 small bronze
coins were found: Maximinus Daza, Maxentius, Licinius, 900
Constantine the Great, 35 Crispus, and 42 Constantine II. Of the
1,200 coins that could be examined, there were also 1 Gallienus, 1
Victorinus, 1 Aurelian, 2 Probus, 2 Constantius Chlorus, and 1
Galerius Maximian. This hoard was said to have been buried between
317 and 323, since it contained coins of Crispus and Constantine II,
and no coins of Constantius II. (Revue num., 1854, p. 81; de
Pontaumont, Hist. de ancienne élection de Carentan, 1866, p.
85.)
436.
In the vicinity of Montfort-sur-Meu, around 1873, 2,000 or 3,000
bronze coins (follis and small bronze) from the reigns of Diocletian
to Constantine the Great were found. (Fornier, Catalogue of coins
found at Plourhan, 1881, p. 1. Extract from the Memoirs of the
Society of Emulation of Côtes-du-Nord, 1881.)
444.
In the territory of the commune of Yffiniac (same canton), in 1855,
a vase containing 800 small bronze coins of Constantine,
Constantius, Valentinian, etc. (Preserved at the Saint-Brieuc
Museum?) (J. Gaultier du Mottay, op. cit. p. 176.)
447.
At the Fosse Bily farm (commune of Quessoy, commune of Moncontour,
arrondissement of Saint-Brieuc), on 15 Germinal, Year XII, a vase
containing coins of Probus, Diocletian, Maximian Herculius,
Constantius Chlorus, and Constantine the Great. (Celtic Academy,
vol. V, 1810, p. 167; J. Gaultier du Mottay, op. cit., p. 201.)
460.
In the village of Chemin-Chaussée (municipality of La
Bouillie, municipality of Matignon), crossed by the Roman road from
Carhaix to Alet, several hundred small bronze coins of Tetricus and
previous emperors were found in 1820. Also found there were “??
number of quinarii." (J. Gaultier du Mottay, op. cit., p. 436.)
463.
At Pont-Abbé (district of Quimper), an earthenware vase was
found containing several hundred billon coins and small bronze coins
of Balbinus, Valerian, Gallienus, Salonina, Postumus, Victorinus,
Tetricus, Claudius II, Quintillus, Severina, Carus, Licinius, and
Crispus. (Note by P. du Chatellier, in the Revue archéologique
1889, vol. II, p. 193.)
470.
At Mérouville (municipality of Janville), around 1857, a pot
was found divided internally by thin sheets of bronze into several
compartments containing two types of coins. On one side, billon
coins of Gallienus and Postumus; and on the other side, bronze coins
from Augustus to Constantine; 1,260 pieces in all. Tiles and various
fragments were also collected. (Bulletin of the French Antiquities
Society, 1857, p. 149.)
480.
At Bonneval (Châteaudun district), 1,000 to 1,200 coins of
Septimius Severus, Claudius II, Tacitus, Probus, Diocletian,
Maximian, and Constantine. (Memoirs of the French Antiquities
Society, vol. IX, 1832, pp. xlv and xci.)
486.
At Ouzouer-des-Champs (Lorris commune, Montargis district), in 1853,
an earthenware vase containing about fifty coins of Diocletian,
Maximian Herculius, Constantius Chlorus, and Constantine the Great.
(Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Orléans,
1848-1853, vol. I, p. 348.)
504.
At Genillé (municipality of Montrésor, district of
Loches), two vases, one bronze and the other earthenware, containing
medium and small bronze coins dating from the reign of Philip the
Elder to Constantine the Great. (Bulletin of the Archaeological
Society of Touraine, 1868-1870, vol. I, p. 232.)
505.
Under a rock shelter, inhabited in prehistoric times, not far from
the Roman road at Manthelan (municipality of Ligueil, district of
Loches), small bronze coins from Constantinople depicting a
she-wolf. (Information provided by Captain Bonnery.)
531.
In Angers, at the crossroads between the Joubert and Pierre-Lise
districts and the Trudelle house, in 1842, a red earthenware vase
containing approximately 300 bronze coins of Diocletian, Maximian,
Constantius Chlorus, Severus, Maximinus Daza, Maxentius, and
Constantine was found. (See Godard-Faultrier, Monuments antiques de
Anjou, 1864, p. 12.)
534.
In Lezon (municipality of Saint-Just-sur-Dive, district of Saumur),
along with various other antiquities, a copper dish containing 80
bronze coins was found (now in the Saumur Museum). (A. Courtiller,
in the Memoirs of the Society of Agriculture, Sciences and Arts of
Angers 1834-1837, vol. II, p. 347. — According to information
provided by Mr. Lemarinier, the dish supposedly contained 80 bronze
coins from the reigns of Augustus to Constantine. However, I am not
certain that this was a genuine hoard. See p. 62.)
539.
At Saint-Martin (municipality of Beaupréau, district of
Cholet), in 1826, a vase filled with coins was found, and in 1851,
at a place called La Métairie des Pierres Blanches, several
hundred coins of Diocletian, Maximian, Constantius Chlorus,
Licinius, Maxentius, and Constantine were discovered. (See
Godard-Faultrier, op. laud., p. 173.)
580.
At Olonne (municipality of Les Sables d'Olonne), in 1856, a find of
bronze coins from the time of Constantine was made. There were many
small bronze coins from Rome and Constantinople, most of which were
of very crude workmanship. A few coins bore the monogram of Christ.
(B. Fillon, Poitou et Vendée, art. Le Veillon; p. 10, note,
and Annuaire de la Société d'émulation de la
Vendée, 1856, vol. III, p. 213.)
581.
A find of Roman coins was reported at Château-d'Olonne
(municipality of Les Sables d'Olonne). There were about a hundred
Tetrici coins, along with some Constantine and Constans coins.
(Review of the Western Provinces, 1854-1855, vol. II, p. 328.)
587.
At Kersahut, near Le Gavre (municipality of Blain, district of
Saint-Nazaire), an earthenware vase containing a large number of
coins of Diocletian, Maximian, Constantius Chlorus, and Severus was
found. (Archaeological Review, 1851, vol. VIII, p. 336. j)
589.
At Chanteloup (municipality of Moncoutant, district of Parthenay), a
vase containing 2,400 coins of the emperors, listed below: Valerian,
Gallienus, Salonina, Saloninus, Postumus, Quintillus, Claudius II,
Aurelian (177), Severina, Tacitus, Florian, Pro? (394), Carus,
Numerian, Carinus, Magnia Urbica, Diocletian (468, including 216
follis), Maximian Herculius (323, including 223 follis), Constantius
Chlorus (284, including 236 follis), Galerius Maximian (204,
including 173 follis), Severus, Maximinus Daza, Constantine (69
follis). The Deux-Sèvres Statistical Society possesses
numerous coins from this find.
591.
At a place called Campian (Margaux commune, Bordeaux district), a
cache of 345 coins was discovered, contained in earthenware vases
placed near funerary urns. Among these coins were 55 from
Diocletian, 35 from Maximian, 70 from Constantine, 17 from Severus,
11 from Maximinus Daza, and 1 from Maxentius, all in good condition.
(Yearbook of the Society of Num. 1887, vol. XI, p. 322.)
592.
At Margaux (municipality of Castelnau-de-Médoc, district of
Bordeaux), an earthenware vase containing 800 to 900 bronze coins
(follis) was found, dating from the reign of Diocletian to
Constantine the Great. There were coins with the conjoined heads of
Severus II and Maximinus Daza. (Bulletin of the Archaeological
Society of Southern France, 1884, p. 17). This find may be the same
as the previous one.)
597.
At Lussac (district of Libourne), at a place called Le Roi, in
January 1844, a vase containing 204 bronze coins of Constantius
Chlorus, Licinius (father and son), Constantine, Crispus,
Constantine II, Constantius II, Fausta, and Helena was found. (F.
Jouannet, in the Proceedings of the Bordeaux Academy, 1847, vol. IX,
p. 213.)
620.
At Blagnac (a commune near Toulouse), two vases containing coins of
Claudius II and Constantine were found. (Memoirs of the Toulouse
Academy, 1867, 6th series, vol. V, p. 458.)
623.
At Saint-Cisy, in 1892 and 1899, two hoards of 3,600 coins, dating
from Hadrian to Constantine, were discovered. (Information provided
by Mr. L. Joulin.)
633.
At Velp, near Arenscheim, not far from Arnhem (Guelders), around
1715, a hoard consisting of a gold chain and bracelets, gold
medallions decorated with circles, and gold coins minted under the
sons of Constantine, Honorius, Galla Placidia, Gratian, Valentinian,
Valens, Arcadius, John, and other emperors and empresses of that
period. (Numerical Review, 1883, p. 81 et seq.).
641.
At Saint-Léger, in September 1850, 45 medium and small bronze
coins of Licinius and Constantine. (Belgian numismatic review, 1851,
p. 87.)
646.
At Pottes (district of Tournai), in 1802, a vase containing numerous
Roman coins. (J. de Bast, Second Supplement to the Collection,
1813.)
670.
At Harlebeck, 4 km from Kortrijk, in 1499, a glass vase containing
Roman coins. (J. de Bast, Collection, 1808, p. 167.)
676.
In the same locality [Meerlebeke], in November 1797, an earthenware
vase containing 98 coins of Victorinus, Quintillus, Claudius II,
Aurelian, Tetricus, Tacitus, Probus, and Julian the Apostate,
including 2 silver coins of Constantine the Great. (J. de Bast,
Recueil, 1808, pp. 99-105.)
680.
At Saint-Denis-Westrem, near Ghent, in 1787, approximately twenty
gold coins of Constantine the Great, Valentinian, Valens,
Theodosius, and Honorius. (J. de Bast, Recueil, 1808, p. 109.)
686.
At Heerlen, between Maastricht and Aachen, 28 small bronze coins of
Valentinian II (5), Theodosius (15), Magnus Maximus, Arcadius,
Honorius, and Constantine III. (Revue de numism. belge, 1846, p.
194.)
691.
At Noville-lez-Bastogne, a vase containing 600 Roman coins (period
unknown). (Westd. Zeitsch. f. Gesch. u. Kunst, vol. XV, 1896, p.
396.)
708.
At Ville-en-Waret, a hoard composed of coins, the most recent of
which are twenty coins of Constantine I.
710.
At Furfooz, a small cache of 8 gold coins. The Namur Museum holds 3
of them, which are from Constantine III, John, and Valentinian III
(425-433). (Annales... Namur..., vol. III, p. 233; vol. V, p. 36.)
720.
At Dalheim, on April 17, 1842, three urns were discovered containing
approximately 30,000 coins, medium and small bronzes. Of the 22,427
coins examined, 14,507 of which were described by M. Senckler, there
were some dating from the reign of Diocletian to that of Constantine
I; Some billon coins dated to the reigns of Licinius and Maximinus.
Since Licinius the Younger and Crispus are not represented in this
hoard, it is certain that the burial took place shortly before 317,
and probably around 313. (Senckler, in the Publications Luxembourg,
vol. III, pp. 60-83; B. de Köhne, Zeitschrift für
Münzkunde, vol. II, p. 254; Jahrbücher de Bonn, vol. I, p.
127 and vol. XI, p. 55.)
See
also: THE ROMAN CAMP OF DALHEIM.
722.
At Ermsdorf-sur-l’Ernz (lez-Medernach), in May 1880, an
earthenware vase with 10,000 small bronzes, of which 5,500 were
studied and belonged to the reigns between Quintillus and
Constantius II. There was a denarius of Alexander Severus.
Classified by mint, 4,239 pieces were distributed as follows: Trier,
2,693; Lyon, 160; Arles, 9; “Constantina”, 119; London,
41; Siscia, 23; Rome, 10; Tarragona, 2; Antioch, 1; Carthage, 1;
Thessaloniki, 8. The burial took place after 342. (Van Werveke,
Publications Luxembourg, vol. XXXV, p. 440; Annuaire Société
franç. de Numism., 1882, vol. VI, p. 270; F. Hettner, Wd.
Zeitsch. f. Gesch. u. K., vol. VII, 1888, p. 117.)
724.
In the same locality [Ettelbruck], at the place called Op Lopert,
not far from the first find, on October 9, 1889, a hoard of 1,982
coins (representing 812 varieties) of Gallienus (very numerous),
Salonina, Postumus (1), Victorinus (6), Marinus (1), Tetricus the
Elder (8) and Son (6), Claudius II (very numerous), Quintillus,
Aurelian, Severina, Tacitus, Florian, Probus, Carus, Numerian,
Magnia Urbica, Diocletian, Maximian Herculius, Constantius Chlorus,
Galerius Maximian. (N. van Werveke, in the International Numismatic
Congress, 1891, p. 656, and in the Luxembourg Publications, 1895,
vol. XLII, pp. 303-384; Revue num., 1896, p. 111.)
737.
At Weeze (Guelre circle, Geldern), in 1880, a red earthenware vase
with 5,200 small bronzes. Of the 1,198 examined, there were: 1
Gallienus, 1 Consecration of Claudius, 1 Licinius the Elder, 1
Licinius the Younger, 113 Constantine, 294 Constantine II Caesar,
136 Constantius II Caesar, 30 Constans Caesar, 5 Delmatius, 46
Theodora, 52 Helena, 262 Roma, 224 Constantinopolis, 1 Populus
Romanus, 26 barbarians. The workshops were represented as follows:
Trier, 668; Lyon, 173; Arles, 78; Rome, 16; Aquileia, 1; Siscia, 8;
Constantinople, 2; Carthage, 1; Thessalonica, 1; Heraclea, 6;
indistinct, 215. The burial took place around 337. (Jahrb. de Bonn,
LXXIV, p. 196; Dr. Steiner, Wd. Korrespondenzbl., vol. I, p. 225; F.
Hettner, Westd. Z., vol. VII, 1888, pp. 124–129.)
746.
In Cologne, on the Marienplatz, on March 29 and April 1, 1895,
several amphorae filled with Roman coins, perhaps 150,000 or 200,000
pieces, were discovered. Among the few thousand that could be
examined, follis of Maxentius and Constantine, small bronzes of
Helena, Licinius the Elder and Son, Constantine I and II, Urbs Roma,
Constantinopolis, Fausta, Crispus, and Constantius II were
identified. (C. Stedfeldt, in Korrespondenzblatt der Wd. Z., vol.
XIV, 1895, cols. 184-189.)
747.
In Cologne, on Stephanstrasse, in 1896, a vase containing 1,400
bronze pieces, including 1,040 of Magnentius, 320 of Decentius, 1 of
Constantine the Great, and 14 of Constantius II, most of them of the
large size. (C. Stedfeldt, Korrbl., vol. XV, 1896, cols. 126-128.)
757.
In Eller (Kochem circle), in April 1856, an earthenware vase
containing 957 small bronzes of Constantine and his sons (except
Constans) as Caesars, of Licinius, Fausta, and Helena, and also
three silver spoons. The burial must have taken place between 323
and 327. (Jahrb. de Bonn, vol. XXV, p. 202; Jahresbericht d.
Gesellschaft für nützl. Forsch. in Trier 1856, p. 21, and
1858, p. 79; F. Hettner, Westd. Z., vol. VII, 1888, p. 153.)
759.
At Dhron (Bernkastel district), on September 26, 1885, fragments of
a bronze vessel with several hundred small bronzes, including some
consecration coins of Claudius II and from the end of the 3rd
century; numerous coins of Constantine I and Constantine II Caesar,
Licinius the Younger, Crispus, Constantius II, Fausla, Helena, Roma,
and Constantinopolis. The burial took place before December 333, the
date on which Constans was created Caesar. (O. von Nell, Westd.
Korrbl. vol. IV, no. 147; F. Hettner, Westd. Z., vol. VII, 1888, pp.
118–123.)
764.
Between Erdorf (Bitburg district) and Badem, in the Nüsselberg,
in 1859, a red earthenware vase containing 403 coins of Maximinus
Daza, Licinius the Elder, Constantine, Crispus, and Constantine II
Caesar. This hoard must have been buried between 317 and 323, as it
does not contain any coins of Constantius II Caesar. (Namur, Revue
numism. belge 1859, p. 469; F. Hettner, Westd. Z., vol. VII, p.
154.)
766.
At Ittel (territory of Trier), in 1847, in a hollowed-out stone,
coins of Constantine, Licinius, Crispus, Constantine II, Helena, and
Constans, buried around 350. (F. Hettner, Westd. Z., vol. VII, p.
154.)
767.
At Euren (near Trier), in 1859, in the ruins of a Roman dwelling, a
small vase containing 1 denarius of Geta and 114 small bronze coins,
including 1 of Constantine, 1 of Constantinopolis, 1 of Urbs Roma, 3
of Constantius II, 2 of Constans, 1 of Valens, 5 of Gratian, 1 of
Magnus Maximus, and 5 of Arcadius. Burial after 393. (Jahresbericht
Trier, 1859-1860, p. 49; F. Hettner, Westd. Z., vol. VII, p. 154.)
768.
In Trier, a hoard containing gold and silver coins from the time of
Constantine and several medallions of the emperors Constantius II
and Constans was found in 1635. (Chiflet, Anastasis Childerici
regis, 1655, p. 285; cf. F. Hettner, Westd. Z., vol. VII, p. 155.)
770.
In Trier, on Fützenstrasse, in July 1886, small bronzes were
found with the fragments of a wooden casket. Out of 513 pieces
acquired by the City Museum, there are coins of Claudius II,
Tetricus father, Constantine, Helen, Roma, Constantinopolis,
Constantine II, Constantius, Constantius II, Julian, Valentinian II,
Theodosius, Magnus Maximus, Flavius Victor, Eugene,
Arcadius and Honorius. (F. Hettner, West. Z., t. VI, p. 150.)
771.
In the same city, in Feldstrasse, in 1885, 240 small bronzes of
Tetricus, Roma, Constantinopolis, Valens, Valentinian II, Theodosius
I, Flavius Victor, Arcadius and Honorius were found.
(F. Hettner, in the Westd. Z., vol. VI, p. 153.)
772.
At Trier, in Nicholasstrasse, amidst foundations, about 50
medium-sized bronze coins from the reigns of Diocletian to
Constantine, buried around 308. (Korrespbl. 1887, p. 120; Westd. Z.,
vol. VII, p. 155.)
775.
At Ollmuth (territory of Trier), on January 23, 1888, a vase
containing a large number of small bronze coins, 155 of which were
from the reigns of Constantine, Constantine II Caesar, Constantius
II, Constans, Delmatius, Helena, Theodosius, Roma, and
Constantinopoli. The burial took place around 337. (F. Hettner,
Westd. Z., vol. VII, 1888, p. 123.)
776.
At Baldringen, near Niederzerf (Hochwald, Trier district), a vase
with 119 bronze coins, including 36 of Magnentius, 5 of Decentius,
and 78 of
Constantius
II. (D. Lehner, Korrbl., vol. XIV, 1895, col. 235-237.)
777.
At Heddert, near Zerf (territory of Trier), in 1862, 547 medium
bronze coins of Diocletian (101); Maximian (134); Constantius
Chlorus (131); Galerius Maximian (66); Severus (8); Maximinus Daza
(9); and Constantine (108). Burial around 307 or 308. (Annual Report
in Trier 1863-1864, pp. 47-53; F. Hettner, Westd. Z., vol. VII, p.
156.)
779.
At Soest (Saarburg district), near Niedersöst, in 1845, a vase
containing "2 pounds" of well-preserved small bronzes of
Licinius, Constantine, and his sons, buried around 330. (Jahrb. of
Bonn, vol. VII, p. 157; F. Hettner, Westd. Z., vol. VII, p. 155.)
785.
At Emmersweiler (Saarbrücken district), near Forbach, in July
1886, two earthenware vases containing 2,000 medium-sized bronzes of
the emperors Diocletian and Maximian and of the Caesars Constantius
and Galerius. (F. Hettner, Westd. Z., vol. VI, pp. 131-149.)
786.
At Grumbach (St. Wendel district), in the Hammelskopf forest, in May
1851, a vase containing 1,430 small bronze coins, consecration coins
of Claudius II and Licinius to Constantius Caesar (1 coin). (F.
Hettner, Westd. Z., vol. VII, 1888, p. 157, citing Schröter,
Mitteil. des Saarbr. Vereins, vol. III, 1859, p. 75, and Jahrb. de
Bonn, vol. XVII, p. 227.)
787.
At Kirchenbollenbach (St. Wendel district), in 1878, a vase with
several hundred small bronzes of Licinius, Constantine I and II,
Crispus, Constantius II, Fausta, Helena, Constantinople, and Rome.
(F. Hettner, Westd. Z., vol. VII, p. 157, citing Van Vleuten,
Jahrbücher de Bonn, vol. LXX, p. 14, and the Saar- und
Moselzeitung, 1878, no. 67.)
789.
At Kirn (Creuznach district), 1,200 small bronze coins from Licinius
the Elder to Constantius II. The most numerous were those of
Constantine (219 pieces), Urbs Roma and Constantinople (595),
Constantine II (201), and Constantius II (127). (Jahrbücher de
Bonn, vol. XVII, p. 226.)
790.
In the Moselle region, in 1811, an earthenware vase containing 2,000
bronze coins of Probus, Diocletian, Maximian, and Constantius
Chlorus. (E. Ritterling, in the Annalen des Vereins für
Nassauische Altertumskunde u. G., vol. XXVIII, 1896, pp. 188 and
189.)
796.
At Daspich (near Diedenhofen=Thionville), in October 1842, in the
substructures, and under a pile of rubble, 111 small bronzes were
found, including 2 Claudius Gothicus, 1 Tetricus, 2
Maximian-Hercules, 3 Constantius, 2 Constantine, 4 Valens, 1
Arcadius, and 3 Honorius. The rest has not been studied. (Memoirs of
the Academy of Metz, 1843-1844, p. 275; cf. Bulletin of the Society
of the History of France, 1845, p. 1896.) 135.)
800.
At Ehl (Helvetum), in March 1865, fragments of a chest and a hoard
of 7,000 small bronze coins of Claudius II, Allectus, Constantine,
Helena, Theodora, Delmatius, Constans I, Constantine II (more than
1,000 pieces), and Valens were found. (Bulletin Société
Conservation des Monum. Alsace 1864-1865, vol. VII, pp. 80 and 87.)
801.
At Niederingelheim (Bingen district), in April 1844, an earthenware
vase containing 3,000 Roman coins was found. (Trier. Zeitung, 1844,
no. 102, and Num. Zeitung de Leitzmann, 1844, p. 102.) 80.)
805.
At Imsbach, in the spring of 1846, a large find of bronze coins,
especially those of Diocletian, Maximian, Constantius Chlorus,
Severus, and Constantine, buried around 305. (F. Hettner, Westd. Z.,
vol. VII, 1888, p. 161, citing Jahresb. 1847, p. 3.)
806.
At Dürkheim, in 1880, approximately 2,000 small bronze coins
from the time of Constantine. (Commentary from Professor Harster to
F. Hettner, Westd. Z., vol. VII, 1888, p. 162.)
807.
At Rheinzabern?, in 1858, approximately 1,000 Roman coins were found
in the bed of the Otterbach stream, along with the legionary eagle
now in the Speyer Museum. (F. Hettner, ibid., p. 162.)
808.
At Rheinzabern, in 1852, in a stone tomb, next to a skeleton, a
terracotta vase was found containing a leather purse closed with an
iron buckle. This purse contained approximately 700 small bronze
coins, including one of Claudius II and others of Constantine,
Constantine II, Constantius II, Constans, Helena, Roma, and
Constantinople. (Workshops of Trier, Aquileia, Constantinopolis,
Thessaloniki, Carthage, Siscia.) (F. Hettner, Westd. Z., vol. VII,
1888, pp. 137–146.)
823.
At Horkheim (Neckar region), in the 18th century, with earthenware
vases, 100 silver coins, and 200 bronze coins, from Augustus to
Constantius (I or II?). There may have been two finds. (Dr. W.
Nestlé, op. laud., p. 14.)
830.
Four kilometers from Geneva, on the left bank of the lake, in 1837,
a vase with 800 small bronze coins of Diocletian, Maximian, and
Constantius Chlorus. (H. Meyer, Ueber die römischen Münzen,
die in der Schweiz gefunden werden, in the Zeitschrift für die
Alterthumswissenschaft, Darmstadt, 1840, vol. VII, col. 622.)
834.
At Altenryff, near Fribourg (municipality of Fribourg), around 1780,
a vase containing coins from Constantine to Julian. (H. Meyer, loc.
cit., Z. f. Alt., 1840, vol. VII, col. 622.)
837.
At Niederweil (municipality of Aargau), approximately 500 bronze
coins from Gallienus to Constantius II were found in a bronze vase
that also contained 5 silver coins from the Julia family, Vespasian,
Tijani, and Alexander Severus and Trebonianus Gallus. (H. Meyer,
cited by Leitzmann, Num. Zeitung, 1850, p. 63, and by
Mommsen-Blacas-de Witte, H. M. R., vol. III, p. 136, note 10.)
839.
At Wettingen (municipality of Aargau), in 1633, a vase with coins
(silver?) from Hadrian to Constantine II. (H. Meyer, Ibid., col.
621; Keller, in the Mittheil. des ant. Gesellsch. in Zurich, vol.
XV, pp. 133–135, pl. xiiie and xiv; H. Thédenat and A.
Héron de Villefosse, Les trésors de vaisselle d’argent
trouvés en Gaule, 1885, p. 33.)
842.
Near Glattbrugg, not far from Kloten (municipality of Zurich), in
1753, an earthenware vase containing 300 coins (silver?) from the
reigns of Augustus to Constantine. (H. Meyer, Ibid., col. 621.)
844.
In Schwerzenbach (municipality of Zurich), in August 1895, an
earthenware pot containing 96 coins was found, the majority of which
were Alexandrian "potins" (Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian,
Maximian). The Roman coins were distributed among Augustus, Philip,
Gallienus, Claudius II, Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian, Maximian I,
Valeria, Constantine, Maxentius, Licinius the Elder, Constantius,
Urbs Roma, Magnentius, and Valens. Buried between 364 and 378.
(E.-A. Stückelberg, in the Swiss Numismatic Review, 1895, p.
274.)
849.
In the Theodulus Pass, at the Matterjoch, which leads from the
Zermatt Valley to the Tournanche Valley, on the 24th In August 1895,
54 coins of Aurelian, Probus, Constantius II, Constantius Gallus,
Magnentius, and Decentius were found. (Num. Chron., 1897, p. 127.)
853.
Near Pfyn (municipality of Thurgau), around 1892, approximately 400
coins, including 200 bronze coins, were examined, dating from the
reigns of Augustus to Constantine III. There were also some
independent Greek coins and Egyptian potin. (E. A. Stückelberg,
Revue suisse de numism. 1895, pp. 273-274.)
854.
“At the site of Epannum (municipality of Valais), destroyed in
562 by a landslide,” a vase containing more than 800 bronze
coins from the time of Diocletian was found in 1837, Maximian and
Constantius Chlorus. (H. Meyer, op. laud., Z. f. Alt., 1840, vol.
VII, col. 622.)
855.
Near Chur (municipality of Graubünden), in 1806, a vase
containing 200 coins of Diocletian, Maximian, and Constantius
Chlorus. (H. Meyer, op. laud., col. 622. This author cites several
other hoards of Roman coins discovered in various locations in
Switzerland, but the composition of these finds is unknown.)
857.
“Near Outrivière,” in 1863, an earthenware vase
containing approximately 8,148 coins. Of the 552 examined by M.
Brouillon, there were coins of Gallienus, Salonina, Victorinus,
Tetricus, Claudius II, Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian, Severus,
Constantine, and Constantine II. (Memoirs of the Society of
Agriculture, Commerce and Arts of the Marne, 2nd series, vol. 1,
part 2, 1898-1899, p. 79.)
867.
In the commune of Donges (commune and district of Saint-Nazaire),
near the Château d'Er, in 1871, coins of Gallienus, Postumus,
Victorinus, and Claudius II were found. There were also reportedly a
coin of Caesar and one of Constantine among them. (Bulletin of the
Archaeological Society of Nantes, vol. XXI, 1882, p. 151.)
A walk around
Venlo. I
The lovely spring
days we now and then already experience prompt me, dear reader, to
invite you for a walk. While winter this year, as it usually does,
has kept us indoors through cold, snow, or rain, those short days,
when the sun's powerful rays are sometimes unable to penetrate the
dense clouds, nevertheless prevent many from taking advantage of the
few suitable and available hours of the day. The temperature, which
exerts such a significant influence on our bodies, lures us outdoors
in spring; we feel involuntarily drawn to the open field, where we
breathe in deep breaths of fresh air; seeing plants and trees awaken
after their winter sleep awakens you from the worries of human life
and work, which kept you locked up for several months; the bird's
warbling...
But let me not delve
further into the fantasy; everyone can do this for themselves, as
long and as much as they wish. I wish to linger with you in the
field of archaeology. However barren this field may seem to most, I
trust too much in your interest in your native soil to dare to
invite you as a companion for this "airing."
You have heard of the
objects found and excavations on or near Venlo's territory by
Messrs. Hub, Michels, Colonel Rudolph, Lieutenant Ort (currently
rhythm), and foreman Frans Deserière, of Mr. Dr. Boetzkes (at
Wambach), and of the Medusa shield owned by the Lienders family.
While these gentlemen had, until now, mostly been, so to speak,
"practical" practitioners, the memory naturally comes to
mind of our fellow citizen, Mr. Martin Jansen, who sadly passed away
so early, possessed so much knowledge in the field of archaeology
and, as a "theoretical" collaborator on the path of
research, could have contributed so much.
One of the
aforementioned gentlemen paved the way, namely Mr. Ort, who arrived
in the city around 1970. His position gave him more opportunity than
anyone else to become thoroughly familiar with the terrain, and his
primary task was to produce a map of Venlo and its surroundings, at
1/8000, for the garrison office, which naturally led him into the
field of archaeology. In Frans Deserière, he found his
mentor, who provided him with information about mounds and ancient
ramparts, whose regular layout had caught his attention. Deserière
had urns that he had excavated himself, and he knew burial grounds.
With him, Mr. Ort, usually on Sundays, explored the soil beneath
Blerik, Grubbenvorst, Lottum, Tienraai, Meerlo, Baarlo, Kessel, and
other villages, as well as the Jammerdaal heath near Venlo.
The positive results
spurred him on to further his knowledge in this field. When he
arrived in Leiden in 1879, he soon became acquainted with Drs.
Leemann and Pleyte, director and curator, respectively, of the
National Museum of Antiquities there, who provided him with helpful
advice on how to give his research a more scientific direction.
In 1882, he received
a request from Mr. E. Von Tröltsch, Kön. Wurtemb. major,
foreign service, to, in the interest of science, hand over his work
on Roman roads—consisting of a map of the region between
Nijmegen, Birten, Aachen, and Tongeren, with indications of sites,
and his many notes—to the anthropological society in
Stuttgart, to assist in the design of a prehistoric map of Germany.
Mr. Ort felt he did
not have to comply with this request; but it prompted him to prepare
his work for the press. The first part was published a few months
ago and deals with the Roman and other ancient roads north of the
Rhine, between the Lippe and the Dutch border, between the Rhine and
the Meuse, and on the left bank of the Meuse, as well as the land
defenses in those regions. The second part, which will appear when
interest permits, will contain a description of the discoveries made
by him and others, and the old map at 1/50,000, which was requested
from Stuttgart.
What lies scattered
in hundreds of essays, magazines, books, and newspapers—a
chaos from which it is difficult to obtain an overview—all the
fragments, and everything in this area as far as our dearly beloved
region is concerned, coupled with his many investigations and rich
results, we now find compiled into a complete whole, for which we
can be truly grateful to Mr. Ort.
I wished to take the
proposed walk with you—already in its youthful
greenery—primarily in his hand, freely taken here and there
from the 150 pages, with additions gathered elsewhere, as best as
possible in a form that will be enjoyable reading for the readers of
this magazine.
Please, dear hikers,
let's first have a hearty snack, light a cigar, and then we'll take
our walking sticks and begin our tour.
It's good that we've
chosen the early morning hour of a beautiful summer day, so we can
get back before the sun rises high and makes climbing the mountains
and hills even more difficult and tiring.
You all know that the
main goal is to visit the areas Ort discusses, so we can only
concern ourselves with other matters in passing. Along the way, I'll
give you some information about the Roman roads, so as not to waste
time. And now, please, from here, along Lomstraat and across the
Helschriksel, outward.
Perhaps you,
gentlemen, will notice the name "helschriksel," but the
"hel" was added to distinguish it from the next street,
the Maasschrirkel, and because it borders the Geldersche Poort,
which was formerly called the Helpoort (Hell Gate); from there, the
Helbeek stream also flows just before the city. "Hel"
means something like sloping or descending.
—"Say,
host, do you know what kind of building that was, right there in
front of us on the corner?" (We've just left the house and the
questions are already starting.) Yes, my dear, that was St. Jacob's
Church, which already existed in 1500, and in 1702, during the siege
of the city by the Allies, was set on fire, largely destroyed, and
never repaired. On this side, next to it, used to be the old men's
house; the large building is now used as a warehouse and for other
purposes. Across from there, somewhere, there lived a former turner,
whose name is unknown, who is said to have invented bombs, which
were first used in 1588 during the siege of Wachtendonk. Tests were
first conducted there during the arrival of the Duke of Cleves,
during a banquet, when one fell on a house on the old market square
and started a fire. The bomber's house stood on Lichtenberg, a hill
that received its name after the death of Valuas, a Bructeri general
who settled here in 95 AD and is considered the founder of Venlo. He
lived to be an old man, and according to history, he was highly
respected by his people and the neighboring tribes, whom he often
assisted with advice and weapons. His body was cremated, and the
ashes were preserved in a statue. He must have lived on the hill at
the corner of Houtstraat and Jodenstraat. After his death, the
people honored his memory with offerings on the nearby hill; a fire
always burned there, which is why it was called Lichtenberg.
Ort considers
Lichtenberg, as well as Laarberg in Velden and the hill near
Velligerstraat, to be Roman watchtowers.
Just one more moment,
please; it's too interesting. You see this new sloping street here;
it's called Bergstraat and belongs to the Venlo Building
Association. When the fortress was demolished here about 15 years
ago, twelve skeletons were found in a row at the foot of this
bastion, along with some parts of coffins; it is suspected that they
were soldiers. That's the Lichtenberg here, to which a historical
reminder from the siege of 1511 is still connected, when the people
of Gelderland were besieged by the people of Brabant; surely you've
heard of our Trui. Yes, something about it floats to mind, but I'll
help you out; you've probably read The Siege of Venlo in 1511 by Van
den Eertwegh. Gertruid Bolwater, as she was called, must have been
one of those so-called dragoons. During that siege, when
Zwartzenburg was the city commander, and during which, incidentally,
the tower of St. Martin's Church partially collapsed, the city was
stormed; the inhabitants defended themselves with unanimity,
guarding the ramparts day and night. Our Trui participated in this
and took the banner of an ensign who had already climbed the wall,
and threw stones at the assailants from the rampart. The siege was
lifted, says Slichtenhorst, because of the "fierce resistance
and unbridled courage of the besieged themselves."
But now, gentlemen,
if I may ask, let's turn the corner and go past the back of the
fort.
May I draw your
attention to that ruin, the so-called "villa Büt."
Fort Ginkel was built in 1731 by the then commander, Reinoud van
Reede, Lord of Ginkel. — And if we turn around for a moment,
across the Meuse, you can also see the ruins of Fort St. Michel, to
the left of De Staai House. It was built by the Spanish on
Michaelmas Day, September 29, 1641, and completed in 1643. It cost
118,000 Brabant guilders, or approximately 52,000 Dutch guilders.
And guess what it brought in? — 26,650 guilders. Look
downstream: there lies the Broken Castle. It's unknown when it was
founded; in Keuller's History of Venlo, it appears in 1511; its
destruction must have taken place during the Eighty Years' War,
namely in the first half of the 17th century.
And now, let's not
dwell on this any longer; we have to cross the "Hoëgschoar"
(translated as "Hooge Schoor," i.e., raised, washed-up
land), through the meadow, the "Miëbaend," and
traverse the Veldenschenweg.
Meanwhile, I can give
you some information about land defenses and ramparts.
The Romans, as I read
in Ort, as well as the Germans, made clear boundaries on their
borders, which were more or less defensible as needed. These
boundary boundaries consisted of one or more ramparts with parallel
dry or wet ditches. Professor Schneider has two names for them:
"Gebrückgraben" (Bridge Trench) and "Pfahlgraben"
(Pillar Trench). The first type is only known in the Netherlands;
they run in separate, yet contiguous arms, which separate or enclose
a terrain or region; They are planted with living trees to protect
the defenders behind them; while, as with Roman roads, guard mounds
for fortified observation and signal stations are located at equal
distances from each other along these land defenses.
The Pfahlgraben form
a continuous line and are so named because a row of interconnected
posts provides shelter. Instead of guard mounds, this type of land
defense is constructed with masonry stone towers, probably at the
same distance from each other as the guard mounds. These can be
found on the right bank of the Upper Rhine.
The Gebrückgraben
were built by the inhabitants themselves, under Roman supervision,
and they were also charged with the security duties. The
Pfahlgraben, however, were constructed entirely by Romans alone, who
also performed the guard duties. In many regions north and south of
the Rhine, including Limburg and North Brabant, a large number of
ramparts, mostly accompanied by small ditches, separate one region
from another in a straight or curved line, or enclose one or more
triangular or polygonal sections of land. Such rampart enclosures
are found in hundreds in some places, although they are noticeably
disappearing as the soil is increasingly reclaimed; they are found
not only in places where there is good arable land, but in isolated
heaths, forests, and marshes, they are even more numerous and, of
course, more in their original form.
To understand the
former purpose of these ramparts, Schneider refers to Tacitus, Germ.
16, where the following can be read:
"It is well
known that the Germans do not inhabit cities, nor that they tolerate
dwellings close together. They build away from one another and
spread out according to their preference for a spring, a field, or a
forest. They build neighborhoods, not in our manner, composed of
coherent and connected buildings; each person surrounds their house
with a space, either as a means of protection against fire, or
because they lack the understanding of construction."
This shows that two
types of dwellings must be distinguished among the Germans: a few
widely spaced farmsteads, of which a triangular, quadrangular, or
polygonal rampart still remains, and a type of village, which,
however, differed greatly from Roman villages. Caesar already
mentions such villages among the Menapii and Sicamberi, Tacitus
among the Marsi and Catti.
The places where such
villages once existed can now be recognized by the many ramparts,
which intersect at various angles, thus forming areas on which the
dwellings stood. Roads often ran through them, forming village
streets, and they had ramparts and ditches of larger dimensions than
the others. Ramparts separating a larger area should be considered
boundaries between villages or between properties of clans or
tribes, and often still are today, such as the land defense of
Calbeck and that in the Jammerdaal heath near Venlo-Tegelen. It is
true that in the time of Caesar, personal land ownership did not
exist among the Germanic peoples, but after the conquest of these
regions by the Romans, when the tribes were tied to a permanent
residence and agriculture was increasingly expanded, we may assume
that personal ownership quickly arose.
Gentlemen, let us now
stand on this hill for a moment; in this vicinity we have several
small ramparts, such as are unique and numerous between the Rhine
and the Meuse, especially at Cranenburg, Kleve, Goch, Calcar, and
Uden, according to Schneider; To which Ort adds those of Venlo, as:
Between the Maas and
the Stralen road: Veegtes, Kruisberg, Zwartwaterkamp, Groethof,
Eikelveld, Hanenkamp, Hoogenkamp, Ketelberg,
Voutenberg, Neurkenskamp, etc.; Between the road to
Stralen and the one to Herongen: Lovendaal, Groothoogstraat,
Arenberg, Genraai, on Rijnstraat, on the Kluis (old people still
remembered that a hermit lived here), etc.;
And between the
Kaldenkerker and Tegelschen road: on Jammerdaal, on the Kluis,
Vrijenbroek, Kleinkamp, Wylrehof, Hulsforthof,
Voordijk, Wittendijk, on Vindelsroad, etc.
The largest rampart
in our neighborhood is on the other side of the Meuse River; it runs
from the marsh near guardhouse no. 6 of the Venlo-Horst railway
line, in a semicircular shape, with the concave side facing
southeast, in a southwest-to-northeast direction. It is over 2
meters high, 9 meters wide, and approximately 700 meters long.
Locals call it the "Germanic rampart." Following the
natural hills to the northeast, Ort continues, to near the main
Venlo-Horst road, one sees another rampart like the previous one,
hugging the upper edge of the hill and following an east-to-west
direction, behind the farmsteads "de Saar" or "Laar"
and "St. Jan," to the marsh "het Meir" east of
"Berkterbroek." This section of the rampart has been
broken down here and there by excavations, resulting from the
reclamation of the heathland. In some places, I even found two
ramparts standing one behind the other.
In the southeast,
there are also sections of ramparts, but I haven't yet been able to
find any connection between them. The area between these ramparts is
called "de Römer" (the Roman) and is a large Germanic
cemetery, where, however, no trace of Roman occupation had been
found until I recently had the good fortune to discover many Roman
potsherds and pieces of peat stone in the low-lying area called the
Meir. According to a farmer living nearby, there must have been a
mound in the middle of the Meir that was dismantled; many potsherds
and pieces of stone that emerged were scattered across the fields.
See the chapel there
in the Kruisbergen, also known as the Genooier Mountains. There lies
buried Sister Agnes Maria Huyn van Amstenrade, renowned for her
virtues, graces, and God's gifts. She lived in the Trans Cedron
convent. Her body is said to be incorruptible.
Formerly, the
Mariëndaal convent stood on the site of this chapel, a name now
adopted by the Dominican nuns who settled on Gerritten last year.
On the grounds over
there between Genooi and Velden, called the Rummer, General Pichegru
camped with his army in 1794.
Since we still have a
long walk to go, we will not continue further along the Velden road
to visit the Zwartwater, but will cross over immediately.
Gentlemen, do you see
that yellow house over there in front of us, on the left before
Besjes, where those two tall trees, planted in 1769, I believe,
stand in front of the door? It's called the "Spiker"; a
ball serves as a keystone on the facade. It's an old mansion. The
Groethof is right there.
There, Gerritten, the
convent of the Dominicans, M.H., now called Mariëndal. Mr.
Heutz, founder of the charitable institution that bears his name,
used to live here; before him, it was inhabited by a certain Mr.
Boymans, a member of the family that founded the museum of the same
name in Rotterdam. If you go past the back of the convent, you
arrive at the Ketelberg; try to find your way through the thin
woods, and you'll have a magnificent view of the countryside behind
the hill, with the Zwartwater, the Vaalkuilen, and the romantically
situated amidst the woods, the house of the... city forest ranger,
which has been mentioned many times in recent months.
But shouldn't we take
a break now with the Jentjens ladies? Over a cup of coffee, which
they make so well, I'll talk to you about what follows. Let's go sit
"upstairs."
Mr.H., take a look
through the window. Opposite here lies the recently renowned school
building. From 1836 to 1860, Mr. Van Oeyen held sway there. It has
since been closed. Currently, a little over a year later, there is a
nursery school at the Sisters' house on Gerritten.
Behind the school,
the Venlo-Gelder railway line—see right—runs across the
land where the Spanish intended to build the Fossa Eugenia in 1625,
the canal to connect the Rhine and Meuse rivers, from Rheinberg past
Kloosterkamp, Bruggen, Gelder, where it intersected
the Niers, to Venlo. —In 1806, Napoleon I planned to connect
the Scheldt, Meuse, and Rhine rivers. On May 10, 1806, a decree was
issued to construct the "Great North Canal," as it was now
called, from Antwerp via Herenthals, with an 8,000-meter-long branch
to Lier, via Neerpelt, Loonen, Weerd, Meiel, and Venlo. From there,
via Herongen, Louisenburg, Suchtelen, and Neerssen, it would extend
to Grimmhausen near Neuss. The canal had a length of approximately
115,000 meters from Antwerp to Venlo, and 52,700 meters from here to
the Rhine. Its width was to be 13 meters, and it was to be navigable
for ships of 400 tons. The locks, each with a drop of 4 meters, on
the Meuse-Rhine section, were to be built: 1. on the Meuse, 2. at
Fort Ginkel, 3. between Forts Ginkel and Beerendonk (the latter was
located approximately where Mr. Schram lives), 4. on the hill, in
the municipality of Stralen, 5. at Herongen, 6. between Herongen and
Louisenburg, 7. at Louisenburg, 8. and 9. near the Rhine. —
The entire undertaking would cost 20 million francs.
In
1808, work began diligently; in 1811, it was halted due to the
unification of Holland with France. Had this happened a year later,
the canal between the Meuse and the Rhine would have been completed,
that's how far it had already progressed; 12.5 million francs had
already been spent on it. Completion has been requested several
times by both Antwerp and Venlo, but always without success. A
request made a few years ago is still more or less pending in Berlin
and The Hague, but there is little hope of success. — A little
further into the city, opposite the innkeeper G. Haanen, the upper
part of a gauge still protrudes from the ground. I wouldn't want to
withhold a fairy tale from you: there was a certain Hazenpoth, a
contractor or supervisor for the construction of this canal, who,
after committing all sorts of deceitful acts, supposedly received
his just reward in the other world and was doomed to ride through
the air, from time to time, in a glowing chariot harnessed to four
fiery steeds, along the entire length of the canal. Several farmers
claimed to have witnessed such a thing at the time.
Dear Miss Jentjens,
please! 15 cents for your delicious coffee. — Gentlemen, let
us now take the road opposite, past the school, to reach the
Herongerberg. In the meantime, I'd like to share some Roman roads
with you.
According to a
Punician writer named Isidore, Habets writes, the Carthaginians,
around the 5th century BC, were the first to build paved roads, and
following their example, the Romans built major roads throughout
their empire. However, they built them with great luxury and
displayed incredible energy.
A large boundary
marker, placed in the middle of the Forum, was the point of exit for
all roads, which stretched southward, to the Euphrates (a river in
Asiatic Turkey), to the Nile, to Gaul, to the dunes of the North
Sea, and to the marshes of the Batavians, triumphing over all
obstacles and connecting the capital with the most distant
provinces.
The existing natural
roads of the Celts and Germans, says Ort, were insufficient for the
Roman armies and their followers, and were used under Caesar,
improved, and where they passed through less favorable terrain,
raised and dammed. When one considers that the Romans worked
tirelessly on roads for six centuries in Italy and four centuries in
the provinces, one understands that enormous sums were spent on
them.
Roman roads,
Hirschfeld reports, are divided into two types, depending on their
purpose: 1. Military or consular roads, constructed and maintained
by the State solely for military purposes, which usually ran in
straight lines; 2. Vicinal roads, which were connecting roads built
by farmers for their own use. These were only considered public
roads if they connected several military roads.
These roads formed
causeways, which ranged in height from 1.26 meters to 2 meters above
the ground; in some cases, in very low places, they were even 4
meters high. This dam-like construction distinguishes them from all
later roads; rainwater drained well; they offered an unobstructed
view of the surrounding terrain, and one could better engage the
enemy from a higher vantage point. Only in Rome was the dam-shaped
form considered unnecessary.
On both sides of the
central road, which was called an "agger," i.e., a dam,
there were banks with a ditch, and usually side walls next to it.
Sometimes, a footpath of flat stones can be found on both sides of
the central dam, for example, at Andernach.
Oberst-Lieut. Schmidt
states that on the Lower Rhine, the Roman roads consist of a high
earthen embankment, covered with a 2 to 2.5 foot high layer of
gravel, cemented with mortar. However, this is only true of the
major roads, as no trace of mortar can be found on the road from
Xanten to the Meuse. Paulus, too, found the use of lime mortar on
only a few of the many roads he examined; however, sometimes two or
three layers of gravel, separated by layers of clay, are found.
Instead of gravel, crushed stones, compacted with intervening earth,
have also been used. The most perfectly constructed roads also have
a substructure consisting of large stones set in lime mortar, while
the upper gravel layers also have a lime bond. The type of stone
found in the region itself was usually used for these roads.
However, if that type of stone was too soft (e.g., sandstone),
harder types were used for the upper stone layers (e.g., basalt,
quartz, hard limestone, and gravel). According to Georg Hirschfeld,
the total thickness of the stone layers, lime, mortar, and sand is
1.10 meters to a maximum of 1.25 meters. — In such roads, the
lime is sometimes lacking in the substructure. On the same highway,
the construction is not the same along its entire length, but
changes as the terrain or the increasing or decreasing traffic made
it necessary.
Very rarely, Ort
reports, were the roads paved with large stones, and where one
sometimes thinks one has found them, closer inspection reveals that
the substructure has been discovered, while the upper layers were
removed to create other roads.
The side walls served
to protect the troops marching on the main causeway from enemy
attacks; they consist solely of earth. Deviations occur in areas
where something was superfluous or made their construction
impossible.
Hey, look, thank God
we're on the Herongerweg. Those back roads are difficult to walk on
and usually dirty. —
Now, gentlemen, we
already know exactly what and how the Roman roads are. We don't need
to track them down now, and for those who are interested, I refer
you to Ort. He tells us that this requires knowledge of the various
constructions, understanding how they have evolved after so many
centuries, so that one can, one after another, with sounding rod in
hand, be able to follow a track once found through unpaved terrain.
We have now arrived
at the site of such a Roman road, namely the one from Venlo to
Bisheim and Homberg on the Rhine near Ruhrort. I'll let Ort speak
for himself:
From Venlo, a Roman
road runs to Niederdorf, and where the road bends many times near
Herongen, it runs straight east to the Wankum road. A few years ago,
the remains of the old road were still visible at Niederdorf and
Herongen. At Wankum, the gravel dam was found next to the road, and
a Roman gravestone was also discovered there. This road, which I
know very well, was previously not considered a Roman road by me,
but the assurance of the learned and accomplished researcher
Professor Schneider that remains were visible near Niederdorf and
Herongen a few years ago now leaves me in no doubt. I will provide
some further details about this road, and one in another direction,
which I previously thought was the Roman road.
Just outside Venlo, a
few hundred paces south of the road, lies a high piece of land,
along the stream "the old Rhine," called the "Romerskamp"
(Roman Camp); a little further on, near the lane leading to the
Tichelarie, it is said that a headless man (Hazenpoth) is often seen
walking at night, as are fiery horsemen, etc. Where the road climbs
the hills, there is an inn called "in de stad Venlo," but
on Buyx's map, that place is called "Lusseike"; On the
hillside behind this house, next to the old postal road from
Stralen, I found shards of Roman tiles and other Roman pottery in
the ground. The road now heads northeast up the hills; the old road
used to run straight east as a sunken lane, and when it reached the
highlands, it continued in a straight line, without the slightest
bend, until it reached the northern canal near Louisenburg. On the
other side of this canal, a wide road begins that runs northeast to
the church in Wankum. The road is now a paved road to Lusseike; the
sunken lane has been extensively altered and used as a sand quarry.
On the plateau, it forms a wide carriageway on the flat heathland,
flanked by small ditches. Immediately within the woods, the side
walls and ditches remain intact until they disappear into the
heathland near Louisenburg, where Roman antiquities have been
discovered. Further to Wankum, I don't know whether there are any
remains of ramparts and ditches; on Buyx's map, a section of the
road is drawn and bears the name "Brühlsche Strasse."
"From Wankum
goes the main road," etc. — I can stop quoting further;
it's no longer in our territory; it's Prussian there! Those
interested in learning more should pick up the book "Oude wegen
en Landwehren" (Old Roads and Land Defences).
Speaking of Herongen.
This town is known for the St. Amandus spring or well. St. Amandus
was Bishop of Tongeren, who was considered the Apostle of the
Netherlands. At this well, he baptized pagans around the year 800;
the well is located on an old Roman road.
Many Roman
antiquities have been discovered between Herongen and Wankum. Prof.
Schneider says that on the Boschberg, there are old graves, and
about 300 paces south of the road lies the "Heidenkerkhof,"
next to the main road, where antiquities have been found. Geometer
Buyx, of Nieukerk, in his Antiquarian Map of the Gelderland Region,
mentions a Roman camp north of Rehboch on the Schürkesbeek;
about 100 paces northwest of there, on the Dambeek, Germanic burial
mounds, and near Herongen, on Bekerstraat, Roman graves and
antiquities.
Gentlemen, let us now
return, to reach the other side of the city via Puteanusstraat to
arrive, where it will become more interesting from an archaeological
point of view.
(To be continued.) H.
A walk around
Venlo. II.
Look, we are now at
't Zand. "'Het Zand,' some of you will probably say, 'I had
imagined it quite differently than a complex of houses.'
Yes, gentlemen, a few
years ago that was also a completely undeveloped area, a triangular,
tapering lawn, stretching from the clubhouse "de Prins" to
the road near the florist Vallen to the colonel. Besides the memory
of the horse market and the fact that the infantry, the militia, and
the nannies exercised here, there is another connected memory;
namely, when Napoleon I was proclaimed Emperor of the French in
1804, he made a journey from the camp of Boulogne to Aachen,
Crefeld, and also came to visit us Venlo residents on September 12
of that year. The Emperor, Keuller writes, accompanied by a mounted
guard of honor, arrived in his chariot along the old Stralen road,
mounted his horse at the Lusseikerweg, and, in order to avoid the
Geldersche Poort, which was considered less than secure due to its
dilapidated state, rode over the hilltop, even through trees and
shrubs, the better to observe the fortress's position. Around ten
o'clock in the morning, arriving at the Zand at the foot of the
glacis, His Majesty was received by the civil authorities and a foot
guard of honor, where he was presented with the keys to the city by
Mayor Van den Vaero??.
For the sake of
curiosity, I would also like to share the following about this
visit. Entering the gate, Napoleon suddenly turned his horse to the
left, probably to escape the countless crowd awaiting him. He turned
into the narrow street called Floddergats (which later acquired the
pompous name Keizerstraat), and, followed only by the commanding
officer of the engineers, headed for the Mariaweide monastery, then
owned by Mr. Lenssen (now by the Berger family). His entourage,
which included the Emperor's son-in-law Eugène Beauharnais,
later Viceroy of Italy, Marshal Lannes, Duke of Montebello, and
several generals, rejoined him. Having circled the main rampart, the
Emperor proceeded to inspect the outworks, and having reached the
lower end of the Maaswaard, had he not been stopped, he would have
ridden through the harbor mouth, where there was more than six feet
of water. A small boat, in which he then embarked with the commander
of the engineers, took him, at his command, across the river, and a
moment later, he was seen galloping on horseback across the
batteries of Fort St. Michael. Returning to this side, he proceeded
along the Meuse, riding at Broesert through the water that flows
into the river from the canals there, to Forts Ginkel and
Beerendonk. Finally, he returned to the city, accompanied by those
who had accompanied him on this hasty journey. After remaining there
for a few more hours, the Emperor climbed into his chariot, drawn by
eight horses, and, escorted by a strong detachment of the Imperial
Guard, left the city, making his way to the Hague near Gelder to
spend the night there and continue his journey the next day via
Mainz to Paris. Beauharnais, Lannes, and all the staff officers in
the Emperor's entourage left only the next day and headed for
Crefeld.
But let's return to
our archaeological layout. From here, a Roman road runs from 't
Zand, which Mr. Ort traced to Hinsbeckerbroek. I'll give him the
honor of speaking to you:
On 't Zand outside
Venlo, a branch of the road that runs from there to Kaldenkirchen
branches off to Leuth. A few hundred paces from this junction, the
road divides again, one branch running to Leuth, the other to the
large heathland used as a parade ground. This last arm climbs the
hills as a wide dirt road and has a rampart on the plateau on its
right. It doesn't run parallel to the road, but forms a sharp angle
with it at the edge of the hill, forming the southern boundary of
the exercise grounds. The road reaches the heathland about 120 paces
from that boundary. This rampart is marked on Buyx's map as a land
defense. Research has shown me that about 25 meters from the first
rampart, a second runs parallel to it. A road is thus formed between
the two ramparts, separated from the ramparts by narrow side
ditches, which in turn are separated from the surrounding terrain by
a side ditch. Notwithstanding the fact that German researchers state
that all Roman roads were narrow causeways, the information provided
by Mr. Jos Habets has shown us that in southern Limburg there were
irrefutably wider Roman roads, and Mr. Van der Rit mentions, 60
voeten (in Dutch feet) the fixed width of Roman roads in Belgium,
which sometimes reached 100 feet in places with heavy traffic; we
therefore obtain a width of over 17 and over 29 meters, the latter
figure including the ramparts and ditches.
The road runs
precisely in the direction of the towers of Venlo and Hinsbeck; I
followed it to near the banks of Schrolick Lake and the
Hinsbeckerbruch, where I was stopped by the marshy ground; it
intersects the Herongen-Leuth road almost at a right angle.
Extending the road, towards the Venlo side, is a footpath through
marshy terrain behind the gardens of Het Zand, past the Panhuis,
where the land called "Romerskamp" lies. In the direction
of Hinsbeck, on the other side of the aforementioned lakes, we find
a sandy road, which connects to the present-day road to Hinsbeck at
the Hombergen. Antiquities were found along this road: probably on
the station grounds in Venlo, Roman pottery and tear bottles. At
Hoogen Dries, just a few steps south of the road and near the lakes,
Buyx notes Roman antiquities on his map; near the Hombergen, east of
the lakes, I investigated a cemetery where I found Germanic urns and
Roman potsherds. I left one of these urns with the forster of Count
von Schaesberg, who lives near the Hombergen. This man also owns
Roman pottery, which he claims originates from the aforementioned
cemetery. It is noteworthy that the extensions of the Roman roads
already described and those listed below in Venlo all end between
the old market there and the Lichtenberg, thus near the old ferry
(or Staai) across the Meuse and not opposite Blerik (Blariacum).
We'll soon reach the
next roads, gentlemen, but take a quick look over there, that tall
house in front of the hill; it's Stalberg. The architectural style
still more or less reveals that the lords of Stalberg used to live
here, several of whom served as mayors. The same can be said of the
adjacent house, "Aan Vinken."
And there, against
the slope of the hill, that white house, nestled in greenery, is
called "Aan de Zeven Bronnen" (At the Seven Springs)
because there are seven springs. The former owner, Mr. Bontamps, had
planted a vineyard there in 1833-36, as did his neighbor Verwins,
who built the house Maagdenburg and converted that now dilapidated
property into a magnificent pleasure garden. Hence the name "Aan
de Wijnbergen" (At the Vineyards). But the grapes that grew
there, although the product must have won an award at an
agricultural exhibition, were never used beyond vinegar production.
So the fable of the fox was quite fitting here: those grapes are too
sour.
In that area on the
hill is also the Galgenberg, where our grandparents once saw
lifeless evildoers slumbering.
Gentlemen, let us now
turn right onto the road past Thywissen's mill, which leads us to
the so-called sanctuary of the Venlo "moetwormen" (moles),
that is, diggers.
Meanwhile, I must
share with you a fairy tale, which Michels tells of this somewhat
mysterious place, but very interesting for those who love natural
beauty, in the Limburg Legends: In earlier times, in the vicinity of
Venlo, near the Ondersten Houtmolen, by the basin of Venlo's
fountain, a fireman walked every night. The residents of the area
had to give him a cartload of sand, a pair of tin shoes, and 7½
stuivers every year. One day, a servant from the Bovensten Houtmolen
(Upper Wood Mill) came out of town late one evening. Arriving at the
water basin, he saw a man standing on the hilltop. Thinking it was a
comrade, nicknamed "Dikke" (Fatty), he shouted, "Dikke,
give me some fire!" The fireman then followed him, but the
servant galloped his horse and had just entered the barn of his mill
when the fireman caught up with him. In the morning, a coal-black
hand was found outlined on the barn door.
Let us first return
to the Roman roads.
From Venlo, a highway
ran to Kaldenkirchen, passing close to the mill. Beyond the border
town, it divided into two branches, one of which led via Breyel,
Speck, Boisheim, Dulken, past the Pohlhut on Viersen, etc., to
Neuss. The other branch behind Kaldenkirchen ran over Bruggen,
Niederkruchten, etc., to Julich, between Aachen and Cologne.
So we have three
roads starting from Venlo: the first via Herongen, Wankum, etc., to
Binsheim-Orsoy and Homberg; the second to Hinsbeckerbroek; the third
to Kaldenkirchen, with two branches to Neuss and Julich.
If you look at these
on the map, the first runs northeast, the second east, and the third
southeast.
Now there's a fourth
Roman road from Xanten to Tudderen near Sittard and on to
Coriovallum (Heerlen). This intersects the first three: the first on
this side of Herongen, the second on the hill near the Seven
Springs, and then runs along this side.
The road from Leuth,
and intersects the third just behind Kaldenkirchen.
The first Roman road
from Venlo left Herongen on its right, thus running between Herongen
and 't Zand near Stralen. There it is intersected by the
Xanten-Tudderen road. From this point, the latter road, originating
in the southern part of Niederdorf, where Roman antiquities have
been discovered, continues as an old grassy path with gravel tracks
through the fields and then through the woods, past Louisenburg,
where Roman antiquities have also been found, and finally across the
heath, where it suddenly ends. Prof. Schneider found no further
traces in the Herongenheide. Only where the Venlo-Hinsbeck road
intersects the Herongen-Leuth road did he find the path back into
the woods, about 400 paces from the road, as a low gravel ridge that
can be followed to the west of Leuth, where Roman antiquities have
been discovered. From Leuth, the main road merges with the road to
Kaldenkirchen; from there, under the name "Ravenstrasse,"
it continues here and there with side ramparts, first through
fields, then through the woods, heading south, and reaching the
Weissen Pfahl in the Meuse valley. It now follows the German-Dutch
border past several burial mounds and is called "Prinsendijk"
or "Prinsenbaan." At the end of the Bruggenerbosch, where
the road turns slightly to the left, it enters Dutch territory; the
gravel dam is clearly visible on both banks of the Zwalm. — We
won't follow him any further.
Buyx, however, draws
three roads from Pont: one to Arcen, one to Stralen and Tegelen
(probably referring to the so-called old postal road), and one to
Wachtendonk. Leemans and Habets also suggest a road that connected
with the other side of the Meuse at Venlo or just below the city.
Gentlemen, I hope the
walk through the woods and over the hills, with its picturesque
valley and water basins, has made you less aware of the dryness of
this description. We are now standing before the Jammerdaal heath,
with its Germanic and Roman antiquities. Here's what Mr. Ort has to
say about it:
Now I must describe
another site of Roman and Germanic antiquities, which, like
Lusseike, is situated on the hillside that begins at the
Noorderkanaal (North Canal), leaving Venlo one kilometer to the
west, and extending in an almost straight line to the aforementioned
Bruggenerbosch (Brugge Forest), sometimes very close, as near Venlo,
sometimes further away from the Meuse, as that river takes its
course.
This site bears the
name Jammerdaal Heath and lies near the borders of Venlo and
Tegelen. It is a high heathland; in the northwest, steep hillsides,
with marshy terrain below, form the border. In the northeast, a
stream flows, forming two basins and a narrow valley, the
Jammerdaal. To the south runs a landwehr approximately 2,000 meters
long, while on the east side, between the stream and the landwehr,
access is blocked by the Venlo-Kaldenkirchen road, which, as I
described earlier, is of Roman origin. The construction of the
Venlo-Kaldenkirchen railway line has caused many changes here,
especially on the east side, but because the road runs through the
stream valley, the plain itself has remained in its original state.
A sunken road, which after a few steps divides into two branches,
provides access to the heath on the north side; a second road,
running south from the Bovensten Watermolen, must be of later date,
as many of the burial mounds in which I found Germanic urns lie on
the road; a third road, which originates from the Kaldenkirchen
road, soon heads towards Gasthuishof and Kaldenkirchen and, I
believe, is also of lesser importance. West of Leuth, a road begins,
first heading south, then west near Brand and the Rosenhaus. Near
the latter house, it connects to the aforementioned landwehr,
continuing along both sides of it until the landwehr ends at the
hillside. However, the road descends as a sunken lane with many
twists and turns into the Meuse valley, running past Hulsfort to the
Venlo-Roermond road and to the Meuse river opposite Holt-Blerik.
Habets believes this road is the connecting road or diverticulum
between the two roads on the opposite banks, as mentioned above.
South of the landwehr
lies the Oelisheide with the Oelishof, apparently derived from Olla
(pot); while it is noteworthy that in the vernacular of Venlo and
Roermond, a wide earthen pot is still referred to as an oelis.
Especially in the mountain slopes bordering this heathland up to the
Tegelen-Kaldenkirchen road, large excavations were made to obtain
earth for the production of roof tiles, tiles, etc., which are
called "pot holes." A great many Roman roof tiles, urns,
and other pottery have been unearthed, including some from the
Middle Ages, of which I have several examples; the largest bakery
appears to be in
I remember having
been to the Jammerdaal, near the Lower Water Mill; just behind the
mill, the miller's son, Mr. Hubert Michels, excavated a multitude of
medieval pots.
In 1879, the same
gentleman was fortunate enough to discover a Roman pottery on the
Jammerdaal heath. It had an elongated, triangular shape, and
contained numerous already fired vessels with decorations, including
unfired ones, but entirely formed of clay. A few weeks after the
discovery, I visited the site; a large pile of shards of broken
pottery lay next to the partially recast bakery, while about 30
paces to the north, broken Roman roof tiles lay scattered about.
Apparently, the potter's house or hut was once located here; indeed,
after a careful examination of the hillside, Dr. W. Pleyte, who
accompanied me, and I even found the exit leading from the house to
the foot of the hills where the potting soil had to be obtained. A
few minutes northeast of this site, I had previously discovered a
Germanic cemetery with large and well-preserved burial mounds. Urns
with and without lids were excavated there by Fr. Deserière
and myself and are now in the Museum of Antiquities in Leiden.
On the heathland
between the Jammerdaal and the railway line to Kaldenkirchen, as
well as immediately south of the landwehr, I found Roman potsherds,
also of terra sigillata. I discovered the foundations of buildings
between the landwehr and the Oelishof, where a building appears to
have stood, next to which lay a funnel-shaped well. At the
intersection of the landwehr and the German border line, where a
chapel appears to have stood, I found ordinary stones in both
places, so that, during this cursory investigation, I concluded that
both sites had contained modern buildings. Mr. Hubert Michels,
accompanied by Dr. Boetskes, who lives at the nearby Wambach Castle
on the Kaldenkirchen-Tegelen road, has further investigated the
aforementioned location. This investigation attracted the attention
of the landowners, namely the regents of the Roman Catholic
almshouses in Venlo. They prohibited the investigation but continued
with it. According to Michels, a cellar was discovered, constructed
of loosely stacked marl blocks, while a cast wall was built around
the outer walls of lime, pieces of tiles, and bricks. He writes to
me: "According to my father, a sheepfold once stood on that
site, from which the bricks and lime containing the blueing, which
you noticed, must have come." He further reports that a coin of
Hadrian was found under the roof tiles of the aforementioned
potter's house, which was bought from the finder by the prostitute
Boetskes. He also mentions that the gentleman discovered an old
grave in the Wambach garden near the two lime trees. The urns were
broken and are kept there. This Wambach castle, located on the
Tegelen-Kaldenkirchen road, is very old and was called "the
farm to Wambeke" in 1326. As early as 1829, Mr. Justen explored
the area on the Oelisheide and apparently found a Roman grave there,
without specifying the exact location; he believes the heath I
described was a Roman army camp. Mr. Peeters, who mentions this,
also states in his description of Tegelen that the Roman road from
Colonia Traiana to Coriovallum passes through Tegelen, without
specifying its exact course. A closer and very careful examination
of the road will be necessary before its course can be accurately
determined, but I will share my suspicion.
I believe the road
from the Paesmühle ran along "the Nachtigal" to the
Noorder-Kanaal, as Schneider describes it up to that point; this
road is listed by Buyx as the old road from Straelen to Venlo (on
old maps it's called Postweg, until past the road to Kaldenkirchen)
and follows the hillside in a straight line to Lusseike. I think the
main road took this direction, running past Lusseike and a few
hundred paces past the Zeven Brons to the small exercise grounds,
along the Kaldenkirchen road. It crossed this ground diagonally and
descended the hills as a sunken lane, passing the Ondersten
watermill, from the Jammerdaal into the Meuse valley, and continuing
past Tegelen, possibly through the Mergelstraat, past Belfeld,
Reuver, etc., along the Meuse bank. It's possible that more will
later be known about this road from the papers left by Mr. Guillon
in Roermond, but as long as the Dutch government hasn't purchased
his collection of antiquities found on Dutch soil, along with these
writings, there's no chance of that happening.
Mr. Ort believes that
the "Sablones" station is located near Ons Zand.
"Jammerdaal"
is a modern name, which according to the locals, it originated when
a worker was buried alive while building a well that collapsed, and
he was heard groaning and moaning without being able to offer help.
Ort doesn't think it's unlikely that this heath also used to belong
to the Zand.
If we now return
across the road crossing to Tegelschenweg, you'll be able to see
some of the farmsteads just mentioned.
"Hey, host, turn
around! What kind of building is that up there on the hill? We
didn't notice it before." — My good friend, please
forgive me, but one fool can ask more questions than ten wise men
can answer. They call it "Casino."
Ahead of us, in a
somewhat straight line, as seen from the road crossing, lies
Wylrehof; There, further south towards Tegelen, was the Hulsforthof,
and further inland, "den Rooden Haan," which was set on
fire in 1794 during a Dutch sortie when the French were near the
city.
When the Belgian
General Daine approached Venlo at half past three in the afternoon
of November 10, 1830, with nearly 1,300 men, in addition to about 30
horsemen of the so-called Maas Cossacks and a multitude of people
armed in various ways, a halt was ordered at the avenue near
Wylrehof. There, the second shot from the fortress killed a
surgeon-major's horse. The attackers, who outnumbered the city's
garrison by some 800 men, had only 4 field guns, 2 six-pounders, and
2 howitzers for artillery; They settled between the Meuse and the
house "Den Roskam," better known as Stevenshuisje, whose
entrance used to be on the opposite side; the old road ran behind
the house.
On our way back to
the city, gentlemen, I can tell you something about the large Roman
road on the other side of the Meuse, which ran from Tongeren to
Nijmegen, as described by Mr. Ort:
According to Habets,
it leaves the church in Buggenum on the right, goes to the hamlet of
Groot-Hansum near Neer, first along the bank there, and on to
Kesseleik, through Kessel, which is very rich in Roman antiquities,
to the hamlet of Ooien, which he leaves on the left, through Baarlo,
past Berkt Castle and Laarbroek to the watermill. Habets reports
that Guillon found the path in Kesseleik near the Noldissenhof,
running past the chapel at that farmstead and continuing towards
Kessel along the banks of the Meuse.
Between Baarlo and
Blerik, it is recognizable by the gravel and a side wall. At Blerik
or near that village, the third Roman station of Blariacum was
located at a distance of 12 leagues from Catualium. Leaving Blerik,
the path veers slightly away from the Meuse and heads towards the
chapel of St. Anna, in a straight line past Oud-Soest and Gebroken
Slot to Grubbenvorst, leaving the church there on the right.
Its course is
indicated in the field "het Reuveld" by the corn, which
quickly turns yellow due to the hard subsoil, especially during dry
summers. It passes Marianne's farmstead, which used to be an inn
where the Nijmegen post stopped, and continues through Lottum,
Broekhuizen, Broekhuizervorst, Ooien, Blitterswijk, and Wansum to
Geisteren...
Locations of Roman
antiquities, writes Mr. Ort, are in Buggenum, where a cemetery lies
next to the highway, yielding primarily Frankish artifacts; in Neer,
where Germanic urns, and at a place called "the Roman camp,"
Roman coins from Augustus and Nerva, Roman pottery, and a bronze
mirror were found; in Kesseleik, west of the road near the
Kappersberg, lies the Hunekesbosch, the place itself called "Oude
Kamp" (Old Camp); here, next to a high old rampart, Deserière
discovered a Roman cemetery, of which I have pottery; A very large
stone axe, found here, is now in the Museum of Antiquities in Leiden
(in 1884 this forest was cleared and the ground dug up; according to
reports, a great deal of Roman pottery and urns were found there);
in Kessel, from where the Guillon collection contains medals of
Constantinus Magnus, Constantinus II, Valentinian I, and Theodosius;
and in the Museum in Leiden, a Roman altar stone dedicated to
Minerva, Juno, and Hercules. Between Kessel and Baarlo, west of the
road, near the inn "De Nachtegaal," I found a Roman
cemetery full of shards of Roman pottery. On one side of the
cemetery runs a road parallel to the road, on the other side a road
to Roggel called "de Keizersweg" (the Keizersweg); the
cemetery lies at the sharp angle they form. Mr. Verhaeg from Baarlo
told me that he had heard from his father that during the
construction of the road, this area was excavated and yielded so
much pottery that the road was covered with shards. Between this and
the previous burial ground, near Kappersberg, lies another cemetery,
from which Colonel Rudolph from Venlo possessed some objects: a
Roman
I donated a pot from
there to Dr. W. Pleyte for the Rijksmuseum. This cemetery, which Mr.
Rudolph only gave us a general overview of, also lies west of the
road, near the Pandu house, but I have not explored it. Between
these three Roman cemeteries, west of the road, there is hardly a
piece of land without Roman potsherds. The acknowledged fact that
the Romans buried their dead very close to public roads, combined
with the fact that Kessel must certainly have been a prominent place
during Roman rule and was probably the Castellum Menapiorum, which
is not mentioned on the Peutinger map, leads me to suspect that this
place was not on the main route, but on the riverbank road, which
had connecting roads with the highway at this point and which
riverbank road is now considered the highway.
. . . . . . .
In Baarlo, a hoard of
gold and silver Roman coins was found near the church in 1830, and
in Blerik, a Roman knife handle, as well as many Germanic urns, was
discovered in three different cemeteries. During my last visit to
this village, in December 1883, I was told that during the
demolition of a house near the Town Hall, a cellar built entirely of
sandstone was uncovered. The village secretary then informed me that
a similar cellar had been uncovered during the excavation for the
Town Hall's foundations, containing a now-vaulted well. Nothing more
could be traced of this. Furthermore, I found Roman potsherds
between the watermill and the village; in a dry spot in the marsh
"het Meir" near guardhouse no. 8, where a hill once stood,
I also found Roman potsherds and pieces of tuff. This location is
located an hour northwest of the village. From the road to Horst,
north of Blerick, just past milestone no. 1, a road heads north
through the lowlands east of St. Anne's Chapel. In most places, the
road has two side ramparts with ditches and ends at a small, high
sandy plain. This point is called "den Scherpenberg" (the
Scherpenberg), and apparently, due to remaining sections, a large
hill once stood here. In the sand there, I found a fragment of a
Roman roof tile, a piece of terra sigillata, and other Roman pottery
shards.
A Roman shield was
found at Holt-Blerick on the Sprinkbeek or Molenbeek stream;
however, this site is more than 2 kilometers from where the main
road is still located. Between the aforementioned watermill and the
village lies a section of that old riverbank road with two side
ramparts, which, at a distance of 20 meters, were found to be about
20 meters apart. Between Blerick and Grubbenvorst the road runs past
the Germanic cemetery "de Wienkelder", described by me in
P. L. XIX. I made my suspicion known there and then that the main
road would not have run via Grubbenvorst and Lottum, without denying
the existence of a Roman bank road in that direction; on the Rhine,
one often sees a road following the bank, but also that wherever
that bank road does not run over very high ground or makes a large
detour, a second road was constructed alongside it, which is
considerably shorter, as it runs in straight lines and does not have
to navigate the bends of the river. I believe that in several
places, as I have already noted near Kessel, a second road was
constructed alongside this main road, and that this was also the
case between Blerick and Geisteren. I believe the main road can be
traced back to the old postal road to Nijmegen, running from the
Blerick-Horst road, at milestone No. 4, past the farmstead "bij
Marianne" across the Thienraaier- and Zwolgenerheide to
Tienraai; further on to Meerlo and Geisteren. The first cemetery
along this road, called "De groote Tomben" (The Great
Tombs), is "bij Marianne" and lies slightly north of the
house, right next to the postal road and not on the road along
Kaldenbroek, which Habets identifies as the main road. I have
explored this burial ground several times and have found only
Germanic urns, which are now in the National Museum of Antiquities
in Leiden.
The second is located
on the Thienraaier- and Zwolgenerheide, is extensive, and is dotted
with large, well-preserved burial mounds. I acquired Germanic urns
from this cemetery through excavations conducted there by Deserière;
a medal of Trajan is noted in Guillon's catalogue as originating
from Zwolgen.
Deserière
discovered a third cemetery on the Wansummerheide, west of Wansum
and Meerlo; he gave me two urns from this location as a gift, one
richly decorated, the other made of very fine red clay. The latter
contained metal fragments, probably from a fibula.
A site containing
fragments of Roman pottery is located at milestone no. 4, at the
beginning of the road on the north side from Bleri[c]k to Horst.
On the riverbank
road, the only site for objects from that period is Lottum, where a
denarius of Claudius I and a bronze coin of Valentinian I were
found. At the site on the Meuse where the old church once stood,
remains of a Roman building and a tombstone have been discovered, of
which only "IANI LM" remains, which ended up in Guillon's
collection.
Schneider reports
that a Roman castle once stood in Lottum, which, after being
destroyed, was rebuilt by Julian. This site is also not mentioned on
the Peutinger map, probably again because it was not on the main
road, but on the riverbank road.
Finally, Mr. H., I
would like to share with you what a well-known archaeologist
recently told me: "I believe Limburg had three Roman main
roads, one from Maastricht to Jülich or Julich, which bisects
the province at its widest point. From this road, along the left
bank of the Meuse, ran the road from Maastricht to Nijmegen; and on
the right bank, the road from Coriovallum via Tudderen to Xanten. —
Undoubtedly, both roads, which bisected Limburg at its longest, were
connected by some side roads, or rather connecting roads. But I
believe that some of the roads labeled as Roman date from the period
of the Frankish emperors."
And now, Mr. H., we
are back home from our walk, without having tired ourselves too
much. If my talking has perhaps required too much effort from you,
please don't blame me so much. Too attached to my native soil, I
couldn't control myself. I thank you for your patience with me.
H.
"Errare humanum
est," dear reader! The following comments were made to me
regarding the first part of the previous issue, which I would like
to "rescue from oblivion."
1. The name Helpoort
has nothing to do with "sloping, descending"—that
phrase was slipped in at an unguarded moment—but it comes from
St. Helenapoort, just as the Cologne gate was formerly called Laur-
or Laarpoort, because, as even older people can remember, a St.
Lawrence stood above it. See Keuller, Geschiedenis van Venlo, p.
345.
2. Northwest of
Voorst Koekerslo, bordering the hamlet of Den Boekend, and west of
Veldenkamp, where it is believed the old Blariacum was
located, running along the stream and close to the spot where the
beautiful shield with the head of Medusa was found a few years ago,
ramparts are also visible, which are not mentioned in ritm. Ort's
work.
3. I mistakenly
placed a bullet as a keystone on the facade of the "Spiker."
The bullet lies on the house of De Kaat, between Hendrikken and De
Veegtes, which anyone interested can see at any time.
H.
Submitted.
Mr. Editor!
In the essay "A
Walk around Venlo," published in your widely read Weekblad of
April 11th, several points appear taken from ritm. Ort, which I
cannot ignore in silence.
Ritm. Ort says, among
other things, that a road from the Bovensten Houtmolen runs south,
which he believes to be of a later date, and that there are burial
mounds on the road in which he has allegedly found Germanic urns. -
His Honor is mistaken, because there are only two burial mounds on
this road; one of these mounds was examined by Mr. Fr. Deserière
and contained a broken urn, the fragments of which were scattered
across the heath; the other mound was examined by me and contained a
completely intact and very beautiful urn, which is still in my
possession.
It is mentioned
regarding the Roman pottery on the Jammerdaal heath, or rather on
the table hill, opposite the water, called "Rosdommel," in
the immediate vicinity of the Tegel potholes, which I was fortunate
enough to discover in 1879, that it was of an elongated triangular
shape. This is incorrect; it had a perfectly square shape, as it
measured 1.90 meters (6 Rhine feet) long and just as wide.
Rhythm Ort further
states that a few weeks after the discovery, he visited the site
with Dr. W. Pleyte, who accompanied him. After a careful examination
of the mountainside, they found the exit leading from the house to
the foot of the hills where the potting soil had to be collected.
This is impossible, because immediately after excavating the
pottery, I made a detailed drawing of the site, showing the kiln,
house, and exit leading to the place where the potting soil had been
collected. I showed this drawing to the two aforementioned gentlemen
before they visited the site, to which I also accompanied them. It
is further stated: A few minutes' walk northeast of this site, I had
previously found a Germanic cemetery with large and well-preserved
burial mounds; urns with and without lids were excavated there by me
and Fr. Deserière and are now in the Museum of Antiquities in
Leiden. - This aforementioned road, running south, belongs to this
Germanic burial ground and bears the name of Siberia. Messrs. Ort
and Deserière did indeed examine some of these burial mounds,
but found nothing except a few broken urns, the fragments of which
remain scattered across the heath to this day. Ritm. Ort himself
testified to this in a letter dated February 17, 1880, in which he
wrote: "Dear Michels, I was very pleased to receive a letter
from you, especially since I learned that you were successful in
your excavations. - There seems to be much still in the ground in
that area of the watermills; it's a pity I'm no longer
here to jointly dedicate our efforts to that work, especially since
I still don't own anything from the Jammerdaal." - After that
time, no further excavations were carried out here, and therefore no
urns from this burial ground can be found in Leiden.
Considering that I
have sufficiently demonstrated the sincere truth, I have the honor
to be
Your Servant
HUBERT MICHELS
Venlo,
Ondersten Houtmolen,
April 16, 1885
To Mr. H., author of
"A Walk Around Venlo".
I read your
aforementioned treatise with great pleasure in issues 14 and 15 of
the Venloosch Weekblad, which the editors were kind enough to send
me.
Your interest in the
ancient history of the region in which Venlo is located has become
apparent to me, and therefore some information and further
reflections on the matters you have addressed may be welcome.
In my "Old Roads
and Land Weirs in Limburg and Adjacent Regions," I wrote on
page 128, I reported that Prof. Dr. J. Sohneider in Düsseldorf
considers it probable that the Venlo-Gennep-Groesbeek and
Hollendoorn road is of Roman origin, and that I have discovered a
Germanic burial ground south of this Ossenberg; this was probably
the burial place of the first inhabitants of the village of Velden.
Are you familiar with
the legend of the Ketelberg? If not, I will share it with you.
About ten years ago,
an enormous stone lay on the hill, the top of which was more than a
meter deep in the ground. Farmers from the surrounding area told me
that it was generally believed that a treasure was hidden beneath
this stone, and because it was immovable due to its weight, they had
dug it under, but without finding anything, but the stone had sunk
increasingly deeper. Was this stone a boundary marker or did it
belong to a grave? These are questions that are probably no longer
resolvable.
I know some details
about the place name "Lusseike." In earlier centuries,
trees, and especially oaks, were used as boundary markers because of
their longevity; signs or names were carved into the bark, and in
the Middle Ages, family crests. In a large part of Germany, these
trees are called Loch Loich, Lâh, or Lachbaüme; however,
in the regions where the Franks lived, they are called Lus, Laus,
Luis, and Leweseiken.
In a copy of the old
Weisthums of the Kempener Mark, taken in 1650, this name appears:
"Fort van den aldene Dieck op Lewes Eicke, vort van Lewis Eick
op die dürre Eick" (Ford of the old Dieck on Lewes Eicke,
Fort van Lewis Eick op die dürre Eick); these are the trees
that the "lex salica" calls "arbor signata."
Since Louis the Pious
(814–840), more than any of his predecessors, ensured the
maintenance and regularity of the boundaries of the national
forests, etc., it is obvious that the place name Lus, in connection
with oak, heath, or mountain, is associated with Louis, while on the
Lower Rhine it is written as Luis, and in England, Lewis.
The Lusseike near
Venlo also appears in 1360 as a point from where the boundary line
of Stralen's jurisdiction ran in a straight line to Leuthermühle;
the point where that line intersects the Roman road
Venlo-Hinsbeckerbruch was then called "Cruitshoum." This
point must have been near the Herongen-Leuth road, between the
latter village and the Venlo-Hinsbeck road. I do not know whether
the name is still known there. It is noteworthy that places with
names containing "Lus"—Luv—or "Lewes"—are
almost always sites of Roman antiquities; this is also the case with
our Lusseike.
On page 68 of
"Oudewegen enz.," I mentioned that I discovered shards of
Roman tiles and other Roman pottery there. Since then, two bronze
Roman coins have been found there: one by Augustus with an altar and
"Provident" on the reverse, minted under Tiberius, and one
by Domitian, minted in 95 or 96 during his 17th consulate. Among the
aforementioned rubble, I also found shards of Germanic urns and a
large iron nail and ring. I'm not aware of any other such place name
near Venlo, except in Holt-Blerick, where a plot of land between the
village and the road to Maasbree is called Op de Luis, and the road
next to it is called Luisweg. I also encountered such a name in
Kaldenkirchen as a group of houses, located west of the town, on the
road to Tegelen, is called im Luys.
A few weeks ago, when
I was standing by the sunken road "de Voerdijk," where the
landwehr of the Jammerdaal heath ends and near which the square
pottery (triangular is a misprint in my book, which I believe I
brought to your attention by postcard before printing in the
Weekblad) is found, I saw that a gently sloping exit leads into the
sunken road, and that its extension runs first across the bare heath
and then further as an almost straight road along the Oelishof to
the houses "im Luys" and Bracht. Presumably, this road has
some significance, as it provides a short connection between the
Jammerdaal heath (Sablones) and the Roman road Venlo-Juliacum,
heading south. In my book, I failed to mention that between 1875 and
1878 I excavated Germanic urns on the heathland immediately adjacent
to the pottery, and that in those same years and also in 1881, I
unearthed the urns from the burial ground south of the upper
watermill. (In the latter year, two urns and a lid were found.) Five
burial mounds are clearly visible in the road that runs through this
cemetery. Although partially leveled by time and sod-cutting, they
are still quite visible even to a less trained eye.
I have deliberately
conducted my visits to the Jammerdaal heathland in recent years as
secretly as possible, for the following reason. One Sunday morning,
I visited the foundations of the Roman building near the Oelishof,
which I had known about for about nine years. Lo and behold, a few
days after returning home to Breda, I read in the newspapers that...
foundations of a Roman building had been discovered near Venlo.
Now that I'm
discussing the Jammerdaal heath with you, I would like to briefly
refute the points discussed by Mr. Michels in issue 16 of the
Weekblad. I do this exceptionally and otherwise take no notice of
such writings, whose purpose is other than to promote the interests
of science.
Regarding point 1,
there are five, not two, burial mounds in the road south of the
upper watermill. Moreover, M. contradicts himself in this regard.
Point 2: I already
mentioned the triangular or square bakery. Point 3. Mr. Dr. W.
Pleyte and I investigated the bakery before we arrived at M.'s, and
we went there again with him afterward. He hadn't seen the exit, nor
had he concluded from the pile of roof tiles he found that there had
been a house there; Mr. M.'s memory sometimes fails him, as is more
evident in the last and fourth points.
Mr. M. quotes a
phrase from a letter of mine, written in 1880, which reads: "...
especially because I don't own anything from the Jammerdaal valley
yet." This phrase must refer to the valley itself, as I
remember that M. once wrote to me that he had found a small cellar
in the valley; or rather, I meant that I no longer owned anything
from the Jammerdaal heath at the time, as the urns were in the
Museum. — Mr. M. visited my home in December 1877, a few days
before my departure for Deventer. I showed him urns from various
burial grounds, including those from the Jammerdaal heath. These
objects inspired him to go there to search. On that occasion, I gave
him an urn from the Romer in Blerick.
M. seems to have
forgotten this, but enough about that. I'd rather share with you
some details about the surrounding heath.
Near the east side of
the sunken road, which runs southeast behind the lower mill to the
heath, lies a very large natural stone in the coppice, not far from
the pond. It has now sunk quite deeply into the ground. Upon
examination, it turned out that this stone rested on smaller stones;
whether it served any purpose, as with the one from the Ketelberg,
is difficult to determine. Immediately behind that same watermill, a
great deal of medieval pottery has been unearthed by the miller's
son, Mr. Michels.
As you know, south of
the landwehr, in the Jammerdaal heath, lies the Oelis or Potheide
heath. I discovered that this heath is separated on the south side
by a second landwehr from the arable land situated near the
Tegelen-Kaldenkirchen road. This landwehr runs approximately west to
east, from boundary marker no. 450 along the border, to close to the
Zollhaus am Schwan, always approaching the first landwehr that joins
the road at the Rosenhaus. Whether these two landwehrs had
extensions towards Leuth, and whether the ramparts at the "Brand"
farmstead are connected to them, I dare not yet determine. Opposite
Wambach, the second landwehr consists, in a small section, of two
ramparts.
n, which enclose an
elongated area, which, according to Dr. Boetskes, is called "the
beugelbaan" (the ring road). This name struck me, as last
summer I investigated a Roman road in the Kondelwald, near Alf aan
den Moesel, which bears the name "Kegelbahn."
And now, finally, a
few words about the information you mentioned from a well-known
archaeologist, who believes that many roads considered Roman are of
Frankish origin.
Limburg must have
been at least as populated in the first centuries AD as it is today,
as is evident from the large number of pagan burial sites already
known; and how many have escaped the attention of those who take an
interest in such matters and publicize them when something is
discovered? Such a population needed many roads for mutual
communication, while the castles on the Meuse were certainly
connected to those on the Rhine by roads, since the Romans designed
and constructed the entire network of highways with a military
purpose.
I have described in
detail in my book how the Romans built roads; they did not, of
course, pay the same attention to local or vicinal roads as they did
to major highways, but for identifying such roads, the discovery of
antiquities, especially of cemeteries, is of the utmost value, as it
is known that they buried their dead immediately adjacent to the
roads.
The roads I have
described all bear the hallmarks of Roman roads or pass by more than
one cemeteries.
Did the Franks also
have a road structure that makes their roads distinguishable from
others? I very much doubt this, and others agree with me, e.g. Mr.
Peigné-Delacourt, who stated at a meeting of the
Archaeological Institute in Rome on April 20, 1863, that research
showed three types of ancient roads in Belgica Secunda. The first
type was Roman, the second Gallic, and the third Merovingian.
According to him, the latter established connections between
princely possessions. They were generally 20 meters wide and mostly
without any architectural foundation, as a result of which they will
soon be impossible to trace.
It is well known that
the Franks restored Roman roads that had fallen into disrepair, and
as an example, I must refer you to pages 59 and 60 of my book, where
the Karstrasse or Karlstrasse in Lobberich and Hinsbeck is
described.
If the name of a road
does not establish its Frankish origin, then one can only assume
that it belongs to that period; Even finding Frankish antiquities
doesn't guarantee certainty, as the Franks settled almost everywhere
in ancient Roman settlements.
If the editors of the
Venloosch Weekblad would like to publish this letter, I would be
very pleased, as this increases the likelihood that people who have
found something and read about the great interest some people have
in ancient objects will share it.
Sincerely,
BREDA, ORT.
May 6, 1885. Rhythm.
K.M. Academy.
[from: Yearbook of
the Society of Dutch Literature, 1908]
Biography of
Johannes Apollonius Ort.
"Look, there's a
piece of Roman road."
"How do you know
that?"
An explanation
followed. About 25 years ago, I met Captain Ort, an antiquarian,
during a horseback riding tour we took in the vicinity of Breda,
where we both worked as teachers—he also as head of education
for the cavalry—at the Royal Military Academy.
Some time later, he
offered me the opportunity to view his treasures—his urns, his
tableware, his coins—in his home.
Now, as a result of
that closer acquaintance, which continued in later years, and
primarily at the urging of his widow, I venture to comply with the
honorable request of our Society's board to write an obituary of the
deceased Colonel Ort. I must first confess that, as a non-expert, I
am unable to place his merits as an antiquarian in the true light of
his work. I will therefore confine myself to the information and
communications provided to me primarily by his widow, and to a few
notes concerning the writings he published.
Johannes Apollonius
Ort was born in Woudrichem on May 2, 1842, the eldest son of the
rather large family of Dr. W.F. Ort and Miss S.G. Hanegraaff. He
received his early education there at a regular primary school until
the age of 12, and continued his education at the then well-known
boarding school of Mr. Kattenbusch in Gorinchem, and subsequently at
the Royal Military Academy in Breda. On June 22, 1861, he was born
on the 19th of June.
At the age of 18, he
was appointed 2nd Lieutenant in the 5th Dragoon Regiment.
His clear intellect,
his gift for communication, his unusually cheerful disposition, his
independent yet compliant nature, and his good military
qualities—although he could, in his time, express his
disapproval of existing conditions or measures taken quite
vociferously—quickly made him stand out to his superiors as an
officer who could and should be considered for special duties. Thus,
from 1870 to 1872, he was an instructor in military subjects at the
cavalry's main course in Haarlem; from 1874 to 1877, the last year
he was appointed captain, he held the position of 1st
Lieutenant-Adjutant in the 2nd Hussar Regiment; in 1879, as
captain-instructor, he was charged with training the horses and
educating the recruits in his regiment. From 1880 to 1887, he was
head of instruction in cavalry subjects and horsemanship at the
Royal Military Academy.
As a senior officer,
he was later regularly appointed to serve on the commission for the
cadet officer examination; and when his turn came for a regimental
command, and the then instructor at the riding school, considered
particularly qualified, wanted to retain him as a colonel in that
position, the board of directors showed him their appreciation for
his merits by appointing him to colonel, above the rank (on a
lieutenant colonel's salary), a distinction never again bestowed
upon him. After four years in command of the 1st Hussars in
Deventer, he retired in April 1899.
Even in his
childhood, he had demonstrated his inquisitive spirit through avid
reading and collecting antiques. The curriculum at the Academy at
the time was not very well-suited to keeping that spirit alive; and
the young, cheerful cavalry officer, having broken free, along with
so many others, from the oppressive bonds with which the outdated
educational system in Breda held the cadets in check, initially
found too much enjoyment in the free social life, among jovial
comrades, to consider devoting himself to study immediately. To be,
in every respect, the carefree—if necessary,
daring—cavalryman—his illusions in those years went no
further.
In 1870, when he
became a lecturer at the Haarlem academy, however, he had to dig out
the books, and in 1874, once again stationed in Venlo, a military
assignment, as it were, naturally pointed him in the direction in
which he would further develop his academic skills. In all
garrisons,
the officers had to
produce maps of the garrison town and its surroundings at a scale of
1/8000. Ort was to do this in Venlo. Upon completing this task, his
dormant spirit of inquiry revived. The terrain, already so familiar
to him from his horseback rides, now had to be examined even more
closely. Inquiries had to be made with the inhabitants of the
countryside and heathland; information was given to him about hills
and old ramparts, which had already attracted his attention by their
regular layout; finds were shown to him: old bronze objects, old
vessels or shards thereof, urns, and coins; old burial places were
pointed out to him... His mind had discovered what—besides his
military duties—would occupy and fascinate him for the rest of
his life. The map was drawn, but the terrain remained his field of
exploration. Wherever he went later—and cavalry officers
frequently changed garrisons—the area was crisscrossed,
surveyed with a searching eye, excavations were conducted, and
meticulous records were kept of everything he found and learned
about archaeology.
At the beginning of
his investigations in Venlo, he met Frans Deserière, a
foreman of the Venlo-Boxtel railway, who seemed to know him so well
that he suggested they conduct joint investigations from then on.
The extent of this simple worker's assistance is best illustrated by
the statement in one of his writings that Dr. W. Pleyte, the
well-known curator (later director) of the National Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden, stated in a report to his director about
Deserière: "One of the subordinates, a foreman on the
Venlo-Boxteler road, is one of the most advanced individuals in the
field of archaeological research in this region. He devotes all his
spare time to the investigation of various antiquities and is very
skilled and meticulous in excavating urns and other objects. It
would be desirable if this person, F.D., could be retained for such
purposes for the benefit of Limburg's ancient history."
With this "expert,"
Ort successively investigated the villages of Blerick, Grubbenvorst,
Lottum, Tienraay, Meerloo, Baerlo, Kessel, and several others, as
well as the Jammerdaal heathland near Venlo, achieving positive
results.
After his marriage to
Helena Catharina Grobbee in October 1876, Grobbee was often his
faithful companion in his explorations. Fully sympathetic to her
husband's amateur studies, she accompanied him on his walks and
hikes and was present at his excavations; afterward, she attentively
followed and weighed his combinations or conclusions regarding the
information obtained and the discoveries made. When Ort was
transferred to Deventer as a captain in 1877, he had already amassed
a considerable collection of urns, jugs, coins, etc., in Limburg, in
addition to the many with which he had enriched the museum in
Leiden.
In 1879, he took up
garrison duties in Leiden. "There, I soon enjoyed the
friendship of Dr. C. Leemans, director of the National Museum of
Antiquities, and Dr. W. Pleyte, curator. They most courteously
provided me with the information I requested and also pointed the
way to a more scientific direction for the research we continued. A
large number of publications, including the Bonner Jahrbücher
and the Publications du Limbourg, which I received for reading,
clarified many things I had noticed but not thoroughly understood."
I took notes during this study whenever it concerned locations in
Limburg or near the Dutch borders, and drew a map at 1/50,000 of the
region between Nijmegen, Birten, Aachen, and Tongres, on which I
placed the Roman roads and a colored marker at each site to indicate
the period to which the found objects belonged. This, however, was
solely for my own use... it prompted me to prepare the notes and the
map for the press. Dr. Leemans and Dr. Pleyte, through their help,
have considerably lightened my workload, and I hereby openly express
my sincere gratitude to both gentlemen.
He had opened up a
new field of work. The investigations along the fields and roads
would be processed in the quiet study or the living room. While Ort
was working on this, his main work, his first publication appeared
in 1882: "Places in the municipality of Blerick (Limburg),
where prehistoric, Germanic, and Roman objects have been found."
In the "Publications de la Société d'archéologie
dans le duché de Limbourg," Volume XVIII, the learned
Limburg state archivist Jos. Habets had described the Roman road
from Tongeren to Nijmegen along the left bank of the Meuse and the
sites of Roman, Germanic, and Frankish antiquities near that road.
Among other things, it was mentioned that excavations had taken
place at the Römerheide in Blerick at the time, with the aim of
searching for hidden treasures in that municipality, and that even
officers from Venlo had participated.
Hardly had he read
this when Ort took up his pen. He knew all about it: "I
consider myself called, but also qualified, to provide some more
precise information about one thing or another, but primarily about
this fact." And amidst the descriptions of the various finds
and locations, he recounts how in 1874 he found several people
digging in various places on the heath, who told him they were
searching for a treasure, supposedly hidden in a beautiful, red
earthenware jar with a lid; they had heard about this from a pastor.
"There" (in
connection with other circumstances)—he writes—"a
light came on for me; the pastor of Ittervoort, who had searched in
vain for the Roman settlement at Blerick, now hoped, without cost or
effort, to find that settlement by having the farmers search for
him; he had therefore given them the description of a Roman jar made
of terra sigillata. I brought this to the attention of these people,
who immediately stopped searching." He concludes the booklet
with the words: "I have hereby provided the further information
I promised, and have cleared the Venlo garrison, as well as that
good foreman Frans Deserière, of the blame heaped upon them."
Two years later, in
1884, his aforementioned work, "Old Roads and Land Defences in
Limburg and Adjacent Regions," appeared. This work can be
considered somewhat of a supplement to Pleyte's "Dutch
Antiquities from the Earliest Times to Charlemagne," which does
not address Limburg and Brabant. This work describes the Roman and
other ancient roads located north of the Rhine, between the Lippe
River and the Dutch borders, between the Rhine and the Meuse Rivers,
and on the left bank of the Meuse River, as well as the land
defenses in those regions. The scholarly approach is particularly
evident in the preceding thirty-odd pages of notes concerning: Roman
roads in general; the distribution of roads to their destination;
road construction; road direction; road tracing; road measurements
in the Roman Empire; Peutinger's map and Antoninus' travel book; the
course of the lower Rhine and the Waal in Roman times; canals and
dikes. And it certainly benefits the work that a skilled military
man chose this subject for discussion. Even more than the major
highways, also built in our country on Napoleon's orders, the Roman
roads are primarily military roads; and thus, the details, for
example, of direction and construction, would likely have been more
accurately appreciated by a military-trained eye than by a less
expert. Be that as it may, the work was released to the world with
the following highly favorable preface by Leemans and Pleyte: "A
book like this needs no recommendation.
Diligently and
judiciously compiled from widely scattered data, supplemented by our
own research, the work is a primary source for anyone who wishes to
continue this research and is interested in the history of their
country. It is an introduction to the study of antiquity for the
entire Netherlands, a perspective not yet explored.
"May it receive
the interest it deserves and that will make it possible for the
second volume, with the proposed archaeological map, to be
published."
How many in the
Netherlands will buy a work on Roman roads in Limburg? The answer to
that question will likely also explain why the wish expressed in the
last section of this preface could not be fulfilled. Ort had
envisioned following this first work with a second, "consisting
of an alphabetical glossary of sites with a more or less precise
description of the find and of the site itself," and later with
an archaeological map, produced at 1/50,000, as mentioned above.
These were never published.
This must have
disappointed him, but the Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letterkunde
(Society of Dutch Literature) offered him membership shortly
thereafter (1886), which must have been proof to him that his work
had attracted more attention than the publisher believed.
The previous year, he
had contributed a piece to the work presented to Dr. Leemans, as an
antiquarian, on his 50th anniversary, entitled: "Der Römerort
Sablones," which, according to him, should be located on the
Jammerdaal heath. In the early nineties, we find Major Ort in
's-Hertogenbosch. There, too, he would leave the mark of his
tireless work, his ever-expanding research into everything related
to the history of the ancient Netherlands. In the winter of 1891/92,
he organized and cataloged the collection of antiquities in the
museum of the Provincial Society of Arts and Sciences, for which the
board of this society presented him with a certificate with a silver
medal minted in his name in recognition of services rendered. The
printed "Proceedings" of this society for the years
1891-93 still preserve a lecture by Ort, delivered at the general
meeting of November 10, 1892. He would have liked to "provide a
critical review of the region we inhabit, with regard to the various
peoples who settled here in ancient times, in connection with the
objects found from those times, the land defenses that separated the
tribes, and their traffic routes.
"However, it has
not been possible for me, as I was only in garrison here for a short
time and the hours my professional duties left me free to devote to
antiquities were too few, to achieve such a result; but what is not
yet, I hope will one day be."
Those last words
typify the persevering amateur worker: what we cannot do today, we
will do tomorrow. That evening, he confined himself to showing the
society's members some antiquities from the museum, describing them
in all their details, and investigating, in connection with the
sites and local conditions, what conclusions could be drawn from
them regarding times long past.
Wherever he went to
garrison, he continued his research, and thus gradually amassed a
wealth of information. One thing led to another. "It is an
introduction to the study of antiquity for the whole of the
Netherlands," Leemans and Pleyte had said of his "Old
Roads and Land Defences in Limburg." He was also compelled to
arrive at this study of antiquity naturally; and so, after his
retirement in 1899, his "Architectural Notes, Mostly Relating
to the Netherlands and its inhabitants" is in print. In five
major and minor installments, covering 340 pages:
I. a. The confluence
of the Maas and Waal rivers during Julius Caesar's reign.
b. Caesar's campaign
against the Usipetes and Tencteri.
II. c. The Marsi and
their land.
III. d. Oldenzaal
during the Salian Franks.
e. Crhepstini 2.
IV. f. The Germanic
god Mars.
V. g. The Roman
left-bank roads of the Rhine in the Batavian region.
Anyone who works
through these studies will understand how much work and thought
underlies them. For what we are presented here is not copyistry. Far
from it; the oldest sources are being explored. First, the Greek and
Roman writers are consulted, then he investigates what well-known
historians have thought they read from these stories, which leave so
much to be desired in terms of clarity; and in the chaotic confusion
that must have repeatedly presented itself to his mind, light first
comes to him from his walks, his astute observations of the terrain
to which the described actions or situations pertain. There he lets
the roads, the woods, the houses, the cemeteries, the ancient
monuments, the stones speak to him, and he understands their
language; there he listens with rapt attention to the stories of the
still uneducated, superstitious country dwellers, preferably the
oldest among them, who tell him of the white women, of the charades,
of the werewolves, of the gray foal, of "the Gluininge"
from whose eyes, nose, and mouth fire spews, and whom they
themselves have seen. All of this is meticulously recorded,
carefully considered, connected, and checked against the oldest
maps. Only then is a personal opinion developed, often deviating
from what experts had previously accepted as truth, or copied from
others.
Anyone who works this
way has earned the right to be called an antiquarian.
A single example. To
determine the place of residence of the Marsi, the work begins with
a report on what Strabo and Tacitus have handed down to us about
this people, "whom we know, under that name, only through the
description of the campaigns of Germanicus in the years 14, 15, and
16 AD." This is followed by the opinion of some thirty German
and Dutch historians, whose accounts of this place of residence vary
between Texel and Holstein, between Friesland and the Lahn.
Given that "the
invasion of Germanicus in the autumn of 14 AD..." teaches us
that the Marsi must have lived in such a region that the Bructeri,
Tubantes, and Usipetes had the opportunity to gather quickly between
the Rhine and the Roman army, which retreated from the Marsi region
to that river,” it is then deemed necessary to first conduct
an investigation into the habitats of these three tribes, “in
which the years in which this story took place should not be
overlooked.”
And when the
conclusion is drawn: “the only region where—according to
my view—the Marsi could have lived and which meets all the
requirements that can be established by Tacitus' historical account
is the province of Overijssel”—then it is still
“necessary, in order to make this as clear as possible, to
examine not only this country itself, but also that between its
southern borders and the Rhine, from an archaeological perspective.”
Thus, the land defenses and old roads in those regions are retraced
on the map and in the terrain, after which Germanicus's journey in
the year 14 can be followed without difficulty. As a further
indication, the following is given: "From all the above, it
appears that the area of the Marsen must have been
located north of the Hallerlandweer (municipality of Zelhem), and
indeed at about a day's march's distance from it."
However, our
researcher is not yet satisfied with this. At the beginning of his
study, the supposition is made that the name Marsen could have been
derived from the land they inhabited: from the marsen, low-lying
places or hollows on the heaths, filled with water and surrounded by
a narrow strip of grass, or from marschgrond, low-lying, marshy and
fertile land, often called mersch in the Middle Ages; While
Tacitus's account mentions that the highly venerated sanctuary of
Tanfanae (in Marsland) was razed to the ground. He therefore
believes that the soil name "Mars" and an old tradition
concerning the site of the temple of Tanfanae can provide further
clues regarding the boundaries of the then-Marsland, and therefore
lists all the places in Overijssel and Drenthe where the word "mars"
appears, which is frequently the case there, in order to determine
the approximate extent of the ancient Marsland.
He cannot yet say
with certainty where the temple (of) Tanfanae once stood. A legend
places it on Tankenberg near Oldenzaal, certainly the oldest town in
the Marsen and Tubantenland. He will discuss this in a subsequent
note.
The following note:
"Oldenzaal during the Salian Franks and the old courthouses,
names of farms and traditions in the Marken Berghuisen and de Lutte"
(published 1901), is the most extensive (200 pages) and, in the
various walks along roads and neighborhoods outside Oldenzaal,
provides, especially for a layperson, a good idea of how
an antiquarian can draw his conclusions from everything he
encounters on his way, from the simple names of farms.
Here too, a few
examples.
"Three
kilometers south of Oldenzaal"—as we read on p. 153 -
"The highway to Enschede is intersected by a stream that rises
approximately east of the Ulenkotte farm in the "elfter lescap"
of the Lutte common."
.... (p. 156) "The
Ulenkotte is associated with the night owl. This bird possesses
prophetic powers; its plaintive call signals the approach of death;
it is a bird of misfortune, and in the wild hunt led by Wodan or
Holda, two owls sometimes fly at the forefront."
.... (p. 157) "From
this circumstance, I deduced that there must be a burial ground near
the Ulenkotte." I actually found burial mounds a few hundred
meters behind the Kotte, behind the nearby Christmas House...’
As promised, in this
note, the author returns to the expression used by Tacitus: ‘templum
quod Tanfanae vocabant’, and provides a detailed explanation
of why he does not, like Van der Aa and Weeling, Grimm, and Van den
Bergh, believe in a goddess Tanfanae, but believes that Tacitus
should have written ‘Tancfanae,’ which would have meant
‘sacred place of judgment’; that furthermore, the
dolmens on Tancenberg (near Oldenzaal) together formed the templum
Tancfanae, and that these dolmens were razed to the ground by the
Romans in the year 14. In the following study, "The Germanic
God Mars," he is identified as the deity who represented law in
the Templum Tancfanae and also as the progenitor and legislator of
the Marsi, which means that any derivation of this folk name from
marsch- or marsland must be discarded.
In the fifth or final
volume of notes (published in 1904), pending further action by
private individuals or the government, a preliminary investigation
is conducted into the Roman left-bank roads in Batavian land.
Regarding this, we read the complaint at the beginning: "There
has never been a regular investigation into the Roman roads in the
Netherlands; I even doubt whether any attempt has been made to
follow the trail found of them at Kesteren. In Germany, both the
public and the government are more interested in such matters, as I
have often personally witnessed."
Ort has done his part
to fill this gap. Before the publication of this last volume, he had
felt he should weigh in on an old controversial issue. On January
22, 1903, my learned friend Prof. Blok had given a lecture at the
first meeting of the "Oud-Leiden" Association on the
ancient history of the University City, and among other things, had
announced as the outcome of his research that the city had no right
to call itself Lugdunum.
Ort had also been
garrisoned in Leiden, and naturally—one might say—he had
included this point of contention in the scope of his research. That
March, his "Lugdunum" appeared in print, in which, after a
20-page argument, he concluded:
1. According to the
road measurements provided by Roman geographers, a place called
Lugdunum formerly existed within the present-day city of Leiden.
2. This place name
means courthouse on a dune. 3. This courthouse, located on and near
the Pieterskerkhof, was still used by the count's court in the
Middle Ages. Its local organization and the place names there and
around it undoubtedly point back to the old Germanic situation.
Oud-Leiden can
therefore be peaceful. It was and remains the home of Lugduno.
An interesting
struggle between the professional historian and the amateur
antiquarian!
In the first yearbook
of Oud-Leiden (1904), Prof. Blok, as promised, elaborated on his
notes in a piece entitled "Lugdunum Batavorum," in which
he maintained his opinion, expressed in the earlier lecture, against
Ort's view. This was followed by an excerpt from Ort's brochure
"Lugdunum" as a second piece. The reasons given by the
latter - mainly derived from the local location according to the
Peutinger table and the travel book of Antoninus, as well as from
the meaning of the word Lugdunum
- were weighed in the first part and found wanting;
attention was drawn to (alleged) errors; and finally—albeit
with a somewhat overly strong conviction of being right—"after
this digression on the assertions and assumptions in Mr. Ort's
brochure, I took leave of it with gratitude for the good
intentions."
But Ort was not the
man to let himself or his brochure be taken away in this way. If he
had dared to challenge a professor of history, it was because he was
firmly convinced that his opinion was the correct one, and after
having first considered the matter from all sides. In the
Nederlandsche Spectator 1904 Nos. 10 and 16, he therefore provided
evidence that his armor was stronger than his opponent had thought,
and that it was not so easy to find its weak points. In this
refutation, Ort's solid knowledge, his originality, and even his
personality are particularly evident. Those who knew him hear him,
with the somewhat screeching voice that was sometimes characteristic
of him, emphasizing every word, utter the sentence before he wrote
it down: "Do you now understand, Professor, why I want nothing
to do with that god Lug 1 in my determination of Lugdunum?" He
concluded his reply by sharing a letter he had received from Mr.
Espérandieu in Paris, dated August 15, 1903, which contained,
among other things, "In the next number of the Revue que je
dirige 2, you will find a small copy of the brochure Lugdunum. It is
possible that your conclusions are not accepted by the whole world:
the Celtic language is so obscure that all opinions, whether they
are justified or sufficiently justified, are permissible. But the
new ideas that you express to a large extent over others and are to
be seriously considered.
Professor Blok has
left the final word to Ort. I will certainly reserve judgment on who
should be awarded the palm of victory in this matter; but I believe
the above has conveyed Ort's work in the field of antiquity, insofar
as he has expressed it publicly. His writings demonstrate sound
study, a keen ability to combine ideas, and above all, fresh
originality. The author follows his own path. He certainly takes
note of what others before him have said on the subject at hand, but
he allows himself to be influenced by none of them, and he doesn't
hesitate to draw conclusions that contradict what renowned
antiquarians had proclaimed to be established. It is therefore
understandable that his insights will not be accepted as "the
truth" by everyone, especially when they concern actions and
situations that must be unearthed from obscure accounts from twenty
centuries ago. He never lacks grounds for his assertions; sometimes
he even overwhelms them, which makes reading his writings somewhat
tedious, which certainly cannot be classified as light reading. But
he didn't intend to provide them either. And it was no easy task for
him to compile these notes. He had to first devote himself to the
study of Latin, Greek, and even Celtic and ancient Germanic; He had
to acquire knowledge of Roman, Greek, and Norse theology and
mythology; he appears to be familiar with ancient Germanic and
ancient Dutch legends and traditions, and with folklore. Only his
keen eye for the terrain is related to his military, particularly
cavalry, work for which he was trained from an early age. The rest
he had to learn on his own, aided by a few good friends, especially
Dr. M.E. Houck of Deventer; while he frequently corresponded about
Celtic expressions or obscurities with Messrs. Espérandieu in
Paris and Mr. C.A. Serrure in Brussels, the latter (since deceased)
visiting him several times.
Only friends and
acquaintances know of his work in the field of numismatics. Through
his research in the vicinity of his various garrison towns and
through his travels abroad to Trier, Constantine, Badenweiler, etc.,
during which he naturally did not neglect to become acquainted with
everything worth seeing in the field of antiquity, he gradually
acquired an extensive collection not only of Roman and Germanic
weapons, tools, urns, jars, jugs, etc., but also (through both finds
and purchases) of primarily Roman consular and imperial coins,
numbering approximately 2,000 varieties. He judiciously compiled a
catalog of these, following the classification of Cohen's well-known
works: "Description générale des monnaies de la
république romaine, communément appelées
médail"
The
Consulates. Paris, chez M. Rollin 1857, and the Historical
Description of Monies struck under the Roman Empire, together with
the appeal of Imperial Medals. Paris, chez M. Rollin 1859.
The oldest coins in
the collection are three from Campania (minted 268 BC); one of the
most important is a denarius of P. Lucinius Stolo, minted 17 BC and
originating from the collection of Dr. Phil. Paul Becker, Director
of the Lyceum Richelieu in Odessa; of Vitellius, there are three
denarius coins and two medium bronze ones, one of the first found in
Tiel—coins that are relatively rare because that emperor
reigned for less than eight months. Several coins were found in our
country, such as in Nijmegen, in the vicinity of Gorinchem, between
Woudrichem and Almkerk, in Lusseike outside Venlo, in the Meuse
River at Andel, etc. Three are listed in the catalog as having been
found in Leiden: a medium bronze of Nero, a medium bronze of Trajan,
and a large bronze of Marcus Aurelius.
The entire collection
— as an expert assured me — appears to have been
compiled with great knowledge and care. It will be sold in Amsterdam
by Mr. Schulman.
The collection of
Germanic and Roman antiquities will remain together and will find
its place in the antiquity room in Oldenzaal, founded by Mr. P.J.
Gelderman, whose establishment Ort largely initiated, and whose
expansion he always followed with interest.
He continued to
devote himself to his amateur studies until his death. After his
retirement, having settled in The Hague, he was inevitably drawn to
the association "die Haghe," of which he became a member
and board member. He had intended to give a presentation at one of
the association's meetings in preparation for the excavations at
Arendsburg near Voorburg (the former Hadriani Forum), which would
likely have begun under his leadership in the spring; however, a
brief illness suddenly ended his working life on February 8, 1908.
Thanks to his
colleagues in the field of archaeology, but no less so to his many
friends and acquaintances, including those from non-military
circles, the warm-hearted, always cheerful former colonel will not
soon be forgotten. Only she knows what he meant to his dearly loving
wife, and it will be her greatest comfort to continue to remember
that. His merits were recognized by the government with his
appointment as an Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau; while,
besides being a member of our Society, he was also a member of the
Frisian Society of History, Antiquity, and Linguistics, of 'Gelre',
the Association for the Study of Gelderland History, Antiquity, and
Law, of the Provincial Society of Arts and Sciences in North
Brabant, of the Bonner Verein, and was also a foreign associate of
the Société numismatique de la Belgique.
G.J.W. Koolemans
Beijnen.
1
The former foreman still lives in Blerick near Venlo.
1
From his introduction: Old roads and land defenses in Limburg and
adjacent regions. Leiden, E.J. Brill. 1884.
1
Roermond, J.J. Romen and Sons. 1882.
1
Published separately as an offprint in 1894 in 's-Hertogenbosch by
the Muller Brothers.
1
The first appeared in Deventer at the Deventer book and lithography
studio, the others in The Hague by the Van Cleef Brothers.
2
A word appearing on the Dutch section of the Peutinger Table, or
world map of Castorius, which Ort explains as "tombstones."
1
Prof. Blok believed he should explain the word Lugdunum from Celtic,
in which language, according to some, the word Lug denotes a
well-known deity. Ort explained the word from Germanic.
2
Revue épigraphique du midi de la France.
I
can say that it is a privilege for those interested in the dispute
to have witnessed the battle between two such powerful champions.
April 11, 1884 [...]
ACQUIRED: From Captain J. A. ORT:
- Baked earth. Large
urn, with a wide belly, small base, wide opening; with burnt human
bones and a piece of bronze wire. Height 33 cm, medium 25 cm. Found
between Rooth and Dubbroek, near Maasbree (Limburg).
- Small jar with a
flat base and wide opening, the rim decorated with indentations.
Head 3.2 cm, medium 6 cm.
- Urn, with an
upright wall and a slightly inward-curving rim decorated with
impressions. Height 18 cm, medium 15.5 cm. From the Jammerdal heath
near Venlo.
- Urn, with a wide
belly and opening. Height 21.5 cm, medium 19 cm. Found as furrows.
- Part of an urn,
like the previous one, decorated with impressed circles. Found as
furrows.
- Bowl, smooth and
polished with a flat bottom, which served as a lid for the previous
pot. Height 7 cm, medium 22 cm. Found as furrows.
- Urn, rough
workmanship, with a flat bottom, very wide belly, and narrow
opening. Height 20.5 cm, medium 16 cm. Found at Schandeloo on the
Ossenberg.
- Urn, roughly
worked, with a wide belly and a straight rim. Partially filled with
bone. Height 23 cm, medium 18.5 cm. Found on the Reumer near St.
Jan, near Blerick (Limburg).
- Very large urn with
a flat bottom, a spherical belly, small, upright, rim decorated with
nail impressions. Height 30 cm, medium 22 cm. Found on the Reumer
near Blerick.
- Bowl of glossy
black, with a flat bottom and a straight rim, which served as a lid
for the urn. Height 9 cm, medium 20 cm.
- Urn with a flat
bottom and a wide opening, two projections on the belly. Height 20
cm, medium 18.5 cm. Found on the Reumer, near Blerick.
- Large urn, glossy
black, with a small base, wide belly, wide opening, and a standing
rim. Height 24 cm, medium 20 cm. Found on the Heldensche Heide
(Limburg).
- Part of the rim and
body of a small jar with a single handle, found in the previous urn.
- Two tapered jars,
with narrow bellies and wide openings, the rim decorated with nail
impressions. Heights 26 and 26 cm, medium 22 and 21 cm. Found in
Swolgen (Limburg).
- Urn, roughly
worked, with hand-forming visible on the outside, the rim with nail
impressions. Height 24 cm, medium 20.5 cm. Found as furrows.
- Roughly worked and
poorly fired urn, with burnt bones. Height 24 cm, medium 22 cm. 22.5
cm. Found at the Wienkelder in Grubbenvorst (Limburg).
- Urn of finer earth
and harder baking material with small, flat bases, a wide belly, a
wide opening, and a raised rim. Height 17 cm, medium 20 cm. Found in
Grubbenvorst (Limburg).
- Small, compressed
jar with a wide belly and a wide opening. Height 6 cm, medium 7 cm.
Found in the previous urn.
- Portions of the
belly and rim of a very rough urn; the rim had indentations. Medium
16 cm. Found south of Middelraai near Grubbenvorst.
- Small jar, red.
Height 8 cm, medium 8 cm. Found in the Kaldenbroek in Grubbenvorst.
- Urn, polished on
the outside, with a small, flat base, a wide opening, and a raised
rim, with burnt bones. Height 18, medium 19 cm. Found at the old
Rinkesfort fortress near Baerlo (Limburg).
- Bowl with a
projection on the side; lid of the previous urn. Medium 22 cm.
- Small jar with a
rounded base and narrow opening. Height 3.5, medium 3 cm. Found in
the previous urn.
Bronze - Part of a
decoration with a needle (perhaps from a dress pin?). Width 2.8 cm.
Found as furrows.
Baked earth. Urn of
rough baking. Reddish-brown, the rim decorated with finger
impressions, wide opening, flat base. Height 23, medium 22 cm. Found
at Montfort near Genouwe (Limburg).
- Brown-black bowl,
with a raised rim and flat base, as lid of the previous urn. Height
9, medium. 23 cm.
- Bowl, smooth brown,
with a raised rim, small flat base. Height 10 cm, medium 21 cm.
Found in Tienraai (Limburg).
- Urn, brown, with a
wide raised rim and small flat base, rim and body decorated with
depressed lines. Height 22 cm, medium 17 cm. Found between Wanssum
and Mierloo (Limburg).
- Urn, light red
exterior, smooth with a spherical body. Height 20 cm, medium 19 cm.
Found as furrows.
Bronze. - Three burnt
fragments of a decoration, found in the previous urn.
CATUALIUM, the Mansio
along the Roman road Tongeren-Nijmegen
November 9, 1889
CATUALIUM, the Mansio along the Roman road Tongeren-Nijmegen. The
Roman road, which ran for centuries from ADUACA TONGRORUM to
NOVIOMAGUM, with its stopping places or mansions TERESNE, CATUALIUM,
BLARIACUM, and CEVELUM, has recently been extensively retraced by
various archaeologists.
His E.M. Habets
locates TERESNE at Mulheim, a hamlet of Eijsden (Belgium), and Lord
Ort also accepts that location for TERESNE.
According to these
gentlemen, TERESNE means Ter Eise: "on the Eis," thus by
the water.
BLARIACUM is
apparently Blerick, perhaps Hout-Blerick.
GEVELUM was
present-day Guijck [Cuyk].
The endpoints ADUACA
TONGRORUM and NOVIOMAGUM correspond to Tongeren and Nijmegen.
Where, then, is
CATUALIUM located?
His E.M. Habets
locates this mansion at Heel; Lord Ort at Horne.
Numerous Roman and
Frankish antiquities have been unearthed at Heel, Horne, and
Melenborg (near Buggenum).
The distances between
the stopping places are, according to PEUTINGER's map, from:
ADUACA
TONGRORUM(1)-TERESNE XVI League = 34,500 m
from
TERESNE-CATUALIUM XLV » = 31,108 »
»
CATUALIUM-BLARIACUM XII » = 26,664 »
»
BLARIACUM-CEVELUM XXII » = 48,884 »
»
CEVELUM-NOVIOMAGUM the rest.
Mr. Ort says:
"Also, Mulheim
and Heel are not 31 km apart, but 25.5 km apart and 31 km apart."
"bring me to Horne" (p. 125).
Therefore, Catualium
cannot be the whole place, according to Mr. Ort and in my humble
opinion.
Mr. Ort further
states (p. 122):
"Mulheim-Horn =
30,000 m; Mulheim-Melenborg 32,500 m."
Therefore, in my
opinion, neither of the last two places mentioned can be Catualium,
even though the three points mentioned are still so different.
Many antiquities have
been found; after all, I assume the Romans measured very accurately.
Aided by the
Publications d'Archéologie etc. de Limbourg, in which
numerous archaeological discoveries were published by Mr. Habets,
and by the work "Oude wegen en Landweren in Limburg" (Old
Roads and Land Weirs in Limburg) by Ort and a detailed map of the
Duchy of Limburg, I take the liberty of sharing my opinion regarding
the location of CATUALIUM.
It is striking how
the old names, however corrupted or shortened, are still in use
today.
Examples:
TERESNE=TER EISE, now
Eisden; (Mulheim).
BLARIACUM=Blerick;
CEVELUM=Cuyck.
NOVIOMAGUM=Nijmegen;
CASTELLUM=Kessel.
I reasoned that
perhaps there wasn't a neighborhood, hamlet, or even a single house
bearing the corrupted or abbreviated name of CATUALIUM, located
somewhere between Kessel and Maeseyk? Neither Horn, Melenborg, nor
Heel would be suitable, as one can see immediately.
East of Grathem lies
a hamlet bearing the characteristic name of CATERT.
In my opinion, after
measuring it on the map, this place meets the distance requirements
better than the three mentioned.
If my guess is
correct, then we should look for the old road from Ittervoort
further west, and a side road must have passed Heel and Horn.
On Wednesday
afternoon, May 15, 1889, I set out for the Chapel under the Linden
Trees in Thorn.
In front of the
chapel (east side) runs the old road, indicated by Mr. Habets as the
main road towards Panheel. If I can find an old Roman road running
slightly west of the chapel, more in the direction of Grathem, I
thought, then that road probably passes Catert, and then Catert is
the manor CATUALIUM I'm looking for.
The innkeeper, Renier
Snickers, at the chapel assured me that behind the chapel (westward)
there used to be a road called the Roman road.
A big step closer to
my goal, I thought. He is immediately willing to accompany me, point
out the way, and give his opinion regarding the direction.
Let's follow that
road.
Where the chapel lies
beneath the Linden trees, the branch to Panheel seems to have
diverged from the main route.
All that remains of
the main road at its beginning is "a raised path, with a manure
cart passing here and there, running behind the chapel's sexton's
garden towards the cross with the lime tree in the Thornerveld near
Santfort," thus heading north.
The path is elevated
and slopes to the west and east. The cobblestones of the old road
can be seen several meters to the left and right in the arable land.
The road must have
been very wide, but certainly not as wide as the position of the
pebbles would suggest; after all, these would have been moved
several meters by the harrow.
About 1000 meters
north of the chapel stands the aforementioned cross with the lime
tree. There lies a most significant intersection.
Our path is suddenly
interrupted there by a sunken crossroads, and at the foot of the
southern section, deep within the sunken road, stands the cross.
There, in that sunken
road, no fewer than six roads converge.
a from Grathem
(sunken road).
b from Thorn (a
sunken road).
c from Hunsel, via
Santfort (a sunken road).
d A field path in the
direction of Wessem.
e A field path in the
direction of Heel.
f Our footpath, the
remnant, a very elevated path.
The piece of arable
land north of the cross, where the northern part of our road ends,
bears the name Venuskamp.
(This last name was
given to me by Mr. Rubens of Hagenbroek.)
The road, now
interrupted here, takes a slight turn to the right at Venuskamp and
continues for approximately 250 meters behind (east of) the house
"de Riet," where the new road passes in front of the door
(west). It remains recognizable by the high ridge and the gravel,
although from Venuskamp onwards, no footpath accompanies it or
remains of it.
I followed this road
until behind the farm "de Riet," when evening forced me to
return home.
On Sunday, May 19th,
I continued its course and was convinced, even more than two days
earlier, that I had found CATUALIUM in CATERT.
That hamlet lies
another 2,000 meters from "de Riet," and the road, running
from the cross at Santfort, maintains the direction I took from
there, apparently directly towards that neighborhood. On Sunday, May
19th, I set off in the morning, heading north through Hunsel towards
De Riet. Following the gravel layer behind (eastward) that farm in
the field, I reached milestone 44, through arable and clover fields,
on the French-built Paris-Hamburg road, or, if you prefer,
Maastricht-Venlo. Along that main road, the track becomes less
distinct, but is still visible.
Soon the old road
approaches the first houses in the Houthem neighborhood. One of the
farmers is happy to act as a guide, but he...
Never heard of an old
road.
The Neer, coming from
Hunsel as a wide stream, forms a delta 10 minutes' walk north of
Grathem, near Houthem. The right branch turns southeast past Panheel
to Wessem. The other branch continues its way to Haelen. Our old
road must therefore cross the right branch at Houthem. This spot is
clearly visible. To cross this branch at right angles, a small turn
to the east is necessary just south of the stream. The road
continues in this direction for a while, crossing the stream, before
turning left (westward) again, almost in line with the direction:
Kruis [=Cross] te Santfort, mile marker 44.
Until several years
ago, according to the farmer mentioned above, there was a bridge at
the spot where the old road crosses the stream. The entire area
where it crosses the stream alluvium bears the most striking traces
of lowering. Indeed, the bases of the fairly large trees there stand
well over half a meter higher than the surrounding land or pasture.
Let us return to the road. It runs northwest through the barren
Houthemerveld, where it is extremely difficult to find, only to
enter the Caterveld at the end of that field.
Catert consists of
only two farmhouses. The southern one is not suitable, but the other
is. It is located 40 to 50 meters from the Neerbeek stream, west of
milestone 45 on the road, a 20 to 25-minute walk from the center of
the municipality of Grathem. Both Houthem and Catert are civilly
part of the municipality of Heel; the streams there separate Heel
from Grathem. At Sibert Seuntjes's farm, the farmer, the owner of
the property, answers our questions with the utmost willingness. His
son, Mathieu, immediately agrees when I express my wish to conduct
some investigations with a spade. The generous housewife refreshes
the unknown, tired, dusty, and sweaty "gentleman" with a
delicious glass of fresh cow's milk.
As I approached the
house, I noticed the remains of ditches in the meadow south of the
current residence, enclosing a fairly large plot.
When I asked if there
had been any ponds here in the past, they replied that they were now
largely filled in, but still clearly visible, and that pools
remained here and there. The previous house, they explained in
response to my questions, stood where a small garden now stands and
had only been demolished a few years ago. That house fell outside
the meadows enclosed by ditches. The farmer's son also told me that
he had unearthed half a pot the previous autumn.
I then went with him
to that spot, right in front of the door of the new house, about
four meters away (east). From the very first turn, I saw wood ash,
shards immediately emerged from the ground, and looking around, I
spotted shards of Roman urns or tiles everywhere.
It was Sunday, so I
decided against further excavation. Now I had to continue my search.
Right where the new
house is located, the road heading north seems to have left Mansio
CATUALIUM. It now runs in a direct direction to the Exaten house
near Baexem, leaving the monastery on its left. From Catert to
Exaten, it runs along the left slope of a natural range of hills,
and a cart track remains of the old road. A lot of sand must have
been pushed across the road there, because the gravel layer is very
deep.
Yet, it came to light
while clearing a hedge just north of Catert and 't Catertveld.
Besides the remains of ponds, the urns, and the name (which points
to the stopping place CATUALIUM), I can also report that a few years
ago, the farmer Sibert Seuntjens unearthed a silver coin the size of
half a guilder, and his neighbor, while harrowing, unearthed a gold
coin, both believed to be of very ancient date.
Whether the place was
favorably situated from a military perspective, I cannot possibly
determine. However, I would like to point out that the manor was
bounded to the south at some distance by the stream to Panheel, to
the west by the stream to Haelen, and to the east by the deep
Heelderpeel, from which it was separated by a ridge.
If this spot I have
indicated along the Neerbeek is the old CATUALIUM, which I no longer
doubt, then I hope that science will benefit from the publication of
this discovery.
After all, then,
after accurate measurements, one can determine the exact location of
the other mansions.
Several roads also
lead from Catert towards the east.
a A wide main road to
Beegden.
b A second road past
the southern house in Catert towards Heel; this one leaves Catualium
from the south.
c From the
southernmost house in Houthem, an old sunken road leads to Heel.
Tungelroy. P. MATH.
PEETERS.
(1)
The spellings FERESNE and CEVELUM are considered incorrect on the
Peutinger map.
Again, Catualium.
A brief observation
on Mr. Peeters's essay. We will not discuss his research, because to
do so, we would have had to visit and walk the same route he took,
which did not happen. But we cannot fail to mention that the hamlet
of Katert appears to us to be located outside the direction of the
Roman Maas road; this road indeed ran past the chapel of Thorn, past
Heel, Beegden, and Horne. This is indicated by the direction the
road also took elsewhere; it never leaves the bank of the Maas, as
evidenced by the investigations carried out by Messrs. Jansen,
Guillon, and Habets, and further by the uninterrupted series of
Roman objects discovered along that route. If a Roman building
actually existed at Katert, as Mr. Peeters claims, then a side road
may well have led there, but the main road, the via strata,
constructed by the Romans to protect the Meuse River and connect
Tongeren with Nijmegen, never left the banks of that river so
far.
Finally, a comment on the quotation from a contribution by
Mr. Ort, who believes that Heel is not 31 kilometers from
Mulheim-Eijsden. The question here is not how far Mulheim is from
Heel, but rather how far the Roman foundations under the Mulheim
area are from these or those Roman foundations located under the
municipality of Heel. There is something vague and uncertain in Mr.
Ort's view, as formulated here. Where is Heel, where is Mulheim, on
the map? If one starts measuring from the western border of Mulheim
to the eastern border of the municipality of Heel, one will likely
find a distance of more than 31 kilometers, especially if one takes
into account the direction of the road and the bends and curves it
has made along its course. Indeed, many things must be considered
when calculating the distances on Peutinger's map, and it is often
the method of arithmetic that gives rise to the differences of
opinion among the authors. Pour comprendre il faut connaître
is the case here.
Meanwhile, we thank Mr. Peeters for his
interesting article.
The Editors of the Maasgouw.
October 6, 1934:
Archaeological discoveries in Hout-Blerick in the 19th century.
The small hamlet of
Hout-Blerick, located fifteen minutes south of Blerick, opposite
Tegelen, deserves the attention of antiquarians, wrote the learned
national archivist Jos. Habets in his time, specifically because of
the following two discoveries: First, it is in Hout-Blerick that
traces of a Belgo-Roman settlement can be found. Twenty minutes from
the Meuse River in the direction of Maasbree, not far from the last
houses, called "Doovend," lies a field, situated higher
than the rest, called Veldenkamp. This name was given in memory of
one of the last owners, named Van Velden. Over an area of twelve
to fifteen acres, one finds Roman antiquities, pieces of tiles and
pottery, building blocks, red cement, wood ash, and fragments of
iron. Alongside this field flows the small river called "de
Breebeek," where the famous head of Medusa, discussed shortly,
was found. According to Greek and Roman mythology, Medusa is one of
the three so-called Gorgons. These were three sisters named Sthenyo,
Euryale, and Medusa.
They were hideous
creatures, surrounded by a belt of hissing serpents; on their heads
they had dragon scales; their large, sharp teeth protruded far;
their claws and wings were made of copper. So terrifying were they
that their mere sight could turn a human to stone. They lived at the
very edge of the Western Ocean.
The hero Perseus, who led the
fight against these monsters, cut off the head of Medusa, the only
mortal of the three, while she lay in a deep sleep. From Medusa's
torso sprang the winged horse, Pegasus. Swift as the wind, Perseus,
who had leaped onto the Pegasus, sped through the air and flew over
Africa. Blood still dripped from Medusa's head, and the drops that
fell to the earth there turned into serpents.
When Perseus wanted
to rest a while near the giant Atlas, who, at the spot where the
Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean meet, carried the pillars
of heaven on his shoulders, and was not received hospitably at all,
he was annoyed. He held up the Medusa's head, and Atlas was
immediately transformed into a rocky mass, its crown rising into the
clouds.
A Medusa's head was
therefore not an inappropriate symbol on a warrior's shield.
But after this
digression, let us return to the Veldenkamp and the Breebeek. Around
1861, the owner of the land had begun removing the tiles and
brickwork from that field and placed them in the small river. This
fact attracted the attention of several antiquities enthusiasts, who
began to examine the ruins. In 1879, Messrs. Pleijten, curator at
the Rijksmuseum in Leiden, and J. A. Ort, lieutenant in the 4th
Hussar Regiment, formerly garrisoned in Venlo, conducted some
excavations at that site, the results of which are unknown.
The second discovery
made in the vicinity of Hout-Blerick is that of a precious Medusa
head and horse harness decorations in bronze.
This discovery
occurred around the autumn of 1872 in the Breebeek, a few meters
from the Beldenkamp substructures. A worker digging in the stream
found this treasure at a depth of 9 to 10 feet underground. He sold
it to the goldsmith J. G. Lienders in Venlo, who still owned it in
1879.
This treasure
contains the following objects: A very beautiful "umbo,"
or navel from a Roman shield. It is a copper plate, fire-gilded in
the shape of a disc and richly sculpted in round molding. Its
diameter is 26 centimeters. The rim of the "umbo" consists
of a wreath of oak leaves interspersed with acorns. The center of
the navel consists of a Gorgon head in raised sculpture, exquisitely
carved. It is of majestic beauty, with a terrifying appearance like
all the Medusa heads. The eyes are wide open. The beautiful
proportions of the face recall the beautiful Greek style. The curls
of long hair encircle the head. Below the head, she wears a short
beard. Snakes are coiled in her hair, forming an elegant knot
beneath the child. Two serpent heads emerge from beneath two small
wings that adorn the hair; a third slants over the center of the
forehead. On top of the head, the artist has placed a flower bud.
This richly adorned head is surrounded by a wreath of oak leaves,
from which hang acorns; it is similar to the one that forms the edge
of the navel. Below the sculpture is a garland of leaves and small
petals.
The Medusa head is
one of the most common representations on ancient shields. Homer
places a Gorga on the shield of Agamemnon.
Phidias appears to
have decorated the shield of Minerva with the same symbol. This
representation can also be seen on the shields of Mars, Achilles,
Victory, the Amazons, etc., which adorn Roman and Greek vases.
Several holes are found in the rim of the navel, which appear to
have been made either by an arrow or by the nails that served to
attach it to the shield.
The depiction of our
Medusa head is nothing unusual. The only thing worth mentioning is
that it wears a short beard around the chin. But even that fact is
not without antecedents. This Medusa head must date from the first
century AD.
Seven other bronze objects were found alongside the
aforementioned shield navel, which were part of a horse harness.
These are, firstly, a decoration of the collar with two rings
through which the reins pass; then another set of rings for the
reins. All these objects have small holes to allow the nails to pass
through and show genuine traces of gilding.
Gold
Finger Rings with the Inscription CONSTANTINO FIDEM
The
first compilations and discussions of such finger rings can be found
in Mowat 1889, Marshall 1907, and Henkel 1913. The items listed
here, Nos. 1-16, are from the corresponding list in Noll 1974b,
241-243; Nos. 17-18 have been added. The following list includes
only additions (primarily from more recent literature) and
corrections to Noll's information, along with the date of discovery,
location where they were found, and weight.
Four
rings with a location of discovery (Nos. 2-5), whose subsequent fate
after their discovery is unknown, are contrasted with two rings of
unknown origin (Nos. 14-15). It is no longer possible to determine
which rings from the two groups are identical due to the lack of or
insufficient quality of images of rings Nos. 2-5.
The
following list includes only additions (primarily from more recent
literature) and corrections to Noll's information, along with the
date of discovery, location where they were found, and weight. No. 1
AMIENS (Somme department) Date of discovery: 1884 (Mowat 1889)
Current location: Fitzwilliam Museum, Department of Antiquities,
Cambridge (purchased 1975; until 1937 Guilhou Collection, Paris, No.
418) Weight: 10.925 g (courtesy of L. Burn, Cambridge) Literature:
Noll 1974b, No. 1 = No. 16; D. Bayard/J.L. Massy, Amiens
romain (Heilly 1983) 257, Fig. 130; Ogden 1992, Fig. 3; Entwistle
1994, 27 (No. 3) with illustration
No.
2 near TOUL (Meurthe-et-Moselle department), in the Moselle River
Date of discovery: before 1906 Current location: "Mus. Toul".
(Noll 1974b); an inquiry dated September 23, 1993, to the Musée
Municipal in Toul remained unanswered. Weight: unknown. Literature:
Noll 1974b, No. 2
No.
3 CONTRÉXEVILLE (dép. Vosges) or Solosse (dép.
Vosges). Date of discovery: 1873. Location: "Musée
Beauvais". (Henkel 1913; Noll 1974b). According to letters from
R. Schüler, Musée Dép. Beauvais, dated October 5,
1993, and June 22, 1994, the ring is not listed in the inventories
and presumably never entered the museum's collection. Weight:
unknown. Literature: Noll 1974b, No. 3
No.
4 Near Kleve (or Nijmegen?) Date found: 1850. Current location:
unknown. Weight: unknown. Literature: Noll 1974b, No. 4
No.
5 Qualburg (3 km south of Kleve). Date found: 1905. Current
location: unknown. Weight: unknown. Literature: Noll 1974b, No. 5
No.
6 Luisendorf (Geldern). Date found: 1836. Current location: British
Museum, London. Weight: 10.81 g (Henkel 1913); 10.95 g (Marshall
1907, No. 649). Literature: Noll 1974b, No. 6; Cat. London 1977, 27
(No. 17) with illustration; Noll 1986 with illustration. Johansen
1994, Fig. 3
No.
7 at ZERF (17 km south of Trier) Date of discovery: 1882 Location:
Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Trier Weight: 10.82 g (Henkel 1913)
Literature: Noll 1974b,
No.
7; Trier, Imperial Residence and Bishopric. Exhibition catalog Trier
1984 (Mainz 1984) 115 (No. 33a) with illustration
No.
8 STROMBERG (10 km west of Bingen) Date found: 1879 Current
location: Cronberg, Friedrichshof Castle (Henkel 1913) Weight: 11.21
g (Henkel 1913) Literature: Noll 1974b, No. 8
No.
9 AUGSBURG (Fig. 1) Date found: 1876 Current location: State
Collection of Antiquities, Munich Weight: 10.55 g (Henkel 1913)
Literature: Noll 1974b, No. 9; Munich 1989 cat., pp. 73f. (No. 12)
with illustration; Biers 1989/90, Fig. 5; Cat. Munich 1998, 173 (No.
228) with illustration; Cat. Rosenheim 2000, 387 (No. 147a)
No.
10 OBERWINTERTHUR, City of Winterthur. Date of discovery: 1935.
Current location: Swiss National Museum, Zurich. Weight: 10.14 g
(courtesy of L. Flutsch, formerly Zurich). Literature: Noll 1974b,
No. 10; Noll 1986 with illustration; B. Hedinger, in: Archaeology in
the Canton of Zurich 1997–1998. Reports of the Cantonal
Archives of Zurich 15 (Zurich/Egg 2000) 312, Fig. 28
No.
11 "HUNGARY". Date of discovery: before 1913 Location:
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Collection of Classical
Antiquities) Weight: 10.7 g (Noll 1974b) Literature: Noll 1974b, No.
11; Noll 1986 with illustration
No.
12 SREMSKE MITROVICA (Sirmium) Date of discovery: before 1825
Location: Magyar Nemzeti Muzeum, Budapest Weight: 10.66 g (courtesy
of E. Töth, Budapest) Literature: Noll 1974b, No. 12; Toth
1979, Fig. 5; Noll 1986 with illustration
No.
13 BELA PALANKA (40 km south of Niš) Date of discovery:
unknown Location: British Museum, London Weight: 7.90 g (!)
Literature: Noll 1974b, No. 13; Jovanovic 1978, 20 (No. 22); 110.
According to Henkel 1913, 17 with Fig. 6, this ring is said to be
"somewhat differently shaped in form." Marshall 1907, 109
notes that the ring is made of light gold and "either it should
be angular." However, based on the illustrations in Henkel
(ibid., Fig. 6) and Marshall (ibid., Plate 17, No. 650) according to
Martin, Constantino Fidem 261, the ring appears to be heavily worn,
and the band in the middle section is only about half as wide as at
its base on both sides of the (worn and heavily rounded) plate, on
which the initial and final letters of the word FIDEM are apparently
no longer legible. This wear is confirmed by the much lower weight,
which is not taken into account in our table, Fig. 3.
[The
text abruptly ends here, so the translation stops as well.] No. 14
Location unknown Date of discovery unknown Current location:
Pforzheim Jewelry Museum (purchased in 1954 from the Battke
Collection) Weight: 10.7 g (courtesy of the museum) Literature: Noll
1974b, No. 14
No.
15 Location unknown (Fig. 2)
Date
of discovery: unknown. Current location: The Walters Art Gallery,
Baltimore (on loan from the Zucker Collection since 1985; Basel
Coins and Medals Catalogue, Auction XXIII, 1961, No. 220; before
1937 Guilhou Collection, Paris, No. 417). Weight: 10.93 g (Basel
Catalogue 1961 and courtesy of G.K. Vikan, Baltimore). Literature:
Noll 1974b, No. 15; Vikan 1987, Fig. 3
[November
22, 2020: not found on the website of The Walters Art Museum]
No.
16 = No. 1 (see above)
No.
17 BELA PALANKA (cf. No. 13). Date of discovery: before 1934.
Current location: unknown. Weight: unknown. Literature: Noll 1974b-;
Jovanovic 1978, 20 (No. 21); 110
No.
18 LÖCS (Luc, Yugoslavia) Date of discovery: unknown Location:
Magyar Nemzeti Muzeum, Budapest Weight: incomplete (only rectangular
plate, 11 x 8 mm, with FIDEM and traces of frost) Literature: Noll
1974b-; Toth 1979, Fig. 6 above
List
2: Gold finger rings with the inscription CONSTANT(I) FIDES
No.
1 CAISTOR ST EDMUND/VENTA ICENORUM (Norfolk) (Fig. 6) Date of
discovery: 1823 Location: Norwich Castle Museum, Norwich Weight: 9.5
g (kindly communicated by A.E. West, Norwich; according to
Archaeologia [London] 21, 1827, 547 "6 dwts. 3grs.")
Literature: Noll 1974b, 243 (No. 1); Collingwood/Wright 1991, 16
(No. 2422.4) with illustration
No.
2 BIRCHINGTON (Kent) Date of discovery: (before) 1860 Location:
unknown Weight: unknown Literature: Noll 1974b, 243 (No. 2);
Collingwood/Wright 1991, 16 (No. 2422.7) CONSTANTINO FIDEM and
CONSTANT(I) FIDES - Gold Fidelity Rings for Constantine I and his
father Constantius Chlorus - CORE Reader
https://core.ac.uk/reader/227000221
November
22, 2020 A gold ring with band shank engraved
CONSTANTINO
CAVDIVM NOSTRI; rectangular raised bezel engraved FIDEM. 15.24 g,
23.83 mm overall, 21.26 mm internal diameter. From an old
collection; formed 1970-1980. Very fine condition. A large wearable
size. Very rare.
November
22, 2020 TimeLine Auctions
June
2, 2020 Harwich, United Kingdom
https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/roman-gold-military-fidem-constantino-ring-122-c-5b54f5eb98#
Lot
122: Roman Gold Military 'FIDEM CONSTANTINO' Ring
4th
century AD. A gold finger ring with raised rectangular plaque,
inscribed in seriffed capitals 'CONSTANTINO FIDEM' (faithful to
Constantine"). Cf. Spier, J., Treasures of the Ferrell
Collection, Wiesbaden, 2010, no. 42 and p. 8 for another example and
discussion on this series of allegiance rings; another example found
at Amiens, France, and acquired by the Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge, acquisition no. GR.1.1975; another acquired by the
British Museum, reference 1917, 10.56 g, 25.88 mm overall, 23.33 mm
internal diameter.
Property
of an East Anglian collector; formerly acquired on the European art
market in the 1990s; this lot has been checked against the Interpol
Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by AIAD
certificate number no.158308-10027. Search rings, declaring
allegiance and loyalty to the emperor were presented to high-ranking
military officers as part of their annual bonus payments, a practice
that commenced under Constantine I, the Great; the inclusion of the
chi-rho confirms that this occurred after the conversion to
Christianity. After his death in 337 AD, his sons Constantius II,
Constantine II, and Constans ruled the empire together, and the
practice, from very rare surviving examples, is known to have
continued until the reign of Magentius (350-353 AD). A video of this
lot can be viewed on the Timeline Auctions website.
June
14-16, 2000 CONSTANTINO FIDEM Loyalty Rings
[...]
First, the unusual provenance of our rings should be mentioned:
Normally, objects made of precious metal, which are not discarded
even when damaged, are preserved either as grave goods or as
belonging to a hidden, often unrecovered, burial site in the ground,
usually containing other valuables. Many of the CONSTANTINO FIDEM
rings were found before The rings were discovered in 1900 without
regard to the circumstances of their discovery. Nevertheless, it is
striking that none of the rings are listed as having been found in a
grave or hoard, a fact that would hardly have gone unnoticed or
unmentioned. One ring (List 1, No. 2) was recovered from the Moselle
River, three more (Nos. 5, 6, and 10) were discovered during
fieldwork, and a fifth (No. 8) was found "all alone and only
about half a foot in the ground." The CONSTANT(I) FIDES ring
from near Venta Icenorum (Fig. 6) was also "ploughed up in a
field." If, in fact, neither of the usual methods of
transmission for precious metal objects played a role for either of
these rings, one might surmise that they were once issued and worn
in unusually large numbers, of which relatively few were lost—as
genuine losses, which of course never entirely ceased—and
never recovered. The wearers of the rings are described as... One
can only imagine members of the male sex, most likely officers and
civil servants.
These
rings were awarded as decorations or "loyalty rewards";
among the military wearers, there were likely quite a few of
Germanic origin. It is probably no coincidence that the CONSTANTINO
FIDEM rings found in the west have surfaced both near the imperial
residence of Trier and in its surrounding area, from the upper
reaches of the Moselle to Bingen on the Rhine (4x; List 1, Nos. 2,
3, 7 and 8), and along the imperial border on the Lower Rhine (3x;
List 1, Nos. 4-6). However, they are still absent from the interior
of Gaul, with the exception of the single example from Amiens (List
1, No. I). While one could, in principle, imagine enthusiastic
supporters and partisans of the young Constantine having oath rings
made from two "old" aurei on their own initiative, as
already mentioned, more compelling arguments speak against a
"private" production and in favor of an official,
centrally directed manufacture of the rings. This can presumably
also be assumed for the loyalty rings of Constantius Chlorus,
especially since here it is not the ring or its wearer who pledges
loyalty and trusts the person named, but rather the emperor's fides
(faith), and presumably also addressed to the emperor, is expressed
on an object that the wearer received from the one to whom he
pledged loyalty and trusts. On the FIDES rings, Constantius Chlorus
himself apparently grants the wearer loyalty or protection and, in
turn, counts on the wearer's loyalty. The ingenious formula of his
son, which, with the phrase CONSTANTINO FIDEM, makes the wearer of
the ring the speaker, standing in loyalty to Constantine and
simultaneously trusting him, is an intensification of the idea of
connecting fides with a (personal) finger ring. It
creates a closer, almost tangible relationship between the person
named on the ring and its wearer. By placing the oath of loyalty on
a ring, the decision to remain loyal to Constantine and to trust him
becomes directly personal and is related to the wearer and owner.
The underlying propaganda is personalized; the oath of allegiance is
not sworn to the state or an institution, but ad personam, to the
individual. According to a later account by Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, Byzantine emperor from 945 to 959, Constantine the
Great is said to have presented the inhabitants of Chersonesus (in
Thracian or Taurian territory?) with, among other things, gold
finger rings bearing his image, so that he could recognize the
messages and petitions they addressed to him by the seal.
Liste I:
Fingerringe aus Gold mit Inschrift CONSTANTINO FIDEM
Erste Zusammenstellungen und
Besprechungen derartiger Fingerringe finden sich bei Mowat 1889,
Marshall 1907 und Henkel 1913. Die hier angegebenen Nrn. 1-16
entsprechender Liste bei Noll 1974b, 241-243; neu kommen hinzu Nrn.
17-18. Im folgenden werden - nebst Funddatum, Aufbewahrungsort und
Gewicht - nur Zusätze (v.a. neuere Literatur) und Korrekturen
zu Nolls Angaben angeführt.
Vier Ringen mit Fundortangabe (Nrn.
2-5), deren weiteres Schicksal nach der Auffindung nicht bekannt
ist, stehen zwei Ringe unbekannter Herkunft (Nrn.14-15) gegenüber.
Welche Ringe beider Gruppen mit einander identisch sind, läßt
sich wegen fehlender oder qualitativ unzureichender Abbildungen der
Ringe Nrn. 2-5 nicht mehr ausmachen.
Nr. 1 AMIENS (dép. Somme)
Funddatum: 1884 (Mowat 1889) Aufbewahrungsort: Fitzwilliam Museum,
Departement of Antiquities, Cambridge (Ankauf 1975; bis 1937
Sammlung Guilhou, Paris, Nr. 418) Gewicht: 10,925 g (frdl. Mitt. L.
Burn, Cambridge) Literatur: Noll 1974b, Nr. l=Nr. l6; D. Bayard/J.L.
Massy, Amiens romain (Heilly 1983) 257, Abb. 130; Ogden 1992, Abb.
3; Entwistle 1994, 27 (Nr. 3) mit Abb.
Nr. 2 bei TOUL (dép.
Meurthe-et-Moselle), in der Mosel Funddatum: vor 1906
Aufbewahrungsort: "Mus. Toul". (Noll 1974b); eine Anfrage
vom 23.9.1993 an das Musee municipal in Toul blieb unbeantwortet
Gewicht: unbekannt Literatur: Noll 1974b, Nr. 2
Nr. 3 CONTRÉXEVILLE (dép.
Vosges) bzw. Solosse (dep. Vosges) Funddatum: 1873 Aufbewahrungsort:
"Museum Beauvais". (Henkel 1913; Noll 1974b). Laut
Schreiben von R. Schüler, Musee departemental Beauvais, vom
5.10.1993 und 22.6.1994 ist der Ring nicht in den Inventaren
verzeichnet und vermutlich nie ins Museum gelangt. Gewicht:
unbekannt Literatur: Noll 1974b, Nr. 3
Nr. 4 Umgebung von KLEVE (oder
Nijmegen?) Funddatum: 1850 Aufbewahrungsort: unbekannt Gewicht:
unbekannt Literatur: Noll 1974b, Nr. 4
Nr. 5 QUALBURG (3 km südlich von
Kleve) Funddatum: 1905 Aufbewahrungsort: unbekannt Gewicht:
unbekannt Literatur: Noll 1974b, Nr. 5
Nr. 6 LUISENDORF (Geldern) Funddatum:
1836 Aufbewahrungsort: British Museum, London Gewicht: 10,81 g
(Henkel 1913); 10,95 g (Marshall 1907, Nr. 649) Literatur: Noll
1974b, Nr. 6; Kat. London 1977, 27 (Nr. 17) mit Abb.; Noll 1986 mit
Abb.; Johansen 1994, Abb.3
Nr. 7 bei ZERF (17 km südlich
von Trier) Funddatum:1882 Aufbewahrungsort: Rheinisches
Landesmuseum, Trier Gewicht: 10,82 g (Henkel 1913) Literatur: Noll
1974b,
Nr. 7; Trier, Kaiserresidenz und
Bischofssitz. Ausstellungskatalog Trier 1984 (Mainz 1984) 115 (Nr.
33a) mit Abb.
Nr. 8 STROMBERG (10 km westlich von
Bingen) Funddatum: 1879 Aufbewahrungsort: Cronberg, Schloß
Friedrichshof (Henkel 1913) Gewicht: 11,21 g (Henkel 1913)
Literatur: Noll 1974b, Nr. 8
Nr. 9 AUGSBURG (Abb.1) Funddatum:
1876 Aufbewahrungsort: Staatliche Antikensammlung, München
Gewicht: 10,55 g (Henkel 1913) Literatur: Noll 1974b, Nr. 9; Kat.
München 1989, 73f. (Nr. 12) mit Abb.; Biers 1989/90, Abb. 5;
Kat. München 1998, 173 (Nr. 228) mit Abb.; Kat. Rosenheim 2000,
387 (Nr. 147a)
Nr. 10 OBERWINTERTHUR, Stadt
Winterthur Funddatum: 1935 Aufbewahrungsort: Schweizerisches
Landesmuseum, Zürich Gewicht:10,14 g (frdl. Mitt. L. Flutsch,
früher Zürich) Literatur: Noll 1974b, Nr. 10; Noll 1986
mit Abb.; B. Hedinger, in: Archäologie im Kanton Zürich
1997-1998. Ber. d. Kantonsarch. Zürich 15 (Zürich/Egg
2000) 312 Abb. 28
Nr. 11 "UNGARN". Funddatum:
vor 1913 Aufbewahrungsort: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien
(Antikensammlung) Gewicht: 10,7 g (Noll 1974b) Literatur: Noll
1974b, Nr. 11; Noll 1986 mit Abb.
Nr. 12 SREMSKE MITROVICA (Sirmium)
Funddatum: vor 1825 Aufbewahrungsort: Magyar Nemzeti Muzeum,
Budapest Gewicht: 10,66 g (frdl. Mitt. E. Töth, Budapest)
Literatur: Noll 1974b, Nr. 12; Toth 1979, Abb. 5; Noll 1986 mit Abb.
Nr. 13 BELA PALANKA (40 km südlich
von Nis) Funddatum: unbekannt Aufbewahrungsort: British Museum,
London Gewicht: 7,90 g(!) Literatur: Noll 1974b, Nr. 13; Jovanovic
1978, 20 (Nr. 22); 110 Nach Henkel 1913, 17 mit Abb. 6 soll dieser
Ring "in der Form... etwas abweichend gestaltet sein".;
Marshall 1907, 109 vermerkt, daß der Ring aus hellem Gold
bestündeund "either should er... angular". sei. Den
Abbildungen bei Henkel (ebd. Abb. 6) und Marshall (ebd. Taf. 17, Nr.
650) nach Martin, Constantino Fidem 261 zuschließen, scheint
der Ring aber vor allem stark abgenutzt zu sein und ist der Reif im
Mittelteil nur noch knapp halb so breit wie an seinem Ansatz beider
seitsder (abgeschliffenen und stark verrundeten) Platte, auf der die
Anfangs- und Endbuchstaben Fund M des Wortes FIDEM offenbar nicht
mehr zu lesen sind. Diese Abnutzungen werden durch das viel
geringere Gewicht, das in unserer Tabelle Abb. 3 nicht
berücksichtigt wird, bestätigt.
Nr. 14 Fundort unbekannt Funddatum:
unbekannt Aufbewahrungsort: Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim (Ankauf 1954 aus
Sammlung Battke) Gewicht: 10,7 g (frdl. Mitt. des Museums)
Literatur: Noll 1974b, Nr. 14
Nr. 15 Fundort unbekannt (Abb. 2)
Funddatum: unbekannt Aufbewahrungsort: The Walters Art Gallery,
Baltimore (seit 1985 Leihgabe der Zucker Collection; Katalog Münzen
und Medaillen Basel, Auktion XXIII, 1961, Nr. 220; vor 1937 Sammlung
Guilhou, Paris, Nr. 417) Gewicht:10,93 g (Katalog Basel 1961 und
frdl. Mitt. G.K. Vikan, Baltimore) Literatur: Noll 1974b, Nr. 15;
Vikan 1987, Abb. 3
[22 november 2020: not found on the
website of The Walters Art Museum]
Nr. 16=Nr. 1 (s.o.)
Nr. 17 BELA PALANKA (vgl. Nr. 13)
Funddatum: vor 1934 Aufbewahrungsort: unbekannt Gewicht: unbekannt
Literatur: Noll 1974b-; Jovanovic 1978, 20 (Nr. 21); 110
Nr. 18 LÖCS (Luc, Jugoslawien)
Funddatum: unbekannt Aufbewahrungsort: Magyar Nemzeti Muzeum,
Budapest Gewicht: unvollständig (nur rechteckige Platte, 11x8
mm, mit FIDEM und Ansätze des Reifserhalten) Literatur: Noll
1974b-; Toth 1979, Abb. 6 oben
Liste 2: Fingerringe aus Gold mit
Inschrift CONSTANT(I) FIDES
Nr. 1 CAISTOR ST EDMUND/VENTA
ICENORUM (Norfolk)(Abb. 6) Funddatum: 1823 Aufbewahrungsort: Norwich
Castle Museum, Norwic Gewicht: 9,5 g (frdl. Mitt. A.E. West,
Norwich; laut Archaeologia [London] 21, 1827, 547 "6 dwts.
3grs.".) Literatur: Noll 1974b, 243 (Nr. 1); Collingwood/Wright
1991, 16 (Nr. 2422.4) mit Abb.
Nr. 2 BIRCHINGTON (Kent) Funddatum:
(vor) 1860 Aufbewahrungsort: unbekannt Gewicht: unbekannt Literatur:
Noll 1974b, 243 (Nr. 2); Collingwood/Wright 1991, 16 (Nr. 2422.7)
CONSTANTINO FIDEM und CONSTANT(I) FIDES - Goldene Treueringe für
Constantinus I. und seinen Vater Constantius Chlorus - CORE Reader
https://core.ac.uk/reader/227000221
22 november 2020 A gold ring with
band shank engraved CONSTANTINO CAVDIVM NOSTRI; rectangular raised
bezel engraved FIDEM. 15.24 g, 23.83 mm overall, 21.26 mm internal
diameter. From a old collection; formed 1970-1980. Very fine
condition. A large wearable size. Very rare.
22 november 2020 TimeLine Auctions
June 2, 2020 Harwich, United Kingdom
https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/roman-gold-military-fidem-constantino-ring-122-c-5b54f5eb98#
Lot 122: Roman Gold Military
'FIDEM CONSTANTINO' Ring [See above]
14-16
juni 2000 CONSTANTINO FIDEM Treueringe
[...]
Zunächst ist noch die ungewöhnliche Fundüberlieferung
unserer Ringe anzusprechen: Normalerweise sind uns Gegenstände
aus Edelmetall, die bekanntlich auch bei Beschädigung nicht weg
geworfen werden, entweder durch ihre Mitgabe ins Grab oder infolge
Zugehörigkeit zu einem meistens weitere Wertobjekte
enthaltenden, nicht mehr wieder geborgenen Versteckort im Boden
überliefert. Zwar sind viele der CONSTANTINO FIDEM-Ringe vor
1900 und ohne Beachtung der Fundumstände entdeckt worden.
Dennoch ist es auffällig, daß für keinen Ring die
Kategorie Grab- bzw. Versteckfund bezeugt wird, was doch kaum
unbeachtet oder unerwähnt geblieben wäre. Ein Ring (Liste
1, Nr. 2) wurde aus der Mosel geborgen, drei weitere (Nrn. 5, 6 und
10) bei Feldarbeiten entdeckt, ein fünfter (Nr. 8) "ganz
allein und nur etwa 1/2 Fuß in der Erde"; auch der
CONSTANT(I) FIDES-Ring aus der Nähe von Venta Icenorum (Abb. 6)
"was ploughed up in a field". Sollte tatsächlich
beiden Treueringen weder die eine noch die andere der für
Edelmetallobjekte üblichen Überlieferungsformen eine Rolle
gespielt haben, so darf man vielleicht vermuten, es seien die Ringe
einst in ungewöhnlich großer Zahl ausgegeben und getragen
worden, wovon dann eben relativ wenige - als echte Verlustfunde, die
natürlich zu keinen Zeiten ganz ausblieben - verloren gegangen
und nicht wieder auf gefünden worden wären. Als Träger
der Treueringe wird man sich ausschließlich Angehörige
des männlichen Geschlechts, am ehesten Offiziere und Beamte,
vorstellen müssen, die diese Ringe als Auszeichnungen oder
"Treueprämien für Loyalität" erhielten;
unter den militärischen Trägern dürften nicht wenige
germanischer Herkunft gewesen sein. Vermutlich nicht zufällig
sind die im Westen gefundenen CONSTANTINO FIDEM-Ringe einerseits bei
der Kaiserresidenz Trier und in ihrem weiteren Umland, vom Oberlauf
der Mosel bis nach Bingen am Rhein (4x; Liste 1, Nrn. 2, 3, 7 und
8), andererseits entlang der Reichsgrenze am Niederrhein (3x; Liste
1, Nrn. 4-6) zum Vorschein gekommen, fehlen hingegen bislang im
Innern Galliens, bis auf den einen Beleg aus Amiens (Liste 1, Nr.
I). Zwar könnte man sich im Prinzip auch begeisterte Anhänger
und Parteigänger des jungen Konstantin vorstellen, die sich aus
eigenem Antrieb aus jeweils zwei "alten" Aurei Treueringe
hätten anfertigen lassen, doch sprechen, wie schon erwähnt,
gewichtigere Argumente gegen eine "private" und für
eine offizielle, zentral gelenkte Herstellung der Ringe. Dies wird
man vermutlich auch für die Treueringe des Constantius Chlorus
annehmen dürfen, zumal hier nicht der Ring bzw. Träger dem
mit Namen Genannten Treue gelobt und ihm vertraut, sondern die Fides
des Kaisers, aber wohl auch zum Kaiser an-und ausgesprochen wird auf
einem Gegenstand, den der Träger von dem erhalten hat, dem er
Treue gelobt und vertraut. Auf den FIDES Ringen gewährt
anscheinend Constanius Chlorus selbst dem Träger Treue bzw.
Schutz und zählt seinerseits auf dessen Treue. Die geniale
Formel des Sohnes, die mit der Wendung CONSTANTINO FIDEM den Träger
des Ringes zum Sprechenden macht, der in Treue zu Konstantin steht
und ihm zugleich vertraut, ist eine Steigerung der Idee, Fides mit
einem (personengebundenen) Fingerring zu verbinden. Sie schafft eine
engere, gleichsam mit Händen zugreifende Beziehung zwischen der
auf dem Ring genannten Person und dessen Träger. Mit der
Platzierung des Treuegelöbnisses auf einem Ring wird der
Entschluß, Konstantin die Treue zu halten und ihm zu
vertrauen, unmittelbar persönlich und ist auf den Träger
und Besitzer bezogen. Die dahinter stehende Propaganda wird
personalisiert, der Treue schwur nicht dem Staat oder einer
Institution, sondern ad personam, der Person geleistet. Nach einer
späten Nachricht des Konstantinos Porphyrogenetos,
byzantinischer Kaiser von 945 bis 959, soll Konstantin d. Gr.
Bewohnern des (thrakischen oder taurischen?) Chersones unter anderem
goldene Fingerringe, auf denen sein Bildnis wiedergegeben war,
geschenkt haben, damit er Berichte und Bitten, die sie an ihn
richteten, am Siegel erkennen könne.
Translation
of articles with respect to archaeological finds in the
Rhine-Maas-Moselle area
April
9, 1640 HORNE-HEEL. In a manuscript from the library of the
University of Liège, bearing the number 188 and written
around the middle of the 17th century by Canon Henri van den Berch,
King of Arms of the Liège region, there is a curious note on
antiquities that existed in Hornes and Heel, and which today are
mostly in the collection of Mr. Guillon. [...]
1
January 1698 Thesavrvs antiqvitatvm Romanarvm, in quo continentur,
lectissimi quique scriptores, qui superiori aut nostro seculo
Romanae reipublicae rationem,
Zie
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken1/gview?query=stablesianorum&coll=boeken1&identifier=g0NkAAAAcAAJ
1
Januari 1715 The treasures of Roman coins
633.
At Velp, near Arenscheim, not far from Arnhem (Gelderland), around
1715, treasure composed of a gold chain and bracelets, gold
medallions, decorated with circles, and coins, also in gold, struck
under the sons of Constantine, under Honorius, Galla Placidia,
Gratian, Valentinian, Valens, Arcadius, John and others emperors and
empresses of that time.
(Revue
num. 1883, p. 81 et seq.).
January
9, 1753 By Douay these days about 4000 pieces of old Copper Coins,
including several from Aur. Valerianus, Gallius Claudius Gothicus,
C. Aur. Diocletian and Maximilian, also some of Constantine the
Great, found under the Earth.
August
3, 1775. Severe thunderstorms have been reported from several
locations recently, including Schyndel in the Meyery van
's-Hertogenbosch, in the Peelland district, on July 30. Yesterday
afternoon, around 4 p.m., we experienced a most terrible
thunderstorm of thunder and lightning, accompanied by heavy wind and
hail. The hail was so considerable that in several places it was 3
feet high. Underneath, stones were found the size of chicken and
pigeon eggs, and hail is still being found in several places this
afternoon. It caused considerable damage to standing rye, oats,
buckwheat, barley, and hops, as well as to young trees and plants,
which were largely destroyed and crushed. The glass and several
houses, which faced the windward side, were also completely
shattered. It was found that as soon as the hailstorm had ended, a
vapor arose from the ground, giving off a sulfurous odor. This sad
event caused general despondency among the inhabitants, as many lost
their entire harvest and were deprived of garden produce.
1
January 1787 C. IANVARIVS] The name C. IANVARIVS can be found in
Rome
on
an old monument in the Vinea Peretti. In Muratorius, p. MCCLXXVIII.
9. C. N. IANVARIVS: On a stone, excavated in the village of Rummel
in the Meijerije of 's-Hertogenbosch, C. IANVARIVS. See Gisb.
Cuperus in Confecr. Homer, p. 271, in Monument. Antiq., p. 218.
[Translation and brief explanation ... p. 69]
1
January 1789 The Lives of Illustrious Greeks and Romans, Compared by
PLUTARCH
THE
LIFE OF ALEXANDER [in Caesar]
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken/view?identifier=dpo%3A9388%3Ampeg21%3A0011&query=plutarchus+theophilus+alexander&coll=boeken
p.
83 of 135 ff. Having the last time to convey this to PARMENIO, he
placed the helmet on his head; as if he had already donned his other
weapons in the Tent, consisting (l/┼) of a Sicilian-made tunic
surrounded by a girdle, and over this a doubled linen armorial, from
the spoils taken at the Battle of Issus. His helmet was of iron,
made by THEOPHILUS (m/§), who had wrought it so beautifully
that it glittered as if it were pure silver. To this helmet was
attached a gorget, also of iron, but set here and there with gems.
His sword was of unparalleled temper and exceptionally light. It had
been given to him by the King of the Cities (n/**). He wore this
because he was accustomed to using a sword in battle. The sling from
which this sword hung was more magnificently crafted than his other
armor, being the work of Helicon the Elder and a tribute to the
Rhodian Citizenship, which Alexander had received as a gift.
Yesterday, too, he was accustomed to using it in battles.
You
have written your words, you have never heard of them, but they have
not heard anything about Phalanx, and you have heard them, you have
heard them, you have heard them, you have heard them, and you know
them. Dan zo dra was men niet gereed om aan het werk te gaan, of dit
Paard wierd gehaald; het welk zo ras niet door hem was beklommen, of
hy gaf het teken tot den aanval.
(┼)
But it's yesterday that we're here to take care of it, but we don't
know what to do with it, we'll see ALEXANDER at the end of the day,
we'll do it again and describe, but also carefully record its
authors. This remarkable battle, in fact, brought about the downfall
of the Persian monarchy. Furthermore, DACIER has very well observed:
>> that PLUTARCH also followed the example of HOMER here.
(§)
We have heard no mention of this artist elsewhere, nor of HELICON,
who is mentioned next.
(**)
Inhabitants of Citium, a city on the island of Cyprus.
[p.
163 ff.] How, he said, would anyone personally take the trouble to
prepare his horse, or to polish his lance, or helmet, if he is loath
to lay hands on his own beloved body? — "Don't you know,"
he said, "that the main thing for victory is for you not to do
the same as those who are conquered by you?" Furthermore, for
this reason, he was even more enthused in all sorts of activities,
from warfare to hunting, in which he feared no fatigue or danger. It
was from this source that a certain Spartan envoy, who was present
when he slew a great lion, exclaimed to him: "Truly, Alexander,
you fought very bravely with that lion for the kingdom!" Of
this hunting, Craterus has a A dedication made in the Temple at
Delphi, consisting of copper images of the Lion, the Dogs, the King
fighting the Lion, and himself rushing to the rescue.
Part
of it was made by Lysippus (k), another part by Leochares.
(k)
This Gift of Craterus, dedicated in the Temple at Delphi, is
mentioned among the works of Lysippus by Pliny, H.N. XXXIV, 7. Pliny
himself speaks of Leochares, L. XXXIV, 8 and XXXVI, 5.
See
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken/view?objectsearch=lysippus&coll=boeken&identifier=dpo%3A9388%3Ampeg21%3A0005&query=plutarchus+theophilus+alexander&pres%5Bmaxperpage%5D=36&pres%5Bpage%5D=1&pres%5Bnobuffer%5D=bottom
January
1, 1809 Plutarch's Lives, tr. by J. and W. Langhorne
As
soon as he had returned Parmenio this answer, he put on his helmet;
for in other points he had come ready-armed out of his tent. He had
a short coat of the Sicilian fashion girt close about him, and over
that a breast-plate of linen strongly quilted, which was found among
the spoils at the battle of Issus. His helmet, the workmanship of
Theophilus, was of iron, but so well polished that it shine like the
brightest silver. To this was fitted a gorget of the same metal, set
with precious stones. His sword, the weapon which he generally used
in battle, was a present from the king of the Citeans, and could not
be excelled for lightness or for temper. But the belt, which he wore
in all his engagements, was more superb than the rest of his armor.
It was given him by the Rhodians, as a mark of their respect, and
old Helicon 99 had exerted all his art upon it. In drawing up his
army and giving orders, as well as in exercising and reviewing it,
he spared Bucephalus on account of his age, and rode another horse;
but he constantly charged upon him; and he had no sooner mounted
him, than the signal was always given.
99
In this description of Alexander's armor, and the mention of the
workmen by whom it had been made, as well as in the principle of his
preceding reply to Parmenio, and the eagle introduced below, Dacier
traces the imitator of Homer.
Helicon
and his father Acesus were eminent in the art of embroidery, as we
learn from Athenaeus, xi. 9., who preserves an inscription to that
purport copies from the temple of Apollo at Delphi.
After
this, he constantly took the exercise of war or hunting, and exposed
himself to danger and fatigue with less precaution than ever: so
that a Lacedaemonian embassador, who attended him one day when he
killed a fierce lion, said: "Alexander, you have disputed the
prize of royalty gloriously with the lion." Craterus got this
hunting-piece represented in bronze, and consecrated it in the
temple at Delphi. There were the lion, the dogs, the king fighting
with the lion, and Craterus advancing to the king's assistance. Some
of these statues were the workmanship of Lysippus, and others of
Leochares.
October
1, 1802 [195] (a) It was also in the vicinity of Cuijk, on the road
from Boxmeer to Grave, on the so-called Bord In October 1802, in
Boord, a highly important medal was unearthed, worth over forty-nine
guilders in gold alone. An old sword was also found with it, which,
however, was so badly rusted that it shattered upon contact. An urn
of beautiful, round clay was shattered by the workers; it seemed to
have contained nothing but ashes.
The
medal itself was the size of a regular dime, and on the right side,
it depicted the head of Emperor Antonius Pius, which perfectly
resembled the image of that Caesar in the SCHIJNVOET coin cabinet.
The edge inscription was for a portion
easy to read. The reverse side showed an image, probably of victory,
but indistinct, as did the inscription on the edge. A gold edge was
soldered around the medal, so [196] that it was the size of a
guilder coin. The right side was covered in three circles around the
medal with red, white, and green glass pebbles; the bases and boxes
in which they were set were colored, so that the pebbles also showed
their color. The reverse side was covered with figures using a thick
gold thread, beautifully worked like a cable rope. Around the edge
were eighteen eyelets, through which a piece of loose gold thread
ran. On the reverse side, there seemed to have been something with
which the medal could be fastened, but this could not be clearly
seen. [...]
January
1, 1807 "Ringkraag"
According
to a description from 1840, a kind of ridge collar was found in
Meijel in 1807:
I
have heard that a farmer in Deurne-Liessel was said to possess a
Roman sword and a gold shield, which were supposedly dug up in the
Peel. I highly doubt this, as I had never heard anything about it.
Upon investigation, I also discovered that no one knows anything
about it; this was probably confused with what happened in the
neighboring municipality of Meyel. In 1807, a gold shield was found
there. A few years ago, while in Meyel, I went to the house of the
then mayor, Goossens, to see this curiosity. He showed me a shield
that had been found in the Peel in 1807, about five feet below the
surface of the ground in the Peel during a peat excavation. It was
made of gold, or at least heavily gilded, embossed with hydroglyphs
and other figures of lions, tigers, etc., and had the shape of a
crescent moon, closely resembling a gorget.
This
description indicates a phalera and bears a striking resemblance to
the phalara from Starobêlsk, as can be seen in figure 20 of
Iranians and Greeks in South Russia.
May
9, 1817. In an old booklet, published in Venlo in 1821 by the widow
H. Bontamps,
under
the title "Short geographical sketch of the province of Limburg
for children," page 35-36, the following footnote:
"When,
on May 9, 1817, a resident of this city (Venlo), had the ground dug
up behind his house (No. 693 in Vleeschstraat) for the construction
of a new factory building, they came across a stone slab, surrounded
by clay, lying on a layer of pebbles, at a depth of 7 to 8 feet. Its
length was 6 and a half, its width 4 feet. The oval-shaped, carved
slab was 6 feet long and 3 and a half wide, and fitted with a very
fitting lid. This lid is a table carved from hard limestone, 4
inches thick, very smoothly ground inside and on the edge. The tuff
stone from which the sarcophagus (stone coffin) is made is not found
anywhere in the area; but the blue limestone is found the vicinity
of Namur, brought here by barge. The sarcophagus stood facing
east-west. Close to the east side stood another tin urn, which, at
its widest point, was 11 inches high and 15 inches in diameter. Its
shape is very simple, the opening 6 inches wide, and is closed by a
lid. Inside the sarcophagus were found some pieces of white thin
glass, probably from a tear glass, some earth, and the remains of
burnt bones, among which fragments of skulls and legs were clearly
visible. Also in the urn was something resembling burnt bones, but
in much smaller fragments. The sarcophagus was uninscribed; however,
runic writing can be seen around the urn, which is not deeply and
irregularly impressed into the tin, and for this reason, as well as
because of the dents in the urn, is illegible. Near the burial site,
another flint of 12 to 15 inches in length and 6 inches in
thickness."
The
question is whether anything more is known in Venlo about that find
and where the objects are currently located.
June
4, 1817 - En creusant, entre les anciens et les nouveaux remparts de
Tongres, for a visit to the countryside in Saint-Trond, on a large
quantity of antique romaines, the tombs, the urns, the
lacrymatoires, the arms, the cendres de morts, the poignards, the
parts of the corne de cerf, and the rest ayant la pointe faite de
cette corne; the pieux pénates don't have a bronze, a
beautiful design, a beautiful font and perfect preservation; des
monnaies de tous genres; the large amphorae, including inscriptions,
don't leave a trace on time and the most recent communication in the
environment; In the end, it is a matter of time and hope that the
success of the job is impossible. These objects were born in 2000,
prouvent l'antiquité de la ville de Tongres, bâtie,
croit-on, 800 ans avant J.-C. et 100 ans avant la fondation de Rome,
par Tongres, qui en fut le premier roi, Jules-César, ayant
conquis ce royaume, dont l'existence a duré près de
huit siècles, l'unit in Brabant. Ont pretend que
Salvius-Braban (qui, dit-on, le Brabant doit son nom) and fut
created the prime minister governor.
October
25, 1817 To our deep sorrow, he died this morning, about seven
hours, at the ripe old age of almost eighty years, our beloved
Grandmother, Widow HUB, was suddenly shaken. BONTAMPS, born SIB.
CRUSTS. All who knew the quiet domestic virtues and the good and
noble character of the deceased will mourn her loss with us, of
which we are assured, even without letters of condolence.
Venlo
On behalf of my Sisters and Brother,
October
19, 1817. C. H. L. BONTAMPS.
October
17, 1825 A resident of Valognes (Manches), made an important
discovery of antiquities. While digging a well in his garden, he
found a gravestone, which could only be removed with great
difficulty. At the opening, a skeleton was found, which collapsed. A
silver coin found in the skeleton's mouth suggests it is the corpse
of a Roman general, a comrade-in-arms of Caesar at the time of his
victory over the Gauls. On one side of the coin is the inscription
"Caes. Imp.," and on the other, "Vic. Gal." At
the skeleton's feet was found a silver box, 1 foot long and 8 inches
wide, containing 150 medals: 40 of bronze, the size of our
two-stuiver coins, 95 of silver, the size of our two-franc coins,
and 15 of gold, the size of our five-franc coins. These medals are
decorated with the images of Caesar, Pompey, Mitridates, Cleopatra,
Crassus, Spartacus, Sylla, Anibal, Asdrubal, Scipio Africanus,
Philippus of Macedon, Pharnacus, Nicomede, Perpenna, and Sertorius.
Fifty
years ago, Roman monuments were discovered in these regions, and it
is believed that the ancient Crociatonum, capital of the Unelli
people, with whom Caesar had a camp, was located there.
October
17, 1825: A resident of Valognes (Manches)
made
an important discovery of antiquities. While digging a well in his
garden, he found a tombstone, which could only be removed with great
difficulty. At the opening, a skeleton was found, which collapsed. A
silver coin found in the skeleton's mouth suggests it is the corpse
of a Roman general, a comrade-in-arms of Caesar at the time of his
victory over the Gauls. On one side of the coin is the inscription
"Caes. Imp.," and on the other, "Vic. Gal." At
the skeleton's feet was found a silver box, 1 foot long and 8 inches
wide, containing 150 medals: 40 of bronze, the size of our
two-stuiver coins, 95 of silver, the size of our two-franc coins,
and 15 of gold, the size of our five-franc coins. These medals are
decorated with the images of Caesar, Pompey, Mitridates, Cleopatra,
Crassus, Spartacus, Sijlla, Anibal, Asdrubal, Scipio Africanus,
Philippus of Macedon, Pharnacus, Nicomede, Perpenna, and Sertorius.
Fifty
years ago, Roman monuments were discovered in these regions, and it
is believed that the ancient Crociatonum, capital of the Unelli
people, where Caesar had a camp, was located there.
October
12, 1827: Excavation of a Roman building near Voorburg. It is well
known that our neighbors have for many years been dedicated to
uncovering the remains of antiquity, both of Roman and other
origins, which are so important to early history. These remains,
initially obscured by the wildness and ignorance of the Middle Ages,
were later destroyed by the subsequent population growth, both for
the construction of later cities and for the development of the
country. In Germany, many excavations are carried out at the expense
of various governments: the Austrian government in Salzburg, the
Prussian near Bonn, the Neuwied government near the town of the same
name; and various societies: the Thuringian-Saxon Association, the
Saxon Association, the Society for Silesian Early Christianity, and
the Historical Association of Westphalia, all work towards the same
goal. In France, the Prefects are charged with collecting reports on
antiquities, each in his own department, and the state or city
governments support the excavations at the baths of Emperor Julian
in Paris, at the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, etc. In
England, it is often the wealthy landowners who carry out
archaeological research on their own soil, in which interest has
been drawn for a century by the Society of Antiquaries and the
Society of Dilettanti.
The
tightly packed population of our country, its early prosperity, and
partly also the nature of the soil have caused almost all traces of
former inhabitants to disappear here, especially in South and North
Holland.
Only
the farmstead of Arentsburg, near Voorburg, seemed to contain any
Roman remains that had not yet been entirely destroyed. Its elevated
position compared to neighboring lands, and the discovery of Roman
antiquities there (including, especially in 1771, that of a bronze
hand of a colossal statue, described with great interest by Mr. van
Wijn, had attracted general attention), which continued to be
discovered, all this demonstrated that an excavation here would not
be without results. His Majesty has therefore graciously agreed to
purchase this farmstead, which had been in stable hands for many
years and was publicly auctioned in 1826, for the state, with the
intention of having its soil investigated and to entrust the
undersigned with the management of this investigation.
The
excavations have been carried out this current year, from June until
now, mostly with a considerable number of workers; and the results
are already very interesting and instructive, both for the country's
history and for archaeology in general. Foundations of an extensive
Roman building have been discovered, most of which have been traced
with remarkable clarity. While a few had already been excavated and
are only recognizable by faint markings on the ground, other areas
still reveal the existing wall, at a height of more or less one
Dutch yard.
It
is known that the land of Arentsburg and its immediate surroundings
had always retained the name "den Burg" (formerly the land
"ten Hoogen Burg"), and that a municipal footpath
stretched across this land from Voorburg to Rijswijk, and thus east
and west. The main excavated portion of the building lies directly
along this former footpath or Burgpad, namely, on the north side the
lower foundations, mostly lying on white sand, and, on the south
side, the higher ones, which largely rest on clay soil, filled with
charcoal, ash, whole or finely crushed tiles and pottery, and even
oyster and mussel shells and animal bones.
It
is on this south side that the aforementioned remains of actual
walls are found, in a few rooms, some distance apart, which, being
considerably deeper than the others, may have been cellars. It is
noteworthy that both of these cellars are equipped with a well: the
easternmost has it within its walls, and this well is built square;
at the other cellar, the well, which is oval and rests on piles, is
only a few steps away. This most significant section of the
excavation covers approximately 80 yards north and south, and 60
yards east and west.
Furthermore,
during partial ground investigations, a good 55 yards further north,
another extensive section of floor was found, and a good 70 yards
further on, or more than 125 yards from the aforementioned, the
foundation of a long wall running east and west, covering the entire
width of Arentsburg (that is, approximately 80 yards). So far, it
appears that this wall served as a perimeter wall for all of the
aforementioned, if it does not belong to another building. This is
the first thing that walkers coming from The Hague will see. A
little further south (about 20 yards), at the eastern end of the
supposed ring wall, a smaller building must have stood, perhaps
connected to it. Many fragments of columns in white chalky stone
have been found, but the foundations of which, at least as far as
excavation has gone, have been almost completely destroyed.
The
building materials, in general, are natural, mostly German stone, as
well as the familiar Roman bricks and tiles, as well as slate for
the roofs. Among the tiles and other baked bricks, many bear the
marks of the XXX, some those of the 16th and 10th Legions; also many
bear the inscription EX. GER. INF. (Army of Lower Germany), etc.
A
large number of fragments found attest to the fact that the lime
walls were colored and some decorated with well-drawn floral
patterns.
The
remains of floors are made of lime with small, broken tiles. Mosaic
floors, mentioned in older reports, have not yet been found here.
The
walls, in the section now excavated, are mostly demolished down to
their foundations. No large objects of art or household goods have
been found either. Nevertheless, numerous pieces of fine Roman
pottery, known as terra sigillata, or, in others, terra samia, have
been unearthed, of which some thirty or forty pieces depicting
figures,
A
sufficiently complete set has been compiled, and many others are so
complete that the majority of the drawing can be seen. These all
form a beautiful and instructive series of works of art from the
Roman imperial period, in a type of vessel of which undamaged pieces
are almost never found.
Another
series of 130 to 140 of these is marked with the names of the
potters.
The
fragments of other pottery are also so numerous that one estimates
well over 2,000 bases. Among these are a number of fragments of
large oil and wine jars, which end in a point at the bottom,
probably the amphorae, or more often the dolia of the Romans, which
are also provided with either an imprinted manufacturer's mark or
the incised mark of their weight. A great deal of broken glass also
appears, which, judging by the handles, etc., must have belonged to
medium-sized bottles.
The
household and ornamental objects are made of bronze, among which a
small reclining hunting dog stands out, as well as some clothes
buckles, three finger rings, some writing styli, copper and iron
keys; as well as an iron tripod to which a similar brazier, a small
bronze cup, and a whetstone appear to belong; all four of these
objects were found in the same well, in one of the cellars. However,
no weapons have yet been discovered.
Of
inscriptions, only fragments remain, found under the fragments of
columns near the supposed ring wall. Another piece of stone bears
two medieval letters most similar to Gothic ones. While the Nestor
of Dutch scholars mentioned medals by Constantine, and even by
Valentinian, as found at Arentsburg, the current deliberate
excavation has not yet uncovered any later than those of Maximinus
Pius. Several silver coins of this type were found together with
those of his immediate predecessors Septimius Severus, Caracalla,
Alexander Severus, and Julia Mamaea, all in the cellar with the
well. Yet another location yielded a similar find; but generally
speaking, the majority of them are in bronze of the first and second
magnitude, from the first emperors, and have been found scattered.
However, a few silver coins from much later periods have also come
to light: one from John I, Count of Holland, the other from
Maximilian and Philip of Austria, and thus from the 13th and 15th
centuries. As far as the discovered building can be judged now, it
most closely resembles the Roman villas, or country estates, in
England, several of which have been excavated and published on
plates, but are unknown to many antiquarians on the Continent.
Little resemblance to the Roman camp at Neuwied, recently
republished by Messrs. Dorow and Hundeshagen, has been observed,
except perhaps the two middle, still incompletely known, buildings
of that camp would qualify. It is certain, at least, that the Roman
fortress at the mouth of the Rhine, the house at Britten, now
swallowed by the sea, did not resemble the institution at Voorburg
in any way, and was much smaller than it. Indeed, the newly
discovered, and even the entire, land of Arentsburg constitutes only
a portion of the Roman building, since its foundations undoubtedly
continue beneath the adjacent properties. It is unfortunate,
however, that a ditch dug in 1771 runs along the footpath, thus
cutting straight through Arentsburg and the old building, destroying
part of the foundations. This has broken the connection between the
higher and lower sections, which is now very difficult to restore in
a drawing, but perhaps, if the excavation continues, it will become
clearer.
His
Majesty has graciously granted permission for the description and
publication with plates of this important archaeological discovery
at the country's expense. C. J. C. REUVENS.
An
attempt will be made to keep the excavation exposed and visible for
a few more days, as long as the season permits. Enthusiasts of
antiquities who wish to use them in the meantime can, until further
notice, register for this purpose, stating their name and quality,
at the homestead itself every day from 12 noon to 1½ hours.
January
1, 1828 NEERHAREN. On a trip to Neerharen in 1828, during
construction
du
canal de Maestricht at Bois-le-Duc a belle cruche romaine en argent.
The vase, which is the current point, with three meters under the
sol, with a height of 0.322 and the cisterns and the cercles on the
col and on the pied. The fond du vase également ciselé
portait une inscription. Ce bel objet fait, depuis 1831, partie du
musée de Leyde (1).
(1)
C. Leemans, Roman antiquities in Maastricht, p. 69.
June
18, 1830 - Deux journaliers de Baarloo, Limbourg, occupies à
retirer de la terre
glaise,
ont trouvé, en creusant, une
Earthenware
vase filled with antique gold and silver medals, worth 300 florins;
they are all the size of a 25-cent coin.
June
19/22, 1830 To the Editors of the Political Scout.
Baerlo,
June 19, 1830.
Gentlemen,
In
yesterday's issue, you reported on a find made here a few days ago
while digging in the clay. — It is true, gentlemen, that an
urn was found filled with various coins, both gold and silver, but
of greater value than the 300 florins mentioned in your newspaper.
I
know that the owner, Mathieu Holtakkers, sold some of it in the
first few days to a single person for 1600 florins, and since then
to others for 3000 florins. — It seems the urn never runs dry,
since they still sell them every day, and you can even pay 4 francs
for a silver coin and 20 francs for a gold one the size of a
Napoleon.
Most
of the coins in this collection are different from one another and
date from the time of Nero Vespasian, Trajan, Faustina Augusta, Diva
Augusta, Antonina, and other Roman emperors. A subscriber.
September
1, 1830, Baerlo. In September 1830, a certain Holtakkers, known as
den Bisschop, found in the municipality of Baerlo, opposite the
church, on the Blerick side (ancient Blariacum), an urn containing
several hundred Roman coins from various consulships, in gold and
silver. This collection was dispersed in the surrounding area, but
the greater part of it was purchased by Mr. Louis Wolters, a banker
in Venlo.
1
January 1833 Bl. 17. Te Leende ontdekte een smid, in 1833, bij
gelegenheid
van
veengraven, op eene diepte van nagenoeg twaalf Rhijnlandsche voeten,
drie Romeinsche penningen van geel koper, van de eerste grootte,
voortreffelijk behouden, prijkende met de borstbeelden en nomen van
AUGUSTUS CLAUDIUS en NERO.
Bl.
17. Magusamus of Macusanus. De Dommel stroomt hier voorbij.
1
January 1834 45. Cornalijn. MERCURIUS, of een GENIUS, die in den
linkerarm
een
horen des overvloeds draagt.
From
Cuyk aan de Maas; found in 1834; collection as no. 6. [=J.J. Nahuis
in Utrecht]
[more
stones from the collection of Guyot in Nijmegen]
January
1, 1835 MONTFORT. Weapons made of stone and bronze have been found
several times in this village. One example of these objects is in
the museum in Bois-le-Duc. It is a quarter-axe, found in 1835 in a
peat bog, 8 to 10 feet below the surface. (1) Mr. Guillon, notary in
Roermond, gave four stone axes or wedges to the Royal Museum of
Brussels, three of which were flint and one of basalt, found in 1836
and 1837 in the peat bogs of the municipality of Montfort. (2)
1
January 1835 Vigilum romanorum latercula duo coelimontana magnam
partem
militiae
romanae explicantia editit atque illustravit
Zie
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken1/gview?query=muttienus&coll=boeken1&identifier=IvFQAAAAcAAJ
OLAUS
KELLERMAN, DANUS
269.*
C
NASENNIO ♥ C F ♥ MARCELLO SENIORI
PRAEF
COH I APAMENAR TRIS COH I ITALICAE CIVIVM ROMANORvM VOLVN
TARIORvM
PRAEF ALAE PHRYGVM PRAEF FABRVM AEDILI QVAESTORI DVVMVI
RO
QVINQVENALLI III CVRATORI OPERVM PVBLICORUM ET AQVARUM ♥
PERPETVO
PRAETORI ET PONTIFICI LAVRENTIVM LAVINATIVM P C OSTENTIVM
NASENNIA
HELPIS FECIT PATRONO INDVLGENTISSIMO ET C NASENNIO SA
TVRNINO
CONIVGI CARISSIMO SIBI LIBERIS LIBERTIS LIBERTATSVS POSTERIS
THAT
EORVM ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
269.
Tab. marm. Exscribes Romae in Mus. Vatican. V. 8 scalpro erasus.
Murat. 1053, 1 (In S. Agnetis, mis. Alex. Capponius (. - V. 5 habet:
LAVRENTVM.
269a.
D M
ACIPE
NUNC
FRATER
PLEASE
MI
MVNDVS M
ONORIS
VAL
EXARCO
VESSEL
IN
VEXIL EQ
STABLESIANORV
M
MILITAVIT
ANNOS
XXV
M V
D XVII VIXIT
YEAR
XXXXIII M VII
D
XIII VAL DONATVS
FRATRI
PIENTISSIMO
D S
P
269a.
Brixiae in coenobio S. Cosmi detecta mense Januario hujus anni.
Mecum communicavit Joh. Labus V. Cl. - Exarchorum exempla habes
Grut. 528.7; Wall. 789.7; 791. 8.
[het
betrayed by Valerius Donatus]
December
1, 1835 STUDY OF ANTIQUITY IN HOLLAND. - ARCHAEOLOGY.
UNIVERSITY
OF LEYDEN.
Obituary
for Mr. C. J. C. Reuvens [...]
December
3, 1835 STUDY OF ANTIQUITY IN HOLLAND. - ARCHAEOLOGY. UNIVERSITY OF
LEYDEN.
Obituary
for Mr. C. J. C. Reuvens [...]
December
15, 1836 — At Arles-sur-Aube, on the road from Arles to Trier,
a few steps
from
the town, on land belonging to a mound already noted as a burial
site for the inhabitants before the re-establishment of
Christianity, a discovery was recently made which confirms this
opinion: vases of different materials and shapes, amulets, Roman
medals, Charon's obol near the bones or hand bones of skeletons. A
complete skeleton was found in a pit.
January
1, 1837 Around the year 1837, in the hamlet of Pey, two feet
under
the ground, a fine flint weapon was found. (2)
February
4, 1837 Deurne 3 February
Row
1837.
To
the Editors of the Noord-Brabander. For eight days now, the
municipality of Deurne has provided proof that this region also
contains treasures, in terms of antiquity and history, that can
easily be placed on a par with other parts of our country. The
attention of our Dutch scholars is therefore drawn to the following:
through which they may be given the opportunity not only to expand
their collections of antiquities with important articles, but also
to render important contributions to history.
Begun
by the official corps of Regt. Huss. No. 6 and continued by private
individuals in the hope of finding treasures, they are here busy
excavating a camp or army, or even a cemetery; presumably
originating from a tribe driven out of the Ardennes by the Romans
and hidden here, behind the marshlands of the Peel. Several urns or
pots of various sizes, all filled with the ashes of cremated bodies
and small bones, have already been excavated; while in some,
fragments of metal and parts of weapons have been found. These pots
are covered by mounds of varying heights, which, like the pots
themselves, have certainly increased in size and height according to
the prestige and rank of the person buried there. The pot is almost
like a globe, tapering slightly oval towards the top and bottom,
while at the top it has a slanting rim, which will have
approximately the same circumference as the pot itself. The lid,
which is very small in proportion to the pot, fits well and appears
to be tightly covered. The largest pots will have a diameter of 3
palms, while the smallest will barely reach 1 to 1.5, and the mounds
will also vary by almost a yard, as some are nearly 2 feet high,
while others are more than five feet high. The pots are made of
potting clay (which is also found here) and demonstrate that they
had already advanced the art of turning to a considerable extent.
P.
[elsewhere:]
- The attention of our national scholars and antiquarians is called
to this discovery, which may be useful for adding to their
collections or for elucidating history.
February
4, 1837 [1] Several urns or pots of various sizes, all filled with
the ashes of burned bodies and small bones [2], while in some,
pieces of metal and fragments of weapons have been found.
In
January and February 1837, a captain with the 10th Company of the
Regt. Hussars No. 6, stationed in Deurne, had excavations carried
out in the heathland for so-called dolmens, small mounds or raised
hills from which various urns or earthenware pots had been dug. As
soon as the residents got wind of this, they also began to dig up
these mounds and retrieve earthenware pots, among which one
contained a crude and inconspicuous metal statuette, approximately
two palms long.
From
Chronicle of Heeze or Note of Remarkable Events within the
Municipality of Heeze and Surrounding Villages, by Hendrik G. van
Moorsel.
This
is again mentioned in the book "People in the Peel."
May
4, 1837, NETHERLANDS. In the latest issue of the Nederlandsch
Magazijn (Dutch Magazine), one finds an article about the recently
unearthed urns in North Brabant. It mainly concerns the recent
publication of reports in several of our daily newspapers regarding
the excavation of antiquities in the municipality of Deurne,
province of North Brabant. The editors of the aforementioned
magazine have now received some details regarding this excavation,
primarily as follows: A captain in the Hussar Regiment No. 6, having
previously discovered that some mounds on the Kempen heathland,
excavated, turned out to be burial mounds and contained urns or ash
jars, came up with the idea that some such mounds, which were
present on the heath near Deurne, his current cantonment, might have
served similar purposes and contained antiquities. With the
permission of the mayor, having had excavations carried out, five
urns or ash jars were found, which increased with subsequent
excavations and now number over fifty. It is unfortunate that the
farmers, hearing of this, also began digging on their own side,
hoping to find treasures; they smashed or damaged the urns they
unearthed. Their disappointment was great when they found nothing
but ash and a few apparently half-decayed human bones, such as
skulls, ribs, thighbones, etc. Not a single penny or coin was
unearthed; only a small piece of metal, which is believed to be the
mouthpiece of a wind instrument. The urns found are of various
sizes, all of virtually the same shape, some with lids. The
heathland in which the urns were found is about four acres in size,
the mounds are fairly regular, but the entire area appears to have
served as a burial ground, as urns have also been found outside the
mounds and at some distance from them. The urns are usually covered
with a layer of charcoal; after all, as soon as one finds this, one
is certain to be near an urn. Some are so high that the fibrous
roots of common heather can be found at the top of the ash; others
have been found deeper, but at uneven depths. The material from
which these pots or urns are composed is smooth, solid, and dark
brown; no vitrification is visible on them, nor any inscriptions or
inscriptions. If these were made in Deurne, where two potteries are
still found, then one must admit that this art has not progressed
there in 10 or 15 centuries; because these urns are more refined and
smoother in workmanship and treated with more care than is currently
the case. Excavations are still continuing in some locations, but,
as mentioned, nothing is found in the urns except ashes and the
aforementioned human bones.
June
3, 1837 HAARLEM, February 30
A
report has been received from the municipality of Deurne (North
Brabant) concerning the discovery, near that location, of an
encampment or burial ground; believed to originate from an ancient
tribe, driven from the Ardennes by the Romans, who perhaps sought
refuge there behind the marshlands of the Peel. The first discovery
of this army or cemetery was made by officers of the Hussar Regiment
No. 6, stationed in the area, and since then, excavations have
continued by private individuals hoping to find treasures. Among the
finds so far are several urns or pots of various sizes, all filled
with the ashes of cremated bodies and small bones; in some of these
pots, it is reported, pieces of metal and fragments of weapons have
been found. These pots are covered by mounds of varying height,
which, like the pots themselves, have likely increased in size and
height according to the appearance and rank of the person buried
there. The pots are made of clay and well-turned; the largest have a
diameter of 3 feet, the smallest just over 1 palm; some mounds are
almost 2 feet high, others more than 5 feet.
May
26, 1838 (§§) The Roman graves, even the simplest, e.g.
Those that did not contain stone coffins yielded not only pottery,
immediately identifiable as Roman by its workmanship, shape, color,
or decoration, but also objects or fragments of metal, glass, or
other composite material. On the contrary, no flint objects were
ever found there. I have noted the distinct character of Roman and
Germanic mound graves, among other places, in a report on the
Antiquity discovery in Deurne, in the Konst- en Letterbode of May
26, 1838.
On
April 23, 1839 [8], a number of urns were sent to us, which had
recently been discovered in Deurne, in North Brabant; and the number
was further increased by the proceeds of a deliberate excavation
ordered for this purpose, donated to the Museum by the mayor of that
town, Mr. van Riet. [probably NBD 2, vRD 4a, vRD 2, vRD 3, ND 3, GtD
15a, k 1942/6.1, k 1925/1.1, NBD 1, k 1942/6.2, vRD 7, k 1925/1.2,
ND 2, k 1942/6.3, ND 13, vRD 4b, vRD 5a, ND 4, GtD 13a, ND 8, k
1932/12.9, ND 10, ND 5, vRD 8, vRD 5b, ND 11, k 1942/6.4, GtD 14b]
[10]
The urns appear not to date from the Roman period, but from many
hundreds of years earlier.
June
7, 1839 BALLO, June 2.
More
than two hundred Roman silver coins, the size of a dime and about
the thickness of a twenty-five-cent coin, have been found in the
vicinity here. They usually bear on one side an image with the
inscription: Diva Faustina, Antoninus Pius, or the like, and on the
other side some symbolic representation with the inscription:
Aeternitas, or the like. Perhaps a careful investigation of these
coins, and the location where they were found, could significantly
influence our understanding of Roman residence in these regions. It
is therefore to be hoped that, since this remains unknown, the
competent authorities would initiate an investigation. This, one
imagines, should be easy, since the sellers of these coins are
sufficiently well known.
June
18, 1839 Roman Coins.
From
the outset, after I had gained some certainty that Roman coins had
been found in this area, I intended, after receiving further
information, to have an article about this published in the
Drentsche Courant.
However,
the articles about this...
The
subject, in the Groninger Couranten of the 7th and 14th, and in the
Drentsche Courant of the 11th of this month, compels me, more
hastily, yet also less precisely than I would like, to report the
following:
As
early as April 25th, 160 of these coins were sold to a silversmith
here, who informed me of them on May 4th or 5th, and which I
received from him on loan. Upon examination, I found that they all
date from the 2nd century AD, namely those of Antoninus, Faustina,
Aurelius, Verus, and Lucilla.
They
are exceptionally well preserved, so that the images are clearly
visible, and the inscriptions and inscriptions of most can be read
word for word. The obverses show the heads of the aforementioned
Emperors and Princesses; While the reverse sides depict goddesses or
other symbolic figures, applicable to contemporary events and mostly
different.
To
give an example of each, one of my medals has the following
inscription: on the obverse: ANTONINVS AVG PIVS. P. P. Tr. P. COS.
III; on the reverse: PROVIDENTIA. DEORVM. A second, obverse:
FAVSTINA. AVGUSTA; reverse: IVNO; a third, obverse: AVRELIVS CAESAR
AVGVSTVS}, reverse: COS; II; a fourth, obverse: VERVS. AVG.
ARMENIACUS; reverse: TR. P. III. IMP. H. COS. II; on the extergue:
ARMIN; and a fifth, obverse: LVCILLAE. AVG. ANTONINI AVG. F.;
reverse: CONCORDIA.
The
coins are all the size of our 10-cent coin, but are thicker and each
weighs almost three wedges.
Apparently,
they initially refused to disclose the name of the finder or the
location where they were all discovered, and it wasn't until the
evening of the 8th of this month that I learned of this. The
following day, accompanied by Mr. Homan, Mayor of Rolde, and the
owner of the land where the coins were found, located in the
aforementioned municipality near Ballo, I went there and had the
pleasure, in my presence, of having six similar pieces excavated.
Those
unearthed thus far (approximately 350 pieces, of which about 100 are
in my possession) were found in a spot measuring approximately 2.5
square Dutch yards. The land is high sandy soil on the west side,
covered with heath, but gradually slopes downwards, down to the
Anderse Diepje canal. The excavation site is hayfield, covered with
a poor type of grass, situated on a mixed soil of peat and sand
(mud), 40 to 42 Dutch inches thick, apparently containing more sand
than peat fragments, and resting on a stiff, grayish-yellow
sandbank.
The
excavated fragments were scattered, over a foot deep in this mud, to
which species I attribute their excellent preservation. At least,
one of the six I helped excavate had sunk onto or near the solid
sandbank, and this was so decomposed that I could barely make out a
woman's head (apparently Faustina's) on it. The nature of this
publication does not permit more detail at this time, while
mentioning the method of discovery of these and various antiquities
in this region, traditions, the discovery of old Groningen and
Spanish coins in the vicinity, etc., is less appropriate. -- I would
only like to point out that it was not the report in the Groninger
Courant of the 7th of this month that prompted several of my fellow
citizens to further investigation, as they had already been more
diligently engaged in this earlier than the author seems to assume.
Assen,
June 14, 1839. G. W. VAN DER FELTZ.
June
29, 1839 M. G. W. van der Feltz, de Assen, published in the
Drentsche Courant, the following notice on Roman medals, found
recently in the environs of Ballo: ROMAN MEDALS.
January
1, 1840 If you, gentlemen, who do not forget the noble pleasure of
hunting during your recreations,
are
inclined, or feel inspired, to bring to light such remnants of the
distant past, then nothing more is necessary than to observe whether
your eye finds any mounds on the flat heath, approximately one and a
half yards high, and two to two and a half or three feet in
diameter. If you come across such mounds, it is almost certain that
urns are hidden there. The cemetery in Deurne and the one in
Baarle-Nassau, at least, were discovered by hunters while hunting,
who also claim to have encountered similar tumuli in the past,
though without paying attention, in the North Brabant heathland.
March
14, 1840 MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES IN LEIJDEN.
[...]
From Mr. S. H. van der Noordaa, of Dordrecht, two tuff mortars with
pestles, unearthed in the vicinity of Deurne in North Brabant; these
are the only objects of this kind in the Museum's possession, and
which, as far as we know, have not yet been found elsewhere. The
proximity of the extensive burial grounds there, discovered in the
heathland a few years ago, gives a high degree of probability that
both those mortars and the urns found in such large numbers in that
area belong to the same tribe, thus providing a most important
contribution to the knowledge of the domestic life of the ancient
Germanic peoples, of whose household goods, except in northern
Europe, relatively little remains. [...]
June
18, 1839 Roman Coins.
From
the beginning, after I had obtained some certainty that Roman Coins
had been found in this area, I intended, after having received more
information about this, to have a report placed in the Drentsche
Courant.
However,
the pieces on this subject, in the Groninger Couranten of the 7th
and 14th and in the Drentsche Courant of the 11th of this month,
urge me, more hastily, but also less accurately than I would like,
to report the following:
As
early as April 25th, 160 of these coins were sold to a silversmith
here, who informed me of them on May 4th or 5th, and which I
received from him on loan. Upon examination I found that they were
all from the 2nd century of our era, namely of Antoninus, Faustina,
Aurelius, Verus and Lucilla.
They
have been excellently preserved, so that the images are clearly
visible, and the inscriptions and inscriptions of most of them can
be read letter by letter. The obverses show the heads of the
aforementioned Emperors and Princesses; while the reverse sides
yield Goddesses or other symbolic figures, applicable to events of
that time and mostly all different.
To
give an example of each, one of my medals has the inscription: on
the obverse ANTONINVS AVG PIVS. P. P. Tr. P. COS. III, on the
reverse: PROVIDENTIA. DEORVM. A 2nd, obverse: FAVSTINA. AVGUSTA;
reverse: IVNO; a 3rd, obverse: AVRELIVS CAESAR AVGVSTVS}, reverse:
COS; II; a 4th, obverse: VERVS. AVG. ARMENIACUS; reverse: TR. P.
III. IMP. H. COS. II on the extergue ARMIN; and a 5th, obverse:
LVCILLAE. AVG. ANTONINI AVG. F.; reverse: CONCORDIA.
The
coins are all the size of our 10 cents piece, but are thicker and
each weighs almost three wedges.
The
name of the finder, and the place where they were all discovered,
were not wanted to be known at first, it seemed, and it was not
until the evening of the 8th of this month that this came to my
attention, whereupon the next day, accompanied by Mr. Homan, Mayor
of Rolde, and the owner of the land where the coins were found,
located in the said municipality under Ballo, I went there, and had
the pleasure, in my presence, of having six such pieces dug up. The
excavated so far (about 350 pieces, of which about 100 are in my
possession) were found on a spot of about 2½ square Dutch
ells. The land is high sandy soil on the west side, covered with
heath, but gradually slopes down, to the Andersche diepje. The place
where the excavation takes place is hayfield, covered with a bad
kind of grass, which is located on a mixed soil of peat and sand
(derrie), with a thickness of 40 to 42 Dutch inches, as it seems to
me containing more sand than peat parts, and resting on a stiff,
grayish-yellow sandbank. The excavated pieces lay scattered, more
than a foot deep in this muck, to which species I attribute it, that
they have been preserved so beautifully, at least one of the 6,
which I myself also excavated, had sunk to or on the solid sandbank,
and this was so rotted, that I could hardly distinguish a woman's
head (it seemed to be Faustina's) on it.
The
nature of this sheet does not permit to be more extensive now, while
also the mention of the manner of discovery of these and various
antiquities in this region, of traditions, of the finding of old
Groningen and Spanish coins in the vicinity, etc., is now less
appropriate. -- I would only like to point out that it was not the
report in the Groninger Courant of the 7th of this month that was
the stimulus that prompted several of my fellow citizens to further
investigation, since they had already been more diligently engaged
in this earlier than the author seems to assume.
Assen,
June 14, 1839. G. W. VAN DER FELTZ.
May
12, 1840 [letter to the mayor of Deurne]
Mayor
of Deurne Liessel Helmond, May 12, 1840
The
Lord Governor of this province (probably requested to do so by the
board of the society for the promotion of sciences and arts in North
Brabant) has given me a large number of questions to answer
regarding antiquities in my District.
These
questions, as far as they concern the municipality of Deurne
Liessel, are the following:
according
to a reported report, a farmer named van de Mortel is said to
possess a Roman sword and a gold shield, which were dug up in the
Peel.
1°.
Is this really so? and if so, when and where on the spot were that
sword and shield found?
2°.
Would there be an opportunity to purchase it for the collection of
old and rare items of the provincial society of arts and water
boards?
3°.
If so, at what price?
4°.
If the owner cannot decide to sell, would he then be willing to hand
over the objects for assessment and signing against proof?
5°.
Is there an opportunity to purchase some of the recently found
mortuary urns or other curiosities excavated there?
6°.
What is the name of the place where the urns were excavated?
A
somewhat speedy answer to these questions would be pleasant to me
D
Distr.
October
15, 1909 Coin and Medal Auction.
In
the Wednesday morning auction of the coin and medal collection of
the late Mr. L. G. Brouwer, under the direction of the expert J.
Schülman, the following interesting items were sold, among
others:
[...]
In the afternoon session, the Greek and Roman coins were sold amidst
great interest, including: [...] 2251, a sou d'or of Constantine the
Great, f68; 2252, the same of the same with a hole, f27.
February
25, 1910 The director conveys a request from Steegh to rent the
floating factory three days a week at f15 per day and 12 cents for
each package. The Helenaveen Company would then have to operate
independently. This would require 20 people per day. This operation
would then take approximately four months. However, the director
fears that this approach would leave him with insufficient labor to
prepare the land.
Since
this cannot yet be stated with certainty, the decision on whether to
accept Steegh's proposal is left to the chairman and the director.
February
21, 1910, email from G. Venner dated November 19, 2010
On
February 21, 1910, Van Beurden offered archival documents from Well
Castle and other archival materials as a gift. On March 12, 1910,
the national archivist requested the Minister of the Interior to
ensure that Van Beurden receives the honorary medal intended for
those who have made a significant contribution to the national
museums and collections. That same day, Van Beurden had already
offered documents as gifts and for sale, including an incunabulum
from the Franciscan monastery in Venray. A silver medal of honor was
awarded to A.F. van Beurden by the minister on April 6, 1910. On
August 25, he again offered archival documents, but these were not
accepted because they did not belong in the Limburg depot.
April
9, 1910: Scientific collection.
Mr.
A.F. van Beurden, surveyor for the Land Registry here, donated an
important collection of archival materials to the National Archives
in Limburg. Mr. Van Beurden had previously demonstrated his interest
in the State's old archives on several occasions by donating
archival documents. In response to this, the honorary medal intended
by the Royal Decree of March 19 was awarded to Mr. Van Beurden. of
May 24, 1897, and June 22, 1898, in silver, awarded as a token of
appreciation for his interest in the State's scientific collections.
St. Ct.
April
27, 1910
The
Most Reverend Mr. A. F. van Beurden, Roermond.
Sir!
In
response to your postcard of the 20th of this month, I enclose a map
indicating the areas to be measured.
The
areas enclosed by red lines are being cultivated; we need the
correct size for the lease.
If
possible, we look forward to your visit sometime next week.
Sincerely,
A. Bos.
An
attachment.
April
30, 1910 The article "Limburg Myths and Legends" is very
noteworthy.
SCHATBERG,
KRONENBERG, DE MEIR AND SCHENKENBURG NEAR SEVENUM, which A.F. van
Beurden published in the magazine "Buiten" on April 30,
1910, several months before the discovery of the Peel helmet.
The
article is actually about several hamlets belonging to Sevenum.
Van
Beurden actually visits the village, as he writes: Further on the
horizon are forests, towers, factory chimneys, and a drilling tower,
which herald the slowly coming transformation of the Peel region
into inhabited and profitable territory.
That
drilling tower must have been deep borehole 11, America,
municipality of Horst, section F, plot 974. Period: April 5, 1909,
to January 19, 1910.
This
was followed by deep borehole 12, Beesel, from January 27 to
September 28, 1910; this was probably less visible from the
Schatberg in Sevenum. Van Beurden notes a story told by several
people about an officer, in Roman or Spanish service, who was said
to have died there, apparently in combat.
June
15, 1910 [March 18, 2006] The Curse of the Roman]
[...]
He has since recovered two newspaper articles that prove that the
helmet wasn't found by the peat cutter from Meijel at all, but by a
peat cutter from Helden, officially named Peter Janssen, but better
known as Loeves Pier. This had appeared in the newspaper because of
his diamond wedding anniversary, in the autumn of 1965. Loeves Pier
had told the reporter that on that afternoon in 1910, he had just
managed to prevent Gebbel Smolenaars from smashing the helmet. Piet
had slid into the peat pit and dug the thing out with both hands. He
had rinsed the helmet in a peat puddle and then placed it on his own
head. Pier had even gone to the bakery in Helenaveen to ask for a
cardboard box so Smolenaars could take the treasure home. Because
they had found much more that afternoon, 'like a pair of boots, a
pair of shoes or sandals, a leather horse blanket, and so on.'
A
silver spur and about 40 copper coins, Loeves Pier had told the
reporter. [...]
His
father had spoken with peat diggers who had witnessed the commotion
surrounding the discovery in 1910. A lot must have been lost during
the digging. His father once had a piece of the lance, which had
been cut to pieces by the peat diggers.
He
later gave the stones to the Helden local history society and they
are now somewhere in the attic.
[On
October 23, 1905, Peter Janssen from Helden married Maria Wilhelmina
Peters from Tegelen.]
June
17, 1910 Correspondence with the National Museum of Antiquities
Helenaveen,
June 17, 1910.
Dear
Mr. Holwerda! Last Wednesday, a peat worker found three coins in the
peat, followed by a beautiful helmet, which unfortunately had been
shattered, pieces of leather that must have formed a garment, two
sandals, both of which are still very intact, a hook, such as those
found among the Romans to fasten garments together, and 38 bronze or
silver coins.
Several
of these coins clearly depict the image of a reigning monarch; the
image is a robust head with a curved nose, with a wreath around the
hair. The inscription on several coins reads "Constantinus."
One also clearly shows "Victoriatus"; surely a very common
inscription on Roman coins?
The
find extends over several meters of peat; various items were found
at a depth of approximately one meter.
There
isn't much peat at this location. One meter of so-called gray peat,
then the objects, then approximately 30 c. M. black peat, and then
already the firm sandy soil.
I
hope the sketch below gives you some idea.
Approximately
at the border between sandy soil and peat, where the peat begins and
there is only 30 cm of peat, is the location of the discovery.
Are
the objects the remains of people who died in the peat bog?
May
I also mention that some pieces of wood were found; could these have
come from a spear?
You
would certainly be very pleased to provide information about this
discovery to many, including myself.
I
shared this information with you in the hope that you would find it
worthwhile to learn about it.
Superficially,
it seems that the objects are very old, from the time of Constantine
the Great?
The
found objects are carefully preserved; The finder is poor and would
greatly benefit from selling them for their actual value.
I
am happy to provide further information, if possible.
If
you consider it worthwhile to come and view the items in person, I
would be happy to open my home to you.
Sincerely,
Yours sincerely, Reverend B. de Jong, Reverend Preacher
June
18, 1910 A discovery. During peat digging in Helenaveen, three
coins, a pair of shoes, and a leather doublet, covered by a brown
fabric, were found. These items were found in the so-called black
peat, of which only a 30 cm layer is present at the location where
the objects were found, covered by 1 meter of peat.
June
18, 1910 The Dutch Heath Society visits Westphalia.
Hagen,
I/W., June 16.
As
in previous years, several Dutch people participated in the
excursion organized recently by the Association for Meadow Building,
Moor and Heathland Cultures in Westphalia. Among the 17 members of
the Dutch Heathland Association present were the board members, Mr.
Ruys de Beerenbrouck and Mr. A. Staring, the company's director, Mr.
J.B. van Lonkhuijzen, several large landowners, and Mr. A. Bos,
director of the Helenaveen Association. Numerous authorities from
Westphalia, including those in the agricultural field, with Dr.
Weddige, the association's chairperson, as leader and Breme, the
provincial meadow builder, as technical leader, jointly undertook
this two-day trip on Wednesday morning. That morning, over 70 people
gathered at the Maria-Veen station between Coesfeld and
Hervest-Dorsten to visit the cultural center of the "Maria
Veen" workers' colony. [...]
June
19, 1910 While excavating peat in Meijel (Limburg), a worker found a
gold helmet, gold footprints, a gold ball, and three quarter-sized
gold coins at a depth of 2.5 meters. The latter bears the date 512.
The find is still in good condition.
June
20, 1910, M. Wijmans, Roermond, June 20, 1910
To
the Hon. Ed Zeergel, Mr. Dr. Holwerda, Leiden
The
Hon. Ed Zeergel, Mr.
I
have often read your name in connection with excavations, so this
information may be of interest to you. Today, while traveling by
train between Weert and Budel (Limburg), a gentleman pointed out to
me that traces of gold helmets, coins, and gold coins (approximately
200) had been found in the peat. The gold value of the coins was
said to be approximately 8 guilders. He had seen some of this, as he
lived there. The helmet was silver on the inside. Many urns, etc.,
are also found at this location and he said it had been a coffin
cemetery. I have not been able to verify the accuracy of his
information as I lacked the time.
Perhaps
the Weert Municipal Council knows more about this.
Sincerely,
Yours sincerely, M. Wijmans, address Nijmegen
June
21, 1910 Remarkable find.
Meijel.
As reported in our issue, peat worker G. Smolenaers found several
gold objects, including three gold coins. We can now report that the
same worker found another 36 gold coins on Friday afternoon at the
same location, but slightly deeper in the peat. All bear dates
ranging between 500 and 600. It is suspected that the man found a
considerable amount of value. The objects have already attracted
numerous visitors.
June
25, 1910 A gilded silver helmet, 30 cm long and 20 cm high, was
found. wide
and
equally high. It consisted of a strong leather cap, to which, by
means of numerous silver pins ending in pearl heads, eight
beautifully crafted quadrilateral and triangular plates of gilded
silver were attached. They were held together by a comb of precious
metal, set with silver pearls, running from front to back. At the
front, above the face, the helmet was somewhat more oval. The
beautiful side pieces, which hang from the helmet along the
shoulders, were also present. They are 20 cm high, 12 cm wide at the
top, and with a graceful taper, tapering to 5 cm. Alongside them was
a gold lily decoration, 10 cm by 10 cm; a beautiful back plate,
semicircular, to which the buckles and a strap were attached, and on
which a long name is engraved in a very strange script. The script
is reminiscent of runic script, but shows more Greek forms. Attached
to a coarse shoe was a bronze-gilded spur, and attached to a piece
of cloth or leather was a well-formed, heavy cloak hook or fibula.
Also found among these relics from times long past were 41 coins.
July
1, 1910 Nothing came of the leasing of the floating factory to
Steegh en Esser.
July
2, 1910 Description by van Beurden in BUITEN
It
was a piece of the helmet, covered internally with leather, which
even contained a small cushion to protect the head from pressure.
Gradually, the leather socket, a coarse shoe, to which the
bronze-gilded spur was attached, a bronze cloak hook, the endpiece
of a quiver, and then the silver, heavily gilded helmet covered with
embossed molding and ornamentation, held together; all of this was
attached to the leather cap with silver pins, which ended in knobs.
The metal is pure stainless steel, the gilding is slightly darker in
color, but well preserved. Because, unfortunately, the metal was
separated from the leather, the helmet has fallen into its original
component pieces. Two plates of the helmet, a sword lily, which was
attached to the cap by pins as an ornament, were also found. A side
plate bears an inscription that one of the readers may be able to
decipher. Another plate was found by another worker. Thanks to the
goodwill of the Mayor of Deurne, a guard was posted at the discovery
site, preventing unauthorized excavation. Among all this, 41 bronze
and silver coins were found with the head and inscription
"Constantinus," the reverse side, for example, depicting a
crowned naked god with staff, lightning bolts, and bird, next to it
a B. [...]
July
14, 1910 Archaeological research. *We received a letter from
Rijsbergen:
At
the direction of Mr. J. Gommers, mayor of Zevenbergen, last Friday
Dr. A. Holwerda, director of the National Museum of Antiquities in
Leiden, visited the site beneath this municipality where, in earlier
centuries, the temple of the pagan goddess Sandraudiga is said to
have stood. This temple appears to have been destroyed by the
preachers who preached Christianity in Taxandria (present-day North
Brabant).
The
hamlet of Hellegat was also visited, where a pagan cemetery is
likely located. The intention is to conduct an investigation at both
locations on behalf of the aforementioned Museum to identify any
antiquities that may be present. Excavations will likely begin this
year.
December
31, 1910 Biography of and by A.F. van Beurden
In
1910, I moved my office to the new National Office Building on
Begijnhofstraat. The old one was opposite the Brothers, belonging to
Guillon and is now St. Christopher's House.
On
November 1st, Victor was No. 1 in his class thanks to his
perseverance.
We,
as was our duty, supported Mama van Schoonhoven for 30 years with
120 guilders a year, which was enough for us, as we were so richly
blessed with children. When François van Schoonhoven, a
draftsman at the land registry, died, we asked Mathilde van
Schoonhoven, married to Pierre Bingen, to contribute theirs as well.
The contributions to Mama have brought us blessings.
Mama
van Schoonhoven passed away suddenly and was buried amid much
sympathy. Uncle Dr. Cuijpers also attended church.
May
30, 1911 Upcoming new publications: Our earliest civilization in
pictures
[in
NIEUWSBLAD VOOR DE BOEKHANDEL]
November
23, 1911 Today saw the publication: Dr. J. H. HOLWERDA The
Netherlands' earliest History in Pictures
Atlas
with 120 plates and 2 color maps.
Price
f1.75; b. f2.25.
The
above work precedes the magnificent edition of the Dutch Historical
Prints (1555-1900) [...]
December
9, 1911 Helenaveen, December 9, 1911. The Most Reverend Dr. J. H.
Holwerda
Leiden
Sir,
I
have the honor to share the following with you, based on what I read
in your work "Nederland’s Vroegste geschiedenis in beeld"
(The Netherlands' Earliest History in Pictures), page 29, regarding
the discovery in the Peel region near the municipality of Deurne.
What
I read in your description gives me the impression that you were not
properly informed about some matters, and that not everything found
was made available.
The
day after the discovery was made, I visited the site and inspected
everything. I also collected all the leather, which had been torn to
pieces due to the finders' ignorance.
The
objects were found in the upper layers of the black peat, almost at
the transition to the gray peat. The thickness of the black peat was
too great for the people who died there to have been on horseback;
horses cannot ride over such layers of peat. Among the leather were
the remains of two beautifully crafted shoes. A third, very simply
made shoe was found about 15 meters from the first site, along with
the money and the leather, probably from a small leather pouch. From
this, I thought I could deduce that the presumed nobleman was
accompanied by a minor, and that thus two people had perished.
I
collected all the leather separately, as well as the shoes, the
pouch, what had been torn from the helmet, etc. The woven fabric was
already too torn apart to make much of it; it mostly looked like it
had been ribbons, wider and narrower.
Regarding
the weaponry, it could be determined that it probably consisted of a
spear or lance, a bow, and a sword. The remains of these had to be
partially retrieved from the excavated peat, so they had been cut
into pieces during the peat digging. 1. Pieces of round, cut wood,
approximately 3 cm in diameter; some were flat and showed grooves as
if they had been metal-tipped, presumably the metal point or tip.
2.
Pieces of flat wood, beautifully worked in the center, with metal
residues as if a steel spring had been inserted through the wood;
all pointed to the wood of a bow.
3.
A small block had grooves to smooth the bowstring.
4.
A piece of peat, approximately 30 cm long, with the imprint of a
sword blade, approximately 2.5 cm wide. The metal had completely
eroded and was still present only as a dark, blue-gray powder.
I
packed all these objects individually and returned them to the
finder, requesting that they later be handed over to the buyer or to
a museum, where the objects would likely be sent. However, it was
later tampered with considerably, and the man took it to fairs. When
I saw it again later, it had suffered greatly.
The
lack of interest initially shown in this discovery, and the dispute
over who owns it, was the reason I stayed out of it. However, after
reading your description, I now felt compelled to share the above
with you.
In
the illustration in your piece, I'm still missing a large piece with
signs or letters. I thought this was particularly important. Isn't
it in your possession?
Later,
a third party brought me a pin, which was still embedded in a piece
of leather. One arm had broken off, and a stone was included, which
had two flat sides and must have served as a fastening, as
everything came from a single peat and was brought to me. Here in
the Peel region, finding anything in the peat is very rare.
Previously, a few leather headdresses, a few large horns, and
something similar have been unearthed, but everything else has been
lost.
If
you would like any further information about any of this, I would be
happy to provide it to the extent possible.
Sincerely,
Your
Honor, A. Bos.
January 1, 1925 Antiquity
reports from the National Museum of Antiquities
Oudheidkundige
mededeelingen van het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden = Nuntii ex
Museo Antiquario Leidensi, 1925, Deel: VI, 1925 » 1925 - Pag.
68 | Delpher
A.
E. REMOUCHAMPS. Excavation of a Roman villa in Ravenbosch (L.) ...
41
THE
FINDINGS.
Bronze
Inscription Plaques.
In
room 20, fragments were found of two bronze plaques (Ia—b and
II) on which very important inscriptions appear. A part of a third
plaque (III) with a similar inscription was found at the front of
the building, approximately where the large staircase that gives
access to the portico has been determined.
Inscription
Ia. A large fragment of the first plaque has been preserved of
11.5 cm high and 13.4 cm long. This fragment is itself also broken
into two pieces, while a few very small fragments also belong to
this plaque. The indicated height is undoubtedly also the original,
as appears from the partially preserved profiled frame. The length
must originally have been considerably greater. The side edge has
been preserved on one side. How large the lost part must have been
we will consider later when discussing the inscriptions. The plaque
is made of bronze and has a beautiful shiny dark green patina on the
front; the back is duller. The bronze is slightly more than 0.5 mm
thick. Presumably the original shape of this inscription was
rectangular, and so we do not recognize a tabula ansata in it, as in
the other plaques to be discussed below: after all, no break can be
recognized on the preserved side edge, as would rightly be expected
if we were dealing with a tabula ansata. Of this inscription on the
front we give here an image (Fig. 54) with next to it a copy of the
text as we believe we may read and supplement it:
That
we may assume an i for the last letter of the 1st line is beyond
doubt, and the reading Vitalinius is therefore also certain. In the
2nd line perhaps only the meaning of the last two letters is
somewhat doubtful. However, the beginning of the 3rd line gives
reason to add "quaestoricio".
IIVIR.
Q. on the 3rd line could be read as duumvir quinquennalis? 1) The
last line is clear: Julius Amico; this was probably followed by:
optimo. However, Julius is probably the cognomen, while at the end
of the 3rd line the gentilicium would have been omitted.
This
inscription therefore shows that MARCUS VITALINIUS, who was former
quaestor of the Colonia Ulpia Trajana and held the position of
duumvir, is given the assurance of friendship by ... JULIUS.
The
letters are carefully cut into the metal in such a way that the
grooves, which
Fig.
54 (at approximately 1/2).
M•VITALINI
.....
DEC•C•V•T•QV....
CIO•IIVIR•Q...
IVLIVS•AMICO...
M(arco)
Vitalini(o Secundo) dec(urioni) C(oloniae) U(lpiae) T(rajanae)
qu(aestori)cio duumviro q(uinquennali) Julius Amico (optimo).
are
quite wide on the metal surface (1 to 1.5 mm), tapering to a
V-shape, as the Romans also used to do with their inscriptions on
stone.
Inscription
Ib. When we turn the plate with the previous inscription around
its longitudinal axis, we see another inscription on the back (Fig.
55). Here the letters are formed by punched dotted lines and, as is
clear from the fact that some of these dots damaged the letters on
the front, this inscription is of a more recent date.
As
with the front, we must assume that here too part of the inscription
has been lost, namely the end of each line. On the first line we see
after the last letter of Tertinio an indented dot that probably
points to a beginning new word, without us having any indication of
the first letter of this word.
Also
in the 2nd line we see after aedilicio a barely noticeable trace of
a letter of which the first part consists of a vertical line.
On
the 3rd line we clearly see C•V• and on a small matching
fragment of this picture - corresponding with the V at the end of
the 2nd line of the front - we see a dot at half the letter height
after this V so that we may read C•V•. We
1)
Prof. BOHN from Berlin, who during the study of these inscriptions
facilitated my task by giving me many pieces of advice, points out
to me that questoricio II viro quinquennali skips the dignity of the
single II vir. One would therefore have to expect: quest. II vir, II
vir quinq. — Cf. C. I. L. XIII. 8772. Dessau And. p. 698.
are
therefore inclined to add a T here and to read Coloniae Ulpiae
Trajanae as we already did on the front.
The
4th line is very clear. Here we must read Pagus Catualium. After all
Catualium
Fig.
55 (at about 1/2).
•T•
TERTINIO...
AEDILICIO......
PAGVS
CATVAL...
NO
T(ito)
Tertinio ... aedilicio ... C(oloniae) U(lpiae Trajanae) ... Pagus
Catual(ium patro)no
[the
text has been added in pencil, see on the Antiquities Reports of the
National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden=Nuntii ex Museo Antiquario
Leidensi, 1925, Part: Nieuwe Reeks VI, 01-01-1925 » 01 Jan
1925 - Page 67 | Delpher]
is
the place indicated on the Peutinger map (Fig. 56) on the left bank
of the Maas between Tongeren (Atuatuca) and Nijmegen (Noviomagus)
that according to some we should look for in the village of Haelen
opposite Roermond 1); or according to some in Heel 2) or in
Fig.
56. Part of the Peutinger map.
Horn,
which is located slightly further south, while the hypothesis that
it would be Kessel, which is located much further north, has also
been suggested. But if one adheres to the distances indicated on the
1)
Miller: Itineraria Romana (1916) p. 58. Cf. Publications de la
Société hist. et arch. dans le Limb. 1924, p. 155.
2)
C. Leemans: Romeinsche Oudheden te Maastricht Pl. I (Leiden, 1843).
Peutinger
map, then the identification with Heel seems most likely, especially
since foundations of Roman buildings have actually been established
there 1). Of great importance to us, however, is that this name,
which on the said map only indicates a station, occurs here in
connection with Pagus, but we will find an opportunity to discuss
this further below. After Catualium, PATRO was certainly mentioned.
After all, on the 5th line we read NO, and placed in such a way that
we can recognize the continuation of the fourth line. Although a few
words of this inscription may remain uncompleted, it is clear that
we are dealing with a tabula patronatus 2) given by the Pagus
Catualium to a certain Titus Tertinius, who himself was a former
aedile of the Colonia Ulpia Trajana.
Inscription
II. The fragments of the second bronze plaque consist of three
larger and one small piece. The patina is excellent and of a
beautiful bluish color. All pieces belong to the first lines of the
inscription, while the other half is missing. The fragments in
question all fit together. They form a plaque of 10 cm high by 8.4
cm. length, provided with a dovetail-shaped projection (which is
approximately 3.5 cm long at
Fig.
57 (on 1/2)
HONO...
T•TERTI...
NV...
DEC•II•VII///..
MANSVET..
MACRIN..
Hono(ri)
T(iti) Terti(nii) ... now ... Dec(urionis) Duumviri ... Mansuet(us
... et) Macrin(us) ...
7
cm. at its greatest width). The thickness of the metal is almost the
same as in the 1st plaque. The inscription is very well cared for;
the letters are of the same nature (pointed) as on the front of the
specimen already discussed (Fig. 57). It is clear that a fairly
large part (possibly slightly more than half) of the plaque is
missing here. The first line contains, after a palm ornament, the
letters Hon and the beginning of a round letter that we can consider
as an O, which makes the reading Honori likely (cf. C. XII. 3165b;
Dessau 1214, 1220, 1243), behind which
1)
Publicat. de la Société historique et archéologique
T. XVIII, 1881, p. 207 (Habets, Découvertes d’antiquités
dans le Limbourg). — The distance Atuatuca-Catualium is on the
P. map 30 leugae or 66.66 K.M.
2)
HUEBNER: Exempla script, epigr. latinae p. 301.
then
a second palm ornament bent in the opposite direction may be
assumed. If this reading is correct and therefore also the number of
missing letters, then the picture would originally have been about
15 cm long, regardless of course of the projections on both sides.
The
2nd line contains the letters T. Terti, which may certainly be read
as Tertinio on the basis of the content of the inscription on the
back of I. So the same person is meant here, as the first name Titus
also shows.
The
3rd line can again be regarded as a continuation of the previous
one; but it is more difficult to fill in the missing part here,
which probably consisted of 3 letters.
On
the 4th line we read Dec. II VI I, the last of which must certainly
be read as R.
The
5th line contains the beginning of the name Mansuetus and the 6th
line the beginning of the name Macrinus. It is likely that we are
dealing with two persons and that we still have to add "et"
after Mansuetus.
Inscription
III. Only a relatively small part of the third plate has been
preserved. This shows us another such inscription
and here too only the initial letters of each line have been
preserved. One of the two dovetail-shaped projections is also still
present here. The thickness of the plate is approximately 0.5 m.M.
The original height can be accurately indicated, thanks to the
preserved edges: it amounts to 11.4 cm. The length of the fragment
is only 3.7 cm. The projection is approximately 3.5 cm long and must
originally have had a height of ±8 cm. (Fig. 58).
Fig.
58 (on 1/2).
TE...
DEC...
VIR...
FLOR.
A.
.
Te(rtinio)
... dec(urioni) ... (duum)viro .. . Flor ... a(mico optimo)
That
the first line will have mentioned the name TE(RTINIVS) again is
very likely; but the line is difficult to complete further. Since we
are dealing with a very compact font here, TERTINIO would only take
up a small part (±5 cm) of space, so that if we think of the
original form of the discussed picture as a horizontal rectangle of
±14 cm long and if we assume that both before the first
letter of the line and behind the last letter about 2 cm of space
has been left, after TERTINIO about 6 to 7 letters can be assumed;
although this of course remains a rough guess since the length of
the picture is uncertain.
The
2nd line starts with DEC, which may be read as the abbreviation of
decurio. What follows is uncertain, but from the beginning of the
next line it is clear that we may assume that the enumeration of
official titles continued and that the line will have ended on II,
which together with the 3rd line can be read as IIviro.
The
4th line is uncertain. Could FLOR possibly be interpreted as the
beginning of a name such as Florentinus?
The
5th and last line, which jumps back somewhat, begins with an A and
the following letter was most likely an M. The first leg of this
letter can still be seen at the break that occurred here. We are
inclined to add Amico optimo here. Although we are again dealing
with a very lacunae inscription here, it seems certain that it also
contains the text of a formula by which honour is paid to Tertinius
(who is here referred to as decurio and IIvir) by a person whose
name probably begins with Flor...
Meaning of these inscriptions: Of
these four different inscriptions, two (Ib and
II) refer to the same Titus Tertinius. We will leave III out of
consideration for a moment, although there is every reason to
attribute this to the same person. From Ib we see that T. Tertinius
was a former aedile, probably of the Colonia Ulpia Trajana. As is
known, the aediles (two in number) were, together with the duumviri
and the quaestors, the highest administrative officials of a
colonia. While the aedile had to fulfil special police functions
(guarding streets, squares and markets, supervising the construction
and maintenance of roads, etc.), the duumvir was the head of the
judiciary and the quaestor was charged with the management of the
finances and the collection of taxes. Due to the absence of the end
of the second line, we do not know what other office he held at the
time that the Pagus Catualium chose him as patron. It is very likely
that he was a duumvir. After all, the aediles are usually
subordinate to the duumviri in the city government, even though they
are their colleagues, so that Tertinius could have been promoted to
duumvir after having been an aedile.
Whatever
the case, on II we read that Tertinius is a decurio and duumvir
without any indication of which colonia. However, it may be
difficult to assume that this refers to a colonia other than the one
mentioned on Ib. After all, a decurio (i.e. the official title for
members of the city council of cities with Roman law) of the colony
of Ravensbosch itself is hardly conceivable; since this settlement
should rather be regarded as a vicus, and vici and castella were
usually added to neighbouring cities. And even if we consider the
vicus of Ravensbosch as the main town of a pagus, the existence of
an ordo decurionum would still not be likely there. Pagi with such
an ordo have only been established with certainty in Africa.
Moreover, for cases in which aediles or quaestors have been
established for a vicus magistri, it is still assumed that these
higher officials could often have been the same as those of the
colonia.
From
all this it appears that a connection must be sought between the
settlement of Ravensbosch and Catualium on the one hand, and Xanten
on the other. It is known that the latter was the main town of a
civitas or gouw, although one was in the dark about the boundaries
of the territory of this civitas. It may be assumed that a civitas
preferably included one or more specific tribes and for the civitas
Ulpia Trajana it has been established that part of the area along
the Maas must also have belonged to it 1). Civitates are often also
referred to by the name of such a tribe. In our country we know of a
Civitas Batavorum through the wisdom stone from Ruimel (south of 's
Hertogenbosch) (C.I.L. XIII 8771) (erected in honour of Hercules
Magusanus) whose main town has been sought both in Lugdunum
Batavorum and in Nijmegen.
The
connection that may now be made in the first place between the
Civitas Ulpia Trajana and the Pagus Catualium cannot be doubted. The
latter was a subdistrict of the civitas; the inscription Ib provides
of it for the first time the proof. It must be left open whether the
vicus of Ravensbosch also belonged to Catualium and therefore also
to Xanten.
Another
valuable fact that we obtain through Ib is that Catualium (which we
only know from the Peutinger map (Fig. 56) as a station on the road
along the left bank of the Maas between Maastricht and Nijmegen) is
indicated here as a pagus.
As
for the person of Tertinius, I am not aware of any document on which
this name appears with the same first name Titus; we do read on a
pointer to Jupiter (C.I.L. XIII 8619), coincidentally originating
from the vicinity of Xanten (dated 232 AD), the name Tertinius
Vitalis. Furthermore, an inscription with the name Tertinius is
known from Mainz (C.I.L. XIII 7115), among others. The reading of C.
V. T. as Colonia Ulpia Trajana also deserves further discussion.
After all, it may be surprising that someone who holds a position in
a city council would live so far away from this city (as the crow
flies, the distance between Xanten and the Ravensbosch is over 100
km.). Prof. Bohn is of the opinion, although he acknowledges that
there are no examples where the abbreviation C. V. T. has a
different meaning than Col. Ulp. Trajana, that the possibility
remains that another Colonia is meant here: e.g. a Colonia Ulpia
Tungrorum.
However,
this problem can perhaps also be solved by assuming that Tertinius
originally lived in Xanten or in the vicinity, but that later, when
he had ceased to be part of the city council there, he settled in
the Ravensbosch. He would then have taken the inscriptions that had
been given to him in Xanten to his new home. The name Mansuetus,
which we find mentioned on II, is also difficult to place. He does
appear several times in inscriptions (C.I.L. XIII, 6871, 6873)
without any connection being made 2). And we do not know Macrinus
any better either, although the name appears several times (Cf.
Prosop. Imp. Rom. II, p. 314, 24 and Macrinus Perpetuus on C.I.L.
XIII, 7281. 230 AD). Or should we perhaps recognize the
ophthalmologist Macrinus here, whose ointment stamp was found in
Heerlen in 1866? (C.I.L. 10021. 109).
1)
SCHUMACHER, Siedelungs- u. Kulturgeschichte der Rheinlande, Bnd. II,
p. 216. The area of the Civitas U. T. was inhabited by
the Cugerni, the Baetasii and the Sugambri and had numerous small
towns and villages situated near the Rhine and the Maas.
2)
Cf. JULIUS MANSUETUS by Otto Schilling: de legionibus romanorum 1893
p. 55; Bonn. Jahrb. 83,136 n° 37.
If
we now connect the inscription III with Ib and II, then there is no
doubt that the same Tertinius is mentioned here with the same titles
(decurio and duumvir) that we already found mentioned on II. We
cannot determine the name of the person who pays him tribute.
The
oldest inscription of the four is without any doubt Ia. After all,
the bronze plate on which it appears was originally intended for
Vitalinius alone. Only later was the back used for the application
of Ib. Since Ia was dedicated to Vitalinius, we must assume that a
certain time had already passed when the Tertinius inscription was
placed on it. This oldest inscription is now entirely of the same
nature as the one already discussed. It is dedicated to M.
Vitalinius, decurio of the Colonia Ulpia Trajana, former quaestor
and duumvir. This M. Vitalinius is very well possible the same one
who is mentioned on an inscription from the vicinity of Xanten
(C.I.L. XIII 8621) with the cognomen Secundus and who was then
beneficiarius consularis. We may assume that Vitalinius, after
retiring from military service, started to play a role in the city
government of the Colonia Trajana.
Finally,
we must briefly discuss the question of what the small bronze tables
were used for. They are usually found with dedication formulas to a
deity. The Museum of the Provincial Utrecht Society 1) possesses,
for example, such a plaque from the vicinity of Kleve [Dutch Kleef].
That these plaques were attached to votive offerings is certain; the
formula "Votum solvit libens merito” or "dono dedit"
that often occurs on them shows this. Sometimes even the wire with
which the table was attached to the gift seems to have been
preserved 2). We may therefore assume that our bronze plaques were
attached to a gift (for example a bust) that was then placed in the
atrium or the room that served for it in the villa of Ravensbosch.
After all, it is in this room that two of the plaques were found,
while the third came to light near the entrance hall. Undoubtedly,
the use of the table aenea was much greater than we can assume on
the basis of the number of copies that have come down to us. After
all, the twice-used copy Ia-b already shows us that bronze was a
valuable metal. And at the looting of the abandoned villas, these
bronze objects will also have been the first to be taken away. As
for the nature of the gifts, we may first think of statues (compare
e.g. C.I.L. XIII, 5063), especially since such gifts were also given
by vici and pagi to deserving dignitaries and were placed in their
homes.3)
A
large number of pottery fragments were also found among the rubble
of this villa, as well as numerous metal objects, a few coins, etc.
The character of all these [...]
1)
Catalogue, 1868, AD 2, p. 164.
2)
The grave relief GIL XIII 4669, (= Espérandieu: VI 4674):
Protome viri imberbis tabellam ansatam tenentis, to which Prof. Bohn
drew my attention, can only support this view.
3)
FRIEDLAENDER: Darstellungen aus der Stitengeschichte Roms 8 ed. III
p. 271.
29
juli 2005 Emperor's Head Found in Sewer
A
1,700-year-old carved marble head of the Emperor Constantine has
been found in a sewer in central Rome.
Archaeologists
found the 60 cm head while clearing an ancient drainage system in
the ruins of the Roman Forum.
Eugenio
La Rocca, superintendent of Rome's artefacts, described the head as
a rare find and said it was possible it had been used to clear a
blocked sewer.
Constantine,
who reigned from AD 306 to 337, is known for ending the persecution
of Christians and creating the city of Constantinople from the Greek
town of Byzantium.
Although
most of his subjects remained pagans, he is credited with helping to
establish Europe's Christian roots by proclaiming religious freedom.
The
white marble head was confirmed as a portrait of Constantine by
experts who compared it with coins and two other giant heads kept in
Rome's Capitoline Museums.
Probably
carved between AD 312 and 325, when Constantine was at the height of
his power, it may have belonged to a statue of the emperor in full
armour.
"Recovering
a portrait of this size and in this state of conservation in the
very heart of the city is really extraordinary," said Mr La
Rocca.
"We
have concluded that the head did not fall by accident into the
passage, but was put there on purpose.
"It
could have been used as a big piece of stone to divert water from
the drain, or it could have been put there to symbolise the
resentment of a pagan people for their Christian emperor."
The
head's unceremonious insertion in the drain may have saved it from
the plundering of the Forum after the fall of the Roman Empire in
the fifth century.
It
is expected to go on display in Rome's museums after a brief period
of restoration.
1
januari 2010 Phalerae
of horse harness in the votive depositions of the 2nd – 1st
centuries BC in the North Pontic region and problems of their
cultural background
Valentina
Mordvintseva
(1)
In the history of the North Pontic region a distinctive place
belongs to the phalerae – silver roundels presumably of horse
harness with representations of different images –
anthropomorphic and zoomorphic, and ornamented with floral and
geometrical decoration. They were widespread in the North Pontic
steppes and neighbouring regions during the last centuries BC.
(2)
First survey of such phalerae was published by A.A. Spitsyn. The aim
of his work was to discuss their chronology and to define thier
stylistic features. He also noted, that these phalerae belong to
some culture of the turn of the era, which still is scarcely known
in our antiquities".
It
is due to M.I. Rostovtzeff, that the phalerae began to play a
special role in the investigation of the Sarmatian Culture of the
North Pontic region. He saw in those phalerae a distinctive cultural
influence from the East. He suggested, that they were brought to the
North Pontic Steppes with the new tribes of the Iranian origin,
which came from the boundaries of Graeco-Bactria and which were
known from the ancient sources as Sakoi.
As
a proof to his theory Rostovtzeff point on the non-Greek character
of representations on the phalerae, its polychrome (partly gilded
silver), representations of a floral rosette, which he thought to be
a pure Persian motive.
(3)
As an analogy – even "the only close analogy" to the
Pontic phalerae he takes horse trappings of the Sasanian time. He
believed, that «this Persian ornaments were taken by the
Sasanians from the Parthians, and by those from the Achaemenidian
Persians».
He
mentions also stylistic parallels to the representations on the
Pontic phalerae.
(4)
A deity on the phalera from Yanchokrak Rostovtzeff suggested to have
closest parallels in the Graeco-Indian Art of Taxila and Hatra. With
this art Rostovtzeff compares also the floral rosettes of the Pontic
phalerae.
(5)
These phalerae as distinctive burial goods were taken by Rostovtzeff
to show the first movement of the great Sarmatian Migration in all
his main works on the history of Bosphorus and the Scythia. A new
assemblage, discovered in Bulgaria – the Galice hoard –
Rostovtzeff suggested as the most western find, connected with the
appearance of the Sarmatians on this territory.
The
ideas of Rostovtzeff and his predecessors were developed by K.V.
Trever in her book "The monuments of the Graeco-Bactrian Art".
Actually, in this volume were published items mostly without clear
provenance, which were kept in the Department of Eastern Antiquities
of the State Hermitage. The idea of Rostovtzeff was taken in whole,
thus, in her book Trever even has not done attempts to find
analogies around the places, where some of the phalerae were found.
Thus, the animals represented on the phalera found near Starobelsk
in the Ukraine were declared as incarnations of the Indo-Iranianian
deities Indra, Mithra and so on. Afterwards many scholars noted,
that some of the published articles cannot be attributed to the
production of the Graeco-Bactria.
(6)
A special research on the phalerae was made by N. Fettich (1953). He
has done very accurate study of the new finds of phalerae from the
territories of Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Also he personally
investigated the phalerae from the Soviet museums – those,
which survived to the time. To the analysis he took as well items
from the Dacian silver hoards.
N.
Fettich pointed out the main decorative features of the discussing
group of the material – graphical elements such as lines of
dots, rows of triangles, zig-zag, running wave and ovoi. With this
particular group he connected not all known phalerae, but only from
the assemblages of Yanchokrak, Taganrog, Balakleja, Galiche, Scorce
and Herastreu.
After
all he concluded, that all these objects were produced in Olbia in
the second half of the 1st century BC. He believed, that it was
connected somehow with the military events of the time – wars
of Burebista.
(7)
In his work N. Fettich based himself on the idea of Rostovtzeff,
that the phalerae were used primarily as the ornaments of horse
harness and were a sign of the Sarmatian ethnicity. Existence of
brooches made in the same style in the Dacian material he explained
in some cases as second use of the phalerae of harness. Olbia he
believed as a centre of production, in which craftsmen made items of
the Sarmatian use (phalerae) for the Sarmatians, and items of the
Dacian use (brooches, bracelets, torques, chaines) – for the
Dacians and Getoi.
T.
Sulimirsky in his book about the Sarmatians (1970) thought, that
phalerae, which were found in the North Pontic region were made by
the jewellers of Panticapeum. The appearance of the phalerae in the
Pontic Steppe he connected with the arrival to the Crimea in the 2nd
c.BC of the troops of the Pontic Army of Diophantus, and with the
Mithridathes’ Wars of the 1st half of the 1st century BC.
(8)
In the concept of K.F. Smirnov (1984) assemblages with the phalerae
were seen as signs of the Sarmatian movement from the East to the
West. He supposed, that the easternmost assemblages should be dated
earlier that the westernmost assemblages. Despite the work of
Fettich, which he mentioned in his book, Smirnov still named all
phalerae as items of the Graeco-Bactrian style. However, in some
notes in his book he suggested as possible also the Bosporan
provenance of them.
(9)
Phalerae were also a subject of my dissertation delivered in 1996
and published in 2001. There were pointed out several stylistical
groups of phalerae.
(10)
With the namely Graeco-Bactrian Style it was possible to connect a
group of phalerae with distinctive compositional, stylistic, and
technical features.
These
phalerae are slightly concave and comparatively big in size –
their diameter is about 24-26 cm. Their composition is divided in
three zones. In the centre one can see the main subject. It is
surrounded by a classical wreath. On the border there is a row of
fine ornamentation – circles, running wave. All these parts of
composition are gilded. The rest of phalerae remains ungilded. This
makes a kind of colour play.
Such
phalerae were done in pairs. A representation on the second item of
the pair is done always in mirror-reflection. On the back-side they
bear 3 loops, by which they were attached to the belts of a
saddlery. This type of phalerae is actually characteristic to the
eastern territories. Phalerae with 3 loops on the back were found
even in Taxila, their representations are well-known in the Iranian
world. They definitely belonged to some particular horse harness,
consisted of a pair of saddlery-phalerae and phalerae of a bridle.
Here
it is worthy to note, that phalerae of the proper Graeco-Bactrian
style were found eastwards of Volga. 3-loop phalerae of other
stylistic group were found also in Kuban and Lower Don region, but
never in the North Pontic region.
(11)
Other group of the phalerae – phalerae of the Pontic Graphical
Style. These are very high roundels, which are comparatively not so
big in their size – diameter ca. 15 cm. Representations are
made in low relief and richly ornamented with the punch-decoration.
The main subject of most of the phalerae is a rosette with leaves of
acanthus and lotus.
(12)
Some of phalerae bear images of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic
figures. The border is decorated with many rows of graphical
elements – zig-zag, running wave, ovoi.
(13)
Some of these elements were made with some special tools and were
used only on the phalerae found in the North Pontic region. This
allow one to suggest, that they were made in this region. At the
same time such special details are absent on the phalerae from the
hoards of Galice, Scercze and Herastreu. Differently, the graphical
elements on borders a made not with the poinsons of special shapes
but by a free-hand. Consequently they were made in different
workshops and not in one, as Fettich believed.
(14)
Subjects of the phalerae of Pontic Graphical Style also cannot be
suggested as of eastern provenance, they are far from eastern
motives as in the meaning, as in the composition, as in the
delivering. (14) Such a motive as the floral rosette came widely in
fasion from the end of the 3rd century BC, which can be shown on the
example of the mould-made bowls or silver cups with similar
ornamentation.
Other
subjects also have a little in common with the art of the
Hellenistic Bactria and Parthia.
(15)
Such compositions as two pairs of animals jumped one against another
are well-known as a classical subject.
(16)
Human faces-masks are the motives, which rather familiar to the
European monuments of the La Tène period. Some ornaments from
the Starobelsk Treasure is similar to the ordinary items of
Pojanesti-Lukashevka Culture.
(16а)
Half-represented figures of deities and figures of riders are
frequent on the silverware of the Western Pontic region.
(17)
On one of the phalerae of Yanchokrak Hoard there is a creature with
the shield, on which an umbon is represented. This M. Schukin
connected with representations of umbons of the La Tène type.
Deity
from the other phalera resembles features of the Scythian and
Thracian tradition of representation – a form of the head, a
headress, a composition with a bird aside, a type of the bird,
ornament on the shoulders and hands.
(18)
The phalerae of the Pontic Graphical Style were found only to the
west of the Volga, in the North Pontic region and in the Kuban
valley. Most of the Pontic Graphical Style phalerae belong to the
other type of the saddlery phalerae – with 2 iron straps on
the back. Some examples bear also 3 loops, and those ones are the
easternmost, found on the territory of Kalmykia and in the Kuban
region.
(19)
The difference between the two mentioned groups of material is not
confined only by their stylistical or constructional features. They
differ also by their burial rite.
In
the case of the phalerae of the 1st type of saddlery they were
deposed in graves. In the case of phalerae of the 2nd type of
saddlery – they were found mainly as votive depositions in the
kurgan mounds or even in natural hills. The easternmost votive
deposit is a find in the mound of kurgan 27 in Zhutovo cemetery,
situated between the rivers Don and Volga.
(20)
Votive depositions of the North Pontic region are not confined only
by those, where phalerae were found. Much more are assemblages
consisted of other objects: horse ornaments of other kind, horse
bits and psalia, helmets, weapons, silver cups and so on.
(20a)
These objects are often found in a damaged condition. Such a burial
rite is not known in the Volga region, which is believed as a
Motherland of the Sarmatians, and on the territories eastwards of
the Volga, but it is well-known in Europe, in the Cultures of the
Scythians and Thracians as well.
Thus,
from the very beginning of their research phalerae were suggested to
show the movement of the Iranian tribes to the North Pontic region
from the boundaries of the Graeco-Bactria. However, they demonstrate
a different tendency. Stylistical and typological features of the
phalerae of the Pontic Graphical Style and their special burial rite
are comparable with territories situated to the west of the Scythia.
How one should interpret these finds of phalerae and is it worthy to
connect them with the Sarmatians?
To
answer the question it is necessary to define – what we mean
under the terms "Sarmatians" and "Sarmatian Culture".
In
the original texts of ancient authors of the early Hellenistic
period the Sarmatia or the Sarmatians are scarcely mentioned. Those
passages are very rare, short, and unclear.
(21)
From the sources dated from the 5th to the 2nd centuries BC one can
see that all writers connected the names of Sauromatians,
Syrmatians, and Sarmatians with the Meotida and the Tanais.
However,
we have no chance to know – are those names the different
spellings of one or do they belong to different peoples. What we
know more or less definitely, is that the ancient authors of later
times (from about the 1st BC onwards) did not recognize the
difference. About earlier sources it is difficult to judge, because
of their paucity and unclearness.
(22)
In the later sources there is a bit more information about the
Sarmatians. Polybius described the treaty of the Pontic states (179
BC), in which took part one Gatal – the "kinglet of the
Sarmatians". Polybius did not define the territory, from which
came this Gatal, but he was mentioned as an European ruler. This
does not exclude the same territory mentioned before – around
Meotida and Tanais.
The
most important record for the fate of the Sarmatian archaeology was
a line of Diodorus (1 c. BC), that «Many years later this
people (i.e. Sauromatae – V.M.) became powerful and ravaged a
large part of Scythia, and destroying utterly all whom they subdued
they turned most of the land into a desert» (Diodorus, Hist.,
II, 43, 7). This episode was the main record to suggest a massive
invasion of the Sarmatians from the East. Diodorus was not a witness
to this migration. He described this as an event, which happened a
long time ago. To date this event – was always a task for many
historians researching the Scythia and Sarmatia. But one should
notice, that it is nothing in the text to suggest that the
Sauromatians came from some distant land to fight Scythia. From the
text it is to conclude, that the Sauromatians invaded Scythia from
their own territory near the Tanais and Meotida.
(23)
In one Chersonesian decree dated to the end of the 2nd c. is written
about danger from the Scythians and some other barbarians to the
city of Kalos-Limen, which was also situated comparatively close to
Meotida.
At
the same time the epigraphical sources of the 2nd – 1st
centuries BC also speak clearly about other events.
In
the Decree in Honour of Protogenus (the last third of the 3rd c.BC –
beginning of the 2nd c.BC) is described the dangerous state of
Olbia, which was threatened from the West, from the Skiroi and
Galatoi, usually thought as Keltoi.
A
Decree in honour of Diophantus, which describes the events in the
Crimea at the end of the 2nd c. BC, mentions several barbarian
tribes – the Scythians, Reuxinaloi, Tauroi.
(24)
In the dedication of Posideos of the second half of the 2nd c. BC,
found at the Scythian Neapolis, are mentioned some Satarchai. The
inscription is not clear because it is very damaged.
In
the second half of the 2nd c. BC Olbia was under the protection of
the Scythian king Skiluros, whose name and a name of the city were
struck on the Olbian coins. The inscription on a marble plat newly
found at the heroon of the king Argotus – a predecessor to
Skiluros, mentions his victories under the Thracians and Meotians.
It is important, that the king is named as "the governor of
Scythia – rich of horse pasturies". The construction of
the heroon is dated not earlier than as 130 BC.
Thus,
in the epigraphical and written sources records about the arrival of
the Sarmatians in the North Pontic region from the East are absent.
Semi-legendary data about some Sarmatia, which lays near Meotida,
corresponds with the usual information about the territory of the
Sauromatians, who by ancient authors were also named as Sarmatians.
(25)
The great migration from the East into the North Pontic region in
the 3rd – 2nd centuries BC is not noticed either by the
archaeological material. Alternatively, in the archaeological
culture of the barbarians of the North Pontic area there are more
signs, which show the connections with the Western World of the
Thracians, Celts and Germans. The traces of such connections we have
also observed in the epigraphical sources.
Why
is it, that in all works on the history and archaeology of the
Sarmatians prevails a version about the occupation of Scythia in the
Hellenistic period by the Sarmatian tribes from the East?
Archaeological
monuments relatively late were taken as an important source to
reconstruct those historical events, which are believed to be
connected with the Sarmatians.
(26)
The investigator, who for the first time clearly shaped the concept
about the Sarmatian invasion of Scythia, which now is a part of our
way of thinking, was M.I. Rostowzeff. Many elements in his
"Sarmatian paradigma" were stated as an extrapolation of
the later records about the Sarmatians on the earlier periods of
their history. As Rostowtzeff before he started to be interested in
history of the North Pontic area was a historian of the Roman
period, the written sources of this time gave him a stable
historical portrait of the Sarmatians, features of which became the
most important for Rostowtzeff in finding the material culture of
the Sarmatians. The main elements of the Sarmatian concept of
Rostowtzeff were the following:
1. The Sarmatians were the eastern neigbours to the Scythians, they
invaded Scythia and became rulers of the North Pontic region.
Generally this was based on the record of Diodorus. This event
Rostowtzeff dated to the transition from the 4th to the 3rd
centuries BC. After that instead of Scythia appeared Sarmatia, and
the Scythians were pushed to the West (Dobrudja) and to the South
(the Crimea).
2. The names "Sarmatians" and "Sauromatians" are
not similar, according to Rostowtzeff, and mean different peoples.
The Sauromatians were a Meotian tribe. Very characteristic feature
of them was to have many matriarchal customs in their culture.
Separating the Sauromatians from the Sarmatians he supposed, that
these names were mixed by the later authors, and the earlier authors
used the names properly.
3. Under the common name of Sarmatians Rostowzeff meant different
tribes of Iranian origin, who constantly invaded the Steppes of
South Russia from the East. Rostowtzeff mentions two main waves of
migrations – early (Saki) and late (Yüe-chi).
4. The most splendid feature of the Sarmatian culture, which one
could characterise as a feature of their material culture, was a
special type of weapon and arms (katafrakta). It consisted of: a
long heavy lance, a long sword and a dagger, an armour or a
chain-armour, and a helmet (usually of conical shape). All this –
according to Rostowtzeff – was different to the arms of the
Scythians. This image of the Sarmatian kataphraktarii, described in
the works of Ammianus Marcellinus (4th c. AD), Rostovtzeff
extrapolates on the earlier Sarmatians.
5. He constantly underlines the close similarity of the Sarmatians
with the Parthians, an impression he also took from the ancient
sources. This connection consisted in the special features of the
Sarmatian art, which was brought with them into South Russia
(polychrome, animal style), in their religion (Fire-worship), in
their patriarchal way of life, and in the military organisation of
their society.
To
correspond to this image of the Sarmatians Rostowtzeff was looking
for monuments of material culture, which would be situated eastwards
of Scythia, dated to the end of the 4th – beginning of the 3rd
c. BC, and exhibiting the above-mentioned features, which could
point on their Iranian origin.
(27)
Such material monuments became the Prokhorovka kurgans (Orenburg
group, after Rostowtzeff). Their discovery coincided with
Rostowtzeff’s visit to his parents in Orenburg in 1915. In
kurgan 1 were found an iron armour, a long sword, polychrome jewels,
items of Animal Style, and Achaemenidian bowls – i.e. direct
Iranian imports, which gave Rostowtzeff an argument to suggest these
monuments as belonging to the Sarmatians – the new Iranian
comers from the East. But by those Sarmatians he did not mean the
local population. The Sarmatians – as well as the Scythians,
Rostowtzeff imagined as a group of tribes of Iranian origin, who
were a minority of the population and ruled the majority of the
local people. They were mounted warriors, who came to rule the
Steppes of the South Russia from the East.
(28)
After his opinion even in the 4th century BC the whole Steppe
eastwards of the Don was in hands of these newcomers.
Rostowtzeff
suggested that the kurgans near Elizavetovskaya stanitsa on the Don
were very close in the material culture to that of the Orenburg
group. The third close assemblages he located in the Kuban region
and Taman peninsula (Stavropol Treasure, Buerova Mogila, kurgans
near stanitsa Besleneevskaya and Kurdzhipskaya).
Thus,
approximately on the base of ten or so assemblages was formed an
idea about the main directions of connections to demonstrate the
movement of the Sarmatian tribes from the East to the West: Orenburg
group (East, the Sarmatians themselves) – Elisavetovskaya
group (possible Syrmatae/Sarmatae) – Kuban group.
To
show this movement of people from the East to the West by the
archaeological material were drawn the phalerae of horse harness,
(29)
and a group of polychrome brooches found in the Kuban region. Now
its Bosporan provenance is shown in works of M. Treister.
(30)
The second wave of migrants – Yüe-chi – brought the
new Animal Style. This event Rostowtzeff dated from the 1st c. BC to
the 1st c. AD.
Before
1917 Rostowtzeff has worked out his notion of the Sarmatian Culture,
which later changed only in details. He created a clear historical
idea of the Sarmatian Culture, he pointed out the main historical
stages of this Culture and connected the historical name
"Sarmatians" with the monuments of material culture.
However,
the concept of Rostowtzeff had its weak sides depended mostly on the
lack of archaeological material for proper analysis. In fact the
culture of the early Sarmatians was defined on the base of one
kurgan mound (Prokhorovka No. 1), which was actually not excavated
fully. And the animal style of the Sarmatians he characterised only
on the base of finds from the kurgan "Khokhlach" and the
Majkop-belt, which was a fake, also introducing some objects from
the Siberian collection of the Peter the Great to the analysts.
In
20-s of the 20th century the chronological phases of the "Sarmatian
stage" on the base of new excavations in the Volga-Ural region
were worked out. The authority of the Rostowtzeff’s theory
about the Sarmatian character of the Orenburg kurgans was quite
strong and this idea was taken as an axiom in future studies.
(31)
The creator of the periodisation of the Sarmatian Culture, which is
still alive, was Paul Rau. Rau was a local German – a citizen
of the newly organized Republik of Germans of the Volga region, who
was really enthusiastic to collect all sources about the ancient
history of his region and to save them for the new generations. He
tried to show the development of his region in the context of
surrounding territories of South Russia and Siberia. In this way the
Volga-Ural region became for him a centre, a sort of standard
measure in this comparison with other regions.
In
his early works P. Rau made an analysis of the archaeological
material – scrupulous and based on new methods (for example,
with correlation tables). In his last book about Scythian
arrow-heads he has proposed briefly a historical concept of the
Sarmatian Culture.
The
statements of the Rau concept, which became a part of the modern
"Sarmatian Paradigma" are the following:
1. The Volga and Ural steppes were the Motherland of the Sarmatians,
the culture of whom spread from this territory westwards (North
Pontic region) and south-eastwards (Middle Asia, Siberia).
2. The Sauromatian (6th – 4th BC) and the Sarmatian (3rd BC –
3rd AD) cultures are connected by their origin.
After
the features of burial rite P. Rau pointed out 4 stages of the
common Sauromato-Sarmatian Culture. Thus, he constructed its
relative chronology. Rau took the orientation and type of a grave’s
form to the main cultural features. With the Sauromatian stage he
connected the Culture of «Ostwestgräber», and with
the Sarmatian – the Culture of «Meridionalgräber».
(32)
It was K.F. Smirnov, who has developed and expanded the main ideas
of P. Rau. Under his direction were made the wide-scale excavations
in the South Ural and Volga districts. In the 1960-s the number of
archaeological monuments of the Sarmatian Culture was counted in
hundreds.
In
works of Smirnov the Volga-Ural region is seen as a centre of origin
of the Sauromato-Sarmatian Culture in general. This culture –
as in works of Rau – is shown as a definite measure to compare
with the barbarian cultures from other territories.
Thus,
Smirnov underlines the connection of the Sarmatian Culture with
cultures of the Late Bronze Age to show the autochton origin of the
Sarmatian population of the Volga-Ural region.
(33)
Thus, since the 3rd c. BC the Sarmatian tribes slowly moved to the
West. As we have seen earlier, to show this slow movement were sets
of phalerae, found as votive depositions. A lack of monuments of the
Volga type in the North Pontic region was explained by the low
degree of investigation in this area.
Very
important for the creating of the "Sarmatian Paradigma"
was also the placing of the tribes known from the written sources
(Aorsi, Siraki, Alanae) on the archaeological map. The name Upper
Aorsi was in fact created to call the Aorsi, who, according to
Strabo, lived above the Aorsi themselves. These tribes became to be
seen as confederations of tribes. This archaeological map was
connected with the chronological scheme showing the stages of the
Sarmatian Culture. Thus, in this periodisation the ethnical aspect
became a matter of the main importance.
After
the works of Smirnov the "Sarmatian Paradigma" was not
remarkably changed, but it developed in some its parts.
In
the following works of sarmatologists the chronological periods of
the Sarmatian Culture became periods of the domination of some
nomadic groups – the Sauromatae, the Aorsi, the Alanae. Dating
of the appearance of some definite tribe on the historical scene
began to influence the dating of the archaeological assemblages,
intuitively connected with the historical events.
(34)
To make a conclusion about the development of the "Sarmatian
Paradigma" it is necessary to note, that initially the material
culture of the Sarmatians was closely connected with the image of
the Sarmatians, which came from the works of Roman historians. This
connection was so strong, that it pressed other sources –
epigraphical and archaeological, which – despite they were
called the most objective to the ancient history – still are
just passive illustrations to the historical concepts.
The
main difficulties arise with the identification of the Sarmatians in
the North Pontic region. The archaeological picture does not
correlate with the picture painted by the historians. The Sarmatian
attack – if we have in mind the monuments of the Volga area)
in the 3rd – 1st centuries BC is not visible.
After
my point of view, there is no ground to suggest the Volga-Ural
region as the centre and Motherland of the Sarmatians of the
historical sources. The movement of some people from the Volga basin
to the North Pontic region in the 2nd c. BC is no more than a
speculation based on the doubtful interpretation of the fragmentary
and dubious written sources.
A
distant eastern influence, which is definitely clear in the material
culture in valleys of the Volga, the lower Don and the Kuban from
the second half of the 2nd c. BC, is not seen in the North Pontic
area.
Who
were the people in this case, who left those votive depositions with
silver phalerae? This question can not be decided easily. At any
rate they were not the Sakoi, who came from the boundaries of
Graeco-Bactria and whom Rostovtzeff suggested as the first
Sarmatians, and they were not the barbarian tribes of the Lower
Volga and Ural region, whom suggested as the Sarmatians Smirnov.
More
likely seems to compare the monuments of the North Pontic region
with the western Pontic territories. This could be seen as in the
artistic tradition, as in the rite of votive depositions.
31
januari 2016 HELENA AUGUSTA The mother of Constantine
the Great and the Legend of Her
Finding of the True Cross
[p.
24] Amidst the excavations the archaeologist Th. K. Kempf found tiny
remains of ceilings frescoes. On reconstruction, these paintings
appeared to be of such high quality and artistry that they
presumably were made to adorn the room of a member of the
Constantinian family. The coffered ceiling was divided into fifteen
unequal panels, separated by garlands. The frescoes, found in
fragments and often incomplete, date from the first quarter of the
fourth century. A terminus post quem is given by a newly minted
coin, struck in Trier in c. 315, bearing the legend SOLI INVICTO.
This coin, embedded in the mortar of a piece of mosaic, was found in
the room of the frescoes. A terminus ante quem is offered by coins
found in the floor of the oldest part of the church building, which
was constructed above the frescoes room. These coins were all minted
in 325/326. It is assumed that the room was part of the living
quarters of Crispus, Constantine’s eldest son. He resided in
Trier as representative of his father in 318-323 and possibly also
in 324-326. This would explain why in 326 the frescoed room and
probably also the adjacent quartes were demolished. In that year
Crispus was executed by his father for reasons which remain obscure.
The deliberate demolition of his living quarters in Trier may have
been a consequence of his damnatio memoriae, after which the
catherdral of Trier was constructed over the remains of the imperial
rooms.
[p.
28] A suitable place for paintings referring to the happiness of
married life is naturally the bedroom, the cubile. It therefore
seems plausible to consider the frescoed room not as the cubile of
the elder Helena, as Kempf suggest, but as that of the younger
Helena. This bedroom was part of the great complex of imperial
quarters in which the Caesar Crispus and his wife Helena lived. In
326, after Crispus’ execution and damnatio memoriae, the
quarters, including the cubile, were demolished; then Trier’s
cathedral was built on the remains.
[p.
15] In his funeral oration for Theodosius I, Ambrose implies, by
referring to her as stabularia, that Helena came from the lower
social strata of the Roman Empire. Literally translated, a
stabularia is a woman who comes from or works in the stables.
Because stables are often associated with inns, the word stabularia
can also mean female innkeeper or servant at an inn. In the
antiquity the social prestige of somebody working at an inn was low.
29
april 2016 Massive 600 kg haul of ancient Roman coins
unearthed in Spain
Construction
workers have found 600kg of ancient Roman coins while carrying out
routine work on water pipes in southern Spain, local officials have
said.
"It
is a unique collection and there are very few similar cases,"
Ana Navarro, head of Seville’s archeology museum, which is
looking after the find, told a news conference.
Dating
back to the late third and early fourth centuries, the bronze coins
were found on Wednesday inside 19 Roman amphoras, a type of jar, in
the town of Tomares near Seville.
Navarro
declined to give a precise estimate for the value of the haul,
saying only that the coins were worth "certainly several
million euros".
The
coins are stamped with the inscriptions of emperors Maximian and
Constantine, and they appeared not to have been in circulation as
they show little evidence of wear and tear.
It
is thought they were intended to pay the army or civil servants.
"The
majority were newly minted and some of them probably were bathed in
silver, not just bronze," said Navarro.
"I
could not give you an economic value, because the value they really
have is historical and you can’t calculate that."
Local
officials have suspended the work on the water pipes and plan to
carry out an archaeological excavation on the site.
The
Romans conquered the Iberian Peninsula in 218 BC, ruling until the
early fifth century, when they were ousted by the Visigoths.
24
september 2016 Double Basilica (326-346) Trier Cathedral
Augusta Treverorum
Trier's
palace to cathedral transformation
It
is uncertain whether the origins of the Helena-tradition date back
as far as the first quarter of the fourth century. If it does, we
can wonder whether this tradition goes back to the elder Helena. It
seems reasonable to assume that the frescoes were made for the
occasion of the wedding of Crispus and [the younger] Helena. The
attributes on the frescoes refer to married life, as do the putti.
The marriage took place c.321. Hardly anything is known about the
younger Helena, except that she was married to Crispus, bore him a
child in 322 and was probably with child in 324. The man with the
scroll may also be connected with Crispus (and [the younger]
Helena); he is identified as Lactantius, Crispus' teacher. A
suitable place for paintings referring to the happiness of married
life is naturally the bedroom, the cubile. It therefore seems
plausible to consider the frescoed room not as the cubile of the
elder Helena, as Kempf suggests, but as that of the younger Helena.
This bedroom was part of the great complex of imperial quarters in
which the Caesar Crispus and his wife Helena lived. In 326, after
Crispus' execution and damnatio memoriae, the quarters, including
the cubile, were demolished; then Trier's cathedral was built on the
remains. Although very little is known about the younger Helena, it
is not impossible that her cubile and domus were known among the
inhabitants of Trier as the cubile and domus of Helena, as we find
in the medieval texts. The younger Helena soon disappeared into
oblivion, and the cubile and domus were soon considered to have been
those of the much more famous elder Helena. The latter was a
renowned and indeed legendary figure because of her alleged
discovery of Christ's Cross. Moreover, her name was often mentioned
in connection with the foundation of churches. Both Helenas may
possibly have become confused, which might explain why in the Middle
Ages the origin of the Helena-tradition at Trier is dated back to
the elder Helena. It may in fact have been the figure of the younger
Helena which lay at its roots. For this reason various medieval
vitae may attribute Helena's descent to an illustrious family in
Trier. Perhaps the younger Helena, about whose origin nothing is
mentioned in the sources, came from a rich and distinguished family
in Trier? Maybe Crispus, who resided in Trier from 316 onwards, had
met her in this northern capital. Her relatively ignoble descent --
the local aristocracy of Trier -- and hence her obscurity, could
clarify why, even while Crispus was still alive, the younger Helena
is not mentioned in the ancient historiography of the Constantinian
period.
[by]
Jan Willem Drijvers, Helena Augusta: the mother of Constantine the
Great and the legend of her finding the true cross (New York: E.J.
Brill, 1992), p. 28-29.
Trier's
cathedral, dedicated to St Peter, has a long history which
ultimately reaches back to the time of Constantine. Our mediaeval
sources report that Helena donated her "house" in Trier,
so that it might become a church, and that Bishop Agritius of Trier
dedicated this church. The mediaeval sources which offer this
statement are generally not very reliable, and it is known that the
cathedral was not completed until many years after Helena had left
Trier and also some years after Bishop Agritius had died. It is not
surprising, therefore, that in the past scholars have denied that
Helena had anything to do with the beginnings of Trier's cathedral.
But archaeological excavations underneath the nave of the cathedral
in 1945-6 and again in 1965-8 have dramatically changed that view.
These excavations revealed a room, measuring c. 10 x 7 m, which had
been built after 316, but was torn down after 330. The location, the
date of construction and the quality of the decorations have
persuaded investigators that this room was once part of the imperial
residence, "Helena's house" and that it was taken down to
make room for the Constantinian church. The painted ceiling of the
room was found in situ but in thousands of fragments. The fifteen
panels which made up this ceiling have been painstakingly restored
and are exhibited in Trier's diocesan museum. Four of these fifteen
panels depict richly dressed and bejewelled ladies, who represent
either members of the imperial family or allegorical figures. If the
former interpretation be right, the four ladies would be
Constantine's mother Helena, his wife Fausta, his half-sister
Constantia, and the wife of his son Crispus, also named Helena. This
writer is persuaded that the latter interpretation is the correct
one.
[door]
Hans A. Pohlsander, The Emperor Constantine (New York: Routledge,
1996), pp. 17-18.
28
oktober 2016
Interpretations of the frescoes
in Trier
The
interpretation of the frescoes is still a matter of debate. The
frequent use of the colour purple seems to indicate that the
portraits represent imperial figures. This is true especially of the
ladies depicted. Unlike the men, all four women are shown with a
nimbus and with costly attributes. Some scholars have identified
these women as members of the Constantinian family, symbolising the
prosperity of the dynasty. Others do not believe that the portraits
should be identified with historical figures, but should rather be
considered allegorical representations.
When
only a few panels had been found and reconstructed, A. Alföldi
interpreted the frescoes as an expression of the imperial laetitia,
gaudium and hilaritas. He identified the woman holding the jewel-box
as Helena representing the hilaritas populi Romani, and the putti on
either side as expressions of the gaudium and laetilia which
Constantine's reign had brought to the world. M.R. Alföldi
agrees with this interpretation and with the identification of the
woman with the jewel-box as Helena. But on the basis of the
depiction of attributes like the cornucopia and veils, she thinks
that the frescoes refer to a marriage. According to W.N. Schumacher
the frescoes not only picture the women of the imperial family but
also in an allegorical way refer to a marriage.
The
marriage in question must have been that of Crispus and Helena the
younger, which took place in c. 321. The frescoes decorated the
bedroom of this Helena. The woman with the kantharos in the centre
of the ceiling Schumacher identifies as the younger Helena.
Nowadays
most scholars-those at any rate who think that the women represent
imperial figures-believe that the young woman with the lyre is
Crispus' wife. Unfortunately, it was this very fresco which had to
undergo large-scale reconstruction. The woman holding the jewel-box
is identified as Constantia, Constantine's half-sister and the wife
of Licinius; the woman holding the mirror is supposed to be Fausta,
Constantine's wife, and the woman with the kantharos is thought to
be Helena, mother of Constantine. Other scholars do not accept that
these frescoes should be identified with the women of the imperial
family. A strong argument is presented by H. Brandenburg. He
believes that there can be no question of the depiction of imperial
ladies, because the depicted men definitely do not belong to the
Constantinian dynasty. The portraits of the ladies should be
interpreted as personifications of the prosperity of the age and the
happiness of life. Others think that the portraits are allegories of
the various seasons, or that they personify Sapientia, Pulchritudo,
Iuventus and Salus.
28
oktober 2016
Trier
Under
the rule of Constantine the Great (306–337), the city was
rebuilt and buildings such as the Palastaula (known today as the
Constantine Basilica) and the Imperial Baths (Kaiserthermen), the
largest surviving Roman baths outside Rome, were begun under
Constantius and completed c. 314 constructed by his son Constantine,
who left Trier in the hands of his son Crispus. In 326, sections of
the imperial family's private residential palaces were extended and
converted to a large double basilica, the remains of which are still
partly recognisable in the area of the Trier Cathedral (Trierer Dom)
and the church "Liebfrauenkirche". A demolished imperial
palace has left shattered sections of painted ceiling, which
scholars believe once belonged to Constantine's young wife, Fausta,
whom he later put to death.
From
318 onwards, Trier was the seat of the Gallic prefecture (the
Praefectus Praetorio Galliarium), one of
the two highest authorities in the Western Roman Empire, which
governed the western Roman provinces from Morocco to Britain.
Constantine's son Constantius II resided here from 328 to 340.
15
november 2016 Minerva and Medusa
Olim
Medusa, puella pulchra, in terra obscura habitabat ubi neque sol
neque luna apparebat. Terra obscura puellae grata non erat. Medusa
igitur Minervam adoravit.
"Dea
sapientiae, audi me," puella misera oravit. "Juva me!
Terra obscura, ubi habito, mihi grata non est. Pulchra sum; pulchram
comam atque faciem pulchram habeo. Nemo autem in terra obscura me
videre potest. Desidero in terra clara habitare."
Dea
autem Medusam juvare recusavit. Tum puella irata Minervae dixit,
"Invidiosa es quod tam pulchra sum! Populum me videre non
desideras!"
Tum
dea irata pulchram comam puellae mutavit.
"Tu
fuisti superba propter comam pulchram atque faciem pulchram. Ego
comam tuam in serpentes mutavi," dea dixit irata. "Non jam
tua coma erit pulchra. Tua facies erit pulchra, sed nemo te spectare
poterit. In saxa tua facies viros mutabit."
Minerva and Medusa (Translation)
Once
upon a time Medusa, a beautiful girl, was living on dark land where
neither the sun nor the moon appeared. The dark land was not
pleasing to the girl. Therefore Medusa adored Minerva.
"Goddess
of wisdom, hear me," the miserable girl begged. "Help me!
The dark land, in which I have lived, is not pleasing to me. I am
beautiful; I have beautiful hair and a beautiful face. No one
however is able to see me on the dark land. I want to live on bright
land."
However
the goddess refused to help Medusa. Then the angry girl said to
Minerva, "You are jealous because I am so pretty! The people do
not want you to see me!"
Then
the angry goddess changed the beautiful hair of the girl.
"You
were arrogant because of beautiful hair and a beautiful face. I
changed your hair into serpents," said the angry goddess. Your
hair will no longer be beautiful. You will be made beautiful, but no
one will be able to see you. You will make men change into stone."
Commentary
Throughout
this passage, the genitive case is used quite often. For example,
the genitive of description is shown in the phrase, "dea
sapientiae" meaning the goddess of wisdom. In addition, the
imperative is utilized as well when Medusa addressed Minerva. This
is an instance where the imperative is present: "Juva me!"
Starting from line five to line six, a form of repetition - parallel
structure is shown by the recurrence of the adjective "pulchra"
and the accusative case. This line proves to be significant because
of the way Medusa praises her own beauty, causing Minerva to become
irritated.
25
oktober 2016 In Troje offert Alexander aan Minerva, zoals
we kunnen lezen bij Plutarchus:
Τοιαύτῃ
μὲν οὖν ὁρμῇ καὶ
παρασκευῇ
διανοίας τὸν
Ἑλλήσποντον
διεπέρασεν.
ἀναβὰς δ’ εἰς
Ἴλιον, ἔθυσε
τῇ Ἀθηνᾷ καὶ
τοῖς ἥρωσιν
ἔσπεισε. τὴν
δ’ Ἀχιλλέως
στήλην ἀλειψάμενος
λίπα, καὶ μετὰ
τῶν ἑταίρων
συναναδραμὼν
γυμνὸς ὥσπερ
ἔθος ἐστίν,
ἐστεφάνωσε,
μακαρίσας αὐτὸν
ὅτι καὶ ζῶν φίλου
πιστοῦ καὶ
τελευτήσας
μεγάλου κήρυκος
ἔτυχεν. ἐν δὲ
τῷ περιϊέναι
καὶ θεᾶσθαι
τὰ κατὰ τὴν πόλιν
ἐρομένου τινὸς
αὐτόν, εἰ βούλεται
τὴν Ἀλεξάνδρου
λύραν ἰδεῖν,
ἐλάχιστα φροντίζειν
ἐκείνης ἔφη,
τὴν δ’ Ἀχιλλέως
ζητεῖν, ᾗ τὰ κλέα
καὶ τὰς πράξεις
ὕμνει τῶν ἀγαθῶν
ἀνδρῶν ἐκεῖνος.
With
such vigorous resolutions, and his mind thus disposed, he passed the
Hellespont, and at Troy sacrificed to Minerva, and honoured the
memory of the heroes who were buried there, with solemn libations;
especially Achilles, whose gravestone he anointed, and with his
friends, as the ancient custom is, ran naked about his sepulchre,
and crowned it with garlands, declaring how happy he esteemed him,
in having while he lived so faithful a friend, and when he was dead,
so famous a poet to proclaim his actions. While he was viewing the
rest of the antiquities and curiosities of the place, being told he
might see Paris's harp, if he pleased, he said he thought it not
worth looking on, but he should be glad to see that of Achilles, to
which he used to sing the glories and great actions of brave men.
Discoveries
in Millingen
July
3, 1845 - From Nijmegen, a report of July 1st reads:
"The
archaeological excavations in the Holledoorn, near Groesbeek, have
led to an important discovery this month. Close to the spot where
the tile with Latin cursive inscription was found last year, and
where, during the planting of trees, old masonry was encountered,
meticulous excavations were now carried out. These resulted in,
among other things, the discovery of an almost complete Roman
hypocaust (subterranean fireplace and heating system), possibly
belonging to the bathroom of a large villa. The cleared foundations,
which have only now become fully visible, present a striking sight.
They form an oval 6.50 yds long, 5.25 yds high, and 2.80 yds deep."
Running along its length, from east to west, is a subterranean
passageway, vaulted by ten round arches and so wide that two people
of average height can easily walk through it side by side. The
arches of this passageway or vault are separated by cleverly
constructed brickwork spaces of 0.25 cubits in average width, which,
like the interior of the vault and the passageway, bear traces of
intense fire heat, smoke, and soot. The vault and the interstices
are floored with square tiles, on top of which hard-burned earth
mixed with pebbles follows. A layer of square tiles finally
completes the whole, in such a way that the tiles and the burnt
earth above the interstices are here and there provided with
elaborately crafted openings, which have allowed the heat from the
subterranean passage to pass vertically upwards, down to the ground
floor of the chamber. South and east of the hypocaust, new wall
fragments are continually discovered from time to time, the exposing
of which, however, is encountering great difficulty due to the
hardness of the rubble and the abundance of tree roots present
there. Among the numerous legion stones found were also some from
the XXXth legion, from which one can conclude that the discovered
hypocaust predates the time of Trajan, since the aforementioned
legion later adopted the name Ulpia Trajana, after this Emperor.
June
8, 1846 NIJMEGEN, June 5. The archaeological excavations, hich were
again carried out this year in nearby Holledoorn, municipality of
Groesbeek, by Dr. Janssen, curator at the National Museum of
Antiquities, at the behest of the high authorities, have, as we
understand it, once again yielded important results. Not far from
the site where, last year, the same scholar discovered Roman outars
with inscriptions, hypocausts, and other structures, a rare
as-yet-unknown stone has now been discovered, at a depth of 0.75
meters, under hard rubble. A well-preserved Roman aqueduct was
discovered, now stripped 12 cubits long. It runs north to south and
was apparently connected to the structures discovered last year. It
consists of round pipes of red baked clay, measuring 0.44 to 0.54
cubits in length and 0.2 cubits in diameter, tightly packed together
between solid clay bricks; they are supported on the sides by Roman
tile fragments. Judging by the inscriptions found on these tile
fragments, the aqueduct cannot have been constructed before the time
of the Antonines.
July
13, 1846 MILLINGEN (near NIJMEGEN) July 6
On
July 2, during the excavation of soil to reinforce the dike, a corn
mill was discovered in the Millingen municipality, just outside the
dike, just downstream, opposite the point where the dike separated
from Rhine and Waal, found at a depth of about half a yard in the
ground, a chest with a loose lid, made entirely of dufa, which is of
rough construction. Inside the chest were only a few burnt bones in
small pieces, a little ash, and an irregularly round ball, also made
of dufa, with a diameter of about 5 Dutch inches. Also found
scattered in the ground around the chest were: 1. Four light yellow
earthenware jars, narrow at the top and bottom and very wide in the
middle, with handles. Two of these were broken during excavation,
while one contained a substance resembling ash. 2. A very
old-fashioned small jug, also narrow at the top and bottom and wide
in the middle. 3. Five red earthenware dishes of various sizes, two
of which bear the inscription "Vanrodia." 4. Another black
earthenware dish of greater weight and size. 5o. A copper coin, on
which the coat of arms or inscription is no longer discernible. 6o.
A small piece of iron, worked in an old-fashioned way. All these
pieces appear to be very old.
The
origins and all suggest that they are of Roman origin. Both here and
elsewhere, great value is attached to such antiquities, for which
reason anything further of this nature will be carefully preserved.
July
22, 1846 Leiden, July 14, 1846.
Your
Honor!
In
your newspaper of the 13th of this month, a report appears from
Millingen, near Nijmegen, dated last 6th, about a tuff stone chest
and other objects found there. It is stated that all these pieces
suggest they are of Roman origin, and that two of the saucers found
bear the inscription VANRODIA. Since I have meticulously recorded
everything found on site, it will perhaps not be indifferent to some
reader of your newspaper to learn that the objects excavated in
Millingen on the 2nd of this month are definitely of Roman origin;
that the tuff stone coffin is a coffin containing the cremated bones
and ashes of the deceased, and that two terra sigillata saucers bear
not the inscription VANRODIA, but the stamp of the pottery maker
VICTORINUS.
Giving
Your Honor the freedom to use this information as you see fit, I
have the honor to subscribe.
Your
Honor,
L.
J. F. JANSSEN,
Curator
at the Museum of Antiquities.
December
12, 1846 DISCOVERY OF ROMAN ANTIQUITIES IN MILLINGEN (ABOVE
NIJMEGEN).
Recently,
reports have been read in some newspapers regarding Roman
antiquities discovered this summer in Millingen during the raising
of the dike; see b. The Utrechtsche Courant of July 13th and 22nd
last. A local investigation convinced me both of the incompleteness
and deficiencies of these reports and of the importance of the
discovery itself. Therefore, since this matter has once been
discussed in public newspapers, I feel compelled to offer the public
a better report on the matter; I reserve the right to a more
detailed and scientific treatment in a subsequent volume of
Antiquities. Such an improved report will be considered all the less
inappropriate because, since the initial discovery, several other
objects have been excavated at the same location, none of which have
been publicly reported. I am particularly well-placed to do so
thanks to a favorable arrangement: Mr. TERWINDT, mayor of the town,
with the permission of Mr. COLENBRANDER, Lord of Millingen, has
donated all the findings to me as a gift for the Museum of
Antiquities. so that it could be examined and assessed by me in the
smallest detail here in the museum.
Half
an hour west of Millingen Church, on the aforementioned occasion,
some Roman remains were found in the meadowland on July 2nd. This
land is owned by the municipality and forms part of a large meadow,
situated a yard higher than the adjacent land. The latter is
particularly noteworthy because it suggests that this land was less
susceptible to flooding in the past, and the remains were therefore
more protected from destruction; also because this gives rise to the
suspicion that further excavation would reveal even more. After
excavating the earth to a depth of over a cubit, Roman artifacts
were discovered, arranged in an oblong square over an area of 25
to 30 cubits, mixed with burnt charcoal and ash, the remains of a
significant combustion. The objects, with the exception of a tuff
coffin, were largely from domestic life, and the entire collection
unequivocally demonstrated that the discovery belonged to a burial
site. The tuff coffin, oblong and square in shape and of relatively
rough workmanship, was fitted with a lid that sloped gently on four
sides. With the lid, it measured 0.41 meters in height, 0.75 meters
in length, and 0.45 meters in width. It had nothing remarkable other
than a projecting ledge on one of its narrow sides, onto which the
lid rested, and in the center of which a star was carved, indicating
how the lid should be placed on the coffin. Inside the coffin were
household items and the burned bones of an adult human being. I was
no longer able to accurately specify which household items were
found inside and which outside the coffin; however, among the items
found there were certainly a few terra sigillata dishes and a few
white pipe clay jars. The objects found then, and during later
excavations at the same site, are as follows:
Made
of baked earth:
1.
three small terra sigillata dishes, two of which bear the mark of
the manufacturer VICTORINVS, and the third CRVMMVIF, i.e., the
factory of CRUMMUUS or CAJUS RUMMUUS; also fragments of seven or
eight similar dishes;
2.
a small gray, hard-baked earth dish, plus
Fragments
of four or more similar ones;
3.
Part of a large mixing bowl, made of terra sigillata, decorated
externally with foliage;
4.
Part of an offering bowl made of light-red, roughly worked earth;
5.
Pear-shaped vase made of fine red earth, painted brown and ribbed
around the belly; as well as fragments of two similar ones, perhaps
used for scented ointments or oils;
6.
Remains of about twenty pots, generally roughly worked, hard-fired,
and yellow, red, gray, and black in color. Based on their shape,
they belong to the storage vessels, for liquids or edibles, and are
primarily known as mortuary urns, because similar pots were usually
used to store the cremated remains of the deceased;
7.
Small drinking bowl made of terra sigillata, the bottom of which is
roughly scratched with a pointed tool; IUL VICT, i.e., JULIUS
VICTOR, the name of its owner or user.
It
is important to note here that a master potter (magister figulorum),
on a rare outlier on Vesta, excavated in Holledoorn, near Nijmegen,
under my supervision in 1845 and now in the museum here, bears
precisely the same name; see Oudheidk. Mededeelingen, St. IV, Pl.
XI, I, p. 337 et seq. — Also a fragment of a similar bowl, and
one made of rougher earth;
8.
Two water jars made of white robes, paired and provided with a
single handle; as well as remains of ten or eleven similar ones; 9.
Fragment of a colossal wine vessel, or apparently of a wine jug;
10.
Three fragments of Roman tiles;
Of
glass:
11.
A beautiful spherical vase of light green glass, 0.11 cubits high;
13.
Two scent or balm bottles of light green glass, such as were
formerly considered tear bottles, 0.14 to 0.15 cubits high; these
still contained an ancient foreign substance, the chemical analysis
of which is the preoccupation of one of our most competent chemists;
13.
Part of a balm or oil bottle of light green glass and square;
14.
Fragments of a beautiful light green bottle, with a long neck and
ribbed belly;
15.
Fragments of a round jar of white glass with two handles;
Made
of stone:
16.
Seven roughly worked balls (apparently sling balls), made of
Andernach trass, measuring 2 to 5 inches in diameter; as well as a
rough chunk of red sandstone.
Made
of metal:
17.
Several pieces of oblong, flat iron, 3 to 4 inches wide, in which
nails have been hammered at regular intervals, apparently
representing bands of wooden barrels, wells, buckets, or the like;
18.
A round plate of a yellow copper cloak hook (fibula), on which the
bust of a Roman emperor, adorned with a radiate crown, is stamped.
The image is very worn, but according to the unanimous opinion of
three mint experts, it could be that of Postumus (258–267 AD);
19.
A completely worn copper coin, 1st size;
Finally,
three horse molars.
Whether
all this is the burial of one or more individuals must be left open,
due to the lack of larger local excavations and accurate reports
from those who found the objects. However, both the coffin and the
objects of luxury reveal that this was the burial place of a
prominent Roman, on whose pyre, according to custom, incense was
poured, at whose grave sacrifices to the spirits (manes) were
performed, and the funeral supper was likely celebrated; the latter
being particularly suggested by the many broken bowls and pots found
there. The name of JULIUS VICTOR, on a small bowl, might suggest
that it was the burial place of the aforementioned chief potter of
that name, or one of his relatives; with which the suspicion that
the found objects, according to the aforementioned fibula, belong to
the time of POSTUMUS would not be particularly contradictory,
because the discovered outtar of JULIUS VICTOR could belong to that
same period. However, we should not attach too much importance to
this, because at Millingen, according to the inscription on a Roman
memorial stone found there earlier, now in the museum of antiquities
here, a burial place of a notable Roman woman or girl must be
sought. That inscription (which was first accurately published in my
Mus. Lugd. Bat. Inscriptiones Graec. et Lat. Tab. XIIII I, cf. p.
89, and will be further explained in the more detailed description
of this discovery) teaches: that there was a sacred grove, in which
an outtar stood (in honour and memory) of RUFIA MATERNA, erected and
consecrated by (her mother) MUCRONIA MARCIA; that religious
activities would take place in this forest at three different times
of the year, namely in February, at the time of the general Roman
festival of the dead; on July 15 (probably the day of death)
(g
of MATERNA, or the day on which the forest and the altar were
consecrated), and in October, on MATERNA's birthday; a custom that
would take place every year, i.e., as long as Roman power and Roman
law were honored at that location. The memorial could also date from
the aforementioned period. And who would blame anyone if they
suspected that among the aforementioned remains belonged to this
woman's grave?
Further
investigations at this location will, we hope, provide decisive
clarification in this regard. This hope is not entirely in vain; for
while writing the conclusion of this report, I received from the
kind hand of Mr. J. G. MAEIJER, pastor of Millingen, a communication
dated December 8th, stating: that very recently, not far from the
site where the object described here was found, three more sites
were discovered where fires were lit in ancient times, and on which
jars and bottles were found. These objects include a ribbed, fine
earthenware vase (as no. 5), a glass saucer, and a square glass
bottle (as no. 13), marked on the bottom with the factory letters:
CG
CP
Which
rare objects, through the favorable intervention of their former
owner and the honored owners, we hope will once again find a worthy
place in the Museum here. It goes without saying that this latest
discovery once again highlights the importance of Millingen in the
Roman period of our history, reinforces the suspicion that even more
remains hidden underground, and revives the prospect that further
research there will shed new light on both that cemetery and the
aforementioned remarkable memorial stone.
Leyden,
December
9, 1846. L. J. F. JANSSEN,
Conservator
at the Museum of Antiquities.
October
17, 1847, ROMAN ANTIQUITIES FOUND IN MILLINGEN (ABOVE NIJMEGEN).
Since
the last reports regarding Roman antiquities found in Millingen (see
Staats-Courant 1846, no. 297 and 1847, no. 84), the area where the
discovery was made has been explored at a relatively low water
level, and excavations have been carried out under my direction at
its highest points. These, in turn, yielded not insignificant
results and once again enriched the Museum of Antiquities with
several objects whose mention is certainly worthy of the attention
of Dutch antiquarians. Regarding the discovery site, it should also
be noted that it is located half an hour northwest of Millingen;
that the depth at which the objects were buried under the earth is
estimated to be 1.5 cubits (if one also considers the earth recently
excavated to raise the dike), and that the area within which the
objects are found is estimated to be 75 square cubits. Outside this
area, at least, nothing has been found thus far, after repeated
investigations; however, it is possible that remains were discovered
during excavations, especially on the north side of this site, in
the as yet unexcavated high meadow belonging to Mr. COLENBRANDER of
Zutphen. — I owe this more precise determination of the site
to investigations carried out on July 8th and 9th, using excavations
and pointed iron. The objects found on this occasion, combined with
those favorably preserved for the Museum by Mr. J. G. MAEIJER,
pastor, and TH. TERWINDT, mayor of Millingen, are (1):
Of
stone:
1.
Two roughly worked balls of Andernach trass, apparently sling balls,
5 to 7 inches in diameter. They are of the same type as those under
no. 16 of the Staats-Courant of 1846, no. 297.
Made
of baked earth.
*2.
A lamp, painted black or dark brown on the outside; the shape as,
for example, in my "Memorials," etc., Pl. XVII:6.
3.
A saucer of terra sigillata, inside marked with the manufacturer's
mark CVDILVN, i.e., Cudiluni or Cudilunis fecit. The same name can
also be found on a fragment of a similar saucer, excavated in
Rinderen, and brought back by me last year for the museum there; see
Staats-Courant 1847, no. 84. - Also fragments of a similar saucer.
4.
A saucer of coarse gray, and two saucers of yellow, fine earth. One
of these contained several small bones, which Dr. H. SCHLEGEL,
curator at the National Museum of Natural History here, had the
goodness to examine, and declared some to be the bones of a wild
boar, and others (due to their fragmentary condition)
unidentifiable. This discovery therefore also serves as evidence
that similar dishes can be mistaken for dinner plates. The latter
dish
The
small bowl has a diameter of 0.195, a height of 0.03 ell, and the
shape of, for example, Pl. XII:10 and XVIII:4 of the aforementioned
Memorials. - Also fragments of two similar dishes.
5.
A small bowl of terra sigillata; shape much like Memorials, Pl.
XII:7.
6.
A small bowl of coarse, gray earth, 0.86 high, 0.16 ell wide. Inside
it lay a fine and smooth milky quartz of 5 to 6 inches in diameter.
- Also fragments of two similar bowls.
7.
A small pot of fine yellow earth, externally decorated with
incisions and painted black; shape like Memorials, Pl. XVIII:3. -
Also fragments of two similar pots. 8. A pear-shaped vase of
light-red, fine clay, with five impressed grooves around the body
and a glossy black exterior. — This and no. 7 appear to have
been intended for storing oil or a fatty substance.
9.
A small jar of light-red, fine clay, with an ornate handle and
gilded on the outside, 0.25 cubits high. This rare object was
severely damaged during excavation. — Also found are fragments
of a small jar of the same clay, but painted externally as terra
sigillata;
10.
Six small jars of white pipe clay, with a handle and 0.175 to 0.285
cubits high; as well as fragments of a large jar of the same clay;
shape similar to, for example, Memorials, Pt. XII:8 and XVIII:17.
Among these jars are some that were previously found and preserved
by the aforementioned gentlemen in Millingen.
11.
Part of a white pipe clay beaker, shaped like a wine tumbler.
Furthermore, among the more than 20 different types of broken
pottery, are some fragments of an offering dish and a terra
sigillata bowl, decorated with relief foliage.
Of
glass:
12.
A light green saucer-shaped bowl, height 0.04 and diameter 0.09
ells. Compare Staats-Courant, 1846, no. 297.
13.
Fragments of two bowls like *12.
*14.
A square light green bottle with a flat handle and the letters CG
CP
in relief on the bottom, arranged in such a way that a letter is
located on each corner. The shape of the bottle is like, for
example, in my antiquity. Communications, n. III, pl. V. 2; height
0.21, width 0.11 ell. Compare Staats-Courant 1846, n°. 297.
Of
metal:
15.
An iron arrowhead, oxidized and damaged, but still 0.07 ell long.
16. Two iron nails.
*17.
A gold coin (tiers de sous d'or), probably of Emperor JUSTINIAN
(537-566), similar to a similar one by DE SAULCY, Monn. Byzant. Pl.
II, 4; on the obverse, the barbarically carved bust of the Emperor
with a difficult-to-read inscription; on the reverse, Victory,
holding a cross in his left hand and a wreath in his right, with the
inscription [VI]CTORIA AUGUSTORUM; in the excerpt CONOB (?)
I
cannot pass up this opportunity to share the results of the chemical
analysis of the substance contained in two glass bottles, which were
discovered last year at the same location and described in the
aforementioned Staats-Courant under number 12 as scent and balm
bottles.
Mr.
VAN DER BOON MESCH, professor of chemistry here, graciously
undertook this chemical analysis and has kindly permitted me to
publish the results he obtained in his own words. They read as
follows:
"Bottle
No. 1 (this bottle is convex at the bottom and 0.14 cubits long)
contained, besides some sand, very small pieces of shapeless baked
clay, a very small round tube, almost 1.5 lines in diameter and 1
line long, carbon dioxide, lime, and resin, and a small quantity of
a soft, brownish substance." composed of fat mixed with a small
amount of clay and bone ash. By treating it with ether, pure water,
hydrochloric acid, ammonia hydroxide, and hydrochloric acid,
potassium hydrate solution, and chlorammonium, chlorbanum, and
gypsum solutions, fat, carbon dioxide, lime, silica, alumina, and
phosphoric acid were separated from the substances present in this
vial, and resin was also separated from the tube.
"Vial
no. 2 (this is 0.16 meters long and approximately the same shape as
no. 504 letter H. of the Egyptian monuments in the Leiden Museum)
contained a grayish-white substance, firmly compressed, with a
broken white bone peg in the center. This grayish substance was
composed of fat, carbon dioxide, lime, clay, white lead, traces of
common salt, and bone ash. By treating it with ether, Water,
hydrochloric acid, ammonia hydroxide, sodium carbonate for the
blowpipe, nitric acid, silver oxide, ammonia solution, chlorbanium,
hydrochloric acid, gypsum solution, nitric acid, hydrogen sulfide
gas—grease, carbon dioxide, lime, alumina, silicic acid, lead
oxide, chlorine, and phosphoric acid were separated from it. These
constituents prove (this scholar concludes) that they are not scent
bottles, at least not if they were originally filled with the
aforementioned substances. Had they previously contained any
essential oil or natural balm, a portion would have remained as
resin. Most remarkable is that no. 2 as much lead white (carbon
dioxide, lead oxide, and lead oxide hydrant)."
The
broken bone pin discovered between the slipper is still two inches
long and two lines wide; it is fairly pointed at the intact end, but
must have been thicker at the broken end. One could consider it the
lower part of a hair needle or one of those needles that the
ancients used to dye eyebrows and eyelids black, and of which wooden
bronze needles are found among the Egyptian monuments of the Leiden
Museum of Antiquities, described by Dr. LEEMANS in the Catalogue
raisonné of those monuments, letter F, nos. 57 and 63; cf.
his communication on the dyes of the ancients and the dyeing of
eyelids and eyebrows, in the Algem. Konst en Letterbode 1847 nos.
33-34. Since it However, it is highly probable that our bone pin was
closely related to the material in which it was found. And that
material, according to chemical analysis, has proven not to be the
same as that used by the ancients to dye eyebrows and eyelids. On
the contrary, a great deal of lead white was found in that material,
which is a component of what is actually called face paint. One
would be inclined to consider this bone pin a fragment of a face
paint spade and the bottles, or at least one of them, face paint
bottles. Thus, it would follow from the arguments presented that
these two seemingly insignificant Millingen objects provided a new
contribution to Roman cosmetology, and also proof that similar
bottles, previously mistaken for tear bottles, were later too
generally labeled as perfume and balm bottles.
The
Curator of the Archaeological Cabinet at Leyden,
L.
J. F. JANSSEN.
(1)
The last-mentioned objects (two of which are noted at the end of my
report in the Staats-Courant of 1846, no. 297) are marked with a *
in this report.
Regarding
inscriptions and excavations in the Rhineland:
January
1, 1867 Corpus inscriptionum Rhenanarum
See
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken1/gview?query=holledoorn&coll=boeken1&page=1&maxperpage=40&identifier=Kv1RAAAAcAAJ
Number
129
DEAE
DOMINAE RVFIAE
mATERNAE
ARAM ER
ivCVM
CONSACRAVIT
MVCRONIA
MARCIA
vBI
OMNIBUS ANNS SACRUM
INSTITVIT
XVI K AVG
eT
NATAL MATAERNAE F S?AT
vc
]N OCTOB ET PARENTAI
\K
MARTAS RVFIS SIMIL ;
mATRI
ET SIMILI G ET
MATERNAI
January
1, 1870 Die römischen Alterthümer von Düffelward
May
8, 2017 Website of the National Museum of Antiquities reports about
the coin:
Byzantine
coin from Rhenen; silver; Justinian; 555-565 AD
De
familie Theelen in Neer, Asselt en Swalmen
17
augustus 1275 ASSELT - Gegevens inzake de vaststelling van de
grensscheiding tussen Roermond, Asselt, Swalmen en Beesel enerzijds,
en Wessem, Beegden, Haelen, Horn, Buggenum en Neer anderzijds, met
toestemming van graaf Reinoud [I] van Gelder.
“In
nomine domini amen, judex et scabini de Ruremonde, totaque
communitas de Assel, de Swalmen et de Beesel ab una parte nec non
judex et scabini de Wessem, de Beegde, de Halen, de Horne, de
Buggenem et de Nere, ex altera vero parte, universis et singulis, ad
quos pntes litera pervenient salutem, et cognoscere veritatem:
quoniam status hominis fragilis est, et humana men labilil, cautum
est solertia, quatenus ea quae posterius sunt pronuncianda, scripti
testimonio roborentur, idesque noverint tam praesentes quam futuri,
quod nos nostri cum antiquioribus hominibus ambarum terrarum
praedictarum, generaliter mediantibus, voluntate, justu et consensus
illustris principis magnifici et potentis domini, domini Reijnoldi
comitis Gelriae et Zutphaniae, et nobilis viri domini Wilhelmi de
Horne nrorum, dominorum carissimorum, officiatorumque eorrundem,
praecepti inducti eramus moti et coaiti super unam demonstrationem,
arconduitionem, palationem et limitationem quae vulgariter dictae
sunt bewijsinge, beleijdinge, selinge ende neijninge, de limite vel
via juxta Mosam de Assel, dictam den lijnpade van der Masen, quam
limitem seu viam dictam, dominus Rutgerus de Assel miles, a nobili
viro domino de Horne tenet in feodo, cum omnibus jus attinentijs et
condependentijs, videlicet omni supremo dominio, cum judicio terra
et Mosa in ambobus lateribus, atqua ripis Mosa infra limitem vel
viam dictam den lijnpad, cum piscatura in Mosa, in ambobus lateribus
et ripis, cis at citra Mosam, nec non cum agris et accrescentijs in
loco dicto den Tolle prout omnia ista jam recitata/in simul ab
antiquo jacentia sunt et sita inter locum vel terminum, dictum der
Schalen vel der Lingen, supra Assel, et inter dimidium ampnim in
Haenssem, inferius infra palos et divisionem infrascriptos, qui
limes vel via dicta die Lijnpade seu bona feodalia superius tacta,
cum omni supremo dominio et judicis in terra et Mosa, cum thelorico,
nec non cum piscatura, antiqua consuetudine, adventione, palatione
et distinctione praedictae limitit seu feodi omnibus suis
pertinentijs coannexis, sicuti superius partim sunt declarata, et
prout inferius sufticienter specificabuntur, et ordinatum
distinguentur, cum omni et generali concordantia servorum ambarum
terrarum praedictarum, eorum, nostrorumque unanimi assensu et
consensu fuerunt, atque sunt circondicta et pertestificata, nec non
per eorum, qni nrorum, juramentor, tactis sacrosaratis, demonstratix
distinata, specificata, perpalata, palem en notoriae divisa et
segregata, et dominus Rutgerus praedictus, suique parentes et
antecessores ejusdem praefatum limitem, seu viam jam dictam bena
feodalia semper de senio ad senium successive obtinuerunt et
possederunt, in vexate ab aliquo, sed pacifice et quiete in omni
modo et forma juris, si..ti pns litera inferius seriatim exprimit,
eludicat et testator: primus palus et distinetis praedicta limitis
seu feodi, incipit supra Assel in loco dicto der Scalero vel des
Lingen palat, specificat et distinguit limitem vel viam dictam den
Lijnpat seu feodum in ambobus lateribus et rijxs a Mosa, lateque per
spacium sexaginta pedalium, super terramo, vel tam remote prout unus
vir stando cum uno pede in littore/Mosae, et cum vomere a rijsa
posterit super terrano proijcere, et ita condescendo in ambobus
lateribus et ripis praedictae Mosa, usque in dimidium ampnem in
Haensem in super est sciendum, quidquid minus juste et excessive in
hac limite seu feodi palis et distinctionibus praedictis, super
terrano et Mosam, cecederit, de homicidis, furto, aut de
quibuscumque excessibus, causis, casibus injustis, malitiosis et
fore factis a supremo dominis ad infinium pertinendo vel attinendo,
hoc idem dominus Rutgerus iudicabit tenquam dominis in palis et
distinctionibus praedictae limitis, seu feodi, coram suuis fidelibus
vel viris homagialbus domini de Horne, ab yoso ad hoc specialiter
vocandis et rogandis, discutiet et aequabit: quia dudem vidimus idem
dominus Rutgerus inferum Vuthoven, in limite super littus ipsus
Mosa, patibulum erigere feut et suspendit a suftocavit ibi furem
captum in palis et distinctionibus praedictae limitis. Ulterius
sisuit intranei vel extranei, ad venae, venditoreo, negotiatores,
vel naucleri, unde sun taut quo tendunt, vel unde veniunt in hanc
limitem vel in palos et distinctionis antedicti Mosa, unus ponens
cautionem potex alterius corpus aut bona arrestare, aggravare,
calumniari, jus petere et accesctare, alter vero ponens cautionem
seu fidejuscionem illico et sine mora, si ipsi plauvrit, posterit et
valebet cum judicio ab arrestatione se dissolvere jujustis causis et
calumnijs subdolis sibi illatis resistere, justa debita et recta
persolvere, contra injustas, iniquas et versutas calumnias dijurare,
duobus digitis tactis sacrofanctis prout juris est insimilibus furi,
et consuetum: quoniam/idem dominus Rutgerus in hac limite ex dominio
habet proprios sanctos quos de jue omnibus indigentibus et
postulantibus est porrigendus: etiam vidimus in hac limite stantem
argastulum cum eculio in quo ponebantur, vinculabantur et
conservabantur illi, qui cautelam nex fideijussores non habebant,
cum quibus causus, querimonias, excessus et sua forefacta poterant
federare seu artiorare. Praeterea omnia bona qui per hanc limitem
vel palos terminos ante dictos, in vel extra naves veluntur vel
moventur per gurgitem Mosa ascendentia vel descendentia, prout jus
et mos est, vel fuit ab antique thelonisantur et si preveherentur
non thelonisando, omnia bona prederentur, et in hac limite aliquae
naves merosae naviarentur, desnerentur, aut alique bona egerentur
seu si ... naves implerentur et merarentur vel aliqua bona
ingerentur, prius a theloniaris petendum ut licentiam, dando ei qua
drantem de onerando, dictum eijnen Lichtveerlinc, sed onerando
dictum eijnen Ladeveerlinc, sin autem qui faceret illicit de quq...
marc... cecideret in excessum. Insuper si in terminis hujus limitis
aliqua bona in vel extra naves velierentur et per ventum magnum ac
impetuosum, aut per auram turbulentam et intemperatam in fluitibis
et undis jactarentur, itaque nautae tunerent, seu desperarent
naufragari, max clamare poterunt et valebunt magnis vocibus
theloniariae, tene quadrantem posundo ipsam super proram navis vel
eijsciendo super terraro, et deonerarem eiscere, na..uare et se
defendere in quantum poterunt et valebunt sine aliquot excess, aut
malae/captione, sed tacendo, non clamando et vacuando, aut per
infortunim improvisibiliter submergendo, cadent in excessum quinque
marcarum. Ulterius sciendum est, quod piscatura in Mosa utroque
littore et ripa, us et citra incipit, procedit et terminat in istuis
limitis sui feodi palis, distinctionibus et circonductionibus
praedictis, in quo dominus Rutgeus, suique haeredes, aut istuis
limitis seu feodi conservator, aut familae, vel alius nomine
esrundem, cum omnibus instrumentis linguijs aut ret..., mediantibus
quibus piscari poterit pisces, valebit seu valebunt capere, loco
temporibusque requisitis, sui oportunis, in illis latere et ripa
Mosa, versus Assel, vel versus terram de Horne, super campum, un
utroque littore ejusdem Mosa, cum suis rethibus et sagenis, ex vel
eas immitendo, ducendo et extrahendo toties quoties indiqurunt, et
ipsis visum fuerit expedire, etiamsi infra palos, limites et
distinctions antedictos ab illa parte, lateris Mosa supra littus
ipsuis terra versus Assel vel versus terram de Horne lingnorum,
aliquae aurescentiae creverunt, fuerunt et orirentur ultra modum,
piscatores eorundem injicientes aut injecturisattrahentes aut
attractionis sua rethia et sagenas, intra vel extra Mosam, pro
piscibus caoiendis impediendo hac hi abiscero poterunt vellere et
detroncare, in tanta multitudine et quantitate sicuti ipsi, vel
ipsis ad hoc fuerit necessarium, atque opus, quorumlibet
contradictione non obstante, insuper omnes medijampnes vel
accrementa qui vel quae accreverunt input, aut advenerunt per modum
aurescentiae in futurum infra gurgitem/Mosa, hos et haec, idem
dominus Rutgerus, suique haeredes, aut conservator praedicti feodi
seu eorum familia, poterunt perpalare, distinqueres et specificare,
perplantare cum arboribus emunire, perstipare et persepire ad omnia
eorum commode, beneplacita, atque velle, illos aqualiter feodo
praetacto, tanquam sua propria bona possidendo. Etiam si jam dictae
aurescuntiae infra gurgitum praedictum orate et pullulatae
integraliter et indivisum ceciderunt latere ab illa parte Mosa,
versus Assel vel versus terram de Horne, has et quidquid his
occereverit et annexunt fuerit versus Mosam et per aurementum
inclinatum, omninus Rutgeru ptus aut sui haeredes possidebunt sicuti
feodum praedictum, et obtinebunt. Praeterea omnia aurementa, qui vel
quae accreverunt in pnti, aut ad venerint per modum accrescentiae in
future, terra arabili, jacenti in loco dicto den Toll ab illa parte
Mosae versus terram de Horne, vel ab illa parte Mosa versus Assel,
has et hoc idem dominus Rutgerus suique haeredes aut jam dicti feodi
conservator seu eorum familia, poterit perpalare, perplantare cum
arboribus, emunire et ixersepere, ad omnia eorum commode, atque
velle, illos, quam illa aequaliter feodo praetacto tanquam sua
propria bona possidendo. Insuper est sciendum, quod sialiqui
excessus, casus vel forefactae perpetrati, seu perpetrate in istuis
limitis seu feodi palis et distinctionibus praedictis ceciderunt,
quos vel quae idem dominus Rutgerus non poterit judicare nee exequi,
tunc dominus de/Horne, tanquam suis feodarius erit ejus adjutor,
judex et executor illos excessus, casus et forefacta judicando, et
so ille nequierit, ex tunc comes Lossen, tanquam suus feudarius,
erit quo adjutor, judex et excuitor, illos excessus, casus, et
forefacta judicandi, et si ille nequierit, ex tune comes Lossen,
tanquam sumnus feodominys erit ejus adjutot, judex et executor,
casus et forefacta exequendi, et judicandi. Hae extant
demonstrationes, circonductiones, palationes, limitationes,
discussions, distinctions, nec non probationes ab antique huc usque
comprobata, declarata, manifestata, singulatim distinctae et
specificatae, nec non jus hujus limitis et feodi praedicti, quas et
quod a nris antecessoribus vidimus semperm audivimus, et
intelleximus nris juramentis, tattis sacrosanctis, istud veraciter,
et pro vero protestantes, quod dominus Rutgerus praedictus, suique
praedecessores, successive de senio ad senium hanc saepedictam
limitem dictam den Lijnpat, seu feodum obtinuerunt et possederunt,
omnibus modis, et forma praeordinatis en caplicatis. In testimonium
veritatis omnum praemissorum, ex jussi, assensu, et consensus duorum
nrorum varissimorum praedictorum, es rumdemque officiatorum, nos
judices et scabini de Roremondae et de Wessem, nne siggila pro
nonis, et nris praesentibus literis duximus appendenda, et nos
Wilhelmus dominus de Horne et de ALtena ob majorem certitudinem
atque cautelam pramissorum omnium et singulorum, rogavimus et
rogamus illustrum prini..m domini Arnoldum comitem de Los et de
Ceijneij summum nostrum feodominum de limite et feodo praedicto et
magnificum ac potentem nobilem virum dominum Reijnoldum comitem
Geldriae, dominos nostros dilectos, ut ipsi omnibus
circonductionibus/palationibus, limitationibus, conditionibus ac
demonstrationibus superius lucide expression, consensum adhibeant,
et nihilominus testimonium perhibeant veritati, in omnibus et
singulis praemissis, nec non per sua transfixa pntes literas
roborent et conferment ut autun praemissa vata premaneant et
inconvulsa, et ad habendum memoriam rei gestae presens scriptum
sigilli nostril appensione una cum sigillis praedictorum scabinorum
communivimus, datum et actum anno dominica incarnationis millesimo
ducentesimo septuagesimo quinto, sexton decimo kalendr septembris.
Hinc instrument
adjunct sunt duo transfixa pendentibus sigillis, quorum prius sic
habet.
Univensis
presentis literas inspecturis, Arnoldus comes Lossensis et
Cynalensis salute in domini noveritis, quod nos omnes
demonstrationes, circonductiones, palationes, specificationis et
conditionis in literis praesentinus, quibus nostra presents literae
sunt affixae, contentas, factas, et ordinatas, ratas habemus et
firmas, ac eis nostrum impertimus assensum, et eas tanquam rite
factas, per nostrum transfixum pro nobis et nostris, in perpetuum
confirmamus in quorum omnium praemissorum evidens robur, et
testimonium nostrum sigillum, datum anno incarnationis dominica
millisimo ducentesimo septuagesimo quinto, sexto decimo kalendr
septembris.
Alterum autem
transfixum in haec verba protenditour.
Nos Reijnoldus
comes Gerlrensis salutem et omne conuni/noveritis quod nobis placet
et de nostro procedit consensus, voluntate et assensu, ut omnes
demonstrationes, circonductiones, distinctiones, specificationes et
conditiones presenti literae, cui praesens nostra litera est appenda
infringatae perpetuae maneant in omni suo robore illaesae
consistant, et vigore, prout inibi particularitur, susticenterque
declarantur, et ipsas tanquam ritefactas, qtum in nobis est, per
nostrum transfixum pro nobis et nostris, confirmamus, in cujus rei
testimonium presents literas fecimus sigilli nostril munimine
roborari, datum anno domini millesimo ducentesimo septuagesimo
quinto, sextodecimo kalend septembris.
Praesent copia
demonstrationum, circonductionum, distinctionum, specificaionum et
conditionum exscripta ex suo originali et cum eodem collationata,
concordat de verbo ad verbum idque tam ipsus instrumenti
principalis, quam transfixorum inibi mentionatorum, quibus in
unoversum quinque apponsa sunt siggila, duo viridis coloris, duo
mixti, et alterum rubric, quod ego infrasignatus manu propria
attestor, hac quinta mensis januarij xvjc vigesimo secundo.
Infra habebatur
Ita testor
signatum Jo.
Oliverius in Richello et pastor immeritus, notarius aplicus per
copiam
Inferius erat
Franciscus Sirout
notarius per consilium Brabantiae admissus, praescriptam cop.
iterato colla. testor ut praefertur cum originali concordare
sigillis que munitam esse, eodem die, mense et anno.”
14
maart 1521
"Gegeven
op onsen huyse to Eelssen in den jaer onss lieffe heren duysent
vijffhondert ind eynentwintich op donredach nae halffasten"
ELSLOO/NEER/ASSELT
- Johan van Vlodrop en Adriana van Merode verpachten de Boxweerd bij
Maaswijnaarden (‘Wienerte’) gelegen met ingang van 1
april voor een periode van twee jaar aan Jan van den Bergh, wonend
te Neer, voor jaarlijks 20 Hornse gulden. Tevens is afgesproken dat
oorkonders gedurende deze pachttermijn geen rente zullen geven
wegens de lening van 210 Hornse guldens die zij van Van den Bergh
hebben opgenomen wegens een vordering door de kinderen van wijlen
Seger Tessers. Na afloop van de termijn zal deze schuld alsnog
worden afgelost.
“Ich
Johan van Vlodorp ind Ariaen van Meroide, eluyde, bekennen oevermytz
desen apenen brieff dat wye uitgegeven hebben te pacht onsen weyrt
off grient gelegen tot Wynerden aen den breyen vleyck geheyten
Bocksweyrt twee jaer lanck ind ten halven tij aeff te staen weem des
niet en genuechden ende malckanderen dat ther gueder tijt eyn halff
jaer te vorrens op te seggen Jan van den Bergh wonende tot Neer ind
Jan sall onss alle jair geven ind waell betailen tot Pinxten
twintich besceiden Haersch gulden off twelff bescheyden Burgonisse
Brabantze stuver vur den gulden off bennen veerteen daighen dair nae
onbevanghen bennen der stat van Ruremunde dair onss dat believen
sall, ind Jan van den Bergh vurss. heefft onss geleent twe hondert
bescheiden Haersche postulaetz gulden ind theen dy in onsen groten
noeden ende merer schaiden te verhueden gekeert sijn aen Segher
Tessers zeleghen kinderen nae vermoegen syegell ind brieve van onsen
alderen sij op onss sprakende hebben ind zo ysset vurwert ind
bededinght dat wye Jannen van den Bergh vursch. van den tween
hondert Haerschen gulden egeyn lopend rent van geven en sullen ther
tijt toe ind all zo lange sijnen tijt de pechtingen omme is, het
were dan then halven off den ganssen tij als vursch. steyt. Ouch zo
ysset mit vurwert ende bededinght als Jans van den Bergh vursch.
tijt uit is under pechtinghe, dat ich dan Johan van Vlodorp ind
Ariaen van Meroede eluide vursch. off onse even dan gehalden sullen
sijn Johan van den Bergh of sijnen erven van stonden aen haem sijn
twe hondert Haersch gulden ind theen dy hee onss zo in onsen noeden
geleent hefft haem wederomme leggen ind betailen sullen tot haeren
benoigen tue. Ind in gevall dat off Got wyll nyt geschien en sall
dair inne gebreecklicken gevonden worden ende Jannen van den Bergh
vursch. off sijnen erven haer penninghen niet en betailden in maeten
als vursch. steyt, soe sall ind maich dan Jan offte sijne erven
dennen Bocksweert vursch. in sijnen handen halden, dennen nutten ind
gebruycken ende van der jairlick pechtinghen der twintich Haersch
gulden inhalden in aeffslaeghen der geleender penninghen der twe
hondert Haersch gulden ind theen vursch. ind onss niet dair van te
geven bis dy geleende penninghen geheellick betailt ind gegeven
sijn. Ind der tijt van der pechtinghen sall aengaen den yersten
daegh van den apryll. All argelist, loese vunde hyr inne genslicken
uitgescheiden, in orkonde dis ind der waerheyt soe hebben weyr Johan
van Vlodorp ind Ariaen van Meroede eluyde vursch. vur onss ind vur
onsen erven elck onsen siegell hyr aen gehanghen, ind hyr synt ouch
oever ind aen geweyst dair dese mytscap ind pechtinge geschiet is dy
eerbaren Tyll Porttens, Jan Ruytzen ind Katheryn op den Vrythoff.
Gegeven op onsen huyse to Eelssen in den jaer onss lieffe heren
duysent vijffhondert ind eynentwintich op donredach nae halffasten.
[Origineel
op perkament met zegels van de oorkonders.
Tilman
Portgens en Jan Ruitzen komen in andere akten voor als schepenen van
Swalmen en Asselt en treden hier mogelijk op als laten van de
laatbank van Asselt, waarvan Johan van Vlodrop eigenaar was.]
2
oktober 1612 RIJKEL - Hendrick van Cruchten oorkondt dat de
superintendant van de Rekenkamer en anderen op 30 augustus 1612 aan
hem een aanwas ('grindt') hebben verpacht, gelegen tegenover zijn
hof te Rickel onder Bezel, zoals deze daar gelegen is of in de
toekomst nog aanwassen mag. Hiervoor zal hij aan de Rekenkamer
(namens de hertog van Gelre) jaarlijks 45 stuiver Brabants betalen
van elk bunder 'holtgewas, groen off weybaer wesende'.
Van
Cruchten heeft zich op 26 oktober 1611 bij de Rekenkamer gemeld met
de mededeling dat hij van Andries Driessen, pastoor te Neer, de
pacht heeft overgenomen van 'twee grinden ofte middelsanden gelegen
in de Maese bij Bezel, die eene tegen die Kesselsche Haege onder die
Handtsommerbeeck, het andere wat hooger gelegen sijnde, tegens over
Deursdaels bossen oft sijnen hoff van Rickel'. Deze aanwassen waren
ca. 4 jaar geleden aan voornoemde pastoor verpacht voor 30 stuiver
Brabants voor een periode van 6 jaar. De aanwas tegenover de
Kesselse haege [waarschijnlijk de Mussenberg] is inmiddels geheel
weggespoeld; de andere is 2 jaar geleden eveneens door 'de hooge
wateren zeer affgespuelt ende innegeschuert, oock mette leste hooge
wateren daer naer zeer beschaedigt', vooral aan de Hornse zijde. Ook
deze aanwas dreigt door hoog water en ijsgang geheel weggespoeld te
worden, hetgeen echter kan worden voorkomen door de oevers te batten
(beschoeien). Omdat de boerderij van Van Cruchten tegenover deze
aanwas ligt, is deze genegen om de aanwas op zijn kosten te laten
'batten ende verscheren', mits hij deze tegen een redelijk bedrag
kan pachten. De Rekenkamer heeft de aanwas hierop, na advies van de
rentmeester van Montfort, Engel van Offenbeeck, bezichtigd en heeft
vastgesteld dat de aanwas met de stenen en zand nog geen bunder
groot is, en dat het 300 pond Arthois of meer zal kosten om deze te
batten en de 'putten ende riolen' die bij het laatste hoog water
zijn ontstaan, weer op te vullen.
Met
ingang van 30 augustus 1612 zal Van Cruchten de aanwas voor een
periode van 10 jaar zonder kosten mogen gebruiken, in ruil voor de
onkosten van het batten. Na het aflopen van deze termijn, te weten
op 30 augustus 1622, zal de aanwas op gezamenlijke kosten door een
beëdigd landmeter met de 'maete off roede van Bezel' gemeten
worden. Per bunder die bruikbaar is als 'holtgewas, groenselyck off
gersingen uytgesteken steen ende zandt' zal hij de eerder genoemde
45 stuiver Brabants betalen, 'teynde maete, teynde gelde', zolang de
aanwas zal bestaan. Elke 5 jaar zal een nieuwe meting worden gedaan
op gezamenlijke kosten en zal de pacht worden verhoogd of verlaagd.
Van Cruchten zal van de hertog geen kosten, schade of arbeidsloon
kunnen verhalen die hij maakt om de aanwas in stand te houden.
Tenslotte is op 30 augustus 1612 bepaald dat Van Cruchten een
reversaalbrief moet afgeven ten behoeve van de Rekenkamer, hetgeen
bij deze gebeurt.
Andreas
Driesen was pastoor te Neer 1598-1621 (mededeling Jan Hanssen, 31
december 2000). De plaatsnaam "Ne..er" is in de akte niet
goed leesbaar.
1
augustus 1668 SWALMEN - Verklaring inzake de heffing van tienden en
betreffende de (verdwenen) ronde toren van Hillenraad.
Johan
de Verwer, contrerolleur van Z.K.M. Licenten op de Maas, als
laatscholtis van de hof en heerlijkheid Asselt, bijgestaan door de
licentiaat Thomas Bordels namens de markiezin de Wargniers, Peter
Spee en Johan Obers, beide laatschepenen, en de secretaris Suiverich
alsmede de laatbode Tiel van Assel oorkonden dat zij zich
aanwezigheid van Geurt Quijten, pachter van voornoemde hof, hebben
vervoegd omtrent het huis Hillenraet, alwaar Gootsen Gerardts, oud
70 jaar en halfman op de Graetshoff, en Corst Stockmans, oud 50
jaar, hebben verklaard dat ze de tiende van de Asselterhof zo'n 40
jaar geleden in pacht hadden '... ende voorts aengewesen dese
naervolgende limiten derselbe thiende, als te weten, den ronden
thoorn des huis Hillenraet, den welcken alsnu affgebroken ende den
nieuwen sael op de plaetse getimmert is, wiesende op eenen dicken
alden eycken boom ontrent t'eynde van Cleutiens straetgen staende,
wijsende van daer op den thoorn des Graeffelijcken huys Hoorn tot
aen den Grip stuckens gelegen' in twee percelen groot samen 3
vierdel plaats, tegenwoordig toebehorend aan Johan Henskens en Ruth
Silkens 'als nichten ende neben kinderen'.
'Ende
van daer langs de landerijen totten huise Hillenraet ende
Beeckerhoff landerijen den Carthuiseren tot Ruermondt toecomende,
daer aff de thient int velt ter slincker hant gelegen toebehoort aen
den hoff t'Asselt ende soe voorts gaende tussen d'erff der
voorschreven heeren Cartuiseren ter eenre, langs den Meulenwegh
vuytschietende mit een spits punct bij den Hillenraeder wegh uyt,
ende ter andere sijden Gasthuys ende der eerwaerden heeren
Capittulaeren landerijen, alwaer de eerwaerde paters Cartuisers de
thiende op hunne landerijen sijn hebbende, ter rechter sijden, ende
op Gasthuis ende der eerwaerden heeren Capittulaeren landerijen ter
slincker hant den voorschreven hoff t'Asselt.
Item
over d'ander sijden van den Hillenraeder wegh ter slincker hant
hebben d'eerwaerden paters Carthuysers eenen geer lant van hunnen
anderen landerijen door den wegh affgescheiden, samen groot omtrent
seven morgen, op welck erff van den paters Carthuisers den thienden
toebehoort aen den heer pastoor tot Swalmen, des Schoollasters
Thiende genoemt, ende die meerreste der landerijen op de
slinckerhant liggende, thient den meergemelten hoff Assel van der
paters Carthuyser lant ter rechterhant soe voorts ter eenren ende
ter anderen sijden des voorschreven Gasthuys landt gehoordt den
thient vant Gasthuis lant aen den hoff t'Assel, ende van daer voorts
gaende tot op Goetsen Graets lant d'welck getient wordt bij den
z[alige]r pastoor tot Swalmen ende den heeren Carthuyseren, ende
t'ander lant der heeren Capittularen toebehoorende thient den hoff
t'Asselt tot op den Leijtgraeff toe, van den Leijtgraeff opgaende
langs de Tigelerije tot op de Spurck Hegge op den anderen hoeck van
den Laethwegh staende op den paters Cartuisers grondt, ende van daer
ter slincker hant langs het busken d'erffgenamen van Bijl tot Venlo
toebehoorende tot op Cartuisers kempken, welck kempken oick den
voorschreven heft thient tot aen joffer Dursdal Spickter, van daer
op den eickenstock aen Wittengraeff tot op den eyckenboom op den
graeff van den eerwaerden heeren Cappittularen hoeffs bomgardt bij
Graeterstraet staende ende soe voorts tot aent hort gatt van den
moeshoff tot op den doornen struyck aen Graterwegh tegens den
voorschreven eycken staeck op den Wittengraeff tient t'Cappittel
ende d'ander landerijen den voorschreven hoff'.
24
september 1669 SWALMEN EN ASSELT - Verklaring door enkele laten
verbonden aan de heerlijkheid Asselt over het belopen en in bezit
nemen van een aanwas in de Maas bij de Biesweerd.
“Wij
Johan de Verver, scholtis, Johan Obers, Nelis Janssen, Corst Peckx,
Corst Stockmans ende Peter Raemaekers, laeten des hoffs ende
heerlicheyt Assel, doen condt en attesteren hiermit en cracht deses
dat wij neffens den gerichtsschrijver en booden ter instantie van de
weledele en eerentrijcke jouff. Irmgardt van Holthuysen, weduwe
Dursdal, en haeren soon joncker Franciscus Arnoldus van Dursdal,
Marie Quyten, weduwe Van Holt, de weduwe Pueyn, Matthijs Stoffers,
soo voor hem selfs als mede voor Leonard Tessers, en Hendrick
Heijnen in naeme van sijne moedere Dirixken Bastiani weduwe Heijnen
saliger, ons alle saemen op den 24 septembris 1669 wederom hebben
getransporteert ende vervoegt onder Assel voorbij den Biesserweert
op sekeren aengeloopenen steen, alwaer wij oick op den 2 deses
loopenden maent sijn geweest, inhalts acte daervan sijnde, tegens
den welcken aengeloopen steen in den Biessen Baendt joncker Baexen
op de Baeckxhooff toebehoerende hebben gevonden Aretz halffman op de
eerw. patres Jesuiten Speck, Herman Spoerens, Jan Beeck, Jan
Ruytzen, Sill Paulssen, Herman Heeskens, joncker Baexens voorss.
knecht en Johan Haewinckel des gemelten joncker Baexens halfman, de
welcke siende dat men naer den voorss. aengelopen steen toegingh,
van daer stilswijgens vertrocken, ende op den steen gecommen sijnde,
hebben aldaer bevonden dat de rijser aldaer gesteken op den 2 7bris
tegens over joncker Baexens Biesenbaendt waren uutgetrocken, en
eenen stock van daer en ende so voorts leger vuyt mit andere risers
besteken, die welcke door last des heere scholtissen en
gerichtsluyden ter instantie van requiranten uutgetrocken ende int
waeter geworpen, sijnde door Tiel Tielen gerichtsbode de selve
plaetse wederom met andere rijseren besteken, ende voorts door Corst
Stockmans hebben laeten aftreden ende bevonden dat de Maese van den
selven steen noch vifftich treden afgeweeken was, so dat den selven
aengeloopen steen van de plaetse af van de welcke den steen
ierstmael afgetreden was, in’t geheel bevonden is woorden
langh te sijn hondert en 29 treden, en gemerckt die/voorss.
requiranten versochten van allen het gene voorss. hun gelijckfals
acte met gedeilt te worden, voor gebeurlich gerechticheyt, d’welck
men niet en heeft moegen verweygeren, soo ist dat wij dem ter warer
oirkondt de menute deses met eygene handen onderteekent hebben, den
heer jeder mallick sijn recht voorbehalden, alles sonder argelist,
actum Assel den 24 septembris 1669 ende was onderteekent J. de
Verver, dit tekenden [handmerk] Jan Obers, dit tekenden [afwijkend
handmerk] Nelis Janssen, dit teekenden [handmerk] Corst Specx, dit
tekenden [handmerk] Corst Stockmans, Peter Ramekers, ...drich
secretaris.”
13
mei 1697 SWALMEN - Voogdgeding.
"Voogdgedingh
gehouden binnen Swalmen onder den hagendoren den 13 may 1697.
Den
schepen Jan Janssen becroont dat de naebuyren van Asselt eenen
voethpatt maecken over sijn erve aen het Meelenbroeck, aen den Slack
tot aen de Maese, alwaer noeyt eenen voethpatt is geweest, versoeck
versieninghe.
Sr. Johannes
Rutsen in naeme van den eerwaerden PP Carthuijsers claeght dat de
naebuyren maecken eenen voethpatt aen hun erve, te weten van
Beeckerhoff wijer recht door het Broecxken, ende door het kempken
naer de Asselsche straete, daer noeyt voor desen eenen voetpaet is
geweest, versoeckt redemie.
Wordt d'eerwaerde
PP Carthuijsers belast alvooren gerichtelick te doen verhooren
eenighe oude persoonen, over de kennisse die sij over den voetpatt
in questie mochten hebben, om sulcx geschiedt voordert gedisponeert
te worden naer behooren, actum Swalmen den 14 may 1697.
De geswoorens
alhier in naeme van de naebuyren, claegen dat sij te seer overlast
worden met diensten, versoecken dat iedereen mitte peerden, daer hij
mit ackert, oock dienst sal doen.
De supplianten
sullen alvooren hierover requeste aen desen gerichte presenteren
ende daerinne te decuceren naerdere ende substantiële redenen,
om alsdan daerinne voorders te disponeren naer behooren, actum
Swalmen den 14 may 1697.
De geswoorens in
naeme van de gemeynte becroonen datter niet en wordt gehalden vahr,
bair, springhaingst, isere eeght, gelijck de besitters van de groote
thiende gehouden sijn te doen, welck niet en wordt geobserveert,
versoecken dar daerinne magh worden versien.
Wordt die groote
thienthebbers belast ten dienste van dese gemeynte te houden den
vahere, bair, springhainghts, isere eeght, ten waere sij hadden
eenige redenen ter contrarien waervan sij den gerichte sullen hebben
te verstendighen binnen 14 daegen, actum Swalmen den 14 may 1697.
De naebuyren van
de Bouckoul claegen datt neffens 't goet van Ruth in den Bonten Os,
gaet eenen gemeynen voetpat recht op den Leijgraef aen de
Horstbrugge, welcke brugge tegenwoordigh niet en is gemaeckt, nochte
geenen en is, dat door den heere capiteyn Everard wordt beleth,
waerdoor de passagie van de thientkarren wordt verhindert,
versoecken daerinne remedie.
Wordt de naebuyren
van de Bouckoul belast de Horstbrugge hierboven vermelt te leggen
ende deselve in't toecommende t'onderhalden, ende den heere capiteyn
Everard den voetpaett hierinne geroert te gedoogen volgens oudt
gebruyck, ten waere hij hadde redenen ter contrarien waervan hij den
gerichte sal verstendighen binnen 14 daegen, actum Swalmen den 14
may 1697.
Fr. Johannes
Rutsen in naeme van de eerwaerde Carthuijsers versoeck dat hun
behoorlicke thientwegen moegen worden aengewesen, soo op den Leucker
als tot Asselt aen den Boeckesstap, gelick oock aen den Heijcamp
aen't Luierken.
Wordt d'eerw. PP
Carthuijsers belast hierover t'exhiberen behoorlick bescheydt om
daerover te doen verhooren eenige oude persoonen daervan kennisse
hebbende, om alsdan daerin te versien, actum Swalmen den 14 may
1697.
De geswoorens
claegen datter geenen geswooren thiendenaer en is gestelt, waerdoor
de gemeynte grooten schaede compt te lijden, versoecken dat daerinne
magh worden versien.
Deselve becroonen
dat de schaepen van de Tichelereije door het Bouckoulder veldt
huyden, sonder daertoe gerechticht te sijn, als gevende geenen
beestenschatt, versoecken versieninghe.
Wordt
d'erffgenaemen van wijlen den heere gouverneur Bitot belast hunne
schaepen van de Tichelereije niet verders te doen drijven of weyden
als op hunne erven onder dese heerlickheydt gelegen, op pene dar sij
ieder reyse sullen wesen schutbaer, actum Swalmen den 14 may 1697.
Jacob Spee
claeght, datter door de naebuyren achter sijn huys eenen voetpatt
gemaeckt wordt, waertoe sij niet berechticht en sijn, versoecken
remedie.
De naeburen seggen
datter voor desen aen den Asselerhoff heeft gehangen een falderen,
vuttwijsens het vooghtgedingh van den jaere 1588, alwaer
tegenwoordigh geen en is, waerinne sij versoecken versieninghe.
Wordt den halffman
van den hoff tot Asselt belast de falderen boven aen het velt ende
aen de Linghe straete t'herstellen volgens oudt gebruyck binnen den
tijt van 14 daegen, actum Swalmen den 14 may 1697.
Den eerw. heere
pastoor claeght datter geenen voethpatt can gebruiyckt worden mits
geen fonderen over de beeck en is waer door hem de rechte passagie
wordt belet naer Asselt om te binneren, versoeckende daerinne
versieninghe.
Wordt …
[blanco]
Den selven heere
pastoor becroont dat de kerckebruggen niet behoorlick en sijn
gerepareert, versoeckt remedie.
Den selven pastoor
claeght dat de kerckhoffsmoeyr begint te vervallen, versoeckende dat
deselve magh worden gerepareert.
Denselven
versoeckt dat in't beleyt houden reflexie magh worden genoemen in't
kerckebroeck, overmits daerlanghs op veel plaetse wordt
affgedronghen.
De geswoorens
claegen dat in de beeck achter Beeckerhoff eenigh holtgewas op de
gemeynte gestaen hebbende, welck holtgewasch bij publycke kerckrogen
is bevrijdt geworden, is het selve dyenniettegenstaende door eenige
naebuyren sonder consent weghgehaelt, versoecken daerinne
versieninghe.
De geswoorens
versoecken dat de vischen op gemeyne waeteren alhier gevanghen
moegen worden aengegeven, voor ende aleer die te coop sullen worden
gebrocht, ende daertoe gestelt eene plaetse, op dat een ieder
daervan sijn gerief magh hebben.
De naebuyren van
de Boutenstraet claegen dat den voetpatt langhs de Swalm naer den
Noenhoff hun belet wordt, versoecken remedie.
De naebuyren van
de Bouckoul claegen dat Theel Theelen nu in sijne pachtjaeren niet
en soeckt te continueren in't betaelen van den loon van den
koygardt, gelick hij van te vooren in sijne halffwininge heeft
gedaen, versoecken daerinne versieninghe.
Wordt Theel
Theelen belast hem te reguleren naer het oudt gebruyck, actum
Swalmen den 14 may 1697."
16
februari 1701 SWALMEN - Lijst van geleden oorlogsschade.
“Lijste
vant’ghene die van Swalmen hebben moeten geven boven cost ende
dranck aen de twee compagnien ende den staff vant’regiment van
den heere Lutsbourg Beijersche gelogeert volgens ordre van den heere
grave van Horn gedateert den 7 februari 1701 ende gelogeert den 14
dito.
Ten
eersten opt’furieus aenhalden van den regiments
quartiermeester voor goede ordre te houden ende dreijghen van
s’anderen daeghs voor den middagh niet te willen optrecken
moeten geven dry pistoelen ad elf reixd. twee schellinghen 11
februari 0
Item
heeft den halfman op den aermenhoff boven cost ende dranck moeten
geven twelf schellinghen 1 april 0
Item
Henderich in de Carthuijsers bosch moeten geven eenen schellingh 0
januari 0
Item
Jan ende Paulus Slabbers als vooren gegeven 0 februari 0
Peter
Obers als vooren 0 januari 4
Hend.
Hocx 0 maart 0
Jacob
Gerardts 0 januari 4
Jan
van Haelen aen en fendrich gegeven 1 februari 0
Theel
Theelen 0 april 0
Sibert
Naus aen eenen sergeant moeten geven eenen halven verckenscop
Nelis
Clumpkens ende Corst Beeren 0 juli 0
Geutts
Pecx een halven verckenscop 0 mei 0
Lambert
Fredericx 0 juni 0
Krijn
Krijnnen 0 juni 0
Jan
Pecx 0 januari 4
Henderick
Pecx 0 maart 0
Janis
Janissen 0 maart 0
Geret
Severs 0 februari 0
Willem
Kermans 0 maart 0
Willem
Beeck aen eenen fenderick een schinck ende 2-0-0
Areth
Neermans 0 februari 0
Henderick
Coenen 0 januari 0
Heijn
Krijnen een schinck ende 0 februari 0
Jacob
Louwij 0 januari 0
Lendert
Theunissen een schinck 0 april 0
Willem
Crompvoets 0 januari 0
Willem
Janssen op gen Heij 0 januari 0
Jan
Lemmen 0 maart 0
Gerard
Bongarts 0 maart 0
Thijs
Theunissen 0 maart 0
Dries
Janssen aen eenen capiteij moeten geven een schinck
Areth
Smeets aen den oversten lieuenant een schinck
Nelis
Wijnen 0 maart 0
Lijsbet
Janssen 0 mei 0
Peter
Everts 0 januari 0
Geurt
Willems 0 februari 0
Areth
Heijnen 0 maart 0
Henderick
Bullers aen eenen fourier gegeven een schinck 0 februari 0
Jacobus
Crijnen 0 februari 0
Hans
Henderick 0 januari 4
Geurt
Coenen 0 juni 0
Lucia
Schrijvers 1-0-0
Peter
van Ool 0 april 0
Henderick
Slabbers den jongen 0 april 0
Derick
Zillen 0 januari 0
Niclaes
Gerardts 0 januari 4
Bij
Jan Fredericx gestoelen een paer niuwe schoonen ende een niuw hempt,
een schinck ende een half veerdel speck als wanneer sij hem mit
slaeghen ten huijse hebben vuytgeiaeght, te samen gereeckent op
2-0-0
Geret
Emets aen de regiments quartiermeester een schinck
Willem
Hendrick aen eenen sergeant moeten geven twee schincken
Geurt
Timmermans 0 juni 0
Jan
Vermeulen 1-0-0
Bij
Willem Coenen, alswanneer sij hem mit sijne huijsvrouwe ten huijse
hebben vuytgedreven, mit gewalt sijne kiste hebben opgebroecken ende
daer vuyt genomen alle sijn kleyn lijnwaet, een beddelaecken mit een
niuwe broeck
Jacob
Meuwissen aen den capiteijn moeten geven 5-0-0
Henderick
Slabbers aen eenen lieutenant moeten geven een schinck ende eenen
halven verckenscop ende 2 februari 0
Henderick
Spee aen eenen lieutenant moeten geven 6 reixdaelder ende twee
schincken
6-0-0
doende te saemen 47 februari 4
Item
daerenboven moeten geven door verscheyde persoonen 13 ongekockte
schincken ende 4 halve verckenshoefden mit ettelicke groote stucken
rindtvleesch
Dat
dese bovenstaende specificatie door de schepens ende geswoorens van
de bovengenoemde persoonen op manne waerheydt in plaetse van eede is
worden afgevraeght, wordt hiermede betuyght, actum Swalmen den 16
februari 1701.
Ter
ordonnantie [w.g.] G. Lubbers, secretaris”
14
juni 1729 SWALMEN - Voogdgeding: o.a. over turfsteken, schapen,
luiden van de klok, konijnen.
"Vooghtgedingh
gehouden tot Swalmen den 14 juny 1729 op den merckt aldaer.
De
geswoorens hebben clachtelijck te kennen gegeven dat sij onversien
sijn van beer, ver, sprinckhinxt ende ijsere egge, dewelcken moeten
gehouden worden door de groote thiendenaers, versoeckende dat
daerinne sal worden versien.
T'gericht
inhaereert de ordonnantiën op de voorige vooghtgedingen gegeve,
actum ut supra.
Deselve geswoorens
hebben mede claegende voorgebracht dat Sr. Postwijck onderstaet
torff vuyt Theelenbroecxken te vercoopen sonder dat hij Postwijck
borge ofte verseckeringe voor den eeuwigen schatt heeft gestelt,
versoeckende derhalven dat aen gemelten Postwijck sal worden belastt
geenen torff te vercoopen ten zije hij alvoorens verseckeringe voor
den eeuwigen schatt sal hebben gestelt.
T'gericht
ordonneert Sr. Postwijck borge ofte verseeckeringe voor den eeuwigen
schatt te stellen, interdicerende denselven tot daeraen eenigen
torff te vercoopen ofte te laeten stecken, actum ut supra.
Ter ordonnantie
van den gerichte,
[w.g.]
Theod. Timmermans
Deselve geswoorens
hebben geclaeght dat de scheepers mit hunne schaepen commen te
drijven over de cleyne ende enge wegen, waerdoor grooten schaede aen
de vruchten wordt gedaen, versoeckende dat den veltschutt magh
worden belast daerop exactelijck te invigileren ende de schepers
over de cleyne wegen mit hunne schaepen drijvende te panden.
Wordt aen de
scheepers belast mit hunne schaepen over geene cleyne smaele wegen
te drijven ende te weyden op pene van eenen halven goltgulden,
buyten den schaede die sij sullen hebben veroorsaeckt, ordonnerende
den veltschutt daerop exactelijck t'invigileren ende de scheepers te
panden, actum ut supra.
Deselve geswoorens
hebben oock clachtelijck te kennen gegeven dat de nabueren van de
kercke alhier soo negligent ende onachtsaem sijn, in luyden ende
trecken van de klocke tijde van donder ende onweder, versoeckende
dat daerinne magh worden voorsien.
Wordt de kercke
nabueren belast promptelijck de clocken te trecken ende te luyden
tijde van donder ende onweder, op pene van een kintier bier door een
ieder niet comparerende nabuer te verbeuren ende door de
comparerende nabueren gesaementlijck te verteeren, actum ut supra.
De nabueren hebben
claegende voorgebrocht dat door de meenighte van conijnen de
vruchten geheelijck worden bedorven, versoeckende daerinne noodige
voorsieninge.
T'gericht
committeert de borgemeesters alhier om den heere deser heerlickheydt
daerover te spreeken ende daeromtrent noodige voorsieninge te
beraemen. Actum ut supr
12
november 1739 SWALMEN - Begraven: Petrus op den Camp [weduwnaar van
Theodora Theelen, gehuwd Swalmen 26 oktober 1700, begraven aldaar 8
juli 1725; echtg. van Maria Heijnen, gehuwd Swalmen 7 juni 1736].
Tijdens
het voogdgeding van 1588 verklaarde Zill Kromvoets als oudste
schepen 'dat geine freyheyt van hoeffslach en sij inn diesen
gerichte, dan dat Hoppenrae, dat Gewijt unnd der Beijswert, behalven
het geene dat beweyslich vrij gegolden ist'.
Twee
akten uit september 1669 maken duidelijk dat toen nog steeds aanwas
plaatsvondt. Op verzoek van enkele eigenaren van land in de
Biesweerd trokken toen diverse laten van de laathof van Asselt naar
de Maas, alwaer wij altsaemen de Maese afwaerts gaende langhs den
hoogen en legen Biesenweert, aen ons verthoent is seekeren
aengeloopenen steen afwarts spits vuytschietende in de Maese
voorss., langhs den hoogen en legen Biessenweert ende soo voorts
langhs jonker Hans Willem van Baexens erff den Biessenweert Baendt
genoempt neffens denwelcken unstaen, ende der voorss. aengeloepen
steen noch eenen waetersloet is, sijnde de selven steen langhs
joncker Baexens erff aen tot in de Maese negenentseventich treden
lanck, yeder treeft van ontrent vier voeten, afgetreden door den
voorss. Corst Stockmans, denwelcken aengeloopen steen tussen den
watersloet ende Maese, die voorss. requiranten als erfgenamen van
den hoogen en legen Biessenweert ten overstaen van ons semptlijcke
gerichtspersoonen voorss. naeradvenant dat een yeder van hun daer
inne geerft ende berechticht is, te weeten in het aldt erff, in
reele ende actuele possessie hebben genoemen naer alder observantien
ende coustumen van rechten daer toe gerequireert als hebbende den
selven steen met wilghen rijseren besteken ende vervolgens daer op
wijn ende weyt genoten.
Drie
weken later werd dit ritueel nog eens min of meer herhaald. Daarbij
bevonden de laten dat de rijser aldaer gesteken op den 2 7bris
tegens over joncker Baexens Biesenbaendt waren uutgetrocken, en
eenen stock van daer en ende so voorts leger vuyt mit andere risers
besteken, die welcke door last des heere scholtissen en
gerichtsluyden ter instantie van requiranten uutgetrocken ende int
waeter geworpen, sijnde door Tiel Tielen gerichtsbode de selve
plaetse wederom met andere rijseren besteken, ende voorts door Corst
Stockmans hebben laeten aftreden ende bevonden dat de Maese van den
selven steen noch vifftich treden afgeweeken was, so dat den selven
aengeloopen steen van de plaetse af van de welcke den steen
ierstmael afgetreden was, in’t geheel bevonden is woorden
langh te sijn hondert en 29 trede.
Het
feit dat juist de laten van de Asselterhof werden opgetrommeld voor
deze gelegenheid heeft alles te maken met een akte uit 1275.
Landmeter
Smabers gaf in 1774 de Hooghen Biesweerth aan als perceel 1 op kaart
8, dat wil zeggen het meest zuidelijke gedeelte van de weerd. Voor
de landmeter, die de kaarten van Swalmen immers maakte in opdracht
van de gezamenlijke tiendheffers, was de Biesweerd een uitzondering.
Deze aanwas was namelijk sinds lange tijd verdeeld in negen
zogenaamde loten, die door verkoop en vererving soms waren
samengevoegd, maar ook soms nog verder waren gedeeld. Om
onduidelijke redenen was in het verleden afgesproken dat de
feitelijke ligging van de grond op basis van deze bezitsverdeling
jaarlijks zou wisselen, waardoor Smabers onmogelijk kon aangeven wie
nu eigenaar was van welk stukje van het grote perceel. Bij de
aangrenzende percelen, eigendom van respectievelijk Baxhof en
Hillenraad, waren de eigendomsverhoudingen duidelijk, maar ook bij
perceel 4, de Kleijn Biesweerth, kwam Smabers hetzelfde probleem
tegen.
In
1826 werd een gedeelte van de Biestert verkocht aan Paulus
Schiffers, 'grutte mulder' en burger van Roermond.
30
oktober 1772 De maasgouw, 15 januari 1903
De
erfmaking van Frans Arnold markgraaf van Hoensbroeck en van zijn
echtgenoote Maria Anna Sophia van Schönborn.
Medegedeeld
door P. Doppler.
Toen
Frans Arnold dos H. R. Ryks graaf en markgraaf van Hoensbroeck,
erfmaarschalk van het vorstendom Gelder en graafschap Zutphen, heer
der voogdijen des Nederambts Gelder, van Swalmen, Asselt,
Hillenraedt, Grubbenvorst, Blyenbeeck, Afferden en Ruynen, drossaard
der stad Gelder enz. (1) en zijne echtgenoote Maria Anna Sophia
geboren gravin van Schönborn, Buchheim en Wolfsthal (2)
overleden waren, werden hunne nagelaten goederen niet door hunne
kinderen onder elkander verdeeld. Doch "niet soo seer
betragtende dan de conservatie en voor soo veel doenelyck de
vermeerderinge van onsen Naam en Stamme, voorts den lustre van onse
familie van Hoensbroeck" hebben zij "mede ter intentie en
op hoog bevel" hunner ouders en voorouders zekere "pacta
familiae sive gentiletien" beraamd en 30 October 1772 gesloten,
waarbij de geheele nalatenschap hunner ouders tot een "vast
fidie commis" werd gemaakt.
Deze
overeenkomst vonden wij, ingeboekt in het gichtregister der
heerlijkheid Grubbenvorst over de jaren 1772-1797 November 18 n°
30.
In
artikel 2 dier overeenkomst wordt bepaald, dat die "fidie
commissaire" goederen bezeten en genoten zullen worden door den
oudsten markgraaf of stamheer hunner familie en door diens
wettelijke mannelijke opvolgers met uitsluiting van alle vrouwelijke
erfgenamen, onder bepaling jaarlijks aan de overige familieleden uit
de opbrengsten daarvan zekere uitkeeringen te doen, die in een paar
volgende artikelen zijn vastgesteld.
Al
die artikelen, ten getale van vijftien, hier in hun geheel te geven
zou te ver voeren; alleen laten wij hier het eerste artikel, waarin
al de goederen opgesomd worden en dat hoogst belangrijk is voor de
geschiedenis onzer provincie, en het tweede in hun geheel volgen.
De
contrahenten waren: L. F. M. de Hoensbroeck erfmaarschalk van het
hertogdom Gelder en graafschap Zutphen; Sophia Charlotta markgravin
van Hoensbroeck, geboren gravin von der Leyen Hohengerolseck; P. (1)
van en te Hoensbroek, dom-kapittelheer van Speyer, proost te
Emmerick, Aartsdiaken van Utrecht, geheimraad en regeerings
president van den keurvorst van Spiers; Leopold markgraaf van
Hoensbroeck, kanonik der domkerk te Spiers; J. F. M. D. Hoensbroeck,
kanonik van het domkapittel te Munster; Jozef markgraaf van
Hoensbroeck, kanonik der metropolitaankerk te Trier; Karel markgraaf
van Hoensbroeck, kanonik der metropolitaankerk van Trier en
kamerheer van den Keurvorst van Keulen.
"...
het slot en marquisaet van Hoensbroeck met de hooge, middele en
laage jurisdictie, jagten, visscherijen, bosschen, geld- en
korenrenten, tinsen, keurmoeden, vrijheden, pand- en weggeld,
wiemede de daertoe gehoorige bouwhoven, bannaal brouwhuys en
watermooien, tot dyen de overige daertoe gehoorige jaghthoven te
weeten: den hof Schwemmbruggen, den Nauenhof, den Aldenhof den hof
Lootbroeck, de helfte van den hof Eysden, den hof Linderen, den hoff
ter Weyer, den hof Eyck, den Weijhof, met alle de respectieve
daartoe gehoorige landerijen, beemden en weylanden, holtgewassen,
jaghten, visscherijen) rechten, gerechtigheden;
item
het slot ende heerlijkheidt Hillenraedt, Swalmen en Asselt met
aengehoorige hooge, middele en laage jurisdictie, jagten,
visscherije, waranden, geld- en korenrenten, tinsen, keurmoeden,
vrijheden en alle recht en gerechtigheden, wiemede daertoe gehoorige
pachthoven als namentlyck Asselderhof, den hof Bockweilsdries, den
Syperhof, den Noenhof, het klein hofken, met eene parthije lands
daerbij aengekocht, voorts alle de landerijen, beemden, weijlanden,
visscherijen, tinsen en erfpagten, bannaal-, koren- en oliemoolen,
de visscherije het Blanckwater genoemt, de Boschheijde en 't
Lothariebosch,
item
de Bochhulder en Raayerthiende, het goed den Boxweerd onder Neer
gelegen, de goederen van den hof Jacquefort onder Buggenum gelegen,
het vrij adellijk huis Welten met de respectieve annexe landerijen
onder Nieuwstad in den ampte van Montfort gelegen,
item
de vrijheerlijckheydt Grubbenvorst met de daertoe gehoorige hoven
naementhjck het slot en den hof Grubben met eene maalmoolen, het
adelijck huijs den Baersdonck en den hof Kleijnraeij, alles met
daertoe gehoorige landerijen, beemden en weijlanden, holtgewassen,
ap- en dependentiën, voorts die aen Grubben en Baersdonck
gehoorende tinsen, lijfgewinnen, erfpachten en leenen, mits gaeders
de thiende aldaer te Grubbenvorst;
item
het slot Blyenbeek en de vrijheerlijckheidt van Afferden en
Heukelom, met de daertoe gehoorige jurisdictie reght en
gerechtigheden, jaght en visscherije, diensten, geld- en
korenrenten, tinsen, thiende en vrijheden met de daertoe gehoorige
koerenmoelen en hoven namentlyck den Aldenhof, Bosserhof, Linderhof,
Flammert, Bulshees, Vogelheck, Niefers, Neudorp, Freyenhof, met de
daertoe gehoorige landerije, beemden, weijlanden, holtgewassen,
visscherije en andere ap- en dependentiën;
item
het Overampt Gelder, bestaende in de naervolgende heerlijckheden en
dorpen, Nieuwkerck, Aldekerck, Sevelen, Taeten, Stenden,
Schaephuysen, St. Anthonyberg, Reurt;
item
het Nederampt Gelder bestaende in de naervolgende heerlyckheden en
dorpen: Pont, Veerten, Capellen, Witten, Groot Kevelaer, Klein
Kevelaer;
item
't slot ende riddersitz den Haag bij Gelder gelegen en daeraen
gehoorige respectieve vryaedelijcke goederen, riddersitzen en hoven
als namentlijck Ravens- en Schuijrenhof, den Egelsom of Kynster, den
grooten en kleyne Bartel, de Voort, den Geysberg, Broekmanshof,
Brouwenshof, Hoenslaer, Gesselen met de seventien morgen daerbij
aengekoght, den Sloet, den Bremershorst, Knegtenhof, Weyschenhof, de
Horst aen de Niers, den Weihorst, den Badenberg, Steenolens en
daertoe gehoorige soo genoemde wellichsche moolen, den Rijntzenhof,
Hubenhof, Hornhof, Gijsenhof, den Heycamp met alle de daertoe
respectivelijck gehoorige hooge, middele en laage jurisdictiën,
recht en gerechtigheden, jagten, visscherijen, diensten, leenen,
tinsen, koren- en geldtenten, erfpachten, keurmoeden, vryheden en
aenhoorige landeryen, bosschen, holtgewassen, beemden en weylanden;
item
het slot en riddersitz Bellinghoven en vryheerlyckheidt van Haffer
en Meer met de daertoe gehoorige recht en gerechtigheden,
jurisdictie, tinsen, erfpachten, vrijheden, jagt ende visscherije,
gelden korenrenten, voorts bouwhoven, naementlijck: Coepenhol,
Hillemanshof, Obbergshof en daertoe gehoorende landerijen, beemden,
weijlanden, holtgewassen en korenmoolen, Duysborger thiende en
wijders den hof Byvanck genoemt met de landerijen, beemden,
weijlanden en holtgewassen;
item
den hof den Grind genoemt bij Zanten gelegen met de daertoe
gehoorige landerijen, beemden en weylanden;
item
den Oosterschen, Grubbenschen en Asselder thol op de Maas;
item
het vryaedelijck goed en riddersitz Yversheim met de daertoe
gehoorige landerijen, beemden, weijlanden, holtgewassen, recht en
gerechtigheden, jagt en visscherije, vrijheden, koren- en
geltrenten, tinsen en soo voorts:
item
het Wiltinger wijngoed, met de daertoe gehoorige landeryen, tinssen,
thienden, recht en gerechtigheden;
item
het Weener Fidei-commis capitaal ad hondert duijsent Rijnsche
gulden;
item
een dito capitaal ad duijsent Rijnsche gulden ten laste der
Oostenrijksche landstenden;
item
de obligatie ten laste der Bohemische landtstenden ad drij duysend
negenhondert vijf en sestig Rijnsche gulden;
item
alnogh een Oostenrijksche landstendische obligatie ad een duijsent
agt hondert tachentig Rijnsche guldens, alle voortskomende van de
gravinne van Straetman;
item
een dito capitaal ad agthien duijsent Rijnsche guldens door Hoog
gemelde haar Excellentie gelegateert aen wijlen syn Hooghweerde
Excellenz den heer Marquis van Hoensbroek in sijn leven Domproost
van Trier;
item
een dito capitael van agtthien duijsent Rhijnsche guldens beijde te
Weenen gevest, en door haer Excellenz de gravinne van Hodion
gelegateert, aen ons gesamentlijke contrahenten, den usumfructum
deser laest gemelte Capitaele somme ad agthien duijsent Rhijnsche
guldens ten onsen respective behoeve ad dies vitae vorbehouden;
item
het Hooge Ampt als Erf-Marsschalk des Vorstendoms Gelder ende
graafschaps Zutphen, mit alle de daertoe gehoorige emolumenten,
prerogativen, rechten en gerechtigheden en finaalyk het geheele
vaiselle, de juweelen, kleinodiën, voorts alle andere gereede
goederen en effecten bij wijlen onse hooggeëerde Ouders
naegelaten respectivelyk en ons anderwaerts toegekomen, voor soo
veel in de Nederlanden gelegen of vindbaer, maeken en constitueeren
tot een fidei-commis en dat hetselve soo dikwils en soo lange sal
effect sorteeren als bij de respective landrechten, waeronder
voorscreven fidei-commissaire goederen ressorteeren gepermitteert
wordt, dat die autem in 't Rijk gelegen eeuwig aen den band van
fidei-commis sullen sijn en blijven onderworpen dusdaeniglijck, dat
geene der voorscreven soo leen als allodiaele goederen, renten,
pandtschappen en soo voorts door de respectieve besitteren, of
voormunderen derselve en sullen moegen woorden veralieneert, verset
of beswaert op wat fundement of praetext het oock soude moegen
wesen, dan voor ons ondergeschreven gesaementlycke contrahenten
alleen en met secluse van onse successeurs, reserveerende de
faculteit om op de voorscreven goederen te negotieeren alsulcke
sommen, als wij noodig sullen oordeelen tot erlegging van andere
capitaelen en principalijck van die staende tot hoogere interessen.
"Ten
tweeden dat de voorscreven fidei-commissaire goederen sullen worden
beseten en gedefructueert by den oudsten Marquis of stamheer van
onse Hoensbroecker familie en soo successivelijk door dessens
wettelijcke mannelijcke erven recht hebbende om te succedeeren, soo
omtrent de voorscreven fidei-commissaire goederen als in 't hooge
amt van Erfmarschalk des hertogdoms Gelder en graafschaps Zutphen,
met seclusie van de Marquisinnen of vrouwelijke geslachte soo lange
van ons of onse naekomelingen wettelijke mannelijke descendenten in
leven sullen wesen, soo nochtans, ten derden dat denselven gehouden
sal sijn respectievelijk aen ieder van sijne broeders en oomen
marquisen van Hoensbroeck ad dies vitae uyt de provenuen der
bovengemelte fidei-commissaire goederen 's jaarlijks aijt te keeren
drijhondert pattacons specie en deselve voor soo veel doenelijk
helpen tot een geestelijk of wereltlijk emploeij of dienst en dragen
de kosten daerop te vallen."
(1)
Volgens Eg. Hanghen, Het markgraafschap Hoensbroek p. 160 overleed
hij den 22 Augustus 17dy.
(2)
Overleden 5 November 1760, idem p. 161.
(1)
Deze noemde zich Philip Damiaan; hij werd 30 October 1775 plechtig
ingehuldigd als bisschop van Roermond.
HIER
IS BEGRAVEN DEN EERSAEMEN THEEL THELEN DIE STARF DEN EERSTEN
OCTOBRIS ANNO 1678 BIDT GODT VOOR SYN SIEL
Deze
grafsteen staat (ergens) in de Voerstreek in België en geeft
dus de naam Theel Thelen. Helaas lijkt deze persoon niet de
voorvader Theel Theelen te zijn die in Asselt, Swalmen woonde.
Hier
de vermeldingen op chronologische volgorde:
Theel
Theelen
vóór
23 december 1634 Z.P. - Gehuwd: Wilhelmus Tijlen en Joanna NN.
Uit
dit huwelijk:
1.
Tilmannus Tilmanni, gedoopt Asselt ..-..-1634 (getuige Joannes
Quijten en Neul Tilmans) begraven aldaar 15 mei 1713. Trouwt 1)
Asselt 30 mei 1663 met Mechtildis Geerlings; 2) Asselt 20 februari
1669 met Catharina Cuijven.
2.
Jacobus Tijlen, gedoopt Asselt 23 december 1634 (getuige Joannes
Keuties en Catharina Steijns; zoon van Wilhelmus x Joanna NN; fol.
9, jaartal onder voorbehoud, vermoedelijk nà 1634).
huwelijk
1. Asselt 30 mei 1663 met Mechtildis Geerlings
kind
1. Cornelia Tijlen, gedoopt Asselt 15 april 1665 (getuige Joannes
Henssen voor Christianus Pex en Maria S[imons?]; dr. van Tilmannus x
Mechtildis Josten), weduwe aldaar 19 maart 1727. Trouwt ... vóór
28 december 1693 met Henricus Heijnen.
19
mei 1665 6. Christophorus Sillen, gedoopt Swalmen 30 oktober 1677
(getuige Tilmannus Tielen
kind
2. Guilielmus Willems, gedoopt Asselt 18 oktober 1666 (getuige
Leonardus Stockmans namens Petrus Engels en Gertrudis Franssen; zoon
van ...ijl Willems x Mechtildis Gerlinghs), overleden .. juni 1710
(niet in DTB!). Trouwt ... vóór 5 maart 1705 met
Gertrudis Crompvoets.
1
augustus 1668 SWALMEN - Verklaring inzake de heffing van tienden en
betreffende de (verdwenen) ronde toren van Hillenraad.
Johan
de Verwer, contrerolleur van Z.K.M. Licenten op de Maas, als
laatscholtis van de hof en heerlijkheid Asselt, bijgestaan door de
licentiaat Thomas Bordels namens de markiezin de Wargniers, Peter
Spee en Johan Obers, beide laatschepenen, en de secretaris Suiverich
alsmede de laatbode Tiel van Assel oorkonden dat zij zich
aanwezigheid van Geurt Quijten, pachter van voornoemde hof, [...]
kind
3. Agneta Tillens, gedoopt Asselt 28 augustus 1668 (getuige
Leonardus Stock[mans] en Weindelina Quitten; dr. van Tilmannus x
Mechtildis Girlenist).
huwelijk
2. Asselt 20 februari 1669 met Catharina Cuijven
20
februari 1669 ASSELT - Gehuwd: Tilmannus Thielen [Theel Theelen,
gedoopt Asselt voorjaar 1634, weduwe aldaar 15 mei 1713, zoon van
Wilhelmus Tilmanni en Joanna NN; weduwnaar van Mechtildis Geerlings,
gehuwd Asselt 30 mei 1663] en Catharina Cuijven [alias Sloncxen,
begraven Swalmen 21 februari 1705]. Getuigen: Christianus Pecxs en
Jacobus Alerts.
24
september 1669 SWALMEN EN ASSELT - Verklaring door enkele laten
verbonden aan de heerlijkheid Asselt over het belopen en in bezit
nemen van een aanwas in de Maas bij de Biesweerd. [...]
ende
op den steen gecommen sijnde, hebben aldaer bevonden dat de rijser
aldaer gesteken op den 2 7bris tegens over joncker Baexens
Biesenbaendt waren uutgetrocken, en eenen stock van daer en ende so
voorts leger vuyt mit andere risers besteken, die welcke door last
des heere scholtissen en gerichtsluyden ter instantie van
requiranten uutgetrocken ende int waeter geworpen, sijnde door Tiel
Tielen gerichtsbode de selve plaetse wederom met andere rijseren
besteken, ende voorts door Corst Stockmans hebben laeten aftreden
ende bevonden dat de Maese van den selven steen noch vifftich treden
afgeweeken was, so dat den selven aengeloopen steen van de plaetse
af van de welcke den steen ierstmael afgetreden was, in’t
geheel bevonden is woorden langh te sijn hondert en 29 treden, en
gemerckt die voorss. requiranten versochten van allen het gene
voorss. hun gelijckfals acte met gedeilt te worden, [...]
kind
4, 1. Mechtildis Thielen, gedoopt Asselt 23 juni 1670 (getuige
Leonardus Stockmans namens Joannes Janessen en Cornelia Ceuven; dr.
van Tillmannus x Catharina Cuijven), vermoedelijk jong overl.
kind
5, 2. Theodora Tielen, gedoopt Asselt 5 november 1673 (getuige
Jacobus Alardts en Meussen? ...; dr. van Tilmannus x Catharina
...ssen), weduwe Swalmen 8 juli 1725. Trouwt Swalmen 26 oktober 1700
met Petrus op den Camp.
kind
6, 3. Joanna Tielen, gedoopt Asselt 1 september 1677 (getuige
Jacobus Pecx en Maria Joosten; dr. van Tilmannus x Catarina
Gerarts), weduwe Swalmen 3 oktober 1747. Trouwt Asselt 7 september
1699 met Wilhelmus Stoffers.
19
mei 1680 ASSELT - Begraven: Anna [Joanna Theelen, gedoopt Asselt 20
februari 1669], dochter van Theel Theelen [en Catharina Cuijven,
gehuwd Asselt 20 februari 1669].
20
augustus 1680 ASSELT - Begraven: Henricus NN, knecht bij Theel
Theelen.
kind
7, 4. Mechtildis Theelen, gedoopt Asselt 25 juni of juli 1681
(getuige Paulus Arets en Catharina ..rens). Trouwt vermoedelijk
Swalmen 10 februari 1714 met Martinus Jansen.
25
juni 1682 SWALMEN - Gehuwd: Gulielmus Corsten en Agatha Smeets [zij
is mogelijk doopgetuige te Swalmen 18 mei 1684, zie hiervoor
huwelijk Ramekers-Janssen, Swalmen 24 juli 1682]. Getuigen:
Tilmannus Theelen en Joannes Wiltschuts.
Theel
Theelen verkocht op 29 november 1685 de Theelenkamp onder Asselt,
die op 11 januari 1686 werd genaast.
11
januari 1686 ASSELT - Aanvaarding naasting.
Ten
overstaan van Johan Swaeck, scholtis, Jan Janssen en Thijs Coelen,
schepenen van de vrijheerlijkheden Asselt en Swalmen, verklaart
Johan Smits junior dat hij het beschut heeft aanvaard van Thelen
Camp onder Asselt gelegen, groot ongeveer 90 roede gelegen tussen de
erfgenamen van Willem Thelen en de erfgenamen van Derick Maessen,
door comparant op 29 november 1685 aangekocht van Theel Teelen,
alles volgens akkoord van diezelfde 29 november 1685 opgesteld
tussen meester Jan Herpers? en Peter Engels enerzijds en Jan Smits
voornoemd anderzijds.
1.
dochter NN [Cornelia], gedoopt Swalmen 27 oktober 1686 (getuige Thel
Thelen en Maria Josten; dr. van Godefridus x Cornelia Kuven). Trouwt
mogelijk Swalmen 11 september 1708 als Cornelia Willems met
Ludovicus Heuijts.
25
november 1686 SWALMEN - Gehuwd: Theodorus Willems [Godefridus,
leeft 19 januari 1733, mogelijk zoon van Wilhelmus Teelen; hij
hertrouwt NIET ... vóór 19 maart 1706 met Catharina
Dirix] en Cornelia Kuven [mogelijk gedoopt Swalmen 14 februari 1647
als dr. van Gerardus Keuffen en Theodora Sijben, vermoedelijk weduwe
Swalmen 20 april 1715]. Getuigen: Theel Telen en Willelmus Thelen.
1.
Petrus Bongarts, gedoopt Swalmen 26 juli 1688 (getuige Tylmannus
Theelen en Anna Dreesen).
15
maart 1693 SWALMEN - Gedoopt: Margreta, buitenechtelijke dochter
van Joannes Silckens en Agnetis Houx. Getuigen: Tilmanus Thelen
namens Gerardus Silkens en Leonarda Houx.
Op
7 juli 1693 verpandde Theel de helft van een huis op de Hoogstraat.
7
juli 1693 SWALMEN - Verpanding van de helft van een huis.
Johan
Swaken, scholtis, en de gezamenlijke schepenen van Asselt en Swalmen
[geen namen] oorkonden dat Theel Theelen, met toestemming van zijn
echtgenote, heeft verklaard schuldig te zijn aan Jan Peters, 'jaeger
van den heere baron van Hillenraedt', een bedrag van 35
rijksdaalders tegen een jaarlijkse rente van 5% en met een
opzegtermijn van een half jaar, met als onderpand een half huis met
het derde deel van 1 morgen land daar achter gelegen tussen Geurt
Cuijpers, mededeelhebber van genoemd huis enerzijds, en Peter
Quijten anderzijds, korte zijden grenzend aan de erven van Henderick
Schrievers en op de openbare straat.
7
juli 1695. Heijncken Heijnen en Neulken Theelen c.s. verpandden op
22 april 1697 een huis te Asselt.
20
september 1695 SWALMEN-ASSELT - Verpanding land.
Ten
overstaan van Johan Swaken, scholtis, Jan Janssen en Frans Gerardts,
schepenen van de heerlijkheden Swalmen en Asselt, bekennen Thel
Theelen en Jan Janssen, als voogden van de kinderen van wijlen Jacob
Alerts en Truijtien Theelen, en Jacob Janssen als man en voogd van
Lisbet Alerts, dat Truijtien Theelen voornoemd samen met wijlen haar
man Jacob Alerts op 24 augustus 1677 op de dag van de apostel
Bartholomaeus een bedrag van 100 gulden tegen een jaarlijkse rente
van 6 gulden heeft opgenomen van ook wijlen Daem Rauckus met al
onderpand al hun roerende en onroerende goederen.
Omdat
deze obligatie na het overlijden van Daem Rauchus is toegevallen aan
diens erfgenamen, wordt op hun verzoek en met toestemming van het
gerecht d.d. 19 oktober 1694 nu afgesproken dat deze lening voortaan
zal uitstaan tegen een rente van 5% te betalen op 24 augustus met
een opzegtermijn van een half jaar, met als onderpand ongeveer 1
morgen land te Asselt gelegen op de Ubergh tussen de erfgenamen Ruth
Silkens en de erfgenamen Jan Silkens, met de korte zijden grenzend
aan de erfgenamen Heijncken Heijnen en het voetpad.
Theel
Thelen en zijn kinderen Neulken en Willem kochten op 22 april 1697
een huis te Asselt welk zij op 22 april 1697 verpandden.
Op
22 april 1697 kocht hij voor zijn voorkinderen de helft van een huis
te Asselt.
In
1697 verpandden Theel Thelen en zijn kinderen 5 vierdel morgen te
Asselt gelegen, Theelencamp genaamd, tussen land van de hof te
Asselt en eerste comparant, met de korte zijden grenzend aan de
openbare straat en land van de Asselerhoff.
22
april 1697 ASSELT - Verpanding huis en hof.
Ten
overstaan van Johan Swaken, scholtis, Frans Gerardts en Corst
Crijnen, schepenen van de heerlijkheden Swalmen en Asselt, bekennen
Theel Thelen en zijn kinderen, te weten:
-
Willem Theelen en
-
Heijncken Heijnen gehuwd met Neulken Theelen, dat zij een bedrag van
150 gulden Roermonds tegen een jaarlijkse rente van 5%, te volstaan
met 4½% bij betaling binnen drie à vier weken na de
vervaldag, eerstmaals te betalen op 1 mei 1698 met een opzegtermijn
van een half jaar, hebben opgenomen van de armen te Buggenum, met
als onderpand 5 vierdel morgen te Asselt gelegen, Theelencamp
genaamd, tussen land van de hof te Asselt en eerste comparant, met
de korte zijden grenzend aan de openbare straat en land van
voornoemde Asselerhoff, met huis en hof in het dorp Asselt. Louijs
Kouwenbergh wordt namens de armen geërfd en gegoed.
22
april 1697 ASSELT - Overdracht huis en hof.
Ten
overstaan van Johan Swaken, scholtis, Frans Gerardts en Corst
Crijnen, schepenen van de heerlijkheden Swalmen en Asselt, dragen
Jacob Janssen als man en voogd van Lijsbet Alerts en Jan Janssen als
voogd van Willem Alerts, een half huis te Asselt in het dorp gelegen
naast Aquarius en Theel Theelen, met de moesgaard groot 1 vierdel en
een kwart roede, alsmede 16 roede in Theelen Camp gelegen, voor de
helft van 250 gulden ten behoeve van de armen van Buggenum en Gerard
Pelsers, over aan Theel Theelen voornoemd. Deze verklaart dat deze
overdracht plaatsvindt ten behoeve van zijn voorkinderen, inclusief
de last daarop staand.
13
mei 1697 SWALMEN - Voogdgeding.
"Voogdgedingh
gehouden binnen Swalmen onder den hagendoren den 13 may 1697.
Den
schepen Jan Janssen becroont dat de naebuyren van Asselt eenen
voethpatt maecken over sijn erve aen het Meelenbroeck, aen den Slack
tot aen de Maese, alwaer noeyt eenen voethpatt is geweest, versoeck
versieninghe. [...] De naebuyren van de Boutenstraet claegen dat den
voetpatt langhs de Swalm naer den Noenhoff hun belet wordt,
versoecken remedie.
De
naebuyren van de Bouckoul claegen dat Theel Theelen nu in sijne
pachtjaeren niet en soeckt te continueren in't betaelen van den loon
van den koygardt, gelick hij van te vooren in sijne halffwininge
heeft gedaen, versoecken daerinne versieninghe.
Wordt
Theel Theelen belast hem te reguleren naer het oudt gebruyck, actum
Swalmen den 14 may 1697."
7
september 1699 ASSELT - Gehuwd: Wilhelmus Stoffers [weduwe Swalmen
1 februari 1724]
en
Joanna Tielen [Telen, Theelen, Thelen, gedoopt Asselt 1 juli 1677,
weduwe Swalmen 3 oktober 1747, dr. van Tilmannus Teelen en Catharina
Cuijven]. Getuigen: Wilhelmus Tielen en Joannes Bulders.
Thiel
verpandde op 14 januari 1702 een half huis op de Hoogstraat.
De
aliasnaam Sloncxen wordt enkel vermeld in een akte van 14 januari
1702.
14
januari 1702 SWALMEN - Verpanding half huis Hoogstraat.
Ten
overstaan van Johan Swaken, scholtis, Areth Meuter en Andries
Mooren, schepenen van de heerlijkheid Swalmen en Asselt, bekent
Thiel Theelen met toestemming van zijn vrouw Catharina Sloncxen dat
zij een bedrag van 40 rijksdaalder (met inbegrip van 17 en 8
rijksdaalder zoals afgelegd aan Houbert Peters en Geurt Willems)
tegen een jaarlijkse rente van 2 gelijke rijksdaalders eerstmaals te
betalen op 14 januari 1703 en met een opzegtermijn van een half
jaar, hebben opgenomen van hun schoonzoon Peter op den Camp en
Dircxken Theelen, met als onderpand een half huis met het 1/3 deel
van 1 morgen land op de Hoogstraete gelegen tussen de erfgenamen Cil
Pauwelssen en Geurt Willems.
Gecancelleerd,
in de marge: 'desen brief compt te cesseren mitte overdraght van den
2 april 1704 ende oversulcx alhier getraceert'.
16
februari 1703 SWALMEN - Hoofdschat over het jaar 1702.
"Hoofdtschat
tot Swalmen ende Asselt den 16 febrij 1703 vuytgesath
Theel
Theelen mit vrouw, een maeght 4 april 0
11
mei 1703 SWALMEN - Beestenschat over het jaar 1702.
Beestenschat
van Swalmen ende Asselt den 11 may 1703 getelt dienende voor den
jaere 1702
Theel
Theelen 4 koyen 3 rinder 16 kar bijen 46 schaepen 19 april
30
september 1703 SWALMEN - Gehuwd: Abraham ...em [alias van Horne,
mogelijk
zoon van Andreas van Horne] en Mechtildis Thelen [Tielen, Metten
Tiel, gedoopt Asselt ..., dr. van Tilmanus Theelen en Catharina
Ceuven]. Getuigen: Casparus Moren en Albertus Meuters.
Theel
Theelen en Trijncken Keuven verkochten op 2 april 1704 een half huis
op de Hoogstraat aan hun schoonzoon Peter op den Camp.
2
april 1704 SWALMEN - Overdracht half huis Hoogstraat.
Ten
overstaan van Petrus Buijckman, scholtis, Geret Emets en Andries
Janssen, schepenen van de heerlijkheid Swalmen en Asselt, draagt
Theel Theelen met toestemming van zijn vrouw Trijncken Keuven
-
een half huis met het 1/3 deel van 1 morgen land op de Hoogstraet
gelegen tussen de erfgenamen Cil Pauwelssen en Geurt Willems, belast
met 1/3 deel van een greve en 1/3 deel van 1 kan olie aan de kerk
aldaar;
-
½ morgen land in het Voorvelt gelegen tussen Geurt Willems
voornoemd en Nuelken Geurts;
-
ongeveer ½ morgen land op de Mortel gelegen tussen de
erfgenamen van Andries Mooren en Geurt Willems;
-
1/3 deel van 1 morgen land op de Cruijtscamp gelegen tussen Geurt
Willems en Peter Arets en consorten, belast met 1/3 deel van 4
'schobben' vruchten van dit land aan de kosterie aldaar,
voor
een bedrag van 89½ gulden over aan Peter op den Camp en
Dericxken Theelen, lijcop, armengeld en kosten van overdracht naar
landsgebruik.
-
Hiermee komen de eerdere obligaties van 20 maart 1700 en 14 januari
1702 [zie aldaar] te vervallen.
30
augustus 1704 SWALMEN - Overdracht land.
Ten
overstaan van Petrus Buijckman, scholtis, Jan Janssen en Geret
Emets, schepenen van de heerlijkheid Swalmen en Asselt, draagt
Christoffer Faessen met toestemming van zijn vrouw Catharina Metsers
d.d. 27 augustus 1704 en als gevolmachtigde van zijn schoonmoeder
Elisabeth Engels d.d. 31 juli 1704 gepasseerd voor notaris J.B. de
Ball te Weert, zich mede sterk makend voor zijn minderjarige
schoonzus Wilhelmina Metsers [trouwt later met Joannes Beckers] en
mede krachtens volmacht van Evert Gieskens en Maria Metsers d.d. 17
augustus 1704 binnen Leyden ondertekend,
-
de helft van 1 morgen 17 roede land te Asselt gelegen tussen de
aankopers en de ontvanger Poel;
-
en ongeveer 30 roede land tussen de ontvanger Poel en Theel Theelen
gelegen,
voor
een bedrag van 36 rijksdaalder 3 schelling en 1 'dobbelken',
godsheller 1 blamuyser, over aan Michel Dispa, borger en koopman te
Ruremunde, en Elisabeth van Kessel, echtelieden, armengeld, lijcop
en overdracht ten laste van de aankopers.
In
1706 verpandden de erfgenamen Teelen land onder Asselt, Teelencamp
genaamd.
Hencken
Heijnen en Neulken Teelen c.s. verkochten op 2 oktober 1706 land te
Asselt en verpandden diezelfde dag de Theelenkamp.
4.
Wilhelmus Stoffers, gedoopt Swalmen 7 oktober 1708 (getuige
Tilmannus 'vulgo Teel' Telen en Catharina Janssen), weduwe aldaar 10
juni 1759. Trouwt Asselt 16 oktober 1737 met Maria Vissers.
???begraven
aldaar 15 mei 1713, zoon van Wilhelmus Tijlen en Joanna NN;
15
mei 1713 ASSELT - Begraven: Tilmannus Teelen [vermoedelijk
weduwnaar van 1)
Mechtildis
Geerlings, gehuwd Asselt 30 mei 1663, weduwe ...; 2) Catharina
Cuijven, gehuwd Asselt 20 februari 1669, begraven Swalmen 21
februari 1705].
10
februari 1714 SWALMEN - Gehuwd met dispensatie in de kerkgeboden:
Martinus
Jansen en Mechtildis Thelen [vermoedelijk gedoopt Swalmen
25-..-1681, dr. van wijlen Tilmanus Theelen en Catharina Cuijven].
Getuigen: Sijbertus Kuijven en Arnoldus Meuters.
8
juli 1725 SWALMEN - Begraven: Theodora Teelen [gedoopt Asselt 5
november 1673, dr. van Tilmanus Tielen en Catharina Cuijven],
echtgenote van Petrus op den Camp [gehuwd Swalmen 26 oktober 1700,
weduwe aldaar 12 november 1739].
19
maart 1728 ASSELT - Begraven: Nuelken [Cornelia Theelen, gedoopt
Asselt 15 april 1665, dr. van Tilmannus Tijlen en Mechtildis
Geerlings], echtgenote van Henricus Heijnen [gehuwd Asselt vóór
28 december 1693].
22
november 1728 ASSELT - Overdracht Theelenbroekje.
Ten
overstaan van Johan Matthijs Daermans, scholtis, Gootsen Gerardts en
Christiaen Bongarts, schepenen van de heerlijkheid Swalmen en
Asselt, dragen Joannes en Gerardus Schrijvers, kinderen en
erfgenamen van wijlen de schepen Hendrick Schrijvers, krachtens
vonnis d.d. 9 november 1728 uitgesproken door het Hof van
Gelderland, de helft van Theelen Broecxkens, zoals op 11 mei 1717
overgedragen aan wijlen hun vader, voor de helft van de koopsom
vermeld in de voorwaarden daarvan opgemaakt, over aan Johan Hendrick
Lambotte.
22
november 1728 ASSELT - Overdracht Theelenbroekje.
Ten
overstaan van Johan Matthijs Daermans, scholtis, Gootsen Gerardts en
Christiaen Bongarts, schepenen van de heerlijkheid Swalmen en
Asselt, dragen Johan Hendrick Lambotte alsmede Joannes en Gerardus
Schrijvers, de eerste mede als gevolmachtigde van zijn vrouw, en
krachtens akkoord d.d. 18 november 1728, een turfbroekje genaamd
Theelenbroexken, zoals op 11 mei 1717 bij openbare verkoop
aangekocht door wijlen de vader van tweede comparanten en waarvan de
helft door eerste comparanten overgedragen aan eerste comparant,
welk broekje indertijd door wijlen de schepen Hendrick Schrijvers is
aangekocht voor een bedrag van 505 gulden Roermonds, over aan Johan
Willhelm Postwijck, lijcop, armengeld en kosten van overdracht ieder
voor de helft.
14
juni 1729 SWALMEN - Voogdgeding: o.a. over turfsteken, schapen,
luiden van de klok, konijnen.
"Vooghtgedingh
gehouden tot Swalmen den 14 juny 1729 op den merckt aldaer.
De
geswoorens hebben clachtelijck te kennen gegeven dat sij onversien
sijn van beer, ver, sprinckhinxt ende ijsere egge, dewelcken moeten
gehouden worden door de groote thiendenaers, versoeckende dat
daerinne sal worden versien.
T'gericht
inhaereert de ordonnantiën op de voorige vooghtgedingen gegeve,
actum ut supra.
Deselve
geswoorens hebben mede claegende voorgebracht dat Sr. Postwijck
onderstaet torff vuyt Theelenbroecxken te vercoopen sonder dat hij
Postwijck borge ofte verseckeringe voor den eeuwigen schatt heeft
gestelt, versoeckende derhalven dat aen gemelten Postwijck sal
worden belastt geenen torff te vercoopen ten zije hij alvoorens
verseckeringe voor den eeuwigen schatt sal hebben gestelt.
1
mei 1746 2. Martinus Meerts, gedoopt Asselt 8 augustus 1748
(getuige
Tilmanus Tilmans en Wilhelmina Smeets), overleden Swalmen-Boukoul 16
maart 1808. Trouwt Swalmen 22 juni 1773 met Elisabetha Thijssen.
13
oktober 1747 SWALMEN - Begraven: Joanna Teelen [gedoopt Asselt 1
juli 1677, dr. van Tilmannus Teelen en Catharina Cuijven], weduwe
[van Wilhelmus Stoffers, gehuwd Asselt 7 september 1699, weduwe
Swalmen 1 februari 1724].
1754
SWALMEN EN ASSELT - Hoofd- en beestenschat.
Lijste
van hooft- ende beestenschat der heerlijckheydt Swalmen ende Asselt
van den jaere 1754
Tilman
Tilmans met vrouwe 1 april 0
een
koey 0 juni 0
4
mei 1756 SWALMEN - Voogdgeding.
“Vooghtgeding
gehouden tot Salmen den 4 mey 1756 sub dio naer voorgaende
kerckepublicatie tot convocatie der inwoonderen.
Tilman
Tilmans
vóór
24 april 1758 Z.P. - Gehuwd: Christophorus Theelen [Teelen, gedoopt
Swalmen
29
maart 1732, bierbrouwer, overleden aldaar 17 april 1783, zoon van
Petrus Theelen en Cornelia Spee] en Elisabetha Delissen [bij de
volkstelling 1796 inwonend bij haar zoon Joannes op de Markt].
Uit
dit huwelijk:
1.
Petrus Teelen, gedoopt Swalmen 24 april 1758 (getuige Joannes
Delissen en Elisabeth Teelen), weduwe aldaar 17 mei 1758.
2.
Joannes Teelen, gedoopt Swalmen 10 november 1759 (getuige Hendericus
Schaeraets en Maria Delissen). Trouwt Swalmen 19 oktober 1791 met
Gertrudis Ceuven.
3.
Petrus Theelen, gedoopt Swalmen 7 augustus 1768 (getuige Joannes
Theelen en Sibilla Delissen), overleden aldaar 31 januari 1770.
4.
dochter NN, geboren en gedoopt Swalmen 5 februari 1773 (nooddoop
door vroedvrouw; 'quae statim obiit'), overleden aldaar 5 februari
1773.
5.
Petrus Theelen, geboren en gedoopt Swalmen 9 februari 1777
(nooddoop; geen get.; 'qui statim obiit'), overleden aldaar 9
februari 1777.
Stoffer
Theelen en Elisabeth Delissen verkochten op 19 december 1768 land te
Swalmen. Stoffer Theelen was in 1774 eigenaar van een huis aan de
Kroppestraat (smabers-15/34).
Johannes
Theelen te Neer en/of Swalmen
21
juni 1723 SWALMEN - Arrest wegens geweldpleging.
De
bode Sibert Kuijven verklaart dat hij ... Theelen van Wijnarden
heeft gearresteerd wegens 'begaene straeten rumoer ende andere
insolentien tot Swalmen begaen'.
17
januari 1753 6. Gertrudis Ceuven, gedoopt Swalmen 24 mei 1763
(getuige Henricus Moren en Maria Ceuven). Trouwt Swalmen 19 oktober
1791 met Joannes Theelen.
11
juni 1774 SWALMEN - Verpanding huis en hof Kroppestraat.
Ten
overstaan van Joannes Bernardus Chanoine, licentiaat in de rechten
en scholtis van de heerlijkheid Swalmen en Asselt, Joannes Mevessen
en Thomas Ubbels, schepenen aldaar, bekennen de echtelieden Jan
Sillen en Geutruijd Schouwenbergh dat zij een bedrag van 50
pattacons tegen een jaarlijkse rente van 4% eerstmaal te betalen op
11 juni 1775 en losbaar in termijnen van 25 pattacons met een
opzegtermijn van drie maanden, hebben opgenomen van Jan Theelen,
ongehuwd, met als onderpand:
-
huis en hof op de Cropperstraete gelegen tussen de weduwe Stephen
Roosen en de weduwe Linnert Tessers, belast met jaarlijks 2 vat
rogge erfpacht aan de kapelanie en 1 greve aan de Gereserveerde
Domeinen;
-
3 vierdel akkerland in het Gratervelt gelegen tussen Jan Dousent en
de gemeente;
-
en ½ morgen in het Gratervelt gelegen tussen Jan Dousent
voornoemd en de gemeente, beide percelen belast met 5 kop rogge aan
de kapelanie aldaar en 1/3 deel van 1 greve aan de Gereserveerde
Domeinen, alle onderpanden gezamenlijk eerder belast met 50
pattacons aan het begijnhof te Ruremonde.
9
april 1777 BUGGENUM - Gehuwd: Anthonius Theelen [gedoopt Neer 20
april 1738, pachter, overleden Swalmen 25 november 1790, zoon van
Joannes Tielen en Wilhelmina Snijders] en Lucia Winkelmeulen
[gedoopt Neer 27 februari 1751, overleden Swalmen 17 februari 1794,
dr. van Segerus Winckelmolen en Elisabetha van Baexen; zij hertrouwt
Swalmen 3 mei 1791 met Jacobus Emets]. Getuigen: Matthias
Winkelmeulen en Willemina Theelen.
Uit
dit huwelijk:
1.
Joannes Theelen, geboren en gedoopt Swalmen 10 december 1783
(getuige Segerus Winckelmolen wonende te Buggenum en Anna Maria
Moren wonende te Neer), herbergier, landbouwer, raadslid vanaf 1820,
secretaris 1822-1837 en burgemeester van Neer 1825-1853, overleden
Neer 19 mei 1867. Trouwt Neer 24 oktober 1808 met Wilhelmina Geenen,
gedoopt Neer 6 december 1777, overleden aldaar 2 februari 1848, dr.
van Leonardus Geenen en Joanna Versondert, weduwe van Wilhelmus
Geenen.
21
maart 1786 SWALMEN - Akte van deling.
Om
hun geschil over de nalatenschap van Peter Theelen en Cornelia Spee,
gewezen echtelieden, bij te leggen, is ten overstaan van het gerecht
het volgende overeengekomen.
Jan
Theelen zal in volle eigendom verkrijgen:
-
84 roede in de Meulendumpel gelegen tussen Willem Sanders en Jan van
Lier;
-
30 roede grasgewas in de Batten gelegen tussen de erfgenamen Peter
Naus en Jan van Lier;
-
42 roede akkerland tussen Peter Naus en Jan van Lier.
Hiervoor
zal Jan Theelen aan zijn neef Joannes Theelen een bedrag van 23
pattacons 12 stuiver Kleefs betalen, van welk bedrag hij heden heeft
betaald 6 pattacons 3 schelling 8½ stuiver. De resterende 16
pattacons 5 schelling 3½ stuiver zullen binnen twee maanden
worden voldaan. Zij machtigen toonder tot de gerechtelijke
overdracht.
27
maart 1786 SWALMEN - Overdracht landerijen.
Ten
overstaan van Joannes Bernardus Chanoine, licentiaat in de beide
rechten, schepen en eerste secretaris van het Hoofdgerecht te
Ruremonde, scholtis van de heerlijkheden Swalmen en Asselt, Cornelis
van Keeken en Joannes Mevissen, schepenen aldaar, draagt Joannes
Theelen, jonkman, na gerechtelijke overeenkomst opgemaakt tussen hem
comparant en zijn oom Jan Theelen d.d. 21 maart 1786,
-
84 roede akkerland te Asselt in de zogenoemde Molendompel gelegen
tussen Willem Sanders en Jan van Lier;
-
32 roede grasgewas te Asselt in de Batten gelegen tussen de
erfgenamen Peter Naus en Jan van Lier;
-
42 roede akkerland in de Lichte Ohe gelegen tussen de erfgenamen
Peter Naus en Jan van Lier, voor een bedrag van 51 pattacons over
aan zijn oom Jan Theelen, kosten van overdracht, lycop en armengeld
ten laste van de aankoper, 'mits dat het vijfde deel van den
aencooper aen de voorss. coopspenningen sal worden gekort.'
Bode
J.L. Corens legt namens Joannes en Jan Theelen de eed af dat deze
overdracht niet is geschied ten profijte van enige dode hand.
zondag
30 april 1786 SWALMEN - Gehuwd: Joannes Theelen [overleden Asselt
1x januari 1787], dienstknecht geboren en wonende te Swalmen, en
Christina Willems [gedoopt Asselt 2 juli 1742; dr. van Joannes
Willems en Aldegondis Pex; weduwe van Petrus Peters, gehuwd vóór
13 oktober 1774, overleden Asselt 4 januari 1783], weduwe geboren en
wonende te Asselt. Getuigen: Joannes Theelen en Anna Heijnen wonende
te Asselt.
30
april 1786 5. Tilmanus Stighner, geboren en gedoopt Swalmen 19
februari 1795 (getuige Joannes Theelen en Anna Maria Geraets, beiden
wonende te Swalmen, 'den vader absent').
3
mei 1791 SWALMEN - Gehuwd met dispensatie in drie roepen: Jacobus
Emets [gedoopt Asselt 23 augustus 1753, pachter, overleden Swalmen
27 juni 1795, zoon van Hubertus Emets en Cornelia Beurskens; hij
hertrouwt Swalmen 4 mei 1794 met Elisabetha Wijnen] en Lucia
Winckelmolen [gedoopt Neer 27 februari 1751, overleden Swalmen 17
februari 1794, dr. van Segerus Winckelmolen en Elisabetha van
Baexen], weduwe [van Joannes Theelen, gehuwd Buggenum 9 april 1777,
overleden Swalmen 25 november 1790]. Getuigen: Martinus Emets en
Catharina Winckelmolen.
23
juli 1860 NEER - Openbare verkoop van een bouwhoeve genaamd
Maaswijnaarden
onder
de gemeente Neer gelegen, op verzoek van:
1)
Maria Anna Geenen, weduwe van Joannes Theelen te Maaswijnaarden en
haar kinderen; en
2)
Antoon Jozef Hubert Mertz te Roermond, als gemachtigd door Maria
Ludovica Jeanette de Swart, weduwe van Johannes Godefridus
Quisthoudt te Maeseijck, opbrengst f30.380,-.
Theelen,
Tielen, etc.
De
naam Theelen (Thielen, Tielen, Teelen, Telen) is patroniem van de
naam Tilmanus (Tiel, Teel). De naam komt al in het begin van de 18e
eeuw voor het Midden-Limburgse Neer waar zij als pachters de hoeve
Wijnaardenhof (Wienertehof) bewonen. Vanuit Swalmen verspreidt de
familie van o.a. Theele Theelen zich over andere Midden-Limburgse
plaatsen. Theel Theelen woonde in Asselt, gemeente Swalmen en
ongeveer twee generaties later woonde Johannes Theelen op het
grondgebied van Neer, enkele km stroomafwaarts aan de andere kant
van de rivier.
De
vraag is nu of Johannes Theelen (J. Tielen) een nazaat is van Theel
Theelen?
Over
Theel Theelen uit Asselt zijn verrassenderwijs veel meldingen
bewaard gebleven. Hij was pachter van de zeer oude en belangrijke
Asseltsehof (in talloze schrijfwijzen). Enkele km noordelijk aan de
andere kant van de Maas lag de Wijnaardenhof. Beide hoeven bestaan
heden ten dage nog altijd, al dan niet in vervallen staat. Vlakbij
lagen stukken land met namen als Boxweerd, Hanssumerweerd, de Aanwas
en Bierweerd.
We
lezen een gedetailleerde benoeming:
26
december 1885 Op Maandag den 11. Januari 1886 's middags ten 2 uur,
te Neer ter herberge van den heer burgemeester Theelen: A. Gemeente
Neer. Eerste koop:
Eene
vruchtbare en in zeer goeden staat van onderhoud verkeerende
bouwhoeve genaamd "Wijnardenhof", bestaande in huis,
stalling, schuur, erf, tuin, bouwland, weiland en hooiland, kadaster
sectie C nos. 1417, 579, 467, 558, 600, 613, 633, 641, 643, 665,
680, 698, 703, 713, 717, 639, 696, 697, 1132, 1287, 1403,1418, 1426,
1427, 1435, 1672, 1673, 1674, 1747, 1748, 1754, 1755, groot 23.30.00
hect.
Benevens
de onverdeelde helft van weiland en wishout "de Maaskop"
sectie C nos. 1757 en 1758, groot 2.32 hect. Verhuurd aan den heer
P. Beurskens: de gebouwen, tuin, hooi- en weiland tot Paschen en het
bouwland tot oogst stoppelbloot 1888.
[op
12 december 1885 wordt nog geschreven ..., in het Zwaarveld,
Hanssummerveld, Sleepad en Boxweerd
In
1871: Vervolg van het tienjarig overzigt der waargenomen
waterhoogten vinden we die bij PEILRAAI LXXXVII [...]
De
zes kribben zijn aangelegd tegenover de grindplaat vóór
het huis Wijnaardenhof, in de gemeente Neer.
zie
Delpher, mGbmhazS7skC
In
1926 wordt gemeld dat een merktekening op de Wijnaardenhof is
aangebracht: NEER-BEESEL
WATERPASSING
GEODETISCH BUREAU IR. W. SCHERMERHORN TE DELFT 1926.
Neer
6. R. B. in de boerderij Wijnaardenhof, in 1926 bewoond door J. van
Melick, n. gevel, 0,88 m rechts van het linker einde.
Overigens
wordt daarna gemeld: Grathem 2. R. B. in de woning van den
hoofdonderwijzer bij de school ten z. van den weg v. Roermond n.
Weert o. gevel, 0,60 m links van den steenen dag van het raam,
rechts van de deur.
zie
Delpher, MMKB24:076597000
Nijverheid
en handel op de Maas in de Middeleeuwen.
De
nijverheid in de Limburgse streken ten noorden van Luik was in de
vroege Middeleeuwen van weinig betekenis in dit overwegend
agrarische gebied. Het industriële centrum lag ten zuiden van
Luik in plaatsen als Dinant en Huy. Voor de handel was de streek
tussen Luik en Nijmegen een doorgangsgebied. De streek zelf had er
weinig direct aandeel in. De landwegen waren zo slecht dat
handelaars en reizigers moesten uitwijken naar de waterwegen, de
Maas en haar zijrivieren. Tot in de vroegmoderne tijd werden thans
niet meer bevaren riviertjes als Roer en Niers voor de scheepvaart
gebruikt. Hoofdverkeersader was de rivier de Maas voor de zuid-noord
en de oude Romeinse weg van de Atlantische kust naar Keulen voor de
west-oostverbinding. Waarschijnlijk zijn plaatsen als Meeswijk,
Wessem, Blerick samen met Venlo en Blitterswijk oude
pleisterplaatsen langs de Maas; zij liggen ongeveer dertig kilometer
uit elkaar, gelijk aan een dag varen stroomopwaarts. De vondst van
een door Tongerse schippers gesticht altaar voor de godin Viradecdis
in Vechten (Utrecht) kan een uitvloeisel van de Maashandel zijn.
Maastricht vormde een centrum met zijn brug over de Maas, een
munthuis in de zevende en een tolkantoor in de tiende eeuw. De
invloed van Maastricht is nawijsbaar in Dorestad. Wat er over de
Maas vervoerd werd, is niet bekend. Op het einde van de zesde eeuw
bezong de dichter Venantius Fortunatus (c. 535-na 600) de rivieren
Moezel, Aisne en Maas. Van de Maas zei hij:
aut
Mosa dulce sonans, quo grus ganta anser olorque est,
triplice
merce ferax (alite pisce rate).
(De
zacht ruisende Maas, waar kraanvogel, gans, eend en zwaan leven,
Draagt
drie koopwaren: vogel, vis en vlot).
Uit
deze regels heeft men wel willen afleiden, dat de Maas met haar
vlotten een van de grote scheepvaartroutes van het Merovingische
Gallië was. Het rate (vlot) betekent hier echter veeleer
gebundeld hout, een houtvlot, wat ook beter past bij vogel en vis,
en niet een vervoermiddel, een 'vlot' als drager van hypothetische
koopwaren. In Venantius' tijd vond er een verschuiving van de
handelsroutes plaats. Waar eerst de weg via Rhône en Rijn de
hoofdverkeersas was tussen de Middellandse Zee en het Noorden, begon
de handel zich nu via de Maas te verplaatsen. Toen en later zullen
over de Maas producten vervoerd zijn van landbouw en veeteelt en van
de messingindustrie in de plaatsen ten zuiden van Luik; bovendien in
de zevende eeuw slaven uit Engeland, die naar de slavenmarkt in
Verdun gingen. Rond 1000 richtte de Maashandel zich op steden als
Keulen, Londen en Goslar. De Maassteden vormden een eigen economisch
gebied, geheel los van de Nederlanden. Er was weinig passieve
handel; kooplieden van elders kwamen er zelden. De transporten over
de Maas in deze tijd omvatten zink, tin, steen, leisteen en
kleiwaren. De middeleeuwse betekenis van de rivier de Maas als
handelsader is in het verleden overschat. De Maas zou de as zijn
geweest voor de eenheid en economische voorsprong van het
Maasgebied, waar de steden continuïteit kenden en de Noormannen
geen breuk veroorzaakt hadden. De bronnen geven hier geen
aanwijzingen voor; zowel de geschreven als de monetaire bronnen zijn
te summier, terwijl continuïteit van bewoning in Romeinse
nederzettingen langs de Maas tot nu toe slechts is aangetoond voor
Maastricht en Huy. Er waren maar twee plaatsen van belang: Verdun en
Maastricht. De Maas heeft nooit die rol gespeeld die de Rijn had,
want de Maas miste de landweg, die de Rijn over zijn gehele traject
begeleidde. Overigens was de rivier tussen Maastricht en de
Zuiderzee voor de handel van groter belang, dan het gedeelte van de
rivier ten zuiden van de stad. Daar volgde het verkeer veeleer de
oude Romeinse wegen.
Zie
http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00000791/images/index.html?id=00000791&groesser=150&fip=193.174.98.30&no=&seite=163
LIBER
SEPTIMUS Ad Gogonem IV
Nubila
quae rapido perflante Aquilone venitis,
pendula
sidereo quae movet axe rota,
dicite
qua vegitet carus mihi Gogo salute,
quid
placidis rebus mente serenus agit:
si
prope fluctivagi remoratur litora Rheni,
ut
salmonis adeps rete trahatur aquis;
an
super uviferi Mosellae obambulat amnem,
quo
levis ardentem temperet aura diem,
pampinus
et fluvius medios ubi mitigat aestus:
vitibus
umbra rigens, fluctibus unda recens;
aut
Mosa dulce sonans, quo grus ganta anser olorque est,
triplice
merce ferax (alite pisce rate)
an
tenet herbosis qua frangitur Axona ripis,
cuius
aluntur aquis pascua prata seges?
Esera?
Sara? Cares? Scaldis? Sate? Somena? Sura?
seu
qui Mettis adit de sale nomen habens?
aut
aestiva magis nemorum saltusque pererrans
cuspide,
rete feras hinc ligat, inde necat?
Ardenna
an Vosagus cervi caprae helicis uri
caede
sagittifera silva fragore tonat?
seu
validi bufali ferit inter cornua campum,
nec
mortem differt ursus onager aper?
an
sua rura colens exusta novalia sulcat
et
rude cervici taurus aratra gemit?
sive
palatina residet modo laetus in aula,
cui
scola congrediens plaudit amore sequax?
an
cum dulce Lupo pietatis iura retractant
consilioque
pari mitia mella creant,
quo
pascatur inops, viduae solacia praestent,
parvus
tutorem sumat, egenus opem?
quidquid
agunt, pariter felicia vota secundent,
et
valeant Christi regis amore frui.
vos
precor, o venti, qui curritis atque reditis,
pro
Fortunato nuntia ferte suo.
BOOK
SEVEN To Gogon IV
Clouds that come with the swift North Wind,
The
starry pendulum that moves the wheel's axis,
Tell me where my
dear Gogon thrives,
What does he do with peaceful things, serene
in mind:
If he lingers near the banks of the Rhine,
As salmon
fat is dragged in a net by the waters;
Or does he wander over the
river of the rain-bearing Moselle,
Where a light breeze tempers
the burning day,
Where the vine and the river meander,
Where
the heat is tempered by the heat:
The shade cools the vines, the
fresh water by the waves;
Or the sweet-sounding Maas, where the
crane and the goose are,
Fertile with threefold merchandise (the
fish are fed, the fish are fed)
Or does he hold the grassy banks
where the Axona breaks,
By whose waters the pastures and meadows
are nourished by the crops?
Esera? Sara? Cares? Scaldis? Sate?
Somena? Sura?
Or who visits Mettis, whose name is from salt?
Or
does the summer forest and forest wander more through the woods and
forests
with its peak, bind wild beasts here and there, killing
them?
The Ardennes or Vosagus deer and goats burn with the
helix
the forest thunders with a crash of arrows,
or does the
wild boar bear strike the field between the horns of the strong
buffalo,
nor does the wild boar delay death?
or does the wild
boar bear, cultivating his fields, furrows the burnt fallow
fields
and the rough-necked bull groans with the plow?
or does
the Palatine now reside happily in the court,
whose school the
follower applauds with love, joining him?
or do they with the
sweet Wolf retrace the rights of piety
and with equal counsel
create a gentle honey,
by which the needy is fed, the widow is
consoled,
the little one takes a guardian, the needy one
helps?
whatever they do, may their happy wishes support them
equally
and may they be able to enjoy the love of Christ the
King.
I pray you, O winds, who run and return,
bring your
message for Fortunatus.
Zie
http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00000790/images/index.html?id=00000790&groesser=150&fip=193.174.98.30&no=&seite=184
Zie
ook "Tractaat tussen het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden en het
Koninkrijk België tot regeling der wateraftappingen uit de
Maas", 's-Gravenhage, 12 mei 1863
en
Archeologisch onderzoek Plangebied Hanssum, Neer
Kartering
en algemene resultaten
Deelgebied
West is in het voorjaar van 2010 belopen waarbij de zichtbaarheid
goed tot zeer goed was. Alleen op het perceel met wintertarwe was de
zichtbaarheid dusdanig matig, dat er niet met succes gekarteerd kon
worden. Het perceel grasland waarin de overloopgeul ligt is niet
gekarteerd wegens de slechte zichtbaarheid, maar vooral omdat het
bij de aanleg van deze geul volledig vergraven is. Het hoger gelegen
akkerperceel van Deelgebied Zuid is in het najaar van 2010 belopen.
De vondstzichtbaarheid was goed. In totaal zijn 2.143 objecten
geraapt, waarvan 40 bij nadere bestudering natuurlijk – niet
antropogeen beïnvloed - bleken te zijn. Van de 2.103 objecten
die als archeologische artefacten kunnen worden aangeduid zijn
slechts 83 exemplaren aangetroffen in Deelgebied Zuid, veruit het
grootste deel is derhalve afkomstig van Deelgebied West (zie Afb.
11). De artefacten zijn in Deelgebied West meer of minder
gelijkmatig verspreid over het terrein aangetroffen. In Deelgebied
Zuid alleen op het hogere deel van de onderzochte graanakker
artefacten aangetroffen. In Deelgebied West loopt in de
noordwestelijke deel een grindbaan vrijwel noord – zuid vanaf
de noordwest hoek van het plangebied. De gedachte dat dit mogelijk
een Romeinse weg zou zijn is al vrij snel ter zijde geschoven. Trekt
men de lijn van het zichtbare tracé door vanaf het kruispunt
van de Hagendoorn met het Eiland en het Zwaarveld (dit globaal het
punt waar deze grindbaan voor het eerst zichtbaar is) door, dan komt
men uit bij de Wijnardenhof. Op de eerste kadastrale minuutplan en
op de topografische kaarten (Afbeeldingen 6 en 7) is een landweg
waarneembaar die precies dit tracé volgt.
26
mei 1830 SWALMEN - Rapport van het Negende Maascollege inzake
waterschade veroorzaakt door de Maas gedurende de winter 1829-1830.
'Bij
eene naauwkeurige bezigtiging langs den geheelen Maasoever in ons
distrikt te hebben gedaan, heeft men bevonden als volgt:
[volgen
eerst de gemeenten Linne, Herten, Roermond en Maasniel...]
Gemeente
Swalmen
Eenen
grooten inbreuk aan een perceel grasgewas, genaamd de Lingen,
toebehoorende aan den hoogwelgeboren Heer Marquis van Hoensbroek.
Eenen grooten inbreuk in een perceel grasgewas, genaamd den Tool
lang circa 600 ellen, toebehoorende aan 24 particuliere eigenaars,
waar van in den afgeloopen winter meer dan een bunder is afgebroken
en waar de Maas dreigt van achteren in te vallen en gevolglijk alle
de in 1816 door het gouvernement gemaakte waterkeerende werken zal
thenemaal vernielen waardoor eenige huizen van het gehucht Asselt in
de stroom der Maas zullen gelegd worden en zonder bijstand van lands
of provincie wegen niet kan ondernomen worden.
Eindelijk
zeer grooten inbreuk onder het gehucht Asselt beginnende tegen over
het huis van Lenard Theelen tot tegen over het veer lang circa 1400
ellen toebehoorende aan 48 particuliere eigenaars waarvan eene
menigte niet in staat zijn waterkeerende werken te kunnen aanleggen
en alwaar meer dan twee en een half bunder is weggespoeld worden.
Het
voornoemd Kollegie zich buiten staat achtende om de hier boven
vermelde beschadiging en de kosten der te doene herstellingen en aan
te leggen werken te begrooten en dierhalve verlangen dat eene
ambtenaar van den waterstaat mogte worden afgezonden, als hier toe
beter geschikt om de waters op de lijdende plaatsen te pijlen en
naar mate de diepte, de kosten te kunnen berekenen en naar dien den
voorstel of beraming der middelen te kunnen regelen.'
1
januari 1897 NEER OF "NÈRE."
De
winterzon doorboort met matte stralen de morgennevelen. Ieder
straaltje kaatst terug in de millioenen druppelen van de berijpte
grasspieren der weide.
De
boomen betalen hun jaarlijkschen tol aan den wintervorst en van de
takken daalt onophoudelijk een regen van verdorde eikenbladeren
neer, die met een eigenaardig geritsel op den harden grond vallen.
Na
verloop van eenige dagen is het landschap even kaal als 't veld,
waarin thans het groen nog slechts weinig afwisseling brengt.
Over
het water trekt een wit-grijzige nevel, en de vochtige, vinnige
koude kleurt neus en ooren bont en blauw.
Het
eentonige van het landschap vóór Buggenum verdwijnt,
als men het dorp nadert, waarvan de lange rei huizen ons in den
wintermorgen als verlaten schijnt. Boven eiken schoorsteen zweeft
een blauw, rechtopstijgend rookwolkje, dat bewijst, hoe men
daarbinnen de koude wel weet te weren.
Achter
Buggenum breidt zich het vergezicht uit. Wij staan op een hooge
vlakte, met vele wegen doorsneden, waarvan de meesten naar Neer
leiden.
Links
zien wij Haelen en Nunhem met hunne kerkjes hun kasteelen tegen de
heuvelen leunende.
Groene
dennenbosschen brekende rechte lijnen.
Rechts
zien wij ver weg het oude kerkje van Asselt, met de huizen van 't
dorpje, dat eens zoo welvarend was, toen de scheepvaart op de Maas
nog bloeide en Hanssum onder Neer, een groot en bekend veer was.
Voor
ons ligt Neer, met de kerk op eene hoogte, die eenvoudige doch
evenredige vormen te zien geeft.
De
huizen van Neer ligen in de inzinking ontstaan door door het
riviertje, waaraan het zijn naam ontleent.
Van
welken kant men het dorp ook beziet, overal is het omringd door een
hooge vlakte.
Ook
van de Noordzijde heeft men een fraai vergezicht van het hooger
gelegen land op Neer.
Wendt
men zich naar de Maas, die aan de zijde van Hanssum en Neer, langs
een hoog schoor of steilen oever loopt, dan ziet men het dorp Beesel
liggen, dat zijne huizen weerspiegelt in het blauwend vlak der Maas.
Achter
tusschen de bosschen door, waar de torens van Swalmen en Reuver
hunne stippen verheffen, ontwaart men de witte rookpluim der
locomotief en kan men hem in zijn loop over de lijn volgen. Let men
goed op, dan zal de stille winterlucht u het gegil der stoomfluit
overbrengen, lang nadat men de rookpluim weer heeft zien bewegen.
De
zon breekt nu krachtiger door de nevelen heen, waartusschen zij
zoolang als een melkwitte schijf een twijfelachtig licht trachtte te
zenden.
Al
verdrijft zij de koude niet, er komt toch meer bezieling en leven om
ons.
Neer
ligt vlak voor ons en de watermolens op het riviertje ratelen en
klapperen, dat het een lust is.
Zoo'n
watermolen heeft iets aantrekkelijks, 't is een aardig stoffeering
in het landschap.
De
watermolen leverde vroeger aan zijne bezitters heel wat op. De heer
des dorps, hier het klooster Keizersbosch, had het monopolie van
malen op de riviertjes. Daarom bracht dit voorrecht geld in de kist,
terwijl de molenaars voor zich zelf zorgden en niet lui waren met
scheppen in de meelzakken. Sommige molenaars hadden echter wijde
mouwen, zoo verhaalt de sage, en schepten met hand en mouw tegelijk.
Of dit verhaal, dat men in Limburg zoo vaak hoort opdisschen, waar
is, zullen wij "God en den mulder laten scheiden."
Het
dorp Neer is zeer oud. Het kan zijn naam ontleenen aan zijne
ligging. Wij herinneren er hier echter aan, dat in het bochtige
diepe riviertje vele draaikolken voorkomen, (in 't Limburgsch neer)
en het riviertje ook dien naam draagt. Het vormde in 870 de grens
tusschen de boven en beneden Maasgouw.
In
de Salische wetten wordt een plaats Nara of Nare vermeld, welke
Wendelinus het tegenwoordige Neer noemt. De bekende muntkundige
Stiels, pastoor te Neer, (1) verhaalt dan ook in zijn te Neer gouden
en zilveren munten uit den tijd der Merovingers werden gevonden en
daaronder enkelen te Wijk-bij-Duurstede of te Wijk bij Maastricht en
Utrecht waren geslagen. Eene bijzonderheid die bovengemeld vermoeden
bevestigd.
De
Heer Stiels schreef verder over het dorp, volgende bijzonderheden
neer, die wij hier doen volgen:
Alhoewel
de heeren van Horne, die in den jare 1450 geworden zijn rijksgraven,
hunne bijzondere woonplaats hadden op het slot omtrent Weert en het
kasteel van Horne, aan de Maas, gehouden werd als het opperhoofd van
dit landschap, zoo heeft nochtans altoos Neer uitgeblonken boven
andere plaatsen. Zoo door zijne oudheid als door het getal zijner
inwoners, zijne privilegiën en voorrechten, alsook door de
treffelijkheid van zijne kerk, (gewijd aan Sint Marten) in welke als
immemoriali niet alleen een pastoor is gesteld gesteld geweest, maar
ook een pastoraat met 4 à 5 benificiën. Mits het
onmogelijk is de fundatiën dezer benificiën te ontdekken,
en het zeker is dat anno 1203 de pastoor reeds genoemd werd, persona
in Neer, gelijk te zien is in Miraeus, en bij meer andere, alwaar
gezegd wordt dat Imaina gravin van Loon en abdisse van
Munsterbilsen, weduwe van den Hertog Godfried III van Brabant
opdraagt het personaat van Neer aan den Heer Prelaet der Abdij van
Averbode enz., zoo kan men besluiten, dat anno 1000 of 1100 dit
pastoraat reeds moet opgericht zijn, en dat vervolgens deze gemeente
alsdan reeds zeer volkrijk moet geweest zijn; ja, wat meer was, is,
Neer was te dien tijde een stad met wallen en poorten, genietende
alle voorrechten, welke steeds burgeren gewoon zijn te hebben.
Alhoewel de schrijver hier niets van meldt, en bij verloop van
tijden door oorlogen en andere ongelukkige omstandigheden, van deze
stad geen de minste overblijfselen meer te zien zijn, zoo heeft men
nochtans proeven genoeg, om dit zeer geloofbaar te maken, aan allen,
die de gelegenheid der plaats kennende, daarenboven zullen bemerken,
de volgende proefstukken:
Neer
is dan eerst een personaat, en dat reeds lang voor 1200; in onze
kerk waren gefundeerd 5 benificiën, met zulke goede revenuen,
dat de benificianten daarvan, resideerende te Neer, op Zon- en hooge
feestdagen het koor frequenteerden gelijk in kapittel-kerken, met
zingen van vespers, metten enz.
Daarenboven,
in Neer zijn drie treffelijke broederschappen of schutterijen,
welker oudheid en opkomst het onmogelijk is te bepalen; immers, is
het zeker dat deze door de vorsten van Horn en ook door de
navolgende graven zijn verrijkt geworden met treffelijke
privilegiën, met verscheidene landerijen en inkomsten, om op
zekere gestelde dagen, est in festo sancti Sebastiani en andere, op
eene eerlijke wijze zich te komen recrëeeren, en ook om in
tijden van oorlog voor hunne graven te velde trekken en bij tijden
van onvoorziene geloopen hunne medeburgers te bewaren van geweld en
strooperijen.
Eertijds
zijn nog meer broederschappen geweest, als dat van den H. Antonius,
van O. L. Vr., welker inkomsten, na het ophouden dezer congregatie,
om wat oorzaak is onbekend, gekomen zijn aan de armentafel dezer
gemeente.
Ook
hebben de ambachten der smeden, wevers en schoenmakers hunne
broederschappen en patronen, op welker feestdagen zij bijeenkomen en
voor hun eene hoogmis gezongen wordt.
Ten
derde hebben de inwoners, welker huizen binnen de vulders of
stadsgrachten staan, een bijzondere privilegie, dat op den dag
hunner begrafenissen, gelijk het in steden geschiedt, het lijk met
kruis en priester aan het sterfhuis moet afgehaald worden.
Maar
hetgeen op het klaarste aanwijst, dat Neer hiervoor eene stad was,
zijn de overgebleven stadsgraven, welke in het begin dezer eeuw nog
niet geslecht zijnde, allengskens afgeworpen zijn tot akkerland,
doch met zulk voorrecht, dat op die graven de tiende altoos zal
toekomen aan den pastoor, als zijnde novale decimateur, welk recht
hij ook altoos, zonder eenige contestatie genoten heeft. Deze graven
(grachten) beginnen aan de Bergerstraat, loopende op de Zuiderhak
vandaar achter de Groote op den Baent en van den Baent op het huis
van schepen Peter Windelmolen, en zoo door het Pasveld tot op den
Keizer, zijnde op sommige plaatsen maar 16 voeten breed, maar op
andere plaatsen veel breeder. Uit oude papieren kan men nog halen de
namen der poorten, als Bergepoort, Veerpoort, enz.
Bij
verloop van tijd heeft Neer veel verspeeld; of zulks geschied is
door de opkomst van andere dorpen, als Roggel, Heijthuijzen, enz.,
welke nog onbekend waren, of wel door verwoestingen van oorlog of
door brand, welke ons dorp verscheiden malen vernield heeft, is
onzeker; immers, dit land heeft ten tijde der beeldstorming, als
grenzende aan de stad Roermond, ook veel geleden, doch nooit meer
als in het leven van den pastoor-deken Leo van der Meer, tusschen de
jaren 1630-1650, want na het plunderen van de stad Thienen, anno
1635 zijn de Hollandsche en andere troepen hier in het graafschap
neergeslagen, alles verbrandende en verwoestende. Daarop is de pest
gevolgd, welke niet alleen een oneindig getal van krijgsvolk, maar
ook van 's lands inwoners weggenomen heeft, zoodat de huizen ledig
en de landen onbebouwd hebben moeten blijven. Maar nooit is onze
gemeente droeviger ongeluk overkomen, als in den jare 1645, wanneer
de Hessische troepen, na vele dagen overal den baas gespeeld te
hebben, ten laatste op den 11 Augustus het dorp op 4 hoeken hebben
in brand gesteld, waarschijnlijk omdat men de geëischte
brandschatting niet heeft kunnen opbrengen. Hierdoor is niet alleen
het geheele dorp, weinige uitgenomen, maar ook het pastoreele huis
met alle papieren documenten, registers, zoo van kerk als armen, zoo
van pastoreele redenen als gemeentezaken in de asch gelegd. De
pastoor Leo van der Meer is als toen door de Hessen gevankelijk
medegeleid en 8 weken tot Nuijs in hechtenis gehouden.
Tot
zoover de pastoor Stiels. Zeer opmerkelijk zijn zijne bewijzen,
waardoor Neer tot stad verheven werd. Zeer zeker ligt er het bewijs
in, dat Neer vroegtijdig een aanzienlijk dorp is geweest. Onzes
inziens heeft men het ter beveiliging tegen vijandelijke aanvallen
met grachten omringd, wijl men, zoo gemakkelijk aan water kon komen,
terwijl men verder eene schans aanlegde, welker overblijfselen nog
bestaan. Van eene eigenlijke verheffing tot stad is niets bekend, 't
Zou ook mogelijk kunnen zijn, dat Neer in den Gelderschen oorlog in
't begin van 1500 in staat van tegenweer gebracht is. In 1504 toch
toen Echt geheel verwoest werd, lag Jacob III van Horne met zijn
krijgsvolk in Neer. Die van Roermond overvielen hem daar, namen hem
gevangen met "anderen luyden van des Prijnschen volcke, die due
tertijt die nachtewaecke qualicke hilden" en voerden hem "myt
grotter blijtschappe tot Ruremonde in gevange."
De
schutterijen bestaan nog en zijn in het bezit van fraai zilver, dat
op de "port" of het gildehuis bewaard wordt. Een
schutterij is nog in het bezit van fraaie steenen drinkkannen. Het
dorp Neer is welvarend, alhoewel de tijdsomstandigheden het niet
verbeterd hebben.
Wanneer
men echter tot het verledene terugkeeren en een treffend beeld wilt
zien van het nietige van het edelste en waardigste dezer wereld,
wandele men den weg in de richting der heide en bezie de eentonige,
smakelooze, doch groote en hechte gebouwen, die er overgebleven zijn
van het wijd befaamde en eeuwen oude stift Keizersbosch.
Vóór
700 jaar reeds eene bezitting der Abdij Averbode bij Sichem, werd
hier een klooster gesticht voor vrouwen, na de milde schenkingen van
Graaf Engelbert van Horne in 1200.
In
1226 werd hier eene kerk gesticht, in 1232 was er een proost, in
1350 was een telg van het machtige geslacht van Horne priorin.
In
het kerkgebouw, in 1472 vernieuwd, werden de hooge Hornes ter aarde
besteld en gedurende ruim vijf eeuwen was Keizersbosch het
vereenigingspunt van de vromen en machtigen. In 1786 werd het stift
opgetrokken; men vond nog de grondslagen der oude hoeven. Een
gedeelte dezer gebouwen bestaat nog.
Gedurende
de Fransche Republiek vluchtten de nonnen van dit klooster naar de
Meijerij en vestigden zich te Deurne, in het verlaten huis van den
Predikant. Daarheen voerden zij ook een gedeelte harer meubelen en
archieven. Een Cartularium der abdij, in 1885 aldaar teruggevonden
is door den archivaris in Limburg ten voordeele van zijn depot
aangekocht. Een oud gezangboek, waarin de voorschriften, te volgen
bij de opname van een religieuze en bij den choordienst, werd door
mij te Neer gevonden en ook aan het Rijksarchief te Maastricht
geschonken.
Keizersbosch
met al zijne bezittingen werd den 28 Messidor jaar 6, 16 Juli 1793,
(affiche 57) met al zijne op- en dependentiën door de fransche
Republikeinen verkocht en aangekocht door Arnold Jan Baptista De
Raedt van Roermond voor de som van 145,000 livres, natuurlijk
grootendeels in assignaten uit te betalen, die bijna waardeloos
waren.
De
Raedt deed al heel spoedig de kerk afbreken, evenals een gedeelte
der 82 jaar vroeger vernieuwde gebouwen.
De
familie De Raedt verkocht dit landgoed den 8 Augustus 1876, groot 7
hectaren en 84 aren, met stallen, schuren en remisen, bouw- en
weiland aan den tegenwoordiger bezitter Alexander Steegh, gehuwd met
Margaretha Antoinetta van Hegelsom.
Zooals
boven vermeld is, bevonden zich in de kerk de grafsteden der meeste
graven van Horn.
Voor
een aantal jaren vond men bij het omgraven van het terrein achter
het gebouw, de grafsteden terug. Maar men kon de beenderen der hooge
heerschers niet onderscheiden van den minsten kloosterknecht. De
huizing bestaat nu uit een tiental kamers met zaal, keukens,
kelders, stalling, door zijne uitwendige vormen weinig aan de
vroegere grootheid herinnerende.
Bij
Neer behoort behalve het huis Ghoor, eene versterkte hoeve van
Aldenghoor, Kuikhoven, Brumholt, Gerheggen, Waay, Wijngaarden, het
gehucht Hanssum, aan de Maas gelegen, waar het veerhuis ligt.
Voor
een paar honderd jaar is er heel wat ruzie ontstaan over dit veer.
In 1700 liet de Bisschop van Luik er tol heffen, dit beviel de
Generale Staten niet en zij beletten gewapenderhand de heffing.
In
1718 begon het spelletje weer, nu lichtte men den Luikschen
ontvanger op en wierp hem te Roermond in den kerker. De Bisschop
liet zich niet ontmoedigen en de schippers betaalden er tot 1731,
toen de koning van Pruisen den Keizer de opheffing verzocht.
Opmerking
verdient het, dat de Noordgrens van de gemeente Neer gevormd wordt
door het afwateringskanaal der Zuidwillemsvaart naar de Maas. Het
verval van het kanaal in de Maas is groot. Daaraan mag het wel te
wijten zijn, dat men de verbinding van Maas en Schelde hier niet tot
stand gebracht heeft.
Voor
aleer wij deze schets van Neer willen besluiten, moeten wij nog
wijzen op het eigenaardige dialect, nog al afwijkende van dat der
omringende streek. Men hoort daar verwisselingen van letters, die
"kerk" bijna tot "krek", van "verkes"
tot ongeveer "vrèkes" maken. Honderde jaren heeft
men er aldus gesproken, want aan oude zeden en gewoonten houdt men
trouw vast en Neer kenmerkt zich gelukkig, nog steeds door
ouderwetsche goede trouw, die u uit alles tegenstraalt.
(1)
Publ. etc. du Limb., Deel XIX, p. 465.
Zie
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/tijdschriften/view?coll=dts&identifier=dts%3A1658002%3Ampeg21%3A0096&sortfield=date&objectsearch=hanssum&query=klein+hanssum
Bewoningsgeschiedenis
Ten
behoeve van het opstellen van de archeologische verwachting wordt
veelvuldig gebruik gemaakt van de relatie die bestaat tussen de
situering van de archeologische vindplaatsen en het landschap, of
zelfs specifieke landschapselementen. Deze relatie
(locatiekeuzefactoren) verschilt per archeologische periode en per
complextype. Omdat de locatiekeuze sterk gebonden is aan het
landschap is Nederland in de Nationale Onderzoeksagenda Archeologie
verdeeld in zogenaamde archeoregio’s. Hierbij is het
plangebied ingedeeld bij het Brabants zandgebied. Het ligt echter
aan de uiterste periferie van deze regio, op de grens met de
Limburgse zandgronden. Kennis van de bewoningsgeschiedenis van zowel
het Brabants zandgebied als het Limburgs zandgebied is derhalve
onontbeerlijk om een goed verwachtingsmodel op te stellen en de
locatiekeuzefactoren per periode te bepalen.
Het
landschap van de Maasterrassen bestaat uit resten van pleistocene en
holocene rivierbeddingen die ingesneden zijn in de pleistocene
rivierterrassen. Sommige van de oude rivierbeddingen werden
ontwaterd door beken die hun oorsprong hebben in de westelijk
gelegen dekzandlandschappen, waardoor ze als beekdalen gingen
functioneren (bijvoorbeeld de Neerbeek).
Deze
afwisseling van verschillende landschapsvormen op korte afstand van
elkaar vormde in het Paleolithicum en het Mesolithicum een
attractief gebied voor jagers en verzamelaars. De grenszones tussen
hoog en laag, nat en droog, boden de meeste kansen op een gevarieerd
en betrouwbaar voedselaanbod. Tijdens de 200.000 jaar voorafgaande
aan het Neolithicum, werden de bewoningsmogelijkheden bepaald door
klimatologische omstandigheden. Tijdens de koudere perioden was deze
beperkter dan tijdens de warmere. Na de laatste ijstijd, circa
11.000 jaar geleden, begint een warme periode die leidt tot een
steeds rijker en gevarieerder voedselaanbod. Gebieden zoals de
Maasterrassen boden door hun afwisseling voldoende mogelijkheden
voor permanente bewoning. Vindplaatsen uit het Mesolithicum worden
met name teruggevonden op ruggen en terrasranden met een goed
drainerende ondergrond van dekzanden in de nabijheid van een
waterbron (ven, rivier of afgesneden meander). De iets hogere delen
rondom beken, vennen en plassen waren daarom waarschijnlijk de
landschappelijk meest gunstige bewoningsplaatsen. Bij de
locatiekeuze nabij open water lijkt er een voorkeur te zijn geweest
voor de (zuid)oostelijke flank van dekzandruggen waarschijnlijk in
verband met de overheersende (noord)westelijke winden.
Waarschijnlijk waren er ook in en nabij rivier- en beekdalen
nederzettingen die later zijn geërodeerd of afgedekt met
sedimenten.9
Met
de introductie van landbouw op de stroomopwaarts gelegen lössgronden
begon de circa 5300 v.C. het Neolithicum. Op de lichte kleigronden
van de Maasterrassen begint de landbouw circa 1000 jaar later. De
gevolgen voor het landschap waren ingrijpend, vooral door het rooien
van bosgebieden om akkers aan te leggen, maar ook door andere
activiteiten die tot doel hadden het landschap zo in te richten dat
deze beter paste bij de nieuwe sedentaire manier van leven. Landbouw
leidde bovendien tot een groei van de bevolking, waardoor de
effecten van de overgang van jagen en verzamelen naar landbouw
versterkt werden. De nieuwe sedentaire levenswijze stelde andere
eisen aan de vestigingsplaatsen, die vaker op of nabij de hogere
delen van het landschap en dan met name daar waar de bodem
vruchtbaarder was, lagen. Het bemesten van landbouwgrond was echter
nog niet bekend, zodat de opbrengst gering was en de akkers
regelmatig moesten worden verplaatst om de vruchtbaarheid op peil te
houden. Afhankelijk van de natuurlijke bodemvruchtbaarheid kon dit
al na enkele jaren gebeuren. De meeste boerderijen kenden
vermoedelijk een levensduur van enkele decennia vanwege de
vergankelijkheid van het bouwmateriaal. Dit bewoningssysteem wordt
omschreven met het begrip zwervende ervensysteem. Tijdens de
Bronstijd en de IJzertijd liep dit proces van omvorming van een
natuur- naar een cultuurlandschap door. De bewoning zal permanent,
maar nog steeds niet plaatsvast zijn geweest.
In
de Romeinse Tijd werd de Maasvallei – voor het eerst –
opgenomen in een groter geheel. Op beide oevers van de rivier kwam
een weg te liggen, die de steden en grotere nederzettingen in de
Maasvallei met elkaar, met de militaire forten aan de Limes en met
andere delen van het Romeinse Rijk verbond. De militaire bezetting
van de delta van Rijn en Maas aan het begin van onze jaartelling
leidde al snel tot een romaniseringsproces bij de lokale bevolking,
waarbij een breed scala aan nieuwe producten en technieken werd
overgenomen. Een van de belangrijkste veranderingen was de opname in
een geldeconomie. De mogelijkheid om voor een ver(der) weg liggende
markt te produceren leidde tot een verdere uitbreiding van het
landbouwareaal, maar ook tot productie van grondstoffen en
gebruiksgoederen op een schaal die de lokale behoefte ontsteeg.
Tegenovergesteld aan deze productie voor afzet elders, was de
aanvoer van goederen voor eigen gebruik. Het meest zichtbaar was dit
proces wel in het nieuwe bouwen waarbij gebruik werd gemaakt van
Romeinse bouwtechnieken en –materialen. In de lössgebieden
maar ook langs de Maas verrezen villa’s –
landbouwbedrijven – die op zijn minst met een dakdekking
uitgevoerd in grofkeramiek waren uitgevoerd. Maar vaak ook andere,
luxe, voorzieningen hadden, zoals vloerverwarming en baden.
Daarnaast werden ook in de nederzettingen op de gewone boerderijen
stenen daken aangetroffen (Helden Schrames).
Uitgaande
van het beeld dat Slofstra in 1991 schetste van het
nederzettingssysteem in Zuid-Nederland wordt er een scherp contrast
geschetst tussen de nederzettings- en agrarische systemen in de Late
IJzertijd en de Romeinse tijd. In de eerste periode is sprake van
celtic fields en ‘zwervende boerderijen’. De
veranderingen zouden volgens Slofstra samenhangen met een agrarische
intensivering, die mede veroorzaakt werd door de Romeinse
belastingheffing. De ‘verwantschappelijke’
productiewijze veranderde in een ‘tributaire’
productiewijze. De nederzettingshiërarchie heeft small rural
settlements aan de basis en kent verder enclosed rural settlements,
rurale centra ofwel vici en de proto-urbane centra die in de loop
van de Romeinse tijd tot echte steden uitgroeiden. Binnen de groep
van de enclosed rural settlements zijn al in de preFlavische periode
indicaties te vinden voor eliteresidenties, die in sommige gevallen
uitgroeiden tot echte villa’s maar elders vaak niet ‘verder’
komen dan wat Slofstra als proto-villa’s betitelt. Het
nederzettingssysteem weerspiegelt als het ware het hiërarchische
patronagesysteem. Dit systeem bestond al in de late prehistorie en
wordt in de Romeinse tijd van extra treden voorzien, namelijk die
van de (Gallo)Romeinse elite en de keizerlijke familie. De bewoners
van de eliteresidenties in Zuid-Nederland vormen de intermediairs
met de hoogste niveaus, doordat zij ook als decuriones van de
civitates fungeren. De afhankelijke bevolking woont in de huizen en
kleine nederzettingen rond de residenties van elites.
De
ondergang van het Romeinse Rijk, een proces dat al in de 3de eeuw
begint en doorloopt tot in de 5de eeuw, leidde tot een neergang die
zich onder andere vertaalde in een krimp van de bevolking en daarmee
van het landbouwareaal. Dit proces lijkt in de Maasvallei minder
ingrijpend te zijn verlopen dan elders. Het voortbestaan van
plaatsnamen uit de Romeinse Tijd (Heel, Blerick, Melick, mogelijk
ook Kessel) wijzen op een continuïteit in bewoning. Wel
veranderde de bevolkingssamenstelling. Franken, al dan niet als
huurlingen die de grens moesten verdedigen, vestigen zich binnen het
Rijk, onder andere binnen de verlaten villa-complexen. Het
afbrokkelen van het Romeinse gezag leidt tot de opkomst van lokale
heersers, veelal afkomstig uit de Frankische elite, wier macht
gebaseerd was op eigen grondbezit. Deze politieke autonomie viel
samen met een economische autarkie, waarin de handel vrijwel tot
stilstand kwam en er alleen nog voor eigen gebruik werd
geproduceerd. Onder de Merovingers (6de–7de eeuw) begint een
herstel, niet alleen van een centraal gezag, maar ook en vooral van
de economie. Het landbouwareaal wordt weer uitgebreid en nieuwe
nederzettingen gesticht. De Maasvallei ligt echter nog in de
periferie van het nieuwe koninkrijk, waarvan het centrum rond Reims
lag. De machtsbasis van de Karolingers (7de tot 10de eeuw), die de
macht overnemen van de Merovingers, lag noordelijker, tussen Verdun
en Herstal, waardoor de Maasvallei meer centraal kwam te liggen. Het
Karolingische Rijk viel in de 9de en 10de eeuw uiteen in groot
aantal kleinere eenheden. Lokale en regionale heersers verwierven
een grote mate van zelfstandigheid.
In
de Vroege Middeleeuwen was macht gebaseerd op eigen grondbezit. Dit
grondbezit werd geëxploiteerd door middel van het dominiale of
hofstelsel, waarbij onvrijen – horigen – het land
bewerkten. Het is een systeem gebaseerd op betaling in natura. Deels
gaan deze domeinen mogelijk terug op oudere nederzettingen, deels
zijn zij ontstaan als nieuwe ontginningen. Er vond een verschuiving
plaats naar het verbouwen van meer graan, waarvoor het
drieslagsysteem werd ontwikkeld. In dit systeem werden twee jaar
waarin zomer- en wintertarwe verbouwd werd, afgewisseld met een jaar
braak. Door het ontbreken van meststoffen om de vruchtbaarheid van
de grond op peil te houden, was dit de enige manier om uitputting
van de bodem te voorkomen. Het vereist echter wel extra grond. De
toenemende nadruk op de teelt van graan heeft waarschijnlijk geleid
tot het ontstaan van de open velden die veel van de dorpen op de
Maasoevers omringen. Het drieslagstelsel functioneert ook het best
bij grote aangesloten complexen. Deels zijn deze velden ontstaan
door het aaneengroeien van kleinere individuele kampen,
waarschijnlijk al in de 9de of 10de eeuw. Maar niet uitgesloten mag
worden dat op de zavelgronden van de Maasterrassen, die door hun
bodemstructuur en natuurlijke vruchtbaarheid uitermate geschikt zijn
voor akkerbouw, er een continuïteit is vanaf de Romeinse Tijd,
toen deze gronden ook al intensief werden benut.
Bewoning
heeft in de Romeinse tijd plaatsgevonden in inheemse nederzettingen,
die verschillende mate geromaniseerd waren en in nederzettingen die
hun ontstaan ontleenden aan specifieke functies in politieke en/of
economische zin. Daarnaast waren er de individuele villa’s,
zoals die van Maasbracht of Neer. In de Vroege Middeleeuwen
verschuift de bewoning, na de aanvankelijke krimp, naar
nederzettingen langs de beken, veelal in de vorm van dorpen, en, met
name in het dekzandlandschap, naar individuele of collectieve
ontginningen. In deze laatste gebieden zal nog langere tijd sprake
zijn geweest van boerderijen die in de loop van de tijd verplaatst
werden, terwijl deze in de dorpen al plaatsvast waren. In hoeverre
binnen de open velden (zoals bijvoorbeeld tussen Neer en Buggenum)
nog bewoning in deze periode voorkwam, is onbekend. Hoeves die te
midden van hun landerijen lagen zijn in de vroege middeleeuwen nog
gangbaar, maar gaande weg concentreert de bewoning zich toch in
bewoningskernen, al komen solitaire hoeven ook heden nog voor, zoals
bijvoorbeeld de Wijnardenhof laat zien. Deze bestaat deels uit
bebouwing die al aanwezig is voor 1800 en deels uit bebouwing die na
1800 is verrezen als vervanging voor de hoeve De Beukel die iets
noordelijker in het Zwaarveld lag en door hoogwater rond 1800 zou
zijn verwoest. Veel van deze alleenstaande hoeven worden voor het
eerst genoemd in de late middeleeuwen en waren veelal eigendom van
de adel of van kloosterorden. Hun huidige vorm dateert uit de 17de
eeuw en later. Maar uitgaande van de veronderstelling dat deze
vruchtbare gronden zeer aantrekkelijk voor de landbouw zijn, mag
worden aangenomen dat de concentratie van bewoning buiten de
akkerarealen al redelijk vroeg in de middeleeuwen zal zijn begonnen.
De neergang van het Romeinse Rijk, het verlaten van de villa’s
en de krimp van de bevolking, zal maar ten dele hebben geresulteerd
in het opgeven van deze gronden. Andere, voor de landbouw minder
geschikte gronden, zullen eerder zijn prijsgegeven aan de natuur.
Dit lijkt ook te worden bevestigd door de ontginning van nieuwe
akkerbouwgebieden in de Late Middeleeuwen en Nieuwe Tijd, die vooral
plaatsvinden in de dekzandgebieden ten westen van het
terrassenlandschap langs de Maas. Het hierboven geschetste
bewoningspatroon ligt ten grondslag aan de huidige inrichting van
het landschap, waarin tussen Buggenum en Neer nog steeds sprake is
van een vrijwel onbebouwd landschap. De oudste vermeldingen van de
nederzettingen stammen uit de 13de en 14de eeuw, maar de
nederzettingen zelf lijken ouder te zijn. Buggenum wordt
bijvoorbeeld voor het eerst vermeld in 1230 maar de kerk moet al uit
het begin van de 11de eeuw stammen. Bovendien is Buggenum (1230:
Bugnem) een heemnaam, die veelal uit de Vroege Middeleeuwen stammen.
Op
de terrassen zal akkerbouw dominant zijn geweest, terwijl in de
lagere beekdalen en de actieve stroomgordel van de Maas graslanden
zullen hebben gelegen. Vermoedelijk zijn op de Maasterrassen al vrij
vroeg alle voor de akkerbouw bruikbare gronden in gebruik genomen.
Latere uitbreidingen aan bouwland vond vooral plaats op de dekzanden
ten westen van de Maasvallei. In grote lijnen ligt daarom vanaf de
Late Middeleeuwen de inrichting van het landschap op de
Maasterrassen vast. Dit is te zien op het kadastrale minuutplan van
1811-32. Alle percelen binnen Deelgebied West zijn dan in gebruik
als bouwland. In Deelgebied Zuid is het hoger gelegen noordelijk
deel ook als zodanig in gebruik, terwijl de lager gelegen delen als
wei- en hooilanden worden benut.
Het
meest oostelijk deel wordt gevormd door een afgesneden geul van de
Maas. Het verlandingsproces van deze arm is goed te volgen op de
Topografische kaarten van 1894 en 1938. Op deze kaarten is ook te
zien dat gedurende de eeuw die deze kaarten bestrijken het gebruik
van het land niet veranderde, bouwland blijft bouwland (wit) en
grasland blijft grasland (groen). Grotere ingrepen vinden pas plaats
in de laatste kwart van de 20ste eeuw, als in 1967 de Maas wordt
rechtgetrokken en er een herverkaveling plaatsvindt van het gebied
tussen Neer en Buggenum in de jaren zeventig. In die jaren wordt ook
een deel van het akkerbouw areaal omgezet in grasland. Tenslotte is
in 1996 een kade en overloopkanaal aangelegd die Neer moeten
beschermen bij hoogwater.
Verwachtingsmodel
Op
basis van de in de bovenstaande stappen verworven informatie over de
huidige situatie, de aardwetenschappelijke, de historische situatie
en bekende archeologische waarden kan een gespecificeerde
verwachting worden opgesteld. Om tot een juiste keuze van de
onderzoeksmethode van het inventariserend veldonderzoek te komen
zijn, voor zover mogelijk, de volgende eigenschappen aangegeven:
datering; minimaal
in hoofdperioden (zoals Paleolithicum, Mesolithicum, et cetera);
complextype (zoals
nederzetting, grafveld, akkerlaag et cetera);
omvang;
diepteligging (ook
zichtbaar/niet-zichtbaar);
locatie (met
eventueel aanduiding in welk deelgebied);
uiterlijke
kenmerken (artefacten en type indicatoren);
Voor
alle perioden geldt dat, behalve de vormende processen door de Maas
die het landschap haar huidige gestalte hebben gegeven, ook de mate
waarin erosie als gevolg van het afspoelen van grond van de akkers
bepalend kan zijn voor het verdwijnen van (delen van) het
bodemarchief. In welke mate dergelijke erosie heeft plaatsgevonden
binnen het plangebied is onduidelijk. Pas na het uitvoeren van het
booronderzoek is hierover meer duidelijkheid en kan deze vraag
eventueel worden beantwoord. Voor het onderstaande verwachtingsmodel
wordt dan ook geen rekening gehouden met de gevolgen van erosie als
gevolg van afspoeling vanaf akkers.
Specifiek
voor het lage deel van Deelgebied Zuid geldt dat bewoning hier
waarschijnlijk nooit heeft plaatsgevonden. Ook andere activiteiten
zullen maar beperkt zijn uitgevoerd in dit deel van het plangebied.
Wel bestaat er een gerede kans op bijzondere datasets uit alle
perioden, bijvoorbeeld rituele deposities, afvaldumps of aan
visserij of scheepvaart gerelateerde zaken. De verwachting voor dit
gebied is dan ook wat betreft bewoning laag, maar voor bijzondere
datasets hoog. Deze betreffen veelal echter puntlocaties, die zich
met de huidige inventariserende en karterende onderzoeksmethoden
nauwelijks laten opsporen.
Laat
Paleolithicum-Mesolithicum: Gezien de geomorfologie van het
plangebied, bestaat een kans dat zich in het plangebied mogelijk
archeologische waarden kunnen bevinden uit de vroege Prehistorie
(met name Mesolithicum). Deze waarden zouden kunnen bestaan uit
kleine nederzettingsterreinen, zogenaamde extractiekampen met een
kleine omvang (circa 5 tot 10 m2) en basiskampen met een ruimere
omvang. Vindplaatsen uit deze periode kenmerken zich door een
strooiïng van vuursteen. Tevens bestaat de mogelijkheid dat
grondsporen (haardplaatsen) kunnen worden aangetroffen. De waarde
van vindplaatsen met vuursteen (artefacten) wordt grotendeels
bepaald door de intactheid ervan. Om zoveel mogelijk informatie uit
de vuursteenvindplaats te krijgen is het daarom van belang dat de
interne structuur van de vindplaats (de verticale en horizontale
spreiding) zo weinig mogelijk verstoord is. De waarde van de
vuursteenvindplaats wordt derhalve grotendeels bepaald door de mate
van intactheid van het bodemprofiel. Slechts geringe bodembewerking
kan al hebben geleid tot een verstoring van de vindplaats. Van
belang is daarom de mate van verstoring van het bodemprofiel in
beeld te brengen. Indien vindplaatsen aan, dan wel dicht aan het
oppervlak voorkomen en het gebied is in gebruik als akkerland,
zullen deze waarschijnlijk sterk verstoord zijn.
Vindplaatsen
uit het Paleolithicum kunnen vooral verwacht worden op de terrassen
uit het Allerød en Late Dryas (zie afbeelding 2). De huidige
overstromingsvlakte van de Maas is gevormd in de laatste fase van
het paleolithicum en later, zodat de kans groot is dat eventuele
resten verspoeld zullen zijn. Gezien de leeftijd van de terrassen
zijn hoe dan ook binnen het plangebied alleen resten uit het late
paleolithicum te verwachten. Vindplaatsen uit het mesolithicum
kunnen binnen het gehele plangebied voorkomen, met ook hier weer de
aantekening dat de kans gering is dat binnen de huidige holocene
overstromingsvlakte geen verspoeling heeft plaatsgevonden. De kans
dat eventuele vindplaatsen niet verstoord zullen zijn is echter
gering, daar binnen het plangebied vooral erosieve processen hebben
plaatsgevonden. Er is geen dekzand afgezet (daarvoor zijn de
terrassen te jong), en evenmin heeft er sedimentatie door de rivier
plaatsgevonden. Eventuele vindplaatsen hebben daardoor altijd direct
aan het oppervlak gelegen waardoor ze zeer kwetsbaar voor verstoring
zijn geweest. Daar het plangebied in een zone ligt die voor de
landbouw zeer geschikt is, en dan ook sedert lange tijd meer of
minder continu als zodanig zullen zijn gebruikt, is de kans zeer
gering dat zich binnen het plangebied nog intacte vindplaatsen
bevinden.
Gezien
de landschappelijke ligging van het plangebied, aan de randen van de
terrassen en nabij de rivier, wordt de kans op het aantreffen van
vindplaatsen uit het late paleolithicum en het mesolithicum als
middelhoog tot hoog ingeschat. De kans op het aantreffen van intacte
vindplaatsen wordt echter als laag ingeschat.
In
tabel 6 zijn de aangetroffen artefacten geordend naar
materiaalcategorie en tijd. Bij deze laatste is de globale datering
van het Archeologische Basisregister (ABR) gevolgd. Deze dateringen
zijn soms zeer ruim, want gebaseerd op het gegeven dat bepaalde
materialen geen periode specifieke vorm of toepassing hebben en dus
over langere tijd kunnen zijn gebruikt. Een mooi voorbeeld in deze
is verbrand leem, ook wel bekend onder de – onjuiste –
benaming huttenleem. Als bouwmateriaal is leem vanaf het Neolithicum
tot in het subrecent verleden gebruikt. Brokken verbrand leem kunnen
derhalve uit deze gehele tijdsspanne stammen. De context waarin het
wordt aangetroffen is dan ook de enige mogelijkheid om het te kunnen
dateren. Voor vuursteen geldt in grote lijnen hetzelfde, echter met
dit verschil dat het als gereedschap is gebruikt waardoor er een
groot aantal periode specifieke vormen zijn, maar ook veel afval,
resultaat van de productie van het gereedschap, dat zich nauwelijks
laat dateren. Daarnaast is vuursteen tot in de subrecente tijd
gebruikt (bijvoorbeeld als vuurslag) waarbij ook afval – door
gebruik – is ontstaan. De datering in het ABR is daarom
Paleolithicum (PALEO) tot heden (NTC), al zal de bulk van het
gebruik in het Paleolithicum tot het Neolithicum liggen. Met dit in
het achterhoofd dient de datering van het aangetroffen materiaal te
worden beschouwd.
De
gevonden artefacten vallen globaal uiteen in drie perioden en/of
drie materiaalcategorieën, die deels samenvallen. Het materiaal
dat buiten deze clusters valt, bestaat veelal uit objecten die zo
weinig specifiek zijn dat een nadere determinatie niet mogelijk is.
Het grootste deel stamt naar alle waarschijnlijkheid uit de Nieuwe
Tijd. IJzer vormt met 54 objecten veruit de grootste groep binnen
deze categorie. Veel van de stukken bestaan uit roestklompen met een
amorfe vorm, waarvan zeker een deel als granaatscherven kunnen
worden geclassificeerd. Daarnaast komen gesmede spijkers voor, die
vanaf de Romeinse Tijd zijn gebruikt. De overige materialen buiten
de drie hoofdclusters zijn steeds met een of twee fragmenten
vertegenwoordigd en omvatten, bot, brons (sterk afgesleten munt),
koper, huttenleem en houtskool. De boven aangeduide drietal clusters
omvatten vuursteen dat vooral uit de Prehistorie stamt, aardewerk en
grofkeramiek uit de Romeinse Tijd en glas, aardewerk en grofkeramiek
uit de Late Middeleeuwen en/of Nieuwe Tijd.
Vuursteen
In
totaal vallen 455 fragmenten vuursteen en 6 fragmenten overige
steensoorten binnen deze cluster. Daarnaast zijn er nog 2 fragmenten
handgevormd aardewerk aangetroffen, maar deze kunnen helaas niet
nader gedetermineerd worden. Het vuursteen is door Huub Schmitz van
de Heemkundevereniging Roerstreek gedetermineerd.
Veruit
het grootste deel van het vuursteen – 335 fragmenten, zie
tabel 7 - bestaat uit afval en brokken die nauwelijks nader te
determineren zijn. Dit materiaal is daarom alleen zeer ruim te
dateren als Paleolithisch tot recent. Het overige materiaal –
119 ex. – bestaat uit (delen van) gereedschappen en materiaal
ontstaan bij het maken of bewerken van gereedschappen. Ook dit
materiaal laat zich, op enkele objecten na, niet strakker dateren
dan Paleolithisch tot IJzertijd. Slechts vijf objecten kunnen worden
gedateerd als mesolithisch tot laat-neolithisch (transversaal
spits), midden-neolithisch (fragment spitskling) of laat-neolithisch
tot Bronstijd (geretoucheerde bijlafslag Lousberg vuursteen;
geslepen bijlafslagen van Valkenburg, Belgisch-grijs en Rijkholtse
vuursteen). Van 162 objecten kon worden vastgesteld van welke type
vuursteen ze gemaakt waren. Bepaalde typen vuursteen zijn vooral of
uitsluitend in bepaalde periodes van de Prehistorie gebruikt zodat
aan de hand daarvan soms een nadere datering mogelijk is. In tabel 8
zijn de objecten waarvan het type vuursteen kon worden
gedetermineerd opgenomen, evenals de globale datering van het
gebruik. Vuursteen van Rijckholt en Maasschotter vormt meer dan
twee-derde van het materiaal. Deze typen zijn gebruikt vanaf het
paleolithicum tot in het neolithicum. Daarbij kan dan wel
aangetekend worden dat het vuursteen uit Rijckholt vooral in het
neolithicum op grote schaal is gebruikt. Van de overige typen
vuursteen is het grootste deel gebruikt tussen het
(laat)-paleolithicum en neolithicum (32 fragmenten: Vetschau, Obourg
en Belgisch grijs) en slechts een klein deel uitsluitend in het
mesolithicum en/of neolithicum (15 fragmenten: Wommersom kwartsiet,
Lousberg, Simpelveld en Valkenburg). Op basis van het type vuursteen
is dus ook nauwelijks een differentiatie in de tijd aan te brengen.
Het
vuursteen is, op vijf fragmenten na, vrijwel uitsluitend in het
Deelgebied West aangetroffen. Er zijn geen duidelijke concentraties
zichtbaar binnen het plangebied (zie Afbeelding 12). Wanneer gekeken
wordt naar de verspreiding van de vuurstenen artefacten (tabel 7,
zonder afslagen, brokken, kernen en afval), lijkt er in het
noordelijk deel van Deelgebied West een wat sterkere concentratie
van vondsten zichtbaar te zijn. Maar er tekenen zich geen duidelijke
locaties af die zouden kunnen worden geïnterpreteerd als zones
waarin bewoning en/of activiteiten hebben plaatsgevonden. Hoe dit
materiaal dan wel geïnterpreteerd zou moeten worden is de
vraag. Voor de hand ligt om dit te doen vanuit degradatie van sites
als gevolg van latere activiteiten, waarbij vooral de landbouw een
belangrijke rol zal hebben gespeeld. Overigens niet alleen door
bodembewerking zelf, maar ook door verplaatsing van materiaal door
bodemerosie als gevolg van denudatie. Hier tegen pleit dat er geen
duidelijke aanwijzingen voor erosie zijn waargenomen in de
boorprofielen. Evenmin is er een concentratie van materiaal te zien
in het lager gelegen oostelijke deel van Deelgebied West, waar
verspoeld materiaal, samen met de bodem, zich juist had moeten
concentreren in het geval dat erosieve processen materiaal zou
hebben verplaatst. Een andere verklaring zou kunnen zijn dat maar
zeer klein deel van het materiaal aanwezig binnen Deelgebied West is
verzameld. Alleen dat gene wat zichtbaar was is meegenomen. Maar
het terrein is maar een keer belopen, als dit vaker was gebeurd zou
ongetwijfeld meer materiaal zijn verzameld, zeker als tussen de
verschillende verzamelmomenten het terrein opnieuw bewerkt was (en
uitgeregend). Een grotere hoeveelheid materiaal had mogelijk wel
concentraties kunnen laten zien, maar zeker is dit geenszins.
Tenslotte moeten we misschien accepteren dat het gevonden materiaal
een weerslag is van enkele duizenden jaren aan vooral kortdurende
activiteiten op een locatie die kennelijk aantrekkelijk genoeg was
om regelmatig naar toe terug te keren.
Late
Prehistorie en Romeinse Tijd: een hoge trefkans op grond van de
bodem en de geomorfologie van het plangebied. Het gebied zal in de
Late Prehistorie en in de Romeinse Tijd tot de meest aantrekkelijke
voor bewoning hebben behoord. Derhalve kunnen binnen het gehele
plangebied, met uitzondering van het laag gelegen deel van
Deelgebied Zuid, sporen van bewoning en activiteiten worden
aangetroffen. Het zal hier gaan om nederzettingen in diverse vormen,
waarbij voor de midden en laat Romeinse tijd ook gedacht moet worden
aan steenbouw, graven en grafvelden, sporen van ambachtelijke
activiteiten en sporen gerelateerd aan landinrichting en
communicatie. Ook hier geldt dat deze activiteiten op en in het
huidige maaiveld zullen hebben plaatsgevonden en derhalve als gevolg
van latere activiteiten verstoord zullen zijn. Echter, een
aanzienlijk deel van deze sporen zullen dieper liggen c.q. reiken
dan de bouwvoor en daarom nog aanwezig zijn. Te denken valt hier aan
graven, (paal)kuilen, funderingen, waterputten, greppels e.d.
Daarnaast zal naar verwachting van de materiële cultuur nog het
nodige aanwezig zijn, zij het dat het deels verspreid zal zijn in de
bouwvoor.
Voor
de terrassen (Deelgebied West en het hoge deel van Deelgebied Zuid]
is de verwachting voor het aantreffen van vindplaatsen uit de late
Prehistorie en Romeinse tijd dan ook hoog. De verwachting dat deze
vindplaatsen nog intact zullen zijn wordt ook hoog ingeschat.
Romeins
keramiek en grofkeramiek
Romeins
keramiek (Lieke van Diepen)
Tijdens
de veldkartering te Neer zijn 55 scherven Romeins aardewerk
geborgen. Het best vertegenwoordigd zijn de kruiken/amforen en het
ruwwandige aardewerk, respectievelijk met 13 en 16 fragmenten. Dit
is niet vreemd, deze categorieën nemen binnen het Romeinse
aardewerkspectrum veelal de grootste plaats in. Tabel 9 geeft een
overzicht van de aangetroffen aardewerkcategorieën.
Aan
het uiterlijk van de scherven was duidelijk te zien dat het om
materiaal gaat dat aan de oppervlakte heeft gelegen. De fragmenten
zijn relatief klein, verweerd, sterk afgerond en enkele exemplaren
tonen vlekken. Bij de terra sigillata en de geverfde waar ontbreekt
de deklaag meestal volledig. Dat het om oppervlaktevondsten gaat, is
ook af te lezen aan het gemiddelde gewicht per scherf dat slechts
8,9 gram bedraagt.
Het
vondstmateriaal is overwegend tweede eeuws, voornamelijk de periode
120-200 n. Chr. is sterk vertegenwoordigd. Alleen de kookpot
Niederbieber 89 is een derde eeuwse vondst. Zuiver eerste eeuws
materiaal ontbreekt. Vermeldenswaardig is dat de terra sigillata
uitsluitend bestaat uit Oost-Gallisch materiaal. Onder het
gladwandige materiaal en de kruiken/amforen bevinden zich
vermoedelijk enkele Heerlense producten.
Grofkeramiek
is de juiste term voor bouwmateriaal gemaakt van klei. Deze term
onderscheid het van het fijnkeramisch materiaal – aardewerk –
dat niet alleen van dezelfde grondstof, maar ook volgens hetzelfde
procedé wordt gemaakt.
Binnen
het plangebied zijn in totaal 689 fragmenten grofkeramiek geraapt.
Daarvan zijn 131 fragmenten toe te schrijven aan de Late
Middeleeuwen of Nieuwe Tijd en 59 fragmenten niet nader te
determineren als Romeins tot Nieuwe Tijd. Het grootste deel stamt
dus uit de Romeinse Tijd.
Van
het materiaal dat ruim gedateerd is (ROMM-NTB) zal waarschijnlijk
ook een aanzienlijk deel Romeins zijn. Het betreft fragmenten zonder
diagnostische vlakken maar waarvan het baksel (met name de structuur
van de matrix) wijst op een niet machinale productie en dat dus voor
het midden van de 19de eeuw moet zijn gemaakt. Het vormen en bakken
van grofkeramiek is tot de opkomst van de industriële productie
in wezen nauwelijks veranderd, waardoor Romeinse, Middeleeuwse en
Vroeg-moderne producten wat baksel betreft vaak op elkaar lijken.
Over het algemeen zijn Romeinse baksels wat compacter dan die uit
latere perioden, maar regionaal kunnen deze verschillen zeer gering
zijn, met name ook wanneer kennelijk dezelfde kleibronnen zijn
gebruikt. Het materiaal uit Neer dat ruim gedateerd is, kon niet met
zekerheid als Romeins worden gedetermineerd, maar lijkt wel sterk op
het materiaal dat wel met zekerheid als Romeins kon worden
gedetermineerd.
Ruim
de helft van het Romeins grofkeramiek kon worden toegeschreven aan
een bepaald type. Dakbedekkingsmateriaal overheerst, met 159
fragmenten van tegulae en 117 fragmenten van imbrices. Verder zijn 4
fragmenten van tubuli gevonden, rechthoekige of vierkante holle
buizen die toegepast werden in verwarmingssystemen. Wat ontbreekt
zijn lateres, platte, vierkante of rechthoekige stenen die als
metselsteen of, in het geval van de grote formaten, als vloerplaten.
Deze vloerplaten maken onderdeel uit van een hypocaust verwarming,
waarin de warmtebron buiten de eigenlijke ruimte lag en hete lucht
onder de vloer en door de wanden – tubuli - circuleerde.
Verwarmde ruimtes komen zowel in woon- als badruimtes voor en
moeten, gezien het voorkomen van deze typen grofkeramiek op Romeinse
sites vrij algemeen zijn geweest.
Het
materiaal is, op een fragment na, uitsluitend aangetroffen in
Deelgebied West (Afbeelding 15). De verspreiding over het deelgebied
is niet gelijkmatig, maar concentreert zich in het noordelijke en in
het zuidoostelijke deel van dit gebied. Binnen deze verspreiding
zijn twee duidelijke concentraties aan te wijzen, beiden in de
zuidoostelijke hoek. Beide sites zijn al bekend in ARCHIS: 17526 en
51303. In het noordelijk deel lijkt er iets meer materiaal in de
noordwestelijke hoek aangetroffen te zijn. Dit sluit aan op de
bekende vindplaats op de hoek van Hagendoorn en Eiland (AMK-terrein
11196, ARCHIS-nrs 15248 en 15360). Maar er is in dit noordelijk deel
ook een concentratie te zien in het middendeel van het terrein. De
ligging hiervan komt globaal overeen met de concentratie keramiek in
dit deel van het plangebied. Een dergelijk samenvallen van keramiek
en grofkeramiek is ook te zien op de twee locaties in de
zuidoostelijke hoek van Deelgebied West, maar ontbreekt bij de
concentratie in de noordwestelijke hoek. Mogelijk zou het hier
daarom kunnen gaan om een nieuwe site.
In
Afbeelding 16 wordt de verspreiding van het binnen het plangebied
aangetroffen Romeins keramiek en grofkeramiek afgezet tegen de
bekende vindplaatsen binnen het ruimere onderzoeksgebied. Hierbij
moet worden aangetekend dat veruit de meeste waarnemingen binnen dit
onderzoeksgebied betrekking hebben op waarnemingen, meestal
veldkarteringen en/of detectorvondsten. Alleen de kleine opgraving
aan de Arixweg, de begeleiding van de aanleg van de Maaskaden en
overloopgeul18 en een waarneming bij graafwerkzaamheden op het
monument, hebben betrekking op – meer of minder –
gravend onderzoek. De vondsten van de veldkarteringen zijn
aangetroffen op akkers, waarvan echter alleen het centrumcoördinaat
is opgenomen in ARCHIS, zodat er geen nauwkeuriger plaatsing
mogelijk is. Een aparte categorie vormen de baggervondsten uit de
Maas, die weliswaar globaal te plaatsen zijn, maar wel een doorsnede
door het landschap geven en bovendien ook nog eens het laagst
gelegen deel. Hoe dan ook, duidelijk is wel dat het gebied langs de
Maas tussen Buggenum en Neer in de Romeinse Tijd dicht bewoond is
geweest.
Vroege
Middeleeuwen: voor de Late Oudheid en Vroege Middeleeuwen geldt een
middelhoge trefkans op grond van de geomorfologie en
bodemsamenstelling van het plangebied en de historische gegevens.
Mogelijk aan te treffen vindplaatsen kunnen bestaan uit
nederzettingssporen en greppels. Nederzettingen kenmerken zich door
een spreiding van aardewerkresten en het voorkomen van grondsporen
(paalsporen, afvalkuilen, greppels, waterputten en funderingen).
Greppels kunnen wijzen op verkavelingspatronen (erfbegrenzingen en
perceelsscheidingen), waterbeheer (afvoergreppels) of ontginnings-
en grondverbeteringsactiviteiten. De omvang van vindplaatsen uit de
Middeleeuwen varieert sterk en is afhankelijk van de aard van de
vindplaats. Hierover kunnen dan ook geen uitspraken worden gedaan.
Ook voor vindplaatsen uit deze periode geldt dat deze zich in en/of
net onder de huidige bouwvoor zullen bevinden, waarbij met name de
dieper reikende sporen nog intact zullen zijn.
De
verwachting voor het aantreffen van vindplaatsen uit de vroege
Middeleeuwen wordt als middelhoog ingeschat. De verwachting dat deze
vindplaatsen nog intact zullen zijn wordt als hoog ingeschat.
Late
Middeleeuwen en Nieuwe tijd: op grond van de historische gegevens
geldt voor het plangebied een lage tot middelhoge verwachting voor
het aantreffen van archeologische vindplaatsen. De bewoning heeft
zich in deze periode al grotendeels geconcentreerd in de
bewoningskernen aan de randen van het veld, het aaneengesloten
akkerareaal tussen Neer en Buggenum. Alleen in de volle middeleeuwen
zal zich mogelijk nog wat meer bewoning binnen het plangebied kunnen
hebben bevonden. In de Nieuwe Tijd beperkt de bewoning zich tot
enkele solitaire hoeven, waarvan er een zich net ten noordoosten van
Deelgebied Zuid bevindt.
De
omvang van vindplaatsen uit de Middeleeuwen varieert sterk en is
afhankelijk van de aard van de vindplaats. Hierover kunnen dan ook
geen uitspraken worden gedaan. Ook voor vindplaatsen uit deze
periode geldt dat deze zich in en/of net onder de huidige bouwvoor
zullen bevinden, waarbij met name de dieper reikende sporen nog
intact zullen zijn
De
verwachting voor het aantreffen van vindplaatsen uit de late
Middeleeuwen en Nieuwe Tijd wordt als middelhoog ingeschat. De
verwachting dat deze vindplaatsen nog intact zullen zijn wordt als
hoog ingeschat.
Glas,
keramiek en grofkeramiek Late Middeleeuwen en Nieuwe Tijd.
De
derde vondstcategorie wordt gevormd door aardewerk, glas en
grofkeramiek uit de Late Middeleeuwen en Nieuwe Tijd. De grootste
vondstcategorie wordt gevormd door het aardewerk, waarvan in totaal
755 fragmenten zijn verzameld. Daarvan zijn 609 fragmenten
gedetermineerd. Het grofkeramiek is vertegenwoordigd door 131
fragmenten en het glas door 45 fragmenten.
Veruit
het grootste deel van het geraapte keramiek stamt uit de Late
Middeleeuwen en/of de Nieuwe Tijd. Een derde deel bestaat uit
materiaal, hoofdzakelijk roodbakkend aardewerk, dat vanaf de Late
Middeleeuwen tot in het subrecente verleden dateert, bijna een helft
bestaat uit materiaal dat uitsluitend in de Nieuwe Tijd dateert. Bij
het glas en het grofkeramiek is deze tendens nog veel sterker te
zien, met slechts een fragment grofkeramiek dat uitsluitend
Middeleeuws is en een aantal fragmenten die Middeleeuws of Nieuwe
Tijds kunnen zijn. Deze materiaalcategorieën zijn vrijwel zeker
op het land gekomen tijdens het bemesten. Als afval uit woonhuis,
stal en/of erf werden zij samen met de mest op de mestvaalt
gedeponeerd en vervolgens over de akkers verspreid. Dit verklaart
ook de verspreiding van het materiaal binnen het plangebied. Deze is
regelmatig, maar wordt dunner naarmate de afstand tot Neer toeneemt.
Dit is te verklaren uit het gegeven dat de akkers die het dichtst
bij het dorp lagen het meest intensief werden bemest. De dunste
verspreiding is zichtbaar op de akker in Deelgebied Zuid. Een
mogelijke verklaring hiervoor is dat dit perceel waarschijnlijk
afwisselend als akker en grasland in gebruik is geweest.
Slechts
twee stukken dateren uit de Vroege Middeleeuwen of het begin van de
Late Middeleeuwen en twintig stukken uit de Hoge Middeleeuwen.
Materiaal uit deze periode kan gerelateerd zijn aan bewoning ter
plekke, maar de geringe hoeveelheid die is aangetroffen maakt dit
niet waarschijnlijk.
https://archisarchief.cultureelerfgoed.nl/Archis2/Archeorapporten/37/AR32653/GAR%201044%20Neer%20-%20Hanssum%20%20%2040815.pdf
9
september 1899 De St. Lambertskapel te Reuver.
Tegen
het einde der VIIde eeuw stapte de Maastrichtsche bisschop
Lambertus, dien de geschiedenis den eerenaam apostel van Peel- en
Kempenland heeft toegekend, tegenover, en waarschijnlijk onder de
bescherming van, het voormalig Romeinsch, destijds Frankisch
Castellum (Kessel) aan wal, ten einde de bewoners onzer zandstreek,
de laatstovergebleven heidenen van ons gewest, tot het Christendom
te bekeeren.
Op
den rechter Maasoever bevond zich een kleine hoogte, en aldaar, uit
rivierkeien opgetrokken, een gebouwtje, herkomstig uit het tijdperk
der Romeinsche overheersching. Toen zijn woord eenige vrucht had
gedaan, wijdde de H. Evangelieverkondiger dit gebouw tot een
bedehuis ten gerieve van zijn nieuwbekeerden.
Na
verloop van tijd werd het, dewijl het aantal geloovigen steeds
groeiende was, vergroot en allengs herschapen in een kerkje,
naderhand gesteld onder de aanroeping van den H. Lambertus-zelve.
Tot
de XIVde eeuw werd het dorp Beesel tot kerspel verheven en bleef de
St. Lambertskapel als hulpkerk voor de thans tot Reuver behoorende
buurtschappen Leeuwen en Offenbeek bestaan.
Habets
vermeldt sub anno 1400 Bezel en Capella St. Lamberti.
2
April 1661 werden de goederen, van lieverlede aan het eerbiedwaardig
heiligdommetje geschonken, overgebracht op de Beeselsche kerk tot
onderhoud van den kapelaan, die tevens de St. Lambertskapel
bediende.
Habets
vermeldt sub anno 1669: Onder Bezel ligt tegenover Kessel de kapel
van den H. Lambertus, waaraan zielzorg is verbonden. Rector is er
Petrus Jacobs.
16
Juli 1689 geeft Karel II, koning van Spanje en hertog van Gelder,
aan den toenmaligen kapelaan-rector Joês Beurskens "Octroij
om een vrije jaer-ende peerdemerckt" tot onderhoud van de "door
ouderdom ende crijgstroubelen ondercommen ende geruineerde"
kapel, welke "volgens de gemeijne traditie van alle
waerschijnelyckheid ware gebouwd in den tijdt als wanneer deze
landen alnoch lieijdens waeren, ende nas de bekeeringe in dezelve
den eersten Christelijcken ende Catholijken Godtsdienst were
begonst."
19
Mei 1787 kwam het St. Lambertuskerkje in het bezit van een eigen en
onafhankelijk zielzorger.
Toen
in 1830 de kapel, die reeds zooveel dagen en vlagen getrotseerd had,
bouwvallig bleek, verrees er weldra een nieuw tempelgebouw op de
plaats, waar zich inmiddels tusschen genoemde gehuchten in, een niet
onaanzienlijke kom had gevormd.
Op
den St. Lambertusheuvel bouwde men in 1845 — Reuver was in
1834 zelfstandig kerspel geworden — van de keien der aloude,
een kleinere kapel, die de herinnering aan het roemrijk verleden bij
de nakomelingschap levendig hield.
Sedert
in 1896 het jubilée van 's grooten Lambertus' marteldood was
gevierd, werd de
toeloop
naar die heilige plek zoo groot, dat men besloot, met behoud van het
bestaande gebouwtje, een ruimere bidplaats daaraan te verbinden.
Deze
nieuwe kapel nu volgens teekening van den heer J. Gielen te Kessel
gebouwd, zal Zondag 17. dezer, met verlof van Z.D.H. den bisschop
van Roermond, worden ingezegend.
Bij
't ontgraven van den bodem werden de grondslagen der aloude kapel
blootgelegd. Evenals van het gebouw zelf bestond het metselwerk der
fundeeringen uit zware keien, met meel en kalkmortel tot een schier
niet te klooven geheel samengegoten.
Ook
vonden wij er een groote menigte brokstukken van Romeinsche
dakpannen, tegulae en imbrices, alsmede op verschillende plaatsen
beenderen, bijna heel vergaan, doch nog duidelijk te onderkennen als
afkomstig van lijken, zeer lang geleden daar begraven.
Dit
staaft de aloude in de oorkonden opgeteekende overlevering, dat in
de hooge oudheid daar een Romeinsch gebouw heeft gelegen, en "de
Capelle St. Lambert — gelijk een onzer bescheiden getuigt —
vorhin geweest is parochiale kerk."
Vlak
bij den Lambertusheuvel ligt, thans met berkestruiken beplant, het
Romeinsche legerkamp, waarvan in de Publications 1864 gewag wordt
gemaakt.
Alhoewel
de daarin gelegen grafheuvels, tumuli, door oudheidkundigen reeds
vroeger doorzocht, en een menigte grafurnen daaruit opgedolven
werden, mocht het ons dit jaar gelukken, er een zestal, waaronder
drie van Romeinsch baksel, met asch en gebeente gevuld, aan het
licht te brengen.
Hetgeen
onmiskenbaar een vrij langdurig verblijf van Romeinen op Reuverschen
bodem bewijst.
Reuver
heeft derhalve het voorrecht, in zijn St. Lambertsheuvel een plekje
te bezitten, dat geheiligd werd door den evangelischen arbeid van
den grooten Maastrichtenaar, die geheel een volk aan de weldaden van
Christendom en beschaving deelachtig maakte.
J.
VRANCKEN.
5
juni 1888 ASSELT EN SWALMEN
Door
het vlakke weiland achter Leeuwen, over den met een dicht kort gras
begroeiden weg, leidt onze wandelweg ons naar Asselt, het oude
Asselon. Heerlijk is ’t buiten. De zoele adem van een zacht
windje voert ons de balsemgeuren van berkenloof tegen. De
madeliefjes en boterbloemen schitteren als sterretjes in ’t
groen, en aan ieder blaadje parelt een dauwdrup als een diamant in
de morgenzon. Voor ons, in de frissche beemden, grazen talrijke
schapen onder de hoede van den blauwgekielden herder en zijn
rusteloozen hond. Rechts sluit een berkenbosch, omgeven door slanke
peppelen, het vergezicht af. Waar de bodem rijst, liggen de ruime
gebouwen van den Zijperhof, de woning van den Burgervader van
Swalmen, tegen den zwarten achtergrond. Door het welig geboomte
heen, schemert de grijs-roode toren van Swalmen en de oude burcht
Hillenrade in zijn boschrijke omgeving; wenden we ons links, dan
ontwaren we de schitterende wateren der Maas, en steekt het
bescheiden torentje der Kapel van Asselt boven de eiken uit. En
boven het geheele kleurige landschap welft zich de helderblauwe,
doorzichtige lentelucht, waarin geen ander vlekje te zien is dan de
leeuwerik, die zingende opwaarts stijgt. Nooit nog kregen we dan ook
zoo’n weldoend gunstigen indruk van ’t dorpje, dan
thans.
Asselt,
waarheen ’t pad ons voert, is een klein Maas dorpje. Daarom
spreekt de geschiedenis van Asselt ook van een voortdurenden strijd
om ’t bestaan tegen de golven, van een ononderbroken kamp.
Heeft de Maas aan Asselt in vroegere dagen veel zegen gebracht, toen
het de stapelplaats voor den Maashandel met de Rhijn-provincie was,
dikwijls hebben hare wateren kerkje en woningen met vernieling
bedreigd, en menige bange nacht is door de Asselder inwoners
doorgebracht, als de hoogopgezette golven met alle kracht de grijze
muren van hun kerkje bereikten.
De
Maas is hier met hare woelige wateren vrij onbestendig in haar loop
geweest. Menigwerf heeft ze haar bed verplaatst; vroeger bespoelde
zij den voet van het kerkje. Toen lag de oever der overzijde ter
plaatse, waar thans de Asseltsche oever ligt. Een paar diepe
slakken, met rietpollen en waterplanten begroeid, duiden thans nog
de plaats aan, waar vroeger de schepen met hun last ankerden aan de
losplaats. In lateren tijd baande zich de felle stroom bij het
kerkje een anderen weg, meer op Buggenum aan en verliet het oude
bed. Volgens eene oude kaart, op het raadhuis te Swalmen aanwezig,
vormde zich tusschen den ouden en nieuwen arm een groote uiterwaard,
de Buggenummer Tolwaard geheeten. Tegenover de verderop gelegen
huizen van Asselt, aan ’t zoogenaamde Gebrouwhuis, dat we
straks zullen passeeren, drong de Maas op de huizen aan, en knaagde
met onwederstaanbare, langzaam werkende kracht aan den oever, die de
huizen steunde. De grond, over eene breedte van meer dan zestig
meter, en drie huizen verdwenen in de wateren der Maas en eerst
thans, nu de gemeente tot behoud der andere huizen een kolossale
steenen beschoeiing aangelegd heeft, is de grootste kracht der
golven gebroken.
Ook
de lage weiden en de zware kleilanden, die we straks doortrokken en
de zoogenaamde Voelbeemden zijn voor eeuwen uit het wisselend bed
der Maas ontstaan.
Het
kapelletje van Asselt ligt op eene ommuurde hoogte, het is een zeer
oud, onderkelderd gebouwtje. Zijne ligging aan de Maas, het
materiaal zijner muren, dat uit een mengsel van ruwe veldkeien en
Romeinsche pannen bestaat, aaneengegoten met kalk, geven veel grond
voor de onderstelling, dat ’t van Romeinschen oorsprong is;
ook de overlevering zegt, dat het een oud tolkantoor der Romeinen
zou zijn; de naam "Tolwaard", die de weide, bij het kerkje
gelegen draagt pleit voor die veronderstelling. Later zou het in een
kerkje veranderd zijn.
De
deur, die kleiner is dan de oorspronkelijke, ligt naar de noordzijde
in het midden van den zijgevel.
Het
gebouw bestaat uit twee deelen: een vierkant achterstuk, waarvan de
oostelijke helft een weinig uitspringt en uit den toren, die van
jongeren datum en uit baksteen opgetrokken is. De achterzijde van
het gebouwtje draagt de sporen van restauratie.
Het
kerkje, hoe klein ook, ziet er zindelijk uit. "Klein, maar
rein" zou men mogen zeggen. Ééne zaak mogen we
niet vergeten.
Het
Asseltsche kerkje bezit een kunstschat, welbekend en hooggeschat bij
de Limburgsche kunstliefhebbers. ’t Is een afbeeldsel van den
stervenden Christus aan het kruis, eene schilderij zoo aangrijpend
schoon, dat men het onmiddellijk voor ’t werk van een
meesterhand verklaart. Het lichamelijk lijden van den Godmensch, de
zielesmart van den Verlosser, zijn zoo meesterlijk op het schoone
gelaat en in de edele vormen van het lichaam weergegeven, dat de
aanblik roert en treft. In zijne nederige omgeving en oude lijst
spreekt het meesterwerk van den schilder tot het gemoed, en de
indruk dien het maakt, prent zich diep in den geest des beschouwers.
De
schilderij moet, dunkt ons, wel een geschenk zijn van de vroegere
heeren van Hillenrade. Hoe zou ’t nederige kerkje anders in ’t
bezit van een dergelijk juweeltje geraakt kunnen zijn.
Aan
den voet der grijze muren van het kapelletje vinden de overledenen
van het dorpje hunne laatste rustplaats. Vroegtijdig al schijnt die
hoog gelegen plek reeds als begraafplaats dienst gedaan te hebben,
want in den voormuur van den toren vinden we een hardsteen
ingemetseld, waarop in gothieke letters het opschrift gebeiteld
staat "Beet russe myt hare kyderen". Naar den vorm van ’t
schrift te zien, kan de steen wel uit het laatst der 15e eeuw
dateeren. Volgens de overlevering zou deze steen daar geplaatst zijn
ter herinnering aan een moeder, die met hare kinderen, door een
ongelukkig toeval, bij een brand omkwamen. Dat die familie, "Russe
of Ruesen" hier inheemsch was, bewijst een ander kruis daar
tegenover, met het jaartal 1558, en het opschrift "Jan Ruesen".
De andere steenen kruisjes melden ons, dat daaronder in 1615 Willem
Quiten, in 1629 Geurdt Quiten, leden eener Asseltsche familie en in
1616 Geurdt Lomen ten eeuwigen slaap besteld waren.
Van
de begraafplaats dalen we weer af tot den zandigen dorpsweg, en gaan
we tusschen hagen van bloeienden hagedoorn aan den eenen en langs
het hooggelegen bouwland aan de anderen kant, naar de witte huizen
aan de Maas om daar een oogenblik te verpoozen. Boven op de hoogte,
hoog en droog, maar wel wat luchtig, ligt de rectorswoning, een
nieuw gebouw. Bij zoo’n fraai rectoraat behoorde natuurlijk
ook een mooier kerkje, want ’t gebouwtje is wel wat klein en
oud voor Asselt, en toch zouden we het oude kerkje met zijn stompen
toren en zijn ruwe muren in zijne schilderachtige omgeving ongaarne
missen. Asselt met een nieuw kerkje zou het eigenaardige Asselt niet
meer zijn.
Van
uit de ramen der zindelijke gelagkamer bij moeder Theelen hebben we
een ruim uitzicht op den omtrek.
Achter
de groote uiterwaarden aan de overzijde der Maas liggen in rei de
torens van Horn, Buggenum, Haelen, Nunhem en Neer tegen den
boschrijken achtergrond. Lang willen we ons niet in ’t
vergezicht verlustigen, maar gaan door het Gebrouwhuis-Veld, op
Genaenhof toe.
Door
het korenrijke veld passeeren we links Genaenhof (ouden hof) en
rechts Genoenhof (nieuwen hof) en zien voor ons de ruïne, die
we zoo vaak van af den spoorweg, die er dicht langs loopt, uit de
hoogte opnamen. Dit is de Ouburg, vroeger de zetelplaats der
adellijke familie van Swalmen. Wellicht is dit ook ’t Stamhuis
der 6e abdis van ’t adellijk convent te Roermond, Elisabeth de
Swalmen, die omstreeks 1293 leefde. Later behoorde het huis aan de
familie Van Oest, en kwam daarna aan de familie Schenck van
Nijdeggen en de Hoensbroeck. Het behoorde reeds in 1381 bij
Hillenrade.
Uit
de archiefstukken moeten we wel besluiten, dat de Ouborg een
riddermatig huis of kasteel geweest is alhoewel dan ook klein van
omvang. Een kleine dikke toren vormt de voorzijde van een
vijfhoekige met dikke muren omsloten ruimte, vroeger geheel door de
Swalm omspoeld. De toren van zijn dak beroofd, is door een
ingebroken opening toegankelijk en kon vroeger beklommen worden door
middel van een steenen wenteltrap, waarvan nog de overblijfselen te
zien zijn. Reeds in de 16e eeuw was Ouborg of het huis Rothem,
zooals het ook wel genoemd wordt, verwoest. Weinig bescheiden zijn
omtrent de verwoesting der sterkte tot ons gekomen. Thans bespoelt
de murmelende Swalm met hare golfjes nog slechts de eene zijde van
de fraaie ruïne. Eenige geknotte eiken en kanada’s, een
bruggetje en fraaien achtergrond stoffeeren het landschapje, waarop
door de schilders de ruïne gewoonlijk als middenpunt gekozen
wordt. Door de Viaduct, langs de beek op, wend ons pad naar Swalmen
en brengt ons op de Markt.
De
Markt, waaraan ’t Raadhuis en de kerk liggen, is niet het
aantrekkelijkste deel van Swalmen. Slechts eene linde heft zijn
langen plechtigen stam omhoog op het vierkante plein, waarvan het
uitzicht der huizen weinig de welvaart doen zien, die in het dorp
heerscht. De linde is vreemdsoortig geschoren en de onderste kroon
is tot eene soort vlak gebogen en vergroeid. Als curiositeit werd
ons medegedeeld, dat de Fanfare, in den tijd, dat ze onder de thans
nog geroemde directie van den Heer Sagers stond, eens een
zonderlingen inval gehad heeft. Staande op die kroon gaf ze een
concert, dat de executanten, zoowel als het publiek, uitstekend moet
bevallen zijn. In vroeger tijd gaf dezelfde Fanfare op den 1en Mei
in het prachtige Bosch van Hillenrade een concert; thans echter
schijnt dit gebruik te niet gegaan te zijn.
We
treden nu door den boog der secretarie heen, om de kerk eens op te
nemen.
De
kerk van Swalmen is een oud gebouw. In 1452 reeds was de kerk
bouwvallig; toen al werd aan de gemeente door Hertog Arnold
toegestaan, 25 bunder gemeentegrond te verkoopen, om uit de
opbrengst de kerk te herbouwen. In 1493 werd de kerk door een
Roermondsch burger, Michiel van der Sterren, voor 28 Rhijnsche
gulden hersteld. Het Asseltsche kerkje schijnt de moederkerk te zijn
van die van Swalmen. In 1293 toch komt reeds voor Mathias, pastoor
van Asselt en Swalmen.
12
juni 1888 De kerk van Swalmen is door het inbreken van Gothieke
ramen en bogen vervormd tot eene Gothieke kerk. Door bijbouw is de
grondvorm zelfs niet eens meer behouden. Van binnen valt ze niet
mede. Erg zindelijk wordt het Godshuis niet onderhouden, althans we
gaan over eene vingerdikke laag zand en stof.
De
drie altaren zijn in renaissance stijl opgetrokken. Het
midden-altaar prijkt met een vrij goede schilderij, het H. Avondmaal
voorstellende, en met het wapen van de schenkers van het altaar, der
Schenck van Nijdeggen en der Hoensbroeck’s.
Het
zijaltaar, gewijd aan St. George, den patroon der ridders, geeft als
altaarstuk een schilderij te zien, den H. Georgius in kamp met den
draak voorstellende. De schilder heeft bepaald nooit de moeite
genomen, de vormen van een paard goed te bestudeeren, anders zou hij
den H. Georgius, die meer van een gewoon Landsknecht dan van een
fier ridder heeft, niet op een dergelijk ros ten drakenkamp
uitgezonden hebben.
Onder
den toren hing vroeger een teenen of biezen draak die door de
jongelieden van Swalmen evenals dit thans nog te Beesel om de zeven
jaren geschiedt, in triomf door het dorp gevoerd werd, en daarna
door lanssteken geveld. Die eeuwenoude gewoonte is echter sinds
jaren in onbruik geraakt.
Het
orgel draagt de wapens van Schenck en Hoensbroeck, evenals het
schoone marmeren wijwatervat.
Onder
het orgel moet volgens de overlevering een Oostenrijksche generaal
begraven zijn, die in een gevecht bij Swalmen gesneuveld is. Steen
noch inschrift wijzen zijne grafstede aan. Meer merkwaardigs vinden
we niet en door het lage portaaltje komen we weer op het hooge
kerkhof.
Met
een van Swalmens autoriteiten, die de beleefdheid had ons te
vergezellen, klommen we naar de secretarie. Hier werd ons een
schoone atlas kaarten uit het einde der vorige eeuw getoond, die al
de perceelen tot de heerlijkheid Asselt, Swalmen en Hillenrade
behoorende, bevat. Voorts is hier een galgenketting aanwezig, eenige
jaren geleden op Grietjesgericht gevonden.
Aan
de grenzen der gemeente, aan den Boschberg, lag in vroeger tijden de
gerechtsplaats, thans nog bij ’t volk bekend onder den naam
van Grietjesgericht. Daar werden de boosdoeners "aan den lijve
met het koord of het zwaard tusschen hoofd en hals gericht, tot de
dood er op volgde."
Een
duidelijk getuigenis, dat er op deze plaats doodvonnissen voltrokken
zijn, vonden eenige arbeiders, die voor een vijftal jaren daar bezig
waren met het planten van dennen. Bij het graven stieten zij met de
schop op een doodshoofd met nekbeen; hieraan was nog de ketting
bevestigd, die eens de treurige bestemming gehad heeft om het lijk
van den misdadiger na afloop der terechtstelling aan de galg te
bevestigen. Het bekkendeel werd door een der arbeiders door een slag
met de schop tot stof geslagen. De ketting werd bewaard.
De
oude archiefstukken van Swalmen zijn op aanvrage allen naar
Maastricht gezonden; slechts enkele gildestukken zijn nog aanwezig.
De
schutterijen te Swalmen waren van zeer ouden datum; hunne
geschiedenis verloor zich in den nacht der middeleeuwen. Wel is het
schoone koningszilver, dat bij ’t plechtige vogelschieten en
in de processie borst en schouder van den schutterkoning dekte, in
de smeltkroes terechtgekomen, en zijn de Schuttenkamp, Schuttenheide
en andere goederen thans in vreemde handen overgegaan, maar toch zou
men uit den hoogen Schutsboom, die we van verre in ’t dorp in
de lucht zien rijzen, moeten besluiten dat de ambitie der oude
"schutten" nog niet geheel uitgedoofd is. De gildebroeders
van St. Joris van Swalmen waren oudtijds niet alleen vroolijke
lieden, maar ook zuinige bestierders van hunne inkomsten.
De
gilderekeningen bewijzen toch, dat ’t er op hunne
vergaderingen lustig toeging. De kruik met ’t schuimende
gerstenat ging er lustig rond, en de vedel noodigde de jongere
broeders met hunne schoonen vroolijk ten dans. En zuinig waren zo
bij al die uitspanningen, want ze brouwden zelf hun bier, kochten
hiervoor het mout, de hop, gaven den brouwer een vast loon en,
accuraat als ze waren, vergoedden ze hem zelfs zijn vuur en licht.
Daarenboven beschonken ze hem als hij ’s nachts door moest
brouwen nog met een fiksche pint schnaps of "waggelwater".
Veel bijzonders is er op het kleine raadhuis niet meer te zien;
weinig is er van de vroegere heerlijkheid overgebleven. De gemeente
bezit zelfs geen wapen, zelfs geen zegelstempel meer.
Een
weinig van het raadhuis, meer op Roermond aan, ligt het riviertje,
waarnaar het dorp zijn naam draagt. De Swalm is eene heldere,
snelstroomende beek, die uit de lage streken achter Wegberg bij het
slot Tusschenbroek zijn oorsprong neemt; ze loopt door de poelen en
meertjes bij Brempt langs Bruggen door de heide op Swalmen aan,
langs de oude Romeinsche begraafplaats en doorstroomt het dorp om
een weinig bezuiden Hanssum onder Neer zich in de Maas te storten.
De beek doorstroomt eene lengte van 30 kilometer. Te Swalmen vloeit
ze onder eene brug door, waarop een standbeeldje staat.
Het
beeld stelt den H. Joh. Nepomucenus voor, en werd in 1823 geschonken
door een Luiker Heer. Deze had hier een handelshuis, waarmede hij
zaken deed en waardoor hij dikwijls te Swalmen moest zijn. Hij
schonk het beeld ter gedachtenis aan eene gelukkige redding uit de
Maas, waarin hij bij toeval geraakt was. Over de steenen brug der
Swalm weet men bij overlevering nog te verhalen, hoe de Franschen ze
in 1791, toen de Pruisen hen kort op de hielen zaten, deze afbraken
om hen zoo den overtocht nog zooveel mogelijk te beletten.
Een
gewonde Franschman moest, toen het fransche leger de brug
overgetrokken was, door zijne kwetsuren achterblijven, en verborg
zich in een bijenhut kort bij de brug. Toen de Pruisen kwamen,
laadde hij zijn geweer, en schoot uit den troep Pruissen er een
neder. Hij hield zich aan ’t vuren, en door zijne gedekte
opstelling wist men in ’t begin niet van waar de welgemikte
schoten vielen; eerst toen de Franschman zeven Pruisen door zijne
schoten neergeveld had, kon men hem na ’t herstel der brug
bereiken; de dappere Françoos werd daarop door de verwoede
Pruisen neergesabeld.
Op
de brug heeft men een aantrekkelijk gezicht op de Swalm en
omliggende gebouwen. Voor ons zien we de Swalm haar schuimend water
in een zijtak over een afsluiting neerplassen; langs den hoofdtak
ligt onmiddellijk bij ons een bedrijvige houtzaagmolen, waarvan het
vroegere klapperende waterrad vervangen werd door eene dampende
stoommachine. Verder door zien we de statige boomen van den
Venloschen weg, en daarachter zenden een paar pannenfabrieken dikke
rookwolken uit hunne lage zwarte schoorsteenen in de lucht. Bij dit
alles hebben we nog het gezicht op een paar tuinen, waarin de appel-
en peerebloesem, de boomen met een doorzichtig wit en rose kleed
schijnen te bedekken.
De
nijverheid heeft in Swalmen door de verhooging der invoerrechten een
gevoeligen knak gekregen. Om hiervan een voorbeeld aan te halen
behoeven we alleen de fabriek van den heer Königs te citeeren,
die naar de inrichting te zien wel de grootste of in ieder geval een
der voornaamste stoomhoutzagerijen van Limburg is. Het meeste
gezaagd hout werd vroeger naar de Rhijnstreek verzonden; de
industrie had door den grooten afzet eene hooge vlucht genomen. Vele
handen vonden in de fabriek werk en brood. Zoodra echter werden in
Pruisen de verhoogde invoerrechten niet geheven, van 1 mark per 100
kilo, of de Duitschers kwamen niet meer koopen, en de fabrikanten
konden alleen de beste kwaliteit planken slechts met geringe winst
blijven uitvoeren. ’t Is dan ook niet te verwonderen dat in
Holland honderden zagerijen stil liggen, te meer wijl de Duitschers
gezaagd hout bij scheepsladingen in Holland mogen invoeren. Vroeger
werden in deze fabriek ook vele landbouwwerktuigen vervaardigd, die
meest aan Pruisische landbouwers in de grensdistricten geleverd
werden. Toen deze machinen echter met f 1.80 de 100 kilo belast
werden, was geen invoer meer mogelijk. De kleinste dorschmachine
toch weegt al licht een 700 kilo. Zelfs ging de Duitsche fiscus zoo
ver, dat van werktuigen, die reparatie moesten ondergaan, bij
terugkomst op nieuw recht werd geheven, wat het lastige gevolg had,
dat de Nederlandsche werklieden ze op Duitsch grondgebied moesten
gaan herstellen. Om het dezen werklieden nog lastiger te maken,
dwong men hen nog tot een Beroepsbelasting, die ook niet malsch was.
Zoo beschermt Duitschland zijne industrie. Door de aanhaling dezer
voorbeelden willen wij hierbij niet betoogen, dat deze bescherming
een gezonde toestand verwekt en dat de industrie, die aldus met
kunst en vliegwerk geholpen wordt, krachtig zal bloeien, maar we
meenen toch uit deze vrij sprekende voorbeelden te moeten besluiten,
dat heffing van beschermende rechten als revanche-middel het eenige
middel is, om de kleine industrie langs de grenzen te redden.
En
wat ’t fraaiste is van de Duitschers, zij weten precies wat ze
niet moeten belasten; datgene, wat ze voor den landbouw noodig
hebben en hier halen, is vrij; op veevoeder b.v. wordt geen
invoerrecht geheven, wat tengevolge heeft, dat de Rhijnlanders in en
om Roermond al het noodige opkoopen tegen hooge prijzen, waardoor
hier menigmaal een te kort ontstaat. Op kalk voor den landbouw, die
op de goedkoopste wijze langs de Maas tot Asselt komt, en verder per
as vervoerd wordt, heft men eveneens geen recht; en dit alles
geschiedt met het goede doel, om den landbouw, de groote bron van
volkswelvaart, te beschermen en bij te staan in dezen calamiteusen
tijd.
Na
deze kleine economische uitweiding, waartoe onze opmerkingen ons als
’t ware van zelf voerden, willen we nog eenige oogenblikken
bij onzen vriendelijken begeleider, den secretaris, verwijlen. Hier
hebben we gelegenheid om te zien, hoe heerlijke uitkomsten de
degelijke lessen, door den wandelleeraar in de fruitboomteelt
gegeven, opleveren. Tal van prachtige ooftboomen in allerlei vorm en
verscheidenheid troffen we aan, maar allen beloofden door de
wetenschappelijke behandeling, die ze ondergingen, ook dubbel zoo
veel fruit als andere boomen, die men hier en daar aan hun lot
overgelaten zag. Hoe jammer is ’t, dat die cursussen niet
overal met die hooge belangstelling gevolgd worden, die ze werkelijk
verdienen.
We
bezochten hierna nog de grisaille-glasfabriek, doorwandelden ’t
dorp, en de schoone laan naar Roermond lag voor ons. Dicht bij den
grooten weg naar Roermond ligt de groote hoeve Beckerhof, geheel in
grachten of weijers. Door deze afsluiting kon men vroeger, als
krijgsgevaar duchtte, vee en have beter in veiligheid brengen, en
aan de roofzieke handen der soldaten onttrekken.
Dergelijke
verschanste hoeven vond men in den omstreken van Roermond en
speciaal in de omstreken van Swalmen meer, zooals b.v. Boschhof
[Baxhof] bij Schoolbroek gelegen, de gebrande Weijer onder Roermond,
de weijer onder Maasniel, eene hostede aan ’t Gebroek enz. In
het Schoolbroek, dat oudtijds aan Beesel en Swalmen behoorde, had
men vroeger nog een schans, waarin ’s nachts ’t vee
gedreven kon worden. Van ’t Schoolbroek deelde men ons ter
loops nog de volgende eigenaardigheid mede. Om twisten tusschen de
inwoners van Beesel en Swalmen te voorkomen, was bij bezegelde
brieven bepaald, dat Swalmen ’s morgens tot 12 uur meester was
in ’t Broek, terwijl Beesel des middags zijn recht van
eigendom kon laten gelden.
Aan
het einde van Swalmen gekomen, nemen we afscheid van onzen
vriendelijken gids, met de belofte van een nader bezoek.
Het
lieve lentezonnetje was in den tijd onzer wandeling reeds zoo hoog
gestegen, dat de schaduw die de fraaie iepenboomen langs de lange
laan naar Roermond op den weg werpen, ons zeer welkom was.
De
trein snort ons voorbij en roept ons een ode aan Swalmen in de
herinnering terug, die een landelijk genie aan zijne medeburgers in
1863 ten beste gaf en waarin hij Swalmen in de volgende gevoelvolle
verzen beschrijft, die we hier letterlijk laten volgen. B
Nieuw
Loflied van Swalmen.
Heffen
wij een loflied aan Van ’t schilderachtig Swalmen, Waar
Swalm en Maas te zamen vloeit, En beurtelings den grond besproeit,
Daar prijkt het dorp Swalmen.
Dierbaar
is voor mij die plaats, Alwaar ik ben geboren, De plek waar eens
mijn wieg op stond, Is ook voor mij de schoonste grond, Deez kan
mij bekoren.
Hier
wonen mijne ouders lief, Mijn vrienden en mijn magen, Die in ’t
prilste mijner jeugd Mij aanwakkeren tot de deugd En staag zorg
voor mij dragen.
Hier
ligt de oude dorpschool, Alwaar ik leerde lezen, Schrijven en
cijferen op de leij
Om
nuttig lid der maatschappij Ook later eens te wezen.
Ginds
rijst die hooge grootsche kerk Met haren schoonen toren, Hier
leerde ik de christe leer En deed er mijn Communie weleer, Hier
ben ik ook herboren.
Hier
heb ik verkeerd als kind Met mijne speelgenooten, En nieuwe
vriendschap naderhand
Ook
met de vrienden van mijn land Nauwer aangesloten.
Nergens
kan ik in de buurt Zijn weerga vinden, Met zijn kasteel en
kaplanie
Zijn
raadhuis en pastorie En op de Markt een linde.
Hier
stort de Swalm haren vloed In gindsche Maas ter neder, En spiegelt
alles in haar schoot Wat zich op haren weg aanbood, Zwelt en
krimpt dan weder.
Zij
is een zoo nuttig rivier Dat niemand haar kan missen, Zij biedt
ons vele diensten aan En maalt voor elk gezin het graan, Schenkt
ons daarbij haar visschen.
Zij
schaft ons olie voor de lamp En aan al de omstreken, Ik wacht den
tweeden slag maar af, Het is weldaad wat zij ons gaf, En zien den
olie leken.
Zoo
rolt zij hare waters voort! Midden door het dorp henen Hetwelk zij
in twee verdeelt
En
een schoon brug nog meer vereêld Van Joannes Nepomucenus
Langs
Swalms snel en heldre stroom Daar zitten wij te drinken, En zingen
liedren van ons land Ons instrumenten in de hand, Laten ’t
Harmonisch klinken.
Swalmens
omstreken zijn ook schoon, Met zijne wandelwegen, Zijn boscaden
uren lang,
Der
Nachtegalen zoet gezang, En heerelijke dreven.
Swalmen
kan ja ook gerust Met zijne velden prijken, Hier drijft de Maas,
hier loopt ’t Spoor In heel zijn lengte Swalmen door Natuur
en konst verrijken.
Daar
komt het trotsch gevaarte aan, Alleen door stoom gedreven;
Onwillekeurig blijft men staan, En staart het met verwondering aan,
En zoo is het al neven.
Al
haalt gij ook bij de steliën niet, In woning of in kleeren,
Zij hebben ook dat voorrecht niet Dat men hier op het dorp geniet,
Van vrijer te verkeeren."
The
family Theelen in Neer, Asselt and Swalmen
See
fot the originals https://loegiesen.nl
De
Sint Dionysiuskerk te Asselt
[17
augustus 1275 ASSELT - Gegevens inzake de vaststelling van de
grensscheiding tussen Roermond, Asselt, Swalmen en Beesel enerzijds,
en Wessem, Beegden, Haelen, Horn, Buggenum en Neer anderzijds, met
toestemming van graaf Reinoud [I] van Gelder.]
“In
the name of the Lord, amen, the judge and sheriff of Roermond, and
the entire community of Assel, Swalemen and Beesel on the one hand,
and the judge and sheriff of Wessem, Beegde, Halen, Horne, Buggenem
and Nere, on the other hand, to all and sundry, to whom this letter
shall reach, greetings, and to know the truth: since the state of
man is fragile, and the human mind is labile, it has been prudent,
so that what is to be pronounced later, may be strengthened by
written testimony, and may be known both by present and future
generations, that we, our people, with the more ancient men of both
the aforementioned lands, generally through the will, justice and
consent of the illustrious prince, magnificent and powerful lord,
Lord Reynold, Count of Gelderland and Zutphen, and the noble man
Lord William of Horne, our dearest lords, and their officers, were
moved and gathered by the precept upon one demonstration,
archonship, palace and limitation which is commonly the said
bewijsinge [proves], beleijdinge, selinge ende neijninge, of the
boundary or road near the Mosam [Maas] de Assel, called den lijnpade
[line path] of the Maas, which boundary or road said, lord Rutgerus
de Assel, knight, holds in fee from the noble man lord de Horne,
with all rights pertaining and dependent, namely all supreme
dominion, with judgment land and Maas on both sides, and on the
banks of the Maas within the boundary or road called den lijnpad,
with fishing in the Maas, on both sides and banks, on this and that
side of the Maas, and also with fields and accretions in the place
called den Tolle, as all these things already recited together from
ancient times lying and situated between the place or terminus,
called der Schalen or der Lingen, above Assel, and between half an
ampnim {?} in Haenssem, below below the stakes and division below,
which boundary or road called die Lijnpade or feudal goods mentioned
above, with all supreme dominion and judgment in the land and the
Maas, with the theloric, and also with the fishing, ancient custom,
adventione, palatione [?] and distinction of the aforesaid limits or
fees with all their pertinents attached, as they are partly declared
above, and as will be sufficiently specified below, and will be
distinguished in order, with the entire and general concordance of
the servants of both the aforesaid lands, theirs and ours, with the
unanimous assent and consent, and they have been circumscribed and
pertestified, and also by their, who are the ones who swear, with
sacred touches, demonstratively distinguished, specified, perpalata,
palem en notoriae divided and segregated, and the aforesaid lord
Rutger, and his parents and ancestors of the same have always
successively obtained and possessed the aforesaid limit, or the way
already said, good feudalism from old age to old age, without being
disturbed by anyone, but peacefully and quietly in every way and
form of law, if..ti pns letter below expresses, explains and
testifies: the first palus and the aforesaid distintis of the
boundary or fee, begins above Assel at the place called der Scalero
or des Lingen palat, specifies and distinguishes the boundary or way
called den Lijnpat or fee on both sides and right from the Maas, and
wide for a space of sixty feet, on the land, or as far as one man
standing with one foot on the shore/of the Maas, and with a plough
from the right throws it down on the ground, and so descending on
both sides and banks of the aforesaid Maas, up to half an acre in
Haensem on the above, it is to be known, whatever less just and
excessive in this boundary or fee stakes and distinctions aforesaid,
on the ground and the Maas, has been done, of homicides, theft, or
of any excesses, causes, cases unjust, malicious and would be made
by the supreme lords to infinity pertaining or relating to this same
lord Rutger will judge the ten lords in the stakes and distinctions
of the aforesaid boundary, or fee, before his faithful or The men
who are the homage of the lord of Horne, specially summoned and
requested for this purpose, will discuss and settle: because we have
seen the same lord Rutger erect a gallows in the lower part of
Vuthoven, on the border above the Maas itself, and hang a thief who
was caught there on the stakes and distinctions of the aforesaid
boundary. Furthermore, it is stated that internal or external, to
the vessels, vendors, traders, or boatmen, from where they go, or
from where they come to this boundary or on the stakes and
distinctions of the aforesaid Maas, one person putting a guarantee
can arrest the body or goods of another, aggravate, slander, claim
and collect the right, but the other person putting a guarantee or
surety immediately and without delay, if he approves, will be able
to release himself from arrest with just causes and to resist the
slanders and slanders brought against him, to pay just and right
debts, to swear against unjust, unfair and cunning slanders, with
two fingers touched, sacred, as is the law, unlike the thieves, and
customary: since/the same Lord Rutger in this limit has his own
saints from his dominion, which he is to extend to all those in need
and who ask for them from the law: we also saw in this limit a
standing argastus the ship with the rack in which they were placed,
bound and preserved were those who did not have the caution or
guarantors, with whom they could have federated or reconciled their
causes, complaints, excesses and their forefacts. Furthermore, all
goods which are carried or moved through this limit or the said
terminus posts, in or out of ships, ascending or descending through
the Maas ravine, as is the law and custom, or has been from ancient
times, are tolled and if they are to be prevented from being tolled,
all goods are to be forfeited, and in this limit some ships are to
be sailed, to be unloaded, or some goods are to be carried, or if...
ships are to be filled and to be loaded or some goods are to be
loaded, first a license must be sought from the toll collector,
giving him a license for loading, said eijnen Lichtveerlinc, but for
loading said eijnen Ladeveerlinc, but if he does it illegally from
what... mark... he falls into excess. Moreover, if within the limits
of this limit any goods are sailed on or off ships and are tossed
about on the waves and in the waves by a strong and impetuous wind,
or by a turbulent and untempered breeze, and the sailors are
thundering, or are in despair of being shipwrecked, they can and
will cry out with loud voices to the toll collector, hold the
quarter by placing it on the prow of the ship or by going out on the
deck, and disembark, go out, sail and defend themselves as much as
they can and will be able to without any excess, or by being
captured, but by remaining silent, not crying out and emptying, or
by unpredictably sinking by misfortune, they will fall into the
excess of five marks. It should further be known that fishing on the
Maas on both shores and banks, both on this side and on that side,
begins, proceeds and ends within the aforementioned stakes,
boundaries and circumscriptions of the limits of his fee, in which
Lord Rutgeus, his heirs, or the conservator of these limits or fees,
or his family, or another named person, with all the instruments of
fishing, nets or nets, by means of which fish can be caught, will be
able to catch, at the required place and times, at his convenience,
on those sides and banks of the Maas, towards Assel, or towards the
land of Horne, on the plain, on both shores of the same Maas, with
his nets and nets, from or by sending them in, leading and pulling
them out as often as they may indicate, and it shall seem expedient
to them, even if within the stakes, boundaries and distinctions
aforesaid on that side, on the Maas side above the shore itself, on
the land towards Assel or towards the land of Horne, some
aureescences have grown, were and would arise beyond measure, the
fishermen Those who inject or inject, attract or attract their nets
and nets, inside or outside the Maas, for preventing fish from
escaping, may pluck and cut off in such great numbers and quantities
as they, or they themselves, may need for this purpose, and work,
notwithstanding any contradictions, moreover all the medioampnes or
accretions which have accrued input, or which have arrived by way of
aurescence in the future below the gurgit/Maas, these and these, the
same lord Rutger, and his heirs, or the conservator of the aforesaid
fee or their family, may pervade, distinguish and specify, pervade
with trees, fortify, perstipulate and persecute for all their
convenience, good pleasure and desire, possessing them equally in
fee aforesaid, as their own property. Even if the said aurescuntiae
below the aforesaid gurgle have already been planted and sprouted
integrally and undividedly and have fallen sideways on that side of
the Maas, towards Assel or towards the land of Horne, these and
whatever has occurred and annexed them towards the Maas and by the
inclined aurement, all Rutger the lord or his heirs will possess as
the aforesaid fee, and will obtain. Furthermore, all aurements,
which or which have accrued in the past, or which will come to by
way of accretion in the future, arable land, lying in the place said
den Toll on that side of the Maas towards the land of Horne, or from
that side of the Maas towards Assel, these and this same lord Rutger
his heirs or the conservator of the said fee or their family, will
be able to pervade, pervade with trees, fortify and ixersepere, for
all their convenience and will, those than those equally possessing
the fee as their own property. Moreover, it is to be known that if
any excesses, cases or forefacts are committed, or if they have been
committed in those limits or fee stakes and distinctions aforesaid,
which or which the same Lord Rutger cannot judge or execute, then
the Lord of Horne, as his feudatory, will be his assistant, judge
and executor in judging those excesses, cases and forefacts, and if
he is unable, from then on Earl Lossen, as his feudatory, will be
his assistant, judge and executor in judging those excesses, cases
and forefacts, and if he is unable, from then Earl Lossen, as his
chief feudatory, will be his assistant, judge and executor in
executing and judging those excesses, cases and forefacts. These are
the demonstrations, circumscriptions, palaces, limitations,
discussions, distinctions, and also proofs proven from ancient times
up to now, of clarified, manifested, individually distinct and
specified, and also the right of this boundary and the aforesaid
fee, which and what we have always seen and heard from our
predecessors, and we have understood with our oaths, sacred texts,
this truly and for the truth protesting, that the aforesaid lord
Rutger, and his predecessors, successively from age to age this
oft-mentioned boundary called den Lijnpat, or fee, obtained and
possessed, in all ways and forms preordained and authorized. In
testimony of the truth of all the foregoing, by order, assent, and
consent of the two most eminent men aforesaid, and the same
officers, we the judges and sheriffs of Roermond and Wessem, have
affixed our seals for the ninth, and to these present letters, and
we William, lord of Horne and of Altena, for greater certainty and
caution of all and each of the foregoing, have requested and do
request the illustrious first lord Arnold, count of Los and of
Ceijneij, our supreme fiefdom of the aforesaid limit and fee, and
the magnificent and powerful noble man lord Reijnold, count of
Gelderland, our beloved lords, that they themselves may give consent
to all the circumscriptions/palations, limitations, conditions and
demonstrations clearly expressed above, and nevertheless bear
witness to the truth, in all and each of the foregoing, and not only
by their own pendent letters to strengthen and confer that the
foregoing may remain valid and unshaken, and to have the memory of
the event, we have communicated the present writing with the
affixation of our seal together with the seals of the aforementioned
scabines, given and executed in the year of our Lord's incarnation
one thousand two hundred and seventy-five, the sixteenth day of the
calends of September.
Herewith
are attached two instruments pierced with pendent seals, the first
of which is as follows.
You
who will inspect the present letters, Arnold Earl of Lossie and
Cynal, may you know in your lordship's safety that we have all the
demonstrations, circumductions, palaces, specifications and
conditions in the present letters, to which our present letters are
affixed, contained, made and ordered, ratified and firm, and we give
them our assent, and we confirm them as duly made, by our pierced
seal for us and ours, in perpetuity in which the evident strength of
all the foregoing, and our seal as a witness, given in the year of
our Lord's incarnation one thousand two hundred and seventy-five,
the sixteenth day of the calends of September.
The
other one is transfixed in these words.
We,
Count Reynold of Gerle, greetings and all the conundrums that please
us and proceed from our consent, will and assent, that all
demonstrations, circumductions, distinctions, specifications and
conditions of the present letter, to which our present letter is
appended, may remain perpetually in all their strength, unharmed,
and with the vigor, as it is therein specified, and they are
declared and confirmed, and they are confirmed as true, as far as is
in us, by our transfixed for us and ours, in testimony of which we
have caused the present letter to be strengthened with the strength
of our seal, given in the year of our Lord one thousand two hundred
and seventy-five, on the sixteenth kalend of September.
The
present is a copy of the demonstration, circumscription,
distinction, specification and condition, copied from its original
and collated with the same, which agrees verbatim with both the main
instrument itself and the transfixes mentioned therein, to which
five seals are affixed on each side, two of green color, two of
mixed color, and another rubric, which I, the undersigned, attest
with my own hand, this fifth of January, the twenty-second of the
sixteenth century.
Below
was
Thus,
witness
signed
Jo. Oliverius in Richello and undeserving pastor, notary applied by
the copy
below
was Franciscus Sirout, notary admitted by the council of Brabant,
the prescribed copy. repeated collated. witness as preferred to
agree with the original seals which are protected, on the same day,
month and year.”
[14
maart 1521
"Gegeven
op onsen huyse to Eelssen in den jaer onss lieffe heren duysent
vijffhondert ind eynentwintich op donredach nae halffasten"
ELSLOO/NEER/ASSELT
- Johan van Vlodrop en Adriana van Merode verpachten de Boxweerd bij
Maaswijnaarden (‘Wienerte’) gelegen met ingang van 1
april voor een periode van twee jaar aan Jan van den Bergh, wonend
te Neer, voor jaarlijks 20 Hornse gulden. Tevens is afgesproken dat
oorkonders gedurende deze pachttermijn geen rente zullen geven
wegens de lening van 210 Hornse guldens die zij van Van den Bergh
hebben opgenomen wegens een vordering door de kinderen van wijlen
Seger Tessers. Na afloop van de termijn zal deze schuld alsnog
worden afgelost.]
March
14, 1521
"Given at our house in Eelssen in the year of our
dear lords one thousand five hundred and twenty-one on Thursday
after half-fast"
ELSLOO/NEER/ASSELT - Johan van Vlodrop and
Adriana van Merode leased the Boxweerd near Maaswijnaarden
(‘Wienerte’), located in Neer, effective April 1st, for
a period of two years to Jan van den Bergh, resident of Neer, for 20
Horn guilders annually. It was also agreed that during this lease
term, no interest would accrue on the charters due to the loan of
210 Horn guilders they had taken from Van den Bergh for a claim by
the children of the late Seger Tessers. This debt would be repaid at
the end of the term.
[“Ich
Johan van Vlodorp ind Ariaen van Meroide, eluyde, bekennen oevermytz
desen apenen brieff dat wye uitgegeven hebben te pacht onsen weyrt
off grient gelegen tot Wynerden aen den breyen vleyck geheyten
Bocksweyrt twee jaer lanck ind ten halven tij aeff te staen weem des
niet [met?] en genuechden ende malckanderen dat ther gueder tijt eyn
halff jaer te vorrens op te seggen Jan van den Bergh wonende tot
Neer ind Jan sall onss alle jair geven ind waell betailen tot
Pinxten twintich besceiden Haersch gulden off twelff bescheyden
Burgonisse Brabantze stuver vur den gulden off bennen veerteen
daighen dair nae onbevanghen bennen der stat van Ruremunde dair onss
dat believen sall, ind Jan van den Bergh vurss. heefft onss geleent
twe hondert bescheiden Haersche postulaetz gulden ind theen dy in
onsen groten noeden ende merer schaiden te verhueden gekeert sijn
aen Segher Tessers zeleghen kinderen nae vermoegen syegell ind
brieve van onsen alderen sij op onss sprakende hebben ind zo ysset
vurwert ind bededinght dat wye Jannen van den Bergh vursch. van den
tween hondert Haerschen gulden egeyn lopend rent van geven en sullen
ther tijt toe ind all zo lange sijnen tijt de pechtingen omme is,
het were dan then halven off den ganssen tij als vursch. steyt. Ouch
zo ysset mit vurwert ende bededinght als Jans van den Bergh vursch.
tijt uit is under pechtinghe, dat ich dan Johan van Vlodorp ind
Ariaen van Meroede eluide vursch. off onse even dan gehalden sullen
sijn Johan van den Bergh of sijnen erven van stonden aen haem sijn
twe hondert Haersch gulden ind theen dy hee onss zo in onsen noeden
geleent hefft haem wederomme leggen ind betailen sullen tot haeren
benoigen tue. Ind in gevall dat off Got wyll nyt geschien en sall
dair inne gebreecklicken gevonden worden ende Jannen van den Bergh
vursch. off sijnen erven haer penninghen niet en betailden in maeten
als vursch. steyt, soe sall ind maich dan Jan offte sijne erven
dennen Bocksweert vursch. in sijnen handen halden, dennen nutten ind
gebruycken ende van der jairlick pechtinghen der twintich Haersch
gulden inhalden in aeffslaeghen der geleender penninghen der twe
hondert Haersch gulden ind theen vursch. ind onss niet dair van te
geven bis dy geleende penninghen geheellick betailt ind gegeven
sijn. Ind der tijt van der pechtinghen sall aengaen den yersten
daegh van den apryll. All argelist, loese vunde hyr inne genslicken
uitgescheiden, in orkonde dis ind der waerheyt soe hebben weyr Johan
van Vlodorp ind Ariaen van Meroede eluyde vursch. vur onss ind vur
onsen erven elck onsen siegell hyr aen gehanghen, ind hyr synt ouch
oever ind aen geweyst dair dese mytscap ind pechtinge geschiet is dy
eerbaren Tyll Porttens, Jan Ruytzen ind Katheryn op den Vrythoff.
Gegeven op onsen huyse to Eelssen in den jaer onss lieffe heren
duysent vijffhondert ind eynentwintich op donredach nae halffasten.]
[Origineel
op perkament met zegels van de oorkonders.
Tilman
Portgens en Jan Ruitzen komen in andere akten voor als schepenen van
Swalmen en Asselt en treden hier mogelijk op als laten van de
laatbank van Asselt, waarvan Johan van Vlodrop eigenaar was.]
“I
Johan van Vlodorp and Ariaen van Meroide, acknowledge in this open
letter that we have given out to lease our weyrt off grient situated
in Wynerden at the wide flat called Bocksweyrt [Boxweerd] for two
years long and a half, we are pleased and mutually agreed that every
year a half year in advance to stop Jan van den Bergh residing in
Neer and Jan will give us every year in the weyrt amounting to
twenty separate Haersch guilders or twelve separate Burgundian
Brabantine stuvers [dimes] for the guilder or for fourteen days that
are unconditional to the town of Ruremunde there. Let us believe
that Jan van den Bergh, in advance, has lent us two hundred modest
postulates of Haersche guilders, which, in our great need and to
cover more damages, were returned to Segher Tesser's seven children
according to our wishes, as stated in the letter from us, when they
spoke to us, and so we agreed that we would give Jan van den Bergh,
in advance, of the two hundred Haersche guilders a regular rent and
will continue to do so from time to time, as long as the tribute is
around, which would then be half of the entire period as before.
Also so we agree with the tribute and the agreement if Jan van den
Bergh is in debt for some time, then Johan van Vlodorp and Ariaen
van Meroede, who are in debt to us, will be given to them
immediately. Johan van den Bergh or his heirs will immediately owe
him two hundred Haersch guilders, and the amount you lent us in our
need will be returned to them and paid to their satisfaction. In the
event that this does not happen, it will be found to be in short
supply and Jan van den Bergh or his heirs do not receive their money
in the same measure as in debt, then maybe Jan or his heirs will
receive the Bocksweert in debt. The use of the annual tax of twenty
Haersh guilders, with the borrowed money of two hundred Haersh
guilders in the foregoing. We are not to give any of it until the
borrowed money has been fully paid and given. The time of the tax
will be the first day of April. All the guilders, if they found him
in private, in an ordinance, this in truth, we have, Johan van
Vlodorp and Ariaen van Meroede, each of us, and for our inheritance,
our seals are attached to him, as he is also on the bank of the to
the fact that this mystery and punishment occurred, the honorable
Tyll Porttens, Jan Ruytzen and Katheryn op de Vrythoff were
informed. Given at our house in Eelssen in the year of our dear
lords one thousand five hundred and twenty-eight on Thursday after
half-fast.
October
2, 1612 RIJKEL - Hendrick van Cruchten declares that on August 30,
1612, the superintendent of the Court of Audit and others leased him
an accretion ('grindt') located opposite his farm at Rickel
[=Rijkel] under Bezel [Beesel], as it is located there or may
accrete in the future. For this, he will pay the Court of Audit (on
behalf of the Duke of Guelders) 45 Brabant stuivers annually for
each acre of 'holtgewasende' (wooded crops, green or pastureland).
On October 26, 1611, Van Cruchten reported to the Court of Audit
that he had taken over the lease from Andries Driessen, pastor of
Neer, of "two gravels or middle sands located in the Maas River
near Bezel, one against the Kessel Haege below the Handtsommerbeek
stream, the other situated somewhat higher, opposite Deursdael's
woods or his farmstead of Rickel." These accretions had been
leased to the aforementioned pastor approximately four years earlier
for 30 Brabant stuivers [dimes] for a period of six years. The
accretions opposite the Kessel Haege [probably the Mussenberg] have
since been completely washed away; the other was also "extensively
washed away and scoured by the high waters two years ago, and also
severely damaged by the most recent high waters," especially on
the Horn side. This accretion is also threatened with complete
erosion by high water and ice formation, but this can be prevented
by revetment (bank revetment). Because Van Cruchten's farm lies
opposite this accretion, he is willing to have it revetment and
sanded at his own expense, provided he can lease it for a reasonable
fee. The Court of Audit, following the advice of Engel van
Offenbeeck, Montfort's steward, inspected the accretion and
determined that the accretion, including the stones and sand, is
less than a hectare {?} in size, and that it will cost 300 pounds
Arthois or more to revet it and refill the pits and sewers created
during the last high water.
Starting
on August 30, 1612, Van Cruchten was granted free use of the
accretion for a period of 10 years, in exchange for the revetment
costs. After this period expires, namely on August 30, 1622, the
accretion will be measured at the joint expense by a sworn surveyor
using the "measure or rod of Bezel." For each acre usable
as "hollow crops, greenery, or barley, dug out stone and sand,"
he will pay the aforementioned 45 Brabant stuivers, "in the end
measure, in the end money," for as long as the accretion
exists. Every five years, a new survey will be conducted at the
joint expense, and the rent will be increased or decreased. Van
Cruchten will not be able to recover from the Duke any costs,
damages, or labor costs incurred to maintain the accretion. Finally,
on August 30, 1612, it was determined that Van Cruchten must issue a
reversal letter to the Court of Audit, which is hereby done.
[Andreas
Driesen was pastor in Neer from 1598 to 1621 (Jan Hanssen, December
31, 2000). The place name "Ne..er" is not legible in the
deed.]
August
1, 1668, SWALMEN - Declaration regarding the levying of tithes and
concerning the (lost) round tower of Hillenraad.
Johan
de Verwer, inspector of His Royal Highness Licenses on the Maas, as
the late scholtis of the court and lordship of Asselt, assisted by
the licentiate Thomas Bordels on behalf of the Marquise de
Wargniers, Peter Spee and Johan Obers, both late aldermen, and the
secretary Suiverich, as well as the late messenger Tiel of Assel,
certified that they had attended the presence of Geurt Quijten,
tenant of the aforementioned court, regarding the Hillenraet house,
where Gootsen Gerardts, aged 70 and half-man on the Graetshoff, and
Corst Stockmans, aged 50, declared that they had leased the tithe of
the Asselterhof some 40 years ago ' ... and further designated these
following limits of the same tithe, namely, the round horn of the
Hillenraet house, which has now been demolished and the new hall on
the site was built, standing on a thick old oak tree near the end of
Cleutiens Straat, pointing from there to the thorn of the Count's
House of Hoorn up to the Grip, situated in two plots together
measuring 3 quarters of a square, currently belonging to Johan
Henskens and Ruth Silkens 'as nieces and nephews'. 'And from there,
along the lands to the Hillenraet house and Beeckerhoff lands of the
Carthusians to Ruermondt, from where the thient [=one-tenth] in the
field on the left-hand side belongs to the court of 't Asselt and
thus continuing between the property of the aforementioned
Carthusian lords on one side, along the Meulenwegh, shooting off
with a pointed point at the Hillenraederwegh, and on the other side
the Gasthuis and the lands of the reverend lords of the
Capitulaeren, where the reverend Cartusian fathers have the tithe on
their lands, on the right side, and on the Gasthuis and the lands of
the reverend lords of the Capitulaeren on the left-hand side the
aforementioned court of Asselt.
Idem
on the other side of the Hillenraederweg on the left-hand side, the
reverend Carthuyser Fathers have a small plot of land separated from
their other lands by the road, together measuring about seven
morgen, on which property of the Carthuyser Fathers the tithe
belongs to the pastor of Swalmen, called the Schoollaster's Tithe,
and the remainder of the lands lying on the left-hand side, thief,
the aforementioned Assel farm of the Carthuyser Fathers land on the
right-hand side, then further on one and on the other sides of the
aforementioned Gasthuis land, heard the thief of the Gasthuis land
at the Assel farm, and from there going further to Goetsen Graets
land, which is located at the the late pastor of Swalmen and the
lords of Carthusiasm, and the other land belonging to the lords of
the Capitulars, thief the court of Asselt up to the Leijtgraeff,
from the Leijtgraeff going up along the Tigelerije to the Spurck
Hegge on the other corner of the Laethwegh standing on the land of
the Carthage Fathers, and from there on the left hand side along the
bush belonging to the heirs of Bijl to Venlo up to the Carthage's
small camp, which camp also the aforementioned heft thief to the
lady Dursdal Spickter, from there on the oak stock at Wittengraeff
up to the oak tree on the grave of the reverend lords of the
Cappitulars farmyard at Graeterstraet standing and so further to the
edge of the gap from the orchard to the thorn bush on Graterwegh
against the aforementioned oak stake on the Wittengraeff tenth
t'Cappittel and the other lands the aforementioned orchard.
September
24, 1669 SWALMEN AND ASSELT - Declaration by several mayors
associated with the Lordship of Asselt concerning the walking and
taking possession of an influx into the Maas River near the
Biesweerd.
“We
Johan de Verver, scholtis, Johan Obers, Nelis Janssen, Corst Peckx,
Corst Stockmans and Peter Raemaekers, leave the court and lordship
of Assel, do hereby state and certify that we, along with the judge,
have offered our services on behalf of the most noble and honorable
young man. Irmgardt van Holthuysen, widow of Dursdal, and her
son-in-law Franciscus Arnoldus van Dursdal, Marie Quyten, widow of
Van Holt, the widow of Pueyn, Matthijs Stoffers, both for himself
and for Leonard Tessers, and Hendrick Heijnen in the name of his
mother Dirixken Bastiani, widow of Heijnen, all of us together on
the 24th of September 1669, have transported and joined Assel past
the Biesserweert on a certain run-on stone, where we also went on
the 2nd of this current month, containing a deed thereof, against
which run-on stone in the Biessen Baendt we found squire Baexen on
the Baeckxhooff belonging to Aretz, half-man of the reverend Jesuit
fathers Speck, Herman Spoerens, Jan Beeck, Jan Ruytzen, Sill
Paulssen, Herman Heeskens, squire Baexen's aforementioned servant,
and Johan Haewinckel of the aforementioned squire Baexen's half-man,
who, seeing that someone was approaching the aforementioned run-on
stone, quietly departed from there, and having arrived at the stone,
found that the sieve had been set there on the 2nd of this month
opposite Joncker Baexens Biesenbaendt had been pulled out, and a
stock from there and so further army fire covered with other risers,
which by order of the Lord scholts and judges on behalf of the
applicants were pulled out and thrown into the water, the same place
being again covered with other risers by Tiel Tielen's court
messenger, and further had Corst Stockmans step down and found that
the Maas had deviated from the same stone another fifty steps, so
that the same stone that had been run down from the place from which
the stone had first been stepped down, was found to be in total one
hundred and twenty-nine steps long, and noted that the
aforementioned applicants requested from all of them the
aforementioned as their similar act with to be shared, for eventual
justice, which one could not refuse, so that we have signed the
minutes of this document with our own hands, in true knowledge,
reserving the right of every lord, all without error, actum Assel on
24 September 1669 and was signed J. de Verver, this signed
[signature] Jan Obers, this signed [deviating signature] Nelis
Janssen, this signed [signature] Corst Specx, this signed
[signature] Corst Stockmans, Peter Ramekers, ...drich secretary.”
May
13, 1697 SWALMEN - Guardianship proceedings.
"Guardianship
held in Swalmen under the haystacks on May 13, 1697.
Alderman
Jan Janssen awards the order that the neighbors of Asselt make a
footpath across his property to the Meelenbroeck, to the Slack, up
to the Maas, where there has never been a footpath. He requests
reparation.
Senior
Johannes Rutsen, on behalf of the Reverend P.P. Carthuijsers,
complains that the neighbors make a footpath to their property,
namely from Beeckerhoff right through the Broecxken, and through the
Kempken to the Asselsche Straete, where there has never been a
footpath before this. He requests reparation.
Is
the Reverend P.P. Carthuijsers charged with having the case heard in
court? Some elderly persons, regarding any knowledge they might have
of the footpath in question, in order to be disposed of accordingly,
in Swalmen, May 14, 1697.
The
sworn here, on behalf of the neighbors, complain that they are being
overburdened with services and request that everyone with horses, as
he would with field, also serve.
The
petitioners will first submit this request to this court and, in
response, provide further and substantive reasons, in order to then
make further arrangements accordingly, in Swalmen, May 14, 1697.
The
sworn, on behalf of the community, declare that this will not be
withheld from them, for springhaingst [?], isere eight, as the
owners of the large tithe are required to do, which is not observed,
request that it may be provided for.
The
large tithe holders are charged to maintain the vahere, bair,
springhaingst, isere eight for the benefit of this community, unless
they have any reason to the contrary, for which they will have to
strengthen the judgment within 14 days, as of Swalmen, May 14, 1697.
The
neighbors of the Bouckoul complain that, next to Ruth's property in
the Bonten Os, a common footpath runs straight to the Leijgraef at
the Horstbrugge, which bridge is currently not constructed, nor is
there any, that by the Captain Everard is being obstructed,
preventing the passage of the thief carts. They request a remedy.
The
neighbors of the Bouckoul are charged with locating the Horst bridge
mentioned above and maintaining it in the future, and Captain
Everard is requested to tolerate the footpath here, according to
ancient custom, if he has reasons to the contrary, for which he will
uphold the judgment within 14 days, effective Swalmen, May 14, 1697.
Fr.
Johannes Rutsen, on behalf of the reverend Carthusians, requests
that suitable thief routes be indicated to them, both on the Leucker
and at the Boeckesstap to Asselt, as well as at the Heijcamp on the
Luierken.
The
Reverend P.P. Carthuijsers is charged with properly documenting this
matter, so that certain senior citizens with knowledge of it can be
questioned about it, in order to then make a decision on it, as of
Swalmen, May 14, 1697.
The
sworn complain that no sworn tithe has been established, causing the
community to suffer great harm, and request that it be made good.
These
claim that the sheep of the Tichelereije are grazing in the
Bouckoulder field without being authorized to do so, as they do not
yield any livestock tribute, and request that it be made good.
The
heirs of the late Governor Bitot are charged with the sheep of the
Tichelereije. Not to allow any further grazing or grazing except on
their property located within this lordship, on a path that will be
fenced off each way, according to Swalmen, May 14, 1697.
Jacob
Spee complains that the neighbors are creating a footpath behind his
house, for which they have not been held accountable and are
requesting a remedy.
The
neighbors say that a trespass was previously attached to the
Asselerhoff, pursuant to the guardianship proceedings of 1588, where
none is present, for which they are requesting redress.
The
half-owner of the hof in Asselt is charged with repairing the
trespass above the field and along Linghe Straat. According to
custom, within a fortnight, in Swalmen, May 14, 1697.
The
reverend pastor complains that no pedestrian path can be used
because there are no foundations over the stream, which prevents
proper passage to Asselt, requesting a solution.
Is
… [blank]
The
same pastor complains that the church bridges have not been properly
repaired and requests a remedy.
The
same pastor complains that the churchyard is starting to
deteriorate, requesting that it be repaired.
He
requests that reflection be included in the church's plan.
Also,
because it has been encroached upon in many places.
The
sworn complain that some hollow vegetation once stood on the common
in the stream behind Beeckerhoff, which was freed by public scourge,
but was nevertheless removed by some neighbors without consent. They
request that it be released.
The
sworn request that the fish caught in the common waters here be
declared before they are brought for sale, and that a location be
designated for this purpose, so that everyone may have access to it
to their own advantage. The neighbors of Boutenstraat complain that
the footpath along the Swalm to the Noenhoff is obstructed from
their access and request a remedy.
The
neighbors of Bouckoul complain that Theel Theelen is not currently
seeking to continue paying the coygard's wages during his lease, as
he previously did in his half-wine, and request reparation. Theel
Theelen is charged with regulating him according to the old custom,
as per Swalmen, May 14, 1697.
February
16, 1701 SWALMEN - List of war damages suffered.
"List
of those who had to provide Swalmen, in addition to food and drink,
to the two companies and staff of the regiment of Lord Lutsbourg,
Bavarian, lodged according to the orders of Lord Count van Horn,
dated February 7, 1701, and lodged on the 14th.
Firstly,
to consider the regimental quartermaster's furious reprimand as good
order and threatening not to advance before noon the following day,
three pistols at eleven pounds each were to be issued. Two
shillings, February 11, 0
The
item had to give the halfman at the Aermenhof twelve shillings in
addition to food and drink. April 1, 0
The
item had to give Henderich in the Carthusian forest one shilling.
January 0, 0
The
item Jan and Paulus Slabbers as given above. February 0, 0
Peter
Obers as given above. January 4, 0
Hend.
Hocx March 0
Jacob
Gerardts January 0
Jan
van Haelen given to a fender February 1
Theel
Theelen April 0
Sibert
Naus had to give half a verckenskop to a sergeant.
Nelis
Clumpkens and Corst Beeren July 0
Geutts
Pecx half a verckenskop May 0
Lambert
Fredericx June 0
Krijn
Krijnnen June 0
Jan
Pecx January 0
Henderick
Pecx March 0
Janis
Janissen March 0
Geret
Severs February 0
Willem
Kermans March 0
Willem
Beeck a shilling and 2-0-0 to a fender.
Areth
Neermans February 0
Henderick
Coenen January 0
Heijn
Krijnen a shilling and February 0
Jacob
Louwij January 0
Lendert
Theunissen a shilling April 0
Willem
Crompvoets January 0
Willem
Janssen op gen Heij January 0
Jan
Lemmen March 0
Gerard
Bongarts March 0
Thijs
Theunissen March 0
Dries
Janssen to give a shilling to a captain
Areth
Smeets to the lieutenant commander a shilling
Nelis
Wijnen March 0
Lijsbet
Janssen May 0
Peter
Everts January 0
Geurt
Willems February 0
Areth
Heijnen March 0
Henderick
Bullers to give a shilling to a fourier February 0
Jacobus
Crijnen February 0
Hans
Henderick January 0
Geurt
Coenen June 0
Lucia
Writers 1-0-0
Peter
van Ool 0 April 0
Henderick
Slabbers the young 0 April 0
Derick
Zillen 0 January 0
Niclaes
Gerardts 0 January 4
At
Jan Fredericx's, a pair of new fine shirts and a new shirt, a
chalice, and half a feather of bacon, as if they had driven him out
of his house with a blow, all together calculated on 2-0-0
Geret
Emets, a chalice to the regimental quartermaster
Willem
Hendrick, two chalices to a sergeant
Geurt
Timmermans 0 June 0
Jan
Vermeulen 1-0-0
At
Willem Coenen's, as if they had driven him out of his house with his
wife, and had his chest taken by force He was to be brought up and
taken from there all his small linen, a bedsheet, and a new pair of
trousers.
Jacob
Meuwissen had to give to the captain 5-0-0
Henderick
Slabbers had to give to a lieutenant a shilling and half a pig's
head and February 2, 0
Henderick
Spee had to give to a lieutenant 6 reixdaelder and two shillings
6-0-0
adding up to February 4, 47
In
addition, various persons had to give 13 uncooked shillings and 4
half pig's heads with several large pieces of beef.
That
this above specification has been confirmed in person by the
aldermen and sworn by the aforementioned persons in lieu of an oath.
requested, is hereby testified, actum Swalmen, 16 February 1701.
By
order [signed] G. Lubbers, secretary”
Is
the Reverend PP Carthuijsers is charged with exhibiting proper
documentation on this matter, in order to have certain senior
individuals with knowledge of it questioned, in order to
subsequently render a verdict, according to Swalmen, May 14, 1697.
The
sworn defendants complain that no sworn tithe had been established,
causing the community to suffer great harm, and request that it be
rendered void.
They
also acknowledge that the sheep of the Tichelereije are grazing in
the Bouckoulder field without being authorized to do so, as they
yield no livestock tribute, and request redemption. The heirs of the
late Governor Bitot are charged not to allow their sheep from the
Tichelereije to be herded or grazed any further than on their
property located within this lordship, provided they are safe during
each journey, as per Swalmen, May 14, 1697.
Jacob
Spee complains that the neighbors have created a footpath behind his
house, for which they have not been held accountable and are
requesting a remedy.
The
neighbors say that a trespass was previously attached to the
Asselerhoff, pursuant to the guardianship proceedings of 1588, where
none is present, for which they are requesting redress. The half-man
of the court in Asselt is charged with repairing the damages above
the field and along Linghe Straat within 14 days, according to
customary practice, as of Swalmen, May 14, 1697.
The
reverend pastor complains that no footpath can be used because there
are no foundations over the stream, which prevents proper access to
Asselt, requesting that a solution be found.
Is
… [blank]
The
same pastor complains that the church bridges have not been properly
repaired and requests a remedy.
The
same pastor complains that the churchyard is starting to deteriorate
and requests that it be repaired. He requests that reflection be
included in the church brook, as it has been encroached upon in many
places.
The
sworn complain that some hollow vegetation once stood on the common
ground in the brook behind Beeckerhoff, which was freed by the
public church gates. Nevertheless, it was removed by some neighbors
without consent. They request that it be removed.
The
sworn request that fish be caught in the common waters here,
indicated, before and before they are brought up for sale, and a
place has been designated for this purpose, so that everyone may
have their own use of it.
The
neighbors of Boutenstraat complain that the footpath along the Swalm
to the Noenhoff is obstructed for them and request a remedy.
The
neighbors of Bouckoul complain that Theel Theelen is not currently
seeking to continue paying the coygard's wages during his lease
years, as he previously did in his half-wining, and request
reparation in this regard.
Theel
Theelen is charged with regulating him according to the old custom,
as per Swalmen, May 14, 1697.
February
16, 1701 SWALMEN - List of war damages suffered.
"List
of those who had to provide Swalmen, in addition to food and drink,
to the two companies and staff of the regiment of Lord Lutsbourg,
Bavarian, lodged according to the orders of Lord Count van Horn,
dated February 7, 1701, and lodged on the 14th.
Firstly,
to consider the regimental quartermaster's furious reprimand as good
order and threatening not to advance before noon the following day,
three pistols at eleven pounds each were to be issued. Two
shillings, February 11, 0
The
item had to give the halfman at the Aermenhof twelve shillings in
addition to food and drink. April 1, 0
The
item had to give Henderich in the Carthusian forest one shilling.
January 0, 0
The
item Jan and Paulus Slabbers as given above. February 0, 0
Peter
Obers as given above. January 4, 0
Hend.
Hocx March 0
Jacob
Gerardts January 0
Jan
van Haelen given to a fender February 1
Theel
Theelen April 0
Sibert
Naus had to give half a verckenskop to a sergeant.
Nelis
Clumpkens and Corst Beeren July 0
Geutts
Pecx half a verckenskop May 0
Lambert
Fredericx June 0
Krijn
Krijnnen June 0
Jan
Pecx January 0
Henderick
Pecx March 0
Janis
Janissen March 0
Geret
Severs February 0
Willem
Kermans March 0
Willem
Beeck a shilling and 2-0-0 to a fender.
Areth
Neermans February 0
Henderick
Coenen January 0
Heijn
Krijnen a shilling and February 0
Jacob
Louwij January 0
Lendert
Theunissen a shilling April 0
Willem
Crompvoets January 0
Willem
Janssen op gen Heij January 0
Jan
Lemmen March 0
Gerard
Bongarts March 0
Thijs
Theunissen March 0
Dries
Janssen to give a shilling to a captain
Areth
Smeets to the lieutenant commander a shilling
Nelis
Wijnen March 0
Lijsbet
Janssen May 0
Peter
Everts January 0
Geurt
Willems February 0
Areth
Heijnen March 0
Henderick
Bullers to give a shilling to a fourier February 0
Jacobus
Crijnen February 0
Hans
Henderick January 0
Geurt
Coenen June 0
Lucia
Writers 1-0-0
Peter
van Ool 0 April 0
Henderick
Slabbers the young 0 April 0
Derick
Zillen 0 January 0
Niclaes
Gerardts 0 January 4
At
Jan Fredericx's, a pair of new fine shirts and a new shirt, a
chalice, and half a feather of bacon, as if they had driven him out
of his house with a blow, all together calculated on 2-0-0
Geret
Emets, a chalice to the regimental quartermaster
Willem
Hendrick, two chalices to a sergeant
Geurt
Timmermans 0 June 0
Jan
Vermeulen 1-0-0
At
Willem Coenen's, as if they had driven him out of his house with his
wife, and had his chest taken by force. He was to be brought up and
taken from there all his small linen, a bedsheet, and a new pair of
trousers.
Jacob
Meuwissen had to give to the captain 5-0-0
Henderick
Slabbers had to give to a lieutenant a shilling and half a pig's
head and February 2, 0
Henderick
Spee had to give to a lieutenant 6 reixdaelder and two shillings
6-0-0
adding up to February 4, 47
In
addition, various persons had to give 13 uncooked shillings and 4
half pig's heads with several large pieces of beef.
That
this above specification has been confirmed in person by the
aldermen and sworn by the aforementioned persons in lieu of an oath.
requested, is hereby testified, act Swalmen, February 16, 1701.
By
order [signed] G. Lubbers, secretary
June
14, 1729 SWALMEN - Guardianship proceedings: among other things,
concerning peat cutting, sheep, ringing the bell, rabbits.
"Guardianship
proceedings held in Swalmen on June 14, 1729, at the market there.
The
sworn witnesses have stated in court that they are not entitled to
any boar, ver, squirrel, and ice harrow, which must be kept by the
large tithe holders, requesting that they be provided for.
The
court incorporates the ordinances issued on the previous
guardianship proceedings, act ut supra.
These
sworn complained that the shippers and their sheep are driving along
the small and narrow roads, causing great damage to the produce.
They request that the military be instructed to keep a close eye on
this and to pledge the shippers driving along the narrow roads with
their sheep.
The
shippers are instructed not to drive their sheep on narrow roads and
to graze them on a penny of half a guilder, except for the damage
they will have caused, ordering the field guards to be carefully
monitored and the shippers to be imprisoned, as stated above.
These
sworn officers have also stated that the neighbors of the church
here are negligent and careless in the sounding and passing of the
bells during times of thunder and storms, requesting that provision
be made for this. The neighboring church is charged to promptly ring
and toll the bells during thunder and storms, on the penalty of a
quintal of beer, to be forfeited by each neighbor not attending and
to be spent jointly by the attending neighbors, as stated above.
The
neighbors have complained that the rabbits are completely spoiling
the fruits, requesting necessary provisions.
The
court orders the mayors here to speak to the Lord of this Lordship
about this matter and to devise necessary provisions in this regard.
Actum ut supr
November
12, 1739 SWALMEN - Buried: Petrus op den Camp [widower of Theodora
Theelen, married in Swalmen on October 26, 1700, buried there on
July 8, 1725; husband of Maria Heijnen, married in Swalmen on June
7, 1736].
During
the guardianship proceedings of 1588, Zill Kromvoets, the oldest
alderman, declared "that there is no freedom of hoofage in this
court, except the Hoppenrae, which is granted and worthy of the
Beijswaard, except for what is demonstrably free."
Two
deeds from September 1669 make it clear that accrual was still
taking place at that time. At the request of several land owners in
the Biesweerd, several landowners moved from the Asselt court to the
Maas, where we all went downstream the Maas, along the high and
empty Biesenweert, where we noticed a certain stone that had run up,
shooting off at an angle into the aforementioned Maas, along the
high and empty Biessenweert and further along the estate of Jonker
Hans Willem van Baexen, the Biessenweert Baendt, next to which we
can no longer see, and besides the aforementioned run-up stone there
is still a water channel, the same stone extending along Jonker
Baexen's estate up to seventy-nine steps into the Maas, each step of
about four feet, stepped down by the aforementioned Corst Stockmans,
whose stone, situated between the ditch and the Maas River, the
aforementioned applicants, as heirs of the high and empty
Biessenweert, presented before us, the sole judge, in accordance
with the aforementioned, according to which each of them inherited
and was judged therein, namely, in the old inheritance, in actual
and current possession, according to all observances and customs of
rights required thereto, having adorned the same stone with willow
wickerwork and subsequently enjoyed wine and wine there.
Three
weeks later, this ritual was more or less repeated. It was also
found that the stones set there on the 2nd of July had been pulled
out opposite Joncker Baexens Biesenbaendt, and a stock had been laid
from there, and a similar stock had been laid out with other stones,
which, by order of the Lord scholts and magistrates, were pulled out
and thrown into the water on behalf of the appellants. The court
messenger of Tiel Tielen had the same place again laid out with
other stones, and furthermore, Corst Stockmans had it stepped down
and found that the Maas had deviated from the same stone by another
fifty steps, so that the stone that had been run up from the place
from which the stone had first been stepped down, was found to be in
total one hundred and twenty-nine steps long. The fact that the
Asselterhof estates were summoned for this occasion is closely
related to a deed from 1275.
In
1774, surveyor Smabers designated the Hooghen Biesweerth as parcel 1
on map 8, meaning the southernmost part of the weerd. For the
surveyor, who drew up the maps of Swalmen on behalf of the
collective tithe collectors, the Biesweerd was an exception. This
addition had been made since for a long time, the land had been
divided into nine so-called lots, which were sometimes combined
through sale and inheritance, but sometimes further divided. For
unclear reasons, it had been agreed in the past that the actual
location of the land would change annually based on this division of
ownership, making it impossible for Smabers to determine who
actually owned which part of the large parcel. Ownership was clear
for the adjacent parcels, owned by Baxhof and Hillenraad
respectively, but Smabers also encountered the same problem with
parcel 4, the Kleijn Biesweerth.
In
1826, part of the Biestert was sold to Paulus Schiffers, "grutte
mulder" (major miller) and citizen of Roermond.
October
30, 1772 De Maasgouw, January 15, 1903
The
inheritance of Frans Arnold, Margrave of Hoensbroeck, and his wife,
Maria Anna Sophia van Schönborn.
Communicated
by P. Doppler. When Frans Arnold dos H. R. Ryks, Count and Margrave
of Hoensbroeck, hereditary marshal of the principality of Gelder and
county of Zutphen, lord of the guardianships of the Lower District
of Gelder, of Swalmen, Asselt, Hillenraedt, Grubbenvorst,
Blyenbeeck, Afferden and Ruynen, bailiff of the city of Gelder, etc.
(1) and his wife Maria Anna Sophia, née Countess of
Schönborn, Buchheim and Wolfsthal (2), died, their surviving
assets were not divided among themselves by their children. However,
"not so much concerned with the preservation and, more
importantly, the enhancement of our name and lineage, and also the
luster of our van Hoensbroeck family," they "also with the
intention and at the high command" of their parents and
ancestors devised certain "pacta familiae sive gentiletien"
and concluded it on October 30, 1772, whereby the entire estate of
their parents was made a "fixed fidie commis." We found
this agreement, recorded in the bailiff's register of the Lordship
of Grubbenvorst for the years 1772-1797, November 18, no. 30.
Article
2 of this agreement stipulates that these "fidie commissaire"
goods will be owned and enjoyed by the eldest margrave or lord of
the manor of their family and by his legal male successors,
excluding all female heirs, with the stipulation that certain annual
payments from the proceeds thereof be made to the other family
members, as stipulated in a few subsequent articles.
Presenting
all fifteen of these articles here in their entirety would go too
far; we will only mention the first article, which lists all the
goods and is extremely important for the history of our province,
and the second in their entirety.
The
confederates were: L. F. M. de Hoensbroeck, hereditary marshal of
the Duchy of Gelderland and the County of Zutphen; Sophia Charlotta,
Margravine of Hoensbroeck, born Countess von der Leyen
Hohengerolseck; P. (1) of and at Hoensbroek, cathedral chapter lord
of Speyer, provost of Emmerich, Archdeacon of Utrecht, privy
councilor and government president of the Elector of Spires;
Leopold, Margrave of Hoensbroeck, canon of the cathedral church of
Spires; J. F. M. D. Hoensbroeck, canon of the cathedral chapter of
Münster; Joseph, Margrave of Hoensbroeck, canon of the
metropolitan church of Trier; Charles, Margrave of Hoensbroeck,
canon of the metropolitan church of Trier and chamberlain of the
Elector of Cologne. "... the castle and marquisate of
Hoensbroeck with its high, middle, and low jurisdiction, hunting,
fishing, forests, money and grain rents, tins, charters, liberties,
pledges, and road tax, along with the corresponding building yards,
banal brewhouse, and water gardens, as well as the other
corresponding hunting yards, namely: the Schwemmbruggen court, the
Nauenhof, the Aldenhof, the Lootbroeck court, half of the Eysden
court, the Linderen court, the ter Weyer court, the Eyck court, the
Weijhof, with all the respective corresponding lands, meadows, and
pastures, hollow crops, hunting, fishing, rights, and justices;
item
the castle and lordship of Hillenraedt, Swalmen, and Asselt with
Applicable high, middle, and low jurisdiction, hunting, fishing,
wardens, money and grain rents, tins, charters, liberties, and all
rights and justifications, including applicable leaseholds such as
Asselderhof, the Bockweilsdries farm, the Syperhof, the Noenhof, the
small farm, with a parcel of land purchased in addition, furthermore
all the lands, meadows, pastures, fisheries, tins, and leaseholds,
bannal, grain, and oil mills, the Blanckwater fishery, the
Boschheijde, and the Lothariebosch,
items
the Bochhulder and Raayerthiende, the Boxweerd estate located near
Neer, the properties of the Jacquefort farm near Buggenum, the free
noble House of Welten with the respective Annexed lands under
Nieuwstad in the Montfort area,
item
the lordship of Grubbenvorst with its associated courts, named
Grubben Castle and Court with a mill, the noble house of Baersdonck,
and the Kleijnraeij, all with its associated lands, meadows and
pastures, hollow crops, appurtenances and dependencies, furthermore
the tins, bonds, leaseholds and fiefs belonging to Grubben and
Baersdonck, as well as the tithe there at Grubbenvorst; Item:
Blyenbeek Castle and the lordships of Afferden and Heukelom, with
their associated jurisdiction, rights and justices, hunting and
fishing, services, money and grain rents, tins, tithes, and
liberties, with their associated courtyards and farms, namely
Aldenhof, Bosserhof, Linderhof, Flammert, Bulshees, Vogelheck,
Niefers, Neudorp, Freyenhof, with their associated lands, meadows,
pastures, hollow crops, fisheries, and other appurtenances and
dependencies;
Item:
Gelder Overampt, consisting of the following lordships and villages:
Nieuwkerck, Aldekerck, Sevelen, Taeten, Stenden, Schaephuysen, St.
Anthonyberg, and Reurt; item the Nederampt Gelder consisting of the
following lordships and villages: Pont, Veerten, Capellen, Witten,
Groot Kevelaer, Klein Kevelaer;
the
castle and knight's seat The Hague near Gelderland, and its
respective noble estates, knight's seats, and courts, such as
Ravenshof and Schuijrenhof, the Egelsom or Kynster, the large and
small Bartel, the Voort, the Geysberg, Broekmanshof, Brouwenshof,
Hoenslaer, Gesselen with the seventeen morgens purchased therewith,
the Sloet, the Bremershorst, Knegtenhof, Weyschenhof, the Horst aan
de Niers, the Weihorst, the Badenberg, Steenolens, and the mills
so-called "maybe" belonging to it, the Rijntzenhof,
Hubenhof, Hornhof, Gijsenhof, the Heycamp with all the respective
high, middle, and low jurisdictions, rights and justices, hunting
grounds, Fisheries, services, fiefs, tins, corn and money tents,
leaseholds, right of way, liberties and associated lands, forests,
hollows, meadows, and pastures;
The
castle and knight's seat of Bellinghoven and the lordship of Haffer
and Meer with their associated rights and rights, jurisdiction,
tins, leaseholds, liberties, hunting and fishing, money and grain
rents, and also farmyards, namely: Coepenhol, Hillemanshof,
Obbergshof and their associated lands, meadows, meadows, hollows,
and grain mills, Duysborger tithe, and furthermore the farm called
Byvanck with its lands, meadows, meadows, meadows, and hollows;
Item:
the farm called "den Grind" near Zanten, located with its
associated lands, meadows, and pastures;
Item:
the Oosterschen, Grubbenschen, and Asselder tol [customs] on the
Maas River;
Item:
the free estate and knight's seat of Yversheim with its associated
lands, meadows, pastures, hollow crops, rights and liens, hunting
and fishing rights, liens, grain and gold rents, tithes, and so on;
Item:
the Wiltinger vineyard, with its associated lands, tithes, rights
and liens;
Item:
the Vienna Fideicommis, capital of one hundred thousand Rhine
guilders;
Item:
a similar capital of one thousand Rhine guilders, payable by the
Austrian land authorities;
Item:
the bond payable by the Bohemian Landstättes of three thousand
nine hundred and sixty-five Rhine guilders;
Another
Austrian Landstätte bond of one thousand eight hundred and
eighty Rhine guilders, all originating from the Countess of
Straetman;
A
similar capital of eighteen thousand Rhine guilders bequeathed by
the aforementioned Her Excellency to the late His Highness, the
Marquis of Hoensbroek, during his lifetime, Provost of Trier; item a
ditto capital of eight thousand Rhine guilders at the hilt in
Vienna, and through her Excellenz the Countess of Hodion bequeaths,
to our joint counterparts, the usumfructum of the last congregation
Capital sum of eight thousand Rhine guilders reserved for our
respective benefit ad dies vitae;
the
High Office as Hereditary Marshal of the Principality of Gelderland
and the County of Zutphen, with all the corresponding emoluments,
prerogatives, rights and entitlements, and finally all the vaiselle,
jewels, trinkets, and all other ready-made goods and securities
bequeathed by the late our highly esteemed parents and passed on to
us in the other direction, as far as located or findable in the
Netherlands, are made and constituted into a fidei-commissaire, and
that it shall take effect as often and as long as the respective
land rights under which the aforementioned fidei-commissaire goods
fall are permitted, that those goods located in the Kingdom shall be
and remain perpetually subject to the bond of fidei-commissaire,
such that none of the aforementioned so loan as allodiaele goods,
rents, pledges and so on by the respective possessors, or priors
thereof and may be alienated, transferred or encumbered on whatever
foundation or pretext it may be, then for us jointly signed
contracts all and with the exception of our successors, reserving
the faculty to negotiate on the aforementioned goods such sums as we
deem necessary for the deposit of other capital and principal of
those standing for higher interests. "Secondly, that the
aforementioned fideicommissary goods will be possessed and defrauded
by the eldest Marquis or ancestral lord of our Hoensbroeck family
and thus successively by his lawful male heirs having the right to
succeed, both with regard to the aforementioned fideicommissary
goods and in the high office of Hereditary Marshal of the Duchy of
Gelderland and the County of Zutphen, with the exclusion of the
Marquises or female lineage, as long as any of us or our descendants
are lawful male descendants alive, then nevertheless, thirdly, that
the same will be held respectively to each of his brothers and
uncles Marquises of Hoensbroeck ad dies vitae from the proceeds of
the aforementioned fideicommissary to return three hundred patacons
of specie annually and to contribute as much as possible to
spiritual or secular employment or service and to bear the costs
thereof."
(1)
According to Eg. Hanghen, Het margraafschap Hoensbroek, p. 160, he
died on 22 August 1760.
(2)
Died 5 November 1760, idem p. 161.
(1)
He called himself Philip Damien; he was solemnly inaugurated as
Bishop of Roermond on 30 October 1775.
January
1, 1897 NEER OR "NÈRE."
The
winter sun pierces the morning mist with dull rays. Every ray
reflects in the millions of droplets from the frost-covered grasses
of the meadow.
The
trees pay their annual tribute to the winter frost, and from the
branches a continuous rain of withered oak leaves descends, falling
with a peculiar rustle onto the hard ground.
After
a few days, the landscape is as bare as the field, where the green
now offers little variety.
A
white-gray mist drifts over the water, and the damp, sharp cold
paints noses and ears black and blue.
The
monotony of the landscape before Buggenum disappears as one
approaches the village, whose long row of houses seems deserted on
the winter morning. Above the oak chimney, a blue, upright cloud of
smoke floats, proving how well they manage to ward off the cold
inside.
Behind
Buggenum, the view expands. We are standing on a high plain,
crisscrossed by many roads, most of which lead to Neer.
On
the left, we see Haelen and Nunhem, with their churches and castles
leaning against the hills.
Green
pine forests break straight lines.
To
the right, far away, we see the old church of Asselt, with the
houses of the village, which was once so prosperous when shipping on
the Maas was still flourishing and Hanssum, near Neer, was a large
and well-known ferry.
Before
us lies Neer, with the church on a hill that displays simple yet
proportionate shapes.
The
houses of Neer are situated in the depression created by the small
river from which it takes its name.
Whichever
side you look at the village from, it is surrounded by a high plain.
From
the north, too, one has a beautiful view of the higher land toward
Neer.
If
one turns toward the Maas, which flows along a high ridge or steep
bank on the side of Hanssum and Neer, one sees the village of
Beesel, its houses reflected in the blue expanse of the Maas.
Behind,
through the woods, where the towers of Swalmen and Reuver rise their
dotted peaks, one sees the white plume of smoke from the locomotive
and can follow its course along the line. If you pay close
attention, the still winter air will carry the wail of the steam
whistle long after you have seen the smoke plume move again.
The
sun now breaks more powerfully through the mists, between which it
has long tried to cast a doubtful light like a milky-white disk.
Although
it does not dispel the cold, it does bring more inspiration and life
around us. Neer lies just before us, and the watermills on the
stream rattle and clang with a delight.
Such
a watermill has something appealing; it's a nice addition to the
landscape.
The
watermill used to yield a considerable profit for its owners. The
lord of the village, here the Keizersbosch monastery, held the
monopoly on milling on the streams. Therefore, this privilege
brought in money, while the millers took care of themselves and
weren't lazy about shoveling flour sacks. Some millers, however, had
wide sleeves, as legend has it, and shoveled with both their hands
and sleeves. Whether this story, so often told in Limburg, is true,
we'll let "God and the miller part ways."
The
village of Neer is very old. Its name may derive from its location.
We would like to remind you here, however, that the winding, deep
river has many whirlpools (called "neer" in Limburgish),
and the river also bears that name. In 870, it formed the border
between the upper and lower Maasgouw regions.
The
Salic Laws mention a place called Nara or Nare, which Wendelinus
calls present-day Neer. The renowned minter Stiels, pastor of Neer,
(1) also recounts in his work that gold and silver coins from the
Merovingian period were found in Neer, including some minted in
Wijk-bij-Duurstede, Wijk bij Maastricht, and Utrecht. This is a
peculiarity that confirms the aforementioned conjecture. Mr. Stiels
further wrote about the village, recording the following details,
which we reproduce here:
Although
the lords of Horne, who became Counts of the Empire in 1450, had
their special residence at the castle near Weert, and Horne Castle,
on the Maas, was considered the supreme head of this region, Neer
has always excelled above other places. This is true for its
antiquity, the number of its inhabitants, its privileges and
advantages, and the excellence of its church (dedicated to Saint
Martin), in which, as an immemorial, not only a pastor was
appointed, but also a parish with four or five benefices. Since it
is impossible to discover the foundations of these benefices, and it
is certain that in 1203 the pastor was already mentioned, persona in
Neer, as can be seen in Miraeus, and in several others, where it is
said that Imaina, Countess of Loon and Abbess of Munsterbilsen,
widow of Duke Godfried III of Brabant, ordered the
From
the personate of Neer to the Lord Prelate of Averbode Abbey, etc.,
one can conclude that this parish must have already been established
in the year 1000 or 1100, and that this community must have been
very populous at that time; moreover, Neer was at that time a city
with walls and gates, enjoying all the privileges customarily
enjoyed by citizens. Although the author makes no mention of this,
and over time, due to wars and other unfortunate circumstances, not
a single remnant of this city remains, there are nevertheless enough
examples to make this quite plausible. For all those familiar with
the situation of the place, the following examples will also be
noted:
Neer
was first a personate, and that long before 1200; Five beneficiaries
were established in our church, with such good revenues that their
beneficiaries, residing in Neer, frequented the choir on Sundays and
high holidays, as in chapter churches, singing vespers, matins, etc.
Moreover,
in Neer there are three excellent brotherhoods or militias, whose
antiquity and origins are impossible to determine; indeed, it is
certain that these were enriched by the princes of Horn and also by
subsequent counts with excellent privileges, with various lands and
income, to come and recreate themselves honestly on certain
appointed days, est in festo sancti Sebastiani and others, and also
to take up arms for their counts in times of war and to protect
their fellow citizens from violence and plunder in times of
unforeseen unrest. There were other brotherhoods in the past, such
as that of St. Anthony and Our Lady, whose income, after the
cessation of this congregation, for unknown reasons, went to the
poor table of this community.
The
blacksmiths, weavers, and shoemakers also have their brotherhoods
and patrons, on whose feast days they gather and a high mass is sung
for them.
Thirdly,
residents whose houses are located within the canals or city moats
have a special privilege: on the day of their funeral, as is done in
cities, the body, complete with cross and priest, must be collected
from the deceased's house. But what most clearly indicates that Neer
was a city before this are the remaining city ditches, which, having
not yet been demolished at the beginning of this century, were
gradually converted into farmland, but with such a privilege that
the tithe on these ditches always belongs to the pastor, as a noval
decimator, a right he has always enjoyed without any contest. These
ditches (canals) begin at Bergerstraat, running along Zuiderhak,
from there behind the Groote onto the Baent, and from the Baent to
the house of alderman Peter Windelmolen, and thus through Pasveld to
the Keizer, being in some places only 16 feet wide, but in others
much wider. The names of the gates, such as Bergepoort, Veerpoort,
etc., can still be found in old documents.
Over
time, Neer has lost much; Whether this occurred due to the rise of
other villages, such as Roggel, Heijthuijzen, etc., which were still
unknown, or due to the ravages of war or fire, which destroyed our
village several times, is uncertain. After all, this land, bordering
the city of Roermond, also suffered greatly during the period of the
iconoclasm, though never more so than during the life of the
pastor-dean Leo van der Meer, between 1630 and 1650. After the
plundering of the city of Thienen in 1635, Dutch and other troops
were crushed here in the county, burning and destroying everything.
This was followed by the plague, which not only decimated an
infinite number of soldiers but also the country's inhabitants,
leaving houses empty and lands uncultivated. But never has a more
tragic misfortune befallen our municipality than in 1645, when the
Hessian troops, after occupying the village for many days, finally
set fire to all four corners of the village on August 11th, probably
because they could not raise the demanded ransom. This resulted in
not only the entire village, with a few exceptions, but also the
parish house, with all its paperwork and records, both of church and
poorhouse, of pastoral reasons and municipal affairs, being reduced
to ashes. Pastor Leo van der Meer was then taken prisoner by the
Hessians and held in custody for eight weeks in Nuijs.
So
much for Pastor Stiels. His evidence of Neer's elevation to the
status of city is quite remarkable. It certainly proves that Neer
was a significant village at an early stage. In our opinion, it was
surrounded by ditches to protect it from enemy attacks, as this
provided easy access to water, and a redoubt was also built, the
remains of which still exist.
Nothing
is known about its actual elevation to city status. It is also
possible that Neer was put in a state of resistance during the
Guelderian War in the early 1500s. In 1504, when Echt was completely
destroyed, Jacob III van Horne and his troops were stationed in
Neer. Those from Roermond attacked him there, captured him along
with "other people of the Prince's people, who were holding the
night watch at the time," and "with greater joy" took
him captive to Ruremonde.
The
civic guards still exist and possess fine silver, which is kept at
the "port" or guildhall. One civic guard still possesses
beautiful stone drinking jugs. The village of Neer is prosperous,
although the circumstances of the times have not improved it.
However, if one wishes to return to the past and see a striking
image of the insignificance of the noblest and most dignified things
of this world, one should walk towards the heath and behold the
monotonous, tasteless, yet large and solid buildings that remain of
the widely renowned and centuries-old Keizersbosch Abbey.
700
years ago, a possession of Averbode Abbey near Sichem, a monastery
for women was founded here, following the generous donations of
Count Engelbert van Horne in 1200.
In
1226, a church was founded here, in 1232 there was a provost, and in
1350, a descendant of the powerful Horne family was prioress.
In
the church building, renovated in 1472, the high Hornes were buried,
and for over five centuries, Keizersbosch was the meeting place of
the pious and powerful. In 1786, the monastery was built; the
foundations of the old farmhouses were still found. Some of these
buildings still exist.
During
the French Republic, the nuns of this convent fled to the Meijerij
and settled in Deurne, in the abandoned house of the minister. They
also moved some of their furniture and archives there. An abbey
cartulary, rediscovered there in 1885, was purchased by the
archivist in Limburg for his repository. An old hymnal, containing
the regulations to be followed when recording a religious service
and during the choir service, was found by me in Neer and also
donated to the National Archives in Maastricht. Keizersbosch, with
all its possessions, was sold by the French Republicans on July 16,
1793 (poster 57), along with all its dependencies and dependencies,
and purchased by Arnold Jan Baptista De Raedt of Roermond for the
sum of 145,000 livres, largely payable in assignats, which were
almost worthless.
De
Raedt soon had the church demolished, as well as part of the
buildings renovated 82 years earlier.
The
De Raedt family sold this estate on August 8, 1876, comprising 7
hectares and 84 ares, including stables, barns, sheds, arable land,
and pastureland, to the current owner, Alexander Steegh, married to
Margaretha Antoinetta van Hegelsom.
As
mentioned above, the church contained the graves of most of the
Counts of Horn. A few years ago, when excavating the grounds behind
the building, the burial places were rediscovered. But the bones of
the high rulers could not be distinguished from the lowly nun. The
house now consists of about ten rooms with a hall, kitchens,
cellars, and stables, the exterior of which bears little resemblance
to its former grandeur.
Besides
the house Ghoor, Neer also includes the fortified farms of
Aldenghoor, Kuikhoven, Brumholt, Gerheggen, Waay, Wijngaarden, and
the hamlet of Hanssum, situated on the Maas River, where the ferry
house is located.
A
few hundred years ago, considerable controversy arose over this
ferry. In 1700, the Bishop of Liège ordered a toll to be
levied there, which displeased the States-General and, armed with
weapons, prevented the levy.
In
1718, the game began again, this time with the Liège tax
collector being arrested and thrown into prison in Roermond. The
Bishop was not discouraged, and the skippers paid their dues until
1731, when the King of Prussia requested the Emperor to abolish it.
It
is worth noting that the northern border of the municipality of Neer
is formed by the Zuidwillemsvaart drainage canal to the Maas. The
canal's drop into the Maas is considerable. This may well explain
why the connection between the Maas and the Scheldt was not
established here.
Before
concluding this sketch of Neer, we must point out the peculiar
dialect, quite different from that of the surrounding region. There,
one hears letter variations, which almost turn "kerk" into
"krek," from "verkes" into something like
"vrèkes." For a hundred years, people spoke this
way, for they faithfully adhered to old customs and traditions, and
fortunately, Neer is still characterized by old-fashioned good
faith, which radiates from everything.
(1)
Publ. etc. du Limb., Part XIX, p. 465.
History
To
formulate archaeological expectations, the relationship between the
location of archaeological sites and the landscape, or even specific
landscape elements, is frequently used. This relationship (location
selection factors) varies by archaeological period and complex type.
Because location selection is strongly linked to the landscape, the
Netherlands is divided into so-called archaeoregions in the National
Research Agenda for Archaeology. The plan area is included in the
Brabant sandy area. However, it lies on the outermost edge of this
region, on the border with the Limburg sandy soils. Knowledge of the
occupation history of both the Brabant sandy area and the Limburg
sandy area is therefore essential for developing a sound expectation
model and determining the location selection factors for each
period.
The
landscape of the Maas terraces consists of remnants of Pleistocene
and Holocene riverbeds that have been incised into the Pleistocene
river terraces. Some of the ancient riverbeds were drained by
streams originating in the western cover sand landscapes, causing
them to function as stream valleys (for example, the Neerbeek).
This
interplay of different landscape forms within close proximity of
each other created an attractive area for hunter-gatherers during
the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods. The boundary zones between
high and low, wet and dry, offered the greatest opportunities for a
varied and reliable food supply. During the 200,000 years preceding
the Neolithic, habitation opportunities were determined by climatic
conditions. These were more limited during colder periods than
during warmer ones. After the last ice age, approximately 11,000
years ago, a warm period began, leading to an increasingly rich and
varied food supply. Areas like the Maas terraces, due to their
diversity, offered sufficient opportunities for permanent
habitation. Mesolithic sites are primarily found on ridges and
terrace edges with well-draining cover sand subsoils near a water
source (fen, river, or cut-off meander). The slightly higher areas
around streams, fens, and ponds were therefore likely the most
favorable landscape locations for settlement. When choosing
locations near open water, there appears to have been a preference
for the (south)eastern flank of cover sand ridges, likely due to the
prevailing (north)westerly winds. Settlements likely also existed in
and near river and stream valleys that were later eroded or covered
with sediments.
The
Neolithic began around 5300 BC with the introduction of agriculture
on the upstream loess soils. Agriculture on the light clay soils of
the Maas terraces began approximately 1000 years later. The
consequences for the landscape were drastic, primarily due to the
clearing of forests to create fields, but also due to other
activities aimed at shaping the landscape to better suit the new
sedentary way of life. Agriculture also led to population growth,
amplifying the effects of the transition from hunting and gathering
to agriculture. The new sedentary way of life placed different
demands on settlements, which were more often located on or near
higher elevations, particularly where the soil was more fertile.
However, fertilizing agricultural land was not yet known, so yields
were low, and fields had to be regularly moved to maintain
fertility. Depending on the natural soil fertility, this could
happen after just a few years. Most farms likely had a lifespan of
several decades due to the perishability of the building materials.
This system of habitation is described as the wandering farmstead
system. This process of transformation from a natural to a
cultivated landscape continued during the Bronze Age and the Iron
Age. The settlement will have been permanent, but still not fixed in
place.
In
the Roman period, the Maas Valley was incorporated into a larger
whole for the first time. A road was built on both banks of the
river, connecting the towns and larger settlements in the Maas
Valley with each other, with the military forts on the Limes, and
with other parts of the Roman Empire. The military occupation of the
Rhine and Maas delta at the beginning of the Common Era quickly led
to a process of Romanization among the local population, with the
adoption of a wide range of new products and techniques. One of the
most important changes was the integration into a monetary economy.
The ability to produce for a distant market led to a further
expansion of the agricultural land, but also to the production of
raw materials and consumer goods on a scale that exceeded local
needs.
The
opposite of this production for sale elsewhere was the supply of
goods for personal use. This process was most visible in the new
construction methods, which utilized Roman building techniques and
materials. In the loess regions, but also along the Maas,
villas—farms—were built with at least a coarse ceramic
roof. But they often also featured other, luxurious amenities, such
as underfloor heating and baths. Stone roofs were also found on
ordinary farmsteads in settlements (Helden Schrames).
Based
on the 1991 picture of the settlement system in the Southern
Netherlands, Slofstra draws a sharp contrast between the settlement
and agricultural systems of the Late Iron Age and the Roman period.
In the former period, Celtic fields and "wandering farms"
are present. According to Slofstra, these changes are related to
agricultural intensification, partly caused by Roman taxation. The
"kinship" mode of production transformed into a
"tributary" one. The settlement hierarchy has small rural
settlements at its base and further includes enclosed rural
settlements, rural centers or vici, and the proto-urban centers that
developed into true towns over the course of the Roman period.
Within the group of enclosed rural settlements, indications of elite
residences can already be found in the pre-Flavian period, which in
some cases developed into true villas but elsewhere often did not
extend "beyond" what Slofstra calls proto-villas. The
settlement system, as it were, reflects the hierarchical patronage
system. This system already existed in late prehistory and was given
additional levels in the Roman period, namely those of the
(Gallo)Roman elite and the imperial family. The residents of the
elite residences in the Southern Netherlands constituted the
intermediaries with the highest levels, as they also functioned as
decuriones of the civitates. The dependent population lived in the
houses and small settlements surrounding the residences of elites.
The
decline of the Roman Empire, a process that began as early as the
3rd century and continued into the 5th century, led to a decline
that, among other things, resulted in a shrinking population and,
consequently, agricultural land. This process appears to have been
less drastic in the Maas Valley than elsewhere. The survival of
place names from the Roman period (Heel, Blerick, Melick, and
possibly Kessel) indicates a continuity of habitation. However, the
population composition did change. Franks, sometimes as mercenaries
defending the border, settled within the Empire, including in the
abandoned villa complexes. The erosion of Roman authority led to the
rise of local rulers, often from the Frankish elite, whose power was
based on land ownership. This political autonomy coincided with
economic autarky, in which trade virtually ground to a halt and
production was limited to domestic consumption. Under the
Merovingians (6th–7th centuries), a recovery began, not only
of central authority, but also, and especially, of the economy.
Agricultural land expanded again, and new settlements were founded.
However, the Maas Valley remained on the periphery of the new
kingdom, centered around Reims. The power base of the Carolingians
(7th to 10th centuries), who took over from the Merovingians, lay
further north, between Verdun and Herstal, thus placing the Maas
Valley more centrally. The Carolingian Empire disintegrated into
numerous smaller units in the 9th and 10th centuries. Local and
regional rulers gained a high degree of independence.
In
the Early Middle Ages, power was based on land ownership. This land
ownership was exploited through the dominiale, or manorial system,
in which unfree people—serfs—worked the land. This
system was based on payment in kind. In part, these domains may be
related to older settlements, while in part they arose as new
reclamations. A shift occurred toward growing more grain, resulting
in the development of the three-field system. This system alternated
two years of growing spring and winter wheat with a fallow year. Due
to the lack of fertilizers to maintain soil fertility, this was the
only way to prevent soil depletion. However, it did require
additional land. The increasing emphasis on grain cultivation likely
led to the development of the open fields surrounding many of the
villages on the banks of the Maas. The three-field system also
functions best in large, connected complexes. These fields were
partly created by the confluence of smaller individual farms,
probably as early as the 9th or 10th century. However, it cannot be
ruled out that on the loamy soils
The
Maas terraces, whose soil structure and natural fertility make them
ideal for arable farming, have maintained a continuity since the
Roman period, when these lands were already intensively used.
Inhabitation
during the Roman period took place in indigenous settlements, which
were Romanized to varying degrees, and in settlements that derived
their origins from specific political and/or economic functions. In
addition, there were individual villas, such as those at Maasbracht
or Neer. In the Early Middle Ages, after an initial decline,
habitation shifted to settlements along the streams, often in the
form of villages, and, particularly in the cover sand landscape, to
individual or collective reclamations. In these latter areas, farms
likely remained for a considerable time, moving over time, while
these were already fixed in place in the villages. The extent to
which habitation still existed within the open fields (such as
between Neer and Buggenum) during this period is unknown. Farmsteads
situated amidst their fields were still common in the early Middle
Ages, but gradually, habitation concentrated in settlement centers,
although isolated farmsteads still exist today, as evidenced by the
Wijnardenhof, for example. This farmstead consists partly of
buildings already present before 1800 and partly of buildings built
after 1800, replacing the De Beukel farmstead, which lay slightly
further north in the Zwaarveld and was reportedly destroyed by
flooding around 1800. Many of these isolated farmsteads are first
mentioned in the late Middle Ages and were often owned by the
nobility or monastic orders. Their current form dates from the 17th
century and later. However, assuming that these fertile lands were
very attractive for agriculture, it can be assumed that the
concentration of habitation outside the arable areas began fairly
early in the Middle Ages. The decline of the Roman Empire, the
abandonment of villas, and the shrinking population will have
resulted only in the partial abandonment of these lands. Other, less
suitable lands for agriculture were more likely to have been
abandoned to nature. This also seems to be confirmed by the
reclamation of new arable lands in the Late Middle Ages and Modern
Period, which primarily took place in the cover sand areas west of
the terraced landscape along the Maas. The habitation pattern
outlined above underlies the current landscape structure, in which a
virtually undeveloped landscape remains between Buggenum and Neer.
The oldest mentions of settlements date from the 13th and 14th
centuries, but the settlements themselves appear to be older.
Buggenum, for example, is first mentioned in 1230, but the church
must date back to the early 11th century. Moreover, Buggenum (1230:
Bugnem) is a local name, which often dates from the Early Middle
Ages.
Arable
farming would have been dominant on the terraces, while grasslands
would have existed in the lower stream valleys and the active Maas
river belt. Presumably, all land suitable for arable farming on the
Maas terraces was put into use quite early on. Later expansion of
arable land occurred primarily on the cover sands west of the Maas
valley. Therefore, the landscape structure on the Maas terraces has
been largely established since the Late Middle Ages. This can be
seen in the cadastral map from 1811-32. All parcels within Sub-area
West were then used as arable land. In Sub-area South, the higher
northern section was also used as such, while the lower sections
were used as pasture and hay meadows.
The
easternmost section is formed by a cut-off channel of the Maas. The
silting up of this arm can be clearly followed on the topographic
maps of 1894 and 1938. These maps also show that during the century
they cover, the land use remained unchanged: arable land remained
arable (white) and grassland remained grassland (green). Major
interventions only occurred in the last quarter of the 20th century,
when the Maas River was straightened in 1967 and the area between
Neer and Buggenum was re-parcelled in the 1970s. During those years,
part of the arable land was also converted into grassland. Finally,
in 1996, a dike and overflow channel were constructed to protect
Neer during high water.
Expectation
Model
Based
on the information acquired in the above steps regarding the current
situation, the geoscientific and historical circumstances, and known
archaeological values, a detailed forecast can be formulated. To
arrive at a correct choice of the research method for the inventory
field study, the following characteristics have been indicated as
far as possible:
Dating; at least in
main periods (such as Paleolithicum, Mesolithic, etc.);
Complex type (such
as settlement, burial ground, field layer, etc.);
Size;
Depth (also
visible/invisible);
Location (with an
indication of the sub-area, if applicable);
External
characteristics (artifacts and type indicators);
For
all periods, in addition to the formative processes by the Maas that
have given the landscape its current shape, the extent to which
erosion resulting from the washing away of soil from fields can also
be a determining factor in the loss of (parts of) the soil archive.
The extent to which such erosion has occurred within the plan area
is unclear. Only after the borehole survey has been conducted will
this become clearer, and can this question potentially be answered.
Therefore, the impact of erosion resulting from runoff from fields
is not taken into account in the forecast model below. Specifically
for the low-lying part of the Southern Sub-area, habitation has
likely never occurred. Other activities will also have been limited
in this part of the plan area. However, there is a good chance of
finding special datasets from all periods, such as ritual deposits,
waste dumps, or fishing- or shipping-related artifacts. Therefore,
the expectation for this area is low in terms of habitation, but
high for special datasets. However, these often concern point
locations, which are difficult to detect using current inventory and
mapping research methods.
Late
Paleolithic-Mesolithic: Given the geomorphology of the plan area,
there is a possibility that archaeological features from the early
Prehistory (particularly the Mesolithic) may be present in the plan
area. These features could consist of small settlement sites,
so-called extraction camps of small size (approximately 5 to 10 m²),
and base camps of larger size. Sites from this period are
characterized by a scattering of flint. It is also possible that
soil traces (hearths) may be found. The value of flint sites
(artifacts) is largely determined by their intactness. To obtain as
much information as possible from a flint site, it is therefore
important that the internal structure of the site (the vertical and
horizontal distribution) has been disturbed as little as possible.
The value of a flint site is therefore largely determined by the
degree of intactness of the soil profile. Even minor tillage can
have led to disturbance of the site. It is therefore important to
determine the degree of disturbance to the soil profile. If sites
occur on or near the surface and the area is used as arable land,
they are likely to be significantly disturbed.
Paleolithic
sites are particularly likely to be found on the terraces from the
Allerød and Late Dryas (see Figure 2). The current Maas
floodplain was formed in the final phase of the Paleolithic and
later, so there is a high probability that any remains have been
washed away. Given the age of the terraces, only remains from the
Late Paleolithic are expected within the plan area. Mesolithic sites
may occur throughout the plan area, with the caveat that, again,
there is little chance that no erosion has occurred within the
current Holocene floodplain. However, the chance that any sites will
remain undisturbed is slim, as primarily erosive processes have
taken place within the plan area. No cover sand has been deposited
(the terraces are too young for that), nor has river sedimentation
occurred. Therefore, any sites have always been directly on the
surface, making them highly vulnerable to disturbance. Because the
plan area lies in a zone highly suitable for agriculture, and will
therefore have been used as such more or less continuously for a
long time, the likelihood of intact sites within the plan area is
very slim. Given the landscape of the plan area, on the edges of the
terraces and near the river, the probability of encountering sites
from the Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic is estimated to be medium
to high. However, the probability of encountering intact sites is
estimated to be low.
Table
6 categorizes the artifacts found by material category and time
period. The approximate dating of the Archaeological Basic Register
(ABR) is followed for the latter. These dating ranges are sometimes
very broad, as they are based on the fact that certain materials do
not have a period-specific shape or application and therefore may
have been used over a longer period. A good example of this is burnt
clay, also known – incorrectly – as huts.
Loam.
Loam has been used as a building material from the Neolithic period
into the sub-recent past. Chunks of burnt loam can therefore date
from this entire time span. The context in which it is found is
therefore the only way to date it. The same applies to flint, in
broad terms, except that it was used as a tool, resulting in a large
number of period-specific shapes, but also a great deal of waste,
the result of tool production, which is difficult to date.
Furthermore, flint has been used into the sub-recent period (for
example, as a fire striker), which also generated waste through use.
The dating in the ABR is therefore Paleolithic (PALEO) to present
(NTC), although the majority of use will be in the Paleolithic to
Neolithic period. The dating of the recovered material must be
considered with this in mind.
The
artifacts found generally fall into three periods and/or three
material categories, some of which coincide. The material outside
these clusters often consists of objects so unspecific that further
identification is impossible. The majority likely dates from the
Modern Period. Iron, with 54 objects, constitutes by far the largest
group within this category. Many of the pieces consist of amorphous
rust lumps, some of which can certainly be classified as shrapnel.
Forged nails, which have been used since the Roman period, are also
found. The other materials outside the three main clusters are
always represented by one or two fragments and include bone, bronze
(heavily worn coin), copper, mud brick, and charcoal. The three
clusters mentioned above include flint, which dates primarily from
the Prehistoric Period, pottery and coarse ceramics from the Roman
Period, and glass, pottery, and coarse ceramics from the Late Middle
Ages and/or Modern Period.
Flint
A
total of 455 flint fragments and 6 fragments of other stone types
fall within this cluster. In addition, two fragments of hand-formed
pottery were found, but unfortunately, these cannot be further
identified. The flint was identified by Huub Schmitz of the
Roerstreek Local History Association.
The
vast majority of the flint – 335 fragments, see Table 7 –
consists of debris and chunks that are difficult to identify. This
material can therefore only be dated very broadly as Paleolithic to
recent. The remaining material – 119 pieces – consists
of (parts of) tools and materials created during tool making or
working. This material, too, with the exception of a few objects,
cannot be dated more precisely than Paleolithic to Iron Age. Only
five objects can be dated as Mesolithic to Late Neolithic
(transverse pointed), Middle Neolithic (pointed blade fragment), or
Late Neolithic to Bronze Age (retouched axe flake from Lousberg
flint; ground axe flakes from Valkenburg, Belgian Grey, and Rijkholt
flint). The type of flint used for 162 objects could be determined.
Certain types of flint were used primarily or exclusively in
specific periods of prehistory, making it possible to establish a
more precise dating. Table 8 lists the objects for which the flint
type could be determined, as well as the approximate dating of their
use. Flint from Rijckholt and Maasschotter constitutes more than
two-thirds of the material. These types were used from the
Paleolithic to the Neolithic. It should be noted, however, that the
flint from Rijckholt was used extensively primarily in the
Neolithic. Of the remaining flint types, the majority were used
between the (Late) Paleolithic and Neolithic (32 fragments:
Vetschau, Obourg, and Belgian Grey), and only a small portion
exclusively in the Mesolithic and/or Neolithic (15 fragments:
Wommersom Quartzite, Lousberg, Simpelveld, and Valkenburg).
Therefore, it is virtually impossible to differentiate temporally
based on the type of flint.
With
the exception of five fragments, the flint was found almost
exclusively in the West Sub-area. No clear concentrations are
visible within the plan area (see Figure 12). When examiningoften
resemble each other. In general, Roman wares are somewhat more
compact than those from later periods, but regional differences can
be very small, especially when the same clay sources were apparently
used. The material from Neer, which is well dated, could not be
definitively identified as Roman, but it does strongly resemble the
material that could be definitively identified as Roman.
More
than half of the Roman coarse ceramics could be attributed to a
specific type. Roofing material predominates, with 159 fragments of
tegulae and 117 fragments of imbrices. Furthermore, four fragments
of tubules were found, rectangular or square hollow tubes used in
heating systems. What is missing are laters, flat, square or
rectangular stones used as masonry or, in the case of the large
sizes, as floor slabs. These floor slabs are part of a hypocaust
heating system, in which the heat source was located outside the
actual space and hot air circulated under the floor and through the
walls – tubules. Heated spaces occur in both living and
bathing areas and, given the presence of these types of coarse
ceramics on Roman sites, must have been quite common.
With
the exception of one fragment, the material was found exclusively in
Sub-area West (Figure 15). The distribution across the sub-area is
not even, but is concentrated in the northern and southeastern parts
of this area. Within this distribution, two clear concentrations can
be identified, both in the southeastern corner. Both sites are
already known in ARCHIS: 17526 and 51303. In the northern part,
slightly more material appears to have been found in the
northwestern corner. This aligns with the known site at the corner
of Hagendoorn and Eiland (AMK site 11196, ARCHIS numbers 15248 and
15360). However, in this northern part, a concentration can also be
seen in the central section of the site. Its location generally
corresponds to the concentration of ceramics in this part of the
plan area. A similar clustering of ceramics and coarse ceramics is
also observed at the two locations in the southeastern corner of
Sub-area West, but is absent from the concentration in the
northwestern corner. This could therefore be a new site.
Figure
16 compares the distribution of Roman ceramics and coarse ceramics
found within the plan area with the known sites within the broader
study area. It should be noted that the vast majority of
observations within this study area are observations, usually field
surveys and/or detector finds. Only the small excavation on Arixweg,
the supervision of the construction of the Maas quays and overflow
channel,18 and an observation during excavation work on the
monument, all relate to excavation work, to a greater or lesser
extent. The field survey finds were found in fields, but only the
center coordinates of these fields are recorded in ARCHIS,
preventing a more precise placement. Dredged finds from the Maas
River form a separate category. While they can be roughly placed,
they do provide a cross-section of the landscape and, moreover,
represent the lowest-lying area. Regardless, it is clear that the
area along the Maas between Buggenum and Neer was densely populated
during the Roman period.
Early
Middle Ages: A medium probability of finding the finds applies to
Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, based on the geomorphology
and soil composition of the plan area and the historical data.
Potential sites may consist of settlement traces and ditches.
Settlements are characterized by a distribution of pottery remains
and the presence of soil traces (postholes, waste pits, ditches,
wells, and foundations). Ditches can indicate land division patterns
(farm boundaries and parcel separations), water management (drainage
ditches), or reclamation and soil improvement activities. The size
of medieval sites varies greatly and depends on the nature of the
site. Therefore, no conclusions can be drawn regarding this matter.
Sites from this period will also likely be located in and/or just
below the current tillage, with the deeper traces, in particular,
remaining intact.
The
expectation for finding sites from the Early Middle Ages is
estimated to be medium. The expectation that these sites will still
be intact is estimated to be high.
Late
Middle Ages and Modern Period: Based on historical data, the
expectation for finding archaeological sites in the plan area is low
to medium. During this period, habitation was already largely
concentrated in the settlement cores on the edges of the field, the
contiguous arable land between Neer and Buggenum. Only in the full
mi
the
distribution of the flint artifacts (Table 7, excluding flakes,
fragments, cores, and debris), a somewhat stronger concentration of
finds appears in the northern part of the West Sub-area. However, no
clear locations emerge that could be interpreted as zones of
habitation and/or activity. How this material should be interpreted,
however, remains to be seen. The obvious approach is based on the
degradation of sites due to later activities, in which agriculture
played a particularly important role. Incidentally, not a
This
is not only due to tillage itself, but also due to the movement of
material through soil erosion resulting from denudation. The fact
that no clear indications of erosion were observed in the core logs
argues against this. Nor is there a concentration of material
visible in the lower-lying eastern part of Sub-area West, where
washed-out material, along with the soil, should have concentrated
if erosive processes had moved material. Another explanation could
be that only a very small portion of the material present within
Sub-area West was collected. Only what was visible was included.
However, the area was only walked on once; if this had happened more
often, undoubtedly more material would have been collected,
especially if the area had been reworked (and rained out) between
the various collection sessions. A larger amount of material might
have revealed concentrations, but this is by no means certain.
Finally, we may have to accept that the recovered material reflects
several thousand years of primarily short-term activities at a
location that was apparently attractive enough to attract regular
visitors.
Late
Prehistory and Roman Period: a high probability of detection based
on the soil and geomorphology of the plan area. The area will have
been among the most attractive for habitation in the Late Prehistory
and Roman periods. Therefore, traces of habitation and activity can
be found throughout the entire plan area, with the exception of the
low-lying part of the Southern Sub-area. These will include
settlements of various types, including stone buildings, graves and
burial fields, traces of craft activities, and traces related to
land development and communication in the Middle and Late Roman
period. Here too, these activities will have taken place on and in
the current ground level and will therefore have been disturbed by
later activities. However, a significant portion of these traces
will lie deeper or extend beyond the building layer and will
therefore still be present. These include graves, (post)holes,
foundations, wells, ditches, etc. In addition, it is expected that
some of the material culture will still be present, albeit partially
scattered within the building layer. For the terraces (Western
Sub-area and the higher part of Southern Sub-area), the expectation
of finding sites from the late Prehistory and Roman periods is
therefore high. The expectation that these sites will still be
intact is also estimated to be high.
Roman
Ceramics and Coarse Ceramics
Roman
Ceramics (Lieke van Diepen)
During
the field survey in Neer, 55 sherds of Roman pottery were recovered.
The best represented are the jugs/amphorae and the rough-walled
pottery, with 13 and 16 fragments respectively. This is not
surprising, as these categories often occupy the largest position
within the Roman pottery spectrum. Table 9 provides an overview of
the pottery categories found.
The
appearance of the sherds clearly showed that they were material that
had been on the surface. The fragments are relatively small,
weathered, strongly rounded, and some specimens show stains. The
covering layer of the terra sigillata and the painted ware is
usually completely absent. That this concerns The average weight per
sherd, which is only 8.9 grams, is also evident in the surface
finds.
The
find material is predominantly second-century, with the period
120-200 AD being particularly well represented. Only the cooking pot
Niederbieber 89 is a third-century find. Pure first-century material
is absent. It is noteworthy that the terra sigillata consists
exclusively of East Gaulish material. Among the smooth-walled
material and the jars/amphoras are likely some Heerlen products.
Coarse
ceramics is the correct term for building materials made of clay.
This term distinguishes it from fine ceramics – earthenware –
which is not only made from the same raw material but also using the
same process.
A
total of 689 fragments of coarse ceramics were collected within the
plan area. Of these, 131 fragments can be attributed to the Late
Middle Ages or Modern Period, and 59 fragments cannot be further
identified as Roman to Modern Period. The majority therefore dates
from the Roman period.
Of
the material that has been broadly dated (ROMM-NTB), a significant
portion is likely Roman as well. These are fragments without
diagnostic surfaces, but whose firing (particularly the matrix
structure) indicates non-machine production and must therefore have
been made before the mid-19th century. The shaping and firing of
coarse ceramics remained essentially unchanged until the advent of
industrial production, making Roman, medieval, and early modern
products comparable in firing style.
In
the early Middle Ages, there may have been more habitation within
the plan area. In the Modern Era, habitation was limited to a few
isolated farmsteads, one of which is located just northeast of the
Southern Sub-area.
The
size of medieval sites varies greatly and depends on the nature of
the site. Therefore, no conclusions can be drawn regarding this.
Sites from this period will also be located in and/or just below the
current building layer, with the deeper traces, in particular, still
intact.
The
expectation for finding sites from the Late Middle Ages and Modern
Era is estimated to be medium. The expectation that these sites will
still be intact is estimated to be high.
Glass,
Ceramics, and Coarse Ceramics from the Late Middle Ages and Modern
Era.
The
third find category consists of pottery, glass, and coarse ceramics
from the Late Middle Ages and Modern Era. The largest find category
is pottery, of which a total of 755 fragments were collected. Of
these, 609 fragments have been identified. The coarse ceramics are
represented by 131 fragments, and the glass by 45 fragments.
The
vast majority of the recovered ceramics date from the Late Middle
Ages and/or the Modern Period. A third consists of material,
primarily red-fired pottery, dating from the Late Middle Ages to the
sub-recent past, while almost half consists of material dating
exclusively to the Modern Period. This trend is even more pronounced
in the glass and coarse ceramics, with only one fragment of coarse
ceramics that is exclusively medieval and a number of fragments that
could be medieval or Modern. These material categories almost
certainly came onto the land during manuring. As waste from the
house, stable, and/or yard, they were deposited on the manure heap
along with the manure and then spread across the fields. This also
explains the distribution of the material within the plan area. It
is regular, but becomes thinner as the distance from Neer increases.
This can be explained by the fact that the fields closest to the
village were fertilized most intensively. The thinnest distribution
is visible in the field in the Southern Sub-area. A possible
explanation for this is that this plot was likely used alternately
as arable land and pasture.
Only
two pieces date from the Early Middle Ages or the beginning of the
Late Middle Ages, and twenty pieces from the High Middle Ages.
Material from this period could be related to habitation at the
site, but the small quantity found makes this unlikely.
https://archisarchief.cultureelerfgoed.nl/Archis2/Archeorapporten/37/AR32653/GAR%201044%20Neer%20-%20Hanssum%20%20%2040815.pdf
September
9, 1899: The St. Lambert Chapel in Reuver. Towards the end of the
7th century, the Maastricht bishop Lambert, whom history has honored
with the title of apostle of Peel and Kempenland, disembarked
opposite, and probably under the protection of, the former Roman,
then Frankish Castellum (Kessel), in order to convert the
inhabitants of our sandy region, the last remaining pagans of our
region, to Christianity.
On
the right bank of the Maas stood a small hill, and there, built of
river pebbles, stood a small building dating from the period of
Roman rule. When his word had borne some fruit, the Holy Evangelist
consecrated this building as a house of worship for the benefit of
his new converts.
Over
time, as the number of believers continued to grow, it was enlarged
and gradually transformed into a small church, later dedicated to
Saint Lambert himself. Until the 14th century, the village of Beesel
was elevated to a parish, and St. Lambert's Chapel continued to
exist as an auxiliary church for the hamlets of Leeuwen and
Offenbeek, which now belong to Reuver.
Habets
mentions Bezel and the Chapel of St. Lamberti in the year 1400.
On
April 2, 1661, the goods, gradually donated to the venerable shrine,
were transferred to the Beesel church for the maintenance of the
chaplain, who also served St. Lambert's Chapel.
Habets
mentions in the year 1669: Below Bezel, opposite Kessel, lies the
chapel of St. Lambert, which provides pastoral care. Petrus Jacobs
is the rector. On July 16, 1689, Charles II, King of Spain and Duke
of Gelderland, granted the then chaplain-rector Joês Beurskens
"a patent for a free year and a horse-mark" for the
maintenance of the chapel "afflicted and ruined by old age and
war troubles," which "according to common tradition, was
most likely built at a time when these lands were still in their
natural state, and after the conversion in them, the first Christian
and Catholic worship began."
On
May 19, 1787, the St. Lambertus Church was built.
in
possession of its own independent pastor.
When in 1830 the
chapel, which had already withstood so many days and storms, proved
dilapidated, a new temple building soon arose on the site where a
considerable basin had formed between the aforementioned hamlets.
On
St. Lambert's Hill, a smaller chapel was built in 1845—Reuver
had become an independent parish in 1834—from the cobblestones
of the ancient chapel, which kept the memory of the glorious past
alive for posterity.
Since the jubilee of the great Lambert's
martyrdom was celebrated in 1896, the influx to that holy place
became so great that it was decided to connect a more spacious place
of worship to it, while preserving the existing building.
This
new chapel, now built according to a design by Mr. J. Gielen in
Kessel, will be consecrated on Sunday, the 17th of this month, with
the permission of His Eminence the Bishop of Roermond.
During
the excavation, the foundations of the ancient chapel were exposed.
Like the building itself, the masonry of the foundations consisted
of heavy stones, cemented together with flour and lime mortar into a
virtually indivisible whole.
We also found a large quantity
of fragments of Roman roof tiles, tegulae, and imbrices, as well as,
in several places, bones, almost completely decayed, yet still
clearly recognizable as belonging to bodies buried there a very long
time ago. This confirms the ancient tradition recorded in the
charters that in ancient times a Roman building stood there, and
that "the Chapel of St. Lambert—as one of us modestly
testifies—was a parish church."
Near the Lambert Hill,
now planted with birch bushes, lies the Roman army camp mentioned in
the 1864 Publications.
Although the burial mounds, or tumuli,
located there had previously been searched by archaeologists, and a
multitude of burial urns had been excavated from them, this year we
were fortunate enough to unearth six, including three of Roman
construction, filled with ash and bones.
This undeniably proves a
relatively long Roman presence on Reuverein soil.
Reuver is
therefore privileged to possess a spot in his St. Lambertsheuvel,
hallowed by the evangelical work of the great Maastricht native, who
brought an entire nation to the benefits of Christianity and
civilization.
J. VRANCKEN.
June
5, 1888 ASSELT AND SWALMEN
Through the flat meadow behind
Leeuwen, along the path overgrown with dense, short grass, our walk
leads us to Asselt, the old Asselon. It is delightful outside. The
warm breath of a gentle breeze carries the balsamic scents of birch
leaves. The daisies and buttercups sparkle like stars in the
greenery, and on each leaf a dewdrop sparkles like a diamond in the
morning sun. Before us, in the fresh meadows, numerous sheep graze
under the care of the blue-collared shepherd and his restless dog.
On the right, a birch forest, surrounded by slender poplar trees,
closes off the view. Where the ground rises, the spacious buildings
of the Zijperhof, the residence of the Mayor of Swalmen, stand
against the black background. Through the lush trees, the gray-red
tower of Swalmen and the old Hillenrade Castle gleam in their wooded
surroundings; if we turn left, we see the sparkling waters of the
Maas, and the modest tower of the Chapel of Asselt rises above the
oaks. And above the entire colorful landscape arches the bright
blue, transparent spring sky, in which not a speck can be seen but
the lark, soaring upwards with song. Never before have we received
such a soothing and favorable impression of the village than
now.
Asselt, where the path leads us, is a small Maas village.
Therefore, the history of Asselt speaks of a constant struggle for
existence against the waves, of an uninterrupted struggle. While the
Maas River brought Asselt many blessings in earlier days, when it
was the depot for the Maas trade with the Rhine province, its waters
often threatened churches and homes with destruction, and many a
night of fear was spent by the inhabitants of Asselt, as the high
waves crashed with all their might against the gray walls of their
church.
The Maas, with its turbulent waters, has been quite
unsteady in its course here. It has frequently shifted its course;
in the past, it washed over the foot of the church. At that time,
the opposite bank lay where the Asselt bank now lies. A few deep
snails, overgrown with reed and aquatic plants, still mark the spot
where ships with their cargo once anchored at the unloading dock.
Later, the strong current near the church carved a different path,
closer to Buggenum, leaving its old course. According to an old map,
present at the town hall in Swalmen, a large flood plain, the
Buggenum, formed between the old and new arm
Mer
Tolwaard. Opposite the houses of Asselt, further along, at the
so-called Gebrouwhuis (Brewery House), which we will pass shortly,
the Maas pressed against the houses, gnawing away at the bank that
supported them with an irresistible, slow-moving force. The ground,
over a width of more than sixty meters, and three houses disappeared
into the waters of the Maas, and only now, when the municipality has
constructed a colossal stone revetment to preserve the other houses,
has the greatest force of the waves been broken.
The
low meadows and the heavy clay soils we just passed through, and the
so-called Voelbeemden (Feel Meadows), also arose centuries ago from
the fluctuating bed of the Maas.
The
chapel of Asselt lies on a walled hill; it is a very old building
with a cellar. Its location on the Maas River, and the material of
its walls, consisting of a mixture of rough field stones and Roman
tiles, cemented together with lime, strongly support the assumption
that it is of Roman origin. Tradition also holds that it was an old
Roman tollhouse; the name "Tolwaard" (Toll Ward), which
the meadow near the church bears, supports this assumption. It was
later converted into a small church.
The
door, which is smaller than the original, faces north in the middle
of the side wall.
The
building consists of two parts: a square rear section, the eastern
half of which protrudes slightly, and the tower, which is of a later
date and made of brick. The rear of the building bears traces of
restoration.
The
church, however small, appears clean. "Small, but clean,"
one might say. One thing must not be forgotten. The Asselt church
possesses an art treasure, well-known and highly prized by Limburg
art lovers. It depicts the dying Christ on the cross, a painting so
poignantly beautiful that one immediately recognizes it as the work
of a master. The physical suffering of the God-man, the anguish of
the Redeemer, are so masterfully rendered on the beautiful face and
in the noble forms of the body that the sight is moving and
touching. In its humble setting and old frame, the painter's
masterpiece speaks to the heart, and the impression it makes is
deeply imprinted on the viewer's mind.
The
painting, we believe, must be a gift from the former lords of
Hillenrade. How else could the humble church have acquired such a
gem?
At
the foot of the gray walls of the chapel, the deceased of the
village find their final resting place. This elevated spot appears
to have served as a burial ground early on, for we find a bluestone
set into the tower's front wall, on which the inscription "Beet
russe mit hare kyderen" (Be free with her children) is chiseled
in Gothic letters. Judging by the form of the script, the stone may
well date from the late 15th century. According to tradition, this
stone was placed there in memory of a mother who, through an
unfortunate accident, died in a fire with her children. That this
family, "Russe of Ruesen," was native to the area is
proven by another cross opposite, bearing the date 1558 and the
inscription "Jan Ruesen." The other stone crosses inform
us that, among them, Willem Quiten in 1615, Geurdt Quiten in 1629,
members of an Asselt family, and Geurdt Lomen in 1616, were ordered
to eternal sleep. From the cemetery, we descend again to the sandy
village road, and we pass between hedges of flowering hawthorn on
one side and along the elevated farmland on the other, to the white
houses along the Maas, where we can rest for a moment. At the top of
the hill, high and dry, yet somewhat airy, lies the rector's
residence, a new building. Such a beautiful rectorate naturally also
required a more beautiful church, for the building is rather small
and old for Asselt, and yet we would hate to miss the old church
with its stubby tower and rough walls in its picturesque setting.
Asselt with a new church would no longer be the unique Asselt it is.
From
the windows of Mother Theelen's neat common room, we have a wide
view of the surrounding area.
Behind
the large floodplains on the other side of the Maas, the towers of
Horn, Buggenum, Haelen, Nunhem, and Neer lie in a row against the
wooded backdrop. We don't want to luxuriate in the view for long,
but instead continue through the Gebrouwhuis-Veld, towards
Genaenhof.
Through
the corn-rich field, we pass Genaenhof (old courtyard) on the left
and Genoenhof (new courtyard) on the right, and see before us the
ruins we so often observed from the heights of the railway line that
runs nearby. This is the Ouburg, formerly the seat of the noble
family of Swalmen. Perhaps this is also the ancestral home of the
6th abbess of the noble convent in Roermond, Elisabeth de Swalmen,
who lived around 1293. Later, the house belonged to the f
The
Van Oest family, and later passed to the Schenck family of Nijdeggen
and de Hoensbroeck. It already belonged to Hillenrade in 1381.
From
the archival documents, we must conclude that the Ouborg was a
knightly house or castle, albeit small in size. A small, thick tower
forms the front of a pentagonal enclosure with thick walls, formerly
completely surrounded by the Swalm River. The tower, now deprived of
its roof, is accessible through a broken opening and could formerly
be climbed by means of a stone spiral staircase, the remains of
which can still be seen. As early as the 16th century, the Ouborg,
or the house of Rothem, as it is also sometimes called, was
destroyed. Few documents concerning the destruction of the fortress
have come down to us. Today, the murmuring Swalm River with its
ripples only washes one side of the beautiful ruin. A few pollarded
oaks and canadas, a small bridge, and a beautiful background adorn
the landscape, where painters usually choose the ruins as their
focal point. Through the viaduct, along the stream, our path turns
towards Swalmen and brings us to the Market Square.
The
Market Square, where the Town Hall and the church are situated, is
not the most attractive part of Swalmen. Only a linden tree raises
its tall, solemn trunk in the square, the appearance of which offers
little indication of the prosperity that prevails in the village.
The linden has been pruned in a strange way, and its lower crown has
curved and grown together into a sort of flat surface. As a
curiosity, we were told that the Fanfare, during the time it was
under the now-renowned direction of Mr. Sagers, once had a strange
idea. Standing on that crown, it gave a concert that must have been
very well received by both the performers and the audience. In
former times, the same fanfare band gave a concert on May 1st in the
beautiful Bosch van Hillenrade; however, this custom seems to have
disappeared.
We
now step through the arch of the secretariat to take a look at the
church.
The
church of Swalmen is an old building. By 1452, the church was
already dilapidated; even then, Duke Arnold permitted the
municipality to sell 25 acres of communal land, using the proceeds
to rebuild the church. In 1493, the church was restored by a citizen
of Roermond, Michiel van der Sterren, for 28 Rhenish guilders. The
Asselt church appears to be the mother church of that of Swalmen. In
1293, Mathias, pastor of Asselt and Swalmen, already appears.
June
12, 1888: The church of Swalmen was transformed into a Gothic church
by the removal of Gothic windows and arches. Because of the
additions, the basic form has not even been preserved. The interior
is rather poor. The altar is not kept very clean; at least, we are
walking over a finger-thick layer of sand and dust.
The
three altars are built in Renaissance style. The central altar
boasts a fairly good painting depicting the Holy Communion and the
coats of arms of the altar's donors, the Schenck van Nijdeggen and
the Hoensbroecks.
The
side altar, dedicated to St. George, the patron saint of knights,
features an altarpiece depicting St. George battling the dragon. The
painter certainly never bothered to properly study the form of a
horse; otherwise, he would not have sent St. George, who looks more
like a common Landsknecht than a proud knight, on such a horse to
the dragon battle. Under the tower used to hang a wicker or rush
dragon, which the young men of Swalmen, just as they still do in
Beesel every seven years, would lead triumphantly through the
village and then fell with spear thrusts. This centuries-old custom,
however, has fallen into disuse over the years.
The
organ bears the coats of arms of Schenck and Hoensbroeck, as does
the beautiful marble holy water font.
According
to tradition, an Austrian general who fell in battle near Swalmen is
buried under the organ. Neither stone nor inscription indicates his
grave. We find nothing more remarkable, and through the low portal
we return to the high cemetery.
With
one of Swalmen's authorities, who was kind enough to accompany us,
we climbed to the secretariat. Here we were shown a beautiful atlas
of maps from the end of the last century, which shows all the
parcels of land belonging to the lordships of Asselt, Swalmen, and
Hillenrade. Furthermore, a gallows chain is present here, found a
few years ago at Grietjesgericht.
At
the edge of the municipality, on the Boschberg, stood the courthouse
in former times, still known to the public as Grietjesgericht.
There, criminals were "executed to the body with a rope or
sword between their head and neck, until death followed."
Clear
evidence that death sentences were carried out at this location was
found by some laborers who were planting pine trees there about five
years ago. While digging, they came across
The
shovel rested on a skull with a neck bone; attached to this was the
chain that once served the sad purpose of fastening the criminal's
body to the gallows after the execution. The pelvis was crushed to
dust by one of the workers with a blow from the shovel. The chain
was preserved.
The
old archival documents from Swalmen were all sent to Maastricht upon
request; only a few guild documents remain.
The
militias in Swalmen were very ancient; their history was lost in the
darkness of the Middle Ages. True, the beautiful royal silver that
adorned the chest and shoulders of the shooting king during the
ceremonial bird shooting and the procession has ended up in the
melting pot, and the Schuttenkamp, Schuttenheide, and
other goods have now passed into foreign hands. Nevertheless, one
would have to conclude from the tall Schutsboom (shooting tree) that
we see rising in the sky from afar in the village that the ambition
of the old "schutters" has not yet entirely died out. The
guild brothers of St. Joris van Swalmen were not only cheerful
people in the past, but also thrifty stewards of their income.
The
guild accounts prove that their meetings were lively. The jug of
foaming barley brew was passed around merrily, and the fiddle
cheerfully invited the younger brothers with their beautiful
brethren to dance. And they were so frugal with all these
recreations, for they brewed their own beer, bought the malt and
hops for it, gave the brewer a fixed wage, and, meticulous as they
were, even reimbursed him for his fire and light. Moreover, if he
had to brew through the night, they would ply him with a generous
pint of schnapps or "waggelwater." Not much of note
remains in the small town hall; little remains of the former estate.
The municipality no longer possesses a coat of arms, not even a
seal.
A
little distance from the town hall, closer to Roermond, lies the
small river after which the village takes its name. The Swalm is a
clear, fast-flowing stream that originates in the lowlands behind
Wegberg near Tusschenbroek Castle. It flows through the pools and
lakes near Brempt, past bridges across the heathland to Swalmen,
past the old Roman cemetery, and flows through the village to pour
into the Maas River a little south of Hanssum, below Neer. The
stream runs for 30 kilometers. At Swalmen, it flows under a bridge,
on which stands a small statue.
The
statue depicts St. John Nepomucenus and was donated in 1823 by a
gentleman from Liège. He had a trading house here, with which
he did business and which often required him to visit Swalmen. He
donated the statue in memory of a fortunate rescue from the Maas,
which he had accidentally fallen into. Tradition still tells of the
stone bridge over the Swalm, how the French, when the Prussians were
hot on their heels, demolished it in 1791 to prevent them from
crossing as much as possible. A wounded Frenchman, forced to remain
behind after the French army crossed the bridge, hid in a beehive
near the bridge. When the Prussians arrived, he loaded his rifle and
shot one of the Prussians. He kept firing, and because of his
concealed position, no one initially knew where the well-aimed shots
were coming from. Only after the Frenchman had downed seven
Prussians with his shots could he be reached after the bridge had
been repaired; the brave Frenchman was then cut down by the furious
Prussians.
From
the bridge, there is an attractive view of the Swalm and the
surrounding buildings. Before us, we see the Swalm's foaming water
splashing down a side branch over a barrier; along the main branch,
immediately adjacent to us, lies a busy sawmill, whose former
chattering waterwheel has been replaced by a steaming steam engine.
Further on, we see the stately trees of the Venlo road, and behind
them, a few tile factories send thick clouds of smoke from their
low, black chimneys into the air. In addition, we have a view of a
few gardens, where apple and pear blossoms seem to cover the trees
with a translucent white and pink blanket.
Industry
in Swalmen has suffered a serious blow due to the increase in import
duties. To cite an example, we need only cite Mr. Königs's
factory, which, judging by its layout, is arguably the largest, or
at least one of the most important, steam sawmills in Limburg. Most
of the sawn timber used to be shipped to the Rhine region; the
industry had boomed due to the large sales. Many people found work
and bread in the factory. However, as soon as the increased import
duties of 1 mark per 100 kilos were not levied in Prussia, the
Germans stopped coming to buy, and the manufacturers could only
produce the best quality planks with small profits to continue to
operate. It is therefore not surprising that hundreds of sawmills in
Holland are idle, especially since the Germans are allowed to import
sawn timber by the shipload. Previously, many agricultural
implements were also manufactured in this factory, most of which
were supplied to Prussian farmers in the border districts. However,
when these machines were taxed at 1.80 guilders per 100 kilos,
import was no longer possible. Even the smallest threshing machine
weighs easily 700 kilos. The German tax authorities even went so far
as to levy a new tax on implements that needed repairs upon their
return, which had the unfortunate consequence that Dutch workers had
to repair them on German soil. To make things even more difficult
for these workers, they were also forced to pay a professional tax,
which was also not very generous. This is how Germany protects its
industry. By citing these examples, we do not intend to argue that
this protection creates a healthy situation and that the industry,
thus aided by any means necessary, will flourish vigorously.
However, we believe we must conclude from these telling examples
that levying protective duties as a means of revenge is the only way
to save small-scale industry along the borders.
And
what is best about the Germans is that they know exactly what not to
tax; what they need for agriculture and obtain here is free; for
example, no import duty is levied on animal feed, which results in
the Rhinelanders buying up all the necessary supplies in and around
Roermond at high prices, often leading to a shortage here.
Similarly, no duty is levied on lime for agriculture, which is
delivered cheapest along the Maas to Asselt and then transported
further by road. And all of this is done with the good purpose of
protecting and supporting agriculture, the great source of national
prosperity, in these calamitous times.
After
this brief economic digression, to which our remarks have almost
naturally led us, we would like to spend a few moments with our
friendly companion, the secretary. Here we have the opportunity to
see how the sound lessons in fruit tree cultivation given by the
walking instructor yield wonderful results. We encountered numerous
beautiful fruit trees in all shapes and sizes, but all of them,
thanks to the scientific treatment they received, promised twice as
much fruit as other trees, which here and there were abandoned. What
a pity that these courses are not universally followed with the high
level of interest they truly deserve.
After
this, we visited the grisaille glass factory, strolled through the
village, and the beautiful avenue to Roermond lay before us. Close
to the main road to Roermond lies the large Beckerhof farm, entirely
surrounded by ditches or meadows. This enclosure made it easier in
the past, when a threat of war was looming, to secure livestock and
possessions and protect them from the predatory hands of soldiers.
Similar
fortified farms were found in the vicinity of Roermond, and
especially in the area around Swalmen, such as Boschhof [Baxhof]
near Schoolbroek, the burnt Weijer near Roermond, the meadow near
Maasniel, a boarding house at 't Gebroek, etc. In the Schoolbroek
area, which formerly belonged to Beesel and Swalmen, there used to
be a redoubt into which cattle could be driven at night. The
following peculiarity was mentioned to us in passing about 't
Schoolbroek. To prevent disputes between the residents of Beesel and
Swalmen, sealed letters stipulated that Swalmen was the master of
the Broek until noon, while Beesel could assert its right of
ownership in the afternoon.
Arriving
at the end of Swalmen, we bid farewell to our friendly guide,
promising a return visit.
The
gentle spring sun had already risen so high by the time of our walk
that the shade cast by the beautiful elm trees along the long avenue
to Roermond was very welcome.
The
train whizzes past us, recalling an ode to Swalmen, which a rural
genius wrote to his fellow citizens in 1863, in which he describes
Swalmen in the following soulful verses, which we reproduce verbatim
here.
April
15, 1640 We believe we are doing the Archaeologists a
favor
by
transcribing here the note that van den Berche placed below the
first two drawings. “I pulled - he says - these two antique
stones out of the originals which are masoned in the wall of the
parish church of Horne, capital of the county, appenage of the
county of Looz, on April 9, first of the Easter holidays 1640, and
the pastor of the place told me at the time that he had several
medals of the Roman emperors found at the said Horn.” van den
Berch then describes several Roman antiquities and medals
found at Heel, a village located a league from Horn. He
adds: “The most admirable is from the same place, that the
village of Heel is called after Helena (1); what is known by
tradition and is all the more credible since a statue of very
fine white marble was found in the ground that was dug up,
and is still, this April 15, 1640, lying on the real road, but very
broken, because one can see the thighs from above to the ankles of
the same piece of the height of six feet and a half; which is of a
lady, to be veiled by her body like the Roman ladies; and they hold
for certain that the rest of the statue is still in the ground.
January
1, 1789 The lives of illustrious Greeks and Romans,
compared
by PLUTARCH
THE
LIFE OF ALEXANDER [and of Caesar]
Having
given this charge to convey to PARMENIO, he placed the helmet on his
head; as if he had already put on his other weapons in the tent,
consisting (l/┼) in a closing skirt of Sicilian make
surrounded by a belt, and over a doubled linen coat of arms, from
the booty obtained in the Battle of Issus. His helmet was of iron,
made by THEOPHILUS (m/§), who had worked it so beautifully that
it glittered as if it had been pure silver. Attached to this helmet
was a ring collar, also made of iron, but here and there set with
stones. His sword was of unparalleled temper and exceptional
lightness. It was given to him by the King of the Citians (n/**). He
wore this because he was generally accustomed to use a sword in
battle. The sling on which this sword hung was more beautiful in
work than his other armor, being the work of HELICON the Ancient,
and a tribute to the Citizenship of the Rhodians, from which
ALEXANDER had received him as a gift. Here too he was always
accustomed to use himself in battles. Furthermore, as long as he was
still busy arranging the Phalanx, or correcting something or other,
or giving orders, or riding through the ranks for inspection, he
used another horse, so that he could use the Bucephalus, who was
already turning a year old, wanted to save. Then as soon as they
were not ready to go to work, this horse was fetched; which no
sooner had he climbed than he gave the signal to attack.
(┼)
The accuracy of our author is extraordinary here, as he not only
describes the weapons that ALEXANDER wore on this day, one by one,
but also carefully lists their craftsmen. This remarkable blow,
namely, destroyed the Persian Monarchy. Furthermore, DACIER has very
well noted: >> that PLUTARCHUS here too followed the manner of
HOMERUS.
(§)
We have heard of this artist elsewhere, as well as of HELICON, who
is subsequently mentioned.
(**)
Inhabitants of Citium, a town on the Island of Cyprus.
How,
said he, will any man take the trouble in his own person to furnish
his horse, or to repair his lance, or helmet, who is loath to lay
his hands upon his own dear body?" "Don't you know, Did he
say that the main point of victory for your people is that you do
not do the same that they do who are conquered by you? Furthermore,
for this reason, he devoted himself much more to all kinds of
activities, such as battles and hunting, for which he feared no
fatigues or dangers. It was also from here that a certain Spartan
Representative, who was present when he felled a great Lion, shouted
to him: "Truly, ALEXANDER, you fought very bravely with that
Lion for the Kingship!" From this hunt CRATERUS made a
dedication in the Temple at Delphi, consisting of copper images of
the Lion, of the Dogs, of the King who fights with the Lion, and of
himself who comes to the rescue.
Part
of it was made by LYSIPPUS (k), another part by LEOCHARES.
(k)
This gift of CRATERUS, consecrated in the Temple at Delphi, is
mentioned among the works of LYSIPPUS by PLINY H. N. XXXIV, 7. The
same PLINY speaks of LEOCHARES, L. XXXIV, 8. and XXXVI, 5.
January
1, 1809 Plutarch’s Lives, translated by J. and W.
Langhorne
As
soon as he had returned Parmenio this answer, he put on his helmet;
for in other points he had come ready-armed out of his tent. He had
a short coat of the Sicilian fashion girt close about him, and over
that a breast-plate of linen strongly quilted, which was found among
the spoils at the battle of Issus. His helmet, the workmanship of
Theophilus, was of iron, but so well polished that it shone like the
brightest silver. To this was fitted a gorget of the same metal, set
with precious stones. His sword, the weapon which he generally used
in battle, was a present from the king of the Citeans, and could not
be excelled for lightness or for temper. But the belt, which he wore
in all his engagements, was more superb than the rest of his armour.
It was given him by the Rhodians, as a mark of their respect, and
old Helicon 99 had
exerted all his art upon it. In drawing up his army and giving
orders, as well as in exercising and reviewing it, he spared
Bucephalus on account of his age, and rode another horse; but he
constantly charged upon him; and he had no sooner mounted him, than
the signal was always given.
99
In this description of Alexander’s armour, and the mention of
the workmen by whom it had been made, as well as in the principle of
his preceding reply to Parmenio, and the eagle introduced below,
Dacier traces the imitator of Homer.
Helicon
and his father Acesus were eminent in the art of embroidery, as we
learn from Athenaeus, xi. 9., who preserves an inscription to that
purport copies from the temple of Apollo at Delphi.
After
this, he constantly took the exercise of war or hunting, and exposed
himself to danger and fatigue with less precaution than ever: so
that a Lacedaemonian embassador, who attended him one day when he
killed a fierce lion, said: “Alexander, you have disputed the
prize of royalty gloriously with the lion.” Craterus got this
hunting-piece represented in bronze, and consecrated it in the
temple at Delphi. There were the lion, the dogs, the king fighting
with the lion, and Craterus advancing to the king’s
assistance. Some of these statues were the workmanship of Lysippus,
and others of Leochares.
January
1, 1807 “Ring Collar”
According
to a description from 1840, a kind of ring collar was found
in Meijel in 1807:
I
very much doubted the report that a farmer in Deurne Liessel was in
possession of a Roman sword and a golden shield that was dug into
the Peel, because I had never heard anything about it. Research has
also shown me that no one knows anything about it, probably people
have confused this with what took place in the neighboring
municipality of Meijel. In the year 1807 a gold shield
was found there. Having been in Meyel for a number of years, I went
to the house of the then mayor Goossens to see this curiosity. He
showed me a shield which had been found in the peel in the year 1807
about five feet below the surface of the ground in the peel on the
occasion of a peat digging, it was made of gold or at least heavily
gilded hammered work, on it were hieroglyphs and other
figures of lions, tigers etc driven, and had the shape
of a crescent moon, much resembling a ring collar
This
description indicates a phalera, and has a stunning similarity to
The phalara from Starobêlsk, as shown in Figure 20 of Iranians
and Greeks in South Russia.
Naar
het berigt Ik heb het berigt dat een landbouwer te Deurne
Liessel in het bezit
zoude zijn van een
oud romeinsch zwaard en een goud schild welk in den
peel zoude
zijn uitgegraven,
zeer betwijfeld, wijl ik er nooit iets van vernomen had. ook is
mij bij onderzoek
verzekerd gebleken dat er niemand iets van weet.
waarschijnlijk
heeft men dit
verward met ?? het geen in de naburige gemeente
Meyel heeft plaats
gehad. In
het jaar 1807 men heeft men aldaar een
goud schild gevonden.
voor eenige jaren
te Meyel zijnde heb ik mij naar het huis van den toenmaligen
burgemeester
Goossens begeven om deze merkwaardigheid te zien. hij vertoonde mij
een schild welk in
den peel in het jaar 1807 omtrent vijf voeten onder het
onder
de
oppervlakte van
den grond in
den peel
bij gelegenheid eener turfgraving gevonden
was, hetzelve was
van goud of althans zwaar verguld gedreven
werk,
op
hetzelve
waren hyroglyphen
en andere figuren van leeuwen, tijgers &c gedreven, en had de
vorm van een halve
maan, veel gelekende naar een ringkraag zoo als de kapiteins der
infanterie
voor
?
nog niet zeer lang geleden op de borst droegen.
May
9, 1817 In an old booklet, which was published in Venlo in
1821
by
Widow H. Bontamps under the title of Short geographical sketch of
the province of Limburg for youth, page 35—36 the following
footnote:
"When
on May 9, 1817, a resident of this city (Venlo), to erect a new
factory building, had the ground excavated behind his house (N°
693 in the Vleeschstraat), they found a depth of 7 to 8 feet, on a
stone slab, surrounded by clay, lying on a layer of pebbles. Its
length was 6 and a half, its width 4 feet. The egg-shaped carved
depth was 6 feet long and 3 and a half wide, provided with a very
fitting lid. This lid is a table hewn from hard limestone, 4 inches
thick, very smooth on the inside and on the edge. The tuff stone,
which makes up the sarcophagus (stone coffin), cannot
be found in the entire area, but the blue limestone is brought here
by barges from the area around Namur. The sarcophagus stood in a
direction from east to west, there was another tin urn, where it was
widest 11 inches in height and 15 in diameter. Its shape is very
simple, the opening is 6 inches wide, and is closed by a lid. In the
sarcophagus were found some pieces of white thin glass,
probably from a tear glass, some earth and remains of burnt bones,
among which pieces of the skull and bones were clearly visible. Also
in the urn, there was something resembling burnt bones; but in much
smaller chunks. The Sarcophagus was without inscription. However,
around the urn one sees Runic writing, which is not
deeply and irregularly printed in the tin, and for this reason, as
well as because of the dents in the urn, is illegible. In the
vicinity of the grave site, another flint of 12 to 15 inches
in length and 6 inches in thickness was found."
The
question is whether anything more is known in Venlo about that find
and where the objects are currently located.
November
26, 1819 ECHTERNACH, near TRIER, November 10.
In
the vicinity of Alttrier, 2 1/2 hours southwest of Echternach, in a
high-lying village, through which the road to Luxembourg leads, many
Roman antiquities have recently been excavated, which are very
remarkable for history and archaeology. Among other things, a silver
hand of a Roman coat of arms was found; two Roman signet rings of
gold with red stones, on one of which the goddess Diana was
found, and on the other a sphinx; several broad silver rings, on
which the niches of the Empresses Faustina, Lucilla and
Didia Clara are engraved; many Roman hairpins, ash urns and
grave lamps. A great quantity of gold, silver and copper coins,
among which a Nero, two Commodi, a Constantinus M. and a Constans of
gold; an exceptionally rare Pescennius Riger, a Marciana, a
Mathedia, several Faustinas, Julia Mameas and others, of fine
silver. Among the urns were found two of terra sigillata, the
most beautiful that have ever been seen, on which more than 50
figures are depicted. Furthermore, two Roman hand mills of stone
were excavated, a sacrificial bull with sacrificial instruments hung
around it, two Mercuries of rons, a he-goat, a goat and two Priapes
of copper, a surgical instrument, 60 household gods of stone of
various colours; some stones with Roman Emperors on horseback; some
statues of gods and goddesses, among which two of white marble,
representing the goddess Nehalennia, with a dog on her lap.
From
the multitude of objects found, it appears that this region was of
importance. The Romans had a colony here, which is believed to have
been located on the road from Trier to Durecorturum (Rheims).
1
January 1828 NEERHAREN. A beautiful Roman silver jug was
found in Neerharen
in
1828, during the construction of the canal from Maastricht to
Bois-le-Duc [Zuidwillemsvaart,
Maastricht 's-Hertogenbosch]. This vase, which
lay near the current point, three metres below the ground, at a
height of 0.322 and is decorated with chiseling and circles on the
neck and foot. The bottom of the vase, also chiseled, bore an
inscription. This beautiful object has been part of
the Leiden Museum since 1831 (1).
(1)
C. Leemans, Roman objects in Maastricht, p. 69.
18
June 1830 - Two day laborers from Baarlo, Limburg, busy
digging up clay,
found,
while digging, an earthenware vase filled with antique
gold and silver medals, worth 300 fl.; they are all
the size of a 25 cent coin.
22
June 1830 To the editors of the Éclaireur
politique.
Baarlo,
June 19, 1830.
Gentlemen,
In
your issue of yesterday, you reported on the find that was made
here, a few days ago, while digging up clay. — It is true,
gentlemen, that an urn filled with various coins, both silver and
gold, was found there, but of a greater value than the 300 florins
mentioned in your newspaper.
I
know that the owner, Mathieu Holtakkers, sold them in the first days
to one person for 1600 fl., and since then to others for 3000 fl. —
It seems that the urn is never empty, since he still sells them
every day, and one even pays 4 fl. for a silver coin and 20 fl. for
a gold coin the size of a Napoleon.
Most
of the coins that make up this collection are different from each
other and date from the time of Nero, Vespasian, Trajan, Faustina
Augusta, Diva Augusta, Antonina and other Roman emperors.
A
subscriber.
September
1, 1830 BAARLO In 1830, in the month of September, a
certain
Holtakkers,
called den Bisschop, found in the municipality of Baarlo opposite
the church, on the side of Blerick (the old Blariacum), an urn,
containing several hundred Roman coins from different consulates in
gold and silver, a collection which was dispersed in the surrounding
area, but the greater part of which was purchased by Mr. Louis
Wolters, banker in Venlo.
January
1, 1833 In Leende, in 1833, on the occasion of peat
digging,
a
blacksmith discovered, at a depth of almost twelve Rhineland feet,
three Roman tokens
of yellow copper, of the first size, excellently
preserved, bearing the busts and names of AUGUSTUS CLAUDIUS and
NERO.
Bl.
17. Magusamus or Macusanus. The Dommel flows past here.
January
1, 1835 MONTFORT. Stone and bronze weapons have been found
in
this village on several occasions. One of these objects is in the
's-Hertogenbosch museum. It is a quarter-axe, found in
1835, in a peat bog, 8 to 10 feet below the ground. (1) Mr. Guillon,
notary in Roermond, gave the Royal Museum of Brussels four stone
axes or wedges, three of which were made of flint and one of basalt,
found in 1836 and 1837 in the peat bogs of the commune of Montfort.
(2)
May
4, 1837 NETHERLANDS. - In the most recently published
issue
of
the Nederlandsch Magazijn you will find an article about the
recently excavated urns in North Braband [Noord
Brabant]. This mainly means that reports
have recently been found in several of our newspapers regarding the
excavation of antiquities in the municipality of Deurne, province of
North Braband, and now the Editorial Staff of the above-mentioned
warehouse has received some details regarding that excavation,
mainly as follows: A Ritmeester [captain]
at the regiment of hussars n°. 6, having noticed on an earlier
occasion that some mounds on the Kempen heath, when excavated,
turned out to be burial mounds and contained urns or ash jars, I
came up with the idea that some such mounds, which were found on the
heath near Deurne, its current cantonment, were present, may have
served such purposes and contained antiquities. With the permission
of the mayor there, five urns or ash jars were found, which
increased with subsequent excavations and now already exceed the
number of fifty. It is a pity that the husbandmen, hearing of this,
also began to dig on their side, in the hope of finding treasure;
smashed or damaged the urns they dug up; great was the
disappointment of these people when they found in it nothing but
ashes and some half-decayed apparent human bones, such as skulls,
ribs, thigh bones, etc. Not one token or coin has been recovered;
only a piece of metal, which one thinks should be taken for a
mouthpiece of a wind instrument. The urns found are of different
sizes, but all of virtually the same shape, some with lids. The
heathland in which the urns were found is approximately four
hectares in size, the mounds are fairly regular, but the entire area
appears to have served as a cemetery, because urns have also been
found outside the mounds and at some distance from them. The urns
are usually covered with a layer of charcoal. After all, as soon as
one finds it, one is certainly close to an urn. Some are so high
that one finds the fibrous roots of the common heather at the top of
the ash; others have been found deeper, but at uneven depths. The
substance from which these pots or urns are composed is smooth,
solid, and of a dark brown color; no vitrification is visible on it,
nor any inscription or inscription. If these were made in Deurne,
where two potteries are now found, then one must admit that this art
has not made any progress there in 10 or 15 centuries; These urns
are purer and smoother and treated with more care than is currently
the case. The excavations are continuing in some places, but in the
urns, as mentioned, nothing but ashes and the above-mentioned human
bones are found.
February
25, 1842 Mr. P. O. P. Guyot in Nijmegen of a very
remarkable collection
of
bronzes and other objects found near Deurne in North Brabant, most
of which had been collected by Captain Baron van Vorst, who handed
them over to Mr. Guyot. This important acquisition, together with
the urns and other objects reported in 1838 and 1839, puts the
Museum in possession of the principal and rarest results of the
excavation near Deurne. All these scattered discoveries, now brought
together, form a whole which may shed great light on the knowledge
of the ancient peoples who once inhabited our country. Most of these
objects are described by Mr. Janssen, the curator, in the Kunst en
Letterbode of 1838, pages 370-395.
January
3, 1844 * BOXMEER, December 31 Recently in this community,
on
the occasion of a useful excavation or excavation of a piece of
pasture belonging to Mr Hengst, several remarkable Roman antiquities
have been found, consisting of urns, grave lamps and other pottery
of various sizes and whitish in colour, as well as some copper coins
with the images and names of Roman emperors. The land on which the
excavation took place is situated at a natural height, so that it is
never watered by the waters of the flooding Maas, while the
surrounding lands are flooded almost annually; perhaps it is due to
this characteristic that the Romans chose that place for a cemetery;
that this was indeed the case is clearly demonstrated by what has
been found.
In
the past, little or nothing was heard in these regions about the
discovery of Roman antiquities and it is due to the ignorance in
this regard and to the greed of the workers that one unfortunately
has to regret the shattering of some objects that are so valuable to
enthusiasts. Now, however, the work is being continued attentively
under the owner's supervision and it is hoped that, with the help of
experts, a more detailed report of what has been found will be given
later.
1848
ANTIQUE COLLECTIONS IN ROERMOND, VENLO AND MAASTRICHT IN
1848
BY
JOS. HABETS ROERMOND, J. J. ROMEN AND ZONEN.
In
1848 the late Mr. Janssen, curator, took over at the Royal Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden, on behalf of the government, an art tour
through Limburg. The purpose of this visit was to give a report on
the condition of the archaeological monuments of this region and to
investigate the direction of the old Roman highways that crossed
this province. Mr. Janssen visited Tongeren, Maastricht, Roermond
and Venlo. He carried out excavations in Melenburg near Buggenum and
undertook a trip in the vicinity of Arcen to a few earthenware
fortifications that seemed to have served to protect the Fossa
Eugeniana and found in the vicinity, in Zand near Pont, on Prussian
territory, the Roman road from Coriovallum to Xanten (Castra Vetera)
and a number of Roman antiquities.
From
his report we take what he has recorded regarding the collection
from the pre-Christian period of the late Mr. Charles Guillon in
Roermond, as well as some details about Roman objects that were at
the town hall in Venlo and Maastricht at the time. See here what he
has done regarding the antiquities of the late Mr. Guillon.
“In
Roermond there is one of the richest collections of Dutch
antiquities, namely that of Mr. Ch. Guillon, secretary of the
Chamber of Commerce there. As a private collection of national
antiquities, it is inferior only in Roman antiquities to that of Mr.
P. C. G. Guyot in Nijmegen, but it far surpasses it in
Gallo-Germanic remains, especially in carving objects made of stone
(1=1). Moreover, it has the peculiarity that it was collected by the
owner himself and his brother, and that, with the exception of
tokens and some objects found in Xanten, everything was found in the
Duchy of Limburg, and that the places where it was discovered were
are known accurately. Anyone who wishes to know the character of the
antiquities to be found in Limburg in general will find satisfaction
in this collection, especially under the guidance of the
knowledgeable owner.
“For
a long time, Mr. Guillon had intended to publish the most important
part of his collection, and also to publish a general overview of
it, but this was something he was prevented from doing by his many
practical activities. Much has already been drawn up and depicted by
him, and during my presence there he renewed his intention to
continue the scientific work that had already begun as soon as
possible. Accordingly, it would first appear in the light: a
treatise on the investigations he made in Gallo-Germanic graves in
various places in Limburg, and then a treatise on his cutting tools
made of stone. All drawings and a large part of the text have
already been completed on both subjects.
“To
give some idea of the nature, size and importance of
this collection, the following overview, based on autopsy, will
serve; however, only the most important information is indicated
with the greatest brevity.
A. CELTIC AND GALLO-GERMANIC OBJECTS.
I.
Of stone: 1° A number of wedges and some hammers, perhaps 50
pieces, mostly made of flint and of well-known shapes. Very rare,
perhaps entirely unique, are two wedges of Jasper, one of which has
a very narrow drilled hole on the side of 2 stripes in diameter, the
other also shows traces of such a hole, but the drilling of which
has failed. These holes were apparently intended to allow a strap to
be inserted through which these objects could be hung. They are
therefore so important, because from those narrow holes it must be
concluded that a metal awl was drilled and it therefore appears that
such wedges, which originate from the time of the earliest
civilization of a people, were processed or used when the use of
metal for technical instruments was already in vogue (1=2). Among
these wedges there are four more that deserve comment because of
their rarer shape.
2°
A number of arrowheads, approximately 40 pieces, made of flint,
including at least 11 or 12 distinctive shapes. Until now, not more,
perhaps not even as many forms of flint arrowheads have been known,
and the variety of the arrowheads mentioned is all the more
important when one considers that they all come from a single part
of our homeland, the Duchy of Limburg.
3°
Flint blades 20 pieces of different shapes and sizes, as well as
small as yet unknown objects made of flint, some similar to those
depicted by me on the map of the Uddelermeer, etc., to my treatise
On the oldest Dutch fortifications in the Contributions of Mr.
Nijhoff IV p. 71.
II.
Made of bronze. 1° Celts, frames or catejen, 5 pieces, of known
shapes. 2° one pear-shaped dagger. 3° one arrowhead, in
shape completely similar to one of the flints mentioned above. If
this arrowhead is not Roman, but, as it seems to me, probably Celtic
or Gallo-Germanic, it proves once again that the forms of tools used
in the Stone Period were kept track of later in the Bronze Period
(1=3).
III.
Made of iron. 1° A flat bowl of 0.085 cubits in diameter and
0.04 cubits high. As far as I know, similar iron bowls have not yet
been found elsewhere with Germanic objects. 2° A cone-shaped
bell, provided with an eye at the top, high 0.1 inch; as well as
some individual clappers made of similar bells. These objects found
near or in Germanic urns are also extremely rare, if not unique. 3°
Three arrowheads, one of which, with a hollow stem and provided with
barbs, long 01.1 or 0.12 cubits, which may be mistaken for the
Germanic framea by the owner. 4° Seven blades of three distinct
shapes. 5° Two buckles of distinct shapes (1=4).
IV.
Of baked earth: A very large number of urns and other vases and
dishes, of various shapes, sizes, workmanship and decoration, some
of which are rare.
B. ROMAN OBJECTS.
An
important part of this has already been mentioned in our report on
Melenburg (2=5). In addition, however, 150 jars, urns, dishes,
lamps, etc., including some made of terra sigillata; a large bronze
bowl (patera) and a hexagonal bottle of light green glass (3=6), not
to mention many other small objects.
“The
Roman objects found at corals of pâte of different colors and
shapes; round belt decorations of white, yellow and blue pâte
(formerly considered to be stem beans) (2=8). These Xanten objects
are still increasing, because the owner has a regular purchaser in
Xanten, so he cannot miss an important object newly found there.
This is all the more important because the well-known Xanten
antiquity friend, the notary Houben, has ceased to increase his
collection through purchases in recent years, so that much is now
preserved for science that would otherwise be scattered or hidden
from many antiquarians.
“For
the medal collection, which contains 2000 pieces of Roman coins,
with the exception of the medieval and later ones, because time did
not permit me to do so, I was only able to use a part, which
included some rare pieces such as: the as quadrans, triens, some
consular and one, I believe, unpublished by Postumus”.
This
report by Mr. Janssen shows the condition in which this remarkable
collection of antiquities was during his visit to Roermond in 1848.
Since that time, the late Mr. Guillon has spared no effort and no
sacrifices to increase his favorite collections and by to enrich new
purchases, so that it can be assumed without exaggeration that the
number of objects more than doubled until his death, which occurred
on November 10, 1873. The value of what was acquired later is also
much greater than what was seen by Mr. Janssen. His library, his
collection of archives, manuscripts, maps, drawings, etchings,
paintings and objects of art and taste were auctioned and
distributed in December 1874. However, this is not the case with his
collection of coins, medals, stamps, carved stones, as well as with
the above-mentioned collection of archaeological objects from the
prehistoric, Germanic, Classical and Frankish times. These have
remained in the possession of Mr Clement Guillon, lawyer in
Roermond. It would be desirable that the government or one of our
Limburg cities purchased this collection; they could well serve as
the basis for a municipal Museum.
Mr.
Janssen reports the following on relatively few Roman tiles with
legion marks that he saw in Venlo: “On the trip to Venlo I
heard from a fellow traveler that there was a collection of Roman
antiquities at the town hall, deposited by a certain Mr. Justen,
wine merchant in Brussels. When I inquired about this at the town
hall from the employees present there, Mr Canoy replied that the
collection had been sold by the owner for some time to the
Provincial Society of Sciences in 's Hertogenbosch, with the
exception of a few tiles, which were considered too insignificant,
and which were now produced at my request. These were by no means
unimportant, and the only regret was that no one knew where they had
been found. I guessed that they descended from proximity to Venlo,
where many Roman tiles (with legion marks) are found; finally
because some stamps of these stones do not correspond to stamps
found in Nijmegen, many of which, perhaps thousands, I have
examined. The stamps of the Venlo-tiles contained the names of army
divisions:
(L)IMIN
(legio 1 Minerva), (L)VR (legio 5 rapax), LEGVIVIC (legio 6
victrix), LXV (legio 15), LEGXXX, LEGXXXVV (legio 30 Ulpia Victrix);
also EXCGERINF (exercitus Germaniae inferioris) and RHENANA, with
the latter name it should be noted that the word TRANS was probably
written on an associated tile, so that that stone comes from the
legio transrhenana, of which, among other things, tiles were found
in Dormagen are, according to STEINER Cod. Inscr. Rom. Rhen. No 699
or 697. Below this was a worn inscription, probably from the VIth
legion, but with one name unknown to me.
Furthermore,
there were three very rare ones, in that on the surface of the stone
where the inscription was located, there were three convex,
button-shaped eminences, which probably served to prevent the stamp
from being damaged when laying another tile, they had this form:
0.25.
Another
tile was therefore remarkable in that the stamp had been pressed on
it twice, crosswise, as follows:
Of
the factory stamps I found only one that was somewhat legible,
namely: OF. M (officina Marcelli or something like that.)”
So
much for Mr. Janssen's notes. There would be confusion in science if
the locations of antiquities were not stated accurately and
truthfully. Roman legion tiles are the sure sign of the presence of
Roman army units and permanent military stations.
It
would therefore be of the utmost importance if one could find out
where the aforementioned legion marks were found. With this aim in
mind, we contacted Mr Gallot, then secretary of the city of Venlo,
who, with a date of April 16, 1877, very willingly informed us of
the following: “Mr A. Justen, on his departure from here to
Brussels, (around the year 1843) requested to be allowed to
temporarily place his collection of stuffed birds and antiques at
the town hall, which he was granted. Some time later he sold his
antiquities to the provincial museum in 's Hertogenbosch; a few
Roman tiles remained, and these are the ones that Mr. Janssen van
Leiden saw here on site. Mr. Justen sold his collection of stuffed
birds to his native city of Venlo, and they were placed with the
remaining Roman tiles in a room of the building of the Higher Civic
School in that city, where they are still located today. If I
remember correctly, the tiles in question would have been found in
the vicinity of Venlo, namely in Baarlo, Grubbenvorst or elsewhere."
This
does not resolve the doubt about the origin of the Venlo tiles. For
science they still remain what in the field of heraldry is called
objects of inquiry.
In
Maastricht, Mr. Janssen visited the Roman objects that were found in
the Stokstraat in 1840 and described by Dr Leemans in his work
entitled Oudheden van Maastricht (1=9). He found it wrapped in
paper, stored in a cupboard at the town hall. He regretted that
these objects were not accessible to the public and spoke to Mayor
Nierstrass about the desirability of displaying these items openly
and having a lectern made for this purpose, which the Lord Mayor
declared himself willing to do.
After
elaborating on other antiquities of the city of Maastricht, the
reporter continues: “Among the antiquities from pre-Christian
times, present in Maastricht, but left unmentioned by those who have
written about Maastricht antiquities, are some objects that are in
the collection of Société des amis des arts et des
sciences are preserved. These are two Roman lamps, one scent
flask, one bronze mantle hook (fibula), two bone hair needles and
one (non-Roman) wedge of flint, the latter damaged and coming from a
cultivated area near the St. Pietersberg (2=10); also a coffin of
red sandstone, square in shape and Roman in origin, according to me.
This
is remarkable because of four round, niche-shaped arches, carved
from the inside into the walls, probably in imitation of the niches
of the Columbaria, in which the urns containing the bones and ashes
of the dead were usually placed. The place where this coffin was
found was not known, but at my request they would investigate it
(1=11).
I
found another hitherto unknown and very likely Roman monument in the
cave of the Church of Our Lady, a cave that, judging by the shape of
the columns, dates from the 11th century. It was a gray sandstone,
elongated square in shape and very well carved into the shape of an
altar, the height of ? inch. However, there was no trace of
inscription to be discovered, and it seemed to me that there had
never been an inscription on it, and was therefore probably
transferred as merchandise, to be provided with an inscription
later, when someone needed an altar or tombstone. There are more
examples of this from Roman times. This altar lay in a deserted
corner, against the wall, but deserved a better place, where it was
protected from loss or mutilation.”
After
this remark, Mr. Janssen proceeds to discuss two examples of
negligence that were committed around the time of his trip to
Maastricht. He gives an incorrect representation of the well-known
sale of the Romanesque relic cabinets of the St. Servatius Church,
which sale the writer puts at the expense of the church council of
Our Lady, and furthermore he initiates a campaign against tasteless
and inartificial repairs in the same Our Lady Church. “A few
years ago,” he says, “the council of this church
approved the beautiful Romanesque columns of the choir (which I
believe are made of sandstone and remains from the 11th century),
whose beautiful sculpture is no less fascinating than that of the
portal of St. Servaas Church, to have it painted in the manner of
red-colored marble! Similar mutilations will be difficult to prevent
if ecclesiastical councils or administrations continue to exhibit a
complete lack of taste and artistry. But it would be desirable that
in colleges of this nature there was at least always a member who
had some knowledge of or respect for ancient art, so that, if there
was a danger that artistic remains were overused or otherwise
damaged or removed, the competent authorities would immediately be
notified in order to prevent the danger. Perhaps a disposition of
the Ministers of Worship could have a favorable influence on this.
Whatever this may be, I felt obliged to respectfully propose to your
Excellency the means indicated for the future prevention of similar
crimes.”
From
Maastricht, Mr. Janssen left for Tongeren to use some classical
antiquities present in and near that city. We will not follow the
traveler on this journey, because objects of that nature, found
outside our duchy, do not immediately fall within our purview.
Notes
(1=1)
Mr. Janssen calls the products from the Stone Age “Gallo-Germanic
remains.” Since 1848, however, science has advanced rapidly
and there is no longer any mention of Gallo-Germanic objects from
the Stone Age.
(1=2)
The Catalog d'antiquités of the Guillon collection, published
in 1874, does not agree with Mr. Janssen. At No 79 the maker says:
“Hache toute polie, oblongue, belle, perforée d'un
petit trou, peut-être naturel, provenant de Thorn.” In
the flint there are indeed several small pockets or veins, filled
with lime dust, which, dissolved by the rainwater, form small holes.
The worker of the stone may therefore have taken advantage of the
natural state of his material, but such holes may also have been
created, wholly or partly, by drilling. On the mechanical drilling
of flint with flint cf. Dr WINKLER, Man for history, p. 233.
(1=3)
See Catalog des antiquités, No 198, where this arrowhead
appears as found in Putbroek near Echt, in the vicinity of Roermond.
Cf. about such arrowheads and about a pear-shaped bronze lance Dr
WINKLER p. 417.
(1=4)
The Catalog seems to have classified these Germanic objects from the
Iron Age among the antiquities of a later date. After all, at the
end of the section Poterie germaine p. 21 one finds it reads: “L'age
de fer, pour ce qui regarde le Limbourg avant la conquête de
Romains, n'a guère de représentants qui puissent se
produire.” The iron bowls, mentioned above,
probably find their place under No 838, der “objets en fer
douteux quant à l'époque”. It was found in
Heiblom near Roggel. I have not seen any iron bells or clappers in
the Catalogue.
(2=5)
We hope to discuss these objects at the same time as the assignment
ravages carried out by the late Mr. Janssen in Melenborg.
(3=6)
Catalog No 411 found in the Graatheide near Sittard.
(1=7)
Maybe No 414, but the Catalog notes this as coming from Heyen in
Limburg
(2=8)
Catalog Nos 421, 422, 423 and 424.
(1=9)
Leiden 1843, with atlas.
(2=10)
These objects are located at the town hall at the same time as those
from Stokstraat. We hope that as soon as a permanent location is
found to store our growing collections, these antiquities can also
be transferred to our provincial museum.
(1=11)
The sandstone coffin mentioned here comes from
Schinveld. It is mentioned in the Bulletin de l'academie royale de
Bruxelles, tome V, No 4 and in the Publ. etc. du Limbourg, II p.
232. The late Mr. Cudell wrote about this chest and about a few
other stone chests found at Limbricht, a treatise
which has not been printed. See Publ. etc. du Limb. VIII p. 302. The
Schinveldse chest was built in 1869 by Jhr. Victor de Stuers and
writer, found in Maastricht next to the gate of the royal atheneum,
under a pile of paving stones. She was taken to the Museum of our
Society, where she is now safe.
December
14, 1849 - In the municipality of Haelen, near Roermond,
there is a place
called Melenborg (perhaps a corruption of Menenborg, a castle of the
Menapiers), lying along the old Maas, and on the other side
adjoining the old Roman road that ran from Tongeren to Nijmegen.
This place, probably once a fortified Roman camp, has repeatedly
attracted the attention of antiquities enthusiasts. Last November,
Dr. Jansen, curator at the museum in Leiden, carried out excavations
on a fairly large scale, where they found: a denarius of Antoninus
Pius, several copper writing pens, pieces of earthenware with the
name of the manufacturer, and other rarities. Dr Jansen's research
into the local conditions has led him to determine the direction of
the old Roman road and its branches at Melenborg.
Last Monday, a farmer
unearthed an idol of Anubis, an Egyptian deity, in the same place,
in which Mercury was worshiped in the form of a dog; its veneration
was introduced into Rome in the time of the Emperors, as was that of
Isis and Senapis. This statue (currently the property of Mr.
Slangen, private receiver in Haelen), is chiseled from whitish,
fairly hard stone, and has 60 Dutch inches in height and 15 inches
in diameter; it lay 80 to 90 inches deep in the ground.
It is remarkable that
the height of Melenborg is safe from the highest Maas water, and
that the objects found, such as nails, bones, lime, freshly
plastered walls, etc., were all covered with a layer of sandy earth
of a Dutch cubits and more thickness, which suggests that built-up
land is gradually becoming higher.
January
1, 1850 [...] Numerous objects from the stone, bronze and
iron periods
have
emerged from his [=Limburg] soil in the past and later. The
scientific investigations to discover this date back to around 1825.
These were initiated by Mr CHARLES GUILLON, notary in Roermond. A
very well-to-do man, he built up a large collection of antiquities,
of all kinds and from different eras, which continued until his
death on November 10, 1873 was regularly supplemented. Later it was
dispersed through sale, but fortunately most objects from
prehistoric times have found a home in the Rijksmuseum in Leiden.
[...]
April
11, 1850 [...] From the excavations and research under the
supervision
of Dr. JANSSEN, on
behalf of the Government, in Melenberg, under the municipality of
Halen and Beugenem, in Limburg:
Some BUILDING
FRAGMENTS of cut stone, tiles of various shapes and HEAT TUBES of
baked earth, fragments of BOWLS, POTS, JARS and VASES of baked
earth, with and without manufacturer's marks; under those marks
CAJUS F, BASSUS F OR MASCULI (or MASCUI) etc.; fragments of glass
BOWLS and BOTTLES; bronze and iron TYPES and HAIR NEEDLES, BUCKLES,
MANTEL HOOKS, DRILLS, fragments of SWORDS, RINGS, HOOKS, etc.,
silver coin (denarius) of ANTONINUS PIUS and a bronze of the 2nd gr.
by FAUSTINA THE YOUNGER. [...]
April
11, 1850 MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES.
The uncertainty as to
whether or not a considerable series of monuments, sent here in the
latter part of the past year, should or could be regarded as a gift
to the Museum, and the desire to obtain a report on the increases
and changes which the collection had undergone, to make it as
complete as possible, were the main reasons that caused a delay in
drawing up and communicating our following report.
Anyone who has taken
note, even superficially and from the reports of newspapers and
magazines, of the important discoveries through which the field of
archeology has expanded so considerably in recent years, and who
considers how indispensable the fruits of these discoveries are to
filling in the numerous gaps in the history of civilization and art,
but also in the collections in which the building materials of that
history are preserved, - we will regret that the needs of the
National Museum increasingly exceed the support funds that can be
made available, exceed; that this unfavorable circumstance causes a
standstill and a decline due to that standstill, the adverse
consequences of which will no longer be able to be compensated
later, even if the future is favorable and there is more room for
resources. We had to make this remark in order to appreciate even
more the acquisitions that we have once again been able to thank
during the past year, both to the extraordinary compensation from
the government and to the patriotic and selfless cooperation of
several supporters of science. The normal social security funds do
not tolerate purchases at all, and are not even sufficient to
provide for the essential needs for exhibition and the intact
preservation of objects; and it is therefore only from the two
sources just mentioned that we were able to draw the means to
preserve for the National Museum objects whose loss or distribution
abroad would perhaps have been regretted by science, and through
which we had the opportunity to to make the collection excel above
many foreign institutions of this nature, to achieve significant
increases. [...]
AEGYPTIAN
ANTIQUITIES.
[...] Twenty-one
Coins in small bronze, including 8 of LICINIUS, 8 of CONSTANTINUS
DEN GROOTE, 2 of CONSTANTINUS DEN YOUNGER and one of JULIUS CRISPUS.
March
16, 1851 Etruscan, Greek and Roman antiquities.
The collection of
Roman objects was increased by the proceeds of the research and
excavations under the supervision of the curator Dr. Janssen,
undertaken on behalf of the country at Ravensbosch in the
municipality of Hulsberg and Houthem (Duchy of Limburg). Among those
objects, which were mostly hidden under or near the foundations or
ruins of a Roman temple and other buildings, along the Roman road
through the region of Maastricht op Kanten enclosed between the
Rhine and the Maas, we mention fragments of sharply worked hand
mills of Andernach tuff; the bronze fitting or decoration of a vase
or some other piece of household furniture, in the form of a human
mask; iron knives, a dagger or knife; and other less important
pieces in iron or bronze; pans of water pipes, and many fragments of
coarse and fine, white, yellow, red and black earthenware, such as
large vessels, jugs with two handles, pots, urns, dishes, tubs,
bowls, cups, etc.
June
15, 1853 BEEGDEN. Between Horn and Beegden, not far from
the old Roman
road that joined
Nijmegen to Tongeren, there is a deserted, sandy hill, surrounded by
small eminences. On June 15, 1853, a worker digging in the earth in
this place, to extract gravel, found at a depth of thirteen feet, a
red earthenware vase in the shape of a saucer. The
worker in his simplicity, took this pot and prepared food for the
young chicks in his farmyard. Three days later Mr. Teelen [Theelen?]
of Horn having learned of this singular discovery, bought the vase
and recommenced the excavation. After digging the earth for three
days, a sarcophagus in sandstone was found at the same
depth, having a length of 4 feet and a width and height of about a
foot and a half. It was covered with a flat lid but broken in
several places. Inside the sarcophagus were found ashes, some pieces
of bone, some pieces of iron, among which were arrowheads, a small
well-preserved gold ball and a finger-length stone resembling a
statuette. The inside of the coffin was square, the bottom flat and
blackened by damp ashes; on one side was managed a height in the
shape of a cushion. Around this stone coffin were arranged 32
terracotta vases of different shapes and colors and
superimposed symmetrically one on the other. These were the vases
that the Romans used in funeral ceremonies, jugs for libations,
vases for sacrifices and for food, urns to receive the burnt dust of
the deceased. These urns, six in number, contained ashes, the other
vases were empty. We especially notice a red
earthenware bowl decorated with a crocodile and nine peacocks.
1
January 1856 KESSENICH (Belgium). It is in the commune of
Kessenich
that we must look for
the location of the station of Catualium, mentioned in the Peutinger
tables. This village is very well known in the diplomas of the
Middle Ages; it enjoyed the rights of currency, free market and
tonlieu on the Maas. In 964 it was called Casallum, in 997 Caselli,
in 1096 Gesselin and in 1155 Cassenic. It is this last name that
prevailed. Kessenich has the ruins of a beautiful castle, which was
formerly on the banks of the Maas, but which, because of the
diversions of this river, has moved away from it. Between the castle
of Kessenich and the Roman road that runs along the left bank of the
Maas, a copper coin with the image of the emperor Marcus Aurelius
and a silver coin of Julian the Apostate were found in a peat bog
called het Vijgelbroeck around 1856.
1
January 1858 ECHT. While levelling the cemetery of Echt in
1858
a
sandstone sarcophagus was unearthed near the church
tower, containing, among other objects, a gold
coin with the image of a Roman emperor.
November
3, 1859 GEOLOGY, INDUSTRY AND COSTUMERY, ELUCIDATED BY AN
ANTIQUITIES
DISCOVERY AT MAINZ.
On
the 3rd of November, 1859, Prof. Nöggerath in Bonn, at the
meeting of the Lower Rhine Society for Natural Medicine and
Medicine, made a statement about the occurrence in the year 1857 in
Mainz, on the Thiermarkt, in a peat layer, at the depth of p. m. 30
feet, excavated Roman antiquities. He stated that the discovery was
also important from a geological point of view, while the director
of the Association for the Study of Rheinischer Geschichte und
Alterthümer, Dr. Jos. Wittmann, had shown that in the first
centuries of our era an arm of the Rhine flowed through the city of
Mainz, in whose swamp the above-mentioned peat layer had formed.
Dr.
Wittmann briefly reported on this discovery in his important
treatises entitled: Chronik der niedrigsten Wasserstände des
Rheines vom Jahre 70 nach Christus bis 1858, and Nachrichten über
die im Jahre 1857-1858 im Rheinbette von der Schweiz bis nach
Holland zu Tage kommen Alterthümer und Merkwürdigkeiten
etc., included in Th. II Part 1-2 of the Zeitschrift des Vereins z.
E. rhein. History and Altenthümer zu Mainz. The same scholar
had provided Prof. Nöggerath with an extensive manuscript on
this subject for use, from which the most important information was
communicated by Nöggerath at the aforementioned meeting. We
take over what has come to the attention of the public from that
announcement (Dr. Wittmann himself will soon reveal his handwriting)
because Dr. Wittmann and Lindenschmit told us this summer during a
visit to the Mainzer Museum brought the same reports verbally and
gave specimens of some of the remains found as a gift. In the
above-mentioned peat layer, a lot of leatherwork had been found,
most probably from a Roman shoemaker's shop, almost a cart full of
mostly used shoes and sandals, although very fragmentary, but among
which fourteen different types could still be recognized. This
invaluable find for the knowledge of Roman industry and costume will
soon be published by Lindenschmit, elucidated with plates. We
therefore only point out here that the stamp of the manufacturer or
shoemaker has been stamped on some fragments of the leather, as I
could still read the names very clearly: L. VALE (i.e. Lucii
VALERii) C. VENED (i.e. Caji VENEDi) and MONA.
Furthermore,
several remains of Roman clothing were found, made of very fine wool
and excellent fabric, as well as various small Roman objects and
coins. The leather and woolen goods had been relatively well
preserved, but the wool had taken on a dark color. The coins were
minted no later than 137 AD, from which it can be concluded with
probability that all these objects ended up in the swamp around that
time. The common peat plants could be used well from the peat; in
particular: birch bark, hazelnuts, water lentils (Lemna major), and
of the moss species: Hypnum splendens (Hedwig), Hypnum tameriscinum
(Hedw.), Hypnum latescens (Hedw.), Hypnum triquetrum (Linn.),
Anomodon curtipendulum (Hoockeri et Taylori), Byrumbinum
(Schreberi), Mnium roseum (Hedw.), Mnium undulatum (Hedw.).
Well-preserved grape vines were also found, evidence of the early
wine culture on the Rhine. These are now the oldest grape vines
known from the Rhine region; finally: feathers of fowl and pigeons.
From
some specimen of this find, which was given as a gift by the
reporter in Mainz from Dr. Wittmann and Lindenschmit, he donated the
moss species to the State Herbarium, the feathers to the State
Museum of Natural History, and the leatherwork to the Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden. The leather, which had hardened and shriveled
due to excessive drying, has been restored to its original softness
by the care of an experienced Leiden tanner, Mr. Visser.
September
15, 1860 Highly remarkable Roman remains FOUND IN DANISH
PEAT Bogs.
"You
have longed to hear from time to time about the discoveries in the
peat bogs at Sönder-Brarup, which I have already mentioned
several times before. During the months of July and August, several
important objects were found there; but the most important find is a
round bronze plate, the size of a table plate, with a wide edge,
decorated by raised sculptures in gold and silver; the sculptures
alternately depict birds and dolphins and some Roman warriors in a
resting position, with helmets on the head, holding a lance in one
hand, while the other hand rests on a shield. Within that edge are
several medusa heads, with helmets on the head, all surrounding one
medusa head in the middle of Roman origin; but it is most noteworthy
that in some places of that plate small silver plates have been
attached, which are decorated with animal images of the most
monstrous shape, of the same kind as are found on the gold
bracteates struck in Scandinavia, and on two silver cups found at
Himlingori, in Zealand. It is evident that strangers have added
these ornaments of their own making to this plate, which was
formerly adorned only with Roman art. Remains of three surcoats,
made of rings, have also been found; two being rings of bronze, the
third of iron. Subsequently, the following were found en masse:
navels of shields, points of lances, arrows and remains of
broadswords, all made of iron, as well as remains of sword
scabbards. Everything points to a fierce battle. Furthermore, a
complete bridle of a riding horse and a snaffle (bridon) were found,
with buckles, rings and jewelry made of bronze; the long leathern
wraths were completely preserved. Two silver coins of Commodus and
Nero. The (wooden) handles of the lances and throwing bolts are
mostly broken, but they were fortunate to find two that were
completely preserved; one of 9 feet (Danish) length, the other a
little longer. A stem of 2 feet 6 dm belonged to a javelin. The
shields are made of wood and have an edge, only the middle part is
made of bronze. But one shield is of maple wood, with an oak edge,
which is attached to it with small pieces of bronze, in the shape of
an S. This is the first time that shields made of different wood
have been found. A leather sandal and some pieces of linen with
edges were also found. There is one hollow under the glass beads,
and this must therefore have been made with a glass blowing pipe;
the other beads are closed. Not a day passes that one does not find
pottery of various shapes, but usually broken. In the meantime, six
pots have been found that were complete. Four pieces of gold have
been found, in the shape of rings, which were used as currency (ring
money). It still remains a mystery how all these objects ended up in
the peatlands, formerly lakes. Some shields and lance handles have
also been found under a thick layer of beams and undergrowth (the
same as previously in Eunen). These are the discoveries of 1860; I
have already told you about that of last year*). Two or three years
ago I have communicated to you our archaeological investigations. In
the absence of an overview of this in French, a Swiss man who spent
the winter of 1859 here has published geological-aroheological
studies in which he gives an account of everything that has been
discovered in our country, of our system, etc. 2).”
Taarbaek,
near Copenhagen,
August
22, 1860.
Dr.
BURMAN BECKER.
(Excerpt
from a letter to Mr. EYCK VAN ZUILICHEM).
1)
We also hope to be able to take a place in this soon.
2)
This is Prof. Morlot in Lausanne, the editor of whose important work
we have already mentioned in No. 20, dated May 21, of this weekly
magazine, and about which the Revue archéologique of the 1st
Aug. has begun to give a very encouraging report. We will return to
this subject as soon as possible, space permitting. Ed.
January
1, 1861 The above opinion of Mr. Soret is confirmed by a
coin
find
made recently near Bitburg, Trier district. A farmer found a small,
genuine Roman jug covered with a slate stone in his field, which
contained 402 small ores, beginning with Maximinus Daza and ending
with Constantinus II. My esteemed friend, Professor Namur, acquired
the find for the local cabinet; he has described it in more detail
and the relevant article will appear in the next issue of the Revue
de la numismatique belge. I was allowed to inspect the coin find; it
contained many rarities, for example the inscription of Constantine
the Great: Soli invicto comiti and the emperor facing left with
helmet, armor and lance; then several coins with the mint place MSL,
which Sabatier also gives and which I interpret as Moneta Sacra
Londinensis; the inscriptions claritas reipublice in various
varieties were also not uncommon with Crispus and Constantinus II. I
believe, however, that the find goes back far beyond the year 326;
Constantine II was only 10 years old in that year, but he had
already won numerous victories with his stepbrother Crispus, who
died in that year. Constantine only wears the laurel crown on his
very youthful, almost childlike head in two examples; both coins
were struck in his birthplace of Arles; he probably received the
right to wear the laurel wreath during Crispus's lifetime. However,
the youngest coin in this find certainly does not go back to the
year 337, the year in which Constantine the Great died and
Constantine II gave up the nickname junior. [...]
March
31, 1864 Several acquisitions were made for the
FATHERLANDS antiquities.
Together
with the above-mentioned Roman objects from the estate of the late
Mr. S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA, some were also taken over from the former
inhabitants of our Fatherland: a very beautifully polished flint
AXE, 12 dm [inch} long; a roughly worked BAL of trachyte, 4 dm in
section; an URNE of baked earth, filled with burnt human bones, high
19 dm; another URNE, 18 dm high, with the fragments of a bronze HAIR
NEEDLE found in it; another three URNS with burnt bones and remains
of bronze RINGS, etc.; the urns of 10, 15.5 and 16 inches height;
two BOWLS, 9 and 7 dm; 4 POTS of different shapes, 6.5 to 9.5 dm
high; a cup-shaped BARREL, 5.5 dm high, and some fragments of pots.
All these objects, with the possible exception of the WEDGE, were
excavated in 1837 from the old cemetery in Deurne in Noord Brabant.
Together with the pieces found at the same location and donated to
the Museum in 1840 and 1841 by the late Mr. P. O. G. GUYOT, they now
form a considerable whole. [...]
Some
MEDIEVAL AND LATER OBJECTS, originating from the excavations for the
camp in Nijmegen, a few trachyte MORTARS with PESTLES from the area
around Deurne and belonging to the estate of the late Mr. S. H. VAN
DER NOORDAA, which has already been mentioned several times; [...]
1
January 1865 Antique stones in Horn
HORNE-HEEL.
In a manuscript in the library of the University of Liege, numbered
188 and written around the middle of the 17th century by Canon Henri
van den Berch, King of Arms of the country of Liege, we find a
curious note on antiques that existed in Hornes and Heel, and which
today are for the most part in the office of Mr. Guillon.
On
page 14 of this manuscript we find three drawings of antique
stones. The first “which had, says van den Berch, a
foot and three quarters, a half-pound less, in height, and a foot
and four inches in length” has the following inscription:
MARTI
HALAMARE
SACRVM
T.
DOMIT. VINDEX
O.
LEG. XX. V. V
V.
S. L. M.
This
inscription was published, with slight differences, by Knippenbergh,
Heylen, Schayes, Wolters, etc. Mr. Guillon, the notary, reads it as
follows:
MARTI
HALAMARDO
SACRUM
T(itus)
LEG(ionis) XX V(aleriae) V(ictricis)
V(ota)
S(olvit) L(ubens) M(erito).
The
second stone, whose length was “two feet, three
quarters and a half pounds and the width three quarters of a foot in
a pound” does not have an inscription, but it shows a vase,
above which is a kind of stretched chain.
The
third, whose dimensions van den Berch does not indicate, has
the inscription:
MERCWRI
INGENVS
YFHIFI.
We
believe we are doing the Archaeologists a favor by transcribing here
the note that van den Berche placed below the first two drawings. “I
pulled - he says - these two antique stones out of the originals
which are masoned in the wall of the parish church of Horne, capital
of the county, appenage of the county of Looz, on April 9, first of
the Easter holidays 1640, and the pastor of the place told me at the
time that he had several medals of the Roman emperors found at the
said Horn.” van den Berch then describes several Roman
antiquities and medals found at Heel, a village located a
league from Horn. He adds: “The most admirable is from the
same place, that the village of Heel is called after Helena (1);
what is known by tradition and is all the more credible since a
statue of very fine white marble was found in the
ground that was dug up, and is still, this April 15, 1640, lying on
the real road, but very broken, because one can see the thighs from
above to the ankles of the same piece of the height of six feet and
a half; which is of a lady, to be veiled by her body like the Roman
ladies; and they hold for certain that the rest of the statue is
still in the ground. In another place he says that the priest had
promised him a coin on which was written the word HEEL.
(1)
The vicus Helena or Hedena does not appear to be the village of Heel
as van den Berch might have us believe. Father Wastelain, places
this vicus in Hesdin.
October
25, 1865 * Maastricht, October 22. For some time now,
excavations
have been continued under the
municipality of Houthem (1 hour from here), to locate the remains of
a Roman villa that once existed there. They have succeeded to such
an extent that the division and layout of the building can be
followed regularly. Many old roof tiles can be found; this day the
cellar was discovered and they flatter themselves that they will
also find the bathing facilities. A coin of Emperor Constantine,
found on this site, sufficiently proves that this villa already
existed during his reign.
December
31, 1865 In addition, we find some details not mentioned
elsewhere
in
the book North Brabant Antiquities [facsimile
of 2012]:
With
about thirty enthusiasts from his company he went to the heath in
Deurne and soon became convinced that those eminences were burial
mounds. These are unequal in height, some being only 60 inches
[duim], and others 7.60
cubits [elsewhere 1.6 cubits is
mentioned] high on a greater or smaller circumference
according to the height. About a hundred urns will have been found,
ranging from large tea cups to 100 pound heavy. […]
In
the spring of 1840 I was with the late Dr. Niermeijer, later a
professor in Leiden, visited this heath and found the hills still as
they were when the treasure hunting stopped! [...]
In
the Rijksmuseum in Leiden, thirteen urns and side pots, by Jhr. Mr.
H. de Grez in 's Hertogenbosch, four urns and side pots (1) and two
urns and a side pot preserved in the cabinet of the North Brabant
Society.
(1)
While printing this message, I was obliged to present Mr. de Grez
with those well-preserved urns as a gift to our cabinet.
January
27, 1870 In the Courrier de la Meuse is informed that when
the old
church in
Kessel was demolished, a slightly
damaged altar of Roman origin
was found under the main altar. This altar is square, high 90 and
wide 55 cm, made of tuff stone, has a pedestal and a frieze, and is
decorated with three bas-reliefs. The altar appears to have been
dedicated to Minerva, Juno and Hercules. At least on the plane on
the left one thinks one recognizes the image of Minerva; however,
the head is missing, as are the statues of the two other
bas-reliefs. A woman is depicted on the right side, next to a
peacock; this should represent Juno. The front is decorated with a
figure, which is very damaged. Because of the large shapes of the
statue and the lion's skin, people thought they saw Hercules in it.
— The back of the outer wears neither jewelry nor adornment. -
Although one may accept the mention of this find with some
reservations, it is remarkable enough to draw attention to it. The
Courrier de la Meuse points out on this occasion that, when old
churches are demolished, and especially under the main altars,
remains from the pagan period, such as statues, votive stones and
altars, are often discovered, and indeed that such antiquities are
often found in the walls of churches are cemented, as in the St.
Servaes Church in Maastricht - and who does not think of the votive
stone of Dodewaard?
February
13, 1870 A few weeks ago the newspapers delivered a short
report
about
archaeological discoveries in the vicinity of a village Heulen and
near the hamlet of Aalbeek in the Duchy of Limburg. Heulen probably
meant Herlen or Heerlen, and the same was meant by the excavation of
the foundations of a Roman house near Aalbeek, where, under the
leadership of the diligent and learned chairman of the Limburg
historical and archaeological society, Mr. J. Habets, the
foundations of a Roman villa were brought to light in the
Ravensbosch in the Land-vsn-Valkenburg, between Houthem and
Schimmert. The building was destroyed by fire, was 32 m long and 14
wide; two coins were found in it, dating from the early Roman
Empire. In a cellar a beautiful iron shovel with a long handle was
found, 90 cm long in total. Some bases of bowls or dishes of fine
red earthenware bore the stamped factory mark OF. CARAN. Among the
other objects, a large bowl or basin in a grey soft stone, very
cleanly chiselled, of round shape, 10 cm high and 27 in diameter,
should be mentioned. The excavations, although on Dutch soil, were
carried out on behalf of the Belgian government; the description of
the results they yielded will probably be published in the Bulletins
des Commissions royales d'art et d'archeologie. A few years ago, in
1850, excavations had already been undertaken on behalf of the Dutch
government by the late curator Dr. Janssen in the same Ravensbosch,
which had also led to some not unimportant discoveries. However, the
further continuation of the investigations was postponed and did not
take place later, because they were undertaken by the councillor
Sehuermans in Liège on behalf of the Belgian government and
crowned with very remarkable results. They had led to the discovery
of a Belgian-Roman villa in the so-called Rondenbosch, and were
depicted and described by Mr. J. Habets, in a treatise: Exploration
d'une villa Belgo-Romaine au Rondenhosch au Houthem-saint-Gerlach,
printed in the Vth volume of the Publications
de la Société historique et archéologique dans
le Duché de Limbourg. (Leidsche
Ct.)
February
19, 1870 Roman altar with restored display in Kessel
[...]
from the mayor of Kessel in Limburg, reports on a Roman altar with
restored display in the church of the same name.
DISCOVERY
OF A ROMAN ALTAR in Kessel near Roermond.
Non
sibi res se submittere rebus. TACITUS.
While
demolishing the parish church of Kessel in December 1869 to build a
new one in its place, an old pagan altar was discovered under the
main altar of the choir. [...]
January
1, 1871 DISCOVERY OF A ROMAN ALTAR in Kessel near
Roermond.
[p.
189-199]
Non
sibi res sed se submittere rebus.
TACITUS.
When
the parish church of Kessel was being demolished around December
1869 to build a new one in its place, an old pagan altar was
discovered under the main altar of the choir.
The
church of Kessel dedicated to the mystery of the Nativity of the
Blessed Virgin was a Gothic construction made of tuff stones from
the surroundings of Maastricht; the location of the village on the
banks of the Maas undoubtedly greatly facilitated the transport of
these materials. It dated from the year 1460 (1). However, the
foundations raised in rough stones seemed to indicate constructions
that had preceded the Gothic church.
Unfortunately,
at the time of our visit to Kessel, everything had been demolished
and removed; it was therefore impossible for us to have any certain
clue as to the form of these primitive substructures. Only we were
able to observe in the large blocks taken out of the earth,
fragments of Roman tiles which blocked the openings left by the
irregularity of the stones of the opus incertum.
The
Roman altar itself had been transported to the garden of the rectory
and bore numerous marks of this poorly executed move. Before
describing this curious monument let us say a word about pagan
altars in general.
The
altars of paganism (ara, altare) adopted different forms: there were
square ones, long square ones, others round, some with several
angles. They were made of stone, marble or more rarely bronze. In
the temple of Babylon there was an altar, of which Herodotus speaks,
made of gold on which only milk animals were sacrificed. According
to Pausanias there were also altars of wood and others built of
bricks or tuff.
There
was no fixed measure for the height of the altars. There are some
that do not even reach the knee, others go up to the waist of the
people who sacrifice. There are, however, some much higher,
especially among the round ones, so that one sometimes has
difficulty in distinguishing them from a simple column.
These
differences in elevation were observed according to Vitruvius in
sacrifices: the highest altars were for Jupiter and the celestial
gods, and the lowest for Vesta, the Earth and the Sea. But this
distinction was not in general use.
On
solemn days, these altars were decorated with garlands, giving to
each god the leaves and branches of the favorite tree that was
consecrated to him. At the altar of Jupiter beech leaves were used,
at that of Apollo the laurel, at that of Minerva the olive tree, at
the altar of Venus the myrtle, at that of Hercules the poplar, at
that of Bachus the ivy, at that of Pan pine leaves. These garlands
of leaves were called verbenae;
they are generally distinguished on the altars that adorn medals,
coins and ancient marbles. Virgil calls these crowns, necklaces, in
the following verse: Saepe
deum nexis ornatae torquibus arae.
Similarly, temples and victims for sacrifice were decorated with
flowers and branches.
It
was before the altars that treaties and oaths were made, to make
them more inviolable. The altars were touched while swearing, says
Cicero, to make the oaths more solemn. It was before the altars that
weddings were celebrated and the closest friendships were formed.
Examples of this are frequent in authors. Finally, altars have been
places of asyle in paganism as in Christianity.
They
were generally placed in temples, in front of the statues of the
divinities in whose honor they were erected. This was done, says
Vitruvius, so that those who prayed and sacrificed should always
have the divinities before their eyes. The altars were in the middle
of the temple, or against the walls.
There
were also altars outside the temples. In Rome there were many in the
streets and in the public squares. It was in a public square in
Athens that St. Paul encountered the altar dedicated to the unknown
God (1). Altars were also erected in the lucus
or sacred woods in front of the statue of the divinity to which the
wood was dedicated, near the door of the temples and in the
impluvium
or inner courtyard of private houses. It was on the altars of this
last class that the family sacrificed to the Penates.
The
top of the altars was regularly provided with a cavity for lighting
the fire, or for placing the fruits the offerings or the victims. In
the altars for sacrifices and libations we also notice an orifice
for the discharge of liquids. Several like that of Kessel were
decorated with sculptures representing the gods in whose honor, or
in whose temples they were erected.
The
ara
of Kessel is a monument mutilated towards the top and whose cavity
has disappeared. But judging by its restricted proportions and the
lack of an orifice for the discharge of liquids it seems to us to
have served to receive offerings of fruits, or to burn incense; the
table is too small to make the slightest bloody immolation there.
The
altar in question forms a square column 0.90 high and 0.55 m wide.
It was built in white and fine sandstone and is decorated with a
base, a shaft and three bas-reliefs. The monument was erected with
the intention of making three powerful Olympian divinities
propitiated: Minerva, Juno and Hercules.
The
artistic execution of the altar is so neat that we have no
hesitation in placing its making towards the High Empire, in the
first or second century of the Christian era. This beautiful
execution as well as the exotic stoneware from which it was made
suggest that it was not sculpted in the country. Perhaps it came
from the south, by the Maas or the consular road from Paris to
Tongeren and Nijmegen. The sculptures that decorate it are divided
in the following order.
In
the frame of the left face is represented Minerva, armed with a
lance whose top end is no longer visible; with her left hand she
rests her shield on a column. The goddess is adorned with a long
dress down to her feet and covered with a cloak. The drapery is very
neat; unfortunately the head is missing from this statue as from the
two others that decorate the altar.
Our
bas-relief represents the goddess emerging fully armed from the sick
brain of Jupiter:
De
capitis fertur sine matre paterni
Vertice
cum polype prosiliisse suo. Ovid.
Fast. 3, 841.
She
owes to this extraordinary origin to have been honored both as a
goddess of war and wisdom. Caesar and Tacitus placed Pallas or
Minerva among the divinities worshiped by the Gauls and the Germans
(See fig. 2 litt. A.)
On
the second side is represented the queen of Olympus, Juno. She is a
matron who has [?] majesty. She holds in her right hand a full
patera
for sacrificing on an altar nearby, where an offering is burning.
The symbolic bird of Juno, the peacock, is next to her head. Her
costume, although trailing and ample, is more modest than that of
the virginal Minerva.
Juno
was the sister and wife of Jupiter, as she herself states in this
verse of Virgil:
Ast
ego, quae divum incedo regina, Jovisque
Et
soror et conjux. Aeneid.
I, 50.
She
was also the mother of Mars and Vulcan. She is represented as the
queen of heaven, with a scepter in her hand. Her cult was widespread
in Gaul (See fig. 2. litt. B.)
The
most mutilated figure is that of Hercules, which adorns the front
face. The son of Jupiter and Alcmene is recognizable only by the
beautiful and strong size of his naked limbs and by the skin of the
Nemean lion that he holds in his left arm. It is known that this
skin made Hercules invulnerable. The author of the altar of Kessel
represented in his work the rest of the god after the fight.
The
Germans boasted, says Tacitus (1), that Hercules came to their
country in the time of their fathers. They sang his praises as they
went into battle, as the most valiant warrior who had ever been on
earth. To Mars and Hercules they sacrificed chosen animals in
preference (1). (See fig. 2 lit. C.)
The
fourth face of the altar is without ornaments and without
inscriptions; it was probably intended to be placed against the
walls of the temple or against any wall.
The
idea of the person who erected this monument is rather
bizarre. We see the jealous Juno next to Minerva, her rival at the
banquet in Paris, with Hercules to whom the same Juno had sworn
immortal hatred. Did the author of the monument perhaps want to
please both sides by placing opposing divinities on the same altar?
In any case, he wanted to honor the principle of physical strength;
which makes us believe that the dedicator was a legionary.
However,
it is not rare to find the figure of these divinities represented
side by side on the same monument and their names formulated in the
same dedication.
Without
leaving the charming banks of the Rhine and the Maas, we cite in
support of our thesis the following altars and votive stones. At
Voorburg in Holland a dedication was found to Juno the queen, to
Minerva and to the Genius of the place; at Kleve one to Jupiter,
Juno and Minerva; near Cologne to Juno, Hercules and Silvanus; at
Andernach, to Juno, Mars and Hercules, at Kreutznach to Jupiter,
Juno, Mercury, Hercules and Minerva, and another to Hercules, Juno
and Fortune; at Mainz one to Juno the queen, Fortune and Minerva.
(2). We even see on one of these dedications represented at the same
time the three divinities of Kessel; it is the first of Kreutznach,
near Bonn.
In
the substructures of a Roman fortress located near the same city, a
Roman altar was discovered in 1863, 0.34 m high and 0.15 m, whose
four faces were decorated in the following manner: first face, Juno
standing, holding the scepter in her left hand and a patera in her
right, at her feet the peacock. Second face, Minerva turned slightly
to the side was decorated with a helmet and a long, trailing tunic,
in her left hand she held the lance and in her right the shield.
Third face, Mercury adorned with the chlamis,
(the petasus was no longer recognizable), held the caduceus
on his left arm and in his right hand the purse. Fourth face,
Hercules looking to the left held in his right hand the club whose
big end rested on the ground in front of his right foot, with his
left he supported the lion's remains (1). As we can see, there is no
lack of examples and analogies to prove that the united cult of
Juno, Minerva and Hercules was quite fashionable in our countries.
Another
observation that we have to make on the altar of Kessel concerns the
place of the find.
In
Germany, France and Belgium we frequently find hidden, either under
the foundations, or in the wall, or in the church itself, especially
under the altars, mutilated statues, arae,
cippus,
votive stones or other objects of the pagan cult of our fathers. The
same phenomenon can be seen in our surroundings.
This
is how the torso of a god Mars was discovered about ten years ago
under the foundations of the old church of St. Martin in Wyck, and
three votive stones in the walls of that of Horne near Roermond. A
fragment of a pagan bas-relief can still be seen today in the
eastern façade of the church of St. Servatius in Maastricht,
and in Guichoven, in the tower, a head of a divinity.
In
the high altar of the church of Goyer (Jeuck) near St. Truiden,
there used to be four inscriptions on marble stone relating to ex
votos in honour of Hercules (1). Finally, in Nieukerk near Venlo, a
discovery similar to that of Kessel took place in 1865. An old Roman
altar was found walled up in the main altar of the church containing
two superimposed inscriptions, one pagan, the other Christian (2).
Here
is what we think of this phenomenon.
Our
fathers in the faith will have preserved these objects in their
churches even after the old cult was abolished; if they hid them
under the altar, it was to mark the triumph of Christianity over
paganism; if they left them before the eyes of the faithful, they
took care to mutilate the paintings and statues so that no one,
deceived by appearances, would pay religious homage to a profane
object.
The
village of Kessel located on the course of the Maas and the military
road from Tongeren to Nijmegen, was obviously known and inhabited by
the Romans; its name indicates a Latin origin. We even suppose that
it was one of the many fortified crossings of the Maas of which the
historians of antiquity speak.
Kessel,
although located in an entirely flat region free of hills, itself
forms an eminence which is sheltered from the floods of the Maas.
Next to the church is the ancient castle of that name placed on a
kind of conical mountain having a height of about thirty meters; it
is a mound of earth which has all the appearances of being
artificial. One finds there by digging the ground walls in the form
of terraces of four to five feet in height and whose sole purpose is
to support the light and friable earth of which the cone is
composed.
The
castle itself is a precious example of military fortification of the
Middle Ages. As it originally existed it was round; it would still
be so if one removed two wings or square towers, located to the east
and which have all the character of a less ancient architecture.
Kessel
was in the Middle Ages an important lordship comprising eighteen
villages and extending between the country of Cuyk, the Maas the
country of Horne and the great marsh of Peel. The lords bore the
title of count. The first Count of Kessel mentioned in history is
Henry, who, with the Archbishop of Cologne, the Duke of Limburg,
Henry Count of Zutphen and other lords, allied against Emperor Henry
V in 1114, and who was crushed by the horses of his own troop in the
battle of Andernach. We note that the chief towns of duchies, counts
or lordships often succeeded military establishments of the High and
Late Empire.
In
the village of Kessel, Roman antiquities have been encountered on
several occasions. We have reported these discoveries elsewhere (1).
Let us add here that Roman medals are frequently found in a square
field surrounded by pits, called De Keeskamer, and that poteries in
a kind of tumulus called the Konynsbergh (2).
Several
modern authors believe that Ptolemy and Ammianus Marcellinus
mentioned Kessel in their books.
Indeed,
the geographer Ptolemy, who flourished in Alexandria around the
second century of the Christian era, after having spoken of the
Morini and the Ambiani of Belgium, mentions the Menapii and their
city, castellum, which he places near the Maas. If this passage
actually applies to Kessel, the word polis (city) used by the author
must be understood in a fairly broad sense, because the castle of
Kessel could only have been surrounded in Roman times by a few rare
houses (1). The ancient remains there are too few to think of the
location of a real city. The current center of the commune which
surrounds the church and the castle, has only 370 inhabitants.
Let
us move on to the second mention. The Roman historian, Ammianus
Marcellinus, recounts, during the reign of Julian the apostate,
around the year 357, the memorable siege of a stronghold situated on
the banks of the Maas, and which several modern historians, such as
Knippenbergh, Slichtenhorst, d'Anville, Wolters, etc. believe to be
the town of Kessel on the Maas. But we think that they are wrong and
that they have been misled by the word Castellum which is found in
some inaccurate editions of Ammianus and which can be taken equally
as a proper name and as a generic name. From the author's text it is
clear that these are two fortresses and that the route followed by
General Severus was not that of Kessel, but that of Juliers and
Tongeren towards Reims. Now on this route we encounter the double
fortress of Maastricht, built on the two ends of the bridge over the
Maas. It was a strategically important point, where the hitherto
somewhat obscure account of Ammien Mercellin (2) is verified to the
letter. Moreover, we will speak more at length about this siege in
our notes on the discoveries of antiquities made at Maastricht.
If
therefore the testimony of ancient authors concerning Kessel remains
doubtful, if its ancient castle no longer presents any Roman
character, the antiquities discovered there, and especially the
altar that we have just described, sufficiently attribute to it an
existence sixteen centuries old. Our ara
is a monumental souvenir that makes us rightly suppose that this
village had its pagan temple before having its Catholic church, its
altar to Juno, Minerva and Hercules before having its altar to the
true God of heaven. One may have succeeded the other on the same
corner of land.
It
would therefore be very regrettable if the altar of Kessel,
carefully preserved by our ancestors, were to be lost in a private
collection or in a museum. These monuments have no real value except
on the very spot where they were originally erected. Remove them
from there and you will have only an object of archaeological
curiosity.
We
therefore express the wish that Mr. Cuypers, the skilled architect
of the new church of Kessel, will have this curious memory of
paganism framed in the exterior wall of the church, in a buttress
for example, and add a commemorative inscription, recalling the
place and date of the find. This is the custom adopted for these
sorts of things in France, by the Imperial Commission of Monuments.
JOS.
HABETS.
(1)
Anno MCCCC ende LX doe waert die Kyrck van Kessel gelymert, inde doe
waeren kyrckmeister Alaert van Ghoer, Geurt van Kessel geheyten
Roffart, Sybrecht Schoer ende Jacob van den Bergh. Archives of the
church in Kessel.
(1)
Acta Apost. XVII, 23. (1) De Moribus Germ. 3. (1) De Moribus Germ.
9. (2) BRAMBACH, Corpus inscription. rhen. passim.
(1)
Jahrbücher von Bonn, Volumes XLVII and XLVIII, p. 92. (1)
SCHUERMANS Roman inscriptions concerning Belgium p. 33. (2) BUYX,
Auffindung eines römischen Votivaltars in der Kirche zu
Nieukerk, Gelre 1865 in 12°.
(1)
Public. etc. of Limb. volume II p. 247. (2) H. W. H. VAN HAEFF
Handwritten notice on Kessel.
(1)
Here is the passage Ptolemy II, cap. 9, according to the Latin
edition of Leiden of 1618: “Post Mosam fluvium Menapii et
civitas eorum castellum.” (2) See LEEMANS Rom. oudheden te
Maastricht p. 17.
1
January 1871 Discoveries of antiquities in the Duchy of
Limburg
HERTEN.
This village formed in 963 a possession of the Duchess Gerberge,
wife of Louis d’outre-mer, King of France and was called
Hertra. It was given by her, with the royal palace of Meerssen, to
the abbey of St-Dénis in Reims. In the hamlet of Meerhem,
dependent on this village, not far from the Maas, there is a large
tower, which in the Middle Ages was part of the residence of the
lords of Meerhem, and which currently exists in a state of ruin. It
was in the remains of this monument of ancient architecture that Mr.
Wolters believed he had found the vestiges of a Roman establishment.
“This tower,” he said, “of square shape, was 14
meters 50 centimeters high; the thickness of the walls, measured on
fragments that remain, was 3 meters 65 centimeters. We no longer
have exact data on the height of this construction, the upper parts
having been in a state of ruin for more than a century.
The
stone of which the masonry of this tower is composed is a rubble of
all sorts of dimensions, interspersed with horizontal chains of a
more or less dressed stone and which seems of an ochre nature;
because by pulverizing it and soaking it in water, its lye provides
a dark, warm color drawing on brown ochre. The mortar seems to have
been a type of concrete; it is interspersed with small pebbles or
gravel.
A
short distance from this ruin, in a communal meadow, is a tumulus
rising 7 meters 50 centimeters above the uniform level of the
surrounding land; it describes [...]
April
14, 1872 [...] During the course of this century, various
sarcophagi
made of sandstone have been unearthed in our diocese; thus in 1817
two at Limbricht, later one at Schinveld, in 1853 another still
between Horn and Beegden, not far from the old Roman road. “One
of the coffins at Limbricht is not described. The other was closed
by a large stone lid and contained, besides some bones, a cinerary
urn, a metal lachrymatory, a lamp and an ornament in silver cloth.
The coffin was surrounded by small glass vials, tied in pairs with
copper or iron wire. All this find was transported to Cologne, where
it is now on display in the Wallraf Museum. The sarcophagus at
Schinveld was surrounded by Roman pottery. That at Beegden, having a
length of four feet, a width and a height of about a foot and a
half, was covered with a flat lid, but broken in several places.
[...]
October
16, 1872 Urns, between Merselo and Overloon
Venray,
October 14. Recently some gentlemen went to the heath between this
place and the villages of Merselo and Overloon, with the aim of
conducting scientific excavations. This first experiment was crowned
with a favorable result, as four urns had already been found in a
short time. This heath (the cemetery of the Marezaten?) can, when
examined by experts, be an important contribution to the history of
Limburg's earliest inhabitants.
April
3, 1875 The Medusa head of Blariacum.
That
is the title of a speech by Mr. GAEDECHENS, professor in Jena, on
December 9, held recently in Bonn on the occasion of the birthday of
the founder of art history, Winckelmann, which was published as a
brochure by the Association of Friends of Antiquity in Rhineland.
The extensiveness of that scientific argument prevents us from
including it in its entirety and we only provide, by way of extract,
the description of the remarkable piece itself, of which Mr J.G.
Lienders is the fortunate owner here and for whom important sums
have already been offered.
...
While important discoveries of ancient objects have been made
several times in various places in the municipality of Maasbree,
including in September 1830 in Baarlo, opposite the church, where an
urn was found containing hundreds of gold and silver coins, most of
which were in the hands of Mr. L. Wolters, banker in Venlo, some
through the intervention of the Rev. Mr Fransen, in Ittervoort,
entered the Belgian state collection - the soil of Blerick was
considered barren in this respect for a long time, until in 1864 a
bronze statue of Ceres came to light, which is now the property of
Mr Fransen. Hubert du Guasco in Valkenburg, stood out because of her
excellent work, but especially because of her white and blue enamel
on the surface and on the corn ornament on the head. Of more
importance, however, was the discovery towards the end of the year
1872, at the deepening of a small stream near Blerick.
A
worker found, at a depth of 9-10 feet, among other objects, the
above-mentioned shield, which, except for some minor deteriorations
at the extreme edge, is extremely well preserved. It has a diameter
of 26 cm and is made of bronze, covered on the outside and inside in
the fire with a strong layer of gold, which has remained completely
pure and spotless. A rich image decoration, entirely executed in
hammered work, covers the plain. A dense wreath of oak leaves runs
along the edge, which sheds very small acorns on both sides. In the
bow that ties the wreath together at the bottom, one will recognize
a poppy head at first glance. Continuing chains of small round
grooves, similar to a string of pearls, wind through the wreath as
further adornment.
In
the center of the shield surface is a round expansion, 7 cm high and
0.11 wide, on which the very excellent and carefully decorated head
of the Gorgon, 0.8 wide, is high and relief. The eyes are wide open,
the apples are deeply extracted, but they show no trace of being
filled with silver or precious stones. The nostrils stand out
sharply from the cheek, the corners of the mouth are very deep, no
less the side of the lower lip under the nose. From the rich hair
two wings emerge from the forehead, under which the heads of two
snakes can be seen, whose bodies run invisibly under the hair on
either side and wind themselves in a loose snare under the chin. A
third snake's head can be seen just in the middle of the Gorgo's
forehead, the scaly body dwelling for a moment on a bald spot on the
skull, before soon disappearing completely. The artist only needed
the head to create an ornament in connection with the two other
dragon heads, which is similar to the teeth of a wide open lion's
mouth, which surrounds the head of Heracles. The Gorgone is
surrounded by an oak wreath, which is very similar to the one
described earlier. Neither the bow at the bottom nor the poppy head
at the top are missing, only there was no room at the front of the
expansion for the small acorns, they are small and relief and hang
down along the sides, alternating with tiny twigs on which three
tender blossom buds grow. On the shield surface itself, the
expansion is surrounded by a very fine, flat decoration, which is
formed by semi-ovoid, crenellated ornaments, from which three small
twigs, each with three buds, emerge between each.
The
writer then enters into comparisons with such well-known objects and
points out all deviations with great accuracy and expertise. He
believes that the original purpose of this precious piece was not to
serve as a weapon, but to all appearances, especially because of the
one treatment, it was made into a piece of jewelry or a medallion.
Simultaneously
with this shield, seven other bronze objects were excavated at the
same location, on which traces of earlier gilding are still visible.
They are ornaments of horse harness in four different types.
June
25, 1875 No. VII. ON AN ALTAR FOUND AT HORN (LIMBOURG)
(LETTER
FROM MR. ROBERT MOWAT, COMMUNICATED BY MR. DE LONGPÉRIER.)
We
know that the work required for the construction of an observatory
at the summit of the Puy-de-Dôme has brought to light the
foundations of a vast building which, in all likelihood, must be the
great temple of Mercury Arverne. Gregory of Tours (Histor. Francor.
I, 30) has left us a curious description of it. By a singular fate,
five altars, dedicated to this same Arverne god, have been found on
the Germanic borders, far from the place of his central worship. One
of them, carefully studied by Mr. Robert Mowat, revealed to him in
an unexpected way details on the colossal statue executed for the
temple of the Arverni by the artist whose name Pliny the Elder has
transmitted to us, Zenodorus. This altar, discovered in the old
demolished church of Horn, currently preserved in Roermond, at Mr.
Guillon's, has a quadrangular shape. It is decorated with
sculptures. It bears an inscription, hitherto poorly read, and which
Mr. Robert Mowat, according to a carefully executed tracing,
restores in the following manner:
MERCVRIO
ARVERNO
D.
IRMIDIVS
AR.
PO. E. V.
That
is to say: Mercurio Arverno Decimus Irmidius aram posuit ex voto.
The
type of the letters seems to belong to the middle of the 2nd century
of our era. The interest of the monument does not reside entirely in
the inscription. The bas-reliefs require description. There are
three of them. On one we see a rooster perched on top of a winged
caduceus, at the foot of which is placed a purse. On another side of
the altar there are two panels; at the upper corners of the first
panel hangs a garland; lower down we find an object similar to a
purse. The second panel, doubtless reserved for other attributes,
contains nothing, as if the sculptor's work had remained unfinished.
Immediately above the inscription, on the main side, there is a very
damaged bas-relief. What remains of it is however sufficiently
characterized for us to distinguish with certainty a figure facing
forward, seated and half-naked; his chlamys, fixed on the
left shoulder, is held by the forearm and falls in draperies on the
thigh; in his left hand he holds a caduceus leaning on the defect of
the shoulder; between the legs and the seat is a quadruped lying
down and turned to the right, in which it is impossible not to
recognize a goat. This composition is framed between two pilasters
which support a triangular pediment. The figure is thus housed in a
kind of niche with a pointed roof or sacellum, which simulates the
sanctuary where the god was worshiped.
Mr.
Mowat points out that to his knowledge this is the only example of a
bas-relief representing Mercury seated; the other lapidary monuments
always show him standing. There is therefore in the choice of this
exceptional pose an obvious intention, which Mr. Mowat interprets in
the following manner. The use of the ethnic epithet shows that the
act of piety accomplished by the consecrator is mixed with the
memory of the cult celebrated at the chief town of the Arverni. The
sculptor executed the bas-relief on the special instructions of
Irmidius or of a person who had seen the colossal statue of Mercury,
and these instructions were reminiscences of what was remarkable
about the statue. The attitude given to the god on the bas-relief is
precisely that of this famous statue.
Pliny
immortalized this masterpiece in these terms:
"The
size of all statues of this kind has been surpassed in our time by
the Mercury that Zenodorus made for the Gallic city of the Arverni,
at the annual price of 400,000 sesterces for the labor for ten
years. Having sufficiently made his talent known there, he was
summoned by Nero to Rome, where he executed the colossus intended to
represent this prince. While he was working on the statue of the
Arverni, he copied for Vibius Avitus, governor of the province, two
cups carved by Galamis, which Germanicus Caesar, who loved them very
much, had given to his tutor Cassius Silanus, uncle of Avitus."
Where had the sculptor borrowed the type of the Arverni Mercury to
import it into Gaul? The bas-relief of Horn offers a striking
analogy with the reverse of some coins struck in Corinth and Patras
under Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius, Verus, Commodus and Elagabalus. We
see Mercury seated, wearing the petasus, the chlamys
thrown over his left shoulder, the caduceus in his left hand,
his right arm extended above a ram who turns his head towards him.
This monetary type, apart from some accessories which change,
appears to Mr. Mowat to be commemorative of a statuary group
described by Pausanias in these terms:
"On
the road which leads directly from Corinth to Lechaeum, we notice a
seated Hermes, of bronze, at the side of which is placed a ram,
because it is believed that Hermes is the god who watches
particularly over the herds and makes them multiply, as the saying
goes by Homer in the Iliad."
Now,
if it is legitimate to suppose that Zenodorus' talent could only
have been formed in the incomparable school of Greece, and that the
artist who reproduced with such perfection the cups chiseled by
Calamis had to study on site the works of the great masters before
being called to Rome by Nero, we readily imagine that he could have
admired in Corinth the Hermes with the ram, noticed a century later
by Pausanias.
In
any case, the type from which he was inspired for the statue
commissioned by the Arverni is essentially Greek. In this regard,
the testimony of numismatic monuments seems decisive. Greek coinage
simultaneously admitted the type of Mercury standing and the type of
Mercury seated, while giving preference to the latter. Roman coinage
only admitted the type of Mercury standing. It seems, moreover, that
the cult of this god had fallen into a sort of oblivion during the
High Empire; his image was absent from Roman coinage from the time
of the Republic until the time when Marcus Aurelius, who professed a
particular devotion to him, restored him to honour.
January
30, 1875 - In the municipality of Obbicht, it is reported
that
during the extraction of gravel, several pots were discovered these
days, which were found to be Roman funerary urns. However, due to
brittleness they have partially fallen apart. The most important
part of the find must be a large glass urn, made of bluish glass,
filled with some bones. In addition to these objects, a piece of a
lock was found, as well as some copper objects, such as a large pin,
two neatly crafted handles, as one sees on chests, two rings, the
wire of which is octagonal, and a hollow
plate, representing a lion's head, with a copper ring in the mouth.
Slttard,
28 Jan. [1875] In de naburige gemeente Obbicht zijn dezer dagen bij
het uithalen van kiezel eenige potten te voorschijn gekomen, die
bevonden werden Romeinsche graf-urnen te zijn. Door broosheid zijn
ze echter gedeeltelijk uit elkander gevallen. Het belangrijkste van
de vondst moet zijn een grooto glazen urn, van blaauwacktig glas,
gevuld met eenige beenderen. Naast die voorwerpen werden gevonden
een stuk van een slot, alsmede eenige koperen voorwerpen, zoo als:
een groote speld, twee keurig bewerkte handvatten, gelijk men die
aan kisten ziet, twee ringen, waarvan de draad achtkantig is, en een
holle plaat, voorstellende een leeuwenhoofd, met een koperen
ringetje in den muil.
1
januari 1880 Les trésors de monnaies romaines
737.
A Weeze (cercle de Gueldre, Geldern), en 1880, vase en terre rouge
avec 5.200 petits bronzes. Sur 1.198 examinés, il y avait: 1
Gallien, 1 Consécration de Claude, 1 Licinius père, 1
Licinius fils, 113 Constantin, 294 Constantin II César, ?36
Constance II César, 30 Constans César, 5 Delmatius, 46
Theodora, 52 Hélène, 262 Roma, 224 Constantinopolis, 1
Populus romanus, 26 barbares. Les ateliers étaient
représentés ainsi: Trêves, 668; Lyon, 173;
Arles, 78; Rome, 16; Aquilée, 1; Siscia, 8; Constantinopolis,
2; Carthage, 1; Thessalonique, 1; Héraclée, 6;
indistincts, 215. L'enfouissement a eu lieu vers 337.
August
19, 1880 Venlo seems to be the place where the Maas
gives
back her swallowed treasures as if by preference. So we bought in
1858 an exceptionally heavy and long sword with an artfully worked
handle, between Blerick and Venlo collected from the Maas with the
fishing net. In a few years, Venlo did not less than five gothic
gold agrafs [agrafen], set
with diamonds, sapphires and rubines found in the Maas. They were
sold to various goldsmiths, from whose hands they came into the
possession of the late Mr. Hugo Garthe, art collector in Cologne.
These
valuables, publicly auctioned in May 1877, fetched astonishing
prices. —Nowadays one can still see a valuable object at the
home of Mr. Lienders, goldsmith in Venlo, probably washed out by the
Maas into an adjacent ditch. It is one gilt plate with Medusa head
and further ornaments, exceptionally high in copper driven.
According to a brochure by R. Gaedechens, professor in Jena, this
would be the case piece of art, from the first century of our era,
as a beautiful or parade shield have served.
May
29, 1883 In the Publications de la Société
d'archéologie dans le duché
de
Limbourg, Tome XVIII, is appointed by Mr. Jos. Habets talked about
the search for hidden treasures under Blerick "in which even
officers from Venloo are said to have taken part."
The
captain J.A. Ort, now at the Kon. Mil. Academy active, now tells in
a small book, published in Roermond under the title: "Places in
Blerick where prehistoric Germanic and Roman objects have been
found," what is true about that search for hidden treasures and
who took part in it. From his letter it appears that not officers
but Mr. Franssen, pastor in Ittervoort, who had searched in vain for
the Roman settlement in Blerick, told the farmers that a treasure
was hidden on the Römerheide there in a beautiful red earthen
pot with a lid. People started looking and digging for it and the
pastor hoped to find that settlement without any expense or effort.
That is why he had given the peasants the description of a Roman pot
of terra sigillata! Mr. Ort further states that the pastor had
damaged funerary urns broken and that, although he was a
correspondent for the former board of government advisors for
memorials of national history and art, he sold the proceeds of his
excavations to the museum in Brussels.
April
4, 1885 [...] You have heard of the found objects and
excavations
on
or near Venlo's territory by Mr. Hub. Michels, the superior Rudolph,
the lieutenant Ort (now captain) and the foreman Frans Deserière
of Dr. Boetzkes (on Wambach) and of the Medusa shield owned by the
family Lienders. So far, these gentlemen have usually been, so to
speak "practical" practitioners, the memory naturally
comes to mind our fellow townsman, Mr. Martin Jansen, who
unfortunately passed away so early had so much knowledge in the
field of archeology and worked as a "theoretical" fellow
worker the way of research could have delivered so much. [...]
September
26, 1885 In 1872 a bronze shield was excavated in Blerick
and four
objects
that resembled small
horseshoes.
The shield, a Medusa head, came into the hands of the late Mr. A.
Lienders, goldsmith here. From the September issue of the Bulletin
mensuel de numismatique et d'archéologie, by Raym. Serrure,
we learn that this shield has left the country. We can confirm that
the shield has actually been in in the hands for about a year of Mr.
Frans Merkins in Cologne, a lover of antiquities, who will keep it
in his museum for the rest of his life.
May
1, 1886 Merovingian coins, Avranches, Ambazac, Arras,
"Juliniacum",
Chemillé,
Maastricht, etc.
BY
R. SERRURE.
Paris,
1886, in 8°, 15 pages, 1 plate engraved by L. Dardel bears 11
coins. (Extract from the Revue française de numismatique,
1886).
The
few thirds of a sou described by M. Serrure have the merit of being
relatively little known; they are all remarkable.
The
author especially wanted to provide useful materials to the one who
will have the genius to raise the entire monument of Merovingian
numismatics.
Any
Merovingian coin, says the author, presents three different points
for study: the interpretation of the place name, the localization of
the type, and finally the examination of the man's name.
It
is in accordance with this method that the various coins whose names
appear in the title of the article are reviewed; we will limit
ourselves to speaking of the thirds of a sou of Arras and Maastricht
which are of particular interest to Belgian numismatists.
The
triens of Arras was found in Malmédy (Prussia) and is part of
the State collections in Brussels.
On
the obverse the legend + ATRAVETES is written around a bust turned
to the left. Reverse: A//CHE + MVNDO. In the middle of a crown of
pearls, a large A surmounted by the cross which cuts the legend and
placed above a sort of flower. A variety of this coin was acquired
at the sale of the Gariel collection by Mr. d'Amécourt.
ATRAVETES
is indeed the Civitas Atrebatensis that the Notice des Provinces
calls Atravatum, Atrevatum, Atrobatum, Atravatrum, Attrabatum etc.
and from where Charles the Bald dates a diploma, January 23, 843,
actum Atravato monasterio S. Vedasti.
The
mint was obviously called ALGHEMVNDVS.
The
type of the reverse of these coins is interesting, notes the author,
because we find the initial A on the meshes of Arras (1) just as the
flower is found both on the Gallic coins of the Nervio-Atrebatian
region and on the Douaisian municipal deniers of the Middle Ages.
M.
Serrure then draws attention to the triens of Maastricht that we
published in the Belgian Review of Numesmatique 1885, p. 70. The
author repeats, what we had pointed out, that the coinage of the
mint Thrasemundus constitutes an almost servile imitation of the
bust of the city of Rome: VRBS ROMA, engraved on certain small
bronzes of Constantin the Great.
We
can conclude that this coin is one of the oldest Merovingian coins
struck in Maastricht.
The
Hague Museum has a third of a sou signed by the same minter, but the
type of this coin shows that the artistic qualities of the coin were
already in decline when it was issued.
Another
triens from Maastricht bears on the obverse: TRIECVO FIT.
Bust
turned to the right; hair held back by a pearl headband extending
behind the head.
R.
+ GODOFRIDVS MO. Latin cross flanked by two globules and raised on a
vault; the cross is separated from the legend by a grenetis. This
triens was part of the Garthe collection; van der Chijs had not
mentioned it, but the Viscount of Amécourt in his Essay on
Merovingian Numismatics Compared to the Geography of Gregory of
Tours, p. 164, did not neglect to mention the Godofridus coin. The
author then describes a triens with the legend + TRIECTO FIT.
Bust
to the right. The head encircled by a pearl diadem seems devoid of
hair; the cheek is marked by a strong projection. Reverse: MACEFINVS
M.
Raised
cross on a step under which are arranged five globules.
This
raised cross that is frequently found on Merovingian coins is, as
Mr. Baron de Chestret very judiciously notes, the origin of the
perron raised in several localities in the country of Liége
(1). This triens was also part of the Garthe collection. Van der
Ghijs gave five varieties of this coin. A similar triens found near
Utrecht is reported and drawn in a very rare small booklet that we
possess. H. Reland, the author, addresses a letter to the Count of
Kniphuizen dated Utrecht, April 20, 1713, in which he speaks of the
mint MADELINVS but wrongly assumes that the coin was struck in
Utrecht because it was found near this city and that the name of the
mint Madelinus is also found on the coins of Duurstede. This triens
of Maastricht then belonged to Doctor van Engelen of Utrecht.
Finally,
Mr. Serrure describes a triens found in Huy. Legend: TRIECTO FIT.
The
letters C T are linked. In the field a bust turned to the right.
R./RIMOALDVS MONE; the letters N E are linked and the legend must be
read externally. In the field a cross, with double crosspieces, one
of which is potentated. This is a notable variety of the triens
reproduced by van der Ghijs under No. 14 of plate VII.
M.
Serrure promises us a numismatic monograph of the Civitas
Trajectensis, under the first two races. His essay proves how much
this complete study will be full of attraction; this is why we hope
that he will soon put his projet to execution.
G.
CUMONT,
Secretary
of the Belgian Royal Numismatic Society.
(1)
The author says that these Arras meshes are from the 16th century.
This error is probably the result of a typographical error.
(1)
See Bulletin of the Liège Archaeological Society, 1885.
May
15, 1886 Over a stipulated Arabic text from Merum.
In
a report from August 1, 1810 to the Grand Duke of Montalivet,
Minister of the Commonwealth of Nations in Paris by the subprefect,
A. Liger from Roermond, we read the following: (1)
"There
are a quarter of a league from Roermond very close to the Maas, in
the commune of Herten, hamlet of Merum, the remains of a tower of
the highest antiquity where the pagan priests made sacrifices to
their divinities from time to time. This tower was built on a small
eminence ten paces from the Maas, but as over time, the rivers have
often changed their height?? this one is now more than 700 paces
away from it. This mass of stones is 60 feet long, by 50 wide; the
thickness of the walls is 14 feet, it is empty in the middle,
without stairs. The pagan priests used a ladder to climb it, which
they burned each time after their sacrifice, so that no profane
would approach the sacred ashes; at 10 paces from the wall there was
found, about 50 years ago, a mound, where formerly the people placed
themselves each according to their rank, to be present at this
ceremony, because the right to climb onto the pyre, where the
sacrifices of idols were ordinarily made, was reserved only for the
sacrificing Priests. It is claimed that, a few years ago, iron bars
were found there all rusty, and if this is so, they were doubtless
pieces of the grill, on which they placed their offering. The ashes
of this holocaust were carefully collected by the Priests and
distributed to the people in the form of an amulet, to which many
virtues were attributed. It is estimated that this tower may have
been nearly 40 feet high, or it was finished with a platform. At a
distance of 30 feet high, we find holes 2 feet wide, which cross
this tower on all its faces. It is presumed that beams had been
placed there, which due to their age no longer exist. The different
kinds of stones, of which this tower is composed, are unequivocal
signs, that it must have been built at a very distant time. These
stones, which were used are for the most part large pebbles,
interspersed with a few layers of tuff, as well as a kind of stone
of a blackish and heavy color, which it is supposed that the
ancients made themselves. This stone closely resembles vitrified
coals, having the same nipples. The method of making it seems to be
lost today. (1) There are still 2 or 3 other species, whose names
are unknown.
"The
medals bearing the effigy of the Roman emperors, which were found at
the foot of the wall, attest that this tower was built by their
cohorts. Among other things, a very rare stone was found, whose
angles are broken, which has lost some of its polish, but whose
engraving has been very well preserved. Its size can be equal to
that of the fingernail. The connoisseurs of fine stone engraving in
Antwerp and Amsterdam attest that it is superiorly engraved, those
in Amsterdam have even subjected it to the test of fire. It is a
hard and precious stone, which cuts glass, like diamonds, but which
does not have its water. They unanimously assured that the manner of
engraving on hard stone today does not approach that of the past.
Not knowing the oriental languages, we do not know whether the
engraving is in Hebrew or Chaldean characters, or whether they are
Egyptian hieroglyphs. However, we have seen in a small book, which
is found in the cabinet of curiosities of the Jesuits in Cologne and
which treats of ancient medals, the same imprint with the words Divo
Esculapio. Everyone who has studied mythology knows that this God
was dedicated to medicine. His cult was in vogue 400 years before
the birth of Jesus Christ; thus it is conjectured that this tower
could well have been dedicated to the God of Medicine. All the
excavations and searches that were made, a few years ago on the side
of the East where the ancients usually began their monuments, have
been fruitless. "It was however on this side that they hid some
coins to indicate to posterity the date of their enterprises, as
well as the reign of their leaders. The present state of this tower
offers nothing remarkable to the eyes of a curious person, except
that a mine or deformed mass of stones. However, one can still
discover on its summit with the aid of a telescope 50 towers of
towns or villages, despite the fact that about 40 years ago one
twentieth of its height was removed. The workers who worked to
demolish this part unanimously agree that cement is harder to detach
than stone. It is presumed that only an 8th part of its whole
remains, its name today is Borgh or castle, although it could never
have served as a place of defense.
This
communication was provided to the sub-prefect of the department of
Lower Maas by Mr. Petit from Roermond, owner of the above-mentioned
old tower. To what extent all the scholarly fuss that embellishes
this report applies here, I leave it to the reader to judge. I only
add that this scholarship dates from a time when every citizen
recognized the right and freedom to judge all things, even those of
which he had only a small understanding. I will therefore pass over
Mr. Petit's scientific observations in silence and confine myself to
a word about the seal itself and about the ancient deposit of Merum,
next to which it is said to have been found.
The
tower of Merum, which Petit describes as a pagan place of sacrifice
and in which Mr Wolters also recognizes a Roman monument, is
certainly not of Roman [Catholic?]
origin, at least in the form it is in today. One finds pieces of
tegulae and imbrices built here and there between the
joints of the stones, but such remains from the Roman era were also
found in the tower of the Romanesque church of Herten, which was
demolished in 1880, and in a number of constructions from the Middle
Ages, still present in our province. Our ancestors, feeling a lack
of building materials, often resorted to the ruined Roman
foundations in the area, which they plundered for the benefit of
their new constructions.
Such
constructions therefore indicate the presence of Roman constructions
in the area, but less so their presence on site itself. The old
castle of Merum is certainly a medieval tower, belonging to the
house of the families of Merum, Cuyck [Cuyk] and Heinsberg
[Germany], who were lords
of Merum and Dalenbroeck.
The
neighboring hill, which was labeled with the grand name of
Drususberg by the classically thinking Mr Petit and which has now
been excavated, also bore no particular traces of Roman origin.
Bones of cattle and medieval pottery shards were found there, which
we saw and examined.
The
view of Mr. Petit, followed by Wolters in his booklet entitled:
Notice sur quelques débris de constructions romaines à
Herten, may have influenced Mr. and not to look for the Roman
poststation Mederiacum in Melick. But he remains indebted for
certain proof of his feelings. We think it will be difficult to find
a Roman highway from Thudder [Tüddern?]
to Merum.
In
our days of general writing about antiquities, there is a real mania
to place roads and ramparts, just like that, in books and on maps,
without first providing the slightest proof of the origins of these
roads and ramparts from Roman or later Frankish period. Our hirers
from the Rhine Province are very strong in that area; to follow them
one must truly have a faith that moves mountains.
In
the report of August 1 sent to the Montalivet in 1819 [or 1810?],
there were impressions of the above-mentioned seal stone, which Mr
Petit considered extremely remarkable, and two of which are still in
the State Archives in Maastricht.
We
had one of these prints examined through our faithful friend G.
Leemans, director of the National Museum of Archeology in Leiden.
Professor De Goeje, our learned orientalist, explained the
inscription in pure Arabic and read: Bismallah, that is in the name
of Allah! This stone is also not Roman, but more likely midcentury.
How it arrived at Merum, from Spain, from Palestine or from the
East, is a mystery.
Jos.
HABETS.
(1)
The minute of this letter is in the State Archives in Maastricht.
(1)
The black bricks indicated here are simply cutting stones from
quarries in the Liège region.
October
15, 1892 Roman Antiquities in Venlo.
By
H. Michels.
In
many places in and around Venlo and Tegelen, objects of Germanic,
Roman and Frankish origin have been found during excavations.
In
the year 1817, in the Vleeschstraat, at a depth of 7 or 8 feet,
underground, a stone tomb was found, surrounded by clay, lying on a
layer of pebbles; the length was 6½, the width 4 feet. The
egg-shaped carved depth was 6 feet long and 3½ wide, with a
very fitting lid. This lid was a table hewn from hard limestone, 4
inches thick, ground very smooth on the inside and on the edge. The
sarcophagus (stone coffin) was made of tuff.
This
sarcophagus stood in a direction from the East to the West. Close to
the east side was another metal urn that, at its widest, was 11
inches high and 15 in diameter. The shape was very simple, the
opening 6 inches wide, and was closed by a lid.
In
the sarcophagus were found some pieces of white thin glass, probably
from a so-called tear glass, some earth and remains of burnt bones,
among which pieces of the skull and bones were clearly visible. Also
in the urn was something resembling burnt bones, but in much smaller
pieces.
The
sarcophagus was without inscription. However, around the urn one saw
Runic writing, which was not deeply and irregularly printed in the
metal, and for this reason, as well as because of the dents in the
urn, is illegible. In the vicinity of the grave site another flint
of 12 to 15 inches in length and 6 inches in thickness was found.
Frankish
jars have been found on the Groenmarkt, corner of Peperstraat, on
the Lomstraat, outside the Geldersche or St. Helenapoort and in the
sandy road to Genooy, behind St. Urbanus.
Outside
the Cologne [Keulsepoort] or Sint Laurentius Gate there is a valley
that extends from the German border to the former building farm "het
Rozenhuisje" in a westerly direction to the Maas. The building
farm "de Lindeboom" and the two water mills "de
Bovenste Houtmolen" and the "Onderste Houtmolen" are
located in this valley, after which it loses itself in the plain.
The Cedron stream originates about 100 meters below "de
Lindenboom"; it takes its course through the ponds of the two
mills and further through the plain to the city, through which it
passes and after which it pours into the Maas.
In
the last century, the Bovenste Houtmolen was inhabited by a
Holthuysen family, descendants of which still live in Venlo. On
August 16, 1758, Gerardus Holthuysen, miller of the Bovenste
Houtmolen, was buried in the cemetery of the St. Martinus Church. In
1760 it was still occupied by this family. One evening in the year
1760, the servant went to the attic with a lantern to get straw, and
fell with it, so that the straw caught fire. Instead of putting out
this fire with one hand, he went downstairs to fetch water; When we
returned, it was too late, the attic was already in full flame and
everything, the mill with its house, barn and stable, burned to the
ground.
This
mill and yard then belonged to the Highly Born Mr. F. G. Ruys, lord
of the seigneury of Blerick and Ordinary of the Sovereign Court by
Her High Powered Lords of the States General of the United
Netherlands, and to his two daughters Catharina and Clara Ruys, who
inherited her five years later (the mill was no longer built) to
Michael Michels and his wife Gertrudis Muggen, February 7, 1765; she
rebuilt that same year. The grandson of these couples sold the mill
again in 1848.
The
Onderste Houtmolen [=Lower Wood Mill] appears to have been built on
the foundations of an ancient Roman or Frankish castle, at least
judging from the foundations, and later destroyed by fire. There
also seems to have been a mill here at the time of the Franks, a few
steps from the house, judging by the fragments of millstones, which
were found here with a large number of Frankish shards and pots
mixed with wood ash. The present building was built in the year
1626. (1)
The
Onderste Houtmolen is now owned by WelEd. gentlemen Eugenius
Gollaes, in Venlo, and Julius Freiherr Von Francken in Pont.
The
valley described here with farms and mills, with ponds, streams,
gardens, meadows, orchards and wildernesses, planted with
centuries-old oaks, pines and other trees, surrounded by mountains
and hills, is the most beautiful and, so to speak, "romantic"
place in the whole of Venlo.
Various
Germanic, Roman and Frankish antiquities have been found in and
around this valley and there are still works from them. At the
beginning of this valley, on the south side, there is a high earthen
wall called "De Landweer", showing part of the trenches of
a Roman camp, which seems to have been located here. For several
years, Mr H. Justen van Venlo managed to discover a Roman cemetery
here. On the northwest side of this camp there is a Germanic
cemetery called Siberie; twenty-eight large and small burial mounds
are still very clearly visible. I have dug up urns from some of
these hills. Only from one was I able to bring out the urn in its
entirety, the others were all broken by the roots of the trees that
once stood here.
From
the above-mentioned camp a broad Roman road runs through the middle
of the mentioned cemetery, first in a northern direction to the end
of the cemetery, and then in an eastern direction to just below the
origin of the Cedron stream, straight through the aforementioned
valley, where in the middle of a swampy area there is a dike has
been constructed to continue the said road; This dike bears the name
of Count Hendrik's dike.
The
legend says: a Count Hendrik had crossed here with his army and had
the war chest hidden in this dike. In the past, a light would have
burned in this place every evening.
Furthermore,
this road runs along a dug-out mountain in the direction of
Straelen, where it loses itself in the plain.
(1)
At the beginning of the 17th century, perhaps immediately after its
reconstruction in 1626, the Onderste Houtmolen was inhabited by the
miller Nicolaas Stoffels, from Broekhuizen, after whom this mill was
also called the Stoffelsmolen. He was married to Maria Janssen from
Venlo, who remarried after the death of her husband to the
"magister" Hendrik Sieberz. From the first marriage there
were 2 sons and a daughter, of which the eldest Godefridus became a
priest; he was S. Theol. doctor, at the Sticht van den H. Severinus
and fits of the church of St. Paul in Cologne, where he died in
1675; his mother followed him to Cologne and died there a few years
earlier. He adopted the name of Molanus in memory of his father's
profession, which was followed by all his family.
After
the death of this Nicolaas Stoffels, who had no son who could
succeed him in the trade, because the youngest son was a monk in the
St. Nicholas Monastery in Dick, the Stoffels family, now called
Molanus, left this mill and was taken over by a niece of his wife,
Gertrudis Janssen, daughter of Albertus Janssen; she was married to
Leonardus Engelen, and the mill now received the nickname of
Engelenmolen, by which it is still generally known today. This
family has continued to inhabit it to this day, with only an
interruption of ten years, from 1856 to 1866.
At
the beginning of this century there were only two male descendants
of the family, of which the eldest continued to inhabit the
Onderste-Houtmolen or Engelenmolen. His marriage to Maria Dorothea
Franssen, van Steyl, municipality of Tegelen, produced two
daughters; the youngest died in infancy; the eldest, Maria Engelen,
married Petrus Hubertus Michels. Children from this marriage still
live in this mill.
November
15, 1892 Roman Antiquities in Venlo.
by
H. Michels.
III.
§
III. Germanic objects.
1.
Germanic urn, opening 0.18, height 0.18, found in Siberia, near 't
Jammerdal, municipality of Venlo, in 1879.
2.
Germanic urn, opening 0.08, height 0.08, found in the Hunnenberg in
Nijmegen.
3.
Germanic jug, opening 0.13, height 0.07, found in the Hunnenberg in
Nijmegen.
4.
Germanic pot, opening 0.09, height 0.09, found in the Hunnenberg in
Nijmegen.
§
IV. Roman objects.
1.
A cup, height 0.07, opening 0.05, found in Andernach on the Rhine.
2. Fragm. amphora, height 0.12, found at Kelheym on the Danube.
3.
Ointment jar, found at Nijmegen.
4.
Patella in white earth, found at Nijmegen.
5.
Ointment jar in white earth, found at Nijmegen.
6.
Jar (quick), found in white earth at Montfort, height 0.13.
7.
Jar in white earth, with an ear, height 0.12, found at Montfort.
8.
Two small crucibles, found in the Maas at Blerick.
9.
Two small jars in white earth, with an ear, height 0.19, found in
Neuss, in 1876.
10.
A small jar with an ear, in white earth, height 0.12, found at the
St. Severinuspoort in Cologne, in 1874.
11.
A small jar with an ear, in white earth, height 0.12, with round
thick belly, without foot and long neck, height 0.18, found in
Cologne.
12.
A small jar with an ear, in white earth, height 0.27, found in
Nijmegen.
13.
A small jar with an ear, in white earth, height 0.20, found in
Nijmegen.
14.
A small jar with an ear, in white earth, height 0.19, found in
Nijmegen.
15.
Two small jars with an ear, in white earth, height 0.11, found in
Nijmegen. 16. Two small jars with a handle, in white earth, height
0.10, found in Nijmegen.
17.
A small jar with two handles (amphora), in white earth, height 0.17,
found in Nijmegen.
18.
A small jar with a handle and a spout, in white earth, height 0.18,
found in Nijmegen.
19.
Vase in black dough with angular belly, height 0.17, opening 0.12,
found in Nijmegen.
20.
A small vase with depressed walls in light brown earth, height 0.10,
opening 0.06, found in Nijmegen.
21.
A purse-shaped bottle (gutta), height 0.18, found in Crefelt.
22.
Terra Samica.
a. A patella, saucer, width 0.09.
b. A patella, width 0.16. with the
mark SEVERUS de grafecto BVGO.
c. A patella, width 0.17, mark illegible.
d. Small bowl, width 0.12, height 0.07, all found in
Nijmegen.
23.
Large milk jug with spout, in ordinary earth, width 0.26, height
0.07, found in Nijmegen.
24.
A lamp in red earth, found in Gennep on the Maas.
25.
A lamp in black earth, found in Crefeld.
26.
Two lamps in ordinary earth, found in Nijmegen.
27.
A lamp in black earth, found in Kesseleyck.
28.
A patella or small bowl, width 0.23, height 0.05, found in
Kesseleyck.
29.
A salt cellar of white earth, height 0.04, width 0.07, found in
Venlo. 30. Vase in ordinary earth, height 0.18, opening 0.25, found
in the previously described pottery in Venlo, in 1879.
31.
Vase in ordinary earth, with flat edge, height 0.18, opening with
the edge measured 0.16, found in the pottery in Venlo, in 1879.
32.
Vase in ordinary earth, height 0.19, width 0.14, found in the
pottery in Venlo, in 1879.
33.
Vase in ordinary earth, height 0.16, width 0.12, with curved edge,
found as furrows.
34.
Vase in ordinary earth, decorated with small and large circles,
height 0.15, width 0.09, found as furrows.
35.
Vase in ordinary earth, decorated with double row of circles, height
0.14, width 0.08, found as furrows. 36. Vase in ordinary earth,
decorated with a double row of diamonds, high 0.14, wide 0.08, found
as furrows.
37.
Lid with flat knob, in ordinary earth, wide 0.13 found as furrows.
38.
Two fibulas, in copper, one with decorations, found in Nijmegen.
39.
Needle in copper, found in Crefeld.
40.
Writing styluses and other objects in copper, found in Nijmegen.
41.
Two copper coins of Emperor Constantine, found on the Lichtenberg
near Kaldenkirchen, in 1889).
42.
A silver coin of Domitian, found in Baarlo, in 1840.
43.
Roman spindle whorls and corals, found in Nijmegen.
44.
A coral of red earth, found at the ruins of the old Carthage in
Africa.
§
V. Frankish objects.
1.
A large number of pearls, found in Nijmegen.
2.
An urn in red-greyish earth, height 0.07, opening 0.0&, found in
Andernacb aan den Rijn.
3.
Two spherical urns or pots, black-grey, height 0.10 opening 0.08,
found just behind the Onderste Houtmolen in Venlo, in 1873.
4.
A spherical urn or pot, black-grey, height 0.13, opening 0.09, found
as furrows.
5.
A spherical urn or pot with spout, black-grey, height 0.15, opening
0.1.4, found as furrows.
6.
A beautiful jug in grey earth, with an ear, height 0.25, opening
0.10, found as furrows.
§
VI. Medieval objects.
1.
A large number of jugs, jars and pots, some of which are very
beautiful in shape, from the 9th to the 16th century, in nature and
and just plain stoneware.
2.
A number of old earthen pipes, including one with the coat of arms
of Venlo and its motto: "Festina lente caute fac omnia mente"
around it.
December
2, 1905 — A lost art treasure recovered.
—
At the end of the year 1872, a worker in Blerick near
Venlo found a Roman bronze shield with some horse harness while
deepening a stream. These goods came into the possession of Mr
Lienders in Venlo. Prof. Gaedechens from Jena gave a lecture about
that shield in Bonn on the feast of Winckelmann's birthday on
December 9. 1874, and since then "das Medusenhaupt von
Blariacum" has acquired a very general reputation in the world
of art connoisseurs and art lovers. The present Blerick was without
doubt the Blariacum from Roman times, which appears on Peutinger's
map. The shield, gilded bronze was probably a showpiece weapon. The
name shield is also probably not entirely correct in that it is more
a so-called umbo, the decoration of a shield on the outer side, than
a shield itself. This umbo (navel) now has a diameter of 26 cm. A
circle of oak leaves runs around it, within which there is again a
similar wreath, which encloses the Medusa or Gorgo's head. This was
from ancient times the most famous sign for averting hostile forces
and as such was of course very peculiar. Our fellow countryman,
Prof. Six wrote a commendable monograph about the Gorgo, his
dissertation. Originally this Gorgo head had a hideous appearance;
they gave her tusks and a stuck out tongue. Blerick's Gorgo is one
in the style of later Greek art. Her character is expressed in human
forms. She has a great reputation in art history. It probably dates
from the first century AD. Not long after, the work of art crossed
borders. We heard that our Queen Sophie tried to keep it for our
country at the time, but in vain. The chance of ever getting it back
became smaller and smaller, especially because the prices for such
things are becoming higher and higher.
It
appeared at the Dusseldorfer exhibition and now it has appeared once
at an auction in Cologne. It has now been purchased there by Mr G.M.
Kam, in Nijmegen, - the same who gave his highly important museum as
a gift to the State, to be accepted after his death. The piece is
now returning to our country and, humanly speaking, will never leave
again. This work of art, found on Dutch soil, does not go to the
prairies of North America or the unknown country house of a
so-called art-loving Englishman. At the same time as the umbo, Mr.
Kam also acquired the horse harness found there. He knows too well
what such "Gesammtfunde" mean. I will say nothing more
about the merits of Mr. Kam. This writes Mr. A.E.J. Holwerda,
professor-director of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden,
in the "N.R.Ct."
April
30, 1910 Limburg Sagas and Legends.
SCHATBERG,
KRONENBERG, DE MEIR AND SCHENKENBURG UNDER SEVENUM.
A
truly old-fashioned, prosperous farming village, where the farmers
have still retained their old customs, where people still spin in
the winter, where the housewives still take their yarn to the
weaver, where the men still prefer Manchester to new-fangled cloth
for the spacious clothes and the weddings are still celebrated with
old songs and dinner parties without a brasserie... that is Sevenum,
in the middle of Limburg, located next to the Peel. There you can
still see houses and stables, large and spacious, lying on their own
property in the orchard and the tinware, copperware, the old
grandfather clock, the folding table, and the large oak chests are
in the front house. And at exactly twelve o'clock in the afternoon,
the simple lunch is steaming on the table, while in the following
summer everything goes “ungeren” or naps.
But
the farmer is not that stupid unless he has faithfully followed and
kept up with the progress of agriculture, dairy production and
chicken breeding; he is well informed about the use of artificial
fertilizers and the cooperative. That is why we can speak of
Sevenum, just like of Horst and Maasbree, as a prosperous
municipality.
But
the old colloquialism, the dialect, the old songs, the singing ways
of the faithful king's son, of the young man who seemed neither
susceptible to sweetness nor love and yet finally succumbed, the old
local legends, they still live on.
Where
the ground is generally so flat, a hill quickly becomes a mountain
and that is why one of the strangely colored, white-yellow sand
dunes on the Peel is called the Schatberg. It is higher than the
surrounding ones. On the left lie deep swamps, swamps along the
edges of which pine forests grow abundantly.
On
the right, the seemingly endless piece of Peel to be developed,
which has already been plowed and will soon be brought into
cultivation. Here and there in the Peel, far away from us, between a
group of trees like a miniature oasis in the brown-black plain, an
old dilapidated sheepfold, dating from the time when sheep farming
was still profitable.
Further
on the horizon, forests, towers, factory chimneys, a derrick, which
announce the slowly coming conversion of the Peel into inhabited and
profitable territory.
We
are sitting on the Schatberg, and we are thinking that if a farmer
sees us now, he will mutter to himself: “They will search, but
they will not find anything”. Because a lot has been sought in
this Schatberg, Treasure Mountain, as evidenced by the grooves in
the flanks and the holes in the top.
An
officer of high rank is buried here, he has his golden sword next to
him and a treasure that he had to keep. He died here, it is not
known how, but was buried nearby by his followers. However, these
too followed him in death. And so he lies here waiting. One person
tells you that it was a Roman, another that it was a Spaniard, but
everyone has dug in the Treasure Mountain at some point and both old
and young have climbed the wonder hill. However, the treasure has
not yet been found any more than the “Crown” in the
hamlet of Kronenberg, which you can see a little further to the
right of Horst, where traces of old fastenings, wall work, broken
crockery and pottery were found. Whatever the case, the common
opinion among the people is that strange things happened on the
Schatberg and Kronenberg, which still await explanation.
In
ancient times, an old pastor lived on the “Meir”, a
square piece of land surrounded by ramparts and canals, where
fragments of walls can still be found. He came to the village every
now and then and had an old gray, a wonderful beast. In the evening
his owner mounted the saddle and said: “To the Lake in one
go.” The Gray rose and ran through the air into the lake. Why,
who knows?
The
old Schenkenweg, near the village, now disappeared, is also seen as
a ghost place. The Schenken van Nijdeggen have a history interwoven
with many changes. Their Schenckenburg castle sometimes saw strange
things. The last of the Schencken, who carried a knife and a sword,
was heavily drinking and every day passed the chapel of St. Anthony,
founded by his ancestors. Each time he passed by mockingly, until
one morning after a revel, he was found dead in the chapel. In his
last hour he still visited Saint Anthony. When the castle was still
in existence, the drawbridge had to be raised every evening at nine
o'clock. If anyone forgot, a large black dog came to lie on the
bridge and repelled everyone with a fiery claw and eyes. Because the
'headless horse' was also around, the castle was demolished, but the
meadow that was created for it is still spoiled and only thistles
and thorns grow there.
B.
DÉCOUVERTES D'ANTIQUITÉS DANS LE DUCHÉ DE
LIMBOURG
7 augustus 1866 Découverts
d'antiquités dans le Limbourg.
Grâce à
l’impulsion bienfaisante donnée par la Société
d’Archéologie dans le duché de Limbourg,
d’importantes découvertes d’antiquités se
poursuivent dans notre province. Toutes les trouvailles, qui
autrefois passaient inaperçues, sont main tenant
consciencieusement visitées et décrites. Depuis les
quatre années que la Société existe et
travaille, on a fait plus pour l’archéologie proprement
dite que par tout le passé. Trente-deux cimetières
anciens et douze substructions belgo-romaines ont été
reconnues et inventoriés. Parmi les cimetières
régulièrement fouillés, nous nommons ceux de
Bergh-Terblyt et celui de Broekhem, prés de Fauquemont
[=Valkenburg]. Les établissements belgo-romains, trouvés
depuis peu de temps, sont ceux de Rondenbosch, à
Houthem-St-Gerlach, les deux villas de Meerssen et des substructions
fort étendues à Heerlen,
dans un lieu nommé Dodelager. Toutes ces découvertes
se trouvent le long de la route romaine de Maestricht à
Juiliers, par Coriovallum. Cette route même a été
retrouvée et sondée en plusieurs lieux. Parmi les
établissements qui ont été régulièrement
explorés, avec le concours de la Société, nous
nommons le Rondenbosch, à
Houthem, et le Herkenbergh, sous Meerssen.
Sur la route de Tongres [Tongeren] à
Nymègue [=Nijmegen] on a découvert un établissement
romain à Heel, prés de
Ruremonde [Roermond], et un autre à
Mulhem, entre Eysden et Lanklaer. Ce dernier, dont nous devons la
connaissance a M. Duchateau, curé à
Eysden, est appelé a fixer la situation de la station romaine
de Feresne, restée inconnue jusqu’à ce
jour.
La direction de la route de
Coriovallum à Teudurum est
restée une hypothèse jusqu’à ce jour. On
la cherchait soit entre le Ravensbosch et Tudderen, soit entre
Heerlen et ce lieu. Depuis les belles découvertes faites à
Meerssen, ce village commence a entrer en lutte et aura le plus de
chance de se revendiquer le nom de Coriovallum.
Ce qui confirme admirablement
l’hypothèse de placer Coriovallum à
Meerssen, c’est d’abord sa situation en ligne directe
entre Tongres et Tudderen, et ensuite la découverte faite, il
y a peu de jours, d’un emplacement belgo-romain a Geverick,
hameau de la commune de Beek, qui se trouve sur la même ligne.
Cet établissement est situé a cent pas de l’ancienne
route menant de Sittard à
Maestricht. Cette route, que l’on nommé encore
actuellement Heerstraat, passé par Geleen, Beek, Vleeck et
Meerssen. Nous devons l’intéressante découverte
de Geverick a l’obligeance de M. Stassen, vicaire à
Ulestraten.
Notons en finissant que toutes les
découvertes faites dans le duché de Limbourg, seront
décrites et éditées dans les Publications de
la Société d'Archéologie, à
Maestricht. On est donc prié de signaler
les découvertes qui pourraient se faire, à
l’attention du comité directeur de cette Société.
Discoveries
of Antiquities in Limburg.
Thanks
to the beneficial impetus given by the Archaeological Society in the
Duchy of Limburg, important discoveries of antiquities continue to
be made in our province. All finds, which once went unnoticed, are
now being conscientiously examined and described. In the four years
since the Society's existence and activity began, more has been done
for archaeology proper than in all of the previous generations.
Thirty-two ancient cemeteries and twelve Gallo-Roman foundations
have been identified and cataloged. Among the cemeteries regularly
excavated, we mention those of Berg-Terblijt and Broekhem, near
Valkenburg. The recently discovered Roman settlements are those of
Rondenbosch, at Houthem-St. Gerlach, the two villas at Meerssen, and
extensive foundations at Heerlen, in a place called Dodelager. All
these discoveries are located along the Roman road from Maastricht
to Juilliards, via Coriovallum. This road itself has been
rediscovered and explored in several places. Among the settlements
that have been regularly investigated, with the assistance of the
Society, we mention Rondenbosch, at Houthem, and Herkenbergh, near
Meerssen. On the road from Tongeren to Nijmegen, a Roman settlement
was discovered at Heel, near Roermond, and another at Mülhem,
between Eysden and Lanklaar. The latter, whose knowledge we owe to
Mr. Duchateau, parish priest of Eysden, is called upon to determine
the location of the Roman station at Feresne, which has remained
unknown until now.
The
direction of the road from Coriovallum to Teudurum has remained a
hypothesis until now. It was sought either between Ravensbosch and
Tudderen, or between Heerlen and this location. Since the
significant discoveries made at Meerssen, this village is beginning
to assert its claim and will have the best chance of asserting the
name of Coriovallum.
What
admirably confirms the hypothesis of placing Coriovallum at Meerssen
is, firstly, its location on a direct line between Tongeren and
Tudderen, and secondly, the recent discovery of a Belgo-Roman site
at Geverick, a hamlet in the municipality of Beek, which lies on the
same line. This settlement is located a hundred paces from the old
road leading from Sittard to Maastricht. This road, still known
today as Heerstraat, passed through Geleen, Beek, Vleeck, and
Meerssen. We owe the interesting discovery at Geverick to the
kindness of Mr. Stassen, vicar of Ulestraten.
Finally,
we note that all discoveries made in the Duchy of Limburg will be
described and published in the Publications of the Archaeological
Society in Maastricht. Therefore, we are asked to report any
discoveries that may be made to the Society's board of directors.
17 november 1866 Les membres de la
Société d’Archéologie dans le duché
de Limbourg viennent de recevoir les 2 premières livraisons
du tome III de ses publications, formant 224 pages. En voici le
contenu:
1. Opkomst en voortgang der stad
Maastricht, met geschiedkundige aanmerkingen, door M. J. Habets.
Vervolg.
2. Inventaire chronologique des
chartes et documents de l’église de St-Servais à
Maestricht, par M. M. Willemsen. Suite.
3. Etude sur les anciens Séminaires
du diocèse de Liège, avec quelques documents inédits,
par M. A. K.
4. L’église de Mesch,
par M. C. Caumartin.
5. Notice sur quelques découvertes
d’antiquités dans le duché du Limbourg, par M.
J. Habets.
6. Titres de documents concernant la
commune et la ville de Maestricht et le comté de Vroenhof,
par M. A. S.
Le volume est orné de 3
planches. Ajoutons que la Société a la satisfaction de
voir ses travaux favorablement accueillis, comme le prouvent non
seulement les nouveaux membres qui se présentent, mais encore
l’article élogieux que lui consacre la Revue Catholique
de Louvain.
DÉCOUVERTES
D'ANTIQUITÉS
DANS
LE DUCHÉ DE
LIMBOURG
PAR
JOS. HABETS,
vicaire à
Bergh-Terblyt et président de la Societé d'histoire et
d'archéologie
dans le Duché de
Limbourg.
TOME I.
Routes romaines,
tombeaux, cimetières francs et
romains, substructions,
objets d'arts etc.
RUREMONDE,
TYPOGRAPHIE DE J. J.
ROMEN.
-
1871.
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken1/gview?query=%22decouvertes+d%27antiquites%22+habets+tome&coll=boeken1&identifier=L81SAAAAcAAJ&rowid=1
Members
of the Archaeological Society of the Duchy of Limburg have just
received the first two installments of Volume III of its
publications, comprising 224 pages. The contents are as follows:
1.
The Origin and Development of the City of Maastricht, with
Historical Remarks, by J. Habets. Continued.
2. Chronological
Inventory of the Charters and Documents of the Church of St.
Servatius in Maastricht, by M. Willemsen. Continued.
3. A Study
of the Former Seminaries of the Diocese of Liège [Dutch:
Luik], with Some Unpublished Documents, by A. K.
4. The Church of
Mesch, by C. Caumartin.
5. Report on Some Discoveries of
Antiquities in the Duchy of Limburg, by J. Habets.
6. Titles of
documents concerning the commune and city of Maastricht and the
county of Vroenhof, by A. S.
The volume is illustrated with 3
plates. We should add that the Society is pleased to see its work
favorably received, as evidenced not only by the new members who
have joined, but also by the laudatory article devoted to it in the
Revue Catholique de Louvain.
DISCOVERIES
OF ANTIQUITIES IN THE DUCHY OF LIMBURGH BY JOS. HABETS
vicar
at Berg-Terblijt and president of the Society of History and
Archaeology in the Duchy of Limburg.
VOLUME
I. Roman roads, tombs, Frankish and Roman cemeteries, substructures,
works of art, etc.
RUREMONDE,
PRINTED BY J. J. ROMEN. 1871.
TABLES
DES MATIERES.
Introduction
I.
Routes romaines.
II.
Exploration d'un cimetière Belgo-roman à
Bergh-Terblyt
III.
Notice archéologique sur un cimetière Belgo-romain à
Broeckhem près de Fauquemont
IV.
Notes sur quelques objets funéraires, d'origine Franque
trouvés à
Heerlen
V.
Exploration d'une villa Belgo-romaine au Rondenbosch à
Houthem-Saint-Gerlach
VI.
Notice archéologique sur un cachet d'oculiste romain trouvé
à Heerlen
VII.
Découverte d'un autel romain a Kessel près de
Ruremonde
VIII.
Exploration d'une villa Belgo-romain au Herkenbergh à
Meerssen
Berichten over de
ontdekte Germaanse begraafplaats in Deurne
24
februari 2014 Eind januari 1837 wordt op de heide bij Deurne
een
compleet grafveld gevonden. Al direct worden urnen als geschenk
weggegeven, zodat er weinig duidelijkheid is over de voorwerpen en
de huidige "verblijfplaats". In mindere mate geldt dit
overigens ook voor de enkele andere voorwerpen die in de
venen/moerassen in de gemeente Deurne zijn gevonden en elders in de
Peel, en landelijk gezien in de veengebieden in het noorden van het
land.
In
dit bestand beperk ik me tot de begraafplaats. Informatie over de
andere gebieden is te vinden in andere bestanden van
www.theelen.info.
Op
mijn verzoek heeft de heer H. Pauts van het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden
in Leiden nadere informatie gegeven over voorwerpen die zich al van
oudsher in zijn museum bevinden. Toch zijn er enkele, tenminste de
mortieren en stampers, afgestaan voor een op te richten museum.
Vanaf dat moment zijn we het spoor bijster...
De
opmerkingen van H. Pauts zijn verwerkt tussen mijn eigen
naspeuringen.
Verzamelde
details betreffende de begraafplaats bij Deurne
[1]
Verscheidene urnen of potten van verschillende grootte, allen met
asch van verbrande ligchamen en kleine beentjes opgevuld
[2]
terwijl in sommige stukjes van metaal en gedeelten van wapenen
gevonden zijn
[3]
Kempensche heide
[4]
eerst 5, daarna 50 urnen gevonden
[5]
Niet één penning of muntstuk is opgedolven; alleen een
stukje metaal, hetwelk men meent voor een mondstuk van een
blaasinstrument te moeten houden.
[6]
De opgravingen worden op sommige plekken nog voortgezet, doch men
vindt in de urnen, zoo als gezegd is, niets dan asch en de
bovengemelde menschenbeenderen.
[7]
urnen of potten van verschillende grootte, allen met asch van
verbrande lichamen en kleine beentjes opgevuld;
[8]
werden ons een aantal urnen toegezonden, die kort te voren te
Deurne, in Noord-Braband, ontdekt waren geworden; en werd het aantal
nog vermeerderd door de opbrengst eener opzettelijke daartoe
verordende opdelving, door den burgemeester dier plaats, de heer van
Riet, aan het Museum ten
geschenke gegeven.
[9]
Romeinsche
voorwerpen uit de nalatenschap van wijlen den heer S. H. VAN DER
NOORDAA werden ook eenige overgenomen, van de vroegere bewoners van
ons Vaderland afkomstig:
[10]
De urnen blijken niet uit de Romeinse tijd te dateren, maar van vele
honderden jaren daarvoor.
[11]
Van den heer S. H. van der Noordaa, te Dordrecht, twee tufsteenen
vijzels met stampers, in den omtrek van Deurne
in Noord-Braband opgedolven;
[12]
Deze objecten (vijzels) zijn NIET gevonden in de gegevens van de
ruim 40.000 objecten online. De vijzels dateren zeer waarschijnlijk
uit de middeleeuwen en zijn rond 1875 door het museum in Leiden
afgestaan aan een ander op te richten museum.
[13]
Van
den heer P. O. P. Guyot,
te Nijmegen, eene allerbelangrijkste verzameling van bronzen en
andere voorwerpen bij Deurne, in de provincie Noord-Braband,
opgedolven, en die voor het grootste gedeelte door den Ritmeester
Baron van Voorst bijeengebragt, en aan den heer Guyot afgestaan
waren.
[14]
is het Museum thans in het bezit gesteld van de voornaamste en
zeldzaamste stukken, die bij de ontdekkiug te Deurne gedaan, voor
den dag zijn gekomen, en die, langs verschillende wegen, eindelijk
wederom bij elkander gebragt, een geheel vormen, dat […]
[15]
Van den heer P. C. G. GUYOT, te Nijmegen, nog een aantal van tien
urnen, potjes en schalen, te Deurne in Noord-Braband gevonden;
[16]
Van
den Heer S. H. van der Noordaa te Dordrecht, nog een drietal kleine
voorwerpen in urnen te Deurne gevonden.
[17]
Van de heer S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA ontvingen wij wederom een mortier
van tufsteen, in den omtrek van Deurne gevonden.
[18]
No. 1-3 afkomstig van Deurne.
[19]
Romeinsche
voorwerpen uit de nalatenschap van wijlen den heer S. H. VAN DER
NOORDAA werden ook eenige overgenomen, van de vroegere bewoners van
ons Vaderland afkomstig:
[20]
eene zeer fraai gepolijste vuursteenen BIJL, 12 dm. lang;
[21]
een ruw bewerkte BAL van trachiet, 4 dm. in doorsnede;
[22]
eene URNE van gebakken aarde, gevuld met verbrande
menschenbeenderen, hoog 19 dm.;
[23]
eene andere URNE, 18 dm. hoog, met de daarin gevonden brokken van
eene bronzen HAARNAALD;
[24,
25, 26] nog een drietal URNEN met verbrande beenderen en
[27]
overblijfsels van bronzen RINGEN enz.; de urnen van 10, 15.5 en 16
duim hoogte;[28] twee KOMMETJES, 9 en 7 dm.;
[29]
4 POTJES van verschillende vormen, 6 5 tot 9.5 dm. hoog;
[30]
een bekervormig VAATJE, 5.5 dm. hoog, en eenige brokstukken van
potten.
[31]
Al deze voorwerpen, met uitzondering welligt van de WIGGE, waren in
1837 op de oude begraafplaats te Deurne in Noordbrabant opgegraven;
[32]
een paar trachietsteenen MORTIEREN met STAMPERS uit den omtrek van
Deurne afkomstig en tot de reeds meermalen genoemde nalatenschap van
wijlen den heer S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA behoorende;
[33]
zij vormen nu met de stukken die, ter zelfder plaats gevonden, in
1840 en 1841 door wijlen den heer P. O. G. GUYOT aan het Museum
geschonken werden, een aanzienlijk geheel.
[34]
Een persoon met de naam van der Noordaa, wonende in Dinther, was
rond 1820 schoolopzichter in een district van de provincie.
24
februari 2014 Antwoord van Heikki Pauts van het Rijksmuseum te
Leiden
Ik
stuur u hieronder een complete lijst van vondsten uit Deurne, die
het RMO in de 19de eeuw heeft gekregen. Een aantal van deze objecten
kunt u ook op onze website vinden - daar zijn alleen de objecten
gepubliceerd die een foto hebben. De rest van de informatie is
afkomstig uit onze Inventarisboeken. Tussen 1818 en 1891 gebruikte
men in het RMO voor de inventarisnummers een enigszins verwarrende
combinatie van de voorletters van namen van personen en
vindplaatsen, dus bijvoorbeeld "vRD" bevat "van Riet
Deurne". Vanaf 1891 stapte het RMO over naar een nieuw systeem
van inventarisnummers, bestaande uit provinciecode (k =
Noord-Brabant), jaartal, / maand en volgnummer. Dus bijvoorbeeld k
1932/12.9 is in het museum binnengekomen in december 1932.
4
februari 1837 Deurne
3 Februarij 1837.
Aan
de Redactie van den Noord-Brabander. Sedert acht dagen levert de
gemeente van Deurne een bewijs op, dat ook dit gewest schatten in
zich bevat, wat oudheid en geschiedenis betreft, gerust met de
andere deelen onzes lands gelijk kan gesteld worden. De aandacht
onzer Vaderl. geleerden wordt derhalve op het volgende gevestigd:
waardoor zij mogelijk in de gelegenheid gesteld zullen worden, niet
alleen om hunne collectien van antiquiteiten met belangrijke
artikelen te vermeerderen, maar ook om de geschiedenis met gewigtige
bijdragen, dienst te bewijzen.
Door
het corps offic. van het Regt. Huss. N°. 6 begonnen en door
particulieren, in hoop van schatten te vinden, voortgezet, is men
hier bezig, met het opdolven eener kamp of leger, of wel
begraafplaats; denkelijk afkomstig, van eene door de Romeinen, uit
de Ardennen verdreven, en hier, achter de moerasgronden der Peel,
verscholene volksstam. Verscheidene urnen of potten van
verschillende grootte, allen met asch van verbrande ligchamen en
kleine beentjes opgevuld, zijn reeds opgegraven; terwijl in sommige
stukjes van metaal en gedeelten van wapenen gevonden zijn. Deze
potten zijn door heuveltjes van differente hoogte bedekt, en die
even als de potten, zekerlijk na het aanzien en rang, dat de aldaar
begravene bekleed heeft, in grootte en hoogte hebben toegenomen. De
pot is bijna gelijk eene kloot, eenigzins naar het boven- en
benedeneinde ovaal toeloopende, terwijl ze aan het boveneinde eene
schuins opslaande rand heeft, die genoegzaam dezelfde omtrek als de
pot zelve zal hebben, en het deksel dat in evenredigheid der pot
zeer klein is, sluit goed en schijnt digt bestreken te zijn. De
grootste potten zullen eene diameter van 3 palmen hebben terwijl de
kleinste naauwelijks 1 a 1½ zullen reiken en de heuveltjes
ook wel een verschil van bijna ééne el zullen
opleveren, daar men er vindt, die schier 2 en anderen die meer dan
vijf voeten hoog zijn. De potten zijn van potaarde (welke ook hier
gevonden wordt) gemaakt, en toonen aan dat zij de kunst van draaijen
reeds tot eene aanmerkelijke hoogte gebragt hadden.
P.
[elders
nog:] - De aandacht onzer vaderlandsche geleerden en oudheidkundigen
wordt op deze ontdekking, die tot aanwinst voor hunne verzamelingen,
of tot opheldring der geschiedenis, van nut kan zijn, ingeroepen.
4
februari 1837 [1] Verscheidene urnen of potten van verschillende
grootte, allen met asch van verbrande ligchamen en kleine beentjes
opgevuld
[2]
terwijl in sommige stukjes van metaal en gedeelten van wapenen
gevonden zijn
4
mei 1837 NEDERLANDEN.
- In het laatst uitgekomen nommer
van
het Nederlandsch Magazijn treft men een artikel aan over
de onlangs opgedolven urnen in Noord-Braband. Hetzelve houdt
hoofdzakelijk in dat men onlangs in onderscheidene onzer dagbladen,
berigten vond wegens het opdelven van oudheden in de gemeente
Deurne, provincie Noord-Braband, en thans bij de
Redactie van boven gemeld magazijn eenige bijzonderheden nopens die
opdelving zijn ingekomen, voornamelijk hierop nederkomende: Een
Ritmeester bij het regiment huzaren n°. 6, bij eene vroegere
gelegenheid, ontwaar geworden zijnde, dat eenige heuveltjes op de
Kempensche heide, bij opdelving, bleken grafheuveltjes te zijn, en
urnen of aschkruiken te bevatten, kwam op het denkbeeld, dat eenige
dergelijke heuveltjes, welke op de heide nabij Deurne, zijn
tegenwoordig kantonnement, aanwezig waren, tot dergelijke einden
mogten gediend hebben en oudheden bevatteden. Met toestemming des
burgemeesters aldaar, hebbende doen graven, vond men vijf urnen of
asch-kruiken, welke bij opvolgende delvingen vermeerderden, en thans
reeds het getal van vijftig te boven gaan. Jammer is het, dat de
landlieden, hiervan gehoord hebbende, ook van hunne zijde aan het
graven gingen, in de hoop om schatten te vinden; de door hen
opgedolvene urnen in stukken sloegen of beschadigden; groot was de
teleurstelling dezer lieden, toen zij in dezelve niets dan asch en
eenige half vergane kennelijke menschen-beenderen, als: schedels,
ribben, dijbeenderen enz. vonden. Niet één penning of
muntstuk is opgedolven; alleen een stukje metaal, hetwelk men meent
voor een mondstuk van een blaasinstrument te moeten houden. De
gevonden urnen zijn van verschillende grootte, doch alle van
nagenoeg ééne gedaante, sommige van deksels voorzien.
Het heide-veld, waarin de urnen gevonden zijn, is omtrent vier
bunders groot, de heuveltjes zijn vrij regelmatig, doch het geheel
terrein schijnt tot begraafplaats gediend te hebben, dewijl men ook
urnen buiten de heuveltjes en op eenigen afstand van dezelve heeft
gevonden. De urnen zijn meestal met eene laag houtskool bedekt;
immers zoodra men deze vindt, is men zeker nabij eene urn te zijn.
Sommige zitten zoo hoog, dat men boven in de asch de vezelworteltjes
der gewone heide vindt; andere zijn dieper gevonden, doch op
ongelijke diepte. De zelfstandigheid, waaruit deze potten of urnen
zijn zamengesteld, is glad, gedegen, en van eene donker bruine
kleur; geen verglaassel is op dezelve zigtbaar, noch eenig in- of
opschrift. Indien dezelve te Deurne vervaardigd zijn, alwaar thans
nog twee pottebakkerijen gevonden worden, dan moet men bekennen,
dat deze kunst aldaar in 10 of 15 eeuwen geene vorderingen gemaakt
heeft; wamt deze urnen zijn zuiverder en gladder bewerkt en met meer
zorg behandeld dan thans geschiedt. De opgravingen worden op sommige
plekken nog voortgezet, doch men vindt in de urnen, zoo als gezegd
is, niets dan asch en de bovengemelde menschenbeenderen.
24
februari 2014 Antwoord van Heikki Pauts van het Rijksmuseum te
Leiden
-
mei 1837, inventarisnummers NBD 1-3 "Opgegraven te Deurne en
door het Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken aan het Museum ten
geschenke gegeven";
http://www.rmo.nl/collectie/zoeken?q=NBD*&Afdeling=&Objectnaam=&Materiaal=&Periode=&Vindplaats=
4
mei 1837 [3] Kempensche heide
[4]
eerst 5, daarna 50 urnen gevonden
[5]
Niet één penning of muntstuk is opgedolven; alleen een
stukje metaal, hetwelk men meent voor een mondstuk van een
blaasinstrument te moeten houden.
[6]
De opgravingen worden op sommige plekken nog voortgezet, doch men
vindt in de urnen, zoo als gezegd is, niets dan asch en de
bovengemelde menschenbeenderen.
3
juni 1837 HAARLEM, 30 Februarij
Uit
de gemeente Deurne (Noord-Braband) wordt een berigt medegedeeld
wegens het ontdekken, in de nabijheid dier plaats, van een kampleger
of wel begraafplaats; zoo men denkt afkomstig van een ouden
volksstam, die door de Romeinen uit de Ardennes verdreven, willigt
daar ter plaatse, achter de moerasgronden der Peel, eene veilige
wijkplaats zochten. De eerste ontdekking dier leger- of
begraafplaats werd gedaan door officieren van het in den omtrek
gekantonneede regiment huzaren no. 6, en sedert worden de
opdelvingen door particulieren, in hoop van schatten te vinden,
voortgezet. Onder hetgeen tot dus ver gevonden is noemt men
verscheidene urnen of potten van verschillende grootte, allen met
asch van verbrande lichamen en kleine beentjes opgevuld; in sommige
dier potten zijn, naar men meld, stukjes metaal en gedeelten van
wapenen gevonden. De genoemde potten zijn bedekt door heuveltjes van
verschillende hoogte, die, even als de potten waarschijnlijk naar
het aanzien en den rang, welke de daar begravene bekleed heeft, in
grootte en hoogte hebben toegenomen. De potten zijn van pot-aarde en
goed gedraaid; de grootste hebben eene middellijn van 3, de kleinste
van ruim 1 palm; sommige heuveltjes zijn bijna 2, andere meer dan 5
voeten hoog.
3
juni 1837 [7] urnen of potten van verschillende grootte, allen met
asch van verbrande lichamen en kleine beentjes opgevuld;
24
februari 2014 Antwoord van Heikki Pauts van het Rijksmuseum te
Leiden
-
augustus 1837, inventarisnummers vRD 1-9b "Gevonden bij Deurne
en aan het RMO ten geschenke gegeven door dhr. van Riet,
burgemeester van Deurne en Liessel in Augustus 1837";
http://www.rmo.nl/collectie/zoeken?q=vRD*&Afdeling=&Objectnaam=&Materiaal=&Periode=&Vindplaats=
26
mei 1838 (§§)
De Romeinsche graven, ook de eenvoudigste,
b.
v. die geene steenen kisten bevatteden, leverden niet alleen
aardewerk op, hetwelk door bewerking, vorm, kleur of versiering zich
terstond als Romeinsche kenmerkte, maar ook daarenboven voorwerpen
of fragmenten van metaal, glas of andere zamengestelde stof.
Integendeel werden daarin nimmer voorwerpen van vuursteen gevonden.
Het onderscheiden karakter der Romeinsche en Germaansche
heuvelgraven is door mij aangestipt o. a. in een berigt over de
Oudheidk. ontdekking te Deurne, in den Konst- en Letterbode van het
jaar 1838, d. d. 26 Mei.
23
april 1839 [8] werden
ons een aantal urnen toegezonden, die kort te voren te Deurne, in
Noord-Braband, ontdekt waren geworden; en werd het aantal nog
vermeerderd door de opbrengst eener opzettelijke daartoe verordende
opdelving, door den burgemeester dier plaats, de heer van Riet, aan
het Museum ten geschenke
gegeven.
[wellicht
NBD
2, vRD
4a, vRD
2, vRD
3, ND
3, GtD 15a, k 1942/6.1, k 1925/1.1, NBD
1, k 1942/6.2, vRD 7, k 1925/1.2, ND 2, k 1942/6.3, ND 13, vRD
4b, vRD 5a, ND 4, GtD 13a, ND 8, k 1932/12.9, ND 10, ND 5, vRD 8,
vRD 5b, ND 11, k 1942/6.4, GtD 14b]
[10]
De urnen blijken niet uit de Romeinse tijd te dateren, maar van vele
honderden jaren daarvoor.
18
maart 1840 [11] Van den heer S. H. van der Noordaa, te Dordrecht,
twee tufsteenen vijzels met stampers, in den omtrek van Deurne
in Noord-Braband opgedolven;
[12]
Deze objecten zijn NIET gevonden in de gegevens van de ruim 40.000
objecten online.
1
januari 1840 Indien ook gij, Mijne Heeren, die onder uwe
uitspanningen het edele jagtvermaak niet vergeet, genegen zijt, of U
opgewekt gevoeld, om ook dergelijke overblijfselen van den grijzen
voortijd aan het licht te brengen, zoo is daartoe niets anders
noodig, als te letten, of uw oog op de vlakke heide geene heuveltjes
vindt, die ongeveer één half el hoog, en twee tot twee
en een half of drie voet in doorsnede zijn. Wanneer gij op
dergelijke heuveltjes stoot, is het bijna zeker, dat er urnen
verscholen zijn. De begraafplaats te Deurne en die te Baarle-Nassau
althans zijn door jagers op de jagt ontdekt, die tevens verzekeren,
dat zij vroeger meer dergelijke tumuli, doch zonder er acht op te
slaan, in Noord-Brabands heide ontmoet hebben.
14
maart 1840 MUSEUM VAN OUDHEDEN TE LEIJDEN.
[...]
Van den heer S. H. van der Noordaa, te Dordrecht, twee tufsteenen
vijzels met stampers, in den omtrek van Deurne in
Noord-Braband opgedolven; zijnde deze de eenige voorwerpen van die
soort welke het Museum bezit, en die, voor zoo verre ons bekend is,
elders nog niet zijn voorgekomen. De nabijheid van de uitgebreide
begraafakkers aldaar, in de heide voor een paar jaren ontdekt, geven
veel waarschijnlijkheid aan het vermoeden dat èn
die vijzels, èn de urnen die in zoo grooten getale in dien
omtrek voorkomen, tot denzelfden volksstam behooren, en leveren
alsdan eene allerbelangrijkste bijdrage tot de kennis van het
huiselijk leven der oude Germaansche volken, van wier huisraad,
behalve in het noordelijk Europa, betrekkelijk zoo weinig meer is
overgebleven. [...]
12
mei 1840 [brief aan de burgemeester van Deurne]
Burgemeester
van Deurne Liessel Helmond, den 12 Mei 1840
De
Heer Gouverneur dezer provincie (waarschijnlijk door het bestuur van
het genoodschap ter bevordering van wetenschappen en kunsten in
Noord Braband daartoe aangezocht) heeft mij een groot aantal
vraagpunten ter beantwoording opgegeven betrekkelijk oudheden in
mijn District.
deze
vragen, voor zoover zij de gemeente Deurne Liessel betreffen zijn de
navolgende:
volgens
een medegedeeld berigt zoude een landbouwer van de Mortel genaamd,
een romeinsch zwaard en een goude schild bezitten, welke in den peel
zoude zijn uitgegraven.
1°.
Is dit werkelijk zoo? en in dat geval, wanneer en waar ter plaatse
heeft men dat zwaard en schild gevonden?
2°.
Zoude er gelegenheid zijn om hetzelve voor de verzameling van oud en
zeldzaamheden van het provinciaal genoodschap van kunsten en
watenschappen aantekoopen?
3°.
Zoo ja, tot welken prijs?
4°.
Wanneer de eigenaar tot verkoop niet mogt kunnen besluiten, zoude
hij dan die voorwerpen tegen bewijs ter beoordeeling en afteekening
willen overmaken?
5°.
Is er gelegenheid om nog eenige der aldaar onlangs gevonden
lijkurnen of andere aldaar opgegraven merkwaardigheden te koopen?
6°.
Hoe is de benaming der plaats waar die urnen opgegraven zijn?
Een
eenigzins spoedig antwoord op deze vragen zal mij aangenaam zijn
D
Distr.
29 juni 1840
Provinciaal Bestuur RANB 17 inv. nr. 12419
n°
1
Missive
van 17 april ll n° 8. / Antwoord op de missive van
afdeeling
kunsten en wetenschappen / 17 april ll no 8.
Helmond
den 29 Juny 1840.
[Aan
den gouverneur]
Bij
de aangehaalde missive/missieve heeft UWEG mij eenige vraagpunten
betrekkelijk oude monumenten die zich in sommige gemeentens van mijn
district/District zouden bevinden, ter beantwoording opgegeven.
Eenige dezer vraagpunten zoude ik dadelijk hebben kunnen
beantwoorden, [doch] tot het bekomen van inlichtingen heb ik de
gelegenheid mijner rondreize waar genomen, als wanneer de leden van
den raad vergaderd zijnde, ik vermeende beter te kunnen geinformeerd
worden. Ik zal de volg orde in acht nemen, zoo als zij in uwe
missieve voorkomt.
[...]
Gemeente
Deurne Liessel.
Naar
het berigt Ik heb het berigt dat een landbouwer te Deurne
Liessel in het bezit zoude zijn van een oud
romeinsch zwaard en een goud schild welk in den peel zoude zijn
uitgegraven, zeer betwijfeld, wijl ik er nooit iets van vernomen
had. ook is mij bij onderzoek verzekerd gebleken
dat er niemand iets van weet. waarschijnlijk heeft men dit verward
met ?? het geen in de naburige gemeente Meyel heeft
plaats gehad. In het jaar 1807 men heeft men
aldaar een goud schild gevonden. voor eenige jaren te Meyel zijnde
heb ik mij naar het huis van den toenmaligen burgemeester Goossens
begeven om deze merkwaardigheid te zien. hij vertoonde mij een
schild welk in den peel in het jaar 1807
omtrent vijf voeten onder het onder de oppervlakte
van den grond in den peel bij gelegenheid eener
turfgraving gevonden was, hetzelve was van goud of althans zwaar
verguld gedreven werk, op
hetzelve waren hyroglyphen en andere figuren van leeuwen, tijgers &c
gedreven, en had de vorm van een halve maan, veel gelekende naar een
ringkraag zoo als de kapiteins der infanterie voor
? nog niet zeer
lang geleden op de borst droegen. de Heer van Keverberg, destijds
sousprefet te Cleef, had dit stuk mede naar Parijs genomen en
na zijne terugkomst, volgens zeggen van den Burgemeester veel geld
voor geboden, doch men was het over den prijs niet eens kunnen
worden. -
Er
zijn te Deurne geene lijkurnen meer verkrijgbaar. de Heer
burgemeester zoude door trachten er
door graving er nog te krijgen, welke hij alsdan, indien dit
gelukken mogt gaarne zoude afstaan. -
De
Districts Commissaris / DD.
Wesselman.
24
februari 2014 Antwoord van Heikki Pauts van het Rijksmuseum te
Leiden
-
september 1840, inventarisnummers GtD 1-12b "Gevonden te Deurne
en geschonken door dhr. P.C.G. Guyot te Nijmegen";
1
oktober 1840 [...] Alzoo bezit het Noord-Brabandsch genootschap
reeds urnen van drie Heidensche begraafplaatsen, als: van
Deurne in 1837, van
Genderen in 1839 en
van Gemonde
in 1849 gevonden. [...]
21
oktober 1840 De Germaansche en Noordsche
monumenten van het museum te Leyden
N.
A. beteekent: Nordische Altherthumskunde
G.
A. --------- Germaniche Altherthumskunde
Een
* --------- dat het voorwerp zeldzaam is.
21a.
Beiteltje van koper, met kopergroen bezet; vorm als Fig. 14, doch
zonder versiering aan den steel; afkomst, Deurne, uit een'
Germaanschen grafheuvel; geschenk van den Heer P. Guyot.
Lang
0,087 El.
21b.
Beiteltje van koper, met kopergroen bezet; vorm als Fig. 15;
afkomst, Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen grafheuvel; geschenk
van den Heer P. Guyot.
Lang
0,062 El.
B.21c.
Beiteltje van koper, met kopergroen bezet; vorm als Fig. 13, doch de
waaijer zeer beschadigd; afkomst, Deurne; geschenk van den
Heer P. Guyot.
Lang
0,067 El (1).
36.
Lans-spits van koper, met kopergroen bezet, bewerking en vorm als in
G. A. Taf. XVII. Fig. 2, en aan het benedeneinde van twee gaatjes
voorzien om aan eene schaft bevestigd te worden; afkomst, Deurne;
geschenk van den Heer van Riet.
Lang
0,115 El.
38.
Lans-spits van ijzer; bewerking en vorm als in N. A. Taf. XVII. Fig.
1, van twee gaatjes voorzien als n. 36; afkomst, Deurne, uit
een' Germaanschen grafheuvel; geschenk van den Heer van Riet.
Lang
0,23 El.
53a.
Twee fragmenten van een' mantelhaak naar het schijnt, van koper en
met koopergroen bezet; afkomst Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen
grafheuvel; geschenk van den Heer P. Guyot.
B.53b.
Schijf van spiraalsgewijs gewonden koperdraad, met kopergroen bezet
(fragment van een' mantelhaak); vorm als in G. A. Taf. 5 Fig. 1;
afkomst, Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen grafheuvel; geschenk
van den Heer P. Guyot.
53c.
Twee fragmenten eener koperen haarnaald, met kopergroen bezet; vorm
nagenoeg als in G. A. Taf. 2 Fig. 4; afkomst, Deurne, uit
een' Germaanschen grafheuvel; geschenk van den Heer P. Guyot.
56a.
Fragment van een' spiraalsgewijs gewonden ring naar het schijnt, van
koper en met kopergroen bezet; afkomst, Deurne, uit een'
Germaanschen grafheuvel; geschenk van den Heer P. Guyot.
Middelbare
dikte 0,006 El.
B.56b.
Fragment van een' ronden armring (?) van koper, met kopergroen
bezet; afkomst, Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen grafheuvel;
geschenk van den Heer P. Guyot.
Dik
0,036 El.
56c.
Fragment van een' ronden armring (?) van koper, met kopergroen
bezet; afkomst, Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen grafheuvel;
geschenk van den Heer P. Guyot.
Dik
0,006 El.
B.58A*
Plat ringetje van graauwachtig roode aarde en fijne bewerking;
hetzelve heeft waarschijnlijk als hals- of oorring aan een' anderen
ring gehangen; afkomst, Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen
grafheuvel; geschenk van den Heer P. Guyot.
Middellijn
0,013 El; dikte 0,005 El.
66a.
Pot van donkerbruine aarde, vorm als Fig. 28, doch gebarsten;
inhoud, verbrande beenderen; afkomst Deurne, uit een'
Germaanschen grafheuvel; geschenk van den Heer van Riet.
Hoog
0,16 El.
C.74.
Potje van bruine aarde, vorm als Fig. 29, doch zonder ooren; inhoud,
aschachige aarde; afkomst, Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen
grafheuvel; geschenk van den Heer van Riet.
Dit
potje werd gevonden in den pot n. 81.
Hoog
0,095 El.
74a.
Pot van donkerbruin aarde; vorm, nagenoeg als Fig. 32, doch aan den
rand beschadigd; inhoud, verbrande beenderen; afkomst Deurne,
uit een' Germaanschen grafheuvel; geschenk van den Heer van Riet.
In
denzelven bevond zich het potje n. 164.
Hoog
0,25 El.
81.
Potje van donkerbruine aarde, tamelijk fijne bewerking en
vermoedelijke vorm als Fig. 32, doch de rand is afgebroken; inhoud,
verbrande beenderen; afkomst, Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen
grafheuvel; geschenk van den Heer van Riet.
In
denzelven bevond zich het potje n. 74.
Hoog
0.195 El.
82.
Pot van donkerbruine aarde; vorm als Fig. 32; inhoud, verbrande
beenderen en asch; afkomst, Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen
grafheuvel; geschenk van den Heer van Riet.
Hoog
0,24 El.
91.
Pot van bruine aarde; vorm nagenoeg als Fig. 28, doch van boven
geschonden; afkomst, Deurne, uit een Germaanschen grafheuvel;
geschenk van den Heer van Riet.
Hoog
0,16 El.
93.
Pot van lichtbruine aarde; vorm nagenoeg als Fig. 37, doch van een
oortje voorzien; inhoud, verbrande beenderen en asch, boven welke
eenige fragmenten ruw aardewerk lagen, die oorspronkelijk tot een'
schotel van 18 duim middellijn kunnen behoord hebben; afkomst,
Deurne; uit een Germaanschen grafheuvel.
Hoog
0,21
El.
98.
Pot van donkerbruine aarde; vorm nagenoeg als Fig. 41, doch aan ééne
zijde zeer geschonden; inhoud, verbrande beenderen; afkomst, Deurne,
uit een' Germaanschen grafheuvel; geschenk van den Hr. van Riet.
Hoog
0,245 El.
C.
99. Pot van donkerbruine aarde; vorm nagenoeg als Fig. 41; inhoud,
verbrande beenderen; afkomst, Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen
grafheuvel.
Hoog
0,205 El.
101.
Pot van bruine aarde; vorm nagenoeg als Fig. 34; inhoud, verbrande
beenderen; afkomst, Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen grafheuvel;
geschenk van den Heer van Riet.
Hoog
0,15 El.
C.
109. Pot van donkerbruine aarde; vermoedelijke vorm als Fig. 34,
doch boven ter helft geschonden; inhoud, verbrande beenderen;
afkomst, Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen grafheuvel; geschenk
van den Heer van Riet.
Hoog
0,27 El.
119.
Pot van bruine aarde; vermoedelijke vorm nagenoeg als Fig. 42, doch
rand en ooren zijn weggebroken; versiering, 5 ruw ingekrabde lijnen
boven den buik; inhoud, verbrande beenderen; afkomst, Deurne,
uit een' Germaanschen grafheuvel, geschenk van den Heer van Riet.
Hoog
0,16 El.
C.
164. Potje van graauwe aarde, tamelijk fijne stof en ruwe bewerking;
vorm nagenoeg als Fig. 67, doch aan ééne zijde
geschonden; afkomst, Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen
grafheuvel, gevonden in den pot n. 74*; geschenk van den Heer van
Riet.
Hoog
0,04 El.
195A
en 195 B. Mortier en stamper van tufsteen; vorm als Fig. 20a en 20b;
afkomst, Deurne; geschenk van den Heer S. H. van der Noordaa.
De
mortier is hoog 0,075 El; breed 0,11 El.
De
stamper is lang 0,1555 El.
196A
en 196B. Mortier en stamper van tufsteen; vorm als Fig. 20 a en b;
versiering der zijden als a, c en d; afkomst Deurne; geschenk van
den Heer S. H. van der Noordaa.
De
mortier is hoog 0,07 El, breed 0,13 El.
De
stamper is lang 0,10 El.
209*.
Bladvormig werktuig van gegoten koper en met kopergroen bezet,
voorzien van eene gesplitste punt en drie kunstige gaatjes, en aan
de zijden scherp, zie Gig. 16; misschien eene vorm tot bewerken van
potten; afkomst, Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen grafheuvel;
geschenk van de Heer P. Guyot.
Oorspronkelijke
middellijn van het geheel 0,045 El.
209a.
Twee fragmenten koper, met kopergroen bezet, doch door verbranding
misvormd; dezelve schijnen het mondstuk eener trompet te hebben
uitgemaakt; afkomst Deurne, uit een' Germaanschen grafheuvel;
geschenk van den Heer P. Guyot.
Oorspronkelijke
middellijn van het geheel 0,045 El.
24
februari 2014 Antwoord van Heikki Pauts van het Rijksmuseum te
Leiden
2014:
Over die mortieren en stampers hadden we vorige zomer al contact.
Zoals
ik toen al schreef zijn de betreffende objecten al in de 19de eeuw
overgedragen naar Amsterdam (VdN a-f aan het Museum van het
Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap in 1860, VdN g-k aan de
toenmalige Rijksadviseur voor de Monumenten van Vaderlandsche
Geschiedenis en Kunst in 1875). Ik weet niet zeker, maar ik denk dat
die collecties later in het Rijksmuseum Amsterdam terecht zijn
gekomen.
Hieronder
nog samenvattend de informatie over de betreffende mortieren en
stampers uit onze Inventarisboeken:
-
februari 1839, inventarisnummers VdN a-b "Gevonden in
Noord-Brabant, aan het museum van oudheden geschonken door den Hr.
S.H. van der Noordaa te Dordrecht.
a)
Vijzel met stamper, uit graauwen tufsteen;
waarschijnlijk
tot het fijnwrijven van koren; (welligt ook om de geringere grootte
ter bereiding van mostaard). De vijzel is van buiten vierkant doch
aan de hoeken eenigszins bijgerond; van binnen bolvormig uitgehold.
b)
Stamper is van boven vierkant, doch loopt onder conisch kegelvormig
toe,
eenigszins
gelijkende naar eenen omgekeerden cippus met voetstuk.
Over
deze beide voorwerpen geeft de Heer v.d. Noordaa in Zijnen brief dd.
Dordrecht 17 Dec. 1838 aan Dr. L.J.F. Janssen het volgende berigt:
"Doch
ook werd aan mij toegezonden een vijzeltje en een stamper van
bazalt, omtrent van vorm als die ik bezit, met dit onderscheid
alléén dat de eerste bij mij bekomen vijzel en stamper
bij elkaar schijnen te behooren, terwijl de stamper U gezonden voor
den daarbij toegeschikten vijzel wat te groot is. Beide vijzels,
beide de stampers zijn van bazalt, van die soort zoo als ze aan den
Rijn voorkomt. Men heeft aan die voorwerpen met de minste moeite
dien vorm gegeven welke de natuurlijke draad van den steen aanwees.
Deze oudheden zijn niet gevonden aan de bewuste begraafplaats te
Deurne; maar nu eenige jaren geleden aldaar in het land en in eenen
tuin, de laatst toegezonden vijzel en stamper zijn zelfs afkomstig
van verschillende plaatsen onder Deurne en van verschillende
personen. Er zijn in dien omtrek meer soortgelijke ruwe huismeubels
geweest, grooter en kleiner, vroeger en later gevonden, doch die
weder zijn verstrooid geraakt. Een mijner broeder vroeger bij de
Lanciers, thans door zwakke gezondheid buiten eenige betrekking en
wondende te Deurne heeft de bedoelde vijzels voor mij opgespoord.
Hij doorkruiste de Majorij in alle rigtingen, hij is daar overal
bekend, ook ik zelve zoude 's nachts er aan vele plaatsen den weg
vinden, en nogthans is het om niet mogen gelukken na alle
nasporingen soortgelijke vijzels ergens elders in Noord-Brabant, dan
juist in den omtrek van Deurne te ontdekken alwaar die dan ook wel
stellig zeker alléén zijn gevonden en bekend zijn
geraakt, want zoo als ik zeide men heeft er daar meer gehad. Over
dit verschijnsel nadenkende, is het mij voorgekomen dat deze
gereedschappen zouden kunnen afkomstig zijn van denzelfden volkstam
die er zijne overledenen aan de ontdekte begraafplaats heeft
nagelaten".
-
november 1839, inventarisnummers VdN c-d "Gevonden in den
omtrek van Deurne en aan het Museum geschonken door S.H. van der
Noordaa, Substit. Griffier te Dordrecht.
c) Een vijzel
van tufsteen, vierkant van gedaante en van buiten
van
eenige versiering voorzien, als aan elk der hoeken een colommetje,
terwijl de vier velden tusschen deze colommetjes in ruiten en
driehoeken zijn afgedeeld. Van die vier velden zijn er twee (welke
tegen elkaar over staan) dus behouwen: [tekening] het derde heeft
regtstaande, en het vierde verschoven ruitjes, als: [tekening]
inwendig is dezelve rond uitgehold.
d) Stamper van
dezelfde steensoort, aan het boveneinde vierkant en beneden
rond.
Dezelve
is te klein dan dat hij oorspronkelijk tot bovengenoemden vijzel
zoude hebben behoord.
Het
is opmerkelijk dat deze en soortgelijke vijzels in zoo groot getal
in de omstreek van Deurne Lijsel en Asten, gelijk de Hr. vdNoordaa
mij (Dr. Janssen) mondeling verzekerde, gevonden zijn en wel binnen
den omtrek van een uur, terwijl men ze elders in Noord-Brabant,
volgens 's mans verzekering, nog niet heeft aangetroffen".
-
october 1842, inventarisnummers VdN e-f "Gevonden in den omtrek
van Deurne en aan het Museum geschonken door S.H. van der Noordaa te
Dordrecht.
e) Een mortier
van tufsteen, langwerpig-vierkant van gedaante
en
tamelijk ruw bewerkt.
f) Twee stukken ijzererts naar het schijnt,
gevonden in eene urn.
-
juni 1863, inventarisnummers VdN g-k "Gevonden in den omtrek
van Deurne, afkomstig uit de verzameling van wijlen den Heer S.H.
van der Noordaa, en van diens zoon, Mr. v.d. Noordaa te Dortrecht,
voor het Museum van Oudheden overgenomen.
g) Mortier van
trachijtsteen, van binnen rond, van buiten achtzijdig,
en
versierd met gothische nissen, in reliëf; in twee dier nissen
is het jaartal 1393 ingebeiteld, en in twee andere zijn de letters A
en H, denkelijk door eene latere hand, ingekrabd. De vorm is p.m.
[tekening]
h) Stamper van
trachijtsteen, behoorende bij de mortier VdN g,
vorm
p.m. [tekening]
i) Mortier als
VdN g, doch vierkant van vorm, met vier pilasters
aan
de buitenzijde, als VdN h.
k) Stamper,
als VdN h, en behoorende bij de mortier VdN i.
31
december 1865 Als aanvulling vinden we nog enkele elders niet
genoemde details in het boek Noord-Brabants Oudheden (facsimile van
2012):
Met
een dertigtal liefhebbers zijner compagnie toog hij naar de heide te
Deurne en had weldra de overtuiging, dat die verhevenheden
lijkheuvelen waren. Deze zijn ongelijk van hoogte, daar eenige
slechts 60 duim, en andere 7,60 el
hoog waren op eenen grooteren of kleineren omtrek naar gelang der
hoogte. Er zullen een honderdtal urnen gevonden zijn, van de groote
eens theekops tot 100 pd. zwaar. […]
In
het voorjaar van 1840 ben ik met wijlen Dr. Niermeijer, later
professor te Leiden, deze heide wezen bezoeken en vond de
heuvels nog zóó als toen men ophield met dit
schatgraven! [...]
In
het Rijks-Museum te Leiden worden dertien urnen en bijpotjes,
bij Jhr. Mr. H. de Grez te 's Hertogenbosch, vier urnen en
bijpotjes (1) en in het kabinet van het Noord-Brabantsch Genootschap
twee urnen en een bijpotje bewaard.
(1)
Onder het afdrukken van dit berigt verpligtte mij de heer de Grez
met die goed bewaarde urnen aan ons kabinet ten geschenke aan te
bieden.
1 januari 1841
VERHANDELING over de in Noord-Braband ontdekte Germaansche
Begraafplaatsen.
[262]
"De Grafheuvel en de daarin gevondene merkwaardigheden mogen in
den eersten opslag, het voorkomen van weinige beteekenis hebben, dit
vooroordeel zal weldra afgelegd worden, wanneer men tot zijne
verbazing ontdekt, dat zulk een op zich weinig beduidend toeval zoo
veel stof aanbiedt, om de Schriften der ouden te verstaan, en over
de oudste geschiedenis en volksgebruiken zulk een licht verspreidt."
Westendorp.
Noord-Braband
is rijk in overblijfsels van den voortijd, en bezit vooral nog zeer
veel in hare volksbegrippen, volksgebruiken en volksoverleveringen,
dat voor den oudheidkundige onschatbaar is, en hem tot eene meer
grondige kennis kan doen komen van het volk, 't welk de oorlogende
Romeinen het eerst leerden kennen en in ruwe trekken afmaalden.
In
de voorgaande afleveringen van het Mengelwerk hebben wij
reeds eenige berigten deswege medegedeeld, en de bijval, welke
dezelve bij vele lezers gevonden [263] hebben, moedigt mij aan, om
onze overige navorschingen
1°.
omtrent de goden en dezelver tempels,
2°.
" de gewijde bosschen,
3°.
" de heilige boomen,
4°.
" de heilige bronnen,
5°.
" de heidensehe begraafplaatsen
van
tijd tot tijd mede te deelen.
Wij
kiezen thans de heidensche begraafplaatsen ter beschouwing, die
ontdekt zijn:
1°.
te Orten bij 's Hertogenbosch,
2°.
" Alphen in de baronie van Breda,
3°.
" Mun onder Oss,
4°.
" Deurne bij Helmond,
5°.
" Gemonde bij St. Michiels-Gestel,
6°.
" Genderen (land van Heusden),
7°.
" Engelen " " "
8°.
" Tilburg,
9°.
" Haren bij Megen.
Deze
opgaven zullen wij doen vergezeld gaan van die bijzonderheden, welke
onze vaderen voornamelijk den kennen bij het plegtige tijdstips des
verscheidens, en of uit middeleeuwsche oorkonden, of uit de taal, of
uit den mond des volks bijeengebragt zijn. De uitvoerigheid dezer
verhandeling zal, hopen wij, om de verscheidenheid en nieuwheid van
vele onzer opmerkingen, bij den lezer gereedelijk verschooning
vinden.
[273]
BEGRAAFPLAATS TE DEURNE.
De
begraafplaats uit den heidenschen voortijd, welke in 1837, in de
heide 20 minuten van Deurne, ontdekt werd, en waaruit wel 100 urnen
gegraven zijn, heeft veel gerucht gemaakt. In het voorjaar van 1840
heb ik mij derwaarts begeven, om met eigene oogen dit kerkhof op te
nemen, en na gedaan onderzoek bevonden, dat de berigten, door Dr.
Jansen in den Konst- en
Letterbode (a)
geplaatst, allernaauwkeurigst zijn, weshalve wij het zakelijke
berigt met de woorden van dezen oudheidkundige zullen overnemen.
De
heer F. baron van Voorst tot Voorst, ritmeester bij het regement
Huzaren N. 6. te Someren gecantonneerd, vond al jagende in de
omstreken van onderscheidene dorpen, zoo ook te Deurne, in de
hoogste punten der heide, [274] regelmatige verhevenheden, die hij
veronderstelde, dat in vroegere tijden een doel gehad moeten hebben.
"Ik dacht", zoo schrijft zijn Hoog wel geboren, wiens
woorden wij verder laten volgen, "ik dacht, na den jagdttijd
wil ik weten, wat daar in zit; sprak er met den Burgemeester over,
die bereidwillig de vergunning tot het opgraven gaf. Met een
dertigtal liefhebbers der kompagnie, waarbij ik sta, aan het werk
gegaan, vonden wij in een paar uren tijds vier urnen, van
verschillende gedaanten en grootte, waarvan er drie gebarsten waren,
en die met het opheffen uit een vielen. Alle waren, als ook de
nadere gevondene, met verbrande menschenbeenderen tot op de helft
gevuld. Het aanvulsel is eene compacte zwarte aarde, misschien
vroeger asch en houtskool... Wanneer men bij het graven houtskool
ontdekte, wan was de urne niet ver af te vinden."
"Zelden
vond men menschenbeenderen zonder urnen. Van de menschenbeenderen
zijn stukken van schedels, ribben en vooral de ronde hoofden der
dij- en opperarmbeenderen nog duidelijk te onderkennen... Ik
beschouw dezelve uit de hand gemaakt, ten minste niet zoo als thans
gedraaid en slecht gebakken, dat bij het doorbreken der scherven op
de kanten te zien is. De kleur is bij eenige als chocolade, bij
andere graauwachtig. Twee waren ligt rood en eene scheen ruw
verglaasd. daags na mijn begin waren eenige boeren en burgers ook
begonnen, om een door den Ritmeester aangeduiden schat te zoeken, en
weldra twee honderd boeren bezig, om alles zonder orde of overleg
ten onderste boven te keeren. Goede raad kon niet baten. Naderhand
werd dit door eenigen begrepen. De aarde heeft een en half spit die
vast en bruinheid... welke zij elders bezit. Dieper [275] spittende
bespeurt men weldra dat de grond vroeger (niet?)
geroerd is geweest."
"De
urnen, die in geel zand zitten, zijn gaver, witter en helderder van
kleur, dan die in den grond, welke op teelaarde gelijkt. Die, welke
in den vlakken grond worden aangetroffen, zitten zelfs minder dan
een voet diep; in de heuvels 2½ tot 3 voet; de eene urne
boven de andere; bij grootere ook wel kleinere, of daarin verborgen,
als de kraamvrouw met haar kind. – Ik had de grootste heuvels
onderzocht (a),
in de veronderstelling, dat dit de graven der voornaamste personen
zouden zijn. Wanneer dit niet meer dan een gewoon kerkhof van dien
tijd is geweest, dan kunnen dit familie-graven geweest zijn, hetwelk
men geneigd is te gelooven, wanneer men de urnen met eenige
tusschenruimte boven elkander zag geplaatst; waardoor die bergjes
achtereenvolgens die hoogte verkregen, welke door verloop van tijd
veel van derzelver hoogte, door regen, droogte en wind moeten hebben
verloren. - Op eenige urnen is verbrand metaal gevonden; al zeer
gering (echter) in vergelijking van de uitgestrektheid opgeworpen
grond, die thans eene woestijn gelijkt... Deze begraafplaats wordt
door een voetpad op Asten doorsneden, liggende op 20 minuten
afstands van Deurne; zij zal op het oog geschat, 150 passen breed,
en 500 land zijn... Er zullen ruim een honderdtal urnen gevonden
zijn van verschillende gedaante en grootte, waarvan een 2/3 gedeelte
beschadigd was, van de grootte eens theekops af tot 100 pd. zwaar.
Zij worden van f1 tot f4 verkocht... Ik moet nog bijbrengen, dat
niet [276] geheel ver van de begraafplaats eene lange breede sloot
bestaat, waarvan het doel niet is te begrijpen, die noch tot vervoer
(tenzij aanvoer van drinkwater). noch tot omsluiting, noch
grensscheiding kan hebben gediend."
Tot
zoo ver deelt Dr. Jansen bovenstaande merkwaardige berigten mede met
de woorden van den baron van Voorst zelven, getrokken uit eenen
brief gedagteekend: Someren 25 Maart 1837, die er tot lof van
den geëerden ontdekker bijvoegt: "Ziet men uit dit
belangrijk berigt, dat de heer van Voorst de eerste was, die de
ontdekking maakte: men zal hem tevens den lof niet kunnen weigeren,
dat hij daarbij oordeelkundiger en naauwkeuriger is te werk gegaan,
dan men van iemand, die deze soort van nasporing niet tot zijne
bijzondere studie maakte, had mogen verwachten; men zal hem
erkentelijk zijn, dat hij gelet heeft op bijzonderheden, die bij
eene wetenschappelijke beoordeeling niet gemist kunnen worden."
Toen
ik te Deurne was, werd mij verhaald, dat reeds vóór
dertig jaren een schaapsherder eene urne met menschen-beenderen
gevonden had, doch dat hij die als overblijfsels van eenen manslag
beschouwd en, om met de politie in geene aanraking te komen, de zaak
stil gehouden en de beenderen met de potscherven weder in den grond
gestopt had.
Beschouwen
wij thans de voorwerpen, welke in deze Germaansche begraafplaats
ontdekt zijn. Dezelve zijn van drieërlei aard, als:
1°.
Een honderdtal urnen.
2°.
Eenige metalen versierselen.
3°.
Een drietal verdachte voorwerpen.
[277] I.
LIJKURNEN.
In
het Rijks Museum van oudheden te Leiden worden bewaard:
1°.
Een gebarsten pot van donker bruine aarde, met verbrande beenderen.
Hoog 0,16 el. (zijnde N°, 66a der verzameling van oudheden.)
2°.
Potje van bruine aarde, met aschachtige aarde. Hoog 0,095 el (N°.
C. 74). Dit potje werd gevonden in een
3°.
Pot van donkerbruine aarde, zijnde tamelijk fijn bewerkt, doch aan
den rand geschonden, met verbrande beenderen. Hoog 0,195 el. (N°.
81.)
4°.
Pot van donkerbruine aarde, aan den rand beschadigd, met verbrande
beenderen. Hoog 0,25 el. (N°. 74a). In denzelven bevond zich een
5°.
Potje van graauwe aarde, tamelijk fijne stof en ruwe bewerking, doch
aan ééne zijde geschonden. Hoog 0,04 el. (N°. C.
164.)
6°.
Pot van donkerbruine aarde; vorm als Fig. 3 der bijgaande plaat, met
verbrande menschen beenderen en asch. Hoog 0,24 el. (N°. 82.)
7°.
Pot van bruine aarde; doch van boven geschonden. Hoog 0,16 el.
(N°.91.)
8°.
Pot van ligtbruine aarde, met één oortje voorzien, en
met verbrande beenderen en asch, boven welke eenige fragmenten ruw
aardewerk lagen, die oorspronkelijk tot een' schotel van 18 duim
middellijn kunnen behoord hebben. Hoog 0,2 el. (N°. 93.)
9°.
Pot van donkerbruine aarde, aan ééne zijde zeer
beschadigd, met verbrande beenderen. Hoog 0,245 el. (N°. 98.)
[278]
10°.
Pot van donkerbruine aarde, met verbrande menschen-beenderen. Hoog
0,205 el. (N°. C. 99.)
11°.
Pot van bruine aarde, met verbrande beenderen. Hoog 0,15 el. (N°.
101.)
12°.
Pot van donkerbruine aarde, doch boven ter helft geschonden, met
verbrande beenderen. Hoog 0,27 el. (N°. C. 109.)
13°.
Pot van bruine aarde, waarvan de rand en ooren weggebroken zijn, met
vijf ruw ingekrabde lijnen boven den buik, met verbrande beenderen.
Hoog 0,16 el. (N°. 119.)
De
omschrijving dezer 13 lijkurnen is overgenomen uit Dr.
Jansen, de Germaansche en noordsche monumenten van het Museum te
Leijden (Leijden
1840), met opgave der Nummers, waaronder zij in de verzameling
voorkomen.
Nog
hebben wij het genoegen van twee urnen te gewagen, die door den
baron van den Bogaerde van ter Brugge aan het Provinciaal
Genootschap te 's Hertogenbosch geschonken zijn, en op de Boekerij
van dat Genootschap bewaard worden.
1°.
Pot van donkerbruine aarde, in den rand eenigzins beschadigd. Hoog
0,16 el. (Zie Fig. 2.) In deze urne werd gevonden een
2°.
Potje mede van donkerbruine aarde, hetwelk veel geleden heeft. Hoog
0,073 el. (Zie Fig. 4.)
Laat
ons thans de geleerde aanmerkingen van den heer Jansen overnemen,
zoo als die in den Letterbode voorkomen.
"De
bestemming der urnen", zegt hij "is aan geene bedenking
onderworpen; zij waren geheel of ten deele met verbrande
menschen-beenderen gevuld, boven welke [279] met houtskolen en asch
gemengde aarde; het waren dus dooden-urnen, die 't laatste overschot
der verbrande lijken bevatteden. Minder bepaald is de bestemming der
kleine potjes, die soms, boven op, soms binnen in en soms naast de
urnen gevonden worden. Als zeker zal men slechts die voor
kinder-urnen houden mogen, bij welks de beendertjes zulks uitwijzen.
De ons bekend gewordenen hebben het niet bewezen. Deze "(zijnde
vijf stuks door den Heer Jansen onderzocht) "bevatteden eene
geele, soms graauw, van asch gemengde aarde, terwijl slechts één
en schelfertje been in zich hield. De jongste oudheidkundige
ontdekkingen, bij soortgelijke elders ontdekte potjes, hebben
aangetoond, dat sommige gediend hebben, om iets tot nut of sieraad
des levens in te leggen. Tegen het veelal omhelsd gevoelen, dat zij
steeds de asch der kraamkinderen zouden bevatten, strijdt onder
andere ook het zeer groot getal van deze, zoo wel te Deurne als
elders gevondene bij-potjes."
"Dat
de urnen en potjes zeer onderscheiden zjn in grootte, gedaante en
uitwenig vertoon, is opgemerkt, en ook aan ons gebleken. De hoogte
en wijdte staan niet in evenredige verhouding, maar alle hebben eene
wijde opening, die geschikt is tot het inleggen van voorwerpen, en
gelijken eene gewone tobbe, terwijl geene enkele kruikvormig is.
Zeldzaam schijnen die, thans op het Museum alhier aanwezig, was er
slechts eene, gedekt met brokstukken eener groote schaal of tobbe,
noch opzettelijk tot bedekking vervaardigd, noch ook op de urne
sluitende. Volgens afbeeldingen is er echter eene ontdekt, waarvan
het deksel binnen de urne beter sloot, en eene waarbij het over den
rand uitstak. Ook [280] hebben slechts weinige één of
twee oortjes en nog zeldzamer schijnen die te zijn voorgekomen, die
eenige versieringen hadden, eene versiering echter, die naauwelijks
dien naam mag verdienen. Bij eene in ons Museum aanwezige bestaat
zij in vijf lijnen, die onevenredig onder elkander rondom den rand
der urne loopen, en er met een puntig werktuig zijn ingeschrabt,
toen de aarde nog week was. Volgens afbeeldingen is er echter ook
eene ontdekt bij welke die lijnen regtstandig naast elkander en eene
andere, bij welke zij kruislings van malkander om de urne liepen. De
kleur der bij onze geziene, is eene gemengde bruine, nu meer in
graauw dan in geel of rood spelende, na gelang van de aarde, waaruit
zij gevormd zijn, en den graad der warmte tot bakking aangewend.
Sommige zijn uitwendig tamelijk glad gestreken of gewreven, doch aan
geene heb ik sporen van glasuur of verw kunnen ontdekken. Het meest
opmerkenswaardig schijnt de ruwe bewerking. De stof is weinig bereid
en gezuiverd; de vorming waarschijnlijk uit de hand, niet op eene
schijf geschied; dit althans blijkt duidelijk bij de kleine potjes
en de brokstukken van het bovengenoemde deksel. De groote broosheid,
die men bij sommige der geschondene potten bespeurt, doet met regt
vermoeden, dat zij weinig gebakken, welligt slechts bij het vuur
gedroogd zijn; aan welke broosheid het mede is toe te schrijven, dat
zoo weinige ongeschonden aan het licht gekomen zijn. Wanneer men dit
ruwe en zoo geringe kunstvordering aantoonende karakter van het
aardewerk overweegt, kan men niet gelooven, dat dit van hetzelfde
volk afkomstig zoude zijn, hetwelk de keurig bewerkte metalen
(waarvan straks) vervaardigd heeft. Bij het aardewerk aan
Romeinschen [281] arbeid te denken, verbiedt ons eene opzettelijke
vergelijking met soortgelijke voorwerpen van Romeinsche afkomst. Het
Romeinsche aardewerk, ook het eenvoudigste, ook het in de armste
graven ontdekte, vertoonde ons steeds die fiksche bewerking, die
evenredige, door geoefende schijfdraaijingen ontstane vormen, die
vaste bakking, die bestemde kleuren en juiste versieringen, welke
wij bij het onze missen."
II. METALEN VERSIERSELEN.
In
het Rijks-Museum te Leiden worden bewaard:
1°.
Beiteltje van koper, met kopergroen bezet. Lang 0,087 el. (N°.
21a.)
2°.
Beiteltje van koper, met kopergroen bezet. Lang 0,062 el. (N°.
21b.) Zie Fig. 5.
3°.
Beiteltje van koper, met kopergroen bezet; doch de waaijer zeer
beschadigd. Lang 0,067 el. (N°. B. 21c.)
Dr.
Jansen geeft in bedenking, of deze beitels geene pottebakkers
gereedschappen geweest zijn. Zoo dit waar is, moeten de urnen op de
begraafplaatsen zelve gevormd en gebakken zijn, hetwelk niet
onmogelijk is. Ik stel mij intusschen de zaak zoo voor, dat destijds
een pottebakker zal belast geweest zijn met het maken der urnen,
even als thans een kistemaker, of de eene of andere godsdienstige of
weldadige inrigting met het maken der lijkkisten, zoodat de
pottevormer even zoo min zijne beitels, als thans een kistemaker
zijne gereedschappen met de kist zal hebben afgeleverd. Daar de
kennis, die wij van Germaansche begraafplaatsen hebben, nog zoo jong
en weinig ontwikkeld is, komt het mij voor, dat de tijd nog niet
gekomen is, om het doel en het ge- [282] bruik aan te wijzen der bij
lijk-urnen gevonden wordende werktuigen. Beschrijven wij liever
naauwkeurig en geven wij juiste afbeeldingen van het gevondene,
waardoor de oudheidkundige na ons genoegzamen voorraad verkrijgen
zal, om door vergelijking van vele gelijkvormige voorwerpen, een
juister denkbeeld te geven van het doel en gebruik, als dit bij de
kindschheid der Noordsche Archeologie doenlijk is. Het spreekt
echter van zelve, dat men verpligt is, om de voorwerpen voorloopig
eene benaming te gevn, wil men van dezelve spreken; doch dit
geschiede voorwaardelijk, tot dat die ons nader bekend zullen zijn
geworden; uit dien hoofde billijken wij de benamingen, die de
geleerde Jansen aan de te Deurne gevondene voorwerpen geeft, en
nemen wij die gaarne over.
4°.
Lans-spits van koper, met kopergroen bezte, aan het beneden einde
van twee gaatjes voorzien, om aan eene schaft bevestigd te worden.
Lang 0,115 el. (N°. 36.)
5°.
Lans-spits van ijzer, van twee gaatjes voorzien. Lang 0,23 el. (N°.
38.)
6°.
Twee fragmenten van eenen mantelhaak naar het schijnt, van koper en
met kopergroen bezet. (N°. 53a.)
7°.
Schijf van spiraalsgewijs gewonden koperdraad, met kopergroen bezet;
(fragment van eenen mantelhaak). (N°. 53b.)
8°.
Twee fragmenten eener koperen haarnaald, met kopergroen bezet (N°.
53 c.)
9°.
Fragment van een' spiraalsgewijs gewonden ring naar het schijnt, van
koper en met kopergroen bezet. Middelbare dikte 0,006 el. (N°.
56 a.)
10°.
Fragment van een' ronden armring (?) van koper, met kopergroen
bezet. Dik 0,036 el. (N°. B. 56b.)
[283]
11°.
Fragment van een' armring (?) van koper, met kopergroen bezet. Dik
0,006 el. (N°. 56c.)
12°.
Bladvormig werktuig van gegoten koper, met kopergroen bezet,
voorzien van eene gesplitste punt en drie kunstige gaatjes en aan de
zijden scherp (zie fig. 6). Dr. Jansen gist, dat het misschien eene
vorm is tot het bewerken van potten. Lang 0,017 el (N°. 209*.)
13°.
Twee fragmenten koper, met kopergroen bezet, doch door verbranding
misvormd; dezelve schijnen het mondstuk eener trompet te hebben
uitgemaakt. Oorspronkelijke middellijn van het geheel 0,045 el. (N°.
209a.)
Behalve
deze metalen versierselen is in het Museum te Leiden nog een
14°.
Plat ringetje van graauwachtig roode aarde en fijne bewerking;
hetzelve heeft waarschijnlijk als hals- of oorring aan een' anderen
ring gehangen. Middellijn 0,013 el; dikte 0,005 el. (N°. B.
58a*.)
Wij
hebben de opgave dezer veertien versierselen, welke in lijkheuvelen
te Deurne gevonden zijn, gedaan met de woorden van Dr. Jansen (Germ.
en noordsche monum. van het Museum te Leijden).
De
meeste dezer voorwerpen had zijn Ed. zeer geleerde reeds in den
Letterbode (1838. I. 390) doen kennen, alwaar nog van vier metalen
versierselen gemeld wordt. Na deze opgave zegt Jansen:
"Voor
zoo verre wij weten, is het opgenoemde al het metaal, dat uit het
groote aantal heuvelen is aan het licht gebragt, en wekte deze
zeldzaamheid met regt de bevreemding van den heer van Voorst; zoo
verdient het tevens opmerking, dat er geene voorwerpen van edeler
metaal, van goud of zilver, en waarschijnlijk ook [284] niet eens
van ijzer (a)
ontdekt zijn. De bewerking dezer voorwerpen is zeer zorgvuldig en
naauwkeurig; zij zijn deels gegoten, deels geslagen en getrokken,
en, ofschoon van beeldwerk ontbloot, verraden zij eenen zeer
gevorderden trap van kunstoefening, en wijzen op een volk, dat op
eene aanzienlijke hoogte van beschaving moet hebben gestaan. Neemt
men den vorm en de beteekenis in aanmerking, vergelijkt men dezelve
met gelijksoortige voorwerpen van stellig Romeinschen oorsprong, zoo
ontwaart men de meest in het oog loopende overeenkomst, eene
overeenkomst die ons althans zoo groot is voorgekomen, dat, zoo wij
dezelve tusschen Romeinsche voorwerpen hadden gevonden, er geene
enkele twijfeling zoude overblijven, dat zij uit eene Romeinsche
fabriek afkomstig waren."
Dat
deze vordering in beschaving – welke Dr. Jansen uit de
gevondene voorwerpen afleidt, bij de in- en ombewoners van Deurne
tijdens het heidendom reeds bestaan te hebben – werkelijk
aldaar bestond, toen de H. Willebrord benevens den H. Lambertus de
inwoners van Peelland, tot het christendom bekeerde, zal ten
klaarste blijken uit onze verhandeling: De
H. Willebrord en de H. Lambertus in Noord-Braband,
uit charters en gelijktijdige oorkonden opgemaakt, welke wij in eene
volgende aflevering van dit Mengelwerk zullen mededeelen.
III. VERDACHTE VOORWERPEN.
De
baatzucht of minachting, voor al wat den kortzigtigen mensch vreemd
is, den oudheidkundige steeds tracht te verschalken, heeft men te
meermalen, tot mer- [285] kelijk nadeel der Archeologie,
ondervonden, dan dat men te Deurne ook dergelijke kunstenarijen niet
zou hebben trachten aan te wenden. Toen ik mij in persoon te Deurne
met nasporingen bezig hield, stond ik aan dezelfde bedriegerij
bloot. Men bood mij een ijzeren beeldje te koop aan, dat alle
blijken droeg, van vroeger tot een heft van een mes te hebben
gediend. Op mijne vragen kreeg ik zulke ontwijkende antwoorden, en
de verkooper werd zo zeer gedecontinanceerd, dat ik hem afwees met
eene houding, die hem duidelijk deed gevoelen, dat ik hem voor eenen
lagen en baatzuchtigen bedrieger hield.
In
den Letterbode spreekt de heer van Voorst:
1°.
van een metalen beeldje, met platte vierkante hoofddekking, zijnde
een span lang, en gekleed als b. v. Erasmus te Rotterdam, met
gevouwen handen, waarin duidelijk een rozenkrans te onderkennen is.
"Zoo dit beeldje werkelijk opgegraven is", schrijft de
heer van Voorst, "dan is 't denkelijk van lateren datum."
2°.
Van eenen sabel of kling. "Maar zoo deze, zegt Dr. Jansen, ook
al te Deurne mogt opgedolven zijn, gelijk men den heer van Voorst,
volgens aan mij gerigte missive, had verzekerd, behoort zij echter
geenszins tot de grafheuvelen; daar zij ons bij onderzoek gebleken
is van zoo jeugdigen tijd te zijn, dat zij niet eens aan de
middeleeuwen reikt. Derzelver beeldwerk en verduisterd opschrift
geeft de overtuiging, dat zij den tijd van Lodewijk XIV niet kan te
boven gaan. Klingen uit de vorige eeuw, nog geene honderd jaren oud,
en uit Amsterdamsche fabrieken, hebben met deze Deurnesche de
treffendste overeenkomst."
[286]
3°.
Van eenen ijzeren bout of hamer. "Deszelfs bezitter, de heer P.
Guyot te Nijmegen, zegt Dr. Jansen, berigtte mij, dat hij het niet
der moeite waard geacht had, deze ter bezigtiging over te zenden,
aangezien hij te kennelijke blijken droeg van een' gewone grendel
uit zeer jeugdigen tijd te zijn."
Wij
eindigen deze berigten wegens de Germaansche begraafplaats te
Deurne, met den wensch, dat de bezitters van daar opgegravene
oudheden mogten worden opgewekt, om dezelve, tegen behoorlijke
schadeloosstelling, af te staan aan het Provinciaal Noord-Brabandsch
Genootschap te 's Hertogenbosch.
Fig.
2-6. Oudheden te Deurne gevonden.
1
januari 1841 Deurne
is een net en welvarend dorp met eene sierlijke kerk
en
eenen fraaijen toren, bij de roomschen in gebruik. Het kasteel te
Deurne is nog in zijnen oudentoestand en een aangenaam verblijf.
Schuins tegenover hetzelve ligt nog een gedeelte van een ander
kasteel of huizing, alwaar eenmaal de wieg stond van den
natuurkundigen Joannes Florentius Martinet, die naar de
getuigenissen van Uilkens meer dan iemand heeft bijgedragen, om de
natuurlijke historie onder onze landgenooten te populariseren.
Deurne heeft met Liessel
eene bevolking van 3,256 inwoners, die zich generen met den landbouw
en het steken van den peelturf. Te Deurne is in het jaar 1837 een
germaansch kerkhof uit den heidenschen voortijd ontdekt geworden.
Men zeide ons, dat de heer F. baron van Voorst tot Voorst,
ridmeester bij het regiment huzaren, het eerst deze grafheuvels
ontdekt heeft. Voor dertig jaren had een schaapherder wel eene urne
met gebrande menschenbeenderen gevonden, doch, daar hij die als het
overblijfsel hield van eenen manslag en voor de politie beducht was,
had hij de zaak stil gehouden, en de beenderen met de potscherven
weder in den grond gestopt. De begraafplaats wordt door een voetpad
op Asten doorsneden, liggende rondom in de heide, en 20 minuten van
Deurne, hebbende nagenoeg eene lengte van 500 en eene breedte van
150 passen. Men had ongeveer 100 lijkbussen van allerlei groote
uitgegraven. Dit heidensch overblijfsel gaf ons ruime stof, om het
eentoonige der heide te doen vergeten.
26
januari 1841 Bij de afdeeling der Germaansche en Noordsche
oudheden,
van
den Generaal Majoor Rottiers, aan wiens ijver en zorg het Museum het
bezit van zoo vele Grieksche kunststukken te danken heeft, een
bronzen Goden-beeldtje, in den omtrek van Aken gevonden.
Van
den heer P. O. P. Guyot, te Nijmegen, eene allerbelangrijkste
verzameling van bronzen en andere voorwerpen bij Deurne, in de
provincie Noord-Braband, opgedoken, en die voor het grootste
gedeelte door den heer Ritmeester Baron van Voorst bijeengebragt, en
aan den heer Guyot afgestaan waren. Door deze aanzienlijke aanwinst,
vereenigd met de urnen en andere voorwerpen, waarvan wij in onze
vorige berigten (Staats-Courant
1838 en 1839) gewaagden, is het Museum thans in het bezit gesteld
van de voornaamste en zeldzaamste stukken, die bij de ontdekkiug te
Deurne gedaan, voorden dag zijn gekomen, en die, langs verschillende
wegen, eindelijk wederom bij elkander gebragt, een geheel vormen,
dat tot de kennis van een der oude volksstammen, die vroeger ons
land bewoonden, eene zoo onverwachte als aanzienlijke bijdrage
leveren kan. In den Konst-
en Letterbode 1838,
Mei. pag. 379—395, zijn de meeste der voorwerpen door den heer
Conservator Dr. Janssen, beschreven.
25
februari 1842 M. P. O. P. Guyot à Nymègue d'une
collection très-remarquable de bronzes et d'autres objets
trouvés près de Deurne dans le Brabant-Septentrional
et qui pour la plupart avaient été rassemblés
par M. le capitaine baron Van Vorst qui les remis à M. Guyot.
Cette importante acquisition jointe aux urnes et autres objets dont
il a été rendu compte en 1838 et en 1839, met le Musée
en possession des principaux et des plus rares résultats de
la fouille près de Deurne. Toutes ces découvertes
éparses, réunies maintenant, forment un ensemble qui
pourra jeter un grand jour sur la connaissance des anciens peuples
qui ont habité jadis notre pays. La plupart de ces objets
sont décrits par M. le conservateur Janssen dans le Konst-
en Letterbode de 1838, pages 370-—395.
26
januari 1841 [13] Van
den heer P. O. P. Guyot,
te Nijmegen, eene allerbelangrijkste verzameling van bronzen en
andere voorwerpen bij Deurne, in de provincie Noord-Braband,
opgedolven, en die voor het grootste gedeelte door den Ritmeester
Baron van Voorst bijeengebragt, en aan den heer Guyot afgestaan
waren.
[14]
is het Museum thans in het bezit gesteld van de voornaamste en
zeldzaamste stukken, die bij de ontdekkiug te Deurne gedaan, voor
den dag zijn gekomen, en die, langs verschillende wegen, eindelijk
wederom bij elkander gebragt, een geheel vormen, dat […]
24
februari 2014 Antwoord van Heikki Pauts van het Rijksmuseum te
Leiden
-
mei 1841, inventarisnummers GtD 13-20 "Gevonden te Deurne en
geschonken door dhr. P.C.G. Guyot te Nijmegen";
http://www.rmo.nl/collectie/zoeken?q=GtD*&Afdeling=&Objectnaam=&Materiaal=&Periode=&Vindplaats=
24
februari 2014 Antwoord van Heikki Pauts van het Rijksmuseum te
Leiden
-
november 1841, inventarisnummers VdN 1-3 "Gevonden in een urn
te Deurne, door dhr. S.H. van der Noordaa te Dordrecht aan de
conservator L.J.F. Janssen gegeven";
1
januari 1842 4.) De
Germaansche en Noordsche Monumenten van het Museum
te
Leyden, kort beschreven door L. J. F. JANSSEN, Conservator bij het
Museum van Oudheden te Leyden. –
Met twee platen. – Te Leyden bij S. en J. Luchtmans, 1840. Gr.
Oct. 70 Bladz.
[…]
Onder deze vindt men hier als zeldzaam aangeteekend: een plat
ringetjes van graauwachtige roode aarde uit een' Germaanschen
grafheuvel te Deurne;
[…]
een bladvormig werktuig van gegoten koper, uit een' Germaanschen
grafheuvel te Deurne;
12
januari 1842 [15] Van den heer P. C. G. GUYOT, te Nijmegen, nog een
aantal van tien urnen, potjes en schalen, te Deurne in Noord-Braband
gevonden;
[16]
Van
den Heer S. H. van der Noordaa te Dordrecht, nog een drietal kleine
voorwerpen in urnen te Deurne gevonden.
20
januari 1843 [17] Van de heer S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA ontvingen wij
wederom een mortier van tufsteen, in den omtrek van Deurne gevonden.
1
juli 1845 uit: Handelingen van het Provinciaal Genootschap van
Kunsten …
72
Romeinsche koperen braadpan (Sartago), in den zomer van 1845
gevonden in de Peel, drie uren van Cuyk, drie voet onder het moer.
Zeer zeldzaam.
Van
wege de Provinciale Commissie van Oudheden, die dit gedenkstuk voor
2 gulden kocht.
74
Lijkurnen en bijpotjes van Germaanschen oorsprong, met een catalogus
van No. 1-50.
[18]
No. 1-3 afkomstig van Deurne.
[…]
111
Eene Peelslang in 1851 levend gevangen, in eene flesch op liquor.
Geschenk
van den Notaris Rovers, te Asten
1
januari 1850 [...] Uit zijn [=Limburgs] bodem
zijn
in vroegeren en lateren tijd tal van voorwerpen uit de steen, brons-
en ijzerperiode voor den dag gekomen. De wetenschappelijke
onderzoekingen om daarvan op het spoor te komen, dagteekenen het
eerst van omstreeks 1825. Deze werden door den heer CHARLES GUILLON,
notaris te Roermond, ingesteld. Een zeer bemiddeld man, legde hij
eene groote verzameling van oudheden aan, van allerlei soort en uit
verschillende tijdperken, die tot aan zijn overlijden op 10 Nov.
1873 geregeld werd aangevuld. Later is zij door verkoop verspreid
geraakt, maar de meeste voorwerpen uit de voorhistorischen tijd
hebben in het Rijksmuseum te Leiden gelukkig een onderkomen
gevonden. [...]
5
december 1856 Op MAANDAG 15 December 1856 en Vijf volgende
dagen,
des
Voor- en Namiddags, zal de Boekhandelaar G. THEOD. BOM, te
Amsterdam, in ODEON Publiek Verkoopen: het uitmuntende KABINET
GEDENK- EN LEGPENNINGEN, EERE- en DRAAGTEEKENEN, VROEDSCHAPS-,
GILDE-, SCHUTTERS-, RELIGIEUSE-, VRIJMETSELAARS-, PRIJS- en
BRANDSPUITPENNINGEN. NOODMUNTEN EN MUNTEN, MUNT-, PENNING- EN
WAPENKUNDIGE BOEKEN, NAGELATEN DOOR WIJLEN DEN HEER S. H. VAN DER
NOORDAA, Lid van verschillende Binnen- en Buitenlandsche Letterk.,
Histor. en Oudheidkundige Genootschappen, te Dordrecht. KIJKDAGEN:
VRIJDAG en ZATURDAG 12 en 13 December. De CATALOGUS is op franco
aanvrage a 20 Cents te bekomen bij G. THEOD. BOM, Kalverstraat, E
10. (19573)
24
februari 2014 Antwoord van Heikki Pauts van het Rijksmuseum te
Leiden
-
juni 1863, inventarisnummers ND 1-15 "Afkomstig uit de
verzameling van wijlen de hr. S.H. van der Noordaa, opgegraven te
Deurne. Overgenomen van zijn zoon, Mr. van der Noordaa. Volgens
etiketjes, van de hand van wijlen den Heer S.H. van der Noordaa,
zijn alle deze voorwerpen (ND 1-15) in het jaar 1837 op de te Deurne
aanwezige oude begraafplaats opgegraven";
31
maart 1864 Voor de VADERLANDSCHE oudheden
werden
onderscheidene aanwinsten gedaan. Met de hierboven vermelde
Romeinsche voorwerpen uit de nalatenschap van wijlen den heer S. H.
VAN DER NOORDAA werden ook eenige overgenomen, van de vroegere
bewoners van ons Vaderland afkomstig: eene zeer fraai gepolijste
vuursteenen BIJL, 12 dm. lang; een ruw bewerkte BAL van trachiet, 4
dm. in doorsnede; eene URNE van gebakken aarde, gevuld met verbrande
menschenbeenderen, hoog 19 dm.; eene andere URNE, 18 dm. hoog, met
de daarin gevonden brokken van eene bronzen HAARNAALD; nog een
drietal URNEN met verbrande beenderen en overblijfsels van bronzen
RINGEN enz.; de urnen van 10, 15.5 en 16 duim hoogte; twee
KOMMETJES, 9 en 7 dm.; 4 POTJES van verschillende vormen, 6 5 tot
9.5 dm. hoog; een bekervormig VAATJE, 5.5 dm. hoog, en eenige
brokstukken van potten. Al deze voorwerpen, met uitzondering welligt
van de WIGGE, waren in 1837 op de oude begraafplaats te Deurne in
Noordbrabant opgegraven; zij vormen nu met de stukken die, ter
zelfder plaats gevonden, in 1840 en 1841 door wijlen den heer P. O.
G. GUYOT aan het Museum geschonken werden, een aanzienlijk geheel.
[...]
Eenige
MIDDELEEUWSCHE EN LATERE VOORWERPEN, afkomstig uit de ontgravingen
voor de legerplaats te Nijmegen, een paar trachietsteenen MORTIEREN
met STAMPERS uit den omtrek van Deurne afkomstig en tot de reeds
meermalen genoemde nalatenschap van wijlen den heer S. H. VAN DER
NOORDAA
behoorende; [...]
31
maart 1864 [19] Romeinsche
voorwerpen uit de nalatenschap van wijlen den heer S. H. VAN DER
NOORDAA werden ook eenige overgenomen, van de vroegere bewoners van
ons Vaderland afkomstig:
[20]
eene zeer fraai gepolijste vuursteenen BIJL, 12 dm. lang;
[21]
een ruw bewerkte BAL van trachiet, 4 dm. in doorsnede;
[22]
eene URNE van gebakken aarde, gevuld met verbrande
menschenbeenderen, hoog 19 dm.;
[23]
eene andere URNE, 18 dm. hoog, met de daarin gevonden brokken van
eene bronzen HAARNAALD;
[24,
25, 26] nog een drietal URNEN met verbrande beenderen en
[27]
overblijfsels van bronzen RINGEN enz.; de urnen van 10, 15.5 en 16
duim hoogte;[28] twee KOMMETJES, 9 en 7 dm.;
[29]
4 POTJES van verschillende vormen, 6 5 tot 9.5 dm. hoog;
[30]
een bekervormig VAATJE, 5.5 dm. hoog, en eenige brokstukken van
potten.
[31]
Al deze voorwerpen, met uitzondering welligt van de WIGGE, waren in
1837 op de oude begraafplaats te Deurne in Noordbrabant opgegraven;
[32]
een paar trachietsteenen MORTIEREN met STAMPERS uit den omtrek van
Deurne afkomstig en tot de reeds meermalen genoemde nalatenschap van
wijlen den heer S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA behoorende;
[33]
zij vormen nu met de stukken die, ter zelfder plaats gevonden, in
1840 en 1841 door wijlen den heer P. O. G. GUYOT aan het Museum
geschonken werden, een aanzienlijk geheel.
28
november 1874 OUDHEDEN.
De
belangrijke verzamelingen van oudheden, kunstvoorwerpen, boeken en
archieven, nagelaten door den Heer G. Ch. H. GUILLON,
in leven Notaris te Roermond, zullende ten verzoeke van den heer Mr.
C. Guillon, Procureur aldaar, ten overstaan van den te Roermond
residerenden Notaris MAX. CORNELIS, ten sterfhuize, op de volgende
dagen, iedere reis te beginnen des voormiddags ten 9 ure, openbaar
verkocht worden, te weten:
De
Gothische kasten en andere voorwerpen van Kunst op maandag den 30
November eerstkomende.
De
schilderijen en gravuren op den 1sten en 2den December
daaraanvolgende.
De
Archieven op den 9 december en volgende dagen.
De
prehistorische, Romeinsche, Germaansche en Frankische oudheden op
den 11 Jan. 1875 en volgende dagen
De
intaglio’s (intailles), Romeinsche munten en medailles,
benevens de Middeleeuwsche munten en andere penningen, op den 18
Januarij 1875 en volgende dagen.
Alle
verzamelingen, met uitzondering der bibliotheek, zullen tegen
contante betaling en tien percent verhooging voor kosten, verkocht
worden.
Voor
de voldoening der boeken wordt drie maanden crediet verleend.
Aan
heeren liefhebbers zal daags voor de pespectieve verkoopingen, van
des voormiddags 9 tot des namiddags 5 ure, de gelegenheid gegeven
worden om de te verkoopen verzameling te bezigtigen.
De
vereenigde Catalogussen zijn tegen betaling van 60 cents
verkrijgbaar bij den uitgever dezer Courant, terwijl daarenboven
voor aanvragen buiten Roermond het porto der post bedraagt als
volgt: voor Nederland en België 22, voor Duitschland 55 en voor
Frankrijk 56 cents.
Ter
voldoening van koopprijs en porto worden postzegels aangenomen.
24
februari 2014 Antwoord van Heikki Pauts van het Rijksmuseum te
Leiden
-
april 1884, inventarisnummers ND 16-37 "Afkomstig uit de
verzameling van wijlen de hr. S.H. van der Noordaa, opgegraven te
Deurne. Aangekocht op een verkoping te Amsterdam bij Frederik Muller
en Co op 8 April en volgende dagen 1884 "in de brakke gronden".
http://www.rmo.nl/collectie/zoeken?q=ND&Afdeling=&Objectnaam=&Materiaal=&Periode=&Vindplaats=
1
maart 1890 Antiquiteiten.
Het
beroemde MUSÉE GUILLON gedurende meer dan een halve eeuw
bijeenverzameld door den bekwamen oudheidkundige CHARLES GUILLON,
Notaris te Roermond, zal publiek worden VERKOCHT op Dinsdag 11-15
Maart a.s. te AMSTERDAM door G. THEOD. BOM & ZOON, Spuistraat
135.
De
verzameling omvat meest in Limburg opgegravene Romeinsche,
Germaansche, Celtische en Middeleeuwsche Oudheden, Romeinsche en
Geldersche Munten en Medailles, Limburgsche Muntstempels, Japansch
gelakte en oude eikenhouten Meubelen, Porceleinen, Schilderijen,
Kostbaarheden, enz.
Catalogus
f 0 25.
8
maart 1890 De catalogus der kunstvoorwerpen,
nagelaten
door wijlen den notaris Guillon alhier, noemt wel duizend in Limburg
opgegravene Romeinsche, Germaansche, Keltische, Frankische en
middeleeuwsche oudheden, uit het steen- en uit het bronstijdperk,
lijkurnen, Romeinsch glas- en aardewerk, ruim 70 stuks van het
fraaie roode aardewerk van Samos, een eenige in zilver gedrevene
schildplaat, waarschijnlijk uit de laatsten tijd van het Romeinsche
keizerrijk, ruim 80 gesneden steenen of cameeën, 1400 antike
gouden, zilveren en bronzen munten, eenige middeleeuwsche Geldersche
en Limburgsche munten, muntstempels en zegels, benevens eene kleine
verzameling zilveren drijfwerken, oude meubelen, enz.
De
met zorg bewerkte catalogus bewijst wel, dat hier voor onze
antiquaren en oudheidkundigen veel belangrijks te vinden is.
10
maart 1890 Twee zeer belangrijke veilingen
zullen
dezer dagen weder bij de auctionarissen G. Theod. Bom & Zoon, te
Amsterdam, plaats hebben.
De
eerste, bevattende de verzameling oudheden en munten, nagelaten door
wijlen den Heer Charles Guillon, notaris te Roermond, is voor de
beoefenaars der geschiedenis van ons vaderland vooral van groot
belang. Nimmer toch werd eene dergelijke collectie van 1000 in
Limburg opgegraven Romeinsche, Germaansche, Keltische, Frankische en
middeneeuwsche oudheden in veiling gebracht. Zij doet ons een blik
werpen in de zeden en gebruiken van die tijden. Zoowel het steen-
als het bronstijdperk zijn ruim vertegenwoordigd, terwijl de
verzameling Germaansch aardewerk, waaronder vele urnen met de asch
onzer Germaansche voorvaderen, tot de rijkste mag worden gerekend.
Ook het Romeinsche glas- en aardewerk, urnen, enz., waaronder van
het fraaie roode aardewerk van Samos, verdient belangstelling,
evenzeer als de in zilver en haut-relief gedreven umbo of
schildplaat, een meesterstuk van drijfwerk uit den tijd van het Bas
Empire. Voorts behoort tot deze collectie nog eene verzameling van
ruim 80 meest antieke gesneden steenen of cameeën, antieke
gouden, zilveren en bronzen munten, eenige middeneeuwsche Geldersche
en Limburgsche munten, enz., enz.
De
tweede, van beperkter omvang, bevat een collectie antiquiteiten,
zilveren drijfwerken, antieke meubelen, historische en Amsterdamsche
rariteiten, kostbaarheden, porselein en Delftsch aardewerk, horens
en schelpen, schilderijen, stereoscopen, glazen stereoscoopplaten,
enz.
Een
en ander is te bezichtigen in het verkooplokaal der firma,
Spuistraat 135, Zaterdag, Zondag en Maandag 8-10 Maart, van 10-3
uur.
10
maart 1890 Dinsdagochtend Tien uur: VERKOOPING
bij
G. THEOD. BOM & ZOON, Spuistraat 135 naast Die Port van
Cleve.
Collectie
Guillon Antiquiteiten uit het Steen- en Bronstijdperk, Germaansche
urnen, No.1-813.
Des
avonds te Zes uur antieke Romeinsche Munten, te beginnen met No. 1.
Met
terugzending van den Catalogus Guillon zal men de Verkoopers ten
zeerste verplichten.
14
maart 1890 De verzameling Limburgsche oudheden,
die
bij G. Theod. Bom & Zoon, op de Spuistraat alhier, thans wordt
verkocht en van den Heer Ch. Guillon te Roermond afkomstig was,
blijkt algemeen de aandacht te hebben getrokken.
Gelukkig
blijft het grootste gedeelte daarvan in ons land en is voornamelijk
voor het Rijksmuseum van oudheden te Leiden en voor het
Maastrichtsch museum van oudheden aangekocht. Het overige ging in
handen van particulieren, terwijl enkele zeer fraaie stukken voor
Engelsche rekening werden gekocht. No. 79 steenen bijl bracht op
f14; no. 38 een dito f11.50; no. 160 steenen pijlpunten f15; no. 167
een steenen ponjaard f26; no. 199 een bronzen scheermes f10; no. 200
een lemmet voor een zwaard f28; no. 300 een germaansche beker f12;
no. 314 en 315 2 bronzen beeldjes f39; no. 321 2 koperen ornamenten
van een drievoet f14; no. 329 een dito reukdoosje met lepel f13; no.
336 een plaat met Jupiter en Hébe f48; no. 410 een Romeinsche
flesch f35; no 411 een dito kleiner f20; no. 427 een vaas van
aardewerk van Samos f32. De veiling duurt voort.
1
december 1894 Verkooping van Wapens en Kunstvoorwerpen TE
KEULEN.
[...]
2º.
Kunst-verzamelingen van wijlen den WelEd. Gestr. Heer C. Guillon,
advocaat te Roermond, [...] Verkooping 12-18 December 1894.
Prijs
van den geïllustreerden catalogus 3 Mark.
J.
M. Heberle (H. Lempertz’ Söhne), Keulen.
4
mei 1929 [...] In Roermond nu had in het jaar 1874
een
hoogst belangrijke verkoop van documenten, archivalia en oude
curiositeiten plaats. Het was de verkoop der curiosa nagelaten door
wijlen Mr. C. Guillon, advocaat en tevens notaris te Roermond. Deze
zeldzame collectie, die circa 10.000 nummers bevatte, kwam onder den
hamer en de verkoop, die van 30 November 1874 tot 19 Januari 1875
duurden had een afdeeling “Manuscrits, Archives et autres
Documents historiques”, die een kleine 1000 nummers bevatte.
De catalogus van dezen verkoop is thans reeds een werkje geworden
van bibliofilische waarde. […]
27
februari 2014
Eindhoven,
27 februari 2014
Geachte
mijnheer Louer,
Als
bijlage vindt u een bestand over vondsten in de Peel. Ik ben zeer
geïnteresseerd in voorwerpen die tot nu toe nog niet beschreven
zijn. Verder verwijs ik naar www.theelen.info.
met
vriendelijke groeten,
Paul
Theelen
Geachte
mijnheer Scheijvens,
Naar
aanleiding van ons telefoongesprek stuur ik als bijlage gegevens van
voorwerpen die in de Peel, vooral bij het turfsteken, zijn gevonden.
Voor het overige verwijs ik naar de uitgebreide website
www.theelen.info, daarvan stuur ik ook de inhoudsopgave mee, zodat u
er met trefwoorden in kunt zoeken en van daaruit naar het betrokken
bestand kunt springen.
met
vriendelijke groeten,
Paul
Theelen
27
februari 2014 van Ronald Louer (rlouer@brabant.nl)
Geachte
heer Theelen, Beste Paul,
Hierbij
een inventarislijst van vondsten uit de Peel (Helmond, Laarbeek,
Gemert-Bakel, Deurne, Asten, Someren en Geldrop – zonder de
plaatsnaam Mierlo) die geïnventariseerd zijn in het Provinciaal
Depot Bodemvondsten Noord-Brabant. Nog niet de gehele collectie is
geïnventariseerd, dus er kunnen nog meer vondsten in ons depot
aanwezig zijn uit die gemeenten. De Provincie Noord-Brabant is pas
vanaf het jaar 2000 verantwoordelijk voor het Provinciaal Depot
Bodemvondsten Noord-Brabant. Daarvoor viel dit depot onder de
verantwoordelijkheid van het Rijk. Sinds 2000 zijn wij bezig om de
gehele collectie na te lopen en te inventariseren. De vondsten die
gedaan zijn voor 1960 vallen in het algemeen onder het Noordbrabants
Museum (als voortzetting van het Provinciaal Genootschap
Noord-Brabant) of zijn in andere collecties terecht gekomen, maar
een aantal van deze oudere vondsten bleken toch in ons depot
aanwezig.
Indien
u nog verdere vragen heeft, ben ik graag bereid deze naar vermogen
te beantwoorden.
Met
vriendelijke groet,
Ronald
Louer | Beheerder Provinciaal Depot Bodemvondsten Noord-Brabant |
06-18303225
10
maart 2014 aan avanpinxteren@hnbm.nl
Eindhoven,
10 maart 2014
Geachte
mijnheer van Pinxteren,
Ik
ben bezig met het inventariseren van vondsten die in het veen van de
Peel zijn terecht gekomen. Vondsten uit de veengebieden in het
noorden van het land worden daarbij betrokken omdat daar wat meer is
gevonden dan in de Peel. In het bijzonder richt ik het verzoek aan u
betreffende de begraafplaats ten zuiden van Deurne die in 1837 is
gevonden. Hoewel dit strikt gesproken niet tot de venen behoort.
In
uw museum zijn voorwerpen terecht gekomen, zoals urnen met inhoud;
enkele vijzels (waarschijnlijk uit de Middeleeuwen) zijn via het
museum van Leiden rond of na 1875 ook bij u terecht gekomen of ze
zijn verdwenen...
Kunt
u aan de hand van de bijgestuurde bestanden op zoek gaan naar
genoemde urnen en metalen voorwerpen, al dan niet door het museum
aangekocht of anderszins verworven?
bij
voorbaat dank,
Paul
Theelen zie ook www.theelen.info
Reports
on the discovered Germanic cemetery in Deurne
February
24, 2014. At the end of January 1837, a complete burial plot was
discovered on the heathland near Deurne. Urns were immediately given
away as gifts, so there is little clarity about the objects and
their current "whereabouts." This also applies, to a
lesser extent, to the few other objects found in the peat
bogs/marshes in the municipality of Deurne and elsewhere in the Peel
region, and nationally in the peatlands of the north of the country.
In
this file, I will limit myself to the cemetery. Information about
the other areas can be found in other files at www.theelen.info.
At
my request, Mr. H. Pauts of the National Museum of Antiquities in
Leiden provided further information about objects that have been in
his museum since ancient times. However, some, at least the mortars
and pestles, have been donated to a prospective museum. From that
moment on, we lost track...
H.
Pauts's comments have been incorporated into my own research.
Collected
details regarding the cemetery near Deurne
[1]
Several urns or pots of various sizes, all filled with the ashes of
cremated bodies and small bones
[2]
while in some, pieces of metal and parts of weapons were found
[3]
Kempen heath
[4]
First 5, then 50 urns were found
[5]
Not a single penny or coin was unearthed; only a piece of metal,
which is believed to be the mouthpiece of a wind instrument.
[6]
Excavations are still continuing in some places, but as mentioned,
nothing but ashes and the aforementioned human bones are found in
the urns.
[7]
Urns or pots of various sizes, all filled with the ashes of cremated
bodies and small bones;
[8]
We received a number of urns that had recently been discovered in
Deurne, North Brabant; and the number was further increased by the
proceeds of a deliberate excavation ordered for this purpose,
donated to the Museum by the mayor of that town, Mr. van Riet.
[9]
Several Roman objects from the estate of the late Mr. S. H. VAN DER
NOORDAA were also acquired, originating from former inhabitants of
our country:
[10]
The urns appear not to date from the Roman period, but from many
hundreds of years earlier.
[11]
Two tuff mortars with pestles, excavated near Deurne in North
Brabant, were sent to Mr. S. H. van der Noordaa of Dordrecht;
[12]
These objects (mortars) were NOT found in the data of the more than
40,000 objects online. The mortars most likely date from the Middle
Ages and were donated by the museum in Leiden around 1875 to another
museum yet to be established.
[13]
From Mr. P. O. P. Guyot, of Nijmegen, a very important collection of
bronze and other objects excavated near Deurne, in the province of
North Brabant, most of which were assembled by Captain Baron van
Voorst and donated to Mr. Guyot.
[14]
The Museum now possesses the most important and rarest pieces that
came to light during the discovery in Deurne, and which, through
various means, finally reassembled, form a whole that […]
[15]
From Mr. P. C. G. GUYOT, of Nijmegen, a number of ten urns, pots,
and bowls, found in Deurne in North Brabant; [16] From Mr. S. H. van
der Noordaa in Dordrecht, three more small objects in urns were
found in Deurne.
[17]
From Mr. S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA, we again received a tuff mortar,
found in the vicinity of Deurne.
[18]
Nos. 1-3 from Deurne.
[19]
Several Roman objects from the estate of the late Mr. S. H. VAN DER
NOORDAA were also acquired, originating from former inhabitants of
our country:
[20]
a very beautifully polished flint axe, 12 dm long;
[21]
a roughly worked trachyte ball, 4 dm in diameter;
[22]
a baked earthenware urn filled with burnt human bones, 19 dm high;
[23]
Another URN, 18 dm. high, containing the fragments of a bronze HAIR
NEEDLE found inside;
[24,
25, 26] Three more URNS containing burnt bones and
[27]
remains of bronze RINGS, etc.; the urns were 10, 15.5, and 16 inches
high;[28] Two CUBS, 9 and 7 dm.;
[29]
Four POTS of various shapes, 6.5 to 9.5 dm. high;
[30]
A beaker-shaped VESSEL, 5.5 dm. high, and some fragments of pots.
[31]
All these objects, with the possible exception of the WIGGE, were
excavated in 1837 at the old cemetery in Deurne, North Brabant;
[32]
a pair of trachyte stone MORTARS with PESTLES from the vicinity of
Deurne and belonging to the estate of the late Mr. S. H. VAN DER
NOORDAA, already mentioned several times;
[33]
they now form part of the pieces found at the same location in 1840
and 1841 by the late Mr. P. O. G. GUYOT
A
considerable collection was donated to the Museum.
[34] A person
named van der Noordaa, living in Dinther, was a school inspector in
a district of the province around 1820.
February 24, 2014
Response from Heikki Pauts of the Rijksmuseum in Leiden
Below, I
am sending you a complete list of finds from Deurne that the RMO
received in the 19th century. You can also find some of these
objects on our website – only those with a photograph are
published there. The rest of the information comes from our
inventory books. Between 1818 and 1891, the RMO used a somewhat
confusing combination of the initials of personal names and
locations for its inventory numbers, so, for example, "vRD"
contains "van Riet Deurne." From 1891 onwards, the RMO
switched to a new system of inventory numbers, consisting of a
province code (k = North Brabant), year, month, and serial number.
So, for example, k 1932/12.9 arrived at the museum in December
1932.
February 4, 1837 Deurne, February 3, 1837.
To the
Editors of the Noord-Brabander. For eight days now, the municipality
of Deurne has provided proof that this region also contains
treasures, in terms of antiquity and history, that can easily be
compared to other parts of our country. The attention of our Dutch
scholars is therefore drawn to the following: this may enable them
not only to expand their collections of antiquities with important
articles, but also to render important contributions to
history.
Begun by the official corps of Regt. Huss. No. 6 and
continued by private individuals in the hope of finding treasures,
they are busy here excavating a camp or army, or even a cemetery;
Probably originating from a tribe driven from the Ardennes by the
Romans, and hidden here, behind the marshlands of the Peel. Several
urns or pots of various sizes, all filled with the ashes of burned
bodies and small bones, have already been excavated; while in some,
fragments of metal and parts of weapons have been found. These pots
are covered by mounds of varying heights, which, like the pots
themselves, have certainly increased in size and height, reflecting
the prestige and rank of the person buried there. The pot is almost
like a globe, tapering slightly oval towards the top and bottom,
while at the top it has a slanting rim, which will have
approximately the same circumference as the pot itself. The lid,
which is very small in proportion to the pot, fits well and appears
to be tightly covered. The largest pots will have a diameter of 3
palms, while the smallest will barely reach 1 to 1.5, and the mounds
will also vary by almost a yard, as some are nearly 2 feet high,
while others are more than five feet high. The pots are made of
potting clay (which is also found here) and demonstrate that they
had already advanced the art of turning to a considerable
extent.
P.
[elsewhere:] - The attention of our national
scholars and antiquarians is called to this discovery, which may be
useful for adding to their collections or for elucidating
history.
February 4, 1837 [1] Several urns or pots of various
sizes, all filled with the ashes of burned bodies and small
bones,
[2] while in some, pieces of metal and fragments of
weapons have been found.
May 4, 1837 NETHERLANDS. In the
latest issue of the Dutch Magazine, one finds an article about the
recently unearthed urns in North Brabant. It mainly concerns the
recent publication of reports in several of our daily newspapers
regarding the excavation of antiquities in the municipality of
Deurne, province of North Brabant. The editors of the aforementioned
magazine have now received some details regarding this excavation,
primarily as follows: A captain in the Hussar Regiment No. 6, having
previously discovered that some mounds on the Kempen heath, during
excavations, turned out to be burial mounds and contained urns or
ash jars, came up with the idea that some similar mounds, which were
present on the heath near Deurne, his current cantonment, might have
served similar purposes and contained antiquities. With the
permission of the mayor, having had excavations carried out, five
urns or ash jars were found, which increased with subsequent
excavations and now number more than fifty. It is unfortunate that
the farmers, hearing of this, also began digging on their own side,
hoping to find treasures; they smashed or damaged the urns they
unearthed. Their disappointment was great when they found nothing
but ashes in them.
A
few half-decayed human bones, such as skulls, ribs, thighbones,
etc., were found. Not a single penny or coin was unearthed; only a
small piece of metal, which is believed to be the mouthpiece of a
wind instrument. The urns found are of varying sizes, but all of
roughly the same shape, and some have lids. The heathland in which
the urns were found is about four acres in size; the mounds are
fairly regular, but the entire area appears to have served as a
burial ground, as urns have also been found outside the mounds and
at some distance from them. The urns are usually covered with a
layer of charcoal; after all, as soon as one finds this, one is
certain to be near an urn. Some are so high that the fibrous roots
of common heather can be found above the ashes; others have been
found deeper, but at uneven depths. The material from which these
pots or urns are composed is smooth, solid, and dark brown in color;
no glaze is visible on them, nor any inscription or inscription. If
they were made in Deurne, where two potteries are still found, then
one must admit that this art has not progressed there in 10 or 15
centuries; because these urns are worked more precisely and smoothly
and treated with more care than is currently the case. Excavations
are still continuing in some places, but, as mentioned, nothing is
found in the urns other than ash and the aforementioned human
bones.
February 24, 2014 Response from Heikki Pauts of the
Rijksmuseum in Leiden
- May 1837, inventory numbers NBD 1-3
"Excavated in Deurne and donated to the Museum by the Ministry
of the Interior";
http://www.rmo.nl/collectie/zoeken?q=NBD*&Afdeling=&Objectnaam=&Materiaal=&Periode=&Vindplaats=
May
4, 1837 [3] Kempen heath
[4] First 5, then 50 urns found
[5]
Not a single penny or coin has been unearthed; only a piece of
metal, which is believed to be the mouthpiece of a wind
instrument.
[6] Excavations are still continuing in some places,
but as mentioned, nothing but ashes and the aforementioned human
bones are found in the urns.
June 3, 1837 HAARLEM, February
30
A report has been received from the municipality of Deurne
(North Brabant) regarding the discovery of a camp or cemetery near
that location; It is believed to originate from an ancient tribe,
driven from the Ardennes by the Romans, who sought refuge there,
behind the marshlands of the Peel. The first discovery of this
military or burial ground was made by officers of the Hussar
Regiment No. 6, stationed in the area, and since then, excavations
have continued by private individuals in the hope of finding
treasure. Among the finds thus far are several urns or pots of
various sizes, all filled with the ashes of cremated bodies and
small bones; in some of these pots, it is reported, pieces of metal
and fragments of weapons have been found. The aforementioned pots
are covered by mounds of varying height, which, like the pots
themselves, have likely increased in size and height according to
the appearance and rank of the person buried there. The pots are
made of clay and are well-turned; the largest have a diameter of 3,
the smallest just over 1 palm. Some mounds are almost 2 feet high,
others more than 5 feet.
June 3, 1837 [7] urns or pots of
various sizes, all filled with the ashes of cremated bodies and
small bones;
February 24, 2014 Response from Heikki Pauts of
the Rijksmuseum in Leiden
- August 1837, inventory numbers vRD
1-9b "Found near Deurne and given to the RMO as a gift by Mr.
van Riet, mayor of Deurne and Liessel in August
1837";
http://www.rmo.nl/collectie/zoeken?q=vRD*&Afdeling=&Objectnaam=&Materiaal=&Periode=&Vindplaats=
May
26, 1838 (§§) The Roman graves, even the simplest ones,
b.
Those that did not contain stone coffins yielded not only pottery,
immediately identifiable as Roman by its workmanship, shape, color,
or decoration, but also objects or fragments of metal, glass, or
other composite material. On the contrary, no flint objects were
ever found there. I have noted the distinct character of Roman and
Germanic mound graves, among other places, in a report on the
Antiquity discovery in Deurne, published in the Konst- en Letterbode
of May 26, 1838.
On April 23, 1839 [8], a number of urns were
sent to us, which had recently been discovered in Deurne, in North
Brabant; and the number was further increased by the proceeds of a
specially ordered excavation, donated to the Museum by the mayor of
that town, Mr. van Riet. [probably NBD 2, vRD 4a, vRD 2, vRD 3, ND
3, GtD 15
a,
k 1942/6.1, k 1925/1.1, NBD 1, k 1942/6.2, vRD 7, k 1925/1.2, ND 2,
k 1942/6.3, ND 13, vRD 4b, vRD 5a, ND 4, GtD 13a, ND 8, k 1932/12.9,
ND 10, ND 5, vRD 8, vRD 5b, ND 11, k 1942/6.4, GtD 14b]
[10]
The urns appear not to date from the Roman period, but from many
hundreds of years earlier. March 18, 1840 [11] From Mr. S. H. van
der Noordaa, in Dordrecht, two tuff mortars with pestles, excavated
in the vicinity of Deurne in North Brabant;
[12]
These objects were NOT found in the data of the more than 40,000
objects online.
January
1, 1840 If you, gentlemen, who do not forget the noble pleasure of
hunting during your recreations, are inclined, or feel inspired, to
bring to light such remnants of the distant past, then nothing more
is necessary than to pay attention to whether your eye finds any
mounds on the flat heath, approximately one and a half yards high,
and two to two and a half or three feet in diameter. If you come
across such mounds, it is almost certain that urns are hidden there.
The cemetery in Deurne and the one in Baarle-Nassau, at least, were
discovered by hunters while hunting, who also claim to have
encountered similar tumuli in the past, though without noticing
them, on the North Brabant heathland.
March
14, 1840 MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES IN LEIJDEN.
[...]
From Mr. S. H. van der Noordaa, of Dordrecht, two tuff mortars with
pestles, excavated in the vicinity of Deurne in North Brabant; these
are the only objects of this kind in the Museum's possession, and
which, as far as we know, have not yet been found elsewhere. The
proximity of the extensive burial grounds there, discovered in the
heath a few years ago, lends considerable credibility to the
suspicion that both the mortars and the urns found in such large
numbers in that area belong to the same tribe, thus providing a
crucial contribution to the knowledge of the domestic life of the
ancient Germanic peoples, of whose household goods, except in
northern Europe, relatively little remains. [...]
May
12, 1840 [letter to the mayor of Deurne]
Mayor
of Deurne Liessel Helmond, May 12, 1840
The
Lord Governor of this province (probably commissioned by the board
of the Society for the Promotion of Science and the Arts in North
Brabant) has given me a large number of questions to answer
regarding antiquities in my District. These questions, insofar as
they concern the municipality of Deurne-Liessel, are as follows:
According
to a reported report, a farmer named Mortel allegedly possesses a
Roman sword and a gold shield, which were allegedly excavated in the
Peel.
1.
Is this actually the case? And if so, when and where were the sword
and shield found?
2.
Would it be possible to purchase them for the collection of antiques
and rarities of the provincial society of arts and water boards?
3.
If so, at what price?
4.
If the owner is unable to decide to sell, would they be willing to
hand over the objects for appraisal and signature, against proof?
5.
Is it possible to purchase some of the recently discovered mortuary
urns or other curiosities excavated there?
6.
What is the name of the place where these urns were excavated?
A
somewhat prompt answer to these questions would be appreciated.
D.
Distr.
June
29, 1840 Provincial Board RANB 17 inv. no. 12419
no.
1
Missive
of April 17, 1840, no. 8. / Response to the letter from
the
Department of Arts and Sciences / April 17, 1840, no. 8.
Helmond,
June 29, 1840.
[To
the Governor]
In
the aforementioned letter, UWEG provided me with some questions
regarding ancient monuments that are said to be located in some
municipalities of my district. I could have answered some of these
questions immediately, but I took advantage of my travels to gather
information, as I believed I could be better informed when the
council members were in session. I will observe the order as it
appears in your letter.
[...]
Municipality
of Deurne-Liessel.
I
have very much doubted the report that a farmer in Deurne-Liessel
was in possession of an old Roman sword and a gold shield, which
were supposedly dug up in the Peel, as I had never heard anything
about it. Research has also revealed that no one knows anything
about it. This was probably confused with what happened in the
neighboring municipality of Meyel. In 1807, a gold shield was found
there. A few years ago, while I was in Meyel, I went to the house of
the then mayor, Goossens, to see this remarkable sight. He showed me
a shield that had been found in the Peel in 1807 five feet below the
surface of the ground in the Peel, found during a peat excavation,
it was made of gold or at least heavily gilded, hammered work.
Hydroglyphs and other figures of lions, tigers, etc., were engraved
on it, and had the shape of a crescent, closely resembling a gorget
such as infantry captains wore on their chests not so long ago. The
Lord of Keverberg, then deputy prefect in Cleef, had taken this
piece with him to Paris and, according to the Mayor, offered a high
price for it after his return, but they could not agree on the
price. -
There are no longer any mortuary urns available in
Deurne. The Lord Mayor would attempt to acquire more by excavation,
which he would gladly relinquish if successful. -
The District
Commissioner / DD.
Wesselman.
February 24, 2014 Answer
from Heikki Pauts of the Rijksmuseum in Leiden
- September 1840,
inventory numbers GtD 1-12b "Found in Deurne and donated by Mr.
P.C.G. Guyot in Nijmegen";
October 1, 1840 [...] Thus,
the North Brabant Society already possesses urns from three pagan
cemeteries, namely: those found in Deurne in 1837, in Genderen in
1839, and in Gemonde in 1849. [...]
October 21, 1840 The
Germanic and Nordic monuments of the museum in Leiden
N.A. means:
Nordic Altherthumskunde
G.A. --------- Germaniche
Altherthumskunde
A * --------- indicates that the object is
rare.
21a. Small copper chisel, set with verdigris; shape as
in Fig. 14, but without decoration on the handle; origin: Deurne,
from a Germanic burial mound; gift of Mr. P. Guyot.
Length: 0.087
ells.
21b. Small copper chisel, set with verdigris; shape as
in Fig. 15; origin: Deurne, from a Germanic burial mound; gift of
Mr. P. Guyot.
Length: 0.062 ells.
B.21c. Small copper
chisel, set with verdigris; shape as in Fig. 13, but the fan is very
damaged; origin: Deurne; gift of Mr. P. Guyot.
Length: 0.067 ells
(1).
36. Spear-point of copper, set with verdigris,
workmanship and shape as in G.A. Table XVII, Fig. 2, and provided
with two holes at the lower end for attachment to a shaft; Origin:
Deurne; gift from the Lord of Riet.
Length: 0.115 ells.
38.
Lance-point of iron; workmanship and shape as in N.A. Table XVII,
Fig. 1, with two holes as in no. 36; origin: Deurne, from a Germanic
burial mound; gift from the Lord of Riet.
Length: 0.23
ells.
53a. Two fragments of a cloak hook, apparently made of
copper and decorated with copper verdigris; origin: Deurne, from a
Germanic burial mound; gift from Mr. P. Guyot.
B.53b. Disk of
spirally wound copper wire, decorated with copper verdigris
(fragment of a cloak hook); shape as in G.A. Table 5, Fig. 1;
origin: Deurne, from a Germanic burial mound; gift from Mr. P.
Guyot.
53c. Two fragments of a copper hairpin, set with
verdigris; shape approximately as in G.A. Table 2 Fig. 4; origin:
Deurne, from a Germanic burial mound; gift of Mr. P. Guyot.
56a.
Fragment of a spirally wound ring, apparently made of copper and set
with verdigris; origin: Deurne, from a Germanic burial mound; gift
of Mr. P. Guyot.
Medium thickness: 0.006 ell.
B.56b.
Fragment of a round armring (?) made of copper, set with verdigris;
origin: Deurne, from a Germanic burial mound; gift of Mr. P.
Guyot.
Thickness: 0.036 ell.
56c. Fragment of a round
armring (?) made of copper, set with verdigris; Origin: Deurne, from
a Germanic burial mound; gift of Mr. P. Guyot.
Thickness: 0.006
ell.
B.58A* Flat ring of grayish-red earth, finely worked; it
probably hung on another ring as a necklace or earring; origin:
Deurne, from a Germanic burial mound; gift of Mr. P.
Guyot.
Diameter: 0.013 ell; thickness: 0.005 ell.
66a. Pot
of dark brown earth, shape as in Fig. 28, but cracked; contents:
burnt bones; origin: Deurne, from a Germanic burial mound; gift of
Mr. van Riet.
Height: 0.16 ell.
C.74. Pot of brown earth,
shape as in Fig. 29, but without handles; contents: ash-like earth;
Origin: Deurne, from a Germanic burial mound; gift from the Lord of
Riet.
This jar was found in jar no. 81.
Height: 0.095
ells.
74a. Jar of dark brown earth; shape, much like Fig. 32,
but damaged at the rim; contents: burnt bones; origin: Deurne, from
a Germanic burial mound; gift from the Lord of Riet.
Inside it
was jar no. 164.
Height: 0.25 ells.
81. Small jar of dark
brown earth, fairly finely worked and probably shaped like Fig. 32,
but the rim is broken off; contents: burnt bones; origin: Deurne,
from a Germanic burial mound; gift from the Lord of Riet.
Inside
it was jar no. 74.
Height: 0.195 ells.
82. Pot of dark
brown earth; shape as in Fig. 32; contents, burnt
Bones
and ashes; origin, Deurne, from a Germanic burial mound; gift of the
Lord of Riet.
Height: 0.24 cubits.
91. Pot of brown earth;
shape similar to Fig. 28, but damaged on top; origin, Deurne, from a
Germanic burial mound; gift of the Lord of Riet.
Height: 0.16
cubits.
93. Pot of light brown earth; shape similar to Fig.
37, but with a handle; contents: burnt bones and ashes, above which
lay some fragments of rough pottery, which may originally have
belonged to a dish of 18 inches in diameter; origin, Deurne; from a
Germanic burial mound.
Height: 0.21 cubits.
98. Pot of
dark brown earth; shape similar to Fig. 41, but severely damaged on
one side; Contents: burnt bones; origin, Deurne, from a Germanic
burial mound; gift from Mr. van Riet.
Height: 0.245 ells.
C.
99. Pot of dark brown earth; shape approximately like Fig. 41;
contents: burnt bones; origin, Deurne, from a Germanic burial
mound.
Height: 0.205 ells.
101. Pot of brown earth; shape
approximately like Fig. 34; contents: burnt bones; origin, Deurne,
from a Germanic burial mound; gift from the Lord of Riet.
Height:
0.15 ells.
C. 109. Pot of dark brown earth; probable shape as
Fig. 34, but half damaged at the top; contents: burnt bones; origin,
Deurne, from a Germanic burial mound; gift from the Lord of Riet.
Height 0.27 cubits.
119. Brown earthenware pot; probable
shape similar to Fig. 42, but the rim and handles are broken away;
decoration: 5 roughly scratched lines above the body; contents:
burnt bones; origin: Deurne, from a Germanic burial mound, gift of
the Lord of Riet.
Height 0.16 cubits.
C. 164. Small grey
earthenware pot, fairly fine material and rough workmanship; shape
similar to Fig. 67, but damaged on one side; origin: Deurne, from a
Germanic burial mound found in pot no. 74*; gift of the Lord of
Riet.
Height 0.04 cubits.
195A and 195 B. Tuff mortar and
pestle; shape similar to Fig. 20a and 20b; origin: Deurne; Gift of
Mr. S. H. van der Noordaa.
The mortar is 0.075 cubits high; 0.11
cubits wide.
The pestle is 0.1555 cubits long.
196A and
196B. Mortar and pestle of tuff; shape as in Fig. 20 a and b;
decoration on the sides as in a, c, and d; origin Deurne; gift of
Mr. S. H. van der Noordaa.
The mortar is 0.07 cubits high, 0.13
cubits wide.
The pestle is 0.10 cubits long.
209*.
Leaf-shaped tool of cast copper, decorated with verdigris, provided
with a split point and three elaborate holes, and sharp on the
sides, see Fig. 16; possibly a tool for working pots; origin Deurne,
from a Germanic burial mound; gift of Mr. P. Guyot. Original
diameter of the whole: 0.045 el.
209a. Two copper fragments,
covered with verdigris, but deformed by burning; these appear to
have been the mouthpiece of a trumpet; origin: Deurne, from a
Germanic burial mound; gift of Mr. P. Guyot.
Original diameter of
the whole: 0.045 el.
February 24, 2014 Response from Heikki
Pauts of the Rijksmuseum in Leiden
2014: We were already in
contact about those mortars and pestles last summer.
As I
wrote then, the objects in question were transferred to Amsterdam in
the 19th century (VdN a-f to the Museum of the Royal Antiquarian
Society in 1860, VdN g-k to the then National Advisor for Monuments
of Dutch History and Art in 1875). I'm not sure, but I think those
collections later ended up in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Below is a
summary of the information about the relevant mortars and pestles
from our inventory books:
- February 1839, inventory numbers VdN
a-b "Found in North Brabant, donated to the Museum of
Antiquities by Mr. S.H. van der Noordaa in Dordrecht.
a) Mortar
with pestle, made of gray tuff;
probably for grinding grain;
(perhaps also for the preparation of mustard due to its smaller
size). The mortar is square on the outside but slightly rounded at
the corners; hollowed out spherically on the inside.
b) The
pestle is square on top, but tapers conically at the
bottom,
somewhat resembling an inverted cippus with a
base.
Regarding these two objects, Mr. van der Noordaa writes the
following in his letter dated Dordrecht, December 17, 1838, to Dr.
L.J.F. Janssen: Report:
"However, a small basalt mortar and
pestle were also sent to me, roughly similar in shape to the one I
possess, with the only difference being that the first mortar and
pestle I received seem to belong together, while the pestle sent to
you is somewhat too large for the mortar intended for it. Both
mortars and both pestles are made of basalt, the kind found along
the Rhine. These objects were shaped with minimal effort to match
the natural grain of the stone. These antiquities were not found at
the cemetery in Deurne in question; but now...
A
few years ago, I found them in the countryside and in a garden
there. The last mortar and pestle sent even came from various places
near Deurne and from different people. There have been more similar,
rough household items in that area, larger and smaller, found
earlier and later, but they have been scattered again. One of my
brothers, formerly with the Lanciers, now out of work due to poor
health and wounded in Deurne, tracked down the mortars in question
for me. He crisscrossed the Majorij in all directions; he is known
everywhere there. I myself would find my way to many places at
night, and yet, after all the searches, it is impossible to discover
similar mortars anywhere else in North Brabant, other than precisely
in the vicinity of Deurne, where they have certainly been found and
known, because, as I said, they have had more of them there.
Thinking about this phenomenon, it occurred to me that these tools
could have originated from the same tribe that bequeathed its
deceased to the discovered cemetery.
-
November 1839, inventory numbers VdN c-d "Found in the vicinity
of Deurne and donated to the Museum by S.H. van der Noordaa, Deputy
Clerk in Dordrecht.
c)
A mortar made of tuff stone, square in shape and decorated on the
outside,
such
as a small column at each corner, while the four fields between
these columns are divided into diamonds and triangles. Of these four
fields, two (which face each other) are carved thus: [drawing] the
third has upright, and the fourth offset diamonds, as: [drawing]
internally it has been hollowed out round.
d)
Pestle of the same type of stone, square at the top and round at the
bottom.
This
one is too small to have originally belonged to the aforementioned
mortar.
It
is remarkable that this and similar mortars have been found in such
large numbers in the vicinity of Deurne, Lijsel, and Asten, as Mr.
van der Noordaa verbally assured me (Dr. Janssen), and indeed within
an hour's radius, while, according to his assurance, they have not
yet been found elsewhere in North Brabant.
-
October 1842, inventory numbers VdN e-f "Found in the vicinity
of Deurne and donated to the Museum by S.H. van der Noordaa in
Dordrecht.
e)
A tuff mortar, oblong-square in shape and rather roughly worked.
f)
Two pieces of iron ore, apparently found in an urn. - June 1863,
inventory numbers VdN g-k "Found in the vicinity of Deurne,
originating from the collection of the late Mr. S.H. van der
Noordaa, and of his son, Mr. van der Noordaa of Dortrecht, acquired
for the Museum of Antiquities.
g)
Mortar of trachyte stone, round on the inside, octagonal on the
outside,
and
decorated with Gothic niches, in relief; the date 1393 is chiseled
into two of these niches, and the letters A and H are scratched into
two others, probably by a later hand. The shape is p.m. [drawing]
h)
Pestle of trachyte stone, belonging to the mortar VdN g, shape p.m.
[drawing]
i)
Mortar as VdN g, but square in shape, with four pilasters on the
outside, as VdN h.
k)
Pestle, as VdN h, and belonging to the mortar VdN i.
December
31, 1865. As a supplement, we find some details not mentioned
elsewhere in the book Noord-Brabants Oudheden (facsimile from 2012):
With
about thirty enthusiasts from his company, he went to the heath at
Deurne and soon became convinced that these elevations were burial
mounds. These are of varying height, with some being only 60 inches
high, and others 7.60 ells high, with a larger or smaller
circumference depending on the height. Approximately one hundred
urns were found, ranging from the size of a teacup to 100 pound in
weight. […]
In
the spring of 1840, I visited this heath with the late Dr.
Niermeijer, later a professor in Leiden, and found the mounds just
as they were when this treasure hunting stopped! […]
Thirteen
urns and small jars are on display in the Rijksmuseum in Leiden. At
the home of Mr. H. de Grez in 's-Hertogenbosch, four urns and small
jars (1), and two urns and a small jar are preserved in the cabinet
of the North Brabant Society.
(1)
While printing this report, Mr. de Grez obliged me to present these
well-preserved urns to our cabinet as a gift.
January
1, 1841 TREATMENT on the Germanic Cemeteries discovered in North
Brabant.
[262]
"The burial mound and the curiosities found therein may seem
insignificant at first glance, but this prejudice will soon be
discarded when one discovers, to one's surprise, that such an
insignificant coincidence offers so much material for understanding
the writings of the ancients and sheds such light on the oldest
history and folk customs."
Westendorp.
North
Brabant is rich in remains of the time before, and it still contains
much in its folk concepts, customs, and folk traditions, which is
invaluable to the antiquarian and can lead him to a more thorough
understanding of the people whom the warring Romans first
encountered and roughly depicted.
In
the previous installments of the Miscellany, we have already shared
some reports on this subject, and the approval they have received
from many readers [263] encourages me to share our other research
from time to time:
1.
concerning the gods and their temples,
2.
"the sacred groves,"
3.
"the sacred trees,"
4.
"the sacred springs,"
5.
"the pagan burial sites."
We
now select for consideration the pagan burial sites that have been
discovered:
1.
at Orten near 's-Hertogenbosch,
2.
Alphen in the barony of Breda,
3rd.
Mun near Oss,
4th.
Deurne near Helmond,
5th.
Gemonde near St. Michielsgestel,
6th.
Genderen (land of Heusden),
7th.
Engelen
8th.
Tilburg,
9th.
Haren near Megen.
We
will accompany these statements with those details that our
ancestors primarily knew at the solemn time of their passing, and
which were gathered either from medieval documents, from the
language, or from the mouths of the people. We hope that the reader
will readily appreciate the length of this treatise, due to the
variety and novelty of many of our observations.
[273]
CEMETERY IN DEURNE.
The
cemetery from the heathen past, which was discovered in 1837 in the
heathland 20 minutes from Deurne, and from which some 100 urns were
dug, has caused quite a stir. In the spring of 1840, I went there to
inspect this cemetery with my own eyes, and after conducting
research, I found that the reports by Dr. Jansen in the Konst- en
Letterbode (a) placed, are most accurate, which is why we will
reproduce the factual report in the words of this antiquarian.
Mr.
F. Baron van Voorst tot Voorst, captain in the Hussars N. 6.
regiment stationed in Someren, found while hunting in the vicinity
of various villages, including Deurne, in the highest points of the
heath, [274] regular elevations, which he assumed must have had a
purpose in earlier times. "I thought," writes his
well-born Highness, whose words we will follow, "I thought,
after the hunting season I want to know what's in there; I spoke
about it with the Mayor, who willingly granted permission for the
excavation. With about thirty enthusiasts from the company, which I
am with, we set to work and, in a few hours, found four urns of
various shapes and sizes, three of which were cracked and fell apart
when lifted. All the wares, as well as those found more closely,
were half-filled with burnt human bones. The addition is a compact
black earth, perhaps formerly ash and charcoal... If charcoal were
discovered while digging, the urn wouldn't be far away.
"Human
bones without urns were rarely found. Of the human bones, fragments
of skulls, ribs, and especially the rounded heads of the femurs and
humers are still clearly distinguishable... I consider them
hand-made, at least not as they are now turned and poorly fired,
which can be seen on the edges when the shards are broken. The color
of some is chocolate-like, of others grayish. Two were light red,
and one seemed roughly glazed. The day after I started, several
farmers and burghers had also begun searching for a treasure pointed
out by the Captain of the Cavalry, and soon two hundred farmers were
busy turning everything upside down without order or consultation.
Good advice was of no use. Later, some understood this. The earth
has a depth and a half of that solidity and brownness... which it
possesses elsewhere. Digging deeper [275] one soon discovers that
the ground has not been disturbed before (or not).
"The
urns, which are in yellow sand, are smoother, whiter, and brighter
in color than those in soil that resembles topsoil. Those found in
the flat ground are even less than a foot deep; in the mounds, 2.5
to 3 feet; one urn above the other; in larger ones, sometimes
smaller ones, or hidden within them, like a woman in labor with her
child. – I had examined the largest mounds (a), assuming that
these were the graves of the most prominent people. If this was
nothing more than an ordinary cemetery of that time, then these
could have been family graves, which one is inclined to believe when
one sees the urns placed above each other with some space between
them; through which these mounds successively reached that height,
which must have lost much of its height over time due to rain,
drought, and wind. - Burnt metal has been found on some urns; very
small (however) in comparison to the urns expanse of raised ground,
which now resembles a desert... This cemetery is intersected by a
footpath to Asten, located 20 minutes from Deurne; it is estimated
at eye level to be 150 paces wide and 500 meters in area... Well
over a hundred urns of various shapes and sizes were found,
two-thirds of which were damaged, ranging from the size of a teacup
to weighing 100 pence. They are sold for 1 to 4 guilders... I should
also add that not far from the cemetery there is a long, wide ditch,
the purpose of which is unclear; it was used for transport (except
as a supply of drinking water). could not have served as either an
enclosure or a boundary divider."
To
this point, Dr. Jansen shares the above-mentioned remarkable reports
with the words of Baron van Voorst himself, taken from a letter
dated Someren, March 25, 1837, who adds in praise of the honored
discoverer: "From this important report, it becomes clear that
Mr. van Voorst was the first to make the discovery. At the same
time, one cannot deny him the praise for having proceeded more
judiciously and accurately than one might have expected from someone
who did not make this type of exploration his special study; He will
be grateful for his attention to details that cannot be overlooked
in a scientific assessment."
When
I was in Deurne, I was told that thirty years ago a shepherd had
found an urn containing human bones, but that he had considered them
the remains of a manslaughter and, to avoid contact with the police,
had kept the matter quiet and buried the bones and potsherds back in
the ground.
Let
us now consider the objects discovered in this Germanic cemetery.
They are of three kinds:
1.
About a hundred urns.
2.
Some metal ornaments.
3.
Three suspicious objects.
[277]
I. URNS.
The
National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden preserves:
1.
A cracked pot of dark brown earth, containing burnt bones. Height
0.16 ells. (being No. 66a of the collection of antiquities.)
2.
Small pot of brown earth, with ash-like soil. Height 0.095 cubits
(No. C. 74). This pot was found in a
3.
Pot of dark brown earth, fairly finely worked, but damaged at the
rim, with burnt bones. Height 0.195 cubits (No. 81).
4.
Pot of dark brown earth, damaged at the rim, with burnt bones.
Height 0.25 cubits (No. 74a). Inside it was a
5.
Small pot of gray earth, fairly fine material and rough workmanship,
but damaged on one side. Height 0.04 cubits (No. C. 164).
6.
Pot of dark brown earth; shape as in Fig. 3 of the accompanying
plate, with burnt human bones and ash. Height 0.24 cubits. (No. 82.)
7.
Pot of brown earth; but damaged at the top. Height 0.16 cubits. (No.
91.)
8.
Pot of light brown earth, with one handle, and with burnt bones and
ash, above which lay some fragments of rough pottery, which may
originally have belonged to a dish of 18 inches in diameter. Height
0.2 cubits. (No. 93.)
9.
Pot of dark brown earth, badly damaged on one side, with burnt
bones. Height 0.245 cubits. (No. 98.) [278]
10.
Pot of dark brown earth, with burnt human bones. Height 0.205
cubits. (No. C. 99.)
11.
Pot of brown earth, with burnt bones. Height 0.15 cubits. (No. 101.)
12th.
Pot of dark brown earth, but half damaged at the top, with burnt
bones. Height 0.27 cubits. (No. C. 109.)
13th.
Pot of brown earth, of which the rim and handles have been broken
away, with five roughly scratched lines above the body, with burnt
bones. Height 0.16 cubits. (No. 119.)
The
description of these 13 mortuary urns is taken from Dr. Jansen, "The
Germanic and Nordic Monuments of the Museum in Leiden" (Leijden
1840), with an indication of the numbers under which they appear in
the collection.
We
also have the pleasure of mentioning two urns, which were donated by
Baron van den Bogaerde of Ter Brugge to the Provincial Society in
's-Hertogenbosch and are preserved in the Library of that Society.
1st.
Pot of Dark brown earth, slightly damaged at the rim. Height 0.16
ells. (See Fig. 2.) In this urn was found a 2nd small pot, also made
of dark brown earth, which had suffered considerably. Height 0.073
ells. (See Fig. 4.)
Let
us now adopt the learned observations of Mr. Jansen, as they appear
in the Letterbode.
"The
purpose of the urns," he says, "is beyond doubt; they were
filled wholly or partially with cremated human bones, above which
[279] was mixed earth with charcoal and ash; they were therefore
funeral urns, containing the last remains of the cremated corpses.
Less certain is the purpose of the small pots, which are sometimes
found on top of, sometimes inside, and sometimes next to the urns.
Only these can be considered certain as children's urns, whose bones
indicate this. The ones known to us have not proven it. These (being
five specimens examined by Mr. Jansen) contained a yellow, sometimes
gray, earth mixed with ash, while only one contained a shard of
bone. Recent archaeological discoveries, in similar jars discovered
elsewhere, have shown that some served to contain something useful
or beautiful. The often-held belief that they always contained the
ashes of postpartum children is also contradicted by the very large
number of these small jars found both in Deurne and elsewhere.
"That
the urns and jars vary greatly in size, shape, and external
appearance has been noted, and also demonstrated to us. The height
and width are not proportional, but all have a wide opening,
suitable for placing objects, and resemble an ordinary tub, while
none are jar-shaped. Those currently in the Museum here seem rare;
only one was covered with fragments of a large bowl or tub, neither
intentionally made as a cover, nor did it fit the urn. However,
according to illustrations, one has been discovered whose lid fit
better within the urn, and one where it extended over the rim. Also
[280] only a few have one or two handles, and even rarer are those
that had any decorations, though a decoration that hardly deserves
that name. In one in our Museum, it consists of five lines, which
run disproportionately under each other around the rim of the urn,
and were scratched into it with a pointed tool when the earth was
still soft. However, according to illustrations, one has also been
discovered in which the lines lie perpendicular to each other, and
another in which they cross each other around the urn. The color of
the one we saw is a mixed brown, now more gray than yellow or red,
depending on the earth from which they were formed and the degree of
heat used for firing. Some have been smoothed or rubbed fairly
smoothly on the outside, but I have not been able to discover traces
of glaze or paint on any of them. The most remarkable aspect seems
to be the roughness of the workmanship. The material is poorly
prepared and refined; the shaping was probably done by hand, not on
a wheel; this is at least clearly evident in the small pots and the
fragments of the aforementioned lid. The great fragility observed in
some of the damaged pots rightly suggests that they were lightly
fired, perhaps only dried in a fire; to this fragility it is partly
attributable that so few have come to light undamaged. When one
considers this crude and so little artistic progress-evident
character of the pottery, one cannot believe that it originated from
the same people who produced the finely wrought metals (discussed
shortly). To think of Roman [281] work in the pottery forbids us
from a deliberate comparison with similar objects of Roman origin.
Roman pottery, even the simplest, even that discovered in the
poorest graves, always showed us that meticulous workmanship, those
proportionate shapes created by skilled disc turning, that solid
firing, those predetermined colors, and precise decorations, which
we lack in our own.
II.
METAL DECORATIONS.
The
Rijksmuseum in Leiden preserves:
1.
Copper chisel, set with verdigris. 0.087 ells long (No. 21a).
2.
Copper chisel, set with verdigris. 0.062 ells long (No. 21b). See
Fig. 5.
3.
Copper chisel, set with verdigris; but the fan is severely damaged.
0.067 ells long (No. B. 21c).
Dr.
Jansen raises the question of whether these chisels were not
potter's tools. are. If this is true, the urns must have been formed
and fired in the burial sites themselves, which is not impossible.
However, I imagine that at that time a potter would have been
responsible for making the urns, just as a coffin maker or some
religious or charitable institution is now responsible for making
coffins. So, the potter would no more have delivered his chisels
with the coffin than a coffin maker would have delivered his tools
today. Since the knowledge we have of Germanic burial sites is still
so young and undeveloped, it seems to me that the time has not yet
come to indicate the purpose and [282] use of the tools found in
burial urns. Let us describe precisely and provide accurate
illustrations of what has been found, so that the antiquarian, after
us, will have sufficient information to form a more accurate idea of
the purpose and use, if this is feasible in the
infancy of Nordic archaeology. However, it speaks for itself, that
one is obliged to provisionally name the objects, one will speak of
them; but this is conditional, until they become more familiar to
us; for this reason, we approve the names that the scholar Jansen
gives to the objects found in Deurne, and we gladly adopt them.
4.
Lance-point of copper, covered with verdigris, with two holes at the
lower end for attachment to a shaft. Length 0.115 ells. (No. 36.)
5.
Lance-point of iron, with two holes. Length 0.23 ells. (No. 38.)
6.
Two fragments of a cloak hook, apparently made of copper and covered
with verdigris. (No. 53a.)
7.
Disk of spirally wound copper wire, covered with verdigris;
(Fragment of a cloak hook). (No. 53b.)
8.
Two fragments of a copper hair pin, set with verdigris. (No. 53c.)
9.
Fragment of a spirally wound ring, apparently made of copper and set
with verdigris. Average thickness 0.006 ells. (No. 56a.)
10.
Fragment of a round armring (?) made of copper, set with verdigris.
Thickness 0.036 ells. (No. B. 56b.)
[283]
11.
Fragment of an armring (?) made of copper, set with verdigris.
Thickness 0.006 ells. (No. 56c.)
12.
Leaf-shaped tool of cast copper, set with verdigris, provided with a
split point and three elaborate holes, and sharp on the sides (see
fig. 6). Dr. Jansen speculates that it may be a form for working
pottery. Length 0.017 ell (No. 209*).
13.
Two copper fragments, covered with verdigris, but deformed by
burning; these appear to have formed the mouthpiece of a trumpet.
Original diameter of the whole 0.045 ell. (No. 209a).
Besides
these metal ornaments, the Leiden Museum also has a
14.
Flat ring of grayish-red earth and finely worked; it probably hung
from another ring as a neck or earring. Diameter 0.013 ell;
thickness 0.005 ell. (No. B. 58a*).
We
have listed these fourteen ornaments, which were found in burial
mounds in Deurne, in the words of Dr. Jansen (German and Northern
Monuments of the Leiden Museum).
His
Honour, the highly learned scholar, had already introduced most of
these objects in the Letterbode (1838, I. 390), where four metal
ornaments are also mentioned. After this statement, Jansen says:
"As
far as we know, the aforementioned constitutes all the metals
brought to light from the large number of mounds, and this rarity
rightly aroused the surprise of Mr. van Voorst; it is also
noteworthy that no objects of more precious metal, gold or silver,
and probably [284] not even iron (a), have been discovered. The
workmanship of these objects is very careful and precise; they are
partly cast, partly struck and drawn, and, although devoid of
figurative work, they betray a very advanced level of artistic
practice and point to a people that must have reached a considerable
height of civilization. If one considers the form and significance,
and compares them with similar objects of undeniably Roman origin,
one perceives the most striking similarity, a similarity that has
struck us as so great that, had we found it among Roman objects,
There would be no doubt whatsoever that they originated from a Roman
factory."
That
this advancement in civilization—which Dr. Jansen deduces from
the objects found to have already existed among the inhabitants of
Deurne during the pagan era—actually existed there when Saint
Willebrord, along with Saint Lambert, converted the inhabitants of
Peelland to Christianity, will be clearly demonstrated in our
treatise: Saint Willebrord and Saint Lambert in North Brabant, drawn
up from charters and contemporaneous documents, which we will report
in a subsequent installment of this Miscellany.
III.
SUSPICIOUS OBJECTS. The self-interest or contempt for everything
alien to the short-sighted, which always tries to outwit the
antiquarian, has been experienced more than once, to the
considerable [285] detriment of Archaeology, so that in Deurne they
would not have attempted to employ similar feats. When I was
personally engaged in investigations in Deurne, I was exposed to the
same deception. I was offered for sale an iron statuette that bore
all the evidence of having previously served as a knife handle. My
questions were met with such evasive answers, and the seller was so
disrespectful that I rejected him with an attitude that clearly made
him realize I considered him a deceitful and self-interested fraud.
In
the Letterbode, Mr. van Voorst speaks:
1°.
of a metal statuette, with a flat, square headdress, being a span
long, and dressed as a... v. Erasmus in Rotterdam, with folded
hands, in which a rosary can clearly be seen. "If this
statuette was actually excavated," writes Mr. van Voorst, "then
it is probably of a later date."
2.
From a saber or blade. "But if this, says Dr. Jansen, was also
excavated in Deurne, as Mr. van Voorst was assured, according to a
letter addressed to me, it certainly does not belong to the burial
mounds; since upon investigation it has shown us to be from so
recent a period that it does not even reach the Middle Ages. Its
imagery and obscured inscription convince us that it cannot date
back to the time of Louis XIV. Blades from the previous century,
less than a hundred years old, and from Amsterdam factories, bear
the most striking resemblance to this Deurne one."
[286]
3.
From an iron bolt or hammer. "Its owner, Mr. P. Guyot of
Nijmegen, says Dr. Jansen, informed me that he had not considered it
worthwhile to send it for inspection, as it bore too obvious signs
of being an ordinary bolt from a very recent period."
We
conclude these reports, referring to the Germanic cemetery in
Deurne, with the hope that the owners of antiquities excavated there
may be encouraged to donate them, in exchange for reasonable
compensation, to the Provincial North Brabant Society in
's-Hertogenbosch.
Fig.
2-6. Antiquities found in Deurne.
January
1, 1841 Deurne is a neat and prosperous village with an elegant
church
and
a beautiful tower, used by the Roman Catholic Church. The castle in
Deurne is still in its original condition and a pleasant place to
stay. Diagonally across from it lies a portion of another castle or
house, where the naturalist Joannes Florentius Martinet once stood,
who, according to Uilkens, contributed more than anyone to
popularizing natural history among our countrymen. Deurne, along
with Liessel, has a population of 3,256 inhabitants, who earn their
living from agriculture and peat cutting. A Germanic cemetery from
pagan times was discovered in Deurne in 1837. We were told that Mr.
F. Baron van Voorst tot Voorst, a captain in the Hussar regiment,
first discovered these burial mounds. Thirty years ago, a shepherd
had found an urn containing burned human bones, but, considering it
the remains of a manslaughter and fearing the police, he had kept
the matter quiet and buried the bones and potsherds back in the
ground. The cemetery is bisected by a footpath on Asten, which runs
all around the heathland, and is 20 minutes from Deurne. It is
approximately 500 paces long and 150 paces wide. Approximately 100
hearses of all sizes had been excavated. This heathen relic provided
ample material to help us forget the monotony of the heathland.
January
26, 1841. In the department of Germanic and Nordic antiquities, from
Major General Rottiers, to whose zeal and care the Museum owes its
possession of so many Greek works of art, a bronze statuette of a
god, found near Aachen.
From
Mr. P. O. P. Guyot, in Nijmegen, a most important collection of
bronzes and other objects, discovered near Deurne, in the province
of North Brabant, largely assembled by Captain Baron van Voorst and
given to Mr. Guyot. This significant acquisition, combined with the
urns and other objects mentioned in our previous reports
(Staats-Courant 1838 and 1839), now provides the Museum with the
most important and rare pieces unearthed during the discovery in
Deurne. These, finally reunited through various means, form a whole
that can make an unexpected and significant contribution to the
knowledge of one of the ancient tribes that formerly inhabited our
country. In the Konst- en Letterbode 1838, May, pages 379-395, most
of the objects were described by the Curator, Dr. Janssen. February
25, 1842 M. P. O. P. Guyot à Nymègue d'une collection
très-remarquable de bronzes et d'autres objets trouvés
près de Deurne dans le Brabant-Septentrional et qui pour la
plupart avaient été assemblages by M. le capitaine
baron Van Vorst qui les remis à M. Guyot. This important
acquisition joint with urns and other objects was completed in 1838
and 1839, with the Museum and possession of the principals and the
additional rare results of the fouille près de Deurne. After
all, the preparations for maintenant reunions form an ensemble that
lasts a long time over the connaissance of the old people that they
used to live in. La part de ces objets sont décrits par M. le
conservator Janssen dans le Konst- en Letterbode de 1838, pages
370-—395.
January
26, 1841 [13] From Mr. P. O. P. Guyot, in Nijmegen, a most important
collection of bronze and other objects excavated near Deurne, in the
province of North Brabant, most of which were assembled by Captain
Baron van Voorst and given to Mr. Guyot.
[14]
The Museum has now been given possession of the most important and
rare pieces that were unearthed during the discovery in Deurne, and
which, through various means, have finally been reassembled to form
a whole that […]
February
24, 2014 Response from Heikki Pauts of the Rijksmuseum in Leiden
-
May 1841, inventory numbers GtD 13-20 "Found in Deurne and
donated by Mr. P.C.G. Guyot in Nijmegen";
http://www.rmo.nl/collectie/zoeken?q=GtD*&Afdeling=&Objectnaam=&Materiaal=&Periode=&Vindplaats=
February
24, 2014 Response from Heikki Pauts of the Rijksmuseum in Leiden
-
November 1841, inventory numbers VdN 1-3 "Found in an urn in
Deurne, given by Mr. S.H. van der Noordaa in Dordrecht to the
curator L.J.F. Janssen";
January
1, 1842 4.) The Germanic and Nordic Monuments of the Museum
in
Leiden, briefly described by L. J. F. JANSSEN, Curator at the Museum
of Antiquities in Leiden. – With two plates. – In
Leiden, by S. and J. Luchtmans, 1840. Gr. Oct. 70 Pages.
[…]
Among these, the following are noted here as rare: a flat ring of
grayish-red earth from a Germanic burial mound in Deurne;
[…]
a leaf-shaped tool of cast copper, from a Germanic burial mound in
Deurne;
January
12, 1842 [15] From Mr. P. C. G. GUYOT, of Nijmegen, another number
of ten urns, pots, and bowls, found in Deurne in North Brabant;
[16]
From Mr. S. H. van der Noordaa, of Dordrecht, another three small
objects in urns found in Deurne.
January
20, 1843 [17] From Mr. S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA, we received another
tuff mortar, found in the vicinity of Deurne.
July
1, 1845, from: Proceedings of the Provincial Society of Arts …
72
Roman copper frying pan (Sartago), found in the summer of 1845 in
the Peel region, three hours from Cuyk, three feet below the peat.
Very rare.
On
behalf of the Provincial Committee of Antiquities, which purchased
this commemorative piece for 2 guilders.
74
Funeral urns and small jars of Germanic origin, with a catalog of
Nos. 1-50.
[18]
Nos. 1-3 from Deurne.
[…]
111
A Peel snake captured alive in 1851, in a bottle in liquor.
Gift
of Notary Rovers, in Asten
January
1, 1850 [...] Numerous objects from the stone, bronze, and iron
periods have been unearthed from its [=Limburgian] soil in earlier
and later periods. The scientific investigations to uncover this
first date back to around 1825. These were initiated by Mr. CHARLES
GUILLON, a notary in Roermond. A very wealthy man, he amassed a
large collection of antiquities of all kinds and from various
periods, which was regularly supplemented until his death on
November 10, 1873. Later, it was dispersed through sale, but most of
the objects from the prehistoric period have fortunately found a
home in the Rijksmuseum in Leiden. [...]
December
5, 1856 On Monday, December 15, 1856, and the following five days,
in the morning and afternoon, the bookseller G. THEOD. BOM, in
Amsterdam, at ODEON for Public Sale: the excellent CABINET OF
MEMORIAL AND TOKENS, HONOUR AND WARRING MARKS, MEETING COINS, GUILD
COINS, SHUTTERS, RELIGIOUS, FREEMASONIC, PRIZE AND FIRE ENGINE
TOKENS. EMERGENCY COINS AND COINS, COIN, MEMBERS AND HEROMICAL
BOOKS, BEQUESTED BY THE LATE MR. S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA, Member of
various Domestic and Foreign Literary, Historical and Archaeological
Societies in Dordrecht. VIEWING DAYS: FRIDAY and SATURDAY, December
12th and 13th. The CATALOGUE can be obtained, postage paid, upon
request for 20 cents from G. THEOD. BOM, Kalverstraat, E 10. (19573)
February
24, 2014 Response from Heikki Pauts of the Rijksmuseum in Leiden
-
June 1863, inventory numbers ND 1-15 "From the collection of
the late Mr. S.H. van der Noordaa, excavated in Deurne. Acquired
from his son, Mr. van der Noordaa. According to labels by the late
Mr. S.H. van der Noordaa, all these objects (ND 1-15) were excavated
in 1837 at the old cemetery in Deurne";
March
31, 1864 Several acquisitions were made for the National
Antiquities. Along with the above-mentioned Roman objects from the
estate of the late Mr. S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA, several others were
also acquired from former inhabitants of our country: a beautifully
polished flint axe, 12 dm long; a roughly worked trachyte ball, 4 dm
in diameter; a baked earthenware urn filled with burnt human bones,
19 dm high; another urn, 18 dm high, containing fragments of a
bronze hair needle found inside; three more urns containing burnt
bones and the remains of bronze rings etc.; the urns measuring 10,
15.5, and 16 inches high; two bowls, 9 and 7 dm; four pots of
various shapes, 6.5 to 9.5 dm high; a beaker-shaped vessel, 5.5 dm
high, and some fragments of pots. All these objects, with the
possible exception of the WIGGE, were excavated in 1837 at the old
cemetery in Deurne, North Brabant; they now form a substantial
collection, together with the pieces found at the same location and
donated to the Museum in 1840 and 1841 by the late Mr. P. O. G.
GUYOT. [...]
Some
MEDIEVAL AND LATER OBJECTS, originating from the excavations for the
Nijmegen army barracks, a pair of trachyte stone MORTARS with
PESTLES from the Deurne area and belonging to the estate of the late
Mr. S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA, already mentioned several times; [...]
March
31, 1864 [19] Roman objects from the estate of the late Mr. S. H.
VAN DER NOORDAA were also acquired, some from former inhabitants of
our country:
[20]
a very beautifully polished flint axe, 12 dm long;
[21]
a roughly worked trachyte BALL, 4 dm in diameter;
[22]
a baked earthenware URN, filled with burnt human bones, 19 dm high;
[23]
Another URN, 18 dm. high, containing the fragments of a bronze HAIR
NEEDLE found inside;
[24,
25, 26] Three more URNS containing burnt bones and
[27]
remains of bronze RINGS, etc.; the urns were 10, 15.5, and 16 inches
high;[28] Two CUBS, 9 and 7 dm.;
[29]
Four POTS of various shapes, 6.5 to 9.5 dm. high;
[30]
A beaker-shaped VESSEL, 5.5 dm. high, and some fragments of pots.
[31]
All these objects, with the possible exception of the WIGGE, were
excavated in 1837 at the old cemetery in Deurne, North Brabant;
[32]
a pair of trachyte stone MORTARS with PESTLES from the Deurne area,
belonging to the estate of the late Mr. S. H. VAN DER NOORDAA,
already mentioned several times;
[33]
these now form a significant collection, together with the pieces
found at the same location and donated to the Museum in 1840 and
1841 by the late Mr. P. O. G. GUYOT.
November
28, 1874 ANTIQUITIES.
The
important collections of antiquities, works of art, books, and
archives bequeathed by Mr. G. Ch. H. GUILLON, a living Notary in
Roermond, will be presented at the request of Mr. C. Guillon,
Attorney there, in the presence of Notary MAX. CORNELIS, at the
house of his death, will be publicly sold on the following days,
each journey beginning at 9:00 a.m.:
The
Gothic cabinets and other objects of art on Monday, November 30th.
The
paintings and engravings on the following December 1st and 2nd.
The
Archives on December 9th and subsequent days.
The
prehistoric, Roman, Germanic, and Frankish antiquities on January
11, 1875, and subsequent days.
The
intaglios (intaglios), Roman coins and medals, as well as the
Medieval coins and other tokens, on January 18, 1875, and subsequent
days.
All
collections, with the exception of the library, will be sold for
cash payment plus a ten percent surcharge for expenses.
Three
months' credit will be granted for the payment of the books.
Gentlemen enthusiasts will be given the opportunity to view the
collection for sale the day before the prospective sales, from 9
a.m. to 5 p.m.
The
combined catalogs are available from the publisher of this newspaper
for 60 cents. In addition, for requests outside Roermond, the
postage is as follows: 22 cents to the Netherlands and Belgium, 55
cents to Germany, and 56 cents to France.
Stamps
are accepted to cover the purchase price and postage.
February
24, 2014 Response from Heikki Pauts of the Rijksmuseum in Leiden
-
April 1884, inventory numbers ND 16-37 "From the collection of
the late Mr. S.H. van der Noordaa, excavated in Deurne. Purchased at
a sale in Amsterdam at Frederik Muller and Co. on April 8 and the
following days, 1884, "in brackish soil."
http://www.rmo.nl/collectie/zoeken?q=ND&Afdeling=&Objectnaam=&Materiaal=&Periode=&Vindplaats=
March
1, 1890 Antiquities.
The
famous MUSÉE GUILLON, collected over more than half a century
by the accomplished antiquarian CHARLES GUILLON, Notary in Roermond,
will be publicly SOLD on Tuesday, March 11-15, 2014, in Amsterdam by
G. THEOD. BOM & ZOON, Spuistraat 135.
The
collection includes Roman, Germanic, Celtic, and Medieval
antiquities excavated primarily in Limburg, Roman and Gelderland
coins and medals, Limburg coin stamps, Japanese lacquered and old
oak furniture, porcelain, paintings, valuables, etc.
Catalog
f 0 25.
March
8, 1890. The catalog of works of art,
bequeathed
by the late notary Guillon here, lists no fewer than a thousand
Roman, Germanic, and Celtic
Roman,
Frankish, and medieval antiquities from the Stone and Bronze Ages,
mortuary urns, Roman glass and pottery, over 70 pieces of beautiful
red Samian pottery, a single silver-chased shield plate, probably
from the latter part of the Roman Empire, over 80 carved stones or
cameos, 1,400 antique gold, silver, and bronze coins, some medieval
Gelderland and Limburg coins, coin dies and seals, as well as a
small collection of silver chased coins, old furniture, etc.
The
carefully edited catalog proves that much of interest can be found
here for our antiquarians and archaeologists.
March
10, 1890 Two very important auctions will be held in the coming days
by the auctioneers G. Theod. Bom & Zoon, in Amsterdam.
The
first, containing the collection of antiquities and coins bequeathed
by the late Mr. Charles Guillon, notary in Roermond, is of
particular interest to students of the history of our country. Never
before has such a collection of 1,000 Roman, Germanic, Celtic,
Frankish, and medieval antiquities excavated in Limburg been
auctioned. It offers us a glimpse into the customs and traditions of
those times. Both the Stone Age and the Bronze Age are amply
represented, while the collection of Germanic pottery, including
many urns containing the ashes of our Germanic ancestors, may be
considered among the richest. The Roman glassware and pottery, urns,
etc., including the beautiful red pottery from Samos, are also
worthy of interest, as is the umbo, or shield plate, embossed in
silver and high relief, a masterpiece of chased work from the period
of the Bas Empire. This collection also includes a collection of
over 80 mostly antique carved stones or cameos, antique gold,
silver, and bronze coins, some medieval Gelderland and Limburg
coins, etc., etc.
The
second, more limited collection contains a collection of antiques,
silver chased pieces, antique furniture, historical and Amsterdam
rarities, valuables, porcelain and Delftware, horns and shells,
paintings, stereoscopes, glass stereoscopic slides, etc.
These
items can be viewed in the firm's salesroom, Spuistraat 135,
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, March 8-10, from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM.
March
10, 1890, Tuesday morning, Ten o'clock: SALE at G. THEOD. BOM &
ZOON, Spuistraat 135, next to Die Port van Cleve.
Guillon
Collection: Stone Age and Bronze Age Antiquities, Germanic Urns, No.
1-813. At six o'clock in the evening: Ancient Roman Coins, beginning
with No. 1.
The
Sellers will be greatly obliged by returning the Guillon Catalogue.
March
14, 1890. The collection of Limburg antiquities,
currently
being sold by G. Theod. Bom & Zoon, on Spuistraat here, and
originating from Mr. Ch. Guillon of Roermond, appears to have
attracted general attention.
Fortunately,
the majority of it remains in our country and was purchased
primarily for the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and the
Maastricht Museum of Antiquities. The remainder went to private
individuals, while a few very fine pieces were purchased for English
money. No. 79, a stone axe, fetched 14 guilders; no. 38, a similar
11.50 guilders; no. 160, stone arrowheads, 15 guilders; no. 167, a
stone poniard, 26 guilders; no. 199, a bronze razor, 10 guilders;
No. 200, a sword blade, f28; No. 300, a Germanic cup, f12; Nos. 314
and 315, two bronze statuettes, f39; No. 321, two copper ornaments
of a tripod, f14; No. 329, a similar incense box with spoon, f13;
No. 336, a plaque with Jupiter and Hebe, f48; No. 410, a Roman
flask, f35; No. 411, a similar smaller one, f20; No. 427, a Samian
earthenware vase, f32. The auction continues.
December
1, 1894, Sale of Weapons and Works of Art in Cologne.
[...]
2nd. Art collections of the late Honourable Gestr. Mr. C. Guillon,
lawyer in Roermond, [...] Sale 12-18 December 1894.
Price
of the illustrated catalogue 3 Marks.
J.
M. Heberle (H. Lempertz’s sons), Cologne.
May
4, 1929 [...] In Roermond, in 1874,
a
highly important sale of documents, archival materials, and old
curiosities took place. It was the sale of curiosities bequeathed by
the late Mr. C. Guillon, lawyer and notary in Roermond. This rare
collection, containing approximately 10,000 items, went under the
hammer, and the sale, which lasted from November 30, 1874, to
January 19, 1875, had a section entitled "Manuscripts,
Archives, and Other Historical Documents," which contained
nearly 1,000 items. The catalog of this sale has already become a
work of bibliophilic value. […]
February
27, 2014
Eindhoven,
February 27, 2014
Dear
Mr. Louer,
Please
find attached a file on finds in the Peel region. I am very
interested in objects that have not yet been described. I also refer
you to www.theelen.info.
Kind
regards,
Paul
Theelen
Dear
Mr. Scheijvens,
Following
our telephone conversation, I am attaching information about objects
found in the Peel region, primarily during peat cutting. For further
information, please refer to the comprehensive website
www.theelen.info, which also includes the table of contents so you
can search using keywords and then jump to the relevant file.
Kind
regards,
Paul
Theelen
February
27, 2014, from Ronald Louer (rlouer@brabant.nl)
Dear
Mr. Theelen, Dear Paul,
Enclosed
is an inventory of finds from the Peel region (Helmond, Laarbeek,
Gemert-Bakel, Deurne, Asten, Someren, and Geldrop – excluding
the place name Mierlo) that have been catalogued in the Provincial
Depot of Archaeological Finds in North Brabant. The entire
collection has not yet been inventoried, so there may be more finds
from those municipalities in our depot. The Province of North
Brabant has only been responsible for the Provincial Depot of
Archaeological Finds in North Brabant since 2000. Before that, this
depot was the responsibility of the national government. Since 2000,
we have been reviewing and inventorying the entire collection. Finds
made before 1960 generally fall under the Noordbrabants Museum (as a
continuation of the Provincial Society of North Brabant) or have
ended up in other collections, but some of these older finds have
been found in our depot.
If
you have any further questions, I am happy to answer them to the
best of my ability.
Sincerely,
Ronald
Louer | Manager of the Provincial Depot of Archaeological Finds in
North Brabant | 06-18303225
March
10, 2014 to avanpinxteren@hnbm.nl
Eindhoven,
March 10, 2014
Dear
Mr. van Pinxteren,
I
am currently compiling an inventory of finds that have been found in
the peat bog of the Peel region. Finds from the peat areas in the
north of the country are included because somewhat more have been
found there than in the Peel region. I am specifically requesting
information regarding the cemetery south of Deurne, which was
discovered in 1837. Although, strictly speaking, this is not part of
the peat bog.
Objects
such as urns with contents have ended up in your museum; some
mortars (probably from the Middle Ages) also came to you via the
Leiden museum around or after 1875, or they have disappeared...
Could
you, using the updated files, search for the aforementioned urns and
metal objects, whether purchased or otherwise acquired by the
museum? Thanks in advance,
Paul
Theelen See also www.theelen.info
[The
name Meuse has been changed into Maas.]
3.3
Area 3. The Maas line
Geologically,
the Lower Maas has much in common with the Lower Rhine, as both are
part of the same river delta. Further up-stream in Limburg, however,
it cuts into harder Quaternary sediments composed of coarse gravel
and sand.
Local
subsidence means that the Maas does not erode or deposit large
quantities of sediment and avulsions or lateral migration are thus
far less common in the Maas delta than in the Rhine delta.
Furthermore, the Rhine depends on both rain water and meltwater,
whereas the Maas is only fed by rain water.
This
means that the discharge of water can fluctuate strongly between
seasons, which surely will have affected the Maas’s usability
for transport.
Fortifications
along the Maas are a new phenomenon in the Late Roman period, and
are generally taken as an indication of defence-in-depth. However,
the majority of the identified sites here is located along its
east-west axis, such as Cuijk, Kessel-Lith and Wijchen-Tienakker.
What makes the Maas even more interesting is that at least two
bridges over it are known at Cuijk and Maastricht (a third has been
suggested at Kessel-Lith), a unique feature in the Netherlands.
Unfortunately, however, the Maas is, like the Rhine, a volatile
meandering river, and many sites are completely or partially eroded
away and can only be identified by dredge finds.
Again,
like the Rhine, the military sites along the Maas have traditionally
been identified based on written sources. Notably this concerns the
comment by Ammianus Marcellinus that Emperor Julian rebuilt three
forts situated on a line along the Maas in AD 358, that were
destroyed by invading Franks.
Several
sites have been proposed in the past, including Cuijk,
Blerick-Venlo, Grubbenvorst-Lottum, Heel and Kessel-Lith, several of
which also appear on the Tabula Peutingeriana.
3.3.1
Sites
Far
fewer sites are known from the Maas relative to the Rhine, but
generally speaking the evidence they have yielded seems to have been
better preserved. The amount of excavations carried out on some has
also helped to establish better chronologies and material culture
studies.
There
are still some sites that are a little doubtful, however. These are
the sites for which the interpretation as a military site was
predominantly based on written evidence imposed upon scant
archaeological evidence, such as Blerick, Grubbenvorst and Heel.
Blerick
has yielded some Late Roman finds in the form of a relatively high
amount of stray coins from the first half of the 4th century, but no
other evidence seems to exist. Its interpretation as a road fort is
rooted in its location but in the absence of more concrete
archaeological evidence this seems circumstantial. No Late Roman
remains seem to have been found at all in Grubbenvorst-Lottum. From
Heel, we only have a large Middle Roman cemetery with several stray
finds of later coins and pottery from the top soil.
Even
though Ammianus Marcellinus is very specific in his description of
the location of the supposed repaired forts, it seems that the
archaeological evidence for such a string of connected forts along
the Maas area is lacking, and his comments should not be taken too
literally.
For
all the other sites, plenty of archaeological evidence is available,
although in varying degrees. Kessel-Lith is the only site on the
Maas based on dredge finds, although remains of walls and building
materials were recovered more or less in situ.
Its
foundation date remains obscure, but the coin series and ceramics
suggest somewhere around the middle of the 4th century and
continuous activity into the early 5th century. It is generally
assumed in the literature that the building remains found at Kessel
represent a small fort or castellum with perhaps a bridge nearby,
but the site’s exact function is unclear.
The
three remaining sites, Cuijk, Maastricht and Wijchen-Tienakker, have
all been excavated to some extent. The burgus or watchtower of
Wijchen was built on the grounds of a villa complex and the ceramics
from its surrounding ditch suggest a foundation date somewhere in
the late 3rd or early 4th century.
An
unusually large amount of coin planchets from around AD 400 make it
difficult to establish the end of Roman occupation here, but given
the other material culture the end date would be at the end of the
4th century at the earliest. Wijchen is one of the rare sites in
this thesis which was recently excavated and published in full. The
castellum at Cuijk was partially excavated in the 1960’s, and
was never published, and Maastricht has seen numerous excavations
pretty much throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries, many of
which were also never published.
At
Cuijk, the complex stratigraphy prevents a concrete interpretation
of the site’s chronology. Based on the finds, it has been
suggested that the castellum may already have been founded in the
late 3rd century.
Traditionally,
the two building phases that have so far been recognised have been
attributed to Constantine I and Valentinian I.
The
bridge at Cuijk was seemingly built and rebuilt in three successive
phases: AD 347/349, AD 368/9 and AD 388-398.
The
dock which was part of the castellum complex has been dated to
around AD 320, with subsequent continuous repairs from AD 342 to at
least AD 373.
As
none of the excavations at Maastricht were comprehensively
published, it is difficult to establish a concise chronology for the
whole site. Most authors seem to agree that the castellum was
founded around AD 325, on a previously empty terrain.
Its
end date is a little harder to place, as the location was
continuously inhabited from the 4th to the 6th century.
The
inner buildings of the castellum are still poorly understood,
although it does include a stone horreum.
For
the bridge at Maastricht, three construction periods have been
recognised: AD 334-357, AD 368-369 and AD 387-398.
3.3.2
Discussion
All
in all, it seems there are four confirmed military sites in the Maas
area: Kessel-Lith, Cuijk and Wijchen on its east-west axis and
Maastricht way down south. Purely looking at location and the spread
of these sites, no single line of defence along the Maas can be
identified. Rather, it seems that its sites interlock with those
along the Rhine. Wijchen and Cuijk are located within the influence
sphere of Nijmegen, and Kessel-Lith forms a chain with Waal sites
such as Rossum and Ewijk.
The
question of course is whether these sites are all contemporary, and
some overlap could be argued for. A foundation date as early as the
late 3rd century has been suggested for both Wijchen and Cuijk
(Kessel seems to begin much later, around the middle of the 4th
century), so some correlation between the sites of the Rhine and
Maas could be suggested.
The
first research question of this thesis was whether traditional end
dates for Middle Roman sites could be extended into the later 3rd
and 4th century. This does not apply to the Maas, as all sites are
newly built in this period. As said before, construction could have
begun on sites such as Cuijk or Wijchen as early as the late 3rd
century, but Maastricht and especially Kessel-Lith appear to have
been founded in the first half of the 4th century.
Compared
to the evidence from the Rhine area, the quality of archaeological
evidence is rather good on the Maas. The partially eroded site of
Cuijk can still be studied relatively well, and even Kessel-Lith has
offered some context. Besides this geological aspect, the Maas
fortifications have practically all been excavated extensively,
giving us good ground plans of fortifications and defences (although
not so much of the inner buildings). The only downside is that apart
from Wijchen, none of these have been published in full detail, but
this is a common problem elsewhere too. Stratigraphy is still often
problematic (Maastricht, Cuijk) and extensive material culture
studies are seriously lacking.
The
small selection of material culture discussed in the appendix is
already informative. From every established site in the Maas area,
we have significant numbers of crossbow brooches, whereas the more
doubtful sites have yielded none. Naturally, a certain amount of
bias is in play here, but it also suggests that a clear relationship
exists in this sub-area between fortified sites and the presence of
crossbow brooches.
The
coin graph of all the Maas sites combined (see below fig 7.), shows
that the large influx of coins to this area starts much later than
in the Rhine delta, and results in much lower numbers per site. It
is interesting that the large peak around AD 270 observed from the
Rhine area is largely absent here (in absolute numbers at least),
and relatively few coins struck by Gallic Emperors have been
found
(except of course for the coin hoard in Maastricht). The relative
lower numbers of circulating coins may reflect the general
population decline in the MDS-area. Heeren has shown that the area
became almost entirely depopulated in the later 3rd century, and
that there is very little evidence to suggest inhabitation in the
early or mid-4th century.
New
settlements only began to appear in the area around the late 4th or
early 5th century, which would correspond well with the sharp
increase in coins we see at Maastricht and to a lesser extent
Wijchen.
The
graph is slightly problematic, however, as it contains very few
sites, with widely varying numbers of coins. Maastricht dominates
the spectrum, and its extreme peak around AD 400 is not
representative for other sites. Likewise, the late 4th century peak
at Wijchen is a deviation. The general pattern seems that most sites
show a slight peak in coins struck between AD 360-370, and show a
steady influx of coins into the 390’s. I have already stated
above that the often-observed spike in coin issues under the House
of Constantine should perhaps be interpreted rather as a general
development rather than an indication for a Constantinian
construction phase. The AD 360-370 peak has similarly been
interpreted for various sites as a sign of a Valentinian building
programme. As I have already argued in appendix 3, this could very
well reflect a general increase in coin emissions, rather than
signal heightened activity at individual sites.
The
problem of stratigraphy and the chronology of individual sites has
been highlighted already, and it appears that this is equally the
case for both excavated and non-excavated sites. There is definite
proof in Cuijk for at least two building phases, although it cannot
be stated how much of the castellum was overhauled for the second
phase. The common assumption that its first phase was constructed of
wood can also not be proven, as no actual remains of wooden
buildings could be found in the excavation’s documentation.
For Maastricht, two successive phases have also been proposed, based
on peaks under certain emperors (Constantine I and Valentinian I) in
the coin evidence. As long as no comprehensive study of the
excavated defences and stratigraphy have been published, I am
sceptical as to the validity of this argument. Coins of the House of
Constantine are numerous across the Dutch river area, and may thus
reflect a general increase in official emissions in the study area
rather than an increased influx in one particular site. For
Kessel-Lith, the evidence is insufficient to establish any detailed
chronology. The relatively short and steady influx of coins during
the second half of the 4th century suggests that there was only one
major construction phase. The ground plan of Wijchen similarly shows
a single construction phase.
None
of the Maas sites are built on previous military terrains, but they
do show a relation with already established activity: the burgus of
Wijchen was built on a villa complex, Cuijk and Maastricht on or
near thriving central settlements and Kessel-Lith was constructed of
spolia from a nearby Gallo-Roman temple.
When
we look at the coin series of the four identified sites in the Maas
area (fig. 7), it is immediately clear that they start much later:
coins pre-AD 260 are almost completely absent, and the AD 260/270
peak is fairly small. Evidence for the 4th century is consistent,
however, and the drop in coin emissions from AD 378 onwards seems
less pronounced. The extreme peaks in the late 4th -early 5th
century at Wijchen and Maastricht are probably related to an
increase in coins circulating in the Maas area generally.
At
Wijchen, a large hoard of blank planchettes was found that was dated
to the late 4th early 5th century. As already said above, the coin
series at Maastricht seems to show continued occupation in the 5th
century.
The
Maas fortifications seem to pick up around the beginning of the 4th
century, so slightly later than their Rhine and Waal counterparts.
It is interesting to speculate as to the underlying cause for this.
Did the Rhine gradually go out of use, due to climatological
changes? We have far fewer sites on the Maas, which may suggest that
it was not meant as a complete replacement, but rather as an
extension.
Of
course, it could be that Maas sites have not been preserved as well,
so we should be careful in this. It is noteworthy, however, that two
bridges and a port were found in this area, suggesting that the Maas
was very important in this period for transport purposes. It should
also be noted that two previous studies into the distribution of
Late Roman belt buckles and gold coin hoards both showed an
increased archaeological activity in the Maas delta as opposed to
the Rhine delta, especially in the 5th century.
As
such, these studies fall outside of this thesis’s parameters,
but it is interesting to see that that development, in which the
Maas seemingly becomes more important to the Roman authorities, can
perhaps already be traced back to the 4th century.
All
four sites have yielded crossbow brooches, be it in varying numbers.
Cuijk, Wijchen and Maastricht have all yielded four (those from
Kessel-Lith could not be quantified). The fibulae from Cuijk date
from the late 3rd to the second half of the 4th century, those from
Wijchen to the entire 4th century, while those from Maastricht date
much later, from the second half of the 4th to the second half of
the 5th century.
See
(67)
The Late Roman limes revisited. The changing function of the Roman
army in the Dutch river/coastal area (AD 260-406/7)
Beesel
21 april 1922
TE HUUR. "Klerkenhof” te Beesel, groot 27,80 H.A.;
te
aanvaarden Paschen 1923. Inlichtingen te vragen bij P. HENDRIKS,
Heijthuijsen, (Dorp 9,) op iederen Maandag. 1045
22 april 1922
Weer een Limburgsche Missie-bisschop.
Noord-Limburg
mag wel trotsch zijn op de Bisschoppen, die het aan Gods Kerk
schenkt. Behalve Mgr. Schrijnen, den Herder van het eigen Diocees,
behalve Mgr. Abels van Weert (Mongolië) en Mgr. Theelen van
Beesel (Bulgarije,), zijn in de laatste twee jaar niet minder dan
vier zonen van Noord-Limburg tot de Bisschoppelijke waardigheid
verheven: Mgr. Frederix van Afferden (China), Mgr. Schraven van
Lottum (China), Mgr. Aerts van Swolgen (Ned. Nieuw Guinea) en nu
Mgr. Verstraelen van Sevenum (Kleine Soenda-eilanden).
In
het pasopgerichte Ap. Vicariaat van Flores en Timor zal Mgr.
Verstraelen de eerste bisschop zijn. Hij wordt dus de opvolger van
den zoo tragisch overleden Mgr. Noyen, die, wel niet formeel maar
toch officieus als Bisschop aangewezen, stierf op denzelfden dag,
welke voor de Bisschopswijding was uitgekozen.
Na
zijn studies in het Missiehuis te Steyl voleindigd te hebben, werd
Mgr. Verstraelen in St. Gabriel bij Weenen priester gewijd en in
hetzelfde jaar 1907 als Missionaris naar Togo op de westkust van
Afrika gezonden.
Met
buitengewoon succes hebben de Steyler Paters in die voormalige
Duitsche kolonie gewerkt, in de hoofdstad bouwden de negers naar het
model der Steyler kerk een prachtige H. Hart-kerk, eender mooiste
van Afrika. Jammer dat de oorlog die rustige ontwikkeling kwam
verstoren; Togo werd door de Engelsche troepen bezet en de Duitsche
priesters moesten de wijk nemen. Hun bisschop, Mgr. Wolf, leeft nu
al acht jaar in ballingschap te Steyl.
Ondertusschen
was de E. P. Verstraelen overgeplaatst naar Ned. Oost-Indië,
waar de Holl. provincie der Steyler Congregatie de Kleine
Soenda-eilanden ter Evangelizeering had overgenomen. Laatstelijk
bekleedde hij daar de functie van deken op het eiland Timor, terwijl
de Superior generaal er op visitatie-reis, was, kwam het bericht van
zijn benoeming tot Vic. Ap.
Moge
het den nieuwen Bisschop mede door onze gebeden gegeven zijn, lang
te arbeiden op den akker, die door het lijden en den dood van Mgr.
Noyen en zijn heldhaftige metgezellen is vruchtbaar gemaakt.
Bisschoppelijk
Missie-Comité.
3 mei 1922 -
Naar wij vernemen zal de fanfare van Beesel haar medewerking
verleenen,
aan het door onze Harmonie georganiseerd concert, ten bate van de
noodlijdenden in Rusland.
4
mei 1922 DE NOOD IN RUSLAND. Eene te Beesel door den R. K.
Vrouwenbond gehouden liefdadigheidsuitvoering voor hongerend Rusland
heeft f250 opgebracht.
BEESEL.
— Zondag 30 April gaf de R. K. Vrouwenbond met welwillende
medewerking der Fanfare alhier een liefdadigheidsuitvoering ten bate
der noodlijdende bevolking in Rusland. De zaai was flink bezet. De
totale opbrengst was ruim f250. Voorwaar een flinke som voor Beesel.
Voordracht en muziek die het programma completeerden werden op
schitterende wijze uitgevoerd. Vooral het nummer "Boertig",
Congoleesch lied, opgevoerd door 'n 10-tal jonge dames, lokte een
daverend applaus uit. Door de presidente, mej. 's Landsweers werd
een kort overzicht gegeven over den heerschenden hongersnood in
Rusland. Er werd een schrijven voorgelezen, van de moeders der arme
streek, hetwelk bevatte, eene dringende bede tot de bevolking en
vooral tot de moeders van andere lauden om opneming en ondersteuning
hunner arme kleinen. Daarna dankte de presidente Bestuur, Directeur
en leden der Fanfare, de dames voor hunne medewerking en steun.
Een
hartelijk woord van dank komt zeer zeker toe aan de presidente, de
secretaresse en de Besturen der beide vereenigingen, voor de moeite
die ze zich hebben getroost om dit schoone werk van naastenliefde
tot stand te brengen en zoo goed te doen.
24 mei 1922
[...] Debat over rapporten en conclusies.
Dhr.
Thijssen (Beesel) heeft bezwaar er tegen, dat in eene conclusie
staat, dat de candidaat in wiens voordeel onregelmatigheden gepleegd
zijn, van de lijst moet verdwijnen. Dhr. Willems (Nuth) komt er
tegen op, dat dhr. Cremers te Roermond gezegd heeft, dat Spr. eene
eigenaardige rol gespeeld heeft en deelt mede, dat dhr. Cremers
tegen het ophangen van het politiek advies in het stemlokaal te;
Nuth geprotesteerd heeft. [...]
20 januari
1923 Colleges van Zetters.
Bij
besluit van dhr. Commissaris der Koningin
In
Limburg zijn voor den tijd van vier jaren ?r benoemd tot leden van
de Colleges van Zetters voor Rijksdirecte belastingen in:
[...]
Beesel: G. J. Theelen en F. H. H. Helden; [...]
9 februari
1923 BEESEL-REUVER.
Veeverzekering.
— Door de Onderlinge Veeverzekering van de afd. Beesel van den
Limb. Land- en Tuinbouwbond werd op j.l. Vrijdag haar jaarlijksche
algemeene vergadering gehouden. Door den voorzitter, de heer P. J.
Timmermans, werd gewezen op den slechten tijd, die vooral de
landbouwers en veehouders beleven en de hoop uitgesproken dat het
jaar 1923 toch eindelijk eens een verbetering in den toestand mag
brengen. Uit het door den secr.-penningmeester uitgebrachte
jaarverslag bleek, dat de vereeniging in het afgeloopen jaar nog al
veel uitkeeringen heeft moeten doen.
Schutterij
en Fanfare. — Door de schutterij St. Georgius & St.
Sebastianus te Beesel, werd Zondag een vergadering gehouden,
teneinde zich te scheiden van het fanfaregezelschap, welke
vereenigingen tot dusverre gecombineerd waren. Deze scheiding werd
door eenige leden, die van meening waren dat de fanfare op kosten
der schutterij leefde, gevraagd. Uit de verschillende discussies,
die gevoerd werden, bleek dat de meeste leden hiertegen waren,
niettegenstaande sommige leden ook al trachtten aan te toonen, dat
de beide vereenigingen goed op eigen beenen konden staan. Het
bestuur, dat gedacht had een schikking in der minne te treffen zag
hiertoe geen kans en kondigde een nieuwe vergadering aan over 14
dagen, waarin men hoopte tot een bevredigende oplossing te komen.
10 februari
1923 RIJKSVOORJAARSKEURING VAN HENGSTEN.
Bij
de vanwege de Provinciale Regelingscommissie voor de Paardenfokkerij
in Limburg gehouden voorjaarskeuringen van hengsten, werden
goedgekeurd:
te
Maastricht: Idégène van Cartils, eigenaar M. Schijns,
Wittem; deze werd opgenomen in stamboek B; Pol, eigenaar Gebrs.
Hollands, Gulpen. Max, eig. J. Diederen, Sittard, opgenomen in
stamboek B; Albert de Velden, eig. J. Diederen, Sittard; Thomas,
eig. J. Douwen Schinnen; Indien d'Emptinne, eig. Wed. J. Vroemen,
Sittard en J. Vaessen, Voerendaal; Sergent de Herstal, eig. Wed. W.
Nols, Eygelshoven; Garson de Wielerhof, eig. L. Heuts, Heerlen;
Radical, eig. A. Bremers, Schinnen; Certain d'Enghien, eig. H.
Castermans en J. Niesten, Maastricht; Finand du gros Buisson, eig.
Gebrs. Rutten, Voerendaal, opgenomen in stamboek B; Mouton, eig. F.
Lebouille, Hoensbroek. Afgekeurd door de Stamboekcommissie en
goedgekeurd door de Rijkscommissie werden: Bill van Overstenhof,
eig. J. Quaedvlieg, Schaesberg; Moustic de Schalven, eig. Gebrs.
Theelen, Oud-Valkenburg;
te
Roermond: Monteur, eig. J. van Melick, Neer; Milord, eig. Josef
Reinders, Beesel; Duc van Melenborg, eig. M. Boonen, Buggenum; César
van Melenborg, eig. dezelfde; Domixianus, eig. P. Geelen,
Broekhuijsen; Roméo, eig. P. Nabben, Sevenum; Chris, eig. J.
Obers, Sevenum; Espoir II de Griebben, eig. Mevr. P. Berger, Velp en
H. Christman, Arnhem. Uitgesteld door de Stamboekcommissie werd
Indigine de Kwei, eig. dezelfden.
17 februari
1923 BEESEL-REUVER.
De
classificatie. — Burgemeester en Wethouders dezer gemeente
verzochten den Minister van Financiën het dorp Reuver in een
hoogere klasse als bedoeld bij art. 5 der wet op de Personeele
belasting te rangschikken, op grond, dat, hoofdzakelijk ten gevolge
van de toename der kleiwarenindustrie, de huren te Reuver in de
laatste jaren aanzienlijk zijn gestegen en ook overigens de
levensstandaard in de meeste opzichten zoo hoog of hooger is dan in
andere door B. en W. in hun schrijven genoemde gemeenten, die in een
veel hoogere klasse zijn gerangschikt. B. en W. waren van meening,
dat het uit een oogpunt van billijkheid, vooral ten opzichte der
arbeidersklasse, noodzakelijk was dat aan hun verzoek gunstig gevolg
werd gegeven. Genoemde Minister heeft thans hierop medegedeeld dat
er geen termen zijn gevonden om incidenteel in de classificatie
eener gemeente wijziging te brengen doch dat bij eene eventueele
algemeene herziening het verzoek in nadere overweging zal worden
genomen.
24 februari
1923 BROEDERSCHAP-SCHUTTERIJ "ST. GEORGIUS" EN
"SEBASTIANUS" TE BEESEL.
Voor
buitenstaanders mag het volgende van ondergeschikt, zelfs van weinig
belang zijn, maar voor de plaats zelf en zeker voor hen, die er het
nauwst bij betrokken zijn, van des te meer en grooter belang.
Zoover
men weet, dateert de Broederschap-Schutterij "St. Georgius"
en "Sebastianus" alhier, uit de dertiende eeuw.
Aan
het Koningszilver bevinden zich dan ook heden nog verschillende
sierlijke massief zilveren platen uit de zestiende eeuw. Veel oudere
van datum, zijn de laatste zeventig jaar door onachtzaamheid
verdwenen, zoek geraakt, of verkwanzeld, zooals men beweert.
Het
van ouds hier in de omstreken bekend "Drakenfeest" het
z.g. "Draaksteken" is een historisch feit, dat van oudsher
aan deze broederschap eigen, en sedert heugelijke jaren de hooge
roem en waardevolle beteekenis voor deze schutterij is geweest, die
van onze voorvaderen op kinderen en kindskinderen, overgeërfd
en haar historische waarde op zeer waardige wijze heet weten te
bewaren.
Het
ligt ongetwijfeld nog in ieders geheugen, dat ten jare 1919, toen te
Arnhem het grootsch Vaderlands Historisch Volksfeest op touw was
gezet en zoo prachtig geslaagd mag heeten, er toen alom in deze
gewesten, een heele roep is opgegaan, dat de Beeselsche Draakstekers
met den Draak, met St. Joris en zijn gevolg bestaande uit een
zestigtal leden uit onze broederschap, juichend en jubelend optogen
naar Arnhem, om met hun historisch Draakstekers-vertoon, aan dat
grootsche feest aldaar nog meer luister en belangstelling bij te
zetten en aldaar vereeuwigd is geworden in het prachtig
geïllustreerde boek, eenigen tijd daarna te Arnhem uitgegeven,
welks boek een kostbaarheid is, voor wie zulk een exemplaar bezit.
Maar
nog veel grooter was het gejuich en gejubel, wanneer de Draakstekers
aldaar na drie dagen feest te hebben gevierd, met een prachtige
medaille als 1e prijs voor hoogste historische beteekenis en waarde
bekroond, op Vrijdag 5 September 1919 huiswaarts keerden waarbij
hier nog aan mag worden toegevoegd een som van f800 voor vrije reis,
vracht- en verblijfkosten te Arnhem, [...]
2
maart 1923 BEESEL—REUVER.
Verkiezing
Gemeenteraad. — Door Burgemeester en Wethouders is bepaald
dat de verkiezing voor de leden van den Raad dezer gemeente zal
plaats hebben op 22 Mei e.k. Gemeenteraadsvergadering van 27
Febr. 1923. — De voorzitter sprak bij deze eerste
vergadering in 1923 zijn beste wenschen uit voor de leden en hoopte
dat het hun gegeven mag zijn in dit jaar veel goeds tot stand te
brengen, tot welzijn der gemeente. Vervolgens werden B. en W.
gemachtigd de landerijen, waarvan de pacht in 1924 eindigt, opnieuw
voor den tijd van 6 jaar te verpachten, mits tegen geen lageren
prijs dan f20 per H.A.
De
stembureaux en het hoofdstembureau voor de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen
werden als volgt samengesteld: Stembureau I, de Burgemeester,
Voorzitter, L. van der Velden en J. Steeghs, leden; G. Goossens, F.
Rutten en H. Vossen, plaatsvervangende leden. Stembureau 2, J.
Laumans, voorzitter, Jos. Korsten en P. Thijssen leden, H. Bors, H.
Cremers en Jos. Thijsen pl.v. leden. Stembureau 3. F. Heldens Wz.
voorzitter. F. Heldens Hz. en J. Claessen, leden; H Rutten, H.
Timmermans en F. Meuter pl. v. leden. Hoofdstembureau de
Burgemeester, voorzitter, J. Laumans, L. van der Velden, P.
Thijssen, F. Heidens Wz. leden; J. Korsten J. Steeghs en F. Heldens
Hz. pl. v. leden Voortaan zal aan de stembureaux van gemeentewege
geen wijn meer worden verstrekt.
Tot
leden in 't Bestuur der Teekenschool werden benoemd de heeren L. van
der Velden en C. Lennaerts te Reuver.
Het
voorschot op de gemeentelijke vergoeding ex art. 101 der L. O. wet
voor de bijz. lagere meisjesschool te Reuver (228 leerlingen) wordt
vastgesteld op f1461.02. De gemiddelde kosten per leerling der
openbare lagere scholen bedragen volgens de laatst vastgestelde
gemeenterekening f8.01.
Het
vervolgonderwijs te Beesel zal ondanks de intrekking der
Rijksvergoeding niet worden opgeheven indien de onderwijzers genegen
zijn het onderwijs te geven tegen een verminderde vergoeding en de
ouders een gedeelte der kosten willen dragen. Burgemeester en
Wethouders worden gemachtigd met de Eerw. Zusters Dominicanessen te
Reuver te onderhandelen inzake de overdracht der erfstelling Meuter.
De gemeente wil alle tot de erfstelling behoorende goederen met
uitzondering van 't langs den tuin van den heer Van der Velden
gelegen perceel bouwland hetwelk de gemeente zal behouden als
vergoeding voor de door haar in 1910 betaalde successierechten en de
verdere to dezer zake gemaakte onkosten, aan de Eerw. Zusters
overdragen onder den last en de verplichting om daarop binnen een
jaar na het overlijden van de laatste vruchtgebruikster een
inrichting voor ouden van dagen en weeskinderen te stichten en in
gebruik te nemen en ten eeuwigen dage te exploiteeren. De inrichting
zal in de eerste plaats bestemd zijn voor personen uit deze
gemeente. Armlastigen moeten tegen den kostenden prijs worden
verpleegd, andere personen tegen een tarief als in soortgelijke
inrichtingen in overeenkomstige gemeenten als Beesel.
Een
voorstel van den heer Steeghs om de raadszaal te Beesel beschikbaar
te stellen tot het houden van bestuursvergaderingen voor de
plaatselijke vereenigingen kwam niet in behandeling omreden het
slechts door den heer Heldens Hz., werd ondersteund. Tegen
beschikbaarstelling van de oude secretarie had de voorzitter bezwaar
daar deze in gebruik is bij de burgerwacht, die daarop ook de
geweren heeft geplaatst.
B.
en W. werden verzocht een oproeping te doen voor personen uit Beesel
en Reuver die genegen en geschikt zijn om de reparatiën aan het
electrisch net te verrichten. De bedoeling is voor elk dorp een
aldaar wonende persoon aan te stellen.
Een
verzoek van den Ned. R. K. Tabaksbewerkersbond tot het treffen eener
steunregeling voor werklooze leden werd, aangezien er alhier
momenteel geen werkloozen in dat bedrijf zijn, aangehouden tot een
volgende vergadering.
Op
een door de Markiezin de Villers te Waterloo, Beesel ingediend
bezwaarschrift tegen de haar door B. en W. gestelde voorwaarden i.z.
de aansluiting aan het electrisch net werd afwijzend beschikt en
besloten tot handhaving der door B. en W. gestelde voorwaarden die
hoofdzakelijk hierop neerkomen, dat alle kosten van uitbreiding en
onderhoud door reclamante gedragen moeten worden.
Den
concessionarissen van de tramlijn door Offenbeek werd vergunning
verleend voortaan ook van motor-tractie gebruik te maken. [...]
6 maart 1923
Kasteel Waterloo
Het
nieuwe kasteel Waterloo gelegen aan den Rijksweg Maastricht—
Nijmegen en toebehoorende aan de Hooggeboren Vrouwe Douairiere
Markiezin de Villers Grignoncourt—Van Nispen tot Sevenaer
nadert zijn voltooiing. Het architectonisch fraai gebouw is een
sieraad voor de streek.
10 maart 1923
Verboden Invoer. — BEESEL-REUVER.
Wegens
verboden invoer een een heele partij eau de Cologne van hot bekende
merk 4711, werd door de militaire politie alhier aangehouden en
opgebracht een zekere A. van Elberfeld (D.).
12 mei 1923
Aangehouden. — BEESEL-REUVER. Door de militaire politie
alhier
werden aangehouden, wegens het niet hebben van voldoende papieren,
twee Duitschers uit Vorst (Pruisen) die tevens in het bezit waren
van verscheidene millioenen marken, wat de politie verdacht voorkwam
en aanleiding gaf om de Duitschers eenige dagen in verzekerde
bewaring te stellen, totdat van gene zijde der grenzen bericht kwam,
dat ze rechtmatig in het bezit der marken waren gekomen.
Eenige
dagen tevoren werden twee Duitschers uit Lobberich aangehouden
wegens het frauduleus invoeren van eenige zuigers voor
motorrijwielen. Ze waren niet in het bezit van geldige papieren en
werden opgebracht. Procesverbaal, werd tegen hen opgemaakt.
Verduistering
rijwiel. — BEESEL-REUVER. Het rijwiel waarvan dezer dagen
bericht werd dat het ten nadeele van zekere D. alhier verduisterd
was, is volgens ingesteld onderzoek in bewaring gegeven in een
rijwielbergplaats te Roermond, alwaar D. het zal kunnen
terugbekomen.
Visscherij.
— BEESEL-REUVER. Door de gemeente en rijkspolitie werden de
laatste dagen eenige personen bekeurd wegens het vangen van visschen
in gesloten tijd. Er wordt tevens streng gelet op het schade
aanrichten aan het gras. Men zij dus gewaarschuwd.
23 mei 1923
Koeien invoer BEESEL
De
landbouwers Th. J. de V. uit Bracht (D.) en G.P. de V. van hier
waren in den nacht van 18 November van het vorige jaar onder deze
gemeente bekeurd wegens den invoer van 4 koeien en deswege door den
Kantonrechter veroordeeld ieder tot 100 gulden boete of 50 dagen
hechtenis en wat nog erger was met verbeurdverklaring der 4 in
beslaggenomen koeien. Beiden waren in hooger beroep gegaan en thans
stonden zij voor de Rechtbank terecht. Beiden ontkenden den invoer
van koeien, zij vertelden de dieren aan de grens te hebben afgehaald
en de dieren pas in ontvangst te hebben genomen toen zij ongeveer 10
Meter op Nederlandsch grondgebied waren, tot staving van die
bewering hadden zij een drietal getuigen a decharge, waarvan twee
verschenen gedagvaard. Als eerste getuigen werden gehoord de twee
kommiezen, die in tegenstelling met de bewering de beide beklaagden
pertinent verklaarden gezien te hebben, dat zij en niet de
Duitschers het vee over de grens brachten. Tusschen het tijdstip dat
het vee over de grens kwam en het tijdstip dat zij beiden verdachten
aanhielden was het vee niet van geleiders veranderd. Als twee
laatste getuigen werden gehoord twee Duitschers de verkoopers der
koeien, die verklaarden dat zij en niet de koopers V. de dieren over
de grens hadden geleid. Zij hadden met de koopers afgesproken dat
zij 't vee op stal zouden leveren, doch door de bekeuring der
ambtenaren was zulks verhinderd.
Het
O.M. meende zich te moeten houden aan de verklaring der beide
ambtenaren en eischte bevestiging van het vonnis in eerste instantie
gewezen. Beklaagdes verdediger Mr. Tripels te Roermond, achtte geen
enkel motief aanwezig om de twee getuigen a décharge niet te
gelooven, daar het in den bewusten nacht zeer duister was en de
verbaliseerende ambtenaren zich ook konden vergissen. Pleiter was
dan ook van oordeel dat hier vrijspraak moest volgen. Over 8 dagen
zal de Rechtbank haar vonnis vellen.
1 juni 1923
ONDERGRAVEN.
De
Duitscher, die door de politie te Beesel als verdacht van diefstal
in bed arrestantenlokaal was opgesloten is uit de cel ontvlucht door
den vloer op te breken en zich onder de deur door den grond een
uitweg te banen. 's Morgens toen zij hem het ontbijt wilde brengen
kwam de politie tot deze ontdekking en uit een daarna ingesteld
onderzoek bleek dat hij al weder vrij in Duitschland rondloopt.
4 augustus
1923 BEESEL. Jubileumfeesten.
— Ook
hier zullen evenals elders ter gelegenheid van het 25-jarig
Regeeringsjubileum van H.M. de Koningin feestelijkheden gehouden
worden. In een tot dat doel op jl. Zondag gehouden vergadering van
alle besturen der pl. vereenigingen werd een regelings-commissie
benoemd, die voor een en ander moet zorg dragen. Als datum der te
houden feestelijkheden werd Kermis-Woensdag 29 Augustus a.s.
bepaald.
Mazelen.
— Deze zoo ernstig heerschende kinderziekte eischte in den
loop dezer week niet minder dan 4 slachtoffers. Het zijn allen
kinderen van nog geen twee jaar.
2 januari 1924
Priesterjubilea in 1924.
SECULIEREN
BISDOM ROERMOND.
50
jaar priester op 21 Maart. — J. P. H. Franssen, rustend
pastoor van Rimburg, woont te Kerkrade; E. U. Haenen kanunnik van
het kathedraal kapittel, pastoor en deken te Weert; A. F. H.
Reighard, oud-directeur der Biss. Kweekschool te Echt, woont te
Roermond; H. A. van de Laar, pastoor te Stevensweert.
40
jaar priester op 23 Maart. — dr. G. A. H. Baunuin, kanunnik,
professor aan het Groot Seminarie te Roermond; P. J. H. Beelen,
pastoor te Geysteren; F. A. J. H. Bloemen, pastoor te Maasbree; J.
W. Hendrix, pastoor te Beesel; J. J. H. Janssen, oud-kapelaan woont
te Heerlen; A. F. Litjens, pastoor te Neer; H. R. Munnecom, pastoor
te Kessel (L.); J. L. Röselaers, pastoor te Hoensbroek; P. R.
H. van Boven, pastoor te Houthem—St. Gerlach; M. M. J.
Verbeek, pastoor te Broeksittard. [...]
6 februari
1924 — BEESEL. Verleden Zondag hield de onderlinge
Veeverzekering
van
de plaatselijke afdeeling van den Limb. Land- en Tuinbouwbond alhier
haar jaarvergadering. Door den secretaris-penningmeester werd het
jaarverslag met rekening en verantwoording uitgebracht. Vooral in
het afgeloopen jaar hadden veel noodslachtingen plaats, waarvoor
moest worden bijgedragen. Toen in 1922 18 noodslachtingen
voorkwamen, meende men, dat dit cijfer niet gauw meer bereikt zou
worden. In het afgeloopen jaar kwamen echter niet minder dan 22
noodslachtingen voor, waarvoor ruim f5000.— werd uitgekeerd.
Het groote nut der onderlinge verzekering is daarbij wel afdoende
gebleken. Door den voorzitter, dhr. P. J. Timmermans, werd een
terugblik op het afgeloopen jaar geworpen en de leden aangespoord
trouw en goed lid der vereeniging te blijven.
Ingestort.
— BEESEL. In den afgeloopen nacht stortte alhier tengevolge
van den storm de schuur van F. Peeters in. Ongelukken kwamen
gelukkig niet voor.
28 februari
1924 BEESEL. Politie. — Bij Besluit van den Minister
van Justitie
zijn
ingetrokken de aanstellingen van Onbezoldigd Rijksveldwachter
destijds verleend aan M. Weyers en G. Niemans alhier.
19 maart 1924
BEESEL. Zaterdag 29 Maart hoopt de Z.Eerw. Heer J. W.
Hendriks,
pastoor
te Beesel zijn 40-jarig priesterfeest te vieren. De parochianen
zullen dezen dag zeker niet ongemerkt voorbij laten gaan.
22 maart 1924
— BEESEL. Maandag hield de R. K. Vrouwenbond alhier
ter
gelegenheid van den feestdag van haar patrones de H. Gertrudis haar
jaarlijksche algemeene vergadering in de zaal van mej. wed.
Reijnders. De vergadering was goed bezocht. Door eenige meisjes
werden een paar aardige tooneelstukken uitgevoerd, die zeer in den
smaak der aanwezigen vielen. De zeereerw. heer pastoor wees de
vrouwen op hunne verplichtingen ten opzichte van kerk, huisgezin en
maatschappij.
28 maart 1924
Diefstal. — BEESEL — De 42-jarige mandenmaker H.
S. van hier,
thans
gedetineerd, werd aangeklaagd van diefstal van twee kippen uit het
hok van den landbouwer J. Niessen, alhier in den nacht, van 23 op 24
September van het vorige jaar gepleegd. Al spoedig was de verdenking
op dezen bekl. gevallen, die met nietsdoen aan den kost trachtte te
komen. En, deze verdenking was niet ongegrond, want niet alleen
bleek bij onderzoek dat de ter plaatse gevonden voetsporen volkomen
overeenkwamen met de klompen van beklaagde; maar in zijn kippenhok
liepen onder de witten ook een paar bonte kippen, volkomen gelijk
aan de ontvreemde. Beklaagde ontkende echter halsstarrig; de kippen
had hij van een onbekenden Duitscher (!) gekocht vertelde hij
terwijl hij in den nacht van den diefstal steeds te bed was geweest.
De
Officier van Justitie eischte zes maanden gevangenisstraf met aftrek
der prevenieve hechtenis. Mr. P. Tripols te Roermond pleitte
vrijspraak.
10 april 1924
Kiesvereeniging — BEESEL — Op een gehouden
vergadering
dezer
vereeniging in de zaal van Mej. Wed. Reijnders, hield het Tweede
Kamerlid Hermans uit Maastricht een interessante spreekbeurt. Hij
schetste in duidelijke bewoordingen hetgeen den laatsten tijd in het
parlement betreffende bezuiniging, Vlootwet, kolonien en Zomertijd
is behandeld en zette dienaangaande zijn standpunt uiteen. Zijn rede
werd aandachtig gevolgd en mocht hij dan ook na afloop een dankbaar
aplaus oogsten. Verder werden eenige huishoudelijke zaken behandeld.
Vee Fokkerij — BEESEL. — Door de
Stierhouderij alhier werd verleden Zondag
een
vergadering van veehouders belegd teneinde te geraken tot oprichting
eener controle-vereeniging. De totstandkoming hiervan is in zooverre
verzekerd dat zich reeds een voldoend aantal leden opgaven die in
een binnenkort te houden vergadering, waarin o.m. een bestuur zal
worden gekozen en ook de Rijksveeteeltconsulent Timmermans uit
Roermond aanwezig zal zijn een en ander nader zullen regelen.
6 juni 1924
Fanfare. — BEESEL. — Toen Zondag tegen den avond
bekend werd
dat
onze fanfare op het concours voor Harmoniën en Fanfares te
Linne, in de tweede afdeeling een 1en prijs had behaald was oud en
jong in een ommezien op de been en werden de handen aan het werk
geslagen om de bekroonde fanfare een feestelijke ontvangst te
bereiden. Daverende salutschoten weerklonken en van de huizen
wapperde de nationale driekleur. De straten werden met groen en
bloemen gesierd, Aan de school werd de fanfare door een eerewacht te
paard, de schutterij en een groep bruidjes verwelkomd. In optocht
werd naar het Marktplein getrokken. De directeur was omringd door
een schaar van bruidjes, die hem zoodra hij onder luide
toejuichingen de kiosk besteeg, onder het uitspreken van
toepasselijke versjes bloemen aanbeden. De concoursstukken werden
nogmaals ten gehoore gebracht, waarna dhr. Heldens-Vallen, president
der Fanfare, dankte voor de hartelijke ontvangst en belangstelling
die allen voor de fanfare toonden. Hij bracht hulde aan den geachten
directeur, dhr. Felten uit Venlo, onder wiens bekwame leiding thans
door de fanfare wederom een zoo groot succes werd behaald. Hij
memoreerde de onderscheiding die verleden jaar op het concours te
Thorn haar deel was en wees op de beteekenis van het feit om thans,
in een hoogere afdeeling, wederom een eersten prijs te behalen.
Hierna werd naar het fanfare-lokaal getrokken, alwaar de Eerw. Heer
Pastoor aanwezig was om de fanfare te feliciteeren. Aan den
Directeur werden nog van verschillende zijden bloemen aangeboden.
Tot laat werd feestgevierd om 's Maandags weer te beginnen. Na den
middag werd een muzikale wandeling door het dorp gemaakt en op het
Markt plein geconcerteerd. Tegen den avond bracht de fanfare
"Maasoever" ven Kessel een serenade en bracht hulde aan
dhr. Felten, die ook van hare vereeniging Directeur is. Er heerschte
tot laat in den avond een feestelijke stemming, die getuigde dat
allen meeleefden met het behaald succes der fanfare.
21 juni 1924
(Zijne Bergen en hunne oudste bewoners.) —
Bij
't dorp Roggel ligt de Krekelberg, Ook dáár in liet
het volk in oude tijden de kaboutermannekens huizen. En ook de naam
Krekelsberg houdt verband met de Sagenwereld. Immers het hiemke,
kriekje of het huis- of schoorsteenkrekeltje wordt bij onze
oostelijke naburen onder de dwergen genoemd, die geluk aanbrengen.
Zij mochten niet gedood, en hun nachtgezang moet lijdelijk worden
aangehoord. Maar vaak vertelden daar de menschen ook, dat het hiemke
of het krekeltje, als dwerg, met zijn gezang een voorteeken van den
dood was. Daarom lezen wij ook nog in een oud Duitsch werk over
folklore:
Das
Heimchen zirpte klaglich
Das
lange nicht gezirpt,
Gelt
sagten alle Bauem,
Gelt,
unser Pfarrer stirbt."
Ook
zegt men in Duitschland nog van iemand, die er slecht uitziet, dat
hij een hiemke heeft gegeten. In ons land en ook in onze provincie
van iemand die knorrig uitziet. Welnu, volgens ouden van dagen zou
er eens de jager Hoeben tusschen Asbroek en Dekeibloem in de aldaar
liggende Heide op jacht zijnde, een kabouterman op eenigen afstand
hebben zien gaan, die over de Asbroekerheide de richting nam van den
Krekelberg, door velen ook Kerkelsberg genoemd. Deze jager zou de
afkeurenswaardige wreedheid begaan hebben op het niets kwaads
vermoedende ventje een geweerschot te lossen. Doodelijk getroffen
stortte het neder, doch had nog de macht naar den Kerkels
(Krekelberg) te loopen, waar eene menigte kabouters, die ook daar in
de buurt 's nachts overal potten, pannen en ketels schuurden, hun
vast verblijf hielden. Nieuwsgierig volgde de jager 't manneke,
naderde den berg, waar hij eenige kabouters mistroostig hoorde
lamenteeren: "O wee, onze Kyrië is dood." Deze was
ook daar de overste of het hoofd, die, midden in den berg aangekomen
zijnde, onmiddelijk overleed.
Sedert
dien tijd heeft niemand in de omgeving van Roggel meer aard- of
kaboutermannekes gezien. Het schijnt, dat ze na dit geval daar voor
goed hun verblijf verlaten hebben.
De
landbouwer Opheij had aan 't Nijken bij Roggel een stuk land, vol
onkruid, (in Limburg "puinen" geheeten). Hij kon de
wortels van dit lastige goedje maar met geen mogelijkheid er uit
krijgen. De 'puinen" bleven er tot groote schade der andere
gewassen voortwoekeren. Op zekeren avond ging hij naar den
Krekelberg om daar hard te roepen en te smeeken dat de kabouters hem
toch hiermede zouden helpen. Hij had er voldoende boterhammen en
pijpen met tabak bij het stuk land neergelegd, en ook de ploeg had
hij er heen gebracht. En zie, 's anderendaags was 't land volkomen
omgeploegd en alle daarin schuilend onkruid lag zorgvuldig op
hoopjes aan 't eind van 't perceel.
Tusschen
Haelen en Roggel, in de Nunhemer heide lag eens de vermaarde
Gravenberg, waarover eene bijzonder interessante sage in de oude
Limburgsche historie gaat en welke wij later zullen mededeelen.
Welnu in dezen Gravenberg woonden een langen tijd verschillende
Kabouters, die niet hooger waren dan anderhalven voet. Het waren erg
gedienstige ventjes, die vooral in de nabij gelegen boerenhuizen
allerlei arbeid verrichten, maar nooit iets gapten. Soms droegen zij
wel de rogge, die zij in de schuur gedorschen en gezuiverd hadden op
den zolder van een anderen eigenaar. Een huis, eenige minuten van
dezen berg in het gehucht Mortel gelegen, moet lange jaren daarna
nog aangeduid zijn als eene werkplaats dezer kaboutermannekens, die
bij den arbeid welken zij in den nacht verrichtten, soms wel
gehoord, doch niet gezien werden. Er zijn inwoners van Roggel, die
ons voor eenige jaren meenden te kunnen verzekeren, van hunne
voorouders te hebben gehoord, dat de laatste kabouters op zekeren
dag genoodzaakt werden op bevel van den Paus, in woonwagens te
vertrekken. Zij waren toen ten getale van twintig. Daarna heeft
nooit meer iemand een kabouter gezien.
In
de omstreken van Beesel, Reuver en Kessel moeten voorheen hebben
gelegen de Lomberg, de Wals- en de Kruisberg *) allen bewoond door
alver- of kaboutermannekes. Van deze ventjes, die in de heide en de
heuvelen in die streken hebben gewoond, waar ook eertijds
grafheuvelen en andere oude voorwerpen zijn gevonden, mochten de
dorpelingen langen tijd menigvuldige diensten genieten. Wanneer de
boerengezinnen die diensten verlangden, kwamen doorgaans twee
kabouters die verrichten. Op eene kast of tafel vonden ze een
stuiver of een ander geldstuk, dat de huisgenooten daar opzettelijk
voor hen neergelegd hadden. Wilden de boeren geboterd of gekarnd
hebben, dan legden zij dat geld op de boterkarn. Daar bij dat werk
warm water behoorde, stookte de eene kabouter het ouderwetsche
haardvuur, terwijl de andere karnde. Zoo vaak de menschen de
kabouters verwachtten, bereidden zij een of andere spijs vooraleer
ze slapen gingen. Dit eten nuttigden de dwergen eerst, waarna zij
den noodigen arbeid sprakeloos en zonder het minste gedruisch deden.
Eens hadden de huisbewoners leder, in kleine stukjes gesneden, voor
de kabouters op het vuur gezet, terwijl een der huisgenooten, in
plaats van naar bed te gaan, op den zolder ging liggen om te zien,
hoe hun die vreemde kost zou bevallen. Een der mannekens zei: "Dat
is taaie fikkefak". Zij aten het evenwel op en verrichtten hun
werk als gewoonlijk.
Op
een anderen nacht bespiedde de landbouwer Gommans het karnen der
kabouters door eene spleet van de zoldering. Een der mannekens zag
dat en zei tegen den andere: "Blaas die nieuwsgierige piepinus
even een oog uit!" En aldus geschiedde. Toen begon eerst het
karnen voor goed.
Behalve
dit werk kwamen zij dikwijls den vloer schuren, brood bakken, vlas
zwingen en graan dorschen, dit laatste meestal in den bakoven, dien
iedere boer op het land zich achter de huizing heeft gebouwd. Een
boer van de Haelerhei, Giezen genaamd, wonende in een huiske, waar
thans de Spiekerhof ligt, kwam eens van de St. Luciamarkt te
Neeritter waar hij een trekos had gekocht, langs de heuvelen in de
hei, toen hij daar een kabouter hoorde jammeren, en hem naroepen:
"Ties, zeg tegen Kobus, dat Kyrië dood is." De boer
ontstelde, maar zag niemand. Thuis gekomen, vertelde hij het geval,
waarop een onder de tafel zittend kabouterke treurig uitriep: "Is
Kyrië dood?"' Verschrikt keken de huisgenooten naar de
plaats vanwaar de stem kwam, doch de kabouter was verdwenen.
Vlodrop.
GERH. KR.
*)
Zij liggen er nog.
28 juni 1924
[...] Zóó vertrouwelijk zelfs stond de mensch
tegenover
bovennatuurlijke
wezens, dat hij ze op zijn volksfeesten uitbeeldde in een of andere
figuratie, bijv. als "Pinksterbruid" of "Meikoning",
ja zelfs in de gedaante van "reuzen", zooals we die heden
ten dage nog in VENLO en in de Vlaamsche steden kennen of in een
"draak", die bijv. in het dorpje BEESEL als een
dorpsalladium bewaard wordt. In blijde zorgeloosheid en met innig
vertrouwen in zijn Heiligen aanvaardde men het nog niet zoo
gecompliceerde leven blijmoedig en vierde men feest, wanneer het
leven op den buiten op zijn allerschoonst was, dus in de Meimaand en
in den vollen midzomertijd. [...]
19 juli 1924
De schoolgeldvermindering voor meerdere kinderen
uit
eenzelfde gezin.
Naar
aanleiding van ons artikeltje: "Een kans die niet verzuimd
worde" — waarin we erop wezen, dat Ged. Staten door den
Minister van Onderwijs in de gelegenheid gesteld worden voorstellen
te doen omtrent wijziging in de thans geldende schoolgeldheffing —
maakt men ons opmerkzaam op een verzoekschrift, d.d. 14 dezer door
B. en W. van BEESEL tot Ged. Staten dezer provincie gericht.
Het
adres is merkwaardig genoeg, om het hier in zijn geheel af te
drukken:
"Hierdoor
deelen wij Uw College mede dat wij het gewenscht achten, dat de op
de heffing van schoolgeld betrekking hebbende bepalingen der Lager
Onderwijswet 1920 wederom worden gewijzigd in dien zin dat het
toelaatbaar wordt eert gezinsreductie te verleenen. Daartoe zouden
wij echter liever niet meer zien ingevoerd de in de practijk tot
veel moeielijkheden aanleiding gegeven hebbende regeling van het
voormalige tweede lid van art. 62 der wet, doch de in de toepassing
meer eenvoudige bepaling, dat, indien meer dan een leerling uit
hetzelfde gezin gelijktijdig een school van dezelfde soort bezoekt,
het schoolgeld slechts bedraagt: bij twee leerlingen 90, bij 3
leerlingen 80, bij 4 leerlingen 70, hij 5 leerlingen 60 en bij 6
leerlingen 50 ten honderd per leerling van hetgeen verschuldigd zou
zijn indien slechts één leerling uit dat gezin de
school bezocht; terwijl, indien meer dan 6 leerlingen als
bovenbedoeld een school bezoeken, slechts voor de zes oudste
leerlingen schoolgeld verschuldigd is. Onder de vroegere wet moest
het Gemeentebestuur, wanneer kinderen uit hetzelfde gezin
verschillende scholen bezochten, doen nagaan welk kind voor een
aftrek van 20, welk voor een aftrek van 40% enz. in aanmerking kwam,
hetgeen zeer tijdroovend was. Bij de door ons aanbevolen regeling is
bedoeld werk niet meer noodig terwijl de berekening op zich zelf ook
veel eenvoudiger is.
Oppervlakkig
beschouwd zou men tegen de aangegeven regeling kunnen aanvoeren, dat
bij meer dan 5 schoolgaande kinderen reeds voor het zesde en
volgende kind geen schoolgeld meer verschuldigd behoeft te zijn
omreden het voor alle kinderen gezamenlijk verschuldigde schoolgeld
bij 5 kinderen hetzelfde bedrag uitmaakt als bij 6 n.l. 300 % (5 x
60 en 6 x 50). Wij meenen echter dat het aanbeveling verdient, met
het oog op de verdeeling van de opbreng&t van het schoolgeld
over de verschillende scholen, een zoo groot mogelijk aantal
kinderen in de schoolgeldheffing te betrekken. Ook is het, omreden
in de meeste gemeenten voor iedere school een apart kohier wordt
opgemaakt, gewenscht dat geregeld wordt voor welke kinderen bij een
grooter getal schoolgaande kinderen dan 6, het schoolgeld
verschuldigd is. Wij zouden hiervoor nemen de zes oudste kinderen.
Opneming
in de wet van bovenstaande regeling zou door de gemeentebesturen
zeer worden toegejuicht, waarom wij U beleefd verzoeken
wetswijziging te bovenbedoelden zin te willen bevorderen.
25 juli 1924
Grenstekens. BEESEL—REUVER. Door de zorgen van het
Gemeentebestuur
zijn
op de beginpunten der verschillende wegen borden geplaatst, die het
eindpunt der aangrenzende gemeente en het begin dezer gemeente
aangeven.
Vooral
vreemde toeristen kunnen zich hierdoor gemakkelijk oriënteeren.
Moge in hét belang en ter bevordering van het
vreemdelingenverkeer dit voorbeeld, waar noodig, navolging vinden.
26 juli 1924
Tragisch — BEESEL. Toen de vrouw van den molenaar Theelen
Zaterdagmorgen
ontwaakte vond zij haren man, die 's avonds nog gezond en wel naar
bed was gegaan, stervende en was deze een uur later reeds een lijk.
De overledene bereikte slechts den leeftijd van 34 jaar en laat een
jonge weduwe met 2 kleine kinderen achter.
9 augustus
1924 [...] De lucht was zwaar en zwart van onweer en terwijl
Robert
zijn ros van over de Swalm voortjoeg in razende vaart, braken de
elementen in al heur klacht los. Bij het felle licht, dat het zwarte
zwerk verscheurde, zag hij, aan den voet van den Donderberg tusschen
Kloosterhof en Rijkel bij Beesel, plotseling naast zich den jongen
ridder, den geliefde zijner dochter.
— Ha,
brulde hij, de fortuin is mij gunstig, gij zult van Uw voornemen
afzien of hier sterven!
— Ik
vrees Uw zwaard niet, heer Robert, antwoordde de vrome jongeling,
maar vechten zal ik niet. De Hemel is mijn getuige, en zal U
dwingen.
— Noch
hemel, noch hel vrees ik, of kunnen mij bedwingen, bulderde Robert.
Sterf dan hier als een hond! [...]
23 augustus
1924 Onbewaakte Spoorweg. — BEESEL. — Naar wij
vernemen
zal
binnenkort de bewaking van den spoorweg-overweg te Bussereind nabij
Ickenroth worden opgeheven. Er zullen waarschuwingsborden met rode
reflectors geplaatst worden.
3 september
1924 Ongeval — BEESEL. Zondagavond vonden de alhier
patrouilleerende
Marechaussee een man op den berm van den weg "Hoogstraat"
liggen. Bij onderzoek bleek het te zijn de 20-jarigen G. Meerts
wiens paard kort te voren op hol was geslagen en hij van den wagen
was gesprongen en een der wielen hem over de beenen was gegaan. De
ontboden Geneesheer. Dr. Crasborn uit Swalmen constateerde een breuk
van het linkerdijbeen en achtte overbrenging naar het Gasthuis te
Venlo noodzakelijk.
6 september
1924 Ongeluk. — BEESEL. De zoon van den landbouwer G.
Meerts
alhier
had Zondagavond toen hij met kar en paard eenige kermisgasten naar
het station had gebracht, het ongeluk onder de kar te geraken
waarbij hij een been brak. Door Dr. Crasborn van Swalmen werd
onmiddellijk geneeskundige hulp verleend en werd M. 's anderendaags
in het Gasthuis te Venlo opgenomen
6 september
1924 Diefstal rijwielplaatje — BEESEL Een zekere O.
van hier
die
verleden Maandag zijn rijwiel eenige oogenhlikken onbeheerd liet
staan kwam, toen hij zijn rijwiel weer wilde meenemen tot de mindere
aangename ontdekking dat zijn rijwielbelasting-plaatje was
ontvreemd.
Concert
Fanfare — BEESEL Kermis-Zondag werd door de Fanfare alhier
een
concert met tooneeluitvoering gegeven met medewerking van de bekende
humoristen, de heeren Leijendeckers uit Thorn en Giesberts uit Echt.
Er werden eenige mooie muziekstukken uitgevoerd en door het
humoristisch duo werden verschillende voordrachten en coupletten
uitgevoerd, die zeer in den smaak der aanwezigen vielen. Door den
president
der Fanfare, dhr. F. Heldens-Vallon werd in zijn welkomswoord den
verjaardag van H. M. de koningin herdacht en werd een spontaan
driewerf hoera op H. M. uitgebracht. Het concert was
niettegenstaande het slechte weer druk bezocht. Kruisverbond —
BEESEL Verleden Zondag werd door den W. E Z G Heer Dr. Krijn,
aalmoezenier van sociale werken, te Venlo, in een vergadering van
het Kruisverbond alhier een spreekbeurt gehouden over het
alcoholvraagstuk in dezen tijd. Zijn zeer interessante lezing werd
door de vele aanwezigen met aandacht gevolgd en getuigde het
daverende applaus dat men ten zeerste voldaan was. Verschillende
nieuwe leden gaven zich op.
24 september
1924 BEESEL Alhier doen zich bij het vee van de landbouwers
H.
Evers en P. Heidens eenige gevallen van mond- en klauwzeer voor. De
ziekte doet zich gelukkig nogal niet kwaadaardig voor. Op
verschillende plaatsen heerscht onder de varkens ook de z.g.
vlekziekte en zijn er reeds verscheidene afgemaakt moeten worden.
Noodslachting
BEESEL Bij den landbouwer R. moest verleden Maandag een koe worden
afgemaakt. Het vleesch werd door den Keuringsdienst voor de
consumptie goedgekeurd.
26 september
1924 Zilveren priesterfeest van Mgr. Theelen.
Men
schrijft aan de Msb.: Op 23 en 24 September herdenkt Mgr. D.
Theelen, bisschop van Nicopolis in de Missie van Noord Bulgarije,
het zilveren jubelfeest van zijn Priesterwijding en eerste H. Mis.
Of deze dagen plechtig gevierd worden, weet ik niet; maar herdacht
zullen ze ongetwijfeld worden zoowel door den jubilaris zelf als
door zijn vele vrienden en weldoeners.
Voor
Z. D. H. zal het een verkwikking zijn in den harden werkdag des
levens. Zoo vele en zoo zoete herinneringen zijn voor hem aan beide
dagen verbonden! Sedert 25 jaren reeds mocht hij nu iederen morgen
"opgaan tot het altaar des Heeren, tot den God, die zijn jeugd
verblijdt".
Van
deze 25 jaren heeft hij er ruim 15 in het klooster doorgebracht. In
het begin en wellicht ten gevolge van den oorlog werd hij geroepen
om een deel van Christus' kudde te weiden in een der moeilijkste
missielanden. God weet, hoe zwaar sindsdien zijn dagen zijn geweest,
niet alleen tijdens den oorlog zelf met zijn gedurige
verdachtmakingen, maar ook daarna en thans nog immer in een land,
waar de beruchte Balkantoestanden hoogtij vieren. Lijden en strijden
was zijn brood haast iederen dag.
Toch
mag hij met stille vreugde op de afgeloopen jaren terugzien. Veel
goed heeft hij kunnen stichten, en niet weinig kwaad verhinderen.
Dank aan den steun, die hem uit het vaderland gewerd heeft hij
meerdere kerken en kapellen kunnen herstellen, vergrooten of
opbouwen; zusterscholen heeft hij kunnen stichten; het kleine
seminarie voor inlandsche geestelijken heeft hij weer in het leven
geroepen; en nu onlangs mocht hij het geluk hebben dat de banden
tusschen de Bulgaarsche Missie en de Hollandsche afdeeling der
Passionistencongregatie nader werden aangehaald.
Aan
het heilig altaar zocht en vond hij de kracht om immer voort te gaan
op den doornigen weg, waar de plicht hem riep. Bij zijn zilveren
priesterfeest kunnen zijn vrienden hem dan ook geen beter geschenk
aanbieden dan den Heer te smeeken, dat zijn dagelijksche H. Mis
steeds meer en meer voor hem wordt: zijn levensbrood en
levenskracht, het middel ook om zichzelf en anderen te heiligen.
Moge dit feest de voorbode zijn van zijn zilveren jubelfeest als
Bisschop. Het is een zware wensch, dien wij hiermee uitspreken; het
is een verlenging vragen van zijn lijden en strijden; maar 't is ook
een vermeerdering vragen van verdiensten voor den hemel. En dit is
en blijft toch het voornaamste in 's menschen leven. In ieder geval:
"Dominus conservet eum et vivifices eum!"
Ziehier
ten slotte een kort "curriculum vitae van Mgr. Theelen. Z. D.
H. werd geboren te Beesel bij Roermond op 4 April 1877. Hij begon
zijn studies op het Bisschoppelijk College te Weert en trad reeds
vroegtijdig in bij de Passinonisten; in 1893 legde hij de
kloostergelofte af. Op 23 September 1899 werd hij te Bordeaux
priester gewijd. Geheel onverwacht werd hij den 21en Mei 1915
benoemd tot bisschop van Nicopolis en op 15 Augustus d.a.v. te Rome
gewijd. Sindsdien is hij in de Bulgaarsche missie werkzaam gebleven.
10 oktober
1924 De Peelvelden.
De
steenkoolvelden in de Kempen zijn belangrijk grooter en liggen ook
wat minder diep dan in de Peel, aldus vervolgt de Msb. zijn
beschouwing over de Peelschatten. Het Kempische kolenveld beslaat
160.000 H.A., waarvan ongeveer 32.500 H. A. in concessie zijn,
terwijl zich de Belgische Staat een drietal reserven ter grootte van
een 20.000 H. A. voorbehouden heeft. De rijkdom van dit gebied wordt
geschat op 8 à 10 miliard ton; de diepte der lagen varieert
tusschen de 600 en 850 M. Op 1200 à 1500 M. diepte bevinden
zich evenwel ook nog exploiteerbare kolenlagen.
Ons
Peelmijnveld vormt ongeveer een rechthoek gelegen tusschen de
gemeenten Swalmen, Belfeld, Liessel en America, een gebied pl.m. 25
K.M lang en 10 K.M. breed.
Het
bestaat uit een Westelijke en een Oostelijke carboonhorst, waar
tusschen een centrale slenk. Voor exploitatie komen het eerst in
aanmerking de Westelijke horst (4 K.M. breed) en de centrale slenk
(3 K.M. breed), over een lengte van 20 en een breedte van 7 K.M.,
omvattende een 14.000 tal hectaren. Het geheele kolengebied beslaat
een oppervlakte van ongeveer 19.000 H.A. en bevat 1.766.100.000 ton
steenkool, met een reserve van 799.000.000 ton op meer dan 1200
Meter diepte. Ter vergelijking zij hierbij eraan herinnerd, dat de
rijkdom van het Zuid-Limburgsche kolengebied bestaat uit plus minus
3.165.000.000 ton, met een dergelijke reserve van 600 millioen.
Boringen in de omgeving van Winterswijk hebben nog aangetoond de
aanwezigheid van 324.800.000 ton op groote diepte. De reserven erbij
rekenende, beschikt ons land dus nog over een voorraad van een
kleine 7 milliard ton.
De
ligging der kolenlagen in de Peel is nogal diep. Bij Swalmen werden
er op 659 M. aangeboord, verder onder de volgende plaatsen op de
erachter vermelde diepten: Baarlo 657, Beesel 672, Kessel 687,
Kesseleyck 795, Helden 730, Beeringen 745, Maasbree 807, Meyel 821,
Maris 837, Sevenum 840, Griendtsveen 872, America 904, Helenaveen
913.
Dan
beginnen de schatten van de Peel weg te zinken, bij Liessel reeds op
1316 Meter diepte en verder naar onbereikbare afgronden, 3 à
4 K.M. diep, in lagen onder Nederland doorgaande, die in Engeland
weer voor menschenhanden bereikbaar worden.
Ter
vergelijking zij aan deze cijfers toegevoegd, dat in Zuid-Limburg de
kolenlagen slechts 200 Meter diep liggen; de mijn Maurits heeft
schachten van 330 M., terwijl in de Belgische Kempen de deklaag van
kolenhoudend gesteente reeds op 400 à 600 Meter is gevonden.
De diepe ligging der Peelkolen is zeer zeker een bezwaar, doch geen
onoverkomelijk. De boringen, die van Rijkswege in den lande zijn
geschied tusschen 1903 en 1916 hebben gekost 2½ millioen
gulden, die grootendeels zijn besteed aan de exploratie van de Peel.
Onder Maasbree, Helden, Kessel en Reuver is de aanwezigheid
aangetoond van rijke vetkolen, cokeskolen; onder Helenaveen, Meyel
en Swalmen werden gaskolen gevonden. De ontginbare lagen varieeren
in gezamenlijke dikte tusschen 5 en 10 Meter, al komt er ook eene
voor van 12.32 M.
Van
Rijkswege werden een veertigtal diepboringen verricht, waaruit de
aanwezigheid bleek van 40 ontginbare lagen, in dikten van 40 tot 120
centimer, een enkele kwam er zelfs voor van 1.90 M. Dit lijkt al
zeer bevredigend, al biedt Belgisch Limburg er nog wel dikkere, als
die van Limbourg-Meuse van 2.20 M. en vooral de beroemde "belle
fille" van Beeringen, een ader gelegen op een diepte van 789
M., die niet minder dan 3.20 M. dikte heeft. En hoever blijft die
nog niet achter bij de nog beroemdere Ten Yards van midden Engeland
nu uitgeput!
Binnen
Westelijke Horst en centrale slenk zouden 434 millioen ton gas- en
vetkolen van meer dan 25% gasgehalte en 712 millioen vetkolen van 20
tot 25% aanwezig zijn, benevens 230 millioen ton beneden 20%.
Het
spreekt vanzelf, dat het reeds aangegeven gebied der rijke vetkolen
onder de gemeenten Helden en Kessel wel het eerst een mijn zal zien
verrijzen. Ruim 1½ jaar geleden werd dan ook een concessie
daar ter plaatse bij de regeering aangevraagd.
De
aanwezigheid van turfkrijt, drijfzand en zoutwater in den bodem, zal
de moeilijkheden bij het aanleggen der schachten niet verminderen.
Onoverkomelijk zijn deze bezwaren ook niet; de ervaringen opgedaan
bij de Kempische mijnen bewijzen dit wel.
Het
aantal moderne groote mijnen, gelijk nu reeds in de Kempen
functionneeren, waarvoor de Peel plaats biedt, wordt berekend op 6 à
9, met een maximum productie van 1½ millioen ton per mijn en
per jaar. Binnen 150 à 200 jaar zou dit kolenbekken dan
uitgeput wezen.
Aangezien
de mijnschachten, gezien de gesteldheid van den bodem, die, zooals
gezegd, turfkrijt, drijfzand en zoutwater bevat, volgens het veel
tijd en kosten vergende bevries-systeem zullen moeten worden
aangelegd, wordt de tijd, noodig voor den aanleg eener mijn, geschat
op niet minder dan 10 à 15 jaren. De groote Kempische mijnen
vorderden 9 tot 14 jaren, doch behalve Helchteren—Zolderen
vielen voor de 5 andere de oorlogsjaren ertusschen gedurende welken
tijd er nagenoeg niet gebouwd doch soms wel afgebroken werd. Daar
was de tijd gemoeid met den aanleg der mijnen dus 5 tot 9 jaren. De
schachten der Peelmijnen zouden evenwel dieper moeten wezen, hetgeen
dus ook meer tijd, geld en moeite vergt.
27 oktober
1924 Erfstelling Meuter. — BEESEL-REUVER. Naar wij
vernemen
hebben
Eerwaarde Zusters Dominicanessen alhier, zich althans bereid
verklaard om de erfstelling Meuter onder de raadsbesluit van 4 Juli
j.l. gestelde voorwaarden van da gemeente over te nemen, zoodat
indien de overdracht door Heeren Ged. Staten wordt goedgekeurd, in
het voorjaar van 1925 met de stichting van een tehuis voor ouden van
dagen en weeskinderen zal worden begonnen.
8 november
1924 BEESEL. Reeds lang werd er geklaagd, dat er veel hout
zou
worden gestolen voornamelijk op Duitsch grondgebied liggend en aan
inwoners dezer gemeente toebehoorend brandhout. De 37 jarige H. J.
H. en de 56-jarige G. H. S. waren deswege voor den Rechter geroepen
doch had alleen H. hier aan gevolg gegeven. Hij bekende het feit,
maar meende dat het niet zoo erg was de waarde was niet groot, zoo
luidde zijn verdediging. De eisch van den Officier van Justitie
luidde tegen ieder acht dagen gevangenisstraf, de rechter evenwel
legde H. een week en den niet verschenen S. twee weken
gevangenisstraf op.
8 november
1924 Hoog water — BEESEL-REUVER Tengevolge van den
buitengewonen
hoogen waterstand der Maas zijn hier, evenals elders, vrij
plotseling verschillende landerijen overstroomd, waardoor aan de nog
niet geoogste veldvruchten veel schade is aangebracht. De bewoners
der Maashuizen moesten reeds verleden Maandag hun woning verlaten en
het vee elders in veiligheid brengen. Gelukkig is thans val
ingetreden.
6 januari 1926
DE OVERSTROOMING VAN BEESEL.
HET
SNELWASSENDE WATER DRONG VAN ALLE ZIJDEN OP.
Oudejaarsavond
om circa 10 uur werd onder leiding van wethouder Heidens een dijk
gelegd vanaf het kerkhof naar den molen der Gebr. Cuijpers, teneinde
het gehucht Oud-dorp, hetwelk voor eenige jaren geteisterd werd door
een grooten brand, zoo mogelijk te vrijwaren voor overstrooming.
Enkele laag gelegen huizen stonden reeds onder water. Tot 4 uur in
den morgen werd hard gewerkt door een vijftigtal, uit het dorp door
den veldwachter opgeroepen mannen. Het water steeg echter
zienderoogen en stond weldra hooger dan 1 meter tegen den dijk... De
dijk mocht echter niet baten, daar het water van de noordzijde kwam
opzetten en Oud-dorp weldra geheel zou overstroomen en daardoor van
alle verbinding geisoleerd zou zijn. Menschen vluchten op de zolders
der hooggelegen huizen en brachten huisraad, levensmiddelen en
klein-vee aldaar in veiligheid. Groote kudden rundvee en varkens
werden ijlings door het opkomende water heen naar het hooger gelegen
dorp gedreven.
Weldra
echter steeg het water zoo hoog, dat geen verkeer meer mogelijk was
en Oud-dorp een eiland vormde, waar bijna alle huizen onder water
stonden. Het loeien en brullen van het angstige vee klonk
huiveringwekkend over de stijgende watermassa. Heel den
Nieuwjaarsdag bleef het water opzetten. Bang ging men den eersten
nacht van het nieuwe jaar in. Veel vee reeds eenmaal op hooger
gelegen stallen gedreven waar men het veilig waande, moest verder
het dorp ingevoerd worden.
Van
de groote hofsteden Enderhof, Klerkenhof en Hoosterhof, onder het
gehucht Rijkel, moest het vee eveneens haastig in veiligheid
gebracht worden, terwijl de bewoners op de zolders vluchtten. Doch
ook dezen moesten weldra weg, daar het water met kracht door
vensters en deuren naar binnen stroomde. Een vrouw schrok hierbij
zoo hevig, dat men voor haar leven vreesde en de ontboden geneesheer
het raadzaam oordeelde haar van de laatste H.H. Sacramenten te doen
voorzien, hetgeen onmiddellijk geschiedde.
In
den nacht kwam het water door de huilbeek opzetten tot midden in het
dorp, de menschen moesten daar niet alleen hun vee, maar ook dat van
Oud-dorp, hetgeen overal ondergebracht was, naar hooger gelegen
plaatsen drijven. Om twee uur klonken noodkreten en signalen vanaf
de huizen van Oud-dorp, dat van alle verbinding verstoken was; er
was zelfs geen bootje voor de bewoners, om aan land te komen.
Van
de overzijde der Maas kwamen schippers met hun bootjes te hulp,
hetgeen tengevolge van de snelle drift van het water met groot
gevaar gepaard ging. Allereerst poogde men nog vee over te zetten.
Dit ging echter tengevolge van de duisternis en de snelle strooming
van het water, niet. Een bootje waarachter men vee had vastgebonden
sloeg om en de opvarenden geraakten te water. Daar zij zich juist
boven een boomgaard bevonden, kwamen zij in een appelboom terecht en
werden door een ander bootje daar vandaan gehaald. Het nog
achtergebleven vee werd naar het hooger gelegen en ommuurde kerkhof
gedreven, waar het vee later in een noodstal is ondergebracht. Tegen
den morgen werden de ouden van dagen met moeite door de schippers
overgezet. Nog werden twee vrouwen door het dak uit een oud huis,
waarvan reeds een gedeelte was ingestort, met veel moeite gered. De
schippers verdienen een hartelijk woord van dank voor de door hen
bewezen diensten. De grintweg door het dorp stond ruim 30 c.M. onder
water. Aanhoudend werden nog kudden vee naar Bussereind, Wittenberg,
Reuver en hoog gelegen plaatsen vervoerd. Zelfs het kasteel
Nieuwenbroeck liep onder. De boerderij aldaar moest ijlings ontruimd
worden; het water stroomde weldra over de stallen. Het landschap
levert een treurigen aanblik; groote koren- en havermijten drijven
op het water; voorraden bieten en koolraap drijven weg. De
ingezaaide rogge spoelt van de akkers. De schade is groot. Gelukkig
zijn geen menschenlevens te betreuren. Deze treurige intrede van het
jaar 1926 zal den menschen nog lang heugen.
Teneinde
Zondags het kerkgaan mogelijk te maken, moest een noodbrug geslagen
worden over een lengte van 20 a 30 M. Gisteren, Dinsdag had een
begrafenis per boot plaats, hetgeen hier nimmer geschiedde.
6 januari 1926
BEESEL-REUVER. — Electrisch licht. — Tengevolge
van
den
hoogen waterstand is deze gemeente 3 dagen van electrischen stroom
voor licht en kracht verstoken geweest, tot groot ongemak der
aangeslotenen.
14 januari
1926 BEESEL. — Na den Watersnood. — Thans kan
men
zich
eenigszins een idee vormen van de groote schade door den watersnood
aangericht. De huizen kunnen wellicht grootendeels bewoond worden
doch zien er treurig uit. Meubels en kleederen werden meestal
drijvende in de woningen aangetroffen. Vooral voor de landbouwers is
aan akkers en velden voor duizenden guldens schade toegebracht.
Hierbij nog buiten beschouwing gelaten de enorme schade toegebracht
aan de in de schuren en in mijten geborgen rogge en haver. De inzet
van 1926 is voorwaar voor velen diep treurig.
BEESEL-REUVER.
— Electriciteitsbedrijf. Gedurende het jaar 1925 bedroeg het
aantal nieuwe aansluitingen aan het gemeentelijk electrisch net 37.
Het aantal lichtaansluitingen vermeerderde te Reuver met 17, te
Beesel met 2, totaal 19; het aantal krachtaansluitingen vermeerderde
te Reu ver met 12 en te Beesel met 6. totaal 18, zoodat het getal
aansluitingen thans bedraagt te Reuver voor licht 349, te Beesel
voor licht 133, totaal voor licht 482; te Reuver voor kracht 40, te
Beesel voor kracht 30, totaal 75. Totaal voor licht en kracht 557.
15 januari
1926 Watersnoods-comite 1926.
In
een verleden Woensdag ten raadhuize gehouden vergadering van het
plaatselijk watersnoods-comité alhier, bestaande uit de
Heeren Wethouders en voorzitters der pl. landbouwbonden, onder
voorzitterschap van den heer Burgemeester, werd o.m. besloten aan de
getroffenen formulieren uit te reiken, waarop dezen den naar hun
oordeel geleden schade kunnen opgeven zulks teneinde een voorloopig
overzicht te krijgen van het totaal der schade. Deze gecontroleerde
gegevens kunnen dan bij eventuele uitkeering tot basis dienen. De
formulieren zijn te Reuver verkrijgbaar ten raadhuize, vanaf a. s.
Maandag, en te Beesel ten huize van den heer Schoenmakers, ambtenaar
ter secretarie, op Zondag 17 dezer. De ingevulde kaarten kunnen
aldaar wederom voor 26 dezer worden ingeleverd. Verder werd in
principe besloten de E.E. H.H. Pastoors der parochiën te
verzoeken om te willen toestaan, dat in de kerken een algemene
collecte gehouden wordt. Vooral zij, die vrij zijn gebleven van
schade en last van het water, worden dringend verzocht door milde
bijdragen den nood hunner medemenschen te willen lenigen.
BEESEL-REUVER.
— Electriciteitsbedrijf. — Op l Januari 1926 waren
aan het electrisch krachtstroomnet dezer gemeente aangesloten 41
landbouwbedrijven, 9 bakkerijen, 5 meubel- en
timmermanswerkplaatsen, 1 meubel- en timmerfabriek, 4 smederijen, 5
motoren voor watervoorziening, 2 schoenmakerijen, 1 slagerij, 1
wasscherij, 1 grèsbuizenfabriek, 1 drukkerij, 1
dakpannenfabriek, 1 verfwarenfabriek, 1 kt ekën beschuitfabriek
en 1 roltabaksfabriek. Totaal 75 krachtaansluitingen. Bovendien was
men op dien datum bezig met de aansluiting van 1 pottenfabriek, 1
slagerij en 2 landbouwbedrijven.
BEESEL-REUVER,
— Aangespoeld. — Ten raadhuize en bij den
brigade-commandant der Koninklijke Marechaussee's zijn inlichtingen
verkrijgbaar omtrent de navolgende aangespoelde goederen:
1
onderstel van een wagen, een planken varkenshok, 1 kruiwagen, 3
schuttingen van karren, waarvan 2 aan elkander bevestigd, l
canadaboom stam van pl.m. 5 M. lengte, 1 idem van pl.m. 4 M.
23 januari
1926 BEESEL-REUVER. Aangespoeld. Alsnog is aangifte gedaan
van
aanspoeling van een gierton van plm. 400 L. inhoud en een kruiwagen,
waarvan de rechterpoot stuk is. Inlichtingen ten raadhuize en bij
den Brigade-commandant der Koninklijke Marechaussee.
26 januari
1926 BEESEL REUVER. — Hondenbelasting. Het zal niet
ondienstig
zijn
er op te wijzen, dat de uitgereikte formulieren voor hondenbelasting
vóór 15 Februari e.k. bij den gemeente-ontvanger, c.q.
met betaling der verschuldigde belasting.
28 januari
1926 BEESEL. De 25-jarige G. A. L. C. van hier was
op
16 November j.1. naar Venlo geweest en had daar in strijd met zijn
gewoonte, flink in het glaasje gekeken. Er was gedanst en gejoeld en
hij keerde laat in den nacht, waggelend huiswaarts. Bang voor zijn
ouders, had hij ook aanranding gefingeerd. Bij de brigade-commandant
der Kon. Marechaussee ging hij hiervan aangifte doen; hij was van
zijn fiets afgeslagen en deze laatste was weg. Zulks was langs den
weg gebeurd. Zijn aangifte had zelfs tot gevolg, dat als
vermoedelijken dader iemand uit Geldrop werd gearresteerd en
gevankelijk naar Reuver gevoerd. Nu werd het toch te erg en hij kwam
terug op zijn aangifte, die van a tot z gelogen was. Ook deze stond
stond wegens doen van een valsche aangifte terecht. Niettegenstaande
de hardhoorigheid van bekl. wisten en President en Officier van
Justitie hem met een flinke stem aan het verstand te brengen, dat
zulks alle perken te buiten ging en de Officier voegde erbij, er
niet aan te denken een voorwaardelijke straf te eischen, doch hij
requireerde drie maanden gevangenisstraf. Beklaagde zelf had liever
drie maanden of een jaar gevangenisstraf voorwaardelijk. Uitspraak
over veertien dagen.
BEESEL-REUVER.
— Ter navolging — Deze week zijn bij bet
watersnood-comité alhier de navolgende giften ingekomen:
Markiezin de Villers Beesel f300.—; Fam. Rutten Reuver f300.—:
Douariere v. Splinter Beesel f208.—; Wethouder Laumans Reuver
f150. —; Burgemeester Meuter Reuver f100.—; Wethouder
Heidens Beesel f100.—; J. Packbier, pastoor Reuver f100.—.
Behalve bij de a.s. Zondag in de kerken te houden collecte kunnen
ook den comité-leden tot en niet 31 Januari e.k. giften ter
hand worden gesteld.
BEESEL.
— Mond- en klauwzeer. — Bij den landbouwer J. Bongers,
Riekel, alhier heeft zich een geval van mond- en klauwzeer
voorgedaan.
BEESEL.
— Jonge Boeren. — Door de vereeniging van Jonge Boeren
alhier werd in de algemeene jaarvergadering het jaarverslag over
1923 uitgebracht met rekening en verantwoording. Verder werden nog
eenig huishoudelijke zaken behandeld.
1 februari
1926 BEESEL. — Diefstal. Ten huize van de landbouwers
B.
werd
diefstal gepleegd. Uit een kistje waar in zien nogal heel wat geld
bevond was f112.— ontvreemd. De aandacht der onderzoekende
politie viel op den knecht S. die al spoedig door de mand zakte. Een
gedeelte van het geld werd teruggevonden. De 17-jarige S. is ter
beschikking der Justitie naar het Huis van Bewaring te Roermond
overgebracht.
27 februari
1926 BEESEL—REUVER. — Rupsenverdelging, in de
boomen
langs
den Rijksweg is men druk bezig met het verwijderen der talrijke
rupsennesten daaruit. In een algemeene bekendmaking hebben B. en W.
dezer gemeente de eigenaren en gebruikers van heggen en hagen van
struiken en opgaand geboomte aan hunne verplichting herinnerd om
uiterlijk in de maand Maart a.s. te zorgen voor verdelging van
rupsennesten. Wellicht ten overvloede wijzen zij er op, dat vooral
de laatste jaren door rupsen enorme schade is aangericht aan veld-,
tuin- en ooftgewassen en het dus van groot belang is, dat de
rupsennesten tijdig en afdoende worden verdelgd. Tegen nalatigen zal
strafvervolging worden ingesteld.
5 maart 1926
De overstroomingen in ons land.
Een
overzicht van de schade.
1300
NIEUWE HUIZEN NOODIG.
Oudejaarsavond
1925! Wanneer over eenige weken het thans nog overstroomde land zal
zijn drooggemalen en wanneer na maanden — wellicht jaren —
noesten arbeid de gevolgen van de overstroomingsramp zullen zijn
verdwenen, dan zullen wij toch nog verhalen van dien bangen
Oudejaarsdag 1925 en van de angstige nachten en dagen, die daarop
volgden. En later zal dezen dag — telkens wanneer wij, en
vooral zij, die er het meest bij betrokken waren, zich gereedmaken
het oude jaar uit te luiden — in de herinnering teruggebracht
worden bij de Oudejaarsavondgesprekken zal hij bij nieuwe
overstroomingsrampen, wanneer deze weer eens over ons land zouden
komen, worden aangehaald in krantenartikelen en misschien in
herinnering gebracht door ouden van dagen, die thans als jongeren de
ramp mede maakten.
Tenzij
in dezen tijd zulke afdoende maatregelen genomen zijn, welke
herhalingen kunnen voorkomen!
Nu,
ruim twee maanden na den doorbraak in den rechter Maasdijk bij
Nederasselt, welke — naast de minder ernstige doorbraken in
Zuid- en Noord-Limburg, de oorzaak is geworden van schrikkelijk veel
ellende en enorme materieele schade, nu nog staat hier en daar het
water in de huizen der laagst gelegen streken van het
overstroomingsgebied en — waar het water verdwenen is —
zien wij de ernstige gevolgen van de ramp.
Het
Persbureau Vaz Dias te Amsterdam heeft getracht een overzicht te
krijgen van de schade, zooals deze thans kon worden geconstateerd,
zonder overdrijving als gevolg van zenuwachtigheid en haast en
gebaseerd op officieele gegevens.
Ongeveer
175 gemeenten lagen in of grenzen aan het overstromingsgebied. In
het grootste gedeelte dezer gemeenten is geen of zeer onbelangrijke
schade aangericht. Zelfs plaatsen, die midden in het water hebben
gestaan, behooren hiertoe, voornamelijk in Limburg, waar 41
zoogenaamde watergemeenten zijn te weten: Arcen en Velden, Beegden,
Beesel, Belfeld, Bergen, Borgharen, Broekhuizen, Buggenum, Echt,
Eijsden, Elsloo, Gennep, Geulle, Grevenbicht, Gronsveld,
Grubbenvorst, Herten, Horn, Itteren, Kessel, Linne, Maasbracht,
Maasbree, Maasniel, Maastricht, Meerlo, Mook, Neer, Obbicht en
Papenhoven, Ohé en Laak, Ottersum, Roermond, Roosteren,
Stein, Stevensweert, Swalmen, Tegelen, Urmond, Venlo, Wanssum en
Wessem. Het grootste gedeelte dezer 41 gemeenten heeft bij hoogen
stand van de Maas steeds last van het water. De buitengewoon hooge
waterstand en vooral de snelle was in de laatste dagen van het
vorige jaar, zijn oorzaak geweest, dat ook in verscheidene
Limburgsch watergemeenten belangrijke schade aangericht, zooals uit
nader te noemen cijfers zal blijken.
De
cijfers omtrent de schade hebben betrekking op 63 gemeenten,
omvattende 129 steden, dorpen en gehuchten. Slechts van enkele
gemeenten, waar schade werd ondervonden, ontbreken de gegevens nog,
doch de eindcijfers zullen daardoor niet belangrijk worden verhoogd.
In
deze 63 gemeenten bedraagt de schade aan gemeentelijke openbare
wegen, werken en gebouwen f590.880,— en aan particuliere
eigendom men volgens de bij de gemeentebesturen ingekomen aanvragen
om steun f3.776.092.
Geheel
vernield werden 454 huizen, terwijl 831 huizen als gedeeltelijk
vernield werden opgegeven. Ongeveer 1300 huizen zullen dus door
nieuwe moeten worden vervangen.
De
veestapel heeft — althans wat verloren vee betreft —
niet zooveel schade geleden. Voor zoover valt na te gaan, zijn
omgekomen 172 runderen, 456 varkens en biggen, 94 geiten, 12 paarden
en ongeveer 15000 stuks pluimvee.
Veel
gered vee is evenwel door de geleden koude en ontberingen in waarde
achteruit gegaan. De schade aan de dijken is zeer belangrijk. Het
herstel van den Maasdijk nabij Nederasselt kost ongeveer f100.000.—.
Met de versterking van verschillende dijkvakken in het Rijk van
Nijmegen is omstreeks f150.000.— gemoeid, terwijl het dichten
der gaten, die de genie heeft gemaakt in den Maasdijk tusschen
Dreumel en Alphen ongeveer f25.000.— kost. In het land van
Maas en Waal is bovendien nog ongeveer f10.000,— noodig voor
het herstel der "afgeslagen" dijken.
In
de provincie Limburg moet ongeveer f200,000 ten koste worden gelegd
aan het herstel der dijken en der provinciale wegen.
De
belangrijkste schade schijnt wed toegebracht te zijn aan den land-
en tuinbouw. Hoe groot bijvoorbeeld de schade is, welke in het land
van Maas en Waal aan den landbouw en de fruitteelt is toegebracht,
kan nog niet bij benadering worden gezegd. Evenmin kan thans reeds
worden vastgesteld de schade in het Rijk van Nijmegen, waar groote
vruchtbare gebieden onder rivierzand zijn bedolven.
In
39 gemeenten, alle buiten het Land van Maas en Waal en het Rijk van
Nijmegen, bedraagt de schade aan land- en tuinbouw naar schatting
ongeveer f1.289.745. In de overige gemeenten kon nog geen raming
worden gedaan.
Deze
globale cijfers geven behalve het laatste punt een vrij juist beeld
van den omvang der directe materieele schade, die de jongste
overstrooming heeft veroorzaakt. Onder de genoemde bedragen zijn nog
niet inbegrepen da kosten van het vervoer en de huisvesting der
bijna veertien duizend vluchtelingen, die moesten worden verzorgd,
noch de verzorgingskosten voor het vee uit het overstroomde gebied,
noch de schade, die de steenenindustrie heeft geleden. In een
volgend artikel zullen nog nadere bijzonderheden omtrent de geleden
schade worden medegedeeld.
22 mei 1926
MAASBREE. — Voor de keuring op 7 Mei 1926, werden
aangegeven
23 stieren, waarvan er 20 verschenen. Afgekeurd werden 5 stieren,
aangehouden geen. Goedgekeurd werden de stieren van de volgende
eigenaren: 1. J. J. Bongers te Rijkel-Beesel; 2. Stierhouderij
"Helden-Dorp" te Helden; 3. Stierhouderij "Panningen"
te Helden-Panningen; 4. L. Smits te Maasbree; 5. dezelfde; [...] 10.
A. Boonen te Neer;
12 juni 1926
BEESEL. — Not. v. Koolwijk, 15 Juni om 4.30 uur,
bij
Mej. Wed. Leon Reijnders: voornagras van 't Weerdje, Rijkelsche
bemden, wegen aan de Maas.
17 juni 1926
Ernstig ongeval.
ROERMOND.
Dinsdagmorgen is de 24-jarige Jan Gielen uit Beesel op den Venlosche
weg tusschen twee karren geraakt. Het slachtoffer bekwam ernstige
inwendige kneuzingen en overleed spoedig na het ongeval.
14 oktober
1926 Vlekziekte. — De laatste dagen komen alhier
verschillende
gevallen van vlekziekte bij de varkens voor. Reeds zijn eenige dikke
krulstaarten aan de gevreesde ziekte ten offer gevallen. Van
deskundige zijde wordt beweerd, dat men over 't algemeen veel te
weinig gebruik maakt van het inspuiten met serum, dat toch gedurende
een bepaalden tijd een vaste waarborg is, dat de dieren gespaard
blijven.
8 oktober 1926
BEESEL. Mond- en Klauwzeer.
—
Alhier heeft zich onder het vee
van den landbouwer Jac. Rutten op Horsterhof een geval van mond- en
klauwzeer voorgedaan.
20 januari
1927 NED. OOGSTFILM IN LIMBURG TE BEESEL.
Zondag
30 en Maandag 31 Januari beloven voor het kleine Draakstekersdorpje
Beesel belangrijke dagen te worden! Dan toch zal voor Limburg de
première plaats hebben van het groote nationale en
folkloristische filmwerk: "Neerland's Volksleven in den
Oogsttijd" dat overal in den lande zooveel belangstelling trekt
en in wetenschappelijke kringen zoo zeer wordt gewaardeerd om zijn
hooge volks-cultureele beteekenis.
Dhr.
D. J. van der Ven, de samensteller van deze film wil door deze
voorstelling de bevolking aan te bieden een bewijs van
erkentelijkheid geven voor de door hem dezen zomer ondervonden
medewerking en tevens hoopt hij door deze buitengewone vertooning
bij de Beeselaars het bewustzijn te versterken, dat zij in het
zevenjaarlijksch spel van Sint Joris met den Draak een der
kostelijke gebruiken op Limburg's grondgebied hebben te behouden en
te behoeden voor de vaderlandsche folklore.
De
belangstelling voor deze voorstelling is thans zóó
groot dat het bestuur van de Schutterij Sint Joris in overleg met
dhr. v. d. Ven besloten heeft twee voorstellingen te geven en wel
een op Zondag 30 Januari beginnende te 6 uur en een op Maandag 31
Januari beginnende - te 7.30. Dij deze voorstellingen zal dhr. v. d.
Ven persoonlijk in populairen trant de verklarende folkloristische
voordracht geven, terwijl de bekende Arnhemsche pianist dhr. Gerard
Dekker, leerling van Willem Andriessen de prachtige muziek, welke
prof. Julius Röntgen heeft gecomponeerd op deze nationale film
ten gehoore zal brengen. Voor Limburgers zal het oud-Maastrichtsche
lied: "D. haon dee weurd geslago!" zeker de aandacht
trekken, terwijl ook de schoone pastorale bewerking van het
Limburgsche volkslied door muziekliefhebbers zeer zal worden
gewaardeerd. Meer in het bijzonder zij hier ook de aandacht
gevestigd op de prachtige Drakenmarsch, welke Röntgen heeft
gecomponeerd op het oude Drakenliedje en op de composities van den
Limburgschen Cramignon.
Waar
dezen zomer meer dan 10.000 personen uit de omliggende dorpen van
Roermond en Venlo naar Beesel kwamen kijken, is het niet
twijfelachtig of de groote harmoniezaal, plaats biedend aan ruim 600
toeschouwers zal te klein blijken om alle belangstellenden een
plaats te bieden. Door kaartenvoorverkoop aan bekende adressen in
Reuver, Swalmen, Tegelen, Roermond en Venlo heeft men bereids de
noodige maatregelen genomen om belangstellenden, die er vlug bij
zijn de zekerheid te verschaffen van een goed plaats. Extra
autobussen zullen na afloop der voorstellingen rijden naar Roermond.
Venlo en tusschenliggende plaatsen.
De
geheele Nederlandsche pers is uitbundig in haar lof over dit
filmwerk, waarin Limburg or zoo bijzonder treffende wijze
vertegenwoordigd is. Niet minder dan twee van de zes afdeelingen
zijn gewijd aan Limburgsche folklore. De tweede afdeeling laat het
Draaksteken zien en de vijfde verplaatst ons naar Schinnen, waar we
het feest van Martelgaus medemaken. Ook bekende Limburgsche personen
als dhr. Hubert Jansen, Lid van Prov. Staten uit Venray burgemeester
Henri Pyls uit Schinnen e.a. autoriteiten verschijnen op deze
historische film.
De
"Tijd" schreef: "Film en muziek vormen een gave
eenheid, een folkloristisch werk van den eersten rang waarvoor ieder
rechtgeaard Nederlander zich laat interesseeren". Niet minder
enthousiast getuigde de dichter Rernard Verhoeven in het R. K.
Dagblad voor Arnhem: "Van opzet en uitbeelding en technische
uitvoering (dit laatste door de filmfabriek Orion) is de oogstfilm
superieur. Een boeiend en bloeiend werk, dat den ontwerper eert."
Overal
trekt deze film stampvolle zalen en een enthousiast publiek. Uit een
verslag in het Vaderland over de eerste voorstelling te
's-Gravenhage voor een publiek, dat het groote gebouw voor Kunsten
en Wetenschappen geheel vulde, nemen wij hier alleen het zinnetje
over [...]
Het
is voorzeker een aardig denkbeeld om de Limburgsche première
te geven in het Draakstekersdorpje, waar dhr. Schoenmakers als
secretaris van het St. Jorisgilde zeker aan belangstellenden alle
gewenschte inlichtingen zal verschaffen.
[...]
DERDE AFDEELING.
HET ZEVENJAARLIJKSCHE DRAKENFEEST TE BEESEL AAN
DE MAAS.
Als
de oogst binnen is, worden overal op ons boerenland de oogst- of
najaarskermissen gehouden. In de Hummelosche kennisviering zagen wij
reeds hoe tal van handelingen nauw verband hielden met oogst-riten
en ook de tafereelen van de Laag-Keppelsche
en
Beeselsche najaarskermissen, die aangevuld zouden kunnen worden met
vele andere uit landbouw-streken, bevestigen, dat er een zeer innige
samenhang bestaat tusschen najaarskermis en oogstdankfeest. Tot de
vertooningen nu, die aan deze kermissen in de middeleeuwen grooten
luister bijzetten, behoorde van ouds het mythologisch en
folkloristisch zoo merkwaardige "Steekspel van Sint Jorus met
den Draak". Op Pieter Breughel's "Sint Joriskermis"
is het afgebeeld en Albrecht Dürer zag in Antwerpen den groenen
draak aan een rood snoer geleid door Sint Margriet. Bergen-op-Zoom,
Axel en verschillende andere Zuid-Nederlandsche plaatsen kenden hun
draken-omgangen, maar thans moet men er een reis naar het landelijke
dorpje Beesel aan de Maas voor over hebben om eens om de zeven jaar
op Kermismaandag getuige te zijn van "De Kamp van Sint Joris
tegen den Draak" of "De Redding van de Conincks-Dochter",
Daar in 1919 de draak gestoken was, zou dit — der traditie
getrouw — nu ook weer plaats hebben op Kermismaandag 30
Augustus 1926. Duizenden vreemdelingen — men heeft de
menschenmenigte langs de hooge Maasoevers op 11—12.000
personen geschat — waren samengestroomd in het oude "Bieslo
aen die Maese", waar het Draaksteken als een dramatisch
gebeuren heel de bevolking in actie brengt. Veertien dagen te voren
— op Zondagmiddag van "Maria Kruidwijn" (Maria
Kruiden-Wijding — Maria Hemelvaart), dus op den dag, waarop
men in de Maria Hemelvaartprocessie den kroedwisch als een gewijde
oogstmei ronddraagt, werd door het bestuur van de St,
Joris-schutterij de draak uit zijn zevenjarige bewaarplaats te
voorschijn gehaald. De film heeft het moment vereeuwigd, waarop de
schutterskoning, de president, secretaris en penningmeester moeizaam
en met een zekere plechtstatigheid het houten krat, waarin het
teenen geraamte van den draak besloten is, naar buiten dragen. De
oude heer Heidens staat er als de man, die zeven jaren lang den
draak in zijn schuur bewaakt heeft, vriendelijk glimlachend bij te
kijken. Nu schieten ook spoedig de prinses en haar hofdames toe om
met lange lappen stof het skelet te bekleeden en dan is het de taak
van den schilder Henri Thijssen uit Linne — een Beeselaar van
geboorte — om evenals in 1919 het nog maagdelijk-blanke
drakenlichaam te beschilderen met angst-wekkende zwart-witte
schubben. Als dan de zeer venijnig-groen geschilderde draken-kop
opgezet is, zien we op de film den drakendrager zich steken in zijn
geklauwde fel-beschilderde drakenbroek, om daarna met behulp van
vele helpende handen in het draken-lichaam te kruipen, dat nu het
ontvangen leven demonstreerend in een sulfer- en vlammenspuwenden
adem, onheildreigend zijn scherpgepunte vlerken uitspreidt om met
"op-gespannen kaeke" op buit belust te loopen naar een
boschje aan de Maas. [..]
Zie
Neerland's
volksleven in den oogst-tijd » Ven, D.J. van der »
[1926] - Pag. 31 | Delpher
11 februari
1927 BEESEL. — Teruggevonden. — De landbouwer M.
A. alhier
vond
verleden Maandag in de nabijheid van zijn huis, onder een struik een
doos welke sokken en andere gebreide goederen bleek te bevatten. Hij
waarschuwde de politie en toen bleek alles afkomstig van den in den
nacht van Zondag op Maandag bij den winkelier Cr. te Reuver
gepleegden inbraak.
16 februari
1927 BEESEL. — Stierhouderij. — De Stierhouderij
"Volharding"
hield
in de zaal van Mej. Reijnders alhier een vergadering, waarin o.m.
besloten werd terug te komen op het in de vorige vergadering genomen
besluit om een nieuwen stier aan te koopen. Met den stier, waarover
de vereeniging thans beschikt, en over de resultaten waarover men
algemeen zeer tevreden was kan men zich nog best een jaar behelpen.
Bovendien was er overeenstemming bereikt met den tegenwoordigen
stierhouder. Deze was genegen den stier wederom te houden op een
voor de vereeniging veel voordeeliger voorwaarde dan voorheen. Dhr.
G. H. Hendrix verklaarde vanaf 1 Maart a.s. de functie van
secretaris neer te leggen. In zijn plaats werd gekozen dhr. H.
Slabbers als bestuurslid, en dhr. G. Meerts als secretaris.
23 april 1927
St. Laurentiushoeve te Reuver. Notaris Tijssen
te
St. Odiliënberg,
zal
op Donderdag 28 April 1927, des nam. 2 ure, in het café A. H.
Cremers te Reuver, publiek verkoopen: Gemeente Beesel. De flinke
Boerderij genaamd "St. Laurentiushoeve", bewoond door G.
Veltman, hoogst gunstig gelegen nabij het station Reuver, bestaande
in goed onderhouden huizing, groote stallen, schuur, tuin, bouw en
weiland, samen groot 1.30,90 H.A. kad. D. 1806 en 1&07.
Aanvaarding 1 Mei 1927, betaling 1 Aug. 1927. Meerdere inlichtingen
bij den notaris. 4841
BEESEL.
— Raadslid vervallen verklaard.
Ged.
Staten van Limburg hebben het lid van den Raad der gemeente Beesel,
dhr. H. J. H. Litjens, van zijn lidmaatschap vervallen verklaard
wegens middellijke deelneming aan eene aanneming ten behoeve dier
gemeente en wegens levering van materialen, waardoor dat raadslid in
strijd heeft gehandeld met de bepalingen der Gemeentewet.
23 mei 1927
BEESEL. — Diefstallen. — In verband met de alhier
begin
van
het vorige jaar gepleegde winkeldiefstallen is thans te GENNEP
aangehouden en na gedaan onderzoek op last der justitie in het Huis
van Bewaring te ROERMOND opgesloten, de woonwagenbewoonster M. T.
hvr. W. LINNE.
2 juni 1927
(LANGS MAAS, ROER, SWALM EN PEEL).
Sporen
der eerste volkeren tot de Ve eeuw.
We
tellen eenige duizend jaren vóór Christus geboorte: de
ijstijd was voorbij. Als ook het ijs ons Limburgsche land noch van
uit 't Noorden noch uit 't Zuiden was binnengedreven dan was zijne
werking toch ook hier te bespeuren geweest. Vooral de Zuidelijke
gletschers hadden vanaf de Ardennen machtige waterstroomen naar 't
Noorden gezonden, en deze hadden diepe dalgraven geboord, die
tegenwoordig nog door onze gewestelijke wateren, als Maas, Roer en
Swalm doorvloeid worden. Ook groote rotsblokken moeten wel in dien
tijd in ons gebied zijn aangeland. Of nu ijs-stroomen deze op hunne
ruggen verder droegen, of watervloeden ze verder deden tuimelen, dat
alles is een moeilijk te beslissen vraag. Zulke blokken bevinden
zich langs de grenzen tusschen Sittard, Roermond, Meynweg, Venlo.
Den
ijstijd met zijn guur en streng klimaat hadden slechts weinig dieren
en planten getrotseerd. Maar nu ontsproot onder de inmiddels warmere
zonnestralen nieuw leven. De moerassige lage vlakten waren met
rietstengels van manshoogte begroeid, waarin ontelbare zwermen van
watergevogelte nestelden en broedden. De stroomen zelf waren
overrijk aan visschen, op hooger gelegen plaatsen wies veelsoortig
en lang gras, en de heuvelen waren met dicht woudgewas bezet.
De eerste menschen.
Een
voorjaarsdag was aangebroken. Purper vlamde het over de oostelijke
heuvels aan den hemel op. Allengs golfde een vloed van gouden licht
over het dal, en als schitterende lansen drongen de lichtstralen
door den dichten nevel, die over de laagvlakten hing.
De
buffel-os, die met zijn vrouwelijk dier en een kalf onder een
boomgroep lag aan den rand van het moeras, verhief zich en trappelde
met zijn kleine kudde weg om in het dauw-vochtige gras te grazen.
Doch
plotseling hief de oer-os al speurend den machtigen kop in de
hoogte, zoog de lucht door de vochtige neusgaten en sloeg den
scherpen blik de bosschages in. Wat was 't, dat 't kalm grazende
wild zoo onrustig maakte? Was 't de beer, de bruine kasuaris of de
wolf, die listige grijze hond? Neen, het was een geheel onbekende,
vreemde reuk, dien de oostwind aandroeg, niet van beer en wolf, noch
van vos of wilde kat. Verdrietig stampte de buffel-os met zijne
machtige hoeven op den weeken weide-grond en gromde een paar malen
met dreigend gebaar. Daar schalde plots een veelstemmige schreeuw:
achter alle bosschen en boomen steeg hij op, en toen sprongen rondom
bruingele tweebeenige gestalten naar voren. Zij zwaaiden houten
speren en slingerden steenen naar den os en zijn kleine kudde. En
met grimmig gebrul nam hij de vlucht. Doch meer van deze wezens met
hun vreemden reuk sprongen te voorschijn en schreeuwden en zwaaiden
hunne speren. Slechts aan één kant was een open piek.
Daarheen begaf zich de stier, gevolgd door zijn kleine kudde. Maar
terwijl hij nog met geweldige sprongen voortholde, stortte hij
opeens in een diepen kuil, waarover een bedriegelijke dekking van
rijzen, graszoden en mos de opening verborgen hield. En na hem
tuimelde moeder en kalf hals over kop in de groeve.
Nu
sprongen allen toe, de eerste menschen, die in Roer- en Maasland
kwamen. En zij omringden met woest en begeerlijk geschreeuw den
val-kuil en doodden de gevangen dieren na lange marteling, doordat
zij met hunne houten speren hen van alle kanten bepiekten.
Toen
het proces eindelijk voltooid was, lieten zich ettelijke mannen naar
beneden, trokken hunne steenen messen en begonnen den buit te
verdeeien. En vrouwen en kinderen namen de stukken vleesch en
droegen ze verder het woud in, waar onder het beschermend getak der
machtige boomreuzen hun woonstede was. Daar laaide het vuur, gevoed
door hars-rijk hout van grenen en dennen. En zij braadden 't vleesch
en verslonden het met begeerige beten. Ook de beenderen sloegen zij
stuk en slurpten het merg eruit.
Ja,
wilde jagers waren het, die de sporen van het wild volgend, het land
afstroopten. Buffel en beer, wolf en vos sloegen zij neder,
stroopten ze de vellen af en kleedden zich ermee. Uit de
beenderen-splinters maakten zij pijlspitsen en naalden, om hun
armzalige kleeding saam te houden. Metalen waren hun nog onbekend.
Knodsen [knotsen], speren, bogen en pijlen sneden zij uit hout.
Aksen, bijlen en messen, zelfs zagen maakten zij uit harden
vuursteen, die zij in de stroombedden vonden. Zij sloegen de steenen
stuk en zochten uit de schreven de geschikte stukken. Deze slepen
zij dan met groote moeite op andere steenen, tot zij een bijl of mes
met scherpe snede hadden. De bijl klemden zij in de opening of
spleet van een houten staaf, en omwikkelden dit met een dierenpees.
Met eene dusdanige strijdaks vermochten zij boomen te vellen en te
bewerken, ja ze zelfs tot booten uit te hollen. Dien tijd, waarin de
menschen hun gereedschap uit steen plachten te maken, noemt men "het
Steenen Tijdperk".
Zeer
armoedig waren ook de woningen dezer menschen. In heuvelachtige
streken woonden zij in holen. Prof. Stroobant in België
beweert, dat in de heidestreken (Kempen en Nederl. Midden-Limburg)
holbewoners hebben geleefd. Het waren veelal ook woongroeven, die
zij dekten met rijs en plaggen. Weer anderen bouwden eene hut in de
dichte bosschages. Ook sloegen zij uit het gesteente met groote
moeite lichtende vonken, en wanneer na vele pogingen het vuur
eindelijk oplaaide, dan voorzagen zij 't rijkelijk met het in groote
massa aanwezige dorre hout. En hoe rijk achtten zich deze menschen
al met het bezit van vuur! Zij dankten daarvoor hunne goden en
eerden hen met bijzondere brandstapels op hooge heuvelen, den
Aasterberg bij Echt, den Bolenberg bij Beesel, den Donderberg bij
Belfeld, den Drususberg bij Herten, den Gravenberg bij Neer, den
Heesberg bij Sevenum, den Hemelsberg bij Lierop, den Lichtenberg bij
Horst, de Muisberg bij Hunsel, den Reutsberg bij Beegden, den
Woerenberg bij Baexem.
Als
echter de zon in de lente hoog steeg en hare stralen verwarmend de
aarde beschenen, dan vielen zij dronken van geluk ter neder en
dankten en prezen "Alvader", die hen nooit vergat.
Uit
oude tijden verhalen ons wel half vergane en vergeelde boeken in
varkensleder gebonden, oorkonden op perkament met dikke waszegels.
Maar van een steentijd vermeldt noch boek noch oorkonde iets.
Getuigen uit die periode zijn slechts oude steenen gereedschappen,
die ook in Midden-Limburg, als te Susteren, Echt, Montfort,
Posterholt, Vlodrop, Herkenboseh, Melick, Lerop, Linne, Odiliënberg,
Maasbracht, Maasnield, Swalmen en op de vorengenoemde heuvelen door
graven, ploegen en beakkeren aan de oppervlakte kwamen.
Gerh.
Kr.
21 juli 1927
Verdronken.
BEESEL.
Het 12-jarig zoontje van dhr. H. is bij het visschen in een sloot
gevallen en verdronken.
9 augustus
1927 Brand door bliksem.
BEESEL.
Zaterdag middag sloeg de bliksem in de woning van dhr. J. K. Teure.
Spoedig stond de geheele boerderij in brand, die een prooi der
vlammen werd.
2 januari 1928
BEESEL. — Verkeersstremming.
Wegens
bouwvalligheid der brug over de beek in het dorp, moet deze
plotseling vernieuwd worden. Vrijdag bleek dat een groot gedeelte
van het gemetseld boog-gewelf was ingestort. De brug werd toen voor
het verkeer met rij- en voertuigen afgesloten. Voor het doorgaand
verkeer vanuit de richtingen Roermond en Venlo over Beesel,
veroorzaakt zulks groot ongemak. De autobussen van de Nedam-garage
rijden over den Rijksweg tot Bussereind tot in het dorp aan de
Noordzijde der brug. Automobilisten uit de richting Roermond, die
verder dan Beesel moeten, doen goed den Rijksweg te volgen, terwijl
zij, die uit de richting Venlo komen tot in het dorp kunnen komen om
vervolgens over Bussereind den Rijksweg te volgen.
25
jaar pastoor: 3 Maart: Zeereerw. heer J. W. Hendriks, geb. te
Meijel, achtereenvolgens pastoor te Griendtsveen en te Beesel.
Paters
Passionisten. Z. D. H. Mgr. D. J. Theelen, geb. te BEESEL, herdenkt
op 15 Februari het 12½jarig feest zijner wijding tot
bisschop. Mgr. resideert te Roustchouk in Bulgarije.
25-jarig
kloosterfeest: 22 November: Zeereerw. Paters Th. C. Kempkens, geb.
te MONTFORT (L.), professor Theol. te Ophem, Brussel; F. J.
Thijssen, geb. te BEESEL (L.), assistent te Haastrecht; [...]
7 januari 1928
BEESEL-REUVER. — Dienstplicht. — Tot het doen
van aangifte
voor
inschrijving van dienstplichtigen der lichting 1929 uit deze
gemeente, waartoe in het algemeen de in 1909 geboren mannen
behooren, zal extra zitting gehouden worden ten raadhuize te Beesel,
op Maandag 9 dezer, des nam. van half zeven tot zeven uur, en ten
raadhuize te Reuver op Dinsdag 10 dezer, des nam. van zes tot zeven
uur. De aangifte moet geschieden door den dienstplichtigen zelve of
door hunne wettige vertegenwoordigers.
17 januari
1928 Een heel dorp gedupeerd.
OPHEFFING
AUTOBUSDIENST.
BEESEL.
— Met groote teleurstelling vernamen de inwoners, dat de
autobusdienst der Nedam heden Maandag zal worden stopgezet. Ondanks
de pogingen van het gemeentebestuur, van plaatselijke vereenigingen
en protestvergaderingen om het dreigende gevaar in dat Beesel weer
tot zijn vroeger isolement zal worden teruggebracht, af te wenden
zal het gevreesde dus reeds een feit zijn. Onbegrijpelijk is het dat
men zich van die klachten en wenschen niets aantrekt en men een heel
dorp durft dupeeren omdat de Ned. spoorwegen meenen dat de
autobusdienst haar concurrentie aandoet. Vanaf a.s. Maandag kunnen
onze menschen, die op reis moeten, dus weer beginnen met drie
kwartier te voet naar het station te Reuver of te Swalmen te loopen.
Meent men in den Haag dat dit in overeenstemming is met de
begrippen, die er in den tegenwoordigen tijd over het verkeer of de
verkeersmiddelen heerschen. Moeten wij ook hier maar weer in
berusten?
BEESEL-REUVER.
— Hoogtezon. Naar wij vernemen bestaan er plannen om in Reuver
en ook in Beesel een hoogtezon-installatie te krijgen, een in het
belang van de volksgezondheid zeer nuttig instrument en waarover men
reeds lang in onze gemeente de beschikking had moeten hebben. Het is
te hopen dat deze inrichting waarvan het nut door de meeste menschen
nog veel te weinig wordt gekend of gewaardeerd er zeer spoedig zal
komen. Voor de tuberculosebestrijding en ter bestrijding van vele
andere ziekten en kwalen alsmede voor de bestrijding der
kindersterfte is een hoogtezon-installatie van het allergrootste
belang en zal het daarin belegde geld ook voor de gemeenschap, in
den vorm van minder kosten van armenbedeeling in de toekomst
honderdvoudig zijne rente opbrengen.
BEESEL-REUVER.
— Burgerwachten. — De sterkte der burgerwachten in deze
gemeente bedroeg op 1 Januari jl. te Beesel 79 gewapende en 12
ongewapende leden en te Reuver 77 gewapende leden.
17 januari
1928 Wegens sterfgeval boerenknecht gevraagd, zoo spoedig
mogelijk,
liefst
die melken kan en met paard kan omgaan. Adres Jos. Ackermans,
Kuileneindestraat n. 106 Meerssen. 1977
27 januari
1928 Gevraagd een KNECHT die met paarden kan omgaan,
en
met alle boerenwerk op de hoogte is. Jos. Akkermans, Beesel,
Klerkehof. 3007
1 februari
1928 L. H., 58 jaar, landbouwer te Nieuwstadt, die op 6 Juli
1927
als
bestuurder van een vierwielig motorrijtuig op den openbaren weg
onder Kessel, C. Vossen, caféhouder te Beesel, had aangereden
waardoor deze zwaar lichamelijk letsel bekwam en overleden is, werd
door de Rechtbank vrijgesproken, van het hem primair ten laste
gelegde en de Rechtbank verklaarde zich onbevoegd om van het hem
secundair ten laste gelegde kennis te nemen.
De
eisch luidde dertig gulden, subsidiair dertig dagen hechtenis.
Raadsman mr. Janssense advocaat te Roermond.
4 februari
1928 BEESEL-REUVER, — Rupsennesten.
— In
een algemeene bekendmaking vestigt de burgemeester dezer gemeente de
aandacht van eigenaren en gebruikers van tuinen, erven en
boomgaarden op hunne verplichting om, ingevolge het hieromtrent
bepaalde in de algemeene politieverordening dezer gemeente,
jaarlijks, vóór 1 Maart, alle rupsennesten in daarop,
daarin of daarlangs staande heggen, struiken of boomen weg te nemen,
te verzamelen en onmiddellijk te verbranden. Het is dus niet alleen
genoeg als men de rupsennesten uitknipt, doch dienen onmiddellijk
verzameld en verbrand te worden. Gezien het groote belang dat
hieraan verbonden is, wordt verondersteld, dat allen aan hunne
verplichting zullen voldoen. Der politie is opdracht gegeven op
behoorlijke naleving toe te zien.
BEESEL-REUVER.
— Kadaster. — Teneinde teleurstelling te voorkomen wordt
bekend gemaakt, dat de ten raadhuize berustende kadastrale kaarten
en leggers vanaf Vrijdag ter bijwerking naar Roermond zijn
opgezonden.
13 februari
1928 DE AUTOBUSDIENST ROERMOND-VENLO.
Een
demonstratie voor Gedep. Staten.
Midden-Limburg
kan maar noode, neen in het geheel niet berusten in da eenzijdig
georiënteerde beslissing van den Raad van State, die tot gevolg
had dat de Maasdorpen tusschen Roermond en Venlo van een
welvaartsmiddel werden beroofd in den vorm van de opheffing van den
autobusdienst tusschen beide genoemde steden.
Geen
middel laat de betrokken streek onbeproefd, om te behouden wat haar
rechtens dient gelaten te worden.
De
gemeentebesturen hebben geadresseerd, geprotesteerd. Beleefde
brieven hielpen niet.
De
bevolking ging op haar achterste beenen en teekenend is de
verontwaardiging van het anders zoo rustige Beesel, die zich
demonstreerde in de vergadering van de burgerwacht, waar een
verbolgen toon heerschte. [...]
24 maart 1928
BEESEL REUVER. — Raadsvergadering. — De
burgemeester
dezer
gemeente heeft de leden van den gemeenteraad opgeroepen tot het
houden eener openbare vergadering op Maandag 26 dezer, des n.m. 4
ure. ten raadhuize te Beesel. De agenda vermeldt o.m. verpachting
landerijen, waarvan de pacht in 192Ö vervalt, aangaan
geldleenipg ad f20.000, wegverbetering op div. plaatsen, toekenning
voorschotten aan de bijz. lagere scholen, en toekenning van
bouwcredieten. [...]
14 april 1928
BEESEL-REUVER. — Landverpachting. Bij de j.l. vanwege
de
gemeente gehouden publieke verpachting van 34 perceelen bouwland,
gelegen in het Meerlebroek, werd geen der perceelen toegewezen omdat
de pachtprijzen niet hoog genoeg geoordeeld werden.
20 april 1928
DE ZALMRIJKE MAAS.
LINNE.
— Deze week is nabij de stuw alhier wederom een begin gemaakt
met de zalmvangst. De eerste dagen was de vangst bijzonder goed.
Reeds werd een 100-tal dezer edele vischsoort buit gemaakt, te zamen
een gewicht van ruim 2000 pond en een directe verkoopwaarde van ruim
3000 gulden vertegenwoordigend. Deze zalmvangst geschiedt door de
familie Melis uit Beesel, in dienst van dhr. Wijnbelt uit
Woudrinchem, die mede de eerste vangsten bijwoonde.
5 mei 1928
Door een stier aangevallen.
BEESEL.
Bij de Donderdag alhier plaats gehad hebbende hoofd- en
premiekeuring van springstieren, heeft zich een ernstig ongeval
voorgedaan. Toen namelijk de zoon van den landbouwer B. uit
Heythuysen-Maxet, een stier uit den veewagen wilde halen, raakte de
veer los, waarmee het leidsel verbonden was aan den neusring, dien
de stier droeg om hem in bedwang te kunnen houden. De stier maakte
van de hierdoor bekomen vrijheid in zijn bewegingen gebruik om den
geleider onverwachts met de horens tegen den schouder te stooten,
dat hij ineen hoek van den wagen neerviel, waar de stier hem met de
horens bleef bewerken, totdat de getroffene zich met een hand
vastgrijpende aan eender zijwanden van den wagen, oprichtte, waarna
de stier hem op zijn horens nam en uit den wagen wierp. Hevig
bloedend werd hij door de omstaanders opgenomen en in het café
J. Boonen, aan het spoorwegstation alhier, waar de keuring plaats
had, binnengedragen. Onmiddellijk werd de heer J. D. Smits, arts te
Heijthuijsen, telefonisch ontboden, die spoedig ter plaatse
verscheen. Na een langdurig onderzoek van den getroffene
constateerde hij, dat deze het sleutelbeen gebroken had, terwijl 3
ribben waren ingedeukt en het benedenlijf vrij ernstig opengescheurd
was. Nadat de wonden door den geneesheer dichtgemaakt en verbonden
waren, werd de ongelukkige naar de ouderlijke woning overgebracht.
15 februari
1929 BEESEL. — De 25-jarige melkrijder V. van de Coöp.
Stoomzuivelfabriek
uit Swalmen, wonende alhier bij zijn ouders, had Asohwoensdag het
ongeluk van de melkkar af te vallen, waarbij hij blijkbaar met het
hoofd op den grond is terecht gekomen. Toen hij eenigen tijd later
thuis kwam oordeelden de ouders geestelijke en geneeskundige hulp
noodzakelijk. Hij werd dan ook onmiddellijk van de laatste H.
Sacramenten voorzien. Geneeskundige hulp mocht niet meer baten, want
even na den middag gaf hij zijn geest. Men kan zich de ontstel, «nis
der geschokte ouders voorstellen.
28 februari
1929 WEER DE LICHTBAK. Strooper contra wachtmeester.
In
den nacht van 6 op 7 December jl. heeft de fabrieksarbeider A. V.
uit Offenbeek, onder Beesel—Reuver in de heide Reuverbroek met
de lichtbak gestroopt. De wachtmeester M. Erasmus had den strooper
aangehouden en het stroopersgeweer in beslag willen nemen; de
strooper V. had zich daartegen verzet en den maréchaussée
gestompt. De strooper verklaarde thans voor de Rechtbank, dat de
maréchaussée opeens zonder eenige voorafgaande
waarschuwing, het geweer had vastgepakt onder het uiten van
bedreigingen. De zaak werd uitgesteld tot 12 Maart om de
maréchaussée te hooren. Intusschen kreeg de strooper
een scherpe vermaning van den president mr. Coenegracht om 't
stroopen met den lichtbak te laten, de grootste ongelukken kunnen er
uit voortvloeien.
9 maart 1929
BEESEL. — Jonge Boeren. Voor de vereeniging van "Jonge
Boeren"
alhier
hield dhr. Dr. Droesen uit Roermond jl. Donderdag alhier, in de zaal
van Mej. Wed. Reijnders, een interessante spreekbeurt over het
onderwerp: "De Taak en organisatie van de "Jonge Boeren."
Spreker ving zijn rede aan met een schets van de toestanden welke
vóór een goede dertig jaar terug voor den boer
bestonden op het gebied van credietwezen, zuivelbereiding,
voorlichting en ontwikkeling. Op dit gebied is dank zij de
organisatie en wetenschap veel ten gunste der boeren bereikt.
Spreker zette dan ook het groote belang der wetenschap voor den
landbouw en de bestudeering daarvan door de jonge boeren uiteen.
Eveneens den eisch van het zich organiseeren in den tegenwoordigen
tijd maakte spreker met eenige voorbeelden duidelijk. Ook op
zedelijk en maatschappelijk gebied valt er veel te doen ook voor de
jonge boeren. 't Gezegde van den spr. werd met aandacht gevolgd en
bewees met luid applaus de instemming der aanwezigen. 't Dankwoord
van den voorzitter was dan ook welverdiend. Er werden nog eenige
vragen gesteld o.a. voor aardappelteelt, aanleg kunstweiden,
bietenverbouw, etc. waarover nog van gedachten werd gewisseld. Ook
werd nog gewezen op het nut van bescherming van nuttige vogels ter
bestrijding der rupsenlaag, tot welker einde vanwege de vereeniging
nestkastjes verkrijgbaar zullen worden gesteld. Hierna sloot de
voorzitter deze leerrijke vergadering.
28 maart 1929
DE NEDAM-DIENST OPGEHEVEN.
Kleine
oorzaken hebben groote gevolgen.
DE
ZIEKTE VAN EEN HOOFD-AMBTENAAR.
Dezer
dagen is gemeld, dat de Nedam-autobussendienst Roermond—Venlo,
vice versa langs beide Maasoevers, gedwongen is voorloopig zijn
werkzaamheid te staken.
Herhaaldelijk
is met nadruk door ons gewezen op het gevaar van opheffing dezer
verkeerslijn der Maasdorpen tusschen Roermond en Venlo.
De
moeielijkheden zijn bekend: de Ned. Spoorwegen hadden beroep
aangeteekend tegen de door Ged. Staten van Limburg verleende nieuwe
concessie voor den autobussen-dienst Roermond—Venlo, door de
Nedam-garage te Roermond.
Gedurende
negen maanden was dus het voortbestaan van den autobussen-dienst al
niet geheel zeker meer, zoolang geen uitspraak was gevallen in deze.
Op
31 October 1.1. is het beroep voor den Raad van State behandeld:
gemeentebesturen, volksgroepeeringen (landbouwbond e.d.), de Kamers
van Koophandel te Roermond en Venlo pleitten met klem van redenen
voor het behoud van den bussendienst als een verkeersbelang voor de
geheele streek tusschen Roermond en Venlo.
Na
de behandeling van het beroep voor den Raad van State hoorde men
niets meer van het geheele geval. De autobussen-dienst bleef
voortsukkelen in zijn onzeker bestaan, dat geen aanschaffing van
nieuw materiaal gedoogde.
Thans,
bijna vijf maanden later, ziet de exploitant van den Nedam-dienst
zich gedwongen stop te zetten: in dien tijd zijn groote sommen gelds
uitgegeven aan het onderhoud der versleten bussen: iederen dag waren
het aanzienlijke bedragen. Een paar chauffeurs en controleurs komen
zonder werk over een paar dagen en dat alleen, omdat van uit den
Haag nog steeds geen beslissing komt.
Waarom?
!... Het advies van den Raad van State gaat via het Departement van
Waterstaat naar de Kroon, welke de uitspraak doet. En van het
Ministerie komt de kwestie blijkbaar niet weg.
Want
toen tusschen 8 en 11 Maart 1.1. door den bond van
bedrijfsautohouders werd geïnformeerd hoe het zat met de
beslissing kreeg men ten antwoord, dat de betrokken hoofdambtenaar
der afd. vervoer en mijnwezen van het Departement van Waterstaat
ziek was, en er dus geen uitsluitsel was te geven.
Veertien
dagen zijn sindsdien verloopen en vanuit den Haag zwijgt men nog
steeds: de betrokken hoofdambtenaar is blijkbaar nog altijd ziek.
Nu,
na vijf maanden is men nog even ver.
De
Nedam-dienst kan het niet langer bolwerken en heft de
autobus-verbinding op. Een 17-tal Maasdorpen raken een gemakkelijke
verbinding kwijt; daarvan zijn er tien, die geen behoorlijke
trein-verbinding hebben, n.l. Maasniel, Beesel, Steyl, Horn,
Buggenum, Haelen, Neer, Kesseleick en Kessel. De gemeente Horn
alleen is per L. T. M. gemakkelijk bereikbaar.
Dat
de dienst in een behoefte voorzag, blijkt wel hieruit, dat in de
normale jaren met de Nedam ongeveer 400 personen per dag werden
vervoerd. Moeten al deze belangen nu maar eenvoudig worden
opgeofferd: kan de geheele behoud-actie van officieele personen en
lichamen, van organisaties maar gewoon genegeerd worden ?...
Vijf
maanden lang is dat nu gebeurd! Misschien kan de ziekte van den
betrokken hoofdambtenaar voor de laatste halve maand als excuus
dienen. Maar het werkloos-zijn tijdens de andere vier maanden niet!
Wanneer de hoofdambtenaar nu eens per ongeluk dood ging? Bleef het
beroep dan in portefeuille?...
Alhoewel
de heillooze, mogelijke gevolgen van het talmen in den Haag tot een
feit zijn geworden, n.l. opheffing van den dienst, is de zaak niet
afgeloopen.
Dan
zou het Departement de blaam op zich laden door zijn houding aan de
beschuldiging, dat men de zaak wil laten doodbloeden, meer vasten
grond te hebben gegeven.
Ten
respecte van de meening en de vaste overtuiging der bij deze
autobuskwestie betrokken en belanghebbende bevolking, moet open en
klaar de beslissing komen! En spoedig!...
Wellicht
dat dàn de mogelijkheid nog bestaat, dat de autobusdienst
hervat kan worden.
19 april 1929
[...] Er wordt met algemeene stemmen besloten een gedeelte
van
het gemeentebosch in 't Meerlebroek groot ca. 7 H.A. te verkoopen.
Zoo mogelijk de helft in het najaar 1930. Er zal overwegen worden op
den vrijkomenden ondergrond weiland aan te leggen voor een
gemeenteweide. Exploitatie door de gemeente wordt evenwel om
verschillende redenen afgeraden en in overweging gegeven den grond
aan den Boerenbond of aan de Stierhouderij te dien einde te
verpachten. B. en W. zullen terzake met een voorstel tot den Raad
komen.
Van
de pl.m. 20 H.A. bouw- en weiland in de vorige vergadering a f45.-
per H.A. aan den heer Felix Bongers te Beesel verpacht wordt met
goedvinden van dezen circa 5½ H.A. verpacht aan den Heer G.
Veldman te Reuver en het vorig raad besluit in verband hiermede
gewijzigd.
Het
gras aan de losplaats te Beesel zal publiek worden verpacht.
Het
gemeente-verslag over 1928 wordt aangeboden. [...]
20 april 1929
SCHADE DOOR OPSTUWING. Eigenaren van landerijen
in
de gemeenten BELFELD, BEESEL, SWALMEN, MAASNIEL, ROERMOND, KESSEL,
NEER EN BUGGENUM, die meenen schade te hebben geleden aan hunne
gronden door opstuwing van de Maas, worden verzocht daarvan
schriftelijk opgave te doen aan den Hoofdingenieur van den
Rijkswaterstaat te Roermond, Willem II Singel 4.
Formulieren
voor opgaven zijn kosteloos te bekomen op de gemeente-secretarieën
en op het kantoor der Maaskanalisatie.
24 april 1929
VOETBAL-GENOT? 'n Punt of de knooke!
De
Rechtbank te Roermond had Dinsdag haar oordeel te vellen over
voetbal-aangelegenheden in het land van BEESEL-REUVER; dit naar
aanleg ding van een vervolging terzake mishandeling, zwaar
lichamelijk letsel ten gevolge hebbende, tegen den voetballer P. L.
Sch. uit KESSEL, die op een voetbalveld te Beesel een tegenstander
zoodanig zou getrapt hebben, dat kuit- en scheenbeen beide gebroken
werden en de jongeman in kwestie, zekere T. uit Kessel er ruim vier
weken mooi mee was geweest.
Voor
de politie waren na het gebeurde door verschillende voetballers, die
op het veld aanwezig waren, verklaringen afgelegd, waaruit duidelijk
bleek, dat de verdachte Sch. op zijn tegenpartij inloopende, deze
had getrapt, toen de bal reeds was doorgegeven. En verder was door
verschillenden bij de politie getuigd, dat vanuit het publiek rondom
het Beeselsche voetbalveld de thuisspelende club herhaaldelijk op
eigenaardige wijze was aangemoedigd om den 1-—0 achterstand in
te halen; dat even voordat het bovenvermelde incident plaats vond,
was geroepen: "Peerke, laat dig neet kiste! punt of de knooke",
welke hartelijke aanmoediging dan voor den verdachte Sch. bleek
bestemd te zijn geweest.
De
rechters konden blijkbaar zich niet voldoende verplaatsen in de
mentaliteit van voetballers, zooals er tegenwoordig helaas maar al
te vaak op de "sport"velden rondwaren: want hun verbazing
was ongeveinsd, toen zij vernamen, dat de sportieve lust bij den
gewonden T. door de beenbreuk geenszins gebroken was.
En
evenmin schenen de heeren achter de groene tafel te kunnen
begrijpen, dat de getuigen allen — behalve de scheidsrechter!!
— van oordeel waren, dat er slechts "forsch"
gespeeld wordt.
Wij
noemen dat ruw, merkte een der rechters op, hetgeen de aanwezige
sportslui in een veelbeteekend stilzwijgen deden terugtrekken. Dat
de verd. Sch. tevoren reeds twee spelers der tegenpartij tegen den
grond had geloopen, bleek iets onbeteekenends: dat had men in het
vuur van den sportieven strijd blijkbaar niet opgemerkt; de
scheidsrechter herinnerde zich niet of hij gefloten had, en de
spelers hadden niets gehoord! "Neen, dat begrijp ik, dat merk
je zoo niet, hè?!... ironiseerde de Officier van Justitie,
welke spotternij den kwieken sporthelden blijkbaar ontging.
De
getuigenis van den scheidsrechter E. uit Venlo, die dezen wedstrijd
had geleid, was intusschen merkwaardig. Op de vraag, of er ruw
gespeeld was, en of hij geen termen aanwezig achtte om het spel te
staken, antwoordde deze voetbal-referer, dat de wedstrijd gewoon
forsch was: op die dorpen gaat het altijd zoo, 't zijn allemaal
forsche lui.
De
belangstellende opmerking, van mr. Ritter dat deze scheidsrechter
misschien bang was voor een zelfde pak rammel, waarop eenigen tijd
te voren een college van hem was onthaald te Beesel, werd door den
scheidsrechter-getuige handig omzeild.
Waar
intusschen door getuigenverklaringen ter terechtzitting in
tegenstelling met het proces-verbaal niet was komen vast te staan,
dat de voetballer Sch. naar zijn tegenstander had geschopt in den
historischen voetbalwedstrijd Beesel—Kessel (nog niet eens een
kampioenswedstrijd) vroeg het O.M. vrijspraak, echter niet voordat
mr. Rieter hartgrondig zijn meening over deze voetbal
geschiedenissen had gelucht: spr. kon zich met recht niet begrijpen
wat voor geweldig belangrijks er achter zou zitten, of Beesel of
Kessel gewonnen had, en of de maatschappij veel belang zou hebben
gehad bij het verloop van zulk een wedstrijd!
Over
veertien dagen zal de Rechtbank, waarin thans mr. Marres voor het
eerst zitting had, vonnis vellen.
30 april 1929
BEESEL-REUVER. — Veerpontverpachting.
— Het
Gemeentebestuur heeft zich nogmaals met een adres tot den Minister
van Waterstaat gewend om zoo spoedig mogelijk voorzieningen te
willen treffen, op de verkeersstremming bij het veer te Kessel,
tengevolge van de opstuwing dar Maas, opgeheven wordt. Voor alle
rij- en voertuigen die op het oogenblik het bedoelde veer moeten
passeeren is de toestand meer dan treurig.
12 september
1929 SCHADEVERGOEDING
De
Eerste Nederl. Onderl. Paarden en Veeverz.-Maatschappij van 1900 te
Den Haag Dir. Folkerts Laurens Reaelstraat 1 vergoedde op spoedige
en coulante wijze de schade van mijn onteigend paard door
tusschenkomst van haren H. Vertegenw. den Heer M. Queis, Molenweg 5
te Leijenbroek. Over deze afwikkeling ben ik uiterst tevreden. Ieder
Paarden en Veehouder raad ik sterk aan dit zware risico aan deze
solide Maatij. over te dragen.
Beesel,
7 September 1929 J. Akkermans, Landbouwer
Hemelvuur
in ’t openveld is gratis inbegrepen.
14 september
1929 BEESEL — Not. v. Koolwijk 16 Sept. 2 uur ten
huize van
dhr.
J. Akkermans, landbouwgereedschappen, paardentuig, maaimachine, enz.
28
november 1929
Aspergeplanten.
Te
koop circa 7000 extra zware aspergeplanten (Roem van Brunswijk). Te
bevragen H. Thijssen-Akkermans, Beesel. 2457
4 oktober 1930
Gevraagd een knecht voor dadelijk.
Zich
te melden: Reinders, Beesel Klerkenhof. 5499
5 maart 1935
[...] 3e Nellie van Klerkenhof, 711105, geb. 1 Juli;
M.
Nella de Roobeek K 11946; eig. J. Reinders, Klerkenhof, Rijkel 43,
Beesel.
30 november
1935 Te koop bij inschrijving: ca. 178 Canadaboomen omtrek
tot
1.70 Meter te wassen staande op het Broekske Heijthuijsen. 11
CANADABOOMEN omtrek tot 2.80 Meter te wassen staande op Klerkenhof
Beesel. Inschrijving te sturen voor 6 December bij Peeters, St.
Elisabeth Nunhem alwaar verdere inlichtingen zijn te bekomen. 4231
12 november
1940 GEMEENTE BEESEL: weiland, Rijkelsebergen, G no. 1160,
gr.
44.05 aren; in pacht bij Jos. Reijnders, Klerkenhof. Betaling: 15
Januari 1941.
Krantenartikelen
over Vilgert, Schandelo en Velden van 1900 tot 1955
29 juni 1878
Op Dinsdag den 2 Juli 1878, ten verzoeke van Gerard
Nelissen
te Velden op
Klein Hovens:
6 perceelen a 32
aren Rogge.
2 id.
id. Haver.
Vergadering aan
het huis 's morgens ten 8 ure.
1 juni 1895
Uit de hand te pachten: eene Bouwhoeve genaamd Kerkehof
gelegen te
Velden op de Velgert, groot 4 hect. 24 aren bouwen weiland,
desverkiezend meer. Te aanvaarden: de gebouwen half Mei, het weiland
1. Januari, tuin en voorland 1. Maart, de bouwlanden stoppelbloot na
den oogst, alles in 1896. Te bevragen bij het Kerkbestuur van
Velden.
21 mei 1904
Es wird zur allgemeinen Kenntniss
gebracht, dass:
1.
der Königliche Major im Königlichen Bayerischen II.
Ulanenregiment "König", Hanns Philipp Albrecht Hubert
Freiherr von Gumppenberg, wohnhaft in Ansbach,
Kreis Mittelfranken, Königreich Bayern, Sohn des Königlichen
Bayerischen Generalleutnants z. d. Max Freiherrn von Gumppenberg und
dessen Ehefrau Therese geborenen Freiin von Brandt, beide wohnhaft
in München, Kreis Oberbayern, Eönigreieh Bayern;
2.
die Hedwig Wilhelmina Maria Huberta Gräfin Wolff-Metternich,
ohne Beruf, wohnhaft in Arcen-Velden,
niederländische Provinz Limburg, Tochter des Niederländischen
Kammerherrn und Gutsbesitzers Max Paul Maria Hubert Graf
Wolff-Metterich und dessen Ehefrau Mathilde Juliette Maria
Antoniette geborenen Gräfin Marchant d'Ansenbourg, beide
wohnhaft in Arcen-Velden, niederl. Provinz Limburg, die Ehe mit
einander eingehen wollen.
Die
Bekanntmachung des Aufgebots hat in den Gemeinden Ansbach und
Arcen-Velden in Holland zu geschehen.
Ansbach,
am 17. Mai 1904.
Der
Standesbeamte,
ANAN,
i.
V.
28 juli 1904
Arcen. Dinsdag werd hier het huwelijk voltrokken
tusschen de
rijksgravin Hedwig Wolff Metternich zur Gracht en den majoor en
kamerheer in Beierschen dienst rijksvrijheer Hanns von
Gumppenberg-Pöttmes-Oberbrennberg. De bruid is de dochter van
den alhier wonenden graaf Wolff Metternich zur Grach; de bruidegom
is de zoon van den Beierischen luit.-generaal op non-activiteit
Rijksvrijheer Max von Gumppenberg-Pöttmes-Oberbrennberg.
Arcen was weer
in feestdos, groen en bloemen, prachtige eerebogen langs den
geheelen weg, dien de stoet moest passeeren; van elk huis wapperde
de driekleur. Talrijke toeschouwers waren er heen gestroomd.
Klokslag elven klonken de eerste tonen der muziek. Voorafgegaan door
het gilde en de schutterij, daarna de Harmonie van Arcen, traden de
bruigom en een schitterende stoet van ongeveer vijftig paren de
slotpoort uit om zich kerkwaarts te begeven; prachtige toiletten,
schitterende Duitsche uniformen, en ten slotte de bruid,
voorafgegaan door bruidjes. De nieuwbenoemde pastoor, de weleerw.
heer Schram, sprak het bruidspaar en de gasten in eene keurige
Duitsche rede toe. Precies te twaalf uur was de kerkelijke
plechtigheid afgeloopen, wat door een schot aangekondigd werd. De
stoet zette zich in dezelfde orde weer in beweging, maar nu volgde
het bruidspaar onmiddellijk achter de muziek. Van alle kanten
klonken de vreugdeschoten. Op het binnenplein van het kasteel stond
nu een gedeelte van de stafmuziek van het 2e reg. huzaren opgesteld,
die bij het binnentreden van den stoet jubeltonen deed hooren.
[Zie
ook De
Marchant et d'Ansembourg - Wikipedia]
3 augustus
1907 Publieke Verpachting voor den termijn van 6 jaren
van de
Landerijen, toebehoorende aan de R. C. Kerkfabriek van den H.
Andreas te VELDEN, op den 16. Augustus des namiddags ten 3 ure, in
de café van den heer Ger. Verbeek in het dorp.
Onmiddellijk
daarna: Publieke Verpachting, eveneens voor den termijn v. 6 jaren,
van den zoogenaamden Kerkenhof, bestaande uit een huis, stal en
schuur, tuin, boomgaard, bouwland, weiland en hakhout, groot drie
hectaren, een en zeventig aren, zes en dertig centiaren, alsmede een
hectare, zes aren en vier en tachtig centiaren bouwland.
Voorwaarden
worden nader bekend gemaakt bij de verpachting.
Het R. C.
parochiaal Kerkbestuur. VELDEN.
Publieke
Verpachting voor den termijn van 6 jaren, van de Landerijen,
toebehoorende aan de R. C. parochiale Armfabriek van den 0.
Andreas te VELDEN, op denzelfden dag als bovenvermelde verpachting.
31
juli 1913 Te koop een goed Maalkalf, zwartbont, bij M.
GEELEN,
2180
Velden,
Velgart
23 mei 1914
Griendtsveen. Op Hemelvaartsdag bracht het zangkoor
van
't Missiehuis van Steijl ons dorp een bezoek. Door onzen Z. E. heer
Pastoor Joosten werden zij op de gulste wijze ontvangen. Onder het
Lof voerde het de gewijde zangen op artistieke wijze uit. Verder
werd de dag genoegelijk doorgebracht en gelooven wij wel, dat de
zangers hoogst voldaan huiswaarts keerden.
8 december
1924 Venlo Deurwaarder RENKIEN te Venlo zal
op
Dinsdag den 9 December 1924 des nam. te 2 uur ten huize van den heer
W. Derix te Velden—Velgart in het openbaar à contant
verkoopen: Een mooi zoo goed als nieuw slaapkamer-ameublement
bestaande uit: 2-persoonsledikant, dubbele kleerkast met laden en
spiegels waschcommode met opstand en spiegel, nachtkastje. Een idem
keukenameublement best. uit tafel, 6 stoelen, kast met opstand;
rieten vloerkleed. Verder: een heerenrijwiel en damesrijwiel, in
goeden staat; Gramaphoon met kast en 45 Gramaphoonplaten.
Keukengerief
en huishoudelijke artikelen als: complete koffie- en theeserviezen,
fornuis, prachtige lamp met leuchters, specerijenstel, azijnstel,
bier- en likeurkaraffen met glaasjes, ketels, potten, pannen,
pendule's, vazen, schoorsteenfournituren, beelden, schilderijen,
porcelein- en aardewerk enz. Alles te zien ½ uur vóór
den verkoop. Geen opgeld.
4 januari 1926
[...] Eens zelfs was dit zóó erg, dat,
ondanks
de bekwame commando's en de stevige knuisten der roeiers, het niet
kon voorkomen worden, dat de Kon. sloep en de boot, waarin de beide
H. H. Wethouders en wij hadden plaats genomen, op vrij stevige wijze
met elkander in botsing kwamen. Door het kordate werk der mariniers
liep alles goed af. H. M. toonde bij de botsing geen oogenblik
angst, doch lachte toen alles weer op z'n pootjes terecht was
gekomen. Men vermeedt voortaan echter de gevaarlijke plaatsen,
vooral die, waar gevaar bestond, dat men door den stroom naar de
rivier zou worden gedreven, wat natuurlijk buitengewoon gevaarlijk
zou zijn geweest. Geroeid werd tot de Mariastraat, waarin ook een
bezoek werd gebracht. Vervolgens terug naar de Molenstraat, doch de
stroom was zoo sterk, dat men besloot maar weer terug te keeren.
Toen werd nog geroeid door de Groote Beekstraat, waarna weer aan den
Steiger werd aangelegd. In auto's werd vervolgens de tocht
voortgezet. Een kijkje werd genomen op de Parade, Gasplein,
Villapark en omliggende straten, waarna even een uitvlucht werd
gemaakt naar het dorp Velden.
Te Velden.
Te
Velden is de toestand buitengewoon ernstig. Even voorbij het dorp is
de groote rijksweg geheel overstroomd evenals al de omringende
landerijen. Talrijke boerderijen, waarin veel vee staat opgeborgen,
staan rondom en bijna tot het dak toe in 't water. En het is bijna
onmogelijk het vee te bereiken. De bekende hengst "Landman"
stond Zaterdagmiddag tot den hals in het water, doch is — naar
wij vernemen — des nachts met veel moeite uit zijn netelige
positie gered. Het kan wel moeilijk anders, of hier is veel vee
omgekomen. Zekerheid is echter nog niet te krijgen. Een der booten
der firma Janssen, heeft met een pont pogingen gedaan om vee te
redden en heeft — naar wij hoorden — verdienstelijk werk
gedaan. Te 10½ uur was men weer aan het station te Venlo
terug. Direct daarna vertrok het Kon. Echtpaar naar Roermond.
11 januari
1926 UIT ARCEN.
Het
water is gelukkig weer grootendeels verdwenen. Zaterdagmorgen kwamen
de hoeren Commissaris der Koningin, de Hoofd-ingenieur van den
Waterstaat en enkele andere autoriteiten den toestand in oogenschouw
nemen. Bij het opruimingswerk komt heel wat kijken. Overal zijn
goederen aangedreven. Bij den Schanstoren is een houten keet met
asphaltdak en 4 luchtkokers aangespoeld, waarschijnlijk afkomstig
uit Grubbenvorst; in de Genelsen werden een wanmolen en eene houten
landrol gevonden.
Opmerkelijk
was het dat de op het kerkhof in de openlucht gelegerde varkens van
verschillende boeren bij het slapen gaan, van iederen eigenaar,
koppelsgewijze bij elkander bleven.
Melk,
brood, drinkwater en petroleum werden van uit het kerkhof
verscheept, hetgeen, dank zij het groote aantal booten (13 stuks
plus enkele platboomde booten en vlotten) waarover men hier kon
beschikken, vrij geregeld ging. De tram rijdt weer, de post en de
kranten worden weer geregeld besteld, zoodat het leven langzaam weer
zijn gewonen gang gaat nemen.
Het
verkeer door de Maasstraat is op het oogenblik nog niet mogelijk,
zodat auto's en andere voertuigen door de Kerkstraat en over den
Boerenweg moeten rijden, daar ook in het Groene Wegske een groot gat
is gedreven. Naar verluidt is er in den Rijksweg nabij kilometerpaal
90 een groot gat gespoeld, zoodat Wellerlooi niet meer te bereiken
is.
Van
Gemeentewege zijn publicaties aangeplakt met raadgevingen voor de
bevolking, in acht te nemen bij het schoonmaken der huizen.
10 februari
1928 ZILVEREN JUBILEUM DER BOERENLEENBANK TE VELDEN.
De
president geridderd.
Woensdag
vierde de Boerenleenbank haar 25-jarig jubilé. Heel het dorp
had zich opge+maakt om dien dag dezen gewichtigen mijlpaal in het
bestaan der instelling mee te vieren. Van bijna ieder huis in het
dorp wapperde de nationale driekleur en al deed 's middags het
regenweer ook eenige afbreuk aan het feest in de feestzaal bleef de
stemming den geheelen dag best.
De
dag begon als vroeg: 's Morgens om half acht had in de parochiekerk
eene H. Mis voor de afgestorvenen van de Boerenleenbank plaats.
Daarna werd om half tien een plechtige Hoogmis voor bestuur en leden
der feestvierende vereeniging opgedragen door pastoor Joosten, den
geestelijk adviseur der instelling. [...]
25 februari
1928 VELDEN. Coöp. Stoomzuivelfabriek.
— Op
de Dinsdag j.l. gehouden propagandavergadering, opgeroepen door het
bestuur der Coöp. Stoomzuivelfabriek "St. Isidorus",
was veel belangstelling. Na een inleidend woord van den voorzitter,
nam de heer Oijen, inspecteur Z. N. Z. het woord, die het den
aanwezigen duidelijk maakte, dat samenwerking noodig is, daar de
tegenwoordige toestand onhoudbaar is, en hun op de gevolgen wees,
indien niet tot den bouw van een nieuwe fabriek werd overgegaan. Na
stemming bleek dat ruim 90 pct. der aanwezigen voorstanders waren.
Voorts werd een commissie benoemd, die tot taak heeft te Velden,
Lomm en Arcen nieuwe leden aan te werven, en verdere plannen voor te
bereiden. Hierna sloot de voorzitter de vergadering met den
christelijken groet.
17 april 1928
Plechtige eerste H. Mis te Velden.
DE
EERW. HEER F. PEETERS. Zondag droeg een van Velden's zonen, de eerw.
heer F. Peeters, in de parochiekerk zijn eerste H Mis op. Was
aanvankelijk de plechtigheid op Paschen bepaald, door
familieomstandigheden werd deze tot Beloken Paschen uitgesteld. Het
zonnetje scheen evenwel niet te willen medewerken om de feestvreugde
te verhoogen, maar bleef gedurende den geheelen dag achter 'n
triestige kille sneeuwlucht verscholen. Maar niettegenstaan dit, had
de buurt zich niet onbetuigd gelaten en had de Kerkstraat een
feestelijk aanzien gegeven. Voor het ouderlijk huis van den nieuw
gewijden Priester en voor de kerk prijkten een paar mooie eerebogen.
De geheele straat was keurig afgezet met groen, bloemen en
guirlandes. Van alle huizen in de Kerkstraat wapperden de vlaggen.
Te circa 10 uur werd te neomist aan zijn woning afgehaald en onder
de vroolijke tonen der fanfare kerkwaarts geleid. Door het zangkoor
werd op verdienstelijke wijze de Alissa St. Caroli Borromei
gezongen. Als diaken en subdiaken fung. de zeereerw. heer Pastoor
Joosten en de wel.eerw. heer kapelaan Vervoort. Door den eerw. heer
Pastoor werd de neomist toegesproken en dé geloovigen gewezen
op de groote eer welke een priester toekwam, als bemiddelaar
tusschen God en de parochianen. Na beëindiging van den H.
Dienst werd hij weer door de Fanfare huiswaarts gevoerd. Des avonds
toen de Kerkstraat sierlijk met lampions verlicht was werd hem nog
een serenade gebracht door de fanfare waarbij een der bestuursleden
een toespraak hield. De eerw. heer Peeters dankte allen voor hun
belangstelling op deze voor hem onvergetelijken dag getoond.
19 september
1928 ARCEN. Bouwvergunningen.
— Door
B. en W. dezer gemeente werd aan den heer W. Derix te Velden
vergunning verleend tot het bouwen van een woonhuis op de Velgart en
aan den heer K. Nuchelmans te Thorn tot het bouwen van eene woning
met café, stalling en werkplaats te Arcen nabij den Boerenweg
aldaar.
13 november
1928 ELECTRIFICATIE VAN VELDEN
PLANNEN
VOOR BOUW EN AANLEG.
Het
voordeel. Gelegenheid tot inschrijving.
Vrijdagavond
had in zaal Janssen te Velden de goed bezochte vergadering plaats
van de Stroomverkoopmaatschappij met de ingezetenen teneinde de
electrificatie van Velden nader te bespreken. De Ed. Achtb. heer
Burgemeester Gubbels opende de vergadering te circa 7 uur en heette
allen welkom. Hierna gaf hij het woord aan dhr. van Venetiën,
die namens de Stroomverkoop Mij. de ingezetenen van Velden zou
inlichten, omtrent het doel en de wijze, waarop Velden zou worden
geëlectrifieerd en de kosten hieraan verbonden. Spreker begon
zijn goed opgezette rede met een uitvoerig overzicht te geven van de
voorbereidende werkzaamheden die noodig waren om 't electrisch net
bedrijfsklaar te maken. Het eerste werk was de aanleg van een
hoogspanningskabel, die via Blerick—Grubbenvorst door de Maas
naar Velden gelegd zou worden. Dan dient er in de kom van het dorp
een transformatorhuisje gebouwd te worden, waar de stroom, van hooge
stroom in lage stroom omgezet wordt en door een laagspanningsnet of
verdeelnet naar de diverse perceelen zal gevoerd worden, die van het
electrisch licht gebruik wenschen te maken. Het laagspanningsnet
gereed zijnde, gaat men over tot de aanleg van huisaansluitingen of
dienstleidingen. Krachtens de gesloten overeenkomst der
Stroomverkoopmaatschappij met de gemeente Arcen en Velden, zal door
de Mij. in ieder perceel dat aangesloten wenscht te worden een
gratis huisinstallatie met 2 lichtpunten en stopcontact aangelegd
worden, mits de afstand van 't verdeelnet tot aan het perceel niet
meer dan 20 Meter bedraagt en de leiding in 't perceel niet meer dan
8 Meter bedraagt. Bij overschrijding van dit maximum moeten de
aangeslotenen de meerdere kosten zelf bekostigen.
Volgens
overeenkomst zou de K. W. op 35 ct. gesteld worden en de meterhuur
op 40 ct. per maand; dit laatste bij een maximum van 20 lampen.
Vervolgens ging spreker over tot het bespreken van het nut en het
gebruik van de electriciteit en electrische kracht in het
landbouwbedrijf op het gebied van electromotoren door deze te
drijven met krachtstroom. In landbouwbedrijven, waarbij men met een
electromotor van max. 5 P.K. werkte, werd door de Mij. voor
krachtstroom 18 cent per K. W. gerekend; bij afname van 100, 200,
300 K. W. per jaar zou de prijs respectievelijk bedragen 15, 11 en 8
cent. Ingezetenen, die derhalve dan ook van krachtstroom gebruik
wenschen te maken, dienen dan echter 2 meters aan te leggen, n.l. 1
voor licht, en 1 voor kracht. Voor de laatste zou dan evenwel 80
cent per maand meterhuur berekend worden.
Verder
deelde spr. mede, dat personen, die reeds voor eigen rekening een
huisinstallatie aangelegd hebben, hiervoor van de
Stroomverkoopmaatschappij een vergoeding ontvangen, indien de
installatie althans aan de voorschriften voldoet en deugdelijk is.
Spreker behandelde daarna hoe het electrische net gebouwd werd en
deelde mede, dat in Schandeloo ook een transformatorhuisje zou
gebouwd worden, van waaruit een apart verdeelnet door dit gehucht
werd aangelegd. Spr. hoopte dan ook, dat alle ingezetenen zouden
inschrijven, waarvoor hun op Maandag 12 en Dinsdag 13 November van 2
tot 5 uur bij tramhalte Coppers gelegenheid zou worden gegeven, daar
een beambte der Mij. hiervoor zitting zou houden. Bovendien werd aan
de ingezetenen tot Zaterdag 24 November de tijd gelaten in te
schrijven. Na dien datum heeft men geen recht meer op een gratis
huisinstallatie met 2 lichtpunten en stopcontact. Daarna stelde
spreker de gelegenheid tot het stellen van vragen, waarvan door de
aanwezigen goed gebruik werd gemaakt en door spr. kort en zakelijk
werden beantwoord. Hierna nam Burgemeester Gubbels het woord en
dankte dhr. van Venetiën voor zijn leerzame en interessante
rede en de aanwezigen voor hun groote opkomst en hoopte, dat alle
inwoners van Velden de gelegenheid niet zuilen laten voorbij gaan om
in te schrijven. Hierna werd de vergadering gesloten.
3 december
1928 Verpachting te Velden
Deurwaarder
Renkien te Venlo zal op Woensdag 5 Dec. 1928 des voorm. 11 uur
verzoeke van den Heer J. A. Rieter ten koffiehuize Ant. v. d.
Hombergh, bakker bij de Kerk aldaar, in openbaar verpachten voor 6
of 12 jaar drie perceelen bouwland gelegen "Op de pa" en
"Velgerd" en in het Dorp, in pacht bij J. Clabbers en H.
Lommen.
15 december
1928 BOERDERIJTJE TE SCHANDELO ONDER VELDEN.
NOTARIS
JOOSTEN TE VENLO, zal op Donderdag 3 Januari 1929, nam. 3 uur, in
het Café Nelissen te Schandelo, ten verzoeke van den Heer
Jac. Janssen, publiek verkoopen: Gemeente ARCEN en VELDEN:
Koop
1. Een goed onderhouden en geriefelijk ingericht huis met tuin en
bouwland in Bunnerveld, sectie C no. 7297, groot 43 aren 50 c.a.,
thans in huur bij H. Beurskens.
Koop
2. Bouwland, Bunnerveld, sectie C no. 3319, groot 18 a. 50 c. a.,
naast Fr. Geelen.
Koop
3. Bouwland op de Hoef, sectie C no. 5528 groot 18 a., naast P.
Theelen en H. v. Wylick.
Koop
4. Bouwland en hakhout, Hulschekampen, sectie C no 3231 groot 37 a.
20 c.a., naast H. v. Wylick.
Koop
5. Massa groot 1 H.A. 17 aren 20 c.a.
Aanvaarding:
het huis en de helft van het bouwland bij het huis dadelijk en al
het overige stoppelbloot 1929 Betaaldag der kooppenningen 15 Maart
1928.
17 mei 1929
Bouwvergunning.
— Door
Burg. en Weths. dezer gemeente werden overeenkomstig hun verzoek de
volgende vergunningen verleend:
1.
aan Jean Verspay te Velden tot het bouwen van een woonhuis met
stalling in de Hasselderheide aldaar.
2.
aan J. Clabbers te Velden in opdracht van het R. K. Kerkbestuur St.
Andreas tot het bouwen van een 4e klasseschool aan de Bijz. L.
Jongensschool en eene bewaarschool aldaar.
3.
aan W. Hendrikx uit Venlo tot het bijbouwen van varkensstallen bij
de boerderij Stepkenshof in Genooi.
Drankwet.
— Aan den Heer A. P. Coenders alhier werd door Burg. en Weths.
dezer gemeente in hunne gisteren gehouden vergadering verlof
verleend tot verkoop van alcoholhoudende drank anderen dan sterken
drank, voor gebruik ter plaatse, voor het perceel gelegen te Arcen,
Klein-Vink, wijk A. no. 172.
Advertenties m.b.t. Vilgert, Schandelo, etc.
1930-1939
18
januari 1930 Voor terstond of Paschen gevr. een
boerenknecht,
goed
met paarden kunnende omgaan. J. Theelen-Verhaegh, Velden Schandelo.
6322
Te
koop 100 kg. prima rood klaverzaad en een partij bastlooze haver.
Wed. Engels, Velden, Schandelo. 7143
Te
koop circa 2000 kg. rogge- en haverstroo. 1775 A. Appeldoorn,
Schandelo, Velden.
Te
koop twee guste weikoeien; een gev. 15 Liter melk. 2163 Aerdts
"Maashof", Velden, Schandelo.
Te
koop twee beste roodb. maalkalveren bij P. Aerdts-Theelen,
Schandelo, Velden. 3141
Voor
terstond gevraagd een paardenknecht. H. Lenders-Theelen, Rieterhof,
Schandelo, Velden.
— Aan
den landbouwer F. Engels te Velden-Schandelo werd vergunning tot
verbouw zijner boerderij en varkensstallen en aan den slager A. P.
Groetelaers te Arcen, tot aanbouw zijner woning aan de Kerkstraat
aldaar verleend.
Gevraagd
voor Paschen een knecht, goed met paarden kunn. omgaan. Tevens te k.
gevraagd goed werkpaard, 4—10 jaar oud, middelzw. C. Nelissen,
Velden, Schandelo.
Te
koop jonge guste koe. Wed. Leupers, Velden, Schandelo.
Te
koop best roodb. maalkalf bij J. Theelen-Lenders, Velden, Schandelo.
Aan h. z. adr. gevr. werklui om hakhout uit te rooien.
Te
koop dragende varkens, 14 en 15 wek. dracht. Adr. Wed. Roefs,
Schandelo, 9953 Velden.
Gevraagd
wegens z. d. t. een dienstmeisje op kleine boerderij. Adres H. G.
Keltjens, Velden, Schandelo C 208. [=Herman Keltjens]
ONDERTROUWD:
Henriëtte Coppes en Henri Geurts. Rijksweg Velden, Schandelo.
Huwelijksvoltrekking 10 Juni a.s. te Velden.
ARCEN.
Miltvuur. — Bij den landbouwer [G.] Koopmans, te
Velden-Schandelo, werd bij een stuk vee in zijn weide een geval van
miltvuur geconstateerd. Het kadaver werd onder politietoezicht
verbrand.
Roodbont
maalkalf te koop bij Kinderen de Loeij, Velden, Schandelo.
Gevraagd
een jongen van 15—16 jaar, voor boerenwerk, ook kunnende
melken. 6107 Henri Geurts, Velden, Schandelo C 229a.
Gevraagd
voor Paschen een paardenknecht, van 16 tot 20 jaar; ook genegen om
te melken. Jos. Peeters, Velden.
Te
koop circa 1000 kg. prima vroeg gerooide eerstelingen
pootaardappelen; ook per 100 kg. bij H. van Wijlick-Theelen, Velden,
6928 Schandelo.
Mond-
en klauwzeer. — Bij het vee van den landbouwer L. R. in
Schandelo werd een geval van monden klauwzeer geconstateerd. De
wettelijke waarschuwingsborden werden aan de boerderij aangebracht.
Gevraagd
zoo spoedig mogelijk een boerenknecht, v. 16 tot 20 jr. H. Roefs
Velden, Schandelo.
23
januari 1932 In Schandelo zal een telefoon-aansluiting voor het
publiek worden aangelegd met doorverbinding.
Gevraagd
voor Paschen boerendienstknecht, leeftijd boven 18 jaar. "Rieterhof"
C 221 Velden Schandelo.
Te
koop 2 guste koeien, 18 en 12 Lit. melk; ook te ruilen tegen drag.
koeien, P. Aerdts-Theelen, Schandelo Velden.
Te
koop hoogdragende vaarzen; ook te ruilen voor weibeesten of koeien.
Adr. Maashof Velden, Schandelo.
Te
koop een best WERKPAARD. Adres Wed. A. Roefs Velden, Schandelo.
Gevraagd
boerenjongen, 15 tot 18 jaar, eenigsz. met paarden kunn. omgaan.
Bern. Geurts, Velden, Schandelo
Gevraagd
een boerendienstmeid of een jongen, 14 tot 17 jaar, genegen om te
melken. H. Lenders-Theelen, Rieterhof Schandelo Velden
Te
koop een groote partij Industrie en Roode Staf eetaardappelen en een
partij kroonerwten a 10 ct. p. k.g. J. Theelen, Raaierhof
[Raaierhoeve], Schandelo, Velden.
Te
koop Roode Star aardappelen; tevens Keulsche spekboonen á 30
ct. p. kg. F. Thiesen, Schandelo Velden.
Te
koop een 1e klas prachtig voshengstveulen, oud 3 maanden. H. Geelen,
Velden, Schandelo.
Vertrokken
personen: J. G. Geurts, landbouwer, Kruisstraat 3, naar Arcen en
Velden, Schandelo, C. 221;
Wegens
ziekte voor terst. gevraagd boerendienstmeid of jongen, goed
kunnende melken bij Frans Engels, Velden, Schandelo. 3816
Te
koop gevraagd een KEUKENPOMP. Adres C. Nillesen, Velden Schandelo.
Te
koop een partij Belle de Boscoop en sterappelen Tevens een roodb.
maalkalf. Jac. Theelen, Velden, Schandelo, Raaierhof.
Te
koop 5 beste runderen; ook te ruilen tegen dragend vee. Wed. L.
Leupers, Velden, Schandelo.
Te
koop zwaar voshengstveulen met papieren, 1 jaar oud. H. Geelen,
Schandelo, no. 207, Velden.
Te
koop een partij eerstelingen pootaardappelen. Klasse B, bij J.
Geurts, Velden, Schandelo no. 216.
Te
koop 2 beste weirunderen, een van 2 jaar, gestierd en een van 1
jaar, roodbont, bij H. van Wijlick, Velden, Schandelo.
Gevraagd
een jongen, van 15—18 jaar, voor boerenwerk, zoo spoedig
mogelijk. H. Lommen Velden Schandelo.
Gevraagd
circa 100 zesweeksche pullen W.L., prijsopgaaf aan J. v. Lipzig,
Velden, Schandelo.
Gevraagd
JONGEN van 14 tot 16 jaar, tevens te koop tonneau-wagen met getuig.
G. Koopmans, Velden, Schandelo.
Te koop een roodbont MAALKALF. A. de
Jong, Vilgert, Velden. 2401
Te koop pl.m. 15000 kg. stalmest;
desgew. aan huis bez. W.
Muijres, Vilgert C 254 Velden.
Te koop een Belg. paard en een
dorschmachine m.
staande benzinemotor, 3 p.k. J. Heldens Vilgert 248, Velden.
Te koop een dragend VARKEN, 2e worp,
15 weken dracht. P.
Jansen [ook: Janssen], Vilgert 244, Velden.
Biedt zich aan R. K.
TUINIERSDAGLOONER voor
terstond. Te bevragen bij J. Jeucken, Vilgert C 243 Velden.
KOFFER GRAMOFOON te k. 33 pl. Prijs
f 8.—. Adr. J. Heldens, Vilgert C 256, Velden. 4129
Geregeld te koop beste zware koeien,
versch en voldragen bij
F. v. d. Haghen, Velgart, Velden. 5836 [op C 247]
Te koop 2000 K.G. prima hooi, tevens
tarwestroo. Jacq.
Beeker, Velden, Vilgert.
Te
koop een roodbont MAALKALF, bij Kinderen de Loeij, Velden,
Schandelo.
Te
koop gevraagd een meisjesfiets en een pathéfoon met platen.
A. van Rens Schandelo, Velden.
Gevr.
boerendienstmeisje, van 15—20 jaar, goed kunnende melken. H.
Geurts, Velden, Schandelo C 229a.
Te
koop 3 bijna voldragen varkens, keuze uit vijf; ook te ruil op
weirunderen bij H. v. Wijlick, Schandelo, Velden.
Te
koop een partij tarwestroo a f5 per 1000 kg. G. Koopmans, Schandelo,
Velden.
Bouwvergunning.
— Aan den heer J. Thelen alhier is vergunning verleend tot het
bouwen van een woonhuis met stalling op het perceel sectie C. no.
5381 dezer gemeente, gelegen aan den weg van Hasselt-Velden naar
Schandelo.
Te
koop een hengstveulen, 10 mnd. oud, een best r. b. maalkalf en 15
Kg. spekboonen. H. Geelen, Schandelo 207, Velden.
Gevraagd
een boerenknecht bekwaam in alle werk; te koop een 2-jr.
vosruinpaard P. Geurts, Velden. Schandelo Dieperhof.
Te
koop mangelwortelen en klaverzaad, tevens een 6-cyl. g. onderh.
6-pers. luxe auto aan spotprijs. J. Geurts, winkelier, Velden,
Schandelo no. 216.
Te
koop twee roodbonte weirunderen, 7—15 mnd. oud. G. Nielissen,
Velden, Rijksweg C 109.
Gevraagd
een paar werkers voor rogge en haver te maaien. A. Verheyen, Velden,
Schandelo.
Gevraagd
een JONGEN, 15 tot 20 jaar, om met paarden om te gaan; tev. kunn.
melken. Bern. Geurts, Schandelo, Velden.
B.
z. a. een R.K. jongen van 18 j. voor alle boerenwerk, genegen te
melken en met paard om te gaan. Te bevr. H. Roefs, Schandelo, Velden
Veehouders
van Velden en Omstreken! Vanaf heden zal geregeld een in het
stamboek ingeschreven stier ter dekking beschikbaar worden gesteld.
De stamboekstier Juul 3996 S bekroond op de premiekeuring met ruim
83 punten, dekt a één gulden voor eerste en herdekking
50 cent. Meerdere stieren beschikbaar. H. Soberjé, Schandelo,
Velden.
Doss.
3209. Gebr. Geurts, Velden, Gem. Arcen en Velden, Schandelo C 229,
Dorp C 80. Melkslijterij. Vennooten: H. H. en H. H. Geurts.
Voor
den verkoop van eerelids-kaarten worden benoemd voor 't dorp de
heeren Zeelen en Duijf, voor Schandelo P. Steegh en Thiesen.
Jachtovertreding.
— Door den rijksveldwachter Houtermans en de jachtopziener
Mulders van het Kasteel te Arcen, werd onder de gemeente Arcen en
Velden "Schandelo", op jachtovertreding bekeurd een zekere
V. te Schandelo. V. die op de vlucht ging, werd na enkele honderden
meters geloopen te hebben, ingehaald en ontdaan van een mooi
tweeloops jachtgeweer en een door hem geschoten fazant.
Kerkmeester.
— Door Z. H. Exc. Mgr. dr. Lemmens is alhier benoemd tot
kerkmeester de heer Fr. Engels te Schandelo.
Ten
verzoeke van den heer Antoon van Wylick: 21 roodwilgen, wassende in
de weide vóór het huis van den heer P. Geurts te
Schandelo. Betaling: 1 Mei 1936.
VELDEN
Ernstig ongeval. — Eenige dagen geleden had de heer A. S. te
Schandelo het ongeluk, bij het houtkappen, een houtspaander tegen
zijn oog te krijgen. Ofschoon men er in den beginne geen acht op
sloeg, verërgerde de pijn dermate, dat hij op dokters advies,
onmiddellijk in het ziekenhuis te Venlo moest worden opgenomen. Naar
we vernemen is de toestand nog zorgwekkend.
Ploegwedstrijd
Jonge Boeren. — Deze strijd, waarvoor een groote
belangstelling bestaat, zal gehouden worden op Donderdagmorgen a.s.
om 9 uur op het perceel van den heer Fr. Thiesen te Schandelo.
Hieraan zal deelgenomen worden door de Jonge Boeren uit Arcen, Lomm
en Velden. Als leiders zullen optreden de heeren Ir. Bles en Ir.
Dewez uit Roermond.
— Door
het Gemeentebestuur werd aan dhr. M. Keyzers, bouwkundige te Horst,
vergunning verleend tot het doen verbouwen der boerderij "Rieterhof"
te Velden-Schandelo.
Overtreding.
— Door
de ambtenaren van den opsporingsdienst der Landbouwcrisiswet, werd
bij den landbouwer J. V. te Velden—Schandelo het vleesch van
een pas geslacht varken opgespoord, waarvoor belanghebbende geene
vergunning om te slachten kon vertoonen. Daar hij genegen was het
verschuldigde heffingsgeld te betalen, werd het vleesch alsnog,
aanzegging van proces-verbaal vrijgegeven.
Biedt
zich aan R. K. meisje, oud 18 jaar voor halve dagen of enkele dagen
in de week H. Deenen, Velden, Schandelo. 5671
Te
koop een best roodbont MAALKALF H. Roefs, Schandelo, Velden
Te
koop 2 dragende zeugen, 6 November aan telling en 7 ongemerkte
biggen. Joh. Nijs, Hasselt, Velden.
[...]
aan M. Keyzers, bouwkundige te Horst, tot het bouwen van een
bidkapelletje nabij de boerderij Rieterhof te Velden-Schandelo;
Te
koop een best roodbont MAALKALF bij C. Nellissen, Schandelo, Velden.
Strooper
gevat. — Vrijdagmorgen werd door den Gemeenteveldwachter van
de Ven en den Rijksveldwachter Eijkelenberg gestationneerd te Lottum
na eene sensationeele achtervolging, waarbij ook een auto te pas
kwam, in Schandelen op heeterdaad bij het stroopen gesnapt de
bekende P.G. uit Velden-Schandelo 'n jachtgeweer en een aantal
patronen werden op hem bevonden en in beslag genomen.
Aardappeldiefstal.
— Een dezer dagen kwam de heer B. uit Schandelo tot de
onaangename ontdekking, dat ongewenschte bezoekers getracht hadden,
zich een partij aardappelen die gekuild waren nabij "De Drie
Dennen" toe te eigenen. Hierbij schijnt men echter te zijn
gestoord, daar op eenigen afstand vier zakken werden gevonden, en in
een naburige beek nog een zak met schop was neergeworpen. Ondanks
het teruggevondene worden nog ongeveer 500 pond vermist.
Op
veler verzoek zal het volgende jaar het proefveld in Schandelo
worden aangelegd.
B.
z. a. voor Paschen een R.K. bekwaam boerenknecht bekend met alle
werkzaamh. Te bevr. H. Haegens, Dieperhof, Schandelo, Velden. 9245
Prima
eetaardappelen te kp. Bintjes, Roode Star, Industr. Tev. goedgek.
poters van Bintjes, R. Star en Industr. H. Soberjé, Schandelo
Tel. no. 20, Velden.
Te
koop een beste jonge weikoe en een partij consumptie- en
voederaardappelen. Gebr. Luijpers, Schandelo, Velden.
Te
koop een partij STAL- en KIPPENMEST. H. Beurskens-Leyssen,
Schandelo, Velden.
Gevraagd
een BOERENKNECHT, voor alle werkzaamheden; voor Duitschl.; Pont bij
Geldern. Zich t. m. bij P. Geurts, Schandelo, Velden.
Te
koop een partij Industrie aardappelen, zeer geschikt voor
consumptie. Wed. Theelen, Schandelo, Velden.
Boschbrand
te Velden Donderdagmiddag omstreeks één uur werd een
begin van brand gemeld nabij de bosschen achter den Ossenberg te
Velden. Met vereende krachten, daarbij krachtig geassisteerd door de
brandweer van Schandelo, slaagde men er in, door een tegenvuur,
uitbreiding te voorkomen en had men omstreeks acht uur des avonds
den brand gebluscht. Ondanks dit spoedig ingrijpen zijn echter nog 5
tot 6 H.A. een prooi der vlammen geworden.
Te
koop een vos-ruinpaard een zeug met biggen en ongemerkte biggen. J.
In 't Zandt-Geurts, Schandelo, Velden
Te
koop een partij ongemerkte BIGGEN. Adres G. Koopmans, Schandelo,
Velden.
Te
koop zware ongemerkte biggen; ook te ruilen tegen dragende koe. Joh.
Nijs, Hasselt, Velden.
Te
koop negen zware gemerkte BIGGEN. Stallen vrij van mond- en
klauwzeer bij P. Theelen, Schandelo 200 Velden (bij Venlo.) 6195
Te
koop een Duitsche Herder 10 maanden oud, prima waker; inbraak
onmogelijk. H. Gielen, Schandelo, Velden.
Te
koop een best roodbont MAALKALF. C. Nelissen, Schandelo, Velden.
Afgekeurd
vleesch Door het hoofd van den vleeschkeuringsdienst werden voor de
consumptie afgekeurd: 1 paard, 1 stier en 2 kalveren, resp. van
Venlo, Blerick Boekend en Velden-Schandelo. Deze dieren werden
vervoerd ter destructie naar den destructor te Son.
Deze
week werd door den plaatsvervangenden inspecteur van de
volksgezondheid bij een paard van den landbouwer M. A. te Schandelo
miltvuur geconstateerd. Het cadaver werd onder toezicht van den
Veeartsenijkundigen Dienst eveneens naar den destructor te Son
vervoerd en aldaar geheel vernietigd.
Te
koop een groote partij Industrie consumptie- en voederaardappelen.
Adres Jac. Theelen, Schandelo, Raaierhoeve 215, Velden. 51
Te
koop een GEIT met veel melk en een partij (Vlaamsche reuzen)
konijnen. Adres J. Geurts, Schandelo 216, Velden.
Gevraagd
voor Paschen of Mei een knecht om met paard om te gaan en kunn.
melken. F. Theelen, Schandelo 213, Velden.
Te
koop een best roodbont maalkalf, 3 scheutelingen, compl. paardentuig
en een partij koemest. J. Theelen-Lenders, Schandelo 230, Velden.
Te
kp. 30000 kg. gezonde knolraap, een partij consumptie-aardappelen &
f2.50 per 100 kg. en een paar goud-, zilver-, lady- en
boschfazanten. J. Geurts, Schandelo, Velden.
Te
koop een partij STALMEST. F. Steegh, Schandelo, Velden.
Bij
inschrijving te koop een onteigende beste 6-j. stamboekmerrie,
staande bij Jacob Theelen, Velden, Schandelo. Biljetten inzenden 21
Maart bij den heer P. Engels, Velden. 9549
13
maart 1939 De aanbesteding der melkritten St. Martinus,
had
den volgenden uitslag: Vilgert, W. Geelen; Vorst-dorp, G. Hagens;
Hanick, J. Kusters; Lottum, J. H. Hovens Genooi-Vilgert-Hasselt, M.
H. Peters; Schandelo-Lomm-Arcen, L. Coenders.
Heden overleed tot onze diepe
droefheid, zacht en kalm, na voorzien te zijn van de genademiddelen
van onze Moeder de H. Kerk, onze inniggeliefde vader, behuwdvader,
grootvader en oom, de heer PETER AERDTS Weduwnaar van CORNELIA
HANSSEN in den gezegenden ouderdom van 86 jaar.
De diepbedroefde familie
De lijkdienst en begrafenis zal
plaats hebben op Woensdag 7 Juni te 9 uur in de St. Andreas kerk te
Velden. SCHANDELO, 5 Juni 1939.
Bij inschrijving te koop een
slachtpaard, staande bij H. Lommen, Velden, Schandelo. Biljetten
inleveren voor Donderdag 29 Juni, nam. 6 uur, bij den secretaris der
Onderl. Paardenverzekering te Velden. 2535
Bliksemschade. — Tijdens het
onweer dat hier Zondagavond boven ons dorp heerschte, werd in de
weide van dhr. J. B. te Schandelo een koe door den bliksem getroffen
en op slag gedood. Verzekering dekt de schade.
Plukkers
(sters) gevr., liefst uit Velden-Lomm of omgev. v. te plukken in
Schandelo. Goed loon. Aanm. a.s. Zondag v. 11-12 uur bij Aarts
"Maassenhof", Schandelo of Stalberg 129, Venlo, 3223
Te
koop een vette KOE, een vet KALF en een vette zeug. Frans Thiesen,
Schandelo no. 233, Velden.
Te
koop een ZEUG met 8 biggen, eerste worp. Adres: In 't Zandt-Geurts,
Schandelo Velden. 4516
Weg.
omstandigheden gevr. voor 1 Nov. een boerendienst meid, zelfst. k.
werken en koken; a. hetz. adr. Wilobo zaai tarwe te koop. Adres P.
v. d. Haeghen, Schandelo C 211, Velden.
Te
koop twee beste roodbonte MAALKALVEREN. Wed. Theelen, Schandelo 218
Velden.
Te
koop CAFE met mooien tuin in schitterende omgev., gelegen te Arcen,
Lingsfort 146 A. Te bez.: elken dag. 3875
Gevraagd
een JONGEN van 15 tot 17 jaar, voor boeren- en tuinierswerk. Zich te
melden bij A. Basten, Arcen, Lingsfort.
Grensverkeer.
— Ten behoeve der paarden, welke in voortdurend grensverkeer
worden gebezigd, zal door den Duitschen veearts eene herkeuring
worden gehouden op Maandag den 27 September [1937] a.s. nabij het
grenskantoor Lingsfort om 10 uur (Duitsche tijd) v.m. De hiervoor
benoodigde bescheiden zijn ter gemeentesecretarie verkrijgbaar.
Voorradig:
1e nab. Zaaihaver, Gouden Regen, 1e nab. Gerst Kenia, 1e nab.
Zomerrogge, Zoete Lupinen en Pootmais. Maken verder bekend, dat wij
met de stroopers nog komen te Broekhuizen, op de Hamert en bij
Apeldoorn op de Lingsfort, te Arcen. Zijn ook geneg. bij flinke
partij elders te persen. Aanb. G. H. Wijnhoven, Tienray. Tel. 7.
Gevraagd
voor 1 Nov. een MEISJE of JONGEN, van 15—18 jaar, kunn.
melken; op klein bedrijf. Adr. J. Geelen, Hasselderheide, Velden.
— Not.
Holtus zal Donderdag 4 Juli nam. 3 uur, ten verzoeke en ten huize
van den heer H. J. Soberjé-Roefs, te Velden Schandeloo,
publiek verkoopen: Een partij dragende stamboekzeugen. Zie
advertentie.
7 maart 1930
Burgerlijke Stand Velden.
— Geboorten:
Theelen—Lenders P. H., vr.; Lenders—Theelen J. P. H. A.,
m.; Willemsen—Fitten M. H., vr.; Dirkx—Keder K. G. T.,
m.,; Holthuyzen—Simons W. M. m.
Overleden:
Nielissen Th. J. m. oud 6 mnd.; Homberg v. d. A., m., oud 84 j.;
Theelen J. M. huisvr. Nielissen, oud 67 j.
16 april 1930
ARCEN.
Burgerlijke
Stand. — Geboren: G. Hussmann-Cleven, zoon; Th.
Lichteveld—Reynders, zoon; P. J. Kerkhof—Simons, zoon;
J. S. Keltjens-Coenders, dochter.
Gehuwd:
W. Nielissen en A. P. Steegh.
Overleden:
F. J. Hendrix, wed. van Sibilla Darns, oud 83 j.; J. Schraets, m.
oud 15 j.; J. H. Voormans, echtg. van J. G. Schreven, oud 39 j.
13 maart 1931
VELDEN.
Burgerlijke
Stand. — GEBOORTEN: H. A. H. d. van G. Nielissen; W. M. z. A.
Th. Lommen; M. H. J. d. van P. H. Janssen.
OVERLEDEN;
M. C. Loeber, echtg. van J. A. Rieter, oud 52 j. — L. L. J.
Brueren, oud 7 jaar.
6 april 1932
Velden.
Burgerlijke
Stand. — Geboren: Ger. H. z. van J. Achterbergh-Schmidt,
Nijmegen; Aug. A. P. Schokker-v. der Zander, Velden; Ger. J. z. van
J. H. Nielissen-Akkermans; Gertra. J. A. d. van F.
Flinsenberg-Aghten; Johs. H. z. van G. A. Schreurs-Buskens.
Overleden: W. H. Thijssen, landbouwer oud 56 jaren geh.
13 januari
1930 Drankwet. — Door Burgemeesters en Wethouders
dezer
gemeente werd op zijn desbetreffend verzoek, met ingang van heden,
ingetrokken het verlof tot verkoop van niet sterken drank, staande
ten name van den heer C. Nielissen te Velden-Schandelo.
19 maart 1930
Pastoor Joosten’s bescheiden figuur.
Evenals
het rustieke dorpje.
—§—
Het Noord-Limburgsche dorpje Velden, dat onder den rook der stad
Venlo ligt heeft nog niets van z'n oorspronkelijk karakter verloren.
Het is eenvoudig gebleven, klein dorpje, zooals bet honderd jaar
geleden ook al was. Het boerenbedrijf, dat er allerwege uitgeoefend
wordt, leent er zich trouwens ook niet voor om een meer stedelijk
aspect te scheppen — en daarom zijn de menschen au fond zoo
gebleven als ze waren. Daar heeft geen tram, geen auto, geen moderne
landbouwmachine, zelfs geen radio iets aan kunnen doen. Ze zijn de
eenvoudige, geloovige dorpsbewoners gebleven, die eerbied hebben
voor oude traditie, voor alles, wat hun voorouders hun nalieten. In
wier huizen de portretten van grootouders de beste plaats hebben
gekregen in de "goeie kamer", waar zelden iemand komt —
waar de oude slingerklok haar eentonig "tak-tak tak-tak"
dag in dag uit voortzet — een erfstuk van de grootouders, die
in hetzelfde huis, dezelfde kamer hebben gewoond met dezelfde
stoelen, deze de schilderijen en dezelfde beelden van heiligen. Ook
de stemming, de sfeer is dus hetzelfde gebleven; ze hangt er nog
rond de muffige meubels met gedraaide pooten en den hoogen schouw
met de blauwe borden in het rek. Hier pasten de menschen van honderd
jaar geleden bij: de propere knipmuts en de hoepelrok zouden hier
als kind in huis zijn. Toch is Velden sinds eenige weken veranderd.
De hooge Amerikaansche olmen, die langs den Rijksweg stonden, zijn
alle onder de bijl gevallen — een onherstelbaar verlies voor
de tegenwoordige generatie. De aanblik van het dorp dat zich meer en
meer langs den chaussee uitbreidde, is daardoor totaal veranderd.
Niet meer die vriendelijke, statige boomen, die een dak spanden over
den weg en 's zomers de heerlijke schaduw erover wierpen; niet meer
het bosch van groen tegen de blauwe luchten van de lente en de zang
van de vink tusschen de bladeren; ook niet meer het bonte
verscheiden in den herfst of het grillige sneeuwdak in den winter.
Unheimisch leeg, kaal, geplukt en... materialistisch, doet het
uiterlijk nu aan. De metselaar, die aan den zijwand der oude
dorpskerk, welke hooggelegen is, bezig was het voetstuk te metselen,
waarop het H. Hartbeeld komt te staan, was zeker ook een vreemde in
Jerusalem. Den koster wist hij niet te wonen, wèl den pastoor
en dien behoefden we niet meer te zoeken. Tóch maar even naar
den jubileerenden herder toe gaan om hem te zeggen, welke booze
plannen we hadden. — Of we den pastoor even konden spreken?
vroegen we aan de huishoudster, die een deurraampje open deed. Toen
ze hoorde dat we van de "pers" waren en dat er bovendien
nog een fotograaf achter me stond, schrok ze wel even. We wisten al
genoeg, want pastoor Joosten houdt er niet van om lang en breed in
de krant komen te staan — en dan die fotografen Binnen mochten
we wel. Even wachten, dan zal ik meneer pastoor gaan roepen. In de
sobere kamer viel een plak zon, een helgele kanarievogel, die in een
koperen kooitje voor het raam in de zon zat, begroette de eerste
lentestralen met trillend keeltje. Buiten stonden vruchtboomen in de
tuinen, in afwachting van de lente, die door de Maartsche buien
slechts even heenlichtte. Een deur ging open en pastoor kwam binnen.
Op z'n grijze haren stond stemmig de baret. Hij rookte de pijp —
een groote oliekop, misschien ook wel veertig jaren in dienst. We
zijn gekomen om een foto van U te maken, zeiden we. Een poosje van
zwijgen. — Neen, zeide hij toen, dat heb ik liever niet. We
trachten hem z'n bescheidenheid een oogenblikje te laten varen door
sterker aan te dringen. Hij trok eens aan z'n pijp. — Neen,
toch niet; als er wat gebeurt, allons, dan is dat in handen van den
kapelaan en het Kerkbestuur. We namen dus afscheid van den nog
krassen herder en stonden spoedig weer buiten in het grillige weer
van Maart. Eenzelfde figuur als het rustieke dorp, dat eenvoudig en
onopgesmukt wil blijven al de jaren door...
25 maart 1930
40-jarig priesterfeest pastoor Joosten.
Aanbieding
H. Hart-monument.
VELDEN.
— Het 40-jarig priesterfeest van pastoor Joosten is Maandag —
zooals we reeds meldden — op passende wijze gevierd. Vele
inwoners hadden de vlag uitgehangen; eveneens woei de driekleur van
den toren van het stemmige kerkske. Om tien uur 's morgens werd in
de fraai versierde kerk een plechtige H Mis tot dankzegging
opgedragen. Hier bleek weer welk een beminde figuur de herder is; in
het kerkgebouw was bijna geen plaats meer te krijgen. 's Middags,
toen de dreigende luchten even vaneen braken en de regen ophield,
had na het plechtig Lof de onthulling en intronisatie plaats van het
prachtig H. Hartbeeld, hetwelk aan den zijkant der kerk is
geplaatst. Dit kostbaar beeld is op een breed voetstuk geplaatst,
dat stemming geeft aan het stille pleintje. Een geschenk van de
parochianen aan hun jubileerenden herder. Toen de stoet uit de kerk
zich om het beeld geplaatst had, trad kapelaan Vervoort —
"die vandaag pastoor is", merkte de jubilaris geestig op —
naar voren om allen gevers dank te zeggen voor hun bijdrage,
waardoor den jubilaris het prachtig geschenk kon worden aangeboden.
Na hem was het de jubilaris, pastoor Joosten. die het woord tot de
rondom hem geschaarde parochianen richtte. Het was spr. een vreugde
uit het geschenk, dat hem aangeboden werd, te kunnen opmaken, dat
Velden zijn herder eert niet alleen, maar vooral dart dit getuigenis
ervan aflegt, dat er een diepe godsdienstzin in hen leeft dat het
geloof van hun voorouders prachtig is bewaard gebleven. "Op
deze plaats", aldus spr.," werd 600 jaar na Christus de
eerste kapel gebouwd". Later werd tot den bouw eener kerk
overgegaan. Spr. brengt dan nog in herinnering zijn voorgangers en
zegt dank aan de parochianen voor hun geschenk. Daarna had de
plechtige intronisatie plaats en zongen de kinderen onder
begeleiding va fanfare eenige passende liederen.
25 maart 1930
40-JARIG PRIESTERFEEST.
Pastoor
P. Joosten te Velden.
PLECHTIGE
ONTHULLING VAN HET H. HART STANDBEELD.
Velden
was Maandag in feestdos gestoken. D Z.E. Heer Pastoor Joosten
herdacht n.l. de dag, waarop hij voor 40 jaar tot priester werd
gewijd. Van verschillende huizen wapperde vroolijk de nationale
driekleur, overal viel een feestelijke stemming te bespeuren. Te
circa half tien werd de jubilaris door de W.E. Heer Kapelaan
Vervoort uit Velden, de E.H. Geestelijken uit Velden geboortig,
verschil lende heeren geestelijken uit den omtrek, alsmede door den
E.A. Heer Burgemeester, wethouder en raadsleden der gemeente Arcen
en Velden aan de pastorie afgehaald en langs met de kleurige
vlaggetjes versierde weg naar de parochiekerk vergezeld. Aan de met
guirlandes en palmen versierde kerkingang prijkte een toepasselijk
opschrift. Het kerkinterieur maar vooral het hoofd altaar, waren
kwistig met palmen en bloemen versierd. Door de kinderen der
Bijzondere jongens- en meisjesschool werden de jubilaris twee
Engelen aangeboden, ter plaatsing op de Communiebank. De kerk was
inmiddels vol gestroomd zoodat velen zich met een staanpiaatsje
moesten tevreden stellen. De plechtige Hoogmis werd door de
jubilaris tot dankzegging opgedragen daarbij geassisteerd door de
W.E. Heer Rector Janssen uit Venlo als diaken, de W-E. Heer Kapelaan
Rieter uit Arcen als subdiaken en de W.E Heer Kapelaan van Velden
als ceremoniarus. Het zangkoor voerde de 3-stemmige Mis van Perosi
uit. Na de Hoogmis zong het zangkoor nog een Priestercantate. Te
half 12 had de receptie plaats, waarvan verschillende parochianen
gebruik maakten, om hun beminden herder te komen complimenteeren
Gedurende de geheele dag kwamen tal van telegrammen en gelukwenschen
binnen. Het geschenk der Mariacongregatie bestond uit een prachtige
bidstoel, die voor het Lof door een der Congreganisten werd
aangeboden. Het plecht'g Lof werd door de jubilaris gecelebreerd
daarbij geassisteerd door de W.E. Heer Kapelaan Kessels uit Sevenum
en de W.E. Heer Kapelaan Peeters uit Mook. Door bemiddeling van Mgr
J Willemsen, een priester uit Velden, te Rome verblijvend, was er
des morgens een telegram uit de Vaticaansche Stad binnengekomen,
onder teekend door Mgr. Kardinaal Pacelli, secretaris van Z.H. den
Paus, waarbij de Z.E. Heer Pastoor Joosten gemachtigd werd, de
Pauselijken Zegen te geven en hieraan een volle aflaat te verbinden.
Na het Lof trok men in processie naar het H. Hartbeeld, het geschenk
der parochianen voor hun herder. Het weer, dat de geheele morgen een
dreigende houding had aangenomen, was vlak voor de middag in een
druilerige bui overgegaan maar toen de onthulling plaats vond,
sijpelde de regen nog traag uit de loodgrijze regenlucht. Onder
begeleiding der fanfare werd het: Aan U, o Koning der Eeuwen
gezongen. De W-E. H. Kapelaan Vervoort hield vervolgens eene
toespraak en verzocht Pastoor Joosten, het H. Hart monument plechtig
te willen inzegenen. Nadat het doek, waarmede het beeld omhuld was,
gevallen was, zegende de Z-E. Heer Pastoor het beeld plechtig en
dankte allen voor het prachtige geschenk op deze, voor hem
onvergetelijken dag. Nadat nog "Voor Jezus Harte zingen"
en "Roomsche Blijdschap" door allen meegezongen was, was
de plechtigheid afgeloopen. Des avonds werd het H. Hartbeeld door
een schijnwerper prachtig verlicht. Aan het voetstuk zijn twee mooie
reliëfs aangebracht en ter weers zijden van het beeld branden
twee lantaarns dag en nacht uit devootheid voor Jezus H. Hart.
31 oktober
1930 Smokkel-geschiedenis. — Toen een dezer avonden
een Duitsche
Zollbeamte
een smokkelaar, welke per motorfiets uit de richting Lingsfort
naderde, nabij Walbeek wilde aanhouden, en daartoe midden op den
rijweg sprong, werd hij door den motorrijder, die een flinke vaart
had, en waarschijnlijk niet meer voldoende heeft kunnen remmen,
omver gereden, waardoor beiden ernstige verwondingen aan armen en
beenen bekwamen, zoodat zij naar het ziekenhuis moesten worden
vervoerd. De motorrijder had een partijtje koffie bij zich, welke in
beslag genomen werd.
11 november
1930 RAAD VAN ARCEN. Besprekingen over
electriciteits-uitbreiding.
Onder
voorzitterschap van den heer Gubbels, burgemeester der gemeente
Arcen, vergaderde de Raad voltallig. Na de opening werden de notulen
voorgelezen van de vergadering van 18 Sept. j.1. welke onveranderd
werden goedgekeurd. Voor kennisgeving werden aangenomen
goedkeuringsbesluiten van Ged. Staten op twee ?ningsbesluiten voor
de uitbreidingen van het electrisch net te Arcen en Velden. Daarna
werden voor kennisgeving aangenomen een aantal koninklijk
goedgekeurde belastingverordeningen voor het volgende jaar in
verband met de wijziging van de financieele verhoudingen tusschen
Rijk en de gemeenten. In beginsel werd besloten medewerking te
verleenen aan den Limburgschen Land- en Tuinbouwbond om te komen tot
zelfstandige destructie van afgekeurd vee en vleesch. In verband met
de zeer hooge kosten werd afwijzend beschikt op het verzoek van een
aantal inwoners in Genooi om electrificatie daarvan. De aanlegkosten
werden geraamd op f16.500; de bijdrage in de verliezen voor deze
aanlegkosten zouden nog hooger zijn. Aan de Stroomverkoop
Maatschappij te Roermond zal alsnog worden verzocht een perceel te
Schandelo aan te sluiten voor het bedrag, dat de Stroomverkoop
Maatschappij daarvoor heeft opgegeven. Voor kennisgeving wordt
daarna aangenomen de dankbetuiging van den heer Linssen voor de
benoeming tot hoofd der O. L. school te Lomm. Besloten wordt de
schoolwoning te Lomm aan den heer Linssen onderhandsch te verhuren
met ingang van 1 December a.s. voor ten hoogste vijf jaar, onder de
voorwaarden in het pachtcontract vermeld. Aan het R. K. Kerkbestuur
St. Andreas te Velden, wordt voor de nieuwe schoolpomp en
aanschaffing van een nieuwe kachel voor de jongensschool aldaar een
crediet toegestaan van f53. Het Kohier Boomenbelasting voor het jaar
1930 wordt met algemeene stemmen vastgesteld ten bedrage van f9.65
voor de afdeeling Arcen en f1.10 voor de afdeeling Velden. De heeren
Mulders en Boonen informeerde daarbij of een aantal boomen welke op
Gemeentegronden staan en niet op het kohier zijn vermeld, eigendom
der gemeente zijn. Dit zal nader worden onderzocht. Met algemeene
stemmen wordt aan het Limburgsche Groene Kruis te Sittard eene
subsidie tot wederopzegging verleend van f20 per jaar, ingaande met
1931 De voorzitter deelt mede, dat in het pachtcontract van den
grond op de Horsten is opgenomen de voorwaarde dat grond welke het
derde jaar voor het einde der pacht als weiland ligt niet meer
gescheurd mag worden. Dit wordt met algemeene stemmen goedgekeurd.
Besloten wordt tot openbare verpachting van twee perceelen bouwland
te Lomm aan den Rijksweg voor den tijd van 6 jaar. Onder voorbehoud
dat van het Staatsboschbeheer toestemming wordt verkregen voor het
vellen van het dennenbosch zoover dit staat op perceel sectie C.
6995, zal worden verkocht het hout op de perceelen sectie nos. 4832,
6995 en 6460 op nader door burgemeester en wethouders te palen
datum. De rekening van het Burgerlijk Armbestuur te Arcen over het
jaar 1929 wordt in handen gesteld eener commissie van drie leden
waarvoor de voorzitter aanwijst de heeren Mulders, Clabbers en
Boonen. Ter nadere afpaling wordt aangehouden verkoop van het
perceel struikhout aan den Rijksweg sectie C. no. 6221. Bij de
Boerenleenbank te Velden zal eens geldleening worden aangegaan groot
f1000 tegen ten hoogste 5 pct. per jaar af te lossen in tien jaar;
voor de verbetering van den weg in het Hanik. Aan Burgemeester en
Wethouders wordt machtiging verleend tot aanbesteding van den
bijbouw van een derde schoollokaal te Lomm. Aan Burg. en Weth. wordt
het noodige crediet verleend om een houten noodwoning te doen
herstellen. Na de gehouden bespreking oordeelt de Raad het noodig,
dat de buizen in de waterlossing in de Rietweiden te doen opruimen.
De heer van Lipzig wijst erop, dat de z.g. Kolkbrug te Lomm stuk is
en hersteld moet worden. Tegen het ontwerp-staatsverdrag toegezonden
door den voorzitter der Straelener Veengenossenschaft, heeft de Raad
geen bezwaren. Hieromtrent zal het advies gevraagd worden van den
heer Dir. van het Rijksbureau voor Ontwatering. De heer Boonen
vraagt nogmaals verbetering van verschillende veldwegen te Velden,
hij is van meening, dat daaraan thans niets gebeurt. De voorzitter
zegt namens Burg. en Weth. toe, in het voorjaar de Zanterdweg te
doen verbeteren. De heer Clabbers vraagt naar de uitbreiding van het
electrisch net ten Zuiden van Velden. De voorzitter deelt hem mede,
dat de aangeplante bosschen de voorloopers zullen moeten verwijderd
worden. Burg. en Weth. zullen hiervoor zorg dragen. Daarna gaat de
vergadering in geheime zitting over.
27 maart 1931
VELDEN. Landbouwcursus.
— Verleden
Dinsdag had alhier de sluiting plaats van de tweejarige
landbouwcursus. De voorzitter van den Boerenbond de heer L. Sanders,
heette de aanwezigen hartelijk welkom, in het bijzonder den heer
Kuypers uit Roermond, die namens den landbouwconsulent de sluiting
verrichtte, den Zeer Eerw. Heer pastoor Joosten, adviseur van den
Boerenbond en de heeren landbouwonderwijzers. [...]
28 april 1931
Auto-ongeluk te Hasselt-Velden.
EEN
ERNSTIGE BOTSING DIE NOG GOED AFLIEP.
Op
den Rijksweg te Hasselt, Velden, heeft Zondagavond te circa 11 uur
een auto-ongeluk plaats gehad, dat nog betrekkelijk goed is
afgeloopen. Op het kruispunt Hasselt—Schandelo—Rijksweg,
kwam de luxe auto van den heer S. uit Horst, waarin tevens de heer
P. R. uit Horst gezeten was, in botsing met een luxe auto komende
uit de richting Venlo. In deze laatste auto zat een gezelschap uit
Gennep en Cuyk. De heer S. die uit Schandelo kwam, had de auto vanaf
Venlo [...]
21 mei 1931
VELDEN. Gouden bruiloft.
— Onder
groote belangstelling vierde het echtpaar Janssen—Reutelingsperger
alhier verleden Dinsdag haar gouden huwelijksfeest. Reeds vroeg in
den morgen weerklonken vreugdeschoten over de Hasselderheide. Te 8
uur werd het jubelpaar onder de vroolijke tonen van de fanfare
kerkwaarts geleid, alwaar een Hoogmis tot dankzegging werd
opgedragen. Gedurende den geheelen dag kwamen de gelukwenschen van
heinde en verre, zoowel schriftelijk als mondeling binnen. Des
avonds werd door de Fanfare nog een serenade gebracht, waarbij de
president het gouden paar namens de geheele fanfare complimenteerde.
Tot laat in den avond duurde de feestpret en de joeks voort.
3 oktober 1931
Opening café-restaurant "Hollandia".
— Ons
dorp is thans een fraai café-restaurant rijker geworden. In
de mooie boschrijke omgeving op de grens Arcen—Walbeek aan de
Lingsfort is het bekende café "Hollandia" door
verbouw in een ruim en schitterend café-restaurant
herschapen. Geen kosten zijn er gespaard om het den bezoekers zoo
aangenaam mogelijk te maken, en zeker zal deze uitspanning spoedig
bekendheid verwerven onder de vele vreemdelingen die de mooie
omstreken bezoeken. Zondag 4 October zal de feestelijke opening van
het nieuw gebouwde gedeelte plaats vinden. Het schilderwerk van zaal
en café, dat verzorgd is door de bekende Venlosche
decorateurs Verkoelen & Holla, biedt een schitterenden aanblik.
De electrische inrichting en verlichting werd geleverd door den heer
H. v. d. Kronenberg te Arcen, terwijl de heer Verschueren uit Venlo
de sanitaire inrichting aanlegde. Wij wenschen den ondernemer J.
Peters, met deze moderne en fraai aangelegde inrichting veel succes.
5 maart 1932
ARCEN. Mond- en klauwzeer.
— Naar
wij vernemen, werd wederom een geval van deze gevreesde
besmettelijke veeziekte geconstateerd in deze gemeente; thans bij
het vee van den landbouwer W. Geelen te Velden, Velgart.
5 maart 1932
EIKENBOOMEN TE VELDEN.
Notaris
Joosten te Venlo, zal op Dinsdag 8 Maart 1932, nam. 4 uur, in het
café van den Heer G. Verbeek te Velden, ten verzoeke van het
R.K. Kerkbestuur te Velden, publiek verkoopen: 37 zware en gave
eikenboomen, staande: in de weide aan den Kuilsenberg, bij den
Kerkenhof en op den Smitselt aan den weg naar Genooi. Aanwijzing
doet de heer Jac. Nielissen, Kerkenhof, Velden.
11 maart 1932
DE SMOKKEL-OORLOG.
De
centrale eener groote smokkelorganisatie ontdekt.
DE
GEPANTSERDE AUTO WEER OP DEN WEG.
Meende
men aanvankelijk, dat de gepantserde smokkelauto, welke
herhaaldelijk bij Goch de grens gepasseerd was en verleden week te
Calcar in beslag werd genomen, dezelfde was die eveneens enkele
malen in Walbeck gezien werd, zoo is men thans tot de conclusie
gekomen, dat men hier met een tweeden pantserauto te doen heeft,
waarvan de smokkelaars zich bedienen om groote hoeveelheden
smokkelwaren over de Duitsche grens te voeren.
In
den nacht van Dinsdag op Woensdag is de auto bij Waldeck weder de
grens gepasseerd en ondanks het hevige geweervuur, dat door de
Duitsche douanebeambten op den auto werd geopend, reed deze
ongestoord verder.
Het
corps der douanebeambten in het commissariaat Straelen is met ca. 25
personen uitgebreid, en er worden krachtige pogingen in het werk
gesteld om deze smokkelbende op het spoor te komen.
Deze
onderzoekingen schijnen al zeer spoedig een gunstig resultaat te
hebben gehad. Naar men ons mededeelde, behoort de pantserauto toe
aan eene groote smokkelbende, die haar operatiebasis te Arcen nabij
Venlo heeft. Ook de pantserauto heeft daar zijn garage. De auto is
gepantserd met dubbele staalplaten. Tusschen deze staalplaten is een
ruimte van 3 tot 4 centimeter gelaten, zoodat zelfs eene beschieting
met zware karabijn-geweren doelloos is.
De
smokkelbende, die uit circa 30 personen moet bestaan, staat onder
leiding van een bekend smokkelaar, zekeren K. afkomstig uit het
Roergebied.
De
Duitsche justitie treedt buitengewoon streng op bij de verschillende
smokkel-processen.
De
geldboeten, welke worden opgelegd, bedragen gewoonlijk het viervoud
van de waarde der in beslag genomen goederen, terwijl bovendien nog
eenige weken tuchthuisstraf erbij komen.
Wanneer
het vaststaat, dat de delinquent die wegens smokkelen voor den
rechter verschijnt, ook nog deel uitmaakt van eene smokkelbende, dan
wordt de straf wegens z.g. "Bandenschmuggeln" met één
maand verhoogd.
26 maart 1932
Weer een pantserauto aangehouden.
Door
zestien karabijnschoten tot stilstand gebracht. De inzittenden
ontvlucht.
In
de omgeving van het grensdorp Walbeck bij Arcen hadden de Duitsche
douanebeambten Woensdag een goede vangst.
Het
schijnt, dat de douane verwittigd was van de komst van een
smokkelauto, want toen een pantserauto de grens bij Walbeck in
razende vaart wilde passeeren, werd plotseling van het struikgewas
langs den weg uit het haltesignaal der douane gegeven. Onmiddellijk
daarop werden van alle kanten schoten gelost uit karabijnen en
revolvers.
De
auto was in een hinderlaag gevallen.
Door
de geweldige vaart van den grooten wagen wist deze echter door het
cordon heen te breken. Daar de wagen door vele schoten zwaar
getroffen was, werd de poging tot ontvluchting opgegeven. De
inzittenden wisten in het donker in het struikgewas te ontkomen met
achterlating van den wagen en rijke buit. Een lading koffie en
tabak. De beambten namen een en ander in beslag.
Nog een smokkel-auto aangehouden.
Een
der inzittenden gearresteerd.
Onder
Twisteden bij Kevelaer is Woensdag door Duitsche commiezen, die alle
toegangswegen tot de Nederl. grens hadden versperd, een gepantserde
auto aangehouden, waarin 1000 pond tabak was geborgen.
Op
den wagen waren 40 schoten gelost, die geen doel troffen.
De
auto reed in een sloot, toen ze niet over de versperring kon
geraken. Een der inzittenden werd gearresteerd. De chauffeur wist te
ontsnappen op Nederlandsch gebied.
2 april 1932
Slachtoffer begraven.
— Gisteren
had onder zeer groote belangstelling de begrafenis plaats van den
dezer dagen door een ambtenaar nabij de grens alhier doodgeschoten
H. Husmann, uit Wesel, op het R. K. kerkhof te Straelen. Een
muziekkapelle uit Geldern speelde treurmarschen. Na afloop der
plechtigheid begaf dit gezelschap zich naar de plaats van aanhouding
in Holt, waar eveneens een treurmarsch ten gehoore werd gebracht.
20 april 1932
DE SMOKKELAARS LANGS DE GRENZEN
Nieuwe
maatregelen van de douane. — Een nieuwe pantserauto.
Zondag
j.l. hebben de douanebeambten van het grensdistrict Dusseldorf een
vergadering belegd te Dusseldorf, om de gebeurtenissen van de
laatste weken te bespreken en de mogelijkheid van nieuwe maatregelen
tegen de smokkelaars ter sprake te brengen. Voor het district
Dusseldorf moeten er bizondere maatregelen getroffen worden, daar de
smokkelhandel hier weliger bloeit dan op andere plaatsen.
Versterking van manschappen bij de douane werd dan ook dringend
noodzakelijk geacht.
Dat
deze nieuwe beambten aanstonds de handen uit de mouwen hebben
gestoken, blijkt uit het feit, dat zij den eersten dag reeds een
smokkelbende verrasten, die daar op in het geheel niet voorbereid
scheen. De smokkelaars gingen aan den haal met achterlating van den
buit. De beambten voorden op de vluchtelingen, zoodat een smokkelaar
zwaar getroffen neerstortte.
Er
schijnt ook weer een nieuwe pantserwagen in gebruik te komen bij een
smokkelbende, die haar centrum heeft in Arcen. De wagen is dubbel
gepanserd.
23 april 1932
MODERNE SMOKKELAARS.
Men
schrijft van de Zuid-Oostelijke landsgrens aan "De Tijd":
De
streek van Arcen en omgeving, nabij er Venlo, vormt meer dan ooit te
voren thans an het middelpunt van een zeldzaam levendigen
"smokkeloorlog". Aan de overzijde der grens is de
Duitsche douane de laatste tijden aanzienlijk versterkt, zulks in
verband met de krasse maatregelen, die genomen worden om den steeds
driesteren smokkelhandel te kunnen beteugelen.
Intusschen
zijn de smokkelaars, grootendeels Duitschers, naar ’t schijnt,
niet voornemens voor de verdubbelde activiteit der rijksambtenaren
uit den weg te gaan. Men mag zeggen, dat nimmer de smokkelstrijd met
zulke moderne middelen werd gevoerd als thans.
De
nieuwste aller methoden is die, welke culmineert in
Pantserkolossen
A en B.
Deze
wagens zijn voorzien van kogelvrije stalen omhulsels en er inderdaad
op berekend den smokkelstrijd op energieke wijze voort te zetten.
Een hunner ontwikkelt een snelheid tot, naar verzekerd wordt, 140
kilometer per uur. En deze snelheid is zoo maar niet een kwestie van
een cijfer, doch zij wordt in werkelijkheid ook gereden, als ’t
er op los gaat. Handgranaten hebben op deze smokkelduivels al
evenmin vat als geweer- of revolverkogels. Weg- en
draadversperringen moeten zij in staat zijn zijn op de meest
elegante wijze "te nemen."
Naast
deze smokkelauto-tractie heet het in den volksmond, dat ook
Vliegmachines
in
dienst der smokkelarij zijn gesteld. In hoeverre dit juist is, valt
niet precies na te gaan. Op het oogenblik is de toestand in de
grensstreek zóó, dat geheel de volksfantasie op het
smokkelbedrijf is ingesteld. En aangezien het van de pantserwagens
naar de vliegmachines slechts een stap is, kan het zeer goed zijn,
dat deze stap door de op avontuur beluste fantasie is gezet. Of het
voor de volle waarheid kan worden aanvaard, blijve dus in het
midden, maar men kan in stadjes en dorpen thans hooren verluiden,
dat per vliegmachine de smokkel-artikelen in het land onzer
Oosterburen worden binnengebracht. Dit gaat dan zóó,
dat op vrij grooten afstand der grens de smokkelwaar eenvoudig naar
beneden wordt geworpen om door groepen handlangers in veilige haven
te worden gebracht.
De
smokkelartikelen
zijn
in hoofdzaak koffie, tabak, cacao, sigarettenpapier, enz. Deze
smokkelhandel is op breede leest geschoeid en honderden personen,
meestal werkloozen, houden zich ermede bezig. Naar de regelen der
smokkelwetenschap worden allerlei listen verzonnen om te trachten de
Duitsche ambtenaren te overschatten. Soms organiseert men
schijnbewegingen, die dienen om de douane af te leiden. Lukt de truc
en wijden de ambtenaren volle aandacht aan deze quasi-smokkelgroep,
dan gaat elders een echte dito met waardenvollen buit de grens over.
Zooals
bij elken grenssmokkel op eenigszins uitgebreide schaal steeds het
geval is geweest beteekent deze "handel" een
levensgevaarlijk werk. De ambtenaren schromen niet van de
vuurwapenen gebruik te maken en nog dezer dagen is bij een
vuurgevecht een smokkelaar aangeschoten en gewond neergestort.
25 juni 1932
DE WITTE BERG, Een prachtig stukje natuur.
Vele
Venlonaars zullen niet weten, waar ze dit plekje natuurschoon moeten
zoeken. Op de kaart vindt men 't niet. De aanwijzingen, die men
ontvangt, zijn meestal wat vaag. Ergens in de bosschen ten N. van
Schandelo ligt een berg; je kunt er de torens van Venlo, Straelen,
Lottum en andere plaatsen zien.
Met
deze weinige gegevens gewapend, trok ik er op een Juninamiddag op
uit. Een echt zomersche dag, bijna tropisch heet, drukkend van on
weerswarmte. Op zulke dagen is flinke lichamelijke inspanning het
beste middel om zich gezond te gevoelen.
Voorbij
Velden volgde ik met de fiets een smal paadje langs den rand van het
koren. Een eenzame boerenjongen wist mij de richting te wijzen,
waarin ik verder door de bosschen moest gaan; de berg was nog niet
te zien. Het pad werd slechter.
Bij
een ven, verscholen achter riet en struikgewas, kwamen twee
boerenvrouwen in zomersche werkkleeding uit het zonnige veld terug.
Zij
waren op de fiets; de jongste droeg "luchtkousen".
— Of
ze mij ook konden zeggen, waar de Witte Berg was?
— Nog
een eindje verder aan genen kant, jong. 't Is warm, jong'è
tusschen de bosschen!
Waarlijk
"verjongd" door deze ontmoeting — ik ben de vijftig
reeds lang gepasseerd — zette ik mijn nasporingen voort.
Mijn
moeite zou weldra beloond worden. Tusschen de stammen vertoonde zich
een glinsterende watervlakte met een rijke flora. Waterlelies, waar
het eerste ven vol van was, waren hier niet. Aan den anderen oever
verhief zich een hoogte met gelen, zandigen top. Dat moest dus de
Witte Berg zijn. Langs een omweg kon ik de gezochte plek bereiken.
Toen
plotseling, op eenigen afstand, joelende mannen- en vrouwenstemmen.
Zoowaar een geïmproviseerd gemengd bad in de open lucht.
Menschen uit Straelen of uit Venlo? 't Was te ver af, en niet het
doel van mijn tocht, om me hieromtrent zekerheid te verschaffen.
Maar
de Witte Berg bleek een openbaring. Een schitterend uitzicht naar
alle kanten. Aan twee zijden uitgestrekte vennen met waterplassen en
krijschende vogels; overal rondom dennen. Hier was weer een van die
door de natuur gevormde plekken van ongerepte schoonheid,
vermoedelijk evenals de vennen in de Peel en bij Oisterwijk in den
diluvialen tijd ontstaan door slechte afwatering in een verlaten
rivierbedding. Wilt gij er eens gaan kijken? Volg dan den grooten
weg naar Lomm, en buig daar af in Oostelijke richting naar de
Ravenvennen. De hooge zandstuiving, die ge zult zien, is de Witte
Berg. R. I.
*
Mag en kan dat zoo maar? (Red.)
4 juli 1932
Auto in een waranda gereden
OM
EEN BOTSING TE VOORKOMEN.
Zaterdagavond
te ca. half 10 heeft op het gevaarlijke kruispunt bij tramhalte
Coppes te Velden weer een auto-ongeval plaats gehad. Uit de richting
Schandelo kwam de bestelauto van dhr. A. v. d. Hombergh uit Velden.
Uit de richting Nijmegen kwam met groote vaart een luxe Fiatauto,
waarin twee heeren uit Amsterdam zaten. De auto van den heer
Hombergh stak den Rijksweg over. De chauffeur van den Amsterdamschen
auto zag het gevaar, waarin hij verkeerde, indien hij zijn gewonen
weg behouden had, op het laatste moment in en gooide met kracht het
stuur naar links om. Door deze manoevre ontweek hij wel den
Veldenschen auto maar kon toch niet voorkomen, dat hij met kracht
tegen de waranda van café Coppes botste, die letterlijk in
puin stortte. De botsing was zoo hevig, dat de steenbrokken in de
café terecht kwamen. Persoonlijke ongelukken hadden niet
plaats. De auto was slechts licht beschadigd. Door de marechaussee
uit Venlo werd een onder zoek ingesteld.
29 september
1932 "Koning der smokkelaars” gepakt
Na
een hevig vuurgevecht met de Duitsche douane
Een
goede vangst
De
arrestant verdiende grof geld met het smokkelen van wapens
In
de borst geschoten
Venlo,
— Woensdag.
Het
was den beambten van de Zollfahndungstelle Düsseldorf reeds
lang bekend, dat een der voornaamste smokkelgroothandelaars een
zekere Frits Szymanski was, die aan het smokkelfront langs de
Limburg-Duitsche grens "de koning der smokkelaars" werd
genoemd.
Enkele
maanden geleden was deze smokkelaar berucht geworden door de
onversaagdheid, waarmee hij bijna iederen dag tabak met honderden
kilo's tegelijk in pantserauto's over de grens bracht, zonder dat
het de douane ook maar een enkele maal gelukte den smokkelaar zelf
te arresteeren. Wel werd verschillende malen de pantserauto in
beslag genomen, doch even gauw verscheen "Der Frits" weer
met een nieuwen auto in het veld.
Ongeveer
een maand geleden hoorde de douane van spionnen, dat de voormalige
tabaksmokkelaar thans dit product verloochend had en nu met
vernieuwde energie zich op den wapen-smokkel had geworpen, waarmee
volgens zijn zeggen veel meer geld te verdienen viel.
De
douane was ervan verwittigd, dat Szymanski gisteren een volle lading
wapenen over de grens zou brengen. De beambten hadden overal langs
de grenswegen wachtposten opgesteld, die niet van plan waren hem
door te laten.
Szymanski
beproefde gistermiddag den doortocht, doch hij was wel zoo slim in
te zien, dat hij ditmaal niet ongehinderd de grens zou kunnen
passeeren. Hij keerde met zijn auto terug naar Arcen, waar een
metgezel, de Hollander Kamps uit Arcen, zich bij hem aansloot.
Gisteravond
om tien uur probeerden beiden nogmaals er door te komen, hetgeen
gelukte. Zi] slaagden er in de grens te passeeren en stevenden naar
de herberg Landsknecht in Büderich.
De
beambten hadden echter spoedig lucht van de zaak gekregen en stelden
derhalve alles in het werk om dezen tocht te verhinderen. Zij
achtervolgden den smokkelauto en slaagden er in hem met twee andere
auto's in te sluiten.
1 oktober 1932
Twee vrouwen krijgen het met elkaar aan den stok
Venlo,
— Vrijdag.
Hedenmorgen
bracht de vrouw van den smokkelaar Camps uit de smokkel-Bude aan de
grens bij Arcen een bezoek aan de vrouw van den smokkelaar
Szymanski. "Celli", zoo wordt de vrouw van Szymanski
genoemd, verweet bij dit bezoek de vrouw van Camps, dat haar man
alles verraden had. Over en weer werden beschuldigingen gedaan. Van
woordenwisseling kwam het tot handtastelijkheden, totdat de vrouw
van Camps ten slotte buiten de deur werd gezet. Deze uitte meerdere
bedreigingen van verraad, doch ging ten slotte weg.
9 november
1932 De broeder van den
koning der smokkelaars gearresteerd.
Theodor
Szymanski, broeder van Fritz Szymanski, "den koning der [der]
smokkelaars", is te Dusseldorp in hechtenis genomen. De
douane-autoriteiten dezer stad hadden vernomen, dat een door Theodor
Szymanski bestuurde auto de Nederlandsche grens had overschreden.
[...]
24 november
1932 Szymanski's laatste grensavontuur.
De
Poolsche smokkelaar voor den rechter.
Spaansche
revolvers voor een Duitsche terreur?
Wij
schrijven het laatste hoofdstuk van Szymanski's avontuurlijk leven.
Jammer! Want [Fritz] Szymanski was een dankbaar onderwerp. Zijn naam
alleen reeds bleek in staat inspiraties op te wekken voor een
middeleeuwsche avonturenroman van roofridders, in geheimzinnige
schuilplaatsen, op donkere boschwegen en onbekende sluippaden. Geen
enkele smokkelaffaire der laatste jaren heeft wel sterker de
fantasie geprikkeld, dan zijn wapenzaakje.
"Der Fall Szymanski".
Om
den persoon van dezen groot-smokkelaar is een haast onontwarbaar net
geweven van fantasie en werkelijkheid. De juiste toedracht der
feiten is er eenigszins door op den achtergrond geraakt.
Ondertusschen,
Szymanski's rijk heeft afgedaan.
Zijn
smokkel-organisatie — wellicht een der best geoutilleerden die
de grensgeschiedenis gekend heeft — wist langen tijd de
"klein-krieg" langs de oostelijke barrière met
succes te voeren, totdat de douane het spel doorzien had en hem
schaakmat zette. Enkele kopstukken die steeds in één
adem met den Poolschen avonturier genoemd werden, vielen de
grenspolitie in handen — Was dat de hoofdgroep? Wie zal 't
zeggen? Szymanski zelf zwijgt.
Men
spreekt van verraad.
Dat
behoeft absoluut geen verwondering te wekken. Elke organisatie welk
doel zij ook nastreeft, heeft haar spionnen, die met betaald
Judaswerk den basis sloopen en zich zelf veilig weten als de
instorting volgt. Zou een organisatie als een smokkelbende dan geen
verraders kennen? Verraad is niets nieuws in de grenszaakjes. Men
rekent zelfs met verraad aan weerszijden, zoowel bij de
grensbewaking als bij de smokkelaars zelf, maar de groote vraag is
telkens: Wie? Wie was 't? Men kan 't immers honderde keeren lezen.
De gevallen zijn legio: 'n met kennis van menschen en zaken —
het eerste nog meer noodzakelijk dan 't tweede — opgerichte
smokkeltroep, loopt plotseling vast, wordt op 't meest onverwachte
moment overrompeld. "Hoe was dat mogelijk?" vragen de
smokkelaars zich later af. De een verdenkt de ander en het
wantrouwen en de onzekerheid jaagt de troep uit elkaar. Óok
Szymanski werd verraden, is er beweerd. Maar wie zal 't bewijzen?
Szymanski zwijgt, de douane zwijgt; de een zal 't gissen, de ander
weten. — Hedenmorgen komt bij het Sondergericht te Düsseldorf
't wapenzaakje ter tafel. Of uit verhooren en getuigenverklaringen
meer vaststaande feiten naar voren zullen komen? — 't Valt te
betwijfelen. De Duitsche douane schijnt op 't punt van verklaringen
voor de rechtbank over meer vrijheid te beschikken dan de
Nederlandsche. Men zal zich in dit opzicht nog wel 't verloop van
Szymanski's laatste strafzaak (op 4 Nov. j.l.) voor de rechtbank te
Elberfeld herinneren.
VENLO WERD TE "ENG".
Al
werd S. hier geduld, de politie hield hem goed in het oog, doch kon
tegen zijn hier te lande niet strafbaren smokkelhandel niet
optreden. Meermalen werd hij gecontroleerd en nagegaan, doch nimmer
kon tegen hem worden opgetreden, omdat geen strafbaar feit werd
ontdekt. Ondanks deze omstandigheid achtte men den vreemdeling hier
natuurlijk toch ongewenscht en werd hem begin Juli van dit jaar door
den grenscommissaris het verblijf in de grens-zone ontzegd. Hierop
begaf S. zich naar Luik, teneinde zich aldaar aan te melden, waartoe
hij de hulp in riep van een caféhouder te Bresseau, die dit
zaakje voor hem zou opknappen en daarvoor 100 francs als belooning
ontving. De poging om zich officieel in Luik te vestigen, gelukte
echter niet. Hij meldde zich daarna te Blerick, alwaar hij, om te
voldoen aan de benoodigde formaliteiten, een kamer huurde. Op zijn
aanvraag werd hem ook door het hoofd der politie aldaar een
jachtacte verstrekt. S. meldde zich aan het Bevolkingsregister te
Venlo af, als zijnde vertrokken naar Luik, terwijl hij clandestien
op de bovenkamers aan den Kaldenkerkerweg verblijf bleef houden, om
in de onmiddellijke nabijheid der grens zijn uitgebreiden
koffiesmokkelhandel te kunnen blijven voortzetten.
WIE WAS SZYMANSKI?
Deze
"koning der smokkelaars" werd in 1890 te Elberfeld geboren
uit een Poolsch gezin, waarvan de vader een handel dreef in oud
ijzer. Op jeugdige leeftijd werd de avonturier taxichauffeur en had
tegelijkertijd een kleinhandel in kolen. Toen hij een jaar of vier
geleden in aanraking kwam met groot-smokkelaars en van de
fabelachtige winsten hoorde, die met den frauduleuze grenshandel te
behalen waren, was hij spoedig besloten het pad der avontuur te gaan
bewandelen. Szymanski's ondernemingsgeest had slechts een korte
scholing noodig. Na enkele jaren zelf kleinere zaakjes te hebben
opgeknapt, kon hij zijn detailsmokkelhandel spoedig uitbreiden tot
een onderneming met een grootschere opzet. Na twee jaren snorden
zijn eigen auto over de grenswegen en al gauw zou de Duitsche douane
ervaren, dat met hem een avonturier op 't pad gekomen was, die met
groote geslepenheid de hinderpalen hem door de grensbewaking in den
weg gelegd, wist te vermijden. De fortuin is echter nukkig. Ondanks
de breed vertakte smokkelorganisatie met een goed geoutilleerde
inlichtingendienst, die Szymanski spoedig om zijn persoon vereenigd
zag, bleven hem de tegenslagen niet gespaard. De eerste buit van
beteekenis, die de Duitsche douanebeambten in handen viel, bestond
uit 40 mille sigaretten en 50 balen koffie.
NAAR HOLLAND UITGEWEKEN.
Szymanski
wist telkens te ontsnappen, totdat men zijn verblijfplaats, die
oorspronkelijk in Vohwinckel en naderhand in Mettmann gevestigd was,
ontdekt had. Op 5 September 1931 was de politie uit Elberfeld op
zijn spoor gekomen en deed 's nachts een inval in café
"Schönblick" te Wuppertal, waar Szymanski
overnachtte. In zijn slaap verrast, zag de avonturier geen uitweg
meer. Zonder zich te bedenken sprong hij in nachtgewaad uit 't
venster op straat en zocht in de duisternis een goed heenkomen. Na
zich een nacht in de naburige bosschen te hebben schuil gehouden,
wist hij naar Holland uit te wijken. Zijn compagnon en chauffeur
Kurt Ritz werd bij deze gelegenheid gearresteerd. Niet minder dan
66.000 sigaretten vielen de douane in handen. Uit de papieren die er
bij behoorden, bleek echter dat de partij reeds in eigendom was
overgegaan aan den smokkelaar Sahm uit Elberfeld. Tot de arrestanten
van dien nacht behoorde ook de waardin uit café "Schönblick",
die Szymanski had helpen ontvluchten en zijn chauffeur Wülfing.
Ruim één jaar, tot 27 September 1932, wist Szymanski
nu uit de handen der douane te blijven. Dit was gedurende den tijd
dat hij in Venlo verblijf hield. Hier vond hij oorspronkelijk
compagnon-schap in een collega-smokkelaar, die eveneens uitgeweken
was. Naderhand heeft hij zich van deze afgescheiden. Zijn eerste
operatiebasis werd de grensstreek in de omgeving van Roermond.
HET SPEL MET DEN DOOD.
De
laatste periode van Szymanski's avontuurlijk leven was hiermede
aangebroken. De laatste weken vóór zijn arrestatie op
27 Sept., hielden de voorspelling in. Enkele smokkeltochten —
hoe goed voorbereid ook — liepen op een fiasco uit. Ofschoon
de te volgen smokkelwegen, volgens informaties vrij waren, werden
toch enkele belangrijke aanhoudingen te zijnen nadeele gedaan,
zoodat de smokkelkoning aanzienlijke verliezen leed. Een
grenswinkelier uit een der naburige dorpen wist Szymanski toen voor
de wapensmokkel te interesseeren, waardoor met minder omslag, meer
geld te verdienen viel. De Duitsche relatie, in den persoon van
Schankweiler zou voor het afzetgebied zorgen. — Szymanski
stond in het begin afwijzend ten opzichte van de nieuwe
smokkelplannen. Hij begreep heel goed, dat hij thans onmiddellijk
ook in botsing met de Hollandsche politie zou komen en het risico
van een eventueel echec dubbel zoo groot werd. Tenslotte bezweek hij
voor den aandrang zijner vrienden, kocht wapens in Luik en smokkelde
ze via Eijsden Limburg binnen. Het wachten was nu nog op een
gunstige gelegenheid. Naar men beweert, moet Szymanski de hulp van
een douane-beambte gehad hebben, bij 't overbrengen der wapens. In
den morgen van 27 September werd de baan veilig gemaakt. Daags te
voren had het plan niet kunnen uitgevoerd worden, omdat de
grenswegen toen niet vrij waren.
DE NOODLOTTIGE DINSDAG.
Dinsdagmorgen
om half negen zou het transport beginnen. Om dit den schijn te geven
van een onschuldige pleizierreis, had Szymanski nog twee auto's
gerequireerd. De een zou voorop rijden, de andere volgen. De
verkenningsauto startte een half uur voor het eigenlijke transport.
De smokkelauto, de Oakland P 16707 werd bestuurd door den 22-jarige
Kurt Ritz uit Barmen. Men had in deze wagen een dubbele bodem laten
aanbrengen, waarin de revolvers verborgen lagen. Om alle verdacht
zooveel mogelijk te vermijden, hadden in deze auto de schoonmoeder,
een dochtertje en een zuster van Szymanski plaats genomen.
Als
dekking in den rug reed ten slotte de derde auto, waarin
Schankweiler, de bestuurder en de vrouw van Szymanski gezeten waren.
Alles liep vlot van stapel. Het passeeren der grens te Lingsfort bij
Arcen bracht totaal geen moeilijkheden mee en om 10 uur had men
veilig en wel Neuss bereikt. Op de afgesproken plaats stapten
Szymanski met Schankweiler en Ritz in den Oakland, één
auto keerde terug naar Venlo en de andere vervoerde Szymanski's
familie naar Elberfeld.
IN DE VAL.
In
het restaurant L. te Büderich — 10 minuten van het
scheidingspunt verwijderd — zouden de wapens worden afgehaald.
Bij aankomst aldaar bleek echter dat de afnemer nog niet aanwezig
was. Of de smokkelaars toen reeds kwade vermoedens hadden? 't Is
best mogelijk, want men besloot den wagen op een binnenweg te rijden
en op een stille plek de wapens uit den dubbelen bodem in een koffer
over te pakken. Nadat dit was geschied, reed men opnieuw naar
genoemd café, doch op hetzelfde oogenblik naderde van de
tegenovergestelde zijde een auto van het Zollfahndungsamt, welke
zich dwars over den weg voor den smokkelauto posteerde.
'N LAATSTE WANHOPIGE POGING
De
smokkelaars zagen onmiddellijk den ernst van den toestand in en
begreep, dat ze in de val waren geloopen. Ritz poogde nog door
achteruitrijden en daarna te keeren te ontkomen. Dit gelukte echter
niet, want de beambten sprongen van hun wagen en zetten den
smokkelauto achterna, waarbij een der beambten op de treeplank van
den smokkelauto sprong. Ritz greep den beambte bij den keel, terwijl
Szymanski hem het wapen, hetwelk in ruststand bleek te zijn gesteld,
uit de hand sloeg. Inmiddels losten de andere beambten schoten. De
smokkelaars ziende, dat hunne vrijheid nog slechts een kwestie van
enkele minuten was, sprongen toen uit den auto. C. en ook
Schankweiler staken al dadelijk hun handen omhoog, terwijl ook Ritz
weldra was overmand. Alleen Szymanski vluchtte, doch werd door een
schot getroffen. Nadat assistentie was aangerukt, werd de omgeving
afgezocht en vond men den gewonden smokkelkoning. Hij werd in het
burgerziekenhuis te Büderich opgenomen. Men herkende den
smokkelkoning onmiddellijk en was er van overtuigd een goede vangst
gedaan te hebben.
DE DUITSCHE JUSTITIE REKENT AF.
De
twee maanden, die Szymanski nu in hechtenis doorbrengt, werden door
de Duitsche justitie druk besteed aan het voor-onderzoek en het
afhandelen van andere smokkelzaakjes, waarin de avontuurlijke Pool
gefaald had. Voor 14 dagen terug stond hij te Elberfeld terecht voor
het nachtelijk avontuur te Wuppertal en zijn romantische vlucht uit
café "Schönblick". Ofschoon toen duidelijk
kwam vast te staan, dat Szymanski niets meer met de gesmokkelde 66
mille sigaretten te maken had — hij had ze diezelfde avond
verkocht — moest hij zijn onbewezen aandeel in deze affaire
boeten met 1 millioen mark en anderhalf jaar gevangenisstraf. Op
welke gronden men dit vonnis baseerde, kwam niet aan 't licht. De
als getuigen gehoorde douane-beambten verklaarden, dat zij niet
gerechtigd waren mede te deelen, wie hun op de hoogte had gebracht
van Szymanski's smokkelpraktijken. Men had toen een zeer sterk
vermoeden, dat zijn chauffeur Kurt Ritz hem verraden had. Dit vond
een eenigszins vage bevestiging, toen Ritz voor de rechtbank
verklaarde, dat men hem, toen hij in voorarrest zat, beloofd had
geheel vrij te laten, als hij alles opbiechtte wat hij wist. Of Ritz
dit inderdaad gedaan heeft en in de verwachtingen op zijn
invrijheidstelling bedrogen werd, en daarom deze verklaring aflegde,
kwam niet vast te staan. 'n Feit is echter wel, dat niemand der
gedagvaarde getuigen tegen deze verklaring opkwam, of zelfs
protesteerde. Dat ook toen, evenals nu bij de wapensmokkel, verraad
in 't spel moet zijn geweest, is zoo goed als zeker. Wanneer het
Sondergericht te Düsseldorf heden echter met evenveel
geheimzinnigheid als in Elberfeld ongezegde verklaringen in de
weegschaal werpt, dan zal er op dit punt evenmin eenige officieele
helderheid komen. Alleen de vermoedens, dat een van Szymanski's
vertrouwden Judaswerk verrichtte, worden er door versterkt.
6 maart 1933
Jacht op een pantserauto.
De
auto met 500 kilo tabak en koffie in beslag genomen.
DE
SMOKKELAARS ONTKOMEN. Zondagmiddag werd te Wetten een pantserauto
gesignaleerd, die zeer waarschijnlijk bij Twisteden de grens
gepasseerd was. Onmiddellijk werd vanuit het douane-kantoor Geldern
de vervolging in twee richtingen met auto's en motorrijwielen
opgenomen. Bij Hörtgen gelukte het een der motorrijders eenige
schoten op de pantserauto te lossen, waardoor er een lek in de
benzinetank ontstond. Blijkbaar van een reservetank voorzien reed de
wagen door tot Lingsfort, waar de smokkelaars tenslotte door de
inmiddels door het grenscommissariaat Geldern gewaarschuwde politie,
genoodzaakt werden te stoppen.
De
inzittenden konden ontkomen. De naam van de bestuurder is bekend
zoodat zijn arrestatie wel spoedig zal volgen. De wagen was met
dubbele 3—4 millimeter dikke ijzeren platen gepantserd en wel
de waterkoeler en de chauffeurscabine. De auto bevatte 500 kilo
tabak en koffie.
Als in oorlogstijd...
Fel
vuurgevecht tusschen een pantser-smokkel-auto en de douane
Auto
werd buitgemaakt
Venlo,
— Maandag. In den afgeloopen nacht is te Lingsfort een
gepantserde smokkel-auto aangehouden, die 1000 KG. koffie en een
groote partij tabak bevatte. De wagen werd het eerst gezien op den
straatweg van de Hollandsche grensplaats Arcen naar de Duitsche
grensplaats Gelderen. Onmiddellijk werd de naburige
Zohlfahndungsstelle gealarmeerd, die met dienstauto's en motoren op
onderzoek uitging. De dienstauto's der douane waren voor de eerste
maal voorzien van mitrailleurs. Even voorbij Twisteden werd de auto
door een wachtpost der douanebeambten onder schot genomen. De
smokkelauto bleek goed tegen de kogels bestand te zijn. De auto
suisde in volle vaart tusschen de beambten door en sloeg de richting
van Gelderen in. Hier kwam hij echter de motor-brigade der
Zohlfahdungsstelle tegen. De chauffeur van den smokkelauto gooide
onmiddellijk het stuur om en trachtte langs denzelfden weg,
waarlangs hij gekomen was, te ontvluchten. Hij werd bij deze poging
echter zeer gehinderd door de scherpe salvo's uit de mitrailleurs,
die op de dienstauto's der douane-beambten gemonteerd waren.
De
smokkelauto hield echter stand. Evenwel bleek het stalen pantser op
den duur niet bestand tegen de onophoudelijk afgevuurde salvo's uit
de mitrailleurs. De benzinetank werd totaal stuk geschoten. Hierin
hadden de smokkelaars echter voorzien. Onmiddellijk werd een
reservetank ingeschakeld, zoodat de smokkelaars opnieuw kans kregen
om te ontsnappen. Nu ontspon zich een waanzinnige race op den
straatweg Gelderen—Lingsfort, waarheen de smokkelauto trachtte
te ontkomen.
Onophoudelijk
losten de beambten schoten. Een der motorrijders van de
Zohlfahndungsstelle slaagde er in met zijn motor langszij den
smokkelauto te komen. Hier werden echter ook op hem vanuit den
smokkelauto schoten gelost, zoodat de twee beambten, die op den
motor hadden plaats genomen, haastig uit zelfbehoud dekking moesten
zoeken.
Tot staan gebracht
Reeds
had de smokkelauto de grensplaats Lingsfort bereikt, nog enkele
honderden meters scheidden hem van de Hollandsche grens. De
douane-beambten van Lingsfort waren echter gewaarschuwd. Zij hadden
haastig versperringen op den weg gegooid, terwijl tevens alle
zijwegen met spijkerplanken gelegd waren. De smokkelauto kwam in
razende vaart op de versperringen inrijden. Een felle knal... de
banden sprongen en de auto had zich zelf vastgereden. De twee
inzittende smokkelaars wisten zich al schietende in de nabije
bosschen terug te trekken, waar zij spoedig het Hollandsche
grensgebied bereikten. De gepantserde wagen, die geladen bleek met
ruim 1000 K.G. koffie en tabak, is eigendom van een bekenden
groot-smokkelaar uit de Hollandsche grensplaats Arcen.
1 april 1933
NIEUWE KERK TE VELDEN.
Velden
is een der vele zoo schilderachtig gelegen plaatsjes langs de Maas.
Gekroond wordt het door het oude kerkje, dat daar hoog troont te
midden van het dorpje aan het oude, mooie marktplein. Hoe pittoresk
ook gelegen, daardoor is het kerkje nog niet goed. Het gaat hier als
met veel oude huisjes: mooi om te zien, doch niet om er in te wonen:
te klein en ongeriefelijk. Zoo is het ook met de St. Andreas-kerk te
Velden. Heel Velden is een mooi plaatsje, met prachtige oude
boerenhuizingen en tradities. Zoo is er nog een eeuwenoud St.
Sebastiaansgilde. Er staat in de kerk een rococo-altaar van den
beschermheilige der schutters. Een heel typisch gebruik is b.v., dat
de herbergiers van Kevelaer elk jaar naar St. Andreas te Velden ter
beevaart komen. Ze worden hier gul en gastvrij onthaald: logies,
eten, muziek en alles vrij. Hoe oud dit gebruik is, weet men niet.
De historie van Velden — welks naam al de eeuwen door zoo
geschreven werd — is zeer zeker de moeite waard meer ontgonnen
te worden: het archief der kerk bevat een schat van historische
documenten en gegevens, die elke geschiedvorscher en vriend van het
oude in verrukking brengen. Wij kregen o.m. de volgende brief in de
suete suevere oude tale onder de oogen:
VOLLEN
AFLAET Onsen Alderheylighsten Vader Innocentius den II. vergunt
Vollen Aflaet ende vergiffenisse van alle hunne sonden, aen alle
g-eloovige Christenen, die gebicht ende gecommuniceert hebbende,
sullen besoecken de Parochiale kereke van Velden (in de welcke
schoone reliquien des H.H. Apostels Andreas ende Iacobus sijn) ende
aldaer devotelijck sullen bidden voor de verheffinge van onse Moeder
de H. Kercke, eendraghtigheyt der Christene Princen, ende uytroeynge
der ketterijen. Desen Aflaet sal beginnen op den avondt van S.
Andreas (Patroon van de voorsz. plaets Velden, eenen besonderen
voorbidder tegen Hen hoest, kortborstigheyt ende andere sieckten)
ende sal duyren tot den somne onderganck des volgende Feestdagh: op
den welcken den Goddelijcken dienst seer solemnelijck sal geschieden
met de Predicatie, ende naer den middagh de Vesperen, sluytende den
Aflaet met de Benedictie des Hooghw: H. Sacrament. Als men nu weet,
dat Innocentius II Paus was van 1130 tot 1143, begrijpt men dat de
stichting van de kerk van Velden wel zeer ver in het grijze verleden
ligt.
Op
de plek waar nu de kerk verrijst, moet in den heidenschen tijd een
afgodstempel gestaan hebben. In de eerste Christentijden is daar
toen een bedehuis opgericht geworden. De H. Apostel Andreas, die aan
twee schuin gekruiste balken de marteldood stierf — de kerk
heeft er 'n heel mooi beeld van — is steeds de hoofdpatroon
van kerk en parochie geweest. St. Jacobus was de tweede patroon. De
acte der kerkvisitatie in 1400 spreekt van een "capelle".
In 1558 wordt er voor het eerst van "ecclesia" of kerk
gesproken Het tegenwoordige priesterkoor is reeds aan de bestaande
kapel gebouwd in 1509. In de steunbeeren van dit priesterkoor vindt
men aan de buitenzijde nog een kop, overblijfsel van een antiek
middeleeuwsch groot doopvont. Wanneer de toren gebouwd is, staat
niet vermeld. De oudste luiklok — Maria vocor: Ik word Maria
genoemd — draagt het jaartal 1419. Is de toren nog vroeger
gebouwd? Het is zeer waarschijnlijk. De oorspronkelijke is n.1. een
Byzantijnsche, de binnenmuren gemaakt van met kalk ineengegoten
keien, van buiten Limburgsche mergel. Langs de breede stroom der
Maas kwamen de geloofsverkondigers naar hét Noorden, en ook
de bouwmaterialen èn bouwstijlen voor de eerste kerken. De
oude kerk, die wel 1000 jaren oud geweest kan zijn, werd in 1857
grootendeels afgebroken: ze was te klein geworden. De muren waren
van mergel en zware ijzerstaven gemetseld. De kerk werd verbreed:
het priesterkoor bleef en de toren werd ingebouwd. Tot aan de
galmgaten is deze blijven staan, doch helaas met een muur van buiten
omkleed. Van het oude is niets meer te zien. De spits, die men van
alle kanten rank ziet oprijzen — hij sluit de lange weg van
Venlo naar Velden zoo mooi af — is toen verhoogd. Op 13
October 1858 werd de vergrootte en bijna geheel vernieuwe kerk in
gebruik genomen, nadat ze daags te voren door Mgr. J. A. Paredis,
Bisschop van Roermond, werd geconsacreerd. De bevolking is
intusschen weer zoo sterk gegroeid, dat de kerk beslist te klein
geworden is. De ZeerEerw. Heer Pastoor J. G. W. Joosten nam het
uitstekende initiatief om tot den bouw van een grooter bedehuis over
te gaan. De liefde tot het oude is echter zoo groot in hem, dat hij
èn Priesterkoor èn toren wilde behouden. Het eerste
moet echter geslachtofferd worden, wil men een flinke, ruime kerk
krijgen. Is de tegenwoordige 23 bij 14½ meter, de nieuwe
wordt 45 bij 20 meter. De toren blijft staan, doch komt aan den
linker-zijgevel. De nieuwe kerk zal n.1. niet meer georiënteerd
gebouwd worden, doch dwars op de as der tegenwoordige. In de toren
komt een zij-ingang, waarheen een trap voert op dezelfde plaats als
nu. Met het oog op de restauratie van den toren wordt de vorm
gewijzigd, zoodat het exterieur overeenstemt met de nieuwe kerk,
zoowel wat de architectuur als grijze steenkleur betreft. Na
afgekapt te zijn komt er dus nieuwe steen om en wordt het
torenlichaam hooger, zoodat de spits korter wordt, in betere
proportie tot het geheel. De top blijft 37 meter hoog. De
hoofdingang der kerk komt aan het intieme marktpleintje. Het H.
Hartbeeld, dat zoo pieus bij het veertigjarig Priesterschap van den
beminden Pastoor Joosten werd opgericht, zal voor dien ingang komen,
in de as der kerk. Het moet daarom verplaatst worden. Men grijpt
deze gelegenheid natuurlijk aan om het een passende architectonische
omgeving' te geven. Aan ir. Jules Kaiser, onder wiens architectuur
de kerk wordt gebouwd, is dit zeer goed toevertrouwd. Zoowel de
perspectiefteekening hierbij, als de plattegrond — waarbij in
den hoek een kleine situatie-schets staat in 't 2e blad, doen zien
hoe monumentaal het daar zal staan temidden van dien breeden oprit.
Men houde alles frisch en flink. Struiken en bloemen aan weerszijden
op de kleine helling zullen een mooie natuurlijke omsiering geven.
De oprit zelf zal ook reeds het front mooier en rijker doen worden.
Men vreeze niet, dat deze oprit te steil zal zijn: de vloer der
nieuwe kerk komt 80 cM. lager te liggen dan nu. Het interieur der
kerk zal grootsch en ruim zijn. Alleen in de breede middenbeuk
zullen de geloovigen hun plaatsen vinden. De zijbeuken zijn smal
gehouden en dienen slechts als processiegangen. Allen zullen dus op
het altaar de H. Handeling kunnen zien en meeleven, zooals dat toch
moet. Moge een zuiver liturgisch altaar deze nog beter doen uitkomen
en alie kerkmeubelen passen bij karakter en stijl dezer moderne kerk
in vrij-gothischen stijl gebouwd, al behoeven daarom de oude
rococo-zijaltaartjes niet verwijderd te worden: die domineeren niet.
De middenbeuk krijgt haar karakteristieke vorm door de in verhouding
lage en massale pijlers, waarop zich hoog de slanke kruisgewelven
verheffen. Het interieur wordt uitgevoerd in een zachte gele steen,
van het mooie smalle Vechtformaat, met een plint van zandsteen en
een lambrizeering van geel verglaasden steen. Van Priesterkoor en
doopkapel, de twee zoo voorname gedeelten der kerk, worden de wanden
rijker uitgevoerd: een heel hooge plint van gele natuursteen, de
verdere muren en gewelven in blauw verglaasden steen. Het exterieur
wordt gebouwd in grijze steen van hetzelfde slanke Vechtformaat, die
het bij het Venlosche ziekenhuis zoo mooi doet. De kleur dezer kerk
zal zich, evenals den vorm ervan, harmonieus bij het landschap
aanpassen, en zoo zal ze een waardige bekroning zijn van het mooie,
goede katholieke Velden.
7 april 1933
Nazi's koopen wapenen
(Van
onzen correspondent te Venlo).
De
Duitsche Zollfahndung (douane-spionnage-centrale) heeft talrijke
spionnen ontslagen, omdat zij deze menschen niet meer voor haar
dienst gebruiken kan.
Nu
zwerven deze menschen in het grensgebied rond en trachten op alle
mogelijke wijze hun kost te verdienen. Er zijn er ook die verraad
plegen tegen hun vroegere meesters en niets komt den nazi's meer van
pas dan juist dat.
Voor
ons zit een vroegere spion van de Zollfahndungstelle Düsseldorf.
Hij heeft enkele jaren met succes gewerkt. Heeft meegewerkt
Szymanski en Schommer ten val te brengen. Hij zocht uit, op welke
dagen beide grootsmokkelaars gewoonlijk met hun auto's de grens
passeerden. Achtervolgde hen vaak. Maakte hun reizen mee naar Luik
en andere Belgische plaatsen, waar zij de wapenen kochten, die zij
aan hun opdrachtgevers, de nazi's in Duitschland, moesten afleveren.
De spion meldde Düsseldorf de komst der auto's en haar
gevaarlijke lading. Gewoonlijk werd in denzelfden nacht de
smokkelaar gearresteerd.
"Mit
Szymanski war es damals schwierig", vertelt de spion. Even
glijdt een fijne lach over zijn vermoeid en afgemat gelaat.
"Vijfmaal hadden we gemeld, dat hij kwam. Vijfmaal gelukte het
hem met een partij wapenen over de grens te komen. Toen zetten wij
er alles op om hem te arresteeren. Wij hadden ons in verbinding
gesteld met een naziafdeeling nabij Düsseldorf. Van een der
"Führer" — die lui zijn dillettanten op gebied
van spionnage — kwamen we den dag te weten, waarop een nieuwe
partij zou aangevoerd worden. Wij waren actief. Het geluk was met
ons en Szymanski liep in de val. Jammer was het dat slechts zoo'n
kleine partij in beslag genomen werd!"
De
spion vertelt nog van andere wapensmokkelaars, welke door het
toedoen van spionnen gearresteerd zijn. De man blijkt een goed
geheugen te hebben. Bij controle stelden we vast, dat alle namen,
alle hoeveelheden en alle bizonderheden juist overeenkwamen met
hetgeen wij telkens over deze arrestaties gemeld hebben — en
dit op mededeelingen van het officieele douanebureau.
Hij
doet nog meer onthullingen. In den nacht van 5 op 6 Maart, den dag
der rijksdagverkiezingen, werd te Lingsfort een gepantserde
smokkelauto aangehouden. De wagen was het eerst gesignaleerd in de
Duitsche grensplaats Geldern. Spionnen hadden onmiddellijk de
Zollfahndungstelle Düsseldorf met de komst van den auto op de
hoogte gebracht. Men wist, dat in den wagen minstens 500 revolvers
met munitie verborgen waren. Ook de Zollfahndungstelle Düsseldorf
wist dat. Zij rustte daarom voor het eerst haar dienstauto's uit met
machinegeweren om tegen de smokkelaars met succes te kunnen
optreden. Hoewel men zich hevig moest inspannen had men inderdaad
succes. De gepantserde smokkelauto werd tot stilstand gebracht of
beter: hij werd in mekaar geschoten in de buurt van Lingsfort.
Nu
komt het merkwaardige. In plaats dat de Zollfahndungstelle in haar
persbericht melding maakte van deze zeldzame vangst, werd gemeld,
dat een gewapende pantserauto was aangehouden, die —
stereotiep als altijd — bleek te bevatten 1000 kg. koffie en
tabak...! Wanneer iemand een kleine voorstelling heeft wat 1000 kg.
tabak beteekenen, dan behoef ik verder niets te zeggen.
Hoe
kwam de Zollfahndungstelle erbij zoo'n prachtige aanhouding dermate
te camoufleeren? Dit raadsel was spoedig opgelost. De leverancier
wist van de douanebeambten gedaan te krijgen, dat hij even van de
telefoon mocht gebruik maken. Hij belde een bekende persoonlijkheid
uit de nazikringen in Düsseldorf op, die op de
Zollfahndungstelle alles voor mekaar gebracht heeft.
"Waren
deze wapenen voor de nazi's?"
"Das
ist ja klar! Zij hadden deze wapenen noodig om hun gezag te
handhaven, dat zij pas gekregen hadden. Nu stond de Zollfahndung
onder nazi-bewind. Zij moest dus gehoorzamen. Vandaar is die fabel
van de 1000 kg. tabak in de wereld gekomen!" "Worden thans
nog wapenen over de grens gebracht."
"Ik
weet pertinent zeker dat in den nacht van 28 Februari op 1 Maart
1000 stuks wapenen Duitschland zijn binnengevoerd. Deze zijn bij
Roermond over de grens gebracht en waren bestemd voor de gouw
Düsseldorf der N.S.D.A.P."
"Koopt
de nazipartij deze wapenen zelf?"
"Neen,
zoo slim is de partij ook wel. Zij zelf koopt niet. Zij laat dit
doen door middel van een der partijleiders. Deze partijleider stelt
zich in verbinding met een bemiddelaar, een "Mittelsmann"
die weer tracht in verbinding te komen met een Belgischen of
Hollandschen leverancier. Gewoonlijk wordt verbinding gezocht met
een Hollandschen leverancier, omdat de Duitschers, vooral de nazi's,
er niet veel voor voelen om rechtstreeks in verbinding te treden met
een vroegeren vijand. En dan nog wel met wapenen! Zij zijn veel te
bang, dat zij voor landverraders uitgescholden worden, wanneer
zooiets uitlekt. U moet denken "Deutschland hoch!"
Deze
"Mittelsmann" koopt de wapenen. Bij hem worden ze
afgeleverd en hij draagt ze ten slotte over aan de partij, die ze
gratis onder haar leden verdeelt.
Thans
hangt alles af van de Hollandsche douane. Is deze actief, dan zal
het den nazi's niet gauw gelukken, groote partijen wapenen over de
grens te brengen. Zijn de wapenen éénmaal op Duitsch
grondgebied, dan wordt den vervoerder geen haar meer op het hoofd
gekrenkt.
8 april 1933
Autobotsing.
— Donderdagmiddag
heeft op de Rijksweg weer een autobotsing plaats gevonden. De heer
D., slager uit Venlo, komende uit de richting Venlo met zijn luxe
auto en de heer v. D. uit Gennep, komende uit de richting Schandelo
met zijn luxe auto, botsten op het kruispunt bij tramhalte Coppes,
doordat zij elkanders signalen te laat gehoord hadden en het
uitzicht ter plaatse zeer belemmerd wordt, tegen elkaar op. Beide
auto's liepen aanzienlijke materieele schade op. Persoonlijke
ongevallen kwamen wonder boven wonder niet voor.
27 april 1933
VELDEN. Gouden huwelijksfeest.
— Onder
groote blijken van belangstelling herdacht het echtpaar
Coppes-Schreurs op de Velgart Dinsdag j.l. den dag van hun 50-jarige
echtvereeniging. De buurt had voor de woning van het gouden paar een
eereboog opgericht en de omgeving van het huis verder kwistig met
jong groen versierd. In den vroegen morgen weerklonken reeds de
saluutschoten, het feestpaar ter eere. Te circa half negen werden de
jubilarissen onder de vroolijke tonen der Fanfare kerkwaarts
gebracht, waar door den Z.Eerw. Hr. Pastoor een plechtige H. Mis tot
dankzegging werd opgedragen.
Des
avonds te half zeven bracht de Fanfare nog een serenade, waarbij de
President der Vereeniging het gouden echtpaar in hartelijke
bewoordingen feliciteerde en de hoop uitsprak, dat over tien jaar
een diamanten kroontje hun hoofd zou sieren. Een familielid dankte
namens 't gouden echtpaar voor de bewezen hulde op dezen voor hen
beiden onvergetelijken dag. Gedurende den ganschen dag waren tal van
schriftelijke gelukwenschen binnengekomen en hadden velen van de
gelegenheid gebruik gemaakt, het feestpaar mondeling te komen
feliciteeren.
6 mei 1933
De vlag, die de lading niet dekte.
EEN
HITLER-SMOKKELAUTO IN DE VAL GELOOPEN.
Aan
de Duitsche grens nabij het Limburgsche plaatsje Arcen, wilde
Vrijdagmiddag een met hakenkruis-vlaggetjes versierde auto
Duitschland binnenrijden. De Duitsche grensbeambten waren echter
ingelicht, dat dien middag daar een smokkelauto zou pogen binnen te
dringen. Het gevolg was, dat de populaire vlaggetjes ditmaal de
lading niet dekten. De auto werd aan een grondig onderzoek
onderworpen, met het resultaat dat meer dan 100 k.g. voor den
smokkelhandel bestemden koffie erin gevonden werden. De auto en de
koffie werden in beslag genomen De smokkelaar, een Duitscher, werd
gearresteerd.
Een
oude smokkel-rot neergeschoten.
75-JARIGE
GRIJSAARD SNEUVELT AAN HET SMOKKELFRONT.
In
de grensstreek tusschen Arcen en Walbeck, zagen surveilleerende
douane-beambten Vrijdagmiddag een oude man door het struikgewas
sluipen. Onmiddellijk riepen zij hem toe halt te houden. De oude man
hield zich echter doof en vervolgde ongestoord zijn weg. Toen losten
de grensbeambten een schot, waarbij ze den grijsaard in de borst
troffen. Hij werd onmiddellijk naar het ziekenhuis te Geldern
overgebracht, waar hij tegen den avond aan de opgeloopen verwonding
is overleden. Op hem werden twee pond koffie gevonden. De oude man,
zekere S., was ongeveer 75 jaar en woonachtig in het Duitsche
plaatsje Schaephuizen.
8 mei 1933
Verboden terugkeer in bewakingsgebied.
Door
de marechaussee alhier werden Zaterdag op de markt aangehouden een
zekere J. en V,, beiden uit Boxmeer afkomstig. Beide aangehoudenen
werden enkele maanden geleden in de omgeving van Arcen bekeurd in
verband met een smokkelarij van een twaalftal automatische pistolen.
In verband met deze smokkelarij is hen destijds het verblijf in het
bewakingsgebied ontzegd. Wegens verboden terugkeer daarin werden zij
thans door de politiemannen aangehouden en worden zij heden naar de
strafgevangenis te Roermond overgebracht.
19 juli 1933
RUITER-TOURNOOI TE VELDEN.
Deelname
der verschillende Noord-Limburgsche Ruiterclubs.
VOOR
VENLO DE EERSTE PRIJS BIJ DE LANDELIJKE PARADE.
Zondag
had onder buitengewone belangstelling van het publiek en talrijke
deelname van de zijde van paardensportliefhebbers te Velden
Schandelo het aangekondigde jaarlijksche ruiterfeest plaats
georganiseerd door de Ruitervereeniging "Zeldenrust". Te
circa drie uur trok een kleurige stoet van ruim 80 paarden, bereden
door sierlijk uitgedoste ruiters vanaf de tramhalte naar het
feestterrein te Schandelo om aldaar aan een vreedzame kamp deel te
nemen.
Verschillende
zusterverenigingen uit den omtrek o.m. die uit Venlo, Blerick,
America, Sevenum, Castenray, Grubbenvorst, Melderslo enz. namen aan
de feesten deel.
Er
heerschte te 4 uur een opgewekte feeststemming toen de Fanfare met
enkele flinke muzieknummers de feestelijkheden opende.
Het
terrein was bij den aanvang der wedstrijden in vrij goeden staat,
alhoewel het wegens de hevige regenbuien der laatste dagen
eenigszins drassig was. Vooral op de bochten ondervonden de ruiters
hiervan wel eenige hinder.
De
toekenning der prijzen geschiedde als volgt:
Dogcar
of tonneau rijden lichte paarden: 1e prijs Litjens, Horst; 2e prijs
Sonnemans, Sevenum; 3e prijs Jacobs, Venlo.
Dogcar
rijden zware paarden: 1e prijs Wienen, Sevenum; 2e prijs Boonen,
Velden; 3e prijs Wed. Leupers, Velden.
Landelijke
parade: 1e prijs Ruiterclub, Venlo; 2e prijs Ruiterclub, Sevenum.
Draven
zware paarden: 1e prijs Vullings, Horst; 2e prijs Wienen, Sevenum;
3e prijs Friesen, Castenray.
Draven
lichte paarden: 1e prijs Rambaghs, Castenray; 2e prijs Joosten,
Blerick, 3e prijs Hendriks, Venlo.
Rennen
zware, paarden: 1e prijs Vullinghs, Horst; 2e prijs Cox
Grubbenvorst; 3e prijs A. Seelen, Venlo.
Rennen
lichte paarden: 1e prijs Sonnemans, Sevenum; 2e prijs Strijbosch,
Castenray; 3e prijs A. Faessen, Venlo.
Bij
de landelijke parade kon men constateeren, wat door training bereikt
kon worden. De winnaars van dit nummer verwierven een dankbaar
applaus van het publiek. Speciaal de Venlosche Ruiterclub dwong door
haar keurig rijden ieders bewondering af. Het was echter wel bepaald
jammer, dat te circa 7 uur een hevige stortregen zich ontlastte, die
de renbaan in een modderplas herschiep, zoodat het laatste gedeelte
van het programma tot aller teleurstelling werd afgelast. Ter
opluistering was de heer Gabriëls uit Arcen met enkele
renpaarden uit zijn stallen op het terrein aanwezig, maar wij konden
de prestaties hiervan niet bewonderen wegens de stortregen, die als
spelbreker optrad. Ook het hindernisrennen, hoogspringen enz. konden
geen doorgang vinden. Ondanks deze teleurstellingen kan de
ruitervereeniging "Zeldenrust" met voldoening op deze
feestdag terugzien.
7 oktober 1933
VELDKRUIS BIJ KLEIN VINK OPGERICHT.
PLECHTIGE
INZEGENING DOOR Z. HOOGW. EXC. EMANUEL HAENESCH.
Te
Klein-Vink bij Arcen, aan den Rijksweg Venlo—Nijmegen, heeft
de plechtige inzegening plaats gehad van het nieuwe veld- of
wegkruis. In processie trokken de Eerw. Paters, Fraters en Broeders
van het Missiehuis St. Paul, de Z. E. Rector en Broeders van het
klooster Mater Dolorosa, met de scholieren van het Juvenaat St.
Jozef naar het kruis. In hun midden Z. Hoogw. Exc. Mgr. Emanuel
Haenesch, Vicaris van Ambaba Zuid-Afrika, die de inzegening
verrichten zou. Bij het met bloemen versierde kruis gekomen, werden
eenige liederen gezongen door de eerw. Paters-seminaristen.
Monseigneur had inmiddels op den verhoogden sokkel van den
kruissteen plaats genomen en sprak allereerst over de beteekenis van
het kruis. Hij prees het Limburgsche volk om zijn diepen
godsdienstzin, uit wier midden een vereeniging gevormd is, met het
doel veldkruizen te planten. Hij dankte de initiatiefnemers en
medewerkers voor dit grootsche werk. De plek waar dit statige kruis
zich verheft, is met Goddelijke Voorzienigheid gekozen. Nabij het
groote Missiehuis waar tal van jonge krachten worden opgeleid om
straks in het groote uitgestrekte vicariaat van Mgr. nieuwe veld- en
missiekruizen te planten. Onder het kruis op Golgotha stonden drie
groepen van menschen. Deze groepen van menschen zijn tot op heden
blijven voortbestaan: zij die het kruis liefhebben, dragen en
volgen; zij die het kruis wel erkennen, doch wier wereldsche
beslommeringen hen steeds verder en verder van het kruis
verwijderen; en zij die het kruis haten en vervolgen. Terug tot
Christus en het kruis, geeft den mensch nieuwen levensmoed en hulp
in deze moeilijke tijd. Hierna verrichtte Monsigneur de heilige
inwijding. Ondertusschen werd door de Fraters het lied "Das
Kreuz" gezongen, waarna de scholieren van het Juvenaat hunne
gezangen aansloten. In processie trokken allen daarna terug. 's
Anderen daags is Mgr. E. Haenesch met nog eenige broeders naar
Rotterdam vertrokken om per s.s. Nyasza der Hamburg—Afrika-lijn
naar zijn Heimat in het zwarte werelddeel Umbaba, zooals Mgr. dat
noemde, terug te keeren.
3 november
1933 De smokkeloorlog in N.-Limburg.
Duitschland
werkt de botersmokkelarij in de hand.
DE
GRENSBEWAKING ONVOLDOENDE.
Bij
het in werking treden der crisiszuivelwet, waardoor de boterprijs
hier te lande aanzienlijk is gestegen, hebben de smokkelaars in de
Limburgsche grensgemeenten een nieuwe bron voor den smokkelhandel
gevonden.
Het
is een feit, dat de margarinesmokkelarij op het oogenblik weliger
tiert dan ooit te voren. De Duitsche regeering, die al het mogelijke
doet, wanneer het de bevordering der eigen industrie geldt, heeft
namelijk op den margarineuitvoer een premie gesteld in den vorm van
nagenoeg vrijwel geheele kwijtschelding der hooge belasting op de
Duitsche margarine, waardoor deze hooge belasting, voor die
partijen, welke naar Holland worden geëxporteerd vrijwel is
komen te vervallen. Hierdoor is de margarineprijs in Duitschland
abnormaal laag.
Een
ruime verdienste.
Terwijl
wij hier onder den druk der crisiszuivelwet nog een slordige 120
centen voor een K.G. margarine moeten neertellen, betrekken de
margarine-smokkelaars de margarine aan de overzijde van de grens
voor 28 a 30 cent per K.G.. Ofschoon de gesmokkelde margarine, die
niet voldoet aan de eischen der crisiszuivelwet en waarvan het
vervoeren, zoowel als het voorhanden hebben een fiscale overtreding
is, wordt deze door de smokkelaars voor ongeveer 70 ct. per K.G. aan
de grootafnemers hier te lande afgeleverd, zoodat deze laatsten ook
nog een aardig duitje op deze wijze in den zak houden. Hieruit
blijkt dus dat de margarine-grootsmokkelaars ongeveer 40 cents per
K.G. verdienen, zoodat het intusschen toch nog een aardig winst
gevend bedrijf is om een vrachtwagen beladen met Duitsche margarine
vaak slechts over enkele kilometers te vervoeren. Waar in deze
crisistijd met zulk een margarinetransport en slechts matig risico
een f1000,— a f1500— kan worden verdiend, dan is het
alleszins begrijpelijk, dat vrijwel het geheele smokkelaarsleger der
Limburgsch-Duitsche grens, zich momenteel met dit winstgevend
"margarine-vervoer" bezig houdt.
Onvoldoende
grensbewaking.
De
maatregelen, welke door ons kleine komiezenkorps, kunnen worden
genomen, zijn ten eenenmale onvoldoende om den tegenwoordigen
smokkelhandel afdoende te keeren. En indien, zooals gedurende de
laatste dagen gebeurde in de omgeving van Arcen kort achter elkander
een tweetal zwaar beladen vrachtauto's met margarine werden
aangehouden, dan is dit succes der beambten meer aan het toeval en
aan verraad, dan aan onze grensbewaking te danken. Zoowel aan
uitrusting als bewapening van ons komiezenkorps, dat nog steeds met
een revolver van ouderwetsch model is uitgerust ontbreekt veel —
zoo niet alles — om ook maar eenigen vat van beteekenis op
deze uitgebreide smokkelarij te krijgen.
Zoowel
de dracht als de trefkans dezer wapenen zijn onvoldoende om tegen
een smokkelauto met succes op te treden. Versnelde middelen van
vervoer, welke ter bestrijding der moderne smokkelarij, die
hoofdzakelijk per auto geschiedt, haagst noodzakelijk zijn
ontbreken. Zij maken nog steeds van het goedkoopste vervoermiddel —
den beenenwagen — gebruik, terwijl zonder toestemming zelfs
het medenemen van een rijwiel op surveillance verboden is.
Waar
de fiscus door deze omvangrijke margarinesmokkelarij dagelijks voor
duizenden guldens aan accijns delft is de vraag gewettigd mede in
verband met de bescherming onzer eigen industrie of het niet hoog
tijd wordt dat de grensbewaking met een tijdelijk beambtenkorps
wordt uitgebreid.
Smokkelaars
op het oorlogspad.
Een
feit is, dat gedurende de laatste nachten belangrijke hoeveelheden
Duitsche margarine over onze Noord-Limburgsche grens het land zijn
binnen gevoerd.
Enkele
dagen geleden zat in een der nabije Limburgsche grensplaatsen een
marechausseepatrouille in een houten keet in de nabijheid der
Duitsche grens verdekt opgesteld, om een smokkelauto, die naar was
uitgelekt met Duitsche margarine de grens zou overschrijden, aan te
houden. Toen de politiemannen eenigen tijd hadden post gevat naderde
uit de richting der grens een man, die wel als smokkelaar bekend
stond, doch waarvan men niet verwachtte, dat hij tot het ondernemen
van een smokkeltransport van eenige beteekenis in staat was.
Door
de openingen der houten keet sloegen de politiemannen den verkenner
gade. Zij zagen hoe de man zorgvuldig het terrein doorzocht of er
ergens onraad te bespeuren viel. Eindelijk was de smokkelaar de
houten keet, waarin de politiemannen zich nog steeds schuil hadden
gehouden, genaderd. Toen ook deze door den "voorlooper"
aan een inspectie werd onderworpen, openden de politiemannen de
deur, grepen haastig den verkenner bij zijn kraag en trokken hem bij
zich in het houten huisje.
De
verkenner werd gefouilleerd. Niet gering was de verwondering der
politiemannen, toen zij in een notitieboekje, hetwelk de
aangehoudene bij zich droeg aanteekeningen vonden, dat deze
oogenschijnlijk onbeduidende smokkelaar in een week tijds ruim
20.000 K.G. Duitsche margarine met succes het land had binnen
gesmokkeld.
Korten
tijd later naderde een tweede verkenner. Ook hij werd ingerekend.
Het margarine-transport bleef dien nacht echter op Duitschen bodem.
De auto-bestuurder, die tevergeefs op het sein "veilig"
wachtte heeft kans gezien op een andere plaats ons land binnen te
dringen.
Het
is nog slechts kort geleden, dat in een onzer grensplaatsen het
geheele kommiezen- en politiekorps werd gealarmeerd, omdat volgens
zoogenaamde ingekomen betrouwbare berichten een belangrijk
margarine-transport over de grens zou worden gebracht. Zoowel de
kommiezen als marechaussee's en overige politiedienaren kennen de
margarine-grootsmokkelaars, ongeacht of deze uit Arcen, Bergen,
Siebengewald of Venlo afkomstig zijn, dan wel onder den rook van
Well zijn gehuisvest. En inderdaad bewogen zich op dien belangrijken
avond ook enkele van deze "kopstukken" uit de
margarine-smokkelaarswereld in bedoelde plaats.
Er
gebeurde echter niets. Terwijl het geheele politie- en
ambtenarencorps zijn aandacht op een centraal punt had gevestigd
stoven op slechts een uur gaans van deze plaats twee zware
vrachtauto's, voorafgegaan door een luxe auto, ongehinderd over de
grens.
Het
vuurgevecht te Arcen.
Bij
deze gelegenheid slaagden de beambten er in een auto beladen met
2500 kg. Duitsche margarine in beslag te nemen. De smokkelauto was,
zooals wij reeds meldden, onder valsche voorspiegelingen door de
smokkelaars gehuurd in Venlo. De eigenaar, die van de heele
smokkelaffaire onkundig was heeft onmiddellijk van dit feit aangifte
gedaan bij de marechaussee's. Onder deze omstandigheden zal er voor
den rechter waarschijnlijk niets anders op zitten, dan den auto
wederom te doen teruggeven aan den rechtmatigen eigenaar.
Rest
voor de smokkelaars nog het verlies der 2500 kg. margarine. Deze
vertegenwoordigde een waarde van f700. Toen de beambten den in
beslag genomen buit overbrachten, heeft de bestuurder van den
tweeden smokkelauto kans gezien met zijn margarinetransport, hetwelk
uit 3500 kg. bestond over de grens terug te vluchten. Deze zending
heeft tenslotte goed de plaats van bestemming bereikt. Hier maakten
de smokkelaars dus eene winst van ongeveer f1300. Wat beteekent
onder deze omstandigheden — zooals op dien voor de smokkelaars
noodlottigen Octobermorgen — een verlies van f700?
Voor
het besturen der smokkelauto's zijn onverschrokken bestuurders zeer
gezocht. Zij worden dan ook goed betaald en zijn niet zelden zelf
bij het transport geinteresseerd.
Autoverhuurders,
die hun wagen voor een smokkeltransport beschikbaar stellen
ontvangen hiervoor tegenwoordig als regel ongeveer f30 per rit.
Meermalen wordt ook eene waarborgsom voor den auto gedeponeerd.
Teneinde bij de aanhouding het verlies tot een minimum te beperken
worden voor de margarine-smokkelarij hoofdzakelijk oude vrachtwagens
gebezigd welke meestal slechts een waarde van f200—300
vertegenwoordigen.
Niet
zelden koopen de smokkelaars hunne vroeger in beslag genomen auto's
tijdens openbare verkoopingen van in beslag genomen goederen terug
om hiermede opnieuw den strijd tegen de beambten aan te binden.
Intusschen
hebben de smokkelaars gedurende de laatste weken op verscheidene
plaatsen ondervonden, dat zoowel de grens- als politiebeambten
strenger tegen de roekelooze smokkelchauffeurs gaan optreden en
spoediger van hunne vuurwapens gebruik maken als voorheen het geval
was. Vorige week nog werd op den Veldenschen weg door beambten
geschoten op een taxi, die naar den zin der beambten niet spoedig
genoeg voldeed aan het bevel om te stoppen. De chauffeur had, naar
hij verklaarde niet tijdig het vlaggetje der ambtenaren opgemerkt.
Alhoewel zich in den wagen een smokkelaarsgroepje bevond, dat
waarschijnlijk eene verkenning had verricht, werd geen smokkelwaar
in den wagen aangetroffen.
12 december
1933 REISMARKEN SMOKKEL.
Circa
50 tot 60 Venlonaren in de gevangenis te Krefeld.
Ondanks
alle verscherpte maatregelen van het Duitsche grenstoezicht is het
smokkelen van reismarken blijven voortgaan, zeer tot schade der
waaghalzen, die bij bosjes tegelijk door de Duitsche S.A.-mannen
worden aangehouden en gearresteerd, wanneer ze slechs een gulden of
mark uit Duitschland trachten te vervoeren boven 't toegelaten
aantal.
De
laatste week zijn weer enkele Venlosche dames en heeren in Duitsche
grensplaatsen gearresteerd onder verdenking van devizensmokkelarij.
Bij hun terugkeer uit Duitschland vonden de douanebeambten op hen
een reischeque van 100 M., die geïnd was en in den pas stond
aangegeven. In strijd met den opzet, dat bedragen van Duitsche
reismarken ook in Duitschland moeten verteerd worden, hadden de
dames en heeren een kansje gewaagd om het geld over de grens te
brengen. Ze werden gearresteerd en naar de strafgevangenis te
Krefeld overgebracht. Naar men meedeelt, vertoeven in deze
strafgevangenis meer dan 50 Venlosche ingezetenen, allen verdacht
van het smokkelen van reismarken. Na een voorarrest van in doorsnee
twee tot drie maanden moeten de gevangenen zich verantwoorden voor
den rechter, die hun lang niet malsche straffen toedeelt. Ongeveer
drie maanden geleden werd het echtpaar J. uit Venlo gearresteerd.
Tot vandaag zit dit echtpaar reeds gevangen en het is nog niet voor
den rechter geweest, waar het nog altijd een straf toebedeeld kan
krijgen, die grooter is dan het voorarrest.
14 mei 1934
ERNSTIG AUTO-ONGELUK.
Moeder
en drie kinderen gewond. In den afgeloopen nacht te circa half een
heeft op de Rijksweg juist bij de grensscheiding Venlo—Velden
een ernstig auto-ongeluk plaats gehad. Dhr. Geurts uit Schandelo
kwam met zijn luxe-auto uit de richting Venlo, toen uit de
tegenovergestelde richting een andere luxe-auto naderde.
Vermoedelijk doordat de auto, die uit de richting Velden naderde, de
lichten niet genoeg gedempt heeft, werd dhr. Geurts verblind en reed
hij tegen een langs den weg staande boom. In de auto zat behalve
dhr. Geurts de echtgenoote van dhr. van den Berg uit Velden met
zeven harer kinderen. Drie der kinderen, alsmede de "moeder,
kregen arm- en beenverwondingen. Een der kinderen liep een
hersenschudding op. De chauffeur en de andere kinderen kwamen met
den schrik vrij. Dr. Paulussen en later dr. Thielen verleenden de
eerste geneeskundige hulp. De auto van dhr. Geurts werd zwaar
beschadigd.
24 juli 1934
Eerste H. Mis van Pater Leo Steegh.
Tevens
de Eerste H. Mis in de nieuwe Parochiekerk van den H. Andreas te
Velden.
Reeds
vroeg in den morgen wapperde de vaderlandsche driekleur van den
slanken toren der nieuwe St. Andreaskerk, ten teeken, dat Velden
haar reeks van Juli-feesten zou voortzetten. Pater Leo Steegh van de
Congregatie der Paters van 't H. Hart, verleden Zondag door Mgr. Bux
tot priester gewijd, droeg zijn eerste plechtige Hoogmis op in de
nieuwe parochiekerk van zijn geboortedorp, een eer te meer, nu de
pas gewijde Pater de eerste H. Mis mocht opdragen in genoemde kerk,
een voorrecht dat weinig neomisten te beurt valt. Tegen half tien
had zich een drom van kijklustigen verzameld op 't kruispunt aan de
tramhalte, bij den prachtig versierden boog, waar door de neomist
spoedig zijn joyeuse entrée zou houden in 't sierlijk
getooide dorp. Het fanfarekorps in haar schitterende nieuwe
uniformen stelde zich reeds op, om haar steeds gewaardeerde
medewerking te verleenen.
Uit
de richting Schandelo naderden over den stoffigen weg langzaam de
auto's met neomist, familie en genoodigden. De beierende klokken
jubelden haar vreugdetonen over de verzamelde menigte ten teeken dat
de plechtigheid zou beginnen. Inmiddels arriveerden de eerw. heeren
geestelijken, voorafgegaan door 'n aantal sierlijk uitgedoste
misdienaars, die den nieuwgewijden Pater naar de nieuwe kerk zouden
vergezellen. Nadat genoemde groep den neomist had verwelkomd, zette
de zich inmiddels geformeerde stoet onder de blijde tonen der
fanfare in beweging. Begunstigd door het prachtige zomerweer ging
het door den met witte en gele bloemen versierden eereboog over de
aan weerszijden pepavoiseerde straat de kom van 't dorp binnen, waar
van alle huizen de vlaggen wapperden in den zonnigen morgen. Voor
den ingang der kerk werd door een bruidje een toepasselijk gedicht
voorgedragen waarna de stoet de feestelijk versierde kerk
binnentrad. 't merkelijk Zangkoor stond hier reeds opgesteld en
machtig klonk 't vierstemmige: Dit is de dag, die de Heer gemaakt
heeft. Hierna beklom de zeereerw. heer Pastoor Joosten 't
spreekgestoelte en sprak enkele hartelijke woorden van gelukwensch
tot den neomist, familie en parochianen. Hij noemde het een
uitzonderlijke eer en buitengewoon voorrecht om als pasgewijd
priester, de eerste H. Mis in deze nieuwe kerk te mogen opdragen. De
nieuwe Pater werd vervolgens gekleed met de kerkelijke gewaden en 'n
teeken met 't nieuwe koorklokje was 't sein, dat de groote
plechtigheid een aanvang ging nemen. Pater Steegh werd geassisteerd
door een tweetal Congregatie-genooten, terwijl de zeer eerw. heer
Pastoor fungeerde als presbyterassistens. De weleerw. heer kapelaan
Meys, leidde buitengewoon keurig 't achttal speciaal voor deze
plechtigheid opgeleide koorknapen. 't Zangkoor voerde verdienstelijk
de veranderlijke gezangen van den 9en Zondag na Pinksteren uit
alsmede de klankvolle Missa Frederici van Gruber. Na 't Evangelie
werd door een der Congregatie-genooten van den neomist de
feestpredicatie gehouden. In goedgekozen woorden schetste de gewijde
redenaar de hooge waarde van 't Priesterschap. Hierna werd het H.
Misoffer weer voortgezet en volgden allen weer met groote aandacht
de stichtende plechtigheid in de stemmige kerk. Tot slot zong het
koor na de Hoogmis een 3-stemmige Priester-Cantate. Klokslag 12 uur
zette de auto's zich weer in beweging, toegejuicht door 'n dubbele
haag van kijklustigen ging de file van auto's Schandelo-waarts. In
den namiddag werd er door de fanfare nog een serenade gebracht aan
Pater Steegh. De heer Linssen, voorzitter der vereeniging sprak
enkele woorden van hulde namens het korps, waarna de toegesprokene
het woord nam en heel de parochie Velden dankte voor de eer hem
bewezen en de moeiten die allen zich getroost hadden om dezen dag te
maken tot den schoonsten van zijn leven. En thans maakt Velden zich
weer op om a.s. Zondag voor de 2e maal in 1934 een van zijn zonen
nl. Jozef Kroonenberghs van de orde der Paters Augustijnen zoo
feestelijk mogelijk ten altare te begeleiden.
28 juli 1934
Wordt gevraagd voor terstond een meisje van 14—17 jaar
voor
alle boerenwerk. J. Nilissen, Kerkenhof, Velden, Velgert 260. 3249
31 augustus
1934 Smokkel-auto met bouillon-extracten aangehouden te
Swalmen.
Toen
de alhier geplaatste ambtenaren der invoerrechten Donderdagmorgen in
de vroegte in dienst waren op den weg van Swalmen naar Bruggen,
zagen zij twee auto's met scherpe lichten vanaf de grens komen. Op
de gebruikelijke sommatie met het bekende douanevlaggetje gaf we
bestuurder van de vrachtauto, welke gevolgd werd door een luxe auto,
vol gas en reed weldra over de voor de smokkelaars zoo gevreesde
spijkerplank. Met een paar lekke voorbanden verdween de vrachtauto
in de richting Swalmen. De ambtenaren volgden het spoor en troffen
de vrachtauto op het gehucht Rijkel, onder de gemeente Beesel,
onbeheerd aan.
De
wagen bleek 'n groote partij bouillon-extracten kisten en flesschen
te bevatten. De auto, waarop als eigenaar stond vermeld Sijben,
expediteur te Kessel, werd door een takelwagen van de Nedam naar
Roermond gesleept, terwijl de smokkelwaar bij den Rijksontvanger te
Roermond werd gedeponeerd.
19 oktober
1934 [...] Afgewezen worden, met het oog op de financiën
dezer
gemeente, de subsidies gevraagd door de Stichting het Limburgsche
Landschap en de Stierhouderij "De Toekomst" te Velden; ook
de door_ de N.V. Maasbuurtspoorweg gevraagde extra-subsidie van f500
wordt afgewezen. [...]
Bij
de rondvraag wordt gewezen op noodzakelijke vernieuwing der deuren
van het brandspuithuisje te Schandelo en verbetering van
drinkwatervoorziening in de veldwachterswoning te Velden. [...]
VELDEN.
Landbouwcursus. — Dinsdagavond j.1. werd alhier de
landbouwcursus der Jonge Boeren geopend. Aanwezig waren de zeer
eerw. heer Pastoor, alsmede de besturen, 't Aantal cursisten
bedraagt 23, terwijl de lessen worden gegeven door 't hoofd der
school den heer J. Kroonenberg alhier.
Ziekenfonds
opgericht.
— De
zoo lang besproken plannen voor een op te richten Ziekenfonds zijn
Woensdagavond in vervulling gegaan. Omstreeks 7 uur opent de weleerw
heer Kapelaan de vergadering, welke zeer druk is bezocht, met den
chr. groet en heet allen welkom. In 't kort wordt dan even reglement
bezien, waarmede de meerderheid zich kon vereenigen, terwijl diverse
verbeteringen in 't vooruitzicht worden gesteld, wanneer de zaak
eenigen tijd heeft gefunctionneerd. Na nog even 't doel en 't nut
van dit fonds te hebben gememoreerd, treden velen naar voren om zich
als lid op te geven, zoo dat de weleerw. heer Kapelaan handen tekort
komt en hulp moet ingeroepen worden. Na telling blijken al direct
196 leden te zijn ingeschreven, terwijl heden nog een 10-tal zich
hebben aangemeld, zoodat dit fonds begint met ruim 200 leden,
voorwaar een prachtig succes. Vooral zeer vele gegoede burgers zijn
ingeschreven, zoodoende begrijpende, dat hoofdmotief van dit fonds:
"daadkrachtige naastenliefde" voorop is gesteld. Wegens 't
vergevorderde uur wordt de bestuursverkiezing uitgesteld tot de
volgende vergadering op Dinsdag 30 Oct. a.s. Tot 1 Nov. bestaat nog
gelegenheid zich als lid te doen inschrijven tegen inleggeld van 10
cent, na dien tijd a 50 cent, bij den weleerw. heer Kapelaan,
alhier.
27 oktober
1934 Schouder gebroken.
— Terwijl
de knecht van den heer G. uit Schandelo met paard en wagen bezig
was, trok het paard ineens aan, zoodat hij tegen een zwaren balk
werd geslingerd. Op dokters advies werd hij naar het ziekenhuis
overgebracht, waar een ernstige schouderbreuk werd geconstateerd.
24 december
1934 Wilde zwijnen.
— Door
eenige bewoners uit Schandelo werden gisteren een paar wilde zwijnen
ontdekt. Ofschoon eenige jagers er direct op uit trokken en
somwijlen ook de dieren in 't oog kregen, mocht 't hun echter niet
gelukken de zwijnen onder schot te krijgen, zoodat men zich hiermede
nog enkele dagen kan amuseeren.
7 januari 1935
Overgeplaatst.
— Met
ingang van 1 Febr. a.s. is naar de standplaats Roosendaal
overgeplaatst dhr. S. Pietsersma [Pietersma], Ontvanger van het
Grenskantoor Lingsfort alhier, welke vele jaren hier deze betrekking
heeft vervuld.
30 maart 1935
VALSCHE 5 MARKSTUKKEN Een arrestatie te Venlo.
Gistermiddag
werd door de marechaussee te Venlo de 25-jarige A. G. te Schandelo
gearresteerd, terwijl deze bij een bankinstelling een 26-tal valsche
muntstukken van 5 Mark trachtte in te wisselen. De man werd in de
marechausseekazerne ingesloten. Vermoed wordt dat de aangehoudene
deel uitmaakt van een reeds lang gezochte valsche muntersbende. In
samenwerking met de Duitsche politieautoriteiten wordt thans een
uitgebreid onderzoek ingesteld.
30 maart 1935
Valsche marken in Limburg.
Man
bij wisselen aangehouden.
Vrijdagmiddag
vervoegde zich aan het wisselkantoor van een reisbureau de ongeveer
25-jarige A. G. uit het gehucht Schandelo onder de gemeente Arcen en
Velden, die zes en twintig valsche vijfmarkstukken ter inwisseling
aanbood.
De
kassier had spoedig ontdekt, dat de markstukken, die opvallend
slecht waren nagemaakt, valsch waren. Hij stelde onmiddellijk de
politie van het voorgevallene in kennis en weldra waren enkele
rechercheurs op het kantoor, waar de man intusschen was opgehouden,
aanwezig. G. werd hierna gearresteerd, terwijl het valsche Duitsche
geld in beslag werd genomen. Bij zijn verhoor verklaarde G., in
wiens ouderlijke woning te Schandelo een handel in koloniale waren
wordt gedreven, dat hij het inbeslaggenomen geld moest omwisselen
voor een broer, die het thuis in zijn winkel van Duitschers, die
koffie hadden gekocht, in betaling zou hebben aangenomen. Hij
beweerde niet te weten, dat het geld valsch was.
Ondanks
deze verklaring is de man voorloopig in de marechaussee-kazerne te
Venlo in verzekerde bewaring gesteld. Het Duitsche bureau voor
falsificaties is van een en ander op de hoogte gesteld, zoodat
overkomst van een Duitschen expert wordt verwacht, ten einde naar de
herkomst van het valsche geld een onderzoek in te stellen.
In
dit verband herinneren we er aan, dat sedert jaren in de Duitsche
grensstreek bij herhaling valsche markstukken in omloop worden
gebracht. Ruim een jaar geleden werd een zeer goed geoutilleerde
munterswerkplaats ontdekt nabij de Duitsche grens, op Limburgsch
grondgebied onder Arcen in een grenswoning, welke door een Pool was
bewoond, terwijl destijds ook op Duitsch grondgebied in de nabijheid
der grens een valsche munterswerkplaats werd ontdekt in een
kippenhok. Alhoewel de personen, die zich met deze laatste
valschmunterij onledig hielden werden gearresteerd, houdt de
circulatie van valsch Duitsch geld in de grensstreek nog steeds aan
en komen bij de politie herhaaldelijk klachten binnen van personen,
die valsch geld in betaling hebben genomen, zoodat het vermoeden is
gewettigd, dat in de grensstreek nog geheime plaatsen, alwaar valsch
Duitsch geld wordt vervaardigd, aanwezig moeten zijn. De
marechaussee's der Brigade alhier onder wier bewakingskring de
gemeente Arcen en Velden ressorteert stellen aan deze zijde der
grens een uitgebreid onderzoek in.
31 maart 1935
OP ZOEK NAAR DE DADERS
Bij
het onderzoek inzake het geval van het in omloop brengen van valsche
Duitsche vijfmark-stukken, waarvan reeds melding werd gemaakt, is
gebleken, dat de verklaring van den verdachten 25-jarigen jongeman
uit Schandelo op waarheid berust. Twee Duitschers hebben nl. in den
winkel in koloniale waren te zijnen huize 150 kg koffie besteld. Den
volgenden morgen is deze partij aan de grens afgeleverd en de
jongeman werd toen betaald met 26 valsche Duitsche vijf-markstukken.
Men is thans op zoek naar de koopers van de koffie. De verdachte
jongeman is in vrijheid gesteld.
25 mei 1935
HAUS ENTE - ARCEN (Lingsfort)
Hiermede brengt ondergeteekende ter
kennis, dat hij het mooie buitenverblijf "Haus Ente", weer
heeft overgenomen. Geheel gemoderniseerd wordt het op Zondag 26 Mei
opnieuw geopend. Beleefd aanbevelend G. MATTISSEN - ARCEN
2 juli 1935
Bekanntmachung.
Die Ehe wollen miteinander eingehen:
der Handlungsgehilfe Josef Gerhard Petry, wohnhaft in Straelen
Mühlenstrasse 5, und die berufslose Anna Christine Roosen,
wohnhaft in Arcen, Lingsforterweg 152. Der Standesbeamte Straelen
den 28 Juni 1935. In Vertretung Panhuysen
STRAELEN, den 28 Juni 1935
8 juli 1935
Ernstig motorongeluk onder Velden
TWEE
DOODEN EN EEN ZWAAR GEWONDE.
Zaterdagavond
heeft op den rijksweg Nijmegen—Venlo onder de gemeente Arcen
en Velden, ter hoogte van het postkantoor te Velden, een ernstig
motorongeluk plaats gehad.
Bij
het oversteken van den Rijksweg is de 72-jarige timmerman J.
Clabbers uit Velden door een motorrijtuig, bestuurd door den
27-jarigen mijnwerker R. Glaser uit Brunssum aangereden. De bejaarde
man liep ernstige inwendige kneuzingen op en is op weg naar het
ziekenhuis overleden. De mijnwerker Glaser bekwam een ernstige
schedelfractuur en werd in zorgwekkenden toestand naar het St.
Josephziekenhuis te Venlo vervoerd, alwaar hij Zondagmiddag aan de
bekomen verwondingen is bezweken. De 20-jarige Mej. A. Jüritsch,
eveneens uit Brunssum afkomstig, die öp de duo was gezeten,
liep een dubbele beenfractuur en gapende hoofdwonde op. In
bewusteloozen toestand is ook deze dame naar het ziekenhuis
vervoerd. Haar toestand was Zondagavond nog ernstig.
Omstreeks
9 uur Zaterdagavond bevond de bejaarde timmerman zich op weg naar
zjjn zoon, die een aan genoemden Rijksweg gelegen winkelhuis
bewoont. Tegenover de woning van zijn zoon stak de grijsaard, die
bovendien doof is, zonder achtte slaan op het verkeer, den drukken
verkeersweg over. Op hetzelfde oogenblik naderde uit de richting
Nijmegen met een snelheid van ongeveer 70 K.M. de motorrijder Glaser
met een zware Norton motor, terwijl Mej. A. Jüritsch op de duo
zat. Op het laatste oogenblik zag dc oude man het gevaar in, hij
aarzelde een oogenblik en liep toen door. In volle vaart reed de
motorrijder den ouden man aan. Deze werd tegen den grond gesmakt,
terwijl de motorrijder ongeveer 10 meter verder tegen een boom
terzijde van den weg werd geslingerd. De duorijdster kwam nog iets
verder tegen den muur van een huis terecht. Onmiddellijk snelden
omwonenden toe. Het bleek, dat de gewonden, die allen hevig
bloeddeip er ernstig aan toe waren. Het bejaarde slachtoffer werd
inde woning van zijn zoon binnengedragen. Onmiddellijk werden
geneeskundige en geestelijke hulp ontboden. Pastoor Joosten en
Kapelaan Meijs uit Velden waren spoedig ter plaatse en verleenden
geestelijken bijstand, terwijl ook de doktoren Thielen uit Arcen en
Poulussen uit Venlo weldra op de plaats van het noodlottig,ongeval
arriveerden. Na voorloopig verbonden te zijn, zijnde drie
slachtoffers in bewusteloozen toestand naar het St. Josephziekenhuis
te Venlo overgebracht. Bij aankomst aldaar bleek de timmerman
Clabbers reeds te zijn overleden. In zorgwekkenden toestand werden
de heide andere slachtoffers het ziekenhuis binnengedragen. Zonder
tot bewustzijn te zjjn gekomen is ook de mijnwerker Glaser
Zondagmiddag omstreeks 1 uur overleden. Naar wij bij informatie in
het ziekenhuis vernamen was de toestand van Mej. Jüritsch
Zondagavond nog zeer zorgwekkend. De gemeentepolitie uit Velden en
de marechaussee’s uit Venlo hebben van het ongeval
proces-verbaal opgemaakt. Het noodlottig ongeval bracht in het
anders zoo rustige Maasdorpje een groote opschudding. Op de plek van
het ongeval stonden de dorpsbewoners Zondagmorgen het gebeurde,
waarbij een hunner oudste ingezetenen het leven verloor, nog drukte
bespreken. Het motorrijwiel, waarmede het ongeval plaats vond, werd
slechts licht beschadigd.
6 augustus
1935 VELDEN. Plechtige Eerste H. Mis Pater Elias Theelen
O.C.
— Nog
is het jubelend gebeier niet uit de lucht, of Velden ziet zich weer
voor de groote eer geplaatst, een harer nieuwe priesterzonen naar 't
altaar Gods te mogen geleiden, ditmaal den W. Eerw. Pater Elias
Theelen van de Orde der Carmelieten, die 't aantal priesters, die
het kleine Velden reeds geschonken heeft, tot negen doet stijgen.
Reeds weken en weken is men bezig geweest, dit feest voor den
Neomist tot een onvergetelijk te maken, waarin men dan ook wondervol
is gaslaagd, want door een dergelijke versiering, met elf eerebogen,
des avonds feeerijk verlicht, aan te brengen, had men ongetwijfeld
den jongen priester geen grooter eer en vreugde kunnen verschaffen,
en de gevoelens der buurtbewoners niet beter kunnen vertolken. Om
kwart voor tien werd de neomist, vergezeld van zijn grijze vader en
familie, aan huis afgehaald door Geestelijkheid, bruidjes,
buurtbewoners en fanfare, en werd hij reeds terstond verwelkomd door
twee maagden, waarop de jonge priester zijn priesterlijken zegen
schonk. Aan de kerk werd hij nogmaals verwelkomd door twee bruidjes,
terwijl in de kerk door het Zangkoor een machtig driestemmig "Tu
es sacerdos" van v. Schaik den jongen priester werd
toegezongen. Vervolgens sprak de Z.Eerw. Heer Pastoor een
gelukwensch tot den Neomist en familie. Dan werd een aanvang gemaakt
met de H. Diensten. Als presbyter-assistens fungeerde Pastoor
Joosten, als diaken de W. Eerw. Pater J. Linssen S.S.S., als
sub-diaken de W.E. Pater J. Kronenberghs O.E.S.A., en als
ceremoniarius de W.E. Frater L. Linssen S.C.J., alle 3 dorpsgenooten
van den Neomist. Door het knapen- en mannenkoor werd de plechtige
tweestemmige "Missae St. Antonii de Padua" van Janssen
gezongen. De feestpredicatie werd gehouden door den W.Eerw. Pater
Herman Joseph Denteneer O.C., die op indrukwekkende wijze de
heiligheid en waardigheid van het H. Priesterschap deed uitkomen. Na
de H. Mis werd door het koor een jubelend vierstemmig "Hic est
sacerdos" van M. Mosmans uitgevoerd en was deze plechtigheid
mede door de prachtige versiering in de kerk, alsook door de op zeer
verdienstelijke wijze uitgevoerde zang, voor allen een
onvergetelijke geworden. Vervolgens toog men huiswaarts, alwaar weer
door meerdere bruidjes verzen werden gedeclameerd en bloemen
aangeboden. Namens de buurtbewoners vertolkte dhr. J. Clabbers in
een kort, doch hartelijk woord de gevoelens der omwonenden. Spr.
dankte voor het geluk, dat ook zij een priester in hun midden
hebben. Ten zeerste geroerd sprak dan de jonge priester, na op de
eerste plaats God te hebben bedankt alsmede zijn grijze vader,
vooral de Z.Eerw. Heer Pastoor, voor de vele moeite en offers, voor
hem gebracht. Des avonds werd de Neomist door de Fanfare een
serenade gebracht. Bij monde van wethouder van den Hombergh werd hij
dan gecomplimenteerd. De jonge priester dankte voor dit eerbewijs en
beloofde de Fanfare in zijn gebed niet te vergeten. Nog lang in den
avond heerschte er groote vreugde in het dorp. Velden heeft weer op
ondubbelzinnige wijze getoond, zijn priesters te kunnen eeren.
21 augustus
1935 Verkeerstelling.
— Op
den van provinciaal belang verklaarden weg, loopende vanaf het dorp
Arcen naar de Rijksgrens aan den Lingsfort wordt momenteel eene
verkeerstelling gehouden, welke echter geen verband houdt met de
plannen tot verbetering hiervan. De verbetering met asphalt-beton,
waartoe bereids door den Raad werd besloten, zal afgezien van den
uitslag der telling, binnenkort ter hand worden genomen. Op Zaterdag
j.1. bedroeg de uitslag der gehouden telling tusschen 6 uur v.m. en
8 uur nam. Bespannen voertuigen voor vrachtvervoer 22;
personenauto's 38, op Zondag 36; autobus 1; vrachtauto's 28;
motorrijwielen 12, op Zondag 10; rijwielen 498, op Zondag 692;
handkruiwagens, hondenkarren, enz 38, op Zondag 19; voetgangers 274,
op Zondag 331.
26 augustus
1935 FEL WOEDT NOG HET VUUR IN HET VEEN.
De
brand in de Noord-Limburgsch Duitsche grensstreek verwoestte reeds
40 H.A.
(Van
onzen correspondent). VENLO, 24 Aug.
— De
veenbrand, die reeds enkele dagen in de Noord-Limburgsch-Duitsche
grensstreek woedt, is nog steeds niet bedwongen. Vóór
de bekenverbetering in deze streken waren de veengronden veel
drassiger dan tegenwoordig, en daardoor ook minder brandbaar. Na de
langdurige droogteperiode zijn deze beken zoo goed als uitgedroogd,
waardoor groote uitgestrekte veengronden droogliggen. De veenlaag is
hier op sommige plaatsen tamelijk diep, zoodat de brand hier en daar
zelfs meer dan een meter diep onder den grond woekert. Aan blusschen
valt onder deze omstandigheden dan ook niet te denken. Dag en nacht
bewaken rijks- en gemeentepolitie de brandende terreinen en de
omgeving, om onmiddellijk als de vlammen aan de oppervlakte komen en
dan over de dorre gras- en heidevelden voortjagen, te kunnen
ingrijpen. Ook de vrijwillige brandweercorpsen uit de Duitsche
grensstreek en de arbeiders uit de werkverschaffing der
Noord-Limburgsche dorpjes Velden en Arcen zijn dag en nacht in de
weer om den vuurwolf te bedwingen. Vooral in het gehucht Schandeloo
in de onmiddellijke nabijheid der Duitsche grens, woedt het vuur
hevig. Ook op het aangrenzende Duitsche grondgebied gaat de vuurwolf
hevig te keer. Uitgestrekte perceelen heidegrond zijn reeds zwart
geroosterd. Vooral langs de spoorlijn naar Krefeld kent het alles
vernielende vuur geen grenzen. Hier is de veenbrand op het oogenblik
wel het ergst. Op grooten afstand is de scherpe brandlucht merkbaar.
19 oktober
1935 Oefening Luchtbescherming.
— Voor
de in de namiddag van Zaterdag 26 October a.s. boven Limburg te
houden oefeningen van den Luchtbeschermingsdienst zullen in deze
gemeente de volgende maatregelen worden genomen. De
straatverlichting in de dorp Arcen, Lomm, Schandelo en Velden, zal
niet ontstoken worden dan na afloop der oefening te omstreeks half
zeven.[...]
24 oktober
1935 LANDELIJKE IDYLLE.
Het
matte licht van een vroegen wintermorgen lag over het zaaltje —
over de daken lag de witte rijp en overal waren teekenen van het
seizoen te bekennen, zoodat het binnen in het zaaltje, waar de hooge
kachel van de warmte glom, reeds genoegelijk verwijlen was. In deze
vroeg-wintersche sfeer trad een clan Veldenaren aan, of juister
gezegd, ze kwamen uit het gehucht Schandelo, en nu wilden we allen
wel eens weten wat deze heeren, wier gehucht reeds een verwijt aan
boosheid beteekent, gedaan of mogelijk niét gedaan hadden.
Men
zal niet te snel oordeelen, wanneer men een aantal lieden uit één
buurt voor de kadi aantreft. Want heel achteraf blijkt met zelden,
dat de schuldige van den dag niet meer schuld draagt dan de heeren.
die hun genoegen hebben gevonden in het spelen van getuige. Alleen
zijn zij misschien wat slimmer geweest, of hebben zij dankbaar
gebruik gemaakt van "het juiste moment", een
omstandigheid, waarnaar het slachtoffer wellicht tevergeefs uitkeek
Lieden
van 't land knauwen soms op iets verschrikkelijks; zij zijn in staat
om plannen, te smeden, ten einde één hunner
gemeenschappelijk aan de galg te helpen, en zij vergeten daarbij,
dat de vrede een onmisbaar element is in de samenleving. De stad
stelt zich gemeenlijk die verhouding wat al te gekleurd of al te
vredelievend voor — wanneer de stad naar buiten trekt en zich
in de vrije natuur tusschen wiegende graanakkers en dennebosschen
ophoudt, dan ziet zij in den naderenden landman, die omgeven door
den vrede van de natuur, over een smal paadje gaat, het beeld van
den hemel. En, wanneer dezelfde stadsmensch zoo nu en dan eens naar
dit zaaltje kwam luisteren, zou hij voor goed twijfelen aan de
waarde van den Volkenbond, want een heele stam kan zóó
hopeloos met elkaar overhoop liggen, dat men zich een rustend kanon
niet kan voorstellen
Ik
wil niet zeggen, dat deze idylle uit Schandeloo geheel volgens
bovenstaand recept is, maar er bleek dan toch oneenigheid te bestaan
— en een oneenigheid, die niet tot het object, een fazant,
beperkt bleef. Het werd er niet bij verteld, doch in de zaal zweefde
het ontzettende woord "veete" en dit maakte de stemming
eenigszins gereserveerd. Een Schandeloër dan zou in het veld
een fazant geschoten hebben, gedood en bemachtigd, luidde de
verdenking, en wel op 30 September van dit jaar, toen de jacht op
dit gevogelte reeds taboe was verklaard.
Hoe
het nu precies in elkaar zat, bleef in de verte zweven, maar de
rijksveldwachter werd in den arm genomen en die moest den dader maar
eens op de bon slingeren.
En
zoo geschiedde het dat Schandelo dezen morgen naar het zaaltje
afgevaardigd werd. Langzaam ontknoopte zich het geval, d.w.z. we
kregen te hooren, dat er méér achter zat, al konden we
met ons getraind combinatievermogen de landelijke legplaatjes niet
geheel aan elkaar leggen.
Als
poging om den vroegtijdigen dood van de fazant voor het slachtoffer
te bezwaren, steeg van voor de balie het verwijt op, dat er ook wel
eens een kraai was geschoten, maar de twist raakte als in een
kluwen, toen verteld werd, dat in de buurt een dochter was getrouwd
en dat er menschen op die bruiloft geweest waren.
De
vraag, die tenslotte van meer interesse was dan de rest, was voor
ons: wat heeft een doode fazant te maken met een gezellige bruiloft
in Schandeloo? Er werd in dit verband wel zoo men dat noemt op den
korf gestooten, maar verder bleef het geheim van het land bestaan.
Toen
kwam de politieman die zich in deze idylle gewaagd had, en hij
trachtte zijn eenmaal begonnen werk tot een goed einde te brengen.
Of
er ook gestroopt wordt, vroeg de rechter.
— Heel
Schandeloo stroopt, sprak de politieman en daarmede maakte hij den
verdediger om zoo te zeggen wakker, die op deze uitlating dan wel
eens wou vernemen of deze man, zijn cliënt, ook als een
strooper bekend stond...
Feitelijk
was deze vraag overbodig, want waar de politieman geen Schandeloër
vrij van de zonde van stroopen genoemd had, daar behoefde men niet
meer over de onschuld van één hunner te twisten.
Maar
de veldwachter schrok misschien een beetje voor zijn eigen moed om
de heele bevolking over één kam te scheren.
— Nee,
zei hij toen, dat nou niet. Toen was de verdediger weer gerust. De
balie noemde het gansche geval niet sympathiek — er zaten te
veel haken en oogen aan, terwijl men niet met absolute zekerheid te
weten kon komen óf de delinquent de fazant — want daar
ging het nog altijd om — geschoten had. Wel was er een schot
gevallen, maar zeg maar eens wie schoot, als de heele buurt, volgens
den politieman, ervoor in staat is. Zoo kwam het, dat de ambtenaar,
die prikkelende gevoeligheden wilde ontwijken en die inderdaad ook
zorgen blijkt te hebben voor het behoud of het herstel van den vrede
ten plattelande, vrijspraak eischte. De rechter hield de gunning nog
veertien dagen vast, maar dat is slechts eerbiedwaardige traditie.
Want de Schandeloër gaat niet naar de galg!
19 november
1935 ZWARE BOERDERIJBRAND TE VELDEN.
Hoeve
door het vuur vernietigd.
TWEE
KINDEREN MET MOEITE GERED.
Geld
en geldswaardige papieren verbrand.
Maandagavond
te ongeveer 6 uur werd de buurtschap Hasselt, gelegen onder de
gemeente Velden, plotseling opgeschrikt door een uitslaande brand in
de groote boerderij van J. Willemsen. In allerijl snelden de
buurtbewoners naar de bedreigde hoeve.
Het
bleek dat de brand was uitgebroken in de stallen welke aan de woning
der boerderij zijn vastgebouwd. In de aanwezige voorraad hooi en
andere voedingsartikelen vond het vuur gretig voedsel. De vlammen
sloegen van alle kanten uit het gebouw.
In
het gedeelte van het woonhuis, dat boven de stallingen gebouwd was,
sliepen een tweetal kinderen van den eigenaar. Een bewijs voor de
groote snelheid, waarmede het vuur zich uitbreidde, is wel het feit,
dat men de kleinen slechts met moeite uit de vlammenzee kon redden.
Het bedje van een der kinderen was reeds aan 't branden.
Ondertusschen was men er ook in geslaagd het vee los te maken en uit
de stallingen te drijven. Het vuur dat in zijn groote hevigheid niet
te temperen was, tastte weldra het geheele woonhuis aan. Met
vereende krachten sleepte men zooveel mogelijk de inboedel naar
buiten.
Hoewel
de brandweren van Velden, Schandelo en Arcen met alle kracht werkte,
kon men het woonhuis niet behouden. Wel gelukte het hun, mede door
de gunstige windrichting, een van de brandende hoeve losstaande
schuur aan het vernietigende vuur te ontrukken.
Men
deelde ons nog mede, dat een portefeuille, die een bedrag van ruim
f200 bevatte, in het vuur gebleven was. Dit geld was de opbrengst
van den verkoop van eenig vee, dat de eigenaar 's morgens nog
ontvangen had. Ook de bezittingen van een inwonende broer van dhr.
Willemsen, konden niet meer uit het vuur gered worden. Zijn kleeren,
geld en papieren bleven in de vlammen. De heer Willemsen zelf was
verzekerd, zijn broer echter niet.
De
huiskapel van Mgr. Willemsen, een familielid van den eigenaar der
hoeve, die een uitbouw vormde van de hoeve, wist men eveneens nog te
behouden. Deze kapel was tijdens het verblijf van Mgr. Willemsen in
Velden, gedurende den oorlog, toen hij niet meer naar Rome terug kon
keeren, aan de hoeve vastgebouwd. Op het terrein van den brand
merkten wij o.m. op wethouder van den Hombergh uit Velden.
Te
ongeveer 8 uur had men het vuur zoodanig bedwongen, dat men geen
verdere uitbreiding meer behoefde te vreezen.
17 maart 1936
TWEE DUIZEND KILO KOFFIE GESMOKKELD.
Door
Duitsche douane achterhaald.
In
den smokkelhandel langs de Duitsche grens valt in de laatste weken
wederom een kleine opleving te bespeuren. De naar Duitschland
gesmokkelde artikelen bestaan hoofdzakelijk uit koffie, tabak en
sigaretten, terwijl uit Duitschland daarentegen in hoofdzaak geld,
alcoholhoudende dranken en vooral Maggi frauduleus worden ingevoerd.
Door een toevallige samenloop van omstandigheden zijn de Duitsche
douanebeambten thans in Noord Limburg een belangrijke
koffie-smokkelarij op het spoor gekomen, meldt de "N. Venl.
Crt."
Enkele
smokkelaars uit Venlo waren er in geslaagd met een gehuurde
vrachtauto, beladen met 2000 K.G. ongebrande koffie, onder de
grensgemeenten Arcen en Velden de Duitsche grens te overschrijden.
Alle voorzorgsmaatregelen waren tevoren reeds genomen, zoodat het
passeeren der Duitsche grens met de zwaarbeladen auto een vlot
verloop had. De koffie was bestemd voor een koffiebranderij gelegen
in de nabijheid van Munchen-Gladbach. De smokkelaars waren met den
wagen ongeveer 25 K.M. de Duitsche grens overschreden toen zij in de
nabijheid van het stadje Viersen auto-pech kregen. Bij onderzoek
bleek dat het defect aan den wagen niet dadelijk te herstellen was,
zoodat de chauffeur van de smokkelwagen er op uit toog om een
vrachtauto op te zoeken, die de lading zou overnemen. Het gelukte
den smokkelaar weldra een Duitscher te vinden, die zich bereid
verklaarde tegen vergoeding de vracht naar de plaats van bestemming
te brengen. Op de vraag van den Duitscher wat zich eigenlijk in de
zakken bevond, antwoord den de smokkelaars, dat daarin zaadboonen
waren verpakt. Onmiddellijk na het overladen, dat geheel ongestoord
kon plaats vinden, werd de wagen naar de plaats van bestemming te
Munchen—Gladbach gereden.
Toen
de lading aan het bestemde adres was afgeleverd keerde de Duitscher
naar Viersen terug, terwijl de smokkelaars zich eveneens huiswaarts
begaven. Toen echter de Duitsche chauffeur de vrachtauto waarmede
hij den avond tevoren de vracht had vervoerd, den volgenden morgen
wederom wilde gebruiken, bemerkte hij, dat in den laadbak een kleine
hoeveelheid ongebrande koffieboonen lag. Hij vermoedde toen dat deze
afkomstig waren van de vracht, welke hij voor de hem onbekende
Hollanders vervoerd had, zoodat hij onbewust zijn medewerking had
verleend aan deze belangrijke smokkel-affaire. Hij stelde de
Duitsche douane-beambten van een en ander in kennis. Deze hebben
zich toen onmiddellijk naar de plaats begeven, al waar de koffie was
afgeleverd, en de geheele partij in beslag genomen, aangezien de
eigenaar niet in het bezit was van de vereischte vergunning zulk een
groote hoeveelheid koffie voorhanden te hebben.
18 maart 1936
Velden. Sluiting 2-jarige Landbouwcursus.
Dhr.
Sanders, voorzitter Boerenbond, opende, heette Geestelijk Adviseur,
Ir. Dewez, rijkslandbouwconsulent en Ir. Bles, directeur
Landbouwschool, welkom. Tevens waren besturen Boerenbond en Jonge
Boeren aanwezig. De landbouwonderwijzer dhr. Kroonenberghs en Ir.
Dewez stelden enkele practische vragen, waarna de laatste nog enkele
opwekkende woorden tot de cursisten sprak. Voorzitter Jonge Boeren,
dhr. Geurts, reikte een toepasselijk woord aan de volgende heeren de
diploma's uit, G. en P. Steegh, M. en K. Lommen, J. en Th. van den
Haghen, G. Verbong, Jac. Lommen, H. Keltjens, J. Tiesen, H. Heldens,
G. Koopmans, Jac. Leupers, Jac. van Hees, C. Verheyen, Jac. Geurts,
Jac. Driessen, H. Vermeulen, M. Becker, H. Bouten, Jac. Jansen, M.
Simons, H. van der Haghen en J. Theelen.
De
geestelijke adviseur, pastoor Joosten, richt ook enkele woorden tot
de geslaagden, welke zij vooral vooreerst ter harte zullen nemen.
Namens de cursisten dankte dhr. G. Steegh, waarna de onderwijzers
aan de aangename samenwerking herinnerde en hiervoor dan ook
speciaal dankte.
30 maart 1936
Ploegdemonstratie Jonge Boeren.
— Onder
een zeer groote belangstelling werd alhier door de kring van Jonge
Boeren, Arcen, Lomm en Velden, ploegwedstrijden georganiseerd,
waarvan ook van de zijde der deelnemers, veel animo bestond. Het
perceel, waarop de wedstrijden zouden plaats hebben, was welwillend
door den heer Fr. Thiessen, Schandelo, afgestaan. De wedstrijd had
plaats in twee groepen van zes deelnemers. Voor den aanvang der
wedstrijden, sprak de kring voorzitter de heer J. Geurts, een
hartelijk welkomstwoord, speciaal tot de juryleden de heeren Ir.
Bles en Dings, Roermond, Jac. Beeker en Fr. Theelen, Velden, alsmede
de heer W. Nijskens Arcen en wees de deelnemers op het nut en doel
van deze strijd, welke in de toekomst goede vruchten zal afwerpen.
De directeur der Landbouwwinterschool dankte het Kringbestuur voor
hun groote activiteit hierin betoond en gaf vervolgens een korte
uiteenzetting over de grondbewerking. Alvorens een aanvang te nemen,
werd de deelnemers bekend gemaakt dat ten hoogste 100 punten kunnen
behaald worden, waarvan 70 punten voldoende is om een diploma te
verkrijgen. Na drie uren ploegen was de strijd beëindigd en
werd overgegaan tot het uitdeelen der prijzen. Alvorens hiertoe over
te gaan, maakte de jury bekend dat in verband met de losse grond en
de korte opstand het minimum te behalen punten voor een diploma was
gesteld op 65. De uitslag is als volgt:
1.
Geelen, Velden met 77 pnt;
2.
G. Hegger, Arcen met 75½ pnt.;
3.
J. Tax, Velden 74¾ pnt.;
4.
M. Rieter, Velden 72¼ pnt.;
5.
J. Schreven, Arcen 69½ pnt.;
6.
H. Heidens, Velden 69¼ pnt:;
7.
H. Arts, Arcen, 69 pnt.;
8.
H. Thiessen, Velden 66¾ pnt.;
9.
L. Engels, Velden 66½ pnt.;
10.
P. Steegh, Velden 66½ pnt.;
11.
W. Muijres, Velden 65¾ pnt.
De
eerste twee prijswinnaars ontvingen bovendien nog een extra
souvenir. De punten zelven werden niet alleen gegeven voor de beste
ploeger, maar ook werd aandacht geschonken aan het best in orde zijn
van tuig en ploeg, waarop meerdere deelnemers niet ernstig hadden
gelet en zich hierdoor schade berokkenden. Tot slot dankte de
voorzitter J. Geurts allen voor hun bereidwilligheid en dankte
vooral de jury, waarmede deze zeer leerzame dag was beeindigd.
19 april 1936
DUITSCHE DOUANE HOUDT AUTO MET BOLLEN AAN.
Winstgevende
smokkelarij... als het ten minste gelukt.
(Van
onzen correspondent).
VELDEN,
IS April. — Duitsche kommiezen hebben aan de grens onder
Walbeck, na eerst eenige schoten te hebben gelost, een vrachtauto
uit Limburg aangehouden, waarop 3000 K.G. bloembollen waren geladen,
welke frauduleus Duitschland waren binnengevoerd. De auto met lading
is in beslag genomen.
De
bestuurder wist te ontkomen. De bollen, afkomstig uit de omgeving
van Haarlem, waren bestemd voor een der groote Duitsche steden. De
bestuurder van den zwaarbeladen auto was onder de Limburgsche grens
gemeente Arcen over de Duitsche grens gereden. Nauwelijks was hij
echter enkele honderden meters gevorderd of van achter een langs den
weg staande woning kwamen twee gewapende kommiezen te voorschijn.
Zij sommeerden den bestuurder te stoppen waaraan deze aanvankelijk
geen gevolg gaf. Toen de beambten hierop het vuur op den
vermoedelijke smokkelauto openden bracht de chauffeur in de
nabijheid van een bosch zijn wagen tot stilstand. In allerijl sprong
hij uit zijn wagen en vluchtte het struikgewas in.
Weldra
was hij uit het gezicht verdwenen. Behoedzaam heeft de vluchteling
door het bedekte terrein de Limburgsche grens wederom opgezocht. De
beambten, die dachten in den wagen een partij koffie of tabak aan te
treffen, bemerkten tot hun niet geringe verbazing, dat de auto de
niet onbelangrijke partij tulpen bevatte. Ten gevolge van de groote
vraag naar bloembollen in Duitschland worden er in den laatsten tijd
herhaaldelijk belangrijke partijen bloembollen zonder de vereischte
vergunning Duitschland binnengesmokkeld. Naar wij van welingelichte
zijde vernemen levert een geslaagde tocht met een dergelijk
transport bloembollen die vaak van honderd tot zelfs driehonderd
kilometer ver naar de groote steden in Duitschland worden vervoerd,
een winst van ongeveer f1000 op.
Het
onderzoek naar den voortvluchtigen smokkelaar heeft geen resultaat
opgeleverd.
11 mei 1936
Gouden Echtvereeniging.
— Morgen,
Dinsdag, hoopt het echtpaar P. Aerts—Hansen te Schandelo
alhier hun gouden echtvereeniging te herdenken. Om 10 uur zal een
plechtige H. Dienst van dankzegging worden opgedragen. De
buurtbewoners zijn reeds weken in de weer, om deze heugelijke dag
voor de beide oudjes tot een onvergetelijke maken.
15 mei 1936
VELDEN. Gouden echtvereeniging.
— Door
de echtelieden Aerdts-Hansen te Schandelo alhier werd Dinsdag j.1.
't feest hunner gouden echtvereeniging gevierd. Reeds weken lang was
de geheele buurt in de weer geweest om dezen dag voor de beide
sympathieke en geachte oudjes tot een onvergetelijke te maken,
waarin men dan ook volkomen is geslaagd. De geheele voorhof was in
een bloementuin herschapen, terwijl de beide eerebogen, welke 's
avonds feeëeriek waren geïllumineerd, het geheel een
schitterend effect gaven. Een hartelijk woord van dank past dan ook
aan de buurt, alsmede aan het inwonend personeel, welke voor dit
gebeuren kosten noch moeite gespaard hadden.
Des
morgens om 9 uur werden de beide oudjes, afgehaald door de fanfare
en de Landelijke Rijvereeniging "Zeldenrust" —
beiden in groot tenue —, ter kerke geleid, alwaar de Z. E.
heer Pastoor een plechtige H. Mis van dankzegging opdroeg. Na afloop
hiervan toog men weder huiswaarts, alwaar bij aankomst de
traditioneele kanonschoten bulderden, om den volke kond te doen van
deze blijde gebeurtenis.
Bij
den ingang der woning werd door twee lieve bruidjes onder opzegging
van een toepasselijk gedicht, het cadeau der buurtbewoners
aangeboden, 't geen op allen een diepen indruk maakte. Van de
receptie maakten velen gebruik om de beminde oudjes hun
gelukwenschen aan te bieden, o.m. de eerw. geestelijkheid,
burgemeester en wethouders en vele anderen. Des avonds om 7 uur werd
door de Fanfare een serenade gebracht en werd bij monde van den
president den jubilarissen een nog lang leven toegewenscht. De
oudste zoon der familie dankte allen voor de groote eer, hun ouders
bewezen.
[Zie
ook Mooi
Limburg » 16 mei 1936 - Art. 8 | Delpher]
6 juni 1936
DANKBETUIGING Aan allen, in 't bijzonder de buurtbewoners,
onzen hartelijken dank,
voor het welslagen van onzen gouden huwelijksdag.
Fam. P. AERDTS HANSEN
Schandelo-Velden
8 augustus
1936 Groot concours-hippique te Velden.
"ZELDENRUST" ALS
GASTHEER.
Morgen zal het groote
concours-hippique op de bekende renbaan te Schandelo-Velden
plaatsvinden. Weken lang zijn reeds de noo dige voorbereidingen
getroffen, zoodat, mits 't zonnetje wenscht mede te werken, een
groote strijd te wachten is en talrijke vereenigingen zich in
draven, rennen en springen zullen bekampen om den eereprijs. Het
programma is als volgt samengesteld 1. Demonstratie viertallen; 2.
Openingsrede door den voorzitter dhr. Jos. Leuptrs; 3. Rennen voor
beide klassen; 4. Harddraven in twee klassen; 5. Eenspannen B. T.-
6. Eenspannene luxe; 7. Sprinconcours.
Als juryleden fungeeren de
heeren E. Kallen, Broekhuizen, H. Deckers, Beesel en G. Nas, Meerlo.
Het feest zal worden
opgeluisterd door een prima Waldorpreproductor radio-luidspreker,
welke de bezoekers trouw op de hoogte zal houden van de diverse
gebeurtenissen.
Vooral aan 't
springconcours is bijzondere aandacht geschonken en bevat dit
parcours een achttal deskundig geplaatste hindernissen, zoodat ook
hierin een heftige strijd te verwachten is.
Rest nog te vermelden dat
het aanvangsuur is gesteld op half drie, terwijl door een spoedige
afwerking om zes uur de wedstrijden zullen geëindigd zijn.
26 januari
1937 GECOMPLICEERD AUTO-ONGEVAL TE VELDEN
Eén zwaar, en één
lichtgewonde
ERNSTIGE MATERIEELE SCHADE
Maandagmorgen omstreeks
half zeven heeft op den Rijksweg nabij de tramhalte Hasselt-Velden,
een ernstig auto-ongeluk plaats gevonden. Omstreeks dien tijd bevond
zich op den weg voor het dagelijksch vervoer naar de stad de melkkar
van den heer H., geheel geladen met melkbussen. Uit de richting
Arcen kwam in kalme vaart aangereden de zware trailor van de firma
Kuipers uit Amsterdam. Deze, waarschijnlijk door de hevige storm en
regen, welke op dit moment nedersloeg, alsmede, volgens ds
verklaringen van den chauffeur, door de verblindende lichten van een
tegenligger, zag de melkkar niet alvorens nog enkele meters hiervan
verwijderd te zijn, zoodat hij, ondanks hevig remmen en naar links
uitwijkende, de melkkar opzij aanreed, met het gevolg, dat het rad
onder den wagen werd uitgereden. Kar en paard kantelde en kwamen in
de tramrails terecht, zoodat de geheele kostbare lading melk,
bestaande uit vele honderden liters, over den weg stroomde. De
tegenligger t.w. een Ford-bestelwagen, die waarschijnlijk noch de
melkkar noch de trailor gezien had, doch natuurlijk geen onheil
vermoedende, gewoon z'n gang reed en de rechterzijde van den weg
hield, was juist de melkkar genaderd, toen de trailor deze aanreed.
Op 't oogenblik echter dat hij naar links uitzwenkte, stond ook de
bestelwagen voor hem, zoodat deze in volle vaart tegen den trailor
opbotste. Op dit donderend gekraak van deze wagens kwam al spoedig
hulp opdagen. Het ergste was de zoon van den heer L. er aan toe,
welke uit de wagen was geslingerd en buiten bewustzijn was. Na eerst
naar de woning van den heer D. te zijn vervoerd, werd hij later naar
het ouderlijk huis te Venlo overgebracht. Een spoedig ontboden
geneesheer constateerde ernstige hersenschudding, alsmede eenige
gebroken ribben en een diepe hoofdwonde. De bestelwagen zelve was
geheel in elkaar gedrukt en totaal vernield. De chauffeur van de
trailor kwam met den schrik vrij en had geen letsel opgeloopen. De
tractor echter was ook totaal vernield en geheel onbruikbaar. De
voerman van de melkkar kreeg een hevige stoot van een der boomen van
de kar en liep ook ernstige kneuzingen op. Ook het paard had eenige
diepe schaafwonden. Omtrent de schuldvraag valt nog niets te zeggen
daar de heer L. nog niet gehoord kon worden. De melkkar draagt,
zooals voorgeschreven, steeds drie lichten, doch deze schijnen door
den hevigen storm en regen te zijn uitgewaaid, reden waarom de
chauffeur van den trailor deze kar niet heeft gezien. De heer L.
draagt aan de aanrijding geen schuld, daar hij steeds de rechter
zijde van den weg heeft gehouden. Wel is gebleken, dat L. pas 17
jaar oud is en derhalve nog niet in bezit van een rijbewijs.
Veldwachter v. d. Ven was terstond ter plaatse, even later
geassisteerd door de motor-brigade der marechaussees uit Venlo,
welke proces-verbaal hebben opgemaakt en deze zaak nader zullen
onderzoeken.
25 februari
1937 VELDEN.
Jaarvergadering
Jonge Boeren. — Deze drukbezochte jaarvergadering, Dinsdag
j.l. in lokaal Mooren gehouden, werd door den voorzitter met een
hartelijk welkomstwoord geopend. De notulen der vorige vergadering
werden onveranderd goedgekeurd. Dan volgde het uitgebreid
jaarverslag van den secretaris. Het ledental is gestegen tot 63. In
't bijzonder wordt gememoreerd de uitstekend geslaagde
landbouwcursus, waarbij alle leden het diploma mochten behalen, de
ploegwedstrijd, de diverse excursies, en last not least het
schitterend geslaagde vaandelwijdingsfeest, welks blijde dag allen
steeds met vreugde zullen herdenken. Het financieel verslag is als
volgt: Aan inkomsten f3026,44, aan uitgaven f2773,14. Blijft een
batig saldo van f253,30. Nog te vorderen van zaad- en pootgoed de
somma van f33,47, zoodat het geheele batig saldo over 't afgeloopen
jaar bedroeg f286,77. De handel in zaad- en pootgoed stemt ten volle
tot tevredenheid en is zeer goed te noemen. Aan 't einde van zijn
laatste jaarverslag, wegens zijn benoeming tot secretaris van den R.
K. Boerenbond, dankte genoemde functionaris voor de hartelijke en
prettige samenwerking met bestuur en leden, verklaarde ook in de
toekomst op zijn hulp en medewerking te kunnen rekenen. De
voorzitter thans 't woord nemende, dankte den heer Clabbers voor al
hetgeen in deze negenjarige periode door hem tot stand is gebracht,
wenscht hem namens alle leden ten volle geluk met deze promotie, en
meent, dat juist door zijn benoeming tot secretaris van den R. K.
Boerenbond, hij de volle belooning gekregen heeft ten aanzien van de
onschatbare diensten, door hem aan de Jonge Boerenvereeniging
bewezen. Bij monde van den heer J. Flensenbergh werden namens de
kascommissie de boeken en bescheiden goedgekeurd. Gezien 't steeds
toenemende ledental werd het bestuur uitgebreid met twee nieuwe
leden. Gekozen werden de heeren J. Leupers en A. Korsten. Als
secretaris werd door het bestuur benoemd de heer J. Bouten, Hasselt,
zoodat het bestuur thans als volgt is samengesteld: J. Geurts,
voorzitter, J. Bouten, secretaris-penningmeester, J. Clabbers, G.
Steegh, A. Korsten en J. Leupers, terwijl als adviseerend
bestuurslid van de plaatselijke afdeeling van L.L.T.B. is toegevoegd
de heer L. Sanders. Dan volgen de mededeelingen. Allereerst werden
de prijzen voor ds proefvelden van 't afgeloopen jaar toegekend aan
de Gebr. Geurts, Heidens, Tax en Korsten. Ook voor dit jaar werd
wederom aller medewerking verzocht en tot opzichter benoemd de heer
J. Bouten. Op veler verzoek zal het volgende jaar het proefveld in
Schandelo worden aangelegd. Besloten werd ook dit jaar wederom
excursies te organiseeren in overleg met de leden. Eveneens wordt
goedgevonden met algemeene stemmen aan de nieuwe kerk alhier een
gift van f7.50 te schenken. De kringtentoonstelling zal dit jaar
niet doorgaan, omdat de kring Horst in Helden een zelfde
organiseert. Als leden der commissie van comptabiliteit werden
benoemd de heeren J. Flinsenbergh, P. Vermeulen en H. Lucassen.
Degenen, welke van de bibliotheek wenschen gebruik te maken, werd
bekend gemaakt, dat deze ten huize van den secretaris zal worden
geplaatst. Beleefd werd verzocht de achterstallige boeken terug te
brengen. Als vaandrig werd voor den tijd van één jaar
benoemd de heer P. Steegh. Tot slot deelde de voorzitter mede, dat
op initiatief van 't Groene Kruis een cursus voor Eerste Hulp bij
Ongelukken zal worden gehouden. Hiervoor gaven zich terstond 35
deelnemers op. Men melde zich hiervoor ten spoedigste bij den heer
H. Geurts.
31 maart 1937
KIPPENHOK AFGEBRAND
Dinsdagmorgen
om vijf uur werd de melkhandelaar P. S. [=Steegh] aan den Rijksweg
te Velden door buurtbewoners gewaarschuwd, dat in zijn kippenhok,
staande in zijn tuin, brand was uitgebroken. Aan hulp of redding
viel niet meer te denken, daar het vuur reeds een groote omvang had
aangenomen. Het geheele hok brandde totaal af, waarbij de geheele
inhoud met een 500 éénweeksche kuikens zijn verloren
gegaan.
22 september
1937 Drama te Velden
Twee
lijken gevonden
Gisterenmorgen
heeft een landbouwer [doorgestreept] onder Velden de lijken gevonden
een naar schatting ongeveer 25-jarigen jongen en meisje.
In
hun nabijheid werd eveneens een geladen pistool aangetroffen.
Uit
het onderzoek, dat door de marechaussees der brigade Venlo werd
ingesteld, is gebleken, dat het hier een liefdesdrama betreft.
Bij
onderzoek bleken het te zijn de 25 jarige J. Stein uit Brunssum,
zijnde van Duitsche nationaliteit en de 22-jarige H. K. Oscheja uit
Geleen-Luterade.
In
het taschje van het meisje werden nog een 12 tal scherpe patronen
gevonden.
De
lijken zijn naar het lijkenhuisje te Arcen vervoerd.
Men
meldt ons nader uit Velden:
Dinsdagmorgen
omstreeks 10 uur deed de landbouwer H. L. alhier een ontzettende
ontdekking. Toen hij op genoemd tijdstip even wilde gaan schaften en
zich daarvoor 'n rustplaats zocht achter een strooberm, gelegen op
circa 200 meter van den Rijksweg, zag hij daar tot zijn grootste
ontsteltenis het lichaam van een manspersoon liggen, het gelaat met
bloed bevlekt.
L.,
welke aan misdaad dacht, stelde terstond een buurtbewoner hiervan in
kennis, waarop men samen terugging, en behalve het lijk van een man,
daarbij nog het ontzielde lichaam van een vrouw vond.
Veldwachter
v. d. Ven, en even later de marechaussees uit Venlo, waren zeer
spoedig ter plaatse. Eveneens werden terstond de burgemeester en dr.
Thielen uit Arcen gewaarschuwd, welke ook beiden weldra aanwezig
waren.
Bij
fouilleering vond men in een portefeuille een fijn dichtgesloten
enveloppe waarin een afscheidsbrief, welke gedateerd was op Maandag
20 September des namiddags klokslag half drie, zooals de brief
aangaf en welke door de man was geschreven. Ook vond men een recu
van een storting van 20 gld. aan hun beider kind van, zooals een
foto aangaf, ongeveer één jaar, hetwelk in
Zuid-Limburg in een gesticht vertoeft.
De
revolver was een parabellum, van groot kaliber, hetwelk nog met zes
patronen was geladen, zoodat twee patronen waren verschoten, hetgeen
ook met de feiten klopte. In het handtaschje van de vrouw werd nog
een patroontaschje gevonden waarin zich nog 17 patronen bevonden.
De
beide lijken zijn naar het lijkenhuisje te Arcen overgebracht in
afwachting van de beslissing van den Officier van Justitie inzake
een eventueel sectie-onderzoek.
24 september
1937 Het drama te Velden.
— Nadat
de beide lijken van de slachtoffers van het drama te Velden
gisterenmiddag door de familieleden van beide waren herkend en
toestemming tot begraven was verkregen, zijn de stoffelijke
overblijfselen gisterenavond ter aarde besteld op de gemeentelijke
algemeene begraafplaats te Arcen.
11 oktober
1937 Ernstig ongeval met goeden afloop.
— Zaterdagmorgen
omstreeks negen uur had nabij het kruispunt aan den Hakkesberg een
ernstig ongeval plaats, hetwelk nog bijzonder goed afgeloopen mag
genoemd worden. Vanuit de richting Velden naderde de melkboer J. D.,
uit Velden, met zijn motor-driewieler, beladen met melkwaren, welke
op genoemd kruispunt door een handsignaal te kennen gaf, den weg
rechts naar Genooi in te slaan. In volle vaart naderde eveneens uit
de richting Velden een luxe wagen met een snelheid van ongeveer 90
K.M., die op onbegrijpelijke redenen rechts trachtte te passeeren,
maar daardoor den driewieler, welke juist naar rechts zwenkte, recht
van voor aanreed, met het gevolg, dat de melkwagen werd opgenomen en
over den weg gesmeten. Door de snelle vaart vloog de auto nog een
eind door, op gelukkige wijze eenige palen passeerende en bleef dan
stilstaan. De melkboer bleef op wonderbare wijze ongedeerd, zij het
dan met eenige schrammen, de motor liep eenige averij op, terwijl
echter een vijftig liter melk alsmede vele eieren over den weg
stroomden. Ook de chauffeur met zijn wagen bekwam geen letsel. Wel
meende deze galant te zijn door den melkboer, welke natuurlijk een
groot schadepostje had, voor schadeloosstelling één
gulden aan te bieden!
21 mei 1938
Zilveren jubilé van den Maasbuurtspoorweg.
Oprichting
haalde talrijke Maasdorpen uit hun isolement.
Den
laatsten Meimaanddag wordt het feit feestelijk herdacht.
OP
31 Mei a.s. zal het vijf en twintig jaar geleden zijn, dat de
tramlijn Venlo—Nijmegen, verbindende de dorpen aan de
rechterzijde van de Maas, op luisterrijke wijze in gebruik werd
genomen. De toenmalige gebeurtenis was van 'n niet te onderschatten
belang, omdat daarmede de Oostelijk van de Maas gelegen dorpen
eensklaps uit hun isolement werden gerukt.
De
oude diligence had nog tot 1880 het verkeer tusschen Venlo en
Nijmegen gaande gehouden, maar nadien waren de dorpen Velden, Lomm,
Arcen, Wellerlooi, Well, Afferden, Siebengewald, Bergen en Heyen
moeilijk anders te bereiken dan per stoomboot, die er een dienst van
tweemaal per week op nahield. De oprichting van een dergelijke
tramlijn was toentertijd werkelijk geen sinecure. Een poging in 1907
tot stichting van een Geldersch—Limburgschen spoorweg liep op
een mislukking uit. Enkele jaren later werd opnieuw concessie
gevraagd en verkregen tot aanleg van een tramlijn Venlo—Nijmegen.
Plannen en begrootingen werden opgemaakt en het was voornamelijk de
toenmalige burgemeester van Venlo, J. B. H. van Rijn, die niets
ongemoeid liet om de plannen ten uitvoer te brengen. Het benoodigde
kapitaal, ongeveer f750.000, zou gedeeltelijk door het Rijk,
gedeeltelijk door provincie en gemeenten en voor een derde deel door
de bevolking der streek moeten worden opgebracht. Met heel veel
moeite kreeg men echter vanuit de bevolking slechts f100.000 bij
elkaar, waardoor de aanleg van de lijn voor jaren werd vertraagd,
totdat eensklaps "de N.-Brabant—Duitsche Spoorweg
Maatschappij zich voor de zaak begon te interesseeren en eveneens
een bedrag van f100.000 in de onderneming investeerde. Hiermede
waren weliswaar niet alle moeilijkheden overwonnen, doch men was
toen toch zoover, dat met den bouw der lijn kon begonnen worden,
nadat de N.V. Maasbuurtspoorweg definitief was gesticht.
Op
31 Mei 1913 werd de tramlijn Venlo—Nijmegen door den
toenmaligen minister van Waterstaat officieel geopend en sindsdien
heeft de onderneming — ondanks de minder gunstige crisisjaren
— kans gezien geheel Noord-Limburg en het Zuidelijk deel van
Gelderland voor zich te winnen en een uitgebreid net van tram- en
autobuslijnen te exploiteeren.
Begonnen
met 46 man personeel is dit in den loop van vijf en twintig jaar
uitgebreid tot 160 man. Gedurende de jaren 1932 tot 1936 bleef de
opbrengst beneden de kosten en werkte de onderneming met verliezen.
Toen besloot de directie het roer om te gooien. Men begon een
regelmatig verkeer in het leven te roepen. Ook de aard der tractie
werd gewijzigd. Naast de tram kwam de autobusdienst, die spoedig een
dusdanigen omvang nam, dat thans slechts 36 pct. van de geheele
ontvangst voor rekening van de tram en 64 pct. voor rekening van het
autobedrijf komt. De stoomtram werd gelijktijdig door Dieseltractie
vervangen.
En
thans, na vijf en twintig jaren kan de maatschappij met trots
terugzien op de door haar bereikte resultaten. In den loop der jaren
werd het net uitgebreid van 63 K.M. tot 180 K.M., waaronder 84 K.M.
railvervoer. Het autopark der maatschappij telt momenteel 44
autobussen en 23 vrachtauto's.
De
directie van den Maasbuurtspoorweg zal 't zilveren jubileum der
onderneming niet onopgemerkt laten voorbijgaan. Op 31 Mei a.s. zal
er gefeest worden. Alsdan zal directeur Schaffers, tezamen met het
college van commissarissen bestaande uit de heeren mr. B. Berger,
burgemeester van Venlo, president-commissaris, dr. H. van Manen,
directeur der Ned. Spoorwegen, Th. Rutten, Horst lid van Ged. Staten
van Limburg, dr. G. van der Meulen, secretaris-generaal van
Waterstaat en L. G. Wolff, oud-directeur en gedelegeerd commissaris
op het hoofdbureau der maatschappij te Gennep recipieeren. Vele
autoriteiten, die bij de opening van de tram voor 25 jaar
tegenwoordig waren, zijn ook thans weer als gasten genoodigd.
Tot
een der voornaamste attracties dezer feestviering behoort de
opvoering eener revue, handelende over 't wel en wee van den
Maasbuurtspoorweg. Deze revue zal 31 Mei voor genoodigden en
personeel der Mij. worden opgevoerd. De directie stelt verder een
ieder in de gelegenheid deze revue gratis te komen zien.
Zoo
is na een kwart eeuw het simpele, zwart-rookende en roet-spuwende
stoomtrammetje aanleiding geworden tot het ontstaan van een
bloeiende verkeersonderneming met Dieseltractie en
luxe-autobus-comfort, en is de smalle strook van Noord-Limburg
benoorden Venlo en ten Oosten van de Maas opgewekt uit den slaap der
vergetelheid, waarin het stukje land toenmaals dreigde te verzinken.
5 augustus
1938 VELDEN. Burgerwacht schietwedstrijden.
— Door
onze burgerwacht werden schietwedstrijden gehouden, welke over vier
Zondagen liepen en waarbij de drie hoogste serie's geteld werden.
De
uitslagen zijn als volgt:
klasse
A: 1. L. Engels 131 punten, 2. K. Krienen 129 punten, 3. A. de Jong
127 punten, 4. Jac. Geelen 125 punten, 5. J. Clabbers 125 punten, 6.
H. In 't Zandt 124 punten, 7. J. Roefs 122 punten, 8. H. Geurts 120
punten, 9. Jean Bouten 120 punten, 10. Jacq. Clabbers 118 punten,
11. Hub. Vosbeek 101 punten, 12. G. Kronenbergh 98 punten.
Klasse
B: 1. Herm. Heidens 131 punten, 2. G. Vosbeek 126 punten, 3. H.
Martens 125 punten, 4. A. Geelen 114 punten, 5. P. in 't Zandt 113
punten, 6. P. de Jong 112 punten, J. Billekens 109 punten, 8. H.
Heidens 104 punten, 9. G. Gerrits 104 punten, 10. G. in 't Zandt 97
punten, 11. H. Holthuijzen 96 punten, 12. J. Heldens 93 punten.
Klasse
C: 1. H. Clabbers 125 punten, 2. Jac. Theelen 121 punten, 3. J.
Crommentuijn J.05 punten, 4. P. Lommen 96 punten, 5. Jan Geurts Hzn.
92 punten, 6. G. Vermeulen 90 punten, 7. J. Holthuijzen 57 punten,
8. H. Heidens 50 punten.
Bij
de prijsuitreiking, welke geschiedde in het clublokaal, dankte de
voorzitter allen voor de prettige samenwerking, feliciteerde met het
behaalde succes en reikte onder een toepasselijk woord vervolgens de
prijzen uit.
Ernstige boschbrand.
— Door
onbekende oorzaak ontstond Woensdagmiddag aan de Vosheuvel bij de
grens alhier een ernstige heidebrand, welke zich aanvankelijk hevig
liet aanzien. Dank zij het krachtige verweer der brandweer uit
Schandelo wist men ten slotte na moeizamen arbeid het vuur te
stuiten, ofschoon inmiddels toch reeds 5 H.A. bosschen waren
afgebrand.
9 augustus
1938 HEMELVUUR VERNIELT EEN OOGSTKAR.
Voerman
bewusteloos geslagen.
Zaterdag
en Zondag heeft een hevig onweer op verschillende plaatsen in
Noord-Limburg ernstige ongelukken veroorzaakt. Zoo werd in Lomm een
rund in de weide doodgeslagen. In Arcen ging het onweer vergezeld
met een hevige regenval en hagelslag zooals men in jaren niet meer
gekend heeft. De bliksem trof hier de electrische leiding, waardoor
een gedeelte van de straatverlichting defect raakte. Ook het
Duitsche douanekantoor Lingsfort werd door het hemelvuur getroffen.
In Siebengewald vernielde de bliksem verschillende radiotoestellen
en enkele telefoonleidingen. In het gehucht de Belt sloeg het
hemelvuur in een kar geladen met koren. Het paard was op slag dood,
terwijl de kar met lading totaal verbrandde. De voerman werd
eveneens getroffen en bleef een tijdlang bewusteloos langs de kar
liggen.
24 september
1938 GRUBBENVORST.
Landbouwcursus.
— Bij voldoende deelname zal wederom in October een
landbouwcursus aanvangen. Met het oog op eventueelen dienstplicht
worden ouders aangespoord hun jongens reeds van 15 tot 16 jaar te
sturen; minimum leeftijd is 15 jaar. Spoedige aanmelding is derhalve
zeer gewenscht.
12 oktober
1938 Toezicht op vreemdelingen.
— De
bewaking der grenzen, hetgeen voornamelijk geschiedde door
marechaussees en hulpkommiezen is thans in verband met de
gebeurtenissen in het buitenland nog weer versterkt. Zoo zijn te
Arcen thans een 12-tal militairen ondergebracht, en te Velden een
3-tal marechaussees en 3 militairen. De bedoeling hiervan schijnt te
zijn het weren van ongewenschte vreemdelingen.
7 juli 1939
Boerderij en aangrenzend woonhuis afgebrand.
Totale
schade ongeveer zevenduizend gulden.
Een
door onbekende oorzaak ontstane brand heeft gistermiddag te Arcen
een boerderij en een woonhuis in de asch gelegd. Het vuur brak
omstreeks half drie uit in de schuur van den landbouwer M. van
Megen. Weldra hadden de vlammen, aangewakkerd door een krachtigen
wind, de boerderij bereikt. Naar alle kanten greep het vuur om zich
heen, zoodat na eenigen tijd ook het aangrenzende woonhuis van de
familie J. Siderius werd aangetast. De inmiddels verschenen
plaatselijke brandweer restte nog slechts de taak, zich te belasten
met het beschermen van de aan de andere zijde der boerderij gelegen
arbeiderswoning van het gezin Reutelingsperger. De inboedel van de
boerderij ging grootendeels verloren; die uit de woning van Siderius
kon voor een voornaam deel zin veiligheid worden gebracht. Zoowel de
boerderij van den landbouwer van Megen als de woning van de familie
Siderius brandden tot den grond toe af. In de woning, welke de
brandweer onder haar bescherming had genomen, werd slechts
waterschade aangericht De totale schade zou omstreeks zevenduizend
gulden bedragen. Zij wordt door verzekering gedekt.
12 december
1939 Feest in "Sint Paul" te Arcen
Zilveren
priesterfeest Pater Herman
Op
het feest van Onze Lieve Vrouw Onbevlekte Ontvangenis vierde het
Missiehuis St. Paul te Arcen, het 25-jarig Priesterfeest van zijn
magister, den hoogeerwaarden pater Herman C.M.M., oud-algemeen
Overste van de Congregatie van de Missionarissen van Mariannhill. In
het begin van de vorige groote oorlog werd pater Herman op
35-jarigen leeftijd priester gewijd in het moederklooster
Mariannhill in Natal (Z.-A.), waar hij zijn geheele studie gemaakt
had — als late roeping: hij was in de wereld als
meester-timmerman — en tevens Engelsch en meerdere inheemsche
talen leerde. Zoo voorbereid, kon hij onmiddellijk een zeer actief
en buitengewoon succesvol missionarisleven aanvaarden, op
verschillende zware posten, totdat hem, veel te vroeg een blijvende
keelaandoening dwong voor de eerste maal naar Europa terug te
keeren. Dit zware offer maakte hem rijp voor de verantwoordelijke
taak van magister, welk ambt hij vervulde tot in 1926 het generaal
kapittel hem koos tot algemeen overste van de Congregatie. Hij
keerde naar zijn geliefd missieland terug, maar in 1930 eischte de
sterke groei van de Congregatie het verplaatsen van het generalaat
naar Europa. Na afloop van zijn ambtstijd werd hem weer de zorg voor
de Mariannhiller novicen toevertrouwd in het oudste Europeesche huis
St. Paul, te Arcen. Daar oefent hij door zijn voortdurende
werkzaamheid, zijn opbeurende jeugdig ideale missieijver, zijn zich
overal aanpassende natuurlijke eenvoud, steeds opgeruimd en
hulpvaardig, voorbeeldig kloosterling en priester, een
beteekenisvolle invloed uit op den geest van de Congregatie. Daarom
trachtten geprofesten en novicen door een plechtige viering in kapel
en refter de dag onvergetelijk te maken voor den jubilaris. De
studenten zetten met hun tooneelavond de dominante in het
jubelaccoard van den feestdag. Het voortreffelijk geslaagde stuk van
pater Boon "Zwarte Hostieën" riep in den jubilaris
weer het heimwee wakker naar zijn onvergetelijk Afrika en deed zijn
missievuur vlammen in zijn dankwoorden, zoodat hij ze eindigde met
den wensch: het gouden feest te mogen vieren te midden van zijn
negers, aan wier zieleredding hij heel zijn leven gewijd heeft.
24 april 1940
GOUDEN PRIESTERFEEST TE VELDEN
Door
parochie en gemeente gehuldigd.
VELDEN.
— Bij stralende voorjaarszon, festijnen van jong groen en
bloeiende boomen, vlaggen, slingers met geelwitte kleuren en
eerepoorten heeft het Noord-Limburgsche dorpje Velden Dinsdag het
gouden priesterfeest van pastoor Joosten gevierd. Heel het dorp had
zich opgemaakt om zijn herder te eeren en men moet een feest als dlt
meegemaakt hebben om te ervaren wat het voor de bewoners beteekent.
Hier weet men nog waardeering, kleur en leven te geven aan
gebeurtenissen, die voor het dorp van belang zijn. En bovenal:
iedereen stelt zich erop in. Het is niet maar eventjes een gang naar
de kerk in den morgen met misschien een handdruk of andere
felicitatie, doch men viert hier over de geheele linie heel den dag
feest.
Tegen
tien uur stelde zich aan den ingang van de pastorie een kleurige
stoet op, waarin geheel Velden vertegenwoordigd was. Schoolkinderen,
bruidjes, jeugdvereenigingen, de verschillende standsorganisaties,
de fanfare Velden waren hierin sterk vertegenwoordigd of zoo goed
als compleet. Temidden van den gouden jubilaris schreden talrijke
geestelijken in den imposanten stoet kerkwaarts, o.m. deken Jul. van
Oppen te Venlo, prof. Janssen van het Groot Seminarie te Roermond,
een Veldenaar, pater Boots te Venlo, pastoor G. Vervoort te
Sweijkhuizen, verschillende Veldensche geestelijken of zij, die
eenigen tijd de zielzorg in het dorp hadden waargenomen,
burgemeester Gubbels te Arcen enz. Te voet ging het naar de kerk,
aan welker ingang burgemeester Gubbels namens de gemeente hartelijke
woorden van gelukwensch sprak. Een verrassing leverde een der
schoolkinderen, een zoontje van dhr. Lenssen, die den gouden
jubilaris, die zichtbaar onder den indruk was, een geestelijken
ruiker namens de parochianen aanbood. Een jongetje uit de familie
van pastoor Joosten bood nog een Misboek aan. De gouden jubilaris
dankte, getroffen door deze attentie, met eenige hartelijke woorden.
De plechtige H. Mis van dankzegging werd opgedragen door pastoor
Joosten met assistentie van pater Haenen en kapelaan Rieter te Neer.
Tijdens de predicatie sprak pastoor Joosten een dankwoord tot zijn
parochianen. Na afloop van den kerkdienst ging de stoet weer in
dezelfde volgorde naar het woonhuis van den gouden jubilaris terug.
De fanfare speelde een opwekkend nummertje. Vóór het
binnentreden van zijn woning ontving pastoor Joosten nog een
prachtige bloemenmand uit handen van twee bruidjes. Tegen half zes
hadden de schoolkinderen zich weer verzameld voor de woning van
pastoor Joosten, waar zij hem een zanghulde brachten. Drie kinderen
reciteerden daarna een aardig versje. Bij het plechtig lof, dat
daarna in de parochiekerk werd opgedragen, toonde wederom heel het
dorp zijn belangstelling. Het slot van de feestelijkheid was een
serenade, welke gebracht werd door de fanfare.
27 april 1940
TE VELDEN vierde de ZeerEerw. Heer Pastoor Joosten
onder
groote belangstelling zijn gouden priesterfeest. Hierboven links: de
jubilaris op weg naar de kerk, waar een plechtige Hoogmis van
dankzegging werd opgedragen. Links van hem ziet men de Zeer Geleerde
Heer Prof. Janssen van het Groot-Seminarie te Roermond; rechts de
Hoog Eerw. Heer Deken v. Oppen uit Venlo. Hierboven: Velden's
burgemeester spreekt de jubilaris toe. Bij deze plechtige
feestviering waren niet minder dan tien Veldensche geestelijken
tegenwoordig, die wij vereeuwigden met de jubilaris in hun midden
(Foto links) Hierna, volgen de namen dezer Veldensche priesterzonen:
de Z. E. Heer pastoor Joosten, Pater Haenen O.F.M., Prof. Janssen,
Kap. Rieter, Kap. Peeters, Pater Kronenberg Q.E.S.A., Pater J.
Linssen S.S.S., Pater Theelen Q. Carm., Pater L. Linssen S.C.J.,
Kap. v. d. Haghen en Kap. J. Hofmans.
24 juni 1940
"HIER ZIJN WE GEBOREN EN GETOGEN"
Een
gouden bruiloft in de bosschen te Arcen. – Herinneringen aan
een "gouden tijd".
ARCEN.
— Het kan misschien alleen maar in Arcen gebeuren, dat een
gouden echtpaar, zoowel man als vrouw in hetzelfde dorp, in dezelfde
buurt en aan denzelfden weg geboren en getogen zijn en dat ze er na
vijftig jaren huwelijk zelfs niet vandaan zijn geweest. — Hier
op deze plaats, waar dit huis staat, ben ik geboren, zegt de gouden
jubilaresse, mejuffrouw Johanna Clabbers, die op Zaterdag 22 Juni
1890 met Willem Toonen in het huwelijksbootje stapte.
De
interviewer zegt voor zichzelf weg, dat dat sterk is: van al de
gouden jubilarissen, die hij in zijn leven verslagen heeft, is er
niet één, die in dat opzicht aan dit gelijk is.
Het
huis, waarin het gouden paar woont, is een ruim woonhuis met café
— een gezellig cafétje met een helder buffet en met
vele dingen in het rond, die de gezelligheid verhoogen. — Dan
moste zeker ok miene man hubbe, zegt ze vervolgens. Ja maar dan komt
ge ongelegen, want die is op het veld in de boonen aan het
schoefelen. — Daar gaan we dan ook maar even naar toe, zegt de
man van de krant, die zich speurder begint te gevoelen. Eerst nog
maar even praten... We bevinden ons dan op den Lingsforterweg, een
boschweg, die naar de grens loopt. Hooge dennen wuiven hun
paraplu-dak in den zomerwind tot over den weg. Er staan hooge
beuken, Amerikaansche eiken en er is eikenhakhout langs den kant
overal —— een weelde van hout en groen, zooals alleen
déze gezegende stukjes natuur in Noord-Limburg kunnen bieden.
Het woonhuis van de gouden jubilarissen gaat schuil onder het zwaar
geboomte. Het is hier als in een sprookje. In het dichte bosch, dat
over heuvelen deint, konden de kabouters wonen — en men denkt
misschien even gauw aan Roodkapje, aan het legendarische
peperkoekenhuisje en aan alle schoone jeugdvertelsels meer, liefst
zonder den wolf... Er is zon, die witte plekken licht tusschen de
stammen door op den bemosten grond werpt, er is net zooveel schaduw
als men gaarne wenscht. Een koekoek roept dichtbij, een vink zit op
een tak te zingen alsof er nu reeds feest gevierd wordt en het zoemt
en het tinkt en pinkt, van welken kant men ook luistert. Zonder
einde.
Als
we aan het praten zijn, zegt de vrouw, dat we geen onbekenden zijn.
We waren immers dezen winter met het worstophalen van de schutterij
ook hier... En waar is die andere heer, die toen bij u was? vraagt
Mia, de schoondochter, die het glas vult.
— Had
hij vergeten te betalen? vragen we lachend.
Neen,
dat niet, maar die had toch dat ander feest ook meegemaakt. Toen
schudde het huis op z'n grondvesten vanwege de uitgelaten ceremoniën
van de jonge gildebroeders. Maar koud...
Het
gouden echtpaar Toonen-Clabbers is steeds een gelukkig echtpaar
geweest. Ziektes? Feitelijk nooit van gehoord, ik niet en mijn man
ook niet. We hebben negen kinderen gehad, waarvan er éen dood
is. We zijn nog met vijf meisjes en drie jongens. De meisjes zijn
allen getrouwd; van de jongens is de oudste het huwelijk ontloopen
en de jongste is het vorig jaar getrouwd met Mia.
— Dat
schrief d'r maar bie, zegt Mia lachend, terwijl ze een versch glas
bier tapt.
— Kunt
ge nogal goed opschieten met uw schoondochter?
— Ja,
héél goed, zegt vrouw Toonen beslist.
Dan
gaan we weer verder. De op een na oudste zoon is getrouwd en die
woont in Waubach. Ja, die komt...
De
dochters zitten ver uit elkaar. De een woont in Utrecht, de oudste
in Blitterswijk, een in Arcen (op den dijk), een in Waalwijk en de
laatste woont op den Lingsforterweg. Allemaal zijn ze getrouwd.
— Hoeveel
kleinkinderen?
— Laat
me 'ns tellen. Acht..., veertien..., twintig... vier- en twintig...,
zes en twintig..., acht en twintig..., dertig. Ja, samen dertig
kleinkinderen en allen goed gezond.
De
dokter heeft er slechte klanten aan. "Ikzelf heb ook nooit iets
met den dokter te doen gehad en miene man is ook zoo hel, nooit
krank geweest".
— Al
ge zoo door gaat, kunt ge met gemak de diamanten bruiloft vieren!
— Dat
zei de pastoor ook al.
Op
het veld tusschen de boonen treffen we Willem Toonen den gouden
jubilaris aan. Een energieke, opgewekte baas, die kwinkslagen
opvangt en retourneert. Om ons heen ruischt het woud, de dennen, de
eiken. Ginder tusschen het hooge hout rijst de slanke Arcensche
toren op.
-
Ik ben feitelijk begonnen als schoenmaker, zegt Willem Toonen. Dat
heb ik vijf en twintig jaar na mienen trouw vol gehouden en toen ben
ik aan den groentenhandel geslagen. Als hij het woord "handel"
uitspreekt, lichten zijn schrandere oogen weer op. Ja — toen
was er geld te verdienen. Er waren toen goede zaken over de grens te
maken. Er zijn jaren geweest, waarop ik meer dan driehonderd wagons
petatten naar Duitschland bracht.
De
gouden jubilaris heeft opgehouden met schoffelen en geniet zichtbaar
van de gedachte aan den "gouden tijd". Maar daarna werd
het slechter en zoo begon hij dan maar met het tuinieren. Dat doet
hij nu nog — een gezond vak, een mooi vak tevens, vooral hier
tusschen de ruischende bosschen.
— Ja,
ik ben hier gebooren en getrouwd, zegt hij bij wijze van
bevestiging". Een schoone streek hier...
We
krijgen ook den gouden jubilaris in de lens.
— Wat
gebeurt er Zaterdag?
— Ja,
we doen het z'n bietje onder ós. Om half negen in de
Arcensche kerk een Mis van dankzegging en hoe het dan zal gaan weten
we ook niet precies. We zijn in den tijd van de broodkaarten...
Langs
een fraaie laan van fijne dennen, waar arbeiders het pad bewerken,
gaan we terug. Een vriendelijke hand wijst ons den weg. Daarheen en
dan ziet ge weer in het dorp...
De
koekoek roept in de verte als we tusschen het groen verdwijnen.
7 september
1940 Feest in het missiehuis St. Paul te Arcen
De
kippenbroeder in het zilver en een tachtigjarige
Zondag
8 Sept. a.s. herdenkt de eerw. Br. Fulgentius C.M.M. van het
Missiehuis St. Paul te Arcen den dag, waarop hij vóór
25 jaar geleden in het klooster trad. Toen Br. Fulgentius het
kloosterkleed ontving, stond St. Paul nog in de kinderschoenen. Het
was nog maar 3 jaar geleden, dat de congregatie der Missionarissen
van Mariannhill een zelfstandige missiecongregatie werd, waarvan St.
Paul in Arcen de eerste Europeesche stichting was. Langs de toen nog
bijna onbegaanbare veldweg, die vanaf de Rijksweg naar de Duitsche
grens leidt, stond toen een hoeve die zoo goed en zoo kwaad als het
ging tot klooster was ingericht. In dit primitieve kloostertje nu
trad Er. Fulgentius in.
Toen
men er later in St. Paul over nadacht om op het gebied van het
klooster een hoenderpark in te richten, was Br. Fulgentius de
aangewezen man om dit werk ten uitvoer te brengen. Bijna dagelijks
kan men den "kippenbroeder" in zijn bestelauto door onze
stad zien rijden om de eieren bij de diverse adressen af te gaan
leveren. Door zijn herhaaldelijk contact dat Br. Fulgentius met de
inwoners van Venlo heeft, heeft hij zich vooral door zijn bescheiden
en hartelijke manier van optreden, velen tot vriend gemaakt. Daarom
meenen wij, dat het Br. Fulgentius bij zijn zilveren
kloosterjubileum niet aan belangstelling uit Venlo en omgeving zal
ontbreken.
Naast
dit kloosterjubileum viert St. Paul Zondag a.s. tevens de 80ste
verjaardag van den oudsten inwoner van het Missiehuis, Br.
Feliciaan. Deze stille en eenvoudige kloosterling kan met vreugde
terugzien op een vruchtbaar leven in den dienst van God en het
missiewerk. Zijn leven was steeds een zwoegen voor de uitbreiding
van het Rijk Gods op aarde. In Nov. '91 scheepte hij zich te
Vlissingen in om zich naar Zuid-Afrika te begeven, waar hij in het
moederhuis van de Congregatie intrad. Na zijn noviciaat in
Mariannhil voltooid te hebben, mocht Br. Feliciaan reeds aanstonds
aan het directe missiewerk medewerken door bij den bouw van
verschillende grootere missiekerken te helpen. Als bekwaam
beeldhouwer droeg Br. Feliciaan niet weinig tot de verfraaiing van
de kerken bij. Na gedurende 15 jaar op verschillende missiestaties
werkzaam geweest te zijn, werd de broeder tot boekhouder van een
Europeesche missieprocuur benoemd. Tot voor twee jaar heeft Br.
Feliciaan dit verantwoordelijke ambt uitgeoefend. Thans leidt deze
veteraan een teruggetrokken leven van innig verkeer met God en is
door zijn stipte plichtsbetrachting een voorbeeld voor zijn jongere
medebroeders, die eveneens in de voetsporen van dezen pionier willen
treden. Br. Fulgentius zoowel als Br. Feliciaan wenschen wij beiden
een hartelijk "Ad multos annos" toe.
7 september
1940 Duitsche tuinbouw nabij de Nederlandsche grens
Naar
het voorbeeld van Straelen
Uit
Keulen wordt aan het Nederlandsche Perskantoor gemeld:
In
het gebied van den Beneden-Rijn breidt zich de tuinbouw, met name
die onder glas, voortdurend uit. In een aantal dorpen, onmiddellijk
nabij de Nederlandsche grens gelegen, waant men zich in een tweede
Westland. Een middelpunt van den glastuinbouw te Straelen.
— Straelen
was het eerste Duitsche plaatsje, waar men met de kasteelt begon.
Het plan hiertoe is uitgegaan van den eigenaar van een
houtzaagmolen. De molenaar ergerde zich aan den steeds omvangrijker
wordenden invoer van groenten uit Nederland. Hij spoorde eenige
Nederlandsche tuinders aan, naar Straelen te komen om den boeren de
groententeelt, met name den glastuinbouw, te leeren. Te Straelen
werd toen de groenteteelt en de verkoop geheel naar Nederlandsch
voorbeeld ingericht. Zelfs het Nederlandsche veilingstelsel met de
bekende veilingklok werd overgenomen. Andere plaatsen in het gebied
van den Beneden-Rijn volgden spoedig het voorbeeld van Straelen en
de groenteteelt in deze gebieden is thans inderdaad aanzienlijk, ook
al heeft men nog niet het bedrijf tot het peil van het Westland
opgevoerd.
Men
moet niet meenen, dat deze wedijver in het nadeel van Nederland is
geweest. Tengevolge van den toenemende tuinbouw in het gebied van
den Neder-Rijn leerde de bevolking der Duitsche steden nog meer de
groenten waardeeren. Dit heeft ertoe geleid, dat de hoeveelheid
groenten, die West-Duitschland thans afneemt, een veelvoud is van
die van 30 jaar geleden en Nederland, ondanks de toenemende Duitsche
voortbrenging, nog veel meer kan leveren dan vroeger.
23 oktober
1940 Nederlandsche Unie.
— De
propaganda en aanwervingsactie voor de Nederlandsche Unie wordt hier
met kracht voortgezet. In de eerste actieweken konden reeds ruim 300
leden worden ingeschreven, waarvan alleen in Schandelo 120. Zelfs
waren hier gezinnen met 8 en 9 leden, wat voor zich zelf spreekt.
Dezer dagen komen ook de andere buurtschappen aan de beurt. Gezien
de reeds behaalde resultaten, mag ook hier eenzelfde succes verwacht
worden.
6
mei 2021 De Nederlandsche Unie was een Nederlandse politieke
beweging tijdens de Duitse bezetting van Nederland in de Tweede
Wereldoorlog, opgericht door een driemanschap bestaande uit Louis
Einthoven (hoofdcommissaris van politie in Rotterdam), Johannes
Linthorst Homan (commissaris der provincie van Groningen) en Jan de
Quay (regeringscommissaris van de arbeid). De Nederlandsche Unie
werd in juli 1940 opgericht, en in december 1941 door de Duitse
bezetter ontbonden. [...]
Op
haar hoogtepunt had de Nederlandsche Unie ongeveer 1 miljoen
sympathisanten. Hiervan waren ongeveer 600.000 personen lid. De
Nederlandsche Unie gaf het weekblad De Unie uit met een oplage van
314.000 exemplaren.
25 oktober
1940 Geen processie.
— Naar
werd medegedeeld zal Zondag a.s. de jaarlijksche processie naar O.
L. Vrouw van Altijddurende Bijstand te Schandelo niet plaats kunnen
hebben. Hiervoor zal Zaterdag om half acht ter eere van O. L. Vrouw
een plechtige Hoogmis worden opgedragen.
16 november
1940 Hoe de storm huishield
Nog
voortdurend kwamen berichten binnen van de ernstige schade, die de
storm van j.1. Donderdag in Noord-Limburg en Oost-Brabant heeft
aangericht. De meeste van deze berichten maken melding van zware
verliezen aan oogstmijten, van verwoestingen aan schuren en daken.
Op tal van plaatsen zijn de bosschen zwaar gehavend en werden de
boomgaarden geteisterd.
PATER ONDER INSTORTENDE SACRISTIE BEDOLVEN.
De
storm heeft ook te Sambeek een slachtoffer geëischt. Toen de
zeereerw. p. Redemptus zich gereed maakte om in de kapel van de
zusters Redemptoristinnen het H. Misoffer op te dragen, rukte de
storm een stuk van den gevel van de kapel af, viel door het dak van
de sacristie, waaronder de pater als 't ware bedolven werd. Ijlings
toegeschoten kerkbezoekers vonden pater Redemptus, hevig bloedend,
onder het puin. Dr. Anderegg die spoedig ter plaatse was verleende
geneeskundige hulp. De zeereerw. heer pastoor diende de pater de
laatste H. Sacramenten toe. In zorgwekkende toestand werd de
ongelukkige naar het ziekenhuis in Boxmeer overgebracht. We
vernemen, dat de toestand van pater Redemptus nog zeer ernstig is.
Verder heeft de storm te Sambeek vrij aanzienlijke materieele schade
veroorzaakt. Een gedeelte van de woning van Th. H. stortte in. Van
bijna alle huizen werden pannen afgerukt, verschillende huizen
vertoonen groote gaten. Vele boomen werden ontworteld, terwijl ook
de leiding van de radiocentrale het danig heeft moeten ontgelden.
ZWARE SCHADE AAN BOSSCHEN
In
Arcen hadden wel het meeste de huizen langs den Rijksweg ten Noorden
van het dorp te lijden, waar dezen zomer de 400 zware canadaboomen
werden gerooid, waardoor de huizen aan dien weg zonder verdere
beschutting aan den Westenwind kwamen bloot te liggen. Van velen
huizen waren dan ook honderden pannen verdwenen.
In
het veld grenzende aan de Maas hield de storm ook groote opruiming.
Alle stroo en korenmijten werden ofwel omvergeworpen of de schoven
vlogen her en derwaarts over het veld en zelfs over den Rijksweg
heen. Ook in de kom van het dorp moesten vele daken het geducht
ontgelden, al was de schade hier betrekkelijk gering. De meeste
schade leed hier echter het Jongenspatronaat. Omstreeks half acht
werd hier het dak van de aangrenzende beugelbaan door een windhoos
gegrepen. Het geheele dak werd van de pijlers gelicht de gevel werd
omver geworpen en daarna kwam deze gevolgd door het dak op den wal
terecht. Een geluk mag het wel heeten dat hier geen persoonlijke
ongelukken hebben plaats gevonden, daar juist een groot aantal
kinderen op weg naar de kerk even tevoren alhier een schuilplaats
tegen den feilen wind hadden gezocht. Dit beteekent echter een
flinke schadepost voor den eerw. heer kapelaan daar het gebouw niet
tegen stormschade verzekerd was. Bij de boerderij van dhr. G.
Nijskens werd een zeer hooge peereboom door den storm neer gesmakt
op de wagenbergplaats achter het huis. Deze werd geheel vernield,
terwijl ook het dak van de schuur nogal schade bekwam.
Het
ergst was wel de verwoesting in de verschillende bosschen rondom
Arcen. Vooral het gemeentebosch aan den Rooden weg kreeg ernstige
schade. Hierin zijn naar schatting meer dan 500 boomen ontworteld.
Sommigen zijn op een meter boven den grond gewoon afgedraaid door
wervelwinden.
Ook
de zware bosschen rondom het kasteel werden door den storm niet
gespaard en menige tientallen jaren oude eik of den werd
neergesmakt, in zijn val andere boomen meesleurende. Het bosch biedt
op sommige plaatsen een troostelooze aanblik. Vooral het bosch nabij
het voetbalterrein aan den Lingsforterweg kreeg zware schade.
Ongeveer een-derde der boomen ligt voor den grond. Arcen werd zwaar
gehavend. De zware kastanjeboomen op den driesprong bij de brug over
de Lingsforterbeek werden wel zwaar getroffen. Een tweetal
eeuwenoude reuzen werden tegen de aarde neergeworpen daarbij de
rustbank, welke alhier door de zorg van de V.V.V. Arcen werd
geplaatst, meesleurende.
Van
een dezer boomen werd voorts een zware tak afgescheurd. Dit mooie
plekje nabij het Kasteel, bij vele toeristen welbekend, zal er dan
ook na de opruiming wel jammerlijk gehavend komen uit te zien. Met
dat al bracht de storm aan heel wat handen werk en reeds in den
vroegen morgen kon men verschillende aannemers bestormd zien met
allerlei wagens om pannen in diverse soorten, terwijl gisteravond de
dakdekkers nog in het maanlicht bezig waren om vóór
den dreigenden regen tenminste de grootste gaten in het dak te
dichten.
HONDERDEN BOOMEN ONTWORTELD
De
hevige storm heeft ook te Beesel heel wat schade aangericht.
Verschillende wegen waren versperd van de omgevallen boomen. Op het
Marktplein viel een der statige kastanjes ten offer van den
windreus. In parken, lanen en bosschen werden honderden boomen
ontworteld. Bij een huis langs den Bussereindschen weg vielen vier
reuze populieren waarvan twee op het dak, zoodat de takken door de
slaapkamermuur drongen. Van meer dan honderd huizen werden de daken
vernield. [...]
11 december
1940 E.H.B.O.-dienst.
— Maandagavond
werd alhier voor de leden van den E.H.B.O.-dienst de laatste les
gegeven door dr. Thielen van den verkorten E.H.B.O.-cursus. Een der
cursisten dankte dr. Thielen voor zijn bereidwilligheid dezen cursus
te hebben willen geven, waarvoor steeds een groot animo bestond.
Door de luchtbeschermingsdienst te Velden zijn thans vier
E.H.B.O.-posten gevestigd en wel voor Hasse]t en de Voort ten huize
van dhr. J. Bouten Hasselt, voor Schandelo, ten huize van dhr. J.
Boonen, voor Krosselt-Genooi, ten huize van dhr. G. Holthuizen, voor
het dorp bij dhr. Schlooz, Markt.
Op
iedere plaats bevindt zich een complete verbandtrommel met brancard
en verder toebehooren, waarin men voor aanschaffing in de
gelegenheid werd gesteld, dank zij de loyale medewerking van diverse
vereenigingen en de gemeente. In 't bijzonder moge hier echter dank
worden gebracht aan 't plaatselijke Groene Kruis, dat zeer veel
heeft bijgedragen tot het instandkomen van deze E.H.B O.-posten,
waardoor eindelijk in een groote behoefte is voorzien.
13 januari
1941 ARCEN. Loop der bevolking.
-—
Naar wij vernemen bedroeg het aantal inwoners dezer gemeente op 1
Januari dezes jaars 3822 zielen.
Hiervan
woonden te Arcen: 899 mannen, 717 vrouwen, totaal 1616;
te
Lomm 218 mannen, 193 vrouwen, totaal 411;
te
Velden 954 mannen, 841 vrouwen, totaal 1795.
In
de gemeente woonden 2071 mannen, 1751 vrouwen, totaal 3822.
Advertenties m.b.t. Vilgert, Schandelo, etc.
1940-1949
Te koop een best roodbont RUND, oud
18 mnd. en
een best zwaar werkpaard B. T., mak in en bij alles. Adres Joh.
Geurts, Velden, Schandelo C 221. 4128
Te
koop 20 stuks W L. PULLEN, bijna aan den leg; tevens een middelzware
wendelploeg. H. Geelen, Schandelo 212, 289 Velden.
Te
koop een best roodbont MAALKALF Gebrs. Leupers, Schandelo, Velden.
324
Te koop ROGGE- en TARWESTROO. Adres:
In 't Zandt, Velden, Schandelo. 4520
Te
koop HAVER- en TARWESTROO Frans Steegh, Schandelo, 720 Velden.
Te koop circa 20 á 25000 kg.
prima jonge consumptie KNOLRAAP.
Jac. Boonen, Schandelo Velden. 834
Gevraagd een boerenknecht kunnende
melken en
een jongen om melk te venten. H. Geurts-Coppes, Schandelo 235,
Velden. 1303
Gevraagd voor 1 Mei een flinke
BOERENKNECHT m.
alle werkz.hed. op de hoogte; liefst kunn. melken. Wed. P. Theelen,
Schandelo C 208, 1962 Velden. [P. Theelen-Vosbeek]
Te
koop een gladstroo DORSCHMACHINE. H. v. Wylick-Theelen, Velden
Schandelo.
Te
koop circa 10.000 kg. KOOLRAAP. Adres F. Thiesen, Schandelo, Velden.
Te
koop 15000 kg. MANGELWORTELEN (Groenkraag). Adres H. Lenders,
Rieterhof, Schandelo, 2259 Velden.
Te
koop een best roodbont MAALKALF. Adres F. Theelen-Jacobs, 2258
Schandelo, Velden.
Te
koop 30.000 kg. MANGELWORTELEN. Adres P. Aerdts-Theelen, Schandelo,
Velden.
Te
koop een dekrijpe PREMIEBEER Adres H. Soberjé, Schandelo
Velden. Tel. 236.
Gevraagd
voor 1 Mei een BOEREN DIENSTKNECHT met paarden kunn. omgaan. Adres
Frans Engels, Velden, Schandelo. 0281
Te
koop enkele honderden nieuwe, aangespitste BOONENSTAKEN en enkele
honderden boonenpalen. Jac. Boonen, Velden, Schandelo C 219. 421
Voor
terstond gevraagd een BOERENKNECHT om met paard om te gaan en
genegen te melken. Adres F. Theelen Schandelo 218, Velden. 497
Te
ruil een best aftandsch WERKPAARD op hengstveulen of 1-jarige ruin.
Adres H. Geelen, Velden 212, Schandelo.
Te
koop 1-jarig roodbont WEIRUND; of WEIDE gevraagd. Adres: H. Lommen,
Velden, Schandelo.
Te
koop een SCHAAP met jong schaapje. Adres H. Keldjens, Velden,
Schandelo 213. 1604
Te
koop een in goeden staat zijnde, middelzware WENDELPLOEG. A.
Verheijen, Schandelo, 1206 Velden.
B.
z. a. een R.K. jongen, oud 25 jaar, liefst in omgev. van Venlo, voor
boerenbedrijf; kan alle boerenwerk. Inl. bij Wed. P. Theelen,
Velden, Schandelo C 208 of bij L. Willems, Siebengewald 2741
Koekoek.
Gevraagd
een boerendienstmeid van 16—20 jaar. H. Geurts-Coppus,
Schandelo 235. Velden. 1624
Te
koop een roodbont rund, 7 mnd. oud. Adres H. Deenen, Schandelo,
Velden.
Gevraagd
voor 1 Mei een boerendienstknecht, goed met paarden kunn. omgaan.
Adres. L. Engels, Schandelo C 232, Velden.
Gevr.
een jongen of meisje, van 14-17 jaar op kleine boerderij. Adres H.
Lommen, Velden Schandelo. 7062
Te
ruil een in g. st. z. middelzware lange kar tegen een slagkar; tev.
te koop gevraagd 8 á 10 ramen platglas. H. van Wijlick,
Schandelo 224, Velden. 4068
Te
koop een heerenfiets met banden. Adres Chr. Luijpers, Krosselt C
281. Velden. 4302 Te koop een partij veldwortelen. Adres: P.
Thiesen, Schandelo, Velden. 4304
Gevraagd
voor Paschen of Mei een jongen, goed met paard k. omgaan. Adres J.
In 't Zandt, Schandelo, Velden. 7726
Te
k. blauw Weener konijn met 6 jongen en 2 zware Vl. reuzen (gedekt).
H. Gielen, Schandelo no. 212, Velden.
Te
ruilen teg. een leveringskoe een jonge drag. koe, 24 Mei aan
telling. H. Keltjens, Velden, Schandelo C 215.
Te
k. een best roodb. maalkalf. J. Theelen-Lenders, Schandelo, Velden.
Gevr.
liefst zoo spoedig mogel., boerendienstmeid of jongen v. 15-18 j. H.
Lommen, Schandelo Velden.
Voor
terst. gevr. boerendienstbode, bov. 16 j., kunn. melken of gen. het
melken te leeren. J. Renkens, Lingsforterweg Arcen
Te
kp. een drag. vaars, begin Oct. aan telling;, ook te ruil op
leveringskoe. H. Roefs, Schandelo, Velden. 2029
Voor
terstond gevr. een bekw. paardenknecht. H. Lenders-Theelen,
Rietherhof, Schandelo, Velden. 2097
Te
k. vaars of jonge koe, bijna voldr. Fr. Theelen, Schandelo.
Te
k. 2 hoogdr. vaarzen of ruil voor leveringsvee. Maashof Velden.
Schandelo. 6741
Te
k. bok met getuig. Velden. Schandelo 210 8109 [H. Keltjens]
Teg.
Paschen gevr. boerendienst knecht. M. Aerdts, Maashof, Schandelo,
Velden.
Te
r. of te k. een rund, tegen drag. vaars of koe. L. Heldens, Velden,
Schandelo 238,
Gevr.
per 1 Sept. [1944] een dienstbode of jongen van 15 tot 18 jaar. op
boerenbedr., geneg. te melken. J. v. Lipzich. Velden. Schandelo 237.
Te koop 10 W. L. pullen, aan den leg
(met haan). Adr.
Wed. P. Vosbeek, Vilgert 258, Velden. 3934
Gevr. voor terst. of 't voorjaar een
tuiniersknecht of
paardenknecht. P. Geurts, Vilgert 266, Velden.
Wie kan 2 runderen op de wei
gebruiken? Tev.
te k. gevr. 10 à 25 een-ruiters. H. Lommen, Vilgert 253,
Velden.
Tabaksplanten. Bestel
nu al uw tabaksplanten, Slits 25; ook verkrijgbaar in potjes. P.
Geurts-v. Wijlick, Vilgert, Velden
Te
ruil een koe gev. 12 L. m., op Jongvee of dr. varken. J. Appeldoorn,
Arcen, Lingsfort 136.
Voor
terst. gevr. flinke slagersleerling, 18-20 J. J. Timmermans,
Lingsfort, Arcen.
Terst.
gevr. paardenknecht. J. Roosen, Lingsfort Arcen.
Te
koop gevraagd twee gebruikte KIPPENHOKKEN. Br. m. omschrijving en
opg. van prijs aan A. Erdman, Lingsfort, Arcen. 1537
Gevraagd
voor Straelen (D.) een boeren- en tuindersknecht en een
tuindersknecht. Bevr. bij P. J. van Lin, Lingsfort no. 151. Arcen.
1927
Wordt
gevraagd voor terst. of later een flinke tuiniersknecht hoog loon,
voor Straelen (D.) Te bevr. Café h. Basten, Arcen, Lingsfort.
1960
ARCEN.
— Not. Haffmans Woensdag 2 Oct., 4.30 uur, in het te veilen
pand aan de Lingsfort: huis met café-restaurant "Haus
Ente" met tuin en groot terrein.
Coöp.
Melkinrichting en Zuivelfabriek St. Martinus te Venlo. AANBESTEDING
DER MELKRITTEN Hanik Lomm, Het Ven Venlo, Hasselt, Dorp, Vorst,
Genooi, Velgert, Heide, Velden. Inschrijvingbiljetten in te leveren
uiterlijk Dinsdag 25 Febr. 1941. des namiddags 3 uur ten kantore der
fabriek.
Plukkers
of pluksters gevraagd. H. Buskes, De Krosselt. Velden.
Te
k. vette slachtkonijnen. H. Buskes, "De Krosselt". Velden.
Tel. 293.
Suiker-,
Pof- en Farkirchin Maisplanten te koop J. van den Hombergh,
Krosselt, Velden
Te
koop texels stamboekschaap, ook gen. te ruilen tegen dragend varken.
J. A. v. d. Hombergh, Krosselt, Velden.
Te
k. of te r. voetbalsch. m. 43 z.g.a.n., teg. fototoestel 6x9 of
zware windbuks. R. v. d. Hombergh. Krosselt. Velden.
Te
k. een slacht-, dragende en 4 Jonge konijnen. Dijks, De Krosselt.
Velden.
Te
k. Belg. Herder en een lief klein kamerhondje. W. Luypers C.280.
Krosselt, Velden.
Te
k. Belg. merrieveulen m. papieren van premiemerrie. F. v. d. Haghen,
Krosselt C.282 Velden.
Te
ruil gekl. pop, kan ook sl. teg. geim. inmaakketel. Peeters,
Krosselt, Velden.
Te
k. 2e hands fornuis f50. Schattefor, Krosselt, Velden.
Wie
r. voetbalsch. m. 44 in g. st, teg. m. 43. R. v. d. Hombergh,
Krosselt Velden.
Te
k. best zwaar r. b. maalkalf. A. Vosbeek, Krosselt, Velden.
Te
k. gevr. een kippenhok, 3x4 M. of grooter. Th. van Hael, Krosselt
286, Velden.
Te
kp. prima eiken tafel f30. Dijks, De Krosselt, Velden.
Te
kp. of te ruil op lichte, een nieuwe overdekte 5-tons wagen op prima
banden (32x6). Adres "De Krosselt", Velden. Tel. 293.
Te
k. een Russisch biljart, eenige stellen beugelballen; een naaimach.
en een waschwring. Jac. Keltjens, Krosselt 286 Velden.
Te
k. Texelsche schapen; St. Bernardhond en een 1. g. st. z. kano. G.
A. v. d. Hombergh, C 294, Krosselt, Velden. 8056
Te
koop een heerenfiets met banden. Adres Chr. Luijpers, Krosselt C
281, Velden. 4302
Te
koop twee dragende GEITEN tev. een mooie Duitsche Herder, 10 weken
oud. J. Peters, Rijksweg C 291, Velden. 5321
HOUTVERKOOP
TE VELDEN. Notaris M. A. Joosten te Venlo, zal op Woensdag 8 April
1942, des nam. te 4 uur, in café Litjens te Velden-Dorp,
publiek verkoopen: 1. Ten verzoeke van de familie Verbeek: circa 60
slagen dennentophout, gelegen in hun bosch Kleikoel, Schandelen. 2.
Ten verzoeke van Mej. W. Koopmans te Velden: circa 10 slagen
dennendunsel, staken en boonenstaken en 3 slagen dennendunsel,
staken en weipalen, gelegen in haar bosch op den Bong te Schandelen.
3. Den heer G. Grubben te Maasbree: 4 slagen verbrande dennen op den
Bong te Schandelen, dienstig voor boonenstaken en brandhout. 4. De
R. K. Kerk te Velden: 1 lindeboom, gekapt liggend bij A. Rieter, te
Velden.
Te
koop Zaterdag 25 Sept. te Arcen, Lingsforterweg 126: 2 broedmachines
voor 500 eieren, petroleumverwarm. [...]
11 september
1941 Veulenkeuring te Velden
Onder
groote belangstelling had bij gunstige weersgesteldheid op "Wilshof"
de eerste Veldensche veulenkeuring plaats. De aangevoerde veulens
waren van goede kwaliteit en de jury bestaande uit de heer P.
Diederen en Hub. Kallen, alsmede de beide arbiters E. Kallen en G.
Nab vervulden hun taak met kennis van zaken en tot ieders
tevredenheid. De keuring mag dan ook in alle opzichten geslaagd
heeten. De prijzen werden als volgt toegekend:
Categorie
1. Merrieveulens geb. in 1941. Belg. T. [=Belgisch trekpaard] 1e
prijs Irma van Wils, eig. P. v. d. Ven, Velden; 2e prijs Nelli van
Schandelo, eig. G. Koopmans, Velden; 3e prijs Astrid van Sintelberg
eig. J. Tax, Aijen-Bergen; 4e prijs Corrie van Hovershof, eig. Th.
Peeters, Velden; 5e prijs Lucie, eig. G. Hegger, Arcen; 6e prijs
Irma van de Erf, eig. H. Th. Sanders, Grubbenvorst; 7e prijs Marie
van Spiekerhof, eig. G. F. Muyres, Lomm. Arcen.
Categorie
2. Merrieveulens geb. in 1940. Belg. T. 1a prijs Jeanny van Ooyen,
eig. E. Kallen, Broekhuizenvorst; 1b prijs Marie van Ender, eig. H.
Soberjé, Velden; 2a prijs Mia van Hoek, eig. Chr. Gielen
Broekhuizen; 2b prijs Irène van Ender eig. H. Soberjé
Velden; 2c prijs Nicoline van Vorst, eig. Th. Peeters, Velden; 3a
prijs Irène, eig. W. Berden, Blerick; 3b prijs Cantora van
Hegelsum, eig. H. de Ruyter, Meerlo; 3c prijs Corrie van Hoek, eig.
Chr. Gielen, Broekhuizen; 4a prijs Gerda, eig. Alb. Achten, Leunen;
4b prijs Irène van Kupershof, eig. Wed. Rieter, Velden; 4c
prijs Liza van Bekenhof eig. J. P. Pellen, Meerlo; 4d prijs Martha
van Sintelberg, eig. J. Jenneskens, Meerlo.
Categorie
3. Merrieveulens geb. in 1939. Belg. T. 1e prijs Madam, eig. Fr.
Steegh, Velden; 2a prijs Mimie van Claironszoon, eig. P. Geurts,
Velden; 2b prijs Emma, eig. Jacq. Boonen Velden; 3a prijs Corry,
eig. Jacq. Willemsen, Velden; 3b prijs Truusje van Ender, eig. G.
Koopmans, Velden. Kampioene van bovengenoemde drie categorieën
en hiermee winnaar van den beker werd Irma van Wils, eig. P. v. de
Ven, Velden.
Categorie
4. Geen prijzen toegekend.
Categorie
5. Handelsveulens geb. in 1939. Belg. T. 1e prijs Max, ruin, eig.
A. Geurts, Velden; 2e prijs Herseur van Vorst, ruin, eig. Th.
Peeters, Velden; 3e prijs Pol ruin, eig. G. Verhaegh, Velden; 4e
prijs Herseur, ruin, eig. H. Geelen, Velden.
Categorie
6. Merrieveulens geb. in 1941. Warmbl. 1e prijs Fientje, eig. M.
Peters, Velden
Categorie
7. Merrieveulens geb. in 1940. Warmbl. 1e prijs Elraïne, Gron.
T., eig. M. Peters, Velden; 1e prijs Ertania, Geld. T. eig. J.
Evers. Velden.
Categorie
8. Merrieveulens geb. in 1939. Warmbl. 1e prijs Dodetta, Gron. T.,
eig. J. Hendrix, Lottum; 1e prijs Dubilia, Geld. T., eig. H. van
Wylick, Velden; 2e prijs Darbota, Geld. T., eig. R. Breukers Lottum.
Kampioene
der warmbloeds der categorieën 6, 7 en 8 en hiermee winnaar der
verguld zilveren medaille werd Elzaïne, eig. M. Peters, Velden.
Categorie
10 Handelsveulens geb. in 1939. Warmbl. 1e prijs Firmant, eig. M.
Peters, Velden; 2e prijs Max, eig. J. Evers, Velden.
Categorie
10. Handelsveulens geb. in 1939. Warmbl. 1e prijs Rally, ruin, eig.
Joh. Geurts, Velden; 2e prijs Danseur, ruin, eig. Gebr. Leupers,
Velden; 3e prijs Frits, ruin, eig. G. Zeelen, Velden.
Ter
opluistering waren aanwezig de hengsten Blok v. d. Louisa, eig. M.
Simons, Grubbenvorst; Cantor, eig. P. W. Berden Blerick.
30 september
1941 Processie.
— Zondag
a.s. zal onze parochie de jaarlijksche processie houden naar het
kapelleke van O. L. Vr. van Altijddurende Bijstand te Schandelo.
13 december
1941 VRUCHTBARE BOERDERIJ te Velden-Schandelo.
H.
M. J. VERHEGGEN, NOTARIS TE VENLO, zal te Velden, op Maandag 22
December 1941, nam. 2½ uur, in café Jansen aan de
Tramhalte voor de kinderen P. J. Gommans-Peeters, publiek veilen en
verkoopen: [...]
8 januari 1942
RUILVERKAVELING WINT VELD
Ook
Limburg heeft een groot aantal objecten.
(Van
onzen redacteur.)
Met
betrekking tot de ruilverkaveling is wel eens het beeld gebruik van
de olievlek, die zich over het water-oppervlak verspreidt. Als we op
het oogenblik eens nagaan hoeveel de ruilverkaveling in de laatste
jaren aan populariteit heeft gewonnen, dan gelooven we te kunnen
zeggen, dat de beeldspraak niet misplaatst was. Het is met enkele in
de provincie verspreide complexen begonnen meestal niet dan nadat
bergen van conservatieve tegenmotieven waren overwonnen. Maar waar
men begon, daar zagen de boeren zoo spoedig de groote voordeelen,
die aan een meer economische indeeling van 't grondbezit zijn
verbonden, dat de voorbeelden aanstekelijk gingen werken. En mede
dank zij de voortdurende activiteit van den Cultuurtechnischen
Dienst, die een reeks van jaren in de weer is om de ruilverkaveling
te populariseeren, is het gaandeweg aanvragen om plannen gaan
regenen. Veelal gingen die aanvragen uit van den voormaügen
N.C.B., in andere gevallen van de ingelanden der betrokken gebieden
zelf, van particuliere eigenaren of van gemeentebesturen.
In
ons land zijn thans 137 blokken met 156.000 HA. voor ruilverkaveling
in behandeling, waarvan 36.000 H.A. in directe uitvoering. Daarvan
levert Limburg 14 objecten met in totaal ongeveer 10.000 H.A., die
voor het meerendeel reeds in uitvoering zijn. Noord-brabant slaat
met 25 plannen voor 25.000 H.A. een bijzonder goed figuur.
Het
grootste object in Limburg is de Ospelsche Peel, waar een
oppervlakte van 4500 H.A. in de verkaveling betrokken is. Voorts
zijn in uitvoering de ruilverkavelingen te NUTH, POSTERHOLT. VLODROP
(Aan het Broek), WEERTERBOSCH, Baxhoeve-SWALMEN. MEERLO,
Heesbeemden SEVENUM, Egheler en Geuper veld, Bezels Broek en de
Elsbemden. Daarenboven loopen nog aanvragen uit Waubach, Roggel-Neer
en Susteren-Nieuwstadt. Over het geheel echter is de belangstelling
voor de ruilverkaveling zoo groot, dat men van hoogerhand moet gaan
overwegen het aantal aanvragen te remmen.
DE NIEUWE RUILVERKAVELINGSWET
Het
besluit van 19 Juli van het vorig jaar tot wijziging van de wet op
de ruilverkaveling heeft de uitvoering van vele plannen zeer veel
eenvoudiger gemaakt. Voor wie wel eens kennis heeft genomen van d3
zeer ingewikkelde procedure, die gevolgd moet worden vooraleer een
verkavelingsplan op de helling staat, zal dat geen verrassing zijn.
In zoo'n plan moet nu eenmaal met honderd-en-een belangen en
belangetjes worden rekening gehouden. Op de speciale
"wensch-zittingen", die hiervoor ten behoeve van de
belanghebbenden worden gehouden, pleegt men de meest veelsoortige
verlangens op te vangen. De wijziging heeft o.m. het bezwaar
ondervangen dat een plan kan worden in de war gestuurd door
verschillende volmaakt onbeteekenende eigendommetjes, meestal
verkregen door erfrecht en niet door den eigenaar in gebruik
genomen. In zulke gevallen kan voortaan de eigendom in contanten uit
de ruilverkavelingskas worden teruggegeven. Ook de techniek van de
schatting der perceelen is gewijzigd. Was het vroeger verboden in
een plan gronden op te nemen die binnen een uitbreidingsplan of
binnen een bebouwde kom vallen, thans mogen ook deze gronden worden
opgenomen. De vroegere toestand bracht veel bezwaren met zich,
vooral daar, waar een belangrijke waterloop buiten de plannen zou
vallen. De mogelijkheid tot automatische royeering van vervallen
hypotheken en tot verstrekking van voorschotten voor ontginningen,
geeft nieuwe voordeelen voor de grondeigenaren. Van belang voor de
spoedige uitvoering der met een ruilverkaveling gepaard gaande
kunstwerken is de thans geschapen mogelijkheid om hangende diverse
detailkwesties reeds bij voorbaat met de werken te beginnen. Vooral
waar het complexen woesten grond betreft kan van deze mogelijkheid
ten volle worden geprofiteerd.
Van
het grootste belang is intusschen echter de mogelijkheid om de
werken in vrüij bedrijf uit te voeren. Hierdoor wordt de
mogelijkheid geschapen om bij bijvoorbeeld kleine boeren in den
tijd, dien zij beschikbaar hebben, werk te geven, altijd natuurlijk
op zoodanige wijze, dat hun eigen bedrijfje er geen schade van
ondervindt. De ervaring in deze is nog niet groot, maar men heeft de
goede verwachting, dat hierdoor het gebrek aan werkkrachten, dat
soms een vlotte uitvoering der werken in den weg stond, zal worden
ondervangen. Aan den Cultuurtechnischen Dienst is voor dit doel een
crediet toegestaan van 10 millioen.
GEEN SCHADE AAN LANDSCHAPSSCHOON
Tenslotte
nog een bijzonder aspect, dat in den laatsten tyd weer eens naar
voren is gebracht. Er is betoogd, dat de mannen van den
Cultuurtechnischen Dienst in hun plannen te weinig rekening houden
met de eischen van het landschapsuiterlijk. Zij zijn voorgesteld als
gevoellooze lieden, die het landschap als een koek in stukken
verdeelen en er de lineaal hoogtij laten vieren. Voor wie eenigszins
ingewijd is in de procedure der ruilverkaveling klinkt dit nog al
onwaarschijnlijk. Een ruilverkaveling komt niet in uitvoering
vooraleer overleg is gepleegd met of goedkeuring is verkregen van
ettelijke instanties. Daarbij zijn niet alleen gemeentebesturen,
waterschappen, streekplandiensten. provinciale en rijkswaterstaat,
inspectie der volksgezondheid, maar ook het Staatsboschbeheer. Dit
laatste heeft de bijzondere opdracht een oogje te houden op de
landschapsaankleeding, als we het zoo eens noemen mogen. Zelfs al
zou de Cultuurtechnische Dienst er op uit zijn om het landschap te
vervlakken, dan nog zou hij daartoe dus niet gemakkelijk de
gelegenheid hebben. Maar dat zulk een opzet in het geheel niet
voorzit, moge o.m. blijken uit het plan voor Molenbroek (Wessem en
Middelbeers), waar een breede strook langs de beek is uitgespaard,
waar de beplanting ongerept blijft en waar wandelpaden zuilen worden
aangelegd. Deze strook wordt dan aan de gemeente overgedragen.
Veelal spaart men ook bij wegkruisingen hoekjes uit, waarop
beplantingen kunnen worden aangebracht, die het landschap breken. De
zorg voor het behoud van natuurschoon gaat zelfs nog verder. In de
centrale ruilverkavelingscommissie zit ook een vertegenwoordiger van
de commissie-Weevers, die naarstig toeziet, dat geen dingen van
natuur-wetenschappelijke waarde verloren gaan. Zoo ligt in het
nieuwe plan Spoordonk de fraaie "Campina" met vele in
particulier bezit zijnde enclaves. Er komen boschanemonen,
oeverzwaluwen en roerdompen voor en dit heele gebied wordt gaspaard
en straks in handen gegeven van de Ver. tot Behoud van
Natuurmonumenten. Dit alles brengt vele zorgen voor de ontwerpers
mede, want zulk een flora en fauna is afhankelijk van den waterstand
en daaraan mag dus niet getornd worden. Niettemin, de waarborgen
zijn er dat dit inderdaad niet gebeuren zal. Dat er met dat al
steeds tegenstellingen kunnen blijven tusschen wat mooi en wat
doelmatig is, valt niet te bestrijden. In zulke gevallen zal de
harde wet der noodzaak wel eens naar den economischen kant
doorslaan. Zoo werd nog pas van hoogerhand een ruilverkaveling
opgelegd voor het Scheeke onder Best, in dit geval om een soort
kolonisatie van dit gebied te bevorderen. Hier waren het de wenschen
der grondeigenaren, die moesten wijken voor het zwaarder wegende
algemeen belang.
5 mei 1942
Biljartclub "De Poedelhaters".
— De
einduitslag van de gehouden wedstrijden in het af geloopen seizoen
om het kampioenschap der vereeniging is als volgt:
Klasse
A I: G. v. d. Hombergh kampioen, gem. 4,640; 2. J. Dirkx 4,325; 3.
Frans v. d. Hombergh 3,545; 4. Leo v. d. Homberg 3.520; 5. H.
Kessels 3,385; 6. G Hegger 2,930; 7. M. Brueren 2,655; 8 G. Zeelen
2,495; 9. Ger. Geurts 2.205.
Klasse
B I: J. Hegger 2,385; 2. G. Duijf 2,105; 3. P. Theelen 2,050; 4. J.
Clabbers 1,955; 5. P. Brueren 1,890; 6. H. Geurts 1,805; 7. P.
Beeker 1,730; 8. J. Geurts 1,295; 9. P. in 't Zandt 1,285.
Poststation. — Vanaf 6 Mei is het
hulppostkantoor alhier gewijzigd
in
een poststation. De openstellirg is vanaf dien datum van 9—ll,
en van 2—3 uur.
Rijwieldiefstallen. — Zondagmorgen onder
de eerste H. Mis, werden alhier
een
2 tal damesrijwielen gestolen. Tot op heden van de daders geen
spoor.
17 augustus
1942 GROOT ZOMERFEEST TE ARCEN
De
Nederl. Arbeidsdienst en de jeugd
Sedert
eenigen tijd is Arcen een kamp rijk van den Nederlandschen
Arbeidsdienst. De groene arbeidsmannen vormen in dit Maasdorp reeds
een veel en ook graag geziene verschijning. Er begint al zooiets van
een bond te ontstaan tusschen de nieuwe en de oude bewoners, een
band, die dezer dagen bijzonder werd versterkt, doordat de
arbeidsmannen de beteekenis blijken te begrijpen van het spreekwoord
"Wie snel helpt, helpt dubbel". Bij een ramp, die enkele
bewoners van het dorp had getroffen, hebben de mannen zich van hun
besten kant laten kennen en zooiets laat nu eenmaal niet na de
verhouding hartelijker te maken. Thans staat er iets anders te
gebeuren, waardoor de bevolking van Arcen en Velden en vooral de
jeugd in de gelegenheid zal zijn de arbeidsmannen nog beter te
leeren kennen. Op 21, 22 en 23 Augustus a.s. organiseeren de
arbeidsmannen tezamen met de burgerij een zomerfeest.
HET RIJKE PROGRAM
Vrijdagavond,
21 Augustus 1942 te 19.30 wordt het feest geopend met den
voetbalwedstrijd D.E.V.—N.A.D. In de rust een grootsche
sportdemonstratie. Na afloop diverse wedstrijden in het hardloopen,
verspringen, hoogspringen, enz., enz.
De
groote dag wordt echter Zaterdag, den 22sten Augustus. Na de
feestelijke vlaggenparade om 8 uur in het kamp, waarbij de
officieele personen van de gemeente Arcen—Velden zijn
uitgenoodigd, zal om 10 uur de intocht van den Zomerkoning te Arcen
plaats vinden. Om 14 uur parademarsch door het dorp. Na het inrukken
op het dorpsplein, gezamenlijk optrekken naar het voetbalveld aan de
Lingsforterweg alwaar omstreeks 15 uur de kinderspelen aanvangen.
Dat
wordt wat voor de kleintjes. Ze gaan zingen, touwtrekken,
paalklimmen lierloopen, hardloopen en nog veel meer. Er zijn leuke
prijsjes voor de winnaars. De dag zal besloten worden met een
kampvuur op het dorpsplein. De muziek en de zanglustigen zullen hier
kunnen toonen wat zij waard zijn, terwijl het programma wordt
ofgewisseld met declamatie, zwaarddans en samenspraken.
Zondagmiddag
wordt in de cantine van het Arbeidskamp te 15.00 de film
"Doornroosje" gedraaid, waarbij iedereen vrij toegang
heeft. Hieraan kan tevens een bezichtiging van het kamp worden
vastgeknoopt, hetgeen trouwens gedurende den geheelen loop der
feestelijkheden mogelijk is. Het behoeft geen betoog dat tijdens
deze dagen voor de burgerij op het kamp geen grenzen bestaan.
Zoowel
de burgemeester als de burgerlijke vereenigingen hebben hun
volledige medewerking toegezegd en samen met het initiatief van de
arbeidsmannen moet dit een waarborg zijn voor het slagen van het
Zomerfeest.
11 september
1942 Veulenkeuring te Velden
Onder
zeer groote belangstelling had op "Wilshof" de 2e
Veldensche veulenkeuring plaats. Er was een groote collectie veulens
van goede kwaliteit aanwezig. De jury, bestaande uit de heeren
Urding en Hub. Kallen, alsmede de arbiters Chr. Bertjens en E.
Kallen, vervulden hun taak met kennis van zaken en kenden de prijzen
als volgt toe:
Categorie
1 Merrieveulens geb. in 1941 Belg. T. 1e pr. Rietje v. d. Speulhof,
eig. M. Smits, Well; 2e pr: Jeanne v. d. Elzahoeve, eig. F. Obers,
Grubbenvorst; 2e pr. Irma van 't Höltje, eig. P. Bouten, Ven;
3e pr. Cato van Aast, eig. J. W. Hendrix, Lottum; 3e pr. Louisa v.
d. Erf, eig. H. Zanders, Grubbenvorst; 3e pr. Lena van Ender, eig.
H. Soberjé, Velden; 4e pr. Flora v. d. Annahoeve, eig. G. van
Wylick, Ven; 4e pr. Truusje v. d. Slangert, eig. J. van Lipzig,
Velden; 4e pr. Ellie van Brandenmolen, G. Hegger, Arcen. Eerv. verm.
Roza v. h. Hoekeinde, eig. J. v. d. Hombergh, Lomm; Eerv. verm.
Bertha van Engelenhof, eig. Th. Berden, Blerick.
Categorie
2. Merrieveulens geb. in 1941, Belg. T. 1e pr. Cora van Boerlo, eig.
Wed. J. Lenders, Blerick; 2e pr. Alda van Aldengoor, eig. J. Neelen,
Neer; 2e pr. Comtesse van Boost, eig. W. Berden, Blerick; 3e pr.
Corrie van Hoverhof, eig. Th. Peeters, Velden; 3e pr. Mina van
Abeele, eig. Th. Peeters, Velden; 3e pr. Lucie, eig. L. Aerdts,
Lomm; 3e pr. Astrid van Sintelberg, eig. J. Tax, Aijen; 4e pr. Ire
van Solinger, eig. A. Geurts, Velden; 4e pr. Irma v. d. Erf, eig. H.
Zanders, Grubbenvorst; 4e pr. Marie van Spiekerhof, eig. G. Muyres,
Lomm; 4e pr. Nellie, eig. Gebr. Leupers, Velden.
Categorie
3. Merrieveulens geb. in 1940, Belg. T. 1e pr. Jeanny van Oijen,
eig. E. Kallen, Broekh'vorst; 1e pr. Alice van Aldengoor, eig. J.
Nellen, Neer; 2e pr. Nicoline van Vorst, eig. Th. Peeters, Velden;
2e pr. Irene van Kupershof, eig. Weduwe Rieter, Velden; 2e pr.
Irene, eig. Berden, Blerick;. 2e pr. Mia van Hoek, eig. Chr. Gielen,
Broekhuizen; 3e pr. Liza van Bekerhof, eig. J. Theelen, Meerlo; 3e
pr. Irene van Ender, eig. H. Soberjé, Velden; 3e pr. Martha
van Sintelberg, eig. J. Jenneskens, Meerlo; 3e pr. Corrie van Hoek,
eig. Chr. Gielen, Broekhuizen.
Categorie
4. Hengstveulens geb. in 1942, Belg. T. 1e pr. Blok van Hegelsom,
eig. A. Keijzers, Horst; 2e pr. Blok v. d. Wilhelminahoeve, eig.
Corn. Willems, Griendtsveen; 3e pr. Bren v. h. Slot, eig. J. Hutten,
Grubbenvorst; 3e pr. Cantor van Ender, eig. H. Soberjé,
Velden; Eerv. verm. Cantorzoon, eig. A. Geurts, Velden; Eerv. verm.
Cantor van Schandelo, eig. J. Theelen, Velden; Eerv. verm. Max van
Molenhuls, eig. P. Soberjé, Horst.
Categorie
5. Hengstveulens geb. in 1941, Belg. T. 1e pr. Nico van Helpeny,
eig. Leyser, Grubbenvorst; 2e pr. Frits van Klein Raay, eig. W.
Leyser, Grubbenvorst.
Categorie
6. Hengstveulens geb. in 1940, Belg. T. 1e pr. Bayaard van
Kanaalmond, eig. W. Leyser, Grubbenvorst; Eerv. verm. Cantor van
Lutjeshof, eig. van Ryswijck, Meerlo; Eerv. verm. Max, eig. W.
Leysen, Grubbenvorst.
Categorie
7. Merries met afst. '43, '41 en '40, Belg. T. 1e pr. Mozette de
Vorst, eig. Th. Peeters, Velden; 2e pr. Liza van Hoek, eig. Chr.
Gielen, Broekh'vorst; 3e pr. Jo van Ender, eig. H. Soberjé,
Velden; 3e pr. Lien, eig.. G. Hegger, Arcen.
Categorie
8. Hengsten met afst. 1942 Belg. T, 1e pr. Blok v. d. Louisa K 1669,
eig. M. Simons, Grubbenvorst
Categorie
9. Hengsten met afst. '40 en '41, Belg. T. 1e pr. met lof der jury:
Cantor K 1854, eig. H. Lenders, Blerick.
Categorie
10. Handelsveulens '42, Belg. T. 1e pr. Fridi van Heggerhof, eig. L.
Engels, Velden; 2e pr. Annie van Drabben, eig. Henri Keltjens,
Velden; 3e pr. Leentje van Drabben, eig. Henri Keltjens, Velden; 4e
pr. Irma van Heggerhof, eig. L. Engels, Velden.
Categorie
11. Warmbloeds geb. 1942. 1e pr. Gonny, eig. H. van Wylick, Velden;
2e pr. Frans, eig. A. Verhaegh, Lomm; 3e pr. Rinus, eig. C. Bos,
Grubbenvorst; 4e pr. Benno. eig. G. Verhaegh, Velden; Eerv. verm.
Nico, eig. A. Verhaegh, Lomm.
Mede
ter opluistering was aanwezig de hengst Colosse van Brandehoeve K
1971, eig. H. Lenders, Blerick.
Winnaar
van den verzilverden wisselbeker werd E. Kallen, Broekhuizenvorst,
met de kampioene der keuring: Jeanny v. Oijen.
17 oktober
1942 ANNIE BUSKES en PIET HOLTHUIJZEN
hebben
de eer U kennis te geven van hun voorgenomen huwelijk waarvan de
voltrekking zal plaats hebben op Dinsdag 10 November om half elf uur
in de Parochiekerk van den H. Andreas te Velden. Velden, 17 Oct.
1942 Velden. "De Krosselt". Velden, Rijksweg C 304. Geen
Receptie.
14 januari
1945 66139 BERG, Peter Hubertus Jacobus van den, 7 April
1919,
Arcen
en Velden. Won. Arcen en Velden. 14 Jan. 1945, de omgeving van
Velden.
8
maart 1945 Fam. P. J. Maas-Nelissen, Stationsstr. 10, SCHAESBERG
vr. inl. o.: FAM. J. NELISSEN v. ENCEVORT en FAM. J. JACOBS-LORMANS
Rijksweg B 42 Lomm. FAM. J. HEZEN-NELISSEN. Kranestraat B 32. Horst.
FAM. P. NELISSEN-LORMANS. Venloseweg A 191, Grubbenvorst, FAM. A.
NELISSEN en v. d. STERREN. Hegelsom Horst.
24
februari 1945 Wie kan mij inlichten omtrent de verblijfplaats van
mijn zoon JOH. DIJKS? In afw. J. Dijks, v.h. de Krosselt Velden,
thans AEkade 9, Veendam
P.
J. W. Holthuizen, p/a K. Maring, D 159 Oudeschip Roodeschool (Gr.),
betr. fam. G. Holthuizen—Geelen H. Beek—Holthuizen en
verd. fam., Krosselt, Velden (L.)
16 januari
1945 Schandelijke evacuatie.
De
bevolking van Venlo, Roermond en het overige deel van bezet Limburg
is op schandelijke wijze door de D. weggesleept. De "Evacuatie",
die werd uitgevoerd door de Grüne Polizei, begon te Venlo op 17
Januari en te Roermond op 21 Januari. In Roermond meldden zich 2.800
mannen, bedreigd met doodstraf en gelokt met Ausweisen; ze werden
allen weggevoerd. De evacuatie der overige inwoners volgde daarna.
De bevolking van Schandelo kreeg midden in den nacht van 20 op 21
Jan. plotseling bevel naar Duitschland te vertrekken. Dit bevel kwam
op 2 uur 's nachts en het dorp diende om 4 uur ontruimd te zijn. Een
stoet van mannen, vrouwen, kinderen en zuigelingen trok in het holst
van den ijzigen sneeuwnacht oostwaarts met achterlating van alles.
De bevolking van Venlo kreeg, nadat verschillende wijken waren
afgezet, een half uur om wat bezittingen bijeen te pakken. De Grüne
zocht de huizen na! Nog dagelijks trekken uit deze streek droeve
colonnes naar het Oosten. Ieder krijgt één brood voor
de heele marsch mee en achter de colonne rijdt een
Roode-Kruiswagentje met waterpap voor de kinderen. Niemand weet het
ware over de plaats van hun bestemming.
17 maart 1945
DE EVACUATIE VAN VENLO
Pater
Herraets sprak voor de radio-omroep Herrijzend Nederland over de
evacuatie van Venlo
Venlo
bevrijd! Donderdag in de late middag rolden tien Amerikaanse tanks
de Kalderkerkerweg af. Vrijwel zonder schot werd de vesting Venlo
overgegeven. Enkele Duitsers ontkwamen achter het stuur van
kinderwagentjes waarin ze nog wat gestolen goed en hun ransels
meevoerden. Het merendeel gaf zich over. Vrijdagmorgen waren de
straten vol tanks, bemand met negersoldaten. Een blije rij mensen
stond langs de wegen. Geen geweldig enthousiasme; de bevolking had
te veel meegemaakt. Alleen de kinderen waren enthousiast. Ze snapten
niet waar Sinter-Klaas bleef. Er bleven al maar zwarte Pieten komen
met lekkernij: koekjes en chocolade. Een gehavende stad en een
gedecimeerde bevolking vierde toen het feest van de bevrijding. Na
13 bombardementen, waarbij de hele binnenstad verwoest was en 450
burgers gedood — na 3 maanden granaatvuur, dag in dag uit —
na een maandenlange zorg: waarmee zullen we ons kleden, wat zullen
we eten, hoe zullen we de kou verdrijven — na maandenlange
onrust over evacuatiedreiging een werkelijke evacuatie, nadat 1200
Venlonaars gedood waren door oorlogsgeweld.
Uit
Venlo werden ongeveer tienduizend personen door de Duitsers
geëvacueerd. Een transport te voet van 172 personen en 6
treinen werden weggevoerd. Op last van de kerkelijke overheid moest
met ieder transport een geestelijke mee gaan. Het voettransport op
14 Januari heb ik zelf als geestelijke meegemaakt. Het was bitter
koud, er lag sneeuw en de wegen waren onbegaanbaar omdat het gedooid
had en weer was gaan vriezen. Om 8 u. moesten we aan de Pope-fabriek
zijn. Men vertelde dat er zich voor het transport enkele honderden
vrijwilligers hadden opgegeven; om 10 u. waren er 11 mensen die
meewilden.
Maar
de "Grune Polizei" zou wel zorgen dat er vrijwilligers
kwamen. Er werden bij de Maas enkele straten afgezet en een
schuilkelder in de buurt, waar gedurende de winter een 5 à
600-tal mensen in gruwelijke ellende geleefd hadden, werd
leeggehaald en met geweld mannen, vrouwen en kinderen op straat
gedreven. Ze konden op 'n sleetje of karretje wat lijfgoed meenemen.
Maar het merendeel kon dat niet, want ze hadden het niet. Het was de
armste wijk van Venlo: de Rummerstraat, Schatwederstraat en
Postelstraat. Tegen 11 u. stonden een troep huilende vrouwen en
kinderen voor de fabriek. Onder geleide van de Grüne, met
geweren gewapend, gingen we naar Straelen. Er liepen kinderen zonder
kousen, zonder ondergoed, met kapotte klompen en lorren van
schoenen. We kwamen maar moeilijk vooruit over de weg. Er waren
vrouwen bij van over de 70 jaar, moeders met borst-kinderen van vier
en zes maanden. De ober-luitenant bekende dat dit geen mannen-werk
was en dat hij liever aan het front vocht dan dit beulenwerk te
doen.
In
Straelen pauzeerde de evacuatie van Velden, die van Noord naar Zuid
gedreven werden. In Pont kwam 'n wagen van Venlo ons achterop en
kregen we warme soep. Aan de baby was niet gedacht. Tegen de avond
bereikten we Geldern, een dode stad onder sneeuw met verse wonden
van bombardementen; huilende kinderen, moeizaam voortsjokkende
mensen intens triest en droevig.
We
werden in een kazerne gestopt en kregen soep en brood. Mijn vriend
Hein Veger, medisch student, die in Venlo op het ziekenhuis als
assistent werkte, had zich vrijwillig aangemeld als dokter de mensen
bij te staan en maakte de ronde: een bloedvergiftiging, een zware
breuk, 'n klein kind met zware bronchites en natuurlijk overal
stukgelopen voeten. Veel totaal uitgeputte kinderen. We moesten een
wagen zien te vinden. De nacht bracht raad. Tegen 4 u. werden we
wakker; op de gangen drukte, heen en weer geloop en de volgende
morgen bleek al gauw waar die nachtelijke drukte voor nodig was
geweest: in 't geëvacueerde Geldern was door onze mensen
"georganiseerd". Ze hadden wagentjes en sleeën
geleend.
Om
9 u. trokken we verder zonder dat er enig eten of drinken was
verstrekt. Een van de vrouwen zei in haar sappig Venlo's: "dat
ze ons er uit gesmeten hebben, allah; dat we de kou in gestuurd
worden, allah; maar dat we vanmorgen geen kopje koffie hebben
gekregen, dàt is onmenselijk. Het is me nog nooit in mijn
leven overkomen." Echt Venlose humor!
In
Sonsbeek wist ik het klaar te spelen dat een katholieke instelling
voor warm eten zorgde. Maar voor de "Grüne" deden ze
het niet en die qaven ze niets, zeiden ze. Ik kreeg er ondergoed,
schoeisel, kousen en kleren. De bevolking van het Rijnland was erg
behulpzaam en goed. Morgen zijn wij aan de beurt, meenden ze.
Na
een tocht van 10 à 11 uur bereikten we in 't duister Xanten.
De mensen kwamen in verschillende kwartieren en werden overal
uitstekend geholpen. Onze medicus-Veger speelde tegen de
Nazi-instanties stevig op zijn poot en wist te bereiken dat we voor
de volgende dag een boerenkar kregen voor de zieken en ouden van
dagen. Een kind met longontsteking en een met zware bronchitis bleef
met de moeder in het ziekenhuis te Xanten achter.
De
mensen waren doodop. Volgende morgen om 9 u. weer verder. Enkele der
.Grüne Polizei" waren uitgevallen omdat ze niet in staat
waren verder te lopen, maar onze vrouwen en kinderen moesten.
Onderweg liepen ze telkens uit de rij en vroegen en bedelden om eten
en drinken.
We
waren dien dag (Dinsdag) tegen 4 u. in Rees. We werden met 'n
veerpont over de Rijn gezet. Een benauwd kwartiertje, want enkele
Engelse jagers hadden dien middag kennelijk interesse voor onze
colonne.
We
stonden nu over de Rijn. In 'n oude zaal met smerig stroo konden
onze mensen in Rees overnachten. Daar de hygiëne en
zindelijkheid onder de mensen nog wel wat te wensen overliet —
ze hadden maandenlang in schuilkelders opgehoopt gezeten —
besloten de dokter en ik in de stad te gaan slapen. We gingen de
mensen nog eens af; ze hadden vreselijk veel last van doorgelopen
voeten. We vroegen en kregen melk en pap voor de kinderen.
In
de stad was de ontvangst, ook bij katholieke instanties, beneden
peil. Nergens plaats. De mensen waren er kennelijk bang, maar dan
ook ontzettend bang. Ik moest mij overal legitimeren als priester.
Vriendelijke mensen hebben wij er niet ontmoet. Ik was de dokter
kwijt qeraakt, zocht in ziekenhuis, maar daar was hij niet.
Misschien in het Holländische lager in de Neustrasse. In de
Neustrasse kende niemand het Holländische lager. Ik liep toen
een gebouw binnen waarop Rode Kruis stond. Onder militairen. Ik werd
brutaal, liep een trap op naar boven en stond... voor een Nederl.
uniform. Het bleek de ziekenafdeling van 'n kamp te zijn. Enkele
duizenden Nederlandse jongens, in een grote West-Nederl. stad domweg
op straat opgepikt, zijn in Rees in een kamp; slapen in 'n open
dakpannenfabriek. Als ze opstonden zat het ijs dik op de dekens. Met
slaag werden ze gewekt. Wie bleef liggen was ziek, iederen dag 5
doden wegens dysenterie. Slecht voedsel, slaag. In de Neustrasse
lagen er 'n honderd doodziek. Dyphterie, dysenterie, longontsteking
etc. Op de vloeren een beetje stroo. Geen hoofdkussen; in hun gewone
kleren, d.w.z. lompen met smerige dekens.
De
helft ervan was katholiek. Ik hoorde biecht, reikte de H. Communie
uit en sprak allen toe. Ze waren ontzettend blij en gelukkig, ze
hadden tranen in de ogen. Geen hard woord hoorde ik van hen. Ze
beschuldigden zich van haat voor de vijand.
Ze
wilden niet haten zeiden ze. Ze wilden het dragen voor een nieuw,
beter en vrij Nederland. Jongens, die avond bij jullie zal ik m'n
hele leven niet vergeten. Als ik spreek en lees over martelaren denk
ik voortaan aan jullie, zie ik jullie holle gezichten, smerig, met
vuile baard, maar zie ik jullie ogen die zuiver, rein en sterk
waren. Dat de Heer der martelaren jullie moge sterken en beschermen.
Over
de stad Rees hing als het ware 'n vloek van hardheid, wreedheid. In
Gelderland hoorde ik van bevoegde personen dat evacué's uit
Gennep wat water vroegen in Rees voor een vrouw die flauw viel. "In
de Rijn is water genoeg, haal 't daar maar" werd hun gezegd.
Het transport uit Gennep kwam er enkele maanden voor ons des nachts
in stromende regen aan. Men werd in openbare schuilkelders geduwd en
in portieken konden we slapen. Maar de mensen namen ze niet in
huizen op. Een vrouw is er in de schuilkelder gevallen.
's
Avonds ben ik naar de Venlonaars teruggegaan om de H. Mis te lezen.
Ik verzekerde hun dat 't kapelleke van Genooi niet te evacueren was
en een Moeder altijd bleef waken over wie daar ooit kwam en bleef
wachten op een spoedige terugkeer van allen. 's Avonds ging ik nog
eens naar 't Holländische lager en bleef er nog lang met de
jongens praten. De volgende dag, onze laatste dag, zouden we over de
grens gaan. Vanuit Gendringen kwamen boerenkarren. Zwakke kinderen
en de bagage gingen daarop. Het was nog bitter koud. We waren blij
dat we Rees konden verlaten en nog blijer dat we weer in Nederland
zouden zijn. Luidkeels werd 't Wilhelmus gezongen toen we de grens
overtrokken, maar de "Grüne" verbood het. In
Gendringen was een comité dat zich voor onze mensen
uitsloofde. Een warme zaal, uitstekend eten. Enkele dagen zouden ze
blijven rusten en dan per wagen en tram doorgaan naar Borculo. Men
vroeg indertijd vaak en vraagt het nog: waarvoor diende die
evacuatie? Er is maar één antwoord: Een demon drijft
het Duitse volk naar de ondergang. De evacuatie van Limburg is
duivelsspel. Ik weet er geen ander antwoord op.
En
als iemand van mijn mensen mij zou kunnen horen dan had ik hem
willen zeggen: De groeten uit Venlo en van Genooi, de groeten uit 'n
vrije, blije Nederlandse stad.
4 april 1945
Mej. Fr. Rouleaux-Meurs, p.a. Groote Dijlakker 24, Bolsward,
betr.
haar vader, Weeshuis, Venlo, wonende Vilgert Velden.
14 juli 1945
De noodtoestand in Limburg
"Daar
is mijn vaderland, Limburgs dierbaar oord," zo zingen de
duizenden Limburgers, welke weer naar hun geboorteplaats terugkeren,
na 4 maanden in het noorden van ons land te hebben doorgebracht. Elk
dorp en iedere stad welke zij op de terugreis passeren, is voor hen
aanleiding hun volkslied opnieuw in te zetten, daarmee hun vreugde
te kennen gevend over het feit, dat voor hen het moment is
aangebroken, waarnaar ze zo lang met een kinderlijk verlangen hebben
uitgezien. En wanneer zij dan bij het passeren van de Limburgse
grens bij de spoorwegtunnel te Mook de woorden "welkom
Limburger" te lezen krijgen, dan wordt nog eens het volkslied
ingezet, uitbundiger dan te voren, en menige boer welke uiterlijk
ruw en onverschillig lijkt, veegt met zijn mouw enkele tranen van
blijdschap van zijn gezicht. Dan wordt het stiller en de
feestvreugde moet plaats maken voor een gespannen en zwijgend
afwachten, een gevoel van teleurstelling, een gevoel van bange hoop.
Ieder verwoest dorp wakkert deze gevoelens aan. Ottersum zwaar
geteisterd, Middelaar geen huis dat hersteld kan worden. Gennep één
monument van verwoeste huizen. Afferden en Heyen vrijwel geheel
verwoest. Arcen en Velden bieden een troosteloze blik, Venlo, dat
zestien bombardementen te verduren had, en eens zo beroemd was door
haar gezelligheid en vrolijkheid, overtreft iedere voorstelling
welke men er zich van maken kan aan de hand van de beschrijvingen
welke pers en radio er over gegeven hebben. Roermond doet wat de
verwoestingen betreft niet voor Venlo onder, Susteren is totaal
verwoest... Doch niet alleen de Oostkant van de Maas tussen Mook en
Sittard is getuige van de meedogenloosheid waarmee twee grote
wereldmachten elkaar hier bestreden, ook de Westkant kent de
methoden der moderne oorlogsvoering. Blerick telt slechts weinig te
herstellen huizen, Lottum, Broekhuizen, Horst, Venray alsmede vele
andere grotere en kleinere dorpen in Noorden midden-Limburg doen
iedere vreemde bezoeker stil worden hoeveel te meer dan hij die dit
zijn dierbaar oord noemt.
Meer
dan welk deel van ons land heeft dit gebied, en meer dan welk deel
van ons volk heeft dit volk de verschrikkingen van de oorlog moeten
doorstaan vanaf de eerste dag dat het Rijn- en Roergebied de doelen
vormden voor de aanvallen der R.A.F. hebben zij bombardementen
meegemaakt, doordat luchtgevechten tussen Engelse bommenwerpers en
Duitse jagers boven hun hoofden werden uitgevochten. Meer dan 2
maanden hebben zij onder het hevigste granaatvuur gelegen, waarvan
velen ten slachtoffer zijn gevallen. Gedurende diezelfde tijd dwong
de veiligheid hen in kelders te wonen.
"De
Groenen" zorgden er met hun razia's wel voor dat deze mensen
geen al te grote rust genoten.
In
begin Januari van dit jaar trof hen de grootste ramp doordat zij
ondanks sneeuw en koude, gedwongen werden alles te verlaten, om naar
het Noorden van ons land te worden geevacueerd, alwaar zij aan de
goede, doch helaas ook aan de slechte gastvrijheid van hun
landgenoten werden overgeleverd. De Deventenaren zijn getuigen
geweest van de ellende welke deze mensen op hun tochten vergezelde.
Thans
zijn velen van hun weer in hun dierbaar oord aangekomen, doch dit
betekent voor hen niet het einde van alle ellende, want zij staan nu
voor de puinhopen van wat eens hun bezit was. Meer dan 25.000 stuks
rundvee werden naar Duitsland gebracht, het zelfde lot ondergingen
ruim 10.000 paarden.
Alle
varkens en kippen zijn verdwenen, matrassen, serviezen, keukengerei,
meubels linnengoed enz. enz. eveneens weggeroofd of in onbruikbare
toestand achtergelaten.
In
ruil hiervoor hebben de Duitsers duizende mijnen achtergelaten welke
iedere dag slachtoffers eisen. Gezinnen werden gedood doordat mijnen
in hun huizen verborgen waren. Duizende H A goede landen
tuinbouwgrond moet hier braak blijven liggen aangezien van
overheidswege geen pogingen zijn aangewend de hierin verborgen
mijnen op te ruimen.
De
toewijzingen van materialen, grondstoffen, transportmiddelen,
huisraden enz. welke van Overheidswege worden verstrekt zijn niet
alleen geheel onvoldoende om aan de minimum behoeften te voldoen,
doch hebben bij de bevolking het idee doen postvatten, dat de
Overheid zelfs niet doordrongen is van de betreurenswaardige
toestanden welke hier heersen.
Is
het dan te verwonderen dat er grote onrust en ontevredenheid heerst
onder dit van nature zo tevreden volk van Noord- en Midden Limburg,
een ontevredenheid die gevoed wordt door de wetenschap dat enige
kilometers Oostwaarts de Duitse boer met hun paarden de grond, welke
vrij is van mijnen, kan bewerken, en zich bovendien tegoed kunnen
doen aan de eieren van hun kippen, het spek eten van de door hun met
zorg groot gebrachte varkens, de linnenkasten met de gestolen
goederen hebben aangevuld, om nog maar te zwijgen van de vele
"Liebesgaben" welke de soldaten uit Holland voor hun
familie hebben meegebracht. Ongetwijfeld zullen deze mensen met
vreugde kennis genomen hebben van de grote actie door de Zeer Eerw.
Heer H. de Greeve aangekondigd in zijn onlangs gehouden bijzondere
lichtbaken waarin deze de Limburgers met name noemde. Doch dit kan
niet voldoende zijn. Het is de plicht van de Overheid alles in het
werk te stellen om hier zo spoedig mogelijk te hulp te komen, het
liefst door hun eigen goederen trachten op te sporen en terug te
halen, waarbij zij op volledige steun van de belanghebbenden kunnen
rekenen.
Laten
wij van onze kant die mensen, waarmee wij zoveel medelijden hadden
toen zij door onze stad trokken, niet vergeten wanneer offers voor
getroffen landgenoten van ons gevraagd worden. En, ja laten we
eerlijk zijn, we kunnen nog heel wat missen, zonder dat we het gemis
hier van merken. En hoe is dat verhaal ook weer van Sint Martinus
met zijn mantel, waarover onlangs ook in een herderlijk schrijven
van enige onzer Bisschoppen gesproken werd?
20 juli 1945
Begin Sept. hervatten wij het onderwijs
Leerlingen
voor het eerste leerjaar kunnen zich aanmelden bij den Zeereerw.
Pater Rector, die ook elke gewenste inlichting verstrekt. De
Missionarissen van MARIANNHILL, ST. PAUL, ARCEN L.
12 december
1945 "DE SCHRIK VAN VENLO" ZAL ALS MOORDENAAR
TERECHT STAAN
Half
Januari zal, zooals reeds in het kort gemeld werd, de zaak-Berendsen
voor het Bijzonder Gerechtshof berecht worden. Dit gerechtshof zal
hiertoe een speciale zitting houden te Venlo. Venlo heeft immers het
twijfelachtige voorrecht gehad Berendsen als commandant van de
Arbeitseinsatzkontrolkommission domicilie te verleenen. Gedurende
ruim twee jaren kon de naam Berendsen in geheel Noord-Limburg bijna
iedereen een nachtmerrie bezorgen. Vergezeld van een luguber groepje
"politiemannen uit Ommen", trok Berendsen geregeld den
boer op, op jacht naar onderduikers, radio's en verborgen piloten.
Hij zoowel als zijn trawanten voerden een waar schrikbewind onder de
bevolking. Als een stelletje revolverbandieten voor wie geen wet
bestond en niets heilig was pleegden zij overvallen in dorpen en op
afgelegen boerde rijen. Nooit wist men precies met welk doel en
welke opdracht de bende op de baan was.
Berendsen
zelf droeg, behalve aan zijn koppel, ook nog een revolver in elk van
zijn laarzen. Zoo nu en dan had hij een holster onder zijn linker
oksel bevestigd en nog een schietwapen in den borstzak. Dat hij al
deze onwaarschijnlijke maatregelen nam ter eigen beveiliging,
verwonderde tenslotte niemand. Zelf ging hij trotsch op zijn
reputatie "de schrik van Venlo" te zijn. Zijn optreden
herinnerde af en toe sterk aan de dolzinnigste scènes uit de
Wild-West.
De
dagvaardiging van Berendsen moet wel zoo ongeveer het midden houden
tusschen een struikrooversverhaal uit den bokkenrijderstijd en de
geschiedenis van een fantastischen cowboy-schurk met veel
revolverknallen en opwindende jachten. Het groote verschil zal dan
echter zijn, dat de historie om Berendsen droeve werkelijkheid is,
of beter gezegd "was".
Zooals
de P.O.D. ons mededeelde, had men nog geen juist beeld over den
inhoud van de aanklacht. De voornaamste beschuldigingen zullen
echter om. zijn: drie politieke moorden met voorbedachten rade. Zijn
slachtoffers in deze gevallen waren: het Israëlitische echtpaar
Maisonpierre—Compris, afkomstig uit Sittard en J. Kohlen uit
Venlo.
Het
echtpaar M. was door Berendsen en zijn bende opgespoord in Sevenum,
waar het ondergedoken was. Hij hield beiden een tijdlang in arrest
in het politiebureau te Venlo. Op een zekeren avond noodigde hij het
echtpaar uit voor een ritje. Hij bracht hen buiten Venlo in de buurt
van het z.g. Zwarte Water en schoot hen bij een boschrand zonder
vorm van proces neer. Nadat hij aanvankelijk de lijken ter plaatse
had laten liggen, koerde hij naderhand terug en wierp ze in de
veenplas.
Het
derde slachtoffer K. had Berendsen overgenomen van een Duitsch
officier, die K. ten onrechte van plundering verdacht. Berendsen nam
K. mee naar den Kaldenkerkerweg te Venlo, waar hij hem ter hoogte
van de tramloodsen van den Maasbuurtspoorweg neerschoot. Dat hij de
dader was van deze afgrijselijke moorden, heeft Berendsen reeds
bekend. Voorts zullen in zijn dagvaardiging verscheidene gevallen
gesignaleerd worden van arrestaties van personen, die hij voor en in
het belang van den vijand verrichtte. Diverse van deze personen zijn
in Nederlandsche en Duitsche concentratiekampen terecht gekomen,
waarvan er verschillende niet zijn teruggekeerd. Johan Berendsen, de
schrik van Venlo, is geboortig uit Avereest. Tijdens den oorlog had
hij een dienstverband met de Militaire Politie. Na uit Duitsche
krijgsgevangenschap te zijn ontslagen, was hij achtereenvolgens in
dienst bij de Rijksveldwacht, bij de Deutsche Polizei in de
Nederlanden en bekleedde hij het bandietenbaantje van commandant bij
de Arbeidseinsatzkontrolkommission.
2 juli 1946
Hij wijst een massagraf op de Hamertsche heide aan
Vermoedelijk
het graf van de zeven Limburgsche slachtoffers van de Mei-staking
1943
Oproep
van den Burgemeester van Bergen tot de familieleden
Gestatten
Sie, Herr Commissar, zegt Richard Nitsche met dat mengsel van
slaafsheid en brutaliteit, dat men alleen van 'n Duitscher
verwachten kan: gestatten Sie, zegt hij, wanneer hij verhoord wordt
in een luchtig vertrek van het Venlosche politiebureau en hij pikt
de peukjes uit den aschbak en vraagt een lucifer.
Het
verhoor is een verstandelijk duel tusschen den ervaren Ned.
commissaris en den sluwen S.D.-er, die zelf honderden Limburgers aan
'n kruisverhoor on[der]wierp, koele nuchtere Nederlanders en
vertwijfelde murw gebeukte gevangenen.
Het
zijn twee oude bekenden, die hier tegenover elkaar staan:
hoofdinspecteur Wieriks en Hauptscharführer Nitsche destijds de
eenige S.D.-er in Limburg die de Gestaposchool geheel doorloopen
heeft. Die met alle praal van 't Duitsche superras tijdens de
bezetting in ditzelfde politiebureau zijn intrede deed.
Die,
tenslotte den dood en mishandeling van tientallen Limburgers op zijn
geweten heeft. Maar het is niet meer dezelfde "Herr Nitsche",
deze schrale kruiperige figuur, die bedelt om de peukjes van den
hoofdinspecteur...
Dat
moet hij toegeven: deze behandeling is toch veel anders dan die de
Duitschers hun gevangenen gaven, maar Herr Commissar begrijpt toch
den nolitieman, we1...
Of
hij ooit iemand geslagen had? Welneen! En, deze getuige dan? Had hij
dien nooit een stomp met de kolf van het geweer gegeven? Neen,
d.w.z.: alleen maar met de hand. Zeker hij wil niets voor de politie
verbergen, niets tenminste wat zijn vroegere kameraden van den S.D.
te Maastricht verdacht kan maken.
Op
Strobl, zijn chef, die het sinistere gezelschap in den steek liet,
toen zij op den dag der capitulatie naar IJmuiden vluchtten, is hij
woest. "Planmäszig" waren zij daarop door de
Canadeezen in een krijgsgevangenenkamp opgeborgen, waaruit hij thans
door de bemoeiingen van "Herr Commissar" te voorschijn is
gehaald.
Richard
Nitsche schrijft een ellenlang raport in zijn cel. Als de zware
grendels verschoven worden ten gerieve van den fotograaf valt het
felle zonlicht naar binnen. Nitsche staat op van de schrijftafel en
doet een stap naar voren als wilde hij zeggen: kan ik de heeren
ergens mee van dienst zijn? En als het fototoestel uit het foudraal
te voorschijn komt, heeft hij de opmerking: "Das geht ja nicht
mit Leika!" Hou jij je maar aan je schrijverij, wordt hem
gezegd en hij gaat weer zitten in zijn verschoten pakje van de
Luftwaffe met de strakke, iets te korte broekspijpen.
Een
foto voor de krant.
Hij
had bij den "Herr Commissar" een dagblad gezien met zijn
naam erin. Hij had om de krant gevraagd, maar het werd hem
geweigerd. Hij hoefde niet alles te weten, wat van hem bekend was.
Dan deden de Canadeezen het anders...
NITSCHE
WIJST GRAVEN AAN.
Zondag
trok Richard Nitsche geboeid en vergezeld van een klein aantal
politiemannen door N.-Limburg waar hij "nur auf Befehl"
zijn terreur heeft uitgeoefend.
Hij
wist het graf van een onderduiker in Helden, het graf van een
onderduiker die onder zijn commando verdacht van spionnage en
ondergrondsch werk door de Duitschers gefusilleerd en op een
verborgen plek begraven was.
Dit
gebeurde in Oct. 1944 toen de bevrijdingslegers reeds in Meyel
stonden.
Nu
zegt de gestapo-agent herhaaldelijk "Das letzte Schusz hätte
in 1944 fallen mussen". Hij wist zich de plaats nauwkeurig te
herinneren en gewillig grijpt hij de schop, toen men hem de boeien
afnam en hij het graf zou blootleggen. Maar Nitsche kon de schop
niet hanteeren, speelden zijn zenuwen hem parten? Of was het magere
mannetje met sluike haren en nietszeggend gezicht te zeer verzacht
in het Canadeesche krijgsgevangenenkamp, waarin hij tot voor zeer
kort was ondergebracht?
Verder
ging de tocht langs den O. Maasoever naar het Noorden. En waar het
gezelschap stopte, tusschen Arcen en Well, lag de Hamersche heide in
den stillen zomeravond. Hier zegt men, oefenden de Duitsche
vliegtuigen met proefbommen; hier fusilleerden Nazi's hun
ongehoorzame wehrmachtsleden. Verderop langs den randweg ligt een
verbleekt schildje op het pad, waarop in afblatterende Gothische
letters "Eichenweg" geschreven staat.
MASSAGRAF
GEVONDEN.
Hier,
in de schaduw van de eiken heeft Richard Nitsche de plaats gewezen,
waar zeven Limburgers werden vermoord en begraven. Zeven
onschuldigen, die over ditzelfde pad geloopen hadden, toen het
bordje "Eichenweg" nog tegen den boom preikte [prijkte] en
de Duitschers heer en meester meenden te zijn in Nederland.
Zonder
droevige verwachtingen te willen wekken kunnen we aannemen, dat het
hier de begraafplaats betreft van zeven Limburgers, die tijdens de
Meistaking van 1943 door de Duitschers na een schijnproces te
Maastricht, waarbij Nitsche als aanklager is opgetreden,
"standrechtelijk" zijn vermoord.
Nitsche
wees de plaats, waar het 15 man sterke vuurpeloton der Grüne
Polizei heeft gestaan.
Er
werden hulzen gevonden, maar hier is de grond bezaaid met hulzen, de
heide overal eender, maar een gestapo-agent heeft een getraind
geheugen en tot op enkele tientallen meters nauwkeurig wist hij,
waar de lichamen begraven waren.
Na
twee peilingen, heeft men gisterennamiddag onder leiding van
burgemeester Douven de lichamen blootgelegd. Zij waren geheel
gekleed. Voorts werd een bamboe wandelstok in het graf gevonden. Zoo
mogelijk zullen de lichamen nog heden geïdentificeerd worden.
RICHARD
NITSCHE de meest gevreesde S.D-man uit Limburg schrijft in de
Venlosche politiecel zijn lugubere memoires.
De
burgemeester der gemeente Bergen, waaronder Well ressorteert, richt
dan ook een dringend verzoek aan de naaste familieleden van de toen
terecht gestelde Limburgers zich zoo mogelijk nog heden te melden
bij de marechaussee te Well.
3 juli 1946
Het massagraf der zeven Limburgsche helden
En
zoo staan er nog vier andere bekendmakingen in de dagbladen van den
3den Mei 1943, ambtenaren, mijnwerkers en arbeiders uit het Noorden,
het Oosten en het Zuiden, maar Limburg heeft de langste eerelijst.
In de tenlastelegging stond dat zij den arbeid, ondanks aanmaning,
niet hebben hervat. Kan men in minder woorden hun nagedachtenis
eeren?
Het
vermoeden, dat het door den Gestapo-agent Richard Nitsche op de
Wellsche heide aangewezen massagraf de begraafplaats is van deze
zeven Limburgsche mannen is Dinsdag bij de identificatie bevestigd.
Tegen den middag arriveerde op de Wellsche heide een politiewagen,
die een der hoofdschuldigen naar de plaats van den moord bracht:
Richard Nitsche.
De
plaats ligt enkele tientallen meters van de plek, die eerder door
Nitsche werd aangewezen. Ja, nu kan hij het zich nauwkeurig
herinneren, ganz genau! Die berk, waar de kogelgaten nog zichtbaar
zijn, is de plaats, vanwaar de veroordeelden in de Duitsche
geweerloopen zagen. Maar zijn woorden breken af als men besluit, hem
allereerst naar het open graf to brengen, waar de zeven slachtoffers
nog onaangeroerd liggen, zooals zo eens door de Grüne Polizei
"begraven" werden, de gezichten naar den grond.
Nitsche
beklimt den rand van opgeworpen aarde en als hij naar beneden ziet,
slikt hij even in neemt met zijn eene vrije hand zijn pet af. Hij
doet nog een stap naar voren en wijst: Ja, dat is de stok van
Bouman, Bouman vooral heeft indruk gemaakt op dezen eevoelloozen
sadist. Bouman, de oud-Indisch officier die zelf steunend on zijn
stok, voor zijn lotgenooten een krachtige moreele steun moet zijn
geweest. Die herhaaldelijk zei: "Als we sneuvelen, vallen we op
Het veld van eer". Die den blinddoek weigerde, evenals nog een
van zijn medeveroordeelden, maar diens naam kan de man, die destijds
als aanklager bij het Polizeistandgericht fungeerde, zich niet meer
herinneren.
Dan
vertelt Nitsche, hoe de zaak zich heeft toegedragen. Hij wijst en
gesticuleerd. Hier stelde zich op dien Zondagmiddag in Mei het 15
man sterke vuurpeleton op. Bouman die te zwak was om te staan zat op
een verhooging voor den berkenboom. Naast hem stonden drie andere
veroordeelden. De overigen wachtten ginds in een autobus "Ze
hebben vijf minuten mogen bidden", zegt Nitsche "Da sagte
der Hauptmann: es ist vorbei, und die Vier reichten einander die
hand". Waar hij zelf stond, toen de schoten vielen?" Och,
ik heb zooiets nog nooit gezien en ik wilde er ook niet bij zijn. Ik
draaide me om en wandelde den zandweg op".
Nitsche
wordt weer geboeid en zet zijn pet weer op. Maar voor men hem weg
brengt, wordt de gebeurtenis nogmaals in scène gezet. 15 man
staan op de plaats van het vuurpeleton Nitsche waar de Hauptmann
stond en voor den berkenboom stelt zich met drie anderen Dr. Hartman
uit Roermond op, die samen met Bouman en de zijnen was gearresteerd.
Dr. Hartman, de eenige, dio door het grillige Nazi-recht werd
vrijgelaten.
NITSCHE
AANSCHOUWT ZIJN SLACHTOFFERS: van links naar rechts: Dr Hartman,
hoofd-inspecteur Wieriks, die het onderzoek leidt en aan wiens
optreden de arrestatie van Nitsche te danken is, de Gestapo-agent,
inspecteur Pollaert en insp. Helsen uit Heerlen.
BEKANTMACHUNG
's-Gravenhage,
2 Mei 1943.
Der
Hoehere S.S.- und Polizeifuehrer deelt mede: Het Polizeistandgericht
te Maastricht heeft den 2en Mei 1943 de hierna genoemde
Nederlandsche onderdanen ter dood veroordeeld: 1 den
hoofd-controleur van den CCD Martinus Bouman uit Roermond, 53 jaar,
2 den adj hoofdcontroleur van den CCD Bernard Ruyters uit Heer, 51
jaar, 3 den districtsleider van den CCD Leo Brouwer uit Maastricht,
35 jaar, 4 den chemicus Johannes Bougerd uit Roermond. 30 jaar, 5
den mijnwerker Meinhardus Tempelaars uit Heerlerheide, 38 jaar 6 den
electro-monteur Renier Savelsberg uit Heerlerheide, 48 jaar, 7 den
houwer Salvatius Hendrikus Toussaint uit Amstenrade, 29 jaar. De 7
vonnissen werden door den kogel voltrokken.
10 juli 1946
Oproep
Al
wie inlichtingen kan verstrekken omtrent het optreden gedurende de
Duitsche bezetting van den Hauptbeharrführer der Sicherheits
Polizei Maastricht, later in Venlo: Richard Nitsche, waaruit kan
blijken, dat deze zich heeft schuldig gemaakt aan eenig
oorlogsmisdrijf, wordt verzocht hiervan ten spoedigste schriftelijk
mededeeling te doen aan onderstaande instantie.
Men
wordt verzocht te volstaan met een korte vermelding van het
misdrijf, b.v. moord, mishandeling, roof, ernstige vernieling, van
den naam of de namen der slachtoffers van hun woonplaats en zoo
nauwkeurig mogelijk van de plaats, waar en het tijdstip waarop dit
werd gepleegd. De mededeeling dient te worden voorzien van den naam,
de voornamen en de woonplaats van den aangever in blokletters. Ook
indien reeds aangifte is gedaan, ingevolge een door den burgemeester
gedane algemeene oproep, wordt een korte mededeeling wenschelijk
geacht.
De
voorzitter der Sub-Commissie Limburg van het Bur. voor Opsporing van
Oorlogsmisdadigers, de Hoofdinspecteur van Politie,
J.
P. L. HELSEN
Papenstraat
11, Maastricht
10 juli 1946
Gestapo-beul Nitsch onthult moord op twee Eindhovenaren
Enkele
dagen geleden meldden de bladen van de Limburgia-pers de ontdekking
en de aanhouding in een gevangenenkamp in Duitschland van den
beruchten Gestapo-beul Nitsche, die in de laatste bezettingsjaren
vanuit zijn standplaats Venlo het Noord-Limburgsche land onveilig
maakte en wien menige vreeselijke misdaad, moorden en gruwelijke
mishandelingen, ten laste werden gelegd. Onmiddellijk na zijn
uitlevering en overbrenging naar Venlo, begon men met een diepgaand
onderzoek, dat reeds belangrijke resultaten heeft opgeleverd.
Zoo
wees hij, na enkele dagen te zijn ondervraagd, de graven aan van een
zevental van zijn slachtoffers, Limburgsche illegale werkers, die na
een lange gevangenschap, waarin zij op menschonteerende wijze werden
gemarteld, naar een eenzame plek nabij de Duitsche grens werden
gevoerd en die daar door Nitsche en zijn helpers op beestachtige
wijze werden afgemaakt.
Het
voortgezette onderzoek brengt nog immer nieuwe feiten aan het licht.
Zoo meldt de Limburgia Pers thans, dat Nitsche de moorden op vier
andere illegale werkers heeft bekend, waaronder op twee
Eindhovenaren, de heeren ir. Reuchlin en de machinist der
Staatsspoorwegen Jonker. De andere slachtoffers zijn een onderduiker
uit Meyel, Heckman, afkomstig uit Heino (Gld.) en de employé
der Electr. Mij. Roosjen uit Roermond. Hun graf werd op aanwijzingen
van Nitsche gevonden in een kuil en een bomtrechter aan de grens bij
Heruner. De heer Heckman belastte zich, onmiddellijk na de
bevrijding van Meyel met het inwinnen van informaties voor de
geallieerden in de Duitsche linies. Acht maal ging het goed, den
negenden maal werd hij gegrepen en naar Venlo gebracht, waar hij in
handen van Nitsche viel. De heer Roosjen was werkzaam aan de geheime
P.L.E.M.-telefoonlijn, waarmede men in verbinding stond met de
bevrijde gebieden. Hij viel door verraad in de handen van den
Venloschen Sicherheitsdienst. Over het droeve lot der beide
Eindhovenaren geeft de Limburgia-pers de volgende aangrijpende
bijzonderheden.
Ir.
Reuchlin, ingenieur der Philipsfabrieken, belastte zich vrijwel
onmiddellijk na de bevrijding van onze stad met de opsporing van de
trein, die, volgeladen met geroofde machines en producten van het
Phiiipsconcern, zeer kort voor den bevrijdingsdag in de richting van
Venlo was weggereden. Niet zonder grond vermoedde men, dat deze
trein niet verder dan Blerick was gekomen. Tezamen met den machinist
Jonker, bracht hij het, via de Engelsche linies, tot Horst, dat
echter nog in Duitsche handen was. Even over de gevaarlijke lijn
achterhaalde hen reeds het noodlot; zij vielen in Duitsche handen en
werden naar Venlo gebracht, waar zij in de gevangenis werden
opgesloten, om het verhoor van de S.D., onder commando van Nitsche
te ondergaan. Tijdens het verhoor echter, wist ir. Reuchlin te
ontsnappen! De Duitschers hadden n.l. vergeten de deuren te sluiten
en het geluk wilde, dat zich juist op dat uur Britsche bommenwerpers
boven de stad vertoonden, die voor de zooveelste maal een aanval
deden op de Maasbrug. In de verwarring wist ir. Reuchlin weg te
glippen. Hij zocht onmiddellijk zijn toevlucht tot de
"Pope”-fabrieken, het Venlosche zusterbedrijf van de
Eindhovensche Philipsfabrieken. Daar kwam hij gelukkig in contact
met illegale werkers, die hem, onder den schuilnaam Maarten
verborgen in het hoofdkwartier, voor de razzia’s der Grünen.
Onmiddelijk nam hij wederom deel aan het illegale werk,
niettegenstaande hij slechts één arm had. Om
herkenning zooveel mogelijk te bemoeilijken maakte men een kunstarm
voor hem, waaronder hij een actetasch kon dragen. Niettegenstaande
dat viel hij in November weer in de handen van de S.D., ditmaal voor
goed. De Duitschers pasten nu beter op hun tellen, zoodat ontsnappen
onmogelijk was geworden. Ir. Reuchlin trof in de cel wederom den
heer Jonker aan.
17
November was voor de vier bovengenoemde heldhaftige vaderlanders de
fatale dag. Uit de groep gevangenen, die de S.D. toen vasthield, in
Venlo, zes mannen en zes vrouwen, werden zij gekozen en weggevoerd.
Langen tijd daarna vond men een kunstarm terug in een der cellen en
toen Venlo bevrijd was, verscheen er een oproep aan het raam van het
politiebureau; men vroeg inlichtingen over een Eindhovenaar, ir.
Reuchlin geheeten; hij miste een arm en was vermoedelijk op
transport naar Berlijn. "Aan de Herunger grens”, zoo
schrijft de reporter, die tegenwoordig was bij de confrontatie van
den S.D.-man met het stoffelijke overschot van zijn slachtoffers,
"wees Richard Nitsch een graf aan in een dichtgegooiden
bomtrechter, waarop kinderen speelden. In den bomtrechter lagen de
lijken van een spoorwegman en een invalide. Nitsch stond er bij,
onbewogen en mager in zijn voddige pakje...”
God
hebbe de ziel van deze Eindhovenscche helden; moge hun offer ’n
voorbeeld voor ons blijven en de moed en de overtuiging waarmede zij
het brachten een troost voor hun nabestaanden.
1 april 1947
Secretaris bisdom Roermond verraden
MAASTRICHT,
31 Maart. — Tijdens de bezetting is de secretaris van het
bisdom Roermond, drs. L. Moonen, door de Duitsers gearresteerd en
daarna onder zeer tragische omstandigheden in een concentratie-kamp
overleden.
Deze
arrestatie geschiedde door den Nederlander G. H. Holla (geb. te
Arcen). Hij zal terecht staan op Maandag 21 April in Roermond, waar
hij zich bovendien heeft te verantwoorden voor zijn medewerking aan
het opsporen van onderduikers in Beegden, Wessem en Heel. Verder gaf
hij leiding bij een razzia op onderduikers te Baexem. Ook leidde hij
huiszoekingen met de Duitsers te Maasniel en te Roermond.
Verschillende der gearresteerden zijn later in Duitse gevangenschap
omgekomen. In deze zaak zullen 24 getuigen worden gehoord.
23 augustus
1947 Grenscorrectie in het geding
Met
slechts 24 uren tussenruimte sprak ik twee persoonlijkheden in het
Westen van Duitsland, van wie de eerste zelfs een ver buiten de
grenzen van zijn land overbekend persoon was en is. Ik bedoel Dr.
Konrad Adenauer, van 1917—1933 Oberbürgemeister van
Keulen, die onmiddellijk door de nazi’s van zijn post werd
verjaagd, driemaal werd gevangen genomen, van het ene
concentratiekamp naar het andere werd gesleept, ten slotte tot
November 1944 door de Gestapo gevangen gehouden. Thans is hij leider
van de C.D.U., de Christlich Demokratischer Union, dat is de grote
christelijke partij, van conservatieven zowel als van meer
vooruitstrevenden, van katholieken, zowel als van protestanten.
De
andere: Max Hildebrand, Freiherr von Gumppenberg, geboren op het
kasteel Arcen bij Venlo, jodenvriend en hevige anti-nazist, die niet
minder geleden heeft dan de eerstgenoemde en vooral ondergronds
heeft gestreden. Hij is thans perschef van de Landesregierung van
Nord Rhein Westfalen, een gebied met 12 millioen inwoners. Hij is
een van de oprichters van de C.D.U.-groep te Bochum en toont mij de
door hem bij die oprichting gehouden rede.
Beiden
zijn katholiek, beiden zijn nu eens werkelijk prettige Duitsers, en
ik kan in geen van beiden de onderdaan van een ons vijandige staat
zien. Zij zijn mijn medemensen en ik eer hen in stilte om hun moedig
gedrag tegen Hitler. Zij zijn aan mij verwant, doordat de Nederrijn
nu eenmaal Nederland na stond, zoals nu nog Nederland sympathiek
wordt beoordeeld door zeer velen in dit land. Beiden geneerden zich
diep om wat is gebeurd en nemen geen blad voor de mond: "het
was een gemene streek van de bovenste plank, dat Duitsland in
Nederland binnenrukte," zegt Adenauer met een onverbiddelijke
trek om zijn energieke mond. "Dat moet natuurlijk worden
goedgemaakt". "Het spreekt vanzelf, dat Nederland ons haat
en het is verkeerd om te vragen, dat de Hollanders dat vergeten en
vergeven moeten, want dat kan niet", zegt von Gumppenberg, die,
veel jonger, de geboren edelman niet slechts in de fijnheid zijner
gelaatstrekken, doch ook in de subtielheid zijner uitgesproken
gedachten verraadt.
Tot
zover kunnen wij volledig samengaan: wij zijn beiden mensen, de
geïnterviewde en ik. Maar dan komt opeens de afgrond: gapend en
onoverbrugbaar. Een kloof wordt, als door een aardbeving, in de
aarde tussen ons gereten. Die aardbeving werd veroorzaakt door een
enkel woord: grenscorrectie. Bij beiden had dit woord precies
dezelfde uitwerking: "Nooit kan herstel van het aangedane leed
door gebiedsafstand plaats vinden. Die methode heeft tot dusver
steeds weer nieuwe oorlogen gebracht. Zij smeedt het overwonnen volk
aaneen en maakt bet chauvinistisch. Sedert 1920 is het
zelfbestemmingsrecht van ieder volk algemeen erkend. Men kan toch de
mensen niet dwingen zich bij Nederland aan te sluiten. Het afgestane
gebied is bovendien het enige (!) met een overschot aan
landbouwproducten. Zij en de tegenwoordige leiders van het Duitse
volk voelden zich zo schuldig en dat is straf genoeg."
Ik
wijs er op, dat het woord "recht" vreemd klinkt uit de
mond van een onderdaan van een staat, die nog 8 jaren geleden niet
naar recht vroeg en half Europa aan zijn willekeur wilde
onderwerpen. Ik herinner er aan, dat, waar zij de plicht tot herstel
erkennen, grenscorrecties de enige manier zijn om althans iets terug
te krijgen. Dan heet het: "Ja, maar nu mag er geen onrecht meer
plaats vinden. Want het aan Holland aangedane leed is immers juist
het gevolg van onrecht. Voortzetten van het onrecht zou de
ondergrondse propaganda bevorderen en tot nieuwe uitbarstingen
leiden."
29 oktober
1947 Merkwaardige verkiezingen te Arcen en Velden
Politieke
delinquenten stemden mee
Alles
wat stemgerechtigd was, is gisteren in de gemeenten Arcen en Velden
in Limburg, "de gemeenten zonder raad", in beweging
gekomen, om nieuwe gemeenteraadsverkiezingen te houden. Zelfs hebben
politieke delinquenten gestemd, die van de kiesrechten waren
uitgesloten. Hier deden zich de volgende feiten voor: Van hogerhand
waren richtlijnen gegeven, dat de delinquenten niet van stemming
konden worden weerhouden, maar dat ze, zodra zij hun stem
uitbrachten, een strafbare handeling pleegden met alle gevolgen van
dien. Zo geschiedde hier het merkwaardige, dat men een strafbare
handeling kon plegen en er toch een bepaalde wettelijke sanctie op
kon krijgen, want de stemmen telden wel mee. Het gaat in de
gemeenten Arcen en Velden om de beslissende éne zetel, die de
doorslag kan geven bij de bepaling van de plaats, waarin het nieuwe
raadhuis zal worden gebouwd. In 1946 bleef Velden in de meerderheid
met 971 tegen 970 stemmen. Velden had toen een grote
propagandacampagne op touw gezet, maar na de verkiezingen begonnen
de Arcenaren het offensief te openen. Bij de Raad van State werd
bereikt, dat de verkiezingen ongeldig werden verklaard en nieuwe
verkiezingen werden uitgeschreven. Gisteren heeft Arcen revanche
genomen. Met taxi's en ziekenauto's uit Venlo gerequireerd, werden
zieken en hulpbehoevenden naar de stemhokjes en daarna weer thuis
gebracht. Over het gehele land verspreide Arcenaren werden opgehaald
— voorzover hun naam op de kiezerslijst stond — om hun
stem uit te kunnen brengen. Het resultaat van de stemming is geweest
dat Arcen met 1010 stemmen tegen 996 voor Velden in de meerderheid
bleef. Toen het nieuws in de Patronaatszaal waar honderden Arcenaren
waren vergaderd, bekend werd, ging er een gejuich op, als bij een
doelpunt in een interlandwedstrijd. In Velden is grote
verslagenheid, ofschoon de leiders in het verzet tegen Arcen met
verbeten aangezichten de mening uitspreken, dat een of andere dag de
glorie van Velden zal terugkeren. Dreigementen worden geuit als:
"Zij zullen met rotte eieren worden bekogeld, de Arcenaren, die
zich in Velden vertonen! Weg met Arcen! Annexatie bij Venlo, daar
moet het heen!" Inmiddels laat het zich aanzien, dat Arcen's
overwinning inderdaad een Pyrrusoverwinning zal zijn. Immers, wat
wil het geval? Het gehucht Lom, welks bewoners op de Arcense
kiezerslijst vermeld stonden, heeft één afgevaardigde
in de Raad zitten. Dit raadslid neemt de elfde plaats in. Arcen en
Velden hebben elk 5 raadsleden. Het Lomse lid van de Raad zit dus op
de wip. Bij staking der overige 10 stemmen, kan hij naar eigen
verkiezing de beslissing forceren. En naar thans vernomen wordt,
voelt het Lomse lid alleen maar voor Lom. De raadhuiskwestie
interesseert hem minder. Misschien doet zich hier dus nog een
oplossing voor, die zelfs Salomo in al zijn wijsheid nog tot eer zou
hebben gestrekt.
31 oktober
1947 STRIJD OM HET RAADHUIS
Arcen
en Velden opnieuw ter stembus
De
strijd om de zetels in de gemeenteraden is indertijd met kracht
gevoerd. Maar zo fel en spannend als in de gemeente Arcen en Velden
nabij Venlo is het nergens toegegaan en, hoe vreemd het ook moge
klinken, het was geen strijd tussen rechts en links. Het ging
namelijk om niet meer of minder dan de plaats waar het nieuwe
gemeentehuis zou verrijzen en de politieke tegenstellingen vielen in
het niet bij dit belangrijk probleem. De Arcenaren stemden op de
candidaten uit eigen dorp en de Veldenaren lieten zich al evenmin
onbetuigd.
Velden
won met 1 stem verschil, maar die ene stem was te laat binnengekomen
en de Raad van State verklaarde de gehele verkiezing ongeldig.
Maandag
togen de gemeentenaren opnieuw ter stembus. En wie niet lopen of
fietsen kon, werd per auto naar de stemlokalen vervoerd als hij nog
in staat was een hokje rood te maken. Heel Arcen was dol van vreugde
toen bekend werd, dat Arcen 14 stemmen méér had
behaald dan Velden. De vreugde was voorbarig. Nog is het pleit niet
beslist. Er blijken namelijk 5 Arcenaren en 5 Veldenaren gekozen te
zijn, terwijl het elfde raadslid uit het gehuchtje Lomm en dus uit
neutraal gebied komt. Hij is thans een belangrijk man in de
gemeente,
11 augustus
1948 Slagers protesteren tegen aankoop Argentijns vlees
De
slagers te Venlo, Blerick, Tegelen, Arcen en Velden hebben besloten
om deze week de winkels te sluiten als protest tegen het ter
beschikking stellen van Argentijns bevroren vlees. Ruim
zestienduizend kilo vlees is niet geaccepteerd en naar het vrieshuis
te Boxmeer teruggestuurd.
9 november
1948 Portier-telefonist werd N.S.B.burgemeester
SCHULDIG
AAN DE DOOD VAN VIJF GOEDE NEDERLANDERS.
MAASTRICHT,
8 Nov. (Eigen red.) — Voor het bijzonder gerechtshof werd
Maandag bij verstek de zaak behandeld tegen de fanatieke partijman
W. J. Beckers. Twaalf getuigen werden hierin gehoord en onder dezen
waren drie weduwen van mannen, die niet meer uit het
concentratiekamp Neuengamme waren teruggekeerd, n.l. mevr. H. P.
Schillings, mevr. Veldhoven en mevr. Tersteeg. Verder was er mevr.
J. P. Schillings bij, de moeder van een der slachtoffers. Een vierde
weduwe, eveneens in de rechtszaal aanwezig, werd niet als getuige
gehoord, ofschoon juist deze na de zitting beweerde, dat zij
belangrijke dingen te zeggen had. In haar plaats was haar moeder als
getuige opgeroepen, die niet veel van het geval afwist. De andere
getuigen waren mr. H. Boyens, burgemeester van Eygelshoven en verder
politiemannen.
De
advocaat-fiskaal, mr. baron van Voorst tot Voorst, schetste Beckers
als een fanatiek partijman. B. was portier-telefonist op de
Domaniale Mijn, daarna bij de politie, vervolgens werd hij
burgemeester van Eygelshoven en later waarnemend burgemeester van
Arcen en Velden. Hij was het type burgemeester, die met felheid
maatregelen tegen zijn tegenstanders nam, en veel omgang met de S.D.
had. Hij diende een aanklacht in tegen burgemeester mr. H. Boyens
van Eygelshoven. Deze werd als burgemeester ontslagen en kreeg 5½
maand gevangenisstraf. Beckers is verantwoordelijk voor de
arrestatie van een aantal lezers van het communistische
verzetsblaadje "De Vonk". Hij liet vijf studenten
arresteren, omdat zij een Oranje-cocarde droegen en 18 jongens, die
met kalk propagandaleuzen op straat hadden geschilderd. Hij ontzag
zich niet burgers te dwingen tot werk voor de Duitse militairen, en
heeft ook personen overgehaald tot de arbeidsdienst. In
Helden-Panningen liet hij een aantal radio's in beslag nemen, en hij
liet zich tevens waarnemend burgemeester van Arcen en Velden maken,
om dit salaris nog te kunnen innen. De dagvaarding noemt met name
zes personen, wier arrestatie voor rekening van Beckers komt,
namelijk: J. Helsman, G. Rombouts, H. A. Schillings, J. J.
Schillings, J. Th. Veldhoven en Tersteeg. Van deze zes is alleen
Hulsman teruggekeerd uit Duitsland. De anderen zijn alle vijf
omgekomen, naar men aanneemt in Neuengamme. De advocaat-fiskaal
deelde mede, dat vermoedelijk Beckers onder een andere naam in Essen
verblijft. Men is met de opsporing nog bezig. De eis luidde: twintig
jaar gevangenisstraf. Uitspraak over 14 dagen.
12 februari
1949 Politiek om wille van een schoolklas
(Van
onze correspondent)
ARCEN
EN VELDEN, 19 Febr. — Nu het weer pais en vree is in de
Noordlimburgse Maasdorpen Arcen, Velden en Lomm, die vorig jaar hun
geruchtmakende verkiezingsstrijd hebben gestreden, speelt de
dorpspolitiek weer een rol. Maar nu een vredige. In de school van
Lomm zitten 70 jongens en meisjes gewrongen in twee kleine
schoollokalen. Om er een derde leerkracht aan te stellen in een
apart lokaal, moeten er echter officieel 78 leerlingen zijn. En die
zullen er komen, als het opgezette plan gelukt. Van het dozijn
woningen, dat de gehele gemeente kreeg toegewezen, zullen er vier in
Lomm worden gebouwd, op voorwaarde, dat zij zullen worden betrokken
door twee uit Velden en twee uit Arcen [...]
4 mei 1949
—
Toen hij na een half uur spitten een nest met zes jonge vossen
had
uitgegraven slaakte de landbouwer P. A. uit Schandelo (gem. Velden),
'n blijde juichkreet. De moedervos had de laatste tijd terwille van
haar jongen 's mans kippenhok vrijwel uitgemoord. — Over
moorden gesproken!
— Te Arcen is een begin
gemaakt met het overbrengen van het stoffelijk overschot van 52
Duitse militairen, welke in deze Noord-Limburgse gemeente nog
begraven lagen. Zij worden vervoerd naar het oorlogskerkhof voor
Duitsers, dat te IJsselstein, bij Venray werd aangelegd.
10 mei 1949
Venlo ziet geen voordelen in aansluiting van Velden
Arcen heeft beste verkiezingskansen
VENLO, 8 Mei — De actie van
Velden bij Gedeputeerde Staten van Limburg om aansluiting bij de
gemeente Venlo te verkrijgen, heeft weinig kans van slagen. De
gemeente Venlo ziet namelijk geen voordelen in een annexatie van
Velden. Wel heeft Venlo belangstelling voor grenscorrecties met de
gemeente Arcen en Velden. Dit is de mening van verschillende Venlose
bestuurderen.
De strijd tussen Arcen en Velden is
bekend. De dorpsvete is acuut geworden door de actie van de
Veldenaren om het verwoeste raadhuis van Arcen in Velden te
herbouwen. Beide dorpen, die met Lomm één gemeente
vormen, liggen namelijk zeven kilometer van elkaar verwijderd. Voor
gemeentezaken moesten de Veldenaren dus steeds naar het "verre"
Arcen. Dit laatste dorp kreeg echter de meerderheid in de raad der
dubbele- gemeente Velden-Arcen in de tussentijdse verkiezingen voor
de gemeenteraad, die wegens fraude moesten worden gehouden. Vandaag
is het nieuw te bouwen raadhuis in Arcen aanbesteed.
- De laagste inschrijver was de firma
J. Coenders te Arcen met een bedrag van f96.930. De hoogste was T.
van den Acker te Venray met een bedrag van f131.512. De gunning is
aangehouden. Een kleine troost voor Velden is nog, dat er binnenkort
een nood-secretarie zal verrijzen. Maar dit was de opzet van Velden
natuurlijk niet. En óók dit kon de meerderheid van de
raad (Arcen dus) beslissen. Ongetwijfeld zal Velden nog aan de
nieuwe gemeenteraadsverkiezingen deelnemen. Van annexatie zal
voorlopig wel geen sprake zijn. Met een meerderheid van 27
stemgerechtigden heeft Arcen de beste papieren voor Juni. Kan Velden
bij een overwinning in de nieuwe gemeenteraad het reeds aanbestede
raadhuis nog ongedaan maken? Een moeilijk probleem, waaraan door de
Veldense dorpspolitici ijverig wordt gedokterd. Mogelijk is het een
begin voor een nieuwe sneeuwbal, die in de komende maanden met
donderend geweld langs de vredige Maasoevers zal rollen. Alleen
Velden heeft voordelen bij annexatie door Venlo. De liefde kan
echter niet van één kant komen. Een belangrijke factor
is bijvoorbeeld, dat de nieuwe industrieterreinen voor Venlo niet in
de richting Velden zijn geprojecteerd. Intussen heeft de overgrote
meerderheid van de Veldenaren zich uitgesproken voor annexatie door
Venlo.
4 juli 1949
Geen sterke drank aan minderjarigen in danszalen
De vroede vaderen van de gemeente
Arcen namen dezer dagen een besluit, waarbij het verboden zal zijn
aan minderjarigen in danszalen en tot de 'aanhorigheden' van een
zaal, waarin gedanst wordt, sterke drank te verstrekken, nadat men
tot overeenstemming was gekomen, dat bier niet tot de "sterke"
dranken gerekend diende te worden. Een voorstel om de jeugd beneden
18 jaar de toegang tot de danszalen te verbieden, werd echter tot
een volgende vergadering aangehouden. In principe was men er wel
voor doch men vreesde, dat de jeugd dan en masse naar danszalen
buiten Arcen en Velden zou trekken.
24 september
1949 Huis met bouwland en dennenbos te Velden
H. M. J. VERHEGGEN, NOTARIS TE VENLO
zal op Donderdag 6 October 1949 nam. 5 uur in café Jac.
Litjens bij de kerkte Velden, publiek veilen en verkopen de
navolgende onroerende goederen gelegen onder Velden, gemeente Arcen
en Velden in sectie C:
A. voor de kinderen P. Beurskens-van
Meegen,
Koop 1. Huis met stal, schuur, erf,
boomgaard en bouwland te Velden Velgert, plaatselijk gemerkt C 265
kadaster nos. 7113 en 3840, samen groot 47 aren 40 c.a.; Koop 2.
Bouwland aldaar, kadaster nos. 7232, groot 59 aren 20 c.a.;
Koop 3. Bouwland in de Genooierheide,
kadaster no. 7106, groot 20 aren 60 c.a.
B. voor mevrouw wed. A. P. Louwers-v.
Erp en kinderen;
Koop 4. Dennenbos in Genooierheide,
geschikt voor speeltuin, kadaster nos. 6918 en 6076, samen groot 99
aren 70 c.a.
Nadere inlichtingen bij de Notaris.
4 maart 1950
Duits grondbezit voor Nederlandse boeren
In
Limburg omvat dit verschillende honderden hectaren
VENLO,
3 Maart. — (Limb. pers.) — Reeds enige jaren leeft de
boerenbevolking in de Noord-Limburgse grensstreek, die als overal
elders gebrek aan land heeft, in hoop en vrees aangaande het op
Nederlands gebied liggende Duitse grondbezit. Deze grond werd na de
oorlog door de Nederlandse regering als vijandelijk vermogen
beschouwd en aan het Nederlandse Beheersinstituut toevertrouwd, dat
de landerijen aan gegadigden onder de Limburgse grensbevolking
verpachtte.
De
grond werd in cultuur gebracht. Maar veel risico aan het op peil
houden van de landerijen besteedde men niet, omdat de verpachtingen
telkens slechts voor één jaar geschiedden en de
onzekerheid bleef bestaan, wat de uiteindelijke bestemming van de
grond zou zijn. Aan deze onzekerheid is thans een einde gekomen. De
verwachtingen die allengs meer zekerheid kregen, zijn thans
bewaarheid: de grond zal in definitief eigendom aan de Limburgse
boeren overgaan. Dat het hier om een zaak gaat, die van grote
heilzame betekenis is voor deze streek, moge hieruit blijken, dat op
deze wijze in de gemeente Bergen circa 1000 hectaren, in de gemeente
Ottersum circa 50 hectaren, in Arcen en Velden circa 175 hectaren en
bovendien in enige gemeenten in Midden- en Zuid-Limburg nog enige
honderden hectaren van Duitse in Nederlandse handen zullen overgaan.
Waar deze gronden voor driekwart niet alleen Duits eigendom, maar
ook nog bij Duitsers in gebruik waren, zal hierdoor een aanzienlijke
verruiming van bestaansmogelijkheden voor de boerenbevolking
ontstaan.
10 mei 1950
Limburg zonder tram
Einde
ener lijdensgeschiedenis
(Van
onze correspondent)
Maastricht,
Mei
NOG
enige dagen, bij het intreden der nieuwe dienstregeling van de
Spoorwegen, en de laatste tram heeft in Limburg gereden. De
Limburgse Tramweg-Maatschappij onttrekt dan de laatste tram, de
electrische van Heerlen naar Kerkrade, aan het verkeer en wordt
uitsluitend exploitante van autobussen. De naam der maatschappij
lijkt dan een anachronisme.
Aannemende,
dat de L.T.M., waarin de Spoorwegen zoveel invloed hebben, ook wel
aankan wat particulieren klaar spelen: een autobusdienst rendabel te
maken, is dan een lange lijdensgeschiedenis ten einde, behoudens dan
de naweeën ervan, waarmee verscheidene gemeenten zitten
opgescheept. Volledigheidshalve herinneren wij eraan, dat niet
alleen de L.T.M. tramlijnen in Limburg exploiteerde, ook de
Maasbuurtspoorweg deed dit, doch het stopzetten van haar lijnen in
Noord-Limburg is meer aan oorlogsgeweld te wijten geweest.
De
eerste trams op Limburgs gebied komen, in 1890, eigenlijk van
Belgische zijde; het was de lijn Glons—Maastricht—Maeseyck,
die maar over enige kilometers Nederlands gebied liep. Ook deze
overleefde de oorlog niet. Omstreeks 1911 was er sprake van, dat de
Duitse A.E.G. een electrische tram Maastricht—Aken zou gaan
exploiteren. Er kwam niets van, doch bij Maastricht ligt, verzonken
in de weg naar Heer, een brede betonnen verkeersbrug als relict. In
1912 komt de eerste C.L.S.M.-lijn Venlo—Maasbree— Helden
tot stand, smalspoor, evenals in 1915 Roermond—Kessenich;
1915—1916 Roermond—St. Odiliënberg—Vlodrop;
1918—1919 Roermond—Roggel—Meyel, later
doorgetrokken tot Deurne.
De
mijnstreek begon ook actief te worden; daar werd een voor
Zuid-Limburg bedoelde Tramwegmaatschappij opgericht, die echter
terstond overging in de L.T.M., welke alle bestaande trams (een stel
degelijke stroppen) overnam, die haar de bijnaam van Leeg Tot Meyel
bezorgden. In 1922 startte de L.T.M. met Wijlré—Vaals,
later gecompleteerd met Maastricht—Gulpen, waarin het fameuze
viaduct ontstond in 1925. Veertien jaar later behoorde dit technisch
meesterstukje plus de lijn alweer tot het verleden: 1923 loopt de
electrische tram Sittard—Heerlen; 1924 gevolgd door lijn
Emma—Brunssum (bijgenaamd "de moordenaar"); 1929
komt Heerlen—Kerkrade tot stand, in 1928 uitgebreid met de
Locht. Tot 1931 wordt het stroomnet nog wat gecompleteerd, doch dan
begint de débacle.
Dit
laatste woord is niet te sterk, behalve voor de electrische trams,
die tot deze tijd rendabel waren, doch, lopende door de
dichtbebouwde mijnstreek, te hinderlijk werden voor het gewone
verkeer. Ze zijn vervangen door autobussen. Spoedig zullen de rails
uit het stadsbeeld van Heerlen en Kerkrade zijn verdwenen.
Inmiddels
heeft het nu ter ziele gaande trambedrijf aan de openbare kassen
millioenen en millioenen gekost, niet alleen door
exploitatie-verliezen, doch evenzeer door waardeloos geworden
terreinen, materialen, locomotieven, spoorwagens, enz. Bij de
opening dier lijnen zal men zich wel geen illusie van te behalen
winsten hebben gemaakt — de lijnen bedoelden in de eerste
plaats streekbelangen te dienen —, doch dat zij zo spoedig uit
de tijd zouden wezen, na 20—35 jaar, en dat ze zo formidabele
stroppen zouden opleveren, kon wel niemand vermoeden. Toegegeven, de
uiterst fatale tijdsomstandigheden, crisis en oorlog, zijn aan de
débacle in ruime mate debet.
Nog
een paar dagen en de laatste tram heeft in Limburg gereden, doch wij
zouden niet in het vrolijke Zuiden leven, wanneer deze laatste rit
niet enigermate in de Carnavalssfeer raakte. Alreeds zijn, door de
treurende overlevenden, spotschriften in de vorm van rouwbrieven
verspreid en naar het heet, zal de laatste tram uitgeleide worden
gedaan door "Büttenredner", sprekers zoals wij die
met Vastenavond wel zien opduiken in tonnen en op houten paarden.
Maar de aandeelhouders zullen wél lachen als de boer die
kiespijn heeft.
13 mei 1950
VELDEN (L.)
Wilt
U in een rustige omgeving uw vacantie doorbrengen? Schrijft dan nog
heden aan: V.V.V. Secretariaat Markt C 74 Velden (L.), Gemeente
Arcen en Velden en wij geven U alle gewenste inlichtingen.
30 oktober
1951 Zulke gasten kunnen we gebruiken
Een
jonge Nederlandse boer, die in een Amerikaans boerengezin is
ondergebracht, is zo bij zijn gastheer en gastvrouw in de smaak
gevallen, dat deze een schrijven aan het Amerikaanse ministerie van
Landbouw gericht hebben, met het verzoek hem een verblijfsvergunning
te verlenen opdat hij bij hen kan blijven, daar hij geknipt is voor
bedrijfsleider.
Jacques
van den Hombergh, Krosselt C 294, Velden bij Venlo, arriveerde 26
Maart in de Ver. Staten in het kader van het programma voor
technische bijstand van de ECA. Tot 5 December blijft hij in de Ver.
Staten om zich daar vertrouwd te maken met allerlei nieuwe
landbouwmethoden en wat méér aan de weet te komen
omtrent het Amerikaanse gemeenschapsleven.
De
heer en mevrouw Lewis Howlett, uit Hartford in Michigan, bij wie
Hombergh werd ondergebracht, schreven het volgende aan het
ministerie van Landbouw: "Het bezoek van onze gast is voor
beider partijen bijzonder goed uitgevallen. Wij proberen Jacques met
kanten van de Amerikaanse samenleving te laten kennis maken en hij
van zijn kant brengt ons dagelijks allerlei dingen bij, waar we geen
flauwe notie van hadden. Hij is werkelijk geknipt als bedrijfsleider
en wij zouden daarom graag zien, dat hij bij ons kon blijven. In dat
deel van Michigan, waar wij wonen, zijn heel wat Amerikanen van
Nederlandse afkomst, en het zijn allen eersterangs burgers. Wij
kunnen op onze boerderijen méér van dergelijke jonge,
ambitieuze, zuinige en ijverige Hollanders gebruiken."
7 november
1950 Zekere G. H. uit Venlo is een dezer avonden op stap
geweest,
met
een hem onbekende jongedame. Bij zijn thuiskomst miste H. zijn
portemonnaie die nog 47 gulden zou moeten bevatten. De politie is er
in geslaagd de jonge dame, mej. N. H. uit Velden, op te sporen. Voor
een gedeelte van het geld uit de portemonnaie had het meisje
inmiddels allerlei dingen gekocht.
29 januari
1952 VOORPROEFJE VAN CARNAVAL
"Kieskup"
van Velden vierden hun "gekke Maandag"
Schiedammer
tegen kippenvel
(Van
onze correspondent) VELDEN, 28 Jan. — Onder het leutig
opper-commando van prins Tonny d'n Ierste hebben de "kieskup"
van Velden vandaag met een complete "carnavalsoptocht",
een raad van elf en gemaskerd bal hun "gekke Maandag"
gevierd. Met dit uitbundig voorproefje voor carnaval houden de
Veldense wuilussen een eeuwenoude traditie in ere. Volgens de
dorpswijzen dateert de "gekke Maandag" van Velden al van
de vijftiende eeuw.
Op
"gekke Maandag" zijn alle Noordlimburgse
vastenavondsgekken zo'n beetje in Velden verzameld. Voorafgegaan
door de luidbellende ceremonie-meester Harry Hermkens trok de "gekke
Maandag"-optocht vanmiddag door de dik besneeuwde straten van
het vredige Maasdorpje. Wie heeft er niet gelachen om de wagen met
de bokken, rijders, die, allerzotst uitgedost, een serie
hobbelpaarden op een boerenkar gespijkerd hadden. Achter de vrolijk
blazende harmonie met gele mutsen en feestneuzen trok een Tiroler
wuilussen bar. Een mooi stuk werk was ook de Vliegende Hollander,
een grote schuit gebouwd op een vrachtwagen, met de doodskopvlag in
top. Zelfs drie graden vorst kon de goede stemming in Velden niet
bederven. Met onvervalste Schiedammer slaagde de raad van elf er in
op de hoge wagen het kippenvel te bestrijden.
Goede sul
Het
grote symbool van "gekke Maandag" is de kaas, die 40 plus
en volvet op elke wagen staat geschilderd. Een Veldenaar is namelijk
een kieskup; dat is een gemoedelijke bijnaam. Wat wuilus betekent is
zelfs de meeste Veldenaren onbekend. Waarschijnlijk noemen ze hun
kerkpatroon Sint Andreas een wuilus. Opmerkelijk is dat hetzelfde
woord in Venlo de betekenis van een goede sul heeft.
Het
meeste succes in de "gekke Maandagoptocht" oogstte echter
de kasteelwagen "Ha ho nee", een groot kasteel dat een
miezerig belastingkarretje met als opschrift "f1500?"
droeg. Dat "Ha ho nee" is een dorpspolitieke grap van de
Veldenaren, die het niet zo best op hun Arcense gemeentebroeders
hebben voorzien. Vorig jaar had Arcen een groot festijn: "De Ha
ho ja" (dat betekent harmonie Arcen 100 jaar) georganiseerd. Om
onder de f1500 aan belastingschuld uit te komen, heeft de
gemeenteraad van Velden en Arcen (met één Arcense stem
meer in de raad) zomaar vrijdom van belasting verleend. Daar zijn
Gedeputeerde Staten van Limburg echter niet mee accoord gegaan. En
daar hebben ze in Velden een beetje leedvermaak over.
6 maart 1952
Grote brand in Velden
VENLO,
5 Maart (Limb. pers). — In de nacht van Dinsdag op Woensdag
werd de landbouwer Verspay in Schandelo (Velden) gewekt door een
hevig geknetter. Er bleek in de stallingen van zijn boerderij een
hevige brand te woeden. De brandweren van Venlo en Velden stonden
voor een bijna wanhopige taak. Ze slaagden erin het woonhuis te
behouden. De schuren en stallingen gingen echter geheel in vlammen
op. Zes varkens kwamen om en de hele oogst van 1951 ging verloren
evenals veel materiaal. De boer was veel te laag verzekerd.
18 augustus
1952 Brandweer werd teruggestuurd
WETHOUDER
VAN VELDEN WEIGERDE HULP UIT VENLO
Vrijdagavond
heeft zich een ongewoon incident voorgedaan te Velden (L.). Nadat de
commandant van de plaatselijke brandweer en een raadslid uit Velden
de Venlose brandweer hadden ontboden om assistentie te verlenen bij
het blussen van een brand in een landbouwschuur te Schandelo, waarin
de bliksem was geslagen, rukte de Venlose brandweer terstond uit. Op
de plaats van de brand aangekomen kreeg het Venlose corps echter, zo
verneemt ANP van Venlose zijde, een verbod van de loco-burgemeester
van Arcen en Velden, wethouder Van de Venne, om het blussingswerk
mede ter hand te nemen.
De
wethouder was van oordeel, dat de plaatselijke brandweer het karwei
alleen wel aankon. De Venlose brandweer kon onverrichterzake
huiswaarts keren. Op dat moment was het Veldense corps, aldus de
Venlose zijde, nog steeds niet met de blussing begonnen. De schuur,
waarin een grote hoeveelheid hooi en stro opgetast lag, is
uitgebrand.
Naar
ANP nog vernam, zal de burgemeester van Arcen en Velden een
onderzoek naar de toedracht van deze gebeurtenis instellen.
22 augustus
1952 Velden geeft zijn visie op het "brandweerincident"
Onbevoegde
riep hulp van Venlo in
Zoals
gemeld heeft zich vorige week te Velden een ongewoon incident
voorgedaan, toen bij een brand in een landbouwschuur de ontboden
Venlose brandweer door loco-burgemeester weth. v. d. Venne
onverrichterzake werd weggezonden en de blussing werd overgelaten
aan de plaatselijke brandweer. Dit geval is in de
gemeenteraadsvergadering van Arcen en Velden ter sprake gekomen.
Burgemeester
Gubbels verklaarde, dat de wethouder in zijn recht stond toen hij de
Venlose brandweer wegzond. Uit een door hem ingesteld onderzoek was
gebleken, dat de Venlose brandweer was ontboden door iemand, die
voorgaf namens "de brandweercommandant en een raadslid" te
spreken. Spreker verklaarde, dat de gemeente de door de Venlose
brandweer gemaakte kosten zal voldoen maar zal trachten die —
zo nodig met gerechtelijke dwang — op de onbevoegde die de
brandweer van Venlo heeft gewaarschuwd, te verhalen. Aan de
landbouwschuur viel niets meer te redden, terwijl er geen gevaar
voor belendende percelen bestond.
Wethouder
v. d. Venne oefende critiek uit op de Veldense brandweercommandant,
die zich na het brandalarm terstond naar de brand begeven had,
terwijl de brandweerlieden kampten met moeilijkheden om aan een
vervoermiddel voor de spuit te komen, daar de anders ter beschikking
staande (particuliere) auto's toevallig niet aanwezig waren. Ook
laakte hij het onoordeelkundig gebruik van het slangenmateriaal. In
het midden van de brandslangenleiding had men een slecht gedeelte
slang aangekoppeld, terwijl men goede stukken slang overhield, zodat
later de leiding opnieuw overgeschakeld moest worden.
Een
voorstel van de voorzitter om zo mogelijk met de Venlose brandweer
een regeling te treffen voor de gehele brandbestrijding in de
gemeente, werd door de raad met instemming begroet.
20 november
1952 Jacht op smokkelaars had succes
(Van
onze correspondent)
Ven1o,
20 November
Ambtenaren
der invoerrechten en accijnzen hebben in de afgelopen nacht in
samenwerking met marechaussée en rijkspolitie in het
Noordlimburgse grensdorpje Arcen een groep smokkelaars verrast. Toen
de smokkelaars zich ontdekt zagen wierpen zij hun zakken met
smokkelwaar, die koffie en thee bleken te bevatten, weg en kozen het
hazenpad, waarna met behulp van een tweetal politiehonden een
intensieve achtervolging werd ingezet. Niet minder dan zeven
personen afkomstig uit Helmond en omgeving, waarvan de meesten al
eerder wegens smokkelarij werden veroordeeld, werden gearresteerd en
ingesloten. De smokkelwaar is in beslag genomen.
26 maart 1954
HOEPHAPS
De
gemeenteraadsleden van Arcen en Velden keken vreemd op, toen in de
raadsvergadering een mededeling van Gedeputeerde Staten van Limburg
werd bekend gemaakt, dat bij de voorgenomen ontginning van het
Arcens en Lommerbroek twee tot drie hectare zouden moeten worden
gespaard ter bescherming van de hop. "De hop is een zeldzame
vogel", verklaarde de burgemeester en dat klopte dan ook wel
want verscheidene raadsleden verklaarden nog nimmer iets van een hop
gehoord of gezien te hebben.
Een
der raadsleden haalde echter een encyclopaedie te voorschijn, waarin
inderdaad een afbeelding van de hop voorkwam. Hij las voor, dat de
hop een hier te lande zeldzaam voorkomende vogel is, die zijn
broedgebied vooral heeft in Zuid en Oost- Europa en in Zuid-Rusland.
Het
was echter de gemeentesecretaris, die het overtuigende woord sprak:
"Ze noemen de hop hier hoephaps". Toen vond de raad het in
orde. (ANP).
19 maart 1965
Weer botersmokkel aan Duitse grens – zeven arrestaties
(Van
een onzer verslaggevers)
In
Kamp-Lintfort, een Duits plaatsje vlak over de Noordlimburgse grens,
heeft de douane vier Nederlanders en drie Duitsers aangehouden. De
mannen zouden zich al geruime tijd hebben beziggehouden met het
smokkelen van boter.
Bij
hun aanhouding werden acht ton boter en twee vrachtwagens in beslag
genomen. De Duitse politie wenst de initialen van de gearresteerden
niet bekend te maken. Zij hoopt nog meerdere arrestaties te kunnen
verrichten en ook de adressen van de afnemers in Duitsland te kunnen
achterhalen.
De
Nederlandse boter werd illegaal naar Duitsland gebracht via een
binnenweg ter hoogte Van het Limburgse plaatsje Arcen. Er is daar
geen doorlaatpost. De Duitse douane noemt het wederom een bewijs,
dat de bewering niet steekhoudend is als zou de smokkelarij via de
zogenaamde "groene grens" weinig Of geen betekenis hebben.
Diversen
26
juli 1930 Verloren van Gasthuis naar Velden een lage schoen. Terug
te bezorgen bij H. Lenders, Rieterhof, Velden, Schandelo. 3874
30
september 1941 Ontloopen een herdershond, tijgerkleur, band om den
hals; luistert naar - de naam Cuno. Teg. bet. ter. te bez. bij J. In
't Zandt, Schandelo C 227, Velden.
4
december 1943 Ontloopen in de richt. Castanjeeborg, Schandelo,
Velden een wit-zwart ruwh. foksterr. (teef) luist. n. naam Dolly.
Teg. bel. ter. te bez. A. Basten, Lingsfort no. 150, Arcen.
21
maart 1975 DE
LAATSTEN DER MAASZALMVISSERS
24
november 1925 ARCEN. HUWELIJKEN: - P. G. Steegh en M. A. Ph.
Akkermans -
7
juli 1926 BEESEL. Draaksteken. ~ Naar wij vernemen zal naar alle
waarschijnlijkheid dit jaar op Kermismaandag, 30 Augustus e.k. het
historisch draaksteken plaats hebben. Was het eerst de bedoeling
zulks, met het oog op de slechte tijdsomstandigheden, een jaar uit
te stellen zoo zal de uitvoering thans op verzoek- en met
medewerking van den bekenden folklorist, den heer v. d. Venne te
Arnhem, nog dit jaar plaats hebben. Het licht [ligt] in de bedoeling
het draaksteken in zijn geheel te laten filmen, waarna het deel zal
uitmaken van een groote wetenschappelijk-historische film, waarvoor
o.a. door de Nederlandsche Maatschappij voor Letterkunde bijdragen
werden toegekend.
14
januari 1931 L. P. Steegh-Akkermans, z.;
9
februari 1932 J. L. F. Steegh-Akkermans, z,;
12
oktober 1942 Petronella M. P., dr. van P. G. Steegh-Akkermans;
17 maart 1928
DE ONDERWIJSWET.
OVERGANG
TOT DEN 7-JARIGEN LEERPLICHT.
HERZIENING
VAN 'T LEERLINGENAANTAL.
Het
initiatief-voorstel van den heer Zijlstra, vond bij de Kamer steun
en het werd aangenomen.
Voordat
de heer Zijlstra zijn voorstel nader mocht toelichten, waren er
echter, volgens de meening van den heer Ketelaar z.g. "knabbelaars",
die, hoewel dit misschien niet hun rechtstreeksch doel was,
werkelijk aan het knabbelen gingen aan de pas aangenomen zevenjarige
leerplicht.
Zoo
bracht de heer Van den Heuvel met zijn amendementje om den
leerplicht niet te laten eindigen voor het kind de 12½-jarige
leeftijd had bereikt heel wat beroering. De heer Van den Heuvel
dacht hier aan kinderen, die op een leeftijd van 5½ jaar
reeds de Lagere School bezoeken.
Zeker,
komt wel voor, laten we echter liever zeggen "komt wel eens
voor".
Als
de heer Van den Heuvel werkelijk zoo bevreesd is, dat zulke
leerlingen weer te vroeg de school verlaten, zou hij misschien meer
gebaat zijn met hetgeen de heer Suring hem ook aanraadde n.l. dring
er bij den minister op aan de L. O.-wet zoodanig te wijzigen, dat de
kinderen den zesjarige leeftijd moeten bereikt hebben, voor zij op
de Lagere School worden toegelaten. Laten wij toch niet gebonden
worden aan de leeftijd van 12½ jaar. De klove, tusschen
onderwijs- en arbeidswet, die men reeds overbrugd waande, wordt er
weer een half jaar door vergroot. Dit hiaat blijft nu ook al groot
genoeg n.l. van den 13- tot 14-jarige leeftijd. Wanneer doet zich
een geval voor dat een kind vroeger de school verlaten kan?
Slechts
wanneer de leerling op 5½-jarigen leeftijd op school komt, de
leerling daarbij zeven klassen doorloopt zonder doubleeren, en
daarbij nog, slechts wanneer het na de Lagere school geen ander
onderwijs meer volgt.
Deze
drie "wanneers", zegt de heer Suring dan ook, zijn
noodzakelijk voor zoo'n uitzonderingsgeval. Trouwens het zal de
kinderen heusch geen kwaad doen, maar hun eerder van groot nut zijn,
als ze op 12½-jarigen leeftijd nog een klein jaartje moeten
schoolloopen.
Minister
Waszink moest ook nog even den heer Zadelhoff gerust stellen, die
bang was dat de nieuwe leerplichtwet niet zou worden nageleefd,
vooral op het platte land. Onze Limburgsche minister had echter
reeds geconfereerd met zijn collega's van Justitie en Arbeid, zoodat
aan de wet wel de hand zal worden gehouden.
De
heer Bijleveld had echter nog een juiste opmerking.
Bij
de invoering der zevenjarige leerplicht had men geen rekening
gehouden met het feit dat kinderen die reeds met 1 April a.s. niet
meer leerplichtig zijn, maar toch nog vrijwillig op de school
blijven, op 1 Juli weer plotseling wel leerplichtig worden. Dit zal
het geval zijn met scholen die in April overgang van klassen hebben.
De heer Bijleveld wees hier werkelijk een lacune aan, en hij hoopte
dan ook dat de heer Ketelaar zou merken dat hij niet bezig was met
knabbelen, maar met oplossen. Zonder eenige verdere
overgangsbepaling kunnen zich dan ook drie gevallen voordoen, n.l.:
een kind dat in April van school gaat en leegloopt, is geheel vrij;
een kind dat vrijwillig op school blijft valt op 1 Juli weer onder
leerverplichting; een kind dat op een of andere manier aan het werk
is gezet, zou teruggehaald moeten worden. Na nog nadere toelichting
van de heer Bijleveld en Gerhard nam de regeering over het
amendement-Bijleveld om een nieuw artikel in te voegen luidende:
"Indien
ten aanzien van een kind op 30 Juni 1928 volgens de op dien datum
geldende regelen de in artikel 1 der Leerplichtwet opgelegde
verplichting is geeindigd, wordt ook na dien datum te zijnen aanzien
die verplichting als geeindigd beschouwd".
De leerlingenschaal
Het
voorstel van wet van den heer Zijlstra over het aantal leerlingen in
verband met de leerkrachten kwam dan in behandeling. Dat het
48-stelsel bij wet van 30 Juni 1924 aangenomen, als een
bezuinigingsmaatregel funest heeft gewerkt op het onderwijs, mag men
onderhand wel als bekend veronderstellen. Deze 48-schaal zou
feitelijk geldend zijn tot 1 Januari 1930 op welke datum de schaal
van artikel 28 der onderwijswet in werking treedt. De heer Rutten
verklaarde zich ook voor het amendement-Zijlstra. In zijn rede wees
hij vooral op het belang dat de dorpen hierbij zouden hebben. De
heer Zijlstra had met zijn voorstel een soort van geleidelijken
overgang op het oog naar den toestand van 1 Januari 1930. [...]
31 januari
1933 DE ACHTJARIGE LEERPLICHT VOORGESTELD.
Sterke
aandrang op schoolvoeding en -kleeding.
GEEN
LANDBOUWVERLOF MEER.
De
heer K. ter Laan, c.s., lid Van de Tweede Kamer, heeft een
wetsvoorstel ingediend tot wijziging van de Leerplichtwet. De
bedoeling is, dat vastgesteld worde:
"De
verplichting, (n.l. die tot het volgen van onderwijs) eindigt,
zoodra het kind acht jaren leerling is geweest van een lagere school
of twee aaneensluitende lagere scholen, waarvan de klassen een
leertijd van acht jaar omvatten, en het alle klassen doorloopen
heeft; of, indien het onderwijs aan die school of scholen gegeven
wordt in klassen, die samen een langeren leertijd dan acht jaren
innemen, zoodra het zoovele klassen doorloopen heeft, als samen een
leertijd van acht jaren omvatten. "De verplichting eindigt in
ieder geval bij het bereiken van den leeftijd van vijftien jaren.
"Ten aanzien van een kind, waaraan vóór of sinds
het bereiken van het zesde levensjaar huisonderwijs in den zin dezer
wet wordt verstrekt, eindigt deze verplichting bij het bereiken van
den leeftijd van veertien jaren, indien het kind alsdan acht
achtereenvolgende jaren onderwijs heeft genoten. "Ten aanzien
van het kind, dat op een later tijdstip aanvangt huisonderwijs te
genieten, eindigt de verplichting bij het bereiken van den leeftijd
van vijftien jaren."
In
de memorie van toelichting — die mede onderteekend is door ir.
J. W. Albarda, mej. S. Groeneweg, G. van der Houven en J. H. F. van
Zadelhoff, allen sociaal-democratische leden der Tweede Kamer —
lezen wij:
De
in 1921 ingevoerde uitbreiding van den leerplicht met het zevende
leerjaar heeft heilzame gevolgen gehad. Maar het voornaamste, de
achtjarige leerplicht, is nog altijd niet bereikt, en daartoe achten
de voorstellers nu meer dan ooit den tijd gekomen. Zij vinden in hun
opvatting steun bij de geheele moderne arbeidersbeweging. Het
invoeren van het achtste leerjaar behoeft niet aanstonds groot
verandering te brengen in de organisatie van de volksschool.
Voorstellers bepalen zich uitdrukkelijk tot het geen nu mogelijk en
naar hun overtuiging dringend noodzakelijk is: inperking van den
kinderarbeid en tegelijk, en mede daardoor, aanmerkelijke
verbetering van het volksonderwijs en van de volksopvoeding. Tevens
maken zij van de gelegenheid gebruik, om opnieuw een voorstel te
doen, om te komen tot het verplicht stellen van de gelegenheid voor
voeding en kleeding voor alle leerplichtige kinderen, die daaraan
behoefte hebben.
Leerplicht tot veertien jaar.
De
ontwikkeling van het bedrijfsleven is in de laatste jaren
buitengewoon snel gegaan; de maatschappij van heden en nog meer die
van morgen eischt voor letterlijk iederen bedrijfstak jongelieden,
die althans het lager onderwijs in zijn vollen omvang genoten
hebben. De eisch van leerplicht tot en met het veertiende jaar klemt
te meer, omdat dit nog volstrekt niet beteekent, dat alle kinderen
de acht klassen der lagere school zullen doorloopen. Immers is het
aantal zeer groot der leerlingen, die in den loop der acht jaren
athans wel éénmaal blijven zitten. Zeer velen zullen
ook dan nog niet verder komen dan de zesde of de zevende klasse.
Maar zij komen bij aanneming van dit voorstel dan toch in ieder
geval één jaar verder dan nu het geval is, en ook voor
hen komt het beste jaar er bij. De voorstellers geven een
schematisch overzicht van den duur van den leerplicht in
verschillende landen. Uit dit overzicht blijkt, dat wij in Nederland
ten achter zijn bij België, Duitschland, Denemarken, Engeland
en Ierland, Luxemburg, Noorwegen, Oostenrijk, Tsjecho-Slowakije,
Zweden en Zwitserland.
De kosten.
Welk
bedrag er noodig zijn zal voor de invoering van het achtste leerjaar
is moeilijk met nauwkeurigheid te ramen. Het dichtst bij de waarheid
komt men, door het aantal kinderen boven dertien jaar, die niet
schoolgaan, te ramen, en dat aantal te vermenigvuldigen met het
gemiddelde bedrag, dat een leerling van het lager onderwijs kost per
jaar. Indien het achtste leerjaar wordt ingevoerd, is het niet te
gewaagd, om aan te nemen, dat niet meer dan ongeveer 50 pct. van de
kinderen in de hoogste klasse plaats zullen vinden; dat is bij
benadering 62.500 leerlingen. En het is wederom niet al te gewaagd,
te onderstellen, dat de helft van deze leerlingen plaats vinden kan,
zonder dat er aanstonds gezorgd behoeft te worden voor nieuwe
lokalen.
Het landbouwverlof.
Ten
aanzien van het landbouwverlof deden de voorstellers boven reeds
opmerken, dat het van zes weken ingeperkt is tot veertien dagen, en
dat een leerplichtig kind gedurende de schooltijden niet meer in
loondienst werken mag. De tijd is nu gekomen, om aan het geheele
landbouwverlof een einde te maken.
De
wegneming van het landbouwverlof is dubbel noodig bij het voorstel,
dat bij dezen wordt gedaan. Het is te verwachten, dat juist de
leerlingen van dertien jaar en daarboven er verre weg het meest van
te lijden zullen hebben. Dit is ook in het belang van land- en
tuinbouw zelf niet langer toe te laten.
Schoolvoeding en -kleeding.
Een
meer dan dertigjarige practijk heeft geleerd, dat zonder
verplichtstelling geen zekerheid te verkrijgen is, dat alle
kinderen, die schoolvoeding en kleeding noodig hebben, die ook
zullen genieten. En dat is gebiedend noodzakelijk tot bevordering
van het schoolbezoek, om het onderwijs voor die kinderen beter tot
zijn recht te doen komen. Het particuliere werk op dit gebied
verdient grooten dank, maar vooral is het te kort geschoten en moest
de overheid bijspringen. En ook dan nog bleven op vele plaatsen de
kinderen er van verstoken.
Bovendien
klemt een ander bezwaar. Particuliere zorg, hoe prijzenswaardig ook,
drukt op kindervoeding en kleeding het stempel van liefdadigheid,
soms zelfs van armenzorg. Dit ontnemen en dit kan niet anders
geschieden dan door aanvaarding van de verplichting der overheid, om
er voor te zorgen.
De
kosten daarvan zullen niet zóó hoog zijn dat daarin
eenig bezwaar gelegen wezen kan. Toch is het bedrag wel van zooveel
belang, dat de helft er van voor rekening van het Rijk behoort te
worden gebracht, te meer omdat in het stelsel der Lager-onderwijswet
de kosten van den bouw, de inrichting en het onderhoud van de
noodige nieuwe schoollokalen voor rekening van de gemeente komen.
Als eenmaal vast staat, dat er alom in het land schoolruimte zijn
moet voor acht leerjaren, dan is er eenige tijd noodig om daarin te
voorzien, overal waar de tegenwoordig gebruikte of leegstaande
lokalen de leerlingen niet allen kunnen opnemen, die voortaan een
jaar langer moeten blijven. Die tijd behoeft niet overmatig lang te
zijn, maar is nu toch niet op een maand na te ramen. Daarom stellen
voorstellers voor, dat deze wet in werking zal treden op een nader
te bepalen dag. De regeering kan dan nagaan, welke tijd vereischt
wordt, om de gemeenten en de schoolbesturen in staat te stellen de
nieuwe voorschriften behoorlijk uit te voeren en zij kan waken tegen
onnoodige vertraging.
Reconstructie
van wijk A, B en C van Velden
"Maashof",
Schandelo;
"Ons
Buiten", Genooi;
"Rieterhof",
C 221 Schandelo;
[...]
Lingsforterweg A 128, tel. 276;
[2
kostgangers] Rijksweg C 302, Krosselt;
[cafe]
Lingsfort A 146;
[dienstbode]
Lingsforterweg A 106a;
[drogist/laborant,]
Lingsforterweg A 132a;
[hondenfokker]
Lingsforterweg A 123;
[kachel
en piano] Rijksweg C 49;
[maalkalf]
Rijksweg 291;
[ontloopen:
Tommy] Rijksweg C 297;
[overcompleet]
Rijksweg C 86c;
Aarts,
"Maassenhof", Schandelo;
Aarts,
Schandelo; J.
AERDTS
Weduwnaar van CORNELIA HANSSEN, Schandelo; PETER
Aerdts-Theelen,
Schandelo C 225; P.
Aerdts,
"Maashof", Schandelo; M.
Akkermans-Genders;
J.
Te
koop een bijna voldragen KOE, zwartbont, een guste KOE, en een 4
jarig bruin
MERRIEPAARD,
bij J. Akkermans Beesel, Rijkel, Klerkenhof.
(11/18 januari 1924/4
februari
1927)
14
september 1929 BEESEL. - Not. v. Koolwijk 16 Sept. 2 uur ten huize
van
dhr. J. Akkermans, landbouwgereedschappen, paardentuig,
maaimachines, enz.
Apeldoorn,
Bong C 148; W.
Appeldoorn-Bouten,
Bong; A.
Appeldoorn,
Bong C 199; A.
Appeldoorn,
Lingsfort A 135; J.
Appeldoorn,
Schandelo; A.
Ardts,
Maashof, Schandelo; Gebr.
Arts,
Lingsforterweg; J.
Backes,
Lingsfort; G. J.
Backes,
Lingsfort; J.
Basten,
driesprong Lingsfort; Erven P. A.
Basten,
Lingsfort; Antoon
Basten,
Lingsfort; Café H.
Basten,
Lingsforterweg A 150; A.
Beeker,
Vilgert C 204; Jac.
Beeker-Driessen,
Rijksweg; P. [tel. 10]
Berden-Keltjes,
Velden; G.
Berg,
Rijksweg C 78; Anna vd.
Beurskens
en Agnes van Megen, Vilgert C 265; Peter
Beurskens-Leyssen,
Schandelo; H.
Beurskens,
Genooi;
Boonen,
Schandelo C 168; J.
Boonen,
Schandelo C 214; L.
Boonen,
Schandelo C 219; Jac.
Bouten,
Hasselt C 136; J.
Bouten,
Voort B 25; Alf.
BUSKES
en PIET HOLIHUIJZEN "De Krosselt", Rijksweg C 304; ANNIE
Buskes,
De Krosselt, tel. 293; H.
Caris,
Rijksweg; [kapper] J.
Ceron,
Bong; weduwe
Ceron,
Hasselt; W.
Clabbers,
Rijksweg 91; Jantje
Coppes
en Henri Geurts, Lingsfort; Henriëtte
Coppus/Coppes,
Rijksweg; W.
Cox,
Lingsfort Leeremarksche heide; Gerard Hendrik, timmerman
Cox,
Lingsfort; G. H.
Cox,
Rijksweg 57; H. J. [dienstbode]
Decker,
Lingsfort; H.
Deenen,
Schandelo; H.
Denissen,
Lingsfort; Mina
Derix
te Velden—Velgart; W.
Dijks,
Krosselt; J.
Dinnissen,
Lingsfort; L.
Driessen,
Genooi C 8; G.
Dubbeld,
Lingsforderweg A 122; mevr.
Enckevort,
Boschweg 307, Genooi; v.
Engels,
Schandelo C 180; weduwe S.
Engels,
Schandelo C 227; Fr.
Engels,
Schandelo C 232; L.
Erdman/Erdmann,
Lingsfort; A.
Evers,
Hasselt; J.
Fischermann,
Lingsfort;
Flinsenberg/Flinzenberg,
Voort; J./weduwe
Flinsenbergh,
C 166; H.
Gaemers,
Lingsforterweg A 122b; P. ["Huize Kamerdel"]
Geelen-Aarts,
Bong; G.
Geelen-Thiesen/Jac.
Gielen-Thiesen, Bong; J.
Geelen,
Bong C 197; G.
Geelen,
Hasselderheide; Adr. J.
Geelen,
Schandelo C 207; H.
Geelen,
Schandelo C 212; H./A.
Geelen,
Schandelo C 216 ; H.
Geelen,
Vilgert; W.
Geelen,
Velgert C 252; J.
Geerlings,
Bong C 201; Th.
Gerits,
Genooi C 5; L.
Geurts
(-Aan de Brug), Schandelo C 175; Bern.
Wegens
teleurstelling gevraagd een zweitzer, R. K. voor tien koeien, zonder
g.
g. s. onnoodig zich aan te melden.
Geurts-Coppes,
Schandelo C 235; H.
Geurts-v.
Wijlick, Vilgert; P.
Geurts,
C 264; A.
Geurts,
Schandelo C 216; J.
Geurts,
Schandelo C 229, Dorp C 80 H. H. en H. H. Geurts; Gebr.
[melkslijterij]
Geurts,
Schandelo C 229a; Henri
Geurts,
Schandelo, C 221; Joh. G.
Geurts,
Schandelo, Dieperhof; P.
Geurts,
Vilgert C 266; P.
Geurts,
Vilgert; Andries
Geurts,
winkelier, Schandelo C 216; J.
Gielen,
Bong C 198; J.
Gielen,
Schandelo C 212; H.
Gielen,
Schandelo; H.
Gockel,
Lingsfort; Herman
Gommans-Peeters,
Schandelo-Bong C 201; kinderen P. J.
Gommans,
Schandelo C 208; Y.
Goot,
Lingsforterweg A 90a; Elizabeth T. v. d.
Haanen,
Vorst C 18; Herm.
Haef,
Krosselt; weduwe van
Haegens,
Dieperhof, Schandelo; H.
Haeghen,
Schandelo C 211; P. v. d.
Hael,
Krosselt C 286; Th. van
Haenen,
Donk 273; C. M.
Haghen,
Krosselt C 282; F. v. d.
Haghen,
Velgart C 247; F. v. d.
Hees,
Lingsfort; weduwe L. van
Hees,
Lingsfort; weduwe van
Heldens,
Schandelo C 238; L.
Heldens,
Vilgert C 248; J.
Heldens,
Vilgert C 256; J.
Hendrikx-Croymans,
C 7a Genooi; H.
Hermkens,
Rijksweg C 50; J.
Hinten,
Lingsforterweg; P.
Hoedemakers,
Rijksweg C 61; J.
Hoesen,
Lingsforterweg; L.J.H.
Hoeymakers;
Th. [Chinese wolhandkrab]
Holla/Fr.
Holla-Toonen, A 124; café F.
Holthuijsen,
Rijksweg 170; M. E. W. [dienstbode]
Holthuizen—Geelen
H. Beek—Holthuizen en verd. fam., Krosselt; fam. G.
Holthuizen,
C 107; P.
Hombergh,
C 294, Krosselt; G. A. v. d.
Hombergh,
Krosselt C 287; J. A. v. d. Verhuur grond aan J. A. v. d. Hombergh,
Velden.
[21 augustus 1939]
Hombergh,
Krosselt C 294; Jacques van den
Hombergh,
Rijksweg C 106; Antoon van den [kruidenierswaren]
Hombergh,
Rijksweg C 263; kinderen v. d.
Hombergh.
Krosselt; R. v. d.
Hombergh;
H. van den. VENLO, 4 Sept. [1940] De heer H. van den Hombergh
te
Velden (bij Venlo) vierde zijn zilveren jubileum als lid van den
gemeenteraad
van
Arcen en Velden. Van deze kwarteeuw was de zilveren jubilaris 24
jaar
onafgebroken
werkzaam als wethouder.
Houben,
Genooi C 4; P.
Hovens,
Lingsforterweg A 82; P.
Hüssmann,
A 104; H. [café]
Hussmann/Hüssmann,
Lingsforterweg A 149; Heinrich
Jacobs,
C 63; [kleermaker] K.
Jansen,
Bong C 205; J.
Jansen,
Tramhalte Rijksweg C 175; M.
Jansen/Janssen,
Vilgert C 244; P.
Jeucken,
Vilgert C 243; J.
Jong,
Vilgert; A. de
K.,
Lingsfort A 98a; heer uit Blerick [verlof]
Kamp,
A 126; Fr. van de
Kamps,
Lingsforterweg A 158; A. [Winterhulp]
Kamps,
Rijksweg 170; W. [dienstbode]
Keeken
Jr., Laarberg C 10, Genooi; W. v.
Keldjens,
Velden, Schandelo C 213; H.
Keltjens,
Krosselt C 286; Jac.
Keltjens,
Schandelo C 208; H. G.
Keltjens,
Velden, Schandelo C 215; H.
Keltjens?,
Schandelo C 210; H.
Kemper,
Lingsforterweg; Ed
Knelissen,
Lingsfort; A.
Koopmans,
Schandelo; G.
Koopmans,
Genooi; J.
Kuijpers,
Rijksweg C 288; H.
Kuipers,
Rijksweg C 278; H.
Laarakkers,
Rijksweg C 285; J.
Lang
Evertsen, Lingsforterweg; L. [F. J.] de
Leenen,
Lingsfort; Herman [café]
Lehnen/Leenen,
Lingsfort; café
Leipzig/H.
v. Leipzigh, Genooi; Th. v.
Lenders-Theelen,
Rieterhof/Rietherhof, Schandelo; H.
Lenders,
Rieterhof, Schandelo C 221; H.
Lenssen,
Rijksweg C 49; M.
Leupers,
Schandelo C 210; Gebrs.
Leupers,
Schandelo; weduwe L.
Lichteveld,
Lingsforterweg A 135; A.
Lin,
Lingsfort A 146; P. J. van
Lin,
Lingsfort A 151; P. J. van
Lipzich/Lipzig,
Schandelo C 237; J. v.
Litjens,
kleermakerij, Rijksweg C 111; A.
Litjens,
Velden C 83; gebroeders metselaars-aannemers,handel in
bouwmaterialen
Loeij,
Schandelo; Kinderen de
Lommen,
Bong 200; H.
Lommen,
Schandelo; H.
Lommen,
Vilgert C 253; H.
Lucassen,
Rijksweg C 51; G.
Luijpers,
C 158; Jos.
Luijpers,
Krosselt C 281; Chr.
Luypers
C 280, Krosselt; W.
Martens,
Lingsforterweg A 134; H.
Mattissen,
Lingsfort; G./Fr. "Huize Ente"
Melick,
Genooi; J. v.
Minten,
Lingsforterweg A 82; P.
Mölders,
Lingsforterweg; Heinrich
Muijres,
Vilgert C 254; W.
Nagels,
Lingsforterweg;
Nelissen,
Schandelo; C.
Nellissen,
Schandelo; C.
Nielissen,
Jacobus Hendrikus en Akkermans, Maria Catharina, C 267;
Nielissen
en A. P. Steegh, Schandelo; W.
Nielissen,
naar Genooi 60; L., arbeider
Nielissen,
Rijksweg C 109; G.
Nielissen,
Velden C 185; C. [café, dossier 1827]
Nijs,
Hasselt; Joh.
Nillesen,
Schandelo; C.
Nilissen,
Kerkenhof, Velgert C 260; J.
Wordt
gevraagd voor terstond een meisje van 14—17 jaar voor alle
boerenwerk.
J.
Nilissen, Kerkenhof, Velden, Velgert 260. [28 juli 1934]
Nielissen,
Kerkenhof; Jac. [aanwijzing eikenbomen]
Nielissen,
Cornelius, 28 j., landbouwer te Belfeld,
en
Joanna Maria Theelen, 36 j., z. b., te Velden [6 mei 1899]
Peeters,
Bomshof/Boomshof, Genooi, tel. 2671; L.
Peeters,
Hovershof, Vorst C 14; Th.
Peeters,
Krosselt;
Peeters,
Genooierweg; J. H.
Peeters,
Lingsforterweg A 131; Pension
Peeters,
Rijksweg C 281; L.
Peters/Peeters,
Rijksweg C 291; L./Leonard
Peeters,
Vorst C 28; Jac.
Peeters/M.
H. Peters, Conenhof, Hasselt; M.
Peters,
Hasselt; Hein
Peters,
Lingsfort; G.
Peters,
Rijksweg C 291; J.
Pietersma,
Lingsfort; S.
Reijnders,
Rijksweg C 163; P.
Reijnders,
Rijksweg C 169; P.
Renkens,
Lingsforterweg; J.
Renkens/J.
Renkens, Lingsforterweg A 107; Gerrit
Rens,
Lomm B 52; J. van
Rens,
Schandelo; A. van
Reutelingsperger-Steegh;
J.
Reutelingsperger,
Rijksweg C 162; P. J.
Roefs-Meijs,
Schandelo; weduwe A. M.
Roefs,
Schandelo; A.
Roefs,
Schandelo; H.
Roefs,
Schandelo; weduwe
Roefs,
Velden, tel. 291; G.
Roefs
(achter Enderhof), Schandelo; Antoon/A. M.
Rohe/Röhe/Rohé,
Lingsforterweg A 126; [kippenbroederij] B.
Roosen,
Lingsfort; J.
Roosen,
Lingsforterweg A 152; (Anna Christine)
Rothof,
Bong; J.
Rouleaux-Meurs,
betr. haar vader, Weeshuis, Venlo, wonende Vilgert Velden; Mej. Fr.
Sanders;
L.; [armbestuur]
Schattefor,
Krosselt;
Schattefor,
Lingsfort A 105; H. J. [dienstknecht]
Scholten,
Lingsfort A 96; A.
Schoof,
Lingsfort A 102; weduwe Joh.
Schoofs,
Lingsfort; J.
Schoofs/Schoofs-Beeker,
De Kamp, Vorst; G.
Schraven,
Lingsforterweg;
Schreurs,
Rijksweg 86, Lomm; weduwe H.
Seuwen,
Lingsforterweg/Grensweg/Walbeckerweg 135; L.
Smits,
Rijksweg C 108; W.
Soberjé-Roefs,
Schandeloo; H. J.
Soberjé,
Schandelo, [Enderhof] [tel. 236.]; H.
Steegh
en Thiesen, Schandelo; P.
Steegh,
Schandelo C 228; Frans
Sternheim,
"Haus Ente", Lingsfort; O.
Tax,
Genooi C 9 [Carissenhoeve]; weduwe A.
Theelen-Jacobs,
Schandelo; F.
Theelen-Lenders,
Schandelo C 230; J.
Theelen-Linders,
Schandelo; J.
Theelen-Verhaegh,
Schandelo; J.
Theelen-Vosbeek,
Schandelo C 208; weduwe P.
Theelen,
Raaierhof [Raaierhoeve], Schandelo C 215; Jac.
Theelen,
Schandelo C 200; P.
Theelen,
Schandelo C 213; F.
Theelen,
Schandelo C 218; F.
Theelen,
Schandelo C 218; weduwe ,
Theelen,
Schandelo C 231; Fr.
Theelen,
Schandelo; Jacob
Theelen,
Schandeloo C 169; Jac
Theelen,
Velden C 98; meisje van 14 jaar
Thelen,
aan den weg van Hasselt-Velden naar Schandelo; J.
Thiesen,
Lingsforterweg A 132; Jacob
Thiesen,
Schandelo C 233; Frans
Thissen,
Rijksweg C 99; J. L. [Winterhulp]
Thyssen,
Lingsforterweg A 142; Th.
Tiesen,
C 228; F.
Timmermans,
Lingsfort; J.
Toonen-Clabbers,
Lingsforterweg; weduwe W.
Toren,
Lingsforterweg; H.
Venne,
Velgert; P. v.d.
Verbeek,
Vorst; J. L./Jac.
Verhaegh,
Genooi 7; G.
Verhees,
Lingsfort;
Verheyen/Verheijen,
Schandelo; A.
Verkoeijen,
Rijksweg C 302; J.
Vermazeren,
C 95; Nellie
Verpraet,
Lingsforterweg A 122;
Verspay
woonhuis met stalling in de Hasselderheide; Jean
Verspay,
Schandelo;
Vis,
Lingsfort A 131a; T.
Vosbeek,
Hasselt; A.
Vosbeek,
Vilgert C 258; weduwe P.
Vosbeek,
Vilgert; J.
Vosbeek,
Vorst; Piet
Wanroy,
Bong C 201; J. v.
Wijlick-Theelen,
Schandelo C 140?; H. van
Wijlick,
Rijksweg, Lomm; H. van
Wijlick,
Schandelo C 224; H. van
Wijlick/Wylick,
Bong; H. van
Willemsen,
Hasselt C 179; Jos.
Wylick
Theelen, Schandelo C 224; H. v.
Zandt-Geurts,
Schandelo; J. In 't
Zandt,
Schandelo C 222; J. In 't
Zandt,
Schandelo C 227; J. In 't
Zeelen,
Genooi C 2; H.
Zeelen,
Rijksweg C 112; G.
Roman
remains in Danish peat bogs
August
22, 1860: HIGHLY REMARKABLE ROMAN REMAINS FOUND IN DANISH PEA BOWLS.
[p.
297, ALGEMEENE KONST- EN LETTERBODE.]
“You
have been asking to hear from time to time about the discoveries in
the peat bogs at Sönder-Brarup, which I have mentioned several
times before. Several important objects were found there in July and
August; but the most important find is a round bronze plaque, the
size of a dinner plate, with a wide rim, decorated with raised gold
and silver sculptures. The sculptures depict alternately birds and
dolphins, and some Roman warriors in a resting position, with
helmets on their heads, holding a lance in one hand, while the other
hand rests on a shield. Within this rim, one sees several Medusa
heads, with helmets on their heads, all surrounding a single Medusa
head in the center. All this points to a Roman origin; but it is
noteworthy that in some places on that plaque small silver plates
adorned with monstrous animal figures, similar to those found on
gold bractes struck in Scandinavia and on two silver cups found in
Himlingori, Zealand. It is evident that foreigners added these
ornaments of their own making to this plaque, which had previously
been adorned solely with Roman art. Remains of three coats of armor
made of rings were also found; on two, the rings are bronze, on the
third, iron. Subsequently, a mass of shield navels, spear points,
arrows, and the remains of broadswords were found, all of iron, as
well as the remains of sword scabbards. Everything points to a
fierce battle. Furthermore, a complete riding horse bridle and a
snaffle (bridon) were found, with buckles, rings, and ornaments of
bronze; the long leather bridles were completely preserved. Two
silver coins of Commodus and Nero. The (wooden) shafts of the lances
The javelins and spears are mostly broken, but we were fortunate
enough to find two that were completely preserved: one 9 feet
(Danish) long, the other a little longer.
A
shaft of 2 feet 6 inches belonged to a javelin. The shields are made
of wood and have a rim; only the middle section is bronze. However,
one shield is made of maple, with an oak rim attached to it with
small pieces of bronze, shaped like an S. This is the first time
that shields made of different woods have been found. A leather
sandal and several pieces of linen with rims were also found. Among
the glass beads, one is hollow, and this must therefore have been
made with a glass-blowing pipe; the other beads are hollow. Not a
day goes by without finding pottery of various shapes, usually
broken; meanwhile, six pots have been found that were intact. Four
pieces of gold, shaped like rings, were found. currency was used
(ring money). It remains a mystery how all these objects ended up in
the peatlands, formerly lakes. Some shields and lance shafts have
also been found under a thick layer of beams and brushwood (the same
as previously in Funen). These are the discoveries of 1860; I have
already reported those of last year to you. 1).
For
two or three years now, I have been sharing our archaeological
explorations with you. In the absence of a French summary of these,
a Swiss who spent the winter of 1859 here published
geological-archaeological studies in which he reports on everything
discovered in our country, on our system, etc. 2).
Taarbaek,
near Copenhagen,
22
August 1860. DR. BURMAN BECKER. (Excerpt from a letter to MR. EYCK
VAN ZUILICHEM).
1)
We hope to be able to include this soon. Ed.
2)
This is Professor Morlot of Lausanne, the publisher of whose
important work we already mentioned in No. 20, dated May 21, of this
weekly, and about which the Revue archéologique of August 1
has begun to give a very favorable report. We will return to this
subject as soon as possible, space permitting.
Ed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorsberg_moor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Iron_Age_weapon_deposits
http://en.natmus.dk/
November
10, 1860 HIGHLY REMARKABLE ROMAN REMAINS FOUND IN DANISH PEATHERS.
1) [p. 360]
In
recent years, during the excavation of the numerous peat bogs, which
were undoubtedly lakes or marshes in the past, mainly in southern
Jutland, and also in some burial places and sand dunes, in more than
60 locations, remains of Roman origin have been found, such as coins
from the imperial period, pots, vases, cups, decorations with Roman
inscriptions, and works of Roman art.
The
factories usually bear the hallmarks of originating from the first
four centuries AD.
Especially
remarkable is the multitude of weapons (several hundred) found in
the peat bogs at five or six locations, namely: iron arrowheads and
lanceheads, copper shield fittings, mixed with buckles, combs, dice,
hammers, etc. All these weapons are very well-made, even beautifully
crafted, but bear many signs of having been damaged and bent in
battle. - The large peat bog of Allesö, on the island of Funen,
not far from Odensee, is especially rich in such objects, and more
are still found there annually. - During the last two years, a large
number have also been found in a bog or swamp near Brarup, in
southern Jutland.
Among
the objects unearthed there is a piece of a shield with the words
AEL: AELIANVS, in pointed letters 2); A fragment of a Roman helmet
with engraved brass ornaments; a whole multitude of round wooden
shields, about 3 feet in diameter, with brass centers; also wooden
bows, and a multitude of staves for arrows and lances, but without
the points, which are presumed to have sunk and will be found at the
bottom of the peat, as are the swords, for which the remains of the
scabbards and their fittings have been found, but not the swords
themselves. 3) Furthermore, brass fittings from belts or slings,
horse harnesses, and pieces of a tunic consisting of rings. 4) All
of this bears evidence of having been damaged by use and in combat.
A silver head ornament was also found, broken by three saber
slashes. It is impossible to list everything; but among the most
remarkable objects certainly belongs a bronze plaque with gold and
silver ornaments and nine engraved female heads on it. as well as
coins of Trajan, Hadrian, and Commodus.
The
most remarkable thing of all is a large quantity of clothing, folded
or packed together; underneath, trousers with stockings attached, in
one piece (I have no information about the material of these
garments). Similar objects are still found in other bogs in Jutland,
and also on the Danish islands, though in much smaller numbers.
The
property of high bogs for preserving objects that would otherwise be
subject to decay is well known; therefore, one is not surprised that
these remains have been preserved, but rather how such a large
number could have gathered in that bog (ancient swamp or lake), and
in so many places. It has been thought that entire war bands would
have fallen through the ice on a winter expedition and been
suffocated, but it is difficult to imagine that this would have
happened in so many places. One would also have had to find a
multitude of human and horse skeletons, which is by no means the
case, but is limited to a very few.
Another
suggestion is that these objects must have been hidden by some tribe
in the Brarup swamp; this seems to be indicated by the collected
articles of clothing and stacked shields, as well as the wooden
hooks found, which seem intended to hold objects that would
otherwise have floated on the water.
However
uncertain the manner in which these objects came together may be,
the more certain is the period from which they originate, and the
influence that Roman civilization must have exerted on the customs
and practices of the Norse peoples.
Nordic
antiquarians assume that three periods occurred in Northern Europe
during which weapons and tools were made of stone, bronze, and iron.
The last and most recent period there would have begun roughly with
the influence of Roman rule, and one of the effects of that
influence was probably that the use of mixed copper (bronze) was
gradually lost and that objects that were not preferred to be made
of iron were made of yellow copper.
Since
it is known that the Romans themselves never crossed the River Elve
during their campaigns, one must conclude from all the artifacts
found that the ancient Jutes or Danes, through war or trade, came
into contact with the Romans more than previously thought and must
have shared in their civilization. I have taken these reports from
some letters from my cousin J. G. Burman Becker in Copenhagen, who
has a great predilection for the antiquities of his remarkable
fatherland and, among other things, also owns a large collection of
sketches, mostly drawn by himself, of old churches, etc., including,
according to his letter, some 120 old baptismal fonts, which, along
with many other curiosities and ornaments, are located in or near
many village churches.
Maartensdijk,
Jan.
1860. EYCK VAN ZUYLICHEM.
The
above communication, in connection with the earlier one (in No. 37),
regarding Roman remains in Danish peat bogs, is all the more
important to us because it provides new evidence for the feeling we
already expressed last year: that in assessing the beautifully
worked metals, especially bronze, implements, and tools, found among
ancient remains in Northern Europe and elsewhere outside Italy, too
little attention has been paid to ancient Italian factories. We, at
least, are convinced that these bronze and iron remains, especially
weapons, originate from ancient Italian factories and were brought
there in high antiquity as well as in the later Roman Imperial
period, primarily through barter. It strikes us as somewhat odd that
Nordic antiquarians, who published so many important works on the
antiquities of their country, have not yet published a work (at
least as far as we know) depicting and describing these Roman
remains from the peat bogs. Even the most recent author on the
Danish peat bogs, although comparing the remains found there with
those found in pile dwellings in Switzerland (Morlot, Etudes
géologico-archéologiques en Danemark et en Suisse),
has not mentioned any Roman remains found in the Danish peat bogs,
although he does so on p. 291 writes: “The Danish antique
mills are rich in antiques of all kinds and ages, as are the museums
in the past. M. Steenstrup estimates that there is no such thing as
a vertical pillar of a meter square at the base, placed or
otherwise, in the same country's antique mills, where one finds less
of an antique object.” We hope to be able to devote more space
to this important topic soon.
Ed.
1)
Comp. No. 37, p. 297.
2)
In the manner, for example, of the Roman inscription from the Linge,
near Hemmen, handed down in antiquity and communicated by Dr.
Janssen, Pl. V. Fig. 4.
3)
These were also discovered later, see Letterbode, t.a., pl.
4)
Of three coats of arms; two with bronze rings and one with iron
ones; see Letterbode, t.a., pl.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_Nicolaas_Marius_Eyck_van_Zuylichem
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken1/gview?query=laat-Romeinsch&coll=boeken1&identifier=y3ZdAAAAcAAJ
ANTITIES
IN DANISH PEATS. 1)
The
following, taken from a special letter written by a very
authoritative hand, may perhaps, even after the information on this
subject in the Bode of November 10th, page 360, not be considered
unworthy of publication in the same weekly. We are making it
available to the editors for this purpose. "Nothing, however,
was as important to me as the rich yield of the excavations near
South-Brarup. These are not just a few objects, but an entire war
booty buried in the peat. The coins found there point to the time
when this occurred; the most recent were Commodus's. There is much
Roman artefact among them, much of it also of barbarian origin or
associated with barbarian work. The most remarkable thing is that
wood, leather, and woven fabrics have been preserved, but everything
made of iron has been lost. We found a magnificent bronze horse
harness, with the straps and everything else, except the iron bits,
preserved in its entirety: bows, even remnants of the cords, and 60
arrows, but whose iron points had decayed. This would be even more
regrettable if two other discoveries in the peat hadn't come to our
aid, belonging to the same period and yielding relatively
well-preserved iron objects. Among the most important curiosities, I
bring... I found a silver mask that served as a helmet visor; bronze
breastplates decorated with silver and gold ornaments; trousers, a
cloak, and a coat of mail, the latter of which was hidden in a jar.
Later, fragments of a highly elaborately crafted coat of mail were
also found; they are partly iron, partly brass; the iron here, for
one reason or another, is of a higher quality and better preserved
than elsewhere. The purely Roman objects are often provided with
barbaric additions, such as, for example, a breastplate with
barbaric ornaments of thinly beaten gold. They are busy arranging
and displaying everything in Flensburg properly, and identifying the
most important objects. A great deal is among them that had
previously only been found severely damaged or in unrecognizable
remains; in addition to the horse harness and clothing, we also
include, for example, wooden shields. “In the past, ancient
objects were found in greater numbers here in Denmark than in most
other countries, and also iron objects from the 8th-10th century,
which had a great resemblance to Frankish and Burgundian objects;
now we have objects from the 2nd and 3rd century in abundance, and
consequently two endpoints; only the definition of the intermediate
point and the transitions between the two are still unclear and
uncertain to us.
L.
1)
Comp. No. 45.
April
3, 1861 REPORTS FROM MR. CONFERENZ-RATH THOMSEN,
IN
COPENHAGEN, ON THE LATEST DISCOVERIES OF ANTIQUITIES IN DENMARK. 1).
I
have noticed that antiquarians in France, and partly also in England
and other countries, know very little about the new discoveries made
in the North, which nevertheless expand and further confirm our
knowledge of antiquity. For example, I have not yet found anything
in foreign works about the large find at Allersö on Funen.
For
ten years already, during peat cutting in a bog near this village,
iron weapons, particularly lances and javelin points of very fine
workmanship, were found annually. It was also noticed that the wood
in the peat had been preserved to some extent; it still had its
original shape, but had softened like a sponge; the water could be
squeezed out, and if it was left to dry without preparation, it
shrank. As attention was now focused on that location, remarkable
items emerged, such as: a silver fitting from the scabbard of a
sword, on which an inscription had been scratched. belonging to the
oldest type of runic script 2), ivory knobs of... and swords, and
these made us eager to examine the site closely. In 1857, we had a
very dry summer; a distinguished and experienced official of our
museum, the Kammerrath and archivist Herbst, was sent there. He set
up his residence in a tent on this bog and, for three weeks, had
investigations carried out in various directions, which yielded us
brilliant results. They consisted of more than 500 objects, which,
together with those obtained earlier, complement an important but
previously little-known or overlooked section of our museum 1). It
is this section that shows us what was in use immediately after the
Bronze Age and what it supplanted, approximately at the time of
Christ and shortly thereafter. Among the most remarkable pieces are:
exquisitely crafted iron spearheads with inlaid silver ornaments,
entirely of the same kind as on the Bronze Age artifacts, namely,
double circles with a dot in the center; a bronze griffin's head,
presumably an ornament on a helmet; long, exquisitely crafted,
double-edged swords; several swords shaped like swords; scabbard
fittings of silver bronze, ivory, and bone; twenty bone combs (each
warrior must have carried his own comb); the tools of a field smith:
anvil, tongs, hammer, and file, but these (the latter) only with
proper marks, as modern ones usually are; other tools such as bore,
... sickles, and wedges (celts), all of iron; unfortunately, we did
not find the wooden handles of the latter; riding implements, traces
of a peculiar kind, fragments of wooden shields, and many shield
bosses (umbones) of iron, along with fittings from the crossbar that
was attached over the stirrup and served as a handle; even remnants
of A boat has been found. The remarkable thing about this find is
also a long bow and a number of arrows, entirely similar to those of
the Tartar peoples. 1) Some of these arrows have iron points, others
bone points; iron must have been too valuable at the time to be
shot. At least half of the arrows have bone points, and these are
far larger and stronger than those of the savages, and generally
triangular or quadrangular. Another curiosity consists of glass and
other pebbles, which served as board games, and bone dice, two of
which have the usual shape. 2) Two others, however, are entirely
similar to those we obtained from India for the Ethnographic Museum;
these are small, elongated, square rods. These latter dice have not
two, but only one point or eye at each end. I find another
similarity to Indian objects in the shafts of the lances; some of
these are 8 to 9 ell long; these wooden handles are sometimes
hammered into one side, towards the point, with small silver nails,
usually several of them, with rounded heads. In the Indies, there is
an old custom that when an enemy is killed with a lance, a silver
nail is hammered into it, and when several nails are seen, it is
considered a badge of honor for the holder. We and the Ethnographic
Museum have examples of these customs. The same pear-shaped
decoration seen on objects from Suder Brarup can also be found on
some belt coverings.
Many
pieces also bear a strong resemblance to the one of Suder Brarup,
but none with the later, Allemannish, Burgundian, and Merovingian
artifacts, which correspond to the artifacts of our younger Iron
Age.
In
general, the aforementioned artifacts are much more noble and finely
crafted than the later ones. If there is something barbaric here and
there, it is an appendage or addition to the original. There is no
trace of serpent- or dragon-shaped ornaments. In one respect, this
find is very similar to the two Schleswig artifacts, namely that the
artifacts bear the hallmarks of a fierce battle, as they have been
hewn, pierced by arrowheads, bent by enemy hands, and rendered
useless. The wood here, as at Suder Brarup, was also preserved, and
after many trials and effort, we have succeeded in making it strong
again and, I hope, durable. But in one respect, this find differs
significantly from the Brarupschen finds: the iron, which had
completely decayed there, has been preserved. Only the tank shirts,
which had been coated with a kind of varnish, were preserved. It was
clearly visible that it had been present, but even thick axes could
only be seen, not recorded, because the iron had completely decayed,
while we were able to preserve the (wooden) handles.
The
Ny Dam find is entirely different; there, the iron has been
preserved; among them, 30 swords were found, elaborately crafted
spear and javelin points, etc., the swords often made of elaborately
damascened work. Generally, there is no great diversity in the forms
of this and the other two finds, but the objects in these are not
quite as tasteful. The youngest of the coins found here is of
Emperor Macrinus, from the year 217 AD. Since these three major
finds clarified our view of this type of object and the period from
which they originate, we noticed that, without knowing it, we had
previously made several similar small finds; that we had found
rings, pieces of chains, belonging to the same period. Bronze riding
implements found on Zealand are entirely identical to the
Suder-Brarupsche; even on Schonen and in Norway, objects have been
discovered that correspond exactly with those of the three major
finds. These three finds demonstrate that in the 1st and 2nd
centuries AD, connections with the south existed, which had
certainly been broken off for a long time previously, and now fill a
gap in our knowledge of Nordic antiquities, because we lacked the
link between the Bronze Age and the objects from the 6th and 7th
centuries (which we can trace back to the 11th century); here it is,
and indeed very complete.” "I've gone through all our
previous inventories and records. Over the years, some remarkable
and valuable finds have been made in this country, but rarely more
than 20 in total. Of 500 or more pieces lost in battle, skirmish, or
as spoils of war in our former seas, now peat bogs, I can find no
earlier examples than those mentioned above. It's only in recent
times that we've seen such extensive finds. The Norderdorf find was
significant, and the Vienna treasures from the Hallstadt burial
sites are also substantial, and now the seas in Switzerland —
nothing like this was previously known in our country."
"Worsaae sent an artist to Flensburg to draw approximately 300
objects, mostly of natural size, for our Museum's archives; that's
how important he considered the finds from Brarup and Ny Dam. The
actual discoverer, to whom we owe this treasure, is the Inspector of
the Collection of Dutch Antiquities in Flensburg, Mr. Engelhard, and
he will publish a work on both finds. However, since these mines of
discovery are not yet considered exhausted, since highly important
objects were found last year and there is every reason to receive
many more this year, the publication will not be rushed; but
preparations are being made and gathering for a large-scale
publication. Among all these finds are some purely Roman objects,
mixed with objects from semi-barbarian peoples. I have no doubt that
a large portion is indigenous, since we now have at least 20
completely different and far-flung finds. distant locations, only
with objects or small finds of the same kind. The quantity of
objects is also so great that one is convinced that it must be
indigenous, and especially the weapons in general and the tools, for
example, those of the blacksmith, demonstrate this. But when I read
the Roman inscription AEL. AELIANVS on one shield boss (umbo), which
differs slightly from the others, I know that it originally belonged
to a Roman. 1), and when I see this lock of the temple of the
maker...RICVS, I suspect the smith was a Goth, not from 500 AD, but
already from 200 to 300 AD. 2) The finds of captured and exchanged
pieces are certainly traceable; naturally, this also includes ivory
objects. 1) Private letter from Mr. Thomsen, Copenhagen, dated April
3, 1861. ED.
2)
According to a copy of that inscription, kindly sent to us by Dr.
Burman Becker from Copenhagen, we would rather attribute it to the
North Etruscan. ED.
1)
This refers to the Royal Museum of Antiquities, not that of the
Royal Society of Norwegian Antiquities. ED.
1)
Mr. Burman Becker has also kindly sent us copies of this. ED.
2)
That is, the square, Roman. ED.
1)
Mr. Burman Becker has also provided us with a copy of this. ED.
2)
Allow us to note that ...RICVS, as the last part of a defective
name, does not necessarily suggest a Gothic name ending; it could be
a Roman manufacturer's name. e.g., [AP]RICVS, or similar. EDITOR
November
3, 1859 GEOLOGY, INDUSTRY AND COSTUME, CLEARED BY AN ANTIQUE
DISCOVERY IN MAINZ.
On
November 3, 1859, Professor Nöggerath gave a presentation in
Bonn, at the meeting of the Lower Rhine Society for Natural and
Medical Sciences, on the Roman antiquities excavated in 1857 in
Mainz, on the Thiermarkt, in a peat layer at a depth of
approximately 30 feet. He declared that this discovery was also
important from a geological point of view, while the director of the
Association for the Research of Rhine History and Ancient History,
Dr. Jos. Wittmann, had demonstrated that in the first centuries AD,
a branch of the Rhine flowed through the city of
Mainz, in whose swamp the above-mentioned peat layer had formed. Dr.
Wittmann briefly reported on this discovery in his important
treatises entitled: Chronik der niedrigsten Wasserstände des
Rheines vom Jahre 70 nach Christus bis 1858, and Nachrichten über
die im Jahre 1857-1858 im Rheinbette von der Schweiz bis nach
Holland zu Tage kommen Alterthümer und Merkwürdigkeiten
etc., included in Th. II Part 1-2 of the Zeitschrift des Vereins z.
E. rhein. History and Altenthümer zu Mainz. The same scholar
had provided Prof. Nöggerath with an extensive manuscript on
this subject for use, from which the most important information was
communicated by Nöggerath at the aforementioned meeting. Some
of those We adopt the information that has come to the public's
attention (Dr. Wittmann himself will soon publish his manuscript),
all the more readily because Dr. Wittmann and Lindenschmit, during a
visit to the Mainz Museum this summer, shared the same reports
verbally with us and presented us with specimens of some of the
remains they found. In the aforementioned peat layer, a great deal
of leatherwork had been found, most likely originating from a Roman
shoemaker's shop—nearly a wagonful of mostly used shoes and
sandals, albeit very fragmentary, among which fourteen distinct
types could still be recognized. This priceless find for knowledge
of Roman industry and costume, illustrated with plates, will soon be
published by Lindenschmit. We will therefore only mention here that
the manufacturer's or shoemaker's stamp has been stamped on some of
the leather fragments, as I could still clearly read the names: L.
VALE (i.e. Lucii VALErii) C. VENED (i.e. Caji VENEDi) and MONA.
Furthermore,
several remains of Roman clothing made of very fine wool and of
excellent weave were found, along with various small Roman objects
and coins. The leather and wool goods were relatively well
preserved, but the wool had taken on a dark color. The coins were
dated no later than 137 AD, from which one can probably conclude
that all these objects ended up in the swamp around that time.
Common peat plants were easily identified from the peat; in
particular, the following were recognized: birch bark, hazelnuts,
water lentils (Lemna major), and of the moss species: Hypnum
splendens (Hedwigü), Hypnum tameriscinum (Hedw.), Hypnum
latescens (Hedw.), Hypnum triquetrum (Linn.), and Anomodon.
curtipendulum (Hoockeri and Taylori), Byrumbinum (Schreberi), Mnium
roseum (Hedw.), Mnium undulatum (Hedw.). Well-preserved grapevines
were also found, evidence of early viticulture on the Rhine; these
are now the oldest grapevines known from the Rhine region; finally:
feathers of fowl and pigeons.
From
some specimens of this discovery, received by the reporter in Mainz
as a gift from Dr. Wittmann and Lindenschmit, he has donated the
moss species to the National Herbarium, the feathers to the National
Museum of Natural History, and the leatherwork to the Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden. The leatherwork,
The
stone, which had hardened and shrivelled due to severe drying, has
been carefully restored to its original softness by an experienced
Leiden tanner, Mr. Visser.
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/boeken1/gview?query=oudheidkundige+ontdekking+mainz+wittmann&coll=boeken1&identifier=YaFUAAAAcAAJ
November
23, 2025 The Thorsberg moor
(German:
Thorsberger Moor, Danish: Thorsberg Mose or Thorsbjerg Mose, South
Jutlandic: Tosbarch, Tåsbjerre "Thor's hill")
near
Süderbrarup in Anglia, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, is a peat
bog in which the Angles deposited votive offerings for approximately
four centuries. It is the location of important Roman Iron Age
finds, including early Elder Futhark runic inscriptions such as the
Thorsberg chape, a Roman helmet, a shield buckle, and an early
example of socks (attached to trousers). The finds are of similar
importance as the contemporaneous finds from Illerup and Vimose in
Denmark.
Excavation
The
moor was excavated in 1858–1861 by a teacher from Flensburg,
Helvig Conrad Engelhardt. The objects recovered by Engelhardt are on
exhibit in the state museum of archaeology at Gottorf Castle;
another 500 finds are on exhibit in the National Museum of Denmark
in Copenhagen.
Discoveries
The
deposits were made from approximately 100 BC to 500 AD and are
clearly votive in nature. However, it is doubtful that they were
dedicated specifically to Thor. The placename may reflect worship of
Thor there by Danes during the Viking Age rather than by Angles
during the Roman Iron Age. And as Engelhardt noted, although the
'Thor's hammer' symbol occurs on several finds from the site, it is
a motif that can be found in many non-Germanic contexts, even on
Native American artefacts. They include early examples of clothing,
both Germanic and Roman, in particular the footed trousers, which
are commonly dated to the 4th century but which now appear to be no
later than 300 AD; objects of Roman workmanship including two
phaleræ, military decorations in the form of richly decorated
gold discs 13.2 cm (5.2 in) in diameter made in the 3rd century in
the workshop of Saciro, thought to have been near Cologne, which
have the image of a seated man with a spear, possibly a
representation of Mars; and objects of Germanic workmanship, notably
the Thorsberg chape, a piece of a scabbard bearing one of the
earliest inscriptions in runes.
Some
of the Germanic fibulæ and shield bosses of ultimately Roman
origin appear to be from Germanic tribes in Greater Germania, who
were in closer contact with the Romans than the Angles. After
approximately 200 AD, the deposition of weapons increased, possibly
as a result of conflict between tribes such as the Marcomannic war
(166 to 180 AD). Many of the objects deposited, especially the
weapons, have been made useless by breaking, bending, etc. It was
common practice among Celtic peoples to ritually "kill"
such weapons.
In
addition to the weapons and other man-made objects, the deposits in
the bog include isolated bones. Just outside the moor is an Iron Age
tumulus with a stone circle.
Papini
and the Devil, red binding
GHOSTS
IN THE PEEL
Rumors
circulated last week that the Limburg Peel region, particularly
around Helenaveen, is haunted. There were reports of eerie noises
and stones, rotten apples, and even tomatoes flying around for no
apparent reason. I rushed to the threatened location and found that
the locals had adopted the usual attitude of somewhat fearful
disbelief regarding these phenomena. However, there is one man who
persists in an unwavering belief: the Peel region isn't just
haunted; the devil is raging "to the point that it's no longer
beautiful." That man is Mr. Leo Kluijtmans. He lives on "Hoeve
het Volkmeer" (Farm of the Volkmeer), on Grashoek, an
inhospitable place that must indeed be a paradise in the eyes of
ghosts with a sense of natural beauty.
Mr.
Kluijtmans is an antiquarian and 56 years old. He has six children,
aged four to eighteen, and his fruit-growing business, which he
primarily manages with his staff, is estimated to be worth around
€200,000. He's not wealthy, but he manages to get by enough to
have enough time for his hobby of archaeology. When I enter his
living room, I see a book lying on a trestle table: "Papini.
The Devil." Upon closer inspection, this turns out to be not
entirely without meaning. Mr. Kluijtmans had been a farmer since he
was twelve. He could do so because he "didn't have to fight the
battle of life." After all, his father, a peat digger by trade,
had worked his way up to become manager of the best farm in the
region. And his research began when, as a boy, he discovered some
shards in the sand during some leveling work for the construction of
a temporary church. He went to ask the teacher about it. And he
said: "Those are the remains of urns." Later, Mr.
Kluijtmans also found whole urns.
A
little bit of ancient history. In 1910, the remains of a Roman
officer were found near Helenaveen. A golden helmet—which can
still be seen in a museum somewhere—a A silver spur, a wine
barrel holding two to three liters, a horseshoe, and some baskets of
leather. Mr. Kluijtmans had long been thinking about solving that
case. However, he had to wait years. In 1959, a fire broke out at
the aforementioned location—which he knew from his father—that
lasted for weeks. This opened up the area, which had previously been
virtually inaccessible to humans. But it wasn't until 1960 that Mr.
Kluijtmans dared to enter. One Sunday after Mass, however, he took
the plunge and made a surprising discovery: he found a curious
moonstone. At the very spot where the Roman's helmet had also been
found.
From
that moment on, Mr. Kluijtmans was certain: this moonstone had
murdered the Roman. And that Roman hadn't been a warrior, but a
preacher of the faith, a martyr.
"How
do you know that?"
"That,"
Mr. Kluijtmans replied. "lies in the magical plane."
The
magical plane. Mr. Kluijtmans shows me a kind of survey form from
the "Central Committee for Research into Dutch Folklore of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Department of
Folklore." Do you know stories about (I'll just give a small
sample from the extensive anthology): "A Voice from the Water,"
"Changing Children," "Changing Witches,"
"Spinning Gnome Woman," "White Ladies," "Huns,"
"False Surveyors," "Derk with the Bear,"
"Heemanneke Ossaert," "Illness as a Cloud,"
"Ghost Funeral," "Sacred Bullets," "People
Who Can Make Peat March," "Shepherds Who Can Turn Their
Sheep into Haystacks or Something Like That," "Music in
the Air," "People Who Were Pulled Off the Road?"
Mr.
Kluijtmans knows all about that last phenomenon. He's experienced it
himself. How?
The
Mr. Kluijtmans must have been in his early twenties when he cycled
home from lessons one Sunday afternoon. Lessons, because at the time
he played the accordion in an amateur jazz band. At a crossroads, he
was stopped by an intelligible force. He felt as if he had to fight
against a force that ordered him to turn back.
Back
to the Roman, however. Mr. Kluijtmans not only knows that he must
have been a martyr and preacher of the faith. He even knows his
name. How?
"One
night," says Mr. Kluijtmans, "I woke up at 12:30, feeling
short of breath. I thought: there's someone in the room. When I
opened my eyes, I saw nothing. When I closed them, I did see him. I
asked: 'What's your name?' And then a beautiful, clear, distinct
voice sounded, saying: 'Basilius.' I nudged my wife and said:
'Woman, I know his name.'" My wife then replied, still
sleepily, "Tell me tomorrow morning."
Mr.
Kluijtmans has seen the devil. How? "One Sunday in September, I
was doing research in the Peel. There had just been a murder there.
I was passing a stretch of water, and there, standing a short
distance apart, were three fishermen, fishing rods in hand. I cycled
past, and one turned his head and looked at me, sending a shiver
down my spine. About ten meters away stood the second; he turned
completely, and his eyes looked like fireballs. The third had a
reddish complexion. That was around 11:30 in the afternoon. At 5:30,
I passed that spot again, and the fishermen were still there. Then
the middle one pulled his rod out of the water and, his head carved
from granite, came at me without blinking. I'm not easily
frightened, so I looked at him coldly. He said nothing, and I said
nothing. His eyes bulged from their sockets. When he came within a
meter of me, I hesitated. He wanted to destroy me. At the same
moment, it was as if he were seized by a higher power, and he fell
back into a helpless smallness, into nothingness. At that moment,
too, I saw a glimpse of divine beauty on his face: there was
something delicate there, something very subtle.
When
Mr. Kluijtmans heard about those ghostly rumors in the Peel region,
he knew immediately that they were true. There are stories about
dogs chasing cyclists. That's true. "The devil likes to
manifest himself in a dog!"
Mr.
Kluijtmans' grandmother was a clairvoyant. "This traditional
story—which must have taken place around 1860—is known
from her. She was a farmer's maid. And one day, at eleven o'clock in
the evening, she went to fetch water from the well. She had just
taken the bucket off the hook and put it down when she thought: what
do I see there? It was a funeral procession in the moonlight. Her
hair rose up under her cap. She saw a woman, tying her apron at the
back, running after the procession.
Days
later, there really was a funeral procession in the village. And the
grandmother remembered that she had been that running
woman-in-apron. The "Folklore Department" calls it: "Ghost
funerals, funeral procession."
I
drive with Mr. Kluijtmans to the place where he found that famous
moonstone.
"I
have one condition," he says beforehand, "if you find
anything, it's mine."
It
costs me no effort to make that promise. Even less to keep it.
Because, upon closer inspection, I find, in the designated spot in
the Absolutely nothing. It's a patch of freshly plowed earth.
When
we return to his house, Mr. Kluijtmans shows me a few more
archaeological finds, which, to my taste, are quite remarkable, and
which he has stored in a small suitcase. A remarkable arrowhead and
a strange stone knife. He talks about them with infectious
enthusiasm. Meanwhile, Papini and the Devil are still bound in red
on the cupboard. Ghosts in the Peel.
Whatever
the case, Mr. Kluitmans simply continues, as he has been accustomed
to doing since he was twelve. Incidentally, he tells me, not without
justified pride, that he has a permit from the bishop to dig in the
area on Sundays. The only restriction imposed on him is that he must
make "reasonable use" of it.
HERMAN
HOFHUIZEN
Biography
of Johannes Apollonius Ort.
‘Look,
there you have a piece of Roman road’.
‘How
do you see that’?
Explanation
followed. About 25 years ago I got to know an archaeologist in the
cavalry captain Ort during a horseback riding tour that we made in
the vicinity of Breda, where we both worked as teachers - he also as
head of education for the cavalry weapon - at the Royal Military
Academy.
Some
time later he gave me the opportunity to view his treasures - his
urns, his crockery, his coins - in his house.
When
I now venture, as a result of that closer acquaintance at that time,
which continued in later years, and mainly also in response to the
urging in this matter of his widow, to comply with the honourable
request of the board of our Society, to write an obituary of the
deceased Colonel Ort, then I must first confess that it is not
possible for me, as a non-expert, to place his merits as an
archaeological researcher in the true light. I will therefore limit
myself to the statements and information, mainly provided to me by
his widow and to a few notes concerning the writings published by
him.
Johannes
Apollonius Ort was born in Woudrichem on 2 May 1842 as the eldest
son of the fairly large family of doctor W.F. Ort and Miss S.G.
Hanegraaff. He received his first education there at the regular
primary school until he was 12, enjoyed his further education at the
then so favourably known boarding school of Mr. Kattenbusch in
Gorinchem and then at the Royal Military Academy in Breda. On 22
June 1861, at the age of 19, he was appointed 2nd lieutenant in the
5th dragoon regiment. His clear intellect, his gift of
communication, his more than usual cheerfulness, his independent,
yet compliant character, his good military qualities - although at
the time he could express his disapproval of existing conditions or
measures taken in a rather noisy manner - soon made him stand out to
his superiors as an officer who could and should be considered for
special services. Thus, in 1870-1872 he was a teacher of military
subjects at the main course of the cavalry in Haarlem; from 1874 to
1877, in which last year he was appointed captain, he held the
position of 1st lieutenant-adjutant with the 2nd hussar regiment; in
1879 he was charged as captain-instructor with the training of
horses and the education of recruits with his regiment; from 1880 to
1887 he was head of education in cavalry subjects and in horse
riding at the Royal Military Academy.
As
a senior officer he was later regularly appointed to take a seat on
the committee for the officer examination of cadets; and when his
turn came for a regimental command, and they wanted to retain the
then instructor at the riding school, as particularly suitable for
that, as a colonel in that position, the main board showed him the
appreciation of his merits in his appointment as colonel, above the
formation (on a lieutenant-colonel salary), a distinction that has
not been granted to anyone since. After four years in command of the
1st Hussar Regiment in Deventer, he was retired in April 1899.
Already
in his childhood he had shown his spirit of inquiry in diligent
reading and collecting old objects. The course of study at the
Academy at that time was not very suitable to keep that spirit
alive; and the young, cheerful cavalry officer, who had broken free
with so many others from the oppressive bonds with which the
outdated educational system in Breda kept the cadets in line,
initially found too much taste in the free social life, among jolly
comrades, for him to have thought of devoting himself to study right
away. In all respects to be the carefree - if necessary daring -
cavalryman - his illusions did not go any further in those years. In
1870, when he became a teacher at the course in Haarlem, the books
had to be brought out, and in 1874, again in garrison in Venlo, a
military assignment, as it were, automatically indicated to him the
direction in which he would further develop himself in the
scientific field. In all garrisons, the officers had to make maps of
the garrison town and its surroundings on a scale of 1/8000. Ort was
to do this in Venlo. In completing this task, his dormant spirit of
inquiry revived. The terrain, which was already so familiar to him
from his horseback rides, now had to be examined even more
accurately. Inquiries had to be made with the inhabitants of the
country and heathland; information was given to him about hills and
old ramparts, which, by their regular construction, were already
had
attracted his attention; finds were shown to him of old bronze
objects, of old vessels or fragments thereof, of urns, of coins; old
burial places were pointed out to him... His mind had found what -
besides his military duties - would occupy and fascinate him for the
rest of his life. The map was drawn, but the terrain remained his
field of research. Wherever he went later - and cavalry officers
often change garrisons - the perimeter was traversed, recorded with
a searching eye, excavations were made there and everything he found
and learned in the field of archaeology was finally carefully
recorded.
At
the beginning of his research in Venlo he met a foreman of the
Venlo-Boxteler railway Frans Deserière, who seemed to know
him so well that he suggested that they do research together from
now on 1. The amount of help he must have had from this simple
workman is best shown by the statement in one of his writings that
Dr. W. Pleyte, the well-known curator (later director) of the
National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, testified in a report to
his director about Deserière: ‘One of the subordinate
persons, a foreman on the Venlo-Boxteler railway, is one of the most
developed persons in the field of archaeological research in this
region. He uses all his spare time for the investigation of the
various antiquities and is very skilled and careful in excavating
urns and other objects. It would be desirable if this person F.D.
could be retained for such matters for the benefit of the ancient
history of Limburg’. With this ‘expert’ Ort
successively investigated the villages of Blerick, Grubbenvorst,
Lottum, Tienraay, Meerloo, Baerlo, Kessel and many others, as well
as the Jammerdaalsche heath near Venlo, where they were able to
enjoy good results.
After
his marriage in October 1876 to Helena Catharina Grobbee, she was
often his faithful companion in his investigations. Completely
sympathetic to her husband’s amateur studies, she accompanied
him on his walks and excursions, she was present at his excavations;
while afterwards she followed his combinations or conclusions with
regard to the information obtained and the discoveries made with
participating attention, and co-considered them. When Ort was
transferred to Deventer as a captain in 1877, he had already amassed
a considerable collection of urns, jugs, coins, etc. in Limburg, in
addition to the many with which he had enriched the museum in
Leiden.
In
1879 he came to Leiden in garrison. ‘There I was soon able to
enjoy the friendship of Messrs. Dr. C. Leemans, director of and Dr.
W. Pleyte, curator of the National Museum of Antiquities. They gave
me the requested information with the most courtesy and also showed
me the way to give a more scientific direction to the research that
we continued. A large number of writings, including the Bonner
Jahrbücher and the Publications du Limbourg, which I received
for reading, explained to me many things that I had noticed but not
thoroughly understood. I made notes during this study, as soon as it
concerned locations in Limburg or near the Dutch borders and drew a
map at 1/50,000 of the region between Nijmegen, Birten, Aachen and
Tongres, on which I placed the Roman roads and a coloured sign at
each find location, to indicate to which period the found objects
belonged, all this however only for my own use... it made me decide
to prepare the notes and the map for the press. Dr. Leemans and Dr.
Pleyte have considerably lightened my work through their help and I
hereby openly express my sincere thanks to both gentlemen for this'.
He
had opened up a new field of work. The investigations along fields
and roads would be processed in the quiet study or in the living
room. While Ort was working on this, his main work, his first little
book saw the light of day in 1882: ‘Places in the municipality
of Blerick (Limburg), where prehistoric, Germanic and Roman objects
have been found 1’. In the Publications de la Société
d'archéologie dans le duché de Limbourg, Tome XVIII,
the learned national archivist of Limburg Jos. Habets had described
the Roman road from Tongeren to Nijmegen along the left bank of the
Meuse and the sites of Roman, Germanic and Frankish antiquities in
the vicinity of that road. Among other things, it was mentioned that
excavations had taken place at the Römerheide in Blerick at the
time with the aim of searching for hidden treasures in that
municipality, and that even officers from Venlo had participated in
them.
He
had hardly read this when Ort took up his pen: ‘I consider
myself called, but also qualified, to bring some more precise
information about one thing and another, but mainly about that
fact’. And between the statements of the various finds and
locations, he tells how in 1874 he found several people digging in
different places on the heath, who told him that they were looking
for a treasure that was supposedly hidden in a beautiful, red,
earthen pot with a lid; they knew this from a pastor.
‘There
went on for me’ (in connection with other circumstances) - he
writes - ‘a light went on; the pastor of Ittervoort, who had
searched in vain for the Roman settlement at Blerick, now hoped,
without cost and effort, to find that settlement by having the
farmers search for him; he had therefore given them the description
of a Roman pot of terra sigillata. I brought this to the attention
of those people, who immediately stopped searching’. He
concludes the booklet with the words: ‘I have hereby given the
further information that I promised, and have cleared the Venlo
garrison, as well as that good team leader Frans Deserière,
of the blame cast upon them’.
Two
years later, in 1884, his above-mentioned work appeared: ‘Oude
wegen en landwehren in Limburg en buren gewesten’, which can
be regarded as a supplement to Pleyte's ‘Nederlandsche
Oudheden van de Vroegste tijden tot op Karel den Groote’, in
which Limburg and Brabant are not discussed. In this work, the Roman
and other old roads are described that are located north of the
Rhine, between the Lippe and the Dutch borders, between the Rhine
and the Maas and on the left bank of the Maas, as well as the
landwehrs in those regions. The scientific manner of treatment is
particularly evident from the preceding thirty pages of notes
concerning: the Roman roads in general; distribution of roads to
their destination; road construction; direction of roads; tracing of
roads; road measurements in the Roman Empire; about the map of
Peutinger and the travel book of Antoninus; course of the lower
Rhine and the Waal in Roman times; canals and dikes. And it
certainly benefits the work that a skilled military man chose this
subject for treatment. Even more than the great highways, also built
in our country on Napoleon's orders, the Roman roads are mainly
military roads; and so the details, for example of direction and
construction, will probably have been more accurately appreciated by
an eye trained in military terms than those would have been noticed
by a less expert.
Be
that as it may, the work went out into the world with the following
highly favourable preface by Leemans and Pleyte: 'A book like this
needs no recommendation. Compiled diligently and with judgment from
widely scattered data, supplemented by own research, the work is a
first source for anyone who wants to continue this research and is
interested in the history of his country. It is an introduction to
the study of antiquity for the whole of the Netherlands, not yet
treated from this point of view.
‘May
it receive the interest it deserves and which will make it possible
for the second part with the designed archaeological map to appear’.
How
many are there in the Netherlands who buy a work on Roman roads in
Limburg? The answer to that question will also explain why the wish
expressed in the last part of this preface could not be fulfilled.
Ort had imagined that this first work would be followed by a second
work, ‘consisting of an alphabetical glossary of the locations
with a more or less accurate description of what was found and of
the location itself’ and later by an archaeological map, made
at 1/50000, which has already been mentioned above. They have not
appeared. This must have disappointed him, the Maatschappij der
Nederlandsche Letterkunde offered him its membership shortly
afterwards (1886), which must have been proof to him that his work
had attracted more attention than the publisher thought he could
establish.
The
previous year he had submitted a piece entitled: ‘Der Römerort
Sablones’ as a contribution to the work that Dr. Leemans, as
an archaeologist, was offered on his 50th anniversary, which place
according to him had to be sought on the Jammerdaalsche heath.
At
the beginning of the nineties we find Major Ort in 's-Hertogenbosch.
There too he would leave the traces of his tireless activity, of his
ever more extensive research into everything that relates to the
history of the Old Netherlands. In the winter of 1891/92 he arranged
and catalogued the collection of antiquities in the museum of the
Provincial Society of Arts and Sciences, for which the board of this
society presented him with a certificate with a silver medal in
recognition of services a
coin
minted in the name of the person offered as a gift.
The
printed ‘Proceedings’ of this society for the years
1891-93 still preserve a lecture by Ort, given at the general
meeting of 10 November 1892 (or 1891?). He would have liked to have
provided a critical review of the region we inhabit, with regard to
the various peoples who were housed here in ancient times, in
connection with the objects found from those times, the land
defences that separated the tribes and their traffic routes.
‘However,
it has not been possible for me, as I was only in garrison here for
a short time and the hours that my professional activities left me
free to devote to antiquities were too few, to achieve such a
result; but what is not yet the case, I hope will one day be the
case’. These last words are characteristic of the persistent
amateur worker: what we cannot do today, we will do tomorrow. That
evening he limited himself to showing the members of the society
some antiquities from the museum, to describe them in all their
details, and to investigate in connection with the finds and local
conditions what conclusions could be drawn from them with regard to
times long past.
Wherever
he went to garrison, he continued his research, and in this way he
gradually collected a wealth of data. One thing had to lead to
another. ‘It is an introduction to the study of antiquity for
the whole of the Netherlands’, Leemans and Pleyte had said of
his ‘Old roads and land defences in Limburg’. In this
way he had to come to that study of antiquity by himself; and so
after his retirement in 1899 his ‘Architectural notes, mostly
relating to the Netherlands and its inhabitants’ were
successively printed. In five larger and smaller episodes 1 were
discussed in 340 pages:
I.
a. The confluence of the Maas and Waal during Julius Caesar.
b.
Caesar's campaign against the Usipetes and Tencteri.
II.
c. The Marsi and their land.
III.
d. Oldenzaal during the Salian Franks.
e.
Crhepstini 2.
IV.
f. The Germanic God Mars.
V.
g. The Roman left-bank roads in the Batavian country.
Anyone
who works through these studies will understand how much work and
thought underlie them. For what is offered to us here is not
copying. Far from it; the oldest sources are climbed. First the
Greek and Roman writers are consulted, then it is investigated what
well-known historians have thought they read from those stories,
which leave so much to be desired in terms of clarity; and in the
chaotic confusion, which will then have occurred to his mind more
than once, light first comes to him in his walks, his astute
observations in the terrain, to which the described actions or
situations relate. There he lets the roads, the woods, the houses,
the cemeteries, the old monuments, the stones speak to him, and he
understands their language; there he listens with tense attention to
the stories of the still undeveloped, superstitious country
dwellers, preferably of the oldest among them, who tell him of the
white women, of the cabauters, of the werewolves, of the gray foal,
of 'the Gluininge' from whose eyes, nose and mouth fire spouts, and
which they themselves have seen. All this is accurately recorded,
carefully considered, linked together, checked on the oldest maps
and only then is an own opinion developed, often deviating from what
experts had hitherto accepted as the truth, or had copied from
others.
Whoever
works in this way has earned the right to be called an antiquarian.
A
single example. In order to determine the place of residence of the
Marsi, we begin with the communication of what Strabo and Tacitus
have handed down to us about that people, ‘whom we know, under
that name, only through the description of the campaigns of
Germanicus, in the years 14, 15 and 16 AD’. Then the opinion
of some thirty German and Dutch historians is mentioned, whose
statements about that place of residence vary between Texel and
Holstein, between Friesland and the Lahn.
Since
‘the attack of Germanicus in the autumn of 14 AD. teaches us
that the Marsi must have lived in such a region that the Bructeri,
Tubantes and Usipetes had the opportunity to gather in a short time
between the Rhine and the Roman army that retreated from the Marsi
country to that river', it is then considered necessary to first set
up an investigation into the places of residence of these three
tribes, 'whereby the years in which this history took place should
not be lost sight of'. And when the conclusion is then drawn: 'the
only region where - according to my view - the Marsi could have
lived and which meets all the requirements that the historical story
of Tacitus can be stated, is the province of Overijssel' - then it
is still 'to make this as clear as possible, necessary to examine
not only this country itself, but also that between its southern
borders and the Rhine, from an archaeological point of view'.
In this way, the landwehrs and the old roads in those regions
are examined on the map and on the terrain, after which the journey
of Germanicus in the year 14 can be followed without any difficulty.
As a further indication, it is then given: 'From all that has
been stated above, it appears that the area of the
Marsen must have been located north of the Hallerlandweer
(municipality of Zelhem) and at about one day's march distance from
it'. However, our researcher is not yet satisfied with this.
At the beginning of his study, the assumption is made that
the name Marsen could have been derived from the land they
inhabited, from the marsen, low-lying places or hollows on the
heath, which are filled with water and around which a narrow strip
of grass grows, or from marschgrond, low-lying marshy and rich land,
which in the Middle Ages was often called mersch;
while in the story of Tacitus it appears that the highly
venerated sanctuary (of) Tanfanae (in the Marsenland) was razed to
the ground. He therefore believes that
the soil name ‘Mars’ and an old tradition about the
place where the temple (of) Tanfanae stood, can provide further
indications about the borders of the then Marsenland, and therefore
mentions all the places in Overijssel and Drente in or where the
word mars occurs, which is frequently the case there, in order to
determine approximately the extent of the old Marsenland.
He is not yet able to say with certainty where the temple
(of) Tanfanae once stood. A legend
places it on Tankenberg near Oldenzaal, certainly the oldest city in
the Marsen and Tubantenland. He will
discuss this in a subsequent note. The following note: ‘Oldenzaal
during the Salian Franks and the old court places, names of farms
and traditions in the Marken Berghuisen and de Lutte’
(published in 1901), is the most extensive (200 pages) and gives, in
the various walks along roads and neighbourhoods outside Oldenzaal,
especially to a layman, a correct idea of the way in
which an antiquarian is able to draw his conclusions from everything
he encounters on his way, from the simple names of farms. Here too,
a few selections. ‘Three kilometres south of Oldenzaal’
- as we read on p. 153 - ‘the
arterial road to Enschede is intersected by a stream, which rises
approximately at the farm Ulenkotte, located to the east of that
road, in the elfter lescap of the marke der Lutte’. .... (p.
156) ‘The Ulenkotte is associated with the night owl.
That bird has a predictive power;
through its plaintive sound it indicates the approach of
death, it is a bird of misfortune and in the wild hunt, which is led
by Wodan or Holda, two owls sometimes fly in front’. .... (p.
157) ‘From this circumstance I deduced that there had to be a
burial ground at the Ulenkotte. I
actually found burial mounds, a few hundred meters behind the Kotte,
behind the nearby Christmas House....’ As promised, the author
returns in this note to the expression used by Tacitus: ‘templum
quod Tanfanae vocabant’, and gives an extensive explanation of
why he does not, like Van der Aa and Weeling, Grimm and Van den
Bergh, believe in a goddess Tanfanae, but is of the opinion that
Tacitus should have written ‘Tancfanae’, which would
have the meaning of ‘sacred place of justice’;
that furthermore the dolmens on Tancenberg (near Oldenzaal)
together formed the templum Tancfanae, and that these dolmens were
razed to the ground by the Romans in the year 14.
In the following study ‘The Germanic God Mars’ he
is designated as the deity who represented the Right in the templum
Tancfanae and also as the ancestor and legislator of the Marses,
which means that a derivation of that popular name from marsch- or
marsland must be dropped. In the fifth or last part of the notes
(published in 1904), pending the necessary steps being taken by
private individuals or the government, a preliminary investigation
is conducted into the Roman left-bank roads in the Batavian country,
about which we read the complaint at the beginning: ‘There has
never been a regular investigation into the Roman roads in the
Netherlands; I even doubt whether an
attempt has been made to follow the trail that was found of them at
Kesteren. - In Germany, both the public
and the government are more interested in such matters, as has often
been apparent to me personally’. Ort has done his part to fill
that gap. Before the appearance of this
last part he had thought he could say a few words on an old
controversial issue.
must
also speak. My learned friend Prof. Blok had given a lecture on the
ancient history of the Academy City on 22 January 1903 at the first
meeting of the Association ‘Oud-Leiden’, and as a result
of his research, he had stated, among other things, that the city
had no right to call itself Lugdunum.
Ort
had also been in garrison in Leiden, and of course - one might say -
he had included this point of contention in the circle of his
research. Already in March of that year his ‘Lugdunum’
appeared in print, in which he, after an argument of 20 pages,
concluded:
1.
According to the road measurements given by the Roman geographers,
there used to be a place called Lugdunum within the present city of
Leiden.
2.
This place name means court place on a dune. 3. This courthouse,
located on and near the Pieterskerkhof, was still in use in the
Middle Ages for the count's court. The local organization of it and
the place names there and there undoubtedly point back to the old
Germanic situation.
Oud-Leiden
can therefore be quiet, It was and remains Lugduno-heim'.
An
interesting battle between the professional historian and the
amateur archaeologist!
In
the first yearbook of Oud-Leiden (1904) Prof. Blok gave, as
promised, the elaboration of his notes in a piece, with the heading
'Lugdunum Batavorum', in which he maintained his opinion, expressed
in the lecture held earlier, against Ort's view, while an extract
from Ort's brochure 'Lugdunum' followed as a second piece. The
grounds, put forward by the latter - mainly derived from the local
location according to the Peutinger table and the travel book of
Antoninus, as well as from the meaning of the word Lugdunum - were
weighed in the first part and found wanting; attention was drawn to
(alleged) errors; and finally - with somewhat too great certainty of
being right - 'after this digression on the assertions and
assumptions in the brochure of Mr. Ort, with gratitude for the good
intention thereof, farewell'.
But
Ort was not the man to let himself or his brochure be farewelled in
this way. If he had dared to enter the arena against a professor of
history, it was because he had the firm conviction that his opinion
was the correct one, and after he had previously examined the matter
from all sides. In den Nederlandsche Spectator 1904 Nos. 10 and 16
he also provided the proof that his armour was more solid than his
opponent had thought, and that it was not so easy to find its weak
points. In that refutation especially Ort's solid knowledge, his
originality, and even his personality come to the fore. Those who
knew him hear him with the somewhat screeching voice that was
sometimes characteristic of him, and putting the emphasis on every
word, utter the sentence before he wrote it down: 'Do you understand
now, Professor, why I want nothing to do with that god Lug 1 in my
determination of Lugdunum?' He concluded his reply with the
communication of a letter he had received from Mr. Espérandieu
in Paris, dd. 15 August 1903, in which, among other things, 'Dans le
prochain numéro de la Revue que je dirige 2, vous trouverez
un petit compte rendu de la brochure Lugdunum. By the way, the
conclusions are not sufficiently accepted by all the world: the
language of the language is obscure, the opinions are based on the
legal basis and the legal requirements, and the permissions are
accepted. The new ideas are to express certain aspects of the beauty
of the environment and to inform the reader.
Prof.
Blok has left Ort the last word. I will wait to make a decision to
whom the palm of victory should be awarded in this matter; but I
believe that Ort's activity in the field of antiquity has been
communicated in the above, insofar as he has given it expression to
the outside world. His writings show evidence of sound study, a
sharp ability to combine and above all of fresh originality. The
writer follows his own path. He does take note of what others before
him have said about the subject to be treated, but he does not let
himself be led by any of them, and does not shy away from drawing
conclusions that conflict with what renowned antiquities had
proclaimed as established. It is therefore understandable that his
insights will not be accepted by everyone as 'the truth', especially
where it concerns actions and situations that have to be exposed
from obscure stories from twenty centuries ago. However, he never
lacks grounds for what he asserts; sometimes he is even overwhelming
with them, which makes reading his writings somewhat tiresome, which
certainly cannot be classified as light reading. But he did not
intend to provide them either. And it was no light task for him to
make that to collect. He had to first
study Latin, Greek, yes even Celtic and old Germanic;
he had to acquire knowledge of Roman, Greek and Norse
theology and mythology; he appears to
be familiar with old Germanic and old Dutch legends and traditions,
with folklore. Only his sharp eye for
the terrain is connected with his military, especially cavalry work,
for which he was trained from an early age. He
had to learn the rest himself, helped along by a few good friends,
among whom especially Dr. M.E. Houck in Deventer;
while he corresponded several times about Celtic expressions
or obscurities with Messrs. Espérandieu in Paris and Mr. C.A.
Serrure in Brussels, the latter (since deceased) came to
visit him several times. Only friends and acquaintances know about
his work in the field of numismatics. Both
through his researches in the vicinity of his various garrison
towns, and through his foreign journeys to Trier, Constantz,
Badenweiler, etc., during which he naturally did not neglect to
become acquainted with everything that was worth seeing in the field
of antiquity, he gradually acquired an extensive collection not only
of Roman and Germanic weapons, tools, urns, jars, jugs, etc., but
also (both through finds and purchases) of mainly Roman consular and
imperial coins to a number of ± 2000 varieties.
He judiciously compiled a catalogue of these, following the
classification of the well-known works of Cohen: ‘Description
générale des monnaies de la république romaine,
communément appelées médailles consulaires.
Paris chez M. Rollin 1857’, and ‘Historical
description of coins struck under the Roman Empire, together with
appeals for imperial medals. Paris chez
M. Rollin 1859’. The oldest of the collection are 3 coins from
Campania (minted 268 BC); one of the
most important is a denarius of P. Lucinius Stolo, minted 17 BC and
originating from the collection of Dr. Phil.
Paul Becker, Director of the Lyceum Richelieu in Odessa;
of Vitellius there are 3 denarius and 2 medium bronze, one of
the first found in Tiel - coins that are relatively rare, because
that emperor reigned for less than eight months. There are several
coins among them that have been found in our country, such as in
Nijmegen, in the vicinity of Gorinchem, between Woudrichem and
Almkerk, in Lusseike outside Venlo, in the Maas in Andel, etc. Three
are listed in the catalogue, as found in Leiden: a medium bronze of
Nero, a medium bronze of Trajan, and a large bronze of Marcus
Aurelius. The entire collection - so an expert assured me - appears
to have been put together with great knowledge and care.
It will be sold in Amsterdam by Mr. Schulman. The collection
of Germanic and Roman antiquities will remain together and will find
its place in the antiquity room in Oldenzaal, founded by Mr. P.J.
Gelderman, to whose establishment Ort largely gave the impetus, and
whose expansion was always followed by him with interest. Until his
death he continued to devote himself to his hobby studies.
After his retirement, having settled in The Hague, he could
not help but feel attracted to the association ‘die Haghe’,
of which he became a member and board member.
He had intended to give a lecture at one of the meetings of
that association, in order to prepare the excavations at Arendsburg
under Voorburg (the old Forum Hadriani), and they would probably
have started under his leadership in the spring;
but a short illness suddenly ended his working life on 8
February 1908. Through his colleagues in the field of archaeology,
but no less through his many friends and acquaintances, also from
non-military circles, the warm-hearted, always cheerful former
colonel will not soon be forgotten. What
he was to his dearly loving wife, only she knows, and it will be her
greatest comfort to continue to think back on that.
His merits were recognized by the Government in his
appointment as an officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau;
while he was, besides our Society, also a member of the
Frisian Society of History, Antiquity and Linguistics, of ‘Gelre’,
Association for the practice of Gelderland history, antiquity and
law, of the Provincial Society of Arts and Sciences in North
Brabant, of the Bonner Verein, as well as associate foreigner of the
Société numismatique de la Belgique. G.J.W.
Koolemans Beijnen. 1 The former foreman still lives in
Blerick near Venlo. 1 From his introduction: Old roads and landwehrs
in Limburg and adjacent regions. Leiden,
E.J. Brill. 1884.
1 Roermond, J.J. Romen and Sons.
1882. 1 Published separately as an offprint in 1894 at
's-Hertogenbosch at the Gebroeders Muller.
1
The first appeared at Deventer at the Deventer book and lithography
office, the others in The Hague at the Gebroeders van Cleef.
2
A word, occurring on the Dutch part of the Peutinger table or world
map of Castorius, which is explained by Ort with 'tombstones'.
1
Prof. Blok thought he had to explain the word Lugdunum from Celtic,
in which language according to some the word Lug would indicate a
well-known deity. Ort explained the word from Germanic.
2
Revue épigraphique du midi de la France.
???
to be allowed to say, that it is a privilege for those who are
interested in the dispute, that they were able to witness the battle
between two such powerful champions.
April
11, 1884 [...] TOOK OVER: From the captain of the cavalry J. A. ORT:
Baked
earth. Large urn, with wide belly, small bottom, wide opening; with
burnt human bones and a piece of bronze wire. Height 33, medium 25
cm. Found between Rooth and Dubbroek, near Maasbree (Limburg).
-
Small pot with flat bottom and wide opening, decorated with notches
on the edge. Height 3.2, medium 6 cm.
-
Urn, with upright wall and, slightly curved inwards, edge decorated
with impressions. Height 18, medium 15.5 cm. From the heath of the
Jammerdal near Venlo.
-
Urn, with wide belly and opening. Height 21.5, medium 19 cm. Found
as furrows. - Part of an urn, like the previous one, decorated with
impressed circles. Found as furrows.
-
Dish, smooth, shiny with flat bottom, having served as a lid for the
previous pot. Height 7, medium 22 cm. Found as furrows.
-
Urn, rough work, with flat bottom, very wide belly and narrow
opening. Height 20.5, medium 16 cm. Found at Schandeloo on the
Ossenberg.
-
Urn, rough work, with wide belly and upright edge. Partly filled
with bones. Height 23, medium 18.5 cm. Found at the Reumer near St.
Jan, under Blerick (Limburg).
-
Very large urn with flat bottom, spherical belly, small, upright,
edge decorated with nail impressions. Height 30, medium, 22 cm.
Found on the Reumer near Blerick.
-
Bowl of glossy black, with flat bottom and standing edge, having
served as a lid for the urn. Height 9, medium 20 cm.
-
Urn, with flat bottom and wide opening, two protrusions on the
belly. Height 20, medium 18.5 cm. Found on the Reumer, near Blerick.
-
Large urn glossy black, with small bottom, wide belly, wide opening
and standing edge. Height 24, medium 20 cm. Found on the Heldensche
heath (Limburg).
-
Part of the edge and belly of a small jar with one ear, found in the
previous urn.
-
Two tapering jars, with narrow belly and wide opening, the edge
decorated with nail impressions. Height 26 and 26, medium 22 and 21
cm. Found in Swolgen (Limburg).
-
Urn, roughly worked, the hand-forming visible on the outside, the
edge with nail impressions. Height 24, medium 20.5 cm. Found as
furrows.
-
Roughly worked and poorly baked urn, with burnt bones. Height 24,
medium 22.5 cm. Found at the Wienkelder in Grubbenvorst (Limburg).
-
Urn of finer earth and harder baking with small flat bolem, wide
belly, wide opening and standing edge. Height 17, medium 20 cm.
Found in Grubbenvorst (Limburg).
-
Small compressed pot, with wide belly and wide opening. Height 6,
medium 7 cm. Found in the previous urn. - Parts of the belly and
edge of a very rough urn, the edge had notches. Medium 16 cm. Found
south of Middelraai under Grubbenvorst.
-
Pot, red. Height 8, medium 8 cm. Found in the Kaldenbroek in
Grubbenvorst.
-
Urn, shiny on the outside, with small flat bottom, wide opening and
standing edge, with burnt bones. Height 18, medium 19 cm. Found on
the old castle Rinkesfort under Baerlo (Limburg).
-
Dish provided with a projection on the side; lid of the previous
urn. Medium 22 cm.
-
Pot with convex bottom and narrow opening. Height 3.5, medium 3 cm.
Found in the previous urn
Bronze
- Part of a decoration with a needle (possibly a dress pin?) Width
2.8 cm. Found as furrows.
Baked
earth. Urn of rough baking. red-brown, the edge decorated with
finger impressions, wide opening, flat bottom. Height 23, medium 22
cm. Found in Montfort near Genouwe (Limburg).
-
Dish brown-black, with standing edge and flat bottom, as lid of
previous urn. Height 9, medium 23 cm.
-
Bowl, smooth brown, with standing edge, small flat bottom. Height
10, medium 21 cm. Found in Tienraai (Limburg).
-
Urn, brown, with wide standing edge and small flat bottom, edge and
belly decorated with impressed lines. Height 22, medium 17 cm. Found
between Wanssum and Mierloo (Limburg).
-
Urn, light red exterior smooth with spherical belly. Height 20,
medium 19 cm. Found as furrows.
Bronze.
- Three burnt pieces of an ornament, found in previous urn.
[from:
Year book of the Society of Dutch Literature, 1908]
Venantius
Fortunatus
Dius
apex carne effigians genetalia limi
vitali
terrae conpingit sanguine gluten,
luciferax
auras animantes affluit illic:
conditur
enixans Adam factoris ad instar;
exiluit
protoplasma solo, res nobilis usu,
dives
in arbitrio radianti lumine: dehinc
ex
membris Adae vas fit tum virginis Evvae:
carne
creata viri dehinc copulatur eidem,
ut
paradyssiaco bene lactaretur in horto.
sed
de sede pia pepulit temeabile guttur,
serpentis
suasu pomi suco atra propinans.
insatiatrici
morti fames accidit illinc.
gavisurus
ob hoc caeli fluis arce locator,
nasci
pro nobis miseraris et ulcere clavi
in
cruce configi: tali malagmate ininctis
una
salus nobis ligno agni sanguine venit.
iucunda
species: in te pia bracchia Cristi
affixa
steterunt et palma beabilis, in hac
cara
caro poenas inmites sustulit haustu.
arbor
suavis agri, tecum nova vita paratur;
electa
ut visu, sic e crucis ordine pulchra
lumen
spes scutum gereris livoris ab ictu.
inmortale
decus nece iusti laeta parasti.
una
omnem vitam sic, crux, tua causa rigavit,
imbre
cruenta pio: velis das navita portum,
tristia
summerso mundasti vulnera clavo,
arbor
dulcis agri, rorans e cortice nectar,
ramis
de cuius vitalia crismata fragrant,
excellens
cultu, diva ortu, fulgida fructu,
deliciosa
cibo et per poma suavis in umbra.
en
regis magni gemmamtem et nobile signum,
murus
et arma viris, virtus, lux, ara precatu,
pande
benigna viam, vivax et fertile lumen;
tum
memor adfer opem nobis, e germine David,
in
cruce rex fixus iudex cum praeerit orbi.
Dulce
decus signi, via caeli, vita redempti.
In
cruce mors Cristi curavit mortua mundi.
Crux
pia, devotas Agnen tege cum Radegunde.
tu
Fortunatum fragilem, crux sancta, tuere.
vera
spes nobis ligno, agni sanguine, clavo.
arbor
suavis agri, tecum nova vita paratur.
Extorquet
hoc sorte dei veniabile signum
rusticulas
laudes viventi reddere flatu,
in
me qui regit ire lutum plasmabile numen,
portio
viventum, curatio fausta medellae,
exclusor
culpae, trinitas effusa, creator,
cuius
honor lumen ius gloria regna coaeve.
Sic
pater et genitus sic scs
spiritus unus.
Eripe
credentes, fidei decus, arma salutis.
Munere,
Criste, tuo removetur causa reatus.
Dulce
mihi lignum, pie, maius odore rosetis.
Dumosi
colles lignum generastis honoris.
Ditans
tampla dei crux et velamen adornas.
Ex
fidei merito magnum, pie, reddis Abraham.
God,
the apex of the earth, fashioning the genitals of the earth, binds
the glue of the vital blood of the earth, and the luminiferous air
flows there: Adam, giving birth, is created in the likeness of the
maker; the protoplasm is exiled from the soil, a noble thing, rich
in the radiant light of his will: then from the limbs of Adam it
becomes the vessel of the virgin Eve: the flesh created by man is
then joined to her, so that she may be well nourished in the garden
of paradise. But from the seat of the pious, the fearsome throat
rushes, at the persuasion of the serpent, offering the black juice
of the apple. Hunger, insatiable for death, strikes from there.
Rejoicing for this, the citadel of the rivers of heaven, the owner
of the citadel, was born for us, with the pain and the wound of the
nail, nailed to the cross: anointed with such an emollient, one
salvation comes to us on the wood of the Lamb's blood. pleasant
appearance: in you the pious arms of Christ
stood fixed and the
palm of the blessed, in this dear flesh bore the cruel punishments
with a sigh.
sweet tree of the field, with you a new life is
prepared; chosen as by sight, so from the order of the cross you
will bear the beautiful light of hope as a shield from the blow of
bruise. immortal glory you have prepared joyfully by the death of
the just. one so, cross, your cause has watered all life, with a
bloody shower piously: you give the sailor a harbor, sadness you
have washed the wounds submerged with a nail, sweet tree of the
field, nectar dripping from the bark,branches from whose vital
chrismations are fragrant,
excellent in worship, divine in birth,
shining in fruit, delicious in food and sweet in the shade with
apples.
here is the jewel of the great king and noble sign, wall
and arms for men, virtue, light, altar with prayer, open the benign
path, lively and fertile light; Then bring us help, from the seed of
David, when the king fixed on the cross will rule the world as
judge.
Sweet glory of the sign, the way of heaven, the life
of the redeemed.
On
the cross, the death of Christ healed the dead of the world.
Pious
cross, cover the devoted Lamb with Radegund.
You,
the Fortunate, the fragile, holy cross, protect.
True
hope for us is wood, the blood of the Lamb, the nail.
Sweet
tree of the field, with you a new life is prepared.
This
fate of God extorts a venial sign To render rustic praises to the
living with breath, In me who rules the clay to go, a moldable
deity, Portion of the living, auspicious cure of medicine, Excluder
of guilt, Trinity poured out, Creator, Whose honor, light, right,
glory reign together.
So
the Father and the begotten, so the Spirit is one.
Rescue
the believers, glory of faith, weapons of salvation.
By
your gift, Christ, the cause of guilt is removed.
Sweet
to me is the wood, pious, greater than the scent of roses.
You
have given birth to the wood of honor on the high hills.
Enriching
the temples of God, you adorn the cross and the veil.
By
the merit of faith, pious, you render great to Abraham.
DIVSAPEXCARNEEFFIGIANSGENETALIALIMI
VITALITERRAECONPINGITSANGVINEGLVTEN
LVCIFERAXAVRASANIMANTESAFFLVITILLIC
CONDITVRENIXANSADAMFACTORISADINSTAR
EXILVITPROTOPLASMASOLORESNOBILISVSV
DIVESINARBITRIORADIANTILVMINEDEHINC
EXMEMBRISADAEVASFITTVMVIRGINISEVVAE
CARNECREATAVIRIDEHINCCOPVLATVREIDEM
VTPARADYSSIACOBENELACTARETVRINHORTO
SEDDESEDEPIAPEPVLITTEMERABILEGVTTVR
SERPENTISSVASVPOMISVCOATRAPROPINANS
INSATIATRICIMORTIFAMESACCIDITILLINC
GAVISVRVSOBHOCCAELIFLVISARCELOCATOR
NASCIPRONOBISMISERARISETVLCERECLAVI
INCRVCECONFIGITALIMALAGMATEININCTIS
VNASALVSNOBISLIGNOAGNISANGVINEVENIT
IVCVNDASPECIESINTEPIABRACCHIACRISTI
AFFIXASTETERVNTETPALMABEABILISINHAC
CARACAROPOENASINMITESSVSTVLITHAVSTV
ARBORSVAVISAGRITECVMNOVAVITAPARATVR
ELECTAVTVISVSICECRVCISORDINEPVLCHRA
LVMENSPESSCVTVMGERERISLIVORISABICTV
INMORTALEDECVSNECEIVSTILAETAPARASTI
VNAOMNEMVITAMSICCRVXTVACAVSARIGAVIT
IMBRECRVENTAPIOVELISDASNAVITAPORTVM
TRISTIASVMMERSOMVNDASTIVVLNERACLAVO
ARBORDVLCISAGRIRORANSECORTICENECTAR
RAMISDECVIVSVITALIACRISMATAFRAGRANT
EXCELLENSCVLTVDIVAORTVFVLGIDAFRVCTV
DELICIOSACIBOETPERPOMASVAVISINVMBRA
ENREGISMAGNIGEMMAMTEMETNOBILESIGNVM
MVRVSETARMAVIRISVIRTVSLVXARAPRECATV
PANDEBENIGNAVIAMVIVAXETFERTILELVMEN
TVMMEMORADFEROPEMNOBISEGERMINEDAVID
INCRVCEREXFIXVSIVDEXCVMPRAEERITORBI
EXTORQVETHOCSORTEDEIVENIABILESIGNVM
RVSTICVLASLAVDESVIVENTIREDDEREFLATV
INMEQVIREGITIRELVTVMPLASMABILENVMEN
PORTIOVIVENTVMCVRATIOFAVSTAMEDELLAE
EXCLVSORCVLPAETRINITASEFFVSACREATOR
CVIVSHONORLVMENIVSGLORIAREGNACOAEVE
R I
T C C
E
H E O R
D
I M L I
E
L P L S
N
I L E T
T
G A S E
E
N D L T
S
V E I V
F
M I G O
I
P C N R
DI
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EXFIDEIMERITOMAGNVMPIEREDDISABRAHAM
IM
X GO
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A E E V
E
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V V E T
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S E R V
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O L A R
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D A S C
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SICPATERETGENITVSSICSCSSPIRITVSVNVS
http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00000790/images/index.html?id=00000790&groesser=150&fip=193.174.98.30&no=&seite=60
See
also Venantius
Fortunatus - Wikipedia
Father
en son Holwerda, row with van Giffen
5
December 1898 COMMUNICATIONS OF VARIOUS NATURE.
REPORT
by Dr. A.E.J. Holwerda,
concerning
the scientific journey to Italy and Greece.
To
His Excellency the Minister of Internal Affairs.
The
scientific journey to Italy and Greece, which I was enabled to
undertake by the Government, had a multifaceted purpose. In the
first place, it was of course in the interest of my education. I
have been charged with explaining the history, art, and life of
ancient peoples, and if one wants to fulfil such a task properly,
then one's own observation of the country of ruins, of the works of
art that are still preserved on classical soil, is absolutely
indispensable. It is entirely connected with this that all kinds of
special research, which had occupied me for a long time, could
hardly be continued without study in the excavated areas and the
museums of Italy and Greece. Likewise I hoped to be able to expand
the material resources for the study of archaeology in our country;
the University Fund opened me a considerable credit for this purpose
and the director of the National Museum of Antiquities instructed me
to try to see whether any gaps in that collection could be filled by
suitable purchases in Italy and Greece. Finally I thought I could
and should promote another interest of national science. Recently
there has been strong pressure from several sides, and rightly so,
that our young scholars should be given more opportunity than
hitherto to undertake a scientific journey to complete their
studies. I had my own opinion about the best way to do this, and I
very much desired to be able to test it in practice. Of course Italy
and Greece, which are so extensively travelled by scholars, offered
ample opportunity for this. If the sending out of young scholars is
to bear fruit, it must be done with deliberation and we can mirror
ourselves on the examples of others, both in what we leave as well
as in what we must do.
What
made my journey very easy was an arrangement by the curators of our
University, whereby my son, the doctoral candidate in classical
literature J.H. Holwerda, was enabled to accompany me through a
subsidy from the Vollenhoven fund. With the greatest appreciation I
also remember the friendly helpfulness that we experienced in Italy,
Greece and Constantinople from our ambassadors and consular agents.
No less do I feel deeply obliged to the Kaiserlich-Deutsch
Archaeological Institut. The perfectly unfettered and selfless way
in which that institution supports the studies of foreigners as
well, is an honour for the German nation, because it springs from
that same honest idealism that constitutes the strength of German
science. In all kinds of matters our German colleagues in Italy and
Greece helped us with their advice and information; we enjoyed their
company, attended their lectures, accompanied them on their travels,
and even stayed in Rome in the Institute building, which had some
space available there. Thus, among others, the names of Professors
E. Petersen, Ch. Hülsen, A. Mau in Rome, W. Dörpfeld and
P. Wolters in Athens will remain in our memory for other reasons
than the services these men rendered to science. The
narrow-mindedness that characterizes some museum boards in Italy was
very striking. Nevertheless, we were kindly granted tickets for free
admission to the State Museums; we gratefully remember in particular
the truly generous board of the Museum of Naples and the excavations
of Pompeii. The way in which the Greek collections are made
available for study is, in a word, exemplary and it is therefore
very regrettable that, for example, in Delphi, which was excavated
by the école Française, the Greek Museum Board, headed
by the well-known general-ephoros P. Kabbadias, cannot yet act with
full authority, by virtue of the agreement with France.
Understandably, the French stipulated for themselves the right of
first publication of what was found there, but for a very long time,
a decade, and with a ban on all foreigners not only from drawing and
photographing, but even from making notes. Every visitor is
therefore closely followed by a soldier.
We
left Leiden on 22 December 1897. From the beginning, the main thing
for us was to limit ourselves; we wanted to see what we saw well.
That is why we also reserved the longest time for Greece. Italy is
relatively easy to reach again. Our visit to Florence was therefore
a preliminary acquaintance; we stayed there for only three days. In
Rome, however, we worked for four weeks. Also with a view to our
their later studies in Greece, a more accurate study of numerous
works of art in Roman museums was very desirable. We made certain
studies in the Vatican, the Capitoline Museum, the Conservator's
Palace, in the warehouse belonging to the last two institutions and
in the so-called Thermenmuseum. The Kircherianum Museum, the
palae-ethnological collections and the museum in the villa Papa
Giulio were visited more cursorily by us. Of modern art we looked at
some of the most famous works by Raphael and Michelangelo. More
deliberately we studied some works of ancient Christian art, among
others the St. Clemente and some Catacombs.
One
will never learn to understand antiquity without penetrating to some
extent into the spirit of later times and in particular that which
immediately followed the downfall of ancient civilization is of
interest to the antiquarian. Of the Roman ruins we made a more
special study of the Forum, Palatinus and the Colosseum. We visited
Tivoli, the villa Hadriana, the via Appia and Latina. Particularly
instructive was a journey that we undertook with the German
Institute under the leadership of professor Petersen to the Etruscan
necropolises of Cervetri (Caere) and Corneto (the ancient
Tarquinii). In Cervetri one sees the most remarkable examples of
tomb dwellings hewn in the rocks; the tombs of Corneto are famous
for their numerous wall paintings that are still exceptionally well
preserved. These fully deserved a careful and complete publication.
Etruscan art, as is well known, is to a large extent a reflection of
Greek art, and thus the wall paintings of Corneto can give us a good
idea of Greek painting techniques in different
periods. From Rome we went to Naples, where we worked for a few days
in the great Museum with its sculptures, its vases, its immense
collections from Pompeii, especially the wall paintings, which were
formerly removed from the walls; nowadays they are more protected on
the spot by shelters and wooden sheds. We also stayed for a few days
in Pompeii itself. The newly excavated Casanuova attracted our
attention in particular. Its wall paintings in particular are
excellently preserved and fortunately here too the decorative whole
has been left untouched. We especially tried to inform ourselves
about the different building methods in the different periods, since
this is also one of the things that one can really only learn
properly from the monuments themselves. We then travelled from
Pompeii via Castellamare, Sorrento, Capri, Amalfi to Cava through
one of the most beautiful regions of Italy. From Cava we visited the
temples of Paestum, ancient Hellenic buildings that have been
relatively well preserved, so that they are of great importance for
our knowledge of Hellenic architecture. On the way it was especially
the beautifully situated Amalfi, so important for the history of the
Middle Ages, that attracted our attention.
On
February 4, 1898 we went to Brindisi, where we embarked for Greece
in the evening. Stormy weather was the reason that we only arrived
in Patras in the evening of the 6th. On the 7th the train took us
along the Corinthian and Saronic Gulfs to Athens. That journey in
the train that moves very slowly in Greece is already highly
interesting.
One
immediately gets a deep impression of the peculiar Greek nature with
its naked mountains and rocks of different tints and the deep blue
sky reflected in the beautiful water surface. From the railway one
soon obtains, opposite Lepanto, a view of the terrain of the naval
battles of Phormio in the Peloponnesian War and the famous battle of
Don Juan of Austria. One passes numerous places well-known from
history; especially the location of Megara and its port city of
Nisaia can be excellently viewed from the train.
We
stayed in Athens for about two months. Almost daily we studied in
the National Museum and in that of the Acropolis, simple but
excellent facilities. Here are displayed most of the original Greek
works of art that the excavations of recent years brought to light.
In the Museum of the Acropolis are collected all the objects that
were found there, especially during the most recent excavations when
it was exposed down to the rocky bottom. The National Museum has,
besides its numerous sculptures, an immense collection of funerary
reliefs, a collection of vases which is so important for the study
because they were almost all found on Greek soil — most of the
Greek vases in European museums come from tombs in Italy — and
then a completely unique collection of Mycenaean art products.
Furthermore, all the important ruins were studied in detail; in
several of them we had the opportunity to really to be allowed to
listen to the explanations of the architect-archaeologist of the
German Institute, Prof. Dörpfeld. At the Parthenon our study
was at once facilitated and hampered by a scaffolding that had been
erected for necessary repairs on the west facade. This of course
spoiled the view of the building on that side, but because the
general-ephoros Kabbadias gave us a permit to climb up, the study of
the details of the superstructure was greatly facilitated. On the
south side of the acropolis we were mainly occupied with the Bacchic
theatre that was now completely exposed there. Here it is especially
that one can study the great question concerning the arrangement of
the ancient Greek theatres and on the basis of what I observed here
and later also elsewhere, especially in Epidauros, I do not believe
that there can be any reasonable doubt whether Prof. Dörpfeld
is completely right with his theory that the Greek theatres had no
stage, but that there was playing on the flat floor of the
orchestra. On the west side the German excavations in particular
attracted our attention. A large water conduit from the time of
Pisistratus was discovered there and it can hardly be otherwise than
that this must be the famous Enneakrounas, although one cannot agree
with all the arguments that Prof. Dörpfeld gives for this. The
steep northern slope is now being exposed by the Greek
archaeological society. We climbed the narrow paths along the very
steep rock face here, where the well-known caves of Pan and Apollo
and a covered passage can now be clearly distinguished. That the
so-called Temple of Theseus, the city walls and the cemetery of
Dipylon, the Pnyx, the Areopagos, the Temple of Zeus east of the
Acropolis, the bed of the Ilissos at the place where some (though
wrongly) seek the Enneacrounus, the stadium, the monument of
Lysicrates, the buildings at the market, such as the stoa of
Attalos, — that all this was repeatedly and accurately
inspected by us, needs no explanation. We also undertook several
trips through the country of Attica. Especially the Piraeus and the
bay of Phalero were repeatedly visited. Likewise we went a few times
to the beautiful northeastern part of the country, the monastery of
Pendeli and the royal pleasure-place Tatoi, the old Dekeleia, known
from the Peloponnesian war. Here the fairly high mountains are
covered with large forests. The significance that this point at the
passage to Boeotia must necessarily have had in a war on Attic
territory, is clearly evident here on the spot itself. With a
similar purpose we visited Phyle, the citadel to which Thrasybulos
retreated in 403; there one still finds the remains of an important
Greek fortification and the exceptionally favourable location of
this refuge, which even today is not reached without effort along
steep mountain paths, makes the entire action of that time
completely explicable. In the same way, the terrain of the battle of
Salamis was also carefully recorded by us. But we paid special
attention to Eleusis. The road from Athens there still runs in
approximately the same direction as the old sacred road of the
festival-goers, which has been uncovered in one place quite intact.
On that road we visited the monastery of Daphni with its remarkable
Byzantine painting and further the remains of the old sanctuary of
Aphrodite. Once you have passed that, you have come out between the
hills and you see the plain with the beautiful Saronic sea in front
of you. Eleusis has been completely excavated by the Greek
archaeological society under the leadership of the learned ephoros
Philios: the objects found have been collected for the most part in
a simple museum. With a view to my earlier studies on Eleusis,
everything was recorded here repeatedly and as accurately as
possible. I collected important material for further studies.
Outside
Attica we visited Olympia for a few days, which, as is known, was
excavated by the Germans. Nature here is noticeably different from
Attica with its picturesque bareness. The landscape here is
extremely lovely. It is a pleasant feeling of calm and peace that
takes hold of the mind here in one of the holiest places in the
Hellenic world. The entire place is surrounded by beautiful green
hills, intersected by the gently rippling Alpheios, in which the
clear blue sky is reflected. The casts of the sculptures found there
are, as is known, in Leiden; they were therefore very well known to
us. Of course, the study of the originals became more fruitful
because of this. On the excavated site I now had the good fortune to
be able to conduct an investigation into questions that had occupied
me for a long time and that can only be determined there. Here too I
gathered material for new study.
On
April 2nd the Institute trip began under the leadership of Prof.
Dörpfeld
through
the Peloponnese. We were allowed to take part in it. Everywhere the
ruins were explained to us by that great connoisseur of ancient
architecture. First we visited Corinth. The most important thing
that remains of the old city are the ruins of a very old Doric
temple; at the moment the American school is trying to bring more to
light by excavation. From Corinth we went to the beautifully
situated Nauplia to undertake several trips from there. We visited
the castle of Tiryns, which was excavated at the time by Dörpfeld
himself in collaboration with Schliemann, then Mykenai, where first
by Schliemann was excavated later by the Greek archaeological
society; We then went to the site of the ancient temple of Hera, not
far from Mycenae, where the excavations of the American school have
brought a few things to light. The excavations of Epidauros by the
Greek archaeological society are of exceptional importance. We also
visited them from Nanplia [Nauplia]. The famous theatre there is
particularly remarkable, the best preserved Greek theatre that we
know of, and one that, like most others, has not undergone
reconstructions in Roman times. That is why these ruins are so
important for our knowledge of the design of the Greek theatre.
There are also remains of the famous temple of Asclepius. Of the
other ruins, the enigmatic round building in particular attracted
our attention, which was built by a certain Polykleitos and is
called thumele in the inscriptions; however, its destination is
unknown. The journey then continued via Argos to Tripolitza in
Arcadia. From there we visited Mantinea, where the French school has
dug successfully and, among other things, almost the entire city
wall has come to light; we also paid a short visit to Tegea, which,
however, since the famous heads of Skopas were found there, has
yielded only things of minor importance from its soil.
Both
Tegea and Mantinea, however, played an important role in Greek
history, so that it is very worthwhile to inform oneself of the
peculiarity of their location by one's own observation. From
Tripolitza we continued through the beautiful Arcadian alpine
country to Megalopolis. The road there leads over steep mountain
ridges and along bold rock formations; at a few points a view opens
up over the vast green plain below with dark mountains and the
shining white snow-capped peaks of Taygetos in the distance.
Megalopolis is now a miserable little place, where one is reminded
by almost nothing of our
European civilization. Five minutes from there lie the rather small
remains of the old city. The most interesting here is the theatre
excavated by the English school; it was adjoined by a large meeting
room, the furnishings of which can still be almost recognized, the
so-called Thersileon. Furthermore, Olympia was visited on this
journey and I considered it a great advantage to hear these ruins
explained by Prof. Dörpfeld; for although the results of the
German excavations have been published in an impeccable manner, the
personal statements of the man who was present as architect at the
greater part of these excavations, always have an extraordinary
value, not to mention that Prof. Dörpfeld's lectures are
unsurpassed in clarity and vivid presentation.
From
Olympia we went to Patras. From there by steamer to the beautiful
island of Ithaca, from Ithaca to Itea Delphi's harbour. It is
probably situated almost on the site of the old Cirrha. The road to
Delphi first leads through a slowly rising plain, covered with olive
groves. One sees the Delphic mountain country before one, with the
white peak of Parnassos rising above it. On the left one comes along
the road that leads to the old Amphissa. Soon, however, one ascends
along steep mountain roads; one then passes through the village of
Chryso, which probably lies on or near the site of the old Krisa.
Then one reaches the village of Kastri, the old Delphi. A village of
that name was namely on the site of the old sanctuary. This was
demolished by the French school and rebuilt a little further on. The
temple area lies on a fairly steep slope, artificially levelled,
against the almost vertically rising Phaedriades. It has now been
completely excavated. Opposite the large sanctuary lies the temple
of Athena Pronoia, of which Aeschylus speaks in the beginning of his
Eumenides; when that will be exposed, the French excavations will be
at an end. The sun-house of the Castalian spring was quite destroyed
at an early date; the water now springs forth elsewhere; yet the
spot where it stood, a few paces beyond the great sanctuary, is
still very well recognizable.
Our
company left us very soon; we stayed a few more days. On the site of
the excavations one obtains a very clear idea of the
entire ground plan of this so extensive sanctuary and as in Olympia
the buildings mentioned by Pausanias and others could be found
almost. It is a pity that not so much of the upright parts of the
buildings has survived. The sculpture that was found and only partly
published is of the highest importance for the history of art.
Almost intact a charioteer has come to light, of extraordinary
artistic value, certainly the most excellently preserved bronze
statue from antiquity. In its style of art the work is from around
470 before Christ. Pieces of horses and a chariot and of one or two
more human figures have been found with it and a limestone slab with
an inscription belonging to a pedestal, which must have been that of
this votive offering; the one who dedicated it was, according to the
inscription, Polyzalos, brother of the Syracusan tyrant Gelo. This
discovery means for the excavations of Delphi what that of the
Hermes of Praxiteles meant for those of Olympia. The epigraphic
discoveries are also extremely important. It is very much to be
desired that all the inscriptions found will soon be published.
From
Delphi we went to Athens, where we stayed a few more days.
From
Athens we sailed to Constantinople. There we wanted to study both
Museums, especially the new one with its famous Sidonian and
Klassomenan sarcophagi. The magnificent Aja Sophia was also
carefully inspected. Of course we also tried to form a good idea of
the city and its location.
We
went home via Vienna. On 4 May 1898 we returned to Leiden.
With
this journey I have more than achieved what I had imagined. I hope
and expect that my teaching will prove to have gained much from it
and that in general the study of classical antiquity at our
university will profit from it. What I brought back in terms of new
material for study is not unimportant. I assembled a collection of
photographs of about 700 pieces. These carefully arranged and
provided with an accompanying description now form an excellent aid
for study. Furthermore, I had an important collection of paper
prints made of well-known Attic inscriptions; together with the
original pieces that the Leiden Museum possesses, these will make it
possible from now on to prepare for epigraphic studies in Leiden. It
was for this that I used the credit that the Leiden University Fund
had the goodness to grant me. For the Leiden Museum of Antiquities I
also acquired several remarkable pieces of ancient Greek pottery,
through which the important vase collection of that Museum was
enriched with specimens of some types that it did not possess until
now. As for my further special investigations, I hope to be able to
publish the results in professional journals before too long; they
concern Eleusis and Olympia in particular. It goes without saying
that this is not the place for abstract scientific dissertations.
The question of the travels of our future literary men is different.
It is of immediate practical importance and I do not hesitate to set
out my opinion on it in more detail.
Foreign
countries have done a great deal for the study of antiquity. The
Archaeological Institute, a German State institution since 1874, has
existed since 1829. The main administration is now located in
Berlin. The oldest department is the Roman one; it probably has the
most complete archaeological library in the world. In 1874 an
Athenian department was also founded. At the Ecole Française
in Rome, archaeological studies recede more into the background.
Different from that in Athens, which in April of this year —
somewhat late as a result of the Greek-Turkish war —
celebrated its 50th anniversary. Founded in 1846, it was not
originally an institution deliberately and primarily for
archaeological studies, but it became more and more so and now it is
the most worthy competitor of the German Institute. The English
school in Athens was founded in 1882 from private funds. An
association of American universities maintains the American school
in Athens and has recently founded one in Rome. At the moment they
are just busy founding an Austrian Institute with a main
administration in Vienna and branches in Athens, Smyrna and
Constantinople.
The
functioning of these institutions is very different. It is in
accordance with the nature of university education in each of these
countries. It is for this reason that our young scholars will find
it most easy to connect with the German and Austrian Institutes.
After all, our university institutions and customs correspond most
closely to those of those two countries. The hospitality that those
various institutions show to foreigners is very great. The German
Institute opens its libraries to students of all nations. Access to
the lectures that the secretaries of the German and Austrian
Institutes give in the Museums and among the ruins is obtained
without any significant difficulty. The company that takes part in
Prof. Dörpfeld's famous Institute trips usually consists for a
very large part of non-Germans. The Ecole Française in Athens
is also very willing to accept students from countries that do not
have Institutes of their own.
It
is a few, not many young French, German, Austrian scholars who are
enabled by a State stipend to study for a considerable period under
the guidance of their Institutes in Italy and Greece. Without
exception, they are young men who have completed a university
education and have attracted attention in one way or another. The
German scholarship holders arrange their journey entirely as they
wish. Of course, they usually follow the lectures of the secretaries
of the Institute, but their own independent study is the main thing;
however, it goes without saying that the resources of the Institute
and the advice and information of the secretaries also benefit them
in this. In addition to the German Reich scholarships, there are
also those from special states and foundations. Quite a few also
travel at their own expense. In addition to the young graduates, one
also encounters several Gymnasiallehrer on the journey, who have
been granted leave for a few months, sometimes with a scholarship
into the bargain. In addition, the scholars associated with the
Institute travel with the Gymnasiallehrer for six weeks through
Italy in museums, ruins and necropolises in order to learn the great
main points through their own observation. Austria also has grants
for recently graduated archaeologists and philologists. Many grants
for a shorter period are, however, enjoyed by Gymnasiallehrer. They
also travel under the guidance of one of the Austrian professors of
archaeology; many went with the German Institute through the
Peloponnese. From now on, the new Austrian Institute will have to
take care of them.
It
is understandable that professional archaeologists have a certain
priority in all these journeys. Yet it is of the utmost importance
for every classicist to get to know Italy and Greece through
personal observation. Moreover, where is the boundary between
philology and archaeology? How many archaeological questions are not
of the utmost importance for philological research? It is so
understandable that so many German or French philologists alternate
their work in libraries with visits to museums. Even those journeys
that are less aimed at the formation of learned researchers are of
great use. That teachers at grammar schools see much and well
without having a specific subject of study in mind, that their minds
are broadened by a number of powerful impressions, how would it not
benefit grammar school education? Yet it goes without saying that
some preparatory archaeological education is absolutely
indispensable even for those who do not travel as a professional.
Even without that, one will be able to follow some of the
archaeological lectures, one loses oneself among the ruins and in
the immense museums of Italy and Greece, if one has not acquired
some knowledge of art history and especially if one has not acquired
some practice in viewing antique works of art with judgment and
discrimination. It is therefore a well-known fact that grants are
sometimes wasted money and likewise that Italy and Greece are often
visited by so-called students, who hardly benefit from them as much
as a cultured tourist. It is also beyond doubt that travelling with
a false pretence of knowledge can very easily have a pernicious
influence. Experience teaches us how easily such unprepared study
leads to imaginary knowledge and confusion of mind.
It
goes without saying that when granting travel grants we should take
advantage of the experience acquired elsewhere. In the first place,
one should never send someone who is not at least somewhat prepared.
Furthermore, one should ask oneself what the purpose of the journey
will be. If it is to train a scientific researcher, then a larger
grant should be given than if one wants to enable a good student to
enliven and confirm the knowledge of antiquity that he has acquired
at the University by his own observation. For the latter, a few
months, even weeks, are sufficient. Here one runs the risk to give a
grant to one person, from whom several could be helped. Especially
the first, the awarding of a stipend to a future researcher, will
give great difficulties. Well-passed examinations do not give the
slightest guarantee of real study-mindedness and in our system of
higher education the examination has acquired a predominant
importance. German stipend holders have often already given proof of
their gifts for independent research by some small writing. It would
be best for our relations if we could do for our preceptors and
candidates in literature what Germany and Austria do for their
Gymnasiallehrer. They should be allowed to make archaeological
excursions of a few weeks to Italy under the guidance of a
professional; the British Museum could also be visited in this way.
Every good student could qualify for such trips. The more highly
gifted would receive a powerful stimulus for their own study by such
a journey, and by hard work, for instance by a dissertation, they
would be able to show who they were. For these, after all always
relatively few, the necessary money for a scientific journey in the
strict sense could of course be collected without great difficulty.
Not only archaeologists and epigraphicists, but also philologists
should be sent, but the latter would then be excellently prepared
for their archaeological studies. Such travellers would naturally
find sufficient help and information at the existing écoles
and Institutes.
The
matter of scientific travel is of the utmost importance, and it is
fortunate that this is increasingly being recognised. Just as in our
trade, in our science we are all too inclined to sit at home. It
would be of the utmost importance for our entire national culture if
our higher education came under the influence of men with
far-reaching vision, completely beyond a certain circle. Not least
in art and science, a country like ours can be great according to
the royal word. Our ancient fame in classical studies still supports
us vis-à-vis foreign countries; however, we have fallen
behind because we did not understand the significance of what was
done outside our borders. The tendency is increasing to see our
grammar schools as vocational schools and our entire education is
considered far too exclusively as a means for the individual to
seize one or other more or less profitable position in his own
interest. People forget that a healthy idealism is a life force for
an entire nation, which also steels it in the struggle for its
material interests. Our schools must inspire our people to something
good and great, and in our grammar schools those men in particular
should be formed who in the whole of society have to set the tone in
matters of higher spiritual culture. How much greater power could
emanate from our teachers at grammar schools if very many had
completed their education through a journey made fruitful with
judgment, and if a few had been able to develop themselves carefree
as independent scholars for a considerable time. For the elevation
of the people, the sciences of aesthetics and the history of
civilization have a very high significance.
I
thank the Government for making it possible for me to fulfill my
important life's task more worthy.
With
respect and esteem
Leiden,
Your Excellency obedient servant,
October
1898. A.E.J. Holwerda.
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/view?query=mededeelingen+van+verschillenden+aard+verslag+griekenland&coll=ddd&page=3&sortfield=date&identifier=MMKB08%3A000172604%3Ampeg21%3Aa0007&resultsidentifier=MMKB08%3A000172604%3Ampeg21%3Aa0007
Trip
to Italy and Greece
December
22, 1897 departure from Leiden
visit
Florence 3 days, Rome 4 weeks
February
4, 1898 Brindisi
February
7, 1898 Athens
2
months Athens, visit Attica, Eleusis, Olympia
April
2, 1898 Peloponnese
visit
Corinth, Nauplia, Epidaurus
Ithaca,
Delphi
Athens,
Constantinople
May
4 1898 via Vienna, arrival in Leiden
4
December 1898 ARTS AND SCIENCES.
Scientific
journey of Dr. Holwerda.
Today's
St.-Ct. contains the report of Dr. A.E.J. Holwerda, concerning the
scientific journey which he, enabled by the Government, made to
Italy and Greece, in the company of his son, the doctorandus in
classical literature J.H. Holwerda, who was enabled to accompany him
by a subsidy from the Van Vollenhoven fund.
As
for the result of his journey, the writer says:
With
this journey I have more than achieved what I had imagined. I hope
and expect that my education will prove to have gained much from it
and that in the common the study of classical antiquity at our
university will benefit from it. Already what I brought back in new
material for study is not unimportant. I assembled a collection of
photographs of about 700 pieces. These carefully arranged and
provided with an accompanying description, now form an excellent aid
for study. Furthermore I had an important collection of paper prints
made of well-known Attic inscriptions; together with the original
pieces that the Leiden Museum possesses, these will make it possible
from now on to prepare for epigraphic studies in Leiden. It was for
this that I used the credit that the Leiden University Fund had the
goodness to grant me. For the Leiden Museum of Antiquities I also
acquired several remarkable pieces of ancient Greek pottery, through
which the important vase collection of the Museum was enriched with
specimens of some types that it did not possess until now. As for my
further special investigations, I hope to be able to publish the
results in professional journals in the not too distant future; they
concern Eleusis and Olympia in particular. It goes without saying
that this is not the place for abstract scientific dissertations.
October
20, 1885 The Guide Cypriot Art.
The
Old Cypriots in Art and Culture. Studies by Dr. A.E.J. Holwerda.
Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1885.
In
a country where, among civilized people, every object adorned with
acanthus leaves is still considered Greek in style, but the most
unmistakably Attic vases remain Etruscan, where, in matters of
archaeology, Schliemann is considered preeminent for the researcher
and Overbeck for the scholar, and where the legislative body argues
that, since a Limburg brewer has contributed so much to the
dissemination of knowledge about the art and customs of antiquity,
it is unnecessary for the state to do the most necessary; In a
country, in short, that in this respect lags behind neighbors and
foreigners, Germans and Austrians, French and English, Russians and
Americans, Italians and Greeks, yes, Poles and Turks, by half a
century, it is a gratifying phenomenon, a bold act on the part of
the author and publisher, even if it is in a foreign language, to
send out a booklet exclusively dealing with a remote corner of the
vast field of Greek art, which almost every year offers new fields
for exploration.
The
booklet that prompted this outburst, which I trust the few
practitioners of Greek art in our country will not notice, as if it
were not aimed at them, is by Dr. A.E.J. Holwerda, equally familiar
to the readers of the Gids and those of the Archaeologische Zeitung.
Yet, this work is, in a sense, a first, for the treatise in the
latter journal, on the games at Olympia, did not, by its very
nature, delve into reflections on art, and the articles in the Gids
are intended for too broad a readership for the author to claim
scholarly significance. Mr. Holwerda addresses complex issues of
style and theology in detail, addressing not exclusively colleagues,
but nevertheless scholars. Nevertheless, I gladly accept the Gids
editors' invitation and venture to draw the reader's attention to
the contents of at least part of this research, for the role Cyprus
played in the competition between Eastern and Western civilization
guarantees us in advance a blend of European and Asian influences in
everything it produces, to which the proximity of Egypt can only add
even greater significance. From the time of Cinyras, the Phoenician
king of Cyprus, who, according to Homer, showed his interest in
Agamemnon's expedition to Troy by presenting him with armor, and,
according to later tradition, withdrew from promised aid by sending
small baked earthen boats and soldiers, a Cypriot commodity still
found in tombs; and from the times of Sargon (722-705), Esarhaddon
(682-668), and Ashurbanipal (668-626), when Greek princes on Cyprus
were already tributary to Assyria, until Alexander opened the entire
world to the Greeks, Cyprus has rarely taken a significant part in
armed conflict, but has contributed all the more to the spread of
religious forms or morality and the arts of peace. And no wonder, a
land rich in copper and precious stones, so fertile that it could be
compared to Egypt, with such a diversity of riches that it could
build and equip a ship from its own materials and products, a land
where Greeks and Phoenicians lived side by side for centuries,
offered a unique breeding ground for young plants of foreign origin.
For
although we can unfortunately too rarely prove that the road leads
through Cyprus, there are, as Mr. Holwerda's booklet will again
demonstrate, phenomena to be observed that leave us no other choice.
But the warm air of the greenhouse that develops the seed would
cause the tree to wither. Moreover, all the seed sown did not bear
equal fruit, no matter how luxuriantly the plant sprouted. Thus, the
Cypriot Greeks possessed an alphabet much earlier than their
brethren, much like the Japanese, derived from the Chinese, and from
Hittite hieroglyphs. But Greece adopted the Phoenician letters and
left them in use throughout history. The founder of the Stoic
school, Zenon, also grew up in Cyprus. Of Phoenician descent and
gifted with Semitic tendencies, he united the lessons of the Greek
philosophers into a morality that still exerts its influence, and
which lacked only legend and form to become a religion.
Mr.
Holwerda's work contains, besides 60 printed pages, 7 lithographic
plates based on other editions and a fairly good photolithograph of
two unpublished baked clay figurines from the British Museum, almost
all of which serve to illustrate comparison of the second chapter on
art, which deserves the lion's share not only in this respect. The
first chapter is preceded by a brief description of the two places
where the largest number of Cypriot works of art were found, by
Hamilton Lang or Louis Palma di Cesnola: Dali (Idalium) and Atheniau
(Golgi). Mr. Holwerda believes that these small, walled places, with
so many statues, probably dedicated to various gods, were merely
sacred gardens, tômõνη, in the great tômõνος
of Aphrodite, where the Christians gathered and buried the useless
statues of the pagans. Useless, I add, because if there was any
marble, it probably disappeared in the lime kiln, and the bronze,
which could not possibly have been missing, was certainly melted.
The discovered sculptures are almost without exception made of
limestone, a material too easy to work and not sufficiently
resistant to the effects of wind and weather.
Before we proceed
to the discussion of these sculptures, however, it should be noted
that in his second chapter, the author first discusses Cypriot
vases, places particular emphasis on the makers' adherence to
ancient forms and figures, and briefly mentions the crudest
terracottas. However, we dare not follow his lead at this point, for
since his book was written, the excavation at Naukratis has promised
so much new light on precisely these aspects of Cypriot art that,
given the brief descriptions published thus far, it would be
premature to form a judgment. It is difficult, indeed impossible, to
convey in a brief overview both the current view of Cypriot art and
that which Mr. Holwerda attempts to introduce, to present his
arguments, and, where necessary, to refute them, especially when the
difference of opinion, as is often the case, rests on differing
appreciations of minor details but stems from differing convictions
regarding principles. We will therefore have to confine ourselves to
pointing out this difference in conviction and then present our
account of the development of Cypriot art, as much as possible using
the author's perspective.
Firstly, we believe we should attach
more weight than Mr. Holwerda to the history of Cyprus itself in
developing that of art. For example, when we encounter a Cypriot
ruler in semi-Egyptian attire, it is not indifferent to us to know
when Cyprus was conquered by Egypt and how long it remained
dependent.
That Mr. Holwerda takes less interest in this can be
explained by the second point of contention. We read on pg. 26:
"Even the Cypriot kings, for example, have as little of a
Shenti as the Phoenicians. All Egyptian robes, crosses, Shentis, and
the like are also quite superimposed objects in Cypriot art."
We cannot possibly agree with these words, for just as it is natural
that Egyptian depictions were imitated with more or less fidelity on
Phoenician bronze vessels, perhaps even on Cypriot ones, to supply a
sought-after commodity for domestic or foreign trade, it is equally
improbable that a ruler would have consecrated his statue of the
deity in foreign garments that he did not wear. And these garments
are not even purely Egyptian, but, by covering the entire upper
body, made suitable for a more northern climate. Does it need
further explanation that the Cypriot vassal of the Egyptian was
quick to imitate his liege lord's attire, especially when it also
indicated his rank and dignity? If we see a king of Holland in a
uniform differing only in color from the French, then we can already
infer his dependence on the Emperor. If, on the other hand, we find
a priest with a Semitic profile, we do not think of an Assyrian
style but rather recognize one of those Phoenicians who inhabited a
large part of Cyprus.
The third point is no less important. There
is something in all art, something called style, that betrays itself
to the trained eye at first glance, yet which cannot be expressed in
words and can only be made known through images or by comparison
with nearly similar art. It is true that small details often
influence this impression, and that is precisely the easiest way to
name style, but a list of all its peculiarities does not provide
style, even if one sometimes makes do. Mr. Holwerda, too, is aware
of the difference or similarity in style, but he fears attaching too
much importance to it and warns himself and us against general
impressions, determining the degree of dependence of an art on
others solely by considering minor details.
There are many
crudely crafted Cypriot dolls, very long and very narrow, flat at
the back, Mr. Holwerda considers them the oldest works of Cypriot
sculpture, yet neither free from foreign influence. For some, the
possibility of this is undeniable, but it seems likely to me that we
are almost always dealing with work no older than the statues we
possess, but of the very slightest kind. The resemblance is too
great.
Of the larger statues, those that appear to be the oldest
exhibit some peculiarities that, since their excavation, have led
them to be called Assyrian in style. But Mr. Holwerda again clearly
demonstrates this: there are only a few points of similarity here,
among which the spirals that imitate the curls of hair and beard
occupy a prominent place.
Therefore, however, these beards are
not Assyrian beards, and these statues even less so Assyrian
statues, but they bear their own unmistakable character, which
brings them closer to other ancient Greek art, primarily to Ionian
art. Mr. Holwerda attributes these similarities, amidst such great
diversity, between Assyrian and Cypriot art to a superficial
oversight, and is therefore forced to place these sculptures in the
period of Nineveh's heyday. I cannot share this conviction, but
prefer to adhere to the assumption that another art served as a
mediator.
The author rightly disputes that this art, as one might
wish, could be found in Phoenicia, but the vast plains of Syria,
which separate Nineveh from Cyprus, have been explored almost as
little as the mountains of Cilicia, and we possess almost nothing of
the art of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
The peculiar depiction of
the folds of the cloaks, for example, most closely resembles that of
some Hittite sculptures on the rocks of Cappadocia. The resemblance
to the oldest Greek art, which is evident not only in the hair and
beard and in the facial features, but especially in the depiction of
those features—the narrow, drawn lips, the strong cheekbones,
the sharp corners of the eyes, the broken line of the upper eyelid,
and the high eyebrows—seems to me to be greater than Mr.
Holwerda believes. Nevertheless, it is an interesting observation
that this oldest Greek art was learned more by the Cyprians than the
other way around. This cannot yet be proven, and the reason the
author offers—the similarity in the application of curls on
the forehead—seems insufficient to me, as this occurs too
frequently in the oldest Greek sculptures and painted vases to owe
its origin to anything other than a faithful imitation of nature. He
could just as justifiably cite the resemblance in the shape of the
beard, which in both cases is a kind of ring beard, as the upper and
lower lips are shaven, precisely in that respect they differ from
Assyrian custom. While Greek statues dating from the sixth century
remain extremely rare, there seems to be no objection to classifying
many Cypriot ones at the beginning of that century, perhaps even a
little earlier. These wear long beards, while the Greeks' are short.
Gradually, the beard also becomes shorter in Cyprus, apparently
around the middle of the sixth century, when Cyprus comes under
Egyptian rule (560-525) and the Egyptian uniform is worn. Soon,
beardless men also appear, who also wear the Egyptian hairdo of the
Saite Empire, and who, unlike earlier Assyrian art, recall Egyptian
examples more through the general impression of body shape and the
position of the head and limbs, than through details of workmanship.
It seems that Naukratis also played a role in this. But by the
beginning of the fifth century, Greek art had completely outgrown
and grown beyond the reach of the Cypriots, and after the Persian
Wars, its influence was felt there as well, albeit moderately, for
the Cypriot disposition seems not to permit him to take a higher
flight, and he remained at the position he had once attained. The
new direction is most noticeable in the treatment of robes. It is
also noteworthy that the Cyprians, like the Greeks, perhaps both
under Persian influence, now grew full beards. Perhaps religious
reasons also contributed to the adherence to the forms once adopted,
but it is certain that a large portion of the discovered sculptures,
which seem old to the untrained observer, are from later periods,
even later than Mr. Holwerda assumes, who argues that Cypriot art
gave way to Hellenistic art in the fourth century; the last traces,
after all, can still be found in a sculpture that clearly dates from
Roman times. In the palaces of princes such as Euagoras and
Nicocles, no more than later at the court in Alexandria, Greek
masterpieces will be found and have been lacking, and remnants of
Hellenistic art are also found, but just as in Ptolemaic Egypt,
sacred art in Cyprus preserved its indigenous features and produced
images very peculiar in appearance, yet a forbidding example for all
art that seeks to perpetuate or revive outdated forms.
In
the third chapter, Mr. Holwerda discusses a bronze bowl found in
Idalium, of Cypriot make, depicting a sacrifice to Aphrodite with
song and dance. He connects this depiction with the ancient custom
of dedicating statues or entire groups of statues in sacrificial
poses as a lasting reminder of the sacrifice, or rather as a
perpetual offering.
With
no less wealth of examples, the author argues in the following
chapter that the statues of the victors in the games, and those of
consecrated priests, were also donated to the deity for the same
reason. It is only with hesitation that I proceed to mention the
final chapter, in which Mr. Holwerda attempts to demonstrate that
although the Aphrodite we know is the Semitic Astarte, who came to
Greece as Cypris via Cyprus, she was nevertheless identified there
with an Indo-European cloud goddess, whom she has so displaced that
we only find traces of the ancient tradition here and there. Anyone
wishing to see this proposition further elucidated should read Mr.
Holwerda's booklet; I readily admit that I do not consider myself
capable of judging this point; after all, everything depends on the
greater or lesser value one attaches to one tradition or another and
on the credence given to the assertions of Philo Byblius, for
example, or to the arguments of Kuhn. I cannot resist one
observation, however: it seems to me almost as dangerous to use the
legends of Thebes, the city of Phoenician tradition par excellence,
as a source for Indo-European theology as to attempt to draw
folklore from the tragedians.
However
this may be, and however much the author in the second chapter—the
most important, as I said—seems to have failed to prove that
in the building, erected by others from existing ruins, the cornice
has become the foundation and the column shafts are upside down, he
has nevertheless likely here and there reduced a pretended metope to
a fragment of the frieze, or assigned what was considered an
acroterium its place in the facade, and in any case, raised an
important question: THE PROBABLE DEPENDENCE OF THE OLDEST GREEK ART
ON CYPRUS. J. SIX
See
http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_gid001188601_01/_gid001188601_01_0028.php
Regarding
education, see
http://www.delpher.nl/nl/tijdschriften/view?identifier=dts%3A1714002%3Ampeg21%3A0232&query=holwerda&coll=dts&page=1&sortfield=date&facets%5Bperiode%5D%5B%5D=1%7C19e_eeuw%7C1890-1899%7C&maxperpage=50
April
4, 1878 The Mayor and Aldermen of Leiden announce a vacancy for the
position of
teacher
of history and geography at the municipal institutions for Higher
and Middle School. education recommended: A. E. J. Holwerda,
doctoral student in letters, teacher at H. B. school in Schiedam,
and this on an annual salary of ƒ2,200.
May
3, 1878 Utrecht, May 1. Heden has been promoted to Doctor of Letters
Mr
A. E. J. Holwerda, from Gorinchem, after defending a dissertation.
{Specimen
literarum continens disputationem de dispositione verborum in lingua
Graeca, in lingua Latina et apud Plutarchum, cui accedunt
commentarioli ad libros de Iside et Osiride et de Genio Socratis]
see
https://archive.org/details/specimenliterari00holw
January
1, 1881 The Guide Olympia.
Ausgrabungen
zu Olympia von E. Curtius u.a. I-IV. Berlin, Wasmuth.
Archaeologische
Zeitung, Year 1875-80.
I.
In
Pausanias, a writer from the first half of the second century AD,
from whom we possess a travelogue of Greece, we read, among other
things, the following story. Timanthes of Kleonae had been a famous
champion fighter and victor in the Olympic games in his youth. As he
grew older, he no longer competed in the wrestling arena, but, still
eager to test his strength, he drew a large bow every day. After
some time, he went on a journey, and naturally, these daily
exercises were neglected. Returning home, however, he immediately
picked up his bow again, but no matter what he did, he could not
pull the string. This was too much for him; he built himself a
funeral pyre; life no longer held any value for him. Such
stories—true or fictional—clearly show us the important
place the wrestling arena occupied in the life of the Hellenic
people. Wherever Greeks lived, from Sicily to the Black Sea, there
were hippodromes and schools for physical exercise, and they were
free Hellenes, who, in their fresh zest for life, felt the need to
measure their strength against one another, and to strive to prepare
for a public contest; the respectable Roman, accustomed to the games
of the gladiators, later wondered why such performances were also
considered appropriate for a free citizen. For the Greek, however,
the race and wrestling were something more than public
entertainment. The great games, at least, also called "sacred"—those
of Olympia, Nemea, those of the Pythian Apollo, and those of the
Isthmus of Corinth—were therefore not so much an addition—a
kind of relaxation after the seriousness—to the other
ceremonies of the religious festival to which they belonged, but
rather a coherent whole, and a part of the worship of God itself. It
was under the gaze of the immortal Gods that the Greek strove for
the highest goal of life in these contests and sought to unfold the
glories of human existence—beauty, wealth, and strength—in
their full splendor.
He
himself, with his deep sense of what distinguished him from the
barbarians, was well aware of how much was unique in his public
games. He believes he perceives this particularly Hellenic character
in two particular instances. When the Persian army had penetrated
Thermopylae and the torch of war was drawing ever closer to Greece
proper, a few Arcadian deserters came to the Persians—as
Herodotus tells us. [This sentence appears to be incomplete and
should be omitted.] Brought before the king, these men replied, in
response to the question: "What were the Hellenes doing at that
moment?", that they were holding their contests at Olympia, and
in response to a second question: "What was the contest
prize?", that they were competing for a crown of olive leaves.
Then Tritantaichmes, one of the king's most moderate counselors,
said to Mardonius, the principal organizer of the war: "Against
whom, Mardonius, have you led us to war? Men who hold a contest not
for money but for masculine virtue!"
Here
the Greek folktale strikingly puts the appreciation of a
characteristic Greek folk custom in the mouth of the Asian. Another
peculiarity of Greek folklore is pointed out to us in plain terms by
the second great historian of Greece, Thucydides. He tells us that
in the early days, the champions at Olympia wore a girdle around
their hips, but that after a few years all clothing was abolished
during the contest. "There are also," Thucydides
continues, "barbarians, especially the Asiatics, who set prizes
for boxing and wrestling, and they also use a belt for this."
The complete nakedness of the fighters was therefore also something
truly Hellenic. Thus, we are already led by the Hellenes themselves
to seek the uniqueness of their national character primarily in
their national games, and when the same Thucydides follows up the
quoted words with this observation that "there are also many
other things in which, as one could demonstrate, the way of life of
the earlier Hellenes was in harmony with that of the barbarians of
his own time," it is also a Hellene who points out to us that
here too, the uniquely Hellenic character gradually emerged, as it
were, from a background of originally greater similarity with the
barbarians, and that, therefore, if we wish to understand it in its
true meaning, we can do no better than consult history. The first
part of this essay is devoted to following up on this suggestion.
On
both sides of the Aegean Sea, in Greece and western Asia Minor,
various Indo-Germanic tribes have lived since ancient times, most of
whom we can, without being too inaccurate, group under the Greek
name of Pelasgians. These Pelasgians could be called the raw
material from which the various Hellenic peoples formed, as if by
secession, and it was the same barbarians from whom they would later
distinguish themselves so much who, at least for most of them, gave
the initial impetus. Through intercourse with Eastern peoples, the
Asia Minor tribes were the first to be elevated to higher
civilization; as we hear mention of very early on Egyptian monuments
by Joniers. Subsequently, through that same contact with the East,
and to an even greater extent through the colonization of the
already more advanced relatives from Asia Minor, the Pelasgians of
the islands and Europe were shaken from their slumber. There, too,
one hears mention of Ionians, but equally of Aeolians and Achaeans;
these are the names of Pelasgian tribes that had risen to a higher
civilization. This elevation of Pelasgians to Ionians, Aeolians, or
Achaeans will likely have occurred in approximately the following
way: a small core of more civilized people—foreign colonists
or natives, who, through intercourse with foreigners, had become
more highly developed — living in a Pelasgian land, mostly on
the coast, gradually expanded in all directions, and more and more
Pelasgians, with or without force, were won over to the new
situation.
However,
the development of true Hellenism did not originate primarily with
the Ionians, Achaeans, or Aeolians. It was, to a greater extent, the
work of another tribe, the Dorians, who originally lived in the
mountains of southern Thessaly and certainly felt the influence of
foreign civilization much less in earlier times. Thus, these Dorians
provide us with proof that when one speaks of the elevation of a
tribe to higher development, in addition to external influences,
certain internal forces are also at work, which we cannot explain
further than by calling them, for example, "original
disposition." One might even argue that the Dorians became the
predecessors of the Hellenes precisely because their lesser contact
with the East made it easier for them to preserve that original
disposition in all its purity. Thucydides' statement that Hellenes
and barbarians were homogeneous from ancient times is therefore only
true insofar as their dissimilarity only emerged in clear outlines
over time.
These
Dorians changed their residence several times; Thessaly was in a
period of turmoil: the various tribes displaced one another. The
Dorians, who first lived in the south of the country, are later
found entirely in the north, then again in the south, until finally,
driven by a desire for illustrious deeds, they penetrated through
the mountains of Thessaly into Central Greece and settled there not
far from Mount Parnassus.
Already
here they gave great proof of their sense of organization. The
various Greek tribes, although constantly warring among themselves
in ancient times, could not, in the long run, close their eyes to
what they had in common as tribal brothers. Early on, we see peoples
living in each other's neighborhood uniting to care for a common
sanctuary: one people, one God. Nevertheless, they continued to
fight each other even afterward, but the groundwork for a more
peaceful situation had been laid. The Dorians took a major step
forward in this direction. It was likely under their influence that
three such unions united into one large one, the Amphictiony of
Delphi, so that from then on, numerous peoples, from northern
Thessaly to the Gulf of Corinth, found their religious and more or
less also their political center in the temple of Delphi on
Parnassus. But Central Greece ultimately offered the Dorians neither
the lands they needed nor a sufficiently large field for their
exploits. Their eyes had long been fixed on the Peloponnese, the
southern peninsula of Greece. There, on the eastern and northern
coasts, lived a fairly large Ionian population, who, long associated
with the East, not only practiced agriculture but also traded and
had even made some progress in arts and crafts. While on the western
coast, Aeolian and Achaean colonies had penetrated only very
slightly into the Pelasgian interior. In the Ionian territory, here
and there, formidable fortresses were found, with walls as thick as
25 feet, constructed of colossal boulders hewn from the mountains.
One of these citadels, the one at Mycenae, had an entrance formed by
two parallel walls, 50 feet long, at the end of which was a gate, 15
feet wide, above which were carved stone statues of two lions,
facing each other, presumably the heraldic emblem of a renowned
heroic family. The Achaean rulers lived in these citadels, for
Achaean colonists had settled among the Ionians in the Peloponnese
and gradually acquired power there. The rulers of the Peloponnese
were called Achaeans, and although some of them were not originally
Achaean families, this did not prevent the name from being extended
to all. A certain connection existed between the Achaean
families—there were also some outside the Peloponnese; How
much did the later legend recount of Agamemnon of the Atreidae
family, the lord of Mycenae, who led so many Achaeans against mighty
Troy? Yet it is understandable that no communal bond was strong
enough to ultimately restrain the wild passions of a savage knightly
aristocracy. People plundered each other's herds and slaves;
numerous feuds divided the various families from generation to
generation. No trace of a struggle over anything one might call a
political or religious issue! Conditions were not entirely
dissimilar to those of Europe in the first century.
In
the time of the feudal system; even in Achaean Greece, despite the
disagreements between great and small lords, a regular social
situation and generally recognized authority were impossible. Very
little evidence remains of later Hellenic republicanism. While the
princes and prominent Achaeans were exhorted to their duty "with
friendly words," the vast mass of the lower ranks, driven by
the royal rod, had to endure the scornful rebuke that they were
"unfightable and cowardly men, of no account in either war or
council, who had only to listen to what others, far more excellent
than themselves, had to say." It certainly meant something that
they were at least admitted to meetings with the princes. Yet, that
vast throng merely formed the dark background against which the
heroic figures of the princes could be more clearly defined. What in
this Achaean civilization—which we can form a fairly clear
picture of through Homer and the ruins of Mycenae—is
particularly reminiscent of later times, for example, is that need
for splendor, which already testifies to a certain extent to a
developed sense of beauty, and also that apparent predilection for
holding contests, in which kings and nobles tried to win the prize—a
cauldron, a tripod, a horse, an ox, or a slave—not only in
horse races, but also by wrestling and throwing discus or javelin.
Such
were the social conditions in the land where, more than a thousand
years before Christ, the Dorians emerged as conquerors. The fame of
the Achaean rulers had also penetrated the valleys of Parnassus, and
the powerful sons of the mountains, who felt no need of fortresses
as a defense, felt drawn to such a camp. Accompanied by many
Aetolian warriors, their western neighbors, and led by the
descendants of their tribal hero Heracles, the majority—the
rest remaining at their old homes—crossed the Gulf of Corinth
where it narrows most, carved their way through the still
predominantly Pelasgian inland, and, heading straight for their
goal, attacked the illustrious descendants of Atreus in their
formidable citadels in the south and east of the peninsula. A
stubborn struggle ensued. With incredible effort, they succeeded in
gaining a foothold at a few points, from which it would later be
possible to penetrate further into the country. Ultimately, they
acquired a sufficiently dominant position among the Peloponnesian
peoples, from which they established a higher order of things and a
more ideal view of life among the Achaeans and later far beyond. The
question becomes: who were the Dorians to be capable of such a task?
And we will attempt to form as clear a picture as possible of the
peculiarities of their spiritual life. That these peculiarities were
already present in their main features when they set foot on
Peloponnesian soil is beyond doubt; yet it is utterly impossible
here to draw even an approximate boundary between what was present
earlier and what developed later. We must, therefore, more or less
step outside the historical order and describe and explain the
Dorian peculiarities in the fuller scope and with the colors of a
later period.
The
higher life of a people often begins with conquest. It then feels
powerful and great, and cannot remain inactive. How could strength
and greatness exist without others having to bow to it? Base
passions can still play a major role in the warrior, but above all,
he wants to conquer for the sake of conquering. Self-esteem rises to
astonishing heights, yet one also carries within oneself a world of
social, political, or religious order, through which one feels that
one, as a people, matters. Most so-called world empires are, to a
greater or lesser extent, new organizations, and the conqueror
often, even where he does not originally intend it, nevertheless
ingrains the peculiarities of his national existence in the land of
the conquered.
Such
conquests were those of the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Persians; such
were also those of the Dorian tribe. Yet, although the general
fundamental character is the same, it is precisely here that the
uniquely Hellenic element begins to reveal itself. Egyptians,
Assyrians, and Persians exalted themselves in the one ruler who had
placed himself at their head; they identified themselves with his
glory, reverently awaiting the wealth and splendor that would
descend upon them from his hands. It was quite different with the
Dorians; there everything is on a much smaller scale, but there the
individual also comes much more into the picture.
in
the foreground. The elevation of the Dorian tribe was simultaneously
an elevation for each individual Dorian; the nation's ideal of life,
at the same time the ideal of life for its members: as a human
being, too, the Dorian's highest purpose in life was to be strong
and to make his strength felt by others; in the consciousness of
having conquered, he also found his highest satisfaction as a human
being. If he called himself the man in his imagination—a more
ideal conception of life for a woman was almost unthinkable here—the
man as he truly had to be, then it was the warrior; as "nailed
to the ground," the Dorian had to remain standing amidst his
enemies, "teeth clenched on his lips, drilling the mighty
spear," "never deviating from the javelins of his
enemies"; Or else he had to leap upon the enemy with sword in
hand, ‘placing his foot beside the enemy’s foot,’
‘pushing the shield against the enemy’s shield,’
‘the helmet toward the enemy’s helmet,’ ‘chest
to chest.’ One senses how strongly, in this representation of
the paragon of humanity, that sense of beauty, the most inalienable
heritage of the Hellenic race, could assert itself. The warrior, who
unwaveringly brandishes his spear amidst his enemies, is undeniably
a figure that appeals to the imagination; he can stand in a pose
full of dramatic power, with every muscle in his body, as it were,
working toward the one great goal. The Dorian went even further.
"Deformed," he said, "it was that an old man lay
before the young men among the champions, with a gray head and a
white beard, breathing out his brave breath, holding his bloodied
limbs in his hands, his body bare"; the youth, on the other
hand, is in good health, "as long as he still enjoys the
glorious blossoms of youth, he is delightful to look upon for men,
lovely to women, both when he is alive and when he falls in the
midst of his enemies in all his splendor." It becomes
understandable why the Greek could later tolerate no clothing,
however named, in the wrestling arena. One senses something of that
unspeakable pleasure with which he could delight in the sight of
beauty and youth. Male virtue was not only something excellent, it
was also something beautiful; "Beautiful and good"
remained the great precept of Hellenic morality, even in a time when
the concept of moral good had a much broader scope than originally
held by the Dorian.
And
the reward of victory? One demands for oneself a good field and
civil prosperity, one dreads being prey to necessity, one desires a
respected position, which is impossible without a certain degree of
prosperity; here too, the influence of the principle of beauty
manifests itself: misery, which nevertheless manifests itself
externally, "brings shame to the glorious human form"; but
however much one therefore did not disdain the material advantage
that a victory could bring in many cases, greed is by no means the
true driving force for the struggle. People desired, first and
foremost, the bliss of victory for its own sake, and as the highest
reward, should one fall in battle, the assurance that the fame of
the brave would live on for posterity, and, should one survive, the
honor one acquires from young and old, that one "shines among
one's fellow citizens," that even "elders make room in
gatherings." Thus, the Dorian, in his quest for glory, remained
truly human, and the fear of the excessive—a characteristic
consequence of the Greek sense of beauty—is also evident here.
If, for example, the Egyptian kings readily allow themselves to be
called God, one should not forget that such a conception is quite
compatible with the theological concepts of the Egyptians, yet it
nevertheless entails a self-aggrandizement, the danger of which the
Greek could easily demonstrate through numerous examples from his
fable: the gods punish the mortal who seeks to equate himself with
them. It is therefore natural that, where victory is presented as
the result of the cooperation of many, the sense of triumph must be
lower than where the efforts of thousands are absorbed by that of
one person. That Ramesses the Great performed miracles of bravery in
the Battle of Kodesh, while many Egyptians, on the other hand,
behaved cowardly, no one doubts; that he achieved victory all by
himself—as we are assured on the pylons of Karnak—and
defeated "hundreds of thousands" is something no one will
take literally.
But
although the Dorian was a born republican, although his kings were
probably little more than Germanic dukes, although every Dorian
warrior demanded a great deal of respect for himself, yet he felt no
danger of falling into the trap of his Germanic brethren, for whom,
as is well known, a love of freedom and respect for personal
independence all too often resulted in a certain impotence in
political organization. How could this also be the case among the
Dorians, the people who, more than 1,100 years before Christ,
established the Amphictionia of Delphi? A people whose legends
recounted a king, Aegimidius, who, even in the distant past, gave
his tribe firm orders? A people, ultimately, where, as we have
noted, the aspirations of individual individuals so completely
harmonized with those of the entire nation. For them, the state was
a union of harmoniously cooperating members, and the widely renowned
Dorian Eunomia ("good legal regulation")—"the
Eunomia, the sister," as the poet later sang, "of Right,
the solid foundation of states, and also the sister of peace, all
three creators of wealth, and glorious children of well-advised
Justice"—this Dorian Eunomia was the guardian of this
harmonious cooperation.
Such
was the Dorian, or rather, such was his nature increasingly over
time. One senses how much further removed he was from the Asiatics
than the Achaeans. True, instead of the single, unimpeded monarch,
the latter had a fairly numerous feudal nobility, whose heroic
figures stood side by side as equals, but even so, he was still very
far removed from the Dorian conception of struggle as the ideal life
goal for every warrior, from Dorian republicanism and Dorian
Eunomia. No wonder, therefore, that the triumph of these principles
in the not yet even universally Achaean Peloponnese was achieved
only gradually. Relatively soon, the Dorians founded several states:
Sicyon, Corinth, Megara, Argos in the Ionian eastern half of the
Peloponnese, Laconia in the south, Messenia in the southwest, while
in western Elis the Aetolians settled. After that, another period of
relative stagnation followed. In Messenia, the Dorian seeds were all
but suffocated: the Dorians there almost disappeared beneath the
large, still half-and-half Pelasgian, population. In the eastern
Ionian lands, they faced an already relatively highly developed
civilization, which, while lacking the ideal fundamental character
of their own, nevertheless found itself disregarded by the Dorians
in its most just demands. The efforts of these Ionians were focused
on trade and industry, their civilization largely the result of
their need for material prosperity. The Dorian, averse to all
commerce, was unable to recognize the right to material development,
and therefore also unable to control that Ionian life. The Eurotas
situation was especially dire. There, in Laconia, the Dorian colony
was too strong to be relegated to a more modest position, not strong
enough to dominate. A state of constant conflict between the old and
new inhabitants of the land resulted. A truly regular state did not
yet exist.
It
seemed that Dorian idealism would perish without a trace; it
remained questionable whether a true Hellenism would ever rise
against the barbarian world. It was then that the great legislator
Lycurgus appeared among the Spartans, the Dorians of Eurotas.
Through wise laws, he brought the old and the new population into a
peaceful relationship with each other; he ensured order and
tranquility, the Dorian Eunomia. Strict regulations were established
to ensure that the Dorians maintained and developed their unique
characteristics: preparation for war became a lifelong task, the
desire for enrichment was excluded by the ban on trade, each was
allocated a sufficient field, but no more than that; each Dorian was
given a position worthy of a freeman before the kings and other
heads of state.
Thus,
Laconia became Dorian for good, and they felt called upon to bravely
enter the fray, in order to ensure the Dorian spirit prevailed
beyond the borders. Messenia, the land that had become
half-Pelasgian again, was reconquered; Spartan warriors, for whom
there were no fields at home, were given them in Messenia. While the
resulting tremendous tensions deeply shook their own household, the
Dorians sought strength in their own principles. As a result of the
Messenian War, in which the kings had rendered great service, their
authority threatened to expand excessively. The power of the Ephors,
however, was then increased to ensure the perpetual exclusive rule
of law against the kings. And not only this, they even had the
courage to somewhat defy their principles. Terpander from Lesbos had
to be shaken by his music, in the soul, by the internal strife that
had been exalted and harmonious mood, where a direction toward the
higher seemed only possible, and Thaletas was called from Crete to
impart a higher inspiration to the young men in their military and
gymnastic exercises through his flute playing.
Yet,
one thing could not be denied in all this. Without war, the Dorian
could not achieve his ideal in life, and the question became how the
Dorian Eunomia, a regulated legal state, would ever become the
peninsula's heritage. It was therefore necessary to discover a haven
of peace, where the pursuit of the glory of male virtue could
achieve a similar satisfaction as on the battlefield. It was the
allies and kindred spirits of the Dorians, the Aetolians, who
deserve the honor of having found such a haven. What a memorable
juncture in human history; the first more or less conscious attempt
by the human race to rid itself of the demon of war! The Aetolians,
as we have already noted, had settled on the west coast in the
region of Elis. The Aeolian and Achaean tribes who lived on that
west coast—as has already been pointed out—had not yet
penetrated equally far into the interior everywhere and had
apparently exerted little influence on the original population here
and there. In Elis, too, the population was probably still in a
state of more or less Pelasgian civilization; they were still
largely dispersed throughout the country; centers of communication,
cities, were still very few. Especially south of Elis, however, at
the mouth of the Alpheios, the civilized coastal strip was
particularly narrow; beyond it lay the Pelasgian land, which in all
likelihood remained almost entirely free of all Achaean or Aeolian
civilization. It is noteworthy that the Aetolians, themselves
powerless to do more than they were already doing, summoned several
Achaean families, displaced from elsewhere, to lead them to a region
where the very foundations for a higher order of things still had to
be laid.
The
natural route to penetrate from the narrow, more civilized coastal
region to the Pelasgians was along the banks of the Alpheios,
present-day Rufias, a river approximately 180 feet wide, which,
after bursting from the high mountains of the far interior, Arcadia,
flows its yellow waters along the northern edge of a much lower
mountain range in a very winding bed. As one traveled further inland
along the river's flatter northern side, one saw the northern hills,
having once approached the river but then retreated again, extend
far south again, sending out a low, westward-facing range of hills,
as they approached the river, at a bend to the north. Continuing
further over these hills, as soon as one reached a peak, a lovely
landscape suddenly spread out before the viewer in tranquil
splendor. The northern hill country (later named Olympus in this
area) continued here at a relatively short distance from the river,
so that between them a fairly narrow plain stretched eastward.
However, further east, the northern hills approached the river even
closer, extending even a single conical peak right up to the bank.
Moreover, since the southern hills, the highest of all, did not
deviate from the river at any point, the entire plain was enclosed
on all sides. Behind them, on the east and southeast sides, rose in
a dim distance the higher mountains of the land lying deeper inland,
and everywhere the peaks were covered with a soft green, over which,
in various places, groves of graceful pine trees, interspersed with
a few solemn oaks, cast their shadow. The plain below was completely
covered with an olive grove, interrupted here and there by a larger
or smaller extension of the northern hills. The largest of these
extensions was a fairly steep, also densely wooded hilltop, which,
near the eastern end of the western range of hills overlooking the
plain, jutted out quite far into the olive grove; this hill was
later called Mount Kronos. Another break formed a small stream in
the distance, near the eastern summit of the cone, whose waters
could perhaps be seen here and there, glistening through the trees.
Close ahead was a much more important stream, already then, or only
later, called the Kladeos. Just past the eastern end of the range of
hills they had climbed, west of what would later become Mount
Kronos, it broke out of the northern hills and, sinking deeply
between its rather steep banks, made its way to the Alpheios. The
whole scene was one of peace and tranquility, often interrupted,
however, by that often turbulent main stream, which, enclosed on the
south side by much steeper banks than on the north, drove its mighty
waters, often swollen by sudden inflows from the interior, between
the trees of the olive groves to the foot of the northern hills.
But
then, right at the foot of that jutting hilltop, of that later
mountain of Kronos, immediately beside the watery stream from the
north, the eye could perceive yet another break in the olive grove.
This one, however, was clearly made by human hands. The forest had
been cleared here over a considerable expanse, and perhaps with a
little effort one could also make out the tall fire altar, which,
rising from the center of that open plain, stood out with greater or
lesser clarity against the greenery behind it. Before them stood a
sacred grove of Pelasgians. The divine spirit murmured through the
olive grove; higher beings hovered over the surrounding mountains.
How one breathes here as if in the Indo-Germanic atmosphere! As yet,
the Deity had not created a dwelling by human hands, but the smoke
rising from the high fire altar climbed upward, to the shining
heavens, to the boundless light where the Unknown One had
established his seat, to Zeus, the father of all that lives. How the
men at the summit of that altar felt, as they gazed more freely into
the vast expanse of the world, as if brought into closer communion
with the Deity! Below, at the foot, hundreds stood absorbed in
silent attention, waiting until the sacrificer would finally descend
to reveal to the people the will of the Deity, drawn from the ashes
of the sacrificial animal. Here was the place where the Pelagie
tribes, perhaps even from further afield, experienced their most
sacred moments; here, too, the place whose solemn silence would be
broken centuries later by the joyful cries of supreme earthly bliss.
Those who saw the long, wooded plain stretched out before them could
little have imagined that there, around that same fire altar, the
buildings of Olympia, the most magnificent sanctuary of later
generations, would one day rise.
It
was to this region, situated only a few miles from the coast, that
the Achaean allies of the Aetohans advanced. On the promontory that
enclosed the plain with the sacred grove on the east side, a
fortress or city called Pisa was founded, or an existing one was
conquered. Soon, other cities arose. According to the idea that the
owner of the land should be the owner of the sanctuaries, it was
deemed advisable to secure the sacred grove in particular, and the
Achaean fortress of Pisa, there on the hill, served primarily to
maintain possession of that property. It would not have taken long
for the king and queen of heaven to obtain residences. In a truly
conservative spirit, the old Pelasgian fire altar was left in its
place, but the establishments of a new civilization were placed
alongside it: a temple of Hera on the north side, and one of Zeus
himself on the south. They believed they worshipped the same gods as
the Pelasgians, and there was no thought of abolishing the old cult.
Their only desire was to expand it, and little was there any
awareness of how much this, too, would lead to a complete reversal.
To a great extent, this religious harmony, this reverence among the
Achaians for the Pelasgian sanctuaries, made the dominion of the
land easier. When the Pelasgian people returned to their old
sanctuary—and the more they did, the more agreeable it must
have been for the Achaians—they certainly found many new
things there, but the old fire altar was still there; indeed, it had
remained the center of worship. So, despite all the new things, they
gradually began to feel completely at home again in the old place,
and, as was natural, they also became increasingly accustomed to
that newness. Thus, right in the heart of their former civilization,
they were won over to a new order of things.
Yet,
understandably, all this did not happen without a hard struggle. The
later legend, at least, which naturally places the events in a much
earlier period, tells how in the land of Pisa in ancient times lived
a ferocious king, Oenomaos, who had a beautiful daughter named
Hippodameia. He wanted to marry this daughter to the one who would
have defeated him in a chariot race. Thirteen tried in vain,
thirteen were pierced by the victor, and their skulls, truly
cannibalistic, were hung on the temple of Oenomaos' father. Then,
across the western sea, comes Pelops, the tribal hero of the
Achaeans. With deep reverence, he implores Poseidon for help in the
difficult battle. Poseidon provides him a golden chariot and winged
horses. The race begins. Hippodameia's wishes are on the young man's
side. Myrtilos, Oenomaos' charioteer, thrusts a wax pin into the
chariot. It crashes down. Pelops is victorious, kills Oenomaos, and
obtains his daughter and his kingdom. This legend, strongly
reminiscent of several ancient Germanic stories—several
Grimm's fairy tales—was truly popular among the later
inhabitants of Pisa. People pointed out not only Oenomaos's tomb and
stables, but also the shared grave of the thirteen unfortunate
suitors, and even that of one of their horses. Centuries later, in
the sacred precincts of Olympia, south of the fire altar, under a
small roof, stood an old wooden column, which would have collapsed
had it not been enclosed by strong bands. People told each other
that Oenomaos's house had been destroyed by Zeus's lightning, and
that this column alone remained. The Pelasgian sanctuary became
Achaean, but the Aetolians also exerted their influence here. It
seems that something resembling an Amphictionian bond existed
between the two peoples regarding the sacred area—soon called
Olympia, while the northern hills were given the name Olympus. Every
five years, a garment was presented to Hera, made by sixteen women
from sixteen cities: eight Elian, eight Pisan. The sanctuary likely
gained increasing renown among the surrounding tribes; it is
plausible that even then a race of youths was held in honor of Zeus,
and one of young girls in honor of Hera.
This
remained the case for a few centuries. The population on the west
coast of the Peloponnese certainly took a great step forward; Yet it
goes without saying that a state of civilization, which could only
have been established with the help of the Achaeans, had remained so
largely Achaean that even here the Dorian Eunomia had not yet
subdued Achaean rule; in Elis, the same question was faced to a
greater or lesser extent as in Laconia. There Lycurgus arose, and
that powerful Dorian movement was awakened, which was destined, in
earlier or later times, to seize upon all related peoples. The
Aetolians—or let us rather say Eleans, for although the ruling
families in Elis were undoubtedly Aetolian, that name no longer
appears here as a national name—the Aetolian Eleans then felt
the shock very quickly and cooperated vigorously, albeit in their
own way. They broke away from the Pisans and deprived them of their
common sanctuary in order to govern the whole according to their own
views. Every fourth year, the month in which the summer solstice
falls (in our country, it falls on June 21st) was to be a "sacred
month." Throughout the Elean region, and subsequently among
other peoples—in later times, increasingly numerous—a
truce (ekecheria, literally: that one should "keep one's hands
to oneself") was proclaimed for that month by "messengers
of peace," as if it were a truce decreed by the gods. Almost
1,000 years later, a round disk was displayed in the temple of Hera,
along the edge of which King Iphitos, to whom the legends
unanimously attribute the introduction of this Olympian peace, had
its provisions inscribed. Elis was then sacred territory. Festive
embassies from states, as well as private individuals, could attend
the sacrificial ceremonies without any danger to any enemy and could
participate in or be spectators at the subsequent races. Soldiers
who wished to cross the Holy Land at such a time were required to
surrender their weapons to one side, only to receive them back from
the other upon leaving the country.
What
a sublime thought of peace in this! The deity himself intervenes to
compel the savage, whose wild fist spared nothing, at least for a
moment, to "stay his hands" and elevate his spirit to
something higher. Iphitos, or whoever he may have been, certainly
had his own people in mind first and foremost in his decree, but
isn't this precisely the blessing associated with noble thoughts,
that they reach further than the one in whose mind they originated
could initially clearly imagine? The peaceful mood of Olympia
exerted its purifying influence far beyond the borders of Elis;
carried far and wide by the numerous celebrators to all corners of
Hellenic land. The ancients themselves also noted that there was a
very great reconciling power in gathering together for the same
purpose in common sanctuaries. Later, the Olympian god refused to
give anyone oracles about a war between Greeks.
But
it couldn't be long before people had to arrive at that other great
idea, in which Olympia's peace above all the lovable meaning was
that one can "just as well in competition as in war, share in
glorious fame, the praise of fellow citizens and foreigners, the
highest attainable gain"; the thought, in a word, that just as
well as the Spartan on the battlefield, one could also fight here
for "manly virtue." With what a different eye is the camp
site next to the temple buildings of Olympia viewed today. There,
too, the Dorian could achieve his highest ideal in life; there, too,
the glorious "Victory" (Nike) descended from the hand of
Zeus, the formidable one; there, too, the victor's breast flowed
with that exalting, cleansing feeling of satisfaction that is the
portion of everyone who, through the exertion of all their strength,
has achieved what is highest for them. It was 28 years after the new
regulations by Iphitos that the custom was introduced at Olympia of
rewarding the victors with nothing more than a simple olive wreath.
From then on, the competition would be for a higher "gain"
than a horse, tripod, or cauldron, or whatever precious objects
might previously have been the prize of victory. The competition
after the sacrificial ceremonies, which had consisted of only a
single type of footrace, now assumed increasing importance. Two new
types of footrace were soon added, but even then, the competition
remained far below its significance. A major step forward was the
introduction of wrestling and boxing, and the so-called pankration;
these exercises, with their more martial character, were very
appropriate for a camp that was to replace the battlefield. More
than a hundred years after the introduction of the wreath, the types
of competition at Olympia already showed great diversity.
The
fighting on the campfire at Olympia had then become Dorian. Another
28 years after the introduction of the wreath, in the year 720,
complete nudity was introduced to the competition. Here, if
anywhere, one could enjoy the beauty of male virtue. That entire
circle of spectators on those heights, surrounding the fighting
site, "worked" as if "alongside" in the fight,
and with breathless effort, they followed every muscular movement of
their completely naked bodies. Now, a javelin would suddenly tremble
right into the target; then, a discus would arc through the air, far
beyond the point where all the discus thrown had landed; the entire
surrounding crowd involuntarily became engulfed in a movement that
echoed through its ranks. What enthusiasm permeated all hearts as
that youth, "in the full bloom of youth," "though
having done beautiful things," strode freely and proudly past
the spectators, and, in the rapture of his victory, made the camp
resound with his triumphant cries.
For
many, there was something else special. While, according to Dorian
principles, fame among his fellow citizens was the highest reward
for every warrior, conversely, every lineage, every city, prided
itself on possessing a victor; it later happened that a victor would
be bribed to be proclaimed a member of a different lineage, or a
citizen of a different city, than the one to which he actually
belonged. In this identification of the victor's fame with that of
his city and his lineage, however, we also see here the measured
manifestation that, as we noted, characterized the Greek in all
things, as well as in his consciousness of victory. When, in later
times, the victor allows a triumphal poet like Pindar to clarify the
sentiments that inspire him, then the consciousness in which he
feels happy is above all that he has worthily perpetuated the glory
of country, city, or family. Here too, the striving of individuals
is in harmonious harmony with that of the community, and while
people often felt the barbarian awakening within, they were fully
aware of this danger and quickly recalled this vain attempt to
"become God," never forgetting that "only the mortal
is in the measure of mortals."
But
if the Olympian victor stood worthy beside a glorious ancestor, he
too, in turn, was entitled to the tribute of posterity, to that
tribute which, as we have seen, was the greatest consolation even
for the Spartan warrior when he fell in battle. A victor at Olympia
is entitled to a song of triumph, which will convey his glory to
distant generations. Just as it is painful for a man that his wealth
is not linked to his name if he has no son to succeed him, so too is
happiness very short-lived when, after having accomplished noble
deeds, one goes to Hades without a song of triumph. A statue of the
victor could also be erected in the sacred precincts of Olympia.
There, often caught in one of the impressions, he would the most
exciting moments of combat, to be held up as an example for
posterity to imitate.
Thus
Olympia, albeit in a very peculiar way, became Dorian. Here too, the
old Achaean period was definitively over; the Dorian-Hellenic era
began. The Dorian Heracles appears in the legend alongside the
Achaean Pelops and even occupies a much broader position. It was
Heracles who, in the distant past, established the divine peace and
devised the various forms of combat; he had also journeyed to the
distant land of the Hyperboreans to fetch the wild olive tree, with
whose foliage the heads of victors would henceforth be wreathed.
After Heracles, however, this entire institution fell into disuse,
until finally Iphitos began to reintroduce it. Later, the Eleans
repeatedly recalled some kind of contest instituted by Heracles at
that time, and naturally, it was immediately reinstated. The courage
to introduce the new was found here, as so often, only in the
conviction that it was actually the genuine old one. But although
almost everything characteristic of Olympia was derived from
Heracles, even less so than Oenomaos before, Pelops could now be
completely set aside; had he not, precisely through his struggle
with him, first wrested the sanctuary from utterly barbaric hands?
Centuries later, two sanctuaries to Heros were displayed in
Olympia's sacred field, one in memory of Pelops, the other in memory
of Hippodameia. The later generations that flocked to the famous
altar of Zeus at Olympia also walked once more in deep reverence
around the sanctuary of Pelops, located just behind it.
The
Elean movement was undoubtedly awakened by the Spartans. The later
mythology therefore aptly portrays Lycurgos and Iphitos as allies.
On the disk on which Iphitos had the terms of the peace engraved, it
was thought that Lycurgos' name could still be recognized later,
when the letters had already been more or less erased. It is
certainly not entirely impossible that they were contemporaries, but
that aside, it can hardly be doubted whether the Elaeans could count
on Sparta's support in their great endeavor. Difficult times had
dawned for both countries. Now it is the mighty Pheidon, who, at the
head of the Ionian national component in the Peloponnesus, rises up
in Argos, seizes sole power, and pushes back all that is Dorian,
even marching right through the peninsula to the legitimate city of
Elis, where he temporarily grants the Pisans possession of their
sanctuary. Then again, it is the vanquished Messenians who rise up;
all Achaean or Pelasgian sentiments unite, and the Dorian order of
things, barely established, threatens to be destroyed forever.
Sparta and Elis stood alone in the unequal struggle; but the
enthusiasm for the great cause ultimately made them triumph.
Messenia was crushed; Pisa, though long spared, was ultimately so
destroyed that a few centuries later one could seriously question
whether there had ever been a Pisa at all. The new could not
establish itself here except on the ruins of the old. But these were
by no means the greatest victories achieved. Far beyond the reach of
Spartan weapons, kindred peoples were gripped by the spirit
emanating from Sparta and Elis and inspired to a higher life.
Already during the Second Messenian War, it was the Athenian
Tyrtaeus who led the Dorian warriors to battle with Ionic songs, and
the famous poet Alcman, a Lydian by birth, found his spiritual
homeland in Sparta. And as for Olympia's spiritual victories, it was
nothing unusual that in the Nemean Games, when they were reorganized
under Dorian influence at the beginning of the sixth century, a
wreath of foliage also became the victor's reward. The triumph of
Elean ideas was more clearly illustrated by the fact that when, not
long before the reorganization of the Nemean Games, Ionian influence
made itself felt in ancient Delphi, the Pythian Games there received
a new regulation modeled on Olympia: initially, contests were still
held for prizes of any value, but later, the reward of an olive
wreath was introduced. It was the Ionians who brought the remaining
ancient Doric sanctuary into the Dorian movement. However, the
organization of the Corinthian Games on the Isthmus was clearly an
act of hostility against Olympia. Not only is the Ionian demigod
Theseus the patron saint here, but of all the Greek tribes, the
Eleans alone are excluded from participating in the competition.
Yet, even here, the spirit of the times was too strong.
People
fought over a wreath of foliage. Olympia was already a common
Hellenic sanctuary in the 7th century. Not only festival-goers from
the Peloponnese flocked there, but also from Thebes, Athens, and
even from the most distant colonies.
The
Spartan and Elean movements went hand in hand; yet both retained a
certain uniqueness. While Sparta, when it called Terpander and
Thaletas to its fold, had clearly shown that it wanted to strengthen
itself through what related peoples elsewhere were bringing to the
fore, the Eleans found their true calling in every endeavor among
the Greek tribes that allowed an ideal conception along the
Dorian-Elean lines to be incorporated, as it were, into general
Hellenic life, by giving it the opportunity to express itself at
Olympia. It was largely due to the influence of Elis that the Dorian
current broadened into a more general Hellenic one. Even in the face
of their Achaean past, the Eleans maintained a more lenient mindset
and a sincere desire to always recognize the good wherever it
appeared. The brilliant lifestyle of the ancient Achaean rulers
continued to permeate, especially in Ionian-Aeolian lands. While
this contrasted sharply with the austere austerity of the Spartans,
immense wealth and distinguished generosity inevitably made a deep
impression on the Hellenic mind, so open to all human splendor. The
Eleans did not reject this expression of the Hellenic spirit. They
came to understand that "wealth adorned by the pursuit of
excellence" is one of man's most glorious possessions: when the
nobleman showers the splendor of his status on his fatherland and
friends, when he adorns the altars of the gods with precious
offerings for the glory of his city, when he delights in receiving
friends into his home,[2] when magnificent stud farms are built at
astonishing expense, and swift charioteers drive the beautiful
horses around the racecourse—a magnificent and impressive
spectacle for everyone to enjoy. Thus, wealth is conceived from an
ideal perspective, and the sacred field also offers the opportunity
to display its full splendor to the assembled Hellas. Already a
century after the rule of Iphitus, horse and chariot races were
introduced at Olympia. The Eleans were concerned with maintaining a
neutral stance as much as possible. They sought, above all, to
unite, not to alienate. When, in the 6th and 7th centuries, numerous
illegitimate rulers emerged in Ionian Greece, who, insofar as they
lived in the Peloponnesus, where Dorians had settled among the
Ionian population, pushed Dorian influence into the background—we
have already mentioned Pheidon—the Spartans became the mortal
enemies of this more Asiatic than Hellenic manifestation. Without a
doubt, they rendered great service to the further development of
their people; yet the attitude of the Eleans in this matter also
demands appreciation. True to their principle of being as generous
as possible, they did not close the Olympian racecourse to the
tyrants, not asking what anyone else was, provided they only
performed worthily as a Hellene at Olympia. More powerful and
grandiose was the Spartan action, but the Eleans' action had the
great advantage of preserving all the sparks of Hellenic life and
better enfolding the various members of the Hellenic people in a
common bond.
Yet
the Hellenic tribe had not yet borne its noblest fruits. The
Athenian had not yet driven out his tyrants, had not yet felt that
higher inspiration that the struggle for freedom against the
Persians would cause to surge through his breast. The Ionian life on
the coasts and islands had much that was brilliant and noble, but
its finest revelation in the Athens of Pericles was still to come.
It did come, and the multifaceted work and endeavors of the Ionian
were ennobled by a fervor for the ideal that one might call Dorian,
had it not originated here as well, and had it not extended
infinitely further than in Sparta. In Athens, too, there was a
republican desire for freedom, yet the Spartan was content if the
government allowed him to live as a free Dorian. The Athenian could
not imagine freedom without co-government, nor republican
institutions without democracy. In Athens, too, there was a striving
for masculine virtue, but here, where life was so much more
multifaceted, it was also linked to the pursuit of the realization
of so many other ideals of human glory. People worked in every field
to elevate themselves and glorify their fatherland. The Dorians'
contributions to the development of Greek art are great—one
thinks, for example, only of the Doric architectural order—but
with Aeschylus, Sophocles, Phidias, only a very few can be mentioned
in the same breath.
This
Hellenic light, too, was intended to shed light on the universal
national sanctuary. Phidias, accompanied by a whole staff of
artists, was summoned by the Eleans to Olympia to complete major
works on the Temple of Zeus. Alkamenes, for example, depicted the
battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs on the west façade;
Paionios, on the east façade, the combat of Pelops and
Oenomaos. The great master himself sculpted the statue of Olympian
Zeus here, which was erected in the interior of the temple; the most
famous work of Phidias's chisel stood in the sacred field at
Olympia. Thus, the Eleans acquired a unique place at the center of
Hellenic life, but one must beware of equating the Greek tribes'
need for communal life and striving too closely with, for example,
the German or Italian unification movement of our time. They felt
united against the barbarian world, yet simultaneously delighted in
the differences of character and gifts they observed in each other,
seeing in this a guarantee of versatility. Several distinct dialects
and national art forms of individual tribes became universally
Hellenic. They were used to express the various feelings and moods
that, while most powerfully developed in one Hellenic tribe and
another in another, had also first found their appropriate form of
expression, yet which, through the inner spiritual affinity of the
various tribes, could nevertheless also arise in every Hellenic
soul; the choruses of Attic tragedy, for example, usually spoke in a
more or less Doric accent; Doric sounded more solemn than Attic.
Such a sense of community precluded rather than demanded political
unity. How else could it come about than through the rule of one
tribe over another, which naturally also had to be accompanied by
the suppression of the national idiosyncrasies of the subjugated
tribe? It was precisely through the larger states' striving for
hegemony, the striving for political unification, that the true
sense of a higher Hellenic community among the Greek peoples was
forever destroyed. What originally brought the Hellenic tribes
together was the purely human need of man for man: people understood
each other, considered the same things "beautiful and good,"
found in each other recognition and appreciation for their deepest
inner feelings.
Thus,
Olympia, which could never later become a Derby or Longchamps,
became a center around which the life of a richly gifted people
moved in its full significance. We have here before us one of the
most remarkable phenomena of historical ethnology. Often, when a
higher sense of human calling reveals itself in a people, it carries
within itself, as it were, the infinite, strives for the more than
human, and extends the meaning of human existence far beyond the
grave. We find a similar spiritual direction in antiquity, to a
greater or lesser extent, among the various Eastern peoples, and
later, developed in all its sublimity, in Catholic Europe during the
Middle Ages. The Hellenic world, insofar as it was not yet under the
influence of philosophy, offers very little that is akin to it. The
Hellene, after all, went no further than the glorification of his
earthly existence. Everything noble that manifests itself in the
person who lives wholeheartedly for the present was noted and
brought to higher perfection; there was no attempt to elevate
oneself to a realm of more than human beings; spiritualization of
matter is the highest thing known. For very few Greeks, the Deity is
the ineffable, entirely exalted above the sphere of all that is
human. The Gods, indeed, excel in their full glory far above the
human world, yet they are nevertheless united with it. Far from
being the glorious consummation for the Greek of what had begun here
on earth, it was at most, quite the opposite, the fading twilight of
an already extinguished torch. One reached the highest here on
earth, and having achieved it, one could lay one's head down in
resignation: it was natural, after all, that one should perish, now
that one no longer had any reason to exist. When Diagoras, himself
victorious at Olympia, saw both his sons triumph in one day, a
Lacedaemonian cried out to him: "Die, Diagoras, for you will
not ascend to heaven!" It was also the Greek's sense of
moderation that compelled him to reach out for nothing higher than
the earthly. If one were to feel a more far-reaching inclination
welling up in the soul, the stern warning would soon sound: to try
to set foot beyond "the Pillars of Heracles." There is
much in the striving of the Greeks that resonates in our souls; yet
we constantly feel that a wide gulf of many centuries lies between
us and that world.
What
Rome is for the Catholic, what Mecca is for the Muslim, that was—if
any comparison is still possible among such disparate people—for
the Greek Olympia. It was, as it were, an entire Hellenic world in
miniature; every Greek tribe had given proof of its existence there
through buildings, statues, or other votive offerings. The
aforementioned Pausanias devotes approximately two-fifths of his
description of Greece to Olympia. In later centuries, however,
nothing of the former grandeur could be observed on the beautiful
plain south of Kronos Hill. All the buildings had collapsed, the
statues broken, and the Alpheios, no longer restrained by waterworks
as before, had, through its numerous floods, covered the entire
ancient site with a layer of sand and silt several feet thick.
Little remained of the ruins; only here and there a single broken
column protruded a foot or so above the silted ground. This remained
the situation for hundreds of years; no one thought of the abandoned
sanctuary. Only when, in the previous century, people began to
clearly understand that one could learn to understand the Greek from
his works of art, no less than from his literature, did a different
era begin to dawn. It was Winckelman, the great spokesman for that
movement, who first proposed the plan to excavate the silted ground
here. A rich harvest was expected here; after all, the silt from the
Alpheios was supposed to have saved many works of art from further
destruction. The brilliant German, however, did not live to see his
plan realized. Since then, Olympia has been receiving more public
attention. It was also visited a few times by Englishmen, and one of
these visits was so successful that the exact location where the
remains of the Temple of Zeus were buried could be pinpointed. More
was accomplished when the French undertook their expedition to Morea
in 1828 and 1829; the commission of scholars that followed this
expedition, among other things, excavated the ground on the north
and south sides of the Temple of Zeus; very important fragments of
the temple's metope reliefs were discovered. Nevertheless,
Winckelman the German's plan was only implemented in its full scope
and true significance by Germans. At the expense of the Imperial
Government, under the supervision of the renowned Berlin Professor
Ernest Curtius, a complete scientific expedition of German scholars
was organized. They planned to excavate as much of the silted soil
as possible, in order to salvage what could only be salvaged of the
buried treasures. Work on this has been ongoing since 1876.
Excavating in all directions from the Temple of Zeus, they have
uncovered the ancient soil of virtually the entire Sacred Field and
a large portion of the surrounding area. The results met the highest
expectations. The remains of virtually all the buildings at Olympia
mentioned by Pausanias have been recovered; so numerous, in most
cases, that one can form a very good idea of their
layout, order of construction, and even minor architectural details.
Eighty-seven statues were found, including 44 larger than life-size
and 42 heads. Among them, one finds outstanding representatives from
almost every period of Greek art. So many remains have been found of
façade groups by Alcamenes and Paionius, and of the metope
reliefs, that one can form a fairly clear idea of their
composition, and even their complete or partial reconstruction is
possible. The Nike of Paionius is the first freestanding statue by a
master from the school of Phidias that we possess; the Hermes of
Praxiteles is the only original work from which we can learn about a
later art movement. The host of smaller finds, especially of
terracotta, the 5,000 coins, and the nearly 400 inscriptions,
including some very important ones, could in themselves constitute a
not inconsiderable museum. When the undertaking began, Professor
Curtius expressed the opinion that it would lead to good results if,
just as in the natural sciences, in history and archaeology too, one
sought to expand the number of known facts primarily by
systematically searching in places where one could be sure of
finding something. That hope, as we have seen, has not been
disappointed. The entire undertaking is a great credit to the German
government and German scholars. We can count ourselves fortunate
that it has not been fruitless for our country either. In an annex
building
At
the Leiden Museum, casts of some of the most important sculptures
found at Olympia, purchased by our government, are being
installed.
Pausanias's detailed description now takes on greater
value for us. With it in hand, we can, as it were, stroll around the
sacred field and take stock of the various buildings we pass, and
admire many of the famous sculptures he also saw there. Readers are
invited to take such a walk in the second part of this
essay.
Leiden.
A.E.J. HOLWERDA.
(To be
continued.)
Olympia.
(Continued from, Vol. I, p.
86.)
II.
Most Greeks who wanted to visit Olympia certainly
first went to Elis, the capital of the region of the same name. From
there, two roads led to the sacred plain further south. The main
highway, the so-called "sacred road," ran closer to the
sea across the flatter coastal land and was about ten hours' walk
long; the other, to the east of this one, was somewhat longer,
winding between mountains and hills, thus offering the hiker more
variety. Both roads, however, ended at the sacred site on the west
side. No sooner had one entered the plain, enclosed on all sides by
hills, as we recall, than one suddenly saw several buildings and,
above them, the battlements of more distant temples. Between the
buildings, one could already spot a few higher-placed statues here
and there.
Crossing the bridge over the Kladeos, one found
oneself surrounded by numerous buildings. On its left, that is, on
the north side, was the so-called Palaestra, a residence and
training ground for the warriors during the festival season.
However, this could not be entered from the south side; To reach
this, one had to walk around to the north, where a stately forecourt
(propylaion) provided access at the northeast corner of the
building. As was customary in training schools for fighters, here
too, an open square area was found inside, where the wrestlers could
practice whenever they wished; for, like a true virtuoso, a Greek
fighter never abandoned his exercises for a single moment; even
during his five-day stay at Olympia, he had to ensure he maintained
the level he had reached by constantly keeping his limbs supple.
While some wrestled, others could walk around the square wrestling
arena through a colonnade that ran around it on all sides, sometimes
talking to each other, sometimes keeping an eye on the wrestlers. On
the south side, the colonnade was double; the open side, where the
columns stood, faced inward, as one understands. If one had had
enough of walking, one could break through one of the doors on the
back wall of the colonnade. One then entered either a bathroom,
where one could bathe, or a common room where one could speak or
listen to a lecture—remains of the beautifully profiled
benches along the walls still remain—or a bedroom. On the
north side, one had not only an entrance to the forecourt through
which one had entered, but also others leading to an outdoor area on
the north side, where several small racecourses and areas for
jumping and discus throwing were located. A long, two-aisled gallery
ran alongside this on the east side, heading north.
Returning to
the bridge over the Kladeos, one found on the right a fairly large,
oblong, square building with its front facing east. It is suspected
that this was the building in which Pheidias finished his greatest
masterpiece, Zeus of Olympia, down to the smallest detail. Entering
the large front door, one entered a very spacious room, the only one
in the building, which likely received its light from the top
center. At the front was a marble basin. Parallel to the side walls,
not far from them, stood four columns at equal distances on either
side, starting from the back wall. These, too, were replaced by a
column on either side by a tall, narrow wall, which connected to the
side wall and thus filled the space left open elsewhere between the
columns and the wall. Two more columns followed on either side,
reaching the front wall. The building's dimensions—this is one
of the reasons why it is considered Pheidias's workshop—were
exactly the same as those of the interior of the Temple of Zeus.
Just as there, seven columns on either side, running close to the
side walls, divided the entire space into two narrow aisles and a
wide central nave, so too were the six columns on either side and
the narrow walls. Furthermore, the various sides of the workshop
faced the same points of the sky as those of the temples turned, so
that the same light would have fallen down here through the opening
in the roof at all times of the day. These small walls, instead of
columns, would have served to attach a partition when the master
wanted to seclude himself with his artwork in a smaller space, for
it could also happen that, while working on it, he needed to see his
artwork in a different light than the one in which it would later be
erected. Even in modern studios, one finds devices to cast a
different light on the objects by firing off a portion of the
interior space. Naturally, the artist had to have all sorts of tools
at his disposal, which were indispensable for creating such a
colossal sculpture. Traces still remain that prove that planks were
attached to the walls of the building, supported by iron bars that
protruded as if from the ground. These would have served to store
such tools. Turning from here to the south, one saw before them a
beautiful and large building, the Gymnasium, which, like the
northern Palaestra, served as a residence and training ground for
champions. There were no race tracks at this Gymnasium; however, the
building itself was more beautiful and larger than the northern one.
A beautiful gallery, open to the outside, with Ionic columns,
supported by a beautifully ornamented architrave (a crosspiece
spanning the columns) and a beautiful geison (cornice), ran around
it. Before entering the building, one could walk around it under
this gallery, a walk of over three hundred meters. Entering, one
entered the building's various rooms, which ran in two rows side by
side around the large square courtyard. The ceilings of these rooms
rested on Corinthian columns, whose calyx-shaped capitals were now
smoother than usual. Undoubtedly, this form of capital was borrowed
by the Greeks from the Egyptians. The Corinthian capital usually
depicts an open calyx with numerous petals and delicate stems rising
from it. However, since the open calyxes of the Corinthian capitals
from the Gymnasium are not as elaborately detailed as capitals of
this type usually are, they are more reminiscent of the smoother
papyrus or lotus calyxes of Egyptian columns and reveal the origins
of the art form all the more clearly. If one now went straight
through these two rows of rooms, one entered a gallery supported by
Doric columns, which ran around the square courtyard, its open side
facing it. This Gymnasium was a building from the fourth century
BC.
Let us place ourselves for a moment between the Gymnasium and
the wall of the sacred precinct, the Altis. Our view of that area is
only obstructed to the extent that one building obscures another.
Here we see the rear of the Temple of Zeus with the group of
Alcamenes on the facade; we see several other buildings more
closely, such as the sanctuaries of Pelops and his wife; we see
numerous sculptures—gods, humans, horses, chariots—and
several altars. The altis wall didn't even reach as high as the
stepped pedestal of the Temple of Zeus and therefore offered little
obstruction to the view. It also seemed to exist more to demarcate
the sacred area than to prevent access. Along its outer edge, one
could see a whole row of troughs for horses and cattle.
This
western altis wall allowed entry to the sacred area at two points.
There was an entrance opposite both the Palaestra and the Gymnasium.
However, these were not the main ones. This was situated further to
the southeastern corner of the Altis. If one went there and turned
the southwestern corner, one suddenly saw the rear of a prominent
building, the so-called Leonidaion, named after its founder, the
Elean Leonidas.
This building consisted of three parts. Two
elongated buildings, both rounded at the rear, were connected by a
relatively small, square central building, while a gallery ran in
front of all three. As the excavated remains still clearly
demonstrate, it had the following history. First, at the end of the
sixth century BC, the southern building was constructed. Its base
had the shape of a very elongated ellipse, however, only rounded at
the rear, while the front was cut off straight. At this front, the
two side walls curved slightly into so-called "anten."
Between those two ants stood two columns, and the space between the
ants and the columns was filled with metal latticework. There were
two doors in the latticework between the columns. Under the cornice
ran around the the entire building was bordered by so-called
triglyphs and metopes (well-known architectural forms, which we will
discuss later). These were painted blue, while the frames that
typically ran above and below such triglyphs were painted red.
Several buildings at Olympia provide evidence that the Greeks used
strongly contrasting colors to set off the different parts of an
architectural composition. A row of columns ran through the center
of the building along its length, and it is not too daring to assume
that a roof, probably wooden, sloped upwards on all sides, rested on
this. In the rear curve of the building, two rooms were found that
could be closed off.
In
a few minor details, particularly regarding ornamentation, the
northern building differed from the southern one, and moreover, in
that the ellipse of the ground plan had merged into a figure
consisting of two straight lines, connected on one side by a
straight line, and on the other by a semicircle. This building was
erected a few years after the first, at the beginning of the fifth
century. Later, the two buildings were connected by the smaller
building in between, and the gallery for all three was probably
built at the same time.
What
was the purpose of the Leonidaion? We know nothing about it with
certainty. It seems not unlikely, in my opinion, that it was a
building to house the theors, the official representatives of the
various states for the great festival every four years. Originally,
the southern building was donated by the Elean Leonidas to the
sanctuary of his state. Now, here as elsewhere, the theors were
housed in tents, and the architect of the Leonidaion intended to
give the stone building somewhat the appearance of the temporary
building, the tent, it replaced: the somewhat oval-round shape and
the sloping roof on all sides naturally bring a kind of tent to
mind. When they later wanted to construct a second building,
identical to the first one to the north, they no longer knew the
underlying motive for the first one, and they thought they were
merely removing a minor irregularity by replacing the gently curved
side walls of the new building with perfectly straight ones. This,
too, is an example of how dangerous it is to imitate ancient art
forms. That the name Leonidaion, originally borne by only one
building, was later extended to all three of these buildings when it
was connected to the northern one by an intermediate building, is
quite understandable. If this building was indeed originally such a
lodging for theorists, then we can easily understand why, as
Pausanias tells us, the Roman officials who governed the province of
Greece would later stop at this building on their procession through
their region.
This
was still the case here on the south side of the Altis at the time
Pausanias visited Olympia (circa 120 AD). Somewhat later, a large
gallery was built parallel to the southern Altis wall. It opened to
the south and, starting at the south side of the Leonidaion,
extended for a length of some 80 m. It was very wide, and a second
row of columns, running midway between the front row and the closed
rear wall, divided it into two aisles. However, before it was
erected, this was already a very suitable vantage point from which
to survey the Altis grounds. The low wall seemed to separate it, and
several buildings were visible here for the first time, or to a
greater extent than before, only partially obscured by a cluster of
statues erected here around the Temple of Zeus and opposite it in
the southeastern part of the Altis and along the southern wall.
Among statues and altars, one could still see the Altis area, but
just behind the Leonidaion, "the olive tree of beautiful
wreaths," whose branches were cut for the victors' wreaths.
But
we didn't linger much longer outside the Altis wall and went through
the large southeastern entrance, through which the solemn procession
to the Zeus altar took place on the last day of the great
festivities, and which was therefore called the "entrance of
the processions." Without much difficulty, we now found
ourselves right in front of the front of the Temple of Zeus, which
stood here in the middle of a large terrace. Pushing forward between
the statues that lined the edge of this terrace, one saw the
building, now unobstructed by anything, before one in all its quiet
majesty. The building with its Doris rose from the almost
two-metre-high pedestal, which narrowed upwards on all four sides
with three steps.
The
columns rose powerfully and stately. It is known that columns of
this type had no base, but rose from the ground itself as if by
natural force. The shaft of the columns had, as usual, twenty
ascending grooves (flutes), gradually narrowing somewhat upward. The
capital, also something very common, consisted of a broadening of
the column upwards, convexly expanding on all sides and left
completely smooth, separated from the actual shaft by four annular
grooves and covered at the top by a square plate. A cluster of
similar annular grooves ran around the shaft a short distance below
the capital. The columns on the front and back (six for each front)
were slightly thicker than those on either side; They therefore had
to support the large, vertically oriented triangular gables, while
only the lower edges of the sloping roof rested above those of the
sides (each side had eleven). Immediately across the columns,
however, ran the architrave, a smooth block separated at the top by
a slightly projecting, narrow frame from the band of triglyphs and
metopes that, in turn, ran above it. The triglyphs were elongated
squares with grooves upwards, two in the middle, two as if cut in
half at the edges (the word means "provided with three
grooves"). They were pushed forward somewhat, so that below the
edge of the architrave, they seemed to need to be supported by a
narrow frame with small, spaced-apart blocks, called drops,
underneath. With the triglyphs, the transverse structure above the
columns already extends slightly forward to accommodate the leaning
cornice. The metopes were left plain, and squares remained near the
triglyphs, separating them from each other; these, as the name also
indicates, represented the former window openings. These triglyphs
and metopes now continued further up in a flat band; soon, however,
followed the cornice, the geison, which, as we mentioned, overhung
slightly and for which a frame with drips was again attached to the
band above each triglyph and metope. The geison was a not very wide,
vertically oriented platform bordered by a cornice. Such a geison
also ran along the upright sides of the obtuse-angled triangular
gable. Above the geisons on both long sides, leaf-shaped decorations
(Simen) were placed here and there, below which a lion's head was
placed, from whose open mouth the rainwater flowing from the roof
flowed down. The walls of the interior temple house could be seen
through the columns. For the columns of a Doric peripteral temple
like this one were always spaced some distance from the walls on all
four sides, so that the roof of the entire temple was actually the
roof of that internal building, which extended at the sides to the
columns, and at the front and back to the facades resting on them.
The
building was not particularly high; it is well known how much all
things excessive offended the Greek artist. From the terrace floor
to the highest point, it measured no more than 20 m, a height equal
to that of many a mansion on the Keizersgracht canal in Amsterdam.
Its length was 64 m, its width 27 m. Up to the architrave, the
building was constructed of Elian shell lime, coated with a layer of
fine white that made the temple shine even from afar. The entire
superstructure was made of Pentelic marble. The vertical surface of
the geison was painted bright red, so that a red border ran around
the entire building at the lower end of the sloping roof and around
the three sides of the gable triangles; the narrow moldings, which
served to support the geison from below, were dark blue; the simen
and lion heads also bore colors. Shields were attached to the
metopes of the front and the south side, a votive offering from the
Roman consul Mummius, the conqueror of Hellas and organizer of that
country into a Roman province. Mummius sought to bring himself and
his family into closer contact with the Hellenic world by endowing
the principal Hellenic sanctuary with numerous votive offerings. The
descendants of someone who had first conquered a province often
considered themselves connected to that province by some bond and
usually represented its interests in Rome, for example, in legal
matters. Traces of the edges of Mummius' shields are still visible
on several of the recovered metope blocks. At the top of the facade,
radiant with the gold with which it was covered, stood the image of
the goddess of victory, Nike, the heavenly one, for whose
soul-stirring gift nowhere more than here was her head raised in
supplication. On both the corners, also covered in gold, were
adorned with decorations in the form of Greek cooking vessels: deep
basins between three upright bars, allowing them to be placed over
the fire. Vases are still sometimes used in the same way as
ornaments on buildings today. These decorations, as well as the
Nike, were the work of Paionios, one of the masters with whom
Pheidias had journeyed to Olympia. The Eleans had held a competition
for them; Paionios' designs were victorious. At the foot of the Nike
was attached a golden shield of the goddess Athena, on which, as is
well known, stood a Medusa's head. It was a votive offering from the
Spartans and their allies after the victory over the Athenians at
Tanagra. It will come as no surprise that none of these objects, so
richly adorned with gold, have been recovered. But what was most
striking about this facade was nothing more than the group of
larger-than-life statues placed within the triangle of that facade.
It was the work of the same Paionios who created the facade
decorations, and depicted the contest between Pelops and Oenomaos,
which, as we recall, would decide for Pelops whether he would
acquire Hippodamia and her father's kingdom, and for the sanctuary
and the entire landscape; whether Pelops or Oenomaos would
henceforth rule; whether the realm of barbarism would be supplanted
by one of gentler morals, yes or no. Nearly all the figures of this
group have been recovered, though they are badly damaged. Yet, the
way in which they are to be assembled into a whole, at least in the
main, remains rather uncertain. The statues are made of marble.
Bright colors, applied here and there, made some parts stand out
more sharply from others, as in architectural compositions. The
artist has chosen the moment that will bring the decision. Zeus, the
supreme judge, has emerged in the center of the facade. He has
positioned himself directly facing the viewer. His head and arms are
still missing. His chlamys, a cloth draped around the shoulders as a
cloak—gods and heroes often wear nothing else in
sculptures—had fallen completely to his hips. To his right
hand, facing the viewer on the left, stands Pelops, a slender,
beardless youth, completely naked, and presumably holding a spear in
his left hand; both arms, however, are missing. Beside him stands
his bride Hippodamia, her right arm pressed against his body under
her gently curved bosom, her left raised across her chest to her
chin. Her head is tilted slightly to the left, that is, towards the
chief judge. She wears a chiton, an undergarment that reaches from
the shoulders to the ground, and over it a peplos, an outer garment
that reaches no further than the hips. To the god's left hand,
facing the viewer's right, stands Oinomaos with a broad, bearded
face, a helmet on his head, his right hand at his side, the left
presumably on his spear; both arms are missing. He has folded his
chlamys and thrown it over his left shoulder. Of his wife Sterope
beside him, we have neither the head nor the arms. She seems to have
turned her left hand slightly away from her, holding her right close
to her side. Her undergarment, a chiton, is held up by a girdle
around the middle, which is, however, obscured by the overhanging
folds. It falls fairly vertically; she is therefore standing almost
completely upright; she has only placed her left leg slightly
forward. Over her chiton hung her hip-length outer garment, peplos.
Beside her, mostly turned toward his horses and thus turning his
back to her, lay Oenomaos's faithless charioteer, Myrtilos, on his
right knee, while his left leg, closest to the wall, was still
raised at a sharp angle. Of the arms, only the left hand, which
gripped the reins, has been found; he seems to have held it up
toward the horses. At the same time, he presumably looked at Zeus
with his head, as much as possible, over his right shoulder. This,
however, has been lost. His robe hung over his left shoulder and
further over his hips and legs. At Hippodamia's side, naked as his
master, Pelops's charioteer, Killas, sat on his right leg. He is
turned forward toward the viewer, though not entirely, as he is
somewhat more turned toward Zeus than toward his horses. The head is
missing. The left leg is raised. His posture is therefore quite
similar to that of Myrtilus. The placement, however, is slightly
different. Directly behind the horses of Oenomaus, four in number
according to Pausanias, sat, facing Zeus and thus with his left side
towards the viewer, a venerable old man, deeply sunken on his
overturned left horse leg, most likely resting on the
downward-extended left arm, which then rested with its hand on the
ground. The other arm was placed with its elbow on the still-raised
right leg; the head rested with its right cheek in the open hand.
Pensive and in silent attentiveness, the old man looked at the chief
umpire. He was probably a priest or diviner, at least a man who
understood the significance of the moment better than anyone else.
His robe was wrapped only around his legs and hips. The arms are
missing, but it is still clearly visible on the right cheek that it
rested against the hand. A similar figure sat behind Pelops's four
horses. He knelt, facing away from Zeus, on the left leg, the one
most turned towards the viewer. By bringing his left arm back a
considerable distance, however, he could, resting on it, turn his
chest and face towards the umpire; his right hand rested on his
still-raised right knee. This figure is badly damaged; here too, the
arms are missing. In the two corners of the façade, on either
side, one saw two gods of the landscape, for which the matter was
naturally also important: Pelops the Alpheus and a nymph, probably
the god of the Pisa spring, which flowed into the Alpheus in the
area of Olympia; and Oinimaos the Kladeus with a young
river god, not unlikely the god of the tributary (the name is
unknown as far as I know), which fell into the Kladeus north of the
hills of Olympia. The two main streams lay most prominently in the
corner of the façade, their entire lengths on the ground:
their faces were turned towards Zeus; the Alpheus probably leaned on
his left arm, while the right, turned backward, rested on his thigh.
The Kladeus lay prone on both arms. In both cases, the garment
covered only the hips and legs. The head of Alpheios and the arms of
both are missing. The nymph sits opposite Alpheios on her left leg.
Yet, she turns her head slightly toward Zeus. Her right hand was
probably on her right knee; both arms, however, are missing. She was
dressed in a chiton and peplos with a girdle over both. The youth at
Kladeos is more drawn away from his river god than she is by
interest in what will happen. He, too, sits opposite him, in a very
relaxed position: his right leg is tucked under him, so that the
foot reaches behind his upright left; his left hand rests against
the turned-away side of that leg; the robe hangs only over his left
shoulder; he sits on part of it. However, wanting to know what was
happening, he has, supporting himself with his right hand on the
ground, turned his entire upper body slightly away from Kladeos, so
much so that his legs have more or less followed that movement. His
head is still missing. Incidentally, it is one of the best-preserved
figures.
This
is the case with the group on the east facade. The composition is
easy to grasp: the bond connecting all these figures is the greater
or lesser attention with which they all direct themselves toward
Zeus in the center of the facade; the pendants differ from one
another, yet are easily recognized as such. At first glance, one
sensed the solemnity of the moment. After the group on the east
facade, it was obvious to take a closer look at the one on the west
facade, which one had already seen in passing along the west wall of
the Altis. It was the work of Alkamenes, the man who, according to
Pausanias, won second prize with Phidias in a competition. Perhaps
this can be connected to a tradition concerning both artists, which,
although written by a very late author, undoubtedly stems from an
older source and has considerable plausibility. Both artists had
created a statue of the goddess Athena, which was to be placed atop
a column. Initially, Alcamenes' work far outperformed that of
Pheidias. However, no sooner were the two Athenas placed on a column
than that opinion changed completely. It is not unlikely that this
story contains a memory of that contest, from which Alcamenes
emerged as the inferior, yet nevertheless a worthy rival to the
incomparable master. We see him here at Olympia in his entourage,
recognizing his superiority and accepting the work that, in the
master's opinion, best suited his particular gifts. It was the
battle between Lapiths and Centaurs at the wedding of Peirithous
that he was commissioned to carve: the sculpture of the rear facade,
the western one. This battle was a very favorite theme for the Attic
artists of that time. Similar representations are found on the
frieze of the temple of Theseus on the metopes of the Parthenon and
on the frieze of the temple of Apollo at Phigaleia, the latter Attic
masters also worked. The ancient legend had acquired a new meaning
for these artists: the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs was a
struggle between civilization and barbarism, meaningfully and truly
Hellenically presented as one of ennobled humanity and self-control
versus animal lust and licentiousness.
The
same is true here at Olympia. The story of that battle is well
known. At his wedding to Deidamia, a hero from the Lapiths,
Theseus's usual companion, Peirithous, also invites the wild
Centaurs from the mountains, creatures who were horselike beneath
and therefore had four legs, but human above and were therefore also
endowed with two arms. At first, everything goes quite well, but
finally, intoxicated by wine, the Centaurs lose their unusual
self-control. The wild Eurytion suddenly rises and seizes the bride.
Now all bond is broken. That example proves decisive for the other
Centaurs. One steals a virgin or woman, the other another. The
Lapiths, however, were not the men to allow such a thing. With
tremendous courage, they rush upon the robbers. It is one long
assault, one long fight, one wrestling, one wrenching! Finally, the
battle is decided: the Lapiths are victorious.
The
artist now has that decision brought about by the appearance of
Apollo, the patron saint of higher human conditions and an ennobled
way of life. It is he who emerges from the middle of the facade
amidst the wild spirit of battle.
He
extends his right arm imperiously to the right, his head also
slightly turned in that direction. He is a slender, powerful young
man on the verge of manhood, completely beardless. He wears his
chlamys over his left forearm and further behind his back, with a
long tip draped over his right shoulder. He thus appears almost
completely naked. With his left hand, he probably rested on his bow.
The figure has now been found in fragments, complete except for the
left foot and the right lower leg. Traces of red paint have been
found on the chlamys, which further confirms the belief that the
ancients often painted their sculptures. We could therefore safely
assume that the group on the facade wore some colors. On the right
side of the god, towards which he turns his head, in front of the
viewer on the left, probably stood Eurytion and Diedamia, the bride.
Her chiton, here with sleeves, is of very fine linen and covered the
entire body and upper arms, hanging in thin folds. It was held up by
a girdle around the middle; she also wears a peplos. The fine chiton
identifies her as a bride. The unfortunate woman is grasped between
the right foreleg and the left arm of her captor. In mortal fear,
she defends herself with both arms. Turning slightly toward him, she
gazes up at the broad, coarse, sensuality of her captor, her
virginal right hand pressing with all her might against his temples,
her left gripping his broad, rough, ring-beard. It is a terrifying
moment. Fortunately, however, her savior is near, and without giving
the Greek artist too much credit for modern romanticism, we may well
assume it was the bridegroom himself, Peirithoos. He is already in a
forward stance, taking long strides, with his left leg, placed
forward and naturally slightly bent, the one furthest from the
viewer, pushing the monster aside. The chlamys has slid from his
shoulders under that violent movement; a tip still hangs over his
left leg, but on the right, stretched right back, she has sunk
completely at his heels. The bride's head is still missing; Of the
groom, everything except his right foot and left leg, with a piece
of the abdomen, both with parts of the dress. Now, there is still a
head available, which was previously assigned to one of the girls in
the group, but since a piece of that girl's actual head was found,
it must be given to another. Apparently, there is no figure in the
group to which it could have belonged, except the groom, and it has
been noted, among other things, in Pelops and Apollo, that the Greek
could very well imagine youthful strength as beardless, and the
beardless Lapith forms a very apt contrast to the shaggy Centaur.
Yet, to give the brave groom a head originally intended for a girl,
simply because all the girls and the other figures on the facade,
one for one reason, another for another, seem to disdain it, is
rather bold. It is best to wait and see if a piece of torso or neck
is found that could clarify the matter.
To
the left of the god, in front of the viewer on the right, one saw a
Lapith virgin of noble features and body, dressed in a chiton and
peplos and a folded cloth wrapped around her head, secured with a
small knot above her forehead. The centaur has grasped her with both
arms around the middle and presses his left hand against the
virgin's bosom. She turns to the right and tries to wrest herself
free from his with both hands. The arms of both figures are missing.
Only fragments of the four hands remain. Nothing has been found of
her rescuer except the right foot and the right arm, with which he
appears to have wielded an axe; at least in the centaur's head, an
open axe wound is believed to be visible. Who he was seems not
difficult to guess. Peirithoos on the other side could hardly have
been flanked by anyone other than his friend and companion Theseus;
and with this, Pausanias's statement in his description of the
group, that Theseus fought with an axe, is entirely consistent.
Right next to Peirithoos, a fearsome struggle is taking place. A
centaur, the front of whose body emerges directly from the wall—the
rest, as it were, remained inside—is being seized on the left
side (the spectator's right) by a Lapith, who had thrown his right
arm around his neck and was now trying to drag him to the ground.
The brave youth is seen more from the side than his opponent, but
not entirely. He rests on his left knee, while his left foot, due to
its slightly slanted position, disappears into the wall. The right
leg must have been raised, naturally deeply bent at the knee; we
only have its foot, but this one, whose sole must have fully touched
the ground, could not possibly have belonged to a leg positioned
differently. The monster is already beginning to sink somewhat,
especially at the side of his enemy, but still offers formidable
resistance. With his left hand, he grasps the other's right hand to
push away the arm that clamps around his neck and threatens to
strangle him. The chlamys has slipped from his shoulders and sinks
between him and the Centaur behind the raised right leg. Much is
missing from both figures; of the Lapith, for example, nothing
remains of the entire torso other than the right arm and right
shoulder.
Next
to Theseus stood a Centaur, who was stealing a flowering boy;
Pausanias mentions it. The robber emerges diagonally from the facade
wall to the right, so that, as with his counterpart, a large portion
of the body remains, as it were, inside. This is evidenced by the
largely recovered half-horse body, which, as far as we can judge,
fitted smoothly against the facade. Of the poor boy, nothing remains
but the armless torso and a piece of the right leg. Behind his back,
the Centaur's right arm extended under his right arm. The monster's
finger is visible under the armpit; the rest of the hand and the
arm, along with a piece of the chest to which it was attached, have
also been found. The boy appears to have resisted and, like his
counterpart, to have grabbed the monster around the neck. No body
parts of this one have been found, except for the one mentioned.
Next,
on either side of the facade, next to the Lapith, who is trying to
strangle his opponent, and the blooming boy, is a Centaur, who has
turned towards his enemy, towards the corner of the facade, but is
also trying to hold his prey. Next to the Lapith, on the left side
of the facade, is a girl, kneeling on her right leg, turned towards
the viewer. The Centaur has attempted to wrap his left paw around
her. This was done very roughly; her chiton was torn from her left
shoulder, and now the horse's hoof is pinching her in her lap. She
is afraid the centaur will lift its hoof to encircle her more
tightly, and that it will then come in her face; therefore, she
probably held her left arm, which is lost, between the two. She was
not seen completely from the side, because she had apparently turned
slightly forward to push herself off the centaur with her right arm,
which is also lost, in order to escape the encircling leg. Only very
small fragments remain of her head. The same is true of the
centaur's, of whom we otherwise have only a large piece of the
horse's body and small parts of the right foreleg and left hindleg.
The Lapith, which is fighting him, probably Caineus, leans forward
quite strongly, following the upright side of the triangular gable.
Only the forward-positioned left leg, a portion of the right, and
both arms are missing. Presumably, he grabbed the Centaur by the
hair with one hand and held a dagger or sword in the other.
The
Centaur on the other side, next to the boy's robber, has also moved
toward the corner of the facade.
He
has turned his attacker, but he keeps his upper body forward, facing
the viewer, as he still needs both arms to hold the girl he has
kidnapped.
She
tries with all her might to wriggle free; she has fallen slightly
forward onto her right knee, her back against the centaur; he has
grabbed her by the left foot with his left hand; he has tried to
swing the right across the front of her body, across her waist, but
she managed to grab it with both hands before it even reached that
point and is now trying to push it back with all her might. This
excessive effort, however, is no longer necessary. While the centaur
was still busy easily subduing her, so he could then turn on his
assailant, the latter had already seized the girl by the hair with
his left hand and, passing under the left arm with which he had
grasped the girl's foot, with his right, plunged a dagger into her
chest—the opening where the dagger was lodged is still visible
in the centaur's body. Suddenly, the monster collapsed, slumped
deeply; its hind legs were still raised. The hero who so decisively
came to the girl's aid is missing his head and arms. The centaur is
missing only small pieces; the girl's head, but otherwise not much.
She is wearing a chiton and peplos.
The
two ends of the group are causing the most trouble. Right next to
the last described centaurs and lapiths, an old woman must have lain
on either side, presumably on a couch, such as was always used at
banquets. At least a cushion has been found, which appears to have
belonged to such a couch, and on which the old woman on the right
side of the gable must have rested. We must imagine her lying prone
on this couch, her face turned towards the battle, with both arms
resting on it. However, only small fragments of both her head and
her body remain. We are more fortunate with her counterpart, the old
woman on the other side; only her arms and the lower parts of her
legs are missing. She lies prone, still somewhat on her knees, and,
like the previous one, probably rested on both arms. She was dressed
in a chiton. This one, too, must have been lying on a couch or
something similar, if she were to flank the other. One could then
see her standing on the ground below, looking up at her from below,
and that is also where the sculpture is best crafted. Both old women
were likely nurses of the kidnapped girls, and it will come as no
surprise that they watched the struggle with anxious anticipation.
In
both corners lie two nymphs prone on the ground. The one on the
right is resting on her elbows; the one on the left has removed her
left arm slightly from under her head to pull up her chiton, which
had slipped over her right shoulder. The main thing missing from
this nymph are both arms; of which only the left hand, which pulled
up the chiton, has been found. She wore a hood or cap. A similar one
also had her counterpart; however, only a fragment of that remains.
It
seems that the two ends of the gable group cannot be composed
differently, and yet it is almost impossible to assume that this
composition is entirely correct. How could an artist, who achieved
such variation in his pendants, have allowed his group to develop
into two figures on either side, both leaning forward, one slightly
higher than the other, as if in two parallel lines extending in
line? This has not been concealed in Berlin either, and experiments
are still being conducted with our group in the glyptotheque there.
Yet, in its main features, it must be composed as described above,
following in the footsteps of Dr. Treu.
One
immediately senses that there is a certain correspondence, a
so-called parallelism, between this group and that of the facade.
Both represent the victory of civilization and gentler morals over
barbarism. In both, the case is decided by the appearance of a god;
on the front it is Zeus, on the back his son Apollo. In both
corners, deities lie watching the spectacle. Behind the horses of
Pelops and Oenomaus sits an old man on either side; Like those on
the east facade, the two old women on the west facade are deeply
interested in what's happening. Yet, despite all the similarity,
there's also a striking difference. As calm and solemn as the front
is, the scene on the rear facade is equally powerful and moving.
Let
us now return in our thoughts to the front of the temple, to walk
around the gallery between the columns and the walls of the inner
temple building, and then enter it itself. To do so, we ascend the
five-staircase staircase.
The
projecting projection at the temple's pedestal, which is located
here in the center of the facade, extends over the wider steps of
the front. If we pass between the columns, we enter the gallery,
walking on the simple pavement of pebbles covered with a kind of
plaster. The gallery had a ceiling, probably of wood, between the
back of the geison and the wall of the temple house. Under such a
ceiling, a row of triglyphs and metopes was often placed around the
walls. This was omitted here, probably for cost reasons. Only at the
front and back, following the metopes, were plaques with reliefs
depicting the twelve labors of Heracles.
Where
were these more appropriate than here, at the sacred place where the
Greeks, as his followers, competed for the prize of victory in the
contest he instituted? Let us begin our examination with the
northernmost relief on the back, for it seems they wanted to
maintain a historical order in the sequence of the works, and here
the young hero appears completely beardless. He has slain the
Neimeian lion and, having placed his right foot on the monster—this,
at least, was most likely his posture—he rests his head on his
right hand, while his elbow rests on his raised knee; he turns his
face forward thoughtfully. Several pieces of these metopes were
already unearthed during the French expedition, and this one is also
preserved in the Louvre; the head of Heracles has now been found
among them.
In
the next relief, Heracles fights the Hydra, the many-headed serpent,
each of whose heads immediately regenerated after being severed. The
monster curls from the left side of the metope to the right and
raises its body along that right side; many heads have already been
severed, but others are still rising. Heracles appears from the
left. This metope probably also depicted Ioloas, who, according to
the story, had set fire to a forest, using the burning branches to
burn out every stump where a head had been severed, to prevent
regrowth. The Hydra, however, occupies the largest space in this
relief.
In
the adjacent one, Heracles shows his friend Athena, who is seated on
the left, a pair of those Stymphalian birds—animals with iron
wings and feathers as sharp as arrows, which even ate humans and had
made the Valley of Stymphalus in Arcadia unsafe. Heracles, however,
chased them away with the sound of an iron rattle and then killed
them. Now he shows the goddess one of the birds with his right hand;
another seems to have hung down along the body in his left, at the
viewer's side. The most important pieces of this relief are in the
Louvre. The same applies to the subsequent Cretan bull, which,
however, owes its head to German excavations. Heracles had to
transport this animal from Crete to Mycenae. The background of our
relief is almost entirely occupied by the bull, which moves from the
left to the right side, but is diverted by Heracles, who stands in
front of it and moves in the opposite direction, from the right to
the left, with his left hand by the head. The hero leans slightly
forward, so that one can see that he has difficulty in pulling the
animal along.
The
next relief depicted Heracles pursuing the Cerynite stag with golden
horns and copper hooves. The moment seems to have been chosen when
he came to the side of the animal from behind and grabbed it by the
horns; because it still wanted to run, its head is pulled far back.
The row at the back of this image was concluded by a depiction of
Heracles' battle with the queen of the Amazons, from whom he had to
take the belt given to her by Ares. Only the head remains, which, it
seems, was dragged down by the hair.
If
we walk around to the east side, the first relief on the left
presents one of the most beloved depictions of the Greek common
prostitute. The story usually has Heracles performing his labors in
the service of King Eurystheus. However, Eurystheus actually became
king entirely by chance instead of Heracles. Just as our demigod was
about to be born, Zeus declared to Hera that he who would first see
the light of day from that moment on would be king. The goddess,
jealous of her husband's natural son, then temporarily prevents
Heracles' birth and brings Eurystheus into the world as quickly as
possible, though before the appointed time. In this way, the clumsy
seven-month-old child becomes the ruler of Greece's greatest hero;
no wonder the lord was never quite at ease with such a servant. Now
he ordered Heracles to capture alive the wild boar that was
infesting the area around Eurymanthos, a river in Arcadia.
The
hero complies with this charge; but his master has reason to regret
having given it. No sooner does his servant arrive with the monster
on his back than fear overwhelms him so much that he crawls into a
copper vessel. Heracles has noticed this and approaches the vessel,
and here begins the scene on our metope, as it often appears on
vases, objects of everyday use. The hero has placed his left foot on
the vessel, grasps the monster with both hands, and threatens to
throw it headfirst into it. The king pleads, rising from the vessel
up to his chest, his hands extended towards his servant. The
servant, however, apparently just wanted a joke. Some fragments of
the figures in this relief are in the Louvre, some recently
discovered, including the rim of the vessel with Heracles' left
foot.
Heracles
was to fetch King Diomedes' wild horses. The second metope on the
front, according to the remains in the Louvre and those recently
discovered, most likely depicted a horse that leaped to the right,
but was diverted by the reins by Heracles, who passed in front of
the horse to the left. The hero holds the reins with both hands; the
horse's head, which is being pulled along, stands further from the
background than the rest of the body.
The
subject of the third relief is the battle with the giant Geryoneus.
Geryoneus had three heads, each wearing a helmet, and three bodies,
each covered by a shield. In our relief, Heracles has already
defeated Eurytion, the giant's herdsman, and steps over his corpse
from the left. The giant himself has also received violent blows
from the hero, presumably with the club. He is, at least, on his
knees. Heracles, continuing to strike, has placed his left foot on
the giant's thigh. One head has already sunk, and the shield has
slid off one arm. A large fragment of this metope can be found in
the Louvre.
The
next metope is the only one that has been preserved almost entirely.
Heracles, completely naked and bearded, stands in the center, turned
entirely to the right. A cushion rests on his bent neck, on which we
can imagine the heavens, which are not visible in the relief; with
his palms turned upward, he supports the burden on either side. Only
her right arm, however, the one facing the viewer, falls into view.
Behind him stands a woman, her body turned forward, her head in
profile to the right. Her chiton falls in fairly upright folds; her
peplos hangs over it. Her right hand falls alongside her body, her
left raised to support something with her palm; perhaps to lend a
helping hand to Heracles. As far as I know, no one has yet been able
to determine who she is. In front of Heracles, Atlas approaches him,
showing him with his right hand the three apples of the Hesperides,
which he had fetched for the hero while he carried the heavens for
him. Atlas is also naked and bearded.
Of
the subsequent metope, which depicted the cleansing of the Augean
stables, only Athena remains, wearing a helmet and a drooping
chiton, watching her friend's labors. Following this is the hero's
final labor; In this order, the Kerberos was brought out of the
underworld. Little remains of it. Heracles seems to have dragged the
animal forward from the left corner of the metope; so that it only
partially appeared. His friend Athena stood beside him again.
With
this, we had walked past all the metope reliefs. They, too, were
provided with various colors, so that the different parts would
stand out clearly; for example, the Cretan bull, judging by a few
remaining traces of paint, was reddish-brown on bright blue. Even on
the reliefs of the Hydra and the Nemean lion, some traces of earlier
colors can still be seen. Now, however, we enter the interior of the
temple itself and proceed first to the rear. There, the two side
walls are curved into antebellums; between the two antebellums stand
two Doric columns. It was probably possible to walk between them, or
between one of them and an antebellum, without any obstruction.
However, one then only entered the rear section, from where one
could not penetrate the actual interior of the temple. It was, in a
sense, a continuation of the surrounding gallery; the same pavement
continued here. Yet, this rear section was intended for a calmer and
more deliberate intercourse among the celebrants than that circuit.
It was here, among others, that Herodotus read his stories.
However
Now to the front. From there, one could penetrate all the way into
the interior of the temple. Here, too, the side walls curved into
anterooms; here, too, two Doric columns stood between them, but the
three bays between these columns and anterooms were completely
closed off by metal grating. The lower section, however, could be
opened like a door, and through one of these doors we entered the
so-called vestibule. There, all sorts of votive offerings caught the
eye, not least the statue of a woman holding a wreath above a man's
head. It was King Iphitos, crowned with the ekecheiria (God's
peace), here depicted as a person. The pavement in this vestibule
consisted of a beautiful mosaic of colored stones. A somewhat
subdued light fell through the grating at the front.
Opposite
the central entrance to the vestibule was the door leading to the
actual interior temple space, the cella. It was opened; A bright
light streamed down through a large opening in the roof, and in all
its majesty and splendor, mortal eyes beheld the father of gods and
men.
The
colossal sculpture was composed largely of ivory and gold. The deity
sat on a throne, which in turn rested on a pedestal. In large locks,
his hair flowed on either side of his broad yet slightly tapering
forehead; a rich beard encircled his chin and mouth; from the
corners of his nose and eyebrows spoke imperious majesty. Around his
head he wore a wreath like olive leaves. The Horen (times), which he
rotates, and the Charites (joys of life), which he sends down,
floated from the upper arm of his throne, one to one side, the other
to the other, around his head. On his right hand stood Victory
(Nike), descending from him, a statue entirely of gold; With his
left, he held the scepter composed of various metals, with the eagle
perched atop it. The golden cloak, which hung from his shoulders,
was interwoven with figures, flowers, and animals. His feet, wearing
golden shoes, rested on a platform covered in golden reliefs,
depicting Theseus's battle against the Amazons.
On
the high pedestal of the throne, as if representing Mount Olympus,
numerous gods and goddesses, carved in gold, were depicted in
various ways. Sculptures were also placed on the throne's legs:
Nikes floated around them; the children of Niobe were struck by the
arrows of Apollo and Artemis; Theban boys and girls were captured by
the Sphinx. On the crossbars between the legs, numerous depictions
of contests were depicted. Of the panels filling the open spaces
between the legs, the foremost was darkly colored, the other three
painted by Panainus, according to tradition a brother of Pheidias;
on them, among other things, one could see Greece and Salamis,
adorned with prows in their hands.
Thus,
the formidable figure must have sat on Olympus when Achilles'
mother, Thetis, came to him imploringly, and he granted her plea, as
if with his eyebrows, his head only slightly moving in response; a
wave spread through the locks on either side of his head: all of
Olympus trembled. The artist's legend has Pheidias telling Panainus
that the scene from Homer where this is described came to mind while
crafting his sculpture. It will come as no surprise that the artist,
wishing to portray the supreme god in all truth, took him to great
lengths. Mockingbirds said that if the god rose from his throne, he
would necessarily have to take the temple roof with him. The artist
had conceived of his task as the fulfillment of a higher mission.
Centuries later, the place in the temple was pointed out where,
according to the story, he had sunk down in deep reverence and asked
the god himself for his judgment. There thunder rolls; lightning
strikes right before him: the deity has spoken and set his seal on
the work of man. Hellenic idealism had reached its highest point;
perhaps no one who wishes to express the divine in the human can
rise higher. The statue was lost—how, it is not known
exactly—but the impression it had made in kindred spirits, the
type the master had created, was perpetuated by subsequent
generations, among others in works such as the Zeus of Otricoli.
Centuries would still have to pass before Pheidias's great equal,
Michelangelo, when he dared to depict the Christian God the Father
on canvas, would overtake the Attic artist.
Let
us now turn to the more mundane matters of this interior temple. On
either side, a little way from the two side walls, ran a row of
seven Doric columns, dividing the space into a large central nave
and two rather narrow side galleries. The floor of the central nave
had three sections.
The
front was paved with dark blue marble. This was followed by a second
section, presumably separated by a threshold, of which no floor
covering has been found. From a site by Pausanias, one seems to be
able to infer that this section was also dark. The final section,
also separated by a threshold, followed this section, which,
according to the same site by Pausanias, must have had a
light-colored pavement. The middle section was probably just below
the opening for the light in the roof. Falling rainwater was then
collected there, preventing it from flowing freely through the
temple; there must have been drainpipes to the outside.
From
the second column on either side, a metal gate, reaching a certain
height, ran between all the columns, the same between the two
outermost columns behind the statue and on the threshold in front of
the statue. Therefore, it could not be approached freely from any
side. To reach it, one would enter the gallery between the first and
second columns, open a door, and thus enter behind the gates. If one
went around, one would exit through a similar door on the other
side. Opposite both doors were stairs that led to the upper gallery,
which rested on the columns of the gallery below. From there, too,
one could likely walk around the statue. If one went even higher,
via a spiral staircase, one would reach the roof, from where, above
the buildings of Olympia, one had an unobstructed view of the green
hills of the landscape and, perhaps, on the western horizon, could
also glimpse the distant blue of the Ionian Sea.
We
descend and leave the temple. Here we have seen a building from the
heyday of Greek art, the age of Pericles. Until now, it was
generally assumed that the temple was built much earlier, and that
only the sculptures of Paionios and Alkamenes were added to the
facades around the middle of the fourth century. This now seems
untenable. Around the temple, the footpath, which was used during
the heyday of Hellas's greatness, can still be seen. As they dug
deeper, they came through a layer of yellow sand and fragments of
stone, clearly building rubble, and then first to the black subsoil.
Now, most of the statue pedestals here have been placed on top of
this layer of sand and building rubble; a few others—one of
which is very clear—originally stood on the black earth and,
when the new layer was cast over it, remained in place, so that a
large section, which had been shaped to be conspicuous, was buried
under the earth. These latter pedestals, as the lettering of the
inscriptions indicates, were erected before the latter half of the
fifth century, the others later. It seems therefore clear that an
earlier temple was demolished around the middle of the 5th century
or slightly later. Some of the remaining rubble was covered with
yellow sand, and the new temple was built on top of it. The
pedestals that already stood around the old temple were partially
placed under this new foundation, while the later ones were placed
on top.
The
architect Libon, a man from Elis, was then a contemporary of the
Attic masters and collaborated with them. He also seems to have
benefited somewhat from his association with them; at least in a few
minor architectural details, Attic style is believed to have been
observed. However beautiful the building may have been, on the
whole, the high nobility of form, such as that seen, for example, in
the Parthenon, was not achieved here. And this also applies most
eminently to the sculptures of the Attic masters themselves. The
treatment of the clothing is broad, that of the hair, for example,
of Apollo, rather old-fashioned for that time, while the ingenious
conception of the western group and the quiet solemnity exuding from
the eastern group make us feel that we are dealing with works by
great masters. This observation about the method of workmanship
applies no less to the metopes, which, while seemingly made
according to the Attic model, those of the Temple of Theseus,
nevertheless possess an unfashionable breadth and sometimes even a
somewhat clumsy quality. In their workmanship, they also offer
similarities to the facade of Paeonios. But that same master had a
statue (a Nike) placed directly opposite the Temple of Zeus, with
noble forms and much better treatment of the clothing. The question,
therefore, is: why did these masters pay so little attention to the
detail in the execution of their beautiful compositions? One might
answer that such fine work was unnecessary for statues placed so
high. But again one might ask: what about the facade sculptures of
the Parthenon? One could answer to this, however, that the Eleans
were indeed wealthy landowners, but not if the Athenians had a
treasury of allies at their disposal. If one considering the
substantial costs incurred for all these works of art, one can
understand that, wherever possible, they economized somewhat, and
therefore, in the case of higher-ranking statues, where the main
concept was more important than elsewhere, less care was given to
the elaboration of the details. For example, hadn't reliefs, out of
economy, only been applied to the fronts of the temple house, and
wasn't the surrounding pavement more neat and clever than beautiful?
Perhaps the masters worked out their compositions somewhat hastily,
here and there even based on outdated schematics. How recently
Pheidias' school had left them behind! Perhaps these works were also
produced under their direction, by others, possibly Eleans; But if
this were the case, then, especially in the western group, the
master often took the chisel from the pupils' hands, or among these,
like Van Dyck among those of Rubens, there was probably a genius who
remained in the making. Even in its details, for example, in the
grips of some of the hands, this western group often possesses
striking dramatic power.
Among
the votive offerings, just before the temple, stood the Nike of
Paionios, already mentioned. From an oblong round slab, the column
rose upwards with ten stepped constrictions, on which the goddess
was placed, almost six meters above the ground. She seemed to
descend with an eagle beneath her; her wings were raised at her
shoulders. The thin robe is fastened above the right shoulder, so
that the left arm and bosom fell outside. Due to the rising air
current caused by her descent, the dress clung closely to the body
at the front, and it appears that it blew backward in broad curves
on either side. In her left hand, she likely held a wreath aloft,
raising her shoulder somewhat. Arms, head, and left lower leg,
wings, and a large piece of the dress were initially completely
missing. Only smaller fragments were found later. An inscription
states that the Messenians from Naupaktos erected it from the spoils
they had captured on "enemies" and that Paionios from
Mende, "the same who triumphed with his designs for ornaments
on the temple facade"—among them, of course, a Nike—had
made it. According to a story from the Messenians, which Pausanias
heard recount and which is highly likely, these enemies were the
Spartans, but their influence was still so strong at Olympia at the
time—the Messenians also related this—that they did not
dare to inscribe that name on it. Later, they were less hesitant.
When, at the behest of the Romans, the Milesians had won a border
battle between the Messenians and their long-standing enemy, three
large deeds relating to this were engraved on the column.
We
leave the terrace of the Temple of Zeus and proceed through a whole
row of sculptures to the eastern part of the Altis. There stood two
buildings, a smaller one on the southeast side and a very large
gallery north of it. Shortly behind these buildings, the eastern
Altis wall appears to have run. This area is still little known.
This smaller building stood on a pedestal with two staircases.
Ascending it, one entered, through a row of columns, a gallery that
encircled the building itself on its long front and narrower sides.
This gallery consisted of four rooms; the space between the columns
of the gallery could be closed off by metal gates. It is not
unlikely that this building was the town hall of the Olympic
Council.
The
large gallery on the north side was the so-called Gallery of Echo,
also called the "Multicolored" because its closed back
wall was painted with numerous depictions. It rose quite high above
the ground floor via four steps of Parian marble; it was 100 m long
and 10 m wide, so that from here at least 2,000 people could watch
the sacrifice ceremony on the large altar opposite, passing between
the Ionic columns at the front. The two sides of the Gallery of Echo
were also closed. If one turned around the Echo gallery on the north
side, one came across a sort of gateway, consisting of two pedestals
shaped like half-columns, and between them two actual columns, all
Ionic, and indeed of very old design. Between the actual columns was
a door; the space between the columns and pedestals was filled to a
certain extent by a stone wall. This was the gateway to the
tunnel-shaped, so-called "secret" entrance to the camp,
the stadium.
From
there, if one went somewhat westward, one came across the so-called
Zanes, a plural of Zeus, statues of the god, erected from the fines
with which they had been burned.
Rafts
were discovered, those who had offended the Deity during the battle,
for example, by bribing the opposing party or accepting bribes. The
pedestals of these statues have been found.
Then
came a temple called the Metroon, that is, the temple of the Mother
of the Gods. It was a Doric peripteral temple, like that of Zeus,
but much smaller, barely a third of its size. It also rested on a
pedestal with three steps. It was probably built in the fourth
century BC, and the remains discovered greatly increase our
knowledge, especially of the Hellenic ornamentation of the
buildings. The colors blue and red were also used to more clearly
highlight certain architectural elements. During the Roman Imperial
period, this temple was gruesomely renovated. It was then given a
new plaster, one several centimeters thick. Our restorer deemed all
sorts of fine ornamental details, such as the drops under the
Geison, superfluous and either discarded or plastered over without
prior treatment. Then it—the temple of the Mother of the
Gods!—was converted into a pantheon for Roman emperors. It was
still more appropriate than that of Zeus or Hera (more on which
later). The emperors enjoyed divine honors in the provinces, even
during their lifetimes, in Rome itself only after their death. It
was certainly not indifferent to the Romans that a place of
veneration was also reserved for these divine rulers of the world
empire at the most important Hellenic sanctuary. Yet, the idea
needn't have occurred to the Romans. At that time, the Greeks were
sufficiently courteous to the Roman lords, and especially to the
emperor. With a certain common enthusiasm, that degenerate race
seized upon every conceivable honor to heap upon the head of the
mighty, and they even assumed a pose as if they had accomplished
something great.
Of
the statues of the emperors that once stood here, several have been
recovered, specifically in the temple itself. One of these statues,
which initially lacked a head, was elevated to Zeus because an eagle
stood beside it. Dr. Purgold was the first to observe that the
marvel strongly resembled a Claudius, recently unearthed at Civita
Lavina. When they subsequently attempted to place the head of that
emperor, which had been found a considerable distance away, on this
torso, it fit perfectly. Similarly, a head of Titus fit on another
torso. Both statues are exquisitely carved. Nearby, a statue of a
woman was also found, probably of an empress, also headless. A woman
in barbaric attire was also unearthed here, kneeling with her hands
behind her back, probably the personification of a subjugated
province bowing to an emperor. Of this woman, only part of one leg
remained standing, but a corresponding torso has now also been
found.
North
of Zanes and Metroon, Pausanias saw a whole row of small,
temple-like buildings, so-called treasuries, houses that various
states or rulers had erected there to house their gifts to the God.
They lay with their backs flush against Kronos Hill and rested on a
raised foundation. Few buildings in the Altis region, however, have
been as damaged by the ravages of the elements and humanity—often
no more than an element—as this one. Even its foundations have
not been completely left untouched, although a large portion of them
can still be found. Fortunately, one of these treasuries was only
destroyed by a landslide from Kronos Hill, so there are enough
remains to allow for some reconstruction. It was a carefully crafted
building, not only resting on a pedestal with two smaller and one
larger staircase, but also the walls tapered gradually, with very
narrow and increasingly narrow steps leading upward. One entered a
porch between two Doric columns and two anterooms, and from there
into an inner room—the same arrangement, it seems, as in most
of the other treasuries. This was the so-called Carthaginian
treasury, that is, the treasury that Gelon, the tyrant of Syracuse,
had built at the beginning of the 5th century BC from the spoils
taken from the Carthaginians.
The
later inhabitants of the Valley of Olympia constructed a large
fortified square from fragments of architectural and sculptural
pieces. From the western wall, various blocks, fragments of columns,
a few capitals, pieces of reliefs, etc., were recovered, which had
been piled up inside and appeared to have been broken away from a
building. After some investigation, it turned out that this building
must have been exactly the width, judging by the foundations found,
of one of the treasuries, except for one.
The
last in the row, according to Pausanias, that of the Megarians. In
the facade of this treasury, he also saw a relief depicting the
battle of Gods and Giants, and this was entirely consistent with the
fact that among the numerous remains found, there were also relief
plaques. When, finally, one was found among the blocks, broken off
at the end, right through the fourth letter of the word Megara, or
Megarians—a block that also seemed to have belonged above the
entrance to the building—the matter was settled.
It
was a carefully crafted building. The facade rested on two ants and
two columns. Below the geisou, a frieze of limestone reliefs ran
around the entire building; this was also found in the facade. The
spaces between the ants and columns were filled with metal grating,
through which one or more doors must have led to the vestibule,
which led to an inner room twice as large as this one. The building
is a human age older than the Carthaginian treasury; it was
certainly built no later than the end of the 6th century BC. How
such discoveries complete all the links in the chain of Greek
architectural history is understandable.
Dr.
Treu has been able to reconstruct the relief on the facade with a
degree of probability that allows one to form a fairly accurate
assessment of the composition. In the center stands Zeus with a
Giant, who has already fallen to his knees. To his right, Athena and
Poseidon are fighting, and to his left, Heracles and Ares, each also
with a Giant. In the corner, in front of the viewer on the right, a
Giant lies flat on the ground, his helmet turned towards the corner.
Flanking him is a sea creature, which comes from the left corner to
assist Poseidon, the god of the sea. One of the best-preserved
pieces depicts the Giant battling Heracles. He has fallen to his
left knee, the one facing the viewer; his right leg is still
standing; he tries powerlessly to defend himself. Heracles, who is
fighting him, has already placed his left leg beyond the Giant's
right and will soon have completely defeated him. Here we have
before us a very ancient example of the art of grouping; with
childish naivety, for example, one thinks it is enough to place a
sea creature opposite the prostrate Giant.
According
to Pausanias, the first treasury on the left was that of the tyrant
Myron of Sicyon. Next came that of the Carthaginians. Now that the
foundations of these buildings have been uncovered, there is one
fewer than the Greek travelogue; yet, according to the most recent
reports, remains of them have also been found. Right next to these
treasuries, on the west side, stood a building that was only erected
a year or so after Pausanias's visit to Olympia. A wealthy and
generous man from Attica, who achieved great respect in Rome,
Herodes Atticus also indulged his almost manic passion for building
at Olympia. Numerous buildings by him are mentioned. When his wife
Regilla later died, he had his house painted black, black carpets
and curtains installed, and other parts clad with black marble. He
loved his Regilla dearly, and it was through her that he had a large
aqueduct, which branched off into the sacred area with various
branches—it has been found everywhere during
excavations—donated to the sanctuary. This was a great
blessing for Olympia, and it was noted, as if living in our age of
hygiene, that not only would one now be able to quench one's thirst
with proper drinking water in the sacred area, but that Olympia
would also suffer less from disease. The elongated main reservoir,
into which water flowed from both sides of the hill of Kronos, was
connected to an elegant building, a so-called Exedra, a building
where one could comfortably indulge in disputing—a very
favored pastime at the time. Herodes Atticus himself was also a
rhetorician. Next to the reservoir, on either side, were two small,
round buildings, probably containing two statues, perhaps those of
Hadrian and Antoninus Pius; of the former, the torso and head were
found, of the latter, only the head. Slightly higher than the
reservoir and behind it, the two round buildings were connected by a
semicircular building; here, too, niches were placed for statues of
the imperial family, several of which have been recovered in
relatively good condition, including one of Faustina, the wife of
Antoninus Pius, though the lower portion of her statue has broken
off above the knees. All the images of the Exedra prove that if one
built as much as Herodes Atticus, one had to compromise considerably
on the demands of beauty. In that semicircular building, they had an
unobstructed view of the great altar of Zeus. In front of the
reservoir stood a rather carelessly carved marble bull, on which an
inscription stated that Regilla had donated the aqueduct and the
accompanying building to Zeus. Water flowed into the reservoir
through the open mouths of two lion heads at the rear.
Close
to this Exedra stood the temple of Hera, the Heraion, so closely
attached to a small hill next to Mount Kronos that one could not
walk around it on the north side. It was, as it were, the
counterpart of the temple of Zeus on the other side of the great
altar and had already stood there at the same time as the temple,
which had been demolished in the latter half of the 5th century; the
foundations of the new one were then brought to the same level as
his. Although they belonged together, that of Zeus's wife was
somewhat smaller. It also had a less grand appearance from the
outside; The pedestal rose by two rather narrow staircases; there
was no trace of sculpture in the facade. One did not enter the
temple from the eastern front, but on the south side, two separate
staircases had been placed in the pedestal at either end, allowing
access to the gallery surrounding the temple house; for this, too,
was a Doric peripteral temple. If one walked under this gallery to
the north side, one could exit the temple there, near the rear
front, via a staircase leading to the heights beside Kronos Hill.
The Eleans certainly considered replacing this temple with a new
one; however, they contented themselves with renovating it whenever
the opportunity arose. Whenever one of the old oak columns became
unusable, it was replaced by another of stone; however, Pausanias
still saw a wooden one at the entrance to the rear of the building.
This explains why the stone columns varied considerably in size and
design. The fact that columns of wood and stone stood side by side
presented no problem, as they were all covered with the same fine
plaster. On the emergency side, where the temple could not be
accurately measured at the time, it was not even considered
necessary to align the columns on the outside, even if they were of
different sizes. The Doric column usually has twenty flutes, but
sometimes sixteen, and here too, one with sixteen can be found on
the north side. Such columns are of the oldest form and very
remarkable for art history. The Doric column is also of Egyptian
origin. When ancient dwellings were hewn from rock, square pillars
were left as supports for the upper vault. Later, they were also
used in buildings above ground. However, the corners were often cut
off, so that they became octagonal; in the same way, they were then
converted from octagonal to sixteen-sided; the flat sides were also
soon grooved and made into flutes. The Greeks wanted more flutes,
but 32 was too many; they started with a pentagon and thus arrived
at twenty. Columns with sixteen flutes, therefore, reveal their
origins much more clearly than those with twenty. Traces of votive
offerings placed against the columns in the gallery can still be
found on the columns, which must have stood on the east and south
sides of the temple.
The
temple house had no antennæ, meaning the side walls did not
curve at the front or back, so that those walls were visible in
cross-section. Two columns also stood midway between these ends of
the walls, and the spaces at the rear of the house were filled with
metal grating, so that only one door provided access. Entering the
interior temple space through the front house certainly gave a
completely different experience than entering that of the Temple of
Zeus. On a throne sat the Goddess of Heaven, presumably with two
gods beside her, one of whom was likely Zeus herself, the other
possibly Ares. They were looking at a very ancient work, made on the
site of Olympia itself; at least the yellowish-white limestone in
which it is carved is found near Olympia. It is a product of Greek
art, as it first began to become independent of Egyptian art. The
hair flows in perfectly even waves on either side of the forehead;
this is followed by a band, and atop the head is a round headdress,
made up of several elongated pieces, closely fitting together on the
long sides. It was precisely under the Saitic dynasty, during the
7th and 6th centuries, when Greece most experienced the influence of
Egypt, that a kind of headdress for Isis-Hahor came into use in that
country, consisting of a combination of Uraeus serpents, symbols of
royal dignity, topped with two horns. also the Leiden Museum has
several examples of this. Hera's headdress is clearly derived from
it; only the horns have been omitted, unless, which is difficult to
judge from a drawing, an unevenness on one of the sides is the
remnant of a broken horn.
The
interior construction of the temple was also very ancient.
Only
during the Roman Imperial period were columns added here, which,
running parallel to the side walls, divided the temple house into
three sections. Before that time, niches had been built on these
side walls, traces of which can still be seen. That these belonged
to the original design of the temple is clearly demonstrated by the
fact that the side walls of these niches, which stood at right
angles to the side walls, were completely aligned with the outer
columns, but in such a way that one column was omitted each time,
and each niche had the width of twice the distance between two
columns. The niches were therefore designed at the same time as the
exterior structure; Had they been added later, a seemingly
unnecessary agreement would not have been so easily arrived at.
These niches were probably covered with wood. The numerous votive
offerings that stood in this temple were undoubtedly placed in them.
The ancients were particularly interested in the so-called chest of
Cupselos, the Corinthian tyrant, painted with all sorts of scenes
from Greek legends and myths. It was a very old work. According to
tradition, the tyrant's mother had hidden him in this chest from the
eyes of his attackers shortly after his birth. In one of these
niches also stood the Hermes by Praxiteles. The majority of this
work has been recovered. We have already noted that not a single
original piece by him, nor by any other representative of the art
movement, of which he was one of the greatest coryphaeus, has
survived. Imagine, for a moment, that after two thousand years a
work by Rembrandt van Rijn was unearthed, after having known him
until then only through the stories of his ancestors and imperfect
copies.
The
gods of Praxiteles are much closer to the ordinary human world than
those of Pheidias. When the Greek, especially after the battle
against the Persians, felt a noble sense of self-worth, and humanity
seemed to him a revelation of dignity and strength, the gods were
the most sublime example of that human splendor. In the time of
Praxiteles, however, when civil wars had destroyed the states, when
their Asian brothers had been delivered to the Persians, when no
state in Greece anymore set an example of devotion to higher
principles, when freedom itself was soon to perish, to perish
through its own fault, how could such a belief in itself have been
possible then? Yet all was not yet lost; Youth and sweet beauty
still shone in their full splendor, and because of this, the human
figure, even though the more powerful striving for higher things had
departed from the soul, remained a captivating image for the
sculptor. Now, too, the artist's eye was more fully opened to
humanity as it presented itself when pain torments or passion drives
him onward, and although art had, if you will, descended into lower
spheres, this was amply compensated for by greater versatility.
Praxiteles,
however, felt drawn above all to that gentle beauty, and his gods
reflect it in great perfection. One could call him the artist of
blossoming beauty in comfortable tranquility. The famous sculptor
Cephisodotus was most likely his father and teacher; It has been
strikingly noted that his Eirene (Peace) with the child Pluto (God
of the Underworld), of which the glyptotheque in Munich possesses a
beautiful copy, offers a certain similarity in composition to this
Hermes and the child Dionysus (the God of Wine); indeed, an ancient
writer, Pliny, reports that the father also developed this same
theme. According to the son's depiction in his sculpture, the young
god has thrown his chlamys onto a cut-down tree trunk, which stands
upright in the ground, down which it falls in numerous folds,
casting all sorts of shades of light and dark over it. He himself
stands beside this tree trunk and leans on it with his left arm,
thereby slightly bending his right hip outward. On this left arm now
sits his divine foster-child, whom he was once supposed to have
taken to certain ymphs for rearing. In his hand the god clutched the
herald's staff, which had broken off, probably because it was
covered in precious metal. The young Dionysus hangs the little
Chlamys on his right hip; on his left side it has slid down a little
further. With his right foot he rests on the stump of a branch cut
from the tree trunk; the left hangs freely. With his right hand he
holds the shoulder of his nurse. Now he throws his head back a
little, and he turns his head back, slightly bending it toward his
left shoulder, so that he can see something in Hermes's face, which
he held in his raised right hand, past his head. The god's mouth is
drawn into a soft smile. He isn't really occupied with the little
boy. He looks straight ahead, tilting his head slightly to the
right, and is apparently in that state of comfortable repose we
mentioned above, while meanwhile the little god goes about his
business quite happily. Therefore, I don't think it's very likely
that he, as one might think, held a bunch of grapes in his raised
hand for the child. He would have been playing with the little one,
as it were. It's better to assume that he had something in his hand,
and when he picked it up, he wasn't thinking of the child, but that
he happened to find it beautiful. What this was, however, is
difficult to determine. Besides the right arm, a large part of both
legs is also missing. The foot of the right has also now been found,
which wears a sandal but has no wings. Here the artist deviated from
the ancient mythological representation. The child is missing both
arms; only the hand on Hermes's shoulder is still visible on the
right; he must have extended the right arm towards the object in his
right hand.
The
god's body is sculpted with great mastery. The fluffy transitions of
the muscles cast numerous delicate shadows across it, and the skin
is soft and lustrous. The hair is cut short and stands out clearly
against the clear skin of the face. He appears to have worn a
wreath. That this god was quite close to the human world is already
evident from the fact that he is only slightly taller than the
average human height. Dionysus, on the other hand, is exceptionally
small and must, on the other hand, look far too old for his age. The
cloak is finely sculpted; the head, it is said, is of very average
height. The long hair is held back by a band. The fact that some
parts are less carefully worked, including Hermes's hair—but
mainly at the back—has led some to claim that the work is not
by the great master. Pausanias, however, assures us quite
unequivocally, and at Olympia, where he inquired about all such
things, they were well aware of it; the supposition that a namesake
of the famous Praxiteles would have created it is highly improbable.
But why not Praxiteles himself? Has it never happened before that a
great master neglected certain parts of his work to elaborate others
with great passion? Praxiteles was an artist who seems to have
worked very extensively; isn't it in the character of such a person,
once he had satisfied himself with elaborating on what was most
important to him in his conception, to find it tedious to continue
working on his work? He apparently heard while working that it would
be placed in a niche and was working on the back. He then
immediately left; the chisel marks are still clearly visible on the
back, and professional sculptors assure us that this shows he must
have used tools exactly the same as those used today. This placement
in a niche, even a wide one, certainly explains the less careful
work on the back of the head. Between the left leg and the tree
trunk, the statue was supported by a crossbar, which, presumably,
only needed to be used during transport, but was accidentally left
in place. The statue probably stood on a not very high pedestal, the
bottom plate of which has been found. We will never see the work
completely as it was. It was painted, according to some traces, and
it is impossible to determine how. After taking another look at two
tables, which, judging by deep grooves in the stones that formed the
floor, must have stood in the temple's porch, we leave it on the
south side. Northwest of it lies the Prytaneion, where, among other
things, the victors in the games were entertained at the expense of
the Eleans. Nearby is the small, elegant, round temple that Philip
of Macedonia, after defeating the Greeks at Chaeronea, had built in
his honor: the Philipion. But the Temple of Hera was above all an
excellent starting point for strolling past the hundreds of
sculptures, mostly statues of victors, placed in the open air. One
then proceeded from the south side of this temple, behind the
aforementioned large altar to Zeus, which, it was said, was formed
from the ashes of sacrificial animals. Ashes from this altar are
found. Then one passed the sanctuary of Pelops (Pelopion), an
unwalled open space dotted with statues and trees. The entrance was
on the west side. One continued between this Pelopion and the Temple
of Zeus to the western Altis wall. Then one walked around the
terrace of the Temple of Zeus, always passing sculptures, until one
reached the western wall again. There presumably lay the
Hippodamion, also a walled area. Parallel to the southern Altis wall
stood another row of statues. If one passed the southeastern main
entrance and then walked north to the column of the House of
Oenomaos, well known to us, one had passed almost all of them.
Many
pedestals of all these sculptures have been found, but few of the
statues themselves. We have already mentioned the Nike of Paionios,
which stood on the terrace in front of the Temple of Zeus. Of the
statues of victors, we have the remains of three: a very moderately
carved marble head; a head that, in its carving, bears a strong
resemblance to the Aeginites and thus dates from the early fifth or
late sixth century. A shield with a fragment of an arm was also
found, the edge of which, covering the chin, fitted this shield to
the head. On the shield, Phrixos is depicted with a ram; it is known
that he escaped with his sister Helle on such an animal, but the
latter drowned in the Hellespont. Now, near the column of the house
of Oinomaos, Pausanias mentions a statue of Eperastos, who, in the
inscription he mentions, boasts of being of the lineage of Melampos.
Melampos was related to Phrixos. This head is therefore likely that
of Eperastos, and a kind of heraldic symbol appeared on his shield.
The third find is the head of a pankratiast, or boxer, as indicated
by the ears, which in such individuals were fused together by scars.
It is beautifully crafted from bronze and striking because of the
realism with which the anything but gentle appearance of such a
fighter is depicted. This suggests that a Pergamic or Rhodian artist
from the last centuries BC made it.
In
an area like Olympia, one naturally also saw many beautiful or
important smaller objects. I would like to mention a few that have
been found. One is a small statue of a female deity, sculpted
entirely in the Egyptian style; the arms are held straight along the
body, and in each hand she holds a serpent. It is believed to be one
of the Erinnyes, goddesses of fate, but a very old one. New evidence
of the Semitic influence that must have had on Greek art has also
been found at Olympia. The most important is a piece of bronze,
which must have belonged to a cauldron or something similar, on
which, among other things, stands Artemis, the goddess of the hunt,
with wings and two lions beside her, who still bears a strong
resemblance to her Asian predecessor, Anaïtis or Anahita; a
piece of light 2,400 years old.
Thus
Olympia, "the mother of the shining garlands, was the place
where merit was truthfully judged, where soothsayers deduced from
the smoldering morsels of sacrificial meat whether one would acquire
masculine virtue, whether one would find relief from the pressure"
through the glorious consciousness of having achieved something
noble through the exertion of one's best efforts. "We humans
are like those of a day. What is someone, what is someone not?"
Today we are this, tomorrow that. "Man is the dream of a
shadow. But when the splendor that comes from the hands of Zeus
(victory) descends upon him, then a brilliant light shines for him;
blessed then is his life." Thus, it was a sacred place here,
where one sought solace and comfort, and felt momentarily weak. The
long line of illustrious ancestors, past whose statues one walked,
was inspired by their example with renewed vigor. When a rhapsode
recited the second book of Homer's Iliad, and had reached that
section where the various tribes and kings who had participated in
the war against Troy are mentioned in great detail, every Greek
listened attentively until the name of his people was mentioned and
the illustrious heroes were mentioned who, even after so many
centuries, still made up the glory of their tribe. So, no Greek
entered the region of the Altis without being able to point out at
least a few victors among all those statues, whom he could count
among his own, to a greater or lesser extent. One might also call
Olympia an art museum; if art had not been fully integrated into
life here, as everywhere in Greece. Olympia was always important for
the Greeks, but at certain times more so than at others. For
example, one might find that the sacrificers would ask the god for
an oracle; one could be present on that day of the month when the
Elian priests performed their oracles.
An
ancient sacrifice, consisting of incense, flour, and honey, was
circulated in a fixed order around all the approximately 70 altars
that stood within the sacred area. But whatever it might have been
at other times, everything was surpassed by Olympia, as it was
during the great festivals every four years, when it showed itself
in its most glorious form, far outshining everything of that kind in
Greece, "like the sun the other stars."
We
will attend such a celebration in the final section of this essay.
Leiden.
A.E.J.
Holwerda.
(Conclusion
to follow.)
Olympia.
(Continued from p. 114.)
III.
The
end of the four-year period, which would be concluded by the great
festival of the Eleans at Olympia, was approaching. Everyone could
easily calculate how far they were from that date; The festival
began five days before the arrival of the full moon, which fell
closest to the summer solstice every fourth year, ending precisely
with that full moon. About a year before that time, various
champions in many Greek cities began to deliberately prepare for the
Olympic competition. Gymnasts (leaders of the champions), fathers,
relatives, and friends consulted whether their son, relative, or
friend was truly trained enough to compete at a venue like Olympia.
Only later did those who wished to attend the festival only as
spectators make their travel plans. Finally, thirty days before the
full moon in question, the so-called sacred month began; heralds of
peace passed through Elis and subsequently also went to several
other states to proclaim the Olympic Peace. This was an old custom
that had lost much of its original purpose, but which, like so many
similar customs, nevertheless served to add greater solemnity to the
entire festival.
For
some time now, the governments and assemblies of the various cities
had also been concerned with the matter. Who would be sent to the
principal Hellenic sanctuary as theores—official
representatives of the state at one or another religious festival
abroad? Only wealthy individuals were eligible. While the states
often spent large sums on their theores—embassies of
theores—it was up to these theores to add even greater
splendor to their appearances in the sacred domain, and many were
eager to render service to their country and thus gain prestige
among their fellow citizens. Now the state ships, which would
transport the theores, also had to be rigged, and the multicolored
tents were brought out to house them during the festival. The crowd
could now admire the magnificent vessels that would serve for the
state's sacrifices at the great altar of Zeus.
Meanwhile,
in Elis itself, on the first day of the sacred month, the prelude to
the approaching festivities had already begun. In one of the halls
of the city's large gymnasium, the judges and organizers of the
competition, the Hellanodikes, held a meeting that day. From all
sides, the champions who wanted to participate in the competition
streamed in; anyone who did not arrive on that appointed day knew
that unless they had very valid reasons for their absence, they
would be excluded. When registering, they had to be able to prove
that they were a free Hellene, not a slave; that they had not been
deprived of their civil rights by any sentence, had committed no
crime against the gods, and were not stained by bloodguilt. Even
those who might wish to claim that another did not meet any of these
requirements were admitted to provide evidence. In Elis, the names
of those who would participate in the competition were already being
announced. They were becoming acquainted with them, or even renewing
old acquaintances, as well as with gymnasts, relatives, and friends,
for they had undoubtedly come more than once before.
The
next morning was very early in Elis. Even before sunrise, the
Hellanodiki left their official residence at the Elian market
square, crossed it, and entered the large gymnasium through an
entrance that led to it. Preliminary exercises for the great
competition were about to begin, and these were apparently repeated
every day. Things were stricter here than at the gymnasium back
home. There was no friendly gymnast here with whom one could more or
less arrange the exercises to their satisfaction; As absolute ruler,
Hellanodike wielded the scepter, and anyone who refused to submit
was excluded from the competition. The champions' own gymnasts were
also usually present, but if they should ever interfere too much, a
blow with the message from one of Hellanidike's servants quickly
informed them that they were no longer on the grounds of their
dominion. The exercises usually began early in the morning with the
footrace; wrestling, boxing, and the like took place at noon. The
sun then blazed brightly in the sky, and the sand from the Arcadian
plains, often more undulating than that of Ethiopia, frequently blew
into the Elian Gymnasium. Now, heat hardiness was one of the main
requirements for the trained champion, but it soon became clear that
only the most outstanding among the best could venture into these
preliminary exercises at the Elian Gymnasium. The less suitable had,
of course, long been eliminated before the actual competition began;
at the same time, the various champions had become accustomed to
each other.
Meanwhile,
the quiet rural town became increasingly lively and bustling. People
walk through the streets, through the market, through the Gymnasium:
they want to see the men and youths who will soon fight for the
greatest victories. It won't be long before the splendidly dressed
theoreticians mingle with the bustling crowd. For many, however,
Elis is merely a place through which they pass. The two roads to
Olympia, situated to the south, are becoming increasingly crowded
with pedestrians and chariots. Bustle and movement begin to prevail
in the hitherto tranquil valley of Olympus and Mount Kronos. Around
the Altis area, tents are being pitched, which they intend to rent
to revelers. Peddlers display their wares there. There is also
activity around and in the Palaestra and the Gymnasium, which must
be prepared to receive the champions, just as the Leonidaion is for
those theoreticians who were not allowed to bring their own tents.
It is even possible that they could not all be accommodated in that
building; In that case, beautiful, multicolored tents had to provide
for further needs. For just as other states considered it their duty
to send theoria, the Elean state owed it to its dignity to receive
them well. And just as wealthy people contributed from their own
resources to a splendid theoria, so too wealthy Eleans, not without
their own financial sacrifices, undertook the reception of theoria
in the name of the state. Amidst all this activity now mingles the
increasing movement of the growing crowd of celebrators. As already
in Elis, old acquaintances from various corners of the Hellenic
world meet here. People walk together in the open air or in one of
the many galleries in and around the Altis. What momentous events
have occurred in each city since they last spoke! Everything is
discussed that the Hellenic tribe from southern Italy to the Black
Sea coast has experienced and enjoyed in recent years. But wherever
the crowds bustle and swarm, nowhere is it livelier than in the rear
of the Temple of Zeus. There, people debate all sorts of weighty and
trivial topics; there, among other places, the Sophist Hippias of
Elis delivered his speech, known to us from Plato, in which he
boasted that everything he wore on his body was his own creation.
His sister's grandson erected a statue there for him, the pedestal
of which, bearing the inscription, has been recovered. It was also
there, in that rear of the building, as we recall, that Herodotus
read his world-famous history. Painters seized the opportunity to
exhibit a new canvas there, as it were, for the entire Hellas
assembled. The man, who had reaped laurels in the harvest here,
could be certain that within a few weeks, his name would be carried
to the four corners of the wind by the returning revellers. It was
like a miniature competition here, for male virtue in the arts and
sciences.
In
the evening, however, the moon grows ever fuller in the sky.
Finally, the full moon is only six or seven days away, and the
festival is about to begin. The preliminary exercises in the
Gymnasium of Elis have already concluded. The Hellanodikes are in
the Plethrion, a racecourse of that Gymnasium, to organize the
procession of champions from the city to the sanctuary. Those who
are the same age or were close equals in the preliminary exercises
are placed side by side. Now it is well worth going to see the
champions; they are all lined up here in squads. How much one
admires these sturdy men with their proud, free bearing, in the full
sense of their strength; the chosen ones from among the hundreds of
thousands of an entire gymnastic-training tribe. People are also
examined with the pleasure of connoisseurs. That powerful man there,
particularly developed in chest and hands, but somewhat less so, as
the others ones, whose body parts are concerned, is a
"lion-athlete"; the other, whose legs are somewhat slender
compared to the massive, awe-inspiring torso, is called an
"eagle-athlete." Undoubtedly, among all these people there
are also "bear-athletes," powerfully built individuals,
somewhat stocky, not tall, more or less square; indeed, it is to be
expected that among such a select group, one can identify the most
striking representatives of each type. Now the procession sets off.
Naturally, they follow the main highway, "the holy way."
The theorias will also have participated in this official march to
the Altiss. Numerous celebrants follow, others follow the road
through the mountains. Elis is now completely empty.
Finally,
the main procession arrives at the sacred festival grounds over the
Kladeos Bridge. The theores occupy the buildings and tents
designated for them, while the champions are billeted in the
Gymnasium and the Palaestra. As will be remembered, there was a
wrestling arena and a racetrack at hand; never for a moment was
there no opportunity to keep their limbs supple through exercises.
The liveliness now reaches its peak. While many a pious offering had
undoubtedly already been placed on one of the altars, now that
number increases greatly; the champions attempt to win the gods'
favor for the approaching contest; many a wealthy theores wants to
honor his fatherland by displaying wealth and splendor; from what
city is this man who brings such magnificent sacrificial animals to
so many altars? What glittering golden vessels for washing hands,
what a finely crafted censer! The day, probably after the arrival of
the great procession, the actual festivities begin. The High Olympic
Council is assembled in the town hall. There also stands the statue
of Zeus, the upholder of the oath, as if in anger at the perjurer,
drilling lightning into each hand. Before the venerable men, to
whose exalted council one could even appeal against the verdicts of
the Hellanodices if they had awarded victory, lay the bloody parts
of a wild boar cut into pieces. It was at such a sacrifice that
solemn oaths were taken. Now the champions, their fathers, brothers,
and gymnasts, approached. Taking the pieces of the sacrificial
animal in their hands, they had to swear that they would not be
guilty of any offense against the Olympic competition—this
meant, for example, that they would not commit bribery; they could
be cut into pieces like that sacrificial animal if they did not keep
their oath. The champions themselves also had to swear under oath
that they had prepared for the competition for at least ten months.
After them, they were also bound to an oath, which would determine
whether the people who registered for the boys' race were not
already too mature to participate, and also those who had to
determine which horses were adult and which not. In this oath, they
had to promise to proceed without deceit.
Everything
heralds the approaching race. The Hellanodike publish a program for
it. Already, the "olive tree of beautiful wreaths," which,
as we recall, stood not far from the southeastern main entrance to
the Altis, is being cut, the branches which would be woven into
wreaths for the victors. This was done with a gold knife by a boy
whose parents were both still alive; anything that evoked the idea
of imperfection, of something tainted, had to be
removed from the race. The prepared wreaths—usually seventeen,
for that is how many contests were usually announced on the
program—were laid out on a table in the temple of Hera.
But
before the contest began, the great sacrifice of the Eleans had to
take place, the principal religious ceremony of the festival, of
which all that followed was originally only an appendage. Hundreds,
indeed thousands, began to move toward the open square before the
great altar; a bustling crowd jostled in the echoing gallery.
Suddenly, however, it fell deathly silent. The sacrificers climbed
onto the altar, and the herald's voice resounded through the room:
"Beware of false sounds." Everyone remained silent, taking
care not to disturb the sacred ceremony with any noise. How easily
could some word or sound prove an evil omen! The offerer above
utters a prayer that it may please the Father of Gods and men to
accept the sacrifice graciously. Thousands mentally join in this
request. The swirling column of smoke rising upwards soon reveals
that the sacrifice has been lit. The soul rises to the Awe-inspiring
One, from whose hands descend the blessings for which one prays
here.
This
place had gathered with this, the first day of the festival ended.
By the following night, people were already crowding the earthen
rampart surrounding the stadium. Before sunrise, most spectators
were already in their seats. The boys' competition was to be held on
the following day. How many a mother would have loved to be there,
to see her son in his greatest strength and glory, perhaps even to
see him triumph. However, an unforgiving law closed the games to
married women; young girls were apparently admitted, according to
Spartan customs, though presumably no use was made of this
permission. Legend told of a mother who, disguised as a gymnast, had
followed her son into the stadium. The boy was victorious; at that
moment, the deception was discovered, but she, however, because
father, son, and brothers had been victors at Olympia, was spared.
It was a law, namely, that women who crossed Alpheios during the
competition, approaching the sacred area, were to be thrown down
from a rock in the neighboring mountain—they were pointed out
to each other. This law, however, was undoubtedly merely a matter of
tradition, not born of any real need to counteract what was
considered evil. Tradition added in the same breath that the mother,
dressed as a gymnast, was the only one who had attempted to break
that law. We need hardly tell you how much the Greek must have
enjoyed the sight of those running, wrestling, and boxing boys, the
Greek who had such a deep sense of the glory of the blossoming human
being. The happiness of a father to see his son crowned was
certainly not insignificant, and the victories of boys also
increased the fame of a city. Yet, the men's competitions remained
the main goal. Only these were said to be institutions of Heracles,
which were later recalled; that boys also performed in the camp was
entirely a human invention of the Eleans. The boys' competition was
a miniature version of that of the men. The pleasure that the
exercises as such offered the spectators was therefore greatest for
the men.
It
began on the third day. Once again, at the early dawn, the
spectators were already in their seats. Probably not long after
sunrise, there was movement on the side of the "secret
entrance." The Hellanodices, in purple festive robes, appeared
first; they stepped forward to take their separate seats, probably
built into the earthen wall on the side of the hippodrome. Soon, the
so-called alytes, led by their alytarch, lined up alongside them.
These were a kind of police force, armed with sticks, assigned to
the Hellanodikes to maintain order and observe the so-called Olympic
laws, the fixed rules for every contest. Opposite the Hellanodikes,
on the other wall of the stadium, sat the priestess of Demeter,
Chamyne, on an altar of white marble, the only woman permitted to be
present at the competition.
Now
the champions, along with their gymnasts, also appeared, men,
primarily theoretically developed—they did not need to be
great athletes—to whom the leadership of the gymnastic
education of the rising generation had been entrusted. Very often,
they had known the champion they were now accompanying from their
earliest youth. It was they who had determined the type of
competition for which the boy's physique made him most suitable, who
had always so regularly regulated the exercises in the gymnasium,
and taken such precautions—the boys' actual drill masters were
the paidotribes—as each one's particular constitution and
possibly a few minor defects seemed to necessitate, and who, through
years of careful and loving observation, had come to fully
understand the weaknesses and strengths of their pupils, including
their moral ones. They were easily distinguishable. Here, unlike the
custom at other festivals, they were completely naked—the
Eleans recounted that the incident with their mother dressed as a
gymnast had prompted them to order it—but as a sign of their
dignity, they wore a stlengis, the instrument with which the
champion was rubbed off the oil mixed with dust after the
competition. How they are engrossed in conversation with the
champions! Once again, they recall everything they had to think
about, they encourage themselves, and they do so in a way that suits
each person's character. What stories circulated about the delicate
tact with which gymnasts had urged their competitors to great
exertions! They were also the ones who had oiled their bodies, for
this too was a task, that It had to be done with deliberation.
Overall, they presented the exhilarating spectacle of a more
advanced age, sympathetic to the expectations of a younger
generation and able to identify with its glory.
The
herald loudly announces the start of the competition: "The
competition begins, which yields the finest prizes," according
to the established formula, "There is no time to delay."
Now the champions, who had been seen entering the stadium, step
forward. They were participants in the so-called long run, because
that was when the competitions began. Once again, the herald's voice
rises. The name of the first competitor is called out, along with
that of his father and his hometown. He then introduces himself to
the assembled crowd. One can still, on the same grounds as a month
ago among the Hellanodikes in Elis—if one is not a Helen or a
freeman, if one has lost his citizenship rights in his state, or if
one has committed an offense against the Gods—resist their
admission to the competition, and the herald loudly invites everyone
to do so. If no one rises, a second participant immediately follows,
then a third, until finally all are present. A drawing is held. Four
by four, they will make the first run; the victors from these four
will compete for the prize.
The
first group of four advances. The gymnasts must remain behind a
parapet. These runners were men with not very well-developed legs
and strong necks and shoulders. The Hellanodikes give a signal. A
barrier or rope is removed. The runners set off calmly. They hold
their arms out in front of them, and to be able to maintain this
position for a long time, that strong development of shoulders and
neck is necessary. They move at a brisk pace; yet it's clear to them
that speed isn't the point. They have to circle the two ends of the
three posts, which ran lengthwise across the center of the stadium,
several times—we don't know how many times—and
therefore, above all, they must ensure they get into a momentum they
can maintain for a long time, rather than slackening off again
later, when it really matters, due to excessive speed at the
beginning. What self-control was needed not to be swept along, as it
were, by a competitor who is charging ahead a bit too quickly. Each
time they approached a post, they often curbed their progress
slightly, to be able to make the shortest turn around it. Suddenly,
however, one of the runners changed their stance. The arms, which
until now had been held straight out in front, now began to move
along with the leg; the arm on each side moves forward and backward
in tactical coordination with the leg on that side; The flat palms
cleave the air. This movement, however, has nothing violent about
it; the muscles are not particularly tense, the forward arm is often
slightly bent. It is noticeable that the runner has suddenly
accelerated; with wide strides he flies forward; his feet touch the
ground only briefly; he holds his upper body upright, thus providing
himself with more ample breathing. It is this swinging of the arms
that imparts a unique momentum to the upper limbs and thus prevents
them, through their inertia, from countering the movement of the
legs. The finish line is already approaching. The runner knew his
strength and knew that he could cover the remaining part of the race
at greater speed. However, he does not remain alone for long in this
altered movement; one of the competitors follows ahead, the other
behind. Now the mutual relationship often changes; whoever was ahead
comes behind, whoever was behind comes ahead. The tension of the
spectators increases more and more; From all sides, a shout echoes
through the stadium: they are being egged on, and the gymnasts,
especially behind their parapets, are ready to call out to them,
every time they pass by, the word they believe will most invigorate
their courage. Their own cries also mingle with the general clamor.
It's as if this gives them new strength. It's getting tough, though,
and they threaten to succumb; but persevere, and renew their
efforts, victory is not yet lost. There they circle the turning pole
for the last time; the goal is already close in sight; the seat of
the Hellanodikes is near. The battle is already decided; arms drop,
steps shorten, the foot of the first has passed the goal!
Now
it's the turn of a second group of four, then a third, a fourth,
until finally all participants have had a turn. How the tension
among the spectators now mounts: the victors from the groups will
fight for the final decision. Who will be the lucky one? Everyone
has already seen all the participants run past them once, so you can
guess.
They
are making moves, but there's not much to say about it; they are,
after all, quite evenly matched. Each time during the fight, the
relationship changes. For the spectators, it's as if they themselves
have completed a difficult task when the last circuit is finally
completed.
Who
is the victor? This hasn't always been clearly visible from the
earthen rampart on which they are seated. Soon, however, all doubt
disappears. The victor steps forward, the vanquished disappear
through the secret entrance. They are in a sad mood. Their
expectation when they return home is "no cheerful laughter from
their mother." They seek "unfrequented roads"; the
fear creeps over them that "on the streets" of their
hometown they will "encounter the mocking gaze of an enemy."
What bliss, on the other hand, flows through the other's breast. A
Hellanodike approaches him to crown him. A palm branch is placed in
his hand, a woolen band2 tied around his head, and the olive wreath
placed on top. Already, his gymnast approaches him, almost as happy
as he himself; his relatives also seem to detach themselves from the
circle of spectators; they are eager to congratulate him. "Who
is he?" they ask from all sides. Many probably know him.
Perhaps his name was already being passed around by word of mouth
when he distinguished himself during the competition. Not
infrequently, it was an old acquaintance, a previous victor either
at Olympia or one of the other great games. Perhaps someone had
remembered his name when it was called out at the beginning of the
competition. But all uncertainty soon disappears; the herald shows
him to the assembled crowd and announces in a loud voice his name,
that of his father, and that of the city to whose citizens he
belonged, or wished to be counted. Now everyone gives themselves
over completely to the joy. He himself walks in a proud, stately
posture along the earthen rampart of spectators, uttering cries of
ecstasy. Gymnasts, friends, and relatives have reached him, but also
strangers, as far as they were sitting near the front, leap from the
heights as he passes, showering him with leaves, flowers, and
wreaths. Those sitting further away throw them over the front rows,
and many small gifts are mixed in among them, such as belts, hats,
and the like. Joy reigns everywhere; people cheer with the cheering,
and in the hearts of many young men, the resolve takes root to exert
themselves with all their might to one day share in the same glory.
After the victor has gathered as much as possible of what was thrown
at him, he disappears from the arena.
After
this long run, it was the turn of the single track through the
stadium. Once again, the champions are called into the arena. They
are remarkably quick in their movements and slender of leg. Lots are
drawn again, for here too, the race begins in groups of four. How
the spectators' intense attention is compressed into a short space
of time! The runners begin at the far end of the stadium, on the
side furthest from the secret entrance; as soon as they reach the
beginning, at the Hellanodike seats, the race is decided. Like a
whirlwind, they rush forward, arms and legs moving simultaneously
from the very beginning. It is now simply a battle of speed. After
the groups have had their turn, the victors from the groups compete
here as well. The victor is proclaimed and crowned. A similar scene
takes place as after the first race.
Now
the third type of race was in order, the so-called double run, once
through the stadium and back around the turning post. This was like
a combination of the first two types. The course was too long for
one to triumph solely through speed; too short for one to triumph
solely through perseverance. One should not adopt one's greatest
speed, but the speed at which one knew one could endure until the
last moment. Each type of race, therefore, had its own specific
speed, and it was very difficult to transition successively from one
speed to the other. The victory of Polites of Keramos, who triumphed
in all three types of race in succession, was therefore quite
extraordinary.
The
victor in the double-battle is crowned. The sun is already high in
the sky. The "light" contests have ended; the "heavy"
ones—wrestling, boxing, and pankration—begin. It is the
wrestlers who are called first into the arena by the herald. Lots
must be drawn here as well. Even in the tough competitions, drawing
lots was more important than in the race: it naturally made no
difference who one would be paired with, and above all, the
so-called 'ephedra' was a great advantage. The silver urn is brought
out; in it were so many leads.
Little
tickets were placed when there were champions. These tickets had
letters on them, each letter on two tickets; if the number of
champions was an odd number, then there was one letter that appeared
on only one ticket. Those who had drawn the same letter would be
paired; however, the one who drew the ticket without a match would
this time (the winners from these first pairs were paired again
later) be able to "stay put" in the competition for the
others; he had the "ephedry," he was the ephedros, "the
man who sat there."
The
wrestlers are already approaching the urn. The first one puts his
hand in. He says a short prayer and withdraws his hand. How he burns
with desire to see if he has drawn the letter without a match, but
one of the alytes holds his arm and prevents him. There must be
order in the matter; He is led by the alyte to a specific spot,
where he must initially remain standing with his arm outstretched.
Soon he is joined by a second, then a third, until everyone has cast
their lots and stands in a circle next to each other. The
Hellanodike or the alytarch reads the letters; one now knows who
they will wrestle with, one knows who will be ephedros.
The
pairs advance. They are powerful men with beautiful, well-rounded
limbs, more broad than tall, yet anything but stocky; though the
neck is not particularly long, the head is raised proudly. The
shoulders are broad, the chest well-rounded, the belly somewhat
heavy, though there is no question of actual corpulence. The
wrestler strides towards them with an easy gait; yet one can clearly
see from the sturdy legs that they remain steadfast where they were
once placed. The spectators' interest is great, because beyond the
tension that every match generates, an extraordinary artistic
pleasure awaits them here. They were treated in advance to the sight
of the various beautiful positions and postures that wrestlers, who
understood their art well, could assume, or achieve spontaneously.
They were familiar with the technical terms used for this purpose in
the gymnasiums and expected to see all movements executed with the
utmost precision. Yet, deviations were to be feared here, and not
only deviations from the strict rules of wrestling, but nowhere was
more supervision required to ensure that the Olympic laws were
upheld than precisely in this competition. Here, it was possible for
one fighter to deliberately kill the other; something that was
strictly forbidden. However, the attempt to do so was rare. It was
more likely that, in the heat of the battle, one or another would be
tempted to kick or punch, or even bite with their teeth. Then,
however, he was quickly reminded by the stick of an alyte on his
back that wrestling must remain a contest of pushing and wresting.
Three Hellanodikes, commissioned for this purpose, kept a regular
eye on things.
But
the fight has begun. "In wasp formation," as it was
called, the wrestlers from the various pairs stand facing each
other. That is, they step forward cautiously, somewhat pressed
together, with their upper bodies more or less bent forward, their
eyes fixed constantly on their opponent, their hands slightly
extended to grab the opponent, but in such a way that they are also
clearly prepared to withdraw in time if they are in danger of being
grabbed themselves. The various wrestlers stand facing each other
like this for a long time. They try to find a spot where they can
grab each other effectively. However, if such a position presents
itself, one still doesn't know whether the opponent isn't
deliberately and seemingly exposing themselves, and in that case, by
engaging, one would run a great risk of falling into their hands; in
wrestling, cunning also played a very important role. Suddenly,
however, a cry went up through all the ranks. One of the wrestlers
had quickly bent to the ground, grabbed his opponent by the foot
with one hand, and in the blink of an eye brought the arm he still
had free under the opponent's leg, pushed the foot down, and thus,
with his arm as a support, used that leg as a lever to lift his
entire body. Barely had the other leg of the wrestler been lifted
off the ground for a moment before his heavy torso bent backward and
he himself collapsed into the sand. Soon, however, he stood up
again, and the fight began anew. After all, unless one of the
parties surrendered, one had to throw one's opponent to the ground
three times to win. Continuing the fight on the ground, rolling over
each other, was forbidden in a venue as prestigious as the stadium
at Olympia.
And
this wasn't the only way one could be suddenly overwhelmed by one's
opponent. Sometimes, one wrestler would suddenly land in the other's
back with a mighty leap. One of the legs in an instant is struck
around the stomach, one arm around the neck. The victim threatens to
suffocate and, in the anguish, declares that he gives up. Sometimes,
a harsh scream suddenly resounds through the station. Two of the
combatants hadn't noticeably changed their stance, but one had
seized the other by the fingertips and broken them with a single,
powerful squeeze. The unfortunate fighter is now forced to give up.
Usually,
however, one rarely saw such sudden victories at Olympia. Here, the
most outstanding fighters from all corners of the Hellenic world
gathered, their strength and skill only slightly surpassing each
other. After standing face to face for some time, they finally grasp
each other by the wrists. Their heads are pressed together "like
goats"; one tries to push the other back. They push off
forcefully with their feet and push against each other. Then one of
them steps back a little. The spectators stir; a decision seems
imminent.
But
suddenly, the repressed, a rousing word from a father or brother, or
from the gymnast behind the parapet, rings in the ears of the one
who has been pushed back. He pulls himself together, summons all his
strength, and pushes his opponent back. Fortunately, for had he been
forced further from his position, he would very easily have lost
full control of his limbs and been easily overwhelmed. Now, it is as
if a stream of renewed vitality tingles through his veins; the
glorious image of victory floats before his eyes in all its
splendor. He has thrust himself forward again, as if in a single
jerk; indeed, it could happen that the newly gathered strength
suddenly gives him the upper hand. His opponent staggers and suffers
the fate he had intended for him; pushed further and further back,
he is carried powerlessly through the stadium. But wrestling, as we
said, was a battle of pushing and wresting, and often the wrestler
certainly didn't win by simply pushing. While pressing against each
other in this way, they usually tried to push the hand holding their
opponent's arm forward until they reached their neck, or else they
tried to wedge the arm they were holding between their fingers, in
order to grab them around the thigh or waist. Even now, one is
absolutely not safe from a sudden attack; one must be prepared for
the opponent to suddenly release the arm they were holding and
unexpectedly grab them by the foot, leg, or neck. But even without
such sudden turns, after a while one of the two combatants often
finds themselves at a decisive disadvantage. Now, the opponent's
hand has reached the neck and is already grasped by a few fingers.
With all his might, he pushes himself away from him, but the other
pulls him toward him. His fingers advance; his arm wraps around his
neck; he feels his opponent's weight pressing ever more heavily upon
him. Courageously straining to remain standing! He tries to raise
himself to his full height against the increasing pressure from
above. Perhaps the other will expose himself at the last moment, and
thus turn the tide. But gradually the oppressive force becomes too
strong for him; his knees buckle; he feels himself sinking: ever
faster he approaches the ground; finally, he is on his knees, his
head, encircled by his opponent's arm, bent forward against the
ground.
Another
time, one of the opponent's arms has forced its way up to his
opponent's thigh. He seizes this opportunity, and the other might
seize the opportunity of him bending slightly to throw his arm
around his neck, but it's no use; he's lifted off his feet and has
to fall. Or perhaps one of the combatants has already advanced his
arm more or less around the other's waist. However much he exposes
himself, the fight is still decided. Soon, that arm has advanced so
far that it's possible, with a mighty jerk, to lift his opponent's
entire body off the ground and send it tumbling backward into the
sand.
Yet,
even for such solutions, many combatants were too much of a match
for each other. The bodies approach each other, one grabs the other,
and it's hard to say whether either has the advantage. What an
effort of force now to force each other to the ground! The upper
bodies, pressed tightly against each other, bend back and forth,
forward and backward, or to the side; one tries to make the other
feel the weight of his own weight in an unfavorable position, in
order to make him fall more quickly. Not infrequently, one of the
parties succeeds with his leg falling from the other to encircle
others. This is lifted from the ground. It is impossible for someone
thus dislodged from his perpendicular position to resist the weight
of his opponent for long. He reaches the ground more quickly or
slowly.
These
and other similar scenes held the attention of the spectators. Their
eyes were drawn alternately from one group of wrestlers to the next.
The movement they saw involuntarily stimulated them to move. They
jumped or waved their arms or their clothes, jokingly made a
wrestling gesture with their neighbor. Finally, all pairs had
finished the fight. A new match began between the victors from those
pairs and, if there was one, the ephedros. Lots were drawn again;
again, if the number was odd, someone received the ephedros. This
second match could have been followed by more. The fight continued
until only two remained, battling for the prize. Ephedra, in
particular, was a major advantage in this final fight. It was
awarded to someone when, after repeated pairings, only three
fighters remained. Two of these would first fight each other, then
the victor of the two would fight the third, who would then become
Ephedra. All the attention of the audience focused on the final
fight. Finally, it was decided. Exhausted, yet momentarily oblivious
to his weariness, the victor was crowned and made his journey
through the stadium.
The
wrestling was followed by the boxing. They were entirely different
men who now emerged from the secret stadium entrance. While they,
too, were solidly built, the beauty of well-endowed and lustrous
limbs was lacking. Rather, one saw the sharp lines of a more
powerful muscular development, especially in the arms. Yet, even
though their legs don't give the most impression of strength, they
stride forward with firm, determined steps. Their upper bodies rest
powerfully on their robust hips. Looking at their hands, one can
easily believe the stories about some of them, that they could smash
stones to pieces with their fists and crush metal objects. The
scars, especially on their faces, and no less so the pankratiast
ear, completely deformed by that constant wounding and then healing,
tell the tale of so many past battles. It is a drama that will soon
be witnessed, awe-inspiring in the gravity of its reality.
The
names are called. Lots are drawn; here too, if the numbers were odd,
an ephedros. Now, each boxer's hands are wrapped in straps—no
longer the soft, soft leather ones used, for example, during Elis's
preliminary exercises, but with hard, sharp ones that not only
protect the hand but also transform it into a formidable weapon.
These straps usually pass between the fingers, fill the palms, and
are fastened around the wrists.
The
pairs proceed to their designated positions. Immediately, a kind of
preliminary combat begins, where, just like two opposing armies,
each tries to gain the advantage over their opponent, having the sun
at their back. Soon, however, they have taken up positions opposite
each other. Burning with fighting spirit, they thrust and wave their
arms in the air. This was the so-called "shadow fight," a
prelude to the actual fight. Suddenly, however, things get serious:
the fighters charge at each other, their left arm raised in front of
their head to parry a blow, the right back to deliver one. The
onlookers are filled with dismay at the approaching clash.
Soon
the blows begin to ring out. The more or less forward-leaning body
rests primarily on the forward leg, while the feet, resting almost
exclusively on the toes, spring upward each time a blow lands. They
thrust further and further, aiming for ever greater impact. Now the
blow lands on the head, jaw, or shoulder, then again on the
opponent's defensive arm. Not infrequently, the fist even crashes
through the air without striking anything. Indeed, it happened that
a sudden dull thud was heard, and one of the fighters, dragged along
by his own, unresisting arm, fell to the ground; the swift dodging
of blows was the other major factor in this combat. Both fighters
kept their eyes constantly on each other's movements. Their necks
were held slightly back to allow for timely withdrawal. They were
careful not to expose themselves and lurked where they could best
attack the enemy. How careful, however, had they to be in this; any
carelessness could only be apparent, and then they would have to
find that the enemy was best prepared for that attack. But despite
all precautions, many a battle could not be avoided.
One
is dizzy, yet one must be careful not to receive an even more
violent blow at that very moment. One shrinks away from the pain,
yet must swallow it down, because every painful expression on the
face can only increase the opponent's courage. Wasn't that why
Eurydamas of Cyrene swallowed the teeth that were knocked out of his
mouth, and thus achieved victory? The fight grows increasingly
fierce. One hears nothing but the impact of the blows and the deep
breaths that accompany the arm's return to each blow. Sweat pours
from the fighters' limbs. Rage seizes them, but they must control
themselves, for very soon they would be harshly reminded by the
Hellanodics that, according to Olympic law, striking out and dodging
is not permitted. Therefore, they must keep their feet to
themselves; grappling is part of wrestling. Another mighty blow! The
head retreats between the shoulders; the arm is brought back even
further, if possible, than before. It is decided: one of the
combatants calls out that he surrenders, or raises one hand as a
sign to indicate this.
Sometimes the fight has lasted a very long
time, without either party still considering surrendering. Yet both
are very tired, and as if by mutual consent, they withdraw for a
moment's respite. The fight then resumes. Occasionally, however, it
might last too long, but then the Hellanodiki intervened and decreed
that from then on, dodging would be forbidden. Everyone had to take
all the blows. This, of course, brought about a quicker decision.
It
was far from the case that the two combatants always rushed at each
other violently from the start. Sometimes one of the two would
initially focus more on dodging and parrying than on delivering
blows, and only after his opponent had exhausted himself from his
unsuccessful efforts would he advance forcefully, making him cower
under his blows. Naturally, they were only exceptional fighters who
could engage in such combat against well-trained opponents. However,
in the stadium, one occasionally saw even stronger pieces. While one
fighter suddenly launched into the attack, the other calmly
continued with "shadow fighting." Now, everyone present
knew that among the boxers who had appeared was an expert in
"arm-waving." Everyone knew stories like, for example,
that of Melankomas from Caria, who for two consecutive days, by
simply waving both arms back and forth in front of him, managed to
fend off all his opponents; he had won numerous victories, yet he
showed no scars anywhere. The attacker tries to reach his opponent's
head through his arms, or by striking them to the side. If he
succeeds several times, the arm-wielder is forced to resort to his
usual fighting style. Naturally, in that case, he cuts a rather poor
figure. Often, however, he can hold out. His opponent strikes ever
deeper and deeper; this powerful blow, at least, he believes, will
be effective. Again, however, the swinging arm collides with the
descending fist from the side. The latter falls without having
accomplished anything. Rage grips the thus disappointed man. The
thought of being defeated by someone who doesn't even consider it
worth the effort to strike him back is unbearable. He strains again;
strikes again. But the other man swings steadily and is only rarely
hit. Finally, the attacker is completely exhausted from all this
effort. He has to raise his hand. The cheers of the bystanders are
appalling. Deeply dejected, the defeated fighter slinks away from
the arena.
In boxing, too, the contest naturally has to be
repeated several times; here too, lots are drawn; here too, an
ephedra is used with an odd number of participants. The final combat
has taken place; the victorious boxer leaves the stadium. It is now
late afternoon; the time for the so-called "battle with all
means," the pankration, has arrived. Just as the double barrel
was a kind of connection between the long barrel and the stadium, so
in this last of the toughest contests, both the pushing and
wrenching of wrestling and the thrusting of fistfighting were
permitted. Indeed, kicking with the foot was even permitted here,
and what was not permitted to wrestlers at Olympia—namely, to
continue the fight, which they had begun standing, rolling on the
ground—could not be forbidden to the pankratiast if they
wanted to let him remain who he was.
They were formidable men who
now performed. Overall much like boxers, yet the greater roundness
of the limbs, which is the consequence of wrestling was clearly
visible here as well. It wasn't uncommon for boxers to be both
boxers and pankratiasts; the deformed ear, common to both, was named
after the latter. It goes without saying that the drawing of lots
and the repetition of the fight proceeded exactly as in the first
two heavy matches. Straps around the fists were out of the question
here; the grappling grips of wrestling would have been impossible.
The blows, however, inflicted fewer wounds. Yet this pankration,
this squeezing, pushing, wringing, kicking, and thrusting, gave the
impression of a life-and-death struggle far more than any other
contest.
The
fighters stood facing each other, their hands ready for the strike,
their fingers tightly closed and only slightly bent. With
astonishing speed, they transitioned from one fighting style to the
other. The fist has barely landed with irresistible force against
the opponent's jaw when, as if in the same instant, it opens and
twists his arm, tightens his throat, or he falls backward, lifted by
the leg. Two combatants are already firmly clasped, but with
terrifying force, one tears himself free and retreats, only to
charge at his opponent, as if in the same instant, and, still
stunned by the sudden slippage, send him crashing to the ground with
a tremendous thud. As they rolled across the ground, one would
emerge, then the other: the intertwined bodies each time presented
different shapes. Meanwhile, limbs were twisted, stretched,
compressed; breath gasped at that powerful pressing against each
other. At last, it was decided; One of the fighters shouts that he's
giving up, or, as in boxing, raises his hand as a sign.
Here
too, several matches follow one another; here too, at last two
remaining fighters, or a fighter and an ephedros. Night is already
falling; occasionally, the final pankratiast fight is illuminated by
the light of the full moon. It even happened that the fight had to
be stopped before anyone had won; the fight, which had already begun
at sunrise, could no longer be allowed to continue. But usually, it
is still daytime when the victorious pankratiast walks around the
stadium. Occasionally, it could be quite early. It did happen,
however, that at one of the matches, only a single fighter showed
up, or that a fighter made such an impression on his opponents that
they didn't dare take him on. In both cases, one champion triumphed
without being dusted off, as the saying goes, i.e., without a fight,
receiving the crown. How dryly it ended when the first incident
occurred! What tremendous enthusiasm, on the other hand, he stirred
up among all present, who, by his mere appearance, had already made
his opponents recoil.
But
after the final crowning, people longed for rest, and although the
knapsack had undoubtedly been used many times during the day, after
the intense interest of more than half a day, they felt a great need
for a good meal. The crowd streams away from the stadium walls. They
camp in the area around the Altis, in their tents or in front of
them. The moon pours its "friendly light"2 over the entire
plain. People eat and drink. Cheerful banter resounds through the
air.
Some
time later, however, the Altis itself becomes busier. A joyful cheer
and commotion resounded from there to the ears of the revelers
camped outside. Many rushed there; they knew what was happening: the
victors had also eaten and drunk with their friends, and then
proceeded with them in a merry procession to the great altar. The
great sacrifice to the giver of victory would only be offered on the
last day of the festival. But just as among the Greeks, merry
banqueters often rose from their table late in the evening to pay a
cheerful visit to an absent friend and, as it were, involve them in
the festivities, so now they felt compelled to proceed, also in
procession, to the altar of the deity and, if they had the means, to
offer her a voluntary sacrifice. With holy reverence in his soul,
yet with jubilant joy, the human child stood here as if before the
throne of the awesome One, showing him, like a father, the glory he
had acquired, and sharing his joy.
The
smoke rises and clouds the bright moonlight; it smolders on the
altar of Zeus and perhaps on others as well. A confused clamor and
hum still lingers, but it seems to be subsiding somewhat; even
someone standing far away clearly discerns the notes of the phorminx
(a kind of harp) through it, and suddenly a song of heroic voices of
men filled the entire Altis. It was the triumphal song and the
reverent greeting of Zeus that was being sung there. A poet had been
present among the spectators and had quickly composed the short
song. Before the great altar stood the singers with their chorus;
the phorminx tuned each line; as if from one voice, the polyphonic
recitative sounded; it was the still-fresh, overwhelming feeling of
joy and reverent gratitude to "the most exalted Zeus, who
propels the mighty thunder" that overflowed the song.
It
was far from the case, however, that every victor could bear the
cost of such a tribute. Yet, before the great altar, they appeared,
and even if they didn't have their own solemn triumphal song, they
had to sing it. Indeed, they were least of all in the mood to be
depressed by the sense of their poverty, and what others performed
solemnly, they could also do improvisedly. As if they were
professional singers, the victor and his friends stood in chorus at
the altar. They did not have a flute, zither, or phorminx player at
their disposal, but one of them compensated for this by calling out
"tenella" (we would say "tsingala") before the
beginning of each line, imitating the sound of one of these
instruments, and thus half-jokingly setting the tone for each line.
It was an old folk melody, in which Heracles was invoked as the
model of all victors, that was thus performed. And if they had not
possessed the talent of Simonides or Pindar, they consoled
themselves with the thought that this song—and they were
firmly convinced of this—had been composed by the ancient
Archilochus. The merry commotion continued late into the night.
However, barely had anyone rested for a few hours when the sun, with
its first rays, called for renewed festivities. Instead of heading
to the stadium, they took their seats on the artificial or natural
elevations surrounding the Hippodrome, the horse racing track, south
of the stadium, which was naturally much larger. In the center of
the Hippodrome, two columns were visible, around which the riders
had to ride: one close to the starting point—consisting of a
statue of Hippodamia, holding the band she would later tie around
Pelops' head, as it were, as a crown—the other not far from
the semicircular end of the track. The building in front of the
exit, the aphesis, was also particularly striking. It jutted out
like the prow of a ship in the hippodrome, not quite straight,
because, since the northern side of the racecourse was somewhat
shorter than the southern, the triangle of the aphesis, whose base
connected to the ends of these two unequal sides of the racecourse,
was oriented slightly more southward. On both sides of this aphesis
were several covered rooms, yet open to the front, where a quadriga
could stand. If one rode forward in a straight line from the
furthest room on the north side—that is, on the left side of
the racecourse, if one stood with one's back to the aphesis—then,
due to this skewed position, one would still end up passing the
statue of Hippodamia on the southern or right side of the
racecourse. All chariots had to move through the racecourse from
left to right, and now, the chariots would only have been able to be
positioned on the right side of the course if care had not been
taken to ensure that, due to this slanted position, those positioned
on the left could automatically reach the right side. Inside, the
aphesis was largely uncovered; several altars were located there,
among other things. One probably couldn't penetrate it from the
hippodrome side, but the base of the aphesis triangle was bordered
by a gallery, called, according to its creator, the Gallery of
Agnaptos, and through it, thus at the rear, one could enter. Also
noteworthy was the elevation in the form of an altar, which could be
seen near the entrance to the Hippodrome, which ran through the
southern earthen rampart. This was called Taraxippos, "horse-scare."
According to popular belief, as they passed the altar, a sudden
fright seized the passing horses, and various explanations were
given, including that this was due to the evil spirit of Oenomaos,
who still haunted the place.
It
was a magnificent procession that could now be seen entering the
Hippodrome through the entrance. Wealthy people from all parts of
Greece, including women, had sent their finest horses and most
skilled charioteers for the race. It began with a four-horse chariot
race, four horses abreast. The various rooms in the aphesis were
drawn by lot. Everyone then went to the room assigned to them. The
charioteers jumped on the back of the horse.
Two-wheeled
chariots, on which they, or even they alone, can stand; the moment
for the race has arrived. With rapt attention, one now looks at the
copper dolphin, which stood on a crossbeam above the very tip of the
aphesis. Suddenly, it falls off, and from the center of the aphesis
rises an eagle, also of copper, with outstretched wings. This eagle
had lain there on an altar, and one of the Hellanodices had set a
device in motion, which caused the dolphin to descend and the eagle
to rise. The signal for the race to begin had been given.
Apparently, by the same device, once set in motion, the ropes for
the two rooms on either side, which were closest to the rear of the
aphesis, come loose. The two chariots standing there break free. A
moment later, just as the horses from the first two rooms have
reached the level of the two following rooms, the ropes for them
also come loose; The four-carriage carriages reached the level of
the third two rooms, then the ropes in front of them, and so on.
Probably, all the carriages initially had to move forward in a
straight line, so that even those placed on the left, as we already
indicated, increasingly ended up on the right side of the racetrack
due to the skewed position of the aphesis. After the ropes for the
two rooms were released at the tip of the aphesis, all the carriages
were allowed to take whichever direction they wished, provided they
only turned from right to left around the two designated posts. The
closer one passed a post, the shorter the route, of course, and the
two carriages that emerged from the rooms at the extreme tip of the
aphesis had an advantage over the others the first time they
departed, as their route to the turning post was somewhat shorter.
However, this arrangement of departing gave the others the advantage
that by the moment the rope for the two extremes departed, they had
already reached a certain speed. All the advantages had been weighed
against each other as accurately as possible. Cleoitas was the
original inventor of this aphesis; a statue of him stood in Athens,
the inscription of which mentioned this.
Now
the cries of charioteers and the rattling sound of chariots resound
through the air. Clouds of dust rise; the goad repeatedly descends
on the horses' backs. All order soon comes to an end. Most
chariots—now and then one might lag behind—soon form a
single, intertwining swarm, swirling around the two turning posts.
Here, two chariots are riding side by side. Now the heads of the
horses of one are in front, now those of the other. Elsewhere, one
chariot suddenly swerves to the side; one powerful summons to the
horses, one powerful blow of the goad, and it has suddenly overtaken
or outpaced the competitor who was riding ahead. However, anyone who
is now on the move may soon find out for themselves. As one
approaches a turning post, the right bridle is more or less released
and the left retracted, the closer one gets to the post. This is a
particularly difficult moment for those who have the advantage of
occupying the position closest to the turning post; they constantly
fix their eyes on both the post and the cart, and then calculate the
turn they will make. Then the end of the axle scrapes against the
post; the turn could not be shorter. Involuntarily, however, one has
lost some momentum.
Suddenly,
a clear trumpet blast sounds; the horses prick their ears; as if in
one jerk, the old momentum is resumed. Sweat pours from the animals'
bodies; The foam flakes splash backward on either side. Proudly the
driver stands upright in his chariot, tense yet self-controlled,
bold yet cautious. Sometimes, however, caution is of no use. One
chariot snags against the other; with a tremendous crash, both crash
to the ground; the trailing chariots fall over the already fallen
ones; it is a tangle of broken chariots; unattended horses gallop
through the racecourse. However, a few of the trailing chariots
manage to swerve in time and rush past the fallen chariots, chasing
the leading one. Another time, the chariots veer around one of the
turning posts; the one who has secured the position closest to the
post, as always, makes the turn as short as possible. Alas, this
time a little too short; the axle hits the post; the chariot
plummets to the ground.
The
others continue the ride; the racecourse has already been covered
several times. Now it's already becoming clear who will be the
victor. Perhaps someone who had initially lagged behind has simply
saved his strength, and now rides past the others at full speed.
Finally, for the twelfth time around the racecourse; they approach
the seat of the Hellanodics in the northern rampart, near the
aphesis; they have arrived there; the battle is over. After a while,
the Hellanodics' decision is announced. The victor is crowned.
Second, third, and even fourth prizes were also awarded here.
It
didn't stop there; they also sought variety in the horseracing.
Pairs of horses, four-horse chariots, and two-horse chariots of
colts were also used here, but only eight times around the
racecourse with them. For a time, teams of mules were also
introduced. Horseracing was also very popular; this too was done
with both colts and adult horses. Saddles and stirrups were not
used. Besides adult men, boys also rode. They were completely naked.
It was a delight to be able to observe the blossoming youth in every
manifestation of their natural strength, to see them master the
mighty steed with the full awareness of their spiritual superiority.
One involuntarily thinks of the frieze of the Parthenon. For some
time, a certain combination of horse racing and horse racing was
also in vogue at Olympia, consisting of the rider leaping from his
horse at the last turn and, holding the reins, running alongside it.
At the very moment when the decision was approaching, victory was
thus made dependent on the speed of his own feet.
It
has become afternoon with all these races. Now that they have
concluded, the crowd hastens back to the ramparts surrounding the
stadium. The pentathlon, the pentathlon, is about to begin, the
greatest masterpiece of Hellenic gymnastics, which, originating on
the soil of Olympia, had spread throughout the Hellenic world. Five
exercises were combined into one whole: the jump and the race, in
which the leg strength was tested in various ways; the discus throw,
which tested the arm's strength; the javelin throw, which also, it
seems, demonstrated the accuracy of the eye; and finally, wrestling,
which placed other demands on the body. Understandably, the
pentathlete was usually no match for a specialty in any of these
exercises, yet his body was more versatile than that of any of the
others. This was what made him the most beautiful of all champions.
In the others, it was always a few body parts that particularly
caught the eye; the pentathlete displayed strength and agility more
in his overall appearance.
It
was relatively rare for someone to win in three of the five
exercises; very often, they won with two; indeed, it could happen
that by the time the final contest, the wrestling, had taken place,
there were five victors, each with one victory. These five were then
likely allowed to continue wrestling until only one victor remained;
similarly, a wrestling match would have been decided if, after the
five exercises, there were two participants, each with two
victories.
A
good wrestler, therefore, had some merit as a pentathlete: yet,
someone trained only in wrestling could not compete in the
pentathletes, because most likely, those who did not meet certain
minimum requirements in any of the five contests were not admitted
to the next. The preliminary exercises at Elis would also have made
the performance of such mock pentathletes at Olympia impossible. It
is plausible that, as soon as the chance of victory had passed for
some competitors, they dropped out. For example, if one person had
won two victories, and two others one each, those who had not yet
achieved a single victory would not participate in the fifth
contest, since they could never equal the two-victory winner. If,
before reaching the fifth competition, one of the competitors had
already achieved three victories, they did not continue. Yet, this
was undoubtedly a very rare occurrence. The wrestling, we know for
sure, came last; the vault most likely first. This was presumably
followed by the discus throw, then the race, and then the javelin
throw. The most skilled competitor was often also a good vaulter;
the good discus thrower could easily handle the javelin well as
well. Had the vault been immediately followed by the race, those
competitors who were more skilled in these two related species would
have had a good chance of achieving two victories right from the
start.
The
pentathletes, completely naked, gather for the vault behind a
pedestal, which, like our springboards, presumably had some spring.
At a considerable distance ahead of them is the hard stadium's floor
was loosened with pickaxes over a fairly wide area: the outermost
edge of the loosened floor would have been approximately 50 feet
from the pedestal for the jump. Jumps that did not exceed the
innermost edge—how far from the pedestal it was, we do not
know—probably caused the jumper to be immediately eliminated
from the competition. Officials, equipped with a measuring rod, had
to measure the jumps. Three Hellanodikes were charged with directing
this competition. A rousing flute music begins, led by flutists in
long, glittering robes, richly embroidered and fringed with wide
hems. The pentathletes take their jumping implements, called
halters, in their hands. The younger, more common model was entirely
similar to our gymnastic implements of the same name: two balls
connected by a crossbar as a handle; Sometimes one of these balls
was replaced by a heavier weight of a different shape, which then
held the pentathlouse most of the way.
Now
the first to jump approaches, holding the hands with the dumbbells
out in front of them. As they approach, they move forward to the
music. They jump onto the pedestal; at the same moment, their arms
descend; one powerful thrust with the feet diagonally upward; at the
same time, the arms, weighed down by the dumbbells, are flung
forward again with a mighty swing. Then, in an extended position,
the body flies, as it were, after the arms. Will the jumper fall
forward like this? No, as soon as they begin to approach the ground,
they swing their arms back again with a mighty jerk, bringing their
body back into a perpendicular position, and they land completely
upright with their feet on the ground. This, at least, is how it
should be, and the Hellanodics approach to examine the impression
made by the soles of the feet in the loosened ground to determine
whether it is truly perfectly even. Only when this is the case does
the jump count and measure itself. After the foot impression is
obscured with the pickaxe, the second jumper follows, followed by
the third; finally, the competition is over, and the victor is
known. The spectators followed every jump with rapt attention.
Occasionally, they were treated to an astonishing spectacle: a
jumper landed on the hard ground above the loosened ground. The
furthest known jumps are 52 and 55 feet.
The
three metal discus, or throwing discus, used in the pentathlon at
Olympia are brought out. Such discus were quite heavy and, when held
in the hand, reached approximately to the bend of the elbow. The
vaulters have now become discus throwers, and the first to go steps
forward. He takes a discus and, holding it against his body with his
left hand, walks to the small platform from which he will make the
throw. He steps onto it, grasps the discus with his right hand as
well, with which he will throw it, and extends both arms straight
out in front of him. He now rests entirely on his right leg, so that
the left can move freely back and forth. The discus is pressed
firmly against the palm of the right hand with the fingers; the left
hand is removed. There, the arm with the discus swings back a
distance, much further than our bowlers do. The eye must not leave
the discus to give the throw the desired direction. Therefore, the
upper body bends forward; Along the right side, under the arm, the
discus thrower looks up at the discus. With his left hand, he rests
on his slightly bent right knee, and his left leg naturally moves
slightly backward. The body leans more forward, and the right arm
with the discus is higher off the ground than would otherwise be
possible, since the platform on which the discus thrower stands—at
least, that's how one seems to imagine it—is slightly slanted
at the front. All this lasts only a moment. The fighter straightens
up; the discus hums straight ahead in arcs through the air. It was a
tremendous shock; his free left leg has, as it were, followed the
movement; indeed, he is forced to take a single step toward the
discus. He watches it tensely in its humming speed. Then it hits the
ground with an audible thud. Usually, it landed at a distance of
about 90 feet, more or less.
A
second thrower took up the position. Presumably, the first-thrown
disc remained where it was, and he had to throw his own over it, or
he would have lost the battle. Then, of the two discs, the one that
had been thrown the furthest was probably removed and brought back
to the throwers' side. Apparently, three discs were in use, because
the third thrower then...
There
was no need to wait for the discus, which was being returned, to
arrive. Undoubtedly, a minimum requirement had to be met here as
well if one wanted to avoid being eliminated from the entire
competition. After throwing the discus, the competitors begin the
race. First, they run four by four, followed by the victors from
those groups of four. It was likely a double run that was being
witnessed, a spectacle they had already enjoyed the previous day. By
comparison, one might have noticed that this time they were not
dealing with specialties.
The
fourth part of this competition saw another novelty. The competitors
now appeared with extremely thin and light javelins, equipped with a
very long, fine needle-shaped tip. They took turns. They grasped the
javelin in their right hand approximately in the middle; In all
likelihood, one grips a handle with one's thumb, little finger, and
ring finger, while the other two fingers are extended back and the
javelin is held between them. This is brought to head height, with
the target firmly in view; one thrust with the arm, one step forward
with the right leg, and the javelin flies forward and soon lodges in
or next to the target. A keen and practiced eye was required to
avoid missing, but the light javelin also had to be propelled
forward with great force, as otherwise it could easily veer off
course.
After
the wrestling, the pentathlon ended. As a bonus to what had been
seen, and as a conclusion to the series of actual competitions, the
so-called "loop in de wapenen" (run in arms) is still held
today, i.e., a run, presumably once up and down the stadium, with a
shield on the left arm. In ancient times, one also wore a helmet on
the head and leggings. This, however, was later abolished. It is
clear that this race again required separate practice.
Now
the herald announces the end of the competition: "The race,
which yields the most beautiful prizes, is finished; remove the
oil"—without which, as is well known, there is no
competition—"The trumpet calls for the works of Enualios
(the god of war)." Indeed, the sound of trumpets seems to have
been heard at this point. It is not unlikely that the so-called
contest of heralds and trumpeters, which we read about in Pausanias
and others, took place, and which could hardly have been part of the
actual competitions.
In
the evening, people return to the Altar of Zeus. Now, there is an
even greater chance of hearing songs composed there for this very
occasion than the previous evening, because the wealthy people who
have triumphed in the races can easily afford them. The following
day, the last of the festival, the Eleans offer a great thanksgiving
sacrifice at the altar of Zeus; afterward follows that of the
victors, and finally, a splendid procession of theores proceeds
through the great southeastern entrance to the Altis, also to the
great altar, to thank the god with offerings as representatives of
"happy Greece." The conclusion of the entire festival is
the meal in the Prytaneion, given by the Eleans to the victors.
These now depart for home, certain to be hailed as victorious
generals. In the Altis, their statue will rise, none greater than
themselves—the Hellanodics would not tolerate such a thing—one
of human proportions, not that of the demigods; a poet will now
compose a more elaborate song of triumph, not so much to glorify
their persons as to make them feel more deeply the value of their
happiness and to serve as a monument to it for themselves and their
distant descendants.
Thus
the Greek found an inner satisfaction at Olympia, something
certainly not often experienced by our race; but he found it only,
as we have already noted, by immediately silencing every inclination
toward something higher than seemed attainable. Now, however, the
human spirit cannot ultimately be confined within "the pillars
of Heracles,"3 and Greek philosophy broke through the circle,
although at first it was completely unaware that in doing so it was,
as it were, tearing away the very foundation of the Greek people's
spiritual existence. It is especially in the period following the
demise of Hellenic freedom that it poses this question with
increasing emphasis—such an infallible sign that an entire
worldview threatens to become obsolete:—what is the highest
good for humanity? That question would certainly have sounded
foolish to the heroes of Marathon and Salamis, to the Athenian
citizen in the time of Pericles, who felt that he too contributed to
the greatness of his fatherland, not least in Greece's best days, to
the fortunate victor at Olympia. But now things had changed.
The
spirits strove for higher goods; for example, what was all that
former glory for the Stoic compared to what seemed to him the only
necessary thing: virtue? At the same time, it also became
increasingly clear that the peaceful mission of Olympia, Delphi, and
similar places had failed. Hatred and discord, which rage in the
human heart like a force of nature, continued to fester in the
Hellenic world, and to exorcise them, higher forces than an Olympian
peace or a Dorian Eunomia proved necessary. The new temple of Zeus
at Olympia was probably not yet fully completed when the
Peloponnesian War broke out, and less than 30 years after Pericles'
death, the orator Lysias had to remind the Hellenes, in the sacred
precinct itself, that Heracles had established peace and freedom and
instituted the Olympic Games, but now, solely as a result of
internal discord, some of the Hellenes had fallen under the
Persians, others under tyrants. Several times during the course of
the civil wars, the Altis itself became the scene of
self-destructive fratricidal warfare. No "sacred month"
was observed in these events; the sanctuary had forever lost the
significance it had held for the life of the Hellenic people.
For
centuries, the Hellenic world labored toward a flourishing period
that would last only a few decades. Fortunately, however, the
afterglow for our generation was almost as fruitful as the
flourishing itself; Consider, for example, Alexandrian scholarship
and Pergamum sculpture. Greek life had certainly risen from the
cothurn, the stage shoe that had made humans appear demigods, but
nevertheless, what the power of a higher inspiration had created
responded so completely here to all sorts of truly human
inclinations and needs that it could still hold its own quite well
on the level ground. So, while people no longer competed in their
feelings in the stadium and hippodrom for the highest human goods,
the healthy person naturally feels excited to exert their physical
strength, and competition dominates us to a greater or lesser extent
in all our actions. Thus, it was now only the mysterious power of
tradition that made Olympia anything more than Derby or Longchamps
today. It's impossible to say how long a state of civilization
without a soul, so to speak, can survive, but it's beyond doubt that
it can't possibly preserve its finest character traits. It's an old
observation, already made by Cornelius Nepos, that lavishness in
honors is a sign of decline, and it certainly was so to a high
degree among the Greeks, who once, above all, had sought to be
measured, serious, and truthful in this respect. However,
now—numerous recently discovered inscriptions prove it—people
at Olympia, too, very readily concluded that someone had, in some
way or another,—not exclusively as a champion—deservedly
merited a statue. The Roman Claudius Rufus, a pankratiast, had made
himself very agreeable during his stay in Elis in preparation for
the contest; Now, according to a discovered inscription,3 he is
named an honorary citizen of Elis and allowed to have a statue
erected for him, because he had nearly won the contest; night had
intervened, rendering the fight indecisive. Furthermore, it was
deeply significant that people at Olympia no longer felt as
exclusively Hellenic as before. How could that have been possible,
at least in the time of the Romans, whose empire encompassed
numerous peoples and placed them on almost equal footing? True,
people then also strove for the unification of all Hellenes, a
Panhellenic union, as it was called, and Panhellenic congresses and
festivals were held, but one might call this a vain romantic
endeavor if it had not entirely lacked the sincerity, sincerity, and
warmth of modern Romanticism. The Roman emperor was the foremost
patron saint of this Hellenic patriotism! At Olympia, champions from
almost the entire Roman Empire now appear. In common parlance,
according to the inscriptions, the term "the inhabited world"
replaced the earlier Hellenism—an expression that also became
very popular elsewhere in Greece. It was this inhabited world that
would soon become the field of activity of the Catholic Church.
The
power of the old idealism weakened and left the Greek more
exclusively to his baser inclinations and desires. He, especially
the Jonier, had always possessed a strong sense of outward splendor,
and the fresh zest for life that had given him such deep pleasure in
cheerful festivities led him down a slippery path.
From
there, he could easily descend into that unenriched sensual pleasure
he had originally considered beneath his dignity as a Greek. This
was the weak side that could most easily lead him to betray himself,
and the tyrants who sought to rob the Greek of his most precious
possession, freedom, knew full well that he had to be seized there.
Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, sent an embassy of theoreticians
to Olympia at the end of the 5th century, which was to dazzle the
eyes with the extraordinary splendor of his armor. It was on that
occasion that Lysias delivered his aforementioned speech, and even
then the assembled Greeks, stirred by his words, tore down the
tyrant's magnificent tents: Away from me, Satan! Sixty years later,
however, Philip of Macedonia appeared on the sacred ground. He had a
temple built for himself there, as if he were a Hellenic hero, like
Pelops or Heracles, and "scattering many and varied benefits
and gifts, he reaped a very abundant reward of gratitude."
Things
did not improve in Roman times. Many of those in whose honor statues
were erected, according to the inscriptions, were prominent ladies
and gentlemen from Rome. The shame of slavery was deeply felt when
Emperor Nero conceived the plan to earn a crown at Olympia as well;
- he acquired everything there, 1808. The celebration had to be
postponed for three years because the emperor couldn't come
sooner—that celebration, by which the calendar was
established—and then he was not only crowned as victor in the
horse races—he fell, according to the story, while driving off
the chariot—but also in a musical competition, which had to be
organized for his sake, although the ancient tradition of the
sanctuary didn't permit it. The reward was a colossal sum of money.
Now, one shouldn't think that the evil was exclusively monarchical;
it manifested itself equally in republican guise. Truly republican
was certainly that "ambition" of the Hellenic citizen in
Greece's heyday to render service to the fatherland and fellow
citizens. What a rivalry existed, for example, among the wealthy
citizens of Athens, to provide, partly from their own resources, for
the equipment of a fleet or even for a splendid performance of
choruses! The only reward one could hope for was the gratitude of
one's fellow citizens, at most monumentally expressed in a metal
tripod. It was also in this manner that, in later times, one
received the "benefits" most appreciated at the time.
Thus, for example, we read of a Theban citizen from the Roman
imperial period, Epamimondas, who, among other things, during a
great festival in his hometown, "treated all the revelers,
including those from other cities, to the theater," and
"prepared large and expensive dishes, so that the expense he
incurred caused a fame in the surrounding cities." It goes
without saying that a citizen who had thus enhanced the fame of his
fatherland had to be rewarded. The above description of his merits
is therefore taken from an official document in which he is awarded
several statues and a wreath. It is now undoubtedly often the same
kind of "civic virtue" and "philanthropy" for
which so many are praised in the inscriptions now found at Olympia.
Finally,
a new life principle was infused into this human world when
Christianity came to power, but how completely different from the
ancient Hellenic religion! The Christian strove for a glory that was
not of this world, and the training (asceticism) of the athlete for
a competition was replaced by that of the monk to heavenly
perfection. The human being who wished to rise above his lower
nature no longer considered that goal attainable through
glorification of his earthly existence, but clung to the deep sense
of a higher world order that he carried within himself, in order to
strive to be more than human. With an infinitely deeper sense of
humiliation than the Greek at Olympia or elsewhere had ever known,
bowed down by the guilt of an entire human race, the Christian
approached the throne of an almighty God. It was not Nike who could
lift this burden from his soul, but only the divine Redeemer
himself, who had suffered as a human being on earth. How could the
racecourse, when such a spirit breathed new life into the world,
seem anything but a vanity of vanities, serving only to bind the
soul, aspiring to heaven, to the dust? In the fourth century,
Christianity triumphed in the Roman Empire; in 394, the Olympic
Games were banned forever. The name of an Armenian has been handed
down to us as the last victor.
The
buildings and statues of the ancient sanctuary have stood for a very
long time; a violent earthquake almost completely destroyed it, and
a landslide from Kronos Hill covered some of the buildings at its
foot. Quite different scenes now behold the sacred precinct. On the
foundations of what is called Pheidias's workshop, a Byzantine
Christian church arose, largely constructed from ancient building
materials. The Olympia area was also very unsafe due to all sorts of
wild hordes. Therefore, the large square fortification wall, already
mentioned, was built between the Temple of Zeus and the southern
gallery. The fragments of ancient architecture and sculpture were
the primary material. From this wall, as we recall, Dr. Tren, among
others, retrieved the pieces of the Megarian treasury. Perhaps one
of these hordes ultimately triumphed. At least, later on, a rather
uncivilized population settled in the sacred area, living in
miserable huts, cobbled together from the same materials, which were
available here in such great abundance; statue pedestals,
architectural ornaments, and pieces of sculpture were piled on top
of each other, usually without any means of connection. The German
scholars working at Olympia, with more or less justification,
usually call these people Slavs. Many precious pieces of sculpture
have emerged from these Slave huts. They lived from agriculture and
viticulture; grapes were pressed in the ruins of the Temple of Hera.
These ancient remains of buildings and sculptures remained a
constant gold mine. Lime kilns were built, to which countless pieces
of marble and limestone were hauled. But now it was too much for old
Alpheios; what other sights had he witnessed along its banks!
Created, not improbably, by breaches of small mountain lakes in its
upper reaches, it spreads its broad waters across the Altis terrain
and drives the sacrileges from the midst of their gruesome
handiwork. The whole is now covered with a thick layer of sand and
silt; the silence of death reigns throughout the entire Olympia
Valley. Undisturbed, the damaged witnesses of a lost greatness rest
in the protective Mother Earth, until, centuries later, a reverent
and loving hand will bring them back into full daylight.
The
old world has passed, and who would wish it back? Yet, as we know,
Hellenic civilization nourished later generations with its marrow.
From the ruins of Olympia resounds a lesson of exalted humanity:
that one must elevate the soul above the pressures of earthly
affairs by exerting one's strength with a fresh zest for work to
achieve a noble goal. And not only the Renaissance, but also the
Middle Ages did more justice to the Hellenic world than it ever
suspected. While Olympia became a wasteland, the greatest flowering
of Christian civilization unfolded in the West. How differently
people thought and felt there than in ancient Greece, and yet,
despite all the differences, they moved within similar circles. The
Divine Peace of the eleventh century was a timid attempt to lift the
world from the desolation of the law of the fist, no different from
the Olympic ekecheiria. Just as the Greeks opposed the barbarians,
so the Catholic world, with the belief that one stood for higher
ideas, opposed those of the Mohammedans: in struggle against an
alien principle, one sought strength for one's own - and just as the
Greek patriots aroused their people to forget their internal
disputes and jointly liberate their brethren from the Persian yoke,
the Popes forbade strife and discord when the land where Christ had
suffered had to be saved from the hands of the unbelievers.
Catholicism was like a single endeavor to wrest humanity from wild
passion and discord, and therefore, although the Gregorys and
Urbanuses were so much grander and more powerful, as a Gothic
cathedral towers higher than a Doric temple—although in their
endeavors they felt they were bringing a heavenly world order down
to earth, which in that sense was entirely alien to a Lycurgos or
Iphitos—yet here we see the modest endeavor of the Elian men
justified by a posterity that knew nothing of them and was separated
from them in spirit and mind by the widest conceivable gulf.
It
is a fitting expression that humanity always returns to the same
thing, yet in doing so does not proceed in a circle, but along the
path of a spiral.
Leiden.
A.E.J.
Holwerda.
January
1, 1882 Schliemann's Troy. IIios, Stadt und Land der Trojaner etc.
von Heinrich Schliemann. With a Selbstbiographie des Verfassers, a
Vorrede von Rudolf Virchow und Beiträgen von P. Ascherson u.a.
Journey
in the Troas im Mai 1881 by Dr. Heinrich Schliemann.
Heinrich
Schliemann now considers it a beautiful illusion
His
childhood dreams come true. When one stands atop the hill of
Hissarlik in the former Trojan land and then looks down into the
excavated portion of that hill, as if into the crater of a
fire-breathing mountain, one sees the ruins of a prehistoric city,
which he is firmly convinced must be considered Homer's Troy.
It
took a prodigious effort to get to this point. When, more than
twelve years ago, he believed he should search for the ancient
Homeric Ilios among the ruins of the later New Ilion, the Aeolian
colony in the land of the former Trojans, he stumbled upon a
veritable archaeological goldmine. Nothing was found beneath the
city itself, but the hill of Hissarlik, on which the fortress had
stood, consisted largely of the ruins of six settlements (not
counting New Ilion itself), six cities, in Schliemann's words, one
of which had been built on the ruins of the other. The hill, which
originally rose no more than 60 feet above the surrounding plain,
thus grew a good 52 feet higher and, as the founders of a new city
often cast aside some of the rubble of the old one to level the
ground, also increased considerably in size. Schliemann dug a quarry
through these masses of ruins from north to south and another from
northwest to southeast. In the third city, which had apparently been
destroyed by fire, he believed he had rediscovered Homeric Troy. The
results of these excavations were made known to the civilized world
(in 1874). Since then, in 1878 and especially in 1879, assisted by
the renowned Virchow and the French engineer Burnouf, he resumed his
task and, as far as the research on his Troy, which was his main
concern, completed it. All later settlements, insofar as they
extended beyond the third city, were demolished. Since the third
city was very small, and the hill, as we noted, also increased in
width with each new settlement due to the debris thrown aside by its
predecessor, unbroken sections of the rubble pile remained around
it, and thus it came to lie as if in a crater. A crater, however,
not with intact edges; consider only the two grooves that bisect the
entire hill. We gained knowledge of the two lower settlements, those
beneath the third city, by excavating the ground somewhat deeper in
some places. It was especially significant that during the 1879
excavations, the northernmost part of the north-south groove was
excavated down to the bedrock over a considerable distance.
In
a voluminous volume, the tireless researcher now shares the results
of his efforts. All the finds are described in good order and
discussed, using the most important information already available.
Not only is the material presented, but a start is also made on its
processing: comparisons are made with other finds, and historical
and archaeological data are gathered that can serve to clarify the
matter. The leading figures of science, Max Müller, Virchow,
Brugsch, and others, assisted him in this. Besides this, we receive
not only a fairly accurate collection of reports on Troy's history,
but Homeric geography also receives a comprehensive treatment with
the help of various surveys, primarily conducted by Virchow and
Burnouf in the Trojan landscape. In May 1881, Schliemann undertook
another journey through Troas in the interest of the same cause. I
have written down the titles of the large book and the travelogue,
which Schliemann considers a new chapter in it, above. We are now
better able than ever to form an opinion about the significance of
Schliemann's excavations for the expansion of our archaeological
knowledge. I would like to draw attention to these books by briefly
outlining their significance.
Who
were the peoples who lived in Tròas before the settlement of
the Aeolian colonists? We are quite certain that the oldest known
inhabitants of Asia Minor and the islands of the Greek
Archipelago—Phrygians, Lycians, Mysians, Cypriots, and the
like—belonged to the Indo-Germanic tribe, and indeed—some
more, some less, but all fairly closely—were related to the
tribes of Enropean Greece, among whom Hellenic civilization,
classical language, and literature later developed. This is already
convincingly demonstrated by the remains of their languages, though
often limited to only a few inscriptions. As for the ancient
inhabitants of Troas, Dardanians, Teukrians, Trojans, the people
who, according to tradition, ruled the land before the Aeolian
colonists from European Greece settled there, we lack the necessary
material to be able to say anything with certainty about their
language. Yet, their Indo-European origin and kinship with the
inhabitants of European Greece are also not in doubt. The
inscriptions of the Phrygians establish this origin and kinship
better than that of most other tribes of Asia Minor, and ancient
legends connect the Phrygians and Dardanians very closely: Ilos, for
example, founded Ilios on the hill of the Phrygian goddess Ate.
Overall, it is noteworthy that in the numerous myths and legends
connecting European Greece with Asia Minor, nowhere does the idea
arise that the inhabitants of both countries were people of
dissimilar passions. This is particularly noteworthy, however, with
regard to Troas. The Aeolian and Ionian colonists, among whom the
Trojan myth series we know from the poems of Homer developed, must
have had, at the time these myths originated, a fairly clear idea of
the nature and character of the peoples among whom
they had settled. After all, a people needs centuries before it
completely sheds its characteristics in the face of a foreign ruler.
Now, when in the Iliad the peoples of Asia Minor are depicted in
conflict with the tribes of Europe, there is nowhere to be seen
anything that hints at a separation of Greeks and barbarians. On the
contrary, the Trojans, Danaans, and Achaeans are considered people
of the same race, and it is consistently the same pantheon that
concerns itself with the fates of both.
We
can form some idea of the civilization of these Asia
Minor-Greek peoples, who might also be called prehistoric Greeks.
The mighty stone walls in the Argive region, commonly called
Kuklopian, belong to them. In the oldest cemeteries of Rhodes, among
the graves arranged in the Phoenician style, one finds older ones
belonging to unmixed prehistoric Greeks. The island of Santorino
(formerly Thera) acquired its present appearance through a volcanic
eruption around 1600 BC. First, the island was completely covered by
volcanic ash from the crater in its center; then the entire central
part sank into the sea, leaving only the edges (the present-day
islands of Santorino, Apronissi, and Therasia) standing.
Now,
settlements have been excavated beneath the ash that covered that
island, which are undoubtedly prehistoric Greek. The most important,
however, are the discoveries on Cyprus. In 1852, the scholarly
world's attention was first drawn to inscriptions on Cyprus,
particularly coins that displayed a non-Phoenician-Greek alphabet.
Later, the consuls of England and America, Lang and Cesnola,
especially the latter, contributed a great deal of new material, and
it was the renowned Assyriologist George Smith who found the key to
deciphering these inscriptions. We now know a great deal about the
language of the oldest known population of Cyprus, and it was
undeniably of Greek-Asia Minor origin. Only after the time of
Alexander the Great does the Phoenician-Greek alphabet seem to have
supplanted this ancient Cypriot alphabet. Where did this latter
origin come from? Cyprus was under Assyrian rule at the end of the
8th century, and Dr. Deecke believed he could demonstrate that it
derived from Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions. However, very weighty
objections have been raised against this view, although presented
with great acumen. The Cypriot alphabet is not even a special
property of Cyprus. Several Carian, Lycian, Pamphylian, and
Cappadocian inscriptions have a Phoenician-Greek alphabet, but also
distinct signs from Cypriot. These inscriptions, like those of
Cyprus, are of a later date, yet they support the belief that in
ancient times the peoples of Asia Minor and Cyprus shared the same
alphabet. In Asia Minor, this was replaced by the new
Phoenician-Greek alphabet around the 7th century; nevertheless, some
signs from the old alphabet were retained there for sounds that they
believed could not be properly represented with the help of the new
alphabet. On Cyprus, the old alphabet was retained for a century or
so longer.
The
excavations, primarily those at Cesnola, also provide a clear
picture of the ancient civilization on Cyprus and of the Eastern
influences that were particularly felt on that island. One need only
continue in this direction, and we will soon enjoy a fairly
extensive, precise archaeological knowledge of prehistoric Greece.
Moreover,
there is another very important tool.
At
our service: the Eastern and Egyptian records. Just as Caesar and
Tacitus inform us about the barbarian Germans, so too do we learn
from the relatively highly civilized Egyptians some important facts
about the semi-barbarian prehistoric Greeks of the 18th to the 12th
century BC. No less clearly than, for example, the column of
Antoninus concerning the Germans, the Egyptian reliefs give us a
pictorial representation of those ancient barbarians of the
Mediterranean coasts.
We
know that the Phoenicians were already trading and committing piracy
on the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean in ancient times.
When, around 1800 BC, the Egyptian conquerors turned against Western
Asia, the Phoenician merchants submitted to foreign rule without
much resistance. Civilized Egypt held many attractions for them.
What valuables could be obtained from there to transport elsewhere
or to recreate at home!
In
a similar manner, though much later, the Phoenicians became
intermediaries for the peoples of the West, for example, for the
Assyrian civilization. In those early days, the Phoenician influence
did not yet penetrate deeply. It was merely a coming and going. Only
centuries later, when several islands, such as Santorino and Rhodes,
were definitely colonized by the Phoenicians, could we speak of a
Greek civilization developing under Phoenician influence. Then, for
example, the ancient Hellenic art industry, that of the oldest
painted vases, arose, and Phoenician script was born; Adopted by the
Greeks, in recent times it is believed that another people have been
discovered who—though certainly not for such a long
period—connected the Greek-Asia Minor tribes with the east. In
the 14th century, we see, according to the records on the pylons of
Karnak, in the famous poem of Pentaura, Ramesses the Great at war
with the Chetas—the Hittites of the Bible—who had allied
themselves with the Dardani (Dardanians), Mauona (Maeonians), Masu
(Mysians), Leka (Lycians), with Asia Minor peoples, and among them,
the Dardanians from Troas. The war ended with a treaty on equal
terms, as it was called, with the Chetas, and, in true modern
European fashion, with a marriage of Ramesses with the daughter of
the Cheta prince. From that time on, the Chetas came more or less
under Egyptian influence. We know a few things about this people
with a fair degree of certainty; Babylonian documents speak of them
with a certain awe, as early as the 20th century BC. Hebrew
tradition also mentions the Chetas, or Hittites, in Palestine before
the Israelite invasion; however, very soon after their arrival, they
seem to have withdrawn from those outposts. However powerful the
Hittites may have been, in the time of the Egyptian king Thothmes
III (c. 1700 BC), it was not they, but another tribe, the Ruthennu,
who were the dominant people in Western Asia; they are not mentioned
among the peoples conquered by that king; they paid him tribute.
However, for Ramesses I (c. 1450 BC), their king, Sapalel, was by
far the most formidable enemy in Western Asia; They completely took
the place of the Ruthennu. Under Ramesses II in the 14th century, as
we have seen, they led a coalition against that king.
In
recent times, we have also come into contact with these Chetas or
Hittites (not to be confused with the Aramaic Syrians, who lived
south of them) more directly. In the immediate vicinity of their
land, especially near former Hamath and Aleppo, and later in their
land itself, at the site of their old capital, Carchemish on the
Euphrates, inscriptions have been found in a very peculiar
hieroglyphic script. Inscriptions in the same hieroglyphic script
have been found in various places in Asia Minor, including
Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Lycaonia; these inscriptions have also been
found on very unusual reliefs. A relief found near Birejik in the
former Hittite region itself corresponds entirely with this Asia
Minor relief in all its peculiarities. These reliefs have something
Egyptian, something Assyrian, very much Babylonian; in any case,
they are entirely oriental in style, so that the idea that they were
brought from the west to the east is entirely excluded. There seems
no doubt that it was the powerful Chetas or Hittites who brought
their art forms and inscriptions to the surrounding, relatively
insignificant kingdoms such as Hamath and further into Asia Minor.
These monuments and inscriptions can be called Hittite with a very
high degree of probability. The extent of this Hittite influence is
demonstrated by a discovery by the English orientalist Sayce.
Herodotus saw two reliefs carved into the rocks on the road between
Sardis and Ephesus, which he considered them portraits of Sesostris.
One of these reliefs had been known for some time; the other was
discovered by Sayce, who also determined that they were
Hittite-style and provided with Hittite inscriptions. Thus, we see
the Chetas, with their inscriptions and reliefs, firmly on their way
to those peoples of Asia Minor with whom the Egyptian monuments
present them in alliance. Only Herodotus's two Sesostris portraits
are found in the eastern part of the Maeonian land; the other
reliefs have been found among the peoples of Asia Minor not
mentioned on the Egyptian monuments of Ramesses II, usually those
located more inland. We thus get the impression that Hittite rule
extended over those inland regions, so that the inhabitants of those
lands could not be described as independent fighters against Egypt
on the Pylons of Karnak. The lands along the sea coast, on the other
hand, would have remained somewhat independent—perhaps they
had to tolerate a single Hittite outpost—but were forced,
completely or partially, to join their powerful neighbor in the
fight against Egypt.
Be
that as it may, we see here, long before the Assyrians appeared in
Western Asia, another people connecting east and west, and there is
little doubt that these were the Chetas or Hittites. We should
therefore expect Hittite influences in the Greco-Asia Minor
civilization. However, the very fact that we should expect them
should make us cautious about believing too readily that we will
find them in anything. The material from which we can learn about
the Hittites is still relatively limited. Sayce, with the aid of a
kind of medal bearing bilingual Hittite and Assyrian cuneiform
inscriptions, has made a not very promising start in deciphering
their hieroglyphs. The Hittite reliefs, as we have already noted,
have something Egyptian, something Assyrian, but above all a great
deal of Babylonian charm; one sees, for example, sphinxes, winged
sun disks, goddesses standing on animals, and the like. It is no
surprise that the Hittites borrowed much from Babylonia; their
empire coincides with Babylonia's earliest period of prosperity,
while Assyria was then only in its early stages of development.
Therefore, in the Hittites, we most likely see transmitters
primarily of Babylonian civilization. Their artistic creations,
despite all the imitation, still display something peculiar. Not
only did they incorporate what they adopted to some extent
independently, but they also made certain aspects entirely their
own, firstly in terms of costume, with the tall hats with turned-up
brims and the shoes with turned-up points found on all the reliefs,
and secondly in the style of workmanship, where, with a certain
predilection, the figures were given a roundedness and compactness
unfamiliar to other Eastern reliefs. Or can Hittite-Babylonian
influences also be detected in the oldest works of art of the
Greek-Asia Minor tribes, for example, the lions from the fortress of
Mycenae? Sayce believes so. Yet, this will not be accepted at face
value. Another assertion by the same scholar is more impressive:
that the Asia Minor-Cypriot alphabet was derived from Hittite
hieroglyphs. Leaving aside other circumstances that support this
view, there is a remarkable similarity between various signs.
The
Chetas and Phoenicians certainly had quick pupils in our prehistoric
Greeks. The Egyptian monuments bear witness to the first
manifestations of their historical life. The feeling of immaturity
in relation to the Phoenicians becomes unbearable to them. They,
too, begin building ships and entrust themselves to the endless
plain; an immense field lies open for their deeds. It was not for
nothing that they had become acquainted with ancient Egypt, which
had a civilization 2,000 years ahead of them. Just as the Germans
later did in the Roman Empire, these barbarians from ancient Greece
wanted nothing more or less than to settle in the kingdom of the
Pharaohs to share in its glory and riches. Already under Thothmes
III (c. 1700 BC), we hear that the Danaou (Homer's Danaans), allied
with Libyan peoples, had stormed Egypt. Under Ramesses II, we saw an
alliance of Asia Minor peoples led by the Chetas take the field
against Egypt. Even under his son Menephtah, numerous Greek-Asia
Minor tribes formed an alliance on their own (among them, for
example, the Akaioeas, Homer's Achaeans); they landed in Libya and
advanced again into Egypt. Inhabitants of Troas were not among them,
for the Turisha, whom Bruges refers to as Trojans, are considered by
Ghabas and Maspero is, with very good reason, considered the Lydian
tribe of the Tyrrhenians. - A hundred years later, the Phoenicians
have apparently been largely driven out of the Greek archipelago,
and the Chetan empire is powerless against the overwhelming power of
its former vassals. At sea and along all coasts, Greek-Asia Minor
fleets and armies can be seen; a few tribes ally themselves again
with the Lybians, but the vast majority, led by the Tekkri
(Teukrians) and Pelesta (Pelasgians), focuses its attacks on the
east. A land army overthrows the Chetan empire, allied with Egypt,
and approaches the borders; a fleet penetrates to the mouths of the
Nile. There, however, Ramesses III (c. 1200) rises; "one
rejoices as at the rising of the sun"; he is "brave as a
bull," "powerful as a lion"; He destroys "the
barbarians," "the peoples of the sea," and seeks them
out in their own land; many cities submit; the names we are given
are largely from Asia Minor. Whether Ilion appears among them is
still doubtful. On the temple walls of Medinet-Abu, Ramesses's deeds
are recounted and the battles depicted in relief; prisoners from
various nations are depicted in their national costumes, with their
names placed alongside them.
Better
days did not arrive for the Chetan Empire. Less than 50 years later,
the Assyrians under Tuklat-habal-asar pushed westward. Until its
complete subjugation to Assyria in the 8th century, the Chetan
Empire enjoyed only a semblance of independence. Major changes also
occurred among the Greeks later. Many European tribes migrated to
Asia; the Aeolian colonists arrived in places such as Troas.
Hellenic civilization developed, and the Phoenicians, retreating to
a few islands, remained the intermediaries between East and West.
There was no longer any question of simply adopting anything. The
Hellenes created their own world from Eastern raw materials. The
period we spoke of earlier, that of the Phoenician alphabet and the
oldest painted pottery (800 BC), began.
Let
us now turn to the six settlements on the hill of Hissarlik beneath
Aeolian Ilion. It is entirely logical to attribute them to the
Dardanians, Teukrians, and Trojans of Greek tradition and the
Egyptian monuments, an Indo-Germanic people of Greek-Asia Minor
origin, subject to varying degrees of influence from the Chetas or
Hittites, Phoenicians, and Egyptians. The excavations should clarify
this completely. The various settlements of Hissarlik exhibit a
considerable difference in construction methods. The first two
cities were built of rough, entirely or almost entirely unworked
stones, broken from the nearby limestone mountains. The stones of
the first, that is, the lower city, are quite small and somewhat
bonded together by earth; however, not enough has been excavated
from that first city to form a proper picture of it. The situation
is different with the second, which was undoubtedly one of the
largest of all. A wall of large limestone blocks seems to have
surrounded that city on all sides; these limestone blocks were
stacked on top of each other, and the oversized openings were filled
with smaller stones, so that we have here before us exactly the same
construction method as can be observed in the so-called Kuklopic
walls of Tyrius and Mycenae. The houses were constructed of similar
blocks of stone; However, it appears that walls of loam or clay were
also used, naturally mixed with straw, as, for example, in the pile
formations of Switzerland and Italy; a single house has been
excavated that had walls of small stones bonded with loam, similar
to the dwellings found beneath the volcanic ash of Santorino. The
houses had multiple stories and probably a flat roof of beams.
Houses also stood on the city walls, whose walls thus formed an
upward continuation of those walls, in the same way, as has been
noted, as in Jericho from the Old Testament.1 The entrance was on
the southwest side. A gently rising street had been artificially
formed there, also paved with limestone slabs, to allow for a more
gradual ascent of the always somewhat steep hill. One entered the
city through a gate with three successive doors. Three houses have
been found in this second city, destroyed by fire; the further
causes of their destruction are unknown. For some time after its
fall, according to Schliemann and Burnouf, the hill was uninhabited,
as rainwater apparently created cavities in the rubble. Virchow,
however, doubts this. Then the third city was founded; they simply
rebuilt on the rubble of their predecessor. Unevenness was leveled,
just as it had been during the foundation of the previous city, and
later also that of the fourth, by placing so-called clay cakes in
the open holes. Over a large area, the walls of the previous city
were also used for this new one. On the south side, however, a new
wall of smaller stones bonded with clay was built, thereby extending
the city slightly on that side. While on the northeast side, several
rows of large stones, one above the other in one place only, were
laid across the rubble of the second city. Because these rows of
stones were to serve as a wall on that side, a significant part of
the second city was not included within the perimeter of the third.
This was therefore quite small. One of the two longest sides curved,
the other fairly straight, and was no more than 150 m long. However,
houses were also situated outside the walls on this northeast side.
On the walls of the second city, to the extent that they were
adopted, new houses were built above the rubble of the houses of
that second city, so that the walls of those houses also formed a
continuation of the city wall. Primarily, it seems, on the walls
that the residents themselves had built (that wall on the south side
and the rows of stones on the northeast side, which had been laid
across the rubble of the second city), brick walls were constructed
as a continuation of the limestone walls. First, a few clay cakes
were piled on top of these, then the bricks followed. This is
undoubtedly the major step the residents of the third city took over
from the two previous ones: that they were the first to grasp a kind
of masonry; tiles of clay mixed with straw, hardened in the sun or
by fire, were bonded with a kind of cement of pounded tiles and
water. Just like those walls, the entrance to the city was also
adopted from the previous one. However, above the limestone
pavement, a red sandstone pavement was laid. Only the lower section
of the gates of the second city remained; it was raised higher,
following the construction methods of the third city.
The
houses of the third city usually consisted of a ground floor
constructed of small, only slightly worked, pieces of limestone
bound with a cement of ash, earth, or crushed tiles. The floor was
made of clay, spread over the rubble of the previous city or over
stone slabs. The floor of the upper floor or floors was formed of
beams, like the bottom, covered with clay, which also filled the
gaps between the beams. The walls of the upper floors were made of
fired tiles; a kind of chimney was cut into them. The roofs seem to
have been formed in the same way as the bottoms of the floors: they
were therefore flat. Sometimes the lower floor had no door, so that,
just like in the pile dwellings, one could only enter the house by a
staircase. The ground floor was also usually only the storehouse; if
it had no door, one descended into it as if it were a cellar. In
these lower floors, one often finds large jars, easily capable of
holding a man, storage places for liquids or crops; they were thus
truly a kind of cellars or storehouses. Near the city entrance stood
a large, rather carefully built house, which Schliemann believes to
be the palace of the city's chief; he previously called it simply
Priam. Virchow's observation is striking that the construction of
the houses of Troas today still corresponds entirely with that of
the ancient dwellings on the hill of Hissarlik; the latter has
become particularly clear to us through the former. It is, however,
a phenomenon that is very commonly observed. For example, in Greece
and Italy, one can still, to a certain extent, learn about ancient
life through one's own observation. About 50 years ago, Stackelberg,
for example, noted that ancient costumes could be explained by those
of modern Greece. It is simply impossible to determine how many
thousands of years old many of our involuntary customs and habits
are.
The
inhabitants of the fourth city again entered their fortress at the
same location as those of the two preceding ones. Walls of this city
have also been excavated; yet we are unable to form a proper picture
of their development. The houses were apparently built similarly to
those of the third city. Like the inhabitants of the Italian pile
dwellings, those of the fourth city let the waste of their food and
other filth fall down, undisturbed, into the space beneath the upper
floor they occupied. The pottery of this city is often somewhat
cruder in workmanship than that of the third, and the stone tools
are also somewhat cruder. Schliemann believes that after the
destruction of Troy, according to him, in the fifth city, a portion
of the population remained, but was unable to maintain the higher
civilization of its predecessor. This would confirm the tradition
that Aeneas established a kingdom on the site of the ruined city.
Based on the information available to us, we cannot form a proper
picture of the layout of the fifth and sixth cities. Schliemann
believes that the houses of the fifth city were made of wood and
clay.
The
inhabitants of Hissarlik used stone, copper, and bronze objects;
iron is completely absent, with the exception of a knife in the
sixth city. However, on the whole, these stone objects are of a
fairly high quality. Flint tools are found only in the first, lowest
settlement, and even then only in a few. The exquisitely polished
axes of Nephrite, found in the five lowest settlements, are
particularly noteworthy; they are not inferior to a bronze axe. Some
objects made of nephrite were also found in Swiss pile dwellings and
in some other places in Europe. However, this type of stone does not
occur in Europe. Among the axes of Hissarlik, one is made of white
nephrite, which in the ancient world is found only in the heart of
Asia, in the Kuen-Luen Mountains. Were there trade connections
between Central Asia and Asia Minor and Europe in those ancient
times, or did the Aryan peoples, when they left the interior of
Asia, certainly take with them these very valuable objects? It is
worth noting that in the fifth city, stone tools are far fewer in
number than in the fourth, and that Schliemann reports none at all
from the sixth. One can see that on the hill of Hissarlik, the
Bronze Age is gradually replacing the Stone Age.
Bronze
objects have not yet been found in the two lower cities, but copper
ones have. However, the excavations in these two cities are not yet
particularly extensive, and it is therefore somewhat premature to
conclude, along with Schliemann, that the inhabitants of the first
two cities lived in a copper period, and that the hardening of
copper into bronze by adding tin only became known in the third
city. Furthermore, in these two cities, several objects made of
gold, silver, and eleotron (a mixture of the first two) are found,
and in the lower city, a copper knife that has been gilded. In the
four upper settlements, bronze objects are very common. That the
metals were worked on the hill of Hissarlik itself is demonstrated
by the numerous stone molds found, for example, for arrowheads and
baked clay objects, which, according to the metal flakes on the
inside, also served as a crucible. The bronze at Hissarlik was
probably not forged. When surveying Schliemann's finds, one is
particularly struck by the gold, silver, and electron objects he
found in ten locations in the city of the third city. The largest
collection, which he previously called Priam's treasure, lay among
the rubble on the city wall not far from the so-called royal palace,
where several objects of precious metal were also found. The
principal items found among these treasures are head ornaments,
hairpins, bracelets, earrings, cups, jars, a shield, and the like.
Among these are pieces whose production, in the opinion of an expert
consulted by Schliemann, the jeweler Guiliano, required a very high
degree of technical skill. Truly, no Etruscan goldsmith of centuries
later would have been ashamed of the extremely fine granulation.
Guiliano cannot fathom how this could have been accomplished without
a magnifying glass. The style of decoration also bears no
resemblance to an original civilization. For example, a hair needle
with a knob of rosettes and spirals, and especially one to the knob
of which some finely crafted, extremely small vases with two handles
were soldered, rather testify to a somewhat spoiled taste, which
delights in charivaris.
Hard
stones for grinding grain, often shaped like a ball, or even a kind
of mortar with pestle, are common at Hissarlik, as is so often the
case in prehistoric settlements. Hundreds, indeed thousands, of
small stones have also been found there, also a fairly common
prehistoric household item. Naturally, the amount of pottery
excavated is astonishingly large; some of it was wheel-made, some by
hand. Even wheel-made pottery is often quite crude. There is no
mention of a kiln in which it was fired; It is so undercooked that
it must have been fired before the fire. Many pots and dishes have a
few protrusions cut out, which are provided with holes, were a rope
was brought through the pot, either to tie a lid on the pot or to
hang it up. Traces of the rope can still be found in some of these
holes. Similar pottery with protrusions can also be found in other
prehistoric settlements, for example, in the Italian pile dwellings.
The large storage jars, in which a man could easily stand, have
already been mentioned; in one of them, which lay long before
Schliemann's door at Hissarlik, two people sometimes sheltered from
the rain. Furthermore, the pottery has a variety of shapes. Numerous
flat dishes are found among them, which are particularly similar to
those from Cyprus, but also suggest others, for example, from
excavations in Germany and Hungary. Conical vessels, or spherical
ones on three legs with an oylinder-shaped extension upwards, are
also found among them. Among them, one frequently encounters conical
jugs with long spouts, rising straight up from the center, which end
more or less like an upward-pointing bird's beak, a design that
immediately brings to mind similar ones from Cyprus and the
ash-covered layers of Santorino and Therasia. Also worthy of note
are certain small jars resembling our water bottles, which almost
every Egyptian and Cypriot collection—including the Leiden
one—contains; jugs with two spouts, also Cypriot in shape; two
or three small cups connected together, also something from Egypt,
Cyprus, Rhodes, and Santorino. Above all, however, attention is
drawn to the animal-shaped vases, for example, pigs, which often
recall some of our children's money boxes. From all Cypriot
collections, including the Leiden one, one can find almost identical
examples. Animals, no less humans, were imitated in the pottery. On
the upper part or lid of many large vases, a face is roughly incised
or sculpted, while on the belly, the female body is crudely
depicted. The mouth is particularly often omitted from the face,
which is why Schliemann calls these vases "owl-headed vases."
Such vases, depicting the human form, are among the most widespread
worldwide; they have been excavated in Cyprus, Egypt, Etruria,
Pomerania, and America. Cups with two handles attached to the sides,
in which Schliemann sees Homer's depa amphicupella, have been found
in all five of the upper cities. In the sixth alone, a certain type
of cup with two upright handles, which project upwards above the
mouth, is very common. Similar in shape to the Greek kantharos, but
convex at the bottom, without any foot. Cups of exactly the same
model are found in Italy. At the sixth city, there is also a
peculiar type of pottery handle, ending in a cow's head.
The
color of the pottery is often black, dark brown, or red, sometimes
yellow, and occasionally green. The more carefully crafted pieces
are polished; the stone tools used for this are still found. The
decoration consisted of incised, straight, zigzag, and wavy lines,
figures reminiscent of a fishbone, circles with a point, and the
like. Often, the incised figures are filled with chalk, which makes
them stand out better against the black or dark brown background.
Among these thousands of pottery pieces, only three rather
insignificant examples of painting can be discovered; the most
prominent is a squid depicted with red earth on a lid. This animal
is also found on many vases from Mycenae. The incisions on the
Hissarlik vases were generally done with a very unsteady hand; yet,
a certain sensitivity to the requirements of proper artistic
decoration cannot be denied. The lines are not applied randomly, but
in harmony with those of the vase itself; they rise with the
ascending walls, or on the wider examples, they curve around,
parallel to the upper rim, often from handle to handle; the more
striking upper part of spherical vases often bears the main
decoration; the vase surface is often divided into several
decorative fields by straight lines. The paucity of different
patterns is remarkable, however. The spindle whorls also bear
decoration, and this is infinitely richer than that of similar
objects from other prehistoric settlements. In this respect, they
are also remarkably superior to the vessels themselves. The
variation among the patterns is quite considerable, and these are
often truly tasteful. A rather refined artistic sense is
particularly evident in the, in some cases, quite clear attempt to
have the figures, as it were, participate in the rotating movement
of the spindles: lines or figures, which run like the spindles of a
wagon wheel from the rim to the center opening of a spindle whorl,
are often all curved in the same direction. Very often, especially
on the spindle whorls, that mysterious mark appears,
The
cross with angles, which we find in China, British India, Cyprus,
Etruria, and other places, even, according to Schliemann's account,
on bronzes brought back by an English officer in 1874 from Kumasi,
the capital of the Ashanti. Schliemann calls this sign Snastika (or
Sauvastika), using a Sanskrit word. It is therefore commonly
considered to be of Indian origin. Max Müller sees it as a
symbol of the sun; others see something else. Animals and people are
also depicted on the spindle whorls, though without anything
resembling a plastic representation of forms: the body, legs, arms,
and horns are represented by straight lines, the head by a circle.
Only in the sixth city does one find a kind of intaglio in ivory,
depicting a pair of crawling creatures, which truly demonstrates
some plasticity. Also worth mentioning are several ivory objects,
including a fragment of a lyre, a few knobs of Egyptian porcelain,
cylinders, and seals in the Babylonian style.
The
inhabitants of Hissarlik were likely an agricultural people; large
quantities of grains of various kinds, especially wheat, have been
found in the burned city. They also engaged in fishing, both at sea
and in the rivers, and consumed a surprising number of mussels and
oysters; the remains prove this. Similarly, it is beyond doubt that
flocks of sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, and horses were herded in the
meadows surrounding the hill even in those ancient times. Hares,
deer, antelope, geese, and swans were also hunted.
Script
was also well-known in those ancient times. It was Hang who first
discovered letters in some signs on spindle whorls, seals and
cylinders, and even on a vase, belonging to the Cypriot alphabet,
though apparently older in form. Gompertz's first attempt at
deciphering it was unsuccessful, and Sayce, in his appendix to
Schliemann's book, has also not yet achieved any conclusive results;
it remains to be seen whether that will ever be achieved with the
limited material at our disposal. Nevertheless, it is a discovery of
great significance. That the Cypriot alphabet was not limited to
Cyprus alone, but was the pre-Phoenician alphabet of all of Asia
Minor, is strikingly confirmed by the fact that we find it in such
ancient Asia Minor settlements as those on Hissarlik.
Which
gods were worshipped on that hill? Noteworthy is the lead idol of a
female goddess, very similar to idols of Babylonian origin; Sayce
speaks of the Babylonian Nana. Furthermore, a highly crude idol,
made of baked clay, marble, or carved from bone and ivory, is found
exceptionally frequently. A distinction between head and torso is
the most striking feature of its plastic form; a face is incised,
sometimes the hair is somewhat indicated, and often the separation
of head and torso is also indicated by stripes, a kind of collar.
All those depicted by Schliemann, except one from the sixth city,
lack a mouth. In a few cases, an eye is also omitted. Schliemann
sees in all these, and also in the owl-headed vases, images of the
Glaukopis Athenaeum, already familiar to us all from our reading of
Homer at grammar school. The word "glaukopis" is usually
derived from glaukos, "gray," and a root, which is given
the meaning "eye," so that "glaukopis" means
"gray-eyed." Schliemann thinks of glaua "owl"
and translates: "Athens with the owl's face."
There
is indeed much to be said for that opinion. Homer certainly did not
imagine either goddess with the face of an animal. But just as a
rudimentary organ speaks of past life activities, so too would those
mechanically repeated epithets preserve an ancient conception,
completely foreign to the minds of those who used them. When people
later attempted to grasp the meaning of these words, they arrived at
those common explanations known to us. Max Müller declared to
Schliemann that he was willing to accept his opinion, provided he
was also shown the booôpis Hêrê, Hera with the
cow's face, not, as had been previously explained, with cow's eyes.
Schliemann went to Mycenae and excavated cow heads and cow figurines
near the temple of Hera.
Has
the matter really been settled? Some believe there are etymological
objections to Schliemann's explanations. I see, then, that this is
so rarely the case that it is precisely the etymology that most
recommends Schliemann's opinion. Has anyone ever properly understood
what a cow-eyed Hera means? I truly don't believe so, and the root
"op" is at least as reminiscent of the face as of the eye.
"Aithiops," the Ethiopian, is certainly not the man with
the brown eye, but with the tanned face, or, to use a word, while
the formation of Homer's names booôpis and glaulcoôpis
fully agrees,2 the girl's name Rhodoôpis certainly does not
mean "rose eye" but "rose face." When Homer has
brazen ladies called kunoôpis,3 the translation
"dog-eyed"—dogs were considered impudent by the
father of the diocese—is highly commendable in terms of
meaning, but perhaps just as easily, that brazenness can be found in
the animal's entire snout. One must then assume that in ancient
times, Athena was sometimes depicted as an owl or with an owl's
face, and Hera as a cow or with the face of a cow. Is that
conceivable? Why not? The ancient Greeks, like no other people,
began with a creation like Praxiteles' Hermes. They, to quote
Thucydides, became Hellenes from barbarians, and in that barbaric
era, like so many other barbarians, had shapeless objects—the
ancient statue of Hera on Samos was a block of wood—and wholly
or partially animal-shaped monsters as idols. A few examples of the
latter have even been found here and there. The only question is:
did people ever imagine Hera with a cow's head, Athena with that of
an owl? This is not unlikely regarding Hera. Io, her mythological
doppelganger, is known to be transformed into a cow. Furthermore,
she was very easily identified with the Egyptian Isis; for example,
the Hera at Olympia wore the coiffure or crown of Isis on her head.
Now, in an appendix to Schliemann's book, Brugsch recalled that,
according to an Egyptian myth, after Horos cut off her head, Isis
received a cow's head from Thoth in its place, and there can be no
doubt that Argos, preeminently Hera-worshipping, came into contact
with Egypt in ancient times via Libya. Egyptian monuments, as we
have seen, already appear in the time of Thothmes III (c. 1700).
Libyans and Danaans allied against Egypt, and the Greek legend has
Danaus, the mythical progenitor of those Danaans, whom she calls the
brother of Egyptus, settle in Argos from Libya. When Tsis fled from
Seth, she transformed herself into a cow—the Egyptian myth
continues—and thus she arrived in the province in the west of
the empire, inhabited by Libyans since very ancient times. There, as
Brugch demonstrates, Isis was especially worshipped as a cow, thus
in that part of Egypt with which, according to the information on
Egyptian monuments and the Greek Danaus saga, we must consider the
Danaans associated. This is the case with the Heres the cow.
Regarding the glaukopis Athena, no such evidence has yet been found.
Yet, how little has been done on the religious history of the Greek
people! It is clear that the entire question would be completely
settled if we possessed a statue of Hera with a cow's head and one
of Athena with an owl's head. Did Schliemann find them? This, I
think, must be denied. Neither the owl-headed vases nor the idols
have anything that gives the impression of an owl, except that they
lack a mouth. Now, that could simply be a mistake, just as an eye
was also omitted from another idol. A statuette found on one of the
Greek islands, which incidentally stands much taller in terms of
sculpture than any of Hissarlik's statuettes, even lacks everything
except its nose. Yet, one might argue, all but one of the
Hissarlik's statuettes that Schliemann published lack a mouth; so do
all the vases with a human face, which he depicts in his current
work. However, in the photographs of the found objects, which he
previously published, several appear where the mouth is clearly
visible, and this, in my opinion, completely negates all evidence
for the deliberate omission of the mouth. And now regarding the Hera
Booôpis, among the gold, silver, terracotta cow heads, and
terracotta cows that Schliemann published in the German edition of
his "Mykenae," there is, in my humble opinion, not a
single one that one has the right to consider idols. That such
statuettes are found in or near a temple of Hera should come as no
surprise. The cow was a favored sacrificial animal for Hera, and
therefore cows could very well have been given to her as so-called
votive offerings, small votive gifts. Animals used as votive
offerings can be found in all museums, for example, doves dedicated
to Aphrodite. The only specific idol, as far as I know, with a cow's
head was found by Cesnola in Cyprus; it has a human torso and arms,
but the head of a cow. However, there is no reason to consider it a
Hera. Thus, Schliemann's opinion remains merely a guess, a not
implausible guess perhaps, but one that is in no way supported by
the archaeological discoveries that gave rise to it.
We
can now form an idea of the state of civilization on
the hill of Hissarlik before the Aeolian colonization naturally
returns to the question: were they settlements of the Greek-Asia
Minor tribe of the Dardanians, Teucrians, or Trojans? And indeed,
after examining the finds, this can be less doubted than ever. One
need only consider the Kuklopian architecture of the second city and
that of its houses, which were built along the lines of those of
Santorino, but above all, the Cypriot alphabet. The pottery also
firmly places the inhabitants of Hissarlik among the prehistoric
Greek-Asia Minor tribes. Now, it is beyond doubt that more original
states of civilization very easily exhibit some similarities, and
that only in a period of more advanced national artistic development
can peoples be clearly distinguished by the products of their
artistic crafts. Hence the similarity of the finds at Hissarlik with
that of all sorts of finds from all corners of the world. However,
no similarity extends across so many objects and is so evident in
the smallest details of workmanship as that with the oldest pottery
from Cyprus, Rhodes, Santorin, and Therasia—in other words,
with the pottery of prehistoric Greeks. That tribes of Asia Minor
(Greek) lived at Hissarlik is certainly not open to doubt. It is
still possible that the various settlements, or some of them, were
inhabited by different peoples, and since this is indeed assumed by
Schliemann and Virchow, it is worth pausing for a moment.
We
must begin by defining the point in question more precisely. If one
means that different peoples of the same tribe succeeded one another
on the hill of Hissarlik, then that is quite possible. For example,
one could assume that the Dardanians, Teucrians, and Trojans
alternately held sway and inhabited the castle of Hissarlik.
However, this matter will likely never be resolved from the
archaeological findings; we would have to imagine the civilization
of these tribes to be so similar that making a clear distinction
would be impossible. However, if one means that peoples of different
origins ruled at Hissarlik, that, for example, a people completely
unknown to us, not of Asian Minor Greek descent, would have
inhabited the lower settlements, then that is highly unlikely at
this stage. We know the two lower settlements, especially the one
below, only imperfectly; yet, certainly from the second, but, I see,
also from the first, vases with human faces have been unearthed, all
of which correspond fairly well in type at Hissarlik. Certainly in
the five upper settlements, but probably also in the lower ones, one
finds the very same crude idols discussed above. Large storage jars,
capable of holding a man, have also been recovered from the second
settlement, as well as from the higher ones. Schliemann attaches
great importance to the lack of large storage jars in the first
city; however, assuming they are not also found there during further
excavation, could the inhabitants of the second city have been the
inventors of these large jars? The fact that the pottery of the
fourth city is somewhat cruder certainly cannot be considered here.
Furthermore, Schliemann points out that in the lower settlement,
certain large, glossy black bowls shaped like basins are found in
large quantities, of which not a single example is found in the
second settlement. He refers to an expression by the Etruscologist
Dennis, who lived in Eugel, that a people does not simply abandon
the style in which they produce their pottery, for example. Firstly,
however, what one might call style—a peculiarity of art form,
cherished and maintained as an expression of its innermost being—is
only present in principle in products of applied art, such as those
found on the Hissarlik hill. Secondly, the second town also has its
own glossy black pottery, so that, if I understand correctly, the
matter boils down to this: certain bowl-shaped dishes appear in the
first town, but not in the second. One would hardly want to see a
stylistic difference in national art industry in this. Therefore, in
all or most of the settlements on Hissarlik, one likely encounters
the same phenomenon as in the Italian terramares, the remains of
Italian pile-dwelling villages,1 and on the Dutch terps: multiple
settlements of the same people, in different periods of their
development, lie one above the other. Pigorini believes that the
ancient inhabitants of the Italian pile-dwellings themselves
sometimes set fire to their dwellings when they felt the need about
new ones. This same is not unlikely for some of the towns of
Hissarlik. For the pile dwellings, fire was the simplest means of
extermination, not so for the stone towns of Hissarlik. There, a
fire is more likely to be attributed to an accident or a foreign
enemy. Of the six settlements, only one has now been destroyed by
fire (a few houses in the second town). If one does not want to
assume that all five of the remaining towns were destroyed by
earthquake, then it is certainly a not entirely objectionable
assumption that the inhabitants themselves each time tore down one
town and built a new one on the rubble, when over time their
wretched dwellings, which certainly did not differ much in
sturdiness, had become somewhat unusable.
In
one respect, Schliemann has indeed demonstrated a rather significant
difference between one of the settlements and its predecessors. The
sixth city not only ranks somewhat higher than the preceding one in
some of its artistic productions, but a large number of those cups
with two high-standing handles were also found there, which, as
Schlieman rightly observed, bear a striking resemblance to similar
objects from Italy, including a large number of those handles ending
in a cow's head. However, this can apparently only be a case of a
new series of objects blending with the old, not of a completely new
civilization. Schliemann explains the matter thus: the Tyrsenians,
the ancestors, as is often believed, of the Etruscans in Italy,
emigrated from Lydia, according to legend; those cups and cow's
heads are therefore not unlikely to be of Lydian origin; the Lydians
ruled over Troas; the art forms that the Tyrsenians brought to
Italy, the Lydians brought to Troas. I will now leave aside the fact
that we know nothing of Lydian rule over Troas before this country
was colonized by the Aeolians; only Gyges, in the 7th century,
subdued that country. The entire question of Asia Minor influences
on Etruscan civilization can also remain undiscussed. Indeed, there
is insufficient basis for the assertion that these cups and cow's
heads are uniquely Etruscan. It is known that the Etruscans are, in
any case, a completely different people than the so-called Italic
tribes, to which, among others, the Latins belonged, and now cups
resembling the Greek kantharos are found in ancient Italian graves
as well as in Etruscan ones. As for the cow's heads, so-called
crescent-shaped handles have been excavated in Italy, including in
the terramares; Schliemann believes that the cow's head is the older
form of these handles, which would then be a simplification in that
only the horns (half-moons) would remain. This in itself would
certainly not be impossible. But what remains of the entire
reasoning when one considers that these half-moon handles are
precisely not found in Etruscan settlements, so much so that they
are usually seen as the most consistent characteristic by which one
can distinguish Italian settlements from all other ones? Greek
influences in Italy are very old, and it is not inconceivable that
these cups are truly crude imitations of the Greek kantharos. In
that case, it would be obvious to assume similar European-Greek
influences in the sixth city, which one could then consider as
precursors of the complete Hellenization by Aeolian colonists.
However, everything here remains conjecture. The settlements on
Hissarlik belong to an Indo-Germanic tribe, and it is obvious to
draw a closer comparison with those of other Indo-Germanic tribes,
including those with whom the relationship was not as close as with
the other Greek-Asia Minor peoples. We have already discussed the
Italian pile dwellings; these are usually not situated on the shores
of lakes, like the Swiss ones, but rather above ground level. Now,
the pile dwellings of the Italian terramares were most likely, and
almost certainly many of them, the dwellings of the Indo-Germanic
people of those ancient Italians, the ancestors of, among others,
the Latins. The similarity between these pile dwellings and the
houses on Hissarlik is greater than one might superficially think.
Whether one builds one's actual dwelling on stilts or on a
foundation wall of stacked stones, dug from the neighboring
mountains, makes little difference. The main concept remains the
same: a dwelling place elevated above the ground. The pile dwellings
had walls of loam or clay, as did the ancient dwellings of the Celts
and Germans. Such walls were also in use at Hissarlik, for example,
in the second town, and when brick was used, clay or loam was used
as a floor covering. The similarity between the residents of
Hissarlik and the ancient Italians, in the way they dealt with their
waste, have already been pointed out. The ancient Celts, Germans,
and Italians lived in a period of transition from the use of stone
to bronze objects, as did the inhabitants of Hissarlik. Their stone
tools for grinding grain are not noticeably higher. Among their
pottery, one also finds very crude examples. The kneading of prongs
to thread ropes through them was, as we have seen, also known to the
Italians. Like their relatives, the Hissarlik inhabitants did not
fire their pots and pans in a kiln. Painting vases is a peculiarity,
especially of later Hellenic civilization. Like the ancient Italian
tribes, the Celts and Germans, the Hissarlik inhabitants decorated
their pottery almost exclusively with incisions. Despite all
similarities, however, there are also significant differences. In
the third city, brick came into use; The pile dwellings lacked them;
Tacitus explicitly states that the ancient Germans were unaware of
them. While the inhabitants of Hissarlik were in that period of
transition from stone to bronze, like other peoples, their stone
objects certainly held a higher status. Among them, common flint was
a rarity, not a major commodity. As for the pottery, a large portion
of that at Hissarlik was made on the wheel; this tool was unknown to
those other peoples. Furthermore, one should also note some objects
that demonstrate such a high level of artistry and development of
taste that all comparison, even with the other finds at Hissarlik,
is completely negated. One need only consider several objects in
these so-called treasures. Among such people, one is fully justified
in concluding that they were imported from abroad. The cities at
Hissarlik, therefore, demonstrate an original Indo-Germanic
civilization; However, important principles of higher development
are already emerging, although the new still stands alongside the
old—like, for example, wheel-thrown pottery alongside
hand-made—and thus there can be no question of a new,
independent state of civilization. The question now is: to what can
this nascent progress be attributed? These objects, undoubtedly
imported from outside, already suggest foreign influences. This,
however, is more evident in another way.
Can
one speak of originally Indo-Germanic art forms? It was Conze who,
in 1870 at the Vienna Academy, believed he could answer that
question in the affirmative. On the oldest painted Greek vases—the
Leiden Museum possessed the most interesting examples at the time,
but since then, due to various excavations, especially in Cyprus and
Mycenae, that number has greatly increased—one finds all sorts
of geometric figures: concentric circles, often several sets next to
each other, usually connected by tangents at the bottom of one set
and the top of the other, zigzag lines, borders (so-called Greek
borders), diamonds like those on a chessboard, and the like, as well
as some rough beginnings of depictions of animals and plants. These
decorations were applied with a keen sense of the demands of
artistic decoration; borders such as borders actually serve as rims;
decorations are found primarily from handle to handle and on the
most conspicuous parts of the vase. The surface to be decorated is
often very regularly divided into fields; in short, there is a
correspondence between the lines of the decoration and those of the
vase to be decorated. Today, the same patterns can be found,
incised, on Germanic and Celtic pottery, and to a greater or lesser
extent, with due regard for the same principles of artistic
decoration. Just as one now ascends from the community of languages
among the Indo-Germanic peoples to a single original
Indo-Germanic language, Conze believed that this correspondence in
patterns and style of workmanship could lead to the conclusion that
there was a certain number of ancient Indo-Germanic art forms,
common to the tribe before its split into different peoples.
However, Helbig [2] has since pointed out that in the Italian
terramares, of which so many have been excavated, nothing of this
decorative style can be found on either the vases or the spindle
whorls. Only in the later, oldest Italian pottery do the patterns
appear, but applied haphazardly, without regard for the simplest
requirements of artistic decoration; a piece of metal, for example,
skewed, in the middle of the body. Helbig makes it very likely that
these patterns are of oriental origin and were introduced to the
Greeks and Italians by the Phoenicians, and indeed, that they also
came from that direction to the ancient Celts and Germans. These
were still in a very original state, while the peoples at the center
of the earth were still in a very original state.
The
Phoenicians, and later the Greeks and Romans, were already at a very
high level of civilization. Archaeology often astonishes us by the
far-reaching influences of trade. But didn't Barth also find pieces
of cotton from a Manchester firm among the Negroes of the Niger? The
Italian terramares, though they probably haven't remained entirely
free, have apparently been subjected to such foreign influences to
the slightest degree; they therefore date back to a relatively
ancient period. Therefore, they best enable us to become acquainted
with the true ancient Indo-Germanic civilization.
And
now the settlement at Hissarlik. The lines and figures on the
pottery are drawn with a very unsteady hand, but nevertheless, as we
have already pointed out, the awakening sense of the demands of
artistic decoration, which the ancient Italians completely lacked,
is very clearly visible here. Of Conze's Indo-Germanic patterns—and
this is certainly quite remarkable—none are found in these
Indo-Germanic settlements, except for the zigzag line, certainly one
of the most obvious. The patterns on the vases are not significant;
however, those on the spindle whorls, though completely different,
are in no way inferior to Phoenician ones. We see foreign influences
acting on the civilization of Hissarlik in a similar way as the
Phoenicians later did on that of Greece and Italy.
Therefore,
if the fact that external influences did affect the civilization of
Hissarlik is fairly well established, the question naturally arises:
what were these? We now recall what was noted above about the
Phoenicians. Their more profound influence on Greek civilization
(except possibly on some islands like Cyprus and Santorin), that
influence most clearly visible in the painting of vases and the
adoption of the alphabet, is certainly not much older than the 9th
century; it was an influence established through colonization and
regular peaceful intercourse. The ancient inhabitants of Hissarlik
did not experience such intercourse with the Phoenicians; it
coincides with Aeolian Ilion, from which Schliemann has therefore
disclosed some shards of that ancient painted pottery. Before that
time, the Phoenicians traded with the Greek peoples of Asia Minor as
with wild tribes; they occasionally brought something there, but
were often more robbers and invaders than merchants. A similar
Phoenician influence is, I believe, quite plausible now also at
Hissarlik. At that time, we are especially thinking of Egyptian
goods transported by the Phoenicians. Just as on Cyprus and other
islands, some unique Egyptian pottery forms have been discovered on
Hissarlik, such as the combination of several small cups. Consider
also Egyptian porcelain and the use of the wheel in pottery
production, which was common among the Egyptians in ancient times.
We can also imagine the so-called "schatteners" (stoves)
being better introduced from no place at that time than from Egypt.
All the major Egyptian museums, including the one in Leiden, possess
examples of fine Egyptian granulation. Yet, much, and in fact the
most important, likely points in another direction: the Babylonian
seals and cylinders, that lead idol, and above all the use of
bricks. The Babylonians primarily used these for building, and among
the Babylonian tiles there are some—for example, only
sun-dried—that are not much better crafted than those from
Hissarlik. The Babylonian example would then have helped the
inhabitants of the third city to bake tiles. The ivory found at
Hissarlik is not unlikely to have originated from Egypt, but it
could also have been brought there from the Euphrates in those
ancient times. Herds of elephants grazed there at that time;
according to Egyptian documents, the army of Thothmes III enjoyed
hunting these animals there. The question becomes: who were the
intermediaries in transmitting this Babylonian civilization? And
given the above, one can probably think of no other people than the
Chetas or Hittites. If it is confirmed that the patterns on the
spindle whorls are at least partly Babylonian in origin, then the
Chetas would occupy a position among the Greco-Kinsa-Asiatic peoples
of that earlier period, entirely similar to that of the Phoenicians
later: they would owe them an incipient artistic development,
manifesting itself in pottery and spindle whorl decoration, and an
alphabet. What we know of the Chetas and Asia Minor fullers makes
such a steady and peaceful influence of the civilization of one
people on that of another quite possible. Centuries before the
dominant influence of the Phoenicians, we thus see an attempt among
the Asia Minor peoples, under Hittite influence.
Athenian
tribes led to what I will call Hellenization. This attempt failed.
When, later, with Phoenician help, Hellenic civilization began to
develop to its full potential, it overwhelmed those first
principles, incapable of any further effort, and spread beyond them:
the Aeolian settlement over the ancient Dardanian.
Accurately
determining the influence of the Chetas on the hill of Hissarlik is
a very important matter. When does it begin? With the third city?
Everything is still too uncertain. One thing is certain, however,
that we have a good chance of obtaining an excellent means of
determining the time. If, according to what we have stated above,
the flourishing of the Chetas fell between 15 and 1300, then the
beginning of the Chetas' influence on Hissarlik also occurred during
that time. If the excavations make it highly probable that we must
imagine the inhabitants of Hissarlik in some degree of contact with
the Phoenicians and in fairly close contact with the Chetas, then it
becomes all the more likely that I am dealing here with Dardanian,
Teucrian, and Trojan settlements. Were the cities of Hissarlik
capitals of Troas, or did Homer's Troy lie beneath them? This is so
little a foolish notion that one can safely say that, according to
the data available to us, it is the most likely guess. The
inhabitants of Aeolian Ilion had no doubt that their city stood on
the site of ancient Troy or Ilios. The existence of this belief is
demonstrable—Schliemann is undeniably correct—in the
fifth century BC. Is it so implausible that the first founders of
New Ilion knew that the ruins on which they built were those of the
country's ancient capital, and can't this tradition, whose existence
can be proven as early as the fifth century, be considered a
reminder of that fact? Only in the Alexandrian period did a learned
woman from Alexandria, Troas, named Hestiaea, and a certain
Demetrius of Skepsis, assert that ancient Troy was not located on
the site of later Troy, but further inland, on the site of the then
"village of the Ilians." Professor Mahaffy, in an appendix
to Schliemann's work, has sharply exposed the insignificance of all
the arguments advanced. The argumentation is entirely in the style
of the artificial debate of the old schools of rhetoric. One of the
arguments, we know from Strabo, is that in the Iliad the statue of
Athena is depicted seated, while it stood in New Ilion; another,
that according to Homer, Ilios was destroyed, which would mean that
all the city's stones were removed. One sees how little such
opponents even realized what they actually had to prove; at most,
they prove that Aeolian Ilion was not the Ilios of Homer, an effort
they certainly could have spared themselves entirely. The truth is
that after Alexander the Great, New Ilion enjoyed great prestige as
the city of Homer's songs; drawing a sharp distinction between Old
and New Ilion was not in their minds: Aeolian Ilion was the city of
Hector and Priam, just as Athens was that of Codros. The jealous
neighbors could not grant her that honor, and, fully confident in
the formidable strength of their rhetorical weapons, those writers
from Alexandria, Troas, and that writer from Skepsis, turned against
the claims of the much-envied capital of their region to be Ilios,
Homer's Troy. Therefore, we should not attach much value to the
opinion of these people. In more recent times, many believed that
ancient Troy must have been located on the heights of Bunarbaschi, a
considerable distance south of Hissarlik. Count Moltke, when he
wrote "Briefe über Zustände und Begebenheiten in der
Türkei" (Briefs on Subsistence and Belongings in Turkey) a
good forty years ago, also concurred with this opinion; "his
military instinct" told him that the main fortress of the
country must have been located on that height. It is a pity that the
inhabitants of Hissarlik, when choosing a site for their fortress,
were unable to seek the advice of the greatest general of our time;
but such arguments are of little use. The main argument of the
Bunarbaschi advocates is that those two springs, one cold and one
hot, that Homer speaks of, would actually be found nearby. However,
there are no fewer than forty springs there, all cold. However, both
Schliemann and Virchow, as well as the Bunarbaschi advocates, attach
far too much importance to what Homer reveals about Troy's location.
Schliemann argues, for example, that the area surrounding the
Bunarbaschi hill is too steep for Hector and Achilles to have
circled it three times, one following the other. We will return
later to the fact that Homer in no way offered any representation of
the actual ancient Troy and it is certainly not so very difficult to
demonstrate that the poet or poets of the Iliad, even if they knew
Troas, paid very little attention to topographical accuracy. Of
greater significance is that, although some remains of walls are
found at Bunarbaschi, these are certainly of relatively late date.
Nor are any traces of an ancient settlement found at the site of
that so-called "village of the Ilians." A surprisingly
large number, however, as we know, are found at Hissarlik, the place
where a very credible tradition sought ancient Troy. Which side is
most likely? Schliemann's journey last May also aimed to locate
other prehistoric settlements in Troas. He found none.
Regarding,
more specifically, the third city, Troy. Considering what was noted
above, that it is not improbable that the inhabitants of Hissarlik,
like those of other prehistoric settlements in various periods of
their history, established one settlement above another, it stands
out that several, or perhaps even all six cities, could have been
Troy. However, the third city was burned, and that was certainly
done by the Achaeans and Danaans of the Iliad. Quite possible. That
the Trojan legend is based on historical truth is not implausible.
But how much? This is truly not so easy to determine. That the
burning of Troy was a historical fact is not proven in the least. I
would like to propose another assertion, namely this: the peoples of
Asia Minor, under the hegemony of the Teucrians, attacked Ramesses
III; The king enters Asia Minor, subdues many cities—all of
this, as we know, is historically highly probable, almost
certain—and—here the conjecture begins—burns the
capital of the ringleaders, the Teucrians. I'm not putting forward
this conjecture at all because I attach scientific value to it; I
simply ask: is it so much less probable than Schliemann's? I want to
propose a third conjecture, possibly more probable than all the
others. Only three skeletons have been found in the entire third
city, two of them, evidenced by the fragments of helmets found with
them, belonging to soldiers. Couldn't one argue that such a small
number doesn't suggest a fortress taken by storm, and that the third
city therefore most likely caught fire by accident? When the Homeric
songs originated, the third city had long been buried, and Aeolian
Ilion had probably already been founded, whose fortress occupied
only the hill of Hissarlik, the site of the entire ancient Ilios.
Centuries separated the production of the Iliad from the heyday of
ancient Troy; the cities of Hissarlik were still largely ancient
Indo-Germanic settlements; the poets of the Iliad lived in an
environment that was already, so to speak, Hellenic; the products of
arts and crafts, which they saw around them, according to various
indications, were already at the highest stage of development
achieved by the Phoenician-Greek pottery mentioned above. Need I
still bring up the other evidence for the relatively late
composition of the Iliad? Truly, one has no right to consider Troy,
as Homer imagined it, anything other than an image of poetic
fantasy, modeled on the most brilliant the poet knew in his time—and
if anything can confirm us in this opinion, it is those small and
miserable citadels of loam and clay on Hissarlik, the Troy of
reality. Therefore, nothing whatsoever can be deduced from Homer's
descriptions regarding the topographical condition of the latter,
and when Professor Virchow tasks philologists with carefully
examining the extent to which these descriptions, for example, that
Achilles and Hector circled the city three times, correspond with
the condition of Troy on Hissarlik, then these gentlemen are
perfectly justified in replying to the great naturalist that they
have better things to do. Schliemann, too, now fully realizes that
there is a startling difference between these two Troys, and that
Homer could not have known anything about the Troy of reality. Yet,
he does not yet draw the natural conclusions from this insight. Nor
does he grasp the consequences of this astonishing gulf between the
civilization of Hissarlik and that of the Homeric songs. Archaeology
can render great services to philology by transporting the
philologist to some extent into the material environment in which
the writers he wishes to explain lived; these services cannot
possibly be proven by the discoveries at Hissarlik to the Homeric
interpreter, for the simple reason that Homer did not live in an
environment like that of Hissarlik.
One
wouldn't want to make the old bard into Walter Soott or Ebers, who,
through long study, managed to transport himself to a world that had
passed centuries ago. It is entirely in the nature of such folk
poets to embellish the past with the utmost naiveté, using
what they saw around them. That's why, for example, in Homer's
description of Achilles' shield, the archaeologist asks: what was
the driving gear the poet had in mind when describing it?1 Not: what
did the shields worn at the time of the Trojan War look like?
Attempts to explain Homer's use of finds at Hissarlik have therefore
not yielded much. Schliemann himself attaches the highest value to
his explanation of the depas amphicupello. In Aristotle's time, it
was seen as a cup, which was, on the contrary, a lace cup.
Schliemann, as we know, considers it a cup with two handles, of
which many were found at Hissarlik. However, leaving aside the fact
that kupellon means cup and amphi on both sides, and therefore the
explanation from Aristotle's time is truly not so objectionable,
leaving aside even the fact that double cups have been found, which
Homer could very well have envisioned,3 I would point out that there
is absolutely no need to speak of an archaeological explanation of
the word based on finds at Hissarlik. No museum lacks dozens, even
hundreds, of "kantharoi," "skuphoi," and
"kulikes," Greek cups with two handles! Such cups were
therefore equally well known in the good old Greek period.
Therefore, one can very well imagine them among the objects from
Homer's circle. Even if we were to admit that Schliemann's
explanation of that word is correct, the discoveries at Hissarlik
would no more confirm that explanation than a hundred others.
I
hope this gives some idea of Schliemann's work on
Hissarlik. The diligent researcher has sometimes been compared to an
alchemist, and there is undoubtedly much truth in that. His
philosopher's stone was Troy, and in his eagerness to find it, he
didn't ask first of all, "What is it?", but "Is it
Homer's Troy?" Even the defense of a Virchow cannot detract
from the fact that the layers situated above the third city, above
his Troy, were eroded away somewhat too hastily, so that we could
have been much better informed about them than we are now. But let
us not forget that the alchemists founded chemistry, and above all,
that it is no flattery when Virchow claims that the romantic digger
has now become a learned man of great wealth. Even if Schliemann's
errors and mistakes were far greater than they actually are, who
would dare to hold them too high against him? "He who has loved
much, much will be forgiven," and he did love much, the
office-goer of the Gentlemen Quien, who did not forget the ideals of
his youth, whose holy enthusiasm, the heavenly driving force in our
earthly existence, was no more suppressed from his soul by sorrow,
hard, mindless labor, or the indifferent treatment of those who did
not suspect what a fire burned in the soul of that poor young
German—as later by the sweet lure of wealth acquired through
his own efforts, which here more than ever seemed to justify a life
of peace and ease. The Handelsblad did a good job of bringing
Schliemann's account of his own life to the attention of its
readers; it certainly deserved a separate publication, which would
bring it more consistently within everyone's reach. And I wouldn't
want to give it to just aspiring young people: frankly, to our
entire student class. Schliemann is (was?) a dilettante. A terrible
word; we are far too learned to care about dilettantes. We are armed
against dilettantism from head to toe. From cradle to grave, we are
accompanied by curricula, exam programs, acts A, B, and C; our
universities are entirely geared towards cultivating someone, in the
best known way, for one of our many doctorates. We are indeed solid
people. But do we have all we need? Are we also sufficiently imbued
with that divine breath that set stones in motion and created life
in "the valley of the dead"? Oh, when we are once again
undergoing or having taken an examination, let us then take up this
biography of Schliemann to refresh our souls with that sacred fire,
without which no poet or artist, nor indeed any man of science, has
ever achieved anything great. Dr. Schliemann may be a dilettante,
but he has rendered greater service to the advancement of our
knowledge than many a half-dozen bookish scholars.
Leiden.
A.E.J.
Holwerda.
January 1, 1884 The Attic People and the Art of
Phidias.
Since Winckelman
At
the beginning of the Pompeian excavations, we were living, as it
were, in a second Renaissance period, one that, though profoundly
influential on the development of art, nevertheless bore a more
scientific character. It connected with archaeology and philology;
the principle of historical treatment, which plays such a prominent
role in the study of the spiritual sciences, especially in our time,
was also very strongly felt in it; it is, to put it briefly,
archaeology first and foremost. The results of its naturally more
deliberate and systematic investigations were astonishing. It
managed to bring a number of works of art within its reach, several
of which, through their high intrinsic value, eclipsed everything
admired by the old Italian masters.
No
new acquisition, however, was as significant in itself and in its
consequences as that of the remains of the Parthenon. Apparently,
shortly after the fall of the pagan world, this most magnificent
temple of antiquity was converted into a Christian church. It
naturally suffered greatly in the process; nevertheless, it remained
in a relatively good condition throughout the entire Middle Ages.
Only in recent times did the actual work of destruction begin. In
1687, the city of Athens was besieged by the Venetians. When they
learned from a deserter that the Turks were storing a large quantity
of gunpowder in the temple, they immediately turned their artillery
on it. And indeed, after some time, a bomb landed right in the
gunpowder store. The entire center of the building exploded, so that
some marble blocks even fell under the besiegers. Three hundred men,
women, and children were buried under the rubble. And since then,
the work of destruction, which had begun on such a scale, has
continued unabated. The building, now essentially a ruin, became an
inexhaustible mine for the lime burners. The opportunity also became
too tempting for foreigners visiting the castle to take some of it
all home. Some officers of the Venetian army, which had occupied the
castle for some time, had already acquired a piece of sculpture as a
commemorative piece, and Commander-in-Chief Morosini even wanted to
have a pair of horses and the statue of Poseidon removed from the
west facade as a token of victory. This was done very clumsily. The
heavy marble pieces fell down as soon as they were dislodged,
smashing to the ground in a thousand pieces. Later, others also took
quite a bit, and this misery naturally didn't diminish when Greece
began to be visited more by travelers from various countries.
Increasingly, Phidias's works of art would have disappeared,
piecemeal, except in lime kilns, from the numerous small collections
of art lovers throughout Europe, had Lord Elgin, British ambassador
to Constantinople, not acquired them at the beginning of this
century. Through a firm, this "faithful friend" of the
Porte obtained permission for his deputies to construct scaffolding,
to shape, to measure, and to conduct excavations in the fortress of
Athens, and "should they wish to remove any blocks with ancient
inscriptions or figures, no obstacle should be placed in their way."
The wishes of these deputies gradually extended to almost all the
sculpture found on or near the Parthenon. The noble Lord spent a
significant portion of his fortune, 62,440 pence, to, as the
well-known English slogan went, "transplant ancient Greece to
England." When the British Museum took over his treasures in
1816, he received back only the larger half, 35,000 pence, of the
expenditure incurred, but he enjoyed the satisfaction of having
acquired works of art for his country, which soon drew countless
artists and scholars from all corners of the continent as if on
pilgrimage to England's capital.
Later,
during the Greek War of Independence, Athens was again besieged, and
a bombardment once again inflicted considerable damage on the
temple. Fortunately, so much of the sculpture had been rescued by
then. We now know of approximately 10 relatively intact statues of
the façade groups, including the few pieces from other
collections and those that remained in Athens or were later
excavated from the rubble. Of the 92 metopes, several remain, but
only 17 are still relatively intact; of the nearly 140-meter-long
frieze, only a few relief plates are completely missing, and about
half is still very well preserved. The arrangement and explanation
of the found and of course, the remains are of great value, the
reports and drawings of those who knew the Parthenon in better
condition. It was a particularly fortunate coincidence that in 1674,
thirteen years before that fateful bomb fell on the temple, the
French ambassador to the Porte, the Marquis de Nointel, obtained
permission from the commandant of the castle, in exchange for six
yards of scarlet cloth and 25 pence for coffee, for the draftsman
Jacques Carrey. Carrey acquitted himself of his task, especially
considering that he was not allowed to make any statements and had
only fourteen days, in an excellent manner in many respects.
A
new era in the development of art seemed to have dawned after 1816.
With a certain astonishment, one felt suddenly transported into an
unknown world of beauty. A Goethe considered himself fortunate to
have been able to experience this. People realized the enormous
distance between the Greek works of later times, with which they had
until now largely had to be satisfied, and these products of
Greece's heyday. Perhaps nothing has more contributed to the triumph
of the historical principle in archaeology than the discovery of
these art treasures.
And
even the contemplation of these Elgin marbles should have prompted a
more in-depth historical study. One clearly senses that one is
confronted here with the remains of a monumental art once destined
to meet the noblest needs of the Attic people. In the façade
groups and metopes, the mythological folk ideas of the Athenians
found their highest expression; in the frieze, it saw itself in its
holiest and happiest moments; it was Attic civilization, seen from
one of its noblest aspects and as the Athenian himself loved it
most, which, in its outward forms and spiritual mood, presented
itself here in a grand scene. We too, when we dwell for a time
amidst all these mighty creations of the human mind, are somewhat
subjected to the same impressions as the Athenian must have received
from them. But hand in hand with this goes the need for
explanations, and we also want to bring these impressions to light
by taking stock of them. We must get to know the Attic people, not
only in their external circumstances, but above all in their life
and aspirations, in their way of thinking and innermost soul.
However, as soon as one attempts to clarify what a people was at a
particular point in its history, one is naturally forced onto the
historical path. We too will embark on that path in this essay,
following it from the beginning, not starting from the work of art,
but returning to it repeatedly, only occasionally setting foot on
it; to enter it for its own sake is the immediate goal. The Elgin
Marbles provided the initial impetus for the following study, but
the author will not concern himself with them for the time being. He
will attempt to briefly present a history of the development of the
Attic people—and, of course, also to some extent of Hellenism
in general, for the two are inseparable—so that it may become
clear how national Hellenic and Attic art arose in close connection
with the entire development of the people and, as it were, grew up
with the people. Our story naturally brings us back to Phidias and
his works, where Hellenic art truly first matures.
We
should begin with the general Hellenic; Attic is, of course, only a
specific form of it.
We
will briefly examine how Hellenic religion, and in close connection
with it, Hellenic civilization as a whole, developed. The high
significance of the religious element for the life of the Hellene in
general and for the development of their art in particular, is not
usually fully appreciated.
In
the deep darkness of so-called prehistoric times, comparative
mythology, alongside archaeology and comparative linguistics, sheds
some bright rays of light. With its help, we can, for example, also
form some idea of the nature-view, indeed the
emotional state, of those Indo-European tribes—we will call
them Pelasgians for convenience—whose Hellenic language and
civilization later developed. Just as little as their kin, at a
similar stage of civilization, were these pre-Hellenes masters of
the overwhelming mass of impressions that pressed upon their
receptive minds from all sides. They lived amidst a world of higher
beings—wandering about on their own or dwelling in trees,
stones, the wind, the clouds, heaven, and earth—from whom they
knew neither what to fear nor what to hope. It was honorable to
ascend the high fire altar and send up the sacrificial fragrance to
Zeus, the being who sat there in the shining vault of heaven,
seeming to encompass the scene of all change and transformation here
below with an eternal equality. There, across that vault of heaven,
a fiery light moved. To which being is it that one owes this
nurturing warmth and bright radiance, which bring joy and confidence
to the soul? A host of explanations arises, new or ones one has
already given oneself many times, and imagining something and
accepting it as true is the same thing, or rather, one does not yet
distinguish between true and false. Many believe that it is
undoubtedly the son of Zeus to whom one owes all this. But the
divine being descends and disappears into the utter darkness of the
far west. With what gloom and anxiety one is filled, what a
multitude of images assail the mind once again. What has become of
the glorious one? Does he sleep an eternal sleep and was he kissed
by the moon goddess seen rising there at the transept?2) Does he no
longer live and does he return from that West just as little as the
shades of the deceased who have arrived there in the house of Hades?
The horrors of death and the afterlife arise before the mind in all
their force; has one perhaps also been tainted by bloodguilt, or has
one offended one of the hundreds of invisible beings by which one is
surrounded, in arrogance or entirely unknowingly? But redemption
dawns from the east; streaks of light appear, followed by a rosy
glow. What being plays there in the first twilight? Who is the
glorious, the rosy-fingered one, whose appearance fills the soul
with renewed hope? There rises the great being of light, whose
coming one had already thought one might expect. Once again, the
soul grasps for this explanation, that explanation. It is a radiant
hero (Tithonos), for example, believed to be desired and embraced in
love by the rosy-fingered one (Eos) herself as her consort, radiant
with beauty and strength, yet one can already predict that, having
descended to the west, he will live forever, without eternal youth,
shrinking to a shadow of himself. It can also happen, however, that
the glorious being of light suddenly disappears while shining high
in the heavens. Numerous demonic beings roar and bellow through the
heavens, dark figures appear on all sides. Zeus himself seems to
have vanished for the moment. It is an attack of the powers of
darkness on those of light. They are the Giants sprung from the
earth; Hades also propels his terrifying minions upwards; The earth
there in the west has split open, and from it rise those beings who
have made it their inexorable task to spread despair and terror
among mortals. The powers of death reign in the realm of life.
There, the black Furies howl, chase, as they drive before them those
laden with bloodguilt; is not Demeter, the goddess of the earth,
herself an Fury, now mingling with her sisters in black form? They
are under the command of the terrifying Persephassa, "the
destroyer," who rushes forth with the Gorgon's head before her,
whose gaze causes all who are struck to fall to the ground. But
deliverance is near. Already Zeus's thunder resounds through all the
shouting and wailing. The deity rises; with lightning in hand, he
stands against every enemy. Or suddenly, his daughter Athena leaps,
resplendent in armor, chariot and all, from her father's mind. She
runs straight through her enemies; no one resists her. There, the
Sun God casts his brilliant radiance through the black masses. A
nurturing glow spreads throughout the entire sky. The powers of
darkness retreat. The realm of life reigns once more. The Gorgon's
head adorns Athena's chest like a trophy.
Such
were the images amidst which one lived. Their number was countless.
Almost no natural phenomenon did not evoke one. They accumulated.
Different individuals or tribes, or even the same ones in different
times, often saw different events in the same phenomenon. What arose
in the soul was not yet usually retained with full consciousness; it
possessed only a small amount of fixed, enduring ideas, by which one
was constantly, even involuntarily, dominated. The same image could
recur incessantly, as an unconscious or semi-conscious memory, with
a certain newness. Imagination still played a major role in these
childlike souls. One could hardly conceive of anything but living
beings in full activity, at a time when, for example, grammatical
gender was used to divide material objects into men and women; and
the mythical figures one envisioned were humans or animals, horses,
cows, birds, or combinations of various animals or of animal and
human. This animal world was that of the old Indo-European homeland,
the same one later encounters on the oldest Greek vases, alongside
the most easily imitated sea creatures (e.g., octopuses), which one
encountered on the coasts or islands of the Greek archipelago, in
the new homeland. Similar vases have come to light from all corners
of Greece and the islands, on Rhodes, Santorino, Cyprus, etc., but
above all through Schliemann's excavations at Mycenae. Had people
already begun to depict the world of the gods? For a long time, that
could not have been the case. Yet, from all parts of Greece and the
islands, very old carved stones have come to light, undoubtedly
representing an artistic practice that must have begun long before
the rise of Hellenic civilization proper, and it is on them that one
believes1) to observe those unadulterated Indo-European depictions
such as, for example, Erinnyes—horse-headed monsters with the
bodies of birds or insects.
A
time, however, approached when the spirit gradually began to outgrow
this old state of affairs. Peoples developed. By what causes?
Primarily by no other means than what turns a seed into a tree, a
boy into a man. Unbiased research has not yet progressed much beyond
this explanation, which is not really an explanation at all.
Geography, too, teaches us nothing more than the external
circumstances that exerted a facilitative or counteractive influence
on that development. Thus, like so many peoples before and after
him, Pelasg, primarily through the inherent power of human nature,
about which we know nothing further, transitioned into a new era of
spiritual development: imagination is increasingly displaced from
the all-pervading position it occupied in the soul; coherent,
ordered thought claims ever greater space. Even amidst ancient
mythological representations, one detects the influence of this
transition. Alongside the Sun God, who died in the west, or slept,
or languished in perpetual old age, people imagined an eternally
youthful being of light, rising uninterruptedly above the horizon
each morning with unchanging benevolence toward the human race.
Here, they truly had the fruit of reflection, a kind of fixed theory
to explain an incessantly recurring phenomenon. Such a being of
light was, or apparently became, Apollo, and herein perhaps lies the
beginning of the great significance this deity had for the entire
development of the Hellenes: people now had some guarantee that the
realm of darkness could never permanently overcome that of light;
the ever-returning God of Light also became the regulator of the
times. But of greater significance was the fact that the entire old
mythological worldview had to recede more and more. People gained a
greater understanding of the natural condition of things—of
clouds and winds, for example—and thus the myths themselves
lost their original natural meaning. Separated from natural
phenomena, the mythical figures became entirely independent
representations of the mind. They also acquired a more fixed form
as, with the development of thought, they increasingly lost the
character of momentary impressions.
And
something else went hand in hand with all this, which was equally
far-reaching. The mass of ancient mythical representations was
astonishing, but order was restored, not least in a way that, while
by no means exclusive, was nevertheless peculiar to the ancient
inhabitants of Greece and Italy. Myths were common representations
within a certain circle; some were more so, others less so, and now,
over time, within that circle, certain of these representations came
to the fore, in a manner similar to how a language, formed from a
mass of sounds that evoked roughly the same image, prefers some
without entirely rejecting others. Thus, here, generations and
families chose particular mythological beings as their gods, without
this necessarily implying even the slightest disdain for the others.
Tribes and peoples did the same—undoubtedly because the ruling
families made their gods into those of the people—and in this
way, certain mythical beings acquired the standard that is usually
accorded explicit recognition in certain circles. A somewhat fixed
system of national gods was acquired, to which one knew one had to
adhere above all. With the development of the state, stability was
found not only in the conditions of life, but even in the world of
thoughts and feelings. And with this went something that entirely
testified to the same spirit. Whereas in the past people often did
not know how to appease a hostile deity and, in desperation, tried
this or that sacrifice or exorcism, a certain kind of solid science
gradually developed in this regard. The aristocratic families who
founded the states and then usually gave them their own gods, whom
they had long known from experience, naturally knew best what had to
be done to remain in harmony with them. They knew the "divine
things, were the interpreters of divine law and sacred ordinances,"
and on this, often for centuries, much of their rule rested with
their fellow countrymen. But gradually, that ancient separation
between the gods of light and darkness acquired a very special
significance among the Pelasgian tribes, and it is here that the
clear development of the specifically Hellenic begins. It was a
period of ferment and development, which, as elsewhere, for example,
in Europe during the time of the Norsemen, preceded the
establishment of settled conditions in Greece as well. Peoples
departed to choose new abodes. Tribes and families, guided by their
gods, entrusted themselves to the vast sea, directing their
impetuous power now here, now elsewhere, or permanently establishing
themselves as lords and masters in a given country. Egyptian
historical tradition has known these movements since the fourteenth
century, and only in the eleventh century, with the Dorian migration
and the subsequent colonizations, did the end arrive. How could the
highly civilized Egyptian have suspected that among those wild
peoples who infested his seas, a civilization was sprouting that
would later become too powerful for him? It was a thirst for action
that drove them from their homes; they no longer felt so passive in
the face of what surrounded them; having gained a firmer footing
with the spirit world around them and having entered into a close
relationship with some of them as their special guides, they were
freed from overwhelming external pressure and entered the world with
a newly awakened sense of their own power. Yet, at the same time,
the contrast between the Gods of light and darkness pressed ever
more powerfully upon their minds. On the one hand, they imagined the
powers of the underworld, Hades, where the shades of the dead led a
desolate existence, the terrible Persephassa, the Erinnyes, who in
blind rage chase the blood-guilty one before them—onward,
onward, ever onward—to cling to him, to suck his blood, to let
him live, but to consume him alive—beings without reason or
human feeling. The thought of all this paralyzed their powers once
again. Fortunately, however, they were countered by the Gods of
Light: Apollo, the glorious God of Light, by whose nurturing
radiance one lived with full soul without disturbing afterthoughts,
or Athena, the powerful feminine being of light, daughter of Zeus,
who triumphed over the powers of darkness. Here one gains insight
into the motives that contributed to the choice of Gods. Which one
will one align with? The deepest inclinations of the soul toward the
mysterious, the most intimate sense of moral responsibility for
one's actions, speak for the powers of darkness. But against this
rises that tremendously effervescent life force, which makes the
bosom rise with the bliss of existence, which must enjoy and must
act, which is completely captivated by the present. Its urge proves
irresistible. "Hades one wants to forget"; one turns to
the Gods of light. With a certain degree of consciousness, a people
here chose a direction in life; the path is taken on which one will
achieve one's entire further development; the dawn of Hellenic
civilization has broken.
Apollo
became, first and foremost, the deity who met the needs of the soul
that were now especially felt. He, the God of Light, became the one
who wrested their prey from the powers of darkness, who freed the
poor suppliant from the weight of bloodguilt through purification
and atonement, and, as it were, restored him to life. He averted all
destruction and triumphed over disease. While the distressed soul
had of old turned to the divine beings themselves for guidance in
the midst of all the uncertainty that surrounded it, to whose oracle
one felt more drawn than to that of the kindly God of Light, whose
delight it was to spread blessings, with whom one knew one would
find a sympathetic heart, whom one could approach with so much more
boldness than the so awesome Zeus? With what rapture of soul did
they sing to him their Paian, the eternally youthful one, through
whom all creation seemed to truly feel the joy of existence for the
first time, that profound delight in life, where songs naturally
rise from the chest, just as the Deity led the way in song and
music, lyre in hand, followed by the Muses. Thus the Sun God became
a god of purification and noble joy of life, and he became so to
such a degree that his original significance faded completely into
the background. However, there was still enough myth-creating power
to establish a new being of light, Helios (the sun), in the vacant
place. It was an event significant in its consequences when—this
occurred already in distant times—a temple and oracle of
Apollo were established at Delphi, probably on the site of an
earlier sanctuary. Yet, this new spiritual direction also holds
great appeal for Athena, the exalted daughter of Zeus. In her
person, one begins to recognize oneself in his noblest aspirations.
It was she to whom the father entrusted his lightning; before her
fled the powers of darkness, the Giants, the sons of the Earth; she
triumphs through bravery and strength; she, the eternal virgin,
unclouded in mind, without desires, keeps her eye fixed unwaveringly
on the fulfillment of her task. There is a zest for work, a
self-satisfaction through exertion—that feeling which those
warlike tribes and families so abundantly enjoyed when their
homeland became too small for their deeds. It was of this bold
desire for action that Athena became the divine example, and
according to Homer, "war was at the heart of men," "the
distaff and the loom to women."[1] Here too, serious effort was
possible; here too, the Deity took precedence (Ergane). But after
the arduous endeavor comes the glorious satisfaction of having
achieved the goal of the effort, the bliss of the victor. And this
too was a gift from the Deity. From her, as from her formidable
father, descended Nike, the Goddess of Victory.
What
else is it that appears before us here than the Hellene in his
peculiar state of mind and striving? New life had been infused into
those old mythical figures, which had remained in the soul after the
retreat of natural meaning, and indeed that same new life that one
felt awakening within oneself. Some gods, such as those mentioned,
were, by their original meaning, more suited than others to absorb
such a new content; in general, however, the world of the gods
increasingly became the epitome of that of humans, as they perceived
it sensually and came to know it through interaction, not least as
they experienced their inner soul sensations in their own minds.
This is truly not particularly Hellenic. Where is or isn't the Deity
presented more or less humanly? Yet perhaps nowhere do we see this
to such a degree as here, among the Hellenic peoples. People had
turned to the gods of light because they wished to free themselves
from all oppressive feelings of fear and uncertainty. With a calm,
free soul, they wanted to approach the Deity, and they succeeded all
the more successfully the more they made it conform to themselves.
The mixed forms of animal and human, which often came to mind at the
mention of a divine name in the past, became increasingly human. The
horse-men (centaurs) and certain winged beings (Eros, etc.) were
ultimately the only things left of the old ideas. From ancient
times, the mythical figures were both active and passive beings;
their sexual intercourse, in particular, often provided the solution
to numerous questions concerning the universe and its phenomena.
Where does the sun come from, for example? From the mating, for
example, of the shining Vault of Heaven (Zeus) and Darkness
(Kaluke). These, however, were more or less mere notions of the
moment; several entirely independent explanations could be given for
the same phenomenon. Drawing conclusions was not considered. Now,
however, was the time for it. The myths are linked together. One is
struck by the fact that one and the same divine being now mates with
one, then with the other; that he mates with someone, for example,
who has also been known as his mother or sister; that the deity
defeated by another is actually his father, etc., etc. The gods are
tainted by fornication, incest, and parricide! One thinks one
observes a certain reluctance to draw such conclusions in the Vedas.
It is undoubted that they were not shunned in the least among the
Greeks, that they were even explored with a certain predilection,
and that nowhere does the world of the gods find such a perfect
partnership.
The
habit of people with human vicissitudes, passions, virtues, and
vices became like theirs. In the time of Homer's poems, it was
completely so. Without these clearly defined human divine figures,
later Greek art is unthinkable; only a mythology that was so highly
a reflection of human life could provide the material for a
literature like Greek in its highest development. Yet, the intensity
of the worship of God certainly suffered as a result. Moreover,
compared to such divine beings, the mysterious and symbolic could
only occupy a modest place. Among numerous ancient peoples, not
least among the Bactrians and Indians, so closely related to the
Greeks, the veneration of a single supreme being also managed to
break through into popular religion. Among the Greeks, only a few
faint traces of this remain. How completely different would the
Greek people have developed if, when they envisioned the gods of
life and death as two separate groups, they had chosen the latter
instead of the former? Not only would the emotional state have
remained more suited to conceptions of a more-than-human divine
being, but on Greek soil, a form of religion focused on the
afterlife would have developed, which would have shared some
striking characteristics, for example, with Catholicism. And this
rests on more than mere speculation. For we have pointed out that in
the choice between mythical figures, which plays such a role in the
development of that ancient religion, those who did not come to the
fore were not, therefore, entirely abandoned. This is nowhere more
evident than here. The gods of light retained great dominance; they
primarily governed life. Yet the right to these other religious
sentiments was also fully recognized, so much so that certain
institutions were created, the Mysteries of Demeter, in which they
were cultivated; these, like all other religious rites, were a
matter for the state. They were for "initiates"; but not
only was it a very common practice to be initiated, but any
understanding that one form of religion excluded another was
lacking. Different institutions were simply created for the various
needs that people felt awakened within them. Thus, the Mysteries
became the place for the sense of the incomprehensible and the
awareness of moral responsibility for one's actions with a view to
the afterlife. The symbolism and mystery of certain sacred displays
and of the elaborate ceremonies there brought the mind into a
silent, sacred mood; one sank into the holiest sensations: one had
beheld the divine itself, and thus one felt more clearly than ever
that one could never fully perceive it. By undergoing initiation,
one could cherish the hope of finding favor with the gods of the
underworld after death. Don't we involuntarily think of those
converts from early Christianity who were baptized on their
deathbeds when we read of someone who believed they had to be
especially careful to be initiated before their death?1) Thus, the
mysteries clearly demonstrate that the Greeks also harbored the
seeds of another religious development.
However,
it wasn't only in a particular form of religious veneration that the
gods of darkness were recognized and honored; they also continue to
occupy a significant place in general religious tradition. There,
they certainly experienced the profound influence of the gods of
light. In their regard, too, people wanted to free the soul as much
as possible from all fear. With the Erinnye-Demeter, this wasn't
difficult; she was the ancient, beneficent goddess of agriculture.
In the interior of Arcadia, the land where the new spirit had the
hardest time penetrating, people long retained the memory of the
"black Erinnye-Demeter" with a horse's head entwined with
snakes, but generally speaking, this deity too soon came to be
considered entirely human. Her terrifying sisters, the Erinnyes,
were eventually also greeted as Eumenides, "the benevolent
ones," or altars were erected for them—the unreasonably
vengeful ones of old—as the "Semnai," the goddesses
of sacred seriousness, the upholders of a moral world order. This
was never entirely successful; the Erinnyes remained, alongside
Semnai and Eumenides; their figures never assumed a completely fixed
form, least of all a friendly and human one; people shuddered at the
mention of her name; they feared, in some way or another, even
without intending to do so. In the case of blood guilt especially,
the oldest offense known to human society, it was as if these were
truly ancient horrors from the underworld broken loose.
This fear
of the Erinnyes kept alive the idea of a mysterious
divine power at work among the gods, who were increasingly
descending to the ordinary human level. This fear, however, also
persisted in other ways; the human mind, especially then, often
harbored the most contradictory ideas without any hesitation. Moira
(fate), an inexorable power, which, according to Greek folk belief,
was half and half independent of the gods, always had something very
supernatural about it. Likewise, atê (ἂτη), the
destruction that the gods send to humans, which suddenly clouded the
mind, which struck when unexpected, fell completely outside the
ordinary human realm. This too, like so many ancient
representations, had something of a person, and had it, like other
abstract concepts such as persuasion, Peitho, become a clearly
defined human figure in the Greek way, then this divine exercise of
power would also have come entirely within the sphere of the human,
and Atê would have become a messenger or helper of this or
that deity, probably of Zeus, just as Peitho, for example, is one of
Aphrodite. A principle of such a complete personalization reveals
itself in the Homeric hymns; however, this was not pursued further.
More generally, numerous ancient folk tales, concerning the
unexpected way in which the gods caused human arrogance to fall,
concerning people who sought to evade divine decrees but thereby
fulfilled them, etc., preserved a fairly lively sense of a divine
power whose ways differ from those of humans. Thus, there was still
some counterbalance to the complete incarnation of the Deity, and
that this exerted an ennobling influence even on the purest
Hellenism, we will see later.
And besides all this, the Deity of
worship was undoubtedly not quite the same as that of mythology. The
gods of natural phenomena had become mythical figures, but the
divine beings could also reside in inanimate objects (fetishes),
often blocks of wood, and from there exert their magical power. The
oldest Greek idols were such blocks of wood (ξόανα),
dwellings of the Deity, half and half the Deity himself. These often
acquired a human form to some extent, now more or less, but in the
perception of those who venerated them, they never fully became an
actual image; one was always primarily impressed by the
incomprehensibility of divine miraculous power. The religious acts
were prayer and sacrifice; Votive offerings, so common among the
Greeks, were originally little more than sacrifices; in connection
with these, other forms of worship developed in later times, as we
shall see. Among the Indians, the sacrificial fire, the sacrificial
drink, and the power of prayer itself were divine powers that, above
all, sustained the world; through meticulous observance of an
incredibly developed ritual of prayers, sacred incantations, and
sacrifices, the Brahmin, as it were, held the universe in order.
Among the Greeks and Romans, such immoderate exaggeration is not to
be found; yet the philosophy underlying their religious practices is
entirely the same; only, as might be expected, prayer and sacrifice
here sustain "families and the state" more than the world
in general. This high significance of sacrifice is particularly
evident, for example, in the sacred fire of Hestia among the Greeks,
and even more so in that of Vesta among the Romans. If that were
extinguished, then the very existence of the state seemed to be
jeopardized. What punishment did the Vestal Virgin deserve, whose
negligence was to blame? Among the Greeks, as noted above, it was
often the nobility who were expected to know the sacrifices required
in all cases (we did not speak of the Romans, but it was not much
different there); one now realizes more clearly how great the
prestige they owed to this must have been. In Greece, as in Brahmin
India, orthodoxy—actually, even that word is inappropriate
here—consisted much more in ceremonial strictness, in
"offering and praying"1) than in faithful adherence to
religious tenets; although, of course, this whole matter plays an
infinitely more modest role for the Greek than for the Indian. It
seems undoubted that the Greek, in his sacrifice and prayer, was
dominated by ideas which he had already brought in embryo from his
homeland common to the Indians and the other Indo-European tribes.
Just as the old idols were imbued with those old religious
practices, which one still feels attached to, some magical power was
attributed to them, the idea of a miraculous deity was
alive. Later, many people completely dulled all sense of the
significance of these ancient actions. Such ideas of a more or less
magical deity were, in themselves, no more sublime than those of
simply human deities, but they kept the mind open to the mysterious
and allowed for more exalted concepts much more easily.
People
were not too attached, especially where the ancient world is
concerned, to a distinction between religious and less religious
peoples. Nearly all ancient peoples are primarily religious,
although the religious ideas of one people are certainly much closer
to ours than those of another. This is also very true of the Greeks.
Perhaps nowhere did religion dominate life more completely than
here. After the birth of a child, many ceremonies and sacrifices;
During the annual festival of the Apaturia, the newborns of the past
year were also received into the phratry, a community of citizens,
through sacrifices; religious festivities, in Athens and elsewhere,
marked the end of childhood for boys and girls, with the boy being
received among the Ephebi (young men), the girl being dedicated to
Artemis; the solemnization of marriage was also primarily a
religious ceremony, no less so than the funeral and burial of the
deceased. Here, religion, like the Catholic Church, accompanied man
from birth to the grave. Yet, even beyond all established customs,
the Greek lived, as it were, with his deity. No hope or fear, no joy
or sorrow, did not share it. Everywhere, too, she was so close to
him. For each of his needs, he found a divine being to whom he could
pray for relief; Along the roads of a "pious land"1), such
as Attica, one saw with every step, as it were, a sacred place, an
altar, a statue, a temple, where the nearness of the Deity was felt
more vividly. And wasn't there still something left of that ancient
creative force from the time of unhindered myth-making, when no
nascent state yet established specific forms of the gods, when
divine beings were heard in the rustling of the trees and the murmur
of the streams; when one repeatedly saw the same forms of the gods
with a certain surprise of newness, like the gods of Olympus, born
from their father's head; when mythical beings, as it were, arose
and disappeared simultaneously with the sensations that gave them
being? Not only could one still populate the forests with satyrs,
the streams and rivers with nymphs and river gods, almost to one's
heart's content, outside the more official pantheon, but even that
pantheon itself was in no great danger of fossilizing into figures
whose names no longer resonated with the mind. One could easily find
a satisfactory expression for each of these gods, and if one didn't
find one, the gods appeared in numerous capacities, outgrowths of
their mythical origins or oldest moral meaning—for example,
Apollo the rejecter, averter of evil, soothsayer, etc.—well,
what prevented one from continuing in that direction and linking the
representations for which one sought a mythical personification to
one of the existing god types, whose character, more or less
beautiful, often barely warranted a separate epithet? Thus the gods
acquire special titles for these legions. Thus, to name a few
examples from the vast majority, Athens became a champion of the
city (πϱόμαχος), a goddess
of the council and popular assembly (βουλαία,
άγοϱάια), and of knightly
games (ιͨππία); yet tradition also
relates that Diomedes, after a violent storm, founded a temple for
her at Mothone under the new name of Goddess of the Winds
(ἀνεμωτιϛ). She undoubtedly
was anything but this originally. The gods repeatedly encroach upon
each other's domain, and indeed, something of a sense of the
universal divine asserts itself here. The high significance of
religion for political life has already been noted. Families,
lineages, and subdivisions of the state, like the Greeks themselves,
had their own gods and cults. When the first major attempt was made
from Delphi to unite various Greek states into a single entity—when
the Delphic Amphictyonic League was founded—a system of twelve
gods had to be devised, through whose union they could join forces.
It was utterly impossible for the Greeks to imagine a state without
religion, and as long as the Greek states existed, no more important
matters of state were known than the organization of religious
festivals and the erection of temples, the making of statues and the
like. All opposition between the spiritual and the secular, by which
one particularly understands the political, was completely alien to
the mind of the Greek.1) Separation, discord between church and
state, has only really existed in our civilized world, at least in
its true sense, since Christianity emerged entirely independently in
the Roman Empire and only reluctantly conformed to the forms of that
empire.
No
wonder that the influence of its religion can be discerned to a high
degree in the entire development of such a people. We know the
spiritual direction associated with the worship of the gods of
light. The Greek walked about the world with his head held high; he
was convinced that he had a place to occupy, that he had to be
something in his own right. His religion also accustomed him least
of all to the idea of a power, before which he, as it
were, sank into insignificance. "Gods, heroes, men"2), was
this indeed only a difference of degree, not of essence? The
Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, who could completely efface
themselves before their gods, could also do so much more easily
before their rulers. When the migrations of peoples ceased in
Greece, when thus the period of formation mentioned above had ended,
republics were established everywhere. The East was and remained the
land of divine kingship. In the Egyptian king lived the Godhead.
With words of reverent admiration, with which an Indo-European
people would, for example, glorify the mighty resurrection of the
solar hero, the king is greeted in Egyptian texts when he rises to
fight his enemies1); already at least 1,500 years before Christ, the
Babylonian king boasts that the gods have "given him dominion
over the peoples, that they have placed their heavenly weapons in
his hands"2). For the Greeks, not the individual's droit divin,
but the entire community of family or state, as we have seen, bore a
divine character. This was, indeed, the great force that held them
together, alongside which, however, developed the so-called
aesthetic concept of a harmonious union of free individuals through
legal organization (εὺνομία).
How different among the similarly related Germanic peoples, where
the same sense of individuality all too severely hampered the
vigorous development of the state.
That
a noble joy of life permeated the soul of the people of Apollo, that
round dances, music, song, and poetry became the highest necessities
of life there, is only natural. Even though the peoples had become
calm, something of the old thirst for action still remained;
exertion demanded the fresh vitality. Racecourses and wrestling
grounds, gymnasiums, and palaces sprang up everywhere, where people
could constantly demonstrate their courage and exercise their
strength, even outside of war. In all their efforts and enjoyments,
they felt a profound need for one another. What delighted the soul
was all the more so when they could share their joy with others, and
what they knew they were capable of, whether on the gymnasium
grounds or in string music, song, or poetry, they felt the most
lively need to see validated by universal recognition, making it, as
it were, a possession. Gymnastic and musical competitions were the
order of the day, and generally, the Greeks surrendered without
restraint to the truly human urge to distinguish themselves among
their fellow human beings (φιλογιμία).
In the powerful self-esteem that flowed through the breast here, it
was the human being that one respected within himself, but the human
being as a whole, in his noble form, his aspirations, his powers,
his inclinations, just as the Gods were, after all, his sublime
image. There was no room here for disparaging the body as a bearer
of baser desires. One felt the deepest obligation to maintain and
develop all that was noble one was conscious of possessing, and this
feeling applied not least to the body, for which one was highly
proud. This, too, gave gymnastics such high significance; bathing
and anointing were a matter of great importance; health and strength
were almost nowhere so valued as here. Whatever admiration physical
beauty inspired; no covering, however slight, could obscure the body
of the wrestling or running youth in any way. And while one
generally felt oneself as a human being and in every human
inclination in closer connection with the Deity, this was especially
the case with the passion of love. With a fire and fervor
reminiscent of a Hebrew poet, Sappho implores the goddess of love,
Aphrodite, 'not to bind her soul under a yoke to press down
suffering'2), but to descend in all glory and 'with a smile on the
divine face to ask her what she suffers and why she calls upon her.'
'Whom do you want me to bring to you in love, who, Sappho, has done
you harm?' Already the poetess feels, as it were, the immediate
presence of the Deity; with powerful assurances, it promises her its
help. - Was it any wonder that this passion was admitted without any
reservation? How overwhelmingly its power is revealed in another
song by the same poetess1): 'that man seems to me like the Gods, who
sits there opposite you and speaks to you sweetly in your presence,
enchanting in his laughter; my heart races through my bosom; My
tongue is speechless, suddenly I glow over my body, I see nothing,
the sounds whistle past my ears, a shudder comes over me,’
etc. However, one also knew the deep melancholy of love2), or the
lovely and sweet, as for example Alcaios3) wants to add something to
his ‘violet-plaiting, pure, sweet-smiling Sappho, but shyness
holds him back.’ Passion was lived through in all its nuances.
Undoubtedly the Greeks here made just as good a distinction between
the permissible and the impermissible as any people who has reached
even the slightest degree of civilization, but what naturally could
not take root here was the idea that in the name of religion one had
to impose restrictions on the demands and inclinations of one’s
human nature, although undoubtedly the beginnings of asceticism are
evident in the mysteries during a certain period of Lent. The
boundaries of what was permissible were drawn rather broadly and
vaguely, and they were crossed without much qualm. On the other
hand, there was a clear sense that, within passion itself, one must
uphold one's dignity as a human being. Within the realm of what was
permitted there fell even the most repulsive associations we find
today, and yet even the most impure passion was often, as it were,
entirely interwoven with the most exquisite feelings of sympathy and
friendship.
In
general, among the Greeks, passion more often than elsewhere arose
from enthusiastic admiration of truly human beauty, so that
spiritual sympathies, feelings of tenderness, and sensual
inclinations followed rather than preceded it. No wonder, then, that
feminine beauty was known there in every manifestation and every
shade. No less, however, was there an open eye for the splendor of
the pristine male body, for the sweetness that is often inherent in
the blossoming boy; One felt oneself completely pulsated with
enthusiasm as the handsome youth trotted victoriously across the
racecourse, the sense of triumph seeming to imbue him with every
movement. From one gymnastics training ground to the next, one
enjoyed the sight of these shapely boys in a thousand poses and a
thousand different groupings; many a beautiful image on vases still
conveys the feeling with which one was inspired. The allure of
masculine beauty stood in stark contrast to that of feminine beauty.
In the same way that the name of a beautiful girl was often written
on walls and partitions, the artists who painted the vases often let
almost no work leave their hands without brushing on it the words:
"This or that (boy's name) is beautiful"—the most
common vase inscription. Likewise, Phidias was said to have placed
the name of his chosen young friend on the finger of one of his
gods' statues, using the same formula "Pantarkes is beautiful."
Among the reliefs on the throne of Olympian Zeus, one found the same
youth who had won a victory at Olympia—what a stroke of luck
for the artist!—tying the band that was to support the victory
wreath around his head. The freestanding statues Phidias created
were almost exclusively of immortal gods; however, among the very
few of humans—it was even believed to be the only one—the
same Pantarkes also appears as the victor. Compare this, for
example, with the predilection with which Rubens and Rembrandt
depicted their women individually or in larger compositions, and
similar works. Among the ancients, Elpinike, Kimon's beautiful
sister, appeared in a painting by Polygnotus, and for Praxiteles,
his hetary Phryne was a favorite model.
Sensual
charm sharpened the eye for human beauty. It is encouraging to note
that although the Greek threw himself almost unreservedly into the
broadest stream of sensuality, his noble human nature was not
destroyed. All the same, the more one penetrates ancient
civilization, the more deeply one realizes the colossal task
Christianity later had to fulfill there with its asceticism.
On
this general foundation, the unique Hellenic civilization emerged.
From which people did this development originate? The principal
so-called Hellenic tribes are the Dorians and Ionians, but the
beginning of the movement is most likely to be found on the southern
islands, especially Crete. The Greeks themselves also had some idea
of it. According to tradition, it was Cretans who
founded the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi; the mythical origin of
art with Daedalus brings us to the same island; even in unnatural
passion, the Hellene considered the Cretans his predecessors. In
more historical times, however, after the Dorian migration (c.
1100), the development of Greece for centuries rested primarily on
the Dorian and Aetolian tribes, who had then settled in the
Peloponnese. There existed, to a great extent, the power that could
create and maintain states, but there also existed a noble sense of
self-worth, which exuded freedom and demanded action. There, one
learned to strive for male virtue, not for material gain but for its
own sake; the highest national idea, the unity of all Hellenes
against the barbarians, was especially cherished there. For
centuries, the soul of those who aspired to the higher was directed
toward Sparta and Olympia. 2) Otherwise, the Ionian and Aeolian
developed on the islands and coasts of Greece and Asia Minor. Here,
there was no such dominant ideal aspiration, which gives the soul a
definite direction and always confines it, to a greater or lesser
extent, within a fixed circle of ideas and feelings. The Aeolian and
Ionian were more inclined to surrender themselves unreservedly to
every impulse of life. Uninhibitedly, they opened their senses and
mind to all impressions and sensations from outside. The most
diverse moods took possession of him in turn; he knew the most
enthusiastic enjoyment and the deepest melancholy; exuberant joy and
exuberant sorrow. Nowhere in Greece were the sounds of song and
string music, or the tripping beat of the round dances, heard more
frequently; yet nowhere, too, was such a wild outcry of mourning
found at the corpses of beloved departed ones: wild cries pierced
the air; people beat their chests with violent blows; they tore
their clothes or wallowed in the mud. Here passions glowed and
seethed; that of love manifested itself here above all in its
unbridled natural force. Here, too, a powerful desire for action and
a noble striving for masculine virtue prevailed; however, more
easily than among the Dorians, people here fell back into the
comfortable pleasures of life. They certainly did not shy away from
the most strenuous exertion, but gladly surrendered themselves to
every inclination of the moment. The carefree continuation of life,
without binding oneself or allowing others to bind them, held the
greatest appeal here. Naturally, however, the soil here was very
suitable for every new endeavor. Directions were taken that could
certainly be considered alongside those of Sparta and Olympia.
Maritime traffic always exerts a great influence, and this was bound
to be especially true here. Especially since, also after the Dorian
migration, colonists from the Greek peninsula settled on the islands
and the west coast of Asia Minor, much life and activity began to
prevail there. Trade developed, and contacts were established with
Asian states, especially Lydia. Along this path, Babylonian weights
and measures were learned; pre-weighed pieces of precious metal were
used as a means of exchange, following the Lydian example; in the
Ionian cities on the west coast of Asia Minor, all trade began to
rely on the use of actual money, minted by the cities and therefore
of completely reliable value. This was one of those innovations
that, due to its all too obvious utility, was destined to triumph
within a short time. It also made itself felt in the Peloponnese. A
global trade arose not only among the Ionians and Aeolians, but also
in Corinth, Sicyon, Megara, Argos, and Aegina. It was an invention
for social development no less significant than that of steam and
electricity in our day.
In
ancient times, the Greek was primarily agriculturist. Under the
authority of the nobility, they lived in the countryside in the same
environment, so that no ideas of change arose in them. As already
noted, the Greeks felt that state and society rested on divine
institution. Naturally, it was easier for the colonist to be freed
from the power of old traditions. Moreover, the suddenly established
new states on the Asia Minor coast were naturally lighter in
structure than those that had gradually emerged on the mainland over
the centuries. This republican order was very easily established
here.
The
weight of the situation, which, as noted above, permeated Greece
after the Dorian migration, overshadowed royal authority. However,
the once-awakened republican self-esteem could easily go further,
and the shocks that the ancient tradition had received ultimately
undermined the prestige of the nobility, the upholders of divine
decrees. The sea voyages made the souls of the Ionians and Aeolian
more susceptible than ever to new impressions, but what is
especially significant is that the new world trade completely
reversed social relations. Trade and commerce became sources of
wealth more than agriculture; the nobles participated in this, but
alongside them also the people of lower classes.
These
not only emerged from the circle of patriarchal subservience of
rural life, but also placed themselves alongside the ancient
lineages with wealth and influence. Revolution after revolution
broke out. States like the Ionian and Aeolian were naturally not
strong or flexible enough to absorb new principles like these and
remain firmly grounded, or even to gain new strength. And indeed,
even the mobile, irritable Ionians and Aeolian lacked the
self-control and perseverance in one direction that were especially
required here. It was as unstable in their own souls as in state and
society. People often felt anxiously tossed to and fro; "the
waves—to use the image with which the Aeolian poet Alcaios
described the situation—rise on either side of the ship, the
storm howls; water has penetrated the bottom, the sails are
torn"—one might add, however, that the crew was also
lacking, who, under such circumstances, are the only ones capable of
steering the ship into a safe harbor. Meanwhile, the Lydians also
sought to extend their rule over the Greek cities on the coast of
Asia Minor. It fell to the Aeolian and Ionian to lead the first
Hellenic war of liberation against the barbarians. How they lived in
grandiose ideas! It was as if one were witnessing once again with
one's own eyes the heroic deeds of their semi-divine ancestors,
Achilles and Ajax. What a noble enthusiasm that freedom inspired,
now that one had to risk one's life for it! Yet, one also readily
lent one's ear to the calculating mind. Did it really make such a
difference whether one joined the Lydians or remained on one's own?
The Lydian, after all, had a strong love for all things Hellenic, he
revered the Hellenic gods and consulted their oracles; one might
almost say that by allying oneself with them, Hellenism was actually
expanded rather than contracted. Now, his strictly monarchical
disposition was certainly not entirely in keeping with the Hellenic
way of thinking and feeling; but couldn't one be incorporated into
the great Lydian empire and still enjoy all the real advantages of
urban independence? Indeed, now that one had learned the power of an
easy medium of exchange, wasn't there also considerable advantage in
establishing close ties with a state that commanded such a supply of
precious metal? These grounds truly had a considerable right.
However, they were the grounds on which, at all times, material
interest and submission to the supposedly inevitable were
recommended as opposed to the ideal.
The
coastal regions bowed their heads. They lacked the inner harmony and
mutual connection that would have been necessary for the success of
their endeavors. More and more, however, it became clear that a
close identification with the East, even where one was not subject
to the Lydian, indeed endangered the Hellene, that the noblest
fervor of his soul would be extinguished, and that he would no
longer be able to maintain even freedom, the most glorious good he
knew. The internal turmoil already made it necessary for a man with
unlimited power to occasionally emerge to restore peace and legal
certainty to the state. Ambitious noble families set themselves up
to assume princely authority, which, after all, they believed,
perhaps sincerely and certainly not without reason, was also in the
interest of their fatherland. In a Lydian word, it is believed, they
called themselves tyrants. Many readily accepted this. Even under
such rulers, after all, all that was beautiful and glorious that
life offered could be preserved, indeed promoted; even a moderate
liberty would undoubtedly be truly possible under their auspices.
So, once again, it's all a matter of arguing for the practical
against the ideal. Tyrants also appear in the Peloponnese,
especially due to the influence of the Ionian population there,
subject to the Dorians, who, with the help of such a tyrant,
rebelled against the Dorians.
The
aristocracies he hoped to assert themselves; namely, in Argos,
Megara, Corinth, and Sicyon. Here, however, Dorian idealism emerges
in its full force. Sparta becomes the arch-enemy of the tyrants. One
owes it to the Dorians that, in this era, the divine spark of
idealism in the soul of the Hellene was not extinguished.
In
general, the Hellenic disposition develops more broadly in the
Ionian and Aeolian than in the Dorian; however, there again, the
strength that knows how to establish and sustain was lacking. The
people in whom the full Hellenic life would be able to unfold
without losing its foundation—one that would also do justice
to all the tendencies of human nature, but would know how to ennoble
them by controlling them—namely, the people of the
Athenians—was still only just emerging. Let us now examine its
development, again beginning from the earliest times.
The
Attic peninsula, a region approximately 1,000,000 inhabitants, was
already early on—in that era of maritime expeditions and
colonizations—where, however, several Phoenician, but
especially Asian Minor, settlements had established themselves. The
bond of family, as is usual among semi-developed peoples, held
particular significance. Here, too, extended lineages, each, as it
were, formed a world unto itself. A common semi-divine progenitor
was venerated, although the original family bond had probably
already very early extended beyond actual relatives. Here, as
elsewhere, the deep sense of mutual responsibility led to the duty
of blood revenge for the murdered member of the family; marriages,
births, the reception of boys into the circle of men, were matters
of common concern; those united in life were also united in death:
each family had its own burial place. It has already been noted that
the Greek-Italian tribes, in particular, regarded human unions as
based on divine decrees. This was especially true of the ancient
inhabitants of Attica. Nowhere was that feeling of nameless anguish
more acute when, through intentional or involuntary violation of
these decrees, the moral world was, as it were, torn apart and the
Erinnye had broken free; nowhere was a deeper need felt for
purification ceremonies and the world-restorative power of
sacrifice. It has also been noted how the Erinnye exerted themselves
especially in cases of bloodguilt, and the ancient regulations
regarding this matter were primarily considered to be among those
divine decrees. In Attica, and undoubtedly elsewhere as well, though
very clearly here, this had been developed into the idea that the
divine constitution of society was endangered by every shedding of
blood, even the most innocent. Thus, not only was blood vengeance
here largely a sacred duty to the community to which one belonged,
but also that which wounded or killed without intent or law—probably
even the blood avenger himself, who had indeed fulfilled a sacred
duty—had to be rendered harmless to that community through
purification or banishment. The awareness of being bound by a higher
bond in one's family was also very vivid here; the communal
sacrificial ceremonies, in which this feeling was strongly fostered,
were considered of great importance. Just as ancient Germanic
families took under their protection less fortunate people, without
considering them to be relatives, the Attic families similarly had a
following of less privileged individuals, connected to the family
through participation in these sacrificial ceremonies, thus through
religious ties (orgeons).
In
Attica, too, as so often happens, the actual state developed
primarily out of the need for collective national defense; the
plundering, especially of the wild pirates, necessitated
cooperation. Political centers were established in numerous
fortresses established by powerful families, behind which they could
take refuge. Soon, the so-called Erechthids, a family that venerated
Athena and had established its fortress and sanctuary of that deity
on a steep rock in the center of the country, acquired a kind of
sovereignty. Later tradition named the mythical Cecrops as its
founder.
It
was a weak rule that was established as a result, the hegemony of a
king over almost independent dukes. The internal wars, probably not
uncommon in the past, did not cease entirely. The powerful Eumolpids
of Eleusis not only refused to submit to any overlordship, but,
eager for supremacy, even attempted to establish themselves on the
rock of Athene
to
establish the worship of their god Poseidon. After a tremendous
effort, the sons of Erechtheus were victorious, though apparently
some concessions had to be made to the opponent, and henceforth,
alongside the chief goddess Athena, certain honor was accorded to
Poseidon-Erechtheus. In later times, legend recounted a struggle
between Athena and Poseidon over the rule of the Attic land, which
ended with the former's victory. Still—we are still more than
a thousand years removed from the beginning of our era—the
Ionian and Carian tyrants, from whom so much suffering had been
suffered, still roamed the eastern seas. They had even occupied the
nearest Euboea and were constantly at hand from there. Even among
these wild wanderers, however, a need for organization arose, which
was otherwise more characteristic of the Dorians; Perhaps
connections with the Apollo sanctuary at Delphi aroused this need
among the Ionians. Be that as it may, Delos became a common
religious and national center for the Ionians of the islands and the
Asian west coast. Just as in the 10th and 11th centuries AD many
Norsemen felt deeply influenced by the ecclesiastical and chivalric
ideas of that time, so too do we see Ionians today acting as
representatives of higher political and religious principles. How
often does it also happen that savage tribes settle in a land that
had hitherto been the target of their attacks and then defend it
against others? Directly opposite Euboea, an entire colony of
Ionians settled in the Attic lands; they founded a state there, the
tetracity of Marathon and Oinu, which maintained constant contact
with Delos and Delphi. Just as, for example, Rollo the Norman
defended France against his kinsmen, so these Ionians defended the
Attic lands against the Ionian inhabitants of Chalcis on Euboea.
It
is no wonder that he who protected the land ultimately became its
ruler, whether amicably or violently. The legend has Ion, the son of
Apollo, or Xuthos, probably a double of this god, and Creousa, the
daughter of the Erechthees, ascending the Attic royal throne. Under
this Ionian rule, the Attic State was first completed. All
independent principalities were abolished; the various parts of the
country ceased to have their own political interests; only in one
place, Athens, would the common affairs of the country henceforth be
dealt with. The king would be supreme judge of all, and those who
had previously commanded supreme power in their district would now
be able to make their voices heard in the king's council. This is
the so-called Synoikismos, which the legend attributes to King
Theseus, an Ionian tribal hero. But it didn't stop there. The
adjacent families were united thirty by thirty into so-called
phratries; three phratries again into one tribe (phyle); four phyles
existed in this way in all. The phratries and phyles were considered
a wider family circle; newborns and newlyweds were introduced to the
phratry; centuries later, they too considered the murder and
manslaughter committed against one of their members as a matter
that, after the closest relatives, concerned them as well: just like
the family, the phratries and phyles were bound by a common cult of
gods; they honored the Ionian Apollo as the paternal god (Patroos),
along with the Pelasgian Zeus, the protector of the family hearth
(Zeus Herkeios). It was, after all, an Ionian institution, extending
over a Pelasgian people. Just as the Phylaeans did, the entire
state, now established, naturally acquired its common cults;
especially the festival in honor of Athena, celebrated on the
goddess's hill, now became, as the Panathenaia, a festival of the
entire Attic people. Sacred was the ancient bond of the family; the
state also grew up independently alongside the family in Attica, but
the Ionians created a bond around it, through which the entire
people acquired something of that intimate sense of cohesion that
characterized the ancient families; outside of these forms, a close
union of people among themselves was still unimaginable. Now that
the entire state had become a sacred family, the family could also
relinquish to it what it considered its most peculiar domain
everywhere: blood vengeance and its associated matters. There were
five blood tribunals on Attic territory; The most important cases,
those of premeditated unlawful murder, were tried on the steep hill
of Ares (the Areopagos); opposite the castle itself, close to the
sanctuary of the Eumenides, Semnai, the Erinnyes resided. The
relatives, the former blood avengers, became the accusers, supported
by the members of the phratries.
Perhaps
even more so than England to its Normans, thanked Attica for its
national unity and political organization to its Ionians. It was a
profound change in existing conditions brought about by the measures
described. Nothing more or less happened than that a civilized,
orderly state put an end to a disastrous and degenerating feudal
fragmentation; the memory remained that nowhere in Greece had the
right of fist been so quickly suppressed as in Attica. What a
completely different position the Attic nobility began to occupy
under the rule of the new institutions. Those who had previously led
religious ceremonies individually, each within their own lineage,
and seemed to possess the requisite knowledge of divine matters,
without which the community of the lineage could not be maintained,
were now, now that the state was believed to have been built from
the union of the lineages, jointly with the king considered the
experts on those divine decrees upon which the state rested. They
knew how—through what ceremonies and sacrifices—those
ordinances were to be upheld. They knew the laws and customs, also
divine in origin, by which one had to live; their knowledge
naturally directed them to government. Their dwellings, whether in
the countryside or in the city, were undoubtedly magnificent;
magnificent stud farms, a requirement of their station, testified to
their immense wealth; with submissive gratitude, the farmers of the
plains, the poor fishermen of the seacoasts, or the wretched
goatherds of the mountains, received the rich gifts of their noble
generosity; one looked up at them in deep awe as they stood proudly,
full of self-confidence, in their beautiful chariot, with the swift
charioteer beside them, driving the fiery four-in-hand. Yet, however
much all this might elevate him in the eyes of their lesser fellow
citizens, those who, as less entitled orgones, participated in the
political sacrifices, revered the nobility primarily for that
indispensable knowledge of the divine. Thus, the latter found its
most important task in promoting the highest interests of the common
fatherland; the city was the primary arena of its activity. Later,
after the Dorian migration, the power of this republican movement
was also felt in Athens, which, a natural product of Hellenic
intellectual development, as has already been demonstrated, then
made itself felt throughout Greece. Here, too, monarchical authority
gradually collapsed, and that of the originally co-ruling nobility
ultimately took its place. The monarchy, which had established the
unity of the country, fell. For centuries, however, people had been
accustomed to living together within the divine family community of
the state, and even the idea of retreating to their
districts in feudal independence no longer entered the nobility, who
stood at the head of that community.
With
what reverence did the inhabitants of Attica gaze upon the citadel
of Athena, what a sense of security it gave them to lay eyes on the
sacred dwelling place of that "protector of the city, who gives
victory and always protects"1). Throughout the Attic
countryside, she, the Attic City Goddess, was venerated alongside
the other gods2), but nowhere did they feel more at home in her own
territory than on that hill of her choosing. There she lived—not
to mention her small shrine as Goddess of Victory—in the
mighty house of the Athenian tribal hero Erechtheus,3) the double
temple, in the rear of which one found altars to Poseidon,
Erechtheus, and Boetes, the semi-divine progenitor of the highly
noble line of priests of the Goddess, the Boetes. In the main
chamber one saw the rather shapeless wooden statue of the Goddess,
adorned with a splendid robe, a helmet on her head, a spear beside
her—the most holy thing that had descended from heaven itself.
One gazed at it with trembling, as if expecting a miracle at any
moment; was it not as if it could instantly come to life and begin
to move? How many a persecuted arm had fallen powerless before it,
arms wrapped around it, invoking the protection of the Deity.1) In
an outbuilding stood the same first olive tree, which the goddess
had caused to rise there when she disputed Poseidon over the
possession of the land; the spring, supposedly filled with seawater,
which Poseidon had caused to spring from the rock on that same
occasion with a blow of his trident, was also known to have been
pointed out. Athena, however, had triumphed through her far more
beautiful gift; Attica had since become the land of olives par
excellence. Never, however, did the fortress attract all the
inhabitants of the land more than on the occasion of the great
festivals. The "festival of ablutions" was especially
sacred", the Plunteries; the crowd stood in silent attention
around the house of Erechtheus; one was not allowed to approach it
too closely at this time; ropes were stretched around it to
determine how far one could go. However, the assembly of the highly
noble Praxergids2), men and women, entered the enclosure; they were
the only ones permitted to do so. And no wonder, for the men must
remove the helmet and spear from the statue, the women its garments;
not everyone is permitted to behold the unveiled deity. After a
while, they emerged with the statue itself, again hidden from the
view of the unconsecrated crowd by some covering. The procession
began to move towards the west; a stream of people followed to the
seashore, where the statue was to undergo its sacred ablution. After
this was completed, it was returned to its original location and
again provided with its garments, helmet, and spear. More genuine
enjoyment was experienced at the Panathenaic festival, especially in
the days preceding the actual religious ceremonies, when, before
their appearance, the apobats, charioteers, horsemen, and
Pyrrhicians would compete. These were ancient, venerable displays
that one witnessed; hadn't apobats already been performed by
Erecthonios, the semi-divine disciple of the goddess, during the
ancient celebration of the Panathenaic festival? Hadn't Theseus
himself invented the so-called war games1) involving horsemen or
chariots? Wasn't it as if the times of Homer had returned when one
saw the noble warrior, helmeted and shielded, running past him
alongside his charioteer, Diomedes alongside Sthenelos? And didn't
one involuntarily think of the fleet-footed Achilles when one
suddenly saw the warriors, the parabats, with their three-crested
helmets, leaping to one side from the apobat's chariots—which
were designed for this purpose—and continuing for a time
alongside the chariot in a race, the contest that had begun in a
race? The charioteers turned their attention now to the runner, then
to their horses. When they had progressed so far in the racetrack
that the race had to become a race again, the charioteer was alert
to turn the chariot at the crucial moment so that the apobat could
easily leap onto it without losing the course. All victors in one of
the contests received a substantial reward, consisting of several
jars of the finest oil, obtained from olive trees cut from the
sacred tree in the house of Erechtheus. But once again, they felt
themselves placed before the Blessed Sacrament when the sacred night
of the festival had arrived, a moonless summer night, for the
Panathenaia were celebrated in our month of August before the new
moon. Torches illuminated the darkness of the night on the hill of
Pallas-Athena. Strong youths, armed with helmets and shields,
performed the ancient war dance, the pyrriche; arranged in a line,
they performed the same movements, leaping up and descending in
time. Men's voices sang a song in honor of the "warlike castle
goddess, the feared deity, the destroyer of castles, the warlike
one, the tamer of peoples, the bravest maiden"3), but women's
voices were also heard, along with the rhythmic footsteps of round
dances. Finally, however—at least, that's how it seems to be
imagined4)—a procession of beautifully dressed women and
girls, accompanied by torches, began to move through the castle. Two
of the four arrephors, noble girls who had been dedicating
themselves to the goddess's service for a time, were led down to the
sacred cries of the women (ὸλολυγή)
and on to a sanctuary of the Eumenides, Semnai. There they descended
into a subterranean cave, where they deposited something they had
worn on their heads all this time, something sacred, the true nature
of which no one knew.
The
ancient Erinnyes had, after all, been transformed into Eumenides by
the Goddess of Light. After the night, a great feast day followed.
The Arrephors had to carry something from that cave back to
Erechtheus's house, and besides that, the Goddess also had to bring
the beautiful new robe (peplos), which priestesses, Arrephors, and
perhaps other women as well had made. The Arrephors and the peplos
bearers went first, then followed noble maidens, carrying the
baskets in which the sacrificial knives and other sacrificial
implements were kept, canephors, and then oxen for the sacrifices;
the procession organizers stood aside, apobats, the chariots, and
the horsemen of the martial games brought up the rear. Music and
song undoubtedly accompanied the whole procession. The Attic people
followed this procession as closely as possible. When the peplos and
the sacred objects which the arrephoras carried had been laid down
in the temple and the sacrificial smoke from the hecatombs of the
great altar as the city rose up on the fortress, people felt safer
than ever under the protection of the City Goddess, and under that
protection, more closely united with each other.
Leiden.
A.E.J.
Holwerda.
(To
be continued.)
The
Attic people and the art of Phidias. II.
Thus
the Athenian state developed between the Peloponnese, with Sparta
and Olympia, on the one hand, and the Ionian-Aeolian islands and
coasts, with their trade and commerce, their vibrant political and
social life, on the other. It is understandable that the city around
the fortress, as it became the true center of the country, expanded.
It also acquired a certain renown, although until then, in every
area, it followed rather than preceded. Thus, it was undoubtedly
influenced by the great centers of Hellenic civilization: the ideal
aspirations of Sparta and Olympia ignited souls here as well. The
Athenian singer Tyrtaeus encouraged the Spartan warriors in the war
against Messenia. Attica also acquired its hippodromes and wrestling
arenas; this country, too, had its Olympians (victors at Olympia).
The ancient center of the Ionian tribe, Delos, which naturally also
held significance for Athens, was probably almost entirely neglected
at the time, but understandably, they maintained contact with their
own colonists, who had migrated from Attica to the Asian west coast
after the Dorian migration. Furthermore, Athens undoubtedly played a
significant role in trade. Yet, even here, the city remained
somewhat in the background. From Athena's hill, one could see the
island of Aiacus's descendants, Salamis,1) lying before them. No
movement on the opposite Attic coast was possible—and
precisely there lay the country's principal ports, such as Eleusis
and Phaleros—unless it was permitted at Salamis. The power of
the Salaminian Aeocenes fell, but the situation then became even
more untenable for Athens, as powerful Megara, Attica's western
neighbor, now asserted itself on the island. Further on, opposite
the western coast, lay the other Aeocene island, the powerful
Aegina, whose capital was a cosmopolitan city where, although
restless seafarers and merchants, who knew no higher principle than
their material interests, flocked from far and wide, Dorian Eunomia,
order and legal certainty, remained.[1] Their fleets made themselves
felt throughout the Mediterranean, soon reaching Egypt and Italy;
their pirates instilled fear, not least on the coasts of the Attic
lands opposite. Nowhere did gymnastic exercises give more resilience
to body and soul than here. No city shone more than this one at the
national arena at Olympia. Athens felt unable to withstand such a
force. A centuries-old national resentment, the origins of which
could only be explained as mythical, separated the two neighbors.
And
as one walked along the east coast of Attica, one could almost
everywhere see the vast expanse of Euboia before one, where powers
also held sway that hindered the development of Pallas's city.
Ancient Chalcis may have been excluded from Attica itself since the
days of Ionian rule, but in many respects it still dwarfed it. It
exploited Euboia's copper mines; the products of its metalworks
dominated Greek and Italian markets; it colonized the coasts of
Macedonia and Italy, whose inhabitants, just as the Greeks
themselves had previously borrowed their writing from the
Phoenicians, had borrowed it from them. Between these western and
eastern constraints, Attic trade could not develop vigorously. On
land, like Megara on the west side, there was the rather powerful
Thebes on the northern border. Until now, we haven't seen art
particularly prominent among the Hellenic tribes. However, for some
time now, a vigorous new life has also emerged in their region. And
for this, too, one shouldn't focus primarily on Attica. Around the
9th or 8th century, that tremendous invasion of Semitic and Egyptian
art forms took place, causing the ancient Greek art industry—which
worked with original Indo-Germanic types, with plant and animal
forms from their own homeland, and with imported patterns from Asia
Minor—which, for convenience, can be called Mycenaean1),
underwent a complete transformation. The Phoenicians brought all
sorts of wares to Italy and Greece; excavations have brought many of
them to light, including several metal vessels. They didn't possess
their own stock of art forms; He combined the sacred symbols of
Assyria and Egypt by way of decoration on the same bowl or cauldron,
even Egyptian hieroglyphs served as such; numerous images were
composed, at least partly based on models of the same origin, which
sometimes had no meaning, then again had something real,
occasionally even representing entire histories. This Phoenician
industry was soon also practiced on Cyprus; a few representations
from Greek life were mingled with this stock of forms. These
Phoenicianized Egyptian, Assyrian, and Babylonian types now
penetrated Greek craftsmanship, both in metalwork and in pottery.2)
However, the Greek did not limit himself to adopting all these
forms. He immediately transformed them to some extent according to
his own sensibilities, and we clearly see that he only gradually
began to satisfy himself in the application of ornament; For
example, a floral woven fabric might move to the neck of a vase,
where it winds itself curiously, after first being applied to the
bottom of the vase's rounded belly—a place more suitable for a
supporting and uplifting ornament. Therefore, the Greek vase painter
very soon favored rays springing from the pedestal,
upward-stretching spindles. The actual images that appeared on the
Eastern models were often, it seems, recreated in depictions of
Greek daily life or mythology. At least, while in the Mycenaean
period any depiction of anything resembling a scene was extremely
rare, the number of pictorial poems now increased dramatically.
The
world of the gods and heroes increasingly took precedence. Like the
epic poets, the illustrators drew from the same endless ocean of
Greek folk tales. The same gods, feared before the wooden idol as a
mysterious, magical force, are spied in the Homeric songs in their
most ordinary actions and behavior, and are also seen in the images
now sold by the thousands in Greek markets, in all their natural
movements like ordinary people before them. We still possess several
bronze stripes provided with various designs; these were attached to
household goods as decorative elements. People soon began carving
these figures, so that they stood out clearly as a bright background
against the wood to which they were attached. Some of these carved
figures still exist; their design is further refined within the
outline by various engravings. Such products of art industry were
magnificent when, for example, figures made of gold and ivory were
assembled on a background of cedarwood. The ivory often served to
depict the bare parts of the body, especially the face and arms. The
most famous work in this vein was the so-called Chest of Cypselos at
Olympia, a votive offering from the powerful rulers of Corinth, also
made of cedar wood, ivory, and gold, depicting a wealth of legends
in no way surpassed by those of the Iliad or the Odyssey. We are
somewhat familiar with this piece from the very precise description
by Pausanias. Naturally, this artistic movement did not remain
entirely without influence on Athens either. Although Attica
probably did not possess works that could be compared to the Chest
of Cypselos, the remarkable Greek vase-making industry, which
ensured the widespread dissemination of artistic representations,
much like lithography and photography today, ensured that no one
remained entirely unaware of what was being produced, particularly
in the Peloponnese. Corinthian, Chalkidian, and so-called Cyrenaic
vase-making emerged, transferring the images from woodwork with
metal fittings to the vases; Black paint usually represents the
metal, white probably the ivory; the engravings on the figures are
rendered by craters; the yellow or red of the vase's surface
provided the base, as did the wood there. Athens did indeed connect
other commercial products with the artistic world of the time, and
it undoubtedly produced quite a bit itself. Yet, even in this
respect, it occupied only a very modest position.
The
time was approaching when Attica would offer a very unique
spectacle. The inner vitality of the old Attic state and its
suitability for further development would be strikingly revealed.
This, too, played a significant role in the political and social
turmoil that then, from Ionia and Aeolia2), stirred most of the
Hellenic states. Here, too, doubts about the right of the nobility
to be custodians of the divine decrees upon which the state rested
became increasingly serious. The arbitrariness to which one was
exposed, especially in matters of justice, had grown greater since
monarchical authority no longer kept the nobility in check3), and
was increasingly felt. Here too, the growing trade exerted its
influence to a great extent.
The
forms of the patriarchal state became too narrow to encompass the
broader developing society. Increasingly, legal cases arose
regarding which it was easy to see that the old legal tradition of
the nobility had established nothing; after all, provisions, such as
those concerning blood revenge, were particularly peculiarly at home
in this tradition, which still strongly recalled the old family law.
The nobility, by virtue of the fundamental principles of the state,
simply had jurisdiction, and its rulings, regardless of their
nature, had to be accepted by the community (δῆμος)
as in accordance with that old legal tradition, regardless of
whether they were or were not. This situation eventually became
untenable. Moreover, in Attica, as elsewhere, it was now not merely
poor farmers or herdsmen who the nobility had at its side; here too,
a class of non-noble merchants and industrious people had emerged,
who owed everything solely to themselves and, through the sea and
the freer, more varied life outside the rural district, had more or
less freed themselves from the ban of inherited reverence for the
noble landowners. Such people were easily convinced, indeed often
already possessed this conviction to some extent, that they, too,
deserved a share in the administration of justice and government.
And indeed, they had fairly escaped the tutelage of the
nobility—though not yet, of course, that of demagogues, who,
rightly or wrongly, were attributed selfish aims.
But
even among these small farmers and herdsmen and the like, something
of these democratic ideas penetrated. At least then, they had the
least reason to be satisfied with their situation. The developing
trade, it seems, did not benefit them; Attic soil produced nothing,
except the olive, that could fetch high prices abroad; everything
became more expensive, the old barter system disappeared; one could
obtain less and less without money, yet money was still nowhere near
enough for one's needs—oh, if Lydia would only save the
day!—and one was forced to borrow at astonishing interest.
[This sentence appears to be incomplete and should be omitted.]
People became impoverished, and all too often the end result was
that one was sold as a slave and, far from pious Athens, far from
the glorious sanctuary of the Patron Goddess, had to forget that one
had once lived as a free man under the protection of that deity. Was
it any wonder that people resisted such a situation with all their
soul? Here too, the equal distribution of goods became the slogan
under which one wanted to initiate the so-necessary social reform.
How
could the nobility have maintained its privileged position under
such circumstances? Yielding was inevitable. Archon Draco (621) also
admitted the municipality to the judiciary and issued written laws.
The mysterious veil that had enveloped the nobility as custodians of
divine right had been torn. In the castle, anyone who wished could
read the divine laws by which they were to live. The ancient law had
been written down, but even on those points where the greatest
irregularity had prevailed, since the old tradition had not
established anything about them, written regulations had now been
made. Draco was a man of strict principles. He could think of no law
except one that, like that old tradition, aimed at upholding the
mysterious divine foundation of the state. However, this could be
jeopardized even by a minor offense; after all, blood shed even
involuntarily had to be atoned for in the interest of society as a
whole. Draco knew no other way to fulfill his duty than by demanding
the highest possible satisfaction for every offense for which he had
to make a legal provision; the theft of crops was punishable by
death, as was murder. It is understandable that such legal
provisions were just as inadequate as the previous arbitrariness,
and the idea developed more clearly that legislation was needed that
was not an extension of the old patriarchal right of the nobility,
but rather stood alongside it. The unrest in state and society
continued unabated. Meanwhile, the nobility itself had also begun to
lose some sense of its higher right. The obligation to safeguard the
most sacred interests of the state as a community no longer bound
the noble lords to each other. Everyone's ambition chose its own
path. How much more powerful now was the example of foreign tyrants.
The Athenian Kylon, a brilliant victor at Olympia, married to a
daughter of Theagenes, the tyrant of Megara, occupied the city's
fortress, intending to rule supreme from there. This mobilized both
the nobility and the community. People gathered around the fortress;
soon, however, they abandoned the siege.
The
hounds and the regular army overran. Kylon himself escaped. Hunger
finally allowed the besiegers access. The remnants of Kylon's
followers are seen sitting, almost dying, beside the great altar of
the Goddess, under whose protection they had placed themselves. They
were driven from there, lest they defile the sacred place by their
death, but were then murdered in a blind frenzy, some even at the
Semni altars below the castle, which they had managed to reach.
The
main perpetrator was the Archon Megakles, from an ancient noble
family. What a state of affairs! The sacred right of protection of
their own Castle Goddess had been trampled upon. A terrible
bloodguilt rested on the community. Even the Semni altars
themselves, in their mad blindness, had not been spared. Like wild
Furies, these would rise from the earth, and from the noble court on
the hill of Ares (Areopagos), no help seemed to be expected. Where
was the nobility now, the upholder of divine decrees? Under the
leadership of the noble regents, the most sacred right had been
brutally violated. Megacles and his followers held their ground in
the city, defying all calls for a judicial verdict that would purify
the land of bloodguilt. "God-fearing" Athens had broken
with the Deity.
How
utterly lacking was all peace of mind, all noble self-confidence
that seeks its support in higher power. They were struck with moral
powerlessness. Salamis had been lost to Megara. After several failed
attempts, they decided to abandon all thought of recovery. They
resigned themselves to the shame of humiliation. Soon they would be
ashamed of the name of Athenian. Happy the land that produced sons
like Solon, son of Exekestides, sprung from a noble lineage, a man
like few capable of reconciling us with our human nature. He fully
knew what it meant to enjoy life. Beautiful horses and hunting dogs
were his utmost delight; how he delighted in lively conversations
with strangers, guests who came from here and there; both female and
male youth enraptured him; "the works of Dionysus and Aphrodite
were both dear to his heart, along with those of the Muses";
even excesses, those we most deeply detest, were not foreign to him.
Yet, just as much as the human desire for pleasure, from this truly
Hellenic soul welled up a noble enthusiasm for the fatherland, a
sincere love for his fellow man, a sacred reverence for the divine.
All that was immoderate was foreign to him; he knew no restless
pursuit of wealth and power; even his best feelings did not lead him
beyond himself. Everywhere in him we encounter the sober, common
sense of humanity. The few remnants of his poems still refresh our
souls today, after more than two thousand years. Astonishing was the
moral force that resided in this man, yet it never tempted him to
any mighty act. Here was the rock upon which a despairing people
could place their hope; here the force that could unite the
scattered and compel the proud Megacles to bow his head for the
common good. He and his followers must stand before a tribunal; all
the guilty go into exile; even the remains of those who have since
died are brought across the border. Breathe again. At Solon's call:
"Onward to Salamis!"2), the able-bodied Attic men take up
arms. The island is recaptured; once again, one can walk among the
Greeks with upright heads.
But
there was a need for an even more intimate reconciliation with the
Deity; State and society had to be, as it were, re-established on
divine foundations. Following the advice of the oracle of Delphi, at
the request of Solon, his friend, the venerable seer Epimenides from
ancient Crete came to Athens. He was a man with profound knowledge
of the sacred, profound insight into human nature as well. He knew
the sacrifices of expiation, purifications, and sacred edifications
that could restore the bond with the Deity. Didn't a higher peace
descend upon all souls when the black and white sheep of the
Areopagos, from which, of course, the purifying effect must emanate,
were seen descending in all directions, even far into the Attic
lands, and an altar was erected at every spot where one of these
animals happened to lie down? What sacrifices were kindled; what new
religious regulations were established! That the great altar in the
castle and that of the Semni, in particular, required special
purifications, goes without saying. The Cretan seer worked towards a
complete moral rebirth of the Attic people. He also gave the
significant indication that one should be 'more calm in one's
mourning, and that one should dedicate one's care for the dead to
religious worship.'
"Serious
ceremonies must be sanctified, and women must be less offensive in
their lamentations."1)
Attica
also made its voice heard powerfully in general Hellenic affairs. It
acted as one of the principal protectors of the sanctuary of Delphi
against the nearby Krisa, from which it had endured much harassment.
Solon's influence was entirely predominant. Why should he not, like
his wise contemporary on Lesbos, Pittakos, seize the highest
authority, or rather have it bestowed upon him? Wasn't this really
the only way to provide lasting peace to the state? Solon thought
better of his people. Would they only be able to conform to order
under the tyrant's scourge? As for himself, his sober mind told him
that for him this path would only yield the fleeting glory "of
a day," to be discarded afterwards as a useless object.2) In
other ways, he "hoped to gain victory over all"3).
He
acted as a legislator (594 BC). First and foremost, it was important
to alleviate the burden on the poor. Debt repayment was made easier,
primarily by changing the monetary standard; no citizen was allowed
to be sold into slavery for debt. Those already sold, as much as
possible, returned to their homeland. How that Attic nobleman—and
it was his job—enjoyed seeing his unfortunate, poor fellow
citizens return, "who had often forgotten their native dialect,
wandering here and there, enduring harsh slavery, trembling before
their masters, but now had become free men"1). Furthermore, he
seems to have made provisions to prevent the formation of large
plantations2). He fully understood, and legal provisions were also
intended to instill this idea in his people, that a country as
infertile as Attica, if it wanted to play a significant role in
world trade, would do best to devote itself vigorously to industry.
Athens later became one of the leading industrial states of the
entire Hellenic region. Furthermore, his practical intellect did not
shy away from doing what had become evidently necessary: to
separate the old, sacred law from a more profane one that met the
immediate demands of society. Of the laws of Draco, he retained
those concerning blood revenge, regulations truly stemming from
ancient legal tradition, and the council of Areopagos was to
constantly monitor their enforcement. For the rest, he established a
new law according to the new needs, and legal cases judged
accordingly would be heard by a jury composed of members of the
community. The most important state interests would be decided by
the community in a popular assembly, under the supervision of the
Areopagos. For the day-to-day administration, a council of four
hundred members was established, elected from the four tribes into
which the people had traditionally been divided[3]; one hundred from
each tribe. Indeed, Solon had no intention of abolishing the old
religious organization of the state, and the sacrifices of tribes,
phratries, and lineages remained, as before, essentially sacrifices
of the nobility, to which only the lesser citizens were admitted.
This was the only prestige the nobility retained as such; yet, it
acquired greater influence on grounds other than its nobility.
Eligibility for holding state office would depend on the annual
yield of each person's fields, and now the nobles were the principal
landowners. Those who belonged to the highest class, for example,
according to that annual yield, were allowed to become archons, and
the resigned archons of impeccable conduct became members of the
Areopagos.
Something
had taken place that Greece, and perhaps the world, had not yet
seen: democracy had been organized and incorporated into the forms
of an ancient state. But Solon understood very well that this was
dangerous territory, and he demonstrated this in ways other than the
partial maintenance of the nobility's influence. In the Aeolian and
Ionian states, it seemed that the autocracy of a tyrant was often
unavoidable. If the Athenian people wanted to govern themselves,
they should not become too Ionian or Aeolian. Solon decreed that the
popular assembly would be opened with prayers and a purification
offering; first, those over fifty would be called to speak, then the
opportunity would be given to others as well. no one was allowed to
speak who had not properly supported his parents, if necessary, who
had thrown away his shield in battle, who had squandered his
paternal inheritance, etc. The popular assembly was not allowed to
acquire the character of an Ionian chatting society, in which the
most boisterous easily prevailed and the ferocity and passion of a
few easily spread to the whole. One had to feel deeply that they had
gathered for a highly serious work. Unworthy people and those who
could not manage their own affairs were also not the proper advisors
of their people. Furthermore, however little he thought to
disapprove of sensual pleasure as such, laws and limits had to be
set for it too; children, for example, had to be safe from their
teachers. Parents who profited financially from their offspring's
youth were also despicable. A child thus abused did not have to
support his father in his old age; he owed him only a funeral. Deep
respect was instilled for the institution of marriage through
various regulations. Idleness was punished; parents were required to
teach their children a trade. One was never to say anything bad
about the dead, nor about the living in shrines, government
buildings, or courthouses; The lively Athenian had to learn to curb
the urge to say whatever bluster or passion prompted him. The
legislator, as evidenced by these and similar provisions, often
strange to our minds, considered modesty the most essential virtue
for a free citizen. The Ionian's soft life was also to be
stigmatized, his unbridled luxury kept as much as possible outside
the borders of the country; the preparation of fragrant ointments
was deemed unworthy of the free citizen; the flamboyant processions
of prominent women with flashy, lavish clothing and large entourages
were forbidden. It had also been against the Athenian way of
thinking since ancient times to allow women too much freedom of
movement. Apparently in response to the suggestions of Epimenides,
regulations were also established regarding the funeral of the
deceased: for example, it was forbidden to bludgeon oneself to death
in lamentation and to bury the dead with excessive pomp. In this
way, too, he took a stand against Ionia. Thus, in Solon's
legislation, and to this it owes its high significance in no small
part, the Athenian comes to a powerful consciousness.
Thus,
Solon met the most profound needs of the Athenian people. They now
had regulations for their political, social, and even personal lives
that were more in keeping with their level of development and their
spiritual direction, in which they also found themselves, yet in
their deepest feelings and inclinations. They freed themselves from
the idea that they had to live in all respects according to precepts
that in one way or another bore a special divine stamp, and had the
courage to enter before the eyes of the immortal gods with a
completely new order of life, an order created according to their
own human insights. Solon's legislation cannot be explained without
a certain freedom of spirit in the religious sphere.
Again,
we must turn to the more general Hellenic realm. There comes a time
in the life of nations when people no longer simply accept the
things around them as they present themselves, but the thinking mind
feels itself awakening amidst numerous riddles that attract it and
whose solution it considers its task. Among the Greeks, this period
of development is first encountered in the colonies, whose youthful
societies were less bound by tradition and where the lively traffic
on the coasts incessantly aroused the mind—especially in
Ionia, where, after all, any restraint on the mind was so largely
shunned.
Already
in the oldest school of Greek philosophers, the Ionian of Thales and
Anaximander, we find a fundamentally genuine scientific endeavor,
independent of all tradition and without need for arcane formulas.
Alongside this stricter trend, however, a certain practical
rationalism revealed itself, which did not seek to create a new
system of world explanation, but rather to explain and more deeply
grasp all things that occurred, including all traditional concepts,
without any connection to each other. On the one hand, this, along
with this stricter philosophy, is a weaker offshoot of the same
stock; on the other hand, it is quite common that the latter
provokes reflection even in circles where it penetrates only
slightly, at least not in its true form. Life's events, especially
the social and political, human experiences and vicissitudes,
indeed, the entire human existence, human character and
inclinations, now became a subject of reflection, and thus far only
among thinkers of that less strict trend, such as Theognis and
Solon. The time had long passed when people simply absorbed and
recorded those things as they found them, when they simply listened
- and listened with a lively interest down to the smallest details -
to the epic story about the deeds and the adventures of gods and
men. Then, especially in that time of deep turmoil in state and
society, the more lyrical forms of poetry came into vogue; one was
stirred to the depths of one's soul by sorrow, joy, or enthusiasm.
Ultimately, with the philosophical sentiment just mentioned, one
knows how to rise above one's feelings to some extent and, with the
calmness of Solon, or the residual bitterness of Theognis, to judge
the world from which one has, as it were, withdrawn for a while,
from a higher vantage point.
It
was not the bright joy of life of the Light deities that primarily
filled the souls of such philosophers. Contemplation of human life
presented them with more shadows than lights; through misfortune and
one's own wrongdoings, humanity was often deeply miserable. In this
state of mind, the older folk ideas of Moira Atê, Erinnyes,
and the vengeance of the Gods punishing presumptuous arrogance—ideas
which, as already noted1), had always managed to hold their own
alongside this more life-loving outlook—suddenly acquired
greater significance. Conceived more profoundly and applied more
extensively, they somewhat take on the character of a system of
poetic-philosophical explanation of human life. Moira (fate) is a
dark force in the world that no one can escape; indeed, it was
thought that even the Gods were not.2) Arrogance—which today,
for example, also manifests itself in the unjust pursuit of wealth;
in ancient myths, the moral principle is not so prominent—this
arrogance could thrive for a time, but then the first rudiments of
Atê manifest themselves; This spreads all around and often
even plunges an entire family into disaster; indeed, subsequent
generations must suffer for the guilt of their predecessors. One
sees a mysterious divine power governing human life, and man is
completely unable to escape its dictates.
3)
It is the same philosophy of life that later, in a more fully
developed form, also comes to us in Attic tragedy; it presents us
with incidents from the lives of semi-divine heroes, especially as
the Atê and the avenging power of the gods manifest themselves
in them. The tragic mood it evokes in us is, for it, the main point,
but this by no means excludes a poetic-philosophical view of human
life. It is, therefore, the way of thinking of an entire subsequent
period that now appears before us; it developed approximately at the
end of the 7th century, reaching its zenith in the 5th. How much
more profound did the entire concept of the divine become during
these reflections on the world and fate? - it has already been
pointed out that those ancient concepts such as Atê and divine
vengeance would play a major role. [This sentence appears incomplete
and should be omitted.] Infinitely deeper does the true religious
sense of dependence become in the face of such a mysterious, higher
power; that power, at least later, at times acquires something
almost impersonal; one feels the influence of the divine more than
of the Deity. [This sentence appears incomplete and should be
omitted.] No longer, as in Homer, for example, do the Gods
restlessly interfere in human affairs, now here, now there, entirely
in the manner of human participants, at one moment fighting
alongside their friends, then offering advice, then, for example,
handing Odysseus a new mast for his ship, etc. [This sentence
appears incomplete and should be omitted.] Calm dignity is now the
essence of the Deity. Zeus no longer "suddenly flies up in his
wrath like a mortal." Seated on his throne, not every evil deed
he witnesses immediately provokes him to revenge; he calmly waits,
so that, as soon as he pleases, he can suddenly bring down
punishment with crushing force like a storm. 4) The gods command
supremely, and the world submits to the will of these formidable
beings, who, in the most imperturbable tranquility, quietly survey
everything. They see the pious and the impious, and comforting is
the thought that the latter can never escape the punishing hand of
the Deity. Never? Simultaneously with the profound concept of God,
the idea arises here, so eminently suited to drive the pious
Israelite or Christian to despair, namely that the God "who
knows all minds and emotions, who holds supreme authority over all,
nevertheless occasionally grants the good an equal fate with the
evil." The Erinnyes, the ancient representatives of the
incomprehensible, terrifying, and mysterious nature of the Deity,
acquire a very high significance for the inner life. People were on
their way to breaking the spell of humanizing the Deity, and for
some it came close to this, as with Aeschylus, for whom Zeus was the
"unspeakable, incomparable," for whom he is "everything."
Yet this was not in the general Hellenic spiritual direction; people
were content with pushing the boundaries of the human aspect as much
as possible. In Homer, the larger stature of divine beings is not
yet a fixed principle. This is now becoming the case; we will return
to this shortly. Later in tragedy, as is well known, the actors were
given bodices to appear larger than they were, since they were,
after all, supposed to represent demigods. The mythical stories
about the gods themselves recede into the background or take on more
of the character of a sublime world event. For example, in Pindar,
heaven and earth tremble with terror when the heavenly maiden Athena
first appears in her magnificent majesty. Thus, alongside the
stricter philosophy—which stood outside the old tradition and
therefore could more easily, and indeed did later, come into
conflict with the old religious ideas—also developed alongside
this, and indeed to some extent under its influence, an enlightened
religious conception. This conception did not consider placing
itself outside the old circle, but, without being aware of any
deviation from the old way of thinking, infused the old with a new
spirit. It was the conception of the aristocracy of the spirit—not
in the narrowest sense, so that it encompassed only the strict
thinkers—and the old way of imagining the gods continued
alongside it as the way of thinking of the general public. This
continued to delight particularly in the old myths and incorporated
them even into the most common stories. The birth of Athena, for
example, is depicted in a flat reality on vase sculptures; A tiny
Athena emerges, to the amazement of the gods present, from the head
of Zeus. They adhered to the most common humanization of the divine,
and the idol nevertheless retained its fetishistic nature quite
strongly. The enlightened, however, looked down on the superstition
and stupidity of the masses. Evidence of superstitious stupidity
was, for example, the fact that the Athenians were led to believe
that Athena herself—a wench disguised as such—brought
the tyrant Pisistratos back to the city;1 similarly, when an ancient
oracle declared that Athens must be defended behind wooden walls,
some actually barricaded themselves behind a wooden plank against
the Persians.2 The enlightened view was that of Themistocles,
according to whom wooden walls meant ships. Naturally, there was
little room in the souls of these enlightened people for genuine
fetishistic tendencies; They were undoubtedly more indifferent to
the ancient idols, unless the mystery surrounding those ancient
sacred blocks of wood appealed precisely to their often deeply
religious minds.
Both
perspectives, however, stood on the same foundation. They also
gradually merged; something of both could be present in the same
human soul; now one, now the other, could dominate; the lower-minded
could easily be temporarily elevated into the higher spheres, just
as historically the higher way of thinking had risen from the lower.
Therefore, for the time being, there is no sign of a division into
two hostile camps between adherents of different opinions.
Precisely
at the time when Hellenic society was thus being infused with new
life, it also came into direct contact—no longer exclusively
through the mediation of the Phoenicians—with the great world
monarchies of the East. Assyrian rule had reached the Mediterranean
coast; Cyprus was also drawn within the larger circle. 3) An
Assyrian cylinder lists ten kings of Cyprus, "which lies in the
middle of the sea," who were tributary to Esarhaddon, an
Assyrian king from the early 7th century BC. 1) The ancient
Pharaonic empire was opened to the Greeks from the mid-7th century
onward, and they maintained the most lively relations with it ever
since. Later, the Median and Babylonian empires established
themselves on the ruins of the Assyrian empire; the Medo-Persian
empire finally extended its borders into Greek territory, to the
coasts of Asia Minor. Greek mercenaries of an Egyptian king,
Psammetichos—probably much earlier, certainly not much later
than the year 600—carved their names into the Ramses' colossi
at Abu Simbel in Nubia. The distinguished Lesbian Antimenides,
brother of Alcaios, enlisted in Nebuchadnezzar's army when his
tyrannical homeland no longer offered room for his noble ambition.
The mighty palaces and colossuses of those wonderlands made a deep
impression on the receptive Hellenic mind. As we have seen, Greece
already possessed a fairly developed art industry, which included
works like the Kupselos cabinet. Crude bas-reliefs were also
available early on. However, the production of freestanding
statues—which, the less they are household goods, can more
easily become artistic creations for their own sake — was
still in its most original state of crude handcraft, devoid of any
conscious artistic endeavor. This certainly doesn't entirely apply
to wooden idols, though they undeniably still had very little form.
Besides these, the Greeks had, until then, talisman-like idols,
statuettes of people and animals, dedicated to the dead, found in
graves, and similar votive offerings to the gods, including
primarily human statuettes; for it was an ancient custom to dedicate
one's image to the deity, presumably in place of oneself, just as
statues of sacrificial animals were also considered sacrifices. A
relic of this custom persisted into much later times in the custom
that victors in combat games were allowed to place their statue on
the sacred grounds where they had achieved their victory, although
by then little was felt of its original significance. None of these
had any national style whatsoever; they are primitive products, such
as can be found all over the world. They were mostly made of baked
clay, very occasionally of marble, and even then extremely rough; in
Cyprus, many were also made of native limestone. They were all
small. Among the wooden idols, some larger ones appeared. Today,
however, the contemplation of Egyptian and Assyrian sculpture makes
their influence felt. We know Cyprus best from that period through
numerous excavations. The mass of sculptures, especially of native
limestone, that we encounter here is astonishing. What Egyptian
collars, tunics, and hairstyles! The left foot is depicted countless
times in a completely Egyptian manner; the shoulders often have the
same high and broad shape. The face and hair, however, are much more
predominantly Assyrian, and generally speaking, in the finer art of
art, the Assyrians seem to have been more the teachers of the
Cyprians than the Egyptians. In Cyprus, one can certainly find one,
probably more, fully Assyrian works of art. It is striking, however,
to see how immediately the Cypriot Greek breaks the rigid Assyrian
stylization; for example, the eyebrows, always joined together by
the Assyrians (there is no soft transition such as occurs in
nature), are immediately separated. From the very beginning, Greek
sculpture has nature before its eyes, just as Greek philosophy, from
the very beginning, strives for truth with an unbiased approach. It
is also noteworthy that the statues begin to acquire a fairly large
size; even enormous colossuses appear among them; for example,
General Cesnola found a severed head, so large that it must have
belonged to a statue several meters tall; over eight feet high is
also a statue of the demigod Heracles, with a pedestal on which a
relief is carved depicting the captivity of Geryon's herd. Among all
the statues found, there are at most a very small number of actual
gods. The overwhelming majority consists of statues of people
dedicated to the deity, as mentioned earlier, mostly of priests and
priestesses. It is noteworthy that little or no thought seems to
have been given here to the deliberate treatment of the nude.
Thus,
Cyprus developed a great deal of activity in the realm of sculpture
itself, at a time when it was practically unheard of in the rest of
Greece. However, it never became fully Hellenic; thus, for example,
it always remained monarchical. It is not unlikely that Hellenic
sculpture owes its origins largely to the example of Cyprus; it was
almost certainly influenced by Cypriots; the Assyrian-Cyprian
treatment of hair, for example, appears quite frequently in the
oldest Greek art. Cypriot art, however, developed further in a
non-Hellenic direction; She never completely escaped Assyrian and
Egyptian forms, but instead incorporated them into her own national
artistic style, alongside which, later in the fourth century, the
truly Hellenic style was introduced as something entirely foreign.
Of great importance for the developing art of the mid-seventh
century was the opening of the marble quarries of Paros. Melas of
Chios emerged as a marble sculptor at this time; his art passed down
as a family legacy to his descendants, his son, grandson, and
great-grandsons, and remained so in his lineage for over 100 years.
Naturally, the new craft was soon practiced outside of this circle
as well. A form of sculpture arose on the islands and coasts of the
archipelago, which one might call the Ionian. It is not unlikely
that what the Cyprians did in their limestone, they began to imitate
in marble. In the art school of Chios, as we have seen, they applied
themselves, especially regarding the workmanship of female dress.
The principal remains of this Ionian art that we possess are seated
statues larger than life, found near Miletus, now in the British
Museum, as evidenced by an inscription, statues of people dedicated
to Apollo. All this is already reminiscent of Cyprus; even more so
is the Assyrian treatment observed here and there, and even the more
or less specifically Cypriot character of the dress.
Alongside
this marble sculpture, a metal one emerged. Samos produced two
famous metal founders, Rhoikos and Theodoros, at the beginning of
the 6th century. The most powerful, most ancient, and yet most
genuinely Hellenically inspired artistic movement, however,
originated, at approximately the same time, at the beginning of the
6th century, from Crete, the island of the Greek art hero and
mythical creator, above all, of woodcuts, Daedalus. Especially then,
that island, which already in ancient times occupied such a
prominent place in the history of Greek civilization, precedes
Hellas here. The first Cretan artists, whose names have been handed
down to us, are Skyllis and Dipoinos, the so-called disciples or
descendants of Daedalus. They felt they had something higher to
offer their people. We see them appear everywhere, especially in the
Peloponnese. They worked in Sicyon, Argos, Cleonae, and Ambrakia,
and founded an entire school, primarily of Spartan artists. This
school produced many works for the great national sanctuary at
Olympia. More independently, yet undeniably under the influence of
the Cretans, Smilis appeared in Aegina, several of whose works were
also found at Olympia. The focal points of Hellenic civilization, in
particular, exert the greatest attraction. Art here no longer
resembles a craft that was the heritage of a family. We hear
frequently of groups crafted by these artists, primarily from cedar
wood with gold and ivory. These were mythological representations
like those found in works like the Kupselos cabinet, and since these
were certainly often also made of cedar wood, ivory, and gold, both
the representations and the materials of the ancient art industry
were used for the new, freestanding statues. It is not unlikely that
the ancient art of making wooden idols also exerted some influence.
It goes without saying that precious materials like gold and ivory
were often omitted. On the other hand, they could take center stage,
and the wood itself became the core covered in gold and ivory. This
is how the gold and ivory (chryselephantine) art, which later became
so famous, came into being. Besides these materials, stone was also
used, particularly Parisian marble. A statue that almost certainly
belonged to the Cretan school of art was the Hera at Olympia, and,
as is known, a large part of its head has now been unearthed in the
most recent excavations there.[1] It is made of limestone found in
the immediate vicinity of Olympia, is larger than life-size, and has
a hairstyle like that of the Egyptian goddess Isis; however, the
horns have broken off. According to Pausanias (V. 17), it had
another statue alongside it, which is not evident, as the site is
corrupt. However, the head found indicates that this other statue
must have been very closely related to it, which again suggests an
original relief composition. The statue has all the flattened
features and broad waves of hair typical of the woodcut style.
Woodcarving, therefore, preceded it; its art developed from there,
and the forms thus acquired were later simply transferred to stone.
Other rediscovered sculptures can be attributed to this school,
especially the so-called Apollos of Orchomenos, Thera, and the
British Museum; they were originally funerary monuments, probably
depicting the deceased as heroes. All are equally imitations of wood
in stone (marble), in the Egyptian manner with the left leg
advanced, and two (those of Orchomenos and London) with the high
Egyptian shoulders. Also remarkable is the complete nudity of these
figures and the apparent effort (evident, for example, by comparing
the apparently younger London figure with that of Orchomenos) to
depict that nudity increasingly in harmony with nature. This new
school of art lived and worked primarily in the Peloponnese, in
circles where, more than elsewhere, people had developed under the
influence of Olympia. It is well known how much the nudity of the
combatants was considered one of the most characteristic features of
the Greeks compared to the barbarians. The very oldest monumental
Greek sculpture was already Hellenic in its core. All traces of
Assyrian or Egyptian stylization had to disappear long before a
sense of the natural, which had been instilled in her from the very
first moment of her development. In another respect, too, we very
soon see her moving in a fixed direction: she increasingly
focused—we find information about several of her works in
ancient writers—on the creation of divine images. The
Egyptian-Assyrian colossuses had passed into the oldest Greek art;
the seated statues from the vicinity of Miletus are larger than
life-size, as was Hera at Olympia; the former depict humans,
apparently not deified. This exaggeration did not, in itself, align
with the Hellenic spirit. It was destined to disappear. Not
entirely, anyway. The larger-than-human size gave a fitting
expression to the divine; it became a fixed requirement for the
image of gods and heroes. The famous master of Aegina, Smilis, was
summoned to Samos to replace the old woodblock depicting the goddess
Hera with a new statue. This was a matter of no small significance,
nor an isolated event. The divine statues of the new art replace, or
even stand alongside, the old idols, and the new statues convey new
ideas, or rather, are the more or less involuntary expression of
existing new ideas. They may well become so in the minds of the
public, but in the minds of the artist who created them—he may
have been more or less aware of this—they are not fetishes in
which the deity itself seems to dwell, but simply representations of
it. To a large extent, the types of works like the Kupselos cabinet,
whose divine figures everyone had to consider mere representations,
were probably transferred to the temple statue. Furthermore, while
the colossal size of the statue expressed divinity, it also
indicated that the artist had no intention of destining it for
highly sacred ablutions, solemn processions, and similar ceremonies,
for which a statue that was not too difficult to lift was a
prerequisite. The nobler spiritual current, which, as we have seen,
purified the religious way of thinking of the Hellenic people at
that time, merged with the new, higher artistic development. The
more deeply the artist was imbued with this new perspective on the
divine, which envisioned the gods in exalted majesty, from Olympus,
directing the fate of humanity, the further he became from the idea
that the divine spirit resided more or less in the work of his
hands. The old statue certainly often retained a higher sanctity,
but the new statues of the gods expressed a nobler conception of the
divine; Let us add, however, that this also marked a new step on the
path to the humanization of the Deity: the representation of the
divine being became more sharply defined, and thus the mystical was
more excluded. Was it perhaps this obscure awareness that later led
a man like Aeschylus to prefer the old, crude images to the new,
more artistic ones?
Athens
is no longer far removed from these movements. It has already been
pointed out how its democracy cannot be explained without a certain
freedom in religious thought, and now we see that precisely at the
time when this was established, a new, more unconstrained view of
the divine and human broke through, in which the democratic
legislator Solon himself also strongly led the way. To a certain
extent, this must already have become common property of the
Athenian people when it later became the soul of a literary genre
that originated on Attic soil and occupied a place in popular life
similar to that of tragedy. - Furthermore, a few names of Attic
sculptors have also been handed down to us, who most likely
flourished shortly after the middle of the sixth century: Endoius
and Aristocles; we even have a tomb stele of the latter; and
although there can be no question of a famous Attic art school, as
will become clear, the significance of the new monumental art was
deeply felt here.
Solon's
last years were most sorrowful. Had it truly been a foolish delusion
when he considered his people ripe for freedom? Party factions
revived, and people once again listened to demagogues. The
Alcmaionides had returned from exile, but the nobility seems to have
understood that if they wanted to preserve anything of their former
selves, they had to keep such comrades at bay. Now the grandson and
namesake of the bloodstained Megacles sought to gain prominence in
another way, and he led the middle class, primarily the seafarers,
against the noble faction surrounding Lycurgos. Alongside both of
these, however, a relative of Solon, Pisistratos, rose to the head
of the smallest of the people, the shepherds and small farmers; hey
felt disappointed because the legislature had not introduced an
equal distribution of the land. Such people, however, were very
easily deceived. With their help, Pisitratus established himself as
tyrant (560 BC). He was driven from the city twice. But he returned
each time and, upon his death, left the government to his sons
Hippias and Hipparchus.
The
most precious asset, freedom, was lost. Yet, the laws of Solon,
insofar as this was compatible with a single authority, persisted,
and so the Athenians, to some extent, embraced those numerous small
regulations that were intended to teach them self-control and
restraint and ennoble their lives. Moreover, the ambitious,
action-hungry nobility felt the pressure of such authority much more
than the common citizen. Pisistratus also believed that, precisely
under a rule like his, the good and great qualities his people
possessed could be better preserved and developed, and to a certain
extent, his opinion was correct. One should not dwell on overly
lofty theories; what mattered was true prestige, prosperity, and
happiness. Athens had to exist first and foremost for itself. It had
to be respected and revered by the Greeks above all. And truly,
under the tyrant, the city's prestige rose. Proud Aegina, for
example, experienced that a different authority now held sway on the
hill of Athena than had hitherto held sway.
The
festival of the City Goddess, during which one felt oneself to be a
citizen of Athens above all else, acquired a new, brilliant
organization. Shortly before Pisistratus's rise as tyrant, perhaps
already under his influence, the prelude to the actual Panathenaic
festival, which had previously consisted of horse races, was
augmented by the addition of gymnastic competitions, where even
those who didn't maintain stud farms could demonstrate their
strength. Even the less fortunate wanted to be given the opportunity
to participate directly in the great city festival; the entire
series of these competitions was adopted from Olympia. And it didn't
stop there. The annual city festival — which, we don't know
since when, now qualifies as Athena's birthday—was to be
celebrated every four years, in the third year of each Olympiad,
with a splendor that would shine throughout the entire Hellenic
world and capture the hearts and minds of thousands. The festival of
the great Panathenaia was instituted alongside the annual smaller
one. Just as in the fourth year of each Olympiad, thousands from all
corners of the Hellenic world were to descend on Athens in the
third; Festive delegations had to gather; foreigners could also
participate in several competitions, but the main thing was that one
would see the Athenian people celebrate the birth of their God in
all their splendor—that one would behold, in that splendid
procession, moving in stately procession through numerous streets to
the castle, all the splendor of foot soldiers and horsemen and
chariots, of youth and virile strength and gray hair, that the city
of Athens knew how to display before the eyes of its Goddess at this
solemn moment. Without a doubt, under Pisistratus and his sons, the
procession became more of a central element of the festival than it
had been. His son Hipparchus also ordered a contest of rhapsodes,
who recited the poems of Homer; this would again precede the
gymnastic games, just as the gymnastic competitions precede the
horse races. In later times, the Parthenon of Pericles was the
principal temple used for the Panathenaic festival; a single brief
note, hidden in the work of a very late grammarian, Hesychius,
informs us that this Parthenon replaced another temple burned by the
Persians (480 BC). Now, in the northern wall of the fortress, which
was hastily constructed after the Persians' departure from whatever
could be found, numerous fragments of a Doric temple have been
found, evidently damaged by the flames. Furthermore, it has been
discovered that the Parthenon rests on an older foundation, which,
before it was placed upon it, had to be widened on the north side
with new additions. Judging from these fragments and what we know
about Doric temple construction in general, the temple, whose
fragments have been recovered from this wall, must have fit more or
less precisely on this old foundation. That temple could not have
stood anywhere else on the castle. We also possess the remains of a
Parthenon destroyed by the Persians in 480, the fragments of which
naturally provided suitable material for that wall immediately after
the retreat of those barbarians. Judging by the style of the
building fragments found, that temple hardly predates Pisistratus.
It was also not yet finished when it burned, which is the result.
It
appears that the discovered building fragments have not yet been
completed. In fact, it could not have been built by anyone other
than the tyrant or his sons. They gave the entire city a new
appearance through numerous new buildings, and the renewed festival
of the Panathenaia—we will return to this shortly—demanded
a temple other than the old-fashioned house of Erechtheus; how
eagerly the tyrants were to carry out works that would enhance the
splendor of the worship of the City Goddess. It was probably not
finished before they were expelled, and the Athenians, like another
building they had begun, the Olympieion, were unwilling to complete
it.
Both
in this new festival and in the founding of that temple, the
influence of the new spirit that was then beginning to dominate the
religious life of the Greeks was felt. Still, at the festival of
Plynterië, one saw the ancient statue of Athena from the house
of Erechtheus brought out with deep reverence. There was the least
thought of abolishing old, mysterious ceremonies, but introducing
new ones was equally unthinkable. For that to happen, fetishistic
tendencies would have had to possess a power completely incompatible
with the then-current state of civilization. Now, however, the image
of the immortal gods as clearly defined beings was more than ever
before before the Greeks; not a god conjuring from a piece of wood,
but an Olympian, enthroned in calm majesty high in the ether, filled
the souls of the more evolved, especially. The spirit could also
rise to such awe-inspiring beings through prayer and sacrifice. The
latter, in the mind's eye, had often lost much of its former
significance. It had become an outward form; but this had acquired a
new content. The enlightened Greek also sacrificed much; he felt the
need to do so whenever he wished to express a sacred, deeply serious
mood; thereby he maintained the bond with the divine. The ancient
custom of giving votive offerings (ἀναϑήματα)
was particularly in keeping with the conception of human gods. One
offered something to the Deity and, as it were, placed it before her
eyes, knowing that she would take as much pleasure in it as one took
in it oneself. The mysterious found almost no place here; yet it was
a religious act, albeit one that very easily degenerated into a most
outward display of homage. This custom then spread. Especially
beautiful temples and statues, splendid sacrificial implements, and
the like were dedicated to the Deity. Even the most exalted
Olympian, however, could look down upon all this with pleasure; even
the most enlightened were happy to honor the gods with votive
offerings. Closely in character with the votive offering was another
way of pleasing the gods, which only became more prominent in
historical times, namely through the display of splendor and
splendor at religious festivals, especially in processions, and
through competitions, in all that one personally enjoyed so much.
Were not also several gods and demigods,—especially
Heracles,—the superior examples of the same exertion one
encountered in the contest, and where, indeed, that truly Hellenic
sense of life flowed more powerfully than ever through the breast?
Alongside many temples, camps arose; the four great contests, like
those at Olympia, were even specifically called "sacred."
Here one truly had a form of divine worship, though, if possible,
one even less mystical than that of votive offerings, and in a
sense, not a complete one; For this reason, people were still too
conscious of dealing solely with human inventions, no matter how
much they tried, for example, at Olympia, to convince themselves
that every type of competition they introduced was actually ancient,
of semi-divine origin, which was being recalled. The gods they
imagined in this context also had to be human and humanly sentient
beings, and here the highest conception of that humanity was by no
means excluded. Indeed, their majestic seclusion readily permitted a
truly sympathetic participation in everything that interested man,
albeit a participation full of gracious majesty and heavenly
tranquility: not only sympathetic humans, but also sympathetic gods,
the Greek had as spectators in all his enjoyments and endeavors.
This could put him in a sacred mood; Many times, when he yielded to
a noble human impulse for pleasure, when he glowed with enthusiasm
at the sight of beauty and strength, when his healthy nature roused
him to exertion, he felt himself, as in prayer and sacrifice,
brought into a closer communion with the immortals. But nowhere was
that feeling aroused more powerfully than by the contests and the
display of splendor and power, which were deliberately dedicated to
the Deity.
And
now in Athens — the festival of the Plynterie had to remain as
it was, until it fossilized in its old forms; however, at that of
the Panathenaia, the number of contests was expanded, and the
procession was given a new organization. Even in the time when only
the chariots and beautiful horses of the nobility accompanied the
peplos and mysterious objects of the arrephores to the castle, the
Gods were undoubtedly expected to observe such beauty with the
deepest interest. Now, however, the purpose of the procession—to
bring the Goddess her own—is fading into the background. The
main goal becomes to display all the splendor and beauty in which
the city so dearly delights, before the eyes of the immortal Gods,
and first and foremost, before the City Goddess herself. The peplos
is more than ever a magnificent piece, especially at the great
Panathenaia; these too were almost as much to be made to shine in
the procession as to be presented to the goddess; we do not know
since when, it was spread from the mast of a ship moving through the
streets. And in all this, we vividly feel that the old little house
of Erechtheus, in which, besides the old idol, through numerous
things, partly mentioned above,1), for example, the fountain of
Poseidon and Athena's olive tree, the wonder of religion, above all,
forced itself upon the spirit, could no longer satisfy. Old
festivals, such as the Plynteria, were added to this; the newer
religious mood demanded a new place of worship. Now, the unevenness
at the highest point on Athena's hill was leveled by inserting
limestone, thus forming a foundation for a new Doric temple. Whether
the statue for that temple was ever actually made, we do not know;
however, it could not have been intended to create anything other
than a conscious depiction of the Deity, in the spirit of modern
sculpture. Only now would the glorious procession end in a glorious
divine dwelling, one where one would breathe in the new atmosphere
of religious sentiment. Curiously enough, the peplos was actually
intended for the wooden statue in the Erechtheum, but the offering
of that garment had now become so much of a side issue that the
procession carrying it would not end there. It would then,
apparently, have to be brought later to the Goddess in the
Erechtheum. The procession would, as always, have to offer the great
sacrifice at the great altar in the castle; however, it went without
saying that many sacrifices would also be offered in or near the new
temple. Above all, however, the victors in the contests—this
is highly likely, though we do not know for certain—would have
had to stand in that temple before the statue of the Goddess, the
giver of victory, at whose magnificent feast they had acquired their
great fortune. Perhaps the awarding of victory was meant to take
place there more as a religious ceremony, after the undeniable
crowning of the victors had already been conferred on the camp site
itself immediately after the decision had been made; indeed, this
also occurred here, although the material rewards in the form of
several jars of oil were still received.2) Thus, temple was placed
beside temple, a renewed form of worship alongside an old one. The
re-creative power of that Hellenic paganism was astonishing. In the
Christian world, perhaps only the monasticism of the Catholic
Church, which also repeatedly managed to rejuvenate itself in new
orders, offers a similarity. One religious creation rose alongside
the other, without excluding them. In the holy places of Greece, the
various religious worldviews of the centuries were seen side by side
in various monumental remains.
The
Athens of the tyrants was undoubtedly resplendent and magnificent,
and yet the Athenian felt all too keenly that this glory was not
truly his own. He was deeply wounded in his self-esteem, and half a
century of a generally wise and moderate monarchical government was
unable to reconcile him to the existing situation. What was the
splendor of the Panathenaia for him, where no one held a place
except that assigned to him by the tyrant? In the eyes of the Castle
Goddess herself, one appeared there as dishonored by slavery. -
Hipparchus, one of the two sons and successors of Pisistratus, was
led by his particular enmity towards a distinguished young man,
Harmodius, to shamefully deny his sister the honor of carrying a
basket in the Panathenaia, of being a canephora. Harmodius and his
friend Aristogiton plan to kill the two tyrants at the feast. They
succeed only halfway. Hipparchus falls, but Hippias, through his
swift and courageous action, manages to save his rule and his life
(514 BC). Harmodius and Aristogiton, however, “the
tyrant-murderers,” were still revered by distant posterity as
the heroes of freedom.
The
bloodstained family of the Alcmaionides still stirred. The years
seemed powerless to erase the stain of the murder of Cylon's
followers. They had, as we noted, already returned to Athens in
Solon's time; but had they really had the right to do so? No family
felt more detached from the old, sacred tradition of the nobility
than this one; how could those who had so horribly violated the old,
sacred right have derived any prestige from it? They often felt
abhorred by the people and were well aware, though they might have
tried to pretend otherwise, that every intimate bond with the Deity
had been broken. What could they rely on but their wealth and
boldness? Megacles, the party leader pushed aside by Pisistratus,
had later joined the noble party under Lycurgos, his former
opponent, to expel the tyrant; then allied with him again to bring
him back and share some measure of power. However, soon realizing
that, after having made use of his services, one could not maintain
close relations with him, the bloodstained one, he had become one of
the principal agents of Pisistratus' second expulsion. When he later
returned, he was forced to flee the country along with many others.
Years have passed, and now his son, from his marriage to the
daughter of the tyrant Clisthenes of Sicyon, also named after him,
is plotting ways to return to the city and make Pisistratus' son
realize that the despised Alcmaionids are still to be feared. The
temple of Delphi had been burned down and, thanks to the
Alcmaionids' money, had been restored more magnificently than would
have been possible without it; that Delphic sanctuary could serve!
Through Sparta's influence, the rule of the tyrants had come to an
end everywhere in the Peloponnese, undoubtedly including in Sicyon,
the city where Clisthenes' grandfather had ruled. The Delphic god
then incessantly reminded the Spartans that it was their solemn duty
to free the Athenians from their tyrant; it was the influence of the
Alcmaionids that had brought this about. It was even believed that
they had bribed the priesthood to do so. Hippias was the Spartans'
guest, but religious duty prevailed too strongly; he was driven out
with the help of a Spartan army. Clisthenes returned to the city
after an absence of at least thirty years (510 BC).
Will
the despised family now achieve prominence there? Like his father,
the old party of the nobility stood in his way, now under Isagoras,
as then under Lycurgos. If his father had sought support from the
middle class, he was able to marshal the popular force against his
enemies even more effectively. The family then evidently felt even
more outgrown by the authority of the nobility than the former;
moreover, it was primarily the nobility itself that was being
sidelined by a monarchical regime like that of the Pisistratidae.
Clisthenes understood that one could now take a significant step
further on the path of democracy. He introduced a new division of
the population according to the hamlets (demen) in which people
lived, then numbering one hundred, while ten hamlets were again
united into a tribe (phyle), so that there were ten tribes (phylen);
hamlets and tribes received their own sanctuaries and sacrificial
ceremonies, so that even now the state did not deny its religious
character. The old tribes, phratries, and lineages were not
abolished; here too, the new was juxtaposed with the old; but all
political significance was transferred to the new administrative
districts; for example, the Council, established by Solon, would
henceforth consist of five hundred members: fifty from each of the
ten new tribes, no longer four hundred, one hundred from each of the
four old ones. From then on, one was considered a citizen when one
was registered on the lists of the hamlets, no longer by being
admitted to the ceremonies of the nobility.
Democracy
was also confirmed in other ways; among other things, the well-known
ostracism (shard court) was introduced. The bloodstained one had
dared what almost no one else would have dared: he had broken with
such an ancient, sacred tradition as that of the Ionian national
division. The nobility was utterly defeated. One could attend his
sacrifices; one could also refrain from attending; in any case, this
no longer held the state together in its constituent parts. One
could have one's child with the phratries indicated; it was of no
concern to the state whether they did or did not do so. The nobility
had excluded numerous people, probably precisely the most turbulent,
whose citizenship was questionable, from citizenship by not allowing
them to attend the sacrifices: they now appeared on Clisthenes'
lists in the hamlets. From the people who attended their sacrifices
with pious attention, the nobility had formed its party; the
political organization had immediately been an aristocratic party
organization. It was ensured that the new division would never
become anything like that; not ten adjacent hamlets (demen), but
often the most distant ones were united into a single tribe (phyle);
the various larger social circles of neighbors, in which one or
another could easily gain a significant following, were divided over
several administrative districts. The Attic people had
enthusiastically followed the bold Alcmaionide, even though he had
led the way in something they themselves would likely have dreaded.
Now, for the first time, they felt completely freed from the ban of
the nobility. They breathed freely in the glorious consciousness of
their independence. What task in the world was too heavy for a
people so conscious of their strength?
Old
aristocratic Sparta was startled by the tide it had helped unleash.
It had once begun to extend its guardianship beyond the Peloponnese
to the Attic lands as well, and just as it had first driven out the
tyrant, it now acts as an upholder of divine right; understandably,
Isagoras had a hand in this. A Spartan herald arrived in Athens to
demand the expulsion of the descendants of those who had murdered
Cylon's followers. Clisthenes and a few others were forced to leave
the country; Even after more than a hundred years, the
great-grandson was persecuted by the bloodguilt of his
great-grandfather. A Spartan army entered the city; the rule of the
nobility would be restored, much as it had been before Solon. Seven
hundred families, naturally the most democratic, were expelled from
the country.
Was
democracy merely a matter of demagogues, and would the people,
deprived of their leaders, willingly submit to an aristocratic
order, such as they had not known for more than eighty years, since
Solon's legislation? The Council, established by the legislature,
refused to be dissolved. This signaled a resolution; a center
appeared around which all could rally. The stream of people
converged from all sides; aristocrats and Spartans fled to the
castle; they were besieged there and were quickly forced to
surrender. All those who had fled, including Clisthenes, returned to
the city. It was understood that the fight for freedom would now
truly begin. Sparta would return with its aristocratic allies; one
felt the eyes of all its old enemies upon it. How could the noble
merchants of Aegina on the west side of the country remain
indifferent to what was happening at Pallas's Hill? How could the
aristocrats of Thebes on the northern border? How could the wealthy
nobility of Chalcis, with its magnificent stud farms, on Euboia,
opposite the eastern coast?
Where
would they look for support? The Persian Empire had replaced the
Lydian. The Alcmaionids had previously been in contact with the
latter. We are not told, but it was presumably they who advised the
Athenians to seek support from the formidable Asiatic empire, which
then stretched from the Nile and the Mediterranean Sea to distant
India. An embassy departed for Asia Minor. The Persian satrap there
was willing to assist the Athenians, provided they sent the king
earth and water as a token of submission.
This
condition was accepted by the envoys; despite such an outward
incorporation into the great empire, one could, after all, remain
relatively true to oneself.
This
was perhaps the boldest feat of Alcmaionide policy, or that emulated
by the Alcmaionides; the first organized democracy the world had
seen would be safe in the shadow of the strictest Eastern despotism.
Now, however, even those for whom politics was merely a game of
shrewd calculations proved to have been mistaken about the most
important factor in their alliances: namely, the people they had
summoned to freedom. The significance of such an embassy seemed to
become fully clear to the Athenians for the first time: they
rejected such an agreement with indignation. Half a century of
tyranny had not made people forget what they owed themselves as
Greeks. How could they want to give up to the barbarian any of that
freedom they were so unspeakably happy to have regained from the
tyrant? Shortly afterward, Clisthenes was again
into
exile.
There
stood the Attic people alone, alone with their ideal spiritual
drive, with the noblest self-esteem that man can cherish, alone, but
under the protection of the gods, whose sanctuaries were everywhere
to be seen, shining especially conspicuously from the city's
fortress, where the Patron Goddess herself had established her seat.
From the east approaches the mighty colossus; on the coasts of Asia
Minor, on a few islands, tyrants have been appointed, who, like
petty kings among the great, bend the necks of the free Hellene;
gradually they will advance, and soon the Attic coast must be
reached. On the landward side, too, across the Hellespont, its
mighty arm extends slowly but surely; numerous places are occupied,
Macedonia is encircled, one is knocking at the gates of the European
Hellenic land. And in Attica's more immediate surroundings?
Peloponnesian, Theban, and Chalkidian aristocrats summon their men
to battle; armed Aeginite warships could invade the Attic ports at
any moment, and amidst all this, a people of surely no more than
twenty thousand fighting men holds aloft the standard of freedom,
the standard of man's high right to live free from the oppression of
his fellow man.
The
Peloponnesian army stands on Attic territory in the west; in the
north, the Thebans, in the east, the Chalkidians, have crossed the
border. The first to act is against the Peloponnesians. Here,
however, the power of the principle for which we fought aided them.
The Peloponnesians themselves, aristocrats though they were,
cherished freedom; relatively recently, several of them had been
freed from their tyrants; Now that they were facing the Athenians,
their courage failed them, confronting these rulers, whom they had
no wish to impose. The Corinthians were the first to leave the army;
even one of the two Spartan kings refused to continue; the
expedition had to be abandoned. The Athenians then proceeded to
chastise Chalkis for its simultaneous invasion. The Boeotians
attempted to come to their aid but were repulsed across the border.
On the same day, the Athenians crossed the sea and the Chalkidians
were also defeated; the landed possessions of the Chalkidian
nobility were distributed among Attic colonists (cleruchs).
Once
again, the Boeotians crossed the border, pressed hard by the
Athenians, and called upon the Aeginites, Athens's long-standing
enemies, for help. These landed, devastated Athens' principal port,
Phaleros, and the coastal regions. At the same time, another attack
from Sparta was threatened. Hippias was present. What happened in
Chalcis showed all too clearly what one feared from the youthful
democratic arrogance. Sparta would so forget itself that it would
bring back a tyrant to a Hellenic city. However, this proved
impossible. Once again, at the behest of the Corinthians, the
undertaking was abandoned, despite Hippias's warning of the danger
that unbridled Athens would pose to all of Greece. Some time later,
Hippias went to the king of Persia, his natural ally. This time,
Athens was saved. They even came to a relatively good understanding
with the Peloponnesians. However, relations with Aegina, in
particular, remained very tense.
With
what a different feeling one could now ascend to the city fortress
for the festival of the Panathenaeans! Only now had that festival
become entirely the Athenians' own festival. No tyrant anymore
inquired of a free citizen whether he carried a sword. Harmodius and
Aristogiton seem to have hidden theirs among the leaves of a myrtle
branch, which, in the hand of the celebrant, would not arouse
suspicion. "With the sword in the myrtle branch," they now
followed the procession, and a song proclaimed that they did so in
imitation of those heroes, "when they slew the tyrant and
liberated Athens." "Dear Harmodius," it continued,
"you are not dead, you live on the islands of the blessed with
fleet-footed Achilles and excellent Diomedes."1) A detachment
of handsome old men, each with a branch in their hand
(Thallophores), also participated in the procession. Beforehand, a
contest was held among the ten tribes of Clisthenes to determine who
could present the most handsome old man (Euandrie). In a similar
manner, the honor of participation for other participants no longer
depended on the whim of a single individual. Cases like that which
had befallen Harmodius' sister were no longer to be feared. Now, for
the first time, it was truly an image of the Attic people in their
full glory that presented itself in the procession of the
Panathenaeans of the goddess.
How
vividly, in all this, the consciousness of being Athenian spoke.
Unlike the tyrants, they had shown themselves unwilling to
relinquish their dignity as a Hellene; in a particularly close bond
with one's Ionian kin; yet, one held the conviction that one was, or
at least could be, different and better than them, and that one
should be so. The Solonian legislation—not abolished under
Pisistratus and his sons, especially regarding provisions such as
those mentioned here—had instilled in the people for almost a
century. Clisthenes had also cast aside the old Phratric tribes
because it was an Ionian division; as protective demigods for his
ten new tribes, he had deliberately chosen demigods from non-Ionian
legends: the Athenian was Pelasgian, was Indigenous, not Ionian.
This increasingly became a well-established popular opinion, and
there was about as much basis for it as if, for example, an
Englishman were to call himself more Anglo-Saxon than Norman. It was
a precious awareness for a people to belong to an age-old state, to
have, as it were, grown together with the soil of their homeland;
this gave a certain stability and steadfastness to customs and ways
of thinking; the sense of national unity was strongly confirmed by
it.1) The Ionians, whose cities were colonies, lacked all of this.
Entirely in the spirit of Solonian law, the Attic men, now or a
little later, abolished the custom of wearing long linen garments in
the Ionian manner, of rolling their hair into a bun, and of piercing
it with elaborate hairpins to keep it together. Such matters had a
completely different meaning for a people who so little separated
the inner from the outer than for us.
Thus,
the Attic people became more and more themselves. Today, too, we
encounter an Attic art that had already acquired a very distinct
character of its own. Indeed, several ancient Attic painted vases,
or fragments thereof, have been found that date to approximately
this period. The large mixing vessel, for example, — seventy
centimeters high and roughly as wide, made according to the
inscription by Clitias and Ergotimos and found in 1845 by
François—is the most famous example; eleven scenes are
depicted on it in six rows. This Attic vase painting is the
successor, above all, to an Ionian one, namely that of Chalcis.1) As
on the battlefield, Chalcis was also defeated here. First, Attic
artists more completely freed themselves from all vestiges of
oriental influence; Chalcis vases, for example, often still have
numerous rows of Asiatic animals, while Attic ones omit them more;
François's vase has one, along with ten with genuinely Greek
mythological scenes. All further situations are generally more
clearly perceived and rendered, even today with a certain sharpness,
as one wanted to bring clearly to the eyes of others what one was
consciously aware of having truly seen for the first time. On one of
the most beautiful Chalkidish vases, for example, one sees a couple
of cows; don't look too closely for the connection between the
tangle of legs and the bodies; that vase painter didn't take that so
seriously. An Attic artist, however, wouldn't be satisfied with
that. They also have a much more vivid sense of what can and cannot
be accomplished with the given resources. Drawing on vases, as we
know from what has already been said about it, was a silhouette
drawing with some, only minor, further elaboration of the figures by
means of crayons. It was therefore highly recommended to use the
figures in profile. The Chalkidish vase painter, however, is not
sufficiently aware of this. So, to take just one example from many,
on one of the most beautiful Chalkidian vases, a warrior is
positioned in such a way that his face and face are visible. That in
itself is quite manageable, but what about the helmet's crest? How
could it be drawn from the front, primarily with a little black
paint, so that one could tell what it was? They knew no other way
than to give one helmet two crests, both seen from the side. Among
Attic artists, however, the desire to compose scenes in such a way
that such difficulties could be avoided is very clearly revealed.
This may have required effort, but they undeniably learned to master
the material better and made greater progress in their art. Through
a very simple, yet precisely for that reason so striking, invention,
they later also managed to expand the means of their art. The black
figures on the red vase surface were still an imitation of the old
metal fittings on a wooden base. They did not yet have their own
style for vase painting. The Attic vase painter now simply turns the
matter around: instead of painting black figures on the red surface
of the vase, he makes the entire vase, or the part intended for the
drawing, black, the figures, retaining the black varnish, these now
became red on a black background, just as they had previously been
black on a red background. This now makes the figures appear much
clearer and more beautiful, and their interiors could be much better
developed with a brush and black paint than previously with crayons.
One now has much more freedom in one's drawing. Deep perspectives
were still out of the question, but the surface of a vase, which in
our perception always remains a plane and therefore wants to be
decorated as a plane, is not really the place for it.
Athens
also apparently came much more to the fore in monumental art at that
time. We hear the names of Antenor, Amphicrates, Hegias, Critius,
and Nesiotes. The former created a group of the two
tyrant-murderers, as did the latter two together. Thus, art was
immediately nationally inspired. We can gain some insight into the
tyrant-murderers of Critius and Nesiotes from later imitations and
depictions on coins; both men charged toward their target with
courageous courage. We also have some remains of sculpture from
approximately that period, but we lack the data for a comprehensive
assessment of the oldest Attic sculpture.
Leiden.
A.E.J.
Holwerda.
(To
be continued.)
The
Attic people and the art of Phidias. III. (Continued from Part
II, p. 312.)
Attic
democracy was, at its origin, a love of freedom and a sense of
self-respect. The community demanded space for itself and displaced
the nobility, but this displacement was more a means than an end. No
desire for equality was the great passion here, nor did the glory of
governing and judging itself shine primarily in the eyes of the
Attic citizen. The city's princes were distrusted to the extent that
they believed they feared their lust for tyranny, yet they could be
seen without envy as the chosen ones of the community at the helm.
As always, the Athenian remained sensitive to the grand splendor of
the nobles' lives and to the allure of distinguished manners and
noble innocence. About eighty years later, the comedian Aristophanes
poked fun at a wealthy Athenian citizen who had taken the pleasure
of marrying a destitute noblewoman. The grand noble names, such as
Xanthippos (yellow horse), Hipponikos (conqueror with horses), long
retained a certain appeal. A party of the old nobility continued to
cling to its lost rights. No wonder, however, that many others
learned to adapt more or less to democracy, which at least offered
them more room for their ambition than the rule of tyrants.
Nevertheless, it is indicative of the situation that the first
statesman who seized the young democracy and led it was a man whose
father belonged only to the less distinguished nobles, yet who,
above all, had often deeply felt the consequences of his
illegitimate birth from a non-Hellenic mother. It was Themistocles,
the son of Neocles. The Greeks recounted all sorts of examples of
his childish tendency toward self-aggrandizement and a burning,
common-sense, yearning to shine and gain prominence. At Olympia, for
example, he attempted to outdo Kimon, the son of Miltiades, with
pomp and splendor, with beautiful tents and splendid banquets. What
the Greeks considered entirely appropriate in the highly noble
youth, however, repelled them when it was imitated by a roturier.
But the roturier was a man of genius. The qualities by which he made
himself felt were an almost unparalleled cunning, a boldness and
foresight that consistently managed to achieve what, in the end,
proved just as attainable, and an originality that mocked all the
calculations of his opponents. No statesman ever
possessed—Thucydides1) already admired him for this—the
gift of foresight to a higher degree. He was fully aware of his
ability, and all that petty and childishness was the bastard
offspring of the statesman's natural ambition. Push a Themistocles
off the stage of government; you might as well wrest the chisel from
the hands of a Phidias. Was he enthusiastic about democracy and
Hellenism? He was not, first and foremost, a nature to be
enthusiastic. His circumstances connected him to democracy, but
above all, he was one of those statesmen who, without much prior
reflection on their desirability and justification, accept the
currents of their time as they are, to see what, with good
leadership, might be made of them in the interests of their state,
and whether therein lies a field for their activity, where they can
fully demonstrate who they are and what they are capable of. For von
Bismarck, in many ways Themistocles' spiritual twin brother, the
German unification movement was the means to the upliftment of the
Hohenzollern; the Attic statesman understood how democracy and the
struggle against the barbarians could leverage Athens' greatness.
The
movement against the tyrants in Europe was countered in the Hellenic
region of Asia Minor. The tyrant of Miletus, Aristagoras, on hostile
terms with the Persian court, knew no better option than to place
himself at the head of the liberation movement; in his own city, he
voluntarily relinquished his authority; in numerous other places, he
drove out the tyrants appointed by the king of Persia. He counted on
the help of Sparta and Athens, and the latter city, in the youthful
sense of its newly acquired freedom, actually came to the aid of the
Ionian kin. The same applied to the inhabitants of Eretria on
Euboia. Aristagoras's venture, however, failed. The Persians once
again confirmed their authority on the coasts and islands of Asia
Minor and the European lands beyond the Hellespont. They then
continued their advance, this time to subdue Greece and to chastise
the Ionian allies. This time (493 BC), it was impossible to
penetrate this far. However, everyone could understand that new
attempts would follow.
Next
to the roadstead of Phaleros, Athens's principal port, a rocky
peninsula of irregular shapes jutted out, with two small and one
large inlet, all three very narrow at the entrance, but widening
further, while being flanked by a higher and lower hilltop. The
largest inlet and the entire peninsula bore the name of Peiraieus.
There is a story that the ancient Epimenides of Crete, upon noticing
the fortress heights of Mounychia, the highest of these two
hilltops, pondered for a long time, but then predicted to the
bystanders that great evil awaited the Athenians from that place.
Similarly, Themistocles foresaw what that hilly peninsula with its
three indented bays could become, and there, as it were, the entire
Athens of the future rose before his eyes. A well-fortified Peiraias
could be the safest harbor and the most impregnable fortress in the
world. The sturdy Attic citizenry, as it then was, animated by the
fire of freedom, undoubtedly formed a land army that could even be
called honorable alongside that of Sparta; but at sea, it could be
utterly irresistible. Athens could become a maritime power that
would far outshine Aegina, Corinth, and every other Greek maritime
state. Their fleets could sail from and return to those inaccessible
harbors, from whose narrow entrances any enemy ship could easily be
barred. Should they be attacked by their enemies from the land side,
the entire population could find a safe refuge within that fortified
harbor. Provided the walls were built high enough, it could easily
be defended by a few weak men, so that almost the entire able-bodied
force would remain available to the fleet, and the enemy would
therefore have as much to fear as ever. There was, of that there was
no doubt, a major Persian campaign was imminent. The great king
could command hundreds of thousands; but a Persian land army would
hardly be able to carry out its task without a fleet. A Persian
expedition solely by sea was conceivable, one solely by land very
difficult. At sea alone could the Persian be permanently defeated,
and what future lay in store for Athens if all of Greece had to bear
witness that its naval power had, first and foremost, broken the
yoke of the barbarians?
And
without a doubt, the vision of the seer—for that was what he
was, albeit one in a completely different vein than the old
venerable Cretan—reached even further. The sea had created
democracy; the sea would make it great. The core of the land army
was formed by the more affluent as hoplites (heavy-armed troops);
the vast majority belonging to the lowest of Solon's classes, those
who owned no or a very small piece of land, were excluded from the
honor of serving as hoplites. No distinction was seen in naval
service; such lesser men, it seemed, were precisely in their place.
If the fleet now gained the upper hand, the preservation of Attica,
perhaps even of all of Greece, would largely depend on these lesser
citizens. Since Solon, Athens had developed greatly as a trading
state; undoubtedly, this measure of the soil's yield excluded many
well-to-do, even somewhat wealthy, citizens. However, there were
fears about the restlessness and the sometimes excessive freedom of
thought from tradition, which, as experience had shown, were
fostered by maritime traffic; the state had to rely primarily on
these sedate citizens, who were more attached to the existing order.
Themistocles' policy ultimately triumphed completely, but that
victory was still lamented by the ancient Plato more than a century
later.[1] This also explains the prediction, rightly or wrongly
attributed to Epimenides.
During
Themistocles' archonship (in 493 BC), work had already begun on
fortifying the Peiraias. However, the work was halted again.
Meanwhile,
the danger threatening from Persia drew ever closer. The great
king's envoys marched through the cities of Greece to demand land
and water as a sign of submission. Several granted it. Sparta and
Athens refused. Among those who had submitted was Aegina.
What
could have motivated the proud island of the Aikides to do so? An
ally of Sparta, a nation powerful through its fleets and wealth,
excelling almost all others through its heroic deeds at the camp of
Olympia, surrendered to the barbarians at the first summons. Was it
to be assumed that this state intended to do what the Athenian
citizenry had so indignantly rejected shortly before, namely, ally
itself with the mighty Persian Empire against its Hellenic
neighbors? The danger threatening them was appalling. From Aegina,
the barbarian fleet might invade the roadstead of Phaleros.
The
Athenians complained to Sparta, considered the natural head of
Hellenism. However, the friends they had in that city at that time
knew nothing more than to hand over some prominent Aeginetans to
them. After Aegina had vainly demanded the extradition of these
people, the Aeginean fleet suddenly attacked the Athenians while
they were celebrating in southern Attica, and in retaliation,
several prominent Athenians were taken to Aegina. The danger that
constantly threatened from this western neighbor was now felt more
vividly than ever; one was not safe for a moment in one's own
country. There was no resting on one's laurels. Aegina had to be
punished. But how? Their own naval forces were insufficient.
However, they managed to obtain twenty ships as a gift from the
Corinthians, made secret alliances with the democrats of the island,
and bravely attacked the powerful enemy. War had broken out.
There,
however, the long-awaited storm was truly approaching from the east.
A mighty fleet was carrying a large army. Hippias was with the
barbarians. Those who had refused water and land would now be
subdued by force. The king had given firm orders that the Athenians
and inhabitants of Eretria on Euboia be taken captive to Persia.
The
enemy fleet approached from island to island. There they landed on
Euboia. Eretria went up in flames; its wretched population was taken
captive. The barbarians stood on Attic soil at Marathon (490 BC).
The
Athenians deeply understood the gravity of the moment. They were
convinced that they had much that was great and noble to defend,
along with their national existence. However, no one could fully
grasp what was then at stake, even for posterity. The question was
whether the noble Attic people would produce its Sophocles, its
Phidias, its Socrates, its Plato, or whether, languishing in a
forgotten corner of the vast Persian empire, it would be no more
than, at best—preserved from utter ruin by a quirk of
fortune—an ethnographic curiosity, a strange national relic
amidst entirely different tribes.2).
What
high interests, then, were those ten thousand heroes fighting for,
who dared to face the formidable Persian army? Themistocles was
among them, and the noble Aristides; but the main leadership was in
the hands of Miltiades, the son of Kimon, a haughty nobleman of
great military experience. He belonged to a family that had acquired
an independent principality among the Thracians, at a time when the
tyrants' rule offered the Athenian nobility no sphere of action;
there, too, he had ruled and fought; there, too, he had come into
contact with the barbarians. He could boast that perhaps no Greek
had been as dangerous to the king as he. The prestige of his highly
noble house was great; the husband of a Thraian princess felt a
considerable distance between himself and the circles of the people,
but what a new splendor it gave to his old nobility to stand as
leader of the Greeks against the barbarians!
The
ten thousand were victorious. The immense army fled to the fleet.
This fleet, however, sailed around Attica to attack it from the
west. Onward from the fields of Marathon, to obstruct the enemy
there as well.
Already
the barbarian fleet comes into view, directly opposite the harbor of
Phaleros. Suddenly, however, it turns away. Did the barbarians lack
the courage for a second battle when they once again saw the enemy
arrayed against them on the coast?
What
a triumph, at what a camp! No long line of victors at Olympia could
bring such fame to a city. Ancient Sparta, too, was full of
recognition for the heroism demonstrated.
And
what were the consequences of this victory? The fear that had so
long plagued them was now completely removed from their souls. Would
the barbarians ever dare to return? Through the might of the Attic
heavy-armed men, it was believed, Athens, indeed all of Greece, had
been freed forever from the danger that threatened from that side.
Had
not Themistocles also been defeated by Marathon? The
ever-calculating, deliberating, and weighing statesman saw matters
quite differently than the people, enraptured by victory. The
decision that had brought the triumph of Marathon was not one the
great king would accept. The vast empire had not yet exhausted all
its resources. The barbarians would return, and they could not be
defeated by heavy weapons alone. Under the circumstances, however,
it was advisable not to discuss this. Continuing the construction of
Mount Peiraieus was out of the question; but perhaps something else
could be achieved. War with Aegina was still on the verge of
collapse. After some initial victories, defeat had been suffered.
Would the brave Attic people prove powerless against this enemy?
Themistocles proposed that the surplus produce from the silver mines
of Laurion should no longer be divided, as had been done up to now,
but should be used for shipbuilding.
Here,
however, Aristides, a man of great influence, stood in his way. That
he possessed this undoubtedly reflected honor on the Athenians, as
he sought to assert himself through nothing but better insight, a
deep sense of justice, and a pure enthusiasm for the beautiful and
the good. He was by no means an unruly conservative, but he
shuddered at all leaps into the unknown, above all at any less than
gradual progress on the path of democracy. Therefore, he opposed
Themistocles' plans, which he fully understood would lead his people
to an entirely new future. Themistocles, however, was victorious.
With all the youthful resilience of a newly awakened sense of self,
the Attic citizenry set to work; for wealthy people, it was a point
of ambition to contribute large sums from their own resources.
Aristides was banished through ostracism. Themistocles thus gained
complete control of the people, and understanding that it would be
unwise to ask for too much at once, he repeatedly proposed building
more ships, thus gradually placing the Athenians in possession of a
large fleet.
There,
approximately a million Asiatic warriors approached (480 BC); a
bridge was built for them across the Hellespont; twelve hundred
ships followed this immense army along the coast. How could Greece
resist? Hellenes versus barbarians—that was one of the most
familiar ideas; but had a united Greece ever actually faced a
foreign enemy, except in the ancient period of the Argonaut
expedition and the Trojan War? Hellenism was still unorganized. The
Spartan alliance in the Peloponnese comprised relatively few states.
How many feuds and disputes also divided the various tribes? Would
it become apparent, once the barbarians actually approached, that
Hellenism did not actually exist? Several Hellenic states had
already submitted to the enemy, who had sent envoys ahead for earth
and water. The cause of Hellas's freedom seemed hopeless.
It
was the great Attic statesman on whose broad shoulders the future of
the entire Hellenic homeland now seemed to rest. He, above all,
organized the resistance against the enemy. Disputes were settled;
Athens reconciled with Aegina. On his advice, the city of the
Marathon victors willingly placed itself under Spartan leadership.
The Spartan confederacy in the Peloponnese was extended to all those
who had the courage to stand up for their dignity as Hellenes, even
in that fearful era.
Sparta's
brave men fell at Thermopylae. The immense host poured down upon
Greece and approached Athens. It was the mighty hand of Themistocles
that managed to drive an entire population out of their homes. One
had to leave one's sanctuaries in the hands of the barbarians; one
must risk whether one would even stand under the protection of the
Immortals outside one's ancient, sacred territory. The Peiraieus,
still unfortified, offers no refuge. Women, children, and old men
flee to Salamis, Troyes, and Aegina—who would have thought
such a thing possible a few years ago?—the men hide behind the
wooden walls of the fleet. From Salamis, the city and the shrines of
the fortress are seen going up in flames.
The
Persian fleet appears at the roadstead of Phaleros. The Greek fleet
has retreated not far from there, between Salamis and the mainland.
Great discord reigns on the latter. The Peloponnesians want to leave
the place to defend their peninsula alone. Themistocles holds them
back with difficulty. News arrives that the Persian fleet is
approaching. Very few knew then that the king, through a ruse of
Themistocles, had been induced to attack the Greeks there in a
narrow strait, terrain so much more suitable for their smaller
fleet, and thus force them to unity.
What
a result his efforts were crowned with: the Persian fleet was
defeated. Most of the Greeks had behaved better; above all, the
Aeginites wanted to erase the stain they had brought upon themselves
by their initial submission. However, no one could reasonably doubt
that the victory was primarily due to the city, which ten years
earlier had been forced to request twenty ships from the Corinthians
to defend itself against a Greek enemy, but which had now deployed a
fleet of two hundred ships, more than half of the entire Greek naval
force (372 ships). What a reversal in the space of thirty years; the
proud Chalcidians of old had fought alongside Athenian ships. The
king left the country, leaving only a portion of the army, three
hundred thousand men, under Mardonius; the Persian fleet also
withdrew from Greek waters. It was later learned that another ruse
by Themistocles had been the cause of all this. However, under his
command, the Attic fleet set sail to rule the seas between Asia and
Greece; the islands that had joined the Persians were forced to pay
a fine. If only the Attic navy would maintain control over this, the
route by which the Persian fleet could return to Greece would be
blocked.
However,
Mardonius and his large army were still in Greece. Athens was once
again occupied by the barbarians; the barely returned population had
to flee the city once again. The work of destruction was now
completed; only a relatively few houses remained standing.
The
king was also determined to vigorously maintain his authority over
the Greek coastal cities of Asia Minor. Of all the troops with which
he had returned from Greece, the majority had perished from hunger
and disease; but there was still a significant reserve army there,
capable of holding the Greeks of Asia Minor in check, while a
substantial fleet lay off the coast to repel any attack from that
side.
Mardonius'
army, however, was all but destroyed at Plataea; he himself was
killed. On the same day, it is said, the Asia Minor reserve army was
utterly defeated on the promontory of Mykale, and the Persian fleet,
along with its fortified landing place into which it had taken
refuge, was burned. At Plataea, the Athenian land forces under
Aristides had contributed at least as much to the success as those
of the Spartans; that the victory at Mykale was primarily due to the
Athenian fleet could not even be doubted. The Persian army consisted
of courageous, tactful men, but those vast, shapeless masses of
warriors, so to speak, nameless, were no match for men so powerfully
developed and of such high moral character as these gymnasium
champions, who were never for a moment disoriented by the
consciousness of competing, just as they did on the racecourse at
Olympia, under the eyes of their fellow Greeks. They undoubtedly
owed much to their superior organization and equipment, but how else
did they possess these if not by being Greeks? Above all, however,
what a sublime character did the fighting here possess! Just as
later, during the Crusades, the most diverse peoples, the most
hostile armies, stood united as Christians against the Muslims, so
too here, for a high principle, all age-old feuds and all petty
ambitions had to be set aside. Man does not maintain himself so
easily at such a lofty position. Just as in that heroic age of
Catholicism, the fire of internal discord flared up again and again.
More than once, this even threatened to destroy the great work
entirely.
What
bitterness and passion, especially over the question of which nation
and which individuals would receive the prize of victory after each
battle, for the fight had so completely taken on the character of
combat in the arena that here too, prizes were awarded to the
bravest. Now, however, Panhellenism (the union of all Hellenes) was
at its peak. A spirit of peace and reconciliation spread its wings
over the united heroic army at Plataea; it was the influence of
Aristides, the commander of the Athenians, that made itself felt
here. Spartans and Athenians were on the verge of drawing swords
over the question of who would receive the prize for bravery in the
battle of Plataea. He prevented any outbreak, and when the proposal
was made to award it to the small, brave nation of the Plataeans, he
was the first to join on behalf of the Athenians. The storm of
passions had completely subsided. The moment was solemn and sacred;
concern for divine things, noble thoughts of freedom and unity of
purpose completely consumed the soul. All fires in the land of the
Plataeans were extinguished; they had been defiled by the presence
of the barbarians. New fire was brought from the hearth of Delphi;
its world-restorative power was certain. An altar of "the Zeus
of Freedom" (Eleutherios) was erected. At the suggestion of
Aristides, the territory of the Plataeans was declared sacred and
inviolable. Festive envoys from all Greek states would travel there
annually; every four years a great festival of freedom (that of the
Eleutheria) would be celebrated. The small nation of the Plataeans,
admired by all for their demonstrated heroism, yet envied by no one,
would be responsible for performing the sacrifices for all of
Greece. At the suggestion of the same Aristides, it was decided to
establish a permanent Hellenic army and navy for the fight against
the barbarians. If ever, then the unity of Hellenism had now become
a reality.
But
what bustle and commotion reign amid the ruins of Athens! The
fleeing population has returned and is restoring its homes and
sanctuaries. But behold, walls are also being built, and indeed on
such an astonishing scale that, in the event of a new invasion, the
entire population of Attica might find a place behind them. Athens'
old enemies were alarmed: the Attic people, already so powerful at
sea, indomitable in their self-esteem, would ensconce themselves
behind high walls, from which they could defy all of Greece. It was
Themistocles, Neocles' son, who once again led the way here. His
strength was the strength of the entire people; the Athens of his
designs was about to be realized. He, too, had repeatedly managed to
maintain the bond between the Hellenes, but he believed he knew
people well enough to know how much one could rely on the durability
of their noblest sentiments. Even in the midst of a united
Hellenism, Athens had to ensure its safety. And wasn't it, in any
case, her right to fortify herself as she saw fit? Couldn't an
Athens with walls render greater service to the Hellenic cause than
one without? Even a man like Aristides had to fully admit that.
Athens'
enemies, however, especially Aegina, were restless. On behalf of the
majority of the Hellenic allies, Sparta demanded a halt to
fortifications; after all, a fortified Athens could serve as a base
for their operations in the event of a possible return of the
barbarians. Themistocles, through cunning, managed to delay the
Spartans for a considerable time. Meanwhile, men, women, and
children had to work tirelessly. All suitable stones found, worked
and unworked, gravestones and stones on which acts were chiseled—we
still have some that were dug out of that wall—in short,
everything that could serve any purpose was piled up into an
irregular, yet strong wall. This was finished before anyone could
intervene. The fortifications of the Peiraias were now also
completed. Athens, on its ancient, hallowed ground, was untouchable.
With
what self-satisfaction could Aegina also look back on the heroic
struggle it had endured. After the Battle of Salamis, it had won the
prize of bravery, and although everyone knew that such decisions
were not always made with the strictest justice, it was above all
suspicion that the Aeginetans, as so often at the camp at Olympia,
had here also proven themselves the worthy people of the Aeacians.
These same ancient demigods, Aiacus, Telamon, Achilles, Ajax, had
been called upon by the Hellenes at Salamis in a very special way,
and some believed that their figures were to have seen themselves
moving through the air. - When approaching the island from Attica, a
platform on the seaward side quickly caught the eye, upon which a
temple of Athena had been built. Now, as we know, Aegina, since the
time of Smilis, had shone with an unsurpassed school of sculptors.
Now, after the heroic struggle, when its powers are felt more
vividly than ever, two large sculptural groups are being created for
the two facades of that temple, a splendid example of what the
sculptural art of the Aeginetes was also capable of. The creation of
a work of art was here, as so often in Greece, a national act. On
the east facade, one saw a battle between Greeks and Trojans for the
body of a fallen man, presumably Oicles, with the Aegean Telamon
leading the fight; on the west facade, the battle also between the
two peoples for the body of Patroos, with Ajax leading the fight. In
both chariot battles, the goddess Athena intervenes, as always in
favor of the Greeks. Thus, as soon as the foreigner set foot on
shore, the ancient glory of the Aeacids shone in his eyes, who had
once again been the forerunners in the renewed struggle between
Europe and Asia that had now been experienced.
Significant
portions of this work of art have been preserved and are now in the
glijtotheque in Munich.[1] Undoubtedly, it does great credit to the
masters who created it. The striking accuracy with which the bodily
forms are rendered and the versatility of postures in which the
figures were composed are those of an already highly developed art.
The Aeginite sculptures undeniably held a very high place among the
works of art of their time.
However,
the full light of truly Hellenic art had not yet broken through
here. The heads, with their good Assyrian hair and old-fashioned
smiles, have lagged behind in their development. A more refined art
of grouping, in which the rich diversity of the various parts is
only briefly, yet just enough, held together by the bond of
symmetry, is still absent. The figures of the gods are highly rigid
and conventional. All grandeur is completely absent in both her and
the fighting heroes. Moreover, especially in the western gable
group, the movements of the bodies, though often tremendous, are not
intimately and accurately rendered in the smallest details to create
a powerful impression of life. There is, in fact, a significant
difference between the two gable groups. The eastern group was
clearly created by a younger generation of artists2), who, through
continued observation of nature, began to outgrow the artistic
tradition honored in the western group. Not only are details like
veins and tendons rendered much more accurately—something that
immediately enhances the impression of life—but the poses and
gestures are also taken from life with much greater delicacy. This
is especially true of a dying warrior, who has fallen to the ground,
but who still holds his upper body somewhat upright with his shield
resting upright on his left arm and his right hand weakly pushing
off the ground. This figure is truly expressive; even the
conventional smile of the west facade is replaced here by a fairly
well-rendered expression of sorrow: the pursed lips are slightly
parted at the corners.
However,
the Aeginetes were not destined to achieve further victories in this
field. It is undeniable that a vigorous development of art usually
goes hand in hand with the overall national advancement of a people.
Yet we are repeatedly reminded that geniuses are primarily by the
grace of God, and thus the great artist who contributed most to
freeing Hellenic sculpture from all the barbarism that still clung
to it, belonged to Rhegion, in a remote corner of the Greek world, a
southern Italian colony far from the battlefields of Marathon and
Plataea, with a population whose cowardice would soon become
proverbial. That city had already produced one famous sculptor,
Klearchos, a pupil of Skyllis and Dipoinus, and Pythagoras—for
that was the name of the great Rhegionian master who now
appeared—was said to have been a pupil of this Klearchos.
While Greek art from the very beginning had an open eye for nature,
Pythagoras was the first to make it a rule that, if one wanted to
imbue bodily forms with the expression of life, one must follow it
down to the smallest detail. He therefore put an end to Assyrian and
other ancient hair treatments; he depicted veins and tendons with
great clarity; but above all, he felt that it was the so-called
rhythm of movements is what gives bodies their full naturalness, and
if one did not want to leave it to chance whether the figures one
created would appear animated or not, one had to endeavor above all
to reproduce that rhythm delicately and accurately. But what did one
understand by this?1) The human body is, so to speak, more of a
single whole than an amalgamation of several limbs; all movements of
any significance are therefore more or less movements of the entire
body, even if they originate in a single limb; the movement
propagates throughout the body and produces countermovements. Only
when this propagation occurs gradually, without jerks or jerks, does
one obtain a movement that, at a single specific moment—and
only such a movement can visual art depict—dominates the
entire body. Such movements were called "good of rhythm,"
"eurythmic." The lines of these movements, however
convoluted, immediately appeared as a single whole, just as one
feels that a line of verse forms a single whole, no matter how
different the feet from which it was composed. Eurythmic was the
springy gait, full of self-control, of the athletically trained,
free Hellene; eurythmic were also highly evocative of the dancer's
movements, which emanated from the feet and were conveyed to the
entire body, which, in its rhythmic undulations, was, as it were,
carried by the rhythm of the accompanying music. A no less striking
example, though of a completely different nature, is provided by one
of Pythagoras's own most famous works, namely his limping
Philoctetes, of which we can gain some understanding from imitations
on cameos. It was precisely a subject that tempted Pythagoras to
test his strength, a difficult, painful gait to which the entire
posture of the body was adapted. Yet even the victors of Marathon
were not left behind. The delicacy and loveliness of Kalamis,
especially his Aphrodite Sosandra, were striking nonetheless—or
rather, more or less so because he clung to the old art form. Of
greater significance in the consequences, however, was that Myron
from Eleuthera, a Boeotian border town that had joined Attica, a
pupil of the famous Argive master Ageladas, dared to enter the arena
with the genius Pythagoras. While the master, with his pankratiast
(a kind of champion), achieved victory this time, there is no doubt
that the movement that had begun in distant Rhegion was carried over
to Athens and continued there. Myron, like Pythagoras, studied
extensively in the gymnasiums and palaces. His animals, especially
his cow, also achieved great fame. We know a few of his works from
imitations. First, his discus thrower; he is depicted at the precise
moment his discus (disc) is about to whizz away; the entire body is
at the height of tension, an indivisible moment before it ceases.
Furthermore, we have copies of Marsyas, who recoils from Athena just
as he was about to seize the flute she has thrown away. Also very
famous was his runner Ladas, who died as a result of his exertions
in the racecourse at Olympia; "his breath," according to
an old poetic description, "floated from the sunken sides onto
the edges of his lips." The position of the lips, in
conjunction with the sunken sides and, of course, the flat chest,
thus indicated the condition of the runner gasping for breath. These
examples demonstrate how effectively Myron, like Pythagoras, was
able to express life in coherent movements. However, he went further
than this. From what we are told—and what we know of his works
is entirely consistent with this—he managed to convey the
impression of life in his creations more powerfully than he had
observed in nature. Furthermore, in relatively minor details, such
as the treatment of hair, he must have been less careful in
imitating nature than Pythagoras. Myron was clearly more concerned
with explaining nature than with following it, and therefore he did
not bother with the minor details of execution, insofar as these
were not related to what he wanted to clearly visualize through his
works. Although he was not yet an idealist in the full sense of the
word, he had undoubtedly already set foot on the path that idealism
alone could attain. Myron no longer needed to search for the forms
of nature, as Pythagoras had done, but he had already mastered them
sufficiently to use them as the material for artistic creations, a
fantasy that reached beyond nature.
However,
the man in whose spirit the unique idealism of Athens was already
alive and working lived and worked in Athens.
Attic
art would mature. Phidias, Charmides' son, had first tried his luck
as a painter, but later, realizing his true calling, he apprenticed
with the Attic sculptor Hegias; probably not entirely satisfied with
what he learned from him, he, like Myron, had sought solace with the
Argive master Ageladas. It is believed that in both his and Myron's
art, traces of Ageladas' influence can be discerned alongside that
of the earlier Attic school of sculpture.[1] Phidias was still a
young man at the time of the Battle of Salamis. However, not long
afterward, he created a large group of bronze statues to commemorate
the Battle of Marathon, using part of the money brought in by the
booty taken there. This group was placed in the temple of Delphi;
Miltiades stood there between Apollo and Athena. Another work from
the early part of his artistic career was a large bronze statue of
the goddess Athena, which was placed on the citadel; this too was
likely made from part of the proceeds of the spoils taken in the
Persian Wars. No Hellenic people were more closely connected to the
Athenians than the Plataeans; they were the only ones who had fought
on the battlefield of Marathon; without the envy of the other
Hellenes, they would have become fully Athenians by having their
territory incorporated into Attica. With the money they had earned
as a prize for bravery in the battle near their city, they had a
temple built for Athena Areia. Phidias sculpted the statue of the
goddess for it. Thus, from the beginning, he was the national
sculptor of the Athenians and their most loyal friends, then, so to
speak, the sculptor of the Persian Wars, just as the sculptors of
the aforementioned Aeginean groups were for Aegina. While these
adorned the island's east coast, facing Attica, anyone approaching
the Attic west coast, facing Aegina, could soon catch sight of
Phidias' bronze statue of the Castle Goddess atop the fortress.
What
powerful impressions lived under the generation that had waged a
gigantic struggle for its national existence and, in the process,
had seen the highest national ideal, hitherto of scarcely any
practical significance, suddenly become a full reality. In the
powerful uplift of soul, which brought the consciousness of having,
according to the noblest promptings of one's soul, dared the unequal
battle for the best one knew, one breathed as if in the heavenly
atmosphere of the Immortals, by whose help, indeed—one was
deeply convinced of this—one had, in the first place, crushed
the power of the barbarians. It was the sacred atmosphere of the
battlefield of Plataea, and while people often imagined these
helpful gods, according to popular belief, as fellow warriors, there
was also a special place here for those poetic-philosophical
conceptions of a higher spiritual development. They had witnessed
the denouement of a tremendous world drama. The ancient struggle
between Europe and Asia, already begun during the time of the
Argonauts' expedition and the Trojan War, had resumed. Old
predictions circulated that the Asian army would perish in an attack
on Greece. In his blind arrogance, Xerxes had, as it were, equated
himself with the gods. It was not a God1) who marched against Greece
at the head of such tremendous armies and such a mighty fleet, who,
at the Hellespont, to clear a path for himself, threw a "yoke
around the neck of the sea"2), who had the promontory of Athos
dug through to grant his ships safe passage! The deceit of the gods
led the arrogant man ever further down the path of destruction, once
he had embarked upon it. Xerxes' blindness caused those ancient
prophecies to be fulfilled more quickly than might otherwise have
been the case. The Moira and Atê of the gods3) were the cause
of the terrible disaster that had befallen the barbarians.
In
this spirit, Aeschylus wrote his "Persians." We know that
the poet's religious views were more peculiar to him. Yet, as we
have seen, the ideas then generated were connected with more exalted
conceptions of the Deity than those according to which the world of
the gods formed a restlessly tossed, small-scale human society. The
events of the time thus brought the Gods more vividly than ever
before to mind as the immense beings who sat enthroned there in
tranquil majesty and heavenly calm on Olympus and guided humanity in
all its ways, even unnoticed by them. Thus, they also undoubtedly
imagined the exalted artist, who seemed chosen to be the heroic
singer and hymn-writer of his people in metal and marble. He would
attempt to recreate them in that full divine majesty.
To
present it to his compatriots and contemporaries as if before their
eyes, after the visual artist had hitherto depicted it as a
motionless lump or in human activity. The form of the colossus was
bestowed upon him by the existing artistic tradition, but he would
lose the accuracy of the Peloponnesian sculptors in depicting bodily
forms, the relative skill in depicting the garment in its various
arrangements, in its folds and folds—which one apparently owed
to the Ionian school of art, and the eurythmy of Pythagoras and
Myron—he would, in short, take everything that his ancestors
and contemporary could achieve in their art, so to speak, as a tool
in their hands, to perfect and glorify it, and to create forms such
as these, though entirely in harmony with nature, were never
produced by nature. The path by which nature was surpassed, taken by
Myron through the inspiration of his imagination, was entered by
Phidias with the awareness of a higher calling. This Attic idealism,
after all, was no arbitrary play of the imagination. They were truly
existing gods and demigods who had to be depicted, as people truly
believed they were, human and yet more than human. It is sometimes
assumed that in Phidias's first works, the influence of Ageladas was
still quite strongly discernible, and of course, the master did not
immediately reach his greatest heights; yet, the basic concept of
his religious creations is apparently already apparent in that
bronze statue of Athena. It was not only very large, but the martial
attitude usually given to the goddess—we know Phidias's image
in its main features from Attic coins—was replaced by one of
calm dignity.
Yet,
however, Athens was not what it could become. Themistocles
experienced the utmost satisfaction; Salamis, so to speak, conquered
Marathon. Was it possible to continue treating the Attic sea people,
to whom Athens, and to whom all of Greece owed most of its survival,
as less entitled fellow citizens, to whom the interests of the state
could not be fully entrusted? At Aristides's own suggestion, most
offices were opened to citizens of all four classes, according to
land ownership. It was one of those reforms that were inevitable,
even if the statesman was not entirely reassured about their
consequences.
Already
during the Battle of Mykale, the Ionian troops of the king's army
had deserted; for the second time, the Asian Hellenic lands were in
full revolt against the barbarians. The European Greeks understood
that they could not abandon their kinsmen to their vengeance and
deliberated on what should be done. The Spartans, naturally wary of
any daring undertaking, believed it best to have them evacuate their
cities and lands and assign them other places of residence in
Europe. Such cowardice, especially after such victories, was utterly
incomprehensible to the Athenians; they had to maintain their Ionian
brethren in their own country despite all the armies and fleets of
the barbarians; abandoning Asia Minor to them was tantamount to
giving them free rein on the path to European Greece. Were those
Dorian Spartans really the right people to decide the fate of their
Ionian brethren? What did they feel for them? Wasn't Athens, already
united with them in ancient times in the Delian League, their
natural protector? When the Spartans shortly thereafter concluded
their campaign of that spring, the Athenians continued the fight
with their Asia Minor brethren for a while longer. Meanwhile, as we
have seen, renewed war against the barbarians had also been decided
upon at Plataea. Consequently, under Spartan leadership, a Hellenic
naval force sailed once again to Asia Minor. Cyprus was largely
captured; from there, any new naval deployments on the opposite
Phoenician coast could be prevented. Byzantium was taken; by
conquering the lands along the Hellespont, the Persian route could
also be blocked there. The Spartan commander, Pausanias, however,
adopted a very haughty attitude and permitted himself all sorts of
violence, especially against the Greeks of Asia Minor. All allies
except the Peloponnesians placed themselves under the protection of
the Athenians and assigned them hegemony. Meanwhile, Pausanias was
summoned to Sparta, accused of treason, and only the Athenians and
those who had allied with them remained on the battlefield. The
Spartans made only one more feeble attempt to regain control of the
war. When it became clear to them that this would not succeed, they
also abandoned the war in Asia without much resistance to the
Athenians and their allies; after all, from the very beginning, this
far-flung undertaking had been very unpopular with them. The
alliance of Plataea was not considered broken, but why should all
the allies go to war, now that it turned out that a portion of them
was entirely sufficient for waging the war?
The
old Delian alliance was renewed. Treasurers of the Hellenes
(Hellenotamies) managed the common funds at the temple of Apollo on
Delos. Each of the allies paid according to their ability; it was
the just Aristides who had established this for each. Not a dominant
Hellenism, as had more or less been Themistocles' intention, but a
free alliance of states on equal terms would form Hellas's bulwark
against the barbarians. The leadership of the war fell to Kimon, son
of Miltiades, a commander of swift and bold warfare, acting with the
same powerful, audacious impulse that then animated the entire Attic
citizenry. The Ionian allies were forced to acknowledge him, in his
private life, as a carefree, rather unstern nobleman, almost one of
their own; however, when the time came for action, he was entirely
self-possession, courage, and strength of spirit. He always
captivated with his engaging, uninhibited manner. No one did good on
a greater scale than he; evidently, his generosity never cost him a
single victory over himself. It is said that he had the fences of
his gardens removed so that his poor fellow citizens could freely
gather as much fruit as they chose; daily he held an open table, at
which he fed a great many poor people. It is understandable that,
however much this open-mindedness suited his nature, it nevertheless
became a consciously employed means of gaining support. The paternal
tradition of fighting the barbarians completely filled this brave
warrior, son of the hero of Marathon, and for him, the general
Hellenic spirit far exceeded what any state, even his famous
hometown, could aspire to be on its own. For Sparta, he possessed
the inherited reverence of ancient Panhellenic sentiments, and he
intended nothing less with his military exploits than to outdo
Sparta by elevating Athens. The Plataean League still held its full
strength for him.
Fighting
resumed in Thrace, on Cyprus, and on the coasts of Asia Minor. The
blows inflicted on the great king's power were tremendous; on and
along the western coasts of his empire, the Hellenes triumphed and
ruled. And yet, the affairs of Panhellenism were already taking a
very unfortunate turn. The Ionians began to complain about the Attic
yoke, just as they had previously complained about the Spartan yoke
of Pausanias. This constant effort was too much against their
nature, and the Athenians demanded that they fulfill their
obligations with great rigor. They thought that the unwilling could
buy their way out of the war; the Athenians used that money to build
ships and fight for those who stayed back. These, understandably,
became all the more dependent on the leader of the alliance; they
became completely weaned from war and soon possessed no ships or
military equipment. Kimon also had to repeatedly bring back to
submission allies who had defected; naturally, these allies lost
even the semblance of independence.
Sparta
watched with dismay how much Athens' power was thus consolidated.
Could even that ancient fighter of tyrants actually tolerate one
Hellenic state depriving another of its liberty? It secretly entered
into an agreement with the rebellious Thasos; by invading Attica, it
would provide indirect aid to that island. However, as if in a
bitter mockery of fate, the Messenians, Sparta's slaves for
centuries, took advantage of the turmoil caused by an earthquake to
rise up against their oppressors, thus preventing the Spartans from
intervening to save Thasos's freedom. Sparta found itself in such
dire straits that it was forced to call upon its allies for help,
and since the treaty of Plataea was still legally valid, it also
turned to Athens. Despite the resistance of the ardent democrat
Ephialtes, Kimon managed to persuade the Athenians to send a Spartan
army to his aid. For the first time in about fifteen years, the
Spartans once again saw an Athenian army on the field beside them.
Now that they were once again in close contact with these people,
they also suddenly felt more vividly the gulf that actually existed
between them. Moreover, those qualities that had always hindered
them in these allies.
That
ease with which they seemed to overturn existing conditions, that
overconfidence in acting on the dictates of the moment, that never
flinching from the uncertainty of the outcome—none of this had
undoubtedly improved during those years. These men came from
numerous victories, in which their boldness had achieved what
Spartan prudence had not dared to attempt: the liberation of the
Asian Hellenic lands. More than ever, they were full of faith in
themselves and their democracy. Like a bolt of lightning, the idea
struck the Spartans that such revolutionary liberators might well
develop sympathy for the Messenian slaves they were supposed to help
bring back under the yoke. It was impossible to retain such people
any longer. Under the pretext that they no longer needed their help,
they sent them back home, alone among all their allies (461 BC). The
anger and bitterness of the haughty Attic people after such a
treatment is understandable. They considered the Platonic League
completely broken and aligned themselves closely with Argos,
Sparta's long-standing enemy in the Peloponnese. At that very time,
Megara found itself deeply embroiled in a conflict with Corinth over
the boundary. It broke away from Sparta's Peloponnesian League and
sought support from the Athenians. They allied with them and
occupied their land to protect it from the Corinthians. Meanwhile,
the campaigns against Persia had also been expanded: Egypt resigned,
and the Athenians of Cyprus came to its aid. It seemed that no
effort was too great for this citizenry with its twenty thousand
able-bodied men; She challenged the immense Persian dominance of the
world, even beyond her Hellenic lands. She held a federal territory
hemmed in by reluctant allies, encompassing almost all the coastal
regions and islands of the Greek archipelago. She now stood ready to
wage war in the Peloponnese as well, now that she considered herself
insulted to death by the Peloponnesian leader of the federation.
Yet,
it was something other than a surge of vengeance that drove her
here. At the very moment she was thus attacked in her innermost
being, her soul overflowed with a consciousness of strength, and it
became increasingly clear to her how much she was on the path to
greatness and dominance. In a sense, this challenge was welcome to
her; she eagerly turned in all directions, wherever an opportunity
for battle was offered her; the inner urge she felt to assert
herself everywhere was powerful. It seemed to her as if, through
every resistance she had to overcome, she felt her strength rising,
and she also realized that she could only assume the great position
she was consciously capable of by inspiring awe in all around her.
She was now playing a high-stakes game and throwing herself into a
terrible crisis, but in doing so she undeniably acted on the
premonition that, from this scourge of effort and danger, her
national greatness would truly shine forth in all its splendor.
Such
self-confidence cannot be justified before any tribunal of
reasoning; moreover, when driven by such a natural urge to assert
oneself and assert oneself, one is, by nature, completely incapable
of lending an ear to a moderation that primarily seeks prudence, and
a strict justice that never yields to circumstances. Such moderation
and justice were represented in Athens by the venerable Council of
the Areopagos. It was impossible for the Athenians to allow
themselves to be hindered in their actions by these any longer. What
lay in the direction of the developing democracy was also a
practical requirement. With the most fervent indignation and deepest
turmoil, many protested against the possibility of such an ancient,
venerable institution being undermined. However, the necessity was
too great. At the suggestion of Ephialtes, the Areopagos was
stripped of all oversight over the decisions of the popular
assembly.
The
Athens of Aristides and Kimon increasingly faded into the
background; the time for a completely selfless dedication to the
common Hellenic cause gradually passed; a completely different
attitude now prevailed. Besides Ephialtes—a passionate but
sincere party man, decisive, full of resilience, and of impeccable
character—there were other popular leaders who opposed Kimon's
policies, among them Pericles, the son of Xanthippos, who had
entered the political arena after Aristides' death and had managed
to acquire great influence.
He
was a man of highly noble descent, also on his mother's side, who
belonged to the famous, though bloodstained, family of the Alkmai
Onids; once more later, the Spartans, in his name, demanded the
expulsion of all those who by birth were tainted with Kylo's
bloodguilt; but then that ancient weapon proved completely blunted.
His father, Xanthippos, was apparently one of those nobles who had
joined the democracy—he was the leader of the Athenians at
Mykale—the son could not imagine Athens as anything other than
democratic. It was especially through his influence that democracy
acquired a very peculiar perfection. It was truly beneath the
dignity of a free Athenian to be welcomed by prominent people.
Didn't the men who did so much for their country also have an
indisputable right to the pleasures of life? Not only was the state
supposed to ensure that sufficient grain was always available at a
reasonable price, and that all citizens should be able to enjoy the
meat of the state sacrifices during the great festivals, but also,
through direct payments from the state treasury, the Athenians had
to be enabled to celebrate their worthy feasts. It was in this
direction that Pericles, in particular, exerted his influence; thus,
it was decided that the poorer Athenians would receive money from
the state treasury to pay the admission fee for the theatrical
performances of the Dionysus festivals. This approach continued. The
free Athenian owed no one for what he received in this way; he gave
it, so to speak, to himself. Such measures were a matter of
principle, but they were also a powerful weapon against Cimon, whose
natural generosity, as we have seen, also became a political tool.
Pericles
was first and foremost, one might almost say exclusively, an
Athenian; The fatherland could then still—and this would soon
change—satisfy all the higher needs of a richly gifted mind.
Yet Pericles' Athens was far from one that, like that of the
tyrants—he was indeed compared to Pisistratus, and even the
elderly were astonished by the similarity in appearance and
voice—lacked all higher Hellenic consecration. Yet, of course,
he was also far removed from Panhellenic sentiments like those of
Cimon. An Athens that was even remotely absorbed into Hellas was, in
his view, a theory completely at odds with the actual state of
affairs. Rather, one could say, conversely, that Hellas was nothing
but Athens. After all, it had initially been primarily thanks to
Athens that the barbarians had been driven back; Afterwards, after
Sparta had withdrawn, the national struggle was only sustained
because Athens held the allies together, indeed, increasingly
shouldered the burden of war on its own shoulders, merely forcing
the unwilling to contribute money. Thus, the struggle with the
barbarians themselves led the Athenians to dominance. It was simply
a matter of accepting it, and it was the most natural thing in the
world that they did so. However,—this must never be
forgotten—they could only possess it despite Sparta and the
Peloponnesians, and above all, a powerful Aegina, directly opposite
the port of sea-ruling Athens, was utterly intolerable.
Pericles
was a man of reason, and thus what stirred the Attic citizenry at
that time stirred him to reflection and reason, and therefore, amid
the complications that now followed, he was the most suitable leader
of his people. Yet, this also implied something else. The rule of
reason also means self-control. Pericles was destined to become, so
to speak, the Areopagos of his people, but naturally, one who felt
and thought accordingly. He understood sooner and better than anyone
that the tremendous Attic power was in danger of being destroyed in
futile outbursts. Often, in moments of slackness—and these too
were to become more frequent the more their strength was
wasted—Pericles also called his people to renewed effort. But
this Athenian was a true Hellene in this respect as well, in that he
considered the enjoyment of life one of life's primary requirements,
and he was not one for a restless drive that seemed to forget that
the primary goal should not be the acquisition, but the enjoyment of
power. Especially through Pericles, the idea increasingly gained
traction that just as the Athenian citizen was at the expense of the
state treasury—Pericles arrived at the same point here as with
his democratic theories—so too was the champion of Greece
entitled to a life worthy of him, full of pleasure, a life full of
splendor and glory—at the expense of Greece's treasury.
It
was not long before Cimon was banished by ostracism. The sheer
number of struggles into which they plunged is astonishing. In
Europe, in the region of Megara and in Argolis (the land of Argos),
they fought with Cimon Rinthians, Epidaurians, and Aeginetes; Aegina
was besieged. Occasionally, they were less fortunate; on the whole,
however, the powerful onslaught of the Attic forces was utterly
irresistible. We still possess a fragment of a tombstone,1 according
to the inscription, erected for people of the Erechthean tribe, who
"had fallen in the same year (458 BC) in Cyprus, in Egypt, in
Phoenicia, in Halieis (a place in Argolis), near Aegina, near
Megara."
Numerous
names follow.
In
fact, it was the policy of Themistocles that was more fully
developed and perfected during this period. Thus, his buildings now
also attain a completion that would better meet the designer's
intentions. A fortified Athens and a fortified Peiraieus were not
satisfactory as long as they each stood alone. Therefore, two
parallel walls were built, two hours' walk in length, to connect the
adjacent ports of Peiraeus and Phaleros with the city. Work
continued restlessly on this amidst all these campaigns. Between
these two walls, the city would always be able to maintain
communication with the port in the event of a siege, and the space
available to accommodate the fleeing population of Attica in that
event became astonishing.
At
that very time, a significant Spartan and Peloponnesian army
appeared in central Greece to protect the Dorian mainland there from
the neighboring Phocensians. When they attempted to return, the
Athenian fleet cut off their return route by sea, and the Attic
garrison of Megara cut off their return route by land. The long
walls were not yet completed, and yet the Attic citizenry confined a
powerful hostile army on its exposed northern border, amidst the
Boeotians, many of whom deeply hated Athens and yearned for the
humiliation of this so dangerous neighbor. In the city itself, the
old noble party, which had been completely powerless since the days
of Clisthenes, was stirring. This nearby Spartan army emboldened
them; they secretly communicated with them. It was no time to delay.
The Attic citizenry advanced toward Boeotia. A terrible battle was
fought at Tanagra (457).
The
situation, it seemed, became even more perilous. The Athenians
suffered defeat. Fortunately, however, the Spartans were satisfied
if the victory provided them with a free return home. After they had
departed, another Attic army marched into Boeotia. That country was
conquered; the Phoenicians also joined Athens; The Locrians submit;
Athens rules central Greece.
Meanwhile,
after a siege of about two years, proud Aegina bowed its head (456).
It was forced to demolish its walls, surrender its ships, and
henceforth pay tribute to the Athenians. A period of centuries had
ended. All the glory of the glorious Aiahides island was lost
forever. From its earliest days, the Attic state had always had to
develop despite its western neighbor; now, having reached its
highest point of strength, it shattered the obstacle that had
taunted it for so long.
During
this time, the long walls had also been completed. An Attic fleet
immediately spread fear and dismay along the coasts of the
Peloponnese. Later, a major expedition was undertaken under the
command of Pericles. They landed in Sicyon (in the northern
Peloponnese) and defeated the Sicyonians, then allied with Achaia,
crossed the Gulf of Corinth, and subdued Akarna. A great goal had
been achieved. Athens now stood truly unassailable, with complete
freedom of movement to attack anyone else. However, the fact that
almost the entire army fighting in Egypt had perished miserably cast
a deep shadow over all this success. An expedition to Thessaly was
also not successful.
At
the same time, Athens' dominance over its naval allies had been
confirmed. The confederation was transferred from Delos to Athens.
The Hellenotamia would no longer be under the auspices of the Ionian
Apollo, but under that of the Athenian Athena. The City Goddess
received one-sixtieth of all the tributes that came in. We still
possess important remains of the official lists that were drawn up
annually of these payments to the Goddess. They begin with the
inception of the administration of the confederacy in Athens and
cover a period of more than thirty years;1 after all, the Athenians
had the custom of having such records chiseled in stone. Allies who
believed they were being charged more than they were required to pay
could lodge a complaint with the popular court of Attic jurors.
Wasn't it fair that these jurors should receive a certain
remuneration from the confederacy?
This
was soon considered entirely Athenian property.
Not
everything that had happened, however, had been in accordance with
Pericles's view. He had real reason to be wary of a useless waste of
popular energy. Kimon was recalled to his office, and through his
mediation, a five-year truce was negotiated with Sparta (454). Kimon
resumed the war against the barbarians in Cyprus and Egypt, but died
soon after.
It
was not long, however, before the Attic citizenry found itself
embroiled in new complications. The alliance with the Phoenicians
once again placed them on hostile terms with Sparta. Completely
against Pericles's advice, a new campaign was undertaken in Boeotia
to drive the enemies there from their last refuge. Now, however,
Athens appeared to have reached the limits of its power. The army in
Boeotia was miserably defeated at Koronea (447). That entire region
became independent. Dangers now arose on all sides. Euboia resigned.
Pericles crossed over to that island with an army. However, news
arrived that Megara had also resigned, that a Peloponnesian army was
advancing into Attica, and that almost the entire Attic garrison of
Megara had been cut down. Quick as lightning, Pericles turned back.
The Peloponnesian army retreated; Pericles had managed to bribe the
Spartan commander. The general immediately returned to Euboia. It
was again subdued.
How
irresistible became the man who had warned of the danger and rescued
it! Now the time approached when, according to Thucydides, the Attic
state, nominally a democracy, would in fact become the rule of a
single ruler. Pericles was a king. His contemporaries recounted that
before his birth, his mother had experienced a vision according to
which she would give birth to a lion. However, he regained his lofty
spirit as an Athenian, during the time of such national exaltation,
and the Attic people felt that only then would they be as truly
ruling people when Pericles elevated them to his height. With the
calm self-confidence of a born ruler, one had to enjoy his
greatness: only those who barely considered themselves entitled to
possess it were allowed to flaunt and boast of their glory. In the
uplifting consciousness of being an Athenian, one had to scorn
troubles and dangers and keep one's eyes constantly fixed on the
greater good, never allowing one's soul to be depressed by passing
adversity. Conversely, those outbursts of arrogance, which, taken
outside oneself, overestimated and squandered one's strength, were
not only, as had become apparent, highly dangerous, but also hardly
in keeping with the self-control and even temper of the true ruler.
Only through such a spirit could the Attic people maintain their
exalted position, and it seemed that this could only be possessed by
Pericles.
It
was also as if all of modern Athens was perfected in that man. How
much did that city owe to that spirit of enlightenment, which,
emerging simultaneously with Hellenic philosophy, had been making
its influence felt for almost two centuries. Without these, there
would have been no Attic democracy, no Solon, no Clisthenes—without
these, there would have been no Themistoclesian policy, no Attic
fleet, which had to be established against the old traditions, no
abandonment of the old sanctuaries before the Battle of
Salamis—without these, there would have been no limitation of
the Areopagos' power—without these, there would have been no
tragedy or art by Phidias. In Pericles, we see him acting very
forcefully and at the same time coming into the closest contact with
that stricter philosopher, who, if not his mother, was certainly his
nurse. At that time, there lived in Athens a philosopher from
Clazomenai, Anaxagoras. The people mockingly called him "Nous"
(Reason), because they had heard something about this man, who
considered the world to be inspired by a great, thinking mind.
Pericles was on very cordial terms with him; He also came into
contact with other thinkers of his time, for example, the
philosopher Zeno. He warmed himself by their fire without being
burned; had he become their follower in the strictest sense, he
would no longer have remained confined within a Hellenic or Attic
horizon. However, the very principle of the natural philosophy of
that time, that the phenomena of nature could be explained, gave him
a sense of sovereignty of reason, which was most welcome to him and
entirely in keeping with the intellectual direction of his mind; all
those signs, solar eclipses, strangely morphed animals, and the
like, which terrified the crowd with what they seemed to foreshadow,
left the convinced one in quiet possession of himself.
That
one saw nothing there but natural consequences of natural causes. In
another respect, too, this philosophy gave man a sense of spiritual
prowess. It achieved results through reasoning, often forcing others
to concede defeat even reluctantly. With a certain naiveté,
then and long afterward, logic, which one first became aware of
using, was regarded more or less as a special art, one that one had,
as it were, been fortunate enough to discover all at once. Pericles
now wanted to apply this art practically to the life of the
state—for a popular leader, it was of great value—and he
thus became the father of Attic oratory.
That
lofty disposition, that lively awareness of spiritual strength, were
naturally paired in this king of democracy with great
open-mindedness of character. He was far above any petty jealousy.
The spirit of exclusion of a party man like Ephialtes was completely
foreign to him; his opponent Kimon experienced this on several
occasions. His Highness was also one who embraced goodness and human
kindness, being the complete antithesis of that narrow-minded desire
to assert himself through torment. His sense of order and prudent
deliberation, a natural outgrowth of his intellectual orientation,
did, however, sometimes make him appear narrow-minded and petty in
his private affairs. His household was relatively frugal and
strictly regular; he shunned all excessive luxury and pointless
waste; Attic self-restraint in pleasure1) ran deep in his blood. His
children, however, all too unlike the father, complained that they
were not permitted to live in accordance with their high birth. The
Attic nobility, entirely in the style of Kimon, still often saw an
extremely luxurious lifestyle and the carefree enjoyment of their
wealth as more or less a characteristic of his station; in this
respect, he was actually still Ionian. Pericles, however, had
completely outgrown such feelings; even in his private life, he was
a counterpart to Kimon. Yet, despite all this, there could be no
question of a narrow-minded attachment to money and possessions in
him. Many examples of great benevolence could be cited from him,
even though they had nothing to do with his politics. He stood far
above all base greed than most of his contemporaries and
compatriots, the man who exerted a greater influence on his fellow
citizens through nothing than the fact that everyone knew he was not
to be bought for the earth's treasures. How could anyone blame him
for not wanting, at any price, to become dependent on his outward
circumstances through a neglected household?
Pericles
would not have been an Athenian, would not have been a Greek, if he
had not attached great value to appearances. In all his behavior, in
his entire demeanor and manner of presenting himself, his
disposition and spiritual state were therefore faithfully reflected.
He was far from ever displaying a nervous activity; he never allowed
his speech or actions to be dominated by momentary moods. He moved
sparingly in social life and did not step into the spotlight more
than necessary—he considered this advisable even as a
statesman—but when he appeared among his people, it was with
majestic calm and dignity. His gait was stately, his bearing
dignified, and he possessed complete control over his facial
features. On his head he wore a helmet, which was especially
fitting, as he was usually chosen as a strategist (army commander);
however, his head was somewhat deformed, as it tapered somewhat, and
he seems to have wanted to prevent the ludicrous appearance of this
deformity from detracting from the impression his person made.1) Nor
was the arrangement of his clothing left to chance; His left arm,
according to the more stately attire, was wrapped in the upper robe,
while the right was entirely sufficient for the moderate movements
he had to make. His mouth opened, his powerful, solemn voice rolled
across the entire square of the popular assembly. This man
passionately loved Athens; this man could be trusted implicitly; no
one knew better than he what could promote the greatness of the
fatherland; his argumentation had something quite extraordinary; in
a surprising way, one had to concede defeat again and again. It was
a sublime spectacle: an entire nation, powerfully self-aware,
dominated solely by the moral superiority of a single person, in
whom it saw its most exalted and magnificent qualities and feelings
represented in the most perfect way.
Was
it any wonder that this man's actions brought the name "Olympian"
to the lips of his fellow countrymen? How did Hellenic religious
concepts, even in their highest form, cling to a humanized deity.
Even those withdrawn, heavenly-calm gods of the more enlightened way
of thinking found their counterparts here on earth, and none were
more so than precisely the man in whom, more than in anyone else,
that enlightened spiritual current reached its zenith.
Pericles,
as has been noted, lived somewhat secluded; this was also made
necessary by his many concerns and activities. Yet he valued the
Attic life, which he could enjoy only sparingly, with true patriotic
fervor. Undoubtedly, the sociable existence of people in Athens had
developed to a very high perfection. People enjoyed together, they
admired together, they sacrificed communally at the altars of the
gods. However, a very important element was missing here. Respect
for an ancient social order, whose dissolution was feared more than
anything else to lead to the degeneration of morals, was the reason
why, while life developed ever more richly, the Attic woman
continued to exist in her secluded state. This was one of the
refuges into which the new spirit of enlightenment had not yet
penetrated. Yet, even the enlightened, especially, felt deeply what
a woman could be in life; Sophocles's magnificent female figures are
proof of this. It was also a gap so great that it had to be filled.
Foreign, especially Ionian, women lingered in large numbers in the
city and lived as hetairs (companions) in free association with
Attic men. It was undoubtedly also the need for social interaction
with women that made association with these hetairs so appealing.
That such free associations carried with them a very great danger
goes without saying. However, in assessing this, one should never
lose sight of the fact that there was also a relatively easily
resolved marriage involved.
Pericles,
too, did not live happily with his wife. Socrates says in
Xenophon—and he usually reflects the master's sentiments
fairly faithfully—to a certain Critobulus that a good wife can
contribute no less to the happiness and prosperity of the house than
the husband. But what does the Attic wife of the household
understand, Socrates continues,? She cannot learn it either, for no
one shows her the way to good, least of all her husband. She is
married off at a very young age, and to whom does the man speak less
than to his wife? But what preparation for marriage would be
desirable for Attic girls? The philosopher cannot explain this to
Critobulus in detail, but he would like to send Aspasia to him; she
is more knowledgeable about all this. Elsewhere, too, Socrates, with
a certain fondness, cites a statement by Aspasia regarding marital
matters: how wrong it is to bring together young people who are not
compatible, since the one who brought them together only reaps
hatred from both parties.2)
There
is no doubt that the noble philosopher held this woman in high
esteem. We even learn that, accompanied by his students, he
frequently conversed with her. She was not an Attic, but a native of
the Ionian city of Miletus, the daughter of Axiochus; we know
nothing whatever of her fortunes before she arrived in Athens.
Pericles became very close to this woman. By mutual consent, he
separated from his wife. She married again—for the third time,
as she had previously been married to Hipponikus—while Aspasia
came to live with Pericles and remained his companion until his
death. A marriage with her, the non-Attic by birth, was an
impossibility; we know nothing about whether they ever regretted it.
It was, however, highly gratifying to Pericles that, when both his
legitimate sons died, the Attic people granted citizenship to his
illegitimate son, whose mother is almost certain to have been
Aspasia, thus removing the consequences of his illegitimacy for him.
We cannot help but assume that this man and this woman were also
bound by a bond of higher sympathy. Without a doubt, Athena's
greatness and majesty captivated the Hellenic soul of that Milesian
woman, and Pericles found in her a complete understanding of his
aspirations, his concerns, his efforts. Rumor had it that she taught
Pericles and many others the art of oratory; Pericles also
supposedly sought her out for the sake of his political wisdom.
However foolish this may have been, it seemed to be realized that
she was something different for him than Attic women could usually
be for their husbands. Thus, Attic life received a most necessary
completion in Pericles. Plato also remembered having heard his
master speak of Aspasia. In his Menexenos, he has Socrates to mock
heartily that talk about her instruction in rhetoric. Attic comedy,
in particular, vilified her in a gruesome way; slander, in that
time, so naive in so many respects, was perhaps the most naive of
all. Aspasia stood at the head of a line along which one was led,
through numerous gradual transitions, to the deepest depths of
baseness; was it any wonder that the general public drew no
boundaries where law and convention did not? After all, she was and
remained a hetary. More or less, she shared the fate of her
philosophical friend. If only we knew Socrates only from
Aristophanes' "Clouds," in which he is mocked as a
sophist, although he, in fact, took very decisive action against
those corrupters of youth! But wasn't that man, with his artificial
reasoning, also in a certain sense a sophist, and therefore that
confusion a very understandable superficiality? Aspasia also truly
exerted some influence on Attic life. Not only women, who would
later live in free intercourse with men, but also Attic female
citizens were brought into her environment. Her insight into what
women needed for their development, which Socrates appealed to, had
thus been demonstrated in practice. The way in which she taught was
undoubtedly that truly Hellenic way of communicating,1) which
Socrates, in turn, also put into practice.
And
truly, the time now seemed to have arrived when the enjoyment of
life in all its glory would be the main thing. The struggle with the
Persians was not resumed after Kimon's death. Yet, one could say
that almost everything that spoke Hellenic in Asia was safe from the
attacks of the barbarians under Athens' scepter. Pericles concluded
a thirty-year peace with the Peloponnesians (445); Boeotia and
Phocis, and the conquests in the Peloponnese, were abandoned.
Attic
citizenship thus gave great proof of moderation and self-control. No
one, however, understood better than Pericles that one day they
would have to fight again to preserve what they had gained. He
persuaded his fellow citizens to build another long wall between the
other two. This measure would connect both the difficult-to-defend
Phaleros and the very strong Peiraieus to the city; through the new
wall, the latter would also be connected to Athens. Thus, Athens
would be almost as unassailable as an island,2) and the Attic
citizenry, if it could only refrain from futile undertakings beyond
its powers and preserve the true spirit of power exemplified by
Pericles, could await with the utmost tranquility any enemy that
might appear.
Now,
however, there was at least a moment of relief. Such tranquility had
not been known since the time of the tyrants. More than thirty years
had passed since the barbarians had been fought in Greece itself,
and yet they had not yet had time to regroup, so to speak. Numerous
sanctuaries, destroyed by the barbarians, still lay in ruins
throughout Greece; as long as these were not restored, matters did
not seem to be back on solid ground. At Pericles' suggestion, the
Athenians decided to send envoys throughout Greece to invite all the
Hellenic states to a meeting in Athens, in order to take measures to
rebuild all the sanctuaries destroyed by the Persians.
But
how could the Peloponnesians, in particular, align themselves, as it
were, under the hegemony of Athens in the religious restoration of
all Hellenism? Pericles felt compelled to limit his plan to his own
homeland. A chosen field of work was opened up for a whole
generation of artists: the fatherland, in such a time of national
greatness, had to be provided at once with almost all the monumental
buildings it needed. The money was available; Athens owed that to
its dominion; it freely disposed of the federal treasury.
No
buildings, however, were of greater importance than those on the
castle of Athens. There lay the center of Athens' existence and
greatness. There the plan was made to build the Propylaea, a
forecourt leading to the castle; there the House of Erechtheus and
the Temple of Athena-Nike had to be renovated; there also—and
everything was significant—had to be rebuilt that temple that
once stood on the highest point of the castle, the Parthenon of the
Pisistratidae.
How
could Athens have achieved such a level of greatness and glory
without also enhancing the splendor of the Panathenaia? Pericles had
a large building erected at the foot of the castle, called the
Odeion, in which musical competitions were held, which on his advice
were added to the games of the Panathenaea.
The
reasons why the house of Erechtheus had previously no longer met the
need[1] were now even more pronounced; a temple was needed that was
more in keeping with the more enlightened religious outlook and the
heightened splendor of the city festival, a temple where one
belonged with the exalting feeling of victory in one's bosom. To all
this, new reasons now arose. Athens's Castle Goddess had become,
simultaneously with her people, the supreme ruler of a vast Hellenic
territory; the sums of money that flowed to her from that region had
to find a worthy refuge; no less so the astonishing mass of votive
offerings in which such a deity might rejoice. Construction of this
temple had to begin.
It
was the edifice in which the Attic people, as it were, expressed
themselves in all their splendor and power. As if by a primordial
impulse of nature, the ancient peoples felt the need for monumental
art. An Asian conqueror, returning from his campaigns, imagined his
greatness tangible before his eyes in colossuses, temples, and
palaces. Here, a people now feels that, after a long, anxious
struggle, it has reached the highest point it can, and it now
wishes, as it were, to proclaim in a lasting memorial to all
succeeding generations: "This is me."
Only
after a fierce struggle were Pericles' building plans adopted. Were
their opponents wrong when they claimed that Athens would damage its
reputation by thus using the funds of its allies to enhance its own
splendor and glory? The Attic citizenry, however, demanded these
buildings—the necessary completion of its greatness—almost
as a condition of its existence, so that here, too, grounds of
justice and honesty could make little impression.
Pericles
was the most influential of those entrusted with the construction of
that new Parthenon. To whom else could the supreme direction of that
work be entrusted but the exalted artist, who, utterly imbued with
the lofty ideas of his time, seemed capable alone of giving them
worthy expression—to Pericles' friend, Phidias Charmides' son?
While
the artist labored, the statesman could not rest. With a firm hand,
he had to hold together what alone made the realization of all that
splendor possible. A large Attic fleet constantly appeared in the
seas between Europe and Asia to show the barbarians that Hellas'
guards were still watching—was it not fair that these were
paid well from the confederation's treasury?—and at the same
time to keep the allies in awe. These, however, were reluctant to
submit to Athens' rule; precisely at the time the Parthenon was
being built, Pericles was waging a fierce war against the rebellious
Samos. And even more deeply, the foundations of the Athens of that
time were threatened by entirely different dangers. While enthusiasm
for freedom was originally the soul of democracy, the generations
that now grew up increasingly distanced themselves from that first,
animated period of struggle for freedom and existence, and in their
actions, found democracy to be a legally existing condition.
Democracy was self-government, democracy was equality. It was
inevitable that now, governing and judging would truly acquire the
greatest appeal in themselves, and people would become increasingly
less inclined to acknowledge the majority of others, even the moral
and intellectual ones. - Why should one look up to one's fellow
citizens? The community had to judge every proposal made to it as
the supreme sovereign. - In a word, democracy, like all earthly
matters, was in great danger of losing its original naiveté,
and thus the foundation of a rule like that of Pericles was
threatened. And while the more old-fashioned religious movement was
not originally hostile to the newer one, indeed, it was not even
sharply distinguished from it,[1] now that it has reached its
highest peak of development, this cannot remain so. A religious
reaction had to develop. The freer life of several Athenian women
under the influence of Aspasia was particularly offensive. The
reactionary deeply felt the connection between old religious ways of
thinking and old social institutions.
Pericles
probably did not sense the full extent of this evil: it only
revealed itself in his first signs. - The cothurn, the high stage
shoe of tragedy, has, as if by a law of nature, the lower footwear
of comedy alongside it. When in Attica one had seen the demigods of
mythology in ideal majesty in the tragic plays, it satisfied a
certain need to see them in the satirical drama in crude reality,
for once of a lower life. For example, the most exalted hero
Heracles appeared there as a glutton and drunkard; the genre of Jan
Steen lies as deeply rooted in human nature as that of Raphael.
Likewise, Attica also had its carnival fun of old, namely at the
rural Dionysus festivals, where people, with a certain brutal
intent, surrendered themselves for a while entirely to the lower
pleasures of human nature and indulged in crude wit at the expense
of everyone within reach: it even had its own genre of folk poetry
there in the satirical and satirical songs of comedy. Today,
however, when one is faced not only with the world of demigods in
tragedy, but with an entire generation of contemporaries in the
chorus, even that comic sense of the lowly naturally acquires the
significance of a spiritual direction of the time. - What did all
this exaltation mean? Did Athens possess so much more true greatness
than in earlier times? Was it more pious, was it more just? Comedy,
too, naturally became a higher literary genre with political
significance. The first comedy poet in this sense was Cratinus, who
was precisely in his prime during Pericles' time. He was very much
one of those natures that adhere with all the more zeal to ordinary
reality the more they see others inspired by a lofty aspiration.
Cratinus, too, did not escape the danger inherent in this trend;
even less than our Jan Steen or Breeroo, he was a model of
restraint. With crude, impudent mockery, yet witty precisely because
of its roughness and impudence, he mocked, referring to the man's
nickname, Pericles, "onion-headed Zeus"—a
quasi-Homeric epithet, referring to his pointed head—and
Hera-Aspasia. A man of fundamentally conservative convictions, for
example, was in all likelihood another comedian from Pericles' time,
Hermippus, and undoubtedly the slightly younger Aristophanes. But
already because of what all these comedic poets had in
common—namely, that utter disbelief in the higher spiritual
direction of their time, that heartfelt delight with which they
tried to show how ordinary, if not commonplace, that so-called
highness actually was—they exerted a great deal of influence
and certainly contributed significantly to completely undermining
the people's respect for intellectual superiority. For several
years, the freedom of these comedic poets was restricted by a law.
It was precisely during the construction of the Parthenon that this
law was enacted.
The
Olympian was still able to completely control the situation. They
continued to work on the great project, restlessly, just as the
Attic citizenry could work in the glow of the highest national
inspiration, and undoubtedly not entirely without the determination
to complete it before perhaps entirely different times dawned. The
harbors were a hive of activity: precious stones and woods, copper,
ivory, gold—in short, the world's treasures—were brought
in from all directions. Drivers constantly traveled back and forth
between these harbors and the castle; large cargoes were also
transported from the Attic region itself, especially from the
Pentelic marble quarries. In and around the castle itself,
stonemasons, carpenters, coppersmiths, chiselers, ivory workers,
metal smelters, sculptors, painters, and the like worked. Even those
not directly involved in the work, such as wheelwrights and
ropemakers, felt its influence. Like the warriors on the fleet, the
workers in the city now also enjoy the benefits of their acquired
dominion. The renowned architect Iktinus and the excellent master
craftsman Kallikrates worked under Phidias; more specifically, the
sculptors had to work from Phidias's drawings and models. The influx
of interested people was immense, constantly showing themselves at
the castle. With amazement—was Aspasia's influence perhaps
discernible here?—one also noticed women among them. A very
cheerful atmosphere prevailed throughout. Attention was drawn to a
discarded mule, eighty years old, which, although no longer
employed, nevertheless accompanied the other draft animals,
seemingly to encourage them to greater diligence. Such dedication to
public affairs had to be rewarded. The people made a decision—was
it half serious, half fleeting?—that this animal would not be
chased from its cribs, and would therefore be fed at the state's
expense.
After
a few years' effort, the new temple was consecrated during the great
Panathenaic Mass of 438.
Leiden.
A.E.J.
Holwerda.
(Conclusion
to follow.)
The
Attic people and the art of Phidias. IV. (Conclusion.) The
Parthenon.
It
was the most glorious temple of the Antiquity, which shone there on
the highest point of the castle, offered a votive offering to the
heavenly virgin.1) It was built in the Doric style. From a pedestal,
rising in three stages to a height of over 1.5 m, rose powerful
Doric columns—8 on the shorter, 17 on the longer sides of the
temple—which supported an impressive superstructure, with a
roof that sloped towards both longer sides of the building, while an
obtuse-angled facade joined it at the shorter front and rear. The
columns were clearly designed for their enormous task: twenty
upward-reaching cannonballs demonstrated their strength, and as they
narrowed and rose, they did so in a somewhat curved line, so that,
especially in the middle, where the pressure between the pedestal
and superstructure was strongest, they were somewhat broader
(αντασις) and thus visually
more powerful than they would have been if the narrowing had
occurred in a perfectly straight line. Moreover, besides supporting
the superstructure, they seemed to have to contribute, at least to
some extent, to holding it together; this impression was given by
their slightly inward-leaning position, not entirely perpendicular
to the base. Freer than the upward-reaching stem of the column. The
leaves, which visually formed the capital, spread outward, but with
their converging points gathered under the flat surface of the
abakos, they were projected outward as a sphere, a result of the
relentless force from below and the heavy load from above. The
beginning of the superstructure was formed by the smooth beams of
the epistyle, which ran across all the column capitals; above these,
in continuous alternation, stood the row of triglyphs and metopes,
the latter decorated with reliefs. The cornice further above this
supported the roof on the longer sides, and the upright moldings of
the triangular pediments on the shorter sides, in which groups of
Avar sculptures were placed. A large foliate ornament stood on the
tops of these triangular pediments, and at each end a golden oil
jar, reminiscent of the jars that victors in Athena's contests were
accustomed to receive. The temple reached a height of approximately
17 m, with a width of over 30 m and a length of almost 70 m, making
it wider in proportion to its length than the other Doric temples,
which were undoubtedly somewhat elongated. The entire building shone
in soft colors; perhaps not painted in all its parts, the Pentelic
marble from which it was constructed also radiated a soft,
light-yellow glow. The superstructure was primarily painted in red
and blue, but the marble's luster shone through all the paintings.
The leaves of the capitals were indicated by colors; similarly,
kumatia with colored leaf ornaments ran along the inside of the
façade frame. Two magnificent maeanders encircled the entire
superstructure, one below and the other above the row of triglyphs
and metopes; just below the topmost maeander, a delicate string of
pearls also ran, also completely circular. The outer edges of the
facades were bordered by a beautiful floral and palmette ornament.
All these ornaments made it easier to grasp the building's main
forms at a glance—something that fully met the truly Attic
need for clarity.
And
the beautiful appearance was achieved solely through the thorough
and meticulous workmanship of all the building components, including
the smallest ones; everything fit and meshed perfectly; no
sloppiness needed to be covered up. During the subsequent
destruction of the temple, it often happened that marble blocks,
assembled without any external connection, broke through without
touching at the joints; through such strong cohesion, they had
become connected under the great pressure to which they were
subjected, as a result of the precision with which they fitted
together. However, several components—metopes, triglyphs,
columns—were apparently deliberately not made perfectly
identical; moreover, even the spacing between the columns was not
always the same. The differences, however, are such that the most
trained eye would not notice them, and yet the structure thus
acquired a somewhat looser and freer quality, so to speak, more of a
natural product. It has also been noted that all the horizontal
lines, both on the superstructure and on the pedestal, had a slight
curvature, making them somewhat higher in the middle. Others,
however, believe this is primarily due to the consequences of
subsidence. In all respects, it can be said that Doric temple
architecture found its perfection and refinement here in Attica,
just as the Attic style in general was a perfection and refinement
of the Hellenic style.
This
superstructure now, with its columns was placed "like a
canopy"1) over the temple proper, so that one could walk—as
always with Doric peripteral temples—between the inner temple
and the columns. At the top, this gallery between the temple walls
and the surrounding columns was closed off by a magnificent
panel-painted ceiling. Below this ceiling, separated only by a
kumatization and a beautiful ornamental band, a bas-relief frieze
ran around the entire inner temple for a length of approximately 160
m. From this encircling gallery, one entered the front of the
building—that is, on the eastern, narrower side—in the
so-called Proneos (ante-temple), also intended for votive offerings.
From there, through a large door, one entered the actual temple
space, the so-called Hekatompedos (hundred-footed temple). This was
divided into three aisles by two rows of columns. At the end of the
wide nave, directly opposite the entrance, one could see the statue
of the Goddess in a large niche; in front of this niche, a section
of the nave was separated by a not very high metal latticework,
bearing the name Parthenon—"virgin chamber"—a
name that was also applied to the entire building. In this
Parthenon, in the narrower sense, most likely stood a platform where
the victors in the contests could stand opposite the statue of the
Goddess, not unlikely for a more solemn awarding of victory; the
side aisles and upper galleries could then be occupied by
spectators. This partitioned Parthenon was also intended for votive
offerings; so were the others. Hekatompedos. Light entered this
inner temple space from above through an opening in the roof
(ΟπαĩΟν). On the west side of the
building, one entered through a small forecourt similar to the
Proneos, the Tamieion—a room for the treasurers of the sacred
funds—into the spacious rear building (Opisthodomos), the
repository of these sacred funds.
Walking
outside, around the temple, one saw the metope reliefs pass by one
after the other. These, as we saw, were placed in the
superstructure, alternating with triglyphs, beneath the cornice.
There were 92 of them, 14 on each of the shorter sides, 32 on each
of the longer sides. The relief work rose to a height of about a
quarter of a meter and stood out brightly against the colored
background, while—we can safely assume—itself being
highlighted by color in various sections. Many of these metopes
still remain in the ruins of the Parthenon; with a few exceptions,
they have become almost entirely unrecognizable. A few others, the
best preserved, can be found in museums, primarily in the British
one. The reliefs of the middle section of the temple, which exploded
during the gunpowder explosion of 1687, have, of course, been lost;
we still have Carrey's drawings of those on the south side.[1] What
all these rows of metopes depicted cannot, therefore, be stated with
complete certainty. There is little doubt that the front of the
building, the eastern side, depicted the battle of Gods and Giants.
The rear, the western side, probably depicted the battle between the
Greeks and Amazons. The relatively well-preserved metopes belonged
to the south side; they depict the battle at the wedding of
Peirithous, when the Centaurs attempted to abduct the Lapith women.
These depictions were interrupted in the middle by several others,
not unlikely from the legends surrounding Troy's downfall, just as
it is not improbable that the north side primarily depicted scenes
from the legends of Troy's downfall, interrupted in the middle by
several Centaur battles. These were all combats in which higher
morals were believed to triumph over brutality and barbarity, or
rather, the mythical precursors of the goddess' own heroic struggle
against the barbarians. The national inspiration here is therefore
unmistakable. In the Battle of the Giants, depicted on the front of
the temple, the goddess herself had played a major role; this was
also embroidered on the state robe (peplos) she received annually.
The metopes that have been preserved are in sufficient condition to
allow us to assess the sculpture. High demands were placed on the
artist's imagination here. Each metope could only contain a single,
smaller depiction, and what else could that be than a duel between a
Centaur and a Lapith—or would one prefer a Hellene—or a
Centaur stealing a woman? The same thing therefore had to be
depicted differently each time. For example, at one point the
Centaur presses the Lapith down, putting an arm around his neck (see
Michael), then again the Lapith has jumped behind the Centaur and
pushes him back with his left knee and, simultaneously, his left
arm, lashing him with great force around his neck (2nd metope).
Elsewhere, a Centaur has forced the Lapith against a barrel, several
of whom were naturally present at the wedding, and is rolling him
backward over it, lifting him by one leg (9th metope). With a
violent lunge, a movement in which his entire body participates, as
it were, and which also transfers itself to his garment, on another
metope (7th metope), a Lapith has seized the Centaur by the throat
and forced him so far backward that he can barely stand on his hind
legs. Similarly, another Centaur, outnumbered (27 metopes), is to
the left, holding his hand over a wound in his back and trying to
escape; The Lapith holds him back, his left hand around his neck,
and with it he pulls him to the right, pushing himself off the
ground with his left foot. The Lapith will not be able to hold his
enemy back for long; however, he has already raised his free right
arm (this one is lost) for a deadly thrust. Lapith and Centaur, each
striving for an opposite side, balance each other for a moment. At
the same time, the Lapith's broad cloak falls from his shoulder,
straight to the ground, just as swayed back and forth as the two
combatants. More fortunate is a Centaur on a metope right next to
this last one (the 28th). Joyfully, with a wagging tail, he leaps
over the body of his enemy, a handsome youth, who lies back on the
ground in a strikingly true pose.
Other
metopes are different. The last three described are among the most
outstanding examples of Attic sculpture. The chosen moments are
highly interesting; everything is full of expression, the postures
and bodily forms are very beautiful; the clothing is exquisitely
crafted. Most of the others are open to criticism; yet many of these
also offer much beauty (e.g., the 1st, 5th, 7th, and 9th). There are
also some, however, that are even quite low: the combatants, for
example, are touching each other, but there is no hint of a struggle
(e.g., the 6th and 32nd); the bodies are gaunt (in the 32nd) and not
entirely correctly formed; the composition leaves unsightly gaps in
the background (e.g., the 26th); the postures are contorted to the
point of impossibility (e.g., that of the Lapith's arm in the 31st).
Many metopes, even otherwise beautiful ones, also show the clearest
traces of the older artistic style: the bodily forms are sharply
defined; it has not yet been possible to accurately depict the
bodies in their various curves. The movement is not expressive
(e.g., in the 30th metope) and so on. The difference in the heads is
also great; from the most nobly formed face (the Centaur in the 4th
metope) there is all sorts of diversity to the grotesquely monstrous
(the Centaur in the 31st metope). It is also beyond doubt that one
of the Centaur heads (the 19th metope) bears a strong resemblance in
type to the head of Myron's satyr. Thus, a very significant
difference in the hands can be observed in these metopes, and this
gives us a clear insight into the nature of Phidias's work. He
worked with artists from all sorts of schools, including those of
Myron, who were still completely accustomed to other artistic
methods. They all had to be brought up to speed on his art, but that
suddenly proved impossible. The metopes were the first sculptural
work to be delivered—they had to be inserted between the
triglyphs before the cornice was placed on top—and even then,
the corps of artists was far from fully inspired by the master's
spirit. Here, we see, as if before our very eyes, how all of Attic
art is being transformed.
This
was already practically accomplished when the façade groups,
consisting of freestanding statues, were put in place, although not
all of these pieces were executed with equal mastery. The group on
the eastern façade, that is, at the front of the temple,
depicted the birth of Athena; that on the western façade
depicted the struggle between Athena and Poseidon for possession of
the Attic lands. Even today, in the old house of Erechtheus, one
still finds both the saltwater spring, which Poseidon had brought
forth from the rocks with a blow of the trident, and the first olive
tree, which Athena had caused to rise on that occasion. [1] Of the
eastern façade group, the largest part, and especially the
central one, which is of particular importance, had already been
lost by Carrey's time. Fortunately, however, the Madrid museum
preserves a raised section above a spring from the Roman period, on
which undoubtedly a copy of the central main figures of the group
appears. It is far from the case that Phidias, according to the
common folk representation found, for example, in vase drawings,
would have had a small Athena emerge from the head of Zeus. His
concept is much grander. How is it possible that
The
artist leaves the question of where she arrived entirely unclear.
She is there, standing in her full size before her father, about to
rush away, yet not yet completely turned away from him; she is seen
almost entirely from the front. Zeus sits on a throne, seen from the
side, but he too is somewhat turned forward. These are the two main
figures of the group in the center of the facade. Between these two
hovered Nike (the Goddess of Victory), thus beneath the highest
ridge of this temple of victory; she joins Athena, whose usual
companion she will become; on whose hand she also hovered at the
large statue inside the temple. Next to Zeus stands Hephaestus or
Prometheus, one of whom, according to the common mythical story, had
his head split open with his axe.
Regarding
the rest of the composition, we are also not entirely in the dark;
the ends of the group are still in relatively good condition. It was
on the "many-peaked" Olympus that this great event took
place. In the left corner of the facade, Helios, the sun, rose from
the sea; already his four steeds were shaking their heads wildly
from the waves, and one could see the head and shoulders of the
charioteer, who, with outstretched arms and evidently not without
effort, held the reins with which he drew the heads of his impetuous
horses toward him. In the other (right) corner, Selene, the moon,
calmly sank into the darkness, her head tilted back to cast one last
glance over the earth before leaving it. Soon she would be
completely gone. Only the heads of her horses remained.
This
was the designation of the heavens across which the sun, moon, and
stars moved, which, together with the earth, encircled Olympus, the
exalted abode of the gods. At the far end of this (left) sat a
beautiful youth, a young god, in a pose of the most calm repose,
leaning slightly backward and resting his left forearm on a raised
surface of the ground; he was more or less devoting his attention to
the rising Helios. Similarly, at the other corner, a goddess in a
reclining position gazed at the setting moon. She leaned in the lap
and against the breast of a goddess beside her. Beside this goddess
sat a third. Similarly, the reclining god had two goddesses beside
him. Judging by the panther skin on which he appears to be resting,
he must have been Dionysus, and then his two companions were
undoubtedly Demeter and her daughter, Kora. Who the three goddesses
on the other side are is actually impossible to determine. A figure
has been preserved, standing next to the so-called Demeter and Kora;
her enormously fluttering dress reveals her vigorous movement. She
is mistaken, perhaps not wrongly, for Iris, the messenger of the
Gods; a similar figure must have stood on the other side.
This
façade group undoubtedly represented the world of the gods,
as they were terrified when the Heavenly Maiden suddenly appeared
before their eyes. Hephaestus (or Prometheus) at Zeus's side recedes
to one side in the Madrid relief. In a similar pose, a female birth
deity, an Ilithyia, probably stood on the other side next to Athena,
one or more of the same type usually appearing in depictions of the
birth of the Goddess. It is quite likely that the remaining space
was completely or partially occupied by Gods or Goddesses, who in
some way or another expressed their dismay. We still possess the
torso of a male deity, who must have stood at Athena's side. He
recoiled, but—as can still be seen from the torso—he had
his arm raised and his head directed toward the center of the
façade. This could very well have been an attitude of
surprise. That the Goddess had only recently appeared is clear. Yet,
all of Olympus has not yet noticed what has taken place. The two
outermost deities are still gazing ahead at Helios and Selene. Those
who follow, however, are already turning somewhat toward the center;
the ones who follow feel even more strongly drawn to it. The
postures of these four Goddesses clearly show that they had just
before turned their attention to a completely different direction.
They do not yet know what is happening; the two Goddesses on the
right are apparently making movements to get a good look; the one
closest to the center is even about to stand up to do so; on the
other side, the one furthest toward the center turned her head
toward her companion, pointing her hand toward the center,
apparently a reminder to also look. In the immediate vicinity of
Zeus and Athena, as we noted, the gods likely stood, completely
stunned by what they saw.
We
are now better able to assess the composition of the western facade
group, although almost less of it has been preserved than the other.
Carrey saw it in a relatively intact state, and besides his, we have
another illustration by a draftsman from the same period. The battle
between Poseidon and Athena, the great event that made the latter
Attica's national deity, had once taken place on the very hill where
she was now depicted. Standing before this group of the castle,
looking down, one could see the river Cephisos in the plain on the
left; in the left corner of the facade, one now also saw this river
god emerge from the water to observe what was happening in the
castle. On the other side of the castle flowed the small stream
Kallirrhoe, a branch of the Ilissos; this female river deity was
seen in the other corner of the facade. Thus, there was a certain
connection between the illustration and reality. It was the decisive
moment in the battle witnessed in this group of gables. Poseidon had
most likely caused a spring to gush forth from the ground with his
trident; there, in the center of the gable, Athena's olive tree
rises, and the god retreats, sensing that he is now vanquished.
Similarly, on the other side, the goddess withdraws somewhat,
presumably facing the god in a victorious pose. Just as Nike on the
other gable stood between Zeus and Athena, so here too the olive
tree stood between her and Poseidon. Behind her was her chariot,
which Nike apparently steered, while Hermes stood to the side of the
horses, deeper within the gable, partially obscured by them. Behind
Poseidon also stood his chariot, driven by his spouse, Amphitrite; a
female figure—let her be called a Nereid—stood, like
Hermes on the other side, beside the horses. Behind Poseidon came
Leucothea with the boy Palaimon Melikertes, Thalassa (the Sea) with
the still young Aphrodite on her lap, completely naked and with the
infant Eros (God of Love) beside her. These were the deities
worshipped on the Isthmus of Corinth alongside Poseidon, who was the
chief god there. Had Poseidon been victorious, he would have taken
possession of Attica with him. Behind Athena's chariot, one has
every right to expect deities who, besides her, are most
characteristic of Attica, and it is therefore not unlikely that the
two female deities represented there were Demeter and Cora, and the
youthful naked god—the counterpart of the naked Aphrodite on
the other side of the façade—Iakchos, that is, Dionysus
in his youth; these were the deities of the famous mysteries of
Eleusis in Attica. On Athena's side, Hygieia (Health), who was
closely related to Athena, and her father Asclepius (the god of
healing) followed, not surprisingly, and correspondingly, on
Poseidon's side, behind his associates in the worship of Corinth,
presumably the nymph Euryte and her son by Poseidon, Halirrhothios.
Then, on both sides, came the river gods in the corners.1)
Already
in the arrangement of the figures, we see the astonishing progress
art had made in these two façade groups. In the Aeginite
groups, for example,1), the coherence rested on an almost perfect
correspondence between the two halves of each group on either side
of the central figure, and where the slope of the façade
prevented a figure from being placed upright, they were simply
placed on their knees, without there always being any real reason
for the person being depicted to kneel. In our facades, however, all
the figures have a perfectly understandable pose or movement, yet
all have one, allowing them to fit perfectly into the place they are
meant to occupy. Here too, the unity of the composition is
powerfully preserved. It is entirely connected to the center. The
warring factions in the western facade focus their attention on the
decision that falls in the center; likewise, the river gods in the
corners. In the eastern facade, we see a movement that increases
from the corners toward the center. At the outermost ends, Helios
rises toward the center, but Selene descends facing away from it;
the latter, however, as we noted, turns her head toward the earth,
which she leaves—a movement in itself quite understandable—and
thus also acquires some direction toward the center. Furthermore,
the so-called Iris, as she rushes mightily from the center, may
almost strive out of the frame of the composition; she was still so
captivated by what is happening in the center that she turns her
head quite strongly back toward it. Likewise, unity was also
maintained in these groups by a certain degree of agreement in the
corresponding components on either side of the center of the facade.
However, here the artist managed to push the boundaries of diversity
to the limit.
*)
At the ends of the eastern façade, which we still possess,
Helios and Selene are certainly similar, yet very different.
Following them, on either side, as we know, are three deities. Of
two of these, one leans against the other, but on the right side,
these are the two outermost, on the left side, the two innermost.
Furthermore, the deity looking at Helios in a reclining position is
male and naked; the one gazing at Selene in a similar, though yet
again in various respects different, position is female and clothed.
Similarly, in corresponding places in the two halves of the western
group, similar, yet again rather dissimilar, components could be
identified. The aesthetic need for grouping, inherent in our human
nature, first reaches its full development here. Variety appealed to
the Athenian, yet nothing resonated less with him—we have
already seen this in the architectural ornamentation of the
temple—than a confused scene, which did not immediately
provide a clear impression of the whole, allowing the mind to easily
grasp it.
When,
at the beginning of this century, the sculptor Daenecker encountered
a cast of Dionysus and Cephisus, he declared that he had never "seen
anything like it;" they were "formed, according to his
expression, as if from nature, and yet he had never had the good
fortune to see such natures"; with these words, the artist
provided a characterization of Attic artistic idealism that is not
much to dispute. What diversity there was, again, in all these
figures. While Dionysus's body was a model of youthful vigor,
Cephisus, in his limp and drooping flesh, strikingly displayed the
character of an aquatic being. What awe-inspiring forms, however, we
are confronted with when we consider the sad remains of Poseidon's
back and shoulders! Now, Phidias's treatment of the nude is
undoubtedly the highest; yet, in the execution of the
garment—although his predecessors likely left more to him—he
undeniably raised art to its true height. The uniqueness of every
pose and movement is also delicately expressed throughout. Who can
fail to see, in the blown-back garment of the so-called Iris, the
speed with which she rushes forward? The river god Cephisus has with
difficulty pulled himself to the edge of his current; he does not
move easily outside his element, after all. Of Poseidon's
charioteer, we have only the torso; but who can fail to see from it
what she is? Understandably, all this could only be achieved through
the highest technical skill. There is also no doubt that colors
clarified the parts of the figures, which also stood out more
powerfully against a colored facade. How much, too, from these
facade groups, the spirit of that broader and more enlightened
religious conception, which especially characterized the artist's
time, blows towards us!1) What a gulf exists between his birth of
Athena and the popular representation depicted on vases!2) Even the
conception of the western group, according to which the entire
battle is decided by the mere appearance of the olive tree, is
certainly more poetic than it testifies to a strict adherence to
tradition. It is a similar treatment of mythological material as
tragedy permits, and here we clearly see again the spiritual
affinity of Phidias' art with this. Ancient myth undoubtedly also
knew of a formal combat, and an epic poet would certainly have dwelt
with great predilection on all sorts of details, for example, having
the various arbitrators appointed by Zeus, whom the popular story
also mentions, deliver speeches in a dignified parliamentary
assembly. Here everything is summed up in one point; It is the
moment when things take a turn: the olive tree rises, everything is
decided. Striking, but at the same time the myth has almost become
something entirely different.
Likewise,
the divine figures on these façade groups testify to a higher
spiritual freedom. Phidias undoubtedly characterized his gods by
attributes, the usual additions through which everyone could easily
recognize them; for example, Hermes by his crozier, Poseidon by his
trident. Such attributes have been lost from our façade; only
Dionysus would still rest on his panther skin. They were probably
mostly made of metal. However, these things were not of such
paramount importance to the artist as in older art—which often
overwhelmed the figures of the gods with them—or in common
folklore. He was much more concerned with portraying the gods in the
gestures, postures, and bodily forms that their mythological
character demanded—as, for example, Athena was sternly
maidenly, Hera matronly—and since his predecessors had taken
only a few steps in that direction, his imagination was limited
almost entirely by that mythological tradition, which naturally
allowed considerable leeway. And even with this, he wasn't too
particular. According to mythical tradition, Dionysus, for example,
was a bearded man; Phidias recreates him as a vigorous youth. Yet,
as has already been noted,1) the free-spirited trend of the time,
which asserted itself here, still stood entirely on the foundation
of popular religion. These ancient myths were, therefore, for the
artist something higher than suitable material for a sculptural
group. As soon as the "Elgin Marbles" became known, it
attracted attention that these statues, intended to stand on a
facade, were carved with as much care at the back, where they would
never be seen, as at the front. This sheds a very peculiar light on
the character of Phidias' art. We vividly sense how much these
groups were more than mere decoration of the facade for the artist.
It was a serious, sacred task he had to fulfill in their creation;
the most important religious traditions for his people had to
receive a sublime expression worthy of their dignity, and that they
received this was in itself a supreme necessity for him. He had to
place them there as established for all ages in a monumental form,
and that they truly possessed this in all its perfection was
everything. The work, which would not be conspicuous, was nothing
less than superfluous.
The
nearly 160-meter-long frieze, which, in the surrounding gallery of
the temple, completely encompassed the interior of the temple,
depicted the procession during the festival of the Panathenaia1), an
image, as we have seen2), of the Attic people as it had developed
over the centuries. Already in the distribution of this material
over the designated space, that Attic sense for a correct and
beautiful arrangement reveals itself in all its subtlety. The artist
could not conceive of composing this procession as a circular band
without beginning or end, like the hunting and battle scenes,
modeled after the Oriental style, that adorned, among other places,
ancient vases. A procession had to be depicted, going somewhere, but
how? Wherever one wanted to place the end of this procession, the
beginning would always have to be adjacent, and it was impossible
for both to be composed in such a way that the natural gap between
them would not forcefully impose itself on the viewer, which would
naturally cause the frieze to lose all character of a band. But
where should that end be located—undoubtedly the most
important part of the procession? Naturally, on the eastern front of
the building. But where? At one of the corners? One immediately
senses that this is not possible. The center above the main entrance
is actually the only fitting place, but there, undoubtedly, the
beginning and end of such a procession would be almost grotesquely
juxtaposed. Phidias resolves all such objections at once—the
full significance of this solution will become clear to us
shortly—by dividing the procession into two parts, two
columns, both of which converge above the eastern main entrance. One
covered the entire west side, then turned northward and arrived at
the east side; the other arrived there after first passing along the
south side.
A
cavalry procession was seen on the West Frisian side. Some riders
are already mounted; others still need to adjust their equipment,
for example, tying on their sandals; or the horses themselves are
not yet complete. It is a selection of Attica's youth, who, on
beautiful horses—for which Attica was renowned—follow
the procession. That these riders also include victors in the
competitions—if not all—is beyond doubt. At the end, in
the left corner of this west side, a procession organizer leads the
riders. This creates a gradual transition to the north frieze, at
the beginning of which some riders are still not fully equipped.
Soon, however, we see the cavalry riding forward uninterruptedly,
though in uneven ranks and without much regularity, so that they
clearly do not have a military cavalry before them. This is also
evident in the riders' equipment; there is great diversity, from the
naked youth, with only a sort of cloak hanging diagonally across his
back, to the even more military-style attire. The movements of the
horses and riders also lack anything resembling monotony; For
example, now a horse throws its head back wildly, then forward
again, or the animal jumps completely off the ground. - If one had
passed the group of riders, then one came to the agent of the
apobats, a runner beside the charioteer2); then a group of sixteen
men on foot, among whom were probably the Thallophores, the handsome
old man with a branch in his hand, chosen by some kind of contest3);
before these marched musicians—this reminds us of the musical
competitions instituted by Pericles4), until finally they saw before
them the great sacrifice being offered to the goddess. Metoici
(foreigners under the protection of the state) carried, as
skaphephors or hydriaphores, the heavy containers and water jars
containing the wet and dry goods necessary for the sacrifice; before
these, with their escorts, went the sacrificial animals themselves,
sheep and cows, the sacrifice of the Attic colonies. The north
frieze ends with these sacrificial animals, and everyone senses that
the procession cannot be concluded with this and will therefore
continue on the east frieze. The second column, which also proceeded
from the southern frieze to the eastern side, opened with a
detachment of regular Attic cavalry, a splendid corps composed of
well-to-do men who could properly provide horses and equipment.
Here, as at the beginning of the northern frieze and throughout the
western frieze, the procession was still in preparation; the first
horsemen had not yet formed ranks. Now we see clearly what a great
advantage the division of the procession into two columns afforded
the artist. The gap between the beginning and end of a procession
was utterly unmanageable; that between the beginning of two
processions, and likewise, as will shortly become apparent, that
between their ends, were made almost imperceptible in the
composition to the unintentional observer. Undeniably, this division
into two presented the great danger of creating the impression that
two entirely separate scenes were depicted on the frieze, but this
was entirely avoidable. Phidias had already made his task easier by
not having the two columns begin in the middle of the west side, but
by assigning the entire western side to one of the two—that of
the northern frieze—so that the separation fell on a corner,
which naturally always made it less pronounced. Now, however, as we
noted, both at the beginning of the southern frieze and on the
entire western frieze, one could see a not-yet-organized cavalry
procession, and this very similarity in material made the divide
less noticeable. While the general direction on the western frieze
was north, the movement of riders just mounting, interspersed with
others not yet ready, was not particularly forceful. Moreover, here
at the southern corner, the artist could have added something that
pointed more specifically southward: a few riders, still busy with
their equipment, had turned in that direction, and likewise, a
reluctant horse, rearing violently, had turned completely. Thus, one
gradually reached the south side of the West Frisian as well. Having
passed the horsemen, who were not yet in order, one saw regular
ranks of six men in diagonal formation before one. Then, however,
one came upon some disorganized horsemen again; the front rank had
been forced to break up because it had encountered a line of
chariots1) that had participated in the race. Ahead of these
chariots walked pedestrians, among whom, not surprisingly, were
Thallophores and musicians, who also appeared on the north frieze.
Here too, one saw sacrificial animals extending to the end of the
frieze, this time to the great sacrifice of the city itself.
Now,
if one positioned oneself in front of the east frieze, at the front
of the inner temple building, one saw on either side the heads of
the two columns, which had turned the corners, moving toward the
center of the frieze. On both sides, there was a procession of
stately advancing girls, carrying the supplies for the sacrifice,
and that the canephors2 were among them, there is no doubt. Further
toward the center of the frieze, the two columns had already arrived
at their destination; for example, a temple official took a dish
from one of the front girls, which she had been carrying, and in
front of the girls, on either side, stood a group of middle-aged men
in a reclining position, most of them leaning on their staffs,
waiting for the entire procession to arrive. They were probably
dignitaries of the state, although that cannot be said with
certainty. Right in the middle of the frieze, the outermost points
of the two columns had arrived, at a place that one should imagine
as the interior of the temple, just above the entrance to the actual
temple. On one side, the right, one sees a boy wearing the peplos,
the beautiful robe brought by the goddess has been handed over to a
priest, who arranges it in its folds; on the other side, the left
side, two girls wear a kind of tabourets on their heads, which they
hold by their legs and on which something is placed; a priestess is
in the process of taking them from her; one of the girls carries
something else on her arm. These girls were most likely the
arrephores, and perhaps they brought the goddess her secrets.1)
Moreover, the spectator was fortunate enough to witness a spectacle
in this east frieze that was apparently completely hidden from the
eyes of the celebrants themselves. The Immortals had descended from
Olympus to see the Attic people perform in all their splendor and
glory. They sat there in two groups, on either side of that middle
group—from the place one might imagine as the inner temple
space—facing away from it, looking ahead at the columns
approaching from either side.2) One immediately recognizes Zeus and
his wife, Hera, on the right, the Castle Goddess herself with
Hephaestus. Poseidon and Aphrodite are also clearly distinguishable
with the boy Eros (Cupid). The other gods are less certain to be
identified. All sat there in an easy, comfortable pose, apparently
completely out of the more formal fold; Zeus, for example, who would
later be depicted by Phidias at Olympia sitting upright on his
throne, here leans comfortably with his left arm over the back of
his chair. The Castle Goddess wears none of her usual regalia; only
her spear was at her side. Here, therefore, the artist's primary
task was to express the essence of the various gods without relying
too much on their usual attributes. It was an entire Olympus of
fourteen divine figures, whose magnificent beauty the artist had to
reinterpret here for his contemporaries, and in every respect, these
groups of gods belong to the most exquisite of Phidias's art we
know. How utterly lacking, now, in that eastern frieze, where the
two columns meet, is anything that could create a sense of
separation. Two similar columns move from either side toward the
center, followed on either side by these two groups of resting men,
followed by the gods; these resting men wait, as it were, before the
temple, while, behind the gods, the two outermost spires have
penetrated the interior of the temple. This last one was indicated
by nothing other than what occurred within it, yet between these two
groups of gods, it was sufficiently separated from the rest of the
frieze for the viewer's perception. Because these groups, despite
all their differences, nevertheless offered so much similarity that
the eye involuntarily connected them, the idea that any boundary
should be sought between them could not occur. Thus, the area where
the two spires converged presented itself powerfully as a single
whole, and since nothing could evoke the impression that it was not
connected to the procession behind them, the two columns were firmly
held together at their ends. Moreover, these were naturally so small
there that the contrast between the two columns was only weakly
continued. The artist composed more freely here by having these ends
consist of two girls on one side and one boy on the other, so that
there was no separation exactly in the middle. This lay between the
priest and priestess, who were facing different directions. However,
the fact that this had only recently occurred is evident in the
priest's posture, and in the depiction, the two belong completely
together again, in the place where we find them.
This
frieze was only worked in very low relief; the elevation remained
below five centimeters overall. This was necessary because, under
the ceiling of the surrounding gallery, it naturally received light
only from below, and with a greater elevation, the shadows of the
lower sections would obscure the upper ones. Only in the latter case
did they go slightly above five centimeters by excavating the
background a little deeper there. There was a great risk of
confusion in the places where the various riders obscured each
other. The artist prevented this by excavating the outlines of the
figures a little more sharply here and there. This did, however,
result in some loss of the plastic character of the figures, as they
no longer emerged so gradually from their background, but it was
entirely contrary to the essence of the Attic artist to create
compositions whose individual figures did not immediately catch the
viewer's eye with complete clarity. 1) Undoubtedly, colours were
also applied to this frieze, which also enhanced its clarity.
Here
too, the figures stood out against a colored background, and several
of their details were highlighted by color. Numerous metal additions
were also applied. That pure, unmistakable sense of style and that
self-control, capable of satisfying the possibilities of every
artistic genre, are also strongly evident here, and these were among
the most precious gifts of the Attic spirit. Therefore, there are no
attempts here to introduce deep perspectives into the reliefs, to
have another representation move further into the background behind
one image, to give the figures a more or less longitudinal direction
from the viewer to the background, sculpting them in foreshortened
form, just as a draftsman in a similar case draws in foreshortened
form. The artist of the somewhat later frieze from Phigaleia (a city
in Arcadia), for example, was unable to refrain from the latter. A
centaur, in particular, lying there with its head turned towards the
viewer, provides a striking example. Such a foreshortened sculpture
naturally acquires a monstrous quality; a figure drawn in
foreshortening appears to possess the true form, a foreshortened
sculpture also appears foreshortened. Phidias, however, apparently
felt no temptation to such deviations. Strictly speaking, for
example, the groups of gods on the eastern frieze should not be in
line with the procession and its spires in the middle section of the
frieze. However, Phidias was so unconcerned with the idea of
either omitting these groups of gods or attempting to
bring them more forward, so that the procession could, as it were,
actually pass behind them, that he even used them in the
composition, as we have seen, to create a separation between the
procession and its spires.
This
carefree deviation from reality is evident in yet another respect.
In such a procession, the horsemen and charioteers naturally towered
far above the pedestrians. If this were transferred to the frieze,
unsightly gaps would be created, and the frieze would no longer
visually form a uniform whole. The Attic artist, therefore, simply
placed all the heads approximately in a single line (isocephalism),
and although this resulted in a significant disproportion in size
between horsemen and foot soldiers, a suitable grouping could ensure
that it did not become too conspicuous, and in any case, this was by
far the lesser of the two drawbacks.
Likewise,
Phidias was not bothered that the Panathenaic procession did not
actually proceed to the castle in two columns, nor did he feel
compelled to depict every element of the procession with meticulous
precision. It was entirely different matters that captivated the
artist's mind. In that procession, the Attic people appeared in
their most select representatives; here, on that temple frieze, an
uninterrupted scene of the highest beauty unfolded before the eyes
of the beholder! Here, youth, middle age, and old age shone before
gods and men, each in its own peculiar splendor. Magnificent
sacrificial animals, often with characterful movements, were led to
the castle. Only Attica, with its beautiful horses, could produce
such a cavalcade. What diversity it offered! The horse connoisseur
could find here the movements for which these animals were usually
trained; besides, however, one saw numerous others, in which the
nature of the animal was more exclusively expressed; in all, each
time changing, an image of magnificent beauty was presented. What a
feeling of rapture flowed through them. An Athenian to the
heart—like a true Hellene—when he had to confess how
glorious the earth truly was, and how unspeakably happy he felt at
the thought that all that beauty was truly produced by his homeland.
2) Even among the two or three hundred human figures that appeared
there, a great diversity prevailed, yet one single spirit pervaded
the entire scene: stately and solemn, the people proceeded toward
the castle, the deepest seriousness prevailed everywhere, everything
spoke of a sacred act being performed there. And indeed, not only
were the most precious offerings made there to the Patron Goddess,
but the scene of splendor and beauty that the brilliant procession
unfolded in its performance was in itself a tribute to the
Immortals,1) whose presence all deeply felt, even if, like us, they
were not fortunate enough to behold it with their own eyes. How
could one not have arranged one's attire in a stately manner? With
all the freedom of movement one allowed oneself, one could not have
observed moderation, full of dignity and self-confidence! In quiet
modesty, that select procession of maidens proceeded there; with
confidence and proud composure, the heavenly-beautiful youth
dominated on his horse; quiet self-possession spoke from the posture
and gestures of the men. It was the people of Pericles, shining
there before the eyes of the Immortals—a glorious image of
majestic beauty—the people of Pericles, as he also led them
when he appeared in the assembly; it was, in a word, an Olympian
people. Thus, it was primarily in his higher qualities that Phidias
portrayed that glorious, ostentatious image of his people, and we
vividly sense how much the man, who even in his external
compositions acted primarily according to his artistic inspirations,
thereby elevates himself above reality. And something else is
closely related to this. Despite all the diversity we admire in this
frieze, each of those numerous figures exists solely for the sake of
the procession; all actions, postures, and gestures can be connected
to it. Likewise, anything that even hints at the characterization of
specific figures is absent; above all, the facial features reveal
nothing individual. Thus, any thought of this or that Panathenaic
procession is entirely excluded here, and we see it, so to speak, in
its eternal form, elevated above all chance. Not only where he
depicted the figures of Olympus, but also where, as in this Mes, he
had to depict the events of reality that each of his contemporaries
could witness with their own eyes, Phidias was an idealistic artist
in the strictest sense.
Illuminated
by the bright light that fell through the large opening in the roof,
one saw before them in the interior of the temple the heavenly
maiden Athena in all her stately power and divine beauty; only in
the large temple sculptures, where the Deity appeared in all the
magnitude of her dignity, could Phidias unfold his full power as an
interpreter of the divine. It was already a magnificent sight, that
ten-meter-high statue on a two-meter pedestal; the nude parts, face,
arms, and feet were made of ivory; the dress and other accoutrements
were of hammered gold; the whole thing stood out clearly against the
red-colored wall behind it. We can form some idea of the
composition not only from the descriptions but also from copies,
including two fairly faithful ones, and depictions on reliefs,
cameos, and coins. The pedestal depicted the birth of Pandora, the
first woman, who was immediately instructed in the art of weaving by
Athena. The goddess's attire is also exceptionally richly decorated.
A magnificent piece was her helmet with its sphinx between two
winged horses; around her sandals, a battle of Lapiths and Centaurs
was depicted. On the outside of her shield was a battle of heroes
and Amazons, on the inside, that of gods and giants. How could
Phidias display his skill as a chiseler in all this! The Athenians
refused to allow him to place his name on this statue. He
compensated himself for this by placing his own portrait and that of
Pericles among the fighting heroes in the Amazon camp. On a copy of
this shield in the British Museum, one can still clearly recognize
both Phidias himself, a bald old man, and Pericles, who partially
obscures his face with his raised arm—Phidias apparently
wanted what he had done to be less conspicuous. It was entirely a
deity in the higher religious imagery one saw before us in Phidias's
statue. She stood there in silent majesty, calm, without any
conspicuous movement. She supported herself primarily on her left
foot; her right leg was slightly raised; this only slightly broke
the upright shape of her robe. She had placed her shield beside her
on her left side, briefly holding it with her hand. Behind it, in
the familiar form of a serpent, coiled Erichthonius, the progenitor
of the Attic people, himself Athena's foster-child, just as the
Attic people were under her care. Her spear rested against her left
shoulder. In her right hand, she held Nike, the goddess of victory,
slightly out in front of her. Indeed, the various capacities in
which she could appear were here somewhat related to a higher whole.
Was the Parthenon a kind of synthesis of the old house of
Erechtheus, the temple of Athena as the Guardian Goddess, and the
small temple of Athena-Nike1) on the slope of the castle?—in
the image of the Goddess in the Parthenon, the essence of the
Guardian Goddess and the Goddess of Victory were united, and
likewise, the representation on the pedestal recalled that the same
divine being was also the "artistic one," the "Ergane,"
as such, as she too possessed a sanctuary in the castle. Now, in all
this, the artist undoubtedly had portrayed her, above all, as a
heavenly maiden (Pallas) Athena had been known (or rather, made
known by the name of Athena), then he would have characterized her
primarily in her most general nature.
But
Athena, in all her sublimity, offered only a weakened image of the
lofty qualities of her father, Zeus, and thus seemed destined, as it
were, to approach humanity more closely than these. It was given to
Phidias to depict that immense being in forms worthy of his majesty,
specifically at Olympia, as the "supreme god of all
Hellenism,"[2] which found its principal religious and national
center there. Everything surpassed the grand splendor with which the
statue itself, also of gold and ivory, and the extensive additional
work were executed. Here Zeus sat on his throne in a moment of
solemn majesty, a Nike hovering from his right hand. The statue,
with its pedestal, was approximately fourteen meters high and seemed
even larger; Parthenos, which stood, reached, as we noted, a height
of about twelve meters. Undoubtedly, the grander religious
conception was also somewhat rooted in ancient religious tradition,
especially with the "father of gods and men"1). In Homer,
Zeus was undoubtedly much more reclusive in majesty and quiet in
movement than the other gods, and according to the usual story,
Phidias himself claimed to have arrived at his conception of that
supreme divine majesty through a passage from that poet. When Thetis
asked him for a favor, Zeus consented with benevolent majesty; he
waved his eyebrows—according to Homer—so that his hair
waved along his head, thereby making the entire Olympus tremble2).
That was that divine majesty that held men and gods in awe and
caused his will to be carried out without requiring any effort on
his part. It's a pity we don't possess any actual sculpture that can
be considered a definitive copy of Phidias's. Even the well-known
Zeus of Otricoli is undoubtedly only remotely so; that lion-like
type it has, especially in those mane-like locks, is certainly not
by Phidias. Such a special individualization as that of a human with
an animal type, however authentically drawn from nature, was not yet
in the artist's sphere, and above all—his gods were merely the
sublime expression of the universally human. Fortunately, Elian
coins have preserved for us not only a depiction of the whole, but
also of the head of Zeus. That small work of art still speaks to us,
at least to some extent, of that silent, awe-inspiring majesty and
heavenly goodness—that true revelation of a supreme majesty,
as unmoved as the atmosphere of Olympus—that caused so many to
raise their heads in stunned reverence to that temple statue. It was
a significant moment when it stood there, completed for the first
time, in the Temple of Zeus: Hellenic idealism had reached the
highest point it could reach. A beautiful Elian saga depicts
Phidias, kneeling before his statue, asking the god himself for his
judgment on it.
There,
Zeus's lightning strikes the artist. The god has spoken and affixed
his seal to the work.
The
master was permitted to place his name on it.
However,
Phidias's work at Olympia is of a somewhat later date. After that
magnificent temple on the fortress of Athens, the Parthenon with all
its sculptures, was completed and dedicated during the great
Panathenaia of the year 438, it gradually came into full use.
Besides serving at that important annual city festival—celebrated
every four years with even greater splendor—it was also, as
has been noted1), intended to hold the prodigious treasures that
constituted the goddess's possession: her money—she had a
substantial annual income; consider, for example, only the sixtieth
of all tributes paid to her by allies2), and the votive offerings
she had received over time and in ever-increasing quantities. These
latter were almost all brought there from the house of Erechtheus
and the small temple of Athena Nike. A prodigious mass of gold and
silver vessels, weapons, necklaces set with precious stones, and
numerous other feminine adornments in beautiful caskets, golden
statuettes of all kinds, especially magnificent otter tools, and the
necessities for the grand procession—all of this and much more
adorned the "pre-temple" (Proneos) and the two parts of
the inner temple space, the "Hekatompedos" and the
"Parthenon" in the narrower sense. Everything concerning
the sacred treasures was arranged on a fixed basis. We still possess
the relevant popular decree. 3) Apparently, a great deal of sacred
money had been used before that time—"borrowed" from
Athena and the other gods. This now remained largely be returned,
and from then on, the Goddess's treasurers would manage their
affairs in the "Secret House" (Opisthodomos), where the
Goddess's money would also be kept. A board of "Treasurers of
the other Gods" was established, who would also manage their
affairs in the Secret House, opposite Athena's, and would keep their
funds. Administrative regulations were established for both. Thus,
we still possess, in relatively good condition, most of the
inventories with which, in accordance with this financial
arrangement—which existed until the end of the Peloponnesian
War—the Goddess's valuables were transferred to their
successors by the various boards of treasurers—an annual
office—according to a fixed model and in a specific manner. It
was further determined for what purposes and up to what amount funds
from the Goddess's treasury could be spent, understandably for
purposes such as further beautification of the castle and the
provision of instruments for worship. No one was allowed to propose
any other use for that money unless they had first been granted
indemnity (ἄδεια) to make such a
proposal. The goddess was then considered to be lending such money
to the Athenian state and received interest (between 1 and 2
percent). We still possess a kind of promissory note for such
loans2) and for accrued interest3). Likewise, her people could count
on her valuables in times of need, even on the gold of her statue,
which, on the advice of Pericles, had been crafted so that it could
be taken away. Thus, even with her material resources, she was
Athens' patron goddess. In all this, a naive faith that knew no
doubt still speaks; yet it is quite striking here how weak the
boundary between the sacred and the profane could become in a
religion like the Greek, especially in the later development of more
enlightened times. How much did Attica and Greece owe to the mighty
genius of the Attic artist! It may seem surprising that so little is
known about the life of such a man. This, however, is true of all
artists of antiquity, and there is a very natural reason for this.
Art was considered a craft, and since all crafts were held in very
low esteem in antiquity, the artist, although the Greeks owed him
the satisfaction of their highest needs, nevertheless enjoyed only
limited social standing. No well-born Greek youth who used his
intellect—as we read in two ancient writers, Plutarch1) and
Lucian2),—felt the desire to become an artist himself at the
sight of Olympian Zeus or the works of Polykleitos. This was a
prejudice from the old chivalric period, which even outlived the
glory of the Attic democracy for centuries. Phidias, through his
association with Pericles, came somewhat more to the fore than other
artists; Yet he, too, was still considered one of that vast body of
artisans whose personalities, understandably enough, aroused little
interest.
But
does the artist, whom we can still get to know so well through his
works after twenty centuries, have any cause for complaint? It is
still perfectly clear to us what Phidias' art was in his time and
for his people. It stood at the end of a thousand-year-old period of
popular development, a ripe fruit of the Hellenic and Attic spirit,
nurtured in a period of the highest development of national
vitality, sufficient to meet both the more practical and the higher
needs of his people. Everything seemed to have to cooperate to make
it possible at a given moment.
It
was, therefore, only in a short space of time that this product of
so many centuries could come into being. A decline soon set in, in
which all the conditions and circumstances that had contributed to
it disappeared in a relatively short time. The. Storms broke out,
whose approach had already been announced during the work itself,
and one of the first victims was the artist himself. It was about
seven years after the completion of the Parthenon—Phidias had
undoubtedly only recently returned from Elis—when charges were
brought against him for having stolen part of the gold intended for
the statue of Athena Parthenos. At the instigation of Phidias'
enemies, one of his former workmen, Menon—who tells you that
the master, like Michelangelo later, was not a very strict master to
his subordinates?—sat down in the marketplace, begging the
people for protection, as he had something to report about Phidias
but did not dare to do so. The people agreed, and so Menon acted
against his former master. However, this accusation of theft was not
accepted. The gold could indeed be taken from the statue, and
Pericles invited the accusers to weigh it. Yet, this did not acquit
Phidias. The anger against him was primarily fueled by the fact that
he had depicted himself and Pericles among the demigods fighting the
Amazons on the shield of the Parthenos. Phidias was taken to prison,
where he died of illness. Menon received, as a reward, exemption
from all state charges and was placed under the special protection
of the ten strategists (army leaders) by the people. It was in Elis
that the memory of the great artist was honored—his
descendants were there appointed the hereditary honorary office of
caring for the maintenance of the great statue of Zeus (as
Phaedruntes).
The
attack on Phidias had primarily been a test to determine the popular
sentiment toward Pericles. The way Menon was allowed to act was also
calculated to arouse the people's jealousy against Pericles. What
did the much-vaunted rule of the community mean if they dared not
accuse someone who had committed offenses against it, simply because
he was Pericles' friend? By having Phidias arrested and rewarding
Menon, the Attic people had now clearly demonstrated that they would
not relinquish their high authority to anyone, and the terrain now
seemed ripe for further attack. The actor Hermippus brought charges
against Aspasia, accusing her of impiety and deceiving free Athenian
women, whom she—this interpretation was given to mean that she
received women and girls for instructional purposes—had
shamefully enticed to her side in order to appease Pericles.
Thereupon, at the suggestion of Diopeithes, the people passed a
decree that atheists and those who supposedly taught about
supernatural things would be prosecuted in the strictest manner.
This referred to Anaxagoras, and this, in turn, was to refer to
Pericles. Finally, a decree was immediately passed against him as
well. At the suggestion of Drakontidas—slightly modified by
Hagnon—he would have to render an extra account for his
management of funds.
A
significant role in all this undoubtedly played by petty jealousy.
This thus exalted workman, Phidias, was quite naturally the object
of many's jealousy; he had even dared to equate himself and his
friend with demigods; and how could Pericles himself have escaped
the envy? Yet those men who acted there in a closed phalanx against
Pericles and all that belonged to his party—however much
malicious malice they may have displayed—were not primarily
motivated by selfish passions. Hermippus, as has been noted, was a
man of a truly conservative persuasion, Diopeithes a religious
zealot, Drakontidas, it seems, a declared enemy of democracy. It was
the entire trend of old Athens that was here vigorously opposing the
newer; it was, so to speak, the trend of the old house of Erechtheus
against that of the Parthenon.
That
old Athens did not triumph over the new. Pericles could only save
Anaxagoras by expelling him from the city, but Aspasia was
acquitted, and undoubtedly—though we are not told—he
himself was as well. With all this, however, the time when the Attic
people allowed themselves to be led uninhibitedly by the Olympian
was over for good, and undoubtedly many had now come to the
conviction that this new, higher spiritual direction must lead to a
renunciation of the Gods.
Meanwhile,—and
how could it be otherwise?—the tension between Athens and the
Peloponnesians had also increased again. Numerous clashes had
arisen, and the situation had become such that, if Athens wanted to
maintain its high position, war was inevitable. It was Pericles,
above all, who believed that this was the time to let it happen.
Athens had never been better equipped to conduct this than then;
surprisingly, the resources it could rely on made its position
almost unassailable. Only fourteen years of the thirty-year truce
had elapsed when war with the Peloponnesians broke out again. Many
in Athens believed that Pericles had been driven to war primarily
because he hoped to restore his shattered prestige, as the people
would then be less able to do without his forceful leadership than
ever before. Who can say that such considerations could not have
been a contributing factor, although they were undoubtedly not the
primary motivation? In any case, during the war, discontent against
Pericles increased significantly; people felt oppressed by its
burdens and directed all their discontent against the man on whose
advice they had begun to seek him.
He
was fined and, after serving as strategist for several years,
removed from supreme command. He was soon recalled, and in the
latter part of his life he enjoyed some satisfaction in other
respects, but his time was effectively over when a plague, which at
that time wreaked havoc in Athens, took him away as well (429 BC).
It
is a sad spectacle to see how everything that had once defined
Pericles's strength or filled the great statesman with hope has
faded away. After this period, there is little left of a free
citizenry, held together and guided in a fixed direction by awe for
spiritual superiority and reverence for what is recognized as higher
and better. Democracy, first and foremost, wants to be itself, and
everything is striving for unity and drifting back and forth, now
that the zeal to assert itself as supreme sovereign completely
dominates the community, and everything that seems to be happening
at the moment is immediately pursued with passion. One should
certainly not blame too much on a few individuals. Couldn't a Kleon
or Hyperbolos, whom Avas was capable of, lead the people, now that
the scepter had almost fallen from the hands of the Olympian?
Pericles had entered the war with the highest hopes; if the Attic
people can control itself, if it doesn't shy away from effort, but
also doesn't allow itself to be lured into futile undertakings
beyond its powers, it will undoubtedly emerge victorious from the
battle! However, the Attic people lacked self-control; they grumbled
about their efforts, throwing themselves into futile undertakings
that held a certain charm for the imagination. Instead, the best of
the people's strengths opted for it, and—with impunity, they
could commit numerous errors against the rules prescribed by
Pericles, so prodigious were their resources. They committed so
many, however, that finally the Peloponnesians entered the city, the
long walls were demolished, and their fleet was burned before their
eyes, while the Attic alliance had also disintegrated, and the Asia
Minor Greeks stood unprotected against the barbarians. Everything
that had once filled the soul of the Athenian with such a high sense
of self had been destroyed.
It
goes without saying that the consequences of the disasters that
befell the city were deeply felt, especially in the rear of Athena's
temple. As we have seen, we still have numerous debts of debt for
borrowed sacred money and accrued interest; they are especially
relevant to this period. Already at the beginning of the war, this
practice of borrowing began, and later it repeated itself
incessantly; naturally, the indemnity to propose such a loan was
repeatedly requested and received. Thus, the treasures in the castle
gradually melted away. After a while, it seems, the interest rate
was demanded. Ultimately, whatever came in was immediately used for
loans. Already at the beginning of the war, it had been determined
that at least the 1,000 talents would remain untouched; a proposal
to borrow even from them was prohibited under penalty of death,
except in the event that an enemy fleet approached the city.
Similarly, 100 ships were designated, which could only be equipped
in that case, and then with that money. Later, even though no enemy
fleet was approaching yet, the need became dire. The threat of death
was lifted; the ships were used for other purposes; the 1,000
talents were used. Nor could the goddess's treasures be spared in
the long run. For a long time, these treasures were kept at bay;
indeed, quite a bit was added—the inventories we still possess
inform us of this. This is coming to an end; some items disappear;
the final entry in the last inventory of the Proneos's treasures
under this arrangement states that everything had been transferred
to the Hellenotamia, for waging war: "one golden wreath
remains, weight as much." What happened to the Proneos's
treasures undoubtedly happened—although we lack the
inventories of those very last periods—also to those of the
Hekatompedos and the Parthenon. Thus, Athens's wealth evaporated,
and now that its naval dominance had collapsed, all hope of complete
restoration vanished. The material conditions that had once made
Phidias's works of art possible had also vanished. Several times
later, new financial arrangements were made; inventories were again
drawn up—we possess quite a few of these as well—and
indeed, at times, quite a few valuables were amassed. However, the
Patron Goddess never received a treasure even remotely comparable to
the one she had possessed. She, too, was deeply affected by the
misfortunes of her people.
But
the power of downfall reached infinitely deeper. Not without reason
had Pericles' enemies directed their attacks against Anaxagoras.
Indeed, the close contact between the more enlightened religious way
of thinking and the stricter philosophy was very dangerous for the
popular religion. In such matters, conservatism is usually felt to
be infinitely more correct than the more liberal approach. One of
the philosophical schools of that time, that of the southern Italian
city of Elea, was already very clearly in conflict with the popular
religion. Its founder, Xenophanes, even railed against the old
polytheism with a certain ferocity, and if, it seems, the other
Eleatic philosophers expressed themselves less on the subject, it
was not unlikely, because they were no longer so passionate about
such matters. One of the most prominent of these Eleatic
philosophers was Zeno, who also lived in Athens and, as we know,
associated with Pericles there. Xenophanes claimed, for example,
that if cows, lions, and horses had hands, they would depict the
gods as lions, cows, and horses. How this simultaneously destroys
the entire foundation of Greek religion and all of Greek art!
Philosophy increasingly withdrew the best intellectual forces from
the popular religion, and those philosophers who did not break with
it nevertheless failed to grasp it in its true character. Was it any
wonder that he increasingly yielded to his natural tendency to lower
the standard of the divine? Phidias himself did not hesitate to
place himself and his friend on the shield of Parthenos among the
demigods. One only had to continue on this path to arrive at the
vulgar human deification of the Roman Empire. And indeed, the world
of the gods now increasingly sank to the level of that of humans, so
that ultimately, elevating a human to the status of god became a
very common occurrence. The history of the Parthenon and its
festival also shows us the Greek folk religion moving in this
direction. At the end of the 10th century BC, the Athenian people
decreed that Antigonus and his son Demetrius would be honored as
gods with sacrifices, games, and a procession, and that their images
would appear in the embroidery on the goddess's magnificent robe,
the peplos, alongside her and Zeus himself, as divine participants
in the battle against the Giants. At the time, many still found this
deeply offensive; it was considered a divine judgment that a gust of
wind caused a large gust of wind to tear the magnificent robe during
the procession, and a severe sleet was considered a punishment from
the gods, causing considerable damage to trees and crops. All such
sentiments later faded. Centuries before this had happened, however,
relatively shortly after Athens's peak, when the retrograde of
popular religion was still only in its infancy, it no longer offered
the artist such lofty and austere ideals of the divine as it had
once done in the time of Phidias.
Yet,
despite all this, the creative power of the Hellenic and Attic
spirit was far from exhausted. Greek visual art, in particular,
continually unfolds new strength and splendor amidst all the
religious, political, and social decline, amidst all the material
and moral misery that so largely befell Hellas and Attica after that
period of greatest prosperity. Once elevated to a high position by
the power of national and religious inspiration, it managed to
maintain and develop, so much so that in many respects it only now
reached its highest perfection. It also underwent the influence of
the changes of the times, in some ways even to its advantage. For
Phidias, art was still more a means than an end. He wanted to
present the gods of Olympus to his contemporaries as if before their
eyes, and he gave them a heavenly, beautiful form because without
it, he could not conceive of a deity. This was, without a doubt, the
most serious stance an artist could take. Yet, a new path of free
development was opened up for his successors, now that they were no
longer so captivated by such lofty concepts. In later artists,
beauty itself became the primary goal, and where Phidias had
indicated with powerful strokes, they developed and refined; the
wealth of beautiful forms was astonishing, now that these were
sought more for their own sake than for the divine forms they had to
depict. Furthermore, if Phidias had attempted to portray the diverse
character of the gods in bodily forms, postures, and gestures, his
soul was too dominated by the general ideal of reclusive divine
majesty to proceed far along that path of specialization. Now now
the world of the gods came closer to men and became much more like
them in every respect.
When
it became uniform, it could also much more easily become the
interpretation of the latter in all its colorful diversity, while
for a long time there remained enough idealism to make the artist
strive for the glorification of the forms that nature produces. Only
then did Aphrodite become the truly feminine beauty, full of the
radiance of life, which she, according to her nature, should be;
Apollo the powerful, proud youth, in whom everything speaks of noble
self-esteem and spiritual strength; Dionysus the more effeminate,
whose beauty smacks of the feminine, just as Hera shines in her
matronly majesty, Athena in stern maidenhood. Only then, in a word,
did Greek art in its fullest extent reveal to our generation the
glory of human appearance in its inexhaustible wealth of beauty.
But
at the beginning of all this stands that mighty Attic hero of art.
It was he who first taught the visual arts its true calling: to
interpret nature by idealizing it; through him, above all, humanity
achieved a new victory over nature, learned to know and spiritually
master it; and if Greek art truly revived subsequent generations
many times over, it was primarily enabled to do so by the stamp he
left upon it. Therefore,—because Greek art, as it was through
Phidias, has so powerfully moved our modern times, because the
master inspired a Michelangelo and Raphael, albeit often only
through the most distant shadows of what he was capable
of—therefore, even if the remains of his masterpieces were not
in the Elgin Room of the British Museum, his spirit would surely
live on among us—even if he were for us little more than a
vague shadow from the distant past, of whom we could never know in
any satisfactory way what he was to us.
Leiden.
A.E.J.
HOLWERDA.
December
17, 1886 EDUCATION. In the "Ned. Spectator," Dr. A. E. J.
Holwerda champions Greek and says, among other things, about our
young students:
"Generally
speaking, there's far too much 'studying'; our country, in
particular, could certainly do without a few lawyers. It has become
clear that examinations are a highly inadequate means of weeding out
unsuitable individuals. How many a dimwitted youngster is so
polished up by his tutor that the faculty is forced to accept him,
whether they like it or not? Even the grammar school can't do
everything in this regard, but certainly more than the university.
How many complaints of overload are based on the fact that
completely unsuitable individuals go to university? Climbing Mount
Parnasus is no longer difficult in the Netherlands—there's a
cog railway on that mountain too—now all we need is science,
and we will become small by the opposite of what made the Greeks
great, who, after all, achieved their mastery of art and their
relatively high level of development in science through "...
through tireless, deeply earnest effort."
January
15, 1895, Royal Academy of Sciences.
The
literary department held an ordinary meeting today, chaired by
Professor Kern, at the Trippenhuis here. A letter was received from
the Minister of Internal Affairs in response to a letter from the
Geographical Society, stating that Mr. Van Limburg Stirum had been
appointed as the government's representative for the upcoming
geographical congress.
Furthermore,
a letter from Mr. Six was received, stating that, having reached the
age of 60, he was becoming a retired member.
Finally,
it was announced that 11 entries had been received for the Latin
Poetry competition.
Professor
Allard Pierson announced that he had traveled abroad due to illness
and was therefore unable to attend the meeting. The next item on the
agenda was a lecture by Dr. A. E. S. Holwerda of Leiden.
On
the sanctuary and mysteries of Eleusis.
The
lecture began with a description of the site where the Eleusinian
sanctuary was built. It was reachable from Athens in four hours and
situated on a small plateau south of the sacred grove with its
sacred spring. The temples and other buildings towered above a
formidable bulwark of steep rocks, and nowhere did the words seem to
be shouted more powerfully to the wanderer: "Keep away, you
profane."
Virtually
nothing remains of the temple's former grandeur, and a few huts and
a shabby little church have risen from its ruins. The society of
amateurs founded in England in the previous century commissioned
some excavations. It was believed that mysterious cellars had been
discovered and it was thought that the main building of the
Eleusinian sanctuary, with its numerous columns, must have resembled
an Egyptian rather than a Greek temple.
Only
from 1882 to 1893 was the entire sacred site sufficiently excavated
at the expense of a Greek archaeological society. The work was
conducted under the direction of Philias. Many sculptures and
inscriptions were discovered, and the foundations of the numerous
buildings have become fully known through these excavations. The
Proverb called particular attention to the main building. In its
deepest depths, the foundations of the oldest building for
initiations, the Telesterion, have been found, founded long before
the 6th century BC. These can then be distinguished from the square
building with its 25 columns, the temple, which was destroyed by the
Persians; then the foundations for a new Telesterion, whose
construction began in the period after the Persian Wars, before
Pericles, but was not completed. The outline of the large building,
erected in Pericles' time, has now been completely exposed, as have
the foundations of the stoad, which was later added to the main
building. According to Aristides, the Telesterion burned in the 2nd
century AD. To create space for the structure, the rock must have
been partially excavated. Eight staircases were carved into the rock
interior, and two smaller temples must have stood on the north side.
Even after the excavations, the Telesterion's interior remained a
mystery.
The
author knew that the main section was the "Anaktoron"
(anatomical structure); but they also found references to "Anaktora"
(plural), from which mysterious voices sounded, opening and closing,
causing it to alternate between darkness and light, and so on. The
"anaktora" were simply not imaginable. Even after the
excavation, the idea of an Egyptian temple was not
abandoned, even though it was known that the ceiling must have been
partially open. Space also had to be found for a stage, where the
mystical drama was always performed; the stairs were designated as
the seats for the spectators. Some have believed they could deduce
from Plutarch that the Eleusinian temple had two stories; in short,
the excavations have made the matter even murkier than it already
was.
The
Proverbs now set themselves the task of finding a solution according
to the information from the writers and the remains of the temple,
and arrived at different results. The "anaktoron" must
have been the actual stage, whose platform was probably placed
approximately 3 m above the ground floor. And the stairs were not
seats but offered standing places, each row 20 cm higher than the
previous one, so that the spectators could see clearly over each
other's heads onto the stage. That is also why the columns were
erected so far apart to obstruct the view of the stage as little as
possible. Those who participated in the mystical drama on stage, the
priests, emerged from the space below through an opening in the
platform, for the stage was also the sacred place of initiation,
where the sacred objects were shown to visitors. However, the
following questions remain: why a platform was carved into the rock
behind the temple; why one of the stairs leading to it has such a
slight incline; how the location of the small temple in the
immediate vicinity of that platform should be explained; and still,
how one could speak of "anaktoron" in the plural.
The
answers to these questions are closely related. From passages in
Hesychius, the author demonstrates that "anaktora"
referred to small portable temples located within the permanent
temple building. When the "anaktoron" was to be used for
the performance of the drama, the portable temples were removed from
the platform; when they were needed again for the ceremonies, they
were carried back there. It now also becomes understandable that one
reads how a priest sometimes emerged from an "Anaktoron";
he was then seated in such a small temple building and emerged when
the door was opened. While the priest was seated in the small
"Anaktoron," he would sometimes sing or shout something.
Lights burned in these small temples, while during the ceremonies
inside the temple building it was otherwise completely dark. So, if
a door of one of the small temples was opened, the entire building
was illuminated. This also explains many obscure inscriptions today.
Secret
things were kept in these "Anaktora," and during the Great
Mysteries, they were transported in processions on chariots to
Athens and from there back to Eleusis.
The
aforementioned staircase with its gentle slope and the platform were
probably used to transport this rather heavy "Anaktora"
outside. A movable bridge of 13 m in length, between the door and
the back wall of the temple and the platform would have made it
possible to remove the "Anaktora," even when the stage was
intended for dramatic scenes. And the small temple on the edge of
the plateau could have served as a storage place for the "Anaktora"
on such occasions. Viewed from the outside, the Eleusinian temple
must not have presented an impressive sight; it was a low, square
building with blank walls. Only initiates were allowed to cross the
threshold. Thus, an old invoice for repairs to the temple, dating
from the fourth century BC, lists expenses for the dedication of
five workmen. Plutarch's indications suggest that inside the
building, the walls surrounding the temple were painted with scenes
of the underworld and the islands of the blessed.
Based
on the authors and the now-acquired knowledge of the meaning of
several previously obscure expressions, the author provides: Now a
description of the solemnity of the Eleusinian Mysteries themselves.
There
were certain degrees of initiation: the highest was the
contemplation of the sacred objects in the "Anaktora."
These were shown on a specific day to the few who had reached this
degree of initiation. This was preceded by the consecration in the
Lesser Mysteries of Agrai; and shortly before, the sacred drink had
been consumed in the forecourt; the sacred bread had been taken from
the sacred chest, eaten of it, and placed back in the sacred basket,
and from that back into the sacred chest. The torch-bearing priest
had spread the sheepskin of purification before their feet, and they
had seated themselves on it.
They
had prepared themselves by fasting and immersion in the sea, and for
days on end, the most precious sacrificial animals, some adorned
with gold ornaments, had been slaughtered. The goddesses had been
carried from Eleusis to Athens and from there, surrounded by dense
crowds, returned to Eleusis. The cries and hum of voices as they
ascended to the holy place had echoed from afar until the evening
before the momentous day. And that evening, in the sacred grove,
dances had been performed; by the light of torches, the search for
the lovely Kore had been reenacted.
And
now the people streamed into the temple; they jostled for a good
seat on the steps; they recognized friends from old and chatted most
animatedly until the hour of the mysteries approached. The sun was
sinking; within the building, the shadows rose higher and higher,
until finally, complete darkness fell. People held their breath.
Through the opening in the stage deck, a gleam of torches shot
upward; The Eleusinian priesthood, in full regalia, appears, headed
by the hierophants, dressed in long, trailing robes, their hair
flowing over their shoulders, bound by a diadem. They are the
descendants of the hero who once dared to wage war against even the
king of the city, Erechtheus. The instructions of the hierophants
are inspired by the Deity himself; they have forever abandoned their
civil name.
The
priests stride slowly and stately across the stage; sacred
ceremonies are performed; explanatory words are spoken by the
hierophant, the incense fills the space and continues to float
upward in mists, in which the torchlight plays ghostly.
Solemn
chants resound, and the crowd responds with short forms from two to
three thousand mouths.
And
on the day of the mystical drama, other figures emerge from the
opening in the platform. One sees Zeus and Pluto, who steal the
lovely Kore. The grieving mother goes in search of the lost
daughter. Heartbreaking lamentations make one share her pain. One
lived the life of the Deity itself and learned the nobility of
maternal sorrow.
A
mighty blow on a sounding board becomes the signal for the small
procession to move to a specific point. Enters Hermes, who brought
the girl herself, Kore, back to her mother. The weight of deepest
sorrow is lifted from the soul.
And
on the day of the highest ceremony, only the few initiated, the
chosen ones, take their places on the steps; mysterious voices sound
from the "Anaktora"; now and then, burning torches were
raised from these temples, briefly shedding light in the darkness;
all this, however, for the time being, behind a translucent curtain.
Finally, this was pushed aside, and the hierophant appeared, who,
striding past the temples, showed the initiates the sacred things
about which no Greek mouth has ever revealed to posterity.
This
most intimate ceremony was followed by a final performance, open to
all. Then, among other things, a water jar was emptied onto the
stage, and the priests muttered prayers.
The
sacred mystery of Eleusis was over, and, impressed by the ceremony,
they began their return journey.
Heading
towards turbulent Athens.
Mr.
Holwerda's captivating speech was met with applause, after which Mr.
Land noted that even in the Greek church, the ministers always
remain standing, so the spectators standing on the steps need not
seem unusual.
Mr.
Tiele argued that it was not the case that sermons or anything
similar were delivered at the Eleusinian Mysteries.
The
speaker replied that one should not cling too closely to the modern
concept of sermon; however, there are passages showing that sermons
did indeed take place.
The
meeting was then closed after a round of questions.
April
8, 1896 By Royal Decree, Dr. A. E. J. Holwerda, a lecturer at the
five-year higher civic school in Leiden, was appointed professor in
the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at Leiden State University, to
teach archaeology and ancient history.
April
30, 1896 Historical Sciences.
This
afternoon at two o'clock, Dr. A. K. J. Holwerda accepted the
professorship in the Faculty of Arts at Leiden University, with an
address, delivered in the main auditorium of the academy, on: "The
Historical Sciences, in particular those of classical antiquity;
their independence and significance."
Every
era has its dominant intellectual trend; ours may well be called the
era of the natural sciences. Yet, therein lies a one-sidedness that
has caused the great significance of the historical sciences to be
far too little appreciated. The speaker included among these
historical sciences all those concerned with religion, language,
art, literature, state, and society. The power and scope of these
sciences has increased particularly since the middle of the last
century; it has been difficult for historical appreciation to break
through. The men who have made a significant contribution in this
field are remembered. First and foremost, to him belongs the truly
extraordinary man, the first to point the way in this direction,
Jakob Perizonius, who discovered a fundamental principle of
historical criticism. Niebuhr is remembered after him, while even
before him, Johan Joachim Winckelmann conceived the idea of art
history in its full scope. This liberated the mind from the power of
rationalism, enabled it to move more freely, and led to the
development of the genetic method of explanation and the comparative
method.
This
character of movement has, remarkably, remained hidden from many
scientists. Natural science also sought to impose its method on
historical studies, and there were those, like Comte Buckel, who
were struck by this shortsightedness. Du Bois Raymond's ignorabimus
was heresy for scientific orthodoxy. Ottokar Lorenz attempted to
steer the study of history onto the right track. People have tried
to observe and apply laws in the field of history as well, but this
preconceived notion naturally causes both the presentation of facts
and the entire method to suffer greatly. The speaker demonstrates
that finding laws cannot be the be-all and end-all of science; its
goal must be to explain phenomena. There are phenomena whose origin
and existence are difficult to fathom, and for which one will not
immediately seek laws. There is no chance. But not everything can be
brought to light by an algebraic formula. Much can still be brought
to light, but until then, it will be ignorable for tens of thousands
of years. The speaker then highlights what the historical sciences
owe to classical philology and how historical research developed
within its school. Textual criticism has proven exceptionally useful
in this regard. The antiquities of the ancient philologists were
already a history of civilization. Modern historical study is rooted
in the study of ancient history. But later studies, especially
archival studies, repay the services rendered with usury.
Among
the leading sciences is the study of antiquity, archaeology.
Although one must also guard against one-sidedness in this field, it
has managed to develop into a model of an exact historical science
in the last thirty years, especially in the initial investigation of
the facts, through excavations, knowledge of ancient coins, and the
style of ancient works of art, using all sorts of tools. This puts
research on solid ground. Archaeology has breathed new life into the
entire study of classical antiquity. Inscriptions have proven
excellent services in this regard. These, in turn, are explained by
knowledge of customs and traditions. Through archaeology, numerous
peoples have risen before us, as if from the dead. From the
fragments of ancient civilization, a world history is gradually
emerging for us, as it were. Because life is gradually coming into
everything, we ourselves are living along with it, the harmony
around us creates harmony within us. The historical sciences are, at
their core, an anthropology. The human is the object of our
interest. And that human reveals itself in various domains, which is
why people can find material for their spiritual needs in very
different areas.
Historical
science, therefore, stands alongside the study of nature and also
derives significance from the pressure of temporal circumstances;
the prophets of Israel, the artists of Greece, the jurists of Rome
do not belong to a worn-out geological formation for us; they live
for us. Moreover, no theory of natural science can be elevated to a
general world philosophy. Let us recognize that the spiritual life
of man cannot be understood without the help of our historical
sciences. In this regard, we should beware of a vulgar rationalism,
which we bow to as if it were a new revelation of 19th-century
natural science. And then the Rev. warns: Finally, against the
rationalist leaven in another respect.
Practical
utility is not so glorified. It is all utility. But that is not the
answer to the question: why science? Rather, it is this: to obey a
powerful driving force within us, and the realization that we are in
harmony with it satisfies us. Should the numbness of utilitarianism
ever affect our civilization, it will revive when it reads of
Hellas, what it means to practice art and science for its own sake.
With
the usual addresses to curators, professors, and students, the
speaker concludes his speech.
July
7, 1898 At the Kon. Decision: Professor J. van Leeuwen Jr.,
Professor of Arts and Philosophy at Leiden State University, is
relieved from teaching Greek antiquities, and Professor A. E. J.
Holwerda, Professor of Arts and Philosophy at that university, is
now charged with teaching Greek antiquities.
March
4, 1899 Married:
Dr.
A. E. J. HOLWERDA, Professor at Leiden, Widower of Mrs. N. JONKHEID,
and
C.
L. A. JONGKINDT CONINCK, Widow of the Honourable Mr. D. LA GRAPPE
DOMINICUS. Leiden, March 2, 1899 [Married on March 16, 1899.]
March
7, 1899 The Board of the Philological Study Fund, established in
Utrecht, invites, since the beginning of the last preceding academic
year, PhDs or PhD candidates, currently studying or having studied
at a Dutch university, who wish to be considered for a posting to
Rome, Athens, or another location to be designated by the Board,
under the condition of receiving a stipend of an amount to be
determined later, to apply to the delegate of their university
before April 1. The delegates are: Professor HOLWERDA for Leiden;
Professor VALETON for Amsterdam; Professor BOISSEVAIN for Groningen;
Professor v. d. VLIET for Utrecht.
Art.
Article 16 of the Articles of Association: "Dutch nationals who
are or have been students at one of the State universities or the
Municipal University of Amsterdam may be sent."
"Firstly,
Doctors or Doctoral candidates in classical literature are eligible,
subsequently also Doctors or Doctoral candidates practicing the
subjects mentioned in Article 42, paragraph 5(d) and Article 45,
paragraph 5(e) of the Higher Education Act."
J.
V. D. VLIET, Secretary of the Philological Studies Fund.
Regarding
a lecture at the Teylers Foundation in Haarlem, February 14, 1900,
see
http://nha.courant.nu/issue/HA/1900-02-17/edition/0/page/1?query=holwerda
April
17, 1900 [...] the continued meeting of the Historical Society
and
Archaeology. Dr. J. Berlage from Gorkum spoke on: "A Roman
castle in Germania," while Dr. J. H. Holwerda Jr. from Leiden
spoke on: "Delphi." Both clarified and illustrated their
informative and engaging presentation with drawings and maps.
January
4, 1901 The January issue of Tijdspiegel contains: Dr. J. H.
Holwerda Jr., Delphi;
December
14, 1901 To Prof. Dr. A.E.J. Holwerda.
Your
Honorable Sir,
Following
your letter in the "Algemeen Handelsblad" dated December
7, I consider it advisable to address just a few more words to you.
It seems to me that a further exchange of ideas between you and me
about the purpose of museums in general is completely pointless. Our
opinions on this matter diverge too much. I also consider a further
explanation of my opinion superfluous, since the organization of
most museums is already moving in the direction outlined in my
letter of November 30th. In almost all natural history museums, the
collections are already divided into two sections: one for the
general public ("Show Collection" or "Schau-Sammlung")
and a second for scientists.
The
administrators of ethnographic museums also already follow this
principle. At least, the director of the National Ethnographic
Museum writes in his compelling work: (Dr. Schmeltz, "Ethnographic
Museums in Central Europe". Report of a Study Trip. Leiden,
E.J. Brill. 1896), speaking about the "Anthropological-Ethnographic
Abtheilung des K.K. Naturhistorischen Hofmuseums"
(Anthropological-Ethnographic Abtheilung of the Royal National
Natural History Museum) in Vienna (l. c. p. 52): "The board has
established a separation between objects suitable for public display
and those of more special interest to the professional. This
measure, which has long been in use in Museums of Natural History,
but, as far as I know, here for the first time in an Ethnographic
Museum, is certainly worthy of imitation." (I add space.)
With
a view to the future of the National Ethnographic Museum, I indeed
attach great value to this statement by Dr. Schmeltz. Once the
division of collections, in the aforementioned spirit, has been
accepted in principle by professionals and museum administrators,
the choice of the location for the large public national
museums—both in the government and parliament—can no
longer raise any objections. The one is logically connected to the
other; public national museums with "schau Sammlungen"
(show collections) for the public should naturally be located in the
largest population centers.
But
now for the reason why I consider it advisable to answer you.
In
the November issue of "Onze Eeuw" 190, p. 1013, you wrote
that we have "cleared out" our ethnographic collection at
Artis. In my "Open Letter" to you in "Algemeen
Handelsblad" dated November 30th, last year, I emphatically
protested this false representation and even attempted to assure you
that our Ethnographic Museum is flourishing—thanks to the many
interesting and valuable acquisitions. (Ethnographic collection of
the Siboga expedition, etc.) Wherever there is talk of
"acquisitions," of "enrichment," the concept of
"clearance" is already excluded.
A
further correction on your part would certainly not have been out of
place. But see—in your letter, addressed to me in the
"Algemeen Handelsblad," I now read the following: "That
the Ethnographic collection at Artis was not literally cleared out
is entirely correct. Oh no, it has simply been left without its own
curator for years, without a professional to manage and organize it.
It has been, so to speak, linked to... the Entomological Museum at
Artis; an entomologist who is also curator of ethnology."
What
now? — is this serious or short-tempered?
The
replacement of the curator-ethnographer, Mr. C. M. P1eijte Wzn., by
the curator-zoologist Dr. J. C. H. de Meijere, is surely not a
"clearing-out process."
You
further say: "I do not believe that the study of insects is the
right preparation for those in religion, art, and the art industry."
— I do not either, — but equally I do not believe that
the study of religions or ancient languages is the
right training for those in agriculture and livestock farming,
hunting and fishing, costumes and apparel, house construction,
vessels, instruments, weapons—in short, all those things and
objects that play a much larger role in the lives of so-called
"uncivilized" peoples and therefore primarily fill our
Ethnographic Museums. So when the skilled ethnographer, Mr. C. M.
Pleijte Wzn., left our Museum, we faced a difficult situation. There
were plenty of applicants—officers, civil servants, ministers,
etc.—but no "professionals." After careful
consideration, the board appointed Dr. J. C. H. de Meijere as
curator—not exclusively an "entomologist," as you
might think—for nowhere in this country, and as far as I know
nowhere else, can one obtain training solely as an
"entomologist"—but as a zoologist in general, a
student of Professors Dr. Max Weber, Dr. C. A. J. A. Oudemans, and
Dr. Hugo de Vries.
Why
a zoologist now? Because a zoologist, through the nature of his
morphological and comparative studies, has learned to describe the
most diverse, largest, as well as microscopic, objects, and through
his strict classificatory training, through which he is, as it were,
drilled in the art of ordering and arranging, generally feels more
at home in a museum than a man of letters or a theologian.
We
remain convinced of the correctness of this view—especially
where we experience that it is supported by very compelling facts.
Although I am, of course, far from capable of tracing the genesis of
all ethnographers, it is nevertheless noteworthy that several
renowned ethnographers—in relation to their training—are
"zoologists." Apart from the fact that Prof. Dr. Max Weber
also published ethnographic studies ("Ethnographische Notizen
über Flores und Celebes", 1890), the well-known
ethnographer Dr. A. B. Meijer, director of the "K. Zoologic
Ethnographic-Anthropological Museum" in Dresden, — a
zoologist; A. C. Haddon in Cambridge was formerly a professor of
zoology in Dublin; Prof. Dr. E. H. Giglioli, a permanent staff
member of the "Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie"
— published in Leiden — is a professor of zoology in
Florence; and Dr. J. D. E. Schmeltz, — director of the
National Ethnographic Museum in Leiden and editor of the
aforementioned journal — formerly conducted scientific
research in the field of zoology. (J. D. E. Schmeltz "Ueber
Polynesische Lepidopteren etc.")
The
view of the board of our Society regarding the appointment of a
"zoologist" as curator at the Ethnographic Museum —
was therefore not founded on such shaky ground, but was indeed
well-founded.
I
am pleased that your letter has given me the opportunity to share
this view of the board of I was able to publicly explain our
Society.
I
now have the honor, with the highest respect, Your Honor,
Your
Servant,
Dr.
C. KERBERT,
Director
of the Royal Zoological Society "Natura Artis Magistra".
August
30, 1922, PROF. HOLWERDA. †
Yesterday,
at the age of 77, after an illness lasting only three days,
Professor A. E. J. Holwerda, former director of the National Museum
of Antiquities in Leiden, passed away in Leiden.
Prof.
Dr. Holwerda was born in Gorcum on July 21, 1845, and after
successfully completing the state examination, enrolled as a
theology student at Utrecht University on September 21, 1862. He
soon began studying in literature and received his doctorate in
ancient literature in Utrecht on May 1, 1868, under the rectorship
of Professor N. Beets and with Professor Herwerden as his
supervisor. From 1869 to 1870, he was a lecturer at the H.B.S. in
Schiedam and from 1878 to 1886 at the H.B.S. in Leiden.
The
latter year, he was appointed professor at Leiden University to
teach archaeology and ancient history. He accepted this position on
April 29 of that year with an inaugural lecture on the historical
sciences, in particular classical antiquity, their independence and
significance.
In
1905, he was appointed director of the National Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden, succeeding Dr. Pleyte. In 1915, he resigned
as professor upon reaching the age of 70.
Numerous
works are by him. Published works include "Die alten Kyprier in
Kunst und Kultur" (1885), "The Significance of Archaeology
for the Study of Antiquity," a speech delivered on the occasion
of the Second Dutch Philologists' Congress on April 18, 1900, in
Leiden.
During
the struggle over higher education under the Kuyper ministry, he
published the brochure "Special Universities and Special
Professors" in 1903, in which he championed the cause of the
special universities.
That
same year, he published a brochure on the reform of our grammar
school and secondary education, reprinted from the publications of
the Association for the Simplification of Examinations and
Education. In response to the criticism that followed, his brochure
on the special universities was followed in 1905 by a brochure: "Who
are we ourselves? A word to his fellow intellectuals," also in
response to the educational novella, and secondly: "Can we not
become different? A word to his liberal compatriots."
He
also wrote several articles. in the Gids, the Spectator, Mnemosyne,
Die Archeologische Zeitung, and the annual journal of the
Kaiserlichen Deutschen Archeologischen Instituts.
In
1893, he was appointed a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in
Amsterdam, where he gave a paper in 1905 on: "New Portrait of
Emperor Augustus."
The
deceased was also a member of the Society of Dutch Literature and a
Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
So
much for the official announcements.
We
briefly considered under which heading we should file this death,
under Education or Art. We chose Art because we had so often
observed Professor Holwerda's work on ancient art, both from afar
and up close.
We
knew the professor personally for four years and often conversed
with this amiable, jovial, and always friendly-smiling old
gentleman. Hearing him talk about ancient art, excavations, etc.,
was a delight. How indignant the otherwise jovial and amiable old
man could become when he heard about vandalism in the field of
ancient arts. I once heard him speak with indignation about the
demolition of an old pump in one of our Limburg villages. But it was
even more interesting to see the professor at work in his museum.
Unlike other museums in Leiden, Professor Holwerda's was
distinguished by order and regularity. Everything had its p
I've
never seen his kind, big eyes sparkle more than when I made a remark
he hadn't suspected: "Do you know, Professor, that Baedeke
placed a star for your museum, and nothing for the other Leiden
museums?"
The
Leiden museum was his glory. His absent-mindedness was also
proverbial. A "joke" is told about him, which he himself
never confirmed, but why those kind, faithful eyes laughed so often.
The professor wanted to visit a colleague but didn't know the
correct house number. He rang the doorbell at number 33 and asked
the lady who opened the door: "Am I with Professor..." No,
was the answer, then you should go next door.
He
rang the doorbell at "next door" and asked: "Am I
with Professor..." When the maid started laughing and corrected
him: "You're with Professor...", Mr. Holwerda realized he
had become the victim of his absent-mindedness. With Mr. Holwerda,
one of our most eminent Dutch scholars descends to the grave.
May
his memory be cherished.
OWL.
September
2, 1922 Funeral of Dr. Holwerda.
Amidst
many expressions of interest, primarily from scholarly circles in
Leiden and beyond, the burial of the remains of Prof. Dr. A. E. J.
Holwerda, former professor at Leiden University and former director
of the Museum of Antiquities, took place yesterday morning at the
cemetery on Groenesteeg in Leiden. Representatives included the
University's Board of Governors, the Senate, and the board of the
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy. In accordance with the deceased's
expressed wishes, no speeches were held at the graveside. After
flowers were strewn on the grave, the son thanked Dr. J. H. Holwerda
for the last honors paid to his esteemed father.
van
Giffen versus Holwerda jr
[p.
153] IV. DATING AND HISTORY. (fig. 110).
Thus,
a Roman castellum, also a naval station, lay here on the present-day
Vliet near Voorburg; the harbor bed, which was rediscovered here in
connection with the Vliet, and the tiles with stamps from the Roman
fleet unearthed here, exclude all doubt. I have often emphasized how
the presence of this naval station is one of the strongest pieces of
evidence for the old belief that the Vliet must have been the old
Corbulonis canal, dug around the middle of the 1st century AD. In
his essay on the Fossa Corbulonis, Mr. BEEKMAN (Tijdschrift v. h.
Kon. Ned. Aarde. Gen. 1916) last elaborated on this belief in
detail. It seems to me that doubting its correctness is now
virtually impossible. This canal of Corbulo was dug, as Tacitus
tells us, "ut incerta maris vitarentur," that is, to avoid
the uncertain sea, so as to be able to sail as much as possible
inland; there seems no doubt as to where.
"There
are four places from which one usually crosses to Britain from the
mainland: from the mouths of the Rhine, the Seine, the Loire, and
the Garonne. But those who choose the sea from the Rhine region do
not depart from the mouths themselves, but from the Morini, who live
among the Menapii" (that this means the mouth of the Scheldt is
beyond doubt). Thus, STRABO IV, 5, 2, tells us. Here we clearly see
the purpose of both the digging of Corbulo's canal and the
construction of our fortress. Both are clearly aimed at the military
communication of the Rhine with England. We find confirmation of
this in many pieces of pottery, which are not of Rhine origin, but
are closely related to forms used specifically in England (cf. in
particular II, A 3 and various types under II D). These demonstrate
at least a very close connection between our Arentsburg and Roman
England in those days.
Regarding
the time at which our naval station existed here on this canal, our
finds do not leave us in any doubt about that either. From our
surveys of the terra sigillata and other pottery, it is clear that
this astonishingly rich ceramic material, with a few early
exceptions, only begins with the somewhat later Flavian period.
Early Frankish pieces, such as the well-known sigillata forms Drag.
29, are not yet found, or are very rare. The coins also speak of the
same starting time. Indeed, Vespasian is the first emperor for whom
a large number of coins have been found, and with whom the
continuous series of coins begins. Considering that such coins were
still in use for some time after their creation, this material also
points to a beginning under the same emperor or his successor.
Perhaps
even more eloquent are the finds of tile stamps. The first large
number in our time are the stamps of Legio X, which, as is well
known, first arrived in our country with the Batavian Revolt of 70
and departed again around 105. It was this legion that we
rediscovered in Nijmegen on the Hunerberg, and which therefore
apparently sent a detachment to this castellum. Our legion stamps,
however, allow us an even more precise dating. They seem to prove
that the castellum was built before the year 89. Indeed, we read
here only the few names of the legion: "X Gemina"; the
addition "pia fidelis Domitiana," which it received in the
year 89 as a reward for its loyalty during the rebellion of
Saturninus, and of which it has retained at least the first two
predicates, "p. f.", appears only on one tegula (cf.
RITTERLING "de legione X Gemina" and Westdeutsche
Zeitschr. XII 20).
Now
we hear that it was precisely during these years that the Romans
conquered Britain, and that military transports from our region also
played a role in this (cf. TACITUS's account of Agricola's
expedition, 36). Cohorts of Batavians and Tungri even saved the day
for him at one point in the year 84. This considerable force,
originating from the banks of our Rhine, must therefore have crossed
from here to Britain, and it is therefore logical to assume, after
the above, that our naval port of Arentsburg was built for these
British expeditions, in which our country also had to play such an
active role a good ten years after the Batavian Rebellion.
Yet
another fact confirms this. Wherever it was possible to distinguish
the oldest construction period of the fortress from the others, it
turned out that Batavian pottery (and Tungarian pottery is probably
indistinguishable from it) was in common use among the first
builders of our fortress.
Already
at the beginning of this work, I expressed the opinion that it must
have been Batavian cohorts who built our fortress. Now, I think we
can safely say that the Batavian cohorts, who performed such
important military operations in Britain in 84, probably built their
staging port here.
As
both coins and, especially, pottery series demonstrate, this staging
port served continuously for the military connection of the Rhine
with Britain until shortly before the middle of the 3rd century.
That it would have been needed occasionally for larger military
transports during that period is also evident from written
tradition. According to SPARTIANUS (Vita Hadriani) and FRONTO ("de
bello Parthico"), fierce wars must have been waged in Britain
during the time when Emperor Hadrian came to power. We know very
little about this. We only know of one inscription (cf. Riese Inscr.
no. 499) concerning a person who held various posts under Emperor
Hadrian, and before that time, "tribunus militum" was
"legionis VI victricis cum qua ex Germania in Brittanniam"
(translated). So, we have here the transport of an entire legion
from Germany to Britain at the beginning of Hadrian's reign, when
there was such fierce fighting in that country, and it is obvious
that our staging port also served in this context.
However
little else we know about British history, we are still frequently
mentioned of Batavian and other auxiliary troops from Germany. An
exceptionally heavy period of fighting in Britain begins again in
the time of ANTONINUS PIUS, whose wall in Scotland testifies to an
extensive conquest (cf. MACDONALD, The Roman Wall in Scotland).
"Antoninus Pius per legatos plurima bella gessit; nam et
Brittones per Lollium Urbicum vicit legatum, alio muro summotis
barbaris ductor," it says in the "vita A. Pii" (5,
4). Established by inscriptions in the Pius wall in the north, the
name LOLLIUS URBICUS even appears in these inscriptions (C. I. L.
VII 1083-1141, especially 1125). Fighting also took place against
the Brigantes south of the Antoninus wall. The name of JULIUS VERUS,
whose many inscriptions have been found in this part of England (cf.
HAVERFELD, "Julius Verus"), is associated with this
battle. According to the inscriptions, this action can be dated to
the year 158. Of particular importance to us is an inscription,
quoted by MACDONALD 1.1., p. 9, which mentions units of the 2nd,
6th, and 20th legions, which were detached from both Germania under
Julius Verus to Britain for assistance in the battle. We can imagine
how our staging port at the Rhine estuary must have been put into
action in that year, as troops from Germania apparently rushed to
Britain from all sides to assist Britain.
It
seems highly likely to me that we are seeing here the events that
also left their mark on our remains of Arentsburg. After all, it
seems highly likely that repairs and new construction would have
been necessary for that large troop transport in the staging port as
well. And precisely at this time, shortly after the middle of the
2nd century, we observed new construction at various points within
the fortress. For example, the large double gate, built into the
long western side wall, dates from this period. The new partition
between the harbor and the fortress, which is connected to this
gate, also dates from this period. At various points in the
barracks, both those of the infantry and the cavalry, we observed
repairs around this time.
Such
a second construction period is also likely to be discernible in the
stone buildings excavated by REUVENS. At least the stamped tiles
also speak of significant construction in the second century,
although the exact age cannot be determined. First, we must note
that, in contrast to the later building materials, the bricks found
here from the 10th Legion—that is, those from the early period
of the fortress's construction—are exclusively roof tiles.
Building materials from foundations or hypocausts are not present
here from this legion. It therefore seems likely to me that during
this first construction period, at the end of the first century,
even the main buildings were constructed exclusively of clay, roofed
only with stone tiles.
The
oldest hypocaust tiles, therefore, are from legion eleven, those of
legion 1 Min and legion XXX Ulpia Victrix. Dating these stamps as
precisely as that of legion X is not possible. We do know, however,
that both legions arrived in Lower Germany shortly before 120 and
that the first remained in these regions until the time of M.
AURELIUS, the second until the very last. (Cf. SCHILLING "de
leg. Rom. XXX Ulpia", see also Bonn Jahrb. 111/112, 296).
These
tiles and stones, which REUVENS found used primarily in his
buildings I and III (villa and praetorium), can therefore probably
also be attributed to the new construction period, around the year
158, which we assumed above. It seems likely to me, therefore, that
the large main buildings were first erected as actual stone
buildings at that time.
Thus,
we see a very extensive reconstruction of our fortress around that
time; the large gate, probably the main buildings, and certainly
several barracks were renovated at that time, and it is obvious, as
we have already seen, to look for the cause in the extensive
transport of troops from three legions, which must have taken place
from the Rhine to Britain.
However,
based on our tiles, it seems possible to speak of a third
construction period for our fortress. By far the largest mass of
this is namely, those with the stamps of the Exercitus Germ.
inferioris or its Vexillationes. Now we know (cf. Bonn Jahrbuch
111/112, 296) that this stamp was common in the tile factories,
which produced the building materials for both Legio 1 and Legio 30,
probably somewhere in our country itself, at the end of the 2nd and
the beginning of the 3rd century. These stamps cannot be dated
precisely, but they generally belong to this late period; the fact
that they are the last is, of course, also attributable to the
preponderance of their number. And now, it seems highly likely to me
that this staging port was also used extensively under Emperor
Septimius Severus. After all, even in the latter part of the 2nd
century, the period from which finds at Arentsburg are also very
abundant, there were continuous wars in England. (Vita M. Aur. in
the Hist. Aug. VIII, 7). In 175, we again hear of troop transports
from the Danube to England (Dio. XXI, 16), and it seems not unlikely
that these took place along the Rhine and through our port.
Furthermore, there is constant talk of fighting in northern England
over the rampart that Antoninus Pius had built in Scotland (Dio. XXI
8, XXII 9). These wars were particularly fierce under Septimius
Severus and even seem to have ended with this emperor withdrawing
from northern Britain and building a new stone defensive wall on the
site of Trajan's former rampart (cf. Dio. XXVI 12 and 5 Vita Severi,
Hist. Aug. 18, 2. See Bonn Jahrb. C X, p. 30).
In
this context, another matter seems remarkable to me. We saw above
that REUVENS had already been on the section of land that we who may
now attribute to the harbor, has excavated one or more stone
buildings (II), in which one would naturally prefer to see buildings
intended for the fleet, factories or arsenals; REUVENS also points
out the probability that they date from a relatively late period.
Now I have previously expressed my opinion about some inscription
stones, now preserved at Duivenvoorde Castle in Voorschoten, which
earlier writers seem to have found now here, then there. I suspected
that they probably originated from the only Roman ruin we know of in
South Holland, from Arentsburg (cf. Ber. d. R. G. Komm. IV 8 and CIL
XIII suppl.). These inscriptions all belong to the time of SEPTIMIUS
SEVERUS and his successors and one of them reads: (Riese Inscr.
171): "Imp. Caes. L. Septimius Severus Aug. bet M. Aurelius
Antoninus Caes. Coh. XV Vol. armamentarium vetustate collabsum
restituerunt sub Val. Pudental leg. Aug. pr. pr. Curante Caecil.
"Batone praefecto." Could there be a connection between
these relatively late harbor buildings and the arsenal rebuilt by
Septimius Severus? If so, then we also have a construction activity
in Arentsburg at a time when this harbor would have served a
significant purpose as a staging post to England.
Tradition
is entirely silent about the subsequent historical periods. We know
nothing of these regions or of England. Therefore, we are entirely
dependent on the finds for the final period of Arentsburg's
existence.
To
determine the period until which the fortress existed, the finds are
also entirely sufficient. The last types of decorated relief terra
sigillata, from the beginning of the 3rd century, certainly still
occur at Arentsburg. However, they are no longer as numerous as
those that immediately precede them. Likewise, we find quite a bit
of other pottery from the first third of that century, although the
first 30 to 40 years of the 3rd century are... Arentsburg was still
occupied in the 1st century, although not as densely as in the 2nd
century. After that, however, the pottery suddenly breaks down. Of
the utmost importance for our dating is the fact that the last types
of pottery, which we find, for example, in Niederbieber,
The
finds, which were after all abandoned around the year 260 (cf.
OELMANN Keramik Niederbieber), do not occur here, or only very
rarely. It is therefore certain that Arentsburg was abandoned
several decades earlier than Niederbieber.
The coin finds also
fully agree with this. Up to and including CARACALLA, we see our
unbroken series continue regularly, with a nearly even number of
coins. Then, the coins from the years in which the pottery only
indicated a small occupation begin to become rarer, and with
GORDIANUS (238), the continuous series finally breaks off
completely. We would certainly not be far off if we consider this
year to be the end date of the actual fortification.
Only a very
few pottery pieces can be from a slightly later period; there are no
compelling data in this regard. However, our coin series does
possibly point to a revival, albeit insignificant, around the year
270. We saw above how, according to REUVENS's data, a single cavalry
barracks (REUVENS's building IV) was built of stone at one location
in our fortress, which was apparently already largely in ruins at
that time. This was in contrast to all other barracks buildings from
an earlier period, partly using fragments from this rubble. It seems
likely to me that we must combine these phenomena and assume that
the walls of the already dilapidated fortress once again served as a
temporary residence for a Roman cavalry troop around the year 270.
The single coin of Emperor CONSTANTINUS is, of course, in itself
insignificant. Undoubtedly, under this emperor, our naval fortress
in the Germanic lands had long since fallen for good.
However,
before this fortress was built at this location, as we have seen,
another structure was located here. Even before our excavations
began, I had suspected the presence of such a precursor. The single
pot from the 16th legion, which was permanently disbanded in the
year 70, which prompted this suspicion, has remained such an
isolated phenomenon that I dare not now attribute any dating
significance to it.
The many traces of soil found beneath our
fortress itself, however, leave no doubt about the existence of such
a prehistoric period. It was not an actual fortress that stood here
at the time; it was probably merely a building surrounded by
palisades. We cannot date this building because here, even more so
than in the first fortress period, the pottery, which cannot be
dated so precisely, predominates. Meanwhile, it seems undeniable
that a number of very early pieces among our finds—a few
coins, a piece of millefori glass, and pottery fragments
sufficiently indicated in the descriptive list—can be
attributed to this oldest period. Although their number is too small
to allow for any dating with certainty, because with such a small
number of specimens one always has to reckon with the possible
coincidental survival of a few specific objects, we can nevertheless
assume with great probability that the first settlement here already
existed in the early years of our era, if not a few years earlier.
In any case, it is certain that a Roman settlement must have existed
here well before the Batavian Revolt; the traces of the foundations
alone teach us this with complete certainty.
Now a few words
about the name. We have previously explained why we believed we
might have the Praetorium Agrippinae of the Peutinger map before us
(cf. fig. 110). After all, this map depicts two significant places
close together in the center of South Holland between the Meuse and
the Rhine: Lugdunum Batavorum and, just a few miles inland,
Praetorium Agrippinae. It seems impossible to derive any information
from the map's drawing or measurements; they are too unreliable.
However, when we consider how our Voorburg ruin lies on the extreme
eastern edge of the sand of the Dutch coastal region, and that
settlements are known in several places to the west, under the
dunes, it seems highly likely that we are looking for the eastern of
these two places here, near Voorburg, and that Lugdunum must lie
somewhere under the Dutch dunes.
It also seems significant to me
that the small drawing indicating Praetorium Agrippinae on that
map—a small square building with a blue box in the center—is
the same as what we often encounter on that map for places located
on water. This, too, might argue in favor of identifying this
Praetorium with our naval port. However, certainty regarding the
name is impossible; the expectation that the excavations might
reveal it has not been fulfilled. I used to think that Claudius'
wife...
Agrippina
might have been the namesake here, but the considerable number of
objects from an even earlier period found here might now perhaps
remind us more of the ancient Agrippina.
One
thing is certain in this regard: our fortress is not what people
used to believe: the Forum Hadriani of the Peutinger map. After all,
firstly, it was not a forum but a naval port, and secondly, it
existed long before Emperor Hadrian could have given it his name.
See
also
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/tijdschriften/view?identifier=MMKB07%3A000885001%3A00121&query=arentsburg+vlootstation&coll=dts&sortfield=date&page=2
Conclusion.
The Roman fortification at Arentsburg was simply a fortified station
of the Rhine fleet and had no other significance than the other
stations of the Classis Germanica along the Rhine.
List
of Roman legions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_legions
THE
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CASTELLUM AT ARENTSBURG
BY
F. KROON
Based
on the numerous and important discoveries at the site, Dr. Holwerda,
in his publication "Arentsburg" 1), has established a very
close connection between the castellum at Voorburg and events in
Britain. He believes he recognizes the great significance of the
Rhine for Roman war policy towards Britain and, as it were, relates
the history of the castellum to events in that country. The presence
of ceramics of likely British origin supports his view. A careful
study of this matter, however, has led me to a completely different
insight and to a differing view regarding the military significance
of the aforementioned castellum with its naval station. To explain
this view, it is first necessary to briefly outline how Dr. Holwerda
classifies and dates the finds:
a.
He concludes that the reconstruction in stone of an older settlement
and the construction of the naval station took place before the year
89. In another writing, 2) he specifies this further by indicating
around 85, the oldest shards being from the time of Domitian.
b.
Furthermore, he notes significant new structures at various points
in the castellum, which he places shortly after the middle of the
2nd century.
c.
He then considers the possibility of a renovation.
1)
Arentsburg, a Roman military naval station near Voorburg (1923).
2)
The Netherlands' earliest history (second edition, 1925).to be
recognized around the end of the 2nd century or the beginning of the
3rd century.
d.
He then raises the possibility of the construction of arsenals
around 210.
e.
From the finds, he further concludes that the castellum was
abandoned around 238, but was temporarily occupied again around 270.
f.
A fairly large quantity of ceramics, probably of British origin,
finally serves to point out the connection with Britain.
To
highlight my objections to Dr. Holwerda's very close connection
between the history of the castellum and that of Britain, it is
necessary to address the aforementioned cases one by one:
ad
a. Dr. Holwerda connects the reconstruction in stone and the
construction of the harbor with Agricola's campaigns in Britain and,
in his view, with the changed Roman war policy towards that country
during those years. As we have seen, the oldest Roman shards date
from the time of Domitian, who came to power in 81. Dr. Holwerda now
dates the period to around 85. If desired, one could place it even
earlier, but in my opinion, not before 82. Let us therefore stick
with this year and consider the events in Britain.
Since
the revolt of Boudicea, four legions had been stationed there. In
67, Nero was able to remove one of them (Leg. XIV), thus reducing
the occupying army to three legions again. In 71, however, another
period of aggression began when Cerealis, after suppressing the
Batavian revolt, invaded with Leg. II Adiutrix departed for that
city. After three years of successful operations, Cerealis was
replaced in 74 by Frontinus, who vigorously continued the conquest.
When his term of office expired, he was succeeded in 77 by Agricola.
He undertook a campaign every year, which led him further and
further north, until in the late summer of 82 he decisively defeated
the Caledonians, the northernmost tribes. The conquest of all of
Britain seemed to have been accomplished. However, it was Agricola's
last campaign; he was recalled in 83. Now, while the image given by
Tacitus may be highly exaggerated and highly subjective, one can
certainly assume that Domitian, for whatever reasons, no longer
cared for Britain, and that Agricola had to watch with great regret
that his magnificent work was not consolidated and what he achieved
was jeopardized by the failure to fully pacify Caledonia 2).
In
any case, it is certain that after 83, there was no further military
action in Britain for a considerable time. On the contrary, around
86, Legion II Adiutrix was sent to the Danube, reducing the
occupying army to three legions.
Can we now connect the
reconstruction in stone of our castellum at Arentsburg—as we
saw, at the earliest in 82—so closely with an action in
Britain that had been underway for years, but ended precisely in
that year? It seems truly irresponsible to me.
And if one were to
speak, with Dr. Holwerda, of a change in Roman war policy towards
Britain, then this would have to be in the opposite sense to what he
does. Indeed, Domitian turned away from Britain and turned against
Germany. For however much this emperor was slandered and ridiculed
by ill-disposed authors for his victories over the Germans, the
spade ultimately did him justice. 3) His work on the Rhine and
Danube was of great significance.
If, as I believe necessary, one
excludes the events in Britain, then there are two possibilities for
the reconstruction in stone and the construction (possibly
renovation) of the port: either they were connected to other
military measures, or they were incidental. It seems to me that the
events on the Rhine in the first years of Domitian's reign compel
the former view. After all, in 83 the campaign against the Chatti
took place, which ended with their subjugation and the occupation of
their territory. After this, construction of the first Limes began.
1)
Agricola.
2)
Collingwood and Myzes, Roman Britain and the English Settlements
(Oxford, 1936), pages 113 et seq.
3) F. Koepp, Die Römer in
Deutschland (1926), pages 52 et seq.
Isn't it much
more natural to understand the innovations at Arensburg in the
context of those events than to look for a connection, as has been
demonstrated, that is very difficult to accept with an action in
Britain that was drawing to a close?
It is quite possible that
the improvement of the castellum was deemed necessary to deter the
Batavians and Caninefates, many of whom had witnessed the uprising
in 69, from rash actions during the action against the related
Chatti. Aside from this, it is clear that this action necessitated
numerous transports on the Rhine. Securing these transports and
generally strengthened military-police surveillance of the waterways
must naturally have required greater activity and probably also an
expansion of the Rhine fleet. The construction (possibly
improvement) of the harbor section is perfectly logical in this
context. It is in the nature of things that the castellum was also
renovated and strengthened at that time. If one considers the year
83 too early, then there is also the construction of the Limes and
the very dangerous uprising under Ant. Saturninus in 88. No, truly,
enough happened on the Rhine itself in those years to explain the
improvements at Arentsburg. and. Dr. Holwerda could not define the
dating of the following, very important, new constructions as
precisely as the previous one. Nevertheless, he believes he can
ultimately place it at around 158. In this, he is actually guided
entirely by his assumed close connection with Britain. Which,
however, as we saw above, must be considered highly dubious at the
very least. This dating is based on the discovery of hypocaustic
tiles bearing the stamps of Legion Minervia and Legion XXX Ulpia
Victrix, which tiles primarily belonged to two large buildings,
designated by Dr. Holwerda as a villa and a praetorium.
The
former legion arrived on the lower Rhine around the year 83,
proceeded to the Danube around 100, and returned to its camp in Bonn
around 105. In 162, it took part in the campaign against the
Dacians, but also returned to its old garrison afterward, where it
remained. Regarding the time, the tiles of this legion could
therefore date as early as 83, and certainly from 105, when Legion X
Gemina, which also had a detachment in Voorburg, permanently
departed these countries, and a detachment of Legion I Minervia was
likely stationed there. However, we must assume, on the authority of
Dr. Holwerda, that the buildings date from a later period.
Leg.
XXX Ulpia Victrix arrived on the lower Rhine around the year 119 and
remained there until the end of the Roman occupation. The tiles of
this legion can therefore be dated from around 120. If we now assume
that the new building was intended for detachments of both legions
together, we arrive at a possible period from 120
until
the date when the Exc. German Inf. stamps were jointly introduced
for both legions. This date is not known with precision, but it
likely falls in the early second half of the 2nd century. There is
therefore a time lag of approximately 40 years.
In addition to
the large buildings mentioned above, the following have also been
observed: a new, heavy gatehouse in the western wall, a new
partition between the fortress and harbor sections, and various
renovations to some barracks buildings.
Further developing his
hypothesis that the origin and subsequent history of the stone
castellum with naval station is closely linked to the course of
events in Britain and in connection with the well-established fact
that fierce fighting took place there during the reign of Antoninus
Pius, necessitating the sending of reinforcements from the Rhine
overseas, Dr. Holwerda suggests that these buildings also reflect
the history of Britain and were connected to those transports.
As
a former officer, I find this somewhat unsatisfactory. Even if one
were to assume that those transports passed through Arensbourg
(which is possible, but not certain) and stayed there for a few days
to stretch their legs before the start of the sea voyage, one would
still expect the construction of a number of temporary barracks
rather than palaces with central heating and luxurious bathing
facilities. The large gatehouse and the new partition between the
fortress and harbor sections are also difficult to explain in this
context. The only things that, in my opinion, could fit this picture
are the improvements to the existing barracks, if they also
represented expansions. But as far as those other buildings are
concerned, I really cannot find any basis for it. The praetorium and
the villa, in particular, point more to the imminent arrival of a
great lord than to passing troops. If one now asks what great lord
could be expected after 120, one immediately thinks of Hadrian, who,
after inspecting the Rhine border in 121, crossed over to
Britain.
One can't help but wonder whether the castellum at
Arentsburg should be identified with Forum Hadriani of the Tabula
Peutingeriana. Dr. Holwerda believes that this is not the case.
After all, he says, firstly, it was not a forum (in the sense of
marketplace, he means) but a naval port, and secondly, it existed
long before Emperor Hadrian could have given it his name.
It
should be noted, however, that forum does not exclusively mean
marketplace. In my opinion, it is quite possible that Hadrian used
his stay there to personally settle various pending matters; this
was entirely in his nature. In commemoration of this important
event, the castellum may have been renamed.
Returning to the core
of our topic, it should be noted that it is known how Hadrian
personally gave instructions on his travels for improvements to the
fortifications, sometimes even ordering their relocation. There
would therefore be a strong case to be made for attributing the
other renovations to his efforts. This seems quite acceptable to me
for the renovations to various barracks and the new partition
between the fortress and harbor sections, but an exception must be
made for the large gate.
Dr. Holwerda reports that for the
construction of this gate, the existing moat had to be partially
filled in, and that shards were found in the material used, which
makes it necessary to date the gate's construction to at least
around 160. But in Dr. I have found nothing in Holwerda's
publications that would necessitate placing these other buildings in
the same period, as he does.
It therefore seems advisable to me
to divide the buildings, which Dr. Holwerda places in one group
around 158, as follows:
a. The palace and the villa: shortly
before Hadrian's arrival, i.e., 120-121.
b. The improvements to
the barracks and the partition between the fortress and harbor
sections: after his departure, i.e., 121-122.
c. The large gate
in the Western Wall: ± 160.
Regarding this gate, it should
be noted that its connection to events in Britain also seems highly
dubious to me. While there was fierce fighting there during
Antoninus Pius, and undeniably, around 155 transports departed from
the Rhine to Britain, it remains somewhat puzzling why this would
have necessitated the construction of a more robust gate at
Arentsburg. One would rather think of an incidental improvement.
However, if one were to seek a connection with events elsewhere, one
would also be better off focusing on this case to the Rhine. Under
the recently mentioned emperor, not only was there fighting in
Britain, but the entire surveillance system against the Germans was
also improved around 160. A renovation of our castellum fits much
better into this picture, in my opinion.
ad
c. Dr. Holwerda believes he finds the possibility of a subsequent
renovation around the end of the 2nd or the beginning of the 3rd
century. This is based on the discovery of pans stamped with the
stamp of Excercitus Germ. Inf. As we have already seen, these pans
cannot be dated precisely, but they must surely date from after
around 160. He also draws on the history of Britain for this
possible renovation. He points out that troop transports resumed
around 175 and that there was renewed heavy fighting during the
reign of Septimus Severus (193-211). This does not seem very
convincing. Aside from the fact that tile replacement is sometimes
necessary, even without any specific underlying events, if one
prefers to consider a more general renewal of the castellum, one
might again look much more closely to the Rhine than to Britain.
Under Commodus (180-192), numerous changes and improvements to the
Germanic Limes took place (e.g., the foundation of the large
castellum at Niederbieber). There were also renewed wars against the
Chatti and Chauci. It is truly unnecessary to look across the North
Sea for an explanation for work on our castellum, regarding Dr.
Holwerda points out the significance of some inscription stones,
which, in his opinion, originate from Arentsburg. He cites one of
the inscriptions, which shows that work on the arsenals was carried
out during the reigns of Septimus Severus (193-211) and his
successor, Caracalla (198-217). He asks whether there might be a
connection between the stone buildings excavated by Revius on the
site now recognized as a harbor and the arsenals mentioned in the
inscription. He continues: "If so, then we also have a building
project here at Arentsburg at a time when this harbor would have
served a useful purpose as a staging post to England." As can
be seen, he remains trapped until the end by the idea of a
connection he sought, the basis of which, however, is difficult to
maintain from a military historical perspective.
Let
us assume that the inscription stones actually come from Arentsburg
and that the magazines mentioned on them were indeed the buildings
discovered by Revius. Is there then any reason to turn our attention
to Britain? Quite a lot happened on the Rhine in those years.
Septimus Severus, for example, prepared plans to subdue the Germans.
Such plans certainly included the reconstruction or construction of
arsenals. Under his successor, Caracalla, wars were waged against
the Chauci and the Saxons, that is, near our region. This, too,
provides sufficient explanation for the reconstruction of warehouses
at Arentsburg. Therefore, I dare say without any hesitation: look
closer to home.
ad
e. The observed reoccupation of the castellum in 270 is tactically
very simple to explain. In that year, the Limes was definitively
abandoned, after which the Danube and Rhine would form the border.
The work and relocations associated with this reorganization would
certainly have necessitated considerable transport on the Rhine. A
temporary guard of the Rhine estuary to cover these transports is
not only plausible, but tactically essential. The castellum at
Arentsburg was perfectly situated for this purpose.
ad
f. I am fully aware that discussing ceramics of likely British
origin would be treading on very thin ice. And yet, I cannot remain
entirely silent on the matter, as it is, in fact, the only point
that undeniably points to a connection with England. But this will
have to remain a layman's talk.
The
remarkable thing about this ceramic is that it was found in a fairly
large quantity at Arentsburg, but, as Dr. Holwerda reports, has not
been found elsewhere along the Rhine. So it apparently did not reach
beyond our castellum. One might think that it was a consignment
imported as merchandise, which the importer suffered because it
proved unpopular here. But there is another solution, which, at
least in my opinion, is more satisfactory. Around the year 150, the
Romans very likely transported several British tribes in their
entirety from their land to the Limes in Wurtemberg. If this is
true, it might explain the presence of this Caramel of British
origin in Arentsburg. Anyone who has ever seen, in reality, on a
newsreel, or in a photograph, the embarkation of Javanese emigrants
destined for the foreign lands, will immediately understand. The
caring women naturally brought their pots with them, not only as a
precaution, because one could not know what it would be like abroad,
but also to have food and drinking water on the way. If such a group
of British colonists had to stay in Arentsburg for a while to wait
for further transport, then it is conceivable that the women noticed
that better or more beautiful pottery was available there. Women are
women; they preferred the foreign pottery and left their old pots
behind.
I
readily admit that this is a very homely explanation, but for that
very reason it is perhaps not so far from the truth.
Summary.
From a military historical perspective, it is unacceptable to
connect the reconstruction in stone of the castellum at Arentsburg
under Domitian with Agricola's war campaign in Britain, which had
just ended. More reason to consider this is in connection with the
campaign against the Chatti, the continued occupation of their land,
and the establishment of the first Limes.
The
construction of a praetorium and villa is difficult to connect with
the passage of troop transports destined for England, but rather
points to the imminent arrival of a prominent figure, which could
point to Hadrian.
Some
of the other renovations to the castellum could be attributed to
Hadrian's wishes.
The
others can be more easily linked to events on the Rhine and in our
region than to those in Britain, insofar as they were not
incidental.
Conclusion:
The Roman fortification at Arentsburg was a simple fortified station
of the Rhine fleet and had no other significance than the other
stations of the Classis Germanica along the Rhine.
Correspondence
regarding van Giffen's accusations against his son Holwerda.
[113]
CURATORS OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF LEIDEN.
No.
422 Leiden, June 2, 1904
Subject:
Pension Basis of Dr. J. H. Holwerda
Appendix
1
We
have the honor to submit to you for your perusal a copy of the
decree of the Minister of the Interior, dated May 28, No. 1428,
Department of KW.
Curators
of the State University of Leiden
Fock?
President
J.E.
Boddart Secretary
The
Professor and Director of the National Museum of Antiquities in
Leiden.
Appendix
to the letter from the Curators of the State University of Leiden,
dated June 2, 1904, No. 422.
Copy.
May 28, 1904, No. 1420, Department of KW.
The
Minister of the Interior has approved:
with
amendment to his decision of March 18, 1904, no. 737, department of
Public Works, to determine that the pension contribution base for
Dr. J. H. Holwerda, curator at the National Museum of Antiquities in
Leiden, remains fixed at two thousand one hundred guilders (2,100
guilders). [...]
[113]
Dutch Antiquities [in Rotterdamsche Courant, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13,
1904.]
(Submitted
by) Dr. J. H. Holwerda,
[635,
p. 6] Giesen, August 12, 1912
567a
Dear
Sir,
As
I suspected, we—both you and I—have been the victims of
fraud. There is no urn field at the location indicated to me, but
there is a small area where some urns once stood. However, they have
been removed; by whom is easy to guess. Probably, in your
municipality, there are still urns, just not in the designated
location. Incidentally, there are no specific mounds at that
location, as I believed there were. I consider it undesirable to
continue further investigation in your municipality and have
therefore had the work stopped. The extent to which we are dealing
with fraudsters is evident from the fact that the workers actually
forced my amanuensis to pay them their 2 guilders as a daily wage,
claiming that I had promised it. In the meantime, I thank you
politely for your kind intentions; my visit is now also unnecessary.
Sincerely,
Yours sincerely, Dr. J. H. Holwerda, Deputy Director of the National
Museum of Antiquities
To
the Honorable Mayor of Luijksgestel.
[635,
p. 7] Valkenswaard, August 14, 1912
[380]
Groningen, October 5, 1912
[...]
J.W. Moll
[380]
? October 7, 1912
Dear
colleague,
Permit
me to add a brief written word to the letter that Van Giffen was
supposed to send you today, and of which I took note.
I
now have a sufficient overview of the matter, also through perusal
of the exchanged documents, to be able to express the opinion that
there has been more misunderstanding than actual misconduct. And
furthermore—and this is the main point—Van Giffen is
unjustly distrusted. I can certainly understand that distrust,
considering the letter he wrote to you. But now that he has made a
full amendment to that letter, this point, which was the reason for
your action, can no longer carry the weight to hit this young man as
seriously as you initially intended. I have also thoroughly checked
that in all sincerity, no thought of collusion with anyone has ever
entered his mind.
However,
I have not considered myself entitled to form an independent opinion
regarding van Giffen's person and therefore request his two mentors,
Moll and van Bemmelen, under whom he worked for many years, to send
me their opinions. I hereby submit this testimony to you. I believe
it speaks volumes in van Giffen's favor.
Since
this is the case, since it is a matter of gaining significant
strength for your science and keeping alive such a rare and genuine
interest in science—I have complete confidence that your sense
of justice and the memory of the cordial relationship that, as
evidenced by the letters exchanged, existed between you, your son,
and van Giffen, will be able to lead you to the decision to grant
him the permanent position he so ardently desires. I remain, yours
sincerely and kindly,
H.
Krabbe
[277]
[October 11, 1912?] Since the faculty issued its previous
recommendation, objections to Dr. Holwerda have come to its
attention, both through documents His Excellency sent to it for
information purposes and through communications provided by some of
its members.
These
objections are of two kinds:
1.
The events concerning Arentsburg challenge Dr. Holwerda's scientific
seriousness and sense of propriety.
2.
The second objection raised against Dr. Holwerda is even more
serious in the faculty's view. It amounts to the claim that Dr.
Holwerda would make independent scientific work, and thus the
continuation of the work, impossible for young scholars appointed to
the Museum as officials, as soon as it becomes apparent that they do
not fully share and support his opinions and views. The faculty is
of the opinion that, should a serious investigation reveal the
validity of these objections, the appointment of Dr. Holwerda as
director of the Museum of Antiquities should be strongly
discouraged.
However,
the faculty lacks the information to form an opinion on this
validity and must therefore declare itself incompetent to issue
further advice.
[380]
?? 10 Oct. 2012
Dear
colleague,
I
owe an explanation for my visit to your son. I asked him whether he
was seeking cooperation with v. Giffen and, in that case,
considering his likely future position at the museum as his
successor, whether he would accept the responsibility of a permanent
appointment, which might lead you to grant v. G.'s request.
I
had to receive a negative answer to that question.
Sincerely,
I remain, Anne L.
H.
Krabbe
[380]
?? 11 Oct. 12
Dear
colleague,
Should
there now be a misunderstanding between us? I hope not. The fact is
that the deputy director recommended Mr. v. Giffen to you for a
permanent position, after what happened last summer. Since your son
had now demonstrated such a benevolent attitude and will in all
likelihood be responsible for the museum's affairs, there was every
reason to ask him the question, which, if answered affirmatively,
would have made it easier for you, in my opinion, to grant Mr.
v.G.'s request. Your son appears to have changed his mind.
My
efforts, which I initiated at the request of my friend Moll, with
the museum authorities have now come to an end.
Convinced
of your good intentions, I remain yours sincerely and with pleasure.
Yours
sincerely. H. Krabbe
[277]
Draft response (Unification of the professorship of archaeology with
that of director of the
Museum
of Antiquities).
Response
of the Faculty to the letter from the Curators of October 11, 1912,
(sent October 21, 1912) regarding the unification of the positions
of Professor of Archaeology and Director of the National Museum of
Antiquities.
We
hasten to respond to your letter of October 11, 1912, No. 793.
Your
committee poses two questions:
1.
Whether the unification of the professorship currently held by
Professor Holwerda with that of Director of the Museum should be
permanent?
2.
Who should be considered as Professor Holwerda's successor as
Director? Regarding the first question, we would like to point out
what our faculty already noted in its 1903 advisory report to your
college, when the question of combining the two positions was
raised. The faculty was of the opinion at the time that it would be
desirable in many cases for the Professor to be the directing head
of the institution where his study material is kept; that "however,
no hard and fast rule can be established in this regard, as various
circumstances may arise that make a different arrangement
preferable."
The
reason why the faculty, back in 1903, recommended the association
was that "at that time, the museum needed strong leadership; it
truly wanted to serve the interests of the public as well as those
of the academic community in the future, and one could expect that
the then-incumbent, Professor Holwerda, was the man to provide that
leadership."
The
association was therefore advocated solely because of the
circumstances and the personality of the then-professor.
That
the association, while highly desirable in certain cases,
nevertheless had its drawbacks, was always recognized by the
faculty, and Professor Holwerda, in particular, stated, according to
the minutes of the faculty meeting held on this matter, that he
found the combination extremely difficult, but that he accepted it
for the sake of the future. The faculty believes that there are
cases in which the combination of the two positions need not be
objectionable to either party, but that even in cases like this one,
where it was objectionable, it could still happen that a Professor
will have to make a sacrifice, like Professor Holwerda did in 1903.
However,
as far as the National Museum of Antiquities is concerned, it is now
effectively organized and in the interest of the public and the
academic community. We should advise against the combination of the
two positions just as strongly now as we advised against it in 1903.
Your
board rightly notes that the appointment of a new director does not
imply a commitment that he or she will later succeed Professor
Holwerda as Professor. Rather, insofar as this expresses the
principle of separation, it is the opposite. We would therefore
consider a temporary appointment highly inappropriate.
In
1903, the question of personalities also weighed heavily, and this
naturally leads us to an answer to the second question. Undoubtedly,
we are now in much more favorable circumstances in this respect than
in 1903. Indeed, it is safe to say that Prof. Holwerda could not
have carried out such an extensive reorganization effort without the
effective assistance of Deputy Director Dr. J.H. Holwerda Jr.
Most
of the new museum design was carried out directly by the Deputy
Director after prior discussion, often also based on his insights.
The current highly effective organization of the national
supervision of finds entrusted to the museum and of the systematic
research of our soil is thanks to his energy and insight. He is a
practical and forceful leader who will never lose sight of the
importance of studies at our University.
We
therefore consider him the most suitable person for this position.
Should
your council wish us to appoint more than one person, we would
secondly mention Deputy Director Dr. P.A.A. Boeser, who worked at
the museum for several years. However, we can hardly seriously
recommend him over the former.
A
final remark. It happens that an official affiliated with a library,
museum, observatory, or similar institution as an extraordinary
professor or lecturer is assigned to teach in their specialty. In
our opinion, this is highly desirable. However, the issue here is
different. The question is whether to attach a directorship to an
ordinary professorship; but conversely, to assign a director or
museum official the additional position of lecturing in a limited
area.
[267]
Correspondence with the president curator, Jhr. Mr. W. H. de
Savornin Lohman, regarding the Giffen case
1
The Hague, 24 Oct. 1912
2
Leiden, October 22, 1912
2
After the conversation with the President Curator
3
I have now taken the whole matter into my own hands
4
He wants an independent position in the museum and wants that
5
him, that we have been for a very long time
6
that attempt with us
7
consider. If you, after their collection of the documents
8
his time for his natural history dissertation.
9
who is working on excavations in the museum
10.
In the last five years
11
had the daily management,
12
disagreement came where I in the memorandum
13
14
Mr. van Giffen during his visit
15
I have the promised information, to further discuss the matter
16
Reply to the letter of October 31
17
whether or not to come to this conclusion
18
reporter: a young person is for a year
19
temporary recommendation
20
know, with honest, unbiased.
21
Your letter from yesterday
22
instruction itself,
23
I think that how the natural way out is to
24
has turned, I would certainly not want him
25
Leiden's feeling would not be in vain
26
Leiden, 8 Nov. 1912
27
made it difficult?
28
the president-curator would have given the decisive verdict.
29
was of secondary importance
30
consider this still. To call in mediation after
31
With all due respect
32
You point out to public opinion
33
how my advice as favorable as possible
[173]
Leiden, November 26, 1912
My
dear colleague
The
interest you have shown, for which I am very grateful, means that I
would like to share with you in a few words my decision.
I
have no control over all these slanders and disparages, as they are
done secretly. Therefore, I cannot speak to the minister about them
except in the vaguest terms.
The
honesty of myself and my son, and also the scientific merit of the
latter, are far too high for me to justify ourselves in these
respects without an accusation being publicly made.
Very
soon after your departure, this insight dawned on me.
I
consider any action by the least of my own selves far beneath me. I
will certainly leave the field open for Mr. Lohman. So be it.
Aderenne qui pourra.
I
had to speak to Mr. R. again, as usual, and I also asked him briefly
about this. He agreed with me completely. However, I had already
made up my mind when I asked him.
Thanking
you again, with kind regards, also to Madam, as always.
??
A.E.J. Holwerda
[173]
Leiden, 28 Nov. 1912
My
dear colleague,
Although
I am convinced I cannot go to the Minister with it, I still owe you
my thanks for your information. Indeed, I do not know at the moment
how it would be advisable to use it in any other way. Now, I believe
I understood that I was not allowed to mention your name. That must
have been a misunderstanding. What objection could you possibly have
to that? May I then, if I deem it appropriate, say, colleague Blok
told me that someone (me, that is), a friend of Mr. van Giffen,
heard and informed him of this and that.
And
then, the person who brought it to you is a good man. However, the
action was considered otherwise? To accuse him of forgery without
that person having any right to do so is not good.
And
then, surely there can be no objection on your part to informing
that informant that you are preventing me from pursuing the matter.
It would then be sent to them in a sealed letter.
With
this, he is even more obliged than you already are to me.
P.S.
My son will be back in town this evening. I will, of course, inform
him.
[173]
Leiden, November 28, 1912
Your
Honor,
I
learned from my colleague Blok that someone has made very serious
accusations to him against me and the deputy director, Dr. Holwerda.
I
summon you to repeat these openly to us. The Professor and Director
of the National Museum of Antiquities
A.
E. J. Holwerda
[268]
Leiden, December 23, 1912
Your
Highness,
A
new, enormous fact in the Van Giffen case has come to light. We have
a prospective draftsman, Mr. H. Martin, who can perform his services
as a draftsman, and we wanted to see if he could also learn
something more. He and Mr. van Giffen accompanied us to Arentsburg.
Neither of them yet knows anything of any significance about Roman
archaeology, but the deputy director could then let them participate
in the work to see how far they had learned about excavation. Mr.
Martin proved unsuitable for it, Mr. van Giffen not.
I
nominated Mr. Martin as an assistant for a year, during which he can
do work for which he is well-suited. I considered him a respectable
young man.
I
had to advise Mr. van Giffen very decisively because of his
character traits and opinions.
Now
the deputy director of the Arentsburgh Association receives a report
containing a complaint from Mr. van Giffen—the student,
N.B.—that Dr. Holwerda, his mentor, is not doing the work
properly.
In
that document, Mr. van Giffen also mentions that he had discussed
the same matter with Mr. Martin in a memorandum addressed to the
President-Curator, which also complains about "unspeakable
circumstances."
I
have now provided Mr. Lohman with a detailed dossier concerning Mr.
van Giffen. In the discussion about the matter, Mr. Lohman raised
virtually no points from that dossier. I heard nothing, then or
later, of the charges brought against us. Thus, the
President-Curator accepted a complaint against my museum management
from a probationary museum official without informing me and thus
allowing me to justify myself. The probationary official was someone
I declared it would be irresponsible to appoint permanently, an
opinion I had clarified with a series of facts.
One
understands the intention: Mr. van Giffen, who still has to learn
his trade, must obtain a permanent position in the museum against
us.
For
us, it is becoming a matter of defending our own honor and dignity.
I
urgently request you to inform His Excellency of this.
How
is it possible to keep Mr. van Giffen in the Museum any longer?
I
hope and trust in the Government's justice.
Sincerely,
dn
A.E.J. Holwerda
Right
Honourable Sir J. B. Kan
Secretary
General at the Ministry of the Interior.
Not
exactly as provided to Mr. Kan
[268]
letters from Professor Holwerda to Minister Kan regarding Van Giffen
Leiden,
13 January 1913
Your
Excellency,
It
has come to my attention that a meeting of the Curators recently
took place, at which, among other things, the existing difficulties
concerning the Museum of Antiquities were discussed.
To
my regret, I was not summoned to that meeting. I deeply regret this,
as the matter could probably have been clarified through joint
discussions. Now, there is no doubt that, in connection with this
entire matter, accusations against me as museum director were also
brought before the Curators. Therefore, should anything unexpectedly
come to Your Excellency after this meeting that directly or
indirectly points to an unfavorable assessment of my museum
management, I believe I can trust that no decision will be made by
Her even remotely based on such an unfavorable assessment without
first hearing me.
With
respectful regard.
Your
Excellency, obedient servant A. E. J. Holwerda, Professor-Director
of the National Museum of Antiquities
To
His Excellency the Minister of the Interior
[268]
23 1 Mr. J. B. Kan
Right
Honourable Sir
His
Excellency was indeed kind enough to speak with me briefly this
morning.
I
also spoke about the Giffen case. May I be so bold as to clarify
this for you once again?
Because
Mr. van Giffen, the probationary curator, is distrustful and
unreliable, yet doesn't interfere with any authority under the
rules, doesn't understand that working in the museum's interest
requires collaboration with others, I strongly advised against
continuing the experiment with him.
A
complete dossier submitted to the Curators supported this assertion.
It's not my fault that the gentlemen apparently ignored this.
Now
comes the Arentsburgh case: Mr. Martin. The snakes of Mr. van Buiten
Uelleb. Mr. van Giffen and his friends have sent two officials, whom
I, as director, sent to Arentsburgh to assist the deputy director.
The
choice of Giffen and Martin, so that the most? menadhelmerk hv
on
the ?? did the following. That evening, using Dr. Holwerda's drafts,
which had been entrusted to Mr. Martin in his official capacity as a
draftsman, the well-known indictment was drafted. This was handed
over to a private committee entirely without my knowledge. In my
opinion, this is a very flagrant violation of official duty. Mr.
Martin acknowledged this on behalf of me and Dr. Boezer, but had
done so "on the orders of Mr. van Giffen," "his
superior," as he added on another occasion.
The
Arentsburgh committee was clearly very favorable to the Lord. Both
gentlemen,
he
also briefly and casually indicated that at least 14 of the 15
accusations were either unproven or refuted, i.e., that they were
false accusations.
As
evidenced by a letter from the Curators to the deputy director dated
January 27th. Last year, Mr. van Giffen also used two unsolicited
statements to the President Curator, making unsolicited
representations.
In
the document addressed to the Arentsburgh committee, Mr. van Giffen
stated that he could not cooperate with the head of his department
(see page 7).
Such
a person who, behind the backs of his superiors, tells at least 16
untruths about outsiders, even the simplest rules of conduct, and
who, moreover, claims to be unable to cooperate, should be banned
from the museum. This is not a matter of "expulsion," as
he is not yet in. The consequences then.
The
minister still attached great importance to the Proposal unfounded.
The
idea that this is a "sprinkle" with the museum is
definitely incorrect. A person is on probation, and the question is:
should that probation be continued?
The
minister still considered less favorable treatment on the part of
the deputy director.
This
seemed to me to be the crucial point.
I
must respect that. That His Excellency
I
respect that this must be taken into consideration, understanding is
self-evident.
What
the Minister may be assured about this rests beyond doubt that that
secret dossier, about which we are not opposed, is further raised.
However,
he primarily agrees with an assurance from Mr. van Giffen himself,
just as the scientific impropriety of the Arentsburgh committee was
also mentioned.
This
was because
the
Arentsburgh committee only accepted Mr. van Giffen, the man who,
according to that committee itself, had numerous 14 unproven or
refuted accusations.
I
understand the minister's difficulties. How can he...
However,
it strikes me who should be held accountable?
Are
the charges of...? Is this necessarily...?
Clear
counter-evidence cannot be found in my document to His Excellency,
in the memorandum that Professor Nieuwenhuis sent to the SD?
This
is something else, which he informed me he sent to the Minister.
I
could also submit a letter from Professor Goossens from Rolduc, who
heard about the matter and now writes about the humane way in which
Dr. Holwerda treats young people.
Assuring
such a man a position in the museum, which he does not yet hold,
seems impossible to me.
It
is another matter to give him a period of transition, even if it is
in the museum's interest that it be short. Mr. van Giffen has
actually already had several requests for transition. How would it
be possible to keep him on longer? What the minister might want to
do to ease this transition is another matter. In the absolute
interest of the museum, in the interest of order and authority, it
is important that this transition be as short as possible.
I
do not understand how it is possible, after all this, to keep such a
person in the museum, even though I am...
With
all the compassion I can feel for the young man, I am reluctant to
resign myself, but I must point out that his stay in the museum is
detrimental in many ways.
Your
Excellency
This
morning...
May
I just inform you that I had a conversation with His Excellency the
minister. Respectfully but very firmly, I said that I might soon
find myself in the very sad necessity of openly defending our honor
and good name as well. F The name of the high-ranking person F I?
One name in particular. I cannot tell you how much I hope I will be
able to remain silent.
His
Excellency seemed not unwilling, not entirely unwilling, to continue
Mr. van Giffen.
He
has only been appointed temporarily to continue,
whom
he has not been appointed to provide a position in the museum.
I
have previously pointed out that this gentleman is distrustful and
even unreliable, that he cares for no order, no rules, no authority,
and does not realize that he and the museum's interests have the
interest of working and collaborating with others. I have insisted
on this with numerous documents.
Later,
this gentleman, violating all the rules of the art, quietly, with
the help of officials entrusted to his position, filed a complaint
against me, to be submitted to the Arentsburgh committee. This
committee issued the following statements, which were strongly
supported in his favor.
I
have, without hesitation, refuted the 15 points of accusation by the
delegated party as unproven. Mr. v. G. himself states in this
document that they are not just able to cooperate.
Although
the curators indicate in a letter dated January 27th that Mr. van
Giffen also has "real advantages to offer" compared to Mr.
President Curator, they apparently remain willing to have them/him
retained in two respects. He has spoken. It seems to me that he
really still supports the museum.
He
is apparently still willing to grant a position in the museum that
he does not yet have.
I
had to point out to His Excellency the Minister that this would be
an insult to me that I cannot allow myself to be subjected to.
Here,
Your Excellency, is a brief account of what I have endured in a
matter in which you too are of some interest, although you are, of
course, completely outside the scope of this matter.
I
have the most pleasant memories of the conversation I had with you,
should you be so kind as to grant me permission, and I ask that my
kind regards also be extended to Miss your daughter. Sincerely, I
have the honor to
Thank
you for your kindness.
Sincerely,
Although
Your Excellency fully respects the advice, after the kind reception
I received, I nevertheless felt compelled to keep you somewhat
informed.
P.S.
Already for a few days
When
I noticed that even a stranger was willing to treat the institution
we created as it is, I asked the Minister to consider my application
for resignation as withdrawn.
[277]
[early 1913] Very confidential 1
To
avoid having to write the same thing over and over again, I would
like to inform my friends in this way of the almost unbelievable
intrigues of which I have been the victim.
In
September, my father wanted to request his resignation as director
of the museum (not as a professor, because both positions are
ultimately incompatible), and I applied to be his successor. My
colleague Boeser himself did not want to and supported me and the
Literary Faculty brought a proposal for me.
The
advice was favorable.
Meanwhile,
we had a temporary curator at the museum, a young man [van Giffen]
with a doctorate in Natural History, but with great ambition for my
profession, which he would learn from me. He also accompanied me on
a few excavations. This young man was determined to be appointed,
and when that initially seemed to be possible, he came up with all
sorts of demands: the most important of which was that I withdraw
almost entirely from the indigenous section of the museum. Everyone
knows that this section is essentially entirely my creation, and so
I understand that I was not interested. Yet, I had already come a
long way towards accommodating him when, through various dubious
actions on his part, it became clear that continuing the experiment
with him was undesirable. My father, as director, made this decision
entirely independently and informed him of it. This was the signal
for him to launch a smear campaign against me, who, as I dare say,
has always been equally lenient towards him. His father, an orthodox
minister, appeared on the scene, and Mr. Krabbe, a law professor,
through Groningen connections of this young man from Groningen,
tried to work for them. Mr. K. also came to me and asked me,
"because I had always been so kind to the young man and yet was
my father's designated successor," to put in a good word for
him with my father. I had to refuse, of course, and a month later
Mr. K. went around telling me it would be a disgrace if I succeeded
my father, as well as all sorts of slander regarding my scientific
work; I had actually accomplished nothing. He oppressed junior
officials, etc., etc. I only learned of the slander much later.
Meanwhile,
the "Christian" action also began. The president summoned
my father and threatened him that if he maintained his unfavorable
advice regarding the young man, he would have to face the
consequences. Of course, my father could not, for his conscience'
sake, be forced by threats. So the consequences were bound to come.
The young man in question collected all sorts of written accusations
against my father and me, and these were used as a secret dossier
against us. Neither of us was ever questioned about any of the
accusations, despite our repeated requests. And even then, we were
completely unaware of the nature of these accusations. They remained
secret in the hands of the President, Curator Mr. de Savornin
Lohman. Based on these secret accusations, a very unfavorable
proposal was made in December, and it almost became reality. I would
have been virtually prevented from working at the museum I had
actually founded, and I would have been forced out of the study I
myself had introduced in our country. All because of a combination
of slander and so-called Christian justice. The exact nature of the
accusations was still kept secret from us. I would have been
sentenced without being able to defend myself.
By
chance, or should I say, the honest believers among my friends of a
board, the evidence of the slander came into my hands a few days
before the verdict. The young man, assisted by a draftsman who was
also leaving our museum, had also attempted to harm my work by
bringing his slander to the chairman of the Arentsburg Association.
He had confided in me that I wasn't on very good terms with Mr.
Gratama, a colleague of Mr. Lohman in the Supreme Court. Instead of
chasing the young man out, he took the accusations seriously and
called me [2] to account. Suddenly, a few days before the decision,
I received the entire slander file concerning my work. I had it
printed with my defense. From the enclosed booklet, especially from
page 23 onward, everyone can see how these young men had acted
against me. The department was indignant and completely on my side.
I personally circulated my booklet among the Curators, and I know
from a reliable source that from that time on, the other Curators no
longer participated. Against the advice of the faculty against the
department, only the personal influence of Mr. Gratama remained.
Lohman on his coalition partner. To strengthen himself, the
Arentsburg Association now had to serve. After six weeks, I was
asked to come and provide some further information, and to my
indignation, I found both young men there. Mr. Gratama, along with
two others who, of course, had no idea of my
profession either, then went to court with those two young men as
prosecutors and experts. You can imagine how insulting. If I hadn't
left it at Arentsburg for the work, I would have walked away. There
was nothing to be found, of course, and so the work was assigned to
me again. * To spare those boys further, I...
In
their article, the gentlemen indulged in certain expressions
regarding my scientific activities and conclusions, such as only
those completely ignorant of the field can make, and I was even
vehemently reproached for informing curators and other authorities
of the accusations. As what gradually became known about the secret
dossier became increasingly concerned, these people naturally became
more and more concerned, and it gradually became a matter of saving
his reputation. The acquittal was that Arentsburg had to be
disguised as darkly as possible. If it weren't such a serious
matter, it would be ridiculous how three complete laymen—Judge
Gratama, archivist Kraemer, and engineer Welcker—speak of my
archaeological work as if I were any ordinary rascal. With that
judgment, they then brought it to the minister, who simply didn't
dare follow his department's advice against Lohman. Meanwhile, we
heard that he had been searching for a rival candidate in Berlin. He
had also been told there that I was the right person. Now the
Arentsburg document was sent to the faculty, asking them to
reconsider their favorable recommendation. Mr. Krabbe and his
friends were once again vigorously prodding faculty members against
me, but I found some very ardent friends and defenders in it, so the
faculty stuck to its previous recommendation. We understood,
however, that Lohman would not give up, and therefore, on the advice
of some friends, my father withdrew his request for resignation.
This puts an end to the intrigue. We hope that the elections will
free us from political influence in this matter. Meanwhile, Lohman
has persevered to the extent that his protégé, despite
making himself virtually impossible with everything he did, will
remain in office, at least for this year.
The
danger to my work has now passed, however, and we can gradually
begin to speak. In response to the grievous treatment by authorities
who have not the slightest idea of my work, I have
asked some of the foremost in my field abroad to express their
opinion of me and my work, and I believe the most worthy response on
my part would be to send those authorities only that response. I am
also attaching it here. For the rest, we must await better times.
*
Meanwhile, to wait and see, Mr. Gratama, who hoped that someone else
would become director, has postponed the work.
[277]
[March 1913] At the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of the State
University of Leiden. (March 1913)
Confidential
At
the faculty meeting of March 4, Mr. van Leeuwen asked why no
appointment of director of the National Museum of Antiquities had
yet been made. I could only provide some preliminary information at
the time, but the matter apparently attracted considerable
attention, as it does even outside our faculty circles. Some further
explanation, even if not intended for publicity, therefore seems
desirable.
[in
the margin] The dean understood that he should not read this letter
addressed to the faculty because of the word "confidential."
Last
year, a doctoral candidate in natural history was appointed as a
probationary curator. As such, he needed archaeological training
from us if he wanted to actually act as a curator. Gradually,
however, I began to have increasingly serious doubts, due to his
character traits, whether it was advisable to continue the trial
with him, and I felt it necessary to give him a very precise
description of his position and relationship at the museum. I did so
(October 22) in a document that I offered to discuss with him; which
he declined. I demanded that he answer a few questions about this
matter and another before November 1st.
Meanwhile,
the father of that young man, a minister in Friesland, had already
tried to pressure me and had separated from me with the words: "So
you don't want to, then I know where to go." Furthermore,
Professor Krabbe had tried the same here, not only with me but also
with the deputy director, Dr. Holwerda, whom he appealed to as my
"presumptive successor."
As
you know, I requested my resignation [p. 2] as director last
September, after having informed the Curators of my intention to do
so in the preceding February, so now over a year ago, in order to
give them all time to become aware. A somewhat peculiar objection
was raised by the Curators at our faculty at the time (early
October), as if appointing a director would obligate them to later
appoint the same person as my successor as professor. They invoked
this objectio on the correspondence of 1903, as if the faculty had
advocated a permanent link between professorship and directorship,
although in that very correspondence the faculty had argued the
opposite: linking the two positions could only be desirable in
certain cases. Apparently, there was a certain fear of nepotism
among the Curators. However, the faculty knows how much I,
especially now that the museum had expanded so much, considered such
a link highly undesirable, and how the person wishing to be
considered for director feels the same way.
On
October 26, I was summoned by the president-curator, who said he
wanted to speak with me about "difficulties that had arisen"
between the deputy director and the temporary official in question.
In this way, two completely unrelated matters were linked for the
Curators: my dismissal and the question of whether the official's
character traits prohibited them from continuing the trial with him.
It turned out that the official had gone to the president-curator
with the document concerning his position in the museum, which he
had refused to discuss with me, and, for understandable reasons, had
presented this matter as one between him and his director, as one
between him and the deputy director.
[p.
3] The president-curator not only accepted these complaints but, as
I later learned, also released him from the obligation to answer my
questions to his superior at the appointed time. When the deadline
expired, I received a request from the president-curator not to hold
him to that deadline. Even after that, I received no response to my
questions.
That
questionable situations had arisen in the museum, the likes of which
we had never previously encountered, is understandable and will
become even more understandable from the facts to be reported
shortly. It goes without saying that I am not responsible for this.
Meanwhile,
the president-curator wrote to me that the temporary official in
question had gathered "written information" for him. On
November 9th, I had a meeting with the presiding curator, whose
character is best understood from a portion of a letter I addressed
to him immediately afterward.
"I
would like to repeat to you that I do not know the Lord ... and
cannot recommend him, not even for a renewal of the examination."
"I
know how you judge this, but a human judgment, from anyone, cannot
prevail over that of conscience. If you should wish to question the
sincerity of my convictions, I must let it pass."
"You
speak of certain consequences that the pronouncement of my judgment
could have. I don't know what you mean by that, but it doesn't
matter to me. The consequences may come. I have no choice."
I
never received a reply to that letter.
[p.
4] So I had to await the consequences of a recommendation issued
according to my conscience. Not long after, a colleague from our
faculty warned me that a smear campaign had been launched against
us. A colleague from another faculty—he didn't mention his
name—had come to him to see if it would be possible to
persuade the Faculty of Arts to reconsider its very favorable
recommendation regarding Dr. Holwerda. Dr. Holwerda, he assured me,
was highly incompetent. All sorts of nasty things were said about
him and me; the most important, however, was that Dr. Holwerda had
falsified scientific data. If that colleague from our faculty showed
even the slightest inclination to cooperate, he would receive a
visit from the president of the board regarding this matter. As I
understand it, that same professor had also approached other members
of the faculty for the same purpose.
I
began to suspect that the professor's slander and the "information"
the president of the board had received were identical, and I also
sensed the consequences of my advice. A work to which we had devoted
10 years of our lives would be jeopardized; the man whose tireless
work first and foremost made the museum the flourishing institution
it is today would be pushed aside, the man who also elevated the
archaeological soil research commissioned to that museum to such
great heights. For health reasons, I have had to withdraw more and
more in recent years. As a result, the management of the internal
museum operations has fallen entirely into his hands, and everything
is now going excellently [p. 5] because the officials feel the
support of his good judgment and firm hand; these officials cannot
imagine working under any other manager. This successful course of
events would be brought to an end. All this as a consequence of not
advising against my conscience.
It
later turned out that I was right. However, I didn't know at the
time what had been decided at the curators' meeting of December 4th.
Moreover, the slanderous gossip had come to us in such an
indeterminate form that we had no control over it.
Suddenly,
however, we received more light. Through a document sent to him by
the Arentsburgh Association—a document that had originated
with the help of another official—the deputy director obtained
a complete dossier of slanderous allegations. He had this printed
with his response and allowed me to send you a copy, although not
intended for publication.
Then
we also learned what the main accusation was, that of forgery, which
had been brought to the curators and spread by that professor. It
concerns Dr. Holwerda's maps of the excavations at Arentsburgh from
1910 and 1911, of which tracings had been submitted to prove that
they did not match and had been assembled through tampering. This
accusation, however, was only possible because the accusers had
omitted the words "provisional map" from the first map and
had failed to mention that Dr. Holwerda had deliberately added this
because he had deemed a further inspection of his map necessary in
1911, which he had carried out at that time.
[p.
6] The nature of the accusations will be further clarified in the
printed material sent to you.
I
then spoke with His Excellency the Minister of Internal Affairs.
Based on his instructions, I declared my willingness to temporarily
remain in charge of the directorship in order to save the
institution and give His Excellency the opportunity to investigate.
At
the beginning of January, the deputy director visited each of the
curators individually with the printed document. It has now also
been established that my suspicions regarding the Curators' conduct
in this matter were entirely correct. That the "information"
provided to the Curators was, at least in part, actually identical
to the slanderous gossip was evident not only from the document sent
to Arentsburgh, but also from a letter the Curators addressed to the
deputy director on January 27th. It is also certain that this
"information," particularly the two maps, constituted a
point of consideration for the Curators. Likewise, decisions were
made against the faculty's advice, and, as regards the temporary
official, against my advice, even though this was supported by a
comprehensive array of documentary evidence. I must note here that
1.
the president of the curator did not inform me of the content of
this "information" in the aforementioned conversation.
2.
I never heard any appointment policy from the curators.
3.
Dr. Holwerda was never heard about the accusations made against him.
On
January 8, the Curatorial Board held another meeting [p. 7].
Professor Blok, the only professor in our faculty who had a public
disagreement with Dr. Holwerda (I do not, of course, mean to say
anything unfavorable to our colleague), was invited to provide
information. Again, I was not heard. The fact that the deputy
director is my son seems to me to disqualify the institution I
mentioned above from giving advice and to place the deputy director
himself outside any official legal relationship. The latter
submitted a document requesting a hearing if any doubt remained
about his guilt. I understand that a decision is currently awaited
from the Arentsburgh Association, which has appointed a committee
for this purpose (*). I do not know on what grounds such a committee
can be granted any jurisdiction in University affairs. It can hardly
be considered an expert committee in archaeological matters. Better
experts could certainly be found in our faculty, although no one
will present themselves as an excavation technician. Moreover, this
is not a scientific judgment, but a judgment of honesty and good
faith, which anyone who wishes to consider the accusation and
defense can form.
[p.
8] From the above, it will have become clear to you on which matters
the interests of the institution, which you also care about, have
been made dependent. Allow me to ask whether it would not be
incumbent on the faculty to champion those interests. An institution
that is of great significance to our University and is increasingly
known with great honor has been placed in grave danger.
Leiden
March 1913 A. E. J. Holwerda
[p.
7] (*) It is less relevant here that this committee, which only
addressed the matter six weeks after receiving the printed material,
was extremely angry because Mr Curators had been informed of the
matter in this manner, but nevertheless, in a very condescending and
unpleasantly worded document, which would lead one to expect the
opposite, ruled out all questions of falsification and once again
entrusted the further management of the excavations to Dr. Holwerda.
[277]
[April 1, 1913] Note from the Professor-Director of the National
Museum of Antiquities regarding a letter from the Curators to the
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy.
His
Excellency the Minister of the Interior felt compelled to request a
new opinion from the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy last March
regarding the person of one of the deputy directors of the National
Museum of Antiquities.
The
Faculty then requested the submission of the dossier of documents
that had assisted the Curators in forming an opinion on that person.
This was refused in the following letter.
Curators
of the State University of Leiden.
Both
April 1, 1913.
No.
309.
Message
in writing dated:
March
17, 1913.
Subject:
Directorate of the Museum of Antiquities.
In
response to your letter mentioned above, and authorized by A. E. the
Minister to do so, we have the honor to inform you of the following.
The
Minister was under the impression that your faculty was not unaware
that objections had been raised against Dr. Holwerda regarding the
museum's management since its advice of October 21, 1912.
Now,
it was not the Minister's intention to obtain your opinion regarding
the facts that had become known during the investigation of the
objections raised, which would encounter various difficulties.
However, he believed that what your faculty or its members might
know about Dr. Whether Holwerda was already known, or has become
known since her aforementioned advice, could have prompted your
faculty to further consider her advice regarding the provision of
the Directorate of the Museum of Antiquities, given the
circumstances.
Although,
as your faculty rightly notes, the documents now sent to it
specifically concern the Arentsburgh case, the Minister appreciated
bringing them to your attention, not with the intention that your
faculty should investigate the soundness of the judgments expressed
therein, but merely for information purposes.
Curators
of Leiden University. Signed by the President and Secretary.
To
the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of Leiden University.
This
document gives rise to the following comments:
It
is known that a probationary official, Mr. A.E. Van Giffen, whom I
do not recommend for further appointment, sought all sorts of
accusations concerning my museum management and the work and person
of one of my deputy directors, which were widely circulated. These
accusations were also brought to the Curators in the form of written
"information," as the President Curator wrote to me.
However, when, in January 1913, the deputy director's defense
against accusations by Mr. Van Giffen also became known to the
Arentsburgh committee (accusations partly corresponding to those
contained in that "information"), the Curators wrote on
January 27, No. 18 sent a letter to that Deputy Director in which
they noted that "insofar as it is up to them to make a decision
regarding what allegedly happened at Arentsburgh, that decision will
not be made until after an on-site investigation where appropriate."
The matter was made dependent on the ruling of the Arentsburgh
Commission.
After
that ruling was issued in February, the letter of April 1st,
mentioned above, indicated that, according to the conclusion, the
Arentsburgh case was of secondary importance. What was needed now
was an investigation, outside of the now-demonstrated slanderous
Arentsburgh accusations, an investigation into objections raised
against that Deputy Director "in connection with the museum
management," which allegedly revealed "facts."
The
faculty could not disclose what those facts were. They were only
referred to what the "faculty or its members may have learned
about the person of that Deputy Director," that is, to what Mr.
van Giffen had reported everywhere. scattered accusations.
Now,
the only thing to be noted here is that:
Either
no investigation took place, in which case the communication
addressed to the Faculty contains an inaccuracy that must have given
this body, which was asked for advice, a completely incorrect and
unjustifiably unfavorable impression. Or, such an investigation did
take place, in which case, however, an investigation would have been
conducted into facts concerning my Museum management and the conduct
of one of my deputy directors, without either myself or that deputy
director being consulted, and without any of the other permanent
officials present.
The
testimony of the other deputy director was requested, even without
our knowledge, and so secretly that even an official body appointed
by the government to advise, the Faculty of Arts, could not be
informed of the results, the facts that had become known.
It
goes without saying that in both cases, both my museum management,
that is, myself, and one of my officials have been compromised, and
moreover, in an official document addressed to a faculty by a board
of curators with authorization from the Minister of the Interior.
Leiden,
October 1913, Signature
[277]
Leiden, April 21, 1913
To
His Excellency the Minister of the Interior
Following
the understandable wishes of his colleagues, the undersigned did not
attend the Meeting of Arts and Philosophy in which your question
regarding Dr. Holwerda was discussed. However, he was able to take
note of the Faculty's response to Your Excellency.
From
that response, he now learns, for the first time in so many months,
somewhat officially what objections are being raised against Dr.
Holwerda himself.
Regarding
the comments on Dr. Holwerda's scientific work at Arentsburg, the
undersigned will not comment on them. It is so obvious to the expert
that only laypeople are speaking in the document concerning that
work that this seems entirely superfluous to him.
The
other objection, that Dr. H. hinders the work of young scholars at
the museum, also directly affects the museum management of the
undersigned himself as Director. During Dr. Holwerda's time in
office, only three younger scientific staff members were associated
with the museum. None of these three were trained in the direction
their museum work should take. So, if one wishes to call them
"younger scholars," so be it. However, it should not be
forgotten that they came to us as students. The issues of the
Antiquity Reports and the catalogs clearly demonstrate how these
young men, who collaborated with Dr. Holwerda as students, were
immediately recognized as his collaborators in his publications by
co-signing them. But above all, they demonstrate how Dr. Holwerda,
as far as they were even remotely capable of their own work, himself
helped these young men along, remaining in the background.
The
three young men, the only ones we can mention, were:
Firstly,
N. J. Krom, a gifted young man whom the undersigned, however, had
considerable difficulty in guiding and keeping on track as director
due to certain personal qualities. The Antiquity Reports now
demonstrate how he collaborated with Dr. Holwerda and Professor
Goossens in this area. He left us to be trained for a much more
important position than he could ever have obtained at the museum.
Was his stay too short for him to have achieved much independently?
Mr.
M. A. Evelein, to be mentioned secondly, as is again evident from
the Oudheidkundige Mededeelingen, first collaborated with Dr.
Holwerda for a few years and co-signed his publications of that
work. The excavations of Riethoven and Valkenswaard, where Dr.
Holwerda was present for a time to help him achieve his goal, were
further carried out independently by him and even published entirely
as his own work at his instigation.
When
Dr. Holwerda, through great effort, acquired the famous golden
helmet of Deurne, he, because the publication of such a work is of
great value to a young man, gave this publication, to which he
naturally had the right through that acquisition, to his younger
colleague, as can be seen again from the Oudheidkundige
Mededeelingen. However, this was not the only reason. When Dr.
Holwerda was personally asked by a foreign journal to publish this
helmet, he also referred that foreigner to Dr. Evelein. I dare say
that very few scholars would have so selflessly passed on such an
important discovery to young people. When Dr. Evelein applied for
his current position, he assured us that he naturally wanted it, but
that if that didn't work out, he would be very happy to remain at
our museum.
Thirdly,
Mr. van Giffen might be mentioned, although from his arrival in 1912
onward, he has done almost nothing at the museum other than work on
his natural history dissertation for months at a time, receiving
considerable assistance from museum officials. Since I was unable to
provide much funding for excavations last summer, Dr. Holwerda
himself managed to secure private funding for them. About half of
that money was now used to enable the Lord of Giffen to build a peat
bridge in Drenthe to excavate. An excavation was also reserved for
him in North Brabant, but Dr. Holwerda was kind enough to carry it
out for him, at his request, to enable him to work undisturbed on
his dissertation for two months, so that it would be ready. Then, in
October 1912, when both months had passed—nine months after
the initial appointment—the archaeological studies and the
actual scientific work finally had to begin. However, by then his
attitude toward us had become such that even he himself realized
that studying under our guidance and joint museum work were out of
the question.
These "young scholars" were not
affiliated with the museum during Dr. H.'s time. Your Excellency
will be aware of the accuracy of my words addressed to Your
Excellency last December, stating that a shameful smear campaign
against us had been launched. It is likely that the file mentioned
in the correspondence with the Faculty of Arts also contains
accusations of the same nature. However, neither the undersigned nor
the deputy director has ever been heard on any of the
accusations.
In order to prevent this possible damage to the
institution, to which he selflessly devoted his care for 10 years
and which is dear to him, to finally put an end to the state of
uncertainty that undermines that institution, and to obtain the
freedom to address the above defense to Your Excellency without his
relationship with the deputy director invalidating his words, the
undersigned has made his decision.
He has the honor to request
Your Excellency to consider his application for resignation,
submitted last September, as undone.
The conviction that he
cannot act otherwise will give him the strength to continue
fulfilling his duties.
W.g. A. E. J. Holwerda
[277]
appointments of A.E. van Giffen and other decisions
March 12,
1912: regret...
November 14, 1912: provisional order without
prejudgment
December 9, 1912: The trustees note some
dissatisfaction with the manner in which your application for
dismissal has been handled. [...]
December 30, 1912: January 1 to
31, 1913
January 2, 1913: provisional order without
prejudgment
January 27, 1913: February 1 to 31, 1913
January
27, 1913. No. 18. Letter dated January 7, 1913.
January 27, 1913:
The trustees received your letter of the 7th of this month, as well
as a printed invoice handed to each of them. [...]
January 30,
1913; Provisional order without prejudgment
March 20, 1913: April
1 to April 30, 1913
April 26, 1913: May 1 to December 31,
1913
April 26, 1913: Application for discharge will be considered
null and void
April 30, 1913: Appointment of Curator
[146]
The Hague, May 26, 1913.
Assuming that the documents recently
received from you, containing judgments by German scholars on your
person and your work, have not been sent to the Association [?] in
confidence, thus under the seal of confidentiality, I inform you
that I will act accordingly if I do not receive a
counter-notification from you by Wednesday, May 28, at noon.
On
behalf of ARENTSBURGH Association for Excavations in the
Netherlands
Seerp Gratama, Chair.
[271] National Museum of
Antiquities Leiden.
Leiden, November 4, 1913.
The long delay
in appointing the curator compelled me, at the audience of November
1, to respectfully request His Excellency, the Minister of the
Interior, to expedite the process. I then learned from His
Excellency that he intended to retain Mr. van Giffen.
However, he
would also hear me first.
It is clear that such a decision by the
Minister would be highly questionable. I feel obligated to draw your
attention to this.
1. Mr. van Giffen was on probation. He had the
right to say that he did not like it, and he also indicated several
times that he had not yet decided to apply for an appointment. Of
course, I was equally entitled not to wish to continue working with
him. He was entirely free not to apply for an appointment; I was
entirely free not to nominate him. It seems to me that people
sometimes forget that Mr. van Giffen has no position at the Nuseum,
that the question isn't whether to oust him, but rather whether it's
advisable to bring him in.
2.? Mr. van Giffen is a natural
historian, out of place in an archaeological museum unless he also
started working in archaeology. I drew up a study plan with him that
he would follow as soon as he finished his dissertation. He was
increasingly given free time for this. After the summer holidays of
1912, the archaeological program was supposed to begin, as agreed.
However, he simply didn't keep his word. When he broke that word, I
was eager to continue the experiment with him. It goes without
saying that later, when he became so fiercely hostile to us, there
was no question of providing training.
How
could I use such a person in an archaeological museum?
3.
That evening, without my knowledge, he and Mr. Martin, who was
morally dependent on him, quietly compiled the notorious false
accusation against Dr. Holwerda to the Arentsburg commission, using
Dr. Holwerda's rough sketches, which he had entrusted to Mr. Martin
in his official capacity. When Dr. Boeser and I asked Mr. Martin if
he was aware that he had used such papers entrusted to him in his
official capacity in such a way, he said, "Yes, but I did it on
the orders of Mr. van Giffen." He was also his superior, he
assured me later. Thus, a commission outside the museum was charged
with such a gross violation of official duty against its own heads.
What
remains of the principle of authority when such individuals are
supported?
4.
It is certain that Mr. van Giffen did not originally have these
criticisms of Dr. Holwerda's work at Arentsburg. Only when I refused
to nominate him did he feel obligated to warn the Arentsburg
Association against Dr. Holwerda's so-called fraud.
5.
The Arentsburg commission lists numerous accusations by Mr. van
Giffen, either unproven by him or refuted by Dr. Holwerda; these are
therefore qualified as libel. Anyone who takes the time to
familiarize themselves with the matter will have to see that this
assessment is correct.
6.
Mr. van Giffen himself declares (see the well-known brochure, p. 7)
that he cannot work with Dr. Holwerda. So now, as Director, I would
like to appoint Dr. Dr. Holwerda must be ordered to cooperate with
someone who himself says he cannot cooperate with him and who Dr.
Holwerda is certain will slander him if it suits his agenda.
7.
Irrefutable facts prove that Dr. Holwerda has done everything he can
to help Mr. van Giffen advance. The contrary assertion is a gross
untruth, even if it has been believed.
I
hope that your board will find the means to avert the danger that
threatens our institution.
The
Professor, Director
To
the Curators of the State University of Leiden.
[424]
Letters to and from H. Martin and the museum regarding his return to
work, notice of dismissal, leave, illness of his mother-in-law,
drawings, museum property, etc.
November
19, 1909: From M.: discovery of urn near Arnhem
November
21, 1909: From M.: thanksgiving
June
29, 1911: From M.: vacancy for assistant
August
10, 1911: Appointment of M. as assistant from September 1 to
December 31, 1911
December
4, 1911: Appointment of M. as assistant for 1912
January
27, 1912: From M.: telegram
January
31, 1912: From M.: telegram
February
1, 1912: From M.: telegram
February
1, 1912: From M.: telegram
February
2, 1912: From M.: telegram
February
3, 1912: From M.: telegram
June
30, 1912: From M.: regarding the excavations in Heerlen
July
13, 1912, father H.
July
28, 1912, father H.
August
6, 1912, father H.
September
25, 1912, M. provisionally terminated work
December
14, 1912, M. appointed assistant for 1913
January
4, 1913, M. pottery kilns in Heerlen
January
23, 1913, M. drawing pottery
January
29, 1913, M. leave for job application
February
6, 1913, M. illness
February
22, 1913, M. nervous tension
February
22, 1913, M. short leave
May
5, 1913, M. return to work
May
16, 1913, father H. disputes arising
May
17, 1913, father H.
June
17, 1913, M. bibliography
August
12, 1913, M. sick leave and summer leave
August
23, 1913, M. drawing board
August
28, 1913, M. job application in the Indies
September
3, 1913, M. morning leave
September
11, 1913, M. extension of leave? September 20, 1913, from M. advance
payment of salary
September
20, 1913, from M. promise of honorable discharge
September
20, 1913, from M. regarding appointment in Leeuwarden
September
26, 1913, from M. "shaken health"
October
10, 1913, from M. association leave
October
10, 1913, from father H.
October
15, 1913, from M. illness of mother-in-law
October
19, 1913, from M.
October
22, 1913, from M. honorable discharge
October
24, 1913, from M. keys, etc.
October
24, 1913, from father H.
October
27, 1913, from M.
October
29, 1913, from father H.
May
6, 1914, from M.
May
15, 1914, from M.
May
23, 1914, from father H.
July
13? From Father H.
September
14? From Father H.
[277]
Returned with thanks. The document has not been seen by anyone but
mine and will continue to be considered "confidential."
Prof.
J. Verdam
Leiden
[146]
Leiden, March 9, 14
Dear
Sir
Although
it is very unpleasant for me to discuss with you personally what
others felt compelled to do to me last year, for whatever reason,
and nothing would please me more than to do so without rancor, as I
can happily be entirely honest with you,
I
am struck by the remark in your letter that the method followed thus
far has led to misunderstandings and difficulties, and I believe I
must permit myself to remark that the burden of proof for this
assertion still rests with those who communicated it to you. [...]
The
Highness J. P. Koolemans Beynen
[273]
MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR.
No.
2661 Department of Physicians
September
25, 1914.
Regarding
Curator Dr. Van Giffen
Following
your telegram of September 23, I interviewed the Amanuenses Bytel
and Koene.
From
their testimony, it has become clear to me that recently, when Dr.
Van Giffen was in the room occupied by the former amanuensis, you
entered and ordered Dr. Van Giffen to leave. Your telegram therefore
contradicts the aforementioned testimony.
I
further consider the manner in which you denied a Museum official
access to the building highly offensive and certainly indefensible
on the grounds, I believe, that Dr. Van Giffen was on vacation.
In
connection with the above, I have the honor to request that you
offer Dr. Van Giffen your apology for the treatment he received and
also send me a draft instruction properly regulating Dr. Van
Giffen's scientific work. I look forward to receiving this draft,
along with the confirmation that you have offered the aforementioned
apology, within eight days.
Coll.:
W. v.d.L. THE MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR Cort vd Linden
To
Prof. Dr. A.E.J. Holwerda, Professor-Director of the National Museum
of Antiquities in Leiden
[...]
Not long after, a colleague from our faculty warned me that a smear
campaign had been launched against us. A colleague from another
faculty—he did not mention his name—had come to him to
see if it would be possible [to get?] the Faculty of Arts to
reconsider its very favorable recommendation regarding Dr. Holwerda.
He and I were told all sorts of nasty things, the most important of
which was that Dr. Holwerda had falsified scientific data. If this
colleague from our faculty showed even the slightest inclination to
cooperate, he would receive a visit from the President of the
Curator regarding this matter. As I understand it, this same
Professor also approached other members of the faculty with the same
objective.
[...]
Then we also learned what the main accusation was, that of
falsification, which had been brought to the Curators and spread by
that Professor. It concerns Dr. Holwerda's maps of the excavation at
Arentsburgh from 1910 and 1911, of which copies had been submitted
to prove that they did not match and had been put together by
fraudsters. This accusation, however, was only possible because the
accusers had omitted the words "provisional map" under the
first map and had failed to mention that Dr. Holwerda had
deliberately added this because he had deemed a further check of his
map necessary in 1911, and that he had indeed carried out both of
these.
[541]
Mr. Dr. Z W. Sneller 23 Apr 17
Dear
Sir
I
would like to discuss the matter frankly. In fact, your Encyclopedia
was virtually unknown beforehand. However, in our conversation, you
mentioned a few names that made me think I should investigate the
matter more closely, and now it appears even less so that I did not
actually find a message that was not entirely correct. Indeed, they
wanted to include my subjects from the beginning. Under the list of
permanent collaborators, I see the name of Dr. van Giffen. This
young man, formerly my assistant, has, in recent years, after I had
to honestly admit I couldn't work with him, been incredibly active
in my work and intrigue, supported by several patrons. Another of
his friends is your co-editor, Mr. Niermeier. I understand just as
well that I was passed over in compiling the list of collaborators
as that, like both of you, they couldn't get any work done from him.
The question you presented to me should therefore have been: the
editors passed you over earlier, but they were fooled by it. Do you
now want to take that other person's place? I am convinced that
neither you, nor even Mr. Pulle, nor the publisher himself knew
exactly what was going on. I don't think I'm easily offended, but
you'll understand by now that I have no choice but to refuse,
especially since I'm convinced that if I were to take that position,
I would once again expose myself to all sorts of insinuations.
I
deeply regret that you've gone to so much trouble for nothing.
Sincerely,
Yours
sincerely,
JH
Holwerda
[541]
24/4 17
Dear
Sir [Mr. Dr. Z W. Sneller]
After
our conversation, I felt the need ?? by mentioning it as a z? ? in
our conversation, the remarks that have arisen, and it appears to me
through light research, that the question posed in the past was not
entirely correct.
My
subjects were not classified under History in your Encyclopedia, but
had an independent editor from the very beginning. On the list of
contributors, I read,
to
my pleasure, the name of Dr. v. Giffen ┼ who, supported by a
few protectors, has since intrigued against me and my work in all
sorts of ways.
Given
the name of your co-editor, Niermeier, it is not at all surprising
that further investigation was conducted in the selection of his
contributors.
If
you now say, as and, that you cannot obtain any work in that field
from the aforementioned young man. Now, however... you will
understand that it is not my place to fill that vacancy, although I
am convinced that neither you nor anyone else on the editorial staff
knew exactly what was going on.
However,
if you knew which of the most worthy gentlemen they and my
personalities, which ones have blindly... I also have no desire to
go through that place... perhaps as far as you... to expose the
gentlemen who think they still have more material to offer...
I
deeply regret that you did not make much effort.
Regards,
September
19, 1922, NETHERLANDS SCHOOL OF COMMERCE, ROTTERDAM.
The
outgoing Rector Magnificus, Professor F. de Vries, has submitted a
report on the University's events during the past academic year,
pointed out that this year was not characterized by expansion or
significant changes in the organization of the University [...]
Polak, head of the State Audit Service in Rotterdam. Mr. Dr. G. M.
Verrijn Stuart, secretary of the board of the Rotterdam Bank
Association, was appointed extraordinary professor of economics,
particularly monetary, credit, and banking. To fill the Posthumus
vacancy, Dr. Z. W. Sneller, deputy director of the Bureau of State
Historical Publications, was appointed full professor of economic
history, particularly modern history. Dr. A. O. Holwerda, lecturer
in statistics and insurance science since 1917, was appointed
extraordinary professor in these subjects. [...]
[420]
January 11, 1922
[...]
Was there even more information about his written writing, but I
don't wonder. Finally, it is clear that Prof. v. B., since we have
shown ourselves Schwiegersohn, the man knows the intrigue and the
revelation that he has for years, even if Zweifel in his opinion
will act and defend his innocence, so he is able to stand up for it.
[...]
[471]
Dedemsvaart, June 21 '23
[concerns
coin of CONSTANTINUS (IMP?) ; BEATA TRAN-QUILLITAS]
F.
O. Peters Kalkwijk 32 Dedemsvaart (O.)
[1971]
J.E. Bogaers
VOORBURG-ARENTSBURG:
FORUM HADRIANI
Architectural
Communications, Part LII
See
https://repository.ubn.ru.nl//bitstream/handle/2066/26485/26485___.PDF?sequence=1
Reuvens
himself believed in 1829 that his excavation at Arentsburg probably
related to Forum Hadriani, but notes he made in the National Museum
of Antiquities in Leiden from 1832 show that he hesitated to
interpret his finds "either as a Roman permanent camp, or as a
Roman city center, or as an old Batavian city later decorated by the
Romans." At the beginning of his excavation campaigns, Holwerda
posed the problem of explaining Reuvens's finds very clearly,
provided one disregards his notion that the Roman settlement of
Arentsburg must have been called either Praetorium Agrippinae (and
as such must have been a fortress) or Lugdunum (in case the place
had been a town). If one is familiar with the many articles and
contributions Holwerda wrote about Arentsburg, and is not content
with simply reading his book, published in 1923, entirely devoted to
Arentsburg, one has embarked on a fascinating, yet disappointing
journey, led by the man who began his research in 1909 in "A
Roman City near The Hague" and who in 1923 subtitled his book
on Arentsburg: "A Roman Military Naval Station near Voorburg."
Much, if not all, of what Holwerda wrote to explain the findings by
Reuvens and himself is now unreliable or unacceptable.
It
is impossible to do justice to Holwerda's theories about
"Arentsburg" in a short space, nor to discuss and refute
them in detail. Therefore, it seems preferable to briefly summarize
the main arguments that support identifying Roman Arentsburg with
the civilian settlement of Forum Hadrani.
a)
In Holwerda's opinion, the Roman settlement at Voorburg-Arentsburg
had a militaristic character.
It
was a rectangular, elongated structure, extending from northwest to
southeast, measuring approximately 400 by 200 m. It was surrounded
on three sides by a wall and two moats, and bordered on the fourth,
the southern side, by the Fossa Corbulonis-Vliet.
The
complex consisted of two parts. The southern half was the harbor
with the harbor quarter, while the northern half was believed to
have been a castellum of a cohors quingenaria equitata. The floor
plan of this castellum is quite peculiar. The space seems far too
large for a cohors quingenaria equitata. Regarding the barracks for
pedites and equites, which Holwerda would have found in the
northwest, Part of the castellum, one must conclude that his
explanations in this regard are far from convincing and that his
floor plans of barracks are very difficult to compare with
well-known Roman military buildings of this kind. The same applies
to Holwerda's explanation of the buildings excavated by Reuvens,
such as the praetorium (principia), the commander's villa
(praetorium), etc.
On
the one hand, it is clear that different periods must be
distinguished in the plan of Arentsburg; on the other hand, it is
very strange that Reuvens—in the eastern part of the
settlement—only found remains of stone buildings, while
Holwerda, in contrast, only uncovered traces of wooden buildings.
One gets the unmistakable impression that no traces of wooden
buildings were seen in the section investigated by Reuvens, and that
the plan of Holwerda's excavation results lacks any remains of stone
buildings. One of the greatest mysteries this plan presents is the
so-called separation between the castellum and the harbor area. This
would have been a dry ditch (or moat) running from west to east,
bordered on either side by a fence. This double fence would also
have connected to the center of a double stone gate on the western
side of the rampart, one of which would have provided access to the
harbor, the other to the castellum. It is regrettable that the plan
will remain a mystery in many respects.
According
to Holwerda, the main reason why Roman Arentsburg must have had a
military character was the military roof-tile temples among the
finds, the rampart wall, and the two moats. According to Holwerda,
the idea that Arentsburg was a military naval station was based
primarily on the discovered roof-tile stamps of the Classis
Germanica Pia Fidelis, as well as on an old channel—within the
surrounding walls, which on the south side would have served as a
kind of harbor head—in which, moreover, traces of
south-to-north channels or canals had been discovered, through which
ships would have had access to the naval station located at Fossa
Corbulonis. The old channel and the traces of canals were allegedly
demonstrated by means of borings. These latter were conducted in
1911 by A. E. van Giffen, who, however, rightly raised serious
objections to Holwerda's interpretation of certain phenomena
revealed by the borings. On this basis, Holwerda's view regarding
the harbor and the canals cannot be maintained. [... on C.G.P.F.
stamps]
b)
The "Roman military naval station," aside from the
military tile stamps, has yielded remarkably few finds of a military
nature. In this regard, one can only point to two altars, both
consecrated by a centurion of the Legio I Minervia (P.F.), a fired
clay cannonball, and some more or less questionable iron weapon
fragments: a pilum, two pila fragments, some sword fragments, a
spearhead, and two spearhead fragments.
c)
Voorburg-Arentsburg is so far the only place in the area between the
mouths of the Rhine and the Meuse where monumental civil
inscriptions have been found, at least if one disregards the
milestones of Monster/Naaldwijk and Rijswijk, which both must refer
to the same "caput viae." These civil inscriptions
contain, respectively, a dedication to Diana by a sevir Augustalis
from Colonia Ulpia Traiana, and a dedication "genio collegi
peregrinorum," i.e., by individuals who were not "cives"
of Roman Voorburg, but as "incolae" only had "domicilium"
there.
We
also know of several limestone fragments from Arentsburg bearing one
or more inscriptional letters. However, it is remarkable that one
fragment of a monumental civil inscription, preserved in the
National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, was found during
Holwerda's 1910 excavation campaign at Arentsburg and included
without commentary in the report for the previous year in 1911 and
without commentary in 1919, published in the report for the previous
year, is not included in Holwerda's book on Arentsburg, nor in any
corpus of inscriptions. Only two-line fragments of the original text
remain. These read ---DEC·MVN---/---ANI·I (ofL)---.
The inscription refers to a decurio municipii, in all likelihood
[FORI HADRI]ANI. This city is then called Municipium Forum Hadriani
here, rather than Municipium A. Cananefat(i)um, as its official name
was.
d)
According to Holwerda, all of Roman Arentsburg would have had an
area of approximately 8 hectares. If, on the one hand,
one does not believe in a military naval station at Arentsburg,
then, on the other hand, it is difficult to assume that Forum
Hadriani, the main town of the civitas of the Cananefates and also a
municipium, would have been only 8 hectares in size. A weak point in
Holwerda's argument is, among other things, his opinion regarding
the course of the walls and moats on the eastern side of Arentsburg.
Holwerda has not only changed his mind on this matter, but his most
recent statements on the subject are more or less contradictory and
therefore entirely unconvincing. Doubts regarding the correctness of
Holwerda's view of the boundaries on the eastern side are entirely
justified.
East
of the actual Arentsburg grounds lie, on the south side, a plot of
land with allotments and on the north side, a meadow. Roman finds
have repeatedly been made on the allotment grounds, and the most
striking aspect of the meadow is that it lies approximately 1.25 m
lower than the level of the adjacent Arentsburg grounds. East of
this former estate, the surface was apparently lowered in the
post-Roman period, presumably due to sand extraction from the
subsoil. This also applies to the grounds of the Deaconesses'
Institution, which borders the allotments and the meadow to the
east. In 1965, it was discovered that numerous traces of Roman
habitation still exist on the latter site, albeit at a relatively
low level; among other things, the lower remains of a wooden well in
the shape of a barrel were found there.
The
conclusion may be that it is by no means certain that Holwerda
correctly indicated the eastern boundary of Roman Arentsburg, and
that there is every reason to assume that the Roman settlement,
i.e., Forum Hadriani, extended even further east. The total area of
this town could certainly have been 400 x 280 m or
more.
e)
When examining Holwerda's map of Arentsburg, it is striking that the
stone buildings excavated by Reuvens are almost all situated in
practically the same direction as the traces of wooden buildings
found by Holwerda, dating from the time of his castellum. In this
regard, however, it is a strange phenomenon that the enclosure wall
(on the western and northern sides) not only forms a somewhat acute
angle, but that none of its sides run parallel to any of the main
directions of the buildings within it. Aside from the reason for
this deviation (which, as far as the enclosure is concerned, may be
due to local terrain conditions), it seems that the enclosure wall,
the moats, and other outer defenses were constructed relatively
late, and that for some reason they deviated from the normal course
of the main directions of the existing buildings.
f)
The way in which Holwerda attempted to connect his "military
naval station" as a port for shipping to Britain with military
events in Roman England is unacceptable. This was rightly objected
to many years ago by the retired Dutch general F. Kroon in an
article that, by its very nature, is highly curious. The intensive
occupation of Arentsburg undoubtedly began only after 70 AD and
continued until 260/270 AD. However, finds from the pre-Flavian
period and the 4th century are also known. Regarding the dating of
the smaller finds, Holwerda can generally continue to follow his
lead. However, an important exception must be made for his dating of
the roof-tile stamps of Legio I Minervia discovered at Arentsburg;
these all belong to the Antoniniana types and therefore date from
212-222 AD, and not from the 2nd century AD, as Holwerda believed.
Interesting,
but equally unacceptable, is Holwerda's explanation for the
considerable quantity of indigenous Roman, so-called
Frisian-Batavian, sherds that seem to have been found primarily in
the oldest "military barracks" of the "castellum."
In order to support his theories regarding the character of Roman
Arentsburg, Holwerda even went so far as to attribute these shards
to Batavian cohorts. These
Auxiliary
troops "who performed such important military actions in
Britain in 84" are said (after the Batavian revolt!) to have
built the naval station at Arentsburg as a staging post for the
voyage to Britain.
The
facts from the excavations at Arentsburg are by far best explained
by assuming that an indigenous settlement of Cananefates existed
there as early as the first half of the 1st century, just west of a
tidal creek of the Rhine estuary, which became part of the Fossa
Corbulonis in 47 or shortly thereafter. This settlement expanded
considerably after the Batavian revolt and grew into the center of
Cananefates' land, which Hadrian granted market rights in 120 or 121
and, as Forum Hadriani, was also elevated to the status of
municipium shortly thereafter, at the latest in 162. Some of the
stone buildings excavated by Reuvens may have been constructed as
early as between 120 and 162, using, among other things, military
bricks from the Exercitus Germanicus Inferior or its vexillarii, the
Legio XXX Ulpia Victrix, and the Classis Germanica Pia Fidelis.
Due
to a lack of data, it is impossible to say when the walls and moats
were built, but one might think of the end of the 3rd century or the
first decades of the 3rd century, around the time of Septimius
Severus, Caracalla, and Elagabalus. The last datable roof-tile
stamps are those already mentioned from the Legio I Minervia
Antoniniana from 212-222.
See
also
http://dare.ubvu.vu.nl/bitstream/handle/1871/15659/Derks%202008%20Naaldwijk.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y
[455]
462 [A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Rector]
December
3, 1923
My
dear friend!
I
would like to return briefly to our conversation yesterday, the
subject of which concerns me more. I would not like you and other
members of the faculty, whose friendly feelings I value, to view the
matter differently than it is.
We
spoke about the many intrigues to which I have been exposed in the
past, and in which many professors also diligently participated at
the time, denigrating me and my work in the ugliest manner, in order
to achieve a specific goal. Those attempts failed, the tide has
turned, but I feel very well that that history has left a mark on
the minds of quite a few, especially in Leiden circles, which makes
dealing with it unpleasant for me, and which has also caused my
private life to take a certain turn, one in which, ultimately, I
feel quite comfortable.
We
also discussed the difficult position of a museum director in
general—as evidenced by all my predecessors, not least the
eminent Reuvens—in Leiden's professorial circle, most of whom
were actually unaware of the value of a museum as a cultural
institution in itself and therefore of the significance of the work
of good museum management.
You
told me that, regarding the former, I should let those old stories
rest, that new people had arrived with better ideas in the latter
respect as well. You told me that I should not, by stubbornly
clinging to the past, stand in the way of a good relationship, a
collegial collaboration between education and museums, such as that
which your faculty would now demand.
I
can refer you to a letter from me dated October 28, 1920, addressed
to the faculty, in which I took a first step towards better
cooperation for the benefit of academic education. I received a
haughty reply to this letter, which cut off further deliberation.
Since
then, a young colleague in archaeology has taken action; I have
shared with you some examples of what he has previously done against
me and my work. His written actions against me, the much older
colleague who also believes he is entitled to some distinction
because of what I have achieved in the scientific field, have
attracted—to use no other word—general attention
throughout the country and already demonstrate very little desire
for collaboration. Even before he had delivered his inaugural
address, he attempted, in a letter to the curators, in which he
acknowledged that he had been helpfully met by me. He attempted,
through this college, to intervene in the museum's management, over
the director's head. At the same time, the incomprehensible
demonstration of another of your colleagues occurred, who fled from
the "unusable" lecture hall, the use of which your faculty
now so fervently desires, only to return there of his own accord
after a few weeks. Naturally, such an attempt was bound to come to
nothing. Since then, complaints against me have been filed
repeatedly with the curators, which, by their very nature, are
equally unsuccessful, but nevertheless raise the question of whether
this is the way forward.
to
achieve amicable cooperation.
You
now tell me that the aforementioned younger colleague himself also
realizes that he went too far, that his attitude was not the right
one. After everything that has happened, I would surely expect to
hear this from him himself, that he himself declared that he wanted
to abandon the aggressive attitude he adopted immediately upon
taking office and, where he sets certain requirements for himself
and his teaching, that he also wants to respect the museum board and
its views, its rights and obligations.
And
if the purpose of your mission was not to push a specific wish on
me, against my honest and established convictions, but to establish
a lasting, good, and preferably amicable cooperation between
lecturers at the State University on the one hand and the management
of the Rijksmuseum on the other, then I refer you once again to my
aforementioned letter to the faculty. I hereby repeat my question
posed therein, and the faculty then only has to retract its answer
given at that time. If anyone asks me how I envision such a
collaboration, I believe I can provide an answer. After the past has
truly been buried, personal contact will be established first and
foremost in all matters pertaining to archaeological interests,
between the museum management on the one hand and the faculty—not
just a single one of its members—on the other. Perhaps it was
the unconscious need for this, which manifested itself in the, in my
opinion, highly unfortunate combination of a professorship and
directorship, both positions requiring a complete person and, in
many respects, very different aptitudes. With a genuine desire for
improvement, a different, better approach can certainly be found.
Once such lasting, regular, personal contact is established, it will
soon become apparent that the devil is not as black as he is
portrayed; that various things that seem unnecessary or incorrect
from the outside actually have very sound reasons; that within
numerous theoretical concepts, a voice from the field can sometimes
truly open up entirely different insights; and most certainly, that
the Museum's usefulness for academic education need not be an empty
pretense.
I
thought it wise to explain my views in writing again before you
discuss this matter with your colleagues.
Whatever
you may have against letters, scripta manent.
Sincerely,
The
High Honourable Professor Dr. A.W. Nieuwenhuis
LEIDEN.
June
2, 1973 Roman Canals in Nijmegen
"ARCHAEOLOGISTS
are puzzlers," says Prof. Dr. J. E. Bogaers of the Institute
for Ancient History and Archaeology, Department of Provincial Roman
Archaeology at Nijmegen University. Together with Dr. J. K.
Haalebos, he has been conducting excavations since April 2nd on the
sites of two villas slated for demolition on Berg en Dalseweg in the
eastern part of Nijmegen. M. P. M. Daniëls dug in the same area
in 1916.
The
renowned archaeologist J. H. Holwerda conducted excavations between
1917 and 1921, which led him to claim that he had determined the
perimeter of the camp of the Tenth Roman Legion Gemina – a
total of 29 hectares. The Legio X Gemina, a double legion, was
stationed at the investigated site from approximately 70 AD to 104
AD. After the last World War, knowledge about the castra's terrain
expanded considerably, thanks to extensive research conducted by
Professor H. Brunsting until 1967.
During
the most recent investigation, in addition to two ditches from the
Flavian period, traces of two wooden barracks dating from the early
Flavian period were also discovered. The most important discovery is
that the late Flavian ditch appears to have been filled in during
the Roman period, and that a rectangular stone building measuring at
least 12 x 18 m was built over it. From this, and from other
previously known data, the conclusion can be drawn that the castra
from the period after 70 AD underwent a unique change of direction.
Initially, the front most likely faced (north)west, towards
Batavodurum-Ulpia Noviomagus. In the first half of the 2nd
century—presumably under Hadrian, when the Legio IX Hispana
was stationed in Nijmegen—the fortress was rotated 90 degrees,
and the front was directed north(east) towards the steep slope of
the Hunerberg, towards the Waal and Rhine rivers.
During
the final phase of the fortifications, the eastern part of the
former castra was extended south(west) to the other side of the Berg
en Dalseweg.
See
https://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/view?query=bogaers+holwerda&coll=ddd&sortfield=date&page=2&resultsidentifier=KBNRC01
%3A000027820%3Ampeg21%3Aa0153&identifier=KBNRC01%3A000027820%3Ampeg21%3Aa0153
The
origin of the 'own'. The Dutch Early Past, Archaeology and National
Socialism by M. Eickhoff, 2003 https://pure.eerste
uva.nl/ws/files/3449320/30381_UBA002000974_06.pdf
Where
are the Norsemen
https://www.elsloo.info/historie-maaskant/2501-waar-zijn-de-noormannen
Ascloa
is not Asselt, but Hasnon. http://www.noviomagus.info/ascloa.htm
Statements
by J.H. Holwerda http://noviomagus.info/voetnoot/holwerda.htm
Archaeological
finds at the Tichelakker
http://www.tiggelen.net/nl/artikelen/artikelen/familie/archeologische-vondsten-op-de-tichelakker/all-pages
The
Castle in Wassenaar http://www.oudleiden.nl/pdf1/1918_07.pdf
From
the RAMS depot http://vobow.be/Data/WAK/PDF's/WAK%2095.pdf
Ulpia
Noviomagus Batavorum
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulpia_Noviomagus_Batavorum
Holwerda,
Jan Hendrik (1873-1951)
http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/bwn/BWN/lemmata/bwn1/holwerda
DON'T
FALL FOR IT!
https://skepsis.nl/mainsite/inhoud/uploads/2015/09/sn11-12.pdf
VOORBURG-ARENTSBURG:
FORUM HADRIANI
https://repository.ubn.ru.nl/bitstream/handle/2066/26485/26485___.PDF
Vicus
van Ockenburgh https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicus_van_Ockenburgh
Hunneschans
Uddel
https://www.absolutefacts.nl/kastelen/data/hunneschans-uddel.htm
The
Rijen Cemetery of Wageningen
https://rjh.ub.rug.nl/Palaeohistoria/article/viewFile/25043/22503
NORTH
BRABANT IN THE ROMAN PERIOD
http://cultuurtijdschriften.nl/download?type=document&docid=460687
Roman
period in Limburg
https://www.limburg.nl/publish/pages/1061/romeinse_tijd_in_limburg.pdf
A
bronze burial urn was discovered in Oss 25 years ago.
http://www.stadsarchiefoss.nl/OssData/documents/Doorlopendleerlijn_Archeologie_bron1_inOsswerd25jaargeledeneenbronzengrafurngevonden.pdf
Leidsch
Yearbook https://www.oudleiden.nl/pdf/1914.PDF
ARCHAEOLOGY
VERSUS HISTORY
https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/oudheidkundig_jaarboek1921/0200/image
A
thousand years of building in the Netherlands
https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/fock001duiz01_01/fock001duiz01_01_0017.php
Forgotten
Banded Pottery
https://www.scribd.com/document/245830968/9789088902246-Van-Wijk-Et-Al-2014-Vergeten-Bandkeramiek-eBook
The
Valkhof and Old Nijmegen
https://archive.org/stream/HetValkhofEnOudNijmegenThKuijper/het%20valkhof%20en%20oud-nijmegen%20th%20kuijper_djvu.txt
Old
Valkenburg Association
http://www.oudvalkenburgzh.nl/vov_J35/index.php/mensen-en-hun-verhaal/92-professor-van-giffen
The
Origin of the Principality of Flanders
https://www.persee.fr/doc/rbph_0035-0818_1941_num_20_3_1622
The
Roman helmet of Peel https://www.bureaupubliciteit.nl/Peelhelm.htm
Correspondence
regarding the Peelhelm
[240]
Berlin 3. October 1909.
Hochgeehrter
Herr Direktor!
More
recent experiences Thank you for the letter from 28/9. and the
siestruktion Zeichnung. - I must not be a leader nor are I happy,
because we have the same misunderstandings about the requirements
and spans.
I
could not work with the Einsatz, which is your 2 Spange and a single
effort of the work journeys since, who I am mute, - it is also 4
Einsätze da sein - sich innen berruhren (with the Rändern)
or with still a Zwischenraum best, so that man also could the
mitteren Teil von der Hinterseite der Spange sehen. Die Frage ist
für die Entwickelung des Typus von grosser Bedeutung. -
Although
it is not possible, if the Photographie is still available, you will
be able to take a look at the photo in the future. I was very
grateful to the Director for a detailed report of the Abbildungen
for the best results.
Ihr
hochachtungsvoll Sehrerraket Dr. Ebert
[310]
Helenaveen June 17, 1910.
B.de
Jong Herv. pred.
[163]
Telegram Received in Roermond, June 20, 1910, at 8 am. 12 m.
[163]
Report on the discovery in the peat at Meijel.-
Following
exchanged telegrams, I decided to go to Meijel on Monday, June 20th.
Mayor Truijen accompanied me to the house of Smolenaars, a peat
worker, in Meijel. He had found some objects at work in the peat
approximately 1.75 m below the ground surface, roughly where gray or
top peat and black or bottom peat were separated:
The
following objects are better described by drawings than by
description. The helmet and the plates were on leather, which is now
in the possession of the director of the Helenaveen Company (Forest
in Helenaveen). Because the finder and others pulled this off, the
helmet has suffered and lies in the pieces from which it appears to
have originally been assembled. The plates are thin, e.g., 3/4
millimeter. The comb is thicker; at the edges, they have been bent
around the leather. The spur was still attached to a kind of heavy
shoe, which is still with the leatherwork. The cloth from a veil is
also still with that leatherwork.
The
helmet and jewelry are still in Meyel with Smolenaars, and the
leather with Mr. Bos.
Later,
I was told that another worker had found a side plate.
One,
another a pin. The mayor of Deurne immediately had a guard posted at
the site to prevent further digging.
Mr. Truyen, former member of
the First Chamber, the mayor of Meijel, Mr. Bos, and the director of
Helenaveen are happy to provide information. I pointed out to the
owner that if anyone from the lords of Leyden were to arrive, they
would be required to show everything, but not to others for the time
being. It was found where a sand ridge runs through the peat. Mr.
Bos also found a spearhead and a bow, all between Helenaveen and
Meijel in the Deurne Peel. ?? --------
I believe I've done
everything in this brief report to provide a good overview. I didn't
answer the question of its value, which the uninitiated naturally
exaggerate. The distance from Roermond to Meijel is four hours, from
Stat. Griendtsveen to Meijel 2 1/2 hours. I would like the drawings
back after copying, as I don't have any.
Roermond, June 20,
1910
AF van Beurden
1st Secretary "Limburg"
Surveyor
of the Land Registry
If the necessary expenses incurred
during the trip can be reimbursed, I would be grateful. If not, I
will pay them myself out of interest.
Telegram 0.58
guilders
Postage 0.12 ½ guilders
Travel expenses
2.-
2.80 ½ guilders
[631, p. 411] 331 ???
Thank
you very much for your "first" information. The find seems
to me to have considerable value (also financially). Gratama? I will
come and take a look when I have the opportunity. Would you be most
helpful in showing me the various items for the helmet? I would like
to send them to the National Museum of Antiquities (? to my personal
address). I will then examine them and send the value to the finder.
You would be very obliging. In any case, the shipping costs are also
at our expense.
After examining them, I will let you know what I
think of the matter.
Sincerely (?) JHHp;werda
B. de Jong,
Pastor, Helenaveen
[310] Helenaveen, June 21, 1910
Dear
Sir!
I thank you kindly for your letter, which I received this
morning. Unfortunately, I cannot send you the objects.
Some items
were found on the border between the upper peat, which was sold to a
company for excavation, and the black peat, which belongs to the
Municipality of Deurne. The company and the Municipality of Deurne
both now claim rights to the objects. As a result, items considered
of inferior quality are now in Helenaveen, while the coins, the
so-called helmet, etc., are in Meyel, about an hour from here.
The
finder entrusted them to the Mayor of Meyel, who will certainly be
happy to show them to you on the spot if you announce your arrival.
I wouldn't dare say how long they will remain there, however, as I
fear the dispute over ownership might lead to a lawsuit.
You can
make the journey from Helenaveen station to the village of
Helenaveen, near which the discovery was made. From there, the
objects can be viewed by bicycle or carriage to Meyel.
Because
the objects have been in unskilled hands until now, they have not
improved.
I felt I should share this with you.
Sincerely,
Yours
sincerely,
B. de Jong.
[631, p. 415] June 23, 1910, [...] the
Mayor of the Municipality of Meijel.
[631, p. 417] June 23, 1910,
[...] the Mayor of the Municipality of Deurne
[631, p. 419] June
23, 1910, [...] Mr. A.F. van Beurden, Roermond
[631, p. 420] June
23, 1910 [...] the Reverend Mr. B. de Jong in [Helenaveen]
[631,
p. 427] June 28, 1910 [...] Mr. A.F. van Beurden, Roermond
[631,
p. 429] June 29, 1910 [...] Mr. Gabriel Smolenaars, Meijel.
[631,
p. 431] 359. June 29, 1910
June 28, 1910 No. 1794; K and
W.
Discoveries near Deurne
Notice from the Mayor
Long
before the Mayor of Deurne informed the Government of the discovery
in his municipality, we had already been informed of it by our
agents. We possess images of these objects; there is no danger of
them crossing the border, and we hope, in due course, to bring the
matter to a successful conclusion in consultation with the Director
of the Royal Print Room. Should I require the Government's
assistance in this regard, I will contact them; otherwise, I will
handle this matter as I always handle such matters, in accordance
with the Government's view. I trust that the Government agrees with
this.
It is certainly commendable that the aforementioned Mayor
has contacted the Government. Apparently, he was unaware of the
Ministerial Order of May 2, 1887, No. 878; Dept. K W, otherwise he
would have addressed that communication to me. Following the reports
from our agents, we also requested information from that Mayor a few
days ago.
The Professor and Director of the National Museum
of Antiquities
A. E. J. Holwerda.
His Excellency the
Minister of Internal Affairs
Dutch
Affairs
[283]
Rolduc, July 4, 1910
[...]
You have certainly heard of the interesting discovery at Meyel. At
first, I thought it was a fabrication, but later I learned from a
reliable source that it was indeed an important archaeological
event. I hope you will be successful in purchasing the pieces.
[...]
W. Goossens
[229]
DEURNE, July 7, 1910
Your
Honor!
In
response to your letter yesterday, I inform you that the Roman
objects found by a certain Smolenaars in Meijel—in the peat
belonging to the municipality, the top layer of which (the gray) is
leased to the firm Terwindt and Arntz and exploited by the firm
Steegh and Esser—are still located at the Smolenaars' house. I
will now try to get the objects, which are in a glass cabinet, here
next Saturday, so that your Deputy Director doesn't have to make the
trip to Meyel (a three-hour journey), unless HE would like to make
the trip anyway, considering some objects (mostly leather footwear
and other items) that are in the possession of Mr. A. Bos, Director
of the Helenaveen Mine.
As
long as the issue of co-ownership between Steegh and the
Municipality remains, the finder will not release the objects.
Apparently,
antique dealers have already offered money. A sum of 1000 guilders
has already been mentioned for the helmet alone.
The
finder cannot or will not yet sell. I believe Mr. van Beurden,
Surveyor of the Land Registry in Roermond, has provided you with the
information you requested in your letter dated June 23rd, no. 339.
Sincerely,
Yours sincerely, ??? Burg
[573]
Helden July 1910
Very
dear Sir
A
very beautiful discovery was made here, two hours from Helden: 43
coins from the year 512-521 and a Roman plech armor of silver gilt
or gold. The goods were found in the Peel with peat pits 2.5 ms
deep. It seems this may have belonged to a knight.
I
don't know if it's still for sale from the worker. I'll come and see
them as soon as possible, so I can discuss them with you and after
them.
Sincerely,
Lou
Ueberbach
Here's
another message from the Courant.
[631,
p. 458] July 14, 1910
389
Letter to the Min. v. B Z
Secret
Cabinet Secret
not
copied for the time being
[229]
DEURNE, 27 Aug 1910
Dear
Sir!
In
response to your letter, I inform you that it has always been
Smolenaars' plan to transfer the helmet to the Rijksmuseum in
September. The Municipality would also prefer to see the museum
acquire the find.
S.,
however, would like to know before then how much the museum could
spend. I doubt that, knowing the price, he would abuse it by selling
everything to a Franck or Gildemeester, at least if the State values
the find.
Since
S. does not wish to go to L. alone, I will probably accompany him.
Sincerely,
Yours sincerely, Dr. ??? Burg
[229]
DEURNE, 25 Oct 1910
The
Director of the Museum of Antiquities Leiden.
Received
your inquiry by telegram with a paid reply this morning. I will keep
the latter in my possession so that I can communicate it as soon as
a decision is made. The purpose of my last letter was to inquire
whether a request of 1,000 guilders, plus any legal costs, would be
well received by you or the State. After all, if the Council
requests such an amount, and the State offers the amount of 800
guilders you first mentioned, we will have to hold another council
meeting later. Council meetings are not held here often because some
council members live two and a half hours from the Town Hall. If you
could quickly inform me whether the B. and W.'s proposal is accepted
by you, I will hold a meeting for that purpose as soon as possible.
The meeting would have already been held if we had not postponed it
in view of the discussion of the budget, accounts, municipal bylaws,
and other matters.
Sincerely,
The Mayor of Deurne ???
[229]
8/11/1910 [telegram]
DEURNE
9 29 8/11 12:34 =
IN
VIEW OF THE BUDGET DEALING THIS DAY, DECISION. THEN AUTHORIZATION
FOR SALE OF STATES. NO CONCERNS, MUNICIPALITY NEGOTIATES OR SELLS
OTHERS. ALLEGED OFFER IS BEING APPROVED = MAYOR +
[229]
DEURNE, November 25, 1910
No.
4B
Dear
Sir!
In
response to your letter of yesterday, no. 599, I have the honor to
inform you that the Council's decision will be submitted for
approval within a few days.
It
is very regrettable that part of the helmet (cheek piece) is
missing. I very much doubt that piece was stolen. Several people
searched for and found objects after Smolenaars. I don't know
whether all the finds are still together. At the time, someone also
owned a piece (probably a cheek piece).
I'll
inquire whether he added it to the finds Smolenaars made. If not,
I'll try to sell it for less than what's required, at a fairly high
price.
to
purchase. For the time being, I would not make any announcement with
a promise of reward.
Sincerely,
always at your service
Yours
truly, ??? Burg
[363]
December 10, 1910
Increase
in the annual salary of J. Koene, amanuensis; L. van der Meer and F.
van der Meer, clerks; H.S. Groen, clerk
[229]
DEURNE, December 13, 1910
Dear
Sir!
I
hereby have the honor to send you the decision of the Council of
this Municipality to sell the Roman objects found by millers in the
Peel region. Since approval from the Provincial Council, according
to their letter, is not necessary, the transfer can be effected by
contract.
When
and where would this be most suitable?
Sincerely,
The
Mayor of Deurne ca. ???
[229]
DEURNE, December 18, 1910
To
the Administrator of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden
Herewith
your draft contract, to which we agree. We will be pleased if
everything can be completed before January 1st, especially since the
current Secretary, Janssens, was honorably discharged as such on the
15th of this month at his own request, effective January 1, 1911,
and will therefore still have to appear in court according to this
draft.
Sincerely,
The
Mayor of Deurne, ca. ???
[229]
DEURNE, December 21, 1910
With
your letter of the 20th of this month, we received a banknote for
1000 guilders (BD10), as well as the purchase agreement in duplicate
for the antiquities found here in the peat bog, the latter document
being returned here after being signed by us. The Mayor and Aldermen
of Deurne ca.
???
The Secretary J.L. Janssens
To
the Administrator of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden
[553]
Correspondence from Gabriel Smolenaars in Meijel
August
23, 1910
November
24, 1910
November
30, 1910
September
17, 1911
September
26, 1912
March
12, 1914 Reply 1 Apr. 14
March
26, 1914 k1914/5 1 and 2; May 1911 k1911 5.1
April
3, 1914
February
27, 1917
March
5, 1917
[278
and 288] Correspondence from Mr. GOUDSMIT & COSMAN. Lawyers and
Attorneys
Leiden,
September 12, 191[0] regarding the purchase of a helmet
September
22, 1910
October
7, 1910
December
2, 1910 Mr. J.F. van den Broek in Nijmegen
December
16, 1910
[278]
September 25, 1912
[279]
November 4, 1910
Well,
Ed Heer,
I
am in possession of a beautiful, intact Roman helmet. The reason I
haven't informed you about it yet is that Mr. Kam is interested in
purchasing it. If he buys it, it will remain in our country.
Although it is still little known that I have this helmet, even the
Gildemeester doesn't know about it yet. I'm surprised that you
already know this. Although I already received an offer from Germany
last week, if you come to Nijmegen one of these days, you can see
it.
November
4, 1910 Sincerely, Yours sincerely. GrandJean(?)
Placing
the collar over the helmet is for breaking the sword blow on the
helmet
this
helmet is hammered from heavy bronze and weighs approximately 3½
pounds
Completely
intact, beautiful Bronze Helmet
A
bronze semicircle of 0. ½ Ned placed over the helmet from the
front. ? centimeters in thickness and 0.2 cm in width
B
ring for hanging the helmet
[240]
Praehistorische Zeitschrift 7/12.10
Sehr
geehrter Herr Director!
They
were so generous about the Spätrömischen Fund in Holland
ein Referat in September in Aussicht. Would we be able to find out
what to do next in order to find out what to do? With the best care
possible Dr. Ebert
[240]
GENERAL-VERWALTUNG OF THE KÖNIGLICHEN MUSEEN
KGL.
MUSEUM OF VÖLKERKUNDE
BERLIN
S.W. 11, Königgrätzer Str. 120
the
12.VIII.1910
Sehr
geehrter Herr Director!
I
would like to receive a copy of the news about a spatial fund in a
Torfmoore near Deurne to receive information about the historical
newspaper and event zu erweitern. With best wishes
Hochachtungsvoll
erzeberste Dr. Max Ebert
595
23 November 1910
22
November 1910
N3134
K.W.
Letter
from His Majesty the German Emperor regarding the discovery in
Deurne.
3.
I would very much have liked to reply immediately to Your
Excellency's letter of 20 October 1910, No. 2791, Dept. K.W.
However,
I was completely unsure. Just about this, however, I received a
telegram from which it appears to me that the Deurne finds have
become State property. The helmet, however, is broken into pieces,
and other objects are in a completely dilapidated condition. Proper
restoration will take a long time. It would be an honor for us to
have everything prepared for His Majesty the Emperor of Germany as
soon as it is at all possible. The documents sent to me by Your
Excellency are returned herewith. The Professor and Director of the
National Museum of Antiquities
(signed)
A. E. J. Holwerda
His
Excellency the Minister of the Interior, The Hague
[163]
Roermond, 30 November 1910.
Higgel.
Sir,
I
am very pleased that the helmet, etc., has been found. I was very
worried at the time. It is an interesting piece, do you know the
shrill?/Uz?? Now, what the inscription means? That interests me very
much. Hereby the stone knife [...] [van Beurden]
[163]
Roermond, December 4, 1910.
WlzG
Heer,
I
am very pleased that the find from the Peel region is in the Museum.
I was otherwise afraid that it wouldn't end up there. Could you tell
me what it says? I am very curious about it? Is the find being
restored? [van Beurden]
[163]
Well? G. Heer,
May
I politely inquire if you have managed to read the inscription on
the back plate of the helmet found in Meijel? What does it mean?
[...]
Roermond,
December 13 [van Beurden]
[202]
Appointment as assistant from January 1 to December 31, 1911 J.
Briedé
[632]
January 30 11
Verehrter
Herr Professor,
In
the Leiden Museum you will find a Roman helmet in Constantinischer
Zeit, with the Nackenschirm an inscription is a single one? tat,
there is only one photographic photograph here that can be found.
Although the man cannot be entziffern. We asked ourselves in
connection with Herrn Prof. Dragendorf, we can turn to you. Also, I
can write my inscription with the bits that I would like to read and
read in writing.
In
addition, you can read about Helmrande in Kapitalschrift Stablesia ♥
VI ♥, which you can see on the Equites Stablesiani, which you
can see in the Not. Dign. More than one thing was reported and also,
so they fell, with two inscriptions forkommen (C.I.L. V, 4376, VIII,
8990). Vielleicht kann dieses Stablesia Ihnen bei der Lesung der
nicht entzifferten Inschrift nützlich seien.
Even
though they were not known, they were not a problem when they were
published. If they were useful, they would not be welded, but they
would also be required to do so.
Ihren
Ergebenen M.A. Evelein Curator.
-
Herrn Prof. Dr. O. Bohn
Berlin-Steglitz
Kurfürstenstr.
3.
[632]
Feb 7 11
Verehrter
Herr Professor,
Thank
you very much for your help, which I really responded to, although
the desired photography was not helpful.
The
Helmet was founded in Summer 1910 in Deurne (N. Brabant). There is a
napkin, cheek claps and a nackenschirm. There were demands with a
source of reward for Silberblech. Der Überzug is now erhalten;
of the claimants are happy with their own small claims. Also, I can
take care of the weight of the heavy loads, and also take care of
the diet, so I can have it with the silver restauriert. Der
restaurierte Überzug wiegt ohne Wangenkkloppen und Nackenschirm
282.50 Gr. For the restoration we will spend 45.- Gr. Silver. The
initial weight of the excess weight and also was more than
282.50-45.-=237.50 Gr. signal.
The
nails have a weight of 32.50 Gr., the cheek claps of 2x17.10 Gr.,
and now the links are there. Since you are a Helmet, you will be
able to enjoy the benefits of rewarded Silberblech. They are visible
on the leather bands that celebrate those cheek slaps on the helmet
rim, ihren Platz. The cribs are 0.70 Gr.
For
the time being, let the inspection take place, also -L. Here are the
photos of Stablesia VI, and the attention to detail of the
photographs, which is not the only retouch with negative or positive
effects. They are the ones who are born in the Netherlands and who
are the first photographers.
With
kind regards,
Hochachtungsvoll
Your Excellency M.A. Evelein
-
Prof. Dr. O. Bohn
Steglitz-Berlin
Kurfürst.str.
3
[632,
p. 336] 92 14 February 11 301/447
from
Deurne
The
helmet found near Deurne in June 1910, about which I wrote to Your
Excellency in my letter of July 14, 1910, No. 389, is currently on
display in the Museum. It is the property of Mr. C. H. Krantz, a
manufacturer in Leiden.
After
much effort, Deputy Director Dr. J. H. Holwerda succeeded in
obtaining this piece. For a time, there was a danger that it would
be lost to our country. It is undoubtedly the most beautiful antique
piece ever found in our soil. It was purchased for 3,000 guilders.
Mr. Krantz made it possible to acquire the helmet so we could
purchase it at his expense.
His
sole intention, however, was to facilitate the acquisition of this
art treasure for the State. He is returning the helmet to the State
for exactly what it cost him, 3,000 guilders.
This
amount of 3,000 guilders is precisely what Your Excellency, in a
letter dated July 19, 1910, No. 1965, Department of Commerce, W.W.,
made available for that purpose.
I
would appreciate receiving your reply with further details of the
budget item to which the invoice should be charged to Mr. Krantz.
The attempts to acquire the piece for less, no matter how
strenuously they were tried, were bound to fail. The value, if it
were purchased, for example, in a market where foreign museums could
bid, would be at least double. Professor and Director of the
National Museum of Antiquities, A. E. J. Holwerda
Your
Excellency, Minister
van
[...]enlandsche Zaken te 's Gravenhaage.
[632]
February 17, 11
Dear
Professor,
I
consider your reading of the inscription to be correct, even though
the symbols ? for ? and ? for ? remain confusing. Regarding the
interpretation, however, I have the following to offer. If I had to
choose between your two interpretations, I would vote for the
first... Tit(ii) Valon(is) Urs(i). For surely the owner of our
golden helmet was not himself a captain? But is a third
interpretation not possible? The weight refers to the covering, but
how could the wearer of the helmet know the weight of the covering?
It was impossible to know without removing the covering from the
iron cap. In my opinion, the weight of the covering could only have
been determined at the factory and set there on the neck guard. One
could therefore think of a manufacturer. Since our helmets, as
correctly assumed, were manufactured in imperial arms factories, I
would like to consider a verifier who requested the weight of the
gold.
His
name would therefore be Titus Valonius Ursus. The first symbol,
which I also do not consider to be the question mark, could then
perhaps be a symbol for auctoritate (C. XIII, 2, 100 30 00) or
something similar. Your opinion on this interpretation would be very
valuable to me, and I hope you would share your judgment with me
again.
I
completely agree with your addition (vexillatio) Stablesia(na), all
the more so because the equites Stablesiani are considered to be
among the Vexillationes Comitatenses Africae und Brittaniorum in the
Not. Dign. (Oce VI, 34, 82. VII, 180, 182203. Ed. Seech).
I
will be happy to send you the supplements for the corpus.
Thank
you very much for your detailed explanations.
Sincerely
Your
devotee
M.A.
Evelein
-
Prof. Dr. O. Bean
Steglitz
Berlin
Kurfürstenstr.
3
[573]
Helden (L.) 8 Feb 1911
Mijnheer
For
more than 30 years there is a man in the Peel at Helenaveen with
turf graven in the inliggende area, can this be seen from the
Museum? I can't wait for it, but it's wild first and there's a lot
of latency. I hoop that uedel my zoo spoedig mogelijk terug zult
zenden indien het niets voor Museum is.
Hoogachtend
u. then. Louis Ueberbach
[633,
p. 44] ?? 1911
helmet
G
Smolenaars Meijel B b/Deurne
Keep
the addresses from Dr Evelein:
Burgemeester
van Deurne Deurne
Ds
B. de Jong (Wolk?ker) Helenaveen
A.
F. van Beurden Landmeter Roermond
company
Steegh Venlo
L
Verkuil Leiden
W.v.
Rossum du Chattel id [=Leiden]
Dr
H. W. de Visser Plantsoen id
[240]
Berlin July 24, 1911 Gold discoveries from Velp
[240]
Berlin 25/9.11.
[240]
Berlin September 7, 1911. Golden Ring
August
21, 1911 As assistant in the Nederlandsche afdeeling of the
Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden is benoemd Mr Hermann Martin
aldaar.
[176]
Helenaveen 9 Dec. 1911 [...] letter from A. Bos
[See
elsewhere]
February
2, 1912 Belangrijke vondsten.
Op
een stuk land, toebehoorende aan den Heer A. Honigman en situated on
the Lindeweg te Heerlen, heeft men naar de "Nieuwe Limb.
Koerier" mededeelt, naast various other concerns zaken a
gedeelte uitgegraven van een Romeinschen pottenbakkersoven, die
volgens aen oppervlakkige Beschouwing afkomstig moet zijn uit het
midden the first eeuw tot het begin der tweede eeuw na Christus.
This
is the first Romeinsche oven in Limburg, the zoo is absolutely
something. The large area in the area is considered to be cut from
the Romans and the men are hoopted and have several concerns from
the most important ones.
Door
de arbeiders, who were on the ground werkzaam, zijn volgens hun
zeggen four van dergelijke ovens ontgraven. In a daarvan vond men
still heel wat Romeinsch aardewerk en wel op de plaats, what was
baked in the oven. The aardewerk has the gemeente a gedeelte
overgenomen, terwijl de rest is aangekocht door the Rijksmuseum van
Oudheden te Leiden.
Door
the army H. Martin, assistant at the genoemd museum, was de verdere
werkzaamheden geleid.
February
21, 1912 [...] 3e. Opgraving in the Klein Duin te Katwijk-Binnen
door dr. Holwerda. Afgemaakt is the onderzoek of the reeds in 1910
and daarvoor in 1906 gedeeltelijk uitgraven Merovingischc grafveld
en van het heuveltje, waar het zich bevond. Dr. Evelein, who
suffered from her previous work, had been revealed to the museum,
zoodat dr. Holwerda zelf the work was taken by hand. This article is
an overview for the assistant, the heer Martin, van de in 1910 and
1911 the Katwijk thought opgravingen, waaruit blijkt, that men about
the results tevreden like zijn.
[146]
Wij komen here terug op de toezegging gedaan op blz II van ons
jaarverslag over 1912 en kunnen ons daarvoor beperken tot een kleine
schets die duidelijk doet zien in hoeverre de voorloopige kaart van
de opgraving der Romeinsche Vesting “Arentsburg”
The
wall direction recorded in 1910 was incorrect in relation to the
points where the ground traces of the buildings were recorded.
In
Fig. ..., the building traces belonging to the same buildings as
those measured in 1910 and 1911 are drawn, and it appears from this
that on the Provisional Map of 1910, the wall was drawn in the
direction AAA, while the control measurement in 1911 established
that this direction should have been drawn according to the
direction BBB.
The
subsequent measurements left no doubt and were therefore drawn in
their correct context.
KN
[?]
[635,
p. 133] 697 11 November 12
Dear
Sir!
On
behalf of the Management of the National Museum of Antiquities, I
have the pleasure of presenting you with a replica of the golden
helmet for the Museum. The box will be sent to your museum today.
Sincerely, Yours sincerely, J.H. Holwerda
The
Most Honorable Sir Mr. J.P.W.A. Smit. Ververstraat 23,
's-Hertogenbosch
[635,
p. 151] November 21, 1912. [...]
Roman
helmet from the time of Emperor Constantine, found in the Peel
region (after the original in the National Museum of Antiquities in
Leiden). [...]
[303]
Leiden, April 28, 1913
[...]
Excavations at Arentsburg will probably not take place this year.
Lack of funds, but especially the slander and gossip that have been
trying to make my life miserable lately, are the cause of this.
[...]
The
Reverend Mr. Rev. Heldring Nijbroek near Deventer
[550]
Venray, January 30, 1914
April
8, 1916 Frisian Museum
The
board of the "Frisian Society" has appointed Mr. H.
Martin, a lecturer in art history and drawing here, as director of
the Frisian Museum. Mr. Martin worked for two years as an assistant
at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and, as such,
participated in the well-known excavations of the Roman fortress at
Arentsburg.
[280]
Helden L., July 28, 1916
Esteemed,
Highly Learned Sir,
On
the advice of Mr. Verzondert (Dr. in Classics), who was present at
the time during excavations conducted under your direction, I take
the liberty of contacting you with a request. A collection that will
soon be auctioned includes several objects that may be of some value
to an archaeological museum.
I
have therefore taken the liberty of attaching a list of these
objects compiled by Dr. Verzondert.
Perhaps
you would be interested in purchasing them, or if not, we would be
very obliged if you would state their value.
Thanking
you in advance.
Sincerely,
M. Haffmans Wibaut
1.
Two Roman earthenware jars, 2nd or 3rd century
2.
Large Roman earthenware jar, 3rd or 4th century?
3
.Terra sigillata bowl (red earthenware, 2nd-3rd century)
4.
Urns & gray earthenware
a.
on three legs
b.
without legs
c.
with a curved edge-of-town urn
d.
small speckled earthen urn, 2nd century
e.
large roughly fired urn (much later)
5.
Various stone chisels and hammer
6.
Three bronze chisels
7.
Three Saxon jugs.
a.
Stone jug only with mark [?]
b.
two bearded men (glaze)
8.
a. fossilized tree branch
b
fossilized bark
9
Earthen lamp.
[279]
The Hague, March 22, 1918
Your
Honorable Director of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden
Your
Honorable Sir,
Mr.
G. Smolenaars of Meyel has contacted me with the complaint that in
1910 he found a gilded He unearthed a silver helmet, which was
donated to your museum, but for which he would not have received
half the value due to him as the finder, but only 1200 guilders.
While the municipality of Deurne, as landowner, had received 1/4
1000 guilders from the Steegh company, as tenant, also 1000 guilders
for its quarter. Smolenaars was reportedly offered 300 guilders for
the coins and other additional finds, which he, however, did not
receive.
Could
I ask you to inform me somewhat about this history? I thank you in
advance for the effort you have made.
Sincerely,
Your
Honor, Henri van Groenendael
Member
of the Second Chamber of Meyel
[279]
March 26, 1918
The
Most Honorable Mr. Dr. H.A.G. van Groenendael The Hague
Your
Honorable Sir,
I
am happy to provide you with the requested information.
In
June 1910, during a dig in the Helenaveen, the pieces of a gilded
silver helmet were found by the worker G. Smolenaars. Smolenaars
took the pieces to his house. They were safe because the Mayor of
Deurne fully understood that this piece, found on our soil, could
not be moved to a foreign museum. The municipality of Deurne, as
owner of the Helenaveen, was co-owner of the find.
Suddenly,
however, a third claimant appeared, the firm Steeg & van Essen
of Nijmegen, under which the excavation work had been carried out.
They initiated legal action, served a writ on their former worker,
Smolenaars, and hoped to obtain the pieces in this way.
That
was a difficult position for the man.
How
could one hold their own against such a firm?
The
deputy director, who had gone to Meyel in this matter, then, at his
own risk, bought Smolenaars' right to the found documents for 1200
guilders and awaited the outcome of the lawsuit. Smolenaars was then
able to refer the gentlemen to the other rightful claimant. This
other claimant actually obtained the firm's lawyer. The lawyers he
consulted did not consider the firm's chances of winning the lawsuit
high, but the legal basis for initiating legal proceedings was
available. We considered it fortunate that the worker was not
involved in the case.
The
firm's lawyer was also not entirely sure of himself, and so, to
avoid a lawsuit, a settlement was reached, whereby the deputy
director acquired the firm's true or alleged rights for 800 guilders
and the municipality of Deurne's for 1000 guilders. He was therefore
the owner of the helmet, i.e., the State became the owner for the
3000 guilders the government had allocated for it.
Regarding
the 300 guilders, I am sending you a copy of part of a letter from
Smolenaars himself. As any visitor to the museum can see, it was not
possible to restore the leather found in its entirety. Therefore,
there is no question of Smolenaars still claiming that money.
So,
Smolenaars has not been wronged. He has been helped out of his
predicament. Now the poor man has been talked out of it. The piece
is supposedly worth half a million. That is absurd. He submitted a
request to Her Majesty the Queen in the spring of 1917 and is now
turning to you.
With
this, I consider the matter sufficiently cleared up.
Sincerely,
For
signed. A.E.J. Holwerda
Sittard,
March 20, 1918
The
Most Learned Mr. A.E.J. Holwerda, Professor at Leiden. Esteemed Sir,
I
hereby have the honor to kindly thank you for your detailed letter
of the 26th of this month regarding the discovery of G. Smolenaars
in Meyel. I advised him to let the matter rest for now and to be
satisfied with what I received. - Please accept my sincere thanks
for your efforts.
Sincerely,
Yours sincerely, HenrivanGroenendael, Member of the Second Chamber.
[374]
Leiden 27/7 18
[381]
21 November 1922
Esteemed
Sir!
The
enclosed postcard, still addressed to my father, was sent to me. And
my father has ever told me that you helped German scientific
institutions in their difficulties and that he acted as a mediator
in this regard, but I don't know exactly what he did in this regard,
nor how far you intend to go. If you wish to continue this and I can
be of assistance, please do so.
Therefore,
I am sending you this postcard for your perusal. - I am also
enclosing a circular letter I recently received for distribution
from the well-known magazine "Bonner Jahrbücher." It
would, of course, be a great pity if this magazine were to cease
operations.
Yours
faithfully,
The
Honourable Mr. C.H. Krantz
W
A R M O N D. [and some other letters from 1922 and 1923]
June
15, 1907 Dutch State Gazette
SOUTH
HOLLAND. (Approved by decree of the Provincial Executive of that
province of May 28, 1907, no. 3.)
Year
1907. The population of the province is 1,144,401. The number of
highly taxed persons is 762.
332.
Krantz, Cornelis Hendrik, of Warmond, born In Leiden, December 20,
1853.
December
27, 1915. By deed executed on December 21, 1915, before the
undersigned notary, a general partnership was established between
Mr. Cornelis Hendrik Krantz, manufacturer, residing in Warmond, Mr.
Boudewijn Franciscus Krantz, manufacturer, residing in Leiden, and
Mr. Leonard Pieter Krantz, manufacturer, residing in Warmond, to
continue the business conducted by the former under the name J. J.
Krantz & Zoon, consisting of the manufacture and trading of
sheets and other woolen fabrics. The partnership is operated under
the name J. J. Krantz & Zoon and is located in Leiden. It was
entered into for an indefinite period and commenced on January 1,
1915. The partners are all authorized to sign the partnership
agreement and are generally authorized to act in the name of the
partnership, to issue and receive funds, and to bind the partnership
to third parties and third parties to the partnership, provided,
however, that the cooperation of all partners is required: a. to
buy, sell, exchange, rent, lease, lend, mortgage, or encumber with
other real rights the partnership's real estate; b. to enter into
all obligations in general whose subject exceeds the value of ten
thousand guilders; c. to lend funds or property to the partnership,
to borrow funds or provide security for borrowed funds, or otherwise
commit themselves to obligations of third parties; d. to enter into
settlements, to conduct proceedings, both as plaintiff and
defendant, and to assign disputes to s
umpires.
However, Mr. Cornelis Hendrik Krantz is authorized to perform all
the acts mentioned in this article alone and therefore without the
cooperation of one or both other partners. (6100) H. M. A. COEBERGH,
Notary.
December
15, 1923 C. H. Krantz †.
After
a short illness, Mr. C. H. Krantz, the oldest partner of the
well-known firm J. J. Krantz and Sons in Leiden, passed away at his
country estate in Warmond, aged 70. This cloth factory, founded in
Leiden during the reign of Louis Napoleon, had a worldwide
reputation. Although he was most interested in the technology of his
business, so that he continued to perfect cloth manufacturing, he
also contributed significantly to the advancement of the people. He
co-founded the first school for manual labor in The Hague and, as
early as 1897, established a public bathhouse in Leiden, one of the
first in the Netherlands. Furthermore, various social institutions
had his support and cooperation.
December
11, 1922 Prof. Dr. O. Bohn Berlin-Steglitz, Kurfürstsenstrasse
3
[303]
Helmond, July 10, 1918.
Your
Honor,
I
have intended several times to draw your attention to a remarkable
piece of land located in Deurne, which, as a lover of history and
archaeology, continues to fascinate me every time I pass it.
It
is a piece of arable land in the middle of the heath, close to the
former Germanic cemetery (all the burial mounds of which are still
clearly visible), rising about one to two meters above the
surrounding area. Traces of a ditch or canal can be discovered
around it. This piece of land, consisting of raised sand, is
popularly known as "de Braok." I've found larger and
smaller potsherds there several times, but never paid much attention
to them, because I attributed their presence to the thrown manure
[?], in which they had been lost.
Recently,
however, when a local farmer was digging to take some sand home, he
came across several objects, which he tried to keep as intact as
possible. But because none of them were still intact, he thought
they were "no good." So much was smashed. Four, however,
have been preserved, but none of them complete.
I
saw them myself, at the home of the farmer who found them.
They
are:
1.
A beautiful, large bearded man, approximately 40 cm high, made of
very hard material, brown on the outside, gray on the inside.
2.
A small jug, approximately 12 to 15 cm high, with three medieval
Christ figures around them, the instruments of torture, also made of
very hard material.
3.
A soft cloth bowl, glazed on the inside.
4.
A stone plate decorated with yellow lines according to the
accompanying sketch.
At
the site where these objects were found, hundreds of shards, green,
yellow, and brown, still lie.
I
took some of them with me. I also found a piece of woolen cloth
there, which had also been excavated. I took that along as well.
Should these finds be important enough to warrant a trip to North
Brabant, I would be happy to give you all the information and
accompany you to the excavation sites. I have said that the finder
will under no circumstances part with the objects before I have
spoken to him about them again.
I
hope to receive an answer from you.
Sincerely,
J. Heerens
Reply
24/16 19
[460]
June 7, 1920
MUSEUM
OF GERMANY, ETHIOPIAN AND MARITIME MUSEUM "PRINCE HENDRIK"
ROTTERDAM.
The
Director of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden
Your
Honorable Sir:
From
your letter of June 5, I learned to my relief that you have received
my letter addressed to Professor E.E.J. Holwerda, Director of the
National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, would like to consider
this as addressed to you, and also offer you my sincere apologies
for the mistake I made. - This mistake would not have occurred if I
had received your personal message at the time regarding my letter
addressed to you – sentence of the family name – dated
March 2nd. - If you [...]
[283]
November 1, 1920
[...]
I would also like to inform you of the following:
You
are aware that Mr. Kam has given his museum in Nijmegen to the State
and that a contract was drawn up entirely without my knowledge. I
now hear that they also want to appoint a museum director and offer
him a full salary, and that the candidate for this position is
[crossed out and typed over]?. vrooi nr/m eioesiu?e?
played
at our museum is known to you. On the one hand, I want to try to
prevent the Kammuseum in Nijmegen from simply becoming a second
Rijksmuseum, competing with ours. Furthermore, it's being presented
as if the municipal museum in Nijmegen will simply be absorbed into
the Kammuseum, thus bypassing the gentlemen in Nijmegen. I don't
think this will ever happen, as the Minister is led to believe. The
best, and indeed the only, good solution seems to me to be the
following:
I
think it would be foolish to appoint a highly paid special official
solely for that Kam collection; it seems to me that this would be
just the job for our friend Daniëls to perform in addition to
his archivist duties. Of course, a settlement would have to be
reached with the municipal museum, and he would need a few
additional assistants, but I think he is absolutely the right person
for this matter. We will undoubtedly have good cooperation.
In
this spirit, I have now arranged for His Excellency to issue a
recommendation. This goes against the wishes of the departmental
authorities, who have apparently been encouraged by Evelein's
friends. However, I have written a piece to counter this. In that
piece, I also stated that I was certain I was not alone in my
conviction, and I cited you as an authority from whom, in my
opinion, one would certainly obtain such advice. I don't know, of
course, whether the Minister will do it, but if you are actually
asked, you now know what I have written, and I am convinced you will
guess the same. After all, there is no one as well-informed as
Daniëls. So I have no doubt that you will want to support my
advice in this matter.
Sincerely,
October
29, 1928 So-called new Drenthe falsifications.
Dr.
A. E. van Giffen of Groningen writes to us.
In
response to the article in the evening paper A, page 2, of October
12, of the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, under the heading
"Rijksmuseum van Oudheden" (National Museum of
Antiquities) in Leiden, about a lecture by Dr. J. H. Holwerda on
Glozel. Spiennes in Drenthe thirty years ago and the accompanying
announced small exhibition of old and new Drenthe falsifications, I
would like to make the following observations. That in the past,
that is, in the nineties and thereabouts of the last century, urns,
stone chisels, and the like were produced or imitated and sold on a
large scale in Drenthe, especially in the area around Odoorn, is a
well-known fact. The warehouse collections in Assen (especially
earlier) and Leiden can, or could, bear all too striking testimony
to this. In older newspaper editions, including those of the Nieuwe
Rotterdamsche Courant and elsewhere, articles on this subject have
been written by, among others, the late Mr. Sj. Gratama, Mr. J. C.
van Kempen, the late Jhr. Mr. J. A. Feith, and Mr. J. G. C.
Joosting. Objects made and sold at that time are also still in the
possession of private individuals here and there.
However,
I very definitely doubt that falsifications like the one mentioned
here have continued to be produced in recent years. Over the past 15
years, I have come across several more, and twice in the last 12
years I have even been offered a similar, clumsy, and immediately
recognizable forgery in Assen. But as far as I could tell, they were
always remnants from earlier, aforementioned periods. It is a fact,
however, that the announcement in question seems to have caused some
concern, at least in some circles in Drenthe. Therefore, it seems
highly desirable to me that, if my assumption is correct, this be
removed as soon as possible. This is especially true since, as I
have heard, Dr. Holwerda recently considered a stone chisel he
purchased from Drenthe and found in the municipality of Emmen to be
a forgery. Dr. J. H. Holwerda informed us of the following in
response to Dr. van Giffen's letter: "In response to this
letter, I can inform you that I am convinced there is no reason for
any concern that may have arisen in Drenthe. The forged objects,
which have apparently recently been offered specifically to the
National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, were probably not made in
recent years.
May
6, 1929, INSTITUTION OF DR. J. H. HOLWERDA
On
April 2, Dr. J. H. Holwerda, director of the museum, was honored in
one of the galleries of the National Museum of Antiquities in
Leiden. He had been associated with the institution for 25 years on
Easter Monday. This tribute took place in the intimate circle of
friends of the celebrant and was attended not only by the members of
the honoring committee but also by the president-curator of Leiden
University. Mr. Van de Sande Bakhuyzen; the secretary of the
curators, Mr. Idenburg; the former president-curator, Mr. De
Gyselaar; the former secretary of the curators, Mr. Boddaert; the
rector magnificus, Professor Van Eysinga; the secretary of the
academic senate, Professor Van Wijk, and several professors. On
behalf of the commemoration committee, Mr. W. A. Beelaerts
van Blokland, clerk of the Senate, spoke. The speaker pointed out
that, thanks to Dr. Holwerda's care, the museum, through the
numerous acquisitions, has not degenerated into a warehouse. He
noted how much better the collection in the current museum building
is given more prominence than they were in the building on
Breestraat. The speaker declined to name those who had assisted the
director; however, he makes an exception for the late Dr.
Remouchamps, sorely missed. Despite Dr. Holwerda's great merits,
criticism of his work was inevitable. This was a natural consequence
of his work on the road. Criticism, however, also has many positive
effects, and among the grateful attendees at this tribute, Dr.
Holwerda would have found many critics. The speaker expressed the
expectation that the jubilarian would continue to work with courage
and enthusiasm for a long time to come, in the interests of the
museum and of science, to the gratitude of the critics as well.
Regarding the tribute he offered on behalf of the committee, the
speaker shared: Including that Dr. Holwerda had expressed the wish
to receive for the museum, as a memento of this day, a small Roman
cup of exceptional value, executed in the millefiori technique and
made in the first century BC. The curator, Miss Bruts, recently
purchased the cup at a public auction in Berlin. Along with the cup,
Mr. Beelaerts van Blokland offered an album compiled by the museum
staff, listing the names of the donors. Furthermore, since Dr.
Holwerda had indicated that he would appreciate some financial
support for his excavations, the committee—not insignificantly
supported by a significant donation received specifically for this
purpose from someone deeply committed to the museum—decided to
present the remaining funds raised in envelopes to the jubilee
recipient, under the motto "Excavation Fund." "Please
accept this sum with the assurance that we await its expenditure
with great interest, in the hope that you may thereby obtain the
results for further solving the problem of the Netherlands' earliest
civilization."
Finally,
as a representative of the Government, I have a particularly
honorable task," Mr. Beelaerts continued. "The Government
also felt it necessary to pay tribute to you today for all that you
have done on behalf of the Museum entrusted to your care. For it
went beyond the performance of duty. The Government considered a
special token of gratitude appropriate in this case, and it believed
it could best express this appreciation by awarding the medal, which
is reserved exclusively for those who have made a very special
contribution to the country's museums." It has pleased Her
Majesty the Queen, by Her Highness's decree of March 27, 1929, to
decree that you be awarded the Museum Medal in gold, and I hereby
request you to accept it from me on behalf of the Government as the
highest tribute on this day. (Prolonged applause.) Mr. H.J. Scharp
spoke on behalf of the Royal Antiquarian Society, which, especially
recently, has had excellent cooperation with the Leiden Museum and
with Dr. Holwerda in particular, as the speaker noted. For placement
in the museum, the speaker offered a 3rd-century Gnathia vase from
southern Italy and a terracotta statue from the same period. The
society's statutes do not permit gifts, and therefore the objects
were loaned, which makes little difference, according to the
speaker. Holwerda, touched by the great warmth he had experienced
from many quarters during these days, then expressed gratitude for
the tribute paid to him. The speaker especially thanked the
government and Mr. Beelaerts van Blokland, who had shared the
museum's joys and sorrows for over 25 years, for his heartfelt
words. The speaker also devoted a few words to the memory of his
colleague, Dr. Remouchamps, who passed away too early and whom he
sorely missed on this day.
Response
from A.E.J. Holwerda regarding metal thickness
See
regarding De Stuers https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_de_Stuers
July
11, 1904 [...] After completing some housekeeping duties, Prof. Dr.
E.A.J. Holwerda gave a lecture on Dutch antiquities in connection
with the reorganization plans for the Museum of Antiquities, which
he directs.
The
speaker then addressed the relationship between local and provincial
museums and the Leiden Museum. His view is that local museums should
contain the best of their region. The Leiden Museum should not be
the sole source of information, but should provide specimens of
everything found on our soil and also provide comparative material
from abroad.
All
mayors in the country have already been contacted to provide
information, but museum boards and private individuals should also
exercise supervision. Here too, a permanent organization would be
highly desirable.
The
speaker hoped that one day a scholar would emerge, equipped with
extensive knowledge, who would devote himself exclusively to the
study of Dutch antiquities; but in the meantime, everyone should do
what they find appropriate.
NATIONAL
MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES.
Leiden,
November 28, 1910
No.
604.
Please
address your reply to the "Management of the National Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden," not to specific individuals.
Esteemed
Sir,
May
I express my sincere thanks for your letter and the two promised
statuettes, which are invaluable to us in themselves, but also as
proof of our interest. Our subsidy has indeed been significantly
increased; ensuring that nothing worthwhile leaves our country
requires considerable effort. The museum is now completely finished,
including the gallery of plaster casts, and I dare say with pride
that one would have to travel quite a distance outside our country
to find something like it. Many a Leiden luminary from around 1860
would turn in their graves if they knew. Arentsburgh will yield
magnificent results; however, determining everything is a formidable
task. Ultimately, a publication will be forthcoming that will
enhance our reputation abroad and shed new light on our oldest
history.
Please
accept my sincere thanks again and believe
my??
Sincerely, yours truly,
A.
E. J. Holwerda
To
the Right Honourable Sir Jhr Victor de Stuers
Member
of the House of Representatives of the States General in The Hague
See
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1x4P3FFhHdg-XUCFjQS5Rctdi5Hkcmgfg
[letter P1112310]
NATIONAL
MUSEUM OF ANTICIPALITIES
Leiden,
11 May 1911
Please
address your reply to the "Management of the National Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden", not to specific individuals.
Esteemed
Sir
Thank
you for your letter,
I
fully understand your doubts; 0.06 mm is not much. However, we had
the thickness of the plate measured a meter later by a skilled
goldsmith using a so-called plate, and he arrived at this result.
After your letter, we called the man again. Same thing again. He
said such coverings can be so thin because the remark [??] gives
them some consistency. It's almost like paper. One must also be very
careful with them.
The
two young men responsible for the care of that piece also considered
a sash strap applied in the manner you suggest. They could have
mentioned this as well. In the description of the piece itself, Dr.
Evelein followed a different conjecture, as you know, and that seems
somewhat plausible, although certainty is impossible. The main
argument against a leather sash strap fitting seems to be that holes
are only on one side of the strips, even though they are a little
too long rather than too short. (This, however, is of less
significance.
The
three holes actually only appear on one side of the helmet. I have
examined it again carefully with Dr. Evelein. A fitting over the
entire length is certainly not necessary, but as I already noted,
the strips are at least long enough for that. The storm straps,
however, will probably not have been attached to the interior.
We
are very pleased that this helmet did not cross the border or end up
in a private collection. My son had a tremendous effort to prevent
that. It would have been unimaginable if such a piece were now in a
foreign museum.
Believe
me, in the meantime, yours sincerely,
Dr.
A. E. J. Holwerda
To
the Right Honourable Mr. Jhr. Mr. Victor de Stuers in The Hague
[letter P1112312]
NATIONAL
MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES.
Leiden,
May 16, 1911
Please
address your reply to the "Management of the National Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden,” not to specific individuals.
Dear
Sir,
Thank
you for your letter.
I
can fully understand your doubts; 0.06 mm is not much. However, we
have the thickness of the plate through a skilled goldsmith with a
so-called plate and he came up with this [=with] this result. After
your letter, we called the man again. The same thing again. He said
such coverings can be so thin because the remark [??] gives them
some consistency. It's almost like paper. One must also be very
careful with it.
The
two young men responsible for the care of that piece also considered
a chin strap applied in the manner you suggest. They could have
mentioned this as well. In the description of the piece itself, Dr.
Evelein followed a different conjecture, as you know, and that seems
somewhat plausible, although certainty is impossible. The fact that
holes are only on one side of the strips seems particularly telling
against the fitting of leather chin straps, even without them being
a little too long rather than too short, seems to be the main
argument. (This, however, is of less significance.
The
three holes actually only appear on one side of the helmet. I have
examined it again carefully with Dr. Evelein. A fitting over the
entire length is certainly not necessary, but as I already noted,
the strips are at least long enough for that. The storm straps,
however, will probably not have been attached to the interior.
We
are very pleased that this helmet did not cross the border or end up
in a private collection. My son had a tremendous effort to prevent
that. It would have been unbearable if such a piece were now in a
foreign museum.
Believe
me, sincerely,
Yours
sincerely,
Dr.
A. E. J. Holwerda
To
the Right Honourable Sir Jhr. Mr. Victor de Stuers in The Hague
See
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1x4P3FFhHdg-XUCFjQS5Rctdi5Hkcmgfg
[letter P1112311 and P1112312]
[Information
obtained from Hans van de Laatschot.
Available
at the National Archives under folder numbers 158_0, 1006_0, and
1015_0]
J.H.
Holwerda
Abstract:
The name Holwerda is associated in the Netherlands with the Dutch
archeology. In fact it refers mainly to son Jan Hendrik, known from
the popularization of the excavations in the Dutch soil during about
40 years. His father, Antonie Ewoud Jan, was professor in Greek and
Greek antiquities and later director of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden
in Leiden. At a very young age Jan Hendrik enrolled at the museum of
his father and became afterwards the new director.
No
real modern biographies of both are known, this article contains new
and critical information about the role of both in some specific
cases.
A
report of a visit to Italy and Greece of both father and son is
given in the Dutch Staatscourant, the official newspaper of the
Dutch government. Here we encounter the close relation between both
with respect to their scientific work.
Though
it is impossible to prove directly faux pas of both - they date from
more than a century ago! - the evidence of a cooperation in writing
a thesis is sufficient to treat this here in detail.
Later,
in 1910, son Holwerda falsified an inscription on the just excavated
Peelhelm, an extremely fine decorated Roman helmet found in
Helenaveen, Deurne. This inscription STABLESIA VI was NOT present on
the date that the helmet was found. In a scientific report of the
Museum of April 1911 it is mentioned officially for the first time.
This inscription has given rise to a whole range of theories, as can
be found when searching the term with computer search engines. With
the helmet nearly 40 small coins, folles or nummi, with Constantine
the Great were found.
They
date the date that the helmet disappeared in the peat at circa 325.
And
just this date makes the helmet extremely important for history,
because it
seems
to have a direct link with the Emperor Constantine and his family
that
resided
in Trier. We can derive from this link the idea that the helmet and
the
other belongings of a high-ranked Roman cavalry-officer belonged to
a near
kin
of Constantine. His son Crispus is a candidate. Just as
Constantine's wife
Fausta,
he was ordered to the death penalty in 326.
When
there is a connection between the helmet and Crispus, an explanation
can
be that Constantine himself - after the Council of Nicaea in 325 and
the
Vicennalia
in 326 - was uncertain about the future of the developing
Christendom
when he should die. He did not trust his son Crispus and
his
wife Fausta to continue his religion politics to christianize the
whole
Roman Empire as it developed from 324 when he defeated his last
rival
of
the tetrarchs.
This
kind of thoughts should emerge in real scientific persons, they
should try to find an explanation of why a Roman helmet was hidden
in a not habited area. But the Holwerda's and dr. M.A. Evelein (the
author of the scientific report) of the museum did not think
scientifically, or they felt that it was dangerous to pay attention
to the new falsified inscription.
In
my view Evelein is not guilty for the inscription: both his bosses
backed each other and he was obliged to mention the new inscription.
A few weeks after the release of the scientific report he left the
museum...
Almost
all texts are in Dutch, and this article is written in Dutch
accordingly.
Father
Holwerda was a member of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van
Wetenschappen.
Subject:
Antonie
Ewoud Jan Holwerda (Gorichem, July 21, 1845 - Leiden, August 29,
1922)
Jan
Hendrik Holwerda (Schiedam, December 3, 1873 - Nijmegen, March 3,
1951)
Holwerda
and Dutch archaeology
The
name Holwerda is inextricably linked to Dutch archaeology, although
his father had no formal training in it, and his son learned it
primarily through daily practice through excavations. However, it is
said of Jan Hendrik that he himself never held a shovel.
Holwerda's
father was clearly a scholar who earned his doctorate with a
(probably) sound but very unremarkable dissertation entitled
DISPUTATIO DE Dipositione verborum in lingua Graeca, in lingua
Latina ET APUD PLUTARCHUM.
ACCEDUNT
COMMENTARIOLO AD LIBROS DE ISIDE ET OSIRIDE ET DE GENIO SOCRATIS.
Incidentally,
his name is ANTONIUS EWALDUS JANUS HOLWERDA.
The
date given is "Scribebam Schiedam anno MDCCCLXXVIII mense
Aprili."
The
dissertation is divided into a large section as described above and
has two commentaries on the book of Isis and Osiris, and on
Socrates. It comprises 156 pages, including the 24 propositions in
Latin.
Note
that these are not inscriptions or anything similar, but grammatical
peculiarities in classical writings. It is amusing that sometimes a
Dutch sentence can be seen in the text as an example, such as on p.
57:
today/red
// tomorrow/death.
ein
alter Mann/ein junges Weib // gewisse Kinder;
better/half
an egg than an empty shell.
Plutarch's
Moralia apparently forms the basis of a large number of paragraphs,
indicated by §. 92 paragraphs on exactly 100 pages.
Clearly
a dissertation for specialists, but in my opinion, few will have
read the dissertation on the grammatical peculiarities discussed. It
was practically very difficult to find a copy online, and the copy
found is from Toronto.
In
short: Father Holwerda was clearly a scholar with an excellent
knowledge of Greek and Latin.
When
the series of excavations in Greece by teams from various countries
began, Father followed the results closely. In De Gids, we find very
long treatises on Olympia in 1881, Schliemann's Troy in 1882, The
Attic People and the Art of Phidias in 1884, and Pre-Hellenic Royal
Castles in 1887. From the history of classical philology in 1888,
1889, and 1890, and Bibliography in 1901. After 1901, articles on,
among other things, intellectual life, the visual arts, and the
education of our academic youth. In 1885, he wrote a book on Cypriot
art.
All
the articles contain a wealth of information, so much so that the
reader feels lost and stops reading. The description of Olympia is
supposed to make you believe you are walking through ancient Olympia
and witnessing fantastic events. But the author himself has not been
to Olympia and apparently fabricates the events from the available
scholarly literature on the excavations and from classical
literature. As an example, a paragraph from this:
In
the evening, however, the moon grows ever fuller in the sky.
Finally, the full moon is only six or seven days away, and the
festival is about to begin. The preliminary exercises in the
Gymnasium of Elis have already concluded. The Hellanodikes are in
the Plethrion, a racecourse of that Gymnasium, to organize the
procession of champions from the city to the sanctuary. Those who
are the same age or were close equals in the preliminary exercises
are placed next to each other. Now it is well worth going to see the
champions; they are all lined up here in squads. How much one
admires these sturdy men with their proud, free bearing, fully aware
of their strength. One examines the people with connoisseur's
delight. That powerful man over there, exceptionally developed in
the chest and hands, but somewhat less so in the other parts of the
body, is a "lion-athlete"; the other, whose legs are
somewhat slender compared to his mighty, awe-inspiring torso, is
called an "eagle-athlete." Undoubtedly, among all these
people there are also "bear-athletes," powerfully built
individuals, somewhat stocky, not tall, more or less square; indeed,
it is to be expected that among such a select group, one can
identify the most striking representatives of each type. Now the
procession sets off. Naturally, they are following the great
highway, "the holy way." The theorias will also have
participated in this official march to the Altiss. Numerous
partygoers follow, others continue along the road through the
mountains. Elis is now completely exhausted.
What
do we learn from this? An absent-minded armchair scholar, with a
fair amount of imagination, who enjoys using his intellect for
magazine articles, but has no practical knowledge of excavations,
neither in the Netherlands nor in the ancient world.
Many
years later, on December 5, 1898, we read a very extensive and this
time very readable article in the Staatscourant (State Gazette)
entitled:
REPORT
by Dr. A. E. J. Holwerda, concerning the scientific journey to Italy
and Greece.
This
concerns a journey made by father and son together. We will return
to this.
Around
April 8, 1896, Father H. was appointed professor in Leiden to teach
archaeology:
April
8, 1896, At Kon. By decree, Dr. A. E. J. Holwerda, a teacher at the
five-year higher civic school in Leiden, was appointed professor in
the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at Leiden State University to
teach archaeology and ancient history.
The
following announcement is therefore noteworthy:
July
7, 1898 By royal decree: Professor J. van Leeuwen Jr., professor in
the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at Leiden State University, is
relieved from teaching Greek antiquities, and Professor A. E. J.
Holwerda, professor in the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at that
university, is now charged with teaching Greek antiquities.
The
trip to Greece is clearly related to this appointment, but why J.
van Leeuwen was suspended is unknown. However, on April 11, 1884, it
was reported that J. van Leeuwen had presented himself as the poet
of the Adolescentis meditatio:
The
secretary further reports that Mr. J. Van Leeuwen, of Amsterdam, has
presented himself as the poet of the Adolescentis meditatio, and
that the retired member, Holwerda, has submitted a short annotatio
critica to Philonis librum de posteritate Caini, which, according to
the editorial committee's recommendation, will be included in a
subsequent issue of the Reports and Communications.
Very
confusingly, the aforementioned Holwerda is actually a different
person. This concerns the Royal Academy of Sciences, of which a Jan
Hendrik Holwerda is a dormant member. This man had the exact same
name as his son H., who himself was never a member of the Academy.
Furthermore,
this member is mentioned on June 24, 1885:
The
reports include two contributions that were not presented at any
meeting. One, written in Latin, contains critical notes by Mr.
Holwerda, a retired member of the department, on the Greek text of
Philo's work on Cain's descendants (Reports and Communications, 3rd
series, part I, pp. 274-284); The other, written in French, is the
work of Dr. H. F. C. Ten Kate Jr. It discusses the names used by the
Native Americans in North America to identify themselves and other
tribes (Reports and Communications, 3rd series, part I, pp.
353-363).
There
is thus a third member named J.H. Holwerda, who died on April 15,
1886, in Oegstgeest. He belonged to the LITERATURE SECTION, as we
can read in the Dutch State Gazette of May 15, 1886. Also, some more
information is provided in the "Het nieuws van den dag"
(The News of the Day) of December 14, 1886.
Father
Holwerda was also interested in education, as evidenced by an
article in the Soerabaijasch Handelsblad of March 7, 1888:
March
7, 1888 Dr. Holwerda discusses in the Ned. Spectator the Unfavorable
results in the secondary education exams, especially in history. Of
the 40 candidates who took the exam this year, only five passed.
Yet, they weren't lacking in diligence; on the contrary, Mr.
Holwerda himself admits that they often risk their health to meet
the requirements. But it's the method of preparation that's flawed.
People practically memorize books, and one book after another is
devoured by those preparing for the exam, but most don't take in
history. They have to know a lot, because the exams demand a lot,
and it's impossible to predict in advance what questions they will
be asked.
Mr.
Holwerda now wants a different method of preparation; he wants to
transfer the academic act exams to one of our universities. A simple
preparatory exam, for which the author sets the requirements, should
precede it, followed by two years of lectures, or, if there's no
opportunity for that, a study program could be developed with the
professors.
Mr.
Holwerda will certainly have given this method considerable thought;
to us, and certainly to many who are less familiar with the matter,
the idea seems very appealing; for it would put an end to the absurd
system of examinations currently in use in secondary education,
which the author so rightly condemns. The exams are the cancer of
education.
Father
H. became a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences on May 8, 1893:
May
9, 1893 May 8. At the meeting of the Royal Academy of Sciences held
today, it was announced that the Minister of the Interior had
confirmed the appointment of Messrs. A.E.J. Holwerda, P.A. van der
Lith, and H.T. Karsten as Dutch members, and G. Maspers of Paris,
Ed. Lieven of Halle, and J. Legge of Oxford as foreign members.
And
Father H. gave a lecture at the Academy on Eleusis:
January
12, 1895. At the meeting of the Department of Language and
Literature, to be held on Monday of this coming week, Dr. A.E.J.
Holwerda will deliver a paper on The Sacred and the Mysteries of
Eleusis.
And
on April 30, 1896, father H. became professor with the title
of
Historical Sciences, in particular those of classical antiquity; its
independence and significance.
The
following cryptic message can be found on October 17, 1896:
The
successors of Doyer, Treub, and Land were remembered and greeted,
and the establishment of the chair of archaeology, held by Dr.
Holwerda, was mentioned, although malicious gossip claims that a
trap or a net, through whose meshes he had only accidentally
slipped, was still prepared for him in the House of Representatives;
Meanwhile, fellow citizens!"
Son
H. passed his doctoral examination in classics on October 1, 1897:
LEIDEN.
Second part of the candidate's examination in theology with A. C. de
Regt and H. van Assendelft; second part of the candidate's
examination in law with A. B. van der Laan; second part of the
physics examination with J. P. Gogarn and J. A. Audier; doctoral
examination in classics with J. H. Holwerda.
Son
H. was then 23 years old; we would consider this a fairly normal age
for current studies, five years after turning 18. Clearly not a
truly brilliant student, but undoubtedly intelligent.
Father
and son. Only a few months after completing his studies, son H. was
allowed to go on a study trip with his father to Italy, Greece, and
Turkey.
The
aforementioned report in the Staatscourant (Government Gazette)
describes the trip between December 22, 1897, and May 4, 1898, made
by father Holwerda, who was allowed to take his son along. At the
expense of Vollenhoven's Leiden Fund. Father and son traveled
together. They spent almost two months in Greece, in Attica, from
February 7th to April 2nd. From April 2nd, they visited sights in
the Peloponnese for several weeks, finally reaching
Constantinople/Istanbul, and then took the train (the Stamboul
Express described by Graham Greene?) via Vienna to Leiden, where
they arrived again on May 4th, 1898.
The
report reveals that several paper prints of well-known Attic
inscriptions were made, as well as 700 photographs of the entire
journey. These documents likely formed the basis of son Holwerda's
dissertation.
Regarding
the Vollenhoven Fund, we find the following on November 19th, 1890:
As
is known, the late Mr. H. Vollenhoven, who died in The Hague in
1889, bequeathed a fund to Leiden University, the interest from
which will be used to award grants to outstanding students of that
university, enabling them to further develop themselves through
domestic or international travel.
The
curators of Leiden University therefore call on students who wish to
be considered for such a grant—regardless of their faculty—to
apply by submitting a sealed petition to the secretary of the
curators before January 1, 1891.
The
amount of the grant, as it depends on the nature of the trip, will
be determined later.
Sixteen
months after his return, on September 25, 1899, his son Holwerda
received his doctorate with his dissertation "Quaestiones de re
sepulcrali apud Atticon" [or Atticos, atticos]. This Latin
version does not deserve or receive much further attention; no
reference at all has been found. The German (trade?) edition is
occasionally mentioned, but more as a sales object.
Project
for private individuals. The title is then THE ATTIC GRAVES. Studies
on the Attic Graves Reliefs.
And
so something peculiar presents itself: the graduation date is very
shortly after the visit to Greece, more than 16 months after
returning home. That seems a very short time for writing a
dissertation, the German version of which comprises well over 200
pages. After all, resting from a grueling journey, describing the
photographs, and printing the dissertation limit the effective
working time to 12 months, and that for the Latin and German
versions. Moreover, the doctoral candidate is only 25 years old.
It
seems improbable that such a thorough dissertation—concluded
here with honors — could have been written alone in such a
short time by such a young person. Moreover, there is no evidence
that he had already been studying this subject for years before the
trip. But his father did possess the knowledge to write a
dissertation — in full or in part—in a short time.
Note,
by the way, that son H. was never admitted to the Royal Academy of
Sciences; an older person with the exact same name as his son was an
active member of the Academy until around 1880.
Events
during the restoration process of the Peel helmet, part 1
The
Peel helmet was purchased by the National Museum of Antiquities
before the ownership disputes were resolved and collected on August
31, 1910. What exactly happened to the helmet afterward is virtually
unknown. The only information we can read in the newspaper is that
on Tuesday, December 20, the helmet was put on display in all its
glory in the museum's so-called Excavation Room. And at the end of
April 1911, a Dutch-language scientific report by the museum's
employee, Evelein, was published, which in the 1970s was described
as "outdated and inadequate" in the scientific community.
Although
it was known from several newspaper and magazine articles that the
right cheek flap had been taken by another peat worker, this was
only discovered later in Leiden. Half-hearted attempts were made
afterward to purchase this part of the helmet from the unknown
owner, but the mayors of Deurne and Meijel were clearly
uncooperative. Therefore, a mirror image of the left cheek plate was
made by a goldsmith's workshop in Leiden. Evelein's report mentions
the goldsmith-worker by name, but little else is known about the
owner and employee.
Although
Van Beurden's article does mention an inscription—the text is
included as an illustration—no mention is made of the very
legible Stablesia.
We
can assume that the months of September, October, and November 1910
were used for the restoration. Perhaps due to the lack of clear
ownership on the sales side, the restoration took quite a while, and
scientific research naturally had to be conducted simultaneously.
External
scholars were contacted for this purpose. Initially, Professor Hans
Dragendorff from Berlin was approached, who in turn referred to
Professor Oscar Bohn, also in Berlin.
The
registrar of the National Museum of Antiquities writes about this:
As
far as I can tell, the Stablesia inscription was first mentioned in
Evelein's letter to Prof. Oscar Bohn, dated January 30, 1911, was
asked for his interpretation of the second inscription—written
in Greek letters—on the neck protector (STABLESIA VI itself
was clearly legible and found in other Roman text sources).
Apparently, they had already (several weeks?) previously requested
this from Prof. Hans Dragendorff of Berlin—an authority on
Roman pottery and name stamps on terra sigillata. Based on
Dragendorff's suggestion, Bohn was called in.
Thus,
we have proof that approximately five weeks after the exhibition in
the Excavation Room, there was still no explanation of the original
inscription. STABLESIA apparently required no explanation...
Incidentally,
this unspoken explanation is completely incorrect. Some cavalry
units or commanders with "stablesiani" were known, but
these bore a further designation such as iuniores or "from
Africa." An army unit with serial number six never existed!
Events
during the restoration process, part 2
Nothing
more is known about the restoration process than the invoice for 123
guilders, without further details of the work. The invoice is dated
November 24th, so we conclude that the entire process took over two
and a half months.
A
new cheek brace was made that still needed to be gilded. Today, it
looks much smoother and more contemporary than the left cheek brace.
The
helmet was therefore left in pieces on the goldsmith's worktable.
The construction was studied, and photographs were taken of the
pieces and other finds, which are also included in Evelein's
article.
Besides
the new inscription "STABLESIA VI," there is another
uncertainty: did the goldsmith regild the helmet at the museum's
request? According to the museum's registrar, the inside of the
helmet is not gilded, so we can assume that not all parts were
dipped in a gold bath, because then all sides would have been evenly
gilded. Unfortunately, no image or detailed description of the first
two and a half months in the Peel region is known that shows any of
the gilding. It is only mentioned that the helmet disintegrated
during excavation, not that any gilding, for example, was knocked
off. However, the helmet was wrinkled.
We
can assume that the Peel helmet looked as we know it today when it
was placed in the Excavation Chamber, so the work was completed a
few days before Christmas.
The
events during the restoration process, part 3
The
author of this article made an inscription on silver paper, which is
actually 10 µm-thick aluminum foil, using various markers.
This was very easy, so we can conclude that applying STABLESIA VI
can be done in a few tens of seconds.
But
what about the gilding?
If
the inscription was applied to the original surface, a trace of the
underlying silver should be visible. If the groove is V-shaped and
deep enough, the transition from gold to silver may be clearly
visible depending on the light.
If
the inscription is applied and then gilded with a brush, the groove
will be completely gilded.
If
we look at the current situation in a photograph, we notice that the
inscription "STABLESIA" replaces a decorative border that
is interrupted for the length of the inscription. In April 1911,
Evelein calls this decorative border "relief bands," and
we read about it:
The
helmet rim is decorated with two parallel, convex, relief bands,
between which is a border decoration similar to the outer edges of
pieces a, b, and c. This runs, just as we saw from the holes for the
rivets, along the entire helmet rim, including behind the nose
guard; Only on the right side, at the level of the central section
b, is it interrupted by an incised inscription, STABLESIA o VI o,
which we will discuss later. Fig. 62 clearly shows how this
interruption of the rim ornament was already made during the
helmet's construction, in order to allow for the insertion of an
inscription either immediately or later. Here we see that the
ornament is not arbitrarily broken off, but finds its specific
termination at the relevant points.
As
a second inscription on our helmet, we saw, on the right side of the
rim, that of Stablesia VI. It designates a division of the equites
Stablesiani, a cavalry corps, which, as appears from the Notitia
Dignitatum, [...]
This
interruption of the relief band was made by the goldsmith by beating
it flat! And then the inscription could be applied. Also note that
there are holes in the helmet at several points along the
interruption, and that the silver base is also visible in several
places. The flattening of the relief bands has seriously weakened
the metal there.
Events
during the restoration process, part 4, conclusions
The
inscription "STABLESIA VI" is highly suspicious; it was
almost certainly applied by deputy director Holwerda Jr., after it
had been replaced on a decorative edge above the renovated cheek
pad. Gold paint was then most likely applied with a brush. The
helmet shows numerous areas of damage on this part of the Peel
helmet.
In
my view—though this will likely no longer be definitively
proven—son Holwerda is the main suspect, with his father and
Evelein as accomplices.
Note
that immediately after Evelein's report was published, he left the
museum to work in The Hague. Many years later, Evelein and Holwerda
Jr. switched positions in an opaque manner at the management of the
Kam Museum in Nijmegen. The museum's correspondent in Roermond, Van
Beurden, also later knew of the forgery but played along because, in
his daily life as an antiquarian, he was no better than his client.
For example, Van Beurden and Holwerda later jointly conducted
research on the Church of Asselt, the results of which are now
disputed.
HOLWERDA,
Jan Hendrik (1873-1951)
Holwerda,
Jan Hendrik, archaeologist (Schiedam, December 3, 1873 - Nijmegen,
March 4, 1951). Son of Antonie Ewoud Jan Holwerda, director of the
National Museum of Antiquities, and Neeltje Jonkheid. Married
Petronella Nicolette Jentink on December 21, 1901. No children were
born from this marriage.
His
father was a teacher of classical languages at the
grammar school in Schiedam, professor of archaeology and ancient
history in Leiden from 1896, and director of the National Museum of
Antiquities there from 1905 to 1918. His son would follow a roughly
similar career. After completing his grammar school education in
Schiedam, Holwerda enrolled in Leiden as a student of classical
languages in 1892. He received his doctorate there in
1899 with a thesis entitled "Quaestiones de re sepulcrali apud
Atticos." Between 1900 and 1904, he taught at the grammar
schools in Alkmaar and Schiedam. From this period date a textbook
entitled "Hellas en Rome. Griekse en Romeinsche archeologie"
(1900) and his adaptation of A. Zeehe's "Leedboek der oude
geschiedenis" (1903). In 1904, he was appointed curator at the
National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, in 1910 deputy director,
and in 1919 succeeded his father as director. This directorship
lasted until 1939. He was also director of the Rijksmuseum Kam in
Nijmegen from 1935 to 1948. In 1910, he was appointed lecturer in
prehistoric and Roman archaeology at Leiden University. His students
would eventually include W.C. Braat, F.C. Bursch, and A.E.
Remouchamps.
A
short internship in 1905 during the excavation of a Roman castellum
at Haltern on the Lippe River would prove to be a major turning
point in his life. Here, for the first time in the history of
archaeology, a systematic search was made for specific soil
discolorations, which were interpreted as traces of stakes placed in
the ground, allowing the reconstruction of completely lost building
remains. Holwerda brought knowledge of the 'post hole' and the
significance of soil discoloration in general to the Netherlands and
applied this modern excavation method to the study of burial mounds.
The first excavations took place between 1906 and 1911 in the Crown
Estates near Hoog Soeren in the Veluwe region at the request of
Queen Wilhelmina, who had become interested in one of the burial
mounds. Although Holwerda must undoubtedly be credited with
introducing the knowledge of the 'post hole', all his publications
demonstrate that he was not a true fieldworker. Thus, during the
excavation at Arentsburg near The Hague, a difference of opinion
arose between him and his assistant, A.E. van Giffen, who was more
talented in this regard, regarding the documentation and
interpretation of the soil traces. This ultimately led to an
irreparable conflict between the two researchers around 1915. Van
Giffen went to Groningen, where he founded the Biological
Archaeological Institute and improved field methods. Holwerda lacked
the ability for objective, unbiased observation of facts and tended
to find only confirmation of what he had already anticipated before
the research. Field drawings, insofar as they were preserved, are
not reinterpretable. Early in his career, in 1906, he had written an
unpleasant and inaccurate piece against Boeles in Bulletin 7 (1906)
130-132, concerning Frisian terp research, in which he presented
himself as the representative of Dutch archaeology, somewhat
surprising for someone who had been working there for only two or
three years. These conflicts led to Holwerda's alienation from
mainstream scholarship. Among his work are the first systematic
investigation of a dolmen in 1912 and the excavations at Dorestad
between 1925 and 1930. In his publication on Dorestad and the Early
Middle Ages, he developed the curtis/curticula concept, which,
following the large-scale excavations since 1967, led by W.A. van
Es, must be considered incorrect. Among other things, his method of
examining large objects through trenches played tricks on him here.
Besides this excavation work and the resulting reports, Holwerda
devoted his entire life to Roman Nijmegen and its surroundings
(e.g., De Holdeurn). He also settled there after the death of his
wife (1932), who had been a great support to him during the
excavations and as an illustrator of his work. It is impossible here
to list or analyze all the research and the publications that
appeared quickly after the research (the latter being a great
achievement). Only the "Architectural Map of the Netherlands"
(1924) and "An Early Gallic Princely Grave near Oss"
(1934) are mentioned here. The publications from the many urn fields
in the south of the country (Riethoven, De Hamert) are still
valuable for modern research. The same applies to the material
publications from Arentsburg and Nijmegen, in which the systematic
museum curator is evident.
One
of his most popular ideas, disseminated through textbooks, is that
of the domed grave. This idea was developed during research in the
Veluwe region at the beginning of his career. It was challenged in
1930 by Van Giffen, whose ideas are still considered correct today.
In 1907 and 1918, Holwerda argued that there had been no Bronze Age
in the Netherlands. Boeles warned in De Gids as early as 1920 that
archaeological activities in the Netherlands were still too recently
underway to allow such a conclusion; He provided a short list of
bronze objects datable to the Bronze Age, a list that has only grown
longer in recent times, thus demonstrating the inaccuracy of
Holwerda's ideas on this subject. He himself held firm to his views.
He offered a summary of his theoretical convictions four times
(1907, 1918, 1925, and 1935). They remained essentially the same
each time, thus demonstrating a certain rigidity on the author's
part.
In
summary, we get the picture of a man who, especially in the
beginning, was unjustifiably overly aggressive. After the conflict
with Van Giffen, he became scientifically isolated; he compensated
for this with his museum and educational work, which earned him
exceptional popularity, especially among laypeople, which was not
entirely in keeping with his true scientific significance.
A:
Collection - M.H.P. den Boesterd in the National Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden.
P:
Bibliography of Dr. J.H. Holwerda. Rev. by W. Mank. Published by the
National Service for Archaeological Heritage in Amersfoort
(Amersfoort, 1977). Reprints of ROB no. 90.
L:
In addition to the obituaries mentioned in the above-mentioned
bibliography, A.E. van Giffen, Note in response to the letter from
the Curators of the State University of Leiden, dated September 3,
1915 (Oegstgeest, 1915); P.C.J.A. Boeles, 'The Bronze Age in
Gelderland and Friesland', in De Gids 84 (1920) IV, 282-306; J.D.
van der Waals, 'By order of Her Majesty', in Archeology and History
(Bussum, 1973) 509-520; J.A. Bakker, 'The Western Group of the
Funnel Beaker Culture' (Amsterdam, 1973) 10-11. Published as a
stencil, available at the Library of the State Service for
Archaeological Heritage; J.D. van der Waals, 'Albert Egges van
Giffen. His work in Drenthe', in Nieuwe Drentse Volksalmanak 91
(1974) 9-19.
J.A.
Brongers
Comments
on the biography of J.H. Holwerda
Jan
Hendrik Holwerda had a namesake with the exact same name who, as a
biblical exegete, was admitted as a member of the Royal Netherlands
Academy of Arts and Sciences. His father had already been admitted
as a member. Although his father had no experience with excavations,
he was nevertheless appointed professor in this field at Leiden
University. His trip to excavations in Italy, Greece, and Turkey in
1898—together with his son on a kind of scholarship—was
therefore more of an orientation trip. A detailed account of the
trip was published in the Staatscourant (State Gazette). See also
elsewhere on the website for The Power and the Glory of Emperor
Constantine. At the age of 25, son H. published a slim dissertation
in Latin, and simultaneously a trade publication in German. He must
have received some assistance with this dissertation and its
translation... The time between the orientation trip and the
doctorate was extremely short; the fact that he received his
doctorate with honors is even more remarkable. The dissertation is a
list of texts on epitaphs and the like, certainly not in-depth
research with entirely new insights; quite the opposite. It is
unforgivable that there are practically no illustrations included,
so there are constant references to publications that are not
readily available. It appears that father H. made an agreement with
the supervisors (De Leeuw and Hartman??) regarding the evaluation of
his son's dissertation. The author of this article is also almost
certain that father H. actively collaborated on his son's
dissertation. This pattern repeats itself later: Father H. appoints
son H. as curator, then—practically simultaneously with the
discovery of the Peel helmet—as deputy director, and even
later, son H. succeeds his father. It's practically certain that any
other applicants didn't stand a chance. Inquiries revealed that the
papers relating to these three applications haven't yet been
digitized (meaning scanned), so any irregularities cannot (yet) be
proven.
Indeed,
there were serious clashes with other scientists even before 1910,
with some complaining that colleague H. was very rigid in his ideas
and actions.
The
inscription "STABLESIA VI" on the Peel helmet is almost
certainly (literally) by him, and his father and the scientist
Evelein were unable to object. This leads us to the conclusion that
son H. was a forger. It was probably more of a prank, with
unexpected (at least for him) consequences: it took on a life of its
own. Incidentally, the number VI was probably intended to indicate
the Sixth Legion in Nijmegen, but the outside world didn't
understand this. The word only appears in correspondence from late
January 1911 (six months after the discovery in the Peel region).
Linguistically speaking, "STABLESIA" is a very peculiar
word, and even in military history, a sixth division of the Equites
stablesiani never existed. If three divisions (iuniores, seniores,
italianici, or similar) existed, a fourth and fifth are unknown.
Evelein
left the museum immediately after the publication of his report on
the Peel helmet and was appointed elsewhere. Later curators were not
always successful: Bursch went to extremes by conducting excavations
as an SS officer in Ukraine, without much success. He fell from
grace immediately after the war.
The
marriage was childless. Immediately after his wife's death, Holwerda
adopted a "foster daughter," Maria den Boesterd, a museum
employee, who lived with him at his home in Oegstgeest and would be
his companion until his death in 1951. In 1936, they both stayed in
a hotel in Berg en Dal, and when H., retired from Nijmegen, took
over as director of the G.M. Kam Museum, she moved with him from the
Leiden museum to the Nijmegen one. Like his wife, she worked for H.,
but Maria den Boesterd also wrote several scholarly articles under
her own name. After her "foster father" died, she
inherited the house at Eversweg 9 in Nijmegen. She herself died at
the end of 1973 at the age of 61.
The
author is unaware of the papers left by his son H. could shed light
on the controversies H. stirred up. He wasn't taken seriously
scientifically in the early years, and many of his theories were
never accepted. Like his companion Van Beurden from Roermond, he was
a big shot, which led to some rather strange theories.
Unfortunately, we must conclude that his ideas and writings are
still consulted and cited.
Son
H., however, didn't develop any theory at all regarding the Peel
helmet, even though it was an open goal: the coins found with the
helmet and its accessories could have led him and Evelein to an
important discovery from the very first report of the find, as the
pastor of Helenaveen provides an accurate description of the images
on the coins. The lack of investigation and the failure to respond
to the letter from A. Bos, director of the N.V. Maatschappij
Helenaveen, cannot be explained with certainty, but it is certain
that if A. Bos had seen the helmet with the inscription, he would
have immediately noticed the new inscription, and he was not the man
to let it go unmentioned.
The
museum in Leiden apparently has a den Boesterd collection. This
collection primarily concerns the bronze objects about which Maria
den Boesterd published. Whether it also contains information about
her "foster father" is unknown.
In
summary, we can say that Jan Hendrik Holwerda was a forger of an
inscription, that his theories on all kinds of archaeological
matters were often erroneous, and that his dissertation would
probably not have been accepted by today's standards. Furthermore,
the three appointments at the National Museum of Antiquities are
also tainted. The fact that he never became a professor proves that
the scientific community of the time did not entrust him with this
position; they had already had enough trouble with him.
There
are ample reasons to distrust any publication by son H.!
Eindhoven,
September 23, 2017
Paul
Theelen
Antiquary
Van Giffen at the Groninger Museum
The
Groningen Ur
by
Koen Kleijn
February
10, 2006
Under
the title "Professor Van Giffen and the Secret of the Terps,"
the Groninger Museum presents its antiquarian collection as if it
were a northern thriller about a headstrong professor on a steam
bicycle, who achieved world fame as the founding father of Dutch
antiquity.
"The
Secret of the Terps" begins with Gaius Pliny the Elder (c.
23-79 AD). He described the salt marshes of Groningen and Friesland
firsthand. The local population, the Chauci, he wrote, lived "on
high mounds or dams which they have built with their own hands to
the highest water level they have ever experienced." The Chauci
had no livestock, could not grow crops, and there was nothing to
hunt, except for the fish left behind at low tide. It was poor and
inhospitable: "They gather mud by hand, which they let dry more
by the wind than by the sun, and with this peat they warm their food
and their bodies, chilled by the north wind. They drink only
rainwater, which they keep in holes at the entrance to their houses.
(...) That is indeed how it goes: fate allows many people to live to
punish them." Pliny's observations would define the
(self-)image of the north for many hundreds of years as a barren
outpost, a mud pit, where Christianity had barely taken root and
which was only safely diked in during the eleventh century. Until
the early modern period, the sparse accounts of the Netherlands by
Pliny and Tacitus provided the only reflection of the local
population: the Batavians and the Canineefates, the Frisians and the
Chauci, with their semi-legendary rulers Claudius Civilis, Brinio,
Friso, and Gruno. These sources persisted until the eighteenth
century, and with them the sense that the history of our region
truly began only with the arrival of Roman civilization. The actual
history of our habitation remained unknown for a long time. After
the eighteenth century, regional phenomena such as dolmens and terps
became the subject of research. Initially, this was done by amateur
folklorists such as Daniël Riga, headmaster in Westerwijtwerd,
Arend Folmer, general practitioner in Eenrum, Rev. Wilbrand Koppius
from Den Ham, and the poet Ubel Wierda from Winsum, who also
invented the plywood skate, which he patented in February 1891 and
which allowed for both speed skating and figure skating. They
carefully mapped local history and naturally became interested in
those remarkable mounds, which were rapidly excavated in the second
half of the nineteenth century. The mound soil, the result of twenty
centuries of accumulated organic matter, was sought after as
fertilizer, and the impoverished region desperately needed the
income.
The
archaeologists observed the loss of this heritage with concern. In
1877, attention was first paid to the issue of terps and wierden
(terps) was addressed at the Great Historical Exhibition in
Leeuwarden, but without any scientific context: "The public
benefits very little from it, as they don't even receive the first
clue to their question, 'What is a terp?'" wrote Groningen
professor Pleyte testily. Such scientific substantiation was
lacking. Archaeology only developed at the university level in the
twentieth century. There was a chair in Archaeology and Ancient
History and Roman Antiquities in Leiden, but the discipline only
flourished somewhat with the appointment, in 1904, of Dr. A.E.L.
Holwerda as director of the National Museum of Antiquities.
Holwerda
had little regard for local archaeology. He considered the chairman
of the Frisian Society, the jurist Boeles, a dilettante. He had
appointed his own son, Jan Hendrik, as curator of Dutch archaeology.
Together, they advised their minister not to subsidize small-scale
local research. The Frisians and Groningers felt insulted.
The
issue was brought to a head by Leiden Professor of Chemistry J.M.
van Bemmelen Sr. (1830-1911) in his 1907 "Consideration of the
Current Position of Our Knowledge of the Dutch Terps." He
advocated a scientific approach to the excavations, under expert
supervision. Attention should be paid to geological and biological
aspects, to various layers, the remains of hearths, and the remains
of building materials. This approach was a far cry from the practice
of the old Holwerda, who was still one of those archaeologists who
cheerfully tackled Egyptian tombs with spade and pickaxe. He knew
nothing about archaeozoology, paleobotany, soil science, plant
sociology, pollen analysis, or the three-dimensional organization of
an excavation. Time for a new generation, then: behold the student
Albert (Ab) Egges van Giffen (1884-1973).
The
pastor's son, Van Giffen's archaeological career began in 1908 when,
as a biology student, he joined the excavation of the Dorkwerd
mound. He was an enterprising young man, a keen observer,
well-versed in biology, soil science, geology, and anatomy. And he
was diligent. With the support of Van Bemmelen, Boeles, and the
Frisian Society, he bought a motorcycle—a "steam
bicycle," as he himself called it—obtained his driver's
license on March 1, 1909, and subsequently visited all the
excavations in the region. He distributed cigars, pencils, and
labels to the excavators to encourage them to keep their finds and
record where they were made.
His
patrons soon discovered that the energetic student could also be a
troublemaker. Van Giffen coolly offered 750 objects found in
Friesland for sale, to the dismay of Boeles, who had assumed his
Society would receive the finds in return for the subsidy, but this
wasn't written down. Boeles had no choice and paid. Similarly, Van
Giffen "mediated" in the Groninger Museum's purchase of
twelfth-century bronze apostle heads from St. Walburg's Church in
Groningen, which he himself had acquired from the diggers for a
small price.
Soon
the Holwerdas also caught Van Giffen's eye, and they lured him to
Leiden with the promise of a permanent position. They later
regretted this decision. While Van Giffen emerged as a promising
archaeologist, he also emerged as a "short-tempered,
headstrong, hot-tempered, and moody personality," who quickly
found himself in bitter conflict with the bureaucratic world. The
episode is recounted with taste in the exceptionally beautiful
catalog ("Botsende Noorderlingen"). It is a conflict of
Bordewijkian allure. The Holwerdas deny ever promising Van Giffen a
permanent position. Van Giffen takes the Holwerdas to the university
curators. He accuses the Holwerdas of managing the Rijksmuseum—and
thus Dutch archaeology—as a private institution. He stumbles
over the sale of finds; as a civil servant, Van Giffen is formally
prohibited from doing so and engages an intermediary, a friendly
coffee roaster from Meppel. The Holwerdas don't fall for it, much to
Van Giffen's anger. He accuses Holwerda Jr. of falsifying data
during the Arentsburg excavations. He slanders, schemes, and
insinuates. The case eventually landed on the desk of Prime Minister
Cort van der Linden, who, in the midst of war, had to personally
intervene. The solution came from the north. Van Giffen's job was
transferred to the Zoological Laboratory in Groningen—far from
Leiden. In 1916, Van Giffen was put in charge of the excavation of
the De Wierhuizen mound near Appingedam, and there began Van
Giffen's Groningen victory. In no time, he became the linchpin of
northern archaeology. He was the leader of the Association of Terp
Research, inspector of the pre- and early history department of the
Groninger Museum, and curator of the Drents Museum. In 1920, he
founded his own Biological-Archaeological Institute. In 1939, he
became a professor.
The
highlight is Ezinge. The excavation of the terp there was spurred by
the 1929 crisis; Van Giffen arranged for the employment of
unemployed people as excavators. What he uncovered was sensational.
Complete farms, with poles and wattle walls still partially
standing, were uncovered. Stables for fifty cattle. Wagon wheels
with spokes. Roman pottery from Tunisia. Van Giffen demonstrated
that the terp had been continuously inhabited since 600 BC, making
it as old as Rome. Ezinge is the Pompeii of the North, Groningen's
Ur, and the muddy salt marshes between Hunze and Fivel are a new
"Two Rivers Land." The results are causing a stir
throughout Europe.
In
Ezinge, the new multidisciplinary archaeology triumphs, and the
Plinian image of the Netherlands is definitively overturned. The
terps had been substantial and prosperous. They were not a muddy
outpost of the Roman Empire, but an integral part of a
civilizational area that stretched from the British Isles to the
Baltic Sea, with trade, military, and cultural exchanges. That zone
already existed when the Romans arrived, and when they left, it
continued. With "Ezinge," Van Giffen gave the northerners
their own history and cultural profile.
During
the occupation, the work continued unabated. After all, it was not
Van Giffen's fault that the German authorities wholeheartedly
supported the research into the national identity, and that those
valiant mudflat inhabitants fit so well with the ideas about an
ancient pan-Germanic civilization. Thanks to the Germans, the
remaining mounds were designated protected archaeological heritage
in 1942. In 1947, Van Giffen became the first director of the
National Service for Archaeological Heritage; shortly thereafter, he
was given his own chair at the University of Amsterdam and an
institute that still bears his name.
Publications
found at https://www.idref.fr/112489362
014874016:
Die attischen Graeber der Blüthezeit [Texte imprimé]:
Studies on the Attic Grave Reliefs/by Dr. J. H. Holwerda Jr/Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1899
090575032:
Beschreibung der aegyptischen Sammlung des Niederländischen
Reichsmuseums der Altertümer in Leiden I, Die Denkmäler
des alten Reiches [Texte imprimé]/von A.E.J. Holwerda, P.A.A.
Boeser and J.H. Holwerda/Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1905
144950227:
The monuments of the Old Kingdom [Texte imprimé]: text/by A.
E. J. Holwerda, P. A. A. Boeser and J. H. Holwerda/Leiden: E.J.
Brill, 1905
184910943:
Beschreibung der aegyptischen Sammlung des Niederländischen
Reichsmuseums der Altertümer in Leiden [I], Die Denkmäler
des alten Reiches/von A.E.J. Holwerda, P.A.A. Boeser and J.H.
Holwerda/Haag: M. Nijhoff, 1908
108345475:
Catalog of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden. Section
Supplement I, Excavations in the Netherlands: prehistory and Dutch
antiquities / by Dr. J. H. Holwerda/Leiden, Boekdr. v/h L. v.
Nifterik, 1913
101983662:
Arentsburg: a Roman military naval station near Voorburg...with an
introduction in German/Jan-Hendrick Holwerda/Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1923
108171019:
Historical atlas of the Netherlands 1, archaeological map of the
Netherlands [Text imprinted]/J. H. Holwerda/The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1924
120879999:
The Netherlands' earliest history [Text imprinted]/by J.H.
Holwerda/2nd expanded edition/Amsterdam: S. L. van Looy, 1925
180985914:
Late Greek and Roman utility pottery from the Mediterranean region
in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden/by J.H. Holwerda/The
Hague: General Government Printing Office, 1936
185141218:
Description of the collection of the G. M. Kam Museum in Nijmegen:
The Belgian Goods in Nijmegen/J. H. Holwerda/Nijmegen: [s. n. ?],
1941
108343960:
The Belgian Goods in Nijmegen [Texte imprimé]: Description of
the collection of the G. M. Kam Museum in Nijmegen/J. H.
Holwerda/[Amsterdam]: Science and Cultural Protection, Department of
Education, 1941
063722593:
Earthenware from the Nijmegen cemeteries, manufactured in the
Holdeurn pottery [Texte imprimé]/by J. H. Holweda/Leiden: E.
J. Brill, 1944
116403543:
Questions about the sepulchral remains of Atticus [Texte
imprimé]/Janus Henricus Holwerda/[Leiden]: [s. n.], [1899]
16203086X:
Catalogue of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Part 1,
[Texte imprimé]: Egyptian Department/National Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden/[Leiden]: Ministry of the Interior, 1904
023975067:
Catalogue of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden:
Department of Prehistory and Dutch Antiquities, by Dr. J.H.
Holwerda, Jr., with the cooperation of M.A. Evelein and N.J.
Krom/National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden/[Leiden]: Ministry of
the Interior Dutch affairs, 1908.
Excavations
by F.C. Bursch
in Ukraine
October
20, 1930 National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden.
The
director would like to thank all those who made the celebration of
his twenty-five years in office such a memorable event. The
voluteers F. C. Bursch and W. C. Braat were appointed scientific
assistants. In response to the difficulties that these officials
seem to experience in obtaining their PhDs here in the country, the
director writes a bitter argument about the fact that Dutch
archeology is still not "honest" in our scientific world.
It is gratefully stated that the Government has opened up the
possibility of making some foreign trips, which are necessary to
keep contact with sister institutions elsewhere alive. Among the
donations we mention the collection of objects excavated by the
Dutch committee in Shechem, which marked the beginning of a
Pre-Asian division, an important collection of Egyptian objects from
the Insinger collection, a precious Roman bowl of rare millefiori
glass (gift from Dr. Holwerda's anniversary); of the purchases some
important samples of Sumerian sculpture, a Coptic fabric depicting a
saint, and a number of objects from Swiss pile walls. It would take
us too far to even give an overview of the many excavations that
took place again this year.
October
21, 1930 National Museum of Antiquities.
The
two volunteers, Mr F. C. Bursch and W. C. Braat, whose training at
the Museum was already mentioned in my previous report, according to
the director, were both appointed temporary scientific assistants on
April 1. It is very regrettable that, despite the great zeal and
dedication that both demonstrate, this training is not easy. It
would be so simple if, in addition to their studies as scientific
museum officials, they could also receive their further education at
the university and could also take the exams that would provide them
with the academic degree that the public now wants. seems to demand
from the scientific official. However, Dutch archeology is still not
entirely fashionable in our Dutch science. Those who compiled the
new Academic Statute a few years ago knew as a subject of study "the
archeology of any independent civilization area outside Europe",
but that of our own continent, of our own country, did not exist for
them. Anyone who, like our two assistants, is specifically dependent
on this study for his training as a museum official will certainly
find plenty of opportunity in our museum to acquire the real
knowledge that his later position will demand of him, but if he
wants official recognition of his studies, he wants to get a Dr.
right in time. to put his name in front of his name, as the outside
world actually demands of him, then he will still have to seek
refuge abroad, unless he wants to undergo a double study to acquire
his title somewhere in a completely different field of study. It
hardly needs saying how much this complicates the training of good
museum officials. In connection with his studies, Mr. F. G. Bursch
was granted leave to attend classes in prehistory and related
subjects at the University of Marburg during the winter semester.
From
around 1930, the employee of the National Museum of Antiquities in
Leiden was Dr. F.C. Bursch assistant to the director Holwerda.
The
arrogance of the museum is once again evident from an article about
excavations near Vlodrop. That article of October 28, 1933 by
Gerhard Krekelberg ends as follows:
October 28, 1933 Then a
few years ago, at my repeated request, Dr. Holwerda
from
Leiden sent his assistant, Mr. Bursch, here with some diggers to
excavate a part of the Knippeheide in which the undersigned had
already brought numerous urns to the surface before then, and where
Mr. Bursch now also dug up 18 urns, plus a piece of sword at a
Germanic cult site, and I later discovered more sites, it was said
that this exploitation would be revisited.
This
whole event was reported in the Publications 1932 [an archeological
magazine] with the following few words: "A remarkable urn field
was excavated there (i.e. Vlodrop), on a site for which permission
had been obtained (i.e. from the owner from Belgium) through the
goodwill of H.H. van Cruchten and Linssen in Roermond".
(Not
a word was said about the fact that this remarkable field had been
discovered by the undersigned after much searching, and that the
digging only took place after my repeated correspondence with the
Museum of Antiquities.)
Summarizing
all this now, it seems a bit strange, even painful, to have to hear
afterwards that a competent person once said: "in the area of
Vl.[odrop] there is nothing to learn." The reader can sense for
himself how obvious this untruth is.
GERH.
KR.
August
17, 1935 PRAE-HISTORICAL FINDS IN OSS.
Royal
graves in Brabant soil.
We
are told from Oss:
In
the past week, Dr. F. C. Bursch, assistant at the National Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden, conducted research at various places in the
municipality of Oss, during which very important results were
achieved. A dome grave belonging to the Beaker culture was found,
dating from about 1800 BC.
The
foundation of the round wooden structure that surrounded the actual
grave was still clearly visible in the solid ground. In one place a
branch of this track pointed to an entrance to a vaulted space, in
the middle of which the deceased was buried. This had been burned,
although the shape of the deeply buried grave at first seemed to
indicate the interment of an unburned body.
Among
the bones found was a beautiful bell beaker of Veluwe type, the
first to be found on Brabant soil. It also turned out that a barbed
arrowhead that had been damaged by the fire had been given to the
deceased.
Both
in terms of construction and discovery, this hill was already
something very special for Brabant. This was even more the case with
the other two graves that Mr. Bursch found. These were located
slightly west of the royal grave discovered in 1933 and further
examined by Dr. Holwerda. On a plateau, without any elevation
indicating anything special, were two graves, characterized by a
large number of poles, which originally surrounded the graves in
different circles.
The
graves themselves clearly contain traces of the dead, which in both
cases were buried unburned and in a stretched position. One of these
graves had a widening on one of the long walls, in which one found
as an addition a large decorated pot, provided with a separate base
and resembling a so-called deverel urn. If finding such a piece of
crockery was already of great importance, this is even more the case
with the grave shapes found. One grave was surrounded by a triple
edge of upright posts, which stood out particularly beautifully in
the main soil due to their gray color.
The
other grave was much more impressive. Here was a four-, in some
cases even six-fold, wreath of such poles around the grave. These
posts surrounded the grave like a strong fence. In addition, beyond
the extreme of these piles ran a wide, shallow ditch, which had now
filled with heather. The shape of this boundary was an ellipse, so
that the space enclosed by it was only partly filled by the circle
of piles and was otherwise empty. To a very small extent, this canal
even disappeared under the wall of the current caravan camp. Burial
mounds such as these are dated between the Beaker period and that of
the urnfields.
January
23, 1936 Lectures in Leiden
In
the National Museum of Antiquities
The
spring program for 1936 of archaeological lectures and courses,
which will be held in the evening in the Rijksmuseum in Leiden, is
composed as follows:
January
28: Dr. W. C. Braat, Syria and the borders of the Roman Empire in
the East;
February
11: Dr. S. Loeschcke, Trier: Sieg bodenstandiger Kraft, an Rhein,
Donau und Mosel über rötische Weltmacht;
February
13: Dr. S. Loeschcke, Trier, Bedeutsame ceramic Neufunde aus
römischen Töpferwerkstatten in Trier.
March
3: Prof. Dr. J. A. J. Barge, Leiden, On anthropology and the
anthropological composition of the Dutch people.
March
17: Dr. J. H. Holwerda, Greek sculptures in the National Museum of
Antiquities. March 31: Dr. F. C. Bursch, The Central European
Elements in Mycenaean Civilization.
Those
who wish to attend one or more lectures, please register before
January 22, either in writing to the Management or by signing their
name on the list available for this purpose at the Museum Porter,
adding or paying f 1.— per person for expenses. (Postal
account 171035). They will then receive a separate free admission
ticket for each lecture in good time.
Registrations
for the 1935 Autumn lectures are also valid for these 1936 Spring
lectures.
August
1, 1936 OLD URNS AND GRAVES IN SWALMEN
Archaeological
research by the Rijksmuseum in Leiden.
In
the past three weeks, archaeological investigations were conducted
by the National Museum of Antiquity in Leiden, under the direction
of the Curator Dr. F. C. Bursch on the Wylerheide, east of Swalmen.
During the reclamation works, which took place there last winter as
a job-providing object, some urns were found, which thanks to the
good care of the municipal council, in particular Mayor Strens and
the municipal supervisor Geraedts, as well as the Very Rev. Lord
Pinckers, pastor in Asselt, for science were preserved and are
currently being restored in the Museum in Leiden, to later be
distributed among the museums in Leiden, Maastricht and Asselt.
The
aim of the research was primarily to determine, if possible, the
size and construction of this urn field. Despite the difficulties
associated with the fact that the entire plot of heathland had
already been dug up, this was almost successful. It was established
that the urn field originally extended in a relatively narrow strip
along the Swalmen-Bruggen road (Germany) and was continued in the
areas now occupied by the factory and warehouses of the company
Gebr. Terstappen. As for the construction, it was relatively
irregular, the trenches usually found around the urn burials were
partly missing, and on the other hand they were very different in
size and were not in all cases circular, but elliptical. This
research also revealed various urns, which, together with the
previously found specimens, gave a clear picture of the diversity in
shape and decoration. All found urns are beautifully decorated,
either with deeply carved geometric ornaments, or more simply with
vertical finger impressions. The shape and decoration indicate an
early stage of urn culture, corresponding, for example, to the urn
types found a few years ago in Vlodrop. Of great importance was the
discovery of numerous burial mounds in the same area, eight of which
were examined this year. These date from a much earlier period and
belong to the so-called Beaker culture. Apart from a few finds of
pottery, this is the southernmost point in the Netherlands where
this culture has been found to date. The mounds served as a grave
monument for one or rarely several dead, who were interred in the
center and always contain traces of a decayed grave building. In
most cases this grave building was dome-shaped, usually built of
wood, in one case particularly beautiful and clearly visible, made
of sods. In one case the wooden dome could be found twice concentric
to each other in the hill. Another mound showed a ring of
alternating double and single poles around the burial pit. In the
grave, which was sometimes not dug into the solid ground, some clear
markings of the interred corpses were found, in a crouching
position, lying on their sides with their knees drawn up and always
oriented towards the East. Twice it happened that two dead bodies,
lying one above the other, could be clearly identified in this way.
In one of the mounds, after the original wooden grave structure had
collapsed due to rotting, a dead person was buried in a stretched
position in a tree trunk hollowed out by fire. The finds here were
very rich. A total of 11 pieces of crockery were found here,
including from one grave 4 and from both double graves respectively
3 and 2. All cups had a curved S-shaped profile and were richly
decorated with rope impressions or other rectilinear ornaments.
The
excavations were completed on Friday, visited by a number of German
scholars from Bonn and Krefeld, who expressed their admiration for
the way in which the often insignificant foundation traces were
revealed and explained.
The
excavations will probably continue next year.
August
14, 1936 Archaeological finds in Swalmen (L)
In
recent weeks, archaeological research has been carried out on the
Wijlerheide in Swalmen (L), by the National Museum of Antiquities in
Leiden, under the supervision of the curator Dr. F. C. Bursch.
Last
winter there were: some urns found at the reclamation works; The aim
of the research was now to investigate the construction and size of
the urn field.
This
investigation again revealed several urns, which, together with the
previously found specimens, gave a clear picture of the diversity in
shape and decoration. All found urns are beautifully carved
geometric ornaments, either simply with vertical finger impressions.
The
shape and decoration indicate an early stage of urn culture,
corresponding, for example, to the urn types found a few years ago
in Vlodrop.
Of
great importance was the discovery of numerous burial mounds in the
same area, eight of which were examined this year.
These
date from a much earlier period and belong to the so-called Beaker
culture. Apart from a few finds of pottery, this is the southernmost
point in the Netherlands where this culture has been found to date.
The
mounds served as a grave monument for one or (rarely) more dead, who
were interred in the center and they always contain traces of a
decayed grave building. In most cases this grave building was built
from wood, in one case particularly beautiful and clearly
recognizable, from sods.
In
one case the wooden dome was concenned twice or tritical in relation
to each other in the hill. Another mound showed a ring of
alternating double and single poles around the burial pit.
In
the grave, which was sometimes not dug into the solid ground, some
clear markings of the interred corpses were found, in a crouching
position, lying on their sides with their knees drawn up and always
oriented towards the East. Twice it happened that two dead bodies,
lying one above the other, could be clearly identified in this way.
In
one of the hills, after the original wooden grave structure had
collapsed due to rotting, a dead person was buried in a stretched
position in a tree trunk hollowed out by fire.
The
finds here were very rich. A total of 11 pieces of crockery were
found, including from one grave 4 and from both double graves
respectively 3 and 2. All cups had a curved S-shaped profile and
were richly decorated with other rectilinear ornaments.
August
5, 1937 ANTIQUE RESEARCH IN SWALMEN
The
excavations at Swalmen, which had already been carried out so
successfully in 1936, were continued in recent weeks under the
leadership of Dr. F. C. Bursch, curator at the National Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden.
This
year, several burial mounds located on the Boschberg, as well as
three mounds on the grounds of Hillenraedt Castle, were examined.
The
burial mounds at Hillenraedt were from the Early Bronze Age and
showed similarity to the dome tombs examined last year. In one of
the mounds very clear traces of corpses were found crouched, and in
another, burnt bones were strewn in the grave. The discovery of
three bronze "rag axes" in the hills was important. This
rarely happens, that one finds bronze objects in the graves in the
south and center of the country and these axes of Italian model were
excellently preserved. Just like last year, these finds, together
with an urn buried later, will be distributed between the Limburg
museums and the National Museum of Antiquities.
The
hills on the Boschberg were built of sods, and the presence of some
circles of originally upright poles could be clearly demonstrated.
However, here the hills also showed a phenomenon that undermined the
accuracy of the predictions already made by Dr. Holwerda's proposed
reconstruction of the dome graves was confirmed. After all, at the
top of the hill, within such a double circle of piles, five charred
beams were found lying next to each other, just as they had been
imagined in this reconstruction. The fact that the entire dome had
not been preserved was due to the fact that in later times the
skulls of criminals, whose bones were perhaps scattered in all
directions, had been buried here.
The
graves themselves contained unburned corpses, and in each mound
later also burned bones, with or without an urn, were buried.
Finally,
the existence of Roman roads in this area was demonstrated at some
points by the fact that gravel road surfaces and the road ditches on
either side were clearly visible in the profile.
August
7, 1937 NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES IN LEIDEN
Report
for 1936.
Dr.
J. H. Holwerda, as director of the National Museum of Antiquities in
Leiden, published a report on this institution for the year 1936. It
repeats the complaint that the government makes virtually nothing
available for purchases, so that the "Gildemeester Fund"
has again paid for almost all purchases. Mr W. Spijer in Amsterdam
again gave some interesting things as a gift, including a number of
molds or seals from Tell Amarna. Gifts were also received from Mr
Chenet and Dr I. M. van der Vlerk. Reports have been published on
various excavations in which the Museum was involved. The museum's
holdings have increased with various objects obtained during these
investigations or through finds from private individuals; such as a
zone cup from Varsseveld, a Roman amphora from Wamel; bronze objects
from Roman times, from Heerewaarden; Roman and Germanic pottery from
the Maas near Lith and from Alphen aan de Maas, a "Faltenbecher"
from Megen, Hallstatt pots found in Oss, a bronze Hallstatt sword
and urns from near Venlo, bell beakers from a cemetery near Swalmen.
The curator Dr. F. C. Bursch and Dr. W. C. Braat, titular curator
and also the director, have apparently again worked tirelessly to
reveal what the soil of the Netherlands contains in prehistoric and
early historical terms. Since Dr. Holwerda had a serious illness in
the last months of the previous year, he was replaced by Dr. W. D.
van Wijngaarden. The institution also demonstrated its activity
through various publications and the well-known evening lectures in
the Museum. The library was increased by 159 numbers and a record
collection of Tutenchamon's grave finds from the "London News"
was taken over. The total number of visitors was 8859.
August
7, 1937 ANTIQUE FINDS IN HEYTHUIZEN
Ancient
objects have been found in the Heythuizerbeek in Heythuizen. These
come from stag horn, they may be associated with remains of a stilt
house culture, which is related to the cultures found in Switzerland
and southern Germany.
Dr.
F. C. Bürsch [Bursch], curator of the National Museum of
Antiquities in Leiden, has studied the objects. Since it had long
been hoped to find such objects in Brabant and Limburg, the research
will continue. The stag horn objects, chisels, were found during the
normalization works on the aforementioned stream.
May
18, 1938 EXCAVATIONS IN HELDEN-GRASHOEK
In
connection with the various discoveries made in recent years in
Helden-Grashoek (L.), in which urns and other objects from earlier
centuries were excavated, the museum will now, under the leadership
of Dr. F. C. Bursch, van den Oudheidkundigen Dienst in Leiden, at
the beginning of June excavations are being done on the ridge found
there.
June
12, 1938 EXCAVATION HELDEN-GRASHOEK
Under
the leadership of Dr. Bursch of the Archaeological Museum in Leiden,
excavations have now begun in Helden-Grashoek (L.) on a site where
several archaeological discoveries have recently been made. By
digging a wide trench around the site, it is already believed that
good results will be achieved. It is expected that urns will be
excavated in a few days, as sites have now been discovered.
July
8, 1938 THE ANTIQUE EXCAVATIONS IN HELDEN.
Important
finds again.
The
second excavation in the urn field in Koningslust (municipality
Helden) also revealed important finds. Fourteen workers examined the
soil under the expert guidance of Dr. Bursch from Leiden for more
than a week. The excavations culminated in the uncovering of a domed
grave, which still clearly bore the characteristics of an old
cemetery.
This
dome tomb contained seven urns, including several of a rare shape,
as well as a bell beaker, a stone knife and various stone
arrowheads.
The
finds clearly bear the stamp of their period. For example, urns have
now been found from 1000, 400, 500 and 300 years BC. It was a pity
that the areas in which the excavations were carried out had already
been partially dug up by non-experts. The finds will be sent to
Leiden for restoration, after which they will be given a
destination.
September
28, 1938 Archaeological finds in Swalmen
ROMAN PAN OVENS EXPOSED.
In
recent weeks, archaeological research has been carried out in
various places in the municipality of Swalmen, starting from the
National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, under the direction of Dr.
F. C. Bursch, curator of this central institution.
Following
the investigations of 1936 and 1937, two burial mounds were first
excavated, containing burnt human bones buried in tree coffins. This
further completes the series of different grave forms from around
1800 BC, previously demonstrated in this municipality, so that
continuous habitation can be assumed here from this date until Roman
times.
The
remains of a Roman villa dating from the latter period, more
specifically from the 2nd century AD, were excavated on his estate
"Groenewoud" with the kind permission of the owner, Mr.
Finken. These residential remains were located on the Swalm, close
to the Roman road found there in 1937.
Finally,
in the hamlet of "Middelhoven", three Roman pan kilns from
the last part of the 2nd century could be uncovered, the first finds
of this kind in Limburg. These ovens were extremely well preserved,
so that many details could be studied better than elsewhere. The
central flue and the side flues running diagonally upwards had been
exposed to such heat from the blazing fire that their walls were
covered with a fairly thick layer of green or blue glaze of
beautiful colors. This fire reached the material to be fired, which
stood on a clay floor above, through numerous small round openings
in that floor. The whole was originally covered with a vault, in
which holes must also have been left to allow the smoke to escape.
Finally, these ovens were covered together with a roof resting on
posts, of which, however, only the large stones on which the
supporting posts rested were found in a square. In these ovens,
which partly covered each other and were therefore used one after
the other (first two smaller ones, then the larger one), in addition
to a few shards, also the puduets of this industry, pans, floor
tiles, heating pipes, etc. were found. Some pans had an inscription,
others had an impression and of a Roman hobnail shoe and of a dog's
or fox's paw. A row of finished tiles still rested where one of the
deck posts had stood, ready to be transported to the customers.
This
large and flourishing industry, whose heirs in Swalmen today make
the same clay tiles, etc., has fortunately unexpectedly ceased
operations. The clay pit was found in the vicinity of the ovens,
while at least some of the raw material must have been extracted
from the Swalmen in the immediate vicinity. Since this was such an
excellently preserved and historically important object, the first
of its kind found in Limburg, the interest from the current
industrialists in Limburg, as well as from the population of Swalmen
itself, was very great.
August
19, 1939 The forgery of prehistoric objects.
An
arrest in Putten.
In
yesterday's magazine, extensive mention was made of the forgery of
prehistoric objects on the Veluwe, which have been marketed as
genuine and of which many have already fallen victim.
One
of the victims was the retired teacher Z. from Lunteren, who had
purchased approximately 30 guilders worth of so-called prehistoric
objects from a certain H. de R. from Putten, who claimed to have
taken them out of the ground. Dr. F. C. Bursch, curator of the
National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, who currently leads the
excavations on the "de Valk" estate in Lunteren, had,
however, established its inauthenticity, reports the "N. R.
Crt." [now: NRC]. Mr Z. has now submitted a complaint to the
police in Ede and as a result an investigation has been initiated by
the police commissioner there, Mr H. P. J. Hulsman, together with
the brigade commander of the National Police in Putten.
Some
counterfeit prehistoric objects were found at R.'s, but he insisted
that these, as well as the collection he had sold to Mr. Z., were
genuine. A report has been drawn up against him for fraud.
The
question is whether R. should be regarded as the main perpetrator of
the falsifications or as an accomplice who promoted the
falsifications by discovering them in the ground during excavations.
He had also done this in Lunteren, where doubts immediately arose as
to the scientific value of his alleged discoveries, so that he had
to cease his work. In the meantime, however, he had already sold a
collection of the objects to Mr. Z., including some cups, a string
of beads and a flint chisel, all of which had turned out to be
forgeries.
The
suspicion is not unfounded that he obtained them from someone else
who manufactured these objects on a large scale. The police are now
also conducting an investigation into the origin.
July
1, 1940 14 days after the start of the war, this Bursch is
appointed
head
of a committee for archaeological soil research. There is immediate
mention of Germanic culture and they want to make an inventory per
municipality of finds that are in the hands of private individuals.
And in addition:
Moreover,
if these are unique finds of truly national significance, we will of
course make every effort to give these objects a place in the
National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, possibly by exchanging
them with other museum pieces, but the main reason why we have to do
this is a to have a complete overview of what the Dutch soil has
yielded and will yield in terms of archaeology.
August
10, 1940 EXCAVATIONS IN NORTH LIMBURG
Numerous
important finds. Much was lost.
The
establishment of the National Bureau for Archaeological Soil
Research a few weeks ago was received with great approval among
stakeholders in North Limburg. This may be primarily because it will
now be a thing of the past that excavations can be carried out by
unauthorized persons, with the result that important areas for
excavations will be lost.
More
and more areas have been developed in Limburg in the last half
century. In addition, many hill edges of high terrain were
excavated. This has almost always happened without any attention
being paid to the importance or not of these areas from an
archaeological point of view. Besides the fact that Limburg has lost
its beauty as a result - the hilly area that gave the landscape such
a special cachet disappeared - it has also lost its importance.
After all, such excavated areas often had their own history, which
previously appealed to the nature lover, but has now become
virtually worthless for him. Some of these areas are artificial
heights — e.g. burial mounds - however, they are largely
natural heights, which were often trodden by man in times long past:
man lived there and left his mark left behind.
Especially
in the years that major works were carried out in Limburg - the
construction of railway lines, the digging of canals, etc. - not
only many heights were excavated that were in the route, but also
many heights far away, which served as sand depots, were considered
and excavated. Naturally, discoveries were occasionally made that
attracted attention. However, this interest soon waned. The finds
were namely previously not sufficiently studied. People contented
themselves with collecting those found objects - usually only the
gifts, such as urns and weapons. Shards were considered of no
importance. Nor do the discovery circumstances, which would now have
special significance for the experts. As a result of all these
circumstances, it may have been the case that until recently it was
believed that flint was minted almost exclusively in South Limburg
and was traded from there in prehistoric times to other areas,
whereby the the rest of Limburg thought it could count. The research
of Mr. L.D. Keus in Venlo, who, as an archaeologist and reporter for
the Rijksmuseum, carries out excavations in North Limburg and
Oost-Brabant, has conclusively demonstrated the untenability of this
with regard to the Venlo area and its surroundings. Over the past
six years he has carried out numerous excavations here and has come
to the conclusion that there were indeed flint workshops here, which
apparently had been in use for centuries: several dating back to
about 20,000 BC or even earlier until the Neolithic, others also
after that.
These
studios are all located on high ground, almost always on flat tundra
banks. As a rule, they are not lower than 20 meters above A.P.
[Amsterdams Peil] and therefore - especially if they were located
near inhabited areas or near roads, railways, etc. - they were
sacrificed to excavations as a sand deposit. All these places have
been completely or partially destroyed for road construction,
raising of land, stone production, etc. Of all the studios that Mr
Keus has been able to discover so far, none are now intact: almost
all have been completely excavated.
The
workshops each had more than one battle circle (battle site). Four
or five more battle sites were found in the larger workshops, which
does not rule out the possibility that there may have been more.
They are all located near sites where flint lumps were naturally
found, as well as pieces of (lime sand) Devon rock. The oldest
inhabitants processed both rocks, small tools (microliths) and
larger tools from Devon rock. In addition to many beaten flints and
various larger tools and working stones made of Devon rock, a knot
was found here, which was used for salmon fishing and is similar to
that found on the Maas side: this is a find of very great
significance. Studios were found - now, as mentioned, they are all
almost completely excavated - two large and three small ones to the
N.E. of Venlo; one at Ossenberg and one at Lomm and one at the lock
in Belfeld. Battle circles were found in Lottum, Molenbosch and
Hout. Both on the east and west sides of the Maas there are mountain
ridges at some distance, which are now increasingly being
cultivated. These ridges are almost always places where people lived
or were buried in the past. According to the research of Mr. Keus,
the settlements from before Christ (indigenous population) were
almost always halfway up the slope. Two of them were so low that a
wall of one meter was necessary to protect the residents against
high water levels. These finds of great archaeological significance
were both completely excavated for sand extraction. One is halfway
along the Grubbenvorst-Blerick road; the other halfway along the
Belfeld-Reuver road.
During
the cultivation of land, a La Taine residence was found on a ridge
on the west side of the Maas. In general it can be said that the
ridge from Kessel-Eych [Kessel-Eik] to Baarlo is an uninterrupted
series of urn fields, where all kinds of material can be found. This
ridge is increasingly being cultivated, which is at the expense of
many finds. All this shows how much it is necessary that the
processing, excavation or cultivation of areas that may be of
significance from an archaeological point of view, takes place under
expert supervision, so that finds and discovery conditions can be
brought to the attention of the government.
September
20, 1941 EXCAVATIONS IN KESSEL-HOUT
In
recent weeks, the National Museum of Antiquities led by Dr. Bursch
has been busy with excavations under Kessel in Limburg. On a site
reported several years ago by a correspondent of the museum, Mr Keus
from Venlo, during the mobilization of military excavators Roman
wall foundations were discovered. The investigation now carried out
showed that we were dealing with the foundations of a fairly large
but simple building from Roman times. The large mass of charcoal
found indicates that a wooden superstructure once stood on these
foundations; in fact, several large nails that were used for this
have also been found. This building was destroyed by fire. Later, a
much smaller building was built on the same site, the foundations of
which have also been found, also from Roman times. The pottery found
was mainly Roman, while there were also some indigenous pieces.
Based on the pottery, both buildings can be dated to the third
century AD. Coins were not found this time. It turned out that Roman
coins have always been found on a neighboring site, which - as goes
without saying - are of the utmost importance for dating. These
coins are often sold well below their value. As usual, it turned out
that it is in the interest of science and in the interest of the
finder if finds - and this of course applies just as much to coins
as to other antiquities such as urns, etc. - are reported to the
National Museum of Antiquities, Rapenburg, Leiden, as it is
impossible for a non-expert to determine the value of such finds.
The intention is to continue the research next year on the adjacent
site, where tile pieces, foundations and even chunks of mural work
were also found during a test excavation.
August
6, 1942 New avenues in archaeological soil research
DIVISION
OF THE PROVINCE INTO ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESORTS WITH THE REGIONAL
MUSEUMS AS THE CENTERS
The
establishment of archaeological departments, centered on the various
regional museums, represents an important advance in the field of
methodical soil research into monuments of historical value. This
arrangement, which had been prepared for a long time, came into
force by a decision of the Secretary General of the Department of
Education, Science and Cultural Protection dated 31 July. This
provides a legal basis for a arrangement that had been designed for
some time and which should be can be regarded as a decentralization
measure in the archaeological field. Previously, most excavations on
a larger scale were carried out exclusively under the auspices of
the Oudheidkundig Museum in Leiden or the Archaeological Institute
in Groningen. These two university institutions had the necessary
scientifically and practically trained staff and also received
government support. But outside these institutions, anyone could
carry out excavations on his own if he received permission from the
owner of the land and had the time and resources to complete the
work successfully. In this way it was quite an expensive hobby and
we owe the knowledge of the history of our region (and we are
thinking in particular of pre-history) to those energetic and
knowledgeable men who willingly sacrificed their time and money for
it. It is also thanks to these men that quite a lot of what emerged
from the soil over time has been preserved for Limburg. Because as
soon as Leiden or Groningen were involved (and this was especially
the case with promising explorations), the objects from the Limburg
soil went straight to these central collection points, while the
local institutions received, at best, plaster casted copies. All
this has now changed due to the official recognition of the regional
museums as supervisory bodies for excavations in the area under
their jurisdiction. In the case of proposed soil research, the
regional museum must be made aware of it, while the finds must be
made available to it. This important task has made the museum the
center of historical and archaeological life in a particular region.
It is therefore officially recognized. As an umbrella organization,
the Provincial Historical and Archaeological Society reserves those
areas for itself that have not been assigned to a regional museum.
The Society will also be the connecting link with the central
museums in Leiden and Groningen. The Society's task has been
delegated to the archaeological sub-committee for the province of
Limburg, which is under the proven leadership of Dr. H. J. Beckers
Sr. in Beek. The heads of the various regional museums are
corresponding members of the sub-committee and keep them informed of
the status of excavations in their archaeological area by regularly
sending messages and reports. According to the above-mentioned
decision of the Secretary General of the Department of Education,
Science and Cultural Protection, these archaeological areas are
specifically the aforementioned regional museums are assigned as
follows:
1o.
The Provincial Archaeological Museum of the Limburg Historical and
Archaeological Society in MAASTRICHT, with the entire province of
Limburg and in particular South Limburg, in the North up to and
including the municipalities of Bunde, Meerssen, Valkenburg-Houthem,
Hulsberg, Klimmen, Schin on Geul, Wijlré and Wittem:
2o.
The Municipal Archaeological Museum in HEERLEN, with the
municipalities of Schinveld, Merkelbeek, Brunssum, Amstenrade,
Hoensbroek, Nuth, Schimmert, Wijnandsrade, Voerendaal, Simpelveld,
Bocholtz, Heerlen, Scheijdt, Kerkrade, Eijgelshoven and Ubach over
Worms.
3o.
The "Museum Doctor Beckers" in BEEK, within the
jurisdiction of the municipalities of Geulle, Ulestraten, Spaubeek,
Beek, Elsloo, Stein, Urmond, Geleen and Schinnen;
4o.
"Museum Het Land van Sittard" in SITTARD, with the
municipalities of Sittard, Munstergeleen, Oirsbeek, Bingelrade,
Jabeek, Limbricht, Born, Obbicht and Papenhoven, Grevenbicht,
Susteren, Roosteren, Nieuwstadt, Ohé and Laak, Echt,
Stevensweert, Montfort and Posterholt;
5o.
The Stedelijk Museum in WEERT, with the municipalities of Neeritter,
Ittervoort, Hunsel, Grathem, Baexem, Heythuysen, Stramproy, Weert
and Nederweert;
6o.
The Municipal Museum in ROERMOND, with the municipalities of
Roermond, Haelen, Horn, Beegden, Herten, Maasbracht, Linne,
Odiliënberg, Melick and Herkenbosch, Vlodrop, Maasniel,
Swalmen, Buggenum, Nunhem, Neer, Beesel, Heythuysen, Roggel, Meijel,
Grathem, Heel and Panheel, Wessem, Thorn and Ittervoort;
7o.
The Folkloric Museum of the monumental church in ASSELT, within the
jurisdiction of the municipalities mentioned under 6o;
8o.
The Tegelsche Oudheidkamer in TEGELEN, with the municipalities of
Tegelen, Venlo Belfeld, Arcen en Velden, Maasbree, Helden, Horst and
Sevenum;
9o.
The Municipal Museum in VENLO, within the jurisdiction of the
municipalities mentioned under 8o., and with the provision that the
recognition takes effect on the day that the museum is founded.
May
26, 1943 Excavations in Ukraine
Led
by Dr. Bursch
The
East Company writes:
On
the initiative of the “Bezirkskommissar” of
Dnipropetrovsk, archaeological excavations will soon be carried out
in the bend of the Dnieper, between Dnipropetrovsk and Saparosje.
There are a number of Scythian dolmens here, while quite extensive
Gothic burial grounds are present in the same region.
The
latter in particular can make an extremely valuable contribution to
the knowledge of the first Gothic settlements in these areas
It
may be considered an honor for Dutch science that the director of
the National Bureau for Archeological Soil Research, Dr. F. C.
Bursch, has been appointed to conduct excavations on site. These
days Dr. Bursch left for the East with some assistants. They have
been granted leave for this trip by the Department of Education,
Science and Cultural Protection
Since
this concerns not only a general Dutch scientific interest, but also
an important Dutch share in the opening up of the European East, the
study department of the Dutch East Company has made its contribution
to the success of the undertaking by Dr. Bursch to provide him with
full scientific and field equipment and to assist him further in his
journey.
June
5, 1943 NEWS FROM EMMEN
As
we were informed, Mr. Bursch from Leiden will not be doing any work
here this year, as he will soon be leaving with his staff for the
Ukraine for archaeological excavations.
June
11, 1943 A Dutch archaeologist in the Russian Steppe
IMPRESSIONS FROM A TRIP
TO SOUTHERN RUSSIA
We
were a living demonstration of Germanic cooperation and solidarity,
as we gathered at the Charlottenburg station in Berlin: a German
Untersturmführer der Waffen-SS., a Russian professor of German
descent from Dniepropetrovsk, a Danish employee who was an active
Danish National Socialist, and the three of us are Dutch. The
Russian was silent, deeply impressed by everything he experienced in
Germany, where he had discovered that not only was culture and
science at a much higher level than at home, but that individual
freedom was also incomparably greater than in Red Russia. The Dane
was lively, full of spirit, and an ideal tour guide when it came to
caring for the salvation of the inner man, or otherwise looking
after our interests. We hear a lot about our plans and prospects
from the Untersturmführer and we look forward to the foreign
country with excitement.
Meanwhile,
the train rushes on, punctually, through the beautiful,
well-cultivated country of Neumark, West Prussia and the former
Polish Corridor. There we see what Germanic industry and Germanic
culture, which had been active for centuries, could do.
Because
once we have passed the former Polish-German border, then everything
is over, what makes a Germanic landscape so attractive. Certainly
the soil is no less fertile, the crops in the field are no worse
off, but the organizing, cleansing, truly caring hand seems to be
missing. Poor houses, dirty roads predominate. All those in the
Netherlands who still regard the Germans as foreigners would like to
be shown this difference, this difference between Germanism and
Slavery, between progressive culture and backward filth. We like to
believe that the Polish nobility, and perhaps also a part of the
Polish middle class, may have had a decent civilization in many
respects according to our ideas, but the mass of the Polish
population lived in conditions so devoid of everything that our
Westerners would expect makes life worth living, that we cannot
imagine it from a distance.
We
pass through Warsaw, heavily ravaged, in the evening. During the
long delay at the station we receive the soldiers' rations, which
prove to be ample and of excellent quality. Early the next morning
we cross the Russian border and after transferring in Kowel we
finally arrive in Rowno. We stay here for a night for some business
arrangements and we find an unsought opportunity to observe life in
a Russian city, even if it is in former Polish territory.
Rowno
is located on the northwestern edge of Ukraine. When we leave the
station, we immediately notice the consequences of the war that has
raged here in all its ferocity. When we enter the city, the
destruction is not that bad. There happens to be a market and the
pan carts, covered with straw and pulled by two skinny horses, take
the farmers to the village.
The
city has one asphalted street, namely the main road that connects
Ukraine with Central Europe. The rest is dirty, bumpy as far as the
pavement is concerned and the houses are higgledy-piggledy and
placed in perfect randomness, the whole thing indescribably more
primitive than the least village in our country or in Germany. Long
before we had regulations regulating the building line, the method
of construction, etc., our farmers already knew that order and
regularity in the development of the village were a prerequisite for
it to be entirely to their taste and habitable. Every Dutch village,
with for example a village green as its center, is the result of
this line of thought. Not so in Rowno. There is one square space,
randomly in the middle of the city, where a market is held and
furthermore we find a wild series of houses and streets.
The
Russian white church with its green towers is beautiful, in which we
attend a service in the evening, which is quite busy and which
conveys great consecration through the beautiful a capella choir.
Beggars sit on the steps of the church.
The
next morning, when we leave our quarters, an accident has happened
on the main road: a small figure, probably a boy of perhaps fourteen
years old, lies there motionless, seriously injured, or at least
unconscious, while a truck and a pan truck are standing there. No
one cares about the injured person, who was apparently hit by the
native driver of the car, but everyone shouts at each other,
probably about the question of guilt, while the victim has to lie
there motionless, until finally a rough guy takes him under his arms
and drags him rather than carries him to the car that will probably
take him to the hospital. Russia, where the individual man is
nothing, has revealed itself to us...
The
next morning we go to the station on spec and truly, we are lucky!
We catch a freight wagon, which alone, pulled by the locomotive,
takes us to the Sdolbunow railway junction. And there is another
train to our destination: Dnipropetrowsk, ready. In these times of
war it is important to take advantage of all opportunities that
arise, because in this way we save about 10 hours of travel. In the
freight wagon, the bottom of which is covered with straw, a nice
heater is burning, because it is still chilly and cold from the rain
this May morning.
Last
night the Dane and the Dutch also sat around the Russian stove and
discussed Germanic cooperation. Compared to the Russian space, all
the difficulties caused by human imperfections, ambition,
tactlessness, and self-interest, above all, pale into
insignificance, because only here does one feel the common calling:
to continuously permeate the Eastern European space with everything
that the Germans and Dutch have in common possess qualities that can
only be a blessing to this space!
On
our further train journey we pass the border of the actual Ukraine,
the land of the Black Earth, between Shitomir and Berditsjef. This
land is incredibly fertile, with its meters-thick, pitch-black humus
layer, created by centuries of forest wealth, above the loose and
marl, already so fat and fertile in itself. This year the
cultivation is exceptionally intensive: only 14% of the area is
undeveloped, the rest of the endless plains, days away, are
completely sown with all the products that Europe so needs, or, if
it concerns low-lying lands, we see large herds of cattle and horses
grazing there, as in the Hungarian Puszta.
The
landscape is by no means monotonous. Gently rolling slopes,
mightier, but otherwise very similar to those of southern England,
alternate. Here and there we find some forests and beautiful views
under the spring skies that always captivate our eyes. The approach
to the Dnieper is particularly beautiful, which meanders through
this landscape in many twists and turns and is now beautifully
illuminated. This country has an overwhelming grandeur due to its
dimensions and is at the same time so lovely that it does not act as
a deterrent.
Dniepropetrovsk
suffered greatly during the war. In contrast to Rowno, it is a
generously laid out city with wide streets and many trees
(especially flowering acacias!) and parks. Some of the trams are
still running (others stand like wrecks at the station), but the
main image of the traffic is formed by the army, which often passes
through this city behind the front in long columns. We also see many
uniforms that we have not seen before: Romanians, Italians,
Hungarians, Croats and also Ukrainians and Russians, in addition to
all other allies of the Empire, walk through the streets. We also
meet Dutch people, as we did in Rowno. This time it is boys who work
for the N.S.K.K. serve. They are very pleased when they come to chat
with us on the tram and are full of praise for the care. If a Dutch
boy of 18 or 20 says that he cannot eat the food that is put in
front of him, then this requires no further comment.
When
we arrive on Sunday afternoon, there is a slipper parade on Broad
Street. The Ukrainians make an excellent and thoroughly European
impression, in contrast to the actual Russians.
Dnipropetrovsk
has several churches, but the one we visit is completely neglected
and was used as a sugar warehouse. Although there are now a large
number of icons hanging, one still gets the strong impression that,
unlike Rowno, religion no longer has much significance for the
population of this industrial city.
We
are experiencing the last rainy season before the start of the hot
summer. After heavy rain, the sometimes rather steep streets of the
city immediately form the beds of rushing mountain streams, which
also carry some of the black earth with them as mud. Pedestrians
soon can't cross the streets, motorcycles stall, cars spray
fountains. For hours afterwards, the streets are covered in dirty
mud, the tram rails are flooded and form obstacles for traffic that
are difficult to overcome, and pedestrians always have to make long
detours to get home on dry feet. Outside the city, deep gorges
reveal the consequences of erosion caused by such tropical rain
showers. Due to the heavy deforestation under the Soviets of the
originally very forested Dnieper area, erosion becomes a major
danger, also for the railway line, but mainly for the fields, from
which the fertile black humus is washed away.
When
we leave Dnipropetrovsk in the morning, our car immediately comes
into contact with Russian roads: wide plains, left open between the
fields, with numerous deep wheel ruts next to each other, like
gigantic Hesse roads, but unspeakably muddy and full of potholes.
The utmost is demanded of the cars, as well as of the drivers.
Shortly afterwards we drive again in this land of contradictions on
a fairly good asphalt road in the direction of Saporozje, until,
turning to the west, we finally reach our final destination:
Solonje.
F.C.
BURSCH.
As
has already been learned from the newspapers, the Director of the
National Institute for Archaeological Soil Research, Dr. F. C.
Bursch, at the invitation of the Commissioner General of
Dnipropetrovsk, excavations at Solonje, one day's journey by
panjewagen from Dniepropetrovsk, in the inner bend of the Dnieper.
Dr. Bursch has promised to occasionally write down his experiences
and adventures for the readers of "De Waag"; the first
article, written shortly after arrival in Dnipropetrowsk, was
received by courier just before this issue went to press. We hasten
to present it to our readers. The Dutch contribution to the opening
up of the East consists not only of the deployment of labor power
and capital, but also of spiritual labor. It can be great
satisfaction, that Dutch science has already been enabled to play
its part. EDITORIAL.
July
2, 1943 A Dutch archaeologist in the Russian Steppe
THE UKRAINE IN ANTIQUITY
Anyone
who has ever traveled to Berlin knows that, with the exception of
the so-called Porta Westfalica, he constantly passed through the
same, fairly flat country, which reflects the "Dutch"
character of the country, both in the pasturelands and continues to
speak clearly in the Veluwe-like hill areas.
If
one now goes further east, either north through the former Polish
corridor, or directly into Russia via Breslau and Posen, the
relatively flat character of the country is preserved, until it
finally merges unnoticed into the steppe. Only in Ukraine does the
country become more hilly, but nevertheless there are no mountains
of any importance here either until the Jaila Mountains in Crimea,
and finally the Caucasus in the south and the Urals in the east.
This
Western, Northern and Eastern European plain lies as one contiguous
whole to the north of the German Central Mountains, and therefore
extends from the Netherlands (and actually from southeastern
England) in the West to the Urals in the East. In this immense space
we see numerous popular movements taking place in ancient times,
sometimes across this entire area, and that is why there are still
wires running from the low countries on the North Sea that reach
here into the Ukraine.
During
the last ice age, a culture with its own unique art prevailed in
Ukraine. While everywhere else naturalism flourishes among hunting
tribes, who had to subdue their hunting prey through magic, and
therefore restrict the animals into the image, here we find the
oldest products of an abstract art, focused solely on decoration by
maeanders. In the same Ukraine, this ornament revived in the
centuries before about 2000 BC among the farming population, who
then inhabit the wider country in large numbers. Is this a
coincidence, or is there a genetic connection between the two
phenomena, are we dealing with a direct continuation? As long as we
do not know the ornaments of the intervening times (in general we
know virtually nothing about the so-called Middle Stone Age, that
is, the period between the end of the Ice Age and the beginning of
agriculture as far as southern Russia is concerned!), people cannot
obtain certainty here.
How
important would be the confirmation of this hypothesis! One of the
most important facts in world history is the transition from a
wandering hunter's life, from hand to mouth, to the existence of the
farmer, who, with wise precaution, grows his crops to see them
ripen, and manages his flocks and one place to thrive in peace.
We
must assume that this transition took place independently in various
parts of the earth. One of the oldest farming populations in the
world today is that whose civilization is characterized by spiral
and moon decoration on the dishes, the so-called "band
ceramics". We find the westernmost offshoots of this culture in
our country, in Limburg, where they were probably the oldest farmers
in our country. In eastern Europe, decoration of the same nature,
with the same ornaments, is applied in red or yellow paint,
including in the Ukrainian "Tripolje culture", named after
a site near Kiev. Some sites in Asia Minor (Anau and Susa), in
Greece (Sesklo and Dimini in Thessaly) and in Romania (Cucuteni et
al.) show great agreement with this.
So
at a very early date we find an agricultural population on the
border between Europe and Asia, who is mainly known through the
research of their places of residence, and who everywhere applied
maeanders and spirals in paint to the dishes. In itself it is
obvious that the first center from which these cultures spread
across the adjacent areas of two continents must have been located
in the extremely fertile regions of the Ukraine, from where we
already know during the Ice Age a population that applied the same
ornaments to her jewelry.
Another
proof of relative primitiveness, which can therefore indicate old
age, is shown by this culture, where in the beginning it still
buried its dead in a squatting position in the homes of the living.
Only later are cremations found in separate, but still residential,
structures in which a large number of urns are housed.
People
already grew wheat, barley and millet, and their pets were dogs,
cattle, boars, sheep, goats and horses.
As
everywhere else in Europe, this farming population was destroyed
here by 2000 BC surprised by new crowds invading the country. In
southern Russia we find remains of civilizations that we know well
from our own country: collar bottles and beakers from our dolmens we
also find in the Western Ukraine, and a little later, stone coffins
of the form that followed the dolmens in Denmark, penetrated even
further east with the ceramics so-called "ball amphorae",
a group related to dolmen ceramics, which had an important center in
Brandenburg, for example.
We
therefore see that in recent times there was no one-sided contact in
an East-West direction, but rather that there were two originally
independent civilization areas that made reciprocal contact: the
East radiates influences from the side of the Tripolje culture, the
Northwest of Europe from the side of the Hunebed culture. Thus,
towards the end of the Stone Age, a certain European unity in
diversity was already growing, reaching from the North Sea to the
Black Sea right through the Northern European plain, with two
centers of gravity: the center of gravity of the Dolmen culture on
the North and Baltic Seas on the one hand, the center of the band
decoration on the one hand, the edges of the Black Sea on the other.
Around
1800 BC we again see an appearance familiar to us from the
Netherlands also appearing in southern Russia: the burial mound with
a body burial in a crouching position, with a war hammer and rope
cup as grave goods, as in the eastern Netherlands on the sandy
soils. The graves here are painted red with a lot of ocher, which
Remouchamps also noticed in the Netherlands at the time. Timber
structures above the grave also occur in the hills here, and are
better preserved than in the Netherlands. It is a real house, built
over the dead, with an oak roof over the shaft grave. It will be
interesting to compare these Russian phenomena with the Dutch ones,
but this will require further research.
What
is striking is the great similarity in the tableware: cups, bowls on
four feet, amphorae, etc. between the Central German finds, from
which the Dutch phenomena can be derived, and this from southern
Russia. Moreover, the first metal appears everywhere in this
context.
In
the following century, the so-called Bronze Age, the grave shape
remains completely the same. In the beginning this was also the case
with ceramics and other cultural heritage, but later spiral
decoration, adopted from the indigenous Tripolje culture, came to
the fore. The bronzes are largely Central European in origin, and
others are of Asian Minority origin.
The
number of burial mounds here is enormous, formerly Kurgans, now
usually called Moghila (dialect Mohila), most of which date from the
Bronze Age. We rarely find metal in burial mounds, but more often
one finds cast molds and loose bronze objects, which are remarkably
lacking in the swords and jewelry that we know from Europe.
Predominant are sickles, small pins, often with hammer-shaped heads,
and small lances. One must assume that bronze was intensively cast
here, but with a limited range of forms and more for direct
practical use than for weapons and adornment. Hollow axes,
originally imported from Central Europe (Lausitz and Hungary), were
later also found in cast form as proof that they were copied here.
All in all, the Bronze Age would not have made an original
impression here at all, and certainly not independently, if there
had not been some treasure discoveries of silver and gold objects,
imported from the Caucasus, which prove the wealth of the Ukrainian
people of the Bronze Age.
So
in the Bronze Age we see the mating of the industrious Tripolje
population with the newly arrived Ocher grave builders, whereby the
first, soil-connected people certainly did not form the minority,
but the second element apparently also remained strongly
represented.
Possibly
one may give this people, amalgamated from both elements, the name
Cimmerians, which has come down to us from classical reports.
During
the popular movements in Asia and Europe around the year 1000 BC the
people of the Scythians (here curiously pronounced Skifen) invade
southern Russia from the East. They are a nomadic people, with a
totemic view of life, typical steppe inhabitants. They also bury
their dead in a crouching position under large burial mounds. The
princes and nobles are buried in the company of women, servants and
domestic animals. Among the Scythians we also find timber
construction in the burial mounds, although now often more
tent-shaped, without it being possible to determine whether this is
a prehistoric custom or was adopted from the original population.
Perhaps the Scythians are also the direct descendants of the Ocher
Tomb Builders.
A
few centuries later the Greeks settled in colony cities on the Black
Sea (Olbia and Kertsch). The Scythians, who as a ruling class had
probably achieved wealth through the labor of the natives, had Greek
artists work for them in their own barbaric animal style, which had
spread to China, inspired by their religion (totem animals).
Especially the deer was frequently depicted, but not in a
naturalistic manner, as the Greek would have preferred, but
dissolved into its parts: antlers, legs, etc., from which parts in
turn other animal ornaments: bird heads and snakes, for example,
sprout.
A
well-known example of this Greek-barbarian art is the golden fish
from Vettersvelde near Berlin, with other animal figures on it,
which was left behind during a raid by the Scythians (approx. 500
BC).
The
Scythians were replaced in their rule over southern Russia by the
Sarmatians, who brought an even stronger Asian influence, which was
reflected, among other things, in the use of colored gemstones
(amaldien), imported from the East Indies.
Then
comes, in quicker succession, the conquest of southern Russia
alternately by northern and central European peoples and by Asian
hordes from the steppes:
In
the third century the Germanic Bastarnae and Skyren invaded. We know
images of the Bastarnae from the Roman victory sign that the general
Crassus had erected after his victory over them at Adamklissi in the
Dobrudscha in 45. Around 200 AD they were absorbed into the Goths,
who conquered the East from Scandinavia. The Bastarnae burned their
dead, the Goths buried them. The Goths were especially influenced by
the Sarmatians, which influences, driven to the West by the steppe
people of the Huns in 375, they spread in the Germanic world of
migration, among the Franks, Alamanni, etc. Some of the Goths did
not make the journey to the countries around the western
Mediterranean, but withdrew to the Crimea, where they maintained
themselves in strong fortresses for a long time (5th-8th century),
and where their language remained intact until the Middle Ages and
was spoken later.
In
the 7th and 8th centuries, Tartars and Turks invaded the southern
Russian space from Asia again, but from the West the Normans
(Waraegi) came to dominate Central Russia, while the Genoese
occupied the Black Sea coasts via the sea route from 1266 to 1475,
until in the latter year the Turks, having gained possession of
Constantinople, seized power there.
First
the Romanovs reconquered this area for Russia, while Charles XII of
Sweden attempted to repeat the Waraegi's raids in the 18th century.
In the meantime, the Germanic East colonization (Hanseatic, German
Order, Anabaptists, etc.) had infused the country with new Germanic
blood in the struggle against the Slavs.
Thus,
from the Stone Age onwards, we have seen the South Russian region as
the scene of perpetual battle between East and West, between steppe
and cultural land, between nomads and farmers, between Asia and
Europe, a battle that is now being fought out again.
It
is therefore extremely difficult to unite the South Russian
population, or even to see Russia as a unit. At least here in
Southern Ukraine, there is a very strong feeling of being bound to
this country by many ties, ties that make it easier for Western
Europeans and Dutch people to feel at home there.
F.C.
BURSCH.
July
30, 1943 A Dutch archaeologist in the Russian Steppe
THE UKRAINIAN POPULATION
In
the previous article about Ukraine in Antiquity we briefly outlined
the origins of the Ukrainian people. The impression created by these
observations must be that on the old pattern of the Tripolje
population, from before 2000 BC, perhaps already established in the
country since the Ice Age, new influxes from East and West are being
woven in later centuries. The current population is therefore
largely indigenous, but strongly Germanized on the one hand, and not
without a strong Asian influence on the other. What is the effect of
these different components of its composition on the current
population of Ukraine? Naturally, in what follows, in which we
attempt to provide an answer to this question, a very preliminary
first impression is decided. We are therefore aware that our view
will eventually require further correction. Nevertheless, we will
try to describe what immediately struck us most.
We
in the West are accustomed to speaking of "the Russian" or
"the Russians" without realizing that we are doing just as
wrongly as when we spoke of "the Indonesian". Just as we
made a distinction in Insulinde [East India] between the Javanese,
the Madurese, the Toradja and the Balinese and the Acehnese, so here
we must distinguish more sharply between the different people
groups.
In
our first letter we clearly highlighted the difference between Rowno
and Dnipropetrovsk, but now we realize even better that this
distinction has its deep foundation in the nature of the human
species that lives there.
Here
in Ukraine we already distinguish four different types of people.
First of all, several Volksdeutsche live here, all of whom have now
been taken into German service in various positions. Many names
remind us of the existence of German settlements, including in this
area, where we find farmsteads called Nemetskij (Westerners,
Germans) and Franzoff. The right hand of the District Commissioner
here is Herr Wilms, who remembers that his family was originally
settled on the Lower Rhine, and from there first to East Prussia,
and then moved here for a few centuries. The history of his family
will certainly be an example for many others, who have forgotten the
memory of their German, often Lower Rhine, origins, but who still
speak their mother tongue to a greater or lesser extent, in addition
to Ukrainian and Russian.
Among
those who no longer have any contact in language or otherwise with
the West, we find many who nevertheless appear outwardly to be
purely Western European, or rather Nordic. Blond hair, blue eyes,
long and narrow face, usually a beautiful figure, we often encounter
here, in contrast to, for example, Rowno. They are elegant and quick
in their movements, active, intelligent and proud. 25 years of
Bolshevik rule have not changed these people internally. Now that
conspicuous cleanliness and cleanliness are no longer seen as proof
of a reprehensible capitalist attitude, but on the contrary as a
virtue, they are valued by the government, they diligently take care
of the good appearance of their homes and of themselves. They wear
colorful blouses decorated with crochet, are clean, often have
curtains and flowers in the windows, the house is well painted and
the roof is covered with tiles.
They
especially leave their mark on our village. Their circles mainly
consist of artisans and small businesses, as well as farmers.
Presumably their example is also the reason that every piece of
land, even the 4 or more meters high and steep burial mounds, has
been brought into cultivation, because they now know that the
additional yield of their soil exceeds the obligatory part to be
delivered is entirely personal to them. They will soon achieve great
prosperity in the new Europe, for which they manage the breadbasket,
through their industry and intelligence, when private property has
been restored for a few years.
We
drive through the fields in our cart. It is about three o'clock in
the afternoon, and everywhere people, mostly tall women, are busy in
the fields. Suddenly, however, we discover two horses running loose,
one of which has its two front legs tied together with a very short
rope, so that it cannot walk, but can only perform short jumps while
standing on its hind legs. A team stands aside. The farmer sleeps
stretched out on his stomach. When we return after an hour, the man
wakes up again, and we can now take him in better. It is a blond
type with blue eyes, but with a yellowish complexion and strongly
developed cheekbones. He is dressed in a ragged suit, consisting of
long trousers and a lined vest, with a fur hat on his head, and is
of short, stocky stature. In appearance and attitude this is an
example of the other, Mongolian type of Russians. Slow, kind and
good-natured, but stupid and lazy and extremely dirty and poor. This
human species does not place the slightest demands on life, which it
takes as it falls. One could briefly call it the "Nitschewo
type". They are doomed to always remain the robots, the
workers, the slaves, no matter under what regime. However, some of
them, stimulated by Bolshevism, are able to whip up the masses of
their fellow sufferers into a fanatical, stupid hatred and lust for
destruction towards everything that is greater than themselves. But
an attempt to level the entire Ukrainian people to the level of
unity, as was at least theoretically the intention of the Soviets,
had to result in everyone being brought down to this low level.
In
our maidservant we had another example, extremely good-willed and
full of nervous care to do well, but the effect of all this effort
was very poor, because she could never think ahead, and only on one
thing at a time. When she called us to the table, the potatoes were
ready, but we had to wait quite some time for the rest. Time and
again she forgot to boil the milk, so that it spoiled in the heat.
She often arrived late at the store, so that the food was already
sold out. She could only be used if there was someone standing next
to her who thought for her, which, however, is not to be expected
from a male household, the members of which have other work to do!
She wasted an awful lot of fat and butter, because her cooking was
done without consultation, and then she thought that she could not
keep our little house with a wooden floor clean, and that a second
girl would have to come for that!
She
was also very good-natured, although she shed tears at every
difficulty, so that the whole thing aroused more pity than anger.
She
told all kinds of untruths about herself in order to pretend that
she was being persecuted by fate. Completely unnecessarily, she got
herself into trouble with the government, from which she tried to
extricate herself by boasting about the distinguished gentlemen
(us!) whom she had to take care of.
For
such people, the time factor does not play a role, hence the great
irregularity in preparing meals. If we were also people who, at
every difficulty that arose, also said "nitschewo" and
nothing more, then everything would have gone well, but now this was
not the case.
These
people, left to their fate, would live under the most miserable
conditions, because they do not have the will and strength to work
their way out of difficulties. A fatherly rule must watch over their
well-being. They once allowed Father Tsar and Father Stalin to pass
over them with the same good-natured submissiveness.
The
coachman Iwan is very tall and dark of hair and eyes. His complexion
is also not white, but yellowish, and his cheekbones are visible in
his narrow face. He is Cossack, completely one with his horses as a
rider and as a driver, whom he takes good care of, but does not
spare at all.
In
him we suspect Tartar blood of the steppe. The cow boys must be of
his kind, who grow up outside with the cattle in the summer in a
certain wildness. It is also a beautiful human character, but
different from the Westerners. What opportunities are available for
their development, thanks to their greater energy and courage, will
have to be seen. Perhaps there are unsuspected possibilities here.
Once they were the rulers of the steppes, herders of large herds of
cattle and horses, and formidable warriors. Nowadays, it seems to
us, they only form a small minority here in the South.
It
goes without saying that the boundaries between the four types
listed are not clear everywhere. There are of course numerous
transitions to be noted, racial mixtures, etc. All in all, in the
first two categories we see the Northern race, the Central and
Northwestern European, the "Nitsche woman" and the
"Tartar" representatives of the East, of the steppe, of
Asia.
It
is of course more difficult to say which popular movements were
responsible for bringing this blood into the Ukrainian people. It
seems impossible to us to say anything with certainty about this
before anthropology (racial science) in collaboration with
archeology and with the help of distribution maps can possibly
arrive at certain results. Two other branches of science, folklore
and dialectology, can certainly also make very positive
contributions to this. Bolshevism tried to create a uniform culture,
and here too it passed completely unnoticed: women with plucked
eyebrows, children's toys and trinkets from the "cooperative"
of a dreary formlessness and primitiveness and tastelessness,
uniform furniture of false splendor: buffets, also canapés,
are the proofs of it, as well as the killing of all popular
initiative.
Nevertheless,
as far as we can already conclude, the national character expresses
itself mainly in two forms: in song and in wedding customs.
In
the evening, when darkness has suddenly fallen, one hears the
singing coming up again and again: one voice, loud and shrill,
starts a song in a minor key, and immediately other voices join in,
and in two voices, with long outbursts and wonderfully enduring,
they insist, the sound through the night.
To
our ear they are rather formless primordial sounds, but carried very
musically like a psalm, but shrill like clarion calls, sternly
chanted like German soldiers' songs.
On
Sundays, and also occasionally during the week (it seems to depend
on this season, it happens so often!), the bridal couples pass by.
She, blushing under the wreath of flowers in her hair, from which
colorful ribbons hang, and sometimes adorned with a red sash, the
groom with a red rosette with hanging ribbons in the buttonhole, and
followed by groomsmen and bridesmaids, also decorated with ribbons.
Family and friends offer the bridal couple bread as a gift, small
round rolls, on the outside like a Christmas wreath, on the inside
with dots at the top.
The
bridal couples often also ride on a wagon, and in the evening there
is a party with lots of singing and playing on the balalaika.
On
Sunday the Ukrainians sang for the small garrison stationed here,
played the balalaika and danced. We hope to be able to be there next
time and report further on this later.
F.C.
BURSCH.
September
24, 1943 A Dutch archaeologist in the Russian Steppe
THE HARD HEART
Ukraine
has asked for its price and has received it. We have all been more
or less seriously ill. If a simple cold would have gotten through
the summer, intestinal, liver, biliary or kidney ailments arise
here, which sometimes take quite some time before they are
completely cured. We got away miraculously with a light attack.
And
its inhabitants are also as hard as this country. They have been
hardened by the climate, and through the horrors of the Bolshevik
years they have also come to know the hardness of their fellow
countrymen. The torments to which the Volksdeutsche and the
propertied peasants have been exposed are indescribable, and
indescribable are also the expressions of their immense lack of
control, which I summarized in a previous article under the name of
"nitschewomensch". It is therefore better not to mention
these expressions of wild anger in detail. Hopefully they will never
have the opportunity to give in to these animal instincts again.
How
is it that these people come to such cruelty, to such incredibly
sophisticated devising of the most terrible tortures against their
fellow human beings, and on the other hand to such an immoderateness
that can no longer even be called animal, of which I cannot refrain
from giving one example, being capable of?
What
to say about people who in a village, when there is no authority in
the Bolshevik revolution, have only one goal, the liquor distillery?
When they have looted to their heart's content, the Bolshevik small
military group finally arrives, tries to create order, shoots some
people dead and finally empties the full barrels into the street.
However, the residents then come with buckets and all the other
dishes at their disposal and collect the alcohol flow. They throw
themselves into the stream and, lying on their bellies, drink the
fluid that flows beneath them. And when the entire village finally
lies unconscious, the children come and shovel the alcohol-soaked
mud into new buckets to enjoy this liquid as well. These are facts,
told to me by a Volksdeutsche, who saw these events unfold in front
of the window with his mother in their home town.
He
has now returned from a stay of several days in his village, which
he has not seen since. Destroyed, razed to the ground is his house,
the graves in the cemetery of his relatives, the beautiful old
castle is destroyed down to the last stone and terrible are the
stories that once prosperous farmers told him of the torments they
suffered. have been exposed, not to mention the many who have been
expelled, tortured to death, exiled.
There
must be factors, deeply rooted in the national character, that can
explain these incomprehensible states of the soul. We can describe
some facets of this national character, but we are not yet able to
discover its deepest depth. The people of forced laborers who work
for us have a camaraderie that goes so far that sometimes three men
share one cigarette. On the other hand, they do not show the
slightest sympathy. It sometimes happens that one of the girls finds
her fate, her work, too difficult and she breaks out into tears. Not
the slightest note is taken of this by the others and when I asked
why she is crying, I was asked the surprising counter question: why
does this actually interest me? On the one hand, sharing in a
friendly manner all the good that the earth still offers here,
fruits for example, the comrades and us too are generously offered
by the lucky owner, but on the other hand there is an indifference
to everything that touches the soul of others.
Permissiveness
on our part, showing sympathy, is immediately met with sabotage in
work. One of the girls had even put a bandage on her foot and was
crying in pain. When this didn't help and I remained hard, the false
bandage was removed and everything went back to normal. Horses are,
by our standards, shamefully abused here. If one observes the
interaction of girls and boys on the street, it is striking that
there is no mention here of the "preliminaries" to
interaction with each other. Only energetic suitors, who take
immediate action with force, are successful.
The
care of the dead is deeply sad. The cemeteries are without any
fence, and as one passes by they are wretched ruins; broken and
sagging stones, including those with hammer and sickle, are the
rule. It is clear that neither the government nor the relatives in
the last Bolshevik years were in the least concerned about the final
place of the dead.
And
now we already understand something of the Russian mentality.
What
is unknown here is the concept of tenderness and compassion. When a
few persistent rebels in our village had to be shot, their wives, in
complete control, came to collect the bodies, without shedding a
tear. This people is hard, hard towards themselves, so they can
tolerate anything, hard towards others, only aiming to have the best
possible for themselves.
It
is said that some can also be faithful to those who know how to bind
them to themselves. However, it is usually the case that they accept
gentleness and kindness for granted, but are very happy to defect to
the opponent as soon as the other party offers more.
For
this people is childish in the highest degree. They are also
cunning, with that calculation that children use to get something
done from their parents. But at the same time they cannot see
further than the length of their nose. They take for granted what is
given to them today, but when the enemy promises them paradise in
his propaganda, they also believe in it unconditionally. They have
little or no sense of duty, everything must be ordered to them.
In
addition to the large collective farms, this year, for the first
time, part of the land has been allocated to the population in small
fields. They can plant whatever they want on it and the government
will buy it off them at a fixed price, according to a certain
estimated yield. They may freely dispose of the additional proceeds.
The result is that there is no longer any undeveloped plot of land,
but the government still has to designate certain days of the week
on which they are obliged to work in their own fields. Of course,
there are also those who also weed on other days.
Because
fortunately one cannot tar everyone with the same brush. There are a
lot of good people here who work as much as they can and who also
see the great opportunities that are now being offered to them and
seize them with both hands. However, the government in general must
have a firm hand in addition to a loving heart and great justice.
Now
that our main road needs to be repaved, it will be divided into four
widthwise. Four die-hard pavers work side by side in noble
competition to see who can deliver their work the fastest and best.
The government imposes strict penalties for sabotage or laziness,
but at the same time it has additional allocations of vodka,
cigarettes and similar luxury items that would otherwise not be
available. These are distributed as a bonus for extra good
agricultural work.
Thus
a fatherly government takes care of these childish people, with
strict justice, in the only way in which dealing with them is
possible. To regard and treat them as equals is the biggest mistake
one can make. They first have to earn this position, which
fortunately is already the case for many.
The
image that we designed above about Ukrainian people is not as
attractive as our first one, but it is necessary to also show this
other side as a supplement. Necessary for two reasons: on the one
hand for the Dutchman, who will soon have to work with these people
here, and on the other hand for a good understanding of what moves
our enemies.
In
this hard country, hard people are also needed. The pioneers who
leave our people to the east must bury all softness and tenderness
deep in their hearts, in order to remain in charge of this people
with a firm and just hand. All "ethical politics" are just
as out of the question here as before in our colonies. At the same
time, however, the core of goodwill must be strengthened here and
educated towards human European life. What a task would be reserved
here for a church that still had faith in its own strength! But it
often seems that the struggle for political power in the homeland
seems more important to her than the spread of the faith! Then it
must be our task as National Socialists to awaken the concept of
popular culture here and to develop it into a force that may later
be able to subdue those other primal forces that can only have a
destructive effect.
Here
in Dnipropetrovsk I came into contact with a number of young
Dutchmen, not National Socialists, but good, young guys who can be
tough, and who, after having done compulsory work in Germany for a
short time, were so sensible, for this country. They first also
experienced the harshness of the land, were also sick, but now they
go their way determined, healthy and brave, an example for our
people!
If
the Dutch share in the so-called "Osteinsatz" is well
organised, then it is important to promote Dutch cultural life by
founding libraries, educational institutions and the like and in
this way to provide support to the Dutch in Ukraine, which will
enable them to carry out their constructive work here with joy.
There is still a lot of rewarding work waiting for us here!
Now
we also understand what it is that distinguishes Europe from its
enemies: with them we, in East and West, miss the tender love for
our own, which previous generations have built up in Europe. Whether
it is the struggle for life of the Americans or Bolshevism, both
lack warmth only a thousand-year-old culture can give. Both have
that hardness, that rock-solid insensitivity, which we described
above.
Naive
opponents may ask whether National Socialism does not possess this
harshness, especially towards the conquered peoples? It certainly
possesses this and the war is not the time to fully get to know
National Socialism. To this end, more Dutch people should have gone
to Germany when there was still an opportunity to do so, to see
there with what great love and sacrifice all the beautiful things
that our culture had built up in the past were cared for, restored,
and especially was brought to the people. Not only the beautiful new
museums and the beautiful books, but also the painstaking
restoration of old parts of the city spoke of this. I need only
mention the examples, now largely barbarically destroyed, of
Cologne, Krefeld and Trier.
And
if harshness is now also applied to the Dutch, then this harshness
is absolutely necessary in these circumstances, in this war, against
these enemies. The war has reached a stage where people used to call
thinking about sins "hard against hard". Now it is indeed
a battle as to who will prove to be the toughest, Europe or the
others. Western Europe was not tough enough and fell in an
incredibly short time, England was not tough enough and is now at
the mercy of an opponent or ally. The hardest peoples still remain
and the issue now is who can remain hard the longest. Every other
thought must now give way to that. It would later seem unforgivable
to us if it turned out that we had not been tough enough in the
decisive hour.
So
this is clearly our path: We must learn to be tough, to be tough in
the demands we set for ourselves, tough in the measures and demands
that the party has to take towards its members, to be tough towards
our youth, who has already been partly raised in softness, to be
hard also in our love for our people. "Gentle surgeons,
stinking wounds" is now said of this regime towards the people.
And this harshness will not be allowed to pass away at the end of
the war as a nightmare that temporarily oppressed us. We want and
must continue to work hard in order to create a spirit in Europe and
among our own people that dares to face real life again, in the
homeland and in the Eastern regions.
Europe
is now waging a stubborn battle for the existence of itself and of
everything that we feel makes life worth living, against the harsh
peoples in the East and West. We must guard ourselves against
Americanism and Bolshevism with all the strength in us.
This
is the lesson that a stay in the East has taught us, to armor our
hearts against the outside world. However, we hope to be able to
prove after the war that this same heart is full of tenderness and
love and is prepared to pour both of these out in streams over the
people. Then it is time to show the Dutch everything that is
beautiful and good in us National Socialists; as the German people
have discovered this in its leadership, which it therefore follows
unwaveringly, even in these times of need. Because National
Socialism can also appropriate the Amsterdam Rasphuis saying:
"Hard
is my hand, but sweet is my mind."
That's
how it is and that's how it should be, there is no other choice.
There
is still much to be written, especially about the development in
Ukraine. However, this will probably be our last article for "De
Waag" during our stay here. The work, which promises good
fruits, now takes up all my attention, time lost due to illness must
be made up for!
F.C.
BURSCH.
December
13, 1943 Dutch archeology in Ukraine
The
director of the National Office for Archaeological Soil Research,
Dr. F. C. Bursch, who in May 1943 had left for the Dnieper bend
under the auspices of the study department of the Dutch East Company
to conduct research into remains of the Goths, who were first
Germans had conquered the Ukraine around the beginning of our era,
returned with his two assistants and told a representative of the
A.N.P. [Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau] that, contrary to
expectations, in three burial mounds near the village of Solonje, 40
km of Dnipropotrowsk, no remains of Gothic culture have been found,
but other discoveries have been made. Two of the three mounds turned
out to date from much earlier times, one from the Bronze Age (1000
years BC) and one from the time of the Scythians, who lived in the
Ukraine from 800 to 300 years BC. During the investigation of the
mounds and the investigation of the most important finds, a gain has
been made that, for the first time, new detection methods have been
successfully applied in Russian soil, which were developed in the
Netherlands and can advance science. This is a Dutch contribution to
the development of archaeology.
The
objects brought to light are expected here soon to be studied
further and then loaned to the National Museum of Antiquities in
Leiden.
December
14, 1943 Dr. BURSCH ABOUT HIS TRIP TO RUSSIA
Dutch
contribution to the development of archaeology
Recently
it has been read that the expedition, led by the director of the
State Bureau for Archeological Soil Research, Comrade F. C. Bursch,
which traveled to the Dnieper bend in May 1943 under the auspices of
the study department of the Dutch East Company, has left, returned
from the East with rich experiences.
The
A.N.P. has had a meeting with Dr. Bursch these days in order to
learn more about the relevant experiences gained in the eastern
areas. Dr. Bursch said that he had been invited by the Commissar
General of Dnipropetrovsk. The "Ahnenerbe" in Berlin, the
well-known Germanic Institute of the SS, mediated for this purpose.
After he had accepted this invitation, an expedition was equipped on
behalf of the study department of the Dutch East Company (later the
Dutch East Institute) and Dr. Bursch left with two assistants, W. J.
de Boone in Amsterdam and F. van Meer in Arnhem, to the village of
Solonje, 40 km southwest of Dnipropetrowsk.
“What
prompted this invitation?”
The
attention of the Commissioner General had fallen - according to Dr.
Bursch - on some burial mounds and he hoped that these would contain
the remains of Goths, who were the first Germans to conquer the
Ukraine around the beginning of our era. People were disappointed in
that expectation. Gutters were not found there.
The
three burial mounds dated from much earlier times, two from the
Bronze Age (1000 BC) and one from the time of the Scythians, who
lived from 800 to 300 BC lived in Ukraine. One of these hills was
about 5 m high and had a diameter of 70 m.
Four
particularly well-cared for graves were found in this hill. The
mound of each of these graves had been significantly raised and
enlarged. Such a grave consisted of a rectangular pit in the bottom
of the hill, covered above by wooden beams and a reed mat. A second
mat was wrapped around the corpse, which had been laid on its back
with its knees drawn up. Sometimes the walls of the burial pit were
whitened with lime, while the deceased himself showed traces of red
paint on the skeleton.
After
these four main graves, which were undoubtedly related, the mound
was enlarged several times in more modest sizes on the sides for
later graves, which were simpler in nature.
The
second mound, close by, contained a large number of these simpler
graves. In each case the deceased lay in a crouching position in a
simple and shallow pit, usually carrying one or more pieces of
pottery. The main grave of this second mound, however, was covered
by a large stone.
The
mound was barely 1 m high, and much smaller than the first mound.
Finally,
the third mound was lower and smaller again and contained only one
grave, dug 2 m deep under the center of the mound. This deceased was
also in a crouching position again, this time the grave goods were:
bronze arrowhead, bead, gold ring, recognizable as Scythian.
The
finds were further studied here in this country and therefore
temporarily ended up in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden
for that purpose.
The
main benefit of these investigations in the Ukraine, however, was to
provide proof that the application of excavation methods developed
in the Netherlands to Ukrainian objects has been of great value for
the development of South Russian archaeology. It is very likely -
Dr. Bursch continued - that all three hills examined succeeded each
other as graves of the inhabitants of that region, who were under
the influence of the Scythians, but were already there for the
latter tribe. Those predecessors were the Cimmerians. The Cimmerian,
whose remains were given the above-mentioned grave goods, probably
saw the Scythians coming, given the objects that he received in the
grave. “Were any more items found?”
Mostly
pots and also a skull have been sent here, according to Dr. Bursch.
The objects are expected here soon to be studied further and then
loaned to the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden.
Dr.
Bursch expressed his opinion that this trip to the Dnieper bend, in
addition to the experiences gained, has yielded the benefit that for
the first time and successfully, new detection methods have been
applied in Russian soil, which were developed in the Netherlands and
can further advance science. This therefore concerns a Dutch
contribution to the development of archaeology
January
15, 1944 DR F. C. BURSCH
The
Beaker culture in Brabant and Limburg
About
ten years ago it looked as if there was a great gap between the
phenomena of civilization in the Young Stone Age in the area to the
south of our great rivers and in that to the north.
In
my dissertation, written in 1931/32 and published in 1933 nothing of
the sort was known from Brabant at the time.
Some
things have changed in the meantime. After all, in short succession
two finds of burial mounds of Beaker culture became known, one near
Oss and one near Schaik, so that suddenly the province of North
Brabant also joined the more northern provinces where finds of this
nature were known. Moreover, due to the excavation of a number of
tumuli on the German border, east of Swalmen, the number of beakers
known from our South was suddenly more than doubled, because 11
beakers came to us from this one site alone. The presence of other
burial mounds of this nature, west of the Central Limburg Maas, is
also very likely.
Thus,
in a relatively short period of time, a completely different light
has been shed on the oldest history of Brabant and Limburg, a light
that is reinforced by the fact that discoveries have now also been
made in Belgium (since 1940) that point out that, contrary to the
original view that Belgium was not at all influenced by the Beaker
culture, the people of the Beaker culture have indeed also
penetrated the south of our country, so that our southern
discoveries are no longer so isolated.
So
instead of counting on only a few finds that came here more or less
by chance from the abundance of similar phenomena on the other side
of the rivers, we are now obliged to take serious account of the
fact that around 1800 BC In our era an important penetration of the
Beaker people into our southern provinces took place.
In
general it can be concluded that archeology has worked somewhat too
much with the hypothesis that every change in cultural heritage is
also a change of the nature of the population of a particular
region. We are now increasingly coming to the realization that in
any case the indigenous population of a particular region always
played the leading role, regardless of the influences exerted on it
over the centuries.
Now,
however, it is precisely the cup culture that represents a sharp
break with the past, and if it has ever happened that new elements
have flowed to our country from abroad, to first play an important
and independent role in the population and only in the long run to
merge with the masses of the people, then that was indeed the case
with these rather small crowds. It is clear that the role played by
these leaders in the Europe of those days can hardly be
overestimated in significance. In these years between 2000 and 1800
BC in large parts of Europe a completely different, enterprising,
expansive, martial element emerged that was not there before. These
were turbulent times, which is proven by the erection of
fortifications at many points, and very strikingly by the large
numbers of stone weapons, mainly arrowheads and spear points, in the
moats and against the walls of some such fortresses in Central
Germany found.
This
appearance of a new element in Central and also in Western Europe
(Scandinavia, the Netherlands and England) also coincides with
similar phenomena in Greece (appearance of stone hammers and cups),
and with much commotion in Asia Minor up to Egypt (Hyksos).
If
we let the latter phenomenon rest outside the borders of our
continent for a moment and limit ourselves to Europe itself, it
becomes clear that neither before nor later can an era be found in
which a cultural unity of such magnitude can be established. The
slender shapes of the pottery cups appear everywhere, usually
slightly S-shaped. The martial performance includes the new weapons
that the people carry: the stone war hammer, the bronze dagger
(because the new population elements also bring with them the first
knowledge of working with metal everywhere in Europe), bow and arrow
(a stone plate to protect the wrist against the return of the
bowstring), and also the horse and perhaps even the chariot! (For
example, we found a horse buried in a hill in Garderen.) We can now
perhaps feel the effect that these new means of fighting had on the
opponent better than ever, now that we have seen the effect of
Stuka's and other surprising new war equipment.
Perhaps
we should attribute it to the fact that in a relatively short time
all of Europe north of the Alps, including West and Eastern Europe
up to the Black Sea, was brought under the sphere of influence of
the Beaker people.
As
we saw, Brabant and Limburg were also part of the area flooded by
the Beaker people, in contrast to France, for example, which was
completely outside it. This therefore means that most of Europe was
suddenly included in a large whole, which will probably have had no
political significance (because it is of course completely wrong to
apply modern concepts of state and power to periods in which
primitive man was still the sole ruler!), but which did offer great
economic and cultural opportunities. After all, it makes a big
difference whether humanity lived in large or small, but in any case
isolated, groups, or whether contact had been established between
all these groups, which could thereby achieve an exchange of
material and spiritual possessions. It therefore appears that it
will never again be possible for the researcher to draw such sharp
boundaries in the periods following the Bronze Age as this would
have been possible in the Stone Age, for example between the dolmen
group and the pile building group or the so-called band-ceramic
group. Afterwards, people's lifestyles apparently never diverged as
much from each other as they had before the conquests of the Beaker
people. For example, we see that the burial mound is on its way to
becoming the universal grave monument for Central and Western
Europe. In Eastern Europe, the burning of the corpse, which was
already competing for supremacy with the burial of the corpse in the
church culture, is gaining the upper hand. European humanity, which
had also become acquainted with metal as a raw material for utensils
through the beaker culture, clung to this material in later times,
and thus not only a civilization based on bronze emerged everywhere,
but logically also an extensive trade, because tin and copper, the
raw materials for bronze, did not occur everywhere in nature, so had
to be exported and imported. Naturally, the trade relations also
include those countries that had not come into contact with the
Beaker people, such as Spain, Italy and France. For the Netherlands,
the conquest of our southern provinces in addition to the others by
the Beaker people meant that not only in the short period of time of
this conquest, but also for quite a few centuries afterwards, a
cultural unity continued to prevail between the North and South of
the country, so that we had the same type of burial mounds and
graves in the North and South of the Netherlands: namely palisade
mounds with corpse burial or cremation in tree coffins, and that the
bronze shapes differ much less than in the past, for example the
shapes of the stone axes in the North and South. It indeed looks as
if a cultural unity of the Dutch (of course together with the
neighboring German!) areas has emerged. The fact that this seems to
change again later, during the time of the urnfields, ultimately
turns out to be a temporary phenomenon.
When
we have attempted to outline the significance of the Beaker people
for the history of our South in the above, our conclusion was that a
relatively small number of conquerors succeeded in expanding the
ties between the originally sharply separated areas north of the
large rivers and to the South (and West) of this, so that from now
on our South would participate in the cultural and social life in
Central Europe and the surrounding area. However, we must also be
aware of the fact that compared to the large number of original
inhabitants, the new arrivals almost fade into insignificance. From
the same direction, a much stronger penetration of population
elements into our South took place in the centuries before the
beginning of our era (first Germanic land acquisition) and later
through the Frankish colonization.
It
would of course now be of the utmost importance if we knew something
more about these newly arrived people than just the remains of their
material culture. It is clear that this material culture is only a
reflection of the nature of these people themselves. For it is not a
coincidence that one people prefers sharp shapes and another prefers
duller ones, or prefers bright colors rather than soft ones, or
buries the dead in family (sibbe) or tribal graves or in burial
mounds for one person. Ultimately, all these external phenomena
reflect man's spirit and talent. And so we can say with all the more
certainty that the people of the Beaker culture were undoubtedly
different from those of stilt houses or those of dolmens.
The
finds prove what it looked like of skeletons in the burial mounds.
Already in the first systematically excavated burial mounds of the
Beaker people in the Netherlands, i.e. in Nierssen (O.M. 1908),
excellently preserved skeletons were found, which were found by
Prof. Dr A. W. Nieuwenhuis were subjected to a systematic
anthropological investigation. They turned out to have pure Northern
Breed skulls. Although it was only rarely that the skeletons were
found as intact as there in Nierssen, the long skull, always of
almost the same high and narrow type, could always be recognized
from the general shape. One gets the impression of great
homogeneity, therefore of a fairly great racial purity, among the
bearers of the Beaker culture. The same has also been noticed in all
other countries where the Cup culture occurs, and there is currently
a strong tendency to see in the Cup culture the reflection of the
civilization of the Northern Race. We will therefore also have to
take into account that in Brabant and Limburg, in view of this
racial purity and in view of the apparently closed as a people
advance of the bearers of this culture, that Northern race elements
have invaded our South with the Beaker people, while we completely
leave aside the question, to what extent it would be possible that
such population elements were previously present.
Besides
the race of these people we can probably also say something about
their language. The linguists, at least most of them, assume that
the great relationship between the various Indo-Germanic languages
would have arisen because an Indo-Germanic speaking
primitive people would have Indo-Germanicized the various previously
existing languages. If this hypothesis is correct, then it is beyond
all doubt on ancient grounds that no other person should be
considered for this Indo-Germanic primitive people than the people
of the Beaker culture, which has carried out the most extensive and
intensive conquests. Moreover, the fact that these conquests took
place on the border between the Stone and Bronze Ages, the period in
which, according to philologists, Indo-germanization should have
taken place also speaks for this. During that period, it is
impossible for another, a second nation to be eligible to play this
important role in addition to the Beaker nation.
It
is therefore clear that the discovery of several graves and objects
in the Brabant and Limburg heathlands has been of far-reaching
significance for the knowledge of the history of the Netherlands.
1)
F. C. Bursch, Die Becherkultur in den Niederlanden, Marburg-Leiden,
1933.
POTTERY
OF THE CUP CULTURE FROM BURIAL MILLS NEAR SWALMEN (LIMBURG) (2x)
STONE
HAMMER OF HANOVERAN TYPE MADE OF DIORITE, WITH PART OF THE WOODEN
HANDLE, DECORATE ON TOP WITH BRONZE NAILS AND STRAPS
STONE
HAMMER OF HANOVERIAN TYPE FROM DIORITE. LOCATION OF HEYTHUYSEN
(PHOTOS ARCHIVE)
BURIAL
MILLS FROM THE STONE AND BRONZE AGE (THE LAST WITH PILE WREATH) NEAR
OSS, WITH BELL CUP (± 1800 BC) AND URN (± 1000 BC)
January
17, 1944 The Spade House opened
Seat
put into use by the Frankish Working Community
Saturday,
January 15, was a great, memorable day for practitioners of local
folklore in our South, in Frankish Limburg and North Brabant. After
all, on that day in Sittard, with its old churches, ramparts and
picturesque corners, the Frankish Working Community, which aims to
study the region of our Frankish regions and whose membership has
increased significantly recently, built a comfortable building of
its own in the heart of the city was opened and put
into use in a festive manner. A large number of ladies and
gentlemen, not only from Limburg and North Brabant, but also from
other regions of our country, had traveled to the town, which is the
gateway to the South Limburg mining area for visitors from the
North, to to witness this important fact. Present at the ceremony
were, among others, F. C. Bursch, director of the State Bureau for
Archeology and Soil Research, the administrative [...]
March
23, 1944 DR BURSCH ON HIS EXCAVATIONS IN THE UKRAINE
In
a meeting in Pulchri Studio which was convened by the socio-economic
association "Netherlands and Europe" in collaboration with
the Dutch East Institute, archaeologist Dr. F. C. Bursch gave a
lecture with illuminated images about his excavation work last year
in the south of Ukraine. Drs. Goedhuys introduced the speaker.
Dr.
F. C. Bursch explained that what had been hoped to find in the three
designated burial mounds at Solonje, south-west of Dnipropetrowsk -
namely graves of Goths - was not found. Speaker was of the opinion
that they were dealing with graves of Scythians or Chimeras, as
Herodotus called them, which date from 900 to 500 BC. A very simple
bell-beaker decoration was found on one cup. Furthermore, a bronze
arrowhead was found and a baked bead and gold ring, both of which
were probably made in Greece. Based on the simple ornamental motif -
the peak of the Bell Beaker culture in the Netherlands is around
1800 BC - tried to to show that those buried here were distant
outposts and colonists of the Northern Race, who, far from their own
cultural center, had to gradually lose their forms of civilization
under the foreign influences there. He also argued, using other
examples, that it is incorrect to assume that culture and
civilization came to us from the East, as Anglo-Saxon and Russian
scholars sometimes want to believe. On the contrary, Central Europe
with its northern race has always been the radiating cultural area.
Russia was the host.
May
1, 1944 PROFESSOR OF PRAE HISTORY.
Dr.
F.C. Bursch appointed.
AMSTERDAM,
April 29. — We hear that Dr. F. C. Bursch, curator at the
National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and director of the
National Office for Archaeological Soil Research, has been appointed
extraordinary professor of prehistory at the municipal university.
Dr.
Bursch was born in Leiden in 1903. He studied history, archeology
and prehistory at the universities of Leiden, Amsterdam and Marburg
and obtained his doctorate with honors in Marburg in 1932. Dr.
Bursch is a member of the German Archaeological Institute. He has
written many articles on prehistory in scientific journals; his
dissertation dealt with "Die Becherkultur in den Niederlande".
In recent years, Dr. Bursch has conducted scientific research in
Ukraine, among other places.
May
5, 1944 Dr. Bursch extraordinary professor
As
successor to Prof. Dr. A. E. van Giffen, the mayor of Amsterdam has
appointed Dr. F. C. Bursch in Oegstgeest as extraordinary professor
of prehistory at the University of Amsterdam. Dr. Bursch also
carried out many excavations in Limburg and worked on the earliest
history of these regions. He also recently made a study trip to
Ukraine and scientifically examined old burial mounds there. He is
director of the Bureau for Archaeological Soil Research in Leiden.
June
1, 1944 THE TOMBS IN THE UKRAINE
For
a small circle of interested parties, Dr. F. C. Bursch gave a
lecture on Friday evening in the Korenbeurs [this is in Eindhoven
and there were only a few listeners, we read!] about his excavations
in Southern Ukraine.
In
our country, Dr. Bursch has conducted research into old burial
mounds, several of which he has uncovered in Drenthe and the Veluwe.
Very interesting discoveries have been made, which bring us closer
to the lives of our ancestors.
In
southern Russia this archaeologist has examined three burial mounds,
where it was hoped to find the graves of Goths. However, this was
not allowed to succeed. However, Dr. Bursch has made interesting
finds here, whereby examination of the objects, the location of the
remains and more technical details concluded that they were related
to graves of Scythians or Chimeras from the period of 900 BC. Dr.
Bursch then explained how these excavations may lead to the
conclusion that civilization did not come to us from the East, as is
often claimed, but on the contrary, the North Race has formed
outposts of civilization in the East Country. The audience listened
to Dr. Bursch's presentation with great interest.
November
15, 1944 PROF. DR F. C. BURSCH
THE
BIRTH OF EUROPE
There
is no end in life,
It
is always a life.
Goethe
Everything
that is dear to us represents the highest value to us at that moment
when the threat of possible loss hovers over it. Then it is also the
time to reflect on what constitutes its value, to ask ourselves how
it became our own property and what powers and possibilities it gave
us.
This
is how it is going for all of us now, when we see how large parts of
Europe are being turned into a wasteland, much scorched by the
violence of war, which threatens to destroy everything that belongs
to the very essence of our continent. Nowhere else in the world will
one find such a high-quality culture, which nevertheless grew
organically and is so closely connected to the surrounding nature to
form a unity. A village in the trees along the rivers or in heath
and forest, isolated farms whose yards and fields blend unnoticed
into the trees around, but also an old town in its ramparts or even
towns that have gradually grown over the centuries such as Amsterdam
gives us this enchanting feeling of bondage to land and soil.
But
it is not only this unity between nature and man that affects us in
Europe.
Whenever
we travel, we are struck again and again, wherever we go, by the
familiarity that is common to all countries, in addition to all that
which constitutes the special value of each region in itself. Europe
is a unity in diversity, both deeply rooted in ancient, inherited
values, and this sets it apart from all other continents.
The
problem with which we now wish to concern ourselves for a moment is
the question of the deepest origin of our varied culture. And we
will have to dig deep, deeper than people previously thought.
For
it will not be sufficient if, in order to explain this phenomenon of
European unity in diversity, we point to the influences that
emanated on the one hand from the Roman Empire and the Christian
faith as promoters of unity, and on the other hand from the history
lived together by each nation, which would have caused the
diversity.
After
all, when we define culture as the ability to work something that is
given by nature or through natural forces into something else, and
then to use this further for purposes that cannot be achieved by the
original, natural 1) then it is clear how important the nature of
the human being who creates or experiences culture is.
We
also speak of the undergoing of culture, because a culture does not
always have to be created by the person who is under the influence
of this culture. Culture can therefore indeed be imposed on man as a
phenomenon originally foreign to him. In this way it can be
explained that in Europe over the centuries numerous cultural forms
have been absorbed or developed by the same people, which sometimes
differed from each other in very important characteristics.
Fully
accepting all this, it is nevertheless clear that there is a close
connection between culture and the natural nature of man, closer
than could be directly concluded from this. For as culture is
understood as nature reworked by man, it is clear that not only is
the emergence of new culture directly from nature a creation of man,
but also that this process of creation is also present when the
culture has come to man from outside. In other words: every
encounter between man and culture is a cause of human creative
capacity, which is aimed at further developing culture in the
direction that best suits man's natural talent, i.e. his own
capabilities. And these powers are hereditarily given to him, are
present in him outside his will.
So
we know the duality: man and culture. Moreover, in this culture a
distinction can be made between that culture that man has created
independently of others and the culture with which he comes into
contact through circumstances beyond his will as something that
comes to him from outside and which he then recreates in an ongoing
process into something, according to his own nature.
The
problem has thus been shifted to an answer to the question whether
there is a characteristic present in different representatives of
humanity, including in their mental powers with which they create
culture, by which we can distinguish between the reactions with
which they confront nature or against a culture originally foreign
to them, in the creation or recreation of culture. If we are
convinced that we must answer this question in the affirmative, then
this conviction is based precisely on what we witnessed at the birth
of European culture. After all, it is clear that we can most clearly
determine the identity of the various peoples and races that inhabit
Europe where they are observed in their most primitive reactions,
that is, in ancient times, when natural disposition played a much
greater role than now, now that advancing civilization has
increasingly overgrown these natural properties with a number of
other learned properties. It is the same reason why we encounter
many more remains of natural bonds and resulting properties and
reactions in the countryside than in the large cities, which means,
among other things, that the diversity between the village
municipalities in the different landscapes is much greater than the
difference between one big city and the other.
Since
the time of Romanticism, we have known for more than a century the
existence of this non-universalistic, underground civilization among
everyone who has not yet become a mass human being broken free from
all natural bonds, i.e. "Americanized". This civilization,
in contrast to the generally applicable, now technologicalized
civilization that is increasingly uprooting itself in many forms and
norms, includes everything that we will continue to call "folkish"
with a much-controversial word, and that goes deeper than all shared
history.
Without
this folk element there would be no European diversity in unity
today, just as there would be a unity without strong kinship between
the original cultures in the different countries of our continent.
Man
therefore creates his culture from the nature surrounding him, and
he accomplishes this culture-creating act from the moment of his
first appearance in the world. The most primitive tools, which show
clear traces of human processing, bear the earliest testimony to
this. In Europe we already know these phenomena in the early
Pleistocene, and a Tertiary origin of humans is certainly a
possibility. Yet in the beginning man was apparently so little
differentiated that we find the oldest forms of his tools, the
so-called hand axes, in exactly the same forms over large areas,
even outside our continent. We only find a stronger differentiation
during the last ice age.
At
the time that a large part of Europe was covered by an ice cap for
the last time, we already distinguished various cultural provinces
in Central, Eastern and Western Europe, which were, however, partly
connected. At the beginning of the last ice age, the so-called
Aurignacian civilization prevailed everywhere, but it developed
differently in the Mediterranean area (Spain and North Africa up to
and including Egypt) than in Central and Western Europe. A
completely different culture emerges in the Alpine regions. These
differences are clearly expressed in the visual arts, among other
things. While the Mediterranean area, mainly Eastern Spain, from the
first, very primitive Aurignac art with female figures made of baked
clay or stone with exaggerated sexual characteristics (steatopygia),
was a lively, full of action, working mainly in black and white and
also depicting humans. The art of faithfully depicting the animal as
an isolated figure is gradually flourishing in southern France and
northern Spain in the well-known rock paintings, hardly involved in
a group or in an action as in Eastern Spain. This art, undoubtedly
eidetic in origin and having numerous parallels in other parts of
the world, is immediately capable of accomplishing this limited task
in a way that could not even remotely be approached elsewhere. In
Central Europe, the steatopygian female figures in free sculpture
simultaneously give rise to beautiful, finely crafted female heads
(Unter-Wisternitz in Bohemia, for example) full of expression, while
in Eastern Europe art soon moves away from this naturalistic phase
and moves on to depicting schematic, rectilinear figures (meanders),
after similar female figures as elsewhere had first set the tone
there.
The
civilization, named after Le Solutré in France, which, with
extremely beautifully crafted flint tools, intrudes on the Western
European development, which leads directly from the Aurignacian to
the Magdalenian, and thus represents a certain break or at least
interruption through the manifestation of the Solutréen,
shows, this Solutréan civilization is an originally
East-Central European phenomenon, perhaps partly a harking back to
older forms of the hand axe.
The
high art of the Ice Age shows a degeneration at the end in France,
the number of tool types decreases until only a scraper remains,
while on the other hand, with the melting of the ice, we can observe
a further push of the Magdalenian culture further northwards into
our country and near Hamburg. Central European elements are also
penetrating the West and North-West of our continent.
Thus,
Europe was already a unity in diversity during the last ice age.
While we can still see in the hand ax a universal tool, which could
possibly have been independently invented everywhere in the meantime
to meet the same need (cutting down trees), from the Aurignacian
onwards we see a different response to nature and consequently the
origin of although still very extensive, but also independent
cultural areas in the various parts of Europe. This phenomenon
occurs at the same time that we see a new human type, homo sapiens,
emerge, immediately in different manifestations, that is, races. The
man from the caves of Grimaldi, near Monaco, looked different from
those of Brünn in Bohemia, or those of Aurignac and Cancelade.
Is it a coincidence that this coincidence occurs between the
appearance of independent cultural areas with the appearance of
separate human races: the Mediterranean, the Western European, the
Central European race? We dare not judge this with certainty, but
this is striking respond differently to virtually identical
conditions in the surrounding world in different parts of Europe,
undoubtedly. Man shows more and more that he wants to uproot himself
from the compelling laws of nature, insofar as they make him too
dependent, and in this cultural reaction he apparently follows much
more differentiated paths than was previously possible for him.
Unfortunately,
many of the important developments that undoubtedly occurred in the
following centuries after 10,000 BC are still shrouded in darkness.
We only have more definitive data from a few areas of Europe:
Germany, England, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian North.
Furthermore, we know that due to special landscape and climatic
conditions in Southern Europe around the Mediterranean Sea, and in
particular in Egypt and in the Two Rivers Country, man early
develops into an existence tied to fixed dwellings, and thus into a
higher level of civilization, earlier than in Europe north and west
of the Alps, where he gradually changes from hunter and fisherman to
farmer tied to permanent residences. Was there any interaction
between the areas of Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean basin and
Asia Minor in these centuries? From the course of the following
development one can certainly conclude that an affirmative answer to
this question is given. After all, in the Near East, as well as in
South-Eastern Europe (Crete, Greece, the Balkans and the Danube
region) we see a similar initial development of the culture of an
agricultural population. We must probably interpret the phenomena as
meaning that cultural influences penetrate from the South-East into
the heart of Europe, causing the gradual transition from wandering
nomadic life to the existence of farmers. This is indicated by the
appearance of motifs on the oldest pottery, such as the palm tree,
and of shells from the Mediterranean region as an import from that
side among the earliest products of the oldest Neolithic culture in
Central Europe. What escapes our observation, however, is the
possibility that previously Central European currents may have
radiated inversely to the Balkans and Asia Minor, thus creating the
possibility of these later connections. In general, especially on
the basis of what we see happening later, one may assume that
popular movements have always taken place in the North-South
direction, and never in the opposite direction.
Around
4000-3000 BC one must therefore imagine that the naturally more
favored Mediterranean region and Asia Minor formed the center from
which Central, Eastern and Western Europe were influenced. Only in
Denmark and the surrounding area do we see a development that takes
place simultaneously, but independently of these influences, where
people apparently occupy permanent residences for at least part of
the year, and then proceed to the production of originally very
primitive pottery without a base (the culture of Kjökkenmöddinger
kitchen waste heaps). For the rest, however, Europe from the South
and especially from the South East is currently being culturally
influenced. This influence first takes place in the loess areas of
Central Europe, which extend in the West to South Limburg. There we
find an agricultural population everywhere, with bowl-shaped pottery
with band decoration, who live in village communities, and in order
to defend themselves against the animal world surrounding them, but
very probably also against the hunting tribes, builds their large
shelters for people and livestock, which we visit from Maastricht to
found in Thessaly. Local differences in this distribution area
naturally occur, and it cannot be assumed that this development
progressed other than very slowly from East to West.
In
the meantime, however, we see the phenomenon that new cultures of
humanity bound to permanent residences are emerging everywhere. In
southern Russia, Romania, Thessaly and as far as Bohemia we find a
culture with different local variations, which is closely related to
the preceding culture of the so-called banded ceramics, but on the
other hand has connections with its painted pottery as far as China
and Persia. Since this culture so clearly has its center of gravity
in the East, it is certainly obvious to assume an Asian Minor
origin, which would then continue to exert its influence, especially
on Crete, in the following centuries. In Bohemia it has been shown
stratigraphically that this painted ceramic is younger than the band
ceramic. However, band pottery and painted ware are the only
cultural influences associated with Asia Minor. In various parts of
Europe we are also gradually seeing more and more independent
cultures emerging, partly spontaneously, partly as a result of
action on these Eastern influences.
Thus,
along the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean: in Portugal, France,
southern and western England and Ireland, and in Scandinavia, we
find civilization characterized by memorials to the dead, consisting
of large stones, either single, vertical stones (menhirs), either
stone wreaths and other stone settings to enclose a space
(cromleghs, etc.), or actual burial chambers of three supporting
stones (dolmen) or more, which together support one or more covering
stones (dolmens, etc.).
If
we examine this Atlantic megalithic culture more closely, we see
that the similarity between the phenomena on the Atlantic coasts and
along the Baltic Sea is only apparent, and that there are even
differences between the phenomena in Portugal, France and western
England. In France (and Brittany) this culture results in a rich,
almost exuberant variety of stone monuments, to a lesser extent in
England, while on the Iberian Peninsula and especially in southern
Scandinavia and Denmark (where they also extend away from the coasts
spreads inland) the culture has been reduced to more modest
proportions. On the other hand, it is precisely in Scandinavia and
Denmark that the other cultural content is particularly richly
varied, and a unique style in form and ornament, mainly of the
tableware, develops there, which is also spreading in the center of
our continent. It is therefore clear that forces of their own are at
work there in the North-West of Europe, which demonstrate forces,
both in style formation and in influence to the outside world, that
are not present in this form elsewhere.
In
Western Europe (the Rhine region, Northern France, Eastern England)
and Central Europe (Switzerland and Southern Germany) we find traces
of another culture, also, but to a lesser extent, separated into
local variations, which is characterized by settlements along the
water and fortifications on the heights, and by the tulip-shaped,
virtually undecorated pottery. In the Eastern Alpine region, a
culture with plastically decorated tableware is still emerging.
Finally,
on the border between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age, we see two
new cultures emerge: the Bell Beaker culture, which emerged from
Spain in England, France, Sicily, West, Central and South Germany as
far as Hungary, and the war hammer civilization, which we, with a
center in Central Germany, radiating to the West to England, to the
North to Southern Sweden, to the East to the coasts of the Black Sea
and Troy, to the South to Greece, Northern Italy and Switzerland. As
a result, the whole of Europe, including the Baltic region, which
was the last to follow this development, has become the home of a
wide variety of agricultural groups, each with their own cultural
forms.
So
much for the facts, as the findings teach us. How should we imagine
the historical events that underlie this? What we see happening
before our eyes is the transition everywhere in Europe from the
cultural stage, in which man lives from what the surrounding nature
provides from its abundance, without its products having to undergo
any special processing by man, to the stage, in which man, as it
were, takes the initiative himself, forces and controls nature, and
thus places himself, as it were, in opposition to nature for the
first time. This is undoubtedly the most important moment in the
history of human development after its origin. The completely
different living conditions brought about by being tied to permanent
residences also revived handicrafts everywhere and thus created
consumer goods with a much greater versatility than had hitherto
been possible. The most important asset was the tableware, and
people also learned to take better care of their stone tools,
including by sharpening them. People also faced new problems when
choosing and building places to live, while much more care could be
given to the graves of the dead, now that people no longer left
their place of residence.
Culture
therefore takes on many more forms in which it manifests itself to
us, namely in the guises of grave and house, pottery and tools. What
we learned in these centuries before 2000 BC see happening, is
responding differently to the new way of life, taking into account
the natural conditions in the different parts of Europe.
We
then saw how man initially chose as his home those areas where his
struggle against the surrounding nature was easiest for him. These
were the barren loess areas in Central Europe, and the regions along
the sea, rivers and streams. This is how the cultures of banded
ceramics and later of painted ceramics, the Atlantic culture and the
culture of "stilt houses" and mountain fortresses came
into being. We have to assume that this was a process, sometimes
starting from a center in all directions, or taking place in one
direction, sometimes caused by outside influences. We therefore do
not believe that popular movements were the basis for this in these
cases. It may be assumed that the country of origin of these
cultures lies somewhere in the area of their closest
distribution.
Hitherto
the antiquary has been inclined to see in every culture the
manifestation of one people, following the example of Gustaf
Kossinna (1858-1931). This was connected with the half-unconscious
acceptance as an axiom of the hypothesis that culture can only arise
through popular movements that transferred it from one place to
another. It is clear that if one regards culture a priori as
transmissible, as we did at the beginning, one must also abandon
this axiom. It is therefore difficult to assume that, for example in
the case of the band ceramics from Maastricht to, say, Sebastopol,
one people would have lived there.
Once
we have seen these cultures emerge, we can further understand them
as spheres of influence, because there is clear mutual contact
between the areas covered by them. And when we observe the further
development of these cultural groups, we see remarkable differences
in their behavior. The once supreme culture of banded ceramics later
left not the slightest traces of its influence in Western and
Central Europe. On the other hand, we see the sphere of influence of
the North-Western European dolmen culture extending over Central
Germany, South and East Germany (in part), Bohemia, Poland, South
Russia, where it partly replaces the culture of band ceramics. The
latter only persists in South-Eastern Europe in its form of painted
pottery, probably because these areas were closest to the center of
this culture.
We
therefore conclude that certain cultures have no, while others have
very great, expansive power. The latter is especially the case with
the Central European cup and battle hammer culture, which also
imposes its shape on the inhabitants of those regions where
completely different cultures used to prevail, for example in
Greece, part of the old area of the colored ceramics.
We also find traces of the original Spanish Bell Beaker culture in
vast areas of our continent, also above or next to previous cultures
of a completely different character. In these cases we see
originally non-native cultures busy bringing other areas under their
influence.
In
the case of the Bell Beaker culture we are dealing with a relatively
small number of finds, which are moreover not tied to one grave
shape, but on the contrary the dolmens of Brittany and Spain, the
burial mounds in our heathlands, and numerous flat graves in Central
Europe into use in Germany. Here we are not dealing with a culture
that presents one and the same image wherever it appears. Since this
occurrence coincides with the earliest appearance of metal, it is
obvious to recognize influences in this type of pottery that arose
through trade. One thinks of small groups of "prospectors"
looking for metal.
It
is a different case with Northern culture and that of the war
hammers. Here the influence is neither temporary nor superficial,
but instead long-lasting and profound and universal. Where northern
culture has once emerged, from now on nothing more than articulated
shapes are made, albeit also in numerous variants of the shapes that
originally came from Scandinavia. The decoration continues to adapt
to these shapes, and a combative character appears in the mostly
original peaceful farming cultures. So there is one choice: either
the inhabitants of these regions will gradually develop a
northern-tinted culture after they have temporarily undergone the
influence of banded ceramics, or there will be an influx of new
population flows from Northern, Western and Central Europe to the
South and East. place. The first possibility is most likely in the
case of the North-Western European culture, the second in the case
of the militant war hammer people. Northern European humanity, after
being influenced by band ceramics, is therefore regaining its
identity and making Northern forms the prevailing rule everywhere in
the area where people live whose sense of form corresponds to that
of the Northern European countries. The war hammer culture, on the
other hand, conquers fallow as well as already cultivated areas in
Northern, Central and Southern Europe from Central Germany, and
everywhere puts its own stamp on the future development of culture
in all these newly conquered areas. The other cultures of Europe
mentioned remain in possession of their original sphere of
influence, except for this one to expand, or their influence is
curtailed by these newly emerging influences or conquerors.
The
cultures can therefore be compared to living beings, who lead an
existence depending on their life force. In addition to cultures
that behave very passively, or even perish due to a lack of
vitality, we apparently find very active cultural elements in
Europe, which expand their area with dynamic force, possibly at the
expense of the living space of others.
With
the inauguration of the Bronze Age we see an end to the emergence of
new civilizations, and rather an era of consolidation dawning, in
which the main centers in Europe are the Upper Rhine, Silesia,
Bohemia and Saxony (with princely tombs and rich bronze industry)
and other centers of bronze industry in Spain and Wales. Eastern
Europe then has such a center of industry in Zevenburgen. In Greece,
the Mycenaean civilization, clearly influenced by Central Europe,
flourishes on the mainland, alongside the originally Asian Minor
culture on Crete. Trade relations develop between Mycenae and Troy
on the one hand, and Central Europe on the other, so that we find
Baltic amber and Germanic sword shapes in Greece and even in Egypt,
and on the other hand other pieces of Eastern Mediterranean model or
manufacture in Bavaria and Silesia. These and other trade relations
that are now being established, including between England and Egypt,
Hungary and Scandinavia, testify that the upheavals of the Stone Age
have now come to a rest. The fronts are clearly formed, cultural
provinces are created.
Around
1000 BC, new commotion arose: In Lusatia, Hungary and the Eastern
Alps, a new culture with funeral burning and plastically decorated
pottery gradually emerged from the original inhabitants with
Northern European and band-ceramic culture through mixing with the
warhammer people, supported by a very large population. Due to an
unknown cause, perhaps due to threats from the East, where Slavs and
Cimmerians first lived, and later also Scythians, we suddenly see
this culture with cremation and plastically decorated forms of
tableware spreading across the Balkans to Greece and Troy, on the
other hand also in the North. It invades Italy, through southern
Germany to the West, exert its influence as far as our country [the
Netherlands], and also reach into the northern part of Central
Europe as far as Mecklenburg. Without any doubt, we are really
dealing here with popular movements, conquests from one area, of
which the so-called Dorian migration in Greece is only a part. The
Illyrians played the main role in this. Around 400 BC the movements
of the Celts began, which also expanded to the East, West and South
from their original area on the Upper Rhine into Asia Minor, Spain,
England and Italy. From these trips they derive the classical Greek
influence, which they then process independently. First pushed back
by Illyrians and Celts, or at least cut off from the southern part
of our continent, the Germanic people gradually broke through the
ring surrounding them everywhere, first towards the East, after the
Illyrians had moved into their southern settlements, then towards
the South-West after the Celts had also spread out. The heyday of
the Roman empire coincided with this Germanic expansion, and the
collision of these two worlds ultimately ended after centuries of
bitter struggle with the time of the Germanic migration, during
which almost all of Europe became Germanic: Goths, Walloons, Franks,
Angles, Saxons, etc. While Charlemagne once again united the Germans
on the mainland under his empire around 800, the Slavs from the East
pushed forward, as they did around 500 BC the Scythians had already
penetrated as far as Berlin, and now Hungary is also being flooded
by Asian hordes, Huns and Avars, and ultimately the Balkans also
become Slavic. At the same time, however, the Normans swarm the
European coasts and islands, as founders of Germanic empires on the
periphery of our continent, including in Slavic Russia, but Moors
and Turks threaten Europe's South and South East from Asia.
In
later centuries, the common struggle of Europe was again and again
directed against Moors, Mussulmans and Slavs as extra-European
enemies, insofar as the emergence of nations and the resulting
disunity of our continent still permits a correct insight into the
danger that threatens all alike. whether a high and sacred common
ideal binds them together. (Final to follow)
1)
Th. Haering: Die deutsche und die europäische Philosophie,
Stuttgart/Berlin 1943, S. 4.
December
15, 1944 PROF. DR F. C. BURSCH
THE BIRTH OF EUROPE
Thus,
from the Bronze Age onwards we see again how the center and the
north of our continent formed the areas from which the popular
movements emerged that promoted the unity of Europe. Italy and
Greece both received around 1000 BC fresh blood and new impulses
from this side, which will help determine further development in
those countries. Thus it is that classical influences in turn easily
penetrate these receptive peoples, because related peoples such as
the Celts and later the Germanic people, although these influences
were also independently processed into something of their own. The
relationship between central Europe and the classical countries
therefore gave these influences a greater place in Europe than was
ever the case with Greek colonization in Asia Minor and southern
Russia, or with the Roman Empire in its Asian and African provinces.
used to be. The deployment of power of an Alexander the Great or of
the Romans, applied only to Europe instead of directed towards the
East and South, would certainly have had much more effect.
Accepting
the multitude of European cultures in the Stone Age, and conceiving
these cultures as organisms that exert an effect, whether through
the emission of indirect influence, through trade or of a spiritual
nature, or through direct pressure through force of arms and
conquest, we see in antiquity already the same phenomenon as with a
state in the modern sense. The latter, through its bare existence,
as it were without its will, through political power, biological
force and economic wealth, through location, etc., exerts influence
that, with a modern term, is called geopolitical according to its
nature. Even in antiquity one can speak of the geopolitical
influence of a culture, and therefore of geopolitical archaeology.
If we examine the above-mentioned development of Europe more closely
from this point of view, we see countries and cultures that behave
purely receptively in all respects, against other countries and
cultures that form a powerful center of forces. Moreover, there are
countries that radiate cultural strength, but biologically absorb
strength.
Some
examples for clarification:
England
is essentially a receptive country. Assuming that the Atlantic
culture of Portugal and France, via England, at least became the
stimulus for building megalithic memorials for Scandinavia, and
seeing that in the very earliest Bronze Age, the natural resources
of raw materials made England the supplier of bronze to part of
Europe was made, and furthermore that in the heyday of Anglo-Saxon
art cultural emanation to Europe took place, we further see England
in all respects as the power receiving forces from Europe. From
Europe it received the Megaliths, the "pile building culture",
the battle hammer culture and the bell beaker culture, the culture
of the Celts, the Roman rule, the Anglo-Saxon conquest and the
Normans. The East is also culturally receptive: Russia and the
Baltic countries, which areas rely almost entirely on the influence
of Central Europe, and therefore always lag behind the center of our
continent in terms of culture. Only the Scythians, Slavs, Avars and
Huns assert their biological strength, but then to a strong extent.
In
the South of Europe the situation is slightly different: people
there are undeniably receptive. If we ignore the very temporary
influence that the Bell Beaker culture that emerged from Spain
exerts on Western and Central Europe and on Southern Italy, then we
only see population movements from North to South in Spain as well
as in Italy and Greece: Celts in Spain; "pole building",
warhammer culture, Villanovan culture, Celts and Germanic people in
Italy; spiral ceramics (with and without painting), battle hammer
culture, Lusatian elements in the Doric migration, Celts, Germanic
people and Romans in Greece. Undoubtedly, there are cultural
radiations back to the North - behind which biological forces in no
case hide: export of Trojan and Mycenaean objects from Greece to
Eastern and Southern Central Europe (in exchange for bronze and
amber), the Greek-Italian influence on the origins of the Celtic la
Tène style, influence of Etruria on the origins of the
Hallstatt style (± 800-400) among Celts and Illyrians, the
strong Mediterranean character of Spain's cultural development
through the influence of Crete and Greece. France once again behaves
essentially receptive, until the Franks, coming from across the
Rhine, extend their power back there.
Differently
the Center and North of our continent: After the culture of banded
ceramics was the first culture of farmers tied to permanent
residences to peacefully penetrate across Europe in the loess area
was completed, other cultures of completely different character
arose everywhere based on her example. In Eastern Europe, banded
ceramics remained partly the dominant culture, but west of it other
more militant cultures of a Northern European character arose, which
ensured that banded ceramics soon largely disappeared from Europe.
In
a surprisingly rich variety of strictly articulated pottery forms,
relatives of Northern European culture are mainly manifested, as far
as Southern Germany, while the Northern European cultural radiation
extends to the East as far as Central and Southern Russia.
As
we have already noted above, we do not regard all these groups as
having arisen through conquest from one center, but on the contrary
we believe that at this time so important for Europe we are dealing
with the manifestation of the original inhabitants who emerged
almost simultaneously. The example of the culture of band ceramics,
to a way of life of farmers tied to permanent residences, and at the
same time, each according to his own taste, making ceramics and cut
stone tools at home. One sphere of influence may be somewhat larger
than the other, development may proceed somewhat faster here than
there, but the surrender of cultural property took place everywhere
fairly quickly and without shocks. Taking into account the density
of habitation and the nature of the area, it must be concluded that
a lot of forest must have been cleared at that time, and that in
general the fertile lands were inhabited quite intensively. These
northern cultures even extend to Zevenburgen, including the area
originally dominated by banded ceramics. The phenomenon of warhammer
culture, which certainly did not originate in southern Russia, must,
on the contrary, have its origins in Central Europe. The country of
origin need not have been narrowly defined, it is very possible that
it extended from Jutland to Thuringia. It seems most likely to us
that in this short-lived appearance dating late to the Stone Age, on
the most barren lands, we see the last remnant of the hunter peoples
from the Middle Stone Age, who are now occupied by the expanding
agricultural population of Europe, cornered to a certain extent,
swarming to East, South and West. We also already talked about this.
Illyrians, Celts and Germans later moved in the same directions, and
so Europe continually received new impulses from its center. If we
look again at the development in the aforementioned areas, located
on the periphery of Europe, in this light, we discover that this
influx of new elements from Central Europe always stimulates our own
development. England's influences on Europe in the early Bronze Age
and in the early Middle Ages immediately followed the influx of the
warhammer people and the Anglo-Saxons. Rome's position of power
follows the influx of Central European elements (Illyrians) around
1000 BC, the Mycenaean as well as the later Greek cultural
development originated with the participation of warhammer people
and "Dorians". The center and north of Europe is indeed
apparently the heart that regulates the circulation of blood in
Europe, that out of great abundance supplies forces to the rest of
the world, in order to defend biological and cultural Europe on the
edges of our continent. There are even times when these forces break
through the boundaries of our continent: in Luristan in Persia we
discover some Central European utensils from the Bronze Age, and we
know that Indogermans took power there and in the East Indies. There
is currently a tendency, in my opinion on good grounds, to place
this Indogermanization chronologically in the Middle Stone Age to
the East took place and not the other way around. We now return to
our starting point: the unity in diversity in European culture. We
saw the diversity of our culture already rooted in the Stone Age,
when we spontaneously responded to a new phase in cultural
development in the different regions of our continent, different
forms of culture emerged. The unity in culture is explained by the
fact that new juices continually flow from Europe's heart to all
sides, which then return to this same heart as new cultural sources
of power and help raise Europe's cultural level. And yet we have not
yet explored and explained everything. Because now the question
arises for us, why this heart is so activating, why precisely in
Europe itself these forces are active that push our continent
forward? Neither unity nor diversity.
These
can be explained by the natural condition of Europe, for why did
America lag behind Europe for so long, where we find largely the
same climate, the same alternation of plains and mountains? Europe
is not one contiguous landscape that promotes unity, nor have most
natural boundaries proven to be such that they could permanently
separate cultural provinces. Far be it from us to underestimate the
influences of location, climate and natural boundaries (the
receptive character of England and the three Southern Peninsulas
towards Europe can undoubtedly be partly explained by this), but
ultimately man is decisive in this regard.
For
it appeared from our consideration of the unequivocal archaeological
evidence that the unity of Europe was brought about by the repeated
migration of the population of its North and Center. The heart of
Europe bears this name not only because it is truly the center, but
also because it was from there that Europe received its lifeblood,
and because without this heart as a guiding organ, it could not have
lived, at least not as it has lived until today: in unity through
diversity. And so we finally came to the people of this North and
Center as a determining factor in the history of our continent
compared to the rest of the world, albeit through different paths
than is usually the case. The man of Northern and Central Europe is
the man who "always strives for himself", the man of the
race that still today constitutes the predominant majority of the
population in Northern and Central Europe, the race to which in
ancient times the bearers of the megalithic culture, the Central
German mixed cultures and the warhammer culture belonged to the race
that included Illyrians, Celts and Germanic people in whole or in
part: the Northern Race. And now we also understand the unity in
folk culture: fairy tale, folk custom and tradition (think of the
great Pan, for example x)) in Europe, and the receptivity for
everything good and beautiful that our relatives in Greece, where
their gods showed that they had a strong kinship with the Germanic
son, both in the trembling that was placed in the hearts of men by
Zeus and Wodan, as well as in the intimate familiarity between the
other gods and men. The urge for the distance later drove this man
through the entire world, everywhere propagating the values
inherent in his being, and partly turning away from
the heart of his existence. Now the time has come when the
population of Europe as a whole must once again reflect on its own
values and return to the source of its existence. To
this end it is not necessary to neglect or forget the achievements
of the European man in the world outside our continent, because they
are also achievements that have naturally emerged from that same
Northern race man with his longing for the distance. But one should
never forget that the heart of Europe is more than just a random
neighbor, but the origin of our entire existence. Long before
archeology discovered the origins of our common culture in its unity
and diversity, the great poet from the heart of Europe had already
noticed these relationships. Because Mephisto's words from the
classic Walpurgisnacht in the second part of Faust do not only apply
to things from the devil's domain, but include everything that is
peculiar to us European people:
Hier
dacht'ich lauter Unbekannte
Und
finde leider Wahlverwandte;
Es
ist ein altes Buch zu blattern
Vom
Harz bis Hellas immer Vettern!
This
Europe, which emerged in conflict and with much suffering, and which
is now once again assigned suffering and struggle by powers outside
it, may hereafter rise again, purified and strengthened, to fulfil
its mission in the world, living on the inexhaustible powers of its
nourishing heart!
*)
F. Muller, The Death of the Great Pan, View. 1942, 162—169 and
226—238.
1)
O. Paret, Die Bandkeramiker und die Indogermanenfrage die Welt als
Geschichte 1942 Heft 42 S. 53 ff.
August
14, 1945 Amsterdam professors suspended
At
the municipal university in Amsterdam, the following have been
suspended by the military authorities: Prof. Dr. G. A. S. Snijder,
Prof. Dr. L. J. van Apeldoorn, Prof. Dr. F. C. Bursch, Prof. Dr. A.
F. H. Gerth, Prof. Dr. R. W. Weitzenbock, Prof. W. L. L. Carol,
Prof. P. Stenimga Hzn., Dr. T. L. de Bruin, lecturer, Dr. K. Mueller
lecturer, Dr. F. H. ter Poorten, curator, Dr. J. de Wit, private
lecturer, while Prof. W. A. P. Schueffner, former professor, has
been denied access to Senate meetings.
Furthermore,
the military authority has issued an order to cease their duties to:
Prof. Dr. H. A. Brouwer, Prof. Dr. L. E J. Brouwer, Prof. Dr. C. F.
A. van Dam, Prof. Dr. H. T. Deelman, Prof. Dr. G. Revesz, Prof. Dr.
Th. J. Stomps, Dr. Th. E. de Jonge Cohen, private lecturer, P.
Otten, secretary of curators, because the investigation into their
conduct during the occupation has not yet ended and to:
Prof.
Dr. B. Brouwer, Prof. Dr. J. de Decker, Prof. Dr. A. W. de Groot,
Prof. Dr. J. A. A. Ketelaar, Prof. Dr. A. de Klein, Prof. Dr. N. H.
Swellengrebel, Prof. Dr. H. ter Veen, Prof. Dr. J. P. Wibaut, Dr. E.
M. Bruins, lecturer, Dr. A. Heyting, lecturer, because the
investigation into their conduct during the occupation led to
disciplinary measures being taken against them .
January
29, 1946 APPOINTMENTS, DISMISSALS, ETC.
[...]
1945, to resign from his position to L. J. van Apeldoorn, professor
at the municipal university in Amsterdam; effective September 25,
1945, to resign from his positions to F. C. Bursch, professor at the
Municipal University of Amsterdam and curator at the National Museum
of Antiquities in Leiden; [...]
August
23, 1946 [...] Partly thanks to the articles of the tireless
investigator
Van der Berg has appointed the currently suspended curator Dr. F. C.
Bursch conducted an investigation on site in 1942. The archaeologist
thought he could conclude from the excavations that there was an old
cemetery, possibly with a chapel, from the 10th century. So one of
the oldest churches in Friesland had probably been uncovered. Mr Van
der Berg was grateful, but not satisfied, he wanted the cemetery to
be older, even much older (6)
Furthermore,
on the basis of similarity between the current cemetery of the
village (which almost certainly already existed in 1661) and the
present cemetery, he believed that we were dealing here with the old
cemetery of the village of Oudehorne, which he considered a center
of ancient culture - for the surrounding area - and which would
later have been moved to the North. It may be, although the evidence
is not conclusive. The gentleman mentioned is definitely on the
wrong track if he even suggests the possibility of having something
to do with a branch of the Gravinneweg (that jack of all trades).
Since
in 1623 there is mention of “het olde kerckhoff" (7) and
the peat works in Oudehorne, with the exception of a few smaller
pieces from the private property of P. van Dekama, date from around
1650, this cemetery can bear its name - now we assume, that the flag
covers the load - only obtained because Jews were buried in this
old, possibly disused cemetery during the time of the settlements.
However, the fact that the archaeologist dates the chapel to the
tenth century gives us the courage to venture on thin ice. In
addition to the Thabor monastery near Tirns, the monks of "Avert"
owned land near the cemetery, and perhaps the Kikenberg itself, as
shown above. Since the well-known Cistercian monastery Aduard was
founded around 1200, it could be that its monks had a courtyard,
possibly with a chapel, of which the abbot mentioned the priest,
under Oudehorne have been mistaken for a few centuries, something
that is far from impossible considering the disturbed condition of
the ground in which it was located.
July
14, 1952 PRAEHISTORY
Dr
F. C. Bursch has presented very interesting ideas about the oldest
history of Western European man and his civilization in his book The
Western Man Discovers His World (Sijthoff, Leiden). The writer
approaches the mental state of primitive man with the help of the
insights of modern psychology, and thus arrives at surprising
conclusions, each of which is worth long-term consideration. The
reproach that the author addresses to many prehistorians in his
introduction - namely, that an image of primitive man has never
appeared behind their description of graves, utensils, drawings,
etc. - does not affect him in any way. Despite the fact that the
usual data of a factual nature can be found in large numbers in this
book, Dr Bursch remains primarily concerned with the spirit and
religion of the oldest bearers and founders of our civilization. The
writer presents interesting thoughts, especially with regard to the
artistic work of primitive Europeans, based on an astute
interpretation of long-known facts. This excellent work gains even
more value due to the fascinating style in which it is written, and
is therefore also very important for the layman.
September
27, 2003 Engagement with one's own
Why
wouldn't Dutch archaeologists cooperate with the Germans after 1933?
Both groups were aware of the ethnic significance of their
profession and there was hardly any difference of opinion regarding
professional content.
Theo
Toebosch
September
27, 2003
'Just
get some air,' said historian Martijn Eickhoff to himself. It was
1996 and he was in the Bundesarchiv in Berlin going through a file
for his dissertation on Dutch archeology during the occupation, when
for him every historian's dream came true. He suddenly had tangible
evidence in his hands for something that he would otherwise have had
to make plausible through argumentation. In front of him, in a
former SS barracks, lay a diagram that a German archaeologist had
made in June 1940, showing the strategy to be followed to Nazisify
Dutch archaeology. A refreshing rain shower was falling outside.
Seven
years later, next Tuesday, Eickhoff (1967) will receive his PhD at
the University of Amsterdam on The origin of the 'own', The
Netherlands' earliest past, archeology and National Socialism. The
dissertation is the result of nine years of research, over four
hundred pages long. The origins of this lie in his student days,
when he attended some archeology lectures and experienced an
excursion to Valkenburg in South Holland. To his surprise, he
learned that Dutch archaeologists had excavated several Roman forts
in the village between 1941 and 1943. 'Gosh', he thought, 'I didn't
know that excavations were also carried out during the war.
Interesting. Because what role did the Germans play in this?'
The
Dutch archaeologists were initially hesitant that his research would
lead to the conclusion that Dutch archeology had been wrong during
the war. But as befits a modern historian, he was not concerned with
right or wrong. He wanted to know how Dutch archaeologists had
responded to the Nazis' interest in their work and to investigate
the professional differences and similarities between Nazi
archeology and 'normal' archaeology. After the archaeologists'
initial fears were allayed, he never felt like an outsider among
them. The funding for his research even came from the NWO
[Nederlands Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek] archeology fund.
three portraits
Eickhoff
begins his dissertation with an extensive sketch of Dutch archeology
in the first half of the twentieth century. He does this on the
basis of the portraits of three archaeologists, J.H. Holwerda, A.E.
van Giffen and A.W. Byvanck. Holwerda, classicist and director of
the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO) in Leiden, was a scholar in
the classical-humanistic knowledge tradition. For him, everything
still began and ended with Classical Antiquity. He therefore studied
indigenous Dutch archaeological phenomena in connection with what
the ancient Greeks and Romans had produced. By writing popular
science books and newspaper articles about his excavations, he was
the best-known Dutch archaeologist around the 1920s.
Unlike
Holwerda himself, Byvanck, professor of Archeology and Ancient
History at Leiden University, did not excavate. He focused entirely
on classical art expressions, which he considered the most important
source for gaining knowledge about the 'spirit' of a period or
culture. When he later became interested in Dutch pre- and
protohistory, the 'folk spirit' in archaeological finds became his
most important object of study.
Van
Giffen was director of the Biological Archaeological Institute (BAI)
of the University of Groningen. Originally a biologist, he was
empirically oriented. He was concerned with the systematic
classification of directly observable archaeological phenomena. Die
Tatsachen bleiben, die Interpretation schwankt was his favorite
motto. His research area was mainly in the three northern provinces.
Due to commercial excavations of mounds, the historic cultural
landscape was in danger of disappearing at a rapid pace. The
provincial notables encouraged Van Giffen to study cultural and
natural history before it was too late. Van Giffen established his
international fame with the excavation of the Ezinge mound.
According
to Eickhoff, there were three different research traditions in Dutch
archeology at that time: the classical-humanistic of Holwerda, the
romantic-idealistic of Byvanck and the empirical-natural scientific
of Van Giffen. But despite the differences, there was an important
similarity between Holwerda, Byvanck and Van Giffen, says Eickhoff.
All three were looking for insight into the ethnic and racial
composition of the Dutch people. Hence their special attention to
the prehistoric dolmen builders and the Beaker peoples, the first
inhabitants of the Netherlands, and the Germanic tribes who were
considered their direct ancestors: the Franks, Frisians and Saxons.
The
archaeological research into the ancestors influenced the way in
which national history was described. Until around 1920, the
starting point was usually with the Romans and the time of the
Migrations, later history started with references to the Late Stone
Age. The archaeological research results also ended up in folklore,
physical anthropology, logical and sociological studies about the
Dutch people. The concept of 'Dutch people' gradually acquired an
ethnic meaning in addition to a political, social and
cultural-historical meaning. People became convinced that shared
descent was reflected in the character and appearance of the current
population. In this way, cultural differences within the Netherlands
could be explained ethnically. At the same time, the interest in
'their own' led some to commitment to their own region, others had
visions of a Greater Netherlands and in the late 1930s there were
also Dutch people who believed that the homeland should be absorbed
into a Greater Germanic unity.
Eickhoff
wants to say that ethnic awareness occurred in many sections of
Dutch society. But it is mainly the German archeology of that time
that is associated with it, he continues. The National Socialists
stimulated the profession in the Third Reich by increasing the
number of chairs in pre- and protohistoric archeology at
universities. Not without reason, because they considered archeology
the most national of all sciences. Cultures and peoples were one for
them. Based on the origin of the oldest finds, they could say which
people came from where. All attention was paid to the ancient
Germanic people. In the eyes of the Nazis, these were, after all,
the blond, blue-eyed Aryans, the firstborn of the Indo-Europeans,
groups of whom had moved south and east from their cradle of
Schleswig Holstein to bring culture and civilization there.
According to the National Socialist archaeologists, scientists who
believed that civilization had come from the east and south showed a
shameful lack of patriotism. The true German archaeologist should
look for Germanic roots everywhere in Europe and should find it
quite normal for Germany to assert historical rights in those
places.
No
one in the Netherlands made a fuss when Van Giffen attended
conferences in Germany in the 1930s that were organized by
scientists who had joined the SS or the NSDAP. Dutch archaeologists
traditionally had good contacts with their German colleagues. These
good contacts remained, even after 1933. In terms of professional
content, is one of Eickhoff's most important conclusions, there was
little difference of opinion. Although Van Giffen believed that
Frisians and Saxons were too culturally related to divide them on
the basis of their pottery, he also supported the general idea that
cultural expressions said something about ethnicity and migration
flows in the past.
dolmens
The
Germans therefore had good hopes of Nazisifying Dutch archaeology.
Better said, the Germans believed in the self-Nazification of Dutch
archaeology. This had to be done, as emerged from the diagram that
Eickhoff found in the Federal Archives, by encouraging cross-border
inventories, for example by mapping the dolmens in the Netherlands
and Lower Saxony. Furthermore, it was necessary to allow research in
military areas. But above all, good scientific contacts had to be
maintained. And so from 1940 onwards, Dutch archaeologists received
invitations for a trip to German archaeological museums along the
Rhine or their German colleagues visited them for tea, sometimes
even in uniform.
Then
came the great dilemma for the Dutch prehistorians, as can be seen
from Eickhoff's reconstruction of the war past of the Dutch
archaeologists. Should they or should they not cooperate with the
Germans, while there were few professional reasons not to do so? As
a classical archaeologist, Bijvanck was able to remain in the
shadows. He wrote a retrospective work, The Prehistory of the
Netherlands, in which he placed the origins of the Dutch national
character for the Frisians, Franks and Saxons in the Neolithic. The
book, which had its third edition in 1944, earned him both praise
and criticism from National Socialists.
Holwerda
had already given up his directorship of the RMO before the
occupation, it was his student, the Leiden prehistorian F.C. Bursch,
who decided to collaborate with the Germans. The Netherlands and
Germany belonged together, he was convinced. That's how it had been
in prehistory, and that's how it would be again in the future
according to a kind of natural law. Eickhoff: “Based on his
knowledge of the past, Bursch drew consequences for the present and
committed himself to propaganda for National Socialist ideas. He
also conducted an excavation in Ukraine for the SS.” Van
Giffen decided differently. According to him, science should be free
of politics. He kept the Germans, including colleagues and old
friends, at a distance, but without this being at the expense of his
work. For the Germans, there was a good relationship with the Dutch
archaeologists, especially with Van Giffen, who was considered as
the best excavator in Europe, so important that they let him do his
thing. Van Giffen gratefully took advantage of this. After the
bombing of Valkenburg airport in May 1940, the neighboring village
was in havoc. A great opportunity for Van Giffen to finally
investigate the elevation in the landscape that he had already
discovered in 1914 - the excavation that gave Eickhoff the idea to
study Dutch archeology during the occupation.
When
it suited him, Van Giffen also collaborated with the Germans or
their sympathizers. For example, in early 1943 he carried out an
emergency excavation with the Nazi Dutch Labor Service in the
Havelter Berg nature reserve, where the Germans were going to build
a military airfield.
After
the war, Bursch was convicted. Van Giffen became the head of the
National Office for Archaeological Soil Research, founded in 1947,
and the most important and powerful man in Dutch archaeology. Among
some archaeologists he was also given the name of a collaborator who
had escaped the dance. Not right, says Eickhoff. “He did try
to take advantage of the German interest in his profession. And
after the war he quickly restored contacts with his German
colleagues. At that time, he attached even more importance to
scientific accuracy and objectivity than before, which meant that
his research focused less and less on race and ethnicity.”
The
Dutch archaeologists are ultimately happy that Eickhoff, as a
historian, did the research. He had a blank attitude towards people
and institutions and the current structures and frameworks regarding
the earliest history of the Netherlands were not in his head. As a
result, he did not fall into the trap of using current knowledge as
a frame of reference.
Eickhoff
hopes that historians will also learn from his research. Nowadays
they often see archeology as nothing but dusty pots and pans. But:
“Archaeology is not only a science, but also a specific form
of historical awareness. If you study archaeologists and their work,
you learn a lot about how society thinks about issues such as who
are we and where do we come from. So you get to know the ideas about
the origins of your own.”
M.
Eickhoff: The origin of 'own'. The Netherlands' earliest past,
archeology and National Socialism. Edition Tree. ISBN 90 5352 935 7.
Price €25.-
March
11, 2006 'The Pompeii of the North'
'I
don't know that leather travel bag with metal fittings, where the
name Van Giffen is engraved. He didn't have that with him in my
time.'
Theo
Toebosch
March
11, 2006
You
will hear such details when you tour the exhibition Professor van
Giffen and the secret of the mounds in the Groninger Museum with
Tjalling Waterbolk. The now eighty-year-old emeritus professor of
archeology at the University of Groningen was a student and student
assistant and later the successor of A.E. van Giffen (1884-1973).
Albert
Egges van Giffen was one of the most important Dutch archaeologists,
if not the most important. He developed an excavation method that is
still used today and has examined and excavated numerous dolmens,
prehistoric burial fields and mounds, mounds and mounds, Roman
settlements and medieval churches. He was also curator of the
museums of Groningen and Assen, professor in Groningen and Amsterdam
and the first director of the National Office for Archaeological
Soil Research.
Originally
a biologist, Van Giffen studied not only the material culture of
people but also their natural living conditions, Waterbolk writes in
the introduction to the book that accompanies the exhibition (and
bears the same title). Van Giffen has introduced many things that
are now self-evident. For example, he ensured the merger of
archeology and natural scientific research such as paleobotany and
zoology and he had landscape reconstructions drawn, complete with
swirling smoke from houses and a man with an ox cart.
Waterbolk
is visiting the exhibition for the second time. During the opening,
where State Secretary Van der Laan unpleasantly surprised the
archaeologists present by talking about the 'eighteenth-century
professor Van Griffen' who dug up items 'from the Ice Age', it was
so busy that he could not get a good impression. 'A beautiful,
interesting exhibition,' he says now. The accompanying book is also
beautiful and interesting, with beautiful full-page historical
photos of the excavations of the mounds. Also beautiful are Hans
Sas's photos of the current mound landscape north of Groningen.
The
book and exhibition focus on research into the mounds, but attention
is also paid to Van Giffen himself and his (scientific) world. As a
student in Groningen, the pastor's son Van Giffen attended lectures
with the geologist Van Calcar. In 1908, he asked Van Giffen 'on
behalf of science' to supervise the commercial excavation of the
Dorkwerd mound. The land was sold as fertilizer to farmers on poorer
sand and peat soils. People like Van Calcar, who were involved in
archeology in their spare time, were afraid that the excavations
would result in the loss of much information about residential
mounds that had once been raised by human hands against the rising
sea water in a dynamic landscape without dikes.
Van
Giffen started collecting the biological remains in Dorkwerd. He
made an agreement with the excavators of seventy other mounds that
they would report archaeological finds to him. He called for
structured research to finally discover the history of the formation
of the mounds and mounds.
A
great task for the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden (RMO),
at the time the only archaeological institute in the country. The
Groningen potato manufacturer J.E. Scholten declared himself willing
to finance an excavation, but father and son Holwerda, who led the
RMO, declined the offer. Too few staff, was the argument. Holwerda
Jr. was nevertheless impressed by the enthusiasm of Van Giffen, ten
years his junior, and asked him to become an assistant in Leiden.
It
became the seed for more than thirty years of discord in Dutch
archaeology. Stubborn as he was, as is evident from Leo Verhart's
contribution in the book, Van Giffen - who thought Holwerda Jr. was
a bad excavator - tried to bend things to his will in Leiden. This
did not go down well in the formal RMO and after many arguments Van
Giffen left for Groningen again. From his Biological-Archaeological
Institute, Van Giffen led his years of prestige battle against
Holwerda.
The
exhibition makers have beautifully depicted that struggle. In one
room, plaster copies of classical Greek statues show the thinking of
Holwerda Jr. As a classicist, he was convinced that the origins of
the Dutch population had to be sought in Southeastern Europe. The
'proof': remains of 'dome graves' that he had excavated on the 't
Loo estate - with the original form of the stone dome grave as it
was known from Greek Mycenae. Van Giffen would later show that they
were simply burial mounds.
In
the adjacent room, a microscope by Carl Zeiss and a 'mound' of
animal skulls refer to Van Giffen's belief that the combination of
natural science and archeology is necessary for prehistoric
research.
One
wall is full of painted portraits of men who were important to Van
Giffen's career. Among them, potato manufacturer J.E. Scholten, who
has funded many studies. Van Giffen had the gift of winning over
high-ranking people and getting everything done from them. He was
strict towards his assistants. They had to be there for him day and
night, Waterbolk knows from personal experience.
In
the early 1930s, Van Giffen finally had the opportunity to
systematically excavate a mound in Ezinge. For the first time, an
archaeologist uncovered the habitation history of a place outside
the classical world. Ezinge became the 'Pompeii of the North', with,
as Van Giffen established, the earliest habitation phase dating from
the fifth century BC. The inhabitants of the far North were not, as
the Roman writer Pliny wrote, poor fishermen in stilt houses, but
farmers who kept cattle and grew crops on the artificial hill. And
Roman pottery from Tunisia pointed to contacts with the outside
world.
The
research into the mounds also provided the answer to the question of
whether there was rapid sea level rise. Van Giffen came up with 10
centimeters per century, not bad.
Standing
in front of the portrait of geologist Van Calcar, Waterbolk notes
that geology has played an important role in the history of Dutch
archaeology. Van Giffen's mound research would never have received
so much support if the geological issue of land subsidence and sea
level rise had not also played a role.
The
still highly regarded Groningen C14 laboratory (for dating), which
Van Giffen initiated in the 1950s, would also not have come about
without geology.
Geological
research also stood at the beginning of Dutch ship archaeology.
During the reclamation of the Noordoostpolder in the 1940s, Van
Giffen managed to get an assistant to excavate shipwrecks. The
responsible authorities had given their approval because geologists
could date sedimentary layers on the basis of objects in the ships.
The
book and exhibition do not explicitly state this. That is the
advantage of visiting an exhibition in the company of an old
initiated scholar. Then you hear just a little more.
exhibition:
'professor van Giffen and the secret of the mounds'. Groningen
Museum, until April 9. catalogue: €34.95. ISBN 90 78214 01 5.
December
8, 2007 Silent conspiracy
The
Nazis used archeology to justify their expansion policy.
It
offered archaeologists unprecedented career opportunities. Only now
are the details coming out. Theo Toebosch
December
8, 2007
Jankuhn,
Kersten, Kimmig, Dehn, Werner, Tackenberg. The archaeologist
Waterbolk knew them all. “But I'm only now finding out what
they did in World War II.” Tjalling Waterbolk, the 83-year-old
emeritus professor of archeology at the University of Groningen,
rightly calls the contents of the recently published conference
volume L'archéologie nazie en Europe de l'Ouest "revealing".
Herbert
Jankuhn, the colleague from Göttingen, knew Waterbolk after the
war as “a real leader, a very smart man and not an unpleasant
figure”. But before that, Jankuhn, as Sturmbannführer,
belonged to the personal staff of SS leader Heinrich Himmler and he
led the Sonderkommando Jankuhn, which was involved in art theft in
the Soviet Union. Karl Kersten was the man “with whom I could
comfortably speak Danish”: also a member of Jankuhn's
Sonderkommando. And Wolfgang Kimmig, “the colleague from
Tübingen” was involved in the inventory of French
archaeological collections in order to – euphemistically put
it – 'safeguard' them. Wolfgang Dehn, “the sympathetic
colleague from Marburg”, was a member of the SA in 1933 and in
1935 as an SS member Ehreramtlicher Arbeiter in Rasse- und
Siedlungshauptamt der SS, received a high Nazi decoration in 1939
and was involved in excavations from 1940 in occupied Luxembourg.
Joachim Werner, “an amicable man who did not want to know
anything about C14 dating”, was an employee of the Kunstschutz
of the German army and was mainly concerned with the study of
so-called Germanic graves in Belgium. Kurt Tackenberg, “a
somewhat steep man, who sent his students to our excavations in
Wijster”, was a member of the Kampfbund für Deutsche
Kultur and the NSDAP and, on behalf of the SS Ahnenerbe, leader of
the German Institute in Brussels.
Waterbolk:
“I have never heard anything about this past, not even from
their students who succeeded them. It has been, as its compilers
say, a conspiracy of silence.” Not everyone was completely
ignorant. It is said of the archaeologist Jankuhn that in his old
age, and already a bit forgetful, he sometimes gave the Hitler
salute at meetings, to the consternation of his colleagues.
The
collection not only outlines what German archaeologists and some
foreign collaborationist colleagues did between 1933 and 1945, but
also the developments before and after that time.
Nazi
archeology looked everywhere for anything that could indicate an
earlier Germanic presence. And that tendency did not just appear out
of the blue, says historian Martijn Eickhoff, who obtained his PhD
in Dutch archeology in the Second World War and is the author of a
contribution to the collection. “The idea that something like
a people or ethnicity could be deduced from an excavated earthenware
pot was widely accepted in the 1920s.”
youth associations
However,
German archaeologists drew the utmost consequences from this
scientific approach. Philologist Gustaf Kossinna (1858-1932) called
archeology the most national of all sciences. German archaeologists,
especially prehistorians, felt the same way after the loss of German
territory after the Treaty of Versailles. Many of them had become
members at a young age of Nazi youth associations that saw and
glorified Germanic roots everywhere. When the Nazis, who were able
to use archeology to justify their expansionist policies, seized
power in 1933, they offered archaeologists unprecedented career
opportunities. In 1933 there were only seven chairs in prehistory,
but three years later there were already fifteen. At its peak in
1942, there were twenty-five chairs. More than eighty percent of the
approximately six hundred archaeologists in Germany were members of
the NSDAP, a percentage comparable to that of SD officers.
During
the war years, archaeologists were sent to the occupied and annexed
areas to excavate and protect Germanic heritage.
Ultimately,
not much came of the archaeological programs drawn up. In the
Netherlands, for example, a law passed shortly after May Day made it
impossible for German archaeologists to excavate themselves. They
then approached Waterbolk's teacher Albert Egges van Giffen, then
the best excavator in Europe, but he held off. Only when it suited
him did he seek help from the Germans for excavations. Eickhoff:
“Van Giffen was a master at confusing the occupying
authorities and playing them off against each other.” Frans
Christian Bursch of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden
allowed himself to be won over by the Nazis. But frustrated by Van
Giffen in the Netherlands, he eventually turned his interest abroad.
For example, in 1943 he carried out an excavation in the Ukraine –
using duress.
In
France and Belgium, where the Germans were able to conduct
archaeological research themselves, excavations came to a minimum
after the German defeat at Stalingrad in 1942. Many archaeologists
were then called up for active duty.
Atlantis
As
in other sections of the Nazis, there was also a struggle for power
in archeology. That battle was mainly between Alfred Rosenberg's Amt
Rosenberg, who wanted to use archeology to demonstrate the
superiority of the Aryan Germanic people and the existence of the
mythical Atlantis, and Heinrich Himmler's Ahnenerbe, the SS
organization for the study of prehistory. The Ahnenerbe won that
battle by sidelining Hans Reinerth, the most important archaeologist
at Amt Rosenberg, through a smear campaign. In addition to being a
convinced National Socialist, Reinerth was also a great supporter of
interdisciplinary research, experimental archeology and
popularization of archaeology. These interests came together in
Unteruhldingen, where in 1922 he had prehistoric stilt houses built
in an open-air museum on the shores of Lake Constance. Waterbolk
also knows him as a pioneer in the introduction of pollen analysis.
“He was decisive.” From 1942 onwards the SS started to
ridicule him. They sent out countless newspaper reports questioning
the former existence of stilt houses. Reinerth himself was called a
fantasist. At the beginning of 1945, the victory of the Ahnenerbe
was final when Reinerth was expelled from the NSDAP after an
internal investigation due to friendship with Jews.
After
the war, Reinerth also became the scapegoat with which his fellow
archaeologists could launder their own past. At a meeting of
prehistorians in Regensburg in 1949, they distanced themselves in a
resolution from the 'unbusinesslike and tendentious science of
prehistory' as it had been propagated by Reinerth. People like
Jankuhn simply kept their positions at the universities and quickly
re-established contacts with their foreign colleagues. They even
published the excavations they carried out in occupied territory,
but without mentioning the circumstances under which the excavations
were carried out.
“There
was a perception that most German prehistorians had in fact resisted
by adhering to 'pure, objective' science,” Waterbolk recalls.
“That image was reinforced in the 1970s by Manfred Kater's
book about the Ahnenerbe, in which the archaeologists were
exonerated, with one exception.”
Only
after the fall of the Wall did new sources become available and the
silence was broken. Achim Leube (1936), originally East German and
professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, organized an
international conference on Nazi archeology in Berlin in 1998.
Partly for this reason, say the compilers of the collection, it can
no longer be said that everything was not too bad, because it would
only have involved a few people and archaeologists did not kill
anyone and only fulfilled their 'task'.
complicit
The
majority of German archaeologists chose to join the NSDAP knowingly
and without any external pressure. German prehistorians also
gratefully benefited from the policies of the Third Reich. But the
most important conclusion is that the German prehistorians are
complicit because they helped to legitimize the imperialist cultural
policy of the Nazis.
That
conclusion is still not easy in Germany. An exhibition on Nazi
archeology in Trier in 2002 sparked protests before its opening.
On
the other hand, publications on archeology during the Vichy regime
are still the subject of debate in France, and in Belgium and
Austria research into archeology during the Second World War has
still been minimal.
Strikingly
enough, says Martijn Eickhoff, Leube believes that the publications
in recent years on Nazi archeology are damaging current archeology
in Germany. “Many chairs are disappearing due to budget cuts.
Leube fears that the Nazi past is being used to eliminate chairs.”
Jean-Pierre
Legendre, Laurent Olivier, Bernadette Schnitzler (ed.),
L'archéologie nazie en L'Europe de l'Ouest, 2007, isbn
978-2-88474-804-9
Historical
lectures
I
— ROMANI, ROMANIA.
The
inhabitants of Rome have always called themselves Romani in their
own language. This word is formed from the name Roma and the suffix
-ano, one of those by which the Latin language derived the name of a
country or city from the name of its inhabitants. Long after the
subjugation of Italy and the other provinces that made up their
empire, the Romani distinguished themselves from the peoples who
lived under their domination. The latter retained their original
names: they were Sabines, Gauls, Hellenes, Iberians, and did not
have the right to call themselves Romans, a name reserved for those
who held the right of citizenship by birth or who had received it by
special favor. This distinction gradually faded, especially after
the famous edict of Caracalla had made Roman citizens of all the
inhabitants of the empire: In orbe Romano qui sunt, says Ulpian, ex
constitutione imperatoris Antonini cives Romani effecti sunt. The
threatening proximity of the Barbarians, who pressed the empire from
several sides, soon made the use of the word Romani more general to
designate the inhabitants of the empire as opposed to the thousand
foreign peoples who bordered it and who were already beginning to
cross its borders. The writers of the 4th and 5th centuries speak
with pride of this new Roman nationality, of this fusion of races in
a single homeland. Quis jam cognoscit, says Saint Augustine, gentes
in imperio Romano quæ quid erant, quando omnes Romani facti
sunt et omnes Romani dicuntur? It was when speaking of the empire
that Apollinaris Sidonius wrote: In qua unica totius orbis civitate
soli Barbari et servi peregrinantur. The poets did not fail to
celebrate this great work. The verses of Rutilius Namatianus are
famous:
Fecisti
patriam diversis gentibus unam;
Urbem
fecisti quæ prius orbis erat.
Those
of Claudien, no less enthusiastic, seem to place particular emphasis
on the name, which has become common, of Romani:
Hæc
est (Roma) in gremium victos quæ sola recepit,
Humanumque
genus communi nomine fecit.
Prudence
also exclaims:
Deus
undique gentes
Inclinare
caput docuit sub legibus iisdem,
Romanosque
omnes fieri, quos Rhenus et Ister,
Quos
Tagus aurifluus, quos magnus inundat Iberus...
Jus
fecit commune pares et nomine eodem
Nexuit
et domitos fraterna in vincla redegit.
How
exaggerated these praises were, how far the entire human race had
come from having entered the orbis Romanus, is what the authors of
these verses themselves witnessed: the universal city was destroyed
at the very moment when its completion was being celebrated, and the
distinction between Romans and Barbarians, instead of expressing a
relationship of superiority of the former over the latter, soon took
on the opposite meaning. This distinction, which predates the
establishment of the Germans in the Roman provinces of the West,
persisted after this establishment; it was the same in all the
countries where it took place. The foreign invaders were designated
by the generic name of Barbari; they accepted it themselves[11], and
did not find it wrong that the Romans, whom they charged with
writing their laws and ordinances in Latin, attributed it to them.
However, this name only appears in an exceptional way, and usually
when it is a question of designating the whole of the Germanic
tribes. These tribes had no common name at that time by which they
could express their collective nationality; the word Germani,
naturally, is completely unknown at that time; as for the word
theodisc, diustisc (formerly French tiedeis, Italian tedesco), it
does not appear in the Latin form theotiscus theudiscus until the
9th century; The word Teuto, which seems to be etymologically linked
to it, is nowhere to be seen, and the derivative Teutonicus, used by
certain Latin writers, is a classical memory which certainly did not
rest, at that time, on any real denomination. It is permissible to
doubt that the Germans had, at that time, a very clear awareness of
their racial unity; in the texts they usually qualify themselves by
the special name of their tribe, and we see the Romani successively
opposed to the Franci, the Burgundiones, the Gothi, the Langobardi,
etc. On the contrary, nowhere do we see the inhabitants of the
provinces of the empire having special denominations which connect
them to a nationality prior to the Roman conquest. In the whole of
the laws and histories of that time there are neither Galli, nor
Rhæti, nor Itali, nor Iberi, nor Afri: there are only Romani
facing the conquerors spread throughout all the provinces. The
Romanus is therefore, at the time of the Germanic invasions and
establishments, the inhabitant, speaking Latin, of any part of the
empire. This is how he calls himself, not without retaining for a
long time some pride in this great name[12]; but his conquerors do
not call him thus: the name Romanus does not seem to have penetrated
any of their dialects. The name that they give him and that they
gave him probably well before the conquest, it is that of walah,
later welch, ags. vealh, anc. nor. vali (Swedish mod. val), to which
are attached the derivatives walahisc, later waelsch (welche) and
wallon. The use of this word and that of Romanus is precisely
inverse: the first is never used except by the Barbarians, the
second only by the Romans[13]; both persisted face to face, as we
will see below, well after the period in question here, in countries
where the two races, Germanic and Latin, were in intimate and daily
contact and had not managed to merge into a new nationality.
The
word welche has in French a contemptuous nuance which it certainly
had, at that time, in the minds of the Germans who pronounced it.
The conquerors had a high opinion of themselves and regarded
themselves as very superior to the peoples among whom they came to
settle. Purely Germanic monuments are unfortunately lacking for
these remote periods; but a few Latin texts have preserved the
memory of the feelings that the conquering race, still several
centuries after the fall of the empire, entertained for the Walahen,
the sole custodians of Western civilization. The most curious of
these texts, because of its naivety, is this sentence which is found
in the famous Roman-German glossary of Cassel and which is certainly
by a Bavarian of the time of Pepin: Stulti sunt Romani, sapienti
Paioari; modica sapientia est in Romanis; plus habent stultitia quam
sapientia. Here, by a rare piece of luck, we have preserved,
alongside the Latin translation, the thought of this excellent
Peigir in the very form in which it smiled on his mind: Tole sint
Walha, spahe sint Peigira; luzic ist spahi in Walhum; mera hapent
tolaheiti denne spahi. At the same time, we encountered, on the
banks of the Rhine, Germans like the one painted by Wandelbert in
his account of the miracles of Saint Goar: Omnes Romanæ
nationis ac linguæ homines ita quodam gentilicio odio
exsecrabatur ut ne videre quidem eorum aliquem æquanmite
vellet... Tanta enim ejus animum innata ex feritate barbarica
stoliditas apprehenderat ut ne in transitu quidem Romanæ
linguæ vel gentis homines et ipsos quoque bonos viros ac
nobiles libenter adspicere posset. These feelings were not limited
to men without culture: even in the 10th century, Luitprand was
indignant at the thought that he could be honored by calling him
Romanus, and said to the Greeks: Quos
(Romanos) nos, Langobardi scilicet, Saxones, Franci, Lotharingi,
Bagoarii, Sueri, Burgundiones, tanto dedignamur, ut inimico nostro
commoti nil aliud contumeliarum nisi: Romane! dicamus, hoc solo
nomine quidquid ignobilitatis, quidquid timiditatis, quidquid
avaritiæ, quidquid luxuriæ, quidquid mendacii, imo
quidquid vitiorum est comprehendentes. How can we fail to
notice that, after ten centuries, almost similar assessments of
"wælschen Lug und Trug," "wælsche
Sittenlosigkeit," and "the deep moral understanding of the
Romanischen Voelker" are still heard in German?
The
name Romani did not persist beyond Carolingian times. The fusion of
the Germanic conquerors with the Romans, their adoption of the
language of the vanquished in Spain, France, and Italy, caused such
a general distinction to disappear from the former Western Empire,
replaced by the special names of the nations that arose from the
debris of Charlemagne's empire. Soon there were no longer Romans in
opposition to a certain number of conquering tribes, but on the
contrary a German nation enclosed within the enlarged limits of
ancient Germany, and which, while remaining divided into tribes,
became aware of itself under the name of Tiedesc, and was called by
its neighbors by various names, but also collective ones,—and,
alongside it, Lombards, French, Provençals, Flemings, etc.
The name Romani was maintained, however, in two cases, where the
peoples who had shared it with the inhabitants of the entire empire
did not find themselves included in any new nationality and
retained, to distinguish themselves from the Barbarians who
surrounded them, the old appellation of which they were proud. The
Germans, faithful for their part to the previous tradition, called
these peoples by the name of Walahen, Welches, and this name has
remained with them to this day. These two cases occur in countries
where the Romani population, due to special circumstances, lives in
a sort of island among other races. Everyone now knows of the
existence of the very interesting language spoken in the canton of
Grisons, and which is distinct from the Italian with which it is in
contact to the south. This language is the only vestige that has
persisted to the present day of the language formerly spoken by the
Romani of Rhaetia. It was long believed that the Roman inhabitants
of this country had all emigrated to Italy, as Eugippius relates in
the life of Saint Severin, and had left the place free for the
Barbarians. But numerous and interesting documents prove that long
after the definitive conquest of the country by the Alemanni and the
Bavarians, a Roman population remained in the country in more or
less numerous and substantial groups... There is therefore nothing
surprising in the fact that the non-Germanized inhabitants of the
Chur region, the only ones who have resisted the progress of
Teutonicism to this day, have kept, at least in part, their name as
well as their language. It is true that they currently call
themselves not Romaun, which among them means "Roman," but
Romaunsch, like their idiom itself; but this derived form
necessarily relies on the other, older one.—Just as they
called themselves Romaunsch, the Germans now designate them by the
derivative of Walah, namely Wælschen, Churwælschen. The
other example of the persistence of the name Romani is found in
countries that were part of the Eastern Empire. The peoples who,
today, in the Danubian provinces, Hungary and European Turkey, speak
a Latin idiom designate themselves by the name Romans (Rumën,
Rumen, Romăn), which we have recently also given them
(Romanians). The designation of Vlachs is applied to them only by
the foreigners who surround them... —Like the Romani of the
West, those of the East received the name Walahen from the Germans.
It is true that at present they are not in contact with the Germans,
but we know that these countries were those through which the first
Germanic invasions rushed upon the empire: they had moreover been
preceded by numerous colonizations. There, as everywhere, the
Germans called those who called themselves Romani Walahen, and they
transmitted this designation to the various peoples who replaced
them in these regions; the Greeks themselves subsequently adopted it
(Βλἁχοι). Both names, the first
in the mouths of foreigners, the second in that of the Romani,
designate to this day the singularly scattered descendants of the
ancient Romanized populations of these provinces. We know that they
have also retained their language, and that, however altered and
impregnated with foreign elements it may be, it deserves its place
among the modern dialects where the Latin language still lives.
The
name Romani, it is understood, did not designate the inhabitants of
the empire who spoke Latin solely in opposition to the Germanic
barbarians. They also used it to distinguish themselves from their
other neighbors: only the corresponding appellation of Walahen is
naturally lacking here. In Africa, for example, the Romani, whom we
find called by this name at the approach of the Vandals, previously
called themselves this in contrast to the natives who remained
foreign to Roman domination or the Roman language. Similarly, when
Armorica was occupied by Celtic-speaking tribes, the newcomers, no
doubt continuing the custom they already had in Great Britain,
called their neighbors, the inhabitants of the Romanized Gallic
provinces, Romani.
It
follows from all that has just been said that the inhabitants of the
Roman Empire, whatever their original nationality, designated
themselves, particularly in contrast to foreigners and especially to
the Germans, by the name of Romani. This name remained with them in
the various countries where the invaders settled, as long as a
distinction remained between the conquerors and the vanquished. In
the West, it generally disappeared around the 9th century to make
way for the names of the various nationalities that emerged from the
dislocation of the empire by the Germanic tribes; It persisted,
however, for a longer time, and still exists at least through its
derivative in the small country of Chur. In the East, it continued
to designate the Romanized inhabitants of the provinces south of the
Danube who did not merge with the Illyrian, Greek, Germanic, Slavic,
or Mongol populations, and it still designates them to this day. The
word Romanus was translated into German as Walah, but the Romani
never took this name themselves; it was maintained in German (where
Romanus is unknown) to designate the Roman peoples during the Middle
Ages, and has not yet completely disappeared: it is particularly
attached to the two peoples who have kept the name Romani, the
Churwælschen and the Walachen.
From
the name of the inhabitants of the empire, a name for the empire
itself was made. It was in the popular spirit to substitute a short
and concrete designation for the terms imperium Romanum, orbis
Romanus. From Romanus came the name Romania, formed by analogy from
Gallia, Græcia, Britannia, etc. The advent of this name
indicates in a striking way the moment when the fusion was complete
between the very diverse peoples subjugated by Rome, and when all,
recognizing themselves as members of a single nation, opposed
themselves as a whole to the infinite variety of the Barbarians who
surrounded them. This name was popular and had no right of entry in
the classical style; thus the period in which it appears to us for
the first time is obviously much later than that in which it must
have been formed; the texts that give it use it solely in opposition
to the barbarian world which had become the object of all fears, the
threat constantly present in the mind.
Romania
had barely become aware of itself that it was going to be ruined, at
least in its material existence. This melancholy reflection is
naturally suggested by the following passage, where we find the
oldest example of the word. It was at the beginning of the 5th
century that the following conversation took place, in the cave of
Bethlehem where Saint Jerome lived, which focused on the Gothic king
Ataulf, who had become an ally of the empire after having thought of
destroying it completely: “Ego
ipse, says Paul Orose, virum quemdam Narbonnensem, illustris sub
Theodosio militiæ, etiam religiosum prudentemque et gravem,
apud Bethlehem oppidum Palæstinæ beatissimo Hieronymo
presbytero referentem audivi se familiarissimum Ataulpho apud
Narbonam Fuisse, ac de eo sæpe sub testificatione didicisse
quod ille, cum esset animo viribus ingenioque nimius, referre
solitus esset se in primis ardenter inhiasse ut, obliterato Romano
nomine, Romanum omne solum Gothorum imperium and faceret et vocaret,
essetque, ut vulgariter loquar, Gothia quod Romania fuisset."—At
about the same time, we find this word in even sadder circumstances.
The other great Christian doctor of this time, Saint Augustine,
besieged in Hippo by the Vandals, receives letters from the bishops
of the province asking him for advice on what they should do in the
face of common peril and disaster, and he answers them on the
conduct to adopt in the face of those whom his biographer Possidius,
then imprisoned with him, calls illos Romaniæ eversores.
Romania does not only mean here, as the Bollandists want, ditio
romana in Africa; it no longer even simply has the sense of Romanum
imperium that Du Cange gives it; it has taken on a more general
meaning, that of the Roman world, of Roman civilization opposed to
the Barbarism that will destroy it. By a singular chance, the
examples of the word Romania are older and more numerous in Greek
than in Latin. When the capital of the empire was moved to
Byzantium, it nevertheless remained the Roman Empire; Constantinople
was called New Rome or simply Rome, and the Latin language remained
the official language for a long time[14]. Greek writers seem to
have adopted at this time the name Romania to designate the whole
empire... Saint Athanasius says expressly: Μητοπὁλις
ἡ 'Pὡμη τἡς 'Pωμανἱας...
Later, when the Eastern Empire was destroyed, the name 'Pωμανἱα
designated, in Greek writers, the empire of Byzantium, and
reappeared under the form Romania (with the accent on the i),
Romania, in Western writers, with this special meaning. It is from
there that it came to designate the possessions of the Greeks in
Asia, then the provinces which today form European Turkey and
Greece, and where it must be recognized under the form Rumelia. I
need not dwell here on the history of the Greek word 'Psymnaἱa';
it suffices to show that it comes from Latin and that its widespread
use in the East in the fourth century proves that it was popular in
the West before that time.
In
the West, the word Romania, as we have seen, was primarily used to
characterize the Roman Empire in opposition to the Barbarians, and
later to express the entirety of Roman civilization and society. In
this broad sense, it naturally includes language, and this secondary
idea is clearly indicated in the verses in which Fortunatus,
addressing the Frank Charibert, says to him:
Hinc
cui Barbaries, illinc Romania plaudit.
Diversis
linguis laus sonat una viro.
Romania
here means the entirety of the Romani, Roman society, the Roman
world in opposition to the German or barbarian world.
The
expression Romania remained in use until the Carolingian times and
even probably took on a new vogue when Charlemagne had restored the
Roman Empire. In a capitulary of Louis the Pious and Lothair, we
read: "Præcipimus de his fratribus qui in nostris et
Romaniæ finibus paternæ seu maternæ succedunt
hereditati," and it seems to me probable that Romania here
signifies the extent of the empire rather than Italy or that Italian
province to which the name ended up being restricted. But when the
empire had passed to the kings of Germany, the word Romania seems to
have designated specifically that part of their States which was not
Germanic, namely Italy... Finally the name Romania ended up no
longer designating anything but the province which still bears the
name of Romagna and which corresponds to the ancient exarchate of
Ravenna; It comes, according to some, from the famous donation made
by Pepin to the Ecclesia Romana, according to others, from the name
of the Greek empire, of [Greek: Rhômania 'Phánýἱá],
of which this province was the last possession in the West.
In
summary, the word Romania, made to embrace under a common name the
whole of the possessions of the Romans, served particularly to
designate the Western Empire, when it was detached from that of
Constantinople (which, for its part, took the name of [Greek:
Rhômania 'Ρωμανἱα]). Since
the successive destruction of all the remains of Roman domination,
it has expressed the whole of the countries which were inhabited by
the Romani, as well as the group of men still speaking the language
of Rome, and consequently Roman civilization itself. In this sense,
Romania is a well-chosen word to describe the domain of Romance
languages and literatures. Romania, from this point of
view of civilization and language, formerly included, at its
greatest extent, the Roman Empire up to the limits where the
Hellenic and Oriental world began, that is to say, present-day
Italy, the part of Germany situated south of the Danube, the
provinces between this river and Greece, and, on the left bank,
Dacia; Gaul up to the Rhine, England up to the wall of Septimius
Severus; the whole of Spain, less the Basque provinces, and the
northern coast of Africa. Large parts of this vast territory were
taken from it, especially by the Germans. It is true that several of
the formerly Roman countries where German is now spoken were never
completely Romanized. For England, the fact is certain: when the
Roman legions had withdrawn, the native Celtic element soon regained
the preponderance, and the Romani who, despite everything, were
still there in large numbers, were probably absorbed as much by the
Bretons as by the Saxons.—The countries situated on the left
bank of the Rhine which were Germanized were not all at the same
time; they owe their Germanization either to the depopulation caused
by the threatening proximity of the Barbarians (Rhine provinces,
Alsace-Lorraine), or to the extermination of the Roman inhabitants
by the invaders (Flanders). But it is certain, particularly for
Alsace, that the Germanic establishment had been preceded by an
almost complete Romanization.—The countries on the right bank
of the Danube (Rhaetia, Noricum, Pannonia) had received early
Germanic colonies established by the emperors themselves; In the
face of the invasions, part of the Roman population went to Italy,
the rest was absorbed more or less slowly into the conquering
people; a small nucleus persisted in some valleys of the Alps.—In
the more eastern provinces, the indigenous element had maintained
itself as in England; but the Roman population had taken on more
consistency there, so that in the midst of the old inhabitants
(Albanians) and the masses of successive invaders (Germans, Slavs,
Hungarians, Turks), the Romanians succeeded in maintaining
themselves, on the one hand as a considerable body of population, on
the other hand in small, very numerous scattered groups, and even
managed to reoccupy Trajan's Dacia, which Aurelian had evacuated all
the Romani from the 3rd century.—In Africa, it was not the
Vandals who put an end to Romanism; On the contrary, it seems
probable that, there as in Spain and Gaul, the Germans ended up
merging with the vanquished, and a particular Romance language would
doubtless have formed in the kingdom of Genseric, if the Vandal
establishment had not been destroyed by the Greeks, and especially
if the disastrous invasion of the Muslims had not torn these
beautiful regions from the Christian world. It is likely that when
the Arabs arrived, there were still many Romans in the country;
However, the indigenous element had never disappeared, even during
the time of Roman domination and in the heart of the provinces which
it surrounded on all sides: it allied itself closely with the Arabs,
and the last vestiges of Romanism disappeared very quickly from
Africa. - Spain, on the contrary, where the fusion of the Goths with
the Romans was complete, preserved its character, even under Arab
domination, and finally succeeded in freeing itself from it
entirely. - It was the same in Sicily: there, Romanism not only
completely drove out the Arab element, but also caused the
disappearance of the Greek element which, without doubt, was still
quite abundant there at the beginning of the Middle Ages. - This
Greek element also disappeared from the south of Italy, where it had
remained since the Hellenic colonization; in the south of Gaul, it
had been absorbed very early into Roman civilization. Romania,
however, lost in Gaul a province that had certainly belonged to it,
the peninsula to which the colonists coming from the other side of
the Channel gave the name of Brittany; but there can be no doubt
that this province, at the time of their landing, was almost
completely depopulated.
The
losses that Romania suffered fourteen centuries ago are not without
compensation. Not only did it absorb all the Germanic tribes that
penetrated into the heart of its territory, but it also fell back
from either side of the borders that the era of invasions had given
it. At almost all the points where it
found itself in contact with the German element, in Flanders,
Lorraine, Switzerland, Tyrol, Friuli, it made a forward movement
which gave it back a more or less large part of its former
territory. In England, the Romanized
Normans reconquered the country for centuries for the Romance world,
and their language only yielded to that of the Saxons by mixing with
it in such a proportion that the study of the English language and
literature is inseparable from that of the Romance languages and
literatures. I have already spoken of
the suppression of Greek in Italy, of Dacia reconquered by the
Romanians. In the new world, Romania
annexed immense territories; it is
beginning to regain possession of a part of North Africa.
Latin, in its various popular dialects—which are the
Romance languages—is spoken today by a much greater number of
people than at the time of the empire's greatest splendor...
G.
Paris, in Romania, Vol. I (1872),
passim.
II
— THE GALLO-ROMAN VILLA.
It
is plausible to conjecture that, in Gaul, before Caesar's conquest,
the dominant system was that of large landownership. The Romans did
not have to introduce into this country either the right of property
or the system of large estates cultivated by a servile population.
In
any case, we find in Gaul during the time of the Empire the same
rural customs as in Italy. Tacitus speaks of an estate belonging to
the Gaul Cruptorix, and he calls it a villa. Perhaps the most novel
thing was that each villa took its own name, following Roman custom.
In accordance with this same custom, the names of estates were most
often taken from men's names. Ausonius mentions the Villa Pauliacus
and the Villa Lucaniacus. Sidonius Apollinaris, in his letters,
often has occasion to mention his properties or those of his
friends. He owns one called Avitacus. An estate of the Syagria
family is called Taionnacus; that of Consentius, a friend of
Sidonius, is called ager Octavianus. Later, charters written in Gaul
will show us a series of estates which all have a proper name; they
are called, for example, Albiniacus, Solemniacensis, Floriacus,
Bertiniacus, Latiniacus, Victoriacus, Pauliacus, Juliacus,
Atiniacus, Cassiacus, Gaviniacus, Clipiacus; there are several
hundred of this kind[15]. These names, which we find in charters of
the 7th century, certainly come from an earlier period. It was under
Roman domination that the estates received them. They are Latin, and
come, for the most part, from family names which are Roman. This
does not mean that Italian families came to seize the land. The
Gauls, upon becoming Romans, took Latin names for themselves and
applied their new names to their lands. Some retained a Gallic name
by Latinizing it; thus, we find a few domain names that have a
Gallic root in a Latin form. Subsequently, all these property names
became the names of our villages in France. The lineage is easily
seen. The original owners were called Albinus, Solemnis, Florus,
Bertinus, Latinus or Latinius, Victorius, Paulus, Julius, Atinius,
Cassius, Gabinius, Clipius; and this is why our villages are called
Aubigny, Solignac, Fleury, Bertignole, Lagny, Vitry, Pouilly,
Juilly, Attigny, Chancy, Gagny, Clichy.
It
is difficult to say what the usual extent of a rural domain was in
Gaul. We must first set aside Narbonne, which had been covered with
Roman colonies and where the land had been distributed in small
lots. We must also set aside some territories in the northeast,
close to the frontier and where military colonies of veterans or
colonies of Germans were founded; here again it was the small or
medium property that was constituted, and there is no appearance
that it changed much. It was different in the rest of Gaul. Here
there was no colony, no artificial constitution of property. Either
the domains remained in the hands of the old aristocracy that had
become Roman, or they passed into the hands of enriched men. In
either case, we do not see that the land could have been much
divided up. It is very likely that there were a certain number of
very small properties; but what prevailed was the large domain. The
small property was spread here and there on Gallic soil, but
occupied only a small part of it; The average and large covered
almost everything.
Some
examples are provided by literature from the 4th and 5th centuries.
The poet Ausonius describes a patrimonial property he owns in the
region of Bazas. In his eyes, it is very small; he calls it a
villula, a herediolum, and it requires "all the modesty of his
tastes" for him to be content with it. We also see that he
counts 200 acres of arable land, 100 acres of vineyard, 50 acres of
meadows, and 700 acres of woods. This is therefore an estate that is
reputed to be small and that comprises 1,050 acres; and if it is
reputed to be small, it is because it is so in comparison with many
others. One would readily believe that a property of a thousand
acres was, in the eyes of these men, only a small property. The
estates that Sidonius Apollinaris describes, without giving their
extent, appear to be larger. Taionnacus includes "meadows,
vineyards, and plowed land." Octavianus contains "fields,
vineyards, olive groves, a plain, and a hill." Avitacus
"extends into woods and meadows, and its pastures support many
herds." A few years later, we see the Villa Sparnacus being
sold for 5,000 pounds of silver; this enormous sum, especially in a
time of crisis and in the circumstances in which we see it sold,
implies that this land was very vast.
However,
we must beware of exaggeration. Imagining immense latifundia would
be a great error. That an entire region or canton belongs to a
single owner is something of which we find no example neither in
Gaul, nor in Italy, nor in Spain. Nothing similar is reported by
Sidonius, nor by Salvian, nor by our charters. Our general
impression, in the absence of affirmation, is that the large estates
of the Roman era hardly exceeded the extent that the territory of a
village occupies today. Many have only that of our small hamlets.
And below these there are still a good number of smaller properties.
There is also a remark that must be made. We know from writers of
the 4th century that a class of very rich landowners was formed at
this time. This is one of the most important and best-established
facts of this part of history. Now, these great fortunes, about
which we have some information, were not formed by the infinite
extension of the same domain. They were formed through the
acquisition of numerous estates far removed from one another. The
most opulent families of this period did not own an entire canton or
a province; but they possessed twenty, thirty, or forty estates
scattered across several provinces, sometimes throughout all the
provinces of the empire. These are the patrimonia sparsa per orbem
of which Ammianus Marcellinus speaks. Such is the nature of the
landed fortunes of the Anicius, Symmachus, Tertullus, and Gregorius
in Italy; of the Syagrius, Paulinus, Ecdicius, and Ferreolus in
Gaul.
The
villa, the rural estate, was a fairly complex organism. It
contained, as much as possible, land of every kind: fields,
vineyards, meadows, forests. It also included men of all social
classes: untenured slaves, tenant slaves, freedmen, colonists, and
freemen. The work was done by two very distinct bodies, one being
the servile group or familia, the other the series of small tenants.
The land was also divided into two parts, one which was in the hands
of the tenants, the other which the owner kept in his hand. He had
this cultivated, either by the servile group, or by the corvées
of the tenants, or finally by a combination of the one and the other
system. There was, in the latter case, a small servile group, to
which were added the hands of the tenants at times of the year when
a lot of hands were needed. The owner thus drew from his domain a
double income, on the one hand the harvests and fruits of the
reserved portion, on the other the rents and rents of the tenants.
His manager or his steward, procurator, actor or villicus,
administered and supervised the two portions equally; from the
tenures, he received the rents; On the reserved portion, he directed
everyone's work.
This
domain... was also covered with as many buildings as were necessary
for the population and the various needs of a village. It is
understandable that no precise description is possible. We see only
that three very different types of buildings were distinguished:
1st, the owner's residence; 2nd, the slaves' dwellings, with
everything that served the general needs of cultivation; 3rd, the
dwellings of the small tenants.
We
know very little about the latter; ancient writers never described
them. Sometimes these dwellings were isolated from one another, each
of them being placed on the plot of land that the man cultivated...
Sometimes they were grouped together and formed a small hamlet that
the language called a vicus. On the largest domains, one could see,
as Julius Frontinus says, a series of these vici that formed a sort
of belt around the master's villa. This villa was always divided
into two clearly separated parts, which were distinguished by the
expressions villa urbana and villa rustica. The villa urbana, on a
rural estate, was the set of buildings that the master reserved for
himself, his family, his friends, and all his personal servants. As
for the villa rustica, it was the set of buildings intended to house
the slave farmers; here were also kept the animals and all the
objects useful for cultivation.
Varro,
Columella, and Vitruvius described this rustic villa. It had to
contain a sufficient number of small rooms, cellae, for the use of
the slaves; and these rooms had to be, as much as possible, "open
to the south." For lazy or unruly slaves, there was the
ergastulum; this was the basement. It had to be lit by enough
windows "so that the dwelling was healthy," but narrow
enough and high enough above the ground so that the men could not
escape. A few steps away were the stables, which, as far as
possible, were to be double-glazed, for summer and winter.
Next
to the stables were the small bedrooms.
The
herdsmen and shepherds' quarters. Then there were the barns for
wheat and hay, the wine cellars, the oil cellars, and the granaries
for fruit. A kitchen occupied a special building; it had to be
high-ceilinged and large enough "to serve as a meeting place at
all times for the domestic staff." Not far away was the slave
bath, which, moreover, only bathed there on holidays. The estate
naturally had its mill, its oven, its wine press, its oil press, and
its dovecote. Add to this, if the estate was complete, a forge and a
wheelwright's workshop. In the middle of all these buildings
stretched a large courtyard; the Latins called it chors; we find it
again in the Middle Ages with the same, slightly altered name,
curtis.
Some
distance away is the master's villa. This owner is usually wealthy
and took pleasure in building. Varro already noted, not without
chagrin, that his contemporaries "gave more attention to the
urban villa than to the rustic villa." Columella gives a
description of this villa. It contains summer apartments and winter
apartments; for the master lives there or can live there in all
seasons. It therefore has a double dining room and a double series
of bedrooms. It contains large bathrooms, where an entire party can
bathe at once. There are also long galleries, larger than our living
rooms, where friends can walk and chat. Pliny the Younger, who owns
about ten beautiful estates, describes two of these dwellings.
Everything imaginable in terms of comfort and luxury is found there.
We will probably not assume that all country houses were similar to
those of Pliny; but there were some even more magnificent than his;
and, from top to bottom of the scale, all country houses tended to
resemble the type he describes. He imitated and he was imitated. The
luxury of villas was, in this society of the Roman Empire, the best
way to enjoy wealth and also the most laudable way to display it.
Since there were no longer free elections, the money no longer spent
on buying votes was spent on building and decorating houses. What
can also mitigate the disadvantages of a system of large estates is
that the owner enjoys his domain and repays it in improvements or
embellishments what he receives in profits.
If
we move from Italy to Gaul, and from the time of Trajan to the 5th
century, we still find vast and magnificent villas there. Sidonius
Apollinaris paints a fairly clear picture, despite the usual
vagueness of his style, of the Villa Octaviana, which belonged to
his friend Consentius. "It offers high walls built according to
all the rules of the art." There are "porticoes and baths
of admirable grandeur." Sidonius also describes the Villa
Avitacus. It is reached by a wide and long avenue which is its
"vestibule." We first encounter the balneum, that is to
say, a group of buildings which includes baths, a swimming pool, a
frigidarium, a perfume room; it is a whole large building. Leaving
there, we enter the house. The women's apartment presents itself
first; it includes a workroom where the cloth is woven. Sidonius
then leads us through long porticoes supported by columns and from
where the view extends over a beautiful lake. Then comes an enclosed
gallery where many friends can stroll. It leads to three dining
rooms. From these, one passes into a large relaxation room, the
diversorium, where one can, as one chooses, sleep, chat, or play.
The writer does not bother to describe the bedrooms, nor even to
indicate their number. What he says about the villas of his friends
suggests that several were more magnificent than his own. These
beautiful residences, which once covered Gaul, did not perish
without leaving many traces. Remains of them are found in all parts
of the country, from the Mediterranean to the Rhine and as far as
the bottom of the British peninsula.
In
the description of the Villa Octaviana, we must note a chapel.
Indeed, a law of 398 states as "a custom" that large
landowners have a church on their property.
The
common language of the empire designated the master's house by the
word prætorium. This term is already found, with this meaning,
in Suetonius and Statius; it is found several times in Ulpian and
the jurists of the Digest; it becomes especially frequent among
authors of the 4th century, like Palladius and Symmachus. Now this
word, by its very root, indicated the idea of command,
precedence, authority. It had been applied, in a Roman camp, to the
general's tent; in the provinces, to the governor's palace. The
history of a word marks the course of ideas. There is no doubt that,
in the thoughts of men, this dwelling of the master was, in
comparison to all the other buildings scattered across the estate,
the house that commanded the most. Calling it a praetorium was like
calling it a manor house.
A
writer of the time, Palladius, recommended building it halfway up
the hill and always higher than the villa rustica. This rustic
villa, with its population, its series of stables and barns, its
mill, its press, its workshops, and all its numerous staff, was more
than what we call a farm: it formed a sort of village, owned by the
master and staffed by his servants. The villa rustica at the bottom
of the hill and the villa urbana halfway up the hill were already
the village and castle of later periods.
It
is true that this 4th-century castle did not have the appearance of
the 10th-century castle. The turres sometimes mentioned were not
feudal towers. There were no moats, no enclosure, no portcullis, no
battlements, but rather avenues and porticoes inviting entry. This
was because people lived in an age of peace and believed themselves
safe. Only around the middle of the 5th century do we see a few men
like Pontius Leontius fortifying their villa and surrounding it with
a thick wall "that no battering ram could break down." It
was only then, to resist invading looters, that the idea of
transforming the villa into a fortified castle arose.
Until then, the villa had been a castle, but a castle of peaceful
and happy times, an elegant, sumptuous, and open castle.
These
great landowners spent most of their lives there, surrounded by
their families and a large retinue of slaves, freedmen, and clients.
These men clearly loved castle life; There can be no doubt about
this when one has read the letters of Symmachus or those of Sidonius
Apollinaris. They built, they managed the cultivation, they carried
out irrigation, they lived among their peasants. A Syagrius, in his
beautiful estate of Taionnac, "cut his hay and did his grape
harvest." A Consentius, son and grandson of the highest
dignitaries of the empire, is represented by Sidonius "putting
his hand to the plow," as the old legend had represented
Cincinnatus. The friends of Ausonius, those of Symmachus, are for
the most part large landowners and they enjoy rural life. Modern
historians have said that Roman or Gallo-Roman society only loved
city life, and that it was the Germans who taught people to love the
countryside... All the writings we have from the 4th and 5th
centuries, on the contrary, depict the Roman aristocracy as a rural
class as much as an urban one: it is urban in the sense that it
exercises magistracies and administers the cities; it is rural in
its interests, in the greater part of its existence, in its tastes.
This
is because, in these beautiful residences, people led the life of a
great lord. Paulinus of Pella, recalling in his verses the time of
his youth, describes "the large residence where all the
delights of life were gathered" and where "the crowd of
servants and clients" crowded. This was on the eve of the
invasions. "The table was elegantly served, the furniture
brilliant, the silverware precious, the stables well-stocked, the
carriages comfortable." The pleasures of castle life included
conversation, horseback riding or carriage rides, tennis, dice, and
above all, hunting. Hunting was always a Roman favorite. Varro
already speaks of the vast warrens, filled with deer and roe deer,
which the owners reserved for their pleasures. The friends to whom
Pliny wrote divided their time "between study and hunting."
He himself, a mediocre hunter who carried a book and tablets,
nevertheless boasted of having once killed three wild boars. The
jurists of the Digest mention, among the objects that are ordinarily
an integral part of the estate, the hunting equipage, the huntsmen,
and the pack. Later, Symmachus wrote to his friend Protadius and
mocked him for his endless hunts and "the genealogy of his
dogs." The Gauls were also great hunters. They had been so
before Caesar, and they were still so after him. One only has to
look at the mosaics which, like that of Lillebonne, represent
hunting scenes. Look at the friends of Sidonius: Ecdicius "pursues
the beast through the woods, swims across rivers, loves only dogs,
horses and bows." It is true that the same man just now, at the
head of a few horsemen raised on his lands, will rout a troop of
Visigoths. Here is another friend of Sidonius, Potentinus: "he
excels at three things, cultivating, building, hunting."
Vectius, a great personage and high official, "is second to no
one in raising horses, training dogs, carrying falcons."
Hunting was one of the rights of the landowner on his land, and he
used it willingly. Thus, many things that the Middle Ages will offer
to our eyes are older than the Middle Ages.
Fustel
de Coulanges, L'Alleu and the Rural Estate during the Merovingian
Period, Paris: Hachette, 1889, octavo. Passim.
III
— CHRISTIANITY.
PROGRESS
OF ORGANIZATION.—THE CHRISTIAN EMPIRE.
...The
organization of the Church was being completed with surprising
rapidity. The great danger of Gnosticism, which was to divide
Christianity into countless sects, was averted by the end of the
second century. The term Catholic Church burst forth from all sides,
like the name of this great body that would henceforth endure
through the centuries without breaking up. And we can already
clearly see the character of this catholicity. The Montanists were
considered sectarians; the Marcionists were convicted of distorting
apostolic doctrine; the various Gnostic schools were increasingly
rejected from the bosom of the general Church. There is therefore
something that is neither Montanism, nor Marcionism, nor Gnosticism,
which is non-sectarian Christianity, the Christianity of the
majority of bishops, resisting heresies and using them all up,
having, if you will, only negative characteristics, but preserved,
by these negative characteristics, from pietistic aberrations and
the rationalist solvent. Christianity, like all parties that want to
live, disciplines itself, cuts off its own excesses... The golden
mean triumphs. The pietistic aristocracy of the Phrygian sects and
the speculative aristocracy of the Gnostics are equally dismissed
from their claims...
It
was the episcopate which, without any intervention from the civil
power, without any support from the police or the courts, thus
established order above liberty in a society founded primarily on
individual inspiration. This is why the Ebionites of Syria, who do
not have the episcopate, also do not have the idea of catholicity.
At first glance, the work of Jesus was not born viable; it was
chaos. Founded on a belief in the end of the world, which the
passing years would convince of error, the Galilean congregation
seemed capable of nothing but dissolving into anarchy... Individual
inspiration creates, but immediately destroys what it has created.
After freedom, there must be rule. The work of Jesus could be
considered saved the day it was admitted that the Church has a
direct power, a power representing that of Jesus. The Church from
then on dominates the individual, driving him from its midst if
necessary. Soon the Church, an unstable and changing body, is
personified in the elders; the powers of the Church become the
powers of a clergy dispenser of all graces, intermediary between God
and the faithful. Inspiration passes from the individual to the
community. The Church has become everything in Christianity; one
step further, the bishop becomes everything in the Church. Obedience
to the Church, then to the bishop, is considered the first duty;
innovation is the mark of falsehood; schism will henceforth be the
worst crime for the Christian...
Correspondence
between the Churches was early a custom. The circular letters from
the heads of the great Churches, read on Sundays at the gathering of
the faithful, were a continuation of apostolic literature. The
church, like the synagogue and the mosque, is an essentially urban
thing. Christianity (the same can be said of Judaism and Islam) will
be a religion of cities, not a religion of peasants. The peasant,
the pagan, will be the last resistance Christianity will encounter.
Rural Christians, very few in number, came to the church in the
neighboring town.
The
Roman municipality thus became the cradle of the Church. As the
countryside and small towns received the Gospel from the large
cities, they also received their clergy, always subject to the
bishop of the large city. Among cities, the civitas alone has a true
church, with an episcopus; the small town is ecclesiastical
dependent on the large one. This primacy of large cities was a
crucial fact. Once the large city was converted, the small town and
the countryside followed suit. The diocese was thus the original
unit of the Christian conglomerate.
As
for the ecclesiastical province, implying the precedence of the
large Churches over the small ones, it generally corresponded to the
Roman province. The founder of the framework of Christianity was
Augustus. The divisions of the cult of Rome and Augustus were the
secret law that regulated everything. The cities that had a flamen
or archiereus were those that later had an archbishop; the flamen
civitatis became the bishop. From the 3rd century onwards, the
flamen duumvir occupied in his city the rank which, a hundred or a
hundred and fifty years later, was that of the bishop in the
diocese. Julian later tried to oppose the flamens to the Christian
bishops and to make parish priests out of the Augustales. Thus the
ecclesiastical geography of a country is, with very little
difference, the geography of this same country in the Roman period.
The table of bishoprics and archbishoprics is that of the ancient
civitates, according to their links of subordination. The empire was
like the mold where religion as a new system coagulated. The
internal framework, the hierarchical divisions, were those of the
empire. The ancient roles of the Roman administration and the
registers of the Church in the Middle Ages and even today are almost
identical.
Rome
was the point where this great idea of catholicity was
developed. Its Church had an undisputed primacy. It owed this in
part to its holiness and its excellent reputation. Everyone
recognized that this Church had been founded by the apostles Peter
and Paul, that these two apostles had suffered martyrdom in Rome,
and that John himself had been plunged into boiling oil there. The
places sanctified by these Apostolic Acts, partly true, partly
false, were shown. All this surrounded the Church of Rome with an
unparalleled aura. Doubtful questions were brought to Rome for
arbitration, if not resolution. It was reasoned that since Christ
had made Cephas the cornerstone of his Church, this privilege should
extend to his successors. The Bishop of Rome became the bishop of
bishops, the one who warns others... The work of which the fragment
known as the Canon of Muratori was part, written in Rome around 180,
already shows us Rome regulating the Canon of the churches, giving
the Passion of Peter as the basis for catholicity... The attempts at
a symbol of faith also began in the Roman Church around this time.
Irenaeus refutes all heresies by the faith of this Church, "the
greatest, the most ancient, the most illustrious; which possesses,
by continuous succession, the true tradition of the apostles Peter
and Paul, to which, because of its primacy, propter potiorem
principalitatem, the rest of the Church must have recourse."
Every Church supposedly founded by an apostle had a privilege; What
can be said of the Church believed to have been founded by the two
greatest apostles simultaneously?
...
We can say that the organization of the Churches has undergone five
degrees of advancement. First, the primitive ecclesia, where all
members are equally inspired by the Spirit. Then the elders or
presbyteri assume, within the ecclesia, considerable police power
and absorb the ecclesia. Then the president of the elders, the
episcopos, absorbs more or less the powers of the elders and
consequently those of the ecclesia. Then the episcopi of the
different Churches, corresponding with each other, form the Catholic
Church. Among the episcopi, there is one, that of Rome, which is
evidently destined for a great future. The Pope, the Church of Jesus
transformed into a monarchy, are seen in the obscure distance... Let
us add that this transformation did not have, like the others, a
universal character. The Latin Church alone lent itself to this, and
even within this Church, the papacy's attempt ultimately led to
revolt and protest.
The
Church, in the third century, by monopolizing life, exhausted civil
society, bled it dry, and emptied it. Small societies killed the
great society. Ancient life, a purely external and virile life, a
life of glory, heroism, civic duty, the life of the forum, the
theater, the gymnasium, was vanquished by Jewish life, an
anti-military life, the life of pale, cloistered people. Politics
does not require people too detached from the earth. When man
decides to aspire only to heaven, he no longer has a country here
below... Christianity improved the morals of the ancient world, but,
from a military and patriotic point of view, it destroyed the
ancient world. The City and the State would later accommodate
Christianity only by subjecting it to the most profound
modifications.
"They
dwell on earth," says the author of the Epistle to Diognetus,
"but, in reality, they have their homeland in heaven."
Indeed, when the martyr is asked about his homeland, "I am a
Christian," he replies. The homeland and civil laws—this
is the mother, this is the father, that the true Gnostic, according
to Clement of Alexandria, must despise in order to sit at the right
hand of God. The Christian is embarrassed, incapable, when it comes
to worldly affairs; the Gospel forms the faithful, not citizens. It
was the same for Islamism and Buddhism. The advent of these great
universal religions put an end to the old idea of homeland;
one was no longer Roman, Athenian: one was Christian, Muslim,
Buddhist. From now on, men will be divided according to their
religion, not according to their homeland; they will be divided over
heresies, not over questions of nationality. This is what Marcus
Aurelius saw perfectly, and what made him so unfavorable to
Christianity. The Church seemed to him a state within a state. "The
camp of piety," this new "system of piety founded on the
divine Logos," has nothing to do with the Roman camp, which in
no way claims to form subjects for heaven. The Church, in fact,
admits to being a complete society, far superior to civil society;
the pastor is worth more than the magistrate... The Christian owes
nothing to the empire, and the empire owes him everything, for it is
the presence of the faithful, scattered throughout the world Roman
Empire, which stops the wrath of heaven and saves the State from
ruin. The Christian does not rejoice in the victories of the empire;
public disasters seem to him a confirmation of the prophecies that
condemn the world to perish by barbarians and by fire...
[However]
ancient and profound reasons required, despite appearances to the
contrary, that the empire should become Christian. The Christian
doctrine on the origin of power seemed expressly designed to become
the doctrine of the Roman State. Authority loves authority. Men as
conservative as the bishops must have been terribly tempted to
reconcile themselves with public force. Jesus had laid down the
rule. The effigy of the currency was for him the supreme criterion
of legitimacy, beyond which there was nothing to seek. In the midst
of Nero's reign, Saint Paul wrote: "Let everyone be subject to
the ruling powers, for there is no power except from God." The
powers that exist are ordained by God, so that whoever opposes the
powers resists the order of God." A few years later, Peter, or
whoever wrote in his name the epistle known as Prima Petri,
expressed himself in an almost identical way. Clement was also a
most devoted subject of the Roman Empire. Finally, one of the traits
of Saint Luke is his respect for imperial authority and the
precautions he took not to offend it.
Certainly,
there were exalted Christians who entirely shared Jewish anger and
dreamed only of the destruction of the idolatrous city, identified
by them with Babylon. Such were the authors of apocalypses and the
writers of Sibylline writings. For them, Christ and Caesar were two
irreconcilable terms. But the faithful of the great Churches had
quite different ideas. In 70, the Church of Jerusalem, with a
sentiment more Christian than patriotic, abandoned the revolutionary
city and sought peace beyond the Jordan. Saint Justin, in his
Apologies, never combats the principle of empire; he wants the
empire to examine Christian doctrine, approve it, countersign it in
some way, and condemn those who slander it. The leading doctor of
the time of Marcus Aurelius, Melito, Bishop of Sardis, was seen to
make even more characteristic offers of service and present
Christianity as the basis of a hereditary empire by divine right...
All apologists flatter the emperors' favorite idea, that of heredity
in a direct line, and assure them that the effect of Christian
prayers will be that their son will reign after them...
The
hatred between Christianity and the empire was the hatred of people
who must one day love each other. Under the Severans, the language
of the Church remained what it had been under the Antonines:
plaintive and tender. Apologists displayed a kind of legitimacy, the
claim that the Church had always saluted the emperor first. Saint
Paul's principle bore fruit: "All power comes from God; he who
holds the sword holds it from God for good." This correct
attitude toward power was due to external necessities as much as to
the very principles the Church had received from its founders. The
Church was already a large association; it was essentially
conservative; it needed order and legal guarantees. This is
admirably seen in the actions of Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch
under Aurelian. The Bishop of Antioch could already be considered,
at this time, a high-ranking personage; the Church's assets were in
his hands; a multitude of people lived off his favors. Paul was a
brilliant man, hardly mystical, worldly, a great secular lord,
seeking to make Christianity acceptable to the world and to those in
authority. The Pietists, as was to be expected, found him a heretic
and had him deposed. Paul resisted and refused to abandon the
episcopal house. This is the problem with the most haughty sects:
they possess; and who can settle a question of property or
enjoyment, if not the civil authority? The question was referred to
the emperor, who was at the moment in Antioch, and we saw this
unusual spectacle of an unfaithful and persecuting sovereign charged
with deciding who was the true bishop. Aurelian... had the
correspondence of the two bishops brought to him, noted the one who
had relations with Rome and Italy, and concluded that this one was
the bishop of Antioch. ...One fact was becoming evident:
Christianity could no longer survive without the empire, and the
empire, on the other hand, had nothing better to do than adopt
Christianity as its religion. The world wanted a religion of
congregations, of churches or synagogues, of chapels, a religion
where the essence of worship was assembly, association, and
brotherhood. Christianity fulfilled all these conditions. Its
admirable worship, its pure morality, its skillfully organized
clergy, assured its future.
Several
times in the third century, this historical necessity almost came
true. This was especially true during the time of the Syrian
emperors, whose status as foreigners and the baseness of their
origins protected them from prejudice, and who, despite their vices,
inaugurated a breadth of ideas and tolerance previously unknown. The
same thing happened again under Philip the Arab, in the East under
Zenobia, and, in general, under the emperors whose origins placed
them outside Roman patriotism.
The
struggle redoubled in fury when the great reformers, Diocletian and
Maximian, believed they could give the empire new life. The Church
triumphed through its martyrs; Roman pride gave way; Constantine saw
the inner strength of the Church, the populations of Asia Minor,
Syria, Thrace, Macedonia—in a word, the eastern part of the
empire—already more than half-Christian. His mother, who had
been an innkeeper in Nicomedia, dangled before his eyes an Eastern
empire centered around Nicaea, the heart of which would be the favor
of the bishops and the multitudes of poor people registered with the
Church, who, in the large cities, formed public opinion. Constantine
inaugurated what is called "the peace of the Church," and
what was in reality the domination of the Church...
Julian's
reaction was a meaningless whim. After the struggle came intimate
union and love. Theodosius inaugurated the Christian empire, that
is, the thing the Church, in its long life, had loved most, a
theocratic empire, of which the Church is the essential framework,
and which, even after being destroyed by the barbarians, remains the
eternal dream of the Christian conscience, at least in the Romance
countries. Many believed, in fact, that with Theodosius the goal of
Christianity had been achieved. The empire and Christianity became
so closely identified with each other that many scholars conceived
the end of the empire as the end of the world, and applied to this
event the apocalyptic images of the supreme catastrophe. The Eastern
Church, whose development was not hindered by the barbarians, never
detached itself from this ideal; Constantine and Theodosius remain
the two poles; it still clings to them, at least in Russia... As for
the Western Christian empire, although it soon perished, it was only
destroyed in appearance...; its secrets were perpetuated in the high
Roman clergy... A holy empire, with a barbarian Theodosius, holding
the sword to protect the Church of Christ, such was the ideal of the
Latin papacy in the Middle Ages...
E.
Renan, Marc-Aurèle, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1882, octavo.
Passim.
IV
— ROMAN SOCIETY
ACCORDING
TO AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, SAINT JEROME, AND SYMMACHOS.
People
have often wondered what to think of public morality in the fourth
century, especially among the upper classes of the empire.
Generally, we are tempted to judge it harshly. When we consider that
this society was in decline, and that it had only a few years left
to live, we are tempted to explain its misfortunes by its faults and
to believe that it deserved the fate it was about to suffer. This is
why we so easily believe those who speak ill of it. There were two
contemporaries in particular, Ammianus Marcellinus and Saint Jerome,
who took pleasure in mistreating it; and, since they belonged to two
opposing factions, it seems natural to us to think that, since they
agreed, they spoke the truth. I admit, however, that their testimony
is suspect to me. Ammianus devoted two long chapters of his history
to the senators of Rome; but these chapters have, in his work, a
particular character: one realizes, when one reads them carefully,
that he wanted to compose pieces with effect, which would strike the
reader, and that, in these passages, which do not entirely resemble
the rest, he is more satirist and rhetorician than historian... What
does he tell us, moreover, that we do not know in advance? He
teaches us, which does not surprise us at all, that there are in
this great world many very small minds: fools who believe themselves
great men because their flatterers have erected statues to them;
vain people, who walk on magnificent chariots, wearing silk garments
whose thousand colors are stirred in the wind; glorious people, who
talk incessantly of their fortune; effeminate people, whom the
slightest heat overwhelms, "who, when a fly lands on their
golden robes or a small ray of sunshine slips through some crack in
their parasol, are sorry they were not born in the Cimmerian
Bosphorus"; atheists, who only leave their homes after
consulting their astrologers; prodigals, caressing and base when
they want to borrow money, insolent when it is necessary to return
it, and other characters of this sort, who are found everywhere.
Besides these failings, which seem to us on the whole rather minor,
he points out more serious vices. Some of them belong more
particularly to the Roman race, and the moralists of past centuries
have already revealed them; others are from all countries and all
times, and since unfortunately no human society escapes them, it is
natural that we also find them among the people of the 4th century.
But what seems to him more odious than all the rest, what most often
excites his bad humor, is that the great Roman lords lack
consideration for the learned and the wise. They reserve their
favors for those who flatter them basely or who amuse them; as for
honest and learned people, they are considered boring and useless,
and the head waiter has them unceremoniously shown the door of the
dining room. We know these complaints; they are not new to us. One
of the serious reasons Juvenal has for scolding his era is that the
Roman customer, "who saw the light of day on the Aventine and
who was nourished from his childhood on the Sabine olive," does
not have as good a place as the Greek parasite at the master's
table, that he is not served the same dishes and that he does not
drink the same wine. Ammianus no doubt had to suffer some
humiliation of this kind. It is likely that when he returned from
the army, where he had fought well, and at the time when he was
beginning to write the history of his campaigns, he was not received
by everyone as he thought he should be. He naturally concluded that
a society which did not always give him his place took no account of
merit. "Today," he says, "the musician has driven the
philosopher from everywhere; the orator is replaced by the one who
teaches histrions their trade; libraries are closed and resemble
sepulchres." It is difficult to believe that these severe words
apply to people like Symmachus and his friends, who loved books so
much and held scholars in such great honor. But Ammian seems to
recognize elsewhere that one should not give too much importance to
his reproaches and make them fall on everyone; He tells us, at the
beginning of his violent invectives, that Rome is still great and
glorious, but that its splendor is compromised by the criminal
frivolity of a few people (levitate paucorum incondita) who do not
sufficiently consider of which city they have the honor to be
citizens. Thus, by his own admission, the guilty are only the
exception.
The
anger of Saint Jerome inspires no more confidence in me than the
epigrams of Ammianus. He was a very hot-tempered saint; his best
friends, like Rufinus and Saint Augustine, have experienced this.
People of this temperament suddenly go from one extreme to the
other, and usually hate most what they loved most. This is precisely
what made Saint Jerome so hard on Roman society: he had been too
charmed by it and could never forgive it for the attraction it had
had for him. The delicate pleasures of his literary vanity, his
frequent conversations with women of wit, the pleasure they found in
listening to him, the applause they gave to his works, all this was
part of those "delights of Rome," the poignant memory of
which followed him into the desert and troubled his penance. He made
them pay with his invectives for the trouble he felt in detaching
himself from it. Rome is for him another Babylon, "the
courtesan in purple clothes." He generally reproaches it for
all sorts of excesses; but it is remarkable that, when he comes to
specific accusations, he finds little to criticize in it except the
trivialities of worldly life. How do we spend our time in the big
city? Seeing and being seen, receiving visits and making them,
praising people and speaking ill of them. "Conversation begins,
we gossip never stops. We tear apart those who are absent, we tell
stories about our neighbors, we bite others and, in turn, we are
bitten by them." This picture is pleasant; but what does it
prove, if not that society at all times is similar? Let us note that
Saint Jerome attacks everyone here, without distinction of religion.
It has been sought to use his testimony to establish that pagan
society was by far the most corrupt: this is a wrong, it is even
harder for Christians than for it. He shows us that the vices of the
old society had passed into the new, almost without changing form,
that one could not always distinguish the virgin and the widow who
had received the teachings of the Church from those who had remained
faithful to the old cult, that there were clerics who were petty
masters, monks who were chasing inheritances, and above all
parasitic priests who went every day to greet the beautiful ladies:
"He gets up in all haste, as soon as the sun begins to show,
regulates the order of his visits, chooses the shortest routes, and
seizes the ladies he goes to see almost still in bed. If he sees a
cushion, an elegant tablecloth or some object of that kind, he
praises it, he feels it, he admires it, he complains of having
nothing as good at home, and does so well that it is given to him.
Wherever you go, he is always the first person you meet; he knows
all the news; he runs to tell them before everyone else; if
necessary, he invents them, or, in any case, he embellishes them
each time with new incidents." Is this not like a first
appearance of the 18th-century abbot?
There
are therefore reasons to only half-believe Saint Jerome and Ammian;
and even if we were to believe them completely, their testimony
seems less damning for their century than has been claimed. In any
case, the letters of Symmachus[16] give a better opinion of them,
and I trust them all the more willingly because he did not claim to
judge his time and write a moral treatise, which always leads to
adopting a certain attitude. He naively says what he thinks, shows
himself to us as he is, and describes people without knowing it. His
letters are those of an honest man, who gives everyone the best
advice. To those who govern provinces exhausted by taxes and war, he
preaches humanity; he recommends charity to the rich, in terms that
recall Christian charity. Sometimes he enters resolutely into the
private lives of his friends; for example, he dares to ask one of
them to renounce the profits of an unjust inheritance. As for him,
he is everywhere occupied in doing good; he comes to the aid of his
unfortunate friends, takes care of their affairs, implores the help
of powerful men for them, marries their daughters, and, after their
death, redoubles his care for the children they leave without
protection and often without fortune. His correspondence does not
make him alone; it sometimes allows us to judge those with whom he
was in contact. His children form united households, his friends,
for the most part, resemble him, and when one has finished reading
his letters, it seems that one has just passed through a society of
honest people. I know well that he is inclined to judge with a
little too much indulgence; He readily attributes his qualities to
others and does not perceive the harm he would not be capable of
committing; but, despite this fault, it is impossible not to take
great account of his testimony. The impression that remains of this
great world of Rome, as we glimpse it in his letters, is, on the
whole, favorable to him and recalls the society of Trajan and the
Antonines as shown to us in the letters of Pliny.
Here
is another piece of information that we owe to the correspondence of
Symmachus, and which somewhat contradicts the opinion we have of
this period. It seems to us that the people of that generation,
which was the last of the empire, must have had some sense of the
perils that threatened them, and that it is impossible that by
listening a little one could not hear the creaking of this machine
that was so close to breaking down. The letters of Symmachus show us
that we are mistaken. We see there that the most distinguished
people, the statesmen, the politicians, hardly suspected that the
end was approaching. On the eve of the catastrophe, everything went
on as usual, people were buying, selling, repairing monuments and
building houses for eternity. Symmachus is a Roman of ancient times,
who believes that the empire is eternal and does not imagine that
the world can continue to exist without it. Despite the warnings he
has received, his optimism is imperturbable. He would certainly have
many reasons to be discontented: the Senate, of which he is so proud
to be a member, is almost nothing anymore, and the religion he
professes is persecuted. However, he never ceases to praise his
teachers and is satisfied with his time. He was one of those candid
souls who regard as incontestable truths that civilization always
triumphs over barbarism, that the most educated people are
inevitably the most honest and the strongest, that letters flourish
whenever they are encouraged, etc. Now he sees precisely that
schools have never been more numerous, education more widespread,
science more honored, that letters lead to everything, that personal
merit opens all careers; so he exclaims, in his enthusiasm: "We
truly live in a century that is friendly to virtue, where people of
talent can only blame themselves if they do not obtain the positions
of which they are worthy." And it does not seem possible to him
that such an enlightened society, which so highly values
literature and places such great value on learning,
could be swept away in a day by barbarians!
Yet
he does occasionally see and note in passing a few unfortunate
incidents, which revealed the evil from which the empire was
suffering, and which should have given him pause for thought. For
example, he tells someone who is waiting for him that he cannot
leave Rome because the countryside is infested with brigands: so the
Roman peace, so vaunted in inscriptions and medals, is over, since,
even at the gates of the capital, one is no longer safe! Another
time he complains that the emperor, who is short of soldiers, is
asking rich people for their slaves to enlist, and this measure does
not reveal to him the extremes to which the empire is reduced! But
what is even more significant, what indicates more clearly a
profound disorder and announces the approaching ruin, is the sad
state of public wealth. The evidence of this is everywhere in
Symmachus. He shows us that the tax authorities have exhausted
everything, that the rich are at the end of their resources, that
farmers no longer have money to pay their landlords, and that land,
which was a source of income, is now only an occasion for
expenditure. These are serious symptoms; and yet Symmachus, who sees
them, who points them out, does not seem alarmed by them. This is
because the evil was old, that it had increased little by little,
and that, since the time that people had suffered from it, they had
become accustomed to it. Since Rome persisted in living, despite the
reasons it had to die, people had ended up believing that it would
always live. Until the last moment, people had entertained this
illusion, and the final catastrophe, although it should have been
expected, was a surprise. This is what the letters of Symmachus
bring to light; They show us to what extent politicians, nourished
by the lessons of history and thoroughly familiar with ancient
times, can be mistaken about the era in which they live; they show
us the spectacle, full of serious lessons, of a society proud of its
civilization, glorious of its past, preoccupied with the future,
which advances step by step to the edge of the abyss, without
realizing that it is about to fall into it.
G.
Boissier, The End of Paganism, Vol. II, Paris, Hachette, 1894, 16vo.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
— T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vols. I1 and II2 [On the
Visigothic, Hunnic, and Vandal Invasions in Italy], Vols. III and IV
[On the Ostrogothic Invasion and the Restoration of the Empire],
Vol. V and VI [On the Lombards, until 744], Oxford, 1892-1895, in -
8º.—Cf. C. Cipolla, Per la storia d'Italia e de' suoi
conquistatori nel medio evo piu antico, Bologna, 1895, in - 16.
